Peer-To-Peer News - The Week In Review - December 11th, '04

[JackSpratts]

Quotes Of The Week


"I know for a fact that a lot of people first heard my music by downloading it from Napster or Kazaa, and for this reason I'll always be glad that Napster and Kazaa have existed." - Moby


"I'm kind of an optimist. When you have common sense and an important issue, then there's reason to be hopeful." – Brewster Kahle


"Your lack of experience in P2P makes it difficult for you to tell the court of any feasibility for the propositions you mentioned." - Sharman attorney Mark Lemming


"We find that, if measured accurately, P2P traffic has never declined." – Thomas Karagiannis


"Users are very much moving around...rather than moving out." – Eric Garland


"We would like to announce that P2P Network MediaSeek.pl has been placed on auction on eBay." – MediaSeek spokesperson mspl, in a surprise pronouncement here at P2P-Zone




















Supreme Court to Hear Internet File-Sharing Dispute
AP

The Supreme Court agreed Friday to consider whether two Internet file-sharing services may be held responsible for their customers' online swapping of copyrighted songs and movies.

Justices will review a lower ruling in favor of Grokster Ltd. and StreamCast Networks Inc., which came as a blow to recording companies and movie studios seeking to stop the illegal distribution of their works.

The file-sharing is ``inflicting catastrophic, multibillion dollar harm on petitioners that cannot be redressed through lawsuits against the millions of direct infringers using those services,'' the appeal by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios and other entertainment companies says.

Grokster and StreamCast, in their filings, disagree: ``Once the software has been downloaded by users, (we) have no involvement in, nor ability to control, what it is used for.''

The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco ruled in August that file-sharing services were not responsible because they don't have central servers pointing users to copyright material.

It reasoned that the firms simply provide software that lets individual users share information over the Internet, regardless of whether that shared information is copyrighted.

The big-money fight has drawn the support of dozens of companies in the entertainment industry as well as attorneys general in 40 states, who fear the file-sharing software will encourage illegal activity, stem the growth of small artists and lead to lost jobs and sales tax revenue.

Civil libertarians, meanwhile, have warned a defeat for Grokster and StreamCast could force technology companies such as Microsoft Corp. to delay or kill innovative products that give consumers more control.

``History has shown that time and market forces often provide equilibrium in balancing interests, whether the new technology be a player piano, a copier, a tape recorder, a video recorder, a personal computer, a karaoke machine, or an MP3 player,'' the 9th Circuit stated. ``Thus, it is prudent for courts to exercise caution.''

If the lower ruling is upheld, the entertainment industry would have to take the more costly and less popular route of going directly after millions of online file-swappers believed to distribute songs and movies illegally.

Recording companies have already sued more than 3,400 such users; at least 600 of the cases were eventually settled for roughly $3,000 each.

The case is Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios v. Grokster, 04-480. Arguments are expected in the spring, with a ruling by July.
http://tech.nytimes.com/aponline/nat...e-Sharing.html


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File Sharing 'Not Hurting' Most Artists
Washington

Most musicians and artists say the internet has helped them make more money from their work despite online file-trading services that allow users to copy songs and other material for free, according to a new study released on Sunday.

Recording labels and movie studios have hired phalanxes of lawyers to pursue "peer to peer" networks like Kazaa, and have sued thousands of individuals who distribute copyrighted material through such networks.

But most of the artists surveyed by the non-profit Pew Internet and American Life Project said online file sharing did not concern them much.

Artists were split on the merits of peer-to-peer networks, with 47 per cent saying that they prevent artists from earning royalties for their work and another 43 per cent saying they helped promote and distribute their material.

But two-thirds of those surveyed said file sharing posed little threat to them, and less than one-third of those surveyed said file sharing was a major threat to creative industries.

Only 3 per cent said the internet hurt their ability to protect their creative works.

"What we hear from a wide spectrum of artists is that, despite the real challenges of protecting work online, the Internet has opened new ways for them to exercise their imaginations and sell their creations," said report author Mary Madden, a research specialist at the Pew Internet and American Life Project.

The nonprofit group based its report on a survey of 809 self-identified artists in December 2003. The survey has a margin of error of 4 percentage points.
http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.j...toryID=6997352


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P2P Technology Still Going Strong Despite Lawsuits, Fines
Kim Lane

The threat of copyright lawsuits and large fines has apparently not been enough to deter computer users from illegally sharing music, movie and other digital files through the use of peer-to-peer (P2P) networking.

That is the finding of UC Riverside graduate student Thomas Karagiannis, who co-authored a paper “Is P2P dying or just hiding?” Karagiannis worked on the two-year project with UCR Computer Science and Engineering professor Michalis Faloutsos, and Andre Broido, Nevil Brownlee and kc claffy from the CAIDA institute at the University of California at San Diego.

Their objective was to determine the validity of claims that music file sharing dropped by as much as 50 percent when, in September 2003, the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) filed the first of thousands of lawsuits that targeted individuals who illegally offered copyright music through P2P networks. These networks allow users to quickly and without cost, share movie, music and other digital files located on their individual PCs with other network users.

“We find that, if measured accurately, P2P traffic has never declined; indeed we have never seen the proportion of P2P traffic decrease over time in any of our data sources,” wrote Karagiannis, in a paper that he presented at the IEEE Globecom 2004 conference, which was held Nov. 29 through Dec. 3 in Dallas.

During the two-year study, Karagiannis and his cohorts looked closely at data that had been provided by major Internet service providers in August 2002, May 2003 and January 2004. By carefully decoding the bit sequences in the data, they sought to determine the percentage of total P2P traffic and how that compared to pre-RIAA lawsuit traffic.

There was no decrease, said Karagiannis. In some instances, there was a slight increase.

“P2P traffic represents a significant amount of Internet traffic and is likely to continue to grow in the future, RIAA behavior notwithstanding,” he wrote in the paper.

This study is more all-inclusive than other similar studies because it looked at eight – as opposed to one or two – of the most popular P2P applications, said Karagiannis. In addition, they were able to identify traffic to P2P networks that had intentionally attempted to mask traffic through the use non-standard port numbers and other sophisticated technology.

The RIAA continues to file lawsuits against individuals. In addition, officials from the Motion Picture Association of America announced that they had filed the first of many lawsuits targeting computer users who share digital movies via P2P networks.

Karagiannis feels his study shows that P2P is here to stay and that these industries would be better off trying to find ways to provide affordable and convenient alternatives that would allow computer users to download their products legally.
http://www.newsroom.ucr.edu/cgi-bin/display.cgi?id=935


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The trial

Report Asserts Kazaa Makes The Rules
Kristyn Maslog-Levis

Setting aside Sharman Networks' objections, an Australian judge accepted on Friday an affidavit with potentially damaging assertions about Kazaa's handling of copyrighted material.

The affidavit contains a report from George Barker, director of the Australian National University's Center for Law and Economics, Intellectual Property and Copyright, and focuses on the financial consequences of the Kazaa system, which is run by Sharman Networks.

According to the report, the Kazaa system is a "marketplace" that brings together people who have copyrighted works and people who want to make unauthorized copies of those works. The report adds that Kazaa "designs the rules, facilitates the 'market' for exchange of copyright works, and enforces or has the capacity to enforce the rules of that market."

"The attractiveness of the system to users, and the success of Sharman's network growth strategy is verified by the fact that Sharman claims that Kazaa has more than 60 million subscribers and is the most downloaded program in history--approximately 20 million downloads per month," the report says. "As the network grows in size, it becomes more attractive to potential users--because more content will be available--and more valuable to Sharman."

The affidavit is part of a trial in which major record labels Universal Music Australia, EMI, Sony/BMG, Warner, Festival Mushroom and 25 additional applicants are suing Sharman Networks and associated parties--including Brilliant Digital Entertainment, Altnet, Sharman Networks CEO Nikki Hemming and others--over alleged music copyright infringement made using the Kazaa software. The trial, which started this week, is taking place in Sydney.

Barker's report also included details on how Kazaa makes its profits from unauthorized music sharing and the damage this causes to the music industry and the Australian economy.

Kazaa's unauthorized distribution system makes money from global advertising, commercial referrals to Web sites, direct marketing and market research, Barker's report states.

Sharman Networks counsel Anthony Meagher tried to prevent the affidavit's admission into the trial by asserting that Barker's report is not relevant to the issue of filtering--which deals with the Kazaa system's ability or inability to stop the sharing of copyrighted music files--or the authorization issue raised by the record companies.

Judge Murray Wilcox, however, rejected the objections from Kazaa's operators saying it was "blindingly obvious it would be to Kazaa's financial advantage" if people could use it as widely as possible. And if that meant using unauthorized material "that would be to Kazaa's benefit...of course it will pay people to freeload on others--it happens all the time."

Tom Mizzone, vice president of data service at antipiracy company MediaSentry, was also cross-examined on Friday. The previous day, he testified that his company can trace IP addresses of Kazaa users and can communicate with them about copyright infringement via instant messaging.

Under cross-examination, Mizzone acknowledged that only 22 percent of the "warning" instant messages were received by Kazaa users.

However, Mizzone also said that instant messaging could be disabled by the Kazaa users, therefore blocking attempts to send warnings about copyright infringement.

The hearing will continue on Tuesday.
http://news.com.com/Report+asserts+K...3-5476260.html


Sharman Lawyer: Witness Switched Sides
Kristyn Maslog-Levis

One of the witnesses against Sharman Networks had at one time offered to be an expert witness for the company in the civil trial now taking place in Australia, according to Sharman's attorney.

Sharman attorney Mark Lemming revealed on Wednesday an e-mail that University of Melbourne professor Leon Sterling sent to an employee at Sharman. The e-mail stated that Sterling was withdrawing an offer to be an expert witness for Sharman during the civil trial, saying that writing a report requested by Sharman would be "stretching his expertise."

During cross-examination, Lemming used the e-mail to question Sterling's expertise in the trial against the company, which makes the Kazaa peer-to-peer software.

"Your lack of experience in P2P makes it difficult for you to tell the court of any feasibility for the propositions you mentioned," Lemming said.

The exchange is part of a trial in which major record labels Universal Music Australia, EMI, Sony BMG Music Entertainment, Warner Music Group, Festival Mushroom Records and 25 additional applicants are suing Sharman and associated parties--including Brilliant Digital Entertainment, Altnet, Sharman CEO Nikki Hemming and others--over alleged music copyright infringement made using the Kazaa software. The trial, which began last week, is taking place in Sydney.

Sterling responded to Lemming that it was not possible for him to do a report on how peer-to-peer networks behave, which Sharman had previously requested, because he did not have the resources to do so in a short period of time.

Sterling added that he was not able to do a feasibility study on the proposals that he made and acknowledged that any filtering done in Sharman's Kazaa system would not be 100 percent efficient.

However, Sterling maintained that the suggestions for filtering and monitoring that he made on the stand Tuesday are "all plausible mechanisms" that can be added to the Kazaa system.

After a heated discussion on Wednesday morning, Justice Murray Wilcox told Sharman's representatives to present--earlier than previously scheduled--witnesses who could offer a detailed understanding of how the Kazaa software works.

Wilcox demanded that Sharman Chief Technical Officer Phil Morle take the witness stand on Wednesday. Morle was previously scheduled to testify on Friday.

Morle reiterated Sharman's stand that the company cannot monitor or control what its users do, adding that Sharman does not have the ability to force people to download new versions of the software.

Morle said Kazaa can promote the use of a newer version of the software but cannot force people to upload it. He said all that the technology can do is pop a small window to tell the person that a new version is available, which the person can close or reject and will not prevent the person from using the Kazaa system. Morle is due to be cross examined on Thursday.
http://news.com.com/Sharman+lawyer+W...3-5483277.html


Sharman Exec Calls Child Porn Unstoppable
Kristyn Maslog-Levis

Sharman Networks' chief technology officer has refuted a claim on the Kazaa Web site that the company could "permanently bar" users who are using its peer-to-peer software to distribute child pornography.

Philip Morle told the Federal Court in Sydney on Thursday that he did not believe Sharman could actually block user access to Kazaa as stated in the company's zero- tolerance policy on child pornography.

The owners of Kazaa have on their Web site a "no-tolerance policy with respect to child pornography and other obscene material" and say they have the right to "permanently bar" users and their computers from accessing Kazaa and other Kazaa services."

Morle, however, said he did not know how permanently barring users from accessing the Kazaa system could be done and he claimed he had never seen Kazaa's child pornography policy before.

The testimony is part of a trial in which major record labels Universal Music Australia, EMI, Sony/BMG, Warner, Festival Mushroom and 25 additional applicants are suing Sharman Networks and associated parties--including Brilliant Digital Entertainment, Altnet, Sharman Networks CEO Nikki Hemming and others--over alleged music copyright infringement made using the Kazaa software. The trial, which started last week, is taking place in Sydney.

Morle's remarks in the trial came after Sharman Networks' Executive Vice President Alan Morris faced a U.S. Senate judiciary committee in September last year that tackled issues of pornography in a peer-to-peer environment. In Morris' speech, he mentioned Sharman's zero-tolerance policy against child pornography.

"It should be noted that, while we support user privacy, Sharman Networks Limited has not chosen to use methods of providing anonymity to users that could hinder the legitimate quests for purveyors of obscene material by law enforcement agencies," Morris' statement said.

Sharman's porn filter was described during the U.S. Senate hearings as "the most comprehensive and effective, password-protected, family filter available with any P2P software application."

Morle also revealed Friday that he had been "constantly looking at ways to inhibit infringement" of unlicensed music files.

"I've spent a lot of time thinking about filtering and considering how that would be done and I haven't gotten to a position where what I've reported can and can't be done has caused my superiors to want me to try anything," Morle said.

Universal Music Australia parties' lead barrister, Tony Bannon, questioned Morle on his claim, stating that the Sharman parties have not produced any documentation demonstrating any attempt to try to introduce filters to the Kazaa system.

Morle said his efforts had not been committed to paper because he had only been discussing them verbally with Sharman Networks Chief Executive Officer Nikki Hemming and other executives.

Bannon questioned Morle's knowledge of the cancellation of a Web server in Denmark in 2002 which had collected around 15 million e-mails from various Kazaa users worldwide. In a graphic illustration, Morle was asked to demonstrate a live link to a Web server in Denmark which collects data on Kazaa users by invoking a "special command line."

Morle said that as far as he knows, the Denmark Web server had been phased out and he was not aware that it is still functioning. He added that he was not familiar with the software being used and therefore could not comment on the process further.

"This is a very administrative unimportant piece of software that a junior programmer developed…there's no need for me to be involved with this kind of stuff. It's not something that I need to do. It's a very small piece of software that automates the recording of statistics that are publicly available in the Kazaa application and that's all it is…I wasn't aware that the computer was still in operation, I thought it's already been phased out," Morle said.

Morle also maintained that he did not deliberately damage his laptop during the execution of the Anton Piller orders (or civil search warrant) in February to prevent access to its content.

"I have nothing to hide on what was on that laptop. It was my belief that it was destroyed by the process, not by myself and I wasn't even in the room at that time," he said.

Other witnesses put on the stand on Thursday included David Thompson, national director of the Deloitte Forensic Technology Group, who confirmed that when the Kazaa software is installed, it includes a "pre-defined list of 200 Internet IP addresses of current or former supernodes within the Kazaa system."

A supernode contains a list of some of the files made available by other Kazaa users and where they are located. Kazaa users with the fastest Internet connections and the most powerful computers become the supernodes. When user performs a search, Kazaa first searches the nearest supernode to the user and sends the user immediate results.

Thompson added that the list of supernode addresses was regularly updated during the operation of the software and was used in the provision of results in response to Kazaa user's search requests.

Thompson said he observed evidence of communications taking place when the Kazaa software operates on a user's computer, and when the user attempts to uninstall the software. "These include the sending of statistical or other information regarding user activity or identity. Such information is sent by users' computers to remote systems, such as supernodes within the Kazaa system and the Web site and may be available to the operators of such remote systems."

He added that Internet IP addresses are useful to identify specific devices on the Internet--such as computers of particular Kazaa users--"despite the fact that they sometimes change."
http://news.com.com/Sharman+exec+cal...3-5486666.html


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Issues of Copyright and File Sharing Compel MPAA, SAG, AFTRA to Act
Leonard Jacobs

What does it mean to own your work? What are the implications and repercussions when private citizens share that work illegally? Is software that allows individuals to trade TV programs and feature films a threat to the performers who appear in those works and derive income -- residuals, health plan contributions, other benefits -- from them?

Of late, these questions have returned to the national conversation with gusto. From the halls of Congress to the executive suites of motion picture studios to the conference tables of unions and guilds, a multitude of actions are underway to clarify the rights of copyright holders, to redefine what constitutes illegal peer-to-peer sharing of copyrighted material, and to determine how the work of artists -- and performers' subsidiary incomes -- can be protected.

Possibly the most high-profile action came on Tues., Nov. 16, when the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA), representing the interests of seven major film studios, announced an unspecified number of lawsuits against individuals it accuses of offering pirated copies of films using Internet-based file-sharing programs. "The motion-picture industry must pursue legal proceedings against people who are stealing our movies on the Internet," said Dan Glickman, the MPAA's president and CEO, in a statement. "The future of our industry, and of the hundreds of thousands of jobs it supports, must be protected from this kind of outright theft using all available means."

The suit follows the strategy adopted by the Recording Industry Association of America in its successful battle against Napster: Concentrate on private citizens who trade copyrighted material.

Back in the nation's capital, meanwhile, a $388 billion spending bill approved by Congress includes a program that creates a federal copyright enforcement "czar." The program authorizes the president to appoint one individual to coordinate law enforcement efforts aimed at stopping international copyright infringement and to oversee a federal umbrella agency responsible for administering intellectual property law. That power is currently diluted across multiple agencies, including the Library of Congress, the Justice and State departments, and the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative.

In another measure, the Senate has passed the Family Entertainment and Copyright Act of 2004, which, among other things, makes recording a movie inside a movie theatre a crime punishable by three years in prison.

Yet a recent Reuters article underscores just how big a problem the industry faces: It reports that a file-sharing application called BitTorrent is now so popular it is "devouring more than a third of the Internet's bandwidth." It is also more insidious, for it does not offer an online platform or marketplace for trading TV programs or feature films. Instead, the software allows private citizens to contact each other directly and trade files privately -- so-called "peer-to-peer" sharing.

So how does all this affect the actor? Back Stage contacted representatives of the Screen Actors Guild (SAG) and the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (AFTRA) to examine this issue from the performer's perspective.

Fair and Rhine

"We are opposed to any unlawful use of copyrighted material," said Pamm Fair, SAG's deputy national executive director for planning and external affairs. "When the MPAA held its news conference announcing the lawsuits, our first vice president, Anne-Marie Johnson, made our position even clearer: She said we -- the industry -- need to crack down on this peer-to- peer use. Why? For example, SAG members get a percentage of the gross of the distributors of the films they do. So when people illegally share copyrighted files, our members lose money. Pure and simple."

While not speaking on behalf of the MPAA, Fair said that the "idea behind the lawsuits -- and the reason why it is going after individual file-sharers -- is to let people know that you can't steal. To all of us, this is exactly like shoplifting -- if you walk into Blockbuster and steal a DVD. It's copyrighted material and you cannot distribute it."

As for the argument that technology will always discover ways to circumvent the law, Fair says, in effect, that all is fair in the copyright war: "Manufacturers are beginning to provide technology that prevents copying, and we've met with various folks in the industry to talk about product inserts -- middle-of- the-road artists who would publicly say, 'You wouldn't come to my house and steal, so why would you steal my work?' And a lot of parents, too, think this peer-to-peer stealing is terrible. To some, it's legitimized shoplifting. So while technology may create more ways of sharing files illegally, we also think technology is going to be helping 'our side' as well."

Fair added that just because software like BitTorrent is popular does not mean that there aren't still other, emerging challenges to copyright holders lurking on the scene: "The Directors Guild and SAG are working against CleanFlicks." Created by a company based in American Fork, Utah, CleanFlicks "has developed software that allows, once you have it in your computer, to edit and take out anything you consider indecent so you can use it in a family-viewing setting. Well, of course directors object."

In an email exchange with Back Stage, Rebecca Rhine, AFTRA's assistant national executive director for public policy and strategic planning, said, "The question is not whether the technology is good or bad -- it simply is. The question is how we create a model which allows consumers the widest access and choices while ensuring that individual artists can sustain a career and continue to create. It is easy to attack the 'establishment' and the litigation-based solutions they are employing to try and deal with piracy. What is harder is to reconcile the fact that free access has a direct link to loss of income for individual actors and recording artists which, in turn, can result in everything from the loss of health and retirement benefits to the inability to continue to support a family or pursue a chosen career. Too often the debate is focused on star performers and huge corporations as opposed to the very real fate of thousands of working-class performers. I don't think most consumers want to save a couple of bucks on the backs of those performers."
http://www.backstage.com/backstage/n..._id=1000731069


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It's Bad To Share
Michael Desmond

With lawsuits springing up against file-sharers, what does the future hold for online media swapping?

Where has all the illegal peer-to-peer action gone? Underground. In some cases, it's gone way underground. Many sharers have gone straight, fearful of reprisals from the major entertainment companies and worried about virus-laden, corrupted, or spoofed files.

That's a win for Hollywood. But large numbers of music and video pirates are simply looking elsewhere for their booty and have turned to lesser-known P- to-P networks, Usenet, and even invitation-only networks.

"Users are very much moving around...rather than moving out," says Eric Garland, the CEO of BigChampagne, a market research firm specializing in P-to-P activity.

To combat the new threats, Hollywood has turned to old standbys: new legislation, more lawsuits, and improved copy-control technology.

Once boasting over 30 million users, Kazaa is now down to about 16 million, according to research firm ComScore Media Metrix. WinMX users have dropped from a high of 6.8 million down to 6 million this May, the firm says.

If you looked just at these results, it would appear that entertainment companies are winning the war. But these statistics show only a partial picture of the piracy problem.

Still trading

Have users really reformed? Not really - many are flocking to smaller P-to-P networks like BitTorrent, EDonkey, and EMule. According to ComScore Networks, BitTorrent nearly doubled in users, from about 200,000 to more than 400,000 between November 2003 and May 2004.

EMule grew from under 100,000 users in February 2003 to nearly 300,000 a year later. EDonkey, which ComScore did not track in its survey, has made even bigger gains, says Garland.

Their usage numbers may not be on the same scale as the old Napster's, but these services may pose a greater threat to content owners than previous P-to- P networks. All three use an advanced technique called swarming, in which portions of files are downloaded from multiple sources and immediately offered to the network. The result is potentially faster downloads and more rapid propagation of content.

There are other options for pirated content. Internet newsgroups, best known by the collective name Usenet, offer a vast reservoir of music, movies, and software, at connection speeds that can put the better-known P-to-P services to shame.

In the past, the difficulty of using newsgroups, combined with limits ISPs place on file transfers, has stunted the growth of piracy on them. That could change, particularly with the emergence of user- friendly software - such as the freely available Xnews reader - that makes accessing content in newsgroups easier than dealing with the more unpredictable P-to-P services.

But even if newsgroups become a more popular venue for illegal file trading, they are generally still public and therefore trackable. Private networks set up by file traders are harder to track or quantify.

"John," an IT manager for a financial services firm in the Midwest, says that he and his friends have traded files over an encrypted virtual private network they set up expressly for that purpose. And more and more music and video is being traded face-to-face.

"If it's music, it's almost always sneakernet," John says. "It's just so much easier to hand someone a USB drive and say, 'Bring it back to me next week.' It's easy to trade someone 20 gigs of music for 20 gigs of music."

Going straight or dropping out?

The good news for Hollywood is that the piracy crackdown in the last two years has persuaded substantial numbers of people to go legit. A Pew Internet Project report reveals an increase in those who say they download music files, from 18 million in December 2003 to 23 million in February 2004 - 17 per cent of whom use legal services like iTunes or Musicmatch. And ComScore data shows that the six largest online music shopping services drew more than 11 million visits from US users in March alone.

That's as it should be, says Marc Morgenstern, vice president and general manager of Loudeye's Digital Media Asset Protection Business. The company sells online-content-protection services to the music, movie, game, and software industries. Its Overpeer service line is responsible for some of the decoy files masquerading as copyrighted content on P-to-P networks. The aim: to make file sharing so inconvenient that consumers will pay for a more predictable and satisfying experience.

"(The file-sharing community is) starting to notice. If you go on bulletin boards, you will see that people are getting frustrated by this activity," says Morgenstern.

But while file-sharing old-timers may be frustrated, Hollywood's aggressive antipiracy campaigns may also be scaring off potential customers for legal download services.

The Pew study shows that the Recording Industry Association of America's legal actions are discouraging potential first-time users of legit services. About 60 per cent of those who have never tried downloading don't want to go to any source of downloaded music - legal or not - for fear of lawsuits, the study says.

The much-publicized anti-piracy lawsuits aren't the only reason users might be confused as they consider buying digital tunes. It can be hard to tell the good guys from the bad.

Some legitimate music services such as Wippit in the UK use the same basic peer-to-peer technology that powers pirate havens like Kazaa, while the Russia- based Allofmp3.com, for example, has a download music store with appealingly low prices - but its licenses are based on Russian copyright laws, so its content may be illegal for users outside of that country.

Upping the ante

Despite an overall drop in P-to-P activity, the RIAA, the Motion Picture Association of America, and the BSA continue to publish apocalyptic estimates of revenue lost to online and offline piracy. The BSA, for instance, maintains that in 2003 nearly $29 billion worth of pirated software was installed on PCs worldwide.

The music industry primarily blames file sharing and music piracy for drops in US sales, from a peak of $14.6 billion in 2000 to $11.9 billion in 2003. What's more, as worldwide broadband adoption continues to grow - especially in Asia - these groups expect the problem to worsen.

Widely available broadband has enabled pirates to expand beyond music to other kinds of digital media. "Accesses for movies and games are increasing dramatically," says Morgenstern. "As soon as a game or movie is released, there is a race out there to get it onto peer-to-peer."

How are antipiracy groups responding? For one thing, they're pushing for more targeted legislation to strictly limit behaviours and technologies that can encourage copyright infringement, points out BigChampagne's Garland.

A flurry of such bills is advancing through the US Congress, including the Inducing Infringement of Copyright Act, which would effectively criminalize P- to-P networks that encourage trading of copyrighted material.

The legislative effort won't end the cat-and-mouse game, says Morgenstern, because some of these P- to-P software vendors, such as EDonkey, are offshore. "This is a gnarly, worldwide problem. Peer- to-peer networks are not going to go away."

In addition to new laws, entertainment and computer companies are bringing new technologies to the content-protection table. One of the more notable is in Microsoft's upcoming Windows Media Digital Rights Management 10 software, formerly code-named Janus. Though it's meant to facilitate the secure downloading of content from subscription services to portable players, its mission could expand.

Janus includes a protected, real-time clock in digital media that permits playback only after verifying that a license is valid. Microsoft has a bevy of partners; expect compatible devices and digital media offerings this year.

Microsoft's software could work with another DRM scheme called Advanced Access Content System. AACS is intended for use with next-generation optical discs, such as Blu-ray and HD-DVDs. It's in the development stage and should work with other existing DRM technology; it may also let users copy a disc onto a compliant movie server in their home or onto select portable devices.

AACS has backing from The Walt Disney Company and Warner Brothers Entertainment, as well as from several major computer firms such as IBM, Intel, Microsoft, and Sony, among others.

TiVo.'s upcoming digital broadcast security technology, recently blessed by the US Federal Communications Commission, permits some sharing of DTV broadcast content over the Internet. It allows a TiVo user to send recorded free, over-the-air DTV programs via the Net to other TiVo boxes or PCs registered to that user.

File sharing is here to stay, and the new DRM technologies do acknowledge that and plan for it. Whether they will give users enough rights to make illegal sharing no more than a blip in the digital media market remains to be seen.

Software on the sly

Hollywood is not alone in feeling the pinch of online pirates. The software industry also faces a significant and growing threat from pirates who spam users relentlessly, marketing cheap, bare-bones copies of popular software such as major products from Adobe, Intuit, and Microsoft.

The email originates largely from Eastern Europe, says John Wolfe, the Business Software Association's manager of investigations. While the spam often describes these copies as being for personal "backup" purposes, Wolfe emphasizes that the practice clearly violates copyright law - the sites make no effort to verify that buyers already have a license for the software, and many offer cracks that let buyers avoid the software's copy protection.

Most such sites have sprung up in the last 12 months, according to industry investigations. And though illegal software sales are difficult to track, Sean Myers, manager of Internet antipiracy at the Software Information and Industry Association, says that, based on his observations, sales of sham backup copies have tripled in the past year.

The BSA and similar groups have a very limited ability to confront offshore pirates. So as with P-to-P file sharing, scrutiny could fall on those who buy the illegal copies of applications.
http://www.digitmag.co.uk/features/i...FeatureID=1177


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Hollywood Allies Sue DVD Jukebox Maker
John Borland

A Hollywood-backed technology group is suing a high-end home theater system company, contending that its home DVD jukebox technology is illegal.

The DVD Copy Control Association, the group that owns the copy-protection technology contained on DVDs, said a company called Kaleidescape is offering products that illegally make copies of DVDs. The company, which has won several recent consumer electronics awards, said it has worked closely with the DVD CCA for more than a year, and will fight the suit, filed Tuesday.

Kaleidescape creates expensive consumer electronics networks that upload the full contents of as many as 500 DVDs to a home server, and allow the owner to browse through the movies without later using the DVDs themselves. That's exactly what the copy-protection technology on DVDs, called Content Scramble System (CSS) was meant to prevent, the Hollywood-backed group said.

"The express intent and purpose of the contract and CSS are to prevent copying of copyrighted materials such as DVD motion pictures," Bill Coats, a DVD CCA attorney, said in a statement. "While Kaleidescape obtained a license to use CSS, the company has built a system to do precisely what the license and CSS are designed to prevent--the wholesale copying of protected DVDs."

The DVD technology group has stepped up its efforts in recent months to control hardware that it believes isn't abiding by the rules of DVD copy protection, suing several chip companies. The Kaleidescape lawsuit in particular could help put legal boundaries around the burgeoning home theater market.

The company sells a high-capacity home movie server, which can store hundreds of movies at a time, allowing access from different places in a networked home to as many as seven films at once. Putting the movies on the server requires copying them from the original DVDs, however.

The products don't come cheap. A basic system, storing 160 movies, sold for about $27,000 earlier in the year.

Technology companies including Microsoft have envisioned doing much the same thing with computers such as a Windows Media Center PC. Movies recorded from television or downloaded from a video-on-demand service can be played throughout a networked home using a Media Center Extender.

Kaleidescape Chief Executive Officer Michael Malcolm said his company had designed its products specifically to the terms of a license from the DVD CCA, and that he had repeatedly updated the group on product plans.

"We are flabbergasted by this lawsuit," Malcolm said. "We have gone to great pains to make our system comply 100 percent with licenses and all the associated technical procedures and requirements."

The company will fight the lawsuit and will likely countersue the DVD CCA, Malcolm added.

The suit was filed in California state court in Santa Clara County. The group is asking the court for unspecified damages and to stop Kaleidescape from further sales of its products.
http://news.com.com/Hollywood+allies...3-5482206.html


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FTC Spotlights Proposals On P2P Risks
John Borland

The head of the Federal Trade Commission sent a letter to Congress on Tuesday highlighting efforts that file-swapping companies are making to disclose potential online risks.

Legislators have criticized software such as Kazaa, Morpheus and eDonkey for exposing users to spyware, pornography and the risk of lawsuits. Although protesting that their software was no more risky than use of the Internet at large, peer-to-peer companies have worked with the FTC to develop better consumer notification techniques.

The FTC included several of those proposals with its letter to Congress, saying that when implemented, they would do a better job of warning consumers.

"(Peer-to-peer) industry members have developed proposed risk disclosures that we believe would be a substantial improvement over current practices," FTC Chair Deborah Platt Majoras wrote in the letter. "We intend to monitor and report back to interested members of Congress on the extent to which P2P file-sharing program distributors implement these proposed risk disclosures."

The letter follows a tumultuous year in Congress for file-swapping companies, which faced proposed legislation that would have overturned a series of court rulings to make them responsible for copyright infringement on their networks.

That legislation ultimately did not pass but could return next year.

Under the new proposals, consumers would be notified when the software is installed that downloading music, games, movies or software without authorization is illegal. The companies' Web sites would also have detailed information about other possible risks in using the software.

Representatives for file-swapping trade associations said the FTC letter could help show legislators that they are serious about playing by the rules.

"We are grateful for the interest that the Federal Trade Commission has taken in this young industry's efforts at self-regulation," Distributed Computing Industry Alliance Chief Executive Officer Marty Lafferty said in a statement. "We hope the FTC letter to Congress will help foster a better understanding on the Hill of the realities of P2P technologies and of the actions being taken by responsible parties to commercially develop this new distribution channel."

The FTC will hold a two-day session studying the consumer impacts of file-swapping technology beginning Dec. 15.
http://news.com.com/FTC+spotlights+p...3-5482429.html


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FBI Serves Subpoenas On Nmap Creator
Sam Varghese

The FBI has been seeking information from the creator of the network security scanner, Nmap, about a particular attacker who they think may have visited the nmap site at a given time.

Nmap creator Fyodor said in a posting to the nmap-hackers mailing list that no reasons had been given to him when he was served with the subpoenas.

"If they see that an attacker ran the command "wget http:// download.insecure.org/nmap/dist/nmap-3.77.tgz" from a compromised host, they assume that she might have obtained that URL by visiting the Nmap download page from her home computer," he wrote.

Wget is a download tool used from the command line on Unix boxes.

Nmap is widely regarded as the best scanner around. It is an open source utility for network exploration or security auditing and though designed to rapidly scan large networks works against single hosts as well.

Fyodor said so far he had not given the FBI any information. "In some cases, they asked too late and data had already been purged through our data retention policy. In other cases, they failed to serve the subpoena properly. Sometimes they try asking without a subpoena and give up when I demand one. "


Fyodor said nothing on his site, insecure.org, was illegal. "Nmap was designed to help security - the criminals and spammers put my work to shame! But the desirability of helping the FBI is immaterial - I may be forced by law to comply with legal, properly served subpoenas," he wrote.

"Most of you probably don't care if someone finds out that you downloaded Nmap, Nessus, Hping2, John the Ripper, etc.... But for those of you who do care, there are plenty of mechanisms available to preserve your anonymity. Remember this security mantra: defense in depth," he said.
http://www.theage.com.au/news/Breaki...19605187.html#


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Spies Trace Music Swappers
Kirsty Needham

Hundreds of thousands of Australian users of Kazaa are being stalked online by the music industry's hired gun, an American company that tracks down and then remotely enters home computers it finds swapping songs.

The Federal Court heard yesterday that the major record labels are also engaged in a program of actively disrupting the file-sharing network by bombarding it with billions of decoys and spoofs that pose as song files.

The success of the spoof war meant as few as 7 per cent of a given artist's tracks found on the network were usable, according to record industry memos read out in court.

Tom Mizzone, vice-president of data services for Media Sentry, said his New York company was asked in March 2003 to search Kazaa for users located in Australia and download evidence they were swapping copyrighted material. Up to 600 scanners were turned to the task, and the internet addresses of the users recorded and checked against a database of internet service providers in Australia.

"You are spying on a person?" asked Justice Murray Wilcox.

Mizzone replied: "We look for people who are sharing or distributing."

Media Sentry then returns 10 minutes later in an automated process and asks the computer to view the person's full collection of music files.

Outside the court, Michael Speck, the general manager of Music Industry Piracy Investigations, said 300,000 Australian Kazaa users had been caught and sent an instant message that read "internet file sharing is theft" and warned they had exposed their computer to outsiders.

But although the US music industry last September sued 261 people it had tracked, Mr Speck said no legal action would be taken against individual file-sharers in Australia.

Executives for BMG Australia and Sony Australia said under cross- examination that they had no knowledge of spoof campaigns conducted for their record labels by another US company, Media Defender.

Damian Rinaldi, director of business affairs for Sony Music Australia, said someone else had drafted the wording of an affidavit he had signed that said spoofs made up only a small number of files on the network and had not limited illegal activity.

But Media Defender reports and record company memos read out in court by Stephen Finch, SC, for Altnet, one of several defendants, stated nine out of 10 attempts to access song files on file-sharing networks failed because of spoofs.

Karen Don, director of legal and business affairs for Universal, said she was aware of the spoof campaigns but, because of the expense, "we are only able to do it for a very small number of titles at a time".

Finch said an email addressed to her in November 2003 read that protection by spoofing campaigns was still very successful and the average level of usable song files on the network had dropped to 6.7 per cent.

Ms Don said: "It only relates to the very limited number of titles that are being protected."

Just one or two of the latest releases would be chosen to be protected, and then only for a limited time, she said.

A decoy is a file that looks like a song but plays only a repeated sound or a warning against piracy. A spoof points a user to a different internet address, and was likened by Justice Wilcox to a wild-goose chase.

"The consumer gets frustrated ... there's nothing really there," Ms Don said.

Earlier, 12 affidavits that demonstrated lawful use of Kazaa by musicians, universities and businesses were withdrawn by the defence after Justice Wilcox said any remedies granted to the record industry could not adversely affect the rights of others who legitimately supply products to Kazaa that did not involve copyright infringement.

The judge said it was important that any legal remedy did not trespass on freedom of communication. "You are entitled to protect copyright. You are not entitled to control the internet," he said.
http://www.theage.com.au/news/Breaki...923300479.html


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D.C.-Area Video Game Stores Targeted in Piracy Raid
Ben Berkowitz

Federal authorities raided three Washington, D.C.-area video game stores and arrested two people for modifying video game consoles to play pirated video games, a video game industry group said Wednesday.

The Entertainment Software Association said the Dec. 1 raids at three Pandora's Cube stores in Maryland and Virginia were a joint effort of the U.S. Department of Justice's computer crimes unit, the U.S. Attorney's Office for Maryland and the Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

Authorities arrested two store employees on charges of conspiracy to commit copyright infringement and conspiracy to traffic in a device that circumvents technological protection measures, the ESA said.

"One of them is someone who has a more substantial role with the company," said Chunnie Wright, anti-piracy counsel to the ESA. She could not provide more details due to the ongoing nature of the criminal case.

A spokesman for the Justice Department declined to comment on what, if anything, was seized during the raids. He said the department has not released details yet on the monetary value of what was allegedly pirated.

Like other entertainment industries, the video game business has aggressively pursued the pirates that it says account for billions of dollars in lost revenue annually.

But because video games tend to have very large digital files, a large part of the industry's piracy problem stems from illegal hardware and illegal copying of game discs.

Pandora's Cube, Wright said, sold $500 "Super Xbox" consoles, modified versions of Microsoft Corp.'s Xbox video game console, that had been modified to hold larger hard drives and play pirated games.

The modified consoles, some holding 15 or more games already copied to the hard drive, were on open display in the stores.

"They were burning games onto the hard drive and equipping the hard drive with copying software so that the average consumer could just go ahead and copy the software themselves," she said.

Pandora's Cube operates three stores, in Baltimore and College Park, Maryland, and Springfield, Virginia. Company officials were not immediately available to comment.

Besides industry efforts, some individual game companies have taken steps of late to stop piracy. Last month Nintendo Co. Ltd. won a court order barring the sale of devices running pirated copies of classic Nintendo video games.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...-2004Dec8.html


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Sites Attacked Last Month To Plant Backdoor
Sam Varghese

An attack on the British tech news site, The Register, and a number of others using ads as the medium was carefully planned to plant the backdoor, Backdoor.Win32.Agent.ec, on PCs, a Finnish software engineer says.

The engineer, who goes by the name Matt, has analysed the entire attack and concluded that the Bofra worm had nothing to do with it.

After noticing the fact that a number of hackers had compromised the servers at the ad-serving company Falk AG, he informed the company.

"The hackers were successful in modifying Javascript code (on the Falk AG servers) returned to Internet Explorer users that allows the exploit to take place. The user was redirected to a page on search.comedycentral.com that hosted the exploit code.

"From there several downloader trojans were used to download a backdoor trojan from gamedev.he.net. The backdoor trojan can then be used to gain full control of your PC," Matt wrote in his analysis of the attack.


Falk serves ads for an impressive list of publishers.

Matt said the attack was carried out as under:

· The hacked Falk eSolutions AG server returned a document to the user containing the location of the exploit code via an IFRAME element.

· A hacked Comedy Central server hosted the exploit code in HTML format. The document was 8 474 bytes and in Unicode format. Included in the document was Javascript to perform the buffer overflow.

· The shell code created by the exploit was 330 bytes. It contained instructions to download an executable.

· A trojan downloader, Trojan-Downloader.Win32.Small.aaq was used to download the final backdoor from 4. The trojan was 3 114 bytes and saved to the root directory of C: as bla.exe.

· The final trojan, Backdoor.Win32.Agent.ec was saved to the root directory of the C: as winampa.exe and bla.exe was deleted. The trojan was 47 616 bytes.

http://www.theage.com.au/news/Breaki...219605013.html


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'Gay' Worm Shuts Down Italian Senate PCs
Rome

A worm containing pictures of gay pornography forced the shutdown of the Italian senate computer system, parliamentary officials said on Tuesday.

The virus attack began late on Monday, and came several days following the firing of an assistant to the upper house's vice president, after images of him attending a homosexual party in Rome surfaced.

The worm slipped by the anti-virus software at the chamber, and computer technicians shut off most of the senate's computers, officials said.

An operation was then begun to clean the worm from the infected machines.
http://www.theage.com.au/news/Breaki...om=moreStories


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Caught in the act

Man Fined Over Pirated DVDs

A Melbourne man has been fined $5000 and placed on a two-year good behaviour bond for pirating DVD movies and computer games.

Bing Lin, 25, of Mt Waverley, pleaded guilty to five charges involving the possession and sale of counterfeit DVDs and computer games at the Melbourne Magistrates' Court yesterday.

More than 3500 counterfeit DVD movies and computer games were seized by Australian Federal Police when they raided Lin's home, in Melbourne's south-east on November 9, the court heard.

The counterfeit DVDs included 30 movie titles which had not yet been released on DVD.

Lin, who worked for his father's carpet cleaning business, was downloading a movie from the internet when police walked into his bedroom, the court heard.

Police also seized computer equipment set up in a manner consistent with the illegal production of counterfeit DVDS and about 500 sales catalogues listing more than 200 different movie titles, price details and a mobile telephone number registered to Lin.

Lin came to the AFP's attention after he was observed associating with stall holders selling counterfeit DVDs at the Caribbean Gardens Market, in Scoresby, on three occasions in August during an AFP investigation.

Defence lawyer Richard Lawson said Lin had no prior convictions, and had agreed to an order to destroy the seized property and had pleaded guilty.

Magistrate Julian Fitz-Gerald said he did not accept Lin's suggestion that he was working for another person and described him as an "industrious young man".

He said the charges Lin faced were "very serious" but he took into account that he had never been before the court before and that he had pleaded guilty at the earliest opportunity.
http://www.theage.com.au/news/Breaki...923301934.html


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Spam-Happy Shoppers Love Stolen Software
Will Sturgeon

Online shoppers are still willing to buy products advertised in spam, indicating that the problem is unlikely to desist anytime soon, a new survey shows.

Among the most popular items being sold via unsolicited e-mail is illegal software--in many cases adding to the number of laws being broken by the sellers.

According to figures from Forrester Research, a staggering 22 percent of U.K. online consumers have bought software through spam.

The problems with this kind of sale in particular are manifold. Users are encouraging the spammers to keep sending bulk mail by buying from them. They are also violating software copyrights. Furthermore, by buying software that is most likely pirated and not produced with much quality assurance they are likely exposing themselves to viruses and spyware bundled with their illegal goods.

Ironically, it is the very Trojans which can come bundled with pirate software that help create the networks of compromised machines abused by spammers.

"Who knows what you're getting when they buy a piece of software from these e-mails," said Alyn Hockey, product director at Clearswift. "There could be anything on there."

Hockey stressed that even if users aren't worried about the copyright implications of pirated software they should certainly take notice of the security threat of installing it.

Some of the most common software suites sold via junk e-mail offer spam protection, anti-spyware and pop-up blocking software--"the current hot topics" and the very problems users are likely to be encouraging through their purchase, Hockey said.

The Forrester survey, conducted on behalf of the Business Software Alliance, revealed there is still a long way to go before there is enough of a financial disincentive to send spammers in search of alternative employment.

"The only guaranteed way to stop the spammers is by hurting them in the pocket," Hockey said. "But by buying from them, users are giving them money and helping them to maintain their business and their lifestyle."

The Forrester survey also revealed that more than 90 percent of U.K. online consumers receive spam. Although there are large variations in the amount of spam received by these consumers, it shows the problem now affects almost anybody connected to the Internet. The survey involved more than 6,000 respondents across six countries.

The BSA warned that before making a purchase, consumers should consider that the same people who send spam offering cheap software are often also involved in identity theft, credit card fraud, and so on.

A spokesman for the BSA said: "Many online consumers don't consider the true motives of spammers. In addition to profiting from selling goods and services and driving click-through ad traffic, organized crime rings use spam to gain access to personal information."
http://news.com.com/Spam-happy+shopp...3-5487375.html


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2004: The Biggest Cases
Rob O'Neill

Universal Music v Sharman
License holdings: P2P or not to P2P

This civil case, which went to trial yesterday in the Federal Court in Sydney, will be of interest to several hundred million internet users, their ISPs and a phalanx of copyright lawyers.

It centres on Kazaa, a piece of networking software that allows users to share files over the internet - such as music recordings, videos and e-books - often in breach of copyright, according to the international music industry. The Kazaa client program, which claims more than 300 million downloads, is part of a class of software known as "file-sharing" or "peer-to-peer" (P2P). Other similar programs include eDonkey, Grokster, Limewire and Morpheus, and have roughly several hundred million more downloads (and users).

In February, as measured by the number of users and the quantity of data transferred daily between users, Kazaa was the biggest network of its kind in the world. That was when Australian Record Industry Association (ARIA) investigators raided the Sydney offices of its maker, Sharman Networks, and the home of its chief executive, Nikki Hemming, left, and other executives associated with the business. Telstra, the ISP ihug and several universities were also hit.

Hemming and her rivals are not speaking to the media after lawyers for Sharman Networks secured what was in effect a press embargo.

Since then, a co-ordinated international response that saw ARIA's US counterpart, the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) sue individuals allegedly engaged in illicit file sharing has seen Kazaa's leadership fade, overtaken by rival eDonkey.

P2P supporters fear that if the music industry succeeds in shutting down Kazaa - as it did its forerunner, Napster - the precedent could stifle innovation on the internet and close the door to new ways of distributing digital content.

Set down for two weeks, the trial could take longer. The case is expected to include technical arguments from both sides.

After months of hearings, insiders told Next, the case will seek to uncover who ultimately owns the mysterious Sharman Networks; unravel the company's complex financial and management structure; and reveal how the embattled software developer makes money and what it does with it.

We could also discover where online marketing company Altnet and its Australian-born star chief executive Kevin Bermeister - founder of Sega- Ozisoft and chief executive of Hollywood entertainment software company Brilliant Digital Entertainment - fit into the picture and what Hemming's role in the company is.

The music industry has a good record of defending its claims. In 2001, the RIAA dealt the original P2P challenger Napster a near-fatal blow in a similar battle in the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. The same court concluded two years earlier that one of the original MP3 players, Diamond's Rio, infringed copyright-holders' rights. But, last August, it ruled in a case against Grokster that file-sharing software did not necessarily infringe copyright owners' rights because network operators were not liable for their users' actions, provided they had no control over users' copyright infringements. That was a central difference in the Napster case, in which operators controlled the servers.

A month later, Altnet followed with a one-two punch, suing the RIAA for copyright infringement, alleging the music industry goliath had infringed Altnet's copyrights during its P2P investigations.

Although the Kazaa case will be fought in an Australian jurisdiction over alleged breaches of local law, the implications will be felt across the globe.
http://www.theage.com.au/articles/20...577387280.html


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Beijing Loves the Web Until the Web Talks Back
Tom Zeller Jr.

LAST December, China's foreign minister, Li Zhaoxing, sat down for a remarkably candid online chat with Chinese Internet users.

"People are not too keen about your looks," one participant chided, according to a translation published in The South China Morning Post - and Mr. Li replied, "My mother would not agree with this view."

The exchange was the first time that a senior Chinese official had engaged in an online chat with ordinary citizens, but its improbably personal moments belied the restrictive government's tenuous relationship with the Internet.

Indeed, as the number of people online in China has quintupled over the last four years, the government has shown itself to be committed to two concrete, and sometimes competing, goals: strategically deploying the Internet to economic advantage, while clamping down - with surveillance, filters and prison sentences - on undesirable content and use.

Both trends, experts say, are likely to continue.

"The continuance of Communist Party rule is only possible to the extent that the government delivers economic growth," said Duncan Clark, the managing director of BDA China, a telecommunications and technology consulting firm based in Beijing. "Much as Henry IV in France was known for the chicken in every pot," he said in an e-mail message, "China's rulers are bent on putting communications, mobile phones, Internet access and the new growth area, broadband, into as many hands as possible."

China is already the largest mobile communications subscriber market in the world, with more than 320 million subscribers. Internet users - who numbered fewer than 17 million in 2000 - are now estimated to be somewhere near 90 million, according to the China Internet Network Information Center, the government's clearinghouse for Internet statistics. China is second only to the United States in the number of people online, and the 90 percent of its total population around 1.3 billion who are not online still represents a vast, untapped market.

The Internet has given rise to several Chinese companies worth billions of dollars, including Web portals like Netease, Sina and Sohu - all traded on Nasdaq. And American interests responded after Beijing's pledge this year to increase purchases of United States telecommunications equipment.

In June, China's leading Internet search engine, Baidu.com, announced that the American search powerhouse, Google, had bought a stake in the company. Days later, Yahoo unveiled Yisou.com, its own China-based search engine. And on Nov. 11, Cisco Systems of San Jose, Calif., announced that it had been chosen to build the business portion of a new backbone network linking 200 Chinese cities. The company, which has secured over $100 million in contracts with China Telecom since last June, was also the main provider of equipment for the country's largest existing public network, ChinaNet.

But not everyone is celebrating the way China has nurtured the Internet.

"China is the world's biggest prison for cyberdissidents," said Tala Dowlatshahi, a spokeswoman for the group Reporters Without Borders, based in France. "It's extremely worrying."

Human rights groups, which consider the Internet in China to be something of a blessing and a curse, have long raised concerns about the Chinese government's use of the technology. The rise of China's Internet hinted at more freedoms, but it also promised the government a new and effective means of monitoring its citizens. And while some technologically adept citizens have been finding ways to circumvent the monitoring, the government is also becoming more sophisticated, and it remains just as willing to punish transgressors.

In a 2004 report called "The Internet Under Surveillance," Reporters Without Borders noted that although Chinese officials had released four people detained for their activities on the Internet since the spring of 2003, there were still 61 people imprisoned "for posting messages or articles on the Internet that were considered subversive."

The report also noted that the Internet, in its Chinese manifestation, is purposly built for social control and monitoring.

"There are just five backbones or hubs through which all traffic must pass," the report noted. "No matter what I.S.P. is chosen by Internet users, their e-mails and the files they download and send must pass through these hubs."

The OpenNet Initiative - an international partnership linking Internet and legal research centers at the University of Toronto, Harvard Law School and Cambridge University - tracks state filtering and surveillance practices. According to the group's most recent bulletins from China, the government has found new ways to filter search engine results. Sensitive keywords like "Falun Gong" or "Taiwan Independence" will often return no hits.

And with more interactive activities like blogging, online chat and message boards, the monitoring is intense and redundant.

"Those who host such activities within the country understand that they can be held responsible for what their users say there," said Jonathan Zittrain, a law professor and a founder of the Berkman Center for the Internet and Society at Harvard, "and therefore themselves engage in monitoring."

Western companies have been chided by human rights groups for acquiescing to demands from the Chinese government that, for instance, certain words be filtered in their search engines, or that hardware be tailored to assist in surveillance - though most companies counter that they have no control over how the government uses their products. And while it occasionally appears that incremental improvements are being made - Reporters Without Borders noted that China finally tried and sentenced most of the cyberdissidents whom it had held without trial for years - China's huge investment in Internet technology remains generally inseparable from the government's expressed desire to control the information carried.

"The evidence points to the government not giving up on surveillance and filtering," Professor Zittrain said. "Indeed, they are refining the techniques for each."

But so, too, will cyberdissidents refine their efforts to do and say what they want on the Internet, experts say.

"On the censorship topic, best to think of it as a cat-and-mouse game," Mr. Clark of BDA China said. "There will never be an absolute winner or loser."

The kind of cultural and economic flourishing that the Internet has already wrought in China is irreversible, Mr. Clark said.

Repercussions for a narrow range of sensitive topics, he acknowledged, are real - and often severe. But apart from these, "China's Internet is a hothouse of content on a wide range of topics and interests," Mr. Clark said, "especially those embraced by the teens and 20-somethings who make up the bulk of the online population still.

"China's rapidly emerging middle classes, numbering tens if not hundreds of millions, are dependent on the Internet and the Internet is dependent on them," he said. "There's no putting the genie back in the bottle now, and no real attempt to do so."
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/12/06/bu...al2/06net.html


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China Bans Computer Game Showing Taiwan, Tibet As Independent

China has banned a popular British online computer game that portrays Taiwan, Tibet and Hong Kong as independent countries.

The Ministry of Culture said Football Manager 2005, developed by London-based Sports Interactive, "poses harm to the country's sovereignty and territorial integrity," the Xinhua news agency said Wednesday. "Such a distortion, even in a computer game, violates the relevant Chinese laws and is anathema to the Chinese government," it cited the ministry as saying. China considers Taiwan, which separated from the mainland in 1949 after a civil war, as a province awaiting reunification. It has ruled Tibet since 1951 and views it as an "inalienable part" of China. Former British colony Hong Kong returned to Chinese sovereignty in 1997. Although Football Manager 2005 is not yet legally on sale in China, it is available in pirated form and could be downloaded from the Internet, Xinhua said. Police and government departments across China have been ordered to punish websites, vendors and Internet cafes which disseminate or sell the game, with fines of up to 30,000 yuan (3,623 dollars). Offenders may also have their business licences revoked. Football Manager 2005 is one of the fastest-selling computer games in Britain, according to game review websites. China launched a nationwide crackdown on online computer games earlier this year, banning those with "unhealthy" and sensitive political content in an attempt to rein in what it perceives as harmful influences on the young. Chinese statistics show that one fifth of China's Internet users are game players -- a 64 percent increase over 2002.
http://uk.news.yahoo.com/041208/323/f85cn.html


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Two tales of Web collaboration

ERoom And Groove Offer Different Approaches But Same Results
Paul Ferrill

It doesn't take much effort to see the benefits that collaboration tools bring to just about any type of team. Having the ability to effortlessly share documents, notes and conversations between geographically dispersed team members can be invaluable. The tough part is keeping all that information up-to-date and synchronized. If the collaboration tool doesn't make that process easy, it probably won't be used for long.

ERoom and Groove Virtual Office — both of which have recently been released in new versions — provide similar capabilities with very different approaches. eRoom takes a centralized-server tack using either a hosted application model (eRoom.net) or an in- house server located behind the corporate firewall. Groove, on the other hand, uses a peer-to-peer model with minimal central control.

Just another pretty interface?

The products use the concept of a container to keep similar information grouped together. Groove's container is a "work space" while in eRoom, it's an "eRoom."

Each product makes it easy to create a new work space or eRoom tailored specifically to the task at hand. Individual items or tools get added to the container at the time of creation, although you can add more later on.

Using a server-based strategy, eRoom stores work space data in a central database. You have your choice of employing Microsoft SQL Server or SQL Anywhere. ERoom also offers multiple predefined template databases to make customization easier.

Notification alerts let end users know when any item of special interest has changed in an eRoom or a Groove work space or if new information has been added to an area the user wants to track.

Meeting facilitation is another common capability between the two products. ERoom has a meeting-tracking feature that makes it easy to schedule a meeting, invite participants and add items into a common area for the group to use. The Calendar tool can be synchronized with a user's Microsoft Outlook calendar as well.

Groove uses several forms to help track meeting agendas, minutes and action items. There's also a button to publish the meeting along with the profile, agenda and minutes. The only downside is that if you make changes in Outlook the Groove files are not automatically updated.

When the Groove team began designing Version 3.0 of their product, they decided on a user interface model that almost everyone is familiar with — instant messaging. The end result of the interface makeover is the Groove Launchbar, which lists all of the work spaces a user belongs to. Major sections of the Launchbar — such as Active, Unread and Read — make it possible for users to quickly see what information needs their attention.

A second tab on the Groove Launchbar displays all contacts in much the same way you'd see them with an instant messaging program. Three headings group the listings into Active, Online and Offline. We liked the handy option, available from just about anywhere inside Groove, titled "Save Shortcut to Desktop," which makes it easy to return to a task later.

For its part, eRoom offers a standard or enhanced Web browser interface. The enhanced version loads an ActiveX component to make file operations more intuitive; it's available only on the Microsoft Windows platform. Using the standard Web browser makes eRoom available to virtually any user regardless of platform or browser software.

Although eRoom doesn't have the same user interface model as Groove, it does arrange information in a structured way. A better analogy for eRoom might be Windows Explorer with its tree-like presentation of drives, file folders and network resources in a panel on the left and a display of contents in a panel on the right.

Assigning user roles

Administration of individual work spaces or eRooms is left up to the original creator. Both products support the concept of user roles and allow you to assign those roles to individuals by project. They provide essentially the same level of control over user access.

ERoom has a feature that allows new users to authenticate against an external directory such as Windows NT domains or a Lightweight Directory Access Protocol server. These new users must then be added by the creator of the work space to specific eRooms for access.

Groove takes more of an invitation approach, enabling you to invite users to join a particular work space. For bulk import of contacts, Groove supports Vcard-formatted VCG or VCF files.

Because Groove does not use a central file to store information, no additional administration is required. The data is automatically backed up because it is shared among all members of the work space.

Groove does, however, offer an optional relay server, which acts as a "who's online" point and doesn't require extensive storage or administration.

In fact, if you want to employ a relay server, you can choose between Groove's service or you can buy a relay server license and run your own server behind your firewall.

In contrast, an eRoom server requires an external backup program to maintain copies of the data for disaster recovery purposes. Because eRoom uses a database — either Microsoft SQL Server or SQL Anywhere — you'll need to use standard database practices to maintain it.

Something of value

The value of these Web collaboration tools for distributed teams is obvious. Both products offer similar capabilities with a few extras that distinguish them. ERoom.net, for example, offers a hosted or outsourced solution that requires no hardware or software purchase to get started. The eRoom tool is, however, significantly more expensive depending on the hosting model chosen.

Groove offers similar capabilities with a distributed model for a reasonable cost per user. If you can live with the peer-to-peer nature of Groove, you'll definitely get more bang for your buck.
http://www.fcw.com/fcw/articles/2004...b-12-06-04.asp


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Yahoo Adding Tool to Search Hard Drives
Michael Liedtke

Yahoo Inc. is adding a tool to search computer hard drives as it scrambles to catch up with Google Inc. and stay a step ahead of Microsoft Corp. in the battle to help users sort through gobs of information on the Internet and the desktop.

Yahoo announced the plan late Thursday, but will wait until January to introduce the free tool for searching e-mails and a wide variety of other files stored on computers operate on Windows.

Unlike Google's desktop search tool, Yahoo's won't operate within a browser. The distinction means that Yahoo's desktop searches won't be co-mingled with online searches conducted at its Web site.

The product, licensed from a pioneering startup named X1 Technologies, seeks to cure a common computer-induced headache by making it as quick and easy to find digital information offline as it has become online.

With just 20 employees, X1 has established itself as a trailblazer in desktop search since starting three years ago. The private Pasadena-based company has been charging $74.95 for its search software and plans to continue to license its products to businesses even as Yahoo distributes a version for free.

The rush to develop better technology for scouring computer hard drives reflects a belief that desktop search is an increasingly important complement to online search engines, where advertising has become a major moneymaker.

Yahoo had been widely expected to take this step since Google introduced a hard- drive search tool nearly two months ago. Microsoft's MSN service hopes to introduce a similar product before year's end and Ask Jeeves Inc., which runs several online search engines, plans to unveil its desktop offering next Wednesday.

The competitive pressure likely motivated Yahoo to license an existing product.
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories...LATE=DEFAUL T


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Kazaa trial won't fix music industry blues

Kazaa Can Track Users, Trial Witness Says
Susan B. Shor

According to computer scientist Leon Sterling, Sharman should be able to stop piracy or at least report it to the music industry. On cross examination, he acknowledged that he didn't know how long it would take to develop such technology or how expensive it would be.

As an Australian court considers whether Kazaa's parent company should be forced to pay damages for the file sharing that goes on over its peer-to-peer (P2P) network, questions persist about the effectiveness of the music industry's enforcement efforts.

Today, the Federal Court in Sydney heard from Leon Sterling, chairman of Software Innovation and Engineering for the Department of Computer Science and Software Engineering in the University of Melbourne.

He said that Sharman Networks should be able to track who is using its Kazaa software and what they are doing.

Details Unclear

In other words, Sharman should be able to stop piracy or at least report it to the music industry.

Sterling appeared as a witness for the music industry. On cross examination, he acknowledged that he didn't know how long it would take to develop such technology or how expensive it would be.

Last week, as the trial opened, Sharman Networks attorney Anthony Meagher said there was no technology sophisticated enough to distinguish between licensed and unlicensed music on the network.

Buyers and Sharers

Universal Music Australia, EMI, Sony/BMG, Warner, Festival Mushroom and 25 other recording companies are suing Sharman Networks in civil court claiming that the created the software knowing it would be used to pirate music and even encouraged that use. The court said that it would not shut the service down, but Sharman could be forced to pay millions in damages.

Regardless, the question remains as to whether fighting music listeners and individual P2P networks a good approach?

According to John Barrett, director of research for Parks Associates , 15 percent of people who never use peer-to-peer networks buy music, while 40 percent of people who use such networks also buy music.

This suggests that people who are interested enough to seek out music to share are also interested enough to buy it. "It's one and the same group," Barrett told TechNewsWorld.

Never Stop

"What I think is happening is that they're just pushing it farther underground," he said the music industry's efforts to squelch the P2P networks.

"They're never going to stop piracy. It's been around forever. I think they know that. Even with legal services and all the copyright protection, it's ridiculously easy to get around. They're kidding themselves and hoping no one will notice."

Bigger Issues

The underlying problem for the music industry has to do with a lot more than P2P networks. Barrett said research shows that 60 percent of people who say they go to a P2P network monthly also say they don't download anything.

Finding what you're looking for and getting a high-quality copy of it are difficult and can be time-consuming, he said.

"The problem is that [the music industry's] revenue model is being completely undermined," he said. In the past, music companies have sold the same songs and albums over and over again by releasing them on movie soundtracks, as greatest hits collections and on new media with better sound quality.

"Just by going digital completely undermines that," Barrett said. "You're never going to upgrade your entire collection, never going to buy a greatest hits album, you can burn your own greatest hits CD."

Suing Kazaa may serve as some kind of damage control, but it will not fix the problems the music industry is facing. What it needs is a new revenue model, and the industry is still arguing over what that might be.
http://www.technewsworld.com/story/news/38756.html


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Programs: a Checklist for Tuning Up Your PC
Gene Emery

You change the oil in your car every 5,000 miles or so. You clean your house every week or two. Your PC needs regular maintenance as well -- especially if you're using Windows and you spend a lot of time on the Internet.

Virus checkers need to be updated. Spyware or adware may have sneaked onto your PC and the clutter could be slowing everything down.

I have a checklist I follow at the end of every month for keeping my computer properly tuned. The steps may differ slightly, depending on your operating system. Clicking the "Start" button, going to the "Help" section and searching for a feature will show you how to adapt this list to your machine.

Here's my drill:

CLEAR THE DESKTOP. I look at my desktop icons to see if I can consolidate some of them in folders. To create a folder, put your cursor in a blank portion of the screen, click on the right mouse button, select "New" and "Folder." Click on the folder to rename it. Then you can drag desktop icons onto it. I had a friend who, until I taught him this trick, had a screen so cluttered with icons he could barely see his wallpaper.

CLEAR THE PROGRAMS. Next, I get rid of unused programs. But beware: Dragging their desktop icons into the Recycle Bin won't work. Instead, click on the "Start" button, select "Programs," find the program you want to remove, and look for an "Uninstall" option. If there isn't one, click on "Start," select "Settings," then "Control Panel," double-click on the "Add/ Remove Programs" icon, look for the program on the list, and then click "Add/Remove." If that doesn't work, I insert the original disk that contained the program. The opening screen often has an "Uninstall" option.

UPDATE AND RUN THE VIRUS CHECKER. This should be done at least once a month. I've been using McAfee for years and, once you're connected to the Internet, updating is as simple as opening the main program and clicking the "Update" button. Once that's done -- the computer can appear to stall for many minutes, so be patient -- reboot the computer and run the virus checker.

By the way, if you keep your computer on all the time -- which I do not -- most virus checkers can be programed to run at specified times. I recommend 3 a.m. daily.

CLEAR THE CLUTTER. Running the "Disk Cleanup" program, found by clicking on "Start," "Programs, "Accessories," and "System Tools," will get rid of temporary files, empty your recycle bin and eliminate other junk.

UPDATE SPYWARE/ADWARE REMOVERS. Spyware and adware -- also known as scumware -- are programs that can sneak onto your computer via the Internet, slow your PC down, give you unwanted ads, and snoop on your Internet browsing habits. I use "Ad-aware" from http://www.lavasoftusa.com. Use the "Check for Updates Now" feature and let the updates install. But wait before you actually run the main program.

By the way, many readers have told me they run both "Ad-aware" and "Spybot: Search and Destroy" from http://www.safer-networking.org, another free program, to be sure all the spies are out of their system.

GO INTO SAFE MODE. I close all my programs and restart the computer in "Safe Mode." In my case, after the rebooting process has begun, I have to hit the "F8" key when I hear the beep. The process varies from computer to computer. In safe mode, the graphics look horrible, but it doesn't load programs that will interfere with what I do next.

RUN THE SPYWARE/ADWARE REMOVERS. They work more effectively in the "Safe Mode." For me, Ad-aware takes about 5 minutes to run.

The remaining steps don't need to be done regularly, but it's a good idea to do them once in a while.

Again, make sure you are in "Safe Mode," and turn off your screen saver by going to "Start," "Settings," "Control Panel," "Display," clicking on the "Screen Saver" tab, and using the pulldown menu to select "None." Then click OK and close all windows.

RUN SCANDISK (unless you have Windows XP). "ScanDisk" can be found by going back to the "System Tools" folder. It checks your hard drive for problems. Make sure the "Automatically Fix Errors" box is checked and do a "Thorough" scan. Don't plan on using your computer for quite a while. It typically takes many hours.

RUN DISK DEFRAGMENTER. This is also found in the "System Tools" folder. It consolidates the files on your hard drive, making things run smoother. I start this when I'm ready to go to bed. It takes all night.

When I'm finished, I reboot the computer and it brings me back to normal.

If you're having problems, visit the site http://www.pcpitstop.com. Their free scan can be very helpful. (Gene Emery is a columnist who covers science and technology. His Internet address is GEmery(at)Cox.net. Any opinions in the column are his alone.)
http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.j...toryID=6995014


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Generation Raised With Internet Grows Up
Martha Irvine

Young people are now the savviest of the tech-savvy, as likely to demand a speedy broadband connection as to download music onto an iPod, or upload digital photos to their Web logs.

The Internet has shaped the way they work, relax and even date. It's created a different notion of community for them and new avenues for expression that are, at best, liberating and fun - but that also can become a forum for pettiness and, occasionally, criminal exploitation.

"Students are continuously connected to other students and friends and family in ways that older generations never would have imagined," says Steve Jones, chairman of the communications department at the University of Illinois at Chicago and a senior research fellow with the Pew Internet & American Life Project.

More than any previous generation, today's young people are plugged in - all the time - with a world of communication and information at their fingertips.

Take Suhas Sridharan, whose introduction to the Web came as a sixth-grader in South Carolina. In those days, she regularly visited the Disney Web site to play games; by high school, she was researching assignments online and checking her e-mail daily.

"Now I think even my 'senior self' in high school would be surprised how much I use the Internet," says Sridharan, a 17-year-old freshman at Emory University in Atlanta, where the Web is woven into the framework of students' lives via a system called LearnLink.

Assignments are dispersed online. Students are much more likely to do research online than use the library. And even the proverbial class handout has gone the way of the Web, posted on electronic bulletin boards for downloading after class.

So when Emory's computer server went down for a few hours one evening this fall, you would've thought the world had come to an end. "A lot of people were at loose ends," Sridharan says. "They couldn't do their homework."

As time and innovations move ahead, many young people only see the Internet becoming that much more vital.

Crystal Cienfuegos, for instance, found a public relations job via the Web - sending out an "electronic" resume, arranging an in-person interview by e-mail and securing the job with a writing test, taken online.

"Nowadays, a person employed at one company can be coordinating interviews via Hotmail during lunch and literally finding a new job without even leaving their desk," says 25-year-old Cienfuegos, from Long Beach, Calif. "It's quite amusing, but not so funny if you are a business owner."

Gabriel Schaffzin, a senior at Babson College in Wellesley, Mass., has used the Internet to rejuvenate his father's personalized calendar business, now called gaboosh.media inc.

Through the Internet, he's found seed funding, business plan competitions and industry data. And perhaps, most importantly, the Web has given customers another way to find the business - and order products.

It's the sort of reach that would've been "unfathomable, not even 20 years ago," says Susannah Stern, a professor of communication studies at the University of San Diego who has studied young people's Internet habits.

"For them, accessing information is easy," she says, noting that the Internet also opens up a chance for teens and 20somethings to communicate with people who are different from them, "people in another state or country, or kids at school they don't talk to."

Of course, there is a dark side to having such broad access: It gives identity thieves and sexual predators a new place to look for victims.

Perhaps more common than those well-publicized dangers are the everyday dramas caused by online rumor-spreading. And it can get ugly, particularly when people post comments on their online profiles and Web logs, commonly known as blogs.

Jennifer Anello recalls the time a friend got drunk one Saturday night, called her ex-boyfriend and ended up arguing with him.

"The following Monday his profile had something to the effect of 'Can someone tell (my ex-girlfriend) how to hold her liquor and get her a shrink?'" says Anello, who's 24 and lives in Stamford, Conn.

Online rumors and innuendo cause angst among teens, too. "Parents say, 'We never knew it would take on this velocity and ferocity,'" says Amanda Lenhart, another Pew researcher.

Andreea Johnson, a student at Central Michigan University and a regular Web user, says those bad experiences make some people, including the grandmother who raised her, wary of the Internet.

"Are you kidding? She would never get an e-mail account," Johnson says, laughing. "I think some older people still think of it as the devil - like it's kind of evil."

But the Internet also has produced many unexpected benefits. Stern, for instance, notes that the Web provides an anonymous outlet to troubled young people who want to talk about everything from suicide and self-mutilation to eating disorders.

"There's nowhere for a lot of kids to go, there's no hanging out on the corner. So the Internet is a place for kids to figure out who they are," she says.

In her research, Stern says it was common to hear young people who've posted online diaries say, "I'd never tell someone this in person."

Indeed, Jones has seen firsthand how students have used the Internet to enhance life - even during classes he leads on his Chicago campus. Using messages sent wirelessly from laptop to laptop, one student recently helped another who didn't speak English very well by translating a point Jones was making during a lecture.

On other occasions, students have surfed the Net during class and found Web sites that supplement the discussion - though Jones also jokes that he's never had his students' undivided attention thanks to the laptops, cell phones and other gizmos they carry.

"There is a real power there, a kind of technological power. But also I think there's a kind of intellectual power that can be harnessed. They are so curious about using these technologies. And I'd really like to be able to regularly marshal that curiosity," Jones says, noting that students - not necessarily universities - are the ones who often drive the use of technology on campus.

He also thinks that young workers will continue to push technological advances in the corporate world, partly because they are able to handle "multiple conversations and juggle better than the previous generations." He says the Internet - and other forms of communication - play very much into this generation's wish for flexibility at home, work and during down time.

AOL's Bird predicts that teens will be among the first to embrace new, Web-based video technology. "You will very soon be able to shoot video messages and play those video messages on your blog that your friends can go to," Bird says. "So your community, your scheduling, your friends, your holidays - all of this stuff will live in an online environment."

It's all very exciting to Sridharan, the Emory freshman. She finds it difficult to predict how the Internet will change her life, even a few years from now. But she knows the potential is there.

"It's just up to us to imagine it," she says, "and put it into motion."
http://apnews1.iwon.com//article/200...D86PB6UO0.html


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Experts Offer a Few Tips to Unplug
AP

Even as we become more dependent on technology, experts say it's still important to unplug once in a while. Here are a few of their suggestions:

- Set a time limit on Web surfing - and, if you have to, set an alarm to remind yourself to log off. "Schedule it in like you would any other task in the day," says Michelle Weil, a psychologist who works with people to find ways to avoid technology-related stress.

- Turn off your cell phone from time to time and use voicemail to help establish boundaries. "You could say, 'I'm not available after 6 p.m.,'" Weil says, suggesting you call people back the following day.

- Limit the number of times per day that you check your e-mail and prioritize what you receive in terms of "important" and "can be read later." And don't be afraid to use the delete key, says psychologist Larry Rosen, who co-authored a book with Weil that looked at tech stress.

- Allow yourself the luxury of a "low-tech day," one day of the week when you put your high-tech devices away. "You can't be attending to where you are if you're punching buttons - playing with your cell phone or PDA or MP3 player. You're not there. You're somewhere else," says psychologist Dave Greenfield.

- Once in a while, resist the urge to e-mail or message someone - and call them instead. Better yet, if they live nearby or work in your office, pay them a face-to-face visit. "It's obvious that there's certain intangible benefits from face-to-face communication," says Allan Stegeman, professor of communications at Drexel University in Philadelphia. Because his students are more likely to e-mail him than visit during office hours, he says it often takes them longer to figure out that he has a life outside the university.

"You come into somebody's office you see pictures on desks." And that, he says, sparks conversation at a different, more personal level.
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories...CTION=BUSINESS