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

[JackSpratts]

Since 2002


































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


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


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



































April 26th, 2008




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

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

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

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

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

This latest lawsuit comes as BitTorrent use is on the rise, but the MPAA still believes that things are getting better on copyright infringement front. The folks behind the Pirate Bay were recently indicted by Swedish prosecutors, which the MPAA says is evidence that its efforts are paying off. "In some ways, the situation is improving in that we've gotten the attention of law enforcement and Swedish prosecutors have taken action [against The Pirate Bay admins]," Malcolm told Ars recently. "Content providers can't afford to sit by and do nothing. We need to highlight that [copyright infringement] is not a victimless crime and take appropriate actions."

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





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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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





IFPI Expert Witness in Pirate Bay Case Worked for IFPI
enigmax

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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





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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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





Fight Against Illegal Downloading Heats Up
Park Si-soo

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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





Quashed!

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

ENDORSED ORDER granting MOTION to Quash Subpoena.

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

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

Order (.pdf format)

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





A Letter from Mp3Tunes
AngryGnome

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

Dear MP3tunes Customer,

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

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

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

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

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

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

-- Michael Robertson
CEO
MP3tunes.com

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

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

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





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

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

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

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

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

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

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





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

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

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





Dough Re Mi

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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





FTC Probes Copyright Monopoly
The Yomiuri Shimbun

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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





Rant and roll

Biohazard Bassist Blasts BitTorrent
enigmax

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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





BitTorrent Throttling ISPs Exposed by Azureus
Ernesto

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

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

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

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

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

ISP Country Reset %

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

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

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

ISP Country Reset %

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

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

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

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

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





Study: All Major Broadband Providers Disrupt P2P

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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





FCC Tells Comcast to Unblock P2P

Ignores delay tactics
Cade Metz

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

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

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

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

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

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





Pile on

Comcast: Worst. Company. Ever.
Craig Aaron

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

It will be Comcast -- in a rout.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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





When Monetizing ISP Traffic Goes Horribly Wrong
Brian Krebs

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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





Testifying @ FCC @ Stanford
Lawrence Lessig

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

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





Analysis: Net Neutrality's Atlantic Divide
Dave West

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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





Not in Kansas anymore

Oz Broadband Gets Faster
Andrew Colley

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

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

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

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

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

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

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





Eircom Rejects Record Firms' Claims

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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





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

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

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

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

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

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





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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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





Campaign Tackles Online Child Porn
AFP

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

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

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

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

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

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





Google Enlists Video ID Tools to Combat Child Porn

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

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

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

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

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

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

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





Google Hands Over Data on Suspected Pedophiles to Brazil

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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





Court Says Search Of Laptop With Porn Is Legal

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

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

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

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

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





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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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





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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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





$9.95

Skype Offers Unlimited International Calling Plan
Peter Svensson

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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





Nokia Unveils Two New Music Phones

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

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

Signs Sony BMG for Free Music Offering

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

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

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

Nokia gave no financial details.

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

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

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

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

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

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





Sony to Give Online Video Distribution Another Try

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

Will the third time be the charm for Sony?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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





Sony to Buy Gracenote Music Data Company
Stephen Lawson

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

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

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

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

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





Apple Wins Dismissal of Ramones Suit Over Downloads
Bloomberg News

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





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

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

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

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

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

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

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





Music Has Its Own Geometry, Researchers Find

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Like what?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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





No Fortissimo? Symphony Told to Keep It Down
Sarah Lyall

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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





Sen. Dorgan Asks FCC To Reject Satellite Merger
FMQB

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

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

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

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

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





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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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





Primary Lures Those Too Young to Vote
Jacques Steinberg

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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





Hack into Obama Campaign Site Exploited a Coding Flaw
Jordan Robertson

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

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

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

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

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

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

Neither campaign responded to e-mail messages seeking comment.

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





NJ Judge Allows Electronic Voting Machines to be Examined
Jeffrey Gold

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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





Debate Backlash: ABC Feels It In The Ratings
Rachel Sklar

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

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

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

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

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

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