Peer-To-Peer News - The Week In Review - May 21st, '11

[JackSpratts]

Since 2002


































"You can call it what you want: piracy, IP theft, content theft. Frankly, I call it looting." – Chris Dodd


"Second-hand [game] sales cost us more in the long-run than piracy these days." – Mike West


"They are welcome to come to our [duplication] facility any time, 24 hours a day, if they ever thought we were doing anything illegal. We're pretty open with [the RIAA]. But I don't want to have a law that says our premises could be invaded any time without a warrant." – Dave Michelsen


"There was no arrest. He was interviewed briefly by police and the iPad will be returned as soon as possible." – Queensland Police


"Our bad @bengrubb was arrested for questioning briefly Our tweet last night was based on information provided at the time Apologies." – Queensland Police


"Quit fretting about Neuromancer [movies], for Pete's sake! We've got the Rapture looming!" – William Gibson



































May 21st, 2011





In File-Sharing Suit, Judge Draws Distinction Between BitTorrent and Other Sites

Not all file-sharing Web sites are created equal, according to U.S. District Court Judge Beryl Howell.

Howell, writing in a series of opinions today denying protective orders for potential defendants in separate but similar copyright infringement cases, noted that while similar orders had been granted in other file-sharing suits, the nature of the site in question, BitTorrent, raised new issues.

“The plaintiff has provided detailed allegations about how the BitTorrent technology differs from other peer-to-peer file-sharing programs and necessarily engages many users simultaneously or sequentially to operate,” Howell wrote. The opinions are all similarly worded.

In the underlying cases, four movie production and distribution companies are suing hundreds of unnamed defendants for illegally downloading copyrighted movies through BitTorrent. In order to uncover their identities and properly file suit, the plaintiffs have subpoenaed Internet service providers to turn over the identities of users tracked through internet protocol addresses.

Time Warner had contested the request to turn over its customers’ information, but Howell denied the company’s motion to quash the subpoenas on March 23.

For every IP address identified, the service providers have been sending letters notifying users that their identity has been subpoenaed and that they have a right to challenge the release of their information in court. In the four different cases addressed by Howell today, putative defendants who received notification were challenging the release of their information, disputing that they had engaged in illegal downloading.

Howell denied all of the requests, writing that it was too early for factual disputes.

“A general denial of liability, however, is not a basis for quashing the plaintiff’s subpoenas and preventing the plaintiff from obtaining the putative defendants’ identifying information. That would deny the plaintiff access to the information critical to bringing these individuals properly into the lawsuit to address the merits of both the plaintiff’s claim and their defenses,” she wrote.

The judge contrasted BitTorrent, where files are downloaded by piecing together data from multiple users, to sites like Napster, where files are downloaded from a single user. In those earlier cases relating to sites like Napster, some courts had granted motions for severance, finding that the single-person model failed to meet the prima facie test for enjoinder.

Nicholas Kurtz of Washington’s Dunlap, Grubb & Weaver is representing the companies in their respective suits.
http://www.dailybusinessreview.com/P...330&hbxlogin=1





Denver Judge Stays all Righthaven Cases in Colorado
Steve Green

A federal judge in Colorado today said there are serious questions about the validity of the Righthaven LLC/Denver Post copyright infringement lawsuits there, and he put them all on hold.

Senior U.S. District Judge John Kane in Denver said in orders filed in the cases that because of challenges to Las Vegas-based Righthaven’s standing to sue there over Denver Post material, he wants to resolve that issue before proceeding.

"Because there are serious questions as to whether my exercise of subject matter jurisdiction over Righthaven’s claim of copyright infringement is proper, I think it most prudent to stay the proceedings in all pending cases in this district in which Righthaven is the named plaintiff," Kane wrote in an order filed today. "Should I find that I lack subject matter jurisdiction over Righthaven’s claim of copyright infringement, it is likely that I will be required to dismiss all pending actions. A stay will best conserve the parties’ and the court’s resources pending resolution of this fundamental inquiry."

Of the 57 suits there, 22 have been settled or voluntarily dismissed under undisclosed terms. The other 35 are pending. In all, Righthaven has filed 274 lawsuits since March 2010 in Nevada, Colorado and South Carolina over content from the Post and the Las Vegas Review-Journal.

One of the cases to be put on hold is a class-action counterclaim filed against Righthaven this week.

Kane said the main case in which he’ll rule on the jurisdiction issue is that of Righthaven defendant Leland Wolf (itmakessenseblog.com), who was sued over a Denver Post TSA pat-down photo.

Wolf’s attorneys this week filed briefs saying that based on Righthaven’s lawsuit contract with Review-Journal owner Stephens Media LLC, it’s lawsuit contract with the Post is likely similar.

Their view of the contract is that it doesn’t give Righthaven standing to sue – a view Righthaven disagrees with. The Nevada federal judges hearing Righthaven cases on that issue haven’t issued final rulings. One Nevada judge, James Mahan, has said the contract apparently does not give Righthaven standing to sue.

“Righthaven very likely is neither the owner nor exclusive holder of any rights in the copyrighted work underlying this lawsuit. As such, Righthaven has suffered no injury or other cognizable harm required for it to have standing. Absent this very basic requirement of standing, there is no subject matter jurisdiction in this case, and this court must immediately dismiss the case,” attorneys for Wolf said in a filing this week.

His attorneys filed a motion to conduct discovery so they can see the lawsuit contract between Righthaven and the Post, writing, “obtaining Righthaven’s agreement with (Denver Post owner) MediaNews group is the fastest route to disposing of this lawsuit.”
Wolf is represented by Denver attorney Andrew J. Contiguglia and attorneys with Randazza Legal Group’s Las Vegas office.
http://www.vegasinc.com/news/2011/ma...ases-colorado/





Righthaven Hit with Class-Action Counterclaim
Steve Green

One of the website operators accused of copyright infringement by Righthaven LLC has retaliated, hitting the Las Vegas company with a class-action counterclaim seeking to represent defendants in all 57 Righthaven cases in Colorado.

While the counterclaim mentions all 275 Righthaven lawsuits, it covers only those filed in Colorado.

It charges defendants in all the Righthaven lawsuits "are victims of extortion litigation by Righthaven, which has made such extortion litigation a part of its, if not its entire, business model."

"As a result of Righthaven’s unlawful actions, class plaintiffs and members of the proposed class were forced either to fight needless litigation or to pay Righthaven a settlement fee, which they would not have had to pay, had Righthaven engaged in legitimate business practices," charges the counterclaim, which specifically accuses Righthaven of violating Colorado’s law against unfair and deceptive trade practices.

The counterclaim says Righthaven has victimized defendants by failing to send takedown notices prior to suing, by threatening to take their website domain names when that’s not provided for under the federal Copyright Act, by falsely claiming it owns the copyrights at issue and by failing to investigate jurisdictional and fair use issues before suing, among other things.

The claim seeks an adjudication that Righthaven’s copyright infringement lawsuits amount to unfair and deceptive trade practices under Colorado law, an injunction permanently enjoining Righthaven from continuing the alleged unfair and deceptive trade practices, an unspecified financial award to the class-action plaintiffs for damages as well as their costs and attorney’s fees.

BuzzFeed is represented by attorneys with the Denver office of the law firm Brownstein Hyatt Farber Schreck LLP. That firm also has a busy Las Vegas office and is usually known for corporate, bankruptcy, casino industry and natural resources legal work and litigation.

Righthaven is the copyright enforcer for the Las Vegas Review-Journal and the Denver Post. It has filed 274 suits against websites, bloggers and message-board posters over material from those newspapers since March 2010. The 275th suit was filed over sports betting material that didn’t involve either newspaper.

The counterclaim is at least the eighth filed against Righthaven. The copyright enforcement company has already lost two Nevada cases on fair use rulings and faces challenges to its standing to sue over Review-Journal material, with a federal judge in Las Vegas saying it appears Righthaven does not have that right.

BuzzFeed separately denied the copyright infringement allegations against it, saying they are barred by Righthaven's lack of standing to sue as the Denver Post is the real party in interest, lack of jurisdiction of the Colorado court over New York-based BuzzFeed, fair use, the First Amendment, copyright misuse, implied license and other things.

The implied license defense says the suit over a Denver Post TSA pat-down photo is barred because the Denver Post granted a license to BuzzFeed and others to use the photo through "links and features encouraging the sharing of the work via: (1) emailing the story; (2) recommending the article on Facebook; (3) using the `Bookmark & Share' feature to share the article on more than 330 websites and social media outlets; and (4) linking the article on Twitter.''

In its March 30 lawsuit against BuzzFeed, Righthaven included a court exhibit showing the Denver Post photo was used on multiple occasions on the website along with some sexual commentary about the TSA agent touching the passenger in the photo as the passenger was patted down.

A request for comment on the counterclaim was placed with Righthaven.
http://www.vegasinc.com/news/2011/ma...-counterclaim/





RIAA: Some of Limewire Piracy Suit Loot May Go to Artists

But past settlements have seen little distributed to artists
Jason Mick

Major music labels and their trade group, the Recording Industry Association of America, scored a major victory over LimeWire last year, shutting down the P2P service. The results were noticeable -- an immediate dip in filesharing traffic. Though perhaps the thrill of that victory will be temporary for the RIAA, they can console themselves with a record settlement of $105M USD that a jury awarded them last week after lengthy negotiations.

Filesharing-centric blog TorrentFreak ran one of the first stories on the settlement and quoted RIAA spokesman Jonathan Lamy as stating, "Any funds recouped are re-invested into our ongoing education and anti-piracy programs."

This might lead one to believe the music artists would get none of the settlement.

After a dialogue with Mr. Lamy we realize this may not necessarily be the case. First, Mr. Lamy's comment was delivered years ago, when the suit was just warming up. Second, his comments may have referred to only the RIAA's share of the settlement -- remember the music labels were co-plaintiffs in the case.

"Far too much credence was given to a TorrentFreak 'report.' The quote attributed to me was something I said years ago in reference to the end-user litigation program, which did not generate any revenue for the record companies." complains Mr. Lamy. "The RIAA has made no comment [at the time of the settlement] on how the recoveries in the LimeWire case would be distributed. That is a decision for the individual plaintiffs. However, the record companies have historically shared large litigation recoveries such as the KaZaa settlement with their artists.”

Ultimately, TorrentFreak's conclusion -- though not as well sourced as it appeared -- may still prove semi-accurate.

The New York Times ran a piece on the settlement in their Media Decoder blog. They quote Warner Music Group as commenting, "We will share the settlement money with our artists."

Similar promises were made with lawsuit settlements with other P2P giants, including Napster, Kazaa, and Grokster. And money was indeed set aside.

But according to many major musicians the money was largely never distributed to artists. Bob Donnelly, a longtime lawyer for artists is quoted by NYT as stating, "I don't remember any of my artists’ accountants ever saying, 'Hey, guess what, we got a great bonus this month.'"

Another question that even if some of the money is eventually set aside and distributed, how it will be divvied out. A major record label can have thousands of artists on the main label and hundreds of imprints. Some say that only the biggest artists will stand a decent chance at collecting a piece of the record loot.

Dina LaPolt, a lawyer for Steven Tyler, the estate of late 90s rap icon Tupac Shakur, and others is quoted as adding, "It’s going to be the artists that make noise. They are the ones that are going to get paid."

At the end of the day the settlement provides few answers to the big questions and challenges facing the music industry. And if history is any indication RIAA and labels will likely pocket a large chunk the settlement; and the money they do choose share will go only towards a privileged handful of established artists. But, for what it's worth, the RIAA wanted to set the record straight -- they never said that musicians would get nothing.
http://www.dailytech.com/RIAA+Some+o...ticle21669.htm





The RIAA Picks A New Legal Target (Exclusive)
Eriq Gardner

The Recording Industry Association of America, fresh off a proclaimed "milestone" in securing $105 million in settlement money from file-sharing service LimeWire, has set its sight on the burgeoning cloud-computing world.

On Wednesday, the RIAA filed legal action against Box.Net, a service that purports to let its users share, manage and access business content. The trade group seeks to investigate a couple of the company's users believed to be using the service to infringe sound recordings.

Mark McDevitt, vp online piracy of the RIAA, filed a declaration to a California federal court supporting a subpeona request to be served on Box.Net.

Box.Net is one of a handful of companies that is growing in popularity in the cloud-storage industry. The company, which was founded in 2005 and received some of its angel capital from noted entrepreneur Mark Cuban, has been called the "Facebook of Cloud Computing."

An RIAA spokesperson explained that it's not a lawsuit per se, but rather a 512(h) subpoena as part of a routine pre-release investigation. "Too soon to tell what we might do with the information once it is uncovered," said the spokesperson, who added that it isn't a change in direction.

The RIAA's latest target of investigation will likely raise some eyebrows

Although cloud storage has gained traction, some facets of the business, including allowing users to upload and conceivably share content, are not very different from the file-sharing platforms like LimeWire that have been killed in the court system.

Box.Net and other cloud computing systems, though, allow users to do much more, so there's little dispute these services have legitimate uses. Still, if copyright holders intend to take their battles to these upstart companies, they've got a number of well-funded targets to pursue. Some of those companies like Dropbox have taken proactive steps to curtail any legal threats.

On the other hand, the RIAA might merely be interested in taking the results of the subpeona to file follow-up litigation against the revealed end-users of these services. But that also would be an interesting development. Famously, the RIAA sued some 30,000 individual users of file-sharing platforms a few years ago, but then ended the mass litigation campaign amid fanfare that it had realized a PR error.

Now that the RIAA has put its dispute with LimeWire to rest, what's next?

Box.Net also responded to the legal action.

"We take the confidentiality of our customers' information very seriously, but just like all other businesses, we are legally required to comply with court orders," said Box.Net in a statement to THR. "Our compliance will be limited to the information the court requires we produce. At Box, we're primarily focused on powering collaboration and information sharing within businesses, and it's rare that we run into copyright infringement issues in those instances."
http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/thr...w-legal-190232





Hargreaves Review Gives Copyright Law Digital Makeover
BBC

A review of the UK's copyright laws offers reforms but not the radical overhaul demanded by some.

The Hargreaves Report was requested by David Cameron amid concerns that current legislation was outdated in the internet age.

Its author, Professor Ian Hargreaves, recommends legalising the practice of copying music and films.

Other suggestions include relaxing the rules on parodies and other reworkings of existing content.

It also calls for the setting up of a new agency to mediate between those wanting to license music, film and other digital content, and rights owners.

Prof Hargreaves, of Cardiff University, said: "My recommendations set out how the intellectual property framework can promote innovation and economic growth in the UK economy.

"They are designed to enhance the economic potential of the UK's creative industries and to ensure that the emergence of high technology businesses, especially smaller businesses, in other sectors are not impeded by our IP laws".

Overdue

One of the key changes it recommends is to legalise format shifting for personal use - the copying of CDs or DVDs onto digital music players or computers.

Although no individual has been prosecuted for ripping music, having an outdated legal framework has stifled some innovations, the report said.

Some think the change is overdue.

"Format shifting has been implemented in all European countries apart from the UK, the Republic of Ireland and Malta," said Susan Hall, media specialist at law firm Cobbetts LLP.

"In today's world, this doesn't reflect consumer behaviour. The new regulations will allow more flexibility for consumers to enjoy content they have paid for in the way they want to," she added.

Newport rap

Another big idea in the report is the creation of a Digital Copyright Exchange. It would be responsible for so-called orphaned works, content that does not have an identifiable author.

The report recommends a "senior figure" be appointed to oversee its design by the end of next year.

"The proposal will allow organisations, such as the BBC and British Film Institute, to use archive material that would previously not have been permitted to be shown because of doubt about ownership and will allow much freer creation of parodies, remixes and other spin-off works," said Ms Hall.

She also welcomed the decision to relax the laws on parody.

That would allow YouTube clips such as Newport State of Mind new breathing space, she said.

The song performed by a Welsh rap duo became an internet hit when it replaced the Jay Z hit about New York with lyrics about Newport.

But it was taken down following a copyright claim by EMI.

The review has been welcomed by groups representing content producers and those campaigning for more liberal laws.

Peter Bradwell from the Open Rights Group called on government to take the recommendations on board

"This evidence-based blueprint should finally help government balance copyright in the interest of creators, consumers and innovators. It is vital they follow it," he said.

American influence

Rights holders have also claimed victory, citing Professor Hargreaves' decision not to support the US concept of "fair use" where significant portions of a work can be replicated without permission.

The Creative Coalition Campaign, which represents a number of creative industries characterised the report as having rejected "moves to change the fundamental principles behind UK copyright law which would have damaged investment in the UK's creative industries".

Prior to its publication, the Hargreaves Report had been referred to as the 'Google review', after the search giant claimed that it could never have been founded in the UK because of outdated copyright laws.

While the Hargreaves panel accepted that US laws were friendlier towards innovation, it decided that it would not work in the UK because it would require copyright changes across Europe.

Many of the reforms recommended in the report had already been suggested in the 2006 Gowers Review of Intellectual Property but never implemented.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-13429217





New Bill Upgrades Unauthorized Internet Streaming to a Felony
Nate Anderson

Two months ago, US Intellectual Property Enforcement Coordinator Victoria Espinel produced her wishlist of changes to US law. One item in particular caught our interest—the suggestion that the online streaming of copyrighted content be bumped up to a full-scale felony. Late last week, Senators Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) and John Cornyn (R-TX) introduced just such a bill.

The text of S. 978 isn't yet available from the official THOMAS system, but Klobuchar's office sent us a copy of the brief bill. Under current law, "reproducing" and "distributing" copyrighted works are felony charges and cover P2P transfers and Web downloads. But streaming is a "public performance" rather than a "distribution"—and holding a public performance without a proper license is not a felony. S. 978 adds "public performance" to the felony list.

Online streamers can now face up to five years in prison and a fine in cases where:

• They show 10 or more "public performances" by electronic means in any 180-day period and
• The total retail value of those performances tops $2,500 or the cost of licensing such performances is greater than $5,000

Movie makers and theater owners support the bill.

Michael O'Leary, who heads up the MPAA's government affairs (read: lobbying) work, said in a statement that "criminals are stealing, trafficking, and profiting off the investment that our workers devote to creating the quality films and TV shows that entertain a worldwide audience and bolster the American economy... We thank Senators Klobuchar and Cornyn for introducing this important legislation to standardize the legal treatment of online content theft and helping ensure that federal law keeps pace with the changing face of criminal activity."
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/n...o-a-felony.ars





French 3 Strikes Suspended Due To Anti-Piracy Security Alert
enigmax

Following a weekend security breach at Trident Media Guard, the outfit spearheading data collection for France’s 3 strikes anti-piracy drive, the country’s HADOPI agency has severed interconnection with the company. This means that, pending an enquiry, French file-sharers are no longer being tracked, a major embarrassment for the government.

On Saturday evening, with the invaluable assistance of blogger and security researcher Olivier Laurelli, aka Bluetouff, TorrentFreak first reported that Trident Media Guard (TMG), the private company entrusted to carry out file-sharing network monitoring for the French government, had been hacked.

As became evident, the term ‘hacked’ was probably overly generous to TMG, since according to Bluetouff the company had left the equivalent of its front door open.

“A virtual machine leaked a lot of information like scripts, p2p clients to generate fake peers, local physical addresses in the datacenter and even a password that could lead to a major global TMG security breach,” he explained.

TorrentFreak obtained and listed some of the files in question in our earlier report, but as the contents of the leak were examined in more detail, it became evident that TMG had not only leaked out its own data, but that belonging to the subjects of their monitoring.

The day after our report, Guillaume Champeau of Numerama, a publication which follows French file-sharing issues in-depth, contacted TorrentFreak to say he had been able to show that IP addresses linked to the 3-strikes process may also have been leaked. He informed the HADOPI agency of his find which led to them to report that they were taking the matter “very seriously”.

Indeed, that concern has been followed by an announcement from Eric Walter, the secretary-general of HADOPI. Walter, a friend of French President Nicolas Sarkozy, who now confirms that “as a precaution Hadopi has decided to temporarily suspend its interconnection with TMG.”

What this effectively means is that since TMG is the only company licensed to do this work for the government, from now on and pending a review, the French 3 strikes regime for dealing with illicit file-sharing is suspended. Data gathered before Saturday evening, however, can still be used.

This suspension will be seen by some as a major embarrassment for President Sarkozy. France has taken a particularly hard-line approach to unlawful file-sharing and the government has continually brushed aside calls from the public and various watchdogs to consider more carefully the privacy and related rights issues connected with such a regime.
http://torrentfreak.com/french-3-str...-alert-110517/





Copyright Law Could End Free Library Internet

Surfing the internet at the library could become a thing of the past
Dan Satherley

Free internet access at libraries across New Zealand is under threat thanks to upcoming changes to the copyright laws.

From September 1, anyone illegally downloading copyrighted material could face a fine of up to $15,000 thanks to last month's passing of the Copyright (Infringing File Sharing) Amendment bill.

And if the threat of fines doesn't work, eventually the Government may start forcing Internet Service Providers (ISPs) to disconnect alleged infringers.

The catch for libraries – and other providers of public internet access, like McDonald's and cafes – is that under the law, it is the account holder that is responsible for what is downloaded on their connection, not necessarily the individual, a situation that has them worried.

"This is almost unworkable, and it's going to prove to be unworkable very quickly," says Tony Millett of the Library and Information Association of New Zealand and Aotearoa (LIANZA).

"The whole thing is an absolute nightmare and we really don't see how it is going to work."

Because many libraries offer an open wi-fi network – where people can connect to the internet wirelessly from their own computers, without supplying any personal information – keeping track of who is downloading what is not only difficult, but potentially very expensive.

"Unless libraries record the ID – names, addresses, the computer used, the exact time and date used – and keep that information, we simply won't be able to track down who in fact is using a specific computer at a specific date and time," he says.

"I'm not saying it's impossible, but it's going to be difficult and quite expensive to do it."

'Sad day' looms if internet cut off

This view is backed up by Auckland Libraries' manager of digital services for libraries and information, Corin Haines. He says it "wouldn't be cheap" to implement a system where library internet users could be identified and tracked, and implementation would be "a large piece of work".

Auckland is adopting a "wait and see" approach, and hopes it won't have to stop offering its free internet service.

"It would be a sad day for free access to information if we ended up in a situation where the internet was shut down or heavily restricted," says Mr Haines.

Libraries already taking action

Users pirating copyrighted material isn't a new problem for libraries. This author admits spending a fortune on blank cassette tapes and borrowing CDs from the local library in the 1990s, and photocopiers have been around for half a century.

However the internet has made copying material these days much easier, and increased the quality of copies. Many libraries have tried to combat this by implementing limits on how much each person can download. In the former Auckland City area, it's 100MB a day – which is still enough to get an album or two in mp3 form.

3 News, logging on at the central city library on Lorne St, was able to access several sites offering illegal music downloads. We were easily able to find links to the new Fleet Foxes album, Helplessness Blues, on blog sites, and had no issues downloading it from file hosting website fileserve.com (we cancelled the download before it was completed).

Mr Millett says libraries were not keen to block sites – like fileserve.com – that had legitimate uses, but agreed something had to be done in order to protect libraries from fines and the threat of disconnection.

"Usually those sites provide access to other information as well," he told 3 News. "It is not unlawful to download some material from those sites. Certainly LIANZA is recommending those sites for which the sole purpose is to facilitate unlawful downloading, access to those should be blocked – but many of the sites where unlawful downloading occurs also provide access to material which may quite lawfully be downloaded."

Notorious filesharing site The Pirate Bay wouldn't load, but other sites offering illegal torrent downloads – like kickasstorrents.com – did.

"Just where you draw the line will have to be made on a case-by-case basis," says Mr Millett. "What would be absolutely terrible would be if the only solution is to block access to any internet site, and that could happen if councils start getting fines."
Mr Haines said it was "logistically difficult to block" every site offering illegal downloads.

But some free wi-fi providers – like McDonald's – use filters to block a range of sites they deem unsuitable (3 News took a look at what's allowed at McDonald's and what isn't back in January). This isn't an option for libraries, says Mr Millett, because they are "specifically in the business of providing access to information, whereas McDonald's is primarily in the business of selling hamburgers, so there is a difference there".

Mr Haines said blocking every site deemed a risk and allowing access upon a customers' request would be possible in theory, but unrealistic in practise.

Councils also under threat?

In most situations, a library's internet account is held by the local council, which raises the question: Just who would lose their internet access, if it came to that? The library, or the entire council?

"Imagine a council not having internet access for six months, let alone a library?" asks Mr Millett. "It won't just be the library, because the library is not normally the account holder – it'll be the council."

LIANZA tried to get an exemption under the law for libraries and other public internet providers, but the Commerce Select Committee "chose not to listen".

"It was not willing to recommend that approach, simply because it believed that organisations should be responsible for what goes on within them," says Mr Millett.

"I certainly believe that that is so if you're an organisation like TV3 or the New Zealand Herald or any other organisation, you are responsible for what your employees do, and if your employees break the law, then you have a responsibility to ensure they don't.

"The difficulty in a public library… is that of course it's not only, or even principally, the employees who might be doing that… it's all the other users who come in and use the facilities that they make available."

Review needed much sooner

The law, passed last month under urgency (which was originally called to deal with legislation relating to the Canterbury earthquakes), is set to be reviewed two years from its introduction in September – not soon enough, says Mr Millett.

"It needs to be reviewed a hell of a lot quicker than after two years. Libraries don't want to be in the position where they're breaking the law. Libraries are lawful places."

Libraries across the country differ in how they offer free internet access, but many are part of the Aotearoa People's Network, established in 2007 as a part of the Government's digital policy. It is somewhat ironic another Government policy threatens to shut it down.

"We are hoping we will end up in a sensible situation where the ability for all New Zealanders to get quick and easy access [to the internet] is not compromised by this," says Mr Haines.

"If there was no internet in libraries that would solve the problem altogether, wouldn't it?" says Mr Millett.

Calls to the Recording Industry Association of New Zealand for comment were redirected to the New Zealand Federation Against Copyright Theft, who didn't respond to messages 3 News left on their answering machine.
http://www.3news.co.nz/Copyright-law...7/Default.aspx





A Nightmare Scenario for Higher Education
Kevin Smith, J.D.

In anticipation of the trial starting on Monday in the copyright infringement case brought against Georgia State University by Cambridge, Oxford and Sage publishers, and partially financed by the Copyright Clearance Center, there has been a flurry of motions, mostly relating to the admission of various pieces of evidence. But amongst that deluge of paper is a truly frightening document, the proposed injunction that the plaintiffs are requesting if they win the case. I have always known that there was a lot a stake for higher education in this case, but the injunction the publishers want would be a nightmare scenario beyond even my most pessimistic imaginings.

First, if this injunction were adopted as proposed, it would enjoin everyone at Georgia State, including students, who would seem to largely lose their fair use rights by virtue of enrolling at GSU. It would apply to e-reserves, faculty web pages and any learning management systems in use or adopted in the future. It would make GSU responsible for every conceivable act of copying that took place on their campus. In short, administrators at Georgia State would have to look over the shoulders of each faculty member whenever they uploaded course material to an LMS or any other web page. Arguably, they would have to monitor student copying at copiers provided in their libraries, since GSU would be enjoined from “encouraging or facilitating” any copying, beyond a limit of about 4 pages, that was done without permission.

Not only would GSU have to micromanage each faculty member’s choices about how to teach every class, they would also have to give the plaintiff publishers access to all of the computer systems on campus so that they too could examine each professor’s decisions.

I can only imagine the angry reaction of faculty members if this requirement were actually imposed on our campuses; they might finally rebel against the exploitation they suffer from these “academic” publishers. In any case the order quite literally asks the impossible and was apparently written by people with no functional knowledge of how higher education actually works. The administrative costs alone would be staggering, not to mention the permission fees.

Permission fees are the real purpose here, of course. The goal is to drive more and more money to the Copyright Clearance Center, which is the only source of permission mentioned by name in the draft injunction. The way the injunction would accomplish this would be by entirely eliminating fair use for Georgia State.

There is absolutely no mention of fair use or section 107 of the copyright law in this proposed order. Instead, the coping that would be permitted without permission is entirely defined by the bright line rules of the 1976 Guidelines for Classroom Copying (see pp 68-70). Actually, it is the guidelines PLUS an additional requirement that is being sought as the sole standard for non-permissive copying.

The guidelines’ rule on brevity would entirely circumscribe such copying if this injunction were granted. That rule permits a copy of only 10% or 1000 words of a prose work, which ever is less. Many schools that adopt 10% as a fair use standard will be shocked to find that, under this definition, that is often still too much to be acceptable, since the 1000 word limit will usually take over.

Also, the rule about cumulative effect — a limit on the total number of excerpts that can be made — would be enforced across the entire institution. Two classes could not use the same work without paying permission, and Georgia State would be responsible for making sure that no system across its campus was providing access to any more than two excerpts (for the whole campus and of no more than 1000 words each) by the same author.

Added to these rules from the Guidelines is a new restriction, that no more than 10% of the total reading for any particular class could be provided through non-permissive copying. The point of this rule is nakedly obvious. If a campus had the temerity to decide that it was going to follow the rules strictly (since the flexibility which is the point of fair use would be gone) and make sure that all of its class readings fell within the guidelines, they still would be unable to avoid paying permission fees. Ninety percent of each class’s reading would be required, under this absurd order, to be provided through purchased works or copies for which permission fees were paid, no matter how short the excerpts were.

Not only would the minimum safe harbor for fair use that the guidelines say they are defining become a maximum — the sum total of fair use — but that maximum would be shrunk much further by this 10%/90% rule. The intentions of Congress in adopting fair use, including its clause about “multiple copies for classroom use,” would be mocked, gutted and discarded, at least for Georgia State.

I believe that compliance with this order, were the publishers to win their case and the Judge to adopt the proposed injunction, would be literally impossible. For one thing, the record keeping, monitoring and reporting requirements would cost more than any institution can afford, even if they were technically possible. Also, there is really no permission market that is broad and efficient enough to meet the demand that this order would create; the CCC might get what it paid for in underwriting the litigation if this order became the law for Georgia State, but they do not have the coverage, even with their Annual Campus License, to support this kind of regime if it were broadened to other campuses and other publishers. Yet you can be sure that if those things happen, all of our campuses would be pressured to adopt the “Georgia State model” in order to avoid litigation.

This proposed order, in short, represents a nightmare, a true dystopia, for higher education. We can only hope, I think, that Judge Evans is clear-sighted enough, and respectful enough of what Congress intended when it passed the 1976 Copyright Act, not to adopt this Orwellian proposal, even if she finds in favor of the plaintiffs. No judge likes to issue an order that cannot be obeyed, and this one would be so far outside the stated policies of the United States in its copyright law that an appellate court could, and likely would, overturn it purely on those grounds.
http://blogs.library.duke.edu/scholc...her-education/





Google's Eric Schmidt: Blocking File-Sharing Sites Would Make U.S., Britain Like China

Eric Schmidt, Google's executive chairman, said on Wednesday that proposals from the U.S. and British governments to block Internet access to file-sharing websites would endanger freedom of speech and push both countries toward being more like China, according to a report.

"I would be very, very careful if I were a government about arbitrarily [implementing] simple solutions to complex problems," Schmidt said, according to a report from the Guardian.

Schmidt, who made the remarks in a keynote speech at Google's Big Tent conference in London, was likely referencing Britain's Digital Economy Act, which allows courts to mandate that specific websites be blocked, and the Protect IP bill in the U.S. that would block illegal file-sharing sites by cutting off access to their domain name system, or DNS.

"So, 'let's whack off the DNS'," Schmidt said, according to the Guardian. "OK, that seems like an appealing solution but it sets a very bad precedent because now another country will say 'I don't like free speech so I'll whack off all those DNSs' -- that country would be China.

"It doesn't seem right. I would be very, very careful about that stuff. If [the British government does] it the wrong way it could have disastrous precedent setting in other areas."

Schmidt said that if such laws were to pass in the U.S. or Britain, Google might not agree to cooperate.

"If there is a law that requires DNSs, to do X and it's passed by both houses of Congress and signed by the president of the United States and we disagree with it then we would still fight it," he said, according to the report. "If it's a request the answer is we wouldn't do it, if it's a discussion we wouldn't do it."

Journalists in attendance at the Google conference asked Schmidt to comment about Facebook's admission to secretly paying the Burson-Marsteller public relations firm to pitch negative stories about Google to reporters and bloggers in the U.S., but he declined to talk specifically about Facebook's role in the controversy, the Guardian said.

But, he did say that some of the stories Burson-Marsteller was attempting to plant didn't pan out as agency at one time had hoped.

"A lot of people -- not Google employees -- have looked at these claims and generally found them to be false," Schmidt said in the report.
http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/tech...ike-china.html





Pirate Bay Heads Norwegian Domain Blocking List
enigmax

Norway’s Ministry of Culture has just proposed legislative changes designed to further crack down on illicit file-sharing. In addition to smoothing the way for Internet users to be monitored more easily by rightsholders, amendments have been tabled which would order file-sharing sites to be blocked at the ISP level. Top of the list, The Pirate Bay.

The spread of anti-filesharing measures across the United States and Europe appears to be accelerating at a somewhat dizzying pace. On an almost daily basis during the last few months stories about controversial and sometimes draconian measures to deal with online infringement have hit the headlines.

Say what you like about the big movie and music studios – they certainly know how to coordinate their lobbying to perfection. Timing like this, with legislation being mulled in many major markets simultaneously, sends a powerful message.

Adding to a growing list, Norway is the latest country to propose tough legislative amendments in favor of rightsholders.

“The Ministry of Culture today sends for comment on a proposal for amendments to the Copyright Act. With this we will give licensees the tools they need to follow-up on copyright infringement on the Internet, while protecting privacy,” said Culture Minister Anniken Huitfeldt.

The main proposals come in two parts – making it easier for rightsholders to identify infringers from their IP addresses and, unsurprisingly, the wholesale ISP-level blocking of sites deemed to be infringing copyright on a large scale.

In order to monitor and collect IP address-based evidence on alleged file-sharers, currently Norway requires companies to be licensed by the Datatilsynet, the country’s data protection office. The new amendments propose that this safeguard be relaxed. Monitoring companies will still have to register, but won’t need a license to operate.

The process for rightsholders to extract personally identifying information from ISPs based on IP address evidence will also be streamlined.

“The rules for how licensees should be able to obtain information about who is behind an IP address used for illegal file sharing, is proposed to be simplified and clarified,” said Culture Minister Anniken Huitfeldt.

“Before making a decision about any identification made by the court, the Post and Telecommunications Authority may make a statement about whether ISPs should be released from confidentiality [obligations].”

The second amendment, and certainly the most controversial, is file-sharing site domain blocking as already suggested by the PROTECT IP bill in the United States and Digital Economy Act in the UK.

“While freedom of speech today will be maintained, it will open for the blocking of sites that clearly and in large-scale make available content in violation of copyright,” said Huitfeldt, who later confirmed during a press conference this would include The Pirate Bay.

The Minister said that any blockage orders would be imposed on Internet service providers after initially going through one of the two models suggested in the consultation paper.

The first would empower the country’s Media Authority to authorize blocks, backed up by a complaints appeals board. The second would see the courts given authority to issue blocks under an amended Copyright Act.

Together, IFPI and music rights group TONO spent a year unsuccessfully pursuing the ISP Telenor in an attempt to force it to block subscriber access to The Pirate Bay. Eventually the pair conceded that there was “no legal authority under Norwegian law for such blocking requirements.”

In a comment they described the proposals from the Ministry of Culture as “a good start.”

It is expected that should the proposals be approved by their September 30th deadline, the bill will be adopted in 2012.
http://torrentfreak.com/pirate-bay-h...g-list-110520/





Estonian Court Fines Owner of File Sharing Website

The Pärnu County Court found Raido Käärid, owner of local file sharing website eestitorrent.com, guilty of copyright infringement and fined him 645 euros.

The website illegally distributed a wide range of films and music, providing access to both Estonian and international titles. TV shows running on Estonian channels were also actively recorded and distributed via the site.

"The illegal distribution of [copyright material] over the internet is a crime that directly disrespects all the people who have contributed to our [having] music to listen to and films to watch," said Erik Mandre, CEO of the Organization for Copyright Protection. Madre added that none of the people punished for copyright infringement ever expect to be cought by the police, nevertheless it happens.

In Estonia, the reproduction and distribution of commercial works without the author's permission is a felony punishable by up to three years imprisonment.
http://news.err.ee/sci-tech/f91fbbec...f-e5441ec8e5b0





On Tyson’s Face, It’s Art. On Film, a Legal Issue.
Noam Cohen

Hollywood is accustomed to lawsuits over salaries, movie credits, even half-baked concepts that become movies. And now a studio may be going to court over a tattoo — or at least over the original concept of the tattoo.

In “The Hangover Part II,” the sequel to the very successful what-happened-last-night comedy, the character played by Ed Helms wakes up with a permanent tattoo bracketing his left eye. The Maori-inspired design is instantly recognizable as the one sported by the boxer Mike Tyson, which is part of the joke. (Mr. Tyson makes an appearance in both films, playing himself.)

But S. Victor Whitmill, a tattoo artist formerly of Las Vegas and currently from rural Missouri, doesn’t quite see the humor. Mr. Whitmill designed the tattoo for Mr. Tyson, called it “tribal tattoo,” and claims it as a copyrighted work.

He has gone to Federal District Court in St. Louis to ask a judge to stop Warner Brothers Entertainment from using the tattoo in its posters or in the movie, which would amount to stopping the film from being released, as well as to demand monetary damages for what he calls “reckless copyright infringement” by the studio.

“Mr. Whitmill has never been asked for permission for, and has never consented to, the use, reproduction or creation of a derivative work based on his original tattoo,” argues the lawsuit, which was filed April 28, and will be taken up next week.

The suit isn’t frivolous, however, legal experts say. They contend the case could offer the first rulings on tricky questions about how far the rights of the copyright holder extend in creations that are, after all, on someone else’s body. They are questions likely to crop up more often as it becomes more common for actors or athletes to have tattoos and as tattoo designs become more sophisticated.

Warner Brothers responded on Friday in a brief to Judge Catherine D. Perry, stating that any delay in releasing the film would have huge economic costs. It also argued that there was no legal precedent for Mr. Whitmill’s assertion of copyright, saying he had put forward a “radical claim that he is entitled, under the Copyright Act, to control the use of a tattoo that he created on the face of another human being.”

Copyright and trademark law can be hard to understand intuitively — for example, the idea that you can “own” a photograph or a letter, but not own the right to reproduce its content. The example of a tattoo, where “ownership” means having it become part of your body, actually does little to clear up the matter.

The wrinkle in the “Hangover” lawsuit is that Mr. Whitmill has taken pains to leave Mr. Tyson out of it. “This case is not about Mike Tyson, Mike Tyson’s likeness, or Mike Tyson’s right to use or control his identity,” the complaint says. “This case is about Warner Bros. appropriation of Mr. Whitmill’s art and Warner Bros. unauthorized use of that art, separate and apart from Mr. Tyson.”

“One of the things that the copyright law gives you as an artist is control over your work — and he lost control here,” said Michael A. Kahn, the lawyer who is representing Mr. Whitmill. The complaint includes a photograph of the tattoo being inked and a statement from Mr. Tyson agreeing that “all artwork, sketches and drawings related to my tattoo and any photographs of my tattoo are property” of Mr. Whitmill’s business.

If a tattoo clearly violates copyright — say, exactly reproduces a Keith Haring drawing or an Annie Leibovitz photograph without permission — could a court order it removed?

The case gets more serious, according to Christopher A. Harkins, an expert on copyright and patents who has written the definitive law review article on the subject, when someone tries to profit from the copying — by, for instance, selling photographs of the infringing tattoos.

“I don’t see a court forcing someone to remove it, or wear a burqa, but they may not allow me to profit from that work that I had tattooed on my body,” he said, adding that it would be very unlikely that this action could delay “The Hangover Part II” from being released.

The range of material that individuals and businesses are seeking to get copyright protection for has only been expanding, often at the insistence of movie studios. Mattel has gone to court to assert the copyright of the face of its Barbie doll; fashion companies have been lobbying Congress to pass a law to protect unique, nontrivial new designs. And trademark, which is governed by different laws and is much more contextual, has been used by athletes and coaches to get a measure of control over terms like “three-peat” or “Revis Island.”

In 2005, Rasheed Wallace and Nike were sued by a tattoo artist, Matthew Reed, over a commercial that outlined a tattoo as he discussed why he had it created; the case was settled. David Beckham and his favorite tattooist, Louis Molloy, had a public dispute that year over his plan to highlight them in an advertisement. The feud culminated in an interview with Mr. Molloy in The Daily Mirror that ran under the headline “I Own Beck’s Tattoo .. and I’ll Sue.”

“It is such a nascent area,” Mr. Harkins said, “and courts are always struggling to keep up with technology. I don’t think Rasheed Wallace ever thought about copyright infringement.”

Warner Brothers in its brief also invoked the “fair use” defense for “Hangover Part II,” namely the right to parody what has become a well-known tattoo since it first appeared on Mr. Tyson’s face in February 2003.

“That’s the real question: the copyright act balances the copyright owners’ rights and not stifling the creativity of the owners — it would stifle creativity to not be able to make a parody,” Mr. Harkins said.

Issues like how central the tattoo is to the plot, how much of the film it is in and whether it is shown in a non-parody context were the kind of factors a judge would consider when determining if “fair use” was in play, he said.

With so many factors in play, and the motivator of ever-rising legal fees, Mr. Harkins said, “it will be settled out of court, as most of them are.”

Mr. Whitmill declined to be interviewed, but Mr. Reed, the tattooist who sued Rasheed Wallace and Nike, spoke from his shop in Portland, Ore.

While he would not comment on his case directly, he explained that one could think of the process as a collaboration between the tattooer and the tattooed, “owned by both people, based on the trust that is used to create it.”

“It’s there for everyone to enjoy,” Mr. Reed added, “but if you think you are going to make money from it, you should get the artist’s permission.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/21/b.../21tattoo.html





Christopher Dodd Brings Hollywood Glitz Back to Washington

The new head of the Motion Picture Assn. of America is borrowing the late movie industry lobbyist Jack Valenti's tactics in using star power to help restore Hollywood's lost prestige in Washington.
Jim Puzzanghera

Reporting from Washington—

A bit of the old Jack Valenti pizazz is back at Hollywood's outpost in the nation's capital, thanks to a new silver-haired frontman.

More than six years after the legendary lobbyist stepped down, the Motion Picture Assn. of America is reviving his tried-and-true methods of tapping entertainment industry glitz to help the major movie studios make their case to Washington's power brokers.

The strategy was on display the night before the recent White House Correspondents Assn. dinner. The MPAA's headquarters were bathed in purple-and-green mood lighting like a Hollywood nightclub as the group for the first time hosted its own bash on Washington's most star-studded weekend.

Seth Meyers of "Saturday Night Live" and Academy Award-winning director Tom Hooper of "The King's Speech" worked the crowd as "Top Chef All-Stars" runner-up Mike Isabella cooked up mini beef paninis, pancetta frittatas and other hors d'oeuvres.

Wolf Blitzer, Chris Wallace, Greta Van Susteren and other big-name journalists sipped cocktails along with political elites such as Sen. Patrick J. Leahy (D-Vt.) and former Sen. John Breaux (D-La).

The man putting it all together was the MPAA's new leader, former Sen. Christopher J. Dodd (D-Conn.), who greeted each guest at the door as if they were long-lost cousins.

"He's trying to bring the magic back to the organization," said Richard Bates, senior vice president for government relations at Walt Disney Co.

Dodd, 66, who retired last year after 36 years in Congress, said he found the MPAA in a state of atrophy when he arrived in March and has been trying to reignite the group.

"If everything had been running really smoothly, this thing was flying along at 90 miles an hour … I'm not sure it would have had quite as much appeal," Dodd said about his new job, which pays more than $2 million a year. "I like challenges."

The MPAA once was Washington's most glamorous trade association even though it represented a relatively small industry. In recent years, the trade group's prestige has slipped in the capital's hierarchy.

Buffeted by the recession and troubles in the movie industry, such as declining DVD sales and piracy, the MPAA's budget dropped to $64 million in 2009 from $93 million in 2007, according to the latest available tax filings.

And even as overall lobbying expenses in Washington for all companies have increased in recent years, the MPAA has cut back. Its spending on lobbying peaked at $2.7 million in 2008 but dropped to $1.7 million last year, according to the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics.

Hollywood isn't one of the bigger pieces of the U.S. economy, paling in comparison with the oil, pharmaceutical and financial industries. The oil and natural gas industry, for instance, said it supports 9.2 million U.S. jobs, while Hollywood said it supports 2.4 million jobs.

But Hollywood has allure, and bringing some of that back to the MPAA is a way to help the group better advocate for its members, Dodd said.

"This is not a job in which your sole purpose is to create buzz. Your purpose here is to educate people about the importance of this industry to the economy of the country," Dodd said as he sat in his new office.

"The face of this industry is the thousands of people whose names you'll never know, whose faces you'll never see, whose jobs, whose livelihood, depend upon this industry, and I want people to know that," he said.

Educating Washington and the world about the industry's economic contributions is a top priority, he said.

"They've had historically a pretty good reputation of marketing what they make, their movies. I would tell you candidly I think they need an awful lot of improvement in marketing their business as a business," Dodd said. "I'm going to do my best to see to it that we tell our story."

His office in the MPAA's building two blocks from the White House is decorated with mementos of his long political career. There are framed presidential pens used to sign landmark bills he shepherded, such as last year's healthcare and financial regulatory reform, as well as photos with presidents back to Richard Nixon and world leaders such as Pope John Paul II and Nelson Mandela.

Four years ago, Dodd was seeking the Democratic presidential nomination. But he was in political trouble last year and decided not to seek reelection. Asked at one point what he might do after Congress, Dodd said it wouldn't be lobbying.

But the heads of the six major movie studios — Paramount, Sony, 20th Century Fox, Universal, Disney and Warner Bros. — were having trouble finding a new MPAA head.

Dodd's predecessor, Dan Glickman, had stepped down after spending five years in the unenviable role of trying to replace Valenti, the smooth-talking head of the organization for nearly 40 years. The studio chiefs wanted someone who had some of Valenti's flair.

"What Valenti did very well was to make the MPAA seem bigger than it actually was," said John Feehery, a former MPAA executive who now lobbies for other interests in Washington. "I think Dodd can meet that challenge as well."

Glickman, a former Kansas congressman and Agriculture secretary, wasn't able to. He was well-known and well-liked around Washington but lacked Valenti's stature and strong personality.

The MPAA was further hampered by new congressional ethics rules in 2007 that made it more difficult to lure lawmakers to the MPAA for dinner and private movie screenings.

"There was never any lobbying going on at those but a lot of goodwill being built up, and it made it a lot easier for the MPAA to call and say, 'Did you enjoy the movie?' and go from there," said Leahy, the Senate Judiciary Committee chairman who is a key player on intellectual property issues.

The MPAA continued its screenings under the new ethics rules. To avoid violations, it replaced the sit-down dinners with appetizers for lawmakers and staffers.

But the organization lost some luster, said Leahy, whose attendance at last month's party was his first visit to the MPAA in several years.

"I like Dan Glickman, and everybody brings their own personality, but in this industry you've got to have somebody who really reaches out," Leahy said. "I've traveled around different parts of the world with Chris and he never stops.... He has the energy, but he also has decades of experience here in Washington."

Senate rules prevent Dodd from lobbying his former colleagues for two years. But he said he could still guide the MPAA's efforts in Washington.

His high energy and ready trove of stories recalls Valenti, as does his instant recognition in Washington and ability to turn a phrase. In a recent speech, Dodd coined his own term for illegal viewing of movies online or on pirated DVDs, one of the few issues on which the studios have a united position.

"You can call it what you want: piracy, IP theft, content theft," he told the Media Institute in Washington. "Frankly, I call it looting."

Disney's Bates said the term described the issue perfectly. And he said Dodd was a perfect fit for the MPAA.

"He automatically brings more glitz and stature to the organization," Bates said.
http://www.courant.com/business/la-f...,6992668.story





William Gibson's Cyberpunk Classic 'Neuromancer' May Finally Get to Screens
Carolyn Kellogg

William Gibson's visionary 1984 novel "Neuromancer," which presaged much of the wired world we now take for granted and coined the term "cyberspace," may finally be coming to the screen.

Slashfilm reports that sales rights were secured at the Cannes Film Festival, currently underway in France, and filming will begin in 2012 in Canada, Istanbul, Tokyo and London. Visual-effects work already has begun.

Vincenzo Natali will direct the film. The Detroit native's previous films include the scientifically creepy "Splice" and intensely paranoid "Cube," both of which seem well in line with "Neuromancer."

It's hard to overstate the influence of Gibson's breakthrough book. When it was published, "Neuromancer" scored science fiction's triple crown, winning the Nebula, Hugo and Philip K. Dick awards.

The ideas, language and grim technotopia of "Neuromancer" have been borrowed heavily by other seminal science-fiction creations, notably the "Matrix" movies.

In a 2010 interview with Slashfilm, Natali said:

[T]he very word “matrix” is in Neuromancer. It was borrowed by the Wachowski brothers for their film. I think that’s a good thing, because I don’t even know how someone would have been able to make that film 10 years ago or 15 years ago, because it’s so abstract. I don’t even know how people understood the book when it first came out. I think I read it in the late 1980s, but in 1984, how would people even understand it, because it was just so far ahead of the curve? ...

I think when you read it now, it still feels very relevant, maybe in some ways more relevant, because so much of what it predicted has come to pass. And therefore, my approach to it would be to be very realistic.

Gibson himself doesn't take the pending film treatment of his iconic work too seriously. Thursday morning, as news of the movie deal broke, Gibson joked on Twitter, "Quit fretting about Neuromancer, for Pete's sake! We've got the Rapture looming!"
http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/jack...o-screens.html





File-Sharing Call to Arms: Sci-Fi Writer Needs Pirate Books
enigmax

An American science fiction writer is trying to get his hard-copy out-of-print books online and to that end he’s actually using illicit sources to build his stock of eBooks. However, he thinks that some of his books are so obscure that pirates have overlooked them, and he’s offering a prize to anyone that can provide them. TorrentFreak has found one, anyone up for the rest of the challenge?

American sci-fi Walter Jon Williams is determined to bring enjoyment and availability of his books to the digital domain.

“Like every other midlist writer on the planet, I’m striving to get my out-of-print books and stories online so that (a) you can enjoy them, and (b) I can make a few bucks,” he wrote on his blog this weekend.

“To this end, I embarked upon a Cunning Plan.”

That plan was quite simple. Williams, like just about every other writer, band, TV show and movie maker, discovered that many of his books could be found for free online, some of them on BitTorrent sites. So, rather than do all the hard digitizing work himself, why not take a short cut?

“So I downloaded my own work from thence with the intention of saving the work of scanning my books— I figured I’d let the pirates do the work, and steal from them. While this seemed karmically sound, there proved a couple problems,” he noted.

As is often the case with eBooks, quality was poor, resulting in a lot of time spent copy-editing. However, there was a more serious problem.

“Apparently a few of my books were so obscure that they flew under the radar of even the pirates! You can’t imagine how astounded I was when I discovered this,” said Williams.

Resigned to the fact that three of his books aren’t available in pirate form, Williams asked anyone who owns a hardcopy to do some scans for him.

“So I’m willing to trade. Should any of you volunteer to provide scans of Days of Atonement, Angel Station, and Knight Moves, that lucky individual will get a signed, personalized copy of the WJW book of his or her choice (assuming I actually have a copy, of course). Plus, whatever book you scan will spend digital eternity with your name in it, along with my eternal thanks,” he concludes.

However, a little digging around using various tools led to TorrentFreak finding the last book (Knight Moves) online and of course we’re going to send it off to Mr Williams for his collection. But if the 3rd book is available, what about the others?

There must be some of the best searchers in the world reading this article right now and there’s never been a better time to put those skills to some culture-preserving use. Send the links to us (all 3 books, since a better copy of the 3rd might be available) and we’ll be sure to send them off with your email address to Walter Jon Williams. Happy searching!
http://torrentfreak.com/file-sharing...-books-110516/





How Viral PDFs Of A Naughty Bedtime Book Exploded The Old Publishing Model
David Zax

The party line on piracy is that it's bad for business. But what to make of the case of "Go the Fuck to Sleep," the "children's book for adults" whose viral-pirate PDF launched the book to the number-one spot on Amazon.com a month before its release?

Something remarkable happened today. A children's book hit the No. 1 spot on Amazon.com's best-seller list. And it did so a month before the book is even slated for release.

You may have heard of the book--it's a best-seller after all. Go the Fuck to Sleep by Adam Mansbach, began its life as a joke Facebook post in June. It was a particularly trying instance of bedtime with his 2-year-old daughter, and Mansbach let off some steam in the form of a humorous status update to his friends: "Look out for my forthcoming children’s book, ‘Go the — to Sleep.' "

The response from his friends was so fierce that Mansbach decided to make his joke book a real one. Go the Fuck to Sleep, which he bills as a "children's book for adults," will hit stores on June 14, published by the Brooklyn press Akashic. If it's not even due for a month, though, how did a little 32-page book already snag a film option deal with Fox 2000 and, today, reach the pinnacle of online publishing commerce world?

The answer appears to be piracy.

There are many reasons why Go the Fuck to Sleep deserves to be a best-seller, and probably would have attained that status anyway. It's hilarious. It's honest. Humor books tend to do well in general, as do parenting books, as do short books. Not to mention it's the perfect ironic, light-hearted shower gift. Parental exhaustion is by no means an emotion exclusive to Mansbach. The book "just tapped into this nerve," Ibrahim Ahmad, Akashic senior editor, told The Bay Citizen in its excellent report on the phenomenon.

Go the Fuck to Sleep book

But all those factors don't seem to be sufficient to explain why this book has reached the heights that it has, as soon as it has. What seems to set this book apart, hypothesizes The Bay Citizen, is the pirated PDF copy of the book that has gone absolutely viral.

Piracy, any publisher will tell you, is bad. It's the scourge of the music industry. With the rise of e-reading, booksellers now fear it to a similar degree. Akashic has been fighting the rampant piracy of its best-seller, almost reflexively. As Ahmad told The Bay Citizen: "As the publisher of this book, our responsibilty is to tackle instances of piracy when we become aware of them...That's just doing a service to our authors, ourselves, book sellers, distributors, to everyone involved in the successful making and promotion of a book."

But in this particular case, fighting piracy may not be doing a serivce to the book. Piracy, it seems, is what has driven the book's real-world, money-making, flying-off-the-shelves success. The bootleg copy hasn't replaced the actual artifact. It has only served as a sort of free advertising. Piracy can hurt publishers, but it can also help them. Call it the double-edged cutlass.

"I'm not sure we'd think it's a bad thing," the publicity director of McSweeney's, Juliet Litman, told The Bay Citizen, of this instance of rampant piracy. May other publishers be so fortunate as to have their booty (profitably) plundered in the same manner as Akashic's.

The multi-billion-dollar question, though, is this: When does piracy work to a publisher's benefit, and when does it work to its detriment? If Go the Fuck to Sleep weren't a children's book of sorts, would parents be so eager for hard-copy versions? Or if it didn't have its irresistible illustrations? Books with artwork have a tactile, archival appeal lacking in the latest Grisham potboiler, say.

Neil Gaiman and other prominent authors have gone on the record as essentially supporting the piracy of their own work as a way of building a fanbase. But to what extent did Gaiman's pre-existing fame act as the necessary ignition to the fire of profitable piracy?

This is fertile ground for research. Publishers should scrutinize the mechanics of e-book piracy, replaying success stories like this one over and over again in slow motion, in an effort to see just what combination of variables caused the pirate's cutlass to land directly into a giant sack of doubloons.
http://www.fastcompany.com/1753287/g...-adam-mansbach





Amazon's Kindle E-Books Outselling Paper Books
Nicholas Kolakowski

Amazon (NASDAQ:AMZN) is claiming that Kindle e-books are outselling hardcover and paperback print books on its Website.

“We had high hopes that this would happen eventually, but we never imagined it would happen this quickly—we’ve been selling print books for 15 years and Kindle books for less than four years,” Jeff Bezos, founder and CEO of Amazon, wrote in a May 19 statement. He also claimed that the Kindle is the bestselling e-reader in the world, although his company has never released sales numbers for the device.

Since April 1, some 105 Kindle e-books have sold for every 100 print books, including hardcover and paperbacks for which there is no Kindle edition. Amazon has excluded free Kindle e-books from that breakdown. Kindle e-books are selling at three times their rate during a comparable period in 2010.

That announcement from Amazon comes days after the company’s ad-supported Kindle device, which comes $25 cheaper than the WiFi-only unsponsored version at $139, took first position on the online retailer’s list of bestselling electronics. The Kindle 3G retails for $189.

Although the Kindle continues to dominate the e-reader market, it faces competition on a number of fronts. E-book applications for the iPad and Google Android have threatened to make tablets and smartphones a more attractive option for consumers who want a multiple-use device. Barnes & Noble’s Nook Color presents a color alternative (and broad selection of applications) in contrast to the Kindle’s grayscale.

Before its release, the question confronting the ad-supported Kindle was whether the price was low enough for consumers to tolerate sponsored messages on their e-reader in the same way they do on virtually every other entertainment device. The device’s position on Amazon’s own bestseller list indeed suggests there is a market, at this early stage, for that format.

In the past few weeks, there have been rumors that Amazon is also considering a leap into the Android tablet market, building a device that would tackle the iPad head-on.

“Amazon could create a compelling Android- or Linux-based tablet offering easy access to Amazon’s storefront (including its forthcoming Android app store) and unique Amazon features like one-click purchasing, Amazon Prime service and its recommendation engine,” Forrester analyst Sarah Rotman Epps wrote in a March blog posting. “More consumers considering buying a tablet say that they would consider Amazon (24 percent) than Motorola (18 percent).”

Should Amazon build an Android tablet, it could leverage its existing customer base for e-texts and multimedia. But such a device remains vaporware for the moment.
http://www.eweek.com/c/a/Desktops-an...-Books-792500/





Amazon Removes Some Explicit Yaoi Manga from Kindle Store
Brigid Alverson

Amazon has removed several yaoi manga from its Kindle Store and refused to allow others to be offered for Kindle, although the bookseller continues to sell the same manga in print and to offer more explicit erotic books in both formats. Yaoi manga, also known as boys-love or BL, is a popular niche genre in manga that features love stories between two males and can range from softly romantic to sexually explicit.

The manga publisher Digital Manga Publishing announced on its blog Tuesday that two of its books had been removed from the Kindle Store and two more were rejected, and the website The Yaoi Review also reported that several Yaoi Press manga and novels had been removed. At least one non-yaoi erotic graphic novel has also been removed from the Kindle Store this week. Amazon representatives contacted by PW did not answer e-mails or phone calls requesting more information.

**Update 5/9/11: Animate U.S.A., a Japanese publisher that publishers yaoi manga exclusively to the Kindle, stated in an e-mail that "some titles are already removed by Amazon without any specific reasons. We just know that the titles contain content that is in violation of their content guidelines." While the e-mail did not specify which titles have been removed, several titles that were announced in Animate's press releases are not available in the Kindle Store, including Delivery Cupid, vol. 1 of Mister Mistress, and Pet in Love (a Pet on Duty side story). Vol. 2 of Mister Mistress and the full Pet on Duty manga are still available. We are awaiting confirmation that these titles were removed by Amazon and not by Animate.

The three DMP manga that were removed or barred from the Kindle Store are available digitally on DMP's eManga website and on Barnes & Noble's Nook. Indeed, Lui said that DMP makes almost as much revenue from Nook sales as from Kindle, even though the Nook pays publishers a smaller percentage of the sale price and is not available worldwide. DMP is about to launch a major digital manga initiative, the Digital Manga Guild, which will involve digital publication of over 500 volumes of manga, the first few hundred of which, Lui said, would be yaoi.

Fred Lui, v-p of production at DMP, said that Amazon had not given him any rationale for the rejections and removals.

"I asked them why, and they said take a look at their content policy and directed me to what I had read a couple times before," he said. Lui said that he is not aware of any recent changes in the policy, and that DMP has been putting books rated for ages16+ and 18+ on the Kindle for the past few years with no problem. Digital does not publish any stories involving characters under 18, he added.

The two older manga, Weekend Lovers and King of Debt, had been available on Kindle since 2009, but Lui had recently updated the digital files, which may have caused them to be flagged, he said. Those books are from their 801 imprint, which includes their most explicit books.

Amazon also refused to carry two new books submitted to the store, the novel The Selfish Demon King and the manga anthology The Color of Love. Both are from Digital's June imprint, which features less explicit, more romantic stories.

"I was led to believe that maybe they had a new guy there and he was just overzealous, or what, I can't say, but it kind of seemed that they were kind of looking closer at our titles and trying to see if it complies with their explicit content restrictions," Lui said.

Kindle's publicly posted guidelines simply ban "Pornography and hardcore material which depicts graphic sexual acts" and "offensive material," which is defined as "probably about what you would expect."

Nonetheless, "Erotica" is the second-largest sub-category in Kindle's fiction department, with 26,149 titles available. The Kindle Store also includes a wide selection of photographic erotica, with titles like No Holes Barred and 18 Today! Indeed, Amazon continues to carry yaoi manga from DMP and other publishers in its Kindle Store, so it is unclear why these particular titles were singled out.

"I did try to publish a couple of new books and one didn't pass," Lui said. "I was quite surprised, and I told them, 'You are selling the print edition of the book. How is this any different?' and they just took a stubborn stand to it and said they are going to hold on their decision, and they didn't give any real solid reasoning for it."

Lui said that he had noticed that a number of non-yaoi adult manga from other publishers that had been added in recent months has disappeared in the past few weeks. One graphic novel, Christmas Creampie, which was pointed out as an example of explicit content remaining in the Kindle Store yesterday, is no longer there today.

News of the removals caused a storm of protest on Twitter, with some users reviving the #amazonfail hashtag that was used two years ago when Amazon removed a number of LGBT-themed books from its sales rankings. Those mass deletions turned out to be due to a glitch in the classification algorithm, while the current removals appear to be deliberate and selective. The Yaoi Review is encouraging readers to take their complaints directly to Amazon.
http://publishersweekly.com/pw/by-to...dle-store.html





Thousands March in Istanbul Against Turkish Internet Censorship
Benjamin Harvey

Thousands of Turkish demonstrators poured into central Istanbul today to protest against the government’s Internet censorship.

Haberturk newspaper said 50,000 joined a protest centered on the city’s Taksim Square, while CNN-Turk reported “hundreds of thousands” taking to the streets in demonstrations across the country.

New regulations from Turkey’s Internet Technologies and Communications Authority set to come into effect on Aug. 22 will require Internet service providers to offer a choice of four filtering options: family, child, domestic or standard. Many websites are expected to be blocked as a result of the filtering measures, Zaman newspaper reported.

More than 600,000 people joined a Facebook page named “Internetime Dokunma!” or “Don’t Touch My Internet!” The group’s organizers say Turkish authorities have already blocked 60,000 websites.
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-0...ensorship.html





Leaders Reach Patriot Act Deal

The agreement between John Boehner and Harry Reid still needs to pass both chambers.
Jake Sherman & John Bresnahan

Top lawmakers in the House and Senate reached a deal to extend the Patriot Act for four years, a week before key provisions were set to expire.

The pieces of the law that allow the federal government to compel businesses to release records, issue roving wiretaps, and monitor so-called “lone wolf” terror suspects were set to run out on May 27. The outline of the deal between Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio), Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) still needs to pass both chambers in the next seven days to avoid a lapse in the law.

Reid went to the Senate floor on Thursday afternoon to file cloture on the bill, setting up a vote for Monday night.

“Sens. Reid and McConnell have introduced a clean, four-year extension of the Patriot Act, one of the critical tools the intelligence community has to keep America safe. The Senate will consider this legislation next week,” said Michael Brumas, a McConnell spokesman.

Extending the Bush-era surveillance law has not been a slam dunk for House GOP leaders this year. In fact, Republicans were unable to muster enough votes to fast-track the bill through the House earlier this year because of objections from lawmakers ranging from libertarian-minded conservatives to liberal Democrats. When a 90-day extension passed earlier this year, Republicans needed Democrats to carry it across the finish line.

House Republicans were readying to push through their own, more ambitious, bill this week. They were going to take up Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner’s (R-Wis.) bill, which extended the business records and roving wiretap provisions for six years, and the “lone wolf” element permanently. Several House Republicans were averse to extending anything permanently, including conservative House Republicans like Rep. Mike Pence of Indiana.

If the bill is amended in either body, its changes will need to be adopted by both chambers. The House is only scheduled to be in session through Thursday and the law expires Friday, making time of the essence.

Before their week-long recess this week, House Republicans had started the hard sell on the Patriot Act. They had a closed briefing with Federal Bureau of Investigation Director Robert Mueller, and heard stern warnings from House Majority Whip Kevin McCarthy (R-Cailf.) that they should get their questions answered before voting “no.” GOP aides and lawmakers were also saying that the death of Osama bin Laden should give urgency to extending the law, although the Patriot Act deals with domestic surveillance, not foreign.

Another plus for both parties: the four-year compromise places the vote in 2015 — which is not an election year.

Civil liberties groups reacted with anger to the news of a four-year extension for the controversial law without committee review.

“That is how the Patriot Act first came into being 10 years ago—without meaningful debate,” said the Bill of Rights Defense Committee in a statement issued on Thursday night.

“Today, despite the prior approval of the Senate Judiciary Committee of a bill introduced by Senator Patrick Leahy (D-VT) to impose some (albeit inadequate) reforms, the congressional leadership is dictating the result of a long overdue policy debate that has never happened.”
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0511/55341.html





Social-Networking Sites Face New Privacy Battle
Wyatt Buchanan

California could force Facebook and other social-networking sites to change their privacy protection policies under a first-of-its-kind proposal at the state Capitol that is opposed by much of the Internet industry.

Under the proposal, SB242, social-networking sites would have to allow users to establish their privacy settings - like who could view their profile and what information would be public to everyone on the Internet - when they register to join the site instead of after they join. Sites would also have to set defaults to private so that users would choose which information is public.

Currently, some sites, like Facebook, have default settings that make certain information - such as photos, biographical information and family information - available to everyone on the Internet after a user registers, unless the user changes those privacy settings.

And while Facebook itself has not told the Legislature it is opposed to , the bill's author, Sen. Ellen Corbett, D-San Leandro, said the social-networking giant has worked in "stealth mode" to oppose it.

The legislation would require that privacy controls be explained in "plain language." Willful violations of the law would result in a $10,000 fine for each violation.

"You shouldn't have to sign in and give up your personal information before you get to the part where you say, 'Please don't share my personal information,' " Corbett said.

The bill also would require a social-networking site to remove personally identifying information of a user if requested and by the request of a parent of a user under 18.

But the measure is facing a strong push back from online companies arguing that the bill is unconstitutional and unworkable and that such a measure actually would decrease privacy for people who use social networking. The bill passed through a legislative committee last week and is headed to the Senate floor, where it will face an intense assault from the industry.

Unintended consequences

Tammy Cota, the executive director of the Internet Alliance trade association that includes Google, eHarmony, Match.com, Facebook and other companies, said the law would have myriad unintended consequences.

The bill "would force users to make decisions about privacy and visibility of all information well before they even used the service for the first time, and in such a manner that they are less likely to pay attention and process the information," Cota wrote in a letter to the Senate Judiciary Committee, which approved the measure.

Opponents argue that could lead to users setting privacy settings they don't fully understand and making public information they want to keep private.

However, Facebook itself has changed its settings for new users over the past few years, as in 2005 the privacy policy stated, "no personal information ... will be available to any user of the web site who does not belong to at least one of the groups specified by you in your privacy settings," according to the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a San Francisco organization that has monitored the changes.

The latest privacy policy from April 2010 states, "When you connect with an application or website it will have access to general information about you. The term general information includes you and your friends' names, profile pictures, gender, user IDs, connections, and any content shared using the 'Everyone' privacy setting. ... The default privacy setting for certain types of information you post on Facebook is set to 'Everyone.' "

When a new user signs up for Facebook, the default settings shares with "Everyone" a user's status update, photos and posts, biographical information, favorite quotations and family and relationships that are entered into the site. They are available to everyone on the Internet.

The bill would affect more than just Facebook, as the bill defines a social-networking site as an Internet site where a user can construct a public or partly public profile that connects to other users and that allows for viewing and traversing the user's own list of connections and those of others.

While much of the focus is on the social-networking giant, Cota said the proposal also would have a large effect on dating websites.

But Facebook is facing extra criticism from Corbett, because while the company has not stated it is opposed, a company lobbyist handed talking points opposing the measure to some members of the committee prior to the hearing. Those included calling the legislation a "serious threat" to the company's ability to do business in California.

"It's very strange to have opposition in a stealth position," Corbett said.

Stealth opposition also violates the code of conduct for the Institute of Government Advocates, the association that represents lobbyists and lobbying firms at the state Capitol. The code of conduct states, "A member owes a public officeholder an obligation to inform the officeholder of the member's planned opposition to a proposal by the officeholder prior to the member's active opposition."

Facebook's spokesman Andrew Noyes said, "Any legislative or regulatory proposal must honor users' expectations in the contexts in which they use online services and promote the innovation that fuels the growth of the Internet economy. This legislation is a serious threat both to Facebook's business in California and to meaningful California consumers' choices about use of personal data."

Facebook is currently embroiled in scandal after it was revealed this week that the company had hired a big-time public relations firm to plant negative stories about its archrival Google in the press.

Complicated settings

Privacy settings on sites like Facebook are difficult for the average user to understand and navigate, said Nicole Ozer, technology and civil liberties policy director for the American Civil Liberties Union of Northern California.

She said Corbett's bill "would take the pressure off each individual to understand every setting and what it means to change the setting."

Ozer said people use Facebook and sites like it to engage in social and political activities and are not necessarily posting information because they want to share it with the whole world. She noted that even if information is private to other users, it is not private to Facebook and that it can still be used for marketing and advertising purposes.

But concerns about the impact of the measure, and whether it would drive Internet businesses out of the state, is resulting in opposition among some lawmakers. Sen. Sam Blakeslee, R-San Luis Obispo, said a single mid-level manager who willfully violates the provisions for just 1 million users would expose a company to $10 billion in fines.

Facebook has more than 500 million active users worldwide, though the measure would apply only to those users in California. Corbett said her measure would apply to businesses even outside the state, but Blakeslee questions that.

He also said Sacramento is the wrong place to address online privacy.

"I think it is certainly something that should be addressed at the national level. That's the appropriate place to deal with Internet laws," he said.
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cg...BASC1JERVI.DTL





Netflix Proclaimed ‘King’ of North American Internet Use
Jameson Berkow

The “unquestioned king” of North American Internet content has just been crowned.

Accounting for 29.7% of all information downloaded during peak usage hours by North American broadband-connected households in March, Netflix Inc. received the title in the latest Global Internet Phenomena Report released by Sandvine Corp. on Tuesday.

In its ninth such report, Waterloo, Ont.-based Sandvine found the amount of data consumed by users streaming television shows and movie from Netflix’s online service exceeded even that of peer-to-peer (P2P) file sharing technology BitTorrent.

But that doesn’t mean sanctioned Internet video services such as Netflix or Hulu are wholly replacing P2P services such as BitTorrent, which has become synonymous with piracy.

“Netflix has surpassed file sharing and BitTorrent, but BitTorrent hasn’t really declined,” explained Tom Donnelly, co-founder and executive vice president of network technology maker Sandvine.

“Given that there hasn’t been a decline in volume of file sharing traffic you could easily suppose that these are new people using Netflix. There are clearly a number of people who, for whatever reason, are not going to use file sharing networks to access content and now they have another choice.”

Rather than switching from using BitTorrent to download music and video files to consuming video via streaming services such as Netflix, users are simply spending more time online generally, and a growing proportion of that time is spent watching Netflix, Mr. Donnelly said.

Netflix’s 29.7% share of downstream Internet traffic represents a 44% increase from the last Sandvine report released seven months ago, when Netflix represented closer to 20% of peak download traffic.

Real-time entertainment services, which in addition to Netflix included other streaming video services such as YouTube, accounted for nearly half (49.2%) of all North American Internet traffic during peak periods. That figure is expected to reach as high as 60% by the end of this year.

Netflix’s foray into Canada, the report said, provides a case study for what Internet Service Providers (ISPs) can expect once the service expands beyond the United States and Canada.

Canada became the Los Gatos, Calif.-based company’s first international market last September when it launched a streaming-only service in the country. Since then, more than 800,000 Canadians have signed on for Netflix in Canada, representing about 10% of Canadian households with broadband connections.

That is a sign of things to come worldwide, according to the Sandvine report:

With the rapid success of Netflix in Canada, Internet providers worldwide, regardless of access technology and degree of mobility, must plan for a future in which on-demand video (whether provided by Netflix or another service) is a large proportion, if not the majority of, last-mile traffic.

More people watching more video online is certainly good news for companies such as Netflix and a host of rivals.

However, the trend represents a growing challenge for Canadian ISPs who are spending billions of dollars upgrading their physical networks to handle the increasing bandwidth demands associated with greater online video consumption.

Canadian ISPs such as BCE Inc.’s Bell Canada unit and Rogers Communications Inc. recently fought a highly politicized regulatory battle over proposed usage-based billing policies.

While opponents (Netflix included) criticized UBB for placing arbitrary limits on the amount of data a subscriber could download each month before incurring hefty overage fees — which some critics charged was a way of discouraging the adoption of services like Netflix in favour of the ISPs own Web-based and on-demand video services — while Bell and others have argued UBB is necessary to manage rising issues of network congestion.

In March, Rogers even admitted to accidentally limiting access to the popular online game World of Warcraft in an attempt to deal with congestion-related issues.

“The fact is that the volume of traffic over the Internet grows exponentially,” said Mr. Donnelly.

“It grows a lot, and it grows a lot every single year.”
http://business.financialpost.com/20...ican-internet/





Netflix Isn't Swamping the Internet; ISPs are Overstating their Congestion Problems

Netflix is popular, but almost all its traffic is last mile -- not the backbone ISPs whine about
Kevin Fogarty

A report issued Tuesday showing Netflix makes up a third of total Internet traffic is inaccurate enough – or at least the reports about it are inaccurate enough – to show not very many people in either the press or vendor marketing understand the network they base their business on.

There are two important points here, both relevant to people who do IT for a living, not just those who either dislike data caps or do like Netflix:

First, the report didn't say Netflix eats a third of the whole Internet; that assumption was off base enough to prompt Forbes to run a piece trying to correct it, but not quite succeeding.

Sandvine – an Ontario-based networking vendor – issued a report Tuesday estimating that streaming media from Netflix make up 30 percent of downstream traffic during peak times.

What Sandvine meant was that Netflix traffic spiked heavily during prime time – when most people are home and watching something other than what's on TV – but only across the last mile.

TechCrunch posted some graphics showing what's travelling across the nation's networks during peak times, and in what volumes. Netflix comes out on top, but only with the caveats below.

Netflix uses content-distribution services to make sure its content is located close to customers, so when you click Play the file you see is being downloaded from somewhere nearby, not from Netflix' central database.

The portion of the network Netflix hogs is only the ISP's edge connections – from a distribution hub to the house of Netflix' subscribers.

The heaviest traffic is in spikes during one part of the day, which is irrelevant from a network-infrastructure standpoint. Even if the spike is only an hour, the network segment through which the spike passes still has to have enough capacity to handle it.

For the ISPs that is the good news, though they already know this and simply leave the good news out when complaining they must be allowed to throttle Netflix to avoid having their networks swamped.

Netflix doesn't swamp the ISPs' backbones or even their high-volume network spokes because its content is distributed and cached ahead of time. When it launches it travels only across the edge, vastly reducing the logic behind arguments by AT&T, Comcast and Verizon that they have to keep adding to their core networks to keep up with bandwidth-sucking competition from Netflix.

The second point that's relevant for working geeks is that the level and reasoning behind data caps from AT&T and other ISPs vastly understimates what a "normal" level of Internet use really is.

That affects consumer accounts most directly, but ripples out to business ISP accounts as well, in both data caps and data-consumption or bandwidth rates.

When AT&T announced its data caps – 150GB per month for DSL users and 250GB for broadband – it called the data levels "generous" and said limits would only affect 2 percent of its customers.

It turns out Netflix users take up an average of 40GB per month just from streaming media, according to a different Sandvine report,

Users that stream data through a device other than a PC – an Xbox or other game console, for example – use twice that amount of bandwidth for the same content.

That puts DSL users who stream movies through their Xbox 360s two-thirds of the way to their data cap every month before they download a single app or send a single email.

It also doesn't include downloading YouTube videos or games, even the demos of which can rush anyone toward the data-cap limit without realizing it.

The Nazi zombies map for Call of Duty alone is 1.4GB.

Download the demo for Office 2010 Professional and you're on the hook for another 688MB.

It eats up the bandwidth quickly, but your ISP will be there to make sure you don't go over, or that you pay $10 for every 50GB you go over the limit every month.

That's the cost of allowing the FCC to avoid limiting the price-gouging plans ISPs impose on consumers and small businesses, rather than see through the smoke and realize it's not compensating for Netflix that is taking up most of the carriers' R&D and network-upgrade work.

It's the effort to upgrade the nets to support their own streaming-media services, which not only compete with Netflix, but also come supported by internal business cases that have to show how quickly each new major upgrade will pay for itself through new services or the ability to support more subscribers.

Upgrades justified to regulators by saying Netflix is about to bring down the Internet go into the books under the category Gravy, and slide straight down to Net Profit at the bottom of the page.
http://www.itworld.com/networking/16...stion-problems





Windows 7 Network Awareness: How Windows Knows it Has an Internet Connection
nhinkle

Have you ever been connecting to a new wireless network and seen the following pop-up balloon?

Additional login information may be required. Click to open your browser.

Whenever I connect to a WiFi network which requires in-browser authentication, such as university networks and hotel access points, Windows somehow magically knows. Windows also knows when your internet connection isn’t working, and can differentiate between having local LAN access, no network access at all, or full internet access. But how?

This week’s question of the week is one I myself asked about this very topic. I guessed that there must be some online Microsoft site that Windows is checking to determine the state of the connection, but I wanted proof, not just speculation.

How does Windows know whether it has internet access or if a Wi-Fi connection requires in-browser authentication?

Tobias Plutat and Jeff Atwood both replied with information about the Network Connectivity Status Indicator (NCSI) service, first introduced in Windows Vista.

When called on by Network Awareness, NCSI can add information about the following capabilities for a given network:

• Connectivity to an intranet
• Connectivity to the Internet (possibly including the ability to send a DNS query and obtain the correct resolution of a DNS name)

NCSI is designed to be responsive to network conditions, so it examines the connectivity of a network in a variety of ways. For example, NCSI tests connectivity by trying to connect to http://www.msftncsi.com, a simple Web site that exists only to support the functionality of NCSI.

How does it work?

Windows does indeed check a Microsoft site for connectivity, using the Network Connectivity Status Indicator site. There are a few variations of the connection checking process:

1. NCSI performs a DNS lookup on http://www.msftncsi.com/ncsi.txt, then requests http://www.msftncsi.com/ncsi.txt. This file is a plain-text file and contains only the text Microsoft NCSI.
2. NCSI sends a DNS lookup request for dns.msftncsi.com. This DNS address should resolve to 131.107.255.255. If the address does not match, then it is assumed that the internet connection is not functioning correctly.

The exact sequence of when which test is run is not documented; however, a little bit of digging around with a packet sniffing tool like Wireshark reveals some info. It appears that on any connection, the first thing NCSI does is requests the text file (step 1 above). NCSI expects a 200 OK response header with the proper text returned. If the response is never received, or if there is a redirect, then a DNS request for dns.msftncsi.com is made. If DNS resolves properly but the page is inaccessible, then it is assumed that there is a working internet connection, but an in-browser authentication page is blocking access to the file. This results in the pop-up balloon above. If DNS resolution fails or returns the wrong address, then it is assumed that the internet connection is completely unsuccessful, and the “no internet access” error is shown.

The order of events appears to be slightly different depending on whether the wireless network is saved, has been connected to before even if it is not in the saved connections list, and possibly depending on the encryption type. The DNS and HTTP requests and responses showing up in Wireshark were not always consistent, even connecting to the same network, so it’s not entirely clear what causes different methods of detection under different scenarios.
What about my privacy?

Some people may be concerned about Windows “phoning home” to Microsoft with their PC’s information through this service. According to Microsoft’s documentation, NCSI retains the time of access and IP addresses of requests made to www.msftncsi.com:

IIS logs are stored on the server at www.msftncsi.com. These logs contain the time of each access and the IP address recorded for that access. These IP addresses are not used to identify users, and in many cases, they are the address of a network address translation (NAT) computer or proxy server, not a specific client behind that NAT computer or proxy server.

It is possible to disable NCSI by a registry setting if you don’t want Microsoft to be able to check your internet connection.

1. HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\NlaSvc\ Parameters\Internet
2. Under the Internet key, double-click EnableActiveProbing, and then in Value data, type: 0.The default for this value is 1. Setting the value to 0 prevents NCSI from connecting to a site on the Internet during checks for connectivity.

When I changed this registry setting, Wireshark picked up no more communication to the NCSI site. As a result, there was no indicator that in-browser authentication was required, and the connection indicator would say “internet connection” even if there was in fact none present.

In the same registry key were a series of other parameters. The expected DNS response, the host to query for a DNS address, the expected content of the text file, the name of the text file, and the domain with the text file were all included. The other parameters are not quite as self explanatory. I tried adapting PassivePollPeriod, expecting it to change how frequently NCSI would poll the server. It appeared at first that the decimal value was equal to that many tenths of a minute, so a value of 5 polls every 30 seconds and a value of 10 polls every minute. However, the frequency also seemed to decrease with time. I could not figure out the use of the other two values.

Can I run my own NCSI server?

For those concerned about privacy, is it possible to run your own server to respond to these requests? Let’s find out!

I created ncsi.nathanhinkle.com on my web hosting, and set it up to send /ncsi.txt as a plain text file with the content nhinkle NCSI. I then changed all of the registry values to point to the values for my server, and what do you know, it worked! Looking in Wireshark, requests were being made to my server instead of to Microsoft’s server, and the system was still determining the status of the internet connection correctly. The user agent on the requests was still Microsoft NCSI, indicating that it was indeed the same service making the requests.

So, if you want your computer to be able to check its connectivity to the internet while not sending your every move to Microsoft, this is a way to do it. As an added benefit, this could be used as a tracking mechanism to see where your computer goes, particularly should it get lost or stolen, since any connection attempt will result in your server being requested.

As operating systems become increasingly complex, features like this can make your life much easier, but it’s always good to know what’s happening behind the scenes.
http://blog.superuser.com/2011/05/16...ork-awareness/





How to Protect Your Android on Public Wi-Fi
Seth Rosenblatt

Android phones and tablets running version 2.3.3 and earlier suffer from a calendar and contact information vulnerability on public Wi-Fi networks, according to a new report. However, there are some concrete steps you can to protect yourself.

Here's how it works. The vulnerability is in the ClientLogin Protocol API, which streamlines how the Google app talks to Google's servers. Applications request access by sending an account name and password via secure connection, and the access is valid for up to two weeks. If the authentication is sent over unencrypted HTTP, an attacker could use network sniffing software to steal it over a legitimate public network, or spoof the network entirely using a commonly-named public network, such as "airport" or "library." While this won't work in Android 2.3.4 or above, including Honeycomb 3.0, that only covers 1 percent of in-use devices.

Of course, the safest solution is to avoid using public, unencrypted Wi-Fi networks by switching to mobile 3G and 4G networks whenever possible. That's not always an option, especially for Wi-Fi-only tablet owners or those on tight data plans.

One legitimate if painstaking option is to disable syncing for the affected Google apps when connected via public Wi-Fi. The security risk affects apps that connect to the cloud by using a protocol called authToken, not HTTPS. The apps tested by the researchers who wrote the report revealing the vulnerability included Contacts, Calendar, and Picasa. Gmail is not vulnerable because it uses HTTPS.

However, this a cumbersome fix, as it requires going into each app before you connect and manually disable syncing during the time you're on the particular public Wi-Fi. A much easier solution is to use an app. One of the best apps for secure communication is SSH Tunnel (download), which was designed for Android users stuck behind the Great Firewall of China. SSH Tunnel has some limitations: You must root your phone to use it, and the makers strongly advise people not in China look elsewhere for a secure tunneling app.

A better solution appears to be ConnectBot (download), which even offers a version from its Web site that supports pre-Cupcake versions of Android.

Users of third-party custom ROMs like CyanogenMod ought to check what security enhancements their installed ROM comes with. CyanogenMod, for example, has VPN support built-in and turned off. Cyanogen users can access it from the Settings menu, tap Wireless and Network Settings, then tap VPN Settings.

Given the fragmentation on Android devices, this is a severe security risk that is mitigated only by its limitation to specific apps and public networks. The ideal solution is for Google to release app fixes or Android updates as soon as possible, although the company has given no indication of what steps it plans to take, or when. As always when using public Wi-Fi networks, proceed with caution.
http://download.cnet.com/8301-2007_4-20063792-12.html





An AppleCare Support Rep Talks: Mac Malware is "Getting Worse"

The number of reports of Mac malware being found in the wild are increasing. The view from inside an Apple call center says this threat is for real. I spoke with an AppleCare support rep who says the problem is getting worse. And Apple’s official policy is “We don’t help.” Here’s the transcript.
Ed Bott

Over the weekend, I got an e-mail from an AppleCare support rep, who was responding to my recent reports of Mac malware being found in the wild. At least one prominent voice in the Mac community dismisses these reports as “crying wolf.” The view from inside an Apple call center says it’s for real:

I can tell you for a fact, many, many people are falling for this attack. Our call volume here at AppleCare is 4-5x higher than normal and [the overwhelming majority] of our calls are about this Mac Defender and its aliases. Many frustrated Mac users think their Mac is impervious to viruses and think this is a real warning from Apple. I really wish I could say not many people will fall for this, but in this last week, we have had nothing but Mac Defender and similar calls.

I contacted this person and arranged an interview. I’ve edited our conversation to remove any details that might identify this individual or the call center location, but otherwise this is a verbatim transcript.

Update In the Talkback comments, some people express skepticism about these conclusions. Be sure to read my follow-up: Crying wolf? Apple support forums confirm malware explosion. It includes direct quotes from Apple customers caught up by this attack.

EB: Until this latest round of fake AV software started, what was a typical week like for you?

AC: There’s usually about 600 or so of us spread around 14 centers for CPU support. Before this started happening, we had 7-12 minutes between calls generally. Now we’re lucky to have any time between calls.

We started getting a trickle of calls a couple weeks ago. However, this last week over 50% of our calls have been about it. In two days last week I personally took 60 calls that referred to Mac Defender.

EB: Do you have a support database that you share for cases like this?

AC: What do you mean? As in articles for new issues we’re running into?

EB: Yes, there must have been a point where you noticed that a lot of people were dealing with this Mac Defender thing and that it wasn’t just your calls.

AC: We have a team of people who go though all case notes and find new issues that are popping up a lot and send notices to all of AppleCare. Our notice for Mac Defender is that we’re not supposed to help customers remove malware from their computer.

EB: Wow.

AC: That’s about what i said when I read it. The reason for the rule, they say, is that even though Mac Defender is easy to remove, we can’t set the expectation to customers that we will be able to remove all malware in the future. That’s what antivirus is for.

EB: I would imagine most of the people who are calling are fairly panic-stricken.

AC: Well, I’m sure you’re aware of what Mac Defender pops up on your screen if you don’t buy it. Last call i got before the weekend was a mother screaming at her kids to get out of the room because she didn’t want them seeing the images. So, panicking, yes, I’d say that would be the situation usually. I had a teacher call about Mac Defender last week.

EB: So you are supposed to tell them that the Terms of Service don’t allow you to help them remove it, and they should … what?

AC: Well, in the agreement for AppleCare, it does state we don’t help with malware. However, just because we’re told we’re not to help people get rid of it, most of us do.

EB: Taking a little risk there? i assume your calls are randomly monitored and you could get a warning if someone decides to be a hardass.

AC: Indeed we are monitored, but I can’t personally justify telling a father who’s freaking out about what his 6-year-old daughter just saw that I can’t help him out. Our on-floor managers and QA guys do their best to let it slide, but if they start getting pushed from higher-ups, we could face write-ups and even termination.

EB: Have any of the customers that you helped paid money to the Mac Defender pushers?

AC: My calls? No. However, the rep that works next to me has had a few people who have. It kept “denying their card” and asking them to put another in. One person ended up trying five different cards. I’m going to assume criminals now have ahold of the info.

EB: Ugh. Adding insult to injury.

AC: Its been quite a mess for us lately.

EB: Do you see any signs that it is easing at all, staying the same, accelerating?

AC: It started with one call a day two weeks ago, now it’s every other call. It’s getting worse. And quick.

EB: That doesn’t bode well for the future.

AC: No, not at all. I’ve worked with computers for a while. Removing Mac Defender is easy, but if it ends up like malware for Windows, we’re going to have a lot of unhappy customers, which is bad for the advisors. If our customers aren’t happy, our pay goes down.

EB: When the bad guys find something that works, they tend to push on it and morph it into other variations.

AC: It’s going by a few names—Mac Defender, Apple Security, and a few less used name variants. So far the only difference is the names. As long as you don’t give it your administrative password you’re usually OK.

EB: So customers who get hit by this are installing it and giving their admin password?

AC: Yes.

EB: if they stop before that, nothing bad happens?

AC: Yes, the file will download but for it to install it requres the password. it tries to trick you into giving it by saying its required to remove the infections.

EB: Ah yes, social engineering.

AC: Indeed, looks rather real, if you ignore the fact it pops up in your browser… but for most of us that know computers that’s a giveaway there.

EB: What sort of advice do you leave customers with after you’ve helped them with this issue?

AC: That even though they’re using a Mac, they need antivirus/antimalware. We give them links to Norton. McAfee, and Sophos.

EB: It’s also important to be suspicious online.

AC: Indeed, a lot of it does seem to stem from hearing from the sales person that there’s built in antivirus, and they believe that’s what they’re seeing when it comes up.

EB: Good luck dealing with this.

AC: Thanks, I’m sure it won’t be long before we have a lot more of this, a lot harder to get rid of, too.
http://www.zdnet.com/blog/bott/an-ap...ing-worse/3342





Ant Video Downloader Firefox Addon Tracking My Browsing
Simon Newton

I was recently doing some web development and discovered that a popular 4 star rated Firefox addon with nearly 7 million users (source: here) is behaving in a way which I did not expect. The Addon in question is the ant.com video downloader and player, which allows viewing or downloading of videos from sites like youtube.com and many other popular video sites.

What I discovered has prompted me to write this article – that this addon is in fact, contrary to their published privacy policy, clandestinely collecting data about every site that the addon users visit (not just ant.com or video sites) and specifically tying this back to you via a cookie and what appears to be a unique identifier, aka Ant-UID. This happens in regular browsing, browsing on your corporate VPN, ‘Private browsing’ mode and browsing via proxies or anonymising services such as Tor, completely bypassing many layers of anonymity and security afforded by services such as proxies, Tor and corporate VPNs.

This is beyond normal cookie or LSO tracking – this is where the plugin itself is ‘phoning home’ to ant.com every time I visit any website. Thats right – a HTTP POST is made to rpc.ant.com for every URL that I was visiting on the internet, my private LAN or VPN.

Those methods, In my book, I consider personally tracking and identifying someone.

Additionally, details about your browser are collected, but lets face it thats nothing new in the world – it happens all the time.

Im hoping that perhaps this behaviour is some kind of bug, though I have upgraded the ant firefox addon to the 2.3.0 version just now and the behavior is still there so I consider that a remote possibility. I will outline my findings later in this article, but before I do, Id like to point out the privacy policy which Ant.com set out when you first install the addon concerned. From what I can see, nowhere does it tell me that every site that I visit or send data to (including those when browsing in ‘privacy’ or other anonymous mode) will be logged by ant.com and connected to a cookie or other unique identifier (Ant-UID) – infact it appears to tell me the opposite. Nor does it tell me this information will be transmitted to a server based in the USA. In fact, the Ant privacy policy implies to me that I will not be uniquely tracked and that only data bout the ant.com sites I visit will be collected. Can you tell me, dear reader, am I reading this wrong?

Ant.com Privacy policy

Openess and security

As a responsible member of the community of website owners, Ant.com solutions (Here in after Ant.com) takes the privacy and security of its users with the highest regard. Ant.com provides a service for user which requires Ant.com to collect certain information, public and non-public. This Privacy Policy explains the use of that information and how it pertains to each of Ant.com’s users.

Information Ant collects and its purpose

Ant.com collects non-personally-identifying information when you are visiting our site or using our software applications, this infomation made available typically from web browsers and servers. Some of the infomation type is: the Uniform Resource Locator (URL) of the web page from wich you came, the date and the time for each page you view, settings such as browser languages, etc. This infomation allows us to better understand the behavior of vistors using our sites. We will also use non-personally-identifiable information for such things as KeyWord popularity reports and regionally website migration patterns, etc.

Ant.com may collect statistics about the behavior of visitors of its websites. For example, Ant.com may monitor the most active user accounts on the Ant.com site or use spamming filters to help identifying spam. Ant.com may display this information to public or provide it to others.

Ant.com also collects infomation made public to us that can be considered personally identifyable, such as your internet protocol (IP) address. Ant.com does not use such information to identify its visitors and does not disclose such information.

There are events in which visitors to Ant.com’s websites who choose to interact with Ant.com in ways that require Ant.com to gather identifying information. For those visitors the infomation collected will depend on the nature of the interaction. For someone who signs up for Ant.com’s social bookmarking service, he will be required to submit his email address. Also, users are able to sign up for advertsing throughout Ant.com’s network of sites. From time to time this process may be automated, in which case Ant.com will ask for further personal and financial information required to complete such a transaction.

Ant.com may disclose potentially identifying information only to those of its employees, contractors and affiliated organizations that need this information to work on Ant.com’s behalf to provide a service available at Ant.com’s websites. These employees, contractors and affiliated organizations have agreed not to disclose information to others, nor using the information given in a unauthorized way.

The location of such contractors, employees and affiliated organizations can be anywhere in the world, and will not necessarily include your home country. By using Ant.com’s websites you consent to the transfer of such information to them. Ant.com will not rent or sell potentially identifying information for any purpose other than what is described here in this privacy policy.

Ant.com also provides software applications that are to be used in certain web browsers. These applications are solely for the purpose of user enjoyment. At no time do we collect information other than what is laid out in this privacy policy with our software applications. Also, Ant.com does not hijack nor change your browser of choice in a way that is not expected or laid out in the applications information pages.

Ant.com also guarantees that any registered user can close its user account at any time, and that no personal data will be kept after the closure.

Changes of your information and our privacy policy

While most changes to this privacy Policy will be minor, please note that from time to time we may change our Privacy Policy and such changes will be at the sole discretion of Ant.com. We encourage our users to check our Privacy Policy frequently and also be on the look out for alerts that show up from time to time in your user account with Ant.com.

(Source https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/fir...layer/privacy/

The Grind

Back to the meat of the story. I cant remember why i had the ant player/downloader installed, but while I was doing some development on an AJAX application on a local server I needed to do some network level traces to diagnose problems I was having with my development. I’ll stress that the problems with my AJAX application were completely unrelated to what I found out about the ant.com plugin The problems with my AJAX app were just the trigger to me finding out what was going on with the ant.com plugin.

When I started up the packet capture software (tcpdump) I noticed that for every HTTP GET or HTTP POST I made to my local server (and every internet based server), packets of information were being sent over the internet to an IP address owned by ‘reality check network corp’ in New York (rpc.ant.com). The data appeared to be in JSON format and specifically telling that rpc.ant.com server details of the hostname and full URL of sites I was visiting, as well as containing data about my browser, several persistent ‘cookies’ and a mysterious ‘Ant-UID’ which appears to conform exactly to the UUID specification (for the un-initiated, think of a non changing UUID as like a registration plate/license plate from your car)

The Network Data

These are examples of such packets (including response from ant.com). First, lets look at what ant.com sent themselves when I visited theregister.co.uk

POST / HTTP/1.1
Host: rpc.ant.com
User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.9.2.17) Gecko/20110422 Ubuntu/10.04 (lucid) Firefox/3.6.17
Accept: text/html,application/xhtml+xml,application/xml;q=0.9,*/*;q=0.8
Accept-Language: en-us,en;q=0.5
Accept-Encoding: gzip,deflate
Accept-Charset: ISO-8859-1,utf-8;q=0.7,*;q=0.7
Keep-Alive: 115
Connection: keep-alive
Content-Type: application/json; charset=UTF-8
Content-Length: 327
Cookie: __utma=1.1249745586.1303010447.1305056403.1305056954.3; __utmz=1.1303010447.1.1.utmcsr=(direct)|utmccn=(direct)|utmcmd=(none); __utmb=1.4.10.1305056954
X-Ant-UID: {0D908E35-A6A6-4326-B03A-CD7408A7FC79}
X-Ant-Agent: vdmoz-2.3.0-stable.linux-linux-i686
Pragma: no-cache
Cache-Control: no-cache
{"version":"1.0","id":1,"method":"rank","params":[{"url":"http://www.theregister.co.uk/","ref":"","uid":"{0D908E35-A6A6-4326-B03A-CD7408A7FC79}","uagent":"Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.9.2.17) Gecko/20110422 Ubuntu/10.04 (lucid) Firefox/3.6.17","lang":"en-us, en"}],"agent":"vdmoz-2.3.0-stable.linux-linux-i686"}

Response:

HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Content-Type: application/json
Content-Length: 50
Server: thin 1.2.7 codename No Hup
Connection: close
Date: Tue, 10 May 2011 20:19:09 GMT
{"version":"1.0","id":1,"code":0,"result":"4,086"}

As you can see (or maybe not for those that dont understand HTTP) – there is uniquely traceable information in the header – cookies and that Ant-UID. There is a ‘JSON’ post which details the site visited (along with that unique UUID again) as well as information about the browser I am using. They respond with the date and time that this action happened.

The same information is sent even when I am talking to a local server on my own network:

POST / HTTP/1.1
Host: rpc.ant.com
User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.9.2.17) Gecko/20110422 Ubuntu/10.04 (lucid) Firefox/3.6.17
Accept: text/html,application/xhtml+xml,application/xml;q=0.9,*/*;q=0.8
Accept-Language: en-us,en;q=0.5
Accept-Encoding: gzip,deflate
Accept-Charset: ISO-8859-1,utf-8;q=0.7,*;q=0.7
Keep-Alive: 115
Connection: keep-alive
Content-Type: application/json; charset=UTF-8
Content-Length: 325
Cookie: __utma=1.1249745586.1303010447.1305056403.1305056954.3; __utmz=1.1303010447.1.1.utmcsr=(direct)|utmccn=(direct)|utmcmd=(none); __utmb=1.4.10.1305056954
X-Ant-UID: {0D908E35-A6A6-4326-B03A-CD7408A7FC79}
X-Ant-Agent: vdmoz-2.3.0-stable.linux-linux-i686
Pragma: no-cache
Cache-Control: no-cache
{"version":"1.0","id":1,"method":"rank","params":[{"url":"http://192.168.1.2/iedit/","ref":"","uid":"{0D908E35-A6A6-4326-B03A-CD7408A7FC79}","uagent":"Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.9.2.17) Gecko/20110422 Ubuntu/10.04 (lucid) Firefox/3.6.17","lang":"en-us, en"}],"agent":"vdmoz-2.3.0-stable.linux-linux-i686"}

And the response:

HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Content-Type: application/json
Content-Length: 50
Server: thin 1.2.7 codename No Hup
Connection: close
Date: Tue, 10 May 2011 20:20:25 GMT
{"version":"1.0","id":1,"code":-101,"result":null}

Though I suppose that unique Ant-UID or cookie Id could change, I have not seen it change for the duration of the time I have performance my analysis.

What else is disturbing me
Additionally to the fact that my browser habits are being tracked with unique identifiers – I’m concerned about these unique identifying UID and cookies. They remain the same for me even after I have un-installed the addon, shut down firefox and then re-installed the addon. In other words, they seem to persist for me between installations. I can remove the addon, but if I install it again, those unique identifiers stay the same as they were the last time I had the addon installed. The only way I could get the UID and Cookie ID to change on my installation was to shut down firefox, completely remove my ~/.mozilla directory (aka reverting firefox to a ‘factory default’ setting), start firefox and the installing the addon. I’m not sure if this behavior is a bug in the addon or not, but persisting my unique identifiers after an un-install/re-install seems suspicious to me.

As there is this unique identifier, patterns could be built up about where I go – for example if I use my laptop at work, at a public wifi hotspot, at home or a friends house – that UID and cookie can be tied to all of those IP addresses, building a picture of not only what I am doing online, but where I am doing it from.

What alarms me a bit more is that the data that is transmitted about me and my browsing (even anonymously) is going onto servers in New York, USA. What if I were visiting site I did not want anyone to know about? What if the US government subpoena ‘Reality check network corp’ for all information stored on their servers about my IP address, cooke, or UID? Lets think even more simplistic, what if a party to a divorce case subpoenas for that data to prove a partner was visiting certain sites at certain times? Assuming this data is recorded by ant.com on their server rpc.ant.com in New York (and lets face it, why would they send such data with unique identifiers if it were not recorded?), my entire browsing history is there laid before the subpoenaing court or government. Every site I visited. Every page I looked at.

At the end of the day, I think I see what ant.com are trying to do – they want to give their ranking engine a better understanding of browsing habits. Building a search engine isn’t easy, especially when one or two pretty much corner the market. Finding an edge in that market is definitely going to help and data like this is a gold mine.

That being said, misleading me with a privacy policy that purports this behaviour does not happen in order to to get that data from me and then sending that data on USA based servers is, to quote my English kinsmen, “just not cricket.”

All the best

Simon

Bootnote: I did try to query this with ant.com but the only contact method I could find was via their website form. I filled that in but, to date, have received no reply
http://iwtf.net/2011/05/10/ant-video...g-my-browsing/





German Police Seize Pirate Party Servers, Looking at Anon's Toolkit
Nate Anderson

Acting on a French request for assistance, German police today confiscated German Pirate Party servers—apparently hoping to search the prominent collaboration tool widely used within Anonymous to select targets for attack.

Authorities appear to be concerned about a possible attack on French energy giant EDF. The German Pirate Party said in a statement that it does not believe itself to be a target of the investigation and expressed willingness “within its legal obligations” to aid French police:

The [Pirate Party] Board does not have information that indicates the necessity to take all servers of the Pirate Party off-line. According to the information it has been provided with, only one single public service on a virtual server of the party was affected. The disconnection of all servers is a massive intrusion into the communications infrastructure of the sixth largest party in Germany. Considering the state elections taking place in Bremen in two days, this caused a severe political damage, which the Board condemns decisively.

In relation to the ongoing investigations, it will have to be verified whether the issued search warrant was actually appropriate, especially whether the principle of proportionality was followed. After all, this action has led to a large-scale breakdown of the technical infrastructure of the Pirate Party Germany. It will also have to be verified whether data have been affected that have no relation to the French investigation.

PiratenPad links in Anonymous chat rooms

The “one single public service” is apparently a reference to the collaborative text editing tool EtherPad. The German Pirate Party has long hosted an installation of the open source EtherPad under the name "PiratenPad," and the PiratenPad install was a particular favorite of Anonymous. Anyone who has spent more than a few minutes in Anonymous chat channels has seen various PiratenPad links used to choose targets, write manifestoes, and collect "dox" on enemies.

The EtherPad Foundation, which coordinates development of the underlying technology, said today, "We entirely support PiratenPad in its struggle, we believe that EtherPad deployments and really-real time collaborative document editing should be a right for all people, great and small."

The group believes the main reason for the raid is “because PiratenPad was being used by the group Anonymous to organize an attack," but notes that even this particular EtherPad install was used for legitimate purposes such as "structured debates around the protests in Spain, so this is a major cause for concern from a libertarian perspective."

Anonymous' main communications tools have been hit hard in the last two weeks. The main Internet Relay Chat servers, run by a group called AnonOps, were taken over last week by a dissident member and have only recently been relocated to a different domain name, which continues to have "issues." Now comes the attack on PiratenPad, though an AnonOps leader says that "police.de wasn't my fault."

Rick Falkvinge, who heads the Swedish Pirate Party, came to the defense of his piratical brethren today, writing, "Doing this to a democratic party—Germany’s sixth largest, actually—two days before an election is nothing short of a democratic sabotage. This shows why we must introduce understanding of information policy into the justice system all across Europe. A computer is not just something you can carry away; doing so has consequences. It is not a wrench, and yet the law (and police) treat it like any tool, just like a wrench."

In response to the takeover of its servers, the German Pirate Party has been tweeting up some sturm und drang today, and its "#servergate" hashtag is the second highest "trending" tag in Germany.

Not surprisingly, the main German police website is now down, as is the website of federal investigators (the BKA). As one Anon put it in a tweet, "#Anonymous to german police: 'Let me introduce myself...' #servergate #PoliceMeetsCocks."

But the German Pirate Party called the attacks inappropriate. "We condemn the totally inappropriate actions by investigators,” said Sebastian Mink, chair of the Chairman Pirate Party, “but these actions are not a reason to attack other websites and we distance ourselves from such attacks.”
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/n...ns-toolkit.ars





Journalist Held Over Article On Hacking
Kelsey Munro

A FAIRFAX journalist was arrested by Queensland Police yesterday after an article he wrote about vulnerabilities in Facebook's privacy controls was published on Fairfax websites.

He was later released without charge, but police retained his iPad.

Ben Grubb, this website's deputy technology editor, was at an IT security conference at a resort on the Gold Coast where security expert Christian Heinrich demonstrated how he had gained access to the privacy-protected Facebook photos of the wife of HackLabs director Chris Gatford.
Advertisement: Story continues below

Mr Heinrich told Fairfax Digital he did so to show that people who use social networking sites should not trust their privacy settings.

Grubb reported that it was well known in the IT security community that the two security experts involved do not get along.

Grubb was arrested at the AusCERT conference venue after his article about the session was published. The police told him they were acting on a complaint from a person whose Facebook photo had been hacked from behind a security wall.

Darren Burden, general manager for news at Fairfax Digital, said: ''Ben was a guest of AusCERT at the conference … reporting on something actually said and presented at that conference. It's fundamental for journalists to be able to report public events.''

A spokeswoman for Queensland Police denied Grubb was arrested, saying he may have voluntarily gone with police for questioning. ''There was no arrest,'' she said. ''He was interviewed briefly by police and the iPad will be returned as soon as possible.''
http://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/nati...517-1eroe.html





Hackers Hit Sony Sites Raising More Security Issues
Liana B. Baker and Jim Finkle

Sony Corp has been hacked again, exposing more security issues for the company less than a month after intruders stole personal information from more than 100 million online user accounts.

A hacked page on a Sony website in Thailand directed users to a fake site posing as an Italian credit card company. The site was designed to steal information from customers, Internet security firm F-Secure disclosed on Friday.

It is the latest in a series of security headaches for Sony, which discovered in April hackers had broken into its PlayStation Network and stole data from more than 77 million accounts. On May 2, Sony disclosed hackers had also stolen data from about 25 million user accounts of the Sony Online Entertainment website, a PC-based games service.

The PlayStation attack, considered the biggest in Internet history, prompted the Japanese electronics giant to shut down its PlayStation Network and other services for close to a month.

"It's a Sony security issue," said Jennifer Kutz, a representative for F-Secure, referring to the fraudulent website.

The latest hacking, which the security company said occurred separately from the April attack, was reported just hours after Sony told customers of another breach on one of its units.

So-Net, the Internet service provider unit of Sony, alerted customers on Thursday that an intruder had broken into its system and stolen virtual points worth $1,225 from account holders.

Critics have slammed the company for not protecting its networks securely and then waiting up to a week before telling its customers of the attack and the possible theft of credit card information, prompting lawmakers and state attorneys general to launch investigations.

Security experts said they were not surprised that the electronics company has not yet fixed weaknesses in its massive global network. Earlier this week, Sony shut down one of its websites set up to help millions of users change their passwords after finding a security flaw.

"Sony is going through a pretty rigorous process and finding the holes to fill," said Josh Shaul, chief technology officer for computer security firm Application Security Inc.

"The hackers are going through the same process and they're putting their fingers in the holes faster than Sony can fill them."

"What we've done is stopped the So-Net points exchanges and told customers to change their passwords," So-Net said in a statement in Japanese to consumers.

About 100,000 yen ($1,225) was stolen from accounts that were attacked. The company said there was no evidence other accounts in the online system had been compromised.

"At this point in our investigations, we have not confirmed any data leakage. We have not found any sign of a possibility that a third party has obtained members' names, address, birth dates and phone numbers."

Security experts have told Reuters Sony's networks around the world remain vulnerable to attack.

Sony's string of security problems could be attracting more hackers to attack its networks.

"I think it's now 'I'm a hacker and I'm bored, let's go after Sony,'" Shaul said.

A Sony representative in the United States could not immediately be reached for comment on Friday.

(Additional reporting by Ritsuko Ando in Helsinki; editing by Andre Grenon and Matthew Lewis)
http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/...74J3Z820110520





Facebook 'Break-Ins': Police Say Receiving Photos Like Taking Stolen TVs
Asher Moses

Receiving a photograph obtained from a Facebook account without the user's permission is the same as receiving a stolen TV, Queensland Police have said after the arrest of a Fairfax journalist.

The head of the Queensland police fraud squad, Brian Hay, admitted this morning that police were "still cutting our teeth" in the rapidly evolving online environment and named cyber crime as the biggest law-enforcement challenge.

He said some aspects of yesterday's arrest of journalist Ben Grubb could become a test case, adding: "I expect complaints of this nature to continue."

His comments came in a press conference in which he was asked to clarify details about the arrest of Grubb, the deputy technology editor of Fairfax's news websites.

Officers from the fraud squad arrested Grubb, who was at a Gold Coast online security conference, and said they were considering charging him with receiving "tainted material", specifically, Facebook photos that were taken from the site by a security researcher to demonstrate flaws in Facebook's privacy settings.

The case has raised concerns about internet privacy and how legislation created years ago applies to current technology.

This incident comes after Queensland Police in 2008 charged a 61-year-old man with serious child abuse offences over uploading to the internet a foreign video of a Russian circus family that showed a man swinging a baby by its arms.

The charges carried a maximum 20-year jail term but all charges were dropped after Fairfax revealed the offending clip had been classified by federal government censors as MA15+.

Detective Superintendent Hay used an analogy to describe why Grubb was targeted.

"Someone breaks into your house and they steal a TV and they give that TV to you and you know that TV is stolen," he said.

"The reality is the online environment is now an extension of our real community and if we go into that environment we have responsibilities to behave in a certain way."

He said: "I think the cyber environment represents the greatest challenge to law enforcement in the history of policing."

He also confirmed that the police media unit misrepresented the situation on its official Twitter feed last night. After Grubb had tweeted about his arrest, the media unit tweeted that he had not been officially arrested, but it was forced to retract that statement this morning.

"Our bad @bengrubb was arrested for questioning briefly Our tweet last night was based on information provided at the time Apologies," it said this morning.

Detective Superintendent Hay described it as a breakdown in communication but he said there was "no charge pending" against Grubb. Grubb was released after just over an hour of questioning.

Detective Superintendent Hay refused to discuss the specifics of the Grubb case other than to say police were acting on a complaint about "an alleged hacking incident that saw private material being obtained unlawfully".

However, Detective Superintendent Hay could not point to any previous examples of criminal charges being considered over Facebook photos.

He said "some aspects" of this matter "most certainly could be a test case" and said complaints about Facebook privacy being eroded were on the increase.

He acknowledged that there would be jurisdictional issues as Facebook's servers are located outside Australia.

In this case, the security researcher who originally obtained the Facebook photos, Christian Heinrich, has not been charged. He was on a flight back to Sydney before Grubb was arrested.

Facebook was asked early yesterday to respond to the privacy failings uncovered by the security researcher but has failed to provide any comment.

Detective Superintendent Hay said he had "no idea" about the last time Queensland Police arrested a journalist in connection with a news story. However, he said "no one is immune" from the law.

"It doesn't happen every week. The reality is journalists and the media are our greatest ally in terms of educating the public and raising awareness of threats that exist," he said.
http://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/tech...518-1esad.html





EFF Applauds New Electronic Privacy Bill That Tells the Government: Come Back With a Warrant!
Kevin Bankston

Today, Senator Patrick Leahy introduced much-needed legislation to update the Electronic Communication Privacy Act of 1986, a critically important but woefully outdated federal privacy law in desperate need of a 21st century upgrade. This ECPA Amendments Act of 2011 (S. 1011) would implement several of the reform principles advocated by EFF as part of the Digital Due Process (DDP) coalition, and is a welcome first step in the process of providing stronger and clearer privacy protections for our Internet communications and location data. Here is the bill text, along with a summary of the bill.

The upshot? If the government wants to track your cell phone or seize your email or read your private IMs or social network messages, the bill would require that it first go to court and get a search warrant based on probable cause. This is consistent with DDP's principles, builds on EFF's hard-won court victories on how the Fourth Amendment applies to your email and your cell phone location data, and would represent a great step forward for online and mobile privacy protections.

The bill isn't absolutely free of problems: although it clearly would require a warrant for ongoing tracking of your cell phone, it would also and unfortunately preserve the current statutory rule allowing the government to get historical records of your location without probable cause. It also expands the government's authority to use National Security Letters to obtain rich transactional data about who you communicate with online and when, without probable cause or court oversight. You can count on EFF to press for these problems to be fixed, and for all of the DDP principles to be addressed, as the bill proceeds through Congress.

However, as the start of the process of updating ECPA for the always-on, location-enabled technology of the 21st century, Senator Leahy's bill represents an incredibly important step in the right direction, and we at EFF look forward to working with Senator Leahy and others in Congress as they work to create new laws to better protect your online and mobile privacy. In the meantime, stay tuned for more commentary and analysis from EFF as the ECPA reform process moves forward.
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2011/0...acy-bill-tells





State Lawmakers Weigh Anti-Piracy Bill to Allow Warrantless Searches of CD and DVD Makers

The Recording Industry Assn. of America is pushing the legislation, which wants to give law enforcement officials the power to enter manufacturing plants without notice or court orders. But U.S. constitutional law scholars say the proposal may violate the 4th Amendment.
Marc Lifsher

Frustrated for years by rampant piracy, the recording industry is pushing California's lawmakers to approve legislation that would allow warrantless searches of companies that press copies of compact discs and DVDs.

The Recording Industry Assn. of America, in effect, wants to give law enforcement officials the power to enter manufacturing plants without notice or court orders to check that discs are legitimate and carry legally required identification marks.

The proposal by state Sen. Alex Padilla (D-Pacoima) is raising questions among U.S. constitutional law scholars as it quietly moves through the Legislature.

"I can understand why this makes people nervous," said Laurie Levenson, a law professor at Loyola Law School of Los Angeles. "We have the 4th Amendment that generally requires probable cause [for a search]. This is a huge exception."

But the RIAA, which went on a well-publicized campaign eight years ago to sue individuals who shared music illegally online, argued that piracy has devastated the industry and nothing else has worked to stem the illegal activity.

Net sales of CDs fell 82% in the last decade, while the number of copies shipped dropped 76%, according to the RIAA. Sales and rentals of movie discs last year declined 19% from a peak of $20.2 billion in 2006, according to the Digital Entertainment Group, an industry-funded advocacy group.

To be sure, other factors have caused sales to fall. In recent years, for instance, music downloads and video streaming have taken the biggest bite out of disc sales. But piracy continues to cause financial losses.

"Last year in California, we seized about 820,000 pirated music discs," said Marcus Cohen, the RIAA's director of anti-piracy investigations for the West Coast. "Nine out of 10 of them come from replicator plants … and the replication capital of the country is California."

He estimated that about 70 sophisticated replicator plants in the state — more than a third of them in the Los Angeles area — use state-of-the-art optical reading equipment to produce up to 85% of the counterfeit CDs nationwide.

The plants typically have contracts to copy discs with educational, religious and promotional content, as well as CDs and DVDs for the industry, but many also make counterfeit music discs on the side, Cohen said.

Illegal, high-quality copies account for as much as three-quarters of Latino music CDs sold, according to a recent analysis by the state Senate Public Safety Committee, citing RIAA data. And in 2005 alone, the industry lost nearly $3.6 billion to music and movie disc piracy, according to a study by the Los Angeles Economic Development Corp.

"Fraudulent CDs and DVDs undermine our economy and California's role as a global leader in music and film," Padilla said. "They steal revenue from artists, retailers and our entertainment sector.

The legislation, SB 550, would give police the power to make sure that replicators comply with existing laws and would hit scofflaws with steep fines of up to $250,000 for a repeat offense.

To date, the measure has sailed through two state Senate committees, one unanimously and one by a 5-2 vote. Sen. Ron Calderon (D-Montebello) said he voted no because of "constitutional concerns." The bill goes to a final committee hearing Monday, then to the Senate floor. If it passes, it goes to the Assembly.

Key support comes from the industry, business groups and the city of Los Angeles.

The American Civil Liberties Union questioned the constitutionality of the bill but so far has not opposed the measure because it said the bill appeared to be narrowly drawn.

The RIAA argued that courts had carved out 4th Amendment exceptions already. So far, it said, warrantless searches have been allowed at such businesses as automobile junkyards and repair shops, mines, gun and liquor stores, nursing homes, massage parlors, pawn shops and wholesale fish dealers.

The common trait, the trade group contended, was that the businesses were in "closely regulated" industries in which "the pervasiveness and regularity of the government's regulation reduces the owner's expectation of privacy in his business records."

CD and DVD manufacturing plants by their nature qualify as closely regulated and should be subject to limited, warrantless searches, Cohen said.

"We're literally talking about walking into a plant, walking up to the line and ensuring that, indeed, the discs are in compliance," he said. "I don't think the scope of the search is something a regulator needs to be worried about."

But the focus in allowing warrantless searches of businesses generally is to protect the health and safety of workers, consumers or the public, Stanford Law School professor Robert Weisberg said.

"It strikes me as very unusual, and it may be unconstitutional … when the harm is an economic problem and faced by a single industry," he said.

Courts are wary of giving such unbridled power to law enforcement, Loyola's Levenson said.

"The recording industry really wants this and may be able to persuade legislators to have some sort of inspection scheme," she said. "But the Legislature has to be careful that it puts together one that won't be subject to constitutional challenge."

A key legal element missing in the Padilla legislation is a standard for suspecting that counterfeiting is occurring, said Robert Fellmeth, a former prosecutor who now is executive director of the Center for Public Interest Law at the University of San Diego.

"If I were in the Legislature, I would say I want some kind of reasonable suspicion," Fellmeth said. "I would not want simply to leave an open door for the police."

Some executives at companies that legally replicate CDs and DVDs also don't like the idea of police suddenly swooping into their businesses even though they comply with state law by stamping each disc with a special identification marker that allows the tracking of copyright violations.

California already has enough laws to crack down on CD and DVD pirates without resorting to "unlawful search and seizure," said Dave Michelsen, general manager of CD Video Manufacturing Inc. in Santa Ana.

In recent years, the Legislature and three governors have approved half a dozen laws increasing criminal and civil penalties for counterfeiting and making it easier to prosecute piracy cases.

"They are welcome to come to our facility any time, 24 hours a day, if they ever thought we were doing anything illegal," Michelsen said. "We're pretty open with [the RIAA]. But I don't want to have a law that says our premises could be invaded any time without a warrant."
http://www.latimes.com/news/la-fi-pi...259,full.story





Lionhead: Pre-Owned Worse than PC Piracy
Robert Purchese

Fable III developer Lionhead has told Eurogamer that second-hand (pre-owned) sales on Xbox 360 are today a bigger problem than piracy on PC.

Fortunately, Lionhead has already managed to cover development costs with first-hand Xbox 360 sales, which are "in their millions".

Nevertheless, piracy will still affect Fable III on PC, and there's "not much you can do about it".

"Piracy these days on PC is probably less problematic than second-hand sales on the Xbox," declared lead Fable III combat designer Mike West. "I've been working on PC games for many years and piracy is always a problem. There are a lot of honest people out there as well, and if they like your game they'll buy it.

"The pirates, whatever you do on whatever system, they will crack it. It might take no time... I think the longest it's taken to happen is two days. Someone will crack it somewhere and there's not much you can do about it.

"It's just a depressing situation we're in that people don't think it's worth spending money on computer games," said West. "What they're doing is making sure there are fewer games coming out in the future and more people out of work, which is a terrible thing.

"Unless you sit down and meet a pirate face to face and have a conversation about what it does, I don't think anything will stop them."

West said that any sales Lionhead make of Fable III on PC this Friday and beyond will be "a bonus".

"For us it's probably a no-lose even with piracy as it is," shrugged West. "But, as I say, second-hand sales cost us more in the long-run than piracy these days."

Most of today's key video game outlets - Game, HMV, Amazon - and even some supermarkets (Tesco) buy and then resell used games from customers. Game publishers have developed a number of initiatives to counter-attack this, the most popular being EA's Online Pass, which bundles a free code with new games that can be redeemed to enable multiplayer or receive downloadable content. Whoever buys the game second hand won't get a free code, which means they'll have to buy a replica online for around $10.

Why do game publishers and developers not like second-hand game sales? Because they don't get any money for the transaction - the shop reaps all the rewards.

On PC, Fable III gains higher resolutions, a harder difficulty level, 3D support and a mode-based control system. The latter alters the mouse and keyboard inputs depending on whether you're using ranged attacks, magic or melee. Heroes can even strafe while aiming their gun, rifle or crossbow. West offers a much fuller description of the Fable III PC additions, as well as a postmortem of Fable III on Xbox 360, in his Fable III PC interview with Eurogamer published this morning.

Fable III scored 8/10 on Eurogamer on Xbox 360. "Many more RPGs will follow between now and whatever Lionhead does next with the series, but few if any will possess half as much heart, and most importantly, whatever else they have to offer, none will have Albion," concluded Eurogamer reviewer Tom Bramwell.
http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/20...than-pc-piracy





How To Download MP3′s & Control Grooveshark From Firefox
Angela Alcorn

For those of us with access to Grooveshark, life is pretty good. We can listen to quite a bit of amazing music for free, simply by picking a playlist and kicking back to enjoy the tunes. Sometimes, you could be tempted to think things on the online music scene couldn’t get any better. But then someone comes along and creates a little tool which completely makes your day just by adding a little bit more awesome to the mix.

Today we’ve got two of these nifty tools to show you. One is an easy way to download the MP3 files directly from Grooveshark as you use it, while the other is a neat way to control Grooveshark playlists from within Firefox. With these two tools up your sleeve, we’re sure you’ll be pretty pleased.

Groove Shredder Add-On For MP3 Downloads

Groove Shredder is a new MP3 downloader for Grooveshark. It’s a Firefox extension which makes MP3 downloading simple, by opening a dedicated toolbar button which you can toggle on and off, then downloading MP3′s to your computer when activated.

When using Grooveshark, all you need to do is double-click to activate Groove Shredder. Search for a tune you like and double-click the result. Grooveshark will instantly ask you where you’d like to save it and what name to give the MP3 file. When the download finishes the song will play normally.

Groove Shredder will also activate when you’re playing playlists, so you can easily download the tracks as they come up. Obviously, if you just want to listen to the tunes, you should disable Groove Shredder while you relax. Just click on the Groove Shredder toolbar button to toggle the downloading ability on and off.

GrooveShark Remote Control — Firefox Control for Grooveshark

GrooveShark Remote Control is a new playlist manager for Firefox users running Grooveshark. This allows you to play, pause and shuffle tracks from Firefox instead of switching tabs to stay in control. It also features track information in your taskbar (now known as the add-on bar in Firefox 4), allowing you to know about what you’re listening to and control all the important stuff without leaving your current tab.

GrooveShark Remote Control will pop up a Growl window when the track changes in order to let you know the new track details. The remote control also disappears when it’s not in use, which is really good if you’re low on space in your taskbar.
http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/downloa...shark-firefox/
















Until next week,

- js.



















Current Week In Review





Recent WiRs -

May 14th, May 7th, April 30th, April 23rd

Jack Spratts' Week In Review is published every Friday. Submit letters, articles, press releases, comments, questions etc. in plain text English to jackspratts (at) lycos (dot) com. Submission deadlines are Thursdays @ 1400 UTC. Please include contact info. The right to publish all remarks is reserved.


"The First Amendment rests on the assumption that the widest possible dissemination of information from diverse and antagonistic sources is essential to the welfare of the public." - Hugo Black