Peer-To-Peer News - The Week In Review - June 28th, '08

[JackSpratts]

Since 2002


































"Americans can’t believe this, they think you’re making it up. It really was true. In today’s terms it would be like hearing that Pizza Hut had developed a new generation of microprocessor, or McDonald’s had invented the Internet." – Paul Ceruzzi


"I don’t want to paint the same painting again. I don’t want to make the same sculpture again. Why shouldn’t a big movie studio be able to make those small independent kinds of pictures? Why not change it up?" – Andrew Stanton


"Never in my most bearish dreams six months ago did I think we’d be talking about negative 15 percent numbers against weak comps. I think the probability is very high that there will be a number of examples of individual newspapers and newspaper companies that fall into a loss position. And I think it’s inevitable that there will be closures in this industry, and maybe bankruptcies." – Peter S. Appert


"Music should be shared." – Joss Stone


































June 28th, 2008




Dutch Court Rules Against Law That Allowed File Downloading

Ruling made in STOBI versus SONT case
Tom Sanders

A court in the Netherlands has ruled against an interpretation of local copyright law that allowed for downloading of copyrighted materials.

"An explanation by the minister and government, which concludes that a private copy from an illegal source should be considered to be legal, is violating [the law]," a court in the city of The Hague ruled on Wednesday.

The Netherlands currently have a unique legal situation where downloading of copyrighted materials is allowed and only uploading is forbidden. The judge now ruled that when the original source is illegal, any copies too should be considered illegal.

The Dutch justice minister in 2006 created the exception to allow for the pragmatic enforcement of copyright laws. A law similar to the U.S. Home recording act allows consumers to make copies of CDs and other media that they had legally purchased. Since it is impossible to verify if a user downloading a file was entitled to do so under the Home Recording Act, all downloading was sanctioned.

Legal experts cautioned that the consequences of the ruling have yet to be determined. In addition to a ban on downloading copyrighted materials, parties could also decide to increase copy levies on rewritable CDs and DVDs or expand such levies to other media such as hard drives and hard disk recorders.

The NVPI, a trade group representing producers and importers of audio and video materials, said it was pleased with the ruling. The organisation has always maintained that the exemption violated European rules. "I don't know many rulings where a judge is directly overruling the minister," NVPI spokesperson Wouter Rutten told Webwereld, a Dutch IDG affiliate.

The ruling is was made in a case between STOBI and SONT. STOBI represents manufacturers of rewritable media such as DVDs and CDs. SONT collects copy levies that are waged on such media to compensate artists for illegal copying. Those levies are collected by STOBI's members. The suit demanding that the levies be lowered. The judge sided with some of their arguments, prompting STOBI to predict a lowering in copy levies.
http://www.pcworld.idg.com.au/index.php/id;1262747976





Judge Orders Legal Fees in RIAA v Andersen
David Kravets

A federal judge is awarding Tanya Andersen, who defeated the Recording Industry Association of America's file sharing lawsuit, $108,000 in legal fees to compensate for defending herself against the RIAA.

The award, made public Wedesday by U.S. District Judge James A. Redden of Oregon, marks the second time that a target of the RIAA who beat a lawsuit was awarded attorney's fees. In August, a federal judge ordered the RIAA to pay $68,685 in litigation costs to two Oklahoma women whose case was dismissed.

Whether RIAA defendants who successfully defend such suits are automatically entitled to legal fees is on appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court. The dispute is whether judges must award fees to a prevailing party under the Copyright Act.

Judge Redden ruled that RIAA's arguments against legal fees were "misplaced."

"An award of attorney's fees to the prevailing party are 'the rule rather than the exception' under the Copyright Act, and 'should be awarded routinely,'" Redden wrote.

The RIAA dropped the case against Andersen last year after concluding her hard drive didn't contain purloined music tracks. The RIAA initially claimed a Kazaa shared directory that linked to her internet-protocol address was unlawfully distributing thousands of songs.

In response to the lawsuit against her, Andersen has countersued the RIAA in a case seeking class-action status to represent what her attorneys say is thousands of persons wrongly sued by the RIAA. That case has been dismissed three times, and its fourth try is pending.

Andersen attorney Lory Lybeck requested $300,000 and the RIAA suggested $30,000 was more appropriate. The award is upwards of $190 a hour.

The RIAA has sued more than 20,000 people for copyright infringement.
http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/200...orders-le.html





EFF Attacks Foundation of Entire RIAA Lawsuit Campaign
Nate Anderson

The Electronic Frontier Foundation weighed in this week on the Jammie Thomas file-swapping case, where the judge has asked for public comment on whether just making a file available for download on a P2P network should count as copyright infringement. In its filing, the EFF goes for the jugular, seeking to show that the RIAA's entire approach to file-swapping cases is flawed.

Not only does the Copyright Act not grant a "making available" right, the EFF said, but trade groups also shouldn't be allowed to claim that an actual distribution took place based solely on downloads from their own investigators. Together, this two-part theory would effectively eviscerate the RIAA's current legal campaign by making it nearly impossible for copyright holders to show that infringing distributions to the public have taken place over P2P networks.

"Making available"=="distribution"?

To tackle the first part of the equation, the so-called "making available" right, the brief makes an argument based largely on "the plain language of the Copyright Act and applicable precedents" (this was the same approach taken earlier in the week by a group of copyright scholars).

It claims that the right "to distribute copies or phonorecords of the copyrighted work to the public" granted in the Copyright Act means that an actual distribution must be proven. This is a more demanding standard of evidence than simply showing a judge that copyrighted files exist in a user's shared file folder on a P2P network.

One of the key parts of this claim is that Congress showed in other laws that it could be quite clear about granting a "making available" right when it wished to do so. The fact that the Copyright Act doesn't include such language should be taken as an obvious sign that just attempting to distribute a work cannot be considered copyright infringement, said the EFF.

The EFF points to several high-profile court cases in support of its argument, including Atlantic v. Howell and London-Sire v. Doe, both of which Ars has covered in painful detail if you're curious about the backstory. Even in the recent Elektra v. Barker, which did support the idea of a "making available" right for copyright holders, the EFF notes that the judge's support was "weak."

"While the Elektra court suggested that an offer to distribute might violate the distribution right, the court hesitated to 'equat[e] this avenue of liability with the contourless "making available" right proposed by [plaintiff record companies]'," noted the EFF.

In other words, if you want to sue, you need to show that the plaintiff actually transferred the files in question.

MediaSentry=="the public"?

So RIAA investigators just have to download the file instead of peeking into a shared folder, right? Sure, it's a bit more resource intensive, but it's not big deal.

Not quite, says the EFF in its brief; downloads by MediaSentry and other investigators don't count, either.

"It is axiomatic that a copyright owner cannot infringe her own copyright," says the brief in its concluding section. "By the same token, an authorized agent acting on behalf of the copyright owner also cannot infringe any rights held by that owner. Accordingly, where the only evidence of infringing distribution consists of distributions to authorized agents of the copyright owner, that evidence cannot, by itself, establish that other, unauthorized distributions have taken place."

Clearly, the EFF knows that this argument strikes at the very heart of the current approach to suing file-sharers. "Plaintiffs may complain that they cannot overcome this evidentiary hurdle," says the brief, but it does point out that the RIAA could pursue a different strategy of suing based on the reproduction right rather than the distribution right.

Using this method, the RIAA would need to sue someone, take a look at the music on their computer, then try to convince a judge that at least some of this was reproduced without authorization or a fair use defense. The EFF suggests "examining and comparing defendants' computers and CD collections to determine which songs a defendant legally owned and, if need be, contending with the fair use claims that may arise with respect to legally owned material."

Such a method would be quite different from the one currently pursued by the music industry, it would pose plenty of problems of its own, and it would take more work than the current method. One imagines that these difficulties don't especially bother the EFF.

We've been talking all along as though the EFF was the only group involved in the brief, but three other organizations actually signed on to the filing: Public Knowledge, the US Internet Industry Association, and the Computer & Communications Industry Association (CCIA).

The CCIA, in particular, is an interesting signatory because its membership includes AMD, Microsoft, Google, Yahoo, and other heavy hitters in the tech world. Many of these groups deal with copyrighted material generated by others (nearly everything Google does, for instance, involves other people's copyrights), and none of them are keen on rightsholders gaining even more leverage for lawsuits. Thus, the brief points out that the "making available" theory has already been used to sue both Google and XM Radio.

"If this outcome or allowed to stand, it would set a dangerous precedent for copyright law," said Ed Black, CCIA's boss, in a Friday statement. "Before you hold someone responsible for an offense, in this case distributing protected songs, it's probably a good idea to prove they actually committed the offense."
International law

The entire argument advanced here is controversial, though; other groups, like the Progress and Freedom Foundation, also filed briefs this week arguing that US copyright law does grant a "making available" right that is "expressly required by nine binding international agreements—two treaties and seven bilateral or multilateral Free Trade Agreements."

The brief is penned by the PFF's Thomas Sydnor, who last showed up on Ars after taking on Lawrence Lessig with what our own Julian Sanchez called a "hyperbolic and stunningly dishonest screed, remarkable less for any contribution it makes to the debate over intellectual property and more for the fact that a well-funded Washington think tank saw fit to publish it."

This time around, Sydnor's argument steers clear of the bizarre commie-baiting evinced in his last work, tending instead toward the wonky. He argues that Congress, two presidents, the Register of Copyrights, and the head of the US Patent and Trademark Office all signed off on various treaties over the years that offer a "making available" right, and all agreed that US copyright law already granted such a right.

The "Charming Betsy" principle is trotted out to argue that judges should not interpret US law in such a way as to undermine international obligations.

However the judge rules on these issues, it's clear that Minnesota will once more become a copyright hotspot. Depending on the ruling, Jammie Thomas could even get a whole new trial, and the media circus could be back in town for a second engagement. The last time around, the case generated national headlines and thong underwear; who knows what wonders a new trial might hold?
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post...-campaign.html





MPAA Says No Proof Needed in P2P Copyright Infringement Lawsuits
David Kravets

The Motion Picture Association of America said Friday intellectual-property holders should have the right to collect damages, perhaps as much as $150,000 per copyright violation, without having to prove infringement.

"Mandating such proof could thus have the pernicious effect of depriving copyright owners of a practical remedy against massive copyright infringement in many instances," MPAA attorney Marie L. van Uitert wrote Friday to the federal judge overseeing the Jammie Thomas trial.

"It is often very difficult, and in some cases, impossible, to provide such direct proof when confronting modern forms of copyright infringement, whether over P2P networks or otherwise; understandably, copyright infringers typically do not keep records of infringement," van Uitert wrote on behalf of the movie studios, a position shared with the Recording Industry Association of America, which sued Thomas, the single mother of two.

A Duluth, Minnesota, jury in October dinged Thomas $222,000 for "making available" 24 songs on the Kazaa network in the nation's first and only RIAA case to go to trial. United States District Court Judge Michael Davis instructed the 12 panelists that they need only find Thomas had an open share folder, not that anyone from the public actually copied her files.

(It is technologically infeasible to determine whether the public is copying an open share folder, although the RIAA makes its own downloads from defendants' share folders, produces screen shots and, among other things, captures an IP address. An Arizona judge ruled last month in a different case that those downloads count against a defendant, a one-of-a-kind decision being appealed on grounds that the RIAA was authorized to download its own music.)

Judge Davis suggested last month that he might have erred in giving that "making available" jury instruction, and invited briefing from the community at large. A hearing is set for August, and the judge is mulling whether to order a mistrial.

The deadline to submit briefs to the judge was Friday. Among the briefs, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, Public Knowledge, the United States Internet Industry Association and the Computer and Communications Industry Association all jointly filed a brief, saying the law did not allow damages for "attempted" copyright infringement.

"Given the serious consequences that flow from copyright’s strict liability regime, the court should resist plaintiffs imprecations to expand that regime absent an unequivocal expression of Congressional intent," the groups wrote, noting that the language in the Copyright Act demands actual distribution to the public of protected works.

It was a similar brief in tone to the one that a group of 10 intellectual property scholars lodged earlier in the week.

But the MPAA, long an ally to the RIAA, which has sued more than 20,000 individuals for file sharing of copyrighted music, told Judge Davis that peer-to-peer users automatically should be liable for infringement.

"The only purpose for placing copyrighted works in the shared folder is, of course, to 'share,' by making those works available to countless other P2P networks," the MPAA wrote.

Other groups meeting Davis' deadline include the Intellectual Property Institute at William Mitchell College of Law and the Progress & Freedom Foundation.
http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/200...ays-no-pr.html





Jury Finds EliteTorrents Administrator Guity
Thomas Mennecke

EliteTorrents was one of the largest and most popular BitTorrent trackers during 2003-2005. Administrators of the site were responsible for uploading the prerelease of Star Wars, Episode III, Revenge of the Sith, 12 hours prior to its theatrical release. The repercussions of their actions were swift, as on May 25, 2005, the collective efforts of the MPAA, FBI, local police and US Customs forced the site off line and the administrators in custody during operation D-Elite.

Today's news from the Department of Justice announced that one of the remaining administrators, Daniel Dove, was convicted by a jury of his peers for criminal copyright infringment. His fellow administrators Scott McCausland and Grant Stanley pled guilty rather than face a jury trial.

"The jury was presented with evidence that Dove was an administrator of a small group of Elite Torrents members known as "Uploaders," who were responsible for supplying pirated content to the group," the Department of Justice press release states. "The evidence showed that Dove recruited members who had very high-speed Internet connections, usually at least 50 times faster than a typical high-speed residential Internet connection, to become Uploaders. The evidence also showed that Dove operated a high-speed server, which he used to distribute pirated content to the Uploaders."

The press release goes on say the case is the "first criminal conviction after jury trial for P2P copyright infringement." Most would agree, however, that Daniel stands in a league far removed from the overwhelming majority of file-sharers. The overall impact of this conviction breaks little new ground, as uploaders have always been the historical target of copyright enforcement. Additionally, accused P2P uploaders such as Jamie Thomas have been tried in civil court, not criminal.

Sentencing is scheduled for September of this year. He faces up to 10 years in prison, far longer than the 5 month stay of his fellow administrators.
http://www.slyck.com/story1697_Jury_...istrator_Guity





Malaysian Government Orders Torrent Sites Shutdown
enigmax

Reports are coming in that the government in Malaysia has ordered the immediate suspension of many BitTorrent trackers hosted in the country. In a shock move, the government - citing the ‘Copyright Act 1987′ - has ordered hosts to suspend servers hosting BitTorrent sites, pending an investigation. Many sites are offline.

When BitTorrent sites get into legal trouble or other pressures force a move to a new location, the speculation begins on the safest place to go.

For instance, would a site bail out of the Netherlands and move to Canada? Is Canada too dangerous now, and would a move to Sweden be more appropriate? What about moving to Ukraine-based hosting like Demonoid or further afield - China or Russia maybe? Inevitably, discussions usually involve ideas of moving sites east, to countries like Malaysia. Fairly high-tech countries like this seem an attractive proposition, particularly given their government’s track-record in failing to do much about piracy.

Given this background, BitTorrent tracker admins with their sites hosted in Malaysia were confronted by a very unpleasant surprise today. An administrator from a well known tracker contacted TorrentFreak this morning with worrying news, he told us: “Malaysia’s government suddenly forced all torrent websites to shut down today until further notice, a complete surprise to torrent admins and the offshore hosting companies in Malaysia.”

The news was given to this and other site admins, via an email from their hosting provider, which indicates the action has been ordered down from a high level. The email informs the admins that their servers have been suspended by the Ministry of Domestic Trade and Consumer Affairs, under the Copyright Act 1987. As the request came from the government, the host makes it clear they had no choice but to shut down the site. Among the affected sites are Extremebits, Rapthe, Superfundo and several others. According to sources, although torrent sites have been taken offline, other sites dealing in pirate material have also been suspended after the government decided to act on mounting copyright-related complaints.

Prominent Malaysian host Shinjiru confirmed the closures, telling TorrentFreak: “We can confirm that this is accurate. We had enforcement officers from MDTCA visiting the office to confirm the closure of BitTorrent sites hosted on our network. We will comply to all shut down instructions from the local authorities or agencies with warrants or documents.”

Update: Contrary to comments from a site admin, sources close to the situation are saying the shutdowns are limited to a small number of sites and aren’t necessarily part of a wider crackdown, despite government involvement.
http://torrentfreak.com/malaysian-go...ackout-080627/





Meshwerks Loses Copyright Appeal

Court rules Utah firm's creations are more copies than originals
Pamela Manson

Hired to create depictions of Toyota vehicles for the automotive giant's advertising campaign, a small Utah company used the relatively new technology of digital modeling.

After 80 to 100 hours of effort per vehicle, Meshwerks produced two-dimensional, wire-frame depictions that appeared three-dimensional on screen. The idea was to create a product that resembled each car or truck model as closely as possible for use on the Toyota Web site and in other media.

The resulting unadorned images, which had no color, shading nor other details, were accurate. So accurate that a federal court has ruled the depictions have no right to copyright protection.

In an opinion handed down Tuesday, the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said the models owe their designs to Toyota - not to the Meshwerks personnel who labored to produce the digital images but added nothing original to them.

"We think Meshwerks' models are not so much independent creations as [very good] copies of Toyota's vehicles," a three-judge panel of the Denver-based court said.

The decision was a blow to Kevin Scheidle, one of the founders of Meshwerks, a 5-year-old company based in the Washington County community of Ivins.

"A 3-year-old kid can take a photo, and it can be protected by a copyright," Scheidle said. "There's a lot more effort and time going into creating our images."

According to court records, Meshwerks was hired to assist with the digitization and modeling for Toyota's model-year 2004 campaign.

The company covered each vehicle with a grid of tape, took measurements at each intersection point and then used the figures to generate a digital image resembling a wire-frame model. Features such as wheels, headlights, door handles and the Toyota emblem had to be re-created by hand.

These products went to another company that added color, texture, lighting and animation. The models could rotate on screen and, with a few clicks of the computer mouse, an advertiser could change the color of the car and its surroundings.

Meshwerks insisted that it contracted for only a single use of its wire-frame models and filed suit claiming copyright infringement when Toyota and its advertising companies reused and redistributed the creations.

In September 2006, U.S. District Judge Tena Campbell in Salt Lake City ruled the models did not meet the originality requirement of copyright law. Meshwerks appealed, leading to the 10th Circuit decision upholding Campbell.

Despite its decision that these particular Meshwerks creations could not be copyrighted, the court noted the future looks bright for digital modeling.

"We do not doubt for an instant that the digital medium before us, like photography before it, can be employed to create vivid new expressions fully protectable in copyright," the opinion says.
http://www.sltrib.com/business/ci_9630368





Copyright Law Would Turn Millions Into Criminals
Catherine Ford

There are at least 400 movies and an uncountable number of television shows on about 200 VHS tapes stored in my den. They constitute what the federal government would refer to as a "permanent library." Should the amendment to Canada's copyright law pass without change, I will apparently be branded a thief for keeping these tapes and will have made Brigitte into a criminal -- the receiver of "stolen" goods.

The woman who cleans my house, does windows, recycles the newspapers, plastic bags and cardboard, and also collects all of our old magazines, books and videotapes to donate to various groups would not be pleased to find herself on the other side of the law because I choose to give her things I no longer need, rather than tossing them in the garbage.

This is the ludicrous aspect of what started out as a serious attempt to curtail the abuse and theft of copyrighted material through the magic of new technology. Should it pass, untouched by cooler heads and brighter minds, it will make me a criminal. It will also make a percentage of Canadians into miscreants by telling them they can't record a favourite television show and keep it. Nor after watching it once, can they give it away.

I can hear the soothing voice of the federal government assuring me that it isn't out to arrest, prosecute, fine or harass retired people who have finally mastered the art of transferring the Well-Tempered Clavier onto tape without the help of their grandchildren. No, the government is out to stop the wholesale downloading and uploading of copyrighted material from the Internet. And it's serious business: a $500 fine for any infringement that isn't commercial (that's you and me), but a hefty $20,000 fine each for any attempt to circumvent, override or bypass what's known as a digital lock. In simpler terms, that's the technological way of preventing what millions of kids do each day -- download, upload and share videos, film clips, bits and pieces of songs and lyrics, probably all of it the intellectual and artistic property of someone.

This is not a new fight and this Act isn't new, either. What it is, is patchwork legislation designed to put the onus on the consumer, rather than commercial businesses involved in the marketing of music, television, film or the intellectual property of writers. It is the content licensers, rather than the artists, who will be protected. Here's what will happen: The copyright owners -- the creators -- unless they are household names, will continue to eke out a living from their art while the money will continue to flow through to those who market the product. Queen Anne knew all about that. At least her legislators did in 1710 when the Statute of Queen Anne was passed, introducing copyright to published works. Prior to that the printers had been ripping off the authors. Printers and publishers, said the act, had been taking the liberty of reproducing published works "without the Consent of the Authors or Proprietors of such Books and Writing, to their very great detriment and too often to the Ruin of them and their Families." The law was proposed "for the Encouragement of Learned Men to Compose and Write useful Books."

Since then, the copyright laws have been rewritten to reflect whatever modern times demanded: currently, the right of a creator to his or her own intellectual work lasts for the life of the artist plus 50 years post-mortem. No matter the modern interpretation of what constitutes intellectual property, few laws have set forth the principle that the rights of modern technology take precedence over the rights of the author and the needs of both the consumer and the competitive market. While the purported beneficiaries of the new act are those artists, the real beneficiaries will be the companies who publish, control and market such work. With the possible exception of an original piece of art, all intellectual property are copied and distributed by someone other than the creator. It is these middlemen who will profit from digital locks, regardless of the hype about copyright protection.

In his essay for the Canadian university textbook Mediascapes, Martin Laba of Simon Fraser University pinpointed the likely result of passing the proposed law. In Pirates, Peers and Popular Music, Laba writes: "Consumers have little compunction about file sharing because they have little affection or concern for an industry that pulls in very handsome profits globally and that engages in 'demonizing the record-buying public and online community' and threatens litigation as its response to peer-to-peer practices." It is prescient. Technologically adept kids won't pay attention because they don't believe they are doing anything wrong in sharing their "stuff" with friends.

Perhaps the next time federal Industry Minister Jim Prentice is back home in Calgary, he might want to have a chat with University of Calgary professor David Taras to talk about what Taras refers to as the "unintended consequences" of consuming media. While Taras surely didn't intend his phrase to apply to ill-thought-out law, it's appropriate.

Meanwhile, until the copyright police break down my door, I'm keeping my movies. And the DVDs made by a friend. And my iPod with its selection of audiobooks.
http://www.canada.com/calgaryherald/...8-dd16f501144d





Uncle Sam's Fingers Are All Over the Canadian Copyright Bill
Michael Geist

Last week's introduction of new federal copyright legislation ignited a firestorm with thousands of Canadians expressing genuine shock at provisions that some MPs argued would create a "police state." As opposition to the copyright bill mounts, the most commonly asked question is "Why"?

Why, given the obvious public concern with the bill stretching back to last year, did federal Industry Minister Jim Prentice plow ahead with rules that confirm many of the public's worst fears? Why did a minority government introduce a bill that appears likely to generate strong opposition from both the Liberals and NDP with limited political gain? Why did senior ministers refuse to even meet with many creator and consumer groups who have unsurprisingly voiced disappointment with the bill?

While Prentice has responded by citing the need to update Canada's copyright law in order to comply with the World Intellectual Property Organization's Internet treaties, the reality may be that those treaties have little to do with Bill C-61.

Instead, the bill, dubbed by critics as the Canadian Digital Millennium Copyright Act (after the U.S. version of the law), is the result of an intense public and private campaign waged by the U.S. government to pressure Canada into following its much-criticized digital copyright model. The U.S. pressure has intensified in recent years, particularly since there is a growing international trend toward greater copyright flexibility, with countries such as Japan, New Zealand, and Israel either implementing or considering more flexible copyright standards.

The public campaign was obvious. U.S. Ambassador to Canada David Wilkins was outspoken on the copyright issue, characterizing Canadian copyright law as the weakest in the G7 (despite the World Economic Forum ranking it ahead of the U.S.).

The U.S. Trade Representatives Office (USTR) made Canada a fixture on its Special 301 Watch list, an annual compilation of countries that the U.S. believes have sub-standard intellectual property laws. The full list contains nearly 50 countries accounting for 4.4 billion people, or approximately 70 per cent of the world's population.

Most prominently, last year U.S. Senators Dianne Feinstein and John Cornyn, along with California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, escalated the rhetoric on Canadian movie piracy, leading to legislative reform that took just three weeks to complete.

The private campaign was even more important. Emboldened by the successful campaign for anti-camcording legislation, U.S. officials upped the ante at the Security and Prosperity Partnership meeting in Montebello, Que., last summer. Canadian officials arrived ready to talk about a series of economic concerns, but were quickly rebuffed by their U.S. counterparts, who indicated that progress on other issues would depend upon action on the copyright file.

Those demands were echoed earlier by the USTR, which, according to documents obtained under the Access to Information Act, made veiled threats about "thickening the border" between Canada and the U.S. if Ottawa refused to put copyright reform on the legislative agenda.

Faced with unrelenting U.S. pressure, the newly installed industry minister was presented with a mandate letter that required a copyright bill that would meet U.S. approval. The government promised copyright reform in the October 2007 Speech from the Throne, and was set to follow through last December, only to pull back at the last hour in the face of mounting public concern. (Disclosure: I created the Fair Copyright for Canada Facebook group that has more than 60,000 members and played a role in this public opposition.)

In the months that followed, Prentice's next attempt to bring the copyright bill forward was stalled by internal Cabinet concerns over how the bill would play out in public. The bill was then repackaged to include new consumer-focused provisions, such as the legalization of recording television shows and the new peer-to-peer download $500 damage award.

The heart of the bill, however, remained largely unchanged since satisfying U.S. pressure remained priority number one. Just after 11 a.m. last Thursday, the U.S. got its Canadian copyright bill.
http://www.canada.com/topics/technol...b-2e64db78b474





Canadian Court Allows Phone Buyout to Proceed
Ian Austen

The largest leveraged buyout in history skirted a potentially crushing blow on Friday.

The Supreme Court of Canada unanimously ruled in favor of Bell Canada and its purchasers late Friday, saying that the deal can proceed. While the ruling ends a challenge from bondholders, the $52 billion buyout still faces uncertainty over its financing and, more broadly, questions about the value of the company.

In a move that almost no one foresaw, an appeals court in Quebec, Bell’s home province, refused last month to approve the sale to a group led by the Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan and its partners, including Providence Equity Partners and Madison Dearborn Partners.

The deal was structured under a Canadian system that requires both shareholder and court approval. The appeals court, however, refused to back the deal after finding that the company had not fairly considered the interests of current bondholders. By adding about $34 billion debt to Bell, the buyout would depress the value of the company’s current debentures.

The decision surprised most corporate law specialists in Canada who generally assume that, as in the United States, directors must consider only the needs of shareholders when making decisions about takeovers.

By overturning the Quebec court, the Supreme Court has apparently endorsed that view. But because it heard Bell’s case on an accelerated basis to accommodate the buyout’s June 30 closing date, the court would not release the reasons for its decision for some time, perhaps months.

“While I feel sorry for the bondholders, the decision prevents complete obfuscation and confusion from developing,” said Roger Martin, the dean of the Rotman School of Management at the University of Toronto. “There was a lot riding on this.”

Bell Canada said in a statement issued Friday evening that because of the unexpected legal delays, the deal would close during the third quarter rather than at the end of this month as scheduled. Richard J. Currie, the chairman, added: “We expect all parties to the transaction will honor their commitments.”

The deal was the high point of a series of private equity buyouts during the first half of last year. But the tight credit market that developed since brought the private equity buying spree to a close and might still derail the effort to take Canada’s largest telecommunications private.

“We continue to negotiate the financing documents in good faith with the sponsors and stand behind our original commitment to the transaction,” said Citigroup, Deutsche Bank, the Royal Bank of Scotland and the Toronto-Dominion Bank.

People on both sides of the deal said earlier this month that the banks, which have been hit by higher lending costs, were demanding higher interest rates, tighter restrictions and increased protection for the banks.

Exactly where the talks now stand is unclear. Negotiations will continue this weekend.

Speaking for all the buyers, Deborah Allan of the teachers’ pension said they were “pleased with the Supreme Court decision. We’re continuing to work to complete the acquisition.”

But many analysts and others say the deal’s demise may actually be to the buyers’ benefit.

“It may be in their interest not to have this deal go through given the pricing,” said Anita Anand, an associate dean at the law school of the University of Toronto, who specializes in securities and corporate law.

The purchasers’ offer of 42.75 Canadian dollars a share was seen as high even last summer. Other groups were also vying for Bell, driving up the price.

If the bid does fail, it will hurt the teachers’ pension, at least in the short term. It is the largest Bell shareholder, holding about 6.3 percent of the company’s stock. The collapse of the buyout would probably depress Bell’s shares for some time to come.

The bondholders canceled a news conference they had scheduled to discuss the court ruling because the court did not disclose its reasoning.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/21/te...y/21phone.html





Bell’s Own Data Shatters P2P Red Herring
Doug Groves

About a week ago, the CRTC demanded that Bell release to the public by June 23rd information that would prove it’s claim that P2P throttling was having a negative impact on it’s network. Some, but not all, of that information has been made public. Many details are being kept from public view for ‘competitive’ reasons. Even the scant evidence released shows exactly how flimsy Bell’s case is.

One would assume that the company would release the most damaging evidence, but their claim is that over a 2 month period, 2-5% of their network links suffered some sort of congestion. They do NOT say whether that was a sustained range of fluctuation, or brief bursts of conjestion. They then pull out the old “it’s like a highway” canard.

In revealing the details, Bell explained in an accompanying letter that “while these numbers may seem low to the average lay person, they are significant to network traffic engineers such that it is important to consider the number of congested links in the proper context.”

If only a single link in the network is congested, end users may still experience slowdowns or dropped connections, the company said, because the situation is similar to the road system — where if one major artery is backed up, all connected roads will also have problems.

“Just like a single traffic roadblock can hinder drivers going to multiple destinations that pass through the road that is blocked, a very small amount of congested links can seriously affect a large number of high-speed end-users’ traffic,” Bell said.

…as quoted from a CBC article. On a simplistic level, the ‘highway’ analogy can be helpful to the ‘lay person’, but in this case it’s shorthand for company spin that obfuscates HOW traffic works.

Since Bell has no interest in actually enlightening their customers, I’m going to take a moment to show why the analogy falls apart:

1) Data packets are the cars of the ‘highway’. They travel at 1000s of kilometres per second. If they didn’t, a person in Toronto wouldn’t get an email from his friend in Australia a second after the Australian hit send. It would be impossible for someone in Toronto to play a decent game of Call Of Duty 4 with someone from London England. Somehow people are doing it every day.

2) the ‘internet highway’ can re-route you in an instant if there’s congestion. Imagine if the 401 HWY is blocked up, and magically, a second highway appears before you, with no cars on it, and your car is automatically sent onto the new route. The ‘congestion’ Bell claims is more of a dead seagull at the side of the road than a 15 car pile-up (even if it was sustained congestion over that two month period - which they haven’t made explicit).

3) Bell is claiming that torrent traffic is the equivalent of a convoy of 18-wheelers blocking the poor little guy. As we previously reported the numbers show that gaming, web streaming, and email each hog more lanes than all torrents combined. These numbers come from Ellacoya (now a part of Arbor Networks), a traffic shaping company that Bell is invested in.

All of this, when combined with Bell’s congestion claims, should completely dis-spell the myth that P2P is crushing the internet.

The throttling issue isn’t the only thing we’ve been facing lately, with the Bill C-61 amendments to the Copyright Act having been tabled, and possibly becoming official after the summer recess. At least we have all summer to mount an opposition to said bill (I know I’m assuming everyone is opposed to it - after all I don’t think the RIAA or MPAA are reading this). That’s a whole other article though, and I’d respectfully point you to Michael Geist’s site, as he’s been doing some amazing coverage on the issue.
http://www.rgbfilter.com/?p=67





Bell Ordered to Publicly Prove Internet Congestion
Peter Nowak

Bell Canada Inc. has been ordered to publicly disclose information that details the level of congestion on its network in regard to a dispute over the company's internet speed-throttling practices.

The Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission on Thursday told the company it has until June 23 to make public data that was marked confidential in a May 29 filing. Bell had said it needed to keep quiet the information, which details the level of internet traffic and possible congestion on its network, for competitive reasons.

In a letter sent to Bell, CRTC director general of competition, costing and tariffs Paul Godin said the need for public disclosure outweighed the company's competitive privacy concerns.

"Commission staff has determined, based on all the material before it, that no specific direct harm would likely result from disclosure, or that the public interest in disclosure outweighs any specific direct harm that might result from disclosure," he wrote.

The dispute centres on Bell's limiting of speeds of peer-to-peer internet applications such as BitTorrent. The company started throttling its own customers using these applications in November and expanded the practice to other internet service providers (ISPs) who rent portions of its network in March. The Canadian Association of Internet Providers, a group of 55 small ISPs affected by the move, filed a complaint in April with the CRTC charging that Bell's actions were anti-competitive.

The CRTC last month rejected CAIP's call for an immediate cease-and-desist order but launched a public probe of Bell's throttling.

Bell says it needs to limit speeds of peer-to-peer applications because they are overwhelming and congesting its network. CAIP says the company has failed to prove there is a congestion problem.

Mark Langton, a spokesman for Bell, said the company was in the process of examining the CRTC order.

"Our folks are still looking at it, but I see no issue with complying," he said.

In light of the order, the CRTC extended the deadline for public commentary on the throttling case, which has become the central issue in the debate over neutrality — or how much control ISPs have over the internet — in Canada. The regulator will now accept comments until July 3 and expects to make a ruling in late summer.

The throttling of internet applications by Bell, Rogers Communications Inc. and a few other ISPs has become a rallying point for net neutrality advocates, prompting a protest on Parliament Hill last month, a complaint with the privacy commissioner and a pair of private member's bills from MPs
http://www.cbc.ca/technology/story/2...tech-bell.html





Virgin Media Rubbishes P2P Throttling Rumours

Secret testing denied
Chris Williams

Virgin Media has today strongly denied a charge it is running secret tests with a view to introducing new bandwidth throttling hardware to target peer to peer and Usenet downloaders.

The claim was made on Friday at Cableforum, a message board often frequented by staff and former staff of Virgin Media, or its forerunners NTL and Telewest. User "TraxData" wrote: "[Application throttling] is, as far as one is aware going to be used for both in and out of peak hours for whoever they see "fit" as a heavy user... [It] is to be deployed across the VM network fully sometime either third quarter 2008 or first quarter 2009."

He alleged deep packet inspection equipment (DPI) provided by the Israeli firm Allot is currently being used in part of the Virgin Media network to restrict Usenet downloads to 512Kbit/s.

Contacted by The Reg today, a Virgin Media spokesman described the claims as "absolute rubbish". He sent us this statement:

Our policy does not discriminate internet traffic by application and we have no plans to do so. Whilst we do use equipment from Allot within parts of our cable network, this is used to build usage metrics and does not affect customers' service in any way. It is certainly not used to do any form of packet shaping or change internet traffic priorities.

In a telephone conversation, the spokesman said the Allot equipment is installed in a part of the national cable network formerly owned by NTL.

Many ISPs use DPI hardware from companies such as Allot to prioritise or restrict HTTP, peer to peer, Usenet and other traffic. BT has deployed Ellacoya boxes in its retail broadband network. The gear's ability to peer inside data packets has also attracted attention from marketeers and fostered the embryonic ISP-level adware business being contoversially pushed by Phorm and NebuAd.

Deep packet inspection technology is particularly popular with operators who compete mostly on price, such as Tiscali. It allows them to keep a lid on their upstream bandwidth overheads, especially at peak times in the evening. Many broadband subscribers argue the opaque way ISPs use the technology to apply "fair usage policy" restrictions to internet usage is unfair.

Any move to install DPI could prove particularly problematic for Virgin Media, as it markets its broadband service as a fast, premium alternative to ADSL rivals. It instead uses the more simple tactic of throttling bandwith to its heaviest users across all protocols at set times when the cable network is likeliest to be overloaded.

Virgin Media describes this policy as "open and transparent" and publishes the details of when and how tightly bandwidth is throttled. It says this maintains decent speeds for the vast majority at busy times.

The firm's CEO Neil Berkett was widely quoted in April describing the net neutrality debate as "bollocks" and arguing that networks will have to be reconfigured to cope with increasing bandwidth demands.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/06...ttling_denial/





Judge Says Limelight Ban 'Premature'

A federal judge said on Wednesday it would be premature to consider a request by Akamai Technologies Inc to permanently ban rival Limelight Networks Inc from selling services that a jury ruled infringe on an Akamai patent.

"The motion for an injunction is kind of premature," U.S. District Court Judge Rya Zobel said during a motion hearing in Boston.

She said that she needs to review several other motions related to the trial first. If she rules in favor of Akamai on each of those motions, then she would consider the request for the injunction, Zobel said.

"The injunction does not come into play until everything else is done in favor of Akamai," she said.

A U.S. District Court jury in Boston had awarded Akamai $45.5 million in February after determining that Limelight's services that help speed Web traffic infringe upon Akamai's intellectual property.

Akamai subsequently sought a permanent injunction banning Limelight from selling related services. (Reporting by Jim Finkle, editing by Phil Berlowitz)
http://www.reuters.com/article/rbssI...25770220080618





Japanese Telco Institutes Upload Caps... of 30GB... Daily
Jacqui Cheng

Bandwidth caps are coming to Japan, but not in the way to which North Americans are accustomed. OCN, operated by NTT Communications, has decided to impose a daily upload limit beginning on August 1. The limit? 30GB per day. Upstream.

According to the company, the limit is being implemented to address a "small number" of users who apparently upload far more than that on a day-to-day basis by running servers for file-sharing. Customers will get a warning upon first violation, NTT spokesperson Tei Gordon told IDG News Service today, but could be disconnected for repeat offenses.

Of course, NTT's 100Mbps fiber-optic connections make it easy to use and abuse the service. And—let's be realistic—a 30GB-per-day upload limit is plenty for even heavy P2P use. That's almost a terabyte per month of data, and those concerned over download caps shouldn't worry, though, as those will remain unlimited.

Download all the terabytes upon terabytes of data you want!

This kind of extremely generous usage cap is made possible because of Japan's fiber-centric broadband infrastructure. Here in the US, fiber installations are few and far between, leaving most of us with subpar speeds and service. It's a large reason why users who use even moderate levels of bandwidth will face very low usage caps. For example, Time Warner recently announced that it would begin capping customers' downloads in Beaumont, Texas at 40GB per month for $55. Users will be billed $1 for each additional gigabyte downloaded.

At first glance, such usage caps might seem reasonable, but they're not so attractive after you consider the growing number of important services we use that soak up lots of bandwidth. The Internet is now used to distribute software, digital high-definition video, and music. It also facilitates online gaming, video conferencing, real-time collaboration, interactive remote desktop access, file backups, and many other bandwidth-intensive activities.

Other companies are tossing around slightly more generous caps, like Comcast's possible 250GB per month limit. As we noted in his analysis of Time Warner's decision, however, ISPs who have ample bandwidth will be happy to take in customers who aren't interested in being metered. And there are some intriguing wireless broadband options on the horizon that could draw customers away from bandwidth-constrained cable companies.
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post...0gb-daily.html





Another Inventor Of The Internet Wants To Gag It
Gregory Sullivan

Lawrence Roberts is just another guy with the title:" Inventor of the Internet" in news articles. According to Wikipedia, he's the father of networking through data packets. And he's turned his attention to everyone's favorite data packet topic: Peer-to-Peer filesharing. He's established a company called Anagran, and says their devices can sort out which file transfers on the tubes are P2P, and -- you guessed it -- can throttle them in favor of other, more "high-priority" traffic.

At Structure 08, he laid out the problem: 5 percent of the Net's users are running P2P transfers taking up 80 percent of its capacity, which is dramatically limiting the available bandwidth available to everyone else. Roberts' company, Anagran, is able to detect which "flows" are P2P traffic, and reduce the bandwidth available to these communications when other users' systems want it. Roberts says that Anagran's technology even functions when P2P transfers are encrypted.

One of the products currently offered by ANAGRAN, the FR-1000 Intelligent Flow Manager has a feature set geared specifically toward shaping network traffic.

• Instant Network Congestion Relief: Adding an FR-1000 wherever network congestion occurs eliminates congestion to instantly improve application performance and service quality. Downstream routers perform better.
• High Quality of Experience for Streaming Media: When loss-susceptible traffic like IPTV and VoIP overload their capacity, packet discard creates noise, jitter, and freeze-frame in all flows. IFD selectively invokes call admission control (CAC) on specific flows only; either the lowest priority or the most recent, for sustained high quality voice and video even during periods of intense user demand.
• Bulk Data and P2P Management: Managing flow rates by service class with BTC throttles bandwidth-hungry traffic like P2P to allow all services (including P2P!) to flourish even when network links become congested.
• Powerful Traffic Inspection and Awareness: Real-time capture of all flow statistics enables inspection, logging, and analysis for all traffic in the network. Find out what is really happening in your network.
• Improved Performance: Fast Flow Technology improves trunk utilization by up to 300% while adding zero incremental delay. For the first time, bandwidth utilization is maximized without adding any latency.
• Significant Cost Savings: Bandwidth needed to connect data/content sources to the network can be reduced by 2:1-3:1. Compact, high-performance 1RU form factor saves space and lowers equipment costs. Eco-friendly low power consumption (300 watts) minimizes heat dissipation and ongoing operating costs.

According to Roberts, 80 percent of Internet traffic is generated by 5 percent of users, and that 80 percent is used for P2P filesharing. I have a feeling Mr. Roberts will finally make some money off that Internet he invented if the device works, as ISPs would love to have a way to shuffle Bittorrents of Deuce Bigalow: Male Gigolo to the back of the queue. I also predict he will become an object of more intense detestation than anyone outside an RIAA office on the Internet he invented if his device works, and is put into general use.

There sure are a lot of people who are referred to as "Inventor of the Internet." Of course we could tell the old joke about Al Gore inventing the Internet, but of course we know he invented weather, not the Internet.
http://www.hothardware.com/News/Anot...nts_To_Gag_It/





Charter Won’t Track Customers’ Web Use
AP

Charter Communications is dropping plans to track the Web use of some high-speed Internet subscribers, citing concerns raised by customers, the company said Tuesday.

In May, Charter, which is based in St. Louis, announced a pilot program in four markets intended to produce enough information for advertisers to aim online ads at individual customers based on their viewing habits.

Charter is controlled by Paul G. Allen, a Microsoft co-founder.

Charter had planned to begin the program as early as this month in the test markets: Fort Worth; San Luis Obispo, Calif.; Oxford, Mass.; and Newtown, Conn.

Earlier Tuesday, Connecticut’s attorney general, Richard Blumenthal, released a letter calling on Charter to drop the plan. A Charter spokeswoman, Anita Lamont, said the decision to do so was unrelated to Mr. Blumenthal’s letter.

In a letter last month to Internet subscribers in the pilot areas, a Charter senior vice president, Joseph R. Stackhouse, wrote that they would not see more ads, just more ads relevant to each user. He promised the personal information gathered through the tracking would remain confidential.

Subscribers would have been able to opt out of the tracking, but Mr. Blumenthal and others said the opt-out provision was inadequate.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/25/te...25charter.html





ISPs Still Considering Tracking Web Use
Peter Svensson

Although a large Internet service provider has backed away from technology that tracks subscribers' Web use in order to deliver personalized advertising, two other broadband companies said Wednesday they are still considering whether to deploy it.

Phone companies Embarq Corp. and CenturyTel Inc. have both completed trials of the same tracking system, from online advertising company NebuAd Inc., and are now considering whether to proceed.

The largest U.S. Internet provider that had been actively looking at Web tracking, Charter Communications Inc., announced Tuesday that it had canceled its planned test because customers had raised concerns.

The technology gathers data on the interests of Web surfers by looking at the sites they visit. It passes the information to online advertising companies, without revealing a surfer's identity, so they can display more relevant ads on Web sites. For instance, a surfer who visits sites about dogs might see more banner ads for dog food.

The system has been criticized by privacy advocates and legislators. Rep. Edward Markey, D-Mass., and Rep. Joe Barton, R-Texas, wrote to Charter asking it to put the test on hold to give time for discussions. Markey chairs the House Subcommittee on Telecommunications and the Internet.

"We are not currently using behavioral targeting tools and have not decided whether to move forward with them, either through NebuAd or with any other vendor," said Debra Peterson, spokeswoman at Embarq.

The Overland Park, Kan., company is the country's ninth-largest ISP, with 1.34 million broadband lines at the end of March.

Tony Davis, the head of investor relations at CenturyTel, said it was his understanding that the reaction to Charter's proposed test had to do with cable-industry regulations that don't apply to a phone company.

"So at this point it's not affecting our thinking," Davis said.

Monroe, La.-based CenturyTel had 586,000 broadband customers at the end of the first quarter.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...062501950.html





Cable Ads Attacking Verizon Confuse Consumers
Peter Svensson

Avery Axel was annoyed with his cable company, Comcast, and was considering switching to Verizon's new FiOS fiber-optic TV and Internet service.

The picture on his TV would freeze now and then, and he had heard good things about FiOS. Then the 21-year-old student saw a TV commercial from Comcast that made fun of FiOS and claimed the cable TV company has a larger fiber-optic network.

"I thought to myself: Maybe I don't have to switch, because if Comcast has fiber optics now, that means that they'll be better," said Axel, who lives in Roosevelt, N.J.

But after asking around online, he found that nothing's changed about Comcast's service: It still uses coaxial cable to connect homes. It does use fiber-optic cable further away in the network, as it has for many years.

"From what everyone said ... this is kind of misleading," Axel said.

Axel had fallen for one of a series of commercials run by every major cable company that competes with Verizon's FiOS. Besides Comcast, Cablevision, Time Warner Cable, Cox and Charter have all run ads belittling FiOS.

The ads have a curiously similar message, emphasizing that cable networks "are" fiber-optic, even though none of the companies draw fiber all the way to the home, like Verizon does in most cases when it installs FiOS. This allows for higher Internet speeds and, according to Consumer Reports, better picture quality.

"Cable is deploying the rhetoric instead of the technology," said Verizon spokeswoman Bobbi Henson.

Comcast spokeswoman Jennifer Khoury said the ad was referring to the fact that the company has the largest "residential" fiber network in the nation, stretching for 125,000 miles, and noted that a freezing picture doesn't necessarily have anything to do with the network technology.

"Our ads reinforce the value and scope of our fiber network to our customers," she said, adding that the fact that Verizon uses fiber to the home makes little difference to the services it can provide. Comcast has started upgrading its network to provide FiOS-like speeds in 20 percent of its markets this year.

Comcast has also started running newspaper ads with the message: "We already have a fiber-optic network serving ALL our homes" reads one in the Seattle-Post Intelligencer.

Fiber-optic lines have been the main conduit for telecommunications since the '80s. In the late '90s, cable companies upgraded their networks to draw fiber closer to homes, which allowed them to offer broadband, video on demand and other services. The fiber lines end at neighborhood nodes, where the signal is transferred to a coaxial cable shared among as many as 500 households. The shared nature of the coaxial network and its susceptibility to electrical noise limits its capacity.

Verizon's FiOS network also shares capacity, but among fewer households, and the fiber itself has nearly unlimited data capacity.

Mike Weaver in Watauga, Texas, saw an ad from Charter Communications Inc. that talked about "advanced fiber optics," and was disappointed when he realized that the cable company isn't drawing fiber to the home. He wants the faster Internet speeds provided by FiOS, he said.

Charter spokeswoman Anita Lamont said the intent behind the current ads, which say the company has been using fiber for the last 10 years, "is to reassure current Charter customers that they too have fiber optic technology bringing their homes to life."

In an ad from Time Warner Cable Inc., an enthusiastic Verizon salesman shows up at a doorstep and starts talking about "The Fiber" and makes a flourish that produces a burst of light. The homeowner holds up a bowl of cereal and retorts that "I think I'm taken care of in that department," adding that Time Warner Cable has been using fiber for over a decade. "Welcome to the program!"

Time Warner Cable got into a legal tussle with Verizon over a longer version of the ad, which Verizon saw as implying that subscribers need a satellite dish to get FiOS. Time Warner Cable is no longer running the ad, said spokesman Alex Dudley.

"Lately it seems everybody is talking fiber optics," says a suave man in Cablevision's commercial for its Optimum cable service. "The Optimum Network is fiber optic. Your phone company? Talking fiber, even though a lot of their network ... isn't."

A Cablevision spokesman did not return calls about the ad, which appears to highlight the fact that FiOS isn't available in Verizon's entire local-phone service area.

An ad for Cox Communications shows a curbside, accompanied by voiceover: "Years ago, Cox laid advanced fiber-optic cable right about here. Now the phone company wants to come along and do it too. The old phone company and its new network is about a decade behind Cox ... Thanks, but ... I don't need any more fiber."

Cox spokesman David Grabert said that ad is no longer on the air, but it is preparing a new batch of videos that "address Verizon's competitive weakness."

For its part, Verizon has taken some criticism for claiming in ads that FiOS provides "uncompressed" high-definition TV signals. All TV providers, including Verizon, provide digital TV signals that are compressed to reduce the bandwidth needed. Henson said Verizon was trying to convey that it didn't apply additional compression to the video it receives, which some cable companies do.

It's stopped running that ad, preferring instead to focus on customer testimonials about the picture quality.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080621/...e_vs_fiber_ads





Supreme Court To Hear AT&T Access Fee Appeal

A federal appeals court had ruled that AT&T was charging wholesale prices to ISPs that were too high for them to compete with AT&T in the retail market.
W. David Gardner

The U.S. Supreme Court has decided to hear an antitrust case involving AT&T (NYSE: T) and Internet service providers, which are protesting that AT&T's access fees are too high.

AT&T and the Bush Administration had urged the high court to review the case.

The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco had ruled against AT&T and agreed that the company's wholesale prices to the ISPs were too high for them to compete with AT&T in the retail market.

The plaintiff in the case is LinkLine Communications, which bought high-speed service from AT&T. The ISP combined the service with other services and sold the package in competition with AT&T.

Fights over access fees have dogged the U.S. telecommunications industry ever since the old AT&T was broken up more than two decades ago. One of the offshoots was SBC Communications, which then acquired what was left of the old AT&T, then a long distance company. SBC then took over the AT&T name and along the way acquired BellSouth, which had been challenging AT&T over access fee issues, too.

The access fee issue has continued to boil under the radar until last year when the Appeals Court allowed the lawsuit filed by LinkLine to move forward in federal court. The original suit had been filed against Pacific Bell -- later acquired by SBC/AT&T.
The Bush Administration's Office of U.S. Solicitor General sided with AT&T, maintaining that federal antitrust laws don't cover the LinkLine claims.

In urging the Supreme Court to overturn the Ninth Circuit opinion, U.S. Solicitor General Paul Clement said: "Such a theory of liability could not be reconciled with this cout's modern antitrust jurisprudence."

The case is Pacific Bell Telephone Co. v. Linkline Communications Inc., 07-512.
http://www.informationweek.com/news/...leID=208800329





AT&T to Boost Online Content Distribution

AT&T said on Tuesday it wants to expand its business of delivering online media, moving into more direct competition with specialized content delivery companies like Akamai Technologies Inc and Limelight Networks Inc.

As more companies launch websites with video and interactive features, AT&T said it will spend nearly $70 million by the end of the year to bolster its network infrastructure across the United States, Europe and parts of Asia.

Content delivery is not entirely new to AT&T, which has customers like Forbes.com and AccuWeather.com; but it said it will start selling more of these services to help companies deliver digital media to consumers' computers and mobile phones.

AT&T also said it is creating a new business unit focusing on content delivery, and named executive Cathy Martine as the leader of that section.

The company said its strength is in its international reach and experience dealing with security issues.

AT&T shares fell 0.1 percent in morning trade to $34.35, while Akamai shares fell 1.6 percent to $34.66 and Limelight fell 0.8 percent to $3.84.

(Reporting by Ritsuko Ando, editing by Gerald E. McCormick)
http://www.reuters.com/article/rbssT...34215220080624





FCC Dealt Setback in Broadband-Over-Power-Lines Push
Anne Broache

In a potential setback for fans of broadband over power lines, a federal appeals court has sided in part with amateur radio operators who challenged rules designed to speed the nascent Internet service's rollout.

When setting rules for BPL operators nearly two years ago, the Federal Communications Commission said it was trying to encourage deployment of a "third pipe" to compete with cable and DSL services, while establishing limits aimed at protecting public safety, maritime, radio-astronomy, aeronautical navigation, and amateur radio operators from harmful interference. The American Radio Relay League (ARRL), which represents amateur and ham radio operators, however, promptly sued the agency, contending that the FCC's approach was insufficient to ward off interference with its radios and inconsistent with its previous rules.

On Friday, the U.S. Appeals Court for the District of Columbia on Friday issued a ruling that took issue with the way the FCC arrived at its rules.

During its rulemaking process, the FCC relied on five scientific studies that measured BPL devices' radio emissions, in an attempt to determine interference risks with other users of the spectrum. Although the agency released those studies during a public comment process required by federal law, it redacted portions of them, arguing they were just "internal" communications that didn't influence its deliberations. But after reviewing the unredacted studies in private, the majority of the judges agreed with the ARRL that it was against federal administrative procedure law to keep those portions under wraps, particularly since they could called the FCC's rules into question.

"It is one thing for the Commission to give notice and make available for comment the studies on which it relied in formulating the rule while explaining its non-reliance on certain parts," D.C. Circuit Judge Judith Rogers wrote. "It is quite another thing to provide notice and an opportunity for comment on only those parts of the studies that the Commission likes best."

The court also said the FCC had not offered a "reasoned explanation" for why it rejected ARRL-submitted data that could have influenced its interference estimates and potentially reshaped its rules. The judges opted to send the rules back to the FCC with instructions to clarify those points and publicize its studies more fully, although they did not overturn the rules themselves.

The court did not side entirely with the ARRL on other key points related to the substance of the rules.

For instance, the ARRL had argued that the FCC was departing from longstanding agency precedent by refusing to require that BPL operations found to cause "harmful interference" be shut down immediately--the so-called "cease-operations" rule. The court wasn't persuaded by that argument, saying the FCC had explained adequately that there isn't ample evidence that "harmful interference" is a real risk.

Still, the court's decision could be significant if it ultimately prompts revisions to the FCC's rules, which could in turn force some BPL operators to change the way they operate or create new legal uncertainty for their operations. The FCC declined to comment on the decision Monday.

The ARRL was quick to applaud the ruling.

"It is obvious that the FCC was overzealous in its advocacy of BPL, and that resulted in a rather blatant cover-up of the technical facts surrounding its interference potential," ARRL general counsel Christopher Imlay said in a statement. "Both BPL and Amateur Radio would be better off had the FCC dealt with the interference potential in an honest and forthright manner at the outset."

The United Power Line Council, which represents the BPL industry, downplayed the significance of the ruling, saying it was largely procedural and noting that the current rules remain in effect.

"We're a little surprised that the court took issue with those two issues that it did send back, but I expect the FCC will work quickly on those and come to a conclusion soon," said Brett Kilbourne, the group's director of regulatory affairs.

According to the UPLC, there were approximately 35 BPL deployments around the United States as of last year. As of the middle of last year, there were about 5,000 U.S. BPL subscribers, according to the FCC's latest data.
http://news.cnet.com/8301-10784_3-9930223-7.html





Satcaster Merger Under Fire From Opponents
FMQB

After FCC Chairman Kevin Martin said over the weekend that he will back the proposed merger of XM and Sirius Satellite Radio, senior members of the Congressional Black Caucus criticized the merger plan, saying it does not provide enough opportunities for minority-owned programming. Martin said he would support the merger after XM and Sirius agreed, among other concessions, to lease four percent of their radio spectrums, or 12 channels, for programming run by minorities and women. But members of the black caucus on Capitol Hill have been arguing that the merged company should set aside five times that amount of spectrum. Short of that, caucus members have warned the Commission that they will oppose the merger.

Rep. G.K. Butterfield (D-NC), Chairman of the Congressional Black Caucus's working group on satellite radio, told the Washington Post that Martin's proposed compromise is "completely unacceptable." He said he and other members of the group planned to express their dissatisfaction to the CEOs of XM and Sirius in a meeting today. "We're going to close the door and have a very honest and open dialogue about the merger," Butterfield said. "If they cannot meet us on any reasonable terms, we are going to be very adamant about not approving the merger. It's not in the public interest. They are not concerned about the cost to the consumer."

Rep. Elijah E. Cummings (D-MD), a former Chairman of the caucus, also said he was upset about the proposed deal. "It's shocking to the conscience in this day and age, where the minority populations comprise a significant part of the satellite radio audience, that Mr. Martin would settle for what I deem to be crumbs that have fallen off the table," Cummings told the Post. "We can do much better. I am hoping that this can be revisited."

Meanwhile, the Consumer Coalition for Competition in Satellite Radio (C3SR) is also raising questions about the integrity of the FCC's decision on the matter. "This untimely announcement follows the discovery of serious legal issues raised by certain highly confidential documents that Sirius submitted to the FCC on April 10, 2008, which remain unresolved," C3SR said in a press release. "Sirius produced these materials subject to an FCC protective order to prevent public disclosure of the documents' contents. In a May 27, 2008 letter to the FCC, C3SR identified several issues raised by the highly confidential documents and asked that the FCC designate the proposed merger of XM and Sirius for hearing. C3SR also requested an FCC investigation leading to appropriate enforcement actions. In addition, Senator Brownback has called for an inquiry into this matter by the Senate Judiciary Committee. No action has been taken by the FCC."

According to Julian L. Shepard of Williams Mullen, counsel to C3SR, "The entire FCC process is now unreasonably shrouded in secrecy. Sirius and XM are trading on the secrecy of the highly confidential documents in the court of public opinion. They have refused to come forth with the facts. In public, Sirius and XM are denying the facts in the highly confidential documents, but they have not submitted any evidence to support their denial. Meanwhile, Sirius and XM are saying what they wish in private ex parte meetings with the FCC."
http://fmqb.com/Article.asp?id=751371





Photographer Documents Secret Satellites — All 189 of Them
Bryan Gardiner

For most people, photographing something that isn't there might be tough. Not so for Trevor Paglen.

His shots of 189 secret spy satellites are the subject of a new exhibit -- despite the fact that, officially speaking, the satellites don't exist. The Other Night Sky, on display at the University of California at Berkeley Art Museum through September 14, is only a small selection from the 1,500 astrophotographs Paglen has taken thus far.

In taking these photos, Paglen is trying to draw a metaphorical connection between modern government secrecy and the doctrine of the Catholic Church in Galileo's time.

"What would it mean to find these secret moons in orbit around the earth in the same way that Galileo found these moons that shouldn't exist in orbit around Jupiter?" Paglen says.

Satellites are just the latest in Paglen's photography of supposedly nonexistent subjects. To date, he's snapped haunting images of various military sites in the Nevada deserts, "torture taxis" (private planes that whisk people off to secret prisons without judicial oversight) and uniform patches from various top-secret military programs.

While all of Paglen's projects are the result of meticulous research, he's also the first to admit that his photos aren't necessarily revelatory. That's by design. Like the blurry abstractions of his super-telephoto images showing secret military installations in Nevada, the tiny blips of satellites streaking across the night sky in his new series of photos are meant more as reminders rather than as documentation.

"I think that some of the earliest ideas in the modern period were actually from astronomy," Paglen explains. "You look at Galileo: He goes up and points his telescope up at Jupiter and finds out, hey, Jupiter has these moons."

More significant than the discovery itself, Paglen says, was the idea that anyone with a telescope could verify it and see the same exact thing that Galileo saw -- an idea Paglen is trying to re-create in his own photographs.

"It really was analogous to a certain kind of promise of democracy," says Paglen, who sees a similar anti-authoritarian premise running through his own work.

Paglen says his most recent project is the culmination of close to two years of trial-and-error experimentation with astrophotography, untold hours of fieldwork and analysis, an ongoing collaboration with amateur astronomers, and many nights in his Berkeley backyard and at California's Mono Lake.

To capture his images, the researcher and "experimental geographer" employs a motorized mount with various combinations of telescopes and digital and large-format film cameras. Paglen uses spy-satellite data compiled by Ted Molczan -- a renowned amateur astronomer profiled by Wired magazine in 2006 -- to predict where a given "black satellite" will be in the sky. Then he decides how he wants to compose the image.

"I'll find where a star will be in the compositional plane," he says. "Then I'll use one telescope, which is attached to a webcam, to focus on that star."

With the help of a computer program that controls the mount of the telescope and keeps it focused on the heavenly body, Paglen says he can get the telescope to swivel with the Earth's rotation.

He then uses another telescope attached to a high-end digital camera for his deep-sky shots, similar to the rig he used for his desert shots.

"I'll see the satellite in the sky, kind of know where it's going to be in the frame, then I'll open the shutter and take a long exposure of the satellite passing through."

Paglen's initial interest in the government's so-called "black projects" took shape while combing through U.S. Geological Survey archives of satellite prison photos in 2002. He noticed that many of the photo frames of prison sites were missing or, in some cases, heavily edited.

"I thought: What the hell is this? We still have blank spots on maps? We've mapped the whole structure of the cosmos and the human genome, so what's this all about?" Paglen said.

Eventually, those blank spots led Paglen to other covert subjects and turned a hobby into a full-time job -- one with a decidedly political stance.

"For a time, people were getting arrested for photographing the Brooklyn Bridge," Paglen notes. "So to me, what it meant to do photography also changed. There was a new kind of politics to it -- something that was very aggressive and dangerous -- and a presumption that it would reveal some kind of truth or evidence."

Ultimately, the satellite photos are an attempt to critique that attitude. While the budget for black military operations has more than doubled in the last 10 years and the government continues to espouse the virtues of secrecy, it can't prevent interested amateur astronomers from calculating the orbital paths of spy satellites.

"The National Reconnaissance Office cannot classify Kepler's laws of planetary motion," Paglen says. "They just work ... and they're unbelievably accurate."
http://www.wired.com/culture/art/new...ret_satellites





The Camera That Knows Where It Is
David Pogue

“Any sufficiently advanced memory card,” Arthur C. Clarke once didn’t write, “is indistinguishable from magic.”

But if he had written it, he could have been referring to the Eye-Fi Share card. It’s a 2-gigabyte memory card ($100), compatible with most digital cameras, with a twist: it has Wi-Fi networking built in. Each time you bring your camera home to your wireless network, it transmits your photos back to the computer, automatically and wirelessly. It can also upload them to Flickr, Picasa or another online photo-gallery site, automatically and wirelessly.

What’s the point? First, you’re saved the trouble of finding and attaching your U.S.B. transfer cable. Second, you skip the multi- step hassle of manually uploading the fresh pictures to a photo-sharing site.

Finally, there’s an enormous showoff factor, both for you and for the manufacturer. How on earth did they fit Wi-Fi circuitry into a regular-size SD card, which could hide behind a postage stamp?

In any case, this week, a new model arrives with an even more amazing trick up its sleeve.

You know how your digital camera gives every photo an invisible time and date stamp? Well, the Eye-Fi Explore ($130) card invisibly stamps every photo with where you took it.

That’s right: photo geotagging has finally come to a camera near you. Noting what photo was taken where used to require either tedious manual data entry or expensive add-on gear. Now it comes cheaply and automatically.

Once on your Mac or PC, each such photo shows the city and state where it was taken. You can also click to view either a street-map view or an aerial photo, clearly showing where you were standing when you pressed the shutter button. At long last, technology has reached a point where we don’t need to write “Eiffel Tower, 1988” on the back of the print as a reminder.

Photo Web sites like Flickr, Picasa and SmugMug can display these maps, too. Certain desktop photo programs, like Photoshop Elements 6, Picasa and (for the Mac) Ovolabs Geophoto.

Now, that’s a pretty interesting trick. But finding out how it’s done is even more interesting.

No, it’s not G.P.S. Even the Eye-Fi people can’t yet shrink a G.P.S. receiver to fit the sliver of an SD card.

Instead, this card incorporates a new technology, a rival to G.P.S., called W.P.S.—Wi-Fi Positioning System. A company called Skyhook came up with it. (Skyhook’s first well-known client was Apple. The original iPhone doesn’t have actual G.P.S., but it does have Skyhook’s “locate me” feature.)

•

Understanding how Skyhook works requires slogging through some tech talk. But it’s fascinating, and it’s also the key to the Eye-Fi card’s strengths and limitations.

At this moment, more than 70 million Wi-Fi base stations are sitting in homes, offices and shops. Each broadcasts its own name and unique network address (called its MAC address — nothing to do with Mac computers) once a second. Although you’d need to be within 150 feet or so to actually get onto the Internet, according to Skyhook, a laptop can detect this powerful beacon signal from up to 1,500 feet away.

Metropolitan areas today are blanketed by overlapping Wi-Fi signals. At a typical Manhattan intersection, you might be in range of 20 base stations.

Skyhook’s big idea: If you could somehow correlate those beacon signals with their physical locations, you could pinpoint your own location, G.P.S.-style, but without G.P.S..

To that end, 500 full-time Skyhook employees have spent the last five years driving every road, lane and highway in every major American city —and, lately, European and Asian cities. Its equipment measures all those Wi-Fi signals leaking out of homes and stores and offices, and marries that information with the car’s G.P.S. location as it drives.

(Note: At no time does this equipment, or any iPhone or Eye-Fi card, actually connect to these base stations. They’re just reading the one-way beacon signal, which is broadcast even by password-protected base stations.)

So far, Skyhook’s database knows about 50 million hot spots—and the precise longitude and latitude of each.

And that’s it. Now any Wi-Fi gadget equipped with Skyhook’s software, like the iPhone and the new Eye-Fi card, can get a fix on its own position, accurate to around 100 feet.

As a bonus, the Skyhook system is self-healing. Suppose, for example, you’re standing on the street in Brooklyn. Your iPhone recognizes six Wi-Fi base stations around you — but one of them, according to the Skyhook database, is supposed to be in Connecticut.

Clearly, somebody moved (or moved the base station). Skyhook’s software says, “Well, the other five base stations are right where they’re supposed to be, but that sixth one looks suspicious. I’ll update my records to show that it has been moved to Brooklyn.”

Skyhook’s biggest weakness is coverage. The 50 million hot spots it knows, the company says, is enough to cover 70 percent of the populated areas in the United States and Canada, and 50 percent of Europe. But that means that the Eye-Fi card draws a blank in some of the situations when you’d most want a location fix for your photos: hiking, skiing, camping, boating or traveling abroad. These are places where you’re not likely to find any Wi-Fi signals at all.

(If that prospect bothers you, consider the $150 G.P.S. Photo Finder from ATP instead. After taking some photos, you slip your memory card into this tiny box, which stamps each picture with your current G.P.S. location. It’s more trouble than the Eye-Fi system, but at least it’s real G.P.S.)

On the other hand, Skyhook’s biggest strengths are how well it works indoors and how fast it works — one second for a fix. That makes it a perfect complement to G.P.S., which works terribly indoors, if at all, and can take up to a minute to find you.

(Indeed, the new iPhone, coming July 11, incorporates both G.P.S. and Skyhook. It even has a third location system, developed by Google, that pinpoints your location by studying your proximity to cellphone towers. That iPhone will really know where you are.)

Apart from the new geotagging feature, the new Eye-Fi card is the same as its geographically impaired predecessor, which is to say that it has the same downsides. For example, the card sends only JPEG files, not movies or RAW files. You can’t choose which photos to upload; the card always sends everything.

Two traditional Eye-Fi drawbacks, though, have been fixed. Formerly you never knew when the card was finished transmitting photos; now, Eye-Fi can send a text message to your phone when it’s safe to turn off the camera.

Nor are you limited to your own home hot spot anymore. For $15 a year, your card can use any of Wayport’s 10,000 commercial hot spots in the United States, or indeed any hot spot that’s completely open (no password, no welcome screen). The first year is free with the Explore card.

•

There’s a lot of great technology at play here. The Skyhook network, incomplete though it may be, is just wickedly clever — you can’t believe that it works, let alone works so well, at least in the 8,000 cities it covers.

Skyhook technology is also available in AOL Instant Messenger, so you can see where your chat buddies are; in location-based games like Plunder and AreaCode; and in software like Trapster, which lets drivers report speed traps when they see one — and then Trapster-equipped drivers following behind are warned on their cellphones. There’s even a browser toolbar that lets you try finding yourself: loki.com.

And when the Eye-Fi card’s pictures do arrive on your computer, being able to see where they were taken is more than a novelty. It’s a huge leap forward in the art and the utility of digital photography.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/26/te...ogue.html?8dpc





Chrysler Will Offer Wireless Internet Access in 2009 Models

The struggling automaker's announcement comes shortly before California enacts a law that requires hands-free cellphone use while driving.
Ken Bensinger

Have you ever thought rush hour on the 405 Freeway might be more bearable if you could check your e-mail, shop for a book on Amazon, place some bids on EBay and maybe even, if nobody is looking, download a little porn?

Then perhaps you should be driving a Chrysler.

The nation's third-largest automaker is set to announce Thursday that it's making wireless Internet an option on all its 2009 models. The mobile hotspot, called UConnect Web, would be the first such technology from any automaker.

Struggling Chrysler is hoping that providing motorists access to the information superhighway will set it apart from competitors and help reverse a dismal year; through May, sales are down 19.3% compared with 2007, the worst drop-off in the industry.
FOR THE RECORD:
An article in Wednesday's Section A about Chrysler offering wireless Internet connections in new cars said users of a device by Autonet Mobile get download speeds of 600 to 800 megabits per second. In fact, the speeds are 600 to 800 kilobits per second, which is about 1,000 times slower.

"It's a notion of always wanting to be connected wherever you are," said Scott Slagle, Chrysler's senior manager of global marketing strategy, who has been testing the technology since last week, allowing his daughters to surf the Web from the back seat. "There's a demand for that."

Coincidentally, Wi-Fi on wheels is being unveiled just days before new hands-free legislation goes into effect July 1 in California and Washington state. Those laws, designed to reduce accidents caused by driver distraction, prohibit talking on a cellular phone without a headset or other hands-free device.

Perhaps not surprisingly, safety advocates were less than overwhelmed by Chrysler's innovation.

"Surfing the Web is something people really don't have any business doing while they drive," said Jonathan Adkins, spokesman for the Governors Highway Safety Assn. "It's definitely a distraction."

His and other safety groups say the only way to drive safely is without using any electronic devices, headset or no.

Chrysler says that when the car is in motion, the service is intended to be used only by passengers. The privately held company acknowledges, however, that there is no way to prevent a driver from steering with one hand and Web surfing with the other.

"We're relying on the responsibility of the consumer to follow appropriate legislation," said Keefe Leung, Chrysler's engineer for the product.

In that case, Californians tempted to Google and drive can breathe a big sigh of relief: The new laws don't proscribe use of computers or the Web, except for drivers under 18 years old. There is a different law on the books preventing the use of television screens or video screens farther forward than the rear of the front seats, but it's unclear whether that measure applies to computers browsing the Internet.

State Sen. Joe Simitian (D-Palo Alto), who authored the California laws, is trying to clarify that situation. He's introduced legislation prohibiting drivers from using any "mobile service device" (including computers) or text-messaging while driving.

"It's great to see technology advance," Simitian said. "But this raises a lot of concerns."

In Chrysler's defense, it's not the first company to offer Internet access in cars. Avis Rent A Car introduced Avis Connect in January 2007. Like UConnect Web, Avis Connect (which costs $10.95 a day) operates on the 3G network using a cellular-based signal.

The device used by Avis is also available through its manufacturer, Autonet Mobile, for $595 plus a $39 monthly subscription rate. Users get download speeds of 600 megabits to 800 megabits per second.

Avis spokesman John Barrows said the device, which is portable, is fairly popular but not in as much demand as GPS units.

"We emphasize that this is not for use by the driver while operating the vehicle," Barrows said.

Chrysler will formally roll out the technology Thursday at an event in Detroit spotlighting its 2009 lineup, which will appear in showrooms in September. The automaker did not disclose pricing, but said there would probably be a base charge for the option, plus a monthly or annual fee.

UConnect Web is an extension of the company's UConnect system, which provides Bluetooth connectivity for cellphones and MP3 player integration with the car stereo. Rival Ford provides similar services, but without Web access, in its popular Sync system.

With the added Internet connectivity, drivers and passengers will be able to get such devices as laptop computers and Nintendo Wii consoles online. As to what users can download while in the car, Chrysler's Leung said anything was fair game.

"There are no limitations in content," he said
http://www.latimes.com/business/la-f...,1676276.story





Bangkok Offers 15,000 Free Wi-Fi Spots
AFP

The Thai capital will offer 500,000 people free Wi-Fi access starting Thursday, in a pilot project that will provide 15,000 hotspots for them to get online, Bangkok's municipal government said.

The scheme is part of the city's drive to cut back on its energy use as officials hope residents will drive less if electronic communication becomes more convenient.

The free service, which is set to last for one year in its initial phase, will offer only slow 64K connections designed mainly for checking email or sending text messages.

"Using information technology for communication with others rather than taking transportation will save energy in crisis period and for the future," Bangkok Governor Apirak Kosayodhin said in a statement.

"This kind of communication will also be cost-saving and convenient while answering a demand of the new generations."

Users will require a special card to access the hotspots. The city has been passing out the free cards in shopping malls in the run-up to the launch of the service on Thursday.
http://uk.news.yahoo.com/afp/2008062...t-214f919.html





Online Service Lets Blind Surf the Internet from Any Computer, Anywhere
Hannah Hickey

Visions of future technology don't involve being chained to a desktop machine. People move from home computers to work computers to mobile devices; public kiosks pop up in libraries, schools and hotels; and people increasingly store everything from e-mail to spreadsheets on the Web.

But for the roughly 10 million people in the United States who are blind or visually impaired, using a computer has, so far, required special screen-reading software typically installed only on their own machines.

New software, called WebAnywhere, launched today lets blind and visually impaired people surf the Web on the go. The tool developed at the University of Washington turns screen-reading into an Internet service that reads aloud Web text on any computer with speakers or headphone connections.

"This is for situations where someone who's blind can't use their own computer but still wants access to the Internet. At a museum, at a library, at a public kiosk, at a friend's house, at the airport," said Richard Ladner, a UW professor of computer science and engineering. The free program and both audio and video demonstrations are at http://webanywhere.cs.washington.edu.

Ladner will demonstrate the tool next week in Dallas at the National Federation of the Blind's annual convention. WebAnywhere was developed under Ladner's supervision by Jeffrey Bigham, a UW doctoral student in computer science and engineering. The research was funded by the National Science Foundation.

Free screen readers already exist, as do sophisticated commercial programs. But all must be installed on a machine before being used. This is the first accessibility tool hosted on the Web, meaning it doesn't have to be downloaded onto a computer. It processes the text on an external server and then sends the audio file to play in the user's Web browser.

"You don't have to install new software. So even if you go to a heavily locked-down computer, say at a library, you can still use it," Bigham said.

In May, Bigham was named the winner of the Accessible Technology Award for Interface Design for the Imagine Cup, a student programming contest sponsored by Microsoft Corp. The prize comes with $8,000 and a trip to Paris in early July.

For the past month WebAnywhere has been available on request. Bigham said he's received inquiries from librarians who would like to make all their machines accessible on a limited budget. He's also had interest from teachers who struggle to find the time to locate free software, get permission to install it on a school computer and then maintain the program so that a single computer is accessible to a visually impaired student. This software would make any computer in the lab instantly accessible for Internet tasks. The Web-based service also eliminates the need for local technical support: there is no software to install or update because each time a person visits the site he or she gets the latest version.

To test the software, researchers had people use the tool to do three things typically done at public machines: check e-mail, look up a bus schedule and search for a restaurant's phone number. People using WebAnywhere were able to successfully complete all three tasks, using a variety of machines and Internet connections.

Like other screen readers, WebAnywhere converts written text to an electronically generated voice. So far the system works only in English. But the source code was released a few weeks ago and a Web developer in China has expressed interest in developing a Chinese version.

The UW team plans to create updates that will allow users to change the speed at which the text is read aloud and add other popular features found in existing screen readers. The service is currently hosted on a server at the UW campus.

Bigham is also working with Benetech, a Palo Alto, Calif., technology nonprofit that distributes free electronic books, to make its collection of more than 30,000 books accessible to blind users without them having to install any screen-reading software.

He believes this could be the first of many Web-based accessibility tools.

"Traditional desktop tools such as e-mail, word processors and spreadsheets are moving to the Web," Bigham said. "Access technology, which currently runs only on the desktop, needs to follow suit."
http://uwnews.org/article.asp?articleID=42563





'Shake-up' for Internet Proposed
Darren Waters

The net could see its biggest transformation in decades if plans to open up the address system are passed.

The net's regulators will vote on Thursday to decide if the strict rules on so-called top level domain names, such as .com or .uk, can be relaxed.

If approved, it could allow companies to turn their brands into domain names while individuals could also carve out their own corner of the net.

The move could also see the launch of .xxx, after years of wrangling.

Top level domains are currently limited to individual countries, such as .uk (UK) or .it (Italy), as well as to commerce, .com, and to institutional organisations, such as .net, or .org.

To get around the restrictions, some companies have used the current system to their own ends.

For example, the Polynesia island nation Tuvalu, has leased the use of the .tv address to many television firms.

The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (Icann), which acts a sort of regulator for the net, as well as overseeing the domain name system, has been working towards opening up net addresses for the last three years.

The plan would also allow for the new domain names to be internationalised, and so could be written in scripts for Asian and Arabic languages.

Dr Paul Twomey, chief executive of Icann, told BBC News that the proposals would result in the biggest change to the way the internet worked in decades.

"The impact of this will be different in different parts of the world. But it will allow groups, communities and business to express their identities online.

"Like the United States in the 19th Century, we are in the process of opening up new real estate, new land, and people will go out and claim parts of that land and use it for various reasons they have.

"It's a massive increase in the geography of the real estate of the internet."

Arbitration process

Hundreds of new domain names could be created by the end of the year, rising to thousands in the future.

Icann says any string of letters can be registered as a domain, but there will be an independent arbitration process for people with grounds for objection.

The openness of the new system could pave the way for a .xxx domain name, after more than half a decade of wrangling between its backers and Icann.

The latest attempt to launch .xxx was rejected by Icann last year on the grounds that approval would put the agency into the position of a content regulator.

When asked about the possibility of a .xxx domain name, Dr Twomey repeated only that the new system would be "open to anyone".

The move could yet be blocked as the independent arbitration panel can reject domains based on "morality or public order" grounds.

Dr Twomey said Icann was still working through how much the application fee to register a domain name will be, but it is expected to be at least several thousand dollars.

'Cost recovery'

"We are doing this on a cost recovery basis. We've already spent $10m on this," he said.

Individuals will be able to register a domain based on their own name, or any other string of letters, as long as they can show a "business plan and technical capacity".

While companies will be able to secure domain names based on their intellectual property easily, some domain names could become subject to contention and a bidding war.

Dr Twomey said: "If there is a dispute, we will try and get the parties together to work it out. But if that fails there will be an auction and the domain will go to the highest bidder."
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/7468855.stm





The Pirate Bay Pledges ISPs to Block Sweden
Ernesto

In an response to the new wiretapping law that was introduced in Sweden this week, The Pirate Bay will ask international ISPs to block traffic to Sweden, to protect their customers. In addition, the BitTorrent tracker will add SSL encryption to their site, and roll out a new VPN service.

Earlier this week, Swedish parliament had voted in favor of a new “wiretapping” law which invades the privacy of its citizens by allowing the government to monitor Internet traffic and phone calls, without the need for court orders.

Before the law was passed, The Pirate Bay crew spoke out against it, and now they are upping the ante. In an initial response they went out putting “wanted posters” up, of politicians who voted in favor of the law. Their next move is to ask international ISPs to block traffic to Sweden, according to Pirate Bay co-founder Peter Sunde.

“Together with other people that work against this law we’ve talked about asking international ISPs to block traffic to Sweden,” Peter writes on his blog. “Yes, that’s right! We want Sweden to be banned from the Internet. The ISPs need to block Sweden in order to protect their own customers integrity since everything they do on Swedish ISPs networks will be logged and searched.”

That is not all though. In addition to these lobbying efforts The Pirate bay will also add SSL encryption to their site, and they will inform their users on how to protect their privacy. For Swedes they already have a VPN solution up and running, which they will open up to international users in the near future.

“We’re going to help out in any way we can with fighting the law,” Peter writes. “This week we’re going to add SSL to The Pirate Bay. We’re also going to help out making a website about easy encryption - both for your harddrives and your net traffic.”

It’s good to see that The Pirate Bay team will not give up their privacy as easy as some of the politicians. “Trust me, this war is not lost,” Peter told TorrentFreak. “We will win. We have many aces up our sleeves and we’re gonna use them. No worries.”
http://torrentfreak.com/the-pirate-b...sweden-080622/





SSL Encrpytion Coming to The Pirate Bay
Thomas Mennecke

Encryption and file-sharing technology have a long history together. Usenet servers, LimeWire, uTorrent, and many other applications and protocols have taken advantage of encryption technology to help give the end user an additional layer of security. In response to Sweden's new wiretapping law, The Pirate Bay's Peter Sunde has announced the tracker’s intention to offer encryption services to its users.

According to the Local, Sweden's surveillance law, which passed on Thursday of this week, allows the government to monitor all incoming and outgoing transmissions in the name of national security.

Although The Pirate Bay's lobbying efforts against the bill were unsuccessful, the tracker still has a few cards left to play. According to Sunde, The Pirate Bay will roll out an encryption option this week.

"Many people have asked me what we’re planning to do," Peter writes in his blog "- and the answer is “A lot!”. We’re going to help out in any way we can with fighting the law. This week we’re going to add SSL to The Pirate Bay. We’re also going to help out making a website about easy encryption - both for your hard drives and your net traffic. As some people know, we’re running a system for VPN-tunnels already and we’re going to lower the price for that as well and open it up for international users as well."

The level of protection offered likely varies on the individual's geographical location. Since The Pirate Bay isn't actually situated in Sweden, a user in the United States isn't impacted by the law. However for the concerned user living in Sweden, the new SSL feature will offer some security against the perceived threat.

Historically, BitTorrent end users have faced little in the way of legal repercussions, regardless of their association with a tracker. Despite the seizure of LokiTorrent and EliteTorrent's userbase information, the only legal action taken was against the administration. That's not to say that can't change in Sweden, however history is on the side of the user – and so is The Pirate Bay. The irony, interestingly enough, is that both The Pirate Bay and Swedish Government's intentions are in the name of security.
http://www.slyck.com/story1691_SSL_E...The_Pirate_Bay





IsoHunt adds 10.000 Free and Legal Albums
Ben Jones

Despite being ensnared in legal proceedings with the MPAA, isoHunt is continuing to grow. Adding fuel to the ’significant non-infringing use’ argument is their latest partnership, with the Creative Commons music distribution site Jamendo.

When BitTorrent sites have come under attack by media groups and their battalions of lawyers, it’s usual for them to pull up the drawbridge and keep the site going as is, and try to get the case over with as soon as possible. The other option is to close down and hunt for a settlement, but isoHunt, like its other big-site brethren, hasn’t. Despite a legal campaign that’s now over two years old, it continues to grow and add features and functionality.

One of these new developments has been the addition of increasing numbers of Creative Commons (CC) licensed material. Creative Commons media is licensed by the creator, to be shared - usually with some restrictions - and is the same license used by TorrentFreak. It’s not a niche license, instead it is becoming increasingly popular, with Nine Inch Nails having released their Ghosts album under a CC license earlier this year.

With this is mind, isoHunt has announced a partnership with Jamendo, a site that deals in Creative Commons licensed music. Reaching the 10,000 album milestone only days ago, content available on Jamendo is growing quickly and when you grow, it helps to be able to get the content out there. This is why isoHunt decided to partner with several BitTorrent sites. isoHunt’s owner, Gary Fung, has been a long time supporter of Creative Commons and public domain works, and has stated that there is a strong future in Creative Commons material at isoHunt.

Laurent Kratz, CEO of Jamendo told TorrentFreak “Jamendo uses the Creative Commons licensing scheme to keep the rules very straight forward : copy as much as you can eat, the artist, the right-holders are ok. The new thing about partnering with a torrent portal like isoHunt, is that Jamendo has started an editorial work on top.”

“We receive up to 500 new albums per week, from more than 60 countries in the world,” Kratz said. “In order to maximize the interest of millions using torrent search engines every day, it was critical to only highlight a subset of all the albums we receive every day. It’s not about discriminating one band from another, it’s about getting anonymous BitTorrent fans to Jamendo, and discovering unsigned bands from everywhere in the world.”

Jamendo is also partnering with SumoTorrent, and torrent.to, and has been experimenting with mininova. In addition, their torrents are also available through Vuze. What better way to “stick it to the **AA” as so many of our commenters put it, than to ignore their memberships product, and use sites like this instead.
http://torrentfreak.com/isohunt-adds...albums-080621/





In Search of Perfect Harmony, Through Software
Anne Eisenberg

MUSICIANS who want to create note-perfect digital recordings of their performances may soon have a powerful tool to help them: a computer program designed to correct mistakes in their piano riffs or guitar accompaniments as easily as software now fixes the red eyes in digital photographs.

The new software is precise enough, for instance, to reach into an audio file and change any one of the six notes in a guitar chord without changing the sound of the other notes, said Peter Neubäcker, inventor of the program and founder of Celemony Software, the Munich company that will sell it.

The software, called Direct Note Access, will be released in the fall and cost $399.

Software can already perform its share of musical Botox with digital recordings, smoothing and correcting performances. If a vocalist recording in the studio sings off key, for example, programs from Celemony and others can nudge a note up or down digitally to get it on pitch.

But that manipulation works only with music that has a single line of notes — for instance, a solo vocal performance. The problem of editing mistakes within polyphonic music — in which more than one note sounds simultaneously, as it does in a fugue, or in songs by a barbershop quartet or a rock band — is much trickier.

Software like Direct Note Access that can edit single pitches in polyphonic music may become popular, said Brian Majeski of The Music Trades, a magazine in Englewood, N.J. Last year, consumers spent $150 million on software for computer-based recording systems, he said. Many of these customers work in professional recording studios, but a growing number edit their music on computers at home, as much recording activity during the past decade has switched from studios to living rooms.

“Recording studios have millions of dollars’ worth of equipment that people once rented and used,” he said. “Now you can buy a computer and software like this and for a few thousand dollars have more capability than the Beatles had when they did their stuff.”

Direct Note Access is designed for music recorded on many tracks, with the bass guitar on one track, for instance, and the vocalist on another. Pitch corrections can be made for all tracks, one by one.

The software may also have applications for music of the past. “If you recorded a piece with a guitar that was out of tune,” Mr. Neubäcker said, “you could now go back and fix the tuning on the recording.”

Mr. Neubäcker’s program received a round of appreciative applause when it was demonstrated for professionals at a trade show in Frankfurt this spring. People outside the world of recorded music, however, may not immediately grasp its ingenuity, said Julius O. Smith III, a professor of music and associate professor of electrical engineering at the Center for Computer Research in Music and Acoustics at Stanford.

“It’s difficult to separate simultaneous sounds in a recording,” he said. “Since our brains do this all the time, it can be hard to appreciate the magnitude of the task” when it is done by computer.

The difficulty is inherent in the sounds themselves. Notes have a basic tone, or fundamental, but they can also have many overtones that intermix in polyphonic music.

Mr. Neubäcker’s program is designed to tease out this musical mix of simultaneous sound and sort it into separate sonic envelopes that can then be manipulated.

Mr. Neubäcker learned his technique of sonic sorting in part by ear, in part by algorithms. “I listened carefully,” he said, “and I also used spectrum analysis,” graphical displays of the complex blends of frequencies in each tone he analyzed.

Professor Smith said that the demonstration of the program he saw on the Internet “looked superb, truly groundbreaking.”

John Gibson, an assistant professor of composition at Indiana University in Bloomington, has also seen a demonstration on the Internet but remains skeptical.

“Sound is complicated,” he said, and devising a program that corrects pitches of single notes within polyphonic music is a daunting task. “Many people think that this is not possible. I’ll believe it once I’ve tried it out myself.”

EVEN if the program works well, its abilities may leave many professionals cold, including Adrian Carr, a Grammy-nominated recording engineer and composer in Montreal. “More and more in our recorded sound, we have an obsession with perfection,” he said. “No artist, especially classical, wants to release a recording with a wrong note. People edit so much it takes out some of the spontaneity.”

Mark Schubin of Manhattan, too, showed no interest. Mr. Schubin is the engineer in charge of live high-definition transmissions to movie theaters of Metropolitan Opera performances; in those transmissions, he said, “never, absolutely never” is a singer’s voice corrected by software.

“I just wonder how close to perfection is really desirable,” he said.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/22/te...y/22novel.html





Does Music Have the Power to Send Us to Sleep?

A recent experiment in Japan tested the power of music to send us into a deep slumber. Leo Lewis stayed awake to test the results.
Leo Lewis

To the casual eye, many features of everyday life seem destined to lull the Japanese to sleep: the steady rattle of a stuffy commuter train, the drone of a monotonous lecturer, the thrum of an office air-conditioner.

But the job of artificially persuading them to drift off into slumber turns out to be much more complicated. Give them pillows, blankets and bombard them with nearly three hours of drowse-inducing music and most will still be wide awake at the end of the show.

The audience at an extraordinary mass experiment in sleep-induction in Central Tokyo ten days ago is still not sure whether Dreams Kaimin - Kaimin is best translated as “good sleep” or “sound sleep” - was a success or not. It set out, under the supervision of one of Japan's most celebrated “sleep doctors”, to use the power of music to push 1,500 people into sweet oblivion. More than half simply enjoyed an entertaining night out at the theatre.

Certainly, there were plenty of people whose heads slumped on to their chins during the carefully arranged playlist of gentle classical and modern music, but then it is not uncommon to see Japanese concert-goers nodding off during Franz Ferdinand and Guns n' Roses concerts.

What has still not been established is whether the concert produced more than the natural quotient of snoozers, and whether those who did grab forty winks did so in record time. If there was one firm conclusion, said those whose shoulders became ad hoc pillows for their male neighbours, it was that a lot of men fell asleep as soon as the female vocalist began.

Two elderly men did not stir for two hours

Opening arrangements of Chopin and Tchaikovsky did not leave the audience any noticeably more heavy-headed after the first quarter of an hour. Better results were achieved a few minutes later when Aoi Teshima, the young female singer, ran through a quartet of popular Japanese numbers, Teru, Wishes, Rainbow and Rose, that sent the two elderly men on either side of me into a sleep from which they did not stir for another two hours.

Several audience members later queried the music choices. Most felt that Mary Hopkins's folk hit from the Sixties, Those Were The Days My Friend, was too interesting and popular to send them to sleep. A rendition of a well-known Japanese song by Masafumi Akikawa, the tenor soloist, was equally exhilarating. Many said they were too thrilled to hear a performance by the great Akikawa to waste the moment on slumber.

Yasuo and Yoshiko Abe, husband and wife participants in the experiment, went out of curiosity, they said, because they had never heard of a concert in which the audience was supposed to sleep. “Knowing that we were actually allowed to sleep made me relax and listen to the music without much feeling of trying to judge the quality of the performance,” Yasuo said. “In that sense, it's good. But being told that you can sleep also got me a little twisted mentally, and so I tried not to sleep.”

Selecting the right music

The brains behind Dreams Kaimin is Dr Takuro Endo, a neurologist who has made a science, and a lucrative CD business, out of selecting the right music to induce sleep. He divides it into three categories: melodies that fire the imagination; those that are calming and relaxing; and music that should, within ten minutes, slow the brain down to the point of unconsciousness. Do not, he cautions, listen to the third category when you're driving. In his limited laboratory experiments, Dr Endo honed a playlist from that third category down to a smaller collection, most of which was played to the Tokyo audience.

Japan's relationship with sleep has always been a complicated one. For instance, the Japanese appear able to sleep anywhere, at any time: low crime rates make people feel especially secure about drifting off on public transport.

But a good night's sleep has been the victim of the country's so-called economic miracle, the long phase of growth in which Japan was propelled from a post-war mess to Asia's most sparkling modern economy. Long hours and the demands of the all-consuming corporate lifestyle have come at the expense of sleep.

Now, as the economy struggles to come to terms with what it has matured into, the Japanese are decreasingly happy at the imposition of the office. Several “napping rooms” have sprung up in Tokyo's main business districts so workers can sleep in their lunch break without the shame of being seen by their colleagues.

Tastes vary According to Professor Jim Horne, the director of the Sleep Research Centre at Loughborough University, music helps people to sleep because it helps them to relax. Generally, children find gentle music lulling, but in adults different music will prove relaxing for different people. CDs of music marketed on the grounds of curing insomnia will work for some, but not others, Horne says. “The secret is to find anything that gives your brain peace of mind.”

Brain music Research from the University of Toronto has suggested that a CD of your brain waves converted into music can help you to sleep. Researchers recorded people's brain waves as they fell asleep, and then converted them into sound. The research subjects listened to the recordings each night for 30 days and fell asleep three times faster than people listening to other people's brain waves.

Didgeridoos Creating music before you go to bed may also induce sleep. A 2006 study in the British Medical Journal concluded that playing a didgeridoo before bed helped people with sleep apnoea to nod off. “Blasting away on an instrument might help you to get rid of troubling emotions before you go to sleep,” Horne says.

The top ten tunes to help you drift off:

Saku, Susumu Yakota

Nocturne, Chopin

Piano Concerto no 1, Tchaikovsky

Eine kleine Nachtmusik, Mozart

Pachelbel, Canon in D

Rose, Aoi Teshima

By This River, Brian Eno

Pie Jesu, John Rutter

Albatross, Fleetwood Mac

Divertimento No. 2 in D Major, Mozart
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/lif...cle4178204.ece





Teen Arrested for 'Blasphemous T-Shirt'
Ben Dillaway

A GOLD Coast teenager who wore a T-shirt by English extreme metal band Cradle of Filth that reads 'Jesus is a c**t' has been charged with offensive behaviour.

Above the offensive slogan a nun is depicted masturbating.

A 16-year-old was arrested on Monday for wearing the shirt and was charged with offensive behaviour under the Summary Offences Act 2005 for public nuisance.

Senior Sergeant Arron Ottaway said the teen was walking along Hollywell Road, in Biggera Waters, when a officer saw him.

Police conducted inquiries at Australia Fair, where the teen said he bought the shirt, to find any shops selling it.

The Reverend Matt Hunt of the Helensvale Baptist Church said it was sad people spoke about the Lord in such a way.

"It's fairly common language these days to express sadness, anger or hurt," he said. "It's a degrading word to use and Jesus is anything but that. It's like calling white black."

Mr Hunt said using the Lord's name in vain was a serious sin.

"When someone comes to the point of saying Jesus is the devil or Jesus is 'expletive', the Bible does say be very careful because you're on thin ice."

Gold Coast lawyer Bill Potts said the arrest highlighted Australia's need for a Bill of Rights.

"One of the great problems with our country is that we talk about rights such as privacy and freedom of speech and the like but they are not enshrined or protected in any way as they are in America," he said.

"While there are always limits on freedom of speech, you can't incite violence or anything like that, it seems to be now more than ever that our rights to freedom of speech and freedom of expression should be protected.

"A Bill of Rights which enshrines that protection is long overdue in this country."

Mr Potts said charging the teen was 'ludicrous' and brought the law into disrepute.

"A shirt might offend some and might be amusing to others," he said.

"If a person was wearing the shirt in a church or a religious rally where it was specifically intended to offend or cause disruption, then perhaps the prosecution might stand a chance.

"However, to criminalise juvenile or boorish messages is to bring the law into disrepute. The police are acting like the thought police and censors."
http://www.news.com.au/story/0,23599...rom=public_rss





School's Out for Death Metal Teacher
David Landes

A hard rocking teacher who was fired before ever setting foot in a classroom has lodged a discrimination complaint with Sweden’s Ombudsman of Justice (JO).

In early June, Emil Koverot, who goes by the stage name Yxmarder as a member of the death metal band Blodsrit (Blood Rite), had been offered and accepted a position as an aesthetics instructor at the Hammargymnasiet high school in Västervik.

Koverot’s reputation as a hard rock guitarist was well known in the community in southern Sweden.

His band even came up during his employment interview with the school’s principal Sven Torstensson.

“He thought my participation in the band was a good thing,” Koverot explained to The Local.

“There are several students at the school who are into hard rock and he thought that I’d be able to relate to them better.”

Koverot had just received his teaching degree and was looking forward to the start of classes in August.

He had even turned down other offers after being offered the job at Hammargymnasiet.

But within a week, Torstenssonhad changed his tune about the appropriateness of Koverot’s membership in Blodsrit.

“He based the dismissal on my participation in a hard rock band, something that couldn’t be accepted by other staff, or by the student’s parents,” wrote Koverot in his complaint to JO.

“The principal felt that my band was so highly immoral that he advised against me ever devoting myself to leading a classroom.”

Koverot theorizes that some of the school’s staff and parents who belong to the Pentecostalist church put pressure on Torstensson to have Koverot fired for fear that he might be a bad influence.

“It’s the same old stereotypes,” he said.

“It’s the same way people reacted to the Beatles in the 1960s.”

Attempts by The Local to reach the principal for comment were unsuccessful.

However, he defended the decision in an interview with the Västerviks Tidningen (VT) newspaper.

“The contents of the band’s lyrics conflict with the school’s values,” he told the newspaper.

Torstensson added that the decision to fire Koverot was taken after he reviewed Boldrit's lyrics together with lawyers from the Swedish Association of Regions and Local Authorities (SALAR), which has authority over Sweden's public schools.

Koverot feels the school has handled the matter inappropriately and in so doing has violated his right to freedom of expression.

“From my perspective, this is a question of democratic values. As a state authority, one of a school’s most important tasks is to protect democracy and equal treatment,” he said.

“I think it’s regrettable that the principal could pass judgment on my own beliefs and hobbies.”

Blodsrit, which was formed in 2000, has released six albums and regularly tours throughout Europe.
http://www.thelocal.se/12626/20080624/





Boutique Audio Systems: 1,000 Watts of Luxury
John R. Quain

“I’M an audio snob,” confessed Chris Ziemer, whose home stereo system included a vintage McIntosh tube amplifier, “but when I heard the Mark Levinson sound system in a friend’s Lexus S.U.V., I was impressed.”

That’s precisely the kind of reaction more luxury automakers and esoteric high-end audio companies are seeking by offering specially designed car sound systems to buyers who may not recognize names like Bowers & Wilkins and Naim Audio, but would welcome the option of having a top-notch stereo system. After all, you don’t have to be familiar with terms like timbre and sound stage to appreciate an exquisitely reproduced Mozart concerto — you just have to be able to afford it.

“It’s a chance to extend the brand to a broader customer base outside the traditional audiophile community,” said Joe Atkins, chief executive of Bowers & Wilkins.

But just as one would not order a $100 Pomerol wine with a Big Mac, optional high-end audio systems don’t always enhance particular cars. Witness the demise of the 200-watt McIntosh Audiophile Sound System that always seemed like an odd factory option in the utilitarian Subaru Outback. On the other hand, in a $50,000 luxury coupe, a four-figure stereo option doesn’t seem like an extravagance.

Among such arranged marriages, one of the first successes in the industry was the Lexus and Mark Levinson union. The audio company was well-known by audiophiles for the thundering clarity of its home systems, but increased its brand awareness through its pairing with Lexus in 2001. The top-of-the-line system that Lexus offers is the Mark Levinson Reference Surround package, which is standard in the company’s six-figure-plus LS 600h L hybrid. It’s a true 7.1 surround-sound system with 19 speakers and 450 watts of power. (And for the record, the oceans of music it generates do sound luxurious.)

But like all marriages, such a divine pairing can take years of hard work. The Danish audio stylist Bang & Olufsen, for example, spent about three years developing a car audio system for the 2005 Audi A8. The company’s engineers experimented with a variety of speaker materials, for example, and spent hundreds of hours just tuning the system to the A8’s interior.

It’s a peculiar challenge for boutique audio companies accustomed to striving for the perfect sound without regard to cost. Properly designed car stereo systems have to be precisely adjusted to a vehicle’s cabin, taking into account the sound absorption of the interior materials, reflective qualities of the glass, sound pressure levels of exterior road noise and the seating and arrangement of passengers and driver, for example. Consequently, engineers can spend hours listening to the same CD over and over again, taking sound measurements and making minute adjustments.

And while many automakers thought Bang & Olufsen’s idea to offer a $6,300 car stereo option was crazy, Tommy Boye Rasmussen, a spokesman for the audio company, said they had begun to understand the value. The first year the option was offered for the Audi A8, just 1,000 systems were expected to be sold; by the end of the first production year, 4,000 had been snapped up.

Now, many Audi models have Bang & Olufsen systems, including the Advanced Sound System in the Audi Q7, with 14 speakers, including tweeters that pop up on the dash when you turn the ignition, all supported by 1,000 watts of power.

There have been other luxury brand nuptials, including Jaguar and the British loudspeaker innovator Bowers & Wilkins. The 2009 Jaguar XF has a Bowers & Wilkins 440-watt, 14-speaker system for which even a Jaguar competitor, Aston Martin, expressed appreciation at a recent trade show.

The apogee of such exotic sound systems appearing as factory options in luxury brands may well be the 1.1-kilowatt (that’s more than 1,000 watts) Naim Audio systems, which will become an option on all Bentley Motors cars this summer. Naim spent more than two years developing the systems, said Paul Stephenson, the company’s managing director.

The work included upgrading the car’s wiring, developing powerful amplifiers that were efficient enough to work in a car and measuring the side panels of each model’s interior to prevent the doors from vibrating. Such vibrations can cause distortion and effectively turn the doors into massive speakers, contributing to sound leakage to the outside. The system’s cost has not been announced.

Naim tested 139 different speaker prototypes and created its own computer software to analyze the acoustic qualities of each car paired with different audio system designs. It literally involved engineers riding in test cars with laptops and microphones to get precise readings. Naim said the sound system can perform the sonic trick of automatically equalizing the music according to the position of the convertible top.

But can an over-the-top sound system sway a buyer to purchase a particular car? “It wouldn’t make me buy a Lexus,” Mr. Ziemer said. “But it would influence my choice between two luxury cars — if I were buying a luxury car.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/22/au...s/22SOUND.html





PwC: Global Music Spending To Decline Gradually By 2012
FMQB

PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) has released its Entertainment and Media Outlook for 2008-2012, a comprehensive prediction of spending on all types of media over the next few years. According to PwC, worldwide spending on recorded music will drop slightly every year, with a 0.6 percent annual decline predicted. Global spending will decline from last year's $33.4 billion to $32.5 billion by 2012.

Digital music sales, of course, will continue on the upswing, with PWC predicting a 20 percent annual increase in sales. By 2012, the U.S. is expected to spend $5 billion on digital music, but Asia will lead the way with $7.5 billion. Digital revenues are expected to surpass physical music sales by 2012 in the States.

Overall, PWC predicts revenue from the entertainment and media industries to grow by an average of 6.6 percent annual, hitting $2.2 trillion worldwide by 2012. The music industry was predicted to be the weakest area of the entertainment and media industries, while television is expected to be stronger than many experts have forecasted. "The oft-reported death of traditional media remains greatly exaggerated," PwC stated. http://fmqb.com/Article.asp?id=754891

Gap Still Wide In Digital Vs. Physical Music Sales

According to a new report from the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI), global music sales dropped 8 percent to $19.4 billion in 2007, reaching their lowest level in at least 10 years. Physical sales of CDs and DVDs fell 13 percent to $15.9 billion. And while sales of digital downloads and ringtones rose 34 percent to $2.9 billion, the increase is still not enough to make up for the lagging physical sales.

Digital sales "are growing healthily but, crucially, not fast enough to arrest the overall decline of the market," said IFPI Chairman John Kennedy, according to Bloomberg News.

The IFPI report also shows that Internet piracy is still a major problem. There were 30 billion illegal downloads around the world in 2007, with 39 percent of teenagers in the U.S. using file-sharing networks to access music. Physical and digital piracy cost the U.S. music industry $5.3 billion, and digital piracy accounted for 70 percent of that figure, the report said.

"Even the most innovative business models are totally undermined by free music," Kennedy commented.

In an effort to help solve the problem of piracy, the IFPI said that engaging the support of Internet service providers is an industry priority, as research suggests that more than two-thirds of file-sharers would stop their activity if they received a warning note from their providers. Furthermore, the cabinet of French President Nicolas Sarkozy approved a draft bill on Wednesday to introduce new sanctions aimed at individuals who illegally download content from the Internet.
http://fmqb.com/Article.asp?id=754838





Coldplay's Sales Feats Heat Up Album Charts
Billboard

Coldplay keeps the top soil fertile on the Billboard 200, as "Viva La Vida or Death and All His Friends" opens with 721,000 sold.

With that U.S. splash, the British band ices the No. 1 slot on both sides of the Atlantic as it holds court for a second week on the U.K. albums chart. Coming a week after Lil Wayne joined the million-per-week club with "Tha Carter III," Coldplay's American splash invokes a few "first since" chart feats.

This marks the first time since March 2005 that the Billboard 200 was led by a 700,000-plus sum in consecutive weeks. The last occasion happened when 50 Cent's "The Massacre" sold 1.1 million in its first frame, then 771,000 in its second.

The parlay from Lil Wayne, now No. 2 with 308,000 sold, to Coldplay also represents just the second time in Nielsen SoundScan history that two different albums open north of 700,000 in back-to-back weeks. Britney Spears' "Oops! ... I Did It Again" and Eminem's "The Marshall Mathers LP" accomplished that feat in May 2000, when they each started with million-plus weeks; 1.8 million for "LP" and 1.3 million for "Oops!"

Following a 2005 start of 737,000 for "X&Y," Coldplay also becomes the first act to field weeks of 700,000-plus copies on consecutive albums since September and the first band or group to do so since 2001.

Kanye West was the last artist to do it, when "Graduation" arrived last year with first-week sales of 957,000 after his "Late Registration" rang 860,000 in 2005. 'N Sync became the last ensemble to do so when it followed its historic 2.4 million-unit launch of "No Strings Attached" in 2000 with an opener of 1.9 million the following year for "Celebrity."

Similar to the battle of divas that happened a couple of months ago, when Mariah Carey's "E=MC2" had a bigger U.S. number while Madonna's "Hard Candy" had larger global success, with more No. 1s scored outside the United States, Coldplay has more of an impact on Billboard's Hits of the World charts than Lil Wayne did.

The band's "Viva" goes No. 1 in 18 of the global territories tracked by Billboard. With 15 of those aces notched in Europe, the set also leads the Euro Albums chart.

By contrast, Canada was the only country outside the States where Lil Wayne's "Tha Carter III" went No. 1. Its highest rank outside North America was a No. 11 start in Portugal.

According to Nielsen SoundScan's Building chart, posted June 25, Coldplay will likely have the first album in 10 weeks to hold at No. 1 for more than a week, as it appears the top bow on the upcoming list will be a No. 2 or No. 3 start for Motley Crue's "Saints of Los Angeles." Carey's "E=MC2" was the last to hold the fort for multiple weeks.http://www.reuters.com/article/enter...42476320080628

Top Pop Catalog Albums for the 7/5/2008 Issue

Now Last Weeks Peak
1 11 68 1 X&Y - Coldplay (Capitol)
2 3 949 1 Legend: The Best Of Bob Marley And The Wailers - Bob Marley And The Wailers (Tuff Gong/Island/UMe)
3 2 28 1 I Can Only Imagine: Platinum Edition - Various Artists (INO/Time Life)
4 15 211 1 A Rush Of Blood To The Head - Coldplay (Capitol)
5 24 200 1 Parachutes - Coldplay (Nettwerk/Capitol)
6 1 763 1 Journey's Greatest Hits - Journey (Legacy/Columbia/Sony BMG)
7 4 222 1 Greatest Hits - Guns N' Roses (Geffen/IGA)
8 - 9 8 Pacific Ocean Blue: Legacy Edition - Dennis Wilson (Caribou/Epic/Legacy/Sony BMG)
9 6 252 1 Thriller 25 - Michael Jackson (Legacy/Epic/Sony BMG)
10 7 176 1 It's Time - Michael Buble (143/Reprise/Warner Bros.)
http://www.reuters.com/article/billb...35760120080627





Prince Strikes Again: Sues to Stop Norwegian Tribute Project
TDS Editors

The long arm of Prince strikes again.

One of the little man’s biggest fans ever, a Norwegian label owner and TV-star by the name of Christer Falck, head of C+C Records, thought he’d celebrate TAFKATAFKAP‘s 50th birthday by asking some 50 Norwegian artists to pick one song from Prince’s huge catalog and record their own version. The plan was to release a 5-CD box of these covers and spread them to the world in 5000 copies as a gesture of love (no-one got paid).

The 81-track, 5-CD set was released earlier this month to rave reviews in many of Norway’s numerous daily newspapers (VG, Dagbladet, Aftenposten , Dagsavsien, Morgenbladet ) and immediately entered the country’s album charts at #8 (a first for a tribute album).

Of course Christer thought he’d give the Purple One himself a copy, and got in touch to present his plan. Well, as word reached Prince via his management, he responded with a “over my dead 50-year old body”. Dagbladet, the country’s second largest daily, now reports that Prince’s lawyers have sued C+C Records and asked for all copies of the tribute to be destroyed.

The album is still listed on the label’s website and snippets of many of the tracks can be heard on this MySpace page.
http://www.thedailyswarm.com/swarm/p...ibute-project/





Joss Stone: Piracy is Brilliant, Music Should be Shared
Ernesto

They are quite rare events but on occasion, artists actually encourage fans to share their music online. Singer Joss Stone has no problem doing so at all. In fact, after a recent concert in Argentina she said that piracy is “brilliant”.

Joss Stone, who won a Grammy last year, loves music, but hates the the music industry. In a recent interview she said that - unlike herself - most artists are brainwashed by the industry, and she encouraged people to share her music.

After the show a reporter asked her what she thinks of piracy, and people who download her songs off the Internet. Her response baffled the reporter, as she simply told him: “I think it’s great…” There was an awkward silence for a few seconds, the reporter probably expected to hear something else from her. “Great?,” he said.

“Yeah, I love it. I think it’s brilliant and I’ll tell you why,” Stone continued. “Music should be shared. [...] The only part about music that I dislike is the business that is attached to it. Now, if music is free, then there is no business, there is just music. So, I like it, I think that we should share.”

“It’s ok, if one person buys it, it’s totally cool, burn it up, share it with your friends, I don’t care. I don’t care how you hear it as long as you hear it. As long as you come to my show, and have a great time listening to the live show it’s totally cool. I don’t mind. I’m happy that they hear it.”

Stone went on to say that most artists have probably been “brainwashed” by the record labels, when they discourage their fans from downloading music. Of course, Stone is not the only artist who actually wants people to share their work. Last year rapper 50 Cent made some positive remarks about filesharing, and Nine Inch Nails takes it even further, as they upload their music onto BitTorrent sites themselves.

These artists are spot on, in fact, several studies have shown that artists actually benefit from filesharing. The more music people share, the more CDs they buy and the more concerts they visit.
http://torrentfreak.com/joss-stone-p...lliant-080625/





Recording Industry Decries AM-FM Broadcasting as 'A Form of Piracy'
David Kravets

The recording industry and U.S. radio companies have squared off for decades about whether AM and FM radio broadcasters should pay royalties to singers, musicians and their labels.

But now the debate is getting meaner; there's more at stake as the recording industry seeks new income avenues in the wake of wanton peer-to-peer piracy and declining CD sales in part due to the iPod and satellite radio. A U.S. House subcommittee could vote as early as Thursday on a royalty measure.

On Monday, the recording industry sent the National Association of Broadcasters -- the trade group representing the $16 billion a year AM-FM broadcasting business -- a can of herring to underscore that it believes its arguments against paying royalties are a red herring. The NAB says its members should not pay royalties because AM-FM radio "promotes" the music industry.

The herring present followed another gift -- a dictionary, a bid by the recording industry to explain what it saw as the difference between fees and taxes. The NAB describes the latest royalty proposal as a tax.

And two weeks ago, the recording industry, under the umbrella group musicFIRST, sent the NAB four digital downloads: "Take the Money and Run" by the Steve Miller Band; "Pay me My Money Down" by Bruce Springsteen; "Back In the U.S.S.R" by Paul McCartney and "A Change Would Do You Good" by Sheryl Crow.

Broadcasting music without payment is akin to piracy, the industry says.

"It's a form of piracy, if you will, but not in the classic sense as we think of it," said Martin Machowsky, a musicFirst spokesman. "Today we gifted them a can of herring, about their argument that they provide promotional value. We think that's a red herring. Nobody listens to the radio for the commercials."

The coalition includes the Recording Industry Association of America, Society of Singers, Rhythm & Blues Foundation, Recording Academy and others.

The argument boils down to this: Radio is making billions off the backs of recording artists and their labels; and the recording artists gain invaluable exposure because they're on the radio, so royalties should not have to be paid.

A House subcommittee is expected to approve a royalty bill perhaps as early as Thursday. The measure, HR 4789, sponsored by Rep. Howard Berman, D-California, would move to the full House Judiciary Committee -- legislation that the National Association of Broadcasters said would cost the industry as much as $7 billion annually.

An identical proposal, S 2500, is in the Senate Judiciary Committee. Rates under both proposals would be negotiated, although small and public stations would pay a flat $5,000 annually.

Internet, cable and satellite broadcasters pay royalties to all participants involved. Singers, musicians and the labels get no royalties when AM-FM radio broadcasters air their songs.

That would change under both the Senate and House proposals. Composers and songwriters, however, do get AM-FM royalties, which are set under a complicated and negotiated rate.

"If it wasn't for radio play, most of the performers wouldn't be known," said Dennis Wharton, a NAB vice president.

The group says that free airplay generates as much as $2.4 billion a year for the recording industry.
http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/200...ing-indus.html





BlogTalkRadio Chats About New Funding and New Plans
Brad Stone

The pirates of radio are losing their eye-patches and going legit.

In the old creaky-wheel analog days, people who didn’t have the face, voice or political views for traditional radio turned to the slightly romantic practice of broadcasting illegally over unlicensed radio frequencies.

But today there is the more legitimate and egalitarian medium of podcasts, and a host of companies are eager to get people up and running and to make their broadcasts available on the Web.

One of those companies, BlogTalkRadio, has drawn attention of late by making it easy for the talkers to start talking with nothing more than a computer and a telephone. The New Jersey company said it just closed an initial $4.6 million round of funding led by The Kraft Group, the owners of the New England Patriots, and some ambitious plans for expansion.

BlogTalkRadio was founded in 2006 by former telecom executive Alan Levy, who demonstrated a knack for good timing in the 1990s by starting and selling his company before the walls caved in on the industry. After the bust, Mr. Levy began buying distressed telecom assets and ultimately turned some of that excess capacity into BlogTalkRadio.

The service lets anyone host a live radio talk show over the telephone or Internet, complete with live guests and callers. I gave it a try, interviewing Mr. Levy:

BlogTalkRadio splits the advertising revenue with show creators. Recent voices on BlogTalkRadio shows have included Senators John McCain, Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama, actor Brad Pitt and Web media mogul Arianna Huffington.

Three million listeners tuned in last month to more than 12,000 radio segments. Compared to terrestrial and satellite radio, that’s a small start, but now the start-up has a war chest. Mr. Levy said the company will use the $4.6 million to expand its offerings to companies (Sun Microsystems, Intel and the Department of Defense all have channels on the site) and to add live video to the service.

Like any good Web entrepreneur, Mr. Levy says the old way of doing things is doomed.

“What blogs have done to newspapers and magazines, I think companies like BlogTalkRadio can do to talk radio. I don’t see how they can compete in a world where there is unlimited opportunity for people to communicate, and when you bring so many people into the conversation,” he said.
http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/0.../index.html?hp





Papers Facing Worst Year for Ad Revenue
Richard Pérez-Peña

For newspapers, the news has swiftly gone from bad to worse. This year is taking shape as their worst on record, with a double-digit drop in advertising revenue, raising serious questions about the survival of some papers and the solvency of their parent companies.

Ad revenue, the primary source of newspaper income, began sliding two years ago, and as hiring freezes turned to buyouts and then to layoffs, the decline has only accelerated.

On top of long-term changes in the industry, the weak economy is also hurting ad sales, especially in Florida and California, where the severe contraction of the housing markets has cut deeply into real estate ads. Executives at the Hearst Corporation say that one of their biggest papers, The San Francisco Chronicle, is losing $1 million a week.

Over all, ad revenue fell almost 8 percent last year. This year, it is running about 12 percent below that dismal performance, and company reports issued last week suggested a 14 percent to 15 percent decline in May.

“Never in my most bearish dreams six months ago did I think we’d be talking about negative 15 percent numbers against weak comps,” said Peter S. Appert, an analyst at Goldman Sachs. “I think the probability is very high that there will be a number of examples of individual newspapers and newspaper companies that fall into a loss position. And I think it’s inevitable that there will be closures in this industry, and maybe bankruptcies.”

Analysts and newspaper executives find themselves revising their forecasts downward every few months, unable to gain a stable footing on a sinking floor. Papers have cut costs by shedding thousands of workers, eliminating some distribution routes and printing fewer, smaller pages, but profit margins continue to shrink.

Since the fall, when Media General, the owner of a major newspaper chain in the South, set its 2008 budget, “We have pulled our thinking down twice with respect to revenue,” said Marshall N. Morton, the chief executive.

Over the next few years, he predicted, “There’s got to be some assimilation,” with some major American newspapers going out of business or merging. At the corporate level, he said, “I would guess that rather than bankruptcies, you’d see combinations.”

Analysts have issued warnings about several companies’ abilities to meet their debt obligations, though the companies insist that they are at no risk of default.

Most of those companies are privately held, like the Tribune Company, owner of The Chicago Tribune, The Los Angeles Times and many other papers; MediaNews Group, whose papers include The Denver Post and The San Jose Mercury News; and Philadelphia Media Holdings, which publishes The Inquirer and The Daily News in that city.

Some analysts also see a lesser risk in a major publicly traded chain, the McClatchy Company, owner of The Miami Herald, The Kansas City Star, The Sacramento Bee and others, which said last week that its ad revenue was down 15.4 percent through the first five months of the year.

The company announced plans to eliminate about 1,400 jobs, leaving it with 21 percent fewer employees than it had a year and a half ago. Some other newspaper chains had already made comparable cuts.

“It’s going a lot worse than anybody predicted, and if we have double-digit ad declines for two years, some newspapers will be in real financial jeopardy,” said Edward Atorino, an analyst at the Benchmark Company. Even with less severe losses, “You’re going to see structural changes: papers could drop a day or two per week, they could outsource printing.”

He said that he expected the decline in ad sales to slow, with 2008 producing a 10 percent drop for the year, but he cautioned that, like other analysts, he had not been pessimistic enough so far.

The primary long-term threat to newspapers is the Internet’s siphoning away of ad revenue, a trend that has been under way for more than a decade, but one that has picked up speed in the last year. Advertisers have vastly more choices online than on paper, so newspaper Web sites win only a fraction of the advertising that goes digital, and it pays much less than advertising in print.

At the same time, the Internet has drawn millions of new readers to papers, and the major ones reach far more readers than ever before.

“As long as we’ve got content, we’ve got something nobody else has,” said Mr. Morton, of Media General. The industry’s challenge, he said, is to keep expanding that audience, “proving to the advertiser that we, in fact, are the right link so that he can have his conversation with the customer through us.”

Online ad revenue for newspapers grew 20 percent to 30 percent annually for most of this decade. Most analysts think the industry will return to that growth rate when the economy picks up again, but for now, it is closer to 15 percent. The Internet still accounts for less than 10 percent of newspaper ad revenue.

Declining sales of printed papers and rising newsprint prices have also hurt the business.

The industry will not bottom out for another three or four years, analysts predict. The question, Mr. Appert of Goldman Sachs said, “is how far things will fall before then.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/23/bu...a/23paper.html





Murdoch Fumes as Facebook Overtakes MySpace
Barry Collins

Facebook has overtaken rival social network MySpace for the first time - provoking an angry outburst from the man who paid $580m for MySpace only three years ago.

Facebook had 123m unique visitors in May, an increase of 162% on May 2007, according to the latest Comscore figures.

By contrast, MySpace drew 114.6m uniques, with visitors growing by only 5% since May 2007.

It's the first time Facebook has managed a significant lead over its chief rival, after the pair were almost level-pegging in Comscore's April figures.

The news hasn't gone down well with News Corp boss, Rupert Murdoch, whose company bought MySpace back in 2005. He claims Facebook has "done a great job of being flavour of the month the last six months of last year," but that Facebook isn't a real social network, claiming the site is "just a directory".

Murdoch has long been exasperated by the rise of Facebook. When asked last year whether sites such as MySpace were responsible for declining newspaper sales, he quipped: "I wish they were. They're all going to Facebook."

Whether Facebook can turn its success into profit is the big question. The privately-held company doesn't report financial figures, although Microsoft's 1.6% stake in the company valued it at $15 billion last year.

With $40 billion burning a hole in its pocket following the collapse of the Yahoo deal, Microsoft has been consistently linked with a takeover of Facebook, although CEO Steve Ballmer last week talked down the possibility of a deal. "People don't understand what they're talking about," he told The Financial Times. "At the end of the day, this is about the ad platform. This is not about just any one of the applications."
http://www.pcpro.co.uk/news/207876/m...s-myspace.html





Judge Ends Facebook’s Feud With ConnectU
Brad Stone

Facebook has finally closed the book on its long-running, multi-front legal battle with the rival college social network ConnectU — but not before a new question was raised about Facebook’s supposed $15 billion valuation.

Late Wednesday, Judge James Ware of Federal District Court in San Jose, Calif., sided with Facebook, enforcing a February settlement between the companies and dismissing ConnectU’s allegations that Facebook fraudulently misrepresented the value of the stock in the settlement agreement.

The Facebook-ConnectU case, which undermined the reputation of the founder Mark Zuckerberg for ingenuity and honesty, was a publicity nightmare for the social networking site and a boon for reporters fascinated by the Palo Alto, Calif., company.

Mr. Zuckerberg’s former Harvard classmates, the twins Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss and Divya Narendra, accused Mr. Zuckerberg of stealing their idea while they were all undergraduates. The ConnectU founders fought right to the end, settling the dispute in mediation, then contesting the settlement and battling with the lawyers who had represented them in the talks.

A couple of interesting items from Judge Ware’s decision enforcing the settlement:

ConnectU was apparently upset that Facebook’s valuation is not, as media reports have widely suggested, $15 billion, the valuation at which Microsoft invested in the company last year. The judge’s ruling says that subsequent to the $15 billion valuation, “Facebook’s board of directors determined a value of the company’s shares which was different than the valuation disclosed in the press release” announcing the Microsoft investment. That diluted the settlement amount, apparently enough to give ConnectU second thoughts. The decision does not reveal Facebook’s current valuation.

Howard Winklevoss — a former professor of actuarial science at the University of Pennyslvania, father of the ConnectU twins and a ConnectU shareholder — was clearly a force behind the dispute. ConnectU tried to argue that since he did not sign the settlement, it was not valid. Judge Ware rejected that argument.

Facebook itself issued a statement last night, breathing a sigh of relief:

We are happy that Judge Ware enforced the agreement settling our dispute with the ConnectU founders. ConnectU’s founders were represented by six lawyers and a professor at Wharton Business School when they signed the settlement agreement. The ConnectU founders understood the deal they made, and we are gratified that the court rejected their false allegations of fraud. Their challenge was simply a case of “buyer’s remorse,” as described by the Boston court earlier this month.

We were disappointed that we had to litigate the settlement, as we believed we were caught in the middle of a fee dispute between ConnectU’s founders and its former counsel. Nevertheless, we can now consider this chapter closed and wish the Winklevoss brothers the best of luck in their future endeavors.
http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/0...ctu/index.html





He Said, She Said: Which Is It? Facebook Asks

Social network site Facebook will press members to declare whether they are male or female, seeking to end the grammatical device that leads the site to refer to individual users as "they" or "themself."

The Internet phenomenon, which boasts 80 million users worldwide, exploded in popularity over the past year as a convenient way for Web users to communicate and share personal details with selected groups of friends or acquaintances.

But grammatical errors in the automated messages Facebook uses to personalize pronouns when members share information with their friends have proliferated since the site expanded from English-only into 15 new languages in recent months.

"We've gotten feedback from translators and users in other countries that translations wind up being too confusing when people have not specified a sex on their profiles," Facebook product manager Naomi Gleit said in a company statement.

In English, when users fail to specify what gender they are, Facebook defaults to some form of the gender neutral, plural pronoun "they." That option is unavailable when the plural is always masculine or feminine in other languages.

"People who haven't selected what sex they are frequently get defaulted to the wrong sex," Gleit wrote.

Unless the gender of the user is clear, Facebook does not know which pronoun to use to notify other members add information to the site. This common English problem is multiplied in languages where masculine and feminine distinctions are grammatically ingrained.

The site will now let users specify whether they are male or female on their basic membership profile. It will prompt existing users to define themselves.

Facebook has an opt-out option for members who choose not to specify their gender or do not consider gender to be clear cut. Members can remove mention of gender from messages about their activities.

"We've received pushback in the past from groups that find the male/female distinction too limiting," Gleit said.

The option is similar to a feature that lets members hide birthdays or the year they were born, a spokeswoman added.

(Editing by Alan Elsner)
http://www.reuters.com/article/inter...33402020080627





Children Concerned by Parents' Web Habits
Paul O'Mahony

Children in Sweden are becoming increasingly concerned by their parents' internet habits, according to a new report from Children's Rights in Society (Barnens Rätt i Samhället - BRIS).

Last year the organization dealt with 1,895 IT-related cases, up sharply on figures from the previous year. Further investigation revealed that more than 100 of the children who made contact with BRIS did so because they were in some way worried about their parent's behaviour on the internet.

Dads visiting pornographic websites represented the most common complaint, while philandering fathers were also a cause for concern.

"It seems that my dad is 'unfaithful'," wrote one 15-year-old boy.

"I read his MSN conversation log. I was just curious. And then I saw that he was talking to, like, young girls. And the disgusting part is that he's 53!

"And they talk about sex and how they're going to meet and everything. It makes me want to puke. It really makes me feel bad.

"I don't know if I should tell mum because I'm worried they'll get a divorce. Please, what should I do?"

The report also made it clear that children were not the only ones spending inordinate amounts of time in front of the computer.

One 12-year-old girl called the organization to explain that she rarely got to speak to her mum anymore. Her mother spent most of her time sitting half naked in front of the computer and posting photos of herself on the internet, the girl said.

Another girl's mother had begun devoting all her attention to a computer game.

"I know it sounds ridiculous but my mother has started playing the computer game WoW, World of Warcraft," wrote the 13-year-old.

"This summer she has been sitting up all day and all night and she forgets what's important to me. And when she's not at the computer she's like a lost soul. She just looks straight ahead and says nothing. I'm not doing so well."

While parents' web behaviour is clearly a growing problem, the majority of cases covered in the Children, BRIS and IT report related to: love and friendship (47 percent), insults, threats and assault (15 percent) and sex (10 percent).
http://www.thelocal.se/12640.html





Firefox 3 Reaches 20 Million downloads in 7 Days, Opera - 4.5 Million Downloads in 5 Days

It’s been 7 days since Firefox 3 launch and so far it was downloaded more than 20 million times, 8,290,908 downloads were in 24 hours.

What is surprising is that Opera 9.5 was downloaded more than 4.5 million times in 5 days. By comparing their market share data:

Firefox, May 08 - 18.41%
Opera, May 08 - 0.71%

and download numbers, you can see that while Firefox has 25x times more market share than Opera does, it’s only 1/4 ahead (in downloads count) which is quite surprising.
http://www.favbrowser.com/firefox-3-...ads-in-5-days/





Select O'Reilly Books Soon on Kindle, and as DRM-free Digital Bundles (Including EPUB)
Andrew Savikas

Update: On his New York Times blog, David Pogue has noted O'Reilly's pilot in the context of the recent discussion prompted his column on ebooks and piracy (which brought insightful responses from Adam Engst and Mike Masnick, along with a follow up from David).

Ebooks are certainly nothing new for us at O'Reilly. We've offered PDFs of hundreds of our titles for some time now, and until quite recently Safari Books Online, our online-publishing joint venture with Pearson, generated more revenue than was typically associated with the entire downloadable ebook business.

But it's clear that things are changing in the ebook market (though precise numbers are proving hard to come by), so we've decided to officially announce two new e-publishing programs that have been in the works for some time:

• First, through oreilly.com we will offer a select number of books as a bundle of three ebook formats (EPUB, PDF, and Kindle-compatible Mobipocket) for a single price -- at or below the book's cover price -- starting in early July. Since we began selling PDFs directly some time ago, we've given those customers free updates to the PDFs to reflect published changes in the books; the same will apply to the ebook bundle, which will replace the PDF option on those titles. That also means that although the ebooks aren't yet available, if you buy the PDF now, you'll receive the EPUB and Mobipocket versions as a free update once they're available in early July. These files (like all our PDFs currently for sale) will be released without any DRM, though we are exploring some custom watermarking options. With these three formats, customers should be able to read the books with most current ebook software and devices, including Adobe Digital Editions, Kindle, Blackberries, and Sony Reader (Sony announced in May that EPUB support is forthcoming in a firmware update for their Reader).
• Second, O'Reilly has agreed to sell select ebooks for the Kindle through Amazon. We hope to see those ebooks available for sale through the Kindle store in the near future.

While we would have liked to make these ebooks available sooner, we felt it was important to first contribute to building some of the tools needed for other publishers to follow our lead, such as enhancements to the open-source DocBook XSL stylesheets, which can now generate EPUB from DocBook XML source files.

We do intend to eventually offer as much of our catalog as possible as ebooks (some titles have rights restrictions; others are so old they present challenges from a format-conversion standpoint), but the July pilot program will be limited to a few dozen, including the titles listed below. Any of these can be purchased as a PDF right away, with the full ebook bundle provided in early July as a free update:

• iPhone: The Missing Manual
• Windows Vista: The Missing Manual
• Facebook: The Missing Manual
• Making Things Happen
• Open Sources 2.0
• The Art of Agile Development
• Information Architecture for the World Wide Web, 3ed

We'll announce the full list of titles when they're all available in early July.

Why just a few dozen? Besides wanting to limit this to an experimental pilot before committing resources to some not-insignificant ecommerce updates, much of our catalog relies heavily on computer code and complex tables -- two types of content that are not rendered well on most of today's ebook readers. Sure, there are some ugly hacks to make code blocks look a little better on a Kindle, but we're holding out for true monospace font support. Ditto for support of many of the special characters used in books like Unicode Explained and Fonts and Encodings. Even Adobe's Digital Editions chokes on a lot of the non-standard characters we use in many of our books (yes, it's possible to embed fonts, but many more characters should be supported out of the box). Our hope is that in the coming months, ebook readers will improve enough to make more of our titles truly usable for ebook customers. (And when there is uncertainty stemming from rendering, customers will also have the full-featured PDF in the bundle as a reference.)

Whether the future of books (and of publishing) revolves around ebooks is certainly debatable; ebooks may be just a stepping stone toward truly digital and networked reading. Until that future is more certain, we're excited to be on the frontier, and look forward to seeing other publishers follow.
http://toc.oreilly.com/2008/06/selec...al-bundle.html





Nothing Sells Like Celebrity
Julie Creswell

EARLY last year, marketing executives at Totes Isotoner, a Cincinnati company that had spent the previous 30 years churning out a reliable lineup of humble umbrellas, crowded around a computer and listened to a teenage singer from Barbados named Rihanna breeze through a tune titled, appropriately, “Umbrella.”

The song, not yet released, had commercial, jingle-ready lyrics and a stick-in-your-head hook: “You can stand under my umbrella, ella, ella, eh, eh, eh.” Totes, which hadn’t deployed celebrity endorsements since the former N.F.L. quarterback Dan Marino hawked its gloves more than a decade earlier, was smitten. “Umbrella” became a corporate rallying cry, with the song drifting through Totes’ offices at all hours.

Rihanna and her representatives wanted Totes to do more, however, than merely use her to peddle a product. They wanted Totes to create customized umbrellas featuring sparkly fabrics and glittery charms on the handles — all recommended by the emerging star and her team. Totes also guaranteed the singer a percentage of the sales of the umbrellas.

“Umbrella” went on to become a huge, Grammy-winning hit. And Totes, although it declines to discuss sales data, describes its relationship with Rihanna as “invaluable.” The company, which had never tried such a sweeping design shake-up before, says it now reaches younger shoppers and that traffic on its Web site — which links to Rihanna’s own site — has soared.

“We’ve worked hard to build me and my name up as a brand,” Rihanna says. “We always want to bring an authentic connection to whatever we do. It must be sincere and people have to feel that.”

But where the star ends and the product and pitch begin has grown less and less discernible in the era of the human billboard.

These days, it’s nearly impossible to surf the Internet, open a newspaper or magazine, or watch television without seeing a celebrity selling something, whether it’s umbrellas, soda, cars, phones, medications, cosmetics, jewelry, clothing or even mutual funds.

Nicole Kidman sashays in ads for Chanel No. 5 perfume. Eva Longoria, the bombshellette star of “Desperate Housewives,” sells L’Oréal Paris hair color. Jessica Simpson struts for a hair extension company, HairUWear, and the acne skin-care line Proactiv Solution. And Jamie Lee Curtis spoons up Dannon Activia yogurt while promoting environmentally friendly Honda cars.

Using celebrities for promotion is hardly new. Film stars in the 1940s posed for cigarette companies, and Bob Hope pitched American Express in the late 1950s. Joe Namath slipped into Hanes pantyhose in the 1970s, and Bill Cosby jiggled for Jell-O for three decades. Sports icons like Michael Jordan and Tiger Woods elevated the practice, often scoring more in endorsement and licensing dollars than from their actual sports earnings.

But over the last decade, corporate brands have increasingly turned to Hollywood celebrities and musicians to sell their products. Stars showed up in nearly 14 percent of ads last year, according to Millward Brown, a marketing research agency. While that number has more than doubled in the past decade, it is off from a peak of 19 percent in 2004. (Hey, it could be more extreme: Celebrities appear in 24 percent of the ads in India and 45 percent in Taiwan.)

Starlets and aging rockers are likely to continue popping up in ads for a very simple reason: Celebrity sells. If consumers believe that a certain star or singer might actually use the product sales can take off.

“The reality is people want a piece of something they can’t be,” says Eli Portnoy, a branding strategist. “They live vicariously through the products and services that those celebrities are tied to. Years from now, our descendants may look at us and say, ‘God, these were the most gullible people who ever lived.’ “

Newer forces are also propping up the celebrity-endorsement boom. Companies, trying to align themselves ever closer to A-list stars (as well as B-listers, C-listers and reality TV pseudocelebrities) and their quicksilver fame are constantly seeking new ways to merge the already-blurry lines between the commercial and entertainment worlds.

Television programmers and music producers are particularly eager to play along as joint marketing deals offer artists new ways to reach audiences while also defraying their own marketing costs. Celebrities have also grown much more sophisticated about the structure and payouts of endorsement deals.

Last fall, the rapper-impresario Sean Combs created a 50-50 joint venture with Diageo, the spirits giant, for Mr. Combs to be the brand manager of the Ciroc vodka line. Mr. Combs says he made the profit-sharing deal only after refusing to work solely as a pitchman.

“My brand is rocket fuel. It would take this brand 10 years to get to where I can take it in one year,” he says. “I’ve gotten to the point where I don’t want to do just endorsements. I want ownership.”

In the few short years since she exploded onto the music scene, Rihanna, now 20, has been involved in about a dozen endorsement and licensing deals. Behind the scenes, her representatives say they vet every offer for two key criteria: how does it support the brand known as Rihanna, and will it help sell more albums?

Rihanna’s commercial for a lip gloss, CoverGirl Wetslicks Fruit Spritzers, opens with outtakes from her steamy “Umbrella” video, then morphs into a close-up of her wearing the lip gloss before ending with a shot of her album cover — leaving viewers possibly confused whether they just saw an ad for a lip gloss or an album. (Totes, for its part, says it cares not a whit about CoverGirl also capitalizing on “Umbrella.” The more the merrier, its executives say, because ubiquity benefits everybody in brandland.)

To be sure, marrying a brand to a celebrity has its perils. Just last month, Christian Dior yanked ads from China featuring the actress Sharon Stone after she suggested that the earthquakes that killed tens of thousands of people in China were karmic retribution for the country’s policies toward Tibet.

Yet no less an expert than the comedian Ellen DeGeneres enthusiastically embraces the endorsement whirlwind.

“It’s flattering that companies think of you and they want to work with you,” she says, adding that she is working with American Express because she liked earlier ads the company did with Jerry Seinfeld. The AmEx ads routinely appear first during her talk show.

Although she says she would consider other endorsement deals, she’s not actively looking. Besides, she says, quality counts.

“I would not feel good if I had made a deal and was making money for something that I’m not proud of and don’t have any control over,” she says. “Now watch, cut to next week and I’m endorsing five different things. Look, bread! Isn’t it great? And what goes well with bread? Mayonnaise!”

BEYONCÉ is hot. Red hot. The numbers prove it.

On the Davie Brown Index, an independent online rating system that was started two years ago to track the marketing power of celebrities, the singing sensation scores 81.31 on a 100-point scale.

The index bases its score on eight metrics, including influence and trendsetting abilities, and is used by corporate marketers to pinpoint desirable boldface names. With that score, Beyoncé is 27th among the more than 1,800 celebrities that the D.B.I. tracks. (The top five are Tom Hanks, Will Smith, Michael Jordan, Morgan Freeman and George Clooney. The presidential candidates Barack Obama and John McCain are 9th and 25th, respectively.)

One Davie Brown category in which most celebrities appear vulnerable is trust. Celebrities are recognizable and appealing, but are often viewed with skepticism. “Trust always seems to be the lowest score among celebrities,” observes Matt Fleming, a Davie Brown account director who helps brands evaluate celebrity talent.

SO if some consumers don’t really trust celebrities, why do they still run out to buy their perfumes or fashions? The answer, some analysts say, has its roots in two seismic shifts in the cultural landscape that began in the late 1990s.

First has been the emergence of Web sites and magazines that chronicle the mundane, daily activities of stars on a 24/7 basis. A voracious public eager to peek at Hollywood celebrities shopping for shoes and buying coffee wanted, in turn, to buy those shoes and drink that coffee themselves.

The other new force has been the explosive growth and mainstreaming of urban hip-hop music and marketing moves by artists like Mr. Combs, Shawn Carter (better known as Jay-Z) and Jennifer Lopez to slap their personal brands on clothing lines, fragrances and other goods. After hip-hop impresarios narrowed the divide between popular music and blatant hucksterism, other popular musicians followed suit.

“Hip-hop completely opened the eyes of other music genres as to how to relate to corporations and not be seen as sellouts,” says Steve Stoute, an ad executive who has matched such celebrities and brands as Justin Timberlake and McDonald’s, Gwen Stefani and Hewlett-Packard, and Jay-Z with Reebok.

The lucre that pours in from successful endorsements, meanwhile, has convinced celebrities that it’s wise to be much more open to such deals than they once were.

“Seven years ago, the belief among celebrities was that perfume was something you did at the end of a career,” says Bernd Beetz, the chief executive of Coty. “Now it’s different and seen as a key step in the start of a career.”

In 2002, Coty released Glow by JLo, in a successful rollout; global sales peaked at $78 million worldwide in 2003 before falling to $41.4 million last year, according to Euromonitor International, which tracks sales of consumer goods.

Glow by JLo is credited with ushering in a wave of celebrity fragrances. Britney Spears, Tim McGraw, Céline Dion, Halle Berry and even the “Grey’s Anatomy” star Patrick Dempsey have either created fragrance lines or are about to do so.

And they want you to know that they really like the products. Really.

“I wear my cologne all of the time,” says Mr. Dempsey, whose fragrance will be introduced by Avon Products in November. “This is a whole different experience and a real education for me, and it has been something that I’ve been involved with every step of the way.”

With consumers facing so many choices these days, an emotional connection with a certain celebrity may make the difference between whether a shopper’s hand stops over one product or moves on to the competition.

“As consumers, we see over 3,156 images a day. We’re just not conscious of them,” says Marshal Cohen, chief industry analyst of the consumer research firm NPD Group. “Our subconscious records maybe 150, and only 30 or so reach our conscious behavior. If I have a celebrity as part of that message, I just accelerated the potential for my product to reach the conscious of the consumer.”

Even savvy, skeptical consumers who understand that stars are paid to support a product may still rely on an endorsement and buy the brand anyway, says Robert Cialdini, a professor of psychology and marketing at Arizona State University.

“We’ve used our cognitive capacity to build a sophisticated informational and technological environment,” he says. But overloaded with information and stimulation, shoppers’ brains revert to a more primitive, raw association of celebrity and product, Mr. Cialdini explains.

Because a celebrity link may entice consumers, brands continue to use stars as the public face of a corporate entity (Avon hired Reese Witherspoon to be its “global ambassador”); as emissaries for new products (the luxury goods company Tod’s is using Gwyneth Paltrow to introduce a new handbag); or as fresh faces to reinvigorate an aging product (Ms. Kidman for Chanel No. 5).

After Chanel signed Ms. Kidman in 2003 to a high-end campaign, which included a mini-movie commercial shot by the film director Baz Luhrmann, global sales of Chanel’s classic perfume have jumped 30 percent, according to Euromonitor. Likewise, sales in Nike’s golf division jumped smartly after the company hired Tiger Woods as a spokesman. (Nike declined to offer specific sales data.)

Such results aren’t lost on other companies.

“Our primary goal is to tell our clients how beautifully this product is made, and to have a person like Gwyneth wear it is the perfect way to create the magic touch,” says Claudio Castiglioni, general manager of Tod’s.

Mr. Stoute says companies need help forming alliances with performers in order to reach fast-growing young Hispanic and urban markets.

“You get corporations and artists in the same room, and the conversation doesn’t align,” Mr. Stoute says. “It’s like Mars and Jupiter.”

The bigger risk for corporations, however, is spending tons of money on a celebrity and a glitzy campaign and not getting results.

Angelina Jolie doesn’t do many endorsement deals, but she did agree to one for the upscale clothier St. John Knits. Analysts say she wasn’t the right fit for St. John, which had hoped that she would revamp its conservative image. The company declined to comment on the ads.

Besides trying to carefully match a brand with a celebrity, some corporations say they also value exclusivity.

“We can’t stop them from signing other endorsements,” says Geralyn R. Breig, Avon’s global brand president, who was involved in bringing on Ms. Witherspoon last year. “But we didn’t want our spokesperson to be someone who was deal-happy.”

JEFF STRAUGHN rocks back and forth in his office chair, chugging coffee as he describes the challenge he faced three years ago when he left a Madison Avenue ad agency to join the Island Def Jam record label with a new mandate: carve out branding deals with corporations that will raise the visibility of Island Def Jam artists.

Among his first assignments: a young vocalist who had been signed to the label by Jay-Z, then Def Jam’s chief executive, and whose first album was about to be released: Rihanna.

“Here was a girl that no one was quite sure how to pronounce her name and quite a few people didn’t know where Barbados was,” he says. “But we knew we had a pop superstar here.”

What better way to drum up interest in Rihanna among teenagers than a shopping mall tour? As luck would have it, the Secret brand of Procter & Gamble was looking to introduce a new body spray and wanted to align the campaign with an emerging singer.

Secret ended up sponsoring a 12-city mall tour for Rihanna, financing various production costs and creating a MySpace site where fans could get tickets for the shows.

While her first concert attracted about 250 people, Rihanna was drawing crowds of 2,500 when the tour closed. A star — and a pitchwoman — were being born.

Mr. Straughn and Rihanna’s managers, meanwhile, actively negotiated other deals, including one with the Barbados Tourism Authority, which used portions of a video for one of Rihanna’s early songs in television ads.

Eight months after her debut album, Rihanna released a second album, whose hit song “S.O.S.” prompted a deal with Nike. Rihanna shot a separate music video for the song, singing and dancing in a high school gym in a new line of Nike fitness dance clothes.

She also did deals with J. C. Penney and Nokia, then with a juice and tea company, Fuze. Rihanna featured Fuze drinks in one of her videos, and the company put six-foot-tall displays of the singer in grocery stores.

While Rihanna was paid for some of her work, the endorsements were intended to raise her visibility, push her music — and her brand — in new ways to consumers, and perhaps save the record label some marketing expenses.

BY the time Rihanna was on the verge of releasing her third album, “Good Girl Gone Bad,” the offers for endorsement and licensing deals were flying in, Mr. Straughn says. Not all were good fits for the singer, who was trying to reach an older audience with the album.

“We said no to so many deals,” says Marc Jordan, one of her managers. “Either the fit wasn’t right — it was more about a check than extending Rihanna’s brand — or there was a disconnect between the brand and Rihanna.”

Despite the desire to reduce marketing costs, Mr. Straughn says he can’t push Rihanna or any of Def Jam’s other artists into doing endorsement deals they don’t want to do. He notes that many artists, like the Killers, don’t want to take part in any endorsement deals.

For her part, Rihanna has been a branding machine — though she says that she has grown more wary of overexposure.

“We started out trying to get everything we could and now we have to be a little more selective,” she says. “We have to hold back a little bit. It’s a good thing to have to say we can take things back a little bit.”

Last spring, she completed her deal with Totes, which was her first licensing arrangement. Meanwhile, CoverGirl, which planned a print ad and related campaigns for the singer and its Wetslicks lip gloss, was persuaded by Rihanna’s representatives to do a commercial as well.

CoverGirl executives saw a chance to connect their new product seamlessly to a megahit song.

“I knew in my gut that this was going to be a hit,” says Vince Hudson, marketing director for CoverGirl North America. “Def Jam needed to have promotion of her album, and CoverGirl wanted the product to be associated with the hot song. It was a win-win.”

As part of the promotion, CoverGirl allowed consumers to download the “Umbrella” video on its Web site and put displays in stores near its Fruit Spritzers product that allowed consumers to push a button to hear the song.

Mr. Straughn says Rihanna provides a good example of how the recording business is changing and how artists and brands can successfully wed without either feeling as if they’ve lost themselves. Rihanna, he crows, “is my single biggest success story.”

Earlier this year, P.& G. provided a glimpse into what the future of celebrity-branded advertising may look like: it’s creating a joint-venture record label with Island Def Jam.

The venture, called Tag Records, is headed up by the record producer and rapper Jermaine Dupri and will sign on new artists who, along with Mr. Dupri, will be the faces of P.& G.’s Tag body spray lines. (Aspiring artists hoping to get noticed will be able to upload their music to the Tag Web site, P.& G. says.)

“Our plan is to fully integrate and merge the music and the marketing for the new Tag body sprays that we have out there,” says Adam Weber, P.& G.’s brand manager for Tag. “This is different than the typical endorsement deal that has a start and end date. This is going to be ongoing throughout their entire career. The message becomes one and the same at some point between Tag and the artist.”

So are there any limits to what celebrities can endorse, or how far the celebrity pitch could go? Mr. Stoute briefly considers the question before jumping up and grabbing a framed front page from a newspaper.

“See that?” he asks, pointing to the picture in the center of the page, showing a General Motors S.U.V. in a metallic blue concept color that Jay-Z helped to design. “That’s Jay-Z blue! We invented a color! There are no limits. There is no such thing as too far.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/22/bu...a/22celeb.html





Comedic Legend George Carlin Dead at 71
AP

George Carlin, the dean of counterculture comedians whose biting insights on life and language were immortalized in his "Seven Words You Can Never Say On TV" routine, died of heart failure Sunday. He was 71.

Carlin, who had a history of heart trouble, went into St. John's Health Center in Santa Monica on Sunday afternoon complaining of chest pain and died later that evening, said his publicist, Jeff Abraham. He had performed as recently as last weekend at the Orleans Casino and Hotel in Las Vegas.

"He was a genius and I will miss him dearly," Jack Burns, who was the other half of a comedy duo with Carlin in the early 1960s, told The Associated Press.

Carlin's jokes constantly breached the accepted boundaries of comedy and language, particularly with his routine on the "Seven Words" - all of which are taboo on broadcast TV and radio to this day. When he uttered all seven at a show in Milwaukee in 1972, he was arrested on charges of disturbing the peace, freed on $150 bail and exonerated when a Wisconsin judge dismissed the case, saying it was indecent but citing free speech and the lack of any disturbance.

When the words were later played on a New York radio station, they resulted in a 1978 Supreme Court ruling upholding the government's authority to sanction stations for broadcasting offensive language during hours when children might be listening.

"So my name is a footnote in American legal history, which I'm perversely kind of proud of," he told The Associated Press earlier this year.

Despite his reputation as unapologetically irreverent, Carlin was a television staple through the decades, serving as host of the "Saturday Night Live" debut in 1975 - noting on his Web site that he was "loaded on cocaine all week long" - and appearing some 130 times on "The Tonight Show."

He produced 23 comedy albums, 14 HBO specials, three books, a couple of TV shows and appeared in several movies, from his own comedy specials to "Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure" in 1989 - a testament to his range from cerebral satire and cultural commentary to downright silliness (and sometimes hitting all points in one stroke).

"Why do they lock gas station bathrooms?" he once mused. "Are they afraid someone will clean them?"

He won four Grammy Awards, each for best spoken comedy album, and was nominated for five Emmy awards. On Tuesday, it was announced that Carlin was being awarded the 11th annual Mark Twain Prize for American Humor, which will be presented Nov. 10 in Washington and broadcast on PBS.

Carlin started his career on the traditional nightclub circuit in a coat and tie, pairing with Burns to spoof TV game shows, news and movies. Perhaps in spite of the outlaw soul, "George was fairly conservative when I met him," said Burns, describing himself as the more left-leaning of the two. It was a degree of separation that would reverse when they came upon Lenny Bruce, the original shock comic, in the early '60s.

"We were working in Chicago, and we went to see Lenny, and we were both blown away," Burns said, recalling the moment as the beginning of the end for their collaboration if not their close friendship. "It was an epiphany for George. The comedy we were doing at the time wasn't exactly groundbreaking, and George knew then that he wanted to go in a different direction."

That direction would make Carlin as much a social commentator and philosopher as comedian, a position he would relish through the years.

"The whole problem with this idea of obscenity and indecency, and all of these things - bad language and whatever - it's all caused by one basic thing, and that is: religious superstition," Carlin told the AP in a 2004 interview. "There's an idea that the human body is somehow evil and bad and there are parts of it that are especially evil and bad, and we should be ashamed. Fear, guilt and shame are built into the attitude toward sex and the body. ... It's reflected in these prohibitions and these taboos that we have."

When asked about the fallout from the Super Bowl halftime show that ended with Janet Jackson's breast-baring "wardrobe malfunction," Carlin told the AP, "What are we, surprised?"

"On that Super Bowl broadcast of Janet Jackson's there was also a commercial about a 4-hour erection. A lot of people were saying about Janet Jackson, 'How do I explain to my kids? We're a little family, we watched it together ...' And, well, what did you say about the other thing? These are convenient targets."

Carlin was born May 12, 1937 and grew up in the Morningside Heights section of Manhattan, raised by a single mother. After dropping out of high school in the ninth grade, he joined the Air Force in 1954. He received three court-martials and numerous disciplinary punishments, according to his official Web site.

While in the Air Force he started working as an off-base disc jockey at a radio station in Shreveport, La., and after receiving a general discharge in 1957, took an announcing job at WEZE in Boston.

"Fired after three months for driving mobile news van to New York to buy pot," his Web site says.

From there he went on to a job on the night shift as a deejay at a radio station in Forth Worth, Texas. Carlin also worked variety of temporary jobs including a carnival organist and a marketing director for a peanut brittle.

In 1960, he left with Burns, a Texas radio buddy, for Hollywood to pursue a nightclub career as comedy team Burns & Carlin. He left with $300, but his first break came just months later when the duo appeared on the Tonight Show with Jack Paar.

Carlin said he hoped to would emulate his childhood hero, Danny Kaye, the kindly, rubber-faced comedian who ruled over the decade that Carlin grew up in - the 1950s - with a clever but gentle humor reflective of its times.

Only problem was, it didn't work for him, and they broke up by 1962.

"I was doing superficial comedy entertaining people who didn't really care: Businessmen, people in nightclubs, conservative people. And I had been doing that for the better part of 10 years when it finally dawned on me that I was in the wrong place doing the wrong things for the wrong people," Carlin reflected recently as he prepared for his 14th HBO special, "It's Bad For Ya."

Eventually Carlin lost the buttoned-up look, favoring the beard, ponytail and all-black attire for which he came to be known.

But even with his decidedly adult-comedy bent, Carlin never lost his childlike sense of mischief, even voicing kid-friendly projects like episodes of the TV show "Thomas the Tank Engine and Friends" and the spacey Volkswagen bus Fillmore in the 2006 Pixar hit "Cars."

Carlin's first wife, Brenda, died in 1997. He is survived by wife Sally Wade; daughter Kelly Carlin McCall; son-in-law Bob McCall; brother Patrick Carlin; and sister-in-law Marlene Carlin.
http://www.newstimes.com/latestnews/ci_9671970





How the "Russert Test" Failed America
Linda Hirshman

The eulogists are right: Tim Russert was powerful. From calling Florida for Bush in 2000 to telling Al Gore to quit the contest after Election Day, to kneecapping Hillary Clinton in the debate in Philadelphia last October, Russert was a kingmaker. When he called the Democratic primary for Barack Obama last month, his fellow pundits compared it to the moment Walter Cronkite bailed on the war in Vietnam. I, for one, am looking forward to the rest of the electoral cycle without the domineering presence of NBC's electoral college of one.

It's not just that Russert abetted the Bush Administration in the Iraq War; much of the media shares that role. It's that he did damage in a wide range of contexts. There are two reasons for this: his tactics and his substance. Procedurally, there was what the Bushies actually called the "Russert Test." As they said after their candidate used an hour on Meet the Press to demonstrate his seriousness in 1999, and again in 2004, when as President he appeared on the show to stanch his fall in the polls, if you can survive an hour of Russert, you're vetted.

The biggest promoter of the Russert Test was Russert himself, as in this 2007 interview with John Elsasser of the Public Relations Society of America: "A political leader, particularly a president, can't make a tough decision unless theycan answer tough questions. So, you can always use that as an entree into the debate--a video question, but it's necessary to have follow-ups, too." And again on Sean Hannity's FOX program: "It's a TV show," Russert explained. "If you can't handle TV questions, how you gonna stand up to Iran and North Korea and the rest of the world?"

In fact, the Russert Test was exactly backwards. The better our leaders performed on Meet the Press, the worse their foreign policy seemed to be. Tough: tough. It sounds the same, right? But it's not the same. The political leaders who did the best answering Tim Russert's questions in the last seven years--Donald Rumsfeld, Dick Cheney and Colin Powell--are the authors of the most disastrous American foreign policy since the Vietnam War, and maybe since 1776.

The Russert Test was a disaster because it rewarded people willing to lie unabashedly on TV. They lied because they could not truthfully defend their positions. But Russert's famed "gotcha" research couldn't catch them. Much has been said this eulogizing week about Russert's hard-working ways assembling the material in advance of the show. Old metal. When someone told a new lie on Meet the Press, such as when Dick Cheney flat-out denied he had ever said that intelligence confirmed the Al Qaeda/Iraq link, Meet the Press had no procedure for producing the contrary evidence. This would hardly have been difficult, given Google, an earpiece and a producer to do instant research. As it happened, NBC had the rebuttal to Cheney's lies in its own archives, but it remained for The Daily Show to do the research.

Since MTP was always looking back, the Bush Administration had a big advantage. Their new lies to Meet The Press were halfway round the world while The Daily Show was putting its boots on.

Russert's sunny manner also concealed that he was anything but a neutral journalist, advancing, somewhat covertly, the conservative trifecta: War on terror, war on women's reproductive rights, and war on Social Security.

The locus classicus of Russert's complicit support for going into Iraq is, of course, Dick Cheney's appearance on Meet the Press March 16, 2003, one week before the invasion:

RUSSERT: Many Americans and many people around the world are asking one question: Why is it acceptable for the United States to lead a military attack against a nation that has not attacked the United States? What's your answer?

There then follows an astonishing, nearly 1,000-word filibuster from the Vice President, including the key litany of assertions for the Iraq War:

CHENEY: ...where might these terrorists acquire weapons of mass destruction, chemical weapons, biological weapons, nuclear weapons? And Saddam Hussein becomes a prime suspect in that regard because of his past track record and because we know he has, in fact, developed these kinds of capabilities, chemical and biological weapons. We know he's used chemical weapons. We know he's reconstituted these programs since the Gulf War. We know he's out trying once again to produce nuclear weapons and we know that he has a long-standing relationship with various terrorist groups, including the al-Qaeda organization.

Just rereading it is enough to raise the hair on your neck, even these disastrous many years later. And what did that paragon of "tough" questioning do in response to this dirty dozen of false assertions ("we know, we know, we know") about to drive the United States into one of the worst foreign policy decisions in the history of the Republic? He asked Cheney about the French:RUSSERT: French President Jacques Chirac said this morning, that perhaps there could be a deadline of 30 days or 60 days and he may be able to buy into that. What would be wrong for the United States to say to the world, "OK. We're going to give Saddam 30 days or 60 days and put some pressure on the French to step up and have a united front against Saddam Hussein"

Russert's inability to stay on target usually vanished, however, when the respondent espoused a liberal position. Here is Russert questioning Al Gore on (the horror) his support for abortion rights:

RUSSERT: When do you think life begins?

GORE: I favor the Roe vs. Wade approach, but let me just say, Tim, I did--

RUSSERT: Which is what? When does life begin?

GORE: Let me just say, I did change my position on the issue of federal funding and I changed it because I came to understand more from women--women think about this differently than men.

RUSSERT: But you were calling fetuses innocent human life, and now you don't believe life begins at conception. I'm just trying to find out, when do you believe life begins?

GORE: Well, look, the Roe vs. Wade decision proposes an answer to that question--

RUSSERT: Which is?

As the liberals sense a coming resurrection, they have begun to shine a light on the corrupt, decade-long conservative attack on Social Security, under the cloak of fiscal responsibility. Social Security, practically the last vestige of the New Deal left, is not going bankrupt any more than Saddam Hussein was about to go nuclear. But by far the loudest journalistic voice for this conservative attack on Social Security was Tim Russert. In this program from 2000, he manages to at once beat the drum for repealing Social Security and also use the sticks (again) on the Democratic candidate, Al Gore:

RUSSERT: If--the facts are simple: When Social Security began, Franklin Roosevelt, genius, he--the life expectancy at that point was 63. He made eligibility for Social Security 65...It was a--was a very popular program. There were 45 workers for every retiree and life expectancy was exactly that age. Now we're approaching two workers for every retiree. Life expectancy is 78 going to 85. You're going to have 80 million people on Social Security and Medicare for about a fourth of their life, for three to 20 years. Everyone knows that, and yet when you present it to Al Gore, he'll say, "No problem. I'll take the surplus and it'll pay for it." Even his own Secretary Treasury written volumes of reports--trustees reports, will say, "No, it doesn't work that way."
Everyone my age is checking their will (and their CAT scan insurance), and no one wishes a father and husband to drop dead at 58. But for many of us ordinary citizens, Tim Russert was a powerful man who mostly did harm in every way we can think of. So if it's all right with you, I think I'll turn the TV off now.
http://www.alternet.org/blogs/peek/8...d1bcc15b1e3837





Reporters Say Networks Put Wars on Back Burner
Brian Stelter

Getting a story on the evening news isn’t easy for any correspondent. And for reporters in Iraq and Afghanistan, it is especially hard, according to Lara Logan, the chief foreign correspondent for CBS News. So she has devised a solution when she is talking to the network.

“Generally what I say is, ‘I’m holding the armor-piercing R.P.G.,’ ” she said last week in an appearance on “The Daily Show,” referring to the initials for rocket-propelled grenade. “ ‘It’s aimed at the bureau chief, and if you don’t put my story on the air, I’m going to pull the trigger.’ ”

Ms. Logan let a sly just-kidding smile sneak through as she spoke, but her point was serious. Five years into the war in Iraq and nearly seven years into the war in Afghanistan, getting news of the conflicts onto television is harder than ever.

“If I were to watch the news that you hear here in the United States, I would just blow my brains out because it would drive me nuts,” Ms. Logan said.

According to data compiled by Andrew Tyndall, a television consultant who monitors the three network evening newscasts, coverage of Iraq has been “massively scaled back this year.” Almost halfway into 2008, the three newscasts have shown 181 weekday minutes of Iraq coverage, compared with 1,157 minutes for all of 2007. The “CBS Evening News” has devoted the fewest minutes to Iraq, 51, versus 55 minutes on ABC’s “World News” and 74 minutes on “NBC Nightly News.” (The average evening newscast is 22 minutes long.)

CBS News no longer stations a single full-time correspondent in Iraq, where some 150,000 United States troops are deployed.

Paul Friedman, a senior vice president at CBS News, said the news division does not get reports from Iraq on television “with enough frequency to justify keeping a very, very large bureau in Baghdad.” He said CBS correspondents can “get in there very quickly when a story merits it.”

In a telephone interview last week, Ms. Logan said the CBS News bureau in Baghdad was “drastically downsized” in the spring. The network now keeps a producer in the country, making it less of a bureau and more of an office.

Interviews with executives and correspondents at television news networks suggested that while the CBS cutbacks are the most extensive to date in Baghdad, many journalists shared varying levels of frustration about placing war stories onto newscasts. “I’ve never met a journalist who hasn’t been frustrated about getting his or her stories on the air,” said Terry McCarthy, an ABC News correspondent in Baghdad.

By telephone from Baghdad, Mr. McCarthy said he was not as busy as he was a year ago. A decline in the relative amount of violence “is taking the urgency out” of some of the coverage, he said. Still, he gets on ABC’s “World News” and other programs with stories, including one on Friday about American gains in northern Iraq.

Anita McNaught, a correspondent for the Fox News Channel, agreed. “The violence itself is not the story anymore,” she said. She counted eight reports she had filed since arriving in Baghdad six weeks ago, noting that cable news channels like Fox News and CNN have considerably more time to fill with news than the networks. CNN and Fox each have two fulltime correspondents in Iraq.

Richard Engel, the chief foreign correspondent for NBC News, who splits his time between Iraq and other countries, said he found his producers “very receptive to stories about Iraq.” He and other journalists noted that the heated presidential primary campaign put other news stories on the back burner earlier this year.

Ms. Logan said she begged for months to be embedded with a group of Navy Seals, and when she came back with the story, a CBS producer said to her, “One guy in uniform looks like any other guy in a uniform.” In the follow-up phone interview, Ms. Logan said the producer no longer worked at CBS. And in both interviews, she emphasized that many journalists at CBS News are pushing for war coverage, specifically citing Jeff Fager, the executive producer of “60 Minutes.” CBS News won a Peabody Award last week for a “60 Minutes” report about a Marine charged in the killings at Haditha.

On “The Daily Show,” Ms. Logan echoed the comments of other journalists when she said that many Americans seem uninterested in the wars now. Mr. McCarthy said that when he is in the United States, bringing up Baghdad at a dinner party “is like a conversation killer.”

Coverage of the war in Afghanistan has increased slightly this year, with 46 minutes of total coverage year-to-date compared with 83 minutes for all of 2007. NBC has spent 25 minutes covering Afghanistan, partly because the anchor Brian Williams visited the country earlier in the month. Through Wednesday, when an ABC correspondent was in the middle of a prolonged visit to the country, ABC had spent 13 minutes covering Afghanistan. CBS has spent eight minutes covering Afghanistan so far this year.

Both Ms. Logan and Mr. McCarthy noted that more coalition soldiers were killed in Afghanistan in May than in Iraq. No American television network has a full-time correspondent in Afghanistan, although CNN recently said it would open a bureau in Kabul.

“It’s terrible,” Ms. Logan said in the telephone interview. She called it a financial decision. “We can’t afford to maintain operations in Iraq and Afghanistan at the same time,” she said. “It’s so expensive and the security risks are so great that it’s prohibitive.”

Mr. Friedman said coverage of Iraq is enormously expensive, mostly due to the security risks. He said meetings with other television networks about sharing the costs of coverage have faltered for logistical reasons.

Journalists at all three American television networks with evening newscasts expressed worries that their news organizations would withdraw from the Iraqi capital after the November presidential election. They spoke only on the condition of anonymity in order to avoid offending their employers.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/23/bu...logan.html?dpc





U.K. to Begin Microchipping Prisoners
David Gutierrez

The British government is developing a plan to track current and former prisoners by means of microchips implanted under the skin, drawing intense criticism from probation officers and civil rights groups.

As a way to reduce prison crowding, many British prisoners are currently released under electronic monitoring, carried out by means of an ankle bracelet that transmits signals like those used by mobile phones.

Now the Ministry of Justice is exploring the possibility of injecting prisoners in the back of the arm with a radio frequency identification (RFID) chip that contains information about their name, address and criminal record. Such chips, which contain a built-in antenna, could be scanned by special readers. The implantation of RFID chips in luggage, pets and livestock has become increasingly popular in recent years.

In addition to monitoring incarcerated prisoners, the ministry hopes to use the chips on those who are on probation or other conditional release. By including a satellite uplink system in the chip, police would be able to use global positioning system (GPS) technology to track subjects' exact locations at all times. According to advocates of such a measure, this could help keep sex offenders away from "forbidden" zones like schools.

Harry Fletcher, assistant general secretary of the National Association of Probation Officers, blasted the measure as degrading to the people chipped and of no benefit to probation officers.

"Knowing where offenders like pedophiles are does not mean you know what they are doing," Fletcher said. "Treating people like pieces of meat does not seem to represent an improvement in the system to me."

Shami Chakrabarti of the civil rights group Liberty had even stronger words:

"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."
http://www.naturalnews.com/023481.html





Study: RFID Tags Can Mess Up Medical Devices
Jacob Goldstein

Radio-frequency identification — a system of using tiny tags to track all sorts of products — could be a smart way for hospitals to keep tabs on everything from surgical sponges to patient beds. Indeed, some hospitals have already started adopting the technology.

But a study out today in JAMA suggests RFID systems can cause “potentially hazardous incidents in medical devices.”

Researchers took two standard RFID systems and examined whether they interfered with 41 different medical devices. Each system comprised a tag (which attaches to the object being tracked) and a “reader” that communicates with tags.

Out of a total of 123 tests (there were multiple tests with each system on each device), there were 34 incidents of electromagnetic interference. The median distance at which the systems caused interference was 30 cm (about 12 inches).

A panel of medical specialists determined that 22 of these incidents were potentially hazardous; among other things, interference changed breathing machines’ ventilation rates and caused syringe pumps to stop.

The research was conducted by Dutch investigators as part of a broader project looking at using RFID to track blood and medical supplies.

In an editorial that accompanies the story, Donald Berwick of the Institute for Healthcare Improvement says hospitals should consider internal surveillance, especially in critical care units, for problems related to electrical interference. And he suggests that regulators should weigh in on whether they need to provide safety guidance.

The findings, Berwick continues, suggest a broader lesson for health-care technology: In a system as complicated as a hospital, technical innovations are bound to have surprising results.

“Safety is not a condition, it is a process,” he writes. “It can only emerge continually in a culture that is alert, cooperative, transparent, and resilient when the unexpected happens, as it always will.”
http://blogs.wsj.com/health/2008/06/...dical-devices/





I've Seen the Future, and It Has a Kill Switch
Bruce Schneier

It used to be that just the entertainment industries wanted to control your computers -- and televisions and iPods and everything else -- to ensure that you didn't violate any copyright rules. But now everyone else wants to get their hooks into your gear.

OnStar will soon include the ability for the police to shut off your engine remotely. Buses are getting the same capability, in case terrorists want to re-enact the movie Speed. The Pentagon wants a kill switch installed on airplanes, and is worried about potential enemies installing kill switches on their own equipment.

Microsoft is doing some of the most creative thinking along these lines, with something it's calling "Digital Manners Policies." According to its patent application, DMP-enabled devices would accept broadcast "orders" limiting capabilities. Cellphones could be remotely set to vibrate mode in restaurants and concert halls, and be turned off on airplanes and in hospitals. Cameras could be prohibited from taking pictures in locker rooms and museums, and recording equipment could be disabled in theaters. Professors finally could prevent students from texting one another during class.

The possibilities are endless, and very dangerous. Making this work involves building a nearly flawless hierarchical system of authority. That's a difficult security problem even in its simplest form. Distributing that system among a variety of different devices -- computers, phones, PDAs, cameras, recorders -- with different firmware and manufacturers, is even more difficult. Not to mention delegating different levels of authority to various agencies, enterprises, industries and individuals, and then enforcing the necessary safeguards.

Once we go down this path -- giving one device authority over other devices -- the security problems start piling up. Who has the authority to limit functionality of my devices, and how do they get that authority? What prevents them from abusing that power? Do I get the ability to override their limitations? In what circumstances, and how? Can they override my override?

How do we prevent this from being abused? Can a burglar, for example, enforce a "no photography" rule and prevent security cameras from working? Can the police enforce the same rule to avoid another Rodney King incident? Do the police get "superuser" devices that cannot be limited, and do they get "supercontroller" devices that can limit anything? How do we ensure that only they get them, and what do we do when the devices inevitably fall into the wrong hands?

It's comparatively easy to make this work in closed specialized systems -- OnStar, airplane avionics, military hardware -- but much more difficult in open-ended systems. If you think Microsoft's vision could possibly be securely designed, all you have to do is look at the dismal effectiveness of the various copy-protection and digital-rights-management systems we've seen over the years. That's a similar capabilities-enforcement mechanism, albeit simpler than these more general systems.

And that's the key to understanding this system. Don't be fooled by the scare stories of wireless devices on airplanes and in hospitals, or visions of a world where no one is yammering loudly on their cellphones in posh restaurants. This is really about media companies wanting to exert their control further over your electronics. They not only want to prevent you from surreptitiously recording movies and concerts, they want your new television to enforce good "manners" on your computer, and not allow it to record any programs. They want your iPod to politely refuse to copy music a computer other than your own. They want to enforce their legislated definition of manners: to control what you do and when you do it, and to charge you repeatedly for the privilege whenever possible.

"Digital Manners Policies" is a marketing term. Let's call this what it really is: Selective Device Jamming. It's not polite, it's dangerous. It won't make anyone more secure -- or more polite.
http://www.wired.com/politics/securi...tymatters_0626





Degeekulator

Karolinska Study: Hormone Spray Can Help Cure Social Phobia

Swedish and British researchers have found that a nasal spray with the hormone oxytocin can relieve social phobia, also known as social anxiety disorder.

“It looks very promising. Many say that oxytocin can help those who suffer from social phobia,” said Predag Petrovic, a researcher in clinical neuroscience at Karolinska Institutet, to the Dagens Nyheter newspaper.

Oxytocin is a hormone which is released during breast feeding, childbirth, and massage, and which strengthens the connection between individuals.

Those who suffer from social phobia often feel anxiety when meeting other people.

In the new study, which is published in the Journal of Neuroscience, trial subjects were shown images of faces, and some images were combined with a weak electric shock.

People in the group who then received a dose of oxytocin via nasal spray feel no discomfort when they were once again shown the images.
http://www.thelocal.se/12638/20080625/





SKorea Ponders Closer Watch on Web After Surge of Protests
Lim Chang-Won

After weeks of tumultuous protests inspired largely by South Korea's netizens, the country which claims to be the world's most wired society is considering new ways to monitor the Internet.

Embattled President Lee Myung-Bak highlighted both the benefits and dangers of the web when he addressed a meeting last week on the future of the Internet economy.

Lee, grappling with IT-inspired mass protests over his decision to resume US beef imports, called for the Internet to "be a space of trust".

"Otherwise, the force of the Internet could turn out to be venomous rather than beneficial," he said, noting increasing damage from computer viruses, hacking, cyber terrorism and the leak of personal information.

"In particular, spam mail sent under the guise of anonymity and the spread of falsehoods and inaccurate information are threatening even rationality and trust," said Lee, who did not mention the protests against him.

The new president, caught unaware by the wave of protests citing mad cow disease fears, plans to appoint a secretary to study online public opinion.

But he has firmly denied any intention to censor cyberspace.

The Korea Communications Commission said it would consider strengthening the identity verification system introduced last year to curb cyber bullying.

This requires users to verify their identity -- or registered nickname or pen name -- when they post comment or opinion.

Portal operators must disclose identities of cyber attackers if victims want to sue for libel or infringement of privacy.

Commission official Kim Young-Joo said cyber bulling and malicious online messages should be restricted but she ruled out excessive regulations.

"The Internet is a place for free and open debate. Excessive regulations are feared to restrict freedom of expression," she told AFP.

A report released last week showed South Korea ranked first in terms of household access to the net among members of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development.

It said 94 percent of households had Internet access compared to an average 58 percent among the 30 OECD members.

For years, the Internet has been a powerful political tool here.

Cyber protests and major candlelit protests broke out in 2002 following the death of two schoolgirls in a traffic accident involving a US military vehicle.

The campaign was helpful in securing an upset presidential election victory for Lee's liberal predecessor Roh Moo-Hyun.

Roh was suspended in 2004 after the opposition-led parliament impeached him on charges of electoral law violations and alleged corruption.

But a cyber campaign brought tens of thousands of demonstrators into the streets and helped him return to office stronger than ever.

The Internet's power was proven again this year, with Lee and conservative newspapers emerging as the target.

Critics say netizens were often inspired to protest by misleading information about the alleged dangers of mad cow disease and about government policies in general.

Users of the Korean-language version of online encyclopedia Wikipedia were banned from editing the entry on Lee because most comments were too rude.

Three major conservative newspapers have come under a well organised cyber attack for allegedly biased articles.

Organisers posted a list of companies that advertise with the papers along with their telephone numbers. Netizens were urged to boycott those companies as well as the newspapers.

Kim Min-Ki, a Soongsil University media studies professor, described some postings as akin to cyber terrorism.

"Netizens can debate and express opinion freely but they must refrain from posting malicious allegations or forcing others to follow their beliefs. This is tantamount to cyber terrorism," he told AFP.

"They must know there will be tighter cyber regulations if they go too far."

Hanyang University professor Koo Ja-Soon said that if the Internet is just a space for debate or discussion, there is no need for a watchdog.

"But if it creates rumours or facts which carry people away, it becomes media, which needs to be refuted or corrected for errors," she told the Korea Times.
http://uk.news.yahoo.com/afp/2008062...t-0de2eff.html