Peer-To-Peer News - The Week In Review - April 4th, '09

[JackSpratts]

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"I guess maybe we’re a bit more fruity than the Clash." – Billie Joe Armstrong


































April 4th, 2009




Teens Cut Online Music Spending, Use Free Web Sites
Adam Satariano

U.S. teenagers, a bellwether customer for the record industry, bought 19 percent less music last year and instead turned to free alternatives like Pandora.com and MySpace.com, according to NPD Group Inc.

Consumers ages 13 to 17 spent 13 percent less on music downloads last year, while compact disc purchases tumbled 26 percent, according to a survey by the Port Washington, New York- based researcher. The decline coincided with a 24 percent drop in overall entertainment spending by teens, NPD said.

Vivendi SA’s Universal Music Group, Sony Music Entertainment, Warner Music Group Corp. and EMI Group Ltd. are counting on increases in digital download sales to make up for shrinking CD sales. Total U.S. album sales declined 14 percent last year, according to Nielsen SoundScan.

“The music industry still hasn’t recovered from declining CD sales, and now they are being challenged anew by slowing digital sales among teens,” NPD analyst Russ Crupnick said in a statement.

The shift doesn’t mean teens are obtaining more music illegally. Downloads from peer-to-peer networks fell 6 percent in 2008, NPD said. Meanwhile, 52 percent of teens said they listened to online radio in 2008, up from 34 percent from 2007. Almost half of teens, 46 percent, used social-networking sites to download or stream music, an increase from 26 percent in 2007, NPD said.

Free music services like Pandora, iMeem and MySpace let users stream music instead of downloading it to their hard- drive. Fifty-four percent of teens who heard a song they liked on MySpace were likely to return to the site to hear the track again, compared with 1 percent who said they bought it through Amazon.com Inc., the digital music seller for MySpace, NPD said.
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?p...3nQ&refer=muse





Obama Presents Queen Elizabeth II With an iPod

Queen Elizabeth II wasn't the only one on President Barack Obama's gift list Wednesday.

He gave presents to British Prime Minister Gordon Brown's wife, Sarah, and their two sons, too.

Obama and first lady Michelle Obama presented the queen with a rare coffee table book of songs by composers Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart that Rodgers had signed in May 1952.

But word that he also had given her an iPod created plenty of buzz as it conjured up images of the British monarch all plugged up, earbuds in place, and perhaps bopping to the 40 show tunes on the portable device.

To bring the 240-plus page book to life, the iPod was loaded with dozens of classic show tunes, including several from "Camelot," which was based on the King Arthur legend, and "My Fair Lady," which was set in London.

The iPod also includes photos and video from the queen's 2007 visit to Virginia and Washington, photos from Obama's Jan. 20 inauguration and audio of his inauguration address.

Sarah Brown received a crocheted black flower brooch, accented with pearls.

Sons John and James were presented with baseball memorabilia, including a bat signed by New York Yankees shortstop Derek Jeter, a signed presidential baseball and a collection of 10 Dr. Seuss books.

There were no gifts for the prime minister or Prince Philip, the queen's husband, per their offices.

In return the queen and the prince gave the Obamas a signed portrait of themselves.
http://www.newstimes.com/national/ci_12048835





Seeqpod Files For Bankruptcy
Glenn Peoples

Music search engine Seeqpod has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in the Northern District of California, according to TechCrunch. The move by the Emeryville, CA-based startup closely follows the decision to sell its source code in hopes of spawning numerous similar sites. Last month the company was sued by EMI.

Seeqpod was sued by Warner Music Group in January 2008. It claimed the search engine trawled only for a particular type of content - music - that Seeqpod "knows is overwhelmingly copyrighted." WMG also took issue with Seeqpod's strategy of gaining a user base in the fastest and cheapest way possible. The Electronic Frontier Foundation has posted a copy of the complaint here(.PDF file) and commentary on the complaint here.

On its Web site, Seeqpod claims it is within the law. "Our technology is legal," it insists, "and we diligently observe industry-standard DMCA regulations for search engines, otherwise known as .information location tools. We do not support, nor facilitate, illegal downloading, and we do not host files."

Since it scours the Internet for links to MP3s and videos, Seeqpod does not have the breadth of a standard music service with licensing deals. Queries for currently popular artists or music favorites will return decent results. A search for something out favor with today's youth, like country legend Roy Acuff, will return disappointing results. But the service does have value, and much of it is derived from content outside of the major label system. Since the content is not licensed, Seeqpod is more current and underground than licensed services. A search at Seeqpod can find items not available at iTunes: illegal DJ mixes, user-generated videos and tracks leaked ahead of street date.

While provisions within the Digital Millennium Copyright Act allow for the indexing of links to music files - files which may or may not be legal - they may not cover Seeqpod's entire business model. Seeqpod not only searches and indexes music links, it also allows for users to stream those songs. The company does not pay performance royalties to either owners of sound recorders or composers. WMG's complaint was specific in arguing that Seeqpod created "unauthorized digital public performances." For a debate on that issue and Seeqpod's business model, read this post by the LA Times' Jon Healy and continue through to the comments where Healy and the EFF's Fred von Lohmann have a good debate
http://www.billboard.biz/bbbiz/conte...d5d4f0124c2b97





The Sorry State Of Music Startups
Michael Arrington

Online streaming music startups are in one very sorry place. On demand streaming rates range from .4 cents to 1 cent per stream - this is what the startups pay to the labels every time they play a song for a user. Add bandwidth and storage costs on top of that, which aren’t trivial for services that want to stream music quickly on demand. The result is hundreds of millions of dollars flowing from venture funds to startups to labels. Little of it makes its way to artists, and advertising revenues only cover a tiny portion of the fees.

The labels don’t care if the startups make money, lose money or go out of business. All they want is to make enough money to extend the ultimate surrender date as long as possible. That’s when we’ll finally see the economic reality dictated by the Internet impose itself irrevocably on the music industry. Unless draconian laws are created and enforced that put people in jail, or worse, for file sharing. And even that probably won’t work.

Anyway, these crazy economics are making the music startups skittish. MySpace Music, the biggest player in this space, may be spending $2 million or more per week to the music labels based on their own statistics that they’re streaming over a billion songs a week. Their streaming rate is likely to be the best in the industry, and it almost certainly isn’t lower than .4 cents per song. There is no way that they’re making that much in advertising revenue.

The hope is that downloads, ticket sales, merchandise and ring tones will make up the difference, but what we’re hearing is that very little incremental revenue is being made from these other revenue sources.

That means there’s no chance for these startups to work until the labels reduce, significantly, the streaming rates they’re charging. Or agree to radically different business models. There’s no sign that is happening any time soon.

These crazy economics are making startups do odd things. I emailed one startup recently to suggest a post here on TechCrunch noting that they seem to be doing well - recent setbacks with partners didn’t hurt traffic as much as it may have, and I wanted to note that. The startup flat out asked me not to post, because they didn’t want positive press to impact their negotiations with labels. They had to present as desperate a situation as possible.

Read that again: streaming music startups don’t want more people using their service, because they lose money from every one of them, and the perceived success from having more users makes it harder for them to plead with the labels to give them better deals.

Then there’s imeem. A few days ago I had multiple conversations with the startup around rumors that they owed significant amounts of money to the labels that they couldn’t pay, and that they had failed to raise money or sell themselves. Not much information was shared, other than to say that the rumored $30 million owed to labels was too high. Now they tell VentureBeat that the number is in the single digit millions.

Whatever the number - $30 million or $1 million - imeem can’t pay it. Their business model doesn’t work and it is going to continue to not work until the labels let it work. And they aren’t going to be doing that any time soon.

Big Music Doesn’t Like Streaming Music

The big music labels don’t like streaming music because it doesn’t help them offset declining CD sales, and the evidence now suggests that streaming doesn’t lead to music downloads. Everything we’re hearing says that the labels would like to see streaming music startups just go away for now so that they can focus on maximizing paid downloads and extend that ultimate surrender date.

So when you hear about labels renegotiating streaming deals to help out music startups, be skeptical. They’re likely lowering the rates from 1 cent down to something closer to .4 cents per stream. And all that means is that these startups will bleed a little slower. But they’re still going to go out of business, because the venture firms are done investing in them.
http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/03/27...usic-startups/





Hendrix Home Tape for Sale, Shows "Softer" Side
Mike Collett-White

A home recording by Jimi Hendrix, which its owners said showed the 1960s rock icon's softer side, will be auctioned next month and is expected to fetch between 50,000 and 100,000 pounds ($70-140,000).

According to co-owner Mark Sutherland, the tape was recorded by Hendrix in New York in 1968 and then taken to Britain.

Carl Niekirk worked in a photography studio below Hendrix's central London residence where, because there was only one entrance to the building, he often doubled as doorman for his famous neighbor, letting in guests including George Harrison.

"I don't know how the tapes got from New York to London, but they must have been important if he took them with him," Sutherland said.

"Hendrix ended up in London above where Carl worked. Carl kept getting disturbed by people, and said 'a favor for a favor' ... and Jimi gave him two tapes."

Sutherland said a friend met Niekirk in a pub several years ago and bought the tape from him "for a nominal fee." He is not sure what happened to the second recording.

Since then the tape's new owners have been in legal dispute with the Hendrix estate, and Sutherland said he was now finally able to auction it. Hendrix's estate was not immediately available for comment.

Sutherland and Ted Owen, managing director of pop memorabilia auctioneer the Fame Bureau which is handling the April 28 online auction, are confident the tape is genuine.

"It's pretty obvious," Owen told Reuters. "I have listened to nearly every outtake of Jimi Hendrix and am very familiar with the personal reels. Thirty seven are known to exist, but now only one is out there in the public domain."

Sutherland said the tape featured 14 tracks, including Hendrix performing Bob Dylan track "Tears of Rage." Hendrix famously covered Dylan with "All Along the Watchtower."

"His playing is unique but there are a lot of Hendrix clones," said Sutherland, who is a record producer.

"As soon as he started singing, though, that was it. There is a Dylan song on there in an acoustic and folksy-type style that no-one's heard. It is away from Jimi's wildness and blues."

The tape includes tracks from the 1968 album "Electric Ladyland" and features Hendrix singing and playing the guitar as well as an unidentified harmonica player.

Interest in Hendrix memorabilia has been high in recent years. In September the first guitar to be set alight by Hendrix on stage fetched 280,000 pounds at a Fame Bureau auction.

Hendrix is considered one of rock's greatest guitarists and showmen and a pioneer of the psychedelic music scene. He died in London in 1970 aged 27.

(Editing by Jon Boyle)
http://www.reuters.com/article/enter...52T5XL20090330





Pirate Bay Torrents Spread Via Facebook
enigmax

In a bid to conquer the web bit-by-bit, The Pirate Bay has launched a new feature to allow it to penetrate the social networking site Facebook. With only a single click Facebook users can add their favorite torrents to their profile to share them with friends. The IFPI is not pleased with the new feature, while FaceBook declined to comment.

With the recent trial out of the way, it seems The Pirate Bay team have had more time for development of the site. Just last week they announced the addition of personal RSS feeds. This week we revealed that they will also offer a new IPRED-busting VPN service.

That’s not all though, the team has recently rolled out a new feature which is almost guaranteed to spark controversy. Visitors to a torrent details page on the site - such as this random Ubuntu torrent - will notice the addition of a brand new button labeled ‘Share on Facebook’.

Users clicking this button will be taken to the Facebook where the torrent will be added to the user’s profile. Anyone browsing the user’s profile page can simply click on the torrent and provided a torrent client is installed, download begins straightaway with no need to visit the Pirate Bay site.

The entertainment industries are obviously not amused by this new feature. A representative from the IFPI told the Swiss newspaper 20 Minuten that offering links to torrents that point to copyright works is illegal in Switzerland, while referring to the ShareReactor case .

Increasingly, social networking sites such as Facebook are used to share files with users linking to BitTorrent sites or file-hosters such as Rapidshare and Megaupload. Anti-piracy outfits see this as a new threat and request the site’s operators to remove the links.

Two weeks ago the Brazilian recording industry took action and managed to pressure the moderators of one of the largest groups on Google’s social network Orkut to shut down their group. But, when the 921,000 member group was closed, new ones soon took its place and the sharing continued.

Pirate Bay’s Peter Sunde says that they haven’t seen any complaints regarding the new feature. “As far as I know, no rights-holders have complained to us yet,” while noting that any complaints they do receive get deleted immediately.

When asked if The Pirate Bay had permission from FaceBook to implement the new feature, Sunde said they didn’t feel the need to ask. “They monitoring their protal every day - they should have noticed it long ago,” he added. Facebook declined to comment on the issue.
http://torrentfreak.com/spread-pirat...cebook-090328/





Canada: $222,000 Damages Award Nullified In P2P File-Sharing Case
Daniel G. C. Glover and Barry B. Sookman

The much-watched proceeding, testing the robustness of copyright in the digital age, has taken yet another twist. In Capital Records Inc. v. Thomas, a federal judge in Minnesota has nullified the jury's $222,000 judgment against a woman who "made available" downloads of copyrighted music in the share folder of her computer via the peer-to-peer (P2P) file-sharing application Kazaa. The jury had found that the woman wilfully infringed 24 of the plaintiffs' sound recordings and awarded them $9,250 for each wilful infringement.

On his own motion, US District Court Judge Michael Davis ruled that he had made a manifest error of law in his instructions to the jury. He had told the jurors that "the act of making copyrighted sound recordings available for electronic distribution on a peer-to-peer network, without license from the copyright owners, violates the copyright owners' exclusive right of distribution, regardless of whether actual distribution has been shown" (our emphasis).

On a reassessment of the law, the judge concluded that the US Copyright Act required proof of an "actual dissemination" to ground distribution liability. In light of his error, the judge vacated the judgment and ordered a new trial.

McCarthy Tétrault Notes:

On its face, this decision is a defeat for the plaintiff copyright owners. However, this ruling has at least three significant silver linings for Canadian rights-holders seeking to enforce their rights against parties who upload unauthorized copies of works to shared folders for dissemination through P2P networks:

1. The ruling does not affect the possibility of plaintiffs to assert the reproduction right against individuals who copy files to shared folders for the purpose of distributing them.
2. The judge concluded that copyright holders can prove an actual dissemination by having investigative firms capture and chronicle downloads as users on P2P networks. This conclusion scuttled the attempt of defendant's counsel and amici curiae (friends of the court) to argue that the investigators' downloads were in fact "authorized" uses. In so ruling, the judge drew on case law deeming the investigator's assignment to be part of the copyright owner's attempt to stop infringement, and found that the act of placing copyrighted materials on a network specifically designed for easy, unauthorized copying substantially assisted an infringing act.
3. The judge left the door open to circumstantial proof of an actual dissemination of copyrighted work over a network. This suggests that plaintiffs will be able to identify facts or circumstances that would indicate a likelihood that an unauthorized distribution occurred by reason of making a file available on a shared public folder. Such facts or circumstances might include expert technical reports or statistical studies, long-standing use of a P2P network, examination of log files or other forensic evidence, or the intentional removal of such evidence from a personal computer. As case law develops, these categories will likely expand.

While Capital Records Inc. v. Thomas is limited to claims of infringement against a single uploader, these findings may also aid in creating a foundation for broader-based authorization or joint or contributory liability theories in order to stem more systemic acts of Internet-based piracy.
http://www.mondaq.com/article.asp?articleid=76416





Swedish Antipiracy Law Stirs Up Political Waters
Erik Palm

File swappers in Sweden, land of the world's largest bittorrent sharing site, The Pirate Bay, are facing a tougher future.

The so-called IPRED law, scheduled to go into effect Wednesday, will in some instances require Internet service providers to reveal subscribers' Internet Protocol addresses to copyright holders--including the film, music, and game industries--that charge users with illegal file sharing.

The Swedish law stipulates that property rights holders can take their grievances to a court, which will examine the evidence, including the extent of the file sharing, and decide whether the IP address will be released. The copyright holder then can send a warning letter to the ISP subscriber, and eventually file a civil case against the alleged pirate if the violation doesn't stop.

The law takes effect just as a copyright infringement case against The Pirate Bay draws to a conclusion. The verdict in that trial, due to be announced April 17, will not be affected by the new law, since only file sharing done after Wednesday will be taken into account. In response to the new law, however, The Pirate Bay site recently launched IPREDator, a new paid service that lets users download "more anonymously." The service costs 5 euros a month.

CNET has contacted The Pirate Bay for comment, but has not yet heard back.

In the United States, major ISPs including AT&T and Comcast have recently begun working with the Recording Industry Association of America to target people suspected of pirating music. The steps involved could include suspension or termination of service for repeat offenders, in a determination made by the Internet provider.

In Sweden, a country with one of the highest rates of Internet use in the world and a strong tradition of peer-to-peer networks, the IPRED law is proving to be a political hot button.

Citizens in general, and young men in particular, oppose IPRED in large numbers, according to a recent survey for Swedish national newspaper SvD.

For its part, the Antipiracy Agency, an organization formed by the film and game industries to fight Internet piracy in Sweden, is happy about the new law, which was passed by a large majority of the Swedish parliament on February 25.

"Of course we'll use the law," Henrik Ponten, a lawyer for at the Antipiracy Agency told Swedish news agency TT. "We have not acted to get the law and then not use it."

But in a sign of just how sensitive the law is, the center party in Sweden's ruling right alliance, which formulated the law, publicly debated its stricter aspects, a stance likely taken to appease a key voting demographic--young people for whom file sharing is one of the biggest political concerns. The leading party in the opposing left alliance party, the Social Democrats, did the same, even though it too voted for the law.

A country of file sharers

The once notorious file-sharing software Kazaa, the established peer-to-peer telephony software Skype, and similar offerings originated in Sweden. An estimated 1 out of 10 Swedes engage in file-sharing practices. File sharing is such a big issue in the Northern European country, in fact, that elected politicians write op-eds on emerging technologies for mainstream news outlets.

And the Pirate Party--which was formed in 2006 to reform copyright law and protect citizens' rights to privacy--after only three years has the one of the largest numbers of members among the youth wings of the country's political parties.

The numbers related to IPRED bear that out. According to the survey by the newspaper SvD (article in Swedish), 79 percent of men ages 15 to 29 oppose IPRED. Only 32 percent of those polled support the law, while 48 percent say they oppose it adamantly.

The law, based on the European antipiracy directive Intellectual Property Rights Enforcement Directive, is supposed to focus on file sharers who upload material and those who download a considerable numbers of files. Where the line will be drawn is not yet clear.

Technically, it has also been questioned whether one can link the downloading of a certain file to a specific person. For instance, if a computer is shared in a family or the subscriber has been surfing with a wireless router, a pirate could be using that connection to download files illegally.

The Left and Green parties in Sweden, which are in political opposition to the ruling right-wing alliance, voted against the law. They say it threatens democracy and personal integrity, since it gives large companies too much power to act as police and collect sensitive personal data.

Whether the law has an effect remains to be seen. According to the survey in the newspaper SvD, only one out of four people who answered that they were sharing files said they would stop once the new legislation is in place.
http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-10207718-93.html





Twah Streeks

HADOPI Law Passed - by 12 Votes to 4

What a travesty of democracy:
Glyn Moody

Alors que le vote n'était pas prévu avant la semaine prochaine, les quelques députés présents à l'hémicycle à la fin de la discussion sur la loi Création et Internet ont été priés de passer immédiatement au vote, contrairement à l'usage. La loi a été adoptée, en attendant son passage en CMP puis au Conseil Constitutionnel.

On peine à en croire la démocratie dans laquelle on prétend vivre et écrire. Après 41 heures et 40 minutes d'une discussion passionnée sur le texte, il ne restait qu'une poignée de courageux députés autour de 22H45 jeudi soir lorsque l'Assemblée Nationale a décidé, sur instruction du secrétaire d'Etat Roger Karoutchi, de passer immédiatement au vote de la loi Création et Internet, qui n'était pas attendu avant la semaine prochaine. Un fait exceptionnel, qui permet de masquer le nombre important de députés UMP qui se seraient abstenus si le vote s'était fait, comme le veut la tradition, après les questions au gouvernment mardi soir. Ainsi l'a voulu Nicolas Sarkozy.

...

Quatre députés ont voté non (Martine Billard, Patrick Bloche et deux députés non identifiés), et une dizaine de mains se sont levées sur les bancs de la majorité pour voter oui. En tout, 16 députés étaient dans l'hémicycle au moment du vote.

[Via Google Translate: While the vote was not expected until next week, the few members in the chamber at the end of the discussion on the Creation and Internet law were invited to proceed immediately to vote, contrary to custom.The law was passed, until it passes then CMP in the Constitutional Council.

It is difficult to believe in democracy in which we aim to live and write. After 41 hours and 40 minutes of passionate discussion on the text, there remained only a handful of courageous members around 22:45 Thursday evening when the National Assembly decided, on the instructions of the Secretary of State Roger Karoutchi to pass immediately to vote on the Creation and Internet law, which was not expected before next week. One exception, which allows you to hide the large number of UMP deputies who would have abstained if the vote had been, as tradition dictates, after the government issues Tuesday night. Thus wished Nicolas Sarkozy.

...

Pack is voted. Four members voted no (Martine Billard, Patrick Bloche and two unidentified deputies), and a dozen hands were raised on the banks of the majority to vote yes. In all, 16 MPs were in the chamber for the vote.]

So one of the most important, and contentious piece of legislation in recent years is passed by trickery. In this way, those pushing this law have shown their true colours and their contempt for the democratic process.
http://opendotdotdot.blogspot.com/20...otes-to-4.html





Global Box Office Hits Record $28.1 Billion in '08

Boosted by smash hits including Batman movie "The Dark Knight," global box offices earned a record $28.1 billion in 2008, up five percent amid the gloomy economy.

The Motion Picture Association, which represents Hollywood's major studios, said domestic box office, including the United States and Canada, reached $9.8 billion, a 1.7 percent increase over 2007, while elsewhere around the world ticket sales climbed seven percent to a record $18.3 billion.

"Movies can still be counted on to boost people's spirits as well as the economy," said Dan Glickman, chairman and chief executive of the movie trade group, in prepared comments for ShoWest, the industry's annual convention held in Las Vegas.

While domestic admissions -- people actually attending theaters -- were down slightly to 1.4 billion in 2008, they remained relatively equal to recent years, the MPAA said.

But admissions were up 7 percent in the fourth quarter of 2008 and eight percent in the first 10 weeks of 2009.

Average ticket prices in 2008 rose by about 30 cents to $7.18, a 4.4 percent increase roughly comparable to the consumer price index increase, the MPAA said.

The number of films released in 2008 increased slightly from the previous year to 610 compared to 599 in 2007.

The MPAA represents studios such as Universal Pictures, Warner Bros., Paramount Pictures, which distributes DreamWorks films, Twentieth Century Fox, Columbia Pictures and Disney.

(Reporting by Susan Zeidler; Editing by Tim Dobbyn)
http://www.reuters.com/article/enter...52U7MK20090331





Report: iPhone Accounts For 50 Percent Of U.S. Mobile Web Traffic; Android At 5 Percent
Tricia Duryee

Every month, AdMob releases some statistics about the mobile phone market by evaluating traffic from its mobile ad network, and in the month of February, it said one of the highlights was that smartphones continue to gain significant market share of the mobile Web traffic. It said over the past six months, the smartphone share has risen to 33 percent from 26 percent. Report.

Here are some of the statistics regarding smartphones:

—Touchscreens: The top handset on each carrier is a touchscreen. T-Mobile has the Android device, the T-Mobile G1, Verizon Wireless (NYSE: VZ) has the BlackBerry Storm; AT&T (NYSE: T) has the iPhone and Sprint (NYSE: S) has the Samsung Instinct.

—Top five smartphones: Globally they are: iPhone, Nokia (NYSE: NOK) N70, BlackBerry 8300, Nokia N80, and Nokia N73. In the U.S.: iPhone, BlackBerry Curve, BlackBerry Pearl, Palm (NSDQ: PALM) Centro, and HTC Dream (G1).

—OS Breakdown: Symbian lost market share in February, but is still number one worldwide with 43 percent of requests; the top Windows Mobile device is the Samsung BlackJack II, but six of the top 10 Windows Mobile devices are from HTC; Android accounts for 5 percent of the US smartphone market; iPhone generated 33 percent of worldwide traffic and 50 percent of US traffic.

Posted in: Companies, Apple, Google, Microsoft, Nokia, Operators, AT&T, SprintNextel, T-Mobile, Verizon, RIM, Samsung, Countries, Media & Publishing, Mobile Adv & Mktg, Technologies, Operating Systems
http://www.moconews.net/entry/419-re...raffic-androi/





Study: Web Ad Dollars Surpass Radio
FMQB

A recent study from Pricewaterhouse Coopers shows that Internet advertising surpassed radio ad revenue in 2008. The "Internet Advertising Revenue Report" found Web advertising growing to $23.4 billion last year, a 10.6 percent increase over 2007. A recent RAB report put radio's ad revenue total for '08 at just under $19.5 billion in 2008, roughly $4 billion less than what Internet advertising brought in.

According to the study, the only other category to experience ad revenue growth in '08 was Cable TV. Total non-Internet media revenue, which includes radio, was down 2.4 percent in 2008. Internet ad revenue, while up last year, did not see the same increases as it had in previous years and even fell in Q1 and Q2.

The New York Times quotes PWC partner David Silverman, who noted that Internet advertising was "one of the few things that actually grew in fourth quarter 2008."
http://fmqb.com/article.asp?id=1248405





Arianna Huffington Forms Fund for Huffington Post Investigative Journalists
Robert Dougherty

Arianna Huffington has frequently complained about the state of journalism on the Huffington Post. Or if not, Arianna Huffington's guest columnists have. The Huffington Post is primarily known as one of the most prolific blogs and sources of political commentary on the Internet. Now, Arianna Huffington wants to turn the Huffington Post into a place for actual investigative journalism.

Newspapers and TV news outlets often fear that the Internet will take over their jobs, and now the Huffington Post seems ready to actually try it. Arianna Huffington announced the foundation of the Huffington Post Investigative Fund on Sunday, to help find new reporters.

Huffington posted on the Huffington Post that the blog is joining forced with Atlantic Philanthropies, and other donors, to found the Huffington Post Investigative Fund. This fund will have a budget of $1.75 million, which will allow the blog to hire 10 investigative journalists.

The Huffington Post investigative reporters will post whatever stories they find on the blog, but Arianna Huffington is also allowing any other publications to post them for free. Huffington told the AP that "All of us increasingly have to look at different ways to save investigative journalism."

The Huffington Post's plan may be the next step in the Internet taking over journalism. Blogs like the Huffington Post, Daily Kos and others were founded so that political commentary could be made by any Internet user. Quite often, that commentary bashes the state of investigative journalism, and accuses corporations of killing it.

Arianna Huffington helped pioneer influential Internet blogs with the Huffington Post, where regular political commentators, regular people, and even celebrities contribute. With the blog's popularity and influence, it is fitting that Huffington's blog is the first to try and outdo the news with its own investigative journalism.
http://www.associatedcontent.com/art...uffington.html





When Surveillance Turns Against the Police
Jennifer 8. Lee

Several times in recent months, video recordings have been used as evidence against police officers accused of misconduct or of lying on the witness stand.

The latest such case emerged on Monday, when a New York City detective, Debra Eager, 41, was indicted on three felony perjury charges after her testimony before a grand jury about a 2007 drug arrest “starkly contradicted” video recording of the event, according to the Bronx prosecutor’s office. The felony and misdemeanor charges against the drug suspects were dropped in October.

Of course, the most high profile video case emerged on YouTube, and charges of attempted assault and resisting arrest against a cyclist were dropped after videotape showed that it was the police officer who knocked him off the bicycle. In addition, two undercover narcotics officers were charged with official misconduct and conspiracy in January after prosecutors said they lied about a “buy and bust” operation at a bar. Last month, assault charges were dropped against a truck driver after a video showed a police officer hitting him 10 times with a metal baton.

The police spokesman said it was “baffling” why officers would risk prosecution to advance a criminal case. Of course it also raises questions about how officers have been behaving before cameras came along.
http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/20...=police&st=cse





Genre From Another Planet: The ’50s
Terrence Rafferty

“THE past is a foreign country,” the novelist L. P. Hartley once wrote; “they do things differently there.” Like everything else in our brave new world this famous sentence, written 56 years ago, could use an update — or in movie terms, a remake. Because sometimes, as in R. W. Goodwin’s wacky new “Alien Trespass” (opening Friday), the past looks stranger than that. In “Alien Trespass,” which is set in 1957 and is both a parody of and a homage to the science-fiction films of that anxious era, the past seems like another planet.

It’s not just the weird extraterrestrial creatures running amok on Earth, sneaking up on decent, hard-working, small-town folks and reducing them to puddles of goo; we’re used to that. It isn’t even the aliens’ shiny spaceships, with their inexplicably powerful thrust and sinister but somehow festive blinking lights. What feels galactically remote in “Alien Trespass,” and in the half-century-old movies it evokes, is the people, the “ordinary” human beings whose existence is so direly imperiled by superior intelligences from far, far away.

Oddest of all are the scientists, our little species’ own homegrown superior intelligences, whose knowledge and mental capacity are often laughably unequal to understanding (much less defeating) the alien adversary. “Alien Trespass” has a character like that, a pipe-smoking astronomer, played by Eric McCormack, who tries to figure out what’s going on and for his trouble has his body appropriated by an extraterrestrial. This possessed scientist is a figure of fun, but it’s kind of touching that he’s in the movie at all; except for television’s many forensic pathologists, poring over runny cadavers, scientists as a type have mostly vanished from pop culture. It’s as if they’d been abducted.

In Byron Haskin’s “War of the Worlds” (1953), for example, the hero is an eminent nuclear physicist, played by Gene Barry; in Steven Spielberg’s more elaborate (and more frightening) 2005 remake, the protagonist — played by the distinctly unscientific-looking Tom Cruise — is a crane operator. When the aliens attack in the 21st-century version of “War of the Worlds,” there’s no one around to supply explanations, theories and plans of action, to stare with furrowed brow at exotic instruments and make complex calculations, to consult with military leaders and heads of government, or even to issue somber pronouncements on the fate of the human race. And without any of that earnest stuff, all that’s left is running and screaming.

Which have their place. But that place is in horror, where the threats to our well-being are impervious to reason, unconquerable by the highest mathematics. Science fiction often verges on horror, and did so even in the ’50s, in pictures like Christian Nyby and Howard Hawks’s “Thing From Another World” (1951) and Don Siegel’s “Invasion of the Body Snatchers” (1956). Yet there was always at least the hope that a bit more knowledge might save the day, a modicum of faith in the power of the mind to vanquish monsters.

It’s that seriousness of purpose that makes ’50s science fiction a fitting subject for both nostalgia and parody — as it is, simultaneously, in “Alien Trespass.” This seriousness has a character very particular to its moment in history. You can’t help being struck, as you watch the sci-fi epics of the first half of 1950s, by how strongly they bear the imprint of the world war that ended less than 10 years before, and the cold war that showed no sign of ending soon.

A good many of the best films of the time have a powerfully martial aura: armies are mobilized, strategies decided upon in urgent, hushed conferences, with charts. Rudolph Maté’s “When Worlds Collide” (1951) speculates on the destruction of Earth by a planet that passes too close, and many of the images of the mass evacuation of cities and their eventual annihilation are, startlingly, taken from newsreels of wartime Europe; the 1953 “War of the Worlds” also makes use of those all-too-real pictures of human devastation, to portray the effects of a Martian invasion.

The feeling that the end of the world has been narrowly averted, and remains a fairly lively possibility, does tend to focus the mind. The ’50s had their share of space operas, like Fred Wilcox’s wonderful 1956 “Forbidden Planet” (based, improbably, on “The Tempest”), but the alien-invasion movies are more resonant and much, much more intense.

The original “Invasion of the Body Snatchers,” does a nifty job of wrapping several of the age’s deepest anxieties into a single scary metaphor: people fall asleep and wake up different, their individual bodies taken over by a kind of collective unhuman consciousness. This extreme-alien-makeover motif is, among other things, an ingenious solution to the stubbornest problem of low-budget sci-fi: namely the variable quality of the acting. It saves a ton on special effects too.

But the genius of the “Body Snatchers” metaphor (the movie is based on a story by Jack Finney) is that it combines the ’50s anxiety about the end of humankind with the era’s equally persistent fears about the toxic effects of mass movements: the Nazism and Fascism that had so recently come close to blowing up the world, the Soviet-style Communism that looked, from these shores, intent on finishing the job. There’s a warning here too about the creeping pressure to conform in our own prosperous middle-class society.

These are useful cautions because, as all these movies show, belief in authority of one kind or another — including the authority of science — was considerably stronger in that age than in the present day, when few leaders are trusted, and the word “expert” is almost invariably preceded by “so-called.” It’s this greater credulity that makes people in ’50s science-fiction films seem so far from us now — familiar but distant, unreachable, like the selves we were as children.

We all, I think, feel a small tug of childlike idealism watching a movie like Robert Wise’s “Day the Earth Stood Still” (1951), in which the noble alien Klaatu arrives on Earth to save us from destroying ourselves; he’s like a teacher or a priest or a rabbi, one of those authority figures we once upon a time believed in. Or even a scientist. The centrality of that profession in ’50s genre films was probably inevitable given the role of science in bringing World War II to its conclusion. But that conclusion was painful, even horrific, as the Japanese science-fiction movies, like “Godzilla” (1954), clearly demonstrate. American and British genre films feature both good scientists and bad; you can tell the dangerous ones by their goatees.

And occasionally there is one who accurately reflects our ambivalence about reason and science, like the gentle-natured intellectual played by George Sanders in Wolf Rilla’s superb “Village of the Damned” (1960), who finds himself the guardian of an extraterrestrial son and tries — foolishly, tragically — first to learn from him and then to teach him. “Village of the Damned” has its own specific resonances: the alien child and his alien playmates are blond and affectless, like Hitler Youth, and the scientist’s attempts to understand them are doomed from the start.

But it’s hard not to be moved by his efforts, futile though they are; they’re evidence of a humanity that glassy children, big-headed aliens, radioactive slimes and the like might have some difficulty destroying. Every now and then it’s nice to go back in time and see the world differently, to watch the skies with the eyes of our bygone selves.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/29/movies/29raff.html





Will British Libel Law Kill Net Free Speech?
Emily MacManus

The UK's libel laws mean more and more websites globally will be forced to respond to threats of litigation with the strategy of "take it down, take it down quickly, take it down again."

Libel laws in England and Wales have caused plenty of controversy and the UK is known as the defamation capital of the world. Indeed, defamation is one of the UK's growing export industries. UK jurisdiction awards the highest damages in Europe and, with costs often running into the millions, has the dubious accolade of being the most expensive place to bring a defamation claim.

But what does this do to free speech on the internet? Freedom of expression and the right to opinion and comment is protected by law. Balanced against this is the right of individuals (and companies) not to have their reputations unfairly harmed by false or defamatory statements. This balance is delicate enough in the traditional media, but on the internet, where statements can be available to a global audience at the click of a mouse, the delicate nature of the balance is amplified exponentially. The global nature of the medium means that anything published anywhere could quite easily be claimed to lead to damages under UK law.

Plenty of print and website editors capitulate daily to the threat of libel by not publishing a piece or removing material from a website. Many of these threats are unjustified. So where exactly is the balance between freedom of speech and protection from defamation for internet service providers and publishers?

There is a real danger that we cannot rely on the UK's judge-made law to move sufficiently fast to protect world-wide web free speech. The UK's unique legal position could combine with the recent introduction of “No-Win-No-Fee” litigation arrangements to create serious globally adverse effects on new media's freedom of speech.

The Bad

In 1999 the use of CFAs (Conditional Fee Agreements) or no-win no-fee arrangements between lawyers and their clients was extended to defamation cases. This means a lawyer can take on a client and take his claim to court without seeking payment (ie: the law firm, in effect pays for the client to go to court). If the client then wins, the media defendant has to pay whatever damages were awarded, plus the costs of the claimant and (most controversially) the success fee of the lawyer. The success fee can be an uplift of up to 100% on the lawyer’s fees. The lawyer is rewarded for taking the risk of not getting paid at all, the client gets the damages and the defendant gets bankrupt. Well, not quite, but the defendant has to pay the damages and the claimant’s costs under his CFA, which often represent an amount three or four times that of the damages themselves. Julian Pike of law firm Farrer and Co was quoted in The Times last month estimating that the cost of losing a major action at trial in a case involving a CFA was now £2.4 million.

If they win, the media outlet is highly unlikely to recover their own fees from the claimant, as the claimant (generally an individual) will not be in a financial position to pay. It is a lose-lose situation for the media. As lawyers well know, there is nothing more dangerous to a defendant than a claimant with nothing to lose. CFA’s have created an environment in which there are a lot more claimants with nothing to lose.

The cost of defending libel claims has had a noticeable effect on the number of libel cases making their way through the courts. A report in October 2008 by Sweet & Maxwell found that in 2007-2008 61% of reported defamation cases in England and Wales resulted in a statement in open court (ie: the claim settled). The figure for the same period in 2006-2007 was 56%, and 2005-2006 it was just 21% of cases.

This trend has slowed the development of the law in the area of defamation. Fewer cases making it to trial mean that there have been fewer judgements on the principles of defamation law. This is harmful in an area of law that is traditionally judicially developed. In addition, old school judicial attitude to the internet pervades leading to many of the same problems as newspapers and magazines faced when mass publication and distribution first arose. As in an Australian High Court case, where it was considered that “the problem of widely disseminated communications is much older than the internet and the World Wide Web. The law has had to grapple with such cases ever since newspapers and magazines came to be distributed to large numbers of people over wide geographical areas”.

However, the internet poses a much bigger problem. The very nature of the world-wide web is that it is indeed, world wide. It is also instantaneous. Information can be published once in the UK and be accessed instantly from anywhere in the world. Anyone who participates in publishing a statement on the web is a ‘publisher’ for the purposes of defamation. This includes the ISPs, websites, individuals. So it is not just the person who wrote the statement and published it initially (the primary publisher), but everyone else who helped that statement to be shared and read (secondary publishers) that are liable. This brings ISPs and websites to the forefront of libel actions. In addition, the UK operates a “multiple publication” rule, whereby every time the statement is downloaded or accessed it constitutes a fresh publication. On the internet, it is hard to imagine how many publications of a statement could be possible if it catches the interest of people around the world. The judicial mind boggles at the thought.

The Good

That is not to say that the law offers no defence to publishers on the internet. Defamation law itself is actually quite media friendly, offering several good defences which are often successfully used. It would also be unfair to say that the law has no grasp of the medium of internet.

The basic defences available to all the print media are also available to ISPs. In particular, the defence of innocent dissemination (under Section 1 Defamation Act (DA)) is useful for internet publishers.

Traditionally a defence of newsagents and libraries, innocent dissemination is now Section 1 DA and is intended to protect ISPs as well. The defence is essentially that if you did not author the work nor physically publish it yourself and did not know or could not reasonably have known that the material was defamatory then you will not be liable for it. It therefore protects websites that publish blogs for example, as they have no control over what is written. However, they will have a responsibility once they are put on notice of any libellous material as then they will have control over it. So there is a responsibility on the part of ISPs only once they are told, or come to believe, that material they are publishing could be libellous.

This rule has meant that now, when ISPs come to know of potentially libellous material on their websites, their first reaction is to take it down to prevent their liability commencing or being exacerbated. This has been criticised because it essentially means that websites will capitulate to almost any threat of libel without the merits of the complaint being examined, or the author’s view being taken. Even if what was said was true (so any libel claim could be defended with justification), the fear of expensive litigation is enough to warrant the post being removed. Many argue this flies in the face of free speech, as any publisher is effectively held to ransom by someone crying libel, irrespective of how good their case is.

In addition to section 1 of the DA, the E-commerce regulations are also in place to protect ISP’s, although it is doubtful how much this adds to the DA already in place. There is much overlap (in fact, they say almost exactly the same things). In Bunt v Tilly the judge hinted that where protection under s1 of the DA falls away when the publisher becomes aware of the libel, more detailed knowledge might be needed on the part of the ISP in order for it to be deprived of the protection of the e-commerce regulations. We must wait for a court to decide whether the directive brings any additional protection to ISPs.

Judicially as well, there have been some important developments on internet libel. Defamatory posts in chatrooms and bulletin boards, for example, are likely to be viewed by the courts as more akin to slander than libel. This is significant because slander is defamation in the form of spoken word rather than the more permanent libel. In slander the claimant will actually have to prove that they were damaged by the statements, whereas in libel damage is assumed.

In a recent case (Smith v ADVFN Plc and others [2008]) a high court judge threw out the claimant's case because he felt the claim to be without merit and with little chance of success. The claimant had complained of a series of postings by shareholders on ADVFN Plc’s online bulletin board. Smith was a director of the company, which had failed to make a profit and was not paying dividends to its shareholders. The bulletin board conversations revolved around abuse of Mr Smith in his position as a director.

The judge believed the statements not to be libellous for several reasons. Firstly he noted that comments of this kind were much more like a conversation than permanent printed media, and therefore more likely to be slander than libel. He also said that comments made on bulletin boards are not made in a vacuum. Most people reading the online conversations would know what the background was and be able to put it into context. He felt that the defendants would be able to avail themselves of several defences and would argue, rightly, that the comments were mere vulgar abuse, fair comment or both.

Where the authors held an interest in the subject matter, he felt that the defence of qualified privilege (see below) might apply. The judge noted that many of the posts were expressed in exaggerated terms, but he believed the authors were still expressing views honestly held. The case was held to have no merit and was thrown out, albeit with a judicial caveat that he "would not suggest for a moment that blogging cannot ever form the basis of a legitimate libel claim.” Still, it is good news for websites operating bulletin boards and forums for debate that what is written can be recognised as slander and the traditional defences used successfully as protection.

Priveleging The Public Realm

The Courts do recognise the need to preserve freedom of expression and privilege can attach to certain situations to allow for this. Qualified Privilege is a defence which protects a defendant where the statements he makes were wrong but were fairly warranted by the occasion in which they were made. An occasion of qualified privilege exists where the maker of the statement has a duty (whether legal, social or moral) to make it, and the recipient has a corresponding interest in receiving it. The defence is defeated by evidence of any malice in the making of the statement, although for legal purposes 'malice' is where the person making the statement had no real belief in what he was saying, not that he wished ill towards anyone.

Obviously, whether the defence will succeed depends on what is being said and whether the court believes it is in the public interest to know about it. In the recent case of Mosley v News Group Newspapers Limited [2008] the idea of "public interest" was found not to extend to Max Mosley's private activities. Of course, the News of the World would disagree with that, citing their publication figures as proof that the public were very interested. But, as Lord Bingham succinctly put it in Jameel (Mohammed) v Wall Street Journal Sprl [2007] "...what engages the interest of the public may not be material which engages the public interest."

Another edge to this defence is the idea of responsible journalism, that it is also in the public interest to receive information that has been thoroughly researched and properly investigated to the best of the journalist's capabilities. If a journalist fails to properly research material which then turns out to be false, then it is his fault and it is not in the public interest to receive such information. If the journalist had very carefully researched both aspects of the argument, obtained quotes from both sides and still the material was false, it is much more likely to be considered to be in the public interest. It is perhaps here that the defence moves away from being available to websites running online forums because the very nature of that debate is that the views expressed are often very poorly researched, they are just one person's opinion - glibly given and quickly forgotten.

However, it is easy to see that it is still in the public interest to allow forums such as these to exist. The authors of these statements are not pretending to be journalists, and everyone reading the discussion will understand that the views being expressed are not representative, well-thought out or informed, but mere opinion, to which everyone is entitled. It is difficult to see how a court would not accept that websites such as openDemocracy were in the public interest. That may not be enough to defend a libel claim, but it would doubtless be taken into account and would probably affect any damages awarded.

What Is Different Elsewhere

Comparatively with other jurisdictions, England and Wales did not fare well in a recent Oxford University report called A Comparative Study of Costs in Defamation Proceedings Across Europe. The report was commissioned by the Daily Mail and found that CFAs are making defamation in England and Wales up to 140 times more costly than in the rest of Europe.

England and Wales was found to be three times more expensive than Ireland, which was the next most expensive jurisdiction. Ireland was still ten times more expensive than Italy, which came in third. England and Wales was also found to be the jurisdiction that awarded the most in damages in libel claims. The report noted that article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights (freedom of speech) was potentially being infringed, as the media would obviously tend to self-censor in order to avoid potential court cases. The report said that the media “no longer had any economic incentive to defend [themselves] against defamation actions in court." It also noted that the high cost of defending a claim against a claimant on a CFA could be infringing the media’s right to a fair trial under Article 6. The report constitutes a fairly damning indictment of the system for defamation claims in England and Wales, particularly in comparison to our European neighbours.

Our libel laws seem particularly stringent on internet providers when compared to the US. The US apply a “single publication rule" in libel law, where only the first publication of the defamatory material will count. This essentially means that ISP’s are immune under statute from defamation actions resulting from the comments of third parties. So where a website picks up on a story elsewhere and re-publishes any defamatory material, they will not be liable. We must bear in mind however, that courts in the US are extremely reluctant to fetter free speech because of the First Amendment which enshrines freedom of speech as part of the US constitution. It is also worth noting that ISP’s immunity has meant that any responsibility on the part of ISPs to police the material they publish has been removed. This has been commented upon several times by the US courts and means it is very unlikely to ever be enacted in the UK. Indeed, our multiple publication rule has recently been upheld by the European Court of Human Rights in Times Newspapers Limited (Nos 1 and 2) v United Kingdom. The Times argued that the multiple publication rule was a disproportionate interference with their freedom of expression. The European court disagreed, saying that it served a legitimate aim and was necessary in a democratic society. The court noted that when exercising its freedom of expression, the media must act responsibly, particularly when the information imparted is likely to have a serious impact on the reputation and rights of private individuals.

Needed: Principled Deep-Pocketed Litigants

So where does this leave libel on the internet? Should websites feel they have no choice but to remove potentially defamatory material from their web pages as soon as they become aware of it - or is this just the latest infringement on freedom of speech?
There are arguments that if the website feels what has been said can be defended it should be left online. But that involves a gutsy editor with the financial backing to go to court and not win anything other than the right to publish the material. That should be enough, but often it is not when the website has expended many thousands of pounds defending the action, which it then cannot claim back from the claimant because he had no money to start with.

Perhaps a good middle ground would be if the Section 1 defence under the DA (innocent dissemination as discussed above) was amended. It has been argued that the Act could provide immunity when an ISP has investigated a complaint and reasonably concluded that there is a valid defence to defamation proceedings. If the DA was amended in this way, it would give ISPs more scope to deal with each complaint independently, although it would likely still mean that the post or statement complained of would have to be taken down while the ISP was investigating it.

The government has also recently launched a consultation paper to look into capping CFA fees to rebalance the financial burden on defendants. In addition there has been talk of an industry code for internet publishers giving guidance and best practice to ISPs and websites confronted with libel complaints.

But for now the reaction to libel remains: take it down, take it down quickly, take it down again. And libel tourism means that this habit is likely to spread.
http://www.opendemocracy.net/article...bel-litigation





The Genius Behind Google’s Web Browser
Rob Minto

About five miles outside Aarhus in Denmark – the country’s second-biggest city and the unofficial capital of Jutland – sits a converted farmhouse. Inside, in a large wood-floored space with vaulted ceilings – once part of the stables – a big brown leather sofa is positioned a few feet from a DVD player. From the outside, with its rough cobbles and small, recessed windows, the farmhouse still seems steeped in the past; yet this is the place where a key part of the future of the internet first took shape.

The drive from Copenhagen has taken longer than expected, and the farmhouse is hard to find. Lars Bak, its owner and a programming genius to his peers, made his home here for a reason – he doesn’t particularly want to be found. His Alsatian, Mickey, isn’t pleased to see us either: the dog has to be restrained before I even think about stepping out of the car.

It’s a cold December day in Denmark. We are further north than Edinburgh, but the sky is the uniform grey you see in the East Anglian fens. Bak seems uncomfortable as we shake hands, and I get the feeling that he wants me nowhere near the part of the farmhouse where he lives. Instead, we go into the vaulted room with the brown leather sofa. Nowadays it is a home cinema, but before that it was the office where Bak did his programming. The temperature is only slightly warmer than outside. I shiver as I take out my notebook. “So, what do you want to know?” Bak demands. We have four hours to go.

Lars Bak isn’t a household name – or at least this one isn’t. There’s a better-known Lars Bak in Denmark who’s a professional cyclist. But this Bak will have a more profound impact on your life than any sportsman. His most recent computer software program, called V8, is part of the Chrome web browser, a lynchpin in the business plan of Google.

Companies don’t really make money out of web #browsers – the Explorers, Safaris and Firefoxes of the internet. So why is a new one so important to Google? Why invest time and effort in a free product that generates no income for the company behind it? The answer is not in the browser itself, but in the things it can access: namely, web-based software programs. These are a source of revenue for Google. The company has high hopes for Google Docs, for example, an online suite of programs that replicates many of the desktop programs in Microsoft’s Office – Word, Excel and PowerPoint – the tools of the modern business. But to deliver better versions of those programs and others over the internet, you need better browsers, ones that can handle the code that will be thrown at them. Many of us already use web-based programs: e-mail accounts such as Hotmail, Yahoo mail or Googlemail, for example. But they are relatively simple: their complexity pales in comparison with the programs stored on the average computer desktop.

The sophistication of web applications is increasing much faster than the corresponding power of the browsers. It’s like having lots of high-performance sports cars using rutted, bumpy roads. And yet no car manufacturer has ever invested in road building. That sort of move would, after all, benefit competitors equally, not to mention being massively expensive. Software development doesn’t cost as much but the competitor problem remains. But Google says it doesn’t mind: without an improvement in browser performance, the company argues, we all suffer.

The ability to access complex programs through the web is known as “cloud computing”, and Google isn’t the only one arguing that it’s the way ahead. Even Microsoft, the company synonymous with applications and operating systems located on the desktop, has talked about moving into “the cloud”. Steve Ballmer, Microsoft’s chief executive, has promised an “operating system that runs in the internet” – something he has dubbed “Windows Cloud”. But for cloud computing truly to take off, web browsers need to be better.

And that’s where Bak comes in. The Dane had first appeared on California’s Silicon Valley radars in 1991, when he joined Sun Microsystems and began building a reputation as one of the industry’s best programmers. He left to help start Animorphic Systems in 1994, which was then acquired by Sun. Once back at the company, Bak developed what would become Java HotSpot, an industry-standard computing system.

In early 2000, however, he left the hub of the computing world for Denmark, moving home for the quality of life, for his daughters, whom he wanted to attend Danish schools, and for his wellbeing – both mental and physical. The developer community in the US can be intense, the lifestyle unhealthy. When Bak returned to Denmark, he lost 20kg in two months (thanks to that very American phenomenon, the Atkins diet), and he hasn’t put it back on.

In 2002, Bak started a company, OOVM, which was based in Aarhus. In 2004, he sold it to a Swiss company, Esmertec, and stayed on for two years, helping integrate the two groups. When he left Esmertec, he wasn’t particularly looking for a new project: he had money to support himself and his family, and ways of keeping busy, including a plan to paint the farm. It would take a year, he reckoned.

Then came the call from Google. For Google, Bak was the obvious choice – he had the experience and talent to build the vital component for Chrome, its JavaScript engine. For Bak, working for Google was a “no-brainer”. “I don’t care about being a top-level manager. It’s about pushing the technological envelope.” Bak was ready for the work, but not for a return to California. In fact, that wasn’t even an option – despite Google’s notoriously worker-friendly offices, with gourmet food in the canteen and free haircuts on site. Instead, Bak would work from home – more than 5,000 miles and nine time zones from headquarters. Google was “prepared to trust me. They knew I wasn’t going to goof off.” The plan to redecorate the farm went on hold. “In the end,” he says, “I only had 14 days [for the painting]. I still have the paint.”

Bak started work, setting up an office in what is now the home cinema. The farmhouse is built around a courtyard, with the family home opposite the office. Every day, he walked across the cobbled stones to his office and started writing code. And at the end of each day, he walked back across the courtyard and left it all behind for the night. In between those strolls, he threw himself into building a browser that would increase the possibilities for others to do what he was engaged in: working from home, attached to the head office and all its tools only by the power of the internet.

Bak may be a computing genius, but he didn’t touch a computer until he was at university. “The computer room at high school was a dark and smelly place for nerds,” he says. “I played sport. Springboard diving – which is pretty cool, by the way. The nerdy stuff came late.”

In Outliers, Malcolm Gladwell’s 2008 exploration into the origins of talent and success, the author explores the idea that you need to practise for 10,000 hours to truly excel in your chosen field. Has Bak done his 10,000 hours, I ask? I can tell he thinks it’s irrelevant; he’s not interested. “I’m just glad I bloomed late,” he emphasises again, “rather than as a teen.”

Perhaps because of being a late-blooming nerd, Bak has never gone in for the caffeine-fuelled all-night coding sessions of programming legend. But that may also be due to the type of program Bak specialises in: the “virtual machine”, a concept originally explored in the 1970s by computer scientist Gerald Popek and his project partner Robert Goldberg. Virtual machines are what they sound like – computer-world versions of real machines, capable of running a single computer program or a whole range of programs. The Chrome browser falls into the latter category. V8, Bak’s virtual machine, compiles pieces of code common to different programs in order to cut down on duplication and allow web applications to run faster.

“Virtual machines are a strange beast,” says Bak. “There’s no perfect solution, instead you optimise for the ‘sweet spot’. There’s a lot of craftsmanship. It’s a long game, you can’t burn out.

“There’s a constant workload,” he adds, “so I always stop for dinner. You can have a normal life.” For Bak this means family and privacy. The issue of work/life balance crops up again and again in conversation – and though he’s not anti-American, he clearly prefers the Danish way of life. “In the US, there is an aggressiveness, the extra level of belief in yourself that is needed. The European way is less aggressive. But in the US, you can get promoted and stay in touch with the technical side. In Europe, you turn into a paper manager. It’s hard to get your fingers dirty.” By working in Denmark for Google, Bak was aiming for the best of both worlds.

Bak called his project V8 as a joke: the V8 engine is what you might find mounted underneath the chrome-finished bonnet of a car – “and Google is cool like that – whatever the project working name is, that’s what it’s called. There’s no intervention by marketing to give it some name.”

From day one on the Google project, Bak enlisted the help of one of his former students, Kasper Lund. Lund is a smaller, younger, more outgoing character, and he agreed to come to the farmhouse to work. He also served another function – keeping Bak entertained. Lund and his competitive boss got into the habit of interspersing work with battles of ping pong and Wii tennis. Who wins at the former, I wonder; Bak responds: “Ask Kasper.” Oh, so Kasper then? “No.” Later, he lets slip: “He’s a better player, but I win.” Their relationship has changed from teacher-student to something closer to peers, but not quite; a friend describes it as wizard and apprentice.

Many computer programs are built using previous versions, or related code, but V8 was started from scratch – a blank slate. When I meet Lund later in my Denmark trip, he takes great delight in underscoring this fact: “It’s the purest form of coding there is.” Bak clearly agrees – as Lund speaks, he can’t stop smiling.

As V8 grew and the project expanded, Bak and Lund moved from coding in the farmhouse to an office at the university in Aarhus where Bak teaches. It’s a 30-minute cycle ride away, and the commute-as-exercise fits nicely into Bak’s philosophy of balancing work and life.

The office at the university may be a long way from head office, the Mountain View Googleplex in California, but it is still recognisably Google. Colourful chairs and beanbags are scattered through the entrance area, which leads on to two main rooms where up to a dozen people work. But there’s no canteen, just a kitchen with a nut dispenser and a fridge full of bottled water and Diet Coke. Bak has introduced a no-sugar policy: “It’s not no sugar as such – you get natural sugar from fruit. But no chocolate, no obvious candy.”

It is testament to the loyalty in the office that everyone has signed up to this regime. Everyone seems to cycle, too, and to leave work around 5pm. “We start early, and when you get tired, there’s no point doing any more so we go home,” says Lund. It’s almost a word-for-word description of the working life that Bak described to me two hours earlier at his farm. And it’s convincing. But what about communication with the gang at Google? When Bak, Lund and crew leave the office at 5pm Aarhus time, it is still only 9am in San Francisco. Are they taking advantage of Silicon Valley’s tendency to work around the clock, or is it really not necessary to be in touch with headquarters? Lund says that overnight e-mailing works fine for most situations. The day of my visit, Bak is due to participate in a conference call after the rest of the office has gone home. He tries to play down his feelings about this, but it’s obvious he would rather not have to take part.

Programming can be a very solitary pursuit. Although Bak and Lund work in close collaboration, there is still a sense of isolation from the rest of the world. You write code, test it, refine it, write more, and just keep going until something works like you need it to. For Bak, it’s very simple, and very secluded. And then, for some reason, the rest of the world wants in – to know about you and your work.

Bak values his privacy. He is clearly uncomfortable having his photo taken at his home. But when I point out that typing his name into the Google search engine brings up page after page related to his cyclist namesake, and suggest that this must shield him from undue attention, he shrugs. “I’m too old to care about what people say about me.”

What does annoy him is people misunderstanding his work – or “the technology”, as he puts it. One example he gives is an article about him in which the journalist confuses Java and JavaScript (the former is a stand-alone program which can be accessed online, the latter is a browser-dependent scripting language). We both laugh at the mistake, and for a moment I feel like Bak and I have clicked.

The world found out about Chrome in an unusual way. The story broke via a specially commissioned comic that was sent out early by Google – apparently in error. There was a PR scramble to shore up the news, involving hastily arranged conference calls and a blog post explaining what had happened, followed by a press conference and demonstrations of the product at the Googleplex.

In the excitement and debate about why Google was releasing a new browser, and whether the leak was deliberate, few people really looked carefully at the comic. Despite being created by Scott McCloud (something of a legend in the world of comics), it’s tough going. There is talk of JavaScript (not Java!), CPU and memory leaks – details of computing that most people don’t want to know. But the comic does show the thinking behind many of the features of Chrome, and the way separate teams set about solving each part of the puzzle. Bak and Lund first appear briefly on page two, but it’s around a third of the way through, on page 13, that we are properly introduced to “The V8 team in Denmark”, who explain the development of this “Virtual Machine”. There’s no mention of why V8 was built a continent and an ocean from Google headquarters.

Lund and Bak like the comic. It’s framed in its entirety on the walls of the Aarhus office. “At first, I thought it was a strange idea,” says Bak. “But then I realised it’s brilliant. Compared to the usual white paper you get, it’s 10 times better. People thought it was funny.”

I suspect one reason they both like it is also that it treats Bak and Lund as equals – although Lund is characterised as physically hulking compared with Bak. “It made me look like a 15-year-old boy,” says Bak. He allows himself to smile.

Chrome attracted more than 10 million users in its first 100 days. Although that’s an impressive number, it still only translates into about 1 per cent of browser usage online. It will be a while before it can compete with Firefox, Internet Explorer and others. In December last year, Google announced that Chrome was now out of its development, or Beta, phase and is ready to be shipped as a pre-installed browser on some PCs. This could rapidly increase the number of users. Moreover, the European Commission’s antitrust battle with Microsoft over, among other things, how its own browser, Internet Explorer, is integrated into its Windows operating system may give competitors such as Google a chance to claim ground.

Legislation and market share aside, the technical challenge has been laid down. “Microsoft will have to build something better than V8,” Bak says. Most tech watchers doubt that they will manage to any time soon: in tests, V8 processes JavaScript 56 times faster than the most used version of Internet Explorer. “We started with high benchmarks,” says Bak. Then he adds, modestly: “It’s been an OK success.”

Even if the Chrome comic didn’t launch Bak into instant stardom, his profile has been rising over the past few months. More and more people want to know about the man behind Chrome. He would rather be writing virtual machines than running the Aarhus office, and he’d rather be doing almost anything than talking to journalists, but that’s part of the game and he accepts it. That said, he’s still a long way off the heights of Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg or Bill Gates. Did he get any fan mail after the comic came out, I ask? He laughs at the idea: “No. But I didn’t get any hate mail either.”
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/03775904-1...779fd2ac.htmls





Light and Cheap, Netbooks Are Poised to Reshape PC Industry
Ashlee Vance and Matt Richtel

Get ready for the next stage in the personal computer revolution: ultrathin and dirt cheap.

AT&T announced on Tuesday that customers in Atlanta could get a type of compact PC called a netbook for just $50 if they signed up for an Internet service plan — an offer the phone company may introduce elsewhere after a test period. This year, at least one wireless phone company in the United States will probably offer netbooks free with paid data plans, copying similar programs in Japan, according to industry experts.

But this revolution is not just about falling prices. Personal computers — and the companies that make their crucial components — are about to go through their biggest upheaval since the rise of the laptop. By the end of the year, consumers are likely to see laptops the size of thin paperback books that can run all day on a single charge and are equipped with touch screens or slide-out keyboards.

The industry is buzzing this week about these devices at a telecommunications conference in Las Vegas, and consumers will see the first machines on shelves as early as June, probably from the netbook pioneers Acer and Asustek.

“The era of a perfect Internet computer for $99 is coming this year,” said Jen-Hsun Huang, the chief executive of Nvidia, a maker of PC graphics chips that is trying to adapt to the new technological order. “The primary computer that we know of today is the basic PC, and it’s dying to be reinvented.”

An unexpected group of companies has emerged to help drive this transformation — firms like Qualcomm, Freescale Semiconductor and Samsung Electronics, which make cheap, power-saving chips used in cellphones and are now applying that expertise to PCs.

As in any revolution, the current rulers of the kingdom — Intel and Microsoft, which make the chips and software that run most PCs — face an unprecedented challenge to their dominance. Microsoft is particularly vulnerable, since many of the new netbooks use Linux software instead of Windows.

“A broad shift in the consumer market toward low-cost PCs would clearly put pressure on the revenues of nearly every player in the value chain, from component suppliers to retailers,” wrote A. M. Sacconaghi, a securities analyst with Sanford C. Bernstein & Company, in a report last month. “However, we believe the impact would be especially negative for Intel and Microsoft, who today enjoy near monopoly positions in their respective markets.”

So far, netbooks have appealed to a relatively small audience. Some of the devices feel more like toys or overgrown phones than full-featured computers. Still, they are the big success story in the PC industry, with sales predicted to double this year, even as overall PC sales fall 12 percent, according to the research firm Gartner. By the end of 2009, netbooks could account for close to 10 percent of the PC market, an astonishing rise in a short span.

Netbooks have trouble running demanding software like games and photo-editing programs. They cater instead to people who spend most of their time dealing with online services and want a cheap, light device they can use on the go. Most of the netbooks sold today run on an Intel chip called Atom, which is a lower-cost, lower-power version of the company’s standard laptop chips. And about 80 percent of netbooks run Windows XP, the older version of Microsoft’s flagship software.

The new breed of netbooks, built on cellphone innards, threatens to disrupt that oligopoly.

Based on an architecture called ARM, from ARM Holdings in Britain, cellphone chips consume far less power than Atom chips, and they combine many functions onto a single piece of silicon. At around $20, they cost computer makers less than an Atom chip with its associated components.

But the ARM chips come with a severe trade-off — they cannot run the major versions of Windows or its popular complementary software.

Netbook makers have turned to Linux, an open-source operating system that costs $3 instead of the $25 that Microsoft typically charges for Windows XP. They are also exploring the possibility of using the Android operating system from Google, originally designed for cellphones. (Companies like Acer, Dell and Hewlett-Packard already sell some Atom-based netbooks with Linux.)

The cellphone-chip makers argue that the ARM-Linux combination is just fine for a computer meant to handle e-mail, Facebook, streaming video from sites like YouTube and Hulu, and Web-based documents.

Freescale, for example, gave free netbooks to a group of 14- to 20-year-olds and watched what happened. “They would use it for Internet access when eating breakfast or on the couch, or bring it to class for taking notes,” said Glen Burchers, the director of consumer products marketing at Freescale.

Mr. Burchers said a number of companies already making netbooks would show a new round of machines using cellphone chips at the Computex trade show in Taipei, Taiwan, this June.

Qualcomm, the San Diego company that built an empire on chips for cellphones, recently introduced Snapdragon, a chip created for smartphones and ultralight computers. Already, the company has announced deals to sell the chip to 15 major device manufacturers, including LG, Acer, Samsung and Asustek. Qualcomm said some Snapdragon devices appearing this year would have screens of 10 to 12 inches.

Intel and Microsoft warn that consumers should remain skeptical about the performance of a computer that costs less than $300.

“When these things are sold, they need clear warnings labels about what they won’t be able to do,” said Sean M. Maloney, the chief sales and marketing officer at Intel. “It would be good to wait and play with one of these products before the industry gets carried away.”

Still, the rise of netbooks could hurt both companies. In its last quarter, Microsoft posted the first sales decline in its history for the PC version of Windows. It blamed netbooks for the drop. On average, Microsoft charges computer makers $73 for Windows Vista, the version of Windows used in desktop and high-powered laptop PCs. That is triple what it receives for a sale of Windows XP for a netbook.

For Intel, the Atom chips represent lower-profit products, which could turn into a major sore spot if consumers become comfortable with netbooks and start to view them as replacements for standard computers.

In his recent report, Mr. Sacconaghi speculated that 50 percent of consumers could get by with an Atom-based computer for their everyday tasks. PC makers like H.P., Acer and Dell, which face razor-thin profit margins selling laptops, could use the rising competition to place more price pressure on both Microsoft and Intel, Mr. Sacconaghi said.

The big winners in the rise of netbooks that use cellphone chips could be the cellphone carriers, which would have access to a whole new market: PC users.

Intel, meanwhile, expects cheap netbooks to expand the PC market to include hundreds of millions of children who have cellphones but no computers. The company has dozens of deals in the works with service providers to seize on this potential, Mr. Maloney said. As for the emerging competition, he said Intel would show off some surprising computer designs at Computex as well.

Mr. Huang of Nvidia said the PC industry sat at an inflection point. “Disruption will come in from the bottom and forever change the market.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/02/te...2netbooks.html





Good-Bye XP. Hello Windows 7
Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols

Microsoft has wanted to kill Windows XP for years. There was only one problem. The users refused to let it die. Now, that Windows 7 is almost ready to go, Microsoft is, once more, trying to ax XP.

Microsoft did this to themselves. Vista was a flop. Even now, according to Net Applications' Market Share, Vista has only a lousy 23% of the desktop market. For a while, Microsoft ignored the fact that even their own executives were horrified by just how bad Vista was. But, then the Linux-powered netbook came along, and Microsoft was frightened enough by its early successes that it un-retired Windows XP Home.

Now, Microsoft wants to kill off XP again. Step one will be bringing free support for XP to a close on April 14th. Step two is letting anyone and their uncle get a free copy of the Windows 7 release candidate sometime in May. The timing is by design.

Microsoft is now hanging on to their desktop market-share and gained netbook market-share because they re-released XP Home, but it's a Pyrrhic victory. The reason XP Home is so popular on netbooks isn't that it's better than Linux, it's because Microsoft is essentially giving XP Home away to netbook vendors. Microsoft can't afford to keep giving away its products, so XP needs to die as fast as possible so they can start selling users on Windows 7.

Vista? Please. It barely runs on PCs, much less netbooks. It's Windows 7 or bust as far as Microsoft is concerned.

Will Windows users go along with this and switch to 7? I suspect they will. The XP users aren't going to be completely happy with the trip though. Windows 7 is a radically cleaned up and skinnier version of Vista. I've been using 7 for several months, and it's a decent operating system. Yes, that's me, the Linux desktop guy, saying that Windows 7 is OK.

However, Windows 7 looks and feels a lot like Vista, and if you think you can just switch right over from XP to 7 without going through a learning curve, you're wrong. I think XP users will find it just as easy, or not, to switch to the Novell's new Windows-friendly SLED (SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop) 11 as to 7.

Windows 7 also has a lot of Vista badness in it still. My compadre Preston Gralla made a good point earlier this year about how if your older hardware didn't work with Vista, it still won't work with Windows 7.

So, if you're an XP user, brace yourself. This time you're not going to get a XP reprise. One way or another, you're going to be moving to a new operating system sometime soon. Microsoft wants it to be 7; I'd like to suggest that you consider a Linux such as Fedora, openSUSE, or Ubuntu as well.
http://blogs.computerworld.com/good_...ello_windows_7





Some Online Shows Could Go Subscription-Only
Brad Stone and Brian Stelter

In the last couple of years, the television industry has made a big push onto the Web, giving viewers hope that they might one day reach nirvana: every show ever made, available online for immediate free viewing.

But many in the industry are now questioning whether free is a sustainable model. And some are trying to make sure people have a reason to keep paying hefty cable bills.

Time Warner Cable, the second-largest cable operator in the country, is working with customers here to test a subscriber model for online TV viewing. Residents who pay for HBO can watch “Big Love,” “Entourage” and other programs on their computers, using special software and a personal log-in. People who are not HBO subscribers are barred from the service.

One night this month, while their two children slept upstairs, Steve Glynn, 35, used headphones to watch the HBO series “In Treatment” on his laptop through the service, while in the same room his wife, Kerri, watched “Dancing With the Stars” on the family television.

Although he says he watches TV infrequently, Mr. Glynn is a convert to HBO, now that the shows and movies are accessible in his lap. And he wants more. “We need this to be across all of Time Warner’s channels, not just HBO,” Mr. Glynn said.

The Time Warner test is one of several signs that the recession-weakened television industry is re-evaluating its plan for bringing TV to the Web. By all measures, full-length television shows on the Web have tremendous appeal, as millions of Americans log on to catch up on episodes they miss on TV and to discover new shows.

The free video Web site Hulu, a joint venture of NBC Universal and the News Corporation, counted 35 million unique viewers in February — only a fraction of the hundreds of millions who watch TV every month, but a 42 percent jump from January, according to comScore. The ratings for some programs, like “Lost” on ABC, would rise as much as 25 percent if online views were included, according to the ratings service Nielsen.

Nevertheless, television executives are developing a different model in which only subscribers to traditional cable and satellite services would be able to access the full breadth of shows online.

Leading the charge are the cable and satellite companies, who worry that the proliferation of free video on the Web — and downloadable shows on Apple’s iTunes — may be harming the $60-billion-a-year subscription video business by allowing people to unplug their cable services.

AT&T, Comcast, DirecTV, Time Warner Cable and Verizon are among the companies exploring a subscribers-only approach to online TV, according to television executives with knowledge of the talks. The distributors have approached cable channel companies like Viacom, owner of MTV, VH1 and Comedy Central; Scripps Networks, owner of HGTV and the Food Network; the BBC; and Discovery to talk about giving subscribers online access to their shows. The Wall Street Journal first reported on some of those talks last month.

Time Warner has also approached YouTube about distributing episodes from channels it controls, including TNT and TBS, people with knowledge of the preliminary discussions said. That could make YouTube, which is owned by Google, a major player in the market for longer videos — something it has not managed to accomplish on its own.

Cable executives expect broader tests by this summer of the new systems, which require them to develop technology to identify their subscribers when they go online. The approach is expected to be a hot topic at the cable industry’s annual trade show in Washington this week.

There are also signs that broadcasters and cable networks are worried that their initial, highly publicized push to put some of their programs online may be threatening the higher revenue they bring in when the same material runs on regular television. Cable networks are loath to put programs online unless they can maintain the per-subscriber fee that they receive from distributors.

Almost every show from the broadcast networks is now free online, at the networks’ sites or at hubs like Hulu, while almost every cable show is not. But in recent months, there have been signs of retrenchment by the broadcasters; CBS no longer streams its hit show “The Mentalist,” for instance.

“Every single network is having a hard time trying to figure out how to make money on their Internet delivery,” said Brian Baker, the chief executive of Widevine Technologies, which helps owners of content distribute their programming securely online. “Advertisers are not willing to pay top dollar for content delivered over the Internet to PCs, and it’s beginning to jeopardize the multibillion-dollar relationship the networks have with their cable and satellite providers.”

The revenues and stock prices of the major media companies have fallen significantly in the last six months, giving ammunition to the critics who think an online approach solely supported by advertising is flawed.

Broadcasters “went out and did deals to put content on broadband without a whole lot of thought about the long-term financial model,” said Jeffrey L. Bewkes, chief executive of Time Warner and a principal supporter of the new subscriber-only Web video plan. “If people aren’t subscribing to the programming, you probably shouldn’t put it online, because then half of the financial support goes away. That isn’t good. It hasn’t been good for the newspaper industry.”

Some content owners, harboring their own new doubts about the profitability of online video, seem open to the subscription idea. Jeff Gaspin, the president of the Universal Television Group, which oversees NBC Universal’s cable channels like USA and CNBC, said the company wanted to figure out a model that “gets our content out there when and where people want it, but that also preserves that dual revenue stream and that relationship we have with our distributors.”

He said NBC Universal was testing technology to identify Time Warner Cable subscribers online, and is also talking to Comcast, Cox and other providers about similar moves.

But an executive at another cable network, who did not want to be named because the discussions are at a preliminary stage, said that the cable operators were not guaranteeing the networks any additional revenue for the right to distribute their content online. He said his network was hesitant to sign on for that reason.

Another trend that terrifies television networks and distributors is the prospect that Web video will move from the PC to the television itself. Products intended to bridge that gap, like the Apple TV set-top box and the Roku digital video player, are now used by only a small percentage of people but could become more popular.

One company getting squeezed by these pressures is Boxee, a New York start-up whose software for PCs can be used to bring shows from Web sites like Hulu to the television set. Last month, Hulu’s backers, Fox and NBC, pressured Hulu to remove its content from the Boxee service because it threatened their efforts to get the cable operators to pay them what the industry calls retransmission fees.

Boxee has been trying to restore Hulu to its service, with both technical workarounds and through negotiations with the networks.

“Transitioning online opens up great opportunities for networks, but it also runs the risk of cannibalizing their existing business,” said Avner Ronen, Boxee’s founder. “Right now I think they want to tread the online waters carefully, to experiment online while it’s still a small business, and to innovate there, but not to rock the boat too hard at the risk of tipping it over. That’s the conflict they have.”

Brian Stelter reported from Milwaukee, and Brad Stone from San Francisco.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/30/bu...0cable.html?hp





Time Warner Rationale for Bandwidth Caps Doesn't Add Up

Time Warner Cable's bandwidth caps are such a hit that the company is rolling them out in more cities this year. The caps start at 5GB per month, but Time Warner Cable's CEO says that they are needed to cover its infrastructure costs. We're (deeply) skeptical.
Nate Anderson

Time Warner Cable's bandwidth cap test in Texas has apparently gone so well that the company plans to deploy the system in Austin, San Antonio, Rochester (NY), and Greensboro (NC) this year. The highest current cap? 40GB per month. The lowest? A mere five.

CEO Glenn Britt tells BusinessWeek, "We need a viable model to be able to support the infrastructure of the broadband business. We made a mistake early on by not defining our business based on the consumption dimension."

To do that, TWC has been testing plans with 5, 10, 20, or 40GB of data transfer per month, with prices ranging from $30 to $55 a month. Compared to other ISPs, this seems like an abysmal deal, since AT&T's DSL has no official cap and Comcast offers 250GB per month, generous by comparison. As it expands the trial this year, TWC is adding a 100GB/month level as well, though pricing is not yet available.

Britt's rationale for the change—infrastructure is expensive—is tough to understand. Cable's physical plant has been in the ground for years; even hybrid fiber-coax systems have been widely deployed for some time. Internet access simply runs across the existing network, and one of cable's big advantages over DSL is that speeds can be upgraded cheaply by swapping in new DOCSIS headend gear, with DOCSIS 3.0 the current standard. Compared to what Verizon is doing with fiber and AT&T with its quasi-fiber U-Verse, cable Internet is a bargain (well, for the operators).

But perhaps consumers are insatiable bandwidth hounds who are simply overloading TWC's system—or perhaps not. The BusinessWeek article notes that only 14 percent of users in TWC's trial city of Beaumont, Texas even exceeded their caps at all. My own recent conversations with other major ISPs suggest that the average broadband user only pulls down 2-6GB of data per month as it is.

One the one hand, this suggests that caps don't really bother most people; on the other, it indicates that low cap levels aren't needed to keep traffic "reasonable" since it's actually quite low to begin with. The shift toward metered pricing can't help but benefit TWC's cable business (unless consumers truly revolt), since low caps will ensure that Internet users think twice before doing data-intensive activities on the Internet such as streaming files from Hulu or downloading HD movies and TV episodes from Amazon and iTunes. TWC's own cable video service may prove more compelling than the online alternatives because it has no "caps" or additional fees for watching too much TV.

It's certainly understandable that ISPs would want to curtail abusive users. One ISP told me that a single subscriber last year used 4TB of data transfer—in a single month. This can be a special problem with cable, which uses a shared neighborhood architecture, and one such user can cause problems for others, especially with uploads.

But Time Warner's low caps make it hard to believe that this is all about infrastructure costs. Internet backbone bandwidth is cheap or free (and plummeting in cost each year), DOCSIS upgrades are a bargain, and competitors in the same business can offer multiple times higher than TWC's maximums. TWC's lowest-priced cap, at $30, is cheaper than Comcast's offerings and more in line with AT&T's DSL pricing, so perhaps TWC hopes to compete on price for value-conscious customers.

Will customers just switch en masse to uncapped AT&T DSL then? Probably not. Not only is switching a hassle, but AT&T has decided that trialing bandwidth caps in Texas is such a good idea, it should do the same thing. In the same town.
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/n...band-texas.ars





Maurice Jarre, Composer of "Zhivago" Score, Dies

Oscar-winning French composer Maurice Jarre, who wrote the rich, lyrical scores for films including "Doctor Zhivago" and "Lawrence of Arabia," has died in Los Angeles at the age of 84.

Jarre's music won him Academy Awards for those classics and for "A Passage to India," all directed by David Lean. He also worked with directors from Alfred Hitchcock and Luchino Visconti to Peter Weir.

"Working with the world's greatest filmmakers, he showed that music is as important as visual image in the success of a film," French President Nicolas Sarkozy said in a statement paying tribute to Jarre, who died at the weekend.

"The works to which he contributed so masterfully are part of cinema history forever," he said.

Throughout the morning, French radio played extracts from "Lara's Theme," the recurring motif from Doctor Zhivago that became an easy listening classic, as well as the dramatic score to "Lawrence of Arabia."

Jarre, who had lived in Los Angeles for many years, was one of the most successful and industrious film composers of his time with more than 150 credits to his name.

After making a start working on French films in the 1950s, he made his international breakthrough with the score to the 1962 Lean epic "Lawrence of Arabia."

His work spanned five decades and his richly orchestrated scores contributed to films from "Ryan's Daughter," "The Tin Drum" and "The Year of Living Dangerously" to "Mad Max III" "Fatal Attraction" and "Witness."

Jarre maintained that music should be a central part of any film. "If it's just there to underline a piece of action or a love scene, it's really not interesting. It's like putting too much sugar in a cake," he said.

His final award came as recently as last month when he won a special prize from the Berlin Film Festival.

"Film composers often are in the shadows of great directors and acting stars," said festival director Dieter Kosslick when he announced the award.

"It's different with Maurice Jarre; the music of Doctor Zhivago, like much of his work, is world famous and remains unforgotten in the history of cinema," he said.

Maurice Jarre was the father of electronic music pioneer Jean-Michel Jarre.

(Additional reporting by Mike Collett-White in London, editing by Mark Trevelyan)
http://www.reuters.com/article/enter...52T1QS20090330





A Signature Shuffle Enjoys a New Life
David Segal

For bowlers the ultimate test is the 7-10 split. For card sharks it’s the hot shot cut. For drummers it’s the funky little miracle of syncopation known as the Purdie Shuffle.

You’ve heard Bernard Purdie — better known as Pretty Purdie — perform his creation on Steely Dan’s “Home at Last,” from the 1977 album “Aja.” And you’ve heard variations on songs by Led Zeppelin (“Fool in the Rain”), Toto (“Rosanna”) and Death Cab for Cutie (“Grapevine Fires”).

Created with six bass, high-hat and snare tones, the Purdie Shuffle is a groove that seems to spin in concentric circles as it lopes forward. The result is a Tilt-a-Whirl of sound, and if you can listen without shaking your hips, you should probably see a doctor.

Now the beat has a whole new life. On YouTube dozens of amateurs, aspiring pros and assorted dilettantes have uploaded videos of their attempts to teach or demonstrate the Purdie Shuffle.

But you post at your peril. A guy identified as BazyBeats was savaged in the comments section of the video he posted of his attempt at “Fool in the Rain.” He slightly bungled the pattern on the snare, and dozens of angry nitpickers let him know it. Eventually he asked them to “go somewhere else with your negative, hateful, blackhearted and useless souls.”

Mr. Purdie can be found these days at the Al Hirschfeld Theater playing for the Broadway revival of “Hair,” which has been in previews since early March and opens Tuesday.

For Mr. Purdie, the “Hair” gig is one of those full-circle experiences that can’t be planned. He worked with the show’s composer, Galt MacDermot, in New York in the early 1960s, when demos of the songs for the show were first recorded. Those tracks were later refined for the musical.

At the time Mr. Purdie was a relative newcomer to the city, having spent most of his life in Elkton, Md., a town near the Delaware border. One of 15 children, he had started by banging on his mother’s pots and pans.

“I knew right away that’s what I wanted to do with the rest of my life,” he said. “No matter what happened, I wanted to play the drums.”

Mr. Purdie, who says he is 68, was sitting at a sushi bar across the street from the theater, dressed in a dark suit and a satiny white tie. He was an hour from changing into Tommy Bahama-style casual wear and climbing onto the rear of a colorful pickup truck stationed onstage, where he drums for the show.

He’s an ample, teddy-bearish guy with a graying mustache, a hearty laugh and an ego that is legendarily large. For years he showed up at sessions with two professionally made signs, which he would place on music stands near his kit. “You done hired the hit maker,” read one. “If you need me, call me, the little old hit maker,” said the other. It was both a gimmick and a calling card, and it would have come across as pure braggadocio except that Mr. Purdie always delivered.

“He was one of the top five drummers in Manhattan back when Atlantic was recording here, when all these great independent labels were recording here,” said Phil Ramone, a producer who worked with Mr. Purdie in the late ’60s and went on to record Paul Simon and Billy Joel. “Purdie just had a way of inspiring confidence in everyone.”

He also had a way of implying that he was finished with a session as soon as he had nailed his part, which was often before anyone else in the room.

“You’d do a first take, and he’d put on his overcoat as if he was about to leave,” said Donald Fagen, the Steely Dan keyboardist. “The problem was that some of the other musicians had just become comfortable with the chords. You had to cajole him to do some other takes so everyone else could polish up their parts a bit.”

Within a few years of arriving in Manhattan Mr. Purdie was touring and recording with the greats of ’60s soul, funk and jazz, including James Brown, Aretha Franklin and Louis Armstrong. He is heard on more than 4,000 records.

Some of the greats, in his telling, were ornery characters. The Godfather of Soul fined him $25 for a mistake he didn’t make, prompting Mr. Purdie to quit. During a concert with Ray Charles in Chicago, when Mr. Purdie started playing a few bars too soon, Charles barked, “Don’t play, drummer,” into the microphone, a rather public embarrassment before a huge crowd.

“He would turn around and look at you — I always thought the guy could see,” Mr. Purdie said. “And he’d say, ‘What is your problem?’ Now, what are you supposed to say to that?”

Before the current “Hair” gig Mr. Purdie spent much of his time in different bands, one of which, the Hudson River Rats, plays a lot of private parties and clubs. He is sampled often, turning up on Beck’s “Devil’s Haircut” and most recently in “Mother of All Funk Chords,” a YouTube mash-up by an Israeli producer known as Kutiman.

A new generation of drummers, meanwhile, is keeping his shuffle alive. Jason McGerr of Death Cab for Cutie says it’s not quite accurate to call the beat on “Grapevine Fires” a Purdie Shuffle.

“It doesn’t matter how much I practice, I will never play that shuffle like Purdie,” Mr. McGerr said. “It’s because he has an attitude that seems to come through every time. He always sounds like he’s completely in charge.”

Mr. Purdie has half a dozen theories about the shuffle’s appeal — the challenge, the energy, the versatility of the rhythm, and on and on. It’s easier for him to pinpoint the beat’s genesis.

“It comes from the train near my house where I grew up,” he said. “When I first started working this out, I was 8 years old, and I called it the locomotion because that’s what I was trying to capture: whoosh, whoosh, whoosh.”

It started as a regular shuffle, but then he began weaving in what are called ghost notes, created by lightly brushing the snare with the fingers or stick. And instead of a straightforward tapping on the high-hat, he moved his right hand up and down so that he was hitting the side of the high-hat, then the top, over and over — creating this tock-tick tock-tick sound.

As buoyant as the beat is, it can convey a lot of different emotions, as Steely Dan figured out during the recording of “Babylon Sisters,” from the 1980 album “Gaucho.”

“I guess we expected more of a regular shuffle, and he started playing something very complex,” Mr. Fagen recalled. “We were amazed, because it was perfect for the tune. ‘Babylon Sisters’ has this dark mood to it, and the beat seemed to accentuate the floating dark mood that the song required.”

Mr. Purdie said he was flattered by the versions he has heard by other bands, though if you want to hear the real thing live, you’ll have to come to “Hair.” The shuffle turns up at least half a dozen times during the show.

“You’ll know it when you hear it,” he said, “because when you do, you’ll have to move your feet.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/31/th...purd.html?_r=1





Google Launches Free, Legal Music Downloads in China

Google Inc on Monday launched free downloads of licensed songs in China, while sharing advertising revenue with major music labels in a market rife with online piracy.

Lee Kai-Fu, president of Google in greater China, said one reason Google lagged in the mainland search market was because it did not offer music downloads, the missing piece to its strategy in a market where it trails leader Baidu.com Inc.

"We are offering free, high quality and legal downloads," Lee told reporters. "We were missing one piece ... we didn't have music."

The service offers downloads of some 350,000 songs -- from Chinese and foreign artists -- a number that will rise to 1.1 million in the coming months, said Gary Chen, chief executive of Google's partner www.Top100.cn, a Chinese music website co-founded by basketball star Yao Ming.

Music from artists signed by Sony Music, Warner Music, EMI and Universal Music will be available on the service, which Google has no current plans to expand beyond China, said Lee.

"This is the first serious attempt to start (monetizing) the online market in China. I can't overestimate how important this is," said Lachie Rutherford, president of Warner Music Asia Pacific and Asia chairman of the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI).

Users will be able to search by musical measurements such as the level of "beat" in a song and "instrumentality," as well as by artist and song name.

IFPI said last year that more than 99 percent of all music files distributed in China are pirated, and the country's total legitimate music market, at $76 million, accounts for less than 1 percent of global recorded music sales.

The new service will attract users away from illegal download sites because the music and service will be of a higher quality, said Warner's Rutherford.

Downloads of unlicensed music and videos are rampant in China, the world's biggest Internet market by number of users.

While Google dominates the global web search market, in China Baidu holds more than 60 percent of the market, more than double Google's share.

($=6.83 yuan)

(Reporting by Kirby Chien, Editing by Ian Geoghegan)
http://www.reuters.com/article/newsO...52T22P20090330





Google Offers China One Million Free Songs

Chinese music-lovers will be offered more than one million songs for free after Google launched a free music download site in China this week in a bid to tackle the internet piracy menace in China.
Peter Foster

The site, which includes songs from major world record labels including Sony, Warner, Universal and EMI, will use advertising revenue to generate cash from the downloads.

Internet music piracy is rampant in China with the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry estimating that up to 99 per cent of all music downloads in China are illegal.

Despite several government-led attempts at crackdowns, the situation has become so bad that some Chinese artists have announced they have stopped recording because it has become unprofitable.

The new Google site, which will be a partnership with the popular Chinese website Top100.cn, hopes the lure of legal downloads will attract millions of Chinese customers and help Google compete with China's biggest search engine Baidu.com.

Music on the site will only be available to internet users whose internet or 'IP' address originates in China.

"This is the first really serious attempt to start monetizing online music in China," said Lachie Rutherford, president of Warner Music Asia and regional head of the global recording industry group, the International Federation of Phonographic Industries.
China has the world's largest number of internet users - estimated at 300m - but internet-based commerce is still in its relative infancy in China with most users searching for games, music and movies Kai-Fu Lee, Google's president for Greater China, said that the partnership, which will share advertising revenues between all the parties, marked a fresh departure for Google in China.

"With today's offering, we complete the puzzle and offer a complete set of services that are fully integrated," he added.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sciencean...ree-songs.html





MPs' Web Browsing is 'Censored'
BBC

MPs are prevented from surfing the internet for pornographic and other "inappropriate" material in their Commons offices, it has emerged.

A filter on the Commons IT system blocks access to websites that contain "offensive or illegal content or are sources of malicious software".

The policy emerged after an MP was unable to access colleague Lembit Opik's column on the Daily Sport site.

Mr Opik said he did not believe the site should be blocked.

"Because of the things they are trying to censor they may have made an assumption about this particular website," said Mr Opik.

But he said he did not believe the site was "inappropriate" and that although he backed the filters, which prevented MPs from being bombarded with "utter rubbish", he did think they were too restrictive and sometimes prevented MPs from accessing sites they needed for their work.

'Outrageous'

"It actually happens quite a lot," he said, adding: "Perhaps the filters can be finessed so that my words of wisdom can be shared by one and all in the Palace of Westminster."

Mr Opik said a Lib Dem colleague, Torbay MP Adrian Sanders, had brought the censorship of his Daily Sport column to his attention.

The Montgomeryshire MP has been writing a column for the Daily Sport, which describes itself as the "world's most outrageous newspaper", since last summer, and previously wrote for the paper in 2005.

The newspaper has come under fire for its sexually explicit content, with Labour MP Claire Curtis-Thomas last year unsuccessfully bidding to have it sold to adults only.

Guidance issued to all MPs in December 2007 warns MPs they have a duty to ensure the Parliamentary network is used properly "by themselves and their staff" and to avoid actions that "threaten the integrity of the system or bring it into disrepute".

Retained for year

It also offers advice on e-mail security and etiquette, including not to write any e-mails in capital letters "as it comes across as shouting" and to "be careful how you word e-mails as it easy for irony and jesting to be misinterpreted".

In a separate notice for Commons staff and MPs, they are warned against "knowingly accessing or transmitting e-mails, text, images or internet material which might reasonably be considered offensive, unless on official business".

The aim is to protect security but also to "help to prevent users of the network from being exposed to inappropriate material".

The web filtering system also "collects data related to user activity, including user names and all websites visited whether blocked or not and will be retained for a period of 12 months", it adds.

MPs who try to access sites deemed inappropriate are presented with a screen asking them to contact the Commons authorities for permission to view the material.

Those who break the rules face being disconnected from the system by the Serjeant-at-Arms.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/politics/7965592.stm





Conroy Backtracks on Internet Censorship Policy
Asher Moses

The Communications Minister, Stephen Conroy, has begun distancing himself from his controversial internet censorship policy in what one internet industry engineer has dubbed "the great walkback of 2009".

Senator Conroy has long said his policy would introduce compulsory ISP-level filters of the Australian Communications and Media Authority's blacklist of prohibited websites. But last night, he said the mandatory filters would be restricted to content that has been "refused classification" (RC).

When the ACMA blacklist was leaked last month, it caused great controversy, partly because it included a slew of R18+ and X18+ sites, including regular gay and straight pornography and other legal content.

But on SBS' Insight program last night, Senator Conroy said "it's mandatory refused classification, and then parents - if the trial says that it is possible to go down this path ... have the option to block other material".

This about-turn has done little to assuage the concerns of online rights groups, the Federal Opposition and the internet industry, as the RC category includes not just child pornography but anti-abortion sites, fetish sites and sites containing pro-euthanasia material such as The Peaceful Pill Handbook by Dr Philip Nitschke.

Sites added to the blacklist in error were also classified as RC, such as one containing PG-rated photographs by Bill Henson.

And the websites of several Australian businesses - such as those of a Queensland dentist - were classified RC and blacklisted after they were hacked by, as Senator Conroy described, "the Russian mob". They were on the blacklist even though they changed hosting providers and cleaned up their sites several years ago.

"The guidelines are so broad that RC can't help but hoover up political speech even if only as collateral damage," said Internode network engineer Mark Newton, describing Senator Conroy's comments last night as "the great walkback of 2009".

Senator Conroy conceded many of the decisions regarding what sites appeared on the blacklist were made by "faceless bureaucrats". He said he was working to build in "further safeguards", but would not abolish the policy because some sites were found to be put on the blacklist in error.

"I don't think Senator Conroy really even knows what his own policy in relation to filtering is. It seems to change on an almost daily basis; it is vague and contradictory and there is little public confidence in his ability to implement it," said Opposition communications spokesman Nick Minchin.

"RC can apply to a range of different subjects, not just sexually explicit, but also the controversial, which under Labor's proposal would all be filtered."

Colin Jacobs, spokesman for the online users' lobby group Electronic Frontiers Australia, said he was pleased the Government was "distancing themselves from the current flawed blacklist, which as we have seen is chock full of legal and harmless sites".

But Jacobs was not convinced that a new "RC only" list would be a big improvement.

"Swapping one secret list for another doesn't mean that fewer mistakes will occur or that everything on the new list will be uncontroversial," he said.

"Not all RC material is illegal, so we'd probably still see euthanasia sites and the like on the list."

Others sites confirmed by ACMA as being included on the blacklist include a YouTube clip showing an excerpt from a horror movie and an astrology website.

ACMA said the horror movie clip was added because it is classified as R18+ but "not subject to a restricted access system that prevents access by children".

"At the time of investigation, access to the YouTube content required only a declaration of an age of 18 years or older which was not verified by evidence of proof of age," ACMA spokesman Donald Robertson said.

On the astrology website, ACMA said it was blacklisted because, at the time it was being investigated, it had been defaced with "an image which depicted an adult female posed naked and implicitly defecating on herself".

This image has since been removed and ACMA said it was in the process of removing the astrology site from the blacklist.

ACMA conceded innocent sites could be blacklisted if they are defaced with content not usually associated with the site. Robertson acknowledged this material was often only visible for a short period before being removed by the site owner.

"To deal with the transient nature of online content, ACMA undertakes regular reviews of the list of URLs notified to filter makers to remove those which no longer lead to prohibited content," he said.
http://www.theage.com.au/articles/20...261622790.html





Downturn Puts New Stresses on Libraries
Susan Saulny and Karen Ann Cullotta

The public library here had just closed its doors one evening in December when two homeless men who had been using the stacks as shelter from the cold got into a fight on the outside steps.

What began as bickering took a violent turn when one of the men pulled out a knife and stabbed the other six times, leaving him bleeding beside the book drop.

Like libraries across the country, Arlington Heights Memorial had strived to keep pace with the changing times, ensuring its relevance in the digital age by becoming something of an indoor town square, and emphasizing that its money-saving services catered to the community’s needs.

These days, however, community need reaches far beyond reference help — and in many libraries, it is turning a normally tranquil place into an emotional and stressful hotbed.

As the national economic crisis has deepened and social services have become casualties of budget cuts, libraries have come to fill a void for more people, particularly job-seekers and those who have fallen on hard times. Libraries across the country are seeing double-digit increases in patronage, often from 10 percent to 30 percent, over previous years.

But in some cities, this new popularity — some would call it overtaxing — is pushing libraries in directions not seen before, with librarians dealing with stresses that go far beyond overdue fines and misshelved books. Many say they feel ill-equipped for the newfound demands of the job, the result of working with anxious and often depressed patrons who say they have nowhere else to go.

The stresses have become so significant here that a therapist will soon be counseling library employees.

“I guess I’m not really used to people with tears in their eyes,” said Rosalie Bork, a reference librarian in Arlington Heights, a well-to-do suburb of Chicago. “It has been unexpectedly stressful. We feel so anxious to help these people, and it’s been so emotional for them.”

Urban ills like homelessness have affected libraries in many cities for years, but librarians here and elsewhere say they are seeing new challenges. They find people asleep more often at cubicles. Patrons who cannot read or write ask for help filling out job applications. Some people sit at computers trying to use the Internet, even though they have no idea what the Internet is.

“A lot of people who would not normally be here are coming in to use the computers,” said Cynthia Jones, a regional branch manager in St. Louis.

“Adults complain a lot about kids just playing games and you know, ‘I need to do a résumé, or ‘I need to write, I need some help,’ ” Ms. Jones said. “There’s a bit of frustration.”

Ms. Jones instructed her staff to tread carefully. “You don’t want to upset people,” she said. “You don’t know what might set somebody off.”

Paul LeClerc, president of the New York Public Library, said résumé writing had become a major use of library computers, and every librarian in the system had received training in how to better assist patrons conduct job searches. The 40 million visits to New York libraries over the past year, he said, is the greatest ever in a 12-month period.

Here in Arlington Heights, newly homeless patrons are showing up in their business suits, said Paula Moore, the library’s director.

“They are living in their cars after losing a job they had for a number of years,” Ms. Moore said.

The American Library Association does not keep statistics on incidents in and around libraries, but anecdotal evidence from around the country suggests that some libraries are struggling with their newfound popularity and the social ills that can come along with it.

In Los Angeles, the police say the Central Public Library has become a magnet for thieves, and that, excluding shoplifting at stores, there were more thefts of personal property at the library last year than any other location in central Los Angeles.

“We hope things get better,” said Lt. Paul Vernon, a spokesman for the Los Angeles Police Department, noting the difficulty of policing libraries. “The library is a place where people tend to congregate, and from a public and government standpoint, you can’t really restrict people.”

In Sacramento this year, two branches of the public library temporarily stopped accepting cash as fines for overdue books, after thieves struck three times since June — in one instance, taking off with a safe filled with money.

In Lynchburg, Va., a gunman shot a man outside the public library on a Monday afternoon in late January. The victim, who survived, staggered into the library bleeding and looking for help. Since then, an off-duty police officer has been hired by the library for extra security.

And in Quincy, Mass., where a man was recently arrested in the library and charged with assault and battery with a dangerous weapon, among other offenses, a police officer on beat patrol now walks through the library during operating hours.

Though homelessness is not new to Arlington Heights, security at the library has been tightened since the stabbing. (The man was charged with attempted murder, and the victim survived.) Although such violence is unusual, a library patron, Judi Crawford, said the scene around the building still made her uncomfortable.

“I don’t like my 16-year-old son to study at the library at night anymore,” Ms. Crawford said. “If he is studying here, I make sure he stays inside until he sees me pull up, and he can just run out and get in the car.”

Other things have changed at the library here, too.

It has tried to anticipate the new needs of its neighborhood. Next to its welcome desk, it created a job-search desk, and it has recruited volunteer professionals to review résumés, set up a support and networking group for the unemployed, and assembled a Web site offering the best of its online resources.

Officials said the library was experiencing double-digit increases in the circulation of DVDs, CDs and books on tape. The library’s many children’s programs and cultural arts events are also filled to capacity, reflecting a growing demand, linked to the economy, for free entertainment.

With an estimated 2,500 patrons visiting the library every day, employees must now park at a parking lot at a nearby church.

“When you walk by our new job-search desk, you see people in line and even waiting on the benches for assistance,” said Ms. Moore, the director of the Arlington Heights Memorial Library.

A therapist is planning to give a workshop at the library called “Finding Hope After Losing a Job,” while also offering advice to library employees who are increasingly being thrust into the role of first responder to emotionally distraught patrons who view them as confidantes.

“I’ve had people come in and talk for hours,” said Barbara Vlk, a librarian specializing in business at Arlington Heights. “More and more people are in need of help and direction.”

Malcolm Gay contributed reporting from St. Louis.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/02/us/02library.html





You’ve Read the Headlines. Now, Quick, Read the Book.
Motoko Rich

For those who want instant information, there is no shortage of outlets, from cable news to Twitter posts. For the long view, it was said, try a book.

But as the metabolism of the culture has sped up in the digital age, pockets of the publishing industry are prodding themselves out of their Paleolithic ways and joining the rush, with more books on current events coming out faster than ever before.

For generations the publishing industry has worked on a fairly standard schedule, taking nine months to a year after an author delivered a manuscript to put finished books in stores. Now, enabled in part by e-book technology and fueled by a convergence of spectacularly dramatic news events, publishers are hitting the fast-forward button.

In December the FT Press released an e-book edition of “Barack, Inc: Winning Business Lessons of the Obama Campaign” a month after the authors delivered a manuscript. Last month Free Press, a unit of Simon & Schuster, published an e-book version of “Dumb Money: How Our Greatest Financial Minds Bankrupted the Nation” just three weeks after Daniel Gross, a writer for Newsweek magazine, completed the book.

And as the financial crisis was deepening last March, George Soros submitted a manuscript to the publisher PublicAffairs. Ten days later the e-book of “The New Paradigm for Financial Markets” went on sale.

“People can’t wait a year to get timely information on critical subjects,” said Amy Neidlinger, associate publisher of FT Press. “Especially today it’s dated 10 minutes after you’ve just received the first installation.”

Of course many publishers and authors suggest that taking time to produce a reflective work is what books are about, and that they should not succumb to the pressures of the 24-hour news cycle.

“You have to believe in the long arm of history,” said the author Andrew Meier, who agreed to sell a book to Random House to chronicle four generations of the Morgenthau family just weeks before Robert M. Morgenthau, the Manhattan district attorney, announced he would retire at the end of the year. Mr. Meier said the book, “The House of Morgenthau,” probably would not come out earlier than 2011, despite the potential value of releasing it closer to Mr. Morgenthau’s departure.

Publishers have released so-called instant books for decades, focusing on political campaigns, sports events and true crime. Most of Bob Woodward’s books are released on a tight schedule; his publisher, Simon & Schuster, calls it “extreme publishing.”

But the unprecedented pileup of historic news is motivating a broader industry speedup. Hoping to capture the public interest while it is still ripe — and to beat out competition — publishers are rushing out a cavalcade of books tied to the election of the first African-American president, a spiraling economic crisis and eye-popping financial scandals.

For the fastest path to market Martha K. Levin, publisher of Free Press, said the e-book model allowed publishers to take more risks, because printing and distribution costs are so low. “Dumb Money,” Ms. Levin said, has sold “a couple thousand” in e-book form. While such a number would probably disappoint for a print book, Ms. Levin said she was pleased with its performance. The publisher will issue a paperback edition next month.

Other publishers, while not releasing early e-books, are nevertheless speeding up print editions. With “Snark,” a long essay by David Denby, the movie critic for The New Yorker, Simon & Schuster took just three months to go from manuscript to hardcover copies.

“It’s fun to do a very short polemic that jumps into the conversation as it’s being had,” said Priscilla Painton, editor in chief of Simon & Schuster. “I didn’t see the reason to drag it out forever.”

Industry insiders say more publishers should expedite their processes to keep pace with the modern media age.

Even books of high quality, if they “come out so late that they’re either obsolete or redundant, are going to lose out,” said Todd Shuster, a literary agent.

For now the quick-turnaround books represent only about 5 percent of all titles, said Kathryn Popoff, vice president for the trade division at Borders Books. But she added that there were more now than ever before, in part, “because of the news cycle.”

Many publishers maintain that books are not meant to chase headlines. “What we need to do on the book side is to do the most thorough, the best and most contextualized” work, said Ann Godoff, president and publisher of the Penguin Press.

She noted that she was waiting until 2010 to publish a book by Nouriel Roubini, the New York University economist whose prognostications have kept him in the news lately, and Stephen Mihm, a historian at the University of Georgia.

Booksellers say that the closer books hew to the news, the shorter the shelf life. “They peak, and they are over,” said Antoinette Ercolano, vice president of trade book buying at Barnes & Noble. “If the consumer feels they aren’t getting anything new, it’s not going to work.”

Only a book that “has instant media appeal” is worth doing quickly, said Jamie Raab, publisher of Grand Central Publishing, a unit of Hachette Book Group. Most books, she and others in the industry said, require time for the publisher to edit and market the book, line up blurbs or secure reviews in magazines with long lead times.

Last August Chelsea Green Publishing, a small house in Vermont, courted controversy when it first offered “Obama’s Challenge” — a portrait and prescription for Barack Obama by Robert Kuttner — exclusively through Amazon’s print-on-demand service so that it would be available at the time of the Democratic National Convention.

Other booksellers threatened to boycott the title. Barnes & Noble reduced its initial order.

Margo Baldwin, president of Chelsea Green, said it was worth the industry storm. “If Obama had lost, the book would have been dead,” she said. “So we felt like we had to get it out as fast as we possibly could.”

The current economic downturn prompted Robert T. Kiyosaki, the best-selling author of “Rich Dad Poor Dad,” to write a book that he is posting chapter by chapter online at conspiracyoftherich.com, where readers can see his work free.

The final book, “Conspiracy of the Rich: The 8 New Rules of Money,” will be published in paperback by Grand Central in September.

Mr. Kiyosaki is integrating up-to-the-minute information as he writes. On March 18 he inserted the news that the Federal Reserve was buying $1 trillion in treasury bonds and mortgage securities into a chapter titled “Are You Prepared for the Coming Depression?”

“If this book had gone through the normal publishing procedures,” Mr. Kiyosaki said, “it wouldn’t be worth writing.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/30/books/30quic.html





Do-It-Yourself Magazines, Cheaply Slick
Ashlee Vance

For anyone who has dreamed of creating his own glossy color magazine dedicated to a hobby like photography or travel, the high cost and hassle of printing has loomed as a big barrier. Traditional printing companies charge thousands of dollars upfront to fire up a press and produce a few hundred copies of a bound magazine.

With a new Web service called MagCloud, Hewlett-Packard hopes to make it easier and cheaper to crank out a magazine than running photocopies at the local copy shop.

Charging 20 cents a page, paid only when a customer orders a copy, H.P. dreams of turning MagCloud into vanity publishing’s equivalent of YouTube. The company, a leading maker of computers and printers, envisions people using their PCs to develop quick magazines commemorating their daughter’s volleyball season or chronicling the intricacies of the Arizona cactus business.

“There are so many of the nichey, maybe weird-at-first communities, that can use this,” said Andrew Bolwell, head of the MagCloud effort at Hewlett-Packard. Samir Husni, a journalism professor at the University of Mississippi who plans to use the technology in his classroom, said, “We’re not talking about replacing the Vanity Fairs of the world. But it’s a nifty idea for a vanity press that reminds me of the underground zines we had in the ’60s and ’70s.”

Should the service take off, Hewlett could expand its lucrative business of selling huge digital printers to companies that would print the magazine and then ship its profitable inks by the barrel instead of the ounce.

It is not clear how big a market there is for small runs of narrow-interest magazines when so much information is available free on the Internet. So far, users of the service, which is still in a testing phase, have produced close to 300 magazines, including publications on paintings by Mormon artists, the history of aerospace, food photography and improving your personal brand in a digital age.

Aspiring publishers must handle their own writing and design work, sending a PDF file of their creation over the Internet to the MagCloud repository. H.P. farms out the printing jobs to partners scattered around the globe and takes care of billing and shipping for people who order the magazine. While H.P. charges the magazine publishers 20 cents a page, they can charge whatever they like for the completed product.

Traditional printing presses are fast and can produce large quantities of publications for much less than 20 cents a page. But the business model and technology relies on replicating a single, fixed image in volume to achieve cost-effective scale.

With digital presses like those made by Hewlett’s Indigo unit, a company can print one copy of 10 magazines or 10 copies of one magazine for about the same price. It is simply a matter of turning on the press and hitting a button.

Doreen Bloch, a student at the University of California, Berkeley, who created and runs a fashion publication, said MagCloud had made it much easier to produce her magazine, Bare, on a tight budget.

Ms. Bloch used to send final versions of Bare to a print shop in Arizona. If the editors noticed a typo or wanted to make a last-minute change, they had to pay $60 a page. “If we needed to change the cover because it had the wrong date, they gave us so much trouble,” Ms. Bloch said. With MagCloud, the editors can fiddle all they want free.

MagCloud could also open up new opportunities for local print shops.

Progressive Solutions in Santa Clara, Calif., has bought five of H.P.’s Indigo presses, which range in price from $300,000 to $600,000 a machine, in the last five years. It produces custom documents for companies like Tiny Prints, a popular service that lets people design their own invitations, stationery and announcements.

According to Scott Feldman, the co-owner of Progressive, the company needs to run its presses eight hours a day to break even and 12 hours a day to make money. It has been printing about 50,000 pages for MagCloud a month, including Bare.

The creators of Bare and other publications warn that it takes a lot of work to produce each issue, and some of the early MagCloud customers have had little success selling their publications online.

H.P. has developed technology in its research labs that could smooth the publication process. It has software that relies on algorithms to automate part of the design process, arranging photos in a way that is pleasing to the eye and suits a page packed with text. Down the road, H.P. might add such applications to the MagCloud service.

H.P. is also using technology similar to MagCloud to help publishers make out-of-print books available. It scans old books, cleans up the images and sends them off to the digital presses.

“By using electronic processes rather than humans, we were able to get our costs down from $2,500 per title down to about $50 per title,” said Phil Zuckerman, the president of Applewood Books in Carlisle, Mass. He said he can now afford to print single copies of old titles.

For H.P., MagCloud is also a way to provide customized service at low risk. And if the niche does not thrive, the company will simply move on. “We are trying to experiment with these new types of business models,” Mr. Bolwell said.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/30/te...net/30mag.html





Skype, the Web Phone Giant, Brings Cheap Calls to Cellular
Brad Stone

Skype, the Internet calling service that has more than 400 million users around the world, is aggressively moving onto mobile phones.

The Luxembourg-based company, a division of eBay, plans to announce on Tuesday that it will make its free software available immediately for Apple’s iPhone and iPod Touch and, beginning in May, for various BlackBerry phones, made by Research in Motion.

Other companies have already made software for those phones that works with Skype, but it does not offer all of the service’s features.

As with Skype on the computer, users of Skype on mobile phones can make calls and send instant messages to other Skype users free, and they pay lower rates than the phone companies would charge when they use Skype to call landlines or other mobile phones.
This year, Skype announced versions of its software for Nokia phones and phones running Microsoft’s Windows Mobile and Google’s Android operating systems.

Apple will limit Skype’s use on the iPhone somewhat, allowing Skype calls to be made only when the device is connected to local Wi-Fi networks, and not allowing Skype calls over the data networks of its carrier partners like AT&T. Apple imposes the same restrictions on all voice applications in its App Store.

The idea of bringing Skype to mobile phones has always been viewed by cellular operators as potentially threatening. It opens up the possibility that people will use their data plans to make calls using Skype, instead of the more expensive and profitable voice minutes on the carriers’ cellular networks.

“The carriers are in the business of selling voice minutes. For a long time they saw products like Skype coming along and they were concerned,” said Ben Wood, director of Research at the London-based CCS Insight, a market research firm. “But it turned out a little bit different than they expected.”

Mr. Wood said many carriers had modified their views about so-called voice-over-Internet-protocol, or VoIP, services. In some cases, Skype has proved to be appealing to consumers and a competitive advantage for a carrier over its rivals.

Skype tested its service in London in the last two years with Hutchison 3, a British mobile network. It said it drew more customers to Hutchison 3 and increased its revenue for each user, since people were making calls on their cellphones using Skype that high calling rates would have discouraged otherwise.

Scott Durchslag, Skype’s chief operating officer, said he did not think the limitations on using Skype on the iPhone would be a big drawback for users, since Wi-Fi networks have become common.

However, he said he hoped Apple and AT&T would relax restrictions and let people make Skype calls anywhere they roamed. “We think these things should work on any device, any network, at any time,” he said.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/30/te...t/30skype.html





Internet Calling Companies Ask EU to Ensure Free Access

Internet calling companies such as eBay unit Skype have called on European policymakers to adopt policies that let consumers access their services through smart phones on any public network.

The Voice on the Net (VON) coalition Europe, which also includes Google Inc, Microsoft Corp and Intel Corp, argues carriers are blocking their applications on their cellular or 3G networks, which limits consumer choice.

The appeal was sparked by news that German mobile operator T-Mobile, the wireless unit of Deutsche Telekom, did not allow customers to use the Skype application on the iPhone.

T-Mobile is the exclusive carrier of Apple's iPhone in Germany.

"Blocking of voice applications on mobile devices, such as the announcement of T-Mobile to block Skype on iPhones in Germany, is highly detrimental for consumer welfare in Europe," VON said in a statement.

Internet phone providers want to expand beyond desktop computers but carriers such as T-Mobile, AT&T or UK's O2 worry this could lead to a fall in their voice revenue.

While carriers can block Skype -- the Internet telephone unit of eBay Inc -- on their networks, they cannot distinguish whether customers are using Skype through a Wi-Fi link, a person familiar with the matter said.

"Essentially, you can use Skype via Wi-Fi on a T-Mobile iPhone," the person said. "I have tried, it works."

T-Mobile blocks Skype usage on its network, arguing the high level of traffic would hinder network performance.

Since Tuesday, Skype's iPhone application can be downloaded through the Apple application store on iPhones and allows free calls between Skype users.

As with Skype on the desktop, fees will be charged for calls to traditional phones.

In May it will launch Skype for Research In Motion's BlackBerry devices, which popularized mobile email.

It has already announced Skype for Nokia phones and for phones based on Android, Google mobile system, and Windows Mobile, from Microsoft.

(Reporting by Nicola Leske; Editing by Andrew Macdonald)
http://uk.reuters.com/article/techno...53241520090403





Punk CD Is Going Theatrical
Dave Itzkoff

The punks are invading the theater. A new musical production adapted from “American Idiot,” the best-selling album by the punk band Green Day, is scheduled to make its debut in September at the Berkeley Repertory Theater in California.

Berkeley Rep is to announce Monday that the new work, also titled “American Idiot,” will have its premiere as the first production of the theater’s 2009-10 season, and run from Sept. 4 through Oct. 11.

The musical is a collaboration between Green Day — the Bay Area rock trio consisting of Billie Joe Armstrong, Mike Dirnt and Tre Cool — and Michael Mayer, the Tony Award-winning director of “Spring Awakening.”

The project is also causing some shock to the band members, who acknowledge that they had grand aspirations for “American Idiot” but perhaps not quite this grand.

“It doesn’t make a lot of sense,” Mr. Armstrong, the Green Day singer and guitarist, said of this new partnership in a telephone interview, “but that’s what I love about it. When people see it, it’s going to be my wildest dream.”

Released in 2004, “American Idiot” (Reprise) was Green Day’s conceptual response to the depressing realities of the post-9/11 era; it combines bleak lyrics with bright, thrashing guitar riffs. Many of its singles, including “Boulevard of Broken Dreams” and the title track, were hits, and the album went on to sell more than 12 million copies worldwide.

Among its fans was Mr. Mayer, who discovered “American Idiot” while he was still in the early stages of directing “Spring Awakening,” Duncan Sheik and Steven Sater’s musical about the pubescent struggles of 19th-century German youth.

“It was very much in my head all during that time,” Mr. Mayer said. “Sometimes I really would say things like, ‘Why can’t this have a groove like “Boulevard of Broken Dreams”?’ ”

Following numerous victories for “Spring Awakening” at the 2007 Tony Awards Mr. Mayer and his producing partner, Tom Hulce, approached Green Day about adapting “American Idiot” for the theater. After two workshops in New York in 2008 — a summer session to try out orchestrations by Tom Kitt (“Next to Normal”), and a winter session that added choreography by Steven Hoggett (“Black Watch”) — the band gave its consent for a full-scale stage production.

For now the creative team is tight lipped about how, exactly, it will translate the libretto of “American Idiot” into a narrative. As Mr. Armstrong admitted, “It’s not the most linear story in the world.”

But Mr. Mayer said, “If you read it a certain way, you can pull out a multiplicity of voices.” He hinted that a triumvirate of characters referred to elliptically in the album’s lyrics, with names like Jesus of Suburbia, St. Jimmy and Whatshername, would likely emerge as the central characters. All told, he said, the ensemble would include 19 performers playing characters in their early 20s, though no casting has been announced.

Mr. Mayer said that it was too soon to contemplate a Broadway run for “American Idiot,” but that the show would almost definitely play beyond the Berkeley Rep (which is also hosting a new musical based on Matthew Sweet’s pop album “Girlfriend” this fall).
“American Idiot” could certainly make it to New York one day. “There might be some fantastic found space where this really wants to live,” Mr. Mayer said. “Or it might live in a beautiful, big Broadway theater.”

For Mr. Armstrong, whose band is preparing to release a new rock-opera album called “21st Century Breakdown” in May, the mere fact that “American Idiot” will have a stage incarnation is its own reward.

In a way, he said, it meant that Green Day had at least measured up to its idols the Who, whose concept album “Tommy” made it to Broadway and whose “Quadrophenia” is set to open as a stage musical in Britain in May. And maybe Green Day has even surpassed another inspiration, the Clash, a band that never saw its ambitious albums like “London Calling” or “Sandinista!” turned into stage shows.

“I guess maybe we’re a bit more fruity than the Clash,” Mr. Armstrong said.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/30/theater/30berk.html





Netflix Ups Fees for Blu-Ray Amid Rising Demand
AP

Online DVD rental leader Netflix Inc. is raising its prices for Blu-ray discs in a change that will triple or quadruple the high-definition surcharge on Netflix's most popular subscription plans.

The new rates announced Monday are being driven by the growing appetite for the Blu-ray format among Netflix's more than 10 million subscribers.

About 1 million of the subscribers are requesting Blu-ray discs instead of standard DVDs, and Blu-ray discs cost about 30 percent more. That means Netflix's profit margins are being squeezed as it expands its high-definition inventory.

The Los Gatos, Calif.-based company had been imposing a $1 monthly surcharge for Blu-ray rentals since September, regardless of how much the basic subscription plan costs.

Effective April 27, Netflix will adopt a sliding scale that will slap higher Blu-ray fees on plans that enable customers to check out multiple DVDs at a time.

Renters who pay $14 per month for Netflix's two-DVD package will have to fork over another $3 if they want Blu-ray discs. Under another popular plan that costs $17 per month for three DVDs, customers who prefer Blu-ray discs will have to pay an additional $4. Subscribers who have more expensive rental plans will pay even more for the Blu-ray luxury.

All monthly fees will remain the same for customers who exclusively rent standard DVDs. Netflix is trying to make it easy for people to avoid the new surcharges by disabling the Blu-ray preference in their rental accounts.

Netflix's Blu-ray selection spans about 1,300 titles, a paltry number compared with the more than 100,000 movies and TV shows in its library of standard DVDs.

The higher Blu-ray fees come at a time when Netflix's subscriber growth has been accelerating, partly because more households have been gravitating toward relatively cheap forms of home entertainment to save money.

Since September, Netflix has added more than 1.3 million customers and its stock has surged more than 30 percent. Netflix shares were up $1.25, 3.2 percent, at $40.93 in trading Monday afternoon.
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2009...-Increase.html





Disney, Hulu Restart Talks Over ABC Shows: Report

The Walt Disney Co and Hulu.com have restarted talks over offering shows from Disney's ABC television network on the online video distributor owned by NBC Universal and News Corp, paidContent.org reported on Friday, citing unnamed sources.

The talks were described as "serious" by the sources and said to center on ABC prime time shows like "Desperate Housewives," "Lost," and "Ugly Betty." Other content from Disney's cable networks, such as ESPN and Disney Channel, were also being considered, the sources said.

Disney was said to be interested in an equity stake in Hulu similar to the equal ownership stakes, of 45 percent each, held by General Electric Co's NBC Universal and News Corp.

A Disney spokeswoman would not comment on the paidContent report but cautioned that no deal had been reached with Hulu.

A Hulu spokeswoman could not be reached for comment.

Disney has long been in talks with Hulu and other Web-based content distributors as it tries to expand viewership of the ad-supported ABC shows offered on ABC.com and Web sites of its local TV affiliates, on AOL.com, and Comcast Corp's Fancast site.

ABC was the first major broadcast network to offer prime time programing online, and Disney reported last month that its Web-based video player has streamed more than 106 million episodes since the TV viewing season began last September.

Disney also sells movies and TV episodes on Apple Inc's iTunes.

Disney has said it is seeking online partners that are "comparable and complementary" to Disney-ABC TV brands, and are able to make "significant" commitments to marketing the shows.

Prospective partners must have a "positive" and strong relationship with their consumers, a sound growth strategy and be able to protect content from piracy, the company said.

A report by consumer technology researcher The Diffusion Group underscores the growing importance of the online video category -- finding that 83 percent of adult consumers, or more than 110 million people, watch online video at least one a week.

The report finds that successful business models will embrace an ad-supported video syndication model and that the majority of Internet television programmers will rely on advertising rather than subscriptions for most of their revenue.

The report forecasts that long-form videos, such as TV shows and movies, will total 22.8 billion streams annually, or 4.1 percent of total video streams by 2013, with short-form and user-generated video making up more than 75 percent of the category.

Ad revenue from long-form video is expected to outstrip the other two categories, however, with long-form content accounting for 69 percent of total ad-related revenue by 2013, the report showed.

(Reporting by Gina Keating; Editing by Gary Hill)
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20090328/...us_disney_hulu





"Monsters vs. Aliens" Fuels Booming Box Office

Hollywood's overflowing cash registers rang even louder on Sunday as the cartoon "Monsters vs. Aliens" scared up the biggest opening of the year at the North American box office.

DreamWorks Animation SKG Inc's first big 3-D film sold an estimated $58.2 million worth of tickets across the United States and Canada during its first three days, the studio said.

The opening was at the upper end of analysts' forecasts within a $50 million to $60 million range. The year's previous best start was $55.2 million for "Watchmen" earlier this month, though that superhero film quickly stalled, and finally crawled across the $100 million mark last Thursday.

"Monsters vs. Aliens" also set a record for a 3-D opening -- $32.6 million, or about 56 percent of the gross, the studio said. The balance came from traditional movie theaters.

Hollywood is betting a lot on 3-D, with about 40 films scheduled to run in 3-D over the next three years in hopes that audiences will pay $3 to $5 more per ticket than they typically do to watch movies that feature characters and objects popping out of movie screens.

One of the biggest 3-D proponents has been DreamWorks Animation's Chief Executive Officer, Jeffrey Katzenberg, who has pledged to release all the company's movies in 3-D at an additional cost of $15 million per film.

The production budget for "Monsters vs. Aliens" was about $165 million to $170 million, including that 3-D premium. Worldwide marketing costs are estimated at $175 million, consistent with past DreamWorks Animation releases.

The film, featuring the voices of Reese Witherspoon, Paul Rudd and Rainn Wilson, was distributed by Paramount Pictures, a unit of Viacom Inc. Witherspoon plays a 50-foot-(15-meter-)tall newscaster recruited to help battle an alien invasion. Reviews from top critics were mixed.

Embarrassment Of Riches?

Sales for all films were up about 40 percent from the haul this time a year ago, reaching $148 million, according to tracking firm Media By Numbers.

Year-to-date revenues stand at $2.4 billion, up 12 percent from the same period in 2008. The number of tickets sold is up by 10.4 percent.

The windfall presents something of an embarrassment of riches for Hollywood. Lawmakers have looked askance at the moguls' pleas for bailout money. The studios are also engaged in a lengthy standoff with the Screen Actors Guild, whose film and TV contract expired last June.

But box office revenues are just "one piece of a giant jigsaw puzzle," said Media By Numbers president Paul Dergarabedian. For starters, the studios generally split sales about 50/50 with the movie theaters, he said.

And the recession has forced studios to tighten their belts along with other sectors of the economy. Indeed, some analysts believe "Monsters vs. Aliens" could have been better had the credit crunch not hampered the roll-out of expensive digital equipment needed to screen 3-D movies.

Also new was the horror film "The Haunting in Connecticut," which came in at No. 2 with $23.0 million, exceeding the forecast of its distributor, Lionsgate.

The strong opening coincides with an intensifying battle for control of the studio's parent, Lions Gate Entertainment Corp, by billionaire investor Carl Icahn.

The activist investor, who controls 14.5 percent of Lions Gate shares, has criticized the company for spending too much on overhead and for its recent $255 million purchase of the TV Guide cable channel.

Lions Gate, which also produces the acclaimed "Mad Men" cable-TV series, has had a good year at the box office. Its most recent film, "Madea Goes to Jail," has earned $89 million, a record for a release by prolific moviemaker Tyler Perry.

Last week's champ, the Nicolas Cage thriller "Knowing," fell to No. 3 with $14.7 million, taking its 10-day total to $46.2 million. The film was released by Summit Entertainment, which is privately held.

(Reporting by Dean Goodman and Sue Zeidler; Editing by Eric Walsh)
http://www.reuters.com/article/filmN...52S1IA20090330





3-D Helps Propel ‘Monsters’ Success
Brooks Barnes

Consider DreamWorks Animation validated in its chest-thumping about a new golden era for 3-D.

“Monsters vs. Aliens,” positioned by the studio and its distributor, Paramount Pictures, as a make-or-break moment for digital 3-D, sold an estimated $58.2 million in tickets at North American theaters over the weekend, according to Media by Numbers, a box-office tracking firm. It’s the biggest opening so far of the year. But a deeper look at the numbers indicates that 3-D is the story.

The movie opened on 7,000 screens, including Imax screens, of which only 2,100 were equipped with 3-D technology. About 56 percent of the movie’s weekend total came from those limited 3-D screenings, according to Paramount, and they carried premium prices of up to $4 atop the standard admission. So about 30 percent of the screens delivered 56 percent of the gross, indicating that audiences sought out the format.

“We really feel this is proof of concept for this new style of 3-D,” said Anne Globe, the DreamWorks chief of marketing and consumer products.

Over all, Hollywood sold $142.7 million in tickets over the weekend, a 35 percent increase over the same weekend last year. Sales for the year are up 12 percent on a 10 percent rise in attendance, according to Media by Numbers.

Jeffrey Katzenberg, chief executive and co-founder of DreamWorks Animation, has tied the future of the company tightly to 3-D. All his future films will be released in that format.

But a success with “Monsters vs. Aliens” was crucial for the studio for other reasons. The film is DreamWorks Animation’s only release in 2009. The studio has typically delivered two movies a year, but altered that plan as a crush of 3-D films was scheduled to enter the marketplace.

The studio also hoped to quiet investor worries about whipsawing quality. Reviews were mixed (and much more negative than those for recent releases by rival Pixar), but good enough to satisfy some people on Wall Street: Cowen and Company upgraded its recommendation on the studio’s stock, saying its “capability to consistently release high-quality films has improved.”

Second place at the box office went to “The Haunting in Connecticut,” a horror entry from Lionsgate, which is waging battle with the corporate raider Carl Icahn. That inexpensive picture sold a solid $23 million in tickets.

“Knowing,” a science-fiction thriller from Summit Entertainment that was No. 1 the previous weekend, was third this weekend with an estimated $14.7 million (for a total of $46.2 million since opening), showing solid audience retention in its second week.

“I Love You, Man,” from Paramount and DreamWorks Studios, the live-action cousin to Mr. Katzenberg’s company, sold an estimated $12.6 million ($37 million so far). Rounding out the Top 5 was “Duplicity,” a romantic thriller starring Julia Roberts and Clive Owen, with $7.6 million ($25.6 million so far).

The performance of “Duplicity,” produced by Universal Pictures and Relativity Media, has been disappointing, particularly given the former ability of Ms. Roberts to turn out masses. While the movie charmed critics, audience chatter has been focused on a bloated running time and its seriousness, a surprise since the studio marketed it as lighthearted.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/30/movies/30box.html





Credit Crunch Impairs Theaters' Digital Vision
Alex Ben Block

At the Carmike Encore Park Cinemas megaplex in Elkhart, Ind., box office receipts are way up this year. But the returns at the candy counter aren't so sweet.

In fact, sales last year of sugary snacks, popcorn and soft drinks barely reached 2007 levels in Elkhart, and this year could be worse.

"That city is at a high level of the unemployment rate and we've seen a little bit of stagnation in our per-capita growth in that particular market," says Fred Van Noy, COO of Georgia-based Carmike.

The slowdown isn't limited to Elkhart. The 289-theater Carmike chain recently launched "Stimulus Tuesdays," offering 16-ounce drinks and 46-ounce popcorns for $1 each in an attempt to boost concessions.

Even as the recession has caused a spike in theater attendance, a fear that more moviegoers are passing on $5 tubs of popcorn and sodas is just one of several concerns on exhibitors' minds as they flock to their annual ShoWest confab in Las Vegas this week.

"Frankly, this is something we are really worried about," says Thomas Stephenson Jr., president and CEO of Dallas-based Rave Motion Pictures, which has 475 screens in 14 states.

"Our concession sales are not up on a yearly basis as much as we anticipated they would be," says Dean Kerasotes, COO of Kerasotes Theaters, whose 100-year-old circuit has 933 screens at 94 locations. "It's hard to tell whether it's people's spending habits or the product, which has been heavily weighted toward more adult fare like 'Gran Torino' and 'Slumdog Millionaire,' which aren't big concession movies."

Overall, the exhibition business, despite years of predictions of doom, is doing just fine. Ticket sales rose 13.1% in January and February compared with last year, and North American box office receipts hit a record $9.8 billion last year, up 1.5% from 2007, according to the National Association of Theater Owners (NATO).

But these bullish numbers obscure some ominous signs. Admissions -- the number of tickets sold -- declined 2.5% in 2008, and ticket prices last year shot up from $6.88 in 2007 to $7.18.

At the same time, conversions of theaters to digital and 3-D projection -- which many believe represents the future of the exhibition business -- have slowed due to the recession.

Several major studios agreed last fall to pay "virtual print fees" of about $1,000 per screen for up to 20 years for digital conversion, a key first step for 3-D projection. Third-party implementors Digital Cinema Implementation Partners (DCIP), a joint venture of AMC Entertainment, Cinemark and Regal Cinemas, and Cinedigm (formerly AccessIT) had raised millions and were ready to begin conversion of half the U.S. screens just as the money froze.

"This is where the credit crisis is a true bummer for us," NATO president John Fithian says. "The big deals that will really accelerate the transition are somewhat on hold. The models are all developed. The agreements with the studios are there. To get back on track we've got to see thawing in the credit markets."

Cinedigm installed about 3,800 screens before the freeze, including the entire Carmike circuit. It became the first major circuit to fully digitize its 2,500 screens across 37 states in a deal valued at $150 million. But others have had to wait.

"We're constrained like everyone else but we're not by any means not doing it," says Bud Mayo, CEO of Cinedigm, which hopes to convert 8,500 screens during the next three years. "We're finding creative ways to work with exhibition and in some cases even the exhibitors' own banks to provide installations."

With about a dozen 3-D films headed to theaters this year, some theater chains are scrambling to complete partial 3-D installations on their own while they wait for DCIP and Cinedigm.

"There's a fair amount of that going on with self-financing and partial deals," Fithian says.

Kerasotes, for instance, was on the verge of converting his chain to digital when the crunch hit.

"Last fall I opened a 16-plex in Manteca, Calif., and went all digital anyway," he says. "I'm on the hook for it. The hope is that later we can put it into a third-party deal, which should happen."

In many existing theaters, Kerasotes paid to convert just one or two screens while he waits for the rest.

The result is money left on the table when high-profile 3-D releases hit theaters. Last Friday, DreamWorks Animation's new box office champ "Monsters vs. Aliens" opened in 3-D on about 2,000 screens (and 700 overseas) out of a total of 38,000 screens. That's a far cry from DWA's announcement last year that it expected 5,000 3-D screens to be ready for the film's launch.

Disney also has made a big commitment to 3-D and is anxiously awaiting more conversions.

"We keep hearing there will be funding by midsummer," says Disney distribution head Chuck Viane.

Until more screens are converted, 3-D movies are being forced out of theaters prematurely.

"So a picture like 'Coraline,' which was doing a lot of business, was knocked out by 'Jonas Brothers,'" Viane says. "And, come summer, we will see four or five films knock each other out."

Even if the funding for conversions materializes, some exhibitors worry that the benefits will fall disproportionally to distributors, who will no longer have to make $1,600 film prints.

"It's very costly for exhibitors and exhibition is not going to be the one that benefits from an investment," says Bruce Olson, president of Milwaukee-based Marcus Theaters. Plus, he says, "The cost for maintenance is 2-1/2-to four times that of 35mm equipment. So the burden is still weighed unfairly against exhibitors."

Digital does create new opportunities for exhibitors. They can broadcast live sporting events and employ teleconferencing for business meetings and special gatherings. National CineMedia, another joint venture of Regal and AMC, offers telecasts of the Metropolitan Opera, among other programs.

"We'll have 50,000-70,000 people show up across the country for a one-night event and in many markets we will sell out," CineMedia CEO Kurt Hall says. "We could put a couple million seats in play at one time and generate a very large gross, if the content is right."

Large-format exhibitor Imax is going through a major technical transition from analog to digital, including digital 3-D, as well as a rapid expansion. It has a deal with AMC, among others, and expects to have more than 100 screens with 3-D capability by the end of the year -- and all are already financed.

"We used to have (theater chains) buy a theater for $1 million-$1.5 million," CEO Greg Foster says. "Now for joint ventures like AMC and Regal, we pay for the theater. We install the system. They pay a fairly small amount, about $150,000-$175,000 to retrofit the theater for our sound system, screen and branding. We now split the revenue."

The Imax boom has coincided with a shift in theater building. The average number of screens at each U.S. theater rose to 6.71 in 2008 but almost no chain is building 25-plexes as they did a decade ago. New theaters are often in the 14-screen range and position themselves as destinations with food and shopping.

The trend is to open where developers pay costs, known as build-to-suit deals.

"The landlord funds the entire construction of the facility," Carmike's Van Noy says. "So we are not having to access our resources to do any of these projects."

However, even that has stalled, as many developers have been caught in the credit crunch.

"This will be the first year since 2000 that we didn't open a new theater," Rave's Stephenson says.

That doesn't mean there won't be activity.

"This credit crisis may be more an opportunity for acquisitions," Marcus' Olsen says. "This may be a good time for a company like us, with cash, to go out and acquire rather than build."

Still, Fithian believes exhibition is in good shape because so many screens were constructed in recent years.

"We wouldn't want to go years without the ability to upgrade," he says, "but for a while we're OK."

(Editing by Dean Goodman at Reuters)
http://www.reuters.com/article/enter...52T1O520090330





Milestones

CBS Turns Out ‘Guiding Light’
Bill Carter

CBS announced Wednesday the cancellation of the longest-running scripted program in broadcasting history, the soap opera “Guiding Light.”

The show has been on radio and television for 72 years, beginning on NBC radio in 1937 and moving to CBS television in 1952.

The show’s run will end with an episode Sept. 18.

The move came after many years of steeply declining ratings for the hourlong soap, which is owned by Procter & Gamble and thus was a link to the earliest days of daytime serial dramas on radio. The shows were eventually called soap operas because soap companies sponsored them.

A spokeswoman for P.&G., Jeannie Tharrington, said the company would seek to place “Guiding Light” elsewhere. “We’re looking at all our options,” she said. “This show started as a 15-minute radio show, and then it was a half-hour television show, so it has adapted over the years.”

Ms. Tharrington said P.&G. would look to any possible outlet to continue the series. A canceled NBC soap, “Passions,” moved for a time to the satellite service DirecTV, but it failed there and is now gone.

None of the producers or stars of “Guiding Light” would grant an interview Wednesday about the decision. “The news is too fresh,” Ms. Tharrington said.

In an official statement, Ellen Wheeler, the executive producer, said, “It will be difficult for all of us at the show to say goodbye.”

The CBS president, Nancy Tellem, said, “It was not an easy decision to make, but we talked it over with our partners at Procter & Gamble, and we agreed it was time.” Ms. Tellem said she had not heard that P.&G. was looking to place the show elsewhere but said that CBS would wish the company well in that effort.

The biggest star in the show’s current cast is Kim Zimmer, a four-time Emmy winner for best actress in a daytime serial. Another star, Justin Deas, has won six Emmys for his acting. The show also provided breakthroughs for many well-known actors, including Kevin Bacon, James Earl Jones, Calista Flockhart, Allison Janney and Cicely Tyson. “Guiding Light” claims the distinction of being the first network soap to introduce regular African-American characters, in 1966.

CBS and the producers of “Guiding Light” — which is shot on the East Coast, in the CBS Broadcast Center in Manhattan and on location in Peapack, N.J. — had taken several steps in recent years to keep the series alive, especially in switching the production to a digital format.

That move, last year, included the introduction of hand-held digital cameras and permanent, four-wall sets as opposed to the traditional, constantly reconstructed three-wall sets built by soaps to accommodate bulky pedestal cameras. Rather than expensive lighting and sound equipment, the show also began using hand-held lights and microphones.

The changes resulted in a look vastly different from the traditional soap, with more camera movement, more muted lighting and much more use of outside locations. The moves saved considerable money, according to CBS executives.

But not enough to save the series. This year the audience for “Guiding Light” had declined to an average of just 2.1 million viewers an episode. Its pattern over recent years had been steadily downward. Last year it averaged about 2.4 million viewers an episode. Five years ago the average was about 3 million viewers.

“Guiding Light” also had the smallest audience of any of the remaining network daytime soaps and a smaller audience than many of the game and talk shows that also fill network daytime hours. The most-watched soap, “The Young and the Restless” on CBS, is averaging about 5.26 million viewers an episode. The network’s game show “The Price Is Right” has an average of about 4.95 million viewers. ABC’s talk show “The View” averages about 4.25 million viewers.

ABC’s top soap, “General Hospital,” averages about 2.97 million viewers, and NBC’s only soap, “Days of Our Lives,” has about 2.76 million, though those shows have much younger audiences, making them more desirable to many advertisers.

Ms. Tellem said that the hour devoted to “Guiding Light” — its scheduling has varied in different cities from 10 a.m. in New York to as late a 3 p.m. in some cities — will be retained by CBS. The network is likely to fill it with another game show or talk show, she said.

When “Guiding Light” ends, another CBS soap, “As the World Turns” — also shot in New York — will become the longest-running daytime serial drama. It started in 1956.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/02/ar...on/02ligh.html





E.U. Poised to Establish Telecommunications Regulator
Kevin J. O'Brien

Lawmakers are moving to create a Europe-wide telecommunications regulator with the power to reverse policies in European Union member countries, a potentially major redistribution of power that could improve competition and lower prices across the Continent.

Negotiators representing the European Commission, the European Parliament and the 27 national telecommunications regulators of the E.U. met Monday night in Brussels to approve the agency, called the Body of European Regulators of Electronic Communications, according to a copy of the agreement obtained by the International Herald Tribune.

“This will definitely have the effect of getting all 27 European regulators to move in the same direction,” said Levi Nietvelt, a lobbyist for the European Consumers’ Organization in Brussels, which supported the regulator. “The regulators will be better controlled now by their peers through the new agency.”

Currently, some E.U. countries ignore or defy E.U. telecommunications law when following it could damage the commercial interests of their former national telephone monopolies, some of which are still under state control or partial ownership.

The commission, for example, is suing Germany for allowing Deutsche Telekom to bar competitors from leasing access to its new €3 billion, or $4 billion, super-high-speed V.D.S.L. broadband network, an act that violates E.U. law. Deutsche Telekom is still 32 percent owned by the German government, which also appoints its national regulator.

But E.U. cases before the European Court of Justice typically take two to three years to resolve, usually too long to have an effect in fast-moving markets. The new E.U. telecommunications regulator, by contrast, will be able to move more quickly to reverse decisions that may protect former monopolies but hurt local consumers.

Starting in 2010, the new agency, together with the commission, would be able to reverse decisions made by national regulators in E.U. countries on issues like telephone and broadband pricing, network access and rules covering the portability of cellphone numbers when customers switch carriers.

Under the plan, the commission can veto a national regulator’s decision only if it obtains the majority of 27 E.U. national regulators who will make up the agency board. Technically speaking, the veto will take the form of binding recommendation that “requires” a national regulator to amend or withdraw a controversial decision.

Also, the commission would gain new powers to harmonize rules and procedures among the member countries on telecommunications pricing and network access, should variations in national laws persist for at least two years.

Currently, the commission is using its advisory powers to try to cajole E.U. countries to lower the fees paid to connect calls to cellphones — so-called mobile termination rates — from an average of 9 cents to under 3 cents a minute by 2012. The rates, set nationally, vary from less than 1 cent in Denmark to 15 cents in Bulgaria.

The compromise reached by Parliament, E.U. telecommunications ministers and European commissioners will ensure passage of the legislation on final votes in late April and early May. Under the plan, the new agency will have a staff of up to 25 people and be funded by the commission. The agency’s new location has yet to be determined.

The E.U. telecommunications regulator was first proposed in 2008 by the European telecommunications commissioner, Viviane Reding, but her plan appeared to hit a roadblock when national telecommunications ministers, led by Germany and Spain, rejected the idea in November as too bureaucratic and a usurpation of local power.

But in private meetings last week and into the weekend, Ms. Reding and key legislative negotiators — Angelika Niebler, the German chairwoman of the Industry, Research and Energy Committee; the committee’s vice chairwoman, Catherine Trautmann of France; and a Spanish committee member, Pilar del Castillo Vera — worked out a compromise along with a representative of the Czech Republic, which holds the rotating E.U. presidency.

Martin Selmayr, a spokesman for Reding, said the members of the committee were to endorse the agreement Monday night at a closed-door meeting in Brussels. Legislation creating the new agency is part of a comprehensive update of E.U. telecommunications law that also seeks to give the commission and new E.U. regulator the ability to force dominant national phone companies to functionally separate themselves from their networks.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/31/bu...1regulate.html





In Exposing the Identity of Mudflats, Rep. Mike Doogan Exposes Himself.

Anonymity is an interesting thing. Anyone who has read my “About” page knows that Mudflats popped out of my head and on to my keyboard last May. I, like many of you, get frustrated with my government. There isn’t anyone who pays attention, on either side of the political spectrum, who doesn’t at some time feel like they need to get something off their chest.

I wasn’t quite sure what this whole blogging thing was about, but a dear friend of mine who is a brilliant writer was doing some work for the American Cancer Society blog, and urged me to start one of my own. And so, one evening after some crazy shenanigans from Don Young and a glass of shiraz, the first post went up on Mudflats. It was a strange sensation to write, and then click on that blue oval button that said, “Publish”. With that click, I was putting my opinion out to the world. I was giving permission for people to peek into my brain, and read my diary, as it were. I had no particular desire for anyone to know it was coming from me, and why should they care, anyway? I’m just….me. I’m not a politician, nor a writer, nor a journalist, nor a state or federal employee, nor a lobbyist. I was just a citizen who was paying attention, feeling frustrated, and liked getting stuff off my chest.

I checked my blog statistics later in the day, and noticed that two people had clicked on my article. I sat there utterly amazed. I called to my spouse, “Look at this! Two people read it!” Then, the next day, eight people had read it. I was getting about a dozen hits a day the next week. I didn’t know where they were coming from, but I imagined my little group of a dozen people who enjoyed Mudflats enough to come back and read more. Then twenty people. And by the end of the summer, about 250 a day. Maybe they liked feeling like somebody was speaking their particular truth. Maybe they liked it. It was a good feeling.

The day that Sarah Palin got nominated to be John McCain’s Vice President, life changed. My sister called me at some pre-dawn hour and said, “Did you hear?” I, like many Alaskans, was completely stunned. Sarah Palin? Was I still dreaming? Really? I knew I had to take the day off. I made a pot of coffee, and thought to myself, that my 250 people might not be the only ones interested in this VP pick. Now, many people adored Sarah Palin, and maybe some of them had blogs too….I had never checked, but they must be out there somewhere. But I knew some things about her, and her policies and positions that others might not be able to find out so easily. I decided to write my opinion. So I wrote a post, “What Is McCain Thinking? One Alaskan’s Perspective.” And that’s exactly what the piece was - one Alaskans perspective. My perspective. Just in case anyone was interested.

It took me about 45 minutes to crank it out and click Publish. (Yes, I was still in my pajamas at the time) And it turned out that people were interested. Really interested. By the time I’d made myself a couple eggs and toast, and sat back down there were more than 7,000 hits. By the end of the day there were 64,000. The total readership of that post ended up being almost 270,000 with more than 1300 comments. To say I was shocked is putting it mildly. I began to get emails and comments asking me when I was going to post again, asking questions about Palin, and saying that this was the only “real” information they were getting.

They wanted pictures of Wasilla. They wanted to know about polar bears. They wanted to know what my friends and relatives really thought.

Now, the main stream media was covering Palin a lot, but just as we tend to converse with friends or relatives, to see what they think of something, to help clarify our opinion, so do people like to hear opinions from a regular person. At least, that’s what I came to believe. The next two months became a frenzy of writing and responding to emails, and managing the hundreds of comments that each post was getting. I got a book offer, interview requests, advertisers asking for room on the site, and I made a decision. I was going to focus on answering the questions people wanted to know, and telling them what I thought. The t-shirts and advertising could wait until later. And interviews? Well, I hadn’t really done anything other than speak my mind, so it seemed a little….silly. There were plenty of other qualified people to talk to.

And so the months of September and October passed. My spouse and my kids graciously gave me up to the computer. If you had stock in Pumpkin Flax cereal, I might have made you rich, because it was fast and easy. I didn’t sleep much, and my back began to ache, and my eyes hurt. But, other than that, I was enjoying writing and I felt useful. Apparently reading my little online “diary” was giving people something they wanted.

So, where am I going with all this? Back to the question of anonymity. It stands to reason that when expressing a personal opinion, there may be times when it will be less than flattering to a particular politician. More often than not, the politician is not a member of your own party, but sometimes they are. I’m not one to cushion and coddle Democrats just because they have a D in front of their name. Nor am I one to look for reasons to condemn the Rs just because of political party. Because, that’s really how most people think. They judge people based upon their actions.

Fast forward to the present. Mudflats has become something of an amazement to me. Over the months, kind souls from many places have volunteered their time, and their energy to build this community. It was hard to manage posts that were getting 500 or 600 comments in just a few hours. So the Mudflats Forum was born, run by a team of administrators and moderators who all work very hard for nothing but gratitude. The forum was a way for readers to connect and discuss issues of the day, start their own threads, support each other, and talk everything from Sarah Palin to Barack Obama to salmon recipes. There were postcard swaps, and Secret Santas, and friendships were born. Mudflatters from Pittsburgh were the first to say “Let’s meet in real life!” and Mudstock Meetups were born. I started attending local events, rallies, debates, and trying to give my perspective. I felt quite qualified to give my persepective and opinion. All of us are.

But sometimes politicians don’t like people who express their opinions, especially when the opinion is less than flattering, and especially when it’s their own words that come back to bite them. Mudflatters may recall back in December when Rep. Mike Doogan really got under my skin. I had posted previously about Mr. Doogan by posting his reaction to the Palin nomination, promoting his appearance on a local radio show, and talking about the certainty of his reelection. But I don’t always agree with him. The post where I took him to task was entitled “Are You People Nuts? Lessons in Email Etiquette.”

The jist of it all, is that being really rude to people via email does not make them like you, nor does it make you look good. And legislators have a certain vested interest in looking good. Taking the high road when you’re an elected leader is always a good plan, because flying off the handle, or mouthing off at people and insulting them results in the dreaded….bad press, and bad public opinion. Neither of those things helps the political goals of being liked, and being reelected.

But here’s where it gets interesting. After the initial opinion piece in Mudflats, I started hearing from fellow bloggers that Mike Doogan was trying to figure out who I was. It seemed strange to me, because really, all I’d done was take his own words and actions and comment on them. Anyone was perfectly free to disagree, or comment on the piece. “He’s rabid,” one blogger told me. Wow. Rabid? I guess I struck a nerve. Over the past few months, I’ve had other messages through the grapevine that he was trying to figure out who I am.

I have to confess, that while I understand the curiosity factor, the fact that an elected representative was this preoccupied with the identity of an anonymous blogger had me puzzled. He wrote a piece for the Alaska Dispatch talking about “accountability”. The thought was that if I was anonymous, I was not accountable. In what way, I wondered. I’m not a journalist. I’m just, as we established before, me. This is my opinion. If he were around, we could ask the “anonymous blogger” of his day, Benjamin Franklin what he thought about this. Using the “screen name” Mrs. Silence Dogood, Franklin was able to put out thoughts and ideas that were weighted on their own merits, not attached to a particular person. Sometimes it’s easier, if you don’t want to think, to attack the person, rather than the idea. I think Franklin would heartily approve of anonymous bloggers.

So, it seemed odd to me that Mr. Doogan was seemingly more focused on the messenger, than on defending his position, or even better, apologizing to people whom he had insulted. I didn’t think much more about it until yesterday, when I got this email:

From: “doogans@gci.net” <doogans@gci.net>
To: akmuckraker@yahoo.com
Sent: Thursday, March 26, 2009 2:55:14 PM
Subject: your identity

Jeanne:

I am reliably told that you are the anonymous blogger who writes Mudflats. I am planning to reveal this in the enews I send to my constituents tomorrow, and am writing to let you know this and offer the opportunity to comment.

Mike Doogan

I was a bit surprised to see my real name, as you can imagine. But after the initial surprise wore off, it really hit me. This is an elected State Representative, of my own political party, who has decided that it’s not OK for me to control the information about my identity; that it’s not OK to express my opinion on my own blog without shouting from the rooftops who I am.

If I were to appear, as many of you have, at a political rally and I were to hold up a sign that expressed my opinion, I don’t have to sign my name on the bottom. And if someone wants to come online and read my diary, they are free to do so. And if they want to disagree, that’s OK too.

It said in my “About” page that I choose to remain anonymous. I didn’t tell anyone why. I might be a state employee. I might not want my children to get grief at school. I might be fleeing from an ex-partner who was abusive and would rather he not know where I am. My family might not want to talk to me anymore. I might alienate my best friend. Maybe I don’t feel like having a brick thrown through my window. My spouse might work for the Palin administration. Maybe I’d just rather people not know where I live or where I work. Or none of those things may be true. None of my readers, nor Mike Doogan had any idea what my personal circumstances might be. But that didn’t seem to matter.

What appears to matter to Rep. Doogan is that either 1) he feels that if he “outs” me, he’ll change what I have to say, or keep me from saying anything. 2) he gets to play mystery detective (like in his books) and believes people will think he’s really cool for figuring it out, or 3) he feels like getting revenge. He knows I want to remain anonymous, so he’s going to take it away. In any of those three scenarios, he didn’t think it was important to get the bigger picture.

And in any of those three scenarios we should probably find it disturbing that an elected official is using his time and mental energy in this way, against an ordinary citizen. I don’t need to remind Mudflats readers that Alaska is in a time of turmoil. We are facing unknown consequences with an erupting volcano that threatens to wipe out a tank farm on Cook Inlet holding 6 million gallons of oil. We have critical issues in the legislature, including Alaska’s acceptance or rejection of hundreds of millions of dollars in federal stimulus money for education and other critical purposes. We have a governor who has just chosen an incredibly divisive and extreme right wing idealogue as our new Attorney General. And there are only three weeks left in the legislative session. It bothers me quite a bit that instead of focusing all his energy on doing his job, one of our elected representatives would rather spend his time stalking and harrassing a political blogger.

And Rep. Doogan is not the only one who has fallen prey to this preoccupation. Our governor, too, seems to be more interested in bloggers than seems healthy. Just a thought, but perhaps if our politicians were doing their jobs better, there would be no need for political bloggers, and we could all write diaries about our dogs, or our kids, or knitting.

It turns out, that Rep. Doogan did make good on his threat to expose me in his legislative newsletter. It actually suprised me, because I thought that maybe he realized that blowing up a progressive political blogger wouldn’t earn him many brownie points with other Democrats. But nevertheless, here you go.

Anonymous Blogger Anonymous No More

The identity of the person who writes the liberal Democratic Mudflats blog has been secret since the blog began, protected by the Anchorage Daily News, among others. My own theory about the public process is you can say what you want, as long as you are willing to stand behind it using your real name. So I was interested to learn that the woman who writes the blog is Anchorage resident Jeanne _____.*

Best wishes,

So, now, if you look on the About page, you’ll get to see my real name* (which Rep. Doogan almost got right). And you also get to learn that Apparently for Rep. Doogan, the rules of the game are whatever his “theory of public process” say they should be. How does everyone feel about that? And as a former journalist, why is Rep. Doogan criticizing the Anchorage Daily News for protecting my identity?

And here’s another irony. Rep. Doogan thinks he has exposed me, but in reality he has done nothing but expose himself.

And with that, Mudflatters, I need to take a little time off to assess things, and take stock of how life will be changing for me and my family.
http://www.themudflats.net/2009/03/2...poses-himself/





Google's Book Settlement Is a Ripoff for Authors

Why allow a single publisher to throw out a functioning copyright system?
Lynn Chu

To get through the 385 pages of mind-numbing legalese of the Google settlement, it might be better to be Nino Scalia, Bob Bork or David Boies. Preferably all three at once. Absent brain enhancement surgery, understanding this monstrosity by May 5, 2009, is going to be rough.

That's the date by which every author and publisher in America is supposed to decide whether to "opt in," "opt out," or simply "ignore" a vast compulsory licensing scheme for the benefit of Google. Most, about 88%, are expected to "ignore." That's because they know their online display rights have value, and the last thing they want is to be herded like sheep into a giant contract commitment.

After Google began digitizing the University of Michigan library in 2004, the Authors Guild, the Association of American Publishers and a handful of authors and publishers filed a class-action lawsuit for copyright infringement. Last November, those "class representatives" reached an out-of-court settlement with Google that would, if approved by the federal court, permit Google to post out-of-print books for reading, sales, institutional licensing, ad sales, and other publishing exploitations, by Google, online. The settlement gives the class-action attorneys $30 million; a new, quasi-judicial bureaucracy called the Book Rights Registry $35 million (more on this later); and $45 million for owners infringed up to now -- about $60 a title. It remains subject to a final fairness hearing, slated for June 11.

No one elected these "class representatives" to represent America's tens of thousands of authors and publishers to convey their digital rights to Google. Nor are the interests of this so-called class identical. There is nothing more individual in the world than a book, an author, a publisher, and the value of a contract. The aging baby boomers now flacking the settlement don't seem to understand that PDF scanning (how Google and everyone else digitizes books) isn't rocket science; it's cheap and easy. Books will be digitized without Google. But the Google settlement sets in amber today's overhyped role of the Internet, ruled by that great and magnificent Oz -- Google.

Sound like hyperbole? Consider this: Under the settlement, every rights-owner in America is supposed to hand over all their private contract data, on every edition of every work they ever wrote -- and every excerpt permission ever granted to others -- at the peril of losing the money Google will be making on their backs. This is a massive burden on everyone in the book industry, making us all, in effect, Google's data-entry slaves. Indeed, in most cases such information about every permission ever granted is unlocatable. It opens a Pandora's box of disputes and mistaken claims about who actually owns what.

Google's erstwhile adversaries are paid off with the aforementioned Book Rights Registry (BRR), which will compete with the U.S. Copyright Office and the federal courts. The BRR expects to read everyone's contracts to say who is owed what of Google's revenues -- net again of all its costs, which are sure to be huge. Our entire dynamic system of individual contract enforcement over time and changing individual proclivities is thus to be exchanged for a forced, immediate squabble over rights, and static databasing, right now, of determinations made by Google.

The Internet was supposed to eliminate middlemen, not pack multiple layers on. The BRR is in fact merely Google's contract negotiation and claims department. As in Hollywood, the settlement deal turns book authors into fully subordinated, last-in-line net residuaries. This reverses the economics of books.

Book publishers today are entitled to a share of the publishing partnership because they shoulder -- not lay off on authors -- all the costs of editing and publication and marketing. The author's net profit share, generally half, in books, is for his creation. The author's share rises against the publisher when the publisher's costs are lower, as in digital. If the author shoulders still more of those costs and burdens, the publisher's share should be reduced again. That doesn't happen with Google.

We already have a good system. It's called the system of private property and free contract, designed for dispersed, autonomous individuals -- not command-and-control centers. The U.S. Constitution grants authors small monopolies in their own copyrights. Author market power is talent-based and individual, not collective. This class action seeks to wipe all this out -- just for Google. But U.S. law does not grant any single publisher monopoly power to herd all of us into its list.

For private gain, the Google parties now seek to destroy the health in the system that individual bargaining preserves. Disputes will be fixed in arbitration with no access to federal courts which have often shown mercy to authors. Arbitrators will be "you sign it you eat it" line-parsing bureaucrats.

Say goodbye to your rights, forever, authors, if this mess goes through.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1238...68261921.html#





High Court Refuses to Consider State Anti-Spam Law
Bill Mears

The Supreme Court has passed up a chance to examine how far states can go to restrict unsolicited e-mails in efforts to block spammers from bombarding computer users.

A tough anti-spam law will not be reviewed by the Supreme Court, the court said Monday.

The high court without comment Monday rejected Virginia's appeal to keep its Computer Crimes Act in place. It was one of the toughest laws of its kind in the nation, the only one to ban noncommercial -- as well as commercial -- spam e-mail to consumers in that state.

The justices' refusal to intervene also means the conviction of prolific commercial spammer Jeremy Jaynes will not be reinstated.

His 2004 felony conviction was the first in the United States for sending bulk unsolicited electronic messages.

A Virginia jury found Jaynes used several computers and servers to send as many as 24,000 spam e-mails in one day to America Online subscribers. He used false "header" info and sender domain names, according to court records. A search of his Raleigh, North Carolina, home found CDs with more than 176 million e-mail addresses and 1.3 billion e-mail user names, some of them stolen by a former AOL employee.

Jaynes was sentenced to nine years in prison, but the state high court eventually reversed the conviction. The state justices said the law was overbroad because some bulk e-mails might contain political, religious, or other speech that has traditionally been given higher First Amendment protection than typical "commercial speech."

Such political speech might be a request for support from a candidate for elected office, while commercial speech might be a solicitation for a medical product, like a hair regrowth tonic.

The U.S. Supreme Court was asked to weigh whether such anti-spam laws overreach into protected speech.

Despite the ruling, Jaynes remains behind bars because of a federal securities fraud conviction unrelated to the state spamming charges.
The anti-spam case is Virginia v. Jaynes (08-765).
http://www.cnn.com/2009/TECH/03/30/s...pam/index.html





Virginia to Rewrite Antispam Law Following Court Action

Virginia's attorney general said Monday that his office will rewrite the state's antispam law now that the U.S. Supreme Court has refused to review a lower court's decision striking down the measure.

The Virginia Supreme Court ruled in September that the law, among the nation's toughest in banning unsolicited bulk emails, was unconstitutional because it barred political, religious and other messages along with commercial solicitations.

The nation's highest court said Monday that it will not consider reinstating the law.

Attorney General Bill Mims said he was disappointed with the decision, but he added that his office will draft legislation for the 2010 General Assembly session that addresses constitutional concerns.

"We are dedicated to protecting all Virginians from unscrupulous spammers who fraudulently send millions of unsolicited garbage email messages," Mr. Mims said in a written statement.

Meanwhile, the court decisions leave Virginia without an enforceable antispam law on the state books, although sending unsolicited bulk commercial email is still illegal under federal law.

The Virginia statute was challenged by Jeremy Jaynes, who once was considered one of the world's most prolific spammers. Mr. Jaynes bombarded Internet users with millions of pieces of spam, all of it commercial.

In 2004, Jaynes became the first person in the U.S. to be convicted of a felony for sending unsolicited bulk email. He was sentenced to nine years. That conviction was overturned, but he is now serving time in federal prison on an unrelated conviction for securities fraud.

Mr. Jaynes' attorney, Thomas M. Wolf, did not immediately return telephone and e-mail messages Monday. However, he had predicted that the U.S. Supreme Court would not review the case because the state court's unanimous ruling was so-clear cut and the constitutional problem could be fixed by limiting the ban to commercial speech.

The case is Virginia v. Jaynes, 08-765.

Meanwhile, the Supreme Court is leaving in place the death sentence for a Nashville man who was convicted of killing three people -- including a 12-year-old boy -- during a robbery.

The justices, without comment Monday, turned down an appeal from Cecil Johnson Jr., who was sentenced to death for the robbery at Bob Bell's Market in 1980.

A divided panel of the Cincinnati-based 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals previously upheld the sentence, despite the failure of prosecutors to turn over police interviews with witnesses that could have cast doubt on their testimony. Mr. Johnson did not receive the interviews until 1992.

The case is Johnson v. Bell, 08-7163.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123842263718969731.html





Video Game Makers Challenged by the Next Wave of Media
Matt Richtel

Booming video game sales are masking a serious concern for game makers: their economic model is in peril. Game companies are taking in more money, but, in many cases, not profits.

The market has expanded greatly, with more women and older gamers playing. People are playing on consoles, computers, cellphones and hand-held gadgets. But a proliferation of free or low-cost games on the Web and for phones limits how much the major game publishers can raise prices. It also diverts attention from the game consoles, like the PlayStation 3 from Sony and the Xbox 360 from Microsoft.

“The model as it exists is dying,” said Mike McGarvey, former chief executive of Eidos and now an executive with OnLive, which delivers games from the Internet. He said consumers were looking at games for consoles and saying, “This is too expensive and there are too many choices.”

Industry sales grew 19 percent in 2008 compared with a year earlier, the kind of sales growth that would thrill many industries during a deep recession. And yet the list of money-losing companies includes top names in gaming: Electronic Arts, Take-Two Interactive and THQ. Dozens of smaller game studios selling games for download and the mom-and-pop companies offering ad-supported “casual games” on the Web are still trying to figure out how to turn their millions of players into profitable customers.

On Monday at the Electronic Arts headquarters in Redwood Shores, Calif., executives and managers will gather to discuss how the company can adapt more quickly and effectively to the emerging media.

Jeff Brown, a spokesman for Electronic Arts, the biggest game maker, said the company was trying to stay ahead of a curve. It took in $4 billion in revenue last year, nothing to sneeze at, he pointed out, but the company sees potential trouble ahead if it fails to adapt. “The smart companies are mindful of what’s on the other side of this thing,” he said.

The problem is a marked shift in the economics surrounding the PlayStation and Xbox consoles. Makers cannot charge enough or sell enough games to cover the cost of producing most titles. As with the Hollywood movie studios, video game makers have to hope for a blockbuster.

The cost of making a game for the previous generation of machines was perhaps $10 million, not including marketing. The cost of a game for the latest consoles is well more than twice that — $25 million is typical and it can be much more, industry executives said.

Games sell for about $60, but the sales of most games do not come close to covering development costs or the additional costs of licensing fees to the console makers, marketing and the merchants’ cut.

The industry might be in better shape if it could sell a million copies of each title. But the majority of games, analysts said, sell no more than 150,000 copies.

Reggie Fils-Aime, chief marketing officer for Nintendo of America, said publishers of games for its Wii console needed to sell one million units of a game to turn a profit. He said that was a lower threshold than for the other consoles. Only 16 out of 486 games for Nintendo Wii game machines have sold more than one million units as of March 1, according to NPD, which tracks the sales of consumer products. (Nine of the best sellers are made by Nintendo.)

Mr. Fils-Aime said Nintendo recognized the economics were changing when it developed the Wii. He said the company deliberately did not add high-definition capability to the Wii so games would be cheaper to make.

“Budgets are well outpacing the cost of games on shelves,” said Shaun McCabe, production director for Insomniac Games, which makes the popular game Resistance 2.

Industry analysts said that if the user base of the PS3 and the Xbox 360 were larger, then more games would be sold, giving publishers more revenue to cover their costs. About 20 million PS3s and 28.5 million Xbox 360s have been sold. Nintendo has sold about 50 million Wiis worldwide.

But game companies say there is a bigger force at work: the proliferation of consumer choice in the game industry prevents them from raising prices on console games. Games for iPhones are considerably cheaper; indeed, many are free. Crash Bandicoot Nitro Kart 3D, a racing game that has been a longtime favorite on the iTunes App Store, costs $5.99. Zombieville USA, another top seller, is only $1.99. Games made for downloading onto the Xbox 360, PS3 or Wii cost $10.

“Video games used to be the type of entertainment that sucked dollars from TV, music and the box office,” said Evan Wilson, an analyst with Pacific Crest Securities. “Now, inside the video game industry, it’s having its own internal distraction issues. There are lots of options.”

Companies are adapting in different ways. To reduce the cost of production, some are laying off staff or hiring cheaper staff overseas in China or India.

Some game companies, like Disney Interactive, are building games around familiar characters to make the games easier and less costly to market.

Another company, Gazillion, plans to experiment with subscriptions to games inside virtual worlds based on superheroes from Marvel Comics. The games will be part of a broader blitz that will include animated TV shows, free online games and other properties. Other companies are displaying in-game advertising or selling virtual goods to wring out more revenue.

One site owned by Nickelodeon, AddictingGames.com, offers free, casual games for the teenage market and attracted 11 million users last month. Dave Williams, senior vice president for the Nickelodeon Kids and Family Games unit, said casual games and even the more graphically rich games were heading toward an ad-supported business model.

“We see this notion of games as a media rather than as a product that you sell,” he said, comparing the model to TV. “You consume media on television, you don’t buy it.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/30/te...gy/30game.html





Senators Agree on Patent Changes

Leaders of the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee said on Wednesday they had reached agreement on key elements of a bill to revise U.S. patent law.

One of the changes would require judges hearing patent infringement cases to play a gatekeeper role in helping identify appropriate damages, according to a statement from committee chairman Patrick Leahy, a Democrat from Vermont.

A similar bill passed the U.S. House of Representatives in late 2007, but failed in the Senate largely because of disagreements between industries over how to craft the bill.

The committee will meet on Thursday to discuss the changes.

Big computer and hardware firms have pushed for years for patent law changes in hopes of reducing litigation, much of which they blame on poor quality patents issued by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.

But the effort has worried big drug companies, some smaller technology firms and others dependent on small portfolios of patents.

The biggest fight has been over damages.

Current law allows for infringement to be punished by payment of the entire market value of the product, but some high-tech companies say that is unfair, as just one of their products may involve hundreds of patents.

Under the proposed amendment, if a company has been found to have infringed a patent, the judge will help determine if the patent was critical to the product, as is typical in pharmaceuticals, or a bit player, as is more typical in high-tech items like computers and mobile phones.

Currently, damages could be tripled if the infringement is found to be willful. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit's 2007 Seagate decision made that harder to accomplish, and the proposed amendment would change the law to make it conform with that decision.

Another proposed amendment to the bill attacks "forum shopping," where plaintiffs file suit in courts likely to favor them. Again, the language in the amendment is designed to match a recent court decision aimed at curbing the practice.

"We are supportive of that compromise package. We hope that they take it up and we hope that it's adopted," said Bill Mashek, a spokesman for the Coalition for 21st Century Patent Reform which includes General Electric, Proctor & Gamble, Eli Lilly, 3M, Johnson & Johnson and Caterpillar.

David DiMartino of the Coalition for Patent Fairness, which counts Apple, Autodesk, Research in Motion, Palm, Google, Hewlett-Packard and Intel among its members, said the amendment represented "significant progress."

"It's not everything that we want, that's for sure," he added.

Chris Andrews, an IBM spokesman, said his company hoped the bill would become law. "IBM supports the amendment and urges to committee to move the legislation forward. Patent reform is urgently needed, and failure to act will harm our nation's economy at a time we can ill afford it," he said.

(Reporting by Diane Bartz; Editing by Tim Dobbyn, Gary Hill)
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...040200933.html





New Report Demands Congress Reverse Key Parts of Patriot Act
William Fisher

One of the nation’s leading legal rights groups is calling on the U.S. Congress to make major changes in the USA Patriot Act to reverse parts of the hurriedly passed law that have been found unconstitutional or have been abused to collect information on innocent people.

On December 31, 2009, three provisions of the Patriot Act will expire unless reenacted. The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) says this proves lawmakers with “the perfect opportunity for Congress to examine all of our surveillance laws.”

The Patriot Act was rushed through a stunned congress, with virtually no debate, shortly after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. The Act substantially expanded the powers of law enforcement agencies. The ACLU says many of these expanded powers have been abused, and that “the public has yet to receive real information about how these powerful tools are being used to collect information on Americans and how that information is being used.”

The ACLU's recent report, Reclaiming Patriotism, says, “Congress should begin vigorous and comprehensive oversight hearings to examine all post-9/11 national security programs to evaluate their effectiveness and their impact on Americans’ privacy and civil liberties. This oversight is essential to the proper functioning of our constitutional system of government and becomes even more necessary during times of crisis.”

Mike German, Policy Counsel on National Security, Immigration and Privacy, for the ACLU -- and a former FBI agent who resigned from the agency in protest of what he saw as continuing failures in the FBI counter terrorism program -- told us, "The Patriot Act, the FISA Amendments and the Mukasey Attorney General Guidelines have vastly expanded the government's authority to pry into Americans' private lives, even without suspecting wrongdoing. The American people have the right to know how these powers are being used, and Congress has the duty to find out.”

The guidelines adopted by Bush-era Attorney General Michael Mukasey in 2008 loosened restrictions on the FBI to allow agents to open a national security or criminal investigation against someone without any clear basis for suspicion.

The ACLU report identifies sections of the Patriot Act that need to be amended. These are:

National Security Letters (NSLs): The FBI uses NSLs to compel internet service providers, libraries, banks, and credit reporting companies to turn over sensitive information about their customers and patrons. Using this data, the government can compile vast dossiers about innocent people. Government reports confirm that upwards of 50,000 of these secret record demands go out each year. In response to an ACLU lawsuit, Doe v. Holder, the Second Circuit Court of Appeal struck down as unconstitutional the part of the NSL law that gives the FBI the power to prohibit NSL recipients from telling anyone that the government has secretly requested customer Internet records. The FBI has admitted numerous incidences of NSLs being improperly used.

The “Material Support” statute: This provision criminalizes providing "material support" to terrorists, defined as providing any tangible or intangible good, service or advice to a terrorist or designated group. As amended by the Patriot Act and other laws since September 11, this section criminalizes a wide array of activities, regardless of whether they actually or intentionally further terrorist goals or organizations. Federal courts have struck portions of the statute as unconstitutional and a number of cases have been dismissed or ended in mistrial. The law gives the government the power to shut down charitable organizations suspected of financing terrorist activities with virtually no notice and no due process.

The 2008 amendments to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act: This past summer, Congress passed a law to permit the government to conduct warrantless and suspicion-less dragnet collection of U.S. residents' international telephone calls and e-mails. The ACLU and many other similar groups are seeking amendments to provide “meaningful privacy protections and judicial oversight of the government's intrusive surveillance power.”

The ACLU report charges that “More than seven years after its implementation, there is little evidence to demonstrate that the Patriot Act has made America more secure from terrorists. But there are many unfortunate examples that the government abused these authorities in ways that both violated the rights of innocent people and squandered precious security resources.”

It declares, “The framers of the Constitution recognized that giving the government unchecked authority to pry into our private lives risked more than just individual property rights. These patriots understood from their own experience that political rights could not be secured without procedural protections. The Fourth Amendment mandates prior judicial review and permits warrants to be issued only upon probable cause.”

“Stifling dissent does not enhance security,” the report concludes. It contends that the Patriot Act “vastly – and unconstitutionally – expanded the government’s authority to pry into people’s private lives with little or no evidence of wrongdoing.”

Little is known about the government’s use of many of its authorities under the Patriot Act, but raw numbers available through government reports reflect a rapidly increasing level of surveillance. The statistics show skyrocketing numbers of Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court orders, National Security Letter (NSL) requests and Suspicious Activity Reports while terrorism prosecution numbers are down. The government has increased the numbers of terrorism investigations it has declined to prosecute.

Reports from the Department of Justice Inspector General (IG) revealed the government’s widespread misuse of NSLs and the authorities contained in Section 215, which allow the FBI to demand information about innocent people who are not the targets of any investigation

The first two IG audits, covering NSLs and section 215 orders issued from 2003 through 2005, were released in March of 2007. They confirmed widespread FBI mismanagement, misuse and abuse of these Patriot Act authorities.

The NSL audit revealed that the FBI managed its use of NSLs so negligently that it literally did not know how many NSLs it had issued. As a result, the FBI seriously under-reported its use of NSLs in its previous reports to Congress. The IG also found that FBI agents repeatedly ignored or confused the requirements of the NSL authorizing statutes, and used NSLs to collect private information against individuals two or three times removed from the subjects of FBI investigations.

In March 2008, the IG released a second pair of audit reports covering 2006 and evaluating the reforms implemented by the DOJ and the FBI after the first audits were released in 2007. The new reports identified many of the same problems discovered in the earlier audits. The 2008 NSL report showed that the FBI issued 49,425 NSLs in 2006 (a 4.7 percent increase over 2005), and confirmed the FBI is increasingly using NSLs to gather information on U.S. persons (57 percent in 2006, up from 53 percent in 2005).
The 2008 IG audit also revealed that high-ranking FBI officials, including an assistant director, a deputy assistant director, two acting deputy directors and a special agent in charge, improperly issued eleven “blanket NSLs” in 2006 seeking data on 3,860 telephone numbers. None of these “blanket NSLs” complied with FBI policy and eight imposed unlawful non-disclosure requirements on recipients
http://www.pubrecord.org/law/801-new...triot-act.html





If We Don't Kill Them They'll Die; the Morbidly Absurd Prosecution of Child Pornography Laws
Jack Elgin

Adolescence. The springtime of life, when hormones and stupidity in equal measure mix and produce all sorts of wonderful life-long regrets.

There's nothing unusual, of course, about two teenagers fooling around. Not addressing the morality or pragmatic arguments of it, but it tends to happen a lot in our society.

Combine this long-standing tendency with modern technology, cell phone cameras and twitter, and there's a chance of some photos being taken and leaked. Increasingly stupid levels of youthful transgression, sure, but mostly innocent, right?

No. According to an increasingly large number of prosecutors, while your right to fool around at the age of fifteen is protected by law- the courts long ago, reasonably, decided that the purpose of statutory rape laws being to protect minors from adults, it didn't really apply to two minors- if you take a photo of it with your cell phone, you can be tried as an adult for making and distributing child pornography. A felony. As an adult.

Let me repeat this; two children, in order to protect them from the terrible harm that could be done if these pictures made the rounds on MySpace, can be tried and convicted as adults, required to spend the rest of their lives registered as felons and sex offenders, unable to vote, find gainful employment or make any real headway in the world.

For the crime of fooling around as young, stupid teenagers in a situation where the only potential victims were themselves.

People like Pennsylvania Prosecutor George Skumanick and Florida Judge James Wolf think it is perfectly legitimate to destroy the lives of children in order to- to what? To protect children from themselves? This argument is stuff and nonsense. An excerpt from the last article of Judge Wolf's opinion;

As previously stated, the reasonable expectation that the material will ultimately be disseminated is by itself a compelling state interest for preventing the production of this material. In addition, the statute was intended to protect minors like appellant and her co-defendant from their own lack of judgment...

Appellant was simply too young to make an intelligent decision about engaging in sexual conduct and memorializing it. Mere production of these videos or pictures may also result in psychological trauma to the teenagers involved.

Further, if these pictures are ultimately released, future damage may be done to these minors' careers or personal lives. These children are not mature enough to make rational decisions concerning all the possible negative implications of producing these videos.

In addition, the two defendants placed the photos on a computer and then, using the Internet, transferred them to another computer. Not only can the two computers be hacked, but by transferring the photos using the Net, the photos may have been and perhaps still are accessible to the provider and/or other individuals. Computers also allow for long-term storage of information which may then be disseminated at some later date. The state has a compelling interest in seeing that material which will have such negative consequences is never produced.

No harm is prevented by destroying these childrens' lives; much greater harm is done to them, in fact, than any that could be imagined from distant, hypothetical perverts being able to see what their doctor sees every checkup. That their decisions were incompetent and foolish is besides the point, since foolishness is not illegal; if anything, this would mitigate the charge. It makes the entire scenario even more absurd and a greater mockery of justice- if they did not exhibit and could not exhibit adult judgment, why try them as adults for an adult crime? If they had been adults, there would have been no crime in the first place. The entire thing is a house of cards of faux moral indignation.

The last point is even more absurd. Because sensitive materials could be stolen and used illegaly, one commits a crime by owning them? This argument is ridiculous on the face of it. Is it illegal to own a gun because someone could steal it and committ murder? A more tangent comparison might be that the same argument could declare it illegal to have a bodily orifice as this would allow you to be raped. If someone's stealing pictures of you in a compromising position and using it for blackmail or simply to profit off of your body, that makes you a victim. It's not a crime to place yourself in a position where you may be compromised; it's not a crime to walk alone in a bad part of town, or to wear "provocative" clothing. As the dissenting voice of reason points out anyway, there's no sure-fire way to protect against crime and theft in any medium; I suppose Judge Wolf thinks that the interwebs are a particularly theft-prone interconnected series of tubes.

So all these arguments fall apart. To go back to the great Friedrich August von Hayek; it's about control. It may be a Mayberry sentiment today, but tomorrow it'll be San Francisco values; whatever the group's individual social mores, there are deep currents and pockets of those who favor social control and engineering, Progressives and Culture Warriors and others who feel that the law must be used to enforce morality and control the direction of society.

I usually try really hard to at least understand the other side of the argument- that was the entire point of the last article, come to think of it- but there's simply no good counterweight here. The arguments that support destroying the lives of teenagers in order to protect them from themselves are absurd and, frankly, monstrously evil.

Marissa Miller is going up against the state of Pennsylvania soon. Hopefully the American justice system is done making a mockery of itself and cooler heads will prevail.
http://www.examiner.com/x-1000-DC-In...rnography-laws





Man Uses 35 Cable Modems to Provide WiFi, Sued by Comcast

In Maryland, an individual that installs building-wide WiFi access in residential buildings apparently fed the wireless routers using 35 different Comcast residential accounts. Now, the cable giant wants its money back.
John Timmer

Ocean City, Maryland is a resort town, drawing vacationers to its beaches from nearby states. As such, many of the multiunit condos are used for summer rentals, with short-term occupancy the rule. In the era of the laptop and netbook, providing free Internet access is a selling point, and OceanNet offered building owners the opportunity to have someone else install and manage a WiFi network for the guests. Unfortunately, it appears that OceanNet kept its service cheap by getting unauthorized access to Comcast's residential service, and the cable giant is not amused—it's suing to recover the ill-gotten gains of the WiFi provider.

We'll leave aside the whole issue of why someone would accept technical services from a company with a website that looks like a fourth grader's school project, and calls one page descriptions of its installs "whitepapers." OceanNet claims to require access to a phone closet for installation of its equipment; from there, it can run its wiring and place its equipment in the ceiling or in other closets in order to provide complete coverage.

Unfortunately, based on a copy of the lawsuit that Comcast provided us, it also appears that the cable giant needed access to one of the closets that OceanNet had installed its equipment in. While there, the technician apparently found that the WiFi network was drawing its Internet access from a residential-class cable modem illicitly spliced into the building's feed. Comcast alleges that check of the cable modem revealed that it was registered to a specific user, one Frank Clark, at a different address.

There were two unusual aspects to this: Frank Clark happened to be the sole operator of OceanNet, and he had apparently registered for Comcast service at a total of 35 addresses. The company alleges that all of these represent locations where he was reselling Comcast's Internet service through WiFi installations.

Now, Comcast would clearly be within its rights to terminate Clark's accounts, as its terms of service are pretty clear about not letting anyone resell access from a residential account. The Prohibited Uses and Activities section states that no one is allowed to "resell the Service or otherwise make available to anyone outside the Premises the ability to use the Service (for example, through wi-fi or other methods of networking), in whole or in part, directly or indirectly. The Service is for personal and non-commercial residential use only and you agree not to use the Service for operation as an Internet service provider or for any business enterprise or purpose (whether or not for profit)."

Nevertheless, Comcast isn't simply looking to cut Clark off. The lawsuit cites two sections of federal law in its allegations against Clark and OceanNet; these deal with licenses for cable operators and "fraud and related activity in connection with computers." The company appears to want to get the money it has been losing back, as it asks the court to award it some combination of legal fees, lost income, statutory damages, and enhanced damages. It also wants all of OceanNet's business records so it can identify any other place that might be offering WiFi access to its cable service.

A Comcast spokesperson wouldn't speculate why simply cutting of Clark's service was considered insufficient, but indicated that the company wouldn't have filed the suit if it didn't feel it had a compelling case.

Despite what appears to be a compelling case against him, it appears that Clark will not go quietly. A local newspaper is reporting (via Broadband Reports) that he plans to fight the suit. Clark apparently feels that reselling residential service is common, and he's simply being singled out because he was successful.
http://arstechnica.com/telecom/news/...et-service.ars





JK Rowling Leads Fight Against Free Books Site Scribd

Harry Potter author is among writers shocked to discover their books available as free downloads

The publishers of bestselling authors JK Rowling, Aravind Adiga and Ken Follett have been shocked by the news that their authors' latest books are available to read for free on a US website. Internet users can not only read free copies of The Tales of Beedle the Bard, The White Tiger and World Without End at Scribd.com, but also download the text onto their computers to edit as they see fit.

Neil Blair, Rowling's lawyer, said the Harry Potter downloads were "unauthorised and unlawful" and that the website had been asked to take them down. "We are aware of this and we've asked them to take them off," he said. "They are quite helpful and they act immediately, but they won't police it themselves."

The San Francisco-headquartered company was set up in March 2007 and claims to have more than 50 million readers a month, with more than 50,000 new documents uploaded by users every day. The Obama campaign used it to publish policy documents, and the site has recently signed a deal with some US publishers to post books and extracts with permission.

Tammy Nam, Scribd vice president for marketing, said that its policy was to "immediately remove copyrighted material when we receive notices from copyright holders", but that it had received no take down notice from Rowling's lawyers. "Our community is generally very good at policing itself and let us know when they come across copyrighted works or other inappropriate material," she added, saying that Scribd also has a copyright management system which contains "tens of thousands of works that have been entered or flagged as copyrighted - so that if anyone tried to upload anything in that system, they're immediately denied".

Rowling's novels aren't the only ones to be available from Scribd. A quick search throws up novels from Salman Rushdie, Ian McEwan, Jeffrey Archer, Ken Follett, Philippa Gregory, and JRR Tolkien.

"We are monitoring this and are concerned about it," said Mark Le Fanu, general secretary of the Society of Authors. "Internet piracy is increasing," he continued, advising authors to monitor sites such as Scribd.

The bestselling science fiction author Christopher Priest is one author who has already been in touch with Scribd over a copy of his 1981 novel, The Affirmation, though he suggests "99% of writers aren't aware it's going on".

"Scribd.com were very courteous and immediately took it down, but since then it's gone up again," he said. "It's very annoying … I'm a writer and I write for a living, I don't want to have to do this."

According to Priest the threat to copyright extends beyond the loss of a few sales. In a letter to writers' magazine The Author he suggested that the threat is "not going to go away and it becomes a greater threat with every passing week ... Pretending it doesn't matter is not in my view an option," he continued. "A few downloads here or there are not going to make a measurable difference to book sales, but treating the text as something that is available to be used or adapted in some unspecified way is a different matter."

Adiga's publisher, Toby Mundy at Atlantic Books, said that Adiga's publishers around the world would be taking action. "We're in the copyright business," he said. "We can't be complacent about this."

Priest agreed. "The music industry has been practically ruined by this. The film industry is fighting hard and it's got lots of money. The book industry is the poorest of the lot – we are vulnerable."
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2009...e-book-outrage





Anti-Counterfeiting Treaty Talks Heat Up
Michael Geist

Next week, the Department of Foreign Affairs will conduct one of the stranger consultations in recent memory. Officials have invited roughly 70 stakeholder groups to discuss an international intellectual property treaty the United States regards as a national security secret and about which the only public substantive information has come from a series of unofficial leaks.

Announced in October 2007, Canada's participation in the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) negotiations has been dogged by controversy over the near-total lack of transparency.

Early talks were held in secret locations with participating countries (Canada, the U.S., the European Union, Japan and Australia among them) offering nearly-identical cryptic news releases that did little more than fuel public concern.

The participants conducted four negotiation sessions in 2008 and though the first session of 2009 was postponed at the request of the U.S. (which was busy transitioning to a new president), talks are set to resume later this spring.

When they do, negotiators will face two key challenges. The first is the mounting disagreement over transparency and the value of releasing the draft text to assuage public mistrust. According to documents recently obtained under the Access to Information Act, Canadian officials favour a transparent approach that would lead to an early release of the draft text.

Marie-Lucie Morin, the former Deputy Minister of International Trade (and now National Security Adviser to Prime Minister Stephen Harper), warned Minister Stockwell Day in November 2008 that "should there be no consensus among the ACTA partners to make the ACTA text public, the department will need to develop options to address Canadian stakeholders' concerns about the lack of transparency in the ACTA process."

Further, a department spokesperson has confirmed plans to establish an ACTA advisory panel comprised of a few lobby groups – the initial intent in the summer of 2008 – have not gone forward.

Canada is not alone in supporting an open approach. Earlier this month, the European Parliament passed a resolution calling for all ACTA materials be made available to the public. Moreover, while the U.S. has denied requests for access to ACTA documents on national security grounds, reports indicate it is currently reviewing its approach.

Assuming the documents are made public, negotiators will then face an even tougher challenge – addressing concerns over the substance of the treaty itself. While little has been officially confirmed, there has been a steady stream of leaks in recent weeks that paint a picture of the treaty and Canada's role in it.

The proposed treaty has six main chapters: (1) Initial Provisions and Definitions (2) Enforcement of Intellectual Property Rights (3) International Co-operation (4) Enforcement Practices (5) Institutional Arrangements and (6) Final Provisions. In addition to drafting two "non-papers" that focus on institutional ACTA issues and procedural matters, Canada supplied the draft text for the Institutional Arrangements chapter at the most recent ACTA meeting in Paris in December.

Most of the discussion to date has centred on the Enforcement of Intellectual Property Rights chapter, which is divided into four sections – civil enforcement, border measures, criminal enforcement and the Internet. The first three sections were addressed in meetings last year. Although there is still considerable disagreement on the final text, leaked documents indicate the draft includes increased damage awards, mandated information disclosure that could conflict with national privacy laws, as well as the right to block or detain goods at the border for up to one year.

Moreover, the criminal provisions go beyond clear cases of commercial infringement by including criminal sanctions such as potential imprisonment for "significant willful copyright and trademark infringement even where there is no direct or indirect motivation of financial gain."

Jail time for non-commercial infringement will generate considerable opposition, but it the Internet provisions are likely to prove the most controversial.

At the December meeting, the U.S. submitted a "non-paper" on Internet copyright provisions, liability for Internet service providers and legal protection for digital locks.

The paper raised questions about damage awards, liability for hosting or storing content and the extent to which national digital lock provisions mirror the U.S. approach. This indicates the U.S. is feeling out its negotiating partners on the potential for an international version of its much-criticized Digital Millennium Copyright Act.

The upcoming consultation demonstrates Canadian officials are working to address the transparency concerns. If the leaked documents are accurate, however, public support for the treaty will require far more than just greater openness.
http://www.thestar.com/sciencetech/article/610257





Guardian Wants Government to Look at Google News
Barry Collins

The Guardian Media Group has asked the Government to examine Google News and other content aggregators, claiming they contribute nothing to British journalism.

In its written response to the preliminary Digital Britain report, The Guardian argues Google reaps the benefit of content from news sites without contributing anything towards their costs.

"We welcome the interim report's focus on respect for IP and copyright, but believe there is a glaring omission from its examination of such issues: the negative effects of aggregators and search engines on the ability of and incentives for UK content providers to invest in quality content," The Guardian's submission states.

"We think the current market dynamic between content creators and search engines/aggregators is skewed heavily in the latter's favour. This is not conducive to a healthy environment for content creation in the online world."

The newspaper group argues that traffic generated by search engines doesn't compensate for the cost involved in producing content: "The argument has traditionally been that search engines and aggregators provide players like guardian.co.uk with traffic in return for the use of our content, and this is enough to make the relationship symbiotic and equal," the submission claims.

"However, there is a vast over-supply in the market of advertising inventory, and yields have come under severe downward pressure. As a result, the value of the traffic generated by search engines and aggregators has reduced significantly."

The Guardian says content providers are faced with a catch-22: they can't afford to withhold content from search engines, yet can't feasibly charge consumers for it either, "not least because of the presence of the BBC and the vast quantities of free content it publishes on bbc.co.uk."

While The Guardian stops short of suggesting Google and others should be forced to pay for content, it does suggest the exploration of new models that "require fair acknowledgement of the value that our content creates, both on our own site (through advertising) and 'at the edges' in the world of search and aggregation."
http://www.pcpro.co.uk/news/250488/g...ogle-news.html





Watch Out Broughton! Street View Fans Plan to Descend on 'Privacy' Village for Photo Fest
Andy Dolan and Eddie Wrenn

As a plan to keep a village hidden away from snooping eyes, it sounded logical - but it may have backfired spectacularly.

When villagers in the quiet, 'affluent' village of Broughton in Cambridgeshire spotted a Google Street View car creeping into sight, they leaped into action and formed a human chain until the Google car slunk away with tailpipe between its tyres.

The villagers complained Google had no right to take pictures of their homes, calling it an 'invasion of privacy' and an 'invitation for burglars to strike'.

But not only has the village now become the focus of national attention, it has raised the ire of Internet users, who are now campaigning for Street View enthusiasts from across the UK to descend on the village to snap their own perfectly legal photographs.

Members of social networking site Twitter are calling on Street View enthusiasts to sweep into action as a protest against the villagers.

They have already begun posting pictures of the village online and used the photographs to post tongue-in-cheek 'masterplans' on how to plot robberies, by climbing on red phoneboxes and swinging off tree branches.

The impromptu protest started on Wednesday when Resident Paul Jacobs spotted the Google car - which was unmarked but featured the tell-tale 360-degree rotating camera fixed on a pole on its roof - cruising slowly down his lane in the Buckinghamshire village.

He dashed outside, confronted the driver and told him that he was not allowed to continue, before alerting police.

Mr Jacobs, 43, then knocked on his neighbours' doors and a crowd of angry residents surrounded the black Opel Astra, forcing it to make a U-turn and quickly leave.

Mr Jacobs, who works for a global entertainment company, described Street View as a 'burglar's dream'.

He said of the moment he spotted the car in London Road: 'My immediate reaction was anger - how dare anyone take a photograph of my home without my consent?

'I ran outside to flag the car down and told the driver he was not only invading our privacy but also facilitating crime. This is an affluent area.

'If our houses are plastered all over Goodgle it's an invitation for burglars to strike.'

'I don't mind estate agents taking pictures but this shows people how to get in and how to get out. I was determined to make a stand so I called the police.'

Another villager, John Holmes, said Street View was 'an invasion of our privacy' and said Google 'should have asked our permission'.

The service from Google - which became famous for its internet search engine - allows anyone in the world to type in a postcode or street address online and call up pictures of a house, its gardens and neighbouring buildings as viewed from the road.

It is billed as a useful tool for anybody looking to move house, for tourists and those looking for directions or information about a particular place.

But it has been accused of invading people's right to privacy. Those left embarrassed include customers filmed leaving sex shops and a man caught being sick in the street.

It has even been cited in divorce cases. Within a fortnight of the first wave of images going online, a London woman launched legal proceedings after spotting her husband's distinct Range Rover parked outside a female friend's house at a time when she believed he had been on a business trip.

Last month Google unveiled images from the first 25 cities in Britain to be captured on cameras. But the mobile cameras have continued to add more localities to the firm's online service as part of its plan to film the 'great majority' of British towns, cities and large villages by the end of next year.

The camera was in Broughton as part of Google's efforts to film the Milton Keynes area for the service.

The village has already seen three break-ins in the last six weeks and locals fear thieves will be able to pick further targets by viewing their exclusive homes online.

Google said that because the was driver was on public land and because Street View blurs out any faces or car number plates, he was not breaking any laws.

A spokesman said: 'Householders are entitled to request their property is removed from the site but only after the picture has appeared. Street View is incredibly popular and now spans nine countries.

'It is just a further evolution of maps and a valuable aid to people moving house or wanting an insight into a particular area.'

A spokesman for Thames Valley Police confirmed: 'A squad car was sent to Broughton at 10.20am on Wednesday to reports of a dispute between a crowd of people and a Google Street View contractor.

'A member of the public had called us to report that he, along with a number of others, was standing in the middle of the road preventing the car from moving forwards and taking photographs.

'They felt his presence was an intrusion of their privacy. When police arrived at the scene, the car had moved on.'
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/arti...oto-fest.html#





Judge Blocks Tunkhannock Sexting Charges

Wyoming County District Attorney George Skumanick Jr. cannot charge three teenage girls who appeared in photographs seminude traded by classmates last year, a judge ruled Monday.
Erin L. Nissley

Wyoming County District Attorney George Skumanick Jr. cannot charge three teenage girls who appeared in photographs seminude traded by classmates last year, a judge ruled Monday.

U.S. District Judge James M. Munley granted a request by the American Civil Liberties Union to temporarily stop Mr. Skumanick from filing felony charges against the Tunkhannock Area School District students.

“We’re grateful the judge recognized that prosecuting these girls ... raises serious constitutional issues,” ACLU attorney Witold J. Walczak said.

The ACLU lawsuit argues the photographs in which the girls appear are not pornographic and should be protected under the First Amendment.

About 20 teens were threatened with child pornography charges after Tunkhannock Area School District officials discovered nude or seminude photographs on cell phones confiscated from students.

Called “sexting,” the phenomenon of sending and trading provocative photos via cell phone has cropped up all over the country and landed other teens in trouble with the law. Seven teens in Greensburg, Pa., were charged with child pornography in February for sending and receiving seminude photos. A teen in Newark, Ohio, was charged after she sent provocative photos of herself to friends.
http://www.scrantontimes.com/article...10585_top3.txt





Verizon, AT&T May Tell U.S. to Keep $7.2 Billion Stimulus Money
Molly Peterson

Verizon Communications Inc. and AT&T Inc. may have this response to the U.S. government’s offer of $7.2 billion for high-speed Internet projects: Keep it.

Unlike the businesses that welcomed the $787 billion stimulus package approved by Congress last month, the two biggest U.S. phone companies have reservations. They’re urging the government not to help other companies compete with them through broadband grants or to set new conditions on how Internet access should be provided.

“I don’t think there’s much for them to gain financially from going after this money,” especially if the government attaches strings to it, said Rebecca Arbogast, an analyst at Stifel Nicolaus & Co. in Washington.

The companies have remained noncommittal as they lobby to shape rules for the grants.

“We do not have our hand out seeking government funds,” James Cicconi, AT&T’s senior executive vice president, told reporters March 11. While the company is “open to considering things that might help the economy and might help our customers at the same time,” he said AT&T’s primary focus for broadband is its own investment program.

The $7.2 billion is intended to bring fast Internet service to “unserved” areas that don’t have it and other regions the government deems “underserved,” according to the stimulus measure. The Commerce Department’s National Telecommunications and Information Administration will disburse $4.7 billion and the Agriculture Department $2.5 billion. Both agencies must decide what “underserved” means before awarding any grants.

Verizon and AT&T say if they seek funds, they are more likely to apply to NTIA because the law requires the Agriculture Department to give priority to rural carriers that have already participated in its loan programs for telephone service.

‘They’re All Coming’

NTIA will receive a “massive” number of applications, mostly from small companies, said former Federal Communications Commission chairman Michael Powell.

“If you’re an entrepreneur or a businessperson, you’re sitting in a room right now, figuring out every way to Sunday how to get this money -- and they’re all coming,” Powell, a Republican who headed the FCC from 2001 through 2005, said in an interview.

Officials at NTIA say more than 2,000 companies, local governments, community groups and consumer advocates have contacted them about the agency’s rules for disbursing its stimulus money. The first public meeting on the funds, held jointly by NTIA, the Agriculture Department and the FCC on March 10, drew an overflow crowd of more than 500 to the Commerce Department.

Adding Staff

NTIA’s portion of the stimulus will be the largest grant program run by the agency. NTIA, whose original grant budget for this year was $592 million, will add staff to its 22-person disbursement office and hire contractors to allocate the stimulus money, said Bernadette McGuire-Rivera, the agency’s associate administrator.

The law requires all grants to go out by Sept. 30, 2010, funding at least one project in each state.

Rural mid-sized carriers such as CenturyTel Inc., Embarq Corp. and Frontier Communications Corp. are likely to push aggressively for grants, said Jessica Zufolo, an analyst with Medley Global Advisors in Washington.

Frontier, the Stamford, Connecticut-based company that offers phone, Internet and television service in 24 states, hopes to use stimulus money for “shovel-ready” projects to expand broadband access in rural areas, Chief Executive Officer Maggie Wilderotter said in an interview last month.

Verizon’s Discussions

New York-based Verizon, like Dallas-based AT&T, may forgo the grants if it doesn’t like the conditions.

“We don’t have any plans to apply; we also have not made a decision not to apply,” Verizon Executive Vice President Thomas Tauke told reporters last month. “We’re certainly going to participate in those discussions to the extent that we can.”

The stimulus measure has a provision that makes NTIA a new battleground in the debate over so-called net neutrality. That’s the idea that broadband providers shouldn’t be permitted to favor some Web sites by delivering their content faster than similar content from other sites.

The law says recipients of NTIA grants must practice “nondiscrimination” in access to their networks and “at a minimum” must comply with broadband guidelines adopted by the FCC in 2005. Those principles, which aren’t formal FCC rules, say carriers should let subscribers have access to any legal Web content or service they choose as long as it doesn’t harm the network.

Managing Congestion

AT&T, Verizon and Comcast Corp., the largest U.S. cable provider, say the rules are unwarranted and would hinder their ability to manage congestion on networks they have spent billions to build.

Attaching “onerous” requirements for the grants would discourage companies from applying for them, said AT&T’s Cicconi.

Verizon, AT&T and Qwest Communications International Inc., also say most of the grant money should go to areas that they and other broadband companies don’t already serve.

“I’m opposed to the government subsidizing competition,” said Steve Davis, senior vice president for public policy for Denver-based Quest, which operates in 14 Western states, in an interview. “While we have unserved areas it’s inappropriate to spend the limited dollars on underserved areas.”

Cisco Systems

Cisco Systems Inc., the largest maker of networking equipment, wants broadband grants to go to underserved areas as well, said Jeff Campbell, the company’s director of technology and communications policy. While San Jose, California-based Cisco doesn’t plan to apply for grants, it will sell broadband equipment to carriers that win funds, he said.

“The underserved are people who have access to broadband at slow speeds with little likelihood that that infrastructure will be upgraded to current-level technology without government assistance,” Campbell said in an interview.

Broadband spending by Verizon and AT&T dwarfs what they would get from a portion of the new federal grants. AT&T plans to invest more than $11 billion this year to expand its high- speed networks. Verizon is spending $23 billion over seven years to build out its fiber-optic network.

So if the companies ultimately seek grants, their goal may be partly to fend off potential competition in underserved areas, Arbogast said.

“They would not welcome competitors coming in with a lot of grant money to markets they’re serving,” she said. “So they might have more of a defensive agenda than an offensive agenda.”
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?p...d=aXx.QVEa9vpM





O aXXo, Where Art Thou?
Ernesto

In what must appear like a lifetime to his loyal fans, the popular DVD ripper aXXo hasn’t uploaded any torrents for three weeks. As always, rumors surface that claim to explain the hiatus. Has aXXo been arrested, or transferred to one of the MPAA’s covert detention facilities? Did BitTorrent’s favorite uploader fall off a cliff?

The most recent torrent uploaded by aXXo dates back to March 11. In the days that followed, millions have been waiting anxiously for fresh content, performing their daily aXXo search on their favorite torrent sites in vain.

The aXXo brand has achieved cult status and for some has become synonymous with quality. Over the years aXXo has grabbed the attention of scammers, the mainstream press and even documentary makers. So, when he goes silent it is quickly noticed and the demand from his fans for news or an update quickly grows.

This isn’t the first time that aXXo has taken a break from releasing. Last year there were no new releases for a full four months but eventually aXXo made a glorious return with the topical release of “I Am Legend.” Little is known about the reasons behind aXXo’s current absence, although he has not disappeared completely.

We can confirm that aXXo has been logging into his account at Mininova, which means that we can safely conclude that aXXo is still among us. When he plans to surface again is unclear, but time will tell.

It is fascinating to see how aXXo has gathered a following of millions of people in the years after he started uploading his first torrent. As always, opinions differ and controversy always surrounds aXXo. He is God to some, while others despise him for his lack of crediting ‘The Scene’ but it’s difficult to criticize his commitment or appreciate the pressure he is undoubtedly under on a daily basis.

Fact is, however, that every aXXo upload is good for a guaranteed entry in our movie download charts, adding up to millions of downloads in a few weeks. It may be Hollywood’s worst nightmare, but many independent film producers will dream of having their films ripped by aXXo, ensuring that they are associated with a global brand with an unprecedented reach on BitTorrent.
http://torrentfreak.com/o-axxo-where-art-thou-090331/





House Votes Limited Court Protection for Reporters
AP

The House has approved a bill to give limited protection in federal court to reporters who decline to reveal confidential information or sources.

The bill passed Tuesday on a voice vote, although several lawmakers opposed it. Similar legislation passed the House in 2007, but the Senate has yet to act.

The bill has exceptions that allow a federal judge to order a reporter to reveal information or produce documents. Those exceptions involve information on terrorism, imminent bodily harm, trade secrets, confidential financial information and leaks of classified information.
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2009...ia-Shield.html





Experts See Early Activity From Conficker Worm
John Markoff

Members of an informal global alliance of computer security specialists who have been trying to eradicate a malicious software program known as Conficker said Tuesday that they were seeing early attempts by the program to communicate with a control server. The researchers said they were uncertain if it had been successful.

The Conficker software, which has spread aggressively around the globe since October and is designed to lash together infected machines into a powerful computer known as a botnet, has touched off widespread concern.

Computer security researchers who have examined a recent version of the program, called Conficker C, have said it was set to try to download commands from a server at an unknown Internet location on Wednesday. There was no certainty about the intent of the program, which could be used to send e-mail spam, distribute malicious software or generate a potentially devastating “denial of service” attack on Web sites or networks.

The choice of April Fool’s Day by the program’s authors, who are unknown, has led to speculation that the program might be a hoax. But a variety of computer security executives and law enforcement officials have pointed out that the program, which has spread to at least 12 million computers, could inflict genuine harm. Consensus among security specialists on Tuesday was that it was likely to take several days before the program’s intent could be determined.

A group of computer security specialists has tried to make it impossible for Conficker’s authors to download instructions to infected computers. While they were doing so, the authors began distributing the C version of the program. It was intended to begin contacting 50,000 Internet domains on Wednesday.

In response, the researchers have created a system that will allow them to trap all of the attempted botnet communications. That has involved a global effort, including monitoring the domains of 110 countries.

A spokeswoman for the Conficker Cabal, a security working group organized by Microsoft and other computer security companies, said on Tuesday that the group had no new information to report about the activity of the malicious program.

“All we are saying is ‘patch and clean, patch and clean,’ ” said Nicole Miller, a Microsoft spokeswoman, referring to the process of disinfecting and protecting machines infected by the software, which targets Windows-based computers.

Separately, I.B.M. said that Mark Yason, a company researcher, had decoded Conficker’s internal communication protocol. The company said that will make it easier for security teams to detect and interrupt the program’s activities.

Earlier this year Microsoft offered a $250,000 reward for information leading to the arrest of Conficker’s author or authors.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/01/te...t/01virus.html





Beijing Rejects China Spy Ring Report as `Lies'
Alexa Olesen

China on Tuesday denied a research report's contention that a China-based computer spy ring stole sensitive information from thousands of hard drives worldwide, calling the accusation a lie meant to feed anxiety over Beijing's growing influence.

In the government's first reaction to the report, Foreign Ministry spokesman Qin Gang said the conclusions were symptoms of a "Cold War virus" that causes people overseas to "occasionally be overcome by China-threat seizures."

The report by the Information Warfare Monitor added to growing concerns that China has become a center for cyber-warfare, spying and crime. Industry watchdogs have complained about junk e-mail generated in China. Officials in the U.S., Britain and Germany have accused Chinese hackers backed by China's military of intruding into their government and defense computer networks.

A State Department spokesman declined to comment directly on the latest allegation, saying only that officials were aware of it. Asked whether U.S. government computers had been compromised, spokesman Gordon Guguid said, "I have no information that that's the case."

The Information Warfare Monitor report released Saturday said that a network, based mainly in China, hacked into classified documents from government and private organizations in 103 countries, including the computers of the Dalai Lama and his exiled Tibetan government.

Speaking at a media briefing, Qin did not directly respond to questions about whether the network exists and if its actions are supported by the government. Instead, he said Beijing opposes criminal activities that compromise computer networks and criticized the report for claiming otherwise.

"China pays great attention to computer network security and resolutely opposes and fights any criminal activity harmful to computer networks, such as hacking," Qin said. "Some people outside China now are bent on fabricating lies about so-called Chinese computer spies."

"Their attempt to tarnish China with such lies is doomed to failure," he said.

The Canadian report said that while evidence pointed to China as the main source of the network, researchers had not conclusively been able to determine the identity or motivation of the hackers.

Experts have noted that China has 300 million Internet users and thus is home to many insecure computers and networks that hackers in other countries could hijack to disguise their locations and launch attacks.

The Canadian group said its research initially focused on allegations of Chinese cyber espionage against the Tibetan exile community but eventually traced a much wider network of compromised machines.

The Dalai Lama said Tuesday that private information on his government-in-exile's computers regularly seems to reach Chinese authorities. He said, for example, that China appears to know almost immediately when people have requested an appointment with him.

"Before that particular person asks for Indian visa, the Chinese already (have) protested to the Indian government. Such things happen," he said.

Thirty percent of the 1,295 hacked computers studied by the Canadian group were described by the report as "high-value diplomatic, political, economic, and military targets."

It said the spying network, dubbed GhostNet, was able to take full control of infected computers, rifling files and even activating microphones and Web cameras to spy on people present.

The sophistication and the focus on spying makes GhostNet sound more like traditional espionage rather than the nationalistic attacks carried out by Chinese hackers, said Jack Linchuan Qiu, a communications professor at Chinese University of Hong Kong.

"Chinese hackers would hack the White House history Web site and put a Chinese flag on it," Qiu said. "That's the kind of thing individuals would do ... This really sounds like something more organized."

Many Chinese hackers have a strong patriotic bent, unlike those in the United States and other Western countries who tend to belong to fringe cultures opposed to state power.

Or it may be that only those hackers who are share the government's ideals survive. Authorities closely monitor the Internet for content deemed politically destabilizing, so perhaps hackers whose ideas are in line with the government's are avoiding punishment.

Qiu, the communications professor, said he had heard of officials jailing Chinese hackers who break into computer systems of domestic banks in a bid to steal money or who infiltrate and vandalize government Web sites.

"I've never seen people who are targeting _ never mind if it's an individual or an organization _ targeting a foreign computer arrested in mainland China," Qiu said.

___

Associated Press writers Ashok Sharma in New Delhi, Carley Petesch in New York and Matthew Lee in Washington contributed to this report.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...033100460.html





Is Facebook Growing Up Too Fast?
Brad Stone

WHEN Facebook signed up its 100 millionth member last August, its employees spread out in two parks in Palo Alto, Calif., for a huge barbecue. Sometime this week, this five-year-old start-up, born in a dorm room at Harvard, expects to register its 200 millionth user.

That staggering growth rate — doubling in size in just eight months — suggests Facebook is rapidly becoming the Web’s dominant social ecosystem and an essential personal and business networking tool in much of the wired world.

Yet Facebook executives say they aren’t planning to observe their latest milestone in any significant way. It is, perhaps, a poor time to celebrate. The company that has given users new ways to connect and speak truth to power now often finds itself as the target of that formidable grass-roots firepower — most recently over controversial changes it made to users’ home pages.

As Facebook expands, it’s also struggling to match the momentum of hot new start-ups like Twitter, the micro-blogging service, while managing the expectations of young, tech-savvy early adopters, attracting mainstream moms and dads, and justifying its hype-carbonated valuation.

By any measure, Facebook’s growth is a great accomplishment. The crew of Mark Zuckerberg, the company’s 24-year-old co-founder and chief executive, is signing up nearly a million new members a day, and now more than 70 percent of the service’s members live overseas, in countries like Italy, the Czech Republic and Indonesia. Facebook’s ranks in those countries swelled last year after the company offered its site in their languages.

All of this mojo puts Facebook on a par with other groundbreaking — and wildly popular — Internet services like free e-mail, Google, the online calling network Skype and e-commerce sites like eBay. But Facebook promises to change how we communicate even more fundamentally, in part by digitally mapping and linking peripatetic people across space and time, allowing them to publicly share myriad and often very personal elements of their lives.

Unlike search engines, which ably track prominent Internet presences, Facebook reconnects regular folks with old friends and strengthens their bonds with new pals — even if the glue is nothing more than embarrassing old pictures or memories of their second-grade teacher.

Facebook can also help rebuild families. Karen Haber, a mother of two living outside Tel Aviv, logs onto Facebook each night after she puts the children to bed. She searches for her family’s various surnames, looking for relatives from the once-vast Bachenheimer clan of northern Germany, which fractured during the Holocaust and then dispersed around the globe.

Among the three dozen or so connections she has made on Facebook over the last year are a fifth cousin who is a clinical social worker in Woodstock, N.Y.; a fourth cousin running an eyeglasses store in Zurich; and another fifth cousin, living in Hong Kong selling diamonds. Now she shares memories, photographs and updates with them.

“I was never into genealogy and now suddenly I have this tool that helps me find the descendants of people that my grandparents knew, people who share the same truth I do,” Ms. Haber says. “I’m using Facebook and trying to unite this family.”

Facebook has also become a vehicle for broad-based activism — like the people who organized on the site last year and mobilized 12 million people to march in protests around the globe against practices of the FARC rebels in Colombia.

Discussing Facebook’s connective tissue, Mr. Zuckerberg recalls the story of Claus Drachmann, a schoolteacher in northern Denmark who became a Facebook friend of Anders Fogh Rasmussen, Denmark’s prime minister. Mr. Drachmann subsequently invited Mr. Rasmussen to speak to his class of special-needs children; the prime minister obliged last fall.

Mr. Zuckerberg says the story illustrates Facebook’s power to cut through arbitrary social barriers. “This represents a generational shift in technology,” he says. “To me, what is interesting was that it was possible for a regular person to reach the prime minister and that that interaction happened.”

As Facebook has matured, so has Mr. Zuckerberg. He has recently traded his disheveled, unassuming image for an ever-present tie and making visits to media outfits like “The Oprah Winfrey Show.” And he says Facebook’s most important metrics are not its membership but the percentage of the wired world that uses the site and the amount of information — photographs, news articles and status updates — zipping across its servers.

Facebook’s mission, he says, is to be used by everyone in the world to share information seamlessly. “Two hundred million in a world of six billion is tiny,” he says. “It’s a cool milestone. It’s great that we reached that, especially in such a short amount of time. But there is so much more to do.”

AS Facebook stampedes along, it still has to get out of its own way to soothe the injured feelings of users like Liz Rabban.

Ms. Rabban, 40, a real estate agent and the mother of two from Livingston, N.J., joined the site in November 2007, quickly amassing 250 friends and spending hours on the site each day.

But these days, she spends less time on the site and posts caustic comments about Facebook’s new design, which turns a majority of every user’s home page into a long “stream” of recent, often trivial, Twitter-like updates from friends.

“The changes just feel very juvenile,” Ms. Rabban says. “It’s just not addressing the needs of my generation and my peers. In my circle, everyone is pretty devastated about it.”

Ms. Rabban is not alone. More than two and a half million dissenters have joined a group on Facebook’s own site called “Millions Against Facebook’s New Layout and Terms of Service.” Others are lambasting the changes in their own status updates, which are now, ironically, distributed much more visibly to all of their Facebook friends.

The changes, Facebook executives say, are intended to make the act of sharing — not just information about themselves but what people are doing now — easier, faster and more urgent. Chris Cox, 26, Facebook’s director of products and a confidant of Mr. Zuckerberg, envisions users announcing where they are going to lunch as they leave their computers so friends can see the updates and join them.

“That is the kind of thing that is not meaningful when it is announced 40 minutes later,” he says.

The simmering conflict over the design change speaks to the challenges of pleasing 200 million users, many of whom feel pride of ownership because they helped to build the site with free labor and very personal contributions.

“They have a strange problem,” says S. Shyam Sundar, co-director of the Media Effects Research Laboratory at Pennsylvania State University, of Facebook’s quandary. “This is a technology that has inherently generated community, and it has gotten to the point where members of that community feel not only vested but empowered to challenge the company.”

Those tensions boiled up previously, when Facebook announced the intrusive Beacon advertising system in 2007, and again when Facebook introduced new service terms earlier this year, which appeared to give the company broad commercial control over the content people uploaded to the site.

Facebook responded to protests over the second move by promising users a vote in how the site would be governed.

But while Facebook is willing to give users a voice, it doesn’t necessarily want to listen.

Users are widely opposed to terms that grant Facebook the right to license, copy and disseminate members’ content worldwide. But Facebook says it has to ignore those objections to protect itself against lawsuits from users who might blame the company if they later regret having shared some piece of information with their friends. (Other Web sites have similar stipulations.)

While Facebook addressed the feedback on its unpopular design changes last week — partly by saying it would give users more control over the stream of updates that appear on their pages — it also said members’ pages would soon become even busier and more dynamic, updating automatically instead of requiring users to refresh their browsers to see new posts.

That’s a change that may irk users like Ms. Rabban, who don’t like how busy their pages have become. Facebook executives counter that it will help users share more information, and that they will eventually come to appreciate it, just as they have with previous changes that were initially jarring.

“It’s not a democracy,” Mr. Cox says of his company’s relationship with users. “We are here to build an Internet medium for communicating and we think we have enough perspective to do that and be caretakers of that vision.”

PEOPLE, of course, sometimes like to keep secrets and maintain separate social realms — or at least a modicum of their privacy. But Facebook at almost 200 million members is a force that reinvents and tears at such boundaries. Teachers are yoked together with students, parents with their children, employers with their employees.

Uniting disparate groups on a single Internet service runs counter to 50 years of research by sociologists into what is known as “homophily” — the tendency of individuals to associate only with like-minded people of similar age and ethnicity.

Facebook’s huge growth is creating inevitable collisions as the whole notion of “friend” takes on a highly elastic meaning. When the Philadelphia Eagles allowed the star safety Brian Dawkins to leave for the Denver Broncos earlier this month, Dan Leone, a gate chief at Lincoln Financial Field, the Eagles’ stadium, expressed his disappointment by referring to the situation with an obscenity on his Facebook status update.

Mr. Leone’s boss, who was his Facebook friend, forwarded the update to an Eagles guest services manager, who fired him. The team has since refused to reconsider the matter, despite Mr. Leone’s deep remorse and his star turn on countless radio talk shows across the country to discuss the situation.

“If you know your boss is online, or anyone close to your boss is online, don’t be making comments that can be detrimental to your employment,” Mr. Leone advises.

Facebook is trying to teach members to use privacy settings to manage their network so they can speak discreetly only to certain friends, like co-workers or family members, as opposed to other “friends” like bosses or professional colleagues. But most Facebook users haven’t taken advantage of the privacy settings; the company estimates that only 20 percent of its members use them.

Other problems are trickier, especially among true friends and family members. How, for example, can Facebook remain a place for teenagers to share what they did on Saturday night when it is also the place where their parents are swapping investment tips with old friends?

In the six weeks since Rich Hall, a 52-year-old theater manager in Mount Carroll, Ill., joined Facebook, he has reconnected with more than 400 friends and acquaintances, including former high school friends, his auto mechanic and former buddies from his days as a stock car driver.

In the course of his new half-hour-a-day Facebook habit, Mr. Hall also “friended” the 60 high school students he is directing in a school play, so he could coordinate rehearsal times. That led some of them to deny his request because, as he says they told him, their parents “found it creepy.” Along the way, Mr. Hall also found photographs of his 19-year-old son on the site, drinking beer at a Friday night bonfire.

“He denied it and said he wasn’t there,” Mr. Hall says. “I said, ‘Let’s go to this page together and look at these photos.’ Of course he did it. There are no secrets anymore.”

Dwindling secrets, and prying eyes, are at the heart of the Facebook conundrum. While offering an efficient and far-reaching way for people to bond, the site has also eroded sometimes natural barriers.

“People usually spend a lot of time trying to be separate — parents and children are a good example,” says Danah Boyd, a social scientist who has studied social networks and now works in the research department of Microsoft, which has invested in Facebook. “You are already seeing young people sitting there thinking, ‘Why am I hanging out with my mother who is reminiscing with her high school mates?’ You are seeing some reticence with young people that wasn’t there two years ago.”

For their part, Facebook executives say they are less interested in being cool than in being a useful place where anyone can go to share elements of their lives.

“The people who started the company weren’t cool. I’m not cool,” Mr. Cox says. “If you look at the people who work here, it’s much more nerdy and curious than cool.

“Cool only lasts for so long, but being useful is something that applies to everyone.”

MR. ZUCKERBERG hopes that being ubiquitous and useful translates to the bottom line.

Though Facebook is privately held and doesn’t publicly disclose its earnings, various press and analysts’ estimates of its 2008 revenues span from $250 million to $400 million. That range may not be enough to cover the company’s escalating expenses, and it hardly justifies some of the atmospheric valuations that have been placed on the start-up, including the $15 billion that Microsoft assigned to the company when it invested in it in 2007.

Facebook’s financial challenges aren’t unique. Popular free e-mail services like Hotmail from Microsoft and Gmail from Google have little in the way of profits to show for their vast audiences, aside from a few text ads that people rarely click on. Instant messaging networks like Microsoft Messenger and AIM from American Online are similarly popular but have never been hyperprofitable, for the simple reason that people do not want intrusive ads inserted into personal conversations.

Facebook’s approach is to invite advertisers to join in the conversation. New “engagement” ads ask users to become fans of products and companies — sometimes with the promise of discounts. If a person gives in, that commercial allegiance is then broadcast to all of the person’s friends on the site.

A new kind of engagement ad, now being tested, will invite people to vote — “what’s your favorite color M&M?” for example — and brands will pay every time a Facebook member participates.

“We are trying to provide the antidote for the consumer rebellion against interruptive advertising,” says Sheryl Sandberg, Facebook’s chief operating officer and Mr. Zuckerberg’s business consigliere.

Ms. Sandberg, who ran Google’s highly successful advertising initiatives before leaving the search giant to join Facebook, said her company’s revenue was growing despite a brutal downturn that is hurting other kinds of online advertising. She also puts one rumor to rest, saying the company is not considering charging members for any aspect of its service.

“We’re pretty pleased with the overall trajectory,” she says. “Our conversations with big advertisers have broadened in scope and we also have more people asking about how they can work with us.”

Facebook recently introduced advertising tools to let companies focus on users based on the language they use on the site and their geographic location. So, for example, an advertiser can now tailor a message to the Latino community in Los Angeles or French speakers in Montreal.

Despite the gloom permeating much of the advertising world, and the formidable challenges facing the site, some advertisers say they glimpse the future in Facebook’s brand of interactive advertising.

“Our clients all want to see if they can make this work,” says Al Cadena, the interactive account director at Threshold Interactive in Los Angeles, which represents companies like Nestlé, Honda and Sony. “Advertising used to be a one-way communication from advertiser to consumer, but now people want to have a dialogue. And Facebook is becoming the default way to do that, not only in the States but really for the whole world.”

Internet evangelists say that when a technology diffuses into society, as Facebook appears to be doing, it has achieved “critical mass.” The sheer presence of all their friends, family and colleagues on Facebook creates potent ties between users and the site — ties that are hard to break even when people want to break them.

Many who have tried to free themselves of their daily Facebook habit and leave the site, like Kerry Docherty, a student at Pepperdine University’s law school, speak of a powerful gravitational pull and an undercurrent of peer pressure that eventually brings them back.

“People gave me a hard time for leaving Facebook,” says Ms. Docherty, who quit at the end of 2007 but then rejoined six months later. “Everyone has a love-hate relationship with it. They wanted me to be wasting my time on it just like they were wasting their time on it.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/29/te...et/29face.html





U.K. Biz 'Disappointed' At EU Term Extension Rejection
Andre Paine

The U.K. music industry has collectively voiced its disappointment, after the Council of the European Union rejected a proposal on term extension for copyright in sound recordings.

A proposal on the term directive, put forward by the Czech presidency of the EU, was discussed at the committee of permanent representatives (COREPER) in Brussels today (March 27).

The European Commission had proposed an increase in the term of copyright from 50 years to 95 years, which was backed by the European Parliament's legal affairs committee last month. The U.K. government had put forward the case for an increase to 70 years.

However, there were also issues today surrounding the session fund measure, for which record companies would set aside part of the additional revenues for performers, and the clean slate proposal to prevent the use of previous contractual agreements by labels to deduct money from the additional royalties.

According to British government statement, it voted against because the "current text did not yet give sufficient benefit for performers."

Secretary of state for innovation John Denham said that member states "need more time to consider the details of the proposal and reach an agreement," insisting that "the vote against the proposal today will not end the process."

The Czech presidency confirmed it would continue to work on the proposal to prepare a second reading for possible agreement at later stage. But the music industry was reeling after the vote.

"The British music sector is very disappointed by the absence of agreement on an extension for performers and sound recording rights at the COREPER meeting today, and particularly that our own government, despite its recent positive statements, did not vote in favor of the proposal at this meeting," said a joint statement issued by the Musicians' Union, collecting society PPL, industry trade body the BPI and independent sector trade body AIM.

The statement added: "The U.K. music sector has lived up to its commitments by reaching an agreement, as demanded by ministers, that will deliver real benefits to musicians in an extended term. In continuing to hold out for further changes, the government has not heeded the repeated pleas of the very musicians it claims to support, who strongly encouraged it to vote for the proposal today.

"We call on the government to work with us urgently to match its supportive rhetoric with concrete action, by moving heaven and earth to reach an agreement under this EU presidency that will deliver an improved term of copyright for performers and music companies."

There was also a blocking minority of countries that voted together against the proposal, including Sweden, Denmark, Belgium, Malta, Netherlands, Finland, Austria, Slovakia, Slovenia and Romania.

In his statement, Denham said that today's outcome "will not kill off the proposals to extend copyright term."

He added: "I've always been clear that the U.K. would support an extension to copyright term to deliver real, lasting benefits to performers. We are nearly there. I am personally disappointed that we could not get agreement to go straight to a deal with the parliament but I remain confident that we can get there.

"The U.K. wants to ensure artists and performers are properly recognized, protected and rewarded and receive real, lasting benefits. A number of other member state governments are still unhappy about the proposal. But that's part of the European process. We shouldn't be surprised about it."
http://www.billboard.biz/bbbiz/conte...6e93200128bb91





Featured Artists Back U.K. Govt On Term Extension
Andre Paine

The recently formed Featured Artists Coalition (FAC) has given its backing to the U.K. government's decision to vote against the EU proposal on term extension for copyright in sound recordings.

While other music industry bodies voiced their disapproval of the U.K. 'no' vote, the FAC has sided with the government. It voted against the proposal at the committee of permanent representatives (COREPER) in Brussels on Friday (March 27) because the "current text did not yet give sufficient benefit for performers," according to a statement. Other countries also voted against; the Czech presidency confirmed it would continue to work on the proposal to prepare a second reading for possible agreement at later stage.

"The Featured Artists Coalition commends the British government for recognizing that the proposed extension of copyright term in recorded music does not deliver real lasting benefits for artists or consumers," said an FAC statement.

The FAC was formed to give artists a collective voice to campaign for effective laws and regulations, as well as transparent and equitable business practices. The board includes Radiohead's Ed O'Brien, pop artist Kate Nash, singer songwriter Billy Bragg and David Rowntree, drummer with U.K. rock act Blur.

The statement added: "The FAC supports the principle of extending copyright beyond the current term. However, we believe that all rights in recordings should revert to the artist after 50 years. While the record companies would lose nothing, as they only expected to own the copyright for the current 50-year term, both artists and consumers stand to gain from this proposal.

"Owning our rights would enable artists to negotiate new deals with record labels and other users of music that would reflect the true costs of digital distribution. We would also be able to decide when our music can be used for free and when we should expect remuneration."

It added that major labels had failed to fully exploit catalogs digitally, and that returning rights to artists would enable that to happen.

It is understood there was a compromise proposal for increasing copyright term from 50 to 70 years - in line with the U.K. position - rather than the 95 years proposed by the European Commission.

However, there were also issues surrounding the session fund measure, for which record companies would set aside part of the additional revenues for performers, and the clean slate proposal to prevent the use of previous contractual agreements by labels to deduct money from the additional royalties. The U.K. government was said to be concerned that, as it stood, the directive would only cover recordings that were in existence at the time it was made law, creating uncertainty on performers' rights over future recordings.

"The FAC supports the proposal made by the U.K. government last Friday, whereby 20% of the revenue rights holders receive in the extended term is to be placed into a fund for our fellow performers - the session musicians who play on our records," added the FAC statement. "The FAC sees this approach as being in the best interest of both featured performers and session musicians.

"We recognize that there is a willingness among EU members to find a compromise on term extension that will benefit both artists and consumers. We call upon our fellow artists in EU member states to lobby their legislators in favour of 100% reversion of rights in recorded music to artists after 50 years. We ask the British government to continue to take the lead on this issue by supporting the right of artists to own their own work at the end of the current period of copyright term."

Billy Bragg also questioned whether or not U.K. industry trade body the BPI "represents the best interests of artists on this issue," following its statement expressing disappointment with the government.
http://www.billboard.biz/bbbiz/conte...5a07e7d6d281e3





Senate Chimes In On Performance Royalties
FMQB

Now that a House resolution known as the Local Radio Freedom Act has been signed by 158 lawmakers, Senators Blanche Lincoln (D-AR) and John Barrasso (R-WY) have introduced the Local Radio Freedom Act into the Senate. The resolution, which opposes the introduction of "any new performance fee, tax, royalty, or other charge" on local radio stations, comes as roughly 500 local broadcasters gather in Washington, D.C. for the annual NAB State Leadership Conference. Senator Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) has also voiced her support for the Local Radio Freedom Act by signing on as an original co-sponsor. The resolution counters the Performance Rights Act, which would force radio stations to pay royalties to artists for playing their music.

"Broadcasters appreciate the bipartisan leadership of Sens. Lincoln and Barrasso on an issue of critical importance to the survival of free, local radio," said NAB EVP Dennis Wharton. "A performance tax would threaten thousands of American jobs, reduce music diversity, and hamstring a new artist's ability to reach radio's 234 million weekly listeners. RIAA's attempted money-grab would decimate a radio business reeling from the worst advertising recession in decades."

Free Radio Alliance spokesperson Cathy Rought also released a statement praising Senators Lincoln, Barrasso and Murkowski for their support.

"Local radio stations and ultimately local communities would suffer if the primarily foreign-owned record labels got their way and the performance tax were passed," Rought said. "The record labels, not the artists would receive the biggest chunk of the proposed pie, in essence taking money out of the pockets of local communities, sending it overseas and threatening some of the 106,000 radio jobs across America. Radio stations already do their fair share in compensating the creators of the music, as well as helping the labels and performers generate up to $2.4 billion annually in music sales. Radio stations are suffering, yet they find a way to give $6 billion back to the community in airtime, disaster relief and hard contributions. The real story is that online music purchasing is on the rise, but the record labels have been slow to adjust to the way people choose to acquire music in this digital age. Communities shouldn’t have to suffer to cover for the labels’ ineptitude."
http://fmqb.com/article.asp?id=1248333





Woman Who Plays Classical Music to Soothe Horses Told to Get Licence

A woman who plays classical music to her horses to keep them calm has been told she must pay for a public performance licence.
John Bingham

Rosemary Greenway: Rather than pay the fee, she now leaves the radio off except on Sundays when she is alone at the stable yard.

Rosemary Greenway has been playing passages of opera and orchestral symphonies on the radio to the animals at her stables for more than 20 years, convinced that it helps soothe them.

While not all of her staff are quite as fond of the output of Classic FM as she is, Mrs Greenway, 62, kept the radio tuned to the station religiously while mucking out because of the apparent benefits.

But she has dropped the practice after being told that she must pay a £99 annual licence fee as it constitutes a "performance".

Because her stables, the Malthouse Equestrian Centre in Bushton, Wilts, employs more than two people it is treated in the same way as shops, bars and cafés which have to apply for a licence to play the radio.

She received a telephone call from the Performing Right Society – now officially known as PRS for Music – which was targeting stables as part of a drive to get commercial premises to pay for licences.

Rather than pay the fee, she now leaves the radio off except on Sundays when she is alone at the stable yard.

"I actually use my radio for the benefit of the horses as Classic FM helps them relax," she said.

"The staff are not bothered whether they have the radio on or not, in fact they don't particularly like my music and turn if off when I'm not around."

Mrs Greenway, who keeps 11 horses at the stables, added: “You would have thought that playing music to your own horses was allowable but apparently not.

“Especially on windy days I try to play it - it gives them a nice quiet atmosphere, you can only exercise one horse at a time so it helps the others to stay calm.

“We are right next to the RAF Lyneham air base so it dulls the noise from the aircraft as well.”

A spokeswoman for the society said: "Of course, we don't ask people to pay for music played to animals.

"Mrs Greenway was only asked to pay for music played for staff, like any other workplace."

She added that the stables might qualify for a new reduced fee of just over £50 if there are fewer than four employees.

It is the latest in a series of seemingly unlikely places to be told that they constituted performing venues and were liable for a licence if they played the radio.

Charity shops run by the mental health group Mind were told to switch off their radios last year while the organisation held discussions with the society after discovering that it was liable for licence payments.

Chris Doran, senior executive at the British horse Society, said that the organisation had received several calls from stables reporting calls from the society.

"I think they are an easy target because these people are working outside all the time, they are more likely to put the radio on while mucking out or feeding," she said.

She added that because of the "abrupt" tone of some of the calls many stable owners suspected initially that it was a hoax call.

Last year a study at Belfast Zoo found evidence that playing Elgar, Puccini and Beethoven to elephants helped reduce stress related behaviours such as swaying, pacing and tossing their trunks.

An American harpist reported that her music helped calm sick digs at a Florida vet's clinic and one online retailer sells specially selected CDs for cats.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/news...t-licence.html





Stealing Music: Is It Wrong Or Isn’t It?
Michael Arrington

Music used to be so simple. You listened to it on the radio for free, but you didn’t get to say what would be played, and there were lots of commercials. If you went to a concert, you paid. And if you bought a record, tape or CD, you paid. People copied CDs to cassette tapes and passed them on to friends. That was just about as far as P2P music piracy got. Stealing music was when you shoplifted a CD or cassette from the record store, and it was pretty clearly understood that it was “wrong.”

Maybe that’s why so many people who are older than say 30 think that downloading music is ethically wrong. They remember that music is something that you pay for. They still download the music, of course. But they know they’re doing something they shouldn’t be doing.

But if you’ve discovered and come to love music in the last decade, I don’t see how you can be expected to know when listening to recorded music is ok, and when it’s wrong.

Let’s put the law aside for a moment - this post is about doing the right thing. We’ve been hammered with messaging from the government and the music labels that downloading or listening to music on the Internet is stealing, unless you pay for it. We see the video clips before movies at the cinema saying its wrong. We read about lawsuits against twelve year olds for downloading music from BitTorrent. Our government is even willing to threaten other sovereign nations over music piracy.

But over the last few years the line has blurred to the point where there really isn’t any line any more. We can listen to free, on demand streaming music at MySpace Music and lots of other sites. It’s ok to do it at MySpace, but it’s wrong to do it at Project Playlist, just because the right contracts aren’t in place? Just a couple of years ago anyone listening to free streaming music anywhere on the Internet was violating copyright and subject to being labeled unethical. Today, its no problem. And you don’t even have to listen to audio ads.

But downloading music, that’s still wrong, right? Nope. If you live in China, you can download music legally from Google for free. No problem.

Above I said I wanted to put the law aside for a moment. Now I’ll come back to it. Because the law, and particularly the U.S. government’s willingness to perpetuate the absurdity of copyright law as it applies to recorded music, is all that the labels have left. No one in their right mind could formulate an argument that downloading music on the Internet is “wrong” at this point. All the labels have left is the law.

Eventually the reality of the Internet will force the laws to change, too. One way or another the music labels will eventually surrender, and recorded music will be free.

Until it is, I refuse to feel guilty for downloading and sharing music. Every time I listen to a song, or share it with a friend, I’m doing the labels a favor. One that eventually I should be paid for. Until that day comes, don’t even think about trying to tell me that I’m doing something ethically wrong when it’s considered quite legal, with the labels’ blessing, in China.
http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/03/31...ng-or-isnt-it/





Piracy Law Cuts Internet Traffic
BBC

Internet traffic in Sweden fell by 33% as the country's new anti-piracy law came into effect, reports suggest.

Sweden's new policy - the Local IPRED law - allows copyright holders to force internet service providers (ISP) to reveal details of users sharing files.

According to figures released by the government statistics agency - Statistics Sweden - 8% of the entire population use peer-to-peer sharing.

Popular BitTorrent sharing site, The Pirate Bay, is also based in Sweden.

The new law, which is based on the European Union's Intellectual Property Rights Enforcement Directive (IPRED), allows copyright holders to obtain a court order forcing ISPs to provide the IP addresses identifying which computers have been sharing copyrighted material.

Figures from Netnod, a Swedish firm that measures internet traffic in and out of the country, suggest traffic fell from an average of 120Gbps to 80Gbps on the day the new law came into effect.

Traffic lite

Speaking to the BBC, Christian Engstrom, vice-chairman of the Swedish Pirate Party - said the drop in traffic was a direct result of the new law, but that it would only be a temporary fall.

"Today, there is a very drastic reduction in internet traffic. But experience from other countries suggests that while file-sharing drops on the day a law is passed, it starts climbing again.

"One of the reasons is that it takes people a few weeks to figure out how to change their security settings so that they can share files anonymously," he added.

Mr Engstrom acknowledged that the new legislation would scare a number off file-sharing, and that the odds of getting caught had increased, but said that the risks to illegal file-sharers were still quite low.

"We estimate there are two million file-sharing [computers] in Sweden, so even if they prosecuted 1,000 people to make an example of them, for an individual user it is still a very small risk."

Prolific sharer

However, for some, that risk is already a reality.

A number of book publishers in Sweden have applied to the courts, on the day the law came out, forcing an ISP to disclose the details of one file-sharer who, the publishers claim, has more than 3,000 audio books on his server.

Speaking to the BBC, Kjell Bohlund - chair of the Swedish Publishers' Association - said that until the new law was passed, they were virtually powerless to act.

"Before 1 April, the only thing we could do about illegal file sharing was to refer it to the police, who were very reluctant to take it on.

"Now we can go get the courts to force ISPs to disclose the user information of an IP address.

"In two weeks time, we will know exactly who owns that IP. We can then do nothing, ask him to stop, or sue him for damages. We won't do this for small offenders, this is just for the big fish," he added.

Other companies are watching the case with interest, to determine what the court deems to be sufficient proof.

One action which began before the new legislation was the prosecution of four men accused of promoting copyright infringement via the hugely popular BitTorrent sharing site, The Pirate Bay.

The Pirate Bay hosts thousands of links to so-called torrent files, which allow for movies, TV programmes and applications to be shared online.

A verdict is expected later this month.

Public perception

Mr Engstrom said the new law was "a disaster", not just for file-sharers, but for Sweden as a whole.

"Dealing with illegal file-sharing is a job for the police. It is their job to enforce the law.

"Now we have given private corporations the legal right to go after our civilians. That's not how Western democracies work," he said.

Mr Bohlund acknowledged that cracking down on illegal file-sharing was not a long-term solution.

"In a study, 80% of people thought we shouldn't go after file-sharers.

"But ask them how they feel about taking money out of the pockets of musicians, authors or artists and that number falls by a significant amount," he said.

"Ultimately we have to change people's perception on file-sharing."
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/h...gy/7978853.stm





Hulu Begins Encrypting HTML Content to Thwart Non-Browser Apps
Nilay Patel

It looks like Hulu's trying yet another ill-fated tactic to keep its content restricted to traditional browsers and off things like Boxee -- TunerFreeMCE's Martin Millmore says Hulu's HTML is now encrypted at the source and then decrypted using Javascript on the client. That means plugins that parse the Hulu site for links to content won't work anymore, but man, what a complicated monkey dance for basically no gain -- it's already been broken, and we're wondering what Hulu's going to do when Boxee or another company stops playing around and simply builds a full-on WebKit or Gecko browser with a tweaked ID string into their app. Keep driving towards that cliff, guys -- millions of users who want Hulu on their TVs and will jump through hoops to get it don't represent any kind of market opportunity or anything.

Update: The Boxee folks just pinged us to say what several commenters have also noted: the current Mac alpha now features an XUL-based Hulu component that works no differently than a browser, and the Windows and Linux versions will be updated shortly. We'll see how Hulu responds -- for now we're sticking by our prediction that this all ends with someone building a full-on browser into one of these apps.
http://www.engadget.com/2009/04/01/h...-browser-apps/





Piracy Puts Film Online One Month Before Open
Brian Stelter

In a case of piracy that some analysts called unprecedented, untold thousands of people watched a version of “X-Men Origins: Wolverine” online Wednesday, a full month before its scheduled theater release.

The film’s distributor, 20th Century Fox, said it did not know how the unfinished copy of the comic book adaptation was leaked onto the Internet. The copy was missing many special effects and included temporary sound and music. Nonetheless, it circulated widely online beginning late Tuesday, even prompting some viewers to publish reviews, favorable and unfavorable, of the hotly anticipated film. “Wolverine” stars Hugh Jackman in the title role and is set to open on May 1.

The troubling leak — which some people initially dismissed as an April Fool’s Day prank — occurred at a time when media companies are working harder than ever to curtail digital piracy of content. Illicit recordings of films usually appear on the Internet shortly after their theater debuts, but leaks before the premiere dates are rare. Hollywood studios spend millions of dollars to track every step of the film production process to avoid such potentially costly leaks.

Eric Garland, the chief executive of the file-sharing monitoring firm BigChampagne, called the widespread downloading of “Wolverine” a “one-of-a-kind case.” “We’ve never seen a high-profile film — a film of this budget, a tentpole movie with this box office potential — leak in any form this early,” he said.

The studio, a unit of the News Corporation, spent the day demanding that copies of the film be removed from the largely anonymous swath of Web sites that swap movie files. But the copies propagated at such a swift rate that the digital cops could not keep up. BigChampagne estimated the digital film copy had been downloaded in the low hundreds of thousands of times in its first 24 hours on the Internet.

The studio said the F.B.I. and the Motion Picture Association of America were both investigating the film’s premature distribution.

“The source of the initial leak and any subsequent postings will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law,” the company said, adding “the courts have handed down significant criminal sentences for such acts in the past.”

Media companies use watermarks and other technological strategies to identify the sources of leaks.

“Wolverine” is not the first film to receive an unintended preview on the Internet. Another superhero film, 2003’s “Hulk,” showed up as a download about two weeks before its release. But the major studios hoped they had learned enough since then to keep it from happening again.

Mr. Garland said the existence of the illicit file could theoretically depress the box-office receipts for the film, but he emphasized that the online viewers would be only a tiny percentage of the total audience. The “other fear is bad word of mouth,” he said. As twisted as it may seem, “you would rather have a very high-quality version of the film leak than a premature working version of the film leak, because it’s not your best work.”

In the case of “Wolverine,” some of the computer-generated scenes were missing and other parts were unedited. The studio noted that some fan Web sites condemned the leak. But other Internet users downloaded the file and weighed in with reviews.

“This is bad bad news for Fox,” a movie blog called In GOB We Trust said on Wednesday, asserting that negative comments about the film would reduce its box-office prospects. But the blog reviewed the film anyway, saying that the creators decided to “dumb it down and essentially make a cartoon.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/02/bu...ia/02film.html





How Did X-Men Origins: Wolverine Get Leaked On The Internet?
Devin Faraci

Today an unwatermarked, time code free workprint of X-Men Origins: Wolverine leaked on the internet. Within hours thousands of people had a version of the upcoming Fox release, and once a file like this is in the wild it can never be fully brought back in.

How the hell did this happen?

I got in touch with a friend of mine who works in a post-production facility here in Los Angeles and he seemed to think my question was funny. "I'm surprised this doesn't happen more often," he said.

While studios bend over backwards to police film critics at press screenings (I've become used to security guards with night vision lenses staring at me while I'm watching a movie), the post-production process is apparently porous. Burned DVDs are swapped around with aplomb in this world; in fact I was told that the Wolverine DVD was switching hands for the last couple of weeks. It's hard to nail down where in the post-production process the Wolverine leak originated; it could have been someone working in digital FX, someone working on the titles, or even someone working on the trailer. Hell, it could be somebody working on the DVD release, for that matter.

My source told me stories of people blithely taking home DVDs of major upcoming studio blockbusters - some with watermarks, some without - so that they wouldn't have to work overtime at the office. And it's not just the honchos who have this access. My source told me about interns bringing DVDs home to watch with their friends. Even he seemed incredulous about the lackadaisical security at most of these post-production houses.

I've experienced some of this stuff first hand. I had someone from a post house meet me at a coffee shop and show me the Cloverfield trailer on a laptop. I've had files emailed to me that are clearly watermarked with post house names. I know a filmmaker who had his film pirated in the post-production stage, and who managed to nail the guy who was handing out DVDs to his friends. And I've come across some of these DVDs myself, although I never knew that they were so rampant.

Post isn't the only source of major leaks; these days getting a script to an unmade movie isn't even a badge of insider honor. They seem to be available to anyone who wants them. Someone told me that the security on the script for Cabin in the Woods was so tight no one would get it. Just to prove him wrong I got it three days later. I don't say that to boast but to explain how lax security is on the script end; once something hits an agency, PDFs of it may as well be deposited in the mailboxes of the biggest movie site writers. But while that's a problem - the mass leak of the script to Quentin Tarantino's Inglorious Basterds being one example - it's not half as damaging as the leak of an actual movie. Very few people will read a script. Many more will watch a DIVX file.

I have a feeling that the Wolverine leak is the tip of the iceberg. My source tells me that he suspects the person who leaked it may have been motivated by a grudge against the house where they work - perhaps someone who has been laid off or had his hours reduced (although to be fair he did also say that it's just as likely that this leak came from a dumb intern who simply made a copy for a friend. My friend has no actual knowledge of the particulars of this specific leak). The ease with which a DVD can be ripped and disseminated makes it child's play, and the ubiquity of laptops make it simpler and simpler for someone to rip a movie without even taking the disc off premises. Studios can keep being worried about someone sneaking a Flip camcorder into a press screening, but the real problem is right in their own system. So far they've been amazingly lucky, but how long can that luck hold out?
http://chud.com/articles/articles/18...NET/Page1.html

















Until next week,

- js.



















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