Peer-To-Peer News - The Week In Review - February 17th, '07

[JackSpratts]

"The kernel, the soul—let us go further and say the substance, the bulk, the actual and valuable material of all human utterances—is plagiarism." – Jonathan Lethem


"Mark Getty [the photo-archive mogul] said that intellectual property is 'the oil of the 21st century'—and oil apparently means war." – Rasmus Fleischer


"You say you're going to war. Pray that these people don't believe you." – Jonas Birgersson


"The plain truth is that gene patents aren’t benign and never will be." – Michael Crichton


"But I was not some snickering teenager looking to get cool shit for free. I was a tasteful, middle-aged gent with a victimless hobby." – Steven Daly


"Between three and four FBI laptop computers are lost or stolen each month on average and the agency is unable to say in many instances whether information on the machines is sensitive or classified." – Glenn A. Fine


"It can happen to anybody." – Herb Horner


"Digg Users ... go home." – Yay Hooray!


"Sorry I’m late, but I had to fly commercial." – Maria Bartiromo


"What’s great about radio is no one knows what you’re wearing." – Ted Stryker


"Inspiration could be called inhaling the memory of an act never experienced." – Jonathan Lethem


























The Doctor Is (Back) In

In the news again are those fine professors of P2P, Harvard’s Felix Oberholzer and UNC’s Koleman Strumpf. Steady Week in Review readers recall the stir they caused three years ago when their paper on P2P (PDF) clearly showed file-sharing caused no appreciable drop in overall record sales (WiR April 3rd, 2004, April 10th, 2004, April 17th, 2004). Of course traders (and tapers before them) had been saying this for years, but until the professors researched the issue and released their findings in March of 2004, there hadn’t been much in the way of up to date empirical evidence to back those claims.

The paper changed all that and it’s making waves all over again because an influential journal will soon be publishing it, some 35 months after it was written. Although it may seem like a long time, the Professor says it’s normal in the rarefied world of elite peer-reviewed periodicals.

“Lead times at academic journals are quite long, in particular at the very best publications such as the Journal of Political Economy,” Oberholzer told me this week, referring to the prestigious 115 year-old bimonthly. Still, three years is a stretch and things can change over time so it’s important the verdict stands. Not to worry assured the doc, “The paper is the one that you saw, with some revisions, but it has only been published now.”

That’s crucial, because it means that when this intensive peer review process ended the conclusion held firm: file sharing does not lead to losses in record sales.

Since copying isn’t stealing, and sharing isn’t piracy, it’s hard to imagine any justification for the over-the-top response to casual non-commercial swapping that pollutes Microsoft’s Vista with DRM, that cripples the First Amendment with the DMCA and that promotes the endless number of court-clogging civil suits that criminalize and stigmatize an entire generation of people who aren’t doing anything wrong.

That is what must be explained now.












Enjoy,

Jack














February 17th, 2007






A Simple Way to Skin the DRM Cat
Leonardo Chiariglione

Steve Jobs, the founder and CEO of Apple, the company that more than many others has offered innovative solutions based on digital technologies, deserves an applause for restarting a languishing debate on the “why and how” of Digital Rights Management (DRM), particularly of his own FairPlay.

He did forget one thing, though. It is true that he is not the only one but he uses the term DRM without defining it. Don’t say that there is no need to be pernickety about it as everybody talks about DRM. It so happens that a good share of the contentions around DRM stems from the fact that there are too many conflicting perceptions of the DRM “thing”.

So, let’s first clear this one by stating the obvious: “DRM is a means to manage rights with digital technologies”. The definition is a tautology but when there is confusion the best is to start from the obvious. If I create a file and, before sending it, I digitally sign it, I am using a form of DRM because I digitally manage my right make sure that the recipients of my file are informed if somebody has tampered with it. Ditto if I send an email with PGP.

It is apparently a different story if I release an MP3 file of a song composed and played by me with a Creative Commons (CC) licence. In this case I am managing my author's and performer's rights attaching (or making reference to) a human readable licence. If, however, I express the CC licence in a computer-readable form, I digitally manage my rights, i.e. I apply DRM.

There are, however, people who add to the DRM (management) technologies described above other (protection) technologies in order to physically force people to comply with their expressed rights. It is an abuse of words to call these technologies DRM (even the most oppressive of managers do not make recourse to physical forcing), but I do not object to that use as long as the original “M as in management” meaning is not forfeited.

Typically protection technologies scramble the bits in such a way that only those who own the descrambling key can actually access the information in an understandable form. Typically you also get the key only if you pay for the thing and you can play or otherwise use the content only if you employ a device specially-tailored to the particular service. The iPod is one such device that plays protected music tracks sold by the iTunes online music service run by Apple. Other music players also exist that can only play music from specific online services, such as Zune and Connect. None of these are capable of playing music purchased from competing services.

The theory has it that a healthy market of competing products and services benefits users. The practice, however, is that a user with 3 different players would need to buy 3 times the same song to be able to listen to it on all three players. Call it benefit...

Since its introduction 5 years ago some 90 million iPods and some 2 billion iTunes tracks have been sold. The numbers look impressive but simple math tells you that for each iPod sold only an average of just 22 tracks have been purchased (and iTunes is by far the most successful service). Probably more important is the fact that the number has been nearly constant over the years and is actually decreasing, and that statistical samplings show that most of the hard-disk or flash-memory space of iPods is full of MP3 that users can freely enjoy.

Still people are complaining that their inability to play legitimately purchased iTunes tracks on the device of their choice is affecting their rights. Here Steve Jobs has to do a bit of tight-rope walking because he wears at least two hats: the “electronic retailer's” and the "device manufacturer's" hats. Wearing the former Steve Jobs says: the importance of iTunes is marginal (this is what his words amount to) because people use the iPod most of the times to listen to an MP3, so why should people care? The answer is easy: we do care because the law in most countries forces us to be serious about protected music (and other types of content), as you go to jail if you tamper with the underlying protection technology, and you never know what happens to technology because what is marginal and a simple nuisance today can become mainstrean and a major hindrance tomorrow.

Wearing the latter hat Steve Jobs makes a bold proposal: let’s get rid of DRM altogether for digital music. Here is where the DRM management/protection ambiguity affects the message because while it makes sense to claim, based on empirical evidence, that protected music does not sell, it remains to be demonstrated that managed music does not. That would be like saying that the Creative Commons movement is a hollow shell. Indeed there is a whole range of business models that can be based on pure DRM (management) technologies and once you start with management...

Knowing that his proposition may not find all the receptive ears it deserves Steve Jobs does address the message coming from his protesting customers. He recognises that a DRM (protection) system that is transparent to the user would be an advantage to them. After all the DVD’s CSS does exactly that, were it not for the unfortunate “region code”. Curiously Steve Jobs restricts his analysis to just one option: how can Apple safely license its DRM technology to other manufacturers and be able to keep its obligations vis-à vis the record companies.

Others have already pointed out some of the weaknesses of his reasoning which, by the way, would not achieve full interoperability as buyers of Zune and Connect players would still be left out in the cold. My intention here is to get inspiration from probably the most successful communication system ever – GSM – to find a good way forward. Indeed most people are unaware that this 20-year old communication system is based on a very sophisticated DRM (protection) technology that has been standardised by the European Telecommunication Standards Institute (ETSI) which also handles the governance.

Do you think that there would be literally billions of people using GSM billions of times a day if the system had been designed to allow incompatible DRM systems? Incidentally I am not aware of any anti-DRM guru protesting the use of DRM (protection) in GSM or avoiding its use because it employs DRM, maybe because a part of the DRM used by GSM is to avoid eavesdropping in the radio link, a very consumer-friendly use of DRM.

The way to go is to have a standard system like GSM that anybody can practical implement and anybody can use to enjoy the content that they legitimately purchase. If you do not like the GSM example, do you think that we would have had the MP3 phenomenon without the MP3 standard or the billions of video files taken by cell phones - and shared - without the MP4 standard?

Let's suppress the enthusiam and avoid an easy criticism: clearly a DRM standard is a different beast than most other standards. The ways people may want to apply DRM technologies for their needs are countless, starting from the management/protection varieties, continuing with the network/broadcast/stand alone varieties, supporting user privacy etc. It would be really hard to define a “one size fits all” DRM standard. But look no further because there is already a solution. The Moving Picture Experts Group (MPEG) has produced most of the standard DRM technologies that are required by a DRM system. The Digital Media Project (DMP) has added a few more technologies that were missing integrating them with the MPEG DRM technologies to provide complete solutions, is now setting up the governance of the system based on established practices and is releasing Chillout, the reference software of its specification, as open source under the Mozilla Public Licence v.1.1.

Should the use of the standard DRM be made compulsory? In spite of the evidence coming from GSM (the fact that in Europe the use of the standard is compulsory for 2G is quoted as the main reason for its world-wide success), there is no need to do as much in the age of digital media. Digital Media in Italia (dmin.it). an Italian initiative advocating the use of a freely selected DRM on the part of entrepreneurs if seconded by the use of the standard DRM, is building evidence that this is not necessarily a requirement.

Twenty years ago the mobile telephony industry barely existed and 10 years ago it was still serving a small élite community. By cleverly designing a standard – GSM – that accounted for user concerns – DRM – the mobile telephony industry has become global, multiplied its size by orders of magnitude and is poised to become the first digital technology affecting each of the six billion humans on the Earth. While getting rich that industry has made billions of people happy. In contrast with this the music industry, because of the absence of a standard that accounted for users concerns – DRM – has shrunk in size, punishing its stakeholders and making millions of people unhappy.

Who hath ears to hear, let him hear.

About the author

Leonardo has some say in matters realted to digital media
He chairs the Moving Picture Experts Group (MPEG), the international ISO/IEC standards committee that has ushered in the digital media age through is MPEG-1 standard (VCD and MP3), MPEG-2 standard (digital television set top boxes and DVD), MPEG-4 standard (music and video on cell phones, compact movies) and a range of newer standards.
He chairs the Digital Media Project (DMP), a not-for-profit organisation with the mission to promote continuing successful development, deployment and use of digital media that respect the rights of creators and rights holders to exploit their works, the wish of end users to fully enjoy the benefits of digital media and the interests of various value-chain players to provide products and services. DMP has issued specification and reference software (Chillout) as open source under the Mozilla Public Licence v.1.1 and is setting up the governance.
He coordinates Digital Media in Italia (dmin.it), an interdisciplinary, open, not-for-profit group with the goal to make proposals of action that will enable Italy to acquire a primary role in the exploitation of the global digital media phenomenon. dmin.it has already issued a proposal and is working on its implementation

Comments should be sent to leonardo "at" chiariglione "dot" org
http://www.chiariglione.org/contrib/...riglione01.htm





Yahoo Music, SanDisk Chiefs Urge Labels to 'Ditch DRM'

The boss of Yahoo Music says that MP3 tracks sell much better than DRM-laden music
Macworld staff

A senior Yahoo chief has spoken out in favour of Apple CEO Steve Jobs' call for major labels to abandon digital rights technology (DRM).

Dave Goldberg, head of Yahoo Music, says that tracks sold through his service in MP3 format sell much faster than rights-protected tunes.

Silicon Valley Watcher reports that Goldberg believes DRM is confusing for consumers, also that the company has experimented by making music available free of DRM, and tracks sold in this way see more sales.

Goldberg is also heavily critical of the DRM system Microsoft licenses for a fee, saying it "doesn't work half the time".

The Yahoo boss believes that removing DRM would provide a boost to interoperability and widen the range of music services and devices available to consumers.

The Yahoo chief's thoughts were echoed by SanDisk founder and CEO Eli Harari, who wrote: "Proprietary systems aren’t acceptable to consumers. In recent months, there has been a rising chorus of complaints in Europe about the anti-competitive nature of closed formats that tie music purchased from one company to that company’s devices, and tie that company’s devices to its music service."
http://www.macworld.co.uk/news/index...S&newsID=17184





Music Execs Criticise DRM Systems

Almost two-thirds of music industry executives think removing digital locks from downloadable music would make more people buy the tracks, finds a survey.

The Jupiter Research study looked at attitudes to Digital Rights Management (DRM) systems in Europe music firms.

Many of those responding said current DRM systems were "not fit for purpose" and got in the way of what consumers wanted to do.

Despite this few respondents said DRM would disappear in the near future.

Lock off

Analyst Mark Mulligan, one of the authors of the report, said the survey was carried out between December and January. This was before Apple boss Steve Jobs published his thoughts on music DRM and galvanised the debate about these protection systems.

Mr Mulligan said he was "surprised" at the strength of the responses which came from large and small record labels, rights bodies, digital stores and technology providers.

The study revealed that about 54% of those executives questioned thought that current DRM systems were too restrictive.

Also, 62% believed that dropping DRM and releasing music files that can be enjoyed on any MP3 player would boost the take-up of digital music generally. However, Mr Mulligan pointed out that this percentage changed depending on which sector of the industry was answering.

Among all record labels 48% of all executives thought ending DRM would boost download sales - though this was 58% at the larger labels. Outside the record labels 73% of those questioned thought dropping DRM would be a boost for the whole market.

Among all those questioned, 70% believed that the future of downloadable music lay in making tracks play on as many different players as possible. But 40% believed it would take concerted government or consumer action to bring this about.

Despite these feelings, said Mr Mulligan, record labels are committed to using DRM because their digital music strategies revolve around these technologies.

"Despite everything that has been happening the record labels are not about to drop DRM," said Mr Mulligan. "Even though all they are doing is making themselves look even less compelling by using it."

Currently, he said, labels were sticking with DRM because they saw it as a tool for protecting their rights. However, he added that he could foresee a day when DRM was used to manage these rights and monitor what people did with music rather than stop them.

Mr Mulligan also pointed out that so far few consumers were troubled by DRM - though this was down to the fact that Apple's iPod dominated the market.

He said the record industry realised that it had to do more to win over some sections of the music buying public - in particular the huge group of people aged 15-24 who prefer to download music for free from file-sharing sites.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/1/h...gy/6362069.stm





Save the BBC from Windows DRM!
Glyn Moody

The BBC has a long and glorious past as a technological innovator. Throughout the history of broadcasting, it has often been the first to develop and promote new technologies. Sadly, it seems now to be teetering on the brink of making technical choices that will not only damage its own reputation as a world-class institution, but which will also have serious knock-on consequences for free software.

As the worlds of computing and media began increasingly to overlap, it was inevitable that the BBC would need to make decisions about which formats and licensing schemes it would adopt for digital versions of its content that were delivered over the Internet.

To begin with, it offered RealMedia streams for its Audio on Demand service, which meant that GNU/Linux users were on an equal footing with those running Windows. Even more promising was the BBC's participation in the Creative Archive project. This was set up in April 2005 by the BBC and several other major UK institutions to make archive video and audio material available under the Creative Archive licence, which was based on the Creative Commons licences. As well as offering liberal licensing terms, the Creative Archive also chose to release the material in a variety of formats - Quicktime, Windows Media and MPEG1 - to promote the widest possible use.

Against this background, then, the hopes were obviously high that the BBC's latest foray into Internet broadcasting, its on-demand service that would allow people to download television and radio programmes after they were broadcast, would continue this even-handed approach and support all computer platforms.

But the current recommendations contain a real shocker, a consequence of the fact that the BBC has decided to use DRM in its new iPlayer software to control how on-demand material is viewed. That's bad enough, if understandable given the hideously complicated situation concerning the rights to the material that the BBC wants to make available. But worse is how it has decided to implement this approach. As the report explains:

the files would require DRM to ensure that they were appropriately restricted in terms of time and geographic consumption. The only system that currently provides this security is Windows Media 10 and above. Further, the only comprehensively deployed operating system that currently supports Windows Media Player 10 and above is the Windows XP operating system. As a result of these DRM requirements the proposed BBC iPlayer download manager element therefore requires Windows Media Player 10 and Windows XP.

Only those running Windows XP (or Vista) and Windows Media Player 10 will be able to access the BBC's proposed on-demand service. Users of GNU/Linux (and the Apple Macintosh for that matter) are to be cast into the outer darkness. That's around 25% of the potential audience according to this BBC podcast, which contains a fascinating discussion of many of the key issues around this decision. From this it also emerges that the reason that the BBC felt obliged to take this route was because “doing something is better than doing nothing”.

But choosing Microsoft's DRM is not just a neutral “doing something”, it is doing absolutely the wrong thing – which is far worse than “doing nothing”. It would provide a huge propaganda victory for Microsoft and its DRM scheme, just at the time when even people like Steve Jobs are casting doubt on the efficacy of DRM in general. The last thing we need now is for Microsoft to be able to go around to other broadcasters and music companies and say: “See, even the famously objective BBC has chosen our DRM; this proves it's the best. Why don't you follow suit?”

Clearly, shutting out 25% of your audience sits ill with the BBC's remit of serving all of its users, and the consultation document felt obliged to address this glaring problem by imposing the following:

We propose to require the BBC Executive to adopt a platform-agnostic approach to rights management within a reasonable timeframe. The MIA [Market Impact Assessment] notes an expectation that the BBC Executive plans to develop a Real Player alternative in the near future. Our understanding is that the BBC Executive aspires to offer an alternative DRM framework, which would enable Apple and Linux users to access the service, but has yet to identify a satisfactory solution. In either case, we will expect this to have been addressed within 24 months.

But this attempt at a technological fig-leaf ignores the dynamics of the networked world. First-mover advantage means that the greater the uptake of Microsoft's DRM early on, the harder it will be to displace. Even if a “platform-agnostic” DRM is eventually developed “within a reasonable timeframe” it will be too late.

There is no denying that this is an extremely difficult area for the BBC, since it must negotiate not one but three minefields – those of technology standards, copyright and contract law. But there are still things that it could do without turning into a global advertisement for Microsoft's flawed DRM approach.

First, it could rewrite its contracts so that henceforth it does have the rights to broadcast content without DRM, at least for a limited time. As technology moves on, this is standard practice in the media world (I should know: as a journalist and writer I've frequently had contracts changed to grant publishers new rights as they become available and/or valuable). This would allow the BBC to “do something” rather than “do nothing”, but without selling its soul to Microsoft.

Secondly, it needs to become more active in fighting DRM, instead of supinely giving in to the bully-boy tactics of the commercial media companies. DRM is the antithesis of everything the BBC stands for. In the BBC's Royal Charter, the document that defines its very existence, two of its core duties are explicitly to

secure that the independence of the BBC is maintained;

ensure that the BBC observes high standards of openness and transparency.

If it adopts only a Windows-based system, the BBC becomes beholden to Microsoft, and loses any possibility of independent action in the future, as the example of Korea shows only too painfully. Similarly, DRM is anything but open and transparent. And with rumours that even the music industry is recognising how counter-productive DRM is, now is precisely the moment to fight and beat DRM, not foist it on even more people.

If the BBC persists in taking this route, Microsoft will receive an important boost after its lacklustre launch of Vista. Moreover, other broadcasters around the world, who look to the BBC for leadership, may well sign up for the same approach, establishing Windows and DRM as global de facto standards, This, in turn, would weaken and marginalise GNU/Linux.

If you are one of the BBC's fee-payers, do join the consultation process that is currently underway. And even if you are not, please consider sending a (polite) explanation of why locking the BBC into the death-embrace of Microsoft's DRM is bad for you, bad for the BBC, and bad for the world.
http://www.linuxjournal.com/node/1000183





Microsoft Builds DRM for Mobile Phones
Scott M. Fulton, III

In an indication that Microsoft’s strategy for digital rights management in the "Zune era" will be even more stratified than at first thought, the company introduced another DRM technology to the mix this morning at 3GSM in Barcelona: PlayReady, which appears to add streaming media and pay-per-view capabilities to the PlaysForSure platform it already had in place.

This morning, Microsoft is calling PlayReady “the result of extended dialogue with the mobile industry,” whose members were evidently looking for a more flexible way to transfer content between devices.

Though the company touted phone manufacturers as being among those calling for the new standard, it primarily lists mobile service operators, including Verizon and AT&T. As of yet, PlayReady does not appear to be associated with specific devices, though its formats are said to be downwardly compatible with Windows Media 10.

PlaysForSure is typically associated with WM10, and Microsoft’s new Windows Mobile 6 operating system -– whose official rollout was also celebrated this morning –- is typically associated with PlaysForSure. In an interview last week with Microsoft Windows Mobile product manager John Starkweather, he told BetaNews that WM6 will be associated directly with PlaysForSure.

"We've always supported the ability to synchronize music, video, recorded television directly from a PC, or also from any of the PlaysForSure Windows Media DRM subscription services,” Starkweather told us. "You can fill as much storage as you can put on a Windows Mobile device, you can port all your Yahoo music over, your Rhapsody music over, your Napster music over, very, very easily."

In this morning’s statement, Microsoft said it will be implementing what it refers to as an interoperability program "so content may flow to qualifying DRM and content protection technologies." It did not list any specific technologies that qualify just yet, nor did it explicitly mention PlaysForSure or Zune’s DRM as perhaps qualifying under the terms of this program.

This morning, a company called PacketVideo may have done a better job of explaining what PlayReady is than Microsoft, calling it a “content access technology,” and vowing to be the first company to implement it for managing and protecting transactions involving not just songs and video, but also downloadable ringtones and wallpaper.

The WM6 rollout today also involves AT&T (formerly Cingular) and Verizon, as well as Sprint and T-Mobile. Apparently managed separately, WM6's content protection technologies are being referred to using a carefully chosen new phrase, information rights management or "IRM," perhaps in an attempt to distance Microsoft from "DRM" - a phrase and abbreviation that has become a magnet for negative attention.
http://www.betanews.com/article/Micr...nes/1171297451





NPD: Early Boxed Retail Sales of Vista Down Nearly 60% Compared to XP
Eric Lai

First-week retail sales of boxed copies of Windows Vista were almost 60% below sales of boxed copies of Windows XP in the week after its 2001 launch, according to one leading market research group.

The dollar value of retail box copies of Vista sold during the week of Jan. 28 also fell 32% from the value of XP box copies sold during its first week in October 2001, according to figures from Port Washington, N.Y-based NPD Group Inc. released Thursday.

However, retail sales of PCs, virtually all of them sporting the new Vista OS, were up 67% over the same week in 2006. While that is hardly an apples-to-apples comparison -- many stores were clearing out their XP inventory in the weeks leading up to Vista's launch -- "it still reflects a fair bit of growth," according to Chris Swenson, a software analyst with NPD. He declined to release exact dollar figures.

Swenson's interpretation of the seemingly-in-conflict numbers? Consumers are "getting the message that they need a more robust system to take advantage of some of the new features in Vista," he said in a statement. Thus, a smaller number of consumers are opting to upgrade their existing hardware with Vista out of fear that it won't be powerful enough.

Vista's poor retail sales contrast with Office 2007's strong first-week retail sales, which more than doubled Office 2003's first-week sales.

The good news for Microsoft: Consumers who are upgrading to Vista on their older machines are opting for pricier, higher-end versions of it. The average selling price of Vista was $207.13, up 66% from the average selling price of XP. That was due in part to the fact that more than 30% of the copies of Vista sold were the Ultimate version, which lists for $399.

"So, although total dollars were down compared to XP, I think the preliminary data shows that Microsoft's gamble on a new high-end Vista SKU will help keep dollar volumes from declining as rapidly as unit volumes in the near term," said Swenson.

Swenson also expects that retailers with "tech benches" such as Best Buy's Geek Squad, CompUSA's Tech Pro and Staples' Easy Tech will see a boost in sales because of customers seeking help with installing Vista. Those services are often offered at attractive prices to consumers, said Swenson, who expects a "bump" in sales similar to that caused by security software.

NPD's data was collected from a number of retailers, including Amazon.com, Best Buy, Circuit City, CompUSA, Kmart, Office Depot, OfficeMax, Staples, Target and others.
http://computerworld.com/action/arti...tsrc =hm_list





Microsoft Warns of Six "Critical" Security Flaws

Microsoft Corp. issued six "critical" security patches on Tuesday to fix flaws in its software products that the company warned could allow attackers to take control of a user's computer.

Microsoft, whose Windows operating system runs on more than 95 percent of the world's computers, issued the patches as part of its monthly security bulletin. There were no patches issued in the update for the newest version of Windows, called Vista.

Microsoft made Vista available to consumers in January after five years of development and a number of delays to improve security. The company says the new operating system is the most secure Windows program ever.

Microsoft defines a flaw as "critical" when the vulnerability could allow a damaging Internet worm to replicate without the user doing anything to the machine.

The world's biggest software maker said the critical flaws affected versions of its Windows, Office, Works, Internet Explorer and Microsoft Malware Protection Engine products. It rated the other holes at its lower threat level of "important."

The company has been working to improve the security and reliability of its software as more and more malicious software target weaknesses in Windows and other Microsoft software.

The latest patches can be downloaded at www.microsoft.com/security.
http://www.reuters.com/article/techn...22899120070214





Pirated Software's Problem
Nathan Spande

One of the biggest challenges living someplace like Cambodia (which I do) is finding all of the cool tech toys that my geek genes tell me I need. Finding software is similarly difficult, at least when it comes to legal copies of software. I can go down the block to my local market and find almost any software program, music CD, or DVD my little heart could desire, for somewhere around $2 per disc. Finding a legitimate copy of, say, Microsoft Office, is much more of a challenge.

So how does this impact the security scene here? Well, for one thing, those pirated copies at the local markets almost certainly contain what they advertise (whether it be Office, Oracle, or Myst). Many of them also almost certainly contain a little bit more (insert name of your favorite virus/trojan/spambot here). Uh oh.

Now, Cambodia is small, remote, and extremely unconnected. Very few people here can afford a PC, let alone the monthly Internet access. I pay over $100 each month for my 128-kbit/s ADSL link. In a country where $60 a month is a good salary, there are clearly few people even thinking about home network access, let alone spending hundreds of dollars on software, or even $4 on pirated software.

However, this "a little bit more" situation is what's happening in the rest of the developing world, including countries like, say, China, which are much more populous and connected. Think about half a billion people using pirated software, with perhaps 64k connections for each. Add in a few thousand Internet cafes. Even if only 1 percent of the pirated software is infected with some sort of malware (and my hunch is that this is an underestimate), this is clearly a non-trivial problem.

Suddenly all that spam that has been making it through my two layers of filters is not so surprising. All of a sudden we have a large portion of the developing world essentially acting as open relays for spammers. We also have half the world available for a very, very big DDOS attack. This is not good.

So, how do we deal with this problem? That's far less clear to me. There are several problems that need to be addressed to solve it entirely, but it seems relatively intractible on the consumer end. Before you can get consumers to use licensed software, it has to be affordable.

As soon as it is affordable for the local populations, it is going to be purchased locally and resold internationally at deep discounts (already done in the electronics/photo equipment world, where "gray market" equipment is available with no warranty but otherwise in new condition). That makes it unlikely that large (or small) software companies will go for it. The other option would be to solve in a robust way the problem of malware in the operating system. Clearly that's not going to happen any time soon. A third option would be to encourage the use of free (as in beer) equivalent programs.

I'm writing this article using OpenOffice Writer, which is great for me, but I just don't see it taking the world by storm right now. For one thing, knowing OpenOffice doesn't give one much of a leg up in the job market, where knowing Microsoft Office certainly does, and computer skills are one of the few things that show promise at getting people out of poverty around here.

The other thing is a distribution problem. OpenOffice at the local market costs the same as Microsoft Office. If I download OpenOffice it actually costs me more money, since here I pay up to $0.10 per MByte for traffic over my DSL link.

So what's the world to do? I don't see a practical way to eliminate pirated software in the developing world right now. The incentives just aren't there for the local populations. Perhaps if we can develop good filtering, or at least monitoring, at the ISP level we'll be able to reduce the volume of such traffic.

Until then, I guess the best we security professionals can do is keep patching holes on the machines we control and be happy that our own PCs are free of the evil beasties. It seems that escaping being a target is just not likely to happen any time soon.
http://www.darkreading.com/document.asp?doc_id=116907





Antipiracy Group Makes List of Worst-Offender Nations
John Letzing

A coalition of companies including technology giants Microsoft Corp. and Apple Inc. on Monday filed recommendations with the U.S. trade representative of countries deemed worst at protecting intellectual property.

The coalition, the International Intellectual Property Alliance, said in the filing that countries including China and Russia are among the worst offenders when it comes to allowing the reproduction of protected intellectual property, with a majority of the resulting losses affecting the software industry.

In all, the coalition recommends that 60 countries "lagging in their obligations to provide adequate and effective intellectual-property protection" be placed under varying degrees of monitoring.

In addition to China and Russia, other countries considered the worst and recommended to be placed on a "Priority Watch List" include Mexico, Venezuela, Israel and Canada.

The coalition said that software in particular suffers financially from copyright piracy. The coalition estimates that trade losses in 2006 resulting from copyright piracy for the business- and entertainment-software industries were roughly $12.3 billion, while losses from both the sound recordings and books industries amounted to a combined $2.96 billion.

Microsoft has sought to actively protect its intellectual property in countries singled out by the filing, including Russia, where one case involving pirated Microsoft software used by a provincial secondary school recently garnered international attention.

Apple also found itself in related headlines recently, when its chief executive, Steve Jobs, wrote an open letter to the music industry suggesting that it drop certain rights restrictions.

In particular, the coalition cites the growing use of software delivered via the Internet, rather than installed on a hard drive, as a growing intellectual-property hazard. The alliance said that not all countries properly protect software delivered over the Internet as they do software sold in packaged form.
http://www.marketwatch.com/news/stor...A002A4F2188%7D





Internet Piracy a Thorn in US-Taiwan Ties: IIPA

WARNING: The association recommended that Taiwan be retained on the USTR's Special 301 Watch List because of rampant stealing of copyrighted works via the Internet
Charles Snyder

Efforts to resolve the long-standing feud between Taiwan and the US over piracy of movies, music, business software and other intellectual property is being thwarted by the rampant use of the Internet in Taiwan to steal copyrighted works, despite gains in other areas of piracy, an umbrella group of US industries reported on Monday.

Piracy over the Ministry of Education's Internet system is also a major problem, the report said.

The report, by the International Intellectual Property Alliance (IIPA), urged the US Trade Rep-resentative (USTR) office to keep Taiwan on the Special 301 Watch List for the time being at least, until the Legislative Yuan passes more stringent anti-piracy laws and enforcement is enhanced.

The USTR has traditionally listened to the industry alliance for guidance on its official action under US piracy laws and has consistently followed its recommendations.

There is no indication that the USTR will not follow the alliance's recommendations again this spring, when the government agency issues its annual report on intellectual property violators.

While Taipei and Washington have been gradually solving other trade disputes, piracy has remained a major area of contention, and removal from the Watch List is seen as a crucial step in advancing bilateral efforts to normalize trade relations.

In one bright spot in the IIPA report, the alliance recommended that the USTR conduct an "out-of-cycle review" later in the year to reconsider whether or not to drop Taiwan from the Watch List. If it dropped Taiwan, that would represent a major trade victory for the nation.

Taiwan has been on the Watch List, or the more serious Priority Watch List, since 2001.

Internet piracy, the IIPA said, "has become a pervasive and corrosive piracy problem," and "one of Taiwan's most urgent piracy problems."

P2P piracy, or peer-to-peer sharing among Internet users, continues to grow, and the highest rate of Internet infringement of business software in Asia is in Taiwan, the alliance said.

"This will threaten what is otherwise a good record on reducing software piracy in the territory," it said.

The report urges the prompt passage of legislation to clamp down on file-sharing, followed by legislative action on "ISP liability" legislation that would penalize such Internet service providers as Yahoo.

P2P legislation, which was introduced last April by Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator Hsieh Kuo-liang (謝國樑) would "make illegal and subject to civil and criminal liability the provision of file sharing services with the intent to facilitate infringement," the IIPA report said.

It would also give authorities the power to close a service once it has been convicted, an effort to prevent cases where offending service providers were convicted but continued to operate with impunity during an appeal.

The ISP legislation, also introduced by Hsieh, would also "subject ISPs to liability as co-infringers if they `gain economic benefits' and are `capable of monitoring or controlling said infringing acts by others.'"

The IIPA report also focused, as it did last year, on piracy over the government-owned TANet network.

The network "is being used widely throughout Taiwan for Internet piracy," the report says, adding that the Ministry of Education "must acknowledge its obligation and take far stronger deterrent actions" to stem illegal file sharing.

Among other suggestions, the report calls for tougher enforcement against illegal photocopying in an around university campuses and monitoring of the smuggling of optical discs to Latin America and counterfeit video game cartridges to China and elsewhere in Asia.

The report also calls on the Legislative Yuan to pass a law against the illegal piracy of movies "right off the screen by professional camcorder pirates" using video cameras to copy a movie being shown in a theater, or even earlier during a promotional showing.
http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/taiw.../14/2003348917





Russian Judge Dismisses Any Penalty in Piracy Case
Andrew E. Kramer

A Russian judge convicted a provincial school headmaster on Thursday for using pirated Microsoft software in school computers, but declined to impose any penalty, saying that Microsoft’s loss was insignificant compared with its overall earnings.

The case has been closely watched as a test of how Russia will enforce intellectual property rights as it moves closer to membership in the World Trade Organization. The verdict was broadcast on Russian state television.

Vera Barakina, a judge in a regional court in Vereshagino, about 650 miles east of Moscow, ruled that the principal was guilty of installing Windows operating systems and software suites on 12 computers used by his students, and that this had cost Microsoft about $9,700.

But then, reading from a prepared statement, Ms. Barakina called this sum “insignificant” compared with Microsoft’s worldwide income.

The principal, Aleksandr M. Ponosov, who could have been sentenced to five years in prison, celebrated by uncorking a bottle of Champagne outside the courthouse.

Mr. Ponosov’s case resonated widely here, touching on the capriciousness of the criminal justice system, something that Russians understand all too well. With Mr. Ponosov, prosecutors plucked one user of pirated software from among millions and threatened a five-year sentence.

The prosecutor, Aleksandr V. Troyanov, said in a telephone interview Thursday that he would appeal the verdict. He criticized the judge’s logic, saying that the damage relative to Microsoft’s earnings had no bearing on the case.

Cheap, pirated software is ubiquitous in Russia, even as the country grows rich from oil profits. Pirated movies and music are sold openly; trademark protections are also widely violated, although less openly, and counterfeit cigarettes, pharmaceuticals and other consumer goods are common.

The government wants to legalize the software market under the terms of entry to the World Trade Organization. But any crackdown is bound to prove unpopular, as has the case against Mr. Ponosov, who has become something of a folk hero among Russian academics and teachers, who get by on small salaries.

The case drew the attention of President Vladimir V. Putin, who called the case “utter nonsense,” and the former Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev, who wrote a letter to Microsoft’s founder, Bill Gates, asking the company to drop the charges.

In its response to Mr. Gorbachev’s letter, Microsoft said it generally opposed prosecuting teachers for software piracy.

“Our interest is not in prosecuting schools or teachers, it is in helping students develop the technology skills they need in the 21st century,” Microsoft said in a statement Thursday, according to Bloomberg News.

Tom Thomson, the executive director of the Coalition for Intellectual Property Rights in Washington, suggested the judge’s rationale for leniency — that Microsoft is a wealthy corporation — is often used to justify piracy.

“Obviously, it should not determine how laws should be enforced,” he said.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/16/bu.../16piracy.html





Tories Will Not Act to Curb Movie Piracy

Camcorder bootlegging: Government cites stiff copyright laws already in place
Janice Tibbetts

The Conservative government appears in no hurry to bring forward a new law to crack down on camcorded movie bootlegging, despite lobbying from theatres and a threat from Hollywood to delay film distribution in Canada.

Justice Minister Rob Nicholson said in an interview that there is already a stiff copyright law in Canada to catch people who sneak camcorders into movie theatres for the purposes of filming for commercial distribution.

"I do point out to people that the country is not completely bereft of laws in this area," he said.

The maximum fine under the federal Copyright Act is $1-million and five years in jail for camcording a movie for commercial distribution.

Hollywood is pressing for more expansive laws and one studio, 20th Century Fox, has threatened to withhold movie distribution in Canada.

The industry charges that Canada has become a major source of film piracy worldwide and has been cited on a U.S. watchlist, along with China and Russia, for three straight years.

The umbrella group for the country's movie theatres, the Canadian Motion Picture Theatre Associations, recently wrote to Mr. Nicholson to lobby for a new law.

Mr. Nicholson said that he is willing "to look at any suggestion that comes forward."

But the new justice minister also noted that he already has a lot on his plate in the coming months, centred around the Conservative government's aggressive law-and-order agenda.

"I don't want to get into the situation that you may have seen in this town where certain ministers or certain governments had a different priority every day of the week and every time a new problem came up that was a new priority and ultimately nothing gets done," said Mr. Nicholson.

The Canadian Motion Picture Distributors Association says movie pirating in Canada accounted for 20 per cent of camcorded copies of DVDs worldwide in 2005 and was responsible for $118-million in losses.

"What we're dealing with here is organized crime," said Doug Frith, the president of the association, which represents the American film industry's interests in Canada.

The way that the most sophisticated piracy works, explained Mr. Frith, is that the ill-gotten movie is put into a hard drive minutes after leaving a theatre and it is available on the Internet within hours of the film's release.

Mr. Frith said that the federal copyright law is not enough because it puts the onus on the Crown to prove that the camcording is being done for commercial purposes.

Michael Geist, a law professor at University of Ottawa, says he is not convinced of Hollywood's claims that Canada is a leading source of movie piracy.

"I think we need far better evidence to suggest that there is a problem," said Geist, adding that the industry's data on the matter is "all over the place."

A bigger problem, he said, is industry insiders bootlegging DVDs before the movies are even released in theatres, he said.

"This is an issue that is far more complex than "Canada is a haven for pirates and we need tougher laws to deal with this issue"," said Mr. Geist.

Howard Knopf, an Ottawa copyright lawyer, said there could be potential problems in making it illegal to use a camcorder in a theatre if it causes problems for movie-goers who carry their cellphones or other gadgets with film-making capability.

"I don't have a problem with it being illegal to use a camcorder," he said, "but I don't think we should criminalize gadgets. More and more companies are coming up with gadgets that do pretty well everything and it shouldn't be a crime to carry one around."
http://www.canada.com/nationalpost/n...9-6a7ce4f31c90





Blu-Ray AND HD-DVD Broken - Processing Keys Extracted
Cory Doctorow

Arnezami, a hacker on the Doom9 forum, has published a crack for extracting the "processing key" from a high-def DVD player. This key can be used to gain access to every single Blu-Ray and HD-DVD disc.

Previously, another Doom9 user called Muslix64 had broken both Blu-Ray and HD-DVD by extracting the "volume keys" for each disc, a cumbersome process. This break builds on Muslix64's work but extends it -- now you can break all AACS-locked discs.

AACS took years to develop, and it has been broken in weeks. The developers spent billions, the hackers spent pennies.

For DRM to work, it has to be airtight. There can't be a single mistake. It's like a balloon that pops with the first prick. That means that every single product from every single vendor has to perfectly hide their keys, perfectly implement their code. There can't be a single way to get into the guts of the code to retrieve the cleartext or the keys while it's playing back. All attackers need is a single mistake that they can use to compromise the system.

There is no future in which bits will get harder to copy. Instead of spending billions on technologies that attack paying customers, the studios should be confronting that reality and figuring out how to make a living in a world where copying will get easier and easier. They're like blacksmiths meeting to figure out how to protect the horseshoe racket by sabotaging railroads.

The railroad is coming. The tracks have been laid right through the studio gates. It's time to get out of the horseshoe business.
But then I realized why I first didn't find the Media Key: it was removed from memory after the Volume ID was retrieved and the VUK calculated. I also saw that in my "corrupt" memdump the VUK, Vol ID, Media Key and the Title Key MAC were all closely clustered in memory: in the first 50kb (of the entire multi megabyte file!) but there were large empty parts around it. Almost as if it was cleaned up.

This gave me an idea: what I wanted to do is "record" all changes in this part of memory during startup of the movie. Hopefully I would catch something insteresting. In the end I did something a little more effiecient: I used the hd dvd vuk extractor (thanks ape!) and adapted it to slow down the software player (while scanning its memory continously) and at the very moment the Media Key (which I now knew: my bottom-up approach really paid off here) was detected it halted the player. I then made a memdump with WinHex. I now had the feeling I had something.

And I did. Not suprisingly the very first C-value was a hit. I then checked if everyting was correct, asked for confirmation and here we are.
http://www.boingboing.net/2007/02/13...hddvd_bro.html





MPAA Borrowing Code
Patrick Robin

Way back in October last year whilst going through the website referals list for another of my sites I stumbled across this link. That's right, my blogging software is being used by the MPAA (Motion picture Association of America); probably one of the most hated organisations known to the internet. Cool, I thought, until I had a look around and saw that all of the back links to my main site had been removed with nary a mention in the source code!

Now this isn't anything new, it seems like every week I'll stumble across someone who doesn't think that my work deserves any recognition or that my effort deserves any thanks. But this time I had a good chuckle; it's not every day that an organisation whos main reason for being is:

... to advocate for strong protection of the creative works produced and distributed by the industry, fights copyright theft around the world, and provides leadership in meeting new and emerging industry challenges.

gets caught out infringing someone elses copyright and sticks it on the internet for all and sundry to see!

Now I know I'm not exactly reknowned for my legalese but I did think that the terms and conditions that I had released Forest Blog under were pretty solid, specifically the section relating to removing the back links:

You may not remove, alter or otherwise disable all or any of the hyperlinks to the Host Forest website (http://www.hostforest.co.uk). All images, links or text must remain unchanged and intact and visible when the pages are viewed unless you first obtain explicit written permission from the copyright holders.

I'm sure that the decision to remove the back links was made by some individual rather than some commitee at the MPAA but I find it surprising anyone working there would be so remiss to remove these links just because I let people download and use Forest Blog for free.

At the time I fired up my trusty template for people who like to borrow my work filled in the blanks with the MPAA website details and fired it off. Unfortunately I pretty much forgot about it after that until I saw it pop-up again in my referals a few days ago, so I'll be firing off another email after the weekend and I might even put printer to paper and send them something via snail mail.

I'm not about to go and find myself a, very reasonably priced, lawyer to try and squeeze some cash out of them, but it would be nice if they'd actually stick the links back in. I'll let you know how I get on.
http://www.patrickrobin.co.uk/default.asp?Display=4





Electronics Execs Seek Reform on EU Copyright Tax

Top electronics firms have asked the European Commission to discuss why the European Union executive body abruptly delayed reform of an "excessive and unjustified" copyright tax after lobbying by France.

In December the commission delayed a decision on reforming the levy, which about 20 EU countries slap on sales of recording devices to compensate performers for private copying.

Just before EU Internal Market Commissioner Charlie McCreevy was due to publish his plans, French Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin asked commission President Jose Manuel Barroso to think again about the reform.

The chief executives of Philips, Nokia, Hewlett-Packard, Intel, Sony-Ericsson, Matsushita Electronic Industrial, Sony and Imation sent a letter to Barroso on Monday evening.

"We would like to request a meeting with you to hear how you intend to proceed, or to understand the reasons why the commission will no longer take action," the CEOs said in their letter, made available to the media.

"Industry's confidence has been shaken by the sudden withdrawal of the proposed reforms, and we look to you to personally lead the way forward for reform," the letter said.

The electronics industry was being penalized by receiving excessive and growing demands for payment of unjustified levies, the letter said.

Top filmmakers such as Bertrand Tavernier of France and Spain's Pedro Almodovar had argued the 560 million euros ($727.8 million) raised by the levy last year was key to funding productions and provided money to governments.

The industry chiefs said commission officials had on several occasions indicated that the tax needed reform.

Earlier this month, McCreevy signaled an end to efforts to revamp a copyright tax on electronic gadgets such as MP3 players.

"It has been left there, because the political view was that it could not be done at the present time," McCreevy said.
http://news.com.com/Electronics+exec...3-6158964.html





Viacom to YouTube: We'll Host Our Own Videos, Thanks
Nate Anderson

Viacom has apparently decided to end its spat with YouTube by taking its proverbial ball (Comedy Central video clips) and going home (its own web sites). Viacom clips can now be embedded in other web pages—just like YouTube clips—but Viacom will be in control of the content.

The two companies have been in negotiations for some time but couldn't come to terms on a licensing deal that would allow Viacom-owned clips to be hosted by YouTube. Viacom then sent YouTube a massive set of 100,000 DMCA takedown notices, and now plans to offer the clips itself. The move affects not just Comedy Central, but all the brands operated by MTV Networks.

Viacom has allowed the embedding of Comedy Central clips for a few months, and the pilot program was apparently successful enough to be deployed further. The company has made no secret of its antipathy toward the YouTube business model, and its desire to be well compensated for any video clips appearing there. Despite the current hostility, Google and Viacom actually did a video deal back in August 2006. Google agreed to distribute ad-supported video clips from MTV Networks through its AdSense network.

"Collaborating with Google gives us a terrific opportunity to take our content and distribute it even more widely on the web in a seamless and targeted way," said Tom Freston, Viacom's CEO, at the time. "This deal fits in perfectly with our strategy to deliver the best content to our audiences—wherever they are. We're very happy to be working with Google, a true innovator in content distribution."

Despite the rhetoric, the fit was not that perfect, and Viacom now believes that it can do a better job by cutting out the middleman and offering its video directly to users. Whether it will work is another question. Fortunately for Viacom, properties like The Daily Show, The Colbert Report, and MTV programming are hot enough that people will probably view (and embed) them no matter where they're hosted. But YouTube has not so far been willing to offer any sort of filtering technology to content owners who don't sign on the dotted line, so Viacom may find that YouTube remains stuffed with its clips even though it passed on the chance to profit from them.

The result could be a perpetual DMCA takedown blizzard. But now that Viacom is actively promoting clips from its show at its own sites, the company might well consider a lawsuit if its video continues to flood YouTube. After all, Comedy Central clips have long been one of YouTube's most popular items, and Viacom could make the case that YouTube's business model is built on the use of infringing content. If a judge agreed, YouTube's DMCA "safe harbor" protection would dry up, and the S.S. YouTube could find itself stranded on a sand bar.

Viacom's move will be watched closely by other content owners who are still deciding whether they are better off in the wild world of YouTube or on their own. If more companies follow the Viacom model and also began aggressive campaigns against the unauthorized use of their content on YouTube, Google would probably find that its shiny new gem looks a bit tarnished. YouTube could certainly still thrive as a place to share amateur productions, watch music videos, and learn about atheism, but the loss of most copyrighted video content would be a major blow.
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20070214-8843.html





YouTube Hands Over User’s Info to Fox
Marshall Kirkpatrick

Three weeks after receiving a subpoena from the U.S. District Court in Northern California, YouTube has reportedly identified a user accused by 20th Century Fox Television of uploading episodes of the show 24 a week prior to their running on television. That user, named ECOTtotal, is also alleged to have uploaded 12 episodes of The Simpsons, some quite old. Apparently Google and YouTube were willing and able to identify the owner of the username ECOTtotal, acording to a report on InternetNews.com.

Some observers hoped when the subpoenas came to light that Google’s history of resisting US government subpoenas would lead to non-cooperation in this case. The moral high ground is clearly far smaller in this case, though. YouTube has handed over user names before upon request prior to its acquisition.

If the episodes of 24 was already circulating on P2P networks before they hit YouTube, as some reports suggest, then this is little more than a symbolic blood letting. It’s not nearly as reprehensible as some of Yahoo’s actions in China, where the company has allegedly handed over information on a number of users accused of subversive activities by the Chinese government. Some of those users have been sent to prison for years.

None the less, I wonder how YouTube users will feel about the company’s disclosure of personal information. While there was a fair amount of concern raised when the subpoenas were issued, I’m going to guess that most YouTube users will tolerate or even support the company’s decision. Perhaps the rest will stop linking their personal information to accounts used in illicit activities. Privacy experts report that it’s the simple things that get most people burned.

Still, with the Viacom purge, harsh words from NBC and now this all occurring in the first half of February, it’s possible that YouTube could be a very different place in the near future.
http://www.techcrunch.com/2007/02/13...s-info-to-fox/





Substitute Teacher's Porn Conviction Sparks Tech Debate
John Christoffersen

Until recently, Julie Amero lived the quiet life of a small-town substitute teacher in eastern Connecticut. She can't believe that the events of one awful day at work could send her to prison for 40 years.

"I'm scared," said Amero, a 40-year-old Windham resident with no prior criminal record. "I'm just beside myself for something I didn't do."

Amero was convicted in January of exposing students to pornography on her classroom computer. While prosecutors insist she is guilty, some experts believe that the lewd images were caused by unseen spyware and adware programs, which critics call one of the top scourges of the Internet.

Amero, who claims to have little experience with computers, has become a cause celebre for technology experts around the country who say she is the victim of a miscarriage of justice that could happen to anyone.

It all began in October 2004. Amero was assigned to a class of seventh-graders at Kelly Middle School in Norwich, a city of around 37,000 about 40 miles east of Hartford.

Amero says before her class started, the teacher allowed her to e-mail her husband. She used the computer and went to the bathroom, returning to find the permanent teacher gone and two students viewing a Web site on hair styles.

Amero says she chased the students away and started class. But later, she said she noticed pornographic images popping up on the computer screen by themselves. She tried to click the images off, but they kept returning.

Amero, who calls pornography exploitative, says she was under strict orders not to shut the computer off. "I did everything I possibly could to keep them from seeing anything," she said.

On her first break, she ran to the teacher's lounge to get help. One of the teachers promised to call the assistant principal, but Amero says she never came.

At her trial, computer consultant Herb Horner testified that the children went to an innocent Web site on hair styles and were redirected to another hair style site that had pornographic links.

"It can happen to anybody," Horner said.

Prosecutor David Smith contended Amero clicked onto graphic Web sites, which included meetlovers.com and femalesexual.com., and failed to prevent children from seeing the pornography. Several students testified during the three-day trial that they saw pictures of naked men and women, including at least one image of a couple having oral sex.

Amero is emphatic that she did not click on the Web pages. She said any inappropriate images on her computer screen were from adware, which can generate pop-up ads, and not from sites specifically keyed.

Amero and her supporters say the old computer lacked firewall or antispyware protections to prevent inappropriate pop-ups.

"What is extraordinary is the prosecution admitted there was no search made for spyware - an incredible blunder akin to not checking for fingerprints at a crime scene," Alex Eckelberry, president of a Florida software company, wrote recently in the local newspaper. "When a pop-up occurs on a computer, it will get shown as a visited web site and no 'physical click' is necessary."

Critics say adware can track a user's browsing habits and mysteriously appear on computers without a user's full knowledge. Pop-up blockers that can prevent so-called porn storms are now in wide use. The Federal Trade Commission has been cracking down on companies accused of spreading malicious spyware to millions of computer users worldwide.

Some of those cases involve pornographic pop-up ads, said Ari Schwartz, deputy director of the Center for Democracy and Technology.

"It's absolutely plausible," Schwartz said of Amero's case. "It's a huge problem."

But many remain skeptical, including Mark Steinmetz, who served on Amero's jury.

"So many kids noticed this going on," Steinmetz said. "It was truly uncalled for. I would not want my child in her classroom. All she had to do was throw a coat over it or unplug it. We figured even if there were pop-ups, would you sit there?"

Smith, the prosecutor, still gets daily telephone calls protesting his handling of the case. He will not say what he plans to recommend when Amero is sentenced March 2, although the maximum sentence would be 40 years.

John Newsone, a defense attorney in Norwich familiar with the case, said Amero might be spared prison or face perhaps a year to 18 months.

Amero turned down a plea deal in which she would have avoided prison time, insisting she was innocent. She plans to appeal.

Principal Scott Fain, who said he was surprised Amero was prosecuted, said the computer lacked the latest firewall protection because a vendor's bill went unpaid. "I was shocked to see what made it through," he said.

But Fain said Amero was the only one to report such a problem. "We've never had a problem with pop-ups before or since," he said.
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories...02-13-16-06-02





Recasting the Word Processor for a Connected World
Michael Fitzgerald

TIMING is the bane of those who would be innovators. Get it right and you’ll be toasted. Get it wrong and you’re just plain toast. Nobody knows that better than T. J. Kang, a software entrepreneur who hopes that after one decade and two failures, he may be in line for a sip of Champagne.

Mr. Kang runs ThinkFree, which offers Web-based word processor, spreadsheet and presentation software that replicates much of what Microsoft’s comparable applications do, and can easily exchange files and other data with Microsoft applications.

ThinkFree keeps the applications, and any data entered into them, on its own servers, which means that you can gain access to your files from any computer with an Internet connection. The Web, in effect, will act as your computer. The tin-eared technology industry calls these kinds of Web applications software-as-a-service, and despite its terrible name the notion has caught on.

Web-based applications appear to represent a platform shift, which in computer industry jargon signals a change that knocks down existing stalwarts and opens room for new companies to grow. The idea of Web-based applications isn’t new, but the spread of broadband and the development of new software technologies makes them practical.

Indeed, Web applications, in theory, can match anything we see on desktop computers and then do them one better: putting applications like spreadsheets and word processors on the Web means that several people can swap or work on the same document or spreadsheet at the same time without having to e-mail it back and forth.

They also extend the drag-and-drop metaphor of the desktop computer to the Web, so one can pull a picture from a photo-sharing site like Flickr into a document. (This is called a mashup, after the music industry term for mixing song clips.) And, generally, the Web-based versions of these applications are free.

“Our vision has finally been realized,” Mr. Kang said. But it is also true that this is the third platform shift that he has experienced in the last 10 years, and that the first two wound up knocking down almost no one. He started the company that became ThinkFree in 1997, when he was inspired by the idea of a network computer, which held that people could create and store all their work on the Web.

The network computer concept fizzled, but in early 1999 he was able to snare some $24 million in venture capital and recreate his company as an “application service provider” that introduced its Web-based Office alternative in 2000. When that money ran out in 2003, Mr. Kang was rescued by Haansoft, an application maker in South Korea, and was able to keep going.

ThinkFree now has 240,000 users, some of whom pay for it; while the online version of the product is free, if you want to keep your files to yourself, ThinkFree markets a downloadable version of its tools for $49 each. That’s much less than the $400 that Microsoft charges most users for its Office 2007 suite of applications. (It must be noted that ThinkFree does not come with an e-mail product like Microsoft Outlook.)

Among the buyers is Ryder System Inc., the trucking company, which purchased ThinkFree for use across its 700 field offices. Henry Wengier, director of technical services at Ryder, said mechanics, reservation agents and other workers need word processors or spreadsheets only occasionally, and ThinkFree lets them have it all; otherwise it would make no economic sense for him to install Microsoft Office on all 2,000 PCs in those offices.

The deal clincher was the ability to download ThinkFree so that Ryder could run the product behind its computer network’s firewall.

Mr. Kang has plenty of company in the market, including the Web-based application suites Ajax13, gOffice, iNetOffice and ZoHo Virtual Office. There’s also the Writeboard word processor, the EditGrid and Num Sum spreadsheets, and WikiCalc, a new spreadsheet from Dan Bricklin, the software developer who, with Bob Frankston, created the very first spreadsheet, VisiCalc, back in 1979.

Meanwhile, the Web’s 800-pound gorilla, Google, has its own online spreadsheet, and it bought a Web word processor, Writely, in March 2006.

None of these offerings will likely make a dent in Microsoft’s 97 percent share of the $10 billion global market for office suites. Instead, analysts like Mark Levitt at the IDC research firm in Framingham, Mass., say that Web offerings will complement Office, appealing primarily to people who do not want to pay to put Office on their home computers. (The cheapest version of Office is a $150 student version.) Web traffic statistics from Alexa.com and Hitwise.com suggest that these Web-based applications are still curiosities.

The big advantages of Web-based applications “are remarkably ordinary,” said Mitchell D. Kapor, who founded the Lotus Development Corporation and now runs the Open Source Application Foundation, which is developing personal information management software. He said those advantages boiled down to not having to install and maintain software on your system, and the ability to share information more easily. But ordinary can be good, he added, and in a well-established field like desktop applications, small steps are better than big ones.

“From a business perspective, actually, too much innovation is a liability,” Mr. Kapor said. If a product differs too much from previous technology, it can be an “enormous deterrent” to adoption, he said. “A lot of innovators have run afoul of that,” he added, “and been shipwrecked on the rocks of inertia.”

At the moment, Mr. Kapor is trying to avoid those shoals himself. His current project is an open source personal information manager called Chandler, which started as a complete rethinking of the way calendar and contact-management software works, and is about three years behind his original schedule. A version that people can use, he said, will arrive in April — and it will, by design, be a gentler break with the past than he intended at the start.

THESE early efforts will probably open the door for substantially different ways of working. A case in point comes from Virtual Ubiquity, a start-up in the Boston area that has rethought what a Web-based word processor should be.

While the word processor lacks a name and will not be publicly available until the late spring, it has been demonstrated at developer conferences, and the company’s founder and chief executive, Rick Treitman, showed it to me, complete with the requisite crash caused by freshly coded features.

Among these features are an elegant reworking of the menu bar, wonderfully easy ways to move and resize images on the page, and color-coded pop-up comment boxes that are a marked improvement over the “track changes” feature in today’s word processors.

Good software demonstrations do not necessarily translate to successful products, of course. But it is obvious that even the word processor, an advance on the ancient idea of the sheet of paper, still has plenty of room for innovation. A toast, then, to what will come next.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/11/bu...y/11proto.html





College: Wikipedia not Source for Papers

Middlebury College history students are no longer allowed to use Wikipedia in preparing class papers.

The school's history department recently adopted a policy that says it's OK to consult the popular online encyclopedia, but that it can't be cited as an authoritative source by students.

The policy says, in part, "Wikipedia is not an acceptable citation, even though it may lead one to a citable source."

History professor Neil Waters says Wikipedia is an ideal place to start research but an unacceptable way to end it.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070213/...A3ZmNeReftiBIF





Supercharged With All the Answers
Patricia Cohen

WHAT was the first wild-card team to win a Super Bowl? Who was Nixon’s running mate when he lost to Kennedy? What was the best Broadway musical in 1995?

There was a time when such points of trivia might arise at dinner or over drinks and lead to a brain-racking long debate or an unsettled and angry standoff.

But now, with mobile technology and the vast stores of information always and instantly available, disagreements in a car pool, a doctor’s office and, perhaps most frequently, in a bar are being modernized and made over. Like a Colt six-shooter in a frontier town, hand-held wireless devices can immediately settle disputes over points of fact. (For the unwired, the answers are: the Oakland Raiders, Senator Henry Cabot Lodge and “Sunset Boulevard.”)

“It’s stunning to be able to access something so obscure so effortlessly,” said John Hoffman, vice president of documentary programming at HBO. He was recently at WD-50, a Lower East Side restaurant, arguing with two friends about whether the Immaculate Conception referred to the birth of the Virgin Mary or to Jesus. Before you could say “Parsnip tart with quinoa, hazelnuts and bok choy,” Mr. Hoffman used his BlackBerry to connect to Wikipedia and recited that it was Mary who “was preserved by God from the stain of original sin at the time of her own conception.”

“This research use of the BlackBerry verges on magical and it’s not alienating,” he said in an e-mail message. “So much more was learned by all. And no one felt bludgeoned into admitting they were wrong.”

It’s like the classic scene in Woody Allen’s 1977 film “Annie Hall,” when Alvy Singer imagines how he would like to reply to the know-it-all standing behind him in line for a movie and pontificating about Marshall McLuhan. Now, instead of pulling McLuhan out from behind a poster to scold, “You know nothing of my work,” Alvy could just pull out his BlackBerry and shove the Wikipedia entry in the guy’s face.

The digital instant answer, it turns out, has been put to all sorts of uses: People say they have relied on it to judge whether a Scrabble player has spelled out a legitimate word or to surreptitiously identify the B-level celebrity seated next to them at dinner.

Susan Lehman, who works at the Brennan Center for Justice in New York, was at her doctor’s office complaining about stomach pains when she dismissed his suggestion that they were a side effect of medication she was taking.

“The doctor whipped out his BlackBerry,” she said in an e-mail message (from her BlackBerry). “I thought: ‘My stomach hurts. Do you really need to check your e-mail now?’ He glanced at the screen and read off the side effects” from the Physicians Desk Reference.

“I realized the doctor was Googling the medicine on his hand-held, discovering, in fact, that I was dead wrong about the side effects.”

After winning a walk-on role in a SciFi Channel original movie at a charity auction last year, Scott Turner talked to the producer and found out that he was going to play Howard Carter, except he didn’t know who Howard Carter was. A quick Google search on his BlackBerry and he soon learned he would be portraying the man who discovered King Tut’s tomb. “Once you have one,” Mr. Turner said of his BlackBerry, “information is so accessible that there is not need to wait for answers.”

Kimberly Cardiel, a bartender at the ESPN Zone restaurant in Times Square, said that when she started working there more than seven years ago, bar bets or plain old disputes about sports would be decided by checking the newspaper, calling around to friends or asking someone nearby for the answer. Most of the time, the majority ruled. Sometimes the question would be left unsettled. But now, she said, those with hand-held devices or cellphones look it up on the Internet. Instant adjudication.

Ms. Cardiel works a long curved bar that is scattered with daily sports pages and overlooking two eye-widening screens, nine smaller ones, a red zipper flashing scores and rankings and a schedule of coming games. Recently, she said, a group of men came in and one bet $100 that a bartender, a “huge Yankee fanatic,” couldn’t name all the years that the Yankees had won the World Series.

“His friends didn’t even know,” Ms. Cardiel said, so he used his BlackBerry to check through the list as the bartender began ticking off the 26 national championships. “She knew them all,” Ms. Cardiel said. “He gave her the $100 and a good tip on top of that.”

Ms. Cardiel refilled a foaming beer mug for Andrew Robertson, a construction contractor in town to watch the Toronto Maple Leafs face the Rangers at the Garden. Mr. Robertson said he checks his BlackBerry to settle arguments with friends all the time, like the time they were in a bar near his home in Toronto arguing over which National Hockey League player holds the rookie scoring record for a single season. Almost everyone was sure it was Sidney Crosby, a Canadian (of course) who plays for the Pittsburgh Penguins. No. Teemu Selanne holds the record. (He scored 76 goals with the Winnipeg Jets in the 1992-93 season.)

Surveys done by the Pew Internet and American Life Project in Washington show that three-quarters of Americans have cellphones and 44 percent of that number can connect to the Internet, said John Horrigan, the project’s associate director. The number of people with hand-held devices is much smaller, 11 percent of the population, and of that group 57 percent can surf the Web. “Adoption of technology is obviously very uneven,” Mr. Horrigan said, adding that for the most computer-savvy Americans, about one-fifth of the population, will have a wireless device.

David Allen and Tom Sherman, managers for a call-center company, are clearly among the savvy. But checking their hand-held devices at one end of ESPN’s second-floor bar, they complained that the technology was still too slow to really be that useful in settling disputes. “It is a pain,” Mr. Allen said, as he started punching keys on his BlackBerry. “Not a lot of stuff is formatted. It’s like being on dial-up.”

Mr. Sherman said the devices need to be a lot more user friendly. “You search and search and search,” he said. “By that time, you can pick up a newspaper.”

Mr. Horrigan agreed. He was at a pre-New Year’s Eve party where the hosts had set up a contest: they named a male athlete of the year, a female athlete of the year, a Pulitzer- winning novel and an Oscar-winning picture, all from the 1970s and 1980s. A copy of the book and the movie would go to the winner.

“So you had that information and you had to guess what year those things happened,” Mr. Horrigan said. Right away, he said, “a few people pulled out their BlackBerrys and started to try to find the answer.”

Wasn’t that cheating? “That issue was raised,” he said. But in the end, it didn’t matter.

“I won,” Mr. Horrigan said, “and I didn’t use a BlackBerry.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/15/fa...ml?ref=fashion





Villaraigosa Introduces LA Wireless Internet Service By 2009

Los Angeles residents may have free or very inexpensive wireless Internet service by 2009, under a plan announced Tuesday by Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa.

The proposed L.A. WiFi Initiative could cost nearly $60 million and would likely be funded by advertisers and telecommunications providers, creating the nation's largest municipal wireless Internet network.

"By giving every resident high-speed access, we will transform Los Angeles into a cutting-edge city across every neighborhood and every economic sector," Villaraigosa said.

"LA WiFi will help us meet the technology needs of our world-class media and creative industries, give a leg up to small businesses, plug every neighborhood directly into the knowledge-based global economy and make computer training programs for students an after-school reality."

The City Council may put the project out to bid as early as fall. The winning company would attach antennas on city telephone poles, city buildings and other structures.

"In today's fast-paced world, we need to give hard-working Angelenos an easier way of doing business with the city," Councilman Tony Cardenas said. "Providing a citywide wireless telecommunications program is another way of bridging the gap between local government and the communities it serves."
http://www.nbc4.tv/technology/11005135/detail.html





Houston Partnering with Earthlink on Citywide Wireless Network
AP

The city of Houston said Tuesday it had struck a deal with Earthlink Inc. to build a citywide wireless Internet network that would eventually be the nation's largest at about 600 square miles.

Houston would join more than 250 communities across the nation that have built or plan to build a public Wi-Fi network offering cheaper or free wireless Internet access to residents, businesses and government workers.

Financial terms of the deal weren't released. As part of the arrangement, EarthLink has agreed to offer a discount rate of $10 per month or lower for up to 40,000 low-income users.

No timeframe for construction or the launch of services was disclosed. Once completed, Houston's municipal network would be the largest in North America, the city and company said.

Cities see municipal wireless networks as an important tool for economic growth and empowering residents, but telecommunications companies and other critics knock the projects as unfair competition and a waste of tax dollars.

In a statement, Mayor Bill White said the system would significantly lower the costs for residents seeking broadband Internet access.

``It will provide a scarce resource to help our low-income households have access, benefiting students at home, helping telecommuters for whom childcare or transportation creates limitations, and benefiting telemedicine in the future,'' he said. ``Houston's work force will be more productive.''

City officials said they chose Atlanta-based EarthLink over four other companies, partly because of its experience setting up broadband networks in other cities.

EarthLink has Wi-Fi initiatives planned or under way in other cities including Philadelphia; New Orleans; Alexandria, Va.; Anaheim, Calif.; and San Francisco.
http://www.siliconvalley.com/mld/sil...l/16690675.htm





Drive-By Pharming Attack Could Hit Home Networks
Kevin Murphy

Security researchers at Symantec Corp and Indiana University have figured out a way to compromise home networks using a single line of JavaScript in a web page.

The attack, which they have called "drive-by pharming", would enable attackers to convincingly pretend to be any web site on the internet, making it fairly trivial to repeatedly phish for sensitive information, install malware on users' machines, or steal email.

"When I tried it out for first time, when I wrote the proof-of-concept, I had a moment of internal panic when I saw how easy it was to do," said Symantec senior principal researcher Zulfikar Ramzan, and one of the paper's authors.

Don't panic yet. There are no bad guys known to be using the technique, and making your network completely invulnerable is a simple case of setting a strong router password, if you have not done so already.

The attack works because most of the popular home routers ship with default passwords, default internal IP address ranges, and web-based configuration interfaces.

The exploit is a single line of JavaScript loaded with a default router IP address, a default password, and an HTTP query designed to reconfigure the router to use the attacker's DNS servers.

The attacker would have to persuade the user to visit the web page containing the attack code. This could be done with spammed links, or by inserting it into a page on a compromised web server on a popular site.

Once the victim's router was configured to use a bad DNS server, the attacker could redirect any internet domain to the server of his choosing whenever he felt like it, without ever having to touch the victim's network.

The attacker could, for example, redirect paypal.com to his own phishing server in order to steal money, or bounce windowsupdate.com to his own malware distribution site to try to create a botnet.

While users are becoming increasingly savvy to the tell-tale signs of phishing attacks, this new pharming attack would confuse matters further by showing an actual domain in the browser address bar, implying that the user really is where they think they are.

Unlike phishing attacks, which need the user to click on the attacker's link, pharming attacks work when a user visits a web site of their own volition, and are not on-guard.

Pharming has been around as a concept for some time, but it's not a particularly widespread problem.

Previous pharming techniques have involved altering the Hosts file on a victims computer (in which case, you've already got access to their machine so you may as well install something more interesting) or breaking into DNS servers at ISPs, which is not easy.

This new attack is much easier. Ramzan said he's verified it works on routers from D-Link, Netgear and Linksys, three of the major brands, which generally ship with default username/password combinations.

The Indiana researchers informally estimated that about 50% of home network users have not changed the default administrator username and password on their routers.

"A lot of people don't change their router password," said Ramzan. "A lot of routers don't ever take you to a place where you can obviously change your password during installation, they just kinda assume you'll do that by yourself."

The paper presents the JavaScript code for conducting the attack against a specific model of D-Link router with the default settings. A single line would only be required for each model with a known default configuration. There are web sites that publish this information.

A more complex attack would be able to determine which model of router the victim is using by first establishing what the router's internal IP address is and then attempting to load known interface graphics from the router's web server. This would broaden the base of potential victims.

Because the attack would be delivered as JavaScript embedded in an otherwise normal-looking web page, it would be almost completely transparent to the victim, whether it succeeded or failed.

The "Drive-By Pharming" paper was published on the Indiana University web site in December, but has yet to be formally published or presented at a conference. Symantec intends to publicize its existence today.

As for the ethics of publishing, potentially putting ideas into the heads of bad guys, Ramzan said that while the attack is fairly straightforward, the solution is even easier. There's no need to wait for a patch from a vendor.

"There's a very simple fix for this problem, something people should have been doing all along, which is to change the default password," he said. "Had there not been a simple solution to it, I would have been much more hesitant about publishing this."

"We haven't seen an example of this in the wild, but some of the building blocks are out there," he said. "It's really just a matter of time before we do see this."

The paper was co-authored by Sid Stamm and Markus Jakobsson, both of Indiana University.
http://www.cbronline.com/article_new...2-0DED432A0CA2





When It Comes to Innovation, Geography Is Destiny
G. Pascal Zachary

IN our celebrity-studded world, where we make a cult of genius and individual achievement, the mind rebels at the notion that geography trumps personality. Yet the inescapable lesson of the iPod, Google, eBay, Netflix and Silicon Valley in general is that where you live often trumps who you are.

Just ask Sim Wong Hoo. About seven years ago, I met Mr. Sim in Singapore, where he was born and was then living. He talked about the rising creativity of Singaporeans and with a flourish, as if to dramatically make his point, he pulled out a prototype of a hand-held music player that he insisted would replace Sony’s famous Walkman.

Mr. Sim’s device was breathtaking, possessing all the elements of what we now know as the MP3 player. Yet today, a Silicon Valley icon, Apple, dominates the market for MP3 players with the iPod. In recognition of its emergence as a music powerhouse, last month Apple dropped the word “computer” from its name.

Some months after my Singapore encounter, I visited the thriving code-writing communities in Tallinn, Estonia; Reykjavik, Iceland; and Helsinki, Finland, three Nordic cities that were being transformed by advances in cellphones, mobile computing and the Internet. Their tight-knit network of engineers seemed poised to create the tools required to make good on a much-hyped prediction: the death of distance. After all, if necessity is the mother of invention, no one had more need than the hardy Estonians, Icelanders and Finns, living on the frozen edge of Europe, when it came to killing distance as a barrier.

Yet these Nordic innovators were blindsided by two Silicon Valley engineers whose tools we experience whenever we “Google” the Web. Their company, Google Inc., posted a quarterly profit of $1 billion on Jan. 31.

Google’s astonishing rise and Apple’s reinvention are reminders that, when it comes to great ideas, location is crucial. “Face-to-face is still very important for exchange of ideas, and nowhere is this exchange more valuable than in Silicon Valley,” says Paul M. Romer, a professor in the Graduate School of Business at Stanford who is known for studying the economics of ideas.

In short, “geography matters,” Professor Romer said. Give birth to an information-technology idea in Silicon Valley and the chances of success seem vastly higher than when it is done in another ZIP code.

No wonder venture capitalists, who finance bright ideas, remain obsessed with finding the next big thing in the 50-mile corridor between San Jose and San Francisco. About one-quarter of all venture investment in the United States goes to Silicon Valley enterprises. And, according to a new report from Joint Venture: Silicon Valley Network, a regional business group, the percentage has risen, to 27 percent in 2005 from 21 percent in 2000.

Many times in the past, pundits have declared an end to Silicon Valley’s hegemony, and even today there are prognosticators who see growing threats from innovation centers in India and China. Certainly, great technology ideas can come from anywhere, but they keep coming from Silicon Valley because of two related factors: increasing returns and first-mover advantage.

These twin principles, debated in head-scratching terms by professional economists, essentially explain why Intel maintains a lead in high-performance chips, why Apple sustains a large lead in music players and why Google’s search engine remains a crowd pleaser.

On a gut level, we all can understand how these two factors work. Who wouldn’t want to play for a perennial contender? For the same reason that Andy Pettitte signs with the Yankees, the best and the brightest technologists from around the world make their way to northern California.

“All that venture capital attracts a lot of ideas — and the people who are having those ideas,” said Stephen B. Adams, an assistant professor of management at the Franklin P. Perdue School of Business at Salisbury University in Maryland who has studied the rise of Silicon Valley.

Newcomers plug into an existing network of seasoned pros that “isn’t matched anywhere else in the world,” says AnnaLee Saxenian, dean of the School of Information at the University of California, Berkeley, and author of “Regional Advantage,” a book about the competitive edge held by tech centers like Silicon Valley and the Route 128 suburbs near Boston. “That allows people to recombine technical ideas much more quickly here than anywhere else,” Professor Saxenian added.

“In terms of creativity, the Valley remains as far ahead of the rest of the world as ever,” she said. “People in the Valley generate new ideas and test them much more quickly than anywhere else. They aren’t a super race; it’s their environment.”

Silicon Valley is not invincible. The logic of increasing returns and the first-mover advantage can be overdrawn. Other clusters in the United States and around the world will commercialize great ideas, and the Valley will endure down cycles again, as it has in the past. Remember how the Japanese conquered memory-chip manufacturing in the 1980s, until then a staple of the Valley’s business? And, of course, the dot-com bust of five years ago remains a painful reminder of how success breeds hubris and humiliating failure.

Americans naturally harbor many fears about losing their edge, especially with the nation mired in war, the dollar’s value sliding and the health care system strained. Rivals, notably in India and China, see Silicon Valley’s pre-eminent position as a prize that they will inevitably take. Yet they face an elusive foe. Every time Silicon Valley recovers from failure, it seems to grow more durable, almost in the same way a person becomes “immune” to a disease after a brush with it.

Fifty years ago, chips were the engine of Silicon Valley. In the late 1970s came the personal computer and data-storage drives, then software, and more recently the dynamic vortex of the Web, new media and online commerce. (EBay, Netflix and, of course, Google and Yahoo are among the names that come to mind.)

These serial renewals are a marvel.

SIR PETER HALL, the British scholar of urban clusters, asks in “Cities in Civilization,” his history of geography and business innovation: “What makes a particular city, at a particular time, suddenly become immensely creative, exceptionally innovative? Why should this spirit flower for a few years, generally a decade or two at most, and then disappear as suddenly as it came?”

Sir Peter’s words highlight an enduring human mystery. In the case of Silicon Valley, the world rightly waits for the flame of creativity to burn out. That’s fair enough. To each, a season (or maybe a few). Living long and large, Silicon Valley surely will wither like a dead flower someday. My advice, though, is: Don’t hold your breath.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/11/bu...ey/11ping.html





Is Radio Still Radio if There’s Video?
Richard Siklos

Ted Stryker, a D.J. at KROQ in Los Angeles, considers it a perk of the job to wear shorts and T-shirts to work. But last Sunday as he dressed for the Grammy Awards, he pulled out his best blazer and a flashy belt buckle, knowing three video cameras would stream live coverage of his show to the Web sites of 147 CBS radio stations.

“What’s great about radio is no one knows what you’re wearing,” Mr. Stryker said by telephone as he made his way through the throng at the Grammys. “I wanted to make myself a little bit more presentable.”

Mr. Stryker, who has done some TV work in the past, said that to create his best radio voice, he often must contort his face in embarrassing ways.

“It’s so different doing radio compared to TV,” he said. “Who knows what faces I make when I’m talking on the radio? I hope I’m not making the same faces today.”

The nation’s commercial radio stations have seen the future, and it is in, of all things, video. As a result, the stereotype of a silken-voiced jockey like Mr. Stryker, slumped and disheveled in the studio chair, may never be the same.

Across the country, radio stations are putting up video fare on their Web sites, ranging from a simple camera in the broadcast booth to exclusive coverage of events like the Super Bowl to music videos, news clips and Web-only musical performances.

“This is no longer the age of ‘having a face for radio,’ ” said Dianna Jason, the senior director of marketing and promotions at Power 106, a Los Angeles hip-hop radio station. “This is a visual medium now.”

Audiences in Los Angeles, for example, will be able to tune in today to Power 106 for an annual Valentine’s Day event called “Trash Your Ex,” in which jilted listeners are invited to put mementos from past loves in a giant wood chipper — and to let it whir while the disc jockey, Big Boy, urges them on. And for the first time, audiences everywhere will be able to watch streamed video of the event, to be held in a parking lot in Pasadena, on the Web site power106.com.

Whereas video was once said to have killed the radio star — according to the pop song by the Buggles that was the first video shown on MTV in 1981 — it is now emerging as an unlikely savior for an industry facing an array of challenges.

In the age of YouTube and the radio talk show hosts Howard Stern and Don Imus as television stalwarts, this might not seem all that remarkable, except that the radio industry has been singularly tardy in embracing the interactive age.

But now many of the largest radio companies are scrambling to stay relevant as their listeners’ attention is drawn in many directions — iPods, cellphones, satellite radio and various streaming and downloading musical offerings from companies like Yahoo and AOL. “A lot of our stations are starting to embrace video and generate new revenue streams,” said Joel Hollander, the chief executive of CBS Radio, the nation’s second-largest radio company, after Clear Channel Communications. “I hope video helps the radio star. Maybe radio will save the video star?”

More than 90 percent of Americans still listen to traditional radio. But the amount of time they tune in over the course of a week has fallen by 14 percent over the last decade, according to Arbitron ratings.

Industry revenues are flat, and the Bloomberg index of radio stocks is down some 40 percent over the last three years.

Reflecting the investor malaise, a group of private equity companies has proposed buying Clear Channel Communications and taking it private.

Video now makes up only a tiny fraction of the $20 billion a year that radio generates in advertising sales. But it could represent a much-needed new source of growth in a rapidly expanding online video market that everyone from Google to newspapers to broadcast television wants to be in.

Radio executives and personalities say their video efforts will be different because they capitalize on radio’s traditional strength in using on-air personalities and local events to draw in listeners.

Taking a cue from YouTube and the rise of user-generated video, a polished, TV-quality product is often not the objective. Another Power 106 video effort featured a staff member, dressed like a shrub, jumping out of a planter to surprise visitors to the station’s office on Halloween.

An alternative rock station, 94.7 FM in Portland, Ore., last fall began a “Bootleg Video” series in which a listener is lent a video camera to record a clip of a local performance by a hot band like the Killers for the Web site. “Sometimes it’s a little shaky, but we want that,” said Mark Hamilton, manager at the station, which is owned by Entercom Communications. “We don’t want it to be perfect.”

The Web site for the radio station WFLZ in Tampa, Fla., features a video series called “Naked,” on the lives of its hosts away from the microphone. “I’m not very pretty today,” one of the station’s disc jockeys, Ashlee Reid, says sheepishly on the latest installment as she arrives at work and realizes the cameras are rolling before bantering with a colleague about chest hair.

Ms. Reid, who is 26, said being videotaped was odd, but in the year that the radio station has been producing monthly installments of the show for downloading, it has not yet caused her and her colleagues to alter their hair or wardrobe. “Maybe we should, but we don’t,” she said.

Similarly, producers for Adam Carolla, the Los Angeles morning host whose program is carried on many CBS Radio stations, regularly record vérité clips featuring Mr. Carolla and a co-host, Danny Bonaduce, for posting on the Web.

The nation’s biggest radio companies are also doing slicker productions, like Mr. Stryker’s Grammy show, that try to capitalize on their size and reach.

Clear Channel, whose Internet efforts are led by Evan Harrison, an executive vice president, has elaborate video programming available on the Web sites of its 1,200 stations, including Tampa’s 933FLZ.com, where “Naked” is featured. Clear Channel has made some 6,000 music videos available for downloading online, but has also been producing original video content that individual stations can feature on their Web sites and disc jockeys can promote on the air.

These programs include “Stripped,” a series of taped performances by artists like Young Jeezy and Nelly Furtado that are often acoustic or done in small clubs. The company has also been producing “Video 6 Pack” in which bands like Fall Out Boy appear as hosts of their own program and play videos they like.

According to comScore Media Metrix, Clear Channel sites ranked sixth in December among music Web sites, behind MTV, AOL, Yahoo, MySpace and Artistdirect.

Radio industry executives stressed that, so far, their video efforts could be considered experimental and only one facet — along with blogs and audio podcasts and a nascent service called HD Radio — of how the industry is adapting for the Internet age.

“People are either going to have to get with the program or get lost,” Fatman Scoop, a disc jockey on Hot 97, an FM station in New York, said in an interview. “People don’t sit in front of a radio for three hours like they used to. If they don’t hear a song they like, they go to the Internet.”

In his case, what listeners will find on hot97.com is a weekly video show about relationships that Fatman produces with his wife, Shanda Freeman, called “Man and Wife.” Introduced in November, the shows are usually taped in the couple’s bedroom in New Jersey and run several minutes each.

Fatman, who prefers to be known by his radio name, said that the show was entirely owned by him but that his bosses at Hot 97 — owned by Emmis Communications, like Power 106 — recognize that raising the visibility of its personalities on the Internet could only be good for attracting listeners and advertisers.

“What we’re trying to do is reach the listener in any way possible,” he said. “If somebody sees that you’re on ‘Man and Wife’ on hot97.com, they will listen to your show.”

Radio and video may be a more natural fit than expected. In his book “Understanding Media,” the cultural theorist Marshall McLuhan wrote that “the effect of radio is visual.”

Certainly, Howard Stern and Don Imus have had video extensions of their radio shows for years. Even Mr. Stern’s new employer, Sirius Satellite Radio, is planning a move in that direction. The company has said it plans to start beaming a video service of children’s programming to play on screens in the cars of Sirius subscribers sometime this year.

For now, most of the new video ventures originating from radio are just starting to generate revenue. Mr. Hollander of CBS Radio and Mr. Harrison of Clear Channel declined to say how much new revenue they were attracting.

Mr. Hollander said plans were in the works at the CBS Corporation, which is better known for its television network, to begin integrating some of its video programming into the radio division’s Web sites. The Web site for WSCR, the company’s sports radio station in Chicago, featured live video from its pregame coverage of the Super Bowl in Miami. Earlier, the station streamed coverage of its 15th-anniversary celebration.

Mitch Rosen, the station manager for WSCR, said the video efforts attracted advertisements from 8 to 10 businesses that normally thought of the station as only an audio outlet. To add some visual flair to the anniversary broadcast, Mr. Rosen put two of the station’s popular hosts in tuxedos. “They did get some ribbing from listeners,” Mr. Rosen said.

For crossover advocates like Fatman, however, audio and video will soon be interchangeable in the D.J.’s repertory. “That’s where it’s going,” he said. “It’s getting to the point where you’re going to have to be good at both.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/14/bu...a/14radio.html





Telstra to Apple: 'Stick to Your Knitting'

Telstra has all but ruled itself out of the running to carry Apple's new iPhone mobile when it is released here next year with a senior executive launching a withering critique of the device.

Telstra's operations chief Greg Winn, considered the telco's second-in-change and the man who oversees most of its big product decisions, believes the iPhone may meet some significant operational challenges when it makes its market debut.

"There's an old saying - stick to your knitting - and Apple is not a mobile phone manufacturer, that's not their knitting," Mr Winn told AAP.

"You can pretty much be assured that Nokia, Motorola, Samsung, Sony Ericsson and ZTE and others will be coming out with devices that have similar functionality."

In addition to mobile calling, music portability and email capability, the iPhone boasts a vastly enhanced design that significantly challenges most mobiles' current approaches to user interface.

The phone's touchscreen is also considered a significant drawcard but it's technology Mr Winn does not believe makes the device truly revolutionary.

"I think people overreacted to it - there was not a lot of tremendously new stuff if you think about it," he said.

"It was maybe kind of cool on the touchscreen technology but touchscreen technology is another domain, so it's only a matter of time before it went to the device."

His comments were all the more surprising given that Telstra was originally touted as being hot favourite to cut a deal with Apple.

The iPhone uses a GSM wireless technology called EDGE, which is widely known as "2.5G". It is not clear why Apple did not decide to support faster 3G technologies, although this has not been ruled out of product revisions.

In Australia, only Telstra uses EDGE, making its network the likely one that the iPhone would be used on - based on the device's current specifications.

Mr Winn said from a marketing perspective, Apple had committed a number of oversights, including its name, which provoked a corporate slanging match with enterprise systems group Cisco, which had previously registered "iPhone" as one of its own trademarks.

Apple's exclusive carrier arrangement with US mobile carrier Cingular was also puzzling.

"They did an exclusive with Cingular and they talked about a global rollout - well, Cingular is not a global company," he said.

The non-replaceable battery may also be a sticking point with consumers, as it has been with the iPod.

But while the phone will probably leave a mark in mobile design, its commercial success is less certain.

"I am absolutely sure that device will be successful initially," Mr Winn said.

"What I'm not sure of is how much money are they willing to devote to all of the life cycle management and upgrades."

The iPhone was announced to enormous fanfare by Apple's CEO Steve Jobs in San Francisco last month after months, if not years of speculation.

The iPhone is a touchscreen device capable of making mobile phone calls, playing music and browsing the web. It comes in 4GB and 8GB models, which are priced at $US499 and $US599 respectively.

It won't be available to Australians until next year, but US consumers will be able to buy it from June.
http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2007/...05363291.html#





Lions Gate Opens Up to iTunes
Candace Lombardi

Lions Gate Entertainment's movies are now available for download at Apple's iTunes Store, both companies announced Monday. The "near-DVD" quality films cost $10 to download. Lions Gate has a library of more than 10,000 films; about 400 of those are set to be available on iTunes over the coming weeks, according to the announcement. Movies for sale on iTunes will include Dirty Dancing, Chaplin, Rambo, and California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's classics Terminator 2: Judgment Day and Total Recall.

Apple has slowly been adding film companies to its repertoire on iTunes. Flicks backed by Walt Disney Pictures, Pixar Animation Studios, Touchstone Pictures and Miramax Film are available on iTunes through a partnership with Walt Disney. They can be downloaded for between $13 and $15, depending on their release date, with library titles available for $10. A recent study revealed that while many people wouldn't shoplift a DVD from a store, they would have no problem downloading movies illegally.
http://news.com.com/Lions+Gate+opens...3-6158506.html





Appeerances Can Be Deceiving: What's That 40-Gig Hard Drive Doing Inside My Apple TV?
Robert X. Cringely

The new Apple TV media extender is supposed to ship this month, perhaps even by the time you read this column, and if you are like me you are wondering what that 40-gig hard drive is doing inside. I'm guessing we won't know for sure until later this year, though of course I also think I know the secret answer, too.

It will be interesting to hear Apple's explanation for the hard drive. It would make good sense, for example, to keep storage close to the attached TV if Apple had some doubts about the speed of the network connection between the Apple TV box and the Mac or Windows machine running Front Row. If we squint hard and enter a state of suspended disbelief that might be plausible. Only that makes no sense.

The native speed for Apple's 640-by-480 streams is 1.5 megabits per second, which could be easily handled by the Apple TV's 802.11g or 802.11n wireless connections and probably even by old 802.11b. The box's wired connection is 100-megabit-per-second Ethernet. No, it's not a network problem that has Apple putting that drive in the Apple TV; if there's a network problem it is between the host PC or Mac and the Internet, and Apple handles that simply by forcing users to download files, rather than streaming them. To a certain extent with downloaded files, slower doesn't matter.

Apple might tell us that the Apple TV can play video from the hard drive without requiring a Mac or PC on the network. This is an answer that I would believe and I really hope it is the case, because wouldn't it be great to still watch a movie even when your computer isn't running in the next room? And it might be true because Apple loses nothing since you'd still need the host computer to load video into the Apple TV.

Or maybe Apple won't mention the hard drive at all, saying only that it is intended for some future software release. I believe this, too, but people are going to have a hard time paying for hardware they can't even use. So I think it is likely Apple will have at least something we can do with that drive.

At $299 the Apple TV is a pretty expensive video extender, but if you think of it instead as a computer, it is darned cheap. It might, in fact, be the prototype for a whole family of Mac Sub-Minis. We know it has an Intel processor, though nobody says WHICH Intel processor. We know it runs an operating system and has a GUI. It wouldn't surprise me at all if the Apple TV hardware is based on the iPhone, with the exception that the mobile phone transceiver is replaced with Apple's WiFi bits.

We'll know soon enough the answer to these hardware questions as Apple starts shipping and hackers start tearing apart Apple TV's on the day they are purchased. My wish list for those hackers, by the way, isn't to know the clock speed or the type of processor or the amount of memory installed. I want to know the identity of the Apple TV's H.264 decoder chip. There's a lot to be learned from the identity of THAT chip. Remember you heard it here first.

I'll tell you my theory about the Apple TV in a moment, but first I want to riff a bit on the other components in the new ministack -- the Mac Mini and the new AirPort Extreme Base Station. All three components have the same form factor, very similar cases, and they stack beautifully one atop the other. But why? Under what circumstance would you even want to stack all three together? It makes no sense to me.

If you have an Apple TV next to your plasma screen, why do you need a Mac Mini there, too? The Apple TV runs its own GUI and has its own storage for 50 hours of video or thousands of songs and pictures. You may as well put the Mini in another room and connect by WiFi or Ethernet. Or you could forgo the Apple TV and just connect your Mac Mini to the TV through a DVI or S-Video connection and still use iTunes and Front Row: again no stacking required. The AirPort base station makes the least sense of all since the Mini and the Apple TV can communicate ad hoc just fine using 802.11g.

There is simply no imaginable situation where you would want to stack together these three components that are clearly made to be stacked. Unless what you want to do is somehow connect the Apple TV to the Mac Mini through the AirPort at a range of three inches just to take advantage of 802.11n, which the Apple TV and the AirPort Extreme have but the Mac Mini doesn't. Well that's just crazy.

And yet the components are clearly designed to be stacked, so either there is a part of this story we have not yet been told or Steve Jobs is just screwing with our brains.

I wouldn't put it past him.

Here is what I think is happening with the Apple TV hard drive. I think sometime this summer Apple will ship a firmware upgrade for the Apple TV and it will suddenly gain an important new capability. That's when the Apple TV becomes a node on the iTunes peer-to-peer video network.

If the Apple TV is plugged in it is turned on. Did you notice that? That means the hard drive will have at least the capability of running 24/7. Now envision a BitTorrent-like file distribution system that is controlled primarily by iTunes, rather than by you or me. A centrally controlled P2P system is VERY powerful because it allows for the pre-positioning of content.

Say Disney releases Cars 1.5 -- a direct-to-DVD release expected to sell millions of copies in its first few days. There is no way iTunes could even hope to participate in a launch like that simply because there isn't enough bandwidth at a good price -- or any price. Even BitTorrent would have troubles handling a small part of such a launch until enough seeds were populated and running. But what if the movie was effectively pre-seeded -- loaded over a few days on a distribution tree of thousands of Apple TV boxes which could then deliver the movie locally at high speed if purchased. Or if not purchased the seeded copies could still work together to serve other Apple TVs on the same ISP subnet.

Go back over my columns for the last three weeks and you'll see nearly all the information required to either understand or implement such a system.

There are products like this already in operation, such as GridNetworks from Seattle or Mike Homer's Kontiki network, now part of VeriSign. It isn't rocket science, but to succeed, networks of this sort need lots of nodes, especially nodes that remain on 24/7.

If you are wondering what Apple might accomplish with such a peer-to-peer distribution system, it would be nothing less than the undermining of TV. First Apple would eliminate its current dependence on Akamai, reducing its network costs for iTunes by about 100X, making the network costs effectively free. Hello HDTV!

Second, Apple would have one or many content channels roughly equivalent to an HBO, Showtime, or perhaps Discovery. Yes, I think Apple will do direct content deals, buying programming that it will then either distribute to subscribers or support with Google ads, thanks to Google CEO Eric Schmidt's position on the Apple board. Apple's network will give you the same content with or without ads, delivered from the same servers, one of which may be underneath your TV.

There are only two forces I can see necessary for this P2P deployment: gaining a big enough installed base of Apple TV boxes and the removal of some or all Digital Rights Management (DRM) code from the content. Gaining a critical mass of Apple TV boxes simply comes down to keeping the real purpose secret until there are 500,000 to 1 million units in the field.

Oops, did I just let that secret out?

And removing DRM is what Steve Jobs started preaching about last week and will continue to do so until he gets his way.

Steve ALWAYS gets his way, you know.

The business case for Apple is downright amazing. Lowering network costs by 99 percent will enable the company to add to its portfolio the equivalent of half a Time Warner. Apple becomes a cable company without trucks or network costs. It becomes a whole bunch of cable networks with an instant audience the exact size of the iTunes registered user base, which is frigging enormous. Add $40 billion to market cap, no waiting.

But I STILL don't know why those components were made stackable.
http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/2...16_001673.html





Where’s Pablo Soto?
Thomas Mennecke

Asking “where’s Pablo” these days isn’t terribly different from asking, “Where’s Waldo?” The seemingly elusive P2P programmer, who shot into file-sharing stardom for his work on Blubster and Piolet (Manolito P2P), has appeared quiet lately.

Yet this doesn’t mean Pablo hasn’t been busy. In addition to fixing the connectivity issues with the Manolito P2P network, Pablo is taking a more forward looking approach to his next project. Named “Omemo” (Ownership Masquerading Explorable Metadata Overlay), he and his consortium of programmers are working feverishly to establish the next great leap forward in file-sharing technology.

The next project for the Manolito group utilizes the traditional “search” and “storage” philosophy of current P2P networks; however Omemo is significantly different as it will create a virtual hard drive among peers. Like any storage medium, the end user can save his or her file, however the file will be stored in cyberspace rather than the individual’s hard drive. If the network were to reach its full potential, the end user would experience a near limitless supply of storage space – as well as a near limitless supply of information.

“…most commercial vendors of P2P technology have failed to detect the real needs of end users,” Omemo’s homepage reads. “We intend to fill the gap, creating a distributed storage network that is fast, scalable and anonymous, allowing users to not only search-download from it, but also storing their files persistently on this virtual drive, and organizing its contents in folders.”

Each user dedicates a certain disk space percentage to the network and contributes to the virtual hard drive community. If the Manolito faithful can be converted over to this new project, it may spark enough curiosity to make this an interesting step forward for the file-sharing community.
http://www.slyck.com/story1397.html





P2P Gets Personal

Companies such as AllPeers, Pando, and Zapr aren't waving the pirate flag - but they're using Napster-like technology to help you send photos to Grandma
Erick Schonfeld

Sending Grandma a video of baby's first steps via e-mail is a bit like taking a horse and sleigh over the river and through the woods to her house: tediously slow and prone to freezing.

In the YouTube era, our hard drives are stuffed with bandwidth-hogging home movies, music, and photos that we share with friends and family using technology built to transmit short text messages. Now a slew of companies are stepping in with a solution to the broadband bottleneck: personal peer-to-peer file sharing.

But companies such as AllPeers, Pando, and Zapr aren't waving the pirate flag. Unlike the original Napster and Kazaa file-swapping services, which were targeted by the music industry for allowing massive copyright infringement, this new breed of file sharing is largely a private affair, designed to let people trade files one-to-one or among a selected group.

Some services, such as MediaMax and Myfabrik, avoid file-sharing technology altogether by allowing subscribers to store their digital goodies on a central server. The advantages over e-mail: fewer limits on how big files can be, and it's all just a click away for you and your friends.

The demand for such services is growing. Every day YouSendIt, for instance, transfers more than 30 terabytes of files among its members - the equivalent of the contents of about 1,000 laptop computers. MediaMax, which is operated by a San Diego company called Streamload, sends 3 million files among its members daily and stores 650 terabytes of their data.

Venture capitalists, meanwhile, are pouring money into personal file-sharing startups. In the past two years, Fabrik has raised $12 million in funding, Pando has scored $11 million, and YouSendIt has pocketed $5 million.

Most of the newer services have little revenue to speak of yet. The exceptions are Streamload, which claims $3 million in revenue for 2005; TransMedia's Glide, which is on track to bring in at least $3.5 million in subscription fees this year; and YouSendIt, which should hit $1 million. Only TransMedia claims to be profitable.

Each service has its own twist. The website-based ones let you upload files and then send links to your friends to view or download them. MediaMax, for instance, lets you store 25 gigabytes for free and then collects $5 to $30 a month, depending on how much you upload. Fabrik's recently launched Myfabrik offers 1 gigabyte for free and then charges a monthly fee of 49 cents per gigabyte thereafter. It encourages people to use the service for all the pictures and music they want to share on social-networking sites like MySpace.

On the peer-to-peer side, it's all about file transfers. AllPeers's software is an extension to Firefox that turns the browser into a file-sharing service complete with a buddy list showing who's online and what they have to trade. AllPeers, based in London and Prague, is backed by the same venture capitalists who invested in Skype (now owned by eBay (Charts)).

Meanwhile, when you send a file using Pando, the recipient gets a regular e-mail with a small attachment. By opening the attachment, that person connects with every other Pando user who is online and also has that file, along with a central backup server.

As for Singapore-based Zapr, you simply drag files to a list of people you want to share with, and Zapr sends each of them an e-mail with a Web link. When they click on the link, they can download the files from your computer as long as you're online.

"The link is our currency," explains Zapr chief marketing officer Michael Liubinskas, a former executive at Kazaa operator Sharman Networks. "Since it's private," he adds, "this is about personal file sharing for family and friends. We wanted to build something legally safe."

So how do these companies plan to make money?

Some are trying to sell subscriptions to heavy users, such as graphic designers or photographers who need to send large files to clients. Others are dabbling in advertising, which is none too surprising given that the typical customer at this point is a tech-savvy 18- to 34-year-old male - in other words, marketing nirvana. YouSendIt CEO Ivan Koon, a former Adobe executive, wants to build his company into a Web-based document management service for small businesses.

Other file sharers plan to license their services. Streamload sells a white-label version of its product to companies like Sprint (Charts) spinoff Embarq, which in turn will make it available to their DSL customers. And Intel (Charts) will be offering TransMedia's Glide with future ultramobile PCs.

Pando CEO Robert Levitan thinks his startup can make money as a low-cost delivery network for high-definition movie trailers and other digital content. Most of these services can also be integrated into MySpace pages, blogs, and RSS feeds. AllPeers wants to let people sell as well as share media.

With so many players out there, a shakeout is inevitable. "It will be really tough for smaller, no-brand companies to survive," notes Michael Cai, a broadband analyst with Parks Associates. Then again, in the public file-sharing realm, YouTube was a no-brand company - until suddenly it wasn't.

Sharing Made Simple

Several new services hope to profit from letting people exchange big digital files.

SERVICE HOW IT WORKS COST BUSINESS MODEL
AllPeers Transfers files to your buddies through a BitTorrent-based add-on to Firefox. Free Content delivery fees, peer-produced media sales
Glide Stores and shares digital media via browser-based "desktop" or smartphone 300MB free; $5/month for 1GB; $10/month for 4GB Subscription fees, software licensing
MediaMax Stores digital photos, movies, and other files on the Web 25GB free; $5-$30/month for 100-1,000GB Subscription fees; software licensing; advertising
Myfabrik Sends links to shared files stored on the Web or a Maxtor Fusion hard drive 1GB free; 49 cents/month for each additional GB Subscription fees, software licensing
Pando E-mail attachments initiates BitTorrent-based P2P transfer backed by server Free Content delivery fees, advertising
YouSendIt Sends links to uploaded files good for 14 days; designed for business use 100MB free; $5-$30/month for more Subscription fees
Zapr Turns any file or folder on your PC into a shareable Web link Free Advertising
http://money.cnn.com/magazines/busin...11/01/8392018/





Skyrider Unveils New In-Video Ad Solution to Empower Content Owners and Advertisers in Peer-to-Peer Networks
Press Release

Solution Provides Advertisers and Content Owners with the First Measurable and Controllable Platform for Monetizing and Distributing Digital Content

Skyrider, developer of a new peer-to-peer (P2P) platform, today announced an innovative in-video advertising solution offering advertisers and content owners a means to distribute, track and monetize content on P2P networks. The new offering is an extension of Skyrider’s platform that organizes and monetizes P2P networks. Skyrider’s in-video ad solution empowers content owners with a mechanism to monetize their digital assets through a targeted, high-volume distribution channel with over 20 million unique daily visitors. This product gives branded advertisers the control and contextual relevancy necessary to run targeted campaigns to this vast audience. The Skyrider platform is the first of its kind available in the decentralized P2P networks where content has traditionally been difficult to control and monetize.

“The deployment of Skyrider’s in-video ad solution comes at a critical juncture as more companies are distributing digital media to the Internet and users are consuming more of it. P2P networks represent a tremendous distribution channel for a video advertising market that is forecasted to reach $3 billion by 2010,” said Edward Kozel, CEO, Skyrider. “Skyrider’s tremendous opportunity lies in continuing to build these viable, lucrative opportunities for both content owners and advertisers.”

How it Works

Content owners, movie studios, recording artists or record labels designate which content they want to distribute to P2P network users. The content is made available alongside relevant search results provided by Skyrider’s search marketing technology when a P2P network user enters a search query. Skyrider’s sophisticated geo-targeting and tracking mechanism determines the most suitable ads to pair with the content, typically yielding one to three ads that are served up dynamically within the video when downloaded and played. Distribution of the content and its advertising can be tracked by download, views, and geo location. Skyrider’s technology includes strong targeting and management tools that deliver a powerful, measurable, and cost effective solution for reaching consumers across diverse multimedia environments.

“Advertisers have been seeking new channels and innovative ways to reach the attractive P2P demographic,” said Tim Hanlon, Senior Vice President, Denuo Group, a Publicis Groupe company. “Skyrider is providing a platform for them to not only reach this demographic, but also to provide invaluable marketing data.”

As global consumers have become accustomed to an a-la-carte, on demand entertainment experience, P2P networks have taken command of 60 percent of backbone internet traffic and 90 percent of upstream traffic according to CacheLogic. To capitalize on this opportunity, Skyrider is paving the way for the widespread commercial utilization of P2P networks for content owners and advertisers. The deployment of Skyrider’s in-video advertising solution, in addition to the company’s search marketing solution, illustrates the company’s commitment to helping content owners find new ways to reach more people with more monetizable content.

Skyrider's systems are based on proprietary high-performance network stacks backed by a large-scale distributed architecture for control and transaction processing. These systems enable Skyrider to weave into the global fabric of P2P networks. P2P networks have unique advantages in scale of user base and the cost of storing and sharing of data that make them well suited to the growth in global media creation and distribution. Skyrider’s embedded P2P platform provides unique opportunities for content owners and advertisers to take advantage of the attractive audience and growing scale of the P2P audience.

Skyrider’s in-video advertising solution is available today. For additional information on Skyrider visit www.skyrider.com.
http://home.businesswire.com/portal/...&newsLang =en





Tubes - Your Private Social Sharing Network Now Available for the College Market at TubesNow.com
Press Release

Thousands of College Students Using New Application To Easily and Privately Share Their Stuff

Tubes, the breakthrough application for Microsoft Windows XP and Vista that redefines social networking, is spreading like wildfire on college campuses as students download it for free at www.TubesNow.com. Students use Tubes to instantly create automatic bi-directional sharing spaces where everything shared - whether photos, videos, web site bookmarks or favorite music is automatically synchronized directly to the desktop of everyone who is part of that tube. Unlike other P2P networks or limited file sharing programs, Tubes allows everyone to easily and automatically share anything with the entire group while eliminating the risk that comes from posting personal content to public websites.

"Tubes allows students to share their content directly from their desktops with just the people they want," said Steve Chazin, Vice President. "Tubes is a safe, secure way for college kids to easily connect and synchronize all their digital worlds. After hearing that many potential employers now check college students' MySpace profiles we thought it was important to let students know that Tubes is a better way - a fast, private way to share anything with anyone but without the rest of the world peering in. Instead of sending a file to your friends, simply create one or more tubes and now anyone you invite can share with everyone else simply by dragging and dropping to the tube. We built Tubes with college kids in mind."

Students quickly build private networks through a simple desktop application familiar to anyone who uses instant messaging. Tubes' built-in email console lets you invite friends and assign access permissions. A tube is instantly established and anything dropped in that tube - music, photos, videos, games, etc. is automatically synchronized to everyone who accepts the invitation. Permitted friends can add or modify content in the tube and those changes are also automatically synchronized to every invitee, making Tubes perfect for community activities like class assignments and media sharing. College students will love Tubes for group projects where documents, spreadsheets and media files can easily be shared and edited by anyone in the group.
Tubes Features:

-- Tubes is a Tiny Application With Big Appeal. Tubes lets each student create an unlimited number of tubes for anything they need. Thousands of people are using Tubes everyday for keeping in touch by swapping photos with siblings, sharing funny videos with friends, social bookmarking cool websites with others, sharing resumes and portfolios with future employers, collaborating on assignments with classmates - even synchronizing their entire iTunes music library with their computer at home.

-- Tubes Easily Goes Both Ways. With other products students have to email a file attachment each time they want to share something with someone. With Tubes they create an instant sharing network allowing for multi-directional, participatory sharing with anyone in the group. Tubes takes up very little desktop space and is designed to work alongside all existing applications, letting students drag and drop contacts & emails, Office documents, even MySpace, Facebook and YouTube browser pages and URLs directly to their tube - all instantly synchronized to everyone every time.

-- Tubes is Always Ready Even When You Are Not. Tubes automatically synchronizes any change to all members of the tube without any interaction required. This means that everything in every tube is always up to date and always on your laptop - even offline. That means that all the files in every tube are always current and available even when there isn't an Internet connection available. So if one student updates their tube with new pictures on a plane coming back from Spring Break, once re-connected to the Internet, their community will quickly have access to their updated content. And anything that changed in the tube while this traveling student was out of touch will be synchronized back to them at that same time.

-- It's Yours. Tubes replicates exact copies of files, meaning that everyone in the tube has an exact copy of everyone's stuff. But the owner of the content retains control. If a file or document is changed, that change propagates to everyone. If a content owner deletes a file from a tube it is deleted everywhere that file was shared. For good measure, Tubes provides an automatic back-up of all shared files so anyone can easily access all their tubes simply by downloading another copy of Tubes on any PC.
http://www.cpwire.com/artman/publish/article_1489.asp





Share Your Files in an Instant With Data Sites
Scott A. May

Every time I think there can’t possibly be more ways to share information, something else comes along. Web file-hosting sites aren’t new, but the rising number of free personal file-sharing services is remarkable. Connectivity - you gotta love it.

Imagine you have one or more large data files that you absolutely, positively have to get to someone in another city, state or country. You don’t need it overnight; you need it delivered right now. It’s far too large for e-mail, and a direct link isn’t possible. What can you do besides panic?

Here’s another twist on the same scenario: You are the one desperate to get one or more large files from a computer located far away. What’s worse, the person on the other end isn’t exactly a wizard at the keyboard, so talking them through any complex operation is out of the question.

The solution to both problems is free personal file-sharing services, which don’t get much easier to use than Senduit, at www.senduit.com. The service provides users with the ability to upload a file, up to 100 MB in size, via HTTP protocol. Once uploaded, the user is presented with a custom URL address that can be used to download the same file from the Senduit servers.

This URL address is like a key that allows anyone you share it with to download your file. You can e-mail it to one person or post to your MySpace account if you like. At the time of uploading, the file can be set to expire from 30 minutes to a maximum of one week. Once a file expires, its URL link no longer works and the file is automatically removed from the Senduit servers.

One of the best things about Senduit is simplicity. There’s no software to buy, install or set up. There’s no registration, nothing to fill out or identify yourself. You simply browse for the file you wish to upload and click the button. The interface couldn’t possibly be more streamlined or easy to navigate.

To demonstrate, here’s a link to an upload I made to Senduit, which should be good through Sunday: senduit.com/164899. Just type this into your browser’s address bar and press enter. In a few seconds you’ll be asked to open or save a file. Feel free to save it - a JPEG picture file featuring a stylized portrait of my dog, Finn. Test it out.

For those curious about security, Senduit claims "the name, type, contents, and origin of your file are not saved, reviewed, or analyzed. The only monitoring that takes place are our automated tallies of file uploads and our automated cleaning of expired files."

Senduit limits file sizes to 100 MB, but I could find no rules governing the number of uploads per user. Presumably the limitation is there to discourage sharing of pirated entertainment, although there are obviously ways around any obstacle. The content of your uploads is private.

Although Senduit claims they have a "don’t look, don’t care" policy toward upload content, one thing they can’t guarantee is file security in the form of a server crash, hacker attack or other digital disaster. So don’t use this type of service for the exclusive storage of any of your data, much less your most sensitive and important files.

Senduit is one of the easiest personal file-hosting services to use, but it’s certainly not the only one. There are several dozen active file-hosting services, each with different feature sets, file size and expiration limits, user anonymity and in some cases, premium services for a monthly fee. Some services even offer free blog space, e-mail addresses, photo and video hosting.

There’s a lot to choose from, but here are some good ones to get you going:

● File Crunch: www.filecrunch.com

● File Buffer: www.filebuffer.com

● Box.net: www.box.net

● File Factory: www.filefactory.com

● Big Upload: www2.bigupload.com

● Pal Send: www.palsend.com

There are countless more. Do a Google search for "free file hosting" and you’ll find enough to make your head spin. There’s a lot of data getting passed around out there - but what a wonderful idea it is for sharing large amounts of data. It’s like having a virtual hard drive anyone can use and enjoy. The possibilities are endless.
http://columbiatribune.com/2007/Feb/20070213Busi008.asp





Home of Iowa State University, City of Ames, Deploys Palisade Systems' PacketSure, To Monitor and Block Peer to Peer Online Traffic and Manage Broadband PressRelease

Palisade Systems, a leading provider of content monitoring, compliance and network security appliances, announced today that the City of Ames, Iowa, has deployed their flagship product, PacketSure 5.0, to monitor and block peer to peer online traffic in order to help manage broadband usage and control Internet costs.While Palisade Systems' content monitoring and filtering appliance, PacketSure, is largely used to monitor and, if necessary, block sensitive and confidential information from leaving a particular computer network; the City of Ames can now also monitor incoming information that could pose a potential threat to the network. By utilizing PacketSure, the City of Ames has been able to successfully monitor the peer to peer traffic within their network.

One example of incoming peer to peer information the PacketSure appliance can help a network manage is music and video downloading. "Inappropriate downloading has not been a problem for the City of Ames, but there have been other instances in the news that have illustrated the risk that exists regarding illegal music downloading, and the City of Ames opted to implement a proactive approach in order to prevent any possible problems," stated Stanley Davis, Information Services Manager for the City of Ames. According to the Recording Industry Association of America, copyright violators found to be illegally downloading and sharing digital music files can face penalties ranging from $750 to $150,000 per downloaded file."Over the past 18 months we have seen a growing acceptance of this emerging technology in corporate America among both executives who want to watch their employees, and also among the employees," said Kurt Shedenhelm, CEO of Palisade Systems. "Both of them understand that that any activity they participate in utilizing company resources can and should be monitored."According to Davis, "PacketSure has eliminated any future concerns we might have regarding the protection of sensitive data, outgoing employee communications, and potential incoming threats within our peer to peer network, and has also allowed us to manage our Broadband usage resulting in savings on our Internet costs. Any enhancements that Palisade Systems makes analogous to peer to peer traffic will be of great interest to us."
http://www.earthtimes.org/articles/s...se,59960.shtml




uTorrent "Announce" URL Handling Buffer Overflow and Code Execution Vulnerability

Advisory ID : FrSIRT/ADV-2007-0571
CVE ID : GENERIC-MAP-NOMATCH
Rated as : Critical
Remotely Exploitable : Yes
Locally Exploitable : Yes
Release Date : 2007-02-13

Technical Description

A vulnerability has been identified in uTorrent, which could be exploited by attackers to take complete control of an affected system. This issue is due to a buffer overflow error when handling a "torrent" file containing an overly long "announce" URL, which could be exploited by remote attackers to execute arbitrary commands by tricking a user into opening a specially crafted torrent file or visiting a malicious web page.

Affected Products

uTorrent version 1.6 build 474 and prior

Solution

The FrSIRT is not aware of any official supplied patch for this issue.

References

http://www.frsirt.com/english/advisories/2007/0571

Credits

Vulnerability reported by defsec

ChangeLog

2007-02-13 : Initial release
http://www.frsirt.com/english/advisories/2007/0571


Note: A few months ago before independent uTorrent was acquired by Hollywood player BitTorrent, they quietly released a stable beta version that addressed this issue. It’s their only pre-merger client unaffected by the vulnerability. Then there is the new 490 build which patches it too. As always with betas and updates, "stable" or otherwise, proceed at your own risk. – Jack





One High, One Low Note for Downloaders
Becky Hogge

As the music industry begins to move away from digital rights management, writes Becky Hogge, the European Union considers criminalising the infringement of intellectual property.

At the beginning of last week, one man surely had the admiration of bloggers across the globe. All Steve Jobs, head of Apple Computer Inc, had to do was post some "Thoughts on Music" on the "Hot News" section of Apple's website on 6 February and he had the attention of the world's media. By the next day, news outlets from Toronto to Taipei were repeating the story that iTunes - Apple's online music store - wanted out of the digital rights management (DRM) charade. The online store would drop the copy-protection measures "in a heartbeat", if only the music industry giants would still let iTunes carry their products.

And so the frantic press-releasing began. The Recording Industry Association of America called Jobs's bluff, asking him to instead licence Apple's proprietary DRM solution - FairPlay - to competitor download shops run by Sony and Microsoft. This, the association asserted, would prevent consumers from being locked into Apple products once they'd downloaded music from iTunes. Then, at the end of the week, EMI, one of the world's "big four" music labels, revealed it was already in talks with Jobs's competitors over releasing its music for download in the non-restricted MP3 format more commonly traded on peer-to-peer file-sharing systems. The revelation bore out insider suspicions that the major players in the music industry were hoping to distance themselves from the dread DRM this year.

DRM has proved unpopular with consumers, and is increasingly being blamed for the slow take-up of legitimate download stores. Expectations carried over from the analogue world, combined with poor labelling at point of sale, meant many non-tech-literate consumers got burnt by unexpected limitations on what they were allowed to do with the music they'd purchased online. The geek community - which might have been expected to be the early adopters of legitimate digital downloads - realised that the incomplete cryptographic logic behind DRM punished the honest and did nothing to stop those dishonest enough to crack the DRM code again and again. Geeks kept their money in their wallets. The assumption behind DRM was that inside every music fan lay a criminal intent on bringing the music industry to its knees. The effects of this attitude were wholly predictable.

But as this new, positive chapter in the industry's troubled relationship with digital unfolds, the spotlight has turned away from something far more momentous - and far more damaging. At the end of February, the legal affairs committee of the European Parliament will gather to vote on amendments to the European Union's second directive on copyright law, commonly known as IPRED2. Would that those bloggers committed to exposing the machinations of Brussels got even a 5% share of the attention paid to the Apple CEO, we might be able to start believing claims that citizen journalism presents a challenge to the media status quo.

The Foundation for a Free Information Infrastructure, those tireless campaigners responsible for pushing software patents off the European agenda in 2005, dub IPRED2 - the second Intellectual Property Enforcement Directive - "the prosecution paradise directive". The directive's main effect is to transform intellectual property infringement from a civil to a criminal offence in European law. And where the World Trade Organisation's TRIPS agreement on intellectual property (IP) already gives the state powers of prosecution in traditional piracy scenarios, the wording of IPRED2 means that many more suspected IP infringements might also be tried in a criminal, rather than civil, setting.

As the proposed amendments to the directive stand, infringements which come under the auspices of the bill are defined as "infringements on a commercial scale", which are further defined as "any infringement of an intellectual property right committed to obtain direct or indirect economic or commercial advantage". Campaigners are concerned that this could include a number of situations not previously covered by Trips - formally, the Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights - adding an unacceptable level of disproportionality to the legislation.

In the public interest

Peer-to-peer file-sharing is one such situation. It could conceivably be argued that those using p2p networks to download music, television and video content are saving money, thus obtaining indirect economic gain. If such an argument were successful, many millions of people would be criminalised across Europe. (An estimated 35 million Europeans downloaded music from filesharing websites in 2004.)

One could argue that, because the music industry is making moves to stop treating its customers like criminals by lifting the punishing restrictions of DRM, it is only right that those who still choose to break the law should be penalised all the more. But this argument misses several points. For a start, EMI is just one player in the industry and the details of its plans to lift DRM have yet to be fully revealed. Further, EMI is not compelled by the full force of criminal law to offer its products in accessible formats; it is merely doing so in response to other market factors.

In fact, the manoeuvres of last week demonstrate exactly why criminalising IP infringement with the kind of broad strokes represented by IPRED2 is such a bad idea. Business models that capture the audience of millions of filesharers, generating revenues with which to reward artists, are still emerging. By criminalising the actions of millions of music consumers, the EU will be doing innovators in the industry a major disservice.

Copyright is essentially a balance between interests - the interests of creators in getting remunerated for their work and the interests of society in spreading knowledge and information as widely as possible. It should not follow that as it becomes easier in theory for information to be distributed, it should become harder in (legal) practice. But this is exactly what is happening. The debate surrounding filesharing has served to skew the function of copyright in our society, in large part thanks to the powerful interests of the major record (and, increasingly, film) companies, which lobby for stronger and stronger protection with no thought as to how this might tip the balance of copyright away from the public interest.

What is at stake with IPRED2 is not just how affluent westerners consume the latest hits. The criminalisation of IP infringement could also harm professional investigative journalists, who need to infringe the copyright of corporations and even governments from time to time to get vital information into the public domain. It could harm artists, who distort and refashion recognisable sounds and imagery from our daily lives to challenge our assumptions about the world around us.

In theory, intellectual property law should exempt such practices from the accusation of infringement. In practice, thanks to the complexity of the law and prohibitive legal costs, it does not. Last year, Andrew Gowers's review of intellectual property in the United Kingdom was clear that, as it stands, copyright law was neither fit for purpose nor worthy of the respect of the average citizen. Until that situation changes, writing it into criminal law will only serve to further damage the trust between citizen and state.
http://www.opendemocracy.net/media/d...aders_4344.jsp





BNL's Page Sees Downloading as Future of Music
Angela Mulholland

Imagine if downloading music were like watching television.

Instead of paying for every song we bought separately, we would be charged a monthly fee, just as we are charged for cable each month. Our music choices would be tracked so that artists and their managers would be compensated. And if we wanted "premium content," we would pay extra fees, just as we do for specialty TV channels.

That's the vision The Barenaked Ladies' Steven Page has for the future of music.

The current system in which music lovers are forced to choose between downloading illegally from rogue websites, or from paying song-by-song from sites that have limited collections, isn't working.

"If we look at the way people watch TV, if there was a transaction fee for every time you changed the channel, people would obviously stop watching TV," he explained to CTV.ca

"I think the answer lies not in charging for every piece of music you take, but in a flat fee."

He sees an evolution of the current system so that music artists and distributors are paid through a model that is either ad-based, or with a fee at the ISP level, or at the entry to the P2P (peer-to-peer) service -- or perhaps a combination.

The one thing he is sure of is that downloading has changed music and there is no going back.

Instead of finding ways to capitalize on this revolution, the music industry has wasted time attempting to fight it, Page contends. They've been trying to force music buyers back into the music stores, and threatening to sue them if they share their music peer-to-peer.

"Suing people back into the old system isn't going to work. What is going to work is working together with record companies and ISPs to create a way for charging for it," he says.

"As far as I'm concerned, there's money sitting on the table that they're not collecting. So the longer they don't, the longer we won't see any income."

Page and his bandmates have joined together with nearly 200 other Canadian music acts to form the Canadian Music Creators Coalition. They are against changes to federal laws that would make it easier for record companies to sue illegal downloaders. They say their members don't support suing music lovers, and want it known that the labels are pursuing the changes against their will.

"We cannot turn back the clock. So rather than trying to pull our audience back and asking them to change their behaviour -- which I think is futile -- what we have to do instead is take advantage of this," Page says.

There are already marketing research firms that can track monitor file-sharing networks. If the record industry could use those services and charge for what music is being traded, they could ensure that everyone -- including themselves -- was getting paid.

Perhaps market forces alone could convince downloaders to abandon illegal websites. If there were a good, reliable alternative, music fans would come to realize that rogue sites, with their viruses, spyware and Trojans, are a lot more hassle than they're worth.

As much as Page loves the mp3 revolution, he isn't expecting the CD to go the way of the vinyl LP anytime soon. Just as VHS didn't kill the movie industry, as many had predicted, and DVDs have found a place alongside TV, the need for CDs remains.

"I think CDs will continue. I think people enjoy the retail experience of buying and giving CDs," Page says.

"Let me put it this way: if music were like water, even though you could have regular tap water anytime you wanted, it wouldn't stop you from buying the musical version of bottled water [i.e.: CDs]. Even though people have access to water anytime they want, they still go and buy the luxury version as well."

On an artistic level, downloading is also changing the way musicians create music. Recent studies suggest that while Canadians are downloading plenty of 99-cent songs, they generally don't like to download albums. Does that mean the concept of albums -- and "concept" albums themselves such as "The Wall" -- will soon become extinct?

Maybe, but maybe it's all part of the evolution of music. Perhaps by being free of constraints of the medium, artists won't feel compelled to pad albums with filler or will release as much music at once as they chose.

"It makes you wonder if Miles Davis hasn't been restricted by the construct of a record when he made "Kind of Blue" -- we know he recorded plenty more -- would he have released a 2-hour DVD? Or maybe just a 10-minute EP?" wonders Page.

"I think in the future, there'll be all kinds of experimentation with the different forms."

The Barenaked Ladies themselves have already begun experimenting with form. They've released albums on USB flash drives, offering their fans songs, videos, and photo galleries in a tiny tool that can fit into a pocket.

Embracing such technologies is the Ladies' way of saying they know their fans are going to save the songs on a computer and they support them being able to copy their music to any device they choose.

"It helps to build trust between you and your fans," Page explains. "We have to create some trust with our fans because right now, the trust level is almost nil."

"So by giving people the music and saying 'Do with it as you please,' then people don't think that we have to treat them as idiots or as criminals."
http://www.ctv.ca/servlet/ArticleNew...name=junos2007





Access: Washington

Congress Finds Ways to Avoid Lobbyist Limits
David D. Kirkpatrick

The 110th Congress opened with the passage of new rules intended to curb the influence of lobbyists by prohibiting them from treating lawmakers to meals, trips, stadium box seats or the discounted use of private jets.

But it did not take long for lawmakers to find ways to keep having lobbyist-financed fun.

In just the last two months, lawmakers invited lobbyists to help pay for a catalog of outings: lavish birthday parties in a lawmaker’s honor ($1,000 a lobbyist), martinis and margaritas at Washington restaurants (at least $1,000), a California wine-tasting tour (all donors welcome), hunting and fishing trips (typically $5,000), weekend golf tournaments ($2,500 and up), a Presidents’ Day weekend at Disney World ($5,000), parties in South Beach in Miami ($5,000), concerts by the Who or Bob Seger ($2,500 for two seats), and even Broadway shows like “Mary Poppins” and “The Drowsy Chaperone” (also $2,500 for two).

The lobbyists and their employers typically end up paying for the events, but within the new rules.

Instead of picking up the lawmaker’s tab, lobbyists pay a political fund-raising committee set up by the lawmaker. In turn, the committee pays the legislator’s way.

Lobbyists and fund-raisers say such trips are becoming increasingly popular, partly as a quirky consequence of the new ethics rules.

By barring lobbyists from mingling with a lawmaker or his staff for the cost of a steak dinner, the restrictions have stirred new demand for pricier tickets to social fund-raising events.

Lobbyists say that the rules might even increase the volume of contributions flowing to Congress from K Street, where many lobbying firms have their offices.

Some lawmakers acknowledge that some fund-raising trips resemble the lobbyist-paid junkets that Congress voted to prohibit.

Jennifer Crider, a spokeswoman for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, said its leaders had decided to stop holding fund-raising events for lobbyists with political action committees because of the seeming inconsistency.

So the committee canceled its annual Colorado ski weekend for lobbyists and lawmakers to raise money for the next campaign. Gone, too, is its Maryland hunting trip with Representative John D. Dingell of Michigan, the avid hunter who is chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee.

But other Congressional party campaign committees have not stopped their events, including the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee’s annual Nantucket weekend for donors who contribute $25,000. And individual lawmakers are still playing host to plenty of events themselves.

Senator Lindsey Graham, a South Carolina Republican who sometimes invites lobbyists to join him for fund-raising hunting trips, called such events an innocuous fact of life.

“If you are not going to have publicly financed elections and you are getting your support from private individuals — which I believe in — I don’t see any problem with having events where private individuals who give you money can talk to you,” said Mr. Graham, who like the other senators quoted in this article voted for the ethics reform. He added, “Hunting is a very popular attraction in South Carolina.”

Representatives John R. Kuhl Jr. of New York and Greg Walden of Oregon, both Republicans, each recently invited lobbyists to a rock concert by Bob Seger and the Silver Bullet Band. And three Republican lawmakers, Mr. Walden and Representatives Darrell Issa and Mary Bono of California, have invited lobbyists to join them next month at a Who concert in Washington.

“They’re her favorite rock ’n’ roll band,” said Frank Cullen, Ms. Bono’s chief of staff.

Among Democrats, Senator Thomas R. Carper of Delaware recently returned from his annual ski trip to the Ritz-Carlton Bachelor Gulch in Beaver Creek, Colo. Senator Max Baucus, a Montana Democrat, just got back from a skiing and snowmobiling trip to his state and has planned two golfing and fly-fishing weekends as well. Expeditions of lobbyists attend each trip. The top prices for the events are meant for lobbyists with political action committees.

Meredith McGehee, policy director of the Campaign Legal Center, which advocates for tighter campaign finance rules, said that organizing a fund-raising trip was not the same as accepting a free vacation. But she added: “At the end of the day, it is the same thing.”

Representative Eric Cantor, a Virginia Republican famous on K Street for his annual fund-raising weekends in Beverly Hills and South Beach, has recently invited lobbyists to join him for some expensive cups of coffee. A $2,500 contribution from a lobbyist’s political action committee entitles the company’s lobbyist to join Mr. Cantor at a Starbucks near his Capitol Hill office four times this spring.

“What’s next? Come help me pick up my dry cleaning?” said Massie Ritsch, spokesman for the Center for Responsive Politics, a group that tracks political fund-raising.

The excursions would be illegal under the new ethics rules if lobbyists or their employers paid for them directly. (The rules, passed by both houses in early January, have already taken effect in the House and are expected to take effect in the Senate later this spring.) And some outings involving personal entertainment or recreation for lawmakers could also run afoul of legal restrictions on the personal use of campaign money if they were paid for by a lawmaker’s re-election campaign.

But they are allowed, and increasingly common, because of a combination of loopholes. First, the ethics rules restrict personal gifts but not political contributions, so paying to attend a fund-raiser is still legitimate. Second, the “personal use” restrictions apply to lawmakers’ re-election campaigns but not to their personal political action committees, which can spend money on almost anything. Lawmakers use their personal PACs to sponsor most of the events. (Lawyers disagree about whether Congressional ethics rules restrict personal use of members’ PACs.)

The lawmakers’ so-called leadership PACs began proliferating about two decades ago, initially as vehicles for senior members of Congress to build loyalty among their colleagues by funneling money to their campaigns.

These days, however, even the newest members of Congress usually start them. Two newly elected Democratic senators, Claire McCaskill of Missouri and Jim Webb of Virginia, already have. And many use them mainly to pay for travel or miscellaneous other costs.

Over the last two years, the roughly 300 PACs controlled by lawmakers raised a total of about $156 million and used only about a third of that on federal campaign contributions, according to the Center for Responsive Politics, a group that tracks political fund-raising.

Vacationlike fund-raising events with lobbyists are not new. Former Representative Tom DeLay’s trips to Puerto Rico were legendary on K Street, for example. But the new ethics rules barring lobbyists from treating lawmakers to less-expensive amusements have given new importance to such getaways.

“I have to have some personal contacts to be a lobbyist,” said James Dyer, a lobbyist at the firm of Clark & Weinstock. “If the only ticket in terms of contact is these fund-raising events, it is going to be costly,” Mr. Dyer said. “The fund-raising part of our lives is a very expensive tool.”

Thomas Susman, a lawyer who was an editor of the American Bar Association lobbying manual, said that at a recent presentation about the new rules to the lobbyists trade group, “the biggest question was, Is this going to drive everything to the fund-raising side? Is that going to be the way to have social contact with members?”

Some members of Congress said it would not bother them if the upshot of the new rules turned out to be more contributions.

“I am not going to hide from the fact that we have to raise money,” said Representative Devin Nunes, a California Republican who has invited donors to his political action committee on a wine-tasting tour in June, modeled after the movie “Sideways.” “Only a moron would sell a vote for a $2,000 contribution,” Mr. Nunes said.

Fund-raising consultants for both parties said they saw a golden opportunity. “We are definitely seeing an increase in the number of events across the board,” said Dana Harris of Bellwether Consulting, a Republican firm that specializes in courting lobbyists’ political action committees. “Fund-raising events will provide a safe haven for lobbyists to talk to members.”

Among the coming events Ms. Harris’s firm helped organize: a trip this month to the Yacht and Beach Club Resort at Disney World for Senator Mel Martinez of Florida, for a $5,000 PAC contribution, and a May trip to the Robert Trent Jones Golf Club in Virginia for Senator Richard M. Burr of North Carolina, for $2,500 a head.

Some private jet companies are trying to capitalize on the rules as well. Lawmakers can no longer fly on a company’s corporate jet and then reimburse the owner at a discount. But lawmakers can still use their PACs to pay the actual cost for the use of jets, as Mr. Cantor and others have done.

Marco Larsen, vice president for publicity at Blue Star Jets, a broker that sells single flights on private planes, said his company planned to hold an event in Washington to promote its services to members of Congress. Because of concerns about appearances, Mr. Larsen said, “We wanted to stay away right after the rules were passed, but I think it is a better time now.”

Lawmakers are usually reluctant to talk about their fund-raising events. Asked in an interview in the Capitol why he was taking lobbyists on a Montana hunting trip, Mr. Baucus said only, “To show off the beauty of our state,” then retreated behind a guarded door.

Mr. Martinez, who will be spending next weekend with lobbyists at Disney World, said, “I’ve heard from many other members that they have had very successful weekend events.” He added, “People can bring their families to it and bring their children, and it’s going to be fun.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/11/us...rtner=homepage





Surveillance

Bill Would Make ISPs Keep Data On Users

Questions are raised on privacy, practicality
Ellen Nakashima

A House Republican is pushing a measure that echoes a long-sought Bush administration goal: to require all Internet service providers to keep records on their subscribers.

The measure, introduced by Rep. Lamar Smith (R-Tex.) last week as part of the larger SAFETY Act, would give the attorney general broad discretion to write the rules on what information companies have to retain and for how long.

It is aimed at protecting children from predators, but privacy advocates say its privacy and civil-liberties implications are huge, and industry is concerned about the costs of compliance. News of the measure has spread around the blogosphere, as critics seek to mobilize opposition to the SAFETY Act.

The provision would require Internet service companies to provide at a minimum the Internet subscriber's name and address, which can be linked to an Internet protocol address -- an identification number associated with a particular computer at a given time. Law enforcement officials would have to obtain a subpoena to have access to the records and could not use the tool to track law-abiding citizens on the Internet, Smith said.

Smith, the ranking minority member of the House Judiciary Committee, said law enforcement has identified mandatory data retention as "the number one tool" it needs to identify and prosecute Internet sexual predators. Last year, the European Union adopted a two-year data-retention requirement for all Internet service providers, and Smith said Congress should adopt a similar law that balances the cost of retaining data with the benefits to law enforcement.

But Lauren Weinstein, co-founder of People for Internet Responsibility, an advocacy group, said Smith's proposal is far too vague. "This bill is so incredibly bad that it opens up a whole array of things that can go wrong, because there's nothing in this legislation to prevent the attorney general from simply saying, 'Save everything forever,' " he said.

He called data retention the "single most important issue" relating to privacy, free speech and technology.

Under mandatory data retention, the chances of targeting innocent people would go up, opponents say. In Arlington County last summer, detectives thought they had tracked an Internet child predator to an apartment, only to find that their target was an innocent elderly woman whose computer's wireless router sent a signal throughout her 10-story building that could be easily hijacked.

Last fall, a child-porn squad in central Virginia led by sheriffs armed with semiautomatic pistols scared a farmer who was mistakenly targeted when his Internet provider gave authorities the incorrect IP address.

U.S. Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales, who began pushing for mandatory data retention about a year ago, told the Senate Judiciary Committee last month that child exploitation investigations have hit dead ends because Internet service providers were not required to keep subscriber data.

A Justice Department spokeswoman said the department had not taken a position on Smith's proposal but was looking at data retention. "We do believe that there is a need for it," spokeswoman Tasia Scolinos said.

What concerns both privacy advocates and industry is the bill's open-endedness.

"The Smith proposal would give the attorney general carte blanche to require service providers to keep all information imaginable on every one of their users," said Kate Dean, executive director of the U.S. Internet Service Provider Association, which represents the nine major providers, including AOL, AT&T, Microsoft, Yahoo and Comcast.

Dean also said the measure could affect a wide range of service providers. "Does this cover wi-fi providers and coffee shops and hotels? Schools and libraries? And, most importantly, the government itself, because that remains unclear."

John Morris, policy director for the Center for Technology and Democracy, said the risks for civil liberties would be enormous if a bill that extends to content of e-mails, computer instant messaging and Web surfing habits. "I would expect that the Justice Department would impose an extremely broad data-retention mandate," he said.

The sheer volume of data could be overwhelming. The amount of data in a week's worth of short instant messages alone would fill two Libraries of Congress, Morris said. Dean said the data retention could impose new costs on innovation. "Any blanket data-retention requirement would dramatically affect new services that companies bring to the market," she said, referring to potential new storage requirements.

The issues proliferate, she said: What if there's a technical failure? Would the data need to be kept "live" for quicker law enforcement access or stored on tapes? Would the data be kept for one year, 20 years or indefinitely?

Weinstein, a computer scientist who focuses on technology's impact, said people interested in child porn could easily use computer viruses to direct innocent people's machines to download the images and then shoot the images back to the perpetrators through obscure channels that are difficult to trace.

Staff researcher Richard Drezen contributed to this report.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...021201337.html





Critics Question Education Department’s Screening
Jonathan D. Glater

As a condition of his work for the federal government, Andrew A. Zucker was willing to be fingerprinted and provide an employment history. But then he was asked to let federal investigators examine his financial and medical records, and interview his doctors.

Dr. Zucker was not tracking terrorists or even emptying the trash at the Pentagon. He was studying how to best teach science to middle school students. He was stunned at the breadth of the request for information.

“To me, personally, it’s shocking,” said Dr. Zucker, who worked for a contractor doing research for the Education Department. He withdrew from the job.

For about a year, contractors say, the department has been requiring employees of the thousands of contractors it hires — many of them academic researchers like Dr. Zucker — to go through a level of security screening usually reserved for those working with very sensitive information.

Katherine McLane, a department spokeswoman, said the scrutiny was warranted because her agency had access to databases with financial data and other information, including names and social security numbers of students or of applicants to colleges or other programs. “We want to make sure that the people who handle and have access to this information are responsible, reliable and trustworthy,” Ms. McLane said.

The policy is prompting critics to question when a prudent background investigation becomes an invasion of privacy. About 100 researchers, including Dr. Zucker, have signed an open letter of protest to Margaret Spellings, the secretary of education, calling the quest for information “far beyond bounds of reason, necessity, and decency.”

Others echo the protests.

“These requirements have very little connection with the work that we do,” said Michael Knapp, director of the Center for Study of Teaching and Policy at the University of Washington.

Mr. Knapp, a former Education Department contractor, called the policy “an example of going overboard.”

Gerald Sroufe, director of government relations for the American Educational Research Association, which represents about 25,000 people, most at universities or research organizations and companies, said, “Our concern is really whether or not all the measures that have been introduced are necessary.”

But Ed Elmendorf, senior vice president for government relations at the American Association of State Colleges and Universities, said criminal record checks, which are considerably less invasive than the screening required by the Education Department, are becoming “pretty much a standard operating procedure” at many public academic institutions.

Still, efforts to put criminal record checks in place have met with resistance. Some faculty members protested when the chancellor of the University of Georgia said recently that new hires would be required to undergo a criminal record check.

Although some federal agencies like the Departments of Defense and Homeland Security routinely seek detailed personal information from contractors considered for classified work, others generally do not, unless the contractors are expected to work in federal buildings or have access to federal databases.

At the Agriculture Department, Boyd Rutherford, the assistant secretary for administration, said that if contractors were not in a position of public trust, the department was not asking for a detailed screening. He said that positions of public trust would include those that allowed a contractor access to areas like government information technology.

At the Department of Health and Human Services, which includes the National Institutes of Health, the intensity of background screening also turns on access, said Bill Hall, a spokesman. The lowest-level screening requires running fingerprints through the Federal Bureau of Investigation, performing a criminal records check and determining whether someone had undergone a background check with another government agency.

Ms. McLane, the Education Department spokeswoman, acknowledged that her agency’s policy may be stricter than others, but she defended it, saying the department “takes very seriously its responsibility to safeguard information and maintains strong systems that protect confidential data.”

Dr. Zucker, a Harvard-trained educator, was a consultant for a subcontractor on a Pennsylvania State University contract with the Education Department. He was developing a procedure to study methods of teaching middle-school science. “I was just designing a study, so I had no access to data because there was no data,” he said.

Kyle L. Peck, associate dean at the College of Education at Penn State, said Dr. Zucker would have been comparing test scores of students taught using one method with scores of those taught using another. The data would not necessarily have identified individual students.

Dr. Zucker said he would not have had access to any databases that would identify individual students. He also did not work in a federal building.

“On the one hand, it makes sense,” Dr. Peck said of the screening. “On the other hand, we have institutional review processes that govern educational research that protect the confidentiality, and, I think, make this additional level of security clearance unnecessary.”

Many employees asked for information by the Education Department were academics like Dr. Zucker. In some instances, the agency has backed down when its policy was challenged. When Dr. Zucker protested, he said the department excused him from providing access to his medical and financial records.

But Dr. Zucker still had reservations about other information the agency required and stopped work on the project.

“I had worked on many Department of Education contracts before,” he said, “and other federal contracts from other agencies, and I have 20 years of experience or more in the business, and I had never seen or heard of anything like this.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/11/wa...rtner=homepage





Congress Seeks 'Bite' For Privacy Watchdog
Ellen Nakashima

Key lawmakers want to replace a White House privacy and civil liberties board created by Congress in 2004 with one that is more independent of the president. The idea is to make the board more like the one envisioned by the bipartisan 9/11 Commission.

As the commission's vice chairman, Lee H. Hamilton, said yesterday: "We felt that you had to have a voice within the executive branch that reached across all of the departments of government with strong powers to protect our civil liberties."

But the five-member Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board is resisting proposals that would dramatically change its composition and powers. The battle is another sign of the changed political landscape, with the Democratic-controlled Congress pushing for stronger oversight of the Bush administration's counterterrorism programs.

"In 2004, the Senate endorsed the idea of a strong privacy and civil liberties watchdog to keep vigil as the government launched a full-bore effort to make the nation safe from terrorists," said Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman (I-Conn.), the chairman of the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee who caucuses with the Democrats. "Congress passed a weak proposal. Now we are back to make sure the watchdog has both a bark and a bite."

House Democrats see the board, which took office only last March after a series of delays, as too beholden to President Bush, who selects the members.

Despite its position, the board has had to wait months before receiving briefings on sensitive administration programs, and then only with permission from the White House counsel's office.

"Since its inception, the administration has failed to properly fund the board, and quite frankly, there have been no visible results of its existence," said Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.), chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee.

Separate House and Senate measures would require that the entire board be confirmed by the Senate -- now it is only the chairman and vice chairman -- and that no more than three members be from one party.

The House provision would remove the board from the Executive Office of the President but keep it within the executive branch and give it subpoena power, as recommended by the 9/11 Commission. The Senate version would keep the board within the executive office and allow it to ask the attorney general to issue subpoenas. Congress would have to be notified if a subpoena request were denied or modified.

Two board members, however, including the lone Democrat, said the board would lose its effectiveness if it were outside the executive office and had "adversarial powers" such as subpoenas.

Vice Chairman Alan Charles Raul said he wanted an environment in which agencies initiated contacts with the board to review programs with civil liberties implications -- before there is a controversy.

"It's almost unreasonable to think that an agency is going to reach out at a very early stage to a body that by design, by mind-set and by reporting channels, is outside the president's supervision, even if they're technically within the executive branch," Raul said yesterday.

Lanny J. Davis, who served as special counsel to President Bill Clinton, agreed. At the same time, he said, "The board needs a clearer mandate to be able to speak independently and to have full and complete access to all programs affecting privacy and civil liberties, both evolving as well as those in place."

The board has asked Bush to issue a directive to all executive agencies that will spell out its mandate to ensure that it is involved in the development of programs that affect privacy and civil liberties.

White House spokeswoman Dana Perino yesterday declined to comment specifically on that request, saying that there have been "internal discussions about any possible refinements that could be made" to make the board more effective.

The board has held only one public forum, in December at Georgetown University, where the public was given an opportunity to express its concerns. The board's first report to Congress is to be presented in March.

In November, board members said they had been briefed by the National Security Agency on its warrantless wiretapping program and that they were impressed by the protections, but failed to provide specifics.

The board paid a return visit to the NSA two weeks ago and observed the surveillance program, which monitors people, including some in the United States, who have links to al-Qaeda. This is done under the supervision of a secret court that administers the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA).

Raul and Davis said they were "more reassured" after the second briefing that the program had taken into account civil liberties and privacy protections. They said the agency had "multiple layers" of review, including audit trails to track whoever has access to the data. If information appears that is not related to counterterrorism, it is not shared with other agencies, Raul said.

On that visit, Raul also reviewed the secret court orders governing the spying program that were issued Jan. 10 and supporting material submitted by the Justice Department. "The surveillance under the program is very highly regimented and justified both internally within the agency and now externally to the FISA court," he said.

He declined to provide more detail on the orders. That hurts the board's credibility, said Marc Rotenberg, executive director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center, an advocacy group. "They have to do something more than say 'trust us,' " he said. "This goes to the objection that many people have had about an oversight board based in the executive branch."

Thomas H. Kean, chairman of the 9/11 Commission, said he supported the legislation to make the board more independent, which includes reporting twice a year to Congress. "The civil liberties board has got to alert us on the questions involving our civil liberties," he said. "What hasn't been done yet is to make sure that it's in the executive branch as a totally independent agency."
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...021201430.html





Hiding Messages in Plain Sight
BBC

A technology that can "hide" information in plain sight on printed images has begun to see the first commercial applications.

Japanese firm Fujitsu is pushing a technology that can encode data into a picture that is invisible to the human eye but can be decoded by a mobile phone with a camera.

The company believes the technology will have spin off implications for the publishing industry.

"The concept is to be able to link the printed page into the digital domain," said Mike Nelson, general manager for sales operations at Fujitsu Europe.

The technique stems from a 2,500-year-old practice called steganography, which saw the Greeks sending warnings of attacks on wooden tablets and then covering them in wax and tattooing messages on shaved heads that were then covered by the regrowth of hair.

Fujitsu's technique works by taking advantage of the sensitivities of the human eye, which struggles to see the colour yellow.

"The key is to take the yellow hue in the picture and we skew that ever so slightly to create a pattern," said Mr Nelson.

"A camera is perfectly sensitive to that yellow hue but the human eye doesn't see it very well.

"Any camera, even those in mobile phones, can decode it very easily."

Pictures printed with the technique look perfectly normal but a camera can see the code printed into the image.

The technique can currently store just 12 bytes of information - soon to rise to 24 - the equivalent amount of data in a barcode.

That data could be a phone number, a message or a website link.

Printed materials can then connect to the online world by storing information which tells the phone to connect the web.

Almost any mobile phone can be used but a small java application must be downloaded before it can be used to decode the information. Other devices such as PDAs with a camera could also be used.

Decipher data

Once installed the same program can be used to read other codes on other products. It takes a few seconds for the phone to decipher the data.

And because most modern mobiles can connect to the net they act as a gateway to content that firms want to send to people who have decoded the steganographic pictures, such as music and video.

The first commercial use of the technology is in Japan where a Music Club has embedded codes into flyers it sends to subscribers.

"Through that flyer they can link through the pictures to music clips," said Mr Nelson.

Any printer can be used to print the coded information inside a picture and Fujitsu is looking to license the technology to publishers.

There is also a small fee for the use of the decoding software which sits on the firm's own servers.

Mr Nelson believes the technology is more useful than barcodes because of its invisibility and because it connects printed matter to the internet, via the phone.

"There's a lot of printed material out there today whether it be food wrappers, billboards, catalogues, phone directories and business cards and they are not going to go away.

'Digital domain'

"We need an added dimension to that flat material and linking that to the digital domain is what we are trying to do."

Mr Nelson does not believe steganography is competing with technologies such as RFID tags, tiny radio chips which can hold information and be scanned at a short distance.

"You have to physically mount a chip into the device - it's expensive and time consuming.

"Steganography can be embedded as part of the normal printing process."

Mr Nelson said he believed promotions and competition would drive take up of the technology as a prize would act as an incentive to use a mobile phone and download the decoding application.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/h...gy/6361891.stm





Judge Limits New York Police Taping
Jim Dwyer

In a rebuke of a surveillance practice greatly expanded by the New York Police Department after the Sept. 11 attacks, a federal judge ruled yesterday that the police must stop the routine videotaping of people at public gatherings unless there is an indication that unlawful activity may occur.

Four years ago, at the request of the city, the same judge, Charles S. Haight Jr., gave the police greater authority to investigate political, social and religious groups.

In yesterday’s ruling, Judge Haight, of United States District Court in Manhattan, found that by videotaping people who were exercising their right to free speech and breaking no laws, the Police Department had ignored the milder limits he had imposed on it in 2003.

Citing two events in 2005 — a march in Harlem and a demonstration by homeless people in front of the home of Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg — the judge said the city had offered scant justification for videotaping the people involved.

“There was no reason to suspect or anticipate that unlawful or terrorist activity might occur,” he wrote, “or that pertinent information about or evidence of such activity might be obtained by filming the earnest faces of those concerned citizens and the signs by which they hoped to convey their message to a public official.”

While he called the police conduct “egregious,” Judge Haight also offered an unusual judicial mea culpa, taking responsibility for his own words in a 2003 order that he conceded had not been “a model of clarity.”

The restrictions on videotaping do not apply to bridges, tunnels, airports, subways or street traffic, Judge Haight noted, but are meant to control police surveillance at events where people gather to exercise their rights under the First Amendment.

“No reasonable person, and surely not this court, is unaware of the perils the New York public faces and the crucial importance of the N.Y.P.D.’s efforts to detect, prevent and punish those who would cause others harm,” Judge Haight wrote.

Jethro M. Eisenstein, one of the lawyers who challenged the videotaping practices, said that Judge Haight’s ruling would make it possible to contest other surveillance tactics, including the use of undercover officers at political gatherings. In recent years, police officers have disguised themselves as protesters, shouted feigned objections when uniformed officers were making arrests, and pretended to be mourners at a memorial event for bicycle riders killed in traffic accidents.

“This was a major push by the corporation counsel to say that the guidelines are nice but they’re yesterday’s news, and that the security establishment’s view of what is important trumps civil liberties,” Mr. Eisenstein said. “Judge Haight is saying that’s just not the way we’re doing things in New York City.”

A spokesman for Police Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly referred questions about the ruling to the city’s lawyers, who noted that Judge Haight did not set a deadline for destroying the tapes it had already made, and that the judge did not find the city had violated the First Amendment.

Nevertheless, Judge Haight — at times invoking the mythology of the ancient Greeks and of Harold Ross, the founding editor of The New Yorker — used blunt language to characterize the Police Department’s activities.

“There is no discernible justification for the apparent disregard of the guidelines” in his 2003 court order, he said. These spell out the broad circumstances under which the police could investigate political gatherings.

Under the guidelines, the police may conduct investigations — including videotaping — at political events only if they have indications that unlawful activity may occur, and only after they have applied for permission to the deputy commissioner in charge of the Intelligence Division.

Judge Haight noted that the Police Department had not produced evidence that any applications for permission to videotape had ever been filed.

Near the end of his 51-page order, the judge warned that the Police Department must change its practices or face penalties.

“Any future use by the N.Y.P.D. of video and photographic equipment during the course of an investigation involving political activity” that did not follow the guidelines could result in contempt proceedings, he wrote.

At monthly group bicycle rides in Lower Manhattan known as Critical Mass, some participants break traffic laws, and the police routinely videotape those events, Judge Haight noted. That would be an appropriate situation for taping, he said, but police officials did not follow the guidelines and apply for permission.

“This is a classic case of application of the guidelines: political activity on the part of individuals, but legitimate law enforcement purpose on the part of the police,” Judge Haight wrote. “It is precisely the sort of situation where the guidelines require adherence to certain protocols but ultimately give the N.Y.P.D. the flexibility to pursue its law enforcement goals.”

Gideon Oliver, a lawyer who has represented many people arrested during the monthly bicycle rides, said he was troubled by the intensive scrutiny of political activities.

“I’m looking forward to a deeper and more serious exploration of how and why this surveillance has been conducted,” Mr. Oliver said.

In the past the Police Department has said that it needed intelligence about the Critical Mass rides in order to protect the streets from unruly riders.

Patrick Markee, an official with another group that was cited in the ruling, the Coalition for the Homeless, said the judge’s decision ratified their basic rights to free speech.

“We’re gratified that Judge Haight found that the police shouldn’t engage in surveillance of homeless New Yorkers and their supporters when they’re engaged in peaceful, lawful political protest,” Mr. Markee said.

The Police Department’s approach to investigating political, social and religious groups has been a contentious subject for most of four decades, and a class action lawsuit brought by political activists, including a lawyer named Barbara Handschu, was settled in 1985. Judge Haight oversees the terms of that settlement, which are known as the Handschu guidelines, and which he modified in 2003.

At the time, Judge Haight said that the police could “attend any event open to the public, on the same terms and conditions of the public generally.”

But in yesterday’s ruling, he said that permission “cannot be stretched to authorize police officers to videotape everyone at a public gathering just because a visiting little old lady from Dubuque (to borrow from The New Yorker) could do so. There is a quantum difference between a police officer and the little old lady (or other tourist or private citizen) videotaping or photographing a public event.”

The judge said he bore some responsibility for misinterpretation of the guidelines.

“I confess with some chagrin that while the text of this opinion and its implementing order, read together, may not be as opaque as the irritatingly baffling pronouncements of the Oracle” at Delphi, “they do not constitute a model of clarity,” he wrote.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/16/ny.../16police.html





Judge to Decide if Couple Will be Prosecuted for 'Stalking' Officer

A Bartow County couple will go before a magistrate judge today to see if they will be arrested for allegedly stalking a Kennesaw police officer by installing cameras to track neighborhood speeders.

Lee and Teresa Sipple spent $1,200 mounting three video cameras and a radar speed unit outside their home, which is at the bottom of a hill. They have said they did so in hopes of convincing neighbors to slow down to create a safe environment for their son.

The Sipples allegedly caught Kennesaw police officer Richard Perrone speeding up to 17 mph over the speed limit. Perrone alerted Bartow authorities, who in turn visited the Sipples' home to tell them Perrone intended to press charges against them for stalking.
http://www.daily-tribune.com/NF/omf/...ey=0041549+cr=





Toshiba Portege G900 and G500: Finger-Friendly Smart Phones
Crave

Toshiba isn't well-known for making high-end smart phones and the truth is that while its laptops aren't bad at all, its mobiles are far from inspiring -- until now, that is. Tucked away in a corner of one of the many giant halls at the 3GSM trade fair is the Toshiba stand, on which you'll find two of its latest phones. These phones, however, aren't like anything Toshiba has brought to the mobile table before.

First up is the Toshiba Portege G500 (pictured). It's a Windows Mobile 5.0 device that features a slider form factor, a 2-megapixel camera and HSDPA, 3G, EDGE, Bluetooth, Wi-Fi and USB connectivity. Then there's the Toshiba Portege G900 that runs on Windows Mobile 6.0, has a large colour touch screen, slide-out Qwerty keypad, supports VoIP and also comes with a 2-megapixel camera and HSDPA, 3G, EDGE, Bluetooth, Wi-Fi and USB connectivity.

So far they look and work like a variety of other Windows Mobile devices, and indeed there are some rather obvious similarities with certain HTC handsets. The difference, however, between Toshiba's new smart phones and anything else on the market is found on the reverse of the phones. When you turn either the G500 or G900 over, you'll see a fingerprint scanner that secures your phone against unwanted access -- a useful tool if you have confidential information on it.

Interestingly, though, the fingerprint scanner also doubles up as a touch-sensitive scroll interface that lets you scroll down emails, menus or Web sites simply by sliding your finger over it. While it may seem strange to have the scanner on the back, it's actually quite well placed because your fingers are on the back of the phone when you're holding it.

Information on UK availability is still a little sketchy but we'll let you know as soon as we find out.
http://crave.cnet.co.uk/mobiles/0,39...9287766,00.htm





Bridezilla Feeds Monster Cynicism

Ads posing as blogs creating generation of skeptics
Dave McGinn

The company behind the latest You Tube video sensation would like you to know this: It was never the intention to portray anything other than a dramatization.

In other words, no one who watched "Bride Has Massive Hair Wig Out," seen 2.8 million times since its Jan. 18 release, should have believed it was a depiction of a real event free of artifice or deception.

Instead, they should have seen it for what it is: an "initiative" from Sunsilk Haircare Brands in Canada. Never mind that the seemingly guileless video makes no mention of the brand, contains no product placement and makes no explicit mention that it is, in fact, a marketing ploy.

Videos such as "Bride Has Massive Hair Wig Out" and those posted by Lonelygirl15 on You Tube may help sell products or kick-start a budding actor's career. But they also have a more pernicious effect on our tendency to trust what seems genuine.

"I can't see how they don't make people more cynical," says Gillian Watson, a social psychologist at the University of British Columbia.

Of course, many people were probably skeptical of the "wig out" video since it was, in many ways, too good to be true.

There was something too perfect in the timing of the soon-to-be married young woman's entrance, something too over-the-top about her hysterically hacking away at her hair with scissors as her bridesmaids try to console her.

Still, few suspected they were watching a shampoo commercial.

By exploiting our tendency to trust in the veracity of such online videos, it is only a matter of time, says Prof. Watson, before we will dismiss even real events or sincere emotional outpourings as just another buzz-building brand strategy.

Last summer, an adorable 16- year-old named Bree, who posted video blogs on You Tube under the name Lonelygirl15, won over millions with her touching musings on first loves and being homeschooled by her religious parents.

A few months after the postings began, however, it was revealed that "Bree" was 19-yearold actress Jessica Rose and that the video blogs had been scripted by two aspiring screenwriters.

In December, Sony admitted it had created a fake blog to promote its Play Station Portable. The blog, supposedly authored by a hip hop artist named Charlie, who claimed he wanted one of the portable devices for Christmas, was exposed as a fraud by bloggers suspicious of its legitimacy. Once the hoax was exposed, Sony admitted the blog was a veiled marketing tool.

A pro-Wal-Mart blog launched in September that chronicled the adventures of supposedly ordinary Americans travelling crosscountry in an RV and sleeping over in Wal-Mart parking lots was later exposed as a promotional tactic by Working Families for Wal-Mart, an organization created by the retail giant's public relations firm.

There is even a word for these kinds of sites: "flogs," short for fake blogs.

"This is part of the overall trend toward stealth marketing," says Alan Middleton, a marketing professor at York University's Schulich School of Business, who says the trend is driven in part by concerns that traditional forms of marketing are losing their allure among certain target groups.

He says that even though stealth marketing is still in its infancy, it has already made everything online suspect: "How can you tell anything from any source isn't a shill?"

As deception and misinformation proliferates on the Web, such sites as snopes.com have emerged to debunk frauds, fakes and hoaxes.

This so-called "truth-squading" is a burgeoning online business, according to Investor's Business Daily, which reports on the growing number of companies developing technology to detect fakery in videos, photos and documents.

Mark Federman, a researcher at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education whose work examines the effects of media on society, says the increase of online fakery demands careful circumspection from those who use the Web.

"Out of this needs to develop a type of literacy or critical understanding of asking, 'Where does this come from? How can we understand what's behind it? How do we create the transparency?' Those are all very much skills of the new era in which we live."

Lonelygirl15 was outed by an 18-year-old blogger named Matt Foremski, who traced "Bree" to Jessica Rose's My Space page.

The Sony flog marketing the Play Station Portable was exposed by bloggers who traced the site's URL to the marketing company behind the flog.

In the long term, developing this kind of skepticism will benefit all Internet users, Mr. Federman says. But in the short term, he says, online deceptions of the "wig-out" video variety have the potential to erode trust in events or moments that seem to be free of artifice or marketing interests.

"If one is always skeptical, then goes to cynicism, you end up feeling pretty negative about the world," Mr. Federman says. "You end up with a very sour disposition. You tend to look at people and interactions as everyone trying to manipulate you, and tend to have a miserable existence, quite frankly.

"It's not pleasant. You can't enjoy yourself. ?You always have to be on your guard."
http://www.canada.com/nationalpost/n...f4f984&k=45802





The Ecstasy of Influence

A plagiarism
Jonathan Lethem

All mankind is of one author, and is one volume; when one man dies, one chapter is not torn out of the book, but translated into a better language; and every chapter must be so translated. . . .

—John Donne


LOVE AND THEFT

Consider this tale: a cultivated man of middle age looks back on the story of an amour fou, one beginning when, traveling abroad, he takes a room as a lodger. The moment he sees the daughter of the house, he is lost. She is a preteen, whose charms instantly enslave him. Heedless of her age, he becomes intimate with her. In the end she dies, and the narrator—marked by her forever—remains alone. The name of the girl supplies the title of the story: Lolita.

The author of the story I've described, Heinz von Lichberg, published his tale of Lolita in 1916, forty years before Vladimir Nabokov's novel. Lichberg later became a prominent journalist in the Nazi era, and his youthful works faded from view. Did Nabokov, who remained in Berlin until 1937, adopt Lichberg's tale consciously? Or did the earlier tale exist for Nabokov as a hidden, unacknowledged memory? The history of literature is not without examples of this phenomenon, called cryptomnesia. Another hypothesis is that Nabokov, knowing Lichberg's tale perfectly well, had set himself to that art of quotation that Thomas Mann, himself a master of it, called “higher cribbing.” Literature has always been a crucible in which familiar themes are continually recast. Little of what we admire in Nabokov's Lolita is to be found in its predecessor; the former is in no way deducible from the latter. Still: did Nabokov consciously borrow and quote?

“When you live outside the law, you have to eliminate dishonesty.” The line comes from Don Siegel's 1958 film noir, The Lineup, written by Stirling Silliphant. The film still haunts revival houses, likely thanks to Eli Wallach's blazing portrayal of a sociopathic hit man and to Siegel's long, sturdy auteurist career. Yet what were those words worth—to Siegel, or Silliphant, or their audience—in 1958? And again: what was the line worth when Bob Dylan heard it (presumably in some Greenwich Village repertory cinema), cleaned it up a little, and inserted it into “Absolutely Sweet Marie”? What are they worth now, to the culture at large?

Appropriation has always played a key role in Dylan's music. The songwriter has grabbed not only from a panoply of vintage Hollywood films but from Shakespeare and F. Scott Fitzgerald and Junichi Saga's Confessions of a Yakuza. He also nabbed the title of Eric Lott's study of minstrelsy for his 2001 album Love and Theft. One imagines Dylan liked the general resonance of the title, in which emotional misdemeanors stalk the sweetness of love, as they do so often in Dylan's songs. Lott's title is, of course, itself a riff on Leslie Fiedler's Love and Death in the American Novel, which famously identifies the literary motif of the interdependence of a white man and a dark man, like Huck and Jim or Ishmael and Queequeg—a series of nested references to Dylan's own appropriating, minstrel-boy self. Dylan's art offers a paradox: while it famously urges us not to look back, it also encodes a knowledge of past sources that might otherwise have little home in contemporary culture, like the Civil War poetry of the Confederate bard Henry Timrod, resuscitated in lyrics on Dylan's newest record, Modern Times. Dylan's originality and his appropriations are as one.

The same might be said of all art. I realized this forcefully when one day I went looking for the John Donne passage quoted above. I know the lines, I confess, not from a college course but from the movie version of 84, Charing Cross Road with Anthony Hopkins and Anne Bancroft. I checked out 84, Charing Cross Road from the library in the hope of finding the Donne passage, but it wasn't in the book. It's alluded to in the play that was adapted from the book, but it isn't reprinted. So I rented the movie again, and there was the passage, read in voice-over by Anthony Hopkins but without attribution. Unfortunately, the line was also abridged so that, when I finally turned to the Web, I found myself searching for the line “all mankind is of one volume” instead of “all mankind is of one author, and is one volume.”

My Internet search was initially no more successful than my library search. I had thought that summoning books from the vasty deep was a matter of a few keystrokes, but when I visited the website of the Yale library, I found that most of its books don't yet exist as computer text. As a last-ditch effort I searched the seemingly more obscure phrase “every chapter must be so translated.” The passage I wanted finally came to me, as it turns out, not as part of a scholarly library collection but simply because someone who loves Donne had posted it on his homepage. The lines I sought were from Meditation 17 in Devotions upon Emergent Occasions, which happens to be the most famous thing Donne ever wrote, containing as it does the line “never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.” My search had led me from a movie to a book to a play to a website and back to a book. Then again, those words may be as famous as they are only because Hemingway lifted them for his book title.

Literature has been in a plundered, fragmentary state for a long time. When I was thirteen I purchased an anthology of Beat writing. Immediately, and to my very great excitement, I discovered one William S. Burroughs, author of something called Naked Lunch, excerpted there in all its coruscating brilliance. Burroughs was then as radical a literary man as the world had to offer. Nothing, in all my experience of literature since, has ever had as strong an effect on my sense of the sheer possibilities of writing. Later, attempting to understand this impact, I discovered that Burroughs had incorporated snippets of other writers' texts into his work, an action I knew my teachers would have called plagiarism. Some of these borrowings had been lifted from American science fiction of the Forties and Fifties, adding a secondary shock of recognition for me. By then I knew that this “cut-up method,” as Burroughs called it, was central to whatever he thought he was doing, and that he quite literally believed it to be akin to magic. When he wrote about his process, the hairs on my neck stood up, so palpable was the excitement. Burroughs was interrogating the universe with scissors and a paste pot, and the least imitative of authors was no plagiarist at all.

CONTAMINATION ANXIETY

In 1941, on his front porch, Muddy Waters recorded a song for the folklorist Alan Lomax. After singing the song, which he told Lomax was entitled “Country Blues,” Waters described how he came to write it. “I made it on about the eighth of October '38,” Waters said. “I was fixin' a puncture on a car. I had been mistreated by a girl. I just felt blue, and the song fell into my mind and it come to me just like that and I started singing.” Then Lomax, who knew of the Robert Johnson recording called “Walkin' Blues,” asked Waters if there were any other songs that used the same tune. “There's been some blues played like that,” Waters replied. “This song comes from the cotton field and a boy once put a record out—Robert Johnson. He put it out as named ‘Walkin' Blues.' I heard the tune before I heard it on the record. I learned it from Son House.” In nearly one breath, Waters offers five accounts: his own active authorship: he “made it” on a specific date. Then the “passive” explanation: “it come to me just like that.” After Lomax raises the question of influence, Waters, without shame, misgivings, or trepidation, says that he heard a version by Johnson, but that his mentor, Son House, taught it to him. In the middle of that complex genealogy, Waters declares that “this song comes from the cotton field.”

Blues and jazz musicians have long been enabled by a kind of “open source” culture, in which pre-existing melodic fragments and larger musical frameworks are freely reworked. Technology has only multiplied the possibilities; musicians have gained the power to duplicate sounds literally rather than simply approximate them through allusion. In Seventies Jamaica, King Tubby and Lee “Scratch” Perry deconstructed recorded music, using astonishingly primitive pre-digital hardware, creating what they called “versions.” The recombinant nature of their means of production quickly spread to DJs in New York and London. Today an endless, gloriously impure, and fundamentally social process generates countless hours of music.

Visual, sound, and text collage—which for many centuries were relatively fugitive traditions (a cento here, a folk pastiche there)—became explosively central to a series of movements in the twentieth century: futurism, cubism, Dada, musique concrète, situationism, pop art, and appropriationism. In fact, collage, the common denominator in that list, might be called the art form of the twentieth century, never mind the twenty-first. But forget, for the moment, chronologies, schools, or even centuries. As examples accumulate—Igor Stravinsky's music and Daniel Johnston's, Francis Bacon's paintings and Henry Darger's, the novels of the Oulipo group and of Hannah Crafts (the author who pillaged Dickens's Bleak House to write The Bondwoman's Narrative), as well as cherished texts that become troubling to their admirers after the discovery of their “plagiarized” elements, like Richard Condon's novels or Martin Luther King Jr.'s sermons—it becomes apparent that appropriation, mimicry, quotation, allusion, and sublimated collaboration consist of a kind of sine qua non of the creative act, cutting across all forms and genres in the realm of cultural production.

In a courtroom scene from The Simpsons that has since entered into the television canon, an argument over the ownership of the animated characters Itchy and Scratchy rapidly escalates into an existential debate on the very nature of cartoons. “Animation is built on plagiarism!” declares the show's hot-tempered cartoon-producer-within-a-cartoon, Roger Meyers Jr. “You take away our right to steal ideas, where are they going to come from?” If nostalgic cartoonists had never borrowed from Fritz the Cat, there would be no Ren & Stimpy Show; without the Rankin/Bass and Charlie Brown Christmas specials, there would be no South Park; and without The Flintstones—more or less The Honeymooners in cartoon loincloths—The Simpsons would cease to exist. If those don't strike you as essential losses, then consider the remarkable series of “plagiarisms” that links Ovid's “Pyramus and Thisbe” with Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet and Leonard Bernstein's West Side Story, or Shakespeare's description of Cleopatra, copied nearly verbatim from Plutarch's life of Mark Antony and also later nicked by T. S. Eliot for The Waste Land. If these are examples of plagiarism, then we want more plagiarism.

Most artists are brought to their vocation when their own nascent gifts are awakened by the work of a master. That is to say, most artists are converted to art by art itself. Finding one's voice isn't just an emptying and purifying oneself of the words of others but an adopting and embracing of filiations, communities, and discourses. Inspiration could be called inhaling the memory of an act never experienced. Invention, it must be humbly admitted, does not consist in creating out of void but out of chaos. Any artist knows these truths, no matter how deeply he or she submerges that knowing.

What happens when an allusion goes unrecognized? A closer look at The Waste Land may help make this point. The body of Eliot's poem is a vertiginous mélange of quotation, allusion, and “original” writing. When Eliot alludes to Edmund Spenser's “Prothalamion” with the line “Sweet Thames, run softly, till I end my song,” what of readers to whom the poem, never one of Spenser's most popular, is unfamiliar? (Indeed, the Spenser is now known largely because of Eliot's use of it.) Two responses are possible: grant the line to Eliot, or later discover the source and understand the line as plagiarism. Eliot evidenced no small anxiety about these matters; the notes he so carefully added to The Waste Land can be read as a symptom of modernism's contamination anxiety. Taken from this angle, what exactly is postmodernism, except modernism without the anxiety?

SURROUNDED BY SIGNS

The surrealists believed that objects in the world possess a certain but unspecifiable intensity that had been dulled by everyday use and utility. They meant to reanimate this dormant intensity, to bring their minds once again into close contact with the matter that made up their world. André Breton's maxim “Beautiful as the chance encounter of a sewing machine and an umbrella on an operating table” is an expression of the belief that simply placing objects in an unexpected context reinvigorates their mysterious qualities.

This “crisis” the surrealists identified was being simultaneously diagnosed by others. Martin Heidegger held that the essence of modernity was found in a certain technological orientation he called “enframing.” This tendency encourages us to see the objects in our world only in terms of how they can serve us or be used by us. The task he identified was to find ways to resituate ourselves vis-à-vis these “objects,” so that we may see them as “things” pulled into relief against the ground of their functionality. Heidegger believed that art had the great potential to reveal the “thingness” of objects.

The surrealists understood that photography and cinema could carry out this reanimating process automatically; the process of framing objects in a lens was often enough to create the charge they sought. Describing the effect, Walter Benjamin drew a comparison between the photographic apparatus and Freud's psychoanalytic methods. Just as Freud's theories “isolated and made analyzable things which had heretofore floated along unnoticed in the broad stream of perception,” the photographic apparatus focuses on “hidden details of familiar objects,” revealing “entirely new structural formations of the subject.”

It's worth noting, then, that early in the history of photography a series of judicial decisions could well have changed the course of that art: courts were asked whether the photographer, amateur or professional, required permission before he could capture and print an image. Was the photographer stealing from the person or building whose photograph he shot, pirating something of private and certifiable value? Those early decisions went in favor of the pirates. Just as Walt Disney could take inspiration from Buster Keaton's Steamboat Bill, Jr., the Brothers Grimm, or the existence of real mice, the photographer should be free to capture an image without compensating the source. The world that meets our eye through the lens of a camera was judged to be, with minor exceptions, a sort of public commons, where a cat may look at a king.

Novelists may glance at the stuff of the world too, but we sometimes get called to task for it. For those whose ganglia were formed pre-TV, the mimetic deployment of pop-culture icons seems at best an annoying tic and at worst a dangerous vapidity that compromises fiction's seriousness by dating it out of the Platonic Always, where it ought to reside. In a graduate workshop I briefly passed through, a certain gray eminence tried to convince us that a literary story should always eschew “any feature which serves to date it” because “serious fiction must be Timeless.” When we protested that, in his own well-known work, characters moved about electrically lit rooms, drove cars, and spoke not Anglo-Saxon but postwar English—and further, that fiction he'd himself ratified as great, such as Dickens, was liberally strewn with innately topical, commercial, and timebound references—he impatiently amended his proscription to those explicit references that would date a story in the “frivolous Now.” When pressed, he said of course he meant the “trendy mass-popular-media” reference. Here, transgenerational discourse broke down.

I was born in 1964; I grew up watching Captain Kangaroo, moon landings, zillions of TV ads, the Banana Splits, M*A*S*H, and The Mary Tyler Moore Show. I was born with words in my mouth—“Band-Aid,” “Q-tip,” “Xerox”—object-names as fixed and eternal in my logosphere as “taxicab” and “toothbrush.” The world is a home littered with pop-culture products and their emblems. I also came of age swamped by parodies that stood for originals yet mysterious to me—I knew Monkees before Beatles, Belmondo before Bogart, and “remember” the movie Summer of '42 from a Mad magazine satire, though I've still never seen the film itself. I'm not alone in having been born backward into an incoherent realm of texts, products, and images, the commercial and cultural environment with which we've both supplemented and blotted out our natural world. I can no more claim it as “mine” than the sidewalks and forests of the world, yet I do dwell in it, and for me to stand a chance as either artist or citizen, I'd probably better be permitted to name it.

Consider Walker Percy's The Moviegoer:

Other people, so I have read, treasure memorable moments in their lives: the time one climbed the Parthenon at sunrise, the summer night one met a lonely girl in Central Park and achieved with her a sweet and natural relationship, as they say in books. I too once met a girl in Central Park, but it is not much to remember. What I remember is the time John Wayne killed three men with a carbine as he was falling to the dusty street in Stagecoach, and the time the kitten found Orson Welles in the doorway in The Third Man.

Today, when we can eat Tex-Mex with chopsticks while listening to reggae and watching a YouTube rebroadcast of the Berlin Wall's fall—i.e., when damn near everything presents itself as familiar—it's not a surprise that some of today's most ambitious art is going about trying to make the familiar strange. In so doing, in reimagining what human life might truly be like over there across the chasms of illusion, mediation, demographics, marketing, imago, and appearance, artists are paradoxically trying to restore what's taken for “real” to three whole dimensions, to reconstruct a univocally round world out of disparate streams of flat sights.

Whatever charge of tastelessness or trademark violation may be attached to the artistic appropriation of the media environment in which we swim, the alternative—to flinch, or tiptoe away into some ivory tower of irrelevance—is far worse. We're surrounded by signs; our imperative is to ignore none of them.

USEMONOPOLY

The idea that culture can be property—intellectual property—is used to justify everything from attempts to force the Girl Scouts to pay royalties for singing songs around campfires to the infringement suit brought by the estate of Margaret Mitchell against the publishers of Alice Randall's The Wind Done Gone. Corporations like Celera Genomics have filed for patents for human genes, while the Recording Industry Association of America has sued music downloaders for copyright infringement, reaching out-of-court settlements for thousands of dollars with defendants as young as twelve. ASCAP bleeds fees from shop owners who play background music in their stores; students and scholars are shamed from placing texts facedown on photocopy machines. At the same time, copyright is revered by most established writers and artists as a birthright and bulwark, the source of nurture for their infinitely fragile practices in a rapacious world. Plagiarism and piracy, after all, are the monsters we working artists are taught to dread, as they roam the woods surrounding our tiny preserves of regard and remuneration.

A time is marked not so much by ideas that are argued about as by ideas that are taken for granted. The character of an era hangs upon what needs no defense. In this regard, few of us question the contemporary construction of copyright. It is taken as a law, both in the sense of a universally recognizable moral absolute, like the law against murder, and as naturally inherent in our world, like the law of gravity. In fact, it is neither. Rather, copyright is an ongoing social negotiation, tenuously forged, endlessly revised, and imperfect in its every incarnation.

Thomas Jefferson, for one, considered copyright a necessary evil: he favored providing just enough incentive to create, nothing more, and thereafter allowing ideas to flow freely, as nature intended. His conception of copyright was enshrined in the Constitution, which gives Congress the authority to “promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries.” This was a balancing act between creators and society as a whole; second comers might do a much better job than the originator with the original idea.

But Jefferson's vision has not fared well, has in fact been steadily eroded by those who view the culture as a market in which everything of value should be owned by someone or other. The distinctive feature of modern American copyright law is its almost limitless bloating—its expansion in both scope and duration. With no registration requirement, every creative act in a tangible medium is now subject to copyright protection: your email to your child or your child's finger painting, both are automatically protected. The first Congress to grant copyright gave authors an initial term of fourteen years, which could be renewed for another fourteen if the author still lived. The current term is the life of the author plus seventy years. It's only a slight exaggeration to say that each time Mickey Mouse is about to fall into the public domain, the mouse's copyright term is extended.

Even as the law becomes more restrictive, technology is exposing those restrictions as bizarre and arbitrary. When old laws fixed on reproduction as the compensable (or actionable) unit, it wasn't because there was anything fundamentally invasive of an author's rights in the making of a copy. Rather it was because copies were once easy to find and count, so they made a useful benchmark for deciding when an owner's rights had been invaded. In the contemporary world, though, the act of “copying” is in no meaningful sense equivalent to an infringement—we make a copy every time we accept an emailed text, or send or forward one—and is impossible anymore to regulate or even describe.

At the movies, my entertainment is sometimes lately preceded by a dire trailer, produced by the lobbying group called the Motion Picture Association of America, in which the purchasing of a bootleg copy of a Hollywood film is compared to the theft of a car or a handbag—and, as the bullying supertitles remind us, “You wouldn't steal a handbag!” This conflation forms an incitement to quit thinking. If I were to tell you that pirating DVDs or downloading music is in no way different from loaning a friend a book, my own arguments would be as ethically bankrupt as the MPAA's. The truth lies somewhere in the vast gray area between these two overstated positions. For a car or a handbag, once stolen, no longer is available to its owner, while the appropriation of an article of “intellectual property” leaves the original untouched. As Jefferson wrote, “He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me.”

Yet industries of cultural capital, who profit not from creating but from distributing, see the sale of culture as a zero-sum game. The piano-roll publishers fear the record companies, who fear the cassette-tape manufacturers, who fear the online vendors, who fear whoever else is next in line to profit most quickly from the intangible and infinitely reproducible fruits of an artist's labor. It has been the same in every industry and with every technological innovation. Jack Valenti, speaking for the MPAA: “I say to you that the VCR is to the American film producer and the American public as the Boston Strangler is to the woman home alone.”

Thinking clearly sometimes requires unbraiding our language. The word “copyright” may eventually seem as dubious in its embedded purposes as “family values,” “globalization,” and, sure, “intellectual property.” Copyright is a “right” in no absolute sense; it is a government-granted monopoly on the use of creative results. So let's try calling it that—not a right but a monopoly on use, a “usemonopoly”—and then consider how the rapacious expansion of monopoly rights has always been counter to the public interest, no matter if it is Andrew Carnegie controlling the price of steel or Walt Disney managing the fate of his mouse. Whether the monopolizing beneficiary is a living artist or some artist's heirs or some corporation's shareholders, the loser is the community, including living artists who might make splendid use of a healthy public domain.

THE BEAUTY OF SECOND USE

A few years ago someone brought me a strange gift, purchased at MoMA's downtown design store: a copy of my own first novel, Gun, With Occasional Music, expertly cut into the contours of a pistol. The object was the work of Robert The, an artist whose specialty is the reincarnation of everyday materials. I regard my first book as an old friend, one who never fails to remind me of the spirit with which I entered into this game of art and commerce—that to be allowed to insert the materials of my imagination onto the shelves of bookstores and into the minds of readers (if only a handful) was a wild privilege. I was paid $6,000 for three years of writing, but at the time I'd have happily published the results for nothing. Now my old friend had come home in a new form, one I was unlikely to have imagined for it myself. The gun-book wasn't readable, exactly, but I couldn't take offense at that. The fertile spirit of stray connection this appropriated object conveyed back to me—the strange beauty of its second use—was a reward for being a published writer I could never have fathomed in advance. And the world makes room for both my novel and Robert The's gun-book. There's no need to choose between the two.

In the first life of creative property, if the creator is lucky, the content is sold. After the commercial life has ended, our tradition supports a second life as well. A newspaper is delivered to a doorstep, and the next day wraps fish or builds an archive. Most books fall out of print after one year, yet even within that period they can be sold in used bookstores and stored in libraries, quoted in reviews, parodied in magazines, described in conversations, and plundered for costumes for kids to wear on Halloween. The demarcation between various possible uses is beautifully graded and hard to define, the more so as artifacts distill into and repercuss through the realm of culture into which they've been entered, the more so as they engage the receptive minds for whom they were presumably intended.

Active reading is an impertinent raid on the literary preserve. Readers are like nomads, poaching their way across fields they do not own—artists are no more able to control the imaginations of their audiences than the culture industry is able to control second uses of its artifacts. In the children's classic The Velveteen Rabbit, the old Skin Horse offers the Rabbit a lecture on the practice of textual poaching. The value of a new toy lies not it its material qualities (not “having things that buzz inside you and a stick-out handle”), the Skin Horse explains, but rather in how the toy is used. “Real isn't how you are made. . . . It's a thing that happens to you. When a child loves you for a long, long time, not just to play with, but REALLY loves you, then you become Real.” The Rabbit is fearful, recognizing that consumer goods don't become “real” without being actively reworked: “Does it hurt?” Reassuring him, the Skin Horse says: “It doesn't happen all at once. . . . You become. It takes a long time. . . . Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in the joints and very shabby.” Seen from the perspective of the toymaker, the Velveteen Rabbit's loose joints and missing eyes represent vandalism, signs of misuse and rough treatment; for others, these are marks of its loving use.

Artists and their surrogates who fall into the trap of seeking recompense for every possible second use end up attacking their own best audience members for the crime of exalting and enshrining their work. The Recording Industry Association of America prosecuting their own record-buying public makes as little sense as the novelists who bristle at autographing used copies of their books for collectors. And artists, or their heirs, who fall into the trap of attacking the collagists and satirists and digital samplers of their work are attacking the next generation of creators for the crime of being influenced, for the crime of responding with the same mixture of intoxication, resentment, lust, and glee that characterizes all artistic successors. By doing so they make the world smaller, betraying what seems to me the primary motivation for participating in the world of culture in the first place: to make the world larger.

SOURCE HYPOCRISY, OR, DISNIAL

The Walt Disney Company has drawn an astonishing catalogue from the work of others: Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, Fantasia, Pinocchio, Dumbo, Bambi, Song of the South, Cinderella, Alice in Wonderland, Robin Hood, Peter Pan, Lady and the Tramp, Mulan, Sleeping Beauty, The Sword in the Stone, The Jungle Book, and, alas, Treasure Planet, a legacy of cultural sampling that Shakespeare, or De La Soul, could get behind. Yet Disney's protectorate of lobbyists has policed the resulting cache of cultural materials as vigilantly as if it were Fort Knox—threatening legal action, for instance, against the artist Dennis Oppenheim for the use of Disney characters in a sculpture, and prohibiting the scholar Holly Crawford from using any Disney-related images—including artwork by Lichtenstein, Warhol, Oldenburg, and others—in her monograph Attached to the Mouse: Disney and Contemporary Art.

This peculiar and specific act—the enclosure of commonwealth culture for the benefit of a sole or corporate owner—is close kin to what could be called imperial plagiarism, the free use of Third World or “primitive” artworks and styles by more privileged (and better-paid) artists. Think of Picasso's Les Demoiselles d'Avignon, or some of the albums of Paul Simon or David Byrne: even without violating copyright, those creators have sometimes come in for a certain skepticism when the extent of their outsourcing became evident. And, as when Led Zeppelin found themselves sued for back royalties by the bluesman Willie Dixon, the act can occasionally be an expensive one. To live outside the law, you must be honest: perhaps it was this, in part, that spurred David Byrne and Brian Eno to recently launch a “remix” website, where anyone can download easily disassembled versions of two songs from My Life in the Bush of Ghosts, an album reliant on vernacular speech sampled from a host of sources. Perhaps it also explains why Bob Dylan has never refused a request for a sample.

Kenneth Koch once said, “I'm a writer who likes to be influenced.” It was a charming confession, and a rare one. For so many artists, the act of creativity is intended as a Napoleonic imposition of one's uniqueness upon the universe—après moi le déluge of copycats! And for every James Joyce or Woody Guthrie or Martin Luther King Jr., or Walt Disney, who gathered a constellation of voices in his work, there may seem to be some corporation or literary estate eager to stopper the bottle: cultural debts flow in, but they don't flow out. We might call this tendency “source hypocrisy.” Or we could name it after the most pernicious source hypocrites of all time: Disnial.

YOU CAN'T STEAL A GIFT

My reader may, understandably, be on the verge of crying, “Communist!” A large, diverse society cannot survive without property; a large, diverse, and modern society cannot flourish without some form of intellectual property. But it takes little reflection to grasp that there is ample value that the term “property” doesn't capture. And works of art exist simultaneously in two economies, a market economy and a gift economy.

The cardinal difference between gift and commodity exchange is that a gift establishes a feeling-bond between two people, whereas the sale of a commodity leaves no necessary connection. I go into a hardware store, pay the man for a hacksaw blade, and walk out. I may never see him again. The disconnectedness is, in fact, a virtue of the commodity mode. We don't want to be bothered, and if the clerk always wants to chat about the family, I'll shop elsewhere. I just want a hacksaw blade. But a gift makes a connection. There are many examples, the candy or cigarette offered to a stranger who shares a seat on the plane, the few words that indicate goodwill between passengers on the late-night bus. These tokens establish the simplest bonds of social life, but the model they offer may be extended to the most complicated of unions—marriage, parenthood, mentorship. If a value is placed on these (often essentially unequal) exchanges, they degenerate into something else.

Yet one of the more difficult things to comprehend is that the gift economies—like those that sustain open-source software—coexist so naturally with the market. It is precisely this doubleness in art practices that we must identify, ratify, and enshrine in our lives as participants in culture, either as “producers” or “consumers.” Art that matters to us—which moves the heart, or revives the soul, or delights the senses, or offers courage for living, however we choose to describe the experience—is received as a gift is received. Even if we've paid a fee at the door of the museum or concert hall, when we are touched by a work of art something comes to us that has nothing to do with the price. The daily commerce of our lives proceeds at its own constant level, but a gift conveys an uncommodifiable surplus of inspiration.

The way we treat a thing can change its nature, though. Religions often prohibit the sale of sacred objects, the implication being that their sanctity is lost if they are bought and sold. We consider it unacceptable to sell sex, babies, body organs, legal rights, and votes. The idea that something should never be commodified is generally known as inalienability or unalienability—a concept most famously expressed by Thomas Jefferson in the phrase “endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights . . .” A work of art seems to be a hardier breed; it can be sold in the market and still emerge a work of art. But if it is true that in the essential commerce of art a gift is carried by the work from the artist to his audience, if I am right to say that where there is no gift there is no art, then it may be possible to destroy a work of art by converting it into a pure commodity. I don't maintain that art can't be bought and sold, but that the gift portion of the work places a constraint upon our merchandising. This is the reason why even a really beautiful, ingenious, powerful ad (of which there are a lot) can never be any kind of real art: an ad has no status as gift; i.e., it's never really for the person it's directed at.

The power of a gift economy remains difficult for the empiricists of our market culture to understand. In our times, the rhetoric of the market presumes that everything should be and can be appropriately bought, sold, and owned—a tide of alienation lapping daily at the dwindling redoubt of the unalienable. In free-market theory, an intervention to halt propertization is considered “paternalistic,” because it inhibits the free action of the citizen, now reposited as a “potential entrepreneur.” Of course, in the real world, we know that child-rearing, family life, education, socialization, sexuality, political life, and many other basic human activities require insulation from market forces. In fact, paying for many of these things can ruin them. We may be willing to peek at Who Wants to Marry a Multimillionaire or an eBay auction of the ova of fashion models, but only to reassure ourselves that some things are still beneath our standards of dignity.

What's remarkable about gift economies is that they can flourish in the most unlikely places—in run-down neighborhoods, on the Internet, in scientific communities, and among members of Alcoholics Anonymous. A classic example is commercial blood systems, which generally produce blood supplies of lower safety, purity, and potency than volunteer systems. A gift economy may be superior when it comes to maintaining a group's commitment to certain extra-market values.

THE COMMONS

Another way of understanding the presence of gift economies—which dwell like ghosts in the commercial machine—is in the sense of a public commons. A commons, of course, is anything like the streets over which we drive, the skies through which we pilot airplanes, or the public parks or beaches on which we dally. A commons belongs to everyone and no one, and its use is controlled only by common consent. A commons describes resources like the body of ancient music drawn on by composers and folk musicians alike, rather than the commodities, like “Happy Birthday to You,” for which ASCAP, 114 years after it was written, continues to collect a fee. Einstein's theory of relativity is a commons. Writings in the public domain are a commons. Gossip about celebrities is a commons. The silence in a movie theater is a transitory commons, impossibly fragile, treasured by those who crave it, and constructed as a mutual gift by those who compose it.

The world of art and culture is a vast commons, one that is salted through with zones of utter commerce yet remains gloriously immune to any overall commodification. The closest resemblance is to the commons of a language: altered by every contributor, expanded by even the most passive user. That a language is a commons doesn't mean that the community owns it; rather it belongs between people, possessed by no one, not even by society as a whole.

Nearly any commons, though, can be encroached upon, partitioned, enclosed. The American commons include tangible assets such as public forests and minerals, intangible wealth such as copyrights and patents, critical infrastructures such as the Internet and government research, and cultural resources such as the broadcast airwaves and public spaces. They include resources we've paid for as taxpayers and inherited from previous generations. They're not just an inventory of marketable assets; they're social institutions and cultural traditions that define us as Americans and enliven us as human beings. Some invasions of the commons are sanctioned because we can no longer muster a spirited commitment to the public sector. The abuse goes unnoticed because the theft of the commons is seen in glimpses, not in panorama. We may occasionally see a former wetland paved; we may hear about the breakthrough cancer drug that tax dollars helped develop, the rights to which pharmaceutical companies acquired for a song. The larger movement goes too much unremarked. The notion of a commons of cultural materials goes more or less unnamed.

Honoring the commons is not a matter of moral exhortation. It is a practical necessity. We in Western society are going through a period of intensifying belief in private ownership, to the detriment of the public good. We have to remain constantly vigilant to prevent raids by those who would selfishly exploit our common heritage for their private gain. Such raids on our natural resources are not examples of enterprise and initiative. They are attempts to take from all the people just for the benefit of a few.

UNDISCOVERED PUBLIC KNOWLEDGE

Artists and intellectuals despondent over the prospects for originality can take heart from a phenomenon identified about twenty years ago by Don Swanson, a library scientist at the University of Chicago. He called it “undiscovered public knowledge.” Swanson showed that standing problems in medical research may be significantly addressed, perhaps even solved, simply by systematically surveying the scientific literature. Left to its own devices, research tends to become more specialized and abstracted from the real-world problems that motivated it and to which it remains relevant. This suggests that such a problem may be tackled effectively not by commissioning more research but by assuming that most or all of the solution can already be found in various scientific journals, waiting to be assembled by someone willing to read across specialties. Swanson himself did this in the case of Raynaud's syndrome, a disease that causes the fingers of young women to become numb. His finding is especially striking—perhaps even scandalous—because it happened in the ever-expanding biomedical sciences.

Undiscovered public knowledge emboldens us to question the extreme claims to originality made in press releases and publishers' notices: Is an intellectual or creative offering truly novel, or have we just forgotten a worthy precursor? Does solving certain scientific problems really require massive additional funding, or could a computerized search engine, creatively deployed, do the same job more quickly and cheaply? Lastly, does our appetite for creative vitality require the violence and exasperation of another avant-garde, with its wearisome killing-the-father imperatives, or might we be better off ratifying the ecstasy of influence—and deepening our willingness to understand the commonality and timelessness of the methods and motifs available to artists?

GIVE ALL

A few years ago, the Film Society of Lincoln Center announced a retrospective of the works of Dariush Mehrjui, then a fresh enthusiasm of mine. Mehrjui is one of Iran's finest filmmakers, and the only one whose subject was personal relationships among the upper-middle-class intelligentsia. Needless to say, opportunities to view his films were—and remain—rare indeed. I headed uptown for one, an adaptation of J. D. Salinger's Franny and Zooey, titled Pari, only to discover at the door of the Walter Reade Theater that the screening had been canceled: its announcement had brought threat of a lawsuit down on the Film Society. True, these were Salinger's rights under the law. Yet why would he care that some obscure Iranian filmmaker had paid him homage with a meditation on his heroine? Would it have damaged his book or robbed him of some crucial remuneration had the screening been permitted? The fertile spirit of stray connection—one stretching across what is presently seen as the direst of international breaches—had in this case been snuffed out. The cold, undead hand of one of my childhood literary heroes had reached out from its New Hampshire redoubt to arrest my present-day curiosity.

A few assertions, then:

Any text that has infiltrated the common mind to the extent of Gone With the Wind or Lolita or Ulysses inexorably joins the language of culture. A map-turned-to-landscape, it has moved to a place beyond enclosure or control. The authors and their heirs should consider the subsequent parodies, refractions, quotations, and revisions an honor, or at least the price of a rare success.

A corporation that has imposed an inescapable notion—Mickey Mouse, Band-Aid—on the cultural language should pay a similar price.

The primary objective of copyright is not to reward the labor of authors but “to promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts.” To this end, copyright assures authors the right to their original expression, but encourages others to build freely upon the ideas and information conveyed by a work. This result is neither unfair nor unfortunate.

Contemporary copyright, trademark, and patent law is presently corrupted. The case for perpetual copyright is a denial of the essential gift-aspect of the creative act. Arguments in its favor are as un-American as those for the repeal of the estate tax.

Art is sourced. Apprentices graze in the field of culture.

Digital sampling is an art method like any other, neutral in itself.

Despite hand-wringing at each technological turn—radio, the Internet—the future will be much like the past. Artists will sell some things but also give some things away. Change may be troubling for those who crave less ambiguity, but the life of an artist has never been filled with certainty.

The dream of a perfect systematic remuneration is nonsense. I pay rent with the price my words bring when published in glossy magazines and at the same moment offer them for almost nothing to impoverished literary quarterlies, or speak them for free into the air in a radio interview. So what are they worth? What would they be worth if some future Dylan worked them into a song? Should I care to make such a thing impossible?

Any text is woven entirely with citations, references, echoes, cultural languages, which cut across it through and through in a vast stereophony. The citations that go to make up a text are anonymous, untraceable, and yet already read; they are quotations without inverted commas. The kernel, the soul—let us go further and say the substance, the bulk, the actual and valuable material of all human utterances—is plagiarism. For substantially all ideas are secondhand, consciously and unconsciously drawn from a million outside sources, and daily used by the garnerer with a pride and satisfaction born of the superstition that he originated them; whereas there is not a rag of originality about them anywhere except the little discoloration they get from his mental and moral caliber and his temperament, and which is revealed in characteristics of phrasing. Old and new make the warp and woof of every moment. There is no thread that is not a twist of these two strands. By necessity, by proclivity, and by delight, we all quote. Neurological study has lately shown that memory, imagination, and consciousness itself is stitched, quilted, pastiched. If we cut-and-paste our selves, might we not forgive it of our artworks?

Artists and writers—and our advocates, our guilds and agents—too often subscribe to implicit claims of originality that do injury to these truths. And we too often, as hucksters and bean counters in the tiny enterprises of our selves, act to spite the gift portion of our privileged roles. People live differently who treat a portion of their wealth as a gift. If we devalue and obscure the gift-economy function of our art practices, we turn our works into nothing more than advertisements for themselves. We may console ourselves that our lust for subsidiary rights in virtual perpetuity is some heroic counter to rapacious corporate interests. But the truth is that with artists pulling on one side and corporations pulling on the other, the loser is the collective public imagination from which we were nourished in the first place, and whose existence as the ultimate repository of our offerings makes the work worth doing in the first place.

As a novelist, I'm a cork on the ocean of story, a leaf on a windy day. Pretty soon I'll be blown away. For the moment I'm grateful to be making a living, and so must ask that for a limited time (in the Thomas Jefferson sense) you please respect my small, treasured usemonopolies. Don't pirate my editions; do plunder my visions. The name of the game is Give All. You, reader, are welcome to my stories. They were never mine in the first place, but I gave them to you. If you have the inclination to pick them up, take them with my blessing.
http://www.harpers.org/TheEcstasyOfInfluence.html





‘Monkey Fishing’ Author Admits to Falsehood
Sara Ivry

When two Columbia University graduate students in journalism began work earlier this month on an article about Jay Forman, a writer whose 2001 article in Slate about fishing for monkeys in Lois Key in Florida proved to be riddled with lies, their investigation prompted Mr. Forman to take new action. After long silence on the topic, last week he called Jack Shafer, his editor for that article, and admitted that he had fabricated the entire piece.

“He never took the boating trip to the key. The whole thing was an imagined fiction,” said Mr. Shafer by telephone.

At the time the article was published, Mr. Shafer was Slate’s deputy editor and was in the running to become its editor (the position instead went to Jacob Weisberg). After the article was questioned, Mr. Forman scaled back his account but still argued that it was essentially true.

Mr. Shafer, who is now Slate’s editor at large and writes a column on media criticism, published a brief account of this most recent disclosure last Tuesday and apologized to readers.

According to Mr. Shafer, in their phone conversation Mr. Forman “used the word remorse, he said he had been troubled,” and followed up the conversation with a personal note of apology. “He had lied about his lie the last time we spoke, and he’s forthcoming about this in his note to me, that he knew that I gave him every possible chance to come clean at the earliest moment and he had not availed himself of that. He had lied to preserve his standing.”

Wary of describing lessons learned from the episode, Mr. Shafer noted that “any publication can be duped by a writer who is prepared to lie in a suicidal fashion and commit career suicide.”

Mr. Forman declined to comment for this article. He did reply to the graduate student inquiry with a statement of apology and said that “he regrets tarnishing his name, that he is not a serial fabricator, that it is the one and only time it’s happened,” according to Gretchen Cuda. Along with Leonardo Blair, she is examining Mr. Forman’s case as part of a larger project on disgraced journalists that will appear in the April issue of The Columbia Journalism Review.

Ms. Cuda said she had not known anything about Mr. Forman until a week and a half ago and found the monkey fishing tale “rather far-fetched,” she said.

“It’s very well written, clearly he’s got a literary gift, but perhaps journalism is not what he should be doing.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/12/bu.../12monkey.html





Carlos Mencia Claims Copyright Infringement On Comedian Who Accuses Mencia Of Stealing Jokes

Another day, another convoluted DMCA claim. Earlier this week, one of the hot stories getting passed around was how comedian (and Fear Factor host) Joe Rogan had confronted comedian Carlos Mencia at a comedy club in LA last weekend. Rogan's complaint was that Mencia, who has a hit show on Comedy Central, constantly uses other comedians' material as if it was his own. Rogan posted a video of the incident and interspersed the argument with additional clips proving all of his claims against Mencia, and disproving many of Mencia's claims. It is an entertaining video no matter how you look at it. Now, given our position on intellectual property issues (especially when it comes to plagiarizing), some might think that we'd support Mencia using other's jokes. However, we also have no problem with Rogan then exposing Mencia's failure to give credit where it's due. The fact is that when Mencia started using other's jokes, the risk (or price) he paid was that he might be exposed some day for it -- and Rogan has pretty damning evidence, which clearly hurts Mencia's reputation. In other words, it's not that we don't think things like plagiarism are bad -- but, rather that many people use it creatively to expand the art -- and those that don't risk harm to their own reputations (as is the case with Mencia).

So what does this have to do with technology? Well, Kevin writes in to to point out that he noticed the video on YouTube that Rogan originally pointed to from his blog has been taken down following a DMCA request from... Carlos Mencia. The video is still available elsewhere and Rogan is offering up various mirrors for downloads -- so it will likely keep appearing. However, it does seem ironic that Mencia is claiming copyright violations to takedown a video that pretty clearly shows him using other's material. It's difficult to see how Mencia has a DMCA claim at all. The video material was mostly taken by Rogan's associates -- so he holds the copyright to it. The short clips he used from other sources to prove his point are pretty clearly fair use. Either way, it seems pretty ridiculous to claim copyright infringement on a video revealing evidence that you used someone else's material without credit.
http://techdirt.com/articles/20070215/230046.shtml





SCO Tries to Subpoena Groklaw Blogger
Ryan Paul

The latest sordid twist in SCO's ongoing legal assault against Linux was revealed today with a report that SCO has subpoenaed Groklaw blogger Pamela Jones. An outspoken critic of SCO, Jones has written countless blog entries with legal analysis of SCO's lawsuits against various Linux users and vendors. Groklaw, the blog created by Jones, is widely read by Linux enthusiasts and members of the open-source community and is considered one of the most comprehensive sources of information regarding the SCO debacle.

Since the initial creation of Groklaw, Jones has risen to celebrity status in the blogosphere. Speculation about her motivations and true identity have transformed into an obsessive fixation for SCO executives, who seem to think that she either doesn't really exist, or is little more than a paid mouthpiece for IBM. SCO CEO Darl McBride claims that Groklaw's "core reason for being is to try to destroy SCO" and that "Pamela Jones is not who she says she is." Pointing out that a PO Box address for Jones is "less than 10 miles from IBM's global headquarters," SCO's former director of corporate communications, Blake Stowell, once claimed that there is some sort of link between Groklaw and IBM. Now SCO wants to depose Pamela Jones in order to bring this dubious conspiracy theory into the courtroom. Absurd claims and perverse theatrics have become a common tactic for SCO, so this latest attempt at obfuscation and distraction comes as no surprise.
Who is Pamela Jones?

This isn't the first time that someone has attempted to invade the Groklaw blogger's privacy since the start of the SCO affair. Two years ago, Sys-Con muckraker Maureen O'Gara wrote an investigative article that allegedly revealed details about the identity of Pamela Jones. O'Gara's article, which provided virtually no relevant details, didn't even provide sufficient evidence to justify the assertion that the person it describes is the Pamela Jones who writes for Groklaw.

When SCO requested access to documentation relating to IBM's relationship with Pamela Jones during the discovery phase of the SCO v. IBM case, IBM vehemently denied any association existed and stated that there is absolutely no documentation to provide on the matter.

SCO's subpoena apparently relates to the Novell case rather than the IBM case. According to Forbes, a "person close to the matter, who spoke on condition of anonymity," claims that the SCO was unable to locate the blogger when the company attempted to serve the subpoena at a residence she allegedly occupies in Connecticut. According to Forbes, a Novell spokesperson acknowledged SCO's intention to depose Pamela Jones, but declined to comment further.

At the present time, the Forbes article and its anonymous tipster are the only sources of information on this matter. It is worth noting that Daniel Lyons, the author of the Forbes article, has been accused of partisanship towards SCO and has been criticized by the Internet Press Guild and Pamela Jones herself for various journalistic deficiencies in articles about Groklaw and the SCO affair.
The missing link

Although there are many unanswered questions about the Groklaw writer, there is very little evidence to support SCO's belief in the existence of a link between Groklaw and IBM. At most, SCO can point to IBM and Groklaw's overlapping agendas on topics like the OpenDocument format and the SCO case and take advantage of uncertainty regarding the details of the blogger's personal life. SCO's assumptions about Jones require the same sort of presumptive leap as the company's overtly fraudulent claims regarding Linux. The company might as well take some cues from a popular anime series and argue that Pamela Jones is an emergent process of humanity's collective conciousness made manifest in the Internet. Such a claim would be just as believable as conspiracy theories about Groklaw's potential complicity with IBM based on the evidence at hand.

It is worth noting that Groklaw's existence precedes the start of the SCO case and that the site still covers a diverse assortment of legal issues that are unrelated to SCO. In fact, the earliest content on the site discusses the Grokster decision. Jones has not yet responded to the Forbes article, and on Saturday she posted an entry at Groklaw in which she revealed her plans to take a temporary break from blogging for health reasons.

Jones has dismissed SCO's previous accusations and declined to provide the general public with any additional insight into her identity. At this point one might be inclined to wonder why Jones hasn't stepped forward and attempted to put an end to the speculation and absurd claims by providing information about herself. The bottom line is that she simply shouldn't have to. The ability of a blogger to remain anonymous is an important factor that contributes to the efficacy of blogging. An anonymous blogger can share their opinions and perspective without fear of persecution or reprisal. SCO's cynical attempt to undermine the anonymity of Pamela Jones reflects a willingness to engage in intimidation to silence critics.
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20070214-8840.html





Patenting Life
Michael Crichton

YOU, or someone you love, may die because of a gene patent that should never have been granted in the first place. Sound far-fetched? Unfortunately, it’s only too real.

Gene patents are now used to halt research, prevent medical testing and keep vital information from you and your doctor. Gene patents slow the pace of medical advance on deadly diseases. And they raise costs exorbitantly: a test for breast cancer that could be done for $1,000 now costs $3,000.

Why? Because the holder of the gene patent can charge whatever he wants, and does. Couldn’t somebody make a cheaper test? Sure, but the patent holder blocks any competitor’s test. He owns the gene. Nobody else can test for it. In fact, you can’t even donate your own breast cancer gene to another scientist without permission. The gene may exist in your body, but it’s now private property.

This bizarre situation has come to pass because of a mistake by an underfinanced and understaffed government agency. The United States Patent Office misinterpreted previous Supreme Court rulings and some years ago began — to the surprise of everyone, including scientists decoding the genome — to issue patents on genes.

Humans share mostly the same genes. The same genes are found in other animals as well. Our genetic makeup represents the common heritage of all life on earth. You can’t patent snow, eagles or gravity, and you shouldn’t be able to patent genes, either. Yet by now one-fifth of the genes in your body are privately owned.

The results have been disastrous. Ordinarily, we imagine patents promote innovation, but that’s because most patents are granted for human inventions. Genes aren’t human inventions, they are features of the natural world. As a result these patents can be used to block innovation, and hurt patient care.

For example, Canavan disease is an inherited disorder that affects children starting at 3 months; they cannot crawl or walk, they suffer seizures and eventually become paralyzed and die by adolescence. Formerly there was no test to tell parents if they were at risk. Families enduring the heartbreak of caring for these children engaged a researcher to identify the gene and produce a test. Canavan families around the world donated tissue and money to help this cause.

When the gene was identified in 1993, the families got the commitment of a New York hospital to offer a free test to anyone who wanted it. But the researcher’s employer, Miami Children’s Hospital Research Institute, patented the gene and refused to allow any health care provider to offer the test without paying a royalty. The parents did not believe genes should be patented and so did not put their names on the patent. Consequently, they had no control over the outcome.

In addition, a gene’s owner can in some instances also own the mutations of that gene, and these mutations can be markers for disease. Countries that don’t have gene patents actually offer better gene testing than we do, because when multiple labs are allowed to do testing, more mutations are discovered, leading to higher-quality tests.

Apologists for gene patents argue that the issue is a tempest in a teapot, that patent licenses are readily available at minimal cost. That’s simply untrue. The owner of the genome for Hepatitis C is paid millions by researchers to study this disease. Not surprisingly, many other researchers choose to study something less expensive.

But forget the costs: why should people or companies own a disease in the first place? They didn’t invent it. Yet today, more than 20 human pathogens are privately owned, including haemophilus influenza and Hepatitis C. And we’ve already mentioned that tests for the BRCA genes for breast cancer cost $3,000. Oh, one more thing: if you undergo the test, the company that owns the patent on the gene can keep your tissue and do research on it without asking your permission. Don’t like it? Too bad.

The plain truth is that gene patents aren’t benign and never will be. When SARS was spreading across the globe, medical researchers hesitated to study it — because of patent concerns. There is no clearer indication that gene patents block innovation, inhibit research and put us all at risk.

Even your doctor can’t get relevant information. An asthma medication only works in certain patients. Yet its manufacturer has squelched efforts by others to develop genetic tests that would determine on whom it will and will not work. Such commercial considerations interfere with a great dream. For years we’ve been promised the coming era of personalized medicine — medicine suited to our particular body makeup. Gene patents destroy that dream.

Fortunately, two congressmen want to make the full benefit of the decoded genome available to us all. Last Friday, Xavier Becerra, a Democrat of California, and Dave Weldon, a Republican of Florida, sponsored the Genomic Research and Accessibility Act, to ban the practice of patenting genes found in nature. Mr. Becerra has been careful to say the bill does not hamper invention, but rather promotes it. He’s right. This bill will fuel innovation, and return our common genetic heritage to us. It deserves our support.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/13/op...c&ei=5087 %0A





Specious Obama Trademark … Denied
Tom Zeller Jr.

From our That Which We Call a Rose Chronicles, in which the singularness and of Senator Barack H. Obama’s name flusters the unworldly, trips up the well meaning, or is exploited by his political opponents, we bring you Alexandre Batlle of Miami Beach, Fla., by way of The Smoking Gun.

Actually, we’re not sure where Mr. Batlle fits — though his case certainly signals that the American reflex for profit-chasing knows no bounds, and is unhindered by political loyalties.

Seems Mr. Batlle recently plopped down $325 to file a trademark application on the name Obama bin Laden. Now, make sure you read that closely — that’s Obama bin Laden. Get it? Not Osama, but Obama!

Oy.

Last Tuesday, Karen K. Bush, a lawyer for the United States Patent and Trademark Office, denied the trademark application, citing laws barring “scandalous” trademarks, those that create “false associations,” and other problems.

In this passage from Ms. Ms. Bush’s decision, which is posted at the Smoking Gun Web site, she attempts to explain to Mr. Battle about “scandalous” trademark law:

To be considered “scandalous” a mark must be “shocking to the sense of truth, decency or propriety; disgraceful; offensive; disreputable; … giving offense to the conscience or moral feelings; … [or] calling out for condemnation,” in the context of the marketplace as applied to goods or services described in the application. …

The term BIN LADEN in the proposed mark refers to the individual Osama bin Laden. The terrorist acts perpetrated by this individual’s organization on Sept. 11, 2001, have caused the name BIN LADEN itself to be synonymous with the acts themselves. As such, the name BIN LADEN is scandalous and not registerable.

Incidentally, Ms. Bush also rejected the mark on the grounds that neither Mr. Obama nor Mr. bin Laden had given their consent.

Mr. Battle apparently had planned to peddle T-shirts emblazoned with cheeky artwork, including the image above, through a Web site he registered in January — Obamabinladen.net.

Mr. Battle also told the editors at The Smoking Gun that he was “more of a Democrat myself,” in the end, and that he was really only trying to “make a quick buck.”
http://thelede.blogs.nytimes.com/200...demark-denied/





Congress Tackles Patent Reform

Luke O'Brien

The U.S. patent system is in bad shape and needs reform, said Rep. Howard Berman (D-California) and a bipartisan group of lawmakers in a House Judiciary subcommittee hearing Thursday.

Although Congress has long considered the patent system a shambles and has attempted to pass corrective legislation several times in the past, the issue is so sprawling and integral to the U.S. economy that progress has come slowly and in grudging increments. But lawmakers in the current Congress have vowed anew to clean up a system overwhelmed by frivolous patent applications and expensive lawsuits.

Witnesses at Thursday's hearing painted a bleak picture of that system. Adam Jaffe, a Brandeis University professor and author of a book on the subject, described the system as "out of whack." Instead of "the engine of innovation," the patent has become "the sand in the gears," he said, citing widespread fears of litigation.

BlackBerry users will remember the lawsuit last year that almost shut down their addictive handheld devices, an example Jaffe raised in the hearing. BlackBerry maker Research in Motion settled with patent holder NTP for $612.5 million.

Litigation and poor patent quality can have "chilling effects" on research in areas such as network technologies where open standards are critical, said Mark Myers, a former vice president at Xerox and one-time chairman of the National Academies committee on intellectual property rights. Myers also described the United States Patent and Trademark Office as being "crushed" by its workload.

"We had a great expansion of patenting in the technology period of the '90s," he said. "At the same time, we did not increase the number of patent examiners proportionate to the workload."

Every year, the patent office receives around 160,000 patent applications, far more than its staff can handle. The office issues approximately 100 patents every working hour, Myers said, meaning that patents with little merit or litigious intent often sneak through the cracks. How else to explain a patent for an idea as inane as "a method of swinging on a swing"?

Patents of poor quality also inspire patent speculators (commonly known as "patent trolls"), said Daniel Ravicher, the executive director of the Public Patent Foundation, a nonprofit legal group that campaigns for the public interest. Setting the patent bar low stymies innovation and leads to "thickets of patents that choke out first inventors," Ravicher said.

Several witnesses said the threshold for inventiveness had been eroded over the past two decades, in large part because of a legal change from 1982, when the process of appealing patent cases was altered to drive most appeals into a single court, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, or CAFC.

"The CAFC has interpreted patent law to make it easier to get patents, easier to enforce patents against others, easier to get large financial awards from such enforcement and harder for those accused of infringing patents to challenge the patents' validity," Jaffe said.

So how to fix the system?

Witnesses said one of the most important steps would be to raise the standards for an idea to be patentable. Congress should mandate a strong post-grant review procedure to cut down on expensive lawsuits and allow complainants to bring evidence to the patent office directly. The United States should also make efforts to harmonize its patent system with those in Europe and Japan, to increase common intellectual property that could benefit U.S. businesses.

Sounds good. Unfortunately for Berman and his colleagues, listening is the easy part.
http://www.wired.com/news/technology/1,72743-0.html





Questions Grow About a Top CNBC Anchor
Landon Thomas Jr.

In November 2005, Citigroup gathered top clients at a lush spa resort in Napa Valley for two days of wine tasting and a chance to road test some of the hottest luxury cars on the market.

The test drivers included Todd S. Thomson, then the chief executive of Citigroup’s wealth management arm, car collectors, clients of the bank and Maria Bartiromo, the CNBC anchor and celebrity guest.

Their charge: To pick the 2006 car of the year for Robb Report, the luxury magazine. Like many of the judges, Ms. Bartiromo chose the bright red Ferrari Spider, according to one attendee. So did Mr. Thomson, a car enthusiast.

“It’s the ultimate package of sex and performance,” he told a reporter for the magazine.

With its blend of high living, glitz and privileged access, the event provides a glimpse of the rarefied world inhabited by Ms. Bartiromo, who, in her years as CNBC’s most recognizable face, has lent to the reporting of once gray business news a veneer of gloss and celebrity.

Socializing with sources is a long journalistic tradition, especially for television personalities whose renown often allows them to travel in the same elite circles as their subjects.

But for Ms. Bartiromo, who accompanied Mr. Thomson last fall on Citigroup’s corporate jet to a series of client and other bank-sponsored functions in China, her ability to gain entree into the exclusive and mostly male world of chief executives and financial titans has made her a valuable commodity to CNBC.

After Mr. Thomson’s abrupt departure from Citigroup, however, such ties have raised questions about her closeness to her sources, all of whom she also covers as the cable network’s top anchor. CNBC has said that it paid commercial fare to Citigroup for Ms. Bartiromo’s trip to China. And last week, Jeffrey R. Immelt, the chief executive of General Electric, CNBC’s parent, voiced his support for Ms. Bartiromo and the cable network.

“Substantially, I don’t think she did anything wrong,” he said.

A CNBC spokesman said that Ms. Bartiromo flew commercial to the California event and that the network paid for her flight as it was network business.

Ms. Bartiromo declined to comment for this article. CNBC declined to comment on whether executives had any discussions with her concerning her relationship with Mr. Thomson. However, people inside of CNBC did say that she will continue to cover the company as part of her regular duties.

Whether it is providing a personalized video tribute — shot from inside the CNBC newsroom — to Stephen A. Schwarzman, the chairman of the buyout giant Blackstone Group to celebrate his 60th birthday or mingling with a source at a benefit for the New York City Ballet, Ms. Bartiromo’s proximity to the people she covers has created a model of journalism that jibes perfectly with CNBC’s mandate to ramp up its ratings by adding pizzazz and drama to its coverage.

Still, Mr. Thomson’s departure and Ms. Bartiromo’s connection to him have raised questions within the network over the possible tension between CNBC’s duty to pursue big financial news stories and its loyalty to Ms. Bartiromo.

On Dec. 11, after the appointment of Robert Druskin as chief operating officer of Citigroup, Ms. Bartiromo and Charles Gasparino, a CNBC on-air editor, had a brief on-air clash when Ms. Bartiromo remarked that an earlier report by Mr. Gasparino that Sallie L. Krawcheck would leave her job as chief financial officer did not pan out.

“That is not what I said,” Mr. Gasparino shot back. “I didn’t say that,” as he argued that Ms. Krawcheck and Mr. Thomson were no longer heirs to succeed Charles O. Prince as chief executive.

Subsequently, according to people with an understanding of how the story unfolded, Mr. Gasparino learned that, in fact, Mr. Thomson’s job was in jeopardy.

He explained this to Jonathan Wald, head of news programming, that he had been told by people within Citigroup that top management had examined Mr. Thomson’s conduct, specifically the occasions that Ms. Bartiromo joined him on the company jet. Mr. Wald told Mr. Gasparino to pursue the story, these people say.

When Ms. Bartiromo got wind of Mr. Gasparino’s reporting, she told Mr. Wald, complaining that her name was being dragged into the matter, these people say. Mr. Wald said that reporting the story was Mr. Gasparino’s job.

Nevertheless, Mr. Gasparino never reported on Mr. Thomson’s threatened job status. He was urged to proceed cautiously with the story, but some within the network say Ms. Bartiromo’s role in the story prevented it from being fully reported.

Mr. Wald adamantly disagrees with that interpretation. “We were clear from the beginning about reporting the story to the fullest. We did not air it because it was not adequately sourced. It didn’t meet our criteria from a journalist’s standpoint, and it clearly wouldn’t have met our lawyers’ criteria.”

On Jan 22, when Citigroup announced Mr. Thomson’s resignation, Mr. Gasparino could barely contain his frustration.

“Two weeks ago I caught wind that essentially Todd Thomson was out,” he said on air that morning when the news broke. Compounding this tension is the fact that no CNBC reporter or anchor has mentioned Ms. Bartiromo’s link to Mr. Thomson’s departure.

Typically, Ms Bartiromo’s interviewing style can be probing, aggressive and, her special access notwithstanding, she can make even some of her best sources sweat a bit on camera.

In an interview with Robert L. Nardelli, the recently ousted chief executive of Home Depot, she peppered him with sharp questions relating to his conduct and governance at the company. And a question posed to President Bush about his use of Google elicited a revealing response from the president as he referred to the search engine as “the Google.”

“She is not a marshmallow,” said Gerard R. Roche, the chairman of the executive search firm Heidrick & Struggles, who has been interviewed by Ms. Bartiromo.

John J. Mack, the chief executive of Morgan Stanley, agreed, recalling an interview he had with her. “She put me on the spot big time,” he said, adding that he did not socialize with Ms. Bartiromo.

“She is a professional,” Mr. Mack said. “You can’t assume that you will go on air and that it will be a cakewalk.”

At the same time, the occasional gushing aside can betray an admiration for her subjects — many of whom she knows socially, either from events at the New York City Ballet, where she is a trustee, or her regular lunches at San Pietro, the favored restaurant of Wall Street titans.

“When we come back, the allure of John Mack,” she once said during an interview.

In many instances, the sentiment on Wall Street seems to be mutual.

It is an appreciation that dates back to Ms. Bartiromo’s early days in the mid-1990s, when she made a name for herself as the first journalist to report live from the floor of the New York Stock Exchange.

“At the height of CNBC mania, we had these C.E.O.’s and celebrities beating down our door to ring the stock exchange bell,” said Robert T. Zito, a former executive vice president at the stock exchange. “The one thing they wanted to do was meet Maria.”

For the daughter of a restaurant owner in Bay Ridge in Brooklyn, her rise to celebrity status — there are Web sites devoted to her, Joey Ramone wrote a song in her honor and she has recently trademarked her “Money Honey” nickname — has been meteoric.

And while much has been made of her Sophia Loren-like looks, her early career ascent was propelled by pluck, ambition and like another famous, albeit fictional, product of Bay Ridge, Tony Manero in “Saturday Night Fever,” a hunger to make it big across the river in Manhattan.

She switched from C. W. Post College to New York University, and in her first media job at WMCA Radio, she impressed the radio personality Barry Farber with her willingness to do more than her share of dirty work.

On one occasion, Mr. Farber recalled, he was sent “100 pounds of frozen North Carolina pork barbecue” and before it could melt, Ms. Bartiromo not only found a charity to take it, but delivered the meat herself in her own car. “She had the stuff and she knew how to deploy it,” he said.

In 1990, just out of college, she met Jonathan Steinberg, the son of Saul Steinberg, the corporate raider. As the two began dating, it was Mr. Steinberg, who presided over a personal finance magazine and a hedge fund, who attracted the media attention. The couple married in 1999.

But Ms. Bartiromo’s public profile would eclipse his. After a stint working for Lou Dobbs at CNN, she moved to CNBC in 1993. She became a star once she started broadcasting from the stock exchange floor.

As her recognition grew, so did the fortunes of CNBC, and it is estimated that her compensation exceeds $1 million.

And when she disclosed last year that the new chairman of the Federal Reserve, Ben S. Bernanke, had told her in a conversation at the White House Correspondents dinner that the markets had misinterpreted his remarks on interest rates, her reputation as an insider became even more entrenched.

Despite the controversy, Ms. Bartiromo remains a staple of CNBC. And she has kept up her public appearances, and her sense of humor.

Earlier this month, she was scheduled to present a lifetime leadership award to former Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan at the CNBC executive achievement award ceremony, at the Mandarin Oriental Hotel in New York.

“Sorry I’m late,” she said with a slight giggle as she stepped up to the dais. “But I had to fly commercial.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/12/bu...bartiromo.html





One Million OLPC Laptop Orders Confirmed
Dan Nystedt

Quanta Computer, the world's largest contract laptop PC manufacturer, already has confirmed orders for 1 million notebook PCs for the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) project, a company representative said Thursday.

The OLPC project is aimed at ensuring children around the world don't miss out on learning how to use computers. The fear is that the high cost of computers is keeping too many people in developing countries from learning how the software, Internet and communications benefits of computing can improve their economies, job prospects and lives, a conundrum commonly referred to as the digital divide.

Quanta is manufacturing the OLPC laptop, and mass production is the key to slashing its cost. Currently, the laptops cost around $130, but the goal is to whittle down the price to $100. The groups involved in the OLPC project, including the MIT Media Laboratory that launched the effort, chip maker Advanced Micro Devices (AMD), and Linux software developer Red Hat, believe they can reach that goal once millions of the laptops are being produced annually, and had set a target to reach that price sometime in 2008.

Quanta said it could ship between 5 million to 10 million units this year because seven nations have already signed up for the project. That may be enough to reduce the costs and meet the $100 goal sooner than expected.

The governments that have committed to buy laptops for their schoolchildren include Argentina, Brazil, Libya, Nigeria, Rwanda, Thailand and Uruguay.

Quanta expects to make a small profit on each machine.

"OLPC is a nonprofit organization, but Quanta is a contract manufacturer, a for-profit business. We can't not charge a fee for making the laptops," the representative said.

What the company is doing is helping find ways to cut costs as much as possible. The company became famous by slashing production costs to a bare minimum and figuring out ways to further reduce the cost of laptops themselves.

Apple, Dell and HP are just some of the companies that farm out notebook PC orders to Quanta, which manufactures the products at factories in Taiwan and China.

The company is using its expertise to keep OLPC laptop production costs to a minimum.

"This is our chairman's pet project, it's his life," said the president of Quanta, Michael Wang, at a company Lunar New Year celebration last week. People across much of East Asia celebrate the Lunar New Year, which falls on Feb. 18. The chairman of Quanta Computer is Barry Lam.
http://www.networkworld.com/news/200...op-orders.html