Peer-To-Peer News - The Week In Review - May 12th, '07

[JackSpratts]

Simple Canadian Quarter Led To Huge U.S. Spy Warning



Now it can be told - the secret weapon Canada was using to spy on the U.S. was: a quarter! A special 25-cent piece has been revealed as being the catalyst that sparked American army contractors to issue a top secret espionage memo about nano-technology being used for nefarious intelligence purposes.

Apparently, it was the Canadian Mint's issuing of a quarter with red poppy highlights honouring this country's war dead in 2004 that created an uproar in the corridors of U.S. Intelligence. Officials down south had never seen anything like it and became suspicious when an agent found one in a rental car. Documents released under the Access to Information Act show concerned contractors described the coin as being "filled with something man-made that looked like nano-technology."

"It did not appear to be electronic (analog) in nature or have a power source," wrote one of those who examined the mysterious 'device'. "Under high power microscope, it appeared to be complex consisting of several layers of clear, but different material, with a wire like mesh suspended on top."

The "discovery" actually led to a ridiculous warning from the U.S. Defence Department that coins with radio transmitters had been found on three contractors with top secret clearance as they came through Canada. Conspiracy theories exploded behind closed doors, with one agent telling his superiors he didn't know where the mysterious talisman came from. "[My] coat pockets were empty that morning and I was keeping all of my coins in a plastic bag in my inner coat pocket," the "victim" wrote.

Canadian officials were alarmed as the rumours spread, and the story began reaching the highest levels of power. "That story about Canadians planting coins in the pockets of defense contractors will not go away," Luc Portelance of Canadian Security Intelligence Service wrote in a January e-mail. "Where do we stand and what's the story on this?"

The U.S. would eventually withdraw its warnings, but the reasons for the alarms were never revealed - until now. "We know where we made the mistake," Defence Department spokesperson Cindy McGovern admits. "The information wasn't properly vetted. While these coins aroused suspicion, there ultimately was nothing there."

And to add insult to injury, because of the rate of exchange, these so-called 'spy coins' aren't even worth a full 25 cents in the U.S. Unless, it seems, misinformed intelligence agents decide to throw their own two cents in.
http://www.citynews.ca/news/news_10737.aspx





Journalists Intend to Sue Hewlett-Packard Over Surveillance
Damon Darlin

In an unusual step for the news media, three journalists whose private phone records were scrutinized by investigators working for Hewlett-Packard intend to sue the company for invasion of privacy.

The dispute stems from an investigation of Hewlett-Packard’s directors initiated under the company’s former chairwoman, Patricia C. Dunn. To try to uncover leaks from board members, private investigators examined the phone records of nine journalists who covered the company, as well as the records of some of their relatives.

While the dispute revolves around the issue of how the journalists’ careers may have been damaged by having their phone records examined, the threat to sue also raises the question whether it is proper for a news organization or its reporters to sue a company they cover. It is certainly not common.

“We are preparing to file a lawsuit,” said Kevin R. Boyle, a lawyer in the Los Angeles firm of Panish, Shea & Boyle, which was hired by three reporters for CNet Networks, an online technology news service, Dawn Kawamoto, Stephen Shank-land and Tom Krazit.

CNet does not plan to join their lawsuit, but said that it might sue separately.

Mr. Boyle said the suit would not ask for a dollar amount of damages but would seek punitive damages against Hewlett-Packard, the world’s largest computer company, which admitted acquiring the records through subterfuge, a practice called pretexting. Mr. Boyle said that while his clients are still employed by CNet, they are no longer allowed to cover Hewlett-Packard.

The threat to sue comes after several months of negotiations with the company. In December, Bill Lockyer, then California’s attorney general, met with a majority of the nine journalists in an attempt to get settlement talks started; the journalists’ lawyers were at the meeting, as were lawyers for some of the news organizations they represented.

The original plan was to seek an amount equal to about $250,000 for each journalist to be donated to an agreed-upon cause, like a journalism school program, Mr. Lockyer had said at the time.

Over the next several months, a group of seven journalists, whose phone records or whose families’ records had been examined, debated whether to proceed and what the implications would be for their profession. The three CNet reporters split off from the group and sought separate representation.

The other four reporters — three from BusinessWeek and one from The New York Times — continue to pursue settlement discussions as a group, together with The New York Times Company.

Two reporters for The Wall Street Journal investigated by Hewlett-Packard, Pui-Wing Tam and George Anders, declined to seek compensation. The Wall Street Journal indicated in December that it would not take part in settlement talks or any legal action.

BusinessWeek also opted out of any involvement, though its three reporters — Peter Burrows, Ben Elgin and Roger O. Crockett — decided to pursue the matter privately. They are represented by a San Francisco lawyer, Terry Gross, who also represents John Markoff, a reporter for The New York Times, as well as The Times itself.

David E. McCraw, a lawyer for The New York Times, said Hewlett-Packard’s spying operations were “designed to interfere with our journalism and, ultimately, to deprive our readers of information of importance to them.”

He added that the newspaper was not looking for financial gain, but a settlement with the money donated to a worthy cause.

“The New York Times Company appreciates the steps that H.P. has taken to remedy the situation,” Mr. McCraw said, “but we believe H.P. can and should do more to acknowledge the harm that was done and to demonstrate to other companies that may be tempted to engage in similar conduct that this is not an offense that carries no consequences.”

At The Times, Mr. Markoff was not regularly assigned to cover Hewlett-Packard, but has written articles that mentioned the company. He can continue to do that, and does not write about the company’s pretexting or related legal issues, according to Lawrence A. Ingrassia, the business editor of The Times.

At BusinessWeek, Mr. Elgin and Mr. Burrows had covered Hewlett-Packard in the past, but no longer do, and Mr. Crockett had contributed reporting to articles about the company. Patricia Walsh, a spokeswoman for McGraw-Hill, the parent company of BusinessWeek, said it would not comment on future coverage of H.P.

In an April meeting with H.P.’s outside law firm, Morgan, Lewis & Bockius of Philadelphia, the seven journalists requested an amount equal to several million dollars each, paid to them directly with their promise that most of the money, though not all, would be donated to charity. Hewlett-Packard’s offer was closer to $10,000 per reporter, roughly enough to cover the reporters’ legal bills, according to several people involved in the talks.

“The discussions have not been fruitful to date, and we hope to resolve this without litigation,” said Mr. Gross, of the firm Gross & Belsky in San Francisco.

News organizations and reporters generally decline to pursue financial settlements with companies or individuals they write about because of the possible perception that they might be trading coverage for compensation. Tom Bivins, a media ethics professor at the University of Oregon, called the Hewlett-Packard case “an odd one,” but said he saw no ethical problem with journalists undertaking a suit.

“A journalist is a citizen, after all,” he said.

But Professor Bivins said he saw potential problems going forward for the journalists involved. “If they tried to cover the company again, that would be an ethical problem.”

The revelation of Hewlett-Packard’s investigation led to the resignation of Ms. Dunn and two company lawyers, as well as the filing of felony charges in California against Ms. Dunn and four others.

A California judge dismissed the charges against Ms. Dunn in March and reduced the charges against three other defendants to misdemeanors.

The company agreed in December to pay $14.5 million to settle a civil lawsuit filed by the California attorney general in connection with the spying. The company has also apologized to the journalists.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/07/bu...edia/07hp.html





Massachusetts Officials Fight Real ID Act

Federal anti-terrorism program provokes outrage
John J. Monahan

A new federal antiterrorism program, aimed at setting up nationally linked computer databases in every state with information on personal ID cards and higher-security driver’s licenses, is running into opposition from states, including Massachusetts. Officials here say it would be expensive for the state, inconvenient for residents, may fail to improve security and would launch a black market for fake IDs.

The Real ID Act, passed by Congress in 2005 and signed by President Bush, requires all U.S. residents without a passport to obtain a new state-issued type of driver’s license or ID card in order to board commercial airplanes, enter federal buildings, get Social Security benefits or get into other federal government programs, starting next May.

Because residents of states that do not adopt the new high security licenses would be barred from boarding airplanes or accessing government programs, the controversy is developing into a major state-federal standoff. The act’s draft comment period ends Tuesday.

State Sen. Richard T. Moore, D-Uxbridge, has filed a bill seeking to stop implementation of the Real ID Act here, and Massachusetts Attorney General Martha Coakley also has come out in opposition, saying the measure would create a false sense of security, create a lucrative black market for fake “Real IDs” and pose major new risks of identity theft.

Mr. Moore said the law would “create a huge bureaucratic nightmare and a nightmare for the traveling public,” starting next May.

In January, the Maine State Legislature adopted a bill refusing to participate. Some 20 other states are considering legislation to either block participation, delay implementation or seek revisions in the federal law. Meanwhile, the Department of Homeland Security advanced the program further last month, issuing regulations to implement the Real ID program next spring.

In announcing those plans last month, U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff noted that two 9-11 hijackers who boarded a 757 airliner out of Dulles International Airport and crashed it into the Pentagon — Hani Hanjour and Khalid al-Mihdhar — obtained paperwork for their phony Virginia driver’s licenses by paying $100 to an illegal alien in a convenience store parking lot. The Real ID law, he said, “gives law enforcement and counterterrorism officials a critical new tool to prevent terrorism.”

If states need them, he said, “we will give extensions” to the May 11, 2008, compliance date.

Gov. Deval L. Patrick’s public safety officials, meanwhile, are recommending that the state seek the repeal of the federal law, or at least revamp it.

Mr. Moore claims the system could cost the state hundreds of millions to implement and would create a national data base subject to abuse by the government and identity thieves.

Under the proposed regulations, states would require all residents to provide documents verifying their Social Security number, proof of birth, citizenship or legal immigration status in person while renewing their driver’s licenses or obtaining new ones. The licenses, which would have to be of the same type of paper, would also have to include a computerized “facial image,” as well as the bearer’s signature, date of birth, home address and driver’s license number on computer-scannable bar codes.

Mr. Moore said the idea of a national ID card has been repeatedly opposed in the United States, and the Real ID proposal would create a virtual national ID system, with 50 states and territories maintaining separate databases, linked electronically.

“Historically, Americans have resisted the idea, which totalitarian governments have tended to do, of having a national ID. That’s the broad philosophical issue. I don’t think it’s a good move and I would be reluctant to see why we are going to that step,” Mr. Moore said. Since Sept. 11, he said, most states already have upgraded security regarding driver licenses they issue.

While the 9-11 Commission recommended higher security on state licenses to prevent foreign terrorists from boarding planes, it did not propose a national ID card, he said.

Proponents say a Real ID program would facilitate “state-to-state queries” by government agencies to find out if a person has a suspended license or tickets in other states, criminal warrants, etc. Another major feature of the act is the implicit institution of a ban on driver’s licenses for illegal immigrants or those unable to prove their legal status.

The wide use, and possible abuses, of an interlinked national system, Mr. Moore said, “certainly were never discussed and debated through normal hearings in the Congress.”

In his bill, pending in the Massachusetts Legislature, Mr. Moore notes that information from the “massive government database” would be accessible at tens of thousands of locations by a variety of federal state and local agencies, including motor vehicle employees and police nationwide. The measure would prevent any state spending to implement the Real ID Act in Massachusetts, except for whatever may be spent by the attorney general to mount a constitutional challenge to the new federal law.

Ms. Coakley, meanwhile, has called on Congress to either repeal the law or postpone its implementation until it can be revised.

The attorney general said that she believes the Real ID system will be very inconvenient, especially for citizens who will have to find proof of citizenship and birth certificates in order to renew a driver’s license. She is convinced the new law also will give rise to a new underground market for fake identity cards. Beyond that, she said, estimates are that it would cost states $10 billion to $14 billion to implement, and would not make people safer.

“I think it’s a bad idea,” Ms. Coakley said.

Not only is it an unfunded federal mandate that will tap large amounts of state tax funds, she said, it will prove logistically difficult for states to implement.

Calling the security benefits intended by the Act “illusory,” Ms. Coakley said “People will still get around it and we will have a black market,” for fake Real ID cards.

Mr. Moore contends the Real ID Act conflicts with more than a century of law surrounding state control of driver’s licenses. A strongly worded commentary attached to his bill complains that, “under the guise of protecting Americans from terrorism, implementation of the Real ID Act has the consequence of restricting the freedoms and privacy of Americans, while imposing a costly financial burden and inconvenience.”

Congress enacted the law “without sufficient deliberation and without any public hearing or vote specifically on its merits” despite opposition from more than 100 different organizations, he said. It was adopted as an amendment to a tsunami relief and military spending bill.

Juliette N. Kayyem, Massachusetts’ undersecretary for homeland security, said the state hasn’t approved any money to implement Real ID in the 2008 state budget.

Mr. Patrick is among those who have signed on to a National Governors Association objection that it is an unfunded and unaffordable federal mandate on states.

“Massachusetts citizens could not fly on airplanes unless they have an international passport, so there will be some real burdens on Massachusetts citizens if the state is not compliant,” Ms. Kayyem said.

“We really can’t afford it,” she said. “The best solution is federal legislation to amend or repeal it and have a real discussion of whether we should have a national ID card.

“On the security side, there are still a lot of unanswered questions.”
http://www.telegram.com/apps/pbcs.dl...705060682/1116





Too late

Real ID Update: Only Four Hours Left to Tell Homeland Security What You Think
Declan McCullagh

If you don't like the idea of a national ID card, you have only four hours left to let Homeland Security know your thoughts.

That's because the deadline to file comments on the Real ID Act is 5pm ET on Tuesday. Probably the best place to do that is a Web site created by an ad hoc alliance called the Privacy Coalition (they oppose the idea, but if you're a big Real ID fan you can use their site to send adoring comments too).

Alternatively, Homeland Security has finally seen fit to give us an email address that you can use to submit comments on the Real ID Act. Send email to oscomments@dhs.gov with "Docket No. DHS-2006-0030" in the Subject: line.

In case you haven't been following this, Real ID compels state governments to follow Homeland Security's rules for federalized ID cards that will be required for state residents to do things like open bank accounts, enter government buildings, and fly on commercial flights. A national database will be created to make all this work. Here's some background from when this scheme was enacted in 2005 as part of an "emergency" military spending bill.

More recently, Homeland Security has published details -- in the form of draft regulations -- on how these federalized IDs will work.

Because Congress ordered the department to implement Real ID, Homeland Security can't do nothing, and any real fix to the law will have to come through a legislative rewrite or appeal. But the draft regulations could be improved in terms of privacy, autonomy, and security, and those are some areas that it would be good to address in comments sent today.
http://news.com.com/8301-10784_3-9716997-7.html





Book Not Ready for Print? You Can Whip Up an Audiobook for a Podcast for Now
Andrew Adam Newman

When you are a budding author and you appear on television, it is sure to enhance book sales.

But what do you do if your book is not even written, never mind in stores?

For Mignon Fogarty, who is host of a popular podcast called Grammar Girl, the answer is to scramble to record a short audiobook in just a few days between the time the show tapes and is shown.

Ms. Fogarty signed a contract a few months ago with Henry Holt & Company, the publisher, but her book is not scheduled to appear until next year. Meanwhile, her audiobook climbed to the top of iTunes’ best-selling books list after she appeared on “The Oprah Winfrey Show.”

Ms. Fogarty’s feat comes at a time when Henry Holt and other presses are rethinking their audiobook divisions, which have negligible marketing budgets and typically ride on the coattails of the hardcovers. Because audiobooks are so fast, inexpensive and easy to record, the dynamic seems to be changing, with publishers looking to the audio format to fuel interest in paper books that aren’t quite ready for the printing press.

And with the ubiquity of iPods, that interest can be generated quickly: recordings need not be pressed onto CDs and packaged, but can quickly be uploaded to iTunes. Sometimes these recordings will be made with well-known authors whose next release isn’t quite ready for bookstores, and other times with newcomers like Ms. Fogarty whose work has gained a following another way.

Ms. Fogarty said that when she was first contacted by Ms. Winfrey’s show, she thought, “I’m going on ‘Oprah.’ Gosh, I wish my book were done.”

Unlike most authors, Ms. Fogarty owns a mixing board for recording her podcasts, which allowed her to gin up a quickie audio version of the book she plans to write. The effort was spearheaded by Mary Beth Roche, publisher of Audio Renaissance, the audiobook division of Holtzbrinck Publishers, which also publishes Henry Holt.

About 100,000 people a week download her free podcasts, which consist of five minutes of grammar tips, from grammar.qdnow.com and iTunes. She produces them on about $600 worth of equipment in her home in Gilbert, Ariz., she said. (When the phone or doorbell rings, or the central air-conditioner kicks on, she stops and re-records.)

“I was working on the book on the airplane on the way home” from Chicago after recording the “Oprah” segment, Ms. Fogarty said. That was March 21, a Wednesday. By that Friday, she had finished the recording, and it was sent electronically to Audible.com, which provides audiobooks through Apple’s iTunes and on its own Web site.

On March 26, the day the show was broadcast, iTunes’ home page highlighted “Grammar Girl’s Quick & Dirty Tips to Clean Up Your Writing,” an hourlong audiobook that could be downloaded for $4.95. By the end of that week, Ms. Fogarty’s presentation had bumped “The Secret,” the advice book that espouses positive thinking which also had been promoted by Ms. Winfrey, from the top spot.

“ ‘The Secret,’ is the phenom of the moment, and here we are basically improvising, creating a digital audiobook in a matter of days, and out of nowhere we’re No. 1 on iTunes,” said John Sterling, the president and publisher of Henry Holt.

He placed the number of sales in the thousands, but would not specify; Ms. Fogarty’s audiobook remains among the top 10 sellers on iTunes.

“We didn’t break out Champagne because we weren’t selling tens of thousands, but we certainly broke out the sparkling water,” Mr. Sterling said. “We are accustomed to working with product cycles one measures in months, but in this case we were working with a product cycle of days and even hours.”

An audiobook would normally appear after — or simultaneously with — a published book, not before. “Traditionally, we would see the audiobook as the tail on the dog, and here the tail is wagging the dog,” Mr. Sterling said.

Other publishers also are experimenting with such changes, including Hachette Audio (formerly Time Warner Audiobooks), which in 2005 released the audio version of Jon Stewart’s “America (The Book): A Citizen’s Guide to Democracy Inaction” on Audible and iTunes several weeks before the book.

“Publishers always want to hit the best-seller list at No. 1, and there had been some concern that releasing an audio version first would drain away sales from the hardcover,” said Beth Anderson, senior vice president of Audible, which, along with iTunes, had brisk download sales before Mr. Stewart’s book and a CD-format audiobook were simultaneously released. “But the publisher told us releasing the audio helped to sell the print version, because having the audio out there really helped to build the buzz for the book.”

Publishers also increasingly are releasing recordings that may never materialize in book form. Simon & Schuster Audio, for example, will put out Jimmy Carter’s “Measuring our Success: Sunday Mornings in Plains,” the second of three collections of the former president teaching adult Bible classes, on May 15.

On May 22, Simon & Schuster will release “You: On a Walk,” an original audiobook by Michael F. Roizen and Mehmet C. Oz, authors of “You: On a Diet.” (The authors speak during half-hour walks that are integral to the diet.) Simon & Schuster has also released audio-only versions of Stephen King reading his stories.

Ms. Anderson of Audible called the alternative format “a great way to bring a new audience in” for popular works. “It helps to have a steady stream of product from major authors so we have something to sell between their big books,” she said.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/07/te...y/07audio.html





The Awesome Power of Spare Cycles
Chris Anderson

In physics, the greatest (theoretical) latent power in the universe is dark energy, waiting only for us to find a way to tap it (and to prove it actually exists; in the meantime it powers fictional superheroes). In people, the equivalent is "spare cycles"--the human potential that isn't tapped by our jobs, which for most of us is a lot of it. People wonder how Wikipedia magically arose from nothing, and how 50 million bloggers suddenly appeared, almost all of them writing for free. Who knew there was so much untapped energy all around us, just waiting for a catalyst to become productive? But of course there was. People are bored, and they'd rather not be. The guy playing Solitaire on his laptop at the airport? Spare cycles. Multiply it times a million.

I am at this moment, somewhat randomly, in the Salisbury (MD) regional airport. It is tiny airport like thousands of others across the country. But, like all the others, it has to meet standard TSA security standards. There is a flight (which I am on) at 2:30 pm. It is the only flight out of this airport for the past hour. There will not be another flight out of this airport for another hour. Yet we need our full TSA apparatus. That includes the local police, who are represented by a sheriff.

I'm watching him right now. He's in his room, labeled "Sheriff". Young guy. He's watching a movie on a portable DVD player. That's fine--he won't be needed for another half hour. But of course "needed" isn't quite the right word. "Required" is closer to it. He will be required by policy to stand by, gun in holster, while I take my laptop out of my nerd backpack. He may, fingers crossed, go his entire career without a terrorist going through that security checkpoint. He may indeed never unholster that gun in the line of duty.

That sheriff is watching a movie because he has spare cycles. Spare cycles are the most powerful fuel on the planet. It's what Web 2.0 is made up of. User generated content? Spare cycles. Open source? Spare cycles. MySpace, YouTube, Facebook, Second Life? Spare cycles. They're the Soylent Green of the web.

In the next issue of Wired we've got a great story about a woman who cyberstalked the lead singer of Linkin Park. She correctly guessed the password to his cellphone account. The rest was easy. She was a technician at a secure military facility, the Sandia National Labs. When eventually confronted, she explained that her job only took her half an hour a day. The rest was spare cycles. She used them to stalk the lead singer of Linkin Park.

Web 2.0 is such a phenomena because we're underused elsewhere. Bored at work, bored at home. We've got spare cycles and they're finally finding an outlet. Tap that and you've tapped an energy source that rivals anything in human history. Solitaire Players of the World Unite!
http://www.longtail.com/the_long_tai...esome_pow.html





AACS LA Versus Digg, Google in DMCA Showdown Over Leaked Key
Scott M. Fulton

Beginning two weeks ago, attorneys for the licensing authority for the Advanced Access Copy System used in both Blu-ray and HD DVD issued letters to multiple Web sites and services, including search engines, demanding they remove direct references to a 32-hexadecimal digit code they claim is a processing key that could be used to circumvent DRM protection in HD DVD discs.

"It is our understanding that you are providing to the public the above-identified tools and services at the above referenced URL," reads one letter sent by AACS LA's attorneys to a representative of Google, "and are thereby providing and offering to the public a technology, product, service, device, component, or part thereof that is primarily designed, produced, or marketed for the purpose of circumventing the technological protection measures afforded by AACS (hereafter, the "circumvention offering"). Doing so constitutes a violation of the anti-circumvention provisions of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act."

The letter goes on to demand the removal of references to four Web sites whose articles include the code, as well as to any other material where the code may appear, otherwise "failure to do so will subject you to legal liability." In an extra bit of irony, the document filename in one of the four URLs the attorneys cite is actually the 32-bit code itself.

The key in question appears to be the same one discovered by the Doom9 Forum user whose screen handle is arnezami, back in February as reported then by BetaNews. What this user discovered, other forum members verified, was a media key that software could use to identify itself as a validly licensed media player of HD DVD discs. While Linux media players could theoretically read the code from HD DVDs, they cannot decrypt that code since AACS LA has thus far declined to issue licenses - and thus, licensed media keys as well - to creators of open-source software, who could theoretically share that code in the act of source code distribution.

Word does not travel as fast as those who repeat online what they read elsewhere online believe it to; and thus, the existence of the discovered media key was only widely reported after a Digg user posted a link to an article where that key happened to appear. That article, appearing Monday on the blog Rudd-O.com - almost two and a half months after the key's discovery - begins with the key itself, explains its discovery on the Doom9 Forum, and links to a 17-page autobiographical feature of the fellows who found it on Doom9 (through Digg) and repeated it on Rudd-O.com, entitled, "Stickin' It to the Man: The Illustrated Report of an Epic Event."

That article which links to "Stickin' It to the Man" was itself Dugg, by way of another blog post - this time entitled, "Spread This Number. Now." - which the author then self-Dugg, and in so doing, generated by his count 15,492 Diggs (votes of approval from Digg.com users).

It is that article with the high Digg count which caught the attention of AACS LA's attorneys, who immediately issued a takedown notice. At first, Digg complied, removing references to "Spread This Number" and other material. In an explanation on Digg's corporate blog, CEO Jay Adelson wrote, "We've been notified by the owners of this intellectual property that they believe the posting of the encryption key infringes their intellectual property rights. In order to respect these rights and to comply with the law, we have removed postings of the key that have been brought to our attention.

"Our goal is always to maintain a purely democratic system for the submission and sharing of information," Adelson continued, "and we want Digg to continue to be a great resource for finding the best content. However, in order for that to happen, we all need to work together to protect Digg from exposure to lawsuits that could very quickly shut us down."

Digg also apparently suspended the accounts of individuals who provided the original Digg links, including the one to "Spread This Number," as its author posted on his own blog last night. However, multiple Diggs to the original Digg, including comments generated there, apparently remained.

There was an immediate public outcry from Digg users - which, for a story that took two and a half months to germinate, is perhaps noteworthy. However, many of the thousands of comments posted to already long threads appear to consist of meaningless data, side discussions irrelevant to the topic, spam, and even cute little pictures drawn with ANSI characters.

Regardless of the substance of the protest, it was enough to provoke Digg's executives to reverse their course. In a blog post late last night whose title actually includes the media key code, Digg founder Kevin Rose wrote, "Today was a difficult day for us. We had to decide whether to remove stories containing a single code based on a cease and desist declaration. We had to make a call, and in our desire to avoid a scenario where Digg would be interrupted or shut down, we decided to comply and remove the stories with the code. But now, after seeing hundreds of stories and reading thousands of comments, you've made it clear. You'd rather see Digg go down fighting than bow down to a bigger company.

"If we lose, then what the hell, at least we died trying," Rose concluded. Exactly what action Digg takes from this point on was not stated.

The entire uproar over whether the posting of a 32-hex digit code should be censored as copyright infringement or upheld like a banner of liberty, overlooks a fairly significant technical issue: specifically, whether the media key, discovered last February after all, still works.

Last month, AACS LA began its first wave of distribution of so-called revocation keys. Through Internet connections and through the distribution of new HD DVD discs, these keys are matches to media keys considered to have been compromised, and this list is believed to contain the now-celebrated 32-hex digit code.

Whether a site posting a software patch that contains revocation keys may, in so doing, be distributing the media keys that were compromised - and thus violating the terms of the DMCA, as maintained by AACS LA's lawyers - remains to be seen.

Meanwhile, members of the Doom9 Forum, including arnezami, have been working since last month to apply a homebrew patch to Microsoft's Xbox 360 HD DVD attachment drive, after having reverse-engineered the firmware from two drives to compare the differences in their code and determine the locations of secret keys. Their stated objective is to make it possible for software to decrypt the contents of a disc using its volume key only - which is more easily located.

If they are successful, then theoretically software could be permitted which enables Linux users to play HD DVD movies without a processing key at all, which would have made this whole two-and-a-half month discovery process another chronicle of wasted time.

In his Freedom to Tinker blog yesterday, engineer Ed Felten - who last year demonstrated the ease in which an unauthorized party could break into a Diebold voting machine - made a poignant comment about this whole affair.

"It's hard to see the logic in AACS LA's strategy here," Felten wrote. "The key will inevitably remain available, and AACS LA are just making themselves look silly by trying to suppress it. We've seen this script before. The key will show up on T-shirts and in song lyrics. It will be chalked on the sidewalk outside the AACS LA office. And so on."

5:35 pm May 2, 2007 - A spokesperson for the HD DVD Promotions Group denied to BetaNews late this afternoon that the organization had any involvement in the sending of takedown notices to Web sites and search engines. Press reports have cited, in addition to the AACS Licensing Authority, the HD DVD Promotions Group and the Motion Picture Association of America as being behind these notices; to the best of BetaNews' knowledge, and based on the spokesperson's comments to us, we believe these reports to be inaccurate.
http://www.betanews.com/article/AACS...Key/1178121088





Fox Interactive Nears Deal to Buy Photobucket
Brad Stone

Photobucket, a four-year-old, rapidly growing Web company, is in advanced talks to be acquired by Fox Interactive Media, a division of the News Corporation, a person briefed on the negotiations said Monday.

Photobucket allows its users to store photos and videos and then easily drop them into their pages on prominent sites like Facebook, eBay and particularly MySpace, which is also owned by the News Corporation.

The deal is not yet complete, but the parties have ironed out major issues and are focusing on finer points, according to this person, who said the price could be as high as $300 million. The person asked not to be further identified because of the sensitivity of the talks.

Representatives of MySpace, Fox Interactive Media and Photobucket all declined to comment.

News of the discussions was first reported earlier Monday on a Silicon Valley blog, Valleywag. Photobucket said last month that it had hired Lehman Brothers to explore a possible sale of the company.

Photobucket, which has offices in Denver and San Francisco, has catapulted over older sites to become the largest and fastest-growing photo-sharing service on the Web. Unlike rival photo sites such as Kodak Gallery, Shutterfly and Flickr, which is owned by Yahoo, Photobucket positioned itself as a tool for people using sites like MySpace, rather than a place to get prints made or to interact with other photographers.

The company has had the kind of booming growth that make larger media companies envious. A year ago, it said it had 14 million members. On its Web site on Monday, Photobucket cited 41 million users.

The site is free for basic use, but charges $25 a year for a premium subscription that includes extra storage space and the ability to store videos more than five minutes long. It also displays advertisements to users when they manage their accounts.

The company already has a symbiotic, if sensitive, relationship with MySpace. According to the research firm Hitwise, for the week ended Saturday, 60 percent of Photobucket traffic came from MySpace users who had placed their photos and videos on Photobucket. It was also the third-largest destination for people leaving MySpace, after Google and Yahoo.

“There’s clearly a synergy between these two sites,” says Bill Tancer, general manager of global research at Hitwise.

That close relationship has made MySpace uncomfortable in the past.

Last month, MySpace blocked slide shows and videos stored on Photobucket, saying the company was violating its terms of service by embedding its own advertisements in the media files. After a week of discussions, the two companies resolved their differences and MySpace removed the block.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/08/te...y/08photo.html





OLPC Project Rollout Begins In Uruguay
Acer500

The One Laptop Per Child project became a reality Thursday in Uruguay, as the 160 children of school number 24 in the humble town of Cardal received their XO computers. The learning tools came directly from the hands of president Tabaré Vazquez. It has become a matter of national pride that Uruguay is the first country to realize the project's goal. The target is that by 2009, every school-age child in Uruguay will have one, and an initial 15 million dollars have already been allocated to the project. From the newspaper articles: "The happiness of having a PC in their hands, some of them for the first time, had the kids in ecstasy, which didn't wait to turn on their computers, introduce their personal information (required the first time they're turned on), choose the screen colors, and start experimenting with them. What initially made them more enthusiastic was the possibility of taking photographs and filming each others with the included webcams."

According to the unofficial blog of the Uruguayan project, named proyecto Ceibal, the infrastructure for wireless is not yet in place but will be provided in the next few days by the national telco ANTEL. No photos of the event have been posted online, but you can see an institutional video on Youtube. One interesting point is that it has not yet been decided that the XO will be the laptop of choice for the entire project. Two other companies want to be considered: Intel, with their Classmate PC, and Israeli-manufactured ITP-C. In a press conference, Intel manager for the southern cone Esteban Galluzzi went as far as to compare the XO to a Pentium II, and stressed that the Classmate is able to run Windows XP. As advisor and local guru Juan Grompone stated, "who will ultimately benefit from this is education?" This will be an interesting test to see if the OLPC project meets its intended goals of "learning learning". Let's hope this project is the means that will foster among some of the children the desire to learn and to tinker.
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/05/12/077205





A Big Stretch
Suketu Mehta

I GREW up watching my father stand on his head every morning. He was doing sirsasana, a yoga pose that accounts for his youthful looks well into his 60s. Now he might have to pay a royalty to an American patent holder if he teaches the secrets of his good health to others. The United States Patent and Trademark Office has issued 150 yoga-related copyrights, 134 patents on yoga accessories and 2,315 yoga trademarks. There’s big money in those pretzel twists and contortions — $3 billion a year in America alone.

It’s a mystery to most Indians that anybody can make that much money from the teaching of a knowledge that is not supposed to be bought or sold like sausages. Should an Indian, in retaliation, patent the Heimlich maneuver, so that he can collect every time a waiter saves a customer from choking on a fishbone?

The Indian government is not laughing. It has set up a task force that is cataloging traditional knowledge, including ayurvedic remedies and hundreds of yoga poses, to protect them from being pirated and copyrighted by foreign hucksters. The data will be translated from ancient Sanskrit and Tamil texts, stored digitally and available in five international languages, so that patent offices in other countries can see that yoga didn’t originate in a San Francisco commune.

It is worth noting that the people in the forefront of the patenting of traditional Indian wisdom are Indians, mostly overseas. We know a business opportunity when we see one and have exported generations of gurus skilled in peddling enlightenment for a buck. The two scientists in Mississippi who patented the medicinal use of turmeric, a traditional Indian spice, are Indians. So is the strapping Bikram Choudhury, founder of Bikram Yoga, who has copyrighted his method of teaching yoga — a sequence of 26 poses in an overheated room — and whose lawyers sent out threatening notices to small yoga studios that he claimed violated his copyright.

But as an Indian, he ought to know that the very idea of patenting knowledge is a gross violation of the tradition of yoga. In Sanskrit, “yoga” means “union.” Indians believe in a universal mind — brahman — of which we are all a part, and which ponders eternally. Everyone has access to this knowledge. There is a line in the Hindu scriptures: “Let good knowledge come to us from all sides.” There is no follow-up that adds, “And let us pay royalties for it.”

Knowledge in ancient India was protected by caste lines, not legal or economic ones. The term “intellectual property” was an oxymoron: the intellect could not be anybody’s property. You did not pay your guru in coin; you herded his cows and married his daughter, and passed on the knowledge to others when you were sufficiently steeped in it. This tradition continues today, most notably in Indian classical music, none of whose melodies have been copyrighted.

Perhaps it is for this reason that Indians do not feel obligated to pay for knowledge. Pirated copies of my book are openly sold on the Bombay streets, for a fourth of its official price. Many of the plots and the music in Bollywood movies are lifted wholesale from Hollywood. I have sat in on Bollywood script meetings where we viewed American films and decided that replication was the sincerest form of flattery.

Still, Indians get upset every time they hear reports — often overblown — of Westerners’ stealing their age-old wisdom, through the mechanism of copyright law. They were outraged by a story last year of some Americans trying to copyright the sacred Hindu syllable “om” — which would be like trade-marking “amen.”

The fears may be exaggerated, but they are widespread and reflect India’s mixed experience with globalization. Western pharmaceutical companies make billions on drugs that are often first discovered in developing countries — but herbal remedies like bitter gourd or turmeric, which are known to be effective against everything from diabetes to piles, earn nothing for the country whose sages first isolated their virtues. The Indian government estimates that worldwide, 2000 patents are issued a year based on traditional Indian medicines.

Drugs and hatha yoga have the same aim: to help us lead healthier lives. India has given the world yoga for free. No wonder so many in the country feel that the world should return the favor by making lifesaving drugs available at reduced prices, or at least letting Indian companies make cheap generics. If padmasana — a k a the lotus position — belongs to all mankind, so should the formula for Gleevec, the leukemia drug over whose patent a Swiss pharmaceuticals company is suing the Indian government. But the drug companies are playing rough. Abbott, based in Chicago, has decided to sell no new medicines in Thailand, in retaliation for that country’s producing generic versions of three lifesaving drugs.

For decades, Indian law allowed its pharmaceutical companies to replicate Western-patented drugs and sell them at a lower price to countries too poor to afford them otherwise. In this way, India supplied half of the drugs used by H.I.V.-positive people in the developing world. But in March 2005, the Indian Parliament, under pressure to bring the country into compliance with the World Trade Organization’s regulations on intellectual property, passed a bill declaring it illegal to make generic copies of patented drugs.

This has put life-saving antiretroviral medications out of reach of many of the nearly 6 million Indians who have AIDS. And yet, the very international drug companies that so fiercely protect their patents oppose India’s attempts to amend World Trade Organization rules to protect its traditional remedies.

There’s more at stake than just the money involved in the commercial exploitation of traditional knowledge. There is also the perception that the world trading system is unfair, that the deck is stacked against developing countries. Unless the World Trade Organization and developed countries correct this, the entire project of globalization is at risk.

If the copying of Western drugs is illegal, so should be the patenting of yoga. It is also intellectual piracy, stood on its head.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/07/op...11d&ei=5087%0A





Vendors’ Removal Brings a Venezuelan Gem Back to Life
Simon Romero

“They made Caracas into Calcutta,” the Venezuelan writer Fausto Masó lamented in the epilogue of a recently reissued memoir of bohemian exploits in the 1970s and 1980s along Sabana Grande, the boulevard that once symbolized this city’s effervescent intellectual life.

Until recently, it was hard for anyone with the nerve to exit a subway stop on Sabana Grande to disagree with that assessment. About 3,000 street vendors associated with black-market sales and crime had taken over the boulevard since the start of the decade, and the area had become emblematic of the city’s decline into lawlessness and neglect.

But at the beginning of this year, buoyed by President Hugo Chávez’s re-election victory, the local government allied with him responded to the many complaints about the area and cleared the vendors out. Pedestrians have flowed back, giving hope of renewal to many people in the area.

“This place has gone from being an area in which you risked your life to something approaching pleasurable,” said Ramón Martínez, a waiter at a restaurant on the boulevard for the last four years.

Returning Sabana Grande to its past grandeur is no easy task in Caracas, a city of four million struggling with violent crime. Citing morgue records, newspapers here reported 265 killings last month, which would make it one of the deadliest in the city’s recorded history. The police disputed the figure, saying that there were 169 killings.

Along Sabana Grande, pickpockets flourished under the vendors’ plastic tarps, where products like pharmaceuticals of dubious origin, smuggled Colombian lingerie and pirated Hollywood DVDs were available.

Considered a contingent of Mr. Chávez’s urban political base, the vendors had for several years successfully prevented the authorities from removing them or collecting taxes. Many of the boulevard’s exclusive shops and outdoor cafes had shut down, as their customers avoided the area.

Before the efforts began to restrict them, the city had about 150,000 of these vendors, according to Cedice, a research organization. The vendors have created an anarchic feel to many streets and plazas, including hundreds perched around the National Assembly downtown, fueling criticism of a government that preaches socialism but tolerates unfettered capitalism on its streets.

“The government should be ashamed to be walking hand in hand with Cuban socialism without acknowledging there are no street vendors nor anything even remotely similar in Havana,” the newspaper El Nacional said in an editorial. “At least they should use Cuba as an example in this respect.”

Along Sabana Grande, whose name refers to a region of savannas and tabletop mesas in southern Venezuela, the facades of Art Deco apartments remain crumbling or covered in grit. Squatters have occupied some abandoned buildings. But the police are more visible, and mimes and street musicians now attract growing crowds.

A few reminders of the boulevard’s past survive, like Suma, a cavernous bookstore, and the open-air Gran Café. Clearing out the vendors has also started a debate about the boulevard’s future, with fervent supporters of the president trying to transform it into an area for discussing the direction of Venezuelan politics.

“The vendors have a right to work, but they should be given the opportunity to do something more creative,” said Janette Rodríguez while passing out copies of La Mancha, a leftist newspaper. Ms. Rodríguez said the challenge was to prevent the boulevard from again becoming “a place full of boutiques for the bourgeoisie.”

Whatever their political stripe, urban planners are enthusiastic about reinvigorating what is considered the city’s premier public space. They point to its surviving examples of the fanciful architecture and public art that blossomed in Caracas after World War II, like a sculpture of dangling plastic tubes by Jesús Soto that graces one end of Sabana Grande, or the Chacaíto shopping center, whose open-air design feels innovative more than four decades after it was built.

Unlike other Latin American capitals that were seats of colonial power, Caracas was long a backwater. Then oil wealth paid for the services of Maurice Rotival, the French urban planner who developed the city’s master plan, and of Robert Moses, New York’s master builder, who advised Caracas on its freeway system.

The modern city they designed has gone through a wrenching transformation, though, after migration surged from other regions. The change is characterized by the growth of shantytowns on its hills and the cloistering of the privileged in gated communities and air-conditioned shopping malls.

“Sabana Grande has exceptional importance in the urban fabric of Caracas,” said Marcos Negrón, a prominent architect here. “It’s one of the few areas where different social classes can mingle with each other outside.”

Though officials are clearing street vendors from other areas, much of their focus has been on Sabana Grande. Critics of the municipal government say the vendors’ removal was opportunistic because it took place only after the president won re-election in December.

Freddy Bernal, mayor of the district encompassing the boulevard, said political allegiances were not a factor. “This place does not belong to those who voted for President Hugo Chávez or those who did not,” he said in a statement. “It belongs to all Caraqueños and needs to be defended.”

He had earlier told reporters, “It’s no secret to anyone that there were years of madness between the government and the opposition, and it wasn’t the political moment to advance.”

Many of the street vendors themselves scoff at their removal to a nearby lot, even as city officials hang banners there saying, “Dignifying the Popular Economy.” The vendors say promises of government loans have gone unmet.

“Chávez used the vendors,” said Jairo Castro, a former vendor on Sabana Grande who voted for Mr. Chávez in December. “We’re no good to him anymore.”

Still, many residents seem delighted that Sabana Grande, and perhaps even a tidied-up Caracas, may have a place in Mr. Chávez’s revolution. Pedro Aponte, 72, a retired fruit seller, relied on nostalgia to discuss the boulevard’s potential.

“We have to conserve this place,” Mr. Aponte said as he set up chess sets one recent morning under an awning, where a growing crowd gathers each day to play. Officials even organized a small Carnival celebration on Sabana Grande this year, though it paled in comparison with Carnivals of decades past in Mr. Aponte’s opinion.

“We would throw something called smile powder on the girls,” Mr. Aponte reminisced.

“They would smile,” he said. “That was beautiful.”

José Orozco contributed reporting.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/11/wo...=1&oref=slogin





How the Inca Leapt Canyons
John Noble Wilford

Conquistadors from Spain came, they saw and they were astonished. They had never seen anything in Europe like the bridges of Peru. Chroniclers wrote that the Spanish soldiers stood in awe and fear before the spans of braided fiber cables suspended across deep gorges in the Andes, narrow walkways sagging and swaying and looking so frail.

Yet the suspension bridges were familiar and vital links in the vast empire of the Inca, as they had been to Andean cultures for hundreds of years before the arrival of the Spanish in 1532. The people had not developed the stone arch or wheeled vehicles, but they were accomplished in the use of natural fibers for textiles, boats, sling weapons — even keeping inventories by a prewriting system of knots.

So bridges made of fiber ropes, some as thick as a man’s torso, were the technological solution to the problem of road building in rugged terrain. By some estimates, at least 200 such suspension bridges spanned river gorges in the 16th century. One of the last of these, over the Apurimac River, inspired Thornton Wilder’s novel “The Bridge of San Luis Rey.”

Although scholars have studied the Inca road system’s importance in forging and controlling the pre-Columbian empire, John A.Ochsendorf of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology here said, “Historians and archaeologists have neglected the role of bridges.”

Dr. Ochsendorf’s research on Inca suspension bridges, begun while he was an undergraduate at Cornell University, illustrates an engineering university’s approach to archaeology, combining materials science and experimentation with the traditional fieldwork of observing and dating artifacts. Other universities conduct research in archaeological materials, but it has long been a specialty at M.I.T.

Students here are introduced to the multidisciplinary investigation of ancient technologies as applied in transforming resources into cultural hallmarks from household pottery to grand pyramids. In a course called “materials in human experience,” students are making a 60-foot-long fiber bridge in the Peruvian style. On Saturday, they plan to stretch the bridge across a dry basin between two campus buildings.

In recent years, M.I.T. archaeologists and scientists have joined forces in studies of early Peruvian ceramics, balsa rafts and metal alloys; Egyptian glass and Roman concrete; and also the casting of bronze bells in Mexico. They discovered that Ecuadoreans, traveling by sea, introduced metallurgy to western Mexico. They even found how Mexicans added bits of morning-glory plants, which contain sulfur, in processing natural rubber into bouncing balls.

“Mexicans discovered vulcanization 3,500 years before Goodyear,” said Dorothy Hosler, an M.I.T. professor of archaeology and ancient technology. “The Spanish had never seen anything that bounced like the rubber balls of Mexico.”

Heather Lechtman, an archaeologist of ancient technology who helped develop the M.I.T. program, said that in learning “how objects were made, what they were made of and how they were used, we see people making decisions at various stages, and the choices involve engineering as well as culture.”

From this perspective, she said, the choices are not always based only on what works well, but also are guided by ideological and aesthetic criteria. In the casting of early Mexican bells, attention was given to their ringing tone and their color; an unusually large amount of arsenic was added to copper to make the bronze shine like silver.

“If people use materials in different ways in different societies, that tells you something about those people,” Professor Lechtman said.

In the case of the Peruvian bridges, the builders relied on a technology well suited to the problem and their resources. The Spanish themselves demonstrated how appropriate the Peruvian technique was.

Dr. Ochsendorf, a specialist in early architecture and engineering, said the colonial government tried many times to erect European arch bridges across the canyons, and each attempt ended in fiasco until iron and steel were applied to bridge building. The Peruvians, knowing nothing of the arch or iron metallurgy, instead relied on what they knew best, fibers from cotton, grasses and saplings, and llama and alpaca wool.

The Inca suspension bridges achieved clear spans of at least 150 feet, probably much greater. This was a longer span than any European masonry bridges at the time. The longest Roman bridge in Spain had a maximum span between supports of 95 feet. And none of these European bridges had to stretch across deep canyons.

The Peruvians apparently invented their fiber bridges independently of outside influences, Dr. Ochsendorf said, but these bridges were neither the first of their kind in the world nor the inspiration for the modern suspension bridge like the George Washington and Verrazano-Narrows Bridges in New York and the Golden Gate in San Francisco.

In a recent research paper, Dr. Ochsendorf wrote: “The Inca were the only ancient American civilization to develop suspension bridges. Similar bridges existed in other mountainous regions of the world, most notably in the Himalayas and in ancient China, where iron chain suspension bridges existed in the third century B.C.”

The first of the modern versions was erected in Britain in the late 18th century, the beginning of the Industrial Revolution. The longest one today connects two islands in Japan, with a span of more than 6,000 feet from tower to supporting tower. These bridges are really “hanging roadways,” Dr. Ochsendorf said, to provide a fairly level surface for wheeled traffic.

In his authoritative 1984 book, “The Inka Road System,” John Hyslop, who was an official of the Institute of Andean Research and associated with the American Museum of Natural History, compiled descriptions of the Inca bridges recorded by early travelers.
Garcilasco de la Vega, in 1604, reported on the cable-making techniques. The fibers, he wrote, were braided into ropes of the length necessary for the bridge. Three of these ropes were woven together to make a larger rope, and three of them were again braided to make a still larger rope, and so on. The thick cables were pulled across the river with small ropes and attached to stone abutments on each side.

Three of the big cables served as the floor of the bridge, which often was at least four to five feet wide, and two others served as handrails. Pieces of wood were tied to the cable floor. Finally, the floor was strewn with branches to give firm footing for beasts of burden.

More branches and pieces of wood were strung to make walls along the entire length of the bridge. The side covering, one chronicler said, was such that “if a horse fell on all fours, it could not fall off the bridge.”

Still, it took a while for the Spanish to adjust to the bridges and to coax their horses to cross them. The bridges trembled underfoot and swayed dangerously in stiff winds.

Ephraim G. Squier, a visitor to Peru from the United States in the 1870s, said of the Apurimac River bridge: “It is usual for the traveler to time his day’s journey so as to reach the bridge in the morning, before the strong wind sets in; for, during the greater part of the day, it sweeps up the Canyon of the Apurimac with great force, and then the bridge sways like a gigantic hammock, and crossing is next to impossible.”

Other travelers noted that in many cases, two suspension bridges stood side by side. Some said that one was for the lords and gentry, the other for commoners; or one for men, the other for women.

Recent scholars have suggested that it was more likely that one bridge served as a backup for the other, considering the need for frequent repairs of frayed and worn ropes.

The last existing Inca suspension bridge, at Huinchiri, near Cuzco, is virtually rebuilt each year. People from the villages on either side hold a three-day festival and gather stiff grasses for producing more than 50,000 feet of cord. Finally, the cord is braided into 150-foot replacement cables.

In the M.I.T. class project, 14 students met two evenings a week and occasional afternoons to braid the ropes for a Peruvian bridge replica 60 feet long and 2 feet wide. They were allowed one important shortcut: some 50 miles of twine already prepared from sisal, a stronger fiber than the materials used by the Inca.

Some of the time thus gained was invested in steps the Inca had never thought of. The twine and the completed ropes were submitted to stress tests, load-bearing measurements and X-rays.

“We have proof-tested the stuff at every step as we go along,” said Linn W. Hobbs, a materials science professor and one of the principal teachers of the course.

The students incorporated 12 strands of twine for each primary rope. Then three of these 12-ply ropes were braided into the major cables, each 120 feet long — 60 feet for the span and 30 feet at each end for tying the bridge to concrete anchors.

One afternoon last week, several of the students stretched ropes down a long corridor, braiding one of the main cables. While one student knelt to make the braid and three students down the line did some nimble footwork to keep the separate ropes from entangling, Zack Jackowski, a sophomore, put a foot firmly down on the just-completed braid.

“It’s important to get the braids as tight as possible,” Mr. Jackowski said. “A little twist, pull it back hard, hold the twist you just put in.”

No doubt the students will escape the fate of Brother Juniper, the Franciscan missionary in Wilder’s novel who investigated the five people who perished in the collapse of the bridge of San Luis Rey.

Brother Juniper hoped to discern scientific evidence of divine intervention in human affairs, examples of “the wicked visited by destruction and the good called early to Heaven.”

Alas, he could not; there is some of both good and evil in people. So his written account was judged heretical. He and his manuscript were burned at the stake.

If the students’ bridge holds, they will have learned one lesson: engineering, in antiquity as now, is the process of finding a way through and over the challenges of environment and culture.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/08/science/08bridg.html





A Museum for Artifacts of the News Media’s Hunters and Gatherers
Katharine Q. Seelye

Time magazine’s armored truck from the Balkans, pockmarked with bullet holes, has been hoisted into place. The laptop used by Daniel Pearl, the Wall Street Journal reporter murdered in Pakistan in 2002, has arrived. So has the vest that Bob Woodruff of ABC was wearing last year when he was wounded by a roadside bomb in Iraq.

These stark reminders of the hazards of newsgathering will be displayed at the new Newseum on Pennsylvania Avenue, scheduled to open on Oct. 15. Cranes still hover over its steel-and-glass structure, but workers have now installed the facade’s showstopper — a 50-ton, 74-foot-high marble engraved with the First Amendment — and are preparing the exhibitions.

Slowly, the Newseum — a bigger, more dramatic, higher-tech reinvention of of the former Newseum in Arlington, Va. — is taking shape. More than six years in the making and costing $435 million, it may be one of the world’s most expensive museums now under construction. It is certainly among the most prominent, perched on the last buildable site on the presidential inaugural parade route between the Capitol and the White House.

And it is one of the most ambitious, both in design and aspiration. Polshek Partnership Architects designed the museum, and Ralph Appelbaum Associates created its exhibits. (Their earlier collaborations include the Clinton Library in Little Rock, Ark., and the Rose Center for Earth and Space at the American Museum of Natural History in Manhattan.)

The building’s transparent exterior is meant to convey the idea of a free press and an open society. A mammoth rectangle frames the facade, suggesting a television or computer screen that provides what the museum calls a “window on the world.” Visitors enter through a Great Hall of News, where they can see breaking stories on a giant digital “zipper” before setting out on a 1.5-mile path of displays and interactive kiosks. The building, which has seven floors, also contains 135 upscale apartments, Newseum shops and Wolfgang Puck’s three-story restaurant, the Source.

The Appelbaum firm, specializing in interpretive exhibits, is known for infusing ordinary objects with meaning. Its past projects include the Holocaust Museum here and the original Newseum. The Newseum will have 600 artifacts on display, one-tenth of its collection. There’s a pencil, but it was used by Mark H. Kellogg, a reporter killed at Little Bighorn with Custer in 1876, and since blogging is best done in pajamas, Newseum also showcases the turquoise slippers worn by Ana Marie Cox when she wrote as Wonkette, the sassy Washington blogger. (She now writes for Time.com.)

The museum has already obtained the cellphone that a Virginia Tech student used last month to capture a video of the campus massacre. It is in the process of trying to obtain the video itself.

“We trace the way news is perceived and digested and remembered,” Mr. Appelbaum said. “All the elements here are devoted to revealing this extraordinary discipline of journalism that has shaped how we see history.”

The Newseum’s goal is to present the “first rough draft of history” in all its glory and some of its shame, impressing upon visitors the importance of the First Amendment’s protections of a free press. In the glory department are Edward R. Murrow’s rooftop broadcasts from London during the Blitz; he is among the heroes of a short movie to be shown in the Newseum’s 4-D theater, where the seats will literally shake as German planes roar overhead.

The shame is evident in exhibits examining, among other things, Jayson Blair’s manufactured articles in The New York Times and Jack Kelley’s fabrications in USA Today. Videos address the use of anonymous sources and how bias can find its way into news accounts.

One of the museum’s major challenges will be to attract visitors at a time when surveys show that public respect for the news media has been ebbing. Charles L. Overby, chief executive of the Freedom Forum, the nonprofit organization that underwrites the Newseum, discussed the problem in an interview in his temporary office adjacent to the construction site.

“Our annual survey shows that 40 percent of the American public believes the press has too much freedom,” he said, adding that the museum’s job is to educate — in an engaging way.

The Newseum, he emphasized, is not meant to be a monument to the press, but to its freedom.

“We try to show that the press has been hostile, arrogant and irresponsible since the beginning of the republic, and that this is not a new phenomenon that comes from being anti-Bush or anti-Clinton,” Mr. Overby said. “It’s the nature of a free press. And when the public sees the making of this sausage, they begin to say, ‘Well, that’s democracy.’ ”

Peter S. Prichard, president of the Newseum and a former editor in chief of USA Today, said that the original Newseum, which opened in 1997, drew 2.2 million visitors over its five years. “It was like a pilot project,” he said. “We got to see what worked and what didn’t, and we saved all the comment cards.”

Like the original Newseum, the new one will be filled with interactive bells and whistles. Visitors will be able to tape themselves doing stand-up broadcasts as if they were reporting from the White House. They can ham it up in a weather forecast. Various spaces in the new building offer that classic Washington photo op, a drop-dead view of the Capitol. The Newseum also has 15 theaters and two state-of-the-art broadcast studios for public-affairs events.

One of the galleries will be devoted to journalistic ethics. It allows visitors to race one another to answer some basic yes-or-no questions on deadline. You are reporting on shoplifting and learn that your neighbor has been arrested, a potential conflict; should you tell your editor? (Yes, according to a Newseum panel of journalism experts.)

But there is also a chance to consider more complex issues, based on real events. Should a photographer in Sudan have taken a picture of a starving child as a vulture lurked nearby, or tried to save the child? At a click, visitors can learn more information about the photograph, which appeared in The New York Times and won a Pulitzer Prize, read the views of journalists and vote on what they would have done. (They can also see how journalists voted.)

The original Newseum was off the beaten path and had no room to expand. After searching for a more tourist-friendly location, the Freedom Forum made an unsolicited offer of $75 million to the District of Columbia for this site. As a sweetener, it offered an extra $25 million for low-income housing.

The Freedom Forum closed the deal in December 2000 and broke ground three years later. So far it has received pledges for $79 million in donations, including $15 million from the Annenberg Foundation; $10 million from the Ochs-Sulzberger family and The New York Times Company; and $10 million from the News Corporation, which owns Fox News and The New York Post and has made a bid for The Wall Street Journal.

Mr. Overby said that without “major missionary work” like the Newseum, the First Amendment could lose political support and “cease to exist” by the end of the century.

“But,” he added, “if, in the middle of an ethics game, people can begin to see the complexity of making decisions, that news judgment is not just black and white, that there’s an awful lot of gray that goes into this, we will have achieved our purpose.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/08/ar...gn/08muse.html





A Misunderstanding, and a Simple Life Descends Into a Nightmare
Michiko Kakutani

The Unknown Terrorist

By Richard Flanagan

325 pages. Grove press. $24.

The heroine of Richard Flanagan’s stunning new novel is an Australian pole dancer known as the Doll, and like Cary Grant or Jimmy Stewart in a Hitchcock movie, she finds herself being mistaken for someone else and falling, abruptly, down a black rabbit hole, her identity stolen, her daily life torpedoed, her most fundamental expectations about life blown to smithereens.

Because of a one-night stand with an attractive stranger named Tariq, the Doll suddenly finds herself being hunted by the police and described on TV as part of a Bonnie-and-Clyde terrorist team determined to set off a bomb, quite possibly a dirty bomb, in downtown Sydney, perhaps even at the city’s iconic opera house.

SWAT teams fan out across the city in search of her; her apartment is ransacked; her friends are grilled and threatened with imprisonment. Images of her and her supposed terrorist boyfriend play on an endless loop on television sets and Jumbotrons across the city, while television reporters and radio shock jocks psychoanalyze her, defame her, mythologize the paltry facts of her life as they reinvent her as an avatar of all that is evil.

The Doll not only sees her modest hopes of a better life — “a life in which she had an apartment and an education and a job that people admired” — abruptly erased, but also realizes that she has been caught up in a gigantic political and media machine that she is helpless to stop. In three days her existence has been transformed. She is now running for her life.

Although the basic outlines of this story come from Heinrich Böll’s novel “The Lost Honour of Katharina Blum,” written in response to the terrorism scares that Germany suffered in the late 1960s and ’70s, Mr. Flanagan has turned the story into an armature for a brilliant meditation upon the post-9/11 world, a globalized world in which fear is a valued commodity for terrorists and governments alike, a world in which rumors and misinformation circumnavigate the globe in the flash of an eye, and narratives — constructed by politicians and tabloid reporters, and avidly consumed by a spectacle-hungry populace — replace facts and truths. Identity has become a commodity and construct in this world: something that can be manufactured, stolen or counterfeited.

“The Unknown Terrorist” may not be as ambitious as this author’s last novel — the astonishing “Gould’s Book of Fish,” a phantasmagorical portrait of a 19th-century forger that opened out into a Melvillian meditation on art and politics and nature, the evils of colonialism and the limits of Enlightenment reason. But if the focus of “The Unknown Terrorist” remains the contemporary world — rather than the cumulative philosophical and cultural underpinnings of several centuries of Australian history — it does an just as dazzling a job job of limning its subject, conjuring up the postmodern, post-sci-fi world of globalized terror and trade, where drugs and weapons and human beings are smuggled with equal brazenness across borders and oceans, and money and power flow back and forth between the legitimate and criminal worlds, unnoticed by the crowds clamoring for more bytes and pixels and bandwidth.

Mr. Flanagan makes the reader see the teeming, seamy streets where the Doll lives and works, and the swank neighborhoods where many of her customers have homes with views of the harbor and the city and the sky. He captures the nervous jujitsu that passes for debate and conversation in the streets, and the frenetic, strobe-lit pulse of the urban wasteland that is modern Sydney — T. S. Eliot’s unreal city gone Aussie and electric. And he’s written a book that deserves to win him the sort of readership enjoyed by two much better-known novelists with whom he has much in common: Don DeLillo and Martin Amis.

As we get to know the Doll — whose real name is Gina Davies — we see that she thinks of herself as a cynic, as a tough-minded survivor, whose abusive childhood has inoculated her against big dreams of love and happiness ever after. Time and again, she has picked herself up and started over — after the stillbirth of her son, Liam; after the death of Liam’s father — and she has set herself the practical goal of dancing until she has made enough money to buy a starter apartment and turn it into a home.

Then: “She would put herself through university, train herself, and have a job that was secure and from which she might derive some small pride. And always she would hold her soul close and precious, allow no one to take it from her and trash it. These seemed neither large nor foolish things, but something solid, a rock, on which to build a life.”

And so she puts up with the daily humiliations of dancing at the Chairman’s Lounge in front of leering men. Among the patrons of the club is one Richard Cody, a has-been TV reporter, adept at embroidering stories, be it at the dinner table or on the screen. When Cody offers to pay the Doll for sex, she rebuffs him, and he will remember her — when a picture of her on a surveillance camera turns up the following day — hugging a man named Tariq, who has become the chief suspect in a terrorist bombing plot.

Cody comes to see Doll’s story — an Aussie girl turned terrorist — as his ticket back to the top of the tabloid television heap; it does not occur to him that she may be an innocent caught up in a series of random events and misunderstandings. And as the public frenzy, hyped by his television special, grows, the possibility of her innocence is also shrugged off by the politicians eager to use the terrorism scare to promote their own agendas.

The Doll’s best friend, Wilder, urges her to turn herself in to the police, to trust that “in Australia things always get sorted out in the end,” but the Doll becomes increasingly convinced that no one will believe her, that the people she’s up against can “take a truth” and “turn it into a lie.”

In Mr. Flanagan’s earlier novels “Gould’s Book of Fish” and “The Sound of One Hand Clapping,” there were glimpses of transcendence amid the senseless violence and degradation sustained by his characters — an appreciation of humanity’s resilience, its ability to alchemize suffering into art or to transmute anger into tenderness and redemption.

Here, however, the Stygian world inhabited by the Doll and her pursuers is without relief: Darwinian rules are the order of the day, and ruthlessness and self-interest are the ways to get ahead or survive. Indeed, Mr. Flanagan’s vision seems to have darkened considerably since his last book: in this stark and unsparing novel, set against the backdrop of the global war on terrorism, he gives us a Hobbesian world, devoid of grace and forgiveness and light, and headed, headlong, toward irredeemable disaster.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/08/books/08kaku.html





The Streisand Effect
Andy Greenberg

A Web user and his information are like a grizzly and her cub. Come between them, and you're likely to get mauled.

That's what a group of heavyweight tech and entertainment companies learned last week when they tried to keep the lid on the code that could help break the electronic locks on HD-DVDs. On May 1, someone posted the code, which allows software developers to copy content from high-definition discs, to the social news portal Digg.com.

A consortium of companies such as Disney, Microsoft and IBM, who have invested in the disc format, responded with a cease-and-desist letter, trying to strong-arm the site's owners into removing the code.

Digg's administrators cooperated; its users didn't. Crying censorship, they staged a digital riot, covering Digg's pages with links to the banned digits, printing them on T-shirts and immortalizing them in a song that's been played on YouTube more than 200,000 times.

Thanks to Digg's rebels, the HD-DVD encryption code has become another victim of the "Streisand effect," an increasingly common backlash that occurs when someone tries to muzzle information on the Web. When the Streisand effect takes hold, contraband doesn't disappear quietly. Instead, it infects the online community in a pandemic of free-speech-fueled defiance, gaining far more attention than it would have had the information's original owners simply kept quiet.

The phenomenon takes its name from Barbra Streisand, who made her own ill-fated attempt at reining in the Web in 2003. That's when environmental activist Kenneth Adelman posted aerial photos of Streisand's Malibu beach house on his Web site as part of an environmental survey, and she responded by suing him for $50 million. Until the lawsuit, few people had spotted Streisand's house, Adelman says--but the lawsuit brought more than a million visitors to Adelman's Web site, he estimates. Streisand's case was dismissed, and Adelman's photo was picked up by the Associated Press and reprinted in newspapers around the world.

The Internet has been mainstream for more than a decade. But what Streisand and others fail to realize, says Michael Masnick, the tech consultant and writer who named the Streisand effect in his blog, Techdirt, is that the rules of privacy and information control have changed. "Before, you took the hardest legal stance you could," says Masnick. "You sent out cease-and-desist letters with a lot of nasty language. But the Internet has turned that around and allowed people to fight back and get a lot more people outraged."

Michael Fertik owns ReuptationDefender, a start-up company that helps individuals and companies manage their online reputation--essentially a Web-centric crisis PR firm. He says he would have taken a subtler approach to Streisand's situation. "You have to reason with people and approach them politely," he says. "People don't like that a large entity can beat up on a little entity, and the power of the Internet has been arrayed to support victims."

Despite these new rules of publicity control, the Streisand effect has its limits. When the celebrity gossip blog Gawker published leaked photos of Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie's newborn baby in June of last year, Time Inc. threatened them with a lawsuit for infringing its exclusive right to publish the star-child's pictures in the U.S. After a heated exchange between the two media outlets and threats of a lawsuit, Gawker gave in and removed the photos--at least until Time's People magazine had a chance to publish its own spread.

But as the Digg revolt shows, damage control can be difficult even when Web sites respond to legal threats. Last September, Brazilian model and TV personality Daniela Cicarelli demanded that Google's YouTube remove a video clip of her indiscreet sexual behavior on a Spanish beach, which had been filmed by a paparazzo. YouTube obediently pulled the clip, but users continued to upload the file with different names, evading YouTube's filters.

Eventually, a Brazilian judge ordered that the site be banned in Brazil until YouTube could effectively remove the video. But the ban only brought more attention to the clip outside of Brazil, as well as inspiring a boycott of her shows by angry Brazilian YouTube fans. Today, YouTube has been unblocked in Brazil, and though Cicarelli's sex clip seems to have disappeared from YouTube, a host of other video sites still feature the footage.

The government of Thailand has run up against similar limits to its power to control the international Web. Last April, an anonymous YouTube user posted a 44-second video portraying Thailand's king, Bhumibol Adulyadej, as a monkey. The Thai government charged the site with "lèse majesté," insulting the monarch, and rather than ask for the offending video to be removed, banned the site altogether.

YouTube users around the world responded by posting a series of Bhumibol-bashing clips, portraying the king as a clown, as various types of animals and as a pedophile. Each clip has been viewed tens of thousands of times, and this week Thailand responded by suing the video site.

But Thailand's lawsuit is more likely to fuel the videos' distribution than to stop them. Attorney Kevin Bankston argues that unlike the laws of Thailand, U.S law ensures that sites like YouTube are free to act as a platform for defamatory materials posted by users. Bankston, a free-speech advocate for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, cites a provision in the Communications Decency Act stating that communication services aren't responsible for the speech that they enable.

That law may have some bearing on the Digg case as well, as the consortium that owns the HD-DVD encryption code considers how to prevent more users from seeing the digits posted on the site. As for Bankston, he was happy to see Digg's users rebel last week in what he calls "a great flowering of civil disobedience," and he says it should serve as a warning to future censors about the power of the Streisand effect.

"The Web," Bankston says, "is like the mythical Hydra. Cut off one of its many heads, and two will grow back in its place."
http://www.forbes.com/home/technolog...streisand.html





Thailand to Sue YouTube Over King Clips

The webpage of YouTube. Thailand's army-backed government plans to sue Internet video-sharing site YouTube over clips it deemed insulting to King Bhumibol Adulyadej.

Thailand's army-backed government plans to sue Internet video-sharing site YouTube over clips it deemed insulting to King Bhumibol Adulyadej.

"We are considering taking legal action against the website," said Vissanu Meeyo, a spokesman for the information ministry.

Thailand plans to sue YouTube, owned by Google, over charges of lese majeste -- insulting the monarchy, a serious crime here that carries up to 15 years in prison, the spokesman said.

The government, which came to power after a September coup, has continued to block YouTube since the first clip showing the king next to a photograph of feet, considered deeply offensive here, appeared in April.

The YouTube ban came a week after a Thai court jailed a Swiss man for 10 years for insulting the monarch by vandalising his portraits.

But the king later pardoned the man, who was then deported from Thailand.

Since the first clip, more new videos mocking the king have appeared on YouTube, including pictures of the monarch that had been digitally altered to make him resemble a monkey.

Thailand's 79-year-old king, almost universally adored by Thais, is the world's longest-reigning monarch, and one of the few who is still protected by tough laws that prohibit any insult against the royal family.
http://www.physorg.com/news97734698.html





Central server model showing weakness

YouTube to Remove Some Clips Mocking Thai King
Mei Vandenberghe

Video-sharing Web site YouTube has agreed to block four clips Thailand says insulted its revered king, the latest twist in a spat that has stirred fierce debate about freedom of expression on the Internet.

However, in a letter to Communications Minister Sitthichai Pookaiyaudom, YouTube owner Google said two other videos that had incurred the wrath of Thailand's military government would stay as they did not break lese majeste laws.

"They appear to be political comments that are critical of both the government and the conduct of foreigners," the letter said.

"Because they are political in nature, and not intended insults of His Majesty, we do not see a basis for blocking these videos."

Insulting royalty is a serious offence in Thailand, but the generals who ousted Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra in a military coup in September have also used the strict lese majeste laws to stifle criticism of themselves or their actions.

Sitthichai, who blocked the entire YouTube Web site last month when clips mocking King Bhumibol Adulyadej first appeared, gave copies of the letter to reporters on Friday.

The letter was on Google-headed paper and signed by senior company lawyer Kent Walker. The company could not immediately be reached for comment.

The letter said Thailand had sent YouTube bosses a list of 12 video clips it deemed offensive. Six of the clips had already been removed by their creators or because they violated YouTube's "code of service", it said. Sitthichai, who threatened to sue Google earlier in the week, said he no longer wished to take legal action but did not say whether the company's concession was enough for him unblock YouTube for Thai Internet surfers.

"The Thai police will not take any action against any company. Instead they will look into ways of fighting the person who uploaded the video onto the Web site," he told a news conference.

The first king-bashing clip appeared a few days after a 57-year-old Swiss man received a 10-year jail sentence for spraying graffiti on pictures of the king on his birthday in December -- a rare conviction of a foreigner.

Bhumibol, the world's longest-reigning monarch who has been on the throne for more than 60 years, has since granted a pardon and the Swiss man has been deported.
http://www.reuters.com/article/inter...K1807320070511





Joost Gets A Jolt From Warner Bros. As Hollywood Focuses On PC Screen
Brian Deagon

Online video sensation Joost added two more partners to a growing stable of media companies willing to have their content stream over the Web onto viewers' computer screens.

Joost announced Monday that Time Warner's (TWX) Warner Bros. Television Group will offer a smattering of vintage TV shows. Separately, the video Web site Heavy.com said it will showcase original programming on Joost's service.

The deals come less than a week after Joost announced its commercial launch. Though still open only to invited users, the service has secured 32 advertising partners that include blue chip brands such as Coca-Cola, (KO) Intel, (INTC) Hewlett-Packard (HPQ) and Nike. (NKE)

Joost boasts 150 separate Web TV channels that offer everything from vintage episodes of "Lassie" to National Geographic specials and fare from Comedy Central.

Joost was founded by Niklas Zennstrom and Janus Friis; the two also created Internet phone service Skype, which eBay (EBAY) acquired for $2.6 billion in 2005.

Though it's one of dozens of Web sites that stream TV shows, Joost has received a bevy of media attention lately due to some major deals. Fans praise its video quality and easy-to-use controls.

In May, Joost announced content deals with Turner Broadcasting, Sony's (SNE) movie and TV unit, Time Warner-owned Sports Illustrated magazine and the National Hockey League. CBS came aboard in April, following Viacom (VIAB) in February.

"Joost is trying to position itself as a true TV service over the Internet," said Len Feldman, an analyst at Multimedia Research Group. "They are trying to be a content aggregator that acts almost like a cable company, with an enormous store of content that you can watch on demand whenever you want."

It's not clear whether Joost and companies like it will pose a threat to cable companies, analysts say. The producers of popular TV shows themselves are not sure where things are headed. They want to avoid making the same mistakes the music industry made by trying futilely to prevent music-file swapping.

"The media entertainment companies are eagerly rushing into unknown territory," said James McQuivey, a media analyst at Forrester Research. "They're saying that if people want to watch their shows over the Internet, then they want to be the ones that get the ad revenue for this."

Joost will share advertising revenue with content providers but has not disclosed any details. And the networks are providing Joost with content even though some of the same shows can be viewed on their own streaming TV Web sites. For example, CBS will offer Joost viewers episodes of "Jericho" even though that show can also be viewed on the CBS site Innertube.

Yvette Alberdingk Thijm, Joost's executive vice president for content strategy and acquisition, says CBS wants to distribute its content as widely as possible.

"In conversations we've had with CBS, they want their audiences to have a good experience," she said. "People don't want to jump from Web site to Web site. They want to find it in one place. "

Streaming video has been on the scene for years, but now it's coming on like a fright train, analysts say. Just as music was copied and swapped illegally from user to user on file-sharing networks — which the industry says costs billions in lost sales annually — the same is now happening with TV .

Dozens of Web sites make available for viewing all manner of TV shows, often without copyright permission. Many of the sites profit from their own on-site ads.

David Graves, chief executive of PermissionTV, another online video service, says the TV networks see syndication as a good strategy.

"Effectively they've said, 'Our content is up for sale,' " Graves said. "And rather than making it available only on their company-owned Web sites, they've agreed to sell the programming to other sites as long as they think it's a good business."

For now, TV executives are treading carefully. Much of what's on Joost "is second- or third-rate content," Feldman said. That could change if the business model works.

"We'll see a lot of experimentation," he said.
http://www.investors.com/editorial/I...issue=20070507





Most Children Younger Than 2 Years Watch TV Despite Warnings

Approximately 40 percent of three-month old children and about 90 percent of children age 24 months and under regularly watch television, DVDs or videos, according to a report in the May issue of Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine.

"The public health implications of early television and video viewing are potentially large. There are both theoretical and empirical reasons to believe that the effects of media exposure on children’s development are more likely to be adverse before the age of about 30 months than afterward," the authors note. Recent studies suggest that what children younger than two years watch and whether they watch it alone or with a parent may be important for their vocabulary development.

Frederick J. Zimmerman, Ph.D., of the University of Washington, Seattle, and colleagues, conducted a telephone survey of 1,009 parents of children age 2 to 24 months. The study analyzed four television and DVD content categories: children’s educational, children’s non-educational, baby DVDs/videos and grown-up television (such as talk shows or sports programming). Average daily viewing, reasons parents gave for their child’s viewing, who was present during viewing and socio-demographic factors were reported.

The median age of initiating viewing was 9 months. The average amount of viewing time for the children was 40.2 minutes per day. At 3 months of age children watched less than an hour per day and by 24 months they watched more than 1.5 hours per day. "Approximately half of the viewing was of shows that parents reported to be in the children’s educational category," the authors note. "The remaining half was approximately equally split among children’s non-educational content, baby DVDs/videos and grown-up television."

Of the reasons given by parents for allowing television and DVD/video viewing, 29 percent believe that television is educational or good for their child’s brain, 23 percent believe that it is enjoyable or relaxing for their child and 21 percent believe it gives them time to get things done while the child is entertained. Parents watched with their children more than half the time.

Researchers also reported that compared with children without siblings, children with two or more siblings were less likely to view grown-up television and watched about 18 minutes less per day in all content types.

"These results suggest that it may not only be the amount or content type that children view, but also the role of siblings in helping to process this content that may affect whether television viewing helps or hinders development," the authors conclude. In addition, "these results suggest that the widespread notion that parents turn to television only as an electronic babysitter is a misconception…Parents are clearly hungry for truly educational content for children younger than 2 years. More research is urgently required to determine whether it is realistic to produce genuinely educational content for children younger than 2 years, and if so, what it would be."

Source: JAMA and Archives Journals
http://www.physorg.com/news97776813.html





I-H-A, T-E-Y, O-U-A-L-L

Hamas TV Refuses to Axe Copycat Mickey Mouse
Sakher Abu El Oun

A Hamas-run television station defied Israel and the Palestinian government on Thursday by refusing to axe a controversial children's puppet show in which a Mickey Mouse lookalike calls for resistance.

"Al-Aqsa TV refuses this pressure and refuses to cull its programme or alter any of its content," said Fathi Hamad, chairman of the Al-Aqsa Television board in Gaza City, lashing out at Israeli and Western "interference".

"This campaign of criticism is part of a plan orchestrated by the West and the occupying power to attack Islam on the one hand and the Palestinian cause on the other," he said.

"We have our own ways to educate our children and any criticism of this approach is shocking interference in our internal affairs," said Hamad.

The programme entitled "Tomorrow's Pioneers" seeks to educate Palestinian children to stand up for their nation and their rights, especially the right of return, said Hamad, slamming a "violation on freedom of journalism".

In the programme, the Mickey Mouse lookalike named Farfur and a little girl urge resistance against Israel and the United States -- along with stressing the importance of daily prayers and drinking milk.

A senior official working for Al-Aqsa said the show would air as normal this Friday in defiance of a request from information minister Mustafa Barghuti to shelve the programme.

"The programme will continue and it will be broadcast tomorrow at 4:00 pm (1300 GMT). Mustafa Barghuti misunderstood the issue," said the official on condition of anonymity.

Earlier, the information ministry in the West Bank city of Ramallah had said the "politically-oriented children's television programme" was withdrawn by Al-Aqsa following a request to do so by the ministry.

Barghuti said the programme adopted a "mistaken approach" to the Palestinian struggle against Israeli occupation and that it was wrong to use children's programmes to convey political messages.

The programme drew strong protests from Israel and Jewish groups.

"Hamas television is producing and broadcasting a children's programme in which a Mickey Mouse lookalike character indoctrinates Palestinian children to violence, hatred and murder," Israel's foreign ministry said.

"The Hamas-led
Palestinian Authority has deliberately created a culture of hatred that encourages Palestinian children to take an active role in violent activities," it added.

The US-based Anti-Defamation League similarly accused the station of promoting a message of radical Islam, anti-Semitism and hatred of the West.

"When you take a Mickey Mouse-like character and deliberately use it to promote an ideology of hatred, obviously it's going to have an impact on children and their thinking," said Abraham Foxman, ADL national director.

"For all of their attempts to appear more moderate, Hamas is still willing to indoctrinate children into their culture of hate," added Foxman.

Hamas is the senior partner in the Palestinian national unity government and blacklisted as a terrorist organisation in the West.

The Islamist movement controls a television and radio network both called Al-Aqsa, the Arabic name for Jerusalem, and it has also just launched a newspaper.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20070510...n_070510145353





Puffing Away That PG Rating
Michael Cieply

WARNING: Smoking may be hazardous to your movie rating.

In a significant change to its movie ratings system, the Motion Picture Association of America on Thursday said portrayals of smoking would be considered alongside sex and violence in assessing the suitability of movies for young viewers. Films that appear to glamorize smoking will risk a more restrictive rating, and descriptions of tobacco use will be added to the increasingly detailed advisories that accompany each rated film.

Antismoking groups, already successful in much of the country in banning smoking in bars, restaurants and other public places, have ratcheted up the pressure on Hollywood in recent years to purge movies of images that might promote tobacco use. Some have even demanded that virtually any film with smoking be rated R, shutting out those under 17 unless they are accompanied by a parent or adult guardian.

Under the new policy, a film’s rating will consider all tobacco use, rather than just teenage smoking, as in the past. But the board stopped short of guaranteeing that tobacco use would be considered as heavily as sex, violence or drug use in assigning a rating. (Film ratings are assigned by a panel of about a dozen parents through an apparatus called the Classification and Ratings Administration, and overseen by the Motion Picture Association and the National Association of Theater Owners.)

“It’s an art, not a science,” said Joan Graves, chairman of the ratings board, of the actual weight that would be placed on smoking in assigning a rating. “It all depends on how impactful the smoking is.”

In deciding whether a tougher rating is appropriate, board members will be expected to consider whether smoking is pervasive, whether it tends to be glamorized and whether the context or historical fact mitigates the portrayal. David Strathairn’s portrayal of a chain-smoking Edward R. Murrow in “Good Night, and Good Luck,” said Ms. Graves, would probably still get the PG rating it received in 2005, because it was historically accurate. The rating would now be likely to include an advisory about pervasive smoking.

Some critics were quick to assail the new policy as inadequate. “It’s an anemic response,” said Dr. Cheryl Healton, president of the American Legacy Foundation, which in recent years has led a drive to minimize exposure of young people to films that depict the habit without clearly showing its dangers.

Financed with money from state lawsuits against tobacco companies, the foundation has joined with dozens of state attorneys general and health organizations like the American Lung Association and the Harvard School of Public Health to push for changes on the screen. They have asked the film industry to confront smoking with tighter ratings, more antismoking messages attached to films and broad prohibitions against tobacco product placement or brand depictions in films.

In tandem with the shift in its ratings policy, the Motion Picture Association and an allied producers group, the Alliance of Motion Pictures and Television Producers, said on Thursday that they would join “Hollywood Unfiltered,” an initiative by the Entertainment Industry Foundation to reduce smoking among film industry workers and to spread information about the health effects of tobacco.

But the industry groups did not meet the various demands to eliminate recognizable tobacco brands in films, or to cut smoking altogether from films in the G, PG, and PG-13 ratings categories, to which children and teenagers are freely admitted.

In announcing their revision of the ratings system, Motion Picture Association officials said a comprehensive internal review showed that smoking had declined in movies recently. Between July 2004 and July 2006, any glimpse of the habit dropped from 60 percent to 52 percent. In the same period, the officials said, 75 percent of all films to depict smoking had already been rated R.

Some of the most appealing images of smokers — say, Scarlett Johansson with her seductive cigarette in “The Black Dahlia” — occur in movies that have already been restricted for violence and sexual content.

But Dr. Healton said her own group’s research showed that teenagers were not receiving fewer impressions of onscreen smoking, thanks in part to a tendency by film raters to assign PG-13 ratings to films that might have received an R in past years.

Dr. Healton said her group advocated an R rating for all smoking references unless they were historically accurate or “unambiguously demonstrate the health issues.” Lindsay Doran, a veteran Hollywood producer known within the film community for her opposition to onscreen smoking, applauded the ratings revision.

“It would be nice if we could leave this to the filmmakers,” said Ms. Doran, producer of last year’s PG-13 rated “Stranger Than Fiction,” in which Emma Thompson played something of a human ashtray, and quite deliberately deglamorized her tobacco addiction. But, Ms. Doran added, even socially conscious Hollywood types could use a nudge.

“This makes people say, ‘Wait a minute, what are doing here, and why are we doing it?’ ” she said.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/11/bu...11smoking.html





Apple Inc. Seeking End to Music Copy Restrictions in iTunes Talks
Alex Veiga

The last time Apple Chief Executive Steve Jobs took on major recording companies, he refused to budge on his 99-cent price for a song on iTunes.

As a new round of talks ramp up this month, however, Jobs has opened the door to higher prices—as long as music companies let Apple Inc. sell their songs without technology designed to stop unauthorized copying.

Jobs contends that would "tear down the walls" by allowing consumers to play music they buy at Apple's iTunes store on any digital music player, not just the company's iPods.

Although most of the major labels insist that safeguards are still needed to stave off online piracy and make other digital music business models work, one company has already struck a deal with Apple.

Last month, Britain's EMI Music Group PLC, home to artists such as Coldplay, Norah Jones and Joss Stone, agreed to let iTunes sell tracks without the copy-protection technology known as digital-rights management. The DRM-free tracks cost 30 cents more than copy-restricted versions of EMI songs and feature enhanced sound quality.

The other major labels—Warner Music Group Corp., Vivendi's Universal Music Group, and Sony BMG Music Entertainment, a joint venture of Sony Corp. and Bertelsmann AG—will be watching closely to see how the unrestricted EMI tracks sell.

"At this point, no one can ignore Apple or what Apple wants, given its position in the marketplace," said Michael Gartenberg, an analyst with Jupiter Research. "The fact that they were able to do this deal with EMI puts more pressure on some of the other labels to follow suit."

For their part, at least two of the recording companies will ask Jobs to sell a wider variety of content in digital bundles of songs, videos and other multimedia, according to two recording company executives familiar with their companies' plans. They spoke on condition of anonymity, citing the confidential nature of the negotiations.

Apple already sells some bundled tracks, but the music companies hope expanding those offerings will boost online revenue and help offset lagging CD sales.

Apple and the recording companies declined official comment on their negotiations.

Four years ago, the majors bought into Jobs' one-price-fits-all vision and agreed to such licensing terms at a time online music services were failing to attract significant interest from music fans.

Since then, the popularity of Apple's iPods has swelled and the sleek devices now dominate more than 70 percent of the digital music player market, by some estimates.

While studies have suggested that only a fraction of the music on most iPods is actually purchased on iTunes, the service has ridden the iPod's coattails and helped cement its position as the top-selling online music service and one of the biggest music retailers overall.

That's given Apple considerable leverage in its dealings with the recording industry.

Last year, the main issue that dominated iTunes licensing talks was pricing, as some of the big music companies urged Jobs to entertain charging more for some songs than others.

The dispute percolated for months, but Jobs didn't budge, not wanting to complicate iTunes' simple pricing scheme for singles.

Eventually, the music companies each agreed to one-year deals, which expire this spring.

Now, Apple is facing pressure in Europe to license its brand of DRM technology to rivals, so consumers can play the music they buy on iTunes on any digital music player, not just iPods.

Critics of the recording industry have argued for years that the labels are alienating customers by placing copy restrictions on legal music downloads, especially as many CDs have been sold without them.

The technology behind such measures differs, depending on the retailer and the music device. Apple, for example, has its own version, called FairPlay, that only works with iPods, making it cumbersome for consumers to transfer songs they bought across other portable digital devices. Likewise, DRM systems used at other online stores won't work with iPods.

Many music fans who don't want to deal with the hassle simply turn to online file-sharing networks to download no-strings tracks for free.

The recording industry has argued that copy protection software itself is not what makes some songs incompatible with some digital players, but the fact that there are different versions of the technology in use. The music companies have called on Jobs to license out FairPlay to makers of rival devices.

Jobs has countered that the best way to get rid of technological barriers is for record labels to strip the copy safeguards from their music. He defends keeping FairPlay closed, saying that if it was widely available, it would become easier for hackers to figure out how to bypass it.

No matter what, Apple plans to continue selling standard, copy-restricted versions of songs for 99 cents each. With the EMI deal, Apple will this month start selling $1.29 premium tracks that are not only DRM free but also of higher quality, compressed at twice the usual bit rate.

John Heard, an iTunes user in Santa Monica, said he would jump at the chance to buy no-strings download, even if it costs more.

"If I have the choice between something that doesn't have copy protection or it does, I'm always going to choose the thing that doesn't have copy protection," said Heard, 28, a television producer who spends about $300 a year on music, almost all on iTunes.

Buying a better-sounding track is appealing to David Sholle, 54, of Long Beach, a college professor who has purchased several hundred songs from iTunes.

"I'd be willing to pay for that," he said.

Anticipating a more competitive market, other companies are looking to break into online music sales. Online retailer Amazon.com Inc. first approached the major recording companies 18 months ago about launching an online music store.

A recent meeting prompted speculation that Amazon might begin selling unrestricted MP3s and other music downloads as early as this month. The company has declined to comment.

David Pakman, president and CEO of eMusic, said the elimination of copy protection could help his company mine the rare, catalog recordings owned by major labels but not typically available on iTunes.

EMusic already sells music from independent labels in the MP3 format and boasts some 300,000 subscribers.

Pakman believes the major record labels will also eventually relent on requiring copy restrictions.

"We really think the market is breaking our way," Pakman said. "A noteworthy major will probably take some steps in this direction later this year."
http://www.mercurynews.com/news/ci_5...source=sb-digg





The Pirate Bay Launches Music Sharing Site

Promises online musical treasure chest
Jan Libbenga

The Pirate Bay, the controversial Swedish piracy torrent tracker, is launching a music site where users can share as much music as they want.

Playable.com is a collaboration between The Pirate Bay, members of the Swedish rock band Lamont, and their manager Kristopher S Wilbur. A statement said: "The shared insight that the record industry is outdated inspired the birth of Playable.com."

Playable.com will allow users to support artists financially. Users will have to pay a monthly fee, but it is up to them how much they want to spend. Artists will receive a portion of that money every time one of their songs is downloaded.

It is unlikely that many record companies will join the initiative, in particular since The Pirate Bay intends to make transactions through its current torrent tracker almost "completely untraceable".

Co-founder Peter Sunde approached several record companies in the USA and told the Los Angeles Times that one record boss even accused him of "perpetrating a disturbingly Viking-like act" on the executive's livelihood.

It is more than likely Playable.com will face law suits for copyright infringement.

Last year, the popular file sharing network eDonkey agreed to pay $30m to settle a case brought by six music labels. P2P networks have succumbed one by one since the US Supreme Court ruled in June 2005 that file sharing services are illegal.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/05...to_the_groove/





The Pirate Bay Admits Links With Right-Wing Benefactor
Jan Libbenga

A spokesman for the Swedish torrent tracker The Pirate Bay, has admitted (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Eg1S9n81ras) on Swedish TV that their servers and broadband bandwidth were financed by Carl Lundström, one of the alleged sponsors of Swedish far-right political party Sweden Democrats. "We needed the money," spokesman Tobias Andersson told Bert Karlsson, a former politician and front figure of the New Democracy (Ny Demokrati) party.

Carl Lundström is the CEO and largest shareholder of Rix Telecom, a large provider in Sweden, where at least one member of The Pirate Bay used to work.

Lundström is also believed to be a major financier of Sweden Democrats, a nationalist movement which opposes all forms of racism. However, it was also modeled after other "euronationalist" parties, most notably the French National Front. Several members have criminal records (http://www.psa.ac.uk/2007/pps/Widfeldt.pdf) or extremist connections. "I think he liked file sharing," Tobias Andersson said about Lundström.

Almost a year after a police raid on the Pirate Bay's servers, a Swedish prosecutor last week announced (http://www.thelocal.se/7205/) that he intends to press charges against the individuals behind the file-sharing site for violating copyright. Tobias Andersson says he expected a move of this kind and doesn't believe that it stands a chance in the courts. The Pirate Bay, Andersson argues, merely points to other pages, and doesn't contain copyright protected material.

Just last week the torrent tracker announced a new all-you-can-download music site with members of the Swedish rock band Lamont.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/05...ht_wing_money/





What is Liberty News TV?
WebBlurb

Liberty News TV is a half-hour long monthly television program, dedicated to unraveling the spin, lies and misguided policies of corporate-owned politicians, media outlets and misinformed pundits. We combine careful research with humor and satire to create a show that is both entertaining and informative. We aim to reach and activate the apathetic viewer/voter as well as the progressive thinker.

Written by professional journalists, LNTV is one of the few outlets left on the television airwaves where the truth about the Invasion of Iraq, corruption in Washington, loss of individual freedoms and the dangerous growth of corporatism and religious intolerance can be exposed to a general audience. We do not have any formal affiliation with any political party, and are not funded by any political PAC.

The program plays nationally on the Dish network, via Free Speech TV. It also plays on about 70 additional cable access television stations nationwide. The show also streams on the Internet, and most recently, podcasts.

LNTV is funded entirely by donations, including a small stipend (about $250 per month) from Free Speech TV. We recently received a small grant from the Glickenhaus Foundation. All of the rest of our operating expenses come from individual donors. In 2005, we received about $13,000 total and spent about $28,500 producing the show. At present, most of our staff work on a volunteer basis.
http://www.libertynewstv.com/index.htm





Reuters, Thomson Outline Proposed Combination
Robert Barr

Reuters Group PLC and Connecticut-based Thomson Corp. confirmed Tuesday that they are discussing a combination of their businesses which values Reuters at $17.7 billion.

Thomson would pay $7.03 per Reuters share in cash and 0.16 Thomson shares for each Reuters share. Analysts at ABN Ambro called it a "knockout offer."

Reuters shares opened 6.6 percent higher Tuesday at $13.10.

On Friday, Reuters announced that it had received a takeover approach, which sent the media company's shares 25 percent higher. Stamford, Conn.-based Thomson announced Monday that it was the suitor.

In an announcement to the London Stock Exchange, the two companies said there was a "powerful and compelling logic for the combination which would create a global leader in the business-to-business information markets."

The announcement added that "much has still to be resolved and there can be no assurance that agreement will be reached."

Projected savings of $500 million within three years "is greater than we would expect to be deliverable in a deal with any other suitor," said Charles Peacock, analyst at Seymour Pierce in London.

A rival bid may emerge, commented Numis Securities, but it also noted the expected synergies and said Thomson was "the bidder best placed to secure Reuters."

Reuters said the proposed terms, involving cash and equity, would value the stock at $14.07 per share, compared to its closing price on Friday of $12.24.

Woodbridge, the Thomson family holding company, would own approximately 53 percent of Thomson-Reuters, other Thomson shareholders would have 23 per cent and Reuters shareholders about 24 percent, the companies said.

Richard Harrington, Thomson's president and chief executive officer, will retire when the transaction is completed, and Tom Glocer, Reuters' CEO, will succeed as chief executive officer of the new company, the announcement said.

Thomson, Reuters and Bloomberg LP compete in providing data terminals to the world's major banks and brokerages. Reuters, which also has a general news service, was the market leader for many years, though it has steadily lost ground to Bloomberg.

By combining with Reuters, Thomson would pull close to Bloomberg in market share. An April report from Inside Market Data Reference said Bloomberg has 33 percent of the market share, with Reuters at 23 percent and Thomson at 11 percent.

Thomson, based in Stamford, Conn., has transformed itself in the last decade from an owner of newspapers and other print products. It has built up its legal information business, and is about to sell Thomson Learning, its book division for about $5 billion.

The company has 32,000 employees and had sales in 2006 of $6.6 billion.

While Reuters is known internationally for its general news operation, that is just a small part of the company's business. Of Reuters' 2006 revenue of $5.11 billion, $338.3 million of that came from the media segment - although its news is a key selling point for terminals, as well.
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories...05-08-06-59-23





PC World Brings Editor Back, Removes CEO

In a surprise reversal, IDG management removed Colin Crawford as PC World's CEO and reinstated Harry McCracken as Editor in Chief, after a dispute over a canceled Apple story led McCracken to quit. A memo just sent to PC World and Macworld staffers by IDG president Bob Carrigan states that McCracken "has decided to remain with PC World."

Crawford, meanwhile, is being kicked back upstairs, assigned to "driving IDG's online strategy and initiatives" -- a nice, safe, strategic role where he can't do any more harm to the company's editorial reputation.

It's good to see the IDG bosses standing behind principled editorial, even if it is a fluffy piece of Digg bait. It's even better to see a stand-up guy like McCracken keeping his job, while the shill takes a hike.

Continue reading for Carrigan's memo.

I am very pleased to tell you about two important staff changes. Harry
McCracken has decided to remain with PC World as vice president,
editor-in-chief. Colin Crawford will be rejoining the IDG management team
as executive vice president, online. In this role, he will be responsible
for driving IDG's online strategy and initiatives in support of our
web-centric business focus.

Harry says, "I'm thrilled to be back with the PC World team. IDG is a
company I've loved working for over the past 16 years, and one with a
remarkable history of enabling editors to serve our customers--the millions
of people who depend on our content online and in print."

Colin has been very successful in helping set online strategy and
communicate it both inside and outside IDG. As he told me, "I am glad to
return to a position where I can raise our profile and contribute to the
exciting transformation of our company around the world."

We will conduct a search for a new CEO to lead PC World and Macworld.

I have tremendous confidence in the teams at PC World and Macworld, who
have accomplished great things and who will continue to grow these leading
IDG brands.

Bob Carrigan

http://blog.wired.com/business/2007/...ld_brings.html





Warner Bros. Bans Canada Previews in Piracy Move
Etan Vlessing

In a pre-emptive strike against movie piracy originating from Canada, Warner Bros. Pictures said Monday it will cancel preview screenings of its movies north of the border.

Frustrated with unauthorized camcording of its new releases in Canadian cinemas, the studio said it will immediately halt all "promotional and word-of-mouth screenings" of upcoming releases.

"We regret having to cancel our screenings in Canada, but our studio must take steps to protect not only our branded assets but our commitment to our filmmakers and to our distributors," Warner Bros. president of domestic distribution Dan Fellman said.

The Canadian ban will begin with the upcoming release of "Ocean's Thirteen" and continue with the July 13 release of "Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix."

Warners said it is reacting to the failure of the Canadian government to introduce legislation here to make camcording of films for trafficking around the world illegal and a punishable offense.

"Canada is the No. 1 priority in terms of anti-camcording legislation," said Darcy Antonellis, senior vp worldwide anti-piracy operations at Warner Bros. Entertainment.

Warners is the first studio to take action against Canada to stem movie piracy. Last year, 20th Century Fox threatened to delay releases of its movies in Canada to eliminate the threat of unauthorized camcording.

"Within the first week of a film's release, you can almost be certain that somewhere out there a Canadian copy will show up," Antonellis said.

The action from Warners came the same day as representatives for the major studios told a parliamentary committee probing domestic counterfeiting and piracy that unauthorized camcording of Hollywood movies in Canadian theaters was rampant.
http://www.reuters.com/article/enter...42386220070508





Video-On-Demand Deal Bars Ad Skipping: WSJ

Walt Disney Co.'s two big TV networks, ABC and ESPN, have struck a deal with cable operator Cox Communications Inc. to offer hit shows and football games on demand, but with the unusual condition that Cox disables the fast-forward feature that allows viewers to skip ads, according to a media report Tuesday.

The deal between Disney (DIS : 36.55, +0.49, +1.4% ) and Cox is expected to be announced today at the National Cable Television Association convention in Las Vegas, The Wall Street Journal reported in its online edition. See Wall Street Journal story (subscription required).

Cox, the nation's third-largest cable operator with 6 million subscribers, was willing to nix fast-forwarding to gain access to popular ABC and ESPN content, the Journal said, adding that on-demand programming, aggressively rolled out by cable operators over the past three years, provides cable operators a competitive edge over satellite-TV providers such as DirecTV Group Inc. (DTV : 24.38, -0.09, -0.4% ) in the race for subscribers.

Cox viewers will be able to watch episodes of ABC's hit series "Grey's Anatomy," "Desperate Housewives," "Lost," and "Ugly Betty" free whenever they choose starting in the fall, The Journal said, adding that episodes will be available 12 hours after they premiere on ABC, and ESPN will chip in a package of college football games.

In an important component of the deal, the companies will also test technology that will place ads in shows based on ZIP Codes and geographic area, The Journal said. The test will start in Orange County, Calif., where Cox has about 250,000 subscribers, the Journal said.

Cox and Disney will also test a system to place fresh commercials in available episodes every few days so that ads don't grow stale, according to the report.

The agreement only applies to programs on Cox's video-on-demand menu, so it doesn't affect viewers using digital video recorders to fast forward through ads, The Journal said.

The deal sets a valuable precedent for broadcasters because TV networks have been struggling as audiences erode and ad sales drop as new technology, including rapidly growing video-on-demand services, allows viewers to avoid commercials altogether, The Journal explained.

The deal could make it easier for the major networks to make their most popular shows available on demand free, according to the report. Because networks have found it difficult to sell advertising for on-demand broadcasts, most offered only a few shows, and viewers usually have had to pay a fee of 99 cents per episode to watch those, The Journal said.

"Advertising is critical to the financial health of our business and this agreement marks the first time one of our cable-operator partners is acknowledging that," The Journal said it was told by Anne Sweeney, president of the Disney-ABC Television Group.

The agreement could also provide broadcast networks a way to give viewers an alternative to the convenience offered by digital video recorders , without allowing them to avoid the ads, according to the report. With DVRs now in almost 20% of U.S. households, the number of people watching television when it is broadcast has dipped noticeably so far this season, The Journal said..
http://www.marketwatch.com/news/stor...FDECF91CAE8%7D





Indie Labels "Revolting" Against eMusic's Low Prices?
Nate Anderson

Billboard recently ran a piece discussing a label "revolt" at eMusic, the number two US retailer of downloadable music. According to the article, at least six independent labels are dissatisfied with their eMusic contracts and are considering pulling their catalogs from the service if they don't get more money per track sold.
eMusic's European expansion

The low price of music on eMusic is the biggest issue. Labels do get nearly half the money from each sale, but with eMusic offering tracks from $0.25 to $0.33 apiece, the label cut can be as little as $0.12 per song. That's not much money, and some labels worried that eMusic is using low prices as a way to build its subscriber base, after which executives will sell the company, pocket mad cash, and walk away—leaving the labels with nothing.

We've profiled eMusic and its CEO David Pakman in the past, so naturally we're curious about the company's fortunes. Is a mass defection in the ranks? Is eMusic simply offering indie music too cheaply? We contacted the company, who pointed us to this blog entry by Pakman that gives his take on the current situation.

His basic premise is that raising prices on music is the surest way for the industry to keep pulling the trigger on the shotgun pointed at its feet. Music sales have been dropping over the last several years, but Pakman points out that the industry response has been to raise prices on CDs, and we're seeing the big music labels trying to do the same thing now with iTunes (where EMI agreed to sell DRM-free versions of songs for a $0.30 premium). All this has done, Pakman argues, is contribute to the decline.

The "problem" is that people simply have so many options when it comes to spending entertainment dollars that music is getting a smaller slice of the pot (widespread file-sharing may also contribute to a sense that music is less valuable, though this isn't an argument that Pakman makes; the death of the album may have something to do with it, as well). Music is an elastic good, he claims, which means that lowering the price leads to a disproportionate increase in sales and therefore to more money. Raising prices has the opposite effect; total revenue actually goes down.

To prove his point, he claims that the average iTunes user spends only $12 per year at the store, but the average eMusic customer spends $168. To labels who don't believe that low prices are the way to increased profits, Pakman simply says, "Sure, on occasion, a few labels will come and go. And we wish them well. We love their music and wish they would work with us. Our model may not work for everyone."

The Billboard article did not include any mention of total label revenue from the different download services, instead focusing only on revenue per track. As eMusic has kept prices low and brought in higher-profile indie acts like the Arcade Fire, Barenaked Ladies, and Spoon, its growth has been remarkable. In the last four months, subscriber growth has soared from 250,000 to 300,000, and all of those people are paying month-over-month fees of $10 to $30 in order to download a set number of songs per month.

Billboard also points out at the beginning of its piece that three of the six indie labels being discussed "were listed among eMusic's top 60 labels this week." Why "top 60," of all things? Likely because at least one of the labels is quite close to that sixtieth spot; the non-top 60 labels are ranked even lower. This may be a "revolt," but it's a revolt that's going to need much larger guns if it wants to pressure the king into raising taxes eMusic into raising prices.

In Pakman's view, it all comes down to a reality of the Web 2.0 era, a reality that some industries are studiously attempting to avoid: the user is in control. "The biggest shock to entertainment companies, in the era of Web 2.0," writes Pakman, "is that the customer sets the value of the music... The customer now decides which music is successful and how much they're willing to pay for it. And, the truth is, our customers tell us that $0.99 a song is not the right price for most music—particularly for music that they haven't heard of before."
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post...es-hardly.html





Regarding Fake ID's
Rachel Hyman

The last few days have had some interesting things occur in the life of my little blog here. First, I've had an amazing amount of readers referred here by a link from facebook. Then, realizing that someone had the lack of forsight to use their real name on a fake ID and had found my blog from my posting, as I do, of their fake ID with text about the confiscation of the ID. I removed their last name from the posting in a gesture of good faith.

See, I collect the fake ID's by confiscating them from underage people who attempt to buy alcohol. I've been informed that I'm required to do this. I don't mind because frankly, our bar is for adults, and not a NYU undergrad hangout. My bar has not had a problem with underage drinking, only other bars that my bar's owner also owns. I have never knowingly served a minor, and never will. Enough of my friends work in the service industry in the neighborhood that if I don't confiscate the ID's, I'm putting their jobs and livelihoods at risk.

I seem to be making an amazing amount of enemies from doing this. Sadly, they don't realize that their real enemy is probably the community board that is cracking down on underage drinking in the East Village, and the Liquor Board that would revoke our license to serve beer legally if we too didn't do everything in our power to stop underage drinkers from obtaining beer at our bars.

Why people would use their real names to make a fake ID?
The obvious advantage is that their credit cards then function as backup identification. The amazingly obvious drawback is that their name is on the illegal piece of identification.

When I went to college, at freshman orientation, we were given a lecture by the Boston Police about the consequences of our actions. If we were caught with a Fake ID, our drivers license would be suspended in our home state, and we would suffer penalty from the University, and legal action from the state of Massachusetts.

Perhaps NYU freshman aren't informed with the same zest that I was. Perhaps the idea of actions having consequences hasn't been ingrained in their minds yet. College is about learning, developing a capacity for critical thought, and sometimes professional training. Education in general is also a method of socializing individuals to society. I should hope that the admission standards of NYU would be enough that the students would be at least mildly socialized to common laws and basic ethical arguments.

The choices you make in life will always carry consequences, some good, some bad, some extreme, some minor, some avoidable- with interaction comes vulnerability to the reaction of others. The justice system, whose laws you can choose to break, might also protect you from the consequences of breaking those laws, but only if you admit those laws are broken first. You could face a choice. You can engage that system while considering, is the admission of my initial breaking of the law going to cause more extreme consequences than my attempt to protect myself? or you can try to talk to the person who you threatened by breaking the law or you can let the consequences play out.

The differences between being a minor and being underage

A minor is under 18, an underage drinker is under 21. The advantage of being a minor is that you can have all records sealed at 18 of any mis-doings in your youth. The disadvantage of being 18 -21 is that you are an adult, and while that does not include being able to purchase alcohol until you are 21, you are considered responsible for your actions.

What has happened over the last few days

I posted a blog entry about a girl who tried to use a fake ID at the bar I work at. I posted a picture of that fake ID. I used her full name in the text of the post. Friday, she commented that she found it and was furious about my noting a political affiliation in the post. Subsequently, she wrote about it in her facebook notes, or someone did, because hundreds of people have visited this blog from that reference point over the weekend.

I realized that it could be a great disservice for her to have this blog show up on every google search of her name. Good intentions in my heart, I deleted the last name in every part of the article so when the cache was refreshed by google, it would no longer show up for searches of her name. I even emailed one of the people who commented, claiming they knew her, so she could rest easy that I didn't have malicious intent. Let's see what I get for being nice.

Then I checked my other email account, which is listed on my other website with an old address of an old studio space. I had been subscribed to some wild internet sites, and a few magazines too. Identity theft is a big deal kids. I unsubscribed myself to a bunch of these things, and sent notices to the magazines (which will not be forwarded to my new address because they will be less than first class in shipping, and aren't covered by the postal service's forwarding service.)

I wonder if the people who thought that using my email and address was a great idea were smart enough not to use their home computers, or school computer accounts. Those ISP addresses would be so trackable. I suppose the police will figure it out if I decide to call them up about all this.

So then the friend of the girl in question and I exchanged a few emails about the situation. He had some rather confused logic justifying a DMCA takedown notice, but informed me that "this young lady is going places". huh. sure, right. Like everyone at NYU. It seems they're all going to drive up the rent in the neighborhood.


This morning I got a notice from Blogger that read:

Hello Rachel,

Blogger has been notified, according to the terms of the Digital
Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), that some of your images allegedly
infringe upon the copyrights of others. The URLs of the allegedly
infringing images may be found at the end of this message.

The notice that we received, with any personally identifying information
removed, may be found at the following link:
http://www.chillingeffects.org/notice.cgi?sID=3261

Please note that it may take several weeks for the notice to be posted on
the above page.

The DMCA is a United States copyright law that provides guidelines for
online service provider liability in case of copyright infringement. We
are in the process of removing from our servers the images that allegedly
infringe upon the copyrights of others. If we did not do so, we would be
subject to a claim of copyright infringement, regardless of its merits.
See http://www.educause.edu/Browse/645?PARENT_ID=254 for more information
about the DMCA, and see http://www.google.com/dmca.html for the process
that Blogger requires in order to make a DMCA complaint.

Blogger can reinstate these images upon receipt of a counter notification
pursuant to sections 512(g)(2) and 3) of the DMCA. For more information
about the requirements of a counter notification and a link to a sample
counter notification, see http://www.google.com/dmca.html#counter.

Please note that repeated violations to our Terms of Service may result in
further remedial action taken against your Blogger account. If you have
legal questions about this notification, you should retain your own legal
counsel. If you have any other questions about this notification, please
let us know.

Sincerely,
The Blogger Team


Affected URLs:
rachelhyman.blogspot.com/2007/04/fake-id-confiscation-5.html

So I immediately called up some friends of mine who are lawyers. First, I wanted to make sure that I wasn't confused about what a DMCA notice is. It is a way to make sure that copyrighted images, text, etc aren't published without permission. Fine. I definately published her fake ID without permission. But can you have a copyright on a fake ID?

Nope.

"Copyright, a form of intellectual property law, protects original works of authorship including literary, dramatic, musical, and artistic works, such as poetry, novels, movies, songs, computer software, and architecture." says the U.S. Copyright office.

A fake ID, besides being illegal to create in the United States, is a derivative work of the United States Government, and is not an original creative work of authorship.

I think it's really interesting that someone would try to claim that the fake ID was their own creation, and subject to their copyright. Admitting you make fake ID's is a serious bath of trouble. More so even than just trying to use one, or possessing one.
http://rachelhyman.blogspot.com/





New Bill to Give Bloggers Same Shield Law Protection as Journalists
Jacqui Cheng

The House of Representatives has amended the Free Flow of Information Act of 2007 to include provisions to protect bloggers from being required to divulge their sources under certain situations in the same way as journalists. Instead of requiring journalists to be tied to a news organization, the bill now defines "journalism" to focus more on the function of the job: "the gathering, preparing, collecting, photographing, recording, writing, editing, reporting, or publishing of news or information that concerns local, national, or international events or other matters of public interest for dissemination to the public."

Introduced last week by Representative Rick Boucher (D-VA), the bill is meant to offer a federal version of reporter "shield" laws that are in place in some 32 states in the US. Legislation at state level has struggled in the past to determine exactly how to define journalism, with bloggers who don't often write for traditional news organizations finding themselves in a murky gray area. However, in 2006, a California court ruled in favor of two rumor sites (often considered "blogs")—AppleInsider and Powerpage—after they divulged details about unreleased Apple products. The ruling concluded that there was no relevant legal distinction between journalistic blogging and journalism when it came to the shield law.

The Free Flow of Information Act was reworked after its introduction with the specific intent of including bloggers under the broader definition of journalism. According to a section-by-section analysis of the bill, "The act would apply to web logs ('blogs') that engage in journalism." Although the law is not likely meant to include every person who writes on the Internet, it doesn't create a litmus test for what constitutes "engaging in journalism."

Under the wording of the bill, journalists are protected from divulging their sources for news stories except in cases where there is imminent harm to national security, imminent death or significant bodily harm involved, a trade secret "of significant value in violation of State or Federal law," individually identifiable health information, and in instances where "nondisclosure of the information would be contrary to the public interest."

The bill will likely be met with some resistance from some companies that are constantly in the spotlight—such as Apple, who has targeted bloggers in the past—but it's being supported heavily by press associations such as the Newspaper Association of America, the National Association of Broadcasters, and the Reporter's Committee for Freedom of the Press. "The bill is a carefully constructed measure which will provide a broad new and much needed privilege for reporters to refrain from revealing confidential sources," said Boucher in a statement. "Given the broad bipartisan support this measure enjoys, I am optimistic that it will be reported by the Judiciary Committee and passed by the House this year."
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post...urnalists.html





US Spy Chief Wants 'Some Control' Over Satellite Imagery

Government intervention isn't going away
Lewis Page

An American intelligence boss has hinted at curbs on commercial satellite imagery to prevent its use by enemies of the USA.

"If there was a situation where any imagery products were being used by adversaries to kill Americans, I think we should act," vice Admiral Robert Murrett, director of the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA), told AP yesterday.

"I could certainly foresee circumstances in which we would not want imagery to be openly disseminated of a sensitive site of any type, whether it is here or overseas."

The NGA has actually been more of a military mapping bureau than a movie-style satellite-using spy outfit. Its motto is "Know the Earth...Show the Way," and most of its products are more on the lines of Google Earth than live satellite monitoring of people or individuals.

But Murrett is a former naval intel analyst, and "NGA provides accurate, up-to-date geospatial intelligence...NGA's strategy supports operational readiness through a set of geospatial foundation data...fused with other spatially referenced information such as intelligence, weather and logistics data. The result is an integrated, digital view of the mission space".

In other words, NGA gets to look at the secret poop from the proper spies in order to put the various counters onto the big map which it has provided. So it may not be the CIA, NSA, DIA, or whoever, but it really is "a crucial member of the intelligence community", as it insists.

In particular, NGA has lately provided $1bn in funding to commercial sat-imagery operators such as Digital Globe and Geoeye. Firms such as these provide much of the imagery used by the likes of Google Earth, and Murrett is no doubt thinking of them when he talks about the US government imposing restrictions. In the case of US-based companies where the NGA controls the money, this would be a simple matter.

There are also means whereby even foreign-based providers can be muzzled. During the 2001 US-special-forces-led invasion of Afghanistan, for instance, the NGA bought up all the imagery over that country for several months, preventing anyone else from getting it. This led to a lot of criticism on the grounds that the US government was muzzling the media and hampering relief work.

Murrett clearly believes that such methods may be justified, however.

"I think we may need to have some control over things that are disseminated. I don't know if that means buying up all the imagery or not. I think there are probably some other ways you could do it," he said.

Just what other ways these might be - especially in the case of non-US organisations disseminating images from non-US satellites - was not made clear. Diplomatic pressure or international law could often be brought to bear, no doubt; and if a future US government felt the need were urgent enough it could resort to electronic/information warfare or even shooting down troublesome satellites, like the Chinese.

But it's likely that Admiral Murrett was really talking more about keeping useful commercial satellite images out of the hands of terrorist groups planning attacks on US facilities or personnel abroad. That could be quite a difficult tightrope to walk. Blanking out big areas for long periods by commercial or other means would cause a storm of complaint; narrowing the time/space curtain might risk giving away the very information one wishes to keep secret.

One thing's clear, however. Commercial satellite-imagery operators will need to tread warily in future. This is one market in which various national governments will feel a frequent need to interfere.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/05...ndfold_powers/





Spy Chief Backs Study of Impact of Warming
Mark Mazzetti

Stepping into the middle of a partisan debate on Capitol Hill, the United States’ top intelligence official has endorsed a comprehensive study by spy agencies about the impact of global warming on national security.

In a letter written earlier this week to the House Intelligence Committee, the official, Michael McConnell, director of national intelligence, said it was “entirely appropriate” that the intelligence community prepare an assessment of the “geopolitical and security implications of global climate change.”

The question of whether the country’s spy agencies, already burdened by the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan as well as the global hunt for members of Al Qaeda, ought to investigate the security implications of global warming has been debated in Congress for several weeks.

A provision requiring a national intelligence estimate on climate change was in the 2008 intelligence authorization bill that the House passed early Friday morning. The exact amount of the authorization is classified, but it is believed to be approximately $48 billion, which would be the largest intelligence authorization ever considered by Congress.

Republicans had tried to defeat the provision on the national intelligence estimate, saying that intelligence resources were too precious to be used to study the impact of climate change.

“Let other federal agencies, as more than a dozen already do, cover the ‘bugs and bunnies.’ But let our spies be spies,” Representative Peter Hoekstra of Michigan, the ranking Republican on the House Intelligence Committee, wrote Thursday in a Wall Street Journal op-ed article.

But intelligence officials have already recognized the importance of studying how crises caused by climate change, like famine and rising sea levels, could affect the United States’ security. Even as Congress was debating whether to order a national intelligence estimate, intelligence agencies had already planned to include a discussion of global warming in a report next year on the main security challenges facing the United States through 2025.

The proposed national intelligence estimate would project the impact of global warming over the next three decades, examining political, social, economic and agricultural risks.

In his letter to the House Intelligence Committee, Mr. McConnell said that intelligence analysts would not do primary scientific research about climate change, but would instead rely on analyses by other government agencies for global warming projections.

Last month, a report written by several retired generals and admirals concluded that climate changes posed a “serious threat to America’s national security,” and could further weaken already unstable governments in developing countries.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/12/wa...n/12intel.html





Los Alamos Blocks Researcher Access to Archives

Los Alamos National Laboratory will no longer permit historians and other researchers to have access to its archival records because Los Alamos National Security (LANS), the private contractor that now operates the Lab, says it has "no policy in place" that would allow such access.

"Policies that had previously applied to the University of California relating to the disclosure of information directly to you are no longer applicable," wrote Judy Archuleta of the Los Alamos Information Practices Office to Alex Wellerstein, a graduate student at Harvard.

Mr. Wellerstein had sought copies of Lab records on the history of nuclear secrecy policy and he had been led to believe that access to such material would be granted, in accordance with past practice.

"Because LANS is a private company, the policies that applied [previously] are no longer in place," she said.

"No policy is presently in place that authorizes the direct disclosure of the information you seek," she wrote.

Instead, Mr. Wellerstein was told that he should pursue his research through the Freedom of Information Act.

"The FOIA process, however cumbersome, currently provides the only means of accessing our records," wrote Roger A. Meade, the Los Alamos Archivist/Historian on April 17.

But FOIA requests are poorly suited to archival research since they can easily take years to process and must specify in advance the records that are sought.

In effect, when it comes to historical or other public research, the Los Alamos archives are closed for business.

It's "terrible news" for scholars, said Hugh Gusterson, an anthropologist who has studied the culture of the nuclear weapons labs.
http://www.fas.org/blog/secrecy/2007...rcher_a_1.html





Germany Swoops on Militants Before G8 Summit
Noah Barkin

German authorities on Wednesday launched raids in six northern states and said they would impose new border controls over fears left-wing radicals were planning attacks to disrupt a June G8 summit on the Baltic coast.

Some 900 security officials were searching 40 sites in Berlin, Brandenburg, Hamburg, Bremen, Schleswig-Holstein and Lower Saxony, the federal prosecutor's office said in a statement, adding it had opened two separate investigations.

"We suspect those targeted, who belong to the militant extreme-left scene, of founding a terrorist organization or being members of such an organization, that is planning arson attacks and other actions to severely disrupt or prevent the early-summer G8 summit in Heiligendamm from taking place," the prosecutor's office said.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel will host the leaders of Britain, Canada, France, Italy, Japan, Russia and the United States at the June 6-8 summit, which will focus on climate change, African poverty and economic cooperation.

Interior Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble announced a tightening of border controls ahead of the G8 summit. The actions are similar to those taken by Germany during last year's World Cup tournament to prevent an influx of soccer hooligans.

"We are particularly focused on dangers arising from violent globalization opponents," the ministry said.

Prosecutors suspect the left-wing militants they are investigating of being behind nine minor attacks in the Hamburg area and three in the Berlin region in the past two years.

Those attacks include an incident last December when a car was set on fire in front of the home of deputy finance minister Thomas Mirow and windows and walls of his house were splattered with paint.

"WAVE OF REPRESSION"

Anti-G8 group "Gipfelsoli" denounced the raids, accusing authorities of a "wave of repression" to dismantle the movement's communication network

"All attempts to criminalize us do not change the fact that we will use the G8 (summit) to cast a spotlight on the injustices of this world," Hanne Jobst, a Berlin-based member of the group said in a statement.

Germany has not experienced any major left-wing violence since the militant Red Army Faction (RAF), which waged a bloody two-decade long campaign of killings and kidnappings, announced in 1998 that it was disbanding.

But authorities are taking aggressive pre-emptive measures to ensure the summit goes as smoothly as the World Cup did.

A 2.5-metre high steel fence, topped with razor wire, has been placed in a 14-km ring around Heiligendamm and police will control access through airport-style X-ray machines.

Around 40 km down the coast from the Kempinski Hotel where the leaders will meet, officials in the city of Rostock are expecting a demonstration of up to 100,000 people on the weekend before the event.

(Additional reporting by Philip Jarke in Hamburg, Sabine Siebold and Markus Krah in Berlin)

Story





Attribution Problems Plague File Sharing
Jonathan Bailey

Harry Potter fans hoping to download a “leaked” copy of J.K. Rowling’s final book in the series, “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hollows”, may have received an unusual surprise.

At least one of the files being distributed on BitTorrent claiming to be the book was, in truth, a copy of a fan fiction work entitled “The Seventh Horcrux” by Melindaleo.

Though Melindaleo already gives her fan fiction work away for free on the Web, the misattribution was very disturbing for her. As she said in an email, “I got nervous that I’d be jinxing the whole fanfic writing thing for everyone.”

Worse still, she was also worried about ending up in the cross hairs of J.K. Rowling, her publisher and her lawyers.

Even though Rowling has supported and condoned the fan fiction community that has sprung up around Harry Potter, this does not bode well for her either. After all, some may believe the book to be the actual release and not bother picking up a real copy when it is release, at least not until they discover the error.

No one wins with this misidentification but it is a situation that is becoming all too common on file sharing networks. Misattributed files are hurting authors, including those who want their work on the networks, and are limiting the usefulness of the services to promote new music, art and literature.

A Musician’s Dilemma

Though piracy has gotten the lion’s share of attention when it comes to file sharing, those who have wanted to use the file sharing networks as a tool to promote their art have been haunted by a different problem, misattributed files. This has been especially true for musicians that have been trying to grow their careers using the various networks.

Some, especially lesser known artists, have had their music attributed to other groups, usually more popular musicians. Others, such as Weird Al (see May 2000 column), have had other people’s music misattributed to them, often tarnishing their reputation.
Sometimes the misattribution is intentional. Both movie studios and record labels are known for flooding the file sharing networks with false files in an attempt to hinder the downloading of pirated material. Most of the time though, the misattribution is accidental, the uploader unsure or misinformed about the creator of the work uploads it with incorrect credentials.

This is extremely frustrating to artists that want to use file sharing networks in an attempt to promote their careers. If the music files they share don’t have the correct name on them, then all of the free downloads do them no good, serving instead as false promotion for artists that had nothing to do with the song.

However, even the bands getting the promotion gain nothing. With no albums containing the song and means of playing them at concerts. They can not live up to the expectations the file creates. They also run the risk of being accused of plagiarism down the road, even if they had nothing to do with the change in attribution.

It’s an annoying problem that is now spreading to other genres.

A Spreading Problem

Of course, file sharing has not been limited to music for many years. Now, any type of file can be shared including video, software, music, images and text.

Sadly, all of them suffer, in varying degrees from misidentification.

Video and image files suffer the least, those files are easily watermarked visually and those marks are very difficult to remove. Audio files, however, rely upon embedded tags that can either be easily changed or, depending on how the song was ripped, added incorrectly in the beginning.

Text, however, is the easiest to plagiarize and misidentify. File names can be changed easily and attribution can be removed, lost or altered very easily. It is also easy to mistakenly not copy attribution when selecting a large block of text and accidentally pass around a file with no author information attached at all.

In this regard, the content is exactly like the rest of the Web in what is and is not easy to plagiarize. However, books are very rarely traded on file sharing networks (Note: study done by bandwidth, not file count, still searching for new study) and only major authors, such as Rowling, are sought after on them.

In that aspect, Melindaleo’s case is exceptionally rare. With very few books being traded on file sharing networks, it is unlikely that many authors will have significant issues with file sharing networks, unless they become very popular offline first.

Still, artists working in other types of media need to consider taking precautions to prevent their work from being misattributed, or even outright plagiarized, over the file sharing networks.

Preventing the Problem

If you’re a content producer, especially if you work heavily in audio or video, you need to take some basic precautions to ensure the integrity of your attribution:

1. Post It Yourself: If you are comfortable with users sharing your files, don’t just tell them they can legally rip and download them, do it yourself. Rip your own files and post them to the various networks. This not only ensures the quality of the media, but that the attribution takes the exact form you want.
2. Watermark Everything: Images and video both should be visibly watermarked if they are going to be distributed. Small, out of the way watermarks on both are very hard to remove and will carry with the work as it is copied and redownloaded, no matter how many times the name is changed.
3. Don’t Rely On Tags: ID3 tags on MP3s are too easily altered and removed. If you plan on using file sharing to promote your music, an audio tag at the end of the file is a better solution. Though it can be cut off with editing software, that is less likely to happen that it be overwritten by a program that can manipulate ID3 tags.
4. Multiple Attribution Points for Text: If you plan on posting a very lengthy work of text, include several points of attribution inside the work, perhaps one at each chapter, to avoid it from being easily or accidentally removed.
5. Hashing For Protection: If you plan to offer your files for download on file sharing networks, have an official page where you post the hashes for the files. This way downloaders can be certain they got an authentic copy of the file and that all of the information in it is correct.

The problem with file sharing is that, once a misattributed file gets out, there’s almost no way to reel it back in. Though one can use the matching files feature to find works with the same content but different names, there’s almost no way to stop their distribution other than sending messages to the people distributing the misidentified files and asking them to change it.

It is far more productive to focus on prevention and flood the market with properly attributed files than try to stop erroneous ones creep out.

Conclusions

Fortunately, the Melindaleo story seems to be coming to a nice enough conclusion. Though the misattributed file is still available, Melidaleo has been in contact with Rowling’s agents and they are very understanding about the situation, leaving the next course of action up to her.

As the truth has gotten out about her story, she has drawn some very real and very positive attention for her efforts. The story has even gartered high praise from some who have downloaded it and later learned of the source.

However, others who have their works plagiarized and misattributed on file sharing networks may not be so lucky. Some songs and videos that are passed around regularly may never be traced back to their origin, not without serious research, and those creators are unlikely to see any significant benefit from the sharing.

The hope is that, as technology advances and sharing becomes both more common and more acceptable, that better ways to ensure attribution will be protected.

After all, file sharing may constitute piracy in some cases, but it is not supposed to be about plagiarism. Attribution costs nothing and giving credit where it is due is still good manners.

Hopefully that will improve as time goes on.
http://www.plagiarismtoday.com/2007/...-file-sharing/





File-Swapping: As "the Man" Says No, Students Say Yes
Nate Anderson

New academic research suggests that neither social norms nor the threat of lawsuits are enough to keep college students from illegally downloading music. The study, which appeared in the most recent issue of Cyberpsychology & Behavior, provides no answers to a music industry that is desperately seeking ways to put the brakes on file-sharing. It does suggest that such sharing doesn't hurt the music business, though; according to the authors, "downloading intentions also had no direct relationship to either compact disc purchases or to subscriptions to online paid music services."
RIAA launches propaganda, lawsuit offensive against college students

"Share, Steal, or Buy? A Social Cognitive Perspective of Music Downloading" was authored by Professors Robert LaRose and Junghyun Kim (and highlighted by the superb Chronicle of Higher Education), and it examined the motivations of 134 students at a Midwestern university. All of the students had downloaded music illegally in the past, and their answers to the survey questions indicated that most intended to continue downloading in the future. It turns out not to matter whether the university or a student's parents believe that such music downloads are wrong; these norms were simply not absorbed by the students.

Two things did affect student behavior. One was a sense of moral justification; students who believed that downloading music was an ethical behavior were likely to download more of it. That's a fairly predictable result, but more surprising was the finding that students were more likely to download music if they believed that their classmates were downloading more than they were. As the researchers put it, "the less excessive one's downloading was perceived to be compared to others, the more deficient was self-regulation [of downloading]." This is "keeping up with the Joneses," college style.

It turns out that many students simply care more about downloading music than they do about rightness, wrongness, or consequences. The researchers have two theories for this, one of which is that file-sharing is more of a social phenomenon than an economic one. "That is," say the researchers, "downloaders of free, so-called 'pirate' music seemed to be more motivated by the social aspect of trading and sharing music with other music enthusiasts rather than the proposition of saving money on music purchases." This certainly seems to be the case for the students who run darknet servers for no profit, even as their school cracks down on the practice.

There's also a darker explanation: addiction. How else to explain the fact that some students persist in their behavior even after repeated disciplinary action and suspensions? A personal story recounted by one of the authors provides a useful example:

"In the first author's class a student reported that he was among those caught up in the most recent dragnet of the Recording Industry Association of America and as a consequence had been subjected to an escalating series of punishments by the university, ending in his disenrollment from the university. This individual expressed a casual attitude towards the actions of his university, rationalizing that in the end he could just move on to university in the next state and begin downloading again!"

With few effective ways to convince students to stop swapping music, should the music industry be worried about its survival? According to the students surveyed (keep in mind that the survey measured future "intentions" rather than actions), downloading music had no negative effect on their plans to purchase CDs or sign up for online music services. This fits with other recent research, but don't expect the RIAA to buy the argument. According to the trade group, the music business loses more than $4 billion a year to piracy. If recent academic studies are correct, however, none of this loss is due to P2P swapping.
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post...s-say-yes.html





RIAA Pre-Litigation Letters Sent to MIT

23 Students Accused of Copyright Violations
Nick Semenkovich

Twenty-three MIT students have been sent pre-litigation settlement letters after allegedly illegally downloading copyrighted audio recordings, according to a press release from the Recording Industry Association of America.

MIT received the pre-litigation letters last Wednesday, May 2, said Daniel Jacobs, legal assistant in MIT's Senior Counsel's Office. At that time, Jacobs said that the letters would have to be analyzed before MIT considered forwarding them to students. These are the first RIAA pre-litigation letters received by MIT, according to Jacobs.

As of yesterday, MIT had forwarded the letters on to students, said Timothy J. McGovern, manager of IT Security Support for Information Services and Technology. McGovern also said that MIT suggested students talk with advisers, family members, or attorneys in considering a response to a pre-litigation letter.

McGovern declined to discuss legal specifics regarding the cases, saying the letters were part of a student's permanent record and thus legally protected by the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act.

According to a spokeswoman from the RIAA, the letters are part of a new anti-piracy initiative announced in February that offers students a chance to avoid a lawsuit by settling outside of court. The spokeswoman also said that the letters allow students to settle at a discounted rate compared to the damages sought in a civil suit.

The new initiative is a shift from the RIAA's previous strategy of filing "John Doe" lawsuits and subpoenas that order MIT to divulge the name of a student. Instead, the RIAA contacts schools directly with pre-litigation letters containing IP addresses — addresses used to uniquely define computers on the Internet — of allegedly infringing users and the dates of the offenses. The RIAA then requests that schools forward the letters on to users, according to an RIAA press release. The spokeswoman said that the majority of schools that received letters had forwarded them on to students.

According to a sample pre-litigation letter provided by the RIAA, the settlement process involves "lump sum" payment to record companies and deletion of all material infringing on copyright. The agreement also states that the party accused of copyright infringement agrees to not infringe on "any other sound recording protected under federal or state law … whether now in existence or later created" or the agreement may become void.

A sample pre-litigation settlement agreement is available at http://www-tech.mit.edu/V127/N24/riaa/letter.pdf.

Jeffrey I. Schiller '79, Network Manager for IS&T, said that the letters also act as a preserve order for MIT, requiring the Institute to save information about the user of a specific IP. MIT maintains a database of IP addresses assigned to users and stores the information for 30 days, said Schiller. "Suppose on day 29 we get one of the pre-litigation notices. Once we get one of these, we basically … have to save the information forever."

Increased enforcement

McGovern stated that "most" of the students who were sent pre-litigation letters had previously received Digital Millennium Copyright Act takedown notices regarding the music in question. Schiller said that MIT, acting as an Internet Service Provider, forwards DMCA notices to students accused of violating copyright law.

According to the IS&T Web site, a student's first case of alleged copyright infringement results in a warning, as long as the student responds that the copyrighted material was removed from their computer. A second violation results in temporary suspension of network access and a meeting with IS&T representatives. A third violation results in an indefinite suspension of network access and referral to the Committee on Discipline.

McGovern said he saw "an unusual increase in the total number of takedown notices" between the 2005-2006 and 2006-2007 academic years, estimating that infringement notices increased by "several hundred percent."

McGovern did not have statistics immediately available, but attributed the spike to increased enforcement by television, movie, and software industries. McGovern also said he hoped MIT students would not be the target of future lawsuits but said that there had been no talks about restricting access to peer-to-peer (P2P) services. Other universities restrict bandwidth available to P2P applications in an effort to stem copyright infringement and some have begun to ban P2P applications altogether. Last month, Ohio University banned all P2P applications, writing in a statement on their Web site that peer-to-peer traffic "consumes a disproportionate amount of resources, both in bandwidth and human technical support."

A statement on MIT's Office of Intellectual Property Counsel's Web page says that MIT "is firmly against the unauthorized uploading or downloading and sharing of … copyrighted material" but also that "MIT recognizes the many legal benefits of P2P software."

Schiller said that MIT has "no plans" to restrict P2P traffic or block P2P applications, and seemed confident that those policies were unlikely to change. "We view ourselves as an ISP," said Schiller, describing MIT's hands-off network policy.

Schiller also said that P2P programs were becoming increasingly difficult to detect, as applications can conceal traffic in a variety of ways, including encrypting payload data.

Moreover, Schiller cautioned that not all students who receive DMCA notices necessarily violated copyright law. Shiller said that it is becoming "quite difficult" to ensure IP addresses were actually used for infringement. "I've seen notices for random IP addresses that we would have never assigned," said Schiller.

Furthermore, the complexity of some protocols such as BitTorrent has caused erroneous DMCA notices to be sent. A discussion on the EDUCAUSE Security Discussion Group last month included concerns that HBO had sent a series of inaccurate DMCA notices with incorrect infringement times. The discussion also suggested that HBO was relying on questionable and possibly forged data from BitTorrent "trackers" — directory servers that contain information about IPs downloading a file — that could be readily forged.
http://www-tech.mit.edu/V127/N24/riaa.html





'A Terrible Precedent'
Brock Read

Officials at Ohio University say their recently enacted partial ban on peer-to-peer networking is working very well, but skeptics still argue that the institution will come to regret the aggressive policy.

Campus officials decided to prohibit peer-to-peer usage after Ohio placed first on the Recording Industry Association of America's list of institutions with song-swapping programs, released in February. According to Bruce Bible, Ohio's chief information officer, the university is careful to let students continue to use peer-to-peer networks for legal file sharing.

But Ashwin Navin, president of the peer-to-peer service BitTorrent, is unconvinced by that claim. In an opinion piece for CNET News, he argues that the ban will have a "devastating effect" on Ohio's computer-science department, and a negative impact on the university's general enrollment:
By applying a short-sighted, arbitrary ban on a technology with so many redeeming uses, Ohio University has deprived its students, faculty, and staff of a powerful tool, as well as censored a treasure trove of information and entertainment that is not available through any means other than P2P. It has created an environment that doesn't prepare its people for the "real world" where P2P technologies are being adopted in powerful, constructive ways. Worse yet, the university's administration has set a terrible precedent for its staff on the desirability of seeking creative ways to support new technologies.

A question for CIO's and professors: If your college shut down peer-to-peer networking, would your computer-science program suffer?
http://chronicle.com/wiredcampus/index.php?id=2048





Peppermint Jam Attacks Italians
p2pnet.net news

With Canada apparently about to succumb to an attack from Hollywood with Warner Bros spearheading the action, Italy is also under siege, but from a "notorious recording label from Germany".

Peppermint Jam, "has sent 3,636 recorded mails to as many file-sharers 'found' guilty of uploading some copyrighted songs (by Mousse T, founder of the label, and other artists in the Peppermint rooster: Warren G, James Kakande, Colin Rich) on such P2P platforms as eMule, eDonkey and BitTorrent," says P2P Forum Italia.

Says the post:

In the letters, sent via the law firm Mahlknecht & Rottensteiner, the Hannover-based label enjoins the 3636 swappers from persisting in their infringement of copyright laws and commands them to remove any "song" (or, better, any supposedly song-related file) whom Peppermint Jam has rights upon from the shared folders. Moreover, the users must committ themselves to «deposit 300 euros into the bank account in Malhknecht & Rottensteiner's name within the 14th of May», if they don't want to have a criminal and/or a civil lawsuit brought against them. 300 euros are in "symbolical" compensation for damage caused by sharing a single song (every user involved in the case has been accused to share only one specifical file/song)!

That would sound like an attempt to formalize what the anglophones call «off court resolution»; yet the price to pay is established only by the "plaintiff" and there's very few time left for swappers to come to an agree with discographics' legal advisers. In fact, it's worth noting that the time space between mails arrival and the set term for payment is just one week. All this brings us to mind some "expensive" methods (read: payment orders) already used by RIAA in USA; particularly, the extremely short gap left for accused users to make a pondered-over decision gives those mails a semblance of an ill-concealed menace. I.e: Peppermint Jam is leveraging the lack of time and people's fears to force, in a way that's not yet been proven perfectly legal, file-sharign boys to pay 300 euros for a song.

Last year the Court of Rome ruled Italian ISPs must disclose user data to Peppermint Jam's legal representatives, says P2P Forums, going on:

"The attorneys have, so, come into possession of the physical names and addresses matching the IPs that an unorthodox (let's call it so...) first phase of 'investigation' - involving the infamous Logistep software for monitoring filesharing networks - had detected as engaged in the uploading of the Peppermint-copyrighted songs. The strange thing is that the Court of Rome has ruled the disclosement of private data relying upon 'evidence' found in a way that is not contemplated by current Italian laws.

The Italian case also bears a resemblance to Warner Music, EMI, Vivendi Universal and Sony BMG's RIAA 'settlement' tactics.

RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America) victims are induced to pay $3,000 and up to avoid a possible court appearance. But in the process, they virtually admit they're guilty of the non-existent criome of file sharing and in addition, give the Big 4 informatin about themselvesm, and leave themselves open to possible further harassment in the future.

In the Peppermint case, "The lawyers backing the German indie label write that paying for the 'established' compensation remove the risk of being subject to criminal charges for copyright infringement, but that's not exactly true," says the Italian story, going on:

There could also be the eventuality of a "querela d'ufficio" (legal action of-office). Moreover, once paid, the compensation is tantamount to an admission not only of the misdeed (proven as such by controversial methods) but also of the paid price fairness. We accept to pay 300 euros for just one song; even considering the "legal and investigation" expenses, it's an over-compensative price for damages that are only supposed.

Another point: a massive admission of guilt shall surely set a precedent which every infamous or, simply, not-selling recording label could easily take advantage of. And that is definitely neither the best way to face the perpetuous sliding down of CD sales, or the most brilliant urging to buy online downloads.

P2P Forum Italia, Italy's largest online p2p community, says it's, "trying to give Peppermint Jam victims support and a form of organization for facing the menacing ways of the German jingle-sellers, hoping that file-sharers will be united enough to stand for a tangible, propositive force".
http://p2pnet.net/story/12198





Man Appeals Internet Piracy Verdict
AFP

The first person worldwide to be convicted of distributing movies over the popular online BitTorrent network appeared in Hong Kong's highest court on Wednesday to appeal his jail sentence.

Chan Nai-ming, sentenced to three months in prison here in 2005, sought to overturn a guilty verdict for distributing three Hollywood movies onto the Web via the peer-to-peer file-sharing technology.

A lawyer for the unemployed 38-year-old, who used the screen name 'Big Crook', said Chan only uploaded the movies without distributing them, local radio RTHK reported.

Even if there was any act of distribution, it was done on the part of the downloaders who initiated the process, the lawyer was cited as saying by RTHK.

BitTorrent allows downloads from multiple sources, each supplying a small part of the file, making it much easier and faster to share large files like films and software.

Chan was charged in April 2005 for uploading the movies 'Daredevil', 'Miss Congeniality' and 'Red Planet' without a licence. He has already had an earlier appeal rejected.
http://www.dnaindia.com/report.asp?NewsID=1095681





NBC, Viacom Join in Copyright Battle With YouTube

US television giant NBC Universal sided with Viacom in a legal campaign to force YouTube to vigilantly filtering copyrighted material from its popular video-sharing website.

NBC and Viacom are backing Los Angeles newsman Robert Tur, who filed suit against YouTube in July for letting users post his video of trucker Reginald Denny being beaten during riots in Los Angeles in 1992 in Los Angeles riots.

"We are confident in our legal case, and more importantly in the tremendous benefit of giving creators a place to post and discuss their videos, whether it be an individual's family video or the BBC's decision to partner with us to host their content," Google said on Monday in response to an AFP inquiry.

"We meet and exceed our responsibilities under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), which balances an easy takedown process and provides complete safe harbor for hosts such as YouTube."

The Viacom-NBC alliance, revealed in a US district court filing in California on Friday came as YouTube was hit with a class-action copyright violation suit filed by English football's Premier League in New York State.

The league's suit was filed on behalf of copyright owners "whose works were reproduced, distributed, publicly displayed, performed or otherwise transmitted or disseminated on youtube.com without authorization," according to court paperwork.

In March, US media giant Viacom launched a billion-dollar (736 million euro) lawsuit against YouTube, accusing it of illegally showing clips from its television shows.

However, the jointly crafted brief filed in the Tur case marked the first time NBC took copyright concerns about YouTube to court.

NBC and YouTube have a "strategic partnership" launched in June of last year and depict themselves as partners in efforts to devise ways for YouTube to protect copyrights of film and television show owners.

NBC and Viacom are out to back Tur's position in a potentially precedent-setting court case in which a "little guy" is up against Internet giant Google's vast financial and legal resources.

"Any ruling on YouTube's motion will have far-reaching ramifications for the owners of video content," attorney Russell Frackman wrote in the Viacom-NBC brief.

"In light of the importance of these issues, Viacom and NBC Universal have prepared their brief to provide the court with their position and perspective."

Google and YouTube lawyers want the Tur case be dismissed on the grounds the website is protected by the DMCA, which simply requires it to remove copyrighted material after owners complain.

YouTube contends that holding it accountable for not filtering copyrighted works posted by users threatens a key underpinning of today's Internet lifestyle.

Viacom and NBC counter that YouTube, which Google bought last year for 1.65 billion dollars worth of stock, filters out pornography and copyrighted material of firms it has deals with so it can do the same for others.

"YouTube incorrectly contends that the DMCA permits it to avoid any responsibility for the content on its commercial website and completely shift the burden to content owners to discover and notify it of infringements," Frackman wrote in the brief.

"In the meantime, the presence of the infringing content draws users to the YouTube website, and in turn generates revenue for YouTube. Regardless of the precise scope intended by Congress in enacting the DMCA, it certainly did not intend that the statute be used to escape liability for the commercial activities of the nature engaged in by YouTube."
http://www.physorg.com/news97779538.html





Premier League: Google, YouTube Are an IP 'Protection' Racket
Scott M. Fulton

In the latest intellectual property rights holders' legal attack on YouTube, and perhaps using the most blistering language to date, England's predominant football (soccer) league has launched a class-action lawsuit against Google and its YouTube division. In its complaint, the Premier League literally accuses the newly merged companies of forming an organized "protection" racket, whose methods are to deceive Congress while extorting low license fees from selected partners in exchange for IP protection.

"In a Twenty-First Century embodiment of an age-old scheme," the League's attorneys write for a filing in US District Court in New York last Friday, "Defendants have agreed to provide 'protection' against their own infringing conduct through a series of 'partnership' agreements with various copyright owners. Put another way, when the license fee sought by a copyright owner is low enough to be deemed satisfactory to Defendants, Defendants find themselves able to shed their blinders and employ technology to safeguard the rights of their new 'partners."'

Such partners include Warner Bros., though the complaint implies that if Google had intentions on partnering with everyone in the business -- for instance, with Viacom as well -- it would have already done so.

Earlier in the complaint, the League claims YouTube already knows how to exercise rights controls over the content it enables users to share, but deliberately chooses not to do so, for that would take away its key bargaining chip. Instead, the League alleges, YouTube and Google willfully contribute to the public's misconception of digital media as being something too complex and unwieldy for rights management measures to control.

Anyone wishing to challenge Google legally, the complaint goes on, must assume the burden of proof: specifically, to prove Google's alleged assertion that the Internet cannot be controlled, wrong.

"Defendants have feigned blindness and an inability to reduce the wholesale infringement that occurs, constantly and unremittingly, every day on the YouTube website," reads the complaint, "distorting the balance created by Congress and forcing the victims - the content producers themselves - to go through the meaningless exercise of pointing out to Defendants what Defendants plainly already know: that there is copyrighted material being exploited on the YouTube website without the authorization of the rights owners."

The complaint lists 17 major Premier League matches during last month whose content was recorded off-air. Premier League soccer is a huge draw, and either the most expensive or second most expensive sporting event for telecast produced anywhere in the world depending upon whom you ask, with American NFL football being the alternate.

In May 2006, a European Commission effort to prevent one British broadcaster, Sky Sport, from holding a monopoly on Premier League football resulted in a second bidder helping the League to raise its rates to astronomical levels. Together, Sky and Irish broadcaster Setanta paid GBP 1.7 billion ($3.1 billion under last year's exchange rates) for the rights to show a mere 138 matches starting this August.

That's not counting international rights and retransmission rights to other media -- for instance, cell phone and Internet -- for which broadcasters also pay handsomely. Estimates are that all these subsidiary rights collectively bring in 159% the revenue of national rights.

Although the Premier League complaint omits any suggestion of a formula for damages, it explicitly claims, "For the length of time each infringing video was or is posted on YouTube...Lead Plaintiffs' and the Class' rights of reproduction, distribution, public performance, public display, preparation of derivative works, and/or to transmit digitally over the Internet were violated."

The complaint also directly refers to the fact that Google and YouTube are advertiser-supported, and draws the parallel between YouTube's ability to show supported content without permission or license and the League's rights to license TV broadcasters to do so for a fee. It's this business which YouTube is working to circumvent, the complaint suggests; and it also refers to the $1.8 billion that Google spent in the acquisition of YouTube.

The Premier League is no stranger to allegations of monopolization. Though it is far from the only soccer league in the UK, its exclusive licensing relationship with Sky Sport was called into question last year, raising allegations that Sky -- owned by Rupert Murdoch, who owns Fox in the US -- was engaging in abuse of monopoly power. This led to the League assuring the presence of a second bidder in the latest round, while the EC finally concluded that while Sky was dominant, it was not abusing its dominant position.

So all the EC accomplished with that inquiry was skyrocketing rates even further, perhaps to the eventual detriment of YouTube.
http://www.betanews.com/article/Prem...ket/1178568967





Yar! Why Web Pirates Can't Be Touched
Andy Greenberg

Pirates don't just plunder. In Sweden, it seems, they also believe in sharing.

As the world's largest repository of BitTorrent files, ThePirateBay.org helps millions of users around the world share copyrighted movies, music and other files--without paying for them.

That's illegal, of course--at least it is in the U.S. But when Time Warner's Warner Bros. studio accused them of breaking U.S. copyright law in 2005, the pirates gleefully reminded the movie company that they didn't live in America, but rather in "the land of vikings, reindeer, Aurora Borealis and cute blond girls."

Based in Stockholm, The Pirate Bay serves as a massive worldwide hub for copyright infringement but is shielded by its home country's lax copyright laws. The site lives in a comfortable legal loophole, one of many available to Web sites that offer users copyrighted content. Some exploit vagaries in U.S. law, while others depend on their international immunity.

That rankles big media outfits like Sony, General Electric-owned NBC, News Corp. and Viacom as they vie to hang on to their sales and carve out a slice of the Web's growing audience--hence Viacom's ongoing $1 billion suit against Google's YouTube. But no matter the outcome of that trial, sites like The Pirate Bay show that the Web will always offer safe harbors for clever copyright violators.

Take the growing guerrilla army of YouTube clones. Video sites like DailyMotion, Veoh, GoFish, OuOu, Vimeo, Peekvid, LiveDigital and 1Dawg work on the same model as YouTube, allowing any user to upload content. But they don't suffer from as much legal scrutiny as better-known video sites, nor do they limit the length of clips uploaded by users.

That means practically any television show or movie can be dug up on one of these YouTube imitators, and another subindustry of Web portals has sprouted just for that purpose. Sites like Alluc.org, VideoHybrid.com, Peekvid.com, TVlinks.co.uk and YouTVPC.com all collect and organize links to movies and shows on these second-tier video sites, offering streaming, on-demand video copyright infringement.

These two classes of video sites--one that lets users upload videos and another that links them to movies and shows located elsewhere--work together in a careful symbiosis. Alluc.org, for instance, links to Lost episodes on Veoh, Scrubs episodes on LiveDigital and kung-fu movies on DailyMotion, bringing in about 500,000 unique visitors a day. The site’s creators, three teenagers living in a suburb of Hamburg, Germany, say they're making plenty of money, though they won't say how much. They also say they're not breaking any copyright laws, since they merely link to content instead of hosting it on their own site.

Their argument is rooted, ironically, in the Digital Millenium Copyright Act that U.S. lawmakers approved in 1998. The Alluc.org kids, as well as the operators of most sites that let users upload content, argue that they're not violating copyright law if they're not the ones putting it up and if they take it down at the copyright holder's request. It's the same argument Google is making in its YouTube case.

But there are more practical reasons that sites like Alluc.org get away with what they're doing. One is that there are simply too many of them to keep track of. Media companies' lawyers rarely have time to police so many obscure sites, and even when they do, users can always upload the infringing files again. So the flow of copyrighted streaming video continues.

Not every scheme to evade intellectual property laws is so subtle. The music-selling site AllofMP3.com uses a simpler business model: Base your company in Russia, steal music from American labels and sell it cheaply. AllofMP3 allows users to download full albums for as little as $1 each--10% of what they would cost on iTunes. From June to October 2006 alone, the Recording Industry Association of America says that 11 million songs were downloaded from the site. AllofMP3 claims those sales adhered strictly to Russian law, but that doesn’t satisfy the RIAA; the record labels have launched a lawsuit, asking for $150,000 for each stolen file, totaling $1.65 trillion.

As Russia seeks to join the World Trade Organization, it may be forced to step in line with international copyright licensing and stamp out sites like AllofMP3. But there's still hope for international pirates: Despite Sweden's membership in the WTO since 1995, The Pirate Bay's copyright sabotage campaign is alive and well. The Week in Review is edited and published by Jack Spratts. Though Swedish police raided the site's headquarters and confiscated its servers in May of last year, the site was soon back online, running on donated hardware. Since then, Pirate Bay administrator Peter Sunde says, the site has started distributing its servers and bandwidth to other locations to avoid the possibility of another raid. Sunde claims even he doesn't know exactly where the servers are stashed.

Still, Sunde and his partners in piracy are waiting for the Swedish government to press charges. If they are prosecuted, Sunde suspects it will most likely be in the next month, before the servers confiscated from their headquarters last year become inadmissible as evidence. But he isn’t worried. "If the Swedish government presses charges, they’ll lose. If they don’t, the U.S. government will be mad at them," Sunde says. "They’re in quite a pickle."

So, he might have added, are the world’s copyright holders.
http://www.forbes.com/technology/200...ml?partner=rss





All your pass are belong to them

We Were Hacked

User data stolen but not unsecured
The Pirate Bay

Hi, we have some sad news, but don't be alarmed...

Some people (and yes, we know who) found a security hole on our web site (in fact, actually in this blog).

They have got a copy of the user database. That is, your username and passwords. But, the passwords are stored encrypted, so it's not a big deal, but it's still very sad that it's out there. All e-mails are for instance encrypted as well, they will most likely not be able to decrypt them either (they are _very_ encrypted).

We encourage all our users to change passwords as soon as possible - and if you have the same password on the bay as other places, you should update them as well.

Sorry for the mess, but we are all human and we miss something sometimes.
http://thepiratebay.org/blog/68

















Until next week,

- js.



















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