Peer-To-Peer News - The Week In Review - August 6th, ’05

[JackSpratts]

"We see this as a blow for freedom of press and the presentation of news in Russia. It is a warning to other foreign news organizations. It's like telling them, 'If you don't cover the Chechen conflict the way they want, you won't be able to work in Russia.' " – Lucie Morillon


"In six years the power structures could not catch terrorist No. 1 in Russia. Now they put all the blame on journalists." – Andrei Babitsky


"You can't use the taxation power as a weapon of censorship." – Jerome Barron


"If you are selling water in the desert and one day it starts to rain, what do you do? Go to the government and get them to ban rain, or do you sell something else?" – Ian Clarke


"After all, I'm not sitting in an office telling someone that their insurance policy doesn't cover their chemotherapy. Theoretically, I am trying to make a piece of music come to life, to try and bring joy and meaning to people's lives. That's a pretty good deal." – Liz Phair




























August 6th, 2005




New File-Sharing Techniques Are Likely to Test Court Decision
John Markoff

Briefly buoyed by their Supreme Court victory on file sharing, Hollywood and the recording industry are on the verge of confronting more technically sophisticated opponents.

At a computer security conference in Las Vegas on Thursday, an Irish software designer described a new version of a peer-to-peer file-sharing system that he says will make it easier to share digital information anonymously and make detection by corporations and governments far more difficult.

Others have described similar efforts to build a so-called darknet that aims to shield the identities of those sharing information. The issue is complicated by the fact that the small group of technologists designing the new systems say their goal is to create tools to circumvent censorship and political repression - not to abet copyright violation.

Such a stand is certain to test the impact of the Supreme Court ruling in June against Grokster and StreamCast Networks, publishers of peer-to-peer file-sharing software, a number of legal specialists and industry executives said. The court ruled unanimously that the publishers could be held liable for the copyright infringement that their software enabled in the sharing of pirated movies and music.

The Irish programmer, Ian Clarke, is a 28-year-old free-speech advocate who five years ago introduced a software system called Freenet that was intended to make it impossible for governments and corporations to restrict the flow of any kind of digital information. The system initially used a secure approach to routing between users and employed encryption to protect the information from eavesdroppers who were not part of the network.

Unlike today's open peer-to-peer networks, the new systems like Mr. Clarke's use software code to connect individuals who trust one another. He said he would begin distributing the new version of his program within a few months, making it possible for groups of users to establish secured networks - available only to them and those they choose to include - through which any kind of digital information can be exchanged.

Though he says his aim is political - helping dissidents in countries where computer traffic is monitored by the government, for example - Mr. Clarke is open about his disdain for copyright laws, asserting that his technology would produce a world in which all information is freely shared.

Mr. Clarke lives in Edinburgh and is employed by a music recommendation site, www.indy.tv. While Freenet attracted wide attention as a potentially disruptive force when he introduced it in 2000, it proved more difficult to use than file-sharing programs like Grokster and Napster, and did not achieve the impact that he envisioned.

Now, however, Mr. Clarke is taking a fresh approach, stating that his goal is to protect political opponents of repressive regimes.

"The classic use for Freenet would be for a group of political dissidents in China, or even in the United States," he said in a telephone interview on Thursday. But he acknowledged that the software would also surely be used to circumvent copyright restrictions, adding, "It's an inevitable consequence of our design."

Industry executives acknowledge that even with their Supreme Court victory, peer-to-peer technology will continue to be a factor in illicit online trading.

"Everyone understands that P-to-P technology is, and will remain, an important part of the online landscape," said Jonathan Lamy, a spokesman for the Recording Industry Association of America. "But the Supreme Court's unanimous decision in the Grokster case will help ensure that business models won't be based on the active encouragement of infringement on P-to-P or other networks."

Initiatives like Freenet are certain to complicate industry and government efforts to restrict the digital sharing of proprietary data.

To join a darknet, a potential user must be trusted by one of the existing members. Thus such networks grow as part of a "web of trust," and are far more restricted than open systems.

In June, Ross Anderson, a prominent computer-security researcher who was a pioneer in developing early peer-to-peer networks, published a technical paper detailing how it was possible to resist industry attempts to disable such networks.

He also published a second paper trying to anticipate the market reaction to curbs on file sharing like the Grokster ruling. The paper, "The Economics of Censorship Resistance," predicts the emergence of closed networks like the new Freenet, as well as "fan clubs" focused on specific digital content, which would be more difficult for the industry to combat.

Mr. Anderson, who traces peer-to-peer networks back to an ad hoc networking system called Usenet pioneered over telephone lines in 1979, said his research group was collaborating with computer scientists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology on a next-generation peer-to-peer network, to be unveiled in a few months. Like Freenet, it is designed to be impervious to censorship and to permit secure communications in potentially hostile environments.

He said that his own early development work in peer-to-peer networks, known as the Eternity Service, had been inspired by a legal battle between the Church of Scientology and Penet, an Internet operation based in Finland that was known as an anonymous remailer.

In that case, an Internet user was using the remailer to post church documents anonymously on online bulletin boards.

"I had not the slightest idea back in 1996 that music would be an application," he said. "I was motivated by the Penet case and by the fear that some of the freedom we'd got from Gutenberg's invention of cheap printing might be lost."

Legal skirmishes over anonymous peer-to-peer networks have already taken place in both Europe and Asia.

In Japan last year, Isamu Kaneko, the developer of a file-sharing program called WinNY, was arrested after two users of the program were charged with sharing copyrighted material through the system. The Kaneko case is pending.

After Mr. Kaneko's arrest, development of the system was continued under the name Share by an anonymous programmer, according to information posted on the Web.

Share uses encryption to hide the identities of users and the material that is being exchanged, in the manner of the new Freenet that Mr. Clarke described.

On a separate front, the recording industry has sued users of Blubster, a peer-to-peer network designed by Pablo Soto, a Spanish programmer, who built privacy features into his system.

Currently Freenet is being developed by a group of five or six volunteer programmers and a single full-time employee who is paid by donations that Mr. Clarke has obtained.

He said that despite concerns that tools such as Freenet might be used by clandestine organizations intent on political violence, Mr. Clarke said he believed that the benefits of such anonymous means of communications outweighed potential harm.

"I think things like terrorism are the result of the absence of communication," he said.

He acknowledged that his system would not be infallible, but neither would it be as transparent as popular peer-to-peer systems like Grokster and Gnutella.

Open file-sharing networks like Gnutella can be joined simply by obtaining a software program. The program connects a user to the file-sharing network and allows the user to publish content.

Computer researchers say that the term "anonymous peer-to-peer," when applied to darknets, is actually a misnomer, because the networks must exist in the open Internet and thus must have identifiable addresses where they can be contacted by other nodes of the network.

As the legal consequences for file sharing become clearer, there will be a proliferation of systems with features similar to Freenet, according to a range of industry specialists. In Silicon Valley, start-up companies like Imeem and Grouper are already making it possible to create groups to share digital information.

"Darknets are going to be with us," said J. D. Lasica, author of "Darknet: Hollywood's War Against the Digital Generation" (John Wiley & Sons, 2005). "Serious file traders have been gravitating toward them. There is just this culture of freedom that people feel they're entitled to, and they don't want anyone looking over their shoulders."
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/08/01/te...gy/01file.html





Army Punishes Soldier For Blog Posts
Anne Broache

The U.S. military has demoted and fined a soldier for publishing "classified" information on his personal blog, an Army spokesperson confirmed Tuesday.

Leonard Clark, a 40-year-old Arizona National Guardsman who is currently on active duty in Baghdad, dropped from the rank of specialist to private first class on July 19 and must pay the Army a fine of $820 per month for two months, according to a statement from U.S. Central Command.

Flora Lee, a spokesperson at the military's Combined Press Information Center in Iraq, confirmed that an investigation is under way but declined to provide further details on the case.

Clark was charged with violating two articles of the Uniform Code of Military Justice, which prohibit soldiers from releasing or "encouraging widespread publication" of classified or specific information about troop movement and location, soldiers who have been attacked or hit, and military strategy, the statement said.

The military has not specified which portions of Clark's blog broke the rules and did not respond to requests for clarification Tuesday about its policy on blogs maintained by personnel.

Word of the soldier's situation has been traversing the blogosphere for weeks. One post at the liberal blog DailyKos lamented Clark's situation and compared selected quotes from Clark's old e-mails about the war in Baghdad with accounts in the mainstream media.

Clark's own site, which describes him as a kindergarten teacher and former Democratic candidate for Arizona governor, is now devoid of content, save for a couple of links to recent media coverage about his plight and a message posted Tuesday by someone identified as a "site admin," which attributes the blogger's recent silence to a gag order.

"He has been asked not to comment, and is doing so," the post said. "Please understand that he is worried about folks back at home smearing his name. When he is done with active duty, the story (from his side) will come out."
http://news.com.com/Army+punishes+so...3-5815812.html





Senators Seek Web Porn Tax
Declan McCullagh

A new federal proposal that would levy stiff taxes on Internet pornographers violates constitutional guarantees of freedom of expression, legal scholars say.

Sen. Blanche Lincoln, an Arkansas Democrat, characterized her bill introduced last week as a way to make the Internet a "safer place" for children. The bill would impose a 25 percent tax on the revenue of most adult-themed Web sites.

"Many adult-oriented Web sites in today's online world are not only failing to keep products unsuitable for children from view, but are also pushing those products in children's faces," Lincoln said. "And it's time that we stand up and say, 'enough is enough.'"

But legal scholars who specialize in the First Amendment say courts have rejected similar taxes in the past--and are likely to do so again, if Lincoln's proposal becomes law.

"The general principle is that if you can't ban a certain category of expression, then you cannot selectively impose a tax on it," said Jamin Raskin, a professor of constitutional law at American University. "So if the speech that the senator is targeting is protected by the First Amendment, it may not be selectively taxed."

"The bottom line is, if it were constitutional to tax a disfavored category of speaker, then there would be 99 percent taxes on pornography and hate speakers and Howard Stern and so on," Raskin said. "But the courts understand that the power to tax ultimately is the power to destroy."

Jerome Barron, a former dean of George Washington University Law School who teaches First Amendment law, noted that the Supreme Court in 1936 rejected a 2 percent tax on newspapers with circulations of more than 20,000 copies a week.

"You can't use the taxation power as a weapon of censorship," Barron said.

A more recent Supreme Court case, Minneapolis Star v. Minnesota Commissioner of Revenue, tossed out a Minnesota law taxing paper and ink products used by newspapers.

Lincoln's bill, called the Internet Safety and Child Protection Act of 2005, would apply only to adult sites subject to controversial record-keeping requirements regarding the identities of people participating in sex acts displayed on Web sites. Those sites must cough up the taxes and use age verification techniques "prior to the display of any pornographic material, including free content."

The Supreme Court has largely rebuffed Congress' previous attempts at Internet censorship. It rejected the Communications Decency Act's prohibition on "indecent" material, and upheld an injunction against the Child Online Protection Act, which targeted "harmful to minors" material online.

Other Senate sponsors of the legislation--all Democrats--include Thomas Carper of Delaware, Mark Pryor of Arkansas, Mary Landrieu of Louisiana, Joseph Lieberman of Connecticut, Ken Salazar of Colorado, Debbie Stabenow of Michigan, Evan Bayh of Indiana and Kent Conrad of North Dakota.
http://news.com.com/Senators+seek+We...3-5814309.html





EU Plan Could Put Open Sourcers In Court
Ingrid Marson

The European Commission has proposed a law that could allow criminal charges to be pressed against a business using software believed to infringe upon another company's intellectual property.

The proposed directive, which was adopted by the European Commission last month, would allow criminal sanctions against "all intentional infringements of an IP right on a commercial scale."

Richard Penfold, a partner at law firm DLA Piper Rudnick Gray Cary, said last week that the proposed directive could "quite possibly" allow the imprisonment of the boss of a company that is using infringing software, although it would depend on whether the defendant can argue that the infringement was unintentional.

It is unusual for companies to target the users of software, rather than its manufacturers, but there is one well-known example--the cases brought by the SCO Group against car maker DaimlerChrysler and auto-parts retailer AutoZone over their use of Linux. SCO claimed that AutoZone infringed on SCO's Unix copyrights through its use of Linux and that DaimlerChrysler had breached its contract with SCO.

Ross Anderson, the chair of the Foundation for Information Policy Research, said the proposed directive could help SCO or other companies in future intellectual property infringement cases against open-source software.

"In future somebody like SCO will have another course of action open to them--the threat of criminal charges. This threat would enable SCO to cast a larger legal cloud," said Anderson.

The European branch of the Free Software Foundation was also worried that SCO could use the directive to its advantage. Joachim Jakobs from FSF Europe said that not only could company managers face being tried in a criminal court, but SCO could also be allowed to join the criminal investigation. That's because the directive calls for "joint investigation teams," where the holder of the intellectual property rights in question can assist the criminal investigation.

But Paul Stevens, a partner at U.K. law firm Olswang, said it was unlikely that software users would be affected by the directive, as any company that pursues criminal cases against users is likely to suffer from the bad publicity.

"It's not that often that companies who have IP rights pursue cases against users," he said. "Most IP owners want you to continue buying their product and to continue dealing with them. If they started threatening someone with prison or a criminal record, how do you think their customers will feel?"

The proposed directive, which has not yet been approved by the European Parliament, includes various penalties for those caught infringing intellectual property rights. They include four years' imprisonment; fines; seizure and destruction of the offending goods; closure of the establishment used to commit the offence; a ban on engaging in commercial activities; and denial of access to legal aid.

The proposal is described as a "European Parliament and Council directive on criminal measures aimed at ensuring the enforcement of IP rights." For more information on this law, click here for the PDF.
http://news.com.com/EU+plan+could+pu...3-5815584.html





Study: Ring Tones Heavily Shoplifted
Ben Charny

Online sound snippets intended to help market ring tones sold by phone operators and other distributors often are illegally downloaded and used free of charge, a new study found.

Cell phone operators and ring tone sellers typically make available on their Web sites ring tone previews of 15 to 30 seconds. But almost 40 percent of cell phone operators and nearly a third of independent ring tone sellers don't secure the previews, which can be downloaded onto a personal computer, then changed into a usable ring tone, according to the study.

Almost two-thirds of the 100 Web sites checked offered previews that were suitably long to make a ring tone, according to research by Qpass, a digital-content distributor based in Seattle.

Ring tones, recorded sound segments that replace a cell phone's prepackaged ringer, are typically priced at $1 each. Shoplifted ring tones have so far cost cell phone operators and other ring tone sellers about $40 million in lost revenue, while lost revenue from ring tone shoplifting will total $123 million by 2007, the study predicted.

"This is the mobile and cyber equivalent of test-driving a car and then not having to give it back," Qpass senior vice president Steve Shivers said. "The amount of revenue loss to both the mobile and music industries is a concern."

Representatives of the cellular trade organization Cellular Telecommunications and Internet Association did not return calls Wednesday seeking comment on the study. The Recording Industry Association of America, which represents major recording interests, declined to comment.
http://news.com.com/Study+Ring+tones...3-5817528.html





Downloading Music Affects Children's Morality, Senators Say

Senators scolded peer-to-peer file-sharing companies, saying they are corrupting America's children, at a committee hearing Thursday.
Kristen Green

Peer-to-peer file sharing is affecting children's morality and well-being by giving them access to pornography and encouraging the everyday theft of music, Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., said.

In a rare bipartisan moment, Sen. Ted Stevens, R- Alaska, the committee chairman, agreed with Boxer.

The Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee hearing addressed issues remaining from the Supreme Court's June 22 decision in Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios Inc. et al v. Grokster Inc. et al.

The court said that Grokster and StreamCast, two peer-to-peer file-sharing companies, violated copyright laws by promoting themselves as alternatives to the sharing service Napster. Formerly free, Napster reinvented itself as a paid service, after being found in violation of copyright laws.

Unlike Napster, which stored music and other materials on a central computer for individuals to download, Grokster and newer P2P companies allow users to share material from their own computers without ever storing it in a central location.

The Court said manufacturing a device that could be used to violate copyrights is not illegal, but there is liability if a company purposefully promotes infringement.

The Senate hearing discussed finding a balance between copyright protection and communications technology innovation.

Dave Baker, vice president of law and public policy for Earthlink, said Internet service providers are not responsible for what travels over their networks, but they do block Web sites that are reported for violating copyrights.

Peer-to-peer file sharing can't be controlled because it belongs to an individual user, not the ISP, Baker said.

Adam Eisgrau, executive director of P2P United, which fights for the future of peer-to-peer file sharing, said televisions, telephones and computers are independent media that allow people to use them however they wish.

P2P United is working with law enforcement officials to end pornography distribution, he said, but it is not feasible to create a system to review Internet content.

"It's an Internet problem, not just a peer-to-peer problem," he said.

Boxer said she and several others wrote bipartisan letters to the chief executive officers of several peer-to-peer file-sharing organizations such as BearShare and LimeWire asking them to end pornography distribution, but had not yet received a response.

Boxer said that if other companies can promise filters on their materials, there's no reason P2P United can't do the same.

Fritz Attaway, executive vice president of the Motion Picture Association of America, said Congress does not need to get more involved until courts begin to make rulings in light of the Grokster decision.

A hearing this fall will let senators discuss the pornography angle of file-sharing distribution.

"We can hardly accuse those of stealing our intellectual property when we can't protect it at all," Stevens said.
http://www.infozine.com/news/stories...View/sid/9389/





No iPod Tax For Canada
John Borland

The Canadian Supreme Court won't hear a case involving extra fees for iPods and other MP3 players in that country, ending a dispute over a so-called iPod tax, but rekindling debate over the legality of file swapping.

At issue was a long-standing law that allows a regulatory agency to collect a small extra fee on blank media such as CDs and tapes, with the revenues going to artists and record labels to recompense them for the private copies being made of their work.

That agency, the Copyright Board of Canada, said in late 2003 that iPods and other hard-drive players were being used to copy music as well, and imposed a fee of up to $25 on the devices. An Appeals Court set aside that decision last year, and Thursday's Supreme Court action will leave iPods untaxed.

The decision may have broader implications for Canadian computer users, however.

The country's trade association for record labels quickly welcomed the Supreme Court's action as a sign that unauthorized file swapping was once again viewed as unambiguously illegal.

That connection stems from another court ruling, in which a judge said that trading files though a file swapping network appeared to be legal, citing the Copyright Board's fee regime.

But if copying files to hard drives--whether on an iPod or a computer--is not included in the private copying fees, then file swapping is no longer protected, executives at the Canadian Recording Industry Association said.

"For years, those supporting unauthorized file sharing have misleadingly used the existence of the Private Copying Levy to justify illegitimate file sharing," CRIA President Graham Henderson said in a statement. "Today, the Supreme Court says 'no such luck.'"

Copyright regulators said the Supreme Court's action was regrettable, and might even make most common uses of the iPod illegal.

"The clear result of this decision is that copying recorded music onto an iPod is illegal, unless the copying has been authorized by rights holders," said David Basskin, a director of the Canadian Private Copying Collective, which collects and distributes the fees on blank media, in a statement.

The CPPC would return the fees that had been collected from iPod and other digital audio device sales between December 2003 and December 2004, the group said.

The ambiguity in Canadian law may be resolved before the courts have much time to address file-swapping issues again, however. The Canadian government has introduced a wide-ranging new copyright law that is expected to definitively make trading copyright files online without permission illegal.
http://news.com.com/No+iPod+tax+for+...3-5809117.html





Internet File Sharing Leads To 5 Being Charged In The UK
Submitted by Anonymous

UK record companies' trade association the BPI is intensifying its campaign against large scale illegal distributors of music on the internet by lodging formal court proceedings for the first time against five uploaders in the UK.

Civil proceedings are being issued today against five individuals who between them made 8,906 songs available for millions of people around the world to download without permission.

The three men and two women live in King’s Lynn, Crawley, Port Talbot, Brighton and South Glamorgan.

BPI General Counsel Geoff Taylor said, “So far 60 UK internet users have settled legal claims against them for illegal filesharing, paying up to £6,500 in compensation. We have tried to agree fair settlements, but if people refuse to deal with the evidence against them, then the law must take its course. That's why we have had no choice but to take these five individuals to the High Court. We will be seeking an injunction and full damages for the losses they have caused, in addition to the considerable legal costs we are incurring as a result of their illegal activity."

All five cases were the subject of a court order on March 11, requiring internet service providers to name the holders of accounts which had been used for illegal filesharing. The account-holders were first contacted by the BPI in April with the details of the case against them.
http://www.technologynewsdaily.com/node/1162






Wales tales

Industry Sues Vale Download Pirate
Steve Tucker

A music lover from the Vale of Glamorgan is to be one of the first people in Britain to be taken to court accused of illegally downloading tracks from the internet.

The British Phonographic Industry (BPI), the UK record industry's trade association, said it was lodging its first civil action against people who had refused to settle out of court.

The lawsuits are being taken against five individuals who, between them, are accused of making 8,906 songs available to millions of people around the globe.

The BPI is claiming compensation and costs against three men and two women on behalf of record companies whose music has allegedly been uploaded on to peer-to-peer networks without permission.

The alleged illegal downloaders could now face bills running into tens of thousands of pounds each.

As well as the unnamed person in the Vale, there is another person from Port Talbot, while the rest are from King's Lynn, Crawley and Brighton.

The move follows out-of- court settlements of up to £6,500 with 60 UK internet users.

BPI chairman Peter Jamieson said: "Music fans are increasingly tuning to legal download sites for the choice, value and convenience.

"But we cannot let illegal file sharers off the hook. They are undermining the legal services, they are damaging music and breaking the law."

BPI General Counsel Geoff Taylor said: "We have tried to agree fair settlements, but if people refuse to deal with the evidence against them, then the law must take its course.

"That's why we have had no choice but to take these five individuals to the High Court.

"We will be seeking an injunction and full damages for the losses they have caused, in addition to the considerable legal costs we are incurring as a result of their illegal activity."

The BPI said illegal file-sharing was a key factor in the recording industry's 22 per cent worldwide sales downturn between 1999 and 2004.
http://icwales.icnetwork.co.uk/0900e...name_page.html





Irish Music-Swappers Admit Liability
Matthew Clark

Eight people in Ireland have agreed to pay damages of up to EUR6,000 after settling out of court in the country's first batch of music uploading court cases.

The Irish Recorded Music Association (IRMA) said that eight of the 17 people it has accused of being among Ireland's worst offenders when it comes to music uploading have agreed to settle out of court with the organisation. According to an Irish Times report, the eight have told IRMA that they will no longer swap music over the internet, and have agreed to pay damages of between EUR2,000 and EUR6,000.

The paper says that some of the accused were parents of children who had uploaded and downloaded music over peer-to-peer file-sharing services such as Kazaa or Gnutella. There was also an instance of an employee of a firm which had been uploading tracks, exposing that company to potential legal liability. Dick Doyle, director of IRMA, said that many of the remaining nine alleged file-sharers who have not yet admitted liability have claimed that file-sharing was undertaken by someone else in their home.

Interestingly, Doyle said that IRMA now has additional information on the activities of alleged file-swappers, and he said that it may target more individuals in the coming months.

The 17 people involved in the current legal action were written to by IRMA in late July after the organisation and its backers -- which include the big music labels -- succeeded in forcing internet service providers to give up the names of file-sharers. This effort actually began in April as part of a global assault led by the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI), which filed 963 new cases against file-sharers in Britain, Austria, Denmark, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Iceland, Finland, Ireland and Japan during that month.

Worldwide, the total number of cases against those accused of illegal file-sharing has hit 11,552 worldwide since the US-based Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) began its crusade three years ago.

Last month, the IFPI made rare positive comments about the digital music business, claiming that the number of songs downloaded legally over the internet had tripled to 180 million in the first six months of 2005. Conversely, illegal file-sharing continues to grow, but at a slower pace, rising just 3 percent to 900 million tracks in the first half of the year compared to the same period in 2004. The IFPI said the most cited reason for the growth of legitimate downloads is the threat of lawsuits.

"We are now seeing real evidence that people are increasingly put off by illegal file-sharing and turning to legal ways of enjoying music online," IFPI CEO John Kennedy said in a July statement. "Whether it's the fear of getting caught breaking the law, or the realisation that many networks could damage your home PC, attitudes are changing, and that is good news for the whole music industry."
http://www.enn.ie/news.html?code=9628671





Hackers Demonstrate Their Skills in Vegas
Greg Sandoval

Even the ATM machines were suspect at this year's Defcon conference, where hackers play intrusion games at the bleeding edge of computer security.

With some of the world's best digital break-in artists pecking away at their laptops, sending e-mails or answering cell phones could also be risky.

Defcon is a no-man's land where customary adversaries - feds vs. digital mavericks - are supposed to share ideas about making the Internet a safer place. But it's really a showcase for flexing hacker muscle.

This year's hot topics included a demonstration of just how easy it may be to attack supposedly foolproof biometric safeguards, which determine a person's identity by scanning such things as thumb prints, irises and voice patterns.

Banks, supermarkets and even some airports have begun to rely on such systems, but a security analyst who goes by the name Zamboni challenged hackers to bypass biometrics by attacking their backend systems networks. "Attack it like you would Microsoft or Linux," he advised.

Radio frequency identification tags that send wireless signals and that are used to track a growing list of items including retail merchandise, animals and U.S. military shipments- also came under scrutiny.

A group of twentysomethings from Southern California climbed onto the hotel roof to show that RFID tags could be read from as far as 69 feet. That's important because the tags have been proposed for such things as U.S. passports, and critics have raised fears that kidnappers could use RFID readers to pick traveling U.S. citizens out of a crowd.

RFID companies had said the signals didn't reach more than 20 feet, said John Hering, one of the founders of Flexilis, the company that conducted the experiment.

"Our goal is to raise awareness," said Hering, 22. "Our hope is to spawn other research so that people will move to secure this technology before it becomes a problem."

Erik Michielsen, an analyst at ABI Research, chuckled when he heard the Flexilis claims. "These are great questions that need to be raised," he said, but RFID technology varies with the application, many of which are encrypted. Encryption technology uses an algorithm to scramble data to make it unreadable to everyone except the recipient.

Also on hand at the conference was Robert Morris Sr., former chief scientist for the National Security Agency, to lecture on the vulnerabilities of bank ATMs, which he predicted would become the next "pot of gold" for hackers.

The Internet has become "crime ridden slums," said Phil Zimmermann, a well-known cryptographer who spoke at the conference. Hackers and the computer security experts who make a living on tripping up systems say security would be better if people were less lazy.

To make their point, they pilfered Internet passwords from convention attendees.

Anyone naive enough to access the Internet through the hotel's unsecured wireless system could see their name and part of their passwords scrolling across a huge public screen.

It was dubbed the "The Wall of Sheep."

Among the exposed sheep were an engineer from Cisco Systems Inc., multiple employees from Apple Computer Inc. and a Harvard professor.

An annual highlight of the conference is the "Meet the Feds" panel, which this year included representatives from the FBI, NSA and the Treasury and Defense departments. Morris and other panel members said they would love to hire the "best and brightest" hackers but cautioned that the offer wouldn't be extended to lawbreakers.

During the session, Agent Jim Christy of the Defense Department's Cyber Crime Center asked the audience to stand.

"If you've never broken the law, sit down," he said. Many sat down immediately - but a large number appeared to hesitate before everyone eventually took their seats.

OK, now we can turn off the cameras, Christy joked.

Some federal agents were indeed taking careful notes, though, when researcher Michael Lynn set the tone for the conference by publicizing earlier in the week a vulnerability in Cisco routers that he said could allow hackers to virtually shut down the Internet.

Lynn and other researchers at Internet Security Systems had discovered a way of exploiting a Cisco software vulnerability in order to seize control of a router. That flaw was patched in April, but Lynn showed that Cisco hadn't quite finished the repair job - that the same technique could be used to exploit other vulnerabilities in Cisco routers.

Cisco and ISS went to court to try to stop Lynn from going public, but Lynn quit ISS and spoke anyway. In the wake of his decision, Lynn has become the subject of an FBI probe, said his attorney Jennifer Granick.

Many at the conference praised Lynn.

"We're never going to secure the Net if we don't air and criticize vulnerabilities," said David Cowan, a managing partner at venture capital firm Bessemer Venture Partners.

And the vulnerabilities are plenty.

During his session on ATM machines, Morris said thieves have been able to dupe people out of their bank cards and passwords by changing the software in old ATM machines bought off eBay for as little as $1,000 and placing the machines out in public venues.
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories...CTION=BUSINESS





Hackers Race To Expose Cisco Router Flaw

Computer hackers worked through the weekend to expose a flaw that could allow an attacker to take control of the Cisco Systems routers that direct traffic across much of the Internet.

Angered and inspired by Cisco's attempts to suppress news of the flaw earlier in the week, several computer security experts at the Defcon computer-security conference worked past midnight Saturday to discover and map out the vulnerability.

"The reason we're doing this is because someone said you can't," said one hacker, who like the others spoke on condition of anonymity.

Cisco's routers direct traffic across at least 60 percent of the Internet and the security hole has dominated a pair of conferences that draw thousands of security researchers, U.S. government employees and teenage troublemakers to Las Vegas each summer.

The hackers said they had no intention of hijacking e-commerce payments, reading private e-mail, or launching any of the other malicious attacks that could be possible by exploiting the flaw.

Rather, they said they wanted to illustrate the need for Cisco customers to update their software to defend against such possibilities. Many Cisco customers have postponed the difficult process because it could require them to unplug entirely from the Internet.

Security researcher Michael Lynn first described the flaw on Wednesday at the Black Hat conference over the objections of Cisco and his former employer, Internet Security Systems.

Lynn helped Cisco develop a fix but wanted to discuss it publicly to raise awareness of the problem, according to associates, going so far as to quit his job with ISS so he could talk freely.

"What (Lynn) ended up doing was describing how to build a missile without giving all the details. He gave enough (details) so people could understand how a missile could be built, and they could take their research from there," said a security expert who gave his name only as Simonsaz and who said he is not involved in the hacking effort.

After his presentation Cisco and ISS obtained a court order barring Lynn and the Black Hat organization from further disseminating details of the flaw. Cisco employees ripped Lynn's presentation from the conference program, according to witnesses, and Black Hat handed over its video recording of his talk.

"ISS and Cisco's actions with Mr. Lynn and Black Hat were not based on the fact that a flaw was identified, rather that they chose to address the issue outside of established industry practices," said Cisco spokeswoman Mojgan Khalili, who added that the company is committed to protecting its customers.

But those efforts have only inspired other security experts to take a crack at Cisco's software.

"It's really saddening and disheartening to see Cisco taking this approach, because it leaves their customers less secure," one of the hackers said.

In one of the hackers' hotel room, several Cisco routers sat surrounded by plastic beer cups on a coffee table. Two laptops on the floor displayed the software's source code, an endless blur of numbers.

If they don't figure out how to take over Cisco's Internet Operating System software by the end of the weekend, their counterparts at a hacking festival in Europe will certainly do so, the hackers said.

Some experts said the flaw has been blown out of proportion. Malevolent attackers are more likely to focus on easier targets such as home computers rather than the complex routers that direct traffic across the Internet, said Jon Callas, chief technical officer of PGP, a provider of encryption software.

"An awful lot of the buzz that is going around is buzz because of the use of lawyers and injunctions and lawsuits rather than the actual thing itself," said Callas, who is not involved in efforts to hack the software.
http://news.com.com/Hackers+race+to+...3-5812611.html





Patches On The Way For Windows Flaws
Joris Evers

As part of its monthly patching cycle, Microsoft on Tuesday plans to release six security alerts for flaws in Windows.

A least one of the alerts is deemed "critical," Microsoft's highest risk rating, the company said in a notice posted on its Web site on Thursday.

The notice did not specify which components of Windows are affected. Earlier this week, security company eEye Digital Security said it had found serious flaws in Windows 2000 and Internet Explorer. Microsoft is investigating the issues, a company representative has said.

In addition to the patches, the software giant will issue on Tuesday a "high-priority" update for Windows that is unrelated to security. That day is also tagged for the usual release of an updated version of the Windows Malicious Software Removal Tool, which detects and removes malicious code placed on computers, Microsoft said.

The company gave no further information on Thursday's bulletins, other than stating that the Windows fixes will require restarting the computer.

The Redmond, Wash., software giant provides information in advance of its monthly patch release day, which is every second Tuesday of the month, so people can prepare to install the patches. In July, Microsoft released three security bulletins, two for Windows and one for Office. All were rated critical.

Microsoft rates as critical any security issue that could allow a malicious Internet worm to spread without any action required on the part of the user.

Microsoft has set a time of Wednesday at 11 a.m. PDT to host a Webcast about the new fixes.
http://news.com.com/Patches+on+the+w...3-5818881.html





Darth Vader Of The Net Recruits Programmers
Glenn Chapman

San Francisco - Internet rebels on Tuesday began testing a new weapon that threatens to scuttle efforts to stop illicit online music swapping.

Internet privacy activists at Freenet Project posted word on their website that they were looking for savvy programmers to test a refined version "darknet" software designed to keep file swappers anonymous.

Freenet's call for stealth software test pilots came slightly more than a month after the United States Supreme Court struck a blow for the entertainment industry by equating Internet sharing of music with "garden variety theft".

'I can assure you they will continue to refine their software'

The court ruled that services, such as Grokster, that abet rogue swapping of music can be held accountable as accomplices.

The decision was proclaimed a landmark victory by Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA).

"There will always be a degree of piracy online, as there is piracy on the street," said Jonathan Lamy of the RIAA.

"Our objective is to bring piracy under sufficient control where legitimate services can compete and flourish."

Hip technophiles tuned into life in Silicon Valley and San Francisco scoffed, saying file swappers would only get sneakier.

Freenet's new software was heralded as "scalable," which means it would enable large numbers of stealth users to freely share files online, Doug Tygar, a computer professor at the University of California, Berkeley, said.

Previous versions of secret file sharing software were seen as manageable by the recording industry because the programmes were unwieldy and limited in the numbers of people who could use them.

"Even if this version of Freenet doesn't met its goals, I can assure you they will continue to refine their software," Tygar said.

"It is just a matter of time before anonymous file sharing networks become available."

The recording industry will need to evolve to keep its grip on copyrighted material, Tygar said.

Copyright holders must build better technological locks to guard their property, he said.

"The onus is on the people producing copyrighted material to protect that material," Tygar said.

"That has always been the case," he continued. "It was the case when the Xerox was invented, and you might argue it was the case when the pencil and paper were invented."

The test software is "neither user-friendly nor secure at this point," Freenet reported on its website.

The project's stated intent is "making a globally scalable friend-to-friend darknet which eliminates a swathe of attacks and makes Freenet far more usable in the short term in hostile regimes such as China and the Middle East".

China uses Internet "fire walls" to block secret sharing of computer files on the Internet, Tygar said. The US recording industry endorses similar online obstacles, Tygar said.

If Freenet's darknet software lives up to its promise, then "techniques used today to trace individual users simply will not work," Tygar said.

"The only way to ensure that a democracy will remain effective is to ensure that the government cannot control its population's ability to share information, to communicate," the Freenet website philosophy page states.

"The core problem with copyright is that enforcement of it requires monitoring of communications, and you cannot be guaranteed free speech if someone is monitoring everything you say."
http://www.iol.co.za/index.php?set_i...3043043728U232





Yahoo Introduces Search Service for Music
Saul Hansell

Hankering for a little yodeling? Yahoo has introduced a test version of a new search service that it claims can comb through 50 million music, voice and other audio files.

Yahoo is hardly the first search engine to offer audio search. Lycos, Singingfish from AOL and even AltaVista, which Yahoo bought, offer search engines that can seek out audio files.

Yahoo says its service, which is available at audio.search.yahoo.com, goes beyond the others. It will have one section that, like the other sites, maintains a broad index of audio files found by visiting millions of Web sites. It has a second section devoted to specialized search for music and a third devoted to podcasts, the emerging form of radiolike programs offered on a regular basis.

Yahoo's music search service will let users find Web sites, news and photos of artists, as well as information about albums and songs. It takes information from Yahoo's own music service to organize the results.

"If you type in 'Like a Virgin' we'll know that the version by Madonna is more popular than the cover by the Smashing Pumpkins," said Bradley Horowitz, the company's director of media and desktop search. The more popular version will be displayed higher in the search results.

The service will also display links to the online sites where users can pay to download a song. Most major music sites have agreed to send Yahoo lists of their songs and pay a commission on every song sold. The current version of the service has no advertising, but Mr. Horowitz said ads might be added later.
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/08/04/te...y/04yahoo.html





ACTLab Peer-To-Peer TV Betas Proceeding Smoothly, Radio Station Guide Forthcoming
Scott Fulton

The heroic engineers at the Foundation for Decentralization Research -- s the students in the Media Studies department at the University of Texas at Austin have come to be known -- are well on their way to fulfilling their mission of building ACTLab TV to give individuals the means to become content channel providers.

The first demo streams--both audio+video and audio only--are being made available now through ACTLab's servers. They're relatively short, and may be slightly more entertaining than the rotating pictures of Felix the Cat that characterized the first demo TV broadcasts of the 1920s. Still, their main purpose is to demonstrate the effectiveness of Swarmcast, Onion Networks' P2P stream downloading system. Unlike conventional P2P, which focuses on the transmission of files, Swarmcast enables the throughput of data streams, allowing videos and audiocasts to be seen and heard during the decentralized download process.

Today, as ACTLab's director, Brandon Wiley told Tom's Hardware Guide, his group is preparing to release the first draft of ACTLab's radio station guide, which instructs individuals as to how they can acquire--without expense--the equipment and some of the content necessary for them to produce a recorded, fully-licensed Internet "broadcast." "It's a pretty good guide," said Wiley, "not just because it tells the technical aspect of how to encode your stuff, but it talks about the various net labels and free content that's out on the Internet, to find content for your station." So-called "net labels" provide MP3s--some for free, to promote the others they sell commercially. Magnatune is one such net label that will be providing content for ACTLab TV, Wiley told us.

By the end of this week, the lab should be providing much longer demo streams. "We've got, for the first release, 30 hours of video and 30 hours of audio that we're going to be streaming," said Wiley. "It's all going to be very high-quality--DVD quality is our goal, with H.264 encoding. For this next release, what we want to show everybody is that we are doing live, instantaneous streaming, but at DVD quality."

In this reporter's own tests of ACTLab TV, the Swarmcast plug-in seems to work quite well. One problem--which I believe other Windows users may face--is that Apple's QuickTime, especially recent versions, insist on trying to decode the MPEG-4 video stream, and will fail. ACTLab's stream is encoded using H.264, one free codec for which, called "ffdshow," is installed with the ACTLab software. My observation has been that QuickTime is being launched before ffdshow has a chance to kick in, so some Registry hacking may be required before I can see the video portion of ACTLab's program. The MP3 audio stream, on the other hand, plays brilliantly through both Firefox and IE 6.
http://www.tomshardware.com/hardnews...02_151229.html




More People Turn to the Web to Watch TV
Saul Hansell

For two decades, media company executives and advertisers have been talking about creating fully interactive television that would allow viewers to watch exactly what they want, when they want it.

It looks like that future may well be by way of the computer, as big media and Internet companies develop new Web-based video programming and advertising that is truly under the command of the viewer. As Americans grow more comfortable watching programs online, Internet programming is beginning to combine the interactivity and immediacy of the Web with the alluring engagement of television.

The Nickelodeon cable network, for example, recently created TurboNick, a free Internet service that offers 24-hour access to popular programs like SpongeBob SquarePants and Jimmy Neutron. It offers some original programs, too, because the young audience of Nickelodeon, which is owned by Viacom, is increasingly spending time in front of computers.

CBS News, which has no cable network and is also owned by Viacom, uses the Internet to offer video news updates and reports that do not fit in the 30-minute time slot of "CBS Evening News."

And for America Online, offering a wide array of free video programming - from coverage of the recent Live 8 concerts to programs hosted by business gurus like Stephen R. Covey and Tom Peters - is a way to attract an audience to its new Internet portal at AOL.com. AOL, a unit of Time Warner, is also producing with the Warner Music Group an Internet-based reality program called "The Biz." It will seek to find the next music mogul, according to people involved with the program.

For all of them, and many more media and Internet companies, investing in new Internet video programming is a way to cash in on the demands of advertisers who want to put their commercials on computer screens, where new viewers are watching. And on many Web sites, viewers can't skip the video commercials, the way they can when using TiVo and other video recorders.

Of course, there have been bits of rough, jerky video on the Internet for years. The new video services, however, can count on better software and faster connections to deliver pictures that are nearly as crisp as those delivered by a typical cable signal. This year more than half of the homes with Internet access have high speed, or broadband, service.

"There is critical mass with high-speed Internet connections, so video is a good user experience," said Jim Walton, the president of the CNN News Group. "And that means there can be critical mass for advertisers."

With the cost of the network connections needed to broadcast video over the Web falling and advertising rates rising, CNN, also a Time Warner property, just replaced a small, fee-based Internet video service with an expanded offering of free videos intermingled with commercials.

"Television is a very straightforward, passive, linear medium," said Lloyd Braun, the former chairman of ABC's entertainment group, who now oversees the development of a sprawling campus for Yahoo in Santa Monica, Calif., that will largely be devoted to creating original video programming for the Internet.

"What I find so compelling about the Internet is that it is not passive," he said. "It is a medium where users are in control, can customize the content, personalize it, share it and tap into their communities in a number of ways."

Mr. Braun said he was exploring dozens of video ideas, including original Internet programming in nearly every genre that has worked on television: news, sports, game shows, dramas, sitcoms, even talk shows. But these are likely to be made up of short video segments that users can assemble to their liking rather than half-hour or hourly programs. "If you try to do television on a PC you will fail, because television does television very well," he said.

In addition to its own programming, Yahoo will feature programming from others in its video search service and on its other pages. For example, Yahoo is expected to announce today that it will add video clips from CNN and ABC News, along with video ads, to its existing Yahoo News site.

A watershed event in the development of Internet video was AOL's live Webcasts of the Live 8 concert series earlier this month. Some five million people tuned into the Webcast on AOL, where they could instantly flip among the concerts in London, Paris, Philadelphia, Toronto, Rome and Berlin.

Three times as many people watched the televised version on MTV, but many of them were dissatisfied with the way the network, a division of Viacom, selected which songs to play and had its announcers talk over the music. (AOL also offered users all sorts of commentary - blogs from backstage, user comments, photos - but these were accessible alongside the Webcast and did not interrupt the music.)

While MTV's TV network is being criticized, its new Internet video service, MTV Overdrive, is being praised as perhaps the slickest attempt yet to combine the packaging of television with the interactivity of the Internet. With one click, users can view dozens of shows - music video collections, newscasts, artist interviews and supplements to MTV's signature programs like "The Real World."

And with a second click, users can see the various segments that make up those shows. They also can assemble a program of their choosing, mixing and matching parts of any of those shows, as well as videos and older programs from MTV's archive of thousands.

For Alisha Davis, who joined MTV two months ago to anchor its afternoon Web newscasts, the medium offers opportunities and challenges that traditional television does not. With no fixed time slot to fill, her afternoon Webcast can run anywhere from 10 minutes to 20 minutes, depending on the news of the day. (That's far more than the three minutes that the MTV network now devotes to its newscasts.)

While she still begins each newscast with an upbeat rundown of stories, Ms. Davis also understands that is not necessarily how Internet viewers will watch the show.

"On a linear broadcast, you can refer to something that happened before," she said. "We can't do that. We'll set up a show for people, but a lot of people will create their own show."

"We always said, 'I want my MTV,' " said Judy McGrath, the chief executive of MTV Networks. "Today that means a very personal relationship to whatever it is you are interested in, so you can talk about it, you can generate it, and you can critique it."

The flexibility of the evolving medium also applies to advertisers.

Services like MTV Overdrive typically show 15-second or 30-second commercials - which users cannot skip - before viewers start watching and then again every few minutes. Moreover, when a commercial plays on Overdrive (and on many other new video services) a static graphic ad from the same advertiser appears on another part of the screen. This graphic ad remains even while the program plays. If users click on it, it opens the advertiser's Web site.

"A commercial on broadband is emotional and impactful," said Matt Wasserlauf, the president of Broadband Enterprises, which sells Internet video ads. He said that Internet video ads already produced 100 times as many clicks as static banners on Web pages.

An Internet commercial typically costs about $15 to $20 for each 1,000 viewers, nearly as much as broadcast networks charge. The price is high because there is more demand from advertisers than there is Internet video programming available. Broadband Enterprises estimates about $200 million will be spent on Internet video this year, up from $75 million last year. That pales in comparison to the $65 billion or so spent on broadcast and cable television advertising, but it is growing faster.

While much of the development of Internet video is now being driven by advertising, there is a growing crop of pay-per-view and subscription video services.

In the fall, CNN will introduce CNN Pipeline, a new fee-based Web service that will give users a choice of four live video programs, as well as access to its extensive archive of video clips. And CourtTV's new $4.95-a-month service on the Internet lets users see as many as three live trials simultaneously and also lets hard-core fans replay testimony and arguments from dozens of past trials.

Already, half a million people pay to watch live Webcasts of Major League Baseball games at $3.95 per game, or an unlimited package at $14.95 a month. That's double the paying audience last year.

In time, industry specialists say, longer, more elaborate programs created specifically for the Internet will also emerge. But how quickly that happens may depend in part on the development of technology that can play Internet video on television sets, on which people are used to watching longer programming.

"It takes time to teach consumers what they can do with this medium," said Kevin Conroy, the chief operating officer of its AOL Media Networks Group. "Now we are in a wonderful position to begin to expand to longer-form content. New video programs will include a live music performance series and a show where movie stars interview one another. AOL is also scouring Hollywood to buy the rights to old TV shows and movies it can fill with ads and show free on the Internet, said Mr. Conroy, who sees the Internet starting as akin to the ultimate UHF station.

One thing AOL will not offer on Webcasts is the most popular programming from its Time Warner cousins, such as HBO and its shows like "The Sopranos" and "Sex and the City."

"Everybody says why don't you have 'Sex and the City,' " Mr. Conroy said, "but 'Sex and the City' is already in first-run syndication on Turner. It will be on the Internet some day, but for now there are thousands of hours of programming that can't get on the air anywhere."
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/08/01/te...y/01video.html





Technology 'Optimists' Turn Off TV – Study

'Consumers went device crazy in 2004,' says Forrester Research
Paul Bond

Broadband Internet surfers in North America watch two fewer hours of television per week than do people without Internet access, while those with dial-up connections watch 1.5 fewer hours of TV.

That data comes from a Forrester Research Inc. study released yesterday that relies on what it calls the longest-running survey of its kind and counts nearly 69,000 people in the U.S. and Canada as participants.

Broadband Internet users watch just 12 hours of TV per week, compared with 14 hours for those who are off-line, according to the study, "The State of Consumers and Technology: Benchmark 2005." Forrester also predicts that the number of broadband households in the U.S., which had soared to 31 million at the end of last year from 2.6 million in 1999, will reach 71.4 million by 2010.

While its conclusion that Internet use detracts from other media is not new, the study delves deeper than others, separating consumers into various categories, including technology "optimists" and "pessimists" and "tenured nomadic networkers."

Folks making up the latter category have had Internet access in their networked homes for at least five years and own a laptop computer. These nomads watch just 10.8 hours of TV each week.

While newspapers and magazines also suffer a bit from Internet competition, radio and video games do not, the study concluded.

The study defines a tech optimist as someone who believes technology will make life more enjoyable, while pessimists are indifferent or even hostile to technology. Pessimists outnumber optimists 51% to 49%.

"Online media attracts technology optimists in droves," said the report, noting that they are three times more likely to use streaming media and peer-to-peer file sharing and read blogs than their pessimistic counterparts.

Optimists play video games, read magazines and listen to the radio more than pessimists, while pessimists watch more television. The level of newspaper reading, according to the study, is identical in the two groups.

Another conclusion reached by the study is that "consumers went device crazy in 2004," snapping up all sorts of digital entertainment gadgets, with adoption rates of many products poised for more explosive growth in the next six years.

Experiencing the most rapid growth might be digital video recorders, which will be in 42.7 million U.S. households in 2010, up from 6.2 million at the end of 2004.

In the same time frame, the number of DVD recorders will grow to 56 million from 12.1 million; MP3 players to 40.1 million from 10.8 million; DVD players to 102.9 million from 76.2 million; and video game consoles to 48.8 million from 40.1 million.

The report, though, appears to give short shrift to satellite radio. It doesn't include satellite radio in its U.S. household technology adoption forecast -- though it does note in a section about in-car device ownership that the percentage of automobiles equipped with satellite radios will double to 5% in 2005 and that buyers of Audis have the highest satellite radio adoption rate. The same section notes that in-car MP3 players are most popular in Acuras, Isuzus and Lexuses, while in-car video is most popular among GMC buyers.
http://www.computerworld.com/hardwar...103650,00.html





Via Multi

How Many Punch Cards Would It Take To Fit A 3-Minute MP3?

"Remember punch cards? I use them. Still got a box or two. Great for taking notes, they fit in VHS boxes for notes, I even print my business card on them. Sure makes people take note."

So begins a very interesting discussion on the Stilyagi discussion board.

"Our tool crib at Ford still used punch cards for inventory control until the early/mid 80s" says another person. "Just think of the concept--the data is made up out of thin air! The card is just there to organize the holes" notes another.

The posters figure out how many punch cards it'd take to read a 3-minute mp3. Answer?

"Assuming a non-Hollerith encoding with eight bits per column, and an MP3 file encoded at 128kbps CBR, there would be 36,864 cards in that deck, and the card reader would need a throughput of 205 cards per second. It might be wise to include an 8-column sequence number, however, so that a misordered deck can be repaired by a card sorter; with 72 data columns per card, the total is precisely 40,960 cards (40K cards), requiring a 228 card/second throughput." The 21 boxes of cards needed would by 5 feet 9 inches tall. That such a huge leap in technology is well within living memory astonishes Y.
http://www.ypsidixit.com/blog/archiv...ber_punch.html





Copyright Lobbyists Strike Again
Declan McCullagh

Hollywood and large U.S. software companies chalked up another crucial yet little-noticed victory last week with the final approval of the Central American Free Trade Agreement.
You wouldn't know it from a political debate veering between labor standards in Nicaragua and the evils of protectionism, but one major section of CAFTA will export some of the more controversial sections of U.S. copyright law.

Once it takes effect, CAFTA will require Costa Rica, the Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras and Nicaragua to mirror the Digital Millennium Copyright Act's broad prohibition on bypassing copy-protection technology.

This prohibition, of course, has been problematic in the United States. Courts have interpreted it as barring news organizations from linking to DVD-descrambling utilities, and lawyers have invoked it to stifle discussion of security vulnerabilities and even prevent conference presentations from taking place. In an earlier column, I wrote how it prevented me from reading password-protected government documents.

The easy days of slipping in a few paragraphs into a trade treaty may be over. Specifically, CAFTA calls for civil and criminal penalties to punish anyone who "circumvents" copy-protection technology or "provides" such tools to anyone else. Like the DMCA, that could cover everything from DeCSS (which removes copy-protection from DVDs) to products that do the same for e-books.

The Central American nations participating in CAFTA must also:

• Permit software patents

• Extend copyright protection to "70 years after the author's death"

• Ban the "manufacture" or "export" of any hardware or software that could decode encrypted satellite TV signals

• Offer "online public access to a reliable and accurate" WhoIs database of domain name registration details

It's true that these may be ideas beloved by the Bush administration and business lobbyists, but they have far more to do with special-interest lobbying than traditional notions of free trade.

In reality, they're simply the latest in a string of victories that copyright lobbyists have managed to accumulate in the last decade--under both Democratic and Republican presidents--through adept work at influencing the arcane process of treaty drafting.

Negotiating below the radar
"We push for that in trade agreements and treaties and bilateral" agreements, Robert Cresanti, vice president for public policy at the Business Software Alliance, told me last week. Members of his group include Adobe Systems, Cisco Systems, Dell, Hewlett-Packard, IBM, Intel and Microsoft.

That strategy has been remarkably successful. It began in the mid-1990s with a copyright treaty crafted under the umbrella of the World Intellectual Property Organization, a habitually copyright-friendly arm of the United Nations.

The WIPO treaty says that nations must provide "effective legal remedies against the circumvention" of copy-protection technologies. That spurred the United States down the path that led to enacting the DMCA in 1998.

But many sizable nations never signed the WIPO treaty: Canada, Russia, China, the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Australia and many others abstained (Click for PDF). And even some participating nations have been less than aggressive, with Japan concluding the treaty permits a less-regulatory approach.

That's why business lobbyists have been pressing to include far more precise rules in subsequent treaties. And the Bush and Clinton administrations have been happy to go along, effectively saying to poorer countries: If you want the United States to open its markets to your products, the price is adopting the most problematic sections of our copyright law.

Previous Next The result? In the last two years, Australia, Chile, and Singapore have agreed to software patents and DMCA-like prohibitions on bypassing copyright protection.

Those "anti-circumvention" requirements have even popped up in a Council of Europe treaty ostensibly devoted to "cybercrime," which a U.S. Senate panel approved last week.

One reason for the copyright lobby's success is that bending ears and twisting arms at organizations like WIPO and the Council of Europe is expensive. Groups that advocate a more balanced approach to copyright just haven't been able to keep up.

Now that may be changing. "From the mid-90s up until the present day, industry groups have gone to international forums and sought greater IP protections so they could export them as treaties and bring them back home," said Mike Godwin, a lawyer at the Public Knowledge advocacy group.

"Taking a tip from them, civil society groups from the developing nations like Brazil and India have said we can do this too," Godwin said. So are their allies in the United States.
In other words, the easy days of slipping in a few paragraphs into a trade treaty may be over. That's probably a good thing: Free trade can easily take place without the copyright lobby's more far-reaching suggestions.
http://news.com.com/Copyright+lobbyi...3-5811025.html