Peer-To-Peer News - The Week In Review – May 14th, '05

[JackSpratts]

Quotes Of The Week


"Estonian lawmakers OK Internet voting." - AP


"Your motivation was not only the benefit of free access. It was to enhance your personal reputation and to be a member of an organization at the leading edge of technology, crossing the legal boundary." – Judge Paul Focke


"It is not a coincidence that during the 60's and early 70's, at the height of the protest against the war in Vietnam, the civil rights movement and widespread experimentation with psychedelic drugs, personal computing emerged from a handful of government-and corporate-funded laboratories, as well as from the work of a small group of hobbyists who were desperate to get their hands on computers they could personally control and decide to what uses they should be put." - John Markoff


"The whole beauty of it is that I don't have to censor myself." - Jason Evangelho


"No matter what I was saying in public, I knew in my heart of hearts that there was no way that a P2P was going to keep going on like it was." – Wayne Rosso


"More than 4 million terabytes of information were produced and stored magnetically in 2002–-more than double the 1.7 million terabytes produced and stored in 2000." - Jun Naruse

















Helping, Not Hindering, Creativity
Eugene Zinovyev

Today, entertainment lobby groups are consciously trying to prevent technological and creative progress in the United States.

Late in March, Ted Olson, the former solicitor general under the current President Bush and counsel for the Recording Industry Association of America and Motion Picture Association of America, wrote an op-ed for the Wall Street Journal arguing against peer-to-peer file-sharing networks, likening them to services that allow users to exploit others' property illegally with no legal repercussion. Yet, the analogy between his scenario and the sharing of music and movies is deeply flawed, because digital movies and songs are not property in the same sense that a car or a pair of shoes are.

Here is how Olson lays out his clever analogy: Imagine if he created a service that allowed anyone with a computer and an Internet connection to gain free access to anyone's car, house or other property. The person could use that property however he or she wishes. Of course, Olson's service would tell you that you should not do anything illegal with the service that he offers, but he is not going to do anything to you if you do.

Olson rightfully points out that such a service would be a serious threat to the property rights of all Americans and would be immediately shut down. He then makes the logical leap that the system he describes is exactly the same as the one now in place on peer-to-peer (P2P) networks, which enable free sharing of digital information among computer users -- except instead of cars and houses, songs and movies (which are the property of artists) are exploited.

Because the government protects the rights of property owners when it comes to cars, it should do the same when it comes to digital songs. Solution: it should institute a policy that would ban P2P networks. Specifically, the U. S. Supreme Court should rule in favor of MGM Studios in its suit against Grokster, a popular P2P network.

Yet songs and movies are not the same as cars for one fundamental reason: Digital songs, unlike cars, are noncompetitive. In other words, when I listen to a song that I downloaded through Grokster, it does not prevent you from listening to that song; in fact, it makes it more likely that you will, because there is now one more source for you to download from. If I drive your car, however, you obviously cannot drive it at the same time. Because I deprive you of your car by driving it without your permission, laws exist to make such an action a crime. Yet, I do not deny anyone the ability to listen to a song by downloading it onto my computer. Thus, I do not deny anyone of their property. Hence, there is no reason that the U.S. government should institute any policy to make such an action illegal.

The P2P debate brings up the larger point of how the U.S. government should treat digital and intellectual property. Olson further tries to mislead the reader by arguing that the framers of the Constitution considered intellectual (and, implicitly, digital) property rights so important that they included a clause in the Constitution that gave Congress the power to "to promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries." Yet the current copyright regime put in place by the U.S. government actually discourages progress, rather than encouraging it.

As pointed out by Stanford law professor Lawrence Lessig in "Free Culture" (Penguin Press, 2004) most creative art, as well as technological innovation, has been derivative. (Mickey Mouse, Lessig points out, was based on a Buster Keaton character. For most of U.S. history, this was possible because works entered the public domain quickly and often. Yet during the past 30 years, Congress, under pressure from such lobbying groups as the Recording Industry Association of America and the Motion Picture Association of America, has extended copyright protection further and further, to the point that now anything from a piece of software code that could be used to create the next Google to a poem that could be put to music by the next Schubert, would be excluded from the public domain for 70 years plus the life of the author.

As a result, a lot of creative art and technology never materializes, because the creators cannot pay the licensing fee to obtain the rights to use the piece of copyright material. By treating intellectual property, which, like digital music, is noncompetitive, as tangible property, the U.S. government actually discourages innovation and creativity.

Congress and the U.S. Copyright Office should, in fact, reverse the trends of the past 30 years and reduce, but not eliminate, the exclusive rights that the creators of intellectual property posses. By reducing the length of copyright terms, and by encouraging, instead of hampering, the operation of networks that spread noncompetitive goods, Congress would finally be able to live up to its constitutional duty to "promote the progress of science and useful arts."
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/articl...DGEQCMI8R1.DTL


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Downhill Battle Seeking Musicians Who Support File-Sharing
Jordan Running

Downhill Battle is helping musician Harry Bergund gather testimony from musicians who support file-sharing. He’s going to take the voices of supporters and compose a song around them, and then presumably distribute it in some meaningful way that will raise awareness of the legitimate uses of P2P. If you’re a musician who recognizes the value of P2P, head on over and lend him your voice.
http://p2p.weblogsinc.com/entry/1234000623042922/


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Fandom Shows That File Sharing Can Create "Gained Fans" Not "Lost Customers"
Joi Ito

While preparing for my talk in Melbourne, I was IM'ing with my sister who I steal a lot of my material from these days. We were talking about Naruto, which I blogged about earlier in the context of the Naruto Matrix Reloaded AMV. On the site, the author says, "To clarify, it's as much of a Naruto advertisement as it is a Matrix parody" (emphasis added) We were talking about the amazing fan community around Naruto.

If you go to the site that lists the BitTorrent files of Naruto, you will see that fans have subtitled the episodes into a variety of languages like Hebrew, Portuguese, French... When new episodes of Naruto come out, the fans get together on IRC and other fora and collaborate and create subtitled versions and put them online. If you search for Naruto on Amazon.com, you find a page where the fans are voting for the DVD release and the notice says that they will notify the publisher of the voting. (It would be interesting to find out if the publisher or the fans initiated this.) It also appears that when a local DVD is released, the fans take down their subtitled episodes for that region. By allowing the fans to create demand, the publishers are using these file sharing networks and illegal derivative works as an extremely efficient form of marketing. Thanks to the network of Internet anime fans, Naruto is still niche, but popular globally.

This kind of publisher approved "piracy" is not a new thing. Dojinshi, are comics created by fans of Japanese comics. They are illegal derivative works. They make their own stories using famous comics as the base. They have huge conventions and it's an amazing community. The publishers of most of these comics encouraged this dojinshi culture because they realized that this increases the demand for the originals. These derivative works and sharing creates "fans" not "lost customers".

Some will argue that this is niche stuff, but I talked to a marketing guy at TV Tokyo and he said that they are now focused on niche. In the past they tried to appeal to a wide audience including young children and they tried to get a small amounts of money from a lot of people. (Like Pokemon stuffed animals.) Now, with box sets and special edition DVDs, they are finding that niche oriented adults and otaku will spend thousands of dollars on one show. They are able to collect more money from fewer people. I think this is one of the key marketing lessons that we're getting to. Before you tried to get a tiny bit of money from everyone who listened to a song or watched a show. Maybe if we focus on getting more money from fewer people, we can design business models around relationships and physical things rather than the content itself. Digital content might be better viewed as a marketing tool or metadata of the actual property or asset that is being promoted.

My sister's been getting most of this information about fandom from her research assistant Rachel Cody.
http://joi.ito.com/archives/2005/05/...customers.html


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Judge Tosses Part of S.C. Internet Law
AP

A federal judge has blocked South Carolina from enforcing a law making it a felony to distribute visual sexually explict material to minors over the Internet.

The First Amendment challenge was brought by booksellers and publishers who distribute graphic arts, literature and health-related information. They argued the four-year-old law restricts the right of adults to constitutionally protected
materials.

U.S. District Judge Patrick Duffy this week issued an injunction against the state enforcing the law. He said Internet filters are less restrictive than requiring Web site operators to seek age verification or label all the pages of their sites.

An attorney for the plaintiffs, Michael Bamberg, said laws like South Carolina's have been struck down in six other states.

According to the State Attorney General's office there have not been any cases tried under this law in its 4 year history.
http://www.wltx.com/news/news19.aspx?storyid=27215


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MPAA Targets TV Download Sites
John Borland

Continuing its war on Internet file-swapping sites, the Motion Picture Association of America said Thursday that it has filed lawsuits against a half-dozen hubs for TV show trading.

The trade association said that piracy of TV programming is growing quickly online, and that shows are as important to protect as big-budget films. This is the first legal action from the group that has focused most heavily on TV content.

"Every television series depends on other markets (such as) syndication and international sales to earn back the enormous investment required to produce the comedies and dramas we all enjoy," MPAA Chief Executive Officer Dan Glickman said in a statement. "Those markets are substantially hurt when that content is stolen."

The latest round of suits retains a focus on BitTorrent technology, which has been widely used online to distribute movies and films.

The suits are focused on the sites that serve as traffic directors for BitTorrent swaps, rather than on individual computer users uploading and downloading content. The MPAA also has sued individuals, but has not said how many people have been targeted.

The six sites sued Thursday include ShunTV, Zonatracker, Btefnet, Scifi-Classics, CDDVDHeaven and Bragginrights.
http://news.com.com/MPAA+targets+TV+...3-5705142.html


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Internet Attack Called Broad and Long Lasting by Investigators
John Markoff and Lowell Bergman

The incident seemed alarming enough: a breach of a Cisco Systems network in which an intruder seized programming instructions for many of the computers that control the flow of the Internet.

Now federal officials and computer security investigators have acknowledged that the Cisco break-in last year was only part of a more extensive operation - involving a single intruder or a small band, apparently based in Europe - in which thousands of computer systems were similarly penetrated.

Investigators in the United States and Europe say they have spent almost a year pursuing the case involving attacks on computer systems serving the American military, NASA and research laboratories.

The break-ins exploited security holes on those systems that the authorities say have now been plugged, and beyond the Cisco theft, it is not clear how much data was taken or destroyed. Still, the case illustrates the ease with which Internet-connected computers - even those of sophisticated corporate and government networks - can be penetrated, and also the difficulty in tracing those responsible.

Government investigators and other computer experts sometimes watched helplessly while monitoring the activity, unable to secure some systems as quickly as others were found compromised.

The case remains under investigation. But attention is focused on a 16-year-old in Uppsala, Sweden, who was charged in March with breaking into university computers in his hometown. Investigators in the American break-ins ultimately traced the intrusions back to the Uppsala university network.

The F.B.I. and the Swedish police said they were working together on the case, and one F.B.I. official said efforts in Britain and other countries were aimed at identifying accomplices. "As a result of recent actions" by law enforcement, an F.B.I. statement said, "the criminal activity appears to have stopped."

The Swedish authorities are examining computer equipment confiscated from the teenager, who was released to his parents' care. The matter is being treated as a juvenile case.

Investigators who described the break-ins did so on condition that they not be identified, saying that their continuing efforts could be jeopardized if their names, or in some cases their organizations, were disclosed.

Computer experts said the break-ins did not represent a fundamentally new kind of attack. Rather, they said, the primary intruder was particularly clever in the way he organized a system for automating the theft of computer log-ins and passwords, conducting attacks through a complicated maze of computers connected to the Internet in as many as seven countries.

The intrusions were first publicly reported in April 2004 when several of the nation's supercomputer laboratories acknowledged break-ins into computers connected to the TeraGrid, a high-speed data network serving those labs, which conduct unclassified research into a range of scientific problems.

The theft of the Cisco software was discovered last May when a small team of security specialists at the supercomputer laboratories, trying to investigate the intrusions there, watched electronically as passwords to Cisco's computers were compromised.

After discovering the passwords' theft, the security officials notified Cisco officials of the potential threat. But the company's software was taken almost immediately, before the company could respond.

Shortly after being stolen last May, a portion of the Cisco programming instructions appeared on a Russian Web site. With such information, sophisticated intruders would potentially be able to compromise security on router computers of Cisco customers running the affected programs.

There is no evidence that such use has occurred. "Cisco believes that the improper publication of this information does not create increased risk to customers' networks," the company said last week.

The crucial element in the password thefts that provided access at Cisco and elsewhere was the intruder's use of a corrupted version of a standard software program, SSH. The program is used in many computer research centers for a variety of tasks, ranging from administration of remote computers to data transfer over the Internet.

The intruder probed computers for vulnerabilities that allowed the installation of the corrupted program, known as a Trojan horse, in place of the legitimate program.

In many cases the corrupted program is distributed from a single computer and shared by tens or hundreds of users at a computing site, effectively making it possible for someone unleashing it to reel in large numbers of log-ins and passwords as they are entered.

Once passwords to the remote systems were obtained, an intruder could log in and use a variety of software "tool kits" to upgrade his privileges - known as gaining root access. That makes it possible to steal information and steal more passwords.

The operation took advantage of the vulnerability of Internet-connected computers whose security software had not been brought up to date.

In the Cisco case, the passwords to Cisco computers were sent from a compromised computer by a legitimate user unaware of the Trojan horse. The intruder captured the passwords and then used them to enter Cisco's computers and steal the programming instructions, according to the security investigators.

A security expert involved in the investigation speculated that the Cisco programming instructions were stolen as part of an effort to establish the intruder's credibility in online chat rooms he frequented.

Last May, the security investigators were able to install surveillance software on the University of Minnesota computer network when they discovered that an intruder was using it as a staging base for hundreds of Internet attacks. During a two-day period they watched as the intruder tried to break into more than 100 locations on the Internet and was successful in gaining root access to more than 50.

When possible, they alerted organizations that were victims of attacks, which would then shut out the intruder and patch their systems.

As the attacks were first noted in April 2004, a researcher at the University of California, Berkeley, found that her own computer had been invaded. The researcher, Wren Montgomery, began to receive taunting e-mail messages from someone going by the name Stakkato - now believed by the authorities to have been the primary intruder - who also boasted of breaking in to computers at military installations.

"Patuxent River totally closed their networks," he wrote in a message sent that month, referring to the Patuxent River Naval Air Station in Maryland. "They freaked out when I said I stole F-18 blueprints."

A Navy spokesman at Patuxent River, James Darcy, said Monday said that "if there was some sort of attempted breach on those addresses, it was not significant enough of an action to have generated a report."

Monte Marlin, a spokeswoman for the White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico, whose computers Stakkato also claimed to have breached, confirmed Monday that there had been "unauthorized access" but said, "The only information obtained was weather forecast information."

The messages also claimed an intrusion into seven computers serving NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. A computer security expert investigating the case confirmed that computers at several NASA sites, including the propulsion laboratory, had been breached. A spokesman said the laboratory did not comment on computer breaches.

Ms. Montgomery, a graduate student in geophysics, said that in a fit of anger, Stakkato had erased her computer file directory and had destroyed a year and a half of her e-mail stored on a university computer.

She guessed that she might have provoked him by referring to him as a "quaint hacker" in a communication with system administrators, which he monitored.

"It was inconvenient," she said of the loss of her e-mail, "and it's the thing that seems to happen when you have malicious teenage hackers running around with no sense of ethics."
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/10/te...rtner=homepage


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Hackers Did Not Hijack Google

The most likely explanation for Google's outage was that "somebody in charge of Google's DNS did something dumb ... (it) doesn't mean that the entire DNS system has been compromised," said Tom Liston of the SANS Internet Storm Center.

Google and security experts said Monday a brief weekend outage of the Internet search giant's website was not due to a hacker attack, despite fears it was linked to a new type of Web hijacking.

"It was not a hacking or a security issue," a statement from Google said.

"Google's global properties were unavailable for a short period of time. We have remedied the problem and access to Google has been restored worldwide."

For a brief time, however, security experts were abuzz over the possibility the outage was linked to a so-called "poisoning" of the Internet domain name system (DNS) -- a growing security threat.

For several weeks, experts have been concerned about the threat in which a hacker can direct users from an authentic website to an alternative or fake site. And the concerns grew when some Google users reported they were redirected to another site called "SoGoSearch."

"Google went bye-bye for 15 minutes. Or perhaps it was an hour. It depends on who you ask," said Tom Liston of the SANS Internet Storm Center, a site maintained by academic and private sector security specialists.

"But what of the mysterious 'redirects' to other search pages?"

Liston said some computer systems are programmed to search for an alternate site if it gets no response from the initial effort, and ended up with the site google.com.net, owned by SoGoSearch.

"If an overzealous browser tried to 'fix' an unavailable Google.com, it's quite likely that you could end up looking at the SoGo search engine," he said.

Google did not elaborate on the cause of the malfunction. But Liston said the most likely explanation was that "somebody in charge of Google's DNS did something dumb ... (it) doesn't mean that the entire DNS system has been compromised."
http://www.newsfactor.com/news//stor...d=023001J61OHT


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Flaw Found In VPN Crypto Security
Dan Ilett

A flaw in a popular VPN technology could allow hackers to obtain a text version of encrypted communications with only "moderate effort," a tech security body has warned.

Britain's national emergency response team, the National Infrastructure Security Coordination Centre, issued a serious warning this week the safety of virtual private networks that use IPsec encryption and tunneling to connect remote workers to corporate networks.

The flaw, which the NISCC rates as "high" risk, makes it possible for an attacker to intercept IP packets traveling between two IPsec devices. They could then modify the encapsulation security payload--a subprotocol that encrypts the data being transported. This could ultimately expose this data to an unauthorized third party.

On its Web site, NISCC stated: "By making careful modifications to selected portions of the payload of the outer packet, an attacker can effect controlled changes to the header of the inner (encrypted) packet…If these messages can be intercepted by an attacker, then plaintext data is revealed."

The NISCC includes a number of solutions to this issue in its advisory.
http://news.com.com/Flaw+found+in+VP...3-5705185.html


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Two Plead Guilty To $530,000 In Counterfeit Software Sales
AP

Two Silicon Valley business owners pleaded guilty Monday to trafficking in counterfeit software valued at more than $500,000 and promised to pay Microsoft Corp. more than $380,000 in restitution.

Perry Zheng, 51, of Cupertino, and William Jin, 44, of Sunnyvale, told U.S. District Court Judge Ronald M. Whyte they possessed and sold $531,961 worth of counterfeit Microsoft software. The men sold the programs through PTI Inc., a San Jose-based software distribution business.

Each faces a maximum of 10 years imprisonment and a $2 million fine. Whyte will sentence Zheng and Jin a hearing scheduled for June 20.

As part of their plea agreements, the men agreed to forfeit $27,550 that they made from selling counterfeit software to undercover law enforcement officers and pay $387,228 to Redmond, Wash.-based Microsoft.

Troubles for Zheng and Jin began in 2002, when police obtained a search warrant and found $116,000 worth of counterfeit products found in a storage locker, triggering a two-year investigation by the FBI, IRS and other agencies.
http://www.siliconvalley.com/mld/sil...l/11604721.htm


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Three British Men Jailed Over Software Piracy Ring
AP

Three British men who gained no money by helping crack security codes to run one of the largest international software piracy rings on the Internet were sentenced Friday to jail terms ranging from 18 months to 2 1/2 years.

The three men -- plus a fourth who received a suspended jail sentence -- were behind the British end of DrinkOrDie, an international code cracking group that U.S. and British authorities believe cost the software industry billions of dollars in sales every year.

The group, which gained notoriety by releasing a pirated copy of the Windows 95 operating system two weeks before Microsoft Corp. released it, was shut down by authorities in the United States, Australia, Britain and other countries following raids in 2002. More than 20 people in the United States were convicted the same year.

British prosecutors said that the four men sentenced Friday were not involved in the syndicate for money, instead cracking security codes to release the software on the Internet for free.

``They may see themselves as latter-day Robin Hoods, stealing from the rich to give to the poor, but in reality it is a cover for fraud,'' prosecutor Bruce Houlder told the Old Bailey Criminal Court during the trial. ``Computers are their universe. They live and breathe a world of computer software.''

Banker Alex Bell, 29, was sentenced to 2 1/2 years in jail, and Steven Dowd, who is 39 and unemployed, was sentenced to two years after they were both found guilty of conspiracy to defraud at a trial earlier this year. IT manager Mark Vent was sentenced to 18 months after pleading guilty to conspiracy to defraud.

Andrew Eardley, a former school IT worker, was given an 18 month sentence, suspended for two years. The suspension means that with good behavior, he may not serve the jail sentence.

Judge Paul Focke said he had imposed the jail terms as a deterrent to other potential Internet pirates.

``The activities of all four of you struck at the heart of the software trade,'' he said. ``The loss of software to owners through piracy is staggering. Also, the effect on related businesses and the lives of employees can be rendered catastrophic.''

Focke said that an estimated third of software being used in Britain was pirated and resulted in a loss of revenue that was impossible to quantify.

Focke also dismissed the claims the four men intended to provide free access to everyone.

``Your motivation was not only the benefit of free access,'' he said. ``It was to enhance your personal reputation and to be a member of an organization at the leading edge of technology, crossing the legal boundary.''
http://www.siliconvalley.com/mld/sil...l/11581750.htm


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Estonian Lawmakers OK Internet Voting
AP

Lawmakers authorized Internet voting Thursday for Tallinn's local elections in October as the first step toward a nationwide system.

Voters will need an electronic ID card, an ID-card reader and Internet access. There are plans to use the system also in the next parliamentary elections in 2007.

The approved bill was initiated by the Parliament's constitutional affairs committee.

The national electoral committee has conducted trials since early this year.

Dubbed E-Stonia by some, Estonia has the most advanced information infrastructure of any formerly communist eastern European state.

It is estimated that nearly 1 million of Estonia's 1.4 million residents already have an official electronic ID card. The ID cards, launched in 2002, include small microchips and offer secure e-signing through a reader attached to their computers.

Internet voting has been conducted in U.S. primary elections, British local tax votes and Swiss local referendums. But last year, the Pentagon scrapped a trial that would have let as many as 100,000 military and overseas citizens from seven states vote online in the November general elections.

The Pentagon announcement came two weeks after outside security experts urged the program's cancellation in a scathing report. Four experts on a 10-member Pentagon peer-review committee said Internet voting cannot be made secure using today's technologies because the Internet is inherently prone to hacking and viruses.
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories...CTION=BUSINESS


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Singaporean Shuts Blog, Apologises After Libel Threat
Geert De Clercq

A Singapore student said on Monday he has shut down his blog and apologised unreservedly after a government agency threatened to sue for defamation. Chen Jiahao, a 23-year-old graduate student in the United States, told Reuters he closed down his personal Web site after A*STAR, a Singapore government agency focusing on science and research, threatened legal action for what the agency said were untrue and serious accusations.

International freedom of speech and media advocates have criticised the agency's methods.

The U.S.-based Committee to Protect Journalists said last week it was alarmed that the threat of defamation lawsuits was being used to inhibit criticism of the government in cyberspace, much as it has in Singapore's traditional media.

Chen said he had removed all material from his site and posted an apology on April 26 after receiving e-mails from the agency's chief. He added that the agency told him last week his apology was insincere and that they wanted a new apology.

On Sunday he posted the new apology on his "Caustic Soda" blog, saying "I unreservedly apologise to A*STAR, its Chairman Mr. Philip Yeo, and its executive officers for the distress and embarrassment caused to them."

"They sent me an e-mail with these words," Chen told Reuters on Monday by telephone from the United States, where he studies chemical physics at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

A*STAR's Yeo said in a statement on Monday he accepted Chen's apology and considered the matter closed. "We wish him well. My invitation to Mr. Chen to meet for tea in the fall still remains," Yeo said.

Paris-based Reporters without Borders said the case highlighted the lack of free expression in Singapore, which is among the 20 lowest-scoring countries in the organisation's worldwide press freedom index.

"Chen criticised some of A*Star's policies but there was nothing defamatory in what he wrote," Julien Pain, head of Reporters without Borders' Internet freedom desk, told Reuters.

A*STAR said in a statement that it recognised the value of a diversity of views and welcomed that in all media. "But the particular public blog had statements which went way beyond fair comment." It did not elaborate.

Bloggers are generally not journalists, but some of the thousands of private online blogs -- short for Web logs -- on the Internet have gained political relevance. The campaign for the May 5 election in Britain saw an explosion of blogs, much like in last year's U.S. presidential election.

"We are troubled that the (Singapore) government has raised the spectre of costly legal action to chill commentary on the Internet," Ann Cooper, Executive Director of the Committee to Protect Journalists, was quoted on a CPJ Web site as saying.

Singapore-based politicians as well as international media organisations have paid large amounts of damages in libel cases brought by senior government figures.

Singapore leaders have defended their use of defamation lawsuits, saying that such actions are necessary to safeguard their reputation.
http://uk.news.yahoo.com/050509/80/fidhf.html


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Eminem's Label Agrees To Settlement Over Apple Ad
AP

Rapper Eminem's music label has agreed to an undisclosed financial settlement with Apple Computer Inc. in a lawsuit over copyright infringement claims.

In February 2004, Ferndale-based Eight Mile Style filed a lawsuit in U.S. District Court in Detroit against MTV, Apple, MTV's parent Viacom Inc. and advertising agency TBWA/
Chiat/Day. The recording company claimed Apple used one of the rapper's hit songs in an advertisement without permission.

``The parties were able to reach an amicable resolution,'' Howard Hertz, a lawyer for Eight Mile Style and Eminem, said Monday.

Elizabeth McNamara, a lawyer for MTV and Viacom, said Monday that the case was ``amicably resolved.'' Both declined to elaborate. A lawyer for Apple declined comment.

Apple featured a 10-year-old singing Eminem's Oscar-winning song ``Lose Yourself'' in an ad on MTV for the computer company's iPod music player and iTunes music service.

The television ad appeared many times during three months beginning in July 2003 and on Apple's Web site, despite the fact that the computer company had unsuccessfully sought Eminem's permission for the campaign.

Eminem, 32, who was born Marshall Mathers III, attended high school in Warren and now lives in the Detroit suburb of Rochester Hills.
http://www.siliconvalley.com/mld/sil...l/11610997.htm


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Apple Plugs Security Hole In iTunes
Dawn Kawamoto

Apple Computer has patched a flaw in iTunes that could open the door to a remote attack on a person's computer.

The fix was released as part of the company's iTunes 4.8 update on Tuesday. Earlier versions of the music software have a vulnerability within MPEG-4 file parsing, Apple said in a security advisory. A person who accesses a malicious MPEG-4 file could trigger a buffer overflow exploit, which could then allow an attacker to gain remote control of their computer without their knowledge or crash iTunes.

"This is considered highly critical because it doesn't require significant user interaction," said Thomas Kristensen, chief technology officer at Secunia, which released an advisory on the security hole on Tuesday. "If you visit a malicious Web site and have an MPEG-4 data stream handled by an iTunes application, you could be affected."

The iTunes update is designed to improve the validation checks that are used when MPEG-4 files are loaded. It is available for Mac OS X, Microsoft Windows XP and Microsoft Windows 2000.

Apple's move follows the release last week of 20 fixes for holes in its Mac OS X operating system software.

The company plugged an earlier hole in iTunes in January in its version 4.7 update to the software, fixing a flaw in the handling of playlists, Kristensen said. That earlier vulnerability could also be exploited to terminate iTunes and execute arbitrary code.
http://news.com.com/Apple+plugs+secu...3-5701556.html


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I.B.M. Expected to Buy Start-Up to Advance Open-Source Strategy
Steve Lohr

I.B.M. is increasingly betting that it can build a big business around open-source software. The latest step in that strategy is the purchase of Gluecode Software, an open-source start-up.

The Gluecode acquisition, which I.B.M. plans to announce today, is small in size but significant in the evolution of the company's plans in open-source software, according to industry analysts.

The two companies did not disclose the price of the deal, but analysts estimated it at less than $100 million.

I.B.M. has long supported open-source software like the Linux operating system and the Apache Web server. And it has made money indirectly, mostly by selling computers that run open-source software or selling I.B.M. proprietary software that works with Linux or Apache.

But Gluecode is a stand-alone open-source business, and the purchase will give I.B.M. a stake in the lower-end market for server software for running business applications.

Gluecode, based in El Segundo, Calif., sells support and service for an open-source server, called Geronimo, that is used by companies for applications including customer service, electronic commerce Web sites and work-sharing Web sites.

I.B.M. offers its own proprietary server, WebSphere, for business applications. It does not see Gluecode and Geronimo as potential competition in that area, but rather as a way to enter new markets.

WebSphere, I.B.M. executives say, is built to handle advanced computing tasks like stock trading and banking, and its transaction-processing engine borrows from the company's mainframe technology.

But WebSphere may be too big and too costly for some customers, I.B.M. says, like departments of large companies or small and medium-size companies with fewer than 1,000 employees.

"This widens our market," said Steven Mills, the senior vice president for software. "Some customers may later move up to WebSphere if they choose to go in that direction. But if they don't, they don't. This is its own business."

I.B.M. executives say they are not worried. Yet open-source projects, in which programmers collaborate to improve the code, often grow and the software becomes more powerful and reliable.

"It's inevitable that there will be overlap with WebSphere," said Amy Wohl, an independent technology analyst in Narberth, Pa., "but that will probably not be for a while."

The Gluecode acquisition can also be seen as a defensive tactic for I.B.M, which ran the risk of ceding the lower end of the business application server market to others, like JBoss, another open-source start-up, which has grown rapidly recently.

Gluecode was founded in 2003 and, in March 2004 received $5 million from two venture capital firms, Palomar Ventures and Rustic Canyon Partners.

"We're very complementary to the strategy that WebSphere has now," said Chet Kapoor, chief executive of Gluecode. "They sell software at the high end, and we have a support and subscription business model for small and medium-sized businesses and departmental projects in big companies."
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/10/te...gy/10blue.html


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DVD Format Talks Lean To Sony Technology-Source

Talks between Japan's Sony Corp. and Toshiba Corp. to unify next-generation DVD formats are leaning toward a disc structure supported by Sony, a source close to the matter said on Tuesday.

Sony and Toshiba, heading rival groups, have waged a three-year war to have their new technology standards adopted by the industry and gain pole position in the multi-billion-dollar markets for DVD players, PC drives and optical discs.

But the companies said last month they were in talks to develop a common standard, in a move to avoid VHS/Betamax-like dual formats that could discourage consumers from shifting to advanced discs and stifle the industry's growth.

Sony's Blu-ray technology is backed by a group including Dell Inc., Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd., Philips Electronics NV and Matsushita Electric Industrial Co. Ltd., maker of Panasonic products.

The source said a unified format based on Blu-ray's disc structure was being discussed in the talks, held between Sony, Toshiba and Matsushita.

He added, however, it was unclear whether and when the two sides would reach a final agreement on a common format.

The Nihon Keizai newspaper said earlier that Sony and Toshiba were in final talks eyeing a new format based on Blu-ray's disc structure and Toshiba's software for efficient data transfer and copyright protection.

In Blu-ray, a layer to hold data is put on the surface of a substrate and covered by thin protective layers, while in HD DVD discs, which are supported by Toshiba, a memory layer is sandwiched between two substrates.

The two sides agree that it would be best for consumers to have a common format, but shifting to a rival standard could mean a delay in product development and the commercial launch, making unification difficult.

Toshiba, which supports HD DVD technology along with NEC Corp. and Sanyo Electric Co. Ltd., said in a statement nothing had been decided on the unified format.

At the core of both formats are blue lasers, which have a shorter wavelength than the red lasers used in current DVD equipment, allowing discs to store data at the higher densities needed for high-definition movies and television.

Member companies in the Blu-ray camp are set to meet in Tokyo next week to discuss technological and promotional matters.

Shares in Sony were down 0.74 percent at 4,000 yen in afternoon trade, while Toshiba fell 1.1 percent to 448 yen. Both underperformed the Tokyo stock market's electric machinery index, which was down 0.22 percent.
http://today.reuters.com/news/newsAr...FORMATS-DC.XML


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Let's Make Some Magic, With No Strings Attached
Virginia Postrel




WIRELESS technology has always had a glamorous aura. The word "glamour," after all, originally referred to a magic spell, an illusion that makes things look different from what they really are.

Wireless technology does just that, through means as occult to most people as any witchcraft. It bestows on ordinary mortals the power to pluck from the atmosphere unheard voices and unseen images, whether broadcasted or recorded. Wireless communication creates the illusion of proximity, immediacy, even intimacy. It transports us from our real surroundings.

Glamour isn't only about movie stars or sex appeal. The theatrical, imaginative process we now call glamour thrives wherever something evokes an audience's desires and makes them seem attainable, or at least imaginable. Through a special combination of grace, mystery and seeming perfection, a glamorous person, setting or object leads us to project ourselves into a better world. Glamour's idealism and ease offer escape from the limitations of our own lives.

That, of course, is also the promise of wireless technology - to cut the ties that literally bind us to our desks, our homes, our mundane existences. Marketers take that promise and try to distill it into glamorous images that will inspire us to take the wireless plunge. It isn't an easy task.

"How do you communicate what wireless does, the freedom wireless gives you to take all this cool stuff with you in life?" said Michael Linton, the chief marketing officer for Best Buy stores.

To promote its wireless products, Best Buy takes a marionette's point of view, imagining a life unbound by strings. "I'm free, I'm free," the marionette sings as he skips across a lawn with his laptop computer in a TV commercial. The marionette is goofy: "We don't need to be glamorous to sell glamorous stuff," Mr. Linton said, but by granting the puppet's most profound wish, the commercials suggest that we, too, can transcend the everyday. Wireless technology will set us free.

"The first wireless product with glamour would have to be the pocket transistor radio," said David Hall, who runs Ephemeranow.com, an online museum of midcentury advertising images. In the 1960's, the tiny radios came to symbolize the freedom of youth. The 1966 movie "The Endless Summer" follows two surfers traveling the world with their boards and, almost as prominently, their transistor radio.

Giving surfing glamour a futuristic twist, a current commercial for Intel's Centrino wireless technology shows a Blue Man Group member zipping by on a hoverboard. "See what it's like to fly" it promises.

Wireless technology used to take seaside imagery a little more literally. For portable computing, a single glamorous image was until recently an advertising and editorial cliché: the laptop at the beach. This picture evoked an alluring mix of escapism and productivity. With the right technology, it suggested, you could do your work and have your fun at the same time.

The more people actually use laptops, however, the less compelling that image becomes. Experience destroys the fantasy. Laptop users know that bright sunlight makes their screens nearly impossible to read, and they also know that working at the beach is still working. Laptops and cellphones make escape harder, not easier.

In the real world, said David Olsen, a photographer in Hawaii, "I have yet to see anybody using a laptop at the beach." He has taken stock shots of men and women using computers and cellphones on the shores of Hawaii, including a particularly glamorous photo of a woman working in a hammock at sunset. But, as beautiful and evocative as these images are, the photographs have had few sales. A laptop at the beach simply looks too much like work.

One of the best places to find wireless glamour isn't in ads for high-tech products. It's in images of stylish lamps in catalogs for companies like Crate & Barrel and Chiasso. Whether through careful composition or a little digital magic, the lamps seem to have no cords. Like bills piled on the kitchen counter or muddy footprints on the floor, the utilitarian realism of electrical wires would break the spell of domestic perfection. Glamour's grace is the art that conceals art.

What is truly glamorous about wireless technology is the fantasy that it requires no wires. Portable they may be, but all those laptops, cellphones, music players and digital assistants have to be plugged in at least occasionally, whether to gather new data or to recharge their batteries.

If the power plants black out, so, eventually, will your wireless gadgets. Similarly, while wireless networks may connect the Internet to your laptop, some sort of cable almost always brings the Internet to the local network.

At the 2003 TED conference (for Technology Entertainment and Design), Jeffrey P. Bezos, the Amazon.com chief executive, gave a speech about the early stages of technology. He drew laughs recounting how the breakthrough technology of 1908 - the electric washing machine - required running a cord from its typical spot on the front porch to the home's light socket. The electrical outlet hadn't been invented.

Now we have outlets, but our breakthrough technologies are still a long way from the sleek glamour of our imagination. "This is what it looks like under my desk," Mr. Bezos said, flashing a photo of a jungle of about two-dozen cables, some emerging from the wall, others swooping down from unseen origins. All those cables are the backstage reality behind the glamour of even the most wireless high-tech life. "We really haven't progressed that much since 1908," he said. "It's a total, total mess."

We may not have cut the cords, but we can still dream.
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/04/te...04postrel.html


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Bandwidth Advance Hints at Future Beyond Wi-Fi
John Markoff

ONE barrier that has held back the much-hyped convergence of the computer and consumer electronics industries has been the tangle of wires that is needed to connect the cascade of home video, audio, Internet and game gadgets.

Now the drive to unwire the living room is about to get a push.

In March, the Federal Communications Commission took a significant step toward breaking an industry deadlock over setting a single standard for a new wireless technology called ultrawideband, or UWB.

While traditional radio technologies have transmitted and received analog signals only on specific frequencies, UWB uses inexpensive computing power to send short radio pulses across much of the radio spectrum. Because it does not use a single frequency, UWB offers several advantages, including the capacity to send high volumes of information quickly and the ability to share frequencies and resist interference. It's like breaking a truck's cargo into loads small enough to be carried on bicycles that can weave through a traffic jam.

The technology's potential, as yet unproven, is that it will be able to increase the capacity of the radio spectrum drastically by allowing users to share with existing licensed users.

Many computer and consumer electronics executives think that UWB will become the next big thing in the second half of this decade, a convenient alternative for all the cables that are now used to connect everything from high-definition television monitors to stereo speakers and anything in between. Moreover, some experts think that UWB also has a future as a wireless networking technology that will eventually replace the now ubiquitous Wi-Fi wireless standard.

"I look at UWB as the third wave of wireless at the edge," said Bill Tai, a partner at the venture capital firm Charles River Ventures and an investor in Staccato Communications in San Diego, one of many start-up companies that are trying to capitalize on the potential radio spectrum bonanza created by the F.C.C.'s approval of the new technology.

"The potential is that there will be no cables hanging from your shiny new flat-panel monitor that will be attached to the wall," Mr. Tai said.

Staccato is one of more than 40 companies that have joined with the WiMedia Alliance, an industry consortium led by Intel that is pressing for a standard that will serve as a wireless alternative to the popular USB cable standard.

Until recently, the WiMedia Alliance has been engaged in a standards war with the UWB Forum, an opposing consortium of more than 100 companies, led by Motorola, that has been pushing for an alternative technical approach to UWB.

With the F.C.C. approval, both sides have declared a temporary truce, and it is now certain that the first products will begin to emerge later this year or early next year.

That has led many in the industry, like Mr. Tai, to be increasingly optimistic that UWB technologies will move into consumer applications more rapidly than the two previous standards, Bluetooth and Wi-Fi.

"This should be a very freeing experience," Mr. Tai said. "This may cross the chasm between consumer electronics and home PC."

And that is truly what the industry is dreaming of. With the widespread availability of UWB, it would be possible to buy a new high-definition television, plug it in and instantly receive a video stream from a DVD playing in a personal computer that was set up in the study, not the living room, without connecting any wires. In the future, it may be possible to transmit wirelessly two multiple HDTV signals simultaneously. A computer in the study, say, can send one program to a television in the living room while receiving and storing another program coming from a set-top box elsewhere in the house.

Still, other technology designers have even broader ambitions for UWB. Rajeev Krishnamoorthy, the founder and chief executive of TZero Technologies, in Sunnyvale, Calif., helped lead the development of the first Wi-Fi 802.11b chipsets at Agere Systems as an engineer in the 1990's.

Mr. Krishnamoorthy said he had set out on that project when he saw that the F.C.C. in 1996 had made available a band of unlicensed radio spectrum to be used freely.

"I looked at their decision on UWB a couple of years ago and I thought, 'déjà vu,' " he said.

While many of the UWB companies are aiming at the market for replacing cables wirelessly, TZero wants to build a technology with much higher speed and greater range. As a result, the company will have to meet vexing technical challenges to make a system that is more immune to interference, which could range from competing transmitters to hair dryers.

Though the challenges are significant, so are the opportunities. Today's Wi-Fi systems are limited to about 100 megabits of data a second, a rate that will realistically support no more than a single high-definition television video stream in the home, whereas UWB's capacity is 500 megabits and faster.

The future, as Mr. Krishnamoorthy envisions it, will include wireless home networks that will need to simultaneously interconnect multiple screens, computers and audio and video streams.

"This is obvious, everyone can see the potential," he said.

What is yet to be proven by the nascent UWB industry, researchers say, is whether the new technology will be able to share the radio spectrum with existing users.

"My concern is still interference," said Laurence Milstein, a professor of electrical and computer engineering at the Center for Wireless Communications at the University of California, San Diego. "The original logic of UWB is that you spread over wide frequency and if you transmit at a low enough power then you won't interfere with other users," Mr. Milstein said.

While it is possible that the industry will be able to reach that goal, it has yet to prove that it can be done without creating the radio equivalent of a traffic jam, he said.

The answer will begin to emerge in the next year as the first UWB products reach the market. The future of the digital living room lies in the balance.
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/04/te...04markoff.html


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You're Ice Cold at a Hot Spot: 7 Reasons Why
David Pogue

YOU'VE bought a wirelessly equipped laptop. You sit down in an airport, hotel or coffee shop where there's supposed to be a hot spot - an invisible bubble of radio waves that lets laptops get onto the Internet at high speed without cables. A message pops up on your screen indicating that the laptop has indeed detected that it's in a hot spot. That's when you discover that, in fact, you can't get online.

So much for the wireless life.

As it turns out, the distance between your wireless laptop and the Internet is a lot longer than you might have imagined. In between is a labyrinth of software, settings and people that often deprives road warriors of the pleasure that a wireless laptop is supposed to provide: instant, hassle-free connections.

What can go wrong? Let us count the ways.

Obstacle 1

You forgot to open your browser. In an ideal world, here's how hot-spot hopping would work: You open your laptop. A dialogue box (on the Mac) or a taskbar balloon (Windows) announces that it has found a hot spot. You click Connect, and you're ready to start e-mailing or surfing the Web.

And indeed, at many conferences, libraries, hotel lobbies and schools, that's exactly how it goes. Life is sweet.

At commercial hot spots, though - the ones where you have to pay for daily or monthly use of the network - you can't just open your e-mail or chat program and start communicating. Instead, you must first open your Web browser, like Internet Explorer, Safari or Firefox. (Some free hot spots require you to first open your Web browser, too.) If you don't realize that a Web browser must be the first stop - even if all you want to do is check your e-mail - your wireless adventure will be very, very short.

Once you open your browser, you see a Web page representing the operator of the wireless network. At Starbucks, Kinko's and many airports, for example, a T-Mobile Web page appears; at many hotels and other airports, it's a Wayport page. Here's where you plug in your credit-card number; or, if you have an existing account, sign in.

It's worth noting, by the way, that the wireless companies often have roaming agreements. If you have an AT&T or British Telecom wireless Internet account, for example, but find yourself at a T-Mobile hot spot, just choose your company's name from the Roaming or Partner pop-up menu.

At this point, clicking the Connect button opens a connection to the Internet. You can now use your Web browser, e-mail program, chat software and other functions that require your machine to be online.

Obstacle 2

You don't have a home page. Actually, it's not enough to open your Web browser. You have to try to visit a Web page. Some people have set up their Web browsers to open to an empty screen rather than a preferred starting page; their laptops won't make the connection. If you're staring at a blank page, try to visit a Web page - any Web page - to nudge your machine onto the network. The wireless company's page will appear instead of the page you requested.

Obstacle 3

The hot spot isn't for public use. Occasionally, your laptop will "see" a wireless network and connect to it, but you won't be able to pull up a Web page or send e-mail. In this case, you have stumbled onto a network that's intended for internal use, not for the public. Whoever set up the access point (that is, the wireless transmitter) has deliberately turned off the feature, called DNS serving, that can connect outsiders to the Internet.

It's also possible that you have encountered a wireless network that's not connected to the Internet at all. It's just a circle of computers connected to each other, a closed network created so that some friends can play a game against one another, or so that conference attendees can chat among themselves during a talk, for example.

If you're technically inclined, here's a geeky but quick way to confirm that this is the problem: Inspect your laptop's current I.P. address (Internet Protocol; that is, its Internet address). On the Mac, open the program in your Utilities folder called Network Utility. In Windows, choose Run in the Start menu; type "cmd" and press Enter; type ipconfig /all and press Enter. Either way, if you have joined a closed network, you'll see an I.P. address beginning with 169.254 - for example, 169.254.1.5.

The bad news: "It's like a gentle 'Keep Out' sign," said Brian Jepson, who edits books on wireless technology and co-wrote "Linux Unwired." "You'll have to find some other way to get online."

Obstacle 4

You need a password. These days, many wireless networks don't let you online without a password, whether they're free or commercial hot spots. (You'll know when a password box appears on your screen.)

Sometimes the password is yours for the asking. Sometimes you get it when you pay, for example, a hotel desk clerk for access. And sometimes a company has installed the password just to keep riffraff like you off its private network. Of course, most network designers hide such networks' signals altogether, so that your laptop doesn't even discover them.

Obstacle 5

The access point is broken. If your laptop sees the hot spot but can't connect you to the Internet, another possibility is that the transmitter (the access point) is configured incorrectly. If you can find somebody in authority - whoever's behind the hotel desk, for example - you may be able to persuade that person to hit the Reset button on the access point, which may do the trick. In some cases, there's even a toll-free number stickered to the access point, bearing the name of the geek who sets up wireless networks for this particular chain of hotels or coffee shops. That person, sitting in a cubicle miles away, may know what to do.

Obstacle 6

You have a conscience. Suppose your laptop cheerfully reports that it has found a hot spot called Default or LinkSys. (Those are the typical names of newly purchased wireless access points, at least until you give them more creative names.)

Now, in a typical wireless coffee shop, the hot spot usually bears the coffee shop's name. "Ask the person behind the counter," Mr. Jepson said. "If they look at you funny, you know the hot spot probably isn't theirs."

In this case, some hapless individual's private Internet bubble is probably bleeding through the walls - somebody who didn't, or couldn't, change the hot spot's default name. The only obstacle is the ethical one: should you enjoy a free connection by exploiting somebody's cluelessness?

(If you have deliberately set up a hot spot for the convenience of passersby, save your visitors confusion by naming it something like "Dave's Free Hot Spot.")

Obstacle 7

You're in Boston. If your laptop discovers a free network called the South Station Wi-Fi Bubble, you must be in the South Station train terminal in Boston. You can get onto the Web, all right - but it's not the big one, the one you're used to. It's a very tiny Web indeed, one whose few pages are dedicated to South Station, its history and its characters. You have stumbled onto an electronic community-building experiment established by Michael Oh, founder of a local wireless consulting company.

That doesn't mean you can't get onto the big Internet instead. You can also hop onto the commercial wireless network that's available in South Station. Assuming, of course, that everything else goes well.
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/04/te...l/04pogue.html


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Spreading the Fun Around
J. D. Biersdorfer

DIGITAL media is here to stay, whether it's music, photographs or movies. Unfortunately, the digital files tend to stay on the computer, which in most homes is in a spot more suitable for a single person rather than for blasting out songs for the whole house to enjoy, gathering the family together to watch a movie or showing off vacation slides to Grandma.

"We've lost that social element," said Anthony Fonzo, marketing manager for home-entertainment networking products at Philips Electronics, about how the digital multimedia boom is shifting people from shared experiences to more isolated activities. With its Connected Planet product line, Philips is among the many electronics companies making devices that help bridge the world of old and new audio-video technology.

So how do you get the social element back without stringing cables all over? One way is to use a wireless home network to tap into the content on the computer. With some hardware and patience, you can link it to your home-entertainment system and play the songs, videos and slide shows stored there.

The first step is to have a wireless home network in place. These work like radio stations: the main transmitter broadcasts a signal that a radio can receive, but instead of pop songs, the transmitter is broadcasting a network signal. Instead of a transmitter tower, your home network sends out the signal with a wireless router, a small box with little antennas.

Each computer connected to the network has a wireless network card installed, acting as the radio receiver, pulling in the signal.

Using your home network to play music files or view photos and video on your home-entertainment system requires adding a link (often called a wireless music player or wireless media player) that lets the stereo and TV communicate with the network and the computer. The devices vary, depending on whether you want to do something simple, like playing MP3 files through the stereo, say, or you want sound and pictures.

Cranking Up the Music

One way to free the digital music on your PC is to use a wireless music player device like the Roku Soundbridge or Netgear's MP 101 Wireless Music Player to link the home network to the home-entertainment center and "stream" the songs over your network's airwaves to the stereo.

Many network music players have their own wireless card so they can receive the signal from your network. Each player also has jacks on it so that can connect it to an audio jack on your stereo receiver. Depending on your stereo's connections, you can use standard audio cables with the red and white RCA plugs or the newer digital fiber-optic cables to hook up the player.

Once you install and configure the player's software on your computer, the device can see your music files. Most players come with remote controls to select songs and playlists displayed on the device's screen. Once you press "play," the song streams over the network, through the wireless music player connected to the stereo and out the speakers. Songs converted to MP3 or other digital formats usually do not sound as lush as they do on a CD, but quantity may trump quality.

Bypassing the PC

Besides linking devices, you can take the computer out of the picture entirely. Audio systems like the Wireless Music Center WACS700 from Philips Electronics, due out later this summer, take over the CD-conversion, wireless networking and file-storage chores from the PC.

The Wireless Music Center can store the tracks from up to 750 discs on its own 40-gigabyte hard drive. It can join an existing wireless network or form its own, and comes with a central unit and one remote Wireless Music Station, a stand-alone player that connects wirelessly to the central unit to stream the music stored on the hard drive.

Slide Shows and Video

You can also get a device that displays digital photos and video on your television and streams music. Typically called wireless media players or media receivers, devices like the ADS Media-Link or D-Link's MediaLounge cost around $200.

A wireless media player also has a network card inside it that can communicate with your home network and tap into photo, video and audio files on the PC. The back of the player includes jacks to connect the stereo and TV with standard audio and video cables like S-Video.

The media player usually comes with software that needs to be installed on the computer, so you can add it to the wireless network and catalog all the multimedia files on the hard drive for browsing on the TV screen. Once the parts are connected, you can sit on the couch and call up photos, videos and music from the computer's hard drive with the player's remote control.

If you have a TiVo Series2 digital video recorder, the TiVo itself can tap into digital photo and audio files from the computer without adding another box to your home system. For more information, go to tivo.com/4.9.asp.

And Keep in Mind

There are some things to consider before whipping out the credit card for any of these devices. Check the media or music player's packaging for the specifications to make sure it will work with your computer's hardware and software.

Your wireless network's speed may be an issue, especially for streaming big video files. Early home-networking hardware used a wireless standard called 802.11b, which transferred data up to 11 megabits per second, but it might not handle a large video file without some stuttering. Much of the new networking products use a similar standard, which can transfer data up to 54 megabits a second, for smoother streaming.

You should also make sure the media or music player is compatible with the media files you want to stream, whether they are in MP3, WMA, AAC or other file formats. Some products are advertising compatibility with Microsoft's Windows Media Connect software for Windows XP, which makes setting up compatible media players on the wireless network fairly painless - as long as you use Windows.

Many media players are designed for the PC, but companies like Elgato Systems makes a media player called the EyeHome for the Macintosh, which works with Apple's AirPort Express wireless base station.

With a bit of research, a dash of hardware and a spot of time to set things up, your wireless network can connect all your home-entertainment appliances, and Grandma will be much more comfortable on the couch in the living room when you show off your vacation photos rather than perched in front of a PC.
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/04/te...al/04jude.html


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EchoStar Sues TiVo, Humax Over Patents
Richard Shim

EchoStar communications has filed a patent infringement lawsuit against digital video recorder company TiVo and electronics maker Humax. The suit, filed on April 29 in U.S. district court in Texas, alleges that TiVo and Humax infringe on four EchoStar patents related to DVR technology.

TiVo filed a suit against EchoStar in January of last year alleging infringement of its "multimedia time warping system" patent. That has been a slow- moving case, with jury selection set for Oct. 4. The lawsuit figures prominently in TiVo's efforts to enforce its patent portfolio.

Humax licenses TiVo's technology and manufactures and sells consumer electronics devices that include DVR features.
http://news.com.com/EchoStar+sues+Ti...3-5696631.html


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The Web Behind the Scrawl
Ethan Todras-Whitehill

THE East Village neighborhood in Manhattan is no stranger to graffiti. In the morass of cryptic tags, stickers and drawings, however, one piece doesn't quite fit. It is scrawled on the base of a lamppost near First Avenue in permanent marker and reads "click here," with "here" written in blue and underlined.

"Click here" is an example of grafedia, a new and growing form of street art that brings together the wireless and physical worlds.

Here is how it works: the person posting the piece of grafedia uploads an image to the grafedia site (www.grafedia.net) and chooses a word to associate with it ("here"). That person then writes the word in a public place (street, print media, Internet) and underlines it in blue (the mark that distinguishes grafedia from graffiti; a full e-mail address is also a tip-off).

On the other end, when people see the writing and recognize it as grafedia, they send a text message or e-mail note to the appropriate e-mail address (the underlined word plus @grafedia.net, or here@grafedia.net in the East Village example), and are sent the image.

Founded by a New York University graduate student, John Geraci, last December, grafedia has gotten attention primarily from blogs and other Web sites, and in March and April the site logged an average of a few hundred requests for images daily. More than 2,000 images have been uploaded to the server from all over the world, for diverse uses, from advertising personal Web sites to running a treasure hunt at an Australian art school, Mr. Geraci said.

Similar projects to grafedia include Yellow Arrow, which uses yellow arrow stickers and text messages to annotate public space, and Murmur, which has been posting phone numbers around Toronto letting visitors call and hear a story set in their location.

Christina Ray, an artist, recently used grafedia as part of an interactive feature in her online magazine, Glowlab, which explores "psychogeography," the effect of spaces on people.

Ms. Ray wrote "heystranger @grafedia.net" on clear tape and posted it in a dozen locations around Williamsburg, Brooklyn. Her image depicts a white shadow on a brick wall with the words "Hey stranger, what are you up to today?" and another e-mail address. Ms. Ray takes the responses she gets and posts them at www.glowlab.com.

The project's goal, which is part of Mr. Geraci's work in the N.Y.U. interactive telecommunications program, is to "extend the borders of the Web out to physical surfaces," he said. "The separation between the online and the physical universes is artificial anyway." He attributes grafedia's appeal to the public's picking up on the natural merging of wireless and physical spaces, and its desire to explore the trend.

Other recent wireless phenomena attest to Mr. Geraci's assertion. Wardriving, the hobby of driving around with a wireless-enabled laptop computer searching for and recording the locations of open wireless networks, became popular in 2001 and was followed by warchalking, the practice of indicating the presence of these same networks on walls or sidewalks with chalk symbols. Neighbornode, Mr. Geraci's previous project, encourages people to set up open Internet hot spots that send users first to a community bulletin board, effectively bringing neighbors together through wireless Internet access.

"Taking the Internet into the physical world gives it boundaries and a character or voice that is otherwise lacking," he said. Graffiti, of course, is often simple vandalism, but Mr. Geraci doesn't think he is promoting criminal behavior. He says most grafedia users have never posted graffiti before, and a lot of the grafedia he encounters is done in chalk or on less permanent surfaces like paper, cardboard or a person's skin.

But grafedia could be picked up by traditional graffiti artists, said Karla L. Murray, a co-author of two books on graffiti. Ms. Murray said that graffiti's essence is fame. "The artists are very adaptable," she said. "If grafedia helped them get their name out there, they'd use it."

Mr. Geraci said he might rank the most popular grafedia tags on his Web site, so graffiti artists may have a reason to embrace grafedia. On the whole, though, he is just happy to be part of the larger phenomenon.

"It's unquestioned in my mind that the streets will be a point of digital exchange for people in the future," he said. "Whether grafedia will be part of that, I don't know."
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/04/te...l/04ethan.html


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EC Demands Microsoft Compliance 'Within Weeks'
Ingrid Marson

The European Commission is talking tough as it waits for Microsoft to comply with last year's antitrust ruling

Microsoft is under growing pressure to comply with the European antitrust ruling within a matter of weeks, an EU spokesman said on Wednesday.

The European Commission's competition spokesman said that if the matter is not resolved soon, it may fine Microsoft a significant sum of money.

"Our patience is in terms of weeks rather than months," said the spokesman. "They've had over a year now. Microsoft knows that if they don't comply to our satisfaction we can fine them up to five percent of their [daily global] turnover every day."

He said that Microsoft was aware of the specific date by which it must comply with the ruling, but the EC has decided not to publicise the date, as a "negotiation tactic".

The initial antitrust ruling on March 24 2004 demanded that Microsoft disclose information to rival makers of server software to enable their products to be interoperable with Windows and that it offer a version of Windows without Media Player.

The EC rejected Microsoft's proposed solution to the server interoperability in March this year, due tofour concerns. One of its main objections was the high level of royalties that Microsoft had proposed, said the spokesman. "The level of royalties should reflect the degree of innovation in the product, rather than [Microsoft's] monopoly power," said the spokesman.

Although Microsoft announced last month that they had addressed the majority of the EC's concern in this area, the EC spokesman said it was still talking to the software giant "concerning the proper implementation of the interoperability remedy." There are also issues regarding the version of Windows without Media Player that are yet to be resolved, said the spokesman.

A Microsoft spokesman was unable to comment on the deadline that the EC has imposed or its work towards complying with the ruling.

"I wouldn't want to talk about timing or what the dialogue is about," said the Microsoft spokesman. "We continue to work diligently and quickly to resolve the outstanding issues."

The EU competition commissioner Neelie Kroes met Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer at the end of April to discuss the software giant's failure to comply with the ruling. Kroes said Microsoft must comply with the decision 'urgently and in full'.
http://uk.news.yahoo.com/050511/152/fil05.html


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Microsoft Eyes Mobile Work Force
Alorie Gilbert

Microsoft has invested an undisclosed sum in Laplink Software and agreed to license some of Laplink's mobile-worker technology, the companies said Tuesday.

The investment gives Microsoft a minority stake in the 50-person company and demonstrates the software titan's growing interest in technology for the mobile work force, Microsoft said.

Laplink, a closely held company in Kirkland, Wash., makes programs that give people access, via the Internet, to their computer's files and e-mail messages, and to calendars on other machines. People can use the program, called Laplink Everywhere, to access information on desktop machines, laptops, handheld computers and some mobile phones. The service costs $8.95 a month.

"We think Laplink has good technology in the collaboration and mobile work force area," said Kenneth Lustig, managing director of intellectual-property acquisitions and investments at Microsoft. "Collaborating with Laplink could be beneficial to Microsoft as we develop more technology for the mobile work force."

Representatives from both companies declined to discuss exactly which Laplink technology Microsoft has agreed to license or the details of the arrangement.

Laplink, which has been in business for more than 20 years, has numerous ties to Microsoft. Laplink's chief executive and majority investor, Thomas Koll, is a former Microsoft vice president. In addition, Laplink licenses several Windows communications protocols, which helps Microsoft hold up its end of an antitrust settlement with the U.S. Justice Department.

In April, Laplink introduced a new version of its Everywhere product that supports Microsoft's Remote Desktop Protocol. The protocol is designed to reduce the hassle of providing remote access to Windows machines that are protected by firewalls. Laplink's products are also designed to work smoothly with various Microsoft programs, including the Internet Explorer Web browser and the Outlook e-mail and calendar system.

Laplink recently introduced a product called ShareDirect, a Windows add-on for setting up peer-to-peer file-sharing networks for businesses.
http://news.zdnet.com/2100-3513_22-5702056.html


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In a Reverse, Microsoft Says It Supports Gay Rights Bill
Sarah Kershaw

Microsoft, faced with unrelenting criticism from employees and gay rights groups over its decision to abandon support of a gay rights bill in Washington state, reversed course again yesterday and announced that it was now in support of the bill.

Steve Ballmer, the company's chief executive, announced the reversal in an e-mail message sent to 35,000 employees in the United States. "After looking at the question from all sides, I've concluded that diversity in the workplace is such an important issue for our business that it should be included in our legislative agenda," Mr. Ballmer said.

He added: "I respect that there will be different viewpoints. But as C.E.O., I am doing what I believe is right for our company as a whole."

Long known for its internal policies protecting gay employees from discrimination and offering them benefits, Microsoft sparked an uproar when officials decided to take a "neutral" stance on the antidiscrimination bill this year, after having supported it the two previous years.

Critics, including employees who said they were told that Microsoft would back the bill, said the decision to withdraw support had been made under pressure from a local evangelical preacher who threatened to boycott the company if it supported the legislation this year. Company officials have disputed the accusation.

The bill, which would have extended protections against discrimination in employment, housing and other areas to gay men and lesbians, failed by one vote on April 21. But it is automatically up for a new vote next year because bills introduced in the Washington Legislature are active for two years even if they are voted down the first time.

After the defeat, Mr. Ballmer sent an e-mail message to company employees, defending the decision to withdraw support. In that note, Mr. Ballmer said that he and Microsoft's founder, Bill Gates, personally supported the measure but felt the company needed to focus its legislative efforts on measures that had a more direct connection to their business.

In yesterday's message Mr. Ballmer suggested that employees' responses had helped persuade Microsoft officials to renew their backing of the measure. More than 1,500 employees signed an internal petition demanding that the company support the bill, and scores wrote in protest to Mr. Ballmer and Mr. Gates.

A Microsoft executive, speaking on condition of anonymity, said that senior company officials met after Microsoft's widely publicized turnaround on the bill prompted an uproar, and that they had decided to change the company's stance because of pressure from employees.

"This issue got attention at the highest levels of the company in a way it didn't before," said the executive, who did not attend the meeting but was briefed on it. "It was a rocky path, but we got to the right place."

Some lawmakers had said that Microsoft, based in Redmond, Wash., could have lent crucial backing to the legislation through influence on lawmakers representing Redmond and the suburbs outside Seattle.

In explaining why the company had not supported the bill this year, Mr. Ballmer and other Microsoft officials had said over the last two weeks that they were re-examining their legislative priorities and debating when and whether to become involved in public policy debates.

Gay rights groups said they were contacted by Microsoft officials before Mr. Ballmer's statement was publicly released. They applauded the decision.

"We're very happy," said Joe Solmonese, president of the Human Rights Campaign, a national gay advocacy group.

Mr. Solmonese met recently with several Microsoft employees after he learned of the earlier decision not to back the bill, which was first disclosed by The Stranger, an alternative weekly newspaper in Seattle.

The Microsoft officials, Mr. Solmonese said, "took it very seriously."

"They said that there had been a huge outpouring of concern via e-mail, both internally and externally," he said.

Ed Murray, an openly gay state legislator from Seattle and a sponsor of the bill, said of the company's reversal: "I think it's important. It sent a message that this issue is not simply a so-called social issue or cultural war issue, but it's an issue that is good for business, and it's an issue that business considers important."

But the company's decision disappointed others, including Microsoft employees who belong to the Antioch Bible Church in Redmond. The church is led by the Rev. Ken Hutcherson, who met with Microsoft officials twice about the bill and claimed to have persuaded them to change their position on it.

"I feel that it's been kind of a stressful day," said a Microsoft employee who is a member of the church and who spoke on condition of anonymity. "I feel that it was wrong for the company to say that they will be supporting issues such as this. Businesses should not actually be publicly taking a stance on that, regardless of their internal policies."

The employee, who has worked at Microsoft for four years, said the company should "stay out of it" when it comes to the debate over gay rights.

Dr. Hutcherson, whose church offices are near Microsoft's headquarters, said earlier that he believed his boycott threat had persuaded Microsoft not to support the bill. He did not respond to messages left yesterday on his cellphone and at his office.
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/07/national/07gay.html?


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Sweat Scent Study Suggests Gay Men's Brains Differ

A compound taken from male sweat stimulates the brains of gay men and straight women but not heterosexual men, raising the possibility that

homosexual brains are different, researchers in Sweden reported on Monday.

It also strengthens the evidence that humans respond to pheromones -- compounds known to affect animal behavior, especially mating behavior, but whose role in human activity has been questioned.

The pheromone in question is a derivative of testosterone called 4,16-androstadien-3-one, or AND.

"AND is detected primarily in male sweat," the researchers write in this week's issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

In a previous study, Ivanka Savic of Karolinska University Hospital in Stockholm and colleagues found that the hypothalamus region of the brain became activated when women smelled AND and when men smelled a corresponding compound in female urine called EST.

This time they compared the reactions of 12 women, 12 heterosexual men and 12 homosexual men.

They let them smell EST, AND, and ordinary odors such as lavender, and used positron emission tomography to watch their brain responses.

"In contrast to heterosexual men, and in congruence with heterosexual women, homosexual men displayed hypothalamic activation in response to AND," Savic's team wrote.

And a region of the brain called the anterior hypothalamus responded most strongly -- an area that in animals "is highly involved in sexual behavior."

But other smells were processed the same in all three groups.

"These findings show that our brain reacts differently to the two putative pheromones compared with common odors, and suggest a link between sexual orientation and hypothalamic neuronal processes," Savic's team wrote.

In most animals, pheromone signals go to the hypothalamus region of the brain via a pit-like structure in or near the nose called the vomeronasal organ.

People have a vomeronasal pit but there are no nerves connecting it to the brain, leading biologists to question whether humans respond to pheromones.
http://today.reuters.com/news/newsAr...ROMONES-DC.XML


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California Dreaming: A True Story of Computers, Drugs and Rock 'n' Roll
Andrew Leonard

WHAT THE DORMOUSE SAID
How the Sixties Counterculture Shaped the Personal Computer Industry.
By John Markoff.
Illustrated. 310 pp. Viking. $25.95.

Engineers can be so cute. In the early 1960's, Myron Stolaroff, an employee of the tape recorder manufacturer Ampex, decided to prove the value of consuming LSD. So he set up the International Foundation for Advanced Study and went about his project in classic methodical fashion.

Test subjects - almost all engineers - were given a series of doses under constant observation and expected to take careful notes on their own experience. A survey of the first 153 volunteers revealed that "83 percent of those who had taken LSD found that they had lasting benefits from the experience." (Other results: increase in ability to love, 78 percent; increased self-esteem, 71 percent.) Such precision might seem antithetical to the fuzzy let-it-all-hang-outness of the psychedelic experience. But John Markoff, a senior writer for The New York Times who covers technology, makes a convincing case that for the swarming ubergeeks assembling in the San Francisco Bay Area in the 1960's, approaching drugs as they might any other potentially helpful tool or device - from a soldering iron to a computer chip - was only natural. The goals were broad in the 60's: the world would be remade, the natural order of things reconfigured, human potential amplified to infinity. Anything that could help was to be cherished, studied and improved.

It is no accident, then, that the same patch of land on the peninsula south of San Francisco that gave birth to the Grateful Dead was also the site of groundbreaking research leading the way to the personal computer. That the two cultural impulses were linked - positively - is a provocative thesis.

Revisionist histories of the 60's often make an attempt to separate the "excess" of the era from the politics. In this view, all those acid-gobbling, pot-smoking, tie-dyed renegades were a distraction from the real work of stopping the Vietnam War and achieving social justice. But Mr. Markoff makes a surprisingly sympathetic case that it was all of a piece: the drugs, the antiauthoritarianism, the messianic belief that computing power should be spread throughout the land.

"It is not a coincidence," he writes, "that, during the 60's and early 70's, at the height of the protest against the war in Vietnam, the civil rights movement and widespread experimentation with psychedelic drugs, personal computing emerged from a handful of government- and corporate-funded laboratories, as well as from the work of a small group of hobbyists who were desperate to get their hands on computers they could personally control and decide to what uses they should be put."

Judging by the record presented in "What the Dormouse Said," it is indisputable that many of the engineers and programmers who contributed to the birth of personal computing were fans of LSD, draft resisters, commune sympathizers and, to put it bluntly, long-haired hippie freaks.

This makes entertaining reading. Many accounts of the birth of personal computing have been written, but this is the first close look at the drug habits of the earliest pioneers. "What the Dormouse Said" may not reach the level of the classics of computing history, Tracy Kidder's "Soul of a New Machine" and Steven Levy's "Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution." But there is still plenty of fun between its covers.

A central character - and one of the early volunteers at Stolaroff's foundation - is Douglas Engelbart, a man worthy of his own book. His team at the Augmented Human Intellect Research Center at the Stanford Research Institute was the first to demonstrate the potential of the computing future. The research demonstration that he conducted for a packed auditorium in San Francisco in 1968 is still talked about in Silicon Valley with the reverence of those who might have witnessed Jehovah handing Moses the Ten Commandments. The mouse, man! Engelbart gave us the mouse! But Mr. Engelbart's story is not a happy one. He saw further ahead than most, but had a difficult time articulating his vision. He became heavily involved with Werner Erhard's human potential movement, EST, and his laboratory ultimately ended up losing both its way and its government financing. Many of his researchers went on to the Xerox Palo Alto Research Center, where the first personal computer, the famous Alto, was invented, while he lapsed into semi-obscurity. As a metaphor for the 60's, which exploded with promise and ended in disarray, he's just about perfect.

Looking back at the 60's from the jaundiced perspective of the early 21st century, it's easy to wonder what was really accomplished, outside of the enduring split of the nation into two irreconcilable ideological camps. Sure, there was the civil rights campaign, women's liberation, environmentalism and a movement that eventually brought a war to heel, but the era is as likely to be ridiculed in modern memory as to be revered. But what happens if we add the birth of personal computing to the counterculture's list of achievements? Does that change the equation?

The answer depends on how one rates the personal computer as consciousness-enhancing device. Remember, after all, what the dormouse did say, in the stentorian full-throttle voice of Jefferson Airplane's Grace Slick: "Feed your head!"

By choosing that as his title, Mr. Markoff makes clear his belief that computers, like psychedelic drugs, are tools for mind expansion, for revelation and personal discovery. And to anyone who has experienced a drug-induced epiphany, there may indeed be a cosmic hyperlink there: fire up your laptop, connect wirelessly to the Internet, search for your dreams with Google: the power and the glory of the computing universe that exists now was a sci-fi fantasy not very long ago, and yes, it does pulsate with a destabilizing, revelatory psychic power. Cool!

But wasn't the goal of those 60's experimenters to make the world a better place? One has to wonder - and this is a question Mr. Markoff doesn't really address - whether the personal computer achieved that goal. Or has it only allowed all of us, heroes and villains alike, to be more productive as the world stays exactly the same?

Andrew Leonard is a staff writer at Salon.
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/07/bo...ew/07leon.html


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As the iPod Stays Hot, It Risks Losing Its Cool
Ken Belson

SO President George W. Bush listens to an iPod, it was learned recently. How uncool is that?

You'd think any marketer would love a little product placement with the consumer in chief. But the iPod - and Apple products generally - have reached near-cult status partly because they cultivate an image as the electronic toys of the anti-establishment set.

If someone as mainstream as President Bush has caught on to something allegedly so hip, what can Apple do to keep iPod chic and cutting edge?

Many successful gadget makers have wrestled with this issue and few have conquered it. Nokia's handsets, treasured for their sleekness just a few years ago, are now ridiculed as clunky blocks. Palm organizers, once signature accouterments in Silicon Valley and on Wall Street, barely register a yawn when they are pulled out at dinner parties.

Even TiVo, which is now synonymous with the digital video recorder, has lost its cachet as cable and satellite operators introduce their own versions.

The stakes, though, may be higher for Apple, a company that for two decades has cultivated the aura of techno-chic. Apple promotes the iPod, for instance, with a counterculture package of freewheeling dancers, psychedelic coloring and raucous music. The company's devotees are almost as fanatical as the Deadheads who followed the Grateful Dead on tour.

With simple styling and an easy-to-use format, it is little surprise that even the president has stumbled upon the iPod. Apple has a daunting 75 percent of the digital music player market, dominating companies like Dell and Samsung.

But these and other rivals are bound to catch up, which means Apple must continue to innovate to stay cool. "It's no longer, 'Will the iPod stay fashionable?' but 'Can Apple keep the tempo up?' " said Paul Saffo, a strategist at the Institute for the Future in Palo Alto, Calif.

Apple isn't standing still. It has extended its iPod line to include iPod Minis - smaller, cheaper versions of the iPod with less memory - and the iPod Shuffle, a stripped-down player that Apple promotes for its ability to play songs randomly.

Apple has also encouraged the development of accessories, including a flashlight that snaps on to iPods. And despite resisting at first, Apple has introduced the iPhoto, which lets users download digital photos from their computers.

It has also latched onto musicians to share some of their luster. Apple makes an iPod U2 Special Edition complete with the autographs of each of the band's members. Its online iTunes store is also a repository of exclusive songs and hip tastes.

"When I look at that store, it's clear Apple has a music director who manages the store, like a radio station manager," said Joe Wilcox, who tracks the industry for Jupiter Research. "It's a subtle thing, but it feeds into the whole cool factor."

Cool, though, is temporal, particularly in an industry as ever-changing as consumer electronics. "There could be something out there that is on the verge of coming out that has a new delivery system that could knock it out quickly," said Irma Zandl, the head of the Zandl Group, a research firm based in New York that tracks youth trends.

One school of iPod watchers says Apple should connect its mobile machines to the Internet, much like the Blackberry and cellphone. This would let people download songs on the run.

Cellphone companies are thinking the same thing; several have released handsets with digital music players inside. Motorola plans to release handsets that can download songs from the iTunes Web site.

Others say Apple has to integrate the iPod into everyday items like cars and exercise treadmills. The company now works with carmakers to make room on their dashboards for the players.

Still others say Apple needs to do for DVD's what it did for CD's - let people download movies quickly and cheaply and move them to their players with little fuss.

Apple is not alone in trying to find a new paradigm. Sony has spent a quarter of a century massaging the Walkman brand to keep its flame burning. Sony has released waterproof players, ever-thinner designs and even a line specially made for children. Walkman morphed from a cassette player into a CD player in 1984, and a mini-disc player in 1992.

Yet despite its ubiquity, the Walkman has limped recently as an MP3 player because Sony's format is harder to use than Apple's.

Which all shows that even the most recognizable and stylish brands lose their shine.

Geoffrey Moore, author of "Crossing the Chasm," an exploration of the life cycle of electronics, notes: "Anything truly edgy necessarily has its own mortality, like Baudelaire or Jimi Hendrix."
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/08/we...son.html?8hpib


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Whoops! We Seem to Have Misplaced Your Identity
Randall Stross

THE diesel-powered utility van is the unappreciated speed demon of the digital age. Even lumbering along city streets in stop-and-go traffic, it can move a trillion bytes of corporate data across town far faster than if they were sent across the Internet.

The homely Ford Econoline 350 is the workhorse of Iron Mountain, the dominating presence in the off-site data protection business. Its customers include more than three-fourths of Fortune 500 companies, and it had revenue of $1.82 billion last year, earned largely out of public sight as its unmarked vans shuttled among the back-office operations of its clients.

Last week, however, Iron Mountain lost the luxury of going about its rounds invisibly. Time Warner, one of its clients, disclosed that personal information - including names and Social Security numbers for 600,000 current and former employees - had gone missing six weeks earlier while in the care of an unnamed "leader in data storage."

The data had been, in fact, in an Iron Mountain van, and the few details about the incident that it and Time Warner have grudgingly divulged - such as the fact that the pick-up at Time Warner was 1 of 19 the van made bouncing around Manhattan on the fateful day - raise all sorts of questions.

To begin with, why would such sensitive information be handled less like a guard-this-with-your-life briefcase entrusted to Brinks than like a fungible bundle handed to the Dy-Dee Diaper Service? Why was the data unencrypted? And why were trucks involved at all?

Why wasn't the backup done via a secure online connection, an option that Iron Mountain offers as well as physical pickup? Why doesn't Iron Mountain eliminate the risk of midroute problems and retire its fleet of Econolines?

Time Warner blamed Iron Mountain for the potential breach of confidential employee information and would say nothing more about the event. Its tapes were last seen on Iron Mountain's vans, so its position is that it's Iron Mountain's responsibility; end of discussion.

Iron Mountain, for its part, gallantly declined to take Time Warner to task. It could have done so by saying how foolish Time Warner had been to send out sensitive personnel files in unencrypted form. Then again, Iron Mountain itself had failed to advise clients to encrypt files until April 21, when it issued a press release on the subject. This was too late to help Time Warner, whose tapes had disappeared a month earlier.

Time Warner has now publicly vowed to floss regularly and encrypt always.

Iron Mountain has adopted a scattershot approach in its public appeal for exoneration. Disappearing tapes - what its chief executive, C. Richard Reese, calls "inadvertent disclosures" - are a rare problem: 12 instances for every five million pick-ups or deliveries. Mr. Reese said he viewed the rarity of error as exemplary.

Jim Stickley, one of the founders and the chief technical officer of Trace Security, a consulting firm based in Baton Rouge, La., is not impressed: "Imagine the Secret Service said that about presidents: 'Well, we protected most of them.' "

Another argument pressed by Iron Mountain is that it knows of no instance when the loss of tapes has "resulted in the unauthorized access of personal information." Then again, have previous problems involved tapes filled with 600,000 names and matching Social Security numbers thoughtfully left unencrypted?

Iron Mountain also takes too much comfort in the fact that the missing tapes are labeled only with a bar code. The company reasons that a thief in search of Time Warner's employees would not know which van to hit and which tapes to grab.

But why assume a crime of planning and cunning? If the tapes landed accidentally in the hands of someone, who knew someone with the technical competence to take a look at their contents - in unencrypted form, not a difficult feat - what person of ill motive would toss aside those 600,000 names and Social Security numbers?

Iron Mountain's best defense is that its reliance on trucks, which must be loaded and unloaded by all-too-fallible humans, is unavoidable for technical reasons. Online backups are not feasible for large companies, given the sheer mass of data, which has grown faster than the bandwidth of corporate Internet connections.

Illustrative numbers provided by Iron Mountain would seem to settle the question. Consider a customer with 22,500 gigabytes (22.5 terabytes) of data that need to be ready for recovery from a disaster. Compressed - and, one hopes, encrypted - these fit onto 300 backup tapes, easily transported by the Econoline.

Now consider the challenge of alternatively moving that data over the wire. Even with a pair of OC3 lines, each with 250 times the bandwidth of a home broadband connection, you would need more than 82 hours to send one set - though let's not forget that 8 to 10 hours are saved because tapes do not have to be created.

And if disaster were to strike, it would take 82 hours to send these terabytes back over the wire for restoration. That's why "we're not driving the truck out of the equation," Mr. Reese said.

THE example, however, best matches a picture in which the computing resources of the largest corporation consist of a single mainframe, all of its many terabytes of data concentrated in one place, susceptible to a single disaster.

Bud Stoddard, the chief executive of AmeriVault, a rival company based in Boston that offers online backup services, says corporate data is distributed across thousands of servers and desktops. "Disasters happen every day, but they hit a server, or a department, or a building." he said. "They do not take out an enterprise's total data set."

His company - as well as Iron Mountain - offers online disaster protection by copying data via the Internet to off-site servers. This eliminates the problem of limited bandwidth, as only incremental changes to a file, not the entire file, need to be sent. It also eliminates another potential problem: a faulty tape, discovered only when it is needed for restoration.

Because of falling storage and bandwidth costs, it's now economically feasible to prepare for disaster by going digital instead of diesel, using a secure Internet connection to make an offsite mirror image of a corporation's vital data.

And should catastrophe strike, a company need not wait hours or days for its backup data to return by wire: AmeriVault can load 500 gigabytes of backed-up data onto a portable drive, then speed it to a client. For that rare emergency, the trusty Econoline can be summoned for duty.

Had Time Warner used the Internet to back up its data, the company would not now find itself reassuring its millions of subscribers - 21.7 million on AOL alone - that only employee information was in the missing tapes.

The company has offered to the individuals listed in the database a one-year subscription to Equifax's Credit Watch service. Iron Mountain has not stepped forward to pick up the bill. It adheres to the same view as photo processors: if something goes wrong when your film is in their possession, they'll replace the film, but they take no responsibility for the lost photos.

"Under standard liability, we are not responsible for the information stored on the tape," said Melissa Burman, an Iron Mountain spokeswoman. "That's because we never know what information is stored on any particular backup tape."

But when a missing tape could expose hundreds of thousands of people to identity theft through no fault of their own, many of whom may retain lawyers happy to work on contingency, Iron Mountain and similar companies are probably glad they never know the contents.

This unfortunate event, seemingly similar to a long list of recently revealed security incidents involving other companies and organizations, should stand apart for one reason: it could have been avoided so easily. It would have been a nonevent had Time Warner encrypted its personnel files before shipping them.

Mr. Stickley of Trace Security advocates making encryption a matter of law: "The government should be stepping in and say, 'You must encrypt information that can ruin people's lives,' " he said. "It's that simple."
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/08/business/08digi.html


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Now, Audio Blogs for Those Who Aspire to Be D.J.'s
John R. Quain

What do the pope and Paris Hilton have in common? They're both podcasters - and you can be one too.

Ranging from the sublime to the ridiculous, podcasts are essentially do-it-yourself recorded radio programs posted online. Anyone can download them free, and, using special software, listeners can subscribe to favorite shows and even have them automatically downloaded to a portable digital music player.

Despite what the name suggests, podcasts can be played not just on iPods but on any device that has an MP3 player program, including PC's and laptops.

Podcasts are the natural technological offspring of Web logs or blogs, those endlessly meandering personal Web musings that now seem to be everywhere online. Similarly, many podcasters have a diaristic bent, ranging from Mr. X, in upstate New York (ifthensoftware.blogspot.com), who has recorded his ruminations while driving to work, to Dan Klass, an underemployed actor in California whose podcast, "The Bitterest Pill" (www.thebitterestpill.com), has been known to feature invectives against Elmo.

There are celebrity podcasts like Paris Hilton's (houseofwaxmovie .warnerbros.com), intended to promote movies. Another, more high-minded site, Catholic Insider (www.catholicinsider.com), links to podcasts of Pope Benedict XVI from Vatican Radio.

Many radio stations are embracing the technology. WGBH in Boston, Q107 in Toronto and BBC Radio are already offering regular podcasts. Tomorrow, Sirius Satellite Radio will begin broadcasting a best-of-podcasting program with the podfather of podcasting, Adam Curry, formerly of MTV, as host.

Taking the experiment a step further, Infinity Broadcasting plans to restart its San Francisco talk station KYCY-AM (1550) with an all-podcasting format beginning Monday. KYCY's broadcasts will feature amateur programs from around the Web, but because of Federal Communications Commission regulations, each will be screened in advance.

Record companies are also beginning to use podcasts to fish for fans. "We think podcasts are a great way to form a relationship with our fans," said Damian Kulash, the lead singer of the rock band OK Go, which has an album coming out this summer on Capitol Records. When the band is on tour, OK Go phones in its podcasts (www.okgo.net).

Finding and Listening

For those wanting to find a podcast, there are online directories that list thousands of them, including Podcast.net (www.podcast.net), Podcasting News (podcastingnews.com), Podcast Alley (www.podcastalley.com) and iPodder.org (www.ipodder.org).

Several free software programs - like Doppler (www.dopplerradio.net) and iPodder (www.ipodder.org) - help users subscribe to and download podcasts. IPodder comes in Windows and Mac versions. The program includes a directory of podcasts available for subscribing on a scheduled basis or for downloading at will. The Web address of a podcast that is not listed can be cut and pasted into iPodder to add it to a user's roster of subscriptions.

Podcasts are usually indicated by an orange logo with the initials RSS (for really simple syndication) or XML (for extensible markup language), standing for the technologies that make such subscriptions possible.

IPod enthusiasts and Mac owners might also consider iPodderX (www.ipodderx.com), a $19.95 program that not only downloads programs but also puts them directly into the iTunes manager so that they can be automatically copied to a connected iPod player.

Unencumbered by professional standards or government broadcast rules, podcasts can devolve into fits of uncontrollable giggling and include more than their share of expletives. (Family Friendly Podcasts, at www.familyfriendlypodcasts.com, has some suggestions for those who prefer tamer shows.) Still, it is the freedom that has inspired many homegrown podcast producers.

"The whole beauty of it is that I don't have to censor myself," says Jason Evangelho, host of "Insomnia Radio," which showcases independent radio (hardcoreinsomniaradio.blogspot.com). "And I can say 'um.' "

Programs dedicated to music still dominate the podcast universe. Many offer an eclectic mix of underground music, but there are also classical music shows like "Your Daily Opera." While most get only a handful of listeners, some programs have developed a devoted fan base.

"I'm averaging about 10,000 to 11,000 listeners per show," says Brian Ibbott, whose "Coverville" (www.coverville.com) originates from his basement outside Denver. Mr. Ibbott's podcasts feature rare and unusual cover songs. He has a sponsor to offset the $30 to $40 a month he says he pays his hosting service for the extra traffic that his listeners create downloading his shows.

Making and Distributing

In addition to the chance to be heard by millions of Internet users, the relative ease of producing a show has driven the popularity of podcasting. A group of college friends unable to get their film careers off the ground, for example, decided to tell their stories, which are a cross between Firesign Theater and Hunter S. Thompson, in a podcast at the Peanut Gallery (www.thepeanutgallery.info). Those looking for a similar creative outlet need only a computer with a connected microphone and Web access.

Stay-at-home disc jockeys can record tracks using the basic recording software included with the Mac and Windows operating systems. Free software like EasyPodcast (www.easypodcast.com) can help upload efforts to a Web site. Services like Liberated Syndication (www.libsyn.com) will provide Web hosting for as little as $5 a month.

Many podcasters end up creating digital studios, using more expensive microphones, mixers and audio editing software, like Adobe Audition ($299, www.adobe.com). Audition lets a podcaster carefully edit voiceovers, mix up to 128 stereo sound tracks and even correct the pitch of a recording. Unfortunately, Audition does not include the tools for uploading to the Web.

Consequently, a new class of software designed for podcasters is beginning to emerge. Two noteworthy examples are Propaganda ($49.95, www.makepropaganda.com) and iPodcast Producer ($149.95, www.industrialaudiosoftware.com). Both Windows applications enable producers to record, mix multiple tracks and automatically post shows to the Web.

Of course, unlike a live radio broadcast or streaming music online, podcasts are downloaded and stored in their entirety. So the programs have the potential to generate thousands of copies of songs, raising legal issues. "Podcasters, like the users of any other sound recordings, must obtain the appropriate licenses from the copyright owners, or their designees," the Recording Industry Association of America said.

At "Insomnia Radio," Mr. Evangelho plays only independent bands that own the rights to their own songs, and gets permission directly from the artists to play their music. At "Coverville," to satisfy the royalties owed to songwriters and composers, Mr. Ibbott pays annual licensing fees totaling about $500 to Ascap and B.M.I. The R.I.A.A. has not specified if or how podcasters should pay the labels.

The programs are stored in the MP3 file format, and companies that use MP3 compression must pay a licensing fee to Thomson, a co-creator of the technology. But according to Rocky Caldwell at Thomson's licensing unit, fees are not applicable unless users make at least $100,000 a year from their podcasts. Now that's the kind of problem many podcasters wish they had.
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/12/te.../12basics.html


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Control Through DRM
Russell McOrmond

How can liberal thinkers trust transnational corporations more than their own neighbors?

One of the most interesting areas to be politically involved in at the moment is technology law. This is an arena where, “To err is human, to really fowl things up requires misunderstanding a computer”.

When you take political positions offered by various groups and filter them through an understanding of how computers work, you end up with conflicting situations. And I say that as someone who's been building, repairing and programming various types since 1981.

The most heated debate in digital copyright today centers on Digital Rights Management (DRM). Most people commenting on DRM do so from the interpretation offered by those selling it: that it gives copyright holders digital control over whether someone can copy their work. They claim that with DRM in place, only those who are authorized to copy will be able to.

The problem is, the technology needed to directly accomplish this goal can't exist.

At the point where a copy might be made, only two entities have control: the owner of the device, and the DRM vendor. Copyright holders can never be given direct control and must always chose between which of those two groups they trust most. These DRM vendors are transnational corporations headquartered predominantly in the United States.

Ironically, in Canada, it's parliament's Heritage Committee, and the various creator organizations, such as the writers' union, that have been rushing to ratify the 1996 WIPO treaties, which would give additional legal protections for DRM. These treaties are based on the same laundered policy proposals (1995 Lehman report) that were implemented in the highly controversial Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) in the USA.

Heritage has traditionally been a cultural sovereigntist and opponent of the negative effects of media concentration. Thus far, it's had the opposite opinion on this area of policy. We need to realize as creators and as liberals that we don't want legal protection for DRM, but that we do need strong legal protection FROM DRM.

If you don't understand DRM and TPMs, you are not alone as this technology is misunderstood by both proponents and opponents . When the Canadian Internet Policy and Public Interest Clinic (CIPPIC) documents their opposition to DRM, they do so based on the intended effects of DRM as stated by the proponents of DRM, not based on the actual effects based on an understanding of the technology.

One of the strongest proponents of DRM has been the recording industry. Past RIAA ceo Hilary Rosen recently sent a letter to Apple complaining about the fact that she could not copy her music to competing media players, even though this the intended purpose of the DRM which her industry demanded that Apple adopt with their iTunes service.

When you properly interpret her complaint what she is really saying is that Apple should have signed up to the Microsoft controlled DRM which the recording industry has been promoting, rather than use competing DRM which Apple would have independent control over. The suggestion that Apple become dependent on Microsoft would have been market suicide. It turns out that Ms. Rosen is now an on-air business and political commentator for Microsoft's MSNBC, and thus is simply promoting the special interests of her new employer.

To understand the limits of technology, and how misunderstandings are being abused, it's important to examine what it's useful for, as well as what it's not so useful for, and one of the best ways to discuss this is to take a look at cryptography.

In its simplest form, cryptography can be seen as mathematics which take a message (called “plaintext”, even though it can be music or any other message) and encrypt it. This is called “cypertext" and it, which can't be decrypted without the right math to return it to plaintext, which usually calls for an encryption key. We can think of this process as putting a message into a locked box and then unlocking it with specific keys so we can read it.

Cryptography has two categories of keys: symmetric and public.

With symmetric, the key that locks the box is the same one that unlocks it. If you want to send me a message, you lock it with a specific key and send it to anyone who has a copy of that same key. This is the type of key most people are familiar with in the physical world - ie, the key that unlocks your door is the same one that locks it, and anyone with access to it can make a copy.

Public key cryptography is a bit different in that there are a pair of keys. If you lock the box with one of the keys you must unlock it with the other. You can't lock and unlock the box with the same key.

This type of system is extremely powerful because it allows us to keep one key secret, never making copies. The other key is made public. If you want to send me a message that you want to be certain only I can open, you encrypt it with my public key, and I decrypt it with my private key. If I want to know for certain that it came from you, I can ask you to encrypt it in your private key. Then, when I decrypt it with your public key, I know it really did come from you.

When you mix these types of keys together, you end up with a technology that can protect privacy and authenticity.

Privacy is protected because an unauthorized person wouldn't be able to decrypt the message without having the right keys.

Public key cryptography protects authenticity in that you know the message decoded with a specific public key was encoded by a specific private key. And you know who the person is who has access to that private key.

Copyright, however, is a type of legal protection that seeks to limit what can be done by authorized recipients of a message. For an audience member to open the message and view it, they need access to the appropriate key. Once they've opened the message, they have access to the plaintext,and can technologically do anything they wish with that message.

DRM keys are embedded
The way DRM deals with this is by embedded the keys within multimedia devices instead of handing them out.

As an example, every DVD player has a key that's specific to a manufacturer and which can decrypt the encrypted movies. A DVD movie is encrypted with a symmetric key and key information is encrypted in each of the public keys where the DVD player manufacturer is trusted to obey a legal agreement it has with those who encode the movies.

The theory is: this will stop people from making copies. But if you understand computers, you know you can easily open any DVD player and extract its key. These keys aren't a secret because they're publicly distributed inside consumer electronics. While it may be illegal to extract them, in reality, this has little meaning.

In other words, this technology has an absolutely minimal effect on criminal behavior.

It does, however, have an effect on law abiding citizens.

You'll notice that a DVD player can only play a movie if that movie was encoded to the key embedded in the DVD player. We've effectively created a system that ties the watching of a movie in with a DVD player authorized by those who encoded the movie.

This legally protected tie between encoded content and devices authorized to access the content is what past RIAA CEO Hilary Rosen was complaining about with regards to online music services such as iTunes. This type of tied selling is something that should be regulated by the Government under competition laws.

And as I've already pointed out, the people who encode the movies have agreements with those who have the decoding keys. Moreover, they'll only encode the movie if they have an agreement.

This agreement could be innocent in that it requires that the device obey copyright restrictions. But it could also contain clauses meant to control markets in other ways.

One of the known controls relates to regional encoding meant to ensure a movie released in North America will only be viewable on a North American DVD player. So if you're traveling and buy a movie outside of North America, you won't be able to watch it on your North American player. And there can easily be many other controls that give further power to those who hold them.

It turns out the people who control these keys strongly influence exactly what content will be distributed, with an effect that could be far worse for creators than those understood from media concentration.

While the stated purpose was to protect the interests of creators, we find we've instead created a situation where creators are forced into positions where their ability to reach an audience depends solely on powerful media intermediaries.

As a creator, I long ago decided that no matter how many private citizens infringe my copyright, I trust citizens a whole more than I do any media intermediary.

My audiences are people with whom I can build healthy relationships, but copyright law still exists as a tool to stop people who continue to infringe my rights.

I strongly oppose DRM because it effectively takes control away from me and my audiences, and transfers that control to powerful media intermediaries.

And I see these as a far greater threat to my rights than any amount of copyright infringement.
http://p2pnet.net/story/4797

[JackSpratts]

I Know What You Downloaded From Freenet
Thomas C Greene

Exclusive The Freenet Project (http://freenetproject.org/) has been around since 2000. It was designed as a stealthy P2P network (some have called it a "darknet") that distributes its content so broadly that it's impossible to censor.

There are a number of security features in Freenet that other P2P networks lack. Because data that the network's various nodes exchange is encrypted, it's difficult, though not impossible, for an outside observer to know what's being passed between two nodes. It is also nearly impossible to identify the author of a Freesite, or to identify the person responsible for inserting content into the network, unless they wish to be known. Most importantly, it's nearly impossible for an outside attacker to determine whether a given node is requesting the data being sent to it, or is merely relaying it to another node.

These layers of obscurity and limited anonymity are what enable Freenet participants to exchange information freely. Content that is illegal, whether rightly or wrongly, flows freely through the network, cached on thousands of computers worldwide.

Who knows where that stuff came from?

Each participant necessarily operates a Freenet node, which caches encrypted data that has either been requested by that node's owner, or requested by other Freenet nodes. That is, one's node will cache data that it is merely proxying for others. Caching enables the broad distribution of content that makes Freenet impossible to censor. It also introduces doubt about the origin of any data found in a given node's cache. It helps to provide deniability.

Of course, anyone can find out what data is in their cache by decrypting it. If one applies the correct Content Hash Key (CHK), the data will be revealed. But because it's encrypted, one can avoid knowing what's in their cache simply by neglecting to run a list of CHKs against it - hence deniability in case a forensic examiner should locate illegal files in one's Freenet cache. It is, or rather, ought to be, impossible to determine whether the owner of a particular machine requested the files in his cache, or if his node merely proxied and cached them for others.

Obviously, this works only so long as cached data that the node's owner has requested, and cached data that his node has proxied, are indistinguishable. Unfortunately, The Register has discovered that this is not the case for large files.

Behavioral differences

Let there be a file of, say, 700 MB - maybe a movie, maybe warez, and possibly illegal, that you wish to have. Your node will download portions of this "splitfile" from numerous other nodes, where they are distributed. To enable you to recover quickly from interruptions during the download, your node will cache all of the chunks it receives. Thus when you re-start the download after an interruption, you will download only those portions of the file that you haven't already received. When the download is complete, the various chunks will be decrypted and assembled, and the file will be saved in your ~/freenet-downloads directory.

If you destroy the file but leave your cache intact, you can request it again, and the file will appear almost instantly. And there's the problem.

Freenet distributes files in a way that tends to select for frequently-requested, or "popular" data. This is partly because the other nodes that one's requests pass through will also cache parts of any files one requests.

We tested this, and found that a 50 MB file took six hours to download the first time we tried. After we eliminated the contents of our own local cache, we requested the file again, and it took only two hours and 20 minutes. Clearly, our "neighborhood" nodes had been caching a good deal of it while we downloaded it the first time. That behavior is by design, and it's nothing to be concerned about. The difference in download times between files never downloaded before and ones cached nearby is not revealing, because anyone else nearby might have initiated the request.

However, it is quite easy to distinguish between a large file cached in nearby nodes and one cached locally. And that is a very big deal.

As we noted earlier, a large splitfile will be cached locally to enable quick recovery from download interruptions. The problem is, the entire file will be cached. This means that, when a file is downloaded once, so long as the local cache remains intact, it can be reconstructed wholly from the local cache in minutes, even when the computer is disconnected from the internet. And this holds even when the browser cache is eliminated as a factor.

We tested this by downloading the same 50 MB file and removing it from our ~/ freenet-downloads directory, while leaving the local Freenet cache intact. On our second attempt, it "downloaded" in one minute, nine seconds.

We ran the test again after disconnecting our computer from the internet, with the Freenet application still running, and it "downloaded" in one minute, fifty seconds.

So, it took six hours initially; two hours, twenty minutes with neighboring nodes caching it thanks to our request; and less than two minutes with our local cache intact, even when disconnected from the net.

The difference in download time between a splitfile cached locally (seconds) and one cached nearby (hours) is so great that we can safely dismiss the possibility that any part of it is coming from nearby nodes, even under the best possible network conditions. It's absolutely clear that the entire file is being rebuilt from the local cache. Forensically speaking, that information is golden.

The attack

Exploiting that information would be trivial. Only a bit of statistical data, of the sort that any government agency in the world could easily afford to obtain, will be needed.

Here's what we need to know: how many chunks of a splitfile will appear on a node that only relays file requests after x amount of uptime. That's it. We already know that for nodes requesting a splitfile, the answer is 100% of the chunks in the amount of uptime needed to fetch them. By running several nodes and observing them, we can easily determine how long it will take to cache, by relaying alone, an entire file of x size.

Since Freenet logs uptime, a forensic examiner can easily learn how long your node has been alive, even if there have been interruptions. So it is quite possible to estimate how many intact files, of what size, that your node ought to have cached without your participation. If he finds many more files, or many larger files, than predicted, and they are illegal, you are in trouble.

Using a tool called FUQID (http://www.freenethelp.org/html/Fuqid.html), which queues Freenet file requests, one could easily run a list of forbidden CHKs against a disk image. If the number/size of whole files containing naughty stuff is significantly higher than predicted, you are in trouble.

A forensic attack can be made more damning if the examiner has statistical information about the density of certain types of files on the network overall, which, again, running several test nodes will reveal. If the density of intact naughty files in your cache doesn't mimic the density of such files on the network, you are in trouble.

You might be smart enough to disable your browser cache and its downloads history, and smart enough to wipe properly or encrypt dangerous files you've downloaded, but your Freenet cache, over which you have little control, will still tell on you.

The fix

We ran these observations by Freenet founder Ian Clarke. He agreed that the caching behavior does reveal far too many clues. But the next major revision is expected to eliminate the problem. Sometime later this year, it is hoped, the Freeenet developers will release a version that employs premix routing.

According to current plans, requests will be relayed through at least three nodes before any caching is performed. The three nodes nearest the one making the request will therefore not be able to determine what has been requested. The requesting node will cache downloads temporarily, although the mechanism by which locally cached data will be purged or randomized once the download is complete is not clear to us. Perhaps it has yet to be established.

In a forthcoming article, we will consider Freenet more generally, and offer suggestions for using it with greater safety, such as it is.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/05..._so_anonymous/


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The New Face of File Sharing?

Wayne Rosso, who built a career of attacking the music industry, wants to help it solve its 'peer- to-peer' troubles
Jon Healey

For years, Wayne Rosso has been the face of evil to the major record companies.

Now, his beefy, half-shaven mug is the labels' newest sign of hope.

Rosso is the driving force behind Mashboxx, a company that wants to help the labels wring some cash out of the world's most popular file-sharing networks. Those networks have been hotbeds of music piracy, but Mashboxx would turn bootlegged tunes into legal downloads that users could sample, buy and share.

On the surface, the 56-year-old Rosso seems an unlikely choice to help the music industry turn its "peer-to-peer" problems into profit.

Before founding Mashboxx last year, Rosso was the wisecracking president of two companies whose file-sharing software helped fuel online piracy: Grokster and Optisoft, the creator of Blubster. He was the Clown Prince of Peer-to-Peer, a widely quoted quip-meister who pilloried the music industry daily as being dimwitted, shortsighted, slow-footed and, well, evil.

"I would lay awake at night thinking of the most incendiary things I could possibly say and hurl these Molotov cocktails out there, knowing that the media would grasp on it and it would spread," he said.

Long before he was cashing Grokster's paychecks, however, Rosso was playing for the other team. He spent more than 20 years as an entertainment industry publicist, touting the likes of the Bee Gees and New Kids on the Block.

And even when he was promoting Grokster and Blubster, Rosso was working behind the scenes to convert the major record companies from antagonists into allies. Eventually, he found a taker: Andrew Lack, the former television executive whom Sony Corp. brought in to lead its music division.

"Andy Lack looked at this problem with a fresh pair of eyes," said Thomas Hesse, president of global digital business for Sony BMG. "He looked at it without emotion. He looked for a solution…. And Wayne seemed to be a solution."

So now Rosso has come full circle, in a sense.

Mashboxx is what many label executives have pined for: a program that lets people dip into the vast pool of bootlegs online to sample songs but not make free copies of them. In particular, it uses song-recognition technology to block unauthorized downloads, a technique that the labels want all file-sharing companies to adopt.

"His leadership is significant," said Chief Executive Mitch Bainwol of the Recording Industry Assn. of America, a group that has been the target of many of Rosso's jibes. "He's made this kind of critical leap, and that is to say we in the P2P space ought to find a way to compensate the property owner."

Mashboxx, based in Rosso's home city of Virginia Beach, Va., has not struck deals yet with all the major music companies, nor does it have a firm date for launching its software. And there is no telling whether it can lure users from Grokster, Kazaa and other file-sharing programs that let users amass huge collections of digital music and movies for free.

"Whether it can survive economically is just totally up in the air," said Lawrence Kenswil, a top online music executive at Vivendi Universal's Universal Music Group. "Nobody knows."

Another important variable is the Supreme Court's pending ruling on the lawsuit by major music and movie companies against Grokster and StreamCast Networks Inc., another file-sharing company. If the court rules that Grokster is not liable for its users' piracy, some observers say, Mashboxx could find it even harder to build an audience.

That's because many people are likely to misinterpret such a ruling, thinking it would mean that downloading copyrighted works was legal too. And Mashboxx is counting on the specter of liability to motivate people to switch to its software.

Still, the major labels and other entertainment industry heavyweights have to make peace somehow with the estimated 60 million people using file-sharing networks in the United States. And after six years of relentless legal and technological attacks by the entertainment industry, many executives in the file-sharing business say they are eager to become partners rather than pariahs.

Those forces have led a growing number of companies to try to marry file sharing and commerce. They all face stiff competition, not only from the many sources of illegal downloads online, but also from established legal outlets such as Apple Computer Inc.'s iTunes Music Store.

Rosso "has been, for better or worse, in the middle of many of the major peer-to-peer controversies, I think always with an eye toward making a business out of it," said Larry Miller, chief executive of Or Music, an independent label in New York. "And if he's able to do that with Mashboxx, all the credit to him."

Thick around the waist and a little shorter than average, Rosso has both the drive and the figure of a bulldog, although he prefers to describe himself as a sweet Italian sausage. He has been married and divorced twice and says he has two Italian greyhounds in lieu of having a third wife or children.

Rosso, born and raised in the Virginia Tidewater region, graduated from the University of South Carolina in 1970 with a bachelor's degree in English. He promoted rock concerts in Atlanta and filled retailers' orders for records and tapes in Los Angeles before gravitating to music industry PR.

Later, in New York, Rosso proved particularly skilled at getting his clients mentioned in the tabloid gossip columns.

"He had very good contacts at the columns, so if you had a party or an event and you wanted it mentioned, he could get it mentioned," said Paula Batson, a longtime music industry executive. "He was also passionate about the artists he was representing. He was very tenacious."

Rosso's route to Mashboxx started in the mid-1990s, when he joined a start-up independent music company in New York. While the company was just getting off the ground, Rosso said, it bought a fledgling online music company called SonicNet.

"Nobody knew what it was, what it was good for, but at the time it was the No. 1 music destination on the Web, for whatever that meant," he said.

After a couple more mergers, Rosso was unemployed again, and he ended up working for a series of ill-fated companies that were trying to transform the music industry with digital technologies — including one, CantaMetrix, whose song-recognition technology helped weed bootlegged files out of file-sharing networks. Then, in September 2002, Rosso went to work for Grokster founder Daniel Rung of Palm Springs.

"Long story short, the owner of Grokster was looking for someone to run the company and to sort of front it, and I got friendly with him," Rosso said. "He was a very nice guy, and he asked me to do it. So I did it."

Grokster had already been sued by the major record companies, music publishers and Hollywood studios, which accused the company of contributing to and profiting from piracy. Rosso and Rung said that one of Rosso's main duties was to try to make peace with the copyright owners and obtain licenses to distribute their wares online.

"We agreed that this just couldn't go on forever," Rosso said of the unauthorized downloading. "These people have to be paid for their content. It was just a question of how and how much."

Rosso said he tried to woo executives at four of the major record companies — Universal, Warner Music Group, BMG and EMI.

"Nobody really wanted to talk to us," he said. "They all felt that they were going to win this lawsuit. And the prevailing attitude was, 'We're not going to reward pirates.' "

Ted Cohen, senior vice president of digital development and distribution at EMI, remembers things differently.

"We've always been willing to sit down and talk about legal alternatives," Cohen said. What was missing in those days, he said, was a good business plan for an authorized file-sharing service.

Rosso spent most of his time defending file sharing against the entertainment industry's attacks, including accusations that it promoted child pornography and identity theft. He blasted the industry for refusing to cut deals with the file-sharing networks, and he called on Congress to force copyright holders to license their works to Grokster and its ilk. And he denounced the labels' efforts to force song-recognition technology onto the file-sharing business, saying such things as, "We cannot filter."

Where Rung was so averse to publicity that he used a pseudonym in news releases, Rosso relished the spotlight. He mixed a we-will-bury-you brashness with self-deprecating humor, slamming himself and his foes while insisting that it was nothing personal.

He shot poison-tipped verbal arrows at the music industry and the major labels' trade group, the Recording Industry Assn. of America, from a bottomless quiver and soon was a fixture in the press and at industry conferences.

For example, in an interview on CNBC two years ago, Rosso said, "The music companies are living in the 20th century. They're out of their minds, and they're going to go down in flames if they don't get with the program fast."

He was glib too, someone who always sounded like he was looking for angles to play. When CBS News' Lesley Stahl asked Rosso in 2003 whether he would sell Grokster to a movie studio, he replied, "Sure. Call me."

"It was all marketing," Rosso said. "We realized that every time Grokster was mentioned in the media, good or bad, downloads would shoot up, would spike. And, ergo, more users."

And the more users Grokster attracted, the more money it made. Like other peer-to-peer programs, Grokster enabled people to copy files from one another's computers for free. Its revenue came mainly from two sources: advertisers whose messages popped up on the computer screens of Grokster users, and software companies that paid to have their programs bundled with the Grokster software.

"What was the RIAA going to do? Sue us again? We were already being sued. And they were kind enough to keep delivering up PR softballs the size of grapefruits. A blind man could have hit them out of the ballpark."

Actually, the labels did sue Rosso and Rung again. The pair were involved in Puretunes, a short-lived downloadable music store that sold songs in bulk at a deep discount. The labels claimed that the Madrid-based store was unlicensed and infringing, and Rosso, Rung and other principals agreed in October to pay them $500,000 to settle the case.

Rosso left Grokster in mid2003 to join Optisoft, which was founded by a youthful Spanish software developer named Pablo Soto. Rosso's idea, he said, was to pitch a new, more controlled type of file-sharing network to major recording artists as a way to distribute music to their fans.

"I wrote Pablo a memo at the time saying that the peer-to-peer business was just a dead-end street the way it was, and that it just couldn't go on. No matter what I was saying in public, I knew in my heart of hearts that there was no way that a P2P was going to keep going on like it was."

Rosso also had started courting Andrew Lack, who had taken over at Sony Music in January 2003. Early the next year, Rosso said, Lack floated an idea for authorized file sharing while the two were chatting in Lack's Madison Avenue office.

"He said, 'I want to start a sampling service. I need somebody to, you know, to work with me on it.' "

Rosso went back to Soto, who had previously agreed to work with Sony, then changed his mind. So Rosso told Lack that he would come up with the technology himself. He left Optisoft and started rounding up investors to fund the company and engineers to build its software.

A key piece of technology is coming from Snocap Inc., a San Francisco-based company led by Shawn Fanning and Ali Aydar, two veterans of the pioneering Napster file-sharing service. When a Mashboxx user tries to download a hit song from someone on one of the major filesharing networks, Snocap's song- recognition software will intervene and deliver an authorized, copy-protected version.

Mashboxx is still negotiating with labels and music publishers over what its users will be able to download for free — for example, songs that are altered with brief voice-overs. In most cases, a permanent, high-quality copy that can be burned to a CD will carry the same charge it does at a typical downloadable-music store.

Kenswil of Universal Music Group said Mashboxx would fall short of the music industry's "holy grail," which would be converting an established file-sharing program that already has millions of users. One leading file-sharing company, iMesh, is trying to do just that, although it has been delayed by technical difficulties.

One of Rosso's goals is to persuade other file-sharing networks to run their own branded versions of Mashboxx. Rung of Grokster declined to comment on any deals he may have in the works but said, "We think something similar to that, maybe not quite the same specific details, might be very interesting to Grokster."

Rosso said that he was skeptical about Lack's idea initially but that he now liked Mashboxx's chances.

"The day we open, we'll be the largest source of authorized music in the world," said Rosso, ever the pitchman.

This is the same kind of buzz-building he used to do for clients such as Harry Connick Jr. and Crosby, Stills & Nash. It's something he's adept at, even if he's not exactly nostalgic for his days as a publicist.

"I knew the day that David Crosby almost vomited on me that my days as a press agent were numbered," Rosso said of a particularly memorable incident from 1984. "Some people would say it's a shame that he missed."
http://www.latimes.com/business/cust...business-enter


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Record Labels Find a Way To Work with P2P

Of course, the record companies did manage to sue Shawn Fanning's first company, Napster, out of existence. And many record company executives now privately acknowledge that if they had tried to work with Napster in 2000, then the P2P situation might not have got to the level it later did.

The news last week that a major record company, SonyBMG, is in advanced talks to offer its content on peer-to-peer services caused major ripples through the music and Internet industries.

The news was even more controversial for most long-time industry watchers because it was reported that not only did SonyBMG senior executives propose the move to work with their previous bete noire technology, but that they have chosen to do so with what the record companies and their trade bodies, the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) and the International Federation of Phonographic Industries (IFPI), will see as two rather unlikely players.

Pop Rivals

The first is Wayne Rosso, the ex-CEO of P2P service Grokster and mouthpiece for trade association P2P United. Rosso, an ex-music industry PR of 30 years' standing, has spent the last two years railing against the record industry for trying to sue P2P companies out of existence.

Of course, the record companies did manage to sue Shawn Fanning's first company, Napster , out of existence. And many record company executives now privately acknowledge that if they had tried to work with Napster in 2000, then the P2P situation might not have got to the level it later did.

That's why this is a surprise, but perhaps not a shock, that the record companies are willing to work with Fanning's new company Snocap . This is especially true since many pundits see Snocap's new audio fingerprinting technology as a solution to one of the key obstacles copyright owners have with P2P distribution.

This is why the proposal coordinated by Rosso, under a new P2P service dubbed Mashboxx, might work. It would enable SonyBMG -- home to Destiny's Child and Britney Spears -- to offer its copyrighted content on a P2P network for the first time.

It's worth noting that SonyBMG content has been available for some time for free on numerous P2P networks, as have other record companies'. But with the combined weight of legal action from music trade bodies in the U.S. and Europe against consumers who use these networks illegally, alongside heavy spoofing of P2P networks with false music files by record companies, numbers have begun to fall on some services.

Hence this is a good time to launch Mashboxx, a desktop file-sharing client based on the Ares decentralized P2P network, with plug-ins to other networks including Fast Track and Gnutella.

None of the parties involved -- Rosso, Snocap, Grokster or SonyBMG -- will comment on the details of Mashboxx. But NMA has learned a formal announcement is expected in the US in the second week of December.

Previous Entry

Mashboxx won't be the first attempt at a legal P2P network. The first in the UK was launched by music download service Wippit. Ironically, Wippit founder Paul Myers says that his company took down its P2P service last month, after nearly three years, due to the costs of running both a centralized and decentralized network.

This was because record companies, in particular the majors, were reluctant to license content for exchange on a P2P basis. This has meant that most of the mainstream music content on Wippit is only available from a fixed server. Wippit hopes to relaunch the service soon.

"In the past, record companies could only see P2P as meaning 'pirate-to-pirate,'" says Myers.

But he's heartened that record companies are finally "getting it." He says, "It's fantastic that a record company has got behind the best distribution system that's ever been handed on a plate to the record industry."

At Playlouder MSP, an ISP-based P2P offer, MD Paul Hitchman is also supportive, describing it as "good news." He says, "It indicates that they are finally looking at ways of monetizing and legitimizing P2P."

But he's less certain whether the early model proposed by Mashboxx actually plays to the strengths of P2P technology. "It's not about making P2P into another kind of download shop," he says. "It has to be about general access to music that you pay for on a subscription basis."

Hitchman also qualifies the idea of P2P as the most efficient form of distribution for music, and believes it's more about record companies finally realizing that they have to move with the times. "P2P is the most popular form of music consumption online. Why not go with the consumers?"

This is, of course, why SonyBMG CEO Andrew Lack, a former TV executive who can perhaps go against the grain internally, was said to be keen to get conversations off the ground. Those conversations have now extended to other majors, including EMI, where again the top executives are said to be looking at this closely.

If the proposed plan does come to fruition, Myers is confident there's plenty of scope for success. "There are millions of fans out there that could be turned into consumers," he says.

"How many would they need? If there really are 100m people downloading illegally now and they convert 1% of those to paying consumers, then that's still very good."
http://www.newsfactor.com/news/story...d=02100000FK59


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Microsoft And The Groove Networks Acquisition
Chris Harris-Jones

Microsoft's acquisition of Groove Networks in March was hardly a big surprise given its investment history. However, this software operates on a distinctly different model to all the collaboration tools already available from Microsoft. Chris Harris- Jones looks at the impact of this acquisition on Microsoft's collaboration offerings.

Acquisition time again

Microsoft has been an investor in Groove Networks since 2001 when it put $50 million into the company, so this acquisition was not a huge surprise. Microsoft's collaboration offering should be bolstered by this acquisition, although it has struggled to pull together a coherent story across its multiple technology offerings in this space. The impending release of Office Communicator 2005 (which was known by its code name of 'Istanbul') this summer will add further functionality to Microsoft's collaboration offering, and possibly further confusion as well, as the product set relating to collaboration functionality continues to grow.

The Groove client delivers a comprehensive set of collaboration functions that overlap significantly with the functionality available from Microsoft. However, Microsoft exclusively follows a model of centralisation, whereas the Groove software is based on decentralisation. The acquisition fills this gap in Microsoft's collaboration tools by incorporating decentralised collaboration tools that are IT infrastructure agnostic, and offer offline and cross-organisational capabilities.

Two different architectures

This acquisition means that you will now be able to get two fundamentally different types of collaboration software from the same organisation. Microsoft has traditionally focused on the conventional model of centralisation - all content is stored and managed at one centralised point. Where this needs to be distributed, there are facilities available for replication, but this is a replication for convenience rather than the principal operating mode.

However, Groove Networks operates on a totally decentralised basis founded on the model of peer-to-peer (P2P) computing. All the information for a collaborative project is held remotely on local devices and is replicated when others are attached to the network - a similar model to the ill-fated Napster music-sharing website. This model means that it is very easy for every user to work locally _ in either a connected or disconnected mode. When users have been working remotely, upon reconnection, all the relevant information is synchronised.

The arguments for and against the centralised and decentralised models are as old as the operating models themselves. The obvious argument in favour of the centralised model is that it is much easier to control - or at least it is much easier to give a semblance of control. Consequently, auditors, compliance officers and many managers are much happier with this centralised model. Even if it is not totally accurate, at least it is a single set of content that can be designed _ the 'official' version. However, remote workers have a tendency to make copies of files for use outside the office - a practice which is increasingly easy with the ubiquity, increasing size and rapidly falling cost of memory sticks.

Conversely, a system that operates a pure P2P model may be far more convenient for some users - typically for those regularly on the move or where collaboration projects are spread over multiple sites and organisations. The biggest problem is that there is no single centralised copy of the information that can be made secure from system failure or accidents, and produced as necessary for auditing purposes.

Mix and match

The Groove Networks software is more often operated in a mixed mode, which captures the benefits of a P2P environment as well as the security of centralised content. This means that it can overcome many of the standard P2P objections while delivering greater flexibility than a purely centralised system, by maintaining a centralised node on the network that automatically receives all changed content. While this will not get over the problem of the rogue memory stick - at least it means that remote workers have a simple automated mechanism for ensuring that their remote devices are kept up to date without having to manually transfer files.

Deploying both centralised and decentralised approaches in conjunction can deliver considerable benefits to workers on the move and contribute to greater efficiency.
http://www.ovum.com/go/content/c,56058


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Peerflix Introduces Social Networking to Peer-to-Peer DVD Trading Service; New ''My Friends'' Feature Provides Unrestricted DVD Trades With Friends and Family
Press Release

Peerflix, an online peer-to-peer service that allows members to legally trade DVDs, today announced the launch of "My Friends," a new set of website features allowing members to easily share their personal DVD library with friends and family, no matter how far apart they live. The new "My Friends" functions allow Peerflix members to create a private network of social contacts who can view all titles in their DVD collections. Peerflix's peer-to-peer trading platform allows users to leverage that information by requesting a DVD exchange with a "friend" with one simple click.

"Members can invite friends and family to join them on the site, whether they are existing Peerflix members or not," said Billy McNair, co-

founder of Peerflix. "'My Friends' effectively gives members the ability to recreate their social network on Peerflix." To add a new connection, members must simply enter their friend's name and email address. The system will ensure that the friend is linked to the member's account once they join the site or accept the invitation.

Another benefit of the new features is to allow members and their contacts to share their "DVDs I Have" and "DVDs I Want" lists. "By sharing their lists, members can find out which movies their friends have already watched, how well they liked them, and which ones they want to see next," said Danny Robinson, co-founder of Peerflix. "What differentiates Peerflix's take on this community exchange is that we enable members to actually do something useful with this information. For example, they can request that friends mail their DVDs to them with one click."

"My Friends" also allows unrestricted trades between friends. Peerflix uses "Peerbux" as the internal currency that balances the trades within the network by assigning relative values to each title. This ensures that users contributing new releases and hot titles to the network get recognized accordingly and can receive DVDs of equal value in return. "Our members have told us that they'd be willing to generously trade their DVDs with friends and family without getting Peerbux in return -- what are friends for after all?" said McNair. "We've added the capability to do just that, so our members can trade with friends and family even if they do not have Peerbux in their account."

For a limited time only, each time a new Peerflix member joins the service from a current member's invitation and fully activates their account, the original member will receive one free Peerbux in their account.

About Peerflix

Peerflix, headquartered in Menlo Park, CA, is an online peer-to-peer service that allows members to legally trade DVDs with each other. Started in 2004, the Peerflix service is an easy way for anyone to get the most out of their DVD collections. With Peerflix, members can maintain a dynamic and updated library of DVD titles, in a cost effective manner. While still in its "beta" phase, Peerflix has already grown to become the leading online destination for DVD owners to trade their DVDs. The Peerflix service is currently available in both the United States and Canada. For more information, please visit www.peerflix.com
http://home.businesswire.com/portal/...&newsLang =en


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Television’s Future: Anytime, Anywhere

Television is going to change more in the next five years than it has in the last 50, according to an analysis published last week in the Chicago Tribune. According to reporter Maureen Ryan, digital video recorders and video-on-demand will soon allow viewers to access shows whenever they want; technology will let people take TV anywhere; the Internet may become TV’s secondary (or primary) home; and advertising will undergo radical changes.

The article outlines six ways in which television will change our lives. The first grows from “timeshifting,” referring to viewers’ ability to watch TV and other media at their own pace. The next is “placeshifting,” the freedom to watch on an airplane, in a car, over a cell phone or on a hand-held gaming device.

Satellite radio firms are exploring ways to get programming into the cars of 5 million customers. A report by the consulting firm Frost and Sullivan predicts that by 2011, 3 million cars will have satellite TV, and 36 million will have some video capability.

In April, Sprint began offering real-time feeds of the Fox News Channel. Verizon also is beginning to offer TV programming for an extra $15 per month.

Another major trend is video on demand. The goal is to go beyond DVDs and make every show available immediately after its broadcast for a small fee.

At this point, not many TV shows are available online, since media companies are wary of illegal file sharing. But this spring, the BBC plans to let a limited number of viewers use new “peer-to-peer” technology to download selected programs from its archives. Once the copyright issues have been settled, more shows will be available online. According to Ryan, that’s why phone companies and cable firms are competing over who will provide online services.

The fourth big change involves the computer-TV connection. The TV equivalent of an IPod hasn’t emerged, but giants like Sony and Microsoft want to provide the tools enabling consumers to access TV, music, and movies. Smaller companies already have introduced technology that allows people to take TV on the road or send programs from a PC to a TV.

According to Advertising Age, five years from now, only half of all advertising dollars will go to network television, down from 70 percent. The game is clearly changing. To deal with viewers who fast-forward through ads, more now feature large logos that stay on the screen longer. In the future, consumers will be able to watch a sponsored show and click buttons to get coupons or more information. Networks may start charging cable and satellite providers to carry their content, while the shows themselves will contain more product placement.

There will be even more choices. Technology will soon allow viewers to access literally millions of channels — “on demand, anytime, anywhere.” The catch is that it won’t all be free.
http://www.vermontguardian.com/dailies/0904/0511.shtml


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Nokia Sets Out Specs for Mobile TV

"Operators and service providers want to know how the interoperability of terminals from different vendors can be ensured," said Richard Sharp, a Nokia spokesman. "By making this interface specification public, we are emphasizing our commitment to open standards and interoperability as a means to enable positive market development."

Nokia Corp. will release technical details about its mobile TV system to help service providers offer customers the possibility of watching television on their handsets, with commercial TV services expected to begin in 2006.

The air interface specifications, for mobile TV based on Digital Video Broadcast-Handheld, or DVB-H, will provide information on how mobile TV terminals interconnect with the network end of the service, the Finnish company said Tuesday.

The technology has been piloted in several countries, including Finland where Nokia last month joined major TV companies and mobile service providers to enable 500 test users in the Helsinki region to watch international television broadcasts and tune in to radio programs on their phones.

"Operators and service providers want to know how the interoperability of terminals from different vendors can be ensured," said Richard Sharp, a Nokia spokesman.

"By making this interface specification public, we are emphasizing our commitment to open standards and interoperability as a means to enable positive market development."

The Nokia mobile TV service, which includes terminals, servers and network components, is based on open standards approved by the European Telecommunications Standards Institute, the company said.

DVB-H is a new technology that enables broadcast transmission of several television, radio and video channels to mobile devices.

In earlier research, Nokia said people like to watch mobile TV in cars and public places, such as cafes. Watching TV on handsets was also common at home and in workplaces, with test users mostly interested in news, weather, sports, current affairs and entertainment.

Nokia, based in Espoo just outside the Finnish capital, is the world's largest mobile phone maker with sales in 130 countries and 55,500 employees.
http://www.newsfactor.com/news//stor...d=023002LYSN4V


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A Virtual World With Peer-To-Peer Style
John Borland

For a virtual world, it starts out very bare: Just an empty blue space, with a picture of a cat in a "Star Trek" costume at its center.

But that confused-looking cat is an avatar--a digital representation of a real person (in this case a reporter)--and the empty blue space is an early "node" in Solipsis, an experiment with building a peer-to-peer virtual world, released late last month by researchers at France Telecom.

Still in the very early stages of development, the Solipsis project aims to draw together the technological lessons of "massively multiplayer" games like Sony's "EverQuest" and file-swapping networks like Kazaa or eDonkey. Developers are hoping to construct a sprawling virtual world that runs on its inhabitants' own linked computers, rather than relying on powerful central servers like those that run Web sites or EverQuest's fantasy adventures.

What's the advantage in that? It sets Internet dwellers free--both in the "free beer" and "free speech" senses, according to the developers.

"In a closed system, the world is bounded by the imagination of the people working in the company that owns the world," said Joaquin Keller, one of the developers at France Telecom, the French telecommunications giant, working on the project. "If your system is open, a lot of ideas will flourish. It's like the difference between one Web site and the whole Web."

Solipsis and similar peer-to-peer and open-source projects are aiming at nothing less than a radical transformation of the way that games are developed, and even of the way people communicate and manipulate information online.

Inspired by science fiction novels like Neal Stephenson's "Snow Crash," which told of a sophisticated online virtual world called the "Metaverse," these developers want to make digital environments as complicated and rich as the real world. People might meet in a digital representation of their own rooms, or of the Taj Mahal, rather than simply exchanging e-mails, for example.

Increasingly, this vision is being blended with the grassroots peer-to-peer and open-source movements, which aims at distributing computing power and creativity as widely, and as close to the individual user, as possible.

Most big online virtual worlds, such as "EverQuest" or "Star Wars Galaxies," are hosted on big central servers. That's partly because the computing requirements of keeping track of a world's consistency--where people are, which dragons have been killed, which houses have burned down--are high.

Keller and a growing number of developers have something else in mind. In their vision, each inhabitant's computer is responsible only for keeping track of what's in its own little corner of the world. In that model, visiting someone else online might mean a literal visit to their space, which has its own look, rules and feel.

That anarchic model, without a central authority or even purpose, could be even more overwhelmingly immersive than today's "addictive" online games, some predict.

"If you had a bunch of P2P worlds, it occurs to me that you might just lose people," said Edward Castronova, an Indiana University professor whose upcoming book "Synthetic Worlds" examines the issues around online games. "People won't show up on scorecards in a game, won't be in our economy anymore, we won't know where they are. They might be producing valuable things, and having a rich and productive social and economic life, but all in the virtual worlds."

Not exactly the "Matrix," yet
To be sure, a peer-to-peer virtual world with the three-dimensional visuals and rich environment demanded by today's game players is far away.

Graphics production alone makes the project a difficult one. Big worlds such as "EverQuest" can cost tens of millions of dollars to produce, with much of that money going to art and design.

Solipsis is utterly rudimentary in this regard. Two-dimensional images, each representing a person or a "bot," float inside the blue space of each individual computer's node. A separate chat room allows visitors to a node to interact. Graphics production and features like voice chat in future versions are being called for by developers.

A few other projects, such as the Open Source Metaverse Project, are a little further along. That effort aims to let developers create their own 3D worlds, which can be hyperlinked together to provide bridges for server-hopping visitors. That project is drawing on modeling technology from the developers of the "Quake" video game.

'Second Life'
However, even some larger commercial projects are moving in the grassroots direction, and they could show a path to the future.

Take "Second Life," the virtual world created by Linden Labs. Rather than offer a traditional game environment like "EverQuest," it provides a growing world in which inhabitants can build their own homes, create their own "in-game" games, run businesses or do pretty much anything else that strikes their fancy.

"Second Life" has 28,000 people online today, and some inhabitants are already making more than $100,000 a year in real-world money by selling digital wares constructed inside the world or running full-fledged role-playing games.

"Second Life" is built on a distributed model, in which numerous servers are connected together, each one representing about 16 acres of land in the digital world. Those patches of digital space are seamlessly connected together to create the world as experienced by visitors.

Today, all of those servers are run by Linden Labs, but the world was built to ultimately support a peer-to-peer model, where players might add their own 16-acre plot into the world from their own computer, said Linden Labs' chief executive officer, Philip Rosedale. For security reasons--including the fact that a real currency is traded inside the world--the company hasn't taken that step yet, however.

"Interesting virtual worlds are ultimately going to be so huge that they couldn't possibly take the centralized approach," Rosedale said. "But pragmatically, we run all the servers today, since it gives you reliability."

Some analysts say it's exactly that fear of giving way to the total anarchy of user-created content that may keep commercial ventures from going all the way to peer to peer. User-created environments will naturally be rough around the edges, and they might infringe on copyrights here and there and even be dangerous, after all.

But they'll never fail to be interesting, backers say. And that's the point.

"P2P virtual worlds are not for the faint of heart," said Crosbie Fitch, a developer who has written on the subject for several years. "But where would you rather play? In an expensive Utopia indistinguishable from an online creche? Or a collection of interactive universes that make the Web look like a quaint old tool, like Gopher does to Web surfers today? "
http://news.com.com/A+virtual+world+...3-5698499.html


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Wurld Media today announced that they have hired Mark A. Fowler as CFO and, after a rigorous selection process, appointed WR Hambrecht + Co as financial advisors. The new financial team brings the experience necessary to support Wurld Media’s rapid growth.
Press Release

Mark A. Fowler, CPA and MBA, brings his capital raising and financial operations expertise to Wurld Media’s management team. Mr. Fowler has been involved in multiple private placement transactions, and has participated in raising more than $200 million over his 20-year senior financial management career. In addition, he has successfully guided two companies through the Initial Public Offering (IPO) process: musicmaker.com, and Bioreliance, Inc. Mr. Fowler most recently was the chief financial officer and vice president of MetriGenix Corporation, a global provider of low-to-medium density, multi- dimensional micro array biochips.

"Wurld Media’s diverse and innovative product offerings put them in a unique position for success," said Mark A. Fowler, recently appointed CFO of Wurld Media. "Products such as Peer Impact and LX Systems have virtually limitless growth potential, and my background in technology, e-commerce and the music industry will complement Wurld Media’s growth objectives."

Wurld Media has also engaged WR Hambrecht + Co as its financial advisor. Best known for its OpenIPO(R) auctions and Internet-based technology, WR Hambrecht + Co provides Wurld Media with a firm commitment from one of the most innovative financial services firms in the industry.

About WR Hambrecht + Co

WR Hambrecht + Co ( http://www.wrhambrecht.com/ ) is an investment bank committed to using technology and auction processes to provide open and fair access to financial markets for all its clients. The firm’s impartial Internet-based auctions, which allow the market to determine pricing and allocation, have dramatically changed the financial services landscape. WR Hambrecht + Co provides underwriting and advisory services for technology and emerging growth companies, as well as equity research, sales and trading, full-service and online brokerage and private equity offerings for institutions and individuals. WR Hambrecht + Co is headquartered in San Francisco with offices in Boston, Chicago, London, New York and Philadelphia.

About Wurld Media, Inc.

Wurld Media is the company behind several unique and innovative technology products, including BuyersPort Networks, LX Systems, Grow Hope and Peer Impact. Wurld Media has quickly become a leader in e-commerce with its technologies being implemented by such diverse organizations as the Elizabeth Glaser Pediatric AIDS Foundation and the United States Army. Founded in 1999, Wurld Media is a privately held company based in Saratoga Springs, New York. For more information about Wurld Media or its products and services, please visit http://www.wurldmedia.com/ .
http://www.mysan.de/article102185.html


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DSL Subscribers On The Rise
Marguerite Reardon

Major U.S. telephone companies are closing in on the cable companies' dominance of the broadband market, as subscription rates on DSL outpaced those in cable for the first quarter of 2005.

Cable companies and phone companies both reported record growth in subscriptions. But large telephone companies added 1.4 million DSL subscribers during the first quarter, while cable companies added 1.2 million lines, according to market researcher Leichtman Research. Currently, about 35.9 million households subscribe to the top 20 telephone and cable companies in the U.S.

Since broadband was first made available, in the late 1990s, telephone companies have lagged behind cable companies in terms of subscribers. But the gap is closing.

In 2004, cable led the market with 59 percent of total subscribers, compared with 62 percent in 2003, according to research firm Strategy Analytics. Meanwhile, phone companies have been gaining market share. In 2003, DSL accounted for 39 percent of the broadband market, up from 36 percent the previous year. Cable operators' share of the broadband market is expected to shrink to around 50 percent in the next three to four years, as the phone companies continue their push with DSL and fiber-to-the-premises (FTTP) services, said Jim Penhune, an analyst with Strategy Analytics.

Experts attribute most of the recent jump in DSL subscriptions to more aggressive pricing plans from the telephone companies. For example, several phone companies have been offering start-up discounts and tiers of service, with lower prices for lower download speeds.

"We think it's a combination of our pricing and the services we offer," said Bobby Henson, a spokeswoman for Verizon, which added 385,000 subscribers in the first quarter. "Cable has traditionally focused on speed, whereas we focus on speed, pricing and content, which we believe equates to a better value."

Last month, Verizon started offering DSL download speeds of 3mbps for $29.95, the same price as its 1.5mbps service. It also is providing an integrated wireless router to customers who sign a one-year contract so more than one computer can share the connection at home.

On average, DSL service ranges in price from $20 to $30 a month before discounts. Prices on cable broadband typically start around $30 to $40 a month and can go as high as $65 a month. For the most part, cable operators have competed with the phone companies on speed rather than price.

Time Warner has raised its download speeds to 5mbps and 8mbps. Prices vary depending on the market, but a 5mbps service can cost $35 to $40 in a bundle that also includes cable television and Internet phone service. The 8mbps service costs about $64.95 as part of this "triple play" bundle.


The idea of bundling services and adding greater-value services is becoming increasingly important. Cable companies already offer high speed Internet access and television services. Many, including Time Warner and Cablevision, also have added voice service.

"The way we have been growing the business is by delivering better value at higher speeds with more robust content," said Keith Cocozza, spokesman for Time Warner Cable. "And when the products are bundled, (customers) can see even more value in our offering. In some markets where competition has been fierce we’ve offered discounted promotions."

Meanwhile, phone companies also are trying to add a triple-play bundle that includes voice, video and data. Verizon is building out its FTTP network, called Fios, which will deliver telephony, high speed Internet and TV service. SBC Communications also is upgrading its network by putting more fiber closer to customers. Although it is falling short of running fiber to individual homes, it nonetheless plans to offer the triple play of services over its network.

"In the long run, the race won’t be between DSL and cable," said Penhune. "It will be between the phone companies and the cable operators."
http://news.com.com/DSL+subscribers+...3-5705360.html


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Surfing for dollars

Impoverished Ethiopia Launches Broadband Internet Service

Impoverished Ethiopia launched the first phase of an ambitious three-year plan to wire the entire country for Internet access with the inauguration of broadband service in the capital.

While not cheap and available only to about 100,000 people in Addis Ababa, officials said they hoped to soon reduce fees and expand the service as part of the project to harness information communication technology to fight the crushing poverty that afflicts most of its population of 70 million. "ICT generates incomes through learning, improve productivity, and promote good governance and democracy," said infrastructure minister Kassu Ilalla who presided at the launch. "Unfortunately, over 85 percent of the population leaves in rural areas where access to telecom services is almost non-existent and this shouldn't continue any more," he said, adding that broadband was the most efficient way to provide internet connectivity. Last month, Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi announced plans for universal Internet access in the country by 2008, calling it "a vital and essential tool for fighting poverty, for beating poverty that kills and ensuring our survival." Before Thursday, Ethiopia had just 30,000 Internet connections but under the nationwide web access plan intends to expand that to 500,000 by October. The Horn of Africa country is one of the poorest nations in the world with an average per capital income of less than 100 dollars (78 euros) per year and is largely dependent on foreign assistance.
http://uk.news.yahoo.com/050505/323/fi640.html


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Majority Of U.S. Fiber Still "Dark"
ILN News Letter

The WSJ reports that despite a surge in Internet usage, there is still a significant fiber glut. Today, researchers estimate that about 85% of the fiber lines in the ground in the U.S. still are "dark," or inactive. Even the fiber that is being used isn't close to having its full capacity exploited. In fact, less than 5% of the total transmission capacity of all the fiber lines is being put to use -- about the same amount as in 2001.
http://online.wsj.com/article/0,,SB1...831034,00.html


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Microsoft Launches “Thought Thieves” Film Competition
Jordan Running

Microsoft has launched a new contest in the U.K. in which you can win £2,000 by making a short film about how intellectual property theft effects society. The name of the competition? ”Thought Thieves!” (Okay, I admit I added the exclamation point myself.) The winner will be honored at a ceremony in London. I hope the finalists wind up on BitTorrent.

P.S. Does the neon logo give anybody else a Deep Throat kind of vibe?
http://p2p.weblogsinc.com/entry/1234000647042925


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Defending Their Copyright With Your Taxes
Catherine Everett

The conviction of four self-proclaimed Robin Hoods for conspiracy to defraud last week has raised some serious questions over just how much public resource should be diverted into helping software companies protect their wares when they don't use all the security technology currently designed for just this purpose.

The gang members, collectively known as DrinkorDie, who were arrested between December 2001 and January 2002, were sentenced at the Old Bailey last week for their part in a global software counterfeiting ring. Three of the four, Alex Bell, Mark Vent, and Andrew Eardley worked or were previously employed as IT managers while the fourth, Steven Dowd, was unemployed. Sentences ranged from 18 months to two years, with Eardley's sentence suspended for two years.

The gang was charged with conspiracy to defraud after being arrested by the UK National Hi-Tech Crime Unit, which acted on information coming from US investigations including Operations Blossom and Buccaneer in 2001.

DrinkorDie formed part of a so-called "warez" group — from the plural of software — which operate by allegedly disseminating pirated copies of computer software, games, movies and music on the Internet. According to the US Justice Department, warez members distribute material to "select clientele" over secure servers, and those files eventually end up on an Internet Relay Chat network or a peer-to-peer file-sharing service.

The latest major US operation against warez groups, termed "Operation Fastlink," began last year and consisted of 120 searches in 27 US states and 10 other countries with US authorities estimating that the seized copyright material was worth $50 million.

But despite the apparent success of such investigations some experts have questioned whether so much public sector time and money should be spent what could be seen as essentially copyright infringement.

Peter Sommer, a security specialist called as an expert witness for the defence in the DrinkorDie case, claims the group should never have been prosecuted under charges of conspiracy. "The main concern that I have is the colossal expenditure of the UK investigating trial, which stems from the way the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) decided to charge this. Because the CPS decided to go with conspiracy charges rather than charging individuals substantively under copyright or trademark law, it increased costs by several million pounds," he says.

While Sommer acknowledges that the crimes committed were not victimless, he argues that the corporate victims weren't exactly defenceless but rather large companies that are, in the main, not even based in the UK.

"While they do have a problem, there are various remedies in terms of the civil courts and how they sell and distribute software. When there's scarce funding available, in my view, protecting companies is lower down the scale than protecting children abused by online paedophile rings," says Sommer.

Other experts have also questioned whether the ponderous judicial system can really keep pace with the changing activities and trends amongst the hacking fraternity. "Trends are shifting and because crackers do this for academic pleasure, they're going to want to move onto what's trendy. Warez groups are starting to die out, and although there's still quite a lot of activity on the Web, it's mainly between hackers and so is a limited market," says Neil Hare Brown, senior security advisor at security incident response company, QCC Information Security.

Crackers' have started looking for challenges elsewhere, argues Hare-Brown. While some have simply refocused their energies on working within the open source community in a more benevolent fashion, others have started concentrating on the games market, which so far has received less attention from law enforcement agencies than the commercial applications world.

"There's already an illegal burgeoning in the games market, with a good number of recent cracks on disk protection. The market is now saturated and it's easy to distribute illegal software in markets like that. People are just ripping stuff off DVDs and putting it on peer-to-peer networks," says Hare Brown.

But another problem indicates Sommer, who works as a research fellow at the London School of Economics, is that the lack of structure of warez groups means that members simply reappear elsewhere under different guises if they come under scrutiny.

"I suspect that many of the people that were in DrinkorDie are now doing other things. The US produced affinity charts trying to marry individuals to groups and it got very complex because a lot of them had different roles in different groups," he explains.

This lack of central structure means that it is very difficult to pursue a decapitation strategy or to round up ring leaders and "makes it a different type of case to investigate than drugs cartels", where there is an obvious hierarchy.

As a result, from a software publisher's point of view, Sommer believes, "going down the legal route is not the most effective means of protecting intellectual property. Mechanisms such as online registration may be rarer, but they're more effective because you can connect a software release to a real computer".

But Shona Jago, communications director for Europe, the Middle East and Africa at anti-piracy group the Business Software Alliance (BSA), claims it was necessary to make an example of the DrinkorDie members to try and prevent such cases happening again.

"This group did a lot of damage while it was operating and other groups are still doing damage. I think there's a deterrent value in showing that the law can act against this type of criminal activity. It's important that people understand that this type of activity is against the law and they can get caught," she says.

The BSA claims that while DrinkorDie may have been shut down as a result of co-ordinated global law enforcement actions, other warez groups are still active and continuing to cause harm. Jago was unable to provide figures on how much money software vendors had lost as a result of DrinkorDie's illegal pursuits but cited a study undertaken by IDC and commissioned by the BSA to indicate the knock-on effects of piracy on the wider economy.

The report found that 29 percent of software in the UK is not licensed properly, and that if 10 percent of this software was properly licensed paid for, the industry could generate a further £10 billion towards the UK's gross domestic product, provide £2.5 billion more in tax revenues and create 40,000 extra jobs, all within a three year period.

But some security experts claim it is high time that software vendors started becoming more proactive in protecting their software by using readily available technological mechanisms to safeguard it.

Hare Brown said: "It's not rocket science. It's about software companies making up their minds. They either want evidence to show that this software should be on that PC or they want a wide as possible distribution of their software and so are prepared to turn a blind eye. So the question is why haven't they put more stringent mechanisms in place to license their software before?"

Even five years ago, before online license registration was possible, suppliers could have requested that customers register their applications over the telephone, for example.

The fear was, however, that they would simply go to rivals rather than bother "so the software companies made it simple to use and asked customers to just click and agree. But now they don't want people stealing their software so they're gradually tightening down and it's also easier to do now there's the Internet", explains Hare Brown

There are already mechanisms in existence that could be used to stop software piracy from the outset such as digital watermarking or authentication, he argues.

"There's been a lot of research work funded by the European Union to come up with better mechanisms to prevent software piracy. It's put a lot of money into it, but it always takes time before the software community gets together and decides to adopt any particular form of copyright prevention technology," says Hare Brown.

The BSA's response to such logic is that, while its members have been exploring such options for some time, there is no one-size-fits-all-approach and different software markets require different IP protection solutions. "In terms of technical solutions, it's something that the industry has been looking at since piracy began. But it's a question of balancing intellectual property protection against not holding back the legitimate needs of users," says the BSA's Jago.

Self-proclaimed anti-piracy groups such as the BSA argue there is "no silver bullet" for solving these problems as at the end of the day it comes down to individual ethics.

"The DrinkorDie group were hobbyists who were more or less competing among themselves as to who could crack code the quickest, but the problem is one of IP protection. In some cases, it's taken years and a huge investment to develop this software and if it's cracked and made available to anyone who wants to download it, it can be used for counterfeit purposes to sell on," says Jago.
http://insight.zdnet.co.uk/business/...9198084,00.htm


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Crackdown on Piracy Hits Barrier

Federal prosecutors are reluctant to go after typical downloaders of music and movies.
Lorenza Muñoz and Jon Healey

Like a stern father figure, Atty. Gen. Alberto R. Gonzales warned Los Angeles high school students last month about the perils of illegally downloading music or movies.

"There are consequences," he said. "It is unlawful."

Backing up the threat is another matter. While federal prosecutors have made fighting piracy

a top priority, to date they have been reluctant to go after the group the entertainment industry most wants targeted: people who illegally download from hugely popular online file- sharing networks.

"No U.S. attorney wants to be the guy who put a UCLA sophomore in jail for downloading Britney Spears," said George Washington University law professor Orin Kerr, a former federal high-tech crimes specialist.

Downloading is one of the most popular ways to watch movies and hear music among the world's youth. Studio executives believe making examples of some of them could put the fear of God into would-be pirates.

Instead, prosecutors and the FBI have focused mainly on sophisticated "warez" groups that copy and distribute software, movies and music. Such groups are important pieces of the piracy distribution chain but have little in common with the masses who use file-sharing software.

When asked in an interview about going after downloaders, Gonzales was circumspect.

"Obviously, these are very complicated cases," he said. "Sometimes the laws are not, I think, as flexible as they might be to help us prosecute these kinds of cases."

The new Family Entertainment and Copyright Act makes it illegal to offer online even one movie, song or software program before its official release, making it easier to prosecute some cases. Though the law does not make downloading of copyrighted files a crime, many people who do such downloading also offer pirated material on their hard drives for others to copy. Still, Gonzales said, the new law was not aimed at people who make available a single bootlegged movie or song.

Prosecutors have neither the resources nor the stomach to go after that kind of lawbreaker, current and former Justice Department officials said. As with most federal crimes, the department prefers targeting bigger fish. Still, officials won't rule out going after anyone who pirates copyrighted works should the right case come along.

Studios, labels and their allies in Congress believe that with a stronger copyright law it's time to stop pulling punches with individuals who use Kazaa, BitTorrent or other popular file- sharing programs to pirate copyrighted works. They believe a highly publicized prosecution of a small-time infringer — the average Kazaa user, for example — would be a powerful deterrent.

"Knowing that the government of the United States has this tool available is so powerful," said Dan Glickman, chief executive of the Motion Picture Assn. of America. "It is an extremely meaningful step and we hope they use that authority. We hope this will not be some illusion on the books."

As it stands now, the worst that confronts people who share music or movies online are civil lawsuits filed by the MPAA or the Recording Industry Assn. of America.

Observers say federal prosecutors are walking a fine line.

"I think there's this delicate dance. They're trying to crack down on piracy without ending up the unpaid enforcement arm of the RIAA or the MPAA," said attorney Fred von Lohmann of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, an advocacy group for civil liberties in cyberspace.

Hilary Rosen, former chief executive of the RIAA, said difficulty gathering evidence was one reason prosecutors were reluctant to go after individual downloaders. Although it is easy to see who is offering copyrighted works for downloading on a file-sharing network, legal experts say it is virtually impossible to observe someone downloading a copyrighted file from another person's computer.

Even if you could overcome the difficulties, Kerr said, prosecutors worry that they could not win over a jury.

"The gap here is [that] it's socially acceptable to download files, but it can also be a crime," Kerr said.

For years, music and movie lobbyists fought to get the Justice Department to make piracy a priority of any kind. Former MPAA President Jack Valenti recalled unsuccessfully lobbying former Atty. Gen. Janet Reno, who was preoccupied with other law enforcement issues.

"They had a lot of crisis issues then," he said. "The digital era had not hit us yet. It's been in the last five or six years that the avalanche has come in a torrential way."

In Reno's defense, Bruce A. Lehman, the Clinton administration's assistant secretary of Commerce in charge of intellectual property issues, said the current Justice Department was doing more than its predecessors because copyright owners had asked it to do more.

"Our view at the time was that piracy in the United States was not a huge, big problem," Lehman said. "We didn't feel that it was seriously economically damaging to the copyright-based industries. And our focus was much, much more on international piracy."

The shift came under former Atty. Gen. John Ashcroft, an amateur singer and songwriter, who took a broad philosophical approach to protecting copyrights, patents and other intellectual property. Creativity and innovation not only are key elements of a society's productivity but they also determine whether a country leads or follows, Ashcroft said in an interview last year. Protecting intellectual property, he said, is critical for the U.S. to remain a place of unique opportunity and inordinate prosperity.

But the 9/11 attacks pushed piracy to the back burner, said David Israelite, CEO of the National Music Publishers' Assn. and a former top Ashcroft aide.

"We became all about terrorism, 24 hours a day," he said.

Slowly, piracy resurfaced as a priority. Valenti said he was encouraged after a 40-minute pitch to Ashcroft and his staff in the fall of 2003. During the meeting, Valenti rolled off statistics, making the case that intellectual property was America's only export with a surplus balance of trade, creating jobs at twice the rate of the U.S. economy.

Ashcroft, recalled Valenti, was impressed. "He realized this was an opportunity for the Justice Department to make a mark," Valenti said.

By early 2004, Israelite approached Ashcroft about fully reigniting the piracy initiative. Israelite said there was a realization that, as manufacturing jobs went overseas, the U.S. economy had become more reliant on intellectual property as an economic engine.

"We were increasingly dependent on that and at the same time seeing an increase in the theft of intellectual property here and abroad," Israelite said. "It had reached a crisis point."

Ashcroft agreed and formed a task force. Israelite spent six months listening to federal prosecutors, heads of movie studios, recording industry officials and software companies.

While Israelite pledged more enforcement from the Justice Department, Hollywood promised to increase its efforts to go after pirates by filing civil suits and launching education efforts. Now, the department has 18 specialized units nationwide that work only on copyright cases.

The department's task force "sent a message to a very large community of enforcers that intellectual property matters, and the behavioral consequences within the organization are enormous," said RIAA Chief Executive Mitch Bainwol.

Now, with a tougher copyright act enacted, the industry is expecting even more from the Justice Department.

Rep. Howard L. Berman (D-North Hollywood), a frequent studio ally, said the problem was severe enough to command the department's attention.

"If there was an elaborate white-collar scheme on a national and international basis to steal valuable property that, in the total context of things, cost an industry billions of dollars annually, I think everyone would expect the Justice Department and the FBI to prioritize finding and exposing and apprehending the people involved in it," Berman said.

Industry and government officials, however, are struggling to sell the idea that piracy equals theft to a young, tech- savvy generation that views illegal downloading as no big deal.

Josh Bernoff, an analyst at Forrester Research, said the Family Entertainment and Copyright Act could help change that mind-set. According to a survey his firm conducted in 2003, more than two-thirds of the 12- to 22-year-olds interviewed said they would stop illegal downloading if they thought there was a serious threat of jail or a fine, Bernoff said.

The new law, he said, "might put a little bit of teeth into the scare now."

John Barrett, an analyst at market research firm Parks Associates in Dallas, is more skeptical. At a recent conference in Universal City, he asked a panel of college students about file sharing and piracy. With so many of their friends illegally downloading, the students said, they were confident they would never be punished.

"There wasn't a kid on that group," he said, "that had the least bit of fear."
http://www.latimes.com/business/la-f...ck=2&cset=true


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Perpendicular Recording: Why It Matters
Jun Naruse

While the hard-drive industry has been using longitudinal recording successfully for five decades, it is now within two product generations of reaching its practical limit.

For about the past decade, scientists and engineers have pondered the potential effects of a natural phenomenon called superparamagnetism and postulated when its presence might interfere with the progress of the hard-disk drive, or HDD, industry.

Since the first commercial hard drive was introduced, in 1956, the industry has grown storage capacity exponentially by decreasing the size of the magnetic grains that make up data bits. In effect, the smaller the magnetic grain, the smaller the bit, the more data that can be stored on a disk. With longitudinal recording, we are getting close to the point where data integrity will be harmed if we continue to shrink the magnetic grains. This is due to the superparamagnetic effect.

Superparamagnetism occurs when the microscopic magnetic grains on the disk become so tiny that random thermal vibrations at room temperature cause them to lose their ability to hold their magnetic orientations. What results are "flipped bits"–-bits whose magnetic north and south poles suddenly and spontaneously reverse–-that corrupt data, rendering it and the storage device unreliable.

Today, the hard-drive industry’s ability to push out the superparamagnetic limit is more critical than ever as capacity requirements continue to grow dramatically. This is due, in large part, to the increasing use of hard drives in consumer electronic devices and the desire to pack more and more storage capacity on smaller devices. The superparamagnetic effect on current magnetic recording technologies will make that growth impossible within one-to-two years.

The superparamagnetic barrier is drawing nearer, forcing the industry to slow the historically rapid pace of growth in disk drive capacity.
Thanks to renewed interest in a magnetic recording method first demonstrated more than 100 years ago, there's confidence in the storage industry that the natural effects of superparamagnetism can be further stalled. That method is called perpendicular recording, which, when fully realized over the next five-to-seven years, is expected to enable a tenfold increase in storage capacity over today's technology. This would, for example, enable production of a 60GB 1-inch microdrive--a higher-capacity version of the microdrives used in MP3 players, personal media players, digital cameras, PDAs and other handheld devices.

To help understand how perpendicular recording works, think of the bits as small bar magnets.

In conventional longitudinal recording, the magnets representing the bits are lined up end-to-end along circular tracks in the plane of the disk. If you consider the highest-density bit pattern of alternating 1s and 0s, then the adjacent magnets end up head-to-head (north pole-to-north pole) and tail-to-tail (south pole-to-south pole). In this scenario, they want to repel each other, making them unstable against thermal fluctuations.

In perpendicular recording, the tiny magnets are standing up and down. Adjacent alternating bits stand with north pole next to south pole; thus, they want to attract each other, are more stable and can be packed more closely. This is the key to making the bits smaller without superparamagnetism causing them to lose their memory.

Earlier this year, Hitachi demonstrated a perpendicular recording-data density of 230 Gigabits per square inch–-twice that of today's density on longitudinal recording--which by 2007 could result in a 20GB microdrive.

Though it departs from the current method of recording, perpendicular recording is technically the closest alternative to longitudinal recording, enabling the industry to capitalize on current knowledge while delaying the superparamagnetic effect.

The superparamagnetic barrier is drawing nearer, forcing the industry to slow the historically rapid pace of growth in disk drive capacity-–a pace that, at its peak over the past decade, doubled capacity every 12 months. Using perpendicular recording, the effects of superparamagnetism can be further forestalled, which would create opportunities for continued growth in real density at a rate of about 40 percent each year.

Perpendicular magnetic recording represents an important opportunity for companies in the hard drive industry to continue to grow capacities at a reasonable pace. Such growth is needed to satisfy the burgeoning information requirements of society: A 2003 University of California at Berkeley study estimates that more than 4 million terabytes of information were produced and stored magnetically in 2002–-more than double the 1.7 million terabytes produced and stored in 2000. There are no signs that the requirements for hard-disk storage is ebbing.

Industry analysts have predicted that hard drives for consumer electronics will account for 40 percent of all hard drive shipments by 2008, up from 9 percent in 2003 and 15 percent in 2004. More than ever, consumers are holding their entertainment and personal data in digital formats and have demonstrated an insatiable appetite for storing music, photos, videos and other personal documents. In the next five to 10 years, the average household will have 10 to 20 hard drives in various applications--a situation that will require the successful adoption of perpendicular recording. Companies that research and produce their own hard drive technologies will be better positioned to do this when the industry demands it.

Confidence for the future
Fifty years ago, when the first 5MB drive was introduced, few if any observers could have predicted the current state of the industry. They would likely not have believed that a read/write head could fly 100mph over a spinning platter at a distance that is less than 1/10,000th the width of a human hair. Or that hard drives the size of matchbooks would be capable of storing entire music libraries. This all would have been in the realm of science fiction.

Yet they would likely understand the scientific concepts and physical laws that have made these advances possible. While there has been a great deal of invention, the basic science--like Danish inventor Valdemar Poulsen's discovery of magnetic recording more than 100 years ago--has remained relatively constant.

Such constancy gives rise to confidence across the industry that the challenge of superparamagnetism will be met. Perpendicular recording is most likely the first technology bridge in this realm, but it is by no means the last.
http://news.com.com/Perpendicular+re...3-5703823.html


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What's Ahead For Net, Digital Entertainment

The Internet and digital technology are changing entertainment at lightning speed. The coming years will scramble concepts of music-making, movies, TV networks and advertising. Last week, USA TODAY's Kevin Maney assembled a panel of some of the industry's most influential players to talk about what's ahead. The discussion took place in San Francisco in front of about 200 members of Silicon Valley's Churchill Club. Maney moderated. Following are excerpts.

Topic: Anyone can create media

Q: Blogs are taking off because now, anyone can create and publish text for the world to see. The same is happening in other media — it's becoming easier to make music, videos and even movies. How will that play out?

Chuck D: The fact that somebody in the Ukraine could just wake up and fall into their (home) studio and make some kind of material and submit it to a situation that can be heard worldwide — that, to me, is incredible. It's almost like a new radio. So that's what really had me understand that the music could run parallel with this new technology and create all kinds of new possibilities.

Q: In that world, how will people find the "good" music or movies?

Chuck D: A lot of people like to play basketball. I could do a different thing with a basketball than maybe Patrick Ewing or Michael Jordan. It doesn't interfere with the NBA. Eventually, the cream does rise to the top.

There's a lot of confusion in the middle part of picking and trying to find what is what. But as that becomes more solidified, then you'll see somebody finding an artist or a filmmaker or a blog writer from the middle-of-wherever in the world.

Ross: Right now, maybe people can figure out how to do basic photo sharing, but they don't know how to do recipe sharing. They don't know how to do anything else that's really interesting to them right now.

We're looking at a way to take all these different types of media, not just movies, not just animation, but anything that people like to do — and figure out how to let people manage that and share that simply and easily. For all the talk about blogs and all, to me, it's still just a buzzword. I don't think that people really know how to do a lot of this stuff.

Topic: Exploring effects of entertainment's 'long tail'

Q: What does the "long tail" mean for entertainment and media?

Ross: Companies can form around these little niche markets where they can sell this out-of-print book and make a killing just because there were enough people out there that were looking for it and couldn't find it for the last 10 years.

McNamee: The people in the middle have tried to be arbiters of what we could be entertained by.

They've been the determinants of what's a hit, what's not a hit. The great thing about the long tail is the consumers get to decide for themselves. They don't need somebody in the middle.

At the margin, what I think you'll see is a more direct relationship between content creators, artists of one kind or another and their fans.

The thing that's truly amazing about blogs is how many of them have seven, eight, 10,000 serious readers a day, which exceeds the average reader of the average column in the average local newspaper.

What's been wrong is that capital, the money, has always been tied to distribution. The reason my firm exists is to change that, to put the capital with the content, with the creative people.

You still have to get this into people's hands. But it needs to have a model that's less based on picking what people should watch and more based on giving them what they want.

Ramsay: We've discovered exactly the same thing in video.

We can measure it. There's maybe only a hundred people who watch bass fishing or speed knitting or whatever. So they watch it, and it's important to them.

What we've found is that the viewing patterns of people who watch live television — and are therefore restricted to prime time whenever they're home — are dramatically different than the viewing patterns of people who have the choice of just picking whatever they want.

Given the choice, people will migrate towards a much greater variety, and the deal is you've got to make everything available to everybody so that they're not restricted. And if you do, the market for that more esoteric, more specialized stuff is just as big as the market of the mainstream stuff.

Chuck D: If you're looking for that fourth Sam Cooke song on an album that's been out-of-print, then everybody sort of relied on file sharing for that.

But then the (record) companies came in and started to say, well, this is thiefdom. So there are brilliant possibilities, but the smoke settling and the dust clearing is a five-year picture.

Topic: Overwhelming choice

Q: If so much entertainment is available online and so much can be stored on hard disks on TiVo machines or personal computers, how will consumers react to that?

Ramsay: There's a lot of anxiety in the industry around just having infinite amounts of storage, where you can store everything and have your own server. It's ironic, because on the consumer side, what we hear is people get storage anxiety.

It's like, "I've got too much on this thing, I'll never be able to watch it." And they get worried about that. Well, why don't they erase something? No, they don't want to do that. You've got two sort of conflicting things there.

McNamee: We don't want to look at everything in real time. We just want to have a ton of stuff on some storage thing somewhere so that when the urge hits us, we can be entertained.

Often described as "Hollywood's Napster," BitTorrent is peer-to- peer software that allows people to share video files and even whole movies over the Internet. The same can be done using Kazaa, Gnutella or eDonkey, but BitTorrent has raced ahead in popularity.

If any of you is an entrepreneur, I'll tell you what I want — I want TiVo for BitTorrent. I want a thing that gives me full automation so I never have to think about it, and every high-quality Cary Grant movie gets automatically downloaded on the hard drive without any intervention by me. Nobody has done that, and it's stupid that they've never done it.

Ramsay: Search becomes a problem. The search tools that you use to find information, like Google and so on, don't generally work in video.

When Yahoo put up their video capability, I looked up (the TV show) 24. I had to go through about two pages before I actually got to the TV program.

There's going to be a growing need for entertainment-oriented search technology and for personalization and recommendations — if you like this, you're going to like that. It's not about a hundred channels or 500 channels anymore; it's about 15 million.

Hendra: Advertising agencies will be able to embed advertising within search so that we can target messages based on what people are actually searching for and their preferences as we get into a more personalized experience.

It's just the early days. There's a ton more that's going to come.

Topic: Changes in music

Q: The music industry is struggling mightily with how to handle the digital era. Can you talk about that?

Chuck D: The artist Prince — he calls himself Prince again — said it's best to be on top of technology or else it will be on top of you. Technology has always ruled the roost, but the companies who are intermediaries are never first to admit it. They always thought that they ruled the roost.

I got involved with the digital online world because I wanted to be able to go peer-to- peer. I wanted to be able to go directly to the public without having somebody judge my art. It's just opened up so many wonderful things. In 1998, I saw that having a PublicEnemy.com allowed me to go to many fans, not just in this country but throughout the world.

McNamee: Technology has transformed not just music, but it is gradually transforming every segment of media by making media mobile. Mobility has changed the demographics of consumption dramatically.

It used to be when you had to go to a movie theater to watch a movie or to your living room to listen to music or watch TV, that distribution could control the experience. It could control the time, place and price of your entertainment. Mobility has created time for people who previously couldn't buy or couldn't really enjoy media. It has given fans above the age of 25 — who still get minimum attention from the industry — it's given them the economic upper hand.

Ross: What the record companies are missing and the movie industry is missing, is that this is a way of life for kids. As kids grew up, (media) was always available to them. They're used to getting it on demand. They're used to going to the computer, and it's right there for them.

It's never been about oh, I don't want to pay X dollars for the CD. It's never been about undermining the record industry. It's always just been about the fact that I know the song is right there on the computer. I know I could download it.

I just can't comprehend the fact that it's there, and yet I'm supposed to go to the store and get it, because that's not the way that anything else works for us on the computer.

Q: Just curious: How do you find and buy music now?

Chuck D: For me, I have offline, online and midline. Midline is that you can order through the Web. Online means that you can go to places such as TheOrchard.com, which is an online retail shop which gets into all online retail outlets such as the Wal-Marts and the Rhapsodies and the iTunes.

Ross: On the Stanford network, there's a program that searches the network for any type of media and downloads it instantly, peer-to-peer. Of course, I only download — whatever the law is, that's only what I do. But that's how I find it. Or just through friends.

It's amazing how much content is not produced in a big warehouse but is produced by JibJab or one of these little media companies and makes the rounds on the Internet just through friends.

Topic: Video following music

Q: What do you see happening next in video and television?

Ramsay: The video world is lagging behind the music world in terms of this revolution that's occurring. It's actually evolving in very similar ways, but it's several years behind because of the technology. Obviously, video takes up a lot more bandwidth, and it's harder to distribute.

But there's no question in my mind that over the next few years, we're going to see a massive shift toward getting access to video content via broadband. You're going to see the same kinds of friction-free, self-publishing dynamic starting to happen. It's already happening. You can get on the Internet, and you can publish your video; you can make it available to anybody.

And it won't be too long before you'll be able to do that and charge for it. All the things that occur today in music are going to occur in video.

McNamee: There's a start-up called Akimbo that's about to ship a product. Its initial programming will be soccer from Europe.

It'll have things from India and from other cultures that have never been available because they don't have large-enough audiences to go on satellite or cable, but they have a plenty large-enough, and certainly devoted-enough, audience to go over the Internet.

Ramsay: Foreign programming is an interesting test case, because it fits into that same model that (Blake) was talking about a bit earlier, which is, if it's too awkward to get somewhere else and it's available on the Internet, I'm just going to download it.

If that gets to be really easy, you're going to see a flood of illegal downloading that could parallel what's been going on in music, led by foreign-language programming, because you just can't get it elsewhere.

Hendra: The networks are starting to try to figure out what they're going to do with all their content to fit the new world. They've got to figure out how to make money off it in a different way. It's going to take some people who have grown up on the computer and the Internet to change it inside those big companies.

Topic: Next-generation advertising

Q: If people have total control over their entertainment, how does advertising fit in?

Hendra: It isn't going to happen at 3 o'clock on Friday; everything's suddenly going to be a new paradigm. But I do think the next three to five years, we're going to see a massive restructuring. What's got to take place is big changes on the advertisers' side. They have to decide that they're going to join this transformational process, and they're going to change the way that they do things in terms of marketing and advertising.

Q: Is it hard to bring the advertisers around?

Hendra: There's still a whole generation of marketers and brand managers who grew up on mass media, and that has to change. It doesn't mean the 30- second TV spot will die. I don't even think that's the right question. We're still, even right now, able to use 30-second TV to drive people to that interactive experience. At the same time, we have to figure out — we're going to have these very picky and demanding audiences of one or 200 or 1,000. That takes a whole new set of skills to be able to target people that way.

Ramsay: In (the TiVo) experience, when you offer advertising to people, it's their choice. You say, here's something you might be interested in. You don't have to watch it if you don't want to.

I'm surprised at just how many people go there. You sort of have this notion that people will ignore advertising almost unilaterally, but they don't. And I think it opens up opportunities to do a lot of interactive, more personal ads, more targeted ads and more direct-response ads.

Topic: The state of the industry

Q: What else do you have to say about where the industry is going?

Ramsay: Entertainment is getting better. People have more choice. They don't have to watch stuff they don't want to watch. They don't have to listen to things they don't like. We're just at the beginning of that.

Ross: We can sit up here and talk about digital seismic earthquakes and everything, but the fact is that my grandfather still struggles with e-mail. People still hate computers and can barely figure out what we're talking about.

I want to see my grandfather blog about the war or make a movie about his experiences in his life before it's too late. People are missing that boat. We're designing (technology) for the young males and the hard-core-technology demographic.

As far as what's next for Firefox, it's about making every last bit of the Internet experience simpler until my mom is not yelling for me from the other room.

McNamee: Most major media companies define their technology strategy in terms of digital-rights management. Their view of the world is about controlling access to what they own. The next 10 years are about exactly the opposite. It's about the creative people and their fans getting together. Whatever it is you like, it will be increasingly available. It's time to give customers what they want.

It's now our job and the industry's job to actually do it. The old business models are brain-dead, and the body will die soon.
http://www.usatoday.com/money/indust...ble-usat_x.htm


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Gloves Off In Dutch Anti-Piracy Punch-Up
Jan Libbenga

Five Dutch ISPs will launch a "procedure on the merits" action against Dutch anti- piracy organisation Dutch Protection Rights Entertainment Industry Netherlands (BREIN). As reported (http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/05...racy_lawsuits/) yesterday, BREIN intends to sue the ISPs next month to obtain the identity of 42 individuals suspected of illegally swapping copyrighted music. The ISPs believe a normal summary proceeding or kort geding will not allow a full investigation of the merits or otherwise of BREIN's case. A procedure on the merits demands such investigation.

Former Kazaa lawyer Christiaan Alberdingk Thijm will now defend the providers in the full proceedings on the merits, which is expected to take months if not longer. The ISPs say they are in no hurry to proceed with a preliminary injunction. Obviously, BREIN disagrees, and says that the movie and music industry is losing money every day as a result of illegal file swapping.

Meanwhile, Dutch maverick weblog Geen Stijl (No Style) has started a campaign against BREIN. Geen Stijl urges its readers to fill out a form asking BREIN if they have any personal data on them. Under article 35 of the Dutch privacy law BREIN is obliged to reply within four weeks. Geen Stijl hopes the protest will create "administrative mayhem" at BREIN, but BREIN has already said it will send out a standard reply and will charge individuals who demand more detailed information.

The weblog also argues that BREIN is a privately-owned company (linked closely to music rights society Buma/Stemra) and that private companies in the Netherlands are not allowed to actively collect personal data and link these to an IP address.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/05...ps_fight_back/


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Direct Infringement on Peer-to-Peer Networks

Niels Schaumann - William Mitchell College of Law

William Mitchell Legal Studies Research Paper No. 9

Abstract:
In 2001, the Ninth Circuit affirmed a trial court decision that some 75 million Americans were infringing copyright by exchanging music files in the MP3 format via a peer-to-peer (P2P) network known as Napster. The breathtaking sweep of this holding - that almost one quarter of the population of the United States was engaging in illegal (and likely criminal) activity - was reason enough to give the case a second look. But most of the scholarly attention lavished on the Napster case focused on Napster's secondary liability for providing the technology of infringement. There has been little analysis of the primary infringement committed by Napster's users.

Indeed, the alleged primary infringement of P2P users seems to be an example of a phenomenon one sometimes encounters in the common law: A case finds liability, with little or no analysis. A later case also finds liability, with no independent analysis, citing the first case. A third case does the same, citing the first two cases. Before long, the principle of liability is declared to be well-settled, despite an almost complete lack of reasoning supporting the principle. The so-called RAM copy doctrine, discussed below, is a good example of this phenomenon. Direct P2P infringement seems destined to be another: While Napster, the first of the P2P cases, at least briefly discusses the basis for the direct liability of Napster's users, later cases have done little more than mention that P2P users infringe copyright, as if it were self-evident.

In this article, I will analyze the activities of P2P users to determine more precisely which, if any, of their actions infringe copyright. I suggest that one reason courts do not delve more deeply into the question of direct infringement is that in fully-litigated cases, the alleged direct infringers are not before the courts; their rights are being adjudicated in absentia. Moreover, the actual defendants in these cases - the alleged secondary infringers - are poor proxies for the users of P2P networks and have no incentive to promote clear judicial analysis, because clear analysis will result in secondary liability. Yet it is important from a policy standpoint to be clear about which activities infringe and which do not.

Part II of this Article will describe the process of copyright lawmaking and the recent evolution of copyright law in response to technology. This discussion will include a brief description of conventional and P2P network technology. A copyright analysis of user activities on P2P networks follows in Part III, which argues that the nature of copyright legislation requires courts to be especially careful and precise in determining the contours of infringing noncommercial conduct by members of the public. The analysis in Part III will lead to the conclusion that copying by P2P users does not infringe copyright, but distribution does. In Part IV, I address some strategic considerations affecting copyright enforcement and P2P networks, and I will argue that the rights of consumers to use copyrighted works are gravely threatened by the current of litigation against secondary infringers. Finally, I propose the reinvigoration of Sony as a way to preserve the public benefit of P2P technology.
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.c...ract_id=703882


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Correspondence

Jack,

I remember that you monitor P2P developments, and I was wondering if you had already talked about my essay covering peer to peer theory in its social and political aspects?

Here is a bunch of links, followed by encouraging kudo's.

I just created a Foundation for P2P Alternatives,

Michel Bauwens


a PDF version here at http://www.networkcultures.org/weblo.../P2P_essay.pdf ;

a Wiki version is already available at http://noosphere.cc/wiki/pmwiki.php?n=Main.P2pEvolution.

an earlier draft version for the 'integral discourse community' is located at http://207.44.196.94/~wilber/bauwens2.html

However, it's always best to ask me for the latest version by email attachment, since I tinker with the essay almost daily.

A weekly newsletter, Pluralities/Integration, monitoring P2P developments is also available from the same author, free by email request. See the archive at
http://integralvisioning.org/index.php?topic=p2p

The foundation website-in-progress is at http://p2pfoundation.net/index.php/Main_Page ; a mailing list for the site's development is available at p2pf@yahoogroups.com.



George Dafermos, at http://radio.weblogs.com/0117128/

"Michel Bauwens is the author of the most visionary piece on peer-to-peer I've ever read, published his much-awaited new essay on P2P, entitled P2P and Human Evolution: p2p as the premise of a new mode of civilization. As expected, his excellent and path-breaking treatise is all-encompassing, critically exploring P2P in all its possible manifestations and linkages, that is, with respect to its political, social, economic, spiritual, cultural, and technological implications. It is at the intersections of all these spheres and their interactions that P2P holds the potential to emerge as the basis of the new civilisation premised on self-realisation, autonomy, creation, eros, and sharing. It's either that or a return to barbarism, writes Bauwens. Read on and marvel at the mental syntheses that this essay invokes."


Peer to Peer weblog / Unmediated at http://p2p.weblogsinc.com/entry/1234000653037158/

"Michel Bauwens has written a phenomenal essay entitled P2P and Human Evolution: Placing Peer to Peer Theory in an Integral Framework. It's long and much of it goes far over my head, but reads like a P2P manifesto" Bauwens even concludes by calling it a guide to an active participation in the transformation of our world, into something better, more participative, more free, more creative. Really quite fascinating."


Integral Foresight Institute, Chris Stewart

"What Michael Bauwens has achieved in a very short space fullfills the same function as the Communist Manifesto once did: a call for a worldwide movement for social and political change, firmly rooted in the objective and subjective changes of contempary society, and articulated as a practical and insightful model of human value and power relations that is ahead of its time. If we listen more carefully to Bauwens than we ever did Marx, however, it just might lead to a smooth evolution for humanity rather than revolution, or at worst, destruction. Bauwens has traced out real contours of hope for Western civilization. His presentation of a P2P perspective includes a clear theory of human power and value relations, a practical appreciation of its relationship to the current orthodoxy, and an inspiring vision for viable, sustainable, and desirable futures. Just as Bauwens notes the limited social acceptance of Marx at the time of his writing, it may well be that in years to come Bauwens's articulate and deeply considered insights will not only be as profoundly influential and valuable but, crucially, a lot more workable."


P2P and Integral Theory – Generation Sit weblog

"I rarely encounter essays addressing Integral Theory in the context of emerging technology. But if there's one thing out there worth reading, this essay is one of them -- P2P and Human Evolution: Placing Peer to Peer Theory in an Integral Framework (via IntegralWorld). This very long essay describes P2P in detail, covering the interior and exterior aspects, and its incompatibilities with Spiral Dynamics and Integral Theory. There are a lot of heady stuff for me to digest in this essay. And I'm still not done reading it."


John Heron, Participatory Spirituality pioneer, author of Sacred Science

"What I appreciate is your clarity with regard to the following: your basic definition of p2p; the way you trace this definition, and any compromises and departures from it, within its many manifestations; and toward the end of your account, forms co-existence and of possible political strategies. All of this is very valuable food for thought and action. You make a most effective and persuasive case for the widespread significance of the p2p phenomenon, in diverse fields, and with due regard for the underlying epistemological shifts involved. This work is indeed a major achievement of scholarship, insight, moral vision and political imagination."


Letters to the WiR are welcome. You may send yours to jackspratts (at) lycos (dot) com – Jack.

[JackSpratts]

Silicon Solution Could Lead to a Truly Long-Life Battery

Using some of the same manufacturing techniques that produce microchips, researchers have created a porous-silicon diode that may lead to improved betavoltaics. Such devices convert low levels of radiation into electricity and can have useful lives spanning several decades.

While producing as little as one-thousandth of the power of conventional chemical batteries, the new "BetaBattery" concept is more efficient and potentially less expensive than similar designs and should be easier to manufacture. If the new diode proves successful when incorporated into a finished battery, it could help power such hard-to-service, long-life systems as structural sensors on bridges, climate monitoring equipment and satellites.

The battery's staying power is tied to the enduring nature of its fuel, tritium, a hydrogen isotope that releases electrons in a process called beta decay. The porous-silicon semiconductors generate electricity by absorbing the electrons, just as a solar cell generates electricity by absorbing energy from incoming photons of light.

Supported by grants from the NSF Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) program, a multi-disciplinary team of researchers from the University of Rochester, the University of Toronto, Rochester Institute of Technology and BetaBatt, Inc. of Houston, Texas, describe their new diode in the May 13 issue of Advanced Materials.

Researchers have been attempting to convert radiation into electricity since the development of the transistor more than 50 years ago. Mastering the junctions between relatively electron-rich and electron-poor regions of semiconductor material (p-n junctions) led to many modern electronic products.

Yet, while engineers have been successful at capturing electromagnetic radiation with solar cells, the flat, thin devices have been unable to collect enough beta-decay electrons to yield a viable betavoltaic device.

The BetaBatt will not be the first battery to harness a radioactive source, or even the first to use tritium, but the new cell will have a unique advantage - the half-millimeter-thick silicon wafer into which researchers have etched a network of deep pores. This structure vastly increases the exposed surface area, creating a device that is 10 times more efficient than planar designs.

"The 3-D porous silicon configuration is excellent for absorbing essentially all the kinetic energy of the source electrons," says co-author Nazir Kherani of the University of Toronto. Instead of generating current by absorbing electrons at the outermost layer of a thin sheet, surfaces deep within these porous silicon wafers accommodate a much larger amount of incoming radiation. In early tests, nearly all electrons emitted during the tritium's beta decay were absorbed.

There were a number of practical reasons for selecting tritium as the source of energy, says co-author Larry Gadeken of BetaBatt - particularly safety and containment.

"Tritium emits only low energy beta particles (electrons) that can be shielded by very thin materials, such as a sheet of paper," says Gadeken. "The hermetically-sealed, metallic BetaBattery cases will encapsulate the entire radioactive energy source, just like a normal battery contains its chemical source so it cannot escape."

Even if the hermetic case were to be breached, adds Gadeken, the source material the team is developing will be a hard plastic that incorporates tritium into its chemical structure. Unlike a chemical paste, the plastic cannot not leak out or leach into the surrounding environment.

Researchers and manufacturers have been producing porous silicon for decades, and it is commonly used for antireflective coatings, light emitting devices, and photon filters for fiber optics. However, the current research is the first patented betavoltaic application for porous silicon and the first time that 3-D p-n diodes have been created with standard semiconductor industry techniques.

"The betavoltaic and photovoltaic applications of 3-D porous silicon diodes will result in an exciting arena of additional uses for this versatile material," says co-author Philippe Fauchet of the University of Rochester.

"This is the first time that uniform p-n junctions have been made in porous silicon, which is exciting from the point of view of materials science," says Fauchet. For example, because of its characteristics and photon sensitivity, each diode pore could serve as an individual detector, potentially creating an extremely high-resolution image sensor.

"The ease of using standard semiconductor processing technology to fabricate 3-D p-n junctions was surprising," adds co-author Karl Hirschman of the Rochester Institute of Technology. That manufacturing ease is an important breakthrough for increasing production and lowering costs, and it makes the device scalable and versatile for a range of applications.

"The initial applications will be for remote or inaccessible sensors and devices where the availability of long-life power is critical," says Gadeken.

The BetaBattery may prove better suited to certain tasks than chemical batteries when power needs are limited. The structures are robust-- tolerant to motion and shock, and functional from -148° Fahrenheit (-100° Celsius) to 302° F (150°C)--and may never have to be changed for the lifetime of the device.
http://www.newswise.com/articles/view/511690/?sc=swtn


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Debate Focuses On Future Of Online File-Sharing
Elizabeth Landau

Amid a growing number of copyright-infringement lawsuits filed by music and film producers against college students, attorneys from both sides of the issue debated the future of online sharing of songs, movies and other files at an event organized by Princeton students.

Dean Garfield, vice president and director of legal affairs of the Motion Picture Association of America, and Wendy Seltzer, intellectual property attorney for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, agreed on the value of copyright protection but diverged on nearly every other subject during an hour-long debate at the Friend Center on Friday, May 6.

During the debate, called "Fear-to-Peer: A Debate About File-Sharing on Campus," both Garfield and Seltzer agreed that copyright laws have long played an important role in encouraging creativity. But they disagreed about the appropriate consequences of using or creating the file-sharing technologies or how to move forward in a society with pervasive access to such technology.

File-sharing, the trading of music and video via the Internet or other computer networks, has sparked disagreements in courts and on college campuses around the country as people share copyrighted materials without paying for them. The recording and motion picture industries have sued college students for allegedly using such networks to illegally share copyrighted materials. Some of the recording industry suits have targeted Princeton students. (The University's published guidelines on copyright protection are available online.)

"I don't think that lawsuits, particularly lawsuits against individuals, including college students, are the best way to enforce copyright and ensure payments to those who create artistic works," said Seltzer. Arguing that industry should "offer the carrot before the stick," she advocated the creation of commercial services that make it more attractive for people to pay for the service than to use free networks.

Technologies have historically presented problems for copyrights, Seltzer said. The piano roll, the radio and the VCR were all “disruptive technologies” that raised fears that they would seriously damage businesses that depend on copyrights. "But in each case, we didn't kill off those technologies," she said. "We found compromises -- whether legislative changes or industries working together -- to find ways to compensate artists while letting the new technologies advance."

File-sharing presents a similar challenge, she said. "Instead of killing off that new technology, let's find ways for people to pay for it."

Garfield assured the audience that the recording and movie industries do not intend to banish file- sharing, or "peer-to-peer" networks, which facilitate the sharing of audio, video and other digital media. "Technology is not the enemy," he said.

Yet technology is clearly used to violate copyright laws, he said. "The legal aspects are the simplest part" of the subject, he said. “Just because you can do it in your dorm room without anyone seeing doesn’t mean it isn’t wrong.”

In addition to individual users, companies such as Grokster Ltd. that provide peer-to-peer services may be held liable when people use them in illegal ways, such as for downloading movies and software, he said.

“When you find out the product you created is being misused, you bear some responsibility to address the impropriety,” he said.

Garfield, who received a master's degree from Princeton's Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs and formerly worked for the Recording Industry of America, has led several key lawsuits related to file-sharing. Seltzer, who is a fellow at the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard Law School, has helped to defend such cases through her work at the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

The debate was organized by a group of students -- seniors Stacy Chen and Daniel Peng and graduate students Harlan Yu and Alex Halderman -- who participated in the course "Information Technology and the Law" taught this semester by Edward Felten, professor of computer science. Felten moderated the debate, which was sponsored by the School of Engineering and Applied Science, the Woodrow Wilson School and the Department of Computer Science.

“I hope it helped people clarify what was going on with the lawsuits,” said Peng, who was subject to one of the music industry's early file-sharing suits in 2003. " I think there is a general acknowledgement that there is a need to compensate the creators. There is not a consensus about what we should do, and that is the crux of the debate."
http://www.princeton.edu/main/news/a...ion=topstories


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WinMX MP3 Music Sharing Software Review
Joanna Gurnitsky

1) Overview of the WinMX software: This product is designed to trade songs and videos across the Internet using "peer to peer" (P2P) networking.

It works like this: thousands of users install WinMX on their PCs, and willingly open their hard drives to each other. As these thousands of people log on to the Net using WinMX, the pool of available WinMX hard drives changes moment-to-moment. Every WinMX user is empowered to search for songs and movies, and then begin downloading and uploading music files to each other. Equitable sharing of music and movies is promoted, and people will often share gigabytes of files with their fellow WinMX users.

This WinMX P2P network system employs its own custom file sharing client software, created by FrontCode Technologies. The current version of WinMX is 3.53, and is free to download here: http:// www.winmx.com/

2) Warning: WinMX is a highly controversial software because of copyright laws, and WinMX users do risk possible fines and lawsuits.

3) What You Need to Run WinMX (System Requirements)" : Windows 98 / ME / 2000 / XP. Pentium166 with 64MB of RAM or better recommended. MacIntosh "grey- market" versions are available for around $50USD.

3) Why WinMX is a Good P2P Software: WinMX is simple to install, easy to use, available for free, and is the only no-cost P2P software that is free of malignant spyware. In short, if you choose to participate in P2P file sharing, WinMX is the friendliest and cheapest choice available.

4) The Downsides of WinMX: Other than in Canada, it is a copyright infringement in most countries to share music and movie files. WinMX users risk being fined or even sued everytime they trade music files.

Part 2: Legalities and Technicalities

6) The Legalities of Using WinMX Music-Sharing Software:

True WinMX software is FREE, but you must decide if you will risk being sued for copyright infringement. The only country that legally sanctions Internet music- and video-sharing is Canada. If you are in the USA, the UK, Mexico, Australia, or elsewhere, you do run a risk of being caught and fined for sharing music.

Example of an American User Being Fined: On May 6th, 2004, a woman from Connecticut was fined six thousand dollars for downloading copyright-protected music from the Internet, and was barred from downloading, uploading or distributing copyrighted songs over the Internet. (Article here)

7) Warning About a Consumer Scam: some P2P networks will unethically sell you paid versions of various file sharing software, including WinMX, and claim that this paid software absolves you of copyright responsibility. This is a lie. While the software itself may be legal (you paid for it), the copyright aspect is not addressed by these surchages.

These unethical scammers will obscure the issue with hazy statements like: “Due to the nature of peer-to- peer software, we are unable to monitor or control the types of files shared within the peer- to-peer communities”. In the end, despite what these unethical vendors will tell you, you are still liable for music sharing copyright regardless if you pay for the software or not

8) Technical Concerns for Using WinMX P2P Software:

a. Always check your files with a good anti-virus program.

b. If you are behind a router-firewall and are curious how to set up your file sharing, go here:

http://homepage.ntlworld.com/j.bucha...l?routers.html

This website contains detailed information you can use to “open up” certain ports on your router to allow the “in” and “out” file sharing traffic.

c. Personal comment: I would highly recommend that you get acquainted with some tips and tricks that will make your WinMX-life easier. These tips include: how to avoid downloading fake files, and what to do if the movie you just downloaded refuses play on your computer. You can also find a lot of information about the fine- tuning of your transfer speeds and other WinMX expert features here:

http://homepage.ntlworld.com/candyst...llingWinMX.htm
http://netforbeginners.about.com/cs/...nmx_review.htm


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Toshiba Developing 45GB HD-DVD Disc
Nate Mook

Despite reports in a Japanese newspaper stating that Toshiba and Sony may be close to deal that would standardize on Blu- ray for next-generation DVDs, Toshiba has announced the development of a higher capacity disc in its competing format, HD-DVD. The 45GB capacity would eliminate Blu-ray's size advantage.

Blu-ray offers a 50-gigabyte disc capacity and proponents boast that it is intended primarily for video purposes. Original HD-DVD discs had two layers of data: one in the old DVD format and a second that holds 15 gigabytes.

Supporters of HD-DVD note its backwards compatibility, but Blu-ray's immense capacity has garnered more interest in the marketplace.

The new HD-DVD format would support three separate layers of data on a disc, with each layer holding 15GB. Toshiba also announced a new dual-layer disc that holds 30GB on one side and 8.5GB in the original DVD format on the other.

The competing high-definition DVD formats has caused a rift in the movie industry. Movie studios Walt Disney and Twentieth Century Fox have pledged support for Blu-ray, while others including Warner Bros. will utilize HD-DVD. HD-DVD discs are expected to reach the market first.

Software companies such as Microsoft and Apple, meanwhile, will win no matter what DVD format comes out on top. Video codecs from both companies will be supported by both Blu-ray and HD-DVD, and Microsoft recently announced that Warner Bros. Studios will use its VC-1 codec for its HD-DVD movie titles.
http://www.betanews.com/article/Tosh...isc/1115827313


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Yahoo Taking On Rivals With Online Music Service
Sue Zeidler

Yahoo Inc. on Tuesday said it was launching a new online music subscription service, aggressively competing against current providers such as Apple Computer Inc., RealNetworks Inc.'s Rhapsody and Napster Inc. with lower pricing.

Yahoo said it was offering the service, beginning May 11, in a trial version with an introductory price of $4.99 per month for an annual subscription, or $6.99 on a monthly basis.

The new service, called Yahoo Music Unlimited, lets individuals play tunes from a catalog of more than one million songs, transfer tracks to portable devices and share music with friends through Yahoo! Messenger.

Rivals Napster and Rhapsody provide subscribers unlimited streams on demand and other features for about $9.99 a month and both recently added portability, charging users about $15 a month for subscriptions including that feature.

Yahoo Music General Manager David Goldberg said the company could eventually raise its prices. "We're not saying it's the price forever, but we're assuming it's the price throughout the Beta (trial) period, which is an undetermined amount of time," he told Reuters.

"Yahoo's clearly putting big pricing pressure on folks like Real and Napster. Neither have the advertising leverage that Yahoo has, so this has the potential to be highly disruptive to any digital music subscription service, particularly Napster since its a pure-play digital music company," said PJ McNealy, an analyst with American Technology Research.

The shares of Real and Napster fell in after hours trading on iNet. Real's stock fell nearly 11 percent or about 80 cents to $6.50 after closing at $7.30 on Nasdaq. Napster fell about 15 percent, or $1 to $5.35 after-hours after closing on Nasdaq at $6.35.

Napster could not be reached for comment.

RealNetworks last month unveiled a free version of its service, offering users 25 songs streamed on demand, Internet radio and other features in hopes of luring consumers to its other fee-based services.

"We just started giving away music for free on Rhapsody and there's more movement to give consumers affordable access to music. Yahoo's jumping into the subscription market is a complete validation for RealNetworks," said a Real spokesman.

By linking the service to its instant messaging application, analysts said Yahoo is aiming to make legal music- sharing among subscribers a focus of its offerings.

Yahoo's service also enables fans to buy downloads, listen to commercial-free Internet radio stations and access their subscription service from any Internet-connected computer.

The subscription service is the latest push by the Sunnyvale, Calif-based Web giant to bolster its music properties under the newly rebranded Yahoo! Music division in hopes of capitalizing on the growing market for online music now led by Apple Computer Inc. with its a la carte music purchasing service and popular iPods.

Yahoo last September bought San Diego-based Musicmatch, which offers the popular Musicmatch Jukebox, online radio stations and a song download service, for $160 million.

Yahoo is also reportedly developing a search engine for finding downloadable songs and music data from across the Internet, which it plans to introduce within the next couple of months. Company officials declined to comment.
http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.j...toryID=8447352


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After The Bell-Dreamworks, Realnetworks And Napster Fall

Shares of DreamWorks Animation SKG Inc. (DWA.N: Quote, Profile, Research) slid nearly 19 percent in extended hours of trading on Tuesday after the movie studio and entertainment company posted lower-than-expected earnings.

DreamWorks stock fell to $29.69 on the Inet electronic brokerage system from its New York Stock Exchange close at $36.50.

The Glendale, California-based DreamWorks posted net earnings of $46 million, or 44 cents a share, compared with a net loss of $25 million, or 33 cents a diluted share for the same period in 2004. Analysts polled by Reuters Estimates expected earnings of 57 cents a share for the latest first quarter.

Meanwhile, shares of Cisco Systems Inc. (CSCO.O: Quote, Profile, Research) which had risen over 1 percent after it announced an increase in its quarterly earnings and sales, were trading at $18.30, still up half a percent from their Nasdaq close at $18.21.

Cisco, the largest maker of gear for directing traffic over the Internet, is considered by many to be a bellwether for the technology sector.

Shares of Bob Evans Farms Inc. (BOBE.O: Quote, Profile, Research) fell 3.6 percent after it said that same-store sales at its namesake restaurants fell 5.8 percent in April as average menu prices for the month also declined.

Bob Evans' shares fell to $21.50 on Inet from its Nasdaq close of $22.31.

Shares of online music service providers RealNetworks Inc. (RNWK.O: Quote, Profile, Research) and Napster Inc. (NAPS.O: Quote, Profile, Research) fell after Internet giant Yahoo Inc. (YHOO.O: Quote, Profile, Research) on Tuesday said it launched a new online music subscription service. The service will compete aggressively against both RealNetworks and Napster with lower pricing.

RealNetworks stock plunged over 10 percent to $6.55, while shares of Napster sank over 17 percent to $5.25.

Shares of eCollege (ECLG.O: Quote, Profile, Research) , which provides technology and services to colleges for their online academic programs, fell more than 9 percent to $9.78 from their Nasdaq close of $10.76. The stock's price fell on Inet after hours in spite of the company's report of higher quarterly results.
http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.j...toryID=8446755


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Stevie Wonder Releases Video For Blind

Stevie Wonder is releasing the first video containing an audio track for people who have trouble seeing, according to the blind singer's Web site.

One version of "So What the Fuss," from Wonder's upcoming album, "A Time To Love," will air on music channels.

Another version featuring the track narrated by rapper Busta Rhymes will air on channels with secondary audio programing, known as SAP technology, Universal Motown Records Group said.

The technology provides alternative audio, such as descriptions of scenery around program dialogue, for the blind and low-vision audience, said Linda Idoni of the Media Access Group of Boston public television station WGBH.

The Media Access Group wrote the description read by Rhymes on Wonder's video.

"Until now music videos have been very one-dimensional for those who are blind or with low vision," said Wonder in a statement.

Yahoo Inc's Yahoo! Music will premiere both versions of the video online on Wednesday.

Wonder, 54, unveiled the narrated video along with the traditional version of "So What the Fuss" at a Los Angeles news conference Monday at which reporters were blindfolded.

"So What the Fuss" is the first studio release from Wonder in nearly 10 years. Universal Motown is a unit of Vivendi Universal.

Wonder was just 12 when he started recording for Motown, and his first hit, "Fingertips, Pt. 2" topped the pop charts in 1963. Other hits include "Superstition," "You are the Sunshine of My life" and "I Just Called to Say I Love You."
http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.j...toryID=8447725


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America Online To Unveil Free E-Mail Service
Kenneth Li

America Online will begin offering a free e-mail service on Wednesday tied to its popular instant messaging service, ahead of a big relaunch of its free AOL.com Web site later this year.

AOL's free Web-based e-mail service is nearly a decade behind Microsoft's Hotmail service and several years behind a Yahoo E-mail offering.

But the online division of Time Warner Inc. (TWX.N: Quote, Profile, Research) is betting that the combination of e-mail with its ubiquitous instant messaging software (AIM) will create a more powerful service combining all electronic and phone messages.

AOL will integrate its recently launched digital phone service this fall, when the AIM software will be rewritten, allowing users to retrieve voice mail, e-mail and instant messages from any computer.

"AOL is a bit late to the Web mail game, but it's not too late," said Joe Laszlo, a senior analyst at Jupiter Research. "It's a question of integrating different communications channels together giving them an opportunity to go a bit further than anyone else has gone."

The once prominent provider of paid online services will offer free e-mail to 20 million active users of the free AOL Instant Messenger as a test before it's final launch about a month later.

The e-mail service, which offers 2 gigabytes of free storage space, will be subsidized by banner advertisements that run alongside the e-mail screens, similar to other free Web-based e-mail services.

AOL's new AIM Mail service is part of an ambitious plan to overhaul its business model to focus on freely available services and programming from one that depends on subscription revenue.

The move is a dramatic reversal from its previous strategy, built around assembling the most compelling package of Internet programming in order to get subscribers to pay about $20 a month for dial-up Internet service.

AOL has been losing subscribers to phone and cable companies offering high speed Internet packages. At the same time, AOL's advertising revenue has exploded, jumping 45 percent in its most recent first quarter from a year ago, prompting the Internet service to rethink its strategy last year.

"It's a part of our broader 'Audience' strategy that takes advantage of the significant increases in advertising, search and e-commerce on the Internet," said Chamath Palihapitiya, vice president and general manager of AIM at AOL.

AOL will be up against Yahoo Inc. (YHOO.O: Quote, Profile, Research) , at which e-mail services accounted for 53.2 percent of traffic to all Web mail services in the week ended May 7, according to measurement firm Hitwise.

It will also be up against Google Inc. (GOOG.O: Quote, Profile, Research) . Google's e-mail service, Gmail, helps marketers target e-mail users by serving ads linked to key words in e-mail text. Google uses technology to sift through e-mail for relevant text and has said no humans actually read users' e-mail.

"That's creepy," Palihapitiya said, referring to Google's use of technology to target e-mail users with ads. AOL has a lucrative partnership with Google, which provides the search engine foundations of AOL's search site.

An AOL executive said AIM Mail will also include junk e-mail fighting features, like AOL.

AIM users will automatically qualify for an account using their current AIM user name.
http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.j...toryID=8448986


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Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) Reform (HR 1201)
Posted by Drakinix

Those of us who live in the United States should consider supporting DMCA reform under HR 1201.

The following article was published by the Electronic Frontier Foundation. If you are a U.S. resident please consider using the EFF Action Center link below to indicate your support of this important consumer rights protection reform of the DMCA.

The Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) has been wreaking
havoc on consumers' fair use rights for the past seven
years. Now Congress is considering the Digital Media
Consumers' Rights Act (DMCRA, HR 1201), a bill that would
reform part of the DMCA and formally protect the "Betamax
defense" relied on by so many innovators.

HR 1201 would give citizens the right to circumvent
copy-protection measures as long as what they're doing
is otherwise legal. For example, it would make sure
that when you buy a CD, whether it is copy-protected
or not, you can record it onto your computer and move
the songs to an MP3 player. It would also protect a
computer science professor who needs to bypass
copy-protection to evaluate encryption technology.

In addition, the bill would codify the Betamax defense,
which has been under attack by the entertainment
industry through the "Induce Act" last year and the
MGM v. Grokster case currently before the Supreme
Court. This kind of sanity would be a welcome change
to our copyright law.

Last year we sent 30,000+ letters of support for the
DMCRA, and the bill got a hearing on Capitol Hill. It's
time to double that number - take action at the link
below, then urge your friends and family to support HR
1201, too!

Make your voice heard with the EFF Action Center:
http://action.eff.org/site/Advocacy?id=115
(Note: U.S. Residents Only)

Source:

EFFector Vol. 18, No. 14 May 5, 2005

A Publication of the Electronic Frontier Foundation
ISSN 1062-9424

Link: http://www.eff.org/deeplinks/archives/003536.php


Thanks for the heads up, Drakonix. Here's the letter I sent:
Mazer

"Support HR 1201, And Let Americans Own The Things They Purchase

I am a Coloradoan who owns a large DVD collection, and I am writing to urge you to support the DMCRA, HR 1201. This bill addresses many problems stemming from the 1998 Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). Specifically, HR 1201 would ensure that I can't be prosecuted for disobeying the ridiculous "anti-circumvention" provisions of the DMCA as long as my use of the underlying copyrighted material is lawful. HR 1201 would allow people like me to make backups of lawfully obtained DVD's by removing the restrictions that protect DVD copy-protection rather than the movies they contain.

No DVD movie is sold in this country without a digital copy-protection scheme called Copyright Control System or CSS, a very weak encryption system that begs to be circumvented. The computer code that makes this possible is so simple it can be reduced to four lines of code short enough to print on a post card, but under the DMCA it's legally risky to do so. Not only is it illegal to use such a tool, it's also illegal to talk about how it works. HR 1201 corrects this problem. This is a long overdue reform to our copyright law, and I hope that we can go even further to legalize the tools that allow me, my family, and my friends to exercise our consumer rights, our fair-use rights, and even our free speech rights. For some even better language, please see last Congress' version of the DMCRA, H.R. 107.

In addition, the bill would codify the "Betamax defense," which has been under attack by the entertainment industries in the "INDUCE Act" last year and the MGM v. Grokster case currently before the Supreme Court. This is an example of good case law that can be turned into good legislative law. It would make it clear that a technology innovator will not be held responsible for every copyright infringement committed by his customers as long as the technology is capable of noninfringing uses. The Internet itself is such a technology. This rule is critical if innovators are to have the mandate and motivation to create the new technologies that make us all better off.

I urge you to address this important issue by becoming a co-sponsor of HR 1201. Thank you for your time, your research into the matter, and your leadership on the hill."


I seem to remember the EFF form said that letters would be both emailed and faxed so there's a good chance that Congress will pay some attention to them. Whether or not they'll agree is yet another matter.

Since my Representative is a Republican I toyed with the idea of comparing the anti-circumvention clause to gun control. Had he been a Democrat I probably would have taken a different approach, but there's gotta be some way to frame the issue to make it fit into either party platform. That's what they really care about, along with their own reputations. It's unfortunate that these issues are being handled by a House and Senate that are almost split down the middle because nonpartisan issues like these get ignored.

All I can say is that if your Reps. are Tom Delay, Roy Blunt, Nancy Pelosi, Steny H. Hoyer, James Sensenbrenner, John Conyers, Lamar Smith, or Howard Berman, make sure you write a letter to them because they're the party and committee leaders that get things done in the House and they're the ones that need to hear us the most. Next in importance would be the rest of the House Judiciary Committee, especially members of the Subcommittee on Courts, the Internet, and Intellectual Property. Just have a look at their hearing schedule and you'll see all kinds of issues that apply to people like us. If these people represent you make sure they hear you.
http://www.p2p-zone.com/underground/...ad.php?t=21500


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'Fair Use' Bill Draws Ire Of Rights Holders
Brooks Boliek

Some of the most important copyright holders, including the studios, sports leagues and the entertainment unions, are urging lawmakers to oppose legislation that would scale back intellectual property protections.

In a letter sent to lawmakers this week, the companies, leagues and guilds told lawmakers that the Digital Media Consumers' Rights Act (HR 1201) actually undermines consumers.

"Despite its title, HR 1201 is decidedly anti-consumer. If enacted, it would promote 'hacking' and the proliferation of 'hacker tools,' undermine the incentives for both copyright owners and the people who create those copyrighted works to create and distribute the highest-quality products to American consumers," the Copyright Assembly wrote. "In the end, HR 1201 will leave individuals with fewer choices, less flexibility and inferior quality digital entertainment."

The legislation, written by Reps. Rick Boucher, D-Va., and John Doolittle, R-Calif., would allow people to bypass digital copyright protection regimes for "fair use" purposes. Under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, cracking a digital copyright protection regime is a federal crime.

Copyright holders contend that allowing such an action guts the protection necessary for Internet delivery of copyrighted works.

"With 2.6 billion infringing files traded each month on peer-to-peer networks, Congress should be looking for ways to limit piracy (or even to keep it from getting worse), not to facilitate it by undermining what limited technical protections do exist today," the Copyright Assembly wrote. "We urge you to seriously consider the adverse effects of this proposal and opt to protect consumer choice in the marketplace by rejecting HR 1201."

Although there has been little movement on copyright legislation since the Family Entertainment and Copyright Act was approved this year, congressional and industry sources say that the letter was prompted because Boucher has been urging colleagues to consider the bill.

Most lawmakers and industry executives think that any broad copyright legislation like the Boucher-Doolittle bill will have to wait until after the Supreme Court rules on the Grokster case. Their ruling likely will decide the copyright liability of P2P networks, and the losing side is sure to ask Congress to undo the court's decision.
http://billboardradiomonitor.com/rad..._id=1000920284


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Your papers please!

Senate Approves Electronic ID Card Bill
Declan McCullagh

Last-minute attempts by online activists to halt an electronic ID card failed Tuesday when the U.S. Senate unanimously voted to impose a sweeping set of identification requirements on Americans.

The so-called Real ID Act now heads to President Bush, who is expected to sign the bill into law this month. Its backers, including the Bush administration, say it's needed to stop illegal immigrants from obtaining drivers' licenses.

If the act's mandates take effect in May 2008, as expected, Americans will be required to obtain federally approved ID cards with "machine readable technology" that abides by Department of Homeland Security specifications. Anyone without such an ID card will be effectively prohibited from traveling by air or Amtrak, opening a bank account, or entering federal buildings.

After the Real ID Act's sponsors glued it to an Iraq military spending bill, final passage was all but guaranteed. Yet that didn't stop a dedicated cadre of privacy activists from trying to raise the alarm in the last few days.

UnRealID.com, which calls the legislation a "national ID card," says that more than 10,800 people filled out its online petition to senators.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation hastily created a "Stop The Real ID Act!" campaign last week, and the ACLU denounced the bill as a measure that would create "a system ripe for identity theft." Security guru Bruce Schneier offered his own negative critique.


If the Real ID Act had been a standalone piece of legislation--instead of being embedded in an unrelated military spending bill--its passage in the Senate might have been less certain.

The House approved it in February by a relatively narrow vote of 261-161, and some senators had condemned it. Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., warned last month that the Real ID Act creates "de facto national ID cards" and the National Immigration Law Center said it will make it harder even for legal immigrants and citizens to get drivers' licenses.

Rep. F. James Sensenbrenner, a Wisconsin Republican and Real ID Act sponsor, applauded the Senate vote on Tuesday. "The Real ID is vital to preventing foreign terrorists from hiding in plain sight while conducting their operations and planning attacks," Sensenbrenner said. "By targeting terrorist travel, the Real ID will assist in our war-on-terror efforts to disrupt terrorist operations and help secure our borders."
http://news.com.com/Senate+approves+...3-5702505.html


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Your Identity, Open to All
Xeni Jardin

A search for personal data on ZabaSearch.com -- one of the most comprehensive personal-data search engines on the net -- tends to elicit one of two reactions from first-timers: terror or curiosity. Which reaction often depends on whether you are searching for someone else's data, or your own.

ZabaSearch queries return a wealth of info sometimes dating back more than 10 years: residential addresses, phone numbers both listed and unlisted, birth year, even satellite photos of people's homes.

ZabaSearch isn't the first or only such service online. Yahoo's free People Search, for example, returns names, telephone numbers and addresses. But the information is nothing more than what's been available for years in the White Pages.
Far more personal information is available from data brokers, including aliases, bankruptcy records and tax liens. That access typically requires a fee, however, which has always been a barrier to the casual snooper.

But ZabaSearch makes it easier than ever to find comprehensive personal information on anyone.

ZabaSearch may give away some data for free, but it charges for additional information -- like background checks and criminal history reports, which may or may not be accurate. The company also plans to sell ads and other services on the search site, much like Google or Yahoo.

Launched in February, the site has emerged during a period of heightened sensitivity about data privacy and identity theft, now among the fastest-growing crimes in America. Numerous security breaches involving personal records have occurred in recent months. Earlier this week, media giant Time Warner admitted it lost the social security numbers of 600,000 employees. Other incidents of bungling or virtual burglary have compromised hundreds of thousands of personal records held by ChoicePoint, Bank of America, Wells Fargo and Lexis-Nexis, among others.

Critics say ZabaSearch is exploiting the lack of data privacy in America. We unknowingly leak personal information in countless ways, the argument goes, and neither the government nor private industry provides effective ways for us to control how our digital identities are shared or sold.

Plus, an odd, often-reported connection between the company's chairman and members of the Heaven's Gate suicide cult hasn't helped make the company's image any more friendly.

But the founders of ZabaSearch maintain they're not villains, and that their service is a step toward data democratization. If your information is already out there, the logic goes, at least now you'll know about it.

Wired News sat down with Robert Zakari, ZabaSearch president and general counsel, and chairman Nicholas Matzorkis, to talk about ZabaSearch.

Wired News: How much traffic is the site receiving?

Nicholas Matzorkis: We intend to release our beta site traffic levels at the time we announce the end of our beta phase in May. But leading up to April 2005, Yahoo People Search was the most-used free people-search directory on the internet since 1998, when Yahoo acquired four11.com. After eight weeks online, ZabaSearch.com beta is processing an estimated three times as many queries as Yahoo People Search on a daily basis.

WN: Who uses the site?

Robert Zakari: Over a third of our users are media, government and companies.

Matzorkis: Based on network domains in our server logs, government use is over 20 percent. Military is 12 to 13 percent. Department of Homeland Security is around 1 percent of the government portion. Media and news agencies, about 2 to 3 percent.

Everybody feels they have the right to use this kind of a search engine, but others should not. Law enforcement tells us they think it's a great tool but question whether others should have right to use it.

There should be laws passed to ensure that access is provided in a way that reflects the public's best interest. But that is not our job. We are not given (the) task of determining those guidelines. Our job is to operate in compliance with the law as it stands. And that is what we do.

WN: Where does the data on ZabaSearch come from?

Zakari: The public domain. Information collected by the government, and information that individuals put it out into the public domain. Court records, county records, state records, information that becomes publicly available after you buy a new house or go to the post office and file a change-of-address form.

Matzorkis: When you move and fill out a change form with the post office, they record date of move and new address, then sell that to info brokers on the open market. When you apply for a credit card, and you don't check the box saying you don't want your information shared, it will be sold.

Personal information in the U.S. is a multibillion-dollar-a-year industry. People realizing that right now as a result of stumbling on ZabaSearch may find that shocking, but the data has been out there for years. It's just a question of who has access. You, or the people selling it to other companies to market things to you?

WN: How many records do you have, and from what countries?

Matzorkis: ZabaSearch does not maintain a database. It is a search engine, which queries third-party public information databases. Currently, nearly 100 percent of the records displayed in ZabaSearch results are U.S. records.

The total number of records being searched is approximately 2 billion. ZabaSearch directly queries an average of about 10 to 12 public records for every adult in the U.S. If it were possible to track back the source of every public record to its origin, the total number of individual public records that exist on thousands and thousands of hard drives right now gets up into the trillions.

WN: How far back do these records go?

Matzorkis: This varies. If, for example, an address that entered a database 10 years ago could belong to someone who was at that address for 20 years before that. I'd estimate that most records displayed were entered into an initial database in the last 10 years.

WN: What do you say to domestic-violence victims, people who've been stalked or others who fear for personal safety as a result of the fact that their home addresses and phone numbers -- information they may have made efforts to keep private -- are so easily available through your site?

Matzorkis: We understand the concern. It's something we have considered. But the real solution to that problem involves more than removing that info from one database. There are laws in some states like Massachusetts, where the state will go to the data source and force the changing or removal of information. Your address, social security number or other info. They'll do that on your behalf. But opting out of every single database won't fix that problem. The data replicates too quickly in the information industry. You have to go to the core -- the state and public information level. So I would say to those people -- if you are under threat, get state help from the courts.

Zakari: Many states -- including Massachusetts, Maine, New Jersey -- have a program called the Address Confidentiality Program in which, if you can show a verifiable threat, you can have a P.O. box or non-identifiable address associated with you on all state or legal documents. If you buy a home, get a drivers license or register to vote, those are all sources of public records. But you have to go to a court to have the information masked and get protection.

WN: What about people who don't live in states where those protections exist? Why should they have to proactively defend their state-acknowledged right to privacy, and how can they? Why should the burden be on the citizen? Doesn't your company bear some responsibility?

Matzorkis: There are other sites like ZabaSearch online already. More will come.

You said there's a state-given right for privacy. There are, for some aspects of privacy -- but not for all of them. It would be good for people to better understand their rights. For example, a lot of people think that if you have an unlisted number, it cannot be legally published or printed. All you're doing is -- and it doesn't even work all the time -- preventing it from showing up in 411 or the White Pages. By unlisting your number, it doesn't mean that info can't be bought and sold in the information market all day long.

WN: I did a search on my own name with your site. The data returned was inaccurate and obsolete.

Matzorkis: Many people point out inaccuracies in many of the records. These are not inaccuracies in ZabaSearch. ZabaSearch simply displays what it finds in the public domain and makes no claims about the accuracy of the information posted.

WN: I also tried to opt out of the site. I e-mailed multiple remove requests, and an autoresponder informed me that I'd have to submit my name and other personal data. I did, but my records were never removed. I was promised that someone would respond personally, and I contacted the site three times as specified in the e-mail with all of the info requested. That felt pretty unresponsive. The data's still there, as it was when I first contacted you.

Zakari: For about three or four weeks, our autoresponder has stated that you have to mail in your request. Our company is still new. Your request may be processing now.

Matzorkis: Yes, we ask for additional info -- how else can we verify how to pull the record? There might be multiple people out there with the same names. The procedure is industry-standard, not unique to ZabaSearch. Experian and other information companies, including publicly traded ones, all follow this process. We destroy information after we've blocked a record at the person's request.

WN: So, you're acknowledging that the system is broken. How should the system as a whole be better managed? Should there be more regulations in place so that data sources have greater accountability and accessibility?

Matzorkis: The information is out there. Many people have access to it. Others don't yet. We believe that anyone whose info potentially makes up those databases should have equal access to it -- not just the people who can afford to, or know where to go to get it, or happen to have a job that gives them access to it. We find it ironic that so many people's info makes up the databases, but these individuals don't know how to get to it themselves and manage what's available about them. At least we provide them with a rough sense of what information is out there associated with them.

Zakari: The address you find on ZabaSearch may not be yours, but it is associated with you. The idea of allowing people to have the same level of access to their own info as others do who are in positions of power -- that's a benefit. Databases exist today which are only available to private investigators, financial institutions and the like. But recent examples of data loss, hacking and theft show that the rules in place to protect that data aren't working.

Matzorkis: If ZabaSearch is a haven for identity theft, what about the 80 million people in the White Pages? You can't steal someone's identity just with a name and a phone number.

WN: But my phone company lets me opt out of the directory when I first create my customer account, and there's more available on your site than just names and phone numbers.

Matzorkis: There are birth years, which are sometimes inaccurate. You can't just walk into a car dealership and say "Hi, my name is John Doe, I'm 28 years old and I live on 123 Maple Street, give me the keys." You can't just call Visa, MasterCard or a bank and have a credit card issued to you on that limited information.

ID theft is occurring because of security breaches and hacking, not because public info -- addresses, phone numbers, birth years -- have been made available on ZabaSearch. Look at the offline issues (like) using your credit card in a restaurant or at the gas pump where employees have access to that data. Even of the theft that occurs online, most is due to hacking -- there are no groups of hackers sitting around in Russia trying to figure out how they can sign up for credit cards based on seven random names and addresses they found on ZabaSearch. They are trying to figure out how they can break into a database to steal those 17,000 credit card numbers and sell them on the black market the following morning for $2 a piece.

There should be more laws to help law enforcement track that more effectively, and there should be better international cooperation to fight identity crime. Sealing public information databases won't solve the problem. If you were to turn ZabaSearch off tomorrow, it wouldn't change anything.

We do not oppose new legislation. But we are not society's caretakers. We are technologists and entrepreneurs.

WN: How did each of you end up in the personal-data business?

Matzorkis: I founded 1-800-US-Search in 1994 as a low-cost way for people to locate lost friends and family members. I've been an entrepreneur all my life and founded the company because of an experience I had being reunited with family members in Greece.

All of my grandparents emigrated to the U.S. from Crete. After WWII, all communication was cut off ... from the four villages my family came from. Thirty years later my father was determined to go find our roots. He quit his job, sold the family house, pulled us out of school to go to Greece, and went to different villages to try and find our family. As a kid I couldn't understand it, but on an emotional level, pathos -- the feelings we feel as human beings -- those feelings are indescribable. Reunions on daytime talk shows are very highly rated shows because being reunited with a brother you've been separated from since birth, for instance -- there's almost nothing that can conjure up the same kind of emotion in people.

Twenty years later, around 1994, I was in the telecom business doing marketing for telecom services and realized that by combining publicly available databases, you could locate just about anybody. You don't have to spend thousands of dollars to hire a private investigator. That's when I launched 1-800-US Search.

Zakari: I joined US Search in 1996, after law school.

WN: After the company went public in 1999, you both left. What happened?

Matzorkis: The dynamic changed after the IPO. New management felt the search industry was headed in different direction than we did. I opened a wireless transaction company in China, focused on that for two years, but I always wanted to come back to this. I felt that companies in the business of selling public information weren't getting it right.

WN: What weren't they getting right?

Matzorkis: I believe the cost of that information will go down, availability will increase, and overall use will increase. Ten or 20 years ago, it wouldn't be possible to build a business around offering that data for free. But it is now. The information itself is not new. But technology has sped up the rate at which it can be obtained and reduced the cost involved.

WN: The two of you then founded a company called PeopleData. What's the difference between that business and ZabaSearch?

Matzorkis: The company still exists. It's a reseller of public record info for the purpose of locating individuals or conducting background checks. We wanted to bring the price down to zero, and decided it would be best to do that under a new brand. ZabaSearch is not a public record broker, it is a search engine. Yes, we'll offer additional information and services for a fee, but the idea is closer to Google or Yahoo -- it's a search engine that gives results and sells ads, integrated links, other services. PeopleData sells information which is not made available on ZabaSearch.

WN: A recent San Francisco Chronicle article pointed to a connection the two of you have with the Heaven's Gate suicide cult. What's the link?

Matzorkis: Several members of the group worked for 1-800-US Search, which was located in Beverly Hills. We had more than 300 employees at that time, some outside contractors. One of them, who became a full-time employee, came into my office and told me what he thought had occurred -- that there had in fact just been a mass suicide. When he told me all of this, I didn't even know who these people were, I didn't realize this was a cult.

As an employer, we don't ask people about their religious beliefs or use that as a criteria for hiring. They performed great work. He asked me if he could ask another employee to give him a ride down there to find out if what he feared had really happened. As his employer, if someone walks in and presents me with this, it would seem irresponsible to send him down there with another employee, so I offered to give this guy a ride to the house myself. I didn't believe that it had occurred. I assumed that it was a hoax or misunderstanding.

I gave him a ride, he went inside, and discovered that it had happened. So, he was an employee, and I was in the wrong place at the wrong time, and as a result -- now, when the media does reports on ZabaSearch or 1-800 US Search, or other companies I've done like Global Agora in China, they bring this association up. But it tends to be presented in some way that implies something which is not true. For the record, neither Robert Zakari nor I were ever members of that cult, believers in it, anything. We simply employed some people who happened to be members.
http://www.wired.com/news/privacy/0,1848,67407,00.html


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Germany Planning To Reduce Internet Privacy

According to a ministerial draft bill for a Telemedia Act (TMG) (PDF) drawn up by the Federal Ministry of Economics and Labor online sales platforms and other telemedia companies will in future be allowed to monitor their customers more intensely. According to §15 of the draft bill providers of telecommunications and media services are to be allowed "for prosecution purposes" to collect, store, modify and/or pass on to third parties personal data of users. Provided that there are "actual grounds for assuming" that a forbidden use of services is occurring. Whereas this permission to engage in the digital counterpart of shopping-mall all- round video surveillance to date only applies in cases of suspected fee or charge fraud, it is henceforth to be expanded to cover all acts by customers undertaken with the intention to "use services illegally at the expense of the owner of the said services or third parties."

Auction houses, which experience many instances of attempted fraud, would be the greatest beneficiaries of this change of law; which is why the TMG is know as "Lex eBay" in the industry. The authors of the draft bill write that the revised text is "of particular importance in view of the requirements in the fight against fraud at Internet market places such as eBay." Data protectionist, on the other hand, fear that the legislator through the ambiguous passage quoted above is about to create a "nosy neighborhood block leader mentality" among providers. They point out that eBay should first of all itself safeguard its platform by establishing reliable authentication methods.

The TMG draft also toys with the idea of expanding rights regarding the making available of user data by Internet providers. Though a footnote in the draft reads: "The examination within the federal government of questions as to the rights and duties regarding the furnishing of information has not yet been concluded", in one of the prepared sections of the draft bill (§12) it says: "The service provider is entitled in accordance with the relevant regulations to provide information regarding personal data to authorized agencies and persons."

A short while ago in contradistinction to these moves a number of civil rights organizations such as the Deutsche Vereinigung für Datenschutz [German Association for Data Protection], the Forum InformatikerInnen für Frieden und gesellschaftliche Verantwortung [Forum Computer Professionals for Peace and Social Responsibility](FIfF) and Stop1984.com had called for the privacy of users to be strengthened substantially within the framework of the "Internet law." The representatives of civil society had demanded among other things that recognition be accorded to an explicit concept of "privacy of telemedia use," given that each user of electronic media at each click of a mouse was creating specific data tracks and was hence much easier to spy on and tail than in the sphere of physical reality. The civil rights organizations also stood up in particular for the reinforcement and expansion of anonymous user options for telecommunications and media services -- something also demanded in principle by the TMG. A hearing on the draft bill is to take place at the Federal Ministry of Economics and Labor in Berlin on Friday. (Stefan Krempl) / (Robert W. Smith)
http://www.heise.de/english/newsticker/news/59437


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Google Suspends Web Accelerator Distribution
Staff writers, TechWeb

Google has suspended distribution of its web Accelerator, saying the company has reached the maximum number of users for the beta software meant to speed up the time it takes to search the internet.

The move occurred less than a week after the search giant launched the test.

"We have currently reached our maximum capacity of users and are actively working to increase the number of users we can support," Google said Thursday [US] in a posting on its website.

web Accelerator, which was available at no charge, runs alongside a browser and directs all searches and page requests through Google's servers. To improve performance of broadband connections only, the application makes use of a cache, or data store, on the local computer, as well as caches on Google's servers, to store frequently accessed web pages.

But Google's Web Accelerator is a waste of time, not a time saver, for the group it's being targeted at, a research firm said Wednesday [US].

"Google's Web Accelerator will help speed searches via dial-up, but it is unnecessary for broadband users," wrote Gartner analyst Allen Weiner in an online research brief.

"web accelerators were hot topics years ago, when many users were surfing the web via dial-up connections. Today, with the popularity of broadband, an increasing number of users will not find a Web Accelerator compelling," Weiner continued.

Google pitched its Web Accelerator to broadband users when it rolled out the free plug a week ago. Then, Google estimated that users could trim two to three hours from their online time if they surfed 20 to 30 hours a month.

Nor did Weiner see Google's Web Accelerator as something other large web properties, such as MSN and Yahoo, would emulate.

In fact, because "[Accelerator] cannot speed downloading of rich media files, such as large, network-clogging music and video files," Weiner noted that the caching techniques that Google uses will be made obsolete by the closed peer-to-peer networks based on instant messaging that AOL, MSN, and Yahoo are building.

These P2P networks promise fast file transfer, something that Google Web Accelerator can't.

Web Accelerator has come under criticism from privacy advocates for caching users' pages on its servers; there have also been scattered reports of some users accessing others' pages. Google spokespeople have denied that the download halt was due to any security or privacy concerns.

Under Google's privacy policies, the company does not track an individual's web activity, but does collect aggregated data from people using its services. The company has said that data collected from Web Accelerator won't be used in Google's advertising services for now. The company, however, could decide to use it later.
http://www.itnews.com.au/newsstory.aspx?CIaNID=18801


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Fiberlink to Integrate Skype into Enterprise Mobile Access Software
Press Release

Fiberlink Communications plans to bundle Skype's telephony with its Extend360 mobile access software and offer it as a value-added service to its enterprise customers. In addition to this new service offering, Extend360 will ensure higher levels of security during Skype peer-to-peer transactions, protecting against security threats.

Fiberlink offers trusted and secure mobile solutions for enterprise users seeking access to network-based resources from anywhere in the world.
http://www.convergedigest.com/Bandwi...e.asp?ID=14745


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Violating Copyright is Illegal - Period
Press Release

The Bottom Line on File Sharing at the University of Delaware

TRAFFICKING COPIES OF COPYRIGHTED SONGS, MOVIES, SOFTWARE OR OTHER PROTECTED WORKS WITHOUT PERMISSION FROM THE COPYRIGHT OWNER OR AGENT IS ILLEGAL AND IS A VIOLATION OF THE UNIVERSITY'S POLICY FOR RESPONSIBLE COMPUTING.

Peer-to-peer (P2P) file-sharing applications, such as KaZaA, enable you to share music, movies and other digital files with computers all over the world. If you use P2P to share copyrighted songs, movies or software without permission, you are breaking the law. It is like stealing, and you can be caught and prosecuted according to the law and subject to University student judicial action. You are responsible for what your computer does on the network and you will be held accountable. It may have been "OK" to download files at home, but it's not OK here. You may know many others who swap files, but just because they do, doesn't make it right. Your use of this type of software raises important issues regarding copyright law, bandwidth consumption and security.

Copyright Law

Copyright laws were enacted to protect the original expression of an idea, whether it is expressed in the form of music, art or written material. A number of rights are given copyright owners by federal law. These rights include the right to control the reproduction, distribution and adaptation of their work, as well as the public performance or display of their work. Many states have laws that support the federal laws and often go further to address piracy. Existing copyright laws are as valid online as they are offline.

The University of Delaware takes a strong stand against unlawful distribution of copyrighted music, movies and software. If a student is found to be distributing copyrighted material using any University computing resource the following things will happen:

their network connection will be terminated;

they will receive a Copyright Violation Notice via-e-mail explaining the case;

they must respond to that e-mail stating they will stop violating copyright law;

they must schedule an appointment to have their computer examined by IT- User Services at a cost of $70 for first-time service and $100 for any subsequent service.

After the above items are completed, the student's network access will be re- instated.

If it is a repeat offense, the student will be referred to the Office of Judicial Affairs for judicial action.

Individuals who violate copyright laws also risk having lawsuits brought against them by the copyright owners or their agents and could be liable for statutory damages up to $30,000 per item (song, movie, etc.) and up to $150,000 if the infringement is willful.

Copyright holders and their agents - e.g., the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) and the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA), are determined in their efforts to seek out and prosecute those suspected of illegally sharing their copyrighted materials over the internet. Lawyers representing the RIAA and MPAA are issuing subpoenas to universities and other internet service providers seeking the names and addresses of those who have allegedly violated federal copyright law. THE UNIVERSITY OF DELAWARE INTENDS TO COMPLY WITH SUCH SUBPOENA REQUESTS, AND MAY OR MAY NOT PROVIDE NOTICE TO THE PARTICULAR STUDENTS ABOUT WHOM INFORMATION IS SOUGHT. YOU SHOULD ALSO BE AWARE THAT THOSE FOUND GUILTY FACE PENALTIES RANGING FROM $750 - $30,000 PER FILE - $150,000 IF THE INFRINGEMENT IS WILLFUL.

Security

Sharing files with P2P applications can open security holes for malicious programs to enter your computer. Hackers can steal files, erase files on your hard drive, plant worms, viruses or trojans and use your computer to attack others or serve copyrighted files out to the world without your knowledge. Because file-sharing applications differ in how much security they offer, it is important to educate yourself and exercise caution. Remember, you are responsible for the security of your PC. You will be held accountable for what your system does on the network whether you have knowledge of it or not. It is recommended that all users educate themselves about the basic steps to secure their PC's, and consciously choose to be a good citizen in cyberspace.
http://www.it.udel.edu/copyright/copyright_abuse.htm


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Flag Ruling Doesn't Signal End to Copyright Issues
Chris Nolan

The looming Congressional battle over copyright legislation got a whole lot hotter last week.

That's when the U.S. Circuit Court in Washington—not exactly a bunch of tech junkies—said that the
Federal Communications Commission had overstepped its authority. The FCC doesn't have the legal right to require TVs or other devices to read special "broadcast flag" coding designed to prevent digital TV signals from being copied, the court said.

They weren't polite either. Judge Harry Edwards didn't use the word "hypocrite," but he came pretty close: "The principal question presented by this case is whether Congress delegated authority to the Federal Communications Commission … to regulate apparatus that can receive television broadcasts when those apparatus are not engaged in the process of receiving a broadcast transmission. In the seven decades of its existence, the FCC has never before asserted such sweeping authority. Indeed, in the past, the FCC has informed Congress that it lacked any such authority."

Ouch.

The court's ruling—and the harshness of its language—is important because the D.C. Circuit is the expert venue due to its location. It rules on the authority of federal agencies all the time, sussing out what Congress meant when it enacted laws.

That's why Hollywood is stung by this ruling and probably won't appeal. Still, it's a bit early to celebrate.

The broadcast flag ruling is a big step in the right direction for the tech community, but hardly a victory. There's too much else going on, too many opportunities for challenges, rewrites, reinterpretations and flat out political monkey business—on both sides of the issue—in the years ahead.

If anything, this spring marked the season when digital technology came to politics. These issues— how new machines can be used, how artists and writers can be protected, what the responsibilities are of the courts and Congress—are here to stay.

"I think there's a very strong connection between this case and the Grokster case,'' said Gigi Sohn, CEO of Public Knowledge, one of the groups that sued the FCC over implementation of the broadcast flag rules. "It's about who's going to control technology."

In an increasingly networked world, who's in charge? Click here to read Chris Nolan's commentary.

As Sohn points out, the broadcast flag ruling comes as the U.S. Supreme Court is deciding MGM v. Grokster. In the case of Grokster, the court is being asked to determine the line between creating and selling a product—in this case, peer-to-peer file sharing for music—and encouraging its use for possibly illegal purposes. For Grokster, that's trading and swapping of music files, but the Supreme Court ruling will set benchmarks for other media, particularly video.

Conventional wisdom in Washington has the Grokster case being sent back to the 9th Circuit Court in San Francisco. If that happens, you can bet the California court will cast an eye on the D.C. court's broadcast flag ruling to gauge the political climate in which they're ruling.

As the saying goes, judges don't play politics but they sure do read the newspapers. They also read each other's opinions. The prevailing sentiment on the broadcast flag—that the FCC exceeded its authority—will register.

The cases will also give Congress a sense of its limits and serve as guides on what needs to be done to alter the law. Congresspeople and senators who are sympathetic to the television, recording and motion picture industries may use the broadcast flag ruling to expand the FCC's authority.

Tech companies might hold up the Supreme Court's Grokster ruling—as yet unannounced—as a way to say there should be clear limits on what Congress can and should do when it tries to protect copyright holders from theft.

Copyright legislation will move front and center in Congress later this year after Grokster, with more —and more heated—action, and maybe even law-making next year. But even if a law gets passed, that won't be the end of this fight.

Telecommunication legislation is up next and some of the same players and issues will be involved in that legislative retooling. What the industries don't get in copyright, they'll try to get in telecom: Two apples, many, many bites.
http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1759,1815034,00.asp


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Napster, Dwango Pair Up To Offer Song Ringtones

Online music service Napster Inc. and Dwango Wireless on Monday unveiled a pact to offer music ringtones and other features in a new service

that Napster hopes will widen its reach.

The mobile phone service, called Napstertones, allows users to download ringtones made from popular songs for $1.99 to $2.99, and is the first ringtone offering provided by an online music download or subscription service, Napster officials said.

Napstertones is now available to wireless subscribers of the Cingular and T-Mobile systems, giving Napster access to nearly 70 million users of those networks in the United States.

"Napster's vision is to make all of our massive (content) library available to our customers. Certainly our entry into music ringtones is a continuing development to our overall plan," said Chief Executive Officer Chris Gorog.

He added that the widely recognized Napster brand has given it an advantage against some rivals for attracting new users.

"We expect to see the same thing in ringtones," Gorog said.

Gorog declined to give financial details, but said the companies will share revenues derived from the downloads.

The service also is expected to roll out in Canada with Rogers Wireless Communications Inc. and Fido in June, and Napster is working with other U.S. cell phone services to expand Napstertones even more broadly during this upcoming summer.

Other features available for download include artist "shoutouts" and wallpapers featuring the Napster Kitty logo.

Dwango provides the wireless technology. Cingular Wireless is a joint venture of SBC Communications Inc. and BellSouth Corp., and T-Mobile USA is part of German carrier Deutsche Telekom AG.
http://today.reuters.com/News/TechSt...NAPSTER-DC.XML


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Steve Jobs, Let my Music Go
Hilary Rosen

The new iPod my girlfriend gave me is a trap. Yeah, it is great looking and I really love the baby blue leather case but when, oh when, will Steve Jobs let me buy music from somewhere other than the Apple iTunes store and put it on my iPod?

I spent 17 years in the music business the last several of which were all about pushing and prodding the painful development of legitimate on-line music. Now, the music fan is on the cusp of riches in their options - free of the viruses of the pirate sites. There are lots of places you can go for great music at good deals and with a deep catalog of songs from over the last 20 or 30 years. MSN.com, Rhapsody.com, aolmusic.com, even walmart.com. There are little players to make your favorite music even more portable than ever starting at as little as 29 bucks. Most every player device works at every one of these “stores” and it is pretty easy to keep all the songs, no matter where you got them, in a single folder or "jukebox" on your computer.

But not the iPod. Most agree it is the best quality player on the market even if the cheapest one costs a few hundred dollars. The problem is that the iPod only works with either songs that you buy from the on-line Apple iTunes store or songs that you rip from your own CD’s. But those other music sites have lots of music that you can’t get at the iTunes store. So, if you have an iPod, you are out of luck. If you are really a geek, you can figure out how to strip the songs you might have bought from another on-line store of all identifying information so that they will go into the iPod. But then you have also degraded the sound quality. How cruel.

I know Steve Jobs is a god. Look, I bowed at his feet when the iPod and iTunes was created because HE GOT THE BALL ROLLING. He is as laconically casually cool as Bono and makes really good cartoon movies too. But keeping the iTunes system a proprietary technology to prevent anyone from using multiple (read Microsoft) music systems is the most anti-consumer and user unfriendly thing any god can do. Is this the same Jobs that railed for years about the Microsoft monopoly? Is taking a page out of their playbook the only way to have a successful business? If he isn’t careful Bill Gates might just Betamax him while the crowds cheer him on. Come on Steve – open it up.

Why am I complaining about this? Why isn’t everyone?
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/theblo...jobs-let-.html


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Apple And Sony Prepare For Download Battle
swissinfo with agencies

The Apple and Sony corporations have launched a battle in Switzerland for control of the market for downloading music via the internet.

Charging SFr1.50 ($1.25) for one track, and from SFr14.50 for an entire album they have made the downloading of music legal.

Up to now, downloads have been possible from illegal free platforms, which the music industry has been trying to stamp out.

Launched in 2003, downloading music and paying for it has become a huge success in the United States and other parts of Europe.

Apple opened its iTunes Music Store (iTMS) in Switzerland on Tuesday, while Sony opened for business on Wednesday.

A communiqué said that the launch of iTMS in Switzerland coincided with the opening of such stores in Denmark, Norway and Sweden. On a worldwide scale, iMTS has a market share of 70 per cent.

Swiss market

With the arrival of Apple on the Swiss market, which had been scheduled earlier, the Swiss now have access to one and a half million song titles via iMTS.

Apple's arrival comes almost two years after the iMTS shop launch in the US.

"We concentrated first on the big markets before becoming interested in Scandinavia and Switzerland," commented Apple spokeswoman Andrea Brack.

"Negotiations with the major players in the music industry took a lot of time," she added.

Competitor Sony is making 600,000 titles available on the Swiss version of its platform Sony Connect. It too has come on to the Swiss market later than expected.

Niche labels

Apart from big labels, Sony Connect is offering many independent and specialised niche labels, as well as Swiss acts, making it possible to use the full potential of the corporation's MP3-Walkman, a communiqué said.

To try to prevent multiple, illegal copying of downloaded titles, the providers are working with data that is specially protected.

Up to now, the Swiss market has been dominated mainly by CityDisc, Microsoft and ExLibris.

According to Professor Ivan Cherpillod, a specialist in intellectual property rights at Lausanne University, it is not illegal to make downloads of music for private use.

"Article 19 of the federal law on copyright foresees no copyright for private use. Downloading music files for me, my family or my circle of friends is not illegal," Cherpillod comments.

Ongoing debate

But there is an ongoing debate on the subject in Switzerland.

"Opinions differ when it comes to the origin of the file. For some people, the non-application of copyright law does not cover a copy of the file which has been put illegally on the internet, in other words without the consent of the author or those who own the rights."

"But for the time being, there is no jurisprudence on the issue in Switzerland," he added.

Private individuals can also exchange music over so- called "peer to peer" software. With this system, there is no question of paying for the copyright on the music downloaded.

The major music industry players have gone to war against this because they consider it the main cause of the decline in CD sales over the past years.

They also argue that it has been detrimental to artistic creation by depriving artists of their income.
http://www.nzz.ch/2005/05/11/eng/article5773157.html


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Yahoo Low-Cost Music Service Hurts Rivals
Michael Liedtke

Yahoo Inc.'s steeply discounted foray into online music subscriptions struck a sour note Wednesday with the shareholders of Napster Inc. and RealNetworks Inc. - the owners of the rival services that stand to lose the most from the new competitive threat.

Napster's shares plunged $1.70, or 26.8 percent, to close at $4.65 on the Nasdaq Stock Market, where RealNetworks' shares fell $1.54, or 21.1 percent, to $5.76.

Yahoo's entrance into the music downloading business even hurt Apple Computer Inc., which runs the dominant online music store with more than 400 million songs sold since it opened two years ago.

Apple's shares fell 81 cents, or 2.2 percent, to $35.61 on the Nasdaq, even though industry analysts say the company is far less vulnerable to Yahoo's aggressive push than Napster and RealNetworks.

Yahoo's shares gained 82 cents, or 2.4 percent, to $34.88 on the Nasdaq.

Napster Chairman Chris Gorog sought to reassure investors as $69 million of his company's market value evaporated Wednesday.

"We think there has been a significant overreaction in the market," Gorog told analysts during a Wednesday conference call. "Our customers have not fled in the past when desperate pricing moves have been made by competitors."

Echoing the sentiment of many analysts, Gorog predicted Yahoo will raise its prices within a few months, relieving the financial pressure on Napster. He also is counting on a consumer backlash to the ads that Yahoo will serve up with its music service.

Los Angeles-based Napster has been struggling financially, even before Yahoo entered the fray. After the stock market closed Wednesday, Napster announced it lost $24.3 million during the first three months of this year, while its revenue rose to $17.1 million from $6.1 million a year ago. The company expects to lose another $27 million to $28 million in its current quarter.

Wednesday's stock market reaction reflected a wide belief that Yahoo's music subscription service, introduced Wednesday, will force Napster and RealNetworks to either lower their prices or risk losing subscribers.

In an effort to make up for lost time in the booming digital music market, Yahoo is offering consumers unlimited access to a library of 1 million songs for as little as $4.99 per month, or about $60 annually.

Subscribers who don't want to make a one-year commitment can pay a rental fee of $6.99 per month.

Napster and RealNetworks charge $14.95 per month, or nearly $180 annually, for a comparable service that enables users to transfer songs from the Internet to portable MP3 players that use Microsoft Corp.'s digital music software.

The subscription services enable customers to rent an unlimited number of songs without ever owning the music outright. That's a significant distinction from Apple's iTunes store, which sells songs for 99 cents apiece and so far has frowned upon the rental approach.

Apple has been able to eschew subscriptions so far because only about 15 percent of consumers to date have expressed an interest in renting songs instead of owning them, said Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster.

But the Cupertino-based company might be forced to change its tune now that Yahoo is offering music subscriptions on its Web site - the world's most heavily trafficked - with 372 million unique users. That means Yahoo will have a bully pulpit to preach the virtues of renting music.

If Yahoo's service catches on quickly with consumers, Apple probably will offer a subscription option before the end of the year, Munster said.

Apple spokeswoman Natalie Kerris declined to comment on how Yahoo's service might affect iTunes, whose current market share exceeds 70 percent.

Yahoo's audience already includes 8.9 million subscribers who primarily pay fees for high-speed Internet connections, matchmaking services and extra e-mail features.

Seattle-based RealNetworks says more than 1 million people subscribe to its music services. Napster said Wednesday that it has 412,000 subscribers.

Although Yahoo's music service already is making a big splash, analysts say the company's success is far from assured.

Yahoo still must prove its music management software, which is being licensed from MusicNet, will make the process of transferring songs to MP3 players simple and painless for consumers. Apple's easy-to-use music management software helped the iTunes store succeed.

The popularity of Apple's iPod players also figures to work against Yahoo because those devices aren't compatible with its new subscription service. Apple already has sold more than 15 million iPods, creating a loyal audience unlikely to move to a competing service.

Analysts also widely expect Yahoo to raise the introductory price of its subscription service - something that might alienate subscribers if it happens.

"I find it hard to believe that Yahoo's prices are going to remain at this level," said American Technology Research analyst P.J. McNealy. "The only real question is how much higher they will go."

Munster predicted Yahoo will raise its subscription price to $10 to $15 per month after the initial testing, or "beta," phase is completed.

A Yahoo spokeswoman declined to comment Wednesday on the company's pricing strategy. In an interview Tuesday, a Yahoo executive said the company expected to be able to make money with an annual $60 subscription.

Yahoo appears better positioned than Napster or RealNetworks to absorb the costs of a potential price war. Yahoo ended March with $1.1 billion in cash compared with $370 million at RealNetworks and $170 million at Napster.
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories...CTION=BUSINESS


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Open-Source Divorce For Apple's Safari?
Paul Festa

Two years after it selected open-source rendering engine KHTML as the basis of its Safari Web browser, Apple Computer has proposed resolving compatibility conflicts by scrapping that code base in favor of its own.

In an e-mail seen by CNET News.com, a leading Apple browser developer suggested that architects of the KHTML rendering engine--the heart of a browser--consider abandoning the KHTML code base, or "tree," in favor of Apple's version, called WebCore. KHTML was originally written to work on top of KDE (the K Desktop Environment), an interface for Linux and Unix operating systems.

"One thing you may want to consider eventually is back-porting (WebCore) to work on top of (KDE), and merging your changes into that," Apple engineer Maciej Stachowiak wrote in an e-mail dated May 5. "I think the Apple trees have seen a lot more change since the two trees diverged, although both have useful changes. We'd be open to making our tree multi-platform."

The suggestion, which KHTML developers said they were unlikely to accept, comes as Apple tries to quell rising dissatisfaction among the original architects of KHTML. Two years after hailing Apple as a white knight, those developers are calling the relationship between their group and the computer maker a "bitter failure."

In a conflict some call emblematic of what can go wrong when corporations embrace open-source projects, developers are airing longstanding gripes against Apple, accusing the computer maker of taking more than it gives back to the open-source group.

Apple declined to comment for this story. But Safari engineer David Hyatt did acknowledge KDE complaints in his blog, defending the scope of recent patches and soliciting suggestions on improving Apple's relationship with KDE.

"For what it's worth, the patches I posted...are not solely KHTML patches," Hyatt wrote. "What do you think Apple could be doing better here?"

The subsequent dialogue, played out in public mailing lists and blogs, led to the e-mail exchange in which Stachowiak suggested that the KHTML group start fresh from WebCore.

KDE said complaints about Apple had been brewing for some time, and attributed some of the tensions to the inherently at-odds priorities of corporations and volunteer coders.

"Business is constrained in ways that open source prides itself on not being constrained," said George Staikos, a software consultant, KDE developer and spokesman for the open-source group. "There have been problems all along in the sense that Apple had their own internal issues to deal with (that) did not mesh well with the model used by KDE to develop KHTML, and it resulted in KHTML and (Safari) quickly diverging. This problem compounded over time."

As a result of that divergence, improvements made to Safari can't be easily contributed back to KHTML, leaving the open-source original at a disadvantage to its corporate-sponsored progeny.

That issue flared in recent weeks as Apple trumpeted Safari's ability to pass the Acid2 standards-compliance test. When confronted with the question of when KHTML would get the improvements to enable it to pass the test, KDE developer Zack Rusin replied, "Probably never."

The divergence between Safari and KHTML has led to a de facto divorce between Apple and KDE, according to some developers.

"At some point the open-source ideals which we apply to KHTML and (Apple's) commercial setup...went in two different directions," Rusin wrote in an open letter to Apple's Hyatt. "At this point we have two completely separate groups developing two different versions of KHTML. We have absolutely no (say) in the way you develop your version of KHTML and you don't participate at all in the way we develop KHTML."

Apple was thought to have breathed fresh life into KHTML two years ago. The choice of KHTML was seen as a validation of KDE's work in developing a small, fast browser engine, and it represented a significant victory over open-source rival Mozilla, which in its pre-Firefox days battled serious code bloat.

"It's a great acknowledgment of the hard work done by all members of the KDE project, and proof that the concept of free software is perfectly capable of producing software worth being the preferred choice of major hardware and software vendors like Apple," KDE engineer Harri Porten said in January 2003 when Apple announced its choice.

KHTML coders said that they looked forward then to having full-time Apple engineers working on the project, which they said had languished by virtue of their own part-time, unpaid status.

After a substantial honeymoon between Apple and KHTML, the relationship soured as it became clear how different the company's priorities and procedures were from those of the volunteers.

According to KHTML developers, Apple engineers took a less "pure" approach to fixing bugs, applying patches that KHTML developers were loath to reincorporate back into their code base.

"In open source, everything's supposed to be done the right way, but sometimes the less correct way is faster," Rusin said. "In fixing one problem, they were breaking a whole bunch of other things. Apple developers were focused on fixing bugs in such a way that we could not merge them back into KHTML. Those fixes were never an option for us."

In contrast to the transparency and immediacy with which open-source developers are accustomed to working, KDE volunteers said they suddenly found themselves dealing with bug reports Apple deemed too sensitive to share, new requirements for auditing code before releasing it, and demands that developers sign nondisclosure agreements before looking at some Apple code.

To be sure, not all relationships between companies and open-source groups sour to the degree that Apple and KDE's has.

The origins are somewhat reversed in the Mozilla case--Netscape gave Mozilla the browser to develop before returning to the project to exploit it commercially--but Netscape characterized its relationship with the Mozilla Foundation as the picture of comity.

"The Mozilla Foundation has been a wonderful thing for Netscape," said Netscape general manager Jeremy Liew. "We built certain features into the Netscape browser that Mozilla didn't see fit to include in their roadmap, and there are going to be certain times when the development directions are different than where the open-source community wants to take it. So in those instances you have divergences in the code tree. A lot of times, though, we'll be exactly in synch."

One analyst said the meltdown between KDE and Apple was the exception, rather than the rule, when it came to corporate-open- source relations.

"For the most part, Apple and others have worked closely with the open-source community, often contributing considerable time and code," said Burton Group analyst Gary Hein. "We tend only to hear about those situations that don't go as smoothly."

Safari isn't Apple's only open source-based software title; the company's Macintosh operating system is based on the Darwin open-source project.

One KDE contributor said the demise and divergence of the Apple-KDE relationship was no surprise.

"It was big news when Apple decided to take the KHTML code and run with it," one KDE contributor wrote in a posting titled "The bitter failure named 'Safari and KHTML.'" "But we, those who were there, with their collective nose in the code all the time, knew from the beginning that the collaboration smelled fishy."

Another said that while Apple had stuck to the letter of the license in fulfilling its obligations to the KHTML project, the two groups were now all but estranged.

"As long as they needed us, they used us, but when they gained enough knowledge they had no reason to keep sending us reviews and patches," Rusin said. "At a certain point they decided it was a waste of time for them, and at that point the communication just stopped...We had hopes that they would pour resources into KHTML. But that never happened."
http://news.com.com/Open-source+divo...3-5703819.html


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Oz iPod Users Denied Access To Quality Pop
Alex Malik

Despite all the huff and puff emanating from the Australian music business about illegal file-sharing, it's comes as a bit of surprise to learn that you can't legally downloaded a number one single, even if you're prepared to shell out hard-earned cash for the privilege.

Jesse McCartney is a harmless enough young pop star and actor who stars in "Summerland" and has a chart-topping hit - "Beautiful Soul". Jesse epitomises all of the attributes that the recording industry likes to push – young, wholesome, American - spot on for the teen hearthrob market.

As has been widely reported, the Australian Record Industry Association (ARIA) and Recording Industry Association of America, among others, have been busily pushing so-called legitimate downloads. In its recent sales figures press release, ARIA had this to say:

"In 2004, there was a ten-fold increase in the global market for legitimate digital music downloads – a trend that the industry anticipates will start to be replicated locally during 2005. Whilst the online services currently operating in Australia have yet to break through in the same way that they have overseas, the industry is encouraged by the overseas results during 2004 and looks forward to similar success locally during 2005."

In their recent court proceedings against Sharman Networks and others it was clear that ARIA was also attempting to disseminate these messages:

Don’t download music from peer to peer services such as Kazaa, buy your CDs instead.
But of you have to download music, pay for it – and buy it from one of the three authorised retailers of downloads in Australia – Bigpond music, Ninemsn or Destra (through Sanity or one of their other partners).

So after all of this, and all of the money spent in the Kazaa case, you’d think you could buy a download of Jesse McCartney’s national number one single.

Right? Well... wrong!

According to my study of the top 20 ARIAnet singles and recent releases, many chart titles could not be purchased from Bigpond music, Ninemsn or Destra. Hit singles unavailable from all of the services included Jesse’s McCartney’s aforementioned smash, as well as hits from Tammin, the Wrights, Garbage and Lil Jon. This leaves iPod-owning fans of these (and other) tracks with two choices: either buy the CD singles and rip them into a compressed digital format so that they can be played on their hardware; or download the track from an unauthorised peer-to-peer service/MP3 website.

Beware, though: both of these alternatives are illegal under Australian copyright law. And forget going stateside, because Australian consumers still can't access iTunes and other MP3 services from the United States.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/05...ownload_in_oz/


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Report: Gates Says IPod Success Won't Last
AP
Microsoft Corp. co- founder Bill Gates says Apple Computer Inc. shouldn't get too comfortable atop the portable music playing world.

"I don't think the success of the iPod can continue in the long term, however good Apple may be," the chairman of Microsoft, the world's biggest maker of computer software, was quoted as telling German daily Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung in an interview published Thursday.

"I think you can draw parallels here with the computer - here, too, Apple was once extremely strong with its Macintosh and graphic user interface, like with the iPod today, and then lost its position."

The iPod is one of the world's most popular portable digital music players, with more than 15 million sold since they were introduced.

But makers of mobile phones are targeting the device - unveiling models that feature not only phones, but onboard music players so users can download their music from services directly to their phones.

Both Sony Ericsson and Nokia have models, and more are being made by others, including Samsung and Motorola, which is working with Apple directly.
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories...CTION=BUSINESS


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Microsoft's Share of Browser Market Slips
Anick Jesdanun

Microsoft Corp.'s share of the U.S. browser market has slipped below 90 percent as the Firefox browser continues to grow in popularity, according to independent tracking by WebSideStory.

Firefox, an open-source browser collectively developed by the Internet community under the Mozilla Foundation, had a 6.8 percent share as of April 29, an increase from 3.0 percent since WebSideStory began tracking Firefox separately in October.

Other browsers based on the Mozilla code, including America Online Inc.'s Netscape, had a 2.2 percent share, while Microsoft's Internet Explorer share was 89 percent, a drop from 95 percent in June.

The figures are for all operating systems combined. On computers running Microsoft's Windows, Internet Explorer has a 91 percent share, down from 97 percent in June.

Outside the United States, Germany is among the leading adopters of Firefox, with a 23 percent share, compared with 69 percent for Internet Explorer.

"They just seem to be averse to Microsoft products and really interested relatively in these open- source products," said Geoff Johnston, a WebSideStory analyst.

Microsoft is strong in Asia, with Internet Explorer commanding a share of 94 percent in Japan and 98 percent in China.
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories...CTION=BUSINESS


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Review Finds Journalist Not Wired In With Sources
Ted Bridis

An investigation over the sourcing and accuracy of roughly 160 news stories by a freelance journalist at a leading Internet news site concluded that the existence of more than 40 people quoted in the articles could not be confirmed.

Wired News, which publishes some articles from Wired magazine, disclosed results late Monday of its review into stories by one of its frequent contributors, Michelle Delio, 37, of New York City. The stories covered subjects that ranged from computer viruses to the September 2001 terrorist attacks.

The review determined that dozens of people cited in articles by Delio, primarily during the past 18 months, could not be located. Nearly all the people who were cited as sources and who could not be located had common names and occupations and were reported to be living in large metropolitan regions.

Almost none of the information attributed to the disputed sources was considered significant. The disputed quotations typically supported details elsewhere in the articles.

Delio said Monday the investigation "concluded that my stories did not contain fabricated news, that key information in all the stories checked out and that all primary sources were located." She said she regretted not keeping contact information for all her sources.

In a private e-mail Delio sent to Wired News executives last month and obtained by The Associated Press, she said she wanted to "present my side of this sad saga."

"I don't understand why my credibility and career is now hanging solely on finding minor sources that contributed color quotes to stories I filed months and years ago," she wrote. Delio said that among hundreds of articles she wrote for the organization, there "isn't one story that contains fabricated news."

Wired News and Wired Magazine are separately owned and do not share office space or staff, but Wired News publishes Wired Magazine's content online.

The review for Wired News was carried out by Adam Penenberg, a Wired News columnist who teaches journalism at New York University. In 1998, while Penenberg was a writer for Forbes.com, he exposed fabricated articles by Stephen Glass in The New Republic. Glass was fired.

Contributing: Mark Jewell

http://www.usatoday.com/tech/news/20...urnalist_x.htm


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Wired News Releases Source Review
By Wired News

MIT Technology Review Online on March 21 retracted two stories written in whole or in part by Michelle Delio, citing the publication's inability to confirm a source. On April 4, InfoWorld edited four articles by Delio to remove anonymous quotes.

Wired News has published more than 700 news stories written by Delio (under the names Michelle Delio and Michelle Finley) since 2000. In April, we assigned journalism professor and Wired News columnist Adam Penenberg to review recent articles written by Delio for Wired News.

Penenberg and his staff of graduate students at New York University reviewed 160 articles, largely from 2004, but some earlier stories were also checked.

Penenberg provided Wired News with a list of 24 stories that contained sources he could not confirm (links are included at the end of this story). Penenberg's report to Wired News can be downloaded here (PDF).

Delio, in communications with Penenberg and Wired News, stands by her reporting and the existence and accuracy of her sources. Most of Delio's sources were in fact located and confirmed by Penenberg.

The unconfirmed sources affect the content of these stories to varying degrees. For example, the Florida network tax story contains only one quote from a source Penenberg could not confirm, but the quote does not materially affect the rest of the story.

However, there are four articles in which unconfirmed sources arguably play a more prominent role.

• "Spyware on My Machine? So What?" The premise of the article is that general users don't care all that much about spyware. However, Penenberg cannot confirm any of the quotes from the users in the story.

• "Searching for Life Amid Rubble" In this article about the 9/11 rescue efforts, Penenberg was unable to trace several of the people quoted, and an apocryphal survival anecdote is included (which other reporters apparently wrote about at the time as well).

• "Meet the Nigerian E-Mail Grifters" This article is based completely on sources whom Penenberg was unable to identify.

• "Nasty Malware Fouls PCs With Porn" The anecdote at the beginning of this article features a family Penenberg was unable to contact. The family's experience was used to illustrate the extent of the problem caused by the malware.

In addition, a quote in "Patron Saint of the Nerds" is attributed to the Rev. Michael Amesse. According to Penenberg's report, Amesse says he never spoke with a reporter from Wired News. We therefore have removed the quote from the story.

Wired News is not retracting any of these stories. Rather, we are appending notes to the stories, indicating what we have been unable to confirm about them and editing them, as noted, where appropriate. By keeping these stories posted and clearly marked, we hope that our readers can help identify any sources whom we cannot track down.

In addition, Wired News will now require freelance reporters to submit contact information for all named sources. Also, anonymous sources will be used only with appropriate justification.

Wired News will continue to review the remaining Delio stories in its archive and post notes and report findings as appropriate.

If you have any information about the sources in these stories, please contact us at sourceinfo[at]wired.com.

1. "Spyware on My Machine? So What?" (Dec. 6, 2004)

2. "Patron Saint of the Nerds" (Nov. 10, 2004)

3. "Minniapple's Mini Radio Stations" (Oct. 8, 2004)

4. "Florida to Tax Home Networks" (June 24, 2004)

5. "Nasty Malware Fouls PCs With Porn" (April 30, 2004)

6. "A Web of Electronic Denial" (April 28, 2004)

7. "Technology Resets the Clock" (April 3, 2004)

8. "Outsourcing Report Blames Schools" (March 24, 2004)

9. "Multiplayer Games: Shards Unite!" (March 22, 2004)

10. "What Have We Here? Junk, Mostly" (March 15, 2004)

11. "The Masters of Memory Lane" (March 2, 2004)

12. "New MyDoom Virus Packs a Wallop" (Feb. 24, 2004)

13. "AOL Peeved by Adware Outbreak" (Feb. 13, 2004)

14. "Adware Spreads Quickly on AOL IM" (Feb. 11, 2004)

15. "Cheapskate's Guide to a Safe PC" (Feb. 10, 2004)

16. "Mood Ring Measured in Megahertz" (Jan. 29, 2004)

17. "Promise of Eternal Youth Dashed" (Nov. 26, 2003)

18. "Clocked by Two Smoking Barrels" (Nov. 18, 2003)

19. "Meet the Nigerian E-Mail Grifters" (July 17, 2002)

20. "How to Thank Kenya for 9/11 Cows" (June 5, 2002)

21. "Read The F***ing Story, Then RTFM" (June 4, 2002)

22. "Klez: Hi Mom, We're No. 1" (May 24, 2002)

23. "Searching for Life Amid Rubble" (Sept. 12, 2001)

24. "CD Program Making Users Burn" (May 8, 2001)

http://www.wired.com/news/culture/0,1284,67428,00.html


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Robot Walks, Balances Like a Human

If you nudge this robot, it steps forward and catches its balance---much like a human.

The machine called RABBIT, which resembles a high-tech Tin Man from "The Wizard of Oz," minus the arms, was developed by University of Michigan and French scientists over six years. It's the first known robot to walk and balance like a human, and late last year, researchers succeeded in making RABBIT run for six steps. It has been able to walk gracefully for the past 18 months.

U-M researcher Jessy Grizzle, who developed the control theory for the robot, said that the balancing ability programmed into the robot has many applications in the medical field, such as so-called smart prosthetics that adapt to the wearer, and physical rehabilitation aids to help people regain the ability to walk.

Bipedal robots---or two-legged walking machines---in existence today walk flat-footed, with an unnatural crouching or stomping gait, said Grizzle, professor of electrical engineering and computer science.

Up until RABBIT, scientists produced stability in two-legged walking machines largely through extensive trial and error experiments during development, Grizzle said. Current walking machines use large feet to avoid tipping over and do not require the robot's control system to be endowed with a real understanding of the mechanics of walking or balance, Grizzle said. If you provided these robots with a pair of stilts or asked them to tip-toe across the room, they would just fall over.

RABBIT was built without feet. Its legs end like stilts so that it pivots on a point when it moves forward. "If you build a robot that pivots on a point you must understand how the different parts interact dynamically, or else it will fall over," Grizzle said. If a robot has no feet, it's impossible to "cheat."

The U-M/French control theory for walking, which was published in a recent paper in the International Journal of Robotics Research, gives scientists an analytical method that can predict in advance how the robot will move, Grizzle said.

"The concept of stability is reduced to two formulas," Grizzle said. "It's a matter of understanding enough about the dynamics of walking and balance so that you can express with mathematical formulas how you want the robot to move, and then automatically produce the control algorithm that will induce the desired walking motion on the very fist try."

Grizzle's work has promising applications in designing human prosthetics.

"Our analytic method is very cost effective by reducing the amount of experimental work that goes into motion design," Grizzle said. "If you can take properties of a patient, their height, weight, how the valid leg functions, etc., maybe you could more quickly have the prosthetic adapt its characteristics to the person, instead of the person adapting his gait to the prosthetic -- which is essentially what happens now. These things are dreams, we're not there yet. But you need principles to get there."

Other applications include rehabilitative walking aids for spinal injury patients, machines designed for home use that can climb stairs or robots for use in exploratory missions over rough terrain.

RABBIT is part of France's ROBEA project (Robotics and Artificial Entity), which involves seven laboratories and researchers in mechanics, robots and control theory. The machine is housed in France's Laboratoire Automatique de Grenoble,

Video of RABBIT shot by researchers during experiments shows a pair of mechanical legs walking in a circle while attached to a boom that keeps it from falling over sideways but does not guide or control its forward momentum. When pushed from behind by researcher Eric Westervelt, formerly a student of Grizzle's and now an assistant professor of mechanical engineering at Ohio State University, RABBIT lurches forward, then rights itself and continues its even forward stride.

U-M became involved in the research in 1998, when Grizzle met with the lead researcher on the ROBEA project while on sabbatical in Strasbourg, France. Grizzle was able to bring his expertise in control theory, something the researchers designing the robot in Strasbourg were without.

Photos and a video are available at: http://www.umich.edu/news/Releases/2...bit_video.html and
http://www.umich.edu/news/Releases/2...bbit_anime.gif
See more Web links below.

Visit Grizzle's Web site for a running video and many other videos on walking:
http://www.eecs.umich.edu/~grizzle/p...periments.html
For Web video of RABBIT walking, visit: http://www.umich.edu/news/Vid/rabbit1.ram
For Web video of RABBIT walking after disruption, visit: http://www.umich.edu/news/Vid/rabbit2.ram
http://www.newswise.com/articles/view/511722/?sc=swtn


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Simple but Seminal: Building a Robot That Can Reproduce

Cornell University researchers have created a machine that can build copies of itself. The basic principle could be extended to create robots that could replicate or at least repair themselves in space or for work in hazardous environments.

One of the dreams of both science fiction writers and practical robot builders has been realized, at least on a simple level: Cornell University researchers have created a machine that can build copies of itself.

Admittedly the machine is just a proof of concept -- it performs no useful function except to self-replicate -- but the basic principle could be extended to create robots that could replicate or at least repair themselves in space or for work in hazardous environments, according to Hod Lipson, Cornell assistant professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering, and computing and information science, in whose lab the robots were built and tested.

Lipson and colleagues report on the work in a brief communication in the May 12 issue of Nature.

Their robots are made up of a series of modular cubes -- called "molecubes" -- each containing identical machinery and the complete computer program for replication. The cubes have electromagnets on their faces that allow them to selectively attach to and detach from one another, and a complete robot consists of several cubes linked together. Each cube is divided in half along a long diagonal, which allows a robot composed of many cubes to bend, reconfigure and manipulate other cubes. For example, a tower of cubes can bend itself over at a right angle.

To begin replication, the stack of cubes bends over and sets its top cube on the table. Then it bends to one side or another to pick up a new cube and deposit it on top of the first. By repeating the process, one robot made up of a stack of cubes can create another just like itself. Since one robot cannot reach across another robot of the same height, the robot being built assists in completing its own construction.

Although these experimental robots work only in the limited laboratory environment, Lipson suggests that the idea of making self-replicating robots out of self-contained modules could be used to build working robots that could self-repair by replacing defective modules. For example, robots sent to explore Mars could carry a supply of spare modules to use for repairing or rebuilding as needed, allowing for more flexible, versatile and robust missions. Self-replication and repair also could be crucial for robots working in environments where a human with a screwdriver couldn't survive.

Self-replicating machines have been the subject of theoretical discussion since the early days of computing and robotics, but only two physical devices that can replicate have been reported. One uses Lego parts assembled in a two-dimensional pattern by moving along tracks; another uses an arrangement of wooden tiles that tumble into a new arrangement when given a shove.

Exactly what qualifies as "self-replication" is open to discussion, Lipson points out. "It is not just a binary property -- of whether something self- replicates or not, but rather a continuum," he explains. The various possibilities are discussed in "A Universal Framework for Analysis of Self- Replication Phenomena," a paper by Lipson and Bryant Adams, a Cornell graduate student in mathematics, published in Proceedings of the European Conference on Artificial Life, ECAL '03, September 2003, Dortmund, Germany.

For example, the researchers point out that human beings reproduce but don't literally self-replicate, since the offspring are not exact copies. And in many cases, the ability to replicate depends on the environment. Rabbits are good replicators in the forest, poor replicators in a desert and abysmal replicators in deep space, they note. "It is not enough to simply say they replicate or even that they replicate well, because these statements only hold in certain contexts," the researchers conclude. The conference paper also discusses the reproduction of viruses and the splitting of light beams into two identical copies. The analysis they supply "allows us to look at an important aspect of biology and quantify it," Lipson explains.

The new robots in Lipson's lab are also very dependent on their environment. They draw power through contacts on the surface of the table and cannot replicate unless the experimenters "feed" them by supplying additional modules.

"Although the machines we have created are still simple compared with biological self-reproduction, they demonstrate that mechanical self- reproduction is possible and not unique to biology," the researchers say.

Co-authors of the Nature communication are Viktor Zykov, a graduate student in mechanical engineering, Efstathios Mytilinaios, a former graduate student in computer science now at Microsoft, and Adams.

Related World Wide Web sites: The following sites provide additional information on this news release.

Hod Lipson's page on self-replication: http://www.mae.cornell.edu/ccsl/rese...frep/index.htm

Video: http://www.mae.cornell.edu/ccsl/rese...eo/4x4ht4a.wmv
http://www.newswise.com/articles/view/511628/?sc=swtn


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Digerati Vogues, Caught Midcraze
Sarah Boxer

Two sickly words, "contagious" and "viral," are supreme compliments on the Internet. Now there's a museum exhibition that honors the contagion, all those videos, e-mail messages and hoaxes that spread like wildfire on the Web.

"Contagious Media," the exhibition, occupies a room in the temporary quarters of the New Museum of Contemporary Art in Chelsea. A quick visit reveals more than a half- dozen media: a telephone, a few computer screens, a bunch of framed photographs, printed e-mail messages, various kinds of paper covered with Magic Marker messages, red paper hearts, a television screen and a yellow sweater on a hook.

Nothing looks contagious, except perhaps the sweater. It all seems sad and shabby. Then again, maybe it is supposed to. (In Web design, this sort of carefully engineered basement look has a name, "dirt style.")

The exhibition offers seven viral artifacts: Black People Love Us! (a Web site), "Nike Sweatshop" (an e-mail exchange), "All your base are belong to us," (a badly translated phrase from a Japanese video game), Hot or Not (a Web site), Fundrace (a Web site), Dancing Baby (a piece of animation) and the Rejection Line (a phone number).

Don't worry if you've never heard of these. It just means that you're not cool. And now that you've learned about them in the mainstream media (known as MSM on the Web), they're not all that cool, either.

Dancing Baby, a bit of brilliant animation created in 1996 by Michael Girard, Robert Lurye and Ron Lussier, is easily the most famous, for a simple reason. The computer folks caught the craze, and then the tube folks did: the dancing baby, spinning round and round, waving and bending, was a recurring hallucination on "Ally McBeal."

Displayed on one of the museum's computers, Dancing Baby is an object lesson in Internet culture. No matter how fast something spreads online, the gold ring is television. New media, no matter how hip, want old-media affirmation.

Another case: The largest display in the exhibition, a whole wall, is given over to Black People Love Us!, a Web site created by the brother-and-sister team of Jonah and Chelsea Peretti. Four of the seven contagious objects in the exhibition are by one of the Perettis or both.

The site itself is designed to look as if it's the work of a clueless white couple, Sally and Johnny. The home page says: "We are well-liked by Black people so we're psyched (since lots of Black people don't like lots of White people)!!" The site includes captioned snapshots of Sally (in a yellow sweater) and Johnny having fun with black people. There are testimonials from "real" black people, little red thumping hearts and comments from visitors to the site. You get the idea.

In the museum, the display looks as if Sally and Johnny have put it together themselves. The snapshots are framed and hung. The readers' e-mail messages are written in low-tech Magic Marker on various kinds of paper and stuck to the walls alongside red paper hearts.

But what about that huge television screen at the center of the wall continually playing a "Good Morning America" segment in which Diane Sawyer interviews the Perettis about their Web site? Suddenly the homemade mask is dropped. The Perettis seem almost as uncool as Sally and Johnny. Oops.

Of course, if your site is good enough, you can get away with bragging about your own virality. The wall devoted to "Nike Sweatshop," another Peretti project, emerges from its self-satisfaction intact.

Four years ago, Mr. Peretti, on learning that Nike customizes shoes, ordered his emblazoned with "Sweatshop." Nike kept giving reasons for canceling the order. He kept swatting them away. In good Michael Moore fashion, he had the last word: "I have decided to order the shoes with a different ID, but I would like to make one small request: Could you please send me a color snapshot of the 10-year-old Vietnamese girl who makes my shoes? Thanks." Nike had no response.

The show highlights not the original exchange but the reaction. Running from floor to ceiling are the e-mail messages Mr. Peretti received after forwarding the original exchange to 10 friends. He got 3,655 responses, the show says, from Jan. 15 to April 5, 2001. It was a fabulous contagion. And the proof of it makes nice wallpaper.

The rest of the show is on a single countertop, where you'll find one telephone and a lineup of computers. And what's this? Someone left a napkin with a lipstick kiss on it.

"Call me!" the napkin demands. There's a number. Dial it. You won't get a date. It is the Rejection Line, yet another Peretti production. "Unfortunately, the person who gave you this number does not want to talk to you or see you again. We would like to take this opportunity to officially reject you." It's grand and deserves to be viral forever.

But nothing is. On the counter, four computers each display a Web site that was once contagious. The sites now seem like pickled relics sitting in a science museum.

They include Fundrace, where you can spy on your neighbors' political contributions, and Hot or Not, where you can rate photos of men and women on a scale of 1 to 10 and see how often they check their ratings.

Finally, there is the cult classic "All your base are belong to us," an animated slideshow that commemorates the time four years ago when some bad English from a 1989 Japanese video game began zipping around the Internet.

Does this culture sound adolescent? You bet. And male.

You needn't set foot in the museum to enjoy all of this. Just use your computer from home. Why the exhibition, then? Well, having a show at an offbeat museum may not be as good as getting on television or in print, but it's something.

Spreading Online or by Phone

The Web sites and phone number discussed in this article:

DANCING BABY burningpixel.com/Baby/Babygif.htm

BLACK PEOPLE LOVE US! www.blackpeopleloveus.com/

'NIKE SWEATSHOP' www.shey.net/niked.html

FUNDRACE www.fundrace.org/

HOT OR NOT www.hotornot.com

'ALL YOUR BASE ARE BELONG TO US' www.planettribes.com/allyourbase/AYB2.swf

THE REJECTION LINE (212) 479-7990

The exhibition continues through June 4 at the New Museum of Contemporary Art, 556 West 22nd Street, Chelsea, (212) 219-1222.

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/12/ar...gn/12cont.html















Until next week,

- js.














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Current Week In Review.





Recent WiRs -

May 7th, April 30th, April 23rd, April16th, April 9th, April 2nd

Jack Spratt's Week In Review is published every Friday. Please submit letters, articles, and press releases in plain text English to jackspratts (at) lycos (dot) com. Include contact info. Submission deadlines are Wednesdays @ 1700 UTC.


"The First Amendment rests on the assumption that the widest possible dissemination of information from diverse and antagonistic sources is essential to the welfare of the public." - Hugo Black

[multi]

3) Why WinMX is a Good P2P Software: WinMX is simple to install, easy to use, available for free, and is the only no-cost P2P software that is free of malignant spyware. In short, if you choose to participate in P2P file sharing, WinMX is the friendliest and cheapest choice available.

dont want to knock winmx here...but
isnt that just a little misleading ?