Peer-To-Peer News - The Week In Review - May 28th, '05

[JackSpratts]

Quotes Of The Week


"The goal is to get every single torrent on the Internet indexed." – Bram Cohen


"It is impossible for the motion picture industry to legislatively attack file sharing because they don't like the way it's used for movies without attacking it in general. A broad-fronted attack on file sharing is going to fail." – U.S. Rep. Rick Boucher, D-Virginia


"Boucher is right. It's not going away. P2P is just too good a way of sharing information. It's efficient, it's easy, and it uses the Internet the way it was meant to be used." - Andrew Kantor


"We have tools to let anyone make high-quality videos to reach millions of people. We'll give a [TV] channel to anyone who wants a channel." – Tiffiniy Cheng


" 'Adult' films not merely sell well, but offer profit margins of 80% or more, compared to the 20-40% (before expenses) typical of mainstream fare. From Deutsche Telekom to small U.S. cablecos, they are the key source of profit from video." - FutureOfTV


"[Bill Gates said] struggles with security issues had probably cost about a year's delay in the introduction of its next-generation version of Windows." - John Markoff


"My heart and viscera just shrank and chilled." - Rita Saltz


"We find that evidence of appellant's Internet use and the existence of an encryption program on his computer was at least somewhat relevant to the state's case against him." – Judge R.A. Randall


"Taking pictures used to be an event of sorts. Now they have camera phones -- they e-mail pictures, look at them once and trash them. The image is not what it used to be. The value of the image is no longer what it was." –Volker von Glasenapp


"If you think we are a snack, remember we eat you too." - Alessandra da Silva Carlos


















Volez ce MP3!
Bruce Gain

PARIS -- Record labels and movie studios are counting on the courts to help wage their war against global online piracy. But in France, some courts are refusing to go along.

Judicial activism is roiling the entertainment industry here, as judges release convicted fileswappers with suspended sentences associated with otherwise draconian penalties stipulated by copyright law.

Now, in a widening rift, the powerful president of the French magistrates union has begun to openly advocate decriminalizing online trading in copyrighted works for personal use.

"We are in the process of creating a cultural rupture between a younger generation that uses the technologies that companies and societies have made available, such as the iPod, file download software, peer-to-peer networks, etc.," Judge Dominique Barella told Wired News. "It's like condemning people for driving too fast after selling them cars that go 250 kmh."

Barella first began his crusade after writing an article in the French daily Libération in March following rulings by French judges who suspended jail time and fines for alleged perpetrators who were caught downloading music for their personal use. The leniency of the French judges illustrates what Barella describes as confusion over the definition of the intellectual property protection law. Instead, a more appropriate policy needs to be adopted in France and in Europe that protects what he says are mostly young people of the MP3 generation who are weak targets against the machinations of the entertainment industry's legal agenda.

The industry is not taking Barella's statements lightly. In a letter last month addressed to the French Minister of Justice Dominique Perben, more than 20 representatives of France's entertainment, music and film association bodies and advocacy groups expressed their outrage.

"We are surprised and shocked that the president of the magistrates union, given the level of influence he has on his (judicial) colleagues, can publish in the press a call to not criminally sanction criminal acts, which contradicts the intentions of government bodies," the letter read.

The letter also thanked the minister in advance for "taking actions that he deems appropriate."

France isn't alone in creating legal headaches for the entertainment industry's copyright enforcement efforts. A Canadian appeals court last week upheld a decision from a lower court finding that internet service providers in the country are not required to divulge the identity of accused fileswappers.

Barella says last week's letter to the ministry is hardly surprising given the industry's copyright campaign. But he said he believes it is ultimately futile to criminally prosecute fileswappers across Europe who stand accused of illegally distributing music, movie or other copyrighted media files using peer-to-peer networks.

"This is a subject that will serve as a source of debate for Europe since … when there is a problem with the application of the penal code on a large scale, the problem must be examined at its source," Barella said. "It is similar to the sociological consequences of the Prohibition period in the U.S. (during the 1920s). Certain laws can have unexpected consequences on society."

Instead, criminal proceedings should be geared more toward prosecuting large-scale counterfeiting rings instead of going after "a young person who fills up his or her iPod."

"The resources of the police and judges are exhausted by these small cases, and do not take care of the large international (counterfeiting) rings," Barella said, adding that the role of the magistrate union is to communicate to society his colleagues' concerns.

Such thinking is anathema to the industry, which is counting on civil lawsuits and criminal proceedings to create a deterrent that will help bring a generation that grew up surrounded by easy internet piracy back into the ranks of paying customers. Lauri Rechard, the deputy general counsel and director of licensing and litigation for The International Federation of the Phonographic Industry, or IFPI, said there is nothing innocuous about the act of downloading and uploading copyrighted files.

"People still look at this as 'harmless, file sharing,' but the fact is that the effects are the same, or even actually worse, than a massive-scale organized crime piracy operation," Rechard said. "If you look at the number of files that are distributed and the number of music that is being offered without payment to the authors and injury inflicted to the copyright holders, at some point people need to start understanding what we are up against here."

Thus far in Europe, hundreds of criminal indictments and civil proceedings against alleged illegal file downloading mostly initiated last year have not resulted in any prison sentences served, according to the IFPI. Among the more severe sanctions, 98 individuals in Denmark have agreed to pay a "few thousand euros," out of which one individual will pay up to 13,000 euros in damages each. Thirty-nine parties in Germany will pay up to 15,000 euro apiece to settle claims in Germany, the IFPI said.

Meanwhile, legal actions and the growing popularity in Europe of filing sharing over P2P networks will likely not cancel each other out in the near time, according to Sacha Wunsch-Vincent, an economist for the computer and communications policy arm of the OECD. So instead, the entertainment industry might make content more readily available to consumers in Europe to dissuade illegal file downloading.

"Recent developments have proven that new business models to get content out to customers can work," Wunsch-Vincent said. "Now is the time for the content industry, access and technology providers to get out of courts and back to business."
http://www.wired.com/news/digiwood/0,1412,67594,00.html


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

U.S. Senators Urge International Copyright Crackdown
Declan McCullagh

U.S. senators urged the Bush administration on Wednesday to increase pressure on Russia and China to respect copyright law, warning that those nations have become havens for movie and software piracy.

Orrin Hatch, the Utah Republican who chairs the Senate copyright subcommittee, made one of the most ominous statements to date about what might happen if unfettered piracy continues. "Before Russia enters the (World Trade Organization), many of us will have to be convinced that the Russian government is serious about cracking down on the theft of intellectual property," Hatch said during a hearing.

James Mendenhall, the acting general counsel for the U.S. Trade Representative, said his colleagues are hosting a delegation from China this week to talk in part about copyright law. "We're going to be issuing a request through WTO rules seeking additional information from China on the status of enforcement in China," Mendenhall said. (A WTO spokesman later said the talks were still ongoing.)

The USTR recently highlighted the governments of both Russia and China as top copyright offenders. A report in April placed both on a "priority watch list"--along with Brazil, Israel and Indonesia--and plans to wield the WTO apparatus as a lever to force greater compliance with international norms. Another U.S. tactic is to ink free-trade deals including strict copyright regulations with individual nations.

Piracy in China alone costs U.S. companies between $2.5 billion and $3.5 billion a year, the USTR says. Industry estimates place Russia's infringement rates last year at 80 percent for motion pictures, 66 percent for records and music, 87 percent for business software, and 73 percent for entertainment software.

Hatch and Vermont's Patrick Leahy, the panel's top Democrat, said that pirated copies of "Star Wars: Episode III--Revenge of the Sith" already were available on the streets of Beijing and Moscow and expressed frustration about the situation. "What is enough of either a carrot or a stick to make them change, especially when it seems to be governmental policy to allow this?" Leahy asked.

"We've raised the issue at the presidential level, we've put them on the priority watch list," replied Mendenhall. Further progress will take negotiations, WTO pressure and patience, he said.
http://news.com.com/Senators+urge+in...3-5720631.html


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Minnesota Court Takes Dim View Of Encryption
Declan McCullagh

A Minnesota appeals court has ruled that the presence of encryption software on a computer may be viewed as evidence of criminal intent.

Ari David Levie, who was convicted of taking illegal photographs of a nude 9-year-old girl, argued on appeal that the PGP encryption utility on his computer was irrelevant and should not have been admitted as evidence during his trial. PGP stands for Pretty Good Privacy and is sold by PGP Inc. of Palo Alto, Calif.

But the Minnesota appeals court ruled 3-0 that the trial judge was correct to let that information be used when handing down a guilty verdict.

"We find that evidence of appellant's Internet use and the existence of an encryption program on his computer was at least somewhat relevant to the state's case against him," Judge R.A. Randall wrote in an opinion dated May 3.

Randall favorably cited testimony given by retired police officer Brooke Schaub, who prepared a computer forensics report--called an EnCase Report--for the prosecution. Schaub testified that PGP "can basically encrypt any file" and "other than the National Security Agency," nobody could break it.

The court didn't say that police had unearthed any encrypted files or how it would view the use of standard software like OS X's FileVault. Rather, Levie's conviction was based on the in-person testimony of the girl who said she was paid to pose nude, coupled with the history of searches for "Lolitas" in Levie's Web browser.

Judge Thomas Bibus had convicted Levie of two counts of attempted use of a minor in a sexual performance and two counts of solicitation of a child to engage in sexual conduct. The appeals court reversed the two convictions for attempted use of a minor, upheld the two solicitation convictions, and sent the case back to Bibus for a new sentence.
http://news.com.com/Minnesota+court+...3-5718978.html


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

EFF Obtains Draft PATRIOT Bill
Web Release

Bill Gives Justice Department More Power to Demand Private Records

On Thursday, May 26, the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence will consider in closed session a draft bill that would both renew and expand various USA PATRIOT Act powers. The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) has obtained a copy of the draft bill, along with the committee's summary of it, and has made them available to journalists and interested citizens on its website, http://www.eff.org/.

"Even though Congress is still debating whether to renew the broad surveillance authorities granted by the original USA PATRIOT Act, the Justice Department is already lobbying for even more unchecked authority to demand the private records of citizens who are not suspected of any crime," said Kevin Bankston, EFF attorney and Equal Justice Works/Bruce J. Ennis Fellow. "The Senate's intelligence committee should focus on adding checks and balances to protect against abuse of already-existing PATRIOT powers, or repealing them altogether, rather than working to expand them behind closed doors."

http://www.eff.org/.

"Even though Congress is still debating whether to renew the broad surveillance authorities granted by the original USA PATRIOT Act, the Justice Department is already lobbying for even more unchecked authority to demand the private records of citizens who are not suspected of any crime," said Kevin Bankston, EFF attorney and Equal Justice Works/Bruce J. Ennis Fellow. "The Senate's intelligence committee should focus on adding checks and balances to protect against abuse of already-existing PATRIOT powers, or repealing them altogether, rather than working to expand them behind closed doors."

Draft of new PATRIOT Act powers.

Senate Select Committee summary.

http://www.eff.org/news/archives/2005_05.php


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~


Sweden's Parliament OKs Anti-Piracy Law
Mattias Karen

Sweden's Parliament on Wednesday made it illegal to download copyright material from the Internet and approved measures to discourage people from burning copies of CDs and DVDs.

The law, which takes effect July 1, also bans technology and software used to circumvent protections on copyright material, including music, movies and games.

Until now, it was prohibited in Sweden to make copyright material available for others to download. But downloading such material was legal.

The new law also makes it illegal to copy an entire book, including text books, on a copying machine.

It does not forbid making a copy of a CD or DVD for personal use but slaps a tax on recordable CD and DVD-discs. Consumers will have to pay a 24-cent tax for a 700-megabyte disc.
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories...CTION=BUSINESS


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Hong Kong Uncovers Pirated Disc Operation
AP

Hong Kong customs officers seized 504 disc copying drives, about 10,000 pirated discs and more than 34,000 blank discs at the largest pirated disc operation uncovered in the territory, the government said Tuesday.

On Monday, officers raided two disc-making factories masquerading as a car mechanic shop and a renovation company, the government said in a statement. Both factories are believed to be controlled by the same criminal syndicate, it said.

The goods seized were worth a total of about $79,500. Officers arrested four men, but it wasn't immediately clear if they have been charged.

It also wasn't clear whether the pirated discs contained video or computer software.

Hong Kong is known for its counterfeit luxury goods and DVDs, but officials have promised to clamp down on the illegal products.
http://customwire.ap.org/dynamic/sto...stomwire.ht m


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Copyright Ruling 'Deprives Public Of Rare Music'
Louise Jury

A small record label that has specialised in bringing neglected classical composers to the public faces costs estimated at up to £1m after losing a tortuous legal wrangle over copyright.

Hyperion warned that CDs of work by lesser-known composers will be threatened by the Court of Appeal decision which will make it more expensive to release them.

Its battle with Lionel Sawkins, a composer and scholar, began after the label released an album of the music of a long out-of-copyright French baroque composer, Michel-Richard de Lalande, based on arrangements made by Dr Sawkins.

Hyperion failed to get his approval for the release of Music for the Sun King and did not identify him as the editor of the arrangements, prompting him to seek damages of up to £50,000 for breach of copyright.

He won at the High Court last year, but the label took the case to appeal where the judgment was upheld yesterday in a ruling which will have widespread ramifications for the classical recording industry.

Usually no royalties have to be paid on music by composers who have been dead for more than 70 years. But music by neglected composers often requires work by an editor to make scores ready for performance.

Dr Sawkins spent a reported 1,200 hours and researched a variety of manuscript and printed sources to produce the four Lalande editions that went to court. He claimed to have added orchestral parts himself, to have adapted and modernised the notation and restored corrupted parts of the music.

Hyperion argued that the edition he produced for performance was not a new and substantive musical work in its own right and that he could not obtain copyright for it as an original piece of music.

But Lord Justice Mummery, Lord Justice Mance and Lord Justice Jacob disagreed in three out of the four pieces. Lord Justice Jacob ruled that, far from mere copying, Dr Sawkins's adaptations were what made the works "playable". "This was not servile copying. It had the practical value of making the work playable. He recreated Lalande's work using a considerable amount of personal judgement. His recreative work was such as to create something really new using his own original work."

However, Simon Perry, the director of Hyperion, warned that the judgment meant that almost every edition of an out-of-copyright work would have its own musical copyright because the law would regard it as "original".

"This will affect classical record companies and performers of classical music as they will have to seek - and pay for - a licence before performing or recording music from an edition," Mr Perry said.

"The collateral damage caused by this decision will affect not only the prosperity of the company, but also dozens of artists and groups, producers, engineers, composers, music publishers and musical editors, and most importantly, the record-buying public whose access to rare and collectable repertoire served by Hyperion ... will be severely diminished."

The law courts were not the right place to assess questions of copyright which were formerly decided by the Performing Rights Society, Mr Perry added. "Giving someone a copyright for copying something is patently ridiculous."

Dr Sawkins was not available for comment. However, some in the music industry have been sympathetic to the fact that scholars are often poorly rewarded for their work and that the CD should not have gone ahead without terms being agreed.
http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/leg...p?story=639800


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Record Weekend For Star Wars Despite Widespread BitTorrent Distribution
Thomas Mennecke

Prereleases, or leaked movies, have become a growing concern for the movie industry. Like the RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America), the MPAA contends that both physical and online piracy is costing movie studios millions of dollars in lost revenue. To combat this growing trend, the MPAA helped enact the "The Family Entertainment and Copyright Act of 2005 (FECA)."

The FECA is a strong piece of legislation that significantly strengthens the current copyright laws. The act amended the existing copyright laws by criminalizing the distribution of prereleased movies. For the casual file-trader, sharing just one prereleased movie could earn you up to three years in prison and a significant fine. From the MPAA's perspective, the goal of this new amendment aims to deter online and offline piracy.

It appears the new amendment did not achieve its desired result.

Within one day of Star Wars' release, the New York City Police Department shut down a DVD piracy ring that contained over 1,000 copies of the new movie. Typically, such pirated releases cost very little to the street consumer - perhaps $5 - $10. Despite the closure of this piracy ring, copies of this movie and many others continue to be readily available.

In the virtual world, the anti-piracy amendment did not appear to fair much better. Hours before Star Wars' theatrical debut, a release group name ViSA uploaded the movie to Usenet. According to online sources, despite a time stamp occupying a small percentage of the screen, the movie is very watchable. Many agree this is a "work print" copy designed for studio screenings - definitely not for public viewing. Because the online copy is a "work print" version, it is suspected the movie was leaked by an inside employee of Lucas Films, Ltd.

From Usenet, the film disseminated to the P2P community via BitTorrent, and to a lesser extent, eDonkey2000.

The MPAA was infuriated, or at least attempted to appear so, at the level of online distribution. On the day Star Wars was released, the MPAA issued an unprecedented press release expressing their frustration at the current situation. MPAA CEO and President Dan Glickman cited the online distribution "...dims the magic of the movies for everyone..." In addition, the press release stressed the economic impact of online piracy.

"If piracy and those who profit from it are allowed to flourish, they will erode an engine of economic growth and job creation; undermine legitimate businesses that strive to unite technology and content in innovative and legal ways and limit quality and consumer choice."

Whether the MPAA and Lucas Film, Ltd. are truly furious over the online distribution of Star Wars is another matter. The mainstream media attention focused on this event is unparalleled, easily eclipsing the interest given to the prerelease of Attack of the Clones. One could argue the elevated interested has actually helped promote ticket sales.

Despite the wide spread proliferation of this movie, Star Wars Episode III still managed to have a record breaking weekend. On its initial Thursday release at 12:01 AM, the movie set a midnight record by making over $16 million. It then went to break a one-day record by making $50 million for Thursday's remainder. Star Wars went on to break the two-day record by making $83.8 million. The film also broke the three-day record by earning $124.7 million. Did it break the four-day record? Absolutely, by raking in $158.5 million by Sunday.

Did the wide spread piracy that accompanied this movie hurt this movie's profitability? Perhaps it lost a million or so, but in the grand scheme of things it appears that online and physical piracy had virtually no role in Star Wars' economic power. Until the day comes that home entertainment equipment can truly reproduce the theater experience, the MPAA’s claim that online piracy hurts movie revenue will remain weak.
http://www.slyck.com/news.php?story=798


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Feds Shut Web Site in Piracy Crackdown
Mark Sherman

Federal raiders. Internet pirates. Intergalactic screen adventures. The government announced a crackdown Wednesday on the theft of movies and other copyright materials that has the elements of a film plot.

Federal agents shut down a Web site that they said allowed people to download the new "Star Wars" movie even before it was shown in theaters.

The Elite Torrents site was engaging in high-tech piracy by letting people download copies of movies and other copyright material for free, authorities said.

The action was the first criminal enforcement against individuals who are using cutting-edge BitTorrent software to obtain pirated content online, Justice and Homeland Security Department officials said.

Elite Torrents had more than 133,000 members and offered 17,800 movies and software programs in the past four months, officials said. Among those titles was "Star Wars: Episode III - Revenge of the Sith," which was available through Elite Torrents six hours before its first showing in theaters, the officials said.

The movie was downloaded more than 10,000 times in the first 24 hours.

Authorities served search warrants in 10 cities against computer users accused of being the first to offer copyright materials to other BitTorrent users on the Web site, Homeland Security's Customs and Immigration Enforcement agency said. The cities are: Austin, Texas; Erie, Pa.; Philadelphia; Wise, Va.; Clintonwood, Va.; Germantown, Wis.; Chicago; Berea, Ohio; Anthem, Ariz., and Leavenworth, Kan.

Authorities said the warrants were still under seal.

Investigators said many of the copyright movies were available through the Web site before their commercial release.

President Bush signed a new law last month setting tough penalties of up to 10 years in prison for anyone caught distributing a movie or song prior to its commercial release.

"Today's crackdown sends a clear and unmistakable message to anyone involved in the online theft of copyrighted works that they cannot hide behind new technology," said John C. Richter, acting assistant attorney general.

People trying to access the elitetorrents.org Web site on Wednesday were greeted with a warning about the penalties for copyright infringement, although officials said the investigation is focusing on those who originally offered the pirated materials.

The message also said: "This site has been permanently shut down by the Federal Bureau of Investigation and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Individuals involved in the operation and use of the Elite Torrents network are under investigation for criminal copyright infringement."

BitTorrent has become the file-sharing software of choice because of its speed and effectiveness, especially after the recording industry last year began cracking down on users of Kazaa, Morpheus, Grokster and other established software.

The peer-to-peer software works by using tracker files that are posted online. The tracker files point to users who are sharing a given file, be it a pirated feature film or a home movie. BitTorrent then assembles complete files from multiple chunks of data that it obtains from everyone who is sharing the file.

The Motion Picture Association of America assisted in the investigation that led to Wednesday's action against Elite Torrents, officials said.

"Shutting down illegal file swapping networks like Elite Torrents is an essential part of our fight to stop movie thieves from stealing copyrighted materials," said the group's president, Dan Glickman.

Hollywood movie studios last year sued many operators of computer servers that use BitTorrent technology to help relay digital movie files across the Internet. The group also sued six sites this month that focus on swapping television programs.
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories...CTION=BUSINESS


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Bit-ance.net Goes Offline
Thomas Mennecke

It has been a rough day for the BitTorrent community. One of the largest and well respected BitTorrent indexing sites, EliteTorrents.org, met an untimely end earlier this morning. This has sparked a large reaction from the BitTorrent community, as another well known site, Bit-ance.net, has closed its' doors forever.

Upon reaching the site, visitors and regulars alike are greeted with the following message:

"Thanks for being a part of bit-ance.net, your data has disappeared and so have we ..."

Bit-ance.net was a large BitTorrent indexing site with over 24,000 registered users. It covered a wide range of content, particularly the type of torrent files the MPAA (Motion Picture Association of America) cited EliteTorrents for.

While Bit-ance.net was not served with any type of copyright violation notice, the escalating atmosphere against the BitTorrent community placed the site's owners and users in peril.

"As I'm sure you're aware, the current climate throughout the BitTorrent scene, and indeed, P2P in general, is a little volatile," site moderator and lead IRC channel Operator "mosaiegh" told Slyck. "The site's closing (indefinite hiatus) is in the interest of everyone, especially the sites' users."

mosaiegh stressed the importance of protecting Bit-ance.net's users, especially considering the FBI/U.S. Customs' implied action on EliteTorrents.org. By taking the site off line now and destroying any records, the population's safety is considerably enhanced.

While many will be dismayed at this news, it was perhaps the best thing the administrators and owners of Bit-ance could have done to ensure the security of their 24,000 person userbase.

Although the IRC channel will remain open, mosaiegh conveys that Bit-ance.net will, in all likely circumstance, never return.

"...the P2P world is so unpredictable and with such a clamp down on sites, the question of: is all this really worth it? And upon weighing the costs (not just financial, of course) and benefits of running a site; the answer is different as to what it used to be."

Many will miss Bit-ance as not just another BitTorrent indexing site, but as a place and community to call home. Acting as Bit-ance.net's representative, mosaiegh gave perhaps the final farewell.

"While we do express our apologies to all effected parties, all actions are taken in the interest of the greater good of its users in an effort to protect their most precious asset: their privacy. And of course, a thank you to them for helping [make] the site what it became, and the many memories it created for so many that will live on..."
http://www.slyck.com/news.php?story=804


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Is Bittorrent Unstoppable?
Gsurface

Is Bittorrent unstoppable?

In today's age, nothing is more valued than information and the speed at which it is delivered. Whether you are a music aficionado or a college teacher trying to distribute papers and reading material, you have used one form or another of Peer to Peer (P2P) software to send or receive files. We all have our personal choice and flavor of P2P wavering only to our personal preference to broadband constraints but no one can deny the phenomenon which is Bittorrent.

Humble Beginnings
In 2002, upfront of thousands of the most savvy of hackers and industry veterans, the then 27 year old Bram Cohen introduced an open source P2P protocol specifically aimed towards Linux developers who needed a fast and cheap way to distribute their Linux software online and not he nor anyone else at that exact point in time could expect how his concept would be received. Fast forward to present day and you can see the once meek P2P protocol as a household name, infuriating many and rejoicing the remainder. Within just two years, Bittorrent's use exploded, being used as an alternative to the then dying eDonkey and Kazaa P2P protocols to distribute every single type of file imaginable, from movies to game to pornography. Many flocked to it for its ease of use and the promise of maxing out their download speed capabilities and others used it for its original intent of distributing open source software and information in a cheap and uncomplicated manner. Each month meant a new milestone and more users for Bittorrent which gathered more and more attention from general users and other more powerful people that started a search and destroy mission for its users.

Doom for the thriving P2P technology?
In the year 2002, there was ground shaking outrage towards file-swapping and P2P in general from the two biggest enforcers of anti-piracy in the world, RIAA and the MPAA. Every month a new P2P protocol and pirate group was killed off as the two giants flexed their muscle, vowing to find and destroy piracy at its root by dispatching thousands upon thousands of online private detectives to find and catch people trading copyright material. For almost 2 years it seemed like Bittorrent was evading such attention from the two anti-piracy giants but then at the beginning of 2005 things turned for the worse for Bittorrent users. One by one, major Bittorrent communities and "trackers" were scared or threatened into submission by RIAA and MPAA with threats of million dollar lawsuits and jail time and slowly but surely the Bittorrent user base went from a roaring and seemingly unstoppable beast to a whimper and underground operation. As the threats rolled in to Bittorrent tracker operators, the number of trackers diminished and ultimately so did the users of the tracker, now with things seemingly getting worse for Bittorrent users, Bram and others have come together to rid the protocol of it's dependence on centralized/static trackers using a new and innovative technology included within each newer Bittorrent client which makes it possible to have torrents that are "trackerless".

How it works
To understand this new technology we first must understand Bittorrent’s current innards and operation. Currently when one wants to share a file using Bittorrent, the user must create a "torrent" file from within their Bittorrent client and then assign that torrent to be "tracked" by a "tracker." All the tracker does is coordinates and manages connections of peers, holding hash data for the file being shared and nothing more. The new "Trackerless" technology recently introduced into the latest release of Bittorrent clients basically do's away with the tracker based system very easily by shifting the responsibility of the tracker to the peers unilaterally. Based upon Kademlia distributed hash table or DHT for short, it allows each client to effortlessly store and share peer contact information pertaining to each individual torrent. It all sounds great right? I mean no more expectation on individuals to spend outrageous amounts of money and risk by hosting a tracker; instead there is a decentralized and pure peer to peer operation, right? Well it does have its disadvantages as well. Without a static or central tracker you can't collect statistics or guarantee a stable transfer of files between users which makes telling a definitive number of peers connected terribly hard.

What's next?
In the end of the day, no one can truly say Bittorrent is a dying P2P outlet only because those that worked so hard to make it what it is today is also continuing to make the protocol evolve and take shape with each difficult day that passes. We will see new and innovative things take form within the Bittorrent community and its technology as the need for change becomes more apparent each and every day from the anti-piracy firms and its user base. One can only sit and ponder about what else is to come and be born from the Bittorrent team as we look into the next year or two.
http://www.flexbeta.net/articles.php...showarticle=91


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

New Search Tool For BitTorrent
John Borland

Peer-to-peer developer Bram Cohen earned himself a place in Internet history with the creation of the BitTorrent file-swapping program.

But his open-source software, now one of the most widely used means of legally and illegally downloading files such as movies or software, has barely helped him earn a living.

Now the programmer is aiming to turn his donation-supported work into a steadier business, with a San Francisco-area start-up devoted to BitTorrent products. The first product, to be released in the next few days, will be an advertising-supported search engine that scours the Web for links to BitTorrent files.

"We're trying to make it a less haphazard revenue stream," said Cohen, who is moving back to the San Francisco area for the project.

The search tool, which will be based on Web crawling technology owned by Cohen's company, could be a boon to downloaders who previously have had little in the way of navigation for BitTorrent files.

Unlike peer-to-peer networks such as Kazaa, eDonkey or the original Napster, no central search technology exists for BitTorrent. Instead, links to specific files are posted on Web sites. Sites that specialize in copyrighted files such as movies or music are often taken offline by legal action.

A few tools have existed to get around this process. Exeem, an application distributed by the former operators of SuprNova, a big BitTorrent Web site, integrates Cohen's downloading technology with a more traditional searchable file-swapping network.

An older Web search tool called Bitoogle also has provided some search capabilities. Cohen said his BitTorrent search will be more powerful than Bitoogle, however.

Cohen said his tool won't aim to screen out the myriad copyrighted files likely to come up in a Web search. But like other search engines, he will comply with federal copyright law and remove any links that copyright holders point to as leading to infringing material.

Plans for the new search tool were first reported by Wired News.

Cohen said his new company, eponymously named BitTorrent, will also host file downloads in torrent form and consult with companies wanting to use the technology to distribute their own products.
http://news.com.com/New+search+tool+...3-5719020.html


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

BitTorrent Creator to Launch Search Engine
AP

The creator of the popular online file-sharing program BitTorrent said Monday he is preparing to launch a Web-based search engine that will comb the Internet for sites hosting files for downloading movies, music and other data.

The ad-supported search engine is designed to function like Google, Yahoo and other search sites used to find Web sites by topic and could be up and running as early as Tuesday, Bram Cohen said.

"People's No. 1 question is 'How do I find stuff?'" Cohen said.

Other popular online file-sharing software programs, such as eDonkey and Kazaa, feature search engines that sift through the computers of its users to find a specific file or title, but BitTorrent is different.

The program, developed by Cohen in 2001, looks for torrent files - digital markers that it needs to assemble complete files from multiple bits of data obtained from other computer users.

Locating the torrents, however, requires finding host sites. And while Cohen himself has not been a target of government or the film and music industries' piracy watchdogs, some operators of Web sites hosting tracker files have been forced to shut down.

Users of the BitTorrent search engine should have an easier time finding the torrent files, wherever they are.

"The goal is to get every single torrent on the Internet indexed," Cohen said.

A link to the search engine will be posted on BitTorrent.com. As of Monday, it had indexed or found 60,000 torrent files, Cohen said.
http://customwire.ap.org/dynamic/sto...05-23-21-33-05


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

MPAA Blames BitTorrent for Star Wars Distribution
Thomas Mennecke

Two days prior to Episode III's release, inaccurate reports dictated this movie was already spreading on the BitTorrent network. However, it was soon discovered the copy purportedly existing on BitTorrent was simply a false copy. On Wednesday, May 18th, approximately 3 hours before Episode III officially debuted in theaters, a release group named "ViSA" uploaded this film to the Newsgroups. This was the genuine article.

From there it eventually spread out to P2P networks such as eDonkey2000 and BitTorrent. For those unfamiliar or simply not willing to use the Newsgroups, P2P networks such as BitTorrent helped Episode III become accessible to the mainstream. Countless duplicates of this movie have since spread across computers throughout the world.

The MPAA has been working vigorously to thwart prerelease movies and online distribution. Recently, President George Bush recently signed the "The Family Entertainment and Copyright Act of 2005 (FECA)." This Act amends the current copyright law by adding prison time and significant fines for those found guilty of distributing prereleased movies.

Believing such amendments would deter movie pirates, the MPAA had some choice words over the current leakage of Episode III.

“There is no better example of how theft dims the magic of the movies for everyone than this report today regarding BitTorrent providing users with illegal copies of Revenge of the Sith. The unfortunate fact is this type of theft happens on a regular basis on peer to peer networks all over the world," MPAA President and CEO Dan Glickman said in a press release.

As an earlier post on the Slyck forums pointed out, the MPAA blamed BitTorrent as a whole, rather than a specific tracker (or trackers.) BitTorrent trackers act as indexes for the network, since the network itself is not searchable. Once an individual downloads a torrent file from a tracker, the torrent informs the BitTorrent client the necessary information to locate and download the desired media file.

Many feel generalizing BitTorrent in this fashion is unwarranted, as many legitimate uses exist; such as distributing the Linux Operating System.

“Fans have been lined up for days to see Revenge of the Sith. To preserve the quality of movies for fans like these and so many others, we must stop these Internet thieves from illegally trading valuable copyrighted materials on-line."

Or, as General Grievous would say, "Crush them!"
http://www.slyck.com/news.php?story=797


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Star Wars Downloading Stealing Corporate Bandwidth
Staff Writer

Organizations may experience a slow down across their networks and risk potential legal action from the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) as Star Wars fans use the BitTorrent P2P file sharing application while at work to download and share copies of "Star Wars: Episode III - Revenge of the Sith."

The final episode of the Star Wars series has been leaked onto the Internet only hours after the movie opened in theaters across the globe. It is being downloaded over the popular BitTorrent file-sharing network and it is reported that a version of the movie has already been downloaded by thousands of people.

The probability of Star Wars fans downloading the movie using easily accessible broadband access at work is high and this presents organizations with two key problems. The first is the corporate network struggling to cope with the abnormal load posed by the file sharing activities, which may adversely affect legitimate use of the network by sucking up too much bandwidth. The second is that organizations that do not take steps to prevent this pirating of the movie could be at risk of legal action by the MPAA.

"BitTorrent has absolutely no legitimate use in corporate networks and CIOs and IT managers should be extremely wary of its presence within the enterprise," said Peter Shaw, CEO of Akonix Systems, Inc. "This latest Star Wars episode is causing great excitement among movie fans so it's inevitable there will be high demand for free copies of the movie. Organizations should immediately make sure that the use of BitTorrent and other file sharing applications are banned in company policies and enforcing this with a technology solution to block its use."

Products are available to help corporations defend themselves from file sharing abuse on the networks. Akonix L7 Enforcer provides protection against security risks and liability from the unauthorized use of the latest IM and P2P protocols, such as eDonkey and BitTorrent. Organizations which are unaware of the extent of IM and P2P file sharing use on their networks can determine this by using Akonix RogueAware, a free monitoring tool which detects and reports on IM and P2P activity.
http://www.securitypronews.com/news/...Bandwidth.html


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The Death Star, As Apt Metaphor For Your Network

Hi, Max Chafkin here, for Inc.com. While viruses and spam are normally the most dreaded calamities to befall a company's network, starting yesterday an unlikely threat emerged: George Lucas.

In anticipation of the opneing of "Episode III � Revenge of the Sith," thousands of people logged onto peer-to-peer (P2P) networks like BitTorrent to download an illegal sneak peek. The third and final Star Wars prequel was available online mere hours after the movie opened in theaters.

Fun, right? Not for your network administrator. Office file sharing can suck bandwidth away from normal operations and slow down a company�s network. Small businesses in particular may suffer, especially those that rely on asynchronous DSL, which can be crippled by the kind of heavy uploading required by P2P software.

Worse, file swapping can leave companies open to security threats and potential lawsuits, says Francis Costello, head of marketing at San Diego-based Akonix Systems, which provides messaging and network security software to large companies. "If I put BitTorrent on a machine and I share the wrong directory I could allow people access to confidential corporate data," says Costello.

Also worth remembering: the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) could pursue litigation against companies whose employees share movies at work. The scenario is, to be sure, unlikely--but it's not as farfetched as you may think. In 2001, the Recording Industry of America sued Arizona- based Integrated Information Systems for allowing employees to use P2P networks at work -� the suit was settled according to CNET.

While the MPAA has yet to follow the RIAA's litigious lead, it has recently stepped up its anti-piracy campaign, announcing that it is suing individuals who have downloaded only a single movie.

So what can businesses owners do? Akonix, along with several other companies, offers what Costello called "perimeter security" -- basically a sophisticated firewall that blocks users from connecting through P2P networks or downloading unauthorized files via instant messaging software.

Short of that, you may want to consider the methadone clinic approach to the problem, and spring for Sith tix for all of your employees.
http://blog.inc.com/archives/2005/05...r_network.html


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Movielink "Wishes It Had Adult"

Hollywood movies offer no margins

Movielink is owned by four studios, but even their own company doesn't get films at prices that offer much margin. Figures aren't public, but they are losing significant money. At a Digital Hollywood event, a CinemaNow exec pointed to the solution - go adult. The Movielink execs quiet response, "I wish we could."

"Adult" films not merely sell well, but offer profit margins of 80% or more, compared to the 20-40% (before expenses) typical of mainstream fare. From Deutsche Telekom to small U.S. cablecos, they are the key source of profit from video.
http://www.futureoftv.net/


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

EU Ponders Putting Movies On Web
Caroline Briggs

European film-makers are looking to the internet to boost international sales in an industry still dominated by Hollywood.

Culture ministers from across Europe promised to explore issues surrounding the online distribution of movies, after a meeting at the Cannes film festival on Tuesday.

The summit - which also included representatives from the film industry, Internet Service Providers (ISPs) and telecoms agencies - discussed possible policies for film distribution online.

Twenty-five culture ministers at the event acknowledged that the chance for film-makers to target new audiences was "huge on the web".

"In Europe, as in other continents, the opportunities for people to enjoy films online are set to increase tremendously over the next few years," said European Union media commissioner Viviane Reding.

The fact this discussion has taken place in Cannes this year... shows that using online distribution is imminent
Tina McFarlind, UK Film Council
"We must take this opportunity to contribute to exploiting new markets and increasing revenue for our film-makers while expanding the choice available to the general public."

UK Film Council spokeswoman Tina McFarlind said it was significant that online movie distribution was being examined.

"The fact this discussion has taken place in Cannes this year and the fact all these culture ministers, ISP providers and industry figures have got together to discuss it, shows that using online distribution is imminent."

Earlier this month UK retailer Tesco announced plans to launch a film downloading service "as soon as possible" to build on the success it has had in the online music sector.

But it said the UK's Broadband capacity was not yet capable of handling movie downloads.

Last month website Wippit said it would launch the UK's first site offering films to download and keep this summer.

The Cannes meeting also looked at online piracy, with a European leadership summit formed to examine the problem.

"There are indeed risks of a disastrous loss in revenue if the market is inundated with unauthorised file-sharing of films, as has been seen with music," the culture ministers said in a statement.

We need to look at ways of changing children's behaviour towards piracy by repeating the message that it is not a victimless crime
Culture Secretary Tessa Jowell
UK Culture Secretary Tessa Jowell told the BBC News website she was concerned about piracy and unauthorised file-sharing on the internet.

"There was a general view that action to tackle piracy was important for the future health of the internet," she said.

"We also need to look at ways of changing children's behaviour towards piracy by repeating the message that it is not a victimless crime."

Ms Jowell added that the UK Film Council was behind the first movie ever to be officially premiered on the internet. This Is Not A Love Song - by Full Monty writer Simon Beaufoy - was launched in September 2003.

Last year the Motion Picture Association of America launched legal action to sue people who facilitate illegal film downloading.

The industry wants to stop people using programs such as BitTorrent to swap movies over the internet.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/1/h...lm/4558427.stm


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Music Industry Must Sing New Tune
Mark Evans

A short conversation this week with a 20-something colleague about music downloading got me thinking when he mentioned he had started buying CDs again.

Intrigued, I asked why he had stopped using free peer-to-peer (P2P) services, which are still legal to use in Canada until copyright laws change. The answer was far from definitive -- he had just grown tired of "stealing" music.

It's an interesting comment because it makes you wonder what has changed, and if this is representative of growing sentiment. My sense is "P2P Fatigue" is starting to emerge as the novelty of free music slowly fades -- albeit six years after Napster took the music industry by storm.

In some ways, P2P services are like going to an all-you-eat buffet with amazing desserts. After a while, you're stuffed and realize maybe the next time you're out for dinner, the nice -- more expensive -- restaurant up the street with smaller, but better, portions would be a better option. You can equate the nicer restaurant to CDs bought at retailers or Web sites such as iTunes, that -- for a fee -- offer high-quality, virus-free downloads. Music retailers are making this option more appealing with lower CD prices, while there are plenty of places on the Web to legally buy music.

This is not to suggest the P2P world is disappearing because there are still billions of free songs being downloaded each month -- many of them by younger consumers who the music industry describes as the "lost generation." As a result, it would be wrong to expect a huge rebound in CD sales or a sudden surge in legal downloads.

That said, if P2P Fatigue is really alive and well, there is a huge opportunity for the music industry to win back consumers. But it means the industry needs to stop hammering its customers with the law and, instead, focus on the benefits of buying legitimate music, such as higher-quality products and access to such value-added features as priority concert tickets and exclusive Webcasts.

In a sense, the Federal Court of Appeal's decision yesterday to uphold a lower court ruling that allows Canadian Internet service providers to not disclose the names of customers who use P2P services is a positive development for the music industry.

The music industry's inability to discover the identify of people downloading free music and, more importantly, the inability to sue them, means different weapons have to be used to counter P2P activity. Music labels will have to be more imaginative than running quasi-public service advertising campaigns that downloading free music is bad.

As much as the Web is an efficient way to distribute music, it has enormous potential to develop strong and more lucrative ties with customers. The music industry has wasted six years trying to catch up with P2P technology. It needs to be smarter and more creative -- otherwise we'll soon be talking about lost generations of consumers.
http://www.canada.com/national/natio...b-d36c99b6b380


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Hitachi Ramping Up Sales Of Secure PCs

Japan's Hitachi Ltd. said on Monday it aimed to sell 30,000 security-enhanced personal computers (PCs) with no hard disk drives (HDDs) this business

year at a time of growing concern about corporate data leakage.

Hitachi sees personal computers with advanced security functions as an area of growth as corporations step up efforts to prevent business data from leaking, and it launched its first HDD-less notebook computer in April.

In order to appeal to broader corporate customers, the Tokyo-based company plans to offer two additional models of security-enhanced desktop and notebook PCs by August.

The new notebook PC is expected to sell for about 129,000 yen ($1,193) and the desktop model for 124,000 yen, Hitachi said.

The HDD-less PC stores no information. Tasks are carried out by interacting with server computers or PCs in the office, protecting business information including the personal data of clients even when the PC is lost or stolen.

Hitachi, Japan's largest electronics conglomerate, said it aimed for 10 billion yen ($92.5 million) in sales of the new PCs and related products and services in the year to next March.

Hitachi said demand for security-enhanced PCs is likely to total 300,000 units in Japan in the current business year.

Rival NEC Corp. also launched personal computers with no hard disk drives in April, aiming for 100 billion yen in sales, related hardware and computer services in three years.

Shares in Hitachi, which aims for an overall PC shipments of 756,000 units in the year to next March, closed 2.55 percent higher at 643 yen, outperforming the Tokyo stock market's electric machinery index, which gained 1.14 percent. ($1=108.15 yen)
http://today.reuters.com/news/newsAr...HITACHI-DC.XML


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Acting Against Anti-File-Swapping Lawsuits In Israel
shlomif

A recent Ynet feature claimed Israel is going to be the third country in the world after the U.S. and England to feature its own law-suits against file-sharer. Two issues are at stake here:

The privacy of the file sharers. Is the ISP allowed to disclose their identities based on their IPs and time?
The legitimacy of the file-sharing process. Can Internet surfers download files using Peer-to-Peer technologies and other means?

Let's tackle them one by one. First the first issue. The short answer is that the ISPs must not disclose such information, at least not without a court permit. By all means, the so-called "Intellectual Property" is not property. The act of infringing on such "goods" is not "stealing". Their positional status among law traditions in many countries (including the U.S.) is that they are simply things that are nice to have, and infringing on them is not stealing. Makes sense too: if I duplicate a song or a computer program or a video, or a picture, the original is left intact. But if I take a tangible value without permission, then the owner has one less instance of it. While I respect the rights of copyrights owner to make money out of their creations, it is not as important as the rights of owners of actual property to preserve their own property.

The second issue (of the file swapping itself) is also perfectly legitimate. While not too many people have heard about it, there's a well known "First Sale Principle" in copyrights tradition. Generally, the copyright owner gets the ownership on the first sale, where all subsequent copies of the original can be done legally. For example, libraries may rent books that they buy.

Downloading a song does not involve a single ounce of guilt. About 20% of Americans share songs, and in Israel it's probably an even higher percentage. It would be a joke to consider all these people as criminals. Can anyone imagine a 21st century Dostoevsky writing "Crime and Punishment" about a file-swapper?

I admit it: I have been downloading songs from the Internet which I have not bought on CDs yet. So did my sisters. However: here's an interesting observation. I never bought a lot of CDs, and since we got a fast Internet connection, have bought about the same amount of CDs. However, my sisters have always bought a lot of CDs and since we had an ADSL connection, they became introduced to many new bands, and as a result have still been buying a lot of their CDs. Perhaps even much more than before. So the Music Industry and the artists did not lose a lot from me, but OTOH gained a lot from my sisters.

My father has bought many recordings of pieces of Classical Music online, and still buys many Classical CDs, despite downloading many others. So the media industry should be happy with the Fish Family.

Neither I, nor my sisters or fathers feel an ounce of guilt about having downloading these songs without buying them afterward. While I highly approve of Online Music Buying services like iTunes[1], P2P networks should co-exist with them free and undisturbed. The next generation of musicians won't think twice before putting all their songs online for free download. As an artist, I can testify that making a living out of one's creations plays a very marginal in one's artistic activities. The main motivation is creating something new and getting everybody possible to experience it, and comment on it. I would continue to write stories, essays, articles and open-source software, regardless if I ever make any significant amount of money out of it. So would almost any artist on the planet, a few of which has so far earned enough to last them and their inheritors for several life-times. (and the arm is still erect).

I hereby testify that I will free time out of my schedule to help in any way I can to help represent some selective lawsuits against file sharers. I wish to take them through the three circuits of Israeli courts, if necessary. I will perform any research task that I will be assigned to do. My knowledge of copyright law is limited to what I've learned as an open-source software developer. (which is quite a lot) However, I'm also interested and knowledgeable in history, especially ancient history of the Near East and Europe. [2] I will even be willing to testify in front of an Israeli court, if that's necessary.

I wish to set the record straight for file sharers right here and right now. Israel is different from the U.S. in the sense that it would be able to easily put a record label owner behind bars if he continues to harass innocent people by filing lawsuits against them.

Bring it on!

Yours truly, -- Shlomi Fish.

[1] - As long as they do not have the so-called "Digital Rights Management", which is so easy to break, and have fully open-source and cross-platform clients.

[2] - I should note that, as far as I know, copyright law is purely a recent phenomenon that emerged during post-Renaissance Europe. In ancient times, when "paper" was precious, and its duplication very time consuming, the ancient authors who published their works in the public, encouraged people to distribute, quote, and make use of their work as much as possible. While people often charged money for preparing a copy, this copy was freely distributable, and also copyable.

A different concept altogether was that of secrecy and privacy, which was considered by many to be sacred. But this is a very distinct issue from copyright laws, and I fully support it.
http://www.advogato.org/article/841.html


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Linux Lab Lays Off Programmers
Stephen Shankland

The Open Source Development Labs, the organization that employs Linux leader Linus Torvalds, has laid off nearly a sixth of its staff as part of a shift to new priorities.

The group cut nine of its 57 staff and contractor positions, Chief Executive Stuart Cohen confirmed Monday. The cuts affected several programmers who worked on the open-source operating system as well as staff in sales, marketing, business development and internal computer operations.

The organization, which calls itself the "center of gravity" of the Linux movement, made the cuts as part of a plan to rebalance its work force. New priorities include the establishment of a European office and an expansion of Asian operations into China and Korea from today's base in Japan, said Nelson Pratt, director of marketing.

"We're a small enough organization that what would be a small change in focus for a bigger company has a large effect on us," Pratt said.

The nonprofit organization isn't dropping its programming efforts, however. It still employs Torvalds, a top deputy named Andrew Morton, and Chris Wright, who maintains a Linux security component. And "substantially more than half our employees are engineers," Cohen said.

OSDL, based in Beaverton, Ore., shepherds several efforts to improve Linux by gathering opinions from computing technology sellers and customers. The efforts focus on Linux on high-end servers, telecommunications equipment and desktop computers.

"We want to be the place where the users, the vendors and the community can come together (to discuss) technical issues, legal issues, business issues and market issues," Cohen said. "Our work groups are becoming the places where data center issues and desktop Linux issues get resolved. I think the 'center of gravity' is becoming more and more true."

Not all see OSDL's role the same way. Greg Kroah-Hartman, a high-ranking Linux programmer, disagreed with the "center of gravity" characterization on his blog Monday while drawing attention to the fact that some experienced kernel programmers now are looking for jobs.
http://news.com.com/Linux+lab+lays+o...3-5717430.html


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

CA Fixes Bug In Antivirus Products
Joris Evers

A high-risk security flaw in several of Computer Associates International's antivirus products could put users at risk of cyberattack, the software vendor warned on Monday.

The flaw lies in the scanning engine used in CA's enterprise and consumer antivirus products, the company said. An attacker could gain full control over a victim's PC by sending a specially crafted Microsoft Office document, according to a security advisory published on the CA Web site.

CA rates the issue "high risk" because an attacker can gain full access to a computer without any user interaction, according to the advisory.

The flaw in CA's antivirus engine is the latest in a series of security bugs in antivirus software. During the past few months, problems have been found in products from Symantec, McAfee, F-Secure and Trend Micro.

Consumer products that contain the flawed engine include CA's eTrust EZ Antivirus and EZ Armor, a bundle that offers the antivirus product. Affected business products include eTrust Antivirus, Intrusion Detection and Secure Content Manager, according to the advisory.

CA publicly disclosed the security issue Monday, but had a patch available on May 3, said Sam Curry, a vice president at CA in Islandia, N.Y.

The patch was made available to corporate customers, Curry said. "The consumer products are automatically being updated today," he said. CA counts between 3 million and 4 million consumers and about 1 million organizations as its antivirus customers, he said.

Consumers who are on more recent versions of EZ Antivirus and EZ Armor may find that their products have already been automatically updated, CA said. Users should check if the antivirus engine in their product is version 11.9.1. If it is a lower number, a virus signature update should be done to get the patch, according to CA.

Users of older versions are advised to upgrade or follow the guidelines in CA's advisory.

CA is not aware of anyone actually using the latest vulnerability in its products to attack users, Curry said. "This vulnerability is still only a potential vulnerability. There are no known exploits in the wild yet," he said. "However, I would say it is only a matter of time."
http://news.com.com/CA+fixes+bug+in+...3-5717570.html


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Worm, Phishing Scam Hit IM Services
Joris Evers

A new worm and a phishing scam are targeting members of the America Online and Yahoo instant messaging networks, security companies warned Tuesday.

In both cases, people receive an instant message with an apparent reference to the newly released "Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith" movie, encouraging them to click on a link, said Jon Sakoda, chief technology officer at IMLogic, an instant messaging security company.

"Both seek to capitalize on momentum and enthusiasm around the 'Star Wars' movie," he said.

In the case of the AOL worm, the text in the instant message is: "hehe, i found this funny movie," and the word "this" is a hyperlink, according to the IMLogic advisory. The Yahoo message references "StarGames" in the link, IMLogic said in its warning.

IMLogic has listed both the Yahoo and AOL issues as "medium" risk threats. McAfee has only had one report of the AOL worm, said Craig Shmugar, virus research manager at the antivirus software vendor.

When an IM user clicks the link in the AOL message, malicious code is downloaded to the user's PC. The code is installed, and the worm sends itself to all of the victim's contacts, Shmugar said. The code, a variant of the Gaobot virus, could give the attacker remote control over the victim's PC, he said.

The link in the Yahoo instant message leads to a site that is designed to look like a real Yahoo Web site, but is in fact part of a phishing scheme to steal login information, Sakoda and Shmugar said. (Phishing scams are a prevalent type of online fraud that attempts to steal sensitive user information such as user names, passwords and credit card information.) Once at the Web site, the IM user is asked to enter their Yahoo credentials, which appear to then be e-mailed to a Hotmail e-mail address.

The worm and phishing scam are the latest in an increasing number of cyberthreats that use instant messaging to get to Internet users. Just as with attachments and links in e-mail, instant messaging users should be careful when clicking on links that arrive in instant messages--even messages from people they know, Sakoda said.

People are advised to keep their antivirus software up to date. McAfee will update its antivirus software on Wednesday to detect this latest Gaobot variant, Shmugar said. Current McAfee products may catch the malicious software via their intrusion detection capabilities, he said.
http://news.com.com/Worm%2C+phishing...3-5719088.html


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Hackers Holding Computer Files 'Hostage'
Ted Bridis

The latest threat to computer users doesn't destroy data or steal passwords - it locks up a person's electronic documents, effectively holding them hostage, and demands $200 over the Internet to get them back.

Security researchers at San Diego-based Websense Inc. uncovered the unusual extortion plot when a corporate customer they would not identify fell victim to the infection, which encrypted files that included documents, photographs and spreadsheets.

A ransom note left behind included an e-mail address, and the attacker using the address later demanded $200 for the digital keys to unlock the files.

"This is equivalent to someone coming into your home, putting your valuables in a safe and not telling you the combination," said Oliver Friedrichs, a security manager for Symantec Corp. The company said Tuesday the problem was serious but not deemed a high-level threat because there were no indications it was widespread.

The FBI said the scheme was unlike other Internet extortion crimes. Leading security and antivirus firms this week were updating protective software for companies and consumers to guard against this type of attack, which experts dubbed "ransom-ware."

"This seems fully malicious," said Joe Stewart, a researcher at Chicago-based Lurhq Corp. who studied the attack software. Stewart managed to unlock the infected computer files without paying the extortion, but he worries that improved versions might be more difficult to overcome. Internet attacks commonly become more effective as they evolve over time and hackers learn to avoid the mistakes of earlier infections.

"You would have to pay the guy, or law enforcement would have to get his key to unencrypt the files," Stewart said.

The latest danger adds to the risks facing beleaguered Internet users, who must increasingly deal with categories of threats that include spyware, viruses, worms, phishing e-mail fraud and denial of service attacks.

In the recent case, computer users could be infected by viewing a vandalized Web site with vulnerable Internet browser software. The infection locked up at least 15 types of data files and left behind a note with instructions to send e-mail to a particular address to purchase unlocking keys. In an e-mail reply, the hacker demanded $200 be wired to an Internet banking account. "I send programm to your email," the hacker wrote.

There was no reply to e-mails sent to that address Monday by The Associated Press.

Ed Stroz, a former FBI agent who now investigates computer crimes for corporations, said the relatively cheap ransom demand - only $200 - probably was deliberately low to encourage victims to pay rather than call police and to discourage law enforcement from assigning these cases a high priority.

"That's a very powerful threat," Stroz said. "If somebody encrypted your files, you need this stuff now to do your work."

FBI spokesman Paul Bresson said more familiar Internet extortion schemes involve hackers demanding tens of thousands of dollars and threatening to attack commercial Web sites, interfering with sales or stealing customer data.

Experts said the Web site where the infection originally spread had already been shut down. They also said the hacker's demand for payment might be his weakness, since bank transactions can be traced easily.

"The problem is getting away with it - you've got to send the money somewhere," Stewart said. "If it involves some sort of monetary transaction, it's far easier to trace than an e-mail account." http://customwire.ap.org/dynamic/sto...05-24-16-25-52


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Montana Leaves Private Info on Computers
Bob Anez

State agencies failed to remove private information before retiring outdated state computers, risking public disclosure of Social Security and credit card numbers, medical records and income taxes, a new report discloses.

The legislative audit, obtained Tuesday, blamed unclear state policy for the computer hard drives not being properly "scrubbed" before the machines were donated to school districts, given to other state agencies or sold to the public.

"The state lacks a single clear policy instructing departments on information removal, assigning responsibility for defining sensitive data, and assigning responsibility for performing data removal and certifying the task has been accomplished," the auditors said.

Janet Kelly, Department of Administration director, said in a written response that her agency immediately began crafting a more concise policy to ensure private information held by the government is not made public.

"The resulting language will require that all data must be irretrievably removed from the hard drive," she said.

Jeff Brandt, acting chief information officer for the state, said Tuesday the new policy should be complete by mid-July. In the meantime, he said, a warning has gone out to all information technology officials throughout state government.

"We're telling folks to not make any assumptions about options for scrubbing disks," he said. "Err on the side of making darn sure they are scrubbed."

Brandt said the information discovered by the auditor's office was never divulged, so the people to whom it pertains need not be concerned. However, he acknowledged the state has no way of knowing if other data on other computers discarded by the state was disclosed over the years as the machines changed hands.

The state has about 11,000 desktop computers and regularly disposes of aging machines. Last year alone, 51 agencies got rid of more 2,300 computers. Most are given to school districts.

State policy requires all agency information be removed from the computers "in such a manner that it cannot be recovered" after the machine leaves a department. But the audit noted that part of the policy also refers to removal of "meaningful information," wording that appears to make the policy inconsistent.

A 1996 policy mandated each computer be certified that removal of all data has occurred, but that same requirement is not contained in the current policy, the report said.

Mark Athearn, who heads the state surplus property office, said his office has stopped collecting computers until the revamped state policy is in place.

Auditors obtained 18 discarded state computers and found 12 of them contained information related to the department that had used them. The hard drives contained software that should have been removed, legal hearing notes, meeting files, citizen e- mails to department staff, and permit application information.

Eight of the machines also held confidential data, including 386 Social Security numbers, financial records for 182 people, 84 business files and job applicant information.

The audit said all agencies contacted were aware of the policy requiring hard drives be cleaned before computers are discarded, but some departments were using tools that did a poor job of completely removing the information.
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories...CTION=BUSINESS


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Banks Notify Customers of Data Theft
Paul Nowell

More than 100,000 customers of Wachovia Corp. and Bank of America Corp. have been notified that their financial records may have been stolen by bank employees and sold to collection agencies.

In all, nearly 700,000 customers of four banks may be affected, according to police in Hackensack, N.J., where the investigation was centered.

So far, Bank of America has alerted about 60,000 customers whose names were included on computer disks discovered by police, bank spokeswoman Alex Liftman said Monday.

"We are trying to communicate with our customers as promptly as possible," she said. "So far, we have no evidence that any of our customer information has been used for account fraud or identity theft."

Wachovia said it has identified 48,000 current and former account holders whose accounts may have been breached.

"The numbers have increased as we continue to receive additional names from police," Wachovia spokeswoman Christy Phillips said Monday.

Both banks are providing the affected customers with free credit reporting services.

In a separate case with the potential for identity theft, a laptop containing the names and Social Security numbers of 16,500 current and former MCI Inc. employees was stolen last month from the car of an MCI financial analyst in Colorado, said company spokeswoman Linda Laughlin.

The car was parked in the analyst's home garage and the computer was password-protected, she said. MCI would not comment on whether the data was encrypted.

The bank record theft was exposed April 28 when police in Hackensack charged nine people, including seven bank workers, in an alleged plot to steal financial records of thousands of bank customers.

The bank employees accessed records for customers of Cherry Hill, N.J.-based Commerce Bank, PNC Bank of Pittsburgh, and Charlotte-based banks Wachovia and Bank of America, according to Hackensack Police Chief Ken Zisa.

Repeated calls seeking comment were not returned by Commerce Bank officials, while PNC officials declined to estimate how many of their customers' accounts may have been breached.

"We have no evidence that any of these accounts have been compromised at all. We continue to work with law enforcement officials," said Pat McMahon, a spokesman for PNC.

New Jersey authorities found 12 names and Social Security numbers belonging to PNC customers but the bank found no suspicious activity in the accounts, he said.

Collection agent Orazio Lembo Jr., 35, of Hackensack made millions of dollars through the scheme, Zisa has said.

Authorities said they discovered the plot after they executed a search warrant at Lembo's apartment in February as part of a separate investigation. They seized 13 computers which contained details about the plan, Zisa said.

Lembo received lists of people sought for debt collection and turned that information over to the seven bank workers, who would compare those names to their client lists. The bank workers were paid $10 for each account they turned over to Lembo, Zisa said.

In New Jersey, continued scrutiny of computer discs seized from Lembo's offices was yielding more names. Investigators have now identified nearly 700,000 potential victims, Hackensack police Capt. Frank Lomia said Monday.
http://customwire.ap.org/dynamic/sto...05-23-23-06-38


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

FBI Investigates Stanford Computer Breach
AP

The FBI is investigating a computer security breach at Stanford University that resulted in the theft of personal data - including letters of recommendation and Social Security numbers - for nearly 10,000 people.

The breach happened May 11, when someone from outside the university gained access to the school's network, Stanford general counsel Debra Zumwalt said Wednesday. The university would not say whether the breach happened as a result of a remote hacker, the physical theft of a laptop or other typical means of network penetration.

Stanford began mailing notifications Monday to about 300 recruiters and 9,600 others - mostly students - who visited the school's Career Development Center since 1996. The electronic dossiers generally did not include financial information such as credit card numbers or driver's license numbers.

The mailings complied with a state law that took effect in 2003 and requires organizations to notify California residents whenever personal data has been compromised. So far, school officials say, there's been no evidence of identity theft resulting from the breach.

When the university learned that someone had accessed the network, security officials temporarily disabled the career center's computers and reported the incident to the San Jose field office of the FBI.

"Protection of confidential information is a high priority of Stanford," Zumwalt said. "Since this incident, we have been working to understand this breach of our system and ways to prevent a reoccurrence."

The breach is the latest to affect a major California university. In one of the state's largest security breaches, the University of California, Berkeley warned 1.4 million Californians that a problem in October had exposed the names, addresses, Social Security numbers and birthdays of people who had participated in a state in-home care program.
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories...CTION=BUSINESS


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Can’t hack it

Teen Goes Too Far

He tried to be selfish but couldn’t
Nick Farrell

A TEEN who tried to bump up his grades to an A by hacking into his school’s computer system, accidentally revealed his cunning plan to officials.

It seemed like a good idea; break into the school’s network and change your grade to an A. However, due to a feature in the school’s record keeping software, he actually managed to turn everyone else’s grade into an A.

Then it turned out that by a strange quirk in the districts record keeping software that he managed to also make every kid in the District a certified genius.

Staff at the Natomas Unified School District smelt a rat when they found that they were suddenly teaching 18,697 top scholars, instead of the usual bunch of no-hopers.

Natomas staff are a bit clued up on hacking at the moment, because there have been four separate incidents of hacking into school computers in the Sacramento area.

Seven students have been charged or are under nvestigation by school or law enforcement officials.

Collaring the teen and the bloke who he advised, apparently was not difficult.

He pleaded guilty to two misdemeanour charges in Sacramento Juvenile Court. He was sentenced to 100 hours of community service and six months' informal probation.
http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=23473


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Student's Start-Up Draws Attention and $13 Million
Ellen Rosen

It is not easy capturing the attention of Jim Breyer, one of Silicon Valley's leading venture capitalists. But Mark Zuckerberg, a 21-year-old Harvard student, managed to do it with a Web site that has attracted 2.8 million registered users on more than 800 campuses since it began in February 2004.

Mr. Breyer was so taken with Mr. Zuckerberg's company, thefacebook.com, which creates online interactive college-student networks, that his firm, Accel Partners, plans to announce a $13 million investment in the start-up today.

"It is a business that has seen tremendous underlying, organic growth and the team itself is intellectually honest and breathtakingly brilliant in terms of understanding the college student experience," Mr. Breyer said.

Five years after the Internet bubble burst, a new generation of Web start-ups is quietly attracting investment capital. Thefacebook.com typifies the breed: a company that is built on substance rather than high expectations. While $13 million might seem paltry next to the free-flowing sums of the late 1990's, Mr. Breyer said it was a "significant investment" from Accel's new $400 million fund.

"The first model was to raise a lot of venture money early on, even before we understood the consumer experience and knew the risks," Mr. Breyer said. Today, by contrast, his firm backs companies "like thefacebook, which have built a deep relationship again and again with the customer." Social sites, as well as those involving music and video, are among those that are particularly attractive right now, he said.

Mr. Zuckerberg and his two roommates, Dustin Moskovitz and Chris Hughes, started the venture in February 2004 as an online directory of all Harvard's students, a big step up from the photo books of incoming freshmen the school produced annually.

The premise - and the process - were both simple: students wanting to join needed a current ".edu" e-mail address to register without fees. They could then supply a digital photo and create a profile of themselves.

They could view one another's profiles and, as the site spread to other campuses, those at other schools if they were accepted as a "friend." Think of individual college directories connected by - at most - six degrees of separation.

(Thefacebook.com is not the first foray into a college site for Mr. Zuckerberg, a computer-sciences-turned-psychology major. As a prank in November 2003, he set up facemash.com, a site that "popped up two students' photos and asked users to choose who was more attractive," he said. Harvard officials were not amused and they put him on probation. But the university's administration has not voiced any complaints with thefacebook.com, he said.)

The three friends designed their site, Mr. Zuckerberg said, "in such a way that if it was good, it could be introduced at other schools." It was an instant hit, and within one month Columbia, Stanford and Yale students could log on to sites at their schools. By June 2004, sites were available for about 30 campuses and 150,000 students were registered. (The colleges and universities themselves do not have any editorial or financial involvement.)

Realizing they were onto something with big potential, Mr. Zuckerberg and Mr. Moskovitz decided to spend last summer in Silicon Valley, where they had friends working as interns at established companies like Google. (Mr. Hughes joined them for the summer, but returned to Harvard to act as the company's media spokesman.)

The two intend to return to Harvard in the fall and nurture their company slowly, Mr. Zuckerberg said, adding schools to their roster slowly "because we wanted to create safe communities" and make sure the system could handle the increased use.

But events overtook them. Before heading west, Mr. Zuckerberg arranged a dinner with Sean Parker, the founder of Napster, to talk about his Web site, which had swept through Stanford University in a number of weeks. A few weeks later, the two bumped into each other on a street in Palo Alto, Calif. Before long, Mr. Parker, who is also a co-founder of Plaxo, an online service that updates e-mail address books, began informally advising the company. By the end of the summer, he became president. And he introduced Mr. Zuckerberg to Peter Thiel, a venture capitalist and founder of PayPal, the online payment service acquired by eBay in 2002.

Mr. Thiel invested $500,000 as seed money, the first major infusion of cash into thefacebook.com, Mr. Zuckerberg said. More important, his connection gave it the imprimatur of an up-and-coming company. Soon, other investors came calling.

But the one who impressed them most was the team from Accel, said Mr. Zuckerberg, who is thefacebook.com's chief executive. At 43, Mr. Breyer, the firm's managing partner, is a seasoned investor who serves on the boards of Wal-Mart Stores and Real Networks.

Mr. Breyer has taken a seat on the company's board, joining Mr. Zuckerberg, Mr. Parker and Mr. Thiel. He would not disclose the size of the stake Accel will take in thefacebook.com. And while he envisions that the company will one day go public, he said there was "no significant timetable."

Mr. Zuckerberg and Mr. Parker decline to disclose revenue, which comes solely from advertising, though they say the company is profitable. With the infusion of outside cash, they are also able to pay themselves salaries and rent an office in Palo Alto. They have not determined when they will return to Harvard, where they remain on leave.

The site is becoming ubiquitous at the 840 colleges where it is available. Laura Hofmann, who just finished her sophomore year at Loyola College in Baltimore, said that when thefacebook.com was introduced at her school in the fall, "everyone was addicted; at first, I was on five times a day."

Ms. Hofmann's sister Kate, who graduated this week from Tufts University in Medford, Mass., missed the site's early days because she was studying abroad for a semester. Upon her return, she acknowledged that the site was a "huge procrastination tool." But now, she said, it is most useful as a means of keeping up with alumni.

How to retain alumni as users is "an interesting question for us," Mr. Parker said. "We're trying to figure out what functionality they want once they graduate. Are they looking for jobs? Are they trying to date?"

But first, with the help of the new financing, the company wants to saturate the approximately 1,400 four-year colleges nationwide.

Running thefacebook.com has not been one success after another. A competitor, ConnectU, has sued the company in a federal district court in Massachusetts, asserting that Mr. Zuckerberg took its idea. Mr. Zuckerberg denies the allegation, saying he helped out at ConnectU for only a few weeks in the fall of 2003, when, he says, it was more of a dating service than a directory. He says his company has counterclaimed, asserting defamation. Calls and e-mails messages to ConnectU were not returned.

While the breakout success of thefacebook.com is unusual, those in Silicon Valley say there is plenty of room for other Internet companies. According to Allen Wiener, an analyst at the research firm Gartner Inc., a successful company needs to have a "clearly articulated product and service," that will "save time or money, offer something someone can't find somewhere else and fulfill a greed or lust factor." The service offered should be "compelling," adds Mr. Thiel, and one which "draws in new users to get organic grass-roots growth."

Difficult? Maybe, but Mr. Thiel predicts a lot of young entrepreneurs will make the grade. "We are nowhere near the end of the innovation arch," he said.
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/26/business/26sbiz.html


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Group Rethink
Michael Fitzgerald

Common sense is uncommon in individuals and, at first blush, seems even more so in groups. No one expects crowds to produce useful thought. We fear the tyranny of the majority and mob rule, avoid peer pressure where we can, and immediately see the aptness of Charles Mackay's 19th-century book title Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds.

But the idea of collective intelligence shouldn't seem so far-
fetched. After all, democracy is built on the principle that large groups know how to govern themselves. Commodities markets, which set prices on the basis of group knowledge, play a growing role in everyday business decisions. Even lone geniuses build on the work of others: for every Einstein there are Poincares and Lorentzes and Hilberts lurking in the background.

In fact, evidence of collective intelligence is all around us, and New Yorker writer James Surowiecki collects much of it in The Wisdom of Crowds. [Surowiecki wrote on technology and happiness for the January 2005 issue of Technology Review.] Surowiecki shows how groups can often outthink even the most knowledgeable experts. He offers proof after proof that "the value of expertise is, in many contexts, overrated." By recounting how the stock market divined that booster rocket manufacturer Morton Thiokol was most to blame for the Challenger shuttle disaster (the official answer came six months later), or how the U.S. Navy found the sunken submarine Scorpion by aggregating the best guesses of a variety of experts, Surowiecki demonstrates that collective intelligence can be harnessed, and that it does not have to be unwieldy. Collections of experts, he concedes, are prone to the ills of groupthink, which can lead to debacles like the Bay of Pigs. But he argues that crowds with certain characteristics--notably, diversity of opinion, independence of opinion, decentralization, and a way to aggregate opinions to arrive at a collective decision--will generally outsmart their most brilliant members. This is true for specific problems and broad ones, Surowiecki says, and for crowds big and small. His premise quickly comes to seem intuitive.

Groups, then, can act as parallel-processing decision engines, pooling disparate knowledge to answer even hard questions in areas like public policy. What we lack, however, is a reliable way to build such decision engines. And Surowiecki's book, unfortunately, offers no practical solutions.

But technologists, entrepreneurs, and venture capitalists do. The last several years have seen intense interest in developing technology that improves our connectedness (see "Tagging Is It," p. 21). In part, that interest was spurred by the phenomenal success of open-source software, which is built by communities (see "How Linux Could Overthrow Microsoft," p. 64). It also reflects the success of Google and eBay, which have profited by harnessing the collective behaviors of very large groups. Connecting technologies like online social networks and Web logs, or "blogs," are familiar to many people, and wikis--group Web pages that any member may edit--soon will be (see "Larry Sanger's Knowledge Free-for-All," January 2005, p. 21). Technologists, then, are already attacking the problem of how to achieve a high group IQ.

Better communications tools are one ingredient. Indeed, Thomas W. Malone of MIT's Sloan School of Management argues in The Future of Work that ever cheaper and more-useful communications technology will effect a revolution in the way businesses operate. E-mail is the obvious example, but Malone also points to artificial electronic markets, which can aggregate employees' best guesses about sales, resource allocation, research and development efforts, and even pollution control. That last was done at BP, which used an internal futures market rather than a committee of experts when it wanted to find ways to reduce its emissions.

Malone says such markets, combined with blogs and other technologies that make it easier for employees to share information, will enable, for the first time in business history, "the
economic benefits of large organizations, like economies of scale and knowledge, without giving up the human benefits of small ones, like freedom, creativity, motivation, and flexibility." He is convinced that companies like Google, which uses internal blogs to keep management ranks flat, represent the future of industry. Tomorrow's companies, he predicts, will be led not by dictatorial, alpha-ego CEOs but by "cultivators" who understand that productivity and profits soar when all of a company's intellectual capital is being tapped.

Other institutions are also being remade through technologies that marshal collective intelligence. Dan Gillmor's We the Media shows how blogging, the Short Message System (SMS),
and corollary technologies like Really Simple Syndication (RSS) are creating a new and vital kind of journalism. (In the interest of full disclosure, I should mention that I am friendly with Dan.)

Gillmor believes that such technologies have brought us to a turning point in media history: with the removal of major barriers to information distribution, such as the need for a broadcast license or a printing press, more people can provide journalistic observation, and that makes for a better-informed populace.

It can also make for better media. An excellent illustration involves Jane's Intelligence Review, the respected defense periodical. In 1999, Jane's posted a draft of an article on cyberterrorism to the massively popular online discussion forum Slashdot, whose denizens vetted the document so thoroughly that Jane's decided to rewrite it from scratch.

Gillmor does not claim that blogging, SMS, and the like are perfect. He is concerned about the ease with which technology can be used to promulgate untruths (he remembers the faked picture of John Kerry with Jane Fonda at an anti-Vietnam rally). He worries about "trolls" (people who post disingenuous, irrelevant, or obscene messages in order to get attention) and "spin doctors" (people who deliberately post misleading items). But he explains how the communal character of blog culture mitigates many potential excesses: bloggers who are uninteresting don't get linked to; those who make false assertions can be pilloried. What frightens him more is the prospect that governments and the mainstream media will try to slow or even derail bloggers, SMS news services, and other emergent forms of journalism through defamation or copyright infringement laws.

Like many, Gillmor also believes that networked technologies could make the political process more democratic. For at least a decade, the Internet has been hailed as the antidote for big campaign contributors' undue influence on electoral outcomes. Until recently, it was a quack cure. But the Howard Dean campaign's successful use of the Internet in the 2004 Democratic primary race suggests that, as Gillmor puts it, "American politics was approaching a tipping point." Joe Trippi, Dean's former campaign manager, agrees.

In his book The Revolution Will Not Be Televised, Trippi contends that the Dean campaign would never have taken off had he not employed communications technology like Meetup, a website that facilitates real-world gatherings. He argues that in 2004, the Internet was to the presidential election what television was in 1956--something present in 75 percent of homes but not truly understood by most politicians and political operatives. But by 2008, Trippi says, the Internet will be at the heart of the political process. America, in Trippi's view, is now run by the 631 people who collectively raised between $100 million and $150 million for the Bush campaign. But technology will make it possible for ordinary citizens to band together, piling small donations into substantial political war chests and speaking with a voice every bit as powerful as those of the special-interest lobbies. The model for all this? The campaign of Howard Dean, of course.

What Trippi identifies as the Dean campaign's strength could just as easily be described as its main problem: it was propelled by its supporters and therefore had no strategy for directing, or even much understanding of, the forces it had unleashed. The campaign had no clue, Trippi makes clear, that thousands of people would show up at Dean meetups at a time when the candidate was barely mentioned in the national press. Nor did it expect to see millions of dollars in small contributions coming in via the Internet.

Yet it's beguiling to envision campaigns that are shaped as much by voters as by the candidates themselves. Trippi seems to be that rare political professional who would be happy to find that, in the next campaign cycle, he was out of a job.

An influence upon all these books is Howard Rheingold's Smart Mobs, which looked at the way groups of people use cell phones and other wireless devices to organize collective action. Rheingold wrote that "the most far-reaching changes will come...from the kinds of relationships, enterprises, communities, and markets that the infrastructure makes possible."

Creating a communications infrastructure that fosters a healthy democracy has been a concern of the United States since its founding. Newspaperman and intellectual Walter Lippmann once noted that the real trouble with both the press and representative democracy is "the failure of self-governing people to transcend their casual experience and their prejudice by inventing, creating, and organizing a machinery of knowledge." That machinery may finally have arrived.
http://www.technologyreview.com/arti...view_group.asp


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Publishers Protest Google Library Project
Michael Liedtke

Scholarly Publishers Protest Google's Online Library Project, Citing Financial Threat

A group of academic publishers is challenging Google Inc.'s plan to scan millions of library books into its Internet search engine index, highlighting fears that the ambitious project will violate copyrights and stifle future sales.

In a letter scheduled to be delivered to Google Monday, the Association of American University Presses described the online search engine's library project as a troubling financial threat to its membership -- 125 nonprofit publishers of academic journals and scholarly books.

The plan "appears to involve systematic infringement of copyright on a massive scale," wrote Peter Givler, the executive director for the New York-based trade group.

The association asked Google to respond to a list of 16 questions seeking more information about how the company plans to protect copyrights.

Two unnamed publishers already asked Google to withhold its copyrighted material from the scanners, but the company hasn't complied with the requests, Givler wrote.

Google, based in Mountain View, Calif., did not immediately return phone and e-mail messages left Monday.

The association of nonprofit publishers is upset because Google has indicated it will scan copyright- protected books from three university libraries -- Harvard, Michigan and Stanford.

Those three universities also operate publishing arms represented by the group complaining about Google's 5-month-old "Libraries for Print" project. That means the chances of the association suing Google are "extremely remote," Givler said in an interview Monday.

Still, Givler said the association is very worried about Google's scanning project.

"The more we talked about it with our lawyers, the more questions bubbled up," he said. "And so far Google hasn't provided us with any good answers."

Google also is scanning books stored in the New York Public Library and Oxford in England, but those two libraries so far are only providing Google with "public domain" works -- material no longer protected by copyrights.

Federal law considers the free distribution of some copyrighted material to be permissible "fair use." The company has told the nonprofit publishers that its library program meets this criteria.

Some for-profit publishers also are taking a closer look at Google's library-scanning project.

"We are exploring issues and opportunities with Google, including the potential impact of this program on our authors, our customers and our business," said John Wiley & Sons Inc. spokeswoman Susan Spilka.

Copyright concerns aren't the only issue casting a cloud over Google's library-scanning project. The project also has drawn criticism in Europe for placing too much emphasis on material from the United States.

One of Google's most popular features -- a section that compiles news stories posted on thousands of Web sites -- already has triggered claims of copyright infringement. Agence France-Presse, a French news agency, is suing for damages of at least $17.5 million, alleging "Google News" is illegally capitalizing on its copyrighted material.

The latest complaints about Google are being driven by university-backed publishers who fear there will be little reason to buy their books if Google succeeds in its effort to create a virtual reading room.

The university presses depend on books sales and other licensing agreements for most of their revenue, making copyright protections essential to their survival.

Google has turned its search engine into a moneymaking machine, generating a $369 million profit during the first three months of this year alone. The company is counting on its library scanning project to attract even more visitors to its site so it can display more ads and potentially boost its earnings even more.

Investors already adore Google. The company's shares surged $13.84, or 5.7 percent, to close Monday at $255.45 on the Nasdaq Stock Market. Earlier in the session, the shares traded as high as $258.10 -- a new peak since the company went public nine months ago at $85.
http://biz.yahoo.com/ap/050523/googl...ghts.html?.v=4


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Microsoft vs Google Heats Up
John Oates

Bill Gates kept the heat on Google yesterday by lifting the skirts on MSN’s new local search and mapping service.

Gates demoed “MSN Virtual Earth” - a new local search service which will combine local search with maps and satellite pictures.

Speaking at a conference in Carlsbad, California, Gates said Google would struggle as competition over search moved away from its interenet sweet spot to new technologies and new platforms.

According to the NewYork Times, Gates said: “Google is still perfect, the bubble is floating and they can do everything. You should buy their stock at any price.”

MSN’s “Virtual Earth” sounds spookily like Google Earth also due in the next few weeks. It will let users mix satellite images, maps and local search information. The company is combining its Terra Server with technology from MapPoint. Terra Server hosts satellite images of the US. The service should be available in the US during the summer but without the aerial photos - they will be added later in the year. No word yet on wider availability.

Microsoft says the images are taken at 45 degrees giving users more information than “straight-down” views. It has an exclusive deal for images from Pictometry International.

Local searching is becoming a technology Holy Grail. Companies are keen to exploit the many smaller businesses which trade locally and don’t bother with a website. It is also vital for mobile companies looking for new sources of revenue from bandwidth-equipped phones. Competition is likely to be fierce with all major search engines chasing the local market.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/05/24/ms_local_maps/


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Take That, Google: Bill Gates Struts Microsoft's New Search Stuff
John Markoff

Bill Gates used his appearance at an industry conference here Monday to offer Microsoft's response to Google's latest online offerings, incorporating satellite imagery into location-based search results and introducing a new customizable MSN "start" page.

Mr. Gates, Microsoft's co-founder and chief software architect, also said that he was skeptical of Google's ability to maintain its dominance in the search marketplace indefinitely. Increasingly, he asserted, that competition will revolve around new technologies and take place in new arenas, like searching local information, where Google is less dominant than in Web searching.

"Google is still perfect, the bubble is floating and they can do everything," Mr. Gates told the moderator sarcastically at a conference on digital technology, sponsored by The Wall Street Journal, at a resort in this town 35 miles north of San Diego. "You should buy their stock at any price." He then added, "We had a 10-year period just like that."

Microsoft will make its satellite-imaging technology available this summer as part of an advertising-supported local search service offered by MSN, its online service, he said. Microsoft will then add more elaborate imagery in the fall.

Microsoft's service, called Virtual Earth, will compete directly against a service called Google Earth, which will feature high-resolution imagery, three-dimensional buildings in some cities and driving directions, among other features.

Today Mr. Gates showed the Microsoft service offering mapping data overlaid on the satellite imagery, all of it combined with directory listings and a clipboard feature that lets users make note of places they find. He said the new product had its roots in work done at Microsoft Research, which during the last decade has developed a global mapping database known as TerraServer.

He demonstrated the ability for MSN online users to move back and forth between map views of local information and satellite views of the same locations. He also said that Microsoft had taken an exclusive license for enhanced aerial photo imagery from Pictometry International of Rochester.

In his demonstration, he showed a high-resolution photo of a downtown building in Seattle taken from a 45-degree angle, showing significant structural detail generally unavailable from top-down satellite images.

Last week Google, which already offers satellite imagery of the United States based on its Google Maps service, showcased the advances in satellite-aided search results reflected in Google Earth, developed with its acquisition of Keyhole, a satellite imaging software company.

One conference participant involved in the local-search field was dismissive of the value added by satellite imagery.

"It's eye candy," said the participant, Perry Evans, the founder of MapQuest service (now owned by America Online), who recently founded Local Matters, a company based in Denver that offers search technology for local information. But he said the competition between Google and Microsoft was forcing both companies to quickly introduce new services, which would be useful to customers.

Mr. Gates also demonstrated a new MSN start page that would let users arbitrarily organize the embedded information and other information sources on an MSN- provided home page. Yahoo, MSN and America Online have already offered user customizable home pages, and last week Google, which is based in Mountain View, Calif., began offering its own version of such an information portal, called Fusion. Google executives, who were also at the conference here, declined to comment on the new Microsoft services.

On other initiatives by Microsoft, Mr. Gates said he felt that the company had made significant progress in "hardening" its operating system against network attackers and virus writers. Most of the remaining issues, he said, involve what the industry refers to as "social engineering," or the ability of a malicious person to fool computer users over the Internet.

He said that the company's struggles with security issues had probably cost about a year's delay in the introduction of its next-generation version of Windows, code- named Longhorn. The company has said it planned a commercial release of the program late next year.

He also said he was optimistic about the potential of the company's software for cellphones.

"We've gone from one customer three years ago to 68 customers today," Mr. Gates said. "We're a very patient company."
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/24/te...y/24gates.html


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Microsoft Must Comply or Face Fine
Paul Meller

Microsoft has until the middle of next week to comply with the European Commission's antitrust ruling, or face daily fines of up to $5 million, Europe's competition monitor said Monday.

The European Commission ruled in March 2004 that Microsoft had abused its dominant position in the European software market. The company paid a 497 million euro fine last summer, but it has not acted on two orders to change its business practices.

"They have until the end of the month to satisfy us," said Jonathan Todd, spokesman for Europe's competition commissioner, Neelie Kroes. She expects Microsoft to make a "final offer" on all aspects of last year's ruling, he added.

Tom Brookes, a spokesman for Microsoft, said the company was trying to address the commission's concerns. "We are aware of the commission's time frame and we continue to work towards full compliance," he said in Brussels.

The company has submitted proposals in the last year to address the antitrust ruling, but they have fallen far short of what the commission is seeking.

The commission ordered that Microsoft make room for rival programs by offering a second version of its Windows operating system without the Media Player program. It also instructed Microsoft to license secret information inside Windows to rivals to allow them to produce server software that works with Windows, which operates more than 95 percent of personal computers around the world.

If Microsoft's final offer fails to satisfy the regulator, or if the company misses the June 1 deadline, the commission will write a formal letter to the company, outlining its concerns.

Microsoft would then be given the opportunity to respond, either in writing or in a hearing before the commission. The final decision to impose fines would then be taken by Ms. Kroes and her 24 fellow commissioners. The process could take around two weeks and the fine is calculated based on roughly 5 percent of Microsoft's global daily sales. The deadline for compliance was set in late April during a meeting between Ms. Kroes and Steven A. Ballmer, Microsoft's chief executive, but was kept secret until now.

Microsoft appealed last year's antitrust ruling at the European Court of First Instance, Europe's second-highest court, in Luxembourg, and asked the court to suspend the remedies called for in the ruling until after the appeal. That request was turned down in December. The appeal is still going forward.

Since then, Microsoft has been in almost daily contact with the commission on how to comply with those remedies. Each side has accused the other of slowing the process.

At the meeting last month, she told Mr. Ballmer that Microsoft must comply with the ruling "urgently and in full."

Mr. Ballmer's previous visit to Brussels was weeks before the historic antitrust ruling in March last year. He tried to secure a settlement with Ms. Kroes's predecessor, Mario Monti, but left empty-handed after three days of meetings.
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/24/te...gy/24soft.html


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

A Front-Runner at Microsoft, but There's No Race Yet
Steve Lohr


Annie Marie Musselman for The New York Times
Eric Rudder, a rising star at Microsoft.

The path to the top at Microsoft is not for the timid. Anyone hoping to make the ascent must be able to match wits with two of the most formidable and combative intellects in corporate America: Bill Gates, Microsoft's co-founder, and Steven A. Ballmer, its chief executive.

Eric Rudder, a senior vice president, demonstrated that skill not long after he arrived at Microsoft. In 1992, Mr. Rudder, then 25, had a confrontation with Mr. Gates, recalled Brad Silverberg, a former senior Microsoft executive. The dispute centered on some now-forgotten technical matter in the Windows desktop operating system.

"Bill, you're absolutely, totally wrong," Mr. Rudder said, according to Mr. Silverberg. "And here's why."

After hearing him out, Mr. Silverberg said, Mr. Gates conceded the point, saying: "You know what? I guess you're right."

Careers at Microsoft are built on such episodes, proof of the right stuff. Yet more is required to climb up the executive ladder, notably a deep understanding of technology and a deft grasp of business.

"And you have to deliver, you have to be in charge of building products that generate huge growth in revenues and profits," observed Michael A. Cusumano, a management professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who has studied Microsoft for years.

No one recently has delivered more than Mr. Rudder. For two years, he has led Microsoft's fast-growing business for server products - the software powering computer networks behind everything from Web pages and e-mail to corporate back-office systems.

There is no heir apparent at Microsoft. Both Mr. Gates and Mr. Ballmer are only 49, and neither has suggested that he wants to step aside soon. Yet by putting Mr. Rudder, 38, in charge of a business earmarked for near-term growth, they singled him out as the likely front-runner among the next generation of leaders.

"Bill and Steve see a lot of themselves in Eric," said Mr. Silverberg, who is now a venture capitalist.

Mr. Rudder's group has grown at 15 percent to 20 percent annually for the last few years, reaching $10 billion a year in sales. It has become Microsoft's third big business by expanding at roughly twice the pace of the more mature desktop divisions, the Windows operating system and the Office software package. Microsoft's server group has posted faster growth than the software businesses of big corporate rivals like I.B.M. and Oracle, and has not suffered much so far from Linux, the popular free operating system.

Someday, Microsoft's fledgling divisions could also be big and profitable, like its Xbox video game consoles and software, and its MSN e-commerce Web sites and search. Young executives from those groups, and others, are also in the running to head the company someday. They include Steven Sinofsky, a senior vice president leading the Office business; Chris Jones, a vice president guiding Windows development; Yusuf Mehdi, a senior vice president in charge of MSN; and J Allard, a vice president who heads the Xbox team.

But Mr. Rudder's server division is the first real winner in Microsoft's strategy to move beyond its desktop stronghold.

That success reflects an evolution in Microsoft's corporate culture and the way it must compete in the future, especially in newer markets where the company is not dominant.

Put simply, Microsoft is moving beyond its heritage as an often insular place focused entirely on shipping and selling software products. That mentality struck many corporate customers as a Microsoft-knows-best arrogance. In fact, the company's surveys of customer satisfaction showed a declining trend for five years until 2003, when the trend reversed.

Microsoft remains first and foremost a technology product company, but one that is far more open to outsiders - and Mr. Rudder's group, by most accounts, has led the way. Corporate customers are brought in to help with product designs early on. Engineers are now routinely dispatched to the field to see how customers use technology and what they want.

More than a thousand engineers and product managers in Mr. Rudder's unit have started blogs in the last couple of years to explain what Microsoft is doing and to field comments and criticism from customers and programmers outside the company.

"It's a huge cultural shift for us," said Simon Witts, a vice president who is a 14-year veteran at Microsoft.

To spend more time with customers himself, Mr. Rudder decided to move to Paris for a year, starting last August, along with his wife and their two children, a 10-year- old daughter and an 8-year-old son.

As someone who came up through the technology side of the business, spending his career at the suburban Seattle headquarters, Mr. Rudder said he felt the need to spend more time in the field, seeing things through the eyes of Microsoft's sales teams and their corporate customers. He has traveled to dozens of countries throughout Europe, the Middle East and Africa.

"I wanted to encourage our people to spend more time in the field," Mr. Rudder explained in an interview while on a trip to Microsoft headquarters here. "So I felt I should lead by example."

The brainpower and competitive zeal valued at Microsoft were evident long before he arrived at the headquarters here in 1988. Growing up on Staten Island, Mr. Rudder had an aptitude for math and science, owned a Commodore home computer and did some programming on an I.B.M. minicomputer in high school. At Brown University, he did not plan to major in computer science initially, but he was lured by the challenge. A computer graphics course had the reputation for being both fascinating and the toughest undergraduate course at Brown.

As a student from a public school attending an Ivy League college, Mr. Rudder recalled, he was determined to test himself in that class. "It could have been marine biology," he said.

At Microsoft, Mr. Rudder found an environment suited to his skills and temperament. He became a product manager, building software and heading teams of engineers working on networking technology, Windows and programming tools.

In 1997, Mr. Gates picked Mr. Rudder as his technical assistant, a sign he was being groomed, and he served as Mr. Gates's aide for technology strategy until 2001, the longest tenure for anyone in that job. Mr. Rudder was then placed in charge of the strategically important software tools business at a time when developers were flocking to Java as the programming tool of choice for the Internet era of open communication and data sharing, instead of locking up information inside a supplier's proprietary technology.

Microsoft's alternative is its .Net programming tools, which are linked to Windows but embrace Internet and Web technologies. The .Net strategy was a technological answer to market imperative and customer demand. "We needed to link things together and work with other vendors," Mr. Rudder explained. "And we had the model with the Internet."

Mr. Rudder kept the tools business when he took charge of the server division in 2003. Today, Microsoft's .Net has closed the gap with the Java programming environment, called J2EE, which is backed by the software companies including I.B.M., Sun, Oracle and BEA Systems, and according to some surveys has pulled ahead of Java.

Bret Rupe, a chief architect for information technology at Weyerhaeuser, has been impressed by the changes at Microsoft. "We want suppliers who play well with others," he said. "Microsoft has really moved away from its proprietary view in the last few years." Assured by that trend, Weyerhaeuser, a big lumber and paper company, decided 18 months ago to increase its investment in Microsoft's server software in its data centers.

Mr. Rudder himself has adopted a somewhat more accommodating style lately, colleagues say, shedding a "never give an inch" mind-set that could stifle contributions from others. His future at Microsoft will hinge on how the company fares against the challenge of open-source software, which is distributed free and is improved by cooperative networks of programmers.

Windows and Linux have both done well in recent years because both systems run on machines using low-cost microprocessors from the personal computer industry - and corporations are increasingly adopting these servers to cut costs.

Still, Linux poses a real long-term threat to Microsoft. In most markets, Microsoft has adopted a high-volume, low-cost strategy. Yet open-source software is an "up from the bottom" phenomenon, a very different kind of competitor for Microsoft.

Mr. Rudder and his lieutenants marshal a series of arguments as to why "free" software is not free at all, once maintenance and support costs are included.

They point to the vast Microsoft "ecosystem" of millions of programmers worldwide and hundreds of thousands of companies who use Microsoft product and tools.

Linux and its open-source cousins, analysts say, could yet batter Microsoft's profit margins and growth. "Revenues may not go to zero but they can certainly stop growing," said Mr. Cusumano, the M.I.T. professor. "That's the nightmare for Microsoft, that happening sometime over the next 10 years."

Finishing off a boxed lunch, Mr. Rudder gave no hint of any such qualms. He is a true believer in the proposition that Microsoft's best days are surely ahead, and any suggestion to the contrary is emphatically dismissed.

"Microsoft is a growth company, absolutely," Mr. Rudder declared. "The opportunities are unlimited."
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/25/te...gy/25soft.html

[JackSpratts]

Never Too Young For A Copyright Lesson
Alorie Gilbert

Think schools are just scaring kids about drugs, sex and poor study habits these days? Now you can put illegal file trading on the list.

Sixth-graders in American Fork, Utah, will start their journey to middle school on Tuesday with a warning from the director of the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office about the ills of illegally downloading music, movies and games from the Web.

Director Jon Dudas is scheduled to deliver this year's commencement speech at Legacy Elementary School, situated in the suburbs south of Salt Lake City.

"Under Secretary Dudas will remind students that downloading and copying music, movies and video games without...the artists' or copyright holders' permission is an illegal activity," his agency said in a statement.

"Dudas will also talk to the children about the importance of intellectual property and describe the value of patents, copyrights and trademarks in our economy," the statement continued.

It could make for a long day for the kids, but the legal ramifications of illegal file trading are real. The Recording Industry Association of America has sued hundreds of children for copyright infringement related to music downloading.
http://news.com.com/Never+too+young+...3-5717670.html


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

This What Happened To Me When Trying To Defend The Legal Use Of P2P Networks In Spain

I have been teaching "Intellectual Property" (although I dislike the term) among other subjects at a Masters Degree in the Polytechnic University of Valencia UPV (Spain) for over 5 years. Two weeks ago I was scheduled (invited by the ETSIA Student Union and Linux Users' Group for the celebration of "Culture Week") to give a conference in one of the university's buildings. During that conference I was to analyze the legal use and benefits of the P2P networks, even when dealing with copyrighted works (according to the Spanish Intellectual Property Law, Private Copy provision, and many research papers, books and court rulings). I was even going to use the network to "prove" that it was legal, since members of the Collecting Society "SGAE" had appeared on TV and newspapers saying that "P2P networks are ilegal" (sic) just like that, and to that extent I even contacted SGAE, National Police, and the Attorney General in advance to inform them about it.

The day before the conference, the Dean (pressured by the Spanish Recording Industry Association "Promusicae" as I found out later, and he recognized himself in a quote to the national newspaper El Pais, and even the Motion Picture Association of America, as another newspaper quotes) tried to stop it by denying permission to use the scheduled venue. So I scheduled a second one, and that was denied again. And a third time. Finally I gave the conference on the university cafeteria, for 5 hours, in front of 150 people.

Later on that day (May 4th, I will never forget), I received a call from the Director of the Masters Degree Program where I was teaching telling me that the Dean had called and had asked him to "make sure I did not teach there again", and on a second call saying "it's your choice, but also your responsibility".

The Director called me and first asked me to remove any link to the university from my website, and also to "hide" the fact that I was teaching there. Then he told me about the pressures and threats he and the Program received (to be subjected to software licenses inspection, copyright violations inspections, or anything that may damage them). Obviously I had to resign to save his job (and everybody else's at the Masters Program). So I did.

But even after I had resigned, when the media (which started to pay attention to the case, as you can see in the attached links) called, the Vice-Dean of communications had the nerve to say that "I was never a teacher in that University, and I only taught a few classes". Sure I was not a Professor (which I never said I was), but I taught several subjects there for over 5 years!

It is not so important that I lost my job even though my ratings from the student satisfaction questionnaire were the highest of the whole Program, and I never violated any rule, contract, or regulation. I don't even mind so much that I never received a direct phone call from anyone objecting to my ideas or procedures. What I regret the most is to have suffered CENSORSHIP inside my own university (in a European Union member state, of all places on earth), and as a result of pressures and threats coming from Collecting Societies and Recording and Movie Industries (on my website you have proof of all that).

When are we going to do something about it? We can't let them impose their failed, outdated, and inefficient business model through threats, pressures and silence. We must speak out. I am wiling to travel the world (as I am doing now in conferences all over Spain) to tell my story, and they will not silence me. The truth has to be known. But I need your help.

This story has already been covered by over 400 Spanish bloggers, national radio stations, magazines and newspapers. But nobody seems to have noticed this outside Spain. Could you please help me spread the word outside Spain?

Should you require any further information, do not hesitate to let me know.

Best regards, and Thank you very much in advance,

Jorge Cortell
jorge (at) cortell (dot) net
jorgecortell (at) mac (dot) com

http://homepage.mac.com/jorgecortell...dio/index.html


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Bypass Found For Windows Piracy Check
Joris Evers

A tool provided by Microsoft could let people get around a check meant to prevent those with pirated copies of Windows from downloading additional software from the company, according to a security researcher.

Researcher Debasis Mohanty outlined what he said was a technique to trick Microsoft's Windows Genuine Advantage validation check in a posting to the Full Disclosure security mailing list on Monday. WGA is a software tool that verifies whether a particular copy of the operating system is properly licensed.

Using a secondary Microsoft validation tool called "GenuineCheck.exe," it may be possible for people to trick the checking mechanism, Mohanty said in the posting. They could then download and run supposedly restricted software from Microsoft's Download Center on a PC running a pirated version of Windows, Mohanty wrote.

Microsoft confirmed that the technique could circumvent the piracy check, but a representative said Monday that the company is not worried.

"This represents very little threat to Microsoft," the representative said. "We expected counterfeiters to try a number of different methods to circumvent the safeguards provided by Windows Genuine Advantage."

The company has been testing the WGA piracy lock on its Download Center and Windows Update Web sites for several months. It has said that by an unspecified date in the middle of this year, all Windows XP and Windows 2000 users will have to validate their copy of Windows before they can download from the Web sites.

The GenuineCheck.exe tool used to bypass the check is meant to provide an alternative way for users to prove that their copy of Windows is genuine. The primary Windows Genuine Advantage checking mechanism uses ActiveX, which is not supported in all Web browsers.

GenuineCheck generates a code that can subsequently be used to validate a pirated copy of Windows, according to Mohanty's posting. However, a PC running a legitimate version of Windows is required to run the GenuineCheck tool.

The threat is mitigated because the keys generated by the GenuineCheck tool expire "rapidly," the Microsoft representative said. Consequently, it would not do anyone much good to put up a Web page with a list of keys. Still, somebody would be able to generate a key and use it immediately on a PC with a pirated copy, or pass it on to a friend.

"This is more of an individual method of pirating. We don't see this as too different from people who take legitimate software, burn it to a CD and distribute it to their friends that way," the Microsoft representative said.

Microsoft's Download Center and Windows Update Web sites offer applications such as Windows Media Player and the Windows AntiSpyware product, as well as security updates for Microsoft products. The trick with the GenuineCheck tool works only on Download Center, according to Microsoft.

When the Windows Genuine Advantage pilot program began last year, it was purely optional, with no benefit for verifying one's operating system and no penalty if the OS was found not to be genuine. Microsoft has gradually expanded the piracy check and is now withholding downloads for users of some international versions of Windows XP.
http://news.com.com/Bypass+found+for...3-5717127.html


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Jobs Says Apple Will Support Podcasts

Apple Computer will support and organize podcasts in the next version of its iTunes and iPod software, the company said Monday.

Podcasts, which are sound files and audio content such as radio shows, have surged in popularity. They do not require an iPod to listen to them on the go. Any digital MP3 player will work.

"With the next version of iTunes, due within 60 days, there will now be an easy way for everyone to find and subscribe to" podcasts, the company said in a statement.

Steve Jobs, Apple's co-founder and chief executive demonstrated on Sunday evening how Apple's podcasting organization and downloading process would work at a Wall Street Journal technology conference, said Tim Bajarin, an analyst at Creative Strategy, a market research company.

"From the demo, we saw you could put podcasts under categories," Bajarin said. "It makes it much easier to have, access, organize and sync podcasts to an iPod."

The updated digital music jukebox software, which Bajarin said Jobs said was version 4.9, "organizes the podcasts within the iTunes store."
http://news.com.com/Jobs+says+Apple+...3-5718074.html


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Futurologist Predicts Need For 'Digital Bubble'
Ingrid Marson

People will soon need a 'digital bubble' to protect them from unwanted electronic information, according to BT futurologist Ian Pearson.

Pearson, speaking in London at a briefing on the future of fashion and technology, said that as more and more marketing departments take advantage of wireless technology to beam information at potential consumers walking past, people will need to protect themselves from the onslaught of digital data.

"[In the future] there will be chips all over the high street relaying information and you will be bombarded with digital information everywhere you go," said Pearson. "You will need a digital bubble force field — a shield that lets through what you want and blocks everything else."

The digital bubble will act as both an electronic force field and a personal firewall, according to Pearson.

There are already technologies available that allow advertising to be pushed wirelessly to mobile devices, for example, the MediaTeam Oulu research group has developed an experimental system that uses Bluetooth positioning and Wireless Application Protocol (WAP) Push technology to deliver permission-based, location-aware adverts to mobile phones. WAP Push, which is part of the WAP standard, allows a user to automatically access WAP content from a mobile handset after receiving an SMS.

Digital bubbles will not only interact with the fixed environment, but with the bubbles of other people, according to Pearson. He pointed out that many people already broadcast information about themselves via a personal Web site. In the future, people may broadcast information about themselves on the go, via a personal wireless Web server that is part of the digital bubble, he said.
http://news.zdnet.co.uk/communicatio...9199800,00.htm


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Pixel Perfect
Torrent of images is leaving film in the dust

Evolution Of Photos Is Creating Unforeseen Effects On Society
Todd Wallack

In a small, second-floor photo supply shop on Folsom Street, Volker von Glasenapp sits and waits for the phone to ring.

But that wait between calls is getting longer and longer because von Glasenapp is trying to sell film in an increasingly digital world. His business -- fittingly called Just Film -- used to have 12 employees. Now it has one.

"I refer to myself as a buggy whip salesman or a blacksmith,'' said von Glasenapp, resigned to the digital photography revolution that has changed his world.

Of course, digital photography has changed just about everybody's world. It isn't just a trendy niche anymore; it is becoming the dominant platform. More than 4 out of 5 cameras sold in the United States this year will be digital (not counting single-use cameras). And the amount of film sold annually has dropped 60 percent since 2000 as people make the switch to digital, according to Photo Marketing Association International, an industry trade group. By now, both pros and amateurs alike have abandoned film, experts say.

"In 2001, it was early adopters'' taking up digital photography, said Mike Wolfe, a Seattle-based analyst with InfoTrends/CAP Ventures, a consulting firm. "Now it's the latecomers."

The evolution is having profound and unforeseen effects on society -- from changing the way that people record their daily lives to making it harder to trust the images we see. Archivists wonder whether digital images will remain as permanent as prints for future generations. And sociologists wonder how it will change the way friends and family relate to one another.

First and foremost, many people are awash in digital images. Without the cost of film and processing, there's little to stop shutterbugs from shooting everything in sight. And some do just that on a daily basis.

"I might take 20 pictures of birds at my bird feeder to get one or two to share,'' said Tony Miksak, 60, who owns a Mendocino bookstore. "With film, I would have stopped at four or five, max."

And people are taking their cameras everywhere. One in 10 Americans now carries a mobile phone with a built-in camera. Others tote cameras in their backpacks or purses.

"My motto is, 'Never leave home without it,' " said Gerald Parrott of Napa. "You never know when you will catch the most incredible sunset at the beach, a snake or a beautiful flower while you are hiking."

Some believe the technology is making photography more casual. Instead of having relatives smile stiffly for formal portraits, people are increasingly taking snapshots of everyday life.

"It leads to more openness,'' said John Grady, a sociology professor at Wheaton College in Massachusetts, whose research involves photography. "People are getting more documentary in style."

But people are also holding onto fewer of those images in tangible form. Some shutterbugs delete photos they dislike just moments after the image flashes across the tiny camera screen.

"Blowing the bad shots away at no cost is a joy of digital," said Alan Drummer, a Burlingame marketing writer.

Or people park images on their hard drive, leaving them suspended as bits of electronic data. Only a fraction of all digital photos taken are ever printed onto paper.

"I used to be really good about putting my photos in albums, (but) I don't have physical albums anymore," said Katie Sommer of San Francisco.

Nowadays, Sommer said, she prints pictures only if she wants to frame them or for special occasions.

But some observers think Americans' willingness to discard digital images is a sign that photos are becoming less precious.

"Taking pictures used to be an event of sorts,'' said von Glasenapp, the film retailer. "Now they have camera phones -- they e-mail pictures, look at them once and trash them. The image is not what it used to be. The value of the image is no longer what it was."

The rise of digital photography also raises questions about whether people will save these images for future generations, the same way they usually keep old prints.

Some experts point out that traditional film and prints degrade over time. But so do compact discs. And it's unclear how people will access old digital photos decades in the future.

But Grady, the sociologist, thinks people are taking more care than ever with photos.

In addition to shooting a flurry of images, people often spend time selecting the best one and touching it up. Many cameras now come with software to retool images, something that used to be the province of professionals. More elaborate software is available for sale.

For instance, Drummer, the Burlingame writer, recently used Adobe Photoshop to create a better family portrait. Drummer replaced the pouting face on his 3- year-old with a smiling image from another picture.

Others doctor photos to eliminate small blemishes, like a pimple or a piece of spinach in someone's teeth.

One local resident said she magically cleaned up a dirty carpet in a picture of her dog. Another, a bug collector, occasionally replaces missing legs of insects in his photos. Other people regularly crop out old boyfriends or girlfriends before posting photos on dating sites.

Doctoring photos isn't new, of course. Many Soviet leaders disappeared from old photographs after Josef Stalin declared them to be enemies of the state.

But never has it been so easy for so many people to alter a photograph. Just last year, supporters of President Bush circulated a phony digital photo of then- presidential candidate Sen. John Kerry standing next to Jane Fonda at a podium. In 2000, the University of Wisconsin was caught digitally inserting a black face into a sea of white football fans to make the campus seem more diverse.

All of which raises questions of what images we can trust.

"People have to be skeptical,'' said Dennis Dunleavy, who runs the photojournalism program at San Jose State University and wrote his dissertation on the impact of digital photography. "It is a question of skepticism. It is a question of education. It is a question of not allowing people to be gullible."

But Dunleavy said the notion that the "camera never lies" has always been a myth. Photographers, he pointed out, have always presented just one, narrow slice of reality, while leaving the rest outside the viewfinder.

"As soon as I pick up a camera, I am editing my reality," he said.

But digital photos are already playing a powerful role in shaping the news and the political agenda.

The Abu Ghraib uproar, for instance, stemmed largely from digital photos soldiers took of themselves humiliating Iraqi prisoners, and then shared with friends. The photos eventually found their way to military investigators and news outlets and were beamed around the world.

Tami Silicio, a military contractor working in Kuwait, caused an uproar last year after she gave the Seattle Times permission to publish a digital photo she shot of a cargo plane filled with coffins of American soldiers killed in Iraq.

"The digital camera is really changing our lives,'' Dunleavy said. "It's not just the camera, but the ability to use the Internet to share those pictures with people a world away."

Indeed, many people use digital photos to keep in touch with friends and family, no matter where they are.

"I moved last year from the Peninsula to Marin, so I sent pictures back and forth with my friends there,'' said Heidi Hansen of San Anselmo. "It's a nice way to keep in touch."

Others e-mail photos to distant continents. Drummer, who posts photos on his family's Web site, said it was a key link to home when his family spent three months in Ukraine to adopt a child.

"It has let relatives and friends feel much closer," he said.

The list of effects goes on. Digital photography has made it easier to auction items online at eBay, for instance. And helped support online dating.

But Tom Davis, a retired Army officer from Benicia, said the biggest impact is that it's made his old 35mm Nikon and Bronica medium-format cameras an anachronism.

Von Glasenapp, who owns Just Film, said many of his customers have switched to digital over the years, especially pros who used 35mm film. "Thirty-five millimeter is gone," he said.

But von Glasenapp said several commercial and wedding photographers in the area continue to order medium-format and some other types of high-end films, keeping his business on life support. Gesturing to a box of film on his desk, he said someone just ordered several hundred dollars worth of film. And his phone rang twice during a short interview at his airy, second-floor office.

Even in the digital age, he pointed out, there's still demand for older technology.

"There are still blacksmiths,'' he said.



DIGITAL DOMINATES THE CAMERA MARKET

About 3 of every 4 cameras sold in 2004 were digital, according to estimates by the Photo Marketing Association International..

-- Camera sales in millions

Film Digital

1994 15.5

’95 15.0

’96 15.1 0.4

’97 15.6 0.7

’98 16.4 1.1

’99 17.8 2.2

’00 19.7 4.5

’01 16.3 7.0

’02 14.2 9.4

’03 11.2 13.0

’04* 6.7 18.2

’05** 4.6 20.5 * - Estimated ** - Projected Note: Excludes single-use cameras Source: Photo Marketing Association InternationalTodd Trumbull / The Chronicle
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cg...NGNVCT8F01.DTL


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Religiously correct

Best Buy to Toughen Policy on Adult Game Sales
Sara Ivry

Youngsters who want to buy adult video games may have run up against a higher authority. Last week, Best Buy agreed to strengthen and publicize its efforts to keep minors from buying violent or sexually explicit video games after the company was pressured by the Christian Brothers Investment Services, which manages assets for Roman Catholic organizations.

The store's policy threatens disciplinary action against clerks who fail to check the ages of shoppers who look as if they may be under 21. It also permits the use of mystery shoppers - spies, in other words - to check whether clerks are observing the rules.

Best Buy agreed to post its policy on its Web site and on store signs after being threatened with a shareholder resolution asking for a report on how Best Buy complied with efforts to restrict the sale of explicit material. Also last week, the Illinois Senate approved the levying of fines against store owners who sell explicit games to minors.

Sue Busch, Best Buy's directory of public relations, rejected the suggestion that the disclosure action was simply to appease a bloc of investors. "We wanted to make sure we were as open as possible so people could see how seriously we take their concerns," she said.

Cathy Rowan, who co-filed the proposed shareholder resolution on behalf of Trinity Health, a Catholic health care provider, said that she was particularly concerned over the games Halo, Manhunt, Hitman and Grand Theft Auto. Grand Theft Auto where players are rewarded if they kill cops or rape prostitutes, she said. "Kids are going to play video games but are they being sold games that are really age inappropriate?"

Nell Minnow, the editor of the Corporate Library, an independent research firm, said . "There's not a bright line distinction between what used to be social policy issues and straight shareholder-value concerns." SARA IVRY
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/23/te...gy/23game.html


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Hollywood Unions Set Video Game Strike Vote

Two of the key unions representing actors have asked their members to authorize a strike against the video game industry after talks on a new master agreement between the two sides broke down.

Materials were sent on Tuesday to about 1,900 members of the Screen Actors Guild and 1,000 members of the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists.

Those unions both require "super-majority" approvals from their members -- 75 percent for SAG and 66.7 percent for AFTRA -- before their national bodies can formally authorize the strike.

The previous contract between game publishers and the unions expired last December, and after repeated extensions talks collapsed earlier this month.

The games industry said the biggest sticking point was residuals, or ongoing payments to actors and actresses for each copy of a game sold to which they contributed, including their voices and likenesses.

The unions wanted residual payments on games that sell more than 400,000 units, while the game publishers wanted only to make single up-front payments to talent.

Results of the strike vote are expected on June 7.
http://today.reuters.com/news/newsAr...LLYWOOD-DC.XML


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Nokia Unveils Linux-Based Web Device Without Phone
Lucas van Grinsven

Nokia unveiled on Wednesday a pocket-sized Web browser for wireless broadband networks, which is the Finnish firm's first Linux-based device and its first product without a built-in mobile phone.

The new device, dubbed Nokia 770, has a four inch horizontal touch screen that can display normal Internet pages.

It will sell for $350 excluding VAT or 350 euros including VAT, the world's biggest mobile phone maker said ahead of a Linux trade show.

The product marks a significant strategy expansion for Nokia which is venturing outside its mainstay cellular phone business. Nokia aims to sell the device through broadband home Internet providers and directly to consumers on its Internet web site.

"We're launching a completely new product category," said Janne Jormalainen, Nokia's vice president for convergence products at its multimedia devices division.

The device is aimed at consumers looking for an affordable extra Internet screen in the house that they can also carry with them and use at wireless hotspots outside the home or connect to a cell phone through a Bluetooth wireless link.

It will be available in the third quarter.

The product will run entirely on open source software, including a standard Linux operating system also used in desktop computers, marking more unchartered waters for Nokia. "Using standard desktop Linux means innovation is happening faster (than in Linux versions for small devices). We will be very fast in implementing this innovation," Jormalainen said.

Several of the innovations already in the pipeline are upgrades by early 2006 to enable Voice over Internet protocol (VoIP) calls and instant messaging. Anyone who buys the device now will be able to upgrade the software next year.

VoIP phone calls from this portable device may cannibalise cell phone voice revenues from Nokia's main customers which are all of the world's biggest mobile operators.

New Open Source Website

Nokia will also launch and support an open source community Web Site, encouraging software developers to hack into the device and improve the product.

A rival to Microsoft's Windows, Linux is an open source operating system, meaning that the software will be freely available to everybody.

Nokia aims to be competitive by implementing innovations ahead of competitors, while benefiting from its huge scale -- it makes one of every three mobile phones sold in the world and the total mobile phone market is expected to be well over 700 million units in 2005.

Consumers will be able to store content downloaded from the Internet on removable MMC memory cards, or transfer it to a desktop computer with a USB connection or Bluetooth.

Nokia has been looking for growth opportunities outside the strict boundaries of the mobile phone industry, first with its N-Gage gaming phone and later with a multimedia device which can double up as a television and video device, but these have been slow to catch on and always came with integrated a mobile phone.

This new device, which took Nokia two years to develop, is a stab at the market for portable computers.

Last year 189 million PCs were sold worldwide, and by 2008 market researchers expect more than half of all sales will be portable computers rather than desktops.
http://today.reuters.com/news/newsAr...A-LINUX-DC.XML


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

U.S. House Votes To Outlaw Computer Spyware
Andy Sullivan

The U.S. House of Representatives on Monday voted to establish new penalties for purveyors of Internet "spyware" that disables users' computers and secretly monitors their activities.

By overwhelming majorities, the House passed two bills that stiffen jail sentences and establish multimillion-dollar fines for those who use secret surveillance programs to steal credit-card numbers, sell software or commit other crimes.

Spyware has emerged as a major headache for computer users over the last several years.

It can sap computing power, crash machines and bury users under a blizzard of unwanted ads. Scam artists use spyware to capture passwords, account numbers and other sensitive data.

Spyware can end up on users' computers through a virus or when they download games or other free programs off the Internet.

"Consumers have a right to know and have a right to decide who has access to their highly personal information that spyware can collect," said California Republican Rep. Mary Bono, who sponsored one of the bills.

The bills prohibit a number of practices often associated with spyware, such as reprograming the start page on a user's Web browser, logging keystrokes to capture passwords and other sensitive data, or launching pop-up ads that can't be closed without shutting down the computer.

The practice known as "phishing" -- in which scam artists pose as banks or other businesses in an attempt to trick consumers into divulging account information -- would also be outlawed.

The House voted 395 to 1 to impose jail sentences of up to 2 years. Violators could face fines up to $3 million per incident. Those who use spyware to commit other crimes, such as identity theft, could have an additional 5 years tacked on to their sentences.

Both bills passed the House last year but the Senate adjourned before taking action. Similar legislation has been introduced in the Senate this year.

Most spyware practices are already illegal under deceptive-business laws but federal and state law enforcers have only sued two spyware purveyors so far, one expert said.

"We know that there are literally hundreds of these cases out there. Unless there's a push for enforcement, passing a new law is really only going to help after the fact," said Ari Schwartz, associate director at the Center for Democracy and Technology, a consumer-advocacy group.

The bill gives the Justice Department an additional $10 million per year through 2009 to fight spyware.
http://today.reuters.com/news/newsAr...SPYWARE-DC.XML


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

New Ways to Drive Home the Message

New technologies that give viewers more control over how they watch TV could spell the end of the classic 30-second commercial. But fear not—advertising is not going away.
Brad Stone

One of the most talked-about commercials this year never appeared on regular television. It was available for voluntary viewing on, of all places, hotel pay-per-view networks. The 10-minute video promoted Virgin Atlantic's new first-class flat-bed seats and salaciously (though cleanly) parodied an adult film with "Austin Powers"-like humor. In six months, more than 1.2 million hotel guests clicked on their remote controls and sat through an average of seven minutes. Did we mention the commercial was about an airline seat? Virgin Atlantic was thrilled, of course, but not just with the response to the ad. "We actually thought the brilliance of the idea was the placement," says Virgin Atlantic VP Chris Rossi. "We want to put our message where business travelers are spending their time."

There's lots of hand-wringing on Madison Avenue these days. Companies like Virgin Atlantic are concluding that advertising on TV is too pricey and the effects too difficult to measure. They're also eying the inexorable advance of technology with trepidation. Digital video recorders like TiVo, video-on-demand services and Internet broadband allow consumers to skip the hallowed 30-second spot like a crack in the sidewalk. The industry must adapt to a coming world where consumers enjoy total control and will no longer tolerate tedious commercials that hold them hostage to messages they care nothing about. "The consumer is increasingly in the driver's seat in all forms of media, and TV is no exception," says Tim Hanlon, vice president of the Starcom MediaVest Group. "There are still a lot of people in the business that don't accept what is about to happen. That is myopic."

Perhaps it's time for the TV industry to get contact lenses, because the latest research suggests that trouble lies ahead. Although only 5 percent of households own DVRs, the number is expected to grow rapidly; most ominous, 70 percent of DVR owners skip the ads. Meanwhile, the average wired consumer now spends more time fiddling with the Internet at work and home than watching TV. Accordingly, the top 50 advertisers are slowly scaling back TV spending in their ad budgets, to 54.9 percent last year from 55.5 percent in 2001, even while overall advertising revenues rose in that time period, according to a study by TNS Media Intelligence. These trends have provoked a flurry of self-examination at ad agencies. Last month a long essay called "The Chaos Scenario" in the trade publication Ad Age worried that the industry might not be prepared for the collapse of the old advertising model. And a book to be published next month, "Life After the 30-Second Spot," surveys the formats that might replace the industry's workhorse. Says author Joseph Jaffe, "Unfortunately, nothing in this industry has changed except consumers, who don't take commercials at face value anymore."

The broadcast TV networks aren't exactly watching idly while their $42 billion in ad revenue dwindles. CBS, for example, is exploring video-on-demand and tailoring programs for cell phones. "You might see the rise of 15-minute shows," says Larry Kramer, head of digital media for CBS. But some of the network's solutions may be doing more damage than good. Commercials in prime time are now more expensive and more obtrusive than ever—18 minutes per hour in the most popular prime-time shows, versus 13 minutes back in 1992. Reality TV, as those who swear by it know, is now clogged with product placements, some subtle and clever but others unbearably clunky. Despite (or maybe because of) these strategies, marketing dollars are slowly fleeing from TV to outdoor ads and into the rising online ad networks of Google and Yahoo.

No one is giving up television advertising for dead quite yet. But even while they argue that the 30-second, mass-targeted commercial will never truly go away, broadcasters are experimenting with ways of replacing or complementing them. One curious strategy involves ads that are actually longer than 30 seconds. A few years ago, BMW started putting on its Web site short videos filmed by notable Hollywood directors and featuring BMW cars. Millions of users downloaded the stylish spots, proving that longer formats can give advertisers more leeway to tell compelling stories, as opposed to just shouting trivial corporate slogans.

Now advertising innovators are tailoring that idea for the TV. Advertisers working with TiVo can send long ads to a consumer's set-top box, then try to entice viewers to watch them. For example, during Disney's live spots about the anniversary celebrations at its theme parks, TiVo users see an icon inviting them to click on the remote to watch the longer clip for a chance to win a free vacation.

The coming wave of interactive TV is also bringing new advertising opportunities. In a trial over the past year, Time Warner Cable in Hawaii allowed consumers to use their remotes to play along with game shows, look up news headlines and interact with commercials. The Game Show Network, for example, let its Hawaiian viewers compete along with contestants and other audience members in programs like "World Series of Blackjack." During the commercials, viewers could add to their scores by answering questions related to the ad, such as choosing their favorite meal at Burger King. It sounds like a transparent, easily ignored ploy, right? Game Show Network exec John Roberts says that 85 percent of viewers interacted with the commercials when they could have skipped right by them. "We're TiVo-proof," he brags.

Advertising insiders concede that these new formats will not deliver the massive audiences of prime-time network TV. So they theorize that most companies will soon target multiple, smaller pools of consumers—on TV, on the Web, over cell phones and, yes, even in hotel rooms. The key will be finding audiences that are interested in the product to begin with—say, someone who is shopping for a new car and wouldn't mind seeing the latest GM SUV mount a staged assault on a mountaintop. Fulfilling this vision will require significant changes in the ad industry. Media research—how advertisers measure what people watch and how they respond to ads—will have to get considerably savvier about gauging media consumption habits. Creative ad teams will have to make better ads that people are actually interested in watching. If all this occurs, in a decade or so, when everything about TV has changed, we'll undoubtedly miss all the old advertising tropes we grew up with. But a vibrant, smarter ad industry that continues to subsidize good programming is better than having no commercials at all and seeing every channel turn into pay-per-view. Nine out of 10 dentists agree.

With Rana Foroohar

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/7935918/site/newsweek/


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Television Reloaded

It's a transformation as significant as when we went from black-and-white to color—and it's already underway. The promise is that you'll be able to watch anything you want, anywhere—on a huge high-def screen or on your phone.
Steven Levy

Forty-four years ago, when Newton Minow famously described television as a vast wasteland, he might have hit the bull's-eye on the
wasteland part. But he didn't know from vast. TV back then—a few black-and-white channels with a test pattern after midnight—was a sleepy three- light town where everybody hung out at the same dull places because there wasn't much else going on. As monochrome moved to color, and we got pay TV, more channels, remote controls, VCRs and cussin' on HBO, television sprawled much wider. But compared with what's coming, our 2005 experience is only half vast.

Tomorrow's television? Now we're talking vast. Start with the screens—wide, flat, high-definition monsters that delineate tire treads on NASCAR rigs and zits on an anchorperson's chin—and move to the programming choices, which will expand from a lousy 200 or so channels to tens of thousands of 'em, if you figure in video-on-demand (VOD). It'll be a cosmic video jukebox where you can fire up old episodes of "Cop Rock," the fifth game of the 1993 World Series, a live high-school lacrosse game, a ranting video blogger and your own HD home-movie production of Junior's first karate tournament. While it's playing, you can engage in running voice commentary with your friends, while in a separate part of the screen you're slamming orcs in World of Warcraft. Then you can pay your bill on screen. And if you ever manage to leave your home theater, you can monitor the whole shebang in your car, at a laptop at Starbucks or via the laundry-ticket-size screen on your cell phone. The ethos of New TV can be captured in a single sweeping mantra: anything you want to see, any time, on any device. "We are at a watershed moment in home entertainment," says Brian Roberts, CEO of the cable giant Comcast.

To paraphrase sci-fi author William Gibson, the TV future is already here; it's just not evenly distributed yet. Early adopters have jumped on the new stuff because they offer two qualities traditionally lacking in the fading era of broadcast television: personalization and empowerment. All of which is worse news than a crummy Nielsen rating for the major networks, whose market share has already plummeted in the past decade.

Start with the hardware. Ever notice that no one uses the term "TV set" anymore? That's because people can watch on anything from a traditional box in the den to their computer, to a screen on the seat back of a JetBlue plane. But when it comes to the living room, the standard is a big-screen monitor that delivers high-definition quality. After years of hype and wrangling about standards, prices are down and a quarter of all TVs sold are now high def. Once you get one, you're hooked. "You find yourself mesmerized," says Mark Cuban, an entrepreneur who used his dot-com earnings to buy the Dallas Mavericks—and now has started HDNet, a cable-and-satellite offering that hosts about 20 hours of original high-def programming a week. "You'll always give the benefit of the doubt to something in HD," he says. That's good for Cuban, who snags viewers with homegrown productions like "Bikini Destinations." Meanwhile, HD is a must-have for network prime-time dramas, and just last week ABC announced that "Good Morning America" would go HD.

Another transition well underway is time-shifting, the ability to rearrange the schedule to watch programs at your convenience, not the networks'. Though videocassette recorders have enabled this for decades, those devices were always too hard to use and too dumb to really shape our habits. But a digital video recorder —(DVR) can easily grab your favorite shows—even if you don't know they're on—and allows you to freeze-frame fast action and jump commercials. Former FCC head Michael Powell called it "God's machine." As DVRs are offered in cable and satellite set-top boxes, more people are finally enjoying the benefits.

Video-on-demand provides another way to bypass what programmers offer at a given moment—and millions are already experimenting with it, commonly choosing old episodes of "Curb Your Enthusiasm" to the usual prime-time fare. VOD libraries will inevitably expand to the equivalent of the mammoth music boxes of iTunes and Rhapsody. And if you ever get tired of old movies, you'll have a chance to watch flicks at home while they're still in theaters. "All the studios say it's a matter of not if but when... new movie releases will quickly air on cable TV," says Comcast's Roberts.

Some people believe that between the recorders and VOD, people will follow schedules only for real-time events like sports and election night. Fox TV president Peter Ligouri says, "People want to watch shows like 'American Idol' live, in the moment." But everything else can wait. "Look behind any programmer's desk and you'll see a chart with the prime-time schedule—in 20 years that model will be as obsolete as the nickelodeon," says Steve Perlman, CEO of Rearden, Inc., and founder of Web-TV.

While time-shifting changes the when of television, "space-shifting" tinkers with the where. Now that you've stored your show on a TiVo, it's only logical to take it with you on your laptop, hand-held viewer or PSP game player. A company called Sling Media sells a device that allows you to watch the program playing in your living room on your computer, anywhere in the world. Other schemes are designed to beam programming directly to gadgets not normally regarded as TV devices. MobiTV, a service that sends programs to cell phones (like CNN and Discovery Channel), has 300,000 subscribers. It may call to mind the characters in "Zoolander" squinting into their microscopic mobiles, but Idetic CEO Phillip Alvelda reminds us that people once scoffed at mobile phones. "The truth is, mobile devices have a lot of advantages over television," he says. "For one thing, it's personal." And while you might not want to watch a viewing of "Lawrence of Arabia" on your Razor, new programming ("Mobisodes") will fit the size and time constraints of commuter-potato viewing.

All these elements come together in what may be the most significant development of all—the movement of the television platform to the Internet. IPTV hopes —to merge the lay-back culture of the living room with the bustling activity of the lean-forward Net. "This is the future," gushes Microsoft chairman Bill Gates, who has a $400 million deal with telecom giant SBC to implement it.

"Moving from broadcast TV to broadband TV changes the whole industry," says Gates's IPTV czar Moshe Lichtman. While cable and satellite companies have limited channel capacity, the Net—which, you'll recall, can host billions of Web pages without a sweat—has room for everything. You can stack as many shows on the screen as your eyes can handle. When you watch baseball, you can monitor several games at once, or choose to view the game from several different angles at the same time. A future presentation of the Masters Tournament might let you follow any golfer for every minute of his round.

Since the Internet is open to any digital content, your television will merge with other activities. Someone on the phone? You'll get caller-ID information on the TV screen. If you don't feel like fast-forwarding past the commercials, check your credit—-card bills. And you know those news-channel "tickers" that run on the bottom of the screen with headlines, weather reports and updates on Britney Spears's wedding status? "Ninety percent of that stuff you don't care about," says Gates. "We'll let you have a custom ticker [with stock quotes, scores and other information that you pick]."

"Once you put this stuff up nobody knows what will happen," says SBC's Randall Stephenson. What some people think might happen may not please media middlemen like... SBC. While IPTV originally requires a reliable high-bandwidth platform to ensure top-quality reception, fast connections will eventually become commonplace. In that case it might be feasible for programmers to reach the mass audience without going through a gatekeeper, be it a telecom, cable provider or satellite service. Video would be served directly, like everything else on the Web. "Most flat-panel TV sets will have Internet connections in their future," says Steve Shannon, founder of Akimbo, a Web video service that has content deals with more than 100 partners, including CNN, Turner Classic Movies and the BBC.

Others focus on the prospect of outsiders' gaining access to your TV set, as bloggers have invaded media on the Web. "Already there is more data downloaded for video over the Internet than there is for music," says Mike Ramsay, cofounder of TiVo. "What happens when a 14-year-old creates a BitTorrent browser that's easy to use and plugs right into your TV? You go from 500 channels to 50 million channels." We soon may find out, as a number of open-source-inspired Internet efforts hope to open the floodgates. "We have tools to let anyone make high-quality videos to reach millions of people," says Tiffiniy Cheng of the Participatory Culture Foundation in Worcester, Mass. "We'll give a channel to anyone who wants a channel."

Given that future programming will be largely on demand, a "channel" could simply be a periodic video blog, a set of fly-fishing videos or a streamed soft-porn Webcam. "The cost of establishing a traditional programming vehicle and securing distribution is incredibly high," says Jeremy Allaire, founder of online distributor Brightcove. In the era of Internet television, it will be as simple and cost-effective to create a microchannel as it is to create a Web site.

How would you figure out what to watch? "By the time you scroll through the listings, something else would already be on," says Bradley Horowitz, head of video search at Yahoo. His suggestion? A personalized home-video page that stores your favorite channels and seeks out stuff you'd like. "Instead of a list of shows, you'd get 'Here's what's hot,' or 'Here's what psychologists are watching'."

Does this mean that traditional programming like "Desperate Housewives" and "The Daily Show" will get overwhelmed? Not necessarily. If two obscure animators at Web site JibJab could get millions of viewers for their Internet-based Bush/Kerry campaign video, would a 2015 "Sopranos Reunion" have any difficulty reaching a mass audience? "There is a consistent hunger for good stories and good characters," says HBO's Carolyn Strauss. David Hill, a DirecTV exec, contends that no matter how open the distribution is, the public will flock to tiny islands of quality, even if quality is defined by what's always been on TV. "People who say that everyone can be a David E. Kelley have no clue of this business," he says. The result may be that when all the time-shifting and space-shifting is accounted for, most people will watch the same stuff by the same creators.

In fact, even with today's relative abundance, most people stick to only a few channels. According to Nielsen Media Research, households that receive about 60 channels usually watch only 15. Households whose systems can receive 96 channels (around the national average) actually watch... 15.

What's more, a recent study conducted at the UPenn Annenberg School for Communications showed that when people were offered more programming choices, they stuck to fewer selections—and, alarmingly, watched fewer news shows.

This doesn't surprise Barry Schwartz, a Swarthmore professor and author of "The Paradox of Choice." He fears that people may stick to a small group of selections that don't challenge any of their assumptions. "I worry about 250 million separate islands," he says. It's a long way from the first era of television, when there were so few choices that almost everything you viewed was a mass-shared experience. Schwartz does concede that when you have millions of options to choose from, you're more likely to find ones that really appeal to you. But even then, you won't necessarily be more satisfied. "Whatever you watch," he says, "you'll know that there's something else on that's good, and regret you're not watching it."

Can it be that in the vast world of television's tomorrow, we'll be nostalgic for the wasteland?

With Brad Stone and Jennifer Ordonez
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/7935915/site/newsweek/


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Triumph for Fox, but Pain for NBC
Bill Carter

One of the most competitive and volatile network television seasons ever recorded ended officially last night with three networks, Fox, CBS and ABC, celebrating and one network, NBC, decelerating.

For the first time in its two-decade history, Fox, once the upstart outsider, will win the network competition in the category of viewers between the ages of 18 and 49, which every network but CBS defines as the yardstick of prime-time supremacy, because so many advertisers pay a premium to reach that group.

CBS has its own claims to victory, however, across even wider audience categories. That network once again dominated in terms of the total number of viewers, still led by "CSI," as well as among the slightly older audience segment, those between the ages of 25 and 54, that CBS claims as its primary selling point to advertisers.

CBS executives had thought during much of the season that they would also take the 18-to-49 crown for a clean sweep of prime-time leadership, only to be nosed out by Fox. But they still noted that CBS would win with those 18-to-49 viewers in terms of regularly scheduled programs, marking the first time that CBS had won that category in 30 years. Regularly scheduled programs would not include, for example, Fox's broadcast of the Super Bowl, which by itself was enough to boost the network's seasonal average above CBS's.

The other positive network rating story came at ABC, which posted the most significant growth of any network. ABC was up 12 percent in the 18-to-49 audience category, thanks largely to the injection of three enormous hits: "Desperate Housewives," "Lost" and "Grey's Anatomy."

NBC, meanwhile, is headed in the other direction, suffering an ignominious fall from first place to fourth in the network ratings, the first time any network has plunged that far in one season. NBC executives pointed out that the margin between first place and fourth was the closest of any network ratings competition ever. But NBC is, nevertheless, the only network whose momentum was conspicuously negative as the season ended.

For the season, NBC plunged 19 percent in the 18-to-49 competition, finishing at a 3.5 rating, down from a 4.3 last season. Fox's winning rating was a 4.1, while CBS finished with a 4 rating and ABC had a 3.7. Among total viewers, NBC was also dead last, down 11 percent, to an average nightly audience of 9.8 million. Last year NBC averaged more than 11 million viewers a night. Each rating point in the 18-to-49 category is worth 1.3 million viewers.

CBS had just under 13 million total viewers for its seasonal average, with ABC at just over 10 million and Fox at 9.9 million.

Peter Liguori, newly installed as president of entertainment for Fox, credited the Fox program department for what he called "a lot of great moves" that turned around what had been an abysmal performance in the fall into a winning performance since January.

Mr. Liguori cited the decision to keep Fox's powerhouse series, "American Idol," to just one contest a season; the strategy of holding off the hit drama "24" until winter so it could run straight through without repeats; the shift of the soap opera cult hit "The O.C." to Thursday night, where it established a beachhead for Fox on television's most competitive night; and the return of the animated series "Family Guy," which, though once canceled, had become a hit on DVD and was successfully revived by Fox this spring.

Mr. Liguori dismissed CBS's argument that Fox squeezed into first place only with the help of sports shows like the Super Bowl, which are not regular parts of the entertainment schedule. "There is no reason for an asterisk on this victory," Mr. Liguori said. "The Super Bowl is always included in the overall ratings."

Kelly Kahl, the executive vice president for program planning at CBS, said, "While we may be a little disappointed not to get the 18-to-49 win, we're certainly happy about hitting on some of these other things, like winning in 25-to-54 viewers two years in a row for the first time in 30 years."

Mr. Kahl noted that the margin between Fox and CBS in the 18-to-49 race was so tiny it amounted to an average of just 60,000 viewers.

NBC's top program executives, Kevin Reilly and Jeff Zucker, conceded that the fall all the way from first place to last was psychologically and financially damaging to a network that had been routinely the network leader since the mid-1980's.

"Going from first to fourth, that's ugly," said Mr. Reilly, the president of entertainment for NBC. "We're a sexy hook for a story. People can't resist that. But the distance between first and fourth was six-tenths of a rating point. It's never been that close before."

Mr. Zucker, president of the NBC Universal Television Group, noted that NBC knew it was facing a challenging season because of the departure of the longtime comedy hits "Friends" and "Frasier" but that the network simply had not come up with much in the way of successful replacements. Only one new scripted NBC series, "Medium," could be called a success.

"The first thing we have to do is stop the bleeding," Mr. Reilly said. "This is really a momentum story. We do not come out of the spring with any momentum. We just didn't have any events, not even any artificial events, to build on. Next year we'll have the Winter Olympics and we have a handful of mini-series. But I don't think we have anything like an 'American Idol.' "

Perhaps most painful for NBC was the loss of its two-decade-long pre-eminence on Thursdays, the nights that generates the most advertising revenue in network television. CBS took complete command of the night this season, a development that its chairman, Leslie Moonves, predicted would lead to a transfer of hundreds of millions of dollars in revenues to CBS from NBC.

Given its surge this season, ABC is widely being cited as the network to watch in the next few years. Stephen McPherson, the president of entertainment for ABC, said he did not want to become complacent about ABC's strong turnaround this season. "I still think we're the underdogs," he said. "The networks are pretty darn close. We're getting into these roundings to determine who's ahead."

Mr. Kahl said that the closeness of the competition this season meant "we'll be going into next season ready for some real gun battles." He added: "We're not taking anything for granted. Hundredths of ratings points matter."
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/26/ar...on/26rati.html


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Mötley Crüe Files Suit Against NBC for Banning It Because of an Expletive
Jeff Leeds and Jacques Steinberg

In the latest twist in the broadening battle overdecency standards, the glam-metal band Mötley Crüe filed suit against NBC yesterday. The suit states that the network violated the group's free-speech rights and weakened its sales by banning it after Vince Neil, the lead singer, used an expletive on the air in a Dec. 31 appearance on "The Tonight Show."

The lawsuit, filed in a federal court in Los Angeles, accuses the network of censoring the band to mollify a Federal Communications Commission that has been increasingly quick to levy steep fines for broadcasting indecent material on television and radio. The lawsuit says the network, which banned the group after Mr. Neil inserted an expletive into his New Year's greeting to Mötley Crüe's drummer, Tommy Lee, added insult to injury by promoting a summer reality series featuring Mr. Lee.

The band, known for 1980's hits like "Shout at the Devil" and "Girls, Girls, Girls," is requesting a ruling that NBC's ban is unconstitutional, a court order forcing the network to lift it, and unspecified financial damages tied to the band's reduced media exposure.

"We meant no harm, but it feels that we're being singled out unfairly," said Nikki Sixx, the band's bassist. "This is a discrimination issue, pure and simple. All we've ever asked is to be treated like everybody else, which is why we're taking this action." In a statement yesterday, NBC said: "To ensure compliance with its broadcast standards, NBC has the right to decide not to invite back guests who violate those standards and use an expletive during a live entertainment program. The lawsuit Mötley Crüe has filed against us is meritless."

The band's case appears somewhat quixotic, given that federal courts have afforded wide discretion to broadcasters to choose their own content. But it does illustrate the uneasiness of the relations between entertainers and the media companies that provide a platform for their fame in the cautious climate that has surrounded programmers since CBS's Super Bowl fiasco last year, when Janet Jackson's right breast was exposed during a half-time performance in front of tens of millions of viewers. Last year the F.C.C. proposed fines of nearly $8 million against broadcasters, primarily for risqué material, and executives have spoken openly of practicing self-censorship to avoid the agency's crosshairs.

Jeff Zucker, president of NBC Universal Television Group, has provided examples of how the decency standards on broadcast television differ from those on cable. This past season, he played himself - albeit an expletive-spewing caricature of himself - in the limited-run Showtime series "Fat Actress."

Whether performers can take legal action to influence programming is in serious doubt, however. Charles Tobin, a Washington lawyer who specializes in First Amendment law and has represented CNN and Fox, said: "The government has no right to censor people on the content of their speech. But time and again the Supreme Court has upheld the rights of broadcasters, newspapers and the other media to decide who it wants to give priority to. That includes the right to ban anyone they want to."

"I think it's a publicity stunt," Mr. Tobin said of the Mötley Crüe suit. "It can't get NBC's help to boost its album through the airwaves. So it's going to try and do it by dragging NBC into court."

But the band's lawyer, Skip Miller, argues that there are lower-court opinions supporting the notion that a private entity, like a television network, acting under government pressure, can be liable for damages for violating free-speech rights. Mr. Miller added that NBC's action unfairly singled out Mötley Crüe because NBC had not announced similar bans on other performers who have uttered profanities on its airwaves, including the singer Bono of U2, or the singer John Mayer. (The F.C.C. found that NBC violated decency standards by broadcasting a vulgarity uttered by Bono during the Golden Globes in 2003, but did not impose a fine.)

"Once you're on, and then you get banned," Mr. Miller said, "the question is why? Is it because NBC decided to throw Mötley Crüe under the train? If it's because of kowtowing to the F.C.C. and governmental pressure," he continued, "yes, I do think that can be a First Amendment violation."

In the lawsuit the band said Mr. Neil was not aware that his statement was being broadcast. But in any event, the band said, the live broadcast took place during late- night hours when federal prohibitions on indecent material have not traditionally been applied.Three weeks later, Mr. Zucker of NBC told a meeting of television critics that "Mötley Crüe will not be back on NBC." He said that the New Year's Eve edition of "The Tonight Show" would be broadcast on a five-second delay going forward.

As a result, the band said, a previously planned appearance on NBC's "Last Call With Carson Daly" was called off. The band also said it was barred from appearing on other network programs, including "Late Night With Conan O'Brien," and media exposure that cost it prospective ticket, merchandise and album sales, as well as corporate sponsorships. Even without appearances on the network, the band's new double album, "Red, White & Crüe," composed primarily of previously released songs, has sold a surprising 349,000 copies, according to Nielsen SoundScan.

Still, when the ban went into effect, just before the release of the album, it "was a tender, important time for them," Mr. Miller said. "NBC's action was overkill."
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/25/ar...ic/25motl.html


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Infineon to Explore New Computer Memory
AP

Chip maker Infineon Technologies AG said Monday it has formed a joint research initiative with IBM Corp. and Macronix International Co. to examine the potential of a new computer memory technology called phase-change memory, or PCM.

The research work will be conducted at IBM's TJ Watson Research Center in Yorktown Heights, New York, and the IBM Almaden Research Lab in San Jose, California. Between 20 and 25 workers from the three companies will be involved in the project. Macronix International is based in Hsinchu, Taiwan; and Infineon Technologies, in Munich, Germany.

PCM is a new technology in which data is stored using a special material, which changes its structure from an amorphous to a crystalline structure, instead of by using electrical charges as is usually the case.

Though it's in early stages, the technology has the potential for high speed, high density storage of data, including keeping the data active and available even if the power is interrupted or turned off.

Ideally, it could be used in dozens of applications, ranging from computer servers to consumer electronics.

Shares of IBM rose 10 cents to close at $76.51 in Monday trading on the New York Stock Exchange.
http://customwire.ap.org/dynamic/sto...05-23-17-09-03


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I.B.M. Software Aims to Provide Security Without Sacrificing Privacy
Steve Lohr

International Business Machines is introducing software today that is intended to let companies share and compare information with other companies or government agencies without identifying the people connected to it.

Security specialists familiar with the technology say that, if truly effective, it could help tackle many security and privacy problems in handling personal information in fields like health care, financial services and national security.

"There is real promise here," said Fred H. Cate, director of the Center for Applied Cybersecurity Research at Indiana University. "But we'll have to see how well it works in all kinds of settings."

The technology for anonymous data-matching has been under development by S.R.D. (Systems Research and Development), a start-up company that I.B.M. acquired this year.

Much of the company's early financial backing came from In-Q-Tel, a venture capital firm financed by the Central Intelligence Agency that invests in companies whose technologies have government security uses.

S.R.D., now I.B.M.'s Entity Analytics unit, has worked for years on specialized software for quickly detecting relationships within vast storehouses of data. Its early market was in Las Vegas, where casinos used the company's technology to help prevent fraud or employee theft. The matching software might sift through databases of known felons, for example, to find any links to casino employees.

By the late 1990's, United States intelligence agencies had discovered S.R.D. and the potential to use its technology for winnowing leads in pursuing terrorists or spies. After 9/11, the government's interest increased, and today most of the company's business comes from government contracts.

The new product goes beyond finding relationships in different sets of data. The software, which I.B.M. calls DB2 Anonymous Resolution, enables companies or government agencies to share personal information on customers or citizens without identifying them.

For example, say the government were looking for suspected terrorists on cruise ships. The government had a "watch list," but it did not want to give that list to a cruise line, fearing it might leak out. Similarly, the cruise lines did not want to hand over their entire customer lists to the government, out of privacy concerns.

The I.B.M. software would convert data on a person into a string of seemingly random characters, using a technique known as a one-way hash function. No names, addresses or Social Security numbers, for example, would be embedded within the character string.

The strings would be fed through a program to detect a matching pattern of characters. In the case of the cruise line and the government, an alert would be sent to both sides that a match had been detected.

"But what you get is a message that there is a match on record Number 678 or whatever, and then the government can ask the cruise line for that specific record, not a whole passenger list," explained Jeff Jonas, the founder of S.R.D. and now chief scientist of I.B.M.'s Entity Analytics unit. "What you get is discovery without disclosure."

To date, the software for anonymously sharing and matching data has been tested in a few projects, but I.B.M. is aiming for day-to-day use in several industries.

In health care, for example, more secure and anonymous handling of patient information could alleviate privacy concerns in the shift to electronic health records, potentially increasing efficiency and reducing costs, analysts said.

The technology, specialists noted, could also reduce the risk of identity theft, especially if personal data held by companies were made anonymous.
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/24/te...gy/24blue.html


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

iPhantom
Press Release

The iPhantom is a comprehensive Internet security device for your PC that is lightweight, portable, and easy to use. The iPhantom is the first of its kind to make enterprise network security available for your PC at the hardware level. The iPhantom™ incorporates a state of the art hardware architecture that provides high-end security effectively without compromising your Internet speed. With hardware accelerated encryption and Freescale™ Coldfire™ Architecture, the iPhantom™ is unparalleled in the industry.

How it Works...

FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions)

Specifications

Warranty

Guarantee
Key Features:
100% Anonymous and secure web access Works with all major file-sharing programs
Strong AES encryption Spyware and Adware protection
Firewall protection Anti-virus protection
Small, lightweight, and portable Works with all major operating systems
Plug-And-Play No software installation
High performance architecture

http://www.iphantom.com/product.html


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

P2P United Informs Users of P2P Risks

Adam Eisgrau, executive director for P2P United, said the organisation had been working with the FTC to "debunk the outrageous claims" made by the Recording Industry Association of America and the Motion Picture Association of America about the dangers of peer-to-peer programs.

P2P United , the U.S.-based trade association representing some of the leading peer-to-peer networks, has announced a new cyber-safety initiative, informing users of the risks associated with peer-to-peer programs.

The move comes after an investigation by the U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) refuted record and film industry allegations that P2P United members committed "false and deceptive practices" by installing spyware and viruses with their products.

However, the FTC added that peer-to-peer providers should be doing more to notify users of the potential risks that might occur from using peer-to-peer software.

Under the initiative, warnings will be displayed on peer-to-peer Web sites, software installation screens and on the user interfaces of peer-to-peer software.

They will explain the dangers of viruses, spyware, pornography and copyright infringement liability.

Adam Eisgrau, executive director for P2P United, said the organisation had been working with the FTC to "debunk the outrageous claims" made by the Recording Industry Association of America and the Motion Picture Association of America about the dangers of peer-to-peer programs.

He said, "Peer-to-peer is neither more nor less risky than using the Internet. We will continue to work with government on these issues."
http://www.toptechnews.com/news/P2P-...d=12200C7X5PRU


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

How the Law Is Shaking the Net
Recent court outcomes are transforming the online business landscape, as will several key upcoming cases
Scott Kessler

In a previous life, I went to law school and later practiced law. Afterward, having become an equity analyst covering an area that isn't heavily regulated (the Internet), I figured I wouldn't have to spend much time thinking about things legal.

Boy, was I wrong. From patent matters to civil suits to Supreme Court cases, legal issues have significantly affected many well-known Web companies. Just take a look:

• eBay (EBAY ; S&P investment rank: 3 STARS, hold; recent price, $36) has been wrangling with a private company called MercExchange over patents related to online auctions and fixed-price sales. A court essentially affirmed a $25 million judgment against eBay in March, 2005, and at that time, we estimated that additional damages could approach $100 million. In May, 2005, the Net auction outfit was granted a stay in the case, pending a prospective review by the Supreme Court.

• RealNetworks (RNWK ; 4 STARS, buy; $5.25) has spent more than $16 million pursuing an antitrust case against Microsoft (MSFT ; strong buy; $26). The company's complaint alleges that Microsoft illegally used monopoly power to restrict competition, limit consumer choice, and attempt to monopolize the digital media segment. When it filed the lawsuit in December, 2003, RealNetworks opined that Microsoft could be liable for damages exceeding $1 billion.

• Yahoo! (YHOO ; buy; $37) has been actively enforcing its claims to sponsored-search-related intellectual property. Google (GOOG ; buy; $239) settled patent infringement and other claims with Yahoo by issuing 2.7 million shares to the company now worth some $645 million. Yahoo is also engaged in patent litigation with FindWhat.com (FWHT ; not ranked; $5), whose stock surged 9% the day a mistrial was announced in mid-May.

BIG DECISION. Notwithstanding the importance of these matters, we at Standard & Poor's believe decisions from the Supreme Court (one recent and one forthcoming) could have an even more dramatic influence on the Internet industry and many of its businesses.

In mid-May, the Supreme Court ruled that state governments cannot prohibit their residents from ordering wine directly from out-of-state vintners (based solely on locations of the would-be consumer and winery in different states). Roughly half of the states restrict such purchases (see BW Online, 5/17/05, "A New Age for Wine Sellers"). We believe this decision will contribute to greater e-commerce opportunities for wineries and should aid outfits like privately held Wine.com. Interestingly, Wine.com announced a partnership with Amazon.com (AMZN ; sell; $35) earlier this month.

We believe this judgment could lead to greater online sales not only of beer and spirits, but also cigarettes, contact lenses, cars, and even real estate (which are all heavily regulated by state and local governments). Reduced distribution costs and regulation would also bolster the profitability of these sales, in our view.

P2P PROBLEMS. As a result, we think Internet companies that could benefit from this decision include publicly traded 1-800 Contacts (CTAC ; not ranked; $20), Autobytel (ABTLE ; not ranked; $4.10), eBay, Homestore (HOMS ; not ranked; $2.15), and IAC/InterActiveCorp. (IACI ; buy; $24). 1-800 Contacts and eBay are members of NetChoice (a coalition that filed an amicus brief in the wine case and whose goal is to promote convenience, choice, and commerce on the Internet).

Next month, the country's highest court is expected to issue a decision regarding the future of file-swapping networks. Media concerns want the court to rein in peer- to-peer (P2P) systems and software, which are frequently used for illegal downloads of copyrighted music and video content.

Many technology companies consider file-sharing networks a compelling innovation that should not be eliminated simply because they're sometimes used for unlawful purposes. We think the Court may try to pursue a middle ground by taking aim at peer-to-peer services that encouraged illicit activity.

STABILIZING SITUATION? We believe Internet businesses that provide legal online music services, like Apple (AAPL ; buy; $37), Napster (NAPS ; not ranked; $4), RealNetworks, and Yahoo (following its recent introduction of a subscription and download music service), are going to be the most affected by the P2P decision. If the court moves decisively to curtail illegal activity on file-sharing networks, we believe these companies would benefit significantly. If the decision doesn't call for notable changes to at least some kinds of usage of P2P systems, we think they would be adversely affected.

(As an aside, I wanted to point out Baker Capital, which has two portfolio companies that have been front and center in the two Supreme Court cases described above. The private-equity firm's major investment in Wine.com was announced in September, 2004, months before the court decided to allow more interstate sales of wine. In April, 2005, Baker bought MusicNet, a leading business-to-business provider of online-music services. A month later, Yahoo introduced its consumer music offering, which is enabled by MusicNet.)

I've been covering Internet stocks for more than five years and cannot remember a time when legal disputes and resolutions were having a greater impact on the industry and its companies. Perhaps this is indicative of a segment that's becoming more stable and mature. Maybe the legal activity evidences the growing importance of intellectual property in the Net area, as companies increasingly employ it to establish and extend competitive advantages. We at S&P do think the Internet field is more crowded than it was a few years ago, and players are striving for proprietary differentiation.

The world's largest Web companies and at least one equity analyst who covers them are taking notice. Today's competition is taking place in the marketplace and in courtrooms. Corporate success for online businesses seems predicated on both good products and services and associated legal protections. Perhaps there's a certain logic to having a former lawyer trying to make sense of this stuff after all.
http://www.businessweek.com/technolo...41.htm?chan=db


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

ILN News Letter

Universities Grapple With Internet Publishing

A pair of articles examined changes facing publishers and the inconsistent approach of universities. The Wall Street Journal carried a front page story on university pressure to free-up scholarship by turning to web-based journals, while Business Week focuses on university press opposition to the Google Print for Libraries program. Business Week article at <http://tinyurl.com/c33y5> WSJ article at http://online.wsj.com/article/0,,SB1...640247,00.html


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Students Sued For File-Sharing
Tom Senn

As part of its ongoing campaign to curb music piracy on college campuses, the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) filed federal copyright lawsuits in April against 25 Princeton students accused of illegally trading music files on the high- speed Internet2 network.

A total of 405 students at 18 colleges nationwide were targeted for lawsuits.

The RIAA initially sent 39 "pre-subpoena" notices to Princeton in late March, but later announced it would sue no more than 25 students at any one college.

"There are 14 lucky students who will have escaped a lawsuit and 25 who will be sued," industry president Cary Sherman said in an April 12 conference call.

Those students facing litigation were notified by the University April 19.

The RIAA's lawsuits targeting Princeton students — collectively known as BMG Music et al. v. Does 1-25 — were filed in New Jersey District Court.

Since the suits were filed using the IP addresses of 25 "John Does," the individuals being sued were not identified by name. The RIAA subpoenaed the University April 18 to officially obtain the identities behind the addresses.

The University complied with the subpoena, releasing the students' identities on the deadline of May 9, University spokesman Eric Quinones said.

Though the penalties for copyright infringement are high — up to $150,000 for each act — lawsuits filed against file-sharing students are typically settled out of court for around $3,000.

One of the targeted students, Chad Smith '08, said in an interview just after the lawsuits were filed that he planned to settle with the RIAA, but wouldn't mind taking the matter to court.

"I'll probably end up [settling] because it's practical," he said. "But, in principle, if I had the time and money, I would love to pursue it."

New tactics

In this latest drive against campus file-sharing, the RIAA took aim at students downloading music on Internet2, a high-powered research network operated by 206 universities and affiliated institutions nationwide.

Sherman said Internet2 is a promising network that allows students and educators to work efficiently, but that it has been hijacked for illegal purposes.

"Internet2 is increasingly becoming the network of choice for students seeking to steal copyrighted songs and other works on a massive scale," Sherman said in the conference call. "We simply cannot allow Internet2 to become a zone of lawlessness where the normal rules don't apply."

The file-sharing program i2hub, which runs on the Internet2 network, was previously thought by many students to be safe from the industry's legal grasp.

"I2hub has, for some reason, been thought to be a safe zone to engage in illegal activity," Sherman said, "and what we wanted to do was puncture that misconception and let people know that when you are on the Internet, there's really no such thing as a safe zone for lawlessness."

Sherman refused to say how the RIAA gained access to the ostensibly private network.

Reaction from University

Associate Dean of Undergraduate Students Hilary Herbold said in April that the University is committed to addressing the problem of music piracy.

"Each of the residential colleges has offered programs on this issue, featuring members of OIT, our own legal counsel, and in some colleges also representatives from the recording industry," she said. "The deans and directors of studies also talk about it in their address to the freshmen each fall."

In announcing the latest round of lawsuits, RIAA president Sherman called on college administrators to address file-sharing on their campuses and encouraged them to explore technical measures such as filtering.

The University is open to the idea of a filtering mechanism, but such a device could not interfere with legitimate Internet activity, Quinones said.

"Generally, we're not aware of any effective technology that is out there that would block someone from sharing copyrighted material but that at the same time would allow legitimate material that would be used for academic work," Quinones said.

MPAA threat

The Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) also took steps recently to discourage file-sharing on campus.

In a letter to President Tilghman dated April 19, MPAA President Dan Glickman expressed concern about illegal movie downloading on the University network and attached a list of 66 IP addresses associated with alleged acts of infringement, according to Quinones.

The letter did not indicate whether the MPAA intends to sue any of the 66 individuals, but the targeted students were notified that any alleged infringement should cease, Quinones said.

At a May meeting of the Council of the Princeton University Community (CPUC), OIT policy adviser Rita Saltz said the movie industry has sent similar infringement warnings — commonly referred to as "takedown notices" — to University administrators for several years.

Recalling her reaction to the news that the MPAA might follow the RIAA in suing students, Saltz said, "My heart and viscera just shrank and chilled."
http://www.dailyprincetonian.com/arc...ws/12998.shtml


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Loud, Proud, Unabridged: It Is Too Reading!
Amy Harmon

JIM HARRIS, a lifelong bookworm, cracked the covers of only four books last year. But he listened to 54, all unabridged. He listened to Harry Potter and "Moby- Dick," Don DeLillo and Stephen King. He listened in the car, eating lunch, doing the dishes, sitting in doctors' offices and climbing the stairs at work.

"I haven't read this much since I was in college," said Mr. Harris, 53, a computer programmer in Memphis. And yes, he does consider it "reading." "I dislike it when I meet people who feel listening is inferior," he said.

Fortunately for Mr. Harris, the ranks of the reading purists are dwindling. Fewer Americans are reading books than a decade ago, according to the National Endowment for the Arts, but almost a third more are listening to them on tapes, CD's and iPods.

For a growing group of devoted listeners, the popularity of audio books is redefining the notion of reading, which for centuries has been centered on the written word. Traditionally, it is also an activity that has required one's full attention.

But audio books, once seen as a kind of oral CliffsNotes for reading lightweights, have seduced members of a literate but busy crowd by allowing them to read while doing something else. Digital audio that can be zapped onto an MP3 player is also luring converts. The smallest iPod, the Shuffle, holds roughly four books; the newest ones include a setting that speeds up the narration without raising the pitch.

"I wish I had had this feature while listening to 'Crime and Punishment,' " said Lee Kyle, 41, a math teacher in Austin, Tex., who now listens in bed instead of reading. It's more relaxing, he said, and he doesn't have to bother his wife with the light.

Audio books, which still represent only about 3 percent of all books sold, do not exactly herald a return to the Homeric tradition. But their growing popularity has sparked debate among readers, writers and cultural critics about the best way to consume literature.

"I think every writer would rather have people read books, committed as we are to the word," said Frank McCourt, who won the Pulitzer Prize for his memoir, "Angela's Ashes." "But I'd rather have them listen to it than not at all."

To make the audio version of his books more tolerable, Mr. McCourt said, he insists on narrating them himself. "Actors are always doing this phony breathing," Mr. McCourt said.

Among the questions facing audio book connoisseurs are: Which is better suited to the format, fiction or nonfiction? Can a bad narrator ruin a great book? If you've listened to a book, have you really "read" it?

Rich Cohen, the author of "Tough Jews," has found short stories are best while walking his dog on the Upper West Side, because of the likelihood of distraction, and the difficulty in rewinding.

"Sometimes your dog will attack another dog, and you're pulled completely out of the book," explained Mr. Cohen, who has experimented with various genres since discovering he could purchase audio books from Apple's online music store.

A book about string theory by the physicist Brian Greene proved entirely unable to hold Mr. Cohen's auditory attention, as did "Hamlet." With "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance," however, he had the multitasking satisfaction of digesting a book he had always been curious about but did not want to devote the time to actually reading.

David Lipsky, another New York writer and frequent dog walker, said he often "shuffles" music on his iPod, and has similarly come to enjoy jumping among chapters of, say, James Joyce, Martin Amis and Al Franken as he circles the block.

Charlton Heston reading "The Snows of Kilimanjaro" proved a dud, even if it was sandwiched between Jeremy Irons reading "Lolita" and Robert Frost reading his own poems. "You keep waiting for him to announce that Kilimanjaro's been taken over by damned dirty talking apes," Mr. Lipsky said. "Now it's hard to read 'Kilimanjaro' without hearing Heston's voice."

The novelist Sue Miller said she prefers Henry James on tape because the narrator has untangled the complex sentences for her. But she found D. H. Lawrence unbearable. His notoriously repetitive prose "doesn't lend itself to an auditory experience," she said.

Some critics are dismayed at the migration to audio books. The virtue of reading, they say, lies in the communion between writer and reader, the ability to pause, to reread a sentence, and yes, read it out loud - to yourself. Listeners are opting for convenience, they say, at the expense of engaging the mind and imagination as only real reading can.

"Deep reading really demands the inner ear as well as the outer ear," said Harold Bloom, the literary critic. "You need the whole cognitive process, that part of you which is open to wisdom. You need the text in front of you."

The comedian Jon Stewart, an author of the mock history textbook "America (The Book)," opens the audio version by lampooning the format. "Welcome, nonreader," he intones. Listeners are advised that the listening experience "should not be considered a replacement for watching television."

Audio book aficionados face disdain from some book lovers, who tend to rhapsodize about the smell and feel of a book in their hands and the pleasure of being immersed in a story without having to worry about the car in the next lane.

Gloria Reiss, 51, of St. Louis, said her officemates correct her when she mentions having read a book.

"They'll say, 'You didn't read it, you just listened to it,' " said Ms. Reiss, who switched to audio when her two jobs and three poodles made it hard to find time to curl up on the couch. Recently a colleague refused her urging to take a Stephanie Plum mystery along on a long drive.

"She goes, 'I like to read my books,' " Ms. Reiss said, "like that makes her better than me."

Most audio book lovers argue that one is not better than the other. Some say it was not until they started listening to books that they realized how much of the language they were skimming over in the books they read on paper. And then there is the sheer pleasure of being read to.

Ms. Reiss's husband, Ken, says he remembers more of books that he hears, perhaps because he's simply wired that way. Levi Wallach, 36, of Vienna, Va., says he's a slow reader, "so it's much more efficient for me to listen while I do other things."

Libraries say the growth in circulation of audio books is outpacing overall circulation. Book clubs are increasingly made up of hybrid listener-readers, and the market for children's audio books is booming. Sales at Audible, the leading provider of digital audio books, surged from $5 million in 2001 to $34 million last year. Half of its subscribers are new to audio books.

Still, a certain stigma lingers. Dan Barber, a chef, said he felt compelled to ask Louis Menand's permission to listen to his book, "The Metaphysical Club," on CD when Mr. Menand dined at his Greenwich Village restaurant, Blue Hill, last month.

Mr. Menand assented, but his dining companion, Adam Gopnik, the New Yorker writer, looked put off, Mr. Barber said. Or maybe Mr. Barber was projecting his own ambivalence about audio, as evidenced by his consumption of Mr. Gopnik's anthology, "Paris to the Moon."

"I read parts of it on tape," Mr. Barber said. "But I also read the whole book - what do you call it? Traditional-style?"

John Hamburg, 34, notes that audio books can be shared in a way that printed ones cannot. Mr. Hamburg and Mr. Barber, high school friends, were both sobbing while listening to "Tuesdays With Morrie" during a drive, Mr. Hamburg said.

Listening to authors read their own memoirs introduces an intimacy that cannot be achieved without the audio, Mr. Hamburg said. He found Bill Clinton's thick autobiography a bit daunting, for instance, but said listening to it "was kind of like being with an old friend."

Mr. Hamburg, a screenwriter, says he limits his audio habit to biography, eschewing fiction out of respect for authors whom he imagines did not intend for their creative work to be read "when you're doing 30 minutes on your elliptical trainer."

But when he came across the audio version of "The Kite Runner" online, it was hard to resist downloading it. The hardcover version of the novel, a coming-of-age story set in Afghanistan, has been sitting unopened on Mr. Hamburg's night table for weeks. It's still there.
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/26/fa...s/26audio.html


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Software Antagonists Square Off In European Parliament
David Lawsky

A proposal to extend patent protection in Europe could threaten the existence of open-source software unless the European Parliament amends it, say advocates of freely distributed programs such as Linux.

However, companies such as Microsoft and Apple Computer argue that they need broader patent protection to prevent open-source companies, which give away their software and make money through service, from effectively expropriating their development costs.

A European Parliament committee will debate the issue on Monday, and vote on it a month later.

European Parliament member Michel Rocard, a former French prime minister heading up review of the software patent directive, wants to protect open-source software by limiting the scope of patent protection.

Like all programs, open-source software must interact with a computer's other software to work, such as a word processor running on Windows.

Writers of free software cannot properly design their programs without information on how propriatory programs interact with other software.

Rocard and other advocates of open-source software argue that coding essential for interoperation needs only copyright protection, while Microsoft and others want patent protection for portions of software used to "talk" to other programs.

A software directive lacking Rocard's amendment could "be the death knell for open source software," said Thomas Vinje of Clifford Chance, who represents a number of software groups. Allies include Oracle and Red Hat , a distributor Linux.

Patent holders can license their software but open source software is distributed and redistributed at no cost, so there is no way to collect licence fees.

"If you allow anyone to get this information for free you have no way of having any kind of licence," says Francisco Mingorance, director of public policy for the Business Software Alliance trade association, which includes Microsoft and Apple.

The inventors "are deprived of their original investment," he said, expropriating their property.

Patent-Worthy Software

Underlying that issue is another which is even knottier -- determining what constitutes a "technical improvement" and therefore merits patent protection.

The software patent measure is designed to help harmonise rules across the EU for "computer- implemented inventions".

Computer-implemented inventions include devices such as DVD players, mobile phones, engine fuel injection and digital cameras, which need software to run.

Invent a clever new way to make digital cameras take better pictures, not obvious to other experts in the field, and your technical improvement is worthy of a patent.

But how does one decide the issue when two pieces of software are involved? Is that pure software? Or a technical improvement to a computer-implemented invention?

Open-source sympathisers want to tie patents to physical "forces of nature" but their opponents prefer an abstract view.

The issue is a live one in the Microsoft antitrust case. The European Commission found the software giant withheld interoperability information to hobble rival makers of server software, favouring Microsoft's own product.

Abstract definitions would put more interoperability information under patent protection.

Some say antitrust cases should not be confused with the broader issues of patents, which are government grants of monopoly for a set period. Clifford Chance's Vinje says making it too easy to get patents will make antitrust enforcement more difficult.

Copyright, used to protect creative works such as films, music, or writing, is granted automatically. It is a narrow right: two people can write different songs about love without infringing copyrights.

But patents require a process to obtain. Those on all sides say big companies with deep pockets can obtain and defend patents better than others in what sometimes become huge court battles.

Mingorance argues patent protection through a harmonised system would make life easier for small companies, because they would not have to defend the same idea in a several countries.

Not everyone on the European Commission agrees with Mingorance. Said one European Commission official:

"Rich companies gobble up the patents. Patent protection is about financial means. Copyright is the true reward for creativity."

The Parliament's Legal Affairs Committee votes June 20 and Parliament in July. Passage also requires member state approval.
http://uk.news.yahoo.com/050522/80/fjj3w.html


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Chirac Urges Yes to EU Charter, Polls Show No
Jon Boyle and Kerstin Gehmlich

French President Jacques Chirac made a final plea to voters on Thursday to back the European Union's constitution as new opinion polls put France on course to reject the charter.

Chirac said the futures of France and Europe were at stake and warned the nation in a televised broadcast not to be tempted to turn Sunday's referendum into a plebiscite on his unpopular government.

In a hint that he could sack his prime minister and shift policy, Chirac promised a "new impetus" to his team.

A French "No" could kill the charter, undermine France's influence in Europe and weaken Chirac two years before the next presidential election.

"Europeans would perceive a rejection of the treaty as a 'No' to Europe," Chirac said in a broadcast that amounted to his last roll of the dice to win over at least 20 percent of voters who are still undecided or refusing to say how they will vote.

"It would open a period of divisions, doubts, uncertainties," he said, sitting at a desk in his Elysee Palace in front of the French and EU flags.

Giving his clearest hint that he might respond to calls to sack Prime Minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin and make policy changes, he said: "During this debate, Europe has not been the only issue. Concerns and expectations have been expressed.

"I am fully aware of this. I will respond by giving a new impetus to our action," he said. He gave no details.

The campaign for the constitution ends at midnight (2200 GMT) on Friday. Two new surveys on Thursday showed French opposition to the treaty had risen to 55 percent. A third put the "No" vote at 54 percent.

The treaty is intended to make decision-making simpler in the bloc following its enlargement to 25 member states last year.

Chirac said there could be no question of renegotiating the charter.

"It's an illusion to believe that Europe would pick up better than ever with another project. Because there is no other project," he said.

Choice For The Future

Thirteen successive polls have put the "No" camp ahead in France. Surveys show rejectionists also clearly ahead in the Netherlands, which votes on the treaty on June 1. The treaty must be adopted by all EU member states to take effect.

Chirac, 72, has put his personal prestige at stake in calling the referendum.

He said the EU constitution would strengthen France's influence in Europe and reinforce the French social model. The EU constitution would help create a European power that could help "humanise globalization," he added.

The president, who has said he will not resign if he loses the referendum, said the ballot should not be used as a vote in favor or against his conservative government.

"It is about your future and that of your children, the future of France and of Europe," he said. "On Sunday, everyone will have a share of the destiny of France in their hands."

Hostility to the charter is strongest among left-wing voters, who have been encouraged by anti-treaty campaigners to reject it and so punish Chirac over high unemployment and his conservative government's cost-cutting reforms.

Treaty opponents say it enshrines economic policies that have failed to stop the loss of jobs to low-wage economies, including countries outside the European Union such as China.

They want a renegotiated treaty that takes better account of social concerns.

Former President Valery Giscard d'Estaing, who led the team that drafted the constitution, said he thought France would approve it because a majority of undecided voters would back it.
http://today.reuters.com/news/newsAr...-FRANCE-DC.XML


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

So Long, Garage Jammers. Nowadays Laptops Rock.
David Carr

Sitting in Bryant Park in Midtown Manhattan last week, Michael Cobden could hardly be blamed for tapping his toe. It was a glorious spring day, and he was playing hooky from his job as a restaurant manager on the Upper West Side. Like a lot of people in the park, Mr. Cobden was enjoying a bit of alfresco media, with a Mac G4 laptop and a set of headphones.

Except Mr. Cobden, 28, was not checking e-mail messages while listening to music, he was creating a pop song called "Bryant Park." In doing so, Mr. Cobden joined millions of people - trained musicians and amateurs alike - who are using powerful laptop tools to produce music that in an earlier age might have wailed out of a garage. "An artist is an artist, even if he is using things he found or stole and arranging them in an artful fashion," he said. "There are many composers who never played an oboe, but they write the music and give it to an orchestra to play." For himself, Mr. Cobden tapped the Mac in front of him lovingly. "I have a computer," he said. (Hear the song he created here.)

"Computers are the new garage," said James Rotondi, the editor of Future Music, a new magazine packaged with enough free software to get any would-be Moby started. "A lot of people who are making music right now have never recorded to tape. The concept is completely foreign to them."

Music recording, an arduous, analog process that has long been the province of musician gearheads and studio savants, is being downsized and democratized by a virtual array of digital sound loops, simulated instruments and the notebook-size means to record them. The growing power of laptop computers and new software means consumers have gone from listening to music at the push of button to creating it with similar ease.

GarageBand, a user-friendly band-in-a-box made by Apple, came preinstalled on 4.5 million Macs sold in the last 18 months. And Mr. Rotondi estimated that hundreds of thousands of copies of Reason, a sound-creation application produced by Propellerhead Software in Stockholm, have been sold, along with many more pirated copies.

Laptop songs are being listened to as well: iCompositions, a Web site for homemade music that is just over a year old, is adding about 36 songs a day to a total of over 11,000 that have been listened to 1.5 million times. It is enough home-brewed music to fill 43,000 iPods to the brim. (MacJams, another online music site, has over 7,500 songs available for the listening.) And several laptop jammers have been signed to major labels on the strength of their digitized output. The line between the music consumer and creator is shrinking to the point where the kid bopping his head on the bus may well be listening to a song he came up with in his bedroom.

"We are in the midst of a true consumer push to create music," said Tim Bajarin, a technology industry analyst with Creative Strategies. "They now have the ability to storyboard a song by dragging and dropping."

The phenomenon appalls many longtime musicians and many of the songs are lame efforts that should remain in the laptop, but there are gorgeous and surprising exceptions. Most of the work seems to fall somewhere in the middle.

Mr. Cobden, who works at Mike's Bistro on West 72nd Street, has created songs with a friend who is a comedy writer and another who is a photographer.

"We get together, we drink and smoke a lot, and then we make music," he said, taking his headphones off to chat. "Everybody sings and contributes, and we end up with a song. It's sort of like an audio photograph of the party."

Although Mr. Cobden is an experienced musician - he plays guitar and was making music long before a studio could be emulated on a laptop - he was more than happy to trade a clutter of equipment for the intimacy and ease of his virtual studio.

"Instead of one band, I can have 10," he said. "Instead of lugging a bunch of equipment to the rehearsal space, I can stay home and make music."

The revolution is still in its nascent stage and has its limits. It is, for instance, much easier to make a synth-based dance track than an off-the-hook rock song, perhaps because there is still no great digital substitute for the bent string of a Fender Stratocaster. But there are people who see value in music that comes out of laptop. "We live in a world of simulation, so no one should be surprised by what is going on," Mr. Rotondi said. "Before, everybody wanted to be a guitar hero. Now they want to be a D.J. or a producer."

A duo from Bellingham, Wash., using mostly free software they found on the Web, produced a record a called "Strange We Should Meet Here." Last year their "band," Idiot Pilot, was signed to Reprise Records. And at the beginning of the month, Trent Reznor, who records as the band Nine Inch Nails, offered a free download of the hit single "The Hand That Feeds" that was broken into multiple tracks, allowing laptop aficionados to mix and mash up their own version of the song.

Mr. Cobden, who has been playing in bands since he was 13, does not see major-label gold when he peers into the Reason 3.0 interface on his desktop, just a way of making music without going through a lot of hoops.

"When musicians get together, there are always a lot of chemistry issues," he said. Using software, if he doesn't like the sound of the bass player, "I just delete him," he added.

Mr. Cobden raced to get a song up and going before he had to go punch in at the restaurant. Though even there, he said, his virtual life as a rock god does not have to end.

"My mom hates my music, but the other night one of the hostesses in the restaurant came in and was rocking out on her iPod and it was one of my songs, which was a big thrill," he said. "Now if I could just get her to throw her panties at me."
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/23/ar...ic/23musi.html


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

China Hires 'Cyber-Agents' To Control Public Opinion On The Internet

The Chinese government has started using "cyber-agents" to spread positive political messages on the Internet and better control public opinion, state media reported.

Several cities have set up special "online propaganda troops" who pose as ordinary Internet users in chatrooms and other cyber-forums as they spread favorable spin for the government, the Southern Weekend newspaper said. One example is Suqian city in eastern Jiangsu province, which set up its own 26-member propaganda force late last month, recruiting mainly among officials with previous experience in public relations, according to the paper. "Chatrooms are centers for public sentiment," said Lu Ruchao, a member of the newly established force. "It's very worthwhile for opinion workers to pay attention to these places." The paper cited an example of how the force works in practice, saying it might react to, say, online criticism of the police force by posting positive views on the law enforcers. "The police is working under the threat of knives and guns, so how can people criticize them," said Lu. "Of course we should step in and turn around public opinion on this issue." Suqian is by no means the only place where such online propaganda warriors have been put to work. The paper said that in Jiangsu province alone, the cities of Nanjing and Wuxi had set up similar groups already last year. And by the end of 2004, a total of 127 officials from all parts of China had received special training in Beijing on how to form and steer public opinion on the Internet, according to the paper. The report may indicate a new chapter has opened in the Chinese government's protracted struggle to come to terms with the Internet. The country is estimated to have a total of about 100 million Internet users, meaning an unprecedented number now has access to a relatively free and unrestricted exchange of news and opinions. Although the government has closed down thousands of cyber-cafes, it has realized that choking the Internet is not the answer, since access to online content also has huge advantages in terms of giving people technical skills. Instead officials are resorting to ever more sophisticated methods of controlling the Internet in subtle but powerful ways, as the establishment of the online propaganda teams suggests.
http://uk.news.yahoo.com/050519/323/fjdun.html


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Korea

Government To Tighten Consumer Privacy
Kim Tong-hyung

The government is drafting new guidelines that ban the use of radio frequency identification (RFID) technology to collect and store information on consumer spending habits.

The Ministry of Information and Communication intends to announce the new guidelines tomorrow, during a public hearing to discuss the issue and ways to implement better privacy mechanisms.

RFID uses a microchip that sends radio waves containing product identification data to an electronic reader.

The technology is designed to improve efficiency in supply-chain management and inventory for companies in the manufacturing and retail sectors, while opening new market opportunities for electronic equipment and semiconductor industries.

Companies such as telecom operators and retailers are expected to be among the businesses most affected by the guidelines.

Electronic tags will be required to hung visibly from items and must be designed to be easily disabled by the consumer after the purchase.

The use of RFID technologies will also be closely controlled, as policymakers are considering completely banning electronic chips from being used to monitor the action of individuals.

"Our guideline was meant as a starting point of debate to address the privacy issue and find better solutions between talks with companies, consumers and media groups. RFID will not realize its business potential and not do anyone good unless the public is comfortable with it," said an official from the ministry's information and communications policy bureau.

The official said that the guideline will not be legally binding at first but will serve as a benchmark when the ministry rewrites the current law to encompass better technology safeguards.

"RFID technology is starting to be introduced commercially but there are currently no laws implemented to control the use of personal information. Right now, there is just so much we could do," said the official.

Last year, the government announced plans to invest 162 billion won through 2010 to support the commercial deployment of RFID technologies in both the public and private sectors.

The government expects the domestic market for RFID will grow to 4 trillion won by 2007 in equipment sales, while generating $760 million in exports.

Some industry watchers have said that the use of RFID could be slower than expected without the implementation of stronger privacy mechanism. Consumer groups and the media have been pressing for government intervention to install safeguards.
http://www.koreaherald.co.kr/SITE/da...0505240030.asp


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Pence Wants Dot-Porn Designation
Elliot Smilowitz

Rep. Mike Pence, R-Ind., thinks one way to keep pornography on the Internet away from children is to segregate it, and he is proposing such sites be confined to a dot- porn designation.

"We've got to be creative within constitutional protections" to prevent minors from accessing pornography, Pence told a recent summit sponsored by the American Decency Association, Kids First Coalition and other family values groups. "The Supreme Court seems more enamored with protecting obscene speech than with protecting everyday citizens."

Rep. Joe Pitts, R-Pa., said even innocuous phrases, such as "baseball" and "Pokemon," turn up pornographic results when searched for in Kazaa and BearShare peer-to-peer programs.

"At any given moment, millions of people are using peer-to-peer technology to move hundreds of millions of products," Pitts said. "We simple do not have the manpower and technology to enforce the laws that we have on the books."

Dan Gluckman, a 20-year-old college student from New York and an avid user of the Internet, said he thought the dot-porn idea was a good solution.

"Right now, it's pretty easy to come across pornographic sites," he said, and noted the now-defunct mislabeled porn Web site WhiteHouse.com. "Sometimes, a simple misspelling of a URL will inadvertently bring you to a pornographic Web site."

Gluckman said while dot-porn would make pornography less accessible to children the flip side is "for users who do want to enjoy pornography, it makes it much easier to find the sites."

Pence sponsored the Truth In Domain Names Act in 2003, which made it a crime for a pornographic Web site to be misrepresented as anything else. "There aught to be a standard of integrity of domain names," Pence said.

Also at the summit, Rep. Katherine Harris, R- Fla., warned against the social power of pornography and called it "the malignant desensitizer that changes a person's perception."

"These monsters that prey upon our children can strike anywhere," she said and added there should be stricter penalties against sexual offenders.

Daniel Weiss, of the group Focus on the Family, said that "lax law enforcement" has allowed pornography to take root with many children. "When pornography becomes a filter through which life is viewed, damage occurs," he said.
http://washingtontimes.com/upi-break...0248-7958r.htm


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

UK

Court Bans Buying Porn Videos Online

Pornographers are breaking the law if they sell adult videos over the Internet or through the mail, the High Court ruled on Monday.

Two pornography companies had argued that a law banning the sale of videos by post was an "unjustified interference with freedom of expression".

But Lord Justice Maurice Kay, upholding a lower court ruling, said it was a legitimate way to help prevent pornography being sold to children.

"We have no doubt that one of the main reasons for the restriction is to ensure that the customer comes face-to-face with the supplier so that there is an opportunity for the supplier to assess the age of the customer," he said.

The restrictions were therefore "lawful, necessary and proportionate" under the Human Rights Act.

The two porn merchants had argued that videos sent out in the post had effectively been purchased from licensed sex shops that dispatched them, but the judges rejected this argument.
http://uk.news.yahoo.com/050523/80/fjlr0.html


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE CRT
WEDNESDAY, MAY 25, 2005 (202) 514-2008
WWW.USDOJ.GOV TDD (202) 514-1888



FEDERAL LAW ENFORCEMENT ANNOUNCES OPERATION D-ELITE,
CRACKDOWN ON P2P PIRACY NETWORK

First Criminal Enforcement Against BitTorrent Network Users



WASHINGTON, D.C. - Acting Assistant Attorney General John C. Richter of the Criminal Division, Homeland Security Assistant Secretary for Immigration and Customs Enforcement Michael J. Garcia, and Assistant Director Louis M. Reigel of the FBI's Cyber Division today announced the first criminal enforcement action targeting individuals committing copyright infringement on peer-to-peer (P2P) networks using cutting edge file-sharing technology known as BitTorrent.

This morning, agents of the FBI and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) executed 10 search warrants across the United States against leading members of a technologically sophisticated P2P network known as Elite Torrents. Employing technology known as BitTorrent, the Elite Torrents network attracted more than 133,000 members and, in the last four months, allegedly facilitated the illegal distribution of more than 17,800 titles-including movies and software-which were downloaded 2.1 million times.

In addition to executing 10 warrants, federal agents also took control of the main server that coordinated all file-sharing activity on the Elite Torrents network. Anyone attempting to log on to Elitetorrents.org today will receive the following message: "This Site Has been Permanently Shut Down by the Federal Bureau of Investigation and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement."

"Our goal is to shut down as much of this illegal operation as quickly as possible to stem the serious financial damage to the victims of this high-tech piracy-the people who labor to produce these copyrighted products," said Acting Assistant Attorney General Richter. "Today's crackdown sends a clear and unmistakable message to anyone involved in the online theft of copyrighted works that they cannot hide behind new technology."

"Internet pirates cost U.S. industry hundreds of billions of dollars in lost revenue every year from the illegal sale of copyrighted goods and new online file-sharing technologies make their job even easier," said Assistant Secretary Garcia. "Through today's landmark enforcement actions, ICE and the FBI have shut down a group of online criminals who were using legitimate technology to create one-stop shopping for the illegal sharing of movies, games, software and music."

"The theft of copyrighted material is far from a victimless crime," said Assistant Director Reigel of the FBI. "When thieves steal this data, they are taking jobs away from hard workers in industry, which adversely impacts the U.S. economy. The FBI remains committed to working with our partners in law enforcement at all levels and private industry to identify and take action against those responsible."

Building on the success of Operation Gridlock, a similar takedown announced by federal law enforcement last August that has already led to the felony convictions of three P2P copyright thieves, Operation D-Elite targeted the administrators and "first providers" or suppliers of copyrighted content to the Elite Torrents network. By utilizing BitTorrent, the newest generation of P2P technology, Elite Torrents members could download even the largest files-such as those associated with movies and software-far faster than was possible using more traditional P2P technology.

The content selection available on the Elite Torrents network was virtually unlimited and often included illegal copies of copyrighted works before they were available in retail stores or movie theatres. For example, the final entry in the Star Wars series, "Episode III: Revenge of the Sith," was available for downloading on the network more than six hours before it was first shown in theatres. In the next 24 hours, it was downloaded more than 10,000 times.

Operation D-Elite is being conducted jointly by ICE and the FBI as part of the Computer And Technology Crime High Tech Response Team (CATCH), a San Diego task force of specially trained prosecutors and law enforcement officers who focus on high-tech crime. Federal and state member agencies of CATCH include the ICE, the FBI, the Department of Justice, the San Diego District Attorney's Office, San Diego Police Department, the San Diego Sheriff's Department, and San Diego County Probation.

Operation D-Elite was coordinated and will be prosecuted by the Justice Department's Computer Crime and Intellectual Property Section, with the assistance and support of Computer Hacking and Intellectual Property (CHIP) coordinators in San Diego and U.S. Attorneys' Offices in Arizona, Illinois, Kansas, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Texas, Virginia and Wisconsin.

The Motion Picture Association of America provided valuable assistance to the investigation.

http://www.fbi.gov/dojpressrel/press...rent052505.htm


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Decriminalise Filesharing For Personal Use?
Dela

It's no secret that the entertainment industry has been fighting a huge battle against online file-sharing of copyrighted music and movies over P2P networks. The entertainment industry is hoping to deter people from sharing copyrighted works by suing those who are caught distributing on P2P networks. It is also relying on support from courts to help them to win their battle but in France, they are being met by some opposition.

The president of the French Magistrates Union has openly begun advocating decriminalising file-sharing of copyrighted works for personal use. "We are in the process of creating a cultural rupture between a younger generation that uses the technologies that companies and societies have made available, such as the iPod, file download software, peer-to-peer networks, etc.," Judge Dominique Barella told Wired. "It's like condemning people for driving too fast after selling them cars that go 250 kmh."

He began his campaign after writing an article in Libération, a French publication, where he explained that lenient rulings by French judges (such as suspended jail time and fines) for individuals who have been caught downloading copyrighted works for personal use was a result of confusion over the definition of the intellectual property protection law. He believes there should be a more appropriate policy adopted in France and in Europe.

His main aim is to protect young people who have become weak targets in the entertainment industries campaign. As you can imagine, the industry is absolutely furious. 20 representatives of France's entertainment expressed their outrage in a letter to the French Minister of Justice Dominique Perben. "We are surprised and shocked that the president of the magistrates union, given the level of influence he has on his (judicial) colleagues, can publish in the press a call to not criminally sanction criminal acts, which contradicts the intentions of government bodies," the letter states.

Barella was not surprised by the letter given the industry's copyright campaign but he believes that futile to criminally prosecute file swappers across Europe accused of trading copyrighted works. "This is a subject that will serve as a source of debate for Europe since … when there is a problem with the application of the penal code on a large scale, the problem must be examined at its source," Barella said. "It is similar to the sociological consequences of the Prohibition period in the U.S. (during the 1920s). Certain laws can have unexpected consequences on society."

He believes the entertainment industry needs to focus more on battling against people who sell pirated works on a large scale than on "a young person who fills up his or her iPod.". "The resources of the police and judges are exhausted by these small cases, and do not take care of the large international (counterfeiting) rings," he added.
http://www.afterdawn.com/news/archive/6461.cfm


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

'Sith' Sharers Not Cutting into Studios' Cash
Jon Newton

Russell Sprague got 130 movies from Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences member Carmine Caridi, who was ordered to pay Warner Bros. a paltry US$300,000 for providing Sprague with the copies. Had someone other than an academy member been caught dishing out 130 Hollywood features, Warner would have demanded millions of dollars in retribution.

Customer service work done right, managed right, and priced right. InternationalStaff.net exports American corporate culture and quality standards in the voice programs, email support, and software projects that we manage overseas. Do what you do best. Let InternationalStaff.net do the rest.

Revenge is sweet.

Record-breaking box-office receipts came in for the opening of the final installment of the "Star Wars" series this past weekend.

Having grossed US$158.5 million from Thursday to Sunday, "Revenge of the Sith" currently stands as online ticket seller Fandango's top-seller for opening weekend sales, according to MarketWatch. And the first two days were Fandango's top-selling 48 hours. Ever.

So where does that leave Dan 'Darth' Glickman, the boss of the movie studio cartel's MPAA (Motion Picture Association of America) who's been screaming about the appearance of "Sith" online?

Inside Job

As everyone except the mainstream media knows, "Sith" showed up on the P2P networks the same day it opened in theaters. But the P2P viewing wasn't due to the efforts of an evil file sharer with Sony's (NYSE: SNE) latest pirate camcorder stashed under his/her grubby rain-coat.

Rather, it was because of yet another Hollywood insider leak -- not that it stopped Glickman from ranting about P2P file sharers, BitTorrent and anything else that came to mind.

Of 285 movies researchers sampled on the P2P networks, 77 percent were leaked by industry insiders, says the 2003 AT&T (NYSE: T) Labs report Analysis of Security Vulnerabilities in the Movie Production and Distribution Process.

Actor and studio owner Mel Gibson knows all about that. His Icon company sued a Hollywood post-production house for the online appearance of his "Passion" movie.

Placing Blame

And Russell Sprague got 130 movies from Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences member Carmine Caridi, who was ordered to pay Warner Bros. a paltry US$300,000 for providing Sprague, who died in an L.A. jail cell, with the copies.

Had someone other than an academy member been caught dishing out 130 Hollywood features, Warner would have demanded millions of dollars in retribution and the case would have been splashed, splashed and splashed again by the world media.

But the Caridi debacle didn't receive anything like the kind of mainstream media exposure it warranted.

Meanwhile, although "Sith" was released officially on Thursday, it was already circulating on the P2P networks by Wednesday night.

Cash-Free

How do we know the leak was down to a Hollywood insider? Because the online version was a work print, not a copy made on a hidden camcorder.

Be that as it may, how much did downloaders pay for their private viewings? Not one red cent. No money changes hands on the P2P networks. Nor did it cost Hollywood anything serious in the way of box office receipts.

So will this now persuade the movie studio cartel to stop its ridiculous practice of suing its audiences and shutting down BiTorrent sites? And will the studios put their own houses in order?

Not a chance.
http://www.crmbuyer.com/story/features/43282.html


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

File Hoarders Get BitTorrent Win
Dana Blankenhorn

BitTorrent -- now trackerless!

Good news (at least in the short term) for file hoarders.

Given that both sides in the Copyright Wars know about language and framing, I'm urging use of this new term for the heavy hobbyist users on peer to peer networks.

Pirates (the copyright industries' term) is false. There is no economic motive behind most file trades. There is no assurance that, if trading ended tomorrow, sales would rise appreciably.
Traders (the term favored by users) isn't correct either. Most traders are asymmetric. Most are downloaders, not uploaders.

I think the word hoarding says more about the motives of the users, and the way toward ending the practice, than anything else. Thanks in part to the industry's rhetoric, and in part to its actions, many lovers of music and other files are afraid they will lose access to the culture they crave. Thus they demand to have physical copies of its artifacts, and grab all they can. It's classic hoarding behavior.

But time is the limit here, not space. You can only listen to one song at a time, watch one movie at a time. It doesn't matter how big your collection is, the only way to get enjoyment out of it is to play the files.

Many hoarders today already "own" more files than they can play in their remaining lifetimes. When you get your arms around this concept, you begin to see how self-defeating hoarding is.

So how can hoarding be stopped?

One step is already being made, unlimited rentals. Economically this is very similar to the concept being pursued in some quarters of taxing the
media. The industry gets regular income and data that can be used to parcel it out.
Tone down the rhetoric. All this talk about an industry "lock-out" of its users (if this keeps up we'll go out of business) is only increasing hoarding.
Engage the market. The movie industry hasn't even begun to do this. BitTorrent has many legal uses, and could easily be used to take a service like NetFlix fully online. But as of now, while there are many non-infringing uses of BitTorrent we're short of economic models for it.

I'm sure you've got some ideas. If you're hoarding files right now what might cause you to stop? What economic models would you accept?

It's time for file peace, and an end to file war, in order to stop the waste of file hoarding.
http://www.corante.com/mooreslore/ar...orrent_win.php

[JackSpratts]

Editor’s Note: A recent advocacy piece in a music industry trade paper took aim at Creative Commons (CC), the alternative-copyright consortium. Here is the original article by Billboard Magazine attorney Susan Butler as distributed by Reuters, followed by two responses from CC. - Jack


Music Biz Wary Of Copyright Sharing Movement
Susan Butler

An innovative approach to sharing and licensing copyrighted material is spreading around the globe, gathering millions of creative works under its umbrella.

The movement, spearheaded by a nonprofit organization called Creative Commons, is little-known in the music industry.

Yet sponsoring groups in 31 countries have adopted the Creative Commons approach. Sponsors in nearly 40 more countries are said to be in the process of launching the project.

For the most part, the various Creative Commons licenses have been applied to academic material and blogs. In many instances, creators permit others to make use of their works

without compensation. In other cases, new works are donated to the public domain.

As Creative Commons chairman and Stanford Law School professor Lawrence Lessig travels the world encouraging international adoption of Creative Commons, the movement has begun to arouse concern in the music business. Some industry leaders say that the group's approach -- applauded by many -- is in effect a Trojan horse that could erode copyright protection or harm unwitting artists.

"My concern is that many who support Creative Commons also support a point of view that would take away people's choices about what to do with their own property," says David Israelite, president/CEO of the National Music Publishers' Assn. and former chairman of the Department of Justice's Intellectual Property Task Force.

Creative Commons dates back to 2001, when a number of figures from the academic world recognized that there was no mechanism in place to inform Internet users how to easily locate copyright owners. Nor was there a way for Web users to determine whether works posted on the Internet -- essays, articles, photographs, poetry, music -- could be used freely as public-domain works or in some ways without the copyright owner's permission.

The group began developing standard licenses that can be linked to works on the Internet, indicating that the copyright owners permit certain uses without compensation. In this way, other creators who want to use or build on the works can do so without tracking down the owners or hiring lawyers to do so, says Massachusetts Institute of Technology computer science professor Hal Abelson, a Creative Commons board member.

While authors were initially licensing blogs, scientific articles and educational materials over the Internet, the Creative Commons has more recently been encouraging the music community to support the project online and offline.

At least one widely circulated CD has been developed using Creative Commons licenses. Wired magazine approached artists to provide music under the Creative Commons licenses for a CD distributed with its November 2004 issue. Sixteen agreed, including David Byrne, Beastie Boys and Chuck D.

Hilary Rosen, former chairman/CEO of the Recording Industry Assn. of America, also has expressed support for the Creative Commons in speeches and in an article in Wired. (Lessig is a contributing editor to the magazine.)

Despite such displays of support, critics like the NMPA's Israelite believe Creative Commons intends to undermine copyright protection through its activities in courts and legislatures.

"Lessig and his followers advocate a shorter copyright term," says attorney Michael Sukin, a founding member of the International Assn. of Entertainment Lawyers.

The Creative Commons was founded on the ideas of Eric Eldred, an Internet publisher who filed a court challenge to federal legislation that extended U.S. copyright protection for an additional 20 years. Lessig argued the case for Eldred before the Supreme Court, which upheld the law.

"I think the biggest issue that Creative Commons really tries to point to is the fact that for the sake of a very small percentage of works that do have high value, we're locking up everything else so our intellectual soil becomes nutrient-poor," says Tim O'Reilly, who publishes technology books and supports the group.

While Lessig and other board members acknowledge that they support a shorter copyright term, they say Creative Commons is separate from their activities as individuals.

MIT's Abelson says his point of view comes from his science background. "If the term in 1920 was what it is today, we would just now be freeing up the work that discovered that there were atoms. I don't want to speak for artists, but for the progress of science it just scares me that you lock this stuff up for 100 years."

Abelson adds, "We're not like a lobbying organization. We've been trying pretty hard for Creative Commons not to get involved in that kind of stuff."

Yet Israelite and Sukin say that it is hard to separate the individuals from the organization.

This blurring was evident when RIAA and Motion Picture Assn. of America members, music publishers and songwriters argued the Grokster case before the Supreme Court, seeking to reverse the federal appellate decision that held peer-to-peer operators Grokster and StreamCast not liable for their users' infringements of copyrighted music.

Fifty-five amicus (friend of the court) briefs were filed, many by professors. Rather than filing a brief as a professor, Lessig submitted one on behalf of Creative Commons.

The brief, which proposed affirming the appellate decision against RIAA and MPAA members, described the Creative Commons as a group with an award-winning project endorsed by many, including ex-RIAA chief Rosen and former MPAA leader Jack Valenti. It also listed as supporters the artists whose music was on the Wired CD.

Although Rosen supports the Creative Commons approach to licensing, she tells Billboard that she was not aware her name was used in the brief.

"Neither Jack nor I endorsed the Creative Commons brief before the Supreme Court," she says. "Obviously I don't approve, obviously I don't think it's appropriate, and I certainly don't endorse their view in" the Grokster case.

Israelite says that often when people give away their own property under a Creative Commons license, "it is really an argument why others should be forced to give away their property."

Still, many industry experts praise the group for creating its licensing mechanism.

"If a creator wants to dedicate his work to the world or wants to allow others to use it with the promise to credit the author, there has been no mechanism in place to provide public notice," RIAA president Cary Sherman says. "The Commons approach would basically solve this problem."

Lessig says, "We thought it was critical to build standards that become interchangeable and understandable across jurisdictions."

On its Web site, Creative Commons offers six basic licenses, eight special licenses and a core licensing engine.

The basic license deals have various options for authors, including offering works for mere attribution (credit), restricting use to noncommercial purposes, permitting adaptations (derivative use) and requiring users to "share alike" if they make changes.

The special licenses cover music sampling, music sharing and contributing works to the public domain.

Each license comes in three versions, which Lessig describes as the human-readable form in language understandable to lay persons; the lawyer-readable license in language for courts to enforce in each jurisdiction; and the machine-readable form that embeds information for Internet search engines.

Critics of Creative Commons say that offering these licenses to artists without encouraging them to get legal advice or explaining risks is dangerous.

Andy Fraser hates to think what his fate might have been had Creative Commons existed when he was a young artist.

Fraser entered the business in 1968 at age 15, when he became the bass player/co-songwriter for British rock/blues band Free. Two years later, while in the dressing room after a bad gig, he started bopping around telling his bandmates, "It's all right now." After about 10 minutes a song was born, with co-writer/singer Paul Rodgers contributing lyrics.

"All Right Now," released on Free's third album, "Fire and Water," became one of the most-performed songs in performinbg rights organization Broadcast Music Inc.'s repertoire of about 4.5 million works. The song has been played nearly 3 million times -- the equivalent of repeatedly playing it for more than 28 years.

While Fraser has written more than 150 songs, continuing royalties from radio and TV use of two compositions -- "All Right Now" and "Every Kinda People" (first recorded by Robert Palmer) -- generate most of his income. Had he given up his rights to those early hits, he would not have the resources to cover his treatment for AIDS.

Such a decision might have been tragic. Fraser says he has been kept alive by medication, radiation therapy and experimental medical treatments -- largely paid for with his song royalties.

"No one should let artists give up their rights," he says.
http://today.reuters.com/news/newsAr...PYRIGHT-DC.XML



Worst "Journalism" Ever.
Matthew Haughey

This Reuters article on critics of Creative Commons is just about the most ridiculous article I've seen about CC to date. It reads as if the president of the National Music Publisher's Association knew the author and basically wanted to get a anti-CC article out there. It contains a few quotes from CC board members and CC supporters (including Hilary Rosen and the current RIAA president) but generally lets the songwriter representitive dub the movement a "trojan horse" and claims that when you license a song under CC "it is really an argument why others should be forced to give away their property." (my emphasis) Then the article confounds the Eldred case into Creative Commons because Lessig is behind both but the real gem is at the end.

They cover one songwriter that found success. Nevermind that Tim O'Reilly's quote in the same article explains how 1 in a million songs are successfull and that CC exists for letting the other 99.999% of people that didn't hit it big share their works with the world. In a wonderful bit of journalistic gymnastics they mention how this successful songwriter has contracted the AIDS virus, and bring it all back to Creative Commons. I quote from the article:

Had he given up his rights to those early hits, he would not have the resources to cover his treatment for AIDS.

Such a decision might have been tragic. Fraser says he has been kept alive by medication, radiation therapy and experimental medical treatments -- largely paid for with his song royalties.

"No one should let artists give up their rights," he says.

That's right, you just read a Reuters article try to make the claim that Creative Commons can kill those living with AIDS.

So to recap, the only legitimate point made in the article is that a musician may not know what rights they are giving away, and I'll grant you that it may be true, provided an artist ignored the page explaining the licenses and the page explaining the rights in all licenses. While the article contains comments supportive of Creative Commons from music industry giants like the RIAA, the article's author turns some minor confusion about a name appearing in an amicus brief into unwanted support for a supreme court case that is somehow CC's fault and the author lets the songwriter association president call the movement names, construe that it is unfair to artists, and finally, twist some emotion out of a ailing songwriter, equating a CC license with a death sentence.

I'm sure Reuters will be getting a Pulitzer for this bit of drivel.

update: Lessig has more to say and mentions previous (and similar) articles from the same Billboard Magazine reporter. Also, it occurred to me that the ailing songwriter in the article could still be alive and paying for medications through royalites, if he chose a non-commercial Creative Commons license for his song. As they say, share your music and good things often follow.
http://a.wholelottanothing.org/2005/...journalis.html



First We're A "Virus," Now We Kill People With AIDS
Lawrence Lessig

Matt's angry about an article in Billboard that is being distributed by Reuters. The article deserves some context.

Last December, Billboard published a piece by its legal affairs editor, Susan Butler. The piece opened with a quote from Michael Sukin, "founding member of the International Association of Entertainment Lawyers," saying that Creative Commons had emerged as a "serious threat to the entertainment industry." The piece then asserted:

The nonprofit organization--also known as Creative Commons--urges creators to give up their copyright protection--which lasts for the life of the author plus 70 years under U.S. law--by selling their copyrights to the commons for $1,according to its Web site. In return, the authors receive certain rights that they can use for either 14 or 28 years, or they can donate all rights to the pubic domain for everyone to use.

The "movement," Sukin stated, had "spread like a virus" and "U.S. copyright income" could be at risk.

The hyperbole from Mr. Sukin -- a lawyer -- was funny. But what struck me in the article was the assertion by Butler that "Creative Commons urges creators to give up their copyright protection" in exchange for $1. I couldn't begin to understand what she was talking about. Obviously, our licenses enable artists to choose to waive certain rights -- while retaining others. (Remember: "Some Rights Reserved"). But they are licenses of a copyright; they couldn't function if you had "give[n] up" copyright protection. The vast majority of creators adopting Creative Commons licenses keep commercial rights, while giving away noncommercial rights (2/3ds). It's hard to see how waiving noncommercial rights would do anything to "U.S. copyright income."

So I contacted Butler to ask her what she was talking about. We connected over email, and she said she'd check into it. She then pointed me to the Founders' Copyright, which indeed does offer $1 in exchange for someone limiting a copyright to 14, or 28 years. I had frankly forgotten about the way the Founders' Copyright functioned, mainly because nothing we do today has anything to do with that license, as Evan pointed out in his birthday wish for the still-born license. As far as I knew at that point, precisely 3 works have been licensed under this license (my own books). O'Reilly is processing more. But to describe the work of Creative Commons as this is either to listen to Mr. Sukin without checking the facts, or not to care about the facts. You could say, for example, that Billboard is a publication that publishes letters to the editor, and that would technically be true. But obviously, though technically true, it would be a totally false characterization of what Billboard is.

I therefore suggested the story should be corrected. It wasn't. Instead, a month or so ago, we learned that the same writer had been assigned to write an "indepth" story about Creative Commons. I thought the idea a bit odd. I raised its oddness to the magazine. According to their standards of truth, what Susan Butler had published before was correct. They were confident that she would produce the same again.

That, of course, was my fear as well.

The Billboard piece is beautifully written -- indeed, it has a cadence to it that is masterful. There's a tide -- in and out -- of good, crested with criticism, all building to the part that got Matt so angry -- as he put it, the suggestion that Creative Commons "kills people with AIDS."

Yet it's very interesting to map the structure of the argument. The piece has some quotes from me, and Hal Abelson in support. It quotes two people opposed. One of the two is Mr. Sukin again. The other is David Israelite, president of the National Music Publishers' Association.

Israelite doesn't actually say any about us. He's worried about the people we hang around with. As he says,

"My concern is that many who support Creative Commons also support a point of view that would take away people's choices about what to do with their own property."

And later, Butler reports,

"Israelite says that often when people give away their own property under a Creative Commons license, 'it is really an argument why others should be forced to give away their property.'"

I love it when people tell me what my argument "really" is. The whole premise of Creative Commons is that artists choose. We give licenses to creators. How exactly empowering creators is "really an argument why others should be forced to give away their property" is bizarre to me. By this reasoning, when Bill Gates give $20,000,000,000 to help poor people around the world, that's an argument for socialism.

Sukin's criticism is even more bizarre. Butler quotes him as saying "Lessig and his followers advocate a shorter copyright term." The link this point has to Creative Commons is left obscure by the author. The RIAA believes it is appropriate to sue kids for downloading music. They're supporters of Creative Commons. Does it follow that Creative Commons supports suing kids for downloading music? There are a wide range of supporters of Creative Commons, many of whom disagree about many matters fundamental. I should think that's a virtue of Creative Commons, not a vice.

There is one part to the piece, however, that does bothered. Not the dramatic flair at the end (this is Hollywood, remember. What would a story be without a villain killing a victim with AIDS in the end). The extraordinary part to me was the following:

The brief, which proposed affirming the appellate decision against RIAA and MPAA members, described the Creative Commons as a group with an award-winning project endorsed by many, including ex-RIAA chief Rosen and former MPAA leader Jack Valenti. It also listed as supporters the artists whose music was on the Wired CD.

The piece then goes on to describe an apparent conversation that Butler had with Rosen, in which Rosen apparently objected to how she understood how her name was used. The reporter thus becomes actor, stirring up a controversy about whether the target of her piece has misbehaved.

Here's the brief. As you'll see when you read it, we mention Rosen and Valenti in the section titled "Interest of Amicus" -- a part of an Amicus brief which explains who the organization filing the brief is. What we say is this:

"The project has been endorsed by former MPAA president Jack Valenti, and by former president of the RIAA Hilary Rosen."

No where in the brief do we suggest that Rosen or Valenti supported the argument we make in the brief. What we assert is that they endorsed the "project" -- which they have.

More extraordinary is the statement about the artists who were on the Wired CD. Again, here's what Butler wrote:

"[The brief] also listed as supporters the artists whose music was on the Wired CD."

Here's what the brief says:

"As part of a feature about Creative Commons, Wired magazine has released a CD with 16 tracks licensed under a Creative Commons license by artists including, among others, the Beastie Boys, David Byrne, Gilberto Gil, Chuck D, and Le Tigre."

Notice, the brief says nothing about the artists being "supporters" of Creative Commons. It simply lists who was on the CD. Butler's statement -- that we listed them "as supporters" -- is just false.

Now you might think, well, cut her a break. She's just a journalist writing for Billboard. But again and again, Butler reminded me that she had in fact been a practicing lawyer. Her editors indicated the same. So I don't quite know how to understand a lawyer who can't read an amicus brief -- or for that matter, a lawyer who doesn't know the difference between putting something "into the public domain" and licensing it. These could well just be mistakes, of course. But they are surprising from someone with the experience she has.

The fair criticism of the article is that we don't do enough to warn people, or to push them to consult a lawyer first. That's a good point, and we're thinking about ways to enable referrals, and to do more than we already do to educate. Help here would be greatly appreciated.

It's also true, as Butler says, that there's a "blurring" between Creative Commons and the views of people like me (though my view of course is far from the view criticized by Israelite). I'd love -- really really love -- to find someone to replace me who might erase such a blur. I am not Creative Commons. It was not my idea. I am just devoting as much time as I can to push its message, and the tools it enables. I'd be very happy to find a way to spend less.

My favorite part of the article is the quote from Cary Sherman at the RIAA. God bless that man. As he is quoted,

"If a creator wants to dedicate his work to the world or wants to allow others to use it with the promise to credit the author, there has been no mechanism in place to provide public notice," RIAA president Cary Sherman says. "The Commons approach would basically solve this problem."

Exactly right. We're giving artists free tools. What they do with them is their choice. There are many who believe, as Butler quotes Andy Fraser to say, that "[n]o one should let artists give up their rights." "Let." Read that word again: "let."

In my view, it is the artists who have the rights. And no one should take the role of deciding what we "let" artists do. Neither should anyone interfere with artists doing what they think best. Of course, and again, education is key. No one should be tricked. No one should waive rights without understanding what their doing. But neither should anyone think themselves entitled to wage war against artists doing what artists choose. Or if they do want to wage such a war, then let's at least be open about the paternalism in the position. If we're not going to "let" artists select Creative Commons licenses, then are we going to "let" them sign recording deals? Because I promise you this: there are many many more artists who are upset with their recording deals than with the spread they've enabled using Creative Commons licenses.

Butler's first article stated that Mr. Sukin is "lobbying" against Creative Commons. It's time we have an open conversation, Mr. Sukin. I challenge you to the sort of duel decent people engage: a debate. Let's let both sides be heard, and let's then "let" the artists decide.
http://www.lessig.org/blog/archives/002903.shtml


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Women Take Center Stage In Brazil's Funk World
Adriana Garcia

A female sexual revolution driven by a thumping bass and racy lyrics is shaking Rio de Janeiro's slums.

Poor women are quitting their jobs as maids and gas station attendants to become singers of Funk Carioca, a musical style born in the tough "favelas" or slums of the famed

Brazilian seaside city.

Known as Masters of Ceremony, or MCs, they draw huge crowds to hear them sing raunchy songs about casual sex. And their earnings have given them the financial independence to make their own demands -- in bed or out.

"Women got into Funk Carioca as dancers, but they refused to stay there as ornaments," says filmmaker Denise Garcia, who has made a documentary about the MCs called "I'm Ugly but Trendy."

The phrase is a mantra of funk diva Tati Quebra-Barraco (Tati Home-Wrecker), the movement's most prominent singer.

Aged 25 and married with three children, Tati lives in City of God, the poor neighborhood where the Oscar-nominated movie of the same name was set.

Her lyrics describe almost all the positions in the Kama Sutra, the ancient Indian book of love.

They include such suggestive lines like "I don't like small lollipops" or "Call me your kitty and I will go woof, woof."

Unattractive and overweight as a teen-ager, Tati said she used explicit sexual overtures to attract men's attention.

"Being neither beautiful nor thin, when I was a teen-ager I could not find a boyfriend," she says.

"But after I started singing these things, they got better," she says, smiling and showing off a slim profile crafted with recent plastic surgery.

She is also an example of economic success for the women of her community, where there are more than 2,000 bondes, or funk groups. As the most prominent of the funkeiras, Tati can make up to 5,000 reais ($2,000) for a show, whereas other lesser known singers get from 100 reais to 500 reais ($40 to $200) per concert.

Brazilian funk was inspired by Miami Bass, the style of hip hop extolling the virtues and vices of sex with repetitive choruses and high speed beats made famous in the United States by groups like 2 Live Crew and 69 Boyz.

It was modified in Brazil with a stronger drumbeat called tamborzao and double-entendre lyrics typical of other genres of Brazilian popular music.

In hillside slums overlooking Rio's beaches, the funk parties draw more than a million people during weekends, says Silvio Essinger, author of a new book on Rio funk.

"This is the real Rio; this is how young people have fun. It's not samba for the older generation," he said.

Funk has other subgenres besides the sexually explicit, he said, including one that praises the gangs that rule the favelas.

The movement's main ambassador, DJ Malboro, has performed at New York's Summerstage Festival and Barcelona's electronic music festival Sonar. His daily radio show, where he plays tamer versions of erotic funk, is hugely popular.

Fame And Freedom

Singing offers the women a glamour profession in poor communities with few idols.

"Nowadays women make their own money, so they don't feel bad about themselves. They work and they have their children. And when you sing or dance you also have a name," said MC Valesca dos Santos, 26, from the group Gaiola das Popozudas, or Cage of the Big Butts.

A woman MC can easily get 10 times more money than working a regular job as a maid, for example, which has a salary of about $150 a month.

Tati Quebra-Barraco now performs outside the slums, sometimes for rich people at the legendary Copacabana Palace Hotel or nightclubs in Sao Paulo. She has more than 200 pairs of expensive Gang jeans, a must-have in the funk world because of their butt-lifting tight cut and lycra.

Most of the "funkeiras" need to perform several times a night to make good money. Their managers drive them in vans from one slum to another all night long. There are plenty of venues as Rio has more than 600 slums among its 6 million inhabitants.

Tramps Versus Faithful Wives

The latest craze in the funk movement pits "tramps" against "faithful wives" -- a rivalry sparked by a male singer whose mistress betrayed him to his girlfriend.

The vocalist, from Bonde dos Magrinhos, then wrote a song calling the mistress "nothing more than a late night snack."

For MC Nem, or Alessandra da Silva Carlos, 19, it was a call for war. "If you think we are a snack, remember we eat you too," she now sings in defense of extracurricular girlfriends.

However, if MCs want to go beyond their communities, they have to play down the sexy lyrics. This means recording a CD and having a song played on DJ Malboro's radio show, which can make the link to popular TV shows and mainstream media recognition.
http://today.reuters.com/news/newsAr...IL-FUNK-DC.XML



~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Studios Seek Revenge As File Sharers Beat 'Sith' To Screen
Andrew Kantor

"Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith" hit the theaters last Friday. And at about the same time pirated versions were already available online. (They were also available on street corners in your nearest big city, but that's not nearly as interesting.)

You probably heard about that already.

In related news, Wal-Mart decided to get out of the DVD-by-mail rental business, giving its customers over to industry pioneer Netflix. Blockbuster, which now offers a similar service, is also trying to lure ex-Wal-Mart customers.

Wal-Mart's logic, or at least it's claimed logic, is that it wants to focus on DVD sales rather than rentals.

I would bet that Wal-Mart's move is a little more forward thinking than that. I think the company knows that the future for movie rentals is severely limited. The rise of peer-to-peer (P2P) networks and cheap broadband access send the message loud and clear: The Internet, not plastic disks, is the future of movie rentals.

We're seeing the tip of that iceberg in cable companies' video on demand services. But those are limited compared to what's coming — limited because your only choices are what your cable company provides.

Soon enough you'll be accessing the Internet through your television and grabbing video from more than just Time Warner or Cox or Comcast. You'll have Netflix.com or Blockbuster.com — or maybe the guy next door.

Today's P2P networking is another tip of another iceberg. When you combine broadband, Internet-enabled television, and P2P, you (and Wal-Mart) can see where the future is.

Today "Revenge of the Sith." Tomorrow… well, the world.

The blame game

"Sith" first appeared on the BitTorrent network, the largest P2P networks. A quick check at TorrentSpy, one of the places that catalogs what's available on BitTorrent, showed more than 50,000 people in the process of downloading it.

And that includes not only "Revenge of the Sith," but also "La Venganza de los Sith," and "Die Rache der Sith," for our Spanish- and German-speaking friends.

Amusingly, the Motion Picture Association of America had a press release out on Thursday decrying this fact. I say "amusingly" for two reasons. First, the press release came out before it was common knowledge that the movie was available online — thus the MPAA helped draw attention (and downloaders) to the fact.

Second, there was the release's headline: "BitTorrent Facilitating Illegal File Swapping of Star Wars On Day of Opening." The MPAA is trying to lay the blame for the problem on BitTorrent. But BitTorrent is a protocol — a language, if you will. That's like trying to blame 9/11 on Arabic.

Of course, the MPAA is in the process of trying to shut down file sharing altogether.

ABC News that night apparently had a long, breathless report about the piracy, complete with plenty of MPAA opinion. It's obvious where ABC stands on the issue; it's owned by Disney, which is apparently trying to use its news division to further a political agenda — smart, but still disturbing.

I didn't see the ABC report. I was told about it by Rep. Rick Boucher, D-Virginia, who was somewhat dismayed to see such a one-sided report.

Boucher, realizing that it's Congress's job to represent the people (imagine that!), was quite clear about his stance on file sharing: It's not going anywhere.

The entertainment industry can push all it wants, but P2P networking is simply too good and too important to ban, he said.

"It is impossible for the motion picture industry to legislatively attack file sharing because they don't like the way it's used for movies without attacking it in general," he said. "A broad-fronted attack on file sharing is going to fail."

We have met the enemy and he is us

I also find the MPAA's release funny because of the files that are available on BitTorrent: They're studio screeners — internal. The most popular one has time codes displayed across the top showing hours, minutes, seconds, and frames.

In fact, some of what's available is even labeled as "VHS Screener" or "workprint," neither of which is available to the public. They're used by studios either in making, editing, marketing, or screening the flick.

In other words, the files that are on BitTorrent came from the studios themselves.

I'm not saying that 20th Century Fox did it deliberately. (Although I suppose that isn't incredibly farfetched.) What I'm saying is that it was an inside job.

(The MPAA, by the way, did not return my call for comment.)

The problem of insiders breaking the law and leaking stuff to the Internet is apparently widespread. Just the other day, in an article about the season finale of NCIS, series producer Don Bellisario commented, "Every time we put a script out, the minute it gets to the network and to Paramount Studios, it is online. So someone at our companies, at Paramount or the network, is feeding the information online."

I'm sure the entertainment companies realize this is a problem — that their own people are the ones leaking the content to the Web. Without those leaks, the only way to get these movies out onto the file-sharing networks would be to do the old bring-the-video-camera-into-the-theater trick.

But neither the movie nor the music industry really cares about that. They have convinced themselves that the Internet is evil, that file sharing can somehow be stopped, and they are falling over themselves (made possible by the fact that they are also beside themselves) trying to fight it.

This is a familiar tune. The entertainment industry tried the same end-of-our-industry panic when cassette tapes were first introduced and when the VCR debuted. And both times it shifted its business models, took advantage of the technology, and made billions. (Not to mention the new industries that sprung up — anyone own any Blockbuster stock?)

Boucher is right. It's not going away. P2P is just too good a way of sharing information. It's efficient, it's easy, and it uses the Internet the way it was meant to be used.
http://www.usatoday.com/tech/columni...-sharing_x.htm















Until next week,

- js.














~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Current Week In Review.





Recent WiRs -

May 21st, May 14th, May 7th, April 30th, April 23rd, April 16th

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