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

[JackSpratts]

Founded 2002


































"The Web is like the mythical Hydra. Cut off one of its many heads, and two will grow back in its place." – Kevin Bankston


"File sharing may constitute piracy in some cases, but it is not supposed to be about plagiarism. Attribution costs nothing and giving credit where it is due is still good manners." – Jonathan Bailey


"That story about Canadians planting coins in the pockets of defense contractors will not go away." – Luc Portelance


"This should be the first $4 billion summer. That could fuel the first $10 billion year at the box office. That was unthinkable two years ago, during the [movie] slump of 2005." – Paul Dergarabedian


"A milestone for us would be to print a robot that would get up and walk out of the printer." – Professor Lipson


"They have got a copy of the user database. That is, your username and passwords." – The Pirate Bay


"We would throw something called smile powder on the girls. They would smile. That was beautiful." – Pedro Aponte





































May 12th, 2007







Beam It Down From the Web, Scotty
Saul Hansell

Sometimes a particular piece of plastic is just what you need. You have lost the battery cover to your cellphone, perhaps. Or your daughter needs to have the golden princess doll she saw on television. Now.

In a few years, it will be possible to make these items yourself. You will be able to download three-dimensional plans online, then push Print. Hours later, a solid object will be ready to remove from your printer.

It’s not quite the transporter of “Star Trek,” but it is a step closer.

Three-dimensional printers have been seen in industrial design shops for about a decade. They are used to test part designs for cars, airplanes and other products before they are sent to manufacturing. Once well over $100,000 each, such machines can now be had for $15,000. In the next two years, prices are expected to fall further, putting the printers in reach of small offices and even corner copy stores.

The next frontier will be the home. One company that wants to be the first to deliver a 3-D printer for consumers is Desktop Factory, started by IdeaLab, a technology incubator here. The company will start selling its first printer for $4,995 this year.

Bill Gross, chairman of IdeaLab, says the technology it has developed, which uses a halogen light bulb to melt nylon powder, will allow the price of the printers to fall to $1,000 in four years.

“We are Easy-Bake Ovening a 3-D model,” he said. “The really powerful thing about this idea is that the fundamental engineering allows us to make it for $300 in materials.”

Others are working on the same idea.

“In the future, everyone will have a printer like this at home,” said Hod Lipson, a professor at Cornell University, who has led a project that published a design for a 3-D printer that can be made with about $2,000 in parts. “You can imagine printing a toothbrush, a fork, a shoe. Who knows where it will go from here?”

Three-dimensional printers, often called rapid prototypers, assemble objects out of an array of specks of material, just as traditional printers create images out of dots of ink or toner. They build models in a stack of very thin layers, each created by a liquid or powdered plastic that can be hardened in small spots by precisely applied heat, light or chemicals.

3D Systems, a pioneer in the field, plans to introduce a three-dimensional printer later this year that will sell for $9,900.

“We think we can deliver systems for under $2,000 in three to five years,” said Abe Reichental, the company’s chief executive. “That will open a market of people who are not just engineers — collectors, hobbyists, interior decorators.”

Even at today’s prices, uses for 3-D printers are multiplying.

Colleges and high schools are buying them for design classes. Dental labs are using them to shape crowns and bridges. Doctors print models from CT scans to help plan complex surgery. Architects are printing three-dimensional models of their designs. And the Army Corps of Engineers used the technology to build a topographical map of New Orleans to help plan reconstruction.

Entrepreneurs like Fabjectory are beginning to find interest in 3-D printing among aficionados of online games, like Second Life and World of Warcraft, in which players design their own characters. Electronic Arts hopes to offer a similar service to create three-dimensional models of characters in Spore, a game to be introduced later this year.

Eventually, 3-D design software will let people make sculptures and design housewares at home.

But 3-D printers may be useful for people who do not want to learn how to use such sophisticated programs.

IdeaLab hopes companies will sell three-dimensional designs over the Internet. This would allow people to print out replacements for a dishwasher rack at home. And it would open up new opportunities for toys.

“You could go to Mattel.com, download Barbie, scan your Mom’s head, slap the head on Barbie and print it out,” suggests Joe Shenberger, the director of sales for Desktop Factory. “You could have a true custom one-off toy.”

How many people will want such a thing? It is impossible to say for sure, but some who work with the current crop of 3-D printers say they will be very attractive when the price puts them in reach of home users.

“When laser printers cost more than $5,000, nobody knew they needed desktop publishing,” said A. Michael Berman, chief technology officer for the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, which has a half-dozen 3-D printers for its students to use. “The market for 3-D printing isn’t as big as for laser printers, but I do believe it is huge.”

And Desktop Factory’s version is meant to be compact enough for a home office — 25 by 20 by 20 inches — with a weight of less than 90 pounds.

The origin of Desktop Factory was not so much a desire to print Barbies as a frustration with the Internet. After making a lot of money starting Internet companies like CitySearch, IdeaLab lost even more with flops like eToys. With its investors disgruntled, the company shrank, slowed down and turned its attention from the Web to technologies like solar energy and robotics.

“We traded bits for atoms,” Mr. Gross said.

IdeaLab’s new interest in things required it to build a machine shop, and eventually Mr. Gross bought a 3-D printer from Stratasys. IdeaLab engineers kept the machine going around the clock, experimenting with designs.

Mr. Gross even downloaded a model of an octopus to print out for a project on vertebrates in his daughter’s eighth-grade biology class.

This convinced Mr. Gross that there was a market for 3-D printers, especially if the price could be cut.

At first, the prospects looked difficult. The three leading 3-D printer companies all used different technologies, but none seemed simple enough to be modified for inexpensive home devices. Stratasys makes models out of liquid plastic using a very expensive heated print head that resembles a glue gun. 3D Systems uses lasers to harden liquid polymers. And the Z Corporation, a unit of the private equity group EQT, builds models by squirting a sort of glue over layers of sandlike plaster.

In a brainstorming session, Kevin Hickerson, an IdeaLab engineer, proposed the method the company would ultimately choose. First the machine spreads a powdered plastic over a roller, which is heated to just below the plastic’s melting point. Then a sharply focused beam of light melts dots of plastic on the roller. After the unmelted powder is brushed off, the roller deposits the hot plastic onto a platform. This process is repeated until the object is assembled from the bottom up.

It took IdeaLab a year to prove that the basic approach would work and a second year to develop the technology to get the layers to stick to each other properly. (The model is gently squished, as in a sandwich press, after each layer is applied.) And it has taken two more years to write the required software and to create a working design for the first production model.

IdeaLab has made about 10 of the printers so far. It is preparing to begin production at its combination office and factory in an industrial building half a mile from the company’s headquarters. This summer it will start to deliver its initial test machines to the 200 customers who have agreed to buy them.

Desktop Factory says the machines pose no hazard to users because they use a safe nylon-based material.

Some in the 3-D printer industry say Desktop Factory may have cut too many corners. Its first model makes objects with rather jagged edges because it applies layers that are 0.01 inch thick, two to three times thicker than many other machines’. Moreover, it uses a nylon mixed with aluminum and glass that produces gray objects, with a rather sandy finish that many do not find attractive.

Kathy Lewis, the chief executive of Desktop Factory, said the company saw enormous initial demand among small engineering firms that simply cannot afford the larger printers, as well as high schools and colleges that teach computer-aided design.

To appeal to the home market, she said, the company is trying to develop new materials — a smoother plastic and a very soft, bendable substance suitable for toys.

Much of the research in the field is about how to develop materials of various properties that can be applied in tiny digital specs. Cornell’s 3-D printer, called Fab@Home, is particularly suited to those experiments because it moves a syringe in three dimensions that can be filled with any substance. So far, it has built objects out of silicone, plaster, Cheez Whiz and Play-Doh.

Noy Schaal, a high-school freshman in Louisville, modified the design with a heated syringe to extrude a chocolate bar, decorated with the letters KY for Kentucky. (Koba Industries has started selling kits with all the parts needed to make the Fab@Home design for about $3,000.)

Professor Lipson said researchers are developing ways to use the process to build parts with more complex functions. They have preliminary designs for batteries, sensors, and parts that can bend when electricity is applied.

“A milestone for us would be to print a robot that would get up and walk out of the printer,” Professor Lipson said. “Batteries included.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/07/te...gy/07copy.html





How-To

Make your own 3-D printer. Cheap, and tasty!
http://www.evilmadscientist.com/article.php/candyfab





Australia Hands Over Man to US Courts
Kenneth Nguyen

BEFORE he was extradited to the United States, Hew Griffiths, from Berkeley Vale in NSW, had never even set foot in America. But he had pirated software produced by American companies.

Now, having been given up to the US by former justice minister Chris Ellison, Griffiths, 44, is in a Virginia cell, facing up to 10 years in an American prison after a guilty plea late last month.

Griffiths' case — involving one of the first extraditions for intellectual property crime — has been a triumph for US authorities, demonstrating their ability to enforce US laws protecting US companies against Australians in Australia, with the co-operation of the Australian Government.

"Our agents and prosecutors are working tirelessly to nab intellectual property thieves, even where their crimes transcend international borders," US Attorney Chuck Rosenberg said.

In some corners of the Australian legal community, however, there is concern about Griffiths' case. In a recent article for the Australian Law Journal, NSW Chief Judge in Equity, Peter Young, wrote: "International copyright violations are a great problem. However, there is also the consideration that a country must protect its nationals from being removed from their homeland to a foreign country merely because the commercial interests of that foreign country are claimed to have been affected by the person's behaviour in Australia and the foreign country can exercise influence over Australia."

Griffiths, a Briton, has lived in Australia since the age of seven. From his home base on the central coast of NSW, he served as the leader of a group named Drink Or Die, which "cracked" copy-protected software and media products and distributed them free of cost. Often seen with long hair and bare feet, Griffiths did not make money from his activities, and lived with his father in a modest house.

But Drink or Die's activities did cost American companies money — an estimated $US50 million ($A60 million), if legal sales were substituted for illegal downloads undertaken through Drink or Die. It also raised the ire of US authorities.

In 2003, the US Department of Justice charged Griffiths with violating the copyright laws of the US, and requested his extradition from Australia. Senator Ellison signed a notice for Griffiths' arrest and Australian Federal Police arrested him at his home.

Griffiths fought the prospect of extradition through the courts for three years, in which time he was denied bail and detained in prison. He indicated that he would be willing to plead guilty to a breach of Australian copyright law, which meant he could serve time in Australia.

Last year, Griffiths ran out of avenues for appeal in Australia. His fate lay in the hands of Senator Ellison, who had the power to refuse Griffiths' extradition. But in December, Senator Ellison issued a warrant for extradition — a decision welcomed by the US Government. Griffiths' extradition in February is believed to be the first out of Australia for a breach of intellectual property law.

"This extradition represents the (US) Department of Justice's commitment to protect intellectual property rights from those who violate our laws from the other side of the globe," US Assistant Attorney-General Alice Fisher said.

But Justice Young described as "bizarre" the fact that "people are being extradited to the US to face criminal charges when they have never been to the US and the alleged act occurred wholly outside the US".

Griffiths appears to have been singled out by US authorities. British-based members of Drink or Die were reportedly tried in Britain. Last month, in news that slipped the local media's radar, Hew Griffiths pleaded guilty in a US District Court in Alexandria, Virginia, to criminal copyright infringement offences. According to US authorities, Griffiths admitted to overseeing all the illegal operations of the now-disbanded Drink Or Die.

On top of a possible 10-year jail term, Griffiths could be fined $US500,000. (By way of comparison, the average sentence for rape in Victoria is six years and 10 months.)

Any Australian who has pirated software worth more than $US1000 could be subject to the same extradition process as Griffiths was. "Should not the Commonwealth Parliament do more to protect Australians from this procedure?" Justice Young asked in his article. Others, however, argue that extradition is necessary to prevent internet crimes that transcend borders.

Griffiths will be sentenced on June 22.
http://www.theage.com.au/articles/20...90140855.html#





CamShaft

Canadins Plan New Movie Piracy Law
Janice Tibbetts

In response to lobbying from Hollywood, the federal government plans to introduce legislation this spring that would make it a crime to use handheld cameras to copy movies in theatres, CanWest News Service has learned.

Pressure from the film industry has been mounting for months, culminating this week with Warner Bros. film studio announcing it will cancel its sneak preview screenings in Canada, starting with this summer's releases of Ocean's Thirteen and the next Harry Potter film.

The Conservative government, which until recently was cool to the idea of a Criminal Code crackdown, now hopes to move a bill quickly through the parliamentary process, a government insider said.

The film industry alleges that movie piracy is rampant in Canada because there are no sanctions unless it can be proved that a movie was surreptitiously recorded for commercial distribution. The maximum penalty under the federal Copyright Act is a $1-million fine and five years in jail.

Hollywood studios assert that Canada, because of lax laws, has become a major source of pirated movies worldwide, alongside China and Russia.

A Warner Bros. spokesman, who declined to give his name, said that in the past 18 months, 70 per cent of the studio's bootlegged movies originated in Canada. The problem, he added, has escalated since 2005 when the United States passed a federal law banning filming in theatres.

"The problem with the (Canadian) law as it stands is that if someone is caught there are no enforceable penalties because you have to prove commercial distribution," the spokesman said yesterday.

The studio will rethink its cancellation of early promotional screening and "sneak peaks" if the federal government comes up with a new law, he added.

But Michael Geist, a University of Ottawa law professor specializing in copyright and the Internet, says he is not convinced by Hollywood's claims that Canada is a leading source of bootlegged movies, particularly since the industry's statistics are all over the map.

"One would hope that government policy would be dictated by facts rather than by lobbying," said Mr. Geist. "We've got all these numbers out there about Canada being this piracy haven and we've never had any sort of independent, verifiable data to support that."

According to the Motion Picture Association of America, for instance, the United States is still the top source of pirated movies. "The notion that somehow stepping up the penalties against camcording will solve this issue is completely undermined by the experience in the United States, where there are laws, but the U.S. is the largest source of camcorded movies in the world and it is also experiencing a proliferation," Mr. Geist said.

The pending bill appears to be a change of heart for the Conservatives. Justice Minister Rob Nicholson said in an interview three months ago that while he was willing to look at proposals, he already had a lot on his plate because of the Conservative government's lengthy law-and-order agenda.

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

But the industry's lobbying efforts appear to be on the verge of paying off.

Doug Frith, a former Liberal cabinet minister who is now president of the Canadian Motion Picture Distributors Association -- Hollywood's voice in Canada -- was in Ottawa yesterday to meet with government representatives. He was, however, not available for comment to the media.

Heritage Minister Bev Oda released a statement this week that she and Mr. Nicholson are working on a plan to tackle piracy, but she did not mention the pending Criminal Code proposal.
http://www.canada.com/ottawacitizen/...a-1bdd7dee212c





The P2P Mistake at Ohio University
Ashwin Navin

Ohio University recently informed students that the use of peer-to-peer technology has been banned from the campus computer network. The reasons cited range from network congestion to malicious software to piracy.

While the university acknowledges that there are legitimate uses of P2P technologies, the blanket ban on the technology stands.

By instituting this ban, Ohio University has demonstrated a serious lack of understanding of P2P technology's value and role on the Internet. Furthermore, the school has closed its doors to innovation and shirked its responsibilities as an educational institution.

P2P is still a tremendously misunderstood and underestimated technology. It is most commonly associated with file sharing, which is only one application of P2P technology. It has been applied in many compelling ways--as a mechanism to make voice calls over the Internet (think Skype), to legally enjoy popular TV shows when on the go or away from a TV, and to solve problems that enterprises face in their computer networks.

The best way to alleviate the stress on the central backbone of the Internet is to decentralize the onus of distribution to a local level using P2P.

Many artists, along with nonprofit and budget-conscious organizations, depend a great deal on P2P to reduce the costs of publication on the Internet. A blanket ban, then, will cripple the basic Internet experience for the very students and organizations that need it most. P2P technologies like BitTorrent are being used by independent software developers, entities like NASA and PBS, and countless musicians and filmmakers to move large files faster and more efficiently around the Web. On the other end of the publishing spectrum, major Hollywood studios like our partners 20th Century Fox, MTV Networks, Paramount Pictures, MGM and Warner Bros. have made their content available legally via P2P technology.

A P2P fix for what ails the Internet

What Ohio University and others fail to realize is that within P2P lies a much-needed fix for the Internet itself. The way we use the Internet today--to stream YouTube videos, to make Voice over IP calls, or to download software and video games--is actually taxing the capacity of our networks and servers beyond their design. If applied intelligently, P2P can provide more capacity to congested networks by harnessing abundant and unused computing capacity and bandwidth we have in our own PCs. If other institutions followed in the footsteps of Ohio University--or worse, if P2P technology were banned completely--the traffic jam on the Internet will actually worsen.

Given my position at BitTorrent, I confess I have a vested interest in building a successful and robust future for P2P architectures; however, this vested opinion is shared by many others. According to a recent study by Deloitte, experts state that video traffic alone is stretching the Internet to its limits and that the current growth rate will lead to serious congestion problems.

If P2P is like a hybrid car, BitTorrent is the Toyota Prius.

P2P can help. (One of the original designers of the Internet, Vint Cerf, also agrees with us.) The best way to alleviate the stress on the central backbone of the Internet is to decentralize the onus of distribution to a local level using P2P, and specifically with a BitTorrent-like architecture. BitTorrent does one thing and one thing only: it reduces, not replaces, the dependency on a central Web server by accumulating all of the available bandwidth and computing capacity that lives on the user's PC. As a result, a Web site and the Internet can run more efficiently. If P2P is like a hybrid car, BitTorrent is the Toyota Prius. Although it doesn't eliminate the need for gasoline (that is, central Web servers), BitTorrent can often provide more than 1,000 times the "fuel efficiency" relative to the old-fashioned way of driving the Internet, which has been dependent on a lot of central resources.

The smart money is betting on P2P. Companies that offer traditional, centralized Internet infrastructure are increasingly adopting P2P to tap its efficiency when managing the delivery of large, popular files that strain central servers. For example, BitTorrent technology is a natural addition to the content delivery market--we are currently in trials with beta customers. Industry heavyweights are also getting in on the action: Akamai Technologies last month purchased a P2P company called Red Swoosh, and VeriSign has scooped up an early P2P developer called Kontiki.

We come in peace. BitTorrent, the company, does not support piracy. In fact, piracy is our biggest competitor and the most significant challenge to making our company profitable.

That said, the potential for tech-aided piracy begs a few fundamental questions. Why aren't similarly broad actions being taken to block other technologies that can be used to transfer and share copyrighted material (such as newsgroups, FTP, IM and e-mail--along with photocopiers, printers and CD burners)? Can the techniques implemented to manage the abuses of other technologies be applied to P2P? Why isn't Ohio University working with P2P industry leaders to find productive solutions, instead of copping out with unilateral bans?

And why are university policy makers not raising awareness for the legal services to rent or purchase content legally? More effectively, why doesn't the campus reply to industry pressure with a plea for steep college discounts and more aggressive marketing support for legal download services like iTunes and the BitTorrent Entertainment Network?

This ban will have a devastating affect on Ohio University's ambitions in computer science, engineering and IT.

Ohio University has a responsibility to its community that is clearly undercut by this ban. Experimentation and adoption of any new technology undoubtedly opens the door to unforeseen risks. But we have the simultaneous obligation to monitor and manage any new risks that surface and apply ingenuity to address them. American universities bear the absolute obligation to lead the world with their openness to new ideas wherever they originate.

By applying a short-sighted, arbitrary ban on a technology with so many redeeming uses, Ohio University has deprived its students, faculty and staff of a powerful tool, as well as censored a treasure trove of information and entertainment that is not available through any means other than P2P. It has created an environment that doesn't prepare its people for the "real world" where P2P technologies are being adopted in powerful, constructive ways. Worse yet, the university's administration has set a terrible precedent for its staff on the desirability of seeking creative ways to support new technologies.

My prediction is that this ban will have a devastating effect on Ohio University's ambitions in computer science, engineering and IT, particularly as most of the country's leading engineering schools are embracing innovative ways to manage P2P traffic. The ban could even hurt general enrollment for the school. Who wants to spend what could be their most formative years in an environment that seeks to stunt creativity and innovation? It's antithetical to what we, as students and parents, want from higher education.

If you're an Ohio University student, you should follow the instructions in the dean's note. Contact the IT service desk to get an exemption and exercise it. Download a photo from space for a term paper from NASA's Visible Earth series. Or download some of the thousands of legal movies, TV shows and music at the BitTorrent Entertainment Network. Or reduce the cost of servers for your school by "torrenting" the documents on your campus Web server--it's as simple as 1-2-3.

P2P isn't the enemy. Narrow-minded policy that thwarts innovation is.
http://news.com.com/The+P2P+mistake+...3-6181676.html





Record Shops: Used CDs? Ihre Papieren, Bitte!
Ken Fisher

There are a few things lawmakers have decided really ought to be handled with the "care and oversight" that only the government can provide: e.g., tax collection, radioactive materials, biohazards, guns, and CDs. CDs? No, I'm not talking about financial Certificates of Deposit, though that might make more sense. I'm talking about Compact Discs.

New "pawn shop" laws are springing up across the United States that will make selling your used CDs at the local record shop something akin to getting arrested. No, you won't spend any time in jail, but you'll certainly feel like a criminal once the local record shop makes copies of all of your identifying information and even collects your fingerprints. Such is the state of affairs in Florida, which now has the dubious distinction of being so anal about the sale of used music CDs that record shops there are starting to get out of the business of dealing with used content because they don't want to pay a $10,000 bond for the "right" to treat their customers like criminals.

The legislation is supposed to stop the sale of counterfeit and/or stolen music CDs, despite the fact that there has been no proof that this is a particularly pressing problem for record shops in general. Yet John Mitchell, outside counsel for the National Association of Recording Merchandisers, told Billboard that this is part of "some sort of a new trend among states to support second-hand-goods legislation." And he expects it to grow.

In Florida, Utah, and soon in Rhode Island and Wisconsin, selling your used CDs to the local record joint will be more scrutinized than then getting a driver's license in those states. For retailers in Florida, for instance, there's a "waiting period" statue that prohibits them from selling used CDs that they've acquired until 30 days have passed. Furthermore, the Florida law disallows stores from providing anything but store credit for used CDs. It looks like college students will need to stick to blood plasma donations for beer money.

Why this trend, and why now? It's difficult to say, but to be sure, there is no love lost between retailers who sell used CDs and the music industry. The Federal Trade Commission has scrutinized the music industry for putting unfair pressures on retailers who sell used CDs, following a long battle between the music industry and retailers in the mid 90s. The music industry dislikes used CD sales because they don't get a cut of subsequent sales after the first. Now, via the specter of piracy, new legislation is cropping up that will make it even less desirable to sell second-hand goods. Can laws targeting used DVDs be far behind?

The music industry has never been a big fan of the Doctrine of First Sale, and the rise of digital music sales will only exacerbate the tension between consumers who believe that they "own" what they pay for, and the music industry. As more and more content-oriented goods transition to digital formats that are distributed free of physical formats, this issue is going to get tricky because it will be harder to spot the counterfeits from the authentic products, and consumers will still expect to exercise robust rights with the content that they've paid for with their hard-earned cash.
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post...ren-bitte.html





The EFF Sues Uri Geller
p2pnet.net news

Israeli spoon-bender Uri Geller is in the EFF's bad books.

Geller, who's supposedly able to bend spoons by merely thinking at them, is being sued by the EFF (Electronic Frontier Foundation) on behalf of a YouTube critic, "silenced by Geller's baseless copyright claims".

Brian Sapient belongs to the Rational Response Squad, dedicated to debunking what it calls irrational beliefs.

"As part of their mission, Sapient and others post videos to YouTube that they say demonstrate this irrationality," says the EFF. "One of the videos that Sapient uploaded came from a NOVA program called 'Secrets of the Psychics,' which challenges the performance techniques of Geller.

"Despite the fact that only three seconds of the over thirteen-minute video contain footage allegedly under copyright owned by Geller's corporation Explorogist Ltd. - a classic fair use of the material for criticism purposes - Geller filed a takedown demand with YouTube under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). That violates the DMCA requirement that copyright holders only send takedown notices for infringing content."

Sapient's YouTube account was suspended, shutting down his videos were not available for more than two weeks.

Now the EFF is asking for damages and a declaratory judgment that the NOVA video doesn't infringe Geller's copyrights, and that he be, "restrained from bringing any further legal action against Sapient in connection to the clip".
http://p2pnet.net/story/12175





‘Spider-Man 3’ Box Office Bodes Well for Summer
Sharon Waxman

In Hollywood summer is supposed to open with a box-office bang, and if all goes well keep on popping through the next three months.

“Spider-Man 3,” the latest in the blockbuster series starring Tobey Maguire, set an exuberant tone for Hollywood’s summer season, beating box-office records for its opening day and the weekend that followed, domestically and internationally.

The movie, directed by Sam Raimi, took in an estimated $148 million in domestic ticket sales in its opening weekend, including $59 million when it opened on Friday, according to box-office tracking companies like Screenline and Media by Numbers. Both figures broke the records held by “Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest.”

“Spider-Man 3” broke records around the world too, as it opened abroad even before hitting screens in the United States, underscoring the rising dominance of international markets. The film took in an estimated $227 million in 105 foreign countries, outstripping the previous record-holder, “Star Wars: Episode III — Revenge of the Sith.”

“It’s the biggest opening ever in the U.S., Canada, Japan, Korea, China, Russia, Italy, Mexico and Brazil,” said Jeff Blake, Sony’s chairman for worldwide marketing and distribution, adding that the film broke records in 26 countries. “It justifies the expense of a franchise picture like this. And I think it’s a great sign for the summer.”

The movie may have cost more to make than any film in Hollywood history. Sony put the budget at $260 million, with additional marketing costs of about $120 million, but some published reports have placed the budget at above $300 million.

The strong opening weekend for “Spider-Man 3” may augur well for a season in which more than a dozen big-budget sequels are set to come barreling forth, promising what some experts say could be a record-breaking summer for the movie industry. “Shrek the Third” will follow “Spider-Man 3” by two weeks, with “Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End” right after that. “Ocean’s 13” and “Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer” come on their heels in June.

“This should be the first $4 billion summer,” said Paul Dergarabedian, president of Media by Numbers. “That could fuel the first $10 billion year at the box office. That was unthinkable two years ago, during the slump of 2005.”

Mr. Dergarabedian and others pointed out that sequels seemed the most reliable way to draw audiences to a familiar theater experience and allowed studios to contain marketing costs relative to the challenge of introducing new franchises.

The results could help put to rest fears over declining audience attendance and box-office revenue. Before this weekend, box-office revenues were up 3.5 percent over the same period in 2006, driven by surprise hits like “300,” which took in $207 million domestically, and “Wild Hogs,” which took in $160 million in the United States.

But after this weekend, box-office revenues were up 6 percent — a jump attributable to “Spider-Man” — while attendance increased 3.6 percent over the same time last year.

The top executives at Sony said that the success of “Spider-Man 3” in its opening weekend, and its potential impact on the industry, more than justified its budget. “We knew what this movie was going to cost, and we hoped that it would be successful,” Amy Pascal, the co-chairwoman of Sony Pictures Entertainment, said. “I don’t think any of us thought it would break records the way it has. It was budgeted to be a little less than Spidey 1 and 2.”

Riding a massive marketing push and a release on 4,252 screens domestically — more than any previous Hollywood release — “Spider-Man 3” was impervious to a drubbing by movie critics who said it had a surfeit of villains (four), an indulgent length at two hours and 20 minutes and a Busby Berkeley section in which Peter Parker cuts a rug.

The only competition among new releases for “Spider-Man 3,” Curtis Hanson’s “Lucky You,” a Las Vegas poker story with Drew Barrymore and Eric Bana, took in just $2.5 million. In those circumstances even the studio releasing it, Warner Brothers, bowed to the blockbuster behemoth. “They just knocked it out of the park,” Dan Fellman, president of theatrical distribution for Warner Brothers, said. The horror film “Disturbia” came in second for the weekend, taking in a mere $5.7 million.

“Dead Man’s Chest,” the 2006 “Pirates of the Caribbean” sequel from Disney, held the previous record for opening day ($55.8 million) and for the highest box-office take on a weekend ($135.6 million).

Ms. Pascal of Sony said she had definite plans to make yet another sequel to the “Spider-Man” franchise, with the same group that had made the first three hits.

“We’re going to make a lot more,” she said. “I hope it will be with Tobey and Sam and all of them. They began it, and I hope they go on making them forever.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/07/movies/07spid.html





Disney Sells 24 Million TV Shows Through iTunes Store

Latest Disney results confirm steady iTunes media sales
Jonny Evans

Walt Disney this week confirmed it continues to enjoy strong sales of its television shows and films through iTunes.

Company CEO Bob Iger confirmed the company to have sold 23.7 million episodes of its television shows and an additional two million films through Apple's media service.

In November 2006, Iger confirmed Disney to have sold 500,000 films and 12 million television show episodes since such content reached iTunes. Disney hit 1.3 million films sold in February.

Top-selling titles include Cars and Pirates of the Caribbean, Iger observed.

“We continue to view the broadband-enabled internet as an important entertainment medium, and our creative and technological investments in Disney, ESPN, ABC.com are designed with that premise in mind.”

Iger also confirmed Disney to be satisfied with iTunes prices – the company makes as much from an online sale as it does from a physical one, he explained.

"There are cost of goods that are factored out of the iTunes sale, which allows them to sell at a lower price. That’s their decision and it allows us to take revenue out that is equal to, in terms of a per-click sale, store sales. So, yes, we’re quite comfortable with iTunes," Iger explained.
http://www.macworld.co.uk/news/index...S&newsID=17988





Transcript: Disney CEO Iger Talks Up Blu-ray in Analyst Call

While he was recently quoted as suggesting that his company might support both Blu-ray and HD DVD, Disney CEO Robert Iger appears to have reversed his earlier position, making a new more unequivocal statement of support for Blu-ray this week.

Back in March, Iger seemed to signal that his Blu-ray exclusive studio was considering joining Warner and Paramount in the format neutral camp, telling investors at Disney's annual meeting with shareholders that his company was "excited about next generation DVD formats" and that while it had chosen Blu-ray because it thought it was superior to HD DVD, that Disney would eventually "probably publish in both formats."

This week, however, Iger made a much more firm statement of his company's exclusive support of Blu-ray during Disney's quarterly analyst call, saying "the single greatest thing we can do right now is to not waffle, but to be very, very blunt about it, to continue our support of Blu-ray because we sense a real advantage."

A complete transcript of Iger's Blu-ray comments made during this week's analyst call follows:

"We made our bed with Blu-ray because we believed more in that format for a variety of reasons; some technical in nature, some due to the fact that it simply had broader support from a variety of industries, notably the motion picture studios but also what I’ll call the consumer electronics and the tech industry.

What we are seeing lately is that sales of Blu-ray discs are outpacing HD discs by at least two to one. As more quality Blu-ray product comes on the market, which is going to happen, notably with Pirates on May 22, we actually believe that the difference or the advantage of Blu-ray is only going to widen.

What we are also seeing is that the adoption of the platform right now is being held back a bit by a perception among consumers, really, that there is a format war; and that the hardware or the players are too expensive. We see the players coming down in price nicely, particularly by the Christmas season. We also believe that if Blu-ray continues to outpace HD DVD the retailers are ultimately going to weigh in, because they only have a limited amount of shelf space, and they are going to have to choose a format in order to manage their own shelf space. Once that happens, the advantage is going to go even more in Blu-ray’s direction.

I think the single greatest thing we can do right now is to not waffle, but to be very, very blunt about it, to continue our support of Blu-ray because we sense a real advantage. The best thing that could happen is for the format war to end, which will be very pro-consumer, particularly as hardware comes down.

The other thing I want to note is, if you look across the globe, the only place there is really a format war is in the United States. In other markets where next-gen DVD is starting to penetrate, Blu-ray is winning, and substantially; so much so there isn’t even a perceived format war.

So I think we made the right decision, the trends we are seeing seem to validate the decision. We think long-term, this is going to be a nice growth area for the company, because as you know sell-through DVD is a big business for the Walt Disney Company, even though we believe in things like VOD and the rental model. People want to own a Disney DVD, particularly in the next-generation format."
http://www.highdefdigest.com/news/show/622





Format Wars in Home Theater

After twenty years of struggling to contend with the emergence of television, movie studios began to realize that the only way to survive would be to adapt to changes in demand.

MCA’s new Laserdisc hoped to bring high quality movies into the home, as soon as the bugs could be fixed. In the meantime, the new VCRs hoped to do the same, while additionally allowing users to both record TV shows and film home movies using a video camera.

Studios were cautiously optimistic about a new videodisc, but adamantly opposed to video tape recorders and the imagined crimes they could be used to commit.

Beyond the studios’ paranoia, there were two other barriers that greatly slowed the progress of home theater.

The first was a brutal series of format wars that wasted tremendous resources and created uncertainty in the market. Like all wars and other sources of uncertainty, these format conflicts upset the market and stalled the advance of technology.

It wasn’t until these format wars--and overall studio opposition--were resolved in the mid 80s that the rapid pace of technical advancement in home theater could begin.

The Fragile Market: Standardization by Decree vs. Competition.

During World War II, the FCC set up the National Television Standards Committee to develop an American TV standard, based upon the recommendations and input from a variety of radio manufacturers.

Standards for NTSC color TV were similarly developed by consensus in the 50s. A rival, incompatible color system developed by CBS was pulled off the market by the government to prevent competition from splintering the nascent TV industry and creating confusion and frustrating incompatibility problems for consumers.

As the pace of technology increased, this style of consensus decree in setting standards was called into question by companies that wanted more freedom to innovate. While the FCC continued to rule certain aspects of broadcasting with the iron fist of government decree, it played a passive role in the development of video recorders.

The Market Fails.

That allowed companies the opportunity to experience the alternative to standards based development. Rather than a government run organization establishing standards, individual manufacturers would all scramble to develop their own proprietary systems, optionally choosing to license their designs to other makers.

In hindsight, this worked out really poorly. While companies were already able to compete in delivering TVs that all worked according to the standard NTSC TV specifications, there were no standards guiding a record or tape delivery medium for video.

Because there were no standards, huge resources were wasted in competing efforts to invent new ones. This same principle was later relearned at considerable expense in the field of software development, in networking, and again in video standards. Open formats and open standards solve a lot of problems for the market.

It Worked in Audio.

The market had earlier appeared to work well in selecting audio formats, but there were fewer format to
chose between and little real contention.

In the mid 60s, Philips introduced the audio tape, which put reel-to-reel magnetic audio tape into a compact cassette. It licensed the format to other makers.

An alternative format, the 8-track, came out at the same time. It was based upon the self-contained carts used in radio to record and play back jingles or advertisements while broadcasting.

Both tape and 8-tracks were widely popular though the 70s and into the 80s, but both offered lower sound quality than vinyl records; 8-track offered particularly marginal sound.

8-tracks slowly phased out as the smaller audio cassette tapes made portable players possible, leaving cassettes the lone ubiquitous standard for audio recording well into the 90s.

Why Video Tape Was a Problem.

The amount of information required to deliver a video signal is far larger than that required for audio, suggesting that any video tape system would have to consume huge reels of tape and draw the tape through the player at problematically unworkable high speeds.

Ampex developed the 2” Quad video tape format for broadcasters in the 50s, but it was far too large and expensive for home use. Ampex put video onto tape using recording heads that wrote in vertical stripes.

Researchers at RCA other companies had failed to deliver a workable video tape system because they were trying to record video using stationary heads that wrote horizontally like audio tape; they couldn’t move the tape fast enough.

Space Age Technology Tries to Replace Magnetic Tape.
Frustrated by the limitations of conventional tape recording and the high demands of video recording, makers turned to advanced new technologies.

In 1969, CBS developed the EVR, using optically read tape. Spools of film were unreeled inside the machine and read using a high speed scanner, which output a video signal for TV. It was outrageously expensive.

In the same timeframe, RCA developed the laser read HoloTape system which was also unworkably expensive, in addition to the more conventional MagTape system. After a test roll out of its prototype video tape recorders in 1974, RCA abandoned MagTape, deciding that it was too expensive to warrant continued development.

Germany’s Telefunken developed a flexible VideoDisc that went on sale in 1975; it was read using a diamond head like a record player. It offered very limited playback time.

Sony Pioneers Practical Magnetic Tape

Sony’s U-matic VCR in 1971 proved that magnetic tape was the most practical and economical technology for recording video.

It used improved magnetic coatings on the tape, but also pulled the tape outside the cassette and around a rotating drum that wrote diagonal stripes on the tape, reducing the speed of tape required to deliver a video signal.

However, U-matic was delivered as a professional format and was too expensive for home users.

Additionally, the studios would not release affordable movie titles for U-matic, since there was no mechanism to audit rentals like the ill fated Cartrivision, or any way to stop users from duplicating films.

Home VCR Format Wars: Technology, Laws, and Espionage.

Sony wasn’t the only company offering consumer video tape recorders; in 1972, Philips launched its own VCR in Europe, which became the first successful consumer format.

Sony’s 1975 Betamax format solved the cost and size problems of its earlier system by replacing U-matic’s 3/4” tape with 1/2” tape in a cassette about the size of a paperback book.

Sony also improved upon both Philips’ VCR and its own U-matic system by developing an azimuth recording head that could put tracks closer together on tape without suffering from crosstalk interference.

This enabled Betamax to reliably record a full hour of content on a single tape, something that Philips’ earlier VCR could not reliably do.

There were two remaining barriers to Sony’s efforts to establish Betamax as the consumer video format:

•the first was the Betamax Case, which MCA’s Universal Studios thew at Sony at the arrival of the Betamax VCR.

•the second was a play by JVC to hijack Sony’s technology and ship its own cloned version.

JVC Steals, Clones Betamax.

While JVC and other manufacturers had licensed Sony’s U-matic format, JVC decided to create its own rival format for home VCRs rather than licensing the new Betamax home format from Sony.

Sony wanted the industry to align behind a common standard. It had earlier worked with other vendors to develop consensus behind U-matic. It hoped that Betamax would launch a new revolution in home video, and tried to dissuade rival makers from introducing their own incompatible formats, fracturing the market.

However since U-matic had helped to establish Sony as the leader in professional video tape development, rival companies feared that licensing Betamax would only further entrench Sony’s position in the consumer market.

With full access to Sony’s technology, JVC created a slightly different cassette format called VHS in 1976. JVC’s rival format eventually won over the technically superior Betamax for a number of reasons:

•JVC initially offered a cheaper VCR

•Sony failed to match functions on competing VCRs, including integrated clocks and pause features

•Sony’s consumer and industrial divisions competed against each other instead of against competing companies

•VHS offered longer recording times than Betamax because its larger cassette could could hold more tape

Sony’s Big Beta Blunders.

Sony was shocked to find that its technical lead in video tape could be ripped off so easily by a former partner, but many of the Betamax problems were Sony’s own fault. Sony stacked the deck against itself by making a series of licensing blunders than sealed its fate back in the late 70s, before competition even got started.

•Sony turned down RCA’s advice to provide a long play mode, so RCA chose to license JVC’s VHS instead

•Sony withheld a Betamax license from Hitachi to avoid upsetting its existing U-matic partner Matsushita

•Matsushita chose to license VHS over Betamax because VHS tapes were simpler and cheaper to duplicate

That left Sony without the two largest players in the US and Japanese market. Sony continued marketing Betamax, and eventually delivered longer format versions that could hold two and then three hours of content, but VHS’ longer play had gained it a head start in video rentals.

JVC not only managed its licensing program better, but also ensured that all VHS licensees supported the slowest and highest quality SP mode, which ensured wide compatibility with movie rentals; Sony’s comparable B1 mode was not only too short to support an entire movie, but wasn’t even supported on all of Sony’s own players.

Content drove sales, and since Sony didn’t support various modes and prerecorded content on all of its Betamax players, VHS increasingly won ground with consumers, content producers, and manufacturers.

As VHS became established, it also logically became the medium for porn; it is unlikely that porn was a decisive factor however, because it is trivial to copy video between formats and low budget pornographers wouldn’t be stymied by the effort required to reach the Betamax audience in the same way larger studios would.

Sony’s advertising grew increasingly bitter and desperate as VHS gained traction, but it didn’t change anything.

Little Room For Technical Superiority.

In 1980, Philips followed up its original VCR with the VCC format, which crossed the VCR with its compact cassette tape design. Also known as Video 2000, the system used VHS sized tapes that could be flipped over like an audio tape, boasting recording times of up to 16 hours.

Philips’ system also pioneered dynamic tracking, which aligned the heads to the tape. Other systems had manual tracking controls until much later.

Even as early as 1980 however, there was little room left for a technically superior system. Prerecorded content was available for VHS, and manufacturers and retailers didn’t want produce and stock multiple types of tapes.

Unable to gain a real footing without content, VCC was also limited to the European market, leaving VHS the standard in consumer video tape players.

Sony eventually began selling VHS VCRs itself, and converted its Betamax technology into the Betacam professional format. Betacam records a much higher quality component signal, making it useable for professional broadcasters.

Sony later beat out JVC in consumer camcorders with the compact Video8 format. Designed specifically for use in small camcorders and using a flying erase head for cleaner edits than VHS could provide, Sony was able to win back the portable segment of the consumer video market in the mid 80s.

Sony repeated many of the same errors it made with Betamax in other formats it attempted to introduce, including 4 mm DAT and MiniDisc in the 90s, and more recently its ATRAC audio players, which handed the Walkman Dynasty to Apple’s iPod.

Videodisc Format Wars: A Quicker Battle.

While JVC won the video tape format wars, it was trounced in a parallel war involving prerecorded videodiscs.

In parallel with RCA’s failure in delivering magnetic video tape, it had also developed the SelectaVison CED videodisc, which electronically read vinyl disc media with an electronic contact head.

It suffered from problematic quality issues, but offered a picture better than video tapes, although not as good as Philips’ optically read Laserdisc, which Philips had developed in partnership with MCA as detailed in the article Movie Studios vs. Consumers in Home Theater.

JVC Again Tries to Pull a Microsoft.

Like Sony, RCA made the mistake of sharing its prototype videodisc with JVC in the early 70s; JVC took RCA’s technology and attempted to create its own rival standard, in the same way it had earlier hijacked Betamax video tape recording from Sony.

JVC had actually originated as the Japanese subsidiary of the American Victor Company, which was owned by RCA. During World War II, RCA cut its relationship with the Japanese Victor Company, but by the 70s, was again working with the company.

What RCA didn’t know was that JVC was the Microsoft of the 70s, intent upon stealing its research to develop its own incompatible, low quality standard it could foist on the masses.

Sure enough, JVC ran to to market with a movie and music player using two new formats incompatible with RCA’s original videodisc: Video High Density and Audio High Density; both even sounded similar to VHS.

Neither format caught on however. Philips’ Laserdisc was already superior on the video end to both RCA’s CED disc and JVC’s VHD copy. Further, Sony had also partnered with Philips to create the audio CD, which destroyed any chance of JVC winning the format war on disc with its copycat, technically inferior new record formats.

Manufacturers Learn to Work Together.

The vast wasted efforts suffered by Sony, Philips, RCA, and all their licensees who developed equipment that ended up incompatible and worthless to consumers taught the manufacturing industry the value of working together to develop common standards.

For the next generation of home theater, Sony and Philips agreed to drop their Multimedia CD standard to join JVC and a range of other manufacturers behind the Super Density disc, and effort that resulted in the highly successful launch of DVD.

Unfortunately it appears that that lesson has been lost, as the disc industry first splintered on ‘+’ and ‘-’ versions of optical disc recording technologies, and most recently on the next generation, high definition Blu-Ray and HD-DVD formats.

The Other Big Problem for Home Theater

Back in the mid 90s, it appeared that both the studios’ panicked fears of home theater users and the brutal format wars were nearly under control. However, one other critical problem still had to be solved:

The studios had worked so hard to differentiate movies from television and create an experience that could not be duplicated at home, that now--somewhat ironically--solutions needed to be engineered for the technical problems of presenting those movies designed exclusively for theaters on home theater equipment.

The movies that studios made available on both Laserdisc and video tape were often poor quality transfers from the original films; the next article takes a look, with less backstabbing and fight scenes, hardly any sex, but a fair amount of surprise endings, and quite a lot of artistic genius and brilliant engineering.
http://www.roughlydrafted.com/RD/RDM...49A926D00.html





Little big man

Hollywood Loves the Tiny Screen. Advertisers Don’t.
Laura M. Holson

Superman has the power to leap tall buildings. But leaping onto a cellphone screen is proving a little trickier.

Warner Brothers recently created a six-episode series of short videos for mobile devices based on the popular Superman television show, “Smallville.” The episodes tracked the history of Oliver Queen, the “Smallville” billionaire mayor who, like Clark Kent, has a superhero alter ego, the Green Arrow.

For Warner, it was a way to tell the Green Arrow story that might have otherwise been missed. “We were never able to do that in the show,” Lisa Gregorian, the executive vice president of worldwide television marketing for Warner Brothers Television Group, said of the “Smallville Legends” mobile series.

But while short, multiepisode cellphone series are growing in popularity, the lucrative advertising dollars prevalent in other entertainment segments — and which studios rely on for profit — have been slow to migrate to the supersmall screen. Sprint, which underwrote the series as part of an overall deal with Warner, was the only sponsor, Ms. Gregorian said.

In the two years since Fox Mobile and MTV Networks pioneered the market for cellphone programming, almost every major film and television studio is developing projects. But, for now, advertisers are reluctant to abandon traditional formats.

In 2006, $421 million was spent on mobile phone advertising, said a study by the market research firm eMarketer. By contrast, broadcast television advertising was estimated at $48 billion last year, according to the Universal McCann media agency.

“If you think about what the market could be from an advertising perspective, it is a dream,” said Linda Barrabee, an analyst for wireless mobile communications at the Yankee Group, a research firm in Boston.

“That’s why you see a lot of companies playing with different concepts and ideas,” she said, but added that “it’s hard to target advertising in a meaningful way. From a brand perspective, they haven’t figured it out.”

Even studio executives suggest that the explosive growth predicted is still some time away.

“In six months from now, we will be producing more of these,” Ms. Gregorian said about the “Smallville” episodes. “But an advertiser would have to pay us to develop content for wireless phones because right now there is no business model. There has to be a way to make money there.”

Alana Muller, director of wireless data marketing for Sprint, said companies are reluctant to sponsor ads because demand for video is still new. According to the Yankee Group, the number of mobile video viewers in the United States is about 5 million, 10 times more than in 2004 but still a small fraction of the 195 million mobile phone subscribers nationwide.

Ms. Muller said that Toyota sponsored advertising for mobile episodes created for the Fox television show “Prison Break.” But that was one of the few she could remember. Instead, wireless Internet promotions have proved more popular, she said.

Many in Hollywood are betting that interest in mobile video will be hastened by the debut of the new touch-screen iPhone from Apple, which are expected to begin selling this summer. With a 3 1/2-inch screen and no cumbersome keypad, many people believe it will be easier for Americans to watch movies and television shows like their peers in Europe and Asia readily do.

“The iPhone is going to shake things up and make cellphone companies look like they are behind the curve,” said Thomas Lesinski, president of digital entertainment for Paramount Pictures. “It is going to be good for us.”

Until then, studios continue to experiment. For fans of “Borat,” 20th Century Fox Film Corporation, which released the film in November, distributed 12 one-minute episodes last fall through several mobile phone carriers. The clips included “best of” highlights and unseen footage tailored for palm-size viewing.

“ ‘Borat’ was not a sweeping cinematic melodrama,” said Kevin Campbell, an executive vice president of marketing at 20th Century Fox. “We offered short, funny clips we thought people would like.”

They were so popular that the studio is developing others like it as advertisements. A small team of Fox marketers now solely focuses on how the company can more widely deliver other original content based on Fox movies through cellphones. Those include serials for “Live Free or Die Hard” and the “Fantastic Four” sequel scheduled for release this summer.

Television has so far proved the easiest to adapt to cellphones. Cellphone users who can’t get enough of Fox Television’s “American Idol” on Tuesday nights, can download the losers’ auditions to their phones the next day. MTV Networks currently offers original shows like “Dances from the Hood,” a 10-episode hip-hop series.

Indeed, there is no limit to what Viacom, MTV’s parent, won’t try; it has created 30 hours of programming for MTV, VH1 and other youth-oriented brands. To promote the MTV television hit “The Hills,” it distributed early footage to several wireless carriers narrated by the show’s host, Lauren Conrad.

“The notion that we have to hold out and be precious for television is gone,” said Van Toffler, president of MTV Networks Music and Logo Group, which was one of the early adopters of mobile phone programming. “We’ll leak this stuff all the time.”

But even Mr. Toffler conceded there were challenges for even the savviest creators. While MTV wanted to offer music videos created by fans, Mr. Toffler said MTV “will edit the clips.”

“We’ve learned how to produce better content over time,” he said. “It is my ambition that before I die or get fired, I would like to do an original 90-minute movie, in non-linear fashion, which is told in three-minute bites.”

The question is whether anyone will pay to watch. Ms. Barrabee said there is a disconnect between what mobile users are willing to spend for video services and what wireless companies charge.

“It’s more like the Internet,” she said. “People are going to want things for free. Studios will have to come up with advertising-supported business models.”

Sony Pictures Television plans to create its own products specifically for the cellphone. It recently closed a deal with the Groundlings troupe, which will develop sketch comedy routines for cellphones. Jamie Erlicht, a co-president of programming and production at Sony Pictures Television said, “we are going to use it too as a tool to market original programming of traditional shows.”

In the summer of 2006, Sony created behind-the-scenes vignettes from the FX series “Rescue Me,” which were offered in three-minute installments on cellphones in-between the weekly television shows.

“We were trying to leverage the production,” said Mike Arrieta, executive vice president of digital distribution and mobile entertainment for Sony, adding that they had their own team on the set for filming.

Where studios could get into trouble, though, is if mobile phone episodes like these are viewed less as promotional material and more as pure entertainment. Unionized actors, directors and writers have already balked at creating videos and other material for the Web, saying they should be paid for the extra work. (Unionized workers are not paid extra to create promotional materials.)

One way to get around the situation is by creating animated episodes or hiring look-alike actresses instead. That is what Fox did early on. But the issue is expected to be a sticking point in the planned talks with the unions. Some unions are already monitoring how much advertising revenue studios are making.

Not surprising, studios are bracing for tough negotiations.

“I think everyone is trying to figure it out and decide how to deal with it,” said Zack Van Amburg, a co-president with Mr. Erlicht at Sony Pictures Television. “For now we are all in a ‘Let’s embrace it and it’s here’ mode. No one has the answer yet.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/07/bu...ia/07cell.html





Digitally Crippled Entertainment

HBO Exec: Don't Call It DRM

People don't like DRM, perhaps that's just because it's such a smelly word. HBO's chief technology officer Bob Zitter thinks so, he wants to ditch the term DRM in favor of "DCE," or, "Digital Consumer Enablement." Speaking at the National Cable & Telecommunications Association show in Las Vegas, HBO's top techie said the new term would better describe all the peachy ways that copyright holders and providers could dictate how consumers access content:

Digital Consumer Enablement, would more accurately describe technology that allows consumers "to use content in ways they haven't before," such as enjoying TV shows and movies on portable video players like iPods. "I don't want to use the term DRM any longer," said Zitter, who added that content-protection technology could enable various new applications for cable operators.

Zitter notes that HBO has HD on Demand movies ready to go, but can't serve them up due to piracy fears until it has better DRM in place. Excuse me, I should have said DCE in place. HBO's big concern is the analog hole--in essence the gap in DRM that lets consumers capture the unencrypted analog signal from an HD signal. He, apparently, would like to plug the hole, but can't due to meddlesome laws.

Theoretically, says Zitter, those analog outputs could be disabled, forcing consumers to use a secure digital connection to watch HD content. But current FCC rules don't give HBO or cable operators that power, in order to protect consumers who bought early HDTV sets that don't support digital copy protection. "They say we can't turn off the analog output," Zitter notes.

That's a bummer, Bob. Yet while it's easy to joke, Zitter's comments at the industry event are revelatory into the disconnect between content consumers and producers. Instead of addressing the problems its customers have with DRM, HBO's tech chief wants to call it by another name. It shows a fundamental distrust of the customer base. Some of Zitter's ideas are great--burn to own DVDs that would let customers download and burn their own movies on demand, or "early window exhibition" that would make HD versions of movies available the same day as their video or theatrical release. Yet these things are being held up, apparently, by an industry that's fearful of its inability to control where its content goes after it's released to consumers. My take is that if you make high quality content affordable, easily available, practical and portable (meaning that if I pay to download an HD movie I should be able to watch it on my set top, iPod, computer, PSP or elsewhere) most people will pay to use it, rather than steal it. To some extent, the iTunes Store has proved this over the past few years as its digital sales have skyrocketed. Even moreso has eMusic. Yet the former still has a DRM wrapper while the latter doesn't sell major label music. Yet in the next year, EMI is going to take the radical step of trusting its customers, offering high quality content without restrictions on when and how you can enjoy it. That--not new restrictions or crippling technologies--is digital consumer enablement.
http://blog.wired.com/business/2007/...xec_dont_.html





Does The MPAA Simply Make Up Piracy Numbers Out Of Thin Air?

Remember in the last few months how the movie industry was hyping up the idea that Canada was the center for camcording movies? This was bogus for many reasons -- with the biggest being that movies recorded in theaters on camcorders are a tiny, tiny part of the counterfeit market. It's much more common to actually get a movie leaked from an insider and then have the real copy spread around. However, the MPAA kept claiming (without any evidence) that Canada was a hotbed of this activity -- accounting for approximately 50% of camcorded movies. However, now the same movie industry is claiming that New York City is responsible for 40% of camcorded movies. That would mean that only 10% of camcorded movies come from outside New York City or Canada -- a number that hardly seems realistic especially given an entirely different report from the movie industry that highlighted how camcorded movies were happening in many states across the US.

It seems like the movie industry just makes up numbers. The reason they're doing so, of course, is to push for stronger legislation in their favor. So far, Canada has resisted, noting that it already has very strict laws when it comes to taping movies. However, the folks in NY weren't able to resist, and have now passed a new law upgrading the penalties for people caught taping movies. Instead of a $250 fine, you can now face a $5,000 fine and up to 6 months in jail. It's unclear how this is a victory for the movie industry. Insiders will still leak copies (that are much better in quality than camcorded ones) and they'll still be available on the internet.

Instead of focusing on pointless legal solutions, the industry would have been better off making the movie-going experience better so that people actually want to go out to the movies. In the meantime, though, why doesn't anyone ask the movie industry to actually back up the numbers they put forth?
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20070502/173805.shtml





The Future's Five Enemies (and How to Beat Them)
Nick Douglas

Wasn't it sci-fi author William Gibson who said "The future is here, it's just unevenly distributed among pithy sci-fi authors"? The future is indeed inevitable, but before it brings us a 24/7 carnival of worldwide post-scarcity, cyborg bodies, and Starbucks on Mars, it must fight enemies like the following five: Baby Boomers, the movie industry and music industries, cell providers, the government, and Web 2.0.

Baby Boomers
Hey, in their time, the Boomers did plenty to help the future. They were the first generation raised on TV. They started the sexual revolution and used the first cell phones. They saw the first walk on the moon and one of them is Prince, who is actually from the future.

But the Boomers have turned into their parents, and now they're cramping their children's style. And children are our future, so the Boomers are giving the future cramps. They're putting parental locks on the TV, driving big old inefficient cars, and gumming up the computers of Gen X and Gen Y with e-mail forwards.

They've started diverting all the biotech research money into stuff to make old age last longer and feel better. Which, in fact, is how they might become useful again to the future. We can skip the whole civilizational step of helper robots if the Gen Xers use the Boomers. Get these aging folks on enough meds and they'll turn their social mores back on themselves; it's better than the three laws of robotics. No one gets Social Security payments without seven years of manual labor. Bam! Two problems solved! Next enemy!

The movie industry
Now, the enemy isn't movies themselves. Movies have done a lot for the future, like reminding us that technology can be evil, unless it's used to make expensive special effects. The enemy is the industry that's risen around them, the people who never touch a camera but make all the money from movies.

Why are films literally wasting away in vaults instead of being preserved? Why does it still cost royalties to publicly perform "Happy Birthday"? Why, in fact, is nothing published after 1923 in the public domain? Because the movie industry, desperate to keep its rights over the first appearance of characters like Mickey Mouse (made by Disney, which has pulled in billions by exploiting fairy tales from the public domain), has successfully lobbied Congress to extend copyright terms 11 times in the past 40 years.

But that's not all they've done to stop the future from building on the past. The MPAA has also cracked down on copying of movies (even for one's personal use) and bottlenecked movies through a panel of raters. The hegemony keeps moviemakers from bucking the system without getting shut out.

One solution is to sit back and watch box office returns stagnate. This might make studios try even harder to keep control, but a mob of renegades is beating them back by grabbing, copying and spreading movies (often before they make it to DVD). A last solution is to just watch stuff made outside the system like YouTube videos and indie films. (No, it's not all crap; come to think of it, I'd rather watch the worst blond-girl lip-synch than "Kickin' It Old School.")

Much of what goes for the movies goes for music as well, but here the industry is more definitely losing the digital war. Until Apple goaded them, labels refused to release digital music without "digital rights management" that limited, for example, how many computers a user could load a song onto.

The RIAA also just killed internet radio by lobbying to make it damn near impossible to legally play a good stream of music for listeners without going bankrupt. This was all done in the name of protecting works from unauthorized copying. Earth to the RIAA: the protected streaming audio of legit internet radio was already one of the few things keeping some listeners from just downloading the whole album on Bittorrent and Limewire or just grabbing one song at a time from their favorite music blogs. (Pretty much every rock and indie song, for example, makes it onto the Hype Machine.)

As for how the future kills the RIAA: the constant barrage of piracy and industry pressure from digital distributors will force the old models out; cell phone ringtones and commercial licensing (Moby, for example, sold all but one track of his "Play" album before it hit stores) will provide plenty of new ways to make money from music.

Cell providers
Cellular providers make yet another great industry oxymoron. Device makers can't survive in the U.S. without tying themselves to a service provider, but providers want to lock down all the potential features in phones. Thank providers for GPS being so rare on phones; it's an intensive service that most customers may refuse to pay for, so cell companies would rather not implement it. And, of course, there are the two-year contracts that keep people from quickly shifting to the best service.

Even Apple had to pick a provider to ensure that its iPhone actually gets sold. But in doing so, the company helped pry open the business's reluctance to adopt new technologies. For example, a combination of wifi and cellular service in devices like the iPhone (some Windows Mobile devices already have this) will free up communication from slow cell service while shifting some of the bandwidth burden to the thousands of wifi providers scattered across the country.

Of course, for widespread wifi to truly decentralize wireless communication, we'll need to keep the landline phone/cable/internet providers from double-charging users and content/service providers (like Skype) for any significant use of bandwidth.

The government
Despite what the anarchocapitalists of Silicon Valley might believe, you can't really have progress without a government to keep civilization running smoothly. But damn if the government doesn't try to prove those anarchocapitalists wrong by stepping in the way of the future.

Remember all the nasty things the music and movie industries did to freedom of information and innovative digital delivery? They couldn't have done it without the help of the feds. The most heinous attack on innovation is the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, which made it illegal to get around a copy protection program, to make a tool to do so, or to even attract attention to such a tool. That's why it's theoretically illegal to even link to this number, a key used to decrypt movies on HD-DVD.

Of course, that's just a fraction of the ways the government gets in the way of the future. There's also the reactionary approach to public health: Under the Bush administration, the federal government has blocked aid to countries that fund abortions, teach safe sex behavior other than abstinence, or help sex workers avoid getting and spreading STDs.

The same government is doing its damnedest to prevent us from even having a future, with an aggressive string of policies that could let industry push the world temperature up until sea levels rise and flood our coastal cities.

Wow, we actually get to try solving this one every couple years. Speaking of the next election, I hear Al Gore plans to finally run. His platform: He'll prevent rising sea levels by fighting global warming and by promising never to plunge his ever-expanding body into the ocean.

Web 2.0
Oh, thought this one was a joke, did you? How could the forefront of the tech industry be anti-future? Well when you think about it, what is Web 2.0 really doing for the future? Sure, we got Flickr and whatever, but now we're wallowing in a sea of consumer-generated crap that goes through "indie" and out the other end. The dot-com money's all back in the hands of Google, News Corp, and Yahoo, and the users are working for them for free.

While hype gets wasted on Web 2.0, the real progress is being made in biotech, nanotechnology, and other businesses that require real money. And as putrid as the phrase "Web 3.0" sounds, it could stand for the salvation of the corporatizing Web 2.0. The next edition of the web could reverse all this user generation through decentralized services like OpenID. With everything decentralized, content stays under the power of users and multiple sites, rather than residing on one service like Facebook or YouTube. Of course, before we can make this future, we'll have to figure out how to make boatloads of money from it.
http://www.valleywag.com/tech/wild-p...hem-259214.php





Last.fm: Video Marries the Radio Star
Nate Lanxon

Community music portal Last.fm has announced it's going to be launching a swanky video version of its popular Web 2.0 music service. The new music video portal will work in much the same way as the music side of the site, where streaming radio stations are dynamically created and tuned for you, based on your listening habits. The site aims to host every music video ever created.

This is a monumental goal, but with the right technology in place and the (pretty much guaranteed) input from its large community, the Last.fm effort has every chance of succeeding, and we sincerely hope it does. Our only concern is how much usage people will get from such a service. Do enough people sit at their computers watching an endless screening of music videos?

Oh, wait, what are those MTV and Kerrang! things again?

We don't want to seem negative, but one of the reasons MTV and similar stations have been so successful is that it's totally acceptable for it to just be on in the background while you've got some friends round. But the same setup doesn't really work on PCs, where video prevents you from doing other things (unlike audio). Can Last.fm justify its servers pumping out hours of streaming video bandwidth for people who aren't really paying attention to the video part for most of the time?

On the other hand, Last.fm's recommendation system has been hugely successful for audio, and a video system that works just as well could potentially be expanded to include other kinds of TV -- now that would be exciting. You like The West Wing, eh? Why not try Studio 60? Why, thank you Last.tv, that's a marvellous new show I would otherwise have been ignorant of.

The doorway for a Web 2.0 video channel is open and Last.fm is in the perfect position to say, "Y'see that doorway over there? That's SO ours!" -
http://crave.cnet.co.uk/digitalmusic...9290318,00.htm





Shock Radio, Playing Rough, Shrugs at Imus’s Fall
Jacques Steinberg

Almost two weeks after CBS Radio fired Don Imus for his racially and sexually demeaning remarks about the Rutgers women’s basketball team, Nick Di Paolo opened his talk show on another CBS station in New York by mocking a manual that, he said, one of his bosses had given him that morning.

The booklet was entitled “Words Hurt and Harm” and, as described by Mr. Di Paolo, it urged him and his brethren to avoid the sort of stereotypes that had not only upended Mr. Imus but had also just gotten two colleagues on WFNY (92.3 FM) suspended for broadcasting a six-minute prank call littered with slurs to a Chinese restaurant.

“Right away, we’re starting with a false premise,” Mr. Di Paolo told his listeners on April 25, just after noon. “Because words don’t hurt.”

He then proceeded to refer to someone in the studio who was apparently of Colombian descent as “a drug dealer,” before using an exercise in the manual as a springboard to the following observations: that “enough” Native Americans drank to make them fair game for a joke; that waiters in Chinese restaurants were “efficient” and “better than most, you know, other ethnic groups as waiters and waitresses”; and that Jewish mothers were “bad cooks and a little hairy.”

The part of the radio spectrum where Mr. Di Paolo holds forth each day — shows in which commentary and entertainment fuse, sometimes under the rubric of a morning or afternoon “zoo” — remains as arguably and insidiously untamed in the days after Mr. Imus’s collapse as it was before, based on a New York Times screening of nearly 250 hours of shock-talk radio broadcast over the last week.

Gay men and lesbians, and women and Muslims, among others, were frequent targets of ridicule; coarse, sexually explicit banter, particularly descriptions of anal and oral sex, proliferated, much of it reminiscent of the routines that once drew Howard Stern heavy penalties; and meanness appeared to be a job prerequisite, whether a host was belittling someone who called in or the unwitting subject of a prank call.

In a sense, the hosts of these shows are juggling live grenades each day, putting the companies that broadcast and sponsor them at the greatest risk of collateral damage, particularly as the smoke clears from the Imus affair.

After being told of Mr. Di Paolo’s comments, for example, officials of the New York State Lottery said they had decided to discontinue all advertising on his show. They also said they would no longer sponsor “Opie and Anthony,” a morning show on the same station, after being apprised of a line uttered by a comedian who is a regular guest. “Would it be possible, could you whistle ‘Singin’ in the Rain’ while I rape a girl?” the comedian had asked another guest, a professional whistler, in an old interview replayed on April 25.

All told, The Times listened to a dozen prominent shows on so-called terrestrial radio for five weekdays in a row. Some, like “Mancow’s Morning Madhouse,” out of Chicago, and “El Vacilón de la Mañana,” a Spanish-language program originating in New York, draw tens of thousands of listeners each day on multiple stations across the country. Others tend to reach a more regional audience, including “The Jersey Guys,” an afternoon talk show that is among the most popular in New Jersey, and “Steve and D.C.,” which has similar reach in St. Louis.

In one respect, Mr. Imus and the hole he dug for himself were unique: a nationally syndicated radio host who interviewed the powerful used his bully pulpit, not just on radio but also on a cable news network, to make a racially charged aside about largely defenseless victims.

And yet, in the weeks after his firing, the nation’s AM and FM airwaves have continued to crackle with the kind of crude remarks, off-color bits and unfiltered rage that might well run afoul of the standards that Mr. Imus was said by his employers, and critics, to have violated.

One morning late last month, for example, Mancow, the syndicated talk show host whose real name is Erich Muller and whose audience was estimated at 1.5 million by Talkers magazine as recently as last fall, could be heard dismissing a caller as a “brain-dead fetus” and a “late-term abortion that somehow crawled out of the Dumpster” after the man’s phone connection gave out.

Mr. Muller — whose show is heard prominently on AM talk radio in South Florida (the station call letters are WMEN, a nod to its format), as well as in Houston, Indianapolis and San Francisco — also suggested on the same broadcast that “radical Muslims” would not stop until they had flattened American religion like a steamroller.

His children, he predicted, “will probably be killed because I’m bringing them up Catholic, and maybe their children will be brainwashed and put into some sort of situation where they’re wearing a burka and they follow Shia law, because that’s what these radicalized Muslims want.”

He also mused about several other matters, including, “I just wonder why we care so much about Virginia Tech kids.” He quickly qualified the remark by saying, “Don’t pull that out of context,” before indicating that soldiers killed in Iraq deserved comparable gestures of mourning.

And that was just one day’s show.

Asked about the appropriateness of that host’s remarks in a post-Imus world, a representative for the company syndicating the show — Talk Radio Network, which also distributes the hosts Michael Savage and Laura Ingraham — said he would pass on the question to the company’s chief executive, Mark Masters, and to the show’s producer. Neither responded.

Meanwhile, a representative for one of the show’s advertisers — the American Council on Education, an association of colleges — said that the group had been unaware that its spots promoting higher education had run on the show. The commercials are part of a public service campaign created and donated by the Ad Council, said Terry Hartle, a spokesman for the college group.

“We will certainly talk with the Ad Council about that particular placement,” Mr. Hartle said.

Still, no targets on such shows — which are overwhelmingly, though not exclusively, led by disaffected white men like Mr. Muller — are fired at with greater frequency than women.

Last Monday Mr. Di Paolo, a stand-up comic whose show on 92.3 “Free FM” in New York is heard by nearly 160,000 people each week (ranking it 27th in the market, according to Arbitron), proposed that homeless women be employed to monitor traffic.

“Go to the women’s shelter,” he said. “Get a bunch of chicks with black eyes and one tooth.”

On April 27, in an extended rant in support of Alec Baldwin’s right to lose his temper in private, he wondered about the last film role of the actor’s former wife, Kim Basinger. “What did she play?” Mr. Di Paolo asked. “An old tampon?”

Asked about the propriety of Mr. Di Paolo’s comments — especially in light of the action taken by CBS Radio against Mr. Imus and “J.V. and Elvis,” the hosts suspended over their prank against the Chinese restaurant — Karen Mateo, a spokeswoman for the company, declined to comment. Reached on Friday night, Mr. Di Paolo said he knew that in the current climate, his reluctance to filter his harshest opinions could ultimately cost him his show, which began on WFNY in December.

“It’s a risk I’m willing to take,” said Mr. Di Paolo, 45, who has been working as a comedian for nearly two decades. “It’s got to stop somewhere. And I’m hoping they say enough is enough — not as far as what I do, but as far as censoring people.”

He added, “At least with my show, I take shots at everybody.”

Across the Hudson River earlier in the week, the hosts of the “Jersey Guys” show on WKXW (101.5 FM) in Trenton, among the most popular in the state, were imagining the sex life of Gov. Jon S. Corzine.

Having decided a few days earlier that the governor’s girlfriend had surely cleared his hospital room to give him “a little servicing” after his car accident, they were now encouraging the governor, as he continued his recovery at his mansion, to find additional female companionship.

“I’d get bitches, wouldn’t you?” said Craig Carton, one of the hosts, on their April 30 program, which was simulcast live on the radio station’s Web site. “Poolside bitches ... with big leaves to fan the governor down after exhausting physical therapy, maybe a little massage.”

“That should be his new mantra,” Mr. Carton added. “I’m the governor, I’ve had a reawakening, I now believe everyone should have poolside bitches.”

Such talk was mild, though, when measured against what is offered every morning on Spanish-language radio, the Wild West of the medium.

Just as Mr. Imus’s show might have featured an interview with a presidential candidate followed by a bawdy imitation of Cardinal Edward M. Egan, “El Traketeo,” a morning show on an FM station owned by Univision in Miami (its title roughly translates as “the uproar” or “the hoax”) toggles between weighty discussion of matters like immigration and chatter that borders on the pornographic.

On April 26, for example, the show, heard by an estimated 142,000 listeners each week, broadcast a parody of a salsa song in which a man pleaded with his girlfriend for anal sex.

“I understand that you’re afraid,” he said. “Relax a little.”

A day later the show’s hosts conducted a phone interview about rising property taxes with Marco Rubio, a Republican from Miami who is speaker of the State House of Representatives. Sometime after Mr. Rubio hung up, the show broadcast another song parody, this one about a man whose life is being cramped by the taxes Mr. Rubio is trying to cut.

I had to have sex in a bus, the singer laments, because “I couldn’t afford the motel.”

Asked if Mr. Rubio had been aware of the shenanigans that are part of the show’s daily diet, a spokeswoman for him, Jill Chamberlin, said that he appreciated “the opportunity Univision has given him to get the cut-property-tax message out to the citizens.”

Whether the Federal Communications Commission or Congress will step up sanctions against radio programs after Mr. Imus’s firing remains unknown. The commission does not actively monitor such shows — it relies on listener complaints to initiate investigations — and even then, harsh or racy speech is often protected by the First Amendment.

Which is not to say that the F.C.C. is not paying attention: in 2004 the hosts of “El Vacilón de la Mañana,” a show that until recently originated in Miami on WXDJ FM, were fined $4,000 by the commission for broadcasting a prank call to Fidel Castro, who apparently thought he was speaking to Hugo Chávez; they have since left the station.

Emmis Communications, which had broadcast Mr. Muller’s show on its FM station in Chicago, let him go last summer, two years after it had agreed to pay $300,000 to settle indecency complaints against his show.

Still, employers may not wait for the government, choosing instead to apply their own standards, particularly if advertisers begin to object.

After Mr. Imus’s comments about the mostly black Rutgers team, the hosts on two predominantly black stations in New York — WQHT (97.1 FM) and WBLS (107.5) — have made references on their programs to the need to police themselves, and their callers, better.

Tarsha Nicole Jones, who as “Miss Jones” is host of a show on WQHT that reaches nearly 700,000 listeners a week, has taken to using “wenches” and “itches” as substitutes for harsher words, and she reprimanded a caller on Monday for using a common racial slur twice.

Later the show ran a stentorian public service announcement that said, “Due to new regulations regarding the use of language, the ‘Miss Jones Show’ has made the appropriate adjustments.”

Reporting was contributed by Terry Aguayo, Rebecca Cathcart, Bob Driehaus, Theo Emery, Ann Farmer, Malcolm Gay, Jon Hurdle, Carolyn Marshall, Lori Moore, Regan Morris, Colin Moynihan and Andrea Zarate.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/06/bu...ia/06talk.html





Record Labels Propose Extending Royalties to All Radio
Scott M. Fulton, III

As a means of eliminating the appearance of disparity between the performance royalties about to be charged to US Internet streaming music providers such as AOL Radio and Pandora, and what terrestrial broadcasters pay for the same privilege - which, for that category, is currently zero - lobbyists representing the recording industry, according to Billboard magazine, are pressuring Congress to resolve this problem by extending essentially the same sharply higher performance royalty rates to all broadcasters.

If such a measure were to become law, an industry which once had the problem of overcoming the appearance of paying off radio broadcasters to increase the airplay for their songs -- a practice known as "payola" -- would begin charging broadcasters in all media for the privilege of having their songs played.

In response, National Association of Broadcasters President and CEO David Rehr is asking senators to oppose what he describes as a "performance tax." "Not only would this new performance tax upend the longstanding mutually beneficial business relationship that exists today between record labels, recording artists and broadcasters," Rehr writes, "but it would have a serious financial impact on broadcasters that could affect their ability to serve their local markets."

According to the Billboard report which was repeated in The Hollywood Reporter, the coalition backing lobbyists' efforts include representatives of record labels, plus the RIAA, musicians' and vocalists' unions, the Recording Artists Coalition, and the SoundExchange organization which would serve as the royalties collection body.

For seven decades, radio stations have paid royalties that are distributed to songwriters, and for most of that time, performance rights organizations (PROs) such as ASCAP, BMI, and SESAC have served as songwriters' representatives. Long-standing agreements between bargaining groups representing broadcasters and these PROs have limited royalty fees to amounts the stations could live with - for the smallest stations, as little as $972 per year to all three PROs combined.

The passage of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act in 1998 introduced into US law the concept of relatively higher value for digital content than for traditional analog. This enabled the recording industry -- which holds copyrights on the performance of music as opposed to the authorship of it -- to acquire the right to charge royalties to digital music streamers and distributors (such as iTunes), on the basis that a digital performance essentially constituted a duplication of that performance. Such fees would theoretically offset losses caused by any piracy that emerged from that duplication.

Up to this point, terrestrial radio broadcasters have never had to pay performance royalties, on the basis that analog performances did not constitute duplications. Now, it appears that the "digital performance = duplication" argument may be in the midst of replacement in favor of a less technical, more populist argument centering on the rights of performers - people whose work appears in music, even if they didn't write the music - to be compensated for their work.

But a report published today by the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation (PDF available here) suggests that performers appearing in popular music haven't exactly gone poor all these years.

With regard to the new populist argument adopted by the recording industry, the ITIF writes, "Considering the historical relationship between the music industry and terrestrial radio there seems to be little merit to this argument. Terrestrial radio could not exist without the music provided by the record labels; however, they have managed to avoid paying royalty fees for sound recordings. On the other hand, the record labels depend on terrestrial radio to create hits, promote their music and drive music sales. If copyright owners could establish separate royalty fees for each sound recording, some copyright owners would actually allow radio stations to broadcast their music for free and some would even pay the radio station. Getting your music played on the radio provides a huge boost for an artist."

The NAB may end up being a strange bedfellow for Internet radio providers who would also prefer the possibility of compromise. Two weeks ago, webcasters were upset by a statement from NAB Executive Vice President Dennis Wharton, which included the sentence, "We will work with Congress to craft a solution that helps ensure the survival of a fledgling audio platform."

As USC Professor of Music Industry Jerry Del Colliano responded last week in his Inside Music Media blog, "Hell, the only reason it's fledgling is because it has been in a battle for its economic life over royalty rates for years. That doesn't really create stability or set the atmosphere right for growth. When universal WiFi is available, Internet radio will be the next radio...See, another reason why the National Association of Broadcasters might want to be seen as useful to this 'fledgling' group."


5:00 pm ET May 10, 2007 - While all this was going on, Senators Ron Wyden (D - Ore.) and Sam Brownback (R - Kansas) (a candidate for President) introduced a Senate version of the Internet Radio Equality Act on the floor of the House, presumably in an effort to expedite the bill's passage through both houses of Congress.

If a merged form of this legislation does pass -- as current bipartisan support indicates is likely -- then any effort by the recording industry coalition to make terrestrial broadcasters pay the same performance royalty rates as Internet radio streamers, may be limited by new caps the Act would impose, which are based on royalty rates currently paid by XM and Sirius satellite radio.
http://www.betanews.com/article/Reco...dio/1178829868





Congress Gets Earful on Net Neutrality, CableCARD, YouTube From Video Execs
Nate Anderson

Ah, elected representatives, where would we be without you and your endless hearings?

Today's hearing of the House Subcommittee on Telecommunications and the Internet gathered Mark Cuban, Blake Krikorian of Sling Media, Chad Hurley of YouTube, and Tom Rogers of TiVo for a discussion about "The Future of Video." Sounds interesting, no? Sadly, the most interesting bit of information gleaned from the hearing was that Rep. John Dingell (D-MI) has an iPod, and that it "holds the kind of music not normally heard enough on the airwaves: classical music." We did learn a few other things: YouTube's founder sees the company as a force for democracy, Mark Cuban thinks bandwidth will make network neutrality irrelevant, and CableCARDs may not solve all the problems they're supposed to solve.

After hearing from the various representatives, who waxed eloquent about new services like "Joust" (Joost), the panel members gave a series of eight-minute presentations. Several of them were essentially sales pitches for a company's products (the lengthy MediaFLO video, in particular, was a minutes-long marketing pitch), with Krikorian even telling the august group of representatives that they should all buy a Slingbox. Ed Markey (D-MA), who oversaw the hearing, had kind words for everyone: Mark Cuban was a "revolutionary," Phil Rosenthal of Everybody Loves Raymond infamy was a "creative genius," and TiVo has "revolutionized my life."

YouTube, which has not apparently revolutionized Markey's life yet, has big plans to revolutionize the world political scene, according to founder Chad Hurley. "I hope I don't mess this up," he told the committee at the start of his testimony, "because if I do it could end up on YouTube." Cue the laughter.

After showing a cute bit of user-generated footage from the site, Hurley laid out YouTube's three main goals: to promote community, advance democracy, and create economic growth. Wait, what's that about "democracy"?

His company wants to "create the world's largest town hall," Hurley said, where everyone in the world has equal opportunity to be heard. YouTube isn't just a good way to share Daily Show clips and motorcycle wipeout footage, it's also a great forum for the free exchange of ideas. It's an interesting argument—YouTube as defender of democracy— and it presents a positive vision of the company at odds with one that the representatives have been getting from content owners (one of the first questions to Hurley was about why he didn't proactively remove copyrighted content).

Who needs network neutrality?

Cuban, who loves to play the contrarian, wasn't there to talk about his own companies but to argue that it's "no longer the case at all technology improves with age." Now that the consumer Internet has matured, Cuban argues that it needs significant investment in last-mile infrastructure, specifically fiber, and he encouraged the subcommittee to do anything it could to help this happen.

While the Internet's fiber backbone is in no danger of running out of capacity, last-mile bottlenecks (especially through twisted-pair wiring) make the system "pretty weak" for transmitting video. Even peer-to-peer networks, sometimes pitched as a solution to the problem, simply spread distribution from the center of the network, where bandwidth is available, to the edges, where bandwidth is constrained. Cuban was essentially making an extended argument for laying fiber everywhere.

With fiber connections in place, the network neutrality issue simply disappears, he believes. It "goes away completely as bandwidth constraints go away," he said, likening the system to a highway. If the highway has 1,000 lanes, there's no need for special HOV (high occupancy vehicle) lanes or other expressways, as there's plenty of room for everyone to move at top speed.

TiVo: Cable industry threatens CableCARD standard

For Tom Rogers, CEO of TiVo, the hearing was like coming home, as Rogers served as chief counsel to the same committee for many years back in the 80s. After talking about where TiVo was today, Rogers told the committee that his main worry was CableCARDs.
CableCARD was supposed to free consumers from the cable company's set-top box, allowing them to plug the small card into any device they wanted (set-top box, TiVo, television, etc.) and to decode encrypted digital cable streams. This is essential for TiVo, which would otherwise be at the mercy of the cable companies. TiVo has done battle with the cable industry many times, urging the FCC to stand strong on its CableCARD support.

Over industry objections, the FCC has mandated an integration ban that will go into effect this summer and will prohibit cable companies from offering set-top boxes with integrated security. Essentially, everyone will be on a level playing field because everyone will need to use a CableCARD.

From TiVo's perspective, that means the problem is solved, and the company can continue to build innovative products without requiring permission from the various cable operators. But Rogers told the committee today that TiVo was facing a new threat that would make CableCARDs useless: the deployment of switched digital signals from cable operators. These two-way signals are incompatible with one-way CableCARDs, and Rogers made the point in both his testimony and in questions afterward that his company absolutely needed access to video signals to survive. He didn't call for any specific action, instead telling the committee that the cable industry has promised to work out a solution to the current problem.

Overall, the event was a bit scattershot, covering everything from HD television to intellectual property issues to CableCARDs. But at least the House is willing to educate itself by hearing from consumer darlings like TiVo, YouTube, and Sling, not just the content owners who have attempted to shut them down.
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post...democracy.html





Having Won a Pulitzer for Exposing Data Mining, Times Now Eager to Do Its Own Data Mining
Keach Hagey

Barely a year after their reporters won a Pulitzer prize for exposing data mining of ordinary citizens by a government spy agency, New York Times officials had some exciting news for stockholders last week: The Times company plans to do its own data mining of ordinary citizens, in the name of online profits.

The news didn't make everyone all googly-eyed. In fact, some people at the paper's annual stockholders meeting in the New Amsterdam Theatre exchanged confused looks when Janet Robinson, the company's president and CEO, uttered the phrase "data mining." Wasn't that the nefarious, 21st-century sort of snooping that the National Security Agency was doing without warrants on American citizens? Wasn't that the whole subject of the prizewinning work in December 2005 by Times reporters Eric Lichtblau and James Risen?

And hadn't the company's chairman and publisher, Pinch Sulzberger, already trotted out Pulitzers earlier in the program?

Yes, yes, and yes. But Robinson was talking about money this time. Data mining, she told the crowd, would be used "to determine hidden patterns of uses to our website." This was just one of the many futuristic projects in the works by the newspaper company's research and development department. Heck, she added, the R&D department, when it was founded several years back, was "a concept unique in the industry."

These days, of course, all media outlets—not just the Times—are trying to bulk up their online presence, and many are desperately attempting to learn more about their readers' habits and then target ads to them. The old-line newspaper companies in particular are under immense pressure to figure out how to make double-digit leaps in profits annually—something they didn't have to worry about doing before websites spirited away huge chunks of newspapers' classified advertisers.

Not that anyone would confuse an old-line media company like the Times with a modern data expert like Google, but Sulzberger himself made kind of a comparison earlier in the stockholders' meeting. Morgan Stanley and other investors have ragged on the Times for having a two-tiered stock structure that protects the powerful voting shares from falling into the "wrong" hands. Sulzberger reminded the crowd that Google stock, that most coveted of Wall Street delicacies, also comes in two tiers.

But that's business. Do readers really want data-mining behavior from their newspapers—not just the Times but every other big media outlet? Do they want newspaper databases to store reading histories, minute by minute, until one day the government shows up to examine ordinary citizens' shopping and viewing and chatting habits in detail? If you think it can't happen, ask the librarians who've been told to hand over readers' checkout records under the Patriot Act.

Jim Harper, director of information policy studies at the libertarian Cato Institute, agrees that the prospect of a media-compiled reader-habit database is worrisome.

"My concern is, what happens when the government comes in and subpoenas it?" he says. "It's bad news to keep long, deep storehouses of information about how people use the Internet."

Harper notes that the Justice Department has been pushing since last spring for a "data retention" law that would require Internet service providers to warehouse their customers' online activity for the convenience of government investigators.

Ancient Times man Arthur Gelb made this hardly surprising observation to the Observer the other day: "Some day we'll all be reading our papers electronically." But the problem with reading papers electronically is that they can also read you.
http://www.villagevoice.com/nyclife/...6522%2C15.html





Online Ads vs. Privacy
Dan Mitchell

FOR advertisers, and in many ways for consumers, online advertising is a blessing. Customized messages rescue advertisers from the broad reach of traditional media. And consumers can learn about products and services that appeal directly to them.

But there are huge costs, and many dangers, warns Jennifer Granick, the executive director for the Stanford Law School Center for Internet and Society (wired.com). To approach individuals with customized advertising, you have to know who they are. Or at least, you have to gather enough personal information about them that their identity could be easily figured out.

This has been an issue for a long time, of course, but as technology has improved and sources of data have multiplied, the problem has, in the eyes of many privacy advocates, reached a tipping point. Last fall, Ms. Granick notes, the Center for Digital Democracy filed a complaint with the Federal Trade Commission calling for “injunctive relief” and detailing how the combination of user profiling, data mining and targeted advertising threaten privacy (democraticmedia.org).

That group’s executive director, Jeff Chester, faced off with Mike Zaneis, the Interactive Advertising Bureau’s vice president for public policy, last week at the Computers, Freedom and Privacy conference in Montreal (cfp2007.org).

Mr. Chester, she reported, argued that the information collected by many Web sites — browsing histories, search histories, wish lists, preferences, purchase histories — is amassed and manipulated in ways consumers never know about. And they often collect Internet Protocol addresses, which usually can be easily traced to individual users.

“They don’t need to know your name to know who you are,” Mr. Chester said.

Mr. Zaneis dressed well and sported “a John Edwards-quality coif and a smooth manner,” Ms. Granick wrote, as he faced “a hostile, privacy-loving crowd.”

She wrote that he “stressed that profiling does not capture” personally identifiable information.

Even if that is true, people like Kaliya Hamlin still say that collecting data about the online activities of individuals can amount to an invasion of privacy. Ms. Hamlin, known as The Identity Woman, is a privacy advocate and consultant. “My clickstream data is sensitive information,” she told Mr. Zaneis, “and it belongs to me.”

On her blog, though, Ms. Hamlin wrote that she found the whole affair frustrating. It was, she wrote, the “angry, progressive anticonsumer guy vs. the super-corporate marketing guy.”

The answers, she wrote, lie somewhere between those positions. “The ‘activist types’ tend to deny that we are people who actually might want to buy things in a marketplace,” she wrote. “The ‘corporate types’ tend to think that we always want to have ‘advertising’ presented to us at all times of day or night because we ‘want it.’ Neither view is really right.”

Her solution is essentially to give consumers ownership of their data and the power to decide whether or not to share it with marketers (kaliyasblogs.net/Iwoman).

Pretty Cool Hotmapping, a “geo-rectifying” British company, uses spy planes to conduct thermal surveys of some neighborhoods to determine which homes are leaking heat — and therefore, money (hotmapping.co.uk). “Now here’s an invasion of privacy I can really get behind,” writes Chris Taylor, who writes the Future Boy blog for Business 2.0. (blogs.business2.com/futureboy) Local governments post thermal maps on the Web. Blue buildings are “cool,” red houses are “hot,” and wasting energy.

Owners who do not take action “will be shamed in front of the whole neighborhood as energy hogs,” Mr. Taylor writes. “Green action groups will know which doors to knock on.”

Sartrean Gag Gift Going the Pet Rock one better, a British outfit, I Want One of Those, is selling a product called Nothing. It is a small plastic sphere that contains, well, nothing. It is aimed at “the person who has everything” and costs $6.28 (iwantoneofthose.com). Charlie White of Gizmodo writes that “undoubtedly, some suckers are buying it” (gizmodo.com).
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/12/te.../12online.html





Escaping the Data Panopticon: Prof Says Computers Must Learn to "Forget"
Nate Anderson

The rise of fast processors and cheap storage means that remembering, once incredibly difficult for humans, has become simple. Viktor Mayer-Schönberger, a professor in Harvard's JFK School of Government, argues that this shift has been bad for society, and he calls instead for a new era of "forgetfulness."

Mayer-Schönberger lays out his idea in a faculty research working paper called "Useful Void: The Art of Forgetting in the Age of Ubiquitous Computing," where he describes his plan as reinstating "the default of forgetting our societies have experienced for millennia."

Why would we want our machines to "forget"? Mayer-Schönberger suggests that we are creating a Benthamist panopticon by archiving so many bits of knowledge for so long. The accumulated weight of stored Google searches, thousands of family photographs, millions of books, credit bureau information, air travel reservations, massive government databases, archived e-mail, etc., can actually be a detriment to speech and action, he argues.

"If whatever we do can be held against us years later, if all our impulsive comments are preserved, they can easily be combined into a composite picture of ourselves," he writes in the paper. "Afraid how our words and actions may be perceived years later and taken out of context, the lack of forgetting may prompt us to speak less freely and openly."

In other words, it threatens to make us all politicians.

In contrast to omnibus data protection legislation, Mayer-Schönberger proposes a combination of law and software to ensure that most data is "forgotten" by default. A law would decree that "those who create software that collects and stores data build into their code not only the ability to forget with time, but make such forgetting the default." Essentially, this means that all collected data is tagged with a new piece of metadata that defines when the information should expire.

In practice, this would mean that iTunes could only store buying data for a limited time, a time defined by law. Should customers explicitly want this time extended, that would be fine, but people must be given a choice. Even data created by users—digital pictures, for example—would be tagged by the cameras that create them to expire in a year or two; pictures that people want to keep could simply be given a date 10,000 years in the future.

Mayer-Schönberger wants to help us avoid becoming digital pack rats, and he wants to curtail the amount of time that companies and governments can collate data about users and citizens "just because they can." Whenever there's a real need to do so, data can be retained, but setting the default expiration date forces organizations to decide if they truly do need to retain that much data forever.

It's a "modest" proposal, according to Mayer-Schönberger, but he recognizes that others may see it as "simplistic" or "radical." To those who feel like they are living in a panopticon, it might feel more like a chink in the wall through which fresh air blows.
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post...to-forget.html





Shredded East German Secret Police Files Being Reassembled by Computer
AP

German researchers said Wednesday that they were launching an attempt to reassemble millions of shredded East German secret police files using complicated computerized algorithms.

The files were shredded as the Berlin Wall fell in 1989 and it became clear that the East German regime was finished. Panicking officials of the Stasi secret police attempted to destroy the vast volumes of material they had kept on everyone from their own citizens to foreign leaders.

So great was the task that it overwhelmed the shredding machines, and a large number of the documents were torn by hand into between eight and thirty pieces.

Some 16,250 sacks containing pieces of 45 million shredded documents were found and confiscated after the reunification of Germany in 1990. Reconstruction work began 12 years ago but 24 people have been able to reassemble the contents of only 323 sacks.

"Many important documents are slumbering in these sacks," Marianne Birthler, head of the Stasi archives, told Deutschlandfunk radio.

Berlin's Fraunhofer Institute for Production Systems and Design Technology estimates that putting everything back together by hand would take 30 people 600 to 800 years.

Researchers are hopeful they will be able to put together 400 sacks in two years using new computer technology employed by the Frauenhofer Institute.

If the government-funded $8.53 million pilot project is successful, head researcher Bertram Nickolay said, researchers will be able to put together all of the bags in four to five years.

Using algorithms developed 15 years ago to help decipher barely legible lists of Nazi concentration camp victims, each individual strip of the shredded Stasi files will be scanned on both sides. The data then will be fed into the computer for interpretation using color recognition; texture analysis; shape and pattern recognition; machine and handwriting analysis and the recognition of forged official stamps, Nickolay said in a statement.

Hand-torn documents are expected to be the easiest to reassemble, because the pieces can be matched together by shape, like a complicated puzzle.

Putting the machine-shredded documents together requires analysis of the script on the surface of the fragments. The institute has already had success putting together similarly destroyed documents for Germany's tax authorities.
http://www.komotv.com/news/national/7423656.html





Breaking the Code: How Credit-Card Data Went Out Wireless Door

Biggest known theft came from retailer with old, weak security
Joseph Pereira

The biggest known theft of credit-card numbers in history began two summers ago outside a Marshalls discount clothing store near St. Paul, Minn.

There, investigators now believe, hackers pointed a telescope-shaped antenna toward the store and used a laptop computer to decode data streaming through the air between hand-held price-checking devices, cash registers and the store's computers. That helped them hack into the central database of Marshalls' parent, TJX Cos. in Framingham, Mass., to repeatedly purloin information about customers.

The $17.4-billion retailer's wireless network had less security than many people have on their home networks, and for 18 months the company -- which also owns T.J. Maxx, Home Goods and A.J. Wright -- had no idea what was going on. The hackers, who have not been found, downloaded at least 45.7 million credit- and debit-card numbers from about a year's worth of records, the company says. A person familiar with the firm's internal investigation says they may have grabbed as many as 200 million card numbers all told from four years' records.

The previous record for card numbers exposed to thieves was 40 million. The TJX hackers also got personal information such as driver's license numbers, military identification and Social Security numbers of 451,000 customers -- data that could be used for identity theft. The company has apologized for its security lapse and beefed up its system. It rejects the 200 million figure as speculation, but says it may never know the precise number. TJX deleted its own copies of the records stolen by the hackers and can't crack the encryption on files that the hackers left in its system.

The cost of the fraud may take years to count. Banks could spend $300 million to replace cards from just one year's worth of stolen numbers, even though about half the numbers were expired and some were hidden in some of the stolen data. TJX, which discovered the fraud in December, privately projected $20 million in fraudulent transactions from the breach, according to people familiar with the company's internal probe.

In March, police in Florida charged just one gang with buying some of the hacked TJX card data and using it to steal $8 million in small transactions at Wal-Mart Stores Inc., Sam's Club and other stores across the state. TJX-related fraud has occurred in at least six other states and at least eight countries from Mexico to China, bankers and investigators say. They are still working to find all the stolen numbers.

"All bankers are talking about these days is the TJX situation," says Boyd R. Boudreaux, chief executive of Fidelity Homestead Association, a small Louisiana savings bank that so far has been hit with $23,000 in losses from the fraud. At a recent meeting of about 200 New England banking officials in Keene, N.H., a moderator asked who was still getting lists of compromised cards connected to the TJX breach. Nearly everyone raised their hands, says Daniel J. Forte, president of the Massachusetts Bankers Association, who was there. His association is suing TJX, in one of 21 U.S. and Canadian lawsuits seeking damages from the retailer.

The ease and scale of the fraud expose how poorly some companies are protecting their customers' data on wireless networks, which transmit data by radio waves that are readily intercepted. The incident also has renewed debate about who should be financially responsible. Banks that issue credit and debit cards so far have borne the brunt of the TJX losses, as opposed to the retailer or the credit-card networks such as Visa or MasterCard. Banks' lobbyists and some legislators have started pushing for laws to make the party that lets the data slip responsible for the costs.

Individual consumers so far have largely been covered for the fraudulent TJX charges. Debit-card holders legally can be held liable for unauthorized transactions if they don't report the fraud within 60 days, while credit-card customers can only be liable for the first $50 in fraudulent charges.

Temporary Scare

Eleanor Dunning of Dana Point, Calif., got a temporary scare last fall when she opened her monthly Bank of America Visa bill: There were $45,000 in charges for gift cards from a Wal-Mart in Florida. "What I saw was a whole page of $450 charges, all identical and all in a row, all from the same place," she says. The bank removed the charges and issued her a new card, she said. When TJX's security breach was disclosed and she realized she was a victim of it, she decided to stop shopping at Marshalls.

TJX's breach-related bill could surpass $1 billion over five years -- including costs for consultants, security upgrades, attorney fees, and added marketing to reassure customers, but not lawsuit liabilities -- estimates Forrester Research, a market and technology research firm in Cambridge, Mass. The security upgrade alone could cost $100 million, says Jon Olstik, a senior analyst for Enterprise Strategy Group, a Milford, Mass., consulting firm, based on his conversations with industry experts and people familiar with the work being done.

TJX declined to comment on those numbers, but says it is undertaking a "thorough, painstaking investigation of the breach," hiring a team of 50 data security experts in December and taking a charge of $5 million in its first fiscal quarter. It says it will also pay for a credit-card fraud monitoring service to help avert identity theft for customers whose Social Security numbers were stolen. "We believe customers should feel safe shopping in our stores," says a letter from Chief Executive Carol Meyrowitz posted on TJX's Web site.

When wireless data networks exploded in popularity starting around 2000, the data was largely shielded by a flawed encoding system called Wired Equivalent Privacy, or WEP, that was quickly pierced. The danger became evident as soon as 2001, when security experts issued warnings that they were able to crack the encryption systems of several major retailers.

By 2003, the wireless industry was offering a more secure system called Wi-Fi Protected Access or WPA, with more complex encryption. Many merchants beefed up their security, but others including TJX were slower to make the change. An auditor later found the company also failed to install firewalls and data encryption on many of its computers using the wireless network, and didn't properly install another layer of security software it had bought. The company declined to comment on its security measures.

The hackers in Minnesota took advantage starting in July 2005. Though their identities aren't known, their operation has the hallmarks of gangs made up of Romanian hackers and members of Russian organized crime groups that also are suspected in at least two other U.S. cases over the past two years, security experts say. Investigators say these gangs are known for scoping out the least secure targets and being methodical in their intrusions, in contrast with hacker groups known in the trade as "Bonnie and Clydes" who often enter and exit quickly and clumsily, sometimes strewing clues behind them.

The TJX hackers did leave some electronic footprints that show most of their break-ins were done during peak sales periods to capture lots of data, according to investigators. They first tapped into data transmitted by hand-held equipment that stores use to communicate price markdowns and to manage inventory. "It was as easy as breaking into a house through a side window that was wide open," according to one person familiar with TJX's internal probe. The devices communicate with computers in store cash registers as well as routers that transmit certain housekeeping data.

After they used that data to crack the encryption code the hackers digitally eavesdropped on employees logging into TJX's central database in Framingham and stole one or more user names and passwords, investigators believe. With that information, they set up their own accounts in the TJX system and collected transaction data including credit-card numbers into about 100 large files for their own access. They were able to go into the TJX system remotely from any computer on the Internet, probers say.

Encrypted Messages

They were so confident of being undetected that they left encrypted messages to each other on the company's network, to tell one another which files had already been copied and avoid duplicating work. The company says the hackers may even have lifted bank-card information as customers making purchases waited for their transactions to be approved. TJX transmitted that data to banks "without encryption," it acknowledged in an SEC filing. That violates credit-card company guidelines, experts say.

While the hackers were stealing the data, they were selling it on the Internet on password-protected sites used by gangs who then run up charges using fake cards printed with the numbers, investigators say.

The problems first surfaced at credit-card issuers such as Fidelity Homestead, the Louisiana savings bank. Its customers were dealing with the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina when they began seeing strange transactions on their credit-card bills in November 2005, says Richard Fahr, Fidelity's security officer. First there were unauthorized transactions from Wal-Mart stores in Mexico, and then fraud started surfacing in Southern California, Mr. Fahr says.

Using bogus debit cards containing the data of just a handful of customers, thieves purchased $5,600 worth of goods from Jan. 18 to Jan. 21, 2006. Over the four-day period, they made 25 shopping trips, moving among California supermarkets, department stores, a drug store and a videogame retailer, ringing up charges ranging between $57 and $561. The real cardholders were in Louisiana at the time, Mr. Fahr said.

Fidelity had no idea how the thieves had managed to obtain the debit-card data. "At that time TJX wasn't even in my vocabulary," he says.

Last fall, a spate of fraudulent card purchases appeared in Florida, where police now say a band of 10 thieves traveled in rented cars purchasing gift cards from Wal-Mart and Sam's Club stores, using bogus credit cards stolen from hundreds of TJX customers. Within four months, the gang bought $8 million worth of gift cards and used them to buy flat-screen TVs, computers and other electronics across 50 of the state's 67 counties.

"They covered a lot of territory in a relatively short period of time," says Dominick Pape, a special agent with the Florida Department of Law Enforcement. The thieves gradually became bolder, with one of them eventually making $35,000 in fraudulent purchases in a single day, police said.

Marilyn Oliver, of San Marcos, Calif., received a phone call from Bank of America alerting her that 40 $400 gift cards had been purchased with her Visa card from cashiers at a single Florida Wal-Mart. "It sort of unnerves you," she says. "I'm very cautious, I shred everything."

Suspicious Purchases

A Wal-Mart clerk in Gainesville, Fla., eventually became suspicious of multiple gift-card purchases and alerted authorities, who reviewed store surveillance tapes and card transaction data at numerous Wal-Mart outlets before making arrests.

As the stolen TJX numbers were being used in Florida, the company was getting a stern warning about its poor security from a routine audit. The auditor told the company last Sept. 29 that it wasn't complying with many of the requirements imposed by Visa and MasterCard, according to a person familiar with the report. The auditor's report cited the outmoded WEP encryption and missing software patches and firewalls.

Then on Dec. 18, another auditor found anomalies in the company's card data. At that point, TJX hired forensics experts from International Business Machines Corp. and General Dynamics Corp. and notified the U.S. Secret Service, which spent a month trying to catch the hackers in the act. But the data thefts stopped and the hackers had obscured their whereabouts by using the Internet addresses of private individuals and public places such as coffee houses. Investigators did find traces of the hackers: altered computer files, suspicious software and some mixed-up data such as time stamps in the wrong order.

On Jan. 17, the company announced its systems had been hacked, affecting "a limited number of credit and debit card holders." It began sending lists of compromised numbers to credit-card issuers as it pored through the data. Some fraudulent activity has continued to pop up this year.

'Hot Lists'

Only last month did Fidelity in Louisiana find out the fraudulent charges in 2005 were linked to the TJX breach, when its card numbers showed up on one of TJX's "hot lists" of stolen cards. New lists keep arriving, and losses for the small bank have climbed from about $7,000 to about $23,000. "The fraud cuts right into our profits," says Fidelity's Mr. Fahr. He says the credit union has asked Visa to reimburse it for the losses, but the credit-card association so far hasn't done so. Visa declined to comment.

Chuck Bower, the chief technical officer of Middlesex Savings Bank, Natick, Mass., says about 18,000 of its Visa debit cards were stolen by TJX thieves, with "at least three dozen claims of fraudulent activities," mostly committed in January and February. The thefts have occurred in Italy, Australia, Mexico and Japan, Mr. Bower reports. Robert Mitchell, chief financial officer of the retail division of Eagle Bank Corp., in Lowell, Mass., says 1,300 of its MasterCards were compromised. The bank has replaced all of them.

Lobbying by banking associations since disclosure of the TJX breach has helped persuade lawmakers in several states and in Congress to consider new legislation. One bill in Massachusetts would impose full financial responsibility for any fraud-related losses, including costs of reissuing of cards, on companies whose security systems are breached. Another bill, in Minnesota, would bar any company from storing any consumer data after a transaction is authorized and completed.

Massachusetts Rep. Barney Frank, chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, said in March he believes Congress will move to require a company responsible for allowing a breach to bear the costs of notifying customers and reissuing cards.
http://online.wsj.com/article_email/...DIwNDQ0Wj.html





States, Uncle Sam Combating Identity Theft
Brian Krebs

Thirty-three states and the District of Columbia allow consumers to place a "security freeze" on their credit files, and more states are considering similar legislation.

For the millions of consumers who receive notice each year that their personal or financial data was lost or stolen, a preemptive security freeze can offer peace of mind. It blocks businesses and potential fraudsters from gaining access to a consumer's credit report and score and from granting new lines of credit in the consumer's name. In many states, consumers who want to remove the freeze can use a special identification number to unlock access to their credit file.

Residents of the District of Columbia will be able to request a credit freeze starting July 1. Maryland's General Assembly approved a similar bill this year. The governor is expected to sign it. Even if he doesn't, it will become law automatically on Jan. 1, 2008. Virginia is among at least four other states where lawmakers are debating credit-freeze legislation.

Most states require consumers to pay a fee of $3 to $10 per credit bureau to freeze their credit files. In some cases, there are additional fees if a consumer wants to remove or temporarily lift a freeze. In all states with credit-freeze laws, victims of identity theft can obtain a freeze without paying a fee, although many states require that the victim provide a copy of a police report detailing the incident.

In the District, consumers will be required to pay a $10 fee per credit bureau to place a freeze, but there are no fees tied to removing it. Maryland consumers could have to pay as much as $5 per freeze, and an additional $5 fee to lift it. (Temporarily "thawing" your credit file to gain access to credit usually only requires lifting the freeze at one of the three major credit bureaus.) Identity-theft victims in D.C. and Maryland will be able to place a freeze on their credit files at no charge.

Gail Hillebrand, senior attorney for Consumers Union, said many states have enacted freeze laws in part to send a message to Capitol Hill that they are intent on securing this option for citizens.

"States are not only making their voice heard, but they're bringing down the cost" for filing credit freezes, Hillebrand said. Montana recently passed a law allowing citizens to freeze their credit file for $3 per credit bureau. "States want this to work for their constituents. Even if companies hold their data and don't protect it, the freeze is the ultimate protection."

In response to a string of high-profile data breaches at companies, universities and government agencies over the past three years, at least 35 states have enacted legislation requiring companies to notify consumers if they have a data breach or loss that jeopardizes consumers' personal and financial information. Faced with the prospect of complying with all of these often disparate state data breach laws, business groups have been pressuring Congress to enact a federal data-breach bill that would unify and override corresponding statutes at the state level.

Among the many data breach notification measures currently being crafted in Congress, only one bill -- a measure currently under consideration by the Senate Commerce Committee -- contains a specific allowance for consumers to freeze their credit. Under the proposed "Identity Theft Prevention Act," consumers would need to spend $30 to place a credit freeze on their files that covers all three major credit reporting bureaus. A couple would have to spend $60 to place a credit freeze jointly. The legislation, sponsored by Committee Chairman Daniel Inouye (D-Hawaii) and ranking Republican Ted Stevens (Alaska), would allow consumers to lift a freeze twice annually for free, with subsequent lifts costing $15 per person.

Under current federal law, individuals can place a 90-day "fraud alert" on their credit files, and are entitled to a free copy of their credit report from each of the three major credit reporting bureaus annually. However, unlike the security freeze, a fraud alert merely notifies the consumer if an inquiry has been made against their credit file. It does not prevent identity thieves or other business from accessing a consumer's credit file or obtaining new lines of credit in their name.

Consumers Union maintains a detailed list of state laws related to data privacy. The page includes links to the individual laws and instructions for how a consumer can file a credit freeze.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...900429_pf.html





CNN Plans to Release Upcoming Debate Footage Uncopyrighted
Arlen Parsa

CNN announced that it plans to release all debate footage it broadcasts in their upcoming presidential debates under a Creative Commons type license Saturday.

“Due to the historical nature of presidential debates and the significance of these forums to the American public,” CNN said in a statement, “CNN debate coverage will be made available without restrictions at the conclusion of each live debate.”

“We believe this is good for the country and good for the electoral process. This decision will apply to all of CNN’s presidential debates, beginning with the upcoming New Hampshire debates in June,” continued in the media advisory sent to other news organizations and posted online.

Several prominent liberal and conservative bloggers had joined together to endorse a proposal by Stanford law professor Lawrence Lessig in April requesting that all television debates during the 2008 Presidential election cycle be released without restriction for internet usage.

Senator Barack Obama (D-IL) was the first candidate to endorse Lessig’s proposal, saying that “As you know, the Internet has enabled an extraordinary range of citizens to participate in the political dialogue around this election.”

“Much of that participation will take the form of citizen generated content. We, as a Party, should do everything that we can to encourage this participation,” Obama continued, later saying he believed that the legal principle of fair use should apply to presidential debates.

Fellow Democratic presidential hopeful and former North Carolina Senator John Edwards joined the call shortly afterwards, saying that the debates should be released specifically under a Creative Commons license and noting that “Much of the content on my own campaign web site is available under just such a license.” Senator Obama’s website is also published under Creative Commons.

So far, no Republican candidates have called for their debates to make their debates copyright free, however several prominent conservative bloggers and the former internet director of the Republican National Committee have called on the RNC to pressure the news organizations it has partnered with for the debates to make them available freely.

Among the others calling for the debates to be released under a Creative Commons license are the founders of Craigslist, Wikipedia, BraveNewFilms a former FEC Chair, representatives from the Electronic Frontier Foundation, PBS, the Center for American Progress, MoveOn, the AFL-CIO, and other media organizations.

MSNBC, which broadcast the first Democratic and Republican debates, has refused to release the footage it shot from copyright, preferring to offer only segments of the broadcast on its website in Windows Media format (MSNBC is a dual venture between NBC and Microsoft). MSNBC even went a step further, prohibiting any broadcast of clips on competing television networks after May 26.

But that hasn’t stopped dozens of YouTube users from posting clips of the debate online. No instances of YouTube removing a clip from the debate due to copyright violation have occurred yet. YouTube has tried to attract presidential candidates themselves, and most of the frontrunners have their own accounts.

CNN’s debates, broadcast from New Hampshire, will be in June. Their Democratic debate will be held on June 3rd from 7 to 9PM EST, while their Republican debate will be on June 5th at the same time.
http://www.thedailybackground.com/20...uncopyrighted/





Webcomic Author Deemed a Terrorist Threat
CaptainCarrot

Writer/IT contractor Matt Boyd, formerly the man who made up the words for webcomic Mac Hall and who now does the same for his and Ian McConville's new comic Three Panel Soul, was recently fired from his government job. His conversation with a co-worker about a gun he intended to buy for target shooting was overheard by someone in a nearby cubicle. As it was unfortunately the day of the Virginia Tech shootings, the eavesdropper panicked and reported him to management. That was bad enough. But when he used the comic to document the meeting where the reason for his firing was explained, he was visited by representatives of local law enforcement investigating him on suspicion of making a "terroristic threat" using the Internet. No charges have been filed. Yet. FLEEN interviewed Matt about the incident.
http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/05/05/1913245





Ex-Army Officer Finds Healing in New Military Record Label
Eric Tucker

Sean Gilfillan served 15 months in the Iraq war, then endured a rougher homecoming than he ever expected.

A diagnosis of post-traumatic stress disorder made him wary of crowded places. Friends who weren't in the military didn't understand what he had been through. Prospective employers questioned whether the Army captain had enough real world experience.

After returning home last year, Gilfillan, 28, spent months casting about for work before taking a job that paid less than what he earned as an Army officer and made him feel like he was starting from scratch.

He ultimately settled on a new career - and received a measure of catharsis - by joining with a friend to form a record label reserved for members of the military.

"It's just something that puts meaning and purpose back into my life - which I kind of lost when I left the military," Gilfillan said.

To The Fallen Records released its first CD in February, a compilation of 14 hip-hop tracks from current and former service members who mix sobering reflections on war with thumping rap beats and catchy choruses.

"We want it to appeal to everyone, whatever your beliefs are," said co-founder Sidney DeMello.

The label keeps Gilfillan rooted in the military, an institution that's been part of his family for generations. His grandfathers, uncle and father all served before him, and Gilfillan, who lives in Newport, received an ROTC scholarship to military college.

Deployed to Iraq in May 2003, he said his unit initially encountered little resistance, giving him the chance to teach English classes in civilian clothes and mix with the Iraqi population. He speaks with pride about his work as an Army officer.

But his memories are colored by the deaths of seven close Army friends in the war.

An intricate tattoo on back his memorializes them. It stretches from shoulder to shoulder and includes his slain friends' names, as well as a picture of a helmet that hangs atop a rifle standing upright inside combat boots - a symbol for a fallen soldier.
Across the top of his back is the inscription that inspired the record label's title: "To The Fallen."

Gilfillan says his "visions of grandeur" about coming from the war never materialized. He coped with post-traumatic stress - something he says is common for anyone mortared every night in a war zone. The job opportunities also weren't there, nor was a sustained hero's welcome.

"For a couple of weeks, you're something," Gilfillan said, "and then you're right back to being on an even playing field with everyone else in the nation."

His sister, Casey, 25, said it was frustrating for her brother to return to a "world that really doesn't have any idea about what you did."

Starting the label has helped him channel his energy into something constructive, she said, and Gilfillan said it's something to look forward to each day.

The label developed after Gilfillan met DeMello, 31, at a university business course last year. "To the Fallen" promotes a voice they say is underrepresented - soldiers themselves. They say one of its aims is to reach younger listeners with minimal knowledge about a war that Gilfillan calls "arguably the biggest social issue of our time."

"I think it's just a way to get information out to them in something that's very palatable - hip hop or rock, country," DeMello said.

The pair advertised the label online and began soliciting submissions. They work with a recording engineer to ferret out the best songs. Many were recorded in professional studios but others were recorded in the midst of war.

Brandon Boggs, an Army specialist, who goes by the name Bank-Roll on the CD, recorded "My War Cry" while in Iraq. He said used a mic, computer and a rap beat he found online.

The performers represent various branches of service and include active-duty soldiers and veterans. They touch on themes including pride in service, homesickness and an awareness that death could be imminent.

In one track, "Walk With Me," an Army sergeant performing under the name Soldier Hard worries he's heading into a death trap as he prepares for another day's mission: "Are we living on borrowed time/Will today be my last/'Cause soldiers dying every day y'all/They're killing us fast."

Several performers said the label affords them a unique outlet for creative expression.

"I love the fact that I can actually write something and talk about my issues, and people will actually listen to it," said Michael Thomas, an Air Force member who served in Iraq and recorded a track called "Soldiers Prayer" from a base in Germany.

The label plans new releases every six months; the next two will be country and rock. The CD sells for $15 on the label's Web site, and Gilfillan and DeMello recently signed a deal with a national distributor.

Gilfillan refuses to share his own opinion of the war.

"Our message is, if you want to know about it, listen to the CD, listen to the different opinions of the guys and girls that are actually involved directly there," he said. "And gauge what they have to say and then form your own opinions."

---

On the Net:

To The Fallen Records: http://www.tothefallenrecords.com
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories...05-05-12-02-35





Senior dedicates project to 'pop'

Connecticut Student Produces CD to Show Healing Power of Music
Nanci G. Hutson

One memory 18-year-old Jenna Bollard treasures from early childhood is sneaking into a drawer in her grandfather's home to find his harmonica, then bringing it to him so she could sing along as he played.

Across the years, the two often played duets.

"His face would always light up. It was really cute," Bollard said.

So she was heartbroken when Alzheimer's disease left her grandfather, World War II Navy veteran Walter Pfeffer, incapacitated. He was not only unable to play his harmonica, he had no memory of those special times with his granddaughter, at least none he could articulate.

The Washington, Connecticut Shepaug Valley High School senior was riveted when her almost-incoherent grandfather, on his deathbed, started humming along to a familiar tune on the radio.

"He was despondent, and then suddenly when a song came on the radio that he had once loved, 'The Last Waltz' by Englebert Humperdinck, he started humming the melody," Bollard said.

She was completely awed by the transformation. Her grandfather died a short time later -- a year ago Veterans Day -- but that moment stayed with Bollard.

From her freshmen year at Shepaug, Bollard looked forward to senior year, when she could pursue under faculty guidance a year-long project of her choosing.

For Bollard, a vocalist and theater lover who played the leading role in this year's production of "Annie Get Your Gun," the clear choice was to produce an original CD of music and lyrics to reflect her lifelong passion.

What was less clear was how she might tie music into a broader theme.

She told choral director Chris Shay, a technical advisor for her project, what happened with her grandfather and he recommended she read a book by Don Campbell, "The Mozart Effect: Tapping the Power of Music to Heal the Body, Strengthen the Mind, and Unlock the Creative Spirit."

She read the book and discovered how she might link her love of music with what she witnessed with her dying grandfather. She also decided to make music therapy her career.

She came to embrace the quote "When words leave off, music begins."

"One night, it all just clicked," Bollard said of the project she titled "Exploring the Healing Powers of Music."

She started writing lyrics in earnest for songs for her first CD. She tracked down a music therapist to follow to learn what they do on a day-to-day basis.

Serendipitously, Bollard found music/psychotherapist Leesa Sklover-Filgate of Brookfield, who became another technical adviser for her project and a close friend.

They went to a conference at New York University and then to the Hebrew Home in West Hartford, where Bollard performed for some of the Alzheimer's patients.

"And that was awesome," she said.

She proved dreams can come true by producing a 13-song CD with the help of friends, family and fellow musicians. Titled "Falling Into Place," it's a personal fairy tale illustrated with a fairy theme.

"It was kind of music therapy for myself," said Bollard, whom Shay described as a "one in a million" student.

Beyond the "smoky jazz" talent Shay predicts will one day bring her fame, he said Bollard has a contagious exuberance.

"I think what is so extraordinary about Jenna is that it's not 'all about me,'" Shay said. Instead, she is generous and genuine.

Bollard is donating all proceeds from the 1,000 CDs she made to Alzheimer's research. Already, she has sold enough at $10 each to cover her $2,200 investment and will donate whatever else she raises to Alzheimer's research.

The CD is dedicated to her grandfather, "Pop," and has his Navy photo on the inside cover.

On Saturday, Bollard will perform original music at the Bridgewater pavilion between 3 and 5:30 p.m. and has also invited fellow Shepaug Valley senior Tom Kean and Oxford jazz group "Scrapyard Blues" to perform.

Shay will most definitely be in the crowd.

On May 17, Bollard is scheduled to complete her final project with a slide presentation of her body of work, including the CD and concert performance.

"A lot of kids complain about their senior project, but I was so excited to start mine. It became an obsession for me," said the vivacious brunette who will study music therapy and voice at the Berkeley College of Music in Boston next year.

"Music can help you remember; music can help you feel; music can and will improve the quality of life," she said.
http://www.newstimeslive.com/news/story.php?id=1052814





Fistfight Mars Boston Pops' Opening Night

A fistfight in the balcony stopped the music on opening night at the Boston Pops, drawing gasps from hundreds of well-heeled guests at one of the country's oldest and best-known city orchestras.

Famous for light classical music and family pop tunes from decades past, the orchestra briefly halted its performance on Wednesday evening as two men wrestled in the side balcony of the 107-year-old Symphony Hall.

Concert-goers looked up after a woman's scream interrupted a rendition of the Hollywood musical "Gigi" about 20 minutes into the performance.

Shortly afterward, conductor Keith Lockhart stopped the orchestra with a motion of his hand as the murmuring crowd turned to watch the scuffle, apparently caused after one man told another guest to be quiet.

One of the men could be seen with his button-down shirt ripped open as a security guard pulled the two apart, according to a Reuters reporter at the scene. A man had his arm wrapped around another's neck, pulling him backward.

"House security and Boston police stopped the fight, and the audience members were escorted out of the hall," the Boston Symphony Orchestra said in a statement on Thursday. "The concert resumed and ended with cheers and a standing ovation."

No charges were filed against the men.

The Pops, comprised of the Boston Symphony minus its principal players, is perhaps best known for July 4th concerts along Boston's Charles River that began in 1974 and include fireworks accompanying Tchaikovsky's "1812 Overture."

Its concert hall is considered among the best in the world.
http://www.reuters.com/article/wtMos...14922020070511





A Loving Look at a Cinematic Tough Guy: Gangster, Hit Man, Gunslinger
Manohla Dargis

Lee Marvin moved across the screen like a shark coming in for the kill. Long and lean, with shoulders that looked as wide as his hips and hair as silver as a bullet, he seemed built for speed. He roamed across genres, excelling at gangsters and cowboys. Romance was not his thing. He could make you laugh, at times uneasily, but it’s his bad men that stick in your head. They are scary as hell, sometimes seductively so, because their every punch and twist of the knife seems delivered not in the heat of violence but in its chill.

Marvin did much of his greatest work in the 1960s; he was passed over by New Hollywood auteurs who could have immortalized him for succeeding generations. He died in 1987 at 63 of a heart attack. For younger audiences, especially those who believe film history starts with Steven Spielberg and George Lucas, Marvin may well represent a question mark. (“Who?” a young friend asked.) I can find no DVD box sets of his work, though he shows up in a few John Wayne collections playing second fiddle and comic foil. Several of these titles, notably John Ford’s melancholic western “The Man Who Shot Liberty Valence” (1962), are included in the first-rate series “Lee Marvin: The Coolest Lethal Weapon,” opening today at the Walter Reade Theater, courtesy of the Film Society of Lincoln Center.

He’s cooler than cool in Don Siegel’s pulpy 1964 classic “The Killers,” where he plays an intellectually curious hit man, and in John Boorman’s masterfully fractured 1967 thriller “Point Blank.” In “The Killers,” the hit man turns detective because he can’t figure out why one of his victims (John Cassavetes) doesn’t run when he has the chance. (Later, when a woman tries to talk him out of killing her, the hit man says, “Lady, I just haven’t got the time.”) The eye-popping cast includes Ronald Reagan wearing a meringue of glossy hair, Angie Dickinson as the prettiest of poisons and a fabulous Clu Gulager. Marvin, who showed up drunk on the first day of production, owns the film up, down and sideways.

Booze played a recurring role for Marvin behind the scenes and on screen: he took his noisy cues from a real biker called Wino Willie for “The Wild One” and brings real hurt to the role of the tragic, alcoholic Ira Hayes, one of the Iwo Jima flag raisers, in John Frankenheimer’s 1960 television drama “The American.” In 1966 he won the best-actor Oscar for his dual roles in the strenuously unfunny western “Cat Ballou,” including that of a hired gun so pickled in alcohol his horse looks soused. (Accepting the statuette, he joked that the horse deserved half the credit.) Yet even this cringingly dated comedy, made when terminal drunks were still good for laughs, can’t disguise his graceful gestural performance, the way he doesn’t so much fall as sway.

He was a remarkable physical specimen. Born in New York in 1924 to an advertising executive and a fashion editor, he knocked around prep schools before joining the Marines. In 1944, the year he turned 20, he was a scout sniper in the Pacific Theater, where, on Saipan, a bullet severed a nerve. He spent 13 months recuperating in a hospital and was awarded the Purple Heart. Decades later, in the last great film he made — Samuel Fuller’s World War II epic, “The Big Red One” (1980) — Marvin’s sergeant leads a group of young soldiers who are around the same age he was when he took on the war for real. Neither the tenderness nor the hate in this performance seem feigned.

After he healed, he apprenticed as a plumber before moving into stage work. He performed on and off Broadway and frequently on television. He first hit the big screen with a small role in a 1951 film, “You’re in the Navy Now,” and soon began specializing in reprobates. Bosley Crowther’s take on him in “The Wild One” in 1953 is worth quoting at length from The New York Times: “And in a second wolf-pack leader, whom Lee Marvin gruesomely portrays as a glandular ‘psycho’ or dope-fiend or something fantastically mad, there is briefly injected into this picture a glimpse of utter monstrosity, loose and enjoying the privilege of hectoring others in a fair society.” I’m not sure about the fair society, given the populace, but fantastically mad is right on.

The Walter Reade series doesn’t include “The Wild One,” perhaps because it’s so familiar, but it’s amazing to watch Marvin holding his own easily against that new force in cinema: Marlon Brando. With his lewd laugh and loose gestures that give him the jangling affect of a marionette without the strings, the grizzle-faced, gravelly-voiced Marvin comes across as the realer and rawer deal. Flanked by his gang of toughs in their matching motorcycle jackets and cute little hats, his plush mouth jutting suggestively, the beautiful Brando looks almost prissy. By comparison, Marvin looks dirty in body and in spirit; he’s rough around the edges and, you imagine, just about everywhere else too.

His character is trying to play it smoother in Fritz Lang’s noir standard “The Big Heat,” which was also released in 1953 and, happily, is in the series. This is the film in which Marvin brutally ups the bad-boyfriend ante by tossing a steaming-hot pot of coffee into the face of his girl (Gloria Grahame), leaving her terribly scarred. Decades earlier, James Cagney was content to push a grapefruit into his moll’s kisser. These days, movie scum feed their prey to the dogs, but there is something still shockingly raw about the fervor that Marvin brings to this scene, as if his character were experiencing sexual pleasure from his violence. Part of this is Lang, a sadist of the screen, but Marvin is the one with the wet lips.

There’s a little softness and a lot of shading in one of his best villains, a gold-hungry gunslinger in Budd Boetticher’s magnificent western “Seven Men From Now.” The first in a series of westerns that Boetticher made with the older Randolph Scott, this near- perfect film gives Marvin plenty of room to prove what he can do, whether he’s taking another man down with brutal psychology or practicing his quick draw. There’s soul in this characterization as well as a hint of the dandy, notably in the green scarf knotted at his neck. Marvin wears similarly silky scarves in both “The Wild One” and “The Comancheros” (1961), a slog of a western that he steals from John Wayne for his 10 showboating minutes onscreen.

Those scarves are lovely flourishes. Maybe he liked the way they looked on him, or maybe he didn’t like his neck. Or maybe this professional tough guy, who lived through World War II and was paid handsomely to keep the fight going on the big screen, wanted to show a side of himself that wasn’t immediately obvious. He twirls his guns with flair in “Seven Men From Now” (off screen, he often handled a gun) and takes on a veritable army without batting an eyelash in Richard Brooks’s entertaining western “The Professionals” (1966). In real life Marvin had been a good guy, but with his hooded eyes and a voice that sounded as if all the gentleness had been scraped from it, he seemed destined for villainy.

He was, certainly. But the best of these are not cartoon creeps or thrill-kill sadists. They are generally complex men, interested, trigger tempered, yes (watch how impatiently he moves through a school for the blind in “The Killers”), but also nimble-witted and at times dry-as-dust funny. In the 1970s, during an infernally long court battle that dragged on for almost the entire decade, he became more famous for being the defendant in the first legal test of palimony (spurring the sale of “Free Lee Marvin” T-shirts) than for any of his contemporary roles. There were still worthy parts and juicy performances, including Michael Ritchie’s venomous satire “Prime Cut” (1972) and, of course, “The Big Red One.” It seems fitting that after 30 years of playing the heavy, the sap, the sneak and the clown, here he was: a hero.

“Lee Marvin: The Coolest Lethal Weapon,” a comprehensive retrospective by the Film Society of Lincoln Center, runs through May 24 at the Walter Reade Theater, 165 West 65th Street, Lincoln Center, (212) 496-3809, filmlinc.com. In connection with the series, the Museum of Television and Radio is showing two dramas in which Marvin appeared, including “The American,” today through Sunday and May 18-20; 25 West 52nd Street, Manhattan, (212) 621-6600, mtr.org.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/11/movies/11marv.html





A Prince of Pulp, Legit at Last
Charles McGrath

ALL his life the science fiction writer Philip K. Dick yearned for what he called the mainstream. He wanted to be a serious literary writer, not a sci-fi hack whose audience consisted, he once said, of “trolls and wackos.” But Mr. Dick, who popped as many as 1,000 amphetamine pills a week, was also more than a little paranoid. In the early ’70s, when he had finally achieved some standing among academic critics and literary theorists — most notably the Polish writer Stanislaw Lem — he narced on them all, writing a letter to the F.B.I. in which he claimed they were K.G.B. agents trying to take over American science fiction.

So it’s hard to know what Mr. Dick, who died in 1982 at the age of 53, would have made of the fact that this month he has arrived at the pinnacle of literary respectability. Four of his novels from the 1960s — “The Man in the High Castle,” “The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch,” “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?” and “Ubik” — are being reissued by the Library of America in that now-classic Hall of Fame format: full cloth binding, tasseled bookmark, acid-free, Bible-thin paper. He might be pleased, or he might demand to know why his 40-odd other books weren’t so honored. And what about the “Exegesis,” an 8,000-page journal that derived a sort of Gnostic theology from a series of religious visions he experienced during a couple of months in 1974? A wary, hard-core Dickian might argue that the Library of America volume is just a diversion, an attempt to turn a deeply subversive writer into another canonical brand name.

Another thing that would probably amuse and annoy Mr. Dick in about equal measure are the exceptional number of movies that have been made from his work, starting with “Blade Runner” (adapted from “Do Androids Dream”), 25 years old this year and available in the fall on a special “final cut” DVD. The newest, “Next,” taken from a short story, “The Golden Man,” starring Nicolas Cage as a magician able to see into the future and Julianne Moore as an F.B.I. agent eager to enlist his help, opened just last month. In the works is a biopic starring Paul Giamatti, who bears more than a passing physical resemblance to the author, who by the end of his life had the doughy look of a guy who didn’t spend a lot of time in the daylight.

Mr. Dick died while “Blade Runner” was still in production, already unhappy about the shape the script was taking, though not the kind of money he hoped to realize. “Blade Runner” is probably the best of the Dick movies, if not the most faithful. (That honor probably belongs to “A Scanner Darkly,” released last year, in which Richard Linklater’s semi-animated technique suggests some of the feel of a graphic novel.)

There’s no reason to think Mr. Dick would have approved any more of the others, especially “Total Recall,” in which Quail, the nerdish hero of Mr. Dick’s story “We Can Remember It for You Wholesale,” turns into Quaid, a buffed-up Arnold Schwarzenegger character. Meanwhile, as several critics have noted, movies like the “Matrix” series, “The Truman Show” and “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind,” though not based on Dick material, still seem to contain his spark, and dramatize more vividly than some of the official Dick projects his essential notion that reality is just a construct or, as he liked to say, a forgery. It’s as if his imaginative DNA had spread like a virus.

Part of why Mr. Dick’s work appeals so much to moviemakers is his pulpish sensibility. He grew up in California reading magazines like Startling Stories, Thrilling Wonder Stories and Fantastic Universe, and then, after dropping out of the University of California, Berkeley, began writing for them, often in manic 20-hour sessions fueled by booze and speed. He could type 120 words a minute, and told his third wife (third of five, and there were countless girlfriends: Mr. Dick loved women but was hell to live with), “The words come out of my hands, not my brain, I write with my hands.”

His early novels, written in two weeks or less, were published in double-decker Ace paperbacks that included two books in one, with a lurid cover for each. “If the Holy Bible was printed as an Ace Double,” an editor once remarked, “it would be cut down to two 20,000-word halves with the Old Testament retitled as ‘Master of Chaos’ and the New Testament as ‘The Thing With Three Souls.’ ”

So for the most part you don’t read Mr. Dick for his prose. (The main exception is “The Man in the High Castle,” his most sustained and most assured attempt at mainstream respectability, and it’s barely a sci-fi book at all but, rather, what we would now call a “counterfactual”; its premise is that the Allies lost World War II and the United States is ruled by the Japanese in the west and the Nazis in the east.) Nor do you read him for the science, the way you do, say, Isaac Asimov or Robert Heinlein.

Mr. Dick was relatively uninterested in the futuristic, predictive side of science fiction and embraced the genre simply because it gave him liberty to turn his imagination loose. Except for the odd hovercar or rocket ship, there aren’t many gizmos in his fiction, and many of his details are satiric, like the household appliances in “Ubik” that demand to be fed with coins all the time, or put-ons, like the bizarre clownwear that is apparently standard office garb in the same book (which is set in 1992, by the way; so much for Dick the prophet): “natty birch-bark pantaloons, hemp-rope belt, peekaboo see-through top, and train engineer’s tall hat.”

To a considerable extent Mr. Dick’s future is a lot like our present, except a little grungier. Everything is always running down or turning into what one of the characters in “Do Androids Dream” calls “kipple”: junk like match folders and gum wrappers that doubles itself overnight and fills abandoned apartments. This sense of entropy and decline is what Ridley Scott evokes so well in “Blade Runner,” with its seedy, rainy streetscapes, and what Steven Spielberg misses in his slightly schizoid “Minority Report,” in which Tom Cruise waves his hands at that glass console, as if it were a room-size Wii system.

The theme of “Minority Report” — pre-cognition, or the idea that certain people, “precogs,” can foresee the future, with not always happy results — was an idea that Mr. Dick began exploring in the mid-’50s, along with themes of altered or repressed memory, which became the subject of “Total Recall,” “Impostor” and, more recently, John Woo’s “Paycheck.” Most of the Dick-inspired movies come from short stories of this period — several of them, including “The Golden Man,” written in the space of just a few months.

In the ’60s Mr. Dick turned his energies to novel writing, and with the exception of “Do Androids Dream” (considerably dumbed down in “Blade Runner”) and “A Scanner Darkly” (published in 1977 and, incidentally, the first book Dick wrote without the assistance of drugs) the novels don’t lend themselves so readily to the Hollywood imagination.

That’s because they’re much harder to reduce to a single concept or plot line. Three of the novels collected in the Library of America volume — “Do Androids Dream,” “The Three Stigmata” and “Ubik — are arguably Mr. Dick’s best. (Some diehards hold out for “VALIS,” his last major work, but that’s really his “Finnegans Wake” — a book more fun to talk about than to read.) All three are less gimmicky than the stories and are preoccupied with two big questions that became his obsession: How do we know what is real, and how do we know what is human? For all I know, you could be a robot, or maybe I am, merely preprogrammed to think of myself as a person, and this thing we call reality might be just a collective hallucination.

This kind of speculation — the stuff of so many hazy, bong-fed dorm-room bull sessions — takes on genuine interest in Mr. Dick’s writing because he means it and because he invests the outcome with longing. His characters, like Rick Deckard, the android-chasing bounty hunter in “Do Androids Dream,” desperately want something authentic to believe in, and the books suggest that the quality of belief may be more important than the degree of authenticity.

“The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch” and “Ubik,” written five years apart, are in many ways two versions of the same story, one tragic and one mostly comic. The title character of “The Three Stigmata” (1964) is not much to look at — his stigmata are steel teeth, a robotic arm and replacement eyes — but he still possesses Godlike, or perhaps Satanic, powers, and is able, with the help of a drug called Chew-Z, to enmesh people in webs of hallucination, one within another, so slippery and perplexing that even the reader feels a little discombobulated. The book is a horror story of the imagination gone amok.

“Ubik” (1969) is more redemptive. The godlike figure here is an entrepreneur named Glen Runciter, who runs what’s called a “prudence organization”: for a fee, he will debug your company and rid it of “teeps,” or secret-stealing telepaths. He manages to communicate with some of his former employees even when they’re dead and supplies them with a salvific aerosol spray, called Ubik, that appears to at least temporarily resist the tendency of everything to regress backwards to the way it was in 1939. Mr. Dick describes Depression-era artifacts — Philco radios, Curtis Wright biplanes — with great affection, however, and in this book death turns out not to be so bad; it isn’t eternal extinction, but a kind of half-life partly imagined by a restless young man (also dead) named Jory.

Jory is a bit of menace, but Mr. Dick has a soft spot for him as a dreamer and fantasist, as he does in “The Three Stigmata” for the colonists on Mars who, bored silly, like to get stoned and play with their Perky Pat layouts, elaborate Ken and Barbie sets that let them make up nostalgic stories about life on Earth. He also likes to embed in his books still other books, emblems of imaginative possibility, like the novel in “The Man in the High Castle” that postulates an Allied victory.

There is doubtless an autobiographical element to Mr. Dick’s novels; they read like the work of someone who knows from experience what it’s like to hallucinate. Lawrence Sutin, who has written the definitive biography of Mr. Dick, says that he took LSD only a couple of times, and didn’t particularly like it. On the other hand his regular regimen of uppers and downers, gobbled by the handful, was surely sufficient to play tricks with his head, and Mr. Dick worried more than once that he might be turning schizophrenic.

The books aren’t just trippy, though. The best of them are visionary or surreal in a way that American literature, so rooted in reality and observation, seldom is. Critics have often compared Mr. Dick to Borges, Kafka, Calvino. To come up with an American analogue you have to think of someone like Emerson, but nobody would ever dream of looking to him for movie ideas. Emerson was all brain, no pulp.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/06/books/06mcgr.html





Hepburn, Revisited



William Mann

KATHARINE Hepburn, who demolished brontosaurus skeletons and male egos in “Bringing Up Baby” and held her own with the King of England in “The Lion in Winter,” would have been 100 today. When she died four years ago at 96, she was hailed as an American icon, celebrated for her strength and independence.

But there was another side to Hepburn, too — more vulnerable, conflicted and ambitious than we knew. Though she liked to appear indifferent to vulgar stardom, she worked hard — very hard — for fame. And she never stopped, enduring fickle tastes and changing times because her desire to be great never waned. While she made us believe she was somehow above Hollywood hoopla, the truth was that long before stars employed staffs to micromanage and refine their public images, Hepburn was inventing a path for others to follow.

The extraordinary enterprise of her life is revealing. Never just the suitable-for-framing, one-dimensional heroine of legend, Hepburn learned early on that if she wanted to maintain both a career and a private life, she was going to have to play the game — and she played it well, perhaps better than any other star of her generation. She milked her romances with Howard Hughes, Leland Hayward and, at times, Spencer Tracy for coverage as shamelessly as Bennifer or Brangelina. When compromises were needed — for an independent woman in Hollywood, that was just about all the time — she was prepared to make them.

For all her alleged iconoclasm, Katharine Hepburn was an exquisitely tuned balancing act who toed the line between rebellion and pragmatism. She did what she had to do to win and survive. Consider a night in December 1935, when the distraught 28-year-old actress paced the parquetry floors of the director George Cukor’s house in the Hollywood hills. She’d just flopped in Cukor’s “Sylvia Scarlett,” for which she’d spent most of her time masquerading as a boy. She hadn’t feared rocking the boat, but now the boat was sinking. “Oh, George,” she said (pronouncing his name “Jo-udge”). “We’ve got to cook it up for ourselves, really cook it up.”

According to Cukor’s friend Michael Pearman, who witnessed the exchange: “What she was saying was that they had an image problem and they had to fix it. They had to make it up to the public somehow.”

Hepburn, who brought a fair share of East Coast entitlement to the film colony, had seemed at first to believe herself immune to the rules that governed other stars. She lived openly with a woman widely assumed to have been her lover, wore men’s trousers and aired unfashionably left-wing opinions that scandalized the fan magazines. One critic sniffed that Hepburn had been “stirring up trouble” ever since she’d arrived in Hollywood. Lessons like the “Sylvia Scarlett” debacle finally convinced her to start following the Hollywood playbook. And so began her metamorphosis from tomboy to glamour girl, from subversive to perpetual honoree.

Through it all, flashes of the original rebel still flared: In May 1947, an “angel in a red dress” (as one audience member described her) made a surprise appearance at Gilmore Stadium in Los Angeles to deliver a fiery speech in support of former vice president (and liberal hero) Henry Wallace. Hepburn lambasted the House Committee on Un-American Activities. “The artist, since the beginning of time, has always expressed the aspirations and dreams of his people,” she said. “Silence the artist and you have silenced the most articulate voice the people have.” The appearance led critics to brand her a “Red appeaser.”

Still, she was shrewd enough to gauge what the traffic would allow: Eventually she would claim that the red dress (“flaming” in some accounts) was really “pink,” and certainly not worn to make a statement. Ultimately she offset all the negative publicity by making “The African Queen.” As the Eleanor Roosevelt-inspired preacher’s daughter, she extolled God and country, chasing from collective memory the fact that she’d barely escaped a summons from the House committee and her career had almost imploded.

In this manner, Hepburn would “cook it up” over six decades — there was a Kate for every era. Remaking herself as a classic movie star, she had Philip Barry tailor “The Philadelphia Story” for her so she might, as spoiled rich girl Tracy Lord, be brought down a few pegs for all her previous “uppity” behavior. Indeed, her stylish career women — so popular during the war years — were never as independent as we like to remember them, and she usually submitted to some kind of onscreen drubbing from her male co-star. Those memorable battles of the sexes with Spencer Tracy? Hepburn always ends up on the losing side. She seemed to understand that her culture extracted certain forms of payback from the independent females whom it occasionally celebrated ... and kept reining in.

Hepburn became an American Rorschach test, mirroring the ways we wanted to see ourselves. Each generation redefined her, rubbing out and adding to her myth. In the ’60s, she fell into step with the counterculture, promoting interracial love in “Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner” and exposing the folly of war in “The Trojan Women.” When the times took another rightward lurch in the 1970s, she made “Rooster Cogburn” opposite the conservative icon John Wayne, and told the press how refreshing it was to work with a “real man.” Hepburn had remade herself from a sexually and politically suspect outsider into an exemplar of true-blue Americana.

By the time of her death, Katharine Hepburn had come to stand for Yankee common sense, Emersonian self-reliance and an all-American ethic of hard work. There’s no question she possessed all of those things. But there was so much more.

It’s taken 100 years to see Hepburn in all her complexity, and we are still trying to figure her out. The limited fictions used to elevate and sell the lives of public figures often form a cloudy chiaroscuro that covers their true humanity. Like many men and women of her time and every other, she had to deal with being different.

Hepburn’s drive for fame meant she would spend her life struggling between the demands of “the creature” (what she called her public image) and the more bohemian, unconventional life to which she was drawn. She was forced to invent a role for the kind of woman she was — her own kind. Labels — sexual, political, artistic — hold little meaning when talking about her. Sex, love and marriage were only the beginnings of the things she had to learn, re-make and often reject.

Hepburn was human, a fact we sometimes forget about the very famous. Too often our public figures remain wrapped in unchallenged “truths,” the cheap garments of hacks and press agents who keep their wayward charges safely moored to the boundaries of convention. But this gives only a partial glimpse into Hepburn’s life, and a distorted one at that. Only the whole truth can do credit to what our heroes did with the actual challenges they faced. People who live worthy lives can stand up to scrutiny. In Hepburn’s case, the real woman makes the icon seem like a bo-ah, bo-ah, bore.

Happy birthday, you old troublemaker.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/12/opinion/12mann.html?





Defending Goliath: Hollywood and the Art of the Blockbuster
Manohla Dargis

SUMMERTIME and the viewing is lousy and noisy and deedle-dee dumb, or so the received wisdom has it. It is our season of stupidity, summertime, that interminable stretch when adults surrender the nation’s theaters to hordes of popcorn-chugging, sugar-jonesing, under-age nose-pickers for whom the cinematic experience means nothing more than recycled big, bigger, biggest bangs. It is the season of mass distraction, of the tent pole, the event movie, the blockbuster.

Blockbuster is really just descriptive, but it often carries with it a down-market whiff, as do many pop-cultural products that come with eye-catching price tags and seem precision-tooled for young audiences. Critics, including, yes, yours truly, often use blockbuster as easy (too easy) shorthand for overinflated productions that rely more on special effects than words and characters, and that distract rather than engage the audience. At its most reductive the negative spin on blockbusters is that they signal the death of cinema art and mark the triumph of the corporate bottom line, of marketing strategies, product placements and opening-weekend returns. And here you thought you were just watching Tobey Maguire run around in a unitard.

But just because a movie blows stuff up doesn’t mean it automatically stinks. A good blockbuster, like the recent Bond flick “Casino Royale,” takes you places you might never otherwise go and shows you things you could never do. It brings you into new worlds, offers you new attractions. It takes hold of your body, making you quiver with anxiety, joy, laughter, relief. When great blockbusters sweep you up and away — I’m thinking about watching “The Matrix” for the first time with a few hundred other enraptured souls — they usher you into a realm of communal pleasure. In a culture of entertainment niches, they remind you of what going to the movies can still be like.

They also remind you that without the human factor a blockbuster is nothing but a big empty box. Blockbusters that endure strike a balance between the spectacular and the ineffably human, whether it’s Peter O’Toole framed against the never-ending desert in “Lawrence of Arabia” or Keanu Reeves coming down to earth in “The Matrix” as he realizes that he knows kung fu. It’s the epic story of America refracted through one family in the “Godfather” films. It’s a mechanical shark and Robert Shaw remembering the U.S.S. Indianapolis in “Jaws.” It’s Tom Cruise hanging by a thread in “Mission: Impossible” and Christian Bale standing amid a cloud of bats in “Batman Begins.” It’s Leonardo DiCaprio’s wild eyes in “Titanic” and Kirsten Dunst’s sad ones in “Spider-Man.”

BLOCKBUSTER usually describes products sold in enormous quantities, like movies, but also theater productions, museum shows, hit songs, books and even pharmaceuticals. The word probably originated with the powerful bombs that the British Royal Air Force used to decimate German cities during World War II, the so-called blockbusters. It soon entered the vernacular, appearing in advertisements before the end of the war, and as a clue in a 1950 crossword puzzle in this newspaper (46 across). In the early 1950s the heavyweight champion Rocky Marciano was known as the Brockton Blockbuster, after the city where he was born, and the word blockbuster routinely appeared in articles about the Hollywood vogue for super-size entertainments.

These days highbrows dismiss movie blockbusters because they are often based in fantasy rather than reality, which is generally a bad thing unless the fantasy comes with a literary pedigree like “The Lord of the Rings.” Blockbusters tend to be made for adolescents instead of adults, which is also a bad thing because youngsters are untrustworthy cultural consumers. (One exception: blockbusters based on children’s books that also appeal to adults, like the Harry Potter cycle.) Blockbusters based on comics are invariably questionable unless they are called graphic novels and then not always. Blockbusters that open on thousands of screens are also considered dubious because anything that appeals to a wide audience is inherently suspect. I’m joking, but not really.

In recent years it has become axiomatic that the 1970s special-effects-laden blockbusters “Jaws” and “Star Wars” helped bring an end to New Hollywood’s flirtation with creative freedom (think of “Nashville”), ushering in the era of juvenile diversions like “Raiders of the Lost Ark.” Never mind that “Jaws” is a good movie, far better at least for some than “Nashville.” As Martin Scorsese says in “Easy Riders, Raging Bulls,” Peter Biskind’s history of 1970s American cinema: “ ‘Star Wars’ was in. Spielberg was in. We were finished.” Well, not exactly, as suggested by the little gold statue presented to Mr. Scorsese in February by Steven Spielberg, George Lucas and Francis Ford Coppola, whose 1972 blockbuster, “The Godfather,” also happens to be a masterpiece.
The movie industry has been in the business of big — big stars, big stories, big productions, big screens and big returns — about as long as it’s been a business. And as long as the movies have told stories, they have used spectacle to sell those stories. In the silent era motion-picture producers employed spectacle to help distinguish the new medium from that of the theater, creating what were essentially protoblockbusters. In the 1950s the faltering movie industry went into the business of the supercolossus, delivering epic-size stories on ever-widening big screens in part to distinguish itself from that small-screen menace called television. Much has changed about the movies in the decades since, but not so the uses of pyrotechnics, sweeping landscapes and all manner of cinematic awesomeness.

Nowadays the armies of sword-brandishing soldiers may be largely computer generated, as in “300,” but film spectacle works more or less the same now as it did in 1912 when the Italian epic “Quo Vadis?” hit screens with a cast of literally thousands and extreme action in the form of a chariot race. That film’s pageantry, its gladiators and sacrificed Christians earned an enthusiastic thumb’s up from the sculptor Auguste Rodin, who declared it “a masterpiece.” (Everyone really is a critic.) The Italians were among the first in the film-spectacle business, but the Americans soon jumped in with costly productions like D. W. Griffith’s benighted masterpiece, “The Birth of a Nation,” which dramatically advanced the art.

Spectacle didn’t just enthrall audiences; it was instrumental to the very development of feature filmmaking, as directors learned how to make longer-running entertainments. Not that spectacle and narrative always mesh, then or now. In 1923 an anonymous critic for The New York Times wrote that Cecil B. DeMille’s “Ten Commandments” was divided into two sections, “the spectacle and the melodrama,” that might as well have been directed by two different men. The critic’s admiration for the spectacle (“done with meticulous precision”) tempered the larger criticism. (“It would have needed an unusually perfect modern drama to stand up in comparison.”) Somewhere the producer Jerry Bruckheimer is shaking his head, wondering why he can’t catch a similar break with today’s reviewers.

Yet if audiences dig spectacle, critics often view it with suspicion, as sneers about the modern blockbuster suggest. The negative rap on blockbusters is partly due to the literary bent of a lot of critics, who privilege words over images and tend to review screenplays, or what’s left of them, rather than the amalgamation of sights and sounds in front of them. But the sneers also suggest an underlying and familiar contamination anxiety. In the 1980s “Top Gun” wasn’t just a glib divertissement; it was evidence that MTV had infected the movies like a deadly virus. In the same grim light “300” isn’t just a shell of a movie; it’s proof that the movies have been infiltrated by an outside force, namely video games.

The threats have changed over the years — from television to music videos, comic books, digital technologies and so on — yet what has remained constant is the idea that the movies are under siege. But if the movies have taught us anything it is that they are brilliant adapters. They mutate and shift, stretch and adjust, and they neutralize those threats the way an organism absorbs nutrients, by assimilating them. We call some of these movie mutations comic-book flicks and compare still others to music videos, sometimes with a sigh, sometimes with a smile. We complain about car chases and forget that D. W. Griffith was among the first to put pedal to the metal on screen. And we condemn blockbusters for, if we’re lucky, doing the very thing we say we want from the movies: giving us a reason to watch.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/06/mo...al/06darg.html





Why the Movies Keep Digging Into TV’s Bottomless Dustbin
A. O. Scott

SAMUEL JOHNSON notoriously compared a woman preaching to “a dog walking on its hind legs.” “It is not done well,” he mused, “but you are surprised to see it done at all.” Johnson’s view of animal behavior may be as dated as his ideas about women. At least in movies, the spectacle of a dog walking, talking, dancing and flying does not seem especially surprising.

It is thus no great shock to see that Disney has adapted “Underdog,” a moderately popular television cartoon originally broadcast from 1964 to 1973, into a live-action feature film. A canine spin on the Superman legend, the series chronicled the adventures of a mild-mannered beagle (the voice of Wally Cox) who, when not shining shoes, flew around in a cape fighting the dastardly schemes of his nemesis, Simon Barsinister. In the film Barsinister is played by Peter Dinklage, and Underdog is an actual pooch who speaks in the voice of Jason Lee.

“Underdog’s” imminent arrival (on Aug. 3) at a theater near you is hardly likely to raise an eyebrow. Even as feature-length animation — mainly of the computer-generated, three-dimensional kind — continues to be part of Hollywood’s commercial bedrock, the somewhat more dubious practice of retrofitting old cartoons into non- or semi-animated features shows no signs of dying out. Before going any further, I should note that “Underdog,” which I have not yet seen, may well turn out to be a delightful motion picture and a box office smash. The title almost requires that you root for its success.

But that success, if it comes, will make “Underdog” something of an exception, a version of Dr. Johnson’s perambulating beast after all. Very few movies of its kind have been hits. According to boxofficemojo.com only four of them — “The Flintstones,” “Scooby-Doo,” “George of the Jungle” and “Casper” — have passed the $100 million mark in theaters. Not that any of these movies were especially good. But they were, perhaps, not as bad as the movies spun out of “Rocky and Bullwinkle,” “Josie and the Pussycats,” “Fat Albert” and “Mr. Magoo.”

These films are a particularly unfortunate subgenre in the none-too-distinguished category of movies based on old television shows, animated or not. The “Mission Impossible” pictures have transcended their small-screen origins. Apart from them, however, the record is artistically and commercially unimpressive.

Those “Brady Bunch” movies were amusing in their way, and the first “Addams Family” was actually pretty good. But “Bewitched”? “The Honeymooners”? “The Mod Squad”? “McHale’s Navy”? You might think — or indeed hope — that the moment for such projects would have passed.

Affectionately mocking the throwaway entertainment of the past feels dated in its own right, part of the mid-’90s craze for attaching air quotes to everything in sight and dredging up half-forgotten treasures from the collective pop memory. But mid- and late-20th-century American popular culture is a barrel without a bottom, full of junk that apparently cries out to be repackaged, recycled and resold.

Plenty of raw material remains. Given the current penguin craze, why not bring back Tennessee Tuxedo, Underdog’s old pal (or at least his fellow shill for General Mills)? Or Chilly Willy? There are a lot of martial arts fans out there. Anyone else remember “Hong Kong Phooey”? I bet he’d beat “Underdog.”

Whether or not there is demand, in other words, there is endless supply, and an equally persistent willingness to tap into it. Nostalgia for the pleasures of childhood is a disease without a cure. Baby-boom and Gen-X writers, directors and studio executives are as reluctant as others in their cohorts to let go of the comfort and predictability of Saturday mornings on the family room couch or prime time in the den. Why not give some of that magic back to their own kids?

So today’s youngsters, who can in any case watch the old stuff (including an “Underdog” boxed set) on DVD, are presented with bigger, shinier, safer versions of the cartoons their moms and dads (and by now grandparents) allegedly used to love. Compared with the originals, which could turn cheapness into a virtue, the new products spare no expense when it comes to technology and casting. And yet for all their lavishness, they tend to feel shoddy and uninspired.

The simplest explanation for this is that something made to be viewed in 15- or 30-minute increments on a small screen does not easily translate into a feature-length movie. This hypothesis is borne out by movie versions of currently popular cartoons, from “Hey, Arnold!” and “The Powerpuff Girls” to “Aqua Teen Hunger Force.” (“South Park,” which breaks every other rule, is the exception to this one.) But the cinematic rehashes of ’50s, ’60s and ’70s television are not disappointing simply because they are clumsy attempts to extend the running times and expand the aspect ratios of the originals. They are acts of narcissistic aggression aimed at the young even as they are undertaken in the name of generational harmony.

The basic, benign selling point is that parents, fondly remembering their own experience of these shows, will bring their children along to the theater, initiating the youngsters into a charmed circle of endless parody. Many of the original programs were benign satires of familiar genres and conventions: “Underdog” poked fun at superheroes; “Rocky and Bullwinkle” made anarchic hay of spy fiction and, most brilliantly, of its own artifice; “The Flintstones” sent up “The Honeymooners.”

In the movies, though, that mild, occasionally thrilling sense of subversion is betrayed not only by the overblown scale but also by a tone of vulgar smirkiness that makes the grown-ups feel smarter than they should and the kids feel dumber than they need to. The adults, that is, laugh knowingly at the in-jokes and moments of pastiche, while their children chuckle at the easy physical humor and the inevitable scatology. And then the grown-ups can lecture the youngsters about how much better — smarter, more innocent, more fun — the originals were.

Which is so frequently true that you begin to suspect it may be the point, that built-in inferiority is part of the formula. What better way for filmmakers and executives to pay sincere tribute to the cartoons they grew up on — and to hold on to a fading vision of the good old days — than to turn memorable television into forgettable cinema? They don’t necessarily set out to do so. They just can’t help themselves.

As I’ve suggested, “Underdog” may surprise us all by turning out to be fresh and true to the silly spirit of the original. And if it isn’t, we’ll just have to wait until December, when the long-awaited “Alvin and the Chipmunks” movie comes out.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/06/mo...al/06scot.html





Wizards in the Studio, Anonymous on the Street
Ben Sisario

THE songwriting session was so fresh that the aroma of the evening’s chicken wings still lingered. Behind the vast mixing board of a dimly lighted Manhattan recording studio, two producers and their co-writer greeted a record executive who had come to hear their work. With the press of a button, the room filled with sound: somber guitar arpeggios over a slow, sleek hip-hop beat, with layers of falsetto harmonies leading to a big, glittery, instantly memorable chorus. It was pure candy — sweetly melodic, but just funky enough to have a dance groove.

“I’m thinking Jennifer,” the executive said. “It’s perfect for Jennifer Hudson.”

As three more songs that had been written in the last 24 hours blared from enormous speakers, the producers sat calmly, waiting to hear which superstars their songs would be pitched to. But they weren’t the Neptunes or Timbaland or Dr. Dre or anyone else ardent followers of the Top 40 would be likely to recognize. They were Tor Erik Hermansen and Mikkel S. Eriksen, wholesome-looking, milk-complexioned Norwegians who, despite having no public persona, have quickly become two of the most in-demand figures in pop music.

Better known as Stargate, Mr. Hermansen and Mr. Eriksen have had an enviable string of hits since arriving in the United States two years ago, including Beyoncé’s “Irreplaceable,” Rihanna’s “Unfaithful” and “So Sick” by Ne-Yo, a rising 24-year-old singer from Las Vegas who is a frequent co-writer. (Ne-Yo’s new album, “Because of You,” released Tuesday on Def Jam, includes two Stargate songs.) Add to those Lionel Richie’s comeback single, “I Call It Love,” and “Beautiful Liar,” the steamy track by Beyoncé and Shakira, which shot to the top of the iTunes best-seller list when released in March. At a time when the music industry is starved for hits, Stargate has had repeated success with a relatively simple approach: sugary, lilting R&B in the Michael Jackson vein leavened with the kind of melody-rich European pop that paints everything in bright primary colors.

More potential hits are in the works. The executive visiting them, Larry Jackson, senior vice president of A&R (artists and repertory) at J Records, confirmed that Ms. Hudson would be recording their song “Can’t Stop the Rain.” And the Stargate name is attached to many other “priority releases” — projects that record labels, managers and radio programmers are expecting to be the most popular and profitable.

“In the industry, their name recognition is as powerful as Timbaland’s,” said Jeff Rabhan, who manages Elliott Yamin, the “American Idol” alumnus whose self-titled new album has two Stargate tracks.

But in this age of the superstar producer, Mr. Hermansen and Mr. Eriksen are an exception, and not just for their perky Scandinavian accents and the plain T-shirts and sweats that make them look like refugees from a college soccer team. Like the Brill Building songwriters of the 1950s and ’60s, they are behind-the-scenes workaholics, preferring to spend their time in a cramped studio.

“We have the No. 1 record in the country for 10 weeks, but when we walk down the street no one knows who we are,” said Mr. Hermansen, who like his partner is 34, shiny of scalp and beanstalk thin. “It’s great.”

With no videos to shoot, no tour dates and no solo albums to record, they are able to devote themselves to writing and recording, and they churn out new songs with astonishing speed and regularity. While labels and artists frequently wait weeks or even months for a new song from a top producer, a typical Stargate workday yields two, three, four or more.

“A lot of American producers have a great difficulty with pop,” said Barry Weiss, president of Jive Records, who recently hired Mr. Hermansen and Mr. Eriksen to work with Usher, Chris Brown and Joe. “But these guys were raised on pop. They grew up on Abba. They grew up on Boney M. Those influences lend themselves to them making very melodic pop records, with great hooks and choruses. You plug in the right top-line writer and you got one plus one equals three.”

Arriving at noon at their studio on West 25th Street six days a week — “We get Sundays off,” Mr. Eriksen said — the men of Stargate keep the music industry’s equivalent of banker’s hours. Working in a modest room so crowded with recording gear that they spend much of their time toiling inches apart, Mr. Hermansen and Mr. Eriksen say they usually finish up by midnight or 1 a.m. — around the time many of their competitors might be beginning their own sessions.

Life in a recording studio can be slow and numbingly repetitive, but on a recent afternoon Stargate was a blur of musical multitasking. After tweaking some instrumental tracks, the producers convened with a co-writer over lyrics to a new song, and recorded it a couple of hours later. On and off throughout the day, as one restaurant delivery after another came through the door — eggs and bacon, Chinese, burgers — they sketched out yet another tune and discussed their favorite topic: the pride and constant stimulation of working in the United States.

“We can be in the studio till 1 o’clock in the morning,” Mr. Hermansen said, “and then we walk out on the street and right outside we meet the president of Atlantic Records and the head of A&R over at Def Jam. And we’ll talk about projects — ‘O.K., we’ll come by your office tomorrow.’ Then we’ll be up there at 11 o’clock playing songs.”

Their work carries on a tradition of Scandinavian bubble-gum artistry that stretches from Abba to Max Martin, the Swedish mastermind behind the late-’90s heyday of Britney Spears, ’N Sync et al. But while Mr. Martin has lately been developing a more rock-influenced sound in songs like Kelly Clarkson’s “Since U Been Gone,” Stargate has followed a lifelong love of the Michael Jackson-Prince school of R&B.

“In Europe we’ve only been hearing the biggest American hits,” said Mr. Eriksen, the quieter of the two, who has a thin, blond goatee and moves in quick, precise jolts at the console, like a video-game virtuoso. “That’s what we’ve been listening to and trying to measure up to.”

Formed a decade ago in Norway as a trio — the third member, Hallgeir Rustan, left two years ago because he did not want to come to America, and remains a producer in Norway — Stargate had its first successes in Britain, with dozens of singles by teen-pop acts like Blue, Atomic Kitten and Hear’Say reaching the Top 10. The three men remixed American hip-hop and R&B songs, sweetening them for European radio with layers of added melody. Soon they began to set their eyes on a studio in New York.

“We knew that to make the records we really wanted to make, we had to go to America,” said Mr. Eriksen.

After some exploratory missions, they settled in New York in the spring of 2005. Work was slow at first until a chance meeting with Ne-Yo (whose real name is Shaffer Smith) in a hallway at Sony Music Studios on West 54th Street. “They told me they did R&B, and honestly I didn’t believe them,” Ne-Yo said.

But he was impressed by their work, and on their first joint songwriting date they knocked out six songs, among them “So Sick,” which was No. 1 for two weeks. Then came Ne-Yo’s next hit, “Sexy Love,” then Rihanna, then Beyoncé. ...

In the usual Stargate M.O. — common in pop and hip-hop production — Mr. Hermansen and Mr. Eriksen create an instrumental backing track and then let a collaborator write the lyrics and vocal melody.

For Ne-Yo, Stargate’s strength has as much to do with the music it makes as the music it doesn’t.

“You hear some tracks where the producer is absolutely trying to be the star,” he said, “the way they do so much with the track that it’s almost difficult to write — you can’t find any space to put a song in there. But I never had a problem with these guys. They are the epitome of simple and to the point.”

For their recent writing session with Ne-Yo, in Studio D at Sony Music, Mr. Hermansen and Mr. Eriksen brought a CD with sketches of 11 songs. Scanning through it, Ne-Yo picked one midtempo track with sharp, resonant acoustic guitar — “That’s nasty!” he said — and sat down with a notepad, playing the track on a loop while Mr. Hermansen and Mr. Eriksen sat for an interview a few feet away.

After about 40 minutes, the singer leaped out of his seat. “I got it,” he announced, and sang his brand-new verse and a chorus. Everyone agreed that the song was hot, and once Ne-Yo removed his heavy gold chains — to keep them from clanging while at the microphone — assumed their recording positions.

In about two hours, they had finished a textbook Stargate song. Over a spare beat that would not be out of place in a vintage Run-D.M.C. track, the guitar laid out a palette of bright, bold chords and the weaving melody that remains a focal point throughout the song. Ne-Yo’s vocal — recorded in a couple of takes, with layer upon layer of harmonies added in quick succession — was soft and soulful, climaxing in a chorus that, with a swell of synthesizers behind it, seemed to glow with neon. “No matter what I do,” Ne-Yo sang, “I can’t stop the rain.”

Stargate’s speed is a big attraction to clients. The duo’s unobtrusive production style is another, and cannily plays to the ego dynamics of pop stars: everybody wants a hit, but nobody wants to be upstaged by the producer.

“Most pop, hip-hop and R&B producers,” said Mr. Rabhan, the manager, “are so distinctive that their music becomes instantly recognizable and overshadows the artist. Stargate has really been able to make a footprint without making it all about them.”

But that footprint is often faint. While a song produced by Timbaland or the Neptunes is recognizable no matter who the artist is, the Stargate signature is more difficult to detect, because to some degree the duo’s style is an adaptable method, not a specific sound.

“They’re chameleons,” said Steve Lunt, an A&R executive at Atlantic Records who last worked with Stargate on songs by the teenage singer Gia Farrell. “But if you put a bunch of Stargate songs together you will see the thread running through them.”

Mr. Hermansen and Mr. Eriksen dismiss the idea that their remarkable productivity might be helped by songwriting formulaics.

“There’s a craft to any art form,” Mr. Hermansen responded. “You have to master the craft, but at the same time you have to be creative within the format you’re working in. We have a certain ...”

“... musical language, so to speak,” said Mr. Eriksen, finishing his colleague’s sentence as if picking up a verse. “You shouldn’t be afraid of that either. Even though it might remind you of something else you shouldn’t shy away from it. Because it’s our expression.”

In the largely black milieu of R&B, Mr. Hermansen and Mr. Eriksen have gotten their share of double takes. More than once, they said, visitors to their studio have misdirected their obeisances to the people they meet at the door: the two black British men who are Stargate’s managers.

But there are a growing number of well-known white R&B producers, including Scott Storch, Mark Ronson and Jonathan Rotem, as well as performers like Justin Timberlake, Amy Winehouse and Robin Thicke (who is also a successful producer).

What sets Stargate apart from producers black or white is its image. Or rather, the lack of one. The two do not stake their reputations on hip-hop authenticity; Mr. Hermansen and Mr. Eriksen, who are both married and have young children, remain deliberately invisible and clean-cut. When a photographer was about to snap their picture, Mr. Eriksen carefully moved an empty beer bottle so it wouldn’t appear in the shot. A laptop computer in their studio is set to Norwegian time, and they make it clear that the biggest draw of living in New York is the work.

“We’re like players who just got off the bench and started scoring,” Mr. Hermansen said.

Beginning their recent studio date with Ne-Yo, they took their places behind the console, unloading discs and various devices from a backpack. A young member of Ne-Yo’s entourage who was surfing the Internet on a studio computer caught Mr. Eriksen’s eye and asked him if they have a MySpace page.

Mr. Eriksen shook his head no.

“Why not?” the young man asked.

“Don’t have time,” Mr. Eriksen said, and began punching buttons at the mixing board.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/06/ar...ic/06sisa.html





Mixed Media
Rupert Murdoch

Traditional companies are feeling threatened. I say, bring on the changes.

Everyone knows that networking--once a face-to-face affair, sometimes captured in a Rolodex--is now worldwide, instant, and impervious to constraints of distance, time or cost.

Those of us in so-called old media have also learned the hard way what this new meaning of networking spells for our businesses. Media companies don't control the conversation anymore, at least not to the extent that we once did. The big hits of the past were often, if not exactly flukes, then at least the beneficiaries of limited options. Of course a film is going to be a success if it's the only movie available on a Saturday night. Similarly, when three networks divided up a nation of 200 million, life was a lot easier for television executives. And not so very long ago most of the daily newspapers that survived the age of consolidation could count themselves blessed with monopolies in their home cities.

All that has changed. Options abound. Fans of small niches can now find new content they could never before. Going elsewhere for news and entertainment is easier and cheaper than ever. And people's expectations of media have undergone a revolution. They are no longer content to be a passive audience; they insist on being participants, on creating their own material and finding others who will want to read, listen and watch.

Consequently the old media are threatened by the erosion of our traditional profit centers. Certainly we can't count on things like print classified advertising being around forever. Similarly, DVRs undermine the mainstay of broadcast television's business model: the commercial.

Nonetheless, it would be wrong to conclude from this that the age of content is over. On the contrary, people want content more than ever, and there is a role for companies that can provide good stuff--"good" being the operative word. Quality is more important than ever, because the marketplace is more ruthlessly competitive. Options are not merely one click of the remote away; devices undreamed of a few short decades ago are at least as tempting as a change of the channel.

Old media can survive--and thrive--in this new environment, but they must adapt. We must learn how younger generations of consumers prefer to receive their news and entertainment, and we must meet those expectations.

The good news is that we are learning--and fast. Take the type of media I know best--news. News is in more demand than ever, but the vast network of Internet-savvy news junkies want their news with several fresh twists: constantly updated, relevant to their daily lives, complete with commentary and analysis, and presented in a way that allows them to interact not just with the news but with each other about the news. They won't wait until six o'clock to watch the news on television or until the next morning to read it in isolation. This plainly provides a challenge for news providers but also an opportunity to be far more engaged with the audience.

Companies that take advantage of this new meaning of network and adapt to the expectations of the networked consumer can look forward to a new golden age of media. Far be it from me to suggest that either I or my company have all the answers. No one does. But the future of media is a future of relentless experimentation and innovation, accelerating change, and--for those who embrace the new ways in which consumers are connecting with each other--enormous potential.
http://www.forbes.com/free_forbes/2007/0507/138.html





Computer Adoption: Buzzword
Glenn Derene

Last week, I wrote about home servers in a column that eventually got posted on Slashdot, which, predictably, led to an all-out nerd pile-on by venomous legions from the geekosphere who took issue with just about everything I said. (Hint to aspiring tech pundits: Don’t ever question a future wherein Google is anything short of the ultimate arbiter of every bit of information on earth.)

My point last week wasn’t to glorify Microsoft’s Windows Home Server approach to home data storage and management, just to say that there is a growing need for some sort of server to play traffic cop—whether it’s a box in your home or a service that you pay for. Personally, I think that the future of both applications and data storage will not be totally Web-based or home-equipment based, but an amalgam of both. In fact, I’m willing to posit that the line between your home digital equipment and Web-based services will grow ever fuzzier as time goes by.

Interestingly, one reader took issue with my comment that it is “not uncommon in the modern American household to have two, three or more computers networked together.” PM user "BB" brought up the point that, according to the latest census data, only 55 percent of American households have a computer with any sort of Internet access.

That data, for the record, is from 2003. The closest recent data I could find was a 2006 study by the Pew Research Center, claiming that 70 percent of U.S. adults go online and that broadband penetration is at 45 percent. And a brand-new study released by Pew this week claims that 49 percent of Americans “only occasionally use modern gadgetry” and 15 percent is considered “off the network,” with no telephone or Internet access to speak of. And while we’re parsing numbers, a 2007 study by the Consumer Electronics Association (CEA) puts desktop computer ownership in 2007 at 66 percent of households—actually down from 70 percent the previous year—and laptop computer ownership at 37 percent (I can only assume some overlap, or the total household computer ownership would be 103 percent).

So which of these statistics paints today's most accurate portrait of computer and Internet usage in America? As is always the case with statistics, none of the studies give an entirely accurate picture, but taken together, you can get a rough idea of the landscape: Two-thirds of Americans have desktop PCs, a growing number are getting laptops, and most use the Internet in some capacity (whether that's just at the office seems to go unasked). So both computer ownership and Internet familiarity are firmly in the mainstream.

Nevertheless, my reader has a point: Even if we give computer usership the benefit of the (statistical) doubt, 15 to 30 percent of the population still doesn’t even bother to use the most important and powerful communication tool since the telephone. And the PC's been around for more than 30 years! Televisions, by contrast, were in 70 percent of U.S. homes within 10 years, and now have an adoption rate of 98 percent (according to the CEA). DVD players were in 82 percent of households within nine years of introduction. There’s a conclusion to be drawn here, perhaps, about the (lazy) priorities of some Americans: that they’d rather sit back on the couch and watch The Chronicles of Riddick than clean up the grammar in the Wikipedia entry on the Boxer Rebellion. But I think that there is more going on here than just a battle between passive entertainment and active engagement with cyberspace.

What keeps the personal computer from being a universally accepted technology? For a while, I’m sure that it was simply the cost of ownership; it’s only in the past few years that computers fell below $1000. But I’m willing to guess that it goes deeper than that. The computer has always been an awkward consumer electronics device. Unlike televisions, telephones and DVD players, PCs require constant updates and regular maintenance. And they have a failure rate that is astoundingly high. Furthermore, until recently, objects like TVs didn’t change that much. If you bought a color television in 1975, you could pretty much be assured that it wasn’t going to be rendered obsolete in five years. And if some new television technology came along, it was going to deliver a noticeable improvement from what you already had (if you liked “I Love Lucy” on your black and white TV, you were going to love “The Flintstones” in color). Computer users, on the other hand, must constantly upgrade their hardware just to keep pace with software and services. What’s more, because of their inherent complexity, personal computers still have a steep learning curve, even though they are at a relatively mature stage of their evolution.

So it is no surprise that a large population of people would rather not bother. In fact, the aforementioned 2003 census study asked people who didn’t have Internet access in the household the reason why they didn’t have the service. For most people over the age of 45 the answer was less likely to be “costs are too high” than “don’t need it, not interested.”

The obvious lesson from all of this is that, even though computers are far more useful to the consumer than televisions, more people embraced television technology faster because it was easier to understand and use. So are we trying to make PCs as simple as TVs? No. Actually we’re making TVs more complicated, with multiple HDTV standards, confusing jargon and dozens of complex connections (pick up the brand-new issue of Popular Mechanics for our untangling of 10 HDTV myths). Of course, as younger generations emerge that have grown up with computers, the percentage of computer and Internet users is guaranteed to rise, as is our tolerance, as a nation, for complex technological objects—just maybe not as fast as those of us in the world of technology would expect.
http://www.popularmechanics.com/blog...s/4216501.html





Virgin Throttles National Cable Network

Tens of thousands choked
Chris Williams

Virgin Media has quietly rolled out bandwidth throttling nationwide, after successful technical trials in the North West, which the ISP says means a group of heavy users will sacrifice high speeds for the benefit of the majority.

Speeds on the cable network will be limited between 4pm and midnight for traffic which Virgin considers "potentially abnormal". Virgin says the top five per cent heaviest downloaders among its three million customers will be affected - about 150,000 broadband users across the country.

Virgin has criticised rival ADSL providers for their "unlimited" marketing, where opaque fair use policies can mask a monthly GB download limit. It made it clear that national bandwidth throttling would be needed for its network, however, but argued that this increasingly common practice would be fairer than an unpublished monthly cap. Under its new regime, Virgin subscribers will not face restrictions on the amount they can download, but on the speed.

Customers on the "M" package will be throttled from 2Mb/s to 1Mb/s download speed and 128Kb/s upload once they have downloaded 350MB during the eight hour period. "L" subscribers will be allowed to run at full 4Mb/s speed until they hit 750MB, when downloads will be capped at 2Mb/s and uploads at 192Kb/s. Premium "XL" punters, paying £37 per month for 10Mb/s broadband, will be rationed to 3GB at full clip: anything more will come downstream at 5Mb/s and go upstream at 256Kb/s.

Virgin is in the process of upgrading the cable network for its top-paying subscribers to allow downloads at 20Mb/s. Theoretically, this speed would exhaust the 3GB limit in just 20 minutes.

While most now accept that technological limits mean bandwidth throttling is a necessary measure to ensure equality of access, Virgin customers have been getting in touch to criticise the limits for being too low. "M" customer Chris wrote: "I am on their 4Mb/s tier and it looks like I will be throttled as soon as I have downloaded 750MB, which in today's internet is next to nothing - not even one DVD. I use Skype with 2-way video most evenings to chat to my girlfriend when she is abroad...I certainly wouldn't say I am abusing the network - but Virgin Media would."

The imminent public release of Joost could fire a bigger revolt from customers. The P2P/streaming TV application downloads 350MB per hour, and Virgin will apply the new limits across the whole of prime viewing period, meaning viewers will trigger throttling very quickly.

Virgin PR chief John Moorwood told us: "We don't cut customers off, cap on bandwidth, or charge extra for going over a set limit, so our customers would still be able to use the P2P TV service at peak times if they were to experience traffic management controls - albeit at a slower speed.

"That can't be said of some other ISPs, who would be cutting off a connection or charging extra. As ever, we will naturally keep an eye on all significant internet developments."

The firm hasn't announced plans to tell users when they are going over their limit, and instead has advised customers to download a piece of trialware called DU Meter. Critics argue this would not help a modern home with several PCs, a Slingbox, and XBox, to easily monitor its usage without decent router setup skills - not a very Virgin Media "experience". Moorwood said developing a tool of Virgin's own is "something we might investigate long term".

Virgin's customer information page is here. Returning to everyone's favourite vintage internet metaphor, it promises "a lot fewer traffic jams on the information superhighway".
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/05...de_throttling/





Comcast Boosts Cable Upload Speeds

Comcast officially announced Tuesday what customers around the United States have been noticing for months: no bandwidth caps when uploading files less than 10MB. The feature, called PowerBoost, follows a similar upgrade in download speeds last year.

Customers will be able to upload at speeds reaching 2 megabits per second, far greater than the standard limit of 384 kilobytes. The service is being rolled out on a market-to-market basis, with the entire Comcast network expected to be upgraded by the end of the year. Comcast customers already see download speeds of 12Mbps to 16Mbps for files under 10MB.
http://www.betanews.com/article/Comc...eds/1178653787





160Mbps Downloads Move Closer for US Cable Customers
Eric Bangeman

The National Cable & Telecommunications Association is holding its annual convention in Las Vegas (where else?) and this year, super-high-speed cable service is finally moving into the limelight. Announcements from hardware providers like Motorola and Texas Instruments suggest that we're finally moving closer to the promised land of DOCSIS 3.0.

DOCSIS 3.0 offers two immediate benefits over what cable ISP subscribers are currently stuck with (DOCSIS 1.1): faster speeds and support for IPv6. The technology has the potential to bump download speeds to 160Mbps and upload speeds to 120Mbps, although that bandwidth will be divided up between households attached to a single node.

In the first widespread deployment of pre-DOCSIS 3.0 hardware, a South Korean cable ISP was able to pump 100Mbps service into the homes of its subscribers. This week's announcements provide hope that the kind of speeds seen in Korea will be making their way across the Pacific before too long.

Motorola, Singapore-based StarHub, and cable hardware provider Vyyo announced that they have successfully tested DOCSIS 3.0 hardware, delivering speeds in excess of 145Mbps. Testing was performed over StarHub's hybrid fiber-coax network in Singapore and used a combination of Motorola hardware and Vyyo's spectrum overlay products.

Texas Instruments has also announced a new DOCSIS 3.0 cable modem architecture that it says will enable "fast adoption and deployment of advanced DOCSIS 3.0 specification-based products." Called Puma 5, TI's solution provides advanced home networking support and is optimized for data, voice, and video traffic.

The announcements demonstrate that while the cable companies will have to invest in some new equipment, wholesale infrastructure improvements will be largely unnecessary. This is especially true for cable companies that have already deployed mixed fiber/coaxial networks. The upside? Faster DOCSIS 3.0 deployments in the US.

Cable companies have another incentive to roll out DOCSIS 3.0 in a rapid manner. Verizon and AT&T are investing heavily in fiber networks of their own. While AT&T's fiber-to-the-node solution won't break any speed records (DSL download speeds are capped at 6Mbps), Verizon's FiOS network offers the kind of bandwidth that is out of reach even for DOCSIS 3.0. Of course, much of that 3.5Gbps of bandwidth is reserved for television programming (leaving around 622Mbps for broadband), but FiOS has the potential for even faster speeds as more technological advances are made and FiOS TV is migrated to an IPTV system.

Comcast plans to demo DOCSIS 3.0 at The Cable Show this week and, more importantly, plans to begin DOCSIS 3.0 trials later this year, according to Cable Digital News. Large-scale DOCSIS 3.0 deployments are unlikely to begin until next year, and a November 2006 report estimated that only 40 percent of the cable modems in use will support the technology by 2011—by that time, FiOS will be available to well over 18 million households in the US. Still, it's encouraging to see one of those "three-to-five-years-away" technologies poised to finally hit the market.
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post...customers.html





With Liberty and 100 Megabit/Second Broadband for All
Eric Bangeman

The sad state of US broadband policy has been on the minds of a lot of people for some time. Federal Communications Commission Kevin Martin has affirmed that broadband policy is a "priority" for the Commission, and President Bush said back in 2004 that he wanted universal access to broadband by 2007. Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D-WV) is on board with the broadband love and has an even more ambitious goal: universal 100Mbps broadband from sea to shining sea by 2015, with an interim goal of 10Mbps by 2010.

In a nonbinding resolution introduced to the Senate yesterday, Sen. Rockefeller noted that at the current pace of deployment, "next-generation" broadband networks (which the resolution defines as being capable of 100Mbps) will not be deployed throughout the US for another 20 years. The resolution calls on Congress to work with the President to develop a strategy with the goal of passing legislation by year end, but since a resolution doesn't carry the force of law, there's no guarantee that it will have any tangible results.

In remarks delivered to the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation, Sen. Rockefeller pointed to the examples of Japan and Korea. "In Japan, tens of millions of people have access to a direct fiber connection, and 100 megabit connections are commonplace," said the senator. "Korea has been the leader in DSL for years, and now it also is extending fiber all the way to the home."

Korea is also hitting the 100Mbps benchmark via cable Internet via deployments of pre-DOCSIS 3.0 gear, and recent developments indicate that the US might not need to run fiber to every household in order to reach the elusive megabit download speeds. At The Cable Show in Las Vegas this week, Comcast demoed some of its own DOCSIS 3.0 equipment that was able to suck down content at 150Mbps.

But as those living in rural areas know all too well, broadband options—let alone next-generation broadband service—can be few and far between. That, too, may change as wireless broadband technologies mature and are brought to market. Perhaps the most compelling of these is the so-called "White Spaces" broadband device currently being tested by the FCC. White spaces broadband would take advantage of unused television spectrum after the transition to digital television in February 2009 to deliver speeds of up to 80Mbps to subscribers.

Sen. Rockefeller credits "healthy competition developing between telephone companies and cable television companies" for the 30Mbps speeds that are available to a mere handful of US residents. However, the definition of broadband competition used by the FCC—where competition is between different modes of broadband delivery rather than the providers themselves—has left millions of Americans with little or no choice when it comes to fast Internet service. And if the telecoms deploying their next-generation networks get their way, that will not change any time in the near future, as they continue to limit their fiber deployments to more profitable and affluent neighborhoods within a municipality while bypassing others.

Universal megabit broadband is not only a noble goal but is arguably a strategic imperative for the US. Sen. Rockefeller's resolution is a first step in the right direction, but the future legislation envisioned by the senator needs to reflect and correct the many failings of current broadband policy in the US if it is to have any meaningful impact.
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post...d-for-all.html





Harvard, BBN Use Streetlamps to Light Up Wireless Network
Ben Ames

Researchers at Harvard University and BBN Technologies have designed an intriguing wireless network capable of reporting real-time sensor data across an entire city, Cambridge, Mass. Scientists will initially use the CitySense network to monitor urban weather and pollution. The network could eventually provide better public wireless Internet access.

The system solves a constraint on previous wireless networks—battery life—by mounting each node on a municipal streetlamp, where it draws power from city electricity. Researchers plan to install 100 sensors on streetlamps throughout Cambridge by 2011, using a grant from the National Science Foundation. Each node will include an embedded PC running the Linux OS, an 802.11 Wi-Fi interface and weather sensors, says Matt Welsh, assistant professor of computer science at Harvard.

For the sensors, the streetlamp approach opens up a new range of uses—for example, performing long-term experiments like real-time environmental monitoring, correlating microclimates with population health or tracking the spread of biochemical agents, according to BBN.

A large challenge was how to design a network that allows remote nodes to communicate with the central servers at Harvard and BBN. CitySense will do that by letting each node form a mesh with its neighbors, exchanging data through multiple-hop links. This strategy allows a node to download software or upload sensor data to a distant server hub using a small radio with only a 1-kilometer range, Welsh says.

People have built such networks on smaller scales before, but for private purposes, or to provide wireless Internet links in towns such as Madison, Wis., and Champaign, Ill., Welsh says. In contrast, CitySense will let academic researchers worldwide log on to the project website and submit their own research programs to run on the network.
http://www.cio.com/article/108413/Ha...reless_Network





Free-Internet Plan Gets S.F. Controller's Office OK

Cost savings, citywide Wi-Fi connections make EarthLink-Google offer attractive
Ryan Kim

The San Francisco controller's office issued a favorable review Friday on a proposal by EarthLink and Google to provide the city with free wireless Internet access.

The report estimates residents could save $9 million to $18 million in Internet bills annually by having the option of choosing the EarthLink service, which will offer free access as well as a paid service that is cheaper than other broadband options like DSL and cable.

The report said the service will help the city bridge the digital divide, providing many residents with Internet service for the first time. It also noted it would be a boon to EarthLink, giving it a foothold in the San Francisco broadband market.

"I think this is one more reason for the board to approve free Wi-Fi as soon as possible," said Nathan Ballard, spokesman for Mayor Gavin Newsom. "It shows that Wi-Fi creates a favorable impact for the city."

Newsom said in January that the city had finalized language for a contract with EarthLink and Google to provide paid and free Wi-Fi service. EarthLink would pay the city $2 million over four years for the right to build, own and maintain the network. Subscribers would pay $22 a month for 1 megabit per second of broadband service or receive free service with speeds topping out at 300 kilobits per second.

But several city supervisors, led by Jake McGoldrick, have pushed for a municipally owned and operated network. McGoldrick has proposed competing legislation that could be heard by the Board of Supervisors later this summer at the same time as the EarthLink-Google deal.

Supervisor Chris Daly, who has supported a city-owned system, said he wasn't swayed by the controller's report. He said a city-owned network could provide even greater benefits than the EarthLink system.

A city-owned project "could potentially offer better service at lower rates for customers, and that might have a bigger impact on the economy and local businesses," Daly said. "That's what we have to be thinking about."

The report by the controller's office, which acts as the city's auditor, comes just three days after EarthLink won approval from the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission to use its light poles to build a network of Wi-Fi antennas.

The EarthLink-Google proposal will be heard Monday by the Board of Supervisors' Budget and Finance Committee before moving to the full board.

"We're really pleased to have a city agency evaluate the deal with this level of diligence and look at the areas where we'd have an impact, whether it's providing funds for digital inclusion or the impact on the economy and savings for consumers," said Cole Reinwand, vice president of product strategy and marketing at EarthLink.
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/articl...UG6FPPLB21.DTL





Vonage Says It May Have Way Around Disputed Patents
Amy Thomson

Vonage Holdings Corp. said it may have technology that could rescue its Internet-phone service, after a jury found the company infringed patents that allow customers to call standard telephones.

``We will begin rolling these workarounds out shortly, hopefully in the next few weeks, and we believe they will work,'' Chief Executive Officer Jeffrey Citron said on a conference call today as the Holmdel, New Jersey-based company reported a narrower first-quarter loss.

Vonage shares have plunged 80 percent since the company went public a year ago. Citron's remarks pushed the stock up 11 percent today on optimism that Vonage can stay in business if the new technology eliminates future patent fights with Verizon Communications Inc.

``They're saying they're well under way, but still not making any guarantees that they'll be successful,'' said Clayton Moran, an analyst at Stanford Group Co. in Boca Raton, Florida. He rates the shares ``hold'' and doesn't own them. ``Investors should remain skeptical.''

Shares of Vonage rose 33 cents to $3.38 at 4:01 p.m. in New York Stock Exchange composite trading. They were first sold to the public for $17 apiece in May 2006.

Vonage's new technology can be installed through software downloads and shouldn't be costly to deploy, Citron said. The company will continue to appeal the court decision that requires it to pay Verizon damages for infringing patents on technology that translates Internet-based calls to standard lines.

Narrower Loss

The first-quarter net loss shrank to $72.3 million, or 47 cents a share, from $85.2 million a year earlier, Vonage said today. Excluding some items, the loss was 39 cents, better than a 44-cent average of analyst estimates compiled by Bloomberg.

Sales rose 64 percent to $195.9 million, in line with the preliminary figures released last month. Growth slowed as the company won 166,000 subscribers in the first quarter, compared with 328,000 a year earlier.

Legal bills and spending to acquire customers contributed to the loss. Vonage reported sales and subscriber numbers early when announcing the resignation of CEO Michael Snyder. Founder Citron took over as his interim replacement at that time.

Vonage will give an update on the CEO search on its next earnings call, Citron said, adding it is unlikely a new leader will be named before the Verizon case is completed.

`Very Aggressive'

``Citron can be very aggressive, and I think he is the best person for that job right now,'' said Yankee Group analyst Patrick Monaghan, who is based in Boston and doesn't own Vonage shares. He spoke before the announcement. ``He's willing to take on the AT&Ts and Verizons of the world.''

Vonage spent an average of $275 to acquire each new customer in the quarter. The rate of customer defections rose to 2.4 percent from 2.3 percent three months earlier. The company wouldn't say what it expects churn to be in the second quarter.

Last month, Vonage also said it would cut its advertising budget by $110 million to $310 million for 2007 and reduce its workforce by 10 percent. Vonage will have costs of $5 million in the second quarter, mainly related to firings, Citron said today.

``The first five months of this year have obviously been very difficult. We have made some very hard choices as a company,'' he said in an interview. ``We made those hard choices because we don't want to do this again.''

Lower Sales

The smaller ad budget will reduce customer additions and hurt sales in 2007, Chief Financial Officer John Rego said on the conference call. He wouldn't confirm Vonage's previous forecast for sales of as much as $900 million in 2007, saying the patent lawsuit and spending cuts are making the year unpredictable.

A U.S. district court judge ruled in March that Vonage must pay Verizon more than $58 million in damages and 5.5 percent of future revenue from phone lines. Vonage has said in court filings it may need to seek bankruptcy protection if it loses the use of the technology.

Yesterday Vonage filed written arguments with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit in Washington, which specializes in patent law. Vonage said the trial judge's interpretation of Verizon's patents was erroneous and the jury's verdict, as well as its determination the patents are valid, should be thrown out. Verizon's reply is due May 23, and the appeal will be argued before a three-judge panel on June 25.
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?p...1FTM0&refer=us





Paedophiles Use Skype ‘Loophole’ to Woo Children
Daniel Foggo, Claire Newell and Martin Foley

INTERNET chatrooms run by Skype, the online telephone giant, have become a magnet for paedophiles and sexual predators who want to groom children as young as 10 for sex, an investigation has found.

The software, which enables users to make free phone calls and also “chat” by typing messages while online, has become the preferred method for many paedophiles to find their victims.

Other internet chat facilities have strengthened their child protection measures or closed down entirely because of concerns over internet “grooming”.

Skype, which was bought two years ago by eBay, the online auction site, for £1.3 billion and has nearly 200m users worldwide, has been accused of leaving under16s vulnerable to abuse. It was contacted last week by concerned Metropolitan police child protection officers.

During a two-week investigation, Sunday Times undercover reporters posed online as children aged between 10 and 14. They were bombarded with sexually overt messages from adult men in Britain and overseas who wanted to meet the children and asked them for pornographic images of themselves.

One, a 50-year-old professional and father of two from southern England, arranged to meet a reporter who he believed to be a girl aged 14 from West Sussex. He turned up at a railway station near to his home on Friday after arranging to take her to his home to “watch a video”.

The man, who had also said that he thought the girl’s clothing would “look great on my bedroom floor”, greeted a reporter who he believed to be the 14-year-old by draping his arm across her shoulders.

Another man, a 33-year-old supervisor for a home counties company and a father of one, attempted to get a reporter masquerading online as a 13-year-old girl to send him lewd pictures of herself and to attend a pornographic photo shoot at a friend’s “mansion”.

A third man, a 32-year-old engineer based in northeast Scotland, took delight in ordering a “13-year-old girl” to engage in a sex act online. He also told her to buy “sexy” underwear, boasted that he had just bedded a 16-year-old and became aggressive when his commands were questioned.

It is illegal for an adult to meet a child following “sexual grooming” over the internet and it is also an offence to ask a child to become involved in pornography.

The Sunday Times has decided not to identify the men after fears were expressed for their safety.

Michele Elliott, director of Kid-scape, the child protection group, said: “The Sunday Times has uncovered not only a loophole, it has uncovered where the paedophiles are going when they are being blocked at other places. What’s Skype going to do about it?

“We know that paedophiles will use anything they can to get in contact with children. There are no checks and you’ve proven that it is so brilliantly easy.”

Skype differs from many other chat facilities because it is run on a system known as “peer-to-peer”. This means individuals communicate directly with each other instead of being hosted through a central server that can be scrutinised by moderators.

It takes just a few minutes to download Skype’s free software and enter the chatroom. The only apparent warning to children is a single sentence found in an obscure corner of the site: “If your children are using Skype, educate them about the threats of communicating with strangers.”

By contrast, children using the Yahoo! chatroom, a centrally hosted service, encounter clear warnings throughout the registration procedure and, once enabled, can communicate only with others of the same age group.

A panic button alerts the service provider to abusive messaging and the chatrooms are “patrolled” by volunteers approved by Yahoo! who are known as “navigators”.

On Skype, users have only to create a “profile” with optional details of their age and then place themselves online. Other users from around the world can then send messages and call.

The profiles created by The Sunday Times, which made clear the girls’ ages and little else, proved irresistible to sexual predators.

The 50-year-old professional messaged an undercover reporter posing as a 14-year-old named Anne, asking what she liked to do at night. He asked her if she was really 14 and, when told that she was, he suggested: “Well, if you ever get up this way, I could take you clubbing.”

He then suggested a rendezvous and gave “Anne” his mobile number. In a subsequent telephone call he arranged to pick her up from the train station on Friday morning.

“I can take you home so to speak and we can sit and watch a video or something like that if you like?” he said, adding that he also had the latest James Bond film.

“How you going to work this with your mum, that’s what I want to know?” he added. When “Anne” said she did not know, he said: “What she doesn’t know, she won’t worry about.”

Later on he sent the “girl” a text saying: “See u tomorrow at station 10am. I am not going to get arrested by pc if I turn up am I?”

When the girl suggested that she did not understand the text, the man seemed reassured.

The next day he appeared at the station half an hour early, looking agitated. After approaching the person he believed to be “Anne”, he was confronted by reporters. He said he had intended to make further checks on her age after meeting her, although he did not explain how.

The man added that he had been behaving strangely lately “because of a recent bereavement” and vowed never to contact children again.

A second man, the 33-year-old supervisor, contacted “Lucy” from Cheshire whose Skype profile described her as “14 soon”, and quickly asked if she was a virgin and if she would perform various sex acts.

“So if your [sic] only 14 have you had sex before?” he asked. When “Lucy” said she had not, the man steered the conversation towards her sending him pornographic pictures of herself.

“I can help [you be a model] but I need to see your body naked,” he messaged. The man also sent her messages from his work e-mail account and texts. “Just watch out for the perverts on Skype ok?” he added.

In a subsequent telephone call he said he had a friend with “a mansion” where he could take her for a photographic session. “If you want to start doing stuff we’ll have to start thinking about arrangements, when you’re available, cause obviously you’re at school and stuff like that, so maybe a weekend thing for you?” he said.

He then suggested she send him a package of graphic pictures to his work address. “Obviously put [them] for the attention of myself yeah? Else my boss will open them probably.”

When confronted, the man, who also contacted another underage profile set up by The Sunday Times, said: “If she was 14 or not I didn’t know that. I genuinely misunderstood. I’m not interested in talking to a 14-year-old. I’ve got my own kid, do you know what I mean?”

A third man, the 32-year-old from Scotland, who spent a long time messaging “Lucy” urging her to masturbate online, said when confronted: “This isn’t going to end well, is it? I haven’t really got a defence. It was a mistake. I wouldn’t even have to think twice before doing it again. I just wouldn’t do it.”

Kurt Sauer, Skype’s chief security officer, said: “This raises some very practical issues. However, we have not found a way to address each of the issues.”

Easy connection

Skype customers make free international telephone calls to other users and message each other via the internet, writes Daniel Foggo.

Skype. masterminded five years ago by the entrepreneurs Niklas Zennström and Janus Friis, was sold for £1.3 billion in 2005 and now has more than 196m users in 200 countries. The software has been downloaded 500m times.

Although calls between computers are free, connections to landlines and mobile phones must be paid for with credits bought online.

Computer-to-computer connections, known as peer-to-peer, enable users to see each other on webcams and to key in messages that are transferred instantly.

The technology encrypts the messages, providing privacy for users and their personal details. There is no way of monitoring the chat.
http://technology.timesonline.co.uk/...cle1752240.ece





States Ponder Laws to Keep Web Predators From Children
Jennifer Medina

Nearly every American teenager, it seems, has a Web page displaying his or her life details. And nearly every parent has nightmares that someone might visit those pages, easily discovering where the children live and what they like.

It happened in Fairfield County in Connecticut in October 2005, when an F.B.I. task force arrested two men in unrelated cases who were suspected of trolling social-networking sites to lure young girls for sex. One of the predators, a 22-year-old man, molested an 11-year-old girl in her home while her parents slept upstairs. In the other case, a 39-year-old man met a 14-year-old girl at a mall and had her perform oral sex on him in his car.

It also happened in Youngsville, N.C., last June, when girls ages 12 and 13 were found at a swimming pool with a 21-year-old woman at 4 a.m. The girls told the police that they had met the woman through MySpace.com, where they had lied and said they were 17 and 18. The police charged the woman with two counts of contributing to the delinquency of a minor. The woman, who did not have a previous criminal record, said she had not been planning anything inappropriate.

[And just last week, a 27-year-old Texas man was charged in Michigan with criminal sexual conduct involving a 14-year-old girl he met on MySpace.]

Now, after years of exponential growth of such Web sites and dozens of high-profile cases of criminal activity stemming from them, politicians in a half-dozen states are pushing legislation aimed at protecting children by requiring sites like MySpace.com and Facebook.com to verify the age of every user and require parental permission for those under 18.

But while the proposals have earned praise from worried parents, those who run the sites and independent technology experts say they are little more than grandstanding and would be impossible to enforce.

Indeed, MySpace already requires that users be at least 14 to create profiles, and limits access to those belonging to anyone under 18, while Facebook requires that users be older than 13 and shows profiles only to other members in the same social network.

Neither set of rules has stopped children like those in North Carolina from lying about their ages or blocked adults from masquerading as teenagers.

“Everyone looking at this has good intentions at their core, but there are some solutions that sound like they are the easy silver bullet and there is just no such thing,” said Hemanshu Nigam, the chief security officer for MySpace, warning that the proposed restrictions could create a false sense of safety. “You’ll see teens who are going to get around it and probably end up in a place where it is more difficult to protect them.”

Richard Blumenthal, the Connecticut attorney general, who has spearheaded the growing movement to crack down on the sites, frequently brushes off such concerns by arguing that “if we can put a man on the moon, we can verify someone’s age.”

“This is a basic issue of safety,” he said in a recent interview. “These kinds of Web sites have created this complete delusion that this is a private world that an outsider does not get into, but it is a total misnomer. Anyone can get in.”

Mr. Blumenthal and Roy Cooper, the North Carolina attorney general, both Democrats, started a national task force last year on the issue that now includes attorneys general from nearly every state. The initial focus was on pressuring MySpace to raise its minimum age for registration to 16 from 14, but when the company resisted, Mr. Blumenthal and others began introducing legislation to force its hand.

In Connecticut, the bill sailed through two committees and is awaiting a vote by the full legislature. In North Carolina, the legislature’s Judiciary Committee is scheduled to address the matter in the coming days. Similar proposals have been introduced by state lawmakers in New York and Georgia, while a legislator in Illinois has proposed blocking access to social-networking sites in public libraries and schools.

Fears about unsuspecting children being stalked by tech-savvy predators are as old as the Internet itself. But far more than their predecessors, chat rooms and bulletin boards, the social-networking sites often feature intimate details and pictures, including a child’s hometown and school, and can be easily seen by anyone, without the creator’s explicit permission.

Still, experts worry that the proposed restrictions would stymie overall participation, since requiring users to verify their age would give the sites access to a person’s true identity. Currently, users must enter an e-mail address and basic information like a birthday and a ZIP code, but there is nothing to stop people from making them up.

Detective Frank Dannahey, who specializes in Internet crimes for the Police Department in Rocky Hill, Conn., said that verification “of course, would be helpful,” but that it was not clear whether the proposed legislation would actually make children safer.

“It’s a quandary,” said Detective Dannahey, who has worked with both MySpace and Mr. Blumenthal over the years. “If you are a teenager, are you going to go ask your parents for permission, or are you just going to go around it and use another Web site, which might be less safe? The only way you will really know whether or not it will work is if it is done.”

None of the proposed bills specifically outline the way the sites should verify the age of users, but the politicians pushing them suggest they could hire private contractors to do so. Most models of identity verification on the Internet involve financial transactions, typically using a credit card. Several sites that sell cigarettes or alcohol use existing databases like those for state driver’s licenses to verify that customers are above the minimum legal age.

But Internet experts say verification would be exponentially more difficult for minors, who typically do not have government-issued or other easily verifiable forms of identification. It would also significantly increase costs for running the sites, which are now almost entirely automated.

“They don’t have driver’s licenses, or for that matter any public records useful for determining age, and present a tremendous challenge to accurately identify,” Jeff Schmidt, the chief executive of Authis, an information security company, wrote in a paper circulated to the attorneys general this spring. “We’re trying to match an identifier and attribute to someone we’ll never see and who is probably located thousands of miles away in another city, state or country.”

Despite the fears of parents — and the warnings of politicians — researchers say that many teenagers are already self-policing the sites.

According to a recent survey by the Pew Internet and American Life Project, more than half of all teenagers with an Internet profile somehow either limit access to their Web pages or leave out sensitive information like proper names and addresses.

Nearly half of those with public profiles, according to the survey released in March of more than 900 users ages 12 to 17, said they lied about the more telling details, and more than two-thirds of those who have been contacted by strangers said they ignored them.

“The good news is that most teens already have a pretty healthy sense of paranoia,” said Mary Madden, an author of the Pew report. “The teens who say they are using the network to make new friends that they only know online make up a fairly small portion of users.”

Adam D. Thierer, a senior fellow at the Progress and Freedom Foundation who has studied sexual predators on the Internet, said that while age verification is the “argument du jour,” research shows that limiting convicted sex offenders’ access to the Internet would be more effective. Several states, including New York, have enacted legislation requiring sex offenders to register their e-mail addresses with law enforcement; New Jersey has a similar proposal pending.

“It’s the same thing as saying to a kid, ‘You can’t hang out in video arcades, because someone might try to come and get you,’ ” Mr. Thierer said. “The better thing to do would be to stop the criminal from getting there. This worrying just creates a new kind of moral panic.”

But with parents packing forums on Internet safety and frequently wary of technology their children navigate better than they do, the proposals have met with relatively little opposition so far. Many argue that stopping even one predator would make regulations worth it.

Beyond the question of feasibility, opponents of the age-verification rules are concerned about unintended consequences, like limiting participation on blogs or other sites, since the legislation does not explicitly define “social-networking sites.”

In Connecticut, several political blogs have posted warnings that they could be shut down if the bill passes. On Wednesday, one blogger posted a petition against the legislation. Lawmakers, in turn, have written their own posts to assure Web-savvy politicos that they were weighing the potential minefields of regulating the Internet.

“While there is a real concern for children, there is also a concern that we don’t sweep in all kinds of other problems by trying to fix this one,” said State Senator Andrew J. McDonald, a Democrat who represents Stamford and Darien. Mr. McDonald was one of the four legislators, out of 39 who voted, to oppose the Connecticut proposal in one committee.

“I am afraid we are dealing with this by coming down with a sledgehammer,” he said, “where a small mallet would be more appropriate.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/06/ny...=1&oref=slogin





Connecticut Film Critic Charged With Sex Crime
AP

A film critic for The Hartford Advocate newspaper is accused of soliciting sex from a minor.

John Boonstra, 54, of Canton was arrested Friday in Stamford where police say he had gone to meet an underage girl, who turned out to be undercover police officers.

Boonstra and the officers had about a dozen contacts during a two-month period in an online chat room that became graphic and sexual in nature, said Stamford Police Sgt. Joe Kennedy.

Boonstra initiated the conversations and even told the undercover officers what he did for a living, talking about his review of the new Spiderman movie, Kennedy said.

He arranged a meeting on Friday in Stamford and was arrested when he arrived, Kennedy said. Police who searched his car found alcohol the undercover officers had asked him to bring, a disposable video camera, Viagra and condoms.

"He was anticipating having sex with an underage girl," said Kennedy, who oversees the department’s recently formed Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force.

Boonstra was charged with criminal attempt at risk of injury to a minor and criminal attempt at second-degree sexual assault.

Boonstra has been a part-time employee of The Hartford Advocate since 1995, but was a free-lance writer for years before that, said Vivian Chow, vice president of human resources and corporate affairs for the Hartford Courant, which owns the newspaper.

He resigned on Monday, before the arrest became public. He also owns The Book Exchange in Plainville.

Calls to the bookstore went unanswered Wednesday.

Boonstra is free on $200,000 bond and is due back in court on May 18.
http://www.newstimeslive.com/news/story.php?id=1052507





Taxpayers Picking Up the Tab for Company's Legal Troubles
Linda Fantin

As lawmakers try to avoid a costly court fight over Utah's trademark protection program, they have taken the unusual step of making taxpayers pick up the legal fees for a private company caught up in litigation over another troublesome registry.

In August, the Attorney General's Office quietly hired private attorney Brent Hatch, who had been defending Unspam Technologies and its money-making interests in Utah's Child Protection Registry. So far, Hatch has been paid $100,000 - half of what his contract allows, Attorney General Mark Shurtleff said.

Unspam President Matthew Prince said Hatch's bills were threatening to strangle his company, adding the state would benefit from his lawyer's expertise. Hatch, son of U.S. Sen. Orrin Hatch, came up with many of the legal arguments that have prevailed in court, Prince said.

"If we shut down, that means the entire program shuts down," Prince said. "We went to the state and said, 'We just can't keep doing this.'"

It's a stunning development for a program that was supposed to generate millions of dollars for the state but is instead a financial flop. The situation also raises questions about the fate of Prince's other brainchild, the Trademark Protection Act, and a legislative process that conceals the potential legal costs of controversial bills.

The trademark law, set to take effect April 30, also was sold to lawmakers as a huge money-maker for Utah. The law allows companies to register electronic trademarks, providing a mechanism for them to sue competitors who try to use those keywords to sell their own products through Utah-based Internet searches.

"This bill will cost the state nothing," Rep. David Clark announced on the House floor during the last day of the legislative session, "In fact it may actually generate revenue."

Sen. Dan Eastman predicted "a nice little cottage industry could spring up and be profitable to all those who participate."

How profitable? With about 1.3 million patent holders, and a $250 state registration fee, Utah could reap a small fortune, Prince said last week during a coffee-shop interview. At the very moment he was touting the potential of the program, senior executives from Google, Microsoft, America Online and other new media giants were on Capitol Hill, arguing they would have no choice but to challenge the program in court.

Lawmakers wondered afterward why industry representatives hadn't spoken up during the session. Taxpayers may be wondering the same thing about lawmakers.

According to audio recordings of legislative proceedings, not a single legislator openly questioned the legitimacy, constitutionality or cost of the innocuous-sounding bill, despite written warnings from legislative analysts that it faced a "high probability" of being overturned in court.

As a result, the Attorney General's Office estimated it would cost $65,900 a year to defend the law against a likely legal challenge, but the financial footnote was ignored, Shurtleff said.

In fact, of six fiscal notes forwarded by the AG's office this year, only one made it onto the bill, Shurtleff said, and the legislative fiscal analyst cut the amount by 25 percent. In Utah's budget-conscious Legislature, even the most conservative fiscal notes can doom harmless bills.

John Massey, head of the Legislative Fiscal Analysts Office, said his analysts almost never attach fiscal notes for litigation. "Until a case goes to court, we just don't know" how much it will cost, Massey said, defending the practice of disregarding the AG's estimates. Usually, Massey said, there is an expectation that the attorney general will "just allocate the work load among existing staff."

That's what happened with the Child Protection Registry, which contained no fiscal note for defending the law in court, and is now being challenged by a cornucopia of porn industry, free speech and advertising advocates. The Utah law requires companies that sell adult-oriented products and services to submit their e-mail lists to Unspam to be "scrubbed" of addresses to which minors have access. The cost is half a cent for every address they submit, and Unspam gets 80 percent of the money.

Only the registry, nearly two years old, has been a financial failure. As of March, the Division of Consumer Protection had collected just $187,224 of the $3 million to $6 million that was anticipated. The state's share is a measly $37,445 - not nearly enough to cover the $58,000-a-year in prosecutorial fees and the $75,000-a-year full-time Department of Commerce investigator estimated in the original legislation. Now the costs also include up to $200,000 for an outside attorney.

Prince said he was surprised to learn a private vendor can be sued along with the state. He claims the plaintiffs named his company in hopes of putting him out of business and neutering the new law. Prince said the company paid Hatch about $70,000 before deciding it could pay no more, saying the money helped defend the state's interests as well.

"I'm happy we subsidized that cost to the extent we did," Prince said.

Hatch also argued the burden should be on the state, not Unspam, to defend the state law.

"It's like you need your engine rebuilt and all you can afford is a tuneup," said Hatch, describing the complex litigation and Unspam's inability to pay.

Shurtleff said he is happy to have Hatch's help on the case, but he did not request it. Rather, he said legislative leaders told him "this is what the Legislature wants" and agreed to supplement the AG's budget to cover the costs.

Shurtleff doesn't like to hire outside attorneys, he said, because they are expensive and have a tendency to overbill. So when lawmakers approached him about putting Hatch on the payroll, Shurleff said he insisted they cap his fees at $200,000.

The contract, signed in August, pays for Hatch, who charges $395 an hour, and an associate attorney, who gets $225 per hour, though Hatch agreed to give the state a 15 percent discount, Shurtleff said.

Still, that's three times what state attorneys make.

Shurtleff and his veteran assistants could not recall another case in which the state paid to defend a private company, let alone assume the fees of its attorney.

That doesn't mean it hasn't happened, said Assistant Attorney General Jim Soper. A case could be made for defending a private company's interests when they coincide with the state's, Soper said.

"If the company was unable to defend itself and there were adverse consequences to the state, then there might be a sound, underlying reason for us to handle it," Soper said.

It's more common for vendors and contractors to indemnify the state, he said. There is some question about whether Unspam agreed to do just that.

Shurtleff and Commerce Director Francine Giani recalled a meeting in 2004 when the registry legislation was being debated in which Pat Shea, an attorney who represented Unspam at the time, pledged to" represent the state for free" in any litigation, they said.

Shea, a mentor and adviser to Unspam's Prince, said he never promised to represent the state in court, only in negotiations and discussions with critics. His legal work for Unspam was limited and mostly pro bono, Shea said, although Prince did give him options in the company should it ever go public.

Senate President John Valentine, whose recollection of the meeting included who was present and where he was sitting, said he didn't take Shea's offer seriously. "It was an off-hand remark," Valentine said, "not a written guarantee."

Valentine had more trouble remembering last summer's conversation about hiring Hatch. "I have no idea," he said. "I don't remember anything about this." House Speaker Greg Curtis also had difficulty recalling the meeting.

After conferring with his chief deputy, who kept notes of the meeting, Valentine insisted Shurtleff came to him and Curtis, saying his office did not have the expertise to handle the case. Valentine also said it was leadership's idea to cap the fees.
"At the time I was trying to protect children from pornography and be responsive to the needs of the attorney general," Valentine said. "I might think differently in hindsight."
lfantin@sltrib.com

A money pit

The Utah Child Protection Registry was expected to generate millions for the state, but instead has only produced about $37,500 for the state in two years. Now the company that sold the program as a money-maker is defending itself in court, and has persuaded the state to pay for its lawyer - at a cost of up to $200,000.
http://www.sltrib.com/ci_5778185





Should Copyright Be Abolished?
Greg Bulmash

There's an old joke in which a man asks a woman if she'd sleep with him for a million dollars. After some thought, she says yes. Then he asks her if she'd sleep with him for 50 dollars. She says, "of course not! What kind of girl do you think I am?"

"We've established what kind of girl you are," he replies. "Now we're just haggling over the price."

When it comes to a lot of the more vocal proponents of abolishing copyright, that punch line applies.

The problem with a large part of the anti-copyright crowd is that they don't understand or won't admit what copyright entails as a concept. That is the right of the creator of a work to exert some control over how it's used, who can copy and distribute it, and a right to have their authorship acknowledged.

These members of the anti-copyright crowd cite the GPL (GNU Public License) as an alternative to copyright without any sense of the ironic fact that the GPL can't exist without copyright. They're proposing a solution while simultaneously advocating the destruction of the thing that makes their solution workable. While the GPL is less restrictive than other licensing methods, it's a license and it does impose some restrictions on or conditions for use of the work. It is a method of controlling your work. But without copyright, the GPL could not be enforced.

Without copyright, the creator would have no power to dictate any licensing terms, even the GPL's licensing terms. Their work would go into the public domain and anyone anywhere could use it in any way they wanted. Drop the argument of whether or not profit motive drives creation sufficiently enough that it needs to be retained. Let's look at what happens if the GPL is unenforceable.

You create some cool open source app. Then some megacorporation comes along, removes all your claims of credit, adds 10% more code, compiles it, and distributes the executable binary locked up in DRM. Under the GPL, you could retain your own lawyer or appeal to the FSF to sue them and force them to open up their application. But without copyright enabling you to dictate licensing terms such as the GPL, you have no legal recourse. They get away with it and the worst they suffer is some bad publicity... maybe.

Would that theft of your work act as a disincentive to creating more works? Would you say to yourself, "why bother slaving away to create this when some megacorporation can just steal it, put their name on it, and lock it up in DRM"? Perhaps you would. Perhaps you wouldn't. But some people would and that would take more creators out of the market and lower the quantity and quality of content that's available.

Those who hold up the GPL, Creative Commons, or any licensing option other than the public domain as an alternative to copyright are expressing a preference for allowing creators to exert some control, however small, over how their work is used and distributed. But if you abolish copyright, you take away even that small element of control.

Now we can argue until we're blue in the face over the details of what copyright should allow and should not. The extension of copyright terms, the constant chipping away at the doctrine of Fair Use, the evils of DRM... these can all be cited as things that are wrong with current copyright law and things that need to be abolished. But that's reforming copyright, not abolishing it. It's surgery on the patient, not euthanasia.

If you support the GPL, support an author's right to dictate any terms regarding how their work is used, then you support the concept of copyright even if you don't support the current law and practice of copyright. Then the argument becomes not whether copyright should be abolished, but what form it should take. In short, we've established what kind of girl you are. Now we're just haggling over the price.
http://www.brainhandles.com/2007/05/...-be-abolished/





Supporting Open Source While Opposing Copyright
K.Fogel

Recently, Slashdot carried an interesting — and in my opinion mistaken — piece by Greg Bulmash about copyright and open source. Here's Slashdot's summary:

Reader gbulmash sends us to his essay on the fallacy of those who would abolish copyright. The argument is that without copyright granting an author the right to set licensing terms for his/her work, the GPL could not be enforced. The essay concludes that if you support the GPL or any open source license (other than public domain), your fight should be not about how to abolish copyright, but how to reform copyright.

The piece contains flaws in both its reasoning and its rhetoric, and deserves a rebuttal, in part because it reached such a wide audience.

The piece's most obvious problem is its conflation of copyright with "creditright". For example, here's how Bulmash asks us to imagine what would happen if the GPL (a copyright license that allows derivative works, but only if they are also under the GPL) were unenforceable:

You create some cool open source app. Then some megacorporation comes along, removes all your claims of credit, adds 10% more code, compiles it, and distributes the executable binary locked up in DRM. [...] Would that theft of your work act as a disincentive to creating more works? Would you say to yourself, "why bother slaving away to create this when some megacorporation can just steal it, put their name on it, and lock it up in DRM"?

This mixes up two completely different concepts: the right to be credited for a work, and the right to control distribution of that work. Attribution and copying are not the same thing: those who download songs illegally from the Internet do not typically replace the artist's name with their own, after all, and yet the RIAA is still filing lawsuits. So attribution is not really the issue here (and in general, letting data be copied freely actually helps prevent plagiarism, a topic covered in more detail here). In any case, no one objects to laws that protect credit. By all means, let's prevent the megacorporation from distributing your work without crediting you proportionally. But it would be a misnomer to call such protection "copyright" law, because it wouldn't have much to do with controlling copying. It would be a creditright, because it would simply enforce proper crediting.

That passage also shows a larger problem in Bulmash's piece, which is that, circularly, his language often assumes the very points he's arguing for. He talks of "theft" and "stealing", as though when the megacorporation gets your work, you somehow lose the work. Again, if he had objected to the theft of your credit, that would be perfectly reasonable, since the degree to which someone else claims credit for your work is exactly the degree to which you lose credit. But he's apparently talking about the theft of the work itself, and this makes little sense when applied to works of the mind. If I steal your bicycle, now you have no bicycle; if I copy your computer program, now we both have it.

All these problems can be seen at once in a paragraph near the opening of his article:

The problem with a large part of the anti-copyright crowd is that they don't understand or won't admit what copyright entails as a concept. That is the right of the creator of a work to exert some control over how it's used, who can copy and distribute it, and a right to have their authorship acknowledged.

Notice the rhetorical sleight-of-hand there: he presents copy control as a natural and uncontroversial "right" — and then accuses his targets of simply not understanding (or refusing to admit) that copyright entails that right! But it is precisely this so-called "right" that copyright doubters are questioning in the first place. If he wants to argue that it should be a right, that's fine, but instead he just asserts the right as though it's a fact of nature, beyond reasonable dispute. And again, he conflates control of distribution with acknowledgement of authorship.

Now let's move to the core of Bulmash's piece, which is his claim that open source software licensing depends on copyright. Here he does have a point, just not as broad or lasting a point as he thinks. For one thing, he tries to apply the argument to all open source software licenses, when it really only applies to the GPL. That's why all of his examples use the GPL, and not other licenses. The GPL is unusual among open source licenses in that it has a "copyleft" provision: it requires that if you make and distribute a derivative work based on a GPL'd original, your derivative must also be under the GPL. It is true that this provision currently depends on copyright law for enforcement, and on various occasions it has had to be enforced, sometimes publicly, sometimes behind the scenes.

But while Bulmash is technically correct that this part of open source licensing depends (today) on copyright law, he's missing the forest for the trees. The basic argument of copyright abolitionists is that people should be free to share when sharing does not result in any diminution of supply. The GPL simply uses copyright law in a jiujitsu-like manner to enforce this principle, in a legal environment where sharing is prohibited by default and must be explicitly permitted to be legal. All the GPL does is create a space where permission to share is enforced. Take his exercise in imagination all the way: imagine if we had laws that did away with most prohibitions against sharing, but that enforced crediting and permitted authors to enforce GPL-like provisions requiring sharing.

We probably would not call such laws "copyright", since they wouldn't prohibit copying. Even if we did call them "copyright", the word would mean something so different from what it means today as to render Bulmash's arguments inapplicable. Indeed, the GPL today doesn't really prohibit people from copying, it merely imposes certain requirements on those who make and distribute derivative works. If you just want to copy and use a GPL'd work yourself, or even make a private derivative work from it, you're free to do so, and many organizations in fact do that. The GPL's requirement is just that if you want to share, you must enable others to share likewise.

This runs completely counter to the modern notion of copyright, and could be enforced using laws so drastically different from our laws today as to be unrecognizeable. Thus, to say that the GPL depends on copyright is like saying that reading depends on scribes. It may be true for a period of time, but it's certainly not built into the nature of things, and it's not an argument for supporting scribes after something better comes along. Later, we might even use the same word, "scribes", to refer to the new, better thing, but that doesn't mean it's the same as the old thing. (Compare what the word "printer" means today versus what it meant in the seventeenth century.)

Claiming that copyright abolitionists depend on copyright for enforcement of their principles is just playing a name game — it's thinking with words instead of with concepts. The real question is whether their principles actually require today's copyright for enforcement, and I think the answer is that they don't: they could be enforced by means that few people would label "copyright", if come to with no preconceptions. The fact that copyright law is the tool available today doesn't change that.

I'm not arguing, by the way, that total abolition of copyright is necessarily the best thing. I do think it's a defensible position, though, and that either abolition or very fundamental changes to copyright terms and restrictions are needed to save our culture from being stuffed into a vending machine and sold back to us dollar by dollar. But that's a topic for another article. With respect to Greg Bulmash, my point is just that copyright abolitionists are being consistent when they use the open source movement as an example.
http://www.questioncopyright.org/cop...nd_open_source





Downloading is Here to Stay
Jon McDonald

In the early '80s, the movie industry was entrenched in another war against technology. It was not file sharing that worried them but video copying.

Sony had just unveiled the VCR, and the movie industry -- certain that people would only use this new technology to copy and steal movies -- tried to block it entirely. Even more, they feared a loss to theater revenues as people stayed home to watch their purchased, rented or, worst of all, copied movies.

Rather than embracing or endorsing the new distribution models created by home video players, movie studios sought to stop their production and the spread of rental services that used them.

But in landmark legal battles (especially Sony Corp. v. Universal City Studios, Inc., in 1984) the courts held that the benefits of these new technologies far outweighed their potential criminal uses.

These decisions benefitted consumers and the movie industry alike. Even though the copying of tapes did continue, the sale and rental of home videos proved a profitable venue for media rather than a threat to the industry.

Despite this recent precedent, a modern technological revolution, the Internet, has produced an almost identical response.

Distributing media online is cheaper and more convenient for both producers and consumers. Cheap bandwidth and technologies like torrents allow companies, bands and filmmakers, big and small alike, to distribute their work without the exorbitant costs once associated with publication.

In this new digital frontier, established industry leaders initially saw only a threat. Just as the VCR can be used to copy movies, the Internet can be used for file-sharing and subverting the established market, first for music and later for film, television and other media.

But rather than learning from the history of media technology and taking advantage of the Internet's boons, companies and groups like the Recording Industry Association of America and Motion Picture Association of America worked ceaselessly to suppress it, and continue to do so despite the success of those who have embraced the Internet.

These zealous associations quickly shut down file-sharing centers like Napster and SuperNova.org. But downloading did not stop or even slow.

Downloaders migrated to new services, which quickly took up the cause. Their activity moved underground, becoming more difficult to track and prosecute.

New downloading networks have no central location or are located in countries with no clear stance on file-sharing, such as Sweden. Without a clear foe, the RIAA, MPAA and other corporations began to pursue individual file-sharers, which is the situation we find ourselves in today.

Their campaign has become overdrawn and impossible to win, but they continue to spend excessive amounts of money pursuing victory.

An example of the inadequacy and cost of this crusade is Sony's 2005 scandal with digital rights management software.

Sony, who once fought for the VCR, attempted to prevent people from sharing music off their CDs by hiding protection software on them. This software secretly installed itself on a computer when the disc was inserted. It opened up security holes in the Windows operating system, but did not actually prevent copying.

In the face of several class-action lawsuits and widespread consumer discontent, Sony had to recall millions of CDs. The whole stupid business cost them as much in reputation as it did financially.

Rather than wasting time and resources targeting downloaders and angering customers in the process, media industries should look to the loyal customers who have embraced legal downloading venues such as iTunes.

Downloaders are not going away. They persists in the face of the constant threat of legal action and overcome the hurdles of new and costly security protocols, such as Sony's protection software, often in a matter of hours.

These media guerillas want free stuff, and no amount of bullying will stop them from taking it. Downloading, legal and illegal, is here to stay.

In the meantime, the image of companies and organizations that carry out Internet inquisitions has gone down the toilet. They are the bane of poor college students and teenage girls out to test the latest offerings of Justin Timberlake and Jay-Z.

But these groups are also dinosaurs with eyes only for the pricey store-bought albums and DVDs that made them rich. They are dead set on an increasingly archaic mode of distribution and blind in their rage against anything that threatens to change it.

If the recording and movie industries would only learn to function within these new models of distribution rather than railing against them uselessly, they would find a profitable new venue, just as they did with the home video market. Instead, they're committed to a foolish and costly crusade they can never hope to win.

Who exactly are these organizations fighting for? Is it the artists they claim to protect or the producers and record labels that have for so long gotten rich acting as middlemen, and who see the end of their fortunes in the free territory of the Internet?
http://media.www.thesantaclara.com/m...-2899005.shtml





Cannabis Website Wins Dogfight Over Stealth Jet Brand
Jack Malvern

It can build aircraft that are invisible to enemy radar and travel at three times the speed of sound, but Lockheed Martin met its match when it took on a small shop in Bexleyheath that sells cannabis paraphernalia.

The multibillion-dollar company brought a complaint against Skunk Works, motto “In the leaf we trust”, over the domain name ukskunkworks.co.uk .

The web address should be awarded to Lockheed Martin, lawyers for the aircraft manufacturer claimed, because Skunk Works is the name of its secret research laboratory in California where it developed the F-117 Nighthawk stealth fighter and the F-22 Raptor. It was also responsible for building the U-2 spy planes that flew over the Soviet Union during the Cold War.

The aircraft manufacturer sent a 1,000-page document to Nominet, the company that administers British domain names, in October asserting that it was already the owner of several European trademarks for “Skunk Works” and that the cannabis accessories shop was sullying its reputation.

The Bexleyheath business responded in November with a single sheet of paper. It won both the first hearing in January, when Nominet dismissed the complaint, and the appeal at the end of last month.

Max Mulley, owner of the London shop, said that Lockheed Martin’s claim that customers would be confused was ridiculous. “I don’t know what the confusion would have been — they sell aeroplanes and we sell smoking equipment. They are a multimillion-dollar company making aeroplanes and we’re a small shop in Bexleyheath.”

Mr Mulley, who estimates that his shop makes about £2,000 a month, did not hire any lawyers for the case. “I’ve done it all myself. They’ve got highflying lawyers. I’m guessing the whole thing has cost them about £40,000.”

Lockheed Martin declined to comment on how much it had spent, but said that it was considering other options. “Lockheed Martin respectfully disagrees with the conclusions of the panel but plans to continue to enforce its trademark rights in its famous mark.”

It could attempt to bring a claim against the shop for trademark infringement at the High Court, but a legal expert told The Times that the case would be difficult and expensive.

Mark Hickey, of Murgitroyd and Company, said that Lockheed would have to argue that it was an upstanding company and that its reputation was being undermined.

“The argument would be that it is like taking the name Rolls-Royce and using it on toilet cleaner,” he said. “But it is difficult to see on what basis they could win because you need to have a presence in the mind of the consumer in the first place. Skunk Works is not Rolls-Royce.”

The judging panel for Nominet disputed the claim from Lockheed Martin, also known as LMC, that British consumers would associate “Skunk Works” with aircraft manufacture.

“LMC’s original use of the name ‘skunk works’ was humorous, and a sense of humour may be appropriate to this situation,” it said. “There may be some comfort for LMC in the fact that many people have as little wish to be associated with military aircraft as have LMC to be associated with illegal drug use.”
http://business.timesonline.co.uk/to...cle1749930.ece





Apple Admits to Faulty Laptop Batteries

Macbook users have been issued with a software update to fix 'visibly deformed' battery packs, among other problems
Jonathan Richards

Apple has admitted that some batteries in its Macbook and Macbook Pro line of laptops have 'performance issues' and has issued a software update to fix the problem.

Among the symptoms of batteries that are affected are swelling, the battery not being recognised or not charging, and a shorter than expected battery life.

The company said that the problem, which could affect any laptop or batteries bought between February 2006 and April 2007, 'is not a safety risk' and has offered to replace any defective batteries. In the meantime, users could continue to use their current battery, Apple said.

Reports of swollen batteries have circulated since the Macbook range was introduced early last year and 'visibly deformed' battery packs were among the problems the update was designed to address, the company said.

If symptoms persist after the update, which can be downloaded here, users should contact their local store to arrange for replacement battery free of charge, Apple said.

Despite the problems, Macbook remains a successful range for Apple. The company recently reported that sales of its portable computers rose from 498,000 to 891,000 over the 12 months to March 31, helping boost quarterly profits to $770 million (£386 million).
http://technology.timesonline.co.uk/...cle1725627.ece





Survey Shatters Technology Assumptions
AP

A broad survey about the technology people have, how they use it, and what they think about it shatters assumptions and reveals where companies might be able to expand their audiences.

The Pew Internet and American Life Project found that adult Americans are broadly divided into three groups: 31 percent are elite technology users, 20 percent are moderate users and the remainder have little or no usage of the Internet or cell phones.

But Americans are divided within each group, according to a Pew analysis of 2006 data released Sunday.

The high-tech elites, for instance, are almost evenly split into:

-- ''Omnivores,'' who fully embrace technology and express themselves creatively through blogs and personal Web pages.

-- ''Connectors,'' who see the Internet and cell phones as communications tools.

-- ''Productivity enhancers,'' who consider technology as largely ways to better keep up with their jobs and daily lives.

-- ''Lackluster veterans,'' those who use technology frequently but aren't thrilled by it.

John Horrigan, Pew's associate director, said he started the survey believing that the more gadgets people have, the more they are likely to embrace technology and use so-called Web 2.0 applications for generating and sharing content with the world.

''Once we got done, we were surprised to find the tensions within groups of users with information technology,'' Horrigan said.

Many longtime Internet users, the lackluster veterans, remain stuck in the decade-old technologies they started with, Horrigan said. That a quarter of high-tech elites fall into this category, he said, shows untapped potential for companies that can design next-generation applications to pique this group's interest.

The moderate users were also evenly divided into ''mobile centrics,'' those who primarily use the cell phone for voice, text messaging and even games, and ''connected but hassled,'' those who have used technology but find it burdensome.

Mobile companies, he said, can target the mobile centrics with premium services, especially once faster wireless networks become available.

The Pew study found 15 percent of all Americans have neither a cell phone nor an Internet connection. Another 15 percent use some technology and are satisfied with what it currently does for them, while 11 percent use it intermittently and find connectivity annoying.

Eight percent -- mostly women in the early 50s -- occasionally use technology and might use more given more experience. They tend to still be on dial-up access and represent potential high-speed customers ''with the right constellation of services offered,'' Horrigan said.

The telephone study of 4,001 U.S. adults, including 2,822 Internet users, was conducted Feb. 15 to April 6, 2006, and has a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 2 percentage points.

------

Take the quiz:

Find out which category you fall under: http://www.pewinternet.org/quiz
http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2007/...rnet-Study.php





Tech Investors Cull Start-Ups for Pentagon
Matt Richtel

The nation’s military, in its search for the next surveillance system, bioterror vaccine or robot warrior, has decided to take a peek into the garage.

Through a program that recently emerged from an experimental phase, the Defense Department is using some of the nation’s top technology investors to help it find innovations from tiny start-up companies, which have not traditionally been a part of the military’s vast supply chain.

The program provides a regular exchange of ideas and periodic meetings between a select group of venture capitalists and dozens of strategists and buyers from the major military and intelligence branches. Government officials talk about their needs, and the investors suggest solutions culled from technology start-ups across the country.

It is in some ways an odd coupling of the historically slow-moving federal agencies and fast-moving investors, who deal in technologies that are no sooner developed than they are threatened with obsolescence.

But the participants argue that the project, called DeVenCI for Defense Venture Catalyst Initiative, brings together two groups that have much to gain from each other and that have had trouble finding easy, efficient ways to work together. Those on the military side of things have adopted the Silicon Valley vernacular to explain the idea of systematically consulting investors to find new technology.

“We’re a search engine,” said Bob Pohanka, director of DeVenCI, noting that the program is a chance for military procurement officials to have more intimate contact with investors who make a living scouring laboratories and universities for the latest innovations.

Venture capitalists “have knowledge of emerging technology that may be developed by companies as small as two guys in a garage,” Mr. Pohanka said. “These are companies that are not involved in the D.O.D. supply chain.”

For the investors, it is a chance to get closer to a branch of government with vast spending power that is a potential customer for the start-ups they have backed. That can be particularly valuable because the venture capital industry, far from enjoying the success of the dot-com boom, has languished in recent years and is looking for new markets and sales opportunities.

The military is “like a Fortune No. 1 company,” said E. Rogers Novak Jr., managing director of the venture capital firm Novak Biddle Venture Partners, and one of the investors who consults with the government. “We may get a customer and the D.O.D. gets something that helps them.”

The project is in its early stages, having convened three meetings since October. And there are questions about whether a bureaucratic and careful system built around long-term relationships between the military branches and their contractors can be compatible with the quicker culture of Silicon Valley.

“Everybody is feeling their way through this relationship,” Mr. Novak said. “The potential is there. The devil is in the details.”

There is nothing fundamentally new about the military trying to gain access to cutting-edge technology. For much of the 20th century, it financed and led that development. But that has changed in the last several decades as innovation has started to move at light speed in the private sector.

Since the Sept. 11 attacks, the military has reached out more to the private sector, trying to make use of a range of technologies in pursuing security and fighting wars. Some venture capitalists have catered to those demands, creating firms aimed at military and security needs.

On the public sector side, the Central Intelligence Agency in 1999 started In-Q-Tel, a venture that identifies and invests in start-ups and technologies whose products could be used in intelligence. And the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency backs new technology and has helped create many important advances, including the Internet.

What makes DeVenCI unusual, its participants say, is that by bringing together military procurement agents and technology investors it is creating a kind of brokerage for ideas. But it had humbler beginnings, starting out on more of a special case basis not long after the attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon.

One of the early participants was Ted Schlein, a partner at the venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers. Mr. Schlein said he and a handful of other venture capitalists met with military officials to hear about their needs and then looked for useful technologies. The relationship bore fruit, Mr. Schlein said. He cited a meeting he had several years ago with then-Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, who was carrying a confidential file.

“Rumsfeld said, ‘I can’t show you what’s in this folder, but you solved some problems for us,’ ” Mr. Schlein recalled.

By the end of 2005, this team had made suggestions that led to the adoption of 15 technologies for military and intelligence uses, DeVenCI participants said. In early 2006, the Defense Department decided to expand the project, and it paid for an office with four full-time staff members led by Mr. Pohanka.

They signed up 11 venture capitalists from 30 applicants to serve two-year terms. These investors are sent hundreds of pages of information, most of it unclassified, about the needs of military agencies. Then the members of the group get together in person, as they did in March in Arlington, Va., with representatives from about 50 procurement agencies for various military branches.

The idea of these meetings is not necessarily to short-circuit the usual military procurement process, which usually involves doing business with one of a handful of big companies like Lockheed Martin and Raytheon, DeVenCI officials said. Rather, the idea is that the military buyers will see technology that they can recommend to those massive contractors for new or continuing projects, or, conceivably, that they will sign small initial contracts with the start-ups so they can further develop a technology for military use.

“Most of these companies wouldn’t dream of approaching the government because they’ve heard about a three-year procurement process,” Mr. Pohanka said. He said he tells the venture capitalists and start-ups that the Defense Department signs 6,000 or more contracts a week with various companies. “There are more than ample opportunities,” he said.

Some companies have already profited from the program. In 2003, when DeVenCI was in its experimental phase, the Defense Information Systems Agency was looking for ways to protect computer networks. After speaking to several companies through DeVenCI and evaluating their technology, the agency wound up working with ArcSight, a software company based in Cupertino, Calif., which won $3.6 million in related contracts over the next few years, DeVenCI officials said.

Mr. Novak of Novak Biddle said he brought with him to the March DeVenCI meeting two executives from a small start-up developing biometric technology that could be used for things like advanced fingerprinting or eye scans. Mr. Novak said the chief executive and chief technology officer from the Virginia company, which he declined to name for competitive reasons, gave a presentation to the roughly 50 assembled procurement agents.

The executives took questions and were approached afterward by buyers from several agencies for a more detailed conversation, and business cards were exchanged.

But it is not all business, the venture capitalists say. For some, there is a patriotic component, one that sometimes tests their own philosophies about the role of the military.

In 1969, Kevin Fong, a high school student, attended antiwar protests on the campus of Stanford University in Palo Alto. Now 52 and a managing director with the Mayfield Fund in Menlo Park, he said he believes that American soldiers need the best equipment possible. He is one of the new participants in DeVenCI.

“There’s a part of me that says the military and conflict are going to happen and you have to be prepared for it,” he said, explaining part of the reason for his interest.

But he said his first impulse to help came from a recognition that participation in DeVenCI could be good for business. “When the DeVenCI people approached me, they said the magic words to a V.C.: ‘We’ll hook you up with buyers,’ ” Mr. Fong said. “How can you resist that?”
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/07/te...07venture.html





Verizon Says Phone Record Disclosure is Protected Free Speech
Nate Anderson

Verizon is one of the phone companies currently being sued over its alleged disclosure of customer phone records to the NSA. In a response to the court last week, the company asked for the entire consolidated case against it to be thrown out—on free speech grounds.

The response also alleges that the case should be thrown out because even looking into the issue could violate state secrets, of course, but a much longer section of the response tries to make the case that Verizon has a First Amendment right to "petition" the government. "Based on plaintiffs' own allegations, defendants' right to communicate such information to the government is fully protected by the Free Speech and Petition Clauses of the First Amendment," argue Verizon's lawyers.

Essentially, the argument is that turning over truthful information to the government is free speech, and the EFF and ACLU can't do anything about it. In fact, Verizon basically argues that the entire lawsuit is a giant SLAPP (Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation) suit, and that the case is an attempt to deter the company from exercising its First Amendment right to turn over customer calling information to government security services.

"Communicating facts to the government is protected petitioning activity," says the response, even when the communication of those facts would normally be illegal or would violate a company's owner promises to its customers. Verizon argues that, if the EFF and other groups have concerns about customer call records, the only proper remedy "is to impose restrictions on the government, not on the speaker's right to communicate."

With all of the phone company cases consolidated into one master case, Verizon is hoping to have the case thrown out on free-speech grounds, putting an end to its legal troubles over the issue. Should it fail, the Bush administration is already preparing to ask Congress for retroactive immunity for all telecommunications companies that assisted the government after September 11, 2001. The government is also fighting hard in court on behalf of the phone companies, filing repeated briefs which claim that "state secrets" trump even the legality of the alleged security programs.
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post...ee-speech.html





Spying in the Death Star: The AT&T Whistle-Blower Tells His Story
Ryan Singel

Mark Klein, a retired AT&T technician, sits quietly at the center of a high-profile legal storm hitting the nation's largest telecommunications companies for allegedly helping the government spy on American citizens' phone and internet communications without court approval.

In 2006, Klein stepped forward and handed sensitive AT&T documents to the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a civil liberties group that was preparing a class-action lawsuit against the telecommunications giant. That case and more than 50 similar suits have been consolidated into five master complaints that are now proceeding in a federal court in San Francisco. This summer, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals will hear AT&T's appeal of a key ruling that rejected the government's national security concerns and allowed the suit to continue.

Those documents are under seal, but Wired News independently acquired and published a significant portion of them last year. They show that AT&T built a network-monitoring facility in a nondescript room at an internet switching hub in San Francisco, at 611 Folsom St. Diagrams in the document show that AT&T technicians split fiber-optic cables handling AT&T's WorldNet internet service -- as well as traffic to and from other major ISPs -- diverting copies of the traffic into the room, which was packed with internet-monitoring equipment.

In this rare interview, Klein supplies details of how he first learned about the secret room even before being transferred to the Folsom Street office. He also lashes out at Congress for failing to hold hearings, and says he won't be satisfied until he can visit the AT&T building and see that the room has been dismantled.

Wired News: How did you first find out about the special room at the Folsom Street building?

Mark Klein: In 2002, we -- the union technicians -- were notified by support that the (National Security Agency) was coming to interview someone for a special project. That's when I got wind of something. I though it was odd that the NSA was coming to a phone company because I thought they weren't supposed to be spying domestically after the law was changed in the 1970s. They told us (it was) because the place was small and we had to know to let the person in. I happened to answer the door and I directed him to the guy he was interviewing for this special job. (Editor's note: This took place at the Geary Street central office in San Francisco, where Klein worked before he was transferred to the Folsom Street office.)

In January 2003, as we gradually moved under a Folsom Street supervisor.... The Geary Street technicians had a tour of the Folsom building, and one of the technicians on the tour pointed at a door and said, "That's the new secret room and only one guy is allowed in there."

In a small office word gets around. People called it So-and-So's secret room and So-and-So worked at my office. (Klein declined to identify the person who worked in the room.)

WN: What did you think about the room at the time?

Klein: I thought, this is not right. But we were in a tough situation at Geary Street and the company kept making cutbacks, and if I made things worse I might not have had a job. Four jobs were in jeopardy at Geary and I saved my job by getting into Folsom....

Who the hell am I? Who was going to listen to me? So I decided to stay quiet and just take notes.

WN: How did you get the three documents?

Klein: Two had been given to the techs when they did their cuts. (Editor's note: "Cuts" here refers to splitting optical fiber.) One guy whose job I was taking on was cleaning out his desk and was about to throw them out, and he said, "Hey, do you want these?" The third document was one a management technician left lying around on top of a router.

WN: How many people worked in or on that room?

Klein: Two people worked in the secret room, and they were management technicians. The first was downsized out of his job at the end of 2003, and was replaced by a second. A third management tech did not work in the secret room but knew what was going on. I knew all three of them. These guys would occasionally stop by the water cooler to chat with the union technicians in their office area on Folsom Street and they said things they probably shouldn't have.

WN: How did you learn more about the room?

Klein: Another guy -- he was bragging one day and he pulled out a batch of keys hanging on a chain from under his shirt. And he started saying "this one is for San Diego" and "this one is for Seattle."

Later on, I was trying to troubleshoot the network. And I found that when I bypassed the splitter (into the secret room) the network would work. They were screwing up their own network. They were degrading their own network.

I called the support line for help and told her what was happening with the cabinet and she said, "That's odd. They are having the same thing at the other offices." I said, "What other offices?" and she said, "San Diego, Seattle, San Jose." I got her information first, so that information matched with the key guy. And I realized this was bigger than I thought.

WN: Wired News published some of the documents you provided to other sources. How much did we miss? (Editor's note: Parties in the AT&T case are forbidden from discussing or sharing the documents, but neither Wired News nor Klein is under a gag order.)

Klein: I think you got the essence.

WN: What information have people missed about the documents?

Klein: J. Scott Marcus (who served as the FCC's senior adviser for internet technology from July 2001 until July 2005) actually knows more about AT&T at the high-level internet engineering level than I do. (Editor's note: Marcus filed an independent analysis on behalf of the Electronic Frontier Foundation.)

In the redacted declaration, at pages 10-11, Marcus says that the documents confirm this is not just for network security, and that it is for government spying. He argues that the unit installed has its own backbone. You wouldn't need a separate backbone for network security -- but for government surveillance they do.

WN: What made you decide to go public?

Klein: What got me back interested was The New York Times' story in December 2005. (Editor's note: The Times reported that the government had been secretly monitoring Americans' phone calls and e-mails that crossed the nation's border since shortly after 9/11 without getting approval from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, or FISA.)

The president admitted the program existed, but only admitted that part which had been exposed -- and he avoided talking about the part that wasn't, which was the internet.

The administration sent officials out to defend the program, including (Vice President) Dick Cheney, and they said they didn't think they had to obey FISA.... This was the defense of the indefensible. So I decided if they are going to perpetuate this fraud then I'm going to blow their cover.

(Editor's note: Klein gave the documents to several civil rights groups, the New York Times and the Los Angeles Times. Former Los Angeles Times editor Dean Baquet killed reporter Joseph Menn's story on the documents and allegations after meeting with then-director of national intelligence John Negroponte and then-NSA chief Michael Hayden.)

Baquet's argument for killing it was weak -- that they didn't understand the documents because they were too technical. That's what outside experts are for. That's what the New York Times did when they got the documents.

They were basically afraid to touch it after the government suggested they shouldn't.

WN: Has AT&T been in contact with you?

Klein: They haven't done anything to me, which is confirmation to me that they are doing this.

Qwest did the right thing. They asked for a legal document and when the government wouldn't give them one, they said no. The other companies volunteered -- that's my speculation. Maybe they did get some document, but I am skeptical.

WN: What do you want to happen now?

Klein: I want this program ended. I will be satisfied when I can get a tour of the Folsom Street building and I can see the equipment has been ripped out. I want to see the physical stuff ripped out. I will not be satisfied with assurances from the government that this program is stopped or being overseen by a court.

They have embedded spying into the infrastructure of the internet. I'm not sure people are fully conscious of what is going on, and I want it exposed and stopped.

WN: Have you tried to talk with members of Congress?

Klein: I've called and sent letters to senators and Congress members. They haven't called back. I don't think they want to pursue it. They want to talk about this behind closed doors. These days I am angry at Congress for helping them keep it secret.

They could hold hearings and subpoena people and give them immunity. Right now there are people who could come forward and say what they know, but they need immunity. That's the bottleneck. I don't see a resolution coming from this Congress. It's a conspiracy against the American people.

WN: Were you scared when you decided to come forward?

Klein: I was concerned about taking on the government by myself. When I heard the director of national intelligence was getting involved, that's when I decided to get a lawyer. (Editor's note: Klein is now represented by a team of four lawyers. All four formerly worked as federal prosecutors.)

WN: Have you heard from former co-workers after you came forward?

Klein: Some of the people I used to work with, I would exchange e-mails or see them when someone retired. But I've cut myself off. I haven't wanted to put them in jeopardy, especially the ones that still work there. I still consider them friends. But I'm not lonely. I have other friends.
http://www.wired.com/politics/online...kleininterview





Bill Bans Illegal Govt Eavesdropping

The US house of representatives today passed a bill outlawing illegal domestic wiretapping by the government.

An amendment to the House Intelligence Reauthorization Bill by Representatives Adam Schiff (D-CA) and Jeff Flake (R-AZ) states that the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978 (FISA) shall be the exclusive means by which domestic electronic surveillance for the purpose of gathering foreign intelligence information may be conducted, and makes clear that this applies until specific statutory authorization for electronic surveillance, other than as an amendment to FISA, is enacted.

"Congress has signaled that it will not allow the president to continue the National Security Agency’s illegal eavesdropping," said Caroline Fredrickson, Director of the ACLU’s Washington Legislative Office. "Passage of the Schiff/Flake amendment is Congress drawing a line in the sand. This amendment reaffirms that FISA is the law and it needs to be followed."

Congress originally passed FISA to provide the exclusive authority for the wiretapping of people in the United States in foreign intelligence investigations to protect national security.

As the Senate Report noted, FISA "was designed . . . to curb the practice by which the Executive Branch may conduct warrantless electronic surveillance on its own unilateral determination that national security justifies it."

The Bill ends plans by the Bush Administration that would give the NSA the freedom to pry into the lives of ordinary Americans.

The ACLU noted that, despite many recent hearings about "modernization" and "technology neutrality," the administration has not publicly provided Congress with a single example of how current FISA standards have either prevented the intelligence community from using new technologies, or proven unworkable for the agents tasked with following them.

"We applaud Congressmen Schiff and Flake for their work to uphold the rule of law," said Michelle Richardson, ACLU Legislative Consultant. "Today is the first move towards Congress growing a backbone. We hope that the Senate will follow their lead and not be swayed by the administration and Department of Justice’s unconstitutional attempts to eviscerate FISA."
http://pressesc.com/01178899253_bill...vedropping_NSA





Reminder: Monday is Wiretap the Internet Day

May 14th is the official deadline for cable modem companies, DSL providers, broadband over powerline, satellite internet companies and some universities to finish wiring up their networks with FBI-friendly surveillance gear, to comply with the FCC's expanded interpretation of the Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act.

Congress passed CALEA in 1994 to help FBI eavesdroppers deal with digital telecom technology. The law required phone companies to make their networks easier to wiretap. The results: on mobile phone networks, where CALEA tech has 100% penetration, it's credited with boosting the number of court-approved wiretaps a carrier can handle simultaneously, and greatly shortening the time it takes to get a wiretap going. Cops can now start listening in less than a day.

Now that speed and efficiency is coming to internet surveillance. While CALEA is all about phones, the Justice Department began lobbying the FCC in 2002 to reinterpret the law as applying to the internet as well. The commission obliged, and last June a divided federal appeals court upheld the expansion 2-1. (The dissenting judge called the FCC's position "gobbledygook." But he was outnumbered.)

So, if you're a broadband provider (separately, some VOIP companies are covered too) … Hurry! The deadline has already passed to file an FCC form 445 (.pdf), certifying that you're on schedule, or explaining why you're not. You can also find the 68-page official industry spec for internet surveillance here. It'll cost you $164.00 to download, but then you'll know exactly what format to use when delivering customer packets to federal or local law enforcement, including "e-mail, instant messaging records, web-browsing information and other information sent or received through a user's broadband connection, including on-line banking activity."

There are also third party brokers who will handle all this for you for a fee.

It's worth noting that the new requirements don't alter the legal standards for law enforcement to win court orders for internet wiretaps. Fans of CALEA expansion argue that it therefore won't increase the number of Americans under surveillance.

That's wrong, of course. Making surveillance easier and faster gives law enforcement agencies of all stripes more reason to eschew old-fashioned police work in favor of spying. The telephone CALEA compliance deadline was in 2002, and since then the amount of court-ordered surveillance has nearly doubled from 2,586 applications granted that year, to 4,015 orders in 2006.
http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/200...er_monday.html