Peer-To-Peer News - The Week In Review - October 6th, '07

[JackSpratts]

Joost Free Video-Sharing Service Opens to Public
CBC News

Internet-based television service Joost on Monday launched its software for Mac and Windows, making the peer-to-peer technology widely available to the public for the first time.

With Joost version 1.0, users can now download the free software without being "invited" by a friend. They can transmit video using peer-to-peer technology (P2P), the same approach used to launch the Skype internet calling service and Kazaa, the music-sharing website.

P2P is a method of distributing data in which multiple computers each transmit and receive information.

Sharing the computing power and band width of its users instead of filtering everything through a central data server can lead to better transmission quality, particularly as the number of users goes up.

Founded by Skype's Janus Friis and Kazaa's Niklas Zennström, the service got a shot in the arm earlier this summer when it raised $45 million US from five investors, including CBS Corp. and Viacom Inc. The company has also signed deals with other big media players such as Turner Broadcasting System, Sony Pictures Television, Major League Baseball and the National Hockey League.

Overall, Joost says it has 150 channels of video.

The mainstream approach is different from that of Kazaa, which has run into trouble with the music industry over users sharing music downloads for free.

While Joost focuses on bringing television programming to the internet, much of the move among technology firms has been to find a way to bring the internet to television in the form of set-top boxes such as Apple Inc.'s Apple TV.
http://www.cbc.ca/technology/story/2...st-public.html





So Far, Joost Lacks Must-See Content
Mathew Ingram

Joost - the streaming Internet TV service from the creators of Skype and the Kazaa file-sharing network - finally opened to the public yesterday, after almost a year of invite-only "beta" testing. So should you download it? And more importantly, is it the future of television?

The first question is pretty easy to answer: It's completely free, so why not? All you need is a high-speed Internet connection and a computer running Windows or Mac OS X (although it had better be a fairly recent model, since Joost needs more horsepower to run than some other video services).

As for whether Joost is the future of TV, that's a tougher question to answer. Obviously co-founders Niklas Zennstrom and Janus Friis believe it's the future. Of course, they also thought Skype was the future of Internet telephony, and eBay (which acquired the company in 2005) just took a $1.4-billion (U.S.) Skype-related writedown yesterday.

The reality is that no one really knows what TV is going to look like in the future -- and that includes the major networks. Most of them are dealing with record low levels of viewership and a splintered marketplace full of YouTube video clips, BitTorrent downloads and other unpredictable forces.

Joost is one attempt to find a middle ground. The service looks a lot like regular television (it is designed to run full-screen, unlike YouTube) and it carries similar types of content, from National Geographic documentaries to music videos.

However, since it is streaming only, content can't be downloaded or shared, which content providers like. The system also allows content providers to restrict where certain shows can be watched, based on a user's IP address. And there are ads sprinkled here and there, both TV-style and popup-style.

Will users who have grown accustomed to the freewheeling nature of the Internet want to put up with those kinds of restrictions? They might, in return for compelling content. At the moment, however, that is what many see as the most obvious issue with Joost: a lack of must-see content.

Although the service has signed deals with Viacom, CBS and others (including a recent deal with Major League Baseball), many of those deals are for older content, including episodes of the 1980s TV show Starsky & Hutch.

The content problem is magnified in Canada, since a lot of U.S. network content is restricted to U.S. users. There are still shows to watch, including some content from Canadian providers such as CHUM's MuchMusic, but it doesn't take long before the menu starts to look pretty familiar. Under the heading "cartoons," there are only eight selections, and under "drama" there are only three. "News" has one.

One of the things that drove television adoption in the late 1940s and early 1950s was the popularity of shows such as Kraft Television Theatre and game shows like Name That Tune - shows that everyone wanted to watch.

In today's fragmented media landscape, however, very few shows have that kind of effect on viewers. And just as the major TV networks have to find a way of dealing with that reality, so do newcomers like Joost.

Joost's hardware and Internet requirements could be a stumbling block as well. Not only does the service need a fairly powerful PC, since it is designed to run video full-screen, but it also demands a high-speed Internet connection.

That's because Joost is a "peer-to-peer" service, like Skype and Kazaa, an early music-downloading pioneer (which was later driven out of business by record-industry lawsuits). Simply put, this means that while a Joost user is watching a streaming TV show with the software, his or her PC is also streaming that show to others watching it.
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servl.../Entertainment





The Marriage Is Over, but the Show Goes On
Whitney Joiner

RICHARD LINKLATER may have put this capital city on the film industry’s radar with “Slacker” in 1991. But for almost as long as Austin has been known as the Texas Hollywood, its most prominent and prolific player has been Troublemaker Studios, a filmmaking funhouse created by the director Robert Rodriguez and the producer Elizabeth Avellan.

For more than 15 years the partners — in both business and marriage — churned out entertainments like “Sin City,” the “Spy Kids” trilogy and “Desperado.” And they gladdened the hearts of studio executives by delivering their popular movies under budget, keeping postproduction in-house at Troublemaker’s downtown location and in their sound and editing studios on the 100-acre Avellan/Rodriguez compound outside Austin, next door to the castlelike home (complete with balconies and hidden staircases) where they raise their five children.

But last year, during the filming of the “Grindhouse” double bill that paired Mr. Rodriguez’s “Planet Terror” with Quentin Tarantino’s “Death Proof,” came the rumors, and then the official announcement that Mr. Rodriguez and the pregnant Ms. Avellan had decided to end their marriage. The news that the two had separated and, months later, Mr. Rodriguez’s public appearances with Rose McGowan, the leading lady of “Planet Terror,” came as a shock to the close-knit Austin filmmaking community.

In a place where crew members had grown so accustomed to regularly working with Troublemaker that some had picked up and moved here from Los Angeles — Ms. Avellan lovingly refers to them as her children — the dissolution of the marriage raised the obvious question: What would become of the moviemaking miniempire they had built together?

Mr. Rodriguez and Ms. Avellan say they plan to keep Troublemaker as is, and to continue working on some joint projects, like a planned family film called “Shortz.” But for Ms. Avellan, 47, personal hardship is leading to a professional evolution. Most of her career she has willingly ceded the limelight and the major creative decisions to Mr. Rodriguez, a charismatic character who famously got his start by partly financing his $7,000 debut, “El Mariachi,” by spending a month in an Austin hospital testing a cholesterol-lowering drug. Now Ms. Avellan plans to transform her own ideas into movies and television shows and take Troublemaker in new directions. For the first time, she is producing a major studio picture with a director besides Mr. Rodriguez.

“Queen of the South,” a sprawling crime thriller set in Mexico and Spain, will be directed by Jonathan Jakubowicz, a 29-year-old filmmaker and Avellan protégé, and produced by Ms. Avellan and Sandra Condito for Warner Independent Pictures. Based on Arturo Pérez-Reverte’s novel of the same name, “Queen” is the story of Teresa, a murdered Mexican drug cartel pilot’s girlfriend. Fearing for her life, she escapes to the Mediterranean and begins her own trafficking operation.

In the past, she said, while she was interested in projects like “Queen,” with its $25 million budget and exotic locations, “I didn’t want Robert to feel like I wasn’t giving 150 percent, like any producer would do. So I’d not talk about this or that.”

“Now I feel free to mention some of the things that I’m doing,” she added.

Considering the strength of the previous incarnation of their partnership, this looser arrangement carries risks for both filmmakers as they make their first films without each other’s help. (Mr. Rodriguez is working on a remake of “Barbarella.”)

Both Mr. Rodriguez and Ms. Avellan describe their relationship as complementary; their success, they say, came from matching her logistical side with his creative one. “In a lot of ways, we were made for each other,” Ms. Avellan said.

Born in Caracas, Venezuela, before moving to Houston as a child and later attending Rice University, Ms. Avellan knew she was destined to be a producer, she said. The moment came while watching Holly Hunter playing a hyperefficient news producer in the 1987 film “Broadcast News.” “To have that much pressure and keep all those balls in the air and have the random knowledge,” she said, “I thought, ‘That’s me!’ ”

Eight years after “Broadcast News,” Ms. Avellan was a co-producer of “Desperado,” Mr. Rodriguez’s first major studio film. From then on, she has received top production billing on all his films. In a telephone interview, Mr. Rodriguez pointed out that he had helped produce Troublemaker’s projects as well. “But the stuff she’s doing now on her own, she’s doing the full-fledged producer job, which I’m sure is more exciting to her than just working on whatever project I hand along,” he said.

And perhaps now Hollywood will truly take notice. Ms. Avellan is well known in Austin as a philanthropist and a supporter of student film (last March she was the first recipient of the Texas Film Hall of Fame Ann Richards Award), and she has played an equal role in creating a moneymaking empire (Troublemaker’s 14 movies have made more than $900 million at the box office and hundreds of millions more in DVD and video sales). But that success has not completely translated to recognition in Los Angeles.

On July 26 The Hollywood Reporter released its first “Latino Power 50” list, highlighting Hollywood’s behind-the-scenes male and female Latino talent. Mr. Rodriguez was third on the list; Ms. Avellan wasn’t included, or even mentioned in Mr. Rodriguez’s entry. “This is the only woman who’s made Latin-themed movies, casting Latinos, for the American audience, in English, that have broken 100 million,” Ms. Condito said. “And she’s not on the list! It’s mind-boggling to me. But that’s not only Hollywood’s fault. That’s also her fault, in the best way possible, in the sense that she doesn’t push herself in front of people.”

Salma Hayek, who starred in Mr. Rodriguez’s “Desperado,” “From Dusk Till Dawn” and “Once Upon a Time in Mexico,” calls Ms. Avellan a “well-kept secret.” But, she said, “now that she’s starting her career as an independent, breaking away and doing stuff on her own, people will know more about her.”

If it’s a challenge to continue on with business as usual at Troublemaker now that she is no longer married to Mr. Rodriguez, Ms. Avellan isn’t showing it. While some in the Austin film world and inside Troublemaker wonder what will happen next — “There’s an enormous amount of concern,” said Louis Black, editor of The Austin Chronicle and founder of the South by Southwest Music, Film and Interactive Festival, “because these are two people that a lot of people care about” — Ms. Avellan said she never questioned whether or not to stay with Troublemaker. It’s a decision that might seem counterintuitive, given the collapse of the marriage. But considering the stakes as equal partner of a moneymaking company with grand plans — Ms. Avellan said she also hoped to expand the studio’s sound and digital facilities and bring in more commercial production — it’s an experiment she’s willing to try.

“Robert and I have been such good partners for 18 years,” she said. “So many things haven’t changed in general, just in how we handle our personal life with our children. The only thing we’re not is married anymore.”

“He can make his movies here,” she added, “just like I can make my movies here. It’ll be good for Austin: if I bring a movie in, and Robert does a movie too, this place will be much more used. People can say, ‘Oh, it’ll never work.’ And I’m like, ‘You know what? It’ll work.’ I’m excited at the prospect of showing them — of showing the world what I do.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/30/movies/30join.html





Publishers Seek Talent Online
Motoko Rich

Joining the growing list of publishers that use public votes to decide what to publish, Penguin Group is teaming with Amazon.com and Hewlett Packard for the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award. From today through Nov. 5, contestants from 20 countries can submit unpublished manuscripts of English-language novels to Amazon, which will assign a small group of its top-rated online reviewers to evaluate 5,000-word excerpts and narrow the field to 1,000. The full manuscripts of those semifinalists will be submitted to Publishers Weekly, which will assign reviewers to each. Amazon will post the reviews, along with excerpts, online, where customers can make comments. Using those comments and the magazine’s reviews, Penguin will winnow the field to 100 finalists who will get two readings by Penguin editors. When a final 10 manuscripts are selected, a panel including Elizabeth Gilbert, the author of the current nonfiction paperback best seller “Eat, Pray, Love,” and John Freeman, the president of the National Book Critics Circle, will read and post comments on the novels at Amazon. Readers can then vote on the winner, who will receive a publishing contract and a $25,000 advance from Penguin. Separately, Borders Group, the bookstore chain, is teaming with Gather.com, the social networking site, and Court TV to solicit unpublished manuscripts from mystery or crime writers. A panel of judges that includes the writers Harlan Coben and Sandra Brown will crown the winner from a pool of finalists selected by voters on Gather.com. The winner will receive a $5,000 advance and will be published by Borders itself.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/01/bo...ERSSE_BRF.html





Stewart Tells MSNBC Host: Your Book is a 'Recipe for Sadness'
Mike Aivaz and Nick Juliano

On Tuesday night's Daily Show, MSNBC host Chris Matthews got an in-person taste of Jon Stewart's penchant for mocking the mainstream media and the conventional wisdom it espouses.

Matthews, appearing to promote his new book Life's a Campaign, said he had endured the "interview from hell" after Stewart panned the new book as a Machiavellian "recipe for sadness."

"What you are saying is, people can use what politicians do in political campaigns to help their lives. ... That strikes me as fundamentally wrong," Stewart said at the opening of the interview. "It strikes me as a self-hurt book, if you will. Aren't campaigns fundamentally contrivances?"

Matthews extolled the virtues of listening and insisted that people can learn much about success from the tools employed in successful political campaigns.

"It's always a campaign," Matthews said. "It's a campaign to get the girl of your dreams; it's a campaign to do everything you want to do in life."

"But there has to be some core of soul in there," Stewart retorted. "What campaigns are, are photo opportunities that are staged, and there's nothing in this book about, 'Be good; be competent.'"

Matthews said that information was in the Bible -- "it's been written," he said.

"This book has been written too, it's called The Prince," Stewart retorted, referring to Machiavelli's treatise. "I thought that (your book) was a recipe for sadness. ... If you live this book, your life will be strategy, and ... you'll be unhappy."

As the interview became more heated, Matthews invited Stewart to a tete-a-tete on his home turf, Hardball, which Stewart declined. "I don't troll," he said.

"You are unbelievable," an exasperated Matthews said. "This is a book interview from hell; this is the worst interview I've ever had in my life. This is the worst. You are the worst."

"There's something in here that you fear," Matthews charged.

"Like fascism; I fear fascism," Stewart retorted.

Given one last opportunity to talk up his tome's "good values," Matthews gave up and tossed the book on Stewart's desk after the host couldn't contain his laughter.

At the end of the segment, Stewart offered to go on Hardball "and you can yell at me." He then extended his hand, "Friends?"

The two men shook hands before the show went to commercial.
http://rawstory.com/news/2007/Chris_...This_1003.html





Tweens Love Broadway, but Can’t Save It Alone
Campbell Robertson

For Broadway producers, 10-year-old Jamie Carroll looks like an ideal theatergoer: she downloads scores off of iTunes, is a fervent proselytizer when she likes something and has lots of friends, two of whom she brought along to a recent Saturday matinee of “Legally Blonde.” “A lot of my friends say it’s the best musical they’ve ever seen,” she said.

Maybe. But Jamie’s father and her 14-year-old brother would not join them, considering the show too girly. Even her mother, Tacey Carroll, was only present as a chaperone: “This is a little more for them,” she said, echoing several other mothers at the theater, one of whom even dropped off her young charges and went shopping.

And that’s the rub for Broadway producers, for whom teenage and tween girls have become the demographic of the moment, wooed by marketing campaigns and featured as central characters in a flurry of shows in development, including “13,” about a teenager from New York who is transplanted to Indiana; “Princesses,” which is basically “High School Musical” meets “Gossip Girl”; and a musical adaptation of the movie “Clueless.”

Increasingly, though, some worry that the sugar-and-spice enthusiasm may be misplaced, because while teenagers and tweens may be helpful in creating a hit, they are far from enough to ensure one. For that, you still need grown-ups — lots of paying grown-ups — to want to come to a show.

Indeed, the producers of these new shows, as well as those of the $10 million “Legally Blonde,” say they are hoping for a general audience, teenagers and tweens included. “Repeat business among that group is a big deal and does help you,” said Bob Boyett, a producer of “13.” “But you have to go for a broad audience.”

For a while now, the “Degrassi” set has been the talk of Broadway, for one big green reason: the musical “Wicked,” which was created for a general audience, but began attracting a fanatical, often face-painted following of teenagers and tweens a few months after it opened in 2003. It also began grossing well over a million dollars a week.

It quickly became a notion along Broadway that the young demographic could make a hit, and producers with new shows spoke to investors about tapping the so-called “Wicked” market.

Even marquee advertising for “The Pirate Queen,” about a 16th-century Irish chieftain, blared a quote from The Record in Bergen, N.J., referring to the show as “the greatest celebration of girl power since ‘Wicked’” (the next sentence of the review, calling it “one of the silliest musicals in years,” was somehow left out).

But as David Stone, one of the producers of “Wicked,” hastens to point out, a show cannot become a major hit solely or even mostly by appealing to a niche audience, teen or otherwise. Surveys taken of “Wicked” audiences showed that while the number of attendees under 18 was about double the average, they still made up less than one-fifth of the audiences over all (a full quarter of the audiences were over 50). The idea of Broadway as a destination primarily for big-city sophisticates, of course, has gone the way of the top hat. The proportion of Broadway audiences composed of out-of-towners, who are likely to be looking for family entertainment, has grown by half in the last 25 years. At the same time, bringing young people to Broadway has become an almost existential mission for producers.

One company that pointed the way was Disney, whose successful shows, like “Beauty and the Beast,” brought in children as never before, many of whom grew up to become the teenagers longing for the sassier “Legally Blonde.”

One theory is that zealous teenagers can kick-start a show, pushing it toward a broad audience. The recent announcement that MTV would broadcast an entire taped performance of “Legally Blonde” on Oct. 13 is evidence of this strategy. After all, “Legally Blonde” the musical was based on a popular 2001 movie aimed squarely at girls and young women. It would be foolish to disregard that groundwork, said Hal Luftig, the lead producer of the musical.

“You sort of embrace it,” he said, adding that a majority of the show’s marketing dollars are aimed at girls and young women.

But there’s a difference, which Mr. Luftig is well aware of. Movies are relatively cheap and accessible, so Hollywood can court a narrow segment of the population and still make a killing. Thus a so-called chick flick like “Legally Blonde” can gross $96 million domestically appealing almost exclusively to, well, so-called chicks.

A successful show on Broadway has to attract people who are, first, in or visiting New York and, second, willing to spend a good deal of money. That’s already a pretty small crowd. Slicing it any further is risky.

Randall Wreghitt was a producer of “Little Women” in 2005, a musical aimed primarily at mothers and daughters. The strategy worked well at first, Mr. Wreghitt said, but the number of women quickly got littler, and the show closed within six months.

“I think we tend to want to say a certain demographic is the reason for a show being popular, but it can’t be,” Mr. Wreghitt said. “It has to be a real cross section.”

There are success stories, especially when shows attract large groups who are outside the traditional Broadway audience. “The Color Purple,” for example, became a hit with groups of black women.

Teenagers and tweens are already a heavily courted audience; casting announcements for “Hairspray” read like the Teen Choice Awards. But they have yet to make a hit entirely on their own. So Mr. Luftig’s plan for “Legally Blonde” — which was in development before “Wicked” opened — is that a general appeal will take hold through a kind of indirect effect.

In other words, by appealing not directly to the ticket buyers but to the people who exert major influence on them — their daughters — “Legally Blonde” brings adults into the theater. Ideally, they then have a good time and tell their adult friends. “If we go after the tweens, we’ll get the adults,” Mr. Luftig said.

Will it work? Well, after a good summer, the show’s attendance figures took a severe drop once school started. But September is a bad month on Broadway in general. Perhaps the MTV broadcast will make a big difference.

As for Ms. Carroll, Jamie’s mom, she thought “Legally Blonde” was cute, but she wouldn’t go back, as she would to “Wicked,” which she and her husband loved. Jamie, on the other hand, was not big on “Wicked.” But, like her friends, she thought “Legally Blonde” was the best show she’d ever seen.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/02/th...02twee.html?hp





Making a Thundering Comeback After 65 Million Years
Patricia Cohen

Dillon Hawkins watching creatures in "Walking With Dinosaurs: The Live Experience."

So Mr. Mactaggart, an Australian entrepreneur with Spielberg-size ambitions, decided to create a theatrical experience that had “something for all ages, kids and adults, so they wouldn’t be bored.” One result is “Walking With Dinosaurs: The Live Experience,” a show with life-size animatronic dinosaurs that walk and talk (well, roar), not simply on screen, but also in three dimensions.

Based on the popular BBC Television series, this $20 million extravaganza is arriving at Continental Airlines Arena in East Rutherford, N.J., tonight through Sunday as part of a two-year American tour. Tickets range from $27 to $87.

Having managed three arenas in Australia and New Zealand, Mr. Mactaggart, now the executive director of Immersion Edutainment, which created the dinosaur show, said he realized how underutilized stadiums are. During the show’s run at the Wachovia Spectrum in Philadelphia, he noted that arenas had such “height and width and depth, but most shows don’t use all the space.”

His does. The ornithocheirus, strung from the ceiling, has a 38-foot wingspan. The brachiosaurus is 36 feet tall. But scale alone does not account for their impact. They are also remarkably lifelike. Stretchy beanbags filled with polystyrene balls and pulled across moving points in the dinosaurs’ bodies give the appearance of muscles and fat moving under skin. Hand-painted mesh (six miles of it) and latex stencils give the skin a pebbled texture. Most important, the technology that allows the giant lizards to cock their heads, roll their eyes and react to the audience endows them with emotion.

Two lumbering torosauruses resemble sumo wrestlers more interested in eating than fighting. A serene vegetarian, the ankylosaurus has the eyes and expression of a dimwitted ram.

The parade of 15 animals lasts about 90 minutes. And though there is a human host (effective as a measuring stick), his commentary is like the onstage questions at a beauty contest; all anyone is really waiting for is the next contestant to appear.

“Some dinosaurs wouldn’t get off the stage,” my 7-year-old complained. “They’re wasting time.”

The hulking Tyrannosaurus rex didn’t wait to be invited out. At 23 feet high and 42 feet long, with 6-inch teeth and a thundering snarl, she was fearsome enough to reduce some toddlers to tears. Mama charged out to save her yelping baby T, who then gave her a playful nip. A look around the arena revealed what seemed to be whole families having fun.

Although the dinosaurs make it all around the stage — about the size of a hockey rink — spectators sitting on the sides may have difficulty in some arenas seeing the video backdrop and the opening egg-hatching sequence.

The large dinosaurs glide along, attached to low-slung go-carts run by jockey-size drivers. A second operator in a control booth uses a “voodoo rig” — a device that fits along the operator’s arm — to move a dinosaur’s body, head and tail, while a third person manipulates the eyes, jaws and sounds.

The Utahraptors and baby T rexes, 7 and 8 feet high and 14 feet long, are actually 90-pound puppets. Though they are the smallest characters, they are in some ways the most compelling. There is a performer inside, and that beating heart comes through.

Harley Durst, 26 and trained as a stunt acrobat, is one of the men inside the belly of the beast. He has been with the show for five years, he said, and has closely watched the BBC series, visited zoos and worked with the designer, Sonny Tilders, to understand “how an animal reacts to whether he sees something or smells something.”

“I watched bears fight,” he said, “posturing, then seconds of madness.”

“We had big mirrors made up,” he added, so the puppeteers could observe themselves and practice “ways you can stand still and keep it alive.”

Hopping up from a chair to demonstrate, Mr. Durst said he practiced moving like a quadruped. He took large strides with his chest forward, leading with one knee while extending the other leg back. And while you might think that a flash of sprinting human legs would ruin the illusion, it is actually less distracting than the camouflaged go-carts between the mammoth robots’ feet.

Although Mr. Durst is onstage for only 15 minutes, it is exhausting work, given the weight and bulk of the costume and the strenuous movements. “My brain is running 100 miles an hour with all the music and movement cues,” he said.

“Walking With Dinosaurs” took six years to create. There is an original score. Onstage with the dinos are inflatable vines, trees, flowers and insects that rise from the stage floor in seconds. A smoking volcano later turns the vines into a pile of scorched wet noodles. Elaborate lighting creates patterns of leaves and footprints across the floor. And the fog that rolls in at intermission could keep “The Phantom of the Opera” going for a month.

The show requires 150 people to stage, including a spectrum manager to control radio frequencies used to operate the dinosaurs. Twenty-five tractor-trailers are needed to transport the 116,000 pounds of scenery, lights and sound equipment, and the 30 tons of dinosaurs.

“This really is a remarkable collaborative effort by people who bought a dream,” Mr. Mactaggart said.

He said his company was creating a second unit to tour in Europe and Asia, possibly by the end of next year — a kind of Cirque du Dinosaure.

Barney, eat your heart out.

“Walking With Dinosaurs: The Live Experience” runs through Sunday at the Continental Airlines Arena in East Rutherford, N.J.; (212) 307-7171, dinosaurlive.com.
http://nytimes.com/2007/10/03/theater/03dino.html?8dpc





I’ll buy that for a dollar

Radiohead Tells Fans To Name Their Own Price For Latest Album Downloads; Gives Them A Reason To Pay

The band Radiohead is apparently coming out with a new album; the first after its original record deal was completed. It appears that, like many other musicians, they're realizing that the traditional recording industry business model doesn't quite make sense for them. While there was some buzz about an apparent hoax website about the band's new album, it turns out the real thing is a bit more interesting. That's because Radiohead is doing two smart things. It's telling fans they can name their own price for digital downloads. You just pay the band however much you think the downloads are worth and they'll be happy. But that's not all (though, that's what most folks are focused on). Rather than just offering up the content, they're also trying to give people a reason to actually buy something else. In this case, it's a "discbox," which will include the new album on both CD and vinyl, as well as an additional CD of seven extra songs and photos, artwork and lyrics. The whole thing will be packaged in a nice container. In other words, the band is following in the footsteps of folks like Trent Reznor, in realizing that the music is promotional for other stuff -- and you can still sell stuff if you make it worthwhile. In this case, Radiohead isn't really selling the "music." After all, you can get that for free. They're selling the full collection of stuff that comes with the music. Funny how it's the musicians, and not the record labels, who seem to realize that adding value and getting people to pay for it is a business model that beats suing fans.
http://techdirt.com/articles/20070930/214524.shtml





Sloejammin

Life’s not over once you hit the big 3-0, it’s just beginning. Settled in a career, comfortable in your own skin and, if you’re a woman, celebrating your sexual peak (or celebrating your woman’s sexual peak), you don’t need to pound shots with your buddies until 3 a.m. to prove that you’ve got “it” anymore. Whether your partner is your, gulp, spouse, or someone you just started dating, here’s what we spin when we trade that beer bong for a night in.



Asking the Question

Because you’re too old to just say, “Hey, wanna fuck?” and you want to set the mood.



If you’re asking her...

Van Morrison, “Crazy Love”

Duh. If you can’t get her into bed playing Van the Man, you need to practice on that blow-up doll buried in your closet.



If you’re asking him...

Okay, you can just say, “Hey, wanna fuck?” For more elegance try:

Sarah McLachlan, “Ice Cream”

Her sultry voice will make you feel sexy and turn him on. It’s a win-win all around.



The Bee Gees, “How Deep is Your Love?”

Before you judge, dust off the album you haven’t listened to since you were 11. Trust us.



Marvin Gaye, “Let’s Get It On”

A no brainer: the smoothest “wanna fuck?” in Motown history.



Making Out

Because you’re never too old to neck on the couch. Or on the front steps. Or by the mail box. Or by the kitchen sink...



Sly and The Family Stone, “If You Want Me To Stay”

If the evening’s not as hot as anticipated, try quoting the liner notes, “[I define] life and existence in terms of light and substance and weight...not necessarily tangible mass, but intangible matter such as a good feeling, a good vibe, a good thought.” Your partner will either be turned on by your metaphysics or tell you to shut up and use your lips for something more productive.



The Commodores, “Easy”

His daughter’s crazy antics will never silence his sexy voice. Admit it: you had a crush on Lionel Richie when you were a kid. Play this song, and you’ll be doing it all night long.



Beastie Boys, “Ricky’s Theme”

Pure, unadulterated make out music.



Prince, “Do Me, Baby”

No more hiding Prince under your bed next to your Playboys like when you were a teenager. Play this one good and loud. And break out the massage oil.



Bumpin’ and Grindin’ or The Hour of Power

The Hour of Power: are we kidding?! Nope. Sex does get better as you age.



Morphine, “Buena”

A little bit of low rock to bring the evening down. Bari sax and all. It’s gooooood.



Funkadelic, “Mommy, What’s a Funkadelic?”

What’s a Funkadelic? “I am Funkadelic, dedicated to the feeling of Good. And baby, I’m good at being Good.” You can be a Funkadelic too.



Red Hot Chili Peppers, “Sir Psycho Sexy”

Men take an early cue from the Peppers’ pride: “I won’t and I don’t hang up until I please her.”



Rick James, “Give It to Me Baby”

James claims to have bedded over 1000 women in his day. With a straight-up, funky approach like this, we understand how.



...and if you’re coming too soon...an interlude...



They Might Be Giants, “Particle Man”

Who needs to think about baseball when you’ve got the geek anthem of all anthems playing in the background? Take a breath, get a drink of water, reapply massage oil... Boppy enough to keep you going, but dorky enough to slow you down.



Barry White, “Your Sweetness Is My Weakness”

Break time: over. Get back in the saddle.



Parliament, “Up for the Down Stroke”

Simple lyrics and a groovin’ beat keep you hot. And to quote George Clinton: “When you’re hot, you’re hot.”



LaBelle, “Lady Marmalade”

The only woman to make the Bump & Grind list, Patti’s old school version of “Lady Marmalade” will make you rip off your grey flannels before you can say, “I’m up for the down stroke.”



B.T. Express, “Do It (’Til You’re Satisfied)”

Sounds a little like Funkadelic, but hey, it’s the Hour of Power. We need the groove.



Stone Temple Pilots, “Interstate Love Song”

Slowing it down and rocking out as we reach our climax.



Led Zeppelin, “Kashmir”

Who has the louder orgasm: you, your partner or Robert Plant?



Blowin’ Smoke

What songs brighten your afterglow?



If the night went well...

Barry White, “You’re the First, the Last, My Everything”

The only man sexy enough to appear twice on this list; end your night with this song and guarantee a repeat. Barry Bonus: The song’s light tempo will keep you from falling asleep right away – a sure fire way to show your partner that you care.



If the night went not so well...

Ted Nugent, “Yank Me, Crank Me”

You can yank me, you can crank me, but don’t you wake up and thank me. Adios.



If it was the best sex you’ve ever had...

Van Halen, “Runnin’ with the Devil”

There’s no way anything that feels this good isn’t a sin.
http://www.thepeeq.com/Features/Feat...r-MP3-Playlist





Can I sit in your lap…

Rolling Stone Magazine Hits a Sour Note With Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Nominees (Like Madonna)
Roger Friedman

To anyone who’s still reading or buying Rolling Stone: It’s time to boycott Jann Wenner’s flagship magazine.

I’ve never participated in a boycott — not of lettuce or grapes or anything else. But enough is enough.

After the announcement late Friday of the nominees’ ballot for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, there’s only thing to do: Hit publisher Wenner, who controls the Rock Hall, where it hurts.

If you love rock 'n' roll, stop buying Rolling Stone until the tremendous insults of the Hall of Fame are corrected.

Wenner’s nominating committee consists largely of his current and former employees from Rolling Stone (Nathan Brackett, David Fricke, Jim Henke, Joe Levy, Brian Keizer, Toure, and Anthony DeCurtis). But they have little say over who really is inducted.

Last year, in a story reported by this column exclusively, Wenner threw out a vote in which the classic British invasion group Dave Clark Five was voted in and changed it for another round that favored rappers Grandmaster Flash.

As one insider from the Hall has maintained, "Once Ahmet Ertegun died, Jann felt like he could run wild." The legendary co-founder of Atlantic Records was considered the only person who could control Wenner. He died in 2006.

The Dave Clark Five incident has repercussions, however. I’m told that Wenner was made to meet Clark after I broke that story last March. The group now is guaranteed entry, although it’s a bittersweet win. They are probably not, to paraphrase one of their hits, "Glad All Over."

But this year’s choices are a complete affront to fans of the Rock and Roll Hall. And to show how much Wenner controls what’s happening, the exclusive announcement was made on Rolling Stone’s Web site.

If you’re still reading or buying Rolling Stone, it’s time to stop.

This year’s ballot shows that the Hall has skipped over the seminal 1970s for the worthless '80s. The committee has chosen dance music over rock. They’ve all but ignored the pioneers who influenced the genre in favor of non sequiturs.

The choices: dance group Chic, hip-hop pioneer Afrika Bambaataa, mediocre Bruce Springsteen-wannabe John Mellencamp (a Wenner crony who’s lost out on many tries), white rappers the Beastie Boys, disco queen Donna Summer and, of course, Madonna.

Among "older" names: the aforementioned DC5, instrumentalists the Ventures and Leonard Cohen.

Here’s the idea: that these names should enter the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame before such historically important and influential acts as Iggy Pop and the Stooges, "fifth Beatle" Billy Preston or performer/producer Todd Rundgren.

They aren’t the only ones.

Major groups the Hall voters deem "not hip": The Moody Blues (simply for "Days of Future Passed") and Chicago (for its first two seminal albums). Hall & Oates, Yes, Genesis, J. Geils Band, Alice Cooper and KISS are also names often mentioned by critics.

Also left wanting: stars such as Carly Simon and Linda Ronstadt, who were mainstays of Rolling Stone in the 1970s, have been iced out. Carole King was inducted only as a writer with ex-husband Gerry Goffin. Her achievement as the creator of "Tapestry," for years the best-selling album of all time, has been ignored.

Neil Sedaka ("Calendar Girl," "Breaking Up Is Hard to Do") is not in the Hall of Fame. Neither is Neil Diamond ("I’m a Believer," "Sweet Caroline"). That’s right. They only wrote half the hits that modern groups cover or sample. Go figure.

The late Laura Nyro, who also wrote a dozen or so hits, is absent, as is Leon Russell, whose songs "This Masquerade" and "A Song for You" are among the most covered by pop acts. He also was a member of Phil Spector’s legendary band, as were other nonmembers Glen Campbell and Sonny Bono.

Then there are the R&B performers who remain in the cold, such as Tina Turner, Dionne Warwick, Motown legends Mary Wells, the Marvelettes and the Spinners, not to mention Ben E. King ("Stand by Me" and dozens of hits on Atlantic), Stax Records legends Carla and Rufus Thomas, Spector star Darlene Love, Joe Tex, Al Green and, of course, Chubby Checker, whom the Hall denies over and over again despite his invention of rock’s greatest dance hit, "The Twist."

Neither John Fogerty, Lou Reed, Peter Gabriel, Ringo Starr, Tom Waits, Steve Winwood, Diana Ross, Steve Miller nor Sonny Burgess — the man behind Elvis Presley — is in the Hall of Fame.

OK, just so we’re straight on why Rolling Stone must be boycotted. It wants the Beastie Boys before Randy Newman, The Hollies, Tom Jones or Mitch Ryder’s "Devil in the Blue Dress."

Controversial Cat Stevens also stays in the cold despite his dozen or so hits and his influence on singer-songwriters of his era. And I haven’t even raised the idea of Poco, Aaron Neville, the Turtles, Gram Parsons and hitmakers Three Dog Night, whose members made hits for dozens of new songwriters including Harry Nilsson, John Hiatt, Jimmy Cliff, Hoyt Axton, Paul Williams and Randy Newman.

The lists go on and on. You can see more names at www.futurerockhall.com.

The Hall has caused its own problems over the years. It no longer includes three categories that the Hall introduced, then eliminated: Non-Performers, Side Men and Early Influences. The nominating committee, with a couple of exceptions who are obviously ignored, is simply too young and uneducated in popular music history to select entries in those groupings.

It’s a pathetic, ridiculous situation and it must be stopped.

Of the new crop, I don’t have much to say that’s positive. Madonna is a steamroller because of the cult of personality. She’s not a rocker, she has a thin voice and she doesn’t write all of her own material. But she’s a force of nature.

There’s no stopping Madonna when she wants something. Chances are good she won’t bring Steve Bray, Patrick Leonard, William Orbit and all her writers and producers to the stage. They are Madonna.

Chic is a fun idea with great songs, but it was really producer-writer Nile Rodgers and his partner Bernard Summers who made it work as a dance group. Rodgers should be in as a hugely successful producer of music by David Bowie, Ross and others. Summers can be thanked. Chic, however, is not rock.

The rest are totally off base, given the above list. Summer was a disco act. For her to get in before Ronstadt is a joke. Mellencamp at least plays rock. But he’s a minor note in the genre’s history.

Afrika Bambaataa and the Beastie Boys: Are they kidding? Even the latter must be laughing. They had one big hit, "You’ve Got to Fight for Your Right to Party." The former, while I’m sure quite lovely, is a record-scratcher with a great name. Each of these belongs in a Rap Hall of Fame.

And it’s not that I am against hip-hop or rap artists in the Hall of Fame. But Run-DMC is the obvious choice for an act in that genre that crossed into rock. Apart from its own music, Run-DMC’s partnership with Aerosmith on "Walk This Way" brought hip-hop to a new level and standard. No one would argue with its inclusion.

Of the two senior acts aside from the DC5, the Ventures probably are a good idea. The Hall lacks instrumentalists. But Cohen should be in as a writer. His morose style never once crossed into rock, and he knows it.

Diamond, Sedaka and Simon have among them dozens more actual rock hits as writers and performers. Come on. And Cohen’s songs have not had nearly the same impact on rock as those by Jimmy Webb. He’s also been snubbed by Wenner’s crew.

By the way: The Hall of Fame Foundation, which Wenner runs with toadie Joel Peresman, has nothing to do with the Rock and Rock Hall of Fame Museum in Cleveland.

"Jann treats the museum like a toy and has no respect for Terry Stewart," an insider says. Stewart runs the museum with no regard for Wenner’s exclusions.

Last year, the Hall claimed to have given away only $158,968 of its $12 million war chest to needy musicians. It gave $56,236 to the museum to maintain its own archives. The museum must raise its own money.

Peresman is thought to get between $300,000 — what the previous director was paid — and $500,000.

New board members include wealthy businessmen Craig Hatkoff (co-founder of the Tribeca Film Festival) and Dirk Ziff (heir to a media fortune), nice guys who have no connection to the music business or rock 'n' roll at all. They’re Wenner’s friends. Famed rocker Jay-Z — ha ha — also has joined.

Former inductees to the Hall, by the way, must buy their own tickets to the annual Waldorf-Astoria dinner. Tickets cost $3,500. Few, if any, show up anymore for the big jam session at the end of the night.

These selections for 2008 are terrible, but they’re just the beginning of what’s going to be a weird ride, thanks to the new generation. To wit: Kanye West is scheduled to be honored soon by the Chicago branch of the Recording Academy.

This means that other artists will have to perform a tribute to him by performing his music. Only: He has no music. West samples existing records. So someone will have to sample a sample to praise him. It’s sad.

So: I don’t know anyone who buys or reads Rolling Stone, but someone must, since Wenner Media seems to make money. It can’t all be Us Weekly.

Until real rock is served by the Hall of Fame, please don’t buy Rolling Stone or click on any of the ads on its Web site. Then maybe Wenner will get the message that no one can take his Rock and Roll Hall of Fame seriously anymore.
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,298681,00.html





World's Biggest Fake Fish Tank

A 250m by 30m LED screen has been installed in the ceiling of a new mall in Beijing. That's an impressive 7,500 square meters of viewable area, and comes with an impressive $32 million price tag to match. It hangs 80 feet in the air, and is actually five screens combined

It can show films, video games or even photos uploaded by visitors, but most of the time it plays animations like swimming fish.
http://gizmodo.com/gadgets/led-scree...ank-297359.php





The Trial

Duluth RIAA P2P File Sharing Trial
p2pnet news

Today Warner Music, EMI, Vivendi Universal and Sony BMG’s RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America) will be forced to step up and explain in-depth and in detail how it’s been able to portray some 30,000 American men women and children, customers all, as hardcore criminals and thieves.

Because today the trial of Jamie Thomas, a First Nations mother of two accused of being a massive online distributor of copyrighted music, opens in Duluth, Minnesota.

However, this time, reporting won’t be left to the mercies of the mainstream media who so far have been distinguished by their consistent failure to present both sides of a story in which the members of the Big 4 organised music cartel claim they’re being “devastated” by losses they say have been incurred because of music lovers using the Net to pass long their favourites.

Files shared equal sales lost, claim the labels, an assertion they’ve never been able to prove but which has, on the other hand, been shot down in a number of authoritative studies, the most quoted being The Effect of File Sharing on Record Sales: An Empirical Analysis from Koleman Strumpf, professor of business economics at the University of Kansas Business School and Felix Oberholzer of the Harvard University Business School.

The labels also claim file sharing contributes to massive job loss and ravages the US economy.

However, a new Fair Use study states unequivocally:

With more than $4.5 trillion in revenue generated by fair use dependent industries in 2006, a 31% increase since 2002, fair use industries are directly responsible for more than 18% of U.S. economic growth and nearly 11 million American jobs.

In fact, nearly one out of every eight American jobs is in an industry that benefits from current limitations on copyright.

Now lawyers representing the corporate music industry will try to justify their attack on Thomas and on other women such as:

» Rae-Jay Schwartz, confined tro a wheelchair my multiple sclerosis
» Tanya Andersen, a disabled single mother who depends on a medical pension for income
» Patti Santangelo, a New York mother of five who’s never allowed tragic family events to be used in stories of the persecution of her and two of her children by the Big 4 labels

Their stories beggar belief, as do the means used by Warner Music, EMI, Vivendi Universal and Sony BMG continue their attacks on these mothers and thousands of other men, women and children —– their own customers.

Despite successful attempts by the Big 4 to use the mainstream media to create the impression thousands of people have been successfully sued for the non-existent crime file sharing, no one has yet appeared in court or been found guilty of anything, let alone copyright infringement.

This will be the first time since 2003 when the RIAA launched its first attack that a case has actually made it to trial. For the first time, the labels will be forced to give chapter and verse on their depredations not to an elderly judge with little or no knowledge of the Net, but to a jury of ordinary people, some of whom will be dedicated surfers.

And that’ll be very bad for the RIAA.

Jury selection and opening statements are expected to begin today with Big 4 lawyers trying to make a case largely based on ‘evidence’ supplied by online scalp Hunter SafeNet that Thomas shared 1,702 files she’d gathered with Kazaa, the seriously discredited P2P file sharing application owned by Australian company Sharman Networks and which is itself the subject of a class action lawsuit.

The labels will try to make the jury believe that Thomas was a criminal and thief, as the labels call file sharers, who illegally distributed the digital downloads online as tereastarr@KaZaA.

RIAA truth alignment specialist Cary Sherman is expected to give evidence.

Ray Beckerman, the New York lawyer who’s representing several RIAA victims and whose Recording Industry vs The People carries the only detailed list of case-by-case court documents and lawyers representing corporate music victims, is dedicating space to reports of the trial provided by citizen journalists.

p2pnet, the only site to have consistently carried victims’ stories since the Big 4 attacks began in 2003, will similarly be featuring reports.

If you live in Duluth or anywhere near it, or you can arrange to get there, attend the trial and let Beckerman know what you see and hear.

This could be the one where the corporate music industry, its shills, its hired legal guns and its professional dissemblers will be shown for what they really are —– not people working in an honest and hard-pressed industry that’s struggling to stay above water in hard times, but a ruthless collection of avaricious executives who will do literally anything to maintain their companies’ dominant position in the music industry, and gain total control of how, and by whom, music is distributed online.
http://www.p2pnet.net/story/13513





Duluth Court to Host First Jury Trial Over Music File Sharing
Mark Stodghill

A single mother of two children takes on the Recording Industry Association of America in a Duluth courtroom today in the nation’s first copyright infringement case to reach a jury.

The RIAA — representing Virgin Records, Capitol Records, Sony BMG, Arista Records, Interscope Records, Warner Bros. Records and UMG Recordings — claims that Jammie Thomas of Brainerd, Minn., distributed 1,702 digital audio files — many of them the plaintiffs’ copyrighted sound recordings — from the KaZaA shared folder on her computer to “potentially millions of other KaZaA users’’ for free.

According to the plaintiffs’ proposed verdict form, the industry is seeking as much as $3.9 million in damages — up to $150,000 for each of 26 copyrighted sound recordings that were allegedly pirated. The trial is in Duluth because it is the federal court nearest to Brainerd.

Minneapolis attorney Brian Toder is representing the defendant. Toder said Thomas, 30, is the single mother of two children, ages 11 and 13. She’s employed by the Mille Lacs Band of Ojibwe in the administration of its natural resources department, he said.

Toder was asked why the case is going to trial. “Because we wouldn’t allow ourselves to be bullied,” he said. “Most people settle when they get these kind of lawsuits … They’re very good at getting people to settle.”

Toder said federal court rules precluded him from commenting on details of his case.

In a court-filed document, Thomas’ attorney said she “did not download anything from KaZaA or any other peer-to-peer network’’ and questions whether the plaintiffs own the copyrights they allege are theirs.

As the result of a Feb. 21, 2005, investigation, the plaintiffs claim Thomas, under the username tereastarr@KaZaA, distributed pirated audio files over the Internet. The plaintiffs filed a “Doe’’ lawsuit and subpoenaed Charter Communications to identify Thomas as the subscriber responsible for the pirating, according to the plaintiffs’ “statement of case.”

Denver lawyer Richard Gabriel is the lead attorney representing the plaintiffs. He couldn’t be reached for comment Monday.

“Without commenting specifically on the merits of this case, I will say that with all our cases we try to be fair and reasonable in resolving them quickly and out of court,” Cara Duckworth, director of communications for the Recording Industry Association of America, said in an e-mail Monday. “I might add that we settle for amounts far less than what the law allows.’’

The RIAA claims that the music industry is losing billions of dollars from the illegal copying of its music. The industry’s zero-tolerance copyright campaign started in 2003. It has brought more than 26,000 lawsuits against individuals who allegedly have illegally downloaded and/or distributed copyrighted music files, Duckworth said.

In separate cases, three University of Minnesota Duluth students are accused of allegedly downloading music illegally. UMD and 57 other U.S. college campuses were included in a wave of 503 pre-litigation settlement letters sent by RIAA last month.

Jury selection begins this morning in Duluth federal court. U.S. District Judge Michael J. Davis will preside over the trial, which is expected to conclude Thursday.
http://www.duluthnewstribune.com/art...s.cfm?id=51388





RIAA Copyright Campaign Finally Goes to Trial
David Kravets

The Recording Industry Association of America and a mother from Minnesota will face off Tuesday in the nation's first copyright jury trial. The case stems from the music industry's four-year-old legal campaign against peer-to-peer piracy.

The RIAA is seeking millions in damages. The case could set legal precedent concerning the level of proof a jury would consider sufficient to find a defendant liable for copyright infringement. It's also likely to offer a glimpse into the industry's investigative techniques.

The case, Virgin v. Thomas, pits a 30-something woman from Brainerd, Minnesota, against some of the biggest names in the industry: Virgin Records, Capitol Records, Sony BMG, Arista Records, Interscope Records, Warner Bros. Records and UMG Recordings -- all members of the RIAA.

The industry is seeking as much as $3.9 million in damages plus legal fees against Jannie Thomas in U.S. District Court in Duluth, Minnesota. The plaintiffs accuse Thomas of distributing 1,702 audio files -- many of them copyrighted by the recording industry -- on file-sharing site Kazaa in 2005.

"Plaintiffs will prove that the defendant is liable for the direct infringement of plaintiffs’ copyrights because she downloaded and distributed them over the internet without plaintiffs’ authorization," several music-industry lawyers wrote in court documents Sept. 17.

Thomas' attorney, Brian Toder, of the firm Chestnut & Cambronne in Minneapolis, said in an interview that Thomas is innocent.

"My client is adamant that she just didn't do it," Toder said. "She hired me to defend her and said she's not going to settle under any circumstances."

The RIAA's zero-tolerance copyright campaign commenced Sept. 8, 2003, and has launched more than 20,000 lawsuits. Anecdotal evidence suggests the bulk of the cases settled, while others were quietly dismissed

Following the pattern of most of the RIAA's lawsuits, Thomas came under legal fire when an investigator with SafeNet allegedly detected somebody at IP address 24.179.199.117 distributing audio files on Kazaa according to court documents. In response to a subpoena, internet service provider Charter Communications identified Thomas as the subscriber assigned that internet protocol address, according to court documents.

Jury selection will take place Tuesday, and the trial could begin the same day.
http://www.wired.com/politics/law/ne.../10/riaa_trial





Music Download Trial Begins in Minn.
Joshua Freed

Was there a serial downloader lurking outside Jammie Thomas' window? Did someone else hook up a computer to her Internet connection?

Those are some of the questions her attorney has been raising in the nation's first trial of someone accused of illegally sharing music online.

But Richard Gabriel, lead attorney for some of the nation's largest record companies, sought to pick those ideas apart one by one by calling witnesses to document each step the record companies used to point the finger at Thomas.

Testimony in the civil case was to resume Wednesday in federal court in Duluth. The case could wrap up as early as Wednesday night or Thursday.

On the courthouse steps Tuesday, Thomas denied illegally downloading music. In court, attorney Brian Toder has said there's no proof she shared music illegally.

Toder's cross-examination has focused on raising doubt about whether the record companies can really prove it was Thomas who downloaded and shared the 1,702 songs, as the record companies allege she did in 2005.

He suggested in his questioning that someone other than Thomas _ someone outside her window, or a neighbor _ could have been responsible if she used a wireless router. That could have allowed anyone nearby to utilize her Internet connection, using the same address that led the record companies to Thomas.

The companies have backed up their claims with literally a wall of data _ enlarging printouts of logs and dates and Internet addresses on a screen in front of jurors, with Gabriel zeroing in with a laser pointer to highlight the entries he says prove Thomas did what they say she did.

Mark Weaver of SafeNet Inc. testified about how his company, at the behest of the record companies, found 1,702 songs offered by a user of the Kazaa file-sharing program under the name "tereastarr."

Then defense attorneys put on David L. Edgar of Charter Communications, Thomas' Internet provider. He testified about how he and another investigator independently matched the Internet address used by tereastarr to both Thomas' account and an electronic address for the cable modem she leased from the company.

Doug Jacobson, a computer security expert and professor at Iowa State University, testified that Toder's theory that someone else used a wireless router to download the songs linked to Thomas was far-fetched. He said records subpoenaed from Charter don't show the kind of Internet address used by such routers.

"There was no wireless router used in this case," he said.

Thomas, a 30-year-old mother of two from Brainerd, is expected to testify during the trial.

"I do know that I didn't do this, and the jury will hear that I did not do this," she said Tuesday outside the courtroom.

Thomas' computer hard drive will be a key to the case. She and her attorney say she replaced it at the suggestion of Best Buy Co. after she had some computer problems in 2005. The record companies say she was trying to cover her tracks after they sent her messages saying she was illegally distributing their files.

Music sales have slumped in recent years as more people have turned to file-sharing. The Recording Industry Association of America, which is not a party to the lawsuit, says record companies have brought more than 26,000 actions against people alleging they shared files in violation of copyrights.

The action against Thomas is the first to get to trial because most defendants have settled by paying a few thousand dollars.

Jennifer Pariser, head of litigation and antipiracy at Sony BMG, portrayed the trial as a fight for survival.

"It is imperative for Sony BMG to combat this problem," Pariser testified Tuesday. "If we don't, we have no business anymore."

In response to a question from Toder about whether the industry was making millions off all the settlements, Pariser said the campaign has actually lost money.

Thomas, who works for the Department of Natural Resources of the Mille Lacs Band of Ojibwe, is at risk for a judgment of more than $1.2 million if jurors found against her for all 1,702 songs. The recording association is seeking damages set under federal law of $750 to $30,000 for each copyright violation.

Besides Sony BMG, the companies that sued Thomas are Arista Records LLC, Interscope Records, UMG Recordings Inc., Capitol Records Inc. and Warner Bros. Records Inc.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...201029_pf.html





RIAA Anti-P2P Campaign a Real Money Pit, According to Testimony
Eric Bangeman

During an occasionally testy cross examination, a Sony executive said what many observers have suspected for a long time. The RIAA's four-year-old lawsuit campaign is costing the music industry millions of dollars and is a big money-loser for the record labels. The revelation came during the first day of Capitol Records v. Jammie Thomas, the first file-sharing case to go to trial (it was formerly known as Virgin v. Thomas, but the sole Virgin Records track was stricken from the complaint, making Capitol Records the lead plaintiff).

After a relatively calm morning session, proceedings resumed after lunch. After RIAA lead counsel Richard Gabriel finished his direct examination, Thomas' attorney David Toder began his attempts to undermine the labels' case. He focused on apparent inconsistencies from the testimony of Jennifer Pariser, Sony BMG's the head of litigation. Toder also got Pariser to admit that IP addresses and screenshots "don't identify human beings."

Pariser also said she had no idea why Virgin Records dropped its part of the case. "The RIAA and the plaintiffs have the same lawyer and coordinate the lawsuits," Toder noted. "You don't know why they bailed on the case?" Pariser said she had enough trouble keeping track of Sony's litigation, let alone what the other companies are doing. Perhaps—and this is just a guess—it's the money.

Lawsuits are punitive, not business

One of the biggest bombshells from the cross-examination was Pariser's admission that the RIAA's legal campaign isn't making the labels any money, and that, furthermore, the industry has no idea of the actual damages it suffers due to file-sharing.

The admission came during questioning over the amount of damages the RIAA is seeking in the case. Toder asked Pariser how much Sony was suing the defendant for, and she replied that the amount was for the jury to decide and that the labels weren't suing for actual damages. As is the case with the other file-sharing lawsuits, the record industry is only seeking the punitive damages available via the Copyright Act, which can range from $750 to $150,000 per song. "What are your actual damages?" asked Toder.

"We haven't stopped to calculate the amount of damages we've suffered due to downloading, but that's not what's at issue here," replied Pariser, who was reminded by Judge Michael Davis to answer the questions actually asked by Toder, not hypotheticals.

Toder then pressed the Sony executive on the question of how many people actually downloaded music from the defendant. "We don't know," she replied. "I can't identify any other entities aside from what SafeNet reported, but I know that many others did... that's the way the system works."

Toder then raised the question of the RIAA targeting the wrong people in its lawsuits. "How many dead people have you sued?" he asked, a question that was blocked after Gabriel objected. Toder then took a different tack, asking Pariser if she recognized the names of Gertrude Walton, Sarah Ward, Cindy Chan, and Paul Wilke—all innocent victims of the RIAA's driftnet tactics.

The next line of questioning was how many suits the RIAA has filed so far. Pariser estimated the number at a "few thousand." "More like 20,000," suggested Toder. "That's probably an overstatement," Pariser replied. She then made perhaps the most startling comment of the day. Saying that the record labels have spent "millions" on the lawsuits, she then said that "we've lost money on this program."

The RIAA's settlement amounts are typically in the neighborhood of $3,000-$4,000 for those who settle once they receive a letter from the music industry. On the other side of the balance sheet is the amount of money paid to SafeNet (formerly MediaSentry) to conduct its investigations, and the cash spent on the RIAA's legal team and on local counsel to help with the various cases. As Pariser admitted under oath today, the entire campaign is a money pit.
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post...money-pit.html





Sony BMG's Chief Anti-Piracy Lawyer: "Copying" Music You Own is "Stealing"
Eric Bangeman

Testimony today in Capitol Records, et al v. Jammie Thomas quickly and inadvertently turned to the topic of fair use when Jennifer Pariser, the head of litigation for Sony BMG, was called to the stand to testify. Pariser said that file-sharing is extremely damaging to the music industry and that record labels are particularly affected. In doing so, she advocated a view of copyright that would turn many honest people into thieves.

Pariser noted that music labels make no money on touring, radio, or merchandise, which leaves the company particularly exposed to the negative effects of file-sharing. "It's my personal belief that Sony BMG is half the size now as it was in 2000," she said, thanks to piracy. In Pariser's view, "when people steal, when they take music without compensation, we are harmed."

Pariser has a very broad definition of "stealing." When questioned by Richard Gabriel, lead counsel for the record labels, Pariser suggested that what millions of music fans do is actually theft. The dirty deed? Ripping your own CDs or downloading songs you already own.

Gabriel asked if it was wrong for consumers to make copies of music which they have purchased, even just one copy. Pariser replied, "When an individual makes a copy of a song for himself, I suppose we can say he stole a song." Making "a copy" of a purchased song is just "a nice way of saying 'steals just one copy'," she said.

Countless studies have shown that the majority of music on portable music players like the iPod comes from sources other than download services. For most people, that music is comprised primarily of songs "ripped" from CD collections to MP3 or some other comparable format. Indeed, most portable music players comes with software (like iTunes) which is designed to facilitate the easy ripping of CDs. According to Pariser's view, this is stealing.

We've actually heard something similar to this view before. As part of the 2006 triennial review of the effectiveness of the DMCA, a number of content-related industries filed a joint reply with the government on the effectiveness of the DMCA and the challenges that lay ahead for copyright. The argument relating to CDs espoused in the joint reply could be summarized: although nothing has prevented consumers from making backups of CDs, this cannot be construed as authorization from the music labels for them to do so. Thus, there has been no authorization of said backups, and the coincidental ability to make backups currently should not be mistaken for fair use.

Pariser's views appear to be similar, insofar as she clearly suggests that consumers have no right to make backups of the music that they have purchased in CD form or even in download form.

Ken Fisher contributed to this report.
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post...-stealing.html





Does Illegal File-Sharing Cut Into CD Sales?

Stan Liebowitz says yes, rebutting the well-known arguments of Koleman Strumpf, published in the Journal of Political Economy. I would be happy to link to a response by Strumpf. In the meantime, two notes: a) I suspect non-fair use CD burning is in any case the bigger issue, and b) significantly lower musical sales, and yes sales are falling, still can be welfare-improving. The real consumption of music seems to be up.
http://www.personalbee.com/105/19913760

Paper



Online File Sharing Does Worst Damage to Lower Ranked Albums in Billboard Top 100

File sharing is taking its worst toll on smaller albums, “devastating” lower ranked titles on the Billboard Top 100, according to the Management Insights feature in the current issue of Management Science, the flagship journal of the Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences (INFORMS).

Management Insights, a regular feature of the journal, is a digest of important research in business, management, operations research, and management science. It appears in every issue of the monthly journal.

“The Effect of Digital Sharing Technologies on Music Markets: A Survival Analysis of Albums on Ranking Charts” is by Sudip Bhattacharjee and Ram D. Gopal, University of Connecticut; Kaveepan Lertwachara, California Polytechnic State University; James R. Marsden, University of Connecticut; and Rahul Telang, Carnegie Mellon University.

The authors completed rigorous empirical analysis, using data on the performance of music albums on the Billboard Top 100 charts together with data on peer-to-peer file sharing. The analysis indicates that average survival time on the chart has decreased by 42%. The lower debut ranked albums bore the brunt of decreased survival times, with file sharing as a major contributing factor.

“Although there is no evidence that file sharing hurt the top debuting albums, this electronic word-of-mouth was devastating for lower debuting albums, suggesting increased risk from rapid information sharing for all but the ‘cream of the crop,’” the authors write.

The authors note that strength of chart debut rank as a success indicator emphasizes the importance of early successful marketing efforts and suggests that firms would do well to frontload their promotional campaigns.

Another important marker of success continues to be the superstar effect, with albums by these artists surviving 35% longer.

The study also provides evidence that minor labels are closing the gap with the major labels.

The authors investigated how the level of file sharing influences survival time on the charts. The first research phase compares music album survival before and after the arrival of MP3, Napster, and the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. The second phase looks at the effect file sharing has on current top debut ranked albums and lower debut ranked albums.-Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences
http://www.huliq.com/36377/online-fi...lboard-top-100





If You Keep Stealing Movies, You'll Never be a Star

The Motion Picture Association of America has, for years, attempted to stop rampant piracy through cheesy, guilt-inducing public service announcements. "You're not just stealing from the rich, you're stealing from the janitors too" -- that sort of thing. Well, the Brits have decided its film industry can only tackle its $18 billion piracy problem by targeting the young. Film Education, as the project is called, infiltrates classrooms to convince kids that piracy is evil by preying on their future hopes and dreams. The message: All those small, independent films that might launch your career in show biz won't get made because of your thieving ways.
http://valleywag.com/tech/file_shari...tar-305837.php





Riding bareback

Internet Killed the Radio Star?

The Recording Industry Association of America is targeting universities, and 58 ASU students and counting, to stop illegal music downloading.
Christina Caldwell

In kindergarten, the first thing we learn is that sharing is caring. In college, this idea could cost you thousands of dollars.

On Sept. 20, the RIAA sent 35 ASU students pre-litigation notices — a letter outlining the RIAA's intent to sue that gives the recipient an option to settle before going to court. This is in addition to 23 students who received notices in February.

In an attempt to limit illegal file sharing on college campuses, the Recording Industry Association of America is in the midst of a campaign targeting university students and faculty in an attempt to curtail illegal music downloading. Since the campaign's launch, about 3,329 pre-litigation notices have been issued to American universities, according to the RIAA.

Just last month, 503 students and faculty at 58 universities were sent pre-litigation notices in the RIAA's seventh wave of collegiate settlement letters. This month, 403 notices were sent to 22 universities, including ASU.

For the RIAA, downloading at the university level has no end in sight and therefore, neither do the lawsuits.

The threat of an RIAA lawsuit being slapped on any ASU student participating in illegal file sharing is here and very real.

'Easy targets'

Chris Ly, an ASU alumnus who settled with the RIAA when he was a journalism senior in 2005, is among the now thousands of college students who have been served with a pre-litigation notice from the Recording Industry Association of America, outlining the group's intent to sue for illegal file sharing.

"To me it seems like they are going after the easy targets," Ly says in an e-mail. "College students don't have the money and knowledge to fight these types of lawsuits."

Whether it is lack of knowledge on the student's part or just a willingness to settle file-sharing suits without a mess, the RIAA has set out to accommodate the thousands of people it is suing. Simply by using their Visa, MasterCard or Discover card, "John Doe" can settle his case online at p2plawsuits.com without going to court. On the Web site, a user can enter his or her case identification number as found on the pre-litigation notice, which will lead them to the amount they will pay to the RIAA and record companies.

But Ly settled in a more traditional way. The pre-litigation letter spelled out that the RIAA was onto Ly's downloading and gave him a phone number to call if he wanted to settle with the RIAA without going to court.

Ly, who was using popular peer-to-peer file-sharing program Kazaa Lite, says he quit downloading music illegally a couple months before he was given a pre-litigation notice.

"I got an iPod and started buying music off of iTunes for it rather than downloading it off of file-sharing programs," he says.

But Ly couldn't erase the past. The RIAA had identified him as a copyright criminal. Ly sent a cashier's check of approximately $4,000 to the lawyers representing the record companies, which thousands like him have done.

Kevin King, a history junior, received a pre-litigation letter from the RIAA in October 2005. King's father thought the notice was unbelievable — literally.

"My dad threw out the first one because he thought it was spam," King says. "We settled out of court after we did a little research and discovered that conviction would be a sure thing."

The RIAA sent King a list of songs they believe he downloaded. At the top of the list were two songs by King's own band from high school. King ended up paying $3,800.

Fighting back

Every university targeted by the RIAA is faced with a decision whether to protect its students from being sued or to comply with the RIAA's wishes in forwarding settlement letters.

Pam Gerace, North Carolina State University's director of student legal services, warned students against revealing themselves to the RIAA, even if slapped with a settlement letter.

Gerace says the RIAA could pursue other legal actions with the names, including giving the names to record companies, according to NCSU's campus newspaper The Technician.

But unlike NCSU and other universities like the University of Kansas and the University of Nebraska, who have refused to forward pre-litigation letters to their students, ASU has complied with the RIAA.

Adrian Sannier, vice president of ASU's University Technology Office, says ASU wants to give the affected students a choice in deciding whether or not they want to pursue with the lawsuit on their own.

It's a "hard problem" in deciding whether to be worried about the RIAA subpoenaing the university or protecting a member of the ASU community, Sannier says. ASU officials decided that the university was not divulging student information to the RIAA by simply forwarding the letters to the accused file sharer and proceeded in distributing the letters.

David Swain, managing attorney at ASU's Student Legal Assistance Office, says 19 students from the February wave of letters have come to him seeking legal advice in dealing with the RIAA. Swain says ASU has not released any student information or identifications to the RIAA.

'Don't fear the RIAAper'

The RIAA's tactics haven't won the group a lot of support in the blogosphere.

George Ziemann, musician and blogger on AzOz.com, has been outspoken about the RIAA lawsuits.

"My disdain for the record labels came before the lawsuits," Ziemann says in an e-mail. "I'm outspoken about the lawsuits because, from a musicians' point of view, telling people not to listen to your music is simply ludicrous."

On his Web site, Ziemann encourages any person accused of illegal file sharing, student or otherwise, to take the RIAA to court and tell them to "prove it."

Ziemann is not alone in his anger. More than 60 anti-RIAA groups exist on Facebook comprising thousands of members. In March, the visit of an RIAA representative at ASU inspired a protest, with students holding signs reading "Don't fear the RIAAper" and "Download like it's 1999."

Mishka Bier was an ASU sophomore when he stopped to pursue a musical career. Bier, who has done fill-in guitar work for popular bands like A Cursive Memory, says illegal downloading doesn't hurt but actually helps struggling artists.

"There are negative effects on the industry, but not from the artist's perspective," he says. "If you look at it, more kids will be coming to the show if they end up 'stealing' the album, and you'll be getting more money from the venue, and if you don't suck as an artist and the kids really like you, they'll buy a shirt. The positive greatly outweighs the negative. The money lost on a CD sale is tiny compared to that of the money gained from ticket and merch sales."

Mainstream artists split on their views of illegal music downloads. Artists like Mary J. Blige, DMX, the Dixie Chicks, Shakira, P. Diddy and even the late Luciano Pavarotti came out against file sharing, according to the Web site MusicUnited.com. However, the Washington Post has reported that artists like Chuck D and Jason Mraz support file-sharing sites, and a 2004 poll by the Pew Internet & American Life Project found a majority of artists didn't think file sharing was a major threat, even though most thought it should be illegal.

Death of the music industry?

Though artists might not be too concerned, the RIAA says the music industry as a whole certainly is. More than 1.3 billion files were illegally downloaded by college students last year, which adds up, the group says.

During his visit to the ASU campus in March during security week, RIAA's senior vice president David Hughes says he thinks illegal downloading could be the death of the music industry unless something is quickly changed.

"The music industry is on the verge of a big change," Hughes says. "Whether it's the current major record companies, whether it's the independent labels … their economics are going to be very similar and piracy is going to disable them."

Hughes says illegal file sharing is not allowing them to invest time and money into new and unique artists, so consumers are left with only what sells.

"The labels don't have the money to gamble on interesting and … financially risky artists," said RIAA representative Hughes during his March visit to ASU. "So music fans get the lowest common denominator. You get the former Mickey Mouse Clubs. You get the Britneys and the Justins and the Jessica Simpsons, and anybody else the labels are confident that can sell a decent amount on the first … single."

A representative with the RIAA says the campaign is not a moneymaker for the group; all the money the association takes in from the settlements goes back into anti-piracy and education efforts, she says.

Where ASU's violations stack up

The RIAA claims that the ASU network is one of the worst collegiate violators of copyright law. ASU officials disagree.

In February, the RIAA ranked ASU 24th on its top 25 worst offenders of pirated music, but Sannier says that statement is simply inaccurate. The sheer number of students who attend ASU give the RIAA's results bias, Sannier says. With over 65,000 students on all four campuses, Sannier points out that ASU's percentage of complaints is below any other school on the worst offenders list by between 5 to 20 percent.

"That's like saying all of the murders are in California," he says. "We have sort of the same kind of numbers of complaints as [5,300-student] Seton Hall College, and we're some kind of giant offender."

During his visit during Security Week in March, Hughes of the RIAA says ASU and other schools with students being sued should not feel victimized. "We have no ability or intention to target any single school," Hughes says. He called the lawsuits a form of "education through litigation."

Maybe there is no intention to target any school, but the students who have been sued say it is surreal. "It's an odd feeling knowing that I could have just as likely gone on downloading for years and years if this [lawsuit] didn't happen," ASU alum and lawsuit target Ly says.

Fellow music sharer King says the RIAA was going to sue him for much more than the $3,800 he settled for had he taken the case to court. King says he had downloaded approximately 1,100 songs using file sharing program Kazaa Lite — the same program Ly was using.

At the time Ly was sued, he had 800 songs on his computer, half of which he says were from compact discs he purchased after downloading a single he liked.

Struggling to adapt

Sannier of the UTO says while ASU has made an effort to prevent piracy by installing anti-piracy software, people will always find a way to get their music for free.

The battle between those who are sharing music and the music industry is an "arms race," and whatever measures a school takes in order to prevent piracy, a few months later there will be a way to get around that obstacle, Sannier says.

The only way to get around the "escalating chain" of collegiate piracy is for the music marketplace to change, Sannier says.

"[The music industry] is selling records based on the idea that they need to be delivered by physical devices [such as CD's]," Sannier says, adding that the industry is slowly adapting and that peer-to-peer technologies have completely transformed the music industry.

Suspicious peer-to-peer traffic is being monitored and halted on the ASU network through software called Audible Magic, Sannier says. If a student thinks that his or her peer-to-peer traffic is legitimate and shouldn't be blocked, they can contact the University Technology Office, Sannier says.

"What's interesting is, we haven't seen any of that," Sannier says of petitions to allow legal peer-to-peer traffic. "So we think our Audible Magic filter is configured so that legitimate P2P traffic is working and illegitimate traffic isn't."

An alternative to file sharing services, Ruckus, a legal music downloading service, is free for ASU students. Ruckus offers over 2.5 million songs to college students across the country.

But a particular file cannot always be found on Ruckus, which is why Sannier says he thinks students might turn to illegal downloading, fully knowledgeable of its risks.

Former ASU student and musician Bier says illegally downloading music is "like having sex without a condom."

"Kids know that they could get STDs if they aren't practicing safe sex, but they're going to do it anyways," he says. "Who honestly thinks that they're going to be sued by the RIAA for downloading music?"
http://www.statepress.com/issues/200...6/style/701942





Problems Persist for Those Who Download

Half of students who download music or file share have experienced problems
Danielle Morris

New research shows more than half of students who download unlicensed software, illegal music and file share experience virus and spyware problems, according to a survey by Ipsos Public Affairs.

In some cases, students have suffered from hard drive crashes and the loss of their document files.

"This is significant. Over 50 percent of students are experiencing virus and software problems, another 20 percent hard drive crashes and another nearly 20 percent are experiencing file losses," said vice president of public affairs at Business Software Alliance, Diane Smiroldo.

Smiroldo also said, "Students need to realize how vulnerable they are to viruses and spyware from illegally downloading unlicensed software and copyrighted material."

A few students surveyed on campus who download unlicensed software said they have yet to experience any problems.

However, downloads that involve file sharing or peer-to-peer (P2P) applications put a computer's security at serious risk.

Peer-to-peer applications allow attackers to access personal information, and although some may be safe, they are nearly impossible to identify, according to the National Cyber Alert System (NCAS).

The NCAS also warns against file sharing, because P2P applications can include pirated software such as copyrighted material or pornography, which would make you unknowingly eligible for fines or further prosecution.

Smiroldo also said not all legal downloads are necessarily safe either. She recommends making sure all downloads are protected by copyright.

According to Smiroldo, it is not necessarily a guarantee where to go.

"It is important to stay as safe and legal as you can," she said.

Although downloads do increase the risk of experiencing a plethora of computer problems there are some things that can help prevent from experiencing a computer crash.

Anti-virus software is a must in effectively preventing a computer from a crash. It is not only important to have this software, but also to maintain it.

Anti-virus software protects computers against new viruses, but since attackers are constantly creating new viruses it is only truly effective with continuous updating.

Another way to protect personal information is to install a firewall. A firewall allows you to block potentially virus causing pop-ups before they can even enter a computer.

To learn about further risks and complications of illegal downloading, B4Ucopy has resources posted on their Web site for college students so they can better understand the vast amount of complications related to download unlicensed software.

Despite the recent growth in students experiencing computer complications do to downloading, fewer students have been downloading illegal software.

According to BSA's press release, only 55 percent of students illegally download compared to 61 percent in 2005, and 68 percent in 2003.

Overall, whether you are downloading illegal software, or downloading free software believed to be safe, a computer's personal information is being put at risk and it is important to be aware of the dangers.
http://media.www.universitychronicle...-2998579.shtml





Mirage Gives Colleges an Answer to MP3 Headaches

Austin-based Mirage Networks Inc. is working with a college in Houston to minimize threats to its computer network, including music file sharing.

Mirage, which makes security software for a variety of clients, said its network access control software can help colleges cope with a range of problems, including virus attacks, unauthorized network access and music file sharing.

Its software is being used on the three campuses of Houston's San Jacinto College to curtail music file sharing that can monopolize network resources and leave students vulnerable to malware on their PCs and lawsuits from the music industry trade group.

The college uses the software to keep unauthorized laptop computers from accessing its network.

"We can configure our security sensor to disallow rampant file sharing and avoid the negative publicity that often comes with that type of activity," said Will Sydnor, the college's information technology manager.

Mirage has sold its security software to more than 50 colleges.
http://www.statesman.com/business/co...01plugged.html





Microsoft Updates Its iPod Competitor
Jeff Leeds

Microsoft has revamped its slow-selling Zune digital music players and created a MySpace-style social-networking site in its drive to compete with Apple’s market-leading iPod player.

In large part, the Microsoft moves announced Tuesday — the introduction of a smaller, sleeker version of the Zune player and the planned Zune Social Web site — reflect an attempt to build scale for a brand that so far has achieved only niche status. Microsoft said it had sold about 1.2 million units of the original device in the last year.

“For something we pulled together in six months, we are very pleased with the satisfaction we got,” Bill Gates, Microsoft’s chairman, said in an interview Tuesday. “The satisfaction for the device was superhigh. The satisfaction on the software actually is where we’d expect to see a huge uptick this year. It was just so-so on the software side.”

Microsoft said it had re-engineered the Zune hardware and software and the associated digital music store to make them all easier to use. “I’m sure a year from now we’ll do even better,” Mr. Gates said. “But I’m blown away by what they’ve been able to do in a year.”

Many of the changes are stylistic. The company reworked the device’s navigation button and dropped one of its signature colors, brown, from the list of options. The Zune will be available in black, pink, green and red.

But one of the most striking changes had to do with Microsoft’s effort to enhance what had been perhaps the most talked-about feature on the original device: the ability to share music files and other media wirelessly with other Zune owners. Far too few people, however, purchased the player for such sharing to become commonplace, and the function held little appeal because it was crippled by usage rules negotiated with the music industry. Shared songs expired within a few days, even if the recipient did not play them. And a file acquired from one Zune user could not be shared with a third user.

Under the new rules, Microsoft said, shared songs would have no expiration date and it would be possible repeatedly to pass along songs sent from one device to another. But a shared file can be played only three times on each Zune.

Partly to warm up the initially tepid response, the company is creating a social-networking site, Zune Social, to encourage the sharing of samples of songs online, even for fans who do not own a Zune player. Members of the network will also be able to use a small application on their computers to display which songs they have been listening to, and that information can be posted on certain Web sites outside the network or sent by e-mail to friends.

Various social networking sites, like Facebook, already offer sharing of samples of songs.

“The whole idea behind Zune is much broader than the devices themselves,” said J Allard, the Microsoft vice president who oversees design and development for consumer products like the Zune and the Xbox 360 game consoles. “The conditioned thought is around a portable device being the center point of the experience, when in fact it’s not. It really is about how do we start taking Zune beyond that device.” He said the social networking would appeal to Zune owners and people who had not bought the device.

A version with 80 gigabytes of storage, available only in black, will sell for $250. A version using flash memory with 8 gigabytes of storage will sell for $200, and the 4-gigabyte flash player will cost $150, the company said.

Van Baker, an analyst at the research firm Gartner, said the Zune revisions amounted to “a much-needed line extension” for the brand. “Is it enough to get somebody to move away from Apple to Microsoft? I don’t think so,” he said, “but it should help Microsoft against some of the other alternatives.”

Microsoft also said the library of songs available on its digital music service would soon include more than one million tracks without copy-protection software, known in the music industry as digital rights management or D.R.M. But the company noted that even songs without copy protection would still be playable only three times when they have been passed from another Zune user.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/03/te...gy/03zune.html





Matsushita to Launch Advanced Blu-Ray Recorders

Panasonic maker Matsushita Electric Industrial Co Ltd said it would launch new Blu-ray optical disc recorders in November that allow more hours of full high-definition recording on a single disc than any others available.

Matsushita, along with Sony Corp, promotes the Blu-ray technology, which competes with the HD DVD format, backed by Toshiba Corp and Microsoft Corp.

Osaka-based Matsushita, the world's largest consumer electronics maker, also said it plans to offer the world's first DVD recorders that can store full high-definition programs on conventional DVD discs next month.

Full high-definition (HD) programs come with a resolution of 1,920 x 1,080 pixels.

Matsushita's new Blu-ray recorders, which are able to record up to 18 hours of full HD programs on a dual-layer disc, will go on sale on November 1 in Japan.

A model equipped with a one-terabyte hard disk drive is expected to sell for 300,000 yen ($2,600), Matsushita said.

The one-terabyte hard drive can store up to 381 hours of full HD programs.

Matsushita, the world's largest maker of plasma TVs, took the wraps off the new Blu-ray and DVD recorders at the CEATEC Japan 2007 electronics industry trade show on Tuesday.

The company said it will start selling three models of new DVD recorders capable of recording full HD programs on conventional DVD discs on November 1.

The high-end model with a 500-gigabyte hard disk drive is likely to sell for 130,000 yen, Matsushita said.

Video rental chain Blockbuster Inc, the largest U.S. provider of home movie entertainment, came out in favor of the Blu-ray format in June.

But Paramount Pictures and DreamWorks Animation SKG Inc signed exclusivity deals in August to distribute their next-generation discs on Toshiba's HD DVD format for the next 18 months, a move that evened a contest where the Blu-ray camp appeared to be pulling ahead.
http://www.reuters.com/article/techn...14015620071002





Writers Guild to Seek Authorization to Call Strike
Richard Verrier

Ratcheting up labor tensions in Hollywood, leaders of the Writers Guild of America on Monday said they would ask members for authorization to call a strike if the union is unable to negotiate a new three-year contract with major studios.

"Because the stakes are so high, it is necessary to empower your negotiators with the tools needed to make the best possible deal," the union stated in a letter posted on its website. "It is apparent that the companies do not yet feel the pressure to conduct serious negotiations."

The request was not unexpected. Unions often seek strike authorizations to gain leverage in negotiations. The Screen Actors Guild, for example, obtained a strike authorization from members last year before signing a new agreement with producers of cable TV programs.

What's more, negotiations between writers and producers, which began July 16 and are set to resume Thursday, have been unusually contentious.

If a majority of the guild's members grant the authorization, the union board members could call a strike any time after the current agreement expires Oct. 31. Ballots are due Oct. 18.

The sides are far apart on several issues, especially the thorny matter of pay for work that is distributed via the Internet and other new media. So far, neither side has gone beyond lambasting the other's proposals.

Still, Monday's move is certain to add to anxiety in Hollywood's executive suites. Studios already are bracing for the first major Hollywood strike in nearly 20 years by, among other things, rushing to complete film and TV shoots before a walkout might occur. J. Nicholas Counter III, president of the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers, accused the guild of pursuing a reckless strategy.

"The Writers Guild's strike authorization is notable only because its negotiators seem intent on striking without seriously addressing the [alliance's] proposals, and with no regard for the devastating impact on their members, fellow unions and this industry," he said in a statement. "We are committed and prepared to make a fair deal with the WGA, but at this point the WGA is not of the same mind."

Most labor analysts have predicted that writers would not reach a deal by Oct. 31 and seek to push back negotiations until early next year to align with the Screen Actors Guild, whose contract expires June 30.

Those familiar with the guild's thinking, however, say the board is keeping its options open, including the possibility of calling a strike as early as next month, when studios would be in the thick of the fall television season.

Meanwhile, the guild has set up an operations center at its headquarters to mobilize members in the event of a strike, earmarking more than $12 million to finance a possible walkout. The union downplayed that outcome Monday. "The guild's leadership will do everything in its power to avoid a work stoppage."
http://www.latimes.com/entertainment...business-enter





Wolf Man and Narnia 3 Pushed Back by Actors Strike

Two potential blockbusters, Chronicles of Narnia: The Voyage of the Dawn Treader and The Wolf Man, starring Benicio Del Toro, have seen their respective release dates pushed back by six months in what appears to be one of the first signs of the impact of next summer's actors strike.

Dawn Treader is moving from a May 1, 2009 date to May 7, 2010, while Mark Romanek's remake of the 1941 horror classic is shifting from November 12, 2008 to spring 2009.

The actor's strike looks set to take place in June next year and will in fact manifest itself as a combined strike by the Screen Actors Guild, the Directors Guild of America and the Writers Guild of America (West) against the Producers Guild of America. The predicted strike has already sent Hollywood into a frenzy of planning, with many studios reportedly accelerating production of films to avoid gaps in their release schedules. A list of 300 high-priority film projects is reportedly circulating around talent agencies as part of the effort. See it here.

The strike is over royalties from sales of movies over the internet and on DVD, which are not covered in the current deal between the various guilds.

Disney had planned to release one Narnia film a year from next summer, when the second film in its fantasy franchise, Prince Caspian, is scheduled to hit the big screen, so the planned strike is clearly being taken very seriously by the major studios. Other films which have so far been affected include the $100m historical epic Pompeii, which lost director Roman Polanski after doubts were raised over its ability to begin an 18-month shoot in summer next year due to the strike. Films with British links which could be affected include Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, Mamma Mia!, Young Victoria and the next James Bond film.
http://film.guardian.co.uk/news/stor...172455,00.html





Abortion as a Front Line in the Culture Wars
Manohla Dargis

The first thing you should know about the documentary “Lake of Fire” — an unblinking look at the violent fight over abortion in the United States, including those homegrown religious fundamentalists who kill in the name of God — is that it was made in black and white. This is critical. Because the other thing you should know about this fascinating, discomfiting, at times unpleasant, confused and confusing film is that it sets off extremely graphic images of actual abortions against a notorious photograph of a woman who died after an illegal motel room abortion, visuals that are inflammatory if, for the most part, also germane.

Not everyone will agree about the abortion visuals, including, perhaps, those who worry that such explicit imagery can speak louder than any pro-abortion-rights argument. It’s an understandable concern. Because they are filmed (the dead woman is immortalized in a still photograph), the abortions are unnerving, which is why I suggest that the faint of heart skip the rest of this paragraph. After the first operation, a second-trimester abortion, the doctor sorts through a tray of fetal parts, including a perfect-looking tiny hand and a foot, to make sure that nothing has been left inside the patient, which might lead to poisoning or even death. The doctor then holds up the severed fetal head. One eerily bulging eye looks as if it’s staring into the camera and somehow at us.

My initial and admittedly angry first thought about these images was that the director, Tony Kaye, was just resorting to shock tactics. The film doesn’t employ narration or on-screen texts that reveal his views on abortion; instead, there are 152 minutes of talking-head testimonials, on-the-street interviews and archival and new visuals. This means that you have to pay extra-special attention to his filmmaking choices, to the way he juxtaposes sights and sounds and who gets to speak and when.

His choices can be baffling. The ludicrous opening credits (anguished music, candles shaped like praying hands) could be straight out of a cheap horror flick, though the later presence of heavyweights like Noam Chomsky points to more sober ambitions.

The British-born Mr. Kaye started his life in images by directing commercials, a form that relies on bold visuals and simple messages. He went on to direct the flashy “American History X” (1998), about a charismatic neo-Nazi, though he lost control of the project to its star, Edward Norton. Mr. Kaye began shooting material for “Lake of Fire” (the title refers to hell) in the early 1990s, a process that consumed an uncommonly long 16 years. He has stated that he was interested in making a “socially conscious” dramatic film, but decided to make a documentary that would represent the issue in its complexity, despite knowing nothing about the form. His ignorance has its dividends. Shot primarily in sumptuous, often disquietingly beautiful 35-millimeter film, “Lake of Fire” doesn’t look anything like most American documentaries.

The decision to use black and white was smart because, as with “Schindler’s List,” too much red might well have sent audiences fleeing from theaters. The absence of color blunts the force of the images (the sounds of the machinery are still unsettling), which allows you to watch the movie rather than avert your gaze and your rattled mind. Mr. Kaye has an irritating, sometimes self-undermining weakness for shocking visuals (and edits), but it’s clear from all the time he spent on this project and from the different voices he’s gathered that he was genuinely interested in making a serious work, one that explores its subject with far more depth and breadth than the usual run-and-gun documentaries.

In the main, he has succeeded, notably through an array of mostly male journalists, activists, ministers, lawyers and academics, including the philosopher Peter Singer and the writer Nat Hentoff, who lay out the arguments and scan the terrain. Some sound rational, coolly dispassionate; others smile and spew. A few of the more vivid characters, specifically religious extremists who believe that America should be a Christian nation and that abortion providers should be executed alongside homosexuals, adulterers and blasphemers, are, well, something else. Intentionally or not, Mr. Kaye has made a documentary that vividly delineates how religious-fundamentalist terrorists take root in a country, slide around the law and gain legitimacy (martyrdom), and how those who profess to love God can justify murder.

Which leads me back to some of the more shocking images in “Lake of Fire.” It’s possible that Mr. Kaye opted to show several abortions because he wanted viewers, particularly those sympathetic to a woman’s right to abortion, to understand what stirs some people not just to action, but also to kill doctors. If nothing else, the first abortion in the film (of a 20-week-old fetus, though that information is not in the film) reinforces what an abstraction the term pro-choice really is. Abortion does end the life of something. The fight, of course, is over what that something is — an embryo, a baby, God’s creation, a blob of cells — and who has dominion over it and the fully formed human being carrying that something inside her body.

I wish there were more of those fully formed human beings in “Lake of Fire,” which has an awful lot of men talking about what women should and should not do with their bodies. There are women here, to be sure, though it may be instructive that one of the most memorable female voices belongs to an unreliable witness who talks about seeing “babies” stacked in an abortion-clinic freezer. Mr. Kaye follows this startling testimonial with otherworldly and unidentified images of intact late-term fetuses or babies or maybe even dolls. Because I couldn’t tell what I was looking at, I asked the film’s distributor. According to the company, these images had been given to Mr. Kaye by members of the anti-abortion group Operation Rescue.

One lesson of “Lake of Fire” is the galvanizing power of the visual image. Sometimes a picture is worth a thousand words, and sometimes pictures are not enough. Although the film doesn’t identify her, the dead woman in the photograph that Mr. Kaye shows us late in the film is Gerri Santoro. In 1964, when abortion was not yet a constitutional right, she and a male lover checked into a Connecticut motel room, where he tried to perform an abortion. She had become pregnant and feared that her estranged husband, who beat her and their children, would find out. Something went wrong, and the lover fled. Ms. Santoro died, smeared in blood, defeated, naked and alone. Before she was a symbol, she was a person.


LAKE OF FIRE

Opens today in Manhattan.

Produced and directed by Tony Kaye; director of photography, Mr. Kaye; edited by Peter Goddard; music by Anne Dudley; released by ThinkFilm. At Film Forum, 209 West Houston Street, west of Avenue of the Americas, South Village. Running time: 152 minutes. This film is not rated.

With: Alan M. Dershowitz, Noam Chomsky, Nat Hentoff, Dallas A. Blanchard, Norma McCorvey, Peter Singer, Randall Terry, Frederick Clarkson, Bill Baird, Frances Kissling, Michael Griffin and Paul Jennings Hill.
http://movies.nytimes.com/2007/10/03/movies/03fire.html





‘The Kite Runner’ Is Delayed to Protect Child Stars
David M. Halbfinger

The studio distributing “The Kite Runner,” a tale of childhood betrayal, sexual predation and ethnic tension in Afghanistan, is delaying the film’s release to get its three schoolboy stars out of Kabul — perhaps permanently — in response to fears that they could be attacked for their enactment of a culturally inflammatory rape scene.

Executives at the distributor, Paramount Vantage, are contending with issues stemming from the rising lawlessness in Kabul in the year since the boys were cast.

The boys and their relatives are now accusing the filmmakers of mistreatment, and warnings have been relayed to the studio from Afghan and American officials and aid workers that the movie could aggravate simmering enmities between the politically dominant Pashtun and the long-oppressed Hazara.

In an effort to prevent not only a public-relations disaster but also possible violence, studio lawyers and marketing bosses have employed a stranger-than-fiction team of consultants. In August they sent a retired Central Intelligence Agency counterterrorism operative in the region to Kabul to assess the dangers facing the child actors. And on Sunday a Washington-based political adviser flew to the United Arab Emirates to arrange a safe haven for the boys and their relatives.

“If we’re being overly cautious, that’s O.K.,” Karen Magid, a lawyer for Paramount, said. “We’re in uncharted territory.”

In interviews, more than a dozen people involved in the studio’s response described grappling with vexing questions: testing the limits of corporate responsibility, wondering who was exploiting whom and pondering the price of on-screen authenticity.

“The Kite Runner,” like the best-selling 2003 novel by Khaled Hosseini on which it is based, spans three decades of Afghan strife, from before the Soviet invasion through the rise of the Taliban. At its heart is a friendship between Amir, a wealthy Pashtun boy played by Zekiria Ebrahimi, and Hassan, the Hazara son of Amir’s father’s servant. In a pivotal scene Hassan is raped in an alley by a Pashtun bully. Later, Sohrab, a Hazara boy played by Ali Danish Bakhty Ari, is preyed on by a corrupt Taliban official.

Though the book is admired in Afghanistan by many in the elite, its narrative remains unfamiliar to the broader population, for whom oral storytelling and rumor communication carry far greater weight.

The Taliban destroyed nearly all movie theaters in Afghanistan, but pirated DVDs often arrive soon after a major film’s release in the West. As a result, Paramount Vantage, the art-house and specialty label of Paramount Pictures, has pushed back the release of the $18 million movie by six weeks, to Dec. 14, when the young stars’ school year will have ended.

In January in Afghanistan, DVDs of “Kabul Express” — an Indian film in which a character hurls insults at Hazara — led to protests, government denunciations and calls for the execution of the offending actor, who fled the country.

Perhaps not coincidentally, the “Kite Runner” actor who plays Hassan, Ahmad Khan Mahmoodzada, 12, told reporters at that time that he feared for his life because his fellow Hazara might feel humiliated by his rape scene. His father said he himself was misled by the film’s producers, insisting that they never told him of the scene until it was about to be shot and that they had promised to cut it.

Hangama Anwari, the child-rights commissioner for the Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission, said on Monday that she had urged Paramount’s counterterrorism consultant to get Ahmad Khan out of the country, at least until after the movie is released. “They should not play around with the lives and security of people,” she said of the filmmakers. “The Hazara people will take it as an insult.”

The film’s director, Marc Forster, whose credits include “Finding Neverland” (2004), another film starring child actors, said he saw “The Kite Runner” as “giving a voice and a face to people who’ve been voiceless and faceless for the last 30 years.” Striving for authenticity, he said, he chose to make the film in Dari, an Afghan language, and his casting agent, Kate Dowd, held open calls in cities with sizable Afghan communities, including Fremont, Calif., Toronto and The Hague. But to no avail: Mr. Forster said he “just wasn’t connecting with anybody.”

Finally, when Ms. Dowd went to Kabul in May 2006, she discovered her stars. “There was such innocence to them, despite all they’d lived through,” she said.

Mr. Forster emphasized that casting Afghan boys did not seem risky at the time; local filmmakers even encouraged him, he said: “You really felt it was safe there, a democratic process was happening, and stability, and a new beginning.”

Ms. Dowd and E. Bennett Walsh, a producer, said they met in Kabul with Ahmad Khan’s father, Ahmad Jaan Mahmoodzada, and told him that his son’s character was the victim of a “vicious sexual assault.” Mr. Mahmoodzada seemed unmoved, they said, remarking that “bad things happen” in movies as in life. The boy, they continued, did not receive a script until a Dari translation was available on the set in western China. The rape scene was rehearsed twice, they said, once with the father present.

On Tuesday the elder Mr. Mahmoodzada, reached by cellphone, rejected this account, and said he never learned the rape was a plot point until the scene was about to be shot. He also said his son never received a script.

Mr. Forster said that during rehearsals he considered including a shot of Hassan’s pants being pulled down, exposing his backside, and that neither Ahmad Khan nor his father objected. But the morning the scene was to be filmed, Mr. Forster found the boy in tears. Ahmad Khan said he did not want to be shown nude, Mr. Forster agreed to skip that shot, and the boy went ahead with the rape scene. Mr. Mahmoodzada confirmed this.

In the final version of the film, the rape is conveyed impressionistically, with the unstrapping of a belt, the victim’s cries and a drop of blood.

The filmmakers said they were surprised when Ahmad Khan and his father told The Sunday Times of London in January that they feared for their lives. Mr. Walsh and Rebecca Yeldham, another producer, flew to Kabul to learn more in February.

The producers dispelled one fear, that the filmmakers would use computer tricks to depict the boy’s genitals in the rape scene. But Ahmad Khan’s parents also pressed for more cash, the producers said.

On the advice of a Kabul television company, the boys had been paid $1,000 to $1,500 a week, far less than the Screen Actors Guild weekly scale of $2,557, but far more than what Afghan actors typically receive.

In late July, with violence worsening in Kabul, studio executives looked for experts who could help them chart a safe course. Aided by lobbyists for Viacom, Paramount’s parent company, they found John Kiriakou, the retired C.I.A. operative with experience in the region, and had him conduct interviews in Washington and Kabul.

“They wanted to do the right thing, but they wanted to understand what the right thing was,” Mr. Kiriakou said.

There was one absolute: “Nothing will be done if it puts any kid at risk,” Megan Colligan, head of marketing at Paramount Vantage, said.

Mr. Kiriakou’s briefing, which he reprised in a telephone interview, could make a pretty good movie by itself. A specialist on Islam at the State Department nearly wept envisioning a “Danish-cartoons situation,” Mr. Kiriakou said. An Afghan literature professor, he added, said Paramount was “willing to burn an already scorched nation for a fistful of dollars.” The head of an Afghan political party said the movie would energize the Taliban. Nearly everyone Mr. Kiriakou met said that the boys had to be removed from Afghanistan for their safety. And a Hazara member of Parliament warned that Pashtun and Hazara “would be killing each other every night” in response to the film’s depiction of them. None of the interviewees had seen the movie.

Another consultant, whom Paramount did not identify, gave a less bleak assessment, but Ms. Colligan said the studio was taking no chances. “The only thing you get people to agree on is that the place is getting messier every single day,” she said.

So on Sunday Rich Klein, a Middle East specialist at the consulting firm Kissinger McLarty Associates, flew to the United Arab Emirates to arrange visas, housing and schooling for the young actors and jobs for their guardians. (The United States is not an option, he said, because Afghans do not qualify for refugee status.)

Those involved say that the studio doesn’t want to be taken advantage of, but that it could accept responsibility for the boys’ living expenses until they reach adulthood, a cost some estimated at up to $500,000. The families, of course, must first agree to the plan.

“I think there was a moral obligation even before any of these things were an issue,” said Mr. Hosseini, the novel’s author, who got to know the boys on the set. “How long that obligation lasts? I don’t know that anybody has the answer to that.”

Kirk Semple contributed reporting from Kabul.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/04/movies/04kite.html?hp





Taking Liberties out on DVD on 15th October



Suchandrika Chakrabarti

Taking Liberties, a documentary which explores the possible erosion of civil liberties under Tony Blair's government, supported by the UK Film Council P&A fund, is out to rent or buy on DVD on 15th October. Director Chris Atkins has grand aims for the film:

"If there's one thing I've learnt from making this film, it is the understanding that politics is not about self important windbags in Westminster, or thundering newspaper editorials - it's about people. And all people need to do is to engage and have a voice and they can change the world."

The film looks at diverse case studies of those affected by the flurry of legislation brought in by Blair's government, with the supposed aim of countering terrorism.

These include the continuing house arrest of Mouloud Sihali, found innocent in the so-called "Ricin plot" case; 82 year-old Walter Wolfgang's 2005 arrest (under the Terrorism Act 2000) for shouting out "nonsense" during Jack Straw's speech at the Labour party conference and the extradition of the Natwest 3 to America for an alleged crime that did not involve America at all.

The film puts forward the argument that the Labour government have overreacted to the potential terrorism threats faced by post-9/11 Britain. Although some of the situations lend themselves easily to humour - such as two grannies running rings around police officers accusing them of "looking" at a classified American air base - some of the stories suggest a sinister erosion of civil liberties.

The case of Omar Deghayes, a British resident still languishing in Guantanamo Bay after five years, is chilling; the government only requested his release on 7th August this year. The case of the Natwest 3 also highlights the fact that UK citizens can easily be extradited to America on flimsy grounds, but that it doesn't work vice versa - certainly a turn of events that has flown under the radar since the signing of the Extradition Act 2003 made this situation possible.

The film uncovers the large extent to which anti-terrorism laws have curtailed everyday freedoms that we all take for granted, and indeed rarely even think about. A thought-provoking watch.
http://www.netribution.co.uk/2/content/view/1286/261/





How's This for a Twist? Bush Insults H'wood
Brooks Boliek

President Bush took a potshot at Hollywood on Monday when he made a seemingly off-handed remark about what the industry purportedly stands for.

Bush's rhetorical broadside came as he paid tribute to the new chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, U.S. Navy Adm. Mike Mullen, noting that his parents were well-regarded, behind-the-scenes players in the U.S. movie industry.

"Many people are surprised when told about the admiral's show business roots," Bush said. "After all, he is humble, well-grounded and filled with common sense. Not exactly what one thinks about when they think of Hollywood values."
http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/hr/...169e2f67c9f7d5





Radiohead Embraces Trust Over DRM: Will it Work for Film?

I recently heard from a music industry insider that Radiohead make some 80% of their income from touring, which opened up the question of why they put so much effort into packaging, selling and protecting albums. A question that has now been answered. Free from a record label after their six album deal with EMI had come to an end, one of the most revered bands of the last 20 years have taken the twin giant leaps into self-distribution and inviting downloaders to decide how much to pay for their new album (In Rainbows).

Trust - it's a model that has supported musicians perhaps longer than any other system, and hundreds of thousands of buskers and touring musicians today make a living from an upturned hat, which - tho no DRM system can ever force people into filling - somehow they do. Magnatunes has already been using the 'pick your own price' system for a while, and despite having a minimum cost of £5 (unlike In Rainbows where there will be no lower limit), sees an average payment of around £8 (Magnatunes also have great licenses for filmmakers wanting to only pay for music rights *after* the film starts making money).

We've seen the publishing industry shift from a paid-for model for newspapers and magazines to free ad-supported distribution in less than a decade. The New York Times was set to make millions this year from pay-per-view articles, the management eventually decided it would make more from advertising in the long run and made everything free. Rumours abound that ft.com and WSJ.com are set to follow suit.

With Amazon now opening a 2 million song DRM-free store, making it easier than ever to pirate (if you are so inclined), the tide for music too seems to be shifting towards a more open trust-based situation. Inherently - as with life - the trust approach has a lot going for it, viewing people as decent until proven otherwise, and it is sufficient to support church collections, eBay and plenty more.

But film is that much more expensive than music or writing to produce, and it'd be foolish not to consider what if trust doesn't work? If so, and unless we are to adjust to watching only microbudget productions and demand that film professionals work for free, then we are presented with the nightmare scenario Orange has been taking great pains to illustrate over the past decade with its Film Funding Board cinema ads - the advertiser as film funder and script developer. In some ways its only a small step away from current practices where Spiderman is filled with Sony technology, or films eligible for British tax breaks have to have sufficient 'British elements'. But it would spell the end of big budget art films. Supercomputer HAL in 2001 would be upgraded to Windows Vista and instantly cheer up.

So if there was an underlying business question the film industry is struggling to answer right now, and that's been at the back of my mind since I first started getting hooked on watching films online, it's how do we make the trust model work? My opposition to DRM is not simply that it's a pain in the arse, a topsy-turvy 'new' technology that offers you less than the 'old' tech it is replacing (imagine buying a DVD that you couldn't take out of your house to lend to a friend, or that vanished off your shelf if the distributor went bust), it's that it encourages technology monopolies to control media distribution. And as we've seen with Google in China, or indeed the iPod, that opens up all sorts of problems for freedom of speech.

Naturally a key part of making the trust model work is increasing and improving the relationship between creators and consumers - making that link as two-way as possible. We put our change in the buskers hat because we see them there as a human, rather than a faceless entity.

As some have seen - such as Brave New Films, who raised the $300,000 budget of their last feature by emailing people who had previously bought their DVDs - the web makes this easy and people are up for doing it.

Could the pre-sales market of finance - which has been shrinking in recent years and could vanish altogether if the web becomes the primary mode of film distribution (why would a video distributor pay an advance if that film is available simultaneously on thousands of download services in many countries?) - be replaced with a kind of micro-presales? Thousands of people paying more than they would normally for a DVD to part finance a film, snoop on its progress, be listed in the credits, and get a personal copy at the end? So rather than paying a premium for something that's offered for free (or pay-what-you-can), you pay for exclusive access, and to be part of the process, like Matt Hanson's Swarm of Angels or the MyMoviesMashup.

In fact the physical version of Radiohead's new album will sell for a premium - £40 for a box set including vinyl, disc and artwork, and all eyes will be on them to see if the loss in official sales will be offset by the higher price (Kid A famously debuted at number one in the charts despite being deliberately leaked in full on P2P networks prior to that). For if they pull this off, it could change everything.
http://www.netribution.co.uk/2/content/view/1312/277/





Weekend Boxoffice

1. The Game Plan $22.7
2. The Kingdom 17.7
3. Resident Evil 8.0
4. Good Luck Chuck 6.3
5. 3:10 to Yuma 4.2
6. The Brave One 3.7
7. Mr. Woodcock 3.0
8. Eastern Promises 2.9
9. Sydney White 2.7
10. Across the Universe 2.1

Weekend of Sept. 28-30.Estimated figures in $ mil.
http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/hr/...fice/index.jsp





New Video Gives ‘SNL’ Another Hit on the Web
Jacques Steinberg

The latest hit for “Saturday Night Live” on the Internet began taking shape on Sept. 24, when Andy Samberg and a group of his colleagues on the show were sitting around their offices, scrounging for a celebrity or politician “who could really use a love song right now.” Around the same time, Seth Meyers, the show’s head writer, was imagining a skit in which Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the president of Iran, would be depicted on a wild night out on the town.

Before long the ideas fused, and by last Saturday, opening night for the 33rd season of “Saturday Night Live,” the group had produced a three-minute music video titled “I Ran So Far Away.” In it, a crooning, piano-playing Mr. Samberg and a doppelgänger for the Iranian president (his castmate Fred Armisen, bearded and in a gray suit and open-neck dress shirt) dance and appear to fall in love — giving apparent lie to Mr. Ahmadinejad’s contention at Columbia University that there were no homosexuals in Iran.

By yesterday afternoon, just four days after its network premiere, the various versions of the video posted on YouTube had been viewed nearly 300,000 times, according to tallies posted on the site. For Mr. Samberg and his main collaborators — Akiva Schaffer and Jorma Taccone — “I Ran” is something of a sequel. Last year, NBC posted an uncensored version of a boy-band video the group made — the cleaned-up title was “Special Treat in a Box” — in which Justin Timberlake and Mr. Samberg each appeared to be making a gift of their male anatomy. Thus far, that film has been seen more than 29 million times on YouTube, and last month it won an Emmy.

However popular, such films — including “Lazy Sunday,” a rapping homage to “The Chronicles of Narnia” — have not appeared to raise the ratings of the show itself. Last season, “Saturday Night Live” drew an average of about 6.4 million viewers a week, which was down from the year before. But the digital shorts have given the show, and Mr. Samberg in particular, a Web presence and cachet.

Considering that Mr. Samberg and his crew typically create their digital films in little more than 48 hours, the six days they spent on “I Ran” made it feel like a feature film. First, Mr. Samberg said, they developed the song’s R&B beat, which had elements of LL Cool J, the Wu-Tang Clan and an outright sample from Aphex Twin, an electronic performer.

The chorus, “I Ran,” is a knock-off of the 1980s Flock of Seagulls hit of the same name. But otherwise, the words were original. Among the more memorable lines Mr. Samberg sings to the Iranian president are:

You can deny the Holocaust all you want

But you can’t deny that there’s something between us

At another point, Mr. Samberg invokes “The Passion of the Christ” and its star, singing :

They call you weasel

They say your methods are medieval

You can play the Jews

I can be your Jim Caviezel

The film also features two cameos, personally arranged by Mr. Samberg. Adam Levine, the lead singer of the band Maroon 5, sings the “I Ran” chorus. Mr. Samberg, 29, said in an interview yesterday that he had sent a text message to a mutual friend, saying he had a perfect part for Mr. Levine to sing. The problem was that Mr. Levine was in Detroit. Mr. Samberg persuaded the singer to fly to New York early Friday morning. He then went straight to the makeshift recording studio in Mr. Samberg’s office and, on only a few hours sleep, traveled to Brooklyn to film his scenes. He was back on a plane to Detroit by early afternoon.

Another cameo, several seconds of Jake Gyllenhaal stroking his beard, was filmed in Los Angeles on Friday.

While the cast’s main goal was to have fun, Mr. Samberg said, the film has a political undertone. “No one around here,” he said, “is super fired-up about a guy who is denying the Holocaust and saying there are no homosexuals in his country.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/04/ar...ion/04snl.html





Network head admits media losing piracy war

NBC Chief Urges All-Hands Assault on Piracy
Anne Broache

Copyright holders are "losing the battle" against piracy, at the expense of economic security and public health, and will never prevail unless a wide swath of governments and industries gets proactive, NBC Universal CEO Jeff Zucker said Wednesday.

The media conglomerate's chief shared a lengthy attack plan in a speech at an antipiracy summit here hosted by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.

He wants alleged intellectual property violations to take center stage at all levels of government, from the White House to U.S. embassies around the world. He wants Congress to create dedicated IP enforcement departments and to offer federal grants for state and local governments to escalate their own policing efforts.

He wants advertisers and credit card companies to stop providing "financial support" to Web sites that are "overwhelmingly devoted" to making pirated content available.

And he wants Internet service providers, university network operators, user-generated content sites, search engines, auction Web sites and even consumer electronics and home networking device manufacturers to install filtering technologies designed to detect and block unauthorized copyright content. Critics argue that technique is prone to being either over- or underinclusive--or downright ineffective--but Zucker said he's convinced it's an approach worth pursuing.

Just as cable companies have helped to combat theft of their signals through encryption, "technology has been and continues to be an incredibly powerful tool to combat theft, whether we are talking about hard goods or digital goods," Zucker said. Such tools will never be perfect, he conceded, "but committed development of technology has the potential to reduce dramatically the traffic in counterfeit and pirated products."

In an attempt to illustrate the impact of piracy on the U.S. economy, Zucker touted the "staggering" numbers in a new study released Wednesday by an economist named Stephen Siwek, which found the U.S. economy loses $58 billion and U.S. workers are deprived of nearly 375,000 jobs annually because of global and domestic-based copyright infringement.

A copy of that study was not immediately available, so it was unclear how those numbers were derived. The group that released the study, called the Institute for Policy Innovation, has a history of sponsoring pro-Hollywood events.

But despite concerns about the Internet as a piracy venue, Zucker said his company has no intention of shying away from the medium. In fact, the General Electric subset intends to continue beefing up investments its digital presence by "ripping apart old business models and pioneering radically new ways of reaching audiences."

Take the network's hit comedy sitcom 30 Rock, for example. If viewers miss its broadcast TV airing, they have a multitude of options for watching it later, including in free, streaming form at NBC.com; in free, downloadable form from NBC.com (albeit with a 7-day lifespan); through some cable and satellite on-demand services; and, in a few weeks, through Hulu.com, the new joint digital video venture between NBC and News Corp. (There wasn't a peep about the fall lineup's newfound lack of availability through Apple's iTunes store, though.)

"On screens small, medium or large," he said, "we are there wherever or however consumer wants to consume our content."
http://www.news.com/8301-10784_3-9790352-7.html





MediaDefender Leak Offers BlueTack Users a Reality Check
Drew Wilson

The Media Defender internal email leak offered plenty of information for the taking. MediaDefender-Defenders said that they hoped that the email leak will prove to be a viable tool to protect against anti-P2P efforts. This is something BlueTack has been trying to do. After the email leak, a text file that compiles the complete IP (Internet Protocol) list Media Defender used while dropping fake files onto various P2P sites and networks was posted. While judging the effectiveness of these lists had proven to be an impossible task before the major leak, the effectiveness can now be tested.

Slyck began the investigation when BlueTack's 'Paranoid' IP filter blocked one of TVUnderground's new eDonkey2000 servers. A request for comment or information on the matter to BlueTack's team went unanswered. To this day, why BlueTack has blocked only one of TVUnderground's servers is unknown. In the meantime, Slyck is currently in the possession of a copy of BlueTack's IP filter lists, and further investigation into related matters appeared warranted.

According to the BlueTack website, "B.I.S.S. is a site dedicated to improving the safety and awareness of all our members and guests, providing News, Security articles, Software Reviews, Technical Support, Guides, IP Research and Free Software needed to help us keep our connections to the net and each other safe, secure, and free from unwelcome intruders."

Among the things offered are the blocklists, which have been met with either acceptance by the file-sharing community or complete rejection. Some say that the blocklists allow users to simply block any anti-filesharing company and allow users to connect with non-industry IPs. Others say that there is no way to get the right IPs before the IPs are changed to different addresses, thereby rendering the filters ineffective. It's been the subject of debate for quite some time amongst many experts with no real way to test the lists, at least until the Media Defender email leak.

The 'Paranoid' eMule IP filter was retrieved on September 27, 2007. The Level1 IP blacklist, which is supposed to block all known anti-p2p IPs, was retrieved on September 30, 2007. The idea behind getting these lists now is to offer ample time for Media Defender's now public IPs to be added to the lists for a much more effective blocklist for PeerGuardian users.

Slyck then obtained a copy of the publicly available 14.3MB compressed text file which lists all of the Media Defender's IP addresses. At this point, it became obvious that testing such a large volume of IPs would prove to be an overly time-consuming challenge, at least by hand. In order to alleviate this problem, it was best to test one particular IP range. Conveniently enough, the first range started with 116. Slyck then decided to test all of the IPs that started with the number 116.

The total number of IPs used by Media Defender starting with 116 was 1,474. Obviously, BlueTack did block all IPs that started with 116, but how many Media Defender IPs were successfully blocked? When Slyck investigated, there was a common theme that blocklists seemingly jumped over several ranges used by Media Defender. After some extensive study using the Level1 list for anti-p2p companies and the 'Paranoid' list, BlueTack would have successfully blocked 16 IPs. Thus, this sample test offered 1.09% protection against Media Defender in that range.

The IPs that were successfully blocked were: 116.255.1.109, 116.255.1.154, 116.255.1.244, 116.255.1.27, 116.255.1.52, 116.255.1.85, 116.215.157.243, 116.212.14.223, 116.199.202.170, 116.199.202.240, 116.199.207.83, 116.199.207.84, 116.199.226.78 , 116.199.227.11, 116.199.227.27, 116.199.227.67. The remaining 1,458 IPs would still be allowed through even with these two filters being used today.

While BlueTack may still perpetuate the idea that their filters are 99% effective, these latest findings will only fuel criticisms towards BlueTack's actual effectiveness. A complete test might not be possible short of creating a simple program to test every single number or spending weeks hand-testing every single Media Defender IP address. In the mean ime, it seems very apparent that BlueTack's filters have a few holes.
http://www.slyck.com/news.php?story=1593





Dealing With the Damage From Online Critics
Hillary Chura

As the power of the Internet grows, businesses small and large find themselves confounded by disenchanted employees, suppliers and competitors who seek fertile ground to air grievances online.

Armed with little more than a Web connection and a keyboard, these detractors can do everything from irritate, via a scathing review, to causing serious business problems by using message boards to reveal company secrets or spread rumors of unethical behavior. They may also start a gripe site or register a Web address in their target’s name.

“There is all type of damage by miscreants on the Web to a business,” said Marc S. Friedman, chairman of the intellectual property practice at Sills Cummis Epstein & Gross in Manhattan. “The number of methods depends only on the creativity of the wrongdoer.”

For Katie Lambert, it was anonymous postings on AOL’s Yellow Pages about the gym she owns, Go Figure, in Westwood, Mass. The gym, the postings said, was overpriced, crowded and chaotic. Ms. Lambert didn’t learn of the comments until a member alerted her. When some loyal customers found out about the review, they went online and responded positively, but the detractor always shot back. Ms. Lambert said she tried to contact AOL but could never reach anyone who could remove the material.

“Anybody can write anything in the world, whether it’s true or not. It could be affecting my business right now,” Ms. Lambert said. She said she ultimately realized the postings came from a member who didn’t want to pay a $100 cancellation fee to get out of her contract. Ms. Lambert’s lawyer wrote the woman, asking that the false comments stop. They did, and Ms. Lambert said she learned that companies should periodically check what is being said about them online.

Business is not alone in such frustrations. Politicians like Hillary Rodham Clinton, authors like Patricia Cornwell as well as other public and private individuals find themselves in the cross hairs of commentators emboldened by the anonymity of cyberspace. But such postings can do more than just irritate; financial damages can reach millions of dollars or shut down a business entirely.

Remedies vary by case and by state, but lawyers, Internet specialists and others counsel that the best course with may be to ignore irritating posts because trying to squelch a malcontent can have unintended consequences.

“Your reaction often, if you’re a small business, is to get angry and to fire off a letter,” said Barry Werbin, an intellectual property lawyer at Herrick, Feinstein in New York. “Some big companies do it. More often than not, the person who posts the gripe site can’t wait to get that letter and post it.”

Sometimes, Mr. Werbin added, “it can worsen the damage because it just fuels the fire.”

Assuming that the posting activity is not illegal or defamatory and truly damages a business rather than just an ego, there may be better ways to respond. Scurrilous opinions often appear on Web sites including Yahoo message boards, AOL and MySpace. Those sites may remove objectionable material if asked but are not legally required to do so. Even if they do remove it, the damage may already have been done. Besides, even if the comments are taken down, a determined whiner can find any number of other venues. Other online review sites, like Yelp or TripAdvisor, are particularly influential.

“New consumer opinion gets posted about every five seconds,” said Rob Crumpler, chief executive of Buzz Logic, which helps businesses identify influential bloggers.

Samantha DiGennaro, who runs her own strategic communications consulting firm in New York, says many companies either run scared from electronic media or fail to realize how quickly negative comments can jet around the Internet.

“People think, ‘It’s only on the Web. It’s not that important.’ But it’s almost more important than a newspaper or something in print,” she said. “Things live in perpetuity on the Web.”

Some large marketers may blog or respond anonymously. Ms. DiGennaro said appropriate responses were not one size fits all and must be tailored to the particular case. If something merits being addressed, she said, it can better be done in the name of the company rather than hiding behind anonymous postings.

On the technical front, a search engine optimization expert can tweak a site so that it moves a positive posting higher in an Internet search, tending to bury the negative one. Shailen Lodhia, vice president for sales at Submit Express, an optimization firm in Burbank, Calif., estimated results could take three months to a year, and monthly retainers could exceed $3,000.

The best defense is a good offense. Useful practices include registering personalized e-mail addresses as well as gripe domain names — not with the intention of using them but to prevent others doing so. Registering common misspellings as well as derogatory domain names is a good precaution and so is covering extensions like .biz and .org. Costs are minimal, some lower than $50 a year.

Companies that sell products or services should trademark their name to prevent others from using it as a domain name without authorization, legal experts said. Executives may find their only recourse is to sue if someone registers their name as a U.R.L. and uses it to defame them, said Mr. Friedman of Sills Cummis Epstein & Gross. He said that few companies thought to buy potentially negative domain names. Debra Condren, a business psychologist and career adviser, said the occasional negative comment could actually lend credibility to a company rather than tarnish it. She said people expected to see a range of opinions, and if they saw only positive ones on a company blog, for example, they might suspect that negative feedback was being censored. A range of opinions seems authentic.

“Some people, for whatever reason, aren’t going to like or appreciate what you’re selling,” she said. “Accept this as normal, and you won’t stay awake at night letting a disgruntled client or a negative person who decided not to use your services bring you down with what will be transparently obvious to most people as sour grapes feedback.”

Angie Hicks, founder of Angie’s List, a member-generated ratings service where users report their positive or negative experiences with local contractors, said every company gets complaints at some time, but the way it responds can be more telling than the complaint itself.

“You can really see how that company is going to stand by their work based on how they handle problems that come up,” she said.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/04/bu...ss/04sbiz.html





Secret U.S. Endorsement of Severe Interrogations
Scott Shane, David Johnston and James Risen

When the Justice Department publicly declared torture “abhorrent” in a legal opinion in December 2004, the Bush administration appeared to have abandoned its assertion of nearly unlimited presidential authority to order brutal interrogations.

But soon after Alberto R. Gonzales’s arrival as attorney general in February 2005, the Justice Department issued another opinion, this one in secret. It was a very different document, according to officials briefed on it, an expansive endorsement of the harshest interrogation techniques ever used by the Central Intelligence Agency.

The new opinion, the officials said, for the first time provided explicit authorization to barrage terror suspects with a combination of painful physical and psychological tactics, including head-slapping, simulated drowning and frigid temperatures.

Mr. Gonzales approved the legal memorandum on “combined effects” over the objections of James B. Comey, the deputy attorney general, who was leaving his job after bruising clashes with the White House. Disagreeing with what he viewed as the opinion’s overreaching legal reasoning, Mr. Comey told colleagues at the department that they would all be “ashamed” when the world eventually learned of it.

Later that year, as Congress moved toward outlawing “cruel, inhuman and degrading” treatment, the Justice Department issued another secret opinion, one most lawmakers did not know existed, current and former officials said. The Justice Department document declared that none of the C.I.A. interrogation methods violated that standard.

The classified opinions, never previously disclosed, are a hidden legacy of President Bush’s second term and Mr. Gonzales’s tenure at the Justice Department, where he moved quickly to align it with the White House after a 2004 rebellion by staff lawyers that had thrown policies on surveillance and detention into turmoil.

Congress and the Supreme Court have intervened repeatedly in the last two years to impose limits on interrogations, and the administration has responded as a policy matter by dropping the most extreme techniques. But the 2005 Justice Department opinions remain in effect, and their legal conclusions have been confirmed by several more recent memorandums, officials said. They show how the White House has succeeded in preserving the broadest possible legal latitude for harsh tactics.

A White House spokesman, Tony Fratto, said Wednesday that he would not comment on any legal opinion related to interrogations. Mr. Fratto added, “We have gone to great lengths, including statutory efforts and the recent executive order, to make it clear that the intelligence community and our practices fall within U.S. law” and international agreements.

More than two dozen current and former officials involved in counterterrorism were interviewed over the past three months about the opinions and the deliberations on interrogation policy. Most officials would speak only on the condition of anonymity because of the secrecy of the documents and the C.I.A. detention operations they govern.

When he stepped down as attorney general in September after widespread criticism of the firing of federal prosecutors and withering attacks on his credibility, Mr. Gonzales talked proudly in a farewell speech of how his department was “a place of inspiration” that had balanced the necessary flexibility to conduct the war on terrorism with the need to uphold the law.

Associates at the Justice Department said Mr. Gonzales seldom resisted pressure from Vice President Dick Cheney and David S. Addington, Mr. Cheney’s counsel, to endorse policies that they saw as effective in safeguarding Americans, even though the practices brought the condemnation of other governments, human rights groups and Democrats in Congress. Critics say Mr. Gonzales turned his agency into an arm of the Bush White House, undermining the department’s independence.

The interrogation opinions were signed by Steven G. Bradbury, who since 2005 has headed the elite Office of Legal Counsel at the Justice Department. He has become a frequent public defender of the National Security Agency’s domestic surveillance program and detention policies at Congressional hearings and press briefings, a role that some legal scholars say is at odds with the office’s tradition of avoiding political advocacy.

Mr. Bradbury defended the work of his office as the government’s most authoritative interpreter of the law. “In my experience, the White House has not told me how an opinion should come out,” he said in an interview. “The White House has accepted and respected our opinions, even when they didn’t like the advice being given.”

The debate over how terrorism suspects should be held and questioned began shortly after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, when the Bush administration adopted secret detention and coercive interrogation, both practices the United States had previously denounced when used by other countries. It adopted the new measures without public debate or Congressional vote, choosing to rely instead on the confidential legal advice of a handful of appointees.

The policies set off bruising internal battles, pitting administration moderates against hard-liners, military lawyers against Pentagon chiefs and, most surprising, a handful of conservative lawyers at the Justice Department against the White House in the stunning mutiny of 2004. But under Mr. Gonzales and Mr. Bradbury, the Justice Department was wrenched back into line with the White House.

After the Supreme Court ruled in 2006 that the Geneva Conventions applied to prisoners who belonged to Al Qaeda, President Bush for the first time acknowledged the C.I.A.’s secret jails and ordered their inmates moved to Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. The C.I.A. halted its use of waterboarding, or pouring water over a bound prisoner’s cloth-covered face to induce fear of suffocation.

But in July, after a monthlong debate inside the administration, President Bush signed a new executive order authorizing the use of what the administration calls “enhanced” interrogation techniques — the details remain secret — and officials say the C.I.A. again is holding prisoners in “black sites” overseas. The executive order was reviewed and approved by Mr. Bradbury and the Office of Legal Counsel.

Douglas W. Kmiec, who headed that office under President Ronald Reagan and the first President George Bush and wrote a book about it, said he believed the intense pressures of the campaign against terrorism have warped the office’s proper role.

“The office was designed to insulate against any need to be an advocate,” said Mr. Kmiec, now a conservative scholar at Pepperdine University law school. But at times in recent years, Mr. Kmiec said, the office, headed by William H. Rehnquist and Antonin Scalia before they served on the Supreme Court, “lost its ability to say no.”

“The approach changed dramatically with opinions on the war on terror,” Mr. Kmiec said. “The office became an advocate for the president’s policies.”

From the secret sites in Afghanistan, Thailand and Eastern Europe where C.I.A. teams held Qaeda terrorists, questions for the lawyers at C.I.A. headquarters arrived daily. Nervous interrogators wanted to know: Are we breaking the laws against torture?

The Bush administration had entered uncharted legal territory beginning in 2002, holding prisoners outside the scrutiny of the International Red Cross and subjecting them to harrowing pressure tactics. They included slaps to the head; hours held naked in a frigid cell; days and nights without sleep while battered by thundering rock music; long periods manacled in stress positions; or the ultimate, waterboarding.

Never in history had the United States authorized such tactics. While President Bush and C.I.A. officials would later insist that the harsh measures produced crucial intelligence, many veteran interrogators, psychologists and other experts say that less coercive methods are equally or more effective.

With virtually no experience in interrogations, the C.I.A. had constructed its program in a few harried months by consulting Egyptian and Saudi intelligence officials and copying Soviet interrogation methods long used in training American servicemen to withstand capture. The agency officers questioning prisoners constantly sought advice from lawyers thousands of miles away.

“We were getting asked about combinations — ‘Can we do this and this at the same time?’” recalled Paul C. Kelbaugh, a veteran intelligence lawyer who was deputy legal counsel at the C.I.A.’s Counterterrorist Center from 2001 to 2003.

Interrogators were worried that even approved techniques had such a painful, multiplying effect when combined that they might cross the legal line, Mr. Kelbaugh said. He recalled agency officers asking: “These approved techniques, say, withholding food, and 50-degree temperature — can they be combined?” Or “Do I have to do the less extreme before the more extreme?”

The questions came more frequently, Mr. Kelbaugh said, as word spread about a C.I.A. inspector general inquiry unrelated to the war on terrorism. Some veteran C.I.A. officers came under scrutiny because they were advisers to Peruvian officers who in early 2001 shot down a missionary flight they had mistaken for a drug-running aircraft. The Americans were not charged with crimes, but they endured three years of investigation, saw their careers derailed and ran up big legal bills.

That experience shook the Qaeda interrogation team, Mr. Kelbaugh said. “You think you’re making a difference and maybe saving 3,000 American lives from the next attack. And someone tells you, ‘Well, that guidance was a little vague, and the inspector general wants to talk to you,’” he recalled. “We couldn’t tell them, ‘Do the best you can,’ because the people who did the best they could in Peru were looking at a grand jury.”

Mr. Kelbaugh said the questions were sometimes close calls that required consultation with the Justice Department. But in August 2002, the department provided a sweeping legal justification for even the harshest tactics.

That opinion, which would become infamous as “the torture memo” after it was leaked, was written largely by John Yoo, a young Berkeley law professor serving in the Office of Legal Counsel. His broad views of presidential power were shared by Mr. Addington, the vice president’s adviser. Their close alliance provoked John Ashcroft, then the attorney general, to refer privately to Mr. Yoo as Dr. Yes for his seeming eagerness to give the White House whatever legal justifications it desired, a Justice Department official recalled.

Mr. Yoo’s memorandum said no interrogation practices were illegal unless they produced pain equivalent to organ failure or “even death.” A second memo produced at the same time spelled out the approved practices and how often or how long they could be used.

Despite that guidance, in March 2003, when the C.I.A. caught Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the chief planner of the Sept. 11 attacks, interrogators were again haunted by uncertainty. Former intelligence officials, for the first time, disclosed that a variety of tough interrogation tactics were used about 100 times over two weeks on Mr. Mohammed. Agency officials then ordered a halt, fearing the combined assault might have amounted to illegal torture. A C.I.A. spokesman, George Little, declined to discuss the handling of Mr. Mohammed. Mr. Little said the program “has been conducted lawfully, with great care and close review” and “has helped our country disrupt terrorist plots and save innocent lives.”

“The agency has always sought a clear legal framework, conducting the program in strict accord with U.S. law, and protecting the officers who go face-to-face with ruthless terrorists,” Mr. Little added.

Some intelligence officers say that many of Mr. Mohammed’s statements proved exaggerated or false. One problem, a former senior agency official said, was that the C.I.A.’s initial interrogators were not experts on Mr. Mohammed’s background or Al Qaeda, and it took about a month to get such an expert to the secret prison. The former official said many C.I.A. professionals now believe patient, repeated questioning by well-informed experts is more effective than harsh physical pressure.

Other intelligence officers, including Mr. Kelbaugh, insist that the harsh treatment produced invaluable insights into Al Qaeda’s structure and plans.

“We leaned in pretty hard on K.S.M.,” Mr. Kelbaugh said, referring to Mr. Mohammed. “We were getting good information, and then they were told: ‘Slow it down. It may not be correct. Wait for some legal clarification.’”

The doubts at the C.I.A. proved prophetic. In late 2003, after Mr. Yoo left the Justice Department, the new head of the Office of Legal Counsel, Jack Goldsmith, began reviewing his work, which he found deeply flawed. Mr. Goldsmith infuriated White House officials, first by rejecting part of the National Security Agency’s surveillance program, prompting the threat of mass resignations by top Justice Department officials, including Mr. Ashcroft and Mr. Comey, and a showdown at the attorney general’s hospital bedside.

Then, in June 2004, Mr. Goldsmith formally withdrew the August 2002 Yoo memorandum on interrogation, which he found overreaching and poorly reasoned. Mr. Goldsmith left the Justice Department soon afterward. He first spoke at length about his dissenting views to The New York Times last month, and testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee on Tuesday.

Six months later, the Justice Department quietly posted on its Web site a new legal opinion that appeared to end any flirtation with torture, starting with its clarionlike opening: “Torture is abhorrent both to American law and values and to international norms.”

A single footnote — added to reassure the C.I.A. — suggested that the Justice Department was not declaring the agency’s previous actions illegal. But the opinion was unmistakably a retreat. Some White House officials had opposed publicizing the document, but acquiesced to Justice Department officials who argued that doing so would help clear the way for Mr. Gonzales’s confirmation as attorney general.

If President Bush wanted to make sure the Justice Department did not rebel again, Mr. Gonzales was the ideal choice. As White House counsel, he had been a fierce protector of the president’s prerogatives. Deeply loyal to Mr. Bush for championing his career from their days in Texas, Mr. Gonzales would sometimes tell colleagues that he had just one regret about becoming attorney general: He did not see nearly as much of the president as he had in his previous post.

Among his first tasks at the Justice Department was to find a trusted chief for the Office of Legal Counsel. First he informed Daniel Levin, the acting head who had backed Mr. Goldsmith’s dissents and signed the new opinion renouncing torture, that he would not get the job. He encouraged Mr. Levin to take a position at the National Security Council, in effect sidelining him.

Mr. Bradbury soon emerged as the presumed favorite. But White House officials, still smarting from Mr. Goldsmith’s rebuffs, chose to delay his nomination. Harriet E. Miers, the new White House counsel, “decided to watch Bradbury for a month or two. He was sort of on trial,” one Justice Department official recalled.

Mr. Bradbury’s biography had a Horatio Alger element that appealed to a succession of bosses, including Justice Clarence Thomas of the Supreme Court and Mr. Gonzales, the son of poor immigrants. Mr. Bradbury’s father had died when he was an infant, and his mother took in laundry to support her children. The first in his family to go to college, he attended Stanford and the University of Michigan Law School. He joined the law firm of Kirkland & Ellis, where he came under the tutelage of Kenneth W. Starr, the Whitewater independent prosecutor.

Mr. Bradbury belonged to the same circle as his predecessors: young, conservative lawyers with sterling credentials, often with clerkships for prominent conservative judges and ties to the Federalist Society, a powerhouse of the legal right. Mr. Yoo, in fact, had proposed his old friend Mr. Goldsmith for the Office of Legal Counsel job; Mr. Goldsmith had hired Mr. Bradbury as his top deputy.

“We all grew up together,” said Viet D. Dinh, an assistant attorney general from 2001 to 2003 and very much a member of the club. “You start with a small universe of Supreme Court clerks, and you narrow it down from there.”

But what might have been subtle differences in quieter times now cleaved them into warring camps.

Justice Department colleagues say Mr. Gonzales was soon meeting frequently with Mr. Bradbury on national security issues, a White House priority. Admirers describe Mr. Bradbury as low-key but highly skilled, a conciliator who brought from 10 years of corporate practice a more pragmatic approach to the job than Mr. Yoo and Mr. Goldsmith, both from the academic world.

“As a practicing lawyer, you know how to address real problems,” said Noel J. Francisco, who worked at the Justice Department from 2003 to 2005. “At O.L.C., you’re not writing law review articles and you’re not theorizing. You’re giving a client practical advice on a real problem.”

As he had at the White House, Mr. Gonzales usually said little in meetings with other officials, often deferring to the hard-driving Mr. Addington. Mr. Bradbury also often appeared in accord with the vice president’s lawyer.

Mr. Bradbury appeared to be “fundamentally sympathetic to what the White House and the C.I.A. wanted to do,” recalled Philip Zelikow, a former top State Department official. At interagency meetings on detention and interrogation, Mr. Addington was at times “vituperative,” said Mr. Zelikow, but Mr. Bradbury, while taking similar positions, was “professional and collegial.”

While waiting to learn whether he would be nominated to head the Office of Legal Counsel, Mr. Bradbury was in an awkward position, knowing that a decision contrary to White House wishes could kill his chances.

Charles J. Cooper, who headed the Office of Legal Counsel under President Reagan, said he was “very troubled” at the notion of a probationary period.

“If the purpose of the delay was a tryout, I think they should have avoided it,” Mr. Cooper said. “You’re implying that the acting official is molding his or her legal analysis to win the job.”

Mr. Bradbury said he made no such concessions. “No one ever suggested to me that my nomination depended on how I ruled on any opinion,” he said. “Every opinion I’ve signed at the Office of Legal Counsel represents my best judgment of what the law requires.”

Scott Horton, an attorney affiliated with Human Rights First who has closely followed the interrogation debate, said any official offering legal advice on the campaign against terror was on treacherous ground.

“For government lawyers, the national security issues they were deciding were like working with nuclear waste — extremely hazardous to their health,” Mr. Horton said.

“If you give the administration what it wants, you’ll lose credibility in the academic community,” he said. “But if you hold back, you’ll be vilified by conservatives and the administration.”

In any case, the White House grew comfortable with Mr. Bradbury’s approach. He helped block the appointment of a liberal Ivy League law professor to a career post in the Office of Legal Counsel. And he signed the opinion approving combined interrogation techniques.

Mr. Comey strongly objected and told associates that he advised Mr. Gonzales not to endorse the opinion. But the attorney general made clear that the White House was adamant about it, and that he would do nothing to resist.

Under Mr. Ashcroft, Mr. Comey’s opposition might have killed the opinion. An imposing former prosecutor and self-described conservative who stands 6-foot-8, he was the rare administration official who was willing to confront Mr. Addington. At one testy 2004 White House meeting, when Mr. Comey stated that “no lawyer” would endorse Mr. Yoo’s justification for the N.S.A. program, Mr. Addington demurred, saying he was a lawyer and found it convincing. Mr. Comey shot back: “No good lawyer,” according to someone present.

But under Mr. Gonzales, and after the departure of Mr. Goldsmith and other allies, the deputy attorney general found himself isolated. His troublemaking on N.S.A. and on interrogation, and in appointing his friend Patrick J. Fitzgerald as special prosecutor in the C.I.A. leak case, which would lead to the perjury conviction of I. Lewis Libby, Mr. Cheney’s chief of staff, had irreparably offended the White House.

“On national security matters generally, there was a sense that Comey was a wimp and that Comey was disloyal,” said one Justice Department official who heard the White House talk, expressed with particular force by Mr. Addington.

Mr. Comey provided some hints of his thinking about interrogation and related issues in a speech that spring. Speaking at the N.S.A.’s Fort Meade campus on Law Day — a noteworthy setting for the man who had helped lead the dissent a year earlier that forced some changes in the N.S.A. program — Mr. Comey spoke of the “agonizing collisions” of the law and the desire to protect Americans.

“We are likely to hear the words: ‘If we don’t do this, people will die,’” Mr. Comey said. But he argued that government lawyers must uphold the principles of their great institutions.

“It takes far more than a sharp legal mind to say ‘no’ when it matters most,” he said. “It takes moral character. It takes an understanding that in the long run, intelligence under law is the only sustainable intelligence in this country.”

Mr. Gonzales’s aides were happy to see Mr. Comey depart in the summer of 2005. That June, President Bush nominated Mr. Bradbury to head the Office of Legal Counsel, which some colleagues viewed as a sign that he had passed a loyalty test.

Soon Mr. Bradbury applied his practical approach to a new challenge to the C.I.A.’s methods.

The administration had always asserted that the C.I.A.’s pressure tactics did not amount to torture, which is banned by federal law and international treaty. But officials had privately decided the agency did not have to comply with another provision in the Convention Against Torture — the prohibition on “cruel, inhuman, or degrading” treatment.

Now that loophole was about to be closed. First Senator Richard J. Durbin, Democrat of Illinois, and then Senator John McCain, the Arizona Republican who had been tortured as a prisoner in North Vietnam, proposed legislation to ban such treatment.

At the administration’s request, Mr. Bradbury assessed whether the proposed legislation would outlaw any C.I.A. methods, a legal question that had never before been answered by the Justice Department.

At least a few administration officials argued that no reasonable interpretation of “cruel, inhuman or degrading” would permit the most extreme C.I.A. methods, like waterboarding. Mr. Bradbury was placed in a tough spot, said Mr. Zelikow, the State Department counselor, who was working at the time to rein in interrogation policy.

“If Justice says some practices are in violation of the C.I.D. standard,” Mr. Zelikow said, referring to cruel, inhuman or degrading, “then they are now saying that officials broke current law.”

In the end, Mr. Bradbury’s opinion delivered what the White House wanted: a statement that the standard imposed by Mr. McCain’s Detainee Treatment Act would not force any change in the C.I.A.’s practices, according to officials familiar with the memo.

Relying on a Supreme Court finding that only conduct that “shocks the conscience” was unconstitutional, the opinion found that in some circumstances not even waterboarding was necessarily cruel, inhuman or degrading, if, for example, a suspect was believed to possess crucial intelligence about a planned terrorist attack, the officials familiar with the legal finding said.

In a frequent practice, Mr. Bush attached a statement to the new law when he signed it, declaring his authority to set aside the restrictions if they interfered with his constitutional powers. At the same time, though, the administration responded to pressure from Mr. McCain and other lawmakers by reviewing interrogation policy and giving up several C.I.A. techniques.

Since late 2005, Mr. Bradbury has become a linchpin of the administration’s defense of counterterrorism programs, helping to negotiate the Military Commissions Act last year and frequently testifying about the N.S.A. surveillance program. Once he answered questions about administration detention policies for an “Ask the White House” feature on a Web site.

Mr. Kmiec, the former Office of Legal Counsel head now at Pepperdine, called Mr. Bradbury’s public activities a departure for an office that traditionally has shunned any advocacy role.

A senior administration official called Mr. Bradbury’s active role in shaping legislation and speaking to Congress and the press “entirely appropriate” and consistent with past practice. The official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said Mr. Bradbury “has played a critical role in achieving greater transparency” on the legal basis for detention and surveillance programs.

Though President Bush repeatedly nominated Mr. Bradbury as the Office of Legal Counsel’s assistant attorney general, Democratic senators have blocked the nomination. Senator Durbin said the Justice Department would not turn over copies of his opinions or other evidence of Mr. Bradbury’s role in interrogation policy.

“There are fundamental questions about whether Mr. Bradbury approved interrogation methods that are clearly unacceptable,” Mr. Durbin said.

John D. Hutson, who served as the Navy’s top lawyer from 1997 to 2000, said he believed that the existence of legal opinions justifying abusive treatment is pernicious, potentially blurring the rules for Americans handling prisoners.

“I know from the military that if you tell someone they can do a little of this for the country’s good, some people will do a lot of it for the country’s better,” Mr. Hutson said. Like other military lawyers, he also fears that official American acceptance of such treatment could endanger Americans in the future.

“The problem is, once you’ve got a legal opinion that says such a technique is O.K., what happens when one of our people is captured and they do it to him? How do we protest then?” he asked.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/04/wa...rogate.html?hp





Cellphones 'Raise Tumour Risk'

Using a cellphone for more than a decade can double the risk of some types of brain tumours, Swedish researchers said on Tuesday.

Dr Lennart Hardell and scientists at the University Hospital in Orebro, Sweden said their analysis of previous studies shows "a consistent pattern of increased risk for acoustic neuroma and glioma".

Acoustic neuromas are benign growths on the nerve linking the ear to the brain, while gliomas are malignant, difficult-to-treat tumours of the brain and nervous system.

The researchers also found that the greatest risk of developing a tumour is on the side of the head where the cellphone was held.

Hardell and his team identified 18 studies of brain tumour risk among long-term cellphone users, 11 of which provided data for 10 years or longer.

When the findings were analysed collectively, the researchers found people who had used cellphones for at least a decade had a 2.4-fold greater risk of acoustic neuromas and were twice as likely to develop gliomas.

Scientists fear cellphones could boost brain tumour risk by exposing the brain to electromagnetic energy. But early studies did not have a long enough follow-up time to fully account for long-term risk, Hardell and his team reported in journal Occupational Environmental Medicine.

Enough time has now passed since cellphones were introduced to analyse risks of cellphone use for 10 years or longer, which they believe is a "reasonable minimum period" to estimate risk.

One study in the analysis found no increased tumour risk with cellphone use, but it did show that cellphone users who developed brain tumours had larger tumours than non-cellphone users.

They found the greatest risk was for tumours located in the area of the brain with the most exposure and the study periods allowed enough time for tumours to develop.

But the researchers added that longer follow-up is needed, because an increased risk for other types of brain tumours cannot be ruled out.
http://www.news24.com/News24/Technol...194709,00.html





PFIR Proposes Automated Network Neutrality Enforcement System
Ryan Paul

People for Internet Responsibility (PFIR) co-founder Lauren Weinstein has issued a proposal for a global Internet traffic analysis system capable of automatically detecting prejudicial bandwidth manipulation. Weinstein believes that implementation of his proposal could put an end to the impasse that has stalled the network neutrality debate.

Network neutrality is a model of broadband network operation that does not distinguish between different kinds of traffic for prioritization purposes. Applied to the Internet, network neutrality generally implies that all forms of traffic—regardless of the nature, source, or recipient—are given equal treatment and transmitted without selective degradation. The aim is to prevent the construction of a so-called tiered Internet, which critics argue would lead to widespread quality of service (QoS) discrimination that would stifle freedom of expression on the Internet and allow the broadband duopoly to set up exploitative digital toll booths to cash in on content delivery. The Week in Review is edited and published by Jack Spratts. Supporters of a tiered Internet argue that network neutrality would impede innovation and degrade network operator property rights. The debate has become increasingly hostile, and little headway has been made.
Getting the facts, and acting on them

A recent proposal issued by PFIR aims to offer a more constructive way to move the net neutrality debate forward. The proposal suggests establishing a distributed global Internet traffic monitoring system that would facilitate rapid detection of abusive network manipulation. At a minimum, this system could be used to provide insight and statistical data so that legislators can make informed decisions about what regulatory solutions are actually needed, if any.

PFIR says the system could also be used for a real-time network neutrality enforcement framework. Legislators could craft a set of uniform network handling standards and an automated system could be devised to leverage the monitoring statistics and impose corrective sanctions when deviations are detected. The standards could be adjusted as needed in order to limit any potential negative impact on innovation.

"This proposal, if implemented from both the technological measurements standpoint and on a legislative basis to whatever degree may be deemed appropriate, would offer what amounts to a 'status quo' operating environment to ISPs so long as they continued to compete in an open, fair, and nondiscriminatory manner, but would enable the promise of quick and decisive corrective actions in the face of any specific abuses as detected by, and defined in conjunction with, the proposed global Internet measurement infrastructure," says the proposal. "Triggers and remedies under the approach proposed here would be as specific and quantitatively precise as possible, and only activated in the face of defined violation conditions based on the hard data from the measurement environment. In the absence of any defined abuse conditions being triggered, ISPs and related operations would proceed on a free market basis without new constraints."

The concept described in the proposal is intriguing on several different levels, but the costs and challenges of creating such a massive monitoring system should be questioned. In some respects, a fully automated system is preferable to other kinds of regulatory proposals because it would reduce the potential for inconsistent enforcement. Most conventional Net Neutrality regulatory solutions that have been proposed thus far would empower government agencies like the FCC, which aren't necessarily more reliable or thorough than the Internet service providers themselves. An automated solution—assuming that it could be devised in a manner that prevents outright manipulation—would be far more transparent and less susceptible to the frailties of bureaucracy.

On the other hand, there are clear cost and privacy concerns that will afflict any kind of Internet traffic monitoring system of this scale. In order to make this proposal viable, PFIR will have to address such concerns and provide more specific implementation details.
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post...nt-system.html





Poll Finds Canadians Strongly Support Net Neutrality Legislation
Michael Geist

A new poll by Leger Marketing (commissioned by eBay) finds that Canadians are generally unware of net neutrality issues, yet strongly support the principles that provide the foundation for net neutrality legislation. In particular, the survey found that:
• three in five Canadians concur that ISPs should be required to treat all content, sites and platforms equally.
• two-thirds of Canadians disagree with the proposal that ISPs should be allowed to impose additional fees for access to specific content on the web.
• 76% of Canadians (including 70% of Conservative supporters, 79% Liberal and 86% NDP) believe the federal government should pass a law to confirm the right of Internet consumers to access publicly available Internet applications and content of their choice.
• 77% of Canadians agree that net neutrality policies protect the rights of Internet consumers.

While critics will undoubtedly note that the majority of Canadians were unaware of net neutrality, that has not stopped other groups - including copyright lobby groups and the telcos - from commissioning similar surveys and reporting them as fact. Indeed, the survey's results point again to the lack of transparency within the Canadian marketplace as most consumers can hardly be faulted for being unaware of instances of traffic shaping since ISPs do not disclose such practices. Canadian politicians have long ignored the net neutrality issue on the basis that it does not resonate with the public. The Leger survey suggests that this is simply not the case and that legislative action would find broad public support.
http://www.michaelgeist.ca/content/view/2272/125/





AT&T Vows to Use Terms of Service for Good, Not Censorship
Ken Fisher

Yesterday we reported on AT&T's controversial Terms of Service, which in broad legal language gives AT&T the right to terminate a customer's service for activity which AT&T deems "damaging" to its reputation. As we noted yesterday, the legal language is particularly vague and appears to give AT&T broad discretion in deciding what constitutes "damage."

To recap, in section 5 of its legal ToS, AT&T stipulates the following:

AT&T may immediately terminate or suspend all or a portion of your Service, any Member ID, electronic mail address, IP address, Universal Resource Locator or domain name used by you, without notice, for conduct that AT&T believes (a) violates the Acceptable Use Policy; (b) constitutes a violation of any law, regulation or tariff (including, without limitation, copyright and intellectual property laws) or a violation of these TOS, or any applicable policies or guidelines, or (c) tends to damage the name or reputation of AT&T, or its parents, affiliates and subsidiaries.

Translation: "conduct" that AT&T "believes" "tends to damage" its name, or the name of its partners, can get you booted off the service. Note the use of "tends to damage": the language of the contract does not require any proof of any actual damage.

Interpretation of this section of the ToS has been practically unanimous online: it gives AT&T the power to punish customers that dare criticize the company. However, an AT&T spokesperson tells Ars Technica that the company has no interest in engaging in censorship but stopped short of saying that AT&T could not in fact exercise its ability to do so.

"AT&T respects its subscribers' rights to voice their opinions and concerns over any matter they wish. However, we retain the right to disassociate ourselves from web sites and messages explicitly advocating violence, or any message that poses a threat to children (e.g. child pornography or exploitation)," the spokesperson told Ars Technica. "We do not terminate customer service solely because a customer speaks negatively about AT&T."

The language of the contract reflects synchronization between the AT&T Yahoo! High Speed Internet Terms of Service with the Terms of Service for AT&T's Worldnet and BellSouth customers. AT&T says that the language is not new, nor is such language unique to AT&T's contracts. It does appear to be here to stay.

Some readers who learned of the updated Terms of Service were upset by them, but not surprised. A reader drew connections to AT&T's involvement in the recent domestic spying scandal. "Given the fact that AT&T doesn't seem to have been hurt much with the spying case, I really don't think they will be hurt much if they cut off people that criticize them," wrote one reader.

Customers will have to take AT&T's word on faith, for the language of the contract is far broader than the spirit of its intent, as described by the AT&T spokesperson. However, as I noted yesterday, AT&T is clearly aware that using the ToS for censorship could cause considerable uproar. It's a cliché, but only time will tell if AT&T sticks to its word.
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post...ensorship.html





‘Howl’ in an Era That Fears Indecency
Patricia Cohen

Those who happened to click on Pacifica.org yesterday could hear Allen Ginsberg intoning, “I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked,” along with the rest of his classic poem “Howl.”

The occasion was the 50th anniversary of a court ruling that found the poem had “redeeming social importance” and was thus not obscene.

Yet Ginsberg, who died in 1997, was heard online and not on the New York radio station WBAI-FM, affiliated with the Pacifica network, because the station, according to an article on Wednesday, feared that by broadcasting “Howl” it could run afoul of the Federal Communications Commission’s interpretation of indecency and incur bankrupting fines.

Janet Coleman, WBAI’s arts director, said that when the idea of airing the poem to test the law was proposed, “I said, ‘Yes, let’s try it.’” The radio station has a history of championing the First Amendment, having broadcast the comedian George Carlin’s “seven dirty words” routine that resulted in a 1978 Supreme Court ruling on indecency. But after several harsh F.C.C. rulings in 2004 — against CBS for a glimpse of Janet Jackson’s breast during the Super Bowl halftime show and against Fox for curse words used during the Billboard Music Awards — “our lawyer felt it was too risky,” Ms. Coleman said. The commission can impose “draconian fines,” she said, that could put WBAI out of business.

In 2005 Congress raised limits on fines for obscenity, enabling the F.C.C. to charge up to $325,000 for every violation of its standards. The commission marks the hours between 6 a.m. and 10 p.m. as a time when the airwaves should be free of offensive language.

“It seems like déjà vu all over again,” said Al Bendichs, one of the lawyers who argued the case in 1957.

WBAI, which is part of the Pacifica network, decided to run “Howl Against Censorship” yesterday on the Pacifica Web site because the Internet, satellite programming and cable TV are not regulated by the F.C.C. The show included a 24-minute recording from 1959 of Ginsberg reading his poem; an interview with Lawrence Ferlinghetti, the original publisher of “Howl” and the defendant in the 1957 case; and a panel on the First Amendment. WBAI's decision was reported yesterday in the San Francisco Chronicle.

“Since 2004 there’s really been a sea change,” said Ronald Collins, a First Amendment lawyer and an author, referring to changes since the Janet Jackson incident. “Howl” has been repeatedly broadcast, but now “it’s a completely different era,” he said. “The F.C.C. made it clear it has a zero-tolerance policy for offensive language and images.”

Mr. Collins was among a group of people, including Mr. Ferlinghetti and Mr. Bendichs, who approached WBAI about airing the poem. They could have tried to get a preliminary judgment from the F.C.C., but Mr. Collins said that the commission doesn’t respond to such requests.

When asked about the broadcasting of the poem, Mary Diamond, a spokeswoman for the commission, referred to the agency’s fact sheet: “The F.C.C. is barred by law from trying to prevent the broadcast of any point of view.” It goes on to say, “However, the Commission does have enforcement responsibilities in certain limited instances.”

In June the Second Circuit Court of Appeals in New York ruled against the F.C.C. in the Fox case, but the commission has indicated that it will appeal to the Supreme Court. The Third Circuit Court of Appeals has not ruled in the CBS case. Mr. Collins said that the First Amendment issues raised by these cases would ultimately be decided by the Supreme Court.

Mr. Ferlinghetti, 88, who owns the landmark City Lights bookstore in San Francisco, said that when “Howl” was labeled obscene, first by United States Customs agents and then by the San Francisco police, it “wasn’t really the four-letter words.” He added, “It was that it was a direct attack on American society and the American way of life.”

Mr. Ferlinghetti quoted the unpublished 1957 opinion by San Francisco Municipal Judge Clayton W. Horn, whom he noted was “a God-fearing Sunday school teacher”: “Would there be any freedom of press or speech if one must reduce his vocabulary to vapid innocuous euphemism?” Judge Horn wrote. “An author should be real in treating his subject and be allowed to express his thoughts and ideas in his own words.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/04/books/04howl.html





The Verizon Warning

We have long been concerned about the potential threat to free speech and a free press as communications migrate from old-fashioned telephone lines, TV broadcasts and printing presses to digital networks controlled by unregulated private companies. The threat stopped being theoretical recently when Verizon Wireless censored political speech on one of its mobile services.

Verizon did the right thing after the problem was disclosed: it promptly dropped a misbegotten policy and said its new policy is to open its network to any legal communication. But alarm bells should be ringing on Capitol Hill, where industry lobbying, legislative goldbricking and Republican aversion to regulations have bottled up much-needed laws on digital communications.

Late last month, Verizon Wireless denied an application from Naral Pro-Choice America, a reproductive rights group, for a “short code,” a few numbers that a mobile phone user can use to subscribe to a particular source of text messages. Verizon said its policy was to refuse “issue oriented” text-messaging programs from any group that “seeks to promote an agenda or distribute content that, in its discretion, may be seen as controversial or unsavory to any of our users.” The policy also said political candidates may be granted short codes if the content is, “in VZW’s sole discretion, not issue-oriented or controversial in nature.”

Leave aside for the moment the sorry spectacle of a major American company aiming to make campaigns even more substance-free than they already are. The Verizon policy was textbook censorship. Any government that tried it would be rightly labeled authoritarian. The First Amendment prohibits the United States government from anything approaching that sort of restriction.

If Verizon had attempted it on normal phone lines, it would have been violating common carrier laws that bar interference with voice transmissions. Unfortunately, those laws do not apply to text messaging.

Given this chilling experience, the Federal Communications Commission should quickly issue regulations that also bar interference with text messaging. Unfortunately, the F.C.C. is in the thrall of the carriers, and the Bush administration has an unblemished record of siding with corporations over the rights and safety of American citizens. That means Congress will have to take the lead, as it must on other issues affecting the mushrooming world of digital communications.

Verizon admitted its mistake and pledged not to repeat it, but that’s not enough. As admirable as Verizon’s retreat was, the company reserved the right to change the rules at any time. Verizon still says “some well-intentioned employee” got too zealous. If its top executives were not engaged on this issue, they should have been.

Our democracy is built on basic freedoms not being left to individuals, or individual companies. And there is special cause for worry in our business. American newspapers can resist government intimidation because the Constitution is on our side, but also because we control the presses. That is the real meaning behind “freedom of the press,” and authoritarian societies know it. In the 1980s in the Soviet Union, you had to have a license from the Communist Party to own a Xerox machine; the Soviets understood that it was a printing press.

If newspapers were delivered over mobile phones, a company could simply cut them off because it did not like a particular article. This is not the stuff of a futurist essay. Freedom of speech must be guaranteed, right now, in a digital world just as it has been protected in a world of paper and ink.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/03/opinion/03wed1.html





Bush Admin: RIAA Win Shows Copyright Law is 'Effective'
Declan McCullagh

The Bush administration said on Friday that the recording industry's $222,000 courtroom victory shows that the legal system is working against peer-to-peer pirates.

"Cases such as this remind us strong enforcement is a significant part of the effort to eliminate piracy, and that we have an effective legal system in the U.S. that enables rights holders to protect their intellectual property," said Chris Israel, the U.S. Coordinator for International Intellectual Property Enforcement, to CNET News.com.


Chris Israel, U.S. Coordinator for International Intellectual Property Enforcement, in a file photograph

President Bush named Israel, formerly a senior Commerce Department official, to the key copyright post in July 2005. He has an MBA from George Washington University and, before joining the Bush administration, worked for Time Warner's public policy arm.

Israel's comments come a day after the Recording Industry Association of America won a landmark jury verdict in a Minnesota federal court against a woman accused of sharing copyrighted songs on the Kazaa file-trading network.

The Bush administration has adopted a generally expansive view of copyright law, including writing trade deals that include anti-circumvention restrictions. In 2005, the president signed into law the Family Entertainment and Copyright Act, which slaps some file-sharers with additional penalties.

Israel also said: "Piracy impacts many of our most innovative industries, costs American jobs and is a huge threat to our economic competitiveness."
http://www.news.com/8301-13578_3-9792252-38.html





Why the RIAA Should Have Won (Though the Fine was Too High)
Declan McCullagh

The Recording Industry Association of America probably should have won its lawsuit against a Minnesota woman accused of sharing songs through the Kazaa file-sharing network.

There was enough evidence linking Jammie Thomas' computer to an IP address that was offering a slew of copyrighted songs to other Kazaa users. A jury in Minnesota, hardly the record labels' home turf, unanimously thought so too.

The problem isn't the verdict. It's the penalty.

After decades of special-interest lobbying by large holders of intellectual property rights, U.S. copyright law has spiraled out of control. It's been transformed from limited protections of authors' rights for 14 years to a juggernaut with criminal enforcement, sky-high penalties, and up to 120 years of legal protection.

Copyright no longer abides by the fundamental principle of law, which is that the damages awarded should be related to any harm committed. No wonder Jammie Thomas got slapped with a $222,000 bill. (And I wouldn't be surprised to see attorney's fees add another $100,000 on top of it.)

"It doesn't strike a regular person that by passing a CD around the neighborhood, they should have their house taken away," says Lew Rockwell, president of the free-market Mises Institute in Auburn, Alabama. "And by electronic means it shouldn't be any different."

Copyright law is, as Berkeley law professor Pam Samuelson points out, way too verbose; it's now swollen to an unbelievable 200 pages long. It's complex, incomprehensible, designed to favor large copyright holders over defendants, and thoroughly out of touch with reality.

This should be no surprise. The technical term for this is "rent-seeking," meaning special-interest coalitions who pressure the government to transfer wealth to them. The general public (reasonably) can't keep track of the minutiae of proposals to expand copyright law, but RIAA lobbyists can devote 100 percent of their time to the job. What happens is that copyright law continues to clamp down on Americans, inexorably, like a ratchet.

Consider what aggressive rent-seeking has achieved for the music and movie industries--and some certain large software companies--in the last decade alone: The Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act. The Digital Millennium Copyright Act. The Family Entertainment and Copyright Act (more P2P penalties). The No Electronic Theft Act (file-swapping criminalized).

So what should Jammie Thomas have been required to pay? She's accused of sharing 24 songs, or two CDs worth. We don't know how many people downloaded those songs, but if 10 people did, that's perhaps $250 in value. If 100 people did, that's $2,500, and so on.

Walter Block, an economics professor at Loyola University, is no fan of copyright law at all. (He'd abolish it.) But his suggested penalties for physical larceny are worth taking into account. "My view is two teeth for a tooth, plus expenses, plus cost of capturing, plus a scaring penalty" that would provide additional deterrence and avoid allowing the wealthy to flout the law, he said on Friday. In other words, let the punishment fit the crime.

Under the judge's interpretation of copyright law, unfortunately, the RIAA wasn't required to prove how many songs were downloaded. Maybe nobody did; maybe thousands of people did. All the RIAA needed to do is prove Thomas made them "available" through Kazaa.

Although we can't make any reasonable estimate, we can nevertheless say it's unlikely that Thomas would be required to pay $222,000 plus attorneys fees if copyright law were reasonable, fair, and just. But it is now none of those, so she is.
http://www.news.com/8301-13578_3-9792175-38.html

















Until next week,

- js.



















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Jack Spratts' Week In Review is published every Friday. Submit letters, articles and press releases in plain text English to jackspratts (at) lycos (dot) com. Submission deadlines are Thursdays @ 1400 UTC. Please include contact info. Questions or comments? Call (617) 939-2340, country code U.S.. The right to publish all remarks is reserved.


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