Peer-To-Peer News - The Week In Review - April 11th, '09

[JackSpratts]

Since 2002


































"Inch by inch, the Government's plans to map and monitor everyone's communications are creeping into place. Today it's retention of data, soon it'll be a giant database to suck it all up. And unless we speak out and stop this, what used to be private – details of your relationships and personal interests – will end up in the ever-widening control of the stalker state." – Phil Booth


"I’m going to milk the gold rush as long as I can." – Ethan Nicholas

























Morpheus Redux

Peer-to-peer pioneers Niklas Zennstrom and Janus Friis, who along with Jaan Tallinn co-created the FastTrack protocol - at one time the largest P2P system in the world - have pooled their personal resources to buy internet phone giant Skype back from eBay, the company they sold it to several years ago for $3.7 billion in cash and considerations. Analysts generally believe the auction house would welcome a sale of the unit.

Complicating matters for eBay however is the proprietary peer-to-peer code Skype depends on for connections. It's licensed to eBay from Joltid, a company Zennstrom and Friis control, and there are indications they're no longer interested in continuing the association. If so it wouldn’t be the first time they ended a relationship. Their self-described supernode technology was also at the heart of file-sharing giant Morpheus and when that license was pulled in 2002 the social forums were shuttered and several hundred thousand swappers found themselves kicked off the platform. The company that owned Morpheus changed protocols but never regained its market share and is now bankrupt. Without this technology it's not clear if Skype, which presently controls nearly one out of 12 international calling minutes, can continue to function. A major IP dispute could scare off other bidders.

Ebay is reportedly looking for at least $1.7 billion for Skype. Zennstrom and Friis plan to bring in additional investors and perhaps get financing from eBay itself.












Enjoy,

Jack












April 11th, 2009







Say bone!

France Rejects Plan to Curb Internet Piracy
Eric Pfanner

In a major blow for President Nicolas Sarkozy’s plan to crack down on Internet piracy, the French National Assembly on Thursday rejected legislation that would have cut off the Internet connections of persistent copyright violators.

The bill was rejected 21-15 in a show of hands, meaning that most of the 577-member legislature decided not to show up — an indication, analysts said, of how unpopular the proposal was among voters in France, where unauthorized file-sharing of music and movies online is widespread.

“It’s a victory for the citizens and the civil liberties over the corporate interests,” said Jeremie Zimmermann, director of La Quadrature du Net, an Internet advocacy group in Paris.

“It’s a huge political blow for Albanel and for Sarkozy,” he added, referring to Culture Minister Christine Albanel.

Under the plan, the music and movie industries would have been empowered to analyze the downloads of individual Internet users to root out instances of piracy, and to report violations to a newly created agency. The agency was to send warning letters to violators; after the third letter, the Internet service provider would have been required to sever service.

The proposal, at least in its broad outlines, is not necessarily dead.

A aide to President Sarkozy, Roger Karoutchi, told reporters that an amended version of the bill would be proposed within weeks.

Still, the vote came as a big surprise because, since the proposal was outlined by Mr. Sarkozy more than a year ago, it had advanced steadily through the legislative process. Last week, lawmakers had voted on individual clauses of the bill in which the measure is contained, approving the so-called three strikes plan.

A committee of lawmakers from the Senate and the National Assembly, had worked out minor differences earlier this week.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/10/te...net/10net.html





Industry Laments Digital Piracy
Michael Cieply

Less than a week after a pirated copy of the unreleased movie “X-Men Origins: Wolverine” popped up on the Internet, federal legislators and entertainment executives presented an extraordinarily bleak picture of the damage digital piracy can inflict, and the grim prospects for limiting it.

At a Monday morning Congressional field hearing here, lawmakers and executives both described a deteriorating situation in which $20 billion annually in copyrighted movies, music and other entertainment are being lost to global piracy networks that are tolerated or encouraged by countries like China, Russia, India and — in a case that drew special attention — Canada.

Representative Howard L. Berman, a Democrat from the Los Angeles area who conducted the hearing as chairman of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs, said he planned to offer legislation that would “begin to elevate the attention” given to foreign piracy, but offered no specifics.

Representative Brad J. Sherman, another Democrat of California, said at one point that countries that failed to stem the theft of United States copyrighted material still had full access to American markets for their own wares. “That will get very controversial,” Mr. Sherman said.

A panel of entertainment executives and others chronicled what appeared to be a largely failing effort to stem the illegal sale of copyrighted material in an increasingly wired world.

Richard Cook, the chairman of Walt Disney Studios, traced an elaborate chain of events under which the studio’s animated hit “Wall-E” was duplicated by a camcorder at a theater in Kiev last July. In less than a month, he said, the single copy was traced to illegal sales in more than a dozen countries.

Zach Horowitz, president and chief operating officer of the Universal Music Group, estimated that only one in three music CDs and one in 20 downloads around the world are sold legitimately.

Mr. Horowitz and others drew particular attention to Baidu, a Chinese search engine that offers links to sites offering pirated material.

“It’s time to bring the hammer down,” said Representative Dana Rohrabacher, Republican of California.

Yet no one on the industry panel offered a proposal when Mr. Rohrabacher asked them to describe a measure that might, for instance, persuade Canada to change a policy under which large shipments of illegal movies and music, according to the legislators and executives, are permitted to pass from that country to the United States.

One of the strongest possible measures was offered by Steven Soderbergh, who testified as a vice president of the Directors Guild of America. He proposed that the entertainment industry be “deputized to solve our own problems,” under a model that is being tried in France.

Pressed later for details of the French plan, Mr. Soderbergh stumbled a bit and said he was not quite sure how it might work.

People who have worked closely on Hollywood copyright issues described a French-like solution as a plan under which those who believe their copyright has been infringed might ask an Internet service provider to send successive warnings to an illegal downloader.

If the warnings fail, the downloader might then be barred from using the provider for a time and be placed on a national registry that would block access to other providers.

To pass laws with similar steps in the United States “is going to be tricky,” Mr. Soderbergh acknowledged during the hearing.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/07/bu.../07piracy.html





'Upload a Song, Lose Your Internet Connection'

New Copyright Law Causes Uproar Among Bloggers, Internet Companies
Kim Tong-hyung

South Korea touts itself as one of the most wired and technology savvy countries in the world. But the Lee Myung-bak government's increasing attempts to monitor the Internet have the blogosphere and Web industry reminded of the cold realities of the real world behind the screen.

The National Assembly passed the new anti-file sharing provision, suggested by the ruling Grand National Party (GNP), following a close vote April 1, despite protests from Internet companies and civil liberties advocates that it could threaten the freedom of expression on the Internet.

Lawmakers also passed another GNP-backed bill that calls for the strengthening of the real-name verification on Web sites, and such developments have critics questioning whether the unpopular Lee government is becoming overzealous in its efforts to avoid another beef crisis.

According to the bulked-up copyright law, the government has the power to shutdown an online message board for a maximum six months after the site is warned for a third time to delete pirated content and prevent its movement.

In addition to the ``three-strikes'' rule, Internet users who repeatedly upload copyrighted content without permission could lose their Internet accounts.

Supporters of the law, including the Korea Communications Commission (KCC), the country's broadcasting and telecommunications regulator, claim that stronger measures are needed to cope with the country's online piracy problems.

However, Internet companies, bracing for increasing regulatory risks, are concerned about the government having arbitrary power that could be used to shake their business at its roots.

According to the new law, the minister of culture, sports and tourism is granted the authority to order the closing of online message boards or suspending individual Internet accounts with or without requests from copyright holders.

``Even for a big company like Naver (www.naver.com), it is virtually impossible for Web portals to totally filter illegal content when there are millions of postings coming up everyday. And I am talking about companies that spend massive amounts of money to monitor copyright violations and hire hundreds of monitoring personnel,'' said an employee from one of the country's largest Internet companies who didn't want to be named.

``I mean, how much does the government expect us to spend in developing and operating a simple Web service? No matter how hard we try, the culture minister will easily find his three strikes and could order us to shutdown a site at anytime, regardless of whether the copyright holder has a problem with us or not.

``So, if somebody uploads a music file on a FTP (file transition protocol) site and links it to Knowledge Search, will Naver be forced to shutdown its most popular Web service? This is insane, unless the government is trying to give us new ideas about how to hurt competitors' business,'' he said.

Defining copyrighted content is also a problem, as the concept not only includes movies, television shows and music, but also the articles of media organizations and even individual blog postings.

This has bloggers concerned, but KCC officials deny the claims that the new copyright law will affect their freedom of expression, pointing out that the provisions are to be imposed only to online message boards with ``commercial'' intentions.

However, the boundaries are still blurry, since an increasing number of bloggers are going professional to create revenue from their sites, or at least attaching advertisements from Google AdSense and other advertisement services for some pocket change. This means that individual blogs could be subject to the copyright law, as the message boards operated by Internet companies are.

``The law could have the government shutting down not only major Web portals, but online message boards of smaller companies and even `meta sites' that compile blog posts. And the member blogs of the meta sites could be interpreted as online message boards, too,'' said Sogumi, a popular blogger whose writings appear on Tatter Media (tattermedia.com).

``The law draws a dreadful picture of the future, as Internet users will be required to submit their real names to post on individual blogs and not even imagine using the online message boards of Web portals or meta sites due to the worries of having his or her Internet cut off.''

Repeatedly kicked in the teeth by bloggers, first for the controversial decision to resume U.S. beef imports and then for ineptitude in economic policies, beleaguered government officials have since been attempting to impose rules on Internet users.

As a result, Korea has now become one of the first democracies to aggressively use the law to hold Internet users and Web sites to account, and the revised copyright law represents the boldest step yet in this direction.

Critics question whether the new copyright law could eventually be used to suppress certain sites, such as Agora, a discussion board operated by Daum (www.daum.net), which was a seedbed for anti-government criticism during the controversy over the beef issue.
http://www.koreatimes.co.kr/www/news...133_42594.html





Internet Providers Gird for Fight With FCC
Amy Schatz

Cable and telephone companies are gearing up for a fight as regulators begin work Wednesday on a national broadband strategy that could bring major changes to how Internet services are delivered to American homes.

The $787 billion government stimulus package requires the Federal Communications Commission to provide a road map for how potentially billions of future taxpayer dollars should be spent to build or upgrade Internet lines across the U.S.

The agency will map out how the U.S. can ensure that every American not only has access to broadband, but has service that runs much faster than what's available today. It will also look at how to update policies that haven't kept pace with the way Americans get phone, cable-TV and Internet services in their homes.

Implicit in the review is that the federal government plans to invest more money in broadband infrastructure than the $7.2 billion promised through the economic-stimulus plan. Rules for how companies can apply for those stimulus funds are expected in the next month or so.

The broader infrastructure plan is "the biggest responsibility given to the FCC since the Telecom Act of 1996," acting FCC Chairman Michael Copps, said in an interview. "The market has done a lot, but it hasn't done enough to keep us competitive in the world."

The FCC plans to delve into issues ranging from how to define faster, next-generation broadband to what sort of rules should be applied to guarantee delivery of Internet traffic. It will examine competition between Internet-service providers and what can be done to provide incentives for building broadband infrastructure, FCC officials said.

The FCC is required to turn in its plan next February, and will begin Wednesday by opening up the issue for comment.

The plan will raise thorny issues about what sort of requirements, if any, should be imposed on Internet-service providers to share the networks they have built with government help. Phone and cable companies argue that such requirements would likely stifle investment and be counterproductive.

"If the government were to suddenly suggest it will get into the business of deciding how networks should be designed, that would be chilling," said Walter McCormick, president of the U.S. Telecom Association, the phone industry's trade group.

Phone and cable companies, which provide a vast majority of the Internet access in the U.S., plan to lobby the agency and Congress to ensure that the FCC's plan doesn't require more stringent rules, particularly on how they manage their networks.

Internet-service providers want to control their systems so that big users don't hog bandwidth and slow service for others. But consumers and companies that want to offer services such as online video don't want those services blocked or hobbled.

Balancing the competing demands "is going to be a tricky public-policy issue that needs to get worked out," said David Cohen, executive vice president of cable giant Comcast Corp.

The FCC's effort is expected to be overseen by President Barack Obama's nominee to head the FCC, Julius Genachowski, a former IAC/InterActive Corp. executive and venture capitalist. Mr. Genachowski's confirmation is awaiting Senate action.

Future federal funding for expanding broadband access likely would come through changes to the Universal Service Fund, a $7 billion annual program designed to subsidize phone service in rural areas and to low-income Americans.

The Obama administration says the fund should provide money for broadband, not just phone service. But any changes to the program are sure to be controversial; rural phone and wireless companies could receive significantly less revenue from the fund if changes are made.

Stimulus funding, meanwhile, is an important first step to getting broadband out to more areas where there is little or no Internet service. But the "stimulus fund, ample as it is, is insufficient to reaching that larger purpose," Rep. Rick Boucher (D., Va.), chairman of a House subcommittee that oversees Internet issues, said during a hearing last week.

Most of the $7.2 billion set aside for high-speed Internet in the stimulus plan will have been spent before the FCC produces its wider plan for how the U.S. should invest in broadband.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123897361669991013.html





FrostWire Hits the Half-Million BT Mark
p2pnet

Find talented unsigned and indie artists and labels who want to share their music online under a Creative Commons license, or some other form of free distribution.

The result?

FrostWire now shares more than half-a-million free legal downloads via BitTorrent and, “We’re proud of that,” the team told p2pnet.

The amount of data shared so far comes to more than 47 Terabytes at zero cost to the musicians and artists.

Another plus of all this content being shared over FrostWire is: it now has thousands of Gnutella seeds, meaning it’s now also available to millions of Gnutella users.

1. ESPSIX, Collection of House Music. Music. 67,190
2. Back ELement, A Major Minority. Music. 60,553
3. Ray Sytes, Guyanese Pride. Music. 49,672
4. Farkus, Thought you should know. Music. 41,184
5. Cartel, Tha Throwback. Music. 38,944
6. Matt Pond, The Freeep. Music. 38,447
7. Sean Fournier, Oh My. Music. 35,374
8. Brad Sucks, Out of It. Music. 34,758
9. Mike Falzone, Fun With Honesty. Music. 32,256
10. Audra Hardt, Superficial Superstar. Music. 30,447
11. K Sparks and DJ Pajozo, Definition. Music. 25,754
12. Tiara Wiles, This is Tiara. Music. 19,724
13. Big Buck Bunny. High Definition Short Film/3D Animation. 19,088
14. Sagaboy, Evolution. Music. 13,670
15. Georgia Wonder, Hello Stranger. 4,995

TOTAL - 512,056

Georgia Wonder’s Torrent file was hosted and tracked by The Pirate Bay, so FrostWire doesn’t have the number of completed downloads.

But, “We know it was a very popular torrent the week of the promotion because it was among the top 20 seeded music torrents,” says the FrostWire guys, adding:

“This torrent also was also published to the Mininova tracker where it shows another 9,232 completed downloads as of March 31st, 2009.

“If you’re an artist or content creator looking to share some of your work for free so others experiment and get to know you, check FrostClick and FrostWire out.”"
http://www.p2pnet.net/story/19828





US Trade Office Releases Information on Secret Piracy Pact

The agency backtracks on its position that the agreement was classified
Grant Gross

The Office of the U.S. Trade Representative (USTR) has released some new details about an anticounterfeiting trade agreement that has been discussed in secret among the U.S., Japan, the European Union and other countries since 2006.

The six-page summary of the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) negotiations provides little specific detail about the current state of negotiations, but the release represents a change in policy at the USTR, which had argued in the past that information on the trade pact was "properly classified in the interest of national security."

The summary of the negotiations, released Monday, says that the countries involved have been discussing how to deal with criminal enforcement of each others' copyright laws. The countries involved have discussed the "scale of infringement necessary to quality for criminal sanctions," as well as the authority of countries to order searches and seizures of goods suspected of infringing intellectual-property laws. The summary does not detail the current state of negotiations in those areas.

The trade pact negotiations have also talked about border measures that countries should take against infringing products and about how to enforce intellectual-property rights over the Internet.

Public Knowledge, a consumer rights group and one of three organizations suing USTR over its refusal to release information on ACTA, praised USTR for releasing the summary, but said more information is needed.

"The dissemination of the six-page summary will help to some degree to clarify what is being discussed," Gigi Sohn, Public Knowledge's president, said in a statement. "At the same time, however, this release can only be seen as a first step forward. It would have been helpful had the USTR elaborated more clearly the goals the United States wants to pursue in the treaty and what proposals our government has made, particularly in the area of intellectual property rights in a digital environment."

Since last June, Public Knowledge, the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) and Knowledge Ecology International (KEI) have filed Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests for information about ACTA. USTR had argued that most of the information about the trade pact was classified while releasing just 159 pages of information on the agreement in January. Public Knowledge and EFF said then that USTR was withholding more than 1,300 pages of information.

When President Barack Obama took office in January, he directed U.S. agencies to be more transparent to the public. In early March, USTR denied an FOIA request from KEI, an intellectual-property research and advocacy group, citing national security concerns. But later that month, the agency pledged to undertake a long-term review of its transparency.

The release of the summary "reflects the Obama administration's commitment to transparency," USTR said in a statement. Other countries helped USTR draft the summary, the agency said.

"We look forward to taking more steps to engage with the public in our efforts to make trade work for American families," newly appointed U.S. Trade Representative Ron Kirk said in a statement.

The goal of ACTA is to negotiate a "state-of-the art agreement to combat counterfeiting and piracy," according to USTR. Among the nations participating in negotiations are Australia, Canada, the European Union, Japan, Mexico, Morocco, New Zealand, Singapore, South Korea and Switzerland.

The U.S. and Japan began discussing an intellectual-property trade agreement in 2006, with other countries joining discussions later that year, according to the ACTA summary. Formal negotiations began in June 2008.
http://www.pcworld.com/article/16271...cy_pact.h tml





ARM: Heretic in the Church of Intel, Moore's Law

Rival flouts rule to seize the day with cheaper chips for a growing netbook market
Eric Lai

For 30 years, the PC industry has treated Moore's Law with religious reverence. Its immutable commandment -- thou shalt double the transistors on circuits every 18 months -- created an enviable business model with consumers spurred to buy new, more powerful PCs every few years.

The gospel according to Moore also drove Intel Corp.'s engineers to perform miracles of miniaturization over the years. Its latest achievement, the 2-billion transistor, quad-core Itanium Tukwila CPU, is due for release in the second half of this year.

Coincidentally, that's when the greatest blasphemy to Moore's Law -- and the biggest threat to Intel's dominance -- is expected to make its entrance into the PC market.

Britain-based ARM Holdings Ltd. had modest financial statistics in 2007, with $518 million revenue and a $2.1 billion market cap. However, the chip maker is wildly successful in the mobile device market. ARM's chips are used in everything from Apple's iPhone, RIM's BlackBerry, and virtually every other cell phone, to Lego's Mindstorm robots and Japanese toilet seats that talk and squirt.

Its partners -- ARM only designs the chips, preferring to license them to partners to make -- have shipped more than 10 billion processors in the last 23 years. By comparison, Intel has shipped somewhere between 1 and 2 billion CPUs.

ARM aims to extend its mobile device success into the red-hot netbook space.

Ian Drew, senior vice president at ARM, told Computerworld recently he expects to see "six to 10 ARM-based netbooks this year, starting in Q3." The devices will run Linux or a Linux derivative, such as the Google Inc.-backed Android smartphone operating system, boast eight to 12 hours of battery life and cost about $200, Drew said.

Drew's price estimates for upcoming ARM-based netbooks represent savings of up to half off compared with today's cheapest Intel Atom-based netbooks, which range from $300 to $400.

Bob Castellano, an analyst with The Information Network, predicts that ARM netbooks will grab 55% of the market by 2012.

Are laws meant to be broken?

By Moore's Law, ARM would have no chance of success, bringing to bear chip technology that is underpowered in both senses of the word.

Its ARM7TDMI chip, released in 2006 and used in Apple's iPod music player and Nintendo's DS game device, has a mere 100,000 transistors -- fewer than a 12 MHz Intel 286 processor from 1982.

Some of its most popular CPUs have as few as between 15,000-20,000 transistors, said Drew. That number represents less than half that of Intel's 8088 chip in 1979, which powered the original IBM PC.

While not impressive on processing power, such modest chips also draw less than quarter of a watt of electricity -- a huge benefit for companies looking to design ever smaller devices with long battery life. Before green computing was hip, ARM was walking the walk out of necessity to meet the requirements of its device-building customers.

ARM may have some chips today that eclipse the 1-GHz mark, but "it's not just about raw megahertz, it's about how effectively you use them," Drew said. That's why "we prefer to use different metrics, like megahertz per milli-watt of electricity."

New era, new Intel

With the market having shifted decisively last year from desktop to portable PCs, PC makers are looking for the same characteristics. Intel's successful Atom chips boast some impressively-low wattage ratings. But Drew, who spent 14 years at Intel before joining ARM in 2005, says ARM is still "better" on energy.

"We're not going to do an 'Intel Inside' brand," said Drew, because it would interfere with "our partnership model."

"We'd like to be more known," he continued. But the reality is "you're talking to a VP of marketing with very little marketing budget."

What about coining a green-minded version of Moore's Law? "We won't have something like Warren East's Law" named after ARM's CEO, said Drew. "We're quite a boring British company."

Besides netbooks, ARM has even talked about taking on Intel in the PC server market with its energy-efficient chips.

"Progress is being made," Drew said, adding that ARM chips, despite their lack of power, may be more efficient than multi-core CPUs when measured by metrics such as "Co2 (Carbon Dioxide) per Web page hit."

What could stall ARM in both the server and netbook markets is the lack of full Windows compatibility. Windows Mobile and many embedded versions of Windows do run on ARM chips. But they lack access to the many desktop apps available for Windows XP or the upcoming Windows 7.

While Drew would welcome it, Microsoft has made no commitment to porting a full version of Windows to ARM. "Windows Mobile is a great OS with some great features," he said. "But does it run the full PC experience? Aren't there still a few missing tricks?"
Philip Solis, an analyst at ABI Research, agrees. "The market is moving too quickly for Microsoft. I know there is demand to see Windows ported over to ARM," Solis said.

One concern about such a port of Windows would seem to be whether an all-new platform optimized for tiny devices might lead to a compromised user experience. Drew scoffs, "Just because it's difficult to do, doesn't mean you shouldn't evaluate it."

Intel is not standing still. Last month, it agreed to give Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. (TSMC) access to its Atom technology. But Drew said it was "manufacturing, not a sales" relationship with a single partner, unlike the arrangements that ARM has. "It's not as wide as us," Drew said.

Moves are afoot in many corners, it seems. Last month, a Motley Fool blogger suggested that Apple might drop the ARM processor in the next version of the iPhone, either for the next version of Intel's Atom, codenamed Moorestown, or Apple build its own chip using the technology from its acquisition of low-power chipmaker P.A. Semi last year.

Should the report be taken seriously? "You'll have to ask Apple on that one," Drew said.
http://www.computerworld.com/action/...icleId=9131098





Accused!
Jon

Today has turned into a real-life nightmare. I wish I could wake up. This nightmare started 9 months ago and has been recurring ever since.
First, a little background. I’ve been designing professionally for 11 years. I started by designing for my church and before long I landed my first design job with Bill Gordon & Associates, an Albuquerque law firm. In January 2000 I formed Relevant Studio as an umbrella for all of my freelance work. I was able to find consistent work through sites such as elance.com, guru.com and designoutpost.com. I began freelancing full-time December 2002.

I’ve known since I was a little boy that I wanted to be an artist. I knew from the first time my preschool doodle went up on my great-grandma’s fridge exactly what I wanted to be. I was introduced to graphic and web design in high school and fell in love with it. I went on to attend The Art Center Design College and The Art Institute of Pittsburgh, all while freelancing on the side to pay the bills.

My first big client was the Warner Brothers TV network (now The CW). They gave me a chance to work on the Smallville launch. Being a comic book geek and TV junkie, I couldn’t have been happier! Because the posters and ads were successful, I was contacted to work on the launch of Birds of Prey as well. That show barely lasted a season, but I enjoyed designing for it anyway. Those ads opened new doors which led to ad work for Alias, CSI and Lost among others. Those jobs were a dream come true for me.

More than anything, the TV ads were a validation for me. They were a sign that I’d picked the right career for me. I haven’t doubted for one moment that I was destined to be a designer. Until today.

This morning I received a message from a friend alerting me to a discussion about me on one of my favorite sites. I tried logging in to see what was going on to find out I had been banned. I emailed the site owner to see what the issue was. His response was that someone had contacted him to inform him I was being investigated for copyright infringement. One of the logos I’ve been accused of stealing was for a client of this site. In order to protect himself from a lawsuit, he had to boot me off the site and distance himself from the problem. I’m not happy about it, but I understand. He wasn’t left with much of a choice.

This morning’s shocker is just a sympton of a larger problem, a HUGE problem, that I became aware of July 2008. I’ve been quietly dealing with it for the past 9 months and thought I was making some headway. Today they crossed a line and have done irreperable damage to my business and my reputation.

I was first contacted by a stock art site in July of last year. They hit me with a bill for a whopping $18,000! I had an account with the site. Years ago I purchased an illustration of a chef’s hat for a client’s project. So, I thought this was some accounting mistake. Nope. This was a bill for new images. Very familiar images. They were images from several of my logos; 65 of them in fact. That breaks down to about $275 per image. They actually wanted me to pay them $275 for each one of MY images!

Once the sticker shock wore off the obvious question came to mind. Where the hell did they get these from? It seems as if most or all of them were lifted from my LogoPond showcase. They especially seemed to favor the ones that made it to the gallery.

My theory is that someone copied my artwork, separated them from any typography and then posted them for sale on the stock site. Someone working for the site either saw my LP showcase or was alerted to the similarities. They then prepared the bill and sent it to me. The good thing is that the bill gives me a record of every single image they took from me. That helps me gather dates, sketches, emails, etc to help me prove my case. The bad thing is that despite my explanations and proof, they will not let this go.

When I refused to pay the bill they hired a law firm specializing in copyright infringement. The attorney called and offered a settlement of $18,000. How is that any different than the bill? I refuse to pay THEM for work I created. That is the epitomy of ridiculous. The attorney didn’t like my response. He threatened to sue. I say BRING IT ON! I have no doubt I can win in court.

However, the new tactic I discovered this morning is so much harder to fight. They are calling or emailing every one of my clients they can find. They inform the client that I’m being investigated for copyright infringement and that the logo I designed for them may have been stolen from their client. After discovering my ban from Design Outpost I began contacting clients to see exactly who they’ve been in touch with. So far, I’ve heard back from three. In every case so far my client is furious with me. They took the lawyer’s warning at face value without bothering to contact me. I understand their reaction to an extent. I’m sure they’re worried that they may be sued as well for using ’stolen’ artwork and the best thing they can do is distance themselves from me.

I feel like this is nothing more than an underhanded campaign meant to demoralize me and destroy my reputation. If you read through their website you can see they work on contingency. This means they don’t get paid if their client doesn’t get paid. I’ve also made it very clear there’s no way in hell that I’ll ever pay up. I’ll declare bankruptcy and go to work for McDonald’s before that happens. Are they thinking they can beat me into submission? Do they think I’ll agree to a settlement to make it all go away? Guess again. I have the truth on my side and I will NEVER pay a rip-off artist or their extortionist lawyers.

Thankfully, I have a lot of incidental proof. I would never have thought to plan for something like this, but now I wish I had. Beyond timestamps this becomes my word against theirs to a degree. The logos on LogoPond have a date stamp showing when I uploaded them to the site. This is good, especially if the designs were stolen from my showcase. My submission date will always be earlier than theirs. Even if its only by a day, first is first. Kode ( @kodespark) suggested looking at the meta data in my source files. I didn’t know about meta data before today, but there are timestamps on the files as well. All of the meta timestamps pre-date my LogoPond submissions.

What do they have? A bill and a bulldog lawyer. They refuse to give me upload dates for any of the images in question. If they believe they’re in the right, then why would they hide that from me? I have asked time and again for the name of the artist who uploaded the stolen work. I finally received an email which is less than helpful:

“Sir, it is not a question of one artist, but several. It is quite obvious you’ve been using the site as your personal reservoir of stolen works.”

I find that extremely hard to believe. I don’t believe it. I don’t believe that a group of people came together to form a cartel of logo rips. They are skirting the issue and won’t give me a straight answer about anything.

So what do I do now? How do I fight back? I hope that making the issue public will help. If they’ve done this to me, they could do it to any one of us. It seems that every day one of us finds a new rip-off artist displaying our work as their own and I’m absolutely sick of it! If you don’t have any artistic abilities, then please find a legitimate line of work. I just don’t get it.

I know this is a long post, so I’ll wrap it up. I hope the issue is resolved soon and will be sure to keep everyone updated with my progress. Big big thanks to everyone who’s shown their support on Twitter, Logopond and Facebook! I love you guys and would have given up the fight without your support.

A lawsuit I can handle, but this has hit me hard. If they were shooting for demoralizing, then mission accomplished. I was so upset about this that I almost threw in the towel. I wanted to shut down my site and delete my LP showcase and go find a job doing anything else. If it hadn’t been for my friends, Mike and Kode, I probably would have. They started a #SaveJon campaign on Twitter that showed me now is the time to fight, not walk away.
http://www.jonengle.com/2009/04/accused/





Stock Artwork, Logos, Copyright and the Power of Twitter. A Cautionary Tale.

If you’re involved in the online graphic design community, you couldn’t help stumble over the fracas that occurred over the weekend when a young designer - we’ll call him Jon - told us how he was being harrassed, sued and billed $18K for “stealing his own work” by stock agency Stock Art (StockArt.com) and their ferocious legal beagles, The Intellectual Property Group (ArtLaws.com). According to Jon and his growing group of supporters, Stock Art had “stolen” his artwork, placed it in their library, and then turned around and billed him $18,000 for the use of that work. It’s the stuff internet legends are made of.

Further, if you lived under a rock, or were out for the entire weekend, you may have missed the various incarnations of the tragic tale when it was everything that designery people on Twitter were Tweeting about. But Twittering and Tweeting they were. A hash-tag campaign called #savejon was started, and as I write this, howls of protest-laden Tweets are still ripping through at the rate of one every three minutes. And why not? The design community is outraged. One of our own was under attack by some Corporate giant and their sleazeball lawyers, and he needed our help. And man, did he get the design community’s help. Hitting the front page of DIGG took out Jon’s blog and company website, such was the traffic, but still the internet noise continued unabated. Boycotts, and worse, were called for. This legal outrage needed to be fought back, and fought back hard, so a legal defense fund was set up, and at this moment it boasts $1800 in contributions from concerned internet citizens (though it will probably be higher as you read this). Designers saw a great injustice being done, and admirably sought to help by blogging, Twittering, DIGGing, Slashdotting and forum posting their avenging angel vibe all over the web. Thousands of e-mails were ripped off to the corporate bullies - some terse but professional, others less so. Others were disturbingly threatening, no doubt spurred on by the anonymity of internet communication. All bore a similar variation of the message - “How dare you steal someone’s artwork and then try to charge/sue/harrass them for it”.

It was, it seemed, the internet at its very best, a juggernaut that could be tasked to help the downtrodden and harrassed within hours, the echo chamber bouncing the message from one avenue to another, recruiting one concerned designer after another. It’s always a compelling story when the internet helps the little guy fight back ‘The Man’ and to take down ‘The Villain’. Trouble is, none of the story may be true, ‘The Man’ may be right and the ‘Villains’ of this story may not be villains at all.
Let’s back it up a bit, to August of last year when Jon was hit up for a bill from StockArt.com, a stock artwork licensing agency, supposedly for the use of his own work. Let’s read a bit of the original post as it appeared on Logopond, a gallery site for logo designers.

Someone has apparently ripped several of my icons and sold/posted them across a couple stock illustration sites. The stock site watchdogs ran across my portfolio and is now threatening to sue ME. They sent me an $18,000 bill and said if I don’t pay up they’ll sue.

Well, that’s certainly going to get any designer’s attention. The idea that someone could not only copy your work and put it on a stock art site is one thing, but threatening a lawsuit if you didn’t pony up $18 grand for using your own artwork? I get freaked out when my credit card company calls to tell me my payment is late. Quite oddly, the issue went on the forum back burner until this past weekend, when another post hit the thread, but this time, Jon seemed a little more frantic.

Its becoming a bigger problem. I was banned from Design Outpost this morning which led me to start talking to clients. Apparently, they’re calling EVERYONE they can find to tell them I’m under investigation for copyright infringement.

Woah. Now that’s a whole different ball game. The legal beagles contacting Jon’s clients and telling them that he was under investigation for copyright infringement? That’s certainly not fair. But wouldn’t it also be on shaky legal grounds as well? When I first read it, the words Slander and Libel entered my head. But it also posed a question - what kind of lawyers would expose themselves to such legal pain in order to get even with someone even if they did copy work from their clients? Surely such actions would invoke all sorts of sympathy for the young designer, who from what I’ve managed to find out, was only trying to get by. Seemed to me that it was a case-destroying move, and one that was certain to garner the wrath of half the internet.

I was certainly right about the backlash. The first Tweets started on Saturday. I happened to be desk bound, so I added my comment into the feed. Those comments were re-tweeted. And again. And again. So on and so on. Before long, comments and protestations about the events had taken on a life of their own, and the news about the hapless designer’s predicament began to spool out past Twitter and onto other social sites like DIGG and Slashdot. Something was happening. There was a movement afoot, and every iteration of the news added a new detail. A new wrinkle. Trouble is, no-one really knew anything, and other than the first fairly well-informed tweets and posts, everyone was making it up on the fly. Not surprisingly, the design community wanted more as it’s hard to keep up the moral indignation without some salacious details to write about. Jon told us that he was hurredly working on a blog post to be published later that afternoon. That news went out via Twitter where it was added to the cacophony of drama. And to DIGG. And Slashdot. And Hacker News. The items started to number in the thousands but all the posts, blogs and Tweets had one thing in common. This outrage would not go unanswered. And sumbitch has to pay. When the blog post finally came, it was a highly anticipated event. The post itself turned out to be mildly anti-climactic.

Once the sticker shock wore off the obvious question came to mind. Where the hell did they get these from? It seems as if most or all of them were lifted from my LogoPond showcase. They especially seemed to favor the ones that made it to the gallery.

The details of what had actually transpired were strangely vague. There wasn’t any real explanation of how the artwork was absconded with in the first place (other than some impractical theory that Stock Art had somehow reverse engineered John’s artwork from Logopond, removed the typography from the featured logos, and added them to their site). To make matters worse, there wasn’t even any examples of ripped design with the original for comparison. Rather than take everything at face value, I decided to poke around a little deeper. I didn’t know much about Stock Art, but their site looked legit. They had an impressive roster of established illustrators - all of whom with impressive portfolio sites of their own - and it didn’t seem like the kind of thing that made sense for a company with a client list of well-heeled companies, some of them belonging to the Fortune 500. Thinking that their lawyers might be the hardcases in all of this. I took a look at the ArtLaws.com website and the various pages and reference materials inside. It didn’t look shady at all, and if anything, they seemed to be champions of designer and illustrator IP rights, as opposed to the sleazy ambulance chasers they were very quickly, and loudly, being portrayed as across most of the internet.

They were certainly legit, and have even been involved in the Zapruder Kennedy assassination movie copyright battle from a few years ago. Something didn’t appear right. Not right at all. Jon had admitted to us that he was a buyer on Stock Art after all, having opened an account a few years ago. Trouble is, there are no artist accounts per se, nothing is uploaded to Stock Art’s server, and Stock Art are extremely picky who they represent, claiming a roster of only 150 illustrators. One of my original theories on the ‘misunderstanding’ was that Jon had uploaded artwork to Stock Art for licensing and then sold the artwork to someone else. As neat and tidy as that theory would have been, it’s not how Stock Art operates, their licenses don’t work that way, and even Jon never claimed that he was represented by Stock Art. No, what we had here was a pretty cut-and-dry case of someone using someone else’s work without payment and/or permission. But who did what to whom? The tens of thousands of people now involved in this growing controversy knew who they thought was the ripper and the rippee. But I was starting to have doubts over my original assumptions. Besides, I always like to get both sides of a story, so I decided to reach out and touch ArtLaws.com lawyers and ask them if they’d like to comment on the deluge of bad internet mojo that they were receiving.

To their credit, they did, calling The Logo Factory studio shortly after reading my email (apparently, out of thousands of e-mails, I was the first one that asked for their side of the story). I talked at length with Jamie Silverberg and John D. Mason, two of the lead lawyers at the The Intellectual Property Group, and found them to be civil, pleasant and quite willing to discuss matters, to the extent that they were legally allowed. Not the “ambulance chasing scumbags” they were beifng called in the latest round of Twitter postings. Firstly, IPG have extensive experience fighting on the behalf of designers and illustrators (as they believe they’re doing in the Stock Art matter). The partners have experience in the graphic design industry itself, helping to organize several chapters of the AIGA. They told me that “nobody” is being sued nor has a suit been filed over the Stock Art artwork, and that rather than ignoring Jon’s pleas of innocence, have been trying to communicate with him ever since the licensing issues became apparent.

Seems Stock Art are ferocious in protecting their illustrators property and copyright (certainly something that I’d demand if Stock Art were representing me). Silverberg denied harassing Jon’s clients, but told me that they had contacted two in order to see if the client’s had legitimate licensing rights to their client’s work. I wondered how likely it would be that Stock Art’s established illustrators would risk their reputation, and Stock Art’s business, by copying some designer they found on the internet. To make matters worse, the issue revolved around the licensing for no less than 65 images to which it appears typography was added and the images uploaded to various portfolio sites like Elance and Logopond (while they didn’t expressly tell me so, the $18,000 bill is likely the result of licensing fees for the 65 images in dispute. Works out to about $275 a pop). I was also told that before contacting anyone, IPG perform extensive research into the background of any disputed images, including creation date, history and when it was added to the Stock Art site, pointing out that some of the images “in question” have been on the Stock Art website for almost a decade. Logopond, the supposed source for the designs (at least according to Jon’s blog), had only been online since June of 2006 at the very earliest. The worst point, from a designer’s point of view anyway, was the dispute involved the work of over twenty illustrators. With illustrations and icons that just happened to mirror their exact personal style. And if that wasn’t enough, Jon had previously been billed for other Stock Art licensed work, after it was discovered that it may have been used without permission. He paid that bill.

Jeezus. Unfortunately, this wasn’t the cut-and-dried case that half the internet believed it to be. To make matters worse, I managed to track down some of the images via Google and Stock Art’s search engine using simple keywords. I wasn’t terribly thrilled with what I found, especially considering I had been around ground zero for some of the anti-StockArt.com and anti-Artlaws.com sentiments now swirling angrily around the internet. I’m not particularly proud of that.

And that by the way, is the reason I’m writing this. At the risk of enraging a good chunk of the design community, I think there’s more here than meets the eye. A lot more. I also believe there’s enough evidence to indicate that neither StockArt.com, Artlaws.com or the various people that work for them, hire them, or use their services are the bastards that they’re being made out to be. And while the entire world has heard Jon’s side, only a few have taken the time to research the other side (or even taken a look at some of the work in dispute). Do I know who copied who in this case? Not for absolute certainty, but I have some pretty strong opinions as to what’s what. I’ll have to keep them them to myself, as they are just opinions until someone comes clean, or this case hits the courts. Only then will you, or I, know for certain (and even then, we may never know, should things get settled beforehand). In the meantime, I know I’ve stepped down off my high-horse, and I think others need to as well. I love internet mob justice as much as the next cat, but I think a lot of people took an undeserved battering over this, and I for one, won’t be joining another internet mob anytime soon. My pitchfork and torch will have to wait for the next time that I’m absolutely sure of the cause. And who the bad guys really are.

I hope some of you will do the same.
http://www.thelogofactory.com.nyud.n...right-twitter/





Radiohead to Testify Against the RIAA
Ernesto

Radiohead, the band that made millions of dollars by giving away their music for free, has very little to complain about when it comes to piracy. On the contrary, in a landmark file-sharing case, Radiohead has responded positively to a request to testify against the RIAA.

Last month, Radiohead expressed its growing discomfort with record labels that abuse copyrights for their own benefit. In an attempt to take a stand against the labels, the band and several other well known artists formed the Featured Artists Coalition, a lobby group that aims to end the extortion-like practices of record labels and allow artists to gain more control over their own work.

In addition, the artists are unhappy with the fact that the labels, represented by lobby groups such as the RIAA and IFPI, are pushing for anti-piracy legislation without consulting the artists they claim to represent. Fans are unnecessarily portrayed as criminals according to some.

Now, in the case of Boston University student Joel Tenenbaum versus the RIAA, Radiohead has indicated that they will testify against the RIAA. Tenenbaum’s troubles started in 2003 when he rejected an offer to settle with the RIAA for $500. After a few more settlement attempts and legal quibbles, the case eventually went to court.

In court Joel is assisted by ‘hippy head‘ Professor Charles Nesson, and his law students. TorrentFreak contacted Tenenbaum’s legal team, who confirmed that they indeed spoke to Radiohead. “We met with Radiohead’s manager two weeks ago here at Harvard Law School. Professor Nesson walked away with the impression that their manager agreed to do so,” we were told.

Unlike the RIAA, Radiohead loves file-sharing

Despite the criticism of Professor Charles Nesson’s work ethics and handling on the case thus far, it would be good to see well respected musicians such as Radiohead testify in favor of an accused file-sharer. Most of the time we don’t hear from the artists directly, only from their representatives, so their views are very welcome.

Recently, the effects of ‘illegal’ file-sharing on music sales were discussed during the Pirate Bay trial. Here, Professor and media researcher Roger Wallis told the court that his research has shown that there is no relationship between the decline of album sales and file-sharing. After his testimony, Wallis’ wife was overwhelmed with flowers as the public warmed to her husband and the opinion he expressed in court.

We can’t rule out the possibility that Radiohead might be after some floral tributes of its own, but even more than that they’d love to put one in the eye of the money obsessed record labels.
http://torrentfreak.com/raiohead-to-...e-riaa-090404/





Copyright Scholar Challenges RIAA/DOJ Position
NewYorkCountryLawyer

Leading copyright law scholar Prof. Pamela Samuelson, of the University of California law school, has published a "working paper" which directly refutes the position taken by the US Department of Justice in RIAA cases on the constitutionality of the RIAA's statutory damages theories. The Department of Justice had argued in its briefs that the Court should follow a 1919 United States Supreme Court case which upheld the constitutionality of a statutory damages award that was 116 times the actual damages sustained, under a statute which gave consumers a right of action against railway companies. The Free Software Foundation filed an amicus curiae brief supporting the view that the more modern, State Farm/Gore test applied by the United States Supreme Court to punitive damages awards is applicable. The paper by Prof. Samuelson is consistent with the FSF brief and contradicts the DOJ briefs, arguing that the Gore test should be applied. A full copy of the paper is available for viewing online (PDF).
http://news.slashdot.org/article.pl?.../04/10/2313233





Personal Web Data to be Stored for a Year

New law forces service providers to record all your calls and emails from Monday
Robert Verkaik

The mobile calls, emails and website visits of every person in Britain will be stored for a year under sweeping new powers which come into force on Monday. Privacy campaigners warned last night that the information would be used by the Government to create a giant "Big Brother" super-database containing a map of everyone's private life.

The new powers will, for the first time, place a legal duty on internet companies to store private information, including email traffic and website browsing histories.

Although the new retention powers will not permit the storage of the content of emails or phone calls it will show details such as IP addresses, date, time and user telephone numbers. Under the terms of the EU directive, the Home Office has written to leading internet service providers and phone companies offering to compensate them for the costs incurred in retaining the data for a year.

A spokesman for the Internet Service Providers Association confirmed that the leading ISPs had received written orders from the Home Office setting out their obligations under the new rules.

Phil Booth of the civil rights campaign group, NOID, said: "Inch by inch, the Government's plans to map and monitor everyone's communications are creeping into place. Today it's retention of data, soon it'll be a giant database to suck it all up. And unless we speak out and stop this, what used to be private – details of your relationships and personal interests – will end up in the ever-widening control of the stalker state."

Last week the The Independent reported that millions of Britons who use social networking sites such as Facebook could soon have their every move monitored by the Government and saved on a "Big Brother" database.

Then ministers faced a civil liberties outcry over the plans, with accusations of excessive snooping on the private lives of law-abiding citizens. Others fear the risk of security breaches. "Quite clearly, this new legislation opens up a whole can of worms for the ISPs when it comes to potential security implications," said Neil Cook, a security expert with the internet data protection firm Cloudmark.

The Government has twice postponed publication of a new data communications Bill in which ministers will set out their plans for a centrally controlled database. A Home Office spokesman said: "If we do not make changes now to maintain existing capabilities, the law enforcement, security and intelligence agencies will no longer be able to use this data in the future."

He added: "It is the Government's priority to protect public safety and national security. That is why we are completing the implementation of this directive, which will bring the UK in line with our European counterparts. Communications data plays a vital part in a wide range of criminal investigations. Without communications data, resolving crimes such as the Rhys Jones murder would be very difficult if not impossible."
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk...r-1662237.html





Dave Arneson, Co-Creator of Dungeons & Dragons, Dies at 61
AP

Dave Arneson, one of the co-creators of the Dungeons & Dragons fantasy game and a pioneer of role-playing entertainment, died after a two-year battle with cancer, his family said Thursday. He was 61.

Arneson's daughter, Malia Weinhagen of Maplewood, said her father died peacefully Tuesday in hospice care in St. Paul.

Arneson and Gary Gygax developed Dungeons & Dragons in 1974 using medieval characters and mythical creatures. The game known for its oddly shaped dice became a hit, particularly among teenage boys. It eventually was turned into video games, books and movies. Gygax died in March 2008.

''The biggest thing about my dad's world is he wanted people to have fun in life,'' Weinhagen said. ''I think we get distracted by the everyday things you have to do in life and we forget to enjoy life and have fun.

''But my dad never did,'' she said. ''He just wanted people to have fun.''

Dungeons & Dragons players create fictional characters and carry out their adventures with the help of complicated rules. The quintessential geek pastime, it spawned copycat games and later inspired a whole genre of computer games that's still growing in popularity.

''(Arneson) developed many of the fundamental ideas of role-playing: that each player controls just one hero, that heroes gain power through adventures, and that personality is as important as combat prowess,'' according to a statement from Wizards of the Coast, a subsidiary of Hasbro, Inc. that produces Dungeons & Dragons.

Blackmoor, a game Arneson was developing before D&D, was the ''first-ever role-playing campaign and the prototype for all (role-playing game) campaigns since,'' the company said.

Arneson and Gygax were dedicated tabletop wargamers who recreated historical battles with painted miniature armies and fleets. They met in 1969 at a convention, and their first collaboration, along with Mike Carr, was a set of rules for sailing-ship battles called ''Don't Give Up the Ship!''

In later years, Dave published other role-playing games and started his own game-publishing company and computer game company. He also taught classes in game design. He was inducted into the Academy of Adventure Gaming Arts and Design Hall of Fame in 1984.

Weinhagen said her father enjoyed teaching game design at Full Sail University in Winter Park, Fla., in recent years, where he taught students to make a solid set of rules for their games.

''He said if you have a good foundation and a good set of rules, people would play the game again,'' Weinhagen said.

Arneson is survived by Weinhagen and two grandchildren. A public memorial service was planned April 20, from 4 to 8 p.m., at Bradshaw Funeral Home in St. Paul.
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2009...e-Arneson.html





The iPhone Gold Rush
Jenna Wortham

IS there a good way to nail down a steady income? In this economy?

Try writing a successful program for the iPhone.

Last August, Ethan Nicholas and his wife, Nicole, were having trouble making their mortgage payments. Medical bills from the birth of their younger son were piling up. After learning that his employer, Sun Microsystems, was suspending employee bonuses for the year, Mr. Nicholas considered looking for a new job and putting their house in Wake Forest, N.C., on the market.

Then he remembered reading about the guy who had made a quarter-million dollars in a hurry by writing a video game called Trism for the iPhone. “I figured if I could even make a fraction of that, we’d be able to make ends meet,” he said.

Although he had years of programming experience, Mr. Nicholas, who is 30, had never built a game in Objective-C, the coding language of the iPhone. So he searched the Internet for tips and informal guides, and used them to figure out the iPhone software development kit that Apple puts out.

Because he grew up playing shoot-em-up computer games, he decided to write an artillery game. He sketched out some graphics and bought inexpensive stock photos and audio files.

For six weeks, he worked “morning, noon and night” — by day at his job on the Java development team at Sun, and after-hours on his side project. In the evenings he would relieve his wife by caring for their two sons, sometimes coding feverishly at his computer with one hand, while the other rocked baby Gavin to sleep or held his toddler, Spencer, on his lap.

After the project was finished, Mr. Nicholas sent it to Apple for approval, quickly granted, and iShoot was released into the online Apple store on Oct. 19.

When he checked his account with Apple to see how many copies the game had sold, Mr. Nicholas’s jaw dropped: On its first day, iShoot sold enough copies at $4.99 each to net him $1,000. He and Nicole were practically “dancing in the street,” he said.

The second day, his portion of the day’s sales was about $2,000.

On the third day, the figure slid down to $50, where it hovered for the next several weeks. “That’s nothing to sneeze at, but I wondered if we could do better,” Mr. Nicholas said.

In January, he released a free version of the game with fewer features, hoping to spark sales of the paid version. It worked: iShoot Lite has been downloaded more than 2 million times, and many people have upgraded to the paid version, which now costs $2.99. On its peak day — Jan. 11 — iShoot sold nearly 17,000 copies, which meant a $35,000 day’s take for Mr. Nicholas.

“That’s when I called my boss and said, ‘We need to talk,’ ” Mr. Nicholas said. “And I quit my job.”

To people who know a thing or two about computer code, stories like his are as tantalizing as a late-night infomercial, as full of promise as an Anthony Robbins self-help book. The first iPhones came out in June 2007, but it wasn’t until July 2008 that people could buy programs built by outsiders, which were introduced in an online market — called the App Store — along with the new iPhone 3G. (The store is also open to owners of the iPod Touch, which does everything that the iPhone does except make phone calls and incur a monthly bill from AT&T.)

There are now more than 25,000 programs, or applications, in the iPhone App Store, many of them written by people like Mr. Nicholas whose modern Horatio Alger dreams revolve around a SIM card. But the chances of hitting the iPhone jackpot keep getting slimmer: the Apple store is already crowded with look-alike games and kitschy applications, and fresh inventory keeps arriving daily. Many of the simple but clever concepts that sell briskly — applications, for instance, that make the iPhone screen look like a frothing pint of beer or a koi pond — are already taken.

And for every iShoot, which earned Mr. Nicholas $800,000 in five months, “there are hundreds or thousands who put all their efforts into creating something, and it just gets ignored in the store,” said Erica Sadun, a programmer and the author of “The iPhone Developer’s Cookbook.”

The long-shot odds haven’t stopped people from stampeding to classes and conferences about writing iPhone programs. At Stanford University, an undergraduate course called Computer Science 193P: iPhone Application Programming attracted 150 students for only 50 spots when it was introduced last fall.

“It completely surpassed our expectations,” said Troy Brant, a graduate student who helped teach the course. Turnout has been equally strong this semester, he said.

As early as the summer of 2007 — a week after the iPhone first hit the market, and long before Apple let outsiders sell software for it — Raven Zachary, a technology consultant, decided to organize an informal get-together for fans of the device. The event, held in San Francisco, drew nearly 500 people.

Since then, he said, dozens of similar conferences have taken place around the world. “The concept has spread quite far and wide,” said Mr. Zachary, who boasts on his Web site that he “directed the launch of two top-20 iPhone applications,” including one for the Obama campaign. He expects the turnout at his conference this summer to be huge. “We may have to find a larger venue and hold simultaneous satellite events to accommodate attendees,” he said.

The rush to stake a claim on the iPhone is a lot like what happened in Silicon Valley in the early dot-com era, said Matt Murphy, a partner at the venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers who oversees the iFund, a $100 million investment pot reserved for iPhone applications.

“People are realizing that by developing in their garage with a couple dollars, they could be the next Facebook,” he said. “It’s still early days for mobile development, but those days are coming.”

This time, however, the scale may be smaller. While iShoot is never going to be the next Google or Facebook, it is the type of program that people with minimal expertise view as within their reach. The fact that Apple handles the financial side of the transactions makes it particularly easy for mom-and-pop developers to sell their homemade software all around the world. (Apple keeps 30 percent of the revenue from each sale and gives the rest to the developer.)

“Even if you’re not a programming guru, you can still cobble something together and potentially have great success,” said James Katz, director of the Center for Mobile Communications Studies at Rutgers University.

If there is ever an iPhone hall of fame, Mr. Nicholas’s portrait might hang next to that of Kostas Eleftheriou, a young Greek entrepreneur who lives in London. He and two friends wrote a program in seven days called iSteam, which fogs up the face of an iPhone like a bathroom mirror. They made more than $100,000 in three months.

It is little more than a party trick. When someone swipes a finger across the phone’s surface, iSteam’s pretend moisture is wiped away with a realistic-sounding squeak. When the phone is tipped on its side, droplets of condensation roll as if pulled by gravity. “It’s quite a good illusion,” Mr. Eleftheriou said. “Everyone wants to show their friends.”

The application hit the App Store in late December, and already Mr. Eleftheriou, who is 25, has decided to postpone graduate school and seek his fortune as an iPhone developer. He and his friends Vassilis Samolis and Bill Rappos, both 22, have set up a company called GreatApps and have hired two more developers.

“We don’t want to stop with iSteam,” Mr. Eleftheriou said. “Our next step is to establish ourselves as a big player in the application store.”

Both the iSteam team and Mr. Nicholas were spurred by the success of Steve Demeter, an inspiration for starry-eyed iPhone developers. Mr. Demeter, who is 30, wrote the game called Trism, which involves aligning rows of brightly colored triangles; he released it into the App Store last July and says he made $250,000 in the first two months. He immediately quit his job writing software for Wells Fargo and started his own iPhone game development company, Demiforce.

It doesn’t take much money to write these programs, Mr. Demeter said, and a larger budget doesn’t always mean more success. “Novel concepts that come out of left field are going viral,” he said. “These are the kinds of applications that will endure.”

The mobile frenzy hasn’t gone unnoticed by other major cellphone and software companies. Last week, Research in Motion opened an application store for the BlackBerry. Google recently began selling applications based on Android, its operating system for cellphones. Nokia is in the early stages of opening a store for its handsets, and Microsoft is creating a store for phones running Windows Mobile.

As for Mr. Nicholas, he has sprung for a family vacation to Washington, hired a nanny and founded a company called Naughty Bits Software to keep developing iPhone programs (so far he is the only employee). “Oh, and I bought myself a new laptop,” he said. “I figured I deserved that.”

He is in talks to adapt iShoot to systems other than the iPhone, and says that investors and big video game companies have approached him about financing his sophomore effort. He is also in full-swing inventor mode, working on a new game that he will not describe for fear that another developer might poach it.

“I’m going to milk the gold rush as long as I can,” Mr. Nicholas said. “It’d be foolish not to.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/05/fashion/05iphone.html





Small Company Offers Web-Based Competition for Microsoft Word
Randall Stross

WITHIN Microsoft’s Office group, the calendar on the wall appears to be 1983, the year the company introduced Microsoft Word. The company still expects customers to buy its software applications as products and install and run them on PCs.

Recognition of the Internet has been slow in coming. Microsoft is finally preparing Web versions of its Office suite, though these are intended as supplements, not as replacements. The company maintains that Web versions of a Word or Excel will never match the functionality and responsiveness that software installed on one’s own machine provides.

It may be wrong.

Granted, Microsoft’s largest competitor, Google, has not yet marched up to the bulwarks guarding Microsoft Office and blown a gaping hole into its adversary’s complacency. Google Apps, its Office-like suite, contains an uneven bunch of services. I find Google Calendar far superior to Microsoft Outlook’s calendar, but Google’s word processor, Docs, lacks many features in Word that I rely on.

The best online word processor, however, may be the one from a tiny company, Zoho, a nimble innovator. Zoho Writer is running close enough to Word to imagine that it and other online word processors will be able to do most everything that Word can do, and more.

Zoho Writer handles the basics and provides many advanced functions without breaking a sweat — like the ability to edit a document when page breaks are displayed. Google Docs can’t. Writer works even when one is offline, thanks to open source technology developed by Google, and used by Zoho in its word processor four months before Google used it.

Zoho Writer also provides some esoteric features, like a choice of footnotes or endnotes, with note numbers in superscript, placed in the text. Google Docs does only footnotes and puts in a pound sign as a placeholder. You may never need to create the most complex mathematical equations, but Zoho Writer makes it easy to do so.

Writer is offered free to individual users and to the first 10 users in a business. (So are 9 of Zoho’s 18 other online services at Zoho.com.) And free means free of advertising, too. “We don’t do advertising at all. We don’t believe in advertising,” says Raju Vegesna, a Zoho marketing executive.

Zoho hopes that word will spread and that larger businesses will sign up, willing to pay $50 a year a user for access to the 10 productivity applications, like Writer, and separate monthly fees for business applications.

Microsoft Office comes in various configurations and prices, and Microsoft doesn’t disclose its lowest price for volume purchases. But Office Professional 2007 is available from retailers for about $400.

Zoho is a division of AdventNet, which provides online software services to corporate I.T. departments and is based in Pleasanton, Calif. AdventNet, privately held, says its I.T. software is profitable but doesn’t claim the same for Zoho, which AdventNet created in 2005.

At Microsoft, Chris Capossela, senior vice president in Microsoft’s Business Division who manages its Office product line, explained to me how the company was preparing for “the future of computing — a combination of the best of software and the best of Internet services.” The next version of Office — being prepared for release in 2010 or after, he said — will have three incarnations, beginning with what Microsoft calls the “rich client” (“rich” refers to features) and installed on the user’s PC, and the mobile version for smartphones. Both of those exist today. The third, and new, form will be the Web-based service.

Mr. Capossela sees the Web version of Office as only a stopgap for users who are away from home or office and, in a pinch, must use a machine that isn’t their own. With Office on the Web, “users can do a little bit of work, between classes, or at the airport,” he said.

Asked whether Microsoft was interested in making the Web version as fully featured as the desktop version, he scoffed at the notion that a “browser experience” could be equivalent to a “rich client,” at least without the graphical help of an add-in like Adobe’s Flash.

Adobe’s Web site offers its own free Flash-equipped online word processor, Buzzword. But to my taste, Flash is visual overkill for word processing. Zoho Writer manages perfectly well without Flash.

Mr. Capossela sounded confident when he described the lead that Microsoft enjoys over online challengers like Zoho. “A lot of our competitors have to spend a huge amount of energy copying features that we already have in the Office suite,” he said. “We don’t have that burden to bear.”

Zoho, however, doesn’t seem burdened at all. It has moved well ahead of Word in some areas, such as offering multiple users the ability to edit the same document simultaneously.

Zoho Writer is not completely polished — I lose double-spacing when exporting to Word, and there’s an irksome extra step required to print a clean copy of a final draft, without the browser’s header. In all, though, these are small irritations, balanced by gaining the ability to edit and share documents online effortlessly, in many different ways.

Microsoft estimates that 500 million copies of Office are running on the world’s one billion Windows machines. Those were the easy wins, before the Web was ready to compete against installed software. The next 500 million copies, if won, will require staying ahead of what rivals can accomplish within the unassuming frame of the Web browser.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/05/business/05digi.html





World’s Fastest Broadband at $20 Per Home
Saul Hansell

If you get excited about the prospect of really, really fast broadband Internet service, here’s a statistic that will make heart race. Or your blood boil. Or both.

Pretty much the fastest consumer broadband in the world is the 160-megabit-per-second service offered by J:Com, the largest cable company in Japan. Here’s how much the company had to invest to upgrade its network to provide that speed: $20 per home passed.

The cable modem needed for that speed costs about $60, compared with about $30 for the current generation.

By contrast, Verizon is spending an average of $817 per home passed to wire neighborhoods for its FiOS fiber optic network and another $716 for equipment and labor in each home that subscribes, according to Sanford C. Bernstein & Company.

Those numbers from Japan came from Michael T. Fries, the chief executive of Liberty Global, the American company that operates J:Com.

His larger point: “To me, this just isn’t an expensive capital investment,” he said.

The experience in Japan suggests that the major cable systems in the United States might be able to increase the speed of their broadband service by five to 10 times right away. They might not need to charge much more for it than they do now and they’d still make as much money.

The cable industry here uses the same technology as J:Com. And several vendors said that while the prices Mr. Fries quoted were on the low side, most systems can be upgraded for no more than about $100 per home, including a new modem. Moreover, the monthly cost of bandwidth to connect a home to the Internet is minimal, executives say.

So what’s wrong with this picture in the United States? The cable companies, like Comcast and Cablevision, that are moving quickly to install the fast broadband technology, called Docsis 3, are charging as much as $140 a month for 50 Mbps service. Meanwhile other companies, like Time Warner Cable, are moving much more slowly to upgrade.

Competition, or the lack of it, goes a long way to explaining why the fees are higher in the United States. There is less competition in the United States than in many other countries. Broadband already has the highest profit margins of any product cable companies offer. Like any profit-maximizing business would do, they set prices in relation to other providers and market demand rather than based on costs.

Pricing at Liberty varies widely by market. In Japan, its 160 Mbps service costs 6,000 yen ($60) per month. That’s only $5 a month more than the price of its basic 30 Mbps service. In the Netherlands, meanwhile, it charges 80 euros ($107) for 120 Mbps service and 60 euros ($81) for 60 Mbps. Mr. Fries said that he expected these prices would fall over time.

“Our margins go up,” he said. “But we are delivering more value.”

Cable executives have given several reasons for why many cable systems in the United States are going very slowly in upgrading to Docsis 3. There’s little competition in areas not served by Verizon’s FiOS system, which soon will offer 50 Mbps service. And some argue there isn’t that much demand for super-high speed.

Mr. Fries added another: Fear. Other cable operators, he said, are concerned that not only will prices fall, but that the super-fast service will encourage customers to watch video on the Web and drop their cable service.

The industry is worried that by offering 100 Mbps, they are opening Pandora’s box, he said. Everyone will be able to get video on the Internet, and then competition will bring the price for the broadband down from $80 to $60 to $40.

Aren’t you worried that the prices will fall too? I asked.

“Maybe,” he said very slowly. “We’ll see how it happens. We want to keep it up there for now. It is a premium service.”
http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/0...d-20-per-home/





Microsoft's Latest Ad Attacks Mac Aesthetics, Computing Power
Prince McLean

Continuing its advertising campaign which seeks to promote generic PCs running Windows as more attractive than Macs, Microsoft's latest spot plays up specifications over aesthetics as opposed to just suggesting that PCs are simply cheaper as the previous spot did. However, it ends up making the opposite point instead.

Following Lauren, the latest ad introduces Giampaolo, who says he's looking for portability, battery life, and power. "I'm technically savvy," he says, "I know what I want. I like a computer that allows me to customize." He's shown shopping at Fry's Electronics, where he picks up a unibody MacBook and says, "This is so sexy!"

Giampaolo then explains why he can't buy it, saying, "Macs to me are all about aesthetics more than they are the computing power. I don't want to pay for the brand, I want to pay for the computer."

Of course, it's really Microsoft that's paying for Giampaolo's computer, and Steve Ballmer is not going to pick up the tab for a MacBook. So instead, Giampaolo uses his $1500 budget to ultimately buy an HP Pavilion HDX 16t, which he says has everything he needs.

"That thing is gigantic"

On HP's website, that model starts at $1000. At Fry's, the salesman in the ad points out its typical configuration of $1,100, although HP's "recommended configuration" is $1400, still within Giampaolo's budget. However, it's an odd choice for somebody who wants portability, as the 16" widescreen model he lugs out of Fry's weighs over 7.3 pounds naked, almost twice as much as the "sexy" MacBook that's "all about aesthetics."

HP certainly isn't "all about aesthetics." The cheap plastic body of the HP Pavilion HDX 16t is 1.7 inches thick, nearly twice as bulky as the MacBook. All that size surrounds a large 16" screen with a miserably low density 1366x768 screen resolution. Giampaolo could upgrade to the 1920x1080 option, but that would have bumped him over his artificial $1500 ad budget, even when applying a $200 instant rebate HP offers.

Battery life not so good

"What would have the best battery life, that could still accommodate my needs?" Giampaolo asked while shopping. It sure wasn't what he picked out.

HP rates its built-in battery for less than 3 hours, but reviewers gave it less than two. That's not very good at all for its category. HP also offers a $150 expansion battery that hangs off the back of the already large system to give it twice the battery life. The "sexy" MacBook is rated for 5 hours with a single battery.

"It's a pretty strong contender"

In terms of power, Giampaolo's third primary need, the "recommended configuration" of the HP Pavilion HDX 16t that he apparently purchased ships with a 2.13 GHz Core 2 Duo P7450 paired with 4GB of PC2-5300 DDR2 RAM, which is a slower memory architecture than Apple was shipping in early 2006 MacBooks three years ago.

The latest MacBooks that Giampaolo feared were "all about aesthetics" pair a Core 2 Duo P7350 or P8600 with PC3-8500 DDR3 RAM, delivering a peak transfer rate that's twice as fast as the HP machine Giampaolo selected.

So much for Macs being about "aesthetics more than they are the computing power," or Giampaolo being "technically savvy."

Hopefully, Giampaolo is at least technologically savvy enough to upgrade to the 64-bit version of Windows Vista (or downgrade to the 64-bit version of Windows XP) in order to actually take advantage of that 4GB of RAM, as the standard version of Windows can only actually use about 3GB of it, a technical problem he wouldn't face on the MacBook.

Given that only a fraction of the PC installed base runs a 64-bit version of Windows (Microsoft reported that less than 6% of users hitting its software update servers were running 64-bit Vista last June), there's lots of "technically savvy" PC users with loads of installed RAM their computer can't even use.

And while Giampaolo can upgrade to even more RAM, he can't upgrade his new system to use the faster DDR3 RAM specification used in the MacBook. That would make his system faster overall and allow it to take full advantage of the installed CPU's 1066MHz front side bus, which HP chose to cripple by pairing it with a 533MHz memory architecture to save money and deliver a cheap system for people who don't know what they're really buying as they shop at Fry's for good-sounding GB and MHz numbers rather than focusing on finding a computer that does the things they want it to do.

Giampaolo was distracted by marketing

Of course, with the scant money that he's saving (he could have bought the high end MacBook by matching Microsoft's money with his own $100), Giampaolo will now get to go shopping for software, where he can easily spend several hundred dollars just trying to match the features and usability of the free iLife and Mac OS X tools Apple bundles with the MacBook.

Giampaolo will also have to spend hours of his time installing and running antivirus and adware tools, and stay on the lookout for that Conficker computer worm that Microsoft is warning Windows PC users about on the front page of its corporate website.

The strangest point of this ad is that Giampaolo didn't get the portability, battery life, and power he was looking for, he just ended up with a cheap-appearing machine that obscured its real technical limitations under a flashy layer of misleading, specification-oriented marketing, the very thing he thought he was avoiding with HP: buying a brand rather than a computer. And that's exactly what Microsoft wants people to do: buy its brand rather than a computer that does what they want it to do.
http://www.appleinsider.com/articles...mitations.html





Obesity Risk Reduced With Water Fountains in Schools
Derek Markham

A study of about 3000 children in 32 schools in Germany found that installing water fountains, giving the children refillable water bottles, and using teaching lessons promoting the health benefits of water consumption reduced the risk of being overweight by 31%.

The one year study, published in Pediatrics, weighed 2nd and 3rd graders in socially deprived areas and interviewed them about their water consumption. In schools in the intervention group, water fountains were added and four lessons were presented to the kids about the health benefits of water consumption. Water flow from the fountains was also measured.

Before the study period, there was no statistical difference between the two groups in the prevalence of overweight kids. At the end of the year, after adjusting for the baseline prevalence of being overweight, the authors found a 31% decrease in the risk of obesity in the intervention group.

After the study, researchers found that water consumption in the intervention group had increased by over 7 ounces per child per school day, and the fountains were in steady use throughout the year. No mention was made about food consumption during the period, although no effect was found on soft drink and juice consumption in the intervention group.

While not a magic bullet for keeping kids in a healthy weight range, the study was a positive example of how small changes in daily routine can have a lasting impact on children’s health.
http://ecochildsplay.com/2009/04/04/...ns-in-schools/





Google and Music Labels Bet on Free Downloads in China
David Barboza

Can global music companies make money by giving away songs in China, where piracy is rampant?

They certainly hope so. Last Monday, the world’s biggest record labels, including EMI, the Warner Music Group and Vivendi’s Universal Music, said they would seek to profit here by working with Google and offering free downloads of music to anyone inside China.

Google, which has no plans to offer the service elsewhere, hopes to build traffic and win new advertisers by allowing the Chinese to search for free music on its site.

Record labels say that instead of earning money from each download, they will share advertising revenue with Google’s partner in the deal, a Chinese company called Top100.cn.

The partnership, analysts say, could help determine the future of how valuable content is distributed in China, which has already overtaken the United States as the world’s biggest Internet market.

Until now, China has been a hotbed of online piracy and free downloads of music, film and even television shows.

According to the International Federation of Phonographic Industries, which represents the global record makers, 99 percent of the music downloaded in China violates copyrights.

Lawsuits by major music labels and promises by the Chinese government to crack down on Internet piracy have failed to deter the practices.

But now, the music industry says that, at least in China, it can live with giving away music.

“The level of online advertising in China is quite mature, so we’re willing to try this out,” said Sandy Monteiro, a senior vice president at the Universal Music Group.

The deal creates a powerful tandem — the world’s biggest online search and advertising engine, paired with powerhouses from the music industry —aiming to take on China’s leading search engine, Baidu, whose Web traffic has grown partly because of its links to free, unlicensed music.

Global record labels have sued Baidu, trying to force the company to stop linking to unlicensed sites. But Baidu, which declined to be interviewed for this article, has said it is simply a search engine and does not engage in piracy.

With its popular searches, Baidu has managed to keep far ahead of Google in China, with a search market share approaching 65 percent.

But analysts say Google could be significantly aided by the new music partnership.

“It’s a smart move for Google,” said Ma Xiushan, deputy director general of the China Intellectual Property Society in Beijing. “Google has realized the point: they have to open the access for downloading so that they can compete with Chinese competitors and attract more users.”

Google executives say they acted because a music search function was one of the few elements they did not have in China.

According to government figures, about 84 percent of China’s nearly 300 million Internet users download music over the Web, and most of it is used for cellphone ring tones.

Google hopes that by offering free, high-quality music — giving consumers fewer worries about viruses or damaged tracks — it can cut into Baidu’s lead.

For the music industry, which believes it has lost hundreds of millions of dollars to online piracy, the deal promises to deliver a steady stream of revenue and could also put pressure on Baidu and other Chinese Internet companies to distribute legitimate tracks or risk being locked out of future deals.

Not everyone believes it will work.

“Google’s move is just burning money to compete with Baidu’s dominance,” said Guo Chunlong, founder of yobo.com, a music and entertainment Web site. “Sharing ad revenues with music companies — this business model is not sustainable. How many page views could generate the money both Google and the music companies expect?”

Music executives dispute that. But they say the China deal is not a model for the rest of the world. They say different regions call for different approaches — some that charge for downloads, some that stream music for a single subscription price and some that are supported by advertising.

In China, they decided an advertising-supported model was best.

“China was a curious place,” said Mr. Monteiro at Universal Music. “It was the one market we couldn’t crack. And then Google approached us about this model.”

Erik Zhang, one of the founders of Top100.cn, said advertising-supported free downloads were just the first of several stages in the proposed deal.

The partners say they could broaden offerings to include paid V.I.P. memberships, free concert tickets or backstage passes and other benefits.

But one thing is clear: Google and its partners want to limit this experiment to China.

For instance, the site — which will eventually offer about 1.1 million tracks — is in Chinese, and only Internet addresses based in China can download free music. Could China’s clever pirates download this music free and then swap it or sell it in other parts of the world, possibly undermining the system?

Last week, for example, a user downloaded a music track in China and easily shipped it to a friend in London.

Music producers said customers might try this, but they are trying to put up legal and technical hurdles to such ploys.

“We’ll definitely need to watch it,” Mr. Monteiro, of Universal Music, said.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/06/te...s/06music.html





Micro-Billing, Byte by Byte, Suits the World of Cellphones
Matt Richtel and Bob Tedeschi

As the music, film, television, newspaper, book and video-game industries strain to find a way to thrive in the new digital marketplace, one seems to have figured it all out.

It is that trailblazer known as the phone company.

Consumers are using their mobile phones to download tens of millions of games, songs, ring tones and video programs. And they shell out money for these items, even as they resist paying for similar digital goodies online using their computers.

It is a curious equation: pay for stuff on a tiny, low-resolution screen while getting some of the very same games and video free on a fancy widescreen monitor.

At its annual trade show in Las Vegas last week, the phone industry pushed new software stores, video players, games and content. Their efforts are based on a digital twist on Pavlov: The phone rings and we pay.

“There’s been no expectation that anything would be free,” said David Chamberlain, an analyst with In-Stat, a market research firm. “The telcos have been very careful not to give stuff away.”

By contrast, he said, “a lot of people on the Internet are wondering — why did we let all this stuff go for free?”

It may have to do with each industry’s origins. “Information wants to be free” has long been the rallying cry for many Internet pioneers. As the mythology goes, the designers of the Internet envisioned it as utopian and open — two words rarely used to describe the phone experience.

One example of the stark difference between the phone and the computer is the concept of micropayments. Newspapers and other content producers have examined the method — getting people to pay for content with a nickel here and a dime there — as a possible answer to their revenue problems on the Web.

But the phone industry has had a micropayment system for decades. Ever since the local telephone company charged a customer an extra 35 cents to hear a recorded weather forecast, the phone industry has been charging for content.

Couple that pervasive billing culture with the ability of consumers to get what they want, whenever and wherever they want it (playing Tetris while waiting in line at Starbucks, for example) and you have a powerful alchemy. Piper Jaffray, a market research firm, published a report recently saying it expected consumers to spend $13 billion on downloads to their phones in 2012, up from $2.8 billion this year. The report called Apple’s popular iPhone application store “a tipping point in consumer consumption” over phones.

Apple’s payment model strongly resembles that of the phone industry. A consumer enters his credit card data once, and all subsequent downloads are automatically charged to that account.

By making the process convenient, Apple has been able to sell software applications that, accessed through a computer, would be free. LiveStrong’s calorie-counter app, for example, is free online but a version of it costs $2.99 in the iPhone App store.

But to some consumers, paying on the phone feels different, and more reasonable, than paying online. Sabrina Sanchez of Pleasanton, Calif., a mother of two teenage boys has found herself with mounting bills from downloaded navigation tools and games, like a Star Wars game that turns their iPhones into light sabers.

Ms. Sanchez said she finally started setting down rules in February when her 12-year-old racked up $25 in charges in a month.

“I don’t want him to get used to the instant gratification,” she said. “It’s like a slot machine.”

Ms. Sanchez said she and her children were much more likely to buy things like games on the phone than on the computer. “I have not bought a casual game on the Net. The kids have bought a couple, but not like on the phone.”

Content developers say consumers like the instant gratification of downloading on the go. By contrast, PC users have to go through a few more steps to pay for items online because, most of the time, they must enter credit card information for each purchase.

Research shows that the more steps a person must take to pay, the less likely he is to buy something. Besides, people have simply become used to paying for things on the phone.

One paid service on phones is TV shows, sold through services like MobiTV of Emeryville, Calif., which packages television programming for phones. About 5.5 million people in the United States are paying $10 or more for MobiTV from AT&T, Sprint and Alltel. “People can’t carry around a 48-inch plasma TV,” said Ray DeRenzo, senior vice president of MobiTV.

But there are others who question how much longer consumers will be willing to pay for content on the phone.

Paul Jacobs, the chief executive of Qualcomm, which offers a mobile TV service called MediaFlow, said the company expected before long to start offering broadcast channels free while charging only for premium programming, like cable shows.

Despite the success of paid phone applications, there are thousands of free applications available. One company, called GetJar, offers some 20,000 services, including games and productivity software, and has been getting 33 million downloads a month.

Apple has plenty of free applications too; Skype, which lets you make free calls over the Internet was downloaded one million times in the first 48 hours after it was introduced last week.

Still, providers of content for mobile devices remain happy about their ability to get paid. One is Kinoma, a Palo Alto, Calif., company whose $30 browser software lets mobile phone users surf the Web and organize their music, among other things.

Brian Friedkin, the company’s co-founder, said he had sold “many thousands” of downloads — though they are features that are free on a PC.

“It’s tough to say why mobile users are more willing to pay,” he said. “But it’s great for us.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/06/te...gy/06cell.html





Will the iPhone 3.0 Fuel a Second Gold Rush?
Jenna Wortham

As I reported in Sunday’s Times, the iPhone has been a golden ticket for some developers who have cashed in on the platform with popular applications.

But the chances of hitting the iLotto have grown increasingly slim. As more developers seek their fortune in the glossy curves of the device, the App Store is becoming crowded. Competition is spiking, driving down application prices — and the chances of becoming the next iMillionaire.

Could the iPhone 3.0 change that? Some developers think so.

Apple’s new version of phone software, expected to be released publicly this summer, will allow developers to employ several new ways to monetize content and build new business models beyond mobile advertisements and charging a flat fee per download. In particular, developers will be able to sell subscriptions and allow users to make individual purchases from within the application itself.

Those changes might only benefit professional developers and larger gaming companies like Sega and Electronic Arts with the resources to deliver extras worth paying for, like secret gaming levels and expansion packs, warns Erica Sadun who has authored several books about coding for the iPhone, including one on the newest software changes.

“These are advances that will better benefit the larger developers than the smaller developers,” she said.

But Nicole Lazarro, a game design consultant, described the upgrades as “a big win for developers.”

“Right now, it’s pretty hard to make back your development cost at a $1 per application,” she said. “You have to sell quite a few applications to do that.” With the changes, she said, developers can still entice iPhone owners with a lower upfront price and introduce upgrades and offers within the application that will generate additional revenue over time.

Some independent developers — such as Kostas Eleftheriou, one of the creators behind iSteam, a nifty digital parlor trick that fogs up the face of an iPhone like a bathroom mirror — think the upgrade will spur a new wave of creativity.

“There will be a sudden storm of apps that were not possible before,” he said, referring to the addition of peer-to-peer networking, multimedia messaging and cut-and-paste functionality. “The new features will be available for everyone, not just big companies.”
http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/0...-gold-rush/?hp





A.P. Seeks to Rein in Sites Using Its Content
Richard Pérez-Peña

Taking aim at the way news is spread across the Internet, The Associated Press said on Monday that Web sites that used the work of news organizations must obtain permission and share revenue with them, and that it would take legal action against those that did not.

A.P. executives said they were concerned about a variety of news forums around the Web, including major search engines like Google and Yahoo and aggregators like the Drudge Report that link to news articles, smaller sites that sometimes reproduce articles whole, and companies that sell packaged news feeds.

They said they did not want to stop the appearance of articles around the Web, but to exercise some control over the practice and to profit from it.

The group’s new stance applies to thousands of news organizations whose work is distributed by The A.P., as well as its own material, but the debate about unauthorized use has focused on newspapers, which are in serious financial trouble, and which own The A.P. The policies were adopted by the A.P. board, composed mostly of newspaper industry executives.

The A.P. will “work with portals and other partners who legally license our content” and will “seek legal and legislative remedies against those who don’t,” the A.P. chairman, William Dean Singleton, said Monday in a speech at the group’s annual meeting, in San Diego. “We can no longer stand by and watch others walk off with our work under misguided legal theories.”

News aggregators and search companies have long asserted that collecting snippets of articles — usually headlines and a sentence or two — is allowed under the legal doctrine of “fair use.” News organizations have been reluctant to test that idea in court, and it is still not clear whether The A.P. is willing to test the fair use doctrine.

“This is not about defining fair use,” said Sue A. Cross, a senior vice president of the group, who added several times during an interview that news organizations want to work with the aggregators, not against them. “There’s a bigger economic issue at stake here that we’re trying to tackle.”

But the details remain to be worked out, she said, including how to limit use of articles and how to share revenue. When asked if The A.P. would require a licensing agreement before a search engine could show specific material, Ms. Cross said, “that could be an element of it,” but added, “it’s not that formed.”

One goal of The A.P. and its members, she said, is to make sure that the top search engine results for news are “the original source or the most authoritative source,” not a site that copied or paraphrased the work.

The A.P. will also pursue sites that reproduce large parts of articles, rather than using brief links, and it is developing a system to track articles online and determine whether they were used legally.

Neither Mr. Singleton nor a statement released by The A.P. mentioned any adversary by name. But many news executives, including some at The A.P., have voiced concern that their work has become a source of revenue for Google and other sites that can sell search terms or ads on pages that turn up articles.

At a time when newspaper revenue is collapsing and some papers are closing, the prospect of a share of revenue from Yahoo or Google is more tempting than ever. But executives at some news organizations have called the ire at the search engines misguided, saying that much of their own Web traffic arrives through links on search pages.

“We believe search engines are of real benefit to newspapers, driving valuable traffic to their Web sites and connecting them with new readers around the world,” said Gabriel Stricker, a Google spokesman. “We believe that both Google Web Search and Google News are fully consistent with copyright law — we simply link users to the site at which the news story appears.”

Mario Ruiz, a spokesman for Huffington Post, said that the site is an A.P. client, and “we pay for everything we use of theirs.” He declined to address the idea of paying for links to other news organizations.

In essence, The A.P. has taken on the role of acting as a representative for the entire industry, particularly the newspapers — including The New York Times and virtually all large newspapers — that are the group’s owners. Some owners have rebelled against The A.P. in the last year, protesting that it charges them too much.

“The A.P. is trying to assert its value to the member newspapers,” by shifting the industry discussion “from fair use to fair share,” said Ken Doctor, an analyst at Outsell, a media research firm.

The A.P. and other wire services have licensing agreements with Google, Yahoo and others, for some of their content to appear on those sites’ news pages, while newspapers generally do not. But general Web searches on those sites often turn up wire service material that is not covered by the agreements.

In parts of Europe, newspapers have gone further in trying to block unauthorized use of their work online. In 2007, a Belgian court blocked Google from using articles from some newspapers in that country, and Danish newspapers warned Google away from using their material without first reaching some kind of agreement. Several days ago, the British newspaper industry asked the government to intervene on its behalf to force Google to stop using newspaper articles without paying for them.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/07/bu...a/07paper.html





A.P. Exec Doesn’t Know It Has A YouTube Channel: Threatens Affiliate For Embedding Videos
Erick Schonfeld

Here is another great moment in A.P. history. In its quest to become the RIAA of the newspaper industry, the A.P.’s executives and lawyers are beginning to match their counterparts in the music industry for cluelessness. A country radio station in Tennessee, WTNQ-FM, received a cease-and-desist letter from an A.P. vice president of affiliate relations for posting videos from the A.P.’s official Youtube channel on its Website.

You cannot make this stuff up. Forget for a moment that WTNQ is itself an A.P. affiliate and that the A.P. shouldn’t be harassing its own members. Apparently, nobody told the A.P. executive that the august news organization even has a YouTube channel which the A.P. itself controls, and that someone at the A.P. decided that it is probably a good idea to turn on the video embedding function on so that its videos can spread virally across the Web, along with the ads in the videos.

Frank Strovel, an employee at the radio station who tried to talk some sense into the A.P. executive Twittered yesterday:

I was on the phone arguing w/ AP today. We were embedding their YouTube vids on our station’s site. We’re an AP affiliate.

And then added:

They asked us to taken them down. I asked, “Why do you have a YouTube page w/ embed codes for websites?” Still… they said NO.

The story was picked up by the Knoxville News, and then by a local video producer Christian Grantham, who captured the following Skype interview with Strovel in the video below (which is not an A.P. video, so I am going to embed it). Strovel notes that the A.P. accused the station of “stealing their licensed content.” He sounds flumoxed, as he should be. This back and forth during the interview says it all:

Strovel: And we’re an A.P. affiliate for crying out loud! I stumped him on that one. . . . What is really shocking is that they were shocked that they’ve got a YouTube channel that people are embedding on their Websites. He seemed shocked by that. ‘Oh, I am going to have to look into that” is what he told me.

Grantham: What an idiot!

Strovel: I know, I know.

Strovel had to pull down all the videos from his Website.
http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/04/08...edding-videos/





Fox News Columnist Pays Big Price for Reviewing a Pirated Movie
Brooks Barnes

Roger Friedman, an entertainment columnist for FoxNews.com, discovered over the weekend just what Rupert Murdoch means by “zero tolerance” when it comes to movie piracy.

On Friday, the film studio 20th Century Fox — owned by the News Corporation, the media conglomerate ruled by Mr. Murdoch — became angry after reading Mr. Friedman’s latest column. (Movie bloggers had started opining about it late Thursday, alerting the studio.) The subject was “X-Men Origins: Wolverine,” a big-budget movie that was leaked in unfinished form on the Web last week.

Mr. Friedman posted a minireview, adding, “It took really less than seconds to start playing it all right onto my computer.”

The film studio, which enlisted the F.B.I. last week to hunt the pirate, put out a statement calling Mr. Friedman’s column “reprehensible,” among other things. Then the News Corporation weighed in with its own statement, saying it asked had Fox News to remove the column from its Web site. (It did.)

Over the weekend, the Web site Deadline Hollywood Daily reported that Mr. Friedman had been dismissed. Sure enough, on Sunday came a revised statement from the News Corporation. “When we advised Fox News of the facts,” the statement said, “they promptly terminated Mr. Friedman.”

Interestingly, Fox News has been relatively silent. In a statement released on Sunday, the network said, “This is an internal matter that we aren’t prepared to discuss at this time.”

Efforts to reach Mr. Friedman were unsuccessful.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/06/bu...dia/06fox.html





Whole-Body Scans Pass First Airport Tests
Joe Sharkey

IN a shift, the Transportation Security Administration plans to replace the walk-through metal detectors at airport checkpoints with whole-body imaging machines — the kind that provide an image of the naked body.

Initially, the machines were supposed to be used only on passengers who set off the metal detectors, to provide them with an option to the customary secondary physical pat-downs and inspections by electronic wand.

But Robin Kane, the agency’s acting chief technology officer, said that the initial results from pilot tests at some checkpoints at 19 airports in the United States had been so good that the idea of using the machines as the standard checkpoint detectors made sense. Those results included, he said, positive feedback from passengers.

The plan now is that all passengers will “go through the whole-body imager instead of the walk-through metal detector,” he said.

“We’re just finishing some piloting in six airports in the primary screening position,” he said. Assuming tests continue to be positive, the machines will eventually be used at most domestic airports.

Still, the use of the equipment has its critics. Bruce Schneier, a security technology consultant, said the body-imaging machines are the equivalent of “a physically invasive strip-search.”

As to the question of additional X-ray exposure, the agency said the machines emit X-ray doses “equivalent to the ambient radiation received in two minutes of airplane flight.”

In interviews, agency officials stressed that the technology remained in a test phase. They said that they expected initial contracts to produce the machines to be awarded this summer and that passengers will start seeing the machines at some checkpoints soon afterward. They had no timetable for when the machines would be installed at most airports.

The machines will cost about $100,000 to $170,000 each, depending on the model. They are being developed by the agency as part of an ambitious technology initiative, which also includes advanced X-ray systems for inspecting carry-on bags for weapons and other contraband.

That new X-ray technology may be capable of electronically identifying explosive chemicals, allowing the agency to drop the much-disliked rule that restricts passengers to carrying on liquids or gels solely in containers holding 3.4 ounces or less, packed in a single quart-size zip-top plastic bag.

Passengers undoubtedly would welcome that advance. It is far less clear what the reaction will be once people realize they will be asked to pose in a machine that transmits a naked body image to a screener who, the agency says, is in a “remote location” and “unable to associate the image with the passenger being screened.”

In the airports where the whole-body imaging machines are being tested, less than 2 percent of passengers presented with the option of using them are choosing not to, Mr. Kane said.

The development of these machines has been widely known for years. But until now it was assumed that the machines would be used only as an option for the relatively small number of passengers chosen for secondary inspections. The machines’ excellent performance changed the agenda, Mr. Kane said.

“My first reaction is that it will slow down the lines,” Mr. Schneier, the security technology consultant and a longtime agency critic, said Monday.

“It’s almost like an M.R.I. scan,” he said. “You stand there and hear the machine whirr around you for a few seconds and it’s done. But that’s still a lot longer than walking through the arch and seeing if you beep.”

Mr. Kane said that the machines, in tests, have moved people through at about the same rate as the metal detectors.

“It’s very, very quick; the scan is about two seconds,” said Sterling Payne, an agency spokeswoman. “They’ll tell you the position to stand in, there’s the quick scan, and then you step out of the machine and wait for the resolution, which happens in a separate room in another part of the checkpoint.”

Or as Domenic Bianchini, the agency’s acting general manager for passenger screening, described it: “It looks very closely for anomalies. If there’s something on the body that doesn’t look like it should be there, that’s the red flag to the operator.”

The agency says that the images can be adjusted to distort faces and private body parts. The images, which have been described as photolike, will not be stored, and current machines do not have the capability to do so, Ms. Payne said.

Mr. Schneier said he was not so sure. “How do we know they’re not going to be storing those images?” he asked. “We’re taking their word for it.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/07/business/07road.html





Leaked HP Memo Details XP Reprieve Until 2010, Report Says

Microsoft admits it is 'broadening the options' for Windows downgrades
Gregg Keizer

Microsoft Corp. acknowledged today that it has "broadened the options" for PC makers to continue offering the eight-year-old Windows XP as a downgrade from Vista, and potentially from the upcoming Windows 7.

However, the company would not confirm specific reports that Hewlett-Packard Co. has been given the green light to sell new PCs with Windows XP Professional preinstalled through the end of April 2010.

"Based on feedback, Microsoft is further broadening the options provided to Direct OEMs to help customers facilitate End User downgrade rights included in the product license terms of a new system with either Windows Vista Business or Windows Vista Ultimate," said a Microsoft spokeswoman in an e-mail. "This option is designed to help Direct OEMs further support customers, primarily small business customers, looking for Windows XP Professional due to application compatibility concerns."

On Saturday, AppleInsider reported that Microsoft had given HP the OK to offer Windows XP as a downgrade through April 30, 2010.

"Downgrade" describes the Windows licensing rights that allow users -- and, in their stead, computer makers -- to install Windows XP Professional, while also providing media for Vista for a possible upgrade later. In effect, the license for the newer Windows -- Vista -- is transferred to the older edition, XP.

Microsoft allows owners of only Vista Business and Vista Ultimate -- the two highest-priced editions -- to downgrade to XP.

Windows XP went into semi-retirement in June 2008, when Microsoft stopped selling it at retail and withdrew Windows XP Home from use on all but netbooks, though it allowed XP Professional to be installed as a Vista downgrade. Since then, Microsoft has extended the final date it will sell XP Professional install media to large computer makers and smaller systems builders to July 31, 2009, and May 30, 2009, respectively.

Today, Microsoft denied that it had extended the life span of Windows XP, and intimated that those rights were built into the newer operating system -- in this case, Vista -- and did not expire at some arbitrary date. "End User downgrade rights are a right in the end user license for Windows Vista Business and Ultimate products, and therefore remain in effect for the life of the product, so this change does not represent an extension," the Microsoft spokeswoman said.

However, the company did not answer questions about whether it was extending the availability of XP media, a crucial factor for OEMs, which must have those installation or restore discs to include with the downgraded PC. When Microsoft said last October that it had extended media availability another six months, through July 2009, a spokeswoman had stressed the importance of media availability in downgrade scenarios. "The [downgrade] rights don't go away. It's all about having the media on hand," she said then.

The internal HP memo cited by AppleInsider also claimed that Microsoft would let computer makers downgrade new PCs from the next operating system, Windows 7.

"Microsoft will allow PC OEMs to structure similar downgrade OS SKUs for Win 7 Professional once available," the memorandum read, according to AppleInsider. You can anticipate that business desktops, notebooks and workstations will take advantage of this with the release of Win 7 in the October timeframe to allow our customers maximum headroom as they transition away from XP Pro OS."

According to the HP communique, Microsoft will also discontinue the downgrade from Windows 7 Professional to XP Professional on April 30, 2010.

In a reply to follow-up questions, the Microsoft spokesman denied that any termination date had been set for Windows 7 downgrades, but she implicitly acknowledged that they would be available for at least a time. "No dates have been announced for the end of Windows 7 downgrade right facilitation to Windows XP," she said.

If the HP memo is accurate, Windows XP will be available for more than a year after Microsoft shifts the aging operating system out of what it calls mainstream support and into the more limited extended-support phase. Windows XP will drop out of mainstream support April 14.

HP did not immediately reply to a request for comment on the XP extension.
http://www.computerworld.com/action/...icleId=9131191





Windows XP Support Runs Out Next Week
Daniel Robinson

Windows XP will pass another milestone on the road to retirement next week when Microsoft withdraws mainstream support for the operating system..
While the company said that it will continue to provide free security fixes for XP until 2014, any future bugs found in the platform will not be fixed unless customers pay for additional support.

Mainstream support for XP will end on 14 April 2009, over seven years after the operating system originally shipped.

However, the passing of the deadline will place Microsoft in the unusual position of no longer offering mainstream support for its most widely used product. Windows XP accounts for about 63 per cent of all internet connected computers, according to March 2009 statistics from Hitslink, while Windows Vista makes up about 24 per cent.

Windows XP also continues to be sold with low-cost mini laptops, otherwise known as netbooks, as Vista is too heavy on system resources for this level of hardware.

The key message, according to Microsoft, is that the company will continue to provide security support for XP users.

"We will provide critical security fixes via Windows Update for all editions of XP until 2014," said Laurence Painell, Windows marketing manager at Microsoft UK.

Microsoft's mainstream support includes problem resolution over the phone, and covers fixes for security and non-security related issues such as bugs and requests for changes.

Once Windows XP moves out of the mainstream support phase, customers will need an extended support contract with Microsoft or one of its channel partners to address any issues not related to security.

With a platform as mature as XP, this is unlikely to prove an issue, according to Microsoft.

"XP has been out a long time, so we would hope that there are not many issues that would require that level of support," said Painell.

Gartner analyst Michael Silver agreed, adding that he had not spoken to any companies planning to pay for extended support.

"The only thing extended support buys you is creation of new non-security fixes, at a hefty fee for each one. After all these years, most people figure that most of the functional bugs [in XP] are already worked out," he said.

In the past, most customers would already have moved to a newer platform before this deadline arrived. But because there was such a long gap between XP and Vista, customers have had only a couple of years to make the transition.

Many customers have also chosen to skip Vista and go straight to Windows 7, once this becomes available. Microsoft said that companies now have an opportunity to look at their options for a transition away from XP.

"Windows 7 is built on the same core architecture as Vista, and we provide a number of tools and applications to help companies understand any problems they might face," said Painell. He reiterated that customers can use Vista or the Windows 7 beta as test platforms for planning a migration to the forthcoming platform.

Meanwhile, Microsoft revealed that, while Windows 7 users will be able to downgrade to Windows XP, the reverse will not be true.

Microsoft said in its Engineering Windows 7 blog that XP users will have to perform a full install.

"There are simply too many changes in how PCs have been configured (applets, hardware support, driver model etc) that having all of that support carry forth to Windows 7 would not be nearly as high quality as a clean install," the blog entry said.
http://www.pcauthority.com.au/News/1...next-week.aspx





Government to Go it Alone On FTTH NBN
Phil Sweeney

Kevin Rudd has announced that the NBN tender process has been terminated, and that the government will go it alone on a new $43 billion broadband network.

The new wholesale-only network will connect 90% of homes with fibre to the home and will offer 100Mbit/s, with "next-generation" wireless and "third-generation" satellites to cover the remaining population. The network will be "open access" so retail ISPs can build their own products to sell to businesses and consumers.

"We believe that fast broadband is absolutely essential for our nation's future", he said at a press conference outside Parliament House today.

"The Government has announced it will establish a new company that will invest up to $43 billion over eight years to build and operate a National Broadband Network delivering superfast broadband to Australian homes and workplaces", said an announcement on the DBCDE website.

Calling it, the "single largest infrastructure decision in Australia's history", Rudd said the project would employ up to 37,000 people a year and help stimulate the Australian economy. Private industry would contribute up to 49% of the funds, and the government would sell the company after operating it for 5 years, he said.

The tender process was cancelled as "none of the national proposals offered value for money". "The Panel noted the rapid deterioration of the global economy had a significant impact on the process", it said.

Senator Conroy said that the Tasmanian Government's proposal had merit and that "fast-track" negotiations will occur to get a Tasmanian roll-out started as early as July.

The rest of the country will have to wait for an "implementation study to determine the operating arrangements, detailed network design, ways to attract private sector investment – for roll-out early 2010".

A consultative process will occur to determine a more effective telecommunications regulatory framework which will also cover the new broadband network.

• DBCDE announcement

http://www.whirlpool.net.au/news/?id=1843&show=replies





U2 blames Apple for Switch to BlackBerry

Apple's tendencies for tight control of its products ultimately drove U2 to abandon the company for sponsorship in favor of Research in Motion's BlackBerries, the music group's frontman Bono is now known to have said. In a recent conversation with Toronto DJ Alan Cross that was mentioned to the Globe and Mail, the artist revealed that U2 had approached Apple for designing products but had been rejected, leading the band to switch to RIM when it became clear it could have a more direct hand in final products.

"[RIM] is going to give us what Apple wouldn't -- access to their labs and their people so we can do something really spectacular," Bono said.

Neither RIM nor U2 has said specifically what will be involved in the collaboration beyond RIM helping to finance U2's latest tour, though it's reportedly "not far off" that custom software will be involved.

The news is a symbolic blow to Apple, which from 2004 through 2006 regularly sold U2 Edition iPods that had special colors and engravings as well as discounted or free downloads of U2 music and videos. U2 Edition sales stopped with the release of the first iPod classic, and the company's only immediate connections to U2 are its sales of (Product) Red iPod nano and shuffle models, which contribute to the anti-AIDS charity co-founded by Bono.

Since Steve Jobs' return to Apple as CEO, his company has typically refused to outsource or otherwise collaborate on hardware or software design with outside parties, instead preferring to acquire companies or otherwise keep designs to itself. RIM largely controls its own designs as well but has often relinquished some authority to other firms, such as its willingness to let carriers customize their firmware and the software offered on BlackBerry App World.
http://www.electronista.com/articles...le.for.switch/





Obama Administration Says Government Abuses are 'State Secrets' Beyond Judicial Scrutiny

The Obama administration's argument in February that even some of the worst government abuses are "state secrets" beyond the reach of the courts proves to be no temporary flashback to the Bush era. In a court filing last week, the Justice Department reiterated that argument, demonstrating that, in many ways, not much has changed just because the White House is under new management.

In the case of Jewel v. NSA, the Electronic Frontier Foundation is suing the federal government over widespread illegal surveillance of Americans' phone calls and other communication. In the case, former AT&T technician Mark Klein has testified that his old employer actually routs Internet traffic through a specific facility so that government spooks have easy access.

Summary judgment for the Government on all of plaintiffs’ remaining claims against all parties is required because information necessary to litigate plaintiffs’ claims is properly subject to and excluded from use in this case by the state secrets privilege."

In response, the federal government, under first President George W. Bush, and now President Barack Obama, argues that the merits of the case don't matter, because the government's conduct is beyond the reach of the courts. According to a motion to dismiss filed on April 3 (PDF):

The grounds for this motion are that the Court lacks subject matter jurisdiction with respect to plaintiffs’ statutory claims against the United States because Congress has not waived sovereign immunity, and summary judgment for the Government on all of plaintiffs’ remaining claims against all parties (including any claims not dismissed for lack of jurisdiction) is required because information necessary to litigate plaintiffs’ claims is properly subject to and excluded from use in this case by the state secrets privilege and related statutory privileges.

The government is effectively arguing that it can act with impunity because the evidence that the government has misbehaved is a secret that can't be used to seek to demonstrate violations of the law or the Constitution and to seek redress.

Did the feds abuse your rights? Too bad, they say, because you won't be allowed to prove it in court.

That's a remarkably pernicious argument, since it effectively puts government action beyond scrutiny. Erwin Chemerinsky, dean of the law school at the University of California-Irvine, describes “state secrets” as a sort of "talismanic phrase" used to muzzle challenges to government authority without going through the bother of actually debating the merits or legality of particular actions and policies.

The Obama administration didn't create the state secrets doctrine, of course. The idea was concocted in the mid-twentieth century and then enthusiastically invoked under the Bush administration to put legally dubious actions beyond challenge by lawsuits or judicial review.

The Obama administration is now picking up where the Bush administration left off, demonstrating an apparent continuity in attitudes toward executive power from the last White House occupant to the current one.

If the courts let the state secrets argument stand, the end result may be that many constitutional and legal protections are reduced to empty words, unenforceable in the courts.
http://www.examiner.com/x-536-Civil-...crets-position





Put Enough Cameras On the Police and Even the Serially Deferential Wake Up
Marina Hyde

Who watches the watchmen? Or, to translate Juvenal another way: who polices the police? The answer this week was a New York fund manager, of all unlikely superheroes, who provided the Guardian with key footage of the minutes leading up to the death of Ian Tomlinson during the G20 protests in London. The man came forward because "it was clear the family were not getting any answers".

If there is anything to feel optimistic about today, perhaps it is the hope that we are witnessing the flowering of an effective inverse surveillance society. Inverse surveillance is a branch of sousveillance, the term coined by University of Toronto professor Steve Mann, and it emphasises "watchful vigilance from underneath", by citizens, of those who survey and control them.

Not that turning our cameras on those who train theirs on us is without risk. Indeed, one might judge it fairly miraculous that the man was not forcibly disarmed of his camera phone, given that it is now illegal to photograph police who may be engaged in activity connected to counterterrorism. And as we know, everything from escorting Beyoncé to parking on a double yellow while you nip in to Greggs for an iced bun can now be justified with that blight of a modern excuse - "security reasons".

Yet it will by now have dawned on even the most dimwitted Met officer that it is increasingly impossible for them to control the flow of information about their activities - to kettle it, if you will - no matter how big their army of press officers putting out misleading information in the immediate aftermath of any event may be.

Did the Met genuinely think they could prevent the emergence of a far more joined-up picture of Tomlinson's passage through the City of London that afternoon, much as they thought they could suppress the details about Jean Charles de Menezes's tragic final journey? If so, their naivety is staggering.

Yet it's odd how often it has been the little ways in which the state attempts to keep tabs on our behaviour - tracking devices on wheelie bins and the like - that have most alienated those who previously bowed to authority. Also captured on film and published yesterday was an amusingly British act of defiance - a pyjama-clad householder blocking dustmen into his road by standing in their path, after they had declined to empty his neighbour's bin of five pebbles.

As Tomlinson's death shows, though, it's not all Victor Meldrew-meets-Passport-to-Pimlico larks. Indeed it is something of a shame that certain elements of society have only recently woken up to the possibility that the police might not be the faultless, justice-dispensing force of establishment myth, and only because - in the cases of De Menezes and Tomlinson - they have seen it with their own eyes, or at least enough of it to provoke a suspicion that was hitherto absent.

The serially deferential dismissed the Blair Peach outcry as lefty agitating. They did not make a point of seeing Injustice, the brilliant and desperately depressing 2001 documentary about deaths in police custody, of which at the time there had been 1,000 in the previous 30 years, without a single conviction.

But they are undeniably more cynical and inquisitive now, and it is interesting that for many previously deferential Brits, the Countryside Alliance march a year later, in 2002, was such a watershed. Here, peaceful marchers who considered themselves fine, upstanding members of law-abiding communities, were genuinely shocked and appalled at the manner in which they felt police treated them during the demonstration.

It is hard to say whether this sea change in the amount of trust people are willing to put in their alleged protectors will be reflected in the judgments of those with the power to call those protectors to account. The De Menezes jury chose notably to believe the civilian witnesses who countered the police line and said that officers had not shouted "armed police" before they shot.

Then again, the Independent Police Complaints Commission had apparently failed to interview the police officer who attacked Tomlinson 48 hours after he had come forward, with anonymous Met sources briefing that the man had not known it was him till he saw the footage, and collapsed upon realising it was. It is up to you how you interpret that memory hole. Maybe the attack was merely a forgettable instant in a trying afternoon. Maybe he had seen so many lone men walking with their hands in their pockets truncheoned that day that his own crack of the baton didn't stick in the mind.

Either way, perhaps the IPCC should interview the officer no matter what sort of funk he is in. After all, from what little we know of him, he would surely agree that there are no excuses for dawdling.

But we have no means of chivvying the IPCC along, alas - of giving them a metaphorical shove in the back, or a notional truncheoning. So in the meantime, let's note that a day which started out protesting about a very different them-and-us situation has reminded us that there is more than one attritional show in town. And sometimes, New York fund managers are on our side.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisf...ce-marina-hyde





Germany Muzzles WikiLeaks

On April 9th 2009, the internet domain registration for the investigative journalism site Wikileaks.de was suspended without notice by Germany's registration authority DENIC.

The action comes two weeks after the house of the German WikiLeaks domain sponsor, Theodor Reppe, was searched by German authorities. Police documentation shows that the March 24, 2009 raid was triggered by WikiLeaks' publication of Australia's proposed secret internet censorship list. The Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) told Australian journalists that they did not request the intervention of the German government.

The publication of the Australian list exposed the blacklisting of many harmless or political sites and changed the nature of the censorship debate in Australia. The Australian government's mandatory internet censorship proposal is now not expected to pass the Australian senate.

On March 25 the German cabinet finalized its own proposal to introduce a nation-wide internet censorship system. Australia and Germany are the only Western democracies publicly considering such a mandatory censorship scheme.

While last week German police claimed to the news magazine Der Spiegel that they had been ignorant about WikiLeaks' role as an international press organization, this "excuse" is surely no longer valid. Despite being questioned by the press, German authorities have still not contacted WikiLeaks or its publishers to resolve the issue, or indeed, at all. The lack of contact is inexcusable.

The situation is similar to the legal dispute between WikiLeaks and the Swiss bank Julius Baer last year. WikiLeaks had published documents exposing hundreds of millions dollars hidden by Baer under Cayman Islands trusts. That case saw the "wikileaks.org" domain temporarily disabled by a California judge following an ex-parte hearing by the bank. Publishing continued on other WikiLeaks domains and following representations by WikiLeaks lawyers and 20 major media and civil liberties organizations, including the American Civil Liberties Union, the Reporters Committee for the Freedom of the Press, the EFF, the Associated Press and Public Citizen, the judge admitted his error and rescinded his orders.

Like the Swiss bank, German authorities have attempted to silence an entire press outlet over their objection to a handful of documents or articles.

WikiLeaks continues publishing on its other (non-German) domains. If the German cabinet's censorship proposal passes the Bundestag, presumably those WikiLeaks domains would be added to Germany's secret blacklist.

Germany and China are now the only two countries currently censoring a WikiLeaks domain.

We are investigating the matter and expect to have further updates soon.

To assist us in our fight against censorship in Germany and elsewhere you can make a donation.
http://wikileaks.org/wiki/Germany_muzzles_Wikileaks





Beatles Fans Await Re-Releases
Allan Kozinn

Finally. After watching the Beatles’ company, Apple Corps, devote the last few years to developing a site-specific show in Las Vegas, a video game and a line of pricey memorabilia, Beatles fans are finally getting something they’ve been demanding for at least the last decade: sonically upgraded reissues of the group’s original British albums, in both stereo and mono. Apple Corps and EMI announced on Tuesday that the much-postponed remasters would be released both on individual stereo CDs and in two boxed sets — one stereo, the other mono — on Sept. 9, the same day the Beatles edition of Rock Band, the music video game, is scheduled for release.

Downloadable versions of this music, however, remain in limbo. In December Paul McCartney said that they were being held up because of a dispute between Apple Corps and EMI. More recently, Dhani Harrison, George Harrison’s son, suggested that Apple Corps was dissatisfied with the price Apple, the computer company, was charging for iTunes downloads, and hinted that the Beatles might sell digital downloads through a system of their own. That could possibly be resolved by September as well.

Like the original set of Beatles CDs, released in 1987 and not upgraded since, the reissue series will include only the 12 albums the Beatles released in Britain between 1963 and 1970, from “Please Please Me” through “Let It Be,” along with “Magical Mystery Tour” — an American album that was originally released as a two-EP set in England — and the two-CD “Past Masters” compilation of the group’s non-album singles. All told, the set includes 16 CDs. (Beatles projects are typically tightly guarded; few outside EMI have heard the remasters yet.) Compilations released since 1987, including the “Beatles Anthology” series, “The Beatles Live at the BBC,” “Yellow Submarine Songtrack,” “1” and “Love,” the soundtrack for the Cirque du Soleil show in Las Vegas, are not included in the new series. Nor are the two “Capitol Albums” boxed sets, which presented several of the Beatles’ albums in the versions released in the United States.

The main reason collectors have been so intent on reissues of music they already own is that the 1987 CDs, like many discs released in the early years of the format, sound comparatively harsh and brittle by today’s standards. Since then, improvements in digital sound technology and remastering equipment have yielded a richer, smoother sound, and most of the major groups and artists from the 1960s — from Bob Dylan, the Byrds and Simon and Garfunkel to the Rolling Stones and Pink Floyd — have had their catalogs refurbished at least once since their first appearance on CD. And the Beatles’ own recent releases, including the “Capitol Albums” and “Love” discs, showed that the band’s recordings could sound vastly better — warmer and with far greater presence — than they do on the 1987 discs.

Even so, remastering can be a dicey business: noise-reduction techniques can slice away the high frequencies of a recording, dulling the treble sound (in return for eliminating tape hiss). EMI’s remastering team apparently took this into consideration: the company’s production notes mention that fewer than five of the 525 minutes of music were subjected to noise reduction. The new transfers were done using a high-resolution Pro Tools system, and each track was compared with both its vinyl LP and 1987 CD incarnations.

This is largely what collectors have been looking for. But Beatles fans are an exacting bunch, and the release plan gives them some cause for complaint as well. The stereo CDs include video documentaries, directed by Bob Smeaton (“The Beatles Anthology”), about the making of each album. But these will be available only on early pressings, and there are otherwise no bonus tracks, outtakes or extras.

Moreover, the group’s first seven albums (through “Revolver”) include only about 25 minutes of music. The mono and stereo versions of each — collectors prize both because of anomalies like different vocal takes, instrumental lines or effects — could have fit on a single CD with room to spare. In many cases, the contemporaneous singles could have fit as well, making the “Past Masters” set superfluous.

The mono boxed set, in fact, demonstrates this. Because the stereo CDs will include George Martin’s 1987 remixes of “Help!” and “Rubber Soul” — mixes that have been the subject of much criticism and debate among Beatles fanatics — the mono CDs of those albums will include both the mono and the original 1965 stereo mixes of those albums.

Those are, however, available only in the mono boxed set, which includes the 10 albums (through “The Beatles,” popularly known as the “White Album”) that were mixed separately for mono and stereo in the ’60s, as well as a mono equivalent of “Past Masters.” (An 11th album, “Yellow Submarine,” was also released in mono, but the mono version was just a folded down version of the stereo mix.) The stereo boxed set has a minor attraction as well: the documentaries included on the individual discs are offered here on a separate DVD, a format many collectors will prefer. A spokesman for Apple Corps said that prices for the CD’s had not yet been set.

Having spent years fantasizing about the ideal reissue series, collectors will also be disappointed about the high-tech opportunities that Apple Corps and EMI did not take. Although many collectors insist that only the ’60s original mono and stereo mixes will do, others, impressed with some of the remixes on the “Yellow Submarine Songtrack” — the version of “Nowhere Man” with centered vocals, for example — had been hoping EMI’s engineers would return to the original multi-track session tapes and use the flexibility of today’s equipment to prepare fresh mixes. And the 5.1 surround sound mixes included on “The Beatles Anthology” DVDs and the “Love” album had collectors hoping that EMI would release all the original albums in surround.

The wildest dreamers hoped the reissues would be all things to all collectors: Blue-Ray DVDs, for example, with the original mono and stereo mixes, a surround mix and a raft of outtakes.

But collectors can look on the bright side: the reissues are imminent, but there is still so much to continue to clamor for. That still elusive 27-minute outtake of “Helter Skelter,” anyone?
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/08/ar...08beat.html?hp





Swedish National Library Reported for Child Porn

The Swedish national library will on Monday afternoon be reported to the police for the possession and distribution of child pornography.

The police report will be made by two Swedish child protection groups, Hand i Hand (literally: hand in hand) and the Föreningen Anhöriga Till Sexuellt Utnyttjade Barn (ATSUB - The Association of Relatives to Sexually-abused Children).

Birgitta Holmberg at ATSUB told The Local on Monday that the purpose of the police report is two-fold.

Firstly to put a stop to the distribution of the National Library's collection of child pornography, and secondly to expose how much of the library's collection has been copied.

"We want the report to demonstrate that the same laws apply for all regardless of whether it is a state institution," Holmberg said.

The existence of the National Library's collection of child pornography emerged after a visit by the writer Valentin Bart in November 2008.

Bart, who spent a year working in a pornographic book shop in central Stockholm in the 1970s, told The Local that he wanted to see if the law which requires the library to archive a copy of everything printed in Sweden, also applied to child pornography.

He found that not only did the library hold large quantities of pornography, featuring children as young as 10-years-old, but access to the material was straightforward.

"All I did was sign up to check out books and send a letter explaining my reasons for wanting to view the material. Anyone could have done the same thing," Bart told The Local.

The large collection at the library was built up in the years between 1971, when the possession, distribution and display of child pornography was legalized in Sweden, and 1980, when the law was repealed.

Until Valentin Bart's November visit brought the issue to the library's attention, the material had remained easily accessible to the general public.

The library has since launched an internal review of its guidelines for lending sensitive material.

"We are not happy with the library's reaction. Every picture that is distributed is a new violation against the abused child," said Birgitta Holmberg to The Local.

"Is it really possible to conduct an internal investigation into this. This matter requires open debate and a legal process. Should a state institution retain child pornography in breach of the law?" Bart queried on Monday.

Both Holmberg and Bart argue that there could be grounds for allowing the collection of the material for research purposes.

"But then we want strict licensing and control of researchers," Holmberg said.

"One can also say, that we all know what a child's body looks like naked and we all know what sex is. Do we really need to view the pictures to learn about this," Holmberg added.

Valentin Bart also pointed out the sensitive issue of the National Library - which is called 'Kungliga Biblioteket' or 'Royal Library' in Swedish - holding material that directly challenges the work of ECPAT - an international charity working against the exploitation of children, and whose patron is Queen Silvia.

The Local contacted Sara Bengtzon at the National Library on Monday and informed her of the police report that will be submitted later today.

"I think that the relative support groups have to do what they think is right."

"Our internal inquiry into this issue will be completed in May and a police investigation into the issue will only help this process in trying to straighten out the guidelines and map out the situation."
http://www.thelocal.se/18704/20090406/





Following Sex Scandals, Districts Impose Message Ban

Miss. Districts Ban Texting, Social Web Sites Between Students and Teachers
Jon Wiener

Two Mississippi school districts have banned text messaging and online social network communication between faculty and their young pupils following a string of teacher-student sex scandals.

The new policies, believed to be among the first in the nation, come as authorities have uncovered a growing number of teacher-student sexual misconduct incidents found to have been facilitated through text-messaging and Internet communication. Representatives of both school districts told ABC News that the policies are not the result of any particular incident.

"This was just an attempt by us to put into policy that there doesn't need to be any informal socialization between teachers and students," said Lamar County school board attorney Rick Norton.

Norton, who initiated the Internet communication policy for Lamar County schools, said it prohibits "fraternization via the Internet between employees...and students."

"The main thing is that we actually encourage interaction via the Internet for educational purposes," he said. "What we're trying to prevent is communication of an inappropriate nature."

In Mississippi and other states, inappropriate online communication between teachers and students has proved to be a factor in revelations of sexual misconduct.

A Greene County, Miss., teacher was sentenced to 10 years in prison in May for sending sexually explicit text messages to a Greene County High School student.

In January, a Biloxi teacher was charged and later admitted to sexual battery of a teenage student after police revealed text message records that indicated the pair had had sex on multiple occasions. In one message the teacher called the student her "little sex fiend," according to authorities.

The recent Mississippi cases are among many sexual misconduct incidents in America. An Associated Press investigation found 2,570 educators whose teaching credentials were revoked, denied, surrendered, or sanctioned from 2001 through 2005 following allegations of sexual misconduct.

Randy Hodges, superintendent of the Lauderdale County, Miss., school district that instituted the "no text message" policy between teachers and students, maintained that his district's new policy was not in response to any particular incident, but acknowledged that the rules were designed to prevent sexual misconduct.

"We had a lawyer who gave ... the example that three employees in the state who had inappropriate messages on their text ended up in prison, to make a long story short," Hodges said. "The messages had some sort of inappropriate language and sexual content, and this was designed to prevent just that -- it's about us trying to be proactive and not having to deal with it after the fact."

While text messaging has grown to become a favored form of communication for teenagers, the rise of Internet social networking sites like MySpace and Facebook presents an even newer source of administrative and parental concern.

Material posted by both students and teachers on social networking sites has led school boards to take disciplinary action.

"The policy is always playing catch-up to the technology, and that's what's happening with these schools," said National School Board Association (NSBA) senior staff attorney Tom Hutton. "They're relatively new policies because the use of these kinds of platforms for educational purposes is relatively new; you want to encourage the use of technology, but how do you make sure you're protecting children against some of the potential downsides?"

Ben Burnett, superintendent of the Lamar school district that banned teacher-student communication on social networking sites, said he didn't expect the national media attention that has followed the district's new policy, but added it was common sense to regulate Internet communication.

"We didn't know we would be blazing a trail with this, but I would assume that with so many people of all ages using the Internet and these kinds of sites, it would be such an easy way for children to get drawn into an inappropriate relationship with an employee," he said. "But our policy doesn't prevent students and teachers from creating and using these type of sites -- that's their First Amendment rights. This is just to restrict communication that might only occur on informal, social Web sites."

Burnett said the district has to be careful when restricting communication between students and teachers.

"The downside is that part of being a good teacher is having a good relationship with a kid. You have to get to know a child to form a relationship, and then education can happen. In fact, no learning will happen until then," he said. "But we have so many different avenues for educational communication, and have really incorporated technology in so many ways in trying to change the culture of how we educate students, that we felt we could do this for the safety of the kids." Lauderdale superintendent Hodges too admitted that communication via means such as text messaging could be beneficial for teachers and students, but said that possibility did not outweigh the risks. "Anything you do you try to use a common sense approach, but we felt you couldn't really leave a gray area. There were just too many problems that could occur."
http://abcnews.go.com/US/story?id=7298483





Video Reveals G20 Police Assault on Man Who Died

Exclusive footage obtained by the Guardian shows Ian Tomlinson, who died during G20 protests in London, was attacked from behind by baton–wielding police officer
Paul Lewis

Dramatic footage obtained by the Guardian shows that the man who died at last week's G20 protests in London was attacked from behind and thrown to the ground by a baton–wielding police officer in riot gear.

Moments after the assault on Ian Tomlinson was captured on video, he suffered a heart attack and died.

The Guardian is preparing to hand a dossier of evidence to the police complaints watchdog.

It sheds new light on the events surrounding the death of the 47-year-old newspaper seller, who had been on his way home from work when he was confronted by lines of riot police near the Bank of England.

The submission to the Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC) includes a collection of testimonies from witnesses, along with the video footage, shot at around 7.20pm, which shows Tomlinson at Royal Exchange Passage.

The film reveals that as he walks, with his hands in his pockets, he does not speak to the police or offer any resistance.

A phalanx of officers, some with dogs and some in riot gear, are close behind him and try to urge him forward.

A Metropolitan police officer appears to strike him with a baton, hitting him from behind on his upper thigh.

Moments later, the same policeman rushes forward and, using both hands, pushes Tomlinson in the back and sends him flying to the ground, where he remonstrates with police who stand back, leaving bystanders to help him to his feet.

The man who shot the footage, a fund manager from New York who was in London on business, said: "The primary reason for me coming forward is that it was clear the family were not getting any answers."

The Guardian's dossier also includes a sequence of photographs, taken by three different people, showing the aftermath of the attack, as well as witness statements from people in the area at the time.

A number of witnesses provided time and date-stamped photographs that substantiate their accounts.

Some said they saw police officers attack Tomlinson.

Witnesses said that, prior to the moment captured on video, he had already been hit with batons and thrown to the floor by police who blocked his route home.

One witness, Anna Branthwaite, a photographer, described how, in the minutes before the video was shot, she saw Tomlinson walking towards Cornhill Street.

"A riot police officer had already grabbed him and was pushing him," she said.

"It wasn't just pushing him – he'd rushed him. He went to the floor and he did actually roll. That was quite noticeable.

"It was the force of the impact. He bounced on the floor. It was a very forceful knocking down from behind. The officer hit him twice with a baton when he was lying on the floor.

"So it wasn't just that the officer had pushed him – it became an assault.

"And then the officer picked him up from the back, continued to walk or charge with him, and threw him.

"He was running and stumbling. He didn't turn and confront the officer or anything like that."

The witness accounts contradict the official version of events given by police.

In an official statement on the night of Tomlinson's death, the Metropolitan police made no reference to any contact with officers and simply described attempts by police medics and an ambulance crew to save his life after he collapsed – efforts they said were marred by protesters throwing missiles as first aid was administered .
The force said officers had created a cordon around Tomlinson to give him CPR.

"The officers took the decision to move him as during this time a number of missiles - believed to be bottles - were being thrown at them," it said.

Yesterday, the IPCC began managing an investigation by City of London police into the circumstances of Tomlinson's death after the Guardian published photographs of him on the ground and witness statements indicated he had been assaulted by police officers.

The IPCC commissioner for London, Deborah Glass, said: "Initially, we had accounts from independent witnesses who were on Cornhill, who told us that there had been no contact between the police and Mr Tomlinson when he collapsed."

"However, other witnesses who saw him in the Royal Exchange area have since told us that Mr Tomlinson did have contact with police officers.

"This would have been a few minutes before he collapsed. It is important that we are able to establish as far as possible whether that contact had anything to do with his death."

The IPCC added that Tomlinson was captured on CCTV walking onto Royal Exchange Passage.

"This is the aspect of the incident that the IPCC is now investigating," it said.

It was here the video was shot. A post mortem carried out by a Home Office pathologist last Friday revealed Tomlinson died of a heart attack.

Prior to seeing the dossier of evidence, Tomlinson's family said in a statement: "There were so many people around where Ian died, and so many people with cameras, that somebody must have seen what happened in the Royal Exchange passageway.

"We need to know what happened there and whether it had anything to do with Ian's death.

"We know that some people who were at the protest may not feel comfortable talking to the police.

"People are putting pictures on the internet, writing on blogs and talking to journalists. But we really need them to talk to the people who are investigating what happened."
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2009/ap...police-assault





They Pay for Cable, Music and Extra Bags. How About News?
Richard Pérez-Peña and Tim Arango

Just a year ago, most media companies believed the formula for Internet success was to offer free content, build an audience and rake in advertising dollars. Now, with the recession battering advertising online, in print and on television, media executives are contemplating a tougher trick: making the consumer pay.

Publishers like Hearst Newspapers, The New York Times and Time Inc.are drawing up plans for possible Internet fees. Jeffrey L. Bewkes, Time Warner’s chief executive, is promoting a plan called “TV Everywhere,” to offer consumers a vast array of television online, provided they are paying cable TV customers. And Rupert Murdoch, who once vowed to make The Wall Street Journal’s Web site free, is now an evangelist for charging readers.

“People reading news for free on the Web, that’s got to change,” Mr. Murdoch said last week at a cable industry conference in Washington.

The Associated Press said on Monday that it intended to police the use of news articles linked on countless Web sites, where many consumers read them free, to make sure the sites shared advertising revenue with those who created the material.

But from networks selling downloads of TV shows, to music companies trying to curb file-sharing, to struggling newspapers and magazines, the make-or-break question is this: How do you get consumers to pay for something they have grown used to getting free?

Some industries have pulled it off. Coca-Cola took tap water, filtered it and called it Dasani, and makes millions of dollars a year. People who used to ask why anyone would pay for television now subscribe to cable and TiVo. Airlines charge for luggage, meals, even pillows. And some music fans who have downloaded pirated songs are also patrons of iTunes.

All of these success stories offered the consumer something extra, even if it was just convenience.

“With bottled water, it’s a kind of snobbery and the perception of healthiness that they have marketed,” said Priya Raghubir, professor of marketing at the Stern School of Business at New York University. “With downloads, the benefit is that the paying services allow you to sample many songs free, and you know it’s legal, and the TV shows have no commercials.

“With newspapers and magazines, there have to be features you can’t get anywhere else, and maybe part of what you would pay for is the privilege of helping the business survive, but that is more of a difficult sell.”

Major publishers say they have not yet decided how to proceed, but that some changes are coming soon.

“We’re looking, of course, at ways to extract payments from the consumers of our news — micro-payments, subscriptions, memberships, licensing, even voluntary donations,” Bill Keller, executive editor of The Times, said last week in a speech at Stanford University. “In the coming months, I fully expect that the N.Y.T. will begin laying down some bets based on our best forecasts of how the relationship between journalists and their audience will evolve.”

Only a few publishers have tried such a transition, with mixed results. The Los Angeles Times and The New York Times each tried charging for access to some content online, then dropped the requirement because it cost them audience and advertising revenue.
Most publications have moved in the other direction, trying to draw the biggest audience for advertisers by offering content free. The Associated Press’s new approach straddles the usual reliance on ads, and the new move to charge someone — though not the consumer — for the content.

By adding free features like e-mail alerts, blogs, discussion forums and video, news organizations are trying to persuade readers that they provide something more valuable than the aggregators and blogs that attract news readers online. In 2006, The Washington Post became the first newspaper to win an Emmy for its video.

Eric J. Johnson, a professor at Columbia Business School, said he had been amazed by media companies repeatedly adding free online services, like on-demand video. “Before you add something to your site, you should say that if consumers really want it, that should be part of a package that you could charge for,” he said.

That is an alien concept to many media veterans, who grew up in a world where news and other content on television and radio were free, and newspapers made far more money from advertisers than from readers.

Before the recession, media executives saw their future in online advertising, which was growing 25 to 35 percent annually. But last year, overall Internet ad spending rose 10.6 percent, and only 3.5 percent for television networks, according to a report by the Interactive Advertising Bureau and PricewaterhouseCoopers. The Newspaper Association of America says that for its industry, online ad revenue dropped 1.8 percent last year.

The free-versus-paid debate is a recurring one. At the birth of the Internet many sites charged for content, but by the late 1990s the prevailing view was that market forces favored free content. A consumer tollbooth raises money, but it also constricts the audience and ad sales. Media companies decided it was not worth the trade-off.

In 1995, Encyclopaedia Britannica began selling online subscriptions and attracted 70,000 paying customers. But in 1999 it opened its doors, hoping to take advantage of the Internet advertising boom. Two years later, it reversed course again, and now charges $70 a year for access to most of its site.

When it resumed charging in 2001, it got back to 70,000 subscribers within 10 months, and now has about 200,000.

If the site hadn’t begun charging, “we would have a product that would be used by many more people today,” said Jorge Cauz, president of Encyclopaedia Britannica, but it would probably generate less revenue.

The Journal began charging online in 1996, soon after its site was started, and before a mass audience could get accustomed to reading it free. Before taking over the paper 16 months ago, Mr. Murdoch said he wanted to make the site free, but with online subscriptions growing and ad sales soft, he decided to keep the pay wall.

The Web site of The Financial Times, FT.com, had more than one million registered users in 2001, when it began charging for access to much of its content though many articles remain open to anyone.

“After a year, we had 50,000 subscribers,” said Rob Grimshaw, managing director of FT.com. Eight years later, the figure is up to 109,000, he said, a small portion of the number of readers who visit the site.

“You have to expect that at first, most of your customers won’t go along,” said Richard P. Honack, a professor at the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University. “You have to train people — the academic word is ‘educate’ — to expect to pay, and unfortunately for media companies, they’ve trained people to expect the opposite.”

Getting customers to pay is easier if the product is somehow better — or perceived as being better — than what they had received free.

In adding a new feature, “you don’t want the starting value you place on it to be zero,” Mr. Johnson said. “People are very loss-averse, and the worst penny to pay is the first.”

Mark Mulligan, vice president of Forrester Research in London, said that even sectors that had successfully charged fees online, like the music industry, have found that it was a game of chasing niches. But products like sitcoms or general-interest newspapers have always been built for the broadest possible appeal.

“The question now is whether that common denominator approach can work online,” Mr. Honack said. He says he thinks it will require treating the audience and the pro
ducts as a series of niches, and tailoring the offering to the customer. “You have to find out what part of your product you can get them to come back for.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/08/bu...dia/08pay.html





Magazines Blur Line Between Ad and Article
Stephanie Clifford

If the separation between magazines’ editorial and advertising sides was once a gulf, it is now diminished to the size of a sidewalk crack.

Recent issues of Entertainment Weekly, Esquire, Time, People, ESPN the Magazine, Scholastic Parent & Child and other magazines have woven in advertisers in new ways, some going as far as putting ads on their covers.

In a medium like television, a partnership with advertisers is nothing surprising — look at how often plastic bags and containers from Glad are featured on “Top Chef.”

But in magazines, the editorial and advertising sides have stayed distinct, largely because of the American Society of Magazine Editors. The society hands out the annual National Magazine Awards, and its guidelines govern how editorial content and advertising should be kept separate. Cover ads are prohibited.

“Everyone has to be able to tell the difference between advertising and editorial, and if you can’t tell there’s a difference, there’s a problem,” said Sid Holt, chief executive of the American Society of Magazine Editors.

But in this recession, when magazines are losing advertisers, the lines between advertising and editorial content are blurring — with few repercussions from the society.

“ASME’s only real sway over editors was always the ability to essentially say you would not be eligible for the National Magazine Awards,” said Susan Lyne, the chief executive of the luxury firm Gilt Groupe, who until last year was the chief executive of Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia. “And in a climate like this, I think people are really weighing what’s more important to them: being eligible for the National Magazine Awards or making their budgets.”

The recent group of advertiser-sponsored projects vary in how far they push the society’s guidelines.

At one end is a “black-and-white violation of the ASME guidelines,” as Mr. Holt put it, in which Scholastic Parent & Child placed an ad on its April cover.

Executives of Scholastic Inc. defended their choice. Risa Crandall, vice president of Scholastic Parents Media, said she had sold advertising for every remaining 2009 cover, and expected a 10 percent increase in ad revenue this year because of the cover ads.

Elimination from the magazine society’s awards was “not a big consideration for us,” said Nick Friedman, editor in chief of the magazine.

The society has not yet publicly commented on several other potential missteps, like a cover design from ESPN the Magazine. The April 6 issue has a fold-out flap over half of the cover with the words, “You wouldn’t settle for an incomplete cover.” Pulled back, the flap reveals an ad for Powerade.

“We’re certainly conscious of industry standards, and in retrospect, did we push the envelope a little bit on this one? Maybe,” said Gary Hoenig, the general manager and editorial director of ESPN Publishing. “But we keep looking for ways to help our advertisers out, so we’re not going to be unwilling to listen if there’s an interesting idea.”

Entertainment Weekly turned its April 3 cover into a pocket that contained a pull-out ad for the ABC show “The Unusuals,” after ABC requested an original ad to promote the series.

“All media brands have been challenged to come up with more creative solutions to advertisers’ needs,” said Scott Donaton, the magazine’s publisher. “The ad was separate and distinct from the cover. It was not part of the cover. We don’t believe it crossed ASME guidelines in any way.”

Entertainment Weekly also participated in a special section that ran in five magazines published by the Time Inc. division of Time Warner — Time, Entertainment Weekly, Fortune, People and Sports Illustrated — in their late March issues. Opening with a page labeled “Promotion,” the section said: “Time Inc. presents the 3-D Explosion.”

What followed was a mix of editorial content and advertising. Entertainment Weekly and Time included editorial photos and coverage of the DreamWorks Animation movie “Monsters vs. Aliens,” mixed with ads from Hewlett-Packard, McDonald’s, Intel and RealD.

The advertisers were all “Monsters vs. Aliens” sponsors, and some of their ads included the same movie characters that were shown in the editorial material. Time, Entertainment Weekly and People ran cover lines promoting the section. And the ads and some editorial content were produced in 3-D (glasses were included with the issues).

Paul Caine, president and group publisher of Time Inc.’s style and entertainment group, which includes People and Entertainment Weekly, said that the project was developed after a Time Inc. editor overheard the DreamWorks chief executive, Jeffrey Katzenberg, speak about the future of 3-D technology.

“We have no financial relationship with him at all,” he said of Mr. Katzenberg, though all of the section’s advertisers were “intimately involved in the release” of the movie.

“It’s just like any other edit piece: it’s got ads, and it’s got edit,” Mr. Caine said. “We absolutely believe that this execution is going to meet, and has already met, all of ASME’s guidelines.”

David Granger, the editor in chief of Esquire, a Hearst magazine, included advertisers in cover compositions he produced for February and May, which the magazine society said it did not object to. The February issue had an image of President Obama with a peel-back window featuring an advertiser, the Discovery Channel. And May’s shows “mix and match” covers — readers can put Mr. Obama’s chin with George Clooney’s nose and Justin Timberlake’s eyes — with the flip side of the images showing History Channel ads.

When he and his publisher began working on the projects, Mr. Granger said, “we came to an agreement on certain principles, and one was that there had to be real, viable reader benefit to any of the things we did.” He said that other cover treatments, like ESPN’s and Entertainment Weekly’s, “are pure advertising iterations.”

“They don’t really do anything to enhance the editorial,” he said.

If the board of the American Society of Magazine Editors decides a magazine has violated its standards, the next step is for the society to write a letter.

“They’re not severe consequences,” said Peggy Northrop, a board member of the magazine society and the editor in chief of Reader’s Digest. “We are not a regulatory body. What we can do is, we have the bully pulpit and we have the ability to withhold” a National Magazine Award.

But that rarely occurs.

“Most people respond quickly and agree that they may have made a mistake or that it was an oversight, whatever — and they agree and don’t do it again,” Mr. Holt said.

“If there are repeated and willful violations, a magazine can be barred from participating in the National Magazine Awards,” he said, and an editor’s membership in the society can be suspended.

“That happens, I will admit, very rarely, because things don’t get to that point,” he said.

Asked whether that was an effective deterrent — it would seem that unless magazines repeatedly offend, they can push the boundaries as long as they are apologetic — Mr. Holt said that the magazine society was somewhat limited in its power.

“What am I supposed to do, go down there and drag the editor on the street like Sonny Corleone and beat him up on the streets of Broadway?” he said. “We work in a collegial business, and we’re not the advertising police.”

For publishers and editors, the allure of advertising revenue may outweigh the threat of a strongly worded letter.

“If you focus on not being able to get an award, ultimately I think that doesn’t have teeth anymore,” Ms. Lyne said. “I think that what does have teeth is thinking about whether this is a short-term solution that is going to end up damaging the long-term viability of your publication. And that’s really what ASME should be reminding people of.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/08/bu...ia/08adco.html





Google Insists It’s a Friend to Newspapers
Miguel Helft

It had the makings of a high-tension face-off: Eric E. Schmidt, Google’s chief executive, spoke Tuesday at a convention of newspaper executives at a time when a growing chorus in the struggling industry is accusing Google of succeeding, in part, at their expense.

Any open controversy reverberated little more than a soggy newspaper hitting a doorstep. Mr. Schmidt’s speech closing the annual meeting of the Newspaper Association of America here was a lengthy discourse on the importance of newspapers and the challenges and opportunities brought about by technologies like mobile phones.

His speech was followed by polite questions from industry executives that only briefly touched upon a perennially sore point: whether the use of headlines and snippets of newspaper stories on Google News is “fair use” under copyright law or a misappropriation of newspaper content.

“I was surprised that the publishers really let Google off the hook,” said Jim Chisholm, a consultant with iMedia Advisory, which advises newspaper companies around the world. “While Google News generates a lot of audience, ultimately, the question is going to be who is going to make the money out of that: Google or the publishers.”

On Monday, The Associated Press said that it would work to require Web sites that use the work of news organizations, including The Associated Press and its member newspapers, to obtain permission and share revenue with them.

“The ultimate resolution of all is this will be determined by how you interpret fair use,” Mr. Schmidt said of the broader debate around Google News. But Mr. Schmidt said that he was “a little confused” by news reports that singled out Google as a target of The A.P. effort. He noted that Google currently licensed and hosted news stories from The A.P. He did not directly address newspaper content, which the company does not license.

Google has long insisted that its use of snippets and headlines in Google News is legal. It also said Google News drove a huge amount of traffic to newspaper Web sites, which the publishers monetize through advertising.

Newspaper publishers do not want to cut off the traffic they get from Google’s search and news services and from other search engines. It is technologically simple for any newspaper Web site to keep content off Google and Google News, but few if any newspapers have chosen to do that.

Publishers do resent that the company, which recently began showing ads on Google News, is profiting from their content.

The A.P. has not given details about exactly how it plans to tackle the issue. Just before Mr. Schmidt’s speech, William Dean Singleton, chairman of The A.P. and chief executive of the MediaNews Group, said: “We don’t plan for anyone to use our content unless they pay for it. The licenses we do in the future will limit how and where our content is used.”

Mr. Singleton said that executives at The A.P. would offer recommendations on how to proceed in the coming weeks. Newspaper companies have been unwilling to test the issue in court, where Google’s fair-use arguments could prevail, and it is not clear that The A.P. plans to do so.

Mr. Singleton said he expected some of MediaNews’s newspapers, which include The San Jose Mercury News and The Denver Post, would come up with a way to charge for some of their content by midyear, a model that a growing number of publishers are considering.

“It’s a balancing act,” he said. “We’d like to have a pay wall but we like the traffic we get from search engines.”

In his speech, Mr. Schmidt encouraged publishers to create more personalized news products that could be delivered effectively on the Web, cellphones and other devices. “We think we can build a business — again, with you guys — with significant advertising resources, where the advertising is targeted to the content,” he said. He acknowledged that many publishers were increasingly thinking about charging for their content, and said he expected the newspaper industry to eventually resemble television, where some content was free, some was purchased by subscription and some was paid for every time it was viewed. But he said he expected that advertising would remain the leading revenue model in online media.

In a meeting with reporters afterward, Mr. Schmidt said Google was unlikely to license newspaper content, as it has done with The A.P., even if that content was behind a pay wall.

“In a scenario where a newspaper had a subscription product, what would Google do?” he asked. “It’s highly unlikely that we would buy a subscription and give the content away free. We might be able to help the distribution of that content, but the user would have to pay.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/08/te.../08google.html





Mapping the Cultural Buzz: How Cool Is That?
Melena Ryzik

Apologies to residents of the Lower East Side; Williamsburg, Brooklyn; and other hipster-centric neighborhoods. You are not as cool as you think, at least according to a new study that seeks to measure what it calls “the geography of buzz.”

The research, presented in late March at the annual meeting of the Association of American Geographers, locates hot spots based on the frequency and draw of cultural happenings: film and television screenings, concerts, fashion shows, gallery and theater openings. The buzziest areas in New York, it finds, are around Lincoln and Rockefeller Centers, and down Broadway from Times Square into SoHo. In Los Angeles the cool stuff happens in Beverly Hills and Hollywood, along the Sunset Strip, not in trendy Silver Lake or Echo Park.

The aim of the study, called “The Geography of Buzz,” said Elizabeth Currid, one of its authors, was “to be able to quantify and understand, visually and spatially, how this creative cultural scene really worked.”

To find out, Ms. Currid, an assistant professor in the School of Policy, Planning and Development at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles, and her co-author, Sarah Williams, the director of the Spatial Information Design Lab at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation, mined thousands of photographs from Getty Images that chronicled flashy parties and smaller affairs on both coasts for a year, beginning in March 2006. It was not a culturally comprehensive data set, the researchers admit, but a wide-ranging one. And because the photos were for sale, they had to be of events that people found inherently interesting, “a good proxy for ‘buzz-worthy’ social contexts,” they write. You had to be there, but where exactly was there? And why was it there?

The answers were both obvious and not, a Möbius strip connecting infrastructure (Broadway shows need Broadway theaters, after all), media (photographers need to cover Broadway openings) and the bandwagon nature of popular culture. Buzz, as marketers eagerly attest, feeds on itself, even, apparently, at the building level. A related exhibition opens on Tuesday at Studio-X in the West Village, just south of Houston Street, an area not quite buzzy enough to rank.

The study follows in the wake of urban theorists like Richard Florida (Ms. Currid calls him a mentor), who have emphasized the importance of the creative class to civic development.

“We had social scientists, economists, geographers all talk about it being so important,” Ms. Currid said. “It matters in the fashion industry, it matters in high tech. The places that produce these cultural innovations matter. We have sort of this idea — ‘Oh, Bungalow 8 matters,’ but what do we even mean by that?”

Ms. Currid became interested in assessing social scenes when doing research for her 2007 book, “The Warhol Economy: How Fashion, Art & Music Drive New York City.” For the buzz project, snapshots from more than 6,000 events — 300,000 photos in all — were categorized according to event type, controlled for overly celebrity-driven occasions and geo-tagged at the street level, an unusually detailed drilling down, Ms. Williams said. (Socioeconomic data typically follow ZIP codes or broad census tracts.)

The researchers quickly found clusters around celebrated locations: the Kodak Theater, where the Oscars are held, for example, or Times Square. “Certain places do become iconic, and they become the branded spaces to do that stuff,” Ms. Currid said. “It’s hard to start a new opera house or a new theater district if you already have a Carnegie Hall or a Lincoln Center.”

The allure trickled down to the blocks nearby, Ms. Currid said, pointing to the nightclub district in West Chelsea, which started with Bungalow 8. “Why wouldn’t they want to be near the places that already were the places to be?” she asked. “It makes a lot of economic and social sense.”

That the buzzy locales weren’t associated with the artistic underground was a quirk of the data set — there were not enough events in Brooklyn to be statistically significant — and of timing. “If we took a snapshot two years from now, the Lower East Side would become a much larger place in how we understand New York,” Ms. Currid said.

But mostly the data helped show the continued dominance of the mainstream news media as a cultural gatekeeper, and the never-ending cycle of buzz in the creative world.

“There’s an economy of scale,” Ms. Currid said. “The media goes to places where they know they can take pictures that sell. And the people in these fields show up because the media is there.”

Distribution to a far-flung audience helps cement an area’s reputation as a Very Important Place. “We argue that those not conventionally involved in city development (paparazzi, marketers, media) have unintentionally played a significant role in the establishment of buzz and desirability hubs within a city,” Ms. Williams and Ms. Currid write in the study.

Whether their research can be used to manufacture interest — hold your party at a certain space, and boom, buzz! — or help city planners harness social convergence to create artist-friendly neighborhoods remains to be seen. (Ms. Currid and Ms. Williams next hope to map economic indicators like real-estate values against their cultural buzz-o-meter.)

For Ms. Williams the geo-tagging represents a new wave of information that can be culled from sites like Flickr and Twitter. “We’re going to see more research that’s using these types of finer-grained data sets, what I call data shadows, the traces that we leave behind as we go through the city,” she said. “They’re going to be important in uncovering what makes cities so dynamic.”

Ms. Currid added: “People talk about the end of place and how everything is really digital. In fact, buzz is created in places, and this data tells us how this happens.”

But even after their explicit study of where to find buzz, Ms. Currid and Ms. Williams did not come away with a better understanding of how to define it. Rather, like pornography, you know it when you see it.

“As vague a term as ‘buzz’ is, it’s so socially and economically important for cultural goods,” Ms. Currid said. “Artists become hot because so many people show up for their gallery opening, people want to wear designers because X celebrity is wearing them, people want to go to movies because lots of people are going to them and talking about them. Even though it’s like, ‘What the heck does that mean?,’ it means something.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/07/ar...gn/07buzz.html





Geeks Gone Wild: Spock’s Surprise Appearance at ‘Star Trek’ Screening
Mekado Murphy

A group of Trekkers in Austin on Monday had a long, prosperous night to remember at the surprise world premiere of Paramount’s new “Star Trek” film.

Austin’s Alamo Drafthouse Cinema, long a destination spot for fanboys and home to the annual Fantastic Fest, had planned for a public screening of “Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan,” which was introduced by Harry Knowles of Ain’t It Cool News, as well as Robert Orci and Alex Kurtzman, the screenwriters of the new “Trek” film, and its producer, Damon Lindelof. But as the opening credits rolled on “Khan,” scratches appeared on the print, it became warped and seemingly burned up in the projector, according to a report from the Drafthouse blog.

The lights came back up, and Tim League, a founder of the cinema, told the crowd he would go try to fix the print himself. Then an unannounced guest — Leonard Nimoy himself — came to the stage with a print of the new “Star Trek” film to play instead, three hours before what was to be the film’s official premiere in Australia.

We can’t show the new “Trek” film here, of course, but for video of a Texas crowd going nuts for Mr. Spock, check below:
http://artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com/20...rek-screening/





Mall Crisis? Call Security. Then Again, Maybe Not.
Manohla Dargis

If you thought Abu Ghraib was a laugh riot then you might love “Observe and Report,” a potentially brilliant conceptual comedy that fizzles because its writer and director, Jody Hill, doesn’t have the guts to go with his spleen. The story, in short, turns on a psycho shopping mall security chief, Ronnie (Seth Rogen, putting the lump into lumpen proletariat), who rules his retail roost with a Taser, a trigger-hair temper and some smiley-faced sycophants. Like the pettiest of dictators, Ronnie preys on the weak in the service of power (in this case the mall itself). He’s the Lynndie England of this dumber-and-dumbest yukfest.

That’s admittedly overstated, but sadism is this movie’s currency. The standard line about Mr. Hill, whose other credits include the movie “The Foot Fist Way” and the new HBO series “East Bound and Down,” is that he has carved out a place in the pop-cultural firmament by exploiting his characters’ perceived awkwardness. But while Ronnie is socially clumsy, his ineptitude is a contrivance, a mask that initially entertains (we laugh at him), only to be more or less discarded when he turns hero — at which point, we’re meant to laugh less at him and more at everyone else. The comedies of the Farrelly brothers and Judd Apatow hinge on a similar misfit-turned-hero dynamic, but Mr. Hill adds a nasty twist to the formula.

The twist here is Ronnie, a veritable catalog of dysfunction whose drop-dead drunk of a mother (Celia Weston) describes him as having been a special-needs child. Ronnie pops prescription pills day and night, presumably for his self-confessed bipolar disorder. At work, where he is soon preoccupied with capturing a serial flasher (Randy Gambill), he swaggers around the mall like a Wild West sheriff — though because he’s more Deputy Dawg than Dirty Harry, the joke is definitely on him. He bosses around his rent-a-cop underlings, including his deputy, Dennis (a heavily lisping Michael Peña), and John and Matt (John and Matt Yuan), a support team that seems to have been assembled specifically to neutralize any complaints about how Ronnie treats nonwhites.

Not that Ronnie is a race hater. However technically inept a director, Mr. Hill is too professionally shrewd to barrel down that particular road and, more important, there are too many studio dollars at stake here to risk outraging ethnic and racial groups that could be buying movie tickets. Instead Mr. Hill thumbs his nose at politically correct sensibilities, notably through Ronnie’s mutually hostile encounters with a mall worker he calls Saddamn (Aziz Ansari), who has taken a restraining order out against him. Mr. Hill defuses this potentially explosive relationship by making sure that Saddamn is as verbally hostile as his foe, which I guess is supposed to make it O.K. to laugh when Ronnie punches him in the face.

By far the most outrageous instance of Mr. Hill’s disarming his own bombs occurs when Ronnie beds Brandi (Anna Faris, rising above the muck), a cosmetics clerk who’s impervious to his attentions until the flasher brings them together. During an ensuing date, Brandi gobbles pills, guzzles tequila and even sputters puke, prompting Ronnie to kiss her square on the messy mouth. What follows next should have been the shock of the movie: a cut to Ronnie having vigorous sex with Brandi who, from her closed eyes, slack body and the vomit trailing from her mouth to her pillow, appears to have passed out. But before the words “date rape” can form in your head, she rouses herself long enough to command Ronnie to keep going.

Comedy is often cruel, of course, but before 1968, the year the movie rating system was instituted, directors couldn’t squeeze laughs from the suggestion of date rape, as Mr. Hill tries to do here. Like action and horror filmmakers, comedy directors now push hard against social norms with characters who deploy expletives, bodily fluids and increasing brutality. Mr. Hill has upped the ante in this extreme comedy scene not only by creating a working-class, bipolar bully who lives with his alcoholic mother, but also by asking us to laugh at this pathetic soul — and his miserably constrained life — as well as at the violence he wreaks. The dolts in “Dumb and Dumber” had hearts of gold. Ronnie has a gun.

Mr. Hill says his movie was inspired by “Taxi Driver,” a self-flattering comparison. Like those of Travis Bickle, Ronnie’s delusions of grandeur do end in a paroxysm of blood. Yet while Martin Scorsese might be overly fond of screen violence, part of what makes that film profound and memorable is how the thrill of violence, its seduction, is always in play with a palpable moral revulsion. No such dialectic informs “Observe and Report,” which exploits Ronnie and his brutality for laughs. This lack of critique might make the movie seem daring. But it’s hard to see what is so bold about a film that, much like the world outside the theater, turns the pain and humiliation of other people into a consumable spectacle.

You could argue, I suppose, that there is no real difference between Ronnie shooting an unarmed man and a comic who throws a custard pie in another person’s kisser: they both make (some) audiences laugh. To insist on that difference is, among other things, to introduce politics and morality into the conversation, and, really, who wants that when you’re watching a Seth Rogen flick? It’s far better and certainly easier, as the old movie theater slogan put it, to sit back and relax and enjoy the show. That, after all, is precisely what Hollywood banks on each time it manufactures a new entertainment for a public that — as the stupid, violent characters who hold up a mirror to that public indicate — it views with contempt.
http://movies.nytimes.com/2009/04/10/movies/10obse.html





Protests in Moldova Explode, With Help of Twitter
Ellen Barry

A crowd of more than 10,000 young Moldovans materialized seemingly out of nowhere on Tuesday to protest against Moldova’s Communist leadership, ransacking government buildings and clashing with the police.

The sea of young people reflected the deep generation gap that has developed in Moldova, and the protesters used their generation’s tools, gathering the crowd by enlisting text-messaging, Facebook and Twitter, the social messaging network.

The protesters created their own searchable tag on Twitter, rallying Moldovans to join and propelling events in this small former Soviet state onto a Twitter list of newly popular topics, so people around the world could keep track.

By Tuesday night, the seat of government had been badly battered and scores of people had been injured. But riot police had regained control of the president’s offices and Parliament Wednesday.

After hundreds of firsthand accounts flooded onto the Internet via Twitter, Internet service in Chisinau, the capital, was abruptly cut off.

There was no sign that the authorities would cede to any of the protesters’ demands, and President Vladimir Voronin denounced the organizers as “fascists intoxicated with hatred.”

But Mihai Fusu, 48, a theater director who spent much of the day on the edges of the crowd, said he believed that a reservoir of political energy had found its way into public life.

“Moldova is like a sealed jar, and youth want more access to Europe,” he said. “Everyone knows that Moldova is the smallest, poorest and the most disgraceful country. And youth are talking about how they want freedom, Europe and a different life.”

Young people have increasingly used the Internet to mobilize politically; cellphones and text messages helped swell protests in Ukraine in 2004, and in Belarus in 2006.

The immediate cause of the protests were parliamentary elections held on Sunday, in which Communists won 50 percent of the vote, enough to allow them to select a new president and amend the Constitution. Though the Communists were expected to win, their showing was stronger than expected, and opposition leaders accused the government of vote-rigging.

Election observers from the European Union and the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe had tentatively accepted the voting as fair, though they expressed some concern about interference from the authorities. But the results were a deep disappointment in the capital, where Communist candidates lost the last round of municipal elections.

“In the air, there was a strong expectation of change, but that did not happen,” said Matti Sidoroff, a spokesman for the O.S.C.E.’s mission in Moldova.

Behind the confrontation is a split in Moldova’s population. The collapse of the Soviet Union brought benefits to much of Eastern Europe, but in Moldova it ushered in economic decline and instability. In 2001, angry citizens backed the return of the Communists and their social programs.

But Moldova remained desperately poor, and young people flocked overseas to work. They have looked to the West as the best path to economic stability and have defied Mr. Voronin’s government by urging closer integration with Romania.

The global financial crisis has eliminated overseas jobs, sending many of the young people back to Chisinau, their horizons suddenly narrowed, said Carroll Patterson, who is finishing his doctoral dissertation on economic changes in Moldova.

“I wouldn’t necessarily call it an anti-Communist movement,” Mr. Patterson said. “This really is a generational squeeze. It’s not really the Communists versus the opposition. It’s the grandmothers versus the grandkids.”

The protests apparently started on Monday, when organizers from two youth movements, Hyde Park and ThinkMoldova, began calling for people to gather at an event billed as “I am a not a Communist.” Natalia Morar, one of the leaders of ThinkMoldova, described the effort on her blog as “six people, 10 minutes for brainstorming and decision-making, several hours of disseminating information through networks, Facebook, blogs, SMSs and e-mails.”

“And 15,000 youths came out into the streets!” she wrote.

The participants at that first gathering, on Monday, dispersed peacefully. But demonstrations on Tuesday spun out of control. News coverage showed protesters throwing stones at the windows of Parliament and the presidential palace, removing furniture and lighting it on fire. Riot police officers shielded their heads as demonstrators pelted them with stones. The police then used water cannons and tear gas to disperse the crowd. Fires continued to burn late into the night.

Valery Obade, director of the Republican Hospital, said his staff had treated 76 people for injuries. Moldova’s national television channel also reported that a young woman died of carbon monoxide poisoning as a result of a fire set in the Parliament building, but it was impossible to independently confirm the report.

Mr. Voronin issued a statement saying the leaders of opposition parties were behind the rallies, which he called “an anticonstitutional coup.” In a television broadcast, he said the protests were “well designed, well thought out, coordinated, planned and paid for.”

Russia backed Mr. Voronin. Moscow’s embassy released a statement saying that “a group of militants” appeared in an otherwise peaceful crowd on Tuesday, urging them to attack government buildings. The Kremlin released a statement saying President Dmitri A. Medvedev had spoken with Mr. Voronin about “the mass disorder unfolding on the pretext of disagreement with the election results.”

At a news briefing, a State Department spokesman, Robert A. Wood, also expressed concern about the violence, but he said policy makers in Washington had not yet assessed whether the elections had been free and fair.

Prominent opposition leaders came out Tuesday night to say that they had not played any role in organizing the demonstrations. Ms. Morar of ThinkMoldova distanced her organization from the violence, shifting the blame to opposition parties.

“Our initiative group bears no responsibility for the looting that occurred,” she wrote on her blog. “The young people who we gathered stand peacefully on the square.”

Mihai Moscovici, 25, who provided updates in English all day over Twitter, painted a more nuanced picture. He said the gathering on Monday night drew only several hundred people. The protesters agreed to gather the next morning and began spreading the word through Facebook and Twitter, inventing a searchable tag for the stream of comments: #pman, which stands for Piata Marii Adunari Nationale, Chisinau’s central square. When Internet service was shut down, Mr. Moscovici said, he issued updates with his cellphone.

Evgeny Morozov, a specialist in technology and politics at the Open Society Institute in New York, a group that works with democratic movements worldwide and has been active in the former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, said Facebook and Twitter had apparently played a major role in the protests.

“Nobody expected such a massive scale,” he said. “I don’t know of any other factor which could account for it.”

But on Tuesday night, with main government buildings seared by fire, violence had left everyone chastened.

Mr. Moscovici said the protests were never intended to turn in that direction. “The situation got beyond any expectations,” he said. “If it would have been planned in advance, they would have used Molotov cocktails or other bad stuff. Today they didn’t have any tools to fight back. The stones they got from the ground, from the pavement.”

Nikolai Khalip and Michael Schwirtz contributed reporting from Moscow, and Noam Cohen from New York.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/08/wo...08moldova.html





Cyberspies Penetrate Electrical Grid: Report

Cyberspies have penetrated the U.S. electrical grid and left behind software programs that could be used to disrupt the system, the Wall Street Journal reported on Wednesday.

The spies came from China, Russia and other countries, and were believed to be on a mission to navigate the U.S. electrical system and its controls, the newspaper said, citing current and former U.S. national security officials.

The intruders have not sought to damage the power grid or other key infrastructure but officials said they could try during a crisis or war, the paper said in a report on its website.

"The Chinese have attempted to map our infrastructure, such as the electrical grid," a senior intelligence official told the Journal. "So have the Russians."

The espionage appeared pervasive across the United States and does not target a particular company or region, said a former Department of Homeland Security official.

"There are intrusions, and they are growing," the former official told the paper, referring to electrical systems. "There were a lot last year."

The administration of U.S. President Barack Obama was not immediately available for comment on the newspaper report.

Authorities investigating the intrusions have found software tools left behind that could be used to destroy infrastructure components, the senior intelligence official said. He added, "If we go to war with them, they will try to turn them on."

Officials said water, sewage and other infrastructure systems also were at risk.

Protecting the electrical grid and other infrastructure is a key part of the Obama administration's cybersecurity review, which is to be completed next week.

The sophistication of the U.S. intrusions, which extend beyond electric to other key infrastructure systems, suggests that China and Russia are mainly responsible, according to intelligence officials and cybersecurity specialists.

While terrorist groups could develop the ability to penetrate U.S. infrastructure, they do not appear to have yet mounted attacks, these officials say.

(Writing by Eric Beech; Editing by Jon Boyle)
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/2009/...ttack-usa.html





Pentagon Cyber Defense Bill:$100 Million in Six Months
Layer 8

Protecting defense departments networks cost taxpayers more than $100 million over the past six months, U.S. Strategic Command officials said yesterday.

The motives of those attacking the networks go from just plain vandalism to theft of money or information to espionage. Protecting the networks is a huge challenge for the command, Air Force Gen. Kevin P. Chilton told a cyber security conference in Omaha, Neb., this week.

"Pay me now or pay me later," Davis said. "In the last six months, we spent more than $100 million reacting to things on our networks after the fact. It would be nice to spend that money proactively to put things in place so we'd be more active and proactive in posture rather than cleaning up after the fact."

Chilton said Defense Department personnel need to change the way they think about cyberspace. "It's not just a convenience. It's a dependency that we have," he said. "We need to change the way we conduct ourselves in cyberspace and hold our military folks to the same high standards that we hold our air, land and sea operators to."

A prohibition on using so-called "thumb-drives" and other portable data storage devices on Defense Department computers will remain in effect, Davis said. "I don't think anybody realizes how much better shape we'd be in if we just did the basics right," he said. "People need to just apply the basic rules and procedures that have been put in place to protect ourselves."

Earlier this year researchers at the military's Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) awarded $30 million to the major contractors it expects will develop the first phase of technologies that it promises will improve cyber security "by orders of magnitude above our current systems." The contracts are part of DARPA's ambitious National Cyber Range (NCR) program the agency says will develop revolutionary cyber research and development technologies.

The NCR has tons of objectives including the ability to offer highly advanced test facilities and the administration needed to certify/accredit, manage security, schedule testing, and processes. It will offer the ability to replicate large-scale military and government network enclaves as well as replicate commercial and tactical wireless and control systems.

Defense Department networks are attacked thousands of times a day, he said. The attacks run the gamut from "bored teenagers to the nation state with criminal elements sandwiched in there," defense officials stated.

The military's expenditures on cyber security might be a timely example of what it takes to protect giant networks. This week reports said cyberspies from China and Russia penetrated the U.S. electrical grid with the intent of being able to disrupt it in a time of conflict.

According to the Wall Street Journal article: "The espionage appears pervasive across the U.S. and doesn't target a particular company or region, said a former Department of Homeland Security official. 'There are intrusions, and they are growing,' the former official said, referring to the electrical systems. 'There were a lot last year.'"
http://www.networkworld.com/community/node/40737





New Variant of Conficker Strikes

New Conficker variant talks to servers associated with the Waledac botnet, and downloads an ‘unknown’ payload.
Asavin Wattanajantra

Security researchers have discovered a new variant of Conficker, which has downloaded a payload from servers connected to the Waledac botnet.

A week after the April Fool’s Conficker scare, a ‘dropper’ came through which updated Conficker and added new functionality through its P2P connectivity.

The new Conficker variant was also talking to servers and websites that were already known for their associations with the Waledac family of malware.

Trend Micro said in an interview with eWeek it had already downloaded a further component that it was currently analysing, but had some "rootkit capabilities".

Trend Micro security expert Rik Ferguson said it could be the payload which could finally monetise the botnet: “These components have so far been missing, but could this finally be the ‘other boot dropping’ that we have all been been waiting for?”

Waledac is a spambot that steals sensitive information and turns computers into spam zombies.

It was suspected to be the latest threat from the people behind Storm, which could mean that the same cybercriminals were behind all three threats.

Ferguson said to IT PRO: “It tallies with some of the assumptions people have made about Conficker – that the first variant was actively trying to avoid Ukraine because Waledac was Eastern European.”

The worm also re-enabled propagation functionality which had previously been disabled on previous versions.

By connecting to one of myspace.com, msn.com, ebay.com and cnn.com, the worm helped establish whether a computer was internet connected or whether it could only infect a local network.

Users were warned not to be alarmed, and to continue to exercise caution and implement security best practices such as keeping patches current and antivirus definitions up to date.
http://www.itpro.co.uk/610478/new-va...ficker-strikes





Watching the IPRED Watchers In Sweden
digithed

In response to Sweden's recent introduction of new laws implementing the European IPRED directive, a new Swedish Web site has been launched allowing users to check if their IP address is currently under investigation. The site also allows users to subscribe for email updates alerting them if their IP address comes under investigation in the future, or to report IP addresses known to be under investigation. This interesting use of people power "watching the watchers" is possible because the new Swedish laws implementing the IPRED directive require a public request to the courts in order to get ISPs to forcibly disclose potentially sensitive private information. Since all court records are public in Sweden, it will be easy to compile a list of addresses currently being investigated.
http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?s...4248&art_pos=6




Trent Reznor - Reznor Urges Musicians to Ditch Labels

Rocker TRENT REZNOR is urging all musicians to follow in his footsteps and ditch their record labels.

Reznor's band Nine Inch Nails broke away from their deal with Universal in 2007, after a tempestuous relationship with the music giant.

The singer describes the experience as "liberating" - insisting big labels make too much money from musicians and are completely out of touch with the industry.
Reznor says, "Anyone who's an executive at a record label does not understand what the internet is, how it works, how people use it, how fans and consumers interact - no idea. I'm surprised they know how to use email. They have built a business around selling plastic discs, and nobody wants plastic discs any more. They're in such a state of denial it's impossible for them to understand what's happening.

"One of the biggest wake-up calls of my career was when I saw a record contract. I said, 'Wait - you sell it for $18.98 and I make 80 cents? And I have to pay you back the money you lent me to make it and then you own it? Who the f**k made that rule? Oh! The record labels made it because artists are dumb and they'll sign anything' - like I did. When we found out we'd been released (from their recording contract) it was like, 'Thank God!'. But 20 minutes later it was, 'Uh-oh, now what are we going to do?' It was incredibly liberating, and it was terrifying."

And Reznor adds that musicians should be exploring other ways to sell their own music, rather than relying on labels: "As an artist, you are now the marketer."
http://www.contactmusic.com/news.nsf...labels_1099985





iTunes : Where are the $0.69 Tracks?
Richard Menta

Today is the day that iTunes shifts to a tiered pricing plan and while most pundits fixated on those downloads that will now cost $1.29, I was more interested in those that will now run $0.69. Here's the problem. I can't find any $0.69 tracks on iTunes.

It is very clear that iTunes has plenty of $1.29 song downloads. As expected, prices on the most popular tunes were jacked up 30%. When I looked up older music on iTunes - some of it decades old - I saw no $0.69 tracks. In fact, I found some of them had raised their prices too.

Do you want to download Heart's 34-year old Barracuda? That will now cost you $1.29. Of course, to some Baby Boomers that song serves as a mini national anthem to the 1970's so it may not be the best example. Maybe, I should look at not just at older music, but music that is less popular too.

So I next checked iTunes for the Katydids wonderful 1991 album Shangri-La. That album was not a big success and hit the bargin bins early on. It has been out-of-print on CD for over a decade, but it is on iTunes. Surly, those tracks had to be priced at $0.69! Nope, all were $0.99. All the tracks from late-80's college faves Camper Van Beethoven and the Lyres also stayed at $0.99.

Maybe, I have to get much older, like 50 years or more. Elvis Presley had no $0.69 downloads on iTunes, but he is the King so that popularity factor plays here again. So I tried his fellow Memphis High School graduates, the more obscure Rock and Roll Trio. Their sublime version of Train Kept a Rollin was....$0.99.

Maybe, I just need to get away from Rock and Roll and Hip Hop. Let's go way back to the mid-1940's to peruse the early BeBop recordings of Dizzy Gillespie and Charlie Parker. Nope, no $0.69 track in the entire oeuvre of both men. The same for 40's jump blues king Wynonie Harris and 30's-40's R&B hitmaker Slim Gaillard.

Now I am getting real frustrated. I venture this time into the late 1920s and search for the old Jazz greats like Sidney Bechet, Kid Ory and Bix Beiderbeck. All of it, every single track, was listed as $0.99 on iTunes.

Finally, I go to the Music of Ada Jones. Who is Ada Jones? She was the number one female recording artist for over 25 years, between 1893 when she made her first recordings with the North American Recording Co. and into post WWI era. Think of her as the "Madonna" of the gaslight set. Jones died in 1922 and all of her recordings fell into the public domain by WWII under the old US copyright laws.

Did I find any $0.69 tracks. Nooooo. I find it interesting that whoever is selling the music of Miss Jones and collecting profits from it are dictating price even though they don't hold any rights to the music - IT IS PUBLIC FRICKEN DOMAIN!

I give up.

I surmised that the reason Apple announced the new pricing plan weeks in advance was not only because they wanted to give consumers time to get used to the idea, but to give them time to make all of the price adjustments in their system. They had no problem doing that for all of the price hikes. The lack of any visible price drops makes me sadly suspicious that it was all a come-on.

I am afraid that Ted Cohen's announcement that the tiered pricing plan would "be a PR nightmare" were words of wisdom from a insider who knew this was really only just a price hike. The claims that there would be $0.69 track downloads appear to just be press fodder to buffer the price shock for consumers.

We'll have to wait and see if iTunes makes good on Steve Jobs' promise that there would be more $0.69 song downloads than $1.29 tracks. I am not confident that will happen after what I have observed, but it is only fair to give them a little more time.

I have a bit of money in my iTunes account waiting for lower prices to take effect and motivate me to spend. Let's see if iTunes comes through.
http://www.mp3newswire.net/stories/9...nes_where.html





Social Media Networks Are Music's Curse and Salvation
Eliot Van Buskirk

In the golden age of the record album, friends would gather around the hi-fi system to share the latest music, most of them not paying a cent. Today, music fans do pretty much the same thing — online, in social networks. But now, just about none of them pay.

Downloading music is still a big business, and it pays a lot of bills: Artists and labels have already earned around $4 billion from iTunes sales alone. But the dynamic is shifting to the cloud, where tracks are always available and listeners generally don't have to fork out money.

These networks represent something of a threat to iTunes, the labels and their record-store-style pay-per-download music sales. But a new report says the same social media sites that threaten the old-school, sales-based approach will eventually save whatever's left of the music business.

"Social music may not generate much revenue now, but monetization’s effectiveness must — and will — improve," writes Mark Mulligan of Forrester Research. "In doing so, it will become an increasingly important revenue stream that helps fill the gaping hole left by lost CD sales."

The key: On social media sites, users categorize themselves into useful demographics based on media consumption, so music-oriented sites can offer advertisers more value than the ones where all people do is talk.

Picture advertisers as caterers at an online party. It's easier for them to choose which drinks to serve if they know Early Man is playing. Music helps advertisers figure out who users are, and what they might like to buy — including, according to Forrester, music downloads.

The debate continues about whether streaming services can replace music ownership.

Forrester admits that "increased adoption of mobile data packages and of connected, dedicated portable media players like the iPod Touch are ... giving consumers on-the-go access to previously PC-tethered streaming experiences. In this context, ownership becomes less important if the songs you want are available on demand and on the go."

However, its report concludes that portable on-demand streaming services will not substitute for music ownership — and cannot do so, if they're going to get along with the labels.

It's an interesting conclusion. Certainly, Pandora, whose usage is increasing as others plateau (see Forrester's chart above), is not substitutional for music ownership.

But on-demand mobile services like the potential Spotify iPhone app, which would presumably let you play customized playlists from a huge catalog of music, could replace some peoples' iTunes collections in the blink of an eye — especially considering that phones apps can cache music to bridge data dropouts.

Many companies are focusing on social media according to the report, having more or less conceded the music download space to iTunes. One example is Yahoo, which just turned Yahoo Music into a social artist directory with hooks into Pandora, YouTube and elsewhere, and plans to launch an open app development platform similar to Facebook's app platform.

But will there be enough money to go around — especially for the labels, which control the music everyone wants to listen to and talk about on these networks?

Not even frontrunner Google can keep up with the licensing payments labels have demanded, in some cases.

Forrester concludes that once labels and sites acknowledge that for some users, free is all they're ever going to get, social media sites will generate significant revenue from ads and subscriptions — just not enough to return it to those high-flying days of the late '90s, when everyone bought CDs to replace their cassettes and vinyl.

The sweet spot for the fans, advertisers and labels, according to the report, lies in the most popular and rudimentary networks. Apparently, sites with more complicated features only appeal to the most sophisticated 5 percent or so of the population.

The report ranks the key social media networks in the following order (in increasing order of popularity and generally decreasing order of complexity): Last.fm with 20 million users, Bebo 22 million, Pandora 24 million, imeem 25 million, MySpace 139 million, Facebook 175 million and YouTube — on top — with 344 million users.

YouTube sits in the middle of the mainstream, appealing to the most internet users regardless of age, and Pandora is growing like wildfire on multiple platforms. Maybe that's why the labels are so concerned with making sure they get the most bang for their buck from both Pandora and YouTube.
http://blog.wired.com/business/2009/...-networks.html





Privacy Commissioner Puts Spotlight on Internet Monitoring Technology

Is it a violation of privacy that should be banned or a tool necessary to keep the internet running?

Canada's privacy commissioner has opened an online discussion on deep packet inspection, a technology that allows internet service providers and other organizations to intercept and examine packets of information as they are being sent over the internet.

"We realized about a year ago that technologies involving network management were increasingly affecting how personal information of Canadians was being handled," said Colin McKay, director of research, education and outreach for the commissioner's office.

The office decided to research those technologies, especially after receiving several complaints, and realized it was an opportunity to inform Canadians about the privacy implications.

Over the weekend, the privacy commissioner launched a website where the public can discuss a series of essays on the technology written by 14 experts. The experts range from the privacy officer of a deep-packet inspection service vendor to technology law and internet security researchers.

The website also offers an overview of the technology, which it describes as having the potential to provide "widespread access to vast amounts of personal information sent over the internet" for uses such as:

• Targeted advertising based on users' behaviour.
• Scanning for unlawful content such as copyright or obscene materials.
• Intercepting data as part of surveillance for national security and crime investigations.
• Monitoring traffic to measure network performance.

The latter can be used by ISPs to give priority to some applications over others — a practice that has upset those who strongly believe in "net neutrality," in which all internet uses and applications are treated equally. Internet traffic management is the subject of ongoing consultations by the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission.

Broad range of views

McKay said some of the privacy commissioner's research on deep packet inspection was incorporated into its submission to the CRTC, but a far broader range of views and opinions is provided on the site by those who submitted essays.

The authors include:

Brooks Dobbs, the privacy officer for Phorm, a British firm that uses the technology to offer more tailored advertising.
Richard Clayton, treasurer of the Foundation for Information Policy research, who alleges that internet service providers will commit criminal offences by using Phorm.
Stéphane Leman-Langlois, a criminology professor at the University of Montreal who believes that all the potential uses of deep packet inspection will be put to use sooner or later and net neutrality is "almost certainly a thing of the past."
Harry Abelson, a professor of computer science and engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, who believes deep packet inspection should be banned, as it violates privacy and affects the reliability of information delivery.
Anil Somayaji, a Carleton University computer science professor who believes deep packet inspection is an essential tool needed to protect the internet and keep it running.
Danielle Citron, a law professor at the University of Maryland, who cites a number of ways to boost the transparency and oversight of deep packet inspection practices, such as instituting a "do not track" list.
McKay said he would have liked to have had more experts with a network technology perspective, but some potential contributors were too busy to submit an essay. However, since the site went live, McKay was contacted by a supplier of deep packet inspection technology that asked if it could add a piece, he said.

The discussion on the website isn't a public consultation. Nor is it expected to result in policy, as the privacy commissioner's office doesn't have jurisdiction over internet management, McKay said.

"It's really an attempt to take some of our research and make it more public and see whether that research can develop any more insights into the issue," he said.

He added that Canadians should be examining how technology affects their daily decisions and the choices made available to them.

"Technology can often be beneficial, but sometimes you do have to be, if not critical, at least questioning to make sure… the technology really is positively affecting your life."
http://www.cbc.ca/technology/story/2...missioner.html





Is This the Time to Buy an OLED TV? Sony Debuts First Models in Stores
Daniel Long

Step aside Plasma and LCD, there's a new television badboy on the market. The first OLED television (SONY XEL-1) is due to go on sale later this month, but it won't come cheap. Should you wait?

You've probably read about the fantastically futuristic OLED TV's over the last few years, and wondered when they'd ever appear, even after they kept on pushing back release dates, in order not to damage LCD/Plasma profit margins.

Now SONY has the honour of being the first manufacturer to offer the first models on our sunny shores, with the XEL-1 due to hit stores in mid-April.

What is OLED and why should I care?

OLED stands for organic light-emitting diode, which means less power and better image reproduction for you at home. OLED delivers a mix of high contrast (1,000,000:1 ratio), high peak brightness with awesome colour reproduction, and rapid response time for fast motion images and high def gaming and playback. Gamers are going to love OLED screens....eventually. But for now, they're definitely not going to love the price.

Because there is no separate backlight source, OLEDs have the benefit of being much thinner and a heck of a lot less power hungry. But that's going to cost you some big bucks overall. The XEL-1 will debut in stores for $6,999 - and it won't even be a substitute for your big screen living room plasma's or LCDs. That's almost twice as much as the best 42" LCD.

The XEL-1 will feature a 'squint' worthy 11" screen, which takes us back to the bad old days in the early 1990's when such screen sizes were the norm.

The resolution on the XEL-1 isn't anything to crow about either: just 960 x 540. Most budget priced netbooks can show more pixels than that . But that isn't the point of such a small model. It's the elegance and the incredibly sleek form factor that will probably make you want one of these before you yask 'How much!?".

At just 3mm wide, the XEL-1 is supermodel thin by TV standards. Most current model LCD's or PLASMA's are at least 10mm thick at best. Sony's XEL-1 panel consists of an organic layer of material with two thin glass panels on either side, allowing them to achieve the 3mm form factor.

There's no doubt that if you're living room has been craving a mega dose of technological elegance, then the XEL-1 delivers on that front.

Save money on power

You have to admire the XEl-1 for its power saving abilities. The XEL-1 can run on as little as 45W, enough to save you quite a bit of money on electricity bills.

Because the XEL-1 can reproduce extremely bright light flows, it's perfect for displaying images such as fireworks, sunlight or camera flashes. But, that also makes it one expensive digital picture frame. OLED's are great at showing really deep shades of black, so regardless of the resolution, the contrast ratio (1 million to 1 ) is through the roof for a TV. The XEL-1 also features two HDMI ports for Blu-Ray connectivity and a built-in TV tuner.

Should I wait or should I buy?

Definitely Wait. The 11" screen is still too small to be useful outside of looking at photos. And Blu-Ray movies on a screen this small tend to render the whole viewing experience as vastly unrewarding.

Although the TV is beautifully designed, it's just too niche at almost $7,000 to be a serious threat to current LCD screens. Prices are bound to drop too, as LED TV's (particularly from Samsung) offer decent competition for your viewing dollar.

For now, we can't imagine the XEL-1 taking off in the mainstream because of its price and size. And, it will probably take a while before manufacturers decide it's time to leverage their LCD and plasma lines in order to offer OLEDs at more competitive prices.
http://www.pcauthority.com.au/News/1...in-stores.aspx





BREAKING NEWS: Rep. Eric Massa (D-NY) Condemns Time Warner Internet Cap; Will Take Lead Role in Opposition
phil

[Update 4:00pm: I have just learned that Rep. Massa is drafting legislation to prohibit/ban this kind of capping. I do not yet have any details about the bill's language, or the legislative approach he is taking. When I have a copy of the bill, I will be bringing it up here.]

Rep. Eric Massa (D-New York) today announced his opposition to Time Warner’s broadband Internet cap, calling it monopolistic and outrageous.

Massa said he will be taking a lead in Congress to oppose Time Warner’s move to impose limits on customers at a time when access to information is driving our economic recovery. He accused the company of “stagnating 21st century technology needed to rebuild America.”

“Internet access is as essential to our economy as water is to our survival,” said Congressman Eric Massa. “With limited choices in broadband providers, and virtual monopolies in many market areas, I view this as nothing more than a large corporation making a move to force customers into paying more money. I firmly oppose capping internet usage and I will be taking a leadership role in stopping this outrageous, job killing initiative.”

Massa predicted that cell-phone style pricing of broadband would lead to a steep decline in Internet usage or else middle income families would see outrageous Internet bills. He also expressed concern about sweeping First Amendment issues that are at stake from the artificial limiting of access to what has become an essential communications tool used by most Americans.

Massa represents New York’s 29th District which extends from the southern tier into the southern suburbs of Rochester.

Contact Rep. Eric Massa:

Washington DC Office
1208 Longworth House Office Building
Washington, DC 20515
Phone: (202) 225-3161
Fax: (202) 226-6599

Corning District Office
89 W. Market Street
Corning, NY 14830
Phone: (607) 654-7566
Fax: (607) 654-7568

Olean Office
317 North Union Street
Olean, NY 14760
Phone: (716) 372-2090
Fax: (716) 372-2869

Pittsford District Office
1 Grove St
Suite 101
Pittsford, NY 14534
Phone: (585) 218-0040
Fax: (585) 218-0053

Contact Eric Massa by e-mail

[Editor's Note: Please be sure to thank Congressman Massa for taking a lead on this issue and for being among the first federal officials that has responded positively to our campaign! We are making a difference, so also applaud yourselves for getting involved and fighting back!]
http://stopthecap.com/2009/04/07/bre...in-opposition/





G20 Video 'Concerns' Police Chief

Home Secretary Jacqui Smith says an inquiry needs to happen as quickly as possible - exclusive footage obtained by Guardian.co.uk

Footage of an officer shoving a man to the ground at a G20 protest minutes before he died raises concerns, London's police chief has said.

Ian Tomlinson, 47, who was walking home from work, suffered a heart attack several minutes after walking away from being pushed in central London.

His stepson Paul King has told the BBC the family "want answers".

Metropolitan Police Commissioner Sir Paul Stephenson said the force fully supported an inquiry into the death.

The Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC), which is carrying out the inquiry, will examine the video footage showing Mr Tomlinson being pushed to the ground.

Sir Paul said: "The images that have now been released raise obvious concerns and it is absolutely right and proper that there is a full investigation into this matter, which the Met will fully support."

The video, shot at 1929 BST at the Royal Exchange Passage, initially shows Mr Tomlinson, who was going home from work and not protesting, walking away from a group of police officers.

Footage shows that he then received a two-handed push from an officer, landing heavily before remonstrating with the police.

Minutes later Mr Tomlinson collapsed and died of a heart attack, after walking to nearby Cornhill where he received first aid from police.

Mr King told BBC Radio 5 Live: "For the sake of the family here and his kids we just want justice ... you know, until everything does come out and we do get the evidence we need, we can't lay our father to rest."

Reacting to the video, he said: "You can clearly see that my Dad Ian had his hands in his pockets with his head down walking away.
"So there was no reason for the officer to push him down. If he did do something wrong, then why not arrest him in the beginning?

"We want answers now. You know, it's only minutes after Ian collapsed and had the heart attack."

A New York fund manager recorded the footage, believed to be the last showing Mr Tomlinson alive.

He said he came forward with the video because the vendor's family "were not getting any answers".

The Liberal Democrats are now demanding a criminal inquiry.

The party's justice spokesman, David Howarth, said the footage showed a "sickening and unprovoked attack" by police.

Daniel Sandford, BBC home affairs correspondent, said of the footage: "This is now going to raise some more serious questions about the police behaviour on that night.

"Why is it that one of the officers walks up to a man who appears to be walking away from him?"

Peter Smyth, chairman of the Metropolitan Police Federation, said some physical confrontation was inevitable during a large protest.

He told Radio 4's Today programme: "On a day like that, where there are some protesters who are quite clearly hell-bent on causing as much trouble as they can, there is inevitably going to be some physical confrontation.

"Sometimes it isn't clear, as a police officer, who is a protester and who is not.

"I know it's a generalisation but anybody in that part of the town at that time, the assumption would be that they are part of the protest.

"I accept that's perhaps not a clever assumption but it's a natural one."

'Quickly and thoroughly'

The Guardian newspaper obtained the video and has handed it to the IPCC.

Jacqui Smith said the investigation must be done ''as quickly as possible''

Ms Smith said: "I'm glad the IPCC themselves called for further evidence in order to be able to do that investigation as quickly and thoroughly as possible.

"And if it identifies - and I can understand people's concerns - if it identifies the need for a criminal investigation, that then also needs to be pursued."

A spokeswoman for the IPCC said: "We have recovered video footage from a national newspaper last night. We are now in the process of analysing it, along with the other evidence we have obtained on the case."

The police have well-established powers to use reasonable force if they think there is a threat either to themselves or the public, but these are enhanced during a protest or riot.

The key concept is that of "reasonable force" - i.e. force that is in proportion to the threat faced either by the public, the police or property

• Thus "reasonable force" may literally range from putting a hand on someone's elbow, to shooting them dead
• The legislation governing police powers during demonstrations (mostly the Public Order Act 1986) must also be seen in context of human rights' legislation
• Under European human rights' laws the police are required to actively protect the public's right to peaceful protest
• Policing during a protest, therefore, is a negotiation between the rights of police to use reasonable force to protect the public, and their responsibility to allow peaceful protest to take place

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/london/7989027.stm





Metadot's Das Keyboard Professional

And how it compares to the venerable Model M
Cyril Kowaliski

Ah, computer keyboards. Once expensive, heavy, and loud contraptions, they've slowly turned into cheap commodity items. A basic Logitech keyboard will set you back less than $10 nowadays, and you might never give it much thought. As for users with more ample budgets, they'll usually splurge on devices with rows of media keys, split "ergonomic" layouts, built-in LCD displays, or wireless laptop-style designs.

For a small number of enthusiasts and veteran typists, however, the perfect keyboard isn't the cheapest or flashiest you can pick up at Best Buy. Those people believe keyboard designs peaked some time in the 1980s, when IBM started offering the 1391401—or Model M—with its computers. "Everything that's come out since then is garbage," they might tell you while adjusting their glasses and brushing crumbs from their beards. And if you've tried a Model M, you might just nod your head in agreement.

What does this have to do with Metadot's Das Keyboard Professional? Simply put, the Das Keyboard and Model M share a similar design philosophy: emphasizing tactile and auditory feedback over other attributes. They both produce loud, mechanical clicks after each key press, and they both have bare layouts with no media keys or other frills. There's one big difference, though. While eBay brims with vintage Model M keyboards priced as low as $30, the Das Keyboard carries a $129 price tag. Is it really worth that much, and can it compare with IBM's cult keyboard?

Buckling springs

What makes the Model M "click" is the so-called buckling-spring design. An actual metal spring lies waiting under each key. When depressed, that spring buckles and activates the key switch, which in turn produces the trademark clicking sound—so you really feel and hear the successful key press. Or, in the words of U.S. patent 4118611, "The sudden snap action provides a tactile feedback to a human operator due to the sudden decrease in force as will be described more specifically later, and also produces an audible feedback since the sudden pivoting of the rocker member 4 produces a clicking noise."

The Das Keyboard feels similar, although it uses a different mechanical switch design engineered by Cherry. There's still a metallic (stainless steel) spring inside each key, and keys still click, but the Cherry key switch has a shorter travel time and requires slightly less pressure. According to the diagrams I collected below, the Das Keyboard's keys should depress when subject to around 56 g of force after 1.2 mm of travel, while the Model M will need approximately 65 g and a 2.3 mm displacement. If you ever used one of the old Apple Extended II keyboards in the 1990s, the Das Keyboard may feel familiar—both units have similar enclosed key switches.

By contrast, most consumer keyboards out there are based on the dome-switch design, where a rubber membrane with "bubbles" replicates the feel of springs. If you're in front of a regular desktop keyboard right now, go ahead: pop out one of the keys and look under it. You'll probably see a grimy rubber dome staring up at you. That dome doesn't cost much to manufacture, and it generates very little noise when it collapses, but it also has a gummy feel that produces far less tactile feedback.

So, because dome-switch keyboards don't let you hear or feel exactly how much force you need to depress a key, you might find yourself pushing too hard or too softly. That can mean either more fatigue or more typos. Some users try to alleviate those shortcomings with split ergonomic keyboards, which place your hands in a more natural position, but those don't really solve the feedback problem—although they can feel comfy enough to type on.

I don't have any statistics handy, but I can throw some anecdotal evidence at you. (Take that however you please.) I've been typing 2,000 words a day five days a week for around three years on a 1989 Model M, and my fingers, hands, or wrists never get tired. When I was using a Microsoft Natural Keyboard Pro and typing less each day, I suffered from finger pain and annoying wrist tingling on a regular basis. I actually type faster on the Model M, as well, even though my touch-typing technique hasn't changed.

I therefore believe the spring-based mechanical design provides a more comfortable typing experience, although I can't deny the shortcomings. Shoving springs inside each key increases cost and weight, and it makes the keyboard loud. You probably won't care if you're a recluse rattling away in your basement, but other people probably will care if you try that around them. Then again, folks got by just fine in the typewriter days—it may just be a matter of habit.

Before we move on, I should mention one last upside for the mechanical switch camp: longevity. I wasn't kidding when I said my Model M is almost 20 years old now. Despite its age, it still works perfectly. Keys never stick, get gummed up, or fail to register, even if I sometimes have to oil up the space bar mechanism to prevent it from squeaking. I challenge you to find a dome-switch keyboard that continues to feel great after two decades (or even one). That's an especially important consideration for the Das Keyboard, since it's so much more expensive than regular wired keyboards.

Taking a closer look at the animal

Now that the boring part is out of the way, let's have a look at the Das Keyboard Professional. The first two keyboards to bear the Das Keyboard name catered to an exclusive niche, since they had completely blank key caps. That made them inaccessible to all but experienced touch-typists.

By contrast, the third-gen Das Keyboard is available both with and without marked key caps. Metadot dubs the blank version Das Keyboard Ultimate, but we're looking at the version with marked key caps today—the Das Keyboard Professional.

Without the blank keys gimmick going for it, this keyboard really needs to stand out because of its tactile comfort alone. That's apparently what Metadot had in mind, because the Das Keyboard Professional really doesn't have many frills. You get 104 normally placed keys (including Windows keys), three LEDs, a dual-port USB 2.0 hub, and that's pretty much it. Much of the company's attention seems to have gone into the details, like the glossy finish, stylish lock indicators, 6.6-foot USB cable, support for up to 12 simultaneous key presses, lack of "F-lock" nonsense, and of course, the clicky key switches.

Incidentally, prying off key caps needn't involve a screwdriver or very much brute force. The caps simply slide off the little cross-shaped key switch nubs, although they stay securely in place unless you actively try to tamper with them.

I can't say I approve of the glossiness, since this device is after all designed to come in contact with human hands on an day-to-day basis. Even Metadot apparently expects the keyboard to collect smudges quickly, because it throws a little wiping cloth in the box. Nevertheless, the Das Keyboard looks good. That's a welcome change from the Model M and its more recent copycats, which are about as retro as New Coke and Rick Astley music videos. Unless you're still using a CRT monitor and an old-fashioned ball mouse, the Das Keyboard should look more at home on your desk than other clicky offerings.

The Das Keyboard is a good deal lighter and more compact than the Model M, as well. (Metadot quotes a weight of 2.6 lbs, while the Model M weighs more than double that according to my bathroom scale.) Those are nice pluses for folks with small desks and LAN party addicts. On the flip side, you can't use the flat area at the top to store pens and other knick-knacks, and the Das Keyboard probably doesn't make a good weapon. Keep that in mind next time you get into a fight over code formatting rules or Joss Whedon shows.

Typing on a $130 keyboard

So, what does typing on the Das Keyboard Professional actually feel like? I compared it to Apple's Extended Keyboard II earlier in this review, and that's not entirely inaccurate: both units have flatter keys than the Model M, and they both have less travel time and softer springs. That means you don't have to push as hard, which (in theory) should minimize fatigue.

Surprisingly, however, I found the Das Keyboard a little cramped. That's not because it's any smaller than the Model M. On the contrary, the home row is actually slightly wider overall. However, Metadot opted for slightly narrower key caps with larger gaps between them. This difference amounts to something like half a millimeter per key, but it still caused me to make more typos at first. (Though perhaps the Das Keyboard's shorter overall height also played a part in that.) Take that impression with a grain of salt: I've been using a Model M on my desktop for about six years, so I'm a bit like a grouchy old man asked to part with his favorite chair.

Softer feel or not, the Das Keyboard Professional's keys are very clicky. The clicks have a somewhat higher pitch and a less plasticky sound than those on the Model M, so they actually sound a little more like an old typewriter. If you're hoping paying $130 will get you the same feel as the Model M without the deafening noise, prepare to be disappointed. For the reasons I explained eariler, however, auditory feedback is a good thing for typists.

I expect some may want to actually see and hear the device in action, so I've filmed myself typing away on both the Das Keyboard and the Model M. Enjoy:

While we're on the topic of noise, I noticed a strange issue with my review unit: the keys hum. You can't hear it in the video, but hitting a key or slapping the underside of the keyboard produces a resonating musical sound not unlike a faint A3 note. After further tinkering, I think the noise comes from the springs inside each key. The Week in Review is edited and published by Jack Spratts. While you may not hear anything if you're listening to music or wearing headphones, it's definitely unsettling. I was even more unsettled when I plugged my Model M back in, because as it turns out, it also produces a sort of ringing sound—just on a higher pitch. I must've gotten used to it over the years, because I think it's fainter and easier to tune out, a bit like a subdued wind chime.

All things considered, though, I think the Das Keyboard Professional feels just great to type on. It doesn't really replicate the touch and feel of the Model M, but after about a day of use, I'd be tempted to say it's actually a little more comfortable. Keys require little pressure to hit, and at certain moments, I feel like my fingers are simply gliding over the keyboard instead of painstakingly pressing down on each key. Coupled with the clickiness, that makes for some very satisfying typing.

Some readers may wonder why I'm comparing the Das Keyboard to the Model M and not a more recent dome-switch keyboard. That's essentially because the two designs are like apples and oranges: clicky keyboards are in a league of their own in terms of tactile feel, and you can't really replicate that without mechanical key switches. The Das Keyboard and Model M both feel crisp, responsive, accurate, and satisfying to use, whereas every dome switch keyboard I've typed on has felt mushy and spongy. If you've tried both keyboard types and prefer the dome-switch variety, then the Das Keyboard isn't for you. Simple as that.Conclusions

The question, then, is whether the Das Keyboard Professional is worth the $129 price tag, since you can get a brand new Unicomp buckling spring keyboard for $69 and a vintage Model M for as little as ~$30 on eBay.

Frankly, I'm a little torn. The Das Keyboard has a lot going for it: the looks, the compact footprint, the USB hub, the Windows keys, and the more comfortable action. However, I may well switch back to the Model M once I'm done writing this review. Perhaps I'm just too used to the IBM keyboard, but I'm not convinced the Das Keyboard is a hands-down superior choice. And somehow, the ringing bothers me more than on the Model M.

This is a bit like trying to pick between two slightly different flavors of delicious ice cream, though, and I think anyone turned off by the Model M's size, looks, and clunky action definitely should consider the Das Keyboard Professional. Yes, it's expensive, but mechanical keyboards typically last longer than their dome-switch brethren. (Cherry rates its MX switches for a "minimum" of 20 million strokes each.) Divide $129 by, say, ten years, factor in the extra comfort and possible health benefits, and the pricing suddenly doesn't sound so crazy. Besides, Metadot offers a 30-day money back guarantee in case you're not completely happy with your purchase.

There's a case to be made for the blank Das Keyboard Ultimate, too. If you want to learn to touch-type, then a very comfortable keyboard without key markings seems like a great option. It's the same price as the Professional, and it'll let you impress your friends with your elite typing skills (not to mention annoy anyone who tries to use your computer).

I give Metadot kudos for producing a keyboard that differentiates itself from the Model M while being just as compelling—if not more so in some ways. Should Metadot produce a fourth-generation Das Keyboard, I would suggest the following changes: get the price tag under $100, make the key caps just a tad bigger and taller, lose the glossy finish, and try to dial down the ringing a little. Oh, and offer more than a one-year warranty. I think that's a little short in light of the price tag and durable key switches.
http://techreport.com/articles.x/16138





A Pirate's Code of Conduct for BitTorrent
Mark Wilson

In the 17th century, when groups of men plundered the seas in ships filled with rats and scurvy, they agreed on a code to keep themselves civilly uncivil. I propose the same for BitTorrent.

My code isn't necessarily the code for everyone. But it is the code for my ship, my computer, my slow-ass DSL connection that can't steal anything worth a damn anyway. Here is the code that I live by.


Article One
Every man shall upload half of what he downloads, with the saints filling in the rest. It's like tossing back a tiny fish so that it may grow into a great whale...only so we can hunt said whale and feast on its blubber during a later voyage.

Article Two
TV is to be downloaded, movies are to be attended when a man returns to shore. If ye aren't a Neilsen family, what you watch doesn't matter for ratings anyway. Since advertisers pay by rating, it's a theft-less crime. Movies, on the other hand, do see profits of gold and jewels. So support independent/foreign film in the theaters, and save the action flicks with high production values and many beautiful explosions for the big screen, too. Hollywood romantic comedies? They are for plundering (in secret).

Article Three
A man shall steal as much music as he needs to quench his thirst, assuming that he supports the band by attending concerts and buying t-shirts. One should always buy the work of an indie label, however, if the music is deemed pleasant after the new moon, it's time for purchasing.

Article Four
Ye wouldn't be a pirate if ye didn't download Photoshop. But for the office, such manners are frowned upon. Make your employer pay so that others may play. And if a man spends his life building a $10 app, that man has earned his $10. Toss him a coin should you requisition his services.

Article Five
Pornography can keep a man company at sea, but always avoid that dealing with husbandry. Girlfriend sharing is OK, assuming the missus knows she's on the Bay. (We're pirates, not douchebags.)

Article Six
JK Rowling's booty is apt for plundering, but her's is a rare case indeed. If a book be in the library and tis in stock, one could make an argument to download for free. But our conscience dictates that we buy some books to keep good writers in print.

Article Seven
If at any time a man should download a virus, that man must notify the message board immediately. If at any time a man should actively upload a virus, no retributive measure shall be deemed too brutal. An arse becomes fair game for a hook.

Article Eight
After you try it, if you really like it and can afford to do so, buy it.

As I said, these are the pirating rules that I live by. They might not be right for every sea, but they've served me just fine for many a year. What be your pirate code?
http://i.gizmodo.com/5202399/a-pirat...for-bittorrent





Photographers Angry at Terror Law

Hundreds of photographers have staged a protest outside Scotland Yard against a new law which they say could stop them taking pictures of the police.

The law makes it an offence to gather information on security personnel if that data could be used for a purpose linked to terrorism.

The National Union of Journalists said the law could be used to harass photographers working legitimately.

The Home Office said it was designed to protect counter-terrorism officers.

The NUJ wants the government to issue guidance to police forces on how exactly the law should be used by individual officers on the ground.

'Treated as terrorists'

The photographers, both professional and amateur, held a mass photo-call outside the Met Police headquarters at Scotland Yard on Monday.

They are angry at the introduction of Section 76 of the Counter Terrorism Act and argue it can be used by police to stop and search them in any situation.

It makes it an offence to "elicit, publish or communicate information" relating to members of the Armed Forces, intelligence services and police, which is "likely to be useful to a person committing or preparing an act of terrorism".

Vice President of the NUJ Pete Murray said it was absurd to treat photographers as terrorists simply for doing their job.

"If the police officer isn't doing anything wrong then what are they worried about?" he told the BBC.

"I mean, we as citizens constantly get told that these extra security laws, terrorism laws, all of this surveillance stuff, is not a threat to us if we're not doing anything wrong.

"So why on earth it becomes a threat to a police officer to have a photographer, a working journalist, a photographer taking a picture of them is quite beyond me."

He said that even if an officer were in the background of a shot - for example, at a football match or street parade - "the photographer may end up on the wrong side of the law".

Peter Smyth, chairman of the Metropolitan Police Federation, backed a call by Grimsby MP Austin Mitchell to introduce a formal code to clarify the position of both the police and photographers.

"Its aim should be to facilitate photography wherever possible, rather than seek reasons to bar it," he said.

"Police and photographers share the streets and the Met Federation earnestly wants to see them doing so harmoniously.

"As things stand, there is a real risk of photographers being hampered in carrying out their legitimate work and of police officers facing opprobrium for carrying out what they genuinely, if mistakenly, believe are duties imposed on them by the law."

'Reasonable suspicion'

In a statement, the Home Office said taking pictures of police officers would only be deemed an offence in "very exceptional circumstances".

"The new offence is intended to help protect those in the front line of our counter terrorism operations from terrorist attack," it said.

"For the offence to be committed, the information would have to raise a reasonable suspicion that it was intended to be used to provide practical assistance to terrorists."

The Home Office added that anyone accused under the act could defend themselves by proving they had "a reasonable excuse" for taking the picture.

Anyone convicted under Section 76 could face a fine or a maximum of 10 years' imprisonment.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/h...ws/7892273.stm





FCC's McDowell Asks Court To Hurry On Cross-Ownership Rules
FMQB

FCC Commissioner Robert McDowell has written to the Third Circuit Court, asking for a ruling sooner than later on newspaper/broadcaster cross-ownership rules. The letter was in response to the Commission's general council recently deciding to inform the court of its withdrawal of an opposition to delay a ruling.

According to Broadcasting & Cable, McDowell wrote that he believed that a decision needs to be made on the status of the cross-ownership rules due to the "grave economic situation now confronting the nation's ‘newspapers and news media' [which] is a matter of immediate concern to lawmakers in Congress and top antitrust enforcement officials." He added, "I support the position expressed in the Jan. 9 Opposition, which urged the Third Circuit to proceed with its consideration of the court challenge."

"I think we need some resolution of this question from the court," McDowell stated. He noted the current "sad state of the newspaper industry," and that the FCC will have to review such ownership rules again in 2010. "I would like to have the old proceeding resolved before then."
http://www.fmqb.com/article.asp?id=1259237





Google Addresses Newspaper Woes
Maggie Shiels

The majority of newspapers should be online, says Google boss Eric Schmidt, amid criticism it should share some of the millions it makes from newslinks.

Media owner Rupert Murdoch has questioned if aggregators like Google should pay to use content.

The Associated Press is to sue to protect its content at a time when the industry is losing readers to the web.

"I would encourage everybody to think in terms of what your reader wants," Mr Schmidt told newspaper bosses.

"These are ultimately consumer businesses and if you piss off enough of them, you will not have any more," he warned the Newspaper Association of America's (NAA) annual conference in San Diego.

While he praised the way newspapers initially embraced the internet, Mr Schmidt said they had since dropped the ball allowing the likes of Google to take over content distribution.

"There wasn't an act after that. You guys did a superb job, and the act after that is a harder question."

"Fair use"

In a question and answer session at the end of his keynote address, suggestions that Google and the internet were eroding the intellectual property rights of newspapers was downplayed by Mr Schmidt.

"From our perspective, there is always a tension around fair use - and fair use is a balance of interest in favour of the consumer."

Industry analyst Ken Doctor of Outsell told the BBC this was the wrong way to look at the argument over how Google profits from newspaper content.

"The real question is, 'Is it fair for news companies to produce all this content for Google and for Google to keep the lion's share of revenue?'

"What we should be focusing on is 'fair share'." said Mr Doctor.

In a blog post, the search engine giant claimed it did provide a financial kickback for newspapers through online advertising.

"We drive traffic and provide advertising in support of all business models - whether news sources choose to host the articles with us or on their own websites," wrote Alexander Macgillvray, Google's associate general counsel for products and intellectual property.

"Users like me are sent from different Google sites to newspaper websites at a rate of more than a billion clicks per month."

Techmeme, which is an aggregator of technology news, agreed that the value of what they did was in driving traffic back to the original publisher of a story.

"Web-native publishers have long come around to the view that short quotes with attribution are not only 'fair use' but highly beneficial," founder Gabe Rivera told BBC News.

"Parasites"

Throughout the last few days, Google has been in the firing line with some in the industry pondering their relationship to the company and other online news aggregators, which link to news articles while selling search terms or ads on pages that provide the links.

"Google is a wonderful company and has done wonderful things as an aggregator and search, and built a model on the fly that means whoever gets the last click gets all the benefit. It's time to reboot the system," said Mr Doctor.

Mr Murdoch, the chief executive of News Corp, was among the first to hit out at Google, one of the biggest aggregators through its Google News service.

"Should we be allowing Google to steal our copyrights? If you have a brand like the New York Times or the Wall Street Journal, you don't have to."

Robert Thomson, the managing editor of the Wall Street Journal which is owned by News Corp, went further in his attack.

"There is a collective consciousness among content creators that they are bearing the costs and that others are reaping some of the revenues.

"There is no doubt that certain websites are best described as parasites or tech tapeworms in the intestines of the internet," said Mr Thomson.

Wait and see

At the NAA conference, the Associated Press waded into the debate and said it would protect online versions of its content from so called "misappropriation" by a variety of online news outlets.

"We can no longer stand by and watch others walk off with our work," said AP chairman Dean Singleton.

At the NAA, Mr Schmidt addressed the AP move with some bewilderment.

"At Google we have a multi-million dollar deal with AP so I was a little confused by all of the excitement in the news in the last 24 hours.

" I'm not sure what they are referring to. We have a very, very successful deal with AP and hope that will continue for many, many years."

The row is being closely watched by analysts and other news aggregators like Techmeme which is adopting a wait-and-see approach.

"I don't see publishers and aggregators suddenly signing up for licensing deals a result of these statements. I think most of us are just waiting to see what they do next," said Mr Rivera.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/h...gy/7988561.stm

















Until next week,

- js.



















Current Week In Review





Recent WiRs -

April 4th, March 28th, March 21st, March 14th

Jack Spratts' Week In Review is published every Friday. Submit letters, articles, press releases, comments, questions etc. in plain text English to jackspratts (at) lycos (dot) com. Submission deadlines are Thursdays @ 1400 UTC. Please include contact info. The right to publish all remarks is reserved.


"The First Amendment rests on the assumption that the widest possible dissemination of information from diverse and antagonistic sources is essential to the welfare of the public." - Hugo Black

[multi]

Interesting news about Skype ..
That article in the thread of yours is still there, amazing
That must of been just before I joined this forum.


Thanks for your efforts on these threads Jack
I often read them but seldom say anything.

[JackSpratts]

yeah, that borland piece is still up. i was just as amazed.