Peer-To-Peer News - The Week In Review - January 26th, '08

[JackSpratts]

Since 2002


































"It’ll be hard, but I need to disconnect. I need to just pull the plug on this Internet life for a little bit and see what it’s like." – Greg Bukata


"Permitting the submission of secret argument is antithetical to our adversary system of justice." – U.S. Magistrate Judge James C. Francis IV


"I owe you one. It's good to know there are some honest people left in the world." – Alan Murphy


































January 26th, 2008





MPAA Admits Mistake on Downloading Study
Justin Pope

Hollywood laid much of the blame for illegal movie downloading on college students. Now, it says its math was wrong.

In a 2005 study it commissioned, the Motion Picture Association of America claimed that 44 percent of the industry's domestic losses came from illegal downloading of movies by college students, who often have access to high-bandwidth networks on campus.

The MPAA has used the study to pressure colleges to take tougher steps to prevent illegal file-sharing and to back legislation currently before the House of Representatives that would force them to do so.

But now the MPAA, which represents the U.S. motion picture industry, has told education groups a "human error" in that survey caused it to get the number wrong. It now blames college students for about 15 percent of revenue loss.

The MPAA says that's still significant, and justifies a major effort by colleges and universities to crack down on illegal file-sharing. But Mark Luker, vice president of campus IT group Educause, says it doesn't account for the fact that more than 80 percent of college students live off campus and aren't necessarily using college networks. He says 3 percent is a more reasonable estimate for the percentage of revenue that might be at stake on campus networks.

"The 44 percent figure was used to show that if college campuses could somehow solve this problem on this campus, then it would make a tremendous difference in the business of the motion picture industry," Luker said. The new figures prove "any solution on campus will have only a small impact on the industry itself."

The original report, by research firm LEK, claims the U.S. motion picture industry lost $6.1 billion to piracy worldwide, with most of the losses overseas. It identified the typical movie pirate as a male aged 16-24. MPAA said in a statement that no errors had been found in the study besides the percentage of revenue losses that could be attributed to college students, but that it would hire a third party to validate the numbers.

"We take this error very seriously and have taken strong and immediate action to both investigate the root cause of this problem as well as substantiate the accuracy of the latest report," the group said in a statement.

Terry Hartle, vice president of the American Council on Education, which represents higher education in Washington, said the mistakes showed the entertainment industry has unfairly targeted college campuses.

"Illegal peer-to-peer file-sharing is a society-wide problem. Some of it occurs at college s and universities but it is a small portion of the total," he said, adding colleges will continue to take the problem seriously, but more regulation isn't necessary.
http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5j...Ec2mwD8UB6S0O2





Troubling "Digital Theft Prevention" Requirements Remain in Higher Education Bill
Richard Esguerra

Last November, we reported on H.R. 4137, the College Opportunity and Affordability Act of 2007, which includes misguided anti-piracy requirements for universities. For the most part, the massive, nearly 800-page bill refreshes existing legislation about federal financial aid. But the bill also includes a section with a title that sounds as if it were dreamt up by an entertainment industry lobbyist: "Campus-based Digital Theft Prevention." Specifically, the bill says:

Each eligible institution participating in any program under this title shall to the extent practicable—

[...]

(2) develop a plan for offering alternatives to illegal downloading or peer-to-peer distribution of intellectual property as well as a plan to explore technology-based deterrents to prevent such illegal activity.

To those unfamiliar with this particular sort of DC double-speak, "alternatives to illegal downloading" means industry-sanctioned download services; and existing "technology-based deterrents" means network filters and other tools.

These congressional requirements will turn out to be expensive dead-ends -- the industry-sanctioned online music services are laden with DRM, and network detection/filtering programs present privacy risks and are inevitably rendered obsolete by technological countermeasures.

Advocates of the bill stress that the language stops short of demanding implementation -- that it only requires universities to "plan" -- but this argument misses the point entirely. The passage of this bill will unambiguously lead universities down the wrong path. For the sake of artists, administrators, students, and consumers better approaches exist.

The bill also would hang an unspoken threat over the heads of university administrators. In response to concerns that potential penalties for universities could include a loss of federal student aid funding, the MPAA's top lawyer in Washington said that federal funds should be at risk when copyright infringement happens on campus networks. Moreover, earlier versions of "Campus-based Digital Theft Prevention" proposals nakedly sought to make schools that received numerous copyright infringement notices subject to review by the US Secretary of Education.

In October 2007, the MPAA even tried to supplement its efforts in Congress by giving away custom-built network monitoring software to universities it had flagged for having the most file-sharing traffic. The software, which they called "University Toolkit," was exposed by researchers to have egregious security and privacy flaws. And, in an ironic twist, the University Toolkit was removed from the MPAA website following allegations of copyright infringement -- the MPAA had failed to comply with copyright licensing terms that required the source code for the toolkit software to be freely available.

Recent reports suggest that February may be the earliest that the House will address the bill. There is time yet to contact your representative in Congress to educate them about these out-of-place requirements, and to ask that they support any effort to remove the offending mandate from the bill. Visit our Action Center to email your representative today.
http://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2008/01...education-bill





Hollywood's Congressman to Leave Internet and IP Issues Behind
Nate Anderson

"Hollywood" Howard Berman (D-CA), the California Congressman who chairs the House Subcommittee on Courts, the Internet and Intellectual Property, could be moving on to bigger and better things—and that could mean changing priorities on the crucial subcommittee.

When Tom Lantos (D-CA) announced early in January that he would retire for health reasons after this term, Berman appeared to be next in line to chair the powerful House Committee on Foreign Affairs. A story in today's Hollywood Reporter confirms through senior Democratic aides that Berman intends to take the job, which would remove him as chair of the Internet and IP subcommittee.

While chairing that committee, Berman has consistently backed stronger IP rights for all industries that want them. He's been behind the push to make radio stations pay performers for playing their music (instead of just paying the songwriters) and has backed the MPAA's campaign against colleges and universities. Berman has also argued for "reforming" the DMCA on the grounds that it did not go far enough, and he has backed the PRO-IP Act, a bill that Google's top copyright lawyer has called the most "outrageously gluttonous IP bill ever introduced in the US."

But Berman has also managed to earn praise even from his philosophical opponents for involving many different stakeholders in the creation of legislation.

One of the most likely candidates to replace Berman on the subcommittee is Rick Boucher (D-VA), who was considered to be in the running for the job the last time around. Boucher is a man we've previously referred to as "a voice of sanity in a cacophony of idiocy" when it comes to IP issues.

He was the backer of the Digital Media Consumers' Rights Act (DMCRA), a bill designed to reform the problems of the DMCA. Sadly, when the bill was introduced in its most recent incarnation, it was far more limited in scope than we would have liked, though it did still address some real problems with secondary liability. He has also backed network neutrality laws and a plan to use the Universal Service Fund for funding rural broadband connections, and he has introduced legislation to give bloggers and journalists federal "shield" protection.

There's no guarantee yet that Boucher will get the job, and he and Berman still need to win their respective elections this fall, but even the prospect of a Boucher-controlled Internet and IP subcommittee in the House feels like an early Christmas present. As the Hollywood Reporter correctly notes, though, the full Committee is still chaired by John Conyers (D-MI), who comes from the Berman School of Thought on such issues.
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post...es-behind.html





Latest Test for DMCA Safe Harbors: Warner Sues SeeqPod
Fred von Lohmann

Warner Music Group has sued SeeqPod (complaint, 500k PDF), a "Web 2.0" music search engine (combined with embedable playlists, etc, etc) that has been gaining in popularity in recent months.

This is the latest in a string of lawsuits against Web 2.0 companies. Together, the suits represent an attack by the entertainment industry on the DMCA safe harbors that protect hosting services and search engines. Other similar cases have been filed against YouTube, MP3Tunes.com, Veoh, PornoTube, and Divx/Stage 6.

The SeeqPod case is different, however, because it is among the first that directly tests how copyright law applies to search engines. Despite the success of search engines like Yahoo and Google, there has been remarkably little case law developed on the copyright front. Part of the reason is because Congress stepped in with the DMCA safe harbors in 1998, creating some degree of certainty where the background legal concepts (e.g., contributory infringement) did not. In addition, by endorsing a notice-and-takedown regime, the DMCA safe harbors created a solution for many copyright owners that is cheaper than litigation.

But now, as search engines become more specialized and capable, certain copyright owners have become increasingly dissatisfied with the notice-and-takedown bargain struck in the DMCA. That's what these lawsuits are really about -- the defendants are complying with the letter of the law, but copyright owners are now trying to change the rules in court.

Of course, the SeeqPod case may settle (as a similar case brought by Warner against iMeem did). But the copyright issues will not be going away anytime soon (in particular, keep your eye on the remand in the Perfect 10 v. Google case, where the DMCA safe harbor issues may take center stage).
http://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2008/01...r-sues-seeqpod





Proposed EU ISP Filtering and Copyright Extension Shot Down
Jon Stokes

This past November, EU regulators in the European Parliament's Committee on Culture and Education began looking in earnest at Europe's cultural products and heritage as an engine for economic growth. The idea behind this investigation, which took its original impetus from a 2006 study on "The economy of culture in Europe" and culminated in a draft report submitted by French socialist MEP Guy Bono entitled "On cultural industries in the context of the Lisbon strategy," is to consider ways that EU regulation might give a boost to the so-called "cultural and creative sector."

The draft report contained language that the caused alarm among European music and movie business trade groups, so Europe's version of Big Content immediately set about lobbying to not only "fix" the offending point (number 9, quoted below), but to convert it into a power grab by proposing alternative language supporting ISP-level copyright filtering (c.f. similar efforts in the US) and the extension of copyright terms.

Here's point 9 from the draft report; see if you can spot the language that made Europe's content industry nervous:

9. [The European Parliament] urges the Commission to rethink the critical issue of intellectual property from the cultural and economic point of view and to invite all those active in the sector to join forces and seek solutions equitable to all, in the interest of a balance between the opportunities for access to cultural events and content and intellectual property; draws Member States' attention on this point to the fact that criminalising consumers so as to combat digital piracy is not the right solution;

All that talk of striking a "balance" between access and intellectual property, and the negative reference to industry tactics that "criminalize" consumers spawned a flurry of lobbying activity, and by the time the dust settled lobbyists had succeeded in getting the European Parliament's Committee on Industry, Research, and Energy (ITRE) to submit an amendment to the draft report urging European ISPs to implement filtering mechanisms for the purpose of copyright enforcement.

The European recording industry followed up this move with another amendment, proposed last week, to extend EU copyright terms to match those of the US (the author's life plus 70 years).

The EFF's Danny O'Brien sent a heads-up to BoingBoing that, as of today, the Culture and Education Committee rejected all of the proposed filtering and copyright extension amendments. Clearly, they're not going to let the ITRE or the European recording industry push them around, which is great news for Europeans. Now if we could only get the US Congress to show as much spine as the French (ouch).
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post...shot-down.html





Peer-to-Peer Network Invites Drivers to Get Connected

CarTorrent could smarten up our daily commute, reducing accidents and bringing multimedia journey data to our fingertips
Laura Parker

The name BitTorrent has become part of most people's day-to-day vernacular, synonymous with downloading every kind of content via the internet's peer-to-peer networks. But if a team of US researchers have their way, we may all be talking about CarTorrent in the not too distant future.

Researchers from the University of California Los Angeles are working on a wireless communication network that will allow cars to talk to each other, simultaneously downloading information in the shape of road safety warnings, entertainment content and navigational tools.

The UCLA Engineering's Network Research Lab team, led by Mario Gerla and Giovanni Pau, hit upon the idea in 2004, when peer-to-peer networking took off fuelled by applications such as BitTorrent. "We had the idea from BitTorrent, and decided to extend BitTorrent to cars under the name of CarTorrent. One of our dreams had always been to apply the technology to civilian applications," says Gerla. "Imagine you're driving to a beach resort and want to find out what the best beaches are. You could stop at a gas station and download several video clips from an internet access point, but that's not very convenient."

Wireless at the wheel

Gerla and his team instead propose to connect cars to one another using the wireless networking platform they're developing, which could be up and running by as early as 2012.

The wireless network would allow moving vehicles within 100 metres and 300 metres of each other to connect and create a network with a wide range. The network would then allow drivers to download information from internet access points simply by driving by, and then share that information with other cars on the road.

Gerla says the benefits of such a network are numerous: "There will be immediate benefits in driving safety as well as in content distribution. Car-to-car communications can be used to avoid accidents by alerting the drivers of imminent danger. To prevent a crash we must act in fractions of a second. We are currently collaborating with vehicle manufacturers to help reduce accidents and fatalities on the road. For this latter application, vehicles are equipped with sensing devices, such as radars and video cameras."

The network uses standard radio protocols such as Digital Short Range Communication, or DSRC, combined with wireless LAN technology at 5.9GHz (not Wi-Fi's 2.4GHz) to create networks between vehicles equipped with onboard sensing devices. These devices can gather safety-related information as well as other complex multimedia data.

By far the most essential aspect of this network, though, is that it is not subject to memory, processing, storage and energy limitations like traditional sensor networks. Instead, it relies on the resources of the vehicle itself, along with those vehicles around it.

Under the scheme, cars would be able to use their onboard radios to exchange three categories of information: safe navigation (such as reporting on icy road conditions, traffic jams and possible collisions ahead), content distribution (locally relevant information, advertisements and videos of upcoming attractions) and urban surveillance (collecting information which could be used later by police for forensic investigations).

Gerla and his team are already collaborating with car manufacturers such as Toyota and BMW on bringing the project to life. However, costs and industry standards are the more important hurdles that this network will have to jump before it can become feasible. Gerla says the network can be slowly implemented, just as GPS navigation systems and Wi-Fi-style radios have slowly started to become standard equipment.

"What will turn the tide will be the approval and widespread adoption of the emerging standards for car-to-car communications sponsored by the IEEE 802.11p Working Committee of the IEEE [the professional association for the advancement of technology]," says Gerla.

"A few years ago, leading car manufacturers decided to join forces with national government agencies in the Vehicle Information Infrastructure Consortium, which works closely with the IEEE 802.11p Committee, to develop communications architecture to help drivers anticipate hazardous events or avoid bad traffic areas."

However, Gerla says the network is not without faults: "The two most critical aspects that could go wrong if the network is implemented are location privacy, because drivers do not want others to know where they are; and attacks where a driver could maliciously inject wrong traffic congestion information to persuade other drivers to get out of its way."

Defensive drivers

With costs currently estimated at around $500 (£255) per car for the implementation of the equipment required to connect to the network, drivers probably won't be clamouring to get the kit.

"Most likely, there will be at least initially two types of drivers," Gerla says. "The drivers enamoured with high-tech features will immediately embrace this technology. But it's true that less aggressive drivers, probably a sizeable fraction of the population, will be reluctant to embrace the technology at first."

That, of course, could present a problem for the growth of CarTorrent: for as anyone who has tried using BitTorrent will know, there's no point in being the only person on a peer-to-peer network. Being the first car to use CarTorrent will be an expensive and pointless exercise. But like a telephone - and the internet - it's the sort of technology whose benefits will multiply rapidly as long as more people use it.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology...ent.technology





Court Says You Can Copyright A Cease-And-Desist Letter

Back in October, we wrote about a law firm that was claiming a copyright on the cease-and-desist letters it sent out, and insisting that it was a violation to repost them. It's long been believed that cease-and-desist letters that have no new creative expression and are merely boilerplates are likely not covered by copyright. On top of that, preventing someone from copying a cease-and-desist letter or posting it on their own website seems like a pretty severe First Amendment violation. The group Public Citizen hit back against this law firm's claims, but surprisingly, a judge has now agreed that you can copyright cease-and-desist letters (thanks to Eric Goldman for emailing over the link). The news was announced in a press release by the lawyer in question, who claims this means he can now sue anytime someone posts one of his cease-and-desist letters. He also goes on to slam those who believe free speech means being able to talk about the fact that a company is bullying them:

"The publication of cease and desist letters is an easy way for scofflaws to generate online 'mobosphere' support for illegal activity and, until today, many businesses have been hesitant to take action to address some of the lawlessness online because of possible retaliation and attacks."

To which I would respond: "The copyrighting of cease-and-desist letters is an easy way for law firms to bully small companies who have committed no wrong, but who have no real recourse to fight back against an attempt to shut them up via legal threat. Until today, many companies who were being unfairly attacked by companies and law firms misusing cease-and-desist letters to prevent opinions from being stated, had a reasonable recourse to such attacks, and could draw attention to law firms that used such bullying tactics to mute any criticism." This is an unfortunate ruling and can only serve to create a serious chilling effect on free speech.
http://techdirt.com/articles/20080125/18070575.shtml





Virus Writers Charged with Copyright Violation
John Leyden

Japan has arrested its first suspected virus writers, but in a strange twist the three suspected creators and distributors of a strain of P2P malware have been charged with copyright violation, in an arrest that recalls Al Capone's prosecution for tax evasion.

The trio were cuffed by cops in Kyoto on suspicion of involvement in a plot to infect users of the Winny P2P file-sharing network with a Trojan horse that displayed images of popular animé characters while wiping MP3 and movie files. The malware, called Harada is Japanese reports, is reckoned to be related to the Pirlames Trojan horse (http://www.sophos.com/pressoffice/ne.../pirlames.html) intercepting by net security firm Sophos in Japan last year.

According to local reports, the three men have confessed to their roles in unleashing the malware. One is said to have created the malware, while the other duo are reckoned to have offered the malware up to prospective marks on Winny. A lack of relevant computer crime law in Japan means that the group have been charged with copyright offences.

"It isn't illegal to write viruses in Japan, so the author of the Trojan horse has been arrested for breaching copyright because he used cartoon graphics without permission in his malware," explained Graham Cluley, senior technology consultant for Sophos. "Because this is the first arrest in Japan of a virus writer, it's likely to generate a lot of attention and there may be calls for cybercrime laws to be made tighter."

Due to the lack of applicable cybercrime laws, the authors of the malware face much the same fate as the coder who developed Winny. Isamu Kaneko, Winny's author, was fined by a Japanese court in December 2006 for copyright offences.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/01..._vxer_arrests/





Anti Piracy Group 'Breaks Law' to Track File Sharers

Switzerland warns leading company it is breaching telecoms law
Jeremy Kirk

The Swiss authorities have warned a company that tracks file sharers for copyright violations that its tactics violate the country's telecommunication law.

Logistep, which supplies information on suspected file sharers to law firms around the world for use in copyright violation cases, has until 9 February to respond to the Federal Data Protection and Information Commissioner (FDPIC), said Marc Schaefer, the agency's legal advisor.

Under Swiss law, the identity of a subscriber to an ISP (Internet service provider) can only be revealed during the course of a criminal case, not a civil one, Schaefer said. The IP (Internet Protocol) address of a computer controlled by the subscriber is considered "personal" information.

In order to try to claim damages from people suspected of trading songs or movies, Logistep has asked Swiss prosecutors to open criminal cases, Schaefer said. As the criminal cases progresses, Logistep receives information from prosecutors that identifies the file sharer.

Logistep then initiates a civil case against the file sharer while the criminal case is ongoing. Prosecutors usually drop the criminal case against the person, Schaefer said.

By starting a criminal case "to obtain the identity behind an IP address ... they just found a way to avoid the telecommunication law," Schaefer said. "Therefore, we told Logistep to stop their work until there is a legal basis which allows such an identification."

The FDPIC's recommended to Logistep to stop the practice, but is prepared to take the matter to court, Schaefer said. Logistep would be in the clear if they pursued a civil case after the criminal one is complete, he said.

Logistep has issued a statement contending an IP address is not personal information. Company officials could not be reached Friday.

An IP address can indicate the location of a computer but not necessarily who is using it. Several people could share the same computer, which would have one IP address.

But ISPs, as well as wireless routers used in home, can also dynamically assign IP addresses, which adds further ambiguity regarding who is using the computer and who may be responsible for illegally activity conducted on the PC.

That means the person paying the bill for the Internet service may end up as the target of the civil proceeding rather than the offender, adding another worrying factor into the lawsuits, Schaefer said.

On its Web site, Logistep said it can compile a history of illegal files shared by someone, even if encryption or proxy servers are used to mask the sharing.

The row comes amid growing concerns over how personal data is collected and retained in Europe.

On Monday, a top European data protection official, Peter Schaar, said at a European Parliament hearing that an IP address should be considered personal information since it can be used to identify people.

Schaar is chairman of the Article 29 Data Protection Working Party which is looking at personal data and privacy issues, such as what kind of data search engines retain. A report is scheduled for release by April.
http://www.computerworlduk.com/manag...fm?newsid=7201





Student Behind DoS Attack that Rekindled Bad Soviet Memories
Joel Hruska

Last May, the web sites of a number of high-ranking Estonian politicians and businesses were attacked over a period of several weeks. At the time, relations between Russia and Estonia were chillier than usual, due in part to the Estonian government's plans to move a World War II-era memorial known as the Bronze Soldier (pictured below at its original location) away from the center of the city and into a cemetery. The country's plan was controversial, and led to protests that were often led by the country's ethnic Russian minority. When the cyberattacks occurred, Estonia claimed that Russia was either directly or indirectly involved—an allegation that the Russian government denied. Almost a year later, the Russian government appears to have been telling the truth about its involvement (or lack thereof) in the attacks against Estonia. As InfoWorld reports, an Estonian youth has been arrested for the attacks, and current evidence suggests he was acting independently—prosecutors in Estonia have stated they have no other suspects. Because the attacks were botnet-driven and launched from servers all over the globe, however, it's impossible to state definitively that only a single individual was involved.

Dmitri Galushkevich, a 20-year-old Estonian student, launched the DoS (denial-of-service) attacks from his own PC last year. Although he's a native Estonian, Galushkevich was angry over his government's plans to move the statue, and launched the attack as a means of protesting the decision. The fact that a single angry student was able to impact international relations between two countries is an startling development. Understanding why Estonia and Russia got into a tiff about a war memorial statue in the first place, however, requires that we take a trip down history lane.

American history tends to focus its coverage of World War II on the theaters of combat we participated in. This makes logical sense—but it leaves the story of the eastern front largely untold, and doesn't begin to explain why the Russians would be upset over Estonia's movement of a statue nearly 63 years after the war's end—or why the Estonians would want to move it in the first place.

The Soviet Union occupied Estonia in 1940 as part of the 1939 German-Soviet Nonaggression Pact. Once it held the country (Russia, to this day, insists the USSR was invited into Estonia and did not "occupy" it), extraordinary elections were held with the ballots restricted to pro-Communist choices. The country became a member of the USSR in August 1940—and was promptly invaded and occupied by the Germans in 1941 when that country opened the Eastern Front of the war.

Germany's eastern front with the USSR was both the longest and the deadliest in worldwide military history. Contemporary estimates on how many Soviet soldiers and civilians died can vary widely, but the median figures suggest that the Red Army lost approximately 10 million men, with an additional 20 million civilian casualties. Soviet casualties and losses dwarfed those of any other nation, and the conflict left an indelible imprint on Russian society.

The war memorials built in Soviet-occupied territories after the war ended weren't just monuments to the millions of soldiers and civilians killed in the conflict—they were Soviet ideological bulwarks and physical representations of what the Great Patriotic War had cost the motherland.

The majority of Estonians, however, have a different view. To them, the Bronze Soldier was a symbol of 50 years of Soviet and communist oppression—many Estonians, in fact, voluntarily enlisted and fought with the Germans in 1944 once it became apparent that the Soviets were about to reoccupy the country. Combine the two viewpoints with a significant minority of ethnic Russians who still identify with the memorial as a reminder of Soviet sacrifice, and you've got a pile of tinder just waiting for a spark.

The fact that a single student was able to trigger such events is particularly ominous when you consider just how many potential flashpoints exist between various countries all over the world. The DoS attack against Estonia is an excellent example of how a cyberattack carried out by a 20-year-old student in response to real-life events further exacerbated an existing problem between two nations.
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post...-memories.html





Hacking the XO Laptop
Joel Evans

We recently wrote about the OLPC (One Laptop Per Child) initiative and specifically the XO laptop. Basically, the XO is a $200 laptop specially designed for use in developing nations. The laptop instantly recognizes other XO’s and connects to them, forming a mesh network, which then enables collaboration and even shared internet access in areas that traditionally can’t afford laptops and/or connectivity to the internet. They’re also specially designed for viewing in bright sunlight, and are incredibly durable. We’re already hearing about the positive impact these laptops are having on small villages, and more are being delivered daily.

The OLPC foundation previously offered a way to get your own XO laptop by taking advantage of their Give One Get One program, which allowed you to purchase two laptops, donating one to a developing nation. While that particular program is no longer available–I am hearing it will be offered again soon–you can still give one.

I took advantage of the G1G1 program and have had one for a while now and recently had a “geek” session with Brian Jepson of HackZine and O’Reilly. Brian is a seasoned geek and a quality Linux hacker, so we had a good time playing around with the XO. I should also mention that we generated some interest in our local Panera as we completely took over an area by a fireplace and had some strange gadgetry flying high.

More





RIAA Website Wiped Clean by “Hackers”
Ernesto

Apparently the RIAA is so busy suing consumers that they forgot to hire a decent programmer. With a simple SQL injection, all their propaganda has been successfully wiped from the site.

It started out on the social news website Reddit, where a link to a really slow SQL query was posted. While the Reddit users were trying to kill the RIAA server, someone allegedly decided to up the ante and wipe the site’s entire database.

The comments on Reddit are only speculation so far. Based on the username, which was apparently “webReadOnly”, it might not have been setup correctly, or someone could have found another way to delete the content form the site.

Another possibility is that the RIAA themselves removed the content temporarily. This would seem unlikely, as a better solution would be to take it entirely offline to fix the bigger problem. While they could fix a small vulnerability like this in a matter of seconds, the chances are it’s not an isolated problem.

As pointed out by Haywire, playing around with the urls a bit can return some funny results. It is pretty easy to make the RIAA link to The Pirate Bay for example.

For now it sure does look like all the content has been wiped from the RIAA homepage. Let’s hope they have backups, or not.
http://torrentfreak.com/riaa-website-hacked-080120/





War Breaks Out Between Hackers and Scientology -- There Can Be Only One
Ryan Singel

A loose confederation of online troublemakers who call themselves Anonymous have declared war on the Church of Scientology by flooding its servers with fake data requests, describing the attacks as punishment for the Church's alleged abuse of copyright laws and alleged brainwashing of its members.

Anonymous congregates on the net at various hangouts such as 711chan.org (NSFW) and partyvan.info and sundry IRC channels. The group usually amuses itself by stealing passwords to downloading sites and finding ways to harass online communities that its members disdain. They were last seen on THREAT LEVEL when a Los Angeles Fox News affiliate ran a story that hilariously implied the group's arsenal included exploding vans.

The attack on Scientology, which Anonymous has dubbed Project Chanology, started in recent days, set off by the Church's most recent attempt to censor the internet by forcing sites to remove a creepy Tom Cruise Scientology video. A wiki set up for the project directs Anonymous members to download and use denial of service software, make prank calls, host Scientology documents the Church considers proprietary, and fax endless loops of black pages to the Church's fax machines to waste ink.

From the Wiki page for Project Chanology:

Let our message ring out from the highest e-mountain.

So you want to join Project Chanology eh? Fight the good fight for the Internet? Or perhaps you are a skeptic, doubtful we can do anything? I won't lie to you. I am an /i/nsurgent first, a /b/tard second, and an all around Anonymous, but I know that for a fight against the Beast it will take more then possible even every chan combined could muster. We might be rivals; hell, we might hate each other's guts, but this goes beyond just us. The people of the Internet, Anonymous, the Goons of SA, the YTMNDers, various hacker groups, trolls of the world, the GameFAQs members, the Gaians, the eBaumers; us old time Internet users, and the newest of noobs, the YouTubers and MySpacers, must band together for a fight that transcends our differences and takes us to a level beyond our individual selves. When things happen to Scientology, like that South Park episode or Tom Cruise going insane on Oprah's show, Scientology loses lots of credential. We need to finish that off, or leave it open for the major media to deliver the coup-de-grace.

Anonymous has also sent out a press release.

The Church of Scientology was founded by science fiction writer L. Ron Hubbard in 1952, and has a large presence in Los Angeles. Scientology's core beliefs center on overcoming traumas from earlier lives, something overcome through sessions with a Scientologist "auditor" who uses an "e-meter" to measure electrical changes in the petitioner's body.

The highly secretive Church of Scientology is liberal in its use of lawsuits to attack its critics and to have Church documents removed from the internet.

The Church of Scientology did not immediately respond to a call for comment.
http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/200...ous-attac.html





Qualcomm’s Guards
Patrick McGeehan

Qualcomm spent about $265,000 last year to post guards at the homes of the company’s billionaire chairman, Irwin M. Jacobs, and its chief executive, Paul E. Jacobs. But the shareholders who were billed for the unusual protection may never know why.

Qualcomm, which makes chip sets for cellphones, temporarily provided the guards to “address a potential threat” to the two men, according to the company’s latest proxy statement. The proxy provides no detail on the threat or whether the Jacobses, who are father and son, were even targets. It simply states that the protective action was taken after “an incident with another high-profile business executive in the same residential area.”

Irwin Jacobs, who founded the company, is one of the most prominent residents of La Jolla, Calif., the affluent community where he has lived for decades in an oceanfront estate. A Qualcomm spokeswoman declined to answer questions about the matter.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/27/business/27suits.html





Boning up on Locust Valley lockjaw

Criminals Beware: Computerized Lip Reading
Sarah Gingichashvili

Researchers at the University of East Anglia (UEA) in the UK are developing a computerized lip-reading system, which they say may be used to fight crime. The scientists recently received a grant of over half a million dollars by England’s Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council, and expect to complete developing the prototype within the next two years.

Lip-reading is a very difficult skill to master - human lip reading is often unreliable, even when it’s performed by trained lip readers. “We all lip read, for example in noisy situations like a bar or party, but even the performance of expert lip readers can be very poor. It appears that the best lip-readers are the ones who learned to speak a language before they lost their hearing and who have been taught lip-reading intensively. It is a very desirable skill” – said Dr. Richard Harvey, a Professor at UEA’s School of Computing Sciences and a leading researcher on the project.

UEA researchers are working in collaboration with experts at the Centre for Vision, Speech and Signal Processing at Surrey University, who have already developed advanced face and lip motion tracking systems. Both teams are currently collecting data, such as videos, which will be used in an analysis designed to determine the exact lip movements and facial expressions associated with specific letter combinations in the most accurate way. The scientists say that since very little is known about exactly what kind of visual information is required for effective lip-reading, one of their main challenges is the task of building a precise and sufficient database of photographs and videos to form a reliable basis for the lip-reading software. Their ultimate goal is to build machines that will be able to automatically convert lip-motion videos into text. According to the researchers, they also plan to extend the silent speech-recognition system to additional languages.

“To be effective the systems must accurately track the head over a variety of poses, extract numbers or features that describe the lips, and then learn what features correspond to what text.” – said Dr. Harvey. “To tackle the problem we will need to use information collected from audio speech, so this project will also investigate how to use the extensive information known about audio speech to recognise visual speech. The work will be highly experimental. We hope to produce a system that will demonstrate the ability to lip-read in more general situations than we have done so far.”

Apart from being extremely helpful to hearing-disabled individuals, researchers say that such a system could be used to noiselessly dictate commands to electronic devices equipped with a simple camera - like mobile phones, microwaves or even a car’s dashboard. England’s Home Office Scientific Development Branch, an institution dedicated to exploring technologies with potential applications in the fight against crime, is currently investigating the feasibility of using lip-reading software as an additional tool for gathering information about criminals or for collecting evidence.

TFOT previously covered MIT’s Lecture Browser software, which allows users to search video content using keywords. You can also read about NASA’s sub-vocal speech-recognition research, aimed to enable silent communication and speech augmentation in extremely noisy environments.

More information can be found on the UEA website (PDF).
http://www.tfot.info/news/1089/crimi...p-reading.html





Unisys Awarded CBP $62 Million RFID Reader Contract

This year, various forms of U.S. IDs will be equipped with vicinity RFID technology; DHS selects Unisys to install RFID readers at the 39 busiest U.S. land border ports of entry

The U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) awarded Blue Bell, Pennsylvania-based Unisys a task order worth as much as $62.2 million over five years to deploy readers and other technologies to support the use of radio frequency identification (RFID) tags on new identification cards at the U.S. borders. Unisys of will install technology upgrades to enable border patrol agents at the thirty-nine largest land border ports of entry to read new RFID cards as well as to read license plates, the agency said in a news release. The new identification cards include the State Department’s upcoming passport card under the Western Hemisphere Travel Initiative (WHTI), the production of which -- a $100 million contract -- was awarded to General Dynamics earlier this week, as well as for a hybrid driver’s license and border card to be produced by Washington State and possibly other states and Canadian provinces. CBP awarded the task order under the Enterprise Acquisition Gateway for the Leading Edge Solutions contract program. It was competed among sixteen vendors in a category covering infrastructure engineering design, development, implementation and integration services.

Unisys will support the use of vicinity RFID technology, which makes RFID-equipped ID cards readable at distances of twenty feet. The RFID tags, embedded in the passport cards and enhanced driver’s license, will be scanned automatically by readers at the border. DHS officials have said they selected the long-range RFID technology over the shorter-range proximity RFID because it enables speedier processing of traffic at the borders. To protect privacy, the RFID tags on the passport card and enhanced driver’s licenses will transmit a reference number that must be matched to a CBP database to obtain personal information on the holder of the card or license.
http://hsdailywire.com/single.php?id=5375





Bush Order Expands Network Monitoring

Intelligence agencies to track intrusions
Ellen Nakashima

President Bush signed a directive this month that expands the intelligence community's role in monitoring Internet traffic to protect against a rising number of attacks on federal agencies' computer systems.

The directive, whose content is classified, authorizes the intelligence agencies, in particular the National Security Agency, to monitor the computer networks of all federal agencies -- including ones they have not previously monitored.

Until now, the government's efforts to protect itself from cyber-attacks -- which run the gamut from hackers to organized crime to foreign governments trying to steal sensitive data -- have been piecemeal. Under the new initiative, a task force headed by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) will coordinate efforts to identify the source of cyber-attacks against government computer systems. As part of that effort, the Department of Homeland Security will work to protect the systems and the Pentagon will devise strategies for counterattacks against the intruders.

There has been a string of attacks on networks at the State, Commerce, Defense and Homeland Security departments in the past year and a half. U.S. officials and cyber-security experts have said Chinese Web sites were involved in several of the biggest attacks back to 2005, including some at the country's nuclear-energy labs and large defense contractors.

The NSA has particular expertise in monitoring a vast, complex array of communications systems -- traditionally overseas. The prospect of aiming that power at domestic networks is raising concerns, just as the NSA's role in the government's warrantless domestic-surveillance program has been controversial.

"Agencies designed to gather intelligence on foreign entities should not be in charge of monitoring our computer systems here at home," said Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.), chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee. Lawmakers with oversight of homeland security and intelligence matters say they have pressed the administration for months for details.

The classified joint directive, signed Jan. 8 and called the National Security Presidential Directive 54/Homeland Security Presidential Directive 23, has not been previously disclosed. Plans to expand the NSA's role in cyber-security were reported in the Baltimore Sun in September.

According to congressional aides and former White House officials with knowledge of the program, the directive outlines measures collectively referred to as the "cyber initiative," aimed at securing the government's computer systems against attacks by foreign adversaries and other intruders. It will cost billions of dollars, which the White House is expected to request in its fiscal 2009 budget.

"The president's directive represents a continuation of our efforts to secure government networks, protect against constant intrusion attempts, address vulnerabilities and anticipate future threats," said White House spokesman Scott Stanzel. He would not discuss the initiative's details.

The initiative foreshadows a policy debate over the proper role for government as the Internet becomes more dangerous.

Supporters of cyber-security measures say the initiative falls short because it doesn't include the private sector -- power plants, refineries, banks -- where analysts say 90 percent of the threat exists.

"If you don't include industry in the mix, you're keeping one of your eyes closed because the hacking techniques are likely the same across government and commercial organizations," said Alan Paller, research director at the SANS Institute, a Bethesda-based cyber-security group that assists companies that face attacks. "If you're looking for needles in the haystack, you need as much data as you can get because these are really tiny needles, and bad guys are trying to hide the needles."

Under the initiative, the NSA, CIA and the FBI's Cyber Division will investigate intrusions by monitoring Internet activity and, in some cases, capturing data for analysis, sources said.

The Pentagon can plan attacks on adversaries' networks if, for example, the NSA determines that a particular server in a foreign country needs to be taken down to disrupt an attack on an information system critical to the U.S. government. That could include responding to an attack against a private-sector network, such as the telecom industry's, sources said.

Also, as part of its attempt to defend government computer systems, the Department of Homeland Security will collect and monitor data on intrusions, deploy technologies for preventing attacks and encrypt data. It will also oversee the effort to reduce Internet portals across government to 50 from 2,000, to make it easier to detect attacks.

"The government has taken a solid step forward in trying to develop cyber-defenses," said Paul B. Kurtz, a security consultant and former special adviser to the president on critical infrastructure protection. Kurtz said the initiative's purpose is not to spy on Americans. "The thrust here is to protect networks."

One of the key questions is whether it is necessary to read communications to investigate an intrusion.

Ed Giorgio, a former NSA analyst who is now a security consultant for ODNI, said, "If you're looking inside a DoD system and you see data flows going to China, that ought to set off a red flag. You don't need to scan the content to determine that."

But often, traffic analysis is not enough, some experts said. "Knowing the content -- that a communication is sensitive -- allows proof positive that something bad is going out of that computer," said one cyber-security expert who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the initiative's sensitivity.

Allowing a spy agency to monitor domestic networks is worrisome, said James X. Dempsey, policy director of the Center for Democracy and Technology. "We're concerned that the NSA is claiming such a large role over the security of unclassified systems," he said. "They are a spy agency as well as a communications security agency. They operate in total secrecy. That's not necessary and not the most effective way to protect unclassified systems."

A proposal last year by the White House Homeland Security Council to put the Department of Homeland Security in charge of the initiative was resisted by national security agencies on the grounds that the department, established in 2003, lacked the necessary expertise and authority. The tug-of-war lasted weeks and was resolved only recently, several sources said.

Staff researcher Richard Drezen contributed to this report.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...012503261.html





Swiss Move on Quantum Cryptography

Ensuring effective data security is the next challenge for global data networks; quantum cryptography offers such effective security; the Swiss national election in October 2007 provided first real-life test of the technology, and Swiss now move to implement it in security-sensitive sectors of the economy

We wrote last fall about how the October 2007 wiss national elections would offer the first real-world opportunity to examine quantum cryptography in action. In last fall's elections, Geneva was first in line to test the unbreakable data code developed by Swiss start-up company id Quantique, paving the way for a new era in data security. The canton of Geneva became a world pioneer when it decided to use quantum cryptography to protect the dedicated line used for counting votes in the October national elections.

The world’s first commercial quantum random number generator and quantum cryptography system was developed by the Swiss company id Quantique -- a spin-off company of the University of Geneva -- so the choice of Geneva to test the system in action was only appropriate. The firm was founded in 2001 by four researchers from the University of Geneva: Nicolas Gisin, Grégoire Ribordy, Olivier Guinnard, and Hugo Zbinden. According to Gisin: “Protection of the federal elections is of historical importance in the sense that, after several years of development and experimentation, this will be the first use of a 1 GHz quantum encrypter, which is transparent for the user, and an ordinary fibre-optic line to send data endowed with relevance and purpose. So this occasion marks quantum technology’s real-world début.”

Quantum cryptography, or quantum key distribution (QKD), allows two communicating parties to produce a shared random bit string know only to them, which can be used as a key to crypt and decrypt messages. An important and unique feature of quantum cryptography is the ability of the two communicating parties quickly to detect the presence of any third party trying to gain access to the key. This third party, the eavesdropper, is commonly known as Eve among cryptographers -- and quantum cryptography is essentially all about cutting Eve out of the equation. The use of the system developed by id Quantique makes it possible to detect Eve’s presence almost immediately and to take counter measures. The system works, however, not only when there is an eavesdropper on the line but also when data become corrupted accidentally, which, in the case of the Swiss elections(and, come to think of it, also Florida), is an equally important feature.

For Robert Hensler, the Geneva State Chancellor, the application of quantum cryptography will thus go a long way toward alleviating concerns over eVoting. “In this context, the value added by quantum cryptography concerns not so much protection from outside attempts to interfere as the ability to verify that the data have not been corrupted in transit between entry and storage,” he says. The Swiss elections provided an important milestone for id Quantique, but they are just the initial phase of a broader plan which is expected to lead to the creation of a pilot quantum communications network in Geneva similar to the nascent internet network in the United States back in the 1970s.

Known as SwissQuantum, this next stage in the project aims to provide a platform for testing and validating the quantum technologies which will help to protect the communications networks of the future. The project’s plans, however, extend beyond the Geneva region with a long term view of expanding the network throughout the country and beyond. This technology will appeal in particular to certain core industries of the Swiss economy which depend particularly on data security -- banks, insurance companies, and high-tech businesses. The Swiss authorities hope that the SwissQuantum name will come to be seen as the best guarantee for reassuring potential clients of the soundness of this scientific innovation.

id Quantique is a partner in the European project SECOQC which began in April 2004. “The SECOQC project makes it possible for id Quantique’s engineers to interact with some of the best groups worldwide in the field of quantum cryptography,” observes id Quantique's cofounder Ribordy. Together, the project partners intend to lay the foundations for a long-range, high-security communication network which combines the technology of quantum key distribution with components of classical computer science and cryptography.
http://hsdailywire.com/single.php?id=5365





Skype and the Bavarian Trojan in the Middle

You can lead a trojan horse to a Bierzelt, but can you make it Skype?
Daniel Schmitt

The pdf file obtained by Wikileaks and also released by the political party Piraten, contains two scanned documents relating to activities of the Bavarian police, Ministry of Justice and the Prosecution office in intercepting encrypted data submitted via SSL or Skype via the internet. The first one, presenting a communication on splitting cost between Bavarian police and the prosecutors offices, the second one presenting the related offer for the software by a German company called Digitask.

The technology, in high-level explained in the offer of Digitask, works via a local installation of a malware on the clients computer.

1 An offer on interception technology
2 The eventuality of delivery
3 The high cost of governmental eavesdropping
4 Software versus bulletproof vests?

An offer on interception technology

The offer dating September 4th 2007, replies an inquiry by Bavarian officials on the possibility of Skype interception, introduces a basic description of the cryptographic workings of Skype, and concludes that new systems are needed to spy on Skype calls.

It continues to introduce the so-called Skype Capture Unit. In a nutshell: a malware installed on purpose on a target machine, intercepting Skype Voice and Chat. Another feature introduced is a recording proxy, that is not part of the offer, yet would allow for anonymous proxying of recorded information to a target recording station. Access to the recording station is possible via a multimedia streaming client, supposedly offering real-time interception.

Another part of the offer is an interception method for SSL based communication, working on the same principle of establishing a man-in-the-middle attack on the key material on the client machine. According to the offer this method is working for Internet Explorer and Firefox webbrowsers. Digitask also recommends using over-seas proxy servers to cover the tracks of all activities going on.

The eventuality of delivery

The document interestingly holds some information on future dependencies, time schedules and similar things, and it quickly becomes clear, the solution presented here eventually delivers something. While it might be admittable that the recording server offered now might only be able to handle a lower amount of clients of Skype introduces new features like Video Chat, the first striking factor is a delivery time of 4-6 weeks for a single installation. Maybe by then or at some other time the software will also be Windows Vista compatible. Interestingly in 2008 software for Windows 2000 and Windows XP only is offered.

The delivery time also does not include installation on the target machine, but only provisioning of the software. Methods of delivery, which would be one of the more interesting features of such a software, include personal delivery to the target machine, and sending it as an e-mail attachment. While other methods, not being further specified, can always be integrated, this will only happen at full development cost and the delivery is still fully up to the purchaser of the software.

Digitask will also not take on any responsibility for use of the software or damage caused by it.

The high cost of governmental eavesdropping

The licensing model presented here relates to instances of installations per month for a minimum of three months. Each installation of the Skype Capture Unit will cost EUR 3500, SSL interception is priced at EUR 2500. A one-time installation fee of EUR 2500 is not further explained. The minimum cost for any installation on a suspect computer for a comprehensive interception of both SSL and Skype will be EUR 20500, if no more than one one-time installation fee are required.

Software versus bulletproof vests?

The letter gives a tabular overview of the cost, interestingly including the proxy server to disguise police officers identity. After stating that no law currently clearly regulates these costs, and concentrating on various legal aspects of this statement, it is declared that all cost for hardware and software obtained needs to be covered by the well-known tight German local police budgets. Based on a decision taken by the State Ministry of the Inner and the State Ministry of Justice, this includes all costs for acquisition and further maintenance of any technical equipment.
http://wikileaks.org/wiki/Skype_and_..._in_the_middle





Sharper Aerial Pictures Spark Privacy Fears

Plans to add high-res images and data including ages to a commerical online database are causing concern
Michael Cross

If you were up to no good in the London open air last winter, start working up excuses: you might be on the web. This week, a company launches an online map of central London which includes aerial photography at four times the resolution of existing online maps: the equivalent of looking down from the 10th floor.

The map, from 192.com, publishes aerial photography at a resolution of 4cm for London and 12.5cm for the rest of the UK. In the right conditions, images at this resolution are enough to identify individuals - a step that existing online mapping ventures such as Google Earth and Microsoft's Virtual Earth have so far been careful to avoid.

Alastair Crawford, 192's chief executive, makes no apologies for the possibilities: "We're considering holding a competition. We want to challenge people to find out how much naughty stuff is happening. If you're having an affair in London, you'd better be careful!"

The mapping venture is likely to heat up the debate about the extent to which information about individuals is available on the web - especially as 192.com, which specialises in providing data about individuals gleaned from official sources has announced plans to attach estimated ages to every person in its database of 27 million Britons.

Getting on the map

The prospect is likely to alarm privacy campaigners. Dr David Wood, of the Surveillance Studies Network at Newcastle University, says he is worried by the power of such systems. "When you combine detailed mapping with demographic data, consumer data and particularly things like credit ratings, you end up with very powerful tools."

Crawford says he is simply presenting data that is already available, often in a less secure setting than through his website.

The London map images, which combine aerial photographs shot over 20 hours last year with data licensed from Ordnance Survey's digital map of Great Britain, are strikingly more detailed than existing services, especially when individuals appear in oblique views. At present, coverage extends from Hyde Park in the centre of London to Dartford Bridge in the east, and Finsbury Park in the north of the capital to Tooting Broadway in the south. The west of London is unavailable because of flight restrictions around Heathrow.

The plan to add estimated ages to its listings will help people look up old friends, says Crawford, especially when they have a common name. "Most people seeking an individual have a rough idea how old the person is. Addresses are very variable, but age stays with you for your whole life."

The estimated age bands are modelled on data gleaned from a sample of the population using what the company calls "complex mathematical algorithms".

Several clues are already in the public domain, Crawford says. One starting point is the database of 4 million directors held at Companies House. This is a public record listing dates of birth as well as addresses. From national demographic statistics of age differences between married couples, it is then possible to estimate the likely age of the director's spouse.

Another source is the electoral roll, which has an annually updated list of 17-year-olds. If a 17-year-old lives with two people of the same surname already listed in the register, they are probably aged between 40 and 60.

Another clue is forename: all other factors being equal, Elsie Jones is probably from a different generation than Kylie Jones. Even house prices, again on public record, can provide a clue: two people of the same name living in a £2m property are probably older than two living in a £200,000 one. All these can be cross-checked with the average age for the postcode area, which is contained in census data.

Crawford says there is nothing new about using information in this way; all the software does is open it up to the non-expert. "It gives that knowledge without having to be clever," he says. "Our anticipation is it will help people get connected."

Crawford says he has taken advice from the information commissioner's office. "We're producing a product as responsible as it can be. 192 provides transparency. It's a safer place for data than the local library. We require users to register with their credit card details and put them through a vigorous verification. We log all IP [internet] addresses, we know what you looked at and we keep a log. If someone is going to abuse personal data, the last place you would get it from is 192.com." But, he admits, "where I think there will be more fuss is when women have been hiding for many years how old they are. But we've always allowed people to have control of data: if anyone wants to correct it, we'll do it free of charge." The data is also not provided for mass unsolicited marketing, he adds.

Who's watching you?

What about stalkers, or worse? "It's not like the movies where killers pick a victim from the phone book. In the real world, the stalker is almost always somebody who already knows where you are."

But with public concern about the safety of personal data rising, the directory is likely to come under fire. Crawford says anyone worried about personal data abuse should start with sites such as Facebook: "It's grossly irresponsible for social networking sites to canvass dates of birth, and publish them."
http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology...ivacy.internet





China Subway Apologizes Over Leaked Kiss Video

Shanghai subway authorities apologized to a Chinese couple videotaped hugging and kissing on a subway platform and dismissed an employee involved in uploading the video which drew thousands of hits, state media said on Friday.

The company found three staff were responsible for taking and uploading the video. Two had already left the company and the other was dismissed after the incident caused "public uproar", Xinhua news agency quoted authorities with Shanghai Metro Operation Co Ltd. as saying.

"We have wrapped up an internal investigation and found the videotape was uploaded by people who had worked for Shanghai metro," they said.

"We made formal apologies and are negotiating with the couple over compensation."

The three-minute footage was uploaded online earlier this week, attracting thousands of hits on sites such as YouTube and sina.com.

Authorities have credited the installation of hundreds of thousands of closed-circuit security cameras in large Chinese cities for helping to reduce crime in recent years.

But Chinese legal experts and scholars have called for more robust privacy legislation to regulate the use of video footage and impose penalties on its abuse.
http://www.reuters.com/article/oddly...55638420080125





Odyssey of State Capitols and State Suspicion
Kathryn Shattuck

IN a recent morning interview in a Midtown Manhattan office Ramak Fazel came across as the quintessential world citizen: tall, slim and elegant, his English tinged with an untraceable accent and peppered here and there with an Italian phrase.

He also exuded the weariness of a frequent flier, having arrived the afternoon before at Newark Liberty Airport, where he was delayed for nearly three hours while United States Customs and Border Protection agents questioned him about the purpose of his trip, searched his baggage and photocopied the pages of his personal agenda.

That routine is something that Mr. Fazel, a 42-year-old freelance photographer who lives in Milan, Italy, has come to know well, and he takes pains to come across as favorably as possible. For starters, he makes sure his face is always immaculately cleanshaven.

“I have become the poster boy for Gillette,” he said, somewhat ruefully.

Shaving was one of the last things on Mr. Fazel’s mind when, on Aug. 7, 2006, he set out on a photographic and philatelic odyssey from his mother’s home in Fort Wayne, Ind. His mission was to photograph each of the nation’s 50 state capitol buildings and dispatch a postcard from each city, using postage stamps from a childhood collection. Each postcard would be mailed to the next state on his journey, where he would pick it up, continuing until he had gone full circle back to Indiana.

But there was a problem. On a flight from Sacramento, Calif., to Honolulu, Mr. Fazel described his project to a fellow passenger. He later discovered that she had reported him as suspicious — perhaps to the pilot or the Transportation Security Administration — and taken a picture of him as he slept.

Maybe it was because he was vaguely foreign looking, he reasoned, and his photographic endeavor seemed menacing in a post-9/11 landscape. He also had a three-day growth of beard, he recalled. And, although Mr. Fazel grew up mostly in the United States and is an American citizen, there was his Iranian name.

In his view that woman’s report began a chain reaction, turning him into a person of interest for officials from local law enforcement agencies on up to the F.B.I. On a stop in Annapolis, Md., for example, he was interrogated about his activities and read his Miranda rights. Today, he said, his name lingers on what he thinks of simply as the “the list.” (He doesn’t know where it originated or who controls it.) He believes it has prevented him from receiving a visa to India and caused him be questioned at the border of Poland, both of which he had visited in the past. He said he has been interrogated the last four times he has entered the United States.

That sense of stigmatization — and the pursuit of life, liberty and art — is a steady undercurrent in “49 State Capitols,” an exhibition of postcards, photographs and ephemera from Mr. Fazel’s 2006 trip that is to open on Wednesday at the Storefront for Art and Architecture in SoHo. (He ran out of money before he made it to Alaska.)

“I wanted to learn about America,” Mr. Fazel said. “Visiting the capitols — I don’t want to say it’s a dream, but we’re led as children to believe that it’s kind of an obligation, that you need to see up close the country you call home.

“I may live abroad, but my sense of being an American, of loving my country, has never changed.”

Mr. Fazel, who moved to Italy in 1994, conceived of the trip in 2006 while visiting his mother in Fort Wayne, where she called his attention to his stamp collection in the attic. “Do something with these,’ ” he remembered her saying.

He went to a collector who offered him less than he believed his stamps were worth. “I thought, what a shame to just sell these for $1,000,” Mr. Fazel said. “I felt they needed to be released from that static state, needed to be released for their original purpose to be postage.”

What specifically inspired his trip was a page of stamps of the flags of the 50 states, in the order of their admission to the union, issued for the nation’s bicentennial in 1976. That was the year he began collecting, shortly after moving to Fort Wayne, where the Fazels were the only Iranian family.

Mr. Fazel was born in Iran but moved to the United States when he was 2 months old. His father, who was then working on his doctorate in psychology, and his mother, who eventually became a potter, settled in Logan, Utah, and then in Fort Wayne. In 1970 the family briefly moved back to Iran, where his father taught in a satellite campus of Harvard Business School in Tehran; in 1976 they returned to Fort Wayne.

Mr. Fazel, feeling something of an outsider in a community divided into white and black, athletically gifted and not, turned to stamp collecting at his father’s urging. “Through stamps I had the chance to learn about America and American culture,” he said. He collected enthusiastically, using money he earned from mowing lawns and shoveling snow.

But with a driver’s license came adult freedom, and Mr. Fazel tucked his collection away. He earned a degree in mechanical engineering at Purdue University, then went to New York to study graphic design and photography. In 1994 he moved to Milan — “to enrich myself, invest in myself,” he said — and to overcome a sense of his cultural limitations. He feels that he succeeded, he said, yet he never stopped pondering what it meant for him to be American.

So in the spring of 2006, stamps in hand, he began to plot his road trip, researching the shortest distances from state capital to state capital and the locations of post offices and Y.M.C.A.’s (where he could shower and swim). He spent $1,500 on a used Chevy van in which he would live and another $2,000 to refurbish it. At night he would often seek out Wal-Mart parking lots, where security was tight, to park his van and sleep.

In each capital Mr. Fazel would research the state’s history in a library and then design a 10-by-14-inch postcard on white stock, adorned with mosaics he concocted from stamps related to the state.

The postcard he sent from Florida to Georgia honors space flight; the one from Hawaii to Arizona pays tribute to Pearl Harbor. The postcard sent from New York to Pennsylvania bears 11-cent stamps from 1965 that Mr. Fazel arranged in the shape of the twin towers — one toppling over, the other being pierced by a commercial aviation stamp — and with fire truck and ambulance stamps and a commemorative stamp of St. Vincent’s Hospital Manhattan.

Mr. Fazel drove 17,345 miles in 78 days, mailing a postcard from each city and picking it up in the next one, with the speed of the mail dictating the pace of his trip. “It was such a nice surprise to discover how reliable the postal system was,” he said, adding that some of the cards arrived within 12 hours.

But in Jackson, Miss., his journey took its bizarre twist. One night, as he sat in his van, a beam of light pierced his reverie. He heard his name over a loudspeaker and a command to step out of the vehicle with his hands held high.

Suddenly, Mr. Fazel said, he was forced to the ground, face to the concrete, and handcuffed by a city police officer. His vehicle was searched, and when the officers determined that nothing was amiss, Mr. Fazel was ordered to leave the parking lot and continue down the road.

He said the officers told him that they had received a report that he was aiming an automatic weapon at passing traffic.

Lee D. Vance, assistant chief of the Jackson city police, said he could not confirm the incident because it had not resulted in an arrest and because Mr. Fazel has not filed a complaint.

As Mr. Fazel continued his travels, he slowly began to perceive that he was on some kind of watch list. In Atlanta he was prohibited from entering the Capitol, he said, even as others did. In Columbia, S.C., he was questioned on the grounds of the Capitol by a police officer who mentioned that he knew Mr. Fazel lived in Italy.

On the morning of Oct. 3, he entered the Maryland Capitol in Annapolis, where he presented identification and signed his name on a visitors’ sheet. A guard asked him to wait.

Suddenly, Mr. Fazel said, he was handcuffed and rushed through corridors into a police station, where a man he later learned was a member of the Maryland Joint Terrorism Task Force with the F.B.I. started speaking to him in Farsi.

As Mr. Fazel related it, the experience went as follows:

“I’m American,” Mr. Fazel said. “I speak English.”

Another officer asked, “Where are you really from?” Mr. Fazel produced his Indiana driver’s license.

“I can tell by looking at you that you’re not from Fort Wayne,” the officer replied.

After a four-hour encounter in which he was asked about a recent trip to Iran for an Italian design magazine and about who was financing his trip to state capitols, he was released without being charged. But he was also warned by an F.B.I. official that he was now in the system and would have troubles if he continued his trip.

Richard Wolf, a media coordinator with the F.B.I. in Baltimore, said he had no knowledge of the incident. He added, “We don’t normally respond or comment on any sort of leads we’ve conducted with the Joint Terrorism Task Force.”

Asked whether Mr. Fazel was on the government’s terrorist watch list, Bill Carter, an F.B.I. spokesman in Washington, said that as a matter of policy, “we can’t verify whether an individual is on a watch list or not.”

After the incident in Maryland Mr. Fazel called Brett R. Fleitz, a lawyer in Indianapolis and a childhood friend. Mr. Fleitz said he immediately sought to reassure him. “I implored him to continue because he was very, very doubtful about the prospects for going on and the dangers that might lie ahead,” Mr. Fleitz said. “I said, ‘Dude, you’re an American.’ And Ramak said, ‘No, I’m a naturalized American.’ And I said: ‘It doesn’t matter. There aren’t two tiers of citizenship here. You have nothing to hide.’ ”

He advised Mr. Fazel to greet law enforcement officers cheerfully and “lay it all out,” as well as to ask for and photocopy the business cards of the authorities he encountered.

Mr. Fazel forged toward the last half of his destinations with his camera, a 1964 Rolleiflex. Despite being questioned at or denied entrance to the remaining capitols, he got every one of his pictures: sometimes an image of gilded rotundas or historic murals, other times pictures of the everyday, the mundane. He photographed visitors in House chambers; a funeral procession for Ann Richards, a onetime Texas governor; a portrait of Arnold Schwarzenegger and his wife, Maria Shriver, in the waiting room of the California governor’s office.

And as the mood of his trip changed from joy to disquiet, he photographed police officers at one capitol, and, at another, a “caution” tape blocking an entrance.

In Albany, Mr. Fazel was asked to wait at the entrance of the Capitol until investigators talked with him. One gave him a big slap on the back, Mr. Fazel recalled, and said, “I know everything about you, and I know you’ve been getting a lot of attention.”

Thomas M. Peters, a senior investigator with the New York State Police, confirmed that Mr. Fazel’s journey from capitol to capitol had raised suspicion.

“We were notified in advance that he was making his way up the East Coast from his stops at other capitols, where he was challenged by law enforcement agents,” he said. “They indicated that at some times he seemed agitated and seemed to be giving evasive answers to their questions, but we don’t know for sure because we were basically getting this information thirdhand.”

Mr. Peters added: “He was fine with us. And if he was agitated, it was probably because he got tired of being questioned.”

Looking back on his travels, Mr. Fazel said: “Notwithstanding the intense scrutiny, the trip was a positive experience. I’m neither rancorous, nor do I feel offended.”

Still, he said, he would like to see his name removed from “the list,” or whatever it is that caused him to be repeatedly stopped and questioned.

The journey ultimately left him wondering what it means to be American — and, more fundamentally, who he really was.

“What I thought would be an exercise in self-betterment turned out to be something a little bigger,” he said dryly.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/20/ar...gn/20shat.html





Teen Arrested After Flight to Nashville
AP

A teenage passenger was detained after a Southwest Airlines flight from Los Angeles landed in Nashville, an airline spokeswoman said Thursday.

Nashville television stations, citing unnamed sources, said the teen unsuccessfully tried to hijack the plane to Lafayette, La., and crash it into a building where a ''Hannah Montana'' concert was to be performed.

Southwest Airlines spokeswoman Brandy King said the passenger was removed from Flight 284 Tuesday night by authorities at Nashville International Airport. She declined to provide additional details.

Airport spokeswoman Emily Richard confirmed there was an incident, but could not provide more information because the passenger was a minor. The teen was not identified.

WSMV and WTVF in Nashville reported the teenager boarded the plane in possession of handcuffs, rope and duct tape with intentions to hijack the plane.

Messages left by The Associated Press with the FBI, TSA, Department of Homeland Security and Nashville police were not immediately returned.
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/articl...&type=politics





Social Networks, from the 80s to the 00s
Brian McConnell

As Facebook enjoys its moment in the sun, we should take a moment to step back and look at the history of computers and social communication. Some historical perspective is in order, both to assess the real value of social networks as businesses, and to anticipate how they are likely to evolve in the future.

I’ve been using the Internet since 1988, and have been using various commercial online services such as CompuServe, Prodigy and GEnie since I had my first computer. A lot of things that could be described as social networks have come and gone in that time.

Bulletin Boards

People have been using computers for social communication since the very beginning of the personal computer industry. Long before the Internet became accessible to the general public, people were hosting BBS systems, many of them focused on an interest group or local community. One particularly prescient invention was FidoNet, a network for BBSes that allowed systems to transfer data (messages, files, etc.) in bucket-brigade fashion to sites around the world. It grew to, at one point, cover much of the world, and was an entirely community-based effort.

Since not everyone had a computer , the communities that emerged in the BBS world largely revolved around computers in some way. Some BBSes focused on DIY computer projects, others on games, and more than a few were devoted to pirating commercial software.

Online Services

Commercial online services reached their peak in the 1990s, first as destinations in of themselves, and later as a way to access the Internet. These services provided access to a broad range of services that are now mirrored on the web. News, travel reservations, shopping and social hubs were all part of the package; much of what we see today on the web existed in some form on these sites. Social communication was one of the big draws for online services, as a major source of their revenue was derived from billing for usage on a per-minute basis. AOL in particular recognized this and allowed users to create communities about just about any topic.

Just as online services were reaching their peak, the web became accessible to ordinary users, turning the Internet into a mainstream phenomenon. Online services, in turn, gradually morphed from destinations to a means of accessing the Internet.

Throughout this period, the population of computer users expanded rapidly. AOL, for all of its faults, deserves a lot of credit for introducing millions of people to the Internet. As the user community grew, online services began to build communities around more diverse interest groups, most having nothing to do with computers. The community focus shifted from computers to people who happened to use computers to do something.

Web 1.0

From the mid-90s to 2000, there was an explosion of activity as companies rushed to reproduce existing online services on the web. There were many social services created during this period, notably GeoCities and theGlobe.com. One thing the web did was to eliminate the walled garden problem that plagued AOL and their brethren. This promoted the development of niche communities, such as PlanetOut/Gay.com, that may have otherwise been stifled by corporate censorship in controlled environments. While none of these services advertised themselves as a social network per se, they had many of the same characteristics.

Friendster

Friendster deserves special mention because it was the first popular web site that contained all of the features we expect from social networks today — especially the notion of using a social graph to track relationships. But was an unfortunate example of being too early in a developing market. Everything I have seen since Friendster is highly influenced by it, and generally offers the same basic features, just in a different package.

The Future

While I think commercial social networks will continue to be popular, it is dangerous to project future growth from past trends. There are several important trends already underway that, while they are good for social networking as a whole, will undermine proprietary commercial services.

Commercial social networks today are a lot like online services in the mid-90s — they’re popular because they make something easier to do (maintain a social graph, keep track of friends, search for new people). It was not that long ago when getting online was difficult for novice users. Large businesses (EarthLink, Netcom, AOL) were built around making the Internet easy to use. They became superfluous as broadband became standard and devices with built-in Net access were shipped.

I think the same thing is likely to happen to social networks, so let’s look at what a social network really does, and think about how that can be implemented on the open web.

Profiles

Social networks make it easy for people to create profiles using standard templates. This makes sense, but this is really no different than a web page. I like what Chris Messina and co. are doing with their distributed social networking project, which uses blogs as a basic building block, and microformats to embed metadata in pages. Separating profiles from other functions, like search and discovery, makes a lot of sense because then you can have one page or site that is visible via many different search tools.

Search (and the Social Graph)

The social graph is a function that can easily be added to search engines. Once web sites, blogs, etc. are tagged to indicate that they are profiles, search engines can crawl them to pick up metadata, links to friends, etc. Search engines are already good at indexing the web, so adding a vertical search for people and social information is not a daunting task. Expect the search engines to add social/people search features. While the conventional wisdom holds that this task will naturally fall to Google, I think this is an area where AOL or Yahoo could score an unexpected win, as both companies are much more people- and community-focused.

Updates

One of the reasons Facebook is so addictive is because it is a convenient way to track the status of friends. This, too, is something that can be moved onto the open web. Anyone who wants to can publish updates, events, etc. via standard formats like RSS and iCal. Anyone who wants to monitor their friend’s updates can do so, via a feed reader, or via custom applications that have yet to be built. If this becomes standard practice, there will be many opportunities for software developers to create new and better ways to track and display this information.

Follow The Money

To many, social networking is a winner-takes-all market. But I don’t think that’s the case. With the three pieces above, you can recreate what any social network does using open standards and the web. At the moment, this requires more effort, so people use commercial services, but in the long run, open standards usually win.

I would bet on a company like WordPress or perhaps Tumblr to come out with a simple tool that makes publishing profiles and updates easy, and that is designed with social search in mind. Maybe this will be an open-source tool, maybe it will be a commercial service supported by monthly fees or advertising. My guess is that many companies will get into this category, and that — just as there is diversity among blogging and personal publishing tools — there will not be one clear winner. Blog authoring and hosting companies are logical entrants, as they already do the majority of what’s needed for an open social network.

Search will be an important component of this, and I would expect that Google and other search vendors will play a dominant role here. There should also be opportunities for companies that specialize in people and social search. They’ll make money, as they already do, by mixing targeted ads with their social search tools.

The good news for users is that this will be an open market, an ecosystem, with no lock in. Users will be able to choose among many profile and update publishing tools. They’ll also be able to use whatever search tool they prefer. Most importantly, users (a.k.a. publishers) will own their data, and will be able to control how it is presented to the outside world.

The bad news for social networking companies is that this is not a winner-takes-all market, with winner-takes-all valuations. Blog authoring tools are a good comparison. This is certainly not a bad business to be in, but it is not a get-rich-quick business, either. The barriers to entry will also disappear as the network effect of having a large user community becomes irrelevant when every participant is equally searchable via multiple services. I also think that the general paranoia about big companies using personal data inappropriately will be an incentive for people to switch to other tools that provide more control over the use and presentation of their data.

If I had to pick a category to start a company in, I’d pick authoring tools. There’s real long-term value there, as people tend to pick a publishing tool and stick with it — and they’ll more for higher-end tools. If I were Facebook, I’d be thinking about how to participate in this trend — in other words, deal with change before it deals with you.
http://gigaom.com/2008/01/20/social-...0s-to-the-00s/





From MySpace to YourSpace
Brian Stelter

Two years ago, Chris DeWolfe, the co-founder and chief executive of MySpace, was talking about international expansion with Rupert Murdoch, whose News Corporation bought the social networking site in 2005. According to Mr. DeWolfe, an entrepreneur used to moving at Internet velocity, he suggested that MySpace could expand to “four or five” countries in the next year.

“What about 13?” Mr. Murdoch said.

That was one of Mr. DeWolfe’s first lessons in just how fast business is done inside the News Corporation. MySpace ended up adding 15 local versions in the year. It is now up to 24 — “we just launched in Brazil,” Mr. DeWolfe said in one of his first interviews since signing a new two-year contract with the News Corporation in October.

In addition to expanding, MySpace is evolving. While it is introducing new musicians and playing host to amateur filmmakers, it is also signing artists to its own record label and developing online video series. It introduced a content guide, MySpace Celebrity, last week.

The world’s largest social networking site, MySpace has grown far past being merely “a place for friends,” as its slogan states. With an estimated 110 million monthly active users, MySpace is undeniably a powerful tool for advertisers who seek reach and efficiency.

Richard Greenfield, a media analyst for Pali Research, called MySpace a fantastic acquisition from a return-on-investment standpoint. The site was sold for $580 million; Mr. Greenfield said it was expected to have around $800 million in revenue in fiscal 2008, mostly through advertising.

“Rupert made an important bet,” said Eric E. Schmidt, the chief executive of Google, which signed a $900 million advertising deal with MySpace’s parent, Fox Interactive Media, in August 2006. “He may find that this is the single best investment he has ever made.”

But MySpace has challenges, especially from Facebook, which has leapt ahead of MySpace in technology and has been accumulating users at a faster rate. Facebook, with its cleaner interface and higher demographic profile, is also seen by some advertisers as a better bet. By comparison, the reputation of MySpace — with its cluttered and often sexually tinged personal pages and lingering privacy concerns — has suffered.

“It’s definitely not the sexy pick anymore,” said Adam Kasper, a senior vice president at Media Contacts, the interactive division of Havas.

So MySpace has changed tack. What was seen as a competitor to traditional media platforms is starting to resemble one.

“Some people still perceive MySpace like it was in early 2004, as a niche place for scenesters in New York and Los Angeles. That’s how it started, but it’s become very mainstream,” Mr. DeWolfe, 41, said. “It’s about consuming content and discovering pop culture.”

As a result, the MySpace site resembles a portal like Yahoo or AOL as much as a social networking site. Peter F. Chernin, the president and chief operating officer of the News Corporation, called MySpace a “contemporary media platform” and said the site existed to “create content and connect people to one another.”

Fox Interactive “clearly envisioned them as a portal,” said Alan Rambam, a senior vice president at the ad agency Fleishman Hillard. “I thought they would be much further along with that today.”

The original content may draw advertisers who are wary of placing a marketing message next to a messy profile page, but it is unclear whether the users who make MySpace the most-viewed Web site in America will want to watch TV episodes and chat with friends on the same site.

Making this transformation work falls to Mr. DeWolfe, the business face of the company, and co-founder Tom Anderson, 37, the product specialist. Both recently signed new contracts at salaries reported to be $7.5 million a year, which would make them two of the highest-paid employees at the News Corporation.

Mr. DeWolfe did not enter MySpace with a media background. He led two companies, now defunct, specializing in data storage and Internet marketing, but he had long envisioned a community-based Web site. In 1997, while in graduate school at the University of Southern California, he developed a business plan for the idea, which he called SiteGeist (he received an A-).

Surprising some observers, the News Corporation — one of the largest media conglomerations — has remained relatively hands-off. Mr. DeWolfe said Mr. Murdoch visited MySpace’s headquarters in Los Angeles about once a month — “He’s definitely in tune with the different features on the site, and he’s very aware of the product road map” — but the two founders are still in control of the site.

“Some of the first words out of Rupert’s mouth were about how important he felt it was to protect what Tom and I had built and to preserve the user experience at all costs,” Mr. DeWolfe said. “He said the single most important thing the company could do is to empower MySpace with the autonomy and resources it needed to continue giving the users what they want.” He added, “It was incredibly reassuring.”

But as MySpace expands beyond its origins, its executives struggle as they try to give users and advertisers what they both want. There is a big contrast between the chaos that is comfortable to many MySpace residents and the neatness that appeals to consumer product companies.

“The challenge for MySpace in the future is making it more of a well-lighted environment for the big brand advertisers — the Procter & Gambles and Unilevers,” said David Cohen, the United States director for digital communication for the media buying agency Universal McCann.

Sitting in his Boston office, Mr. Kasper of Havas counted 10 advertising units on the main page of MySpace Music. He said that some appeared to have been placed by third-party networks, creating a cluttered environment.

“I think it’s too much,” Mr. Kasper said. “It’s just not as valuable to the advertiser, and it’s certainly not as good from a consumer experience standpoint.”

The site suffers, at least in some circles, from an image problem. The prevalence of unwanted friend requests, spam and sexually suggestive material has driven some users away, even giving rise to the term “MySpace refugee.” It still has more page views than any other Web site in the world — more than 1.3 billion a day — although that figure dipped for the first time in December 2007, according to comScore. (MySpace executives said improvements to the site’s structure were at fault.)

Mr. DeWolfe does not seem especially concerned about the perception. He points to what he sees as MySpace’s growth potential and new security and customization features. Users will soon be able to tailor their profile for subsets of friends, “so my colleagues will see a much different page than my college buddies,” Mr. DeWolfe said.

New features for mobile devices are being added, as well as new social applications. And in response to concerns about child predators, MySpace unveiled an accord last week with 49 states to tighten privacy restrictions.

To burnish MySpace’s media credentials, Mr. DeWolfe is leaning on his friends in Hollywood. At the Sundance Film Festival this week, he is playing host to industry parties with the band Maroon 5 and the rapper 50 Cent. MySpaceTV has been the launching pad for a number of Web video series, and it is second to YouTube among Internet video sites.

Mr. DeWolfe is nurturing another project that promises to help MySpace grow: an incubator that will form new companies and function like a start-up. The company, tentatively named Slingshot Labs, will be financed by the News Corporation but exist as a separate company. Mr. DeWolfe anticipates that it will nurture four or five consumer Web sites at a given time.

“We firmly believe that it’s very hard to create a disruptive technology within a larger organization,” he said.

Mr. Chernin said he was not surprised that Mr. DeWolfe and Mr. Anderson had decided to stay with the company they created.

“Think about the size and the scale of MySpace and the opportunity to affect people and the opportunity to play a role in the culture,” he said. “There’s really nothing like it.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/21/te...yspace.html?hp





PC Piracy Levels are "Astounding" Says COD4 Dev
Blake Snow

Infinity Ward's community manager muses, "they wonder why people don't make PC games any more."

"We pulled some disturbing numbers this past week about the amount of PC players currently playing [Call of Duty 4] Multiplayer (which was fantastic)," writes Robert Bowling, on the game's community blog. "What wasn't fantastic was the percentage of those numbers who were playing on stolen copies of the game."

"The amount of people who pirate PC games is astounding," he added. "It blows me away that people are willing to steal games (or anything) simply because it's not physical or it's on the safety of the internet to do."

PC games sales have decreased in recent years due to rampant piracy of software and other digital goods over internet sharing sites.
http://www.gamepro.com/news.cfm?article_id=156948





The Video Game May Be Free, But to Be a Winner Can Cost Money
Seth Schiesel

Ever since John Riccitiello took over last year as chief executive of Electronic Arts, the video game industry bellwether, he has promised to revitalize the company with new games and new ways of reaching consumers. Now, that may be happening.

In a major departure from its traditional business model, E.A. plans to announce Monday that it is developing a new installment in its hit Battlefield series that will be distributed on the Internet as a free download. Rather than being sold at retail, the game is meant to generate revenue through advertising and small in-game transactions that allow players to spend a few dollars on new outfits, weapons and other virtual gear.

At a conference in Munich, the company intends to announce that the new game, Battlefield Heroes, will be released for PC this summer. More broadly, E.A. hopes the game can help point the way for Western game publishers looking to diversify beyond appealing to hard-core players with games that can cost $60 or more.

E.A.’s most recent experiment with free online games began two years ago in South Korea, the world’s most fervent gaming culture. In 2006, the company introduced a free version of its FIFA soccer game there, and Gerhard Florin, E.A.’s executive vice president for publishing in the Americas and Europe, said it has signed up more than five million Korean users and generates more than $1 million in monthly in-game sales.

Players can pay not only for decorative items like shoes and jerseys but also for boosts in their players’ speed, agility and accuracy. Mr. Florin said that while most users do not buy anything, a sizable minority ends up spending $15 to $20 a month.

With Battlefield Heroes, E.A. hopes to bring that basic system of “microtransactions” to Western players, along with increased advertising. Mr. Florin said the licensing agreements around the soccer game prevent E.A. from inserting in-game advertisements from companies that are not already sponsors of FIFA, the international soccer federation. By contrast, E.A. already owns the Battlefield franchise and will be free to insert whatever advertising it wants.

The game industry is booming worldwide, largely on the strength of two trends: a demographic expansion of the gaming population beyond the traditional young male audience and the rising popularity of online play.

Electronic Arts, once the industry leviathan, has not taken full advantage of those shifts. Meanwhile, one of E.A.’s main competitors, Activision, is riding high on the strength of the mass-market Guitar Hero series and has agreed to merge with Vivendi’s games division, which makes the world’s most popular online game, World of Warcraft.

With Battlefield Heroes, E.A. is trying to capitalize on both trends at once. Not only will Heroes be distributed online, but also it is meant to provide a simpler, more accessible entertainment experience than the relatively complex earlier Battlefield games. The combat-oriented series has sold about 10 million copies since the 2002 debut of the franchise’s first game, Battlefield 1942.

“The existing Battlefield games are fairly deep; you have to be pretty good or you’ll die pretty quick,” Mr. Florin said Friday in a telephone interview from Geneva. “Now we’ve toned down the difficulty, shortened each game session to 10 or 15 minutes and made the visual style more cartoony.”

Strategically, Mr. Florin said the game was a step toward figuring out how to generate multiple revenue streams from a single intellectual property, a maneuver Hollywood has mastered.

“I’ve always envied the movie industry when they put a film out in the cinema, then they go to retail with a different business model and then to pay television and then free TV,” he said. “They have the same content reaching different audiences with different models, and we could never figure out a way to do that. Now with higher broadband penetration, we can use the technology to reach a broader audience.”

Not to mention the fact that popular games distributed online can be more profitable than games sold at retail, a prime driver of the Activision-Vivendi deal. Across China and South Korea, where online games dominate the market, game companies are generating profits far beyond their Western counterparts’ returns.

“The Activision-Vivendi deal changes the landscape for how investors will look at game companies, and that puts pressure on everyone else,” Ben Schachter, an Internet and game company analyst at UBS Securities, said Friday.

“Before it was a battle for a few operating margin points here and there,” Mr. Schachter said, “but when you look at the Asian companies like Shanda or something like World of Warcraft, you talking about a 40 percent operating margin business, which is just in a different league from the U.S. companies. So the U.S. publishers like E.A. have to be looking at those models with envious eyes, and those companies will have to experiment.”

Mr. Florin declined to name names but did say that if Battlefield Heroes is a success, E.A. would soon look to create free downloadable versions of some its other marquee games as well.

Perhaps the prime candidate would be the company’s flagship Madden series, for which sales have slowed. Traditional versions of Madden are extremely complicated, but a simplified downloadable version would be expected to appeal to millions of more casual players.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/21/te...gy/21game.html





Guitar Hero: the $1 Billion Game, by the Numbers
Ben Kuchera

Do you remember the first time you played Guitar Hero? It seems odd looking back, but it seemed like the game spread mostly by word of mouth. One of your friends bought Guitar Hero, and then everyone who played it got hooked and bought their own copy. Now Guitar Hero is a cultural icon, and for some freakish reason pretending to play music on a plastic instrument is actually considered cool in some circles. Just how big has Guitar Hero become? Activision has sent us some information on the sales of the game, so let's break down Guitar Hero by the numbers.

• Total sales of Guitar Hero games? $1 billion in North America in 26 months
• In units and dollars, Guitar Hero III was the number one title in 2007
• Since 2005, the series has sold 14 million units
• In 10 weeks, gamers have downloaded five million songs for Guitar Hero 3

These aren't large numbers, in the same way the vastness of outer space couldn't really be described as "roomy." These are company-making sales. In fact, Activision posted net revenues of $1.5 billion for the fiscal year ending on March 31, 2007. There has been a South Park episode. Rock Band was released, but so far hasn't come close to matching these sales (although their download business is going very well, thank you). People play Guitar Hero at bars, they use their projectors to play on the sides of houses. People get together weekly to see how much they can five-star.

If we didn't think rhythm games were large before, these numbers prove it. The only thing missing is the flood of imitators. Although I'm guessing that's on its way...
http://arstechnica.com/journals/thum...by-the-numbers





Author Faults a Game, and Gamers Flame Back
Seth Schiesel

The Internet hath no fury like a gamer scorned.

That’s the lesson Fox News and a self-help author learned this week after a program on that channel featured a discussion of the sexual content of the hit video game Mass Effect.

Bound by global message boards, blogs, chat rooms and of course the games themselves, gamers are perhaps the single most intense subculture on the Internet — fiercely protective of their pastime and at ease with the byways of cyberspace.

So the game world has been ablaze with indignation since the Fox News program “The Live Desk With Martha MacCallum” said on Monday that Mass Effect, one of the most critically praised games of 2007, contains frontal nudity and explicit depictions of sexual activity. The assertions of virtual lasciviousness first appeared earlier this month among conservative bloggers incensed by brief YouTube clips excerpted from the 30- to 40-hour game.

Mass Effect, a science fiction game, includes a complicated romantic subplot that is no more risqué in its plot or graphic in its depiction than evening network television.

To exact their revenge, gamers have turned their vitriol on Cooper Lawrence, an author who appeared to mischaracterize the game when she said: “Here’s how they’re seeing women: They’re seeing them as these objects of desire, as these, you know, hot bodies. They don’t show women as being valued for anything other than their sexuality. And it’s a man in this game deciding how many women he wants to be with.”

In fact Mass Effect allows users to play as either a man or a woman, and the few suggestions of intimate contact occur in the context of a detailed interpersonal story line. Asked on the air by Geoff Keighley of Spike TV whether she had ever played the game, Ms. Lawrence laughed and said, “No.”

Irate gamers have flooded the page on Amazon.com selling Ms. Lawrence’s most recent book, “The Cult of Perfection: Making Peace With Your Inner Overachiever,” sending its user-generated rating into oblivion.

By Friday afternoon 412 of the book’s 472 user reviews were the lowest possible rating, one star. Another 48 ratings were for two stars. Only 12 of the ratings were for three stars or higher. In addition, 929 Amazon users had tagged the book with the keyword “ignorant.” Tied for second place with 744 tags were “garbage” and “hypocrisy,” while “hack” and “hypocrite” tied for fourth place with 710 votes. Gamers have also attacked the book on the Barnes & Noble Web site.

Many of the reviewers admit that they have not read Ms. Lawrence’s book.

As one Amazon user put it: “I know all about this book but have never fully read it. Why? Due to the overwhelming backlash, I have no choice but to agree with the 1 star ratings. The rumors are rampant that this book was poorly written and poorly researched. So without verifying the contents myself — I give it a 1 star. Good thing video games aren’t judged in this manner — whew!!!”

On Friday “The Cult of Perfection” was ranked the 346,106th best-selling book on Amazon. Mass Effect, by contrast, has been a hit, selling more than 1.6 million copies since November. An Amazon spokeswoman said the site would soon begin to remove reviews written by users who had clearly not read the book.

In an interview on Friday, Ms. Lawrence said that since the controversy over her remarks erupted she had watched someone play the game for about two and a half hours. “I recognize that I misspoke,” she said. “I really regret saying that, and now that I’ve seen the game and seen the sex scenes it’s kind of a joke.

“Before the show I had asked somebody about what they had heard, and they had said it’s like pornography,” she added. “But it’s not like pornography. I’ve seen episodes of ‘Lost’ that are more sexually explicit.”

Electronic Arts, the giant publisher that owns Mass Effect, has asked Fox News for a correction. A Fox News spokesman would say only that Electronic Arts had been offered a chance to appear on the channel. An Electronic Arts spokesman said the company had not yet decided whether to accept the offer.

By telephone from Edmonton, Alberta, Ray Muzyka, the medical doctor who is chief executive of BioWare, the Electronic Arts studio that made Mass Effect, said: “We’re hurt. We believe in video games as an art form, and on behalf of the 120 people who poured their blood and tears into this game over three years, we’re just really hurt that someone would misrepresent the game without even playing it. All we can hope for is that people who actually play our games will see the truth.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/26/ar...on/26mass.html





Can’t Tell a Book by Its Cover, or Even Its Title, It Turns Out
Joanne Kaufman

When Missy Chase Lapine, author of the cookbook “The Sneaky Chef” that suggests ways to hide fruit and vegetables in dishes for finicky children, was angered by the publication of “Deceptively Delicious,” a similar book by Jessica Seinfeld (a k a Mrs. Jerry Seinfeld), she had recourse. This month, she sued for copyright infringement and defamation.

But when Raymond Sokolov, the restaurant columnist for The Wall Street Journal, saw that a new food book was coming out with the same title as the cookbook he had published more than 30 years ago, all he could do was stew because book titles cannot be copyrighted.

In 1976, Mr. Sokolov wrote “The Saucier’s Apprentice: A Modern Guide to Classic French Sauces for the Home.” Published by Knopf, the book is now in its 16th printing and Mr. Sokolov, who is also food and wine columnist for the magazine Smart Money, continues to get modest royalty checks.

A few months ago, courtesy of a friend in the publishing industry, Mr. Sokolov learned that W. W. Norton had on its spring list “The Saucier’s Apprentice: One Long Strange Trip Though the Great Cooking Schools of Europe,” by Bob Spitz, author of the highly regarded “The Beatles: The Biography.” (For the record, the humorist S. J. Perelman published an essay called “The Saucier’s Apprentice” in The New Yorker about two decades before Mr. Sokolov’s book).

There are many instances of books with the same titles: “March” by Geraldine Brooks and “The March” by E. L. Doctorow; “Gone” by the mystery writer Lisa Gardner and “Gone” by the mystery writer Jonathan Kellerman; “Leap of Faith” by Danielle Steel and “Leap of Faith” by Queen Noor of Jordan, to name a few.

But in Mr. Sokolov’s view, it’s one thing to duplicate another author’s use of a common phrase or expression and quite another to echo a play on words, particularly when both books are in the same genre. “I think it’s just in bad taste,” he said. “I looked into it, and I’m certain that this was not a blunder, that Norton knew about the existence of my book.”

Mr. Spitz said that he came up with the title when he was working on the proposal for his “Saucier’s Apprentice.” He added that until recently, he had no knowledge of Mr. Sokolov’s title, which is listed on Amazon.com. “I interviewed a lot of people in the food industry for my book,” Mr. Spitz said, “and not one of them mentioned there was already something else with that title. I thought it was a stroke of genius, but as it turns out it was Ray Sokolov’s stroke of genius.”

Nach Waxman, the owner of Kitchen Arts & Letters, a shop on the Upper East Side of Manhattan, said Norton was wrong to keep Mr. Spitz’s title. “It’s derivative of a book that is still in print in the same field and that has 30 years’ standing,” he said.

Mr. Sokolov said he hoped Norton would “promote the hell out of the book and that a confused buying public will buy my ‘Saucier’s Apprentice’ instead of Spitz’s.”

Although he is not now working on a book, he said, “I am thinking about one, and maybe I should call it ‘The Da Vinci Code.’ ”
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/21/bu...a/21sauce.html




Cooking the books

Well Done

The annual report for food company you have to bake before use

Empty pages become filled with content after being baked at 100°C for 25 minutes.

“Well done” created by Bruketa & Zinić is the new annual report for Podravka, the biggest food company in South-East Europe. It consists of two parts:

» a big book containing numbers and a report of an independent auditor
» a small booklet that is inserted inside the big one that contains the very heart of Podravka as a brand: great Podravka’s recipes.

To be able to cook like Podravka you need to be a precise cook. That is why the small Podravka booklet is printed in invisible, thermo-reactive ink. To be able to reveal Podravka’s secrets you need to cover the small booklet in aluminium foil and bake it at 100 degrees Celsius for 25 minutes.

If you are not precise, the booklet will burn, just as any overcooked meal. If you have successfully baked your sample of the annual report, the empty pages will become filled with text, and the illustrations with empty plates filled with food.
http://www.dezeen.com/2007/11/13/wel...-cooked-first/





Freed From the Page, but a Book Nonetheless
Randall Stross

PRINTED books provide pleasures no device created by an electrical engineer can match. The sweet smell of a brand-new book. The tactile pleasures of turning a page. The reassuring sight on one’s bookshelves of personal journeys.

But not one of these explains why books have resisted digitization. That’s simpler: Books are portable and easy to read.

Building a portable electronic reader was the easy part; matching the visual quality of ink on paper took longer. But display technology has advanced to the point where the digital page is easy on the eyes, too. At last, an e-reader performs well when placed in page-to-page competition with paper.

As a result, the digitization of personal book collections is certain to have its day soon.

Music shows the way. The digitization of personal music collections began, however, only after the right combination of software and hardware — iTunes Music Store and the iPod — arrived. And as Apple did for music lovers, some company will devise an irresistible combination of software and hardware for book buyers. That company may be Amazon.

Amazon’s first iteration of an electronic book reader is the Kindle. Introduced in November, it weighs about 10 ounces, holds more than 200 full-length books and can display newspapers, magazines and blogs. It uses E Ink technology, developed by the company of that name, that produces sharply defined text yet draws power only when a page is changed, not as it is displayed.

Sony uses E Ink in its e-book Reader, which it introduced in 2006, but the Kindle has a feature that neither Sony nor many e-reader predecessors ever possessed: books and other content can be loaded wirelessly, from just about anywhere in the United States, using the high-speed EVDO network from Sprint.

This may turn out to be a red-letter day in the history of convenience — our age’s equivalent of that magical moment FedEx introduced next-day delivery and people asked, “How was life possible before this?”

The Kindle is expensive — $399 — but it sold out in just six hours after its debut on Nov. 19. Since then, supplies have consistently lagged behind demand, and a waiting list remains in place.

The Kindle gets many things right, or at least I assume it does. I haven’t had much of a chance to test out my demonstration unit. My wife, skeptical that a digital screen could ever approach the readability of ink on paper, was so intrigued by the Kindle when it arrived last week that she snatched it from my grasp. I haven’t been able to pry it away from her since.

I can see that the text looks splendid. But when one presses a bar to “turn” a page, the image reverses in a way I found jarring: the light background turns black and the black text turns white, then the new page appears and everything returns to normal. My wife said she wasn’t bothered by this at all, and I didn’t have enough of a chance to see if I would soon get used to it.

Steven P. Jobs, the chief executive of Apple, has nothing to fear from the Kindle. No one would regard it as competition for the iPod. It displays text in four exciting shades of gray, and does that one thing very well. It can do a few other things: for instance, it has a headphone jack and can play MP3 files, but it is not well suited for navigating a large collection of music tracks.

Yet, when Mr. Jobs was asked two weeks ago at the Macworld Expo what he thought of the Kindle, he heaped scorn on the book industry. “It doesn’t matter how good or bad the product is; the fact is that people don’t read anymore,” he said. “Forty percent of the people in the U.S. read one book or less last year.”

To Mr. Jobs, this statistic dooms everyone in the book business to inevitable failure.

Only the business is not as ghostly as he suggests. In 2008, book publishing will bring in about $15 billion in revenue in the United States, according to the Book Industry Study Group, a trade association.

One can only wonder why, by the Study Group’s estimate, 408 million books will be bought this year if no one reads anymore?

A survey conducted in August 2007 by Ipsos Public Affairs for The Associated Press found that 27 percent of Americans had not read a book in the previous year. Not as bad as Mr. Jobs’s figure, but dismaying to be sure. Happily, however, the same share — 27 percent — read 15 or more books.

In fact, when we exclude Americans who had not read a single book in that year, the average number of books read was 20, raised by the 8 percent who read 51 books or more. In other words, a sizable minority does not read, but the overall distribution is balanced somewhat by those who read a lot.

If a piece of the book industry’s $15 billion seems too paltry for Mr. Jobs to bother with, he is forgetting that Apple reached its current size only recently. Last week, Apple reported that it posted revenue of $9.6 billion in the quarter that spanned October to December 2007, its best quarter ever, after $24 billion in revenue in the 2007 fiscal year, which ended in September.

But as recently as 2001, before the iPhone and the iPod, Apple was a niche computer company without a mass market hit. It was badly hurt by the 2001 recession and reported revenue of only $5.3 billion for the year. This is, by coincidence, almost exactly what Barnes & Noble reported in revenue for its 2007 fiscal year. In neither case did the company owners look at that number, decide to chain the doors permanently shut and call it quits.

Amazon does not release details about revenue for books, but books were its first business. And Andrew Herdener, a company spokesman, said that Amazon’s book sales “have increased every year since the company began.”

The book world has always had an invisible asset that makes up for what it lacks in outsize revenue and profits: the passionate attachment that its authors, editors and most frequent customers have to books themselves. Indeed, in this respect, avid book readers resemble avid Mac users.

The object we are accustomed to calling a book is undergoing a profound modification as it is stripped of its physical shell. Kindle’s long-term success is still unknown, but Amazon should be credited with imaginatively redefining its original product line, replacing the book business with the reading business.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/27/business/27digi.html





Photo Clues Lead to Camera's Owner
Brian Bergstein

At dusk on New Year's Eve, Erika Gunderson got into a taxi in New York City and entered a digital-age mystery. Sitting on the back seat was a nice Canon digital camera. Gunderson asked the driver which previous passenger might have left it, but the cabbie didn't seem to care. So Gunderson brought it home and showed it to her fiance, Brian Ascher. They decided that the only right thing to do was to find the owner.

But how? The only clues were the pictures on the camera: typical tourist snapshots, complete with a visit to the Statue of Liberty. How could they find a stranger among the huddled masses?

Gunderson is busy in finance for Bear Stearns Cos., so the detective quest fell to Ascher, a 26-year-old law student at New York University. He was on winter break and eager to put off writing a paper about climate change treaties.

He checked whether anyone had reported a matching missing camera to the city's Taxi and Limousine Commission. No dice. He placed ads in lost-and-found sections of Craigslist but got just one response -- from a couple in Brazil who had lost a camera in a cab on Oct. 12, not Dec. 31.

''I guess they thought their camera had been riding around in a taxi for two months,'' Ascher recalls now, chuckling at the notion that such a thing would be possible in New York.

The 350 pictures and two videos on the camera showed several adults, an older woman and three children. Half put them at New York sites like the Empire State Building. The other half had the group enjoying warm weather and frolicking at kid-friendly theme parks.

Ascher easily pinpointed Florida. The group had stood in front of a sign indicating Clearwater, Fla., and posed at Bob Heilman's Beachcomber Restaurant there.

They also took a pirate-themed boat ride where the kids got mustaches painted on their faces. Ascher zoomed in on the group to see name tags on their shirts. He spotted an Alan, an Eileen, a male Noel and a female Noelle, plus a Ciarnan. Under their names was written ''IRE.''

When Ascher checked the videos, he saw nothing telling, just the children dancing and swimming. But in the background, he heard Irish accents.

OK, Ascher figured, the camera's owner is from Ireland.

Ascher called Canon's Ireland division to see if anyone had registered the $500 camera's serial number. No such luck. He posted ads on Irish Web sites. Nothing.

He checked the date stamp on the photos from Bob Heilman's and called to inquire whether anyone remembered serving a big Irish group that day. Without the diners' last names, there was no way to check. It's a nice thing you're trying, the manager told Ascher, but you probably just found yourself a new camera.

Enter some fresh eyes. Ascher's mother, Nancy, and sister, Emily Rann, scoured the pictures for clues he might have missed. Nancy was particularly confident, having reunited people with their lost belongings before. She once found a California woman's wallet in a cab in Florence, Italy, and spent all day on her trail before making a handover at an American Express office.

''I thought, with all this data in the camera, there's no way we're not going to get it back to them,'' Nancy Ascher says now. ''I was hoping it wasn't going to take a trip to Ireland, flashing their pictures everywhere.''

Ascher's mother and his sister noticed that one of the pictures showed a doorman helping someone into a New York taxi. Zooming tight on the doorman's uniform, they made out the logo of the Radisson Hotel.

After several phone calls and a visit to the hotel to show the pictures around, Nancy Ascher persuaded an employee to search the Radisson's guest records by first name and country of residence. Indeed, a Noel from Ireland had stayed there on the date stamped on the photo. Nancy Ascher charmed the hotel employee into sharing the guest's e-mail address.

Wonderful.

Except that when Noel responded to Brian Ascher, he said he hadn't lost a camera.

By now, school was resuming, and Ascher was prepared to give the camera to his mom so she could take over. She had figured out the name of the Florida pirate-boat cruise and was trying to reach its operator.

But first Ascher took a final look at the photographs.

He pored over some from Dec. 30 that didn't include the children. The photos showed signs for bars in Manhattan's East Village: The Thirsty Scholar, Telephone Bar, Burp Castle. There also were multiple interior shots of a tavern, but they didn't seem to fit with what Ascher knew of those other three bars.

Then he stopped on another picture, showing two people outside an apartment building. Seemingly accidentally included in the picture was something Ascher had missed the first time: an awning in the background that read ''Standings.'' Aha! Standings is a bar next to Burp Castle. Ascher checked its Web site, and the interior matched the pictures on the camera.

Ascher found Standings' owner, who reached the bartender who had worked Dec. 30. Yes, he recalled an Irish group. Especially because one of the women was a big tipper and said she worked at another New York City bar, Playwrights. The Standings bartender called Playwrights to ask which employees had been in his bar.

Ascher soon got an e-mail from a woman named Sarah Casey, whose sister Jeanette works at Playwrights. Suddenly everything Ascher had seen on the camera came to life.

The Caseys recently had hosted relatives and friends from Ireland. The group included their friend Alan Murphy, who had journeyed to Florida with family before heading to New York, where the clan stayed at the Radisson. (Their Noel was not the Noel whom Ascher e-mailed.) Murphy ended the trip kicking himself for leaving his camera in a cab in the twilight on New Year's Eve.

Sarah Casey agreed to send it to him. It didn't go to Ireland but to Sydney, Australia, where Murphy lives now.

Murphy, an insurance underwriter, had been devastated to lose the pictures from a trip he had planned for years. It was Jan. 10 -- his 34th birthday -- when he heard he would be getting the photos back. ''I was over the moon,'' he says now. ''Best present ever.''

''I owe you one,'' he wrote to Ascher. ''It's good to know there are some honest people left in the world.''
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories...LATE=DEFAUL T





The Capa Cache


Tony Cenicola/The New York Times

Randy Kennedy

TO the small group of photography experts aware of its existence, it was known simply as “the Mexican suitcase.” And in the pantheon of lost modern cultural treasures, it was surrounded by the same mythical aura as Hemingway’s early manuscripts, which vanished from a train station in 1922.

The suitcase — actually three flimsy cardboard valises — contained thousands of negatives of pictures that Robert Capa, one of the pioneers of modern war photography, took during the Spanish Civil War before he fled Europe for America in 1939, leaving behind the contents of his Paris darkroom.

Capa assumed that the work had been lost during the Nazi invasion, and he died in 1954 on assignment in Vietnam still thinking so. But in 1995 word began to spread that the negatives had somehow survived, after taking a journey worthy of a John le Carré novel: Paris to Marseille and then, in the hands of a Mexican general and diplomat who had served under Pancho Villa, to Mexico City.

And that is where they remained hidden for more than half a century until last month, when they made what will most likely be their final trip, to the International Center of Photography in Midtown Manhattan, founded by Robert Capa’s brother, Cornell. After years of quiet, fitful negotiations over what should be their proper home, legal title to the negatives was recently transferred to the Capa estate by descendants of the general, including a Mexican filmmaker who first saw them in the 1990s and soon realized the historical importance of what his family had.

“This really is the holy grail of Capa work,” said Brian Wallis, the center’s chief curator, who added that besides the Capa negatives, the cracked, dust-covered boxes had also been found to contain Spanish Civil War images by Gerda Taro, Robert Capa’s partner professionally and at one time personally, and by David Seymour, known as Chim, who went on to found the influential Magnum photo agency with Capa.

The discovery has sent shock waves through the photography world, not least because it is hoped that the negatives could settle once and for all a question that has dogged Capa’s legacy: whether what may be his most famous picture — and one of the most famous war photographs of all time — was staged. Known as “The Falling Soldier,” it shows a Spanish Republican militiaman reeling backward at what appears to be the instant a bullet strikes his chest or head on a hillside near Córdoba in 1936. When the picture was first published in the French magazine Vu, it created a sensation and helped crystallize support for the Republican cause.

Though the Capa biographer Richard Whelan made a persuasive case that the photograph was not faked, doubts have persisted. In part this is because Capa and Taro made no pretense of journalistic detachment during the war — they were Communist partisans of the loyalist cause — and were known to photograph staged maneuvers, a common practice at the time. A negative of the shot has never been found (it has long been reproduced from a vintage print), and the discovery of one, especially in the original sequence showing all the images taken before and after the shot, could end the debate.

But the discovery is being hailed as a huge event for more than forensic reasons. This is the formative work of a photographer who, in a century defined by warfare, played a pivotal role in defining how war was seen, bringing its horrors nearer than ever — “If your pictures aren’t good enough, you’re not close enough” was his mantra — yet in the process rendering it more cinematic and unreal. (Capa, not surprisingly, later served a stint in Hollywood, befriending directors like Howard Hawks and romancing Ingrid Bergman.)

Capa practically invented the image of the globe-trotting war photographer, with a cigarette appended to the corner of his mouth and cameras slung over his fatigues. His fearlessness awed even his soldier subjects, and between battles he hung out with Hemingway and Steinbeck and usually drank too much, seeming to pull everything off with panache. William Saroyan wrote that he thought of Capa as “a poker player whose sideline was picture-taking.”

In a Warholian way that seems only to increase his contemporary allure, he also more or less invented himself. Born Endre Friedmann in Hungary, he and Taro, whom he met in Paris, cooked up the persona of Robert Capa — they billed him as “a famous American photographer” — to help them get assignments. He then proceeded to embody the fiction and make it true. (Taro, a German whose real name was Gerta Pohorylle, died in Spain in 1937 in a tank accident while taking pictures.)

Curators at the International Center of Photography, who have begun a months-long effort to conserve and catalog the newly discovered work, say the full story of how the negatives, some 3,500 of them, made their way to Mexico may never be known.

In 1995 Jerald R. Green, a professor at Queens College, part of the City University of New York, received a letter from a Mexico City filmmaker who had just seen an exhibition of Spanish Civil War photographs sponsored in part by the college. He wrote that he had recently come into possession of an archive of nitrate negatives that had been his aunt’s, inherited from her father, Gen. Francisco Aguilar Gonzalez, who died in 1967. The general had been stationed as a diplomat in the late 1930s in Marseille, where the Mexican government, a supporter of the Republican cause, had begun helping antifascist refugees from Spain immigrate to Mexico.

From what experts have been able to piece together from archives and the research of Mr. Whelan, the biographer (who died last year), Capa apparently asked his darkroom manager, a Hungarian friend and photographer named Imre Weisz, known as Cziki, to save his negatives in 1939 or 1940, when Capa was in New York and feared his work would be destroyed.

Mr. Weisz is believed to have taken the valises to Marseille, but was arrested and sent to an internment camp in Algiers. At some point the negatives ended up with General Aguilar Gonzalez, who carried them to Mexico, where he died in 1967. It is unclear whether the general knew who had taken the pictures or what they showed; but if he did, he appears never to have tried to contact Capa or Mr. Weisz, who coincidentally ended up living the rest of his life in Mexico City, where he married the Surrealist painter Leonora Carrington. (Mr. Weisz died recently, in his 90s; Mr. Whelan interviewed him for his 1985 biography of Capa but did not elicit any information about the lost negatives.)

“It does seem strange in retrospect that there weren’t more efforts to locate these things,” Mr. Wallis said. “But I think they just gave them up. They were lost in the war, like so many things.”

When the photography center learned that the work might exist, it contacted the Mexican filmmaker and requested their return. But letters and phone conversations ended with no commitments, said Phillip S. Block, the center’s deputy director for programs, who added that he and others were not even sure at the beginning if the filmmaker’s claims were true, because no one had been shown the negatives. (Saying that the return of the negatives was a collective decision of the Aguilar Gonzalez family, the filmmaker asked not to be identified in this article and declined to be interviewed for it.)

Meetings with the man were scheduled, but he would fail to appear. “And then communications broke off completely for who knows what reason,” Mr. Block said. Efforts were made from time to time, unsuccessfully, to re-establish contact. But when the center began to organize new shows of Capa and Taro’s war photography, which opened last September, it decided to try again, hoping that images from the early negatives could be incorporated into the shows.

“He was never seeking money,” Mr. Wallis said of the filmmaker. “He just seemed to really want to make sure that these went to the right place.”

Frustrated, the center enlisted the help of a curator and scholar, Trisha Ziff, who has lived in Mexico City for many years. After working for weeks simply to track down the reclusive man, she began what turned out to be almost a year of discussions about the negatives.

“It wasn’t that he couldn’t let go of this,” said Ms. Ziff, interviewed by phone from Los Angeles, where she is completing a documentary about the widely reproduced image of Che Guevara based on a photograph by Alberto Korda.

“I think it was that no one before me had thought this through in the way that something this sensitive needs to be thought through,” she said. The filmmaker worried in part that people in Mexico might be critical of the negatives’ departure to the United States, regarding the images as part of their country’s deep historical connection to the Spanish Civil War. “One had to respect and honor the dilemma he was in,” she said.

In the end Ms. Ziff persuaded him to relinquish the work — “I suppose one could describe me as tenacious,” she said — while also securing a promise from the photography center to allow the filmmaker to use Capa images for a documentary he would like to make about the survival of the negatives, their journey to Mexico and his family’s role in saving them.

“I see him quite regularly,” Ms. Ziff said, “and I think he feels at peace about this now.”

In December, after two earlier good-faith deliveries of small numbers of negatives, the filmmaker finally handed Ms. Ziff the bulk of the work, and she carried it on a flight to New York herself.

“I wasn’t going to put it in a FedEx box,” she said.

“When I got these boxes it almost felt like they were vibrating in my hands,” she added. “That was the most amazing part for me.”

Mr. Wallis said that while conservation experts from the George Eastman House in Rochester are only now beginning to assess the condition of the film, it appears to be remarkably good for 70-year-old nitrate stock stored in what essentially looks like confectionery boxes.

“They seem like they were made yesterday,” he said. “They’re not brittle at all. They’re very fresh. We’ve sort of gingerly peeked at some of them just to get a sense of what’s on each roll.”

And discoveries have already been made from the boxes — one red, one green and one beige — whose contents appear to have been carefully labeled in hand-drawn grids made by Mr. Weisz or another studio assistant. Researchers have come across pictures of Hemingway and of Federico García Lorca.

The negative for one of Chim’s most famous Spanish Civil War photographs, showing a woman cradling a baby at her breast as she gazes up toward the speaker at a mass outdoor meeting in 1936, has also been found. “We were astonished to see it,” Mr. Wallis said. (The photograph, often seen as showing the woman worriedly scanning the skies for bombers, was mentioned by Susan Sontag in “Regarding the Pain of Others,” her 2003 reconsideration of ideas from her well-known treatise “On Photography,” a critical examination of images of war and suffering.)

The research could bring about a reassessment of the obscure career of Taro, one of the first female war photographers, and could lead to the determination that some pictures attributed to Capa are actually by her. The two worked closely together and labeled some of their early work with joint credit lines, sometimes making it difficult to establish authorship conclusively, Mr. Wallis said. He added that there was even a remote possibility that “The Falling Soldier” could be by Taro and not Capa.

“That’s another theory that’s been floated,” he said. “We just don’t know. To me that’s what’s so exciting about this material. There are so many questions and so many questions not even yet posed that they may answer.”

Ultimately, Mr. Wallis said, the discovery is momentous because it is the raw material from the birth of modern war photography itself.

“Capa established a mode and the method of depicting war in these photographs, of the photographer not being an observer but being in the battle, and that became the standard that audiences and editors from then on demanded,” he said. “Anything else, and it looked like you were just sitting on the sidelines. And that visual revolution he embodied took place right here, in these early pictures.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/27/ar...gn/27kenn.html





Getty Images Up for Sale, Could Fetch $1.5 Billion
Andrew Ross Sorkin and Michael J. de la Merced

Getty Images, the world’s biggest supplier of pictures and video to media and advertising companies, has put itself on the auction block and could fetch more than $1.5 billion, people briefed on the situation said Sunday.

The firm hired Goldman Sachs to advise it on a potential sale, these people said. The company has attracted interest from several buyers, mostly private equity firms, including Kohlberg Kravis Roberts, Bain Capital and others.

Final bids are due by the end of the month, but people briefed on the auction cautioned that it was unclear which firms would submit a final bid. A sale is not assured, because the tightening of the high-yield debt markets has cut off private equity firms from the lifeblood of their business, making it harder to finance deals.

Getty, founded in 1995 in Seattle, has grown through a series of acquisitions into a go-to source for visual media, claiming an average service of 3.2 billion images and 4 million unique visitors at its Web site each month. The company’s main selling point is the licensing of high-quality images from professional photographers around the world. Among its main clients are advertising agencies and media companies, including The New York Times. It also offers video footage for use in movies, television and the Internet.

A spokeswoman for the company contacted last week said the company does not comment on “rumors and speculation.”

Some of the company’s premium offerings include the distribution of images from the Time Life and National Geographic collections. Early last year, Getty bought its biggest competitor, MediaVast, for $202 million, acquiring the WireImage service in the process. Last year, Getty held takeover talks with the publicly held Jupitermedia Corporation, but the discussions ended quickly without a deal.

Its main rivals, Jupitermedia, and the Corbis Corporation, a private company owned by the Microsoft founder Bill Gates, have also made a number of acquisitions, though they remain far smaller than Getty. The Internet — a medium that Getty pioneered by being the first to license images online — has made it easier for clients to find pictures for less money.

Getty’s shares have declined more than 47 percent in the last year. Its shares fell 10 percent in August, when the company lowered its full-year profit estimate because of competition from low-cost rivals. Last November, it reported a third-quarter profit of $25.7 million, down 31 percent from a year ago.

Last April, Getty also restated its earnings and took a $28 million to $32 million charge after an internal investigation into the backdating of stock options grants to executives.

Started by Jonathan Klein and Mark Getty, a scion of the J. Paul Getty oil fortune, the company began striking deals and acquiring the photo archives of companies like PhotoDisc. Its growth began to skyrocket with later acquisitions like its $183 million purchase of Eastman Kodak’s Image Bank in 1999.

But the rise of digital photography and the Web created a host of competitors that charged as little as a dollar for an image. Recent events — from the assassination of Benazir Bhutto, the former Pakistani prime minister, to the latest foibles of the entertainer Britney Spears — have led to a surging popularity of low-quality but on-the-scene photos, many taken by cellphone cameras.

“Getty Images continues to be a company in transition, adjusting from being the leading player in an oligopolistic market to being one of many players in a highly competitive market,” Barbara Coffey, a research analyst with Kaufman Brothers, wrote in a research note earlier this month.

The company made its biggest effort to harness some of that new sector’s profit by buying iStockphoto.com, a site for cheaper if also lower-quality photos, for $50 million in 2006. It has lowered the price for some of its wares and offers low-resolution versions of its photographs for $49.

Getty has moved to diversify in other ways. Last June, it bought Pump Audio, a music-licensing company that draws on works by unsigned musicians, for $42.5 million. Another acquisition, WireImage, which does picture coverage of entertainment events like parties, has helped bolster revenue from magazine and newspaper sales as well.

Still, some analysts worry that other, cheaper rivals could continue undercutting the company’s prices. Last August, Getty announced that it was laying off 100 employees, or about 5 percent of its full-time staff, its second round of cuts in as many years.

Other analysts are more bullish about Getty’s prospects. Ms. Coffey of Kaufman Brothers raised her recommendation of the stock to hold from sell this month after its price fell closer to her target of $24.

Getty’s share price has since fallen, closing at $21.94 on Friday.

Not all of Getty’s troubles stem from competitive pressures. A special committee of the company’s board said last April that it found no signs of “intentional wrongdoing” in the backdating of stock options, but Getty was forced to restate its earnings from virtually its inception until November 2006.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/21/bu...ia/21deal.html





Shopping for Films but Settling for Some Fun
David Carr

A half foot of perfect, powdery snow fell here on Monday, carrying a message to the frantic crowd in temporary residence at the Sundance Film Festival: Slow down. Forget the branded parties on Main Street and the accompanying marketplace of film, and just enjoy the crunch of snow underfoot as you make your way to the next screening.

Sure. Beats worrying.

After a huge buildup about the commercial prospects of this year’s Sundance — where they said the writers’ strike and ambient private money could fuel a frenzy of acquisitions — buyers have their hands jammed deep into their coats, responding to both the cold snap and the fear that they will spend too much on movies that deliver too little.

Beyond the joy of a new snowfall, of course, there were some messages that this indie playground was welcoming more than movie stars and dollar signs. There were plenty of those, but there were also some movies with nobody special attached that rang out against the din.

On Sunday, for instance, there was a huge ovation for “Trouble the Water,” an intensely personal documentary about Hurricane Katrina that focused on the fight for survival traced by Kimberly Rivers Roberts and Scott Roberts, two New Orleaneans left behind by nature’s brutality and government indifference. They were both present for the screening, she remarkably pregnant and remarkably happy.

And at 6:15 a.m. on Monday, Martin Luther King Day here and everywhere, she gave birth to a baby girl named Skyy Kaylen Rivers Roberts, 7 pounds 1 ounce. Hope floats, in a hurricane, in a ruined city and, yes, at a film festival infested by wannabes and commercial interests.

If both buyers and sellers are a little bereft — there has not been a single significant purchase of feature film in the first five days of the festival — everyone else seemed more than happy to see little movies that may not end up being seen anywhere else. Documentaries, a huge commercial fiasco coming out of Sundance last year, continued to assert themselves artistically, with “Polanski” and “American Teen” kicking up chatter in the bars and coffee shops of Park City; the conversations had nothing to do with the films’ commercial prospects. And little movies like “Ballast” and “Momma’s Man” renewed the festival’s implicit promise of discovery but had no traction in the industry.

Main Street, of course, plays host to a few other activities besides movies. Every night there are frantic scrums in front of all manner of privatized nightlife options, with hierarchies of both need and power calculated by the minute. People in headsets examine hopefuls for credentials, wristbands, status or appearance, then decide whether they merit entrance to the warm and magical places within.

Which were plenty warm in the main, though rarely magical: rooms full of absently good-looking young people who seemed more interested in an incoming text than the people around them. Those who fought their way in soon found themselves fighting equally hard to get out.

Sundance always comes with a soundtrack. On Sunday night Patti Smith played (she is here behind a documentary about her career), and music filled the air deep into the night. When Lil John said, “Make some noise if you’re not from Park City,” the visiting hordes went nuts.

And at the Egyptian Theater “Adventures of Power,” a comedic film about air drumming — air guitar’s dumb brother — had its premiere at midnight. The film, which features Adrian Grenier, the crushed-on star of “Entourage,” was directed by and stars Ari Gold, an actor and longtime friend of Mr. Grenier’s who has the dubious honor of lending his name to the Jeremy Piven character on “Entourage.”

In true Sundance fashion, there was a preparty for the film, an intimate little dinner that was blown out to include hundreds, followed by the movie itself, and then an afterparty featuring a set by the Honey Brothers, a band that includes both Mr. Grenier and Mr. Gold. At 3:15 a.m. they were finally ready to play, but Mr. Grenier could not find — I am not making this up — his drumsticks. Some were finally obtained, and the show, as it always does at Sundance, went on.

Just about everybody who comes to Sundance brings a little something besides a love of movies, and it is all on display in the ad hoc parade that is Main Street: the impossibly tall woman with the impossibly tiny little dog with booties on; the corpulent Ronald McDonald with a huge dollar sign of bling around his neck; the PETA protesters shouting slogans at a crowd whose members not infrequently wear fur. It can be a little bewildering.

“Do you have any idea what we are doing right now?” said Paul Giamatti as he walked down Main Street during his one day in town to promote “Pretty Bird,” a movie about the fight over custody of intellectual and physical property — a jet pack, to be specific. Mr. Giamatti carried a look of wonder and confusion as he was photographed in various media locations. Now sitting at a table outside the MySpace Celebrity Lounge with a bottle of MySpace Ketchup on the table, he was pretty obviously in the midst of a branding moment, as everyone was.

Cue Paris Hilton. She is a fully integrated media company now, with clothing, fragrances, guerrilla pornography and, this being Sundance, even a movie for sale: “The Hottie and the Nottie.” Everybody wants a piece of Ms. Hilton — the rock band the Bravery, MySpace, even Bon Appétit magazine — and she is now as much a part of the fabric of Sundance as obscure documentaries about people you had never heard of.

There has been no big bolt of theatrical lightning this year, no “Little Miss Sunshine” or “Once.” There are movies that will find both audience and distribution one way or another — “Sunshine Cleaning,” starring Amy Adams and Emily Blunt, seems perfectly confected — but others that rode in on a wave of hype have been just sitting there. After the premiere of “What Just Happened?,” directed by Barry Levinson and starring Bruce Willis and Robert De Niro, people said nice things. But the answer to the question posed by the film? Not so much.

Some of the attendees simply took Park City for what it is. Jason Reitman, the director of the runaway hit “Juno,” acquitted himself nicely in a charity hockey game on Sunday. Tom Bernard, the Sony Pictures Classics executive who might have been out frantically shopping, played as well.

“I would much rather be on the rink than fighting the line to get into a premiere at the library,” he said. “This is safer.”

And Emily Mortimer and Woody Harrelson, who are here in support of a Hitchcock-inspired train thriller called “Transsiberian,” looked up at the mountains of the village after a night of promoting the film and decided to strap on skis and snowboards on Sunday morning.

“There was this huge run-up with all of this talk, partly because there is so much new money producing films, but when you got here, there was really not much to buy,” said one film executive who did not want to be seen as soiling Sundance’s reputation for commercial and artistic excellence. “There are a lot of bad movies here, movies that should not have been made. And the few ones that could be turned into something in the market are going to have to head into the sweat lodge and wait it out. No one is throwing the kind of money around they were last year.”

It had been expected that the industry would bring a hunger to the festival this year, but instead the pall over Hollywood, cast by shuttered award shows and strike-stalled productions, seemed to come to the event. Civilians, though, have made their way amid the gloom with real enthusiasm.

Because, in the end, what do you mean there is nothing to buy? There are all manner of T-shirts, caps and pullovers on sale here to help document that you were at Sundance 2008, that you saw the thing, that you have pictures of the star. Look, there he is with his arm around me. He’s smiling. What could be better than that?
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/22/mo...2sundance.html





Deals Are Made at Sundance
David M. Halbfinger

And on the fifth night, the wallets opened.

After a weekend marked by too many downbeat dramas and comedies-in-name-only, the Sundance Film Festival’s flock of film buyers finally began seeing movies they could take to the multiplexes — and it was a religious experience.

Just after midnight Tuesday, “Henry Poole Is Here,” Mark Pellington’s light-hearted tale of a terminally ill man (Luke Wilson), his troubled neighbors and a stain on his stucco wall that looks to them like the face of Christ, sold to Overture Films, one of the new movie distributors clamoring for attention and movies.

The price paid was a minimum guarantee of $3.5 million for the rights to release the movie in the United States, three people close to the negotiations said, making it the first major deal of the festival. Overture beat out Warner Independent Pictures and Focus Features, one person involved said.

That agreement came hours after what was perhaps the most rousing premiere of the festival, that of “Hamlet 2,” a bawdy romp starring Steve Coogan as a failed actor turned pathetic high-school drama teacher who stages a musical sequel to “Hamlet,” with a “sexy Jesus” Christ in a starring role.

“Ten minutes after the screening ended, I had e-mails from distributors saying, ‘I must have that film’ and ‘Name your price,’ ” said Micah Green of the Creative Artists Agency, the film’s sales representative.

After a feverish auction, Focus Features emerged at about 3 a.m. the winning bidder for “Hamlet 2” with a price of $10 million – just shy of the Sundance record $10.5 million paid for “Little Miss Sunshine” in 2006 – edging out Fox Searchlight, the Weinstein Company, Lionsgate, Summit, and Warner Independent, according to two people close to the talks. The “to buy or not to buy” questions surrounding other films, meanwhile, seemed to be resolving themselves quickly.

For one example, at around 5 a.m. Tuesday Fox Searchlight agreed to pay a mid-seven-figure price for “Choke,” Clark Gregg’s adaptation of the Chuck Palahniuk novel. The film stars Sam Rockwell as a sex-addicted con man (he forces himself to choke in fancy restaurants), Anjelica Huston as his deranged, hospitalized mother, and Kelly McDonald as her doctor. The United Talent Agency represented the film, which also has religious overtones: Ms. Huston’s character believes her fatherless son is the Second Coming.

One of the festival’s overarching themes has been hope and optimism, as is most evident in films about people facing down death, including “Henry Poole Is Here” and Amy Redford’s drama “The Guitar” (which was less well received in its Friday opening).

In Mr. Pellington’s comedy-drama, written by Albert Torres and produced by Lakeshore Entertainment, Adriana Barraza (“Babel”) plays a woman whose glimpse of the holy visage in a skeptical neighbor’s water-stained stucco wall — complete with tears of blood — threatens to turn his back yard into a suburban Lourdes. All the principal characters are coping with loss of one kind or another (already realized, or looming just ahead) — appropriately enough, since Mr. Pellington decided to make the film while grieving over his own wife’s death in 2004.

Chris McGurk, chief executive of Overture, said he sent an e-mail message to Tom Rosenberg, the head of Lakeshore, from his seat in the theater in the middle of the premiere to say he wanted “Henry Poole.”

In a phone interview, he said that both believers and nonbelievers could find the film validating. “It’s much more than a movie about religion,” he said. “Whether you subscribe to a certain faith or not, it’s a movie you can hook into.”

By contrast, “Hamlet 2,” even as it made sure to offend Christians, gays, Latinos, Jews, the A.C.L.U., and one of its lead actresses (Elisabeth Shue), also managed to subvert the festival’s running theme of death-defying optimism. The film, whose producer is Eric Eisner (son of Michael, the former Disney chief), was one of those Cinderella stories at Sundance: Submitted after the festival had announced its line-up in November, still unfinished, it was absent from the printed festival guides. “The buyers knew we rushed a cut,” said Mr. Green, the film’s agent. “We projected digitally. The film’s really not done — we weren’t done editing, we just stopped to have something to show.”

As acquisition teams from Focus, Fox Searchlight, Lionsgate, Miramax and the Weinstein Company, among others, left the screening to huddle and come up with offers, the non-buying audience hung around for a quick question-and-answer session with Andrew Fleming, the director of “Hamlet 2,” and several members of his cast.

Mr. Fleming said he and his writing partner, Pam Brady (a veteran “South Park” writer), had been working on the script for five years, but the idea of a “Hamlet” sequel was much more recent, and the actual play-within-the-movie was written on deadline. “It was this kind of panicked, last-minute thing — ‘let’s write some songs and put on a show,’ ” Mr. Fleming said.

In the movie Ms. Shue plays herself, oddly enough — or a version of herself that could be so smitten by Mr. Coogan that she’d lick his face (as she did again onstage, for good measure). Why’d she take the role? “I just got the script and it said, ‘A famous actress who’s a has-been, lives in Tucson and is a nurse,’ ” she said. “I had to do it.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/23/movies/23sund.html





Born of ‘Juno’: A Hit Soundtrack With an Uneasy Singer at Its Heart
Ben Sisario

Her songs are all over a hit indie soundtrack, and new fans are mobbing her concerts. Most musicians would see this as good news. But for Kimya Dawson, the 35-year-old den mother of the tiny anti-folk scene, all the attention for her music in the film “Juno” is a little troubling.

“I’m totally scared,” she said recently at Southpaw, a small club in Brooklyn where she was playing a sold-out afternoon show open to all ages. Literally all ages: among the toddlers in attendance was her 17-month-old daughter, Panda, whom Ms. Dawson breast-fed backstage while explaining her fears of getting too famous too fast.

A do-it-yourself singer who writes in childlike, stream-of-consciousness verse and has “LAFF LOUD” tattooed on her fingers, she now finds herself competing with major celebrities like Alicia Keys, Mary J. Blige and Radiohead for the top spot on the Billboard album chart. It’s a strange situation for Ms. Dawson, who with her old band, the Moldy Peaches, became a leader of the loosely knit, underground punk-meets-folk scene.

Last week the soundtrack to “Juno,” the snarky romantic comedy about a pregnant 16-year-old, reached No. 3 in a close contest, selling 68,000 copies, and this week the race for No. 1 looks just as tight. On Monday morning Ms. Dawson is booked on “The View” on ABC to perform with Adam Green of the Moldy Peaches; the group’s song “Anyone Else but You” receives prominent treatment in the film.

“Because of the success of the album, people have all these expectations of what the next steps are for me,” Ms. Dawson said. But she has no manager and no booking agent and promotes herself through her site (kimyadawson.com). And she said she had no plans to leave K Records, a veteran independent label in Olympia, Wash., where she lives.

“I don’t like people seeing me on the street and freaking out,” she added. “It’s never what I wanted.”

“Juno” is the latest indie soundtrack to become a hit just as the popularity of the blockbuster pop soundtrack has faded. A decade ago soundtracks were a dependable cash cow for the music industry, but in recent years their sales have plunged; excluding “High School Musical” and “Hannah Montana” products, few major ones have done well on the charts. Last January the “Dreamgirls” album set a record for the least number of weekly sales for a No. 1 album, with 60,000.

“During the ’90s almost every label had a soundtrack division, and there were some huge sellers,” said Geoff Mayfield, Billboard’s director of charts. “It worked for a minute, but once the consumer got the ability to make their own compilations with iTunes and digital technology, that became less appetizing.”

At the same time the indie soundtrack has come into its own as a stable, if modest, seller. Directors like Wes Anderson (“Rushmore,” “The Royal Tenenbaums”) established the type with a mix of new independent music and older rarities, and in 2004 “Garden State” accelerated the trend by highlighting the indie band the Shins. One of their songs, Natalie Portman’s character promised in the film, will “change your life, I swear.”

The “Garden State” album went on to sell 1.3 million copies, according to Nielsen SoundScan. More indie-heavy soundtracks followed for “Thumbsucker,” “Stranger Than Fiction,” “The Last Kiss” and others, increasing the pressure on filmmakers to find new and distinctive musical voices.

“As a director there’s a sensitivity to other soundtracks,” said Jason Reitman, who made “Juno.” “You want to find your own artists. I don’t want to be the 100th guy to use Simon and Garfunkel in my movie.”

In recent years some of the more successful indie soundtracks, like last year’s “Once” and “Into the Wild,” have relied on a smaller number of singers or songwriters to create a stronger, unified identity, enticing listeners to buy the whole album instead of just one or two hits. Of the 19 songs on the “Juno” album, 9 are by Ms. Dawson or one of her bands.

Mr. Reitman said he discovered Ms. Dawson’s music before shooting for “Juno” began, when he asked the star, Ellen Page, what band she thought the characters would listen to. Without hesitation she recommended the Moldy Peaches, and Mr. Reitman said their sensibility matched the film’s.

“They have the ability to be ironic and sincere at the same time,” he said. “You believe the love, the sentiment in everything they’re saying, even though they’re being crass or they’re joking around.”

As Ms. Dawson’s solo albums, like “I’m Sorry That Sometimes I’m Mean” and “Remember That I Love You,” have grown more reflective and mature, she has become a figure of wisdom and support for her fans. She said she frequently receives e-mail messages from lonely and depressed young people looking for guidance, and YouTube is chock full of videos of teenagers performing “Anyone Else but You” in bedroom duets.

“I’m into, like, full-audience group-hug kind of stuff,” Ms. Dawson said.

Onstage at Southpaw, playing solo with a guitar, Ms. Dawson closed her eyes and squinted as she sang, and although she made her share of wisecracks, she also seemed to choke back tears when pleading with her fans not to abandon her. “Just treat me normal, please,” she said.

After her last song she announced: “People who have to leave, leave fast. People who don’t, get in a circle and hold hands.”

She walked into the middle of the circle and began to swirl it closely around her: a full-audience group hug.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/21/ar...ic/21juno.html





Hip-Hop’s Newest Faces: Indie, Fierce and Female
Julianne Shepherd

JWL B. of the Florida hip-hop duo Yo Majesty was not satisfied with her tight-collared, mostly male audience at a New York club last fall. So she nonchalantly peeled off her oversized white T-shirt and black sports bra and performed the next several songs topless, bounding about the stage with the ease of a shirtless male rapper. The audience lit up and finally proceeded to, as the Yo Majesty song “Club Action” commands, get their behinds “on the floor.”

And that is how a lesbian rap group from Florida got an uptight Manhattan crowd to relax a little.

“I got stretch marks, and I’m fat, and I’m wildin,’ ” Jwl B., whose real name is Jewel Baynham, said in a phone interview. “But your boy 50 Cent does his show with his shirt off. Why can’t I? God made me who I am, and I’m comfortable in it. I want people to know you don’t have to look glamorous to be an inspiration.”

It’s a lackluster time for mainstream female rappers, with M.C.’s like Foxy Brown and Remy Ma making more headlines for jail stints than for their music. Lil’ Kim hasn’t gone platinum since 2003, Eve’s comeback album has been delayed several times, and Missy Elliott’s first record in three years isn’t due until late spring. Fergie, with her singsong chants about her feminine wiles, is the closest thing to a female rap superstar these days. But in the wake of the critical favorite M.I.A., a new crop of young, multicultural, female hip-hop acts is causing a stir on the Internet and in indie-label conference rooms.

There’s Kid Sister, a cheeky, charismatic rapper from Chicago who recently released a video featuring Kanye West; Amanda Blank, a nasty-mouthed M.C. from Philadelphia who is associated with the hipster male hip-hopper Spank Rock; and Santogold, a new-wavey singer and dub-style rapper from Brooklyn who toured with Bjork last fall. Though their styles vary from agile wordplay to club-ready choruses, what unites them is their fresh, left-of-center enthusiasm; their bold attitudes; and an expansive approach to female sexuality.

“There is a reason why these artists are having so much early traction online,” said Josh Deutsch, chief executive of Downtown Records, which will release albums by Amanda Blank and Santogold this spring. “And it’s because they have such strong voices and strong points of view. There’s nothing remotely manufactured about them.”

Yo Majesty’s roots go back six years, when Ms. Baynham met LaShunda Flowers, who is known as Shunda K., a track star turned rapper, at a gay club in Tampa, Fla. (A third member, Shon Burt, quit recently.) The group’s early songs were “real gay music,” Ms. Flowers said.

Yo Majesty broke up for a few years, during which Ms. Baynham renounced her homosexuality, found God, married a male Christian missionary, got divorced then reclaimed her lesbian identity. Upon reuniting, the rappers began building a following through MySpace. That led to a recording contract with Domino Records, which will release their debut album this year.

Yo Majesty’s party-rap proudly celebrates everything below the waist, but the duo also grapples with growing up Christian and gay. “At the end of every show,” Ms. Flowers said, “whatever we do, we ask people, ‘Do you know who the Lord is?’ ”

The only religion in Amanda Blank’s music is the kind she is losing. Ms. Blank, whose real name is Amanda Mallory, mimics the pornographic lyrics of Southern rappers like Trina and Khia, but she ramps up the gross-out factor to the point of nigh-absurdity. Her persona is a mix of seediness and street-toughness, which is on display in “Loose,” a recent video by Spank Rock. As several naked, tattooed women writhe all over him, Ms. Blank sits on a toilet, threatening to fight rappers who try to steal her style and making highly unprintable claims about her sexual prowess.

Unlike Yo Majesty and Amanda Blank, Kid Sister spurns sexual frankness in favor of innuendo. Born Melisa Young on the South Side of Chicago, she dismisses unsuitable suitors while strutting her postmodern stuff. “We could be hugged up like hippies on a tree trunk,” she teases in her verse in Chromeo’s “Tenderoni,” while “Telephone” reprimands a guy for calling too much. In the video for her single “Pro Nails,” backup dancers sit in pedicure chairs, lip-synching the chorus: “Got her toes done up with her fingernails matchin’.”

The video underscores Ms. Young’s populist, all-ages aspirations. “It’s music made by a girl who shops at Target, made for girls who shop at Target,” Ms. Young said. “Or girls who work at LensCrafters or Ace Hardware or are sorority sisters or debutantes.”

Angel Laws, editor of the celebrity news Web site Concreteloop.com and an early champion of Kid Sister, said: “I think she stands out. She’s a party rapper, bringing back the ‘80s style with the club-hop.” (Kid Sister’s debut album, “KoKo B. Ware,” is due from Fool’s Gold Records this summer.)

But the artist with the loudest buzz is Santogold, who has already been called the next big thing in many articles. Born Santi White, she parlayed a college internship at Ruffhouse Records into a job as an A&R scout for Sony. After she was executive producer and wrote most of the songs on an album for the R&B singer Res, she left and eventually formed her own punk band, Stiffed.

In 2006 Ms. White, who now lives in Brooklyn, began writing her own songs; “Creator” and “LES Artists” confess to feelings of alienation, but she also revels in her individuality. Singing in a haunting, sensual wail, or toasting in the style of dub M.C.’s, she adds a layer of softness to an unusual mix of synthesizers, dancehall rhythms and percolating new wave.

“She appeals very broadly,” said Martin Heath, the founder of Lizard King Records, which signed Stiffed and is jointly releasing Santogold’s debut album with Downtown. “She’s not cliché one way or the other. She’s not playing on the foxy thing.”

Ms. White said she admires other female artists who try to defy stereotypes. “You get these images of women in sexy clothes, walking around in, like, panties,” she said. “Even Beyoncé — that’s what it is to be a woman and make music. But now there are all these other women doing cool, interesting things, wearing styles they came up with, and it’s not about being naked.”

Since the time seems ripe for underground, unquantifiable female M.C.’s, the Lady Tigra is hoping that pioneers will have a place too. She was half of the ’80s duo L’Trimm, which scored a poppy Miami bass hit with “Cars that Go Boom” in 1988.

After spending the last two decades getting a creative writing degree, managing Manhattan clubs and writing and singing the theme song for the frozen yogurt chain Pinkberry (“Sorry Ice Cream”), she’s preparing for a comeback. Her first solo album, “Please Mr. Boom Box,” released by High Score Records, is available through major digital retailers.

Tigra’s aesthetic hasn’t changed much since the ‘80s. She raps in the same honeyed, high-pitched tone, and there are beefy low-end clicks, handclaps and electro synthesizers, all hallmarks of classic Miami bass music. But contrary to much music of that genre, there is little overt sex; she prefers coy comebacks.

The Lady Tigra, whose real name is Rachel de Rougemont, said she hopes that girls will realize that artists like Fergie and Gwen Stefani were inspired by semi-forgotten female forebears like “L’Trimm and J. J. Fad and M.C. Lyte and get into that.”

“Before, you’d really have to come with it to be considered an M.C.,” she added. “And now women get — if not equal — way more respect and recognition for what they do.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/27/ar....html?ref=arts





Digital Music Sales Grow, but at Slower Rate
Eric Pfanner

Digital music claimed an increasing share of overall music sales last year, though its growth rate slowed, the music industry’s international trade group said Thursday.

Digital music, distributed online or by mobile networks, accounted for $2.9 billion in sales worldwide, up from $2.1 billion a year earlier, according to the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry. It represented 15 percent of overall industry sales last year, up from less than 1 percent in 2003 and 11 percent in 2006.

But after a near doubling in 2006, digital sales grew by less than 40 percent last year. Meanwhile, sales of compact discs continue to fall sharply, and increased digital revenue has yet to make up the difference. Overall industry sales fell about 10 percent last year, to around $17.6 billion, the federation estimates.

A recovery in the music industry, walloped by digital piracy, remains at least a year away, John Kennedy, chief executive of the federation, said in an interview.

The industry’s troubles were highlighted this month when EMI, the smallest of the four major recording companies in terms of market share, announced plans to eliminate as many as 2,000 of its 5,500 employees, amid a steep decline in sales.

While the industry may see another year of decline, Mr. Kennedy said, there were some positive signs in the battle against illegal digital file-sharing, which the record companies cite as the main reason for their woes. In November, Internet service providers in France, in a deal brokered by President Nicolas Sarkozy, agreed to a plan under which they would shut down the accounts of persistent copyright pirates.

Mr. Kennedy said the record companies would step up their efforts to enlist the support of Internet service providers, either through voluntary action or through the courts.

“If people can be made to understand that free is not an option, we could get a dramatic improvement,” Mr. Kennedy said. “That, for me, would be the beginning of a recovery.”

Industry representatives are meeting with service providers in countries like Britain and Sweden, where government-sponsored reports have recommended that Internet service providers play a greater role.

In China, where piracy is rampant, the music industry plans to file a new lawsuit against Baidu.com, the largest Internet provider, within weeks, Mr. Kennedy said.

The music industry lost a previous round of court battles against Baidu, but took hope from a recent verdict against another service provider, Yahoo China, which was found guilty of copyright violations for linking users to file-sharing sites. Mr. Kennedy said regulations in China had been tightened between the filing of the two cases, providing hope for a future legal attack on Baidu.

Though growth in digital sales is easing, Mr. Kennedy said the industry remained on track to reach a previous projection that 25 percent of sales would be digital by 2010. The United States already moved beyond that level last year, reaching 30 percent. But many other markets are far behind; in France, for instance, digital sales were only 7 percent of the total in 2007.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/24/bu...cnd-music.html





Recording Music Without the Recording Industry
hephaist0s

The 2008 RPM Challenge — to write and record an original album in February, just because you can — is about to begin. Hundreds of musicians from around the world have already signed up. Last year, more than 850 albums were recorded as part of the challenge, a testament to what can be done by independent musicians without a label, without the RIAA, and often without a professional studio. The efforts ranged from an album made entirely on a Nintendo Game Boy to a Speed Racer rock opera, produced by both experienced bands and novice musicians, often in continent-spanning online collaborations. Last year's challenge generated one of the largest free jukeboxes of original music available online, built to stream on-demand all 8500-plus original, artist-owned songs. Imagine if grassroots, independent systems like this foretold the future of recorded music and its distribution.
http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/01/26/2129250





Closing the Barn Door After the Cows Have Gotten Out
Verlyn Klinkenborg

Last week, the Food and Drug Administration cleared the way for the eventual sale of meat and dairy products from cloned animals, saying, in effect, that consumers face no health risks from them. The next day, the Department of Agriculture asked farmers to keep their cloned animals off the market until consumers have time to get over their anticloning prejudice. That is one prejudice I plan to hold on to. I will not be eating cloned meat.

The reason has nothing to do with my personal health or safety. I think the clearest way to understand the problem with cloning is to consider a broader question: Who benefits from it? Proponents will say that the consumer does, because we will get higher quality, more consistent foods from cloned animals. But the real beneficiaries are the nation’s large meatpacking companies — the kind that would like it best if chickens grew in the shape of nuggets. Anyone who really cares about food — its different tastes, textures and delights — is more interested in diversity than uniformity.

As it happens, the same is true for anyone who cares about farmers and their animals. An agricultural system that favors cloned animals has no room for farmers who farm in different ways. Cloning, you will hear advocates say, is just another way of making cows. But every other way — even using embryo transplants and artificial insemination — allows nature to shuffle the genetic deck. A clone does not.

To me, this striving for uniformity is the driving and destructive force of modern agriculture. You begin with a wide array of breeds, a truly diverse pool of genes. As time passes, you impose stricter and stricter economic constraints upon those breeds and on the men and women who raise them. One by one, the breeds that don’t meet the prevailing economic model are weeded out. By the beginning of the 21st century, you’ve moved from the broad base of a genetic pyramid to its nearly vanishing peak, which is to say that the genetic diversity present in the economically acceptable breeds of modern livestock is minute. Then comes cloning, and we leave behind all variation.

Cloning is not unnatural. It is natural for humans to experiment, to try anything and everything. Nor is cloning that different from anything else we’ve seen in modern agriculture. It is another way of shifting genetic ownership from farmers to corporations. It is another way of creating still greater economic and genetic concentration in an industry that has already pushed concentration past the limits of ethical and environmental acceptability.

It always bears repeating that humans are only as rich as the diversity that surrounds them, whether we mean cultural or economic diversity. The same is true of genetic diversity, which is an essential bulwark against disease. These days there is less and less genetic diversity in the animals found on farms, and farmers themselves become less and less diverse because fewer and fewer of them actually own the animals they raise. They become contract laborers instead.

It is possible to preserve plant and crop diversity in seed banks. But there are no animal banks. Breeds of animals that are not raised die away, and the invaluable genetic archive they represent vanishes. This may look like a simple test of economic efficiency. It is really a colossal waste, of genes and of truly lovely, productive animals that are the result of years of human attention and effort. From one perspective, a cloned animal looks like a miracle of science. But from another, it looks like what it is: a dead end.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/23/opinion/23wed4.html





It's Official: Mail is Slow as Snails

It's official. Postal delivery is as slow as snails, at least in Poland.

An IT worker, after receiving a letter on January 3 that was sent on December 20 as priority mail, calculated that a snail would have made it even faster to his home than the letter.

Daily Gazeta Wyborcza said Michal Szybalski calculated that it took 294 hours for the letter to arrive at his home. He also said the distance between his home and the sender was 11.1 kilometers.

Given the distance and the time, the speed of the letter was 0.03775 kilometers per hour. Szybalski calculated that a garden snail travels at around 0.048 kilometers per hour.

(Writing by Karolina Slowikowska; Editing by Ibon Villelabeitia)
http://www.reuters.com/article/oddly...23750920080124