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30-09-09, 09:15 AM
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Join Date: May 2001
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Peer-To-Peer News - The Week In Review - October 3rd, '09
Since 2002
  "We can actively change the landscape of Australian politics by advocating fairer copyright, freer culture and ensuring the protection of civil liberties, sending a strong message to Mr Conroy that his censorship scheme is not welcome." – Rodney Serkowski, Pirate Party spokesman "The Internet is on a long-term arc from being 100 percent American to being 100 percent global." – Rod Beckstrom October 3rd, 2009  Pirates Plunder Germany's Big-Party Voters Ole Reißmann The Pirate Party has increased its membership tenfold in 2009. Germany's elections have seen one small special-interest party notch up an impressive performance. The Pirate Party proved popular with first-time male voters -- to the tune of 13 percent -- and won 2 percent of the overall vote. Party members are already dreaming of a bigger, brighter future. Chancellor Angela Merkel's Christian Democratic Union (CDU) party sits at the top of the list. Below are the Social Democrats (SPD), the Free Democratic Party (FDP), the Left Party, the Greens and the Christian Social Union (CSU). And there, at the very bottom, are the Pirates. At around 2:20 a.m. local time, when the organization managing the federal elections published the voting results for all of Germany's 16 federal states on its Web site, the nation saw a new power sitting on the seventh rung of the political ladder: The Pirate Party had managed to get 2 percent of the vote. Granted, it's not enough for the party to enter the German government, since a political party has to get 5 percent of the vote to do that. But for political newcomers like the Pirates, this can be interpreted as a success worth paying attention to. In many large German cities, they even got as much as 3 percent of the vote. And they were particularly popular among first-time male voters, from whom they might have won as much as 13 percent of the vote. "This election has shown that the issues we're campaigning for are important and that we will be more successful in the future," party leader Jens Seipenbusch said at its post-election celebration. In a short time, his party has become the unofficial representative of Internet activists in Germany who don't feel any affinity for the other parties and who have been feeling threatened in their natural environment -- that is, online. CDU Internet Laws Boost Pirate Popularity The Pirates have the CDU to thank for their strong result. When it comes to Internet issues, two politicians from the CDU embody the treachery of the grand coalition -- that is, the uneasy combination of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and the Social Democrats (SPD) that has been running the country for the past four years: Interior Minister Wolfgang Schäuble, with his laws regarding Internet surveillance and spying, and Family Minister Ursula von der Leyen, with her well-publicized list of banned sites in her campaign to fight online child pornography. Internet activists have suggested that rather than banning the sites, the content should be erased. An online petition started by Franziska Heine against "Zensursula" laws -- a word play on the German word for censorship and von der Leyen's first name -- secured more than 130,000 signatures. The petition got a lot of media attention -- and so did the Pirate Party. During discussions about the law on blocking Web sites, politicians from the grand coalition demonstrated their ignorance about technical aspects of the online world -- and a bit of arrogance to boot. That certainly didn't hurt the Pirates' numbers in the election. The Pirate Party was founded in 2006, and since the beginning of the year, its membership has increased tenfold. At last count, it had around 9,200 members, which makes it the seventh-largest party in Germany. High on Hype, Low on Ideology The Pirates' power was only really recognized after the elections for the European Parliament in June. At that time, the original Swedish version of the Pirate Party made it into the European Parliament with 7.4 percent of the national vote. The German Pirate Party managed to get 0.9 percent. Since then, its proposals championing the free exchange of culture and scientific information on the Internet and a new set of copyright laws have been seen and heard everywhere. Still, the young party continues to wrestle with its identity, while its members wrangle with each other. They primarily campaign for strengthened data privacy protection, respecting users' rights and Internet freedom. And the members recognize this. But the fact that its platform only includes these few items -- and that the party seems to lack a deeper ideology -- makes the Pirates seem to many much more like a protest party. For example, when it comes to issues of major political concern in Germany -- such as its involvement in the war in Afghanistan and those related to pensions and social justice -- the Pirates have refrained from taking any positions. Likewise, party leaders granted two interviews to Junge Freiheit (Young Freedom), a weekly far-right German newspaper, which unleashed a flood of online arguing. And the party has also taken a lot of flak for accepting members like Jörg Tauss, a former member of the Bundestag, Germany's lower house of parliament, for the center-left Social Democratic Party (SPD), whom state prosecutors are investigating as part of a child pornography case. Pirates Tricks On German Media Despite these problems, surveys conducted online or among young people in the last few weeks continued to show the party gaining in popularity and earning double-digit support. But what these polls might have really done is led the party to think too highly of itself. For example, party leaders said that they deserved a spot on the panel of program hosted by Stefan Raab, one of Germany's top entertainment personalities, on the eve of the election. They wanted to sit in the company of representatives of major parties represented in the Bundestag. When Raab said no, the Internet was flooded with charges of censorship. But the Pirates got their revenge. Using Twitter, many of them concocted a plan to distort the telephone voting survey conducted by Raab's program. In the end, the survey showed the Left Party winning a ridiculously high 16.8 percent of the vote -- and many suspect that the Pirates' mass mobilization might have played a role in the funny figures. Could The Pirates Be The New Greens? Pirate Party leaders say they are "very satisfied" with the results of the election. But good or not, a lot of supporters are still upset. There were already plenty of conspiracy theories floating around online because, despite its strong media presence, support for the Pirate Party was not being measured in pre-election polls. Some supporters blamed polling organizations, while others criticized the methods used to gather voter opinions. Still, Pirate Party supporters are now looking boldly into the future. At the election party in Berlin's young and bohemian Friedrichshain district and on Twitter posts, the mood was one of jubilation. Members like to draw parallels with Germans Greens, who started off slow, failed to get enough votes to get into the Bundestag in 1980, but wrestled their way in three years later. In any case, in political terms, the Pirates -- just like the Greens before them -- can now get real. And it will be a reality in which their sworn foes -- such as von der Leyen and Schäuble -- will be holding on to the reins of power for another four years. That is bound to be a thorn in the side of the online pirates, and it will certainly be awkward for the Pirate Party. http://www.spiegel.de/international/...651748,00.html  Many Swedes Still Download Illegally: Poll Six months after the introduction of Sweden's controversial anti-piracy law, 11 percent of Swedes continue to download copyrighted material. Sweden's tough new anti-piracy law has had little effect on the downloading habits of many young Swedes, according to a recent SIFO survey. Within the most “download-intensive” age bracket, 15-29 years, it appears that every fourth Swede is a criminal. Overall, 16 percent of men, but only five percent of women, continue to download music and films illegally. Moreover, 76 percent of file sharers report that they are not afraid of getting caught. The survey also shows, however, that the new law has been effective in many respects, with 16 percent of those surveyed stating they have stopped downloading since the implementation of the new law. In a survey conducted by SIFO six months ago, 21 percent of these people were still downloading copyrighted material. Of the group continuing to download illegally, 46 percent said that they would stop if better legal alternatives were available, a fact which caught the attention of television operator, Viasat, who ordered the survey. “We need a greater selection of well-priced, legal alternatives in order to prevent illegal downloading. Only 27 percent think that existing alternatives are good enough. Businesses need to take more forceful action in order to provide more legal alternatives as well as becoming better at informing people of the alternatives that already exist,” said Viasat Chief Executive Hans Skarplöth in a statement. The Ipred law, implemented on April 1 of this year, gave copyright holders the right to force internet service providers to reveal details of users sharing files, paving the way for legal action that could see downloaders pay hefty damages and fines. http://www.thelocal.se/email/114/88342/22380/20090930/ Google Stops Indexing The Pirate Bay? This morning the news went out on Twitter that torrent pages and the Front Page of The Pirate Bay are gone from Google. A simple site:thepiratebay.org on Google confirms this: There are a lot of Copyright laws in US and also in Europe, and you can always discuss if what they do is against the law or not and you can always find search results like these where in the bottom you can read: In response to a complaint we received under the US Digital Millennium Copyright Act, we have removed 7 result(s) from this page. If you wish, you may read the DMCA complaint that caused the removal(s) at ChillingEffects.org. But the interesting part here is that Google has stopped indexing the Front Page of The Pirate Bay. Brokep - one of the responsible behind The Pirate Bay explains this: In response to a complaint we received under the US Digital Millennium Copyright Act, we have removed 7 result(s) from this page. If you wish, you may read the DMCA complaint that caused the removal(s) at ChillingEffects.org. Well, the frontpage of TPB certainly does not infringe on any copyright, in any way or form. It’s a competitor to Google though If this is true that Google has stopped indexing and/or banned The Pirate Bay it’s hot stuff… really hot stuff! Because according to what we can read at Chilling Effects it could be so: Many copyright claimants are making complaints under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, Section 512(c)’s safe-harbor for hosts of “Information Residing on Systems or Networks At Direction of Users” or Section 512(d)’s safe-harbor for providers of “Information Location Tools.” These safe harbors give providers immunity from liability for users’ possible copyright infringement — if they “expeditiously” remove material when they get complaints. Whether or not the provider would have been liable for infringement by users’ materials it hosts or links to, the provider can avoid the possibility of a lawsuit for money damages by following the DMCA’s takedown procedure when it gets a complaint. The worst case scenario is of course that Google has stopped indexing The Pirate Bay. This would imply that it’s a political decision from Google. A decision that is a PR Nightmare - especially in Sweden. Sweden is one of those cold countries in the north where the discussion regarding integrity and copyright has been a hot topic for many years now. The Pirate Bay has, of course, played a vital part in these discussions, by mocking the authorities and copyright industry - and received a huge support from Swedes. This led to the events in 2006 when the police raided The Pirate Bay and took their servers - three days later the site was up again. The court decision that ruled in favor of the Copyright industry in April just led to a massive boost for the Swedish Pirate Party. A party that got 7,1% in the latest election for the European Parliament and now have a MEP. Let us all hope for Googles sake that this isn’t true. Becyuse if this is true and Google won’t come up with a fast and good explanation - the people in Sweden (and the World) will get angry - really, really, angry. And if you at Google reads this - prepare for a PR nightmare… http://www.joinsimon.se/google-stops...he-pirate-bay/ Chased From Sweden, Pirate Bay Sails To Ukraine enigmax In August the bandwidth supplier to The Pirate Bay was ordered by a court to disconnect the world’s largest BitTorrent tracker from the Internet. Within hours the site had relocated to a new host which immediately received similar entertainment industry threats. Now it seems the Bay has left Sweden, setting sail for Ukraine. At the end of August, Stockholm’s district court ordered Black Internet, the bandwidth supplier to The Pirate Bay, to disconnect the site from the Internet, pending the outcome of a civil action taken by several Hollywood entertainment companies. The ISP had little choice but to comply or face large fines, but TPB was quick to react and quickly partnered with a new host. That short honeymoon was quickly over. “It took just 20 minutes before the Hollywood companies telephoned the new host who took over operation of The Pirate Bay,” commented Patrik from the ISP which had been indirectly supplying bandwidth to TPB. Despite initially putting on a brave face and standing strong, Patrik’s company continued to feel the heat. It is not a large outfit and doesn’t have the resources to fight the entertainment industry and its threats. Last night, Patrik could hold off no longer after receiving mounting threats from the entertainment industries, which culminated in threats of a court summons. Having come this far, there is little doubt that IFPI and the MPAA would litigate if necessary. “I was threatened by the movie and music companies,” Patrik said today. He had no choice but to stop servicing TPB. His company cut off the site’s bandwidth last night but The Pirate Bay is fully operational, so they must’ve found another host. It’s likely that they already had one prepared. With Sweden seemingly out of bounds, the site needed to move overseas. The Netherlands is not really an option anymore and the same goes for most of Western Europe – the solution lies in the east. On the heels of several rumors today, Patrik said he could confirm news of the move, saying that he believes The Pirate Bay is now hosted in Ukraine. There have been signs that this Eastern European nation is becoming an attractive location for torrent site hosting, with several large sites and services showing interest. However, as illustrated by the on-going problems at Demonoid, TorrentFreak is told that the reliability can leave a lot to be desired, with sites having to take measures to ensure that when their Ukrainian hosting becomes unavailable, backup resources kick in. The standard of Pirate Bay’s new home (if it is indeed in Ukraine) isn’t likely to reflect the comparative luxury of Sweden, but that door seems to be all but closed now. Whether the site stays in Ukraine is another question, but that aside, a simple one remains; Would you host The Pirate Bay in Sweden? The answer will likely match the response to “Do you like lawsuits?” Maybe the Swedish government’s nightmare is finally over. http://torrentfreak.com/chased-from-...kraine-091002/ U.S. to Share Oversight of Internet with Other Countries, Private Sector Anick Jesdanun As Internet use expands worldwide, the United States said Wednesday it will give other governments and the private sector a greater oversight role in an organization whose decisions affect how computers relay traffic such as e-mail and Twitter posts. The move comes after European regulators and other critics have said the U.S. government could wield too much influence over a system used by hundreds of millions of people worldwide. Those critics have complained, among other things, about the slow rollout of Internet addresses entirely in languages other than English. However, the U.S. government stopped short Wednesday of cutting its ties completely with the Internet organization, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, or ICANN. The government agreed instead to establish advisory panels made up of government and private-sector representatives around the world. The panels will review how well ICANN decisions are made openly, reflect the public interest, ensure stability and promote competition for domain names — the monikers ending in ".com" and other suffixes. ICANN decisions could influence what domain names are available, what languages they are in and how much they cost. "The Internet is on a long-term arc from being 100 percent American to being 100 percent global," said Rod Beckstrom, the former U.S. cybersecurity chief who joined ICANN as chief executive in July. "This is a significant step along that arch to becoming more global." The U.S. Commerce Department has a guaranteed seat on only one of those panels, with the remaining representatives to be picked by leaders from ICANN and its advisory committee of government officials. But the panels' recommendations won't be binding on ICANN. And the Commerce Department retains oversight through a separate contract for ICANN to handle the nuts-and-bolts of domain name administration. That contract runs through 2011; the new one taking effect Thursday covers ICANN's broader role in setting guidelines and policies. ICANN also agreed to remain a nonprofit headquartered in the United States — it's based in Marina del Rey — with offices around the world. Beckstrom said some critics abroad might take that to mean Internet governance still isn't truly global, but the arrangement should ultimately bolster ICANN's standing internationally. "The U.S. government is saying, 'OK, you have become a multistakeholder body. Congratulations. Now on to the next set of challenges,' " Beckstrom said. http://www.siliconvalley.com/news/ci_13452511 ISPs Force Rewrite of Law Karen Dearne INTERNET lobbyists have forestalled a law that could turn internet service providers into online sheriffs. The federal government has substantially rewritten a bill intended to protect computer networks before its tabling in parliament by Attorney-General Robert McClelland. Electronic Frontiers Australia spokesman Geordie Guy said it was unclear if the draft Telecommunications (Interception and Access) Amendment Bill was an "attempt to sneak through" a wholesale expansion of intercepts of private emails and file-sharing or merely a badly drafted bill. "There was an incredibly short two-week consultation period but it only takes one of our members to notice what is going on and wave the flag," he said. "The bill is now significantly less broad, and its scope is essentially limited to those (monitoring) government agency networks." The Attorney-General's Department said the aim was to legally protect network administrators who may "inadvertently breach the TIA Act" when intercepting private communications in security defence activities. Government employees have been protected by an exemption due to end on December 13, and the draft bill suggested extending that protection to all persons "lawfully engaged" in operating networks, such as businesses and ISPs. Mr Guy said EFA's main concerns involved the vague phrase "appropriate purposes" -- "and who determines what's appropriate and why" -- and the potential use of intercepted communications "for disciplinary purposes". "The draft left it open for police to approach anybody in a position of authority in any organisation and require them to wholesale hand over information under an organisation's acceptable use provisions," he said. Internet Industry Association spokesman John Hilvert was also pleased by the changes, saying the original bill suggested "a new discretionary ability for ISPs" that conflicted with their obligations under privacy laws and the act generally. "There's a tendency to overlook the fact that an ISP's prime function is as a conduit," Mr Hilvert said. "Most users assume that their content will be absolutely confidential and is not to be shared unless there is a magistrate's ruling that material can be viewed by an authorised person, such as a policeman. "So most assume they will only be contacted by their ISP if there's something affecting the network -- not because there's potentially some content that may breach copyright, for instance. That's not a crime, that's an infringement." Mr Hilvert said there was a risk ISPs would have been forced to become "deputy sheriffs for almost everyone" under the proposed provisions. Mr McClelland has also introduced an amendment to the Serious and Organised Crime Act that gives police agencies greater powers to search and seize data from electronic equipment, no matter where it is held on a system, and to compel a person to provide access to the data. "These powers, currently only available when the computer is on the warrant premises, will assist officers in overcoming challenges posed by technological developments such as encryption," Mr McClelland said. Both bills have been referred to the Senate Legal Committee for public comment. Meanwhile, the Rudd government is still considering its position on the Council of Europe's Convention on Cybercrime nearly 18 months after signalling it was ready to start talks on the widely accepted global framework. An Attorney-General's Department spokesman said it was necessary to ensure that it was in Australia's "best interests to comply" with the convention, and consistent with domestic law. "The fact Australia is not a signatory is not an impediment to the investigation of cybercrime across borders," he said. "Alternative avenues exist for law enforcement to co-operate with their international counterparts, including under mutual assistance arrangements." http://www.australianit.news.com.au/...-15306,00.html Internet Speeds Are Often Slower Than What Consumers Pay For, FCC Finds Cecilia Kang The small army at the FCC trying to figure out how to bring broadband Internet to all American homes gave their half-time report Tuesday at the agency. Lots of takeways about how much it would cost and how networks aren't up to snuff, according to a study by the FCC. But here is one data point that really stood out to this reporter: -Actual broadband speeds lag advertised speeds by as much as 50% to 80%. So more than half the time, and sometimes as much as eight out of ten times, consumers are paying for slower Internet access speed than they signed up for. Joel Kelsey, a policy analyst at Consumers Union, says he's heard many such complaints from users and has pushed for the Federal Trade Commission to take up a review under truth in advertising laws. A spokeswoman at the FTC said the agency doesn't publically disclose all of its investigations. "This speaks to consumer empowerment. And if you are advertising one speed but delivering another, that takes power away," Kelsey said. "Consumers can't make accurate decisions based on quality of service from one provider off another." Other takeaways: It could cost between $20 billion and $350 billion to accomplish the task, depending on if you want to just send e-mail with large PDF files or watch HD videos over the Web. And even the networks in place now aren't robust enough to meet the kind of traffic expected down the line. "A constrained network dictates investment needs in infrastructure," the FCC's broadband task force said in its report. About 1% of users drive 20% of traffic, while 20% of users drive up to 80% of traffic, according to the release. - Three to six million people are unserved by basic broadband (speeds of 768 Kbps or less). -Nearly 2/3 of Americans have adopted broadband at home, while 33% have access but have not adopted it, and another 4% say they have no access where they live. -Universal Service Fund recipients have made progress bringing broadband to rural America, but the fund faces systemic and structural problems. All of these data points will go to informing a game plan being crafted by the task force. Blair Levin, former chief of staff to chairman Reed Hundt, is leading the group and required by Congress to present a final plan on Feb. 17. http://voices.washingtonpost.com/pos...=news-col-blog Web Survey Finds Speed Is Quickest Overseas Eric Pfanner The performance of broadband Internet connections has surged ahead in many countries in the last year, even before government stimulus packages aimed at upgrading networks take full effect, according to a study to be published Thursday. The most advanced broadband connections are in South Korea, Japan and Sweden, according to the study, conducted by the Saïd Business School at Oxford and the University of Oviedo in Spain, and sponsored by Cisco Systems, the telecommunications equipment maker. The work differs from some other efforts to assess how countries stack up on the basis of broadband, a form of high-speed Internet connection, because it measures the performance of these connections, rather than simply comparing market penetration rates. As broadband has become more widespread — some governments want to turn it into a universal service like electricity or water — the quality of connections has grown more important. The study takes into account the download and upload speeds of Internet connections, along with the latency, or delay, in the hookup. These measures will be increasingly important in the future, Cisco says, as consumers embrace online services like high-definition Internet television and video conferencing. The top three countries, along with six others in Europe, have sufficiently robust Internet connections to allow the average broadband customer to take advantage of these kinds of services already, according to the survey. A year ago, in an early survey by Cisco, only one country, Japan, met these criteria. Sixteen more countries, including the United States, France and Germany, fell into the second-highest category, meaning that the average Internet connection “comfortably” handles the needs of consumers for popular Web uses today, including social networking and low-definition video streaming. For the United States, that was a jump from last year, when the average Internet connection only barely met users’ needs, according to the survey. Fernando Gil de Bernabé, a senior director at Cisco, cited network upgrades by Internet providers like Comcast, Verizon and AT&T as a reason for the better performance. “Last year, it was quite painful for the U.S.,” he said. “This year it showed a big improvement.” But the United States still ranked behind such poorer countries as Bulgaria and Romania, the survey showed. Internet connections in Eastern Europe are often superior because network operators invested straight into the latest equipment, leapfrogging past broadband providers in other countries. Highlighting performance gaps is, for Cisco, a way to try to drive sales of networking equipment. But governments have also been paying more attention to speed and other quality issues, as broadband has climbed the political agenda in national capitals. A number of countries have recently announced or started to put into effect spending plans aimed at spreading broadband availability. The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development ranks countries on a variety of individual criteria, like average advertised download speed and how widely available broadband service is. Japan, South Korea and France are at the top of its list for speed, while the highest market penetration is in Denmark, the Netherlands and Norway, the O.E.C.D. said. The O.E.C.D. has been urging policy makers to look at issues like the divide between broadband speeds or availability in urban and rural areas, as well as discrepancies between advertised and real speeds. To try to come up with a more complete picture of where countries stand, the Cisco-sponsored researchers created an overall index of “broadband leadership” including the performance scores and market penetration. By that measure, South Korea ranked highest, followed by Japan and Hong Kong, with the United States ranking 15th. “One commonality from all the countries at the top is that they all have a national broadband agenda,” Mr. Gil de Bernabé said. http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/01/te...t/01broad.html U.S. May Need as Much as $350 Bln to Extend Broadband Expanding broadband usage throughout the United States will require subsidies and investment in infrastructure upgrades of as much as $350 billion, a regulatory panel said on Tuesday. The U.S. Federal Communications Commission is crafting a national broadband plan aimed at increasing usage in rural and urban areas. The report is due to be submitted to Congress in mid-February. In a mid-course status report, an FCC task force said preliminary estimates indicate that investments in the range of $20 billion to $350 billion may be needed for wireless and landline infrastructure, depending on the speed of service. The range indicates the slowest speeds to premium fast speeds. The report, which reflects information from dozens of workshops, did not provide initial recommendations. Panel members said they are still collecting data and studying how consumers are affected. It is expected to issue recommendations in the final report. The potential costs for investment dwarfs the $7.2 billion set aside in President Barack Obama's massive economic stimulus package. The panel said transferring the universal services fund collected for traditional phone calls for broadband usage will not suffice. "Subsidy mechanisms must also be considered as a means to universal adoption," the panel said in a statement. The panel said the majority of Americans have Internet service at home, one-third have access to broadband but have not subscribed, and another 4 percent have no access. However, those who have broadband are receiving slower speeds than what is being advertised, said the panel, which estimated that actual speeds lag by as much as 50 to 80 percent. "It is actual speed we should be thinking of," Shawn Hoy, a business analyst for applications on the task force, said at an open meeting with FCC commissioners. The panel, which is trying to envision a broadband ecosystem 10 years from now, also said broadband usage for online videos and music is increasingly used on mobile devices and putting a strain on networks, driving a need among carriers for more spectrum to meet consumer demand. Big wireless providers such as AT&T Inc, Verizon Wireless, Sprint Nextel Corp and T-Mobile are seeking more spectrum as they roll out more sophisticated bandwidth-hogging smartphones such as Apple Inc's popular iPhone. Cable companies such as Comcast Corp and satellite TV providers such as DirecTV also provide broadband products and services. T-Mobile is a unit of Deutsche Telekom AG. Verizon Wireless is a joint venture between Verizon Communications Inc and Vodafone Group Plc. As the demand for smartphones, which many consider small computers, increases applications for those mobile devices they are expected to eat up more bandwidth, which will drive the need for more spectrum. The panel said with next generation upgrades to the network it expects the sale of those smartphones will overtake the sale of standard phones by 2011. CTIA, the wireless industry trade group, said spectrum is needed at least over the next six years. "The industry needs access to more spectrum so we can continue to meet the growing consumer demand," CTIA President Steve Largent said. Another strain on the networks is the broadband usage during peak hours after work, which can result in network congestion and slower speeds. (Reporting by John Poirier; Editing by Matthew Lewis, Bernard Orr) http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...092902712.html Alcatel Boosts Fiber Speed to 100 Petabits in Lab Stacey Higginbotham Alcatel-Lucent today said that scientists at Bell Labs have set an optical transmission record that could deliver data about 10 times faster than current undersea cables, resulting in speeds of more than 100 Petabits per second.kilometer. A petawhat? This translates to the equivalent of about 100 million Gigabits per second.kilometer or sending about 400 DVDs per second over 7,000 kilometers, roughly the distance between Paris and Chicago. Such capacity increases on our undersea cables are important. A single home isn’t sending about 400 DVDs per second, however, as video becomes increasingly available and downloaded on the web, entire neighborhoods and geographic regions will get there, and that capacity increase is reflected in the growth of long-haul networking demand. That’s why research such as this and new companies such as Cyan Optics are so important to maintaining the current pace of innovation on the web. Now that broadband is our platform we have to make sure it continues to get faster and faster. The transmissions were not just faster, they were accomplished over a network whose repeaters are 20 percent farther apart than commonly maintained in such networks, which could decrease the costs of deploying such a network. To achieve these results, researchers from the Bell Labs facility in Villarceaux, France used 155 lasers, each operating at a different frequency and carrying 100 Gigabits of data per second. The team multiplied the number of lasers by their transmission rate of 100 Gigabits per second and then multiplied the 15.5-Terabit-per-second result by the 7,000-kilometer distance achieved. The combination of speed multiplied by distance expressed as bit per second.kilometers is a standard measure for high-speed optical transmission. http://gigaom.com/2009/09/28/alcatel...by-10x-in-lab/ Data Both Blessing and Curse for Mobile Telecoms Leila Abboud "Dongle" may sound a bit goofy, but the innocent-seeming technology is emerging as one of the biggest challenges to the mobile telecoms industry in coming years. Alongside smartphones, these 3G cards or sticks that allow people to get online via the mobile network from anywhere have come to symbolize how a goldmine of surging data traffic risks becoming a nightmare for mobile operators. Dongles are often sold with a flat-rate data plan, or with a subscription allowing a certain number of megabits of data to be used. They are fuelling a boom in mobile data traffic that is so heavy it is putting unprecedented stress on networks. Yet even as traffic explodes, revenues from these new services aren't keeping up because of the intense pressure on prices -- so investment in improvements risks squeezing margins. "Mobile broadband is manna from heaven for consumers, but it is hell for operators," said John Strand, who has consulted for global mobile operators for more than 12 years. As more people access the internet over mobile phone networks using laptops with 3G cards, Apple's iPhone or Research in Motion's BlackBerry, data traffic is doubling every six months globally and growing even more rapidly in some countries. On the day pop star Michael Jackson died, data traffic on Australian telecom operator Telstra's network jumped 170 percent. "Everyone wanted to know what was going on at the same time," said Mike Wright, Telstra's director of wireless engineering. "It put an enormous stress on the system." A laptop equipped with a dongle consumes 450 times more bandwidth than a classic mobile phone, said Pierre-Alain Allemand, who oversees the mobile network at France's second largest operator SFR. Yet competition is so intense, few operators increase rates. The situation is putting mobile operators from India to Sweden in a bind: they have to invest heavily in their networks to prevent congestion and outages, yet doing so risks hurting their long-term profitability. Many have taken to rationing bandwidth by slowing down the traffic of the heaviest users. Unexpected Rush "You can easily lose money on mobile broadband if you do it in the wrong way," said Bjorn Amundsen, director of mobile network coverage for Norway's Telenor. "We have had to be careful not to invest too much -- because the only thing that would happen if we did would be to increase in data traffic without an increase in our profits," he said. Few mobile firms expected the changes to user behavior brought about by 3G cards. For example, the technology allows a banker to follow the progress of his portfolio from his laptop in the back of a New York taxicab, or a photographer to upload pictures of a Paris soccer match instantly from the side of the field. But even in areas where 3G technology has been rolled out, mobile networks weren't designed for such heavy traffic. Base stations can only handle a certain amount of data, which must be shared by all users in a given area. So if everyone on Wall Street uses their iPhone at lunchtime to watch video, the network can experience slower connections or service outages. Michele Campriani, CEO of Accanto Systems, which markets software to track data traffic in telecom networks, says the company has signed 15 contracts with mobile operators in the past year to monitor problems due to traffic overload. He says telecom executives see the data explosion as a serious threat: "They're all very concerned. If they don't manage this moment carefully, some mobile operators will run into major problems that threaten their very profitability and viability. Some may not survive." Network Can't Take It Complicating life for the networks are people like Cherif Paul, a university student in Paris who does all his internet surfing via mobile because he doesn't have a fixed-line phone or broadband connection at home. "I use my laptop and dongle for everything," said the 23 year-old. "It saves me money and it's more convenient when I am on the go." Such practices make mobile operators nervous, especially when customers are on flat-rate plans. Since 2005 the number of fixed lines globally has fallen 0.9 percent to reach 1.24 billion lines, according to IDATE, a telecom market research firm. Over the same period, the number of mobile subscribers has gone up 95 percent to 4.22 billion. About 10 percent of mobile users -- who are often players of bandwidth-intense video games or music and movie pirates -- account for 80 percent of the data traffic, according to operators. "The dongles cause people to use the wireless network just as they would use their fixed broadband line at home," said Accanto's Campriani. "But the network just can't take that." Operators are trying to educate customers that mobile broadband should be the secondary method of access, not the main one. "If we don't succeed in sending this message, then we'll have to spend such a huge amount to boost the network capacity that it would be very hard to make ends meet," said Telenor's Amundsen. In France, dongles and the expanded use of smart phones caused data traffic on SFR's mobile network to increase tenfold last year while revenues increased 30 percent, Allemand said. SFR is a unit of Vivendi. Solutions Operators have already started responding to the data crush with new investments, phasing out flat-rate plans, and introducing techniques to curtail the heaviest use. One approach some have adopted is to shift some mobile traffic over to the fixed-line network, which is more stable and can handle heavier traffic. Networks in Japan and Korea, two of the countries with the most advanced mobile broadband, are also built this way and face less severe congestion problems. When Telstra invested $1 billion to beef up its mobile network three years ago, it used this strategy. In France, SFR linked many of its mobile base stations with fixed fiber lines to better handle data traffic. In addition to investing, most operators are implementing systems that slow or stop internet access once a subscriber exceeds an allotted amount of bandwidth. "We have to do this otherwise only a few users will end up straining the whole network," said Telenor's Amundsen. To keep up with data traffic, Telenor has undertaken 800 projects in its Norwegian mobile network in the past six months, he added. Esa Rautalinko, who heads TeliaSonera's mobile network in Finland, warned that such challenges were not going to disappear. "We are closer and closer to a situation where we reach the limits of our capacity," he said. (Additional reporting by Marie Mawad in Paris and Tarmo Virki in Helsinki; Editing by Sara Ledwith) http://www.reuters.com/article/techn...58S01B20090929 Former FCC Chairman Joining Patton Boggs Cecilia Kang Kevin Martin, former chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, is joining Patton Boggs in early October as co-chairman of the D.C. law firm's telecommunications policy practice, according to the firm. Martin served as a commissioner and then was appointed chairman in 2005 by President George W. Bush, five years after working as legal counsel for Bush's presidential campaign. He left the agency in January to join the Aspen Institute. Martin will co-chair the law firm's telecom policy group with Jennifer Richter. He left a checkered legacy at the FCC, where he was known for his strong but unsuccessful push to bring a la carte pricing to cable television. He drew a congressional investigation after complaints of mismanagement. Greater consolidation in the telecommunications industry took place under his leadership, and the agency failed to establish an interoperable public safety network for emergency responders, as mandated by Congress. During his tenure, the agency coped with the Web's massive disruption of the communications sector. Martin ruled against Comcast for allegedly blocking a peer-to-peer Web service company, an important milestone in the debate over net-neutrality rules. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...092903698.html Two-Thirds of Americans Object to Online Tracking Stephanie Clifford ABOUT two-thirds of Americans object to online tracking by advertisers — and that number rises once they learn the different ways marketers are following their online movements, according to a new survey from professors at the University of Pennsylvania and the University of California, Berkeley. The professors say they believe the study, scheduled for release on Wednesday, is the first independent, nationally representative telephone survey on behavioral advertising. The topic may be technical, but it has become a hot political issue. Privacy advocates are telling Congress and the Federal Trade Commission that tracking of online activities by Web sites and advertisers has gone too far, and the lawmakers seem to be listening. Representative Rick Boucher, Democrat of Virginia, wrote in an article for The Hill last week that he planned to introduce privacy legislation. And David Vladeck, head of consumer protection for the F.T.C., has signaled that he will examine data privacy issues closely. Marketers are arguing that advertising supports free online content. Major advertising trade groups proposed in Julysome measures that they hoped would fend off regulation, like a clear notice to consumers when they were being tracked. The data in this area, however, has been largely limited to company-financed research or Internet-based research, which survey experts say they believe is not representative of all Americans. So the study — among the first independent surveys to examine this issue — has attracted widespread interest. “This research is going to ignite an intense debate on both sides of the Atlantic on what the appropriate policy should be,” said Jeffrey Chester, executive director of the privacy group Center for Digital Democracy, which did not work on the study. • The study’s authors hired a survey company to conduct interviews with 1,000 adult Internet users. The interview, which lasted about 20 minutes, included questions like “Please tell me whether or not you want the Web sites you visit to give you discounts that are tailored to your interests.” The results were later adjusted to reflect Census Bureau patterns in categories like sex, age, population density and telephone usage. Tailored ads in general did not appeal to 66 percent of respondents. Then the respondents were told about different ways companies tailor ads: by following what someone does on the company’s site, on other sites and in offline places like stores. The respondents’ aversion to tailored ads increased once they learned about targeting methods. In addition to the original 66 percent that said tailored ads were “not O.K.,” an additional 7 percent said such ads were not O.K. when they were tracked on the site. An additional 18 percent said it was not O.K. when they were tracked via other Web sites, and an additional 20 percent said it was not O.K. when they were tracked offline. The survey company also asked about customized discounts and customized news. Fifty-one percent of respondents said that tailored discounts were O.K., and 58 percent said that customized news was fine. On the advertising question, there was not a big difference between age groups. Marketers often use teenagers’ behavior on Facebook as anecdotal evidence that they do not mind handing over information. But 55 percent of respondents from 18 to 24 objected to tailored advertising. “We sometimes think that the younger adults in the United States don’t care about this stuff, and I would suggest that’s an exaggeration,” said Joseph Turow, lead author of the study and a professor of communication at the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Pennsylvania. His co-authors are professors at Berkeley’s law school and at the Annenberg Public Policy Center at the University of Pennsylvania. The survey also asked nine true-or-false questions about privacy laws to see how knowledgeable Americans were about protection, including “If a Web site has a privacy policy, it means that the site cannot share information about you with other companies, unless you give the Web site your permission.” (The correct answer is “false.”) On only one question, regarding sweepstakes, was answered correctly by more than half of respondents. • Finally, the survey sought opinions on laws regarding tracking, asking if there should be a law that gave people the right to know everything a Web site knew about them. Sixty-nine percent of respondents said yes. Respondents also overwhelmingly supported a hypothetical law that required Web sites and advertising companies to delete all information about an individual upon request; 92 percent endorsed it. “I don’t think that behavioral targeting is something that we should eliminate, but I do think that we’re at a cusp of a new era, and the kinds of information that companies share and have today is nothing like we’ll see 10 years from now,” Professor Turow said. He said he would like “a regime in which people feel they have control over the data that marketers collect about them. The most important thing is to bring the public into the picture, which is not going on right now.” Stuart P. Ingis, a partner at the law firm Venable who represents the industry trade groups’ self-regulation coalition, said that the industry was taking steps to explain to consumers how behavioral targeting worked. “The more people understand the practices and how the data is actually being used, that’s when the concerns disappear,” he said. Just because many Americans are not in favor of something does not mean it should be banned, he said, citing negative feelings about taxes. But Mr. Chester, whose group is part of a privacy coalition calling for Congressional action, said the survey would be helpful. “This research gives the F.T.C. and Congress a political green light to go ahead and enact effective, but reasonable, rules and policies,” he said. http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/30/bu...ia/30adco.html Van Loan's Misleading Claims: Case for Lawful Access Not Closed Michael Geist The push for new Internet surveillance capabilities - dubbed the "lawful access" initiative - dates back to 1999, when government officials began crafting proposals to institute new surveillance technologies within Canadian networks along with additional legal powers to access surveillance and subscriber information. Over the past decade, lawful access has stalled despite public consultations, bills that have died on the order paper, and even a promise from former public safety minister Stockwell Day to avoid mandatory disclosure of personal information without court oversight. Last June, current Public Safety Minister Peter Van Loan tabled the latest lawful access legislative package. Much like its predecessors, the bill establishes new surveillance requirements for Internet service providers. In an about-face from the Day commitment however, it also features mandatory disclosure of customer information, including name, address, IP address, and email address upon request and without court oversight. My weekly technology law column (Toronto Star version, Ottawa Citizen version, homepage version) notes that lawful access has long faced at least two significant barriers. The first involves ISP costs associated with installing new equipment and responding to disclosure requests. The government has attempted to address those concerns by promising to help pay the bills. It plans to provide some funding for new equipment and, in a little noticed provision, has opened the door to paying ISPs for providing customer name and address information to law enforcement authorities. The second barrier involves lingering questions about the need for lawful access. Critics have pointed to the fact that Canadian law enforcement has successfully used the Internet in hundreds of investigations, including a high-profile Toronto terrorism case. Moreover, the law already grants ISPs the options to disclose customer name and address information. Van Loan argues that the changes are long overdue, pointing to a kidnapping case in Vancouver earlier this year as evidence of the need for legislative change. In several interviews, he has described witnessing an emergency situation in which Vancouver police waited 36 hours to get the information they needed in order to obtain a warrant for customer name and address information. While that makes for a powerful example, a more detailed investigation into the specifics of the case reveals that Van Loan's rendition leaves out some important details. Over the summer, I launched Access to Information requests with the Ministry of Public Safety, the RCMP, and the Vancouver Police Department, seeking further information on the kidnapping case. Both Public Safety and the RCMP responded that they had no additional information to provide other than the transcripts of the minister's interviews. The Vancouver Police identified the case as a February kidnapping (not March as suggested by Van Loan). The suspect was ultimately arrested and the case is currently before the courts, therefore limiting the department's ability to provide much detailed information. However, in an admission that goes to the heart of Van Loan's claims, a legal adviser disclosed that no ISP records were sought during the investigation. In other words, the case the minister of public safety has presented as evidence of the need for mandatory disclosure of ISP customer records never involved a request for such records and yielded an arrest using the current law. Without a doubt, society needs to ensure that police have the ability to deal with serious crime. Yet, public concern about lawful access comes directly from privacy fears and the absence of compelling evidence that the current system has created serious barriers to police investigations. The latest reliance on a case that did not even involve ISP records should only heighten skepticism about the government's proposed lawful access reforms. http://www.michaelgeist.ca/content/view/4424/135/ Chicago’s Loss: Is Passport Control to Blame? Michelle Higgins Did Chicago lose the chance to host the 2016 Olympics because of airport security issues? Among the toughest questions posed to the Chicago bid team this week in Copenhagen was one that raised the issue of what kind of welcome foreigners would get from airport officials when they arrived in this country to attend the Games. Syed Shahid Ali, an I.O.C. member from Pakistan, in the question-and-answer session following Chicago’s official presentation, pointed out that entering the United States can be “a rather harrowing experience.” President Obama, who was there as part of the 10-person team, assured Mr. Ali that all visitors would be made to feel welcome. “One of the legacies I want to see is a reminder that America at its best is open to the world,” he said.” But Mr. Obama’s assurances may have not been enough to assuage critics like Mr. Ali. A few hours later the Games went to Rio de Janiero. The exchange underscores what tourism officials here have been saying for years about the sometimes rigorous entry process for foreigners, which they see as a deterrent to tourism. Once the news came out that Chicago lost its Olympic bid, the U.S. Travel Association didn’t miss an opportunity to point that out, sending out a critical press release within hours. “It’s clear the United States still has a lot of work to do to restore its place as a premier travel destination,” Roger Dow, U.S. Travel’s president, said in the statement released today. “When IOC members are commenting to our President that foreign visitors find traveling to the United States a ‘pretty harrowing experience,’ we need to take seriously the challenge of reforming our entry process to ensure there is a welcome mat to our friends around the world, even as we ensure a secure system.” International travel to the U.S. declined by 10 percent in the first quarter of 2009 according to the U.S. Department of Commerce. To lure visitors back, U.S. Travel has been pushing the Travel Promotion Act, which recently was passed in the Senate and is awaiting action in the House, to create a campaign to strengthen the image of the United States abroad. http://intransit.blogs.nytimes.com/2...trol-to-blame/ Filtering Works, Enex Trial Shows Fran Foo RESULTS of a federal government trial show that live ISP-level content filtering does not have a negative impact on network performance and can work in a real-time environment. However, a highly anticipated report based on the pilot is still weeks away and the federal Opposition says the government can not be trusted to deliver on the $43 billion national broadband network when the goalpost keeps shifting for a mere $300,000 filtering trial. "The trial shows that filtering does work and that the gear stops identified IP addresses without major degradation to network speed," sources close to the trial said. "We can stop individual URLs, IP addresses, but we can't stop peer-to-peer nor virtual private network-type traffic." Unwired, Optus, Primus, Highway 1, Nelson Bay Online, Netforce, OMNIconnect, TECH 2U and Webshield participated in the trial, conducted by Enex TestLab. The tests involved thousands of internet users, mostly on an opt-in basis. Australia's largest ISP, Telstra BigPond, chose not to participate. Trials concluded last month and Enex has submitted the test results to the Department of Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy. Enex declined to comment on the results, citing a confidentiality agreement with the department. It is still unclear when exactly Communications Minister Stephen Conroy expects to take receipt of the report that is being compiled by the department. It will contain recommendations to government on the ISP filtering framework. There have been several missed deadlines due to the various ISPs’ different start dates for testing. A spokesman for Senator Conroy could not provide a likely timetable, but said the report would be provided to the Minister once it was finalised. Opposition communications spokesman Nick Minchin slammed the government for the delay and said it had produced "nothing" since the filtering policy was first announced in the run up to the 2007 federal election. "This procrastination is unbelievable," Senator Minchin said. “They should release the report now. There seems to be a systemic problem with Senator Conroy and deadlines," he said. "Until today, we still don't even know what the criteria for the trials are." "Senator Conroy doesn't seem to be able to handle a small trial. How on earth can we expect him to handle a $43bn broadband project? "This incompetence doesn't bode well for taxpayers," Senator Minchin said. The government is assessing the technical feasibility of ISP-level content filtering, which means a "clean feed" will be provided to homes. This approach is starkly different to PC-based filters that are installed on computers to help identify and stop children from accessing undesirable websites. Originally the government wanted to bar every web page listed on a secret blacklist managed by the Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA). The list contains a wide array of URLs that contain both illegal and prohibited content. The government has since changed tack, saying it would only seek to block "refused classification" material on the blacklist. RC includes child sexual abuse imagery, bestiality, sexual violence, detailed instruction in crime, violence or drug use and/or material that advocates terrorist acts. For the trial, ISPs were invited to test filter the entire ACMA blacklist of prohibited URLs. There was the option to do additional testing of content filtering solutions to test for non-web based applications such as peer-to-peer networks. Senator Conroy has always stated that ISP filtering is no silver bullet and was not the only answer in tackling child pornography. He has pledged to make the report public in "due course". The filtering scheme can be introduced via legislation or as a mandatory code registered with ACMA. Senator Minchin said the Coalition did not support mandatory internet filtering, but if legislation was the chosen route, it would study it carefully before making a decision. The controversial filtering plan has been slammed by several quarters including privacy advocates, child protection groups and advocacy organisation GetUp. Their main concern is the mandatory nature of the program which forces ISPs to play ball. Most argue that a voluntary approach by industry is the way to go. GetUp’s petition against the proposal has garnered more than 115,000 signatures. It has raised over $100,000 in contributions that have been geared towards online, television and print advertising, including a parody TV advertisement dubbed Censordyne. http://www.australianit.news.com.au/...-15306,00.html Hacker Ships Tool to Circumvent China's Green Dam Filter Ryan Naraine A security researcher at the University of Michigan has released a tool that help Chinese computers users disable the censorship functionality of the controversial Green Dam Youth Software. The Dam Burst utility, created by researcher Jon Oberheide, works by by injecting code into a running application and removing the Green Dam hooks that enable it to monitor and block user activity. This effectively restores the running application to its original uncensored state, Oberheide explained. Here’s the skinny from the Dam Burst documentation: Quote:
A remote code execution vulnerability was discovered on Green Dam a short time after it was released for download. http://blogs.zdnet.com/security/?p=4471 Glenn Beck vs. glennbeckrapedandmurderedayounggirlin1990.com Conservative yakker Glenn Beck hasn't (yet) been rounded up and sent to a secret FEMA prison camp, which has given him time instead to send his lawyers after the owner of the satirical glennbeckrapedandmurderedayounggirlin1990.com. Beck has reached deep inside to find a hitherto hidden well of respect and affection for foreign international organizations, and he has taken his case to the domain name dispute center at the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) in Geneva. The site, he says, is defamation, and it violated his trademarked name. But the anonymous website operator who has been targeted by Beck today stepped up, identified himself, and found a lawyer to file a response (PDF)—and what a response it is. How many legal documents have you seen that throw circumspection to the four winds and tell a WIPO arbiter that "only an abject imbecile could believe that the domain name would have any connection to the Complainant." And that's before the "HOMOSEXUAL BLOOD ELF" even makes an appearance. Play him off, keyboard cat Glennbeckrapedandmurderedayounggirlin1990.com turns out to be run by one Isaac Eiland-Hall. Eiland-Hall had discovered a Fark thread in which commenters picked up on a Gilbert Gottfried routine about Bob Saget raping and murdering a teenaged girl (it's, er, a bit funnier in context than it sounds [NSFW]). They adapted it for Beck to highlight what they perceived as his habit of forcing people to explain away completely baseless charges—as when Beck interviewed Muslim Congressman Keith Ellison (D-MN) and opened with this gem: "And I have to tell you, I have been nervous about this interview because what I feel like saying is, sir, prove to me that you are not working with our enemies. And I know you're not. I'm not accusing you of being an enemy. But that's the way I feel, and I think a lot of Americans will feel that way." How better to give Beck a taste of his own medicine than by wondering publicly why he has never addressed the rumor that he raped and murdered a young girl in 1990? No one's saying that Beck really did it… but if he has nothing to hide, why won't he deny the tale? You get the idea. Eiland-Hall thought this was genius ("It just felt right," he told Ars a couple weeks ago) and set up his own website to give the burgeoning meme its own homepage. The site went up on September 1 and had a huge spike of initial interest—it served more than 120,000 page loads in the first 24 hours. By September 3, lawyers for Beck's media company, Mercury Radio Arts, tried to have the domain name deleted by the registrar (they failed) and also took their case to WIPO, which mediates domain name disputes. When we spoke to Eiland-Hall earlier, he was unsure about unmasking himself by replying to the WIPO complaint, which meant that he would soon lose the domain name. In the three weeks since, however, he changed his mind and found himself a lawyer named Marc Randazza. Randazza dropped us a line today with a copy of his response to Beck's complaint, and boy, is it something... unique. Definitely not a rapist/murderer The reply opens by pointing out that domain name disputes aren't designed to "resolve all Internet-related grievances." Beck might be unhappy about the domain name and the site content, but he can't use WIPO to prove defamation. The domain name dispute process is generally used to prevent cybersquatters from sitting on trademarked terms, and it generally applies only when there is both commercial intent and the real possibility of consumer confusion. The satirical site is noncommercial, but is it "confusingly similar" to Glenn Beck's name? Randazza doesn't think so. "We are not here because the domain name could cause confusion. We do not have a declaration from the president of the international association of imbeciles that his members are blankly staring at the Respondent’s website wondering 'where did all the race baiting content go?' We are here because Mr. Beck wants Respondent's website shut down. He wants it shut down because Respondent's website makes a poignant and accurate satirical critique of Mr. Beck by parodying Beck's very rhetorical style." In the US, courts have long adopted a "moron in a hurry" test for dealing with issues of trademark confusion. Would a moron, hurrying home at the end of a long day and seeing the offending sign/billboard/website, likely confuse it with an official offering of the trademark holder? The reply says no. "It is specious at best for Mr. Beck to assert that his fans, or the public as a whole, would confuse Respondent’s website with Mr. Beck himself—unless of course it is Mr. Beck’s view that his fans and the average internet user are in fact hurried morons. Respondent presumes that this is not how Mr. Beck regards his audience. And, even if he does so regard his audience, this is not a basis for upholding his complaint." Randazza then proceeds to explain the concept of "Internet memes" to a presumably uninterested European WIPO bureaucrat. From "Mr. Spock Ate My Balls" (defunct) to ALL YOUR BASE ARE BELONG TO US to "Leeroy Jenkins" to a slew of sub-memes based on the movie "300," Internet memes are as old as the internet itself, and almost as ubiquitous as actual cybersquatters… Memes are often puzzling to those who have never encountered them before, and they are similarly puzzling to the subjects of the memes when they involve real people… Nobody believes that the director of the critically acclaimed “Downfall” would have directed a script in which Hitler screams “YOU HOMOSEXUAL BLOOD ELF!” Similarly, nobody really thinks that “Every time you masturbate... God kills a kitten,” which was an internet meme that originated on the same website that spawned the Glenn Beck meme, Fark.com… Memes often involve famous people, and they are often unflattering. Richard Gere has never dignified the infamous “Gerbil story” meme with a response, even though the story is nasty and false, and it too has entered the culture as an irrepressible meme, even making an appearance in The Simpsons, Episode 183. This is the price of celebrity—you just might wind up in a meme, and you might not deserve it. Richard Gere did nothing to bring the meme monster to his door. The basic charge here is that Beck and his lawyers are using a WIPO proceeding to shut down a website that they could not shutter under US law (thanks to the First Amendment). Whether this is true or not is debatable—lawyers we spoke to were divided, on the subject, as the factual nature of the domain name and the site's initially small disclaimer might be found defamatory in court. In any event, the WIPO battle promises to be entertaining, and there's even a bit of serious purpose mixed in with the frivolity. Just how far can WIPO go in using its domain dispute system to address Internet spats? Because WIPO is not a court system (it can use "any rules and principles of law that it deems applicable" to a particular complaint), it is not bound by its own precedent and it sometimes has a reputation for favoring big trademark holders. But WIPO has ruled on thousands of these disputes before and does have a track record of rejecting claims in which companies or individuals use the process as a way to shut down criticism or satire. Eiland-Hall certainly hopes to prevail at WIPO, though of course the issue there is a minor one; who controls a particular domain (Eiland-Hall has already registered several similar but less inflammatory domains to deal with the situation). The bigger problem could be that now, after unveiling himself, Beck's lawyers decide to send a message and drag the whole case into a US court, where big monetary damages could be on the line. http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/n...m_campaign=rss Britain Asks Schwarzenegger to Close Prostitute Web Site A British government minister asked California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger on Wednesday to shut down a U.S. website that allows men to rate prostitutes, including many working in London. Harriet Harman, minister for women and equality, told the ruling Labor Party's annual conference that "Punternet" fuels the demand for prostitution -- a vice she said degrades women and puts them at risk. She said the web site was a "very sinister development" in the trade and exploitation of women and allows guests to compare and rate services in the same way as they would a restaurant, a hotel or a holiday. Pimps put women on sale for sex on the site then clients offered their comments on line, she said. "Punternet has pages and pages of women for sale in London," said Harman, who is deputy leader of Prime Minister Gordon Brown's Labor Party. She said she had raised the issue with the U.S. ambassador to Britain and asked California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger to close it down as it is based in that state. "Surely it can't be too difficult for 'The Terminator' to terminate Punternet and that's what I am demanding that he does." The Punternet site describes itself as "The Online Community for Patrons and Providers of Adult Personal Services in the UK" and says it was "created to facilitate the exchange of information on prostitution in the UK." A U.S. Embassy spokesman could not immediately be reached for comment. Prostitution is not illegal in Britain. But associated activities, including soliciting, advertising using cards in telephone boxes and kerb crawling, are criminal offences. The minister also used the speech to say the government would make it a criminal offence to have sex with a prostitute who is being controlled by a pimp. The government was also stepping up action to tackle human trafficking in the run up to the 2012 Olympic Games, most of which will be hosted in London. "We're determined to ensure that, especially in the run-up to the Olympics, international criminal gangs don't trick and abduct women from abroad and sell them for sex in London." (Reporting by Stefano Ambrogi; Editing by Angus MacSwan) http://www.reuters.com/article/techn...58T69420090930 New Malware Re-Writes Online Bank Statements to Cover Fraud Kim Zetter September New malware being used by cybercrooks does more than let hackers loot a bank account; it hides evidence of a victim’s dwindling balance by rewriting online bank statements on the fly, according to a new report. The sophisticated hack uses a Trojan horse program installed on the victim’s machine that alters html coding before it’s displayed in the user’s browser, to either erase evidence of a money transfer transaction entirely from a bank statement, or alter the amount of money transfers and balances. The ruse buys the crooks time before a victim discovers the fraud, though won’t work if a victim uses an uninfected machine to check his or her bank balance. The novel technique was employed in August by a gang who targeted customers of leading German banks and stole Euro 300,000 in three weeks, according to Yuval Ben-Itzhak, chief technology officer of computer security firm Finjan. “The Trojan is hooked into your browser and dynamically modifies the text in the html,” Ben-Itzhak says. “It’s a very sophisticated technique.” The information appears in a cybercrime intelligence report (.pdf) written by Finjan’s Malicious Code Research Center. The victims’ computers are infected with the Trojan, known as URLZone, after visiting compromised legitimate web sites or rogue sites set up by the hackers. Once a victim is infected, the malware grabs the consumer’s log in credentials to their bank account, then contacts a control center hosted on a machine in Ukraine for further instructions. The control center tells the Trojan how much money to wire transfer, and where to send it. To avoid tripping a bank’s automated anti-fraud detectors, the malware will withdraw random amounts, and check to make sure the withdrawal doesn’t exceed the victim’s balance. The money gets transferred to the legitimate accounts of unsuspecting money mules who’ve been recruited online for work-at-home gigs, never suspecting that the money they’re allowing to flow through their account is being laundered. The mule transfers the money to the crook’s chosen account. The cyber gang Finjan tracked used each mule only twice, to avoid fraud pattern detection. “They instruct the Trojan that the next time you log into your online banking account, they actually modify and change the statement you see there,” says Ben-Itzhak. “If you don’t know it, you won’t report it to the bank so they have more time to cash out.” The researchers were able to capture screen shots showing the rogue bank statements in action, disguising, for example, a transfer of Euro 8,576.31 as Euro 53,94. The researchers also found statistics in the command tool showing that out of 90,000 visitors to the gang’s rogue and compromised websites, 6,400 were infected with the URLZone trojan. Most of the attacks Finjan observed affected people using Internet Explorer browsers, but Ben-Itzhak says other browsers are vulnerable too. Finjan provided law enforcement officials with details about the gang’s activities and says the hosting company for the Ukraine server has since suspended the domain for the command and control center. But Finjan estimates that a gang using the scheme unimpeded could rake in about $7.3 million annually. “The example we found relates to German banks,” Ben-Itzhak says. “But we believe this will increase to other countries.” http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/200...nk-statements/ Feds Give Homeland Security OK to Retain Up to 1,000 New Cyber Security Experts Lolita C. Baldor The Obama administration has given a green light to the Department of Homeland Security to hire up to 1,000 new cyber experts over the next three years, the first major personnel move to fulfill its vow to bolster security of the nation's computer networks. The announcement follows a wave of cyber attacks on federal agencies, including a July assault that knocked government Web sites off the Internet and earlier intrusions into the country's electrical grid. DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano, who made the announcement on Thursday, said the hiring plan reflects the Obama administration's commitment to improving cyber security. At the same time, however, it underscores the administration's ongoing struggle to better organize and manage the country's vulnerable digital defense. President Barack Obama vowed in February to tackle cyber issues, but still has not named a cyber coordinator, a job that experts say will be difficult to fill. Napolitano said the department does not anticipate filling all 1,000 positions, which will include cyber analysts, developers and engineers who can detect, investigate and deter cyber attacks. The secretary's announcement marked the start of National Cybersecurity Awareness Month, which reflects the White House goal to draw more public attention to the need for everyday computer users to exercise more diligence in protecting their online security. http://www.courant.com/news/politics...,7726727.story An Educated Consumer is Our Finest Customer Bipartisanship has been hard to come by in Washington of late. Still, the bipartisan dream has not completely died, as proved yesterday in the House Energy and Commerce committee, which marked up the "Informed P2P User Act" (PDF) and sent it on to the full House for a vote. The bill, which has wide support on both sides of the aisle, does two simple things. First, it requires P2P software vendors to provide "clear and conspicuous" notice about the files being shared by the software and then obtain user consent for sharing them. Second, it prohibits P2P programs from being exceptionally sneaky; surreptitious installs are forbidden, and the software cannot prevent users from removing it. Rep. Henry Waxman (D-CA), the powerful committee chairman, opened the markup session by warning about "the danger of inadvertent sharing of sensitive information through the use, or misuse, of certain file sharing programs. Tax returns, medical files, and even classified government documents have been found on these networks. The purpose of H.R. 1319 is to reduce inadvertent disclosures of sensitive information by making the users of this software more aware of the risks involved." The bill, sponsored by members of both parties, had a rather general first draft. The definition of P2P software, for instance, included all programs that could: • Designate files available for transmission to another computer; • Transmit files directly to another computer; and • Request the transmission of files from another computer. This sounds like a lot of software, including OS file-sharing and networking tools. During yesterday's markup, Rep. Jay Inslee (D-WA) wanted to make sure that the definition wasn't so broad that it unintentionally incorporated other useful software, and he got his wish; the amended version that escaped from the committee contained a much longer and more detailed definition, complete with a set of software explicitly not covered by the bill. Given what's going on over in the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, P2P vendors like LimeWire would strongly prefer this be the only bill on the subject. Edolphus Towns (D-NY), who chairs Government Reform, has been rumbling all year about P2P; back in July, he warned that P2P software was too often "predator-to-prey" and that "the days of self-regulation should be over for the file-sharing industry." He has also called for a ban on LimeWire-style applications on all government and government contractor computers, due to worries about inadvertently sharing sensitive information with the world. The Energy and Commerce bill, by contrast, simply tries make sure that people know what they're sharing, and that they know what software is installed on their machines. It's a modest bill (and quite short); with strong bipartisan support and the endorsement of the committee, the "Informed P2P User Act" stands a good chance of passing the House. http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/n...m_campaign=rss Legal or Not Here We Come Downloading copyrighted music over peer-to-peer networks—is it legal in the US? Judging by the comments and e-mails that we received while covering the two federal file-swapping trials of 2009, it's clear that some minority of our readership believed that these lawsuits were only about uploading files; some also believed that downloading music was in fact legal as well, and that one was within the law so long as no further sharing took place. Neither position, however, is accurate. First up: the question of what exactly was at issue in the trials of Jammie Thomas-Rasset (Minnesota) and Joel Tenenbaum (Massachusetts). RIAA legal complaints are generally boilerplate documents, and the charges against each defendant are largely identical. The Jammie Thomas-Rasset complaint is typical: Quote:
In case that language isn't clear enough, the complaints spell it out even more plainly toward the end, when they demand an injunction against the defendant in question. Such an injunction would "ban Thomas from using the Internet or any online media distribution system to reproduce (i.e., download) and of Plaintiffs' Recordings [or] to distribute (i.e., upload) any of Plaintiffs' Recordings." The industry has always been concerned about both downloads and uploads, and indeed spent a fair bit of time at trial attempting to show that much of the music in a user's share folder was downloaded from P2P networks. In the Thomas-Rasset trial, for instance, record industry lawyers showed that many of the music files in Thomas-Rasset's "share" folder contained metadata showing that they were made by ripping crews—and had presumably been downloaded via P2P. As for uploading, record industry investigators tried to show this more directly by putting MediaSentry on the witness stand. MediaSentry had identified the IP addresses assigned to Thomas-Rasset and Tenenbaum in the first place and had then downloaded several complete tracks from each user in an attempt to prove that they were distributing files. The record industry position is clear: both uploads and downloads are illegal, and both can result in lawsuits. We checked in with Electronic Frontier Foundation's Fred von Lohmann to see if he agreed with the music business legal position. "Does it infringe US copyright law to download music without authorization from a P2P network?" he said. "It depends. If you're a teacher who needs a clip for use in a class presentation, I think there's a good chance it's a fair use. But if you're downloading just because you don't want to pay for the song, then you're probably an infringer. Intermediate cases can be imagined, but that gives a pretty good idea of the two poles." (When it comes to appropriate penalty for infringement, though, von Lohmann parts ways with the record industry.) So much for the legality of downloading. Practically speaking, though, mere downloading has not been enough to trigger RIAA attention, due largely to the difficulty of detecting it. MediaSentry and other RIAA investigators can see the files that they download from others, and the IP addresses of those offering the files, but seeing what files those people are themselves downloading can be difficult or impossible. Canada, a downloader's haven? The situation is less clear in other countries, like Canada, where the recording industry has apparently shot itself in the foot… by getting exactly what it wanted. Uploading files in Canada is infringement, just as in the US, but downloading files might not be. That's because the music business long ago convinced the government to slap a levy on various recording media, like blank CDs, to cover "private copying." The levy was not extended to "devices" like the iPod or the PC, however, even though they were certainly able to carry around copies of musical works. The distinction between "media" and "devices" is crucial here, since Canadian courts have ruled that downloads are legal so long as the copies are made onto media that is covered by the private copying levy—not what the record industry envisioned when it had the levy passed. Perhaps the most famous such decision was made back in 2004 by a federal appellate judge named Konrad von Finckenstein—who now happens to run Canada's top telecoms regulator. In a 2004 case on file-sharing, von Finckenstein ruled that "the downloading of a song for a person's private use does not constitute infringement." He cited a section of Canada's copyright law which says that copies of musical works downloaded "onto an audio recording medium for the private use of the person who makes the copy does not constitute an infringement of the copyright in the musical work, the performer's performance or the sound recording." Note that the law applies only to a "medium," not a device. Furthermore, it applies only to music; downloading video games or movies remains infringement, since those industries don't receive money from the levy system. Not that the major labels in Canada see it this way. "Downloading pirated music is not legal in Canada," wrote Richard Pfohl, the top lawyer for the Canadian Recording Industry Association, to a newspaper in June 2009. "The copyright law conclusions in the case he cites were overturned on appeal. In fact, the Federal Court of Appeal has subsequently twice ruled that the private copying regime doesn't apply to downloads made to hard drives." But as copyright lawyer Howard Knopf points out, the issue really remains the old "devices" vs. "media" distinction. "The consistent thread of what the Copyright Board said in 2003 and the Federal Court of Appeal said in 2004 and 2008 is that downloading sound recordings onto something that is not an 'audio recording medium' may be infringing," he wrote. So downloading music to an iPod or a computer's internal hard drive might well be infringement, but Knopf argues that "an external plug and play hard drive that is clearly not in any sense 'embedded' in anything and serves no function other than to be a large memory medium may very well be 'audio recording media.' In that case, downloading any sound recording onto them obtained in any way from any source for private use would be legal in Canada, regardless of whether a levy has ever been sought from the Copyright Board." All clear? http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/n...s-it-legal.ars Ignoring RIAA Lawsuits Cheaper than Going to Trial Jammie Thomas-Rasset and Joel Tenenbaum captured the nation's attention when they were defendants in the RIAA's first two trials against accused online infringers. But here's the mind-warping reality: both defendants would have been far better off monetarily if they had simply ignored the complaint altogether and failed to show up in court. That counterintuitive logic played out again this week in Massachusetts, where federal judge Nancy Gertner issued four default judgments against accused P2P file-swappers who never bothered to respond to the charges against them. Their failure to appear meant an automatic loss, and though the judge does have some discretion in setting penalties, judges often pick the minimum awards in such cases. That was true in all four cases, where Gertner accepted the record labels' claims and awarded them the minimum statutory damages of $750 per song. The defendants were accused of downloading an average of ten songs, putting total awards in the $7,500 range, in addition to a few hundred more for court costs. Having $7,500 in damages assessed against you by a federal court is no picnic, but it pales in comparison to the two twenty-somethings who actually showed up to court, got attorneys, went through a multiyear process and a nationally covered trial, and came out the other side owing far more money. The chart below illustrates the point by graphing the various damage awards per song: When it comes to total damages, the disparities are even greater. Thomas-Rasset's retrial ended up with a $1.92 million award, while Tenenbaum faces $675,000 in damages. Those who didn't show up owe around $7,500. In fact, this might well have been Tenenbaum's fate. He was actually included in a massive complaint consolidated into a single docket, and it was only when he showed up to a court hearing that Gertner stopped the default judgment proceeding against him and actually helped find him a lawyer—Harvard Law prof Charles Nesson. Now, Tenenbaum faces a life-altering damage award and the prospect of bankruptcy if not reduced or overturned on appeal. Update: I was interested more in what happens within the federal court system for this article, but several commenters rightly point out that "not showing up" isn't the cheapest way out of such situations. Settling with the RIAA usually leads to payments of between $3,000 and $5,000, lower than the default judgments issued here by Judge Gertner. Convincing a jury that you're innocent could be cheaper still (if you find a pro bono lawyer), though it comes with certain obvious risks. http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/n...g-to-trial.ars Italian Appeals Court Rules Against Pirate Bay Mark Worden Italy's Court of Cassation has ruled against BitTorrent tracker the Pirate Bay in a decision that has been greeted by the country's recording industry. Italian access to the Swedish file-sharing site had originally been blocked in August 2008 by a court in the northern town of Bergamo. Swedish supporters of Pirate Bay proceeded to denounce Italy as a "Fascist state" and the company managed to get the block lifted on appeal, but the Court of Cassation has now overturned that decision. Nor is this the only legal headache for Pirate Bay in Italy. Earlier this year the country's major label representative body, FIMI, along with the anti-piracy organisation, FPM, filed a €1 ($1.6 million) million damages lawsuit against the site on behalf of the Italian music industry. In a statement, FIMI president Enzo Mazza says that his organisation is "satisfied" with the Court of Cassation's decision. He says: "Since the previous appeal, Pirate Bay has been able to operate and go unpunished for almost a year, causing great damage to Italian music. This latest decision means that access to the site can now be blocked again, as was the case in August 2008." Meanwhile, ahead of the appeal in Sweden against the April 2009 court ruling against the Pirate Bay, the Appeal Court has announced that lay judge Fredrik Niemelä has been disqualified from the hearing scheduled for November. While the Pirate Bay defendants have - so far unsuccessfully - challenged the involvement of other judges involved in the legal process, this challenge came from the music industry, the IFPI. Niemelä was disqualified because he holds stock options in streaming service Spotify. (Additional reporting by Andre Paine) http://www.billboard.biz/bbbiz/conte...8ef12b2176a1e5 Project Playlist Pushes The Line Between Music Search And Music Hosting Erick Schonfeld If there is a poster child for the battered Web music startup, Project Playlist is it. The company had to fight lawsuits from the record labels, is still trying to iron out licensing deals with those labels, lost its last CEO Owen van Natta to MySpace, lost its CFO Mike Sheridan, and by the looks of it is losing its audience. What else could go wrong? Well, it looks like the self-styled music search engine is actually hosting MP3s of major label artists via content delivery networks such as Limelight. If you search for Britney Spears songs, for example, the second result is “(You Drive Me) Crazy.” The originating site where the MP3 was hosted, http://www.sarzamin.org/, is no longer available. But not to worry because Project Playlist cached the song on its CDN, Limelight Networks. Khalid Shaikh, a TechCrunch reader and developer who wanted to harness Project Playlist to create his own music site, discovered this arrangement and sent me the screencast above to prove it. In the video, Shaikh speculates on the legality of this method of caching, which is impossible to say one way or the other without knowing the terms of Project Playlists’ licensing agreements with the labels. Project Playlist does have a licensing agreement with Sony, which owns the Zomba Label that Spears is on. But it certainly is a strange way to build a catalog of songs. And there are plenty of other examples, such as Alanis Morissette, who is on Warner Music, which is the one major lbel that still has not dropped its lawsuit against Project Playlist. Project Playlist bills itself as a music search engine that lets people share playlists, not the songs underlying those playlists per se. On its About page, here’s how the service describes itself: Quote:
Quote:
When I contacted Josh Brooks, vice president of programming and content, he seemed genuinely surprised and said that this is the first time he’s ever seen anything like that. After viewing the screencsat, he says: “Watching that troubles me and it should trouble anyone trying to do anything n digital music. It is a problem that has to be fixed. All I can say is it is going to be remedied because it needs to be.” He also says that Project Playlist is in the middle of negotiations with labels to stream licensed songs directly: “Playlist.com technology neatly aggregates song searches on the web and directs a user to a stream of music from the site where the song is hosted. In the very near future, our hosted music service will find a linked stream and replace it with a stream from the broad library of music we have licensed. Users can then listen and share the music on Playlist.com or through an off-site embeddable player. There are dozens of linked services out there. Playlist is actively working with the content owners to insure proper reporting and accounting for music we have licenses for.” in other words, Project Playlist doesn’t want to be a music search engine anymore. It is already moving away from through the way that it is caching songs, but it needs to host those songs in a more straightforward manner if it wants the labels to take it seriously. http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/09/28...music-hosting/ Warner Music Group, YouTube Make Official Pact FMQB After lots of rumors and media speculation on the subject, Warner Music Group (WMG) and YouTube have officially announced that they have reached a new licensing agreement. Under the new deal, YouTube will once again be allowed to stream content from WMG artists. All of WMG's music and videos were removed from the site in December 2008 after their old licensing agreement expired and the two sides could not agree on a new deal. "We’re pleased to announce that we’ve reached a new and expanded agreement with Google and its YouTube subsidiary that will bring WMG content back to the service as early as the end of the year," said WMG in a statement. "Under the agreement, members of the YouTube community will not only be able to access videos and other music-related content from Warner Music Group recording artists and songwriters, but will also gain access to an enhanced user experience on YouTube with a feature-rich, high-quality premium player and enhanced channels." Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed, but WMG will receive the majority of advertising revenue generated around the music clips. "It sets us up for a sustainable partnership going forward by sharing revenues, where the vast majority of the revenues will be going to Warner Music associated with advertising when consumers watch or listen to the content on YouTube," explained Chris Maxcy, head of Music partnerships at YouTube, according to Reuters. The deal with WMG means that YouTube will now feature videos from all the major music companies, including Universal Music Group, Sony Music Entertainment and EMI Music. YouTube also recently struck licensing deals with Disney, Sony Pictures, and the U.K.'s Performance Right Society. http://www.fmqb.com/Article.asp?id=1522880 Mobile Usage a Rare Highlight in Music Biz Antony Bruno The mobile music landscape is very much a study in good news, bad news. The bad news is that mobile music has failed to live up to the expectations that the early success of ringtones had inspired. Combined ringtone and ringback tone sales have fallen almost 23 percent so far this year, according to Nielsen RingScan. And Forrester Research analyst Sonal Gandhi estimates that only one-third of U.S. mobile subscribers with music-capable phones use their devices to listen to music. "That's not very big in the grand scheme of things, considering how long we've had MP3-capable phones," she says. "Compare that to iPhones users. Almost 60 percent of them are listening to music on their phones, and it's only been around two years." But it's not all gloom and doom. The mobile content business is undergoing a dramatic sea change, evidenced by the introduction of downloadable applications for such devices as the iPhone, BlackBerry and Android-powered phones. This new app-based distribution model allows developers and service providers to create mobile-specific services and sell them directly to users without interference from mobile operators, which historically have restricted the flow of new services available on their networks. This, combined with more sophisticated handsets and smart phones, has already had a positive effect on mobile music consumption. According to Gandhi, mobile music usage -- while still low overall -- doubled during the past year. She credits music apps like Pandora and Slacker as driving the bulk of that increase. And there are more music apps coming. RealNetworks just released an iPhone version of its Rhapsody subscription music service, marking the first time U.S. music fans can access on-demand streaming music from their mobile phones. Spotify just launched a similar app in Europe as well. Both require monthly subscription plans, which will certainly affect adoption. But it's only a matter of time before a U.S. mobile carrier decides to bundle a monthly music subscription into the cost of an unlimited mobile data plan to retain existing customers and attract new ones. "Mobile companies have to be really serious about using music as a differentiator," Gandhi says. "They're the best people to do music subscription because they have a billing relationship. They can get people to pay a certain amount monthly without even thinking about it, (and) that can be used as a way to drive data adoption as well." Carriers have avoided doing so because of network bandwidth capacity and cost concerns. But carrier sources say network improvements have addressed those concerns, adding that the remaining hurdle is getting labels to agree to a licensing rate low enough to offer a reasonable price to subscribers. In the meantime, even Verizon Wireless -- once considered the most difficult operator to work with -- is now providing developers access to such sensitive network data as location data and messaging controls in hopes of discovering new, innovative services that will also appeal to customers. The success of the iPhone App Store has served as a wakeup call to mobile carriers, which haven't focused much on developing new services around music. In their defense, the thin margins gained from mobile music services didn't result in the kind of revenue that inspires innovation on that front. So by partnering with music-focused companies that have the incentive to make their services accessible to mobile customers, carriers hope to discover new services and spur adoption. "This is us saying we're going to be good at a few things ... but there's a whole bunch of other stuff open to innovation," says Ed Ruth, director of strategic business development and partner management for Verizon Wireless. "Combine the ideas of the developer with the areas of expertise of the carrier, and you now have a brand-new offering with great consumer advocacy and interest meeting a need that's traditionally been a nascent space." Of course, this could just be the beginning of yet another round of hype, something the mobile industry is no stranger to. How it responds to the early success of music apps could determine whether the industry will repeat its earlier disappointment with ringtones or finally succeed in developing a larger, more lucrative mobile music market. "Ringtones and ringback tones have certainly been a really big business and caused artists and the music industry to really pay attention to mobile," says Rob Hyatt, director of premium content at AT&T. "The real challenge for us collectively is -- what's next?" (Editing by DGoodman at Reuters) http://www.reuters.com/article/techn...58R0YF20090928 EU to Set Volume Limits on Digital Music Players Constant Brand Now hear this, if you still can: The European Union said Monday it wants makers of popular digital music players to recommend users turn the volume down to preserve their hearing. The EU's Consumer Affairs Commissioner Meglena Kuneva said experts and industry will together draft tougher standards to limit hearing loss. "If you want to enjoy your favorite songs in 20 or 30 years time, turn the volume down," Kuneva said. Action is necessary because there is cause for concern over health risks, especially to younger people, she said. An EU scientific advisory body says that between 2.5 million and 10 million Europeans could suffer hearing loss from listening to MP3 players at unsafe volumes — over 89 decibels — for more an hour daily for at least five years. The EU's executive commission said the maximum sound levels of players now being sold range between 80 and 115 decibels. Using different earphones could add to those levels by up to 9 decibels. Above 120 decibels is equivalent to the level of noise generated by an airplane taking off. "The use of personal music players at high volume settings over a sustained time can lead to permanent hearing damage," Kuneva said. "We need to make sure consumers, particularly young people, are aware of these risks." Kuneva said the new standards would see new players include a maximum sound level default at 80 decibels. However, users could still switch that default off if they wanted to. She said the risk of hearing damage also depended on the length of time users listen to music and urged manufacturers to beef up health warnings with players sold, either in instruction manuals or on the product itself. Manufacturers welcomed the move, but said they would have to study the best way on how to issue better health warnings. Bridget Cosgrave, director general of DigitalEurope, said the safety of consumers "remains our highest priority." DigitalEurope represents digital technology associations and companies that do business in Europe, including Sony, Panasonic and Apple, maker of the industry-leading iPod. Regulators are expected to finalize the new standards over the next year, Kuneva said. Apple has already moved in recent years to upgrade software and iPods to limit volume levels after France passed a law capping sound to 100 decibels for music players. The company also ships a warning with each iPod that cautions "permanent hearing loss may occur if earphones or headphones are used at high volume." Sales of digital players has jumped in recent years, and some 50 to 100 million people are believed to listen to them on a daily basis, the EU says. http://www.siliconvalley.com/news/ci...nclick_check=1 Giz Explains: Why You Can't Get Decent Earphones for Less Than $100 Matt Buchanan Crappy earbuds are killing music. It's true. The problem is that good earbuds, like speakers, aren't cheap. We're gonna be talking in-ear earbuds—canalphones, really, or in-ear monitors, if you're snooty—since all the good stuff goes deep into your precious earholes. We aren't talking about headphones because great headphones aren't the most discreet things around—can't defeat physics, children. Unless you derive some sick pleasure from jogging with a pair of giant cans bolted to your head, earbuds are the way to go. It's All About the Drivers—No, Not Those Kind Whether you're talking about headphones or earbuds, they work a lot like loudspeakers, just miniaturized. The key element in both are drivers, though earphone drivers are a lot smaller, and do a lot less work to make the same music. There are two main types of drivers: The a dynamic driver works just like a traditional one in big ol' speaker. The benefit of the dynamic driver is that it produces a nice bass response, though it can be hard to miniaturize. A balanced armature driver is pretty common in serious in-ear monitors, since it's easy to shrink down. Originally found in hearing aids, it houses a magnetic armature that moves when an electric current runs through the coil, putting pressure on the diaphragm, creating sound. It can be, and often is, paired with a dynamic driver. Most earbuds just have the one driver, though more and more have multiple drivers. That costs more 'cause it's harder to cram more than one into a tiny casing meant to rest gravity-free in your ear. With multiple drivers also comes a "crossover network," circuitry meant to divide music into different frequencies and route them to the appropriate drivers, an additional payload to stuff into that tight space. Once all that is crammed in, however, multi-driver earbuds typically sound better than single-driver ones, because the woofer, tweeter and mid-range horn are more innately equipped to handle their own domains of sound—from boomy bass to sizzly treble. Among the least expensive multiple-driver earbuds are Apple's fancier $80 in-ear earbuds, which use two drivers, a tweeter for highs, and another for everything else. It gets more expensive as you creep up. Shure's three-driver SE530 lists for $500 (but can be found for much less). Ultimate Ears' UE-11 Pro, which will run you a ridiculous $1150, come with a correspondingly ridiculous four drivers. That's one for mid-range and one for highs and two for bass. Some companies opt for a single driver because they think it's better, since there aren't complications with crossover networks, trying to get all the drivers to work together to produce seamless sound. On the other hand, with a single driver, you're asking one driver to do everything: highs, lows and mid-range, says Stereophile senior contributing editor Michael Fremer Fremer. (Yes, that Michael Fremer.) That's why , FutureSonics, for instance, makers of pro monitoring gear, charges so much for their single-driver earbuds. "A really good single-driver can sound really good," says Fremer. What It's Made Of, How It's Made Besides more drivers, what you get in pricier earbuds is (surprise, surprise) better materials, finer build quality and a more focused design. Michael Johns, headphones manager for Shure—known for earbuds with MSRP ranging from $100 to $500 but rarely double digits—told me that most of the really cheap ($20) headphones on the market are basically rebranded crap from no-name factories, and that when you buy those with suggested retail pricing between $50 and $100, you're mostly paying for style, not sound. The top-tier brands, of which there are many, tend to design and engineer their own headphones. The expense of that is, unfortunately, passed on to you. The cost of raw ingredients is also passed to you—the cable material, the magnet behind the diaphragm, the diaphragm material itself, the overall quality of the driver, and the enclosure. (Again, all of the stuff that jacks up the price of higher quality loudspeakers too.) None of that stuff, when it's well made, is cheap. Fremer says, for instance, that better headphones actually use stronger magnets than cheaper headphones. As you might guess, the more powerful the magnet, the higher the cost. The Fit With legit in-ear buds, fit matters a lot, because the seal is critical. Not only does a good seal mean less ambient noise infiltrates your ears—allowing you to keep your volume low while still catching the full dynamic range—but an airtight seal is how you get decent bass response. And you want something shoved deep down inside your ear to be comfortable, as well as fit, so there's a lot of different kinds of tips earbud makers have come up with. Besides the standard rubber bulb, there's squishy foam, and the Christmas tree-lookin' triple-flange sleeves. What works best often comes down to your own ears and personal preference, which is why better earbuds come with a ton of tips. What Do I Buy? So, uh, what's the sweet spot price for great headphones? If Shure and Fremer had their way, everybody would spend upwards of $200 on their earbuds, but if you twist their arm, they'll agree that $100 is where buds start getting decent. The real trick, according to Fremer, is just getting people to "spend that first hundred bucks." The law of diminishing returns tends to kick in above that point: The difference between $300 set of buds and a $400 pair is nowhere near the jump from $20 to $100. Even smaller is the difference in models between generations. The best value on the market might be a previous-gen version of Shure's 500 series buds at a cut rate ($290), but if you can find $100 earbuds for 70 bucks, it's even better. Interestingly, Fremer says what you're looking for in great earbuds is "a relatively flat frequency response so no frequency is accentuated above another," so "the product that sounds the best is usually the one that impresses you the least at first." Buds that tout big bass, for instance, don't actually have better bass, just more of it. (You can always adjust the EQ if you want more bass.) Whatever you do, for Christ's sake—and yours—ditch the iPod earbuds. http://gizmodo.com/5371253/giz-expla...-less-than-100 Guitar Maker Draws Buyers, Cult-Like Following Andrea Shalal-Esa Three decades after defying the odds and persuading Carlos Santana to try out his hand-built guitar, Paul Reed Smith's quest for perfect tone is still reeling in enthusiasts from all over the world. Despite the world economic downturn, his company has built a new multimillion dollar factory and is looking at multiplying revenues while other instrument makers report declining sales. More than 1,700 guitar dealers and customers traveled to a festive open house at Smith's Maryland headquarters this past weekend to see his newest guitars and tour a factory that turns out over 16,000 handcrafted instruments each year. The crowd -- which included dealers, doctors, investment bankers and ordinary guitarists -- ordered more than 500 guitars ranging in price from several thousand dollars to as high as $70,000, for a grand total of well over $1 million. Over the past 25 years, that kind of excitement has made Paul Reed Smith (PRS) Guitars the third largest U.S. electric guitar maker, helping it to squeeze older names Fender and Gibson and capture 40 percent of the high-end guitar market. Nick Catanese, of Black Label Society, began playing PRS guitars in January, and says there's no comparison with other brands. "They're almost like a work of art," he told Reuters. Those kind of reviews are good for PRS's bottom line, which is surviving the economic downturn better than most. This year, PRS expects to match its 2008 revenues of $38 million, while competitors report declines of 20 to 30 percent, and the new factory should allow the company to double its sales once the economy recovers, says President Jack Higginbotham. Gary Ciocci, managing director of Premier Guitar magazine, attributes the company's success to Smith's intense focus on its customers and events like the $300,000 open house. "They're not here to make a quick dollar," he said, noting that despite the economic downturn there weren't many used PRS guitars among thousands for sale on eBay. Contagious Passion Santana, who has been playing Smith's guitars since 1980, said he was grateful "God put me in Paul Reed's path" because his passion and integrity were simply contagious. "It inspires you to be the best you can be," he told the crowd during a surprise concert on the eve of the open house. "He's like Leonard Bernstein ... and the people who make the guitars are like the symphony," he told 400 guests. Santana was so impressed with PRS's new amplifiers -- a product line introduced this year -- that he ordered several for a concert on the West Coast next week. Smith began repairing guitars while in high school, but soon began building his own by hand, persuading stars like Santana, Howard Leese of Heart, and Ted Nugent to try them. Over the decades, Smith has become a kind of rock star himself, says Guitar World publisher Greg DiBenedetto, who says PRS has an almost cult-like following among its fans, many of whom collect PRS guitars. Some own as many as 50 or 60. Smith calls his success "the American dream come true." "You get a kid whose a hippie in a bedroom in Bowie, Maryland without any money who is somehow able to put a guitar company together," he says. "The other part of the magic is that these are musical instruments." And those instruments are "the best of the best," says Leese, who bought his first Smith guitar in the late 1970s for $2,000, an instrument now worth over $500,000. Buying a PRS is like buying a Rolex watch, he told Reuters. "The instrument eliminates the physical barrier between what you hear in your head and what's coming out the other end." Smith keeps a few vintage guitars in his office, including a 1957 Fender Stratocaster, the instruments he considers his real competition. On Saturday, he let Dweezil Zappa, son of the late Frank Zappa, play some of those old guitars before handing him a brand new prototype PRS guitar. "Maybe it'll be the Dweezil Zappa special," he told Zappa, who is weighing a possible endorsement. Zappa said he'd still have to think about it, but thanked Smith for the invitation to play at the open house. "It's a fun thing to be part of what you put together," he said. (Writing by Andrea Shalal-Esa, editing by Anthony Boadle) http://www.reuters.com/article/domes...58R3ZA20090928 Bob Dylan Album Goes for Early Sales to Citi Customers The times they are a-changin', and Bob Dylan's surprise decision to release his first Christmas album next month now comes with a banking tie-in that would have been unimaginable during the singer's 1960s protest years. Citibank said on Tuesday that "Christmas In The Heart" will be available for Internet download to 13 million customers enrolled in the company's rewards program, during the week before it hits stores on October 13. Nancy Gordon, executive vice president of Citibank's rewards program, said she expects the album will have "high appeal" to customers, who mainly get points by using their credit or debit cards. The CD will not be sold in branches of the Citigroup Inc unit. Dylan, 68, will donate his proceeds from the Columbia Records release to charities that feed the needy. Columbia is a unit of Sony Corp. (Reporting by Alex Dobuzinskis: Editing by Bob Tourtellotte, Gary Hill) http://www.reuters.com/article/newsO...58T0WT20090930 "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds" Inspiration Dies The woman who inspired the iconic Beatles song "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds" has died, a charity said Monday. Lucy O'Donnell was a childhood friend of John Lennon's son Julian, and the song title was inspired by a picture that he had drawn of her at school. "That's Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds," Julian explained to his father when he took the picture home. Many fans believed that the classic 1967 hit, recorded for the "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band" album, was a thinly disguised paean of praise for the hallucinogenic drug LSD. But O'Donnell, a housewife whose married name was Vodden, revealed two years ago that she had in fact been the source. "I remember Julian and I both doing pictures on a double-sided easel, throwing paint at each other, much to the horror of the classroom attendant," O'Donnell told BBC radio in 2007. "Julian had painted a picture and on that particular day his father turned up with the chauffeur to pick him up from school." The St Thomas' Lupus Trust charity said O'Donnell had died aged 46 from the autoimmune disease lupus. It said Julian and his mother Cynthia, Lennon's first wife, were "shocked and saddened by the loss of Lucy." "It's so sad that she had finally lost the battle she fought so bravely for so long," said Angie Davidson, the Trust's campaign director. (Reporting by Michael Holden; Editing by Steve Addison) http://www.reuters.com/article/enter...58R4RS20090928 Mr. Magic, Disc Jockey for Early Hip-Hop, Dies at 53 Douglas Martin Mr. Magic, whose panache and persistence in bringing once-reviled rap to mainstream radio in the 1980s helped pave the way for the breakout of hip-hop culture, died on Friday in Brooklyn. He was 53. The cause was a heart attack, said Tyrone Williams, his manager and producer. Mr. Magic, born John Rivas, was the first host on commercial radio to devote a program exclusively to rap when his “Rap Attack” began broadcasting on WBLS-FM in New York in April 1983. Disco and funk were then fading, and rap was emerging as a rebellious new art form in the streets, housing projects and parks of New York City. But many radio stations and music executives were wary of the frank explosiveness of the new music. Mr. Magic played a role similar to that of Alan Freed in popularizing rock ’n’ roll in the 1950s. “Magic was the guy who carried a flag for the music on the radio, exactly as Freed had done for rock ’n’ roll,” said Bill Adler, a former director of publicity for Def Jam Recordings. Mr. Magic looked the part of a rap impresario, wearing rings on every finger and gold rope chains. He favored a sharkskin suit. In the 1970s Mr. Magic was an itinerant disk jockey in Brooklyn, and a few small labels were starting to release rap records. He bought some late-night time on a New York public-access radio station, WHBI (now WNWK), to broadcast the new music. A few others were doing the same thing on that and other noncommercial stations. Mr. Williams said it was a lucrative concept: the station charged $75 an hour, and he and Mr. Williams charged advertisers $100 a minute. But their larger motive was to demonstrate a growing appetite for the music that created the culture of hip-hop, manifested in fashion, advertising, dance and other fields. A following grew. “In no time at all a star was born,” went “Magic’s Wand,” a 1982 song by the rap group Whodini. Mr. Magic’s big breakthrough came when WBLS-FM, a larger, mainstream New York station, decided to take a chance on rap, starting in April 1983. Soon Mr. Magic was engaged in spirited competition with a rap show on the station KISS-FM hosted by a D.J. who called himself Kool DJ Red Alert. Mr. Magic gathered a sort of hip-hop collective that included artists like Big Daddy Kane, Biz Markie, Roxanne and Kool G Rap, and was called the Juice Crew. (Mr. Magic was Sir Juice.) Red Alert was affiliated with a rap group called Boogie Down Productions. The two sides staged elaborate battles, recording songs as insults to respond to taunts from the other side. The exchanges were wildly popular, on and off the air. John Rivas was born in the Bronx on March 15, 1956. In a 1995 interview with Hiphopmusic.com, he called himself something of a hoodlum as a youth, but by the time he was in his early 20s he had a van and was working as a mobile D.J. He also worked at an electronics store, where he gave up-and-coming musicians discounts on speakers. In her book “Rap Music and Street Consciousness” (2002), Cheryl L. Keyes wrote that WBLS assigned Mr. Williams, a sportscaster known as Fly Ty, to be Mr. Magic’s manager. Marley Marl was assigned to be his sound engineer, but he soon came to be called the Engineer All Star for his provocative mixing — what the three called “the dirty basement sound.” Many rappers they presented on the radio did not have record contracts, much less fame. That came later, often abundantly. Together, the three toured the country to do what were often the first rap shows on many stations. They then sent tapes by mail to the stations so they could do more shows. In 1985 KDAY in Redondo Beach, Calif., became the first radio station in the country to adapt an-all rap format. Mr. Williams said that in 1984, WBLS wanted to abandon the rap show and offered Mr. Magic the chance to host a show playing softer music. “If I stop playing, rap will die,” Mr. Magic said, and returned to WHBI. He came back to WBLS the next year and stayed until 1989. He then worked for WEBB in Baltimore until 1992. In 2000 he left to work for WQHT in New York, a station known as Hot-97. For more than six years, he had been unable to get another show, Mr. Williams said. “I watched Magic become sadder, thinner and upset,” he said. Mr. Williams said that at the time of his death Mr. Magic was negotiating to return to WBLS. Mr. Magic was separated from his wife, Lisa Rivas. He is also survived by his sons John Jr. and Jabar, and his daughter, Domonique Rivas. Mr. Magic was often described as arrogant, although his on-the-air manner was smooth and warm. When he met Magic Johnson, the basketball great, he said, “The world is not big enough for two Magics.” http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/03/ar...c/03magic.html Musicians Get Their Close-Ups in Cable Documentary Series Ann Donahue Mos Def is in a Tokyo hotel room, wearing a bathrobe and smoking a cigarette. He's holding forth on the differences between Japanese and American culture, revealing how impressed he is by the intensity of the local hip-hop fans who have been filling clubs for a week to see him perform. It's an intriguing look at the thought process behind his charismatic onstage persona -- and it's all part of the debut episode of "Embedded," cable channel Current TV's hour-long music documentary program that airs weekly starting October 14. Besides Mos Def, the initial run of six episodes will feature Common, Ben Harper, Thievery Corporation, Silversun Pickups and the Decemberists. In an era when networks are slashing production budgets in favor of cheaper, quick-hit reality programing and when informative TV music segments are rarely more than two minutes long, Current TV's "Embedded" is a throwback to a time of pre-YouTube attention spans. After the first run of six episodes is completed, the independent channel will debut a few "best of" compilations from all of the shows, and then plans to air another six-episode season in the coming months, according to Davis Powers, vice president of music programing at Current TV. "No one is committing to this type of music programing in the television space," Powers says. "We wanted to commit to doing real music journalism and documentaries -- and that comes with working with the artists on the ground floor." For the Mos Def episode of "Embedded," that meant spending seven days with him as he performed at venues in Tokyo and Osaka. "When we're talking to these artists," Powers says, "the things that they don't think will be compelling are actually the things we hang on the most." A Day In The Life In an episode featuring the Decemberists, the focus is on portraying a band in its hometown "and what they like to be surrounded by in the midst of them preparing for a very ambitious tour," she says. In another episode, Silversun Pickups are seen in the promotional whirl of the week before their album "Swoon" was released in April 2009. The "Embedded" team that travels with the artists is intentionally small, usually consisting of Current TV senior producer of music programing Alex Simmons and executive producer Mark Rinehart. That intimacy gives them the flexibility to build "Embedded" documentaries around an artist's lifestyle, which has been the show's primary draw for labels, artists and managers. "Instead of spending 10 minutes on the phone with someone, you can really see what their lives are like," Simmons says. "It makes them much more interesting subjects." In addition to each episode's main artist documentary, "Embedded" features shorter segments that focus on emerging artists. Founded in 2005 with funding from former Vice President Al Gore, Current TV is available on select cable and satellite providers, including Comcast, Time Warner, DirecTV and Dish Network. It recently captured international headlines when North Korean authorities detained Current TV journalists Laura Ling and Euna Lee for nearly five months before releasing them in August. Former MTV Networks president Mark Rosenthal was named CEO of the channel's corporate parent, Current Media, in July. To enhance the appeal of "Embedded" among Current TV's target demographic of 18- to 34-year-old viewers, the network's Web site will feature additional performances and outtakes of artists who appear on the show. The show's Mos Def episode will be available online to stream in its entirety. In addition, Current TV reached a deal with Virgin America for "Embedded" to air as part of the airline's in-flight programing on cross-country flights. "What we're all really working for is definitive pieces that will be evergreen," Powers says. "You can come back and watch Mos in Japan three years from now and it will still be a true document of that time." (Editing by SheriLinden at Reuters) http://www.reuters.com/article/enter...58P22X20090926 Finnish Startup Bets on Universal Media Manager Finnish startup Linkotec hopes to create a flourishing business by making consumers' lives easier: its free software links all digital media devices to all key social networks. The firm's Dazzboard (www.dazzboard.com) is an Internet-based application that connects with phones or digital cameras, storing all media in the same location and allowing it to be shared with different networks. "I have one interface, one window to manage all the content," Tero Salonen, chief executive of Linkotec said. "You have no interest to copy your content to seven places." Similar offerings from other software firms are usually limited to sending content from one device to multiple social networks. The company, which opened Dazzboard to the public in July, aims to build up a user base and then start making money by offering paid content in addition to users' own content. Linkotec is owned by its founders and a number of Finnish private investors. (Reporting by Tarmo Virki; editing by John Stonestreet) http://www.reuters.com/article/techn...5910T520091002 Is Liberty Media Planning An Expansion Of Satellite Radio? FMQB Back in February, John Malone and Liberty Media reached an agreement to pump $530 million into Sirius XM Radio, in exchange for a share of the satcaster. Now Rapid TV News reports that Liberty Media has effectively "bought" $102 million worth of bankruptcy claims of global satellite radio provider Worldspace, leading to speculation that something bigger could be in the works. Worldspace founder Noah Samara had planned to purchase the entire company, which is also facing financial problems, but was unable to come up with enough funds. Similar to the situation early this year with Sirius XM, Malone's Liberty Media has invested more cash to keep the overseas satcaster afloat. Rapid TV and Orbitcast hypothesize that Malone could combine Sirius XM and Worldspace to potentially launch Sirius XM globally, though such plans are just speculation at this point. http://www.fmqb.com/article.asp?id=1521004 New Media Explosion Upends TV Ratings System Basil Katz The explosion of ways people watch television is confounding the media industry, which has relied for decades on the Nielsen ratings but now must adapt to the realities of the Internet and on-demand video. Americans are watching more TV than ever -- an average of 151 hours a month -- on more networks and in increasingly diverse ways. Industry heavyweights and analysts are calling for a new ratings system to keep up. At first there was a "crisis in measurement" due to the scarcity of data, said Alan Wurtzel, president of research and media development at NBC Universal, which is 80-percent owned by General Electric Co. But now, he said, content providers are "drowning in data." Broadcasters, content providers and advertisers including consumer products giants Unilever and Procter & Gamble Co are all trying to adapt. "In the past one-and-a-half years there has been a geometric increase in consumers' access to the Internet for video, and the metrics market has not kept up," Wurtzel said. Though little more than 2 percent of television viewing is done on the Internet, Hulu.com, which combines video from 150 broadcasters on a single platform, has seen its audience grow fourfold in the last year, according to The Conference Board/TNS. Hulu is a joint venture owned by media giants NBC, News Corp and The Walt Disney Co. Coalition To Seek Better Metrics This month 15 of the biggest broadcast network companies, advertisers and media-buying agencies formed the Coalition for Innovative Media Measurement (CIMM) to help improve audience metrics. CIMM is a LLC composed of 15 voting members, from Unilever and Procter & Gamble to MTV Networks and the Omnicom Group Inc. Each has contributed $100,000 for a minimum two-year engagement. CIMM is expected to seek two bids from ratings and data companies: one to conduct set-top box research, the other for cross-platform viewing. Thanks in part to the conversion to digital cable, many Americans are accessing their favorite shows through set-top boxes provided by cable or satellite companies. This has led to an explosion of new audience data from half a dozen companies that mine set-top boxes for viewer habits. Factor in TiVo and video-on-demand systems with upcoming Internet video portals OnDemand Online by Comcast Corp or Time Warner Inc's TV Everywhere -- and getting uniform data becomes that much more difficult. "With more than 500 channels, and linear and nonlinear viewership, we're far from the three networks that captivated 90 percent of the viewership 30 years ago," said Alan Gould, a media analyst at Natixis Bleichroeder. Nielsen Says Up To Date But Nielsen ratings still hold sway over the buying and selling of advertising. Major broadcast networks spend roughly $1 billion dollars every year to get ratings from Nielsen, estimates Larry Gold, who publishes Inside Research, a newsletter on the market research industry. "It has control of the marketplace," he said. This is an often-heard gripe against Nielsen, which says it has made significant investments in acquisitions, infrastructure, and research that address the new ways people use media. As for CIMM, Susan Whiting, chairwoman of Nielsen Media Research, said, "We share all of the objectives of the leaders of the coalition, and we are interested in hearing more about their plans." But for Tracey Scheppach, a senior vice president at SMG Exchange, an offshoot of CIMM member Starcom MediaVest, part of France's Publicis Groupe, Nielsen is partly to blame for the metrics lag. "While audiences have fragmented, Nielsen's panel size has not kept up," said Scheppach. That has led to "dumbed down, inaccurate data," she said. For instance, broad audience categories such as women between the ages of 18-49 are hard to translate into targeted advertising. "There's bound to be a difference between an 18-year-old woman in Manhattan and a 49-year-old woman in some rural area," says Alan Gould. "There has been no matching of consumer behavior with the ads." (Editing by Daniel Trotta and Xavier Briand) http://www.reuters.com/article/newsO...59014820091001 Cuts Meet a Culture of Spending at Condé Nast Stephanie Clifford At Condé Nast, it is consultants versus car service. A three-month McKinsey & Company project advising the publisher how to reduce costs is drawing to a close, and several magazines have been told to cut about 25 percent from their budgets. The company’s editors and publishers have already been under pressure to reduce costs this year, as advertising has plunged, and Condé Nast has closed two magazines in 2009, Domino and Condé Nast Portfolio. But cost-cutting at Condé Nast is not quite like cost-cutting at other publishers. For example, on Oct. 13, the men’s magazine GQ will host a party in Washington to promote its list of powerful capital players, to appear in its November issue. The party is upscale: it will be held at the 701 Restaurant, known for its caviar and live piano music. That is not the only expense involved. Several editorial employees will travel from New York for the evening. And they received an e-mail message recently reminding them to limit their expenses for the night — to $1,000 a person. That culture of spending at Condé Nast explains some of the fascination with the place, which incites a mix of envy and scorn among employees at other magazines. Condé Nast’s top editors and publishers have drivers on call, staff members can be reimbursed for $15 a day for lunches they order in, and even freelance writers stay at hotels like the W when they are on assignment. Those perks would be unremarkable at any investment bank or law firm, at least before the recession. But magazine companies other than Condé Nast have become grim places to work in recent years. Time Inc. outlined layoffs of 600 employees last October, almost all of which were completed by the end of last year, Dawn Bridges, a spokeswoman for Time Inc., said in an e-mail message. The company has also put strict limits on expense accounts. Hearst laid off some employees at the end of last year. And BusinessWeek, as it tries to find a buyer, has proposed a 20 percent staff layoff, along with cutting costs on art and illustrations, research, marketing and events. Now Condé Nast is finally making some serious changes to its business, and life inside the 4 Times Square headquarters is about to change — a little. “They’ve been shielded a little bit,” said Audrey Siegel, executive vice president and director of client services at the media firm TargetCast tcm. “But I think Condé Nast will feel it now.” Teams of McKinsey consultants have been in the Condé Nast headquarters for the last three months, meeting with editors, publishers and other executives to review how they spend their money. Their recommendations are in: In addition to the overall cost cuts of about 25 percent, budgets for 2010 must assume that sales will be flat, said several executives, who asked not to be identified because they were not authorized to discuss the issue. The magnitude of the cuts was first reported in The New York Observer. Some magazines are subject to different rules, including The New Yorker, where the editorial side is exempt from cutbacks. It is up to the publishers and editors how to reduce their budgets. It is unlikely that prominent editors like Anna Wintour of Vogue or Graydon Carter of Vanity Fair will cancel their town-car service: their magazines sell luxury, and Ms. Wintour’s swiping her 30-day MetroCard and jostling with Times Square commuters would hardly enhance that position. Executives said there were some obvious places where they could cut, like contracts with contributors. (That is one explanation for the company’s letting details of the McKinsey process leak, one executive suggested — it allows Condé Nast to blame the consultants for budget reductions and renegotiate contracts with well-known photographers, writers and stylists without alienating them.) Other cuts executives mentioned included magazine promotional items, photo shoots that stretch for several days, the high “kill fees” paid for completed photographs that do not make it into the magazines and the near-daily lunch orders from Balthazar. Another obvious way to cut costs is through layoffs. While Condé Nast has been in a virtual hiring freeze for about a year, with most magazines declining to fill empty positions, no widespread layoffs have been announced. Some magazines are considering reducing their frequency. However, Ms. Siegel cautioned, this could have long-term effects. “There are very few advertisers that buy 12 issues of a monthly, so does it matter to me that it might be 10? Not in the short term, but it might matter if it affects the overall readership,” for instance, if readers cancel subscriptions because they receive fewer issues, or if measures of readers’ interest in the magazines decline. Condé Nast is a private company and does not publicly report financial results. Maurie Perl, a Condé Nast spokeswoman, declined to comment on the reports. But a look at some measures suggests how hard the company has been hit. For instance, while Condé Nast has been moving away from its dependence on newsstand sales, the high-price newsstand copies still bring in significant revenue. But Condé Nast’s newsstand sales brought in $2 million less in the first six months of this year than they did a year earlier, according to Audit Bureau of Circulations data. That revenue is shared with distributors, and the drop was calculated using newsstand prices for the most recent period. However, every Condé Nast magazine except Bon Appétit increased its subscriptions in the same period. Still, advertising, where Condé Nast makes most of its money, has been hammered. Condé Nast magazines have lost about 8,000 ad pages through the October issues compared with last year, according to Media Industry Newsletter. Those figures exclude the company’s bridal magazines. That is a decline of about one-third. Ms. Siegel said some cost controls were appropriate but she hoped they would not affect the quality of the magazines. “I love their magazines — I think they’re pretty, I like the way they feel, and I think the reproduction is lovely,” she said. “That’s why I would hope that one of the things their consultants will not tell them is to, in any way, diminish the quality of what they’re offering, because that is something that makes those titles valuable.” http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/28/bu...a/28conde.html Crawford Says Time Warner Will Sell Magazine Unit Time Warner Inc will eventually sell the Time Inc magazine unit and could buy holdings in its core entertainment category, Gordon Crawford, managing director of its largest shareholder, said during a presentation this week. "Time Warner just spun off their cable division, they are going to sell their print division, they are going to spin off AOL and they're just going to be Warner Brothers, HBO and the Turner Networks," said Crawford, managing director of The Capital Group. "Now, they will make acquisitions ... but they're probably going to buy just stuff in their wheel house of those businesses. They're not going to, I don't think, go very far afield from their core competency." Crawford made the comments during a September 24 discussion at University of Southern California's Annenberg School for Communication entitled "The Art of the Long View: The Media Company of 2020." Time Warner declined to comment on Saturday. Time Inc's magazines include popular titles such as People and Sports Illustrated. In the second quarter, revenue at Time Inc publishing, the largest U.S. magazine publisher, fell 22 percent to $915 million due to a 26 percent decline in advertising revenue. While Crawford did not name specific acquisition targets, he did say there would be a "winnowing process" during which weaker companies in the sector would be gobbled up. Capital Research Global Investors held 98.6 million shares of Time Warner, or 8.32 percent of the company's total shares outstanding, as of June 30. The presentation, which was available online, was discussed in a BusinessWeek blog posted on Friday. (Reporting by Jessica Wohl, Editing by Sandra Maler) http://www.reuters.com/article/newsO...58P1JK20090926 Kindles Yet to Woo University Users Hyung Lee When the University announced its Kindle e-reader pilot program last May, administrators seemed cautiously optimistic that the e-readers would both be sustainable and serve as a valuable academic tool. But less than two weeks after 50 students received the free Kindle DX e-readers, many of them said they were dissatisfied and uncomfortable with the devices. On Wednesday, the University revealed that students in three courses — WWS 325: Civil Society and Public Policy, WWS 555A: U.S. Policy and Diplomacy in the Middle East, and CLA 546: Religion and Magic in Ancient Rome — were given a new Kindle DX containing their course readings for the semester. The University had announced last May it was partnering with Amazon.com, founded by Jeff Bezos ’86, to provide students and faculty members with the e-readers as part of a sustainability initiative to conserve paper. But though they acknowledged some benefits of the new technology, many students and faculty in the three courses said they found the Kindles disappointing and difficult to use. “I hate to sound like a Luddite, but this technology is a poor excuse of an academic tool,” said Aaron Horvath ’10, a student in Civil Society and Public Policy. “It’s clunky, slow and a real pain to operate.” Horvath said that using the Kindle has required completely changing the way he completes his coursework. “Much of my learning comes from a physical interaction with the text: bookmarks, highlights, page-tearing, sticky notes and other marks representing the importance of certain passages — not to mention margin notes, where most of my paper ideas come from and interaction with the material occurs,” he explained. “All these things have been lost, and if not lost they’re too slow to keep up with my thinking, and the ‘features’ have been rendered useless.” Wilson School professor Stan Katz, who teaches Horvath’s class, said he is interested in whether he “can teach as effectively in using this as in using books and E-Reserve material and in whether students can use this effectively,” adding that “the only way to find out is to try it.” One of Katz’ main concerns is whether students can do close reading of the texts with the new device, he said. “I require a very close reading of texts. I encourage students to mark up texts, and … I expect them to underline and to highlight texts,” Katz explained. “The question is whether you can do them as effectively with a Kindle as with paper.” Katz added that had to confront the issue early when he transitioned from using familiar texts for teaching. “I have all of my books marked up,” Katz said. “Either I use my own annotations, or I take the time, an immense amount of time” to annotate with the Kindle. Katz also said he has little incentive to move his annotations to the Kindle, explaining that he heard the University won’t use the Kindle next year and adding that he finds the device “hard to use.” Katz also added that the absence of page numbers in the Kindle makes it more difficult for students to cite sources consistently. “The Kindle doesn’t give you page numbers; it gives you location numbers. They have to do that because the material is reformatted,” Katz said. He noted that while the location numbers are “convenient for reading,” they are “meaningless for anyone working from analog books.” Though using a Kindle is voluntary, no one has opted out of using a Kindle in Katz’ class, so he has permitted his students to use location numbers in their written work for the course. Should students from any of the courses choose to not take part in the pilot program — called “Toward Print-Less and Paper-Less Courses: Pilot Amazon Kindle Program” — they will be allowed to print their readings. While the Kindle may hinder the reading experience of some, others may benefit from the device’s unique electronic display. Classics professor Harriet Flower, who teaches Religion and Magic in Ancient Rome, said in an e-mail that the Kindle “is very easy on the eye,” adding that she could “read for longer without [her] eyes feeling tired.” But Rachel George ’10, a student in Katz’ class, said in an e-mail that she has found it “a little difficult to adjust to the e-reader.” “A huge benefit to the Kindle is having large quantities of reading available at your fingertips and not having to print and lug around books and articles,” she said. “Some disadvantages are the necessity to charge the Kindle and the impossibility of ‘flipping through’ a book.” George also said the annotation software was “useful but not as easy or ‘organic’ feeling as taking notes on paper.” “For some people,” she explained, “electronic reading can never replace the functionality and ‘feel’ of reading off paper.” http://www.dailyprincetonian.com/2009/09/28/23918/ Will Books Be Napsterized? Randall Stross YOU can buy “The Lost Symbol,” by Dan Brown, as an e-book for $9.99 at Amazon.com. Or you can don a pirate’s cap and snatch a free copy from another online user at RapidShare, Megaupload, Hotfile and other file-storage sites. Until now, few readers have preferred e-books to printed or audible versions, so the public availability of free-for-the-taking copies did not much matter. But e-books won’t stay on the periphery of book publishing much longer. E-book hardware is on the verge of going mainstream. More dedicated e-readers are coming, with ever larger screens. So, too, are computer tablets that can serve as giant e-readers, and hardware that will not be very hard at all: a thin display flexible enough to roll up into a tube. With the new devices in hand, will book buyers avert their eyes from the free copies only a few clicks away that have been uploaded without the copyright holder’s permission? Mindful of what happened to the music industry at a similar transitional juncture, book publishers are about to discover whether their industry is different enough to be spared a similarly dismal fate. The book industry has not received cheery news for a while. Publishers and authors alike have relied upon sales of general-interest hardcover books as the foundation of the business. The Association of American Publishers estimated that these hardcover sales in the United States declined 13 percent in 2008, versus the previous year. This year, these sales were down 15.5 percent through July, versus the same period of 2008. Total e-book sales, though up considerably this year, remained small, at $81.5 million, or 1.6 percent of total book sales through July. “We are seeing lots of online piracy activities across all kinds of books — pretty much every category is turning up,” said Ed McCoyd, an executive director at the association. “What happens when 20 to 30 percent of book readers use digital as the primary mode of reading books? Piracy’s a big concern.” Adam Rothberg, vice president for corporate communications at Simon & Schuster, said: “Everybody in the industry considers piracy a significant issue, but it’s been difficult to quantify the magnitude of the problem. We know people post things but we don’t know how many people take them.” We do know that people have been helping themselves to digital music without paying. When the music industry was “Napsterized” by free file-sharing, it suffered a blow from which it hasn’t recovered. Since music sales peaked in 1999, the value of the industry’s inflation-adjusted sales in the United States, even including sales from Apple’s highly successful iTunes Music Store, has dropped by more than half, according to the Recording Industry Association of America. A report earlier this year by the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry, based on multiple studies in 16 countries covering three years, estimated that 95 percent of music downloads “are unauthorized, with no payment to artists and producers.” Free file-sharing of e-books will most likely come to be associated with RapidShare, a file-hosting company based in Switzerland. It says its customers have uploaded onto its servers more than 10 petabytes of files — that’s more than 10 million gigabytes — and can handle up to three million users simultaneously. Anyone can upload, and anyone can download; for light users, the service is free. RapidShare does not list the files — a user must know the impossible-to-guess U.R.L. in order to download one. But anyone who wants to make a file widely available simply publishes the U.R.L. and a description somewhere online, like a blog or a discussion forum, and Google and other search engines notice. No passwords protect the files. “As far as we can tell, RapidShare is the largest host site of pirated material,” Mr. McCoyd said. “Some publishers are saying half of all infringements are linked to it.” When I asked Katharina Scheid, a spokeswoman for RapidShare, if the company had a general sense of what kinds of material were most often placed on its servers — music? videos? other kinds of content? — she said she could not say because “for us, everything is just a file, no matter what.” At my request, Attributor, a company based in Redwood City, Calif., that offers publishers antipiracy services, did a search last week to see how many e-book copies of “The Lost Symbol” were available free on the Web. After verifying that each file claiming to be the book actually was, Attributor reported that 166 copies of the e-book were available on 11 sites. RapidShare accounted for 102. Ms. Scheid said her company complied with publishers’ take-down requests. But the request must refer to a particular file and use the specific U.R.L.; it’s left to the publishers to find all instances of a given book title on RapidShare’s servers. (I can report that RapidShare acted promptly in September when my publisher, Simon & Schuster, asked it to remove an audiobook version of one of my own books and provided the U.R.L. for the one file.) According to Ms. Scheid, the company gets requests to remove about 1 to 2 percent of the files that are uploaded daily. To protect users’ privacy, however, she said RapidShare does not attempt to block the uploading of infringing material in the first place: “We don’t do content filtering; we don’t look into uploaded files.” Once a file is removed, the company tries to keep perfectly identical files from being uploaded again, but she listed various ways that determined users can alter the files just enough to effectively circumvent these measures. (My book reappeared on RapidShare a few days after it was taken down.) Hotfile and Megaupload did not respond to requests for comment. RapidShare and fellow online storage services say that their services help users share large files easily or store personal data without having to carry around a memory stick. On the F.A.Q.’s page of its Web site, Megaupload depicts its customers as the most ordinary of citizens: “Students, professional business people, moms, dads, doctors, plumbers, insurance salesmen, mortgage brokers, you name it.” Publishers and authors are about the only groups that go unmentioned. Ms. Scheid, of RapidShare, has advice for them if they are unhappy that her company’s users are distributing e-books without paying the copyright holders: Learn from the band Nine Inch Nails. It marketed itself “by giving away most of their content for free.” I will forward the suggestion along, as soon as authors can pack arenas full and pirated e-books can serve as concert fliers. http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/04/business/04digi.html Federal Judge Rules Video Games Are Protected "Expressive Works" Owen Good The news here isn't that Jim Brown, a man who certainly knows his rights, is supporting college players suing Electronic Arts over the use of their likenesses. It's how he lost his own claim against the Madden series publisher. On Wednesday, a federal district court in Los Angeles dismissed Brown's claim against Electronic Arts for the use of his image in its Madden NFL series. Judge Florence Marie-Cooper essentially found that video games are "expressive works, akin to an expressive painting that depicts celebrity athletes of past and present in a realistic sporting environment." Such works are protected by the First Amendment. This would cover the use of Jim Brown's likeness - that of a living person, remember - in a commercial work. Lawyers for Sam Keller, the NCAA footballer who sued over the use of his likeness in EA Sports' NCAA football franchise, say that this ruling has no bearing on their suit. Indeed, it's at the federal district level and may be appealed. But a judge interpreting the First Amendment to protect video games in this way is certainly noteworthy. Brown wants to file a friend-of-the-court brief in Keller's case, which is before federal court in California's Northern District, up in Oakland. Brown's attorney is also the same one who represented retired player Herb Adderley - the lead plaintiff in a successful $26 million class action lawsuit against the NFL Players Association over its licensing of retired players' likenesses to EA Sports for the Madden series. Ronald Katz, the lawyer representing Adderley and Brown, wrote in a filing Monday that allowing EA Sports to profit from the use of athletes' likenesses without their permission means "EA could use for free the identity of thousands of present and former collegiate and professional athletes, eliminating any legal reasons for EA to continue any licensing, and giving it a windfall worth hundreds of millions of dollars." A judge in California's Northern District will hear arguments on the Keller case on Nov. 17. Again, this is a district-level ruling that has not been appealed. Bigger picture, the "expressive works" finding, if upheld, could have significantly larger implications for video games, well beyond sports titles. http://kotaku.com/5369702/federal-ju...pressive-works Software Freedom Law Center Files Brief with Supreme Court Arguing Software Cannot Be Patented Today the Software Freedom Law Center (SFLC), provider of pro-bono legal services to non-profit developers and distributors of free and open source software, filed a brief with the United States Supreme Court arguing that software standing alone cannot constitutionally be patented. In this closely-watched case, the Supreme Court will decide whether the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit was correct in restricting patentable processes to those "tied to a particular machine or apparatus," or which "transform[s] a particular article into a different state or thing," a conclusion which if fully implemented could bring to an end the widespread patenting of computer programs. "Software patenting has been a scourge in the global technology industries, let loose by a misinterpretation of US patent law by lower court judges biased in favor of patentability," said Professor Eben Moglen of Columbia Law School, founding executive director of SFLC. "Over the last twenty years, everyone from Microsoft to academic computer scientists to hobbyist developers have been hassled, interfered with and forced to pay legal fees and royalties sometimes reaching into the hundreds of millions of dollars on the basis of patents that should never have been issued in the first place. This case gives the Supreme Court a chance to reaffirm what its past cases have held for more than a century: that no patent law consistent with the US Constitution can permit the monopolization of abstract ideas." SFLC's brief supports the position that software is unpatentable by showing that software is merely a set of detailed instructions in a language that humans can understand and computers can execute, no more subject to patent monopolization than a mathematical equation or the precise description of a law of physics. Mathematical expressions and facts of nature cannot be patented, as the Supreme Court has repeatedly held since the mid-nineteenth century. SFLC's brief also shows that software patents hinder innovation in software, and thus run counter to the Constitutional authorization of patents "to promote the progress of science and useful arts." "Everyone would have been better off if software had never been patented," Professor Moglen says. "Now the Court can correct the mistakes of the lower courts, talented programmers everywhere will breathe easier as they invent our future, and we will all have better technology at lower prices. That's the value of keeping ideas free, as in free speech." The full brief is available on the Web here http://www.softwarefreedom.org/news/...les-in-bilski/ 50 Years Later, Twilight Zone Bridges Time William Kates "There is a fifth dimension beyond that which is known to man. It is a dimension as vast as space and as timeless as infinity. It is the middle ground between light and shadow, between science and superstition, and it lies between the pit of man's fears and the summit of his knowledge. This is the dimension of imagination. It is an area which we call The Twilight Zone." - Rod Serling SYRACUSE, N.Y. (AP)—On a Friday night in October 1959, Americans began slipping into a dimension of imagination as vast as space and as timeless as infinity. They've really never returned. "The Twilight Zone," first submitted for the public's approval by a reluctant CBS, has resonated with viewers from generation to generation with memorable stories carrying universal messages about society's ills and the human condition. Like the time-space warps that anchored so many of the show's plots, Rod Serling's veiled commentary remains as soul-baring today as it did a half-century ago, and the show's popularity endures in multiple facets of American pop culture. "I'm interested in the escapist ideas, the psychological nature of the stories," said Lauren Chizinski of Houston, a first-year graduate student in sculpting at Syracuse University who is among two dozen students taking a class on show and its 50th anniversary. "The Twilight Zone" has been exulted in mediums such as pinball and video games and The Twilight Zone Tower of Terror ride at Disney theme parks. Advertisement The original show—which ran just five seasons, 1959-1964—led to a feature film by Steven Spielberg and John Landis in 1983, and is reportedly soon to appear again on the silver screen from Leonardo DiCaprio's production company. It's also resulted in short-lived television series in the 1980s and in 2002, and has been the subject of scores of books, Web sites, blogs, comic books and magazines and a radio series. It's even inspired music from the Grateful Dead, Rush, Golden Earring and Michael Jackson. "Even people who have never seen 'The Twilight Zone' know about it," said Doug Brode, who is teaching the Serling class at Syracuse and teamed with Serling's widow to write "Rod Serling and The Twilight Zone: The 50th Anniversary Tribute." With quality writing, acting and production, "The Twilight Zone" pioneered a genre, said Robert Thompson, director of the Center for the Study of Popular Television at Syracuse University. "The whole idea of 'The Twilight Zone' jumped off the television screen and became a catchphrase, a buzzword for something much beyond the TV show itself," Thompson added. "When you say Twilight Zone, it's its own genre. The X-Files was working in 'The Twilight Zone' genre." Its signature theme song even became part of popular language, allowing people to describe unusual or inexplicable moments with a simple "doo-doo doo-doo," Thompson said. CBS has no plans to observe the show's 50th anniversary, said spokesman Chris Ender. The show has enjoyed nearly uninterrupted popularity through television, syndication and DVD releases and is under license to air in 30 countries, he said. The Syfy Channel regularly broadcasts The Twilight Zone and plans a 15-show marathon Oct. 2. Anniversary observances are planned in Binghamton, N.Y., where Serling grew up and went to high school; at Ithaca College in New York, where Serling taught from 1967 until his death in 1975, and which keeps Serling's archives; and at Antioch College in Ohio, where Serling was a student—met his wife, Carol—and later taught. "I don't think he would have thought in a million years that Twilight Zone would be having an important 50th birthday or that it would still be on," said Carol Serling, who will attend the celebrations in Ithaca and Binghamton. "Through parable and suggestion, he could make points that he couldn't make on straight television because there were too many sacred cows and sponsors and people who said you couldn't do that," she said, referring to the networks' reluctance to deal with contemporary issues in its prime-time programming. There were 156 episodes filmed for the original series; Serling wrote 92 of them and other contributors included Richard Matheson and Ray Bradbury, two of the deans of science fiction writing. In a time on television when suburbia was idealized in popular shows such as "Ozzie and Harriet" and "Make Room for Daddy," Serling offered a mixture of fantasy, science fiction, suspense, horror—and the show's trademark macabre or unexpected twist. Serling had already earned acclaim for his television writing ("Requiem for a Heavyweight," "Patterns,") but found himself fighting CBS to get "The Twilight Zone" on the air. Serling would have repeated conflicts with network censors throughout his career. In 1958, CBS bought Serling's teleplay, "The Time Element," which he hoped would be the pilot to his weekly series. The story was about a bartender who keeps waking up in Pearl Harbor knowing the Japanese will be attacking the next day but unable to convince anyone he's telling the truth. But CBS shelved the series after buying it because the studio didn't think there was much commercial value in science fiction. Bert Granet, producer of the weekly CBS anthology series "Westinghouse Desilu Playhouse," stumbled on the script and wanted it. He bought it for $10,000. The story aired on Nov. 24, 1958, and became the Westinghouse series' biggest hit, garnering more audience reaction than any previous episodes. CBS finally decided to take a chance on Serling's series. ——— On the Web: Rod Serling Memorial Foundation: http://www.rodserling.org Doug Brode: http://www.TwilightZone50th.com Ithaca College: http://www.ithaca.edu/rhp/serling http://www.newstimes.com/national/ci_13443470 Swiss Hold Roman Polanski in Anticipation of Possible Extradition to US Over 1977 Sex Case Ernst E. Abegg Director Roman Polanski was taken into custody, Swiss police confirmed Sunday, on a 1978 U.S. arrest warrant for having sex with a 13-year-old girl. Polanski was flying in to receive an honorary award at the Zurich Film Festival when he was detained late Saturday at the airport, festival organizers said in a statement. Zurich police spokesman Stefan Oberlin confirmed Polanski's arrest, but refused to provide more details because he said it was a matter for the Swiss Justice Ministry. Ministry spokesman Guido Balmer declined to comment. Rudolf Wyss, the Justice Ministry deputy director, also declined to comment on the case. But he told The Associated Press that Switzerland and the United States have an extradition treaty dating back to the 1950s that is still in force. Polanski fled the U.S. in 1978, a year after pleading guilty to unlawful sexual intercourse with a 13-year-old girl. The 76-year-old director of such classic films as "Chinatown" and "Rosemary's Baby" has asked a U.S. appeals court in California to overturn a judges' refusal to throw out his case. He claims misconduct by the now-deceased judge who had arranged a plea bargain and then reneged on it. Polanski has lived for the past three decades in France, where his career has continued to flourish. He received a directing Oscar in absentia for the 2002 movie "The Pianist." Festival organizers said Polanski's detention had caused "shock and dismay," but that they would go ahead with Sunday's planned retrospective of the director's work. The Swiss Directors Association sharply criticized authorities for what it deemed "not only a grotesque farce of justice, but also an immense cultural scandal." A native of France who was taken to Poland by his parents, Polanski escaped Krakow's Jewish ghetto as a child and lived off the charity of strangers. His mother died at the Auschwitz Nazi death camp. He worked his way into filmmaking in Poland, gaining an Oscar nomination for best foreign-language film in 1964 for his "Knife in the Water." Offered entry to Hollywood, he directed the classic "Rosemary's Baby" in 1968. But his life was shattered again in 1969 when his wife, actress Sharon Tate, and four other people were gruesomely murdered by followers of Charles Manson. She was eight months pregnant. He went on to make another American classic, "Chinatown," released in 1974. In 1977, he was accused of raping a teenager while photographing her during a modeling session. The girl said Polanski plied her with champagne and part of a Quaalude pill at Jack Nicholson's house while the actor was away. She said that, despite her protests, he performed oral sex, intercourse and sodomy on her. Polanski was allowed to plead guilty to one of six charges, unlawful sexual intercourse, and was sent to prison for 42 days of evaluation. Lawyers agreed that would be his full sentence, but the judge tried to renege on the plea bargain. Aware the judge would sentence him to more prison time and require his voluntary deportation, Polanski fled to France. The victim, Samantha Geimer, who long ago identified herself publicly, has joined in Polanski's bid for dismissal, saying she wants the case to be over. She sued Polanski and reached an undisclosed settlement. http://www.courant.com/news/nationwo...,1430898.story Woody Allen Interview Downbeat, self-effacing and desperate for rain, Woody Allen is making his fourth film in London. He talks about his doomed search for perfection . John Hiscock Woody Allen squints into the bright sun that is bathing London’s Notting Hill in a rare, warm glow and shakes his head in irritation. “I hate sunshine,” he mutters. “It should be raining.” Then he shrugs philosophically. “But those are the breaks. We’ll have to shoot it differently or maybe use a garden hose on the windows.” The 73-year-old New Yorker is currently making his fourth film in London and instead of the grey skies and rain he loves, he has endured days of sunshine and blue skies. “The sun is a very, very big problem,” he says gloomily. He is talking during a brief break from filming a scene for his as-yet-untitled comedy-romance which stars Josh Brolin, Antonio Banderas, Anthony Hopkins, Naomi Watts and Freida Pinto, the Indian beauty from Slumdog Millionaire. The scene calls for Brolin and Pinto to be talking in a restaurant while sheltering from the rain. The rain is an important part of the story because, Allen explains with a straight face: “If you go back through my films you find that it’s a tip-off that whenever the boy meets the girl and it’s a rain scene they always mean business. I’m a big rain fan. I think it’s beautiful in life and on the screen, so when Josh invites Freida to lunch and she says that it’s pouring with rain and he brings an umbrella, you know right away something serious is going to happen. If they had met on a sunny day, it could just be platonic.” As always he is keeping the plot and title to himself until the movie is finished, although he allows: “Josh is playing a very frustrated writer who’s having problems with his family and gets into an extramarital relationship and hopefully it’s interesting to people as well as being amusing and also serious. It’s a delicate line that I try and hit and sometimes I can do it and sometimes I can’t.” Occasionally he thinks of a title while he is still filming but, he says: “I never title a movie until it’s finished because if I look at the film and it’s no good I don’t like to give it an aggressive title. I give it what I call one of my hiding titles – the kind of title that is low-key and promises nothing, so people are less disappointed by it. But if I feel the film is good, I give it an aggressive, confident title and then hope for the best.” Allen speaks with a deadpan delivery which makes it difficult to know when he is joking. Listening to him talk in a guilelessly downbeat manner about his lack of hope for the future, his low expectations for his movies and his fear of swine flu is one of the better entertainments available in London at the moment. He did not want to shake my hand although, he insisted: “I’m not one of those crazy people who wash constantly and put little white gloves on before I touch a doorknob or something. I’m not that crazy, but I do wash my hands for what I know to be a sufficient amount of time.” That time, he says, is as long as it takes to sing the lyrics to Happy Birthday twice. One would think that after 50 films, 14 Oscar nominations and two wins, Woody Allen would know exactly what he was doing when it comes to moviemaking. “It doesn’t work that way,” he says. “It’s a new thing each time so you never learn anything. When I’m making a film I never learn anything that will help me on the next one. “There’s not much pleasure in directing. I get up very early and come to the set and stand around all day while the cinematographer spends three hours lighting the set, then I get 30 seconds to do the scene and then we move on and he lights for another three hours and I get another 30 seconds. It’s tedious. I don’t do it in order; just a piece here and a piece there .The pleasure is when I get home and look at all the footage and sit down and put it together and put in the music and make it look like something.” Soon-Yi, his wife of 12 years who is 35 years his junior and the Korean-born adopted daughter of his former lover Mia Farrow, is with him in London. So, too, are their adopted daughters, Bechet, nine and Manzie, eight. Before shooting began they all spent several days watching the tennis at Wimbledon. The scandal that erupted in 1992 when Farrow discovered nude photographs Allen had taken of Soon-Yi and subsequently accused him of sexually abusing their adopted daughter Dylan, then aged seven, leading to a long and public legal battle for custody, has faded into the past –he was later cleared of abuse – although he and Farrow still do not talk and he has no contact with their three children. Allen today is fit, alert and funny although he is somewhat hard of hearing and leans forward, sometimes cupping his hand against his ear, to hear what is said. For someone who has achieved such iconic status he seems refreshingly free of ego. He says he does not have high expectations for the films he makes nowadays. “When you first start out you’re always striving for greatness and perfection and then after some years reality sets in and you realise that you’re not going to get it,” he says. “One of the things that’s so fascinating about an art form is that it may be good, mediocre or terrible but it’s not perfect, so when it’s over you’re constantly impelled to try another one because you suffer from the delusion that you can get perfection. Intellectually, I’ve given up and I’m happy that the picture is not an embarrassment. I start out thinking it’s going to be the greatest thing ever made and when I see what I’ve done I’m always saying, 'I’ll do anything to save this from being an embarrassment.’” He stands up. “I’ve got to go back and be bullied by the actors,” he says. Around the corner outside the restaurant his crew has rigged up a rain machine and water is beating against the windows and onto the pavements, drenching surprised passers-by as well as extras with umbrellas. “Ah, that’s better,” says Allen with a rare smile. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/f...interview.html Romans Rally Against Berlusconi Demonstrators have protested in Rome against Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi's influence over the media. Organisers claim 300,000 people took part in the rally in the city's central Piazza del Popolo. City officials say 60,000 people were at the protest, while agency journalists put the figure at more than 100,000. Some protesters wore t-shirts with the writing "now you can sue me too", and a group of musicians played with gags over their mouths. They were references to Mr Berlusconi issuing writs against two left-leaning newspapers for their coverage of a sex scandal that has engulfed him since May. The scandal involves prostitutes who were allegedly invited to his residence in Rome. Mr Berlusconi dismisses the allegation as gossip, and says he is the victim of a smear campaign. http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2...04/2704195.htm Jack Thompson Sues Facebook for $40M The lawsuit was filed Tuesday in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida by Jack Thompson Robert McMillan A long-time critic of the video game industry has sued Facebook for US$40 million, saying that the social networking site harmed him by not removing angry postings made by Facebook gamers. The lawsuit was filed Tuesday in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida by Jack Thompson. Thompson is best know for bringing suit against Grand Theft Auto's Take Two Interactive, Sony Computer Entertainment America, and Wal-Mart, arguing that the game caused violent behavior. In 2005 episode of CBS's 60 Minutes, Thompson likened the popular video game to a "murder simulator" and blamed it for the 2003 shooting deaths of two police officers and a 911 dispatcher in Fayette, Alabama. That suit was eventually dismissed, and Thompson's critics accuse him of being a frivolous litigator. Last year he was ordered permanently disbarred by the Florida Supreme Court, which said he had made "abusive and frivolous filings." None of these activities has made him many friends on Facebook, where there are literally hundreds of groups -- most with just a handful of members -- dedicated to him. The less-offensive sounding ones have names such as I Hate Jack Thompson, Stop Jack Thompson, and Disbar Jack Thompson. But Thompson says that some of the posts are dangerous and have caused him "great harm and distress." For example, he cites the group Jack Thompson should be smacked across the face with an Atari 2600 in his lawsuit. Another link -- now apparently removed from Facebook -- reads: "I will pay $50 to anyone who punches Jack Thompson in the face. If someone can get a video clip of themselves punching Jack Thompson in the face I'll PayPal them $50." In his court filing, Thompson says he's been harassed ever since the 60 Minutes episode. His house has been shot at, his car vandalized, and he's had "sex aid devices sent to his home." At night, he has to take his phone off the hook to keep from being awakened by angry callers. Citing Facebook's recent decision to remove a poll asking if U.S. President Barack Obama should be shot, Thompson demands the same treatment for his detractors in the lawsuit. "Unlike our President, Thompson does not have the Secret Service to protect him," he writes. Thompson's suit has little chance of success, according to Parry Aftab, a cyber-law attorney who is Executive director of Wiredsafety.org, a cyber safety and help group.That's because the U.S. Communications Decency Act makes it clear that companies like Facebook have no liability for what people do with their services. "They are no more liable than the phone company would be for anyone who is calling in a ransom demand," she said. http://www.goodgearguide.com.au/article/320607 Court Order Served Over Twitter BBC The High Court has given permission for an injunction to be served via social-networking site Twitter. The order is to be served against an unknown Twitter user who anonymously posts to the site using the same name as a right-wing political blogger. The order demands the anonymous Twitter user reveal their identity and stop posing as Donal Blaney, who blogs at a site called Blaney's Blarney. The order says the Twitter user is breaching the copyright of Mr Blaney. He told BBC News that the content being posted to Twitter in his name was "mildly objectionable". Mr Blaney turned to Twitter to serve the injunction rather than go through the potentially lengthy process of contacting Twitter headquarters in California and asking it to deal with the matter. UK law states that an injunction does not have to be served in person and can be delivered by several different means including fax or e-mail. Danvers Baillieu, a solicitor specialising in technology, said it was possible for anyone to approach the court about any method of serving an injunction if the traditional methods are unavailable. "The rules already allow for electronic service of some documents, so that they can be sent by e-mail, and it should also be possible to use social networks," he said. Mr Blaney decided to use Twitter after a recent case in Australia where Facebook was used to serve a court order. The blogger, who is also a lawyer and owns the firm serving the order, said that he thought that it was the first time Twitter had been used to deliver a court order. The injunction - known as the Blaney's Blarney Order - is due to be served at 1930 BST and will include a link to the text of the full court order. http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/h...gy/8285954.stm Professor Wins Fees from Joyce Estate Bob Egelko A Stanford professor who battled James Joyce's estate for the right to quote family documents in research on one of the author's most celebrated works will get $240,000 from the estate for her legal fees, the university said Monday. Carol Shloss' settlement with Joyce's heirs ends a court case in which the estate, fiercely protective of its rights to his works, refused to let Shloss use excerpts from his papers or his daughter's medical records in her 2003 book, "Lucia Joyce: To Dance in the Wake." The book's thesis was that Joyce's daughter Lucia, who spent most of her adult life in mental institutions, had been a gifted young woman and the inspiration for the main female character in "Finnegans Wake," Joyce's last novel, published two years before his death in 1941. Threatened with a lawsuit, Shloss deleted material from the book, leading some critics to write that she had failed to back up her assertions. She then sued the estate and reached a settlement in 2007 that allowed her to restore the material in the United States and on the Internet. That settlement was a compromise that did not resolve the extent of a researcher's right to quote excerpts of copyrighted works. But a federal judge in San Jose ruled in May that Shloss was the prevailing party and awarded her $329,000 in legal fees and costs. The estate dropped its appeal last week and agreed to a $240,000 settlement. The fee agreement sets no legal precedent, but "there's a kind of warning," Shloss said Monday. "We've established that if you don't pay attention to the rights of scholars, authors and researchers the copyright laws protect, you might have to pay something." A lawyer for the estate was unavailable for comment. Stephen Joyce, the author's grandson and co-trustee of his estate, has been assertive in protecting the estate's publication rights. A 2006 New Yorker article said he once told a British performer, inaccurately, that he had probably violated the copyright law by memorizing part of "Finnegans Wake" to recite it on stage. Shloss said she had once attended a conference where another scholar feared reciting Joyce's words aloud and instead projected them on a screen. Shloss' difficulties in publicly documenting her research also reflect the strictness of U.S. copyright law, which allows a writer's descendants to control unpublished works for decades. The original U.S. copyright on Joyce's writings expired in 1991, 50 years after his death. But a law signed by President Bill Clinton in 1998 added 20 years to all such lapsed terms, restoring the Joyce estate's control through 2011. "We thought we could quote from writers we were writing about, and then we couldn't," Shloss said. "The consequence was that people like myself, writing about (Sigmund) Freud or (Virginia) Woolf or (Ezra) Pound, truly had their work set back." http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/articl...BALS19U1RQ.DTL JK Rowling Denied Medal by Bush Because Harry Potter 'Encouraged Witchcraft' JK Rowling was denied the US's highest civilian honour because members of the Bush administration believed Harry Potter "encouraged witchcraft", a new book claims. Matt Latimer, a former speech writer for George W Bush, states in 'Speechless: Tales of a White House Survivor' that White House officials objected to the author's perceived promotion of sorcery in the series. As a result her name was not included amongst those receiving the Presidential Medal of Freedom, it is alleged. The award acknowledges contributions to US national interest, world peace or cultural endeavours. In one of his last acts as head of state, Mr Bush gave the medal to former British prime minister Tony Blair. President Barack Obama recently bestowed the honour on physicist Stephen Hawking, amongst others. But according to Mr Latimer's new book, plans for Ms Rowling to receive the Medal of Freedom were nipped in the bud by officials in the previous administration. He claims that the White House politicised the honour under the Bush regime. In Speechless, Latimer writes that "narrow thinking" led "people in the White House to actually object to giving the author J K Rowling a presidential medal because the Harry Potter books encourage witchcraft". Others denied the privilege under the Bush administration included Senator Edward Kennedy. The veteran politician and health care activist was excluded because he was deemed to be too liberal, it is alleged in Speechless. In August, Mr Obama awarded the medal to Mr Kennedy just days before he died on cancer aged 77. J K Rowling's alleged exclusion is not the first example of her writing coming into conflict with the American right. In 2007, Fox News commentator Bill O'Reilly hit out at the author for announcing that Harry Potter character Dumbledore was gay. He called her a "provocateur" adding that the outing of Dumbledore was part of a liberal "indoctrination" of children. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/h...itchcraft.html Pirate Party to Contest Next Federal Election Calls for office bearers and supporters. Ben Grubb The political party that sent European copyright holders into a spin has opened a branch office in Australia and is recruiting office bearers and supporters. The Pirate Party, which evolved from cultural and legal skirmishes with authorities in Sweden and Germany, last week updated the Australian website it registered last year and advertised for a president, treasurer, secretary and supporting positions. A party spokesman, Rodney Serkowski, said the group was close to establishing a beachhead in Australia. He said that with 300 supporters it was on its way to signing the 500 it needed to become an official Australian political party. "We are currently an online community, working together with the intention of becoming a registered party, and we're coming closer to reaching that goal," Serkowski said. "If we can get the required 500 members, and be registered by years end, I think it is highly probable that we will contest the next Federal election in Australia." At the weekend about two percent of Germans voted for the Pirate Party although it needed at least five percent to gain a seat in the German parliament, the Bundestag. Serkowski said that one of the parties' aims was to counter the online censorship scheme proposed by Communications Minister Senator Stephen Conroy. "We hope that their [the German Pirate Party's] success will help us in our push for registration, so that we can actively change the landscape of Australian politics by advocating fairer copyright, freer culture and ensuring the protection of civil liberties, sending a strong message to Mr Conroy that his censorship scheme is not welcome in Australia," Serkowski said. Serkowski said the party's Australian policies would reflect those positions taken by its affiliates in Sweden and Germany. He also said that illicit copying and sharing of content on online networks didn't equate to lost income for producers of such works. "It is not the party's understanding that file sharing affects the artist detrimentally," Serkowski said. "We believe that file sharing, even though it may be represented as a lost sale - that tired old drum the [music] industry beats, despite a 28 percent leap in profits for digital music last year recorded by the IFPI - it is in fact one of the best means of advertising for artists. "It is only a matter of time before artists that haven't already made this realisation, do," Serkowski said. "It allows for entire niche genres and unknown artists to propagate their creative works to fans, without the controls imposed by industry, allowing more vibrant cultural and economic outcomes for artists." Serkowski also said the Pirate Party supported the legislation of non-commercial file sharing. He also voiced concerns about Senator Conroy vowing to tackle illegal file-sharing by looking at initiatives such as a 'three strikes' law which could see internet users disconected after infringing copyright three times in a row. "We don't want a three strikes situation to happen in Australia, as is being proposed in the UK, and has been suggested by Senator Conroy and ARIA," he said. "[It] threatens freedom of expression and due process - especially when socially, culturally and economically we have become dependent on the internet, "Any attempt to disconnect a citizen and seperate them from these fundamental rights for the purposes of protecting a monopoly is offensive." Elections will be held online at 8pm on October 7 for the National Council of the Pirate Party of Australia. http://www.itnews.com.au/News/156960...-election.aspx Until next week, - js. Current Week In Review  Recent WiRs - September 26th, September 19th, September 12th, September 5th Jack Spratts' Week In Review is published every Friday. Submit letters, articles, press releases, comments, questions etc. in plain text English to jackspratts (at) lycos (dot) com. Submission deadlines are Thursdays @ 1400 UTC. Please include contact info. The right to publish all remarks is reserved. "The First Amendment rests on the assumption that the widest possible dissemination of information from diverse and antagonistic sources is essential to the welfare of the public." - Hugo Black |
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