Peer-To-Peer News - The Week In Review - August 6th, ’05

[JackSpratts]

"We see this as a blow for freedom of press and the presentation of news in Russia. It is a warning to other foreign news organizations. It's like telling them, 'If you don't cover the Chechen conflict the way they want, you won't be able to work in Russia.' " – Lucie Morillon


"In six years the power structures could not catch terrorist No. 1 in Russia. Now they put all the blame on journalists." – Andrei Babitsky


"You can't use the taxation power as a weapon of censorship." – Jerome Barron


"If you are selling water in the desert and one day it starts to rain, what do you do? Go to the government and get them to ban rain, or do you sell something else?" – Ian Clarke


"After all, I'm not sitting in an office telling someone that their insurance policy doesn't cover their chemotherapy. Theoretically, I am trying to make a piece of music come to life, to try and bring joy and meaning to people's lives. That's a pretty good deal." – Liz Phair




























August 6th, 2005




New File-Sharing Techniques Are Likely to Test Court Decision
John Markoff

Briefly buoyed by their Supreme Court victory on file sharing, Hollywood and the recording industry are on the verge of confronting more technically sophisticated opponents.

At a computer security conference in Las Vegas on Thursday, an Irish software designer described a new version of a peer-to-peer file-sharing system that he says will make it easier to share digital information anonymously and make detection by corporations and governments far more difficult.

Others have described similar efforts to build a so-called darknet that aims to shield the identities of those sharing information. The issue is complicated by the fact that the small group of technologists designing the new systems say their goal is to create tools to circumvent censorship and political repression - not to abet copyright violation.

Such a stand is certain to test the impact of the Supreme Court ruling in June against Grokster and StreamCast Networks, publishers of peer-to-peer file-sharing software, a number of legal specialists and industry executives said. The court ruled unanimously that the publishers could be held liable for the copyright infringement that their software enabled in the sharing of pirated movies and music.

The Irish programmer, Ian Clarke, is a 28-year-old free-speech advocate who five years ago introduced a software system called Freenet that was intended to make it impossible for governments and corporations to restrict the flow of any kind of digital information. The system initially used a secure approach to routing between users and employed encryption to protect the information from eavesdroppers who were not part of the network.

Unlike today's open peer-to-peer networks, the new systems like Mr. Clarke's use software code to connect individuals who trust one another. He said he would begin distributing the new version of his program within a few months, making it possible for groups of users to establish secured networks - available only to them and those they choose to include - through which any kind of digital information can be exchanged.

Though he says his aim is political - helping dissidents in countries where computer traffic is monitored by the government, for example - Mr. Clarke is open about his disdain for copyright laws, asserting that his technology would produce a world in which all information is freely shared.

Mr. Clarke lives in Edinburgh and is employed by a music recommendation site, www.indy.tv. While Freenet attracted wide attention as a potentially disruptive force when he introduced it in 2000, it proved more difficult to use than file-sharing programs like Grokster and Napster, and did not achieve the impact that he envisioned.

Now, however, Mr. Clarke is taking a fresh approach, stating that his goal is to protect political opponents of repressive regimes.

"The classic use for Freenet would be for a group of political dissidents in China, or even in the United States," he said in a telephone interview on Thursday. But he acknowledged that the software would also surely be used to circumvent copyright restrictions, adding, "It's an inevitable consequence of our design."

Industry executives acknowledge that even with their Supreme Court victory, peer-to-peer technology will continue to be a factor in illicit online trading.

"Everyone understands that P-to-P technology is, and will remain, an important part of the online landscape," said Jonathan Lamy, a spokesman for the Recording Industry Association of America. "But the Supreme Court's unanimous decision in the Grokster case will help ensure that business models won't be based on the active encouragement of infringement on P-to-P or other networks."

Initiatives like Freenet are certain to complicate industry and government efforts to restrict the digital sharing of proprietary data.

To join a darknet, a potential user must be trusted by one of the existing members. Thus such networks grow as part of a "web of trust," and are far more restricted than open systems.

In June, Ross Anderson, a prominent computer-security researcher who was a pioneer in developing early peer-to-peer networks, published a technical paper detailing how it was possible to resist industry attempts to disable such networks.

He also published a second paper trying to anticipate the market reaction to curbs on file sharing like the Grokster ruling. The paper, "The Economics of Censorship Resistance," predicts the emergence of closed networks like the new Freenet, as well as "fan clubs" focused on specific digital content, which would be more difficult for the industry to combat.

Mr. Anderson, who traces peer-to-peer networks back to an ad hoc networking system called Usenet pioneered over telephone lines in 1979, said his research group was collaborating with computer scientists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology on a next-generation peer-to-peer network, to be unveiled in a few months. Like Freenet, it is designed to be impervious to censorship and to permit secure communications in potentially hostile environments.

He said that his own early development work in peer-to-peer networks, known as the Eternity Service, had been inspired by a legal battle between the Church of Scientology and Penet, an Internet operation based in Finland that was known as an anonymous remailer.

In that case, an Internet user was using the remailer to post church documents anonymously on online bulletin boards.

"I had not the slightest idea back in 1996 that music would be an application," he said. "I was motivated by the Penet case and by the fear that some of the freedom we'd got from Gutenberg's invention of cheap printing might be lost."

Legal skirmishes over anonymous peer-to-peer networks have already taken place in both Europe and Asia.

In Japan last year, Isamu Kaneko, the developer of a file-sharing program called WinNY, was arrested after two users of the program were charged with sharing copyrighted material through the system. The Kaneko case is pending.

After Mr. Kaneko's arrest, development of the system was continued under the name Share by an anonymous programmer, according to information posted on the Web.

Share uses encryption to hide the identities of users and the material that is being exchanged, in the manner of the new Freenet that Mr. Clarke described.

On a separate front, the recording industry has sued users of Blubster, a peer-to-peer network designed by Pablo Soto, a Spanish programmer, who built privacy features into his system.

Currently Freenet is being developed by a group of five or six volunteer programmers and a single full-time employee who is paid by donations that Mr. Clarke has obtained.

He said that despite concerns that tools such as Freenet might be used by clandestine organizations intent on political violence, Mr. Clarke said he believed that the benefits of such anonymous means of communications outweighed potential harm.

"I think things like terrorism are the result of the absence of communication," he said.

He acknowledged that his system would not be infallible, but neither would it be as transparent as popular peer-to-peer systems like Grokster and Gnutella.

Open file-sharing networks like Gnutella can be joined simply by obtaining a software program. The program connects a user to the file-sharing network and allows the user to publish content.

Computer researchers say that the term "anonymous peer-to-peer," when applied to darknets, is actually a misnomer, because the networks must exist in the open Internet and thus must have identifiable addresses where they can be contacted by other nodes of the network.

As the legal consequences for file sharing become clearer, there will be a proliferation of systems with features similar to Freenet, according to a range of industry specialists. In Silicon Valley, start-up companies like Imeem and Grouper are already making it possible to create groups to share digital information.

"Darknets are going to be with us," said J. D. Lasica, author of "Darknet: Hollywood's War Against the Digital Generation" (John Wiley & Sons, 2005). "Serious file traders have been gravitating toward them. There is just this culture of freedom that people feel they're entitled to, and they don't want anyone looking over their shoulders."
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/08/01/te...gy/01file.html





Army Punishes Soldier For Blog Posts
Anne Broache

The U.S. military has demoted and fined a soldier for publishing "classified" information on his personal blog, an Army spokesperson confirmed Tuesday.

Leonard Clark, a 40-year-old Arizona National Guardsman who is currently on active duty in Baghdad, dropped from the rank of specialist to private first class on July 19 and must pay the Army a fine of $820 per month for two months, according to a statement from U.S. Central Command.

Flora Lee, a spokesperson at the military's Combined Press Information Center in Iraq, confirmed that an investigation is under way but declined to provide further details on the case.

Clark was charged with violating two articles of the Uniform Code of Military Justice, which prohibit soldiers from releasing or "encouraging widespread publication" of classified or specific information about troop movement and location, soldiers who have been attacked or hit, and military strategy, the statement said.

The military has not specified which portions of Clark's blog broke the rules and did not respond to requests for clarification Tuesday about its policy on blogs maintained by personnel.

Word of the soldier's situation has been traversing the blogosphere for weeks. One post at the liberal blog DailyKos lamented Clark's situation and compared selected quotes from Clark's old e-mails about the war in Baghdad with accounts in the mainstream media.

Clark's own site, which describes him as a kindergarten teacher and former Democratic candidate for Arizona governor, is now devoid of content, save for a couple of links to recent media coverage about his plight and a message posted Tuesday by someone identified as a "site admin," which attributes the blogger's recent silence to a gag order.

"He has been asked not to comment, and is doing so," the post said. "Please understand that he is worried about folks back at home smearing his name. When he is done with active duty, the story (from his side) will come out."
http://news.com.com/Army+punishes+so...3-5815812.html





Senators Seek Web Porn Tax
Declan McCullagh

A new federal proposal that would levy stiff taxes on Internet pornographers violates constitutional guarantees of freedom of expression, legal scholars say.

Sen. Blanche Lincoln, an Arkansas Democrat, characterized her bill introduced last week as a way to make the Internet a "safer place" for children. The bill would impose a 25 percent tax on the revenue of most adult-themed Web sites.

"Many adult-oriented Web sites in today's online world are not only failing to keep products unsuitable for children from view, but are also pushing those products in children's faces," Lincoln said. "And it's time that we stand up and say, 'enough is enough.'"

But legal scholars who specialize in the First Amendment say courts have rejected similar taxes in the past--and are likely to do so again, if Lincoln's proposal becomes law.

"The general principle is that if you can't ban a certain category of expression, then you cannot selectively impose a tax on it," said Jamin Raskin, a professor of constitutional law at American University. "So if the speech that the senator is targeting is protected by the First Amendment, it may not be selectively taxed."

"The bottom line is, if it were constitutional to tax a disfavored category of speaker, then there would be 99 percent taxes on pornography and hate speakers and Howard Stern and so on," Raskin said. "But the courts understand that the power to tax ultimately is the power to destroy."

Jerome Barron, a former dean of George Washington University Law School who teaches First Amendment law, noted that the Supreme Court in 1936 rejected a 2 percent tax on newspapers with circulations of more than 20,000 copies a week.

"You can't use the taxation power as a weapon of censorship," Barron said.

A more recent Supreme Court case, Minneapolis Star v. Minnesota Commissioner of Revenue, tossed out a Minnesota law taxing paper and ink products used by newspapers.

Lincoln's bill, called the Internet Safety and Child Protection Act of 2005, would apply only to adult sites subject to controversial record-keeping requirements regarding the identities of people participating in sex acts displayed on Web sites. Those sites must cough up the taxes and use age verification techniques "prior to the display of any pornographic material, including free content."

The Supreme Court has largely rebuffed Congress' previous attempts at Internet censorship. It rejected the Communications Decency Act's prohibition on "indecent" material, and upheld an injunction against the Child Online Protection Act, which targeted "harmful to minors" material online.

Other Senate sponsors of the legislation--all Democrats--include Thomas Carper of Delaware, Mark Pryor of Arkansas, Mary Landrieu of Louisiana, Joseph Lieberman of Connecticut, Ken Salazar of Colorado, Debbie Stabenow of Michigan, Evan Bayh of Indiana and Kent Conrad of North Dakota.
http://news.com.com/Senators+seek+We...3-5814309.html





EU Plan Could Put Open Sourcers In Court
Ingrid Marson

The European Commission has proposed a law that could allow criminal charges to be pressed against a business using software believed to infringe upon another company's intellectual property.

The proposed directive, which was adopted by the European Commission last month, would allow criminal sanctions against "all intentional infringements of an IP right on a commercial scale."

Richard Penfold, a partner at law firm DLA Piper Rudnick Gray Cary, said last week that the proposed directive could "quite possibly" allow the imprisonment of the boss of a company that is using infringing software, although it would depend on whether the defendant can argue that the infringement was unintentional.

It is unusual for companies to target the users of software, rather than its manufacturers, but there is one well-known example--the cases brought by the SCO Group against car maker DaimlerChrysler and auto-parts retailer AutoZone over their use of Linux. SCO claimed that AutoZone infringed on SCO's Unix copyrights through its use of Linux and that DaimlerChrysler had breached its contract with SCO.

Ross Anderson, the chair of the Foundation for Information Policy Research, said the proposed directive could help SCO or other companies in future intellectual property infringement cases against open-source software.

"In future somebody like SCO will have another course of action open to them--the threat of criminal charges. This threat would enable SCO to cast a larger legal cloud," said Anderson.

The European branch of the Free Software Foundation was also worried that SCO could use the directive to its advantage. Joachim Jakobs from FSF Europe said that not only could company managers face being tried in a criminal court, but SCO could also be allowed to join the criminal investigation. That's because the directive calls for "joint investigation teams," where the holder of the intellectual property rights in question can assist the criminal investigation.

But Paul Stevens, a partner at U.K. law firm Olswang, said it was unlikely that software users would be affected by the directive, as any company that pursues criminal cases against users is likely to suffer from the bad publicity.

"It's not that often that companies who have IP rights pursue cases against users," he said. "Most IP owners want you to continue buying their product and to continue dealing with them. If they started threatening someone with prison or a criminal record, how do you think their customers will feel?"

The proposed directive, which has not yet been approved by the European Parliament, includes various penalties for those caught infringing intellectual property rights. They include four years' imprisonment; fines; seizure and destruction of the offending goods; closure of the establishment used to commit the offence; a ban on engaging in commercial activities; and denial of access to legal aid.

The proposal is described as a "European Parliament and Council directive on criminal measures aimed at ensuring the enforcement of IP rights." For more information on this law, click here for the PDF.
http://news.com.com/EU+plan+could+pu...3-5815584.html





Study: Ring Tones Heavily Shoplifted
Ben Charny

Online sound snippets intended to help market ring tones sold by phone operators and other distributors often are illegally downloaded and used free of charge, a new study found.

Cell phone operators and ring tone sellers typically make available on their Web sites ring tone previews of 15 to 30 seconds. But almost 40 percent of cell phone operators and nearly a third of independent ring tone sellers don't secure the previews, which can be downloaded onto a personal computer, then changed into a usable ring tone, according to the study.

Almost two-thirds of the 100 Web sites checked offered previews that were suitably long to make a ring tone, according to research by Qpass, a digital-content distributor based in Seattle.

Ring tones, recorded sound segments that replace a cell phone's prepackaged ringer, are typically priced at $1 each. Shoplifted ring tones have so far cost cell phone operators and other ring tone sellers about $40 million in lost revenue, while lost revenue from ring tone shoplifting will total $123 million by 2007, the study predicted.

"This is the mobile and cyber equivalent of test-driving a car and then not having to give it back," Qpass senior vice president Steve Shivers said. "The amount of revenue loss to both the mobile and music industries is a concern."

Representatives of the cellular trade organization Cellular Telecommunications and Internet Association did not return calls Wednesday seeking comment on the study. The Recording Industry Association of America, which represents major recording interests, declined to comment.
http://news.com.com/Study+Ring+tones...3-5817528.html





Downloading Music Affects Children's Morality, Senators Say

Senators scolded peer-to-peer file-sharing companies, saying they are corrupting America's children, at a committee hearing Thursday.
Kristen Green

Peer-to-peer file sharing is affecting children's morality and well-being by giving them access to pornography and encouraging the everyday theft of music, Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., said.

In a rare bipartisan moment, Sen. Ted Stevens, R- Alaska, the committee chairman, agreed with Boxer.

The Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee hearing addressed issues remaining from the Supreme Court's June 22 decision in Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios Inc. et al v. Grokster Inc. et al.

The court said that Grokster and StreamCast, two peer-to-peer file-sharing companies, violated copyright laws by promoting themselves as alternatives to the sharing service Napster. Formerly free, Napster reinvented itself as a paid service, after being found in violation of copyright laws.

Unlike Napster, which stored music and other materials on a central computer for individuals to download, Grokster and newer P2P companies allow users to share material from their own computers without ever storing it in a central location.

The Court said manufacturing a device that could be used to violate copyrights is not illegal, but there is liability if a company purposefully promotes infringement.

The Senate hearing discussed finding a balance between copyright protection and communications technology innovation.

Dave Baker, vice president of law and public policy for Earthlink, said Internet service providers are not responsible for what travels over their networks, but they do block Web sites that are reported for violating copyrights.

Peer-to-peer file sharing can't be controlled because it belongs to an individual user, not the ISP, Baker said.

Adam Eisgrau, executive director of P2P United, which fights for the future of peer-to-peer file sharing, said televisions, telephones and computers are independent media that allow people to use them however they wish.

P2P United is working with law enforcement officials to end pornography distribution, he said, but it is not feasible to create a system to review Internet content.

"It's an Internet problem, not just a peer-to-peer problem," he said.

Boxer said she and several others wrote bipartisan letters to the chief executive officers of several peer-to-peer file-sharing organizations such as BearShare and LimeWire asking them to end pornography distribution, but had not yet received a response.

Boxer said that if other companies can promise filters on their materials, there's no reason P2P United can't do the same.

Fritz Attaway, executive vice president of the Motion Picture Association of America, said Congress does not need to get more involved until courts begin to make rulings in light of the Grokster decision.

A hearing this fall will let senators discuss the pornography angle of file-sharing distribution.

"We can hardly accuse those of stealing our intellectual property when we can't protect it at all," Stevens said.
http://www.infozine.com/news/stories...View/sid/9389/





No iPod Tax For Canada
John Borland

The Canadian Supreme Court won't hear a case involving extra fees for iPods and other MP3 players in that country, ending a dispute over a so-called iPod tax, but rekindling debate over the legality of file swapping.

At issue was a long-standing law that allows a regulatory agency to collect a small extra fee on blank media such as CDs and tapes, with the revenues going to artists and record labels to recompense them for the private copies being made of their work.

That agency, the Copyright Board of Canada, said in late 2003 that iPods and other hard-drive players were being used to copy music as well, and imposed a fee of up to $25 on the devices. An Appeals Court set aside that decision last year, and Thursday's Supreme Court action will leave iPods untaxed.

The decision may have broader implications for Canadian computer users, however.

The country's trade association for record labels quickly welcomed the Supreme Court's action as a sign that unauthorized file swapping was once again viewed as unambiguously illegal.

That connection stems from another court ruling, in which a judge said that trading files though a file swapping network appeared to be legal, citing the Copyright Board's fee regime.

But if copying files to hard drives--whether on an iPod or a computer--is not included in the private copying fees, then file swapping is no longer protected, executives at the Canadian Recording Industry Association said.

"For years, those supporting unauthorized file sharing have misleadingly used the existence of the Private Copying Levy to justify illegitimate file sharing," CRIA President Graham Henderson said in a statement. "Today, the Supreme Court says 'no such luck.'"

Copyright regulators said the Supreme Court's action was regrettable, and might even make most common uses of the iPod illegal.

"The clear result of this decision is that copying recorded music onto an iPod is illegal, unless the copying has been authorized by rights holders," said David Basskin, a director of the Canadian Private Copying Collective, which collects and distributes the fees on blank media, in a statement.

The CPPC would return the fees that had been collected from iPod and other digital audio device sales between December 2003 and December 2004, the group said.

The ambiguity in Canadian law may be resolved before the courts have much time to address file-swapping issues again, however. The Canadian government has introduced a wide-ranging new copyright law that is expected to definitively make trading copyright files online without permission illegal.
http://news.com.com/No+iPod+tax+for+...3-5809117.html





Internet File Sharing Leads To 5 Being Charged In The UK
Submitted by Anonymous

UK record companies' trade association the BPI is intensifying its campaign against large scale illegal distributors of music on the internet by lodging formal court proceedings for the first time against five uploaders in the UK.

Civil proceedings are being issued today against five individuals who between them made 8,906 songs available for millions of people around the world to download without permission.

The three men and two women live in King’s Lynn, Crawley, Port Talbot, Brighton and South Glamorgan.

BPI General Counsel Geoff Taylor said, “So far 60 UK internet users have settled legal claims against them for illegal filesharing, paying up to £6,500 in compensation. We have tried to agree fair settlements, but if people refuse to deal with the evidence against them, then the law must take its course. That's why we have had no choice but to take these five individuals to the High Court. We will be seeking an injunction and full damages for the losses they have caused, in addition to the considerable legal costs we are incurring as a result of their illegal activity."

All five cases were the subject of a court order on March 11, requiring internet service providers to name the holders of accounts which had been used for illegal filesharing. The account-holders were first contacted by the BPI in April with the details of the case against them.
http://www.technologynewsdaily.com/node/1162






Wales tales

Industry Sues Vale Download Pirate
Steve Tucker

A music lover from the Vale of Glamorgan is to be one of the first people in Britain to be taken to court accused of illegally downloading tracks from the internet.

The British Phonographic Industry (BPI), the UK record industry's trade association, said it was lodging its first civil action against people who had refused to settle out of court.

The lawsuits are being taken against five individuals who, between them, are accused of making 8,906 songs available to millions of people around the globe.

The BPI is claiming compensation and costs against three men and two women on behalf of record companies whose music has allegedly been uploaded on to peer-to-peer networks without permission.

The alleged illegal downloaders could now face bills running into tens of thousands of pounds each.

As well as the unnamed person in the Vale, there is another person from Port Talbot, while the rest are from King's Lynn, Crawley and Brighton.

The move follows out-of- court settlements of up to £6,500 with 60 UK internet users.

BPI chairman Peter Jamieson said: "Music fans are increasingly tuning to legal download sites for the choice, value and convenience.

"But we cannot let illegal file sharers off the hook. They are undermining the legal services, they are damaging music and breaking the law."

BPI General Counsel Geoff Taylor said: "We have tried to agree fair settlements, but if people refuse to deal with the evidence against them, then the law must take its course.

"That's why we have had no choice but to take these five individuals to the High Court.

"We will be seeking an injunction and full damages for the losses they have caused, in addition to the considerable legal costs we are incurring as a result of their illegal activity."

The BPI said illegal file-sharing was a key factor in the recording industry's 22 per cent worldwide sales downturn between 1999 and 2004.
http://icwales.icnetwork.co.uk/0900e...name_page.html





Irish Music-Swappers Admit Liability
Matthew Clark

Eight people in Ireland have agreed to pay damages of up to EUR6,000 after settling out of court in the country's first batch of music uploading court cases.

The Irish Recorded Music Association (IRMA) said that eight of the 17 people it has accused of being among Ireland's worst offenders when it comes to music uploading have agreed to settle out of court with the organisation. According to an Irish Times report, the eight have told IRMA that they will no longer swap music over the internet, and have agreed to pay damages of between EUR2,000 and EUR6,000.

The paper says that some of the accused were parents of children who had uploaded and downloaded music over peer-to-peer file-sharing services such as Kazaa or Gnutella. There was also an instance of an employee of a firm which had been uploading tracks, exposing that company to potential legal liability. Dick Doyle, director of IRMA, said that many of the remaining nine alleged file-sharers who have not yet admitted liability have claimed that file-sharing was undertaken by someone else in their home.

Interestingly, Doyle said that IRMA now has additional information on the activities of alleged file-swappers, and he said that it may target more individuals in the coming months.

The 17 people involved in the current legal action were written to by IRMA in late July after the organisation and its backers -- which include the big music labels -- succeeded in forcing internet service providers to give up the names of file-sharers. This effort actually began in April as part of a global assault led by the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI), which filed 963 new cases against file-sharers in Britain, Austria, Denmark, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Iceland, Finland, Ireland and Japan during that month.

Worldwide, the total number of cases against those accused of illegal file-sharing has hit 11,552 worldwide since the US-based Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) began its crusade three years ago.

Last month, the IFPI made rare positive comments about the digital music business, claiming that the number of songs downloaded legally over the internet had tripled to 180 million in the first six months of 2005. Conversely, illegal file-sharing continues to grow, but at a slower pace, rising just 3 percent to 900 million tracks in the first half of the year compared to the same period in 2004. The IFPI said the most cited reason for the growth of legitimate downloads is the threat of lawsuits.

"We are now seeing real evidence that people are increasingly put off by illegal file-sharing and turning to legal ways of enjoying music online," IFPI CEO John Kennedy said in a July statement. "Whether it's the fear of getting caught breaking the law, or the realisation that many networks could damage your home PC, attitudes are changing, and that is good news for the whole music industry."
http://www.enn.ie/news.html?code=9628671





Hackers Demonstrate Their Skills in Vegas
Greg Sandoval

Even the ATM machines were suspect at this year's Defcon conference, where hackers play intrusion games at the bleeding edge of computer security.

With some of the world's best digital break-in artists pecking away at their laptops, sending e-mails or answering cell phones could also be risky.

Defcon is a no-man's land where customary adversaries - feds vs. digital mavericks - are supposed to share ideas about making the Internet a safer place. But it's really a showcase for flexing hacker muscle.

This year's hot topics included a demonstration of just how easy it may be to attack supposedly foolproof biometric safeguards, which determine a person's identity by scanning such things as thumb prints, irises and voice patterns.

Banks, supermarkets and even some airports have begun to rely on such systems, but a security analyst who goes by the name Zamboni challenged hackers to bypass biometrics by attacking their backend systems networks. "Attack it like you would Microsoft or Linux," he advised.

Radio frequency identification tags that send wireless signals and that are used to track a growing list of items including retail merchandise, animals and U.S. military shipments- also came under scrutiny.

A group of twentysomethings from Southern California climbed onto the hotel roof to show that RFID tags could be read from as far as 69 feet. That's important because the tags have been proposed for such things as U.S. passports, and critics have raised fears that kidnappers could use RFID readers to pick traveling U.S. citizens out of a crowd.

RFID companies had said the signals didn't reach more than 20 feet, said John Hering, one of the founders of Flexilis, the company that conducted the experiment.

"Our goal is to raise awareness," said Hering, 22. "Our hope is to spawn other research so that people will move to secure this technology before it becomes a problem."

Erik Michielsen, an analyst at ABI Research, chuckled when he heard the Flexilis claims. "These are great questions that need to be raised," he said, but RFID technology varies with the application, many of which are encrypted. Encryption technology uses an algorithm to scramble data to make it unreadable to everyone except the recipient.

Also on hand at the conference was Robert Morris Sr., former chief scientist for the National Security Agency, to lecture on the vulnerabilities of bank ATMs, which he predicted would become the next "pot of gold" for hackers.

The Internet has become "crime ridden slums," said Phil Zimmermann, a well-known cryptographer who spoke at the conference. Hackers and the computer security experts who make a living on tripping up systems say security would be better if people were less lazy.

To make their point, they pilfered Internet passwords from convention attendees.

Anyone naive enough to access the Internet through the hotel's unsecured wireless system could see their name and part of their passwords scrolling across a huge public screen.

It was dubbed the "The Wall of Sheep."

Among the exposed sheep were an engineer from Cisco Systems Inc., multiple employees from Apple Computer Inc. and a Harvard professor.

An annual highlight of the conference is the "Meet the Feds" panel, which this year included representatives from the FBI, NSA and the Treasury and Defense departments. Morris and other panel members said they would love to hire the "best and brightest" hackers but cautioned that the offer wouldn't be extended to lawbreakers.

During the session, Agent Jim Christy of the Defense Department's Cyber Crime Center asked the audience to stand.

"If you've never broken the law, sit down," he said. Many sat down immediately - but a large number appeared to hesitate before everyone eventually took their seats.

OK, now we can turn off the cameras, Christy joked.

Some federal agents were indeed taking careful notes, though, when researcher Michael Lynn set the tone for the conference by publicizing earlier in the week a vulnerability in Cisco routers that he said could allow hackers to virtually shut down the Internet.

Lynn and other researchers at Internet Security Systems had discovered a way of exploiting a Cisco software vulnerability in order to seize control of a router. That flaw was patched in April, but Lynn showed that Cisco hadn't quite finished the repair job - that the same technique could be used to exploit other vulnerabilities in Cisco routers.

Cisco and ISS went to court to try to stop Lynn from going public, but Lynn quit ISS and spoke anyway. In the wake of his decision, Lynn has become the subject of an FBI probe, said his attorney Jennifer Granick.

Many at the conference praised Lynn.

"We're never going to secure the Net if we don't air and criticize vulnerabilities," said David Cowan, a managing partner at venture capital firm Bessemer Venture Partners.

And the vulnerabilities are plenty.

During his session on ATM machines, Morris said thieves have been able to dupe people out of their bank cards and passwords by changing the software in old ATM machines bought off eBay for as little as $1,000 and placing the machines out in public venues.
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories...CTION=BUSINESS





Hackers Race To Expose Cisco Router Flaw

Computer hackers worked through the weekend to expose a flaw that could allow an attacker to take control of the Cisco Systems routers that direct traffic across much of the Internet.

Angered and inspired by Cisco's attempts to suppress news of the flaw earlier in the week, several computer security experts at the Defcon computer-security conference worked past midnight Saturday to discover and map out the vulnerability.

"The reason we're doing this is because someone said you can't," said one hacker, who like the others spoke on condition of anonymity.

Cisco's routers direct traffic across at least 60 percent of the Internet and the security hole has dominated a pair of conferences that draw thousands of security researchers, U.S. government employees and teenage troublemakers to Las Vegas each summer.

The hackers said they had no intention of hijacking e-commerce payments, reading private e-mail, or launching any of the other malicious attacks that could be possible by exploiting the flaw.

Rather, they said they wanted to illustrate the need for Cisco customers to update their software to defend against such possibilities. Many Cisco customers have postponed the difficult process because it could require them to unplug entirely from the Internet.

Security researcher Michael Lynn first described the flaw on Wednesday at the Black Hat conference over the objections of Cisco and his former employer, Internet Security Systems.

Lynn helped Cisco develop a fix but wanted to discuss it publicly to raise awareness of the problem, according to associates, going so far as to quit his job with ISS so he could talk freely.

"What (Lynn) ended up doing was describing how to build a missile without giving all the details. He gave enough (details) so people could understand how a missile could be built, and they could take their research from there," said a security expert who gave his name only as Simonsaz and who said he is not involved in the hacking effort.

After his presentation Cisco and ISS obtained a court order barring Lynn and the Black Hat organization from further disseminating details of the flaw. Cisco employees ripped Lynn's presentation from the conference program, according to witnesses, and Black Hat handed over its video recording of his talk.

"ISS and Cisco's actions with Mr. Lynn and Black Hat were not based on the fact that a flaw was identified, rather that they chose to address the issue outside of established industry practices," said Cisco spokeswoman Mojgan Khalili, who added that the company is committed to protecting its customers.

But those efforts have only inspired other security experts to take a crack at Cisco's software.

"It's really saddening and disheartening to see Cisco taking this approach, because it leaves their customers less secure," one of the hackers said.

In one of the hackers' hotel room, several Cisco routers sat surrounded by plastic beer cups on a coffee table. Two laptops on the floor displayed the software's source code, an endless blur of numbers.

If they don't figure out how to take over Cisco's Internet Operating System software by the end of the weekend, their counterparts at a hacking festival in Europe will certainly do so, the hackers said.

Some experts said the flaw has been blown out of proportion. Malevolent attackers are more likely to focus on easier targets such as home computers rather than the complex routers that direct traffic across the Internet, said Jon Callas, chief technical officer of PGP, a provider of encryption software.

"An awful lot of the buzz that is going around is buzz because of the use of lawyers and injunctions and lawsuits rather than the actual thing itself," said Callas, who is not involved in efforts to hack the software.
http://news.com.com/Hackers+race+to+...3-5812611.html





Patches On The Way For Windows Flaws
Joris Evers

As part of its monthly patching cycle, Microsoft on Tuesday plans to release six security alerts for flaws in Windows.

A least one of the alerts is deemed "critical," Microsoft's highest risk rating, the company said in a notice posted on its Web site on Thursday.

The notice did not specify which components of Windows are affected. Earlier this week, security company eEye Digital Security said it had found serious flaws in Windows 2000 and Internet Explorer. Microsoft is investigating the issues, a company representative has said.

In addition to the patches, the software giant will issue on Tuesday a "high-priority" update for Windows that is unrelated to security. That day is also tagged for the usual release of an updated version of the Windows Malicious Software Removal Tool, which detects and removes malicious code placed on computers, Microsoft said.

The company gave no further information on Thursday's bulletins, other than stating that the Windows fixes will require restarting the computer.

The Redmond, Wash., software giant provides information in advance of its monthly patch release day, which is every second Tuesday of the month, so people can prepare to install the patches. In July, Microsoft released three security bulletins, two for Windows and one for Office. All were rated critical.

Microsoft rates as critical any security issue that could allow a malicious Internet worm to spread without any action required on the part of the user.

Microsoft has set a time of Wednesday at 11 a.m. PDT to host a Webcast about the new fixes.
http://news.com.com/Patches+on+the+w...3-5818881.html





Darth Vader Of The Net Recruits Programmers
Glenn Chapman

San Francisco - Internet rebels on Tuesday began testing a new weapon that threatens to scuttle efforts to stop illicit online music swapping.

Internet privacy activists at Freenet Project posted word on their website that they were looking for savvy programmers to test a refined version "darknet" software designed to keep file swappers anonymous.

Freenet's call for stealth software test pilots came slightly more than a month after the United States Supreme Court struck a blow for the entertainment industry by equating Internet sharing of music with "garden variety theft".

'I can assure you they will continue to refine their software'

The court ruled that services, such as Grokster, that abet rogue swapping of music can be held accountable as accomplices.

The decision was proclaimed a landmark victory by Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA).

"There will always be a degree of piracy online, as there is piracy on the street," said Jonathan Lamy of the RIAA.

"Our objective is to bring piracy under sufficient control where legitimate services can compete and flourish."

Hip technophiles tuned into life in Silicon Valley and San Francisco scoffed, saying file swappers would only get sneakier.

Freenet's new software was heralded as "scalable," which means it would enable large numbers of stealth users to freely share files online, Doug Tygar, a computer professor at the University of California, Berkeley, said.

Previous versions of secret file sharing software were seen as manageable by the recording industry because the programmes were unwieldy and limited in the numbers of people who could use them.

"Even if this version of Freenet doesn't met its goals, I can assure you they will continue to refine their software," Tygar said.

"It is just a matter of time before anonymous file sharing networks become available."

The recording industry will need to evolve to keep its grip on copyrighted material, Tygar said.

Copyright holders must build better technological locks to guard their property, he said.

"The onus is on the people producing copyrighted material to protect that material," Tygar said.

"That has always been the case," he continued. "It was the case when the Xerox was invented, and you might argue it was the case when the pencil and paper were invented."

The test software is "neither user-friendly nor secure at this point," Freenet reported on its website.

The project's stated intent is "making a globally scalable friend-to-friend darknet which eliminates a swathe of attacks and makes Freenet far more usable in the short term in hostile regimes such as China and the Middle East".

China uses Internet "fire walls" to block secret sharing of computer files on the Internet, Tygar said. The US recording industry endorses similar online obstacles, Tygar said.

If Freenet's darknet software lives up to its promise, then "techniques used today to trace individual users simply will not work," Tygar said.

"The only way to ensure that a democracy will remain effective is to ensure that the government cannot control its population's ability to share information, to communicate," the Freenet website philosophy page states.

"The core problem with copyright is that enforcement of it requires monitoring of communications, and you cannot be guaranteed free speech if someone is monitoring everything you say."
http://www.iol.co.za/index.php?set_i...3043043728U232





Yahoo Introduces Search Service for Music
Saul Hansell

Hankering for a little yodeling? Yahoo has introduced a test version of a new search service that it claims can comb through 50 million music, voice and other audio files.

Yahoo is hardly the first search engine to offer audio search. Lycos, Singingfish from AOL and even AltaVista, which Yahoo bought, offer search engines that can seek out audio files.

Yahoo says its service, which is available at audio.search.yahoo.com, goes beyond the others. It will have one section that, like the other sites, maintains a broad index of audio files found by visiting millions of Web sites. It has a second section devoted to specialized search for music and a third devoted to podcasts, the emerging form of radiolike programs offered on a regular basis.

Yahoo's music search service will let users find Web sites, news and photos of artists, as well as information about albums and songs. It takes information from Yahoo's own music service to organize the results.

"If you type in 'Like a Virgin' we'll know that the version by Madonna is more popular than the cover by the Smashing Pumpkins," said Bradley Horowitz, the company's director of media and desktop search. The more popular version will be displayed higher in the search results.

The service will also display links to the online sites where users can pay to download a song. Most major music sites have agreed to send Yahoo lists of their songs and pay a commission on every song sold. The current version of the service has no advertising, but Mr. Horowitz said ads might be added later.
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/08/04/te...y/04yahoo.html





ACTLab Peer-To-Peer TV Betas Proceeding Smoothly, Radio Station Guide Forthcoming
Scott Fulton

The heroic engineers at the Foundation for Decentralization Research -- s the students in the Media Studies department at the University of Texas at Austin have come to be known -- are well on their way to fulfilling their mission of building ACTLab TV to give individuals the means to become content channel providers.

The first demo streams--both audio+video and audio only--are being made available now through ACTLab's servers. They're relatively short, and may be slightly more entertaining than the rotating pictures of Felix the Cat that characterized the first demo TV broadcasts of the 1920s. Still, their main purpose is to demonstrate the effectiveness of Swarmcast, Onion Networks' P2P stream downloading system. Unlike conventional P2P, which focuses on the transmission of files, Swarmcast enables the throughput of data streams, allowing videos and audiocasts to be seen and heard during the decentralized download process.

Today, as ACTLab's director, Brandon Wiley told Tom's Hardware Guide, his group is preparing to release the first draft of ACTLab's radio station guide, which instructs individuals as to how they can acquire--without expense--the equipment and some of the content necessary for them to produce a recorded, fully-licensed Internet "broadcast." "It's a pretty good guide," said Wiley, "not just because it tells the technical aspect of how to encode your stuff, but it talks about the various net labels and free content that's out on the Internet, to find content for your station." So-called "net labels" provide MP3s--some for free, to promote the others they sell commercially. Magnatune is one such net label that will be providing content for ACTLab TV, Wiley told us.

By the end of this week, the lab should be providing much longer demo streams. "We've got, for the first release, 30 hours of video and 30 hours of audio that we're going to be streaming," said Wiley. "It's all going to be very high-quality--DVD quality is our goal, with H.264 encoding. For this next release, what we want to show everybody is that we are doing live, instantaneous streaming, but at DVD quality."

In this reporter's own tests of ACTLab TV, the Swarmcast plug-in seems to work quite well. One problem--which I believe other Windows users may face--is that Apple's QuickTime, especially recent versions, insist on trying to decode the MPEG-4 video stream, and will fail. ACTLab's stream is encoded using H.264, one free codec for which, called "ffdshow," is installed with the ACTLab software. My observation has been that QuickTime is being launched before ffdshow has a chance to kick in, so some Registry hacking may be required before I can see the video portion of ACTLab's program. The MP3 audio stream, on the other hand, plays brilliantly through both Firefox and IE 6.
http://www.tomshardware.com/hardnews...02_151229.html




More People Turn to the Web to Watch TV
Saul Hansell

For two decades, media company executives and advertisers have been talking about creating fully interactive television that would allow viewers to watch exactly what they want, when they want it.

It looks like that future may well be by way of the computer, as big media and Internet companies develop new Web-based video programming and advertising that is truly under the command of the viewer. As Americans grow more comfortable watching programs online, Internet programming is beginning to combine the interactivity and immediacy of the Web with the alluring engagement of television.

The Nickelodeon cable network, for example, recently created TurboNick, a free Internet service that offers 24-hour access to popular programs like SpongeBob SquarePants and Jimmy Neutron. It offers some original programs, too, because the young audience of Nickelodeon, which is owned by Viacom, is increasingly spending time in front of computers.

CBS News, which has no cable network and is also owned by Viacom, uses the Internet to offer video news updates and reports that do not fit in the 30-minute time slot of "CBS Evening News."

And for America Online, offering a wide array of free video programming - from coverage of the recent Live 8 concerts to programs hosted by business gurus like Stephen R. Covey and Tom Peters - is a way to attract an audience to its new Internet portal at AOL.com. AOL, a unit of Time Warner, is also producing with the Warner Music Group an Internet-based reality program called "The Biz." It will seek to find the next music mogul, according to people involved with the program.

For all of them, and many more media and Internet companies, investing in new Internet video programming is a way to cash in on the demands of advertisers who want to put their commercials on computer screens, where new viewers are watching. And on many Web sites, viewers can't skip the video commercials, the way they can when using TiVo and other video recorders.

Of course, there have been bits of rough, jerky video on the Internet for years. The new video services, however, can count on better software and faster connections to deliver pictures that are nearly as crisp as those delivered by a typical cable signal. This year more than half of the homes with Internet access have high speed, or broadband, service.

"There is critical mass with high-speed Internet connections, so video is a good user experience," said Jim Walton, the president of the CNN News Group. "And that means there can be critical mass for advertisers."

With the cost of the network connections needed to broadcast video over the Web falling and advertising rates rising, CNN, also a Time Warner property, just replaced a small, fee-based Internet video service with an expanded offering of free videos intermingled with commercials.

"Television is a very straightforward, passive, linear medium," said Lloyd Braun, the former chairman of ABC's entertainment group, who now oversees the development of a sprawling campus for Yahoo in Santa Monica, Calif., that will largely be devoted to creating original video programming for the Internet.

"What I find so compelling about the Internet is that it is not passive," he said. "It is a medium where users are in control, can customize the content, personalize it, share it and tap into their communities in a number of ways."

Mr. Braun said he was exploring dozens of video ideas, including original Internet programming in nearly every genre that has worked on television: news, sports, game shows, dramas, sitcoms, even talk shows. But these are likely to be made up of short video segments that users can assemble to their liking rather than half-hour or hourly programs. "If you try to do television on a PC you will fail, because television does television very well," he said.

In addition to its own programming, Yahoo will feature programming from others in its video search service and on its other pages. For example, Yahoo is expected to announce today that it will add video clips from CNN and ABC News, along with video ads, to its existing Yahoo News site.

A watershed event in the development of Internet video was AOL's live Webcasts of the Live 8 concert series earlier this month. Some five million people tuned into the Webcast on AOL, where they could instantly flip among the concerts in London, Paris, Philadelphia, Toronto, Rome and Berlin.

Three times as many people watched the televised version on MTV, but many of them were dissatisfied with the way the network, a division of Viacom, selected which songs to play and had its announcers talk over the music. (AOL also offered users all sorts of commentary - blogs from backstage, user comments, photos - but these were accessible alongside the Webcast and did not interrupt the music.)

While MTV's TV network is being criticized, its new Internet video service, MTV Overdrive, is being praised as perhaps the slickest attempt yet to combine the packaging of television with the interactivity of the Internet. With one click, users can view dozens of shows - music video collections, newscasts, artist interviews and supplements to MTV's signature programs like "The Real World."

And with a second click, users can see the various segments that make up those shows. They also can assemble a program of their choosing, mixing and matching parts of any of those shows, as well as videos and older programs from MTV's archive of thousands.

For Alisha Davis, who joined MTV two months ago to anchor its afternoon Web newscasts, the medium offers opportunities and challenges that traditional television does not. With no fixed time slot to fill, her afternoon Webcast can run anywhere from 10 minutes to 20 minutes, depending on the news of the day. (That's far more than the three minutes that the MTV network now devotes to its newscasts.)

While she still begins each newscast with an upbeat rundown of stories, Ms. Davis also understands that is not necessarily how Internet viewers will watch the show.

"On a linear broadcast, you can refer to something that happened before," she said. "We can't do that. We'll set up a show for people, but a lot of people will create their own show."

"We always said, 'I want my MTV,' " said Judy McGrath, the chief executive of MTV Networks. "Today that means a very personal relationship to whatever it is you are interested in, so you can talk about it, you can generate it, and you can critique it."

The flexibility of the evolving medium also applies to advertisers.

Services like MTV Overdrive typically show 15-second or 30-second commercials - which users cannot skip - before viewers start watching and then again every few minutes. Moreover, when a commercial plays on Overdrive (and on many other new video services) a static graphic ad from the same advertiser appears on another part of the screen. This graphic ad remains even while the program plays. If users click on it, it opens the advertiser's Web site.

"A commercial on broadband is emotional and impactful," said Matt Wasserlauf, the president of Broadband Enterprises, which sells Internet video ads. He said that Internet video ads already produced 100 times as many clicks as static banners on Web pages.

An Internet commercial typically costs about $15 to $20 for each 1,000 viewers, nearly as much as broadcast networks charge. The price is high because there is more demand from advertisers than there is Internet video programming available. Broadband Enterprises estimates about $200 million will be spent on Internet video this year, up from $75 million last year. That pales in comparison to the $65 billion or so spent on broadcast and cable television advertising, but it is growing faster.

While much of the development of Internet video is now being driven by advertising, there is a growing crop of pay-per-view and subscription video services.

In the fall, CNN will introduce CNN Pipeline, a new fee-based Web service that will give users a choice of four live video programs, as well as access to its extensive archive of video clips. And CourtTV's new $4.95-a-month service on the Internet lets users see as many as three live trials simultaneously and also lets hard-core fans replay testimony and arguments from dozens of past trials.

Already, half a million people pay to watch live Webcasts of Major League Baseball games at $3.95 per game, or an unlimited package at $14.95 a month. That's double the paying audience last year.

In time, industry specialists say, longer, more elaborate programs created specifically for the Internet will also emerge. But how quickly that happens may depend in part on the development of technology that can play Internet video on television sets, on which people are used to watching longer programming.

"It takes time to teach consumers what they can do with this medium," said Kevin Conroy, the chief operating officer of its AOL Media Networks Group. "Now we are in a wonderful position to begin to expand to longer-form content. New video programs will include a live music performance series and a show where movie stars interview one another. AOL is also scouring Hollywood to buy the rights to old TV shows and movies it can fill with ads and show free on the Internet, said Mr. Conroy, who sees the Internet starting as akin to the ultimate UHF station.

One thing AOL will not offer on Webcasts is the most popular programming from its Time Warner cousins, such as HBO and its shows like "The Sopranos" and "Sex and the City."

"Everybody says why don't you have 'Sex and the City,' " Mr. Conroy said, "but 'Sex and the City' is already in first-run syndication on Turner. It will be on the Internet some day, but for now there are thousands of hours of programming that can't get on the air anywhere."
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/08/01/te...y/01video.html





Technology 'Optimists' Turn Off TV – Study

'Consumers went device crazy in 2004,' says Forrester Research
Paul Bond

Broadband Internet surfers in North America watch two fewer hours of television per week than do people without Internet access, while those with dial-up connections watch 1.5 fewer hours of TV.

That data comes from a Forrester Research Inc. study released yesterday that relies on what it calls the longest-running survey of its kind and counts nearly 69,000 people in the U.S. and Canada as participants.

Broadband Internet users watch just 12 hours of TV per week, compared with 14 hours for those who are off-line, according to the study, "The State of Consumers and Technology: Benchmark 2005." Forrester also predicts that the number of broadband households in the U.S., which had soared to 31 million at the end of last year from 2.6 million in 1999, will reach 71.4 million by 2010.

While its conclusion that Internet use detracts from other media is not new, the study delves deeper than others, separating consumers into various categories, including technology "optimists" and "pessimists" and "tenured nomadic networkers."

Folks making up the latter category have had Internet access in their networked homes for at least five years and own a laptop computer. These nomads watch just 10.8 hours of TV each week.

While newspapers and magazines also suffer a bit from Internet competition, radio and video games do not, the study concluded.

The study defines a tech optimist as someone who believes technology will make life more enjoyable, while pessimists are indifferent or even hostile to technology. Pessimists outnumber optimists 51% to 49%.

"Online media attracts technology optimists in droves," said the report, noting that they are three times more likely to use streaming media and peer-to-peer file sharing and read blogs than their pessimistic counterparts.

Optimists play video games, read magazines and listen to the radio more than pessimists, while pessimists watch more television. The level of newspaper reading, according to the study, is identical in the two groups.

Another conclusion reached by the study is that "consumers went device crazy in 2004," snapping up all sorts of digital entertainment gadgets, with adoption rates of many products poised for more explosive growth in the next six years.

Experiencing the most rapid growth might be digital video recorders, which will be in 42.7 million U.S. households in 2010, up from 6.2 million at the end of 2004.

In the same time frame, the number of DVD recorders will grow to 56 million from 12.1 million; MP3 players to 40.1 million from 10.8 million; DVD players to 102.9 million from 76.2 million; and video game consoles to 48.8 million from 40.1 million.

The report, though, appears to give short shrift to satellite radio. It doesn't include satellite radio in its U.S. household technology adoption forecast -- though it does note in a section about in-car device ownership that the percentage of automobiles equipped with satellite radios will double to 5% in 2005 and that buyers of Audis have the highest satellite radio adoption rate. The same section notes that in-car MP3 players are most popular in Acuras, Isuzus and Lexuses, while in-car video is most popular among GMC buyers.
http://www.computerworld.com/hardwar...103650,00.html





Via Multi

How Many Punch Cards Would It Take To Fit A 3-Minute MP3?

"Remember punch cards? I use them. Still got a box or two. Great for taking notes, they fit in VHS boxes for notes, I even print my business card on them. Sure makes people take note."

So begins a very interesting discussion on the Stilyagi discussion board.

"Our tool crib at Ford still used punch cards for inventory control until the early/mid 80s" says another person. "Just think of the concept--the data is made up out of thin air! The card is just there to organize the holes" notes another.

The posters figure out how many punch cards it'd take to read a 3-minute mp3. Answer?

"Assuming a non-Hollerith encoding with eight bits per column, and an MP3 file encoded at 128kbps CBR, there would be 36,864 cards in that deck, and the card reader would need a throughput of 205 cards per second. It might be wise to include an 8-column sequence number, however, so that a misordered deck can be repaired by a card sorter; with 72 data columns per card, the total is precisely 40,960 cards (40K cards), requiring a 228 card/second throughput." The 21 boxes of cards needed would by 5 feet 9 inches tall. That such a huge leap in technology is well within living memory astonishes Y.
http://www.ypsidixit.com/blog/archiv...ber_punch.html





Copyright Lobbyists Strike Again
Declan McCullagh

Hollywood and large U.S. software companies chalked up another crucial yet little-noticed victory last week with the final approval of the Central American Free Trade Agreement.
You wouldn't know it from a political debate veering between labor standards in Nicaragua and the evils of protectionism, but one major section of CAFTA will export some of the more controversial sections of U.S. copyright law.

Once it takes effect, CAFTA will require Costa Rica, the Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras and Nicaragua to mirror the Digital Millennium Copyright Act's broad prohibition on bypassing copy-protection technology.

This prohibition, of course, has been problematic in the United States. Courts have interpreted it as barring news organizations from linking to DVD-descrambling utilities, and lawyers have invoked it to stifle discussion of security vulnerabilities and even prevent conference presentations from taking place. In an earlier column, I wrote how it prevented me from reading password-protected government documents.

The easy days of slipping in a few paragraphs into a trade treaty may be over. Specifically, CAFTA calls for civil and criminal penalties to punish anyone who "circumvents" copy-protection technology or "provides" such tools to anyone else. Like the DMCA, that could cover everything from DeCSS (which removes copy-protection from DVDs) to products that do the same for e-books.

The Central American nations participating in CAFTA must also:

• Permit software patents

• Extend copyright protection to "70 years after the author's death"

• Ban the "manufacture" or "export" of any hardware or software that could decode encrypted satellite TV signals

• Offer "online public access to a reliable and accurate" WhoIs database of domain name registration details

It's true that these may be ideas beloved by the Bush administration and business lobbyists, but they have far more to do with special-interest lobbying than traditional notions of free trade.

In reality, they're simply the latest in a string of victories that copyright lobbyists have managed to accumulate in the last decade--under both Democratic and Republican presidents--through adept work at influencing the arcane process of treaty drafting.

Negotiating below the radar
"We push for that in trade agreements and treaties and bilateral" agreements, Robert Cresanti, vice president for public policy at the Business Software Alliance, told me last week. Members of his group include Adobe Systems, Cisco Systems, Dell, Hewlett-Packard, IBM, Intel and Microsoft.

That strategy has been remarkably successful. It began in the mid-1990s with a copyright treaty crafted under the umbrella of the World Intellectual Property Organization, a habitually copyright-friendly arm of the United Nations.

The WIPO treaty says that nations must provide "effective legal remedies against the circumvention" of copy-protection technologies. That spurred the United States down the path that led to enacting the DMCA in 1998.

But many sizable nations never signed the WIPO treaty: Canada, Russia, China, the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Australia and many others abstained (Click for PDF). And even some participating nations have been less than aggressive, with Japan concluding the treaty permits a less-regulatory approach.

That's why business lobbyists have been pressing to include far more precise rules in subsequent treaties. And the Bush and Clinton administrations have been happy to go along, effectively saying to poorer countries: If you want the United States to open its markets to your products, the price is adopting the most problematic sections of our copyright law.

Previous Next The result? In the last two years, Australia, Chile, and Singapore have agreed to software patents and DMCA-like prohibitions on bypassing copyright protection.

Those "anti-circumvention" requirements have even popped up in a Council of Europe treaty ostensibly devoted to "cybercrime," which a U.S. Senate panel approved last week.

One reason for the copyright lobby's success is that bending ears and twisting arms at organizations like WIPO and the Council of Europe is expensive. Groups that advocate a more balanced approach to copyright just haven't been able to keep up.

Now that may be changing. "From the mid-90s up until the present day, industry groups have gone to international forums and sought greater IP protections so they could export them as treaties and bring them back home," said Mike Godwin, a lawyer at the Public Knowledge advocacy group.

"Taking a tip from them, civil society groups from the developing nations like Brazil and India have said we can do this too," Godwin said. So are their allies in the United States.
In other words, the easy days of slipping in a few paragraphs into a trade treaty may be over. That's probably a good thing: Free trade can easily take place without the copyright lobby's more far-reaching suggestions.
http://news.com.com/Copyright+lobbyi...3-5811025.html

[JackSpratts]

P2P Customer/Consumer Survey – Analysis
P2PUnite

The analysis of the P2P consumer/customer survey is done. It turns out that we now have even stronger reason to believe that file-sharers do not cause financial loss to the entertainment industry. But that is not all...

Introduction

Why is this survey important? Why does it matter if file-sharers buy commercial products, too?

It is important because file-sharers are depicted as a threat to society in the propaganda issued by organisations like MPAA and RIAA. Such organisations justify the persecution of file-sharers by citing severe financial losses on behalf of the companies they represent. If we can show that file-sharing in fact does not entail financial loss to the commercial companies, it follows that the actions taken against file-sharers are, at best, misguided. The message to the **AA organisations is that the file-sharers and the customers are one and the same. It should be important to the organisations to make and stay friends with file- sharers, rather than infuriating them by heavy-handed legal actions.

That is not all we have to say, though. There are two other main conclusions to be drawn from the survey results:

1. The results from this survey suggest that the “harm” done to commercial companies is not so much in terms of financial loss, as in loss of control. Many of those that took part in the survey said that they had purchased products that they had first discovered through some file-sharing network. We can combine that piece of information with many comments found in posts on file-sharing forums, to reach a preliminary conclusion about the impact of file-sharing. File-sharing may challenge the power that commercial companies are used to wielding. File-sharing help people to discover products that are not heavily promoted by the entertainment industry. In this sense, it may be true that file- sharing is indeed a threat to the companies that the **AA organisations represent. In addition, file-sharing may become a means for artists to free themselves from their dependence on commercial companies.

2. So, the survey shows that it is far from certain that file-sharing causes financial loss to the entertainment industries that are behind the **AA organisations. What more is, it also suggests that file-sharing may in fact be behind increased financial gain. It seems that file- sharing can lead to people buying more fan-material, going to more concerts, and indeed buying more computer hardware and blank media (CDs and DVDs).

How the survey was conducted

File-sharing being what it is – criminalised and highly decentralised – makes it impossible to have the kind of control that one expects from a scientific study. This is by no means a scientific study. Our results are supported, though, by the The Leading Question-survey made by a market research firm. That study showed that P2P users are the ones most likely to buy music online.

We posted an invitation to take part in the survey at nine different file-sharing forums. People were encouraged to spread the invitation, so there is no telling how far it traveled in the P2P networks, nor where/how those that participated encountered it. The survey was open for a month, from July 4 to August 3 2005 , and a total of 1,122 unique users participated.

Multiple entries from the same IP-number have been deleted into containing only one (the first) response, in order to make sure that the results could not be manipulated by one user answering the survey many times. This also means that some “legitimate” double answers have been purged from the survey, though. Users that share the same connection have not been able to take part more than once per connection. This purging of IP-number does not mean that we can tell who the people that answered to the questions are. All we can tell is that a (user with a) certain IP-number has taken part.

Detailed comments on the survey results

The tallies would suggest that various businesses most likely make quite the revenue from P2P-activities, and that for many users file-sharing seems to be a way of economizing rather than simply saving money. File-sharing is used to choose where to spend the money – file-sharers do buy products.

We started up (question no 1) by asking just in what way file-sharing activities affected the personal economy. As can be seen, most are on the same level of "outcome". Many, though, manage to save a little money and some even end up spending more than they used to.

We cannot say if the answers would have been the same, though, if we had placed this question at the end of the survey instead. If you start thinking about the cost for computers, (other) hardware, etc, you may find that you spend more money because of file-sharing than you are usually aware of.

Question no 2 displays purchases made after having found a product on a file-share network. Few - 11% only - claims to have never bought such a product. However, there is a discrepancy with the percentage in question no. 3 - where in all fairness it should be 11% as well, but sinks surprisingly to 8%.

This isn't easy to explain, and a source for speculation by each and all. Perhaps question no. 2 is replied to "in principle" and question no. 3 "in reality". If that is the true interpretation, there are obviously those out there that have no intention of spending money by principle or other reasons. But even if we calculate with the highest amount, 11%, it is a really LOW amount of users who never purchases products found and downloaded online. The answers to questions 2 and 3 quite contradict the kind of arguments made by the *AAs of the world. They show that you can not measure "money lost" by trying to measure the distribution of files on the P2P networks.

Since 49% of all file-sharers do purchase products "once in a while", a rather high amount of the speculated loss of income from file-sharing can be detracted immediately. As many as 30% even claim to make purchases monthly, and even though there is no telling in this survey of how much the person downloads in comparison with how many products they purchase, the numbers are clear. This is one shopping-happy crowd.

One thing of real interest here, is that these answers show that file-sharing generally is not used in order to save money. Instead it is used both as a means to evaluate content before buying it, and to discover music and movies other than those you would find anyways. In this sense, we see file-sharing as a tool for making the world of art and entertainment more "democratic". File-sharing networks give more power to the customers, who can not be fooled into buying products that turn out to disappoint them and they certainly give more power to artists, who no longer have to rely on large companies to help them find their audiences.

Question number 4 - about other purchases made - is interesting, because while the entertainment business cry "foul" there are other businesses out there who are probably very happy. The computer and electronic media businesses are probably smiling all the way to the bank.

“Other purchases” also include things related to music and movies, such as going to concerts and buying fan material. One must consider that many times customers feel that when they pay for a product the money end up in the wrong pockets. Often we read (in P2P forums) about how consumers don't trust the music industry to pay their artists fairly and many support their idols by going to live concert and buy merchandise instead of buying the CD, which they choose to download instead. This is also contradictory to the general view that file-sharers have no wish to support the artists. When reading around it would seem that many file-sharers feel that that argument is quite the lie.

Going to the movies, well, this is something that the industry probably need not worry about. Almost half of the participants (46%) go to the movies - as a result from file- sharing. This is perhaps why one can hear spreading of laughter in the salon when the nowadays complimentary "do not participate in file-sharing" splashes across the scene. Often movies are discussed in P2P forums, both before and after they have been released in movie theatres.

At the P2P boards, one can also read about how parents download to check out a movie, to see if it's something appropriate and worth taking the whole family to. Money is tight for most, and this sort of consumer control takes place all the time. Hardly anybody mistakes the movie-going experience with having checked a title out in a file-share network, there simply is no competition. However, the loss feared is suspected to be that people find out it's a "dud" too soon and is perhaps one reason why the movie-industries problems are not often respected.

A no doubt surprisingly high amount of file- sharers knowingly avoid downloading in favour of a purchase (question no 5). Only 12% claims to have never done that.

Why would that be? Well, a good example of this is the kind of trust you have in the product release. The Lord of the Rings trilogy, for instance, rated highly on the trust-scale amongst file-sharers. The discussions around message-boards were plentiful, and arguments for why not downloading it were common. Most that downloaded claimed to do it in order to be able to see it again after having seen it in the movies, others because it wasn't showing in their areas but they were going to see it in the cinema once available. If anybody were of the notion to NOT see it "properly" as it were it was uncommon and they were generally considered to be a bit cooky. Not saying they were, obviously, to each their own, but generally speaking - file-sharing networks contains a lot of discussions like this.

Another example would be releases of products that are released for charity. Usually very few users download such releases and many times people post their concerns about how a charity should be paid for, as it's for a good cause. The file-sharers are quite simply not non-thinking, downloading zombies, but quite aware of the world, just as well as their personal finances. File-sharers are not immoral criminals who simply want something for nothing.

In fact, people even download copies of files they already own (question no 6). The entertainment business would rather have you buy several copies, that much is clear. But is that really what their customers want? And when is the customer's interest cared for? And how big of a dent does this put in the speculated numbers displayed in terms of revenues lost? Is it REALLY that simple, that somebody is stealing - for wanting an extra copy of the CD in the car? There's an obvious grey-area here, one can argue that when buying a product, you're only allowed to use it in one location, but all in all it doesn't quite cut it with consumers, generally speaking. When we buy, we own it too and want to use it as we choose. This is probably a question that everybody can relate to, being file-sharer or not. Just to what degree should a company be allowed to regulate what you purchased and now own.

Finally a spread of gender and ages of the participants in this survey (question no 7).

One should perhaps comment on the fact that those that participated in this survey no doubt are to be considered "hard core" to a degree. The vast majority of file-sharers most likely never visit P2P communities online. Those that have participated here, have in most cases been made aware of this survey through such a place.

This may explain the low number of female participants. It is more common that men participate at online boards, whereas women, although not being strangers to file-sharing, rarely do. It is also worth noting that, while a lot of file-sharers are indeed teenagers, file- sharing is an activity that people of all ages take part in. The majority of file-sharers in our survey are over twenty years of age. File-sharing does not merely concern youngsters with little or no money to buy music, as some newspaper articles would have us believe. File- sharing is for everybody, regardless of age, sex and nationality.
http://www.p2punite.org/files/P2PCustomer_survey_0.doc





A Whole New World Of File Sharing

BitTorrent gears up for online distribution of large files such as movies and games
Dawn C. Chmielewski

Bram Cohen arrives in San Francisco's Mission District, his hair disheveled, his face stubbled with a day's growth of beard and his black BitTorrent T-shirt proclaiming him for
what he is -- the poster boy for a popular and disruptive Internet file-swapping technology.

Time was, guys like this would be found hunched over a computer keyboard in a distant Baltic republic, working anonymously for some offshore corporation.

But now that the Supreme Court has clarified the do's and don'ts of file-sharing, the creator of BitTorrent -- which allows video and other large files to be quickly downloaded -- has no reason to hide. Indeed, Cohen, 29, recently relocated from Seattle to San Francisco, and he and his chief operating officer are making the rounds on Sand Hill Road looking for venture capital for their new company, BitTorrent. They've forged a partnership with paid-search provider Ask Jeeves, and recently the duo flew to Burbank for high- level talks with the Motion Picture Association of America.

BitTorrent already has struck deals with video game publishers to distribute games with its technology.

Cohen's bid to commercialize BitTorrent is a measure of how far the entertainment industry has come since the late 1990s, when Napster introduced millions of people to the power of peer-to-peer technology for downloading songs -- and mobilized scores of lawyers to shut it down.

The recording industry continues its legal campaign to crush the once-wildly popular Australian-based Kazaa file-sharing service. But the studios are now moving to embrace BitTorrent technology -- which gracefully and cheaply distributes giant files -- even as they sue those who use it to trade bootlegged movies, TV shows or video games.

``We have no aversion to peer-to-peer technology. For us, it is in some respects kind of a promising delivery method,'' said Darcy Antonellis, senior vice president of worldwide anti-piracy for Warner Bros. Studios. ``We obviously have issues with its illegal uses, but to the extent that the use of the technology can be legitimized, we're all for it.''

It helps that Cohen never cast himself as an anarchist who bragged that his technology would vanquish the old entertainment industry. He has gone out of his way to castigate those who use BitTorrent for piracy.

The trick, of course, is converting the 40 million or so people Cohen says have downloaded BitTorrent's free software into paying customers.

Over a lunch of veggie burritos and nachos, Cohen and BitTorrent's 28-year-old chief operating officer, Ashwin Navin, talk about their plans for turning a garage operation dependent on donations and T-shirt sales into a Hollywood player.

Any examination of BitTorrent's potential needs to start with an understanding of how it differs from other file-swapping technologies. BitTorrent breaks giant files into tiny bits and spreads the distribution load among dozens or hundreds of computer users. It's built on the notion of cooperative distribution -- to get pieces of the file you lack, you must offer up chunks in exchange.

This approach turns typical online distribution on its head: the more popular the file, the faster the download times. The inverse is also true: It took 72 hours to download Bram Cohen's September 2003 lecture at Stanford University.

BitTorrent dramatically improves the economics of the Internet as a broadcast medium.

With distribution costs removed, budding filmmakers like Ben Buie of HighlyDef Productions in Altanta can suddenly afford to release ``On Our Way Up,'' a full-length docudrama, based on the lives of three brothers, shot in high-definition video. Buie uses Prodigem, a Mountain View start-up, to manage the delivery and collect payment.

``We actually thought about hosting it ourselves, and the bandwidth costs would have been enormous,'' said Buie. ``With BitTorrent, download is distributed over several users. There was really no cost of entry.''

The power and efficiency of BitTorrent lured Navin, the embodiment of a high-energy ``biz dev'' guy, away from search giant Yahoo, where he worked in corporate development figuring out digital distribution strategies.

``BitTorrent solved a lot of issues that I think an aggregator like Yahoo or download.com faces,'' said Navin, who joined the newly incorporated company in October. ``Do we host? Does the publisher host? If we host, how much do we charge? BitTorrent makes that whole question irrelevant.''

Navin and Cohen, the computer networking savant, share a vision of BitTorrent evolving into a true distribution platform that not only delivers video, but also helps people discover interesting content online. Eventually, they hope to collect a fee for connecting its audience to commercial content.

The first step along this path came in May, when BitTorrent introduced a search feature to help people find specific ``torrent'' files they're seeking. Search unlocked a fresh source of revenue for BitTorrent: sponsored links provided through a partnership with Ask Jeeves in Oakland.

BitTorrent's search engine also points to obviously pirated content, such as copies of the new Steven Spielberg blockbuster ``War of the Worlds,'' available with Danish subtitles from a Swedish site called thepiratebay.org.

When asked how he would respond to BitTorrent's use as a tool for piracy, Cohen said he would follow the same rules that apply to other search engines. The studios would provide notice of the infringing work, and he would remove links to the stolen content, rendering it inaccessible.

The challenge for BitTorrent or any other existing file-sharing technology is whether pirated content can co-exist alongside paid movies or television shows.

From the perspective of the Motion Picture Association of America, the solution is obvious: BitTorrent should use filtering technologies to block the exchange of pirated works.

``There is a whole new market that's being developed with filtering tools, ways of allowing these technologies to develop while preventing copyright infringement,'' said Dean Garfield, the MPAA's legal affairs director. ``We're hopeful that Bram will be a partner in moving BitTorrent in that direction.''

Negotiations between the MPAA and BitTorrent are continuing, talks that Cohen characterizing as `friendly.'' BitTorrent is also in discussions with two studios he declined to identify.

In the past, negotiations have failed because of the entertainment industry's reluctance to put a pirate in business, said Hilary Rosen, the former head of the Recording Industry Association of America. Peer-to-peer companies, meanwhile, have been reluctant to go dark or filter out copyrighted works, for fear of losing their loyal users, she said.

The recent Supreme Court decision in the Grokster case has changed the tenor of discussions. It made clear that tech companies that tout their file-sharing technology as a tool for piracy, or provide technical support to aid in the theft, are legally liable.

A number of established file-swapping services ``are coming to the table, either with the MPAA or with individual studios, to talk about ways they might alter their mode of operations,'' said one senior media attorney involved in the discussions.

Cohen said the Grokster ruling freed entertainment companies to seriously consider the file-swapping technology, once the scourge of Hollywood.

``They've been worried about using our technology,'' said Cohen. ``It's been made clear now that piracy is bad, not the technology is bad.''

As negotiations progress, BitTorrent is focused on content that might not otherwise be available for download because the bandwidth costs would prohibitive. Linspire, a San Diego software developer, uses BitTorrent to distribute its Linux-based software, including its recently released Linspire Five-0 operating system. BitTorrent saves Linspire about $20,000 a month, a company spokeswoman said.

BitTorrent also has reached agreements with game publishers to distribute about 1,000 licensed titles in the coming weeks, including such recognizable games as ``Tomb Raider 3'' and ``World of Warcraft,'' said Navin.

Blizzard Entertainment uses an enhanced version of BitTorrent to distribute software updates to the 1 million World of Warcraft players who inhabit its online virtual world. Allowing players to download from one another speeds the process significantly and saves money. ``Those who want to download directly from us can still do so, but the process is considerably slower,'' said a spokeswoman.

``This tool is designed to solve a very real problem,'' said Navin. ``What we hope is the folks it was designed for will embrace it as quickly as possible.''
http://www.siliconvalley.com/mld/sil...l/12274166.htm





CRIA's Higher Risk Strategy

Of all the reactions to today's SCC decision to skip the appeal of the private copying decision, I thought the Canadian Recording Industry Association's was the most remarkable. I've obviously commented regularly on its high risk strategy of suing individual file sharers. I think this is a bad strategy for many reasons. Suing your customers (and we should be clear, file sharers are the industry's best customers) is never a good idea. Further, the immense energy devoted to fighting file sharing, despite ample evidence that any industry woes have little do with the practice, is wasted time that could be spent actually responding to the market.

Today's response represents an even higher risk strategy. CRIA is now going to war not only with its customers, but now also with its artists. There have been several indications of this in the past year, namely CRIA's opposition to artists on ringtone compensation and on satellite radio.

But opposing the artists on private copying takes this strategy to new heights. CRIA today claimed that artists will make up private copying levy losses through the marketplace. The truth is that artists and rights holders lost $4 million today, the amount collected from the iPod and digital audio recorders during a fairly brief period. Longer term, they lost tens of millions of dollars of potential compensation. These are not the nickels and dimes that CRIA derides. If anything, for Canadian artists the levy represents a potentially important revenue stream that will not be easily recouped.

Today's decision also likely means the end of a private copying levy that CRIA spent 15 years fighting to get. The system is clearly broken and policy makers will either drop it completely (perhaps supplemented by a fair use doctrine that will permit copying such as store bought CDs to personal iPods) or expand the levy so that it resembles a European approach that extends to both audio and video, while providing even greater compensation.

Further, today's decision represents a serious blow to the iPod, which has been an incredible boon to the music industry. Simply put, copying store bought CDs onto iPods, as CRIA's own Graham Henderson has supported, may now be unlawful in Canada since it is difficult to find an exception within the Copyright Act that would permit that form of copying. While perhaps some in the industry may think this is a good thing as it transitions users to re-purchase the same music yet again as MP3 files from services such as iTunes, I think it will ultimately lower the value that consumers associate with music to the detriment of everyone in the industry.

Finally, it is worth noting what this decision does not mean. While CRIA claims yet again that this means that file sharing is unlawful in Canada, the issue is still unsettled. They argue that "unauthorized file sharing to hard drives of any kind, including those on home computers, is illegal." Not so. A good argument can be made that computer hard drives are not the equivalent of the hard drives embedded in digital audio players. I don't think anyone knows for sure and I doubt CRIA will try to test the issue. There is high risk and higher risk but that lawsuit would involve perhaps the highest risk.
http://www.michaelgeist.ca/index.php...mid=85&nsub =






Apple Launches iTunes in Japan

Apple Computer launched its iTunes online music store in Japan on Thursday, bringing its market-leading download service to the world's second-largest music market by album sales.

Apple has sold more than 500 million songs in 19 countries since it introduced iTunes in the United States over two years ago. While iTunes by itself is not viewed as a big money maker for Apple, it has helped drive sales of its wildly popular iPod portable music player.

The Cupertino, Calif.-based company said iTunes would charge 150 yen ($1.35) each for 90 percent of its songs and 200 yen for the other 10 percent, undercutting some existing services such as Sony's Mora, which charges 210 yen per song.

At least 15 Japanese companies including Avex Group Holdings will provide music for the iTunes store, Apple said. Columbia Music Entertainment said Thursday it would also provide songs.

"We've got a lot of Japanese content on the store and we'll be adding even more as the months go on," Apple CEO Steve Jobs told a packed news conference in Tokyo. "We think it's going to set the standard for online music pricing in Japan."

Apple has sold about 22 million iPods since their introduction in October 2001, making it by far the most widely used digital music player in a market researcher In-Stat expects to nearly quadruple to 104 million units a year by 2009.

Analysts have said the lack of an iTunes online store aimed at users in Japan was a major reason behind Sony's securing the top market share for flash memory-based players in the Japanese market in recent months, overtaking the iPod shuffle.

Apple retains the top spot overall in Japan thanks to brisk sales of its hard-drive based players. It controls about 36 percent of the market, ahead of Sony at 22 percent.

Jobs said the iTunes service in Japan would also offer podcasts, which are sound files, and audio content such as radio shows.
http://news.com.com/Apple+launches+i...3-5817814.html





TV, phone signals mixed but broadband relatively strong

Comcast Profit Rises 64%, Charter Loss Narrows
Deborah Yao

Comcast Corp., the nation's largest cable television operator, reported Tuesday that second-quarter profit rose 64 percent as its video and high-speed Internet businesses gained steam.

Net income rose to $430 million, or 19 cents per share, from $262 million, or 12 cents per share, a year ago. Revenue rose 10.5 percent to $5.6 billion from $5.1 billion last year.

The results easily beat analysts' estimates for profit of 15 cents per share on revenue of $5.54 billion, according to Thomson Financial.

The second quarter was much tougher for Charter Communications Inc., the suburban St. Louis cable operator controlled by Microsoft Corp. co-founder Paul Allen. While its quarterly loss narrowed from a year ago, it still was wider than what Wall Street expected.

Shares of cable providers have been depressed recently on concerns about emerging threats to their video and Internet businesses from phone companies.

Charter lost $356 million, or $1.18 per share, in the three months ended June 30, compared with a loss of $416 million, or $1.39 per share, a year ago. Analysts expected a loss of 91 cents per share.

Revenue rose 7 percent to $1.32 billion. Gains in high-speed Internet and telephone customers helped narrow the quarterly loss. Charter shares declined 3 cents to $1.30 on the Nasdaq.

Comcast's shares rose 49 cents, or 1.6 percent, to $31.10, also on the Nasdaq.

Craig Moffett, an analyst at Sanford C. Bernstein in New York, said Comcast shares rallied because investors breathed "a sigh of relief that the second quarter is over," since that period is usually a seasonally poor one for cable.

College students disconnect their service for the summer and retirees vacationing in places such as Florida also cancel subscriptions as they head home.

In the quarter, Comcast benefited from gains in video and high-speed Internet service but Charter lost ground in cable TV. However, business at Charter's Internet and phone units rose.

Comcast's video revenue increased 5.9 percent to $3.4 billion, driven by higher monthly revenue per basic subscriber and a 13.3 percent increase in the number of digital cable customers.

Comcast added 284,000 new digital customers in the second quarter of 2005 and now has more than 9.1 million. High-speed Internet revenue increased 28.8 percent to $982 million, and Comcast ended the quarter with more than 7.7 million high- speed Internet subscribers.

However, the company added only 297,000 subscribers in the latest period, down from 327,000 in the year-ago quarter.

Comcast acknowledged that local phone companies have been aggressive in cutting prices on their digital subscriber line, or DSL, service. SBC has lowered promotional prices on high-speed Internet service to $14.95 a month and Verizon has been aggressively cutting rates as well.

Among all Comcast's business units, the only revenue decline occurred in its phone service, which fell 4 percent to $170 million. Comcast has been behind other cable companies in signing up digital phone customers.

The Wall Street Journal reported last week that Comcast was considering plans to set up a major sports network, but Comcast executives insisted they have no plans to establish a sports network to rival ESPN.

Juli Niemann, an analyst with RT Jones in St. Louis, said Charter's financial troubles are costing the company at a time when firms such as Verizon Communications and SBC are starting to compete for the cable TV market.

"We've got pricing wars going on, service buildup, and Charter can't compete," Niemann said. "They don't have the money to compete. In the meantime, all their competitors are moving ahead."
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories...customwire.htm





Some MySpace Users Skittish About Fox
Mary Papenfuss

There's a Fox in MySpace, and bloggers are squawking.

Nervous members of the wildly popular online social networking spot are blasting its purchase by Rupert Murdoch's News Corp., expressing dark fears about the powerful billionaire's alleged motives and the possibility of privacy breaches, monitoring, censorship - and access fees.

"It's something we're very concerned about," said Scott Swiecki, 34, of Tempe Ariz., who's a member of the MySpace group "Faux News" as well as another group that combines the Murdoch name with an expletive. "There are a lot of counterculture people on MySpace. My concern is Fox will add fees and censor content."

News Corp. purchased Intermix Media Inc., the owner of MySpace, for $580 million last month, mainly so that Fox Interactive Media can reach the site's 22 million registered users.

MySpace, which launched just two years ago, is currently the most popular social networking site in the world. It makes it easy for people to customize their home pages with personal photos, art, color and music, along with market-revealing lists of favorite activities, books, music and films. Users can get site-wide bulletins, but they mostly communicate with friends or intriguing strangers they've expressly allowed into a network. Bands often use the site to debut their music.

The only automatic "friend" for everyone who joins the site is MySpace's co-founder, Tom Anderson. He has his own profile - single, 29, Santa Monica - and a list of 18 interests, 24 favorite bands, and 12 heroes, including "my mom" and author George Orwell.

After the sale was announced, spoofers added a profile for Murdoch, too: straight, married, 74 - which says he has joined the site for "networking" and lists his occupation as "world domination."

Chris DeWolfe, co-founder and CEO of the Los Angeles- based MySpace, told The Associated Press that the News Corp. acquisition will change nothing about the site - other than to extend MySpace's international reach.

But some of the hipsters in the online hangout fear their freewheeling ways, celebrated in naughty notes, brash blogs and provocative photos, won't mesh with the values of Murdoch's media outlets, like Fox News, which they believe are right-wing mouthpieces for the Bush administration.

"I'm opposed to what Rupert Murdoch has done to the media, and I don't want him involved in MySpace," said user Nathan Hall, 26, of Milwaukee.

News Corp. spokeswoman Teri Everett said the company has "no intention of imposing any sensibilities on MySpace," and that none of the anti-Murdoch messages will be deleted.
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories...CTION=BUSINESS





Sirius Widens 2Q Loss but Boosts Outlook
AP

Sirius Satellite Radio Inc. posted a larger second-quarter loss on Tuesday but beat Wall Street's expectations and raised full-year forecasts for revenue and subscribers.

Sirius' loss widened to $177.5 million, or 13 cents per share, from $136.8 million, or 11 cents per share, in the same period a year ago. Analysts polled by Thomson financial had expected a loss of 15 cents.

Revenue surged to $52.2 million from $13.2 million last year. Average monthly churn - the percentage of customers who cancel subscriptions - during the second quarter of 2005 was 1.4 percent versus 1.6 percent a year ago.

The New York-based company reported costs of $160 for each customer added for the second quarter of 2005, a 32 percent improvement from the same period last year.

As of June 30, Sirius had 1.8 million subscribers, including second-quarter net additions of 365,931 subscribers, more than double last year's 128,678 net additions.

For the third time this year, the company raised its 2005 year-end subscriber guidance to 3 million subscribers, up from its previous estimate of about 2.7 million subscribers.

The company attributed the revised outlook to continued momentum in the retail and automotive distribution channels, and expectations of strong consumer demand for Sirius' exclusive programming, including the NFL, Martha Stewart Living Radio and Howard Stern. Sirius will launch its second season of NFL coverage and introduce Martha Stewart's radio channel this month. It expects Stern to join its lineup in January 2006.

Sirius expects to $225 million in total revenue in 2005, up from previous guidance of $215 million. The company also expects to report an adjusted loss from operations of about $540 million in 2005, wider than prior estimates of $510 million.

Even though it beat Wall Street's estimates, Sirius's shares fell 2 cents to $6.93 in early trading on the Nasdaq Stock Market. Investors had bid up the shares over the past three months, off their recent low of $4.67 reached in late April.
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories...CTION=BUSINESS





Internet Ad Pioneer Now Shunning Pop-Ups
Anick Jesdanun

A pioneer of software that tailors pop-up ads to Internet users' browsing habits is beginning to shun a practice that has invited much derision and plenty of lawsuits. A new service Claria Corp. is launching this month will still deliver advertising to the computer desktops of Web surfers. Only this time, they won't be annoying pop-ups.

So-called personalization - targeting surfers with ads based on their online outings and errands - was always Claria's goal, says its co-founder and chief executive, Jeff McFadden.

Pop-ups delivered via adware, which is often criticized as sneaky in its installation, were merely a stepping stone as Claria waited for the technology to improve and the behavioral-targeting market to ripen, he said.

"It was never a destination," McFadden told The Associated Press. "There's a lot of people who aren't fans of the pop-up model."

Some might consider that an understatement from the head of a company whose name has become synonymous with adware, which many consider a cyberparasite or worse.

Although Scott Eagle, Claria's marketing chief, said market forces ultimately drove the decision, he acknowledged the new strategy could help improve the image of a company that has bothered more than consumers.

The New York Times Co. and L.L. Bean Inc. are among businesses that have sued Claria for delivering pop-up ads that they said subverted paid advertising or lured visitors to rivals. Claria even changed its name in 2003 from Gator Corp., though the company insists it wasn't a response to mounting criticism.

"It is a little naive of them to believe they can introduce a product and have the sins of the past forgotten completely," said Jeff Lanctot, vice president of media at Avenue A/Razorfish, an ad- placement agency whose sister company makes behavioral-targeting technology that could compete with Claria's.

"They have to be completely aboveboard and take extra steps other companies don't have to do to gain trust back," said Ari Schwartz, associate director with the Center for Democracy and Technology.

Many of Claria's critics remain skeptical.

Claria's new services will still require a software download "just like the old Claria software," said Ben Edelman, a Harvard University student who specializes in spyware research. "The question is how sneaky they are going to be about it."

Claria's software typically comes bundled with free products such as its own eWallet password-storage program and file-sharing software like Kazaa. Though licensing agreements disclose the ad components, many computer users don't bother reading them. And that prompts complaints that Claria isn't doing enough to obtain consent.

In the new model, Claria will work with developers of toolbars and instant-messaging programs as well as reputable Web sites - and largely have them bear responsibility for branding and getting consumer consent.

The Interactive Advertising Bureau says pop-ups peaked at 6 percent of all online advertising two years ago and have been declining since. America Online Inc. stopped selling pop-up ads in 2002, and most Web browsers now block them.

Even so, Claria claims it commanded 20 percent of the adware market with $100 million in revenues last year, mostly from pop-ups delivered through software on some 40 million computer desktops.

The 7-year-old company, which has 235-odd employees at its Redwood City, Calif., headquarters and other locations, began a pilot in May of a new ad network called BehaviorLink that serves banner ads targeted to a user's interests.

With software for it installed, someone reading online news articles on maternity might get pitches for baby products.

And while Claria's pop-up ads sometimes covered up someone else's Web site, BehaviorLink ads come with the site's permission. In some cases, Claria buys ad space and resells it at a premium; in others, Claria works out a revenue-sharing arrangement.

Companies like Revenue Science Inc. and Tacoda Systems Inc. also offer behavioral- targeting services but they use browser "cookies" instead of software downloads, meaning they could potentially reach more users overall but won't have Claria's across-the-Web targeting capabilities.

The product Claria is launching this month, in a test version, is called PersonalWeb.

It generates "personalized Web portals" on the fly so that a user who just checked baseball scores and movie show times might get a page pulling top items from ESPN and Moviefone.

The page will also display targeted ads from BehaviorLink.

An existing portal can also buy Claria's technology to incorporate personalization. Though Yahoo Inc. and others now have customization features, they rely on users to set preferences and are not automatic.

BehaviorLink and PersonalWeb combined, Eagle said, will mean more time spent on each site and more value for each ad.

Traditional advertising has up to 30 times the potential of adware pop-ups, he said, making Claria a possible target for acquisition. He insisted, though, that Claria was happy to remain independent, and he refused to comment on reports that Microsoft Corp. has been in talks to buy Claria.

Claria still must navigate some challenging terrain on privacy and consent, and many key decisions still need to be worked out.

For example, although Claria said it would obtain permission before activating PersonalWeb, it is negotiating on a site-by-site basis whether that permission would be limited to a specific site that runs PersonalWeb or cover the entire network.

Claria says its data on browsing habits are all anonymous, but it is open to letting partners link such information with personally identifiable information.

Whatever happens, users will be fully informed before they accept, said Reed Freeman, Claria's chief privacy officer. Benefits to the consumer, he said, will be easier to explain than the previous trade-off between free software and more pop-ups.

Larry Ponemon, one of three outside privacy consultants hired by Claria, said complaints about privacy stem more from annoyance with pop-ups rather than any data collected. Non-adware companies might capture more data but get fewer complaints, he said.

Claria still must win over the Web sites that once sued it. Eagle said most have been willing to listen, even if they have yet to sign deals.

Advertisers that have shunned pop-ups, meanwhile, have been more willing to run traditional ads through Claria, Eagle said, though he declined to name any of the 250 advertisers participating in BehaviorLink's pilot.

Elias Plishner, head of the interactive group at Universal McCann ad agency, said many companies that previously weren't willing to "dip their toes into behavior marketing" might now be willing to give Claria a chance.
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories...CTION=BUSINESS





Russia Bars ABC News for Interview With Rebel
Steven Lee Myers

Russia announced today that it was barring journalists from ABC News from working here, effectively expelling a foreign news organization for the first time since the collapse of the Soviet Union.

Russia's step came in retaliation for ABC's broadcast of an interview with Shamil Basayev, the Chechen rebel who has ordered or carried out some of the worst terrorist acts in the country's history, including the school siege in Beslan last September that left 330 people dead.

The decision underscored not only Russia's sensitivity to foreign perceptions of the war in Chechnya, but also a seething and evidently growing antipathy toward the United States and other countries viewed as hostile toward Russia.

The defense minister, Sergei B. Ivanov, had already called the network an "outlaw" and ordered the military to cease any contact with it after the interview, featured on the ABC News program "Nightline" on Thursday. The Foreign Ministry took the unusual step of summoning the top American diplomat in Moscow the next day to complain formally.

The ministry went further today. In a statement published on its Web site and repeated on state television by its deputy spokesman, Boris N. Malakhov, it said that Russia would not renew the accreditations of journalists working for ABC once they expire. Foreign journalists cannot work legally in Russia without the accreditation.

In the meantime, the statement said that no officials would cooperate with the network, saying the interview amounted to "propagandizing terrorism."

The Kremlin under President Vladimir V. Putin has long faced criticism for tightening state control over the media in Russia, especially when it comes to political opposition and the second war in Chechnya, which began nearly six years ago and grinds on still.

But it was the first time that the Russian government directly - and openly - targeted an entire news organization for its reporting.

Only on Sunday, the Foreign Ministry appeared to rule out such a step, even as it criticized the interview with Mr. Basayev, who appears on the United Nations' and the United States' lists of wanted terrorists.

David Westin, the president of ABC News, expressed regret and defended the broadcast, saying that the network could not allow "any government to deter us from reporting the news fully and accurately."

"The mission of a free press is to cover news events, even those involving illegal acts to help our audience better understand the important issues that confront us all," he said in a statement.

The State Department said in a press briefing earlier today that it was still seeking to confirm the ban.

"If that's true, we'd regret that decision," said a State Department spokesman, Tom Casey. "I don't think - if, in fact, ABC is to somehow be banned from reporting in Russia - that that would be a positive statement about freedom of expression."

Russia has previously denied accreditation or visas for foreign journalists, though usually without a clear explanation. In 2004, a correspondent from the Danish newspaper Politiken, Vibeke Sperling, complained that she had been denied a visa because of her reporting on Chechnya and other sensitive topics.

In 1995, the government revoked the visa of Steve LeVine, a correspondent for Newsweek and The Washington Post, citing a technicality involving the revoking of his visa in Uzbekistan. He was the first American expelled by the Kremlin since 1986, when Nicolas Daniloff of U.S. News and World Report was arrested and charged with espionage before being expelled during a flare-up in cold-war tensions with what was then the Soviet Union.

ABC, like many news organizations following the end of the cold war, has scaled back its reporting staff in Moscow, and is now represented by its bureau chief, Tomasz Rolski, who has Polish citizenship.

It was not immediately clear when his accreditation was due to expire. Several other employees in Moscow and based elsewhere could be affected by the loss of accreditation. Foreign journalists typically receive accreditation for one or two years.

The Foreign Ministry also threatened unspecified steps against the journalist who conducted the interview, Andrei Babitsky. Mr. Babitsky, a Russian with an American work permit whose reporting on Chechnya has long irritated the Kremlin, works for Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, based in Prague. In a telephone interview, he said he arranged the interview and offered it to ABC on his own initiative, while on leave from his regular employer.

Russian and foreign reporters alike face restrictions on covering Chechnya, though a prohibition on traveling there without government escort is routinely sidestepped and has, so far, been tolerated.

"This interview was made in violation of Russian law, since he had no corresponding accreditation," the statement said. "The circumstances of organizing and conducting the interview will be clarified with his employers."

Other foreign news organizations, including TT in Sweden and Channel 4 in Britain, have broadcast prerecorded interviews with Mr. Basayev this year, but ABC's interview sparked an even greater torrent of condemnation, some directed at the United States generally. The Foreign Ministry tried, unsuccessfully, to persuade ABC not to show it.

Anatoly Safonov, Mr. Putin's special representative for counterterrorism, told Interfax last week that the interview hindered international cooperation against terrorism and gave "new impulse to the activities of terrorists."

Journalist advocacy groups reacted with surprise and dismay. Lucie Morillon, the representative in Washington for Reporters Without Borders, called the decision appalling.

"We see this as a blow for freedom of press and the presentation of news in Russia," she said in a telephone interview. "It is a warning to other foreign news organizations. It's like telling them, 'If you don't cover the Chechen conflict the way they want, you won't be able to work in Russia.' "

In the interview, Mr. Basayev acted defiant, though at times he appeared muddled. Some of his remarks had little basis in reality, including a claim that Russian forces shot down two passenger airliners that exploded in midflight last August. He had previously claimed responsibility for organizing the two suicide bombers who blew up the planes, killing 90 people.

Mr. Basayev acknowledged he was a terrorist, but blamed Russia for spawning his deeds. He also warned of new attacks.

Mr. Babitsky said he spent two days - June 22 and 23 - with Mr. Basayev and six other fighters, one a foreigner he called an Arab. His report offered a rare glimpse into what remains of Chechen separatist resistance: small groups of sickly men living stealthily in thick forests, fearful of lighting campfires for fear of detection by reconnaissance planes droning overhead.

In a telephone interview, Mr. Babitsky said he believed the interview had taken place in Chechnya, but added that he could not be sure they were not elsewhere in the remote mountains along Russia's southern border.

He said was not yet aware of any official steps being taken against him, but he expected them; he has not returned to Russia since the interview. He said Russia was overreacting out of frustration and embarrassment.

"In six years the power structures could not catch terrorist No. 1 in Russia," he said, referring to the police, military and security services operating in Chechnya. "Now they put all the blame on journalists."
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/08/02/in... tner=homepage





The Archives

Rescued From Dustbin, Paper Medical Record Tells Its Tale
Barron h. Lerner, M.D.

"I wonder if patient could tolerate such a procedure emotionally," wrote a doctor about Mrs. E., a 44-year-old breast cancer patient being considered for a last-ditch brain operation called a hypophysectomy.

"I believe she stands a very real chance of another remission by hypophysectomy," wrote one of his colleagues.

This debate about Mrs. E.'s treatment, which occurred in 1960, comes from her paper medical chart, an aging document full of descriptive longhand notes by doctors, nurses and social workers. It was rescued from a New York medical center that was disposing of its old records because of space limitations.

With the push toward electronic medical records, physicians' notes are becoming less discursive and more standardized. As a result, stories like Mrs. E.'s may disappear. But they can teach us a great deal about the ordinary, and sometimes unexpected, events encountered by patients in the past.

Mrs. E. had watched the lump in her left breast grow for almost two years before seeing a doctor in 1954. A black domestic worker originally from the Caribbean, she was raising three children by herself and feared losing her job. "I hope it is not too late," she told a social worker.

But it was. When the doctors operated, they removed not only her breast, but also the chest wall muscles and the rib cage on the side of the cancer. At that time, such radical operations were in vogue.

So was concealing information from patients. Mrs. E.'s chart reveals what one would expect from this era. She was told a white lie - that she had a "tumor."

The word "cancer," with its ominous implications, was avoided.

But the chart was also full of surprises. The hospital's social workers routinely visited Mrs. E. at her "poor tenement house" because she could not afford taxi fare.

"She seems a person accustomed to facing difficulties with fortitude," one social worker wrote admiringly of Mrs. E.

The hospital also gave her holiday gifts and money to purchase a breast form.

In 1957, for reasons that are unknown, Mrs. E.'s doctor decided to tell her that she had breast cancer and would die from the disease. That the doctor decided to tell this to a poor black woman, who was less educated than most private patients, was especially surprising.

Mrs. E., another doctor noted in the chart, "is an example of a pt. who has been 'told the truths.' "

By 1960, despite additional treatments, the patient had worsened and thus became a candidate for a hypophysectomy. This operation, first performed in 1889, involved cutting into the skull and removing the pituitary gland, located in the lower portion of the brain. The gland produces hormones, which stimulate the growth of some breast cancers. Removing the gland was aimed at providing temporary relief of a patient's symptoms when no other options existed.

But the operation was a difficult one, especially for patients like Mrs. E., who had already undergone significant surgery and radiation. How was the decision reached about whether to proceed in Mrs. E.'s case?

Much has been written, appropriately, about how doctors have done a poor job of involving patients in making medical decisions. But in this case, perhaps because the doctors themselves were unsure whether the procedure would help, a patient with few resources became a participant in the process. One physician wrote in the chart that the "possibilities and risks have been fully explained to the patient."

Mrs. E. initially told a social worker that the idea of additional surgery was "overwhelming."

She feared going blind or dying, she said, two complications mentioned by the doctors.

But later, the social worker reported, the patient was "debating with herself the pros and cons" of surgery. Eventually, the possibility of relief from her pain led Mrs. E. to consent to the operation.

Mrs. E. withstood the surgery well and went home four weeks later. A visiting social worker remarked that she was feeling better, adjusting "amazingly well" and eating "like a horse."

Within a few months, though, Mrs. E. broke her hip as a result of the spread of the cancer. She died soon thereafter.

Was the hypophysectomy worthwhile? We will probably never know what Mrs. E. thought. Medical records in the 1960's, like those today, too often omit the patient's voice.

But thanks to Mrs. E.'s medical chart, we at least know how one woman with a grave disease ultimately accepted a dramatic operation that was her only hope.

Her chart - and its story - will soon be sent to the archives of the medical center for safekeeping.
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/08/02/science/02case.html





The Independence of Liz Phair


Pascal Perich for The New York Times

Liz Phair, 38, performs tonight at Joe's Pub in the East Village. Her latest album, "Somebody's Miracle," is to be released in October.

David Carr

Liz Phair, former crown princess of indie music, has news for all those who wish she would go back to opening up a vein so listeners can feel her pain.

She does not feel theirs.

"I don't remember that time as fun or happy," she said, recalling the days in 1993 after she released "Exile in Guyville," a gender-bent song-for-song retort to the 1972 Rolling Stones album, "Exile on Main Street." The CD was hailed as a revelation, but since then, she has steadfastly refused to live down or up to her early reputation as the coolest girl at the party. Ms. Phair has made four CD's since "Exile," and the latest, "Somebody's Miracle" - due out in October - will do nothing to quiet critics and fans who suggest she traded mesmerizing musical idiosyncrasy for a more common, commercial sound.

"If you are an old fan and it doesn't fit what you need, don't buy the disc," she said with firmness, but no rancor. "People hang their hopes on you fitting into their CD collection in way that they have made a space for, but I'm playing a longer game than that."

Ms. Phair, 38, who has spent the past few years as a piñata for critics, is nonetheless in a very sunny mood. She is in the midst of a lo-fi, nine-city tour with her boyfriend and accompanist, Dino Meneghin. Sitting on Pier 25 in Lower Manhattan on Sunday afternoon before playing at Joe's Pub last night and tonight, she had to be persuaded to sit down at a picnic table rather than hop in a nearby kayak and paddle into the Hudson. The duo is doing three songs a night from the new record and then mostly winging it, grabbing requests shouted from the audience and playing B-sides and oldies as whimsy indicates.

"Every night we play a challenge song, which is one we might have rehearsed and then one hack job where we just do our best," she said. With its acoustic setting and reach-back into her oeuvre, the tour should be a crowd pleaser, which is something Ms. Phair has not been spending much career time on. Her last record, self-titled, but radio ready, drew particularly visceral criticism.

"Hating, I can understand," she said. "I hate stuff too. I can get with that. But some of it is personal and weird. I don't like being approached by people who look at me too intensely, who needed something from me that I didn't have. I don't represent anything. I am just like you and everyone else. I am trying to live my life as best I can."

Ms. Phair is a fickle cult figure, who was surprised by the adoration when it was forthcoming and seemed mystified by the disappointment that came behind it.

She jumped up to take pictures of passing boats and sipped on a half-caf iced soy latte - "I tamper with everything, including coffee," she said - seeming relatively self- aware, if not as self-involved in a way that made for compelling songwriting in the past.

"Am I coasting on some early success? Yeah," she said. "It was a good lucky break for me. But I would rather earn my way back again than simply conform to what people are expecting."

In the one version of Ms. Phair's career, she took all her early promise and squandered it on her last album with a production team that confected Avril Lavigne. She pointed out that the record did pretty well, not huge, but enough to keep her and hers - she has an 8-year-old-son - in food and shelter.

Ms. Phair said the record's singles, a particular genre of music, required plenty of compromises. "I would argue with the producers and listen and then say, 'Yeah, take my guitar off the record, because you know you want to.' I fought for the songs I wanted and cared about and tried to piece it back together in a way that was meaningful to me."

Her label, Capitol, put major juice and money behind the singles, and she trudged from morning show to morning show, plugging it with whatever wacky guys happened to be sitting in front of the mics. But it was not a strictly commercial undertaking, she added. The mostly nude cover art and a one-song ode to the health effects of semen meant Wal-Mart and Starbucks were not much interested in "Liz Phair" by Liz Phair. The fact that the project was self-titled only doubled the rejection.

Ms. Phair pointed out that she never signed with a major label to begin with and has tried to make the most of what has happened: Matador, the indie label she signed with, made a deal with Atlantic, and a later deal with Capitol Records, and so on.

"I figured if I was going to float, I would have to find a way to navigate these waters and still maintain what I like to do," Ms. Phair said. "I like doing the photo shoots, the interviews, the videos, but the bottom line is that I like to sit in my bedroom and write these little songs. I am still making records and still have a measure of control over my music, and that is not easy to come by."

But, she added, "I think what I do is still pretty identifiable. I think I have a quirkiness and a melodic sense that you won't confuse with anyone else."

Tiny, with a bustier framed by an overlay of white blouse and a skirt that demonstrates motherhood has not changed her penchant for showing some casual leg, Ms. Phair would be hard to mistake for someone else. Her do-me feminism and frank sexual lyrics may be part of what put the mostly-male rock criticism community in a tizzy to begin with.

Ms. Phair has lived her life in opposition to whatever has been placed in front of her. "Exile" was a bitter, compelling retort to both the Rolling Stones and all the snotty girls in her suburban neighborhood.

The gesture of "Somebody's Miracle" is more complicated. Conceived as another song-by-song response - this time to Stevie Wonder's 1976 album, "Songs in the Key of Life" - it tacked away from that concept to become an album that gives solace to whoever shows up. There are singles, throwaways and full-on confessionals - enough to satisfy or embitter various parts of her fan base, depending.

Which is just about pleasing to Ms. Phair, who might be seen as a diva without portfolio or a sly genius, depending.

"After all, I'm not sitting in an office telling someone that their insurance policy doesn't cover their chemotherapy," she said. "Theoretically, I am trying to make a piece of music come to life, to try and bring joy and meaning to people's lives. That's a pretty good deal."
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/08/02/ar...ic/02phai.html





Keeping Your Enemies Close – BitTorrent and The Art of War
Russell de Pina

In the 6th century, Sun Tzu wrote, “To know your enemy is to become your enemy. Keep your friends close, but keep your enemies closer.” Apparently, Hollywood has become hip to this strategic gem in its continuing battle against copyright infringement in the form of file trading. For those in the know, peer-to-peer (P2P) networks like Kazaa and Grokster are so 1999. Today, the networks frequented by file trading enthusiasts are those powered by software called BitTorrent.

The magic of BitTorrent is that it improves the performance of file sharing networks by shifting the burden of bandwidth from the publisher and distributes it amongst the users downloading a file. In effect, when users download a “torrent file,” they are also uploading it to other users at the same time. Also, the dynamics of the network are such that the more popular a file, the faster it downloads. This makes it quite possible to transfer very large files, like movies and video games for example. You would assume that Hollywood, based on its prior responses to distribution enabling technologies, would be suing the pants off of Bram Cohen, the creator of BitTorrent, but you would only be half right.

Since he released the first version of BitTorrent, Bram Cohen he claims publicly that he has never downloaded any content with BitTorrent and that his sole motivation for creating the tool was to provide a means for publishers to make content available to the masses without heavy bandwidth requirements needed to support large numbers of transfers. This is quite a different manifesto from that of Shawn Fanning, who created Napster expressly for the purpose of [illegally] trading music content. Unfortunately, while there are many legitimate uses for P2P technology, the P2P networks that receive the most attention in the media have been those dedicated to copyright infringement. However, with the emergence of legal alternatives for downloading music files, and the “scorch and burn” lawsuit campaign of the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) many users have turned away from pirate networks like Grokster and Kazaa. Of course, there is another reason why BitTorrent has become so popular – movies.

Which is why Hollywood is simultaneously fighting BitTorrent and working with them at the same time. Because the technology works so well at moving large files across the Internet, many movie and video game companies recognize the value of the tool for legally distributing their content. Rather than adopt former Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) chief Jack Valenti's position of “sue them out of existence.” A kinder, gentler MPAA is encouraging BitTorrent to develop filtering technology to weed out infringing content. Blizzard Entertainment uses an enhanced version of the software to distribute its “World of Warcraft” game amongst the 1 million players inhabiting its online world. The company has also made an agreement to provide distribution for the Tomb Raider 3 game title.

The tenuous peace with BitTorrent marks the recognition by “Big Media” that while there exists bad applications of technology, that the technology itself is not the bad guy. We should be hopeful that further development of the technology will illustrate how technologists and Big Media can work and profit together.
http://eurweb.com/printable.cfm?id=21657





ObjectWeb ProActive Breaks World Computational Record

Xavier MOGHRABI writes "The OASIS team, form INRIA-University of Nice Sophia Antipolis-CNRS I3S announced the calculation of N-Queens for N=25, setting a new world record in grid computation.

The number of solutions is: 2,207,893,435,808,352

The nQueens problem consists in placing n queens on a nxn chessboard with that no queens are enable to capture each others.

Thanks to the ObjectWeb ProActive library, the computation was achieved in Peer-To-Peer mode (P2P), just using the spare CPU cycles of INRIA desktop machines. As such , the computing platform was highly heterogeneous: Linux, Windows, various JVMs, PII to Xeon bi-pro from 450 Mhz to 3.2 GHz, etc.

The total duration time was slightly over 6 months (4444h 54m 52s 854), starting October 8th until June 11th, using the spare CPU cycles of about 260 machines. The cumulated computing time was over 50 years: 53 years 2 days 16 hours 27 minutes 1 seconds 117 ms!

More information about Proactive and ObjectWeb is available at:
http://proactive.objectweb.org/
http://www.objectweb.org/"

http://newsvac.newsforge.com/article.../08/03/1731210





U.K. Government Begins The Peer-To-Peer Show
David Quainton

165 U.K. government departments are to migrate to an internal IT network to improve security and workflow.

The Government Secure Intranet (GSi) program replaces their previous system, called Legacy, which has come under some scrutiny in recent years. The new system, completed on July 31, has communications company Energis effectively acting as an ISP for a private network within which government departments can communicate.

"Government is an absolute target for worms, viruses and malware. What we needed to create was a safe network in which government departments can communicate and operate more efficiently," said Andrew Swaffer, GSi client director at Energis.

The service will feed some 350,000 staff and has already been put into use by some of the larger departments, such as the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP).

All government departments have an option which level of service they take, from the simple peer-to-peer service to anti-spam and content and image control. Currently around a sixth are using the anti-spam service – the content and image control will be available from September.

If the migration is successful Energis plan to extend it to local authorities.

"It's a big challenge, but there are business and operational benefits to what we're doing here," said Swaffer. "The biggest obstacle is that in order to get on board local government has to sort it's own systems out first. It's a huge task."

In June

SC reported the U.K. critical national infrastructure was being targeted by hackers intent on delivering malware to systems. Swaffer and colleague Paul Hayman, director of government and public sector at Energis, said they have already seen examples of such targeted attacks. According to the company five percent of government emails received contain some sort of virus. Dictionary attacks were also cited as a growing threat.
http://www.scmagazine.com/news/index...&newsType=News




Peer-To-Peer Anonymizer
Robert W. Smith

The developers of the AN.ON Project of the TU Dresden [Technical University Dresden], which is cooperating closely with the Landeszentrum für Datenschutz Schleswig-Holstein [State Center for Data Protection, Schleswig- Holstein] (ULD), have completed a new version their program JAP. JAP is a client program for a network run by the AN.ON Project, which network is designed to allow users to surf anonymously.

In the past the operators of AN.ON have engaged in the odd scuffle with investigating authorities, who would like to see the service switched off altogether. The new JAP version has a kind of peer-to-peer technology built into it. Users of the current software release will now be able to make part of the bandwidth of their anonymous Internet connection available to other Internet surfers. They will thereby be offering independent access points to the Internet - and be contributing, the programmers hope, to the freedom of the World Wide Web.

Users of the likewise popular anonymzing service TOR of the Electronic Frontier Foundation will now also be able to use JAP as access software. To do so they have to enter JAP as (socks) proxy in the application to be anonymized. Users of older versions of JAP will have to switch to the current release 00.05.001 as the older versions will in future no longer be supported.
http://www.heise.de/english/newsticker/news/61985





Stop That File Sharing!

Installing XP SP2 can sometimes cause Simple File Sharing to turn on and conflict with GPOs. Here's a workaround.
Don Jones

This tip is part 1 in a series of 5 on living with Windows XP Service Pack 2.

Windows XP SP2 is undoubtedly a great upgrade to WinXP, but it does introduce a few complications in any environment. Reader Aaron Spurlock writes in with this issue:

"It appears that WinXP SP2 turns simple file sharing back on for all computers, including those in a domain environment. It has caused me to rip my hair out several times wondering why I can't push anti-virus updates, why group policies aren't functioning, and why I cannot remotely administer computers."

After some back-and-forth and some virtual machine-based testing, we determined that adding XP to a domain turns Simple File Sharing (SFS) off, as it should; adding SP2 left SFS off. Just adding SP2 left SFS in its default state of on, and joining to the domain turned SFS off. Perfect. However, one of Aaron’s clients had just installed a computer from SP2-slipstreamed media and joined the computer to the domain—and SFS was left on. Weird.

Aaron’s solution was to deploy a batch file logon script that imports a registry file. Here’s the file he used:

REGEDIT4

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Lsa]
"forceguest"=dword:00000000

Ironically, you can control this setting from within a Group Policy object (GPO), but with SFS turned on, GPOs can’t download and apply properly. Oh, well. If you’ve got more insight on the SFS on-or-off problem, drop me a line at don@scriptinganswers.com. In the meantime, hopefully Aaron’s reg hack will help anyone who’s been dealing with this.
http://www.mcpmag.com/columns/print....torialsID=1049





Internet Worm Targeting File Sharing Amd IM Networks

Submitted by Anonymous on Tue, 2005-08-02 20:41. Internet

Sophos has issued a warning about the W32/Hagbard-A worm that can pose on file-sharing networks as one of over 400 different downloadable programs, including disk images of popular PS2 and XBOX console games such as "Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas" and "Need For Speed Underground 2".

The worm once downloaded will attempt to spread using the Windows Messenger. An instant message will be sent to others with a link: "please download this...its only small brb."

"Because this worm can arrive in the form of an instant message, some users may be fooled into thinking it has come from a friend or colleague rather than a virus on their PC," said Graham Cluley, senior technology consultant for Sophos. "The reference to 'brb' is shorthand for 'be right back'. What the recipient doesn't realise is that once infected remote hackers can gain unauthorized access to the data on their computers."

Downloading pirated software and/or clicking on any IM links should always be avoided but, for some reason the public doesn't seem the get the message.
http://www.technologynewsdaily.com/node/1179





'Darknets' Could Make File-Sharers Invisible To Authorities

Free-speech advocate working on system to share information anonymously.
Gil Kaufman

The music industry shouldn't get too comfortable with its recent Supreme Court victory over Grokster. An Irish programmer announced at a computer security conference last week that he is developing a new peer-to-peer file trading system that would be virtually invisible to the pryingeyes of government and corporations.

Promoting the idea of a "darknet," free-speech advocate Ian Clarke, 28, said he's developing a new version of his Freenet file-sharing system that will make it easier to trade digital information anonymously, in a bid to combat censorship and political repression — but not to necessarily violate copyrights — according to a report by The New York Times.

Clarke's announcement comes just a month after the Supreme Court ruled against P2P networks Grokster and StreamCast, deciding that their publishers can be held liable for copyright infringement as a result of using their products (see "File-Sharing Networks Can Be Liable For Copyright Infringements, Supreme Court Rules").

Clarke's new software — which he plans to release in a few months — differs from current open P2P networks, instead using a closed system that requires new users to be trusted by an existing member to enter into their "web of trust," keeping out those they don't know.

Though the new software will allow users to trade any kind of digital information they want securely, Clarke insists that his real goal is to help political dissidents in countries where computer networks are monitored by the government. He does admittedly dislike copyright laws and believes that his technology could create a world in which all information is freely exchanged. This is Clarke's second attempt at this kind of software, following his 2000 release of the original Freenet, which failed to catch on because it was harder to use than programs such as Grokster and LimeWire.

"The classic use for Freenet would be for a group of political dissidents in China, or even in the United States," Clarke said. It could, of course, also be used to trade movies, music, video games and other copyrighted software as well, he said, admitting, "It's an inevitable consequence of our design." And what if the anonymity provided by the software fell into the hands of terrorists intent on keeping their communications secret? Clarke said the benefits would still outweigh the potential harm.

"I think things like terrorism are the result of the absence of communication," he said.

Clarke isn't the only one looking to create closed P2P networks.

Computer-security researcher Ross Anderson is working with scientists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology on a new P2P network that will also be unveiled in a few months. Like Clarke's, it is designed to resist censorship and allow for secure exchanges safe from monitoring.

Both developers will likely face opposition, which has already begun across the globe.

Japanese programmer Isamu Kaneko was arrested last year after two users were charged with sharing copyrighted material anonymously through his WinNY system. Also, the recording industry recently filed suit against users of Blubster, a Spanish P2P network that has privacy features.

Like the earlier P2P craze unleashed by the original version of Napster more than six years ago, darknets will likely be with us for a while, according to J. D. Lasica, author of "Darknet: Hollywood's War Against the Digital Generation."

"Serious file traders have been gravitating toward them," he told the Times. "There is just this culture of freedom that people feel they're entitled to, and they don't want anyone looking over their shoulders."
http://www.mtv.com/news/articles/150...headlines=true





ILN News Letter
Michael Geist

Report Finds Canadian ISP Blocked Hundreds Of Sites

The OpenNet Initiative has released a report on the blockage of a union website by Canadian ISP Telus blockage. The report reveals that there were additional 766 websites that shared the same IP address and thus were also caught by the Telus action. These included an engineering company, a breast cancer fundraising site, an alternative medicine site based in Australia, and a Colorado based electronic recycling company. Report at http://www.opennetinitiative.net/bul...-010-telus.pdf


1st Circuit Refuses To Order Japanese Site Blocked

The 1st Circuit Court of Appeal has ruled that it does not have jurisdiction to order a Japanese site blocked. The case arose as part of a Lanham Act trademark action as the U.S. trademark holder argued that the Japanese site infringed its trademark. Case name is Cecil McBee v. Delica. Decision at http://www.ca1.uscourts.gov/pdf.opin...4-2733-01A.pdf





'Unacceptable potential risk' of competition more likely

Boston Airport Battles With Free Wi-Fi
Declan McCullagh

A free Wi-Fi service that competes with Logan Airport's paid-for service poses an 'unacceptable potential risk' to security forces gear, according to airport authorities

Boston's Logan International Airport is attempting to pull the plug on Continental Airlines' free Wi-Fi node, which competes with the airport's $7.95 (£4.48) per day pay service.

In an escalating series of threatening letters sent over the last few weeks, airport officials have pledged to "take all necessary steps to have the [Wi-Fi] antenna removed" from Continental's frequent flyer lounge. Continental's free service poses an "unacceptable potential risk" to communications gear used by the state police and the Transportation Security Administration, the letters claim.

For its part, Continental says that a 1996 law prevents local officials from meddling with wireless service and has asked the Federal Communications Commission to intervene. Its letter to the FCC argues that the agency has "exclusive jurisdiction" over Wi-Fi and should keep local authorities at bay.

"We believe that offering free Wi-Fi at Boston's Logan airport is consistent with the FCC's regulations and its prior rulings on similar issues and that it is permissible under the terms of our lease," Continental spokeswoman Julie King said Wednesday. The airline provides free wireless access at all of its Presidents Club lounges worldwide.

The Massachusetts Port Authority (Massport), the state government agency that operates Logan airport, was not available for comment.

At stake is a sizable chunk of revenue that Massport receives from its pay-per-use Wi-Fi service, which is operated by a commercial provider called Advanced Wireless Group. Massport did not respond to queries about the current sum, but the Boston Globe reported two years ago that the contract gives Massport "up to a maximum of 20 percent of annual gross revenues, which could exceed $1m annually."

Whether Continental will be allowed to continue its free service in its Presidents Club lounge may depend on the FCC's interpretation of an obscure set of rules that grew out of the 1996 Telecommunications Act. While Congress appears to have intended to authorise outdoor antennas and satellite dishes under a certain size, the airline claims the law covers Wi-Fi antennas built into access points — an interpretation the FCC also mentions on its Web page on the topic.

Massport is conceding nothing. Deborah Lau Kee, an attorney for the state agency, wrote in a July 5 letter that the FCC's regulations may not even be "lawful." Kee added that Continental is free to purchase access from Massport's partner at a "very reasonable rate structure for airline use based on the number of emplanements at Logan airport or on the number of 'hits'."

The FCC has started its investigation of Continental's request and is accepting public comments until 29 August.
http://uk.news.yahoo.com/050804/152/fous1.html





'Copyrighting Songs, Movies Will Soon Be Obsolete’
Glenn Chapman

Software that will allow people to anonymously swap music and other files on the Internet could render copyrighting of songs and movies obsolete by year's end, a creator said on Wednesday.

A test version of the 'darknet' software was made available on a Freenet Project website early on Wednesday and a refined edition could soon be ready "for general consumption", Ian Clarke of Freenet told AFP.

The software is intended to allow computer users worldwide to exchange files online in a way that hides them from industry investigators, vindictive politicians and others, Clarke said.

Music recording industry goliaths have fought to crush such renegade file sharing, which they claim fosters piracy of copyrighted material by musicians. Darknet software has so far been treated as a tolerable bane by copyright defenders because programmes have been difficult to use and limited to sharing between groups of no more than five or 10 computer users.

"We've devised a way you can have a darknet with potentially millions of users," Clarke said. "We hope we will have something suitable for launch this side of Christmas."

The Recording Industry Association of America won a recent US Supreme Court ruling that said online services that aid illicit file swapping are responsible accomplices in what amounts to theft.

Clarke said that Freenet is altruistically advancing technology and defending democratic ideals of unrestrained communication. "Our goal has never been to encourage copyright infringement, however, you cannot have freedom of communication and protect copyright laws," he continued. "The two are mutually exclusive."

Darknet software is a natural progression in increased security for computer users, Clarke said. The programme would let people weave clandestine global networks of peers they trust in an "invitation only" manner.

He predicted Freenet clandestine networks would undergo rapid "viral spreading." Clarke equated the forming of covert online allegiances with the way French resistance fighters warily gauged who to trust during World War II.

"If you are foolish enough to establish a link to an agent of the Chinese government then the only person hurt by that would be you," said Clarke, who maintained Freenet was created to battle Internet tyranny in places such as China, Iran and Saudi Arabia.

"You will have an option of being part of a global network without fear," Clarke said. "The whole copyright thing came out of left field for us."

People who make music and films deserve to be compensated for their creations, but must wake up to the fact that copyrighting is an impotent remnant of a past era, according to Clarke.

Demanding legal or political intervention to prop up copyrights is misguided, Clarke said. "In a capitalist system, if things change, you adapt," Clarke said, advising studios to invest in technology instead of lawyers.

"If you are selling water in the desert and one day it starts to rain, what do you do?" he asked rhetorically. "Go to the government and get them to ban rain, or do you sell something else?"

Freenet's user-cloaking software was tested by about 2,000 members of Orkut, an online social network created by Internet search giant Google, with "very positive results," Clarke said.

If Freenet's darknet software lives up to its promise, then "techniques used today to trace individual users simply will not work," according to Doug Tygar, a computer professor at the University of California, Berkeley.

Tygar predicted the release of effective, wide-scale darknet software is inevitable. "I think the music industry will have a strong challenge working in these kinds of environments," Tygar said, advising studios to evolve to survive.

RIAA representatives declined an offer to comment for this article on Wednesday. "We are not against file sharing," Jonathan Lamy said in an interview a day earlier. "It has been an abuse of technology by bad actors."
http://sify.com/news/fullstory.php?id=13909982

















Until next week,

- js.



















Current Week In Review






Recent WiRs -

July 30th, July 23rd, July 16th, July 9th, July 2nd, June 25th

Jack Spratt's Week In Review is published every Friday. Please submit letters, articles, and press releases in plain text English to jackspratts (at) lycos (dot) com. Include contact info. Submission deadlines are Wednesdays @ 1700 UTC.


"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