Peer-To-Peer News - The Week In Review - October 15th, ’05

[JackSpratts]

"We are disappointed that politicians of both parties chose to toss overboard the First Amendment and free artistic and creative expression in favor of political expediency." – Doug Lowenstein


"It's kind of ironic [Schwarzenegger 's] protecting kids from himself." – Jason Della Rocca


"Recording industries on both sides of the Pacific are trying to find all kinds of schemes to make more money. They have this alternative commercial channel, and they're just trying to block it or tax it." – Tim Bajarin


"users are like sheep. they stick to what they know." – Camille Le On


"It's like charging riders when they board the bus, and then again when they get off." – Naoki Koizumi


"It's ridiculous to ban. I'm paying $45,000 a year to go to college and I'm a struggling artist, so if there's free music or movies out there, I'm going to take it." – Jessica Bhargava


"Just say no to DRM." – David Berlind






































October 15th





P2P Activity Doubles In Two Years

Despite the best efforts of the music industry, peer-to-peer activity has more than doubled over the past two years according to the latest figures from a p2p tracking service.

Big Champagne reports that in September the average number of people logged onto p2p networks worldwide was 9,284,558. In September 2003 the figure was 4,319,182. Moreover the increase in the number of users since the 2004 figure of 6,784,574 suggest that there is no slowing in the rate of growth.

Music remains the cornerstone of p2p activity accounting for just over 70 per cent of all traffic while the swapping of movies remains at low levels. However as Big Champagne's tracking method cannot measure BitTorrent traffic the figures for the number of films swapped is likely to be lower than the actual level.

In July John Kennedy, CEO of the International Federation of Phonographic Industries (IFPI), said that the legal campaign against file sharers in 11 countries was being effective in dissuading people from file sharing

'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,' he said. '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.'

This may well be the case but if attitudes are changing it has yet to be reflected by statistics. Even in the US, where there have been approximately 15,000 lawsuits, the rise in p2p usage mirrors the global trend.
http://www.pcpro.co.uk/news/78525/p2...two-years.html





Software Pirate To Pay $1.1 Million
Joris Evers

An admitted counterfeiter has agreed to pay Microsoft and Symantec $1.1 million in restitution, a victory in the software industry's fight against software piracy.

The award is part of a plea agreement in a criminal software piracy case in Houston, Symantec said Tuesday. The case came to court after a yearlong investigation by the Houston police and the FBI into the activities of Li Chen, who was found to have 5,100 copies of counterfeit Symantec software at his Houston business, Symantec said.

Chen pled guilty to one count of trademark infringement and agreed to pay Symantec $1,005,000 in restitution, the Cupertino, Calif., software maker said. Microsoft is to get $95,000, according to a copy of the agreement, which was signed on Aug. 29.

Law enforcement officials searched Chen's business, Microsource International, on Nov. 17, 2004. In addition to the pirated software, they found documents showing that Chen had sold counterfeit Symantec products with a retail value of more than $9.9 million, Symantec said.

"This guy was one of the largest distributors of pirated software. He had direct ties to China, where the counterfeit product was being produced," said Cris Paden, a Symantec spokesman.

Microsoft worked with Symantec to support the Houston police and FBI in this case, said Bonnie MacNaughton, a senior attorney at the Redmond, Wash., software giant. "Microsoft is very pleased with the outcome and law enforcement's support for intellectual property protection," she said in a statement provided by Microsoft's public relations agency.

Symantec and Microsoft both have significant ongoing initiatives to fight software piracy. Since September 2003, Symantec has won judgments in criminal and civil court of more than $19.5 million in damages against various entities for selling counterfeit Symantec software, the company said.
http://news.com.com/Software+pirate+...3-5884914.html





Theater Cashier Faces Prison For Bootlegging, Posting Movies

A 19-year-old movie theater cashier faces eight years in prison after pleading guilty to bootlegging movies and posting them to the Web, prosecutors said.

Curtis Salisbury, who worked in a St. Louis, Mo., multiplex theater, admitted that he recorded ``Bewitched'' and ``The Perfect Man'' this summer. He uploaded the movies onto a site created by FBI agents in Northern California as part of ``Operation Copycat,'' a sting to fight movie piracy.

Salisbury pleaded guilty Monday in San Jose federal court to a provision of the Family Entertainment and Copyright Act of 2005, which prohibits using recording equipment to make copies of movies in theaters. The conviction is the first in the sting.

Salisbury and several friends snuck into the projection room after the theater closed and recorded directly from the projector.

He was not paid for uploading the movies, but had discussed payment, said a spokesman for the U.S. Attorney's office.

Sentencing was scheduled for February. Salisbury also faces a $250,000 fine.

Six people in the Northern District of California have been charged in connection with the sting operation, and investigators have conducted 40 searches.
http://www.siliconvalley.com/mld/sil...printstory.jsp





8 Charged In Illegal Release Of 'Star Wars'
AP

Eight Californians were charged Tuesday with involvement in the illegal release of "Star Wars: Episode III - Revenge of the Sith" before the movie appeared in theaters.

Court documents allege the piracy began with a "screener" copy of the film at a post-production facility where one of the defendants worked and ended with the movie being released online the day before its worldwide release. "Screeners" are copies of films made available for such purposes as reviewing or for use by voters in industry awards programs.

The case is the latest attempt to crack down on movie piracy by law enforcement and the film industry.

All are accused of misdemeanor copyright infringement charges that carry up to one year in prison. One of the defendants also faces a felony count of uploading the movie onto the Internet, which carries a sentence as long as three years in prison if convicted.

All eight defendants are scheduled to appear in federal court next month.
http://www.siliconvalley.com/mld/sil...l/12757257.htm





Hollywood Suits Hit Download Sites
Brooks Boliek

Hollywood filed a new round of copyright-infringement lawsuits Thursday against a half-dozen Web sites, alleging that they attempted to fool consumers into thinking the sites were legitimately offering copyrighted motion picture images for download.

In fact, the suits allege, the sites falsely claim or imply that by using their services, consumers can download movies legally on the Internet. Actually, they merely connect users to peer-to- peer sites that have pirated copies of movies, according to the Motion Picture Assn. of America (MPAA), the trade group representing the major studios. Should they download such movies, the consumer commits copyright infringement, which can bring serious consequences.

"There are plenty of ways to download movies legally online, which is good for consumers and good for the movie industry," MPAA chairman and CEO Dan Glickman said. "These scam businesses charge customers for facilitating illegal downloads of movies, which could lure innocent consumers into becoming lawbreakers. We won't tolerate this scam premised on the illegal swapping of valuable movie content."

The lawsuit was filed in the Southern District Court of New York against http://wwwDownloadshield.com, http://www.Full-movie-downloads.com, http://www.MP3eternity.com, http:// www.Moviesadvance.com, http://www.Thedownloadplace.com and http://www.Easydownloadcenter.com.

According to the MPAA suits, these Web sites charge a subscription fee ranging from $20 for a three-month trial to $40 for lifetime membership ostensibly enabling the member to download an unlimited number of movies online from P2P networks, which often include movies still in theaters.

Noting that these downloads are unauthorized and illegal, the MPAA is seeking a court order forbidding the sites to continue operating.

This marks the third round of lawsuits filed against alleged pirate sites and the first such lawsuit following the U.S. Supreme Court's decision in MGM v. Grokster, which ruled in June that file-sharing networks could be liable when users copy movies, music and other protected works without permission.

The lawsuits came a day after a federal grand jury indicted three individuals in conjunction with two simultaneous actions, "Operation Remaster" and "Operation Buccaneer." The raids on 13 locations in California and Texas targeted individuals who were suspected of involvement in a large-scale network believed to be illegally manufacturing and distributing millions of pirated CDs and DVDs. It was the largest raid ever conducted against suspected illegal CD and DVD labs in the U.S.

More than 500,000 CDs and more than 1 million CD inserts were seized, along with thousands of DVDs and 3,300 "stampers" -- the metal discs used to press multiple copies.

In addition to the upstate raids, the Los Angeles Police Department's Organized Crime Vice Division this week executed a search warrant at two locations in Los Angeles county supplied by facilities raided in Operations Remaster and Buccaneer. In this action, authorities said, 20,655 replicated CDs were seized from a telemarketing company offering counterfeit CDs to numerous Latin retailers and a connected storage facility.
http://today.reuters.com/news/newsAr...-PIRACY-DC.XML





Ex-Miramax Chiefs Halfway to Financial Goal for New Studio
David M. Halbfinger and Andrew Ross Sorkin

If all goes according to plan, Bob and Harvey Weinstein, the former heads of Miramax, will soon have raised more than $420 million for their movie studio, people briefed on the efforts said Thursday.

And if all goes according to an early version of their business plan, the new movie studio will be profitable by 2007, putting out 25 movies a year, and generating annual revenue of $1.9 billion.

That would give the new company annual sales greater than those of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer before it was acquired by Sony and other investors this year. It would also give the Weinstein Company revenue roughly equal to the revenue of Miramax when the brothers ran it for the Walt Disney Company.

While many in Hollywood were skeptical of the ambitions of the Weinsteins, they appear to be closing in on meeting their goals.

In a regulatory filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission on Monday, Weinstein Company Holdings, the venture of the brothers, reported it had raised $230.5 million from 18 equity investors thus far, out of an anticipated $420 million.

People briefed on the fund-raising - who insisted on anonymity, saying they feared that identification might disrupt the deal - said the equity offering was already oversubscribed, and that the amount raised would exceed the goal. Investors so far, these people said, include strategic partners like the advertising agency WPP Group and the film-processing company Technicolor, which will process and distribute Weinstein Company films. (At Miramax, the Weinsteins had used a Technicolor competitor, Deluxe.)

Other recent investors include Mark Cuban, the owner of HDNet, a high-definition satellite TV network, as well as the Dallas Mavericks; the luxury goods company LVMH Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton; and TF1, a French television broadcaster. As previously disclosed, the biggest investors in the Weinsteins include their investment banker, Goldman, Sachs & Company, and Tarak Ben Ammar, a French-Tunisian financier, producer and chairman of Quinta Communications.

The Weinsteins are also still working on a plan to issue what is expected to be some $500 million in securitized debt.

Bob and Harvey Weinstein declined to comment. A company spokeswoman, Sarah Levinson, said by e-mail message that the company was "confident that it has the operational capacity and financial resources to successfully meet its goals and carry out its business plan."

While a fuller picture of the new company and its finances is likely to emerge within weeks with the completion of the equity offering, a working draft of a confidential memorandum to investors, written in June, provides a wealth of previously undisclosed details about the business strategy for the new studio.

The draft, provided by a potential investor who received it, details their inventory of completed, current and still-sketchy projects; the kinds of movies they plan to make; the types of deals they intend to make with distributors like cable operators and pay-cable television networks; and their relationships with directors, producers and screenwriters.

For example, the Weinsteins say in the draft that "it has become critical to control one's own destiny" by owning their own home-video distribution; people close to the brothers' planning confirm that they intend to work out a collaboration with an established video distributor.

One conclusion that jumps out is that if Miramax became known as the house that Quentin Tarantino built, the Weinstein Company, as envisioned back in June, might become known as the house that Michael Moore built.

Two Moore films, one this year and one next, were projected to bring the Weinsteins their largest profits each year: "Fahrenheit 9/11.5," a sequel to last year's blockbuster, would examine the run-up to the 2004 presidential election and is projected to deliver $47 million in profit; and "Sicko," on the health care industry and health maintenance organizations, is projected to deliver $52 million to the bottom line. Neither film was included in a public announcement of coming projects earlier this week.

Under the separation agreement between the Weinsteins and Disney, the brothers were given sequel rights to 15 franchise or potentially franchise projects, including a remake of "Halloween." They also took 13 TV projects from Disney, including future seasons of "Project Greenlight" and "Project Runway"; a pilot called "Emergency Sex," on United Nations aid workers; a potential reality series based on the movie "Rounders;" and "Dangerous Company," a series for NBC based on a novel by Peter Bart, the editor of the trade publication Variety.

Some of the draft's language seems aimed far more at investors than at peers of the Weinsteins in Hollywood and independent film circles: "The Weinstein Company will be less focused on 'prestige pictures' and more focused on the types of films that have made Dimension so successful over the past 11 years," it assures, referring to Bob Weinstein's Dimension label, which has made genre films like the "Scream" and "Scary Movie" series.

As for the new Weinstein label itself, the draft makes clear that Harvey Weinstein intends to continue making "high-quality commercial films" like Miramax's "Good Will Hunting" and "Chicago"; "moderate-budget prestige pictures" like "The English Patient" and "Shakespeare in Love"; English-language acquisitions; and foreign films like "Amelie" and "Like Water for Chocolate."

There is no mention of plans to risk making movies in the vein of high-budget box-office disappointments like "Cold Mountain" or "Gangs of New York."

David M. Halbfinger reported fromLos Angeles for this article and Andrew Ross Sorkin from New York.
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/10/07/bu.../07studio.html





Legitimate Music Hits A Higher Note

The way we listen to music has come a long way from the old days of iconic British pop music show, "Top of the Pops". Popping down to the local shop to snap up the latest vinyl number one in the singles charts is a fading memory as the digital way of doing things takes hold.

Downloading songs either online or to a mobile phone cuts out all the hassle (and some of the expense) of purchasing the physical product. But while the Asian mobile digital music industry is already pretty well served with competition, online services have yet to rival those in the US or parts of Europe, admits Sudhanshu Sarronwala, chief executive officer (CEO) of Soundbuzz, Asia's largest digital online and mobile music retailer. Soundbuzz boasts a digital library of over 300,000 songs, perhaps just 10 per cent of its ultimate size, says its CEO.

Creating an industry

According to Sarronwala, the challenge for Soundbuzz, at least in the short term, is not so much from Apples' ubiquitous iPod and its closed iTunes online store, but in developing an industry partly undermined by illegal and unlicensed websites. Progress is being made, says Sarronwala.

His optimism has been fuelled by a number of legal rulings against P2P (Peer to Peer) websites and consumers in countries across the globe including the US, Australia and South Korea in the last three months. "(The legal rulings) are not going to directly hit business positively straight away, but I think it's one of two or three things that need to happen," says Sarronwala. "There are a remarkable number of people and parents who had no idea that P2P sites were illegal. In many cases there were P2P sites that were even charging money, which sort of legitimizes it for the average consumer. Many people weren't in favour of going to consumers directly and attacking P2P sites that were encouraging the abuse of copyright, but it just had to be done," he adds.

Sarronwala believes that by 2008 or 2009, 25 to 30 per cent of the total music market will be in a digital format. "In the final analysis, one or two generations down the track, is it going to be all digital? I would think that would be a large percentage which would be digital. I think there will always be a physical market, but I don't think that my eight year old son is ever going to buy a CD."

There is still some way to go before this situation is achieved. Of the top ten online digital music retailers last year in the US, just three were licensed. Moreover, there are around 2 billion songs traded illegally each month worldwide, mostly from the US. This figure dwarfs the legitimate industry which trades only 60 million songs per month, though Sarronwala points out that new business models involving a flat fee for unlimited songs have made the figures harder to compare.

Nevertheless, the rapid growth in the legitimate market is encouraging, he says. "A year and a half ago it was 2 billion versus zero. The emergence of a legitimate music market developing 60 million songs a month is fantastic in under two years."

Sarronwala claims to welcome the success of Apple's iPod and iTunes as a key to building momentum for the entire legitimate industry. "We are not talking about fighting for market share. At this point in time we are talking about the creation of an industry, the creation of a distribution mechanism... We still believe that there are not enough legitimate music services. When we look around the region we are still astonished to find that Soundbuzz is still the only legitimate player across multi-cultures. You need more than one player. You need a critical mass." So far, key markets for Soundbuzz's online business include India, Singapore, Australia, Hong Kong and Taiwan while the company's mobile business covers 13 markets of Asia minus Japan and South Korea.

Alliance strategy

The growth of the market has seen Soundbuzz outgrow its old strategy. In the early years of the digital and online music industry, companies like Soundbuzz provided the content, licensing, technology platform and then integrated the service with the portal's billing system, leaving the portal to market the product to their subscribers. These days they have become more proactive, looking to strategic alliances with consumer brands like Levis or banks to promote the brand. "Over the last year or so we have started interacting with the consumers directly as Soundbuzz," says Yen Ong, Soundbuzz General Manger in Asia.

In addition, central to their plans is Soundbuzz's forging strategic relationships with MP3 manufacturer Creative Technologies (they hope to have a similar arrangement with iRiver "by early next year"). "We had to go back and ask ourselves what's the music system we want to create in the Asian environment?" says Sarronwala. "The interoperability of the format was pretty much the key to that and the dominant format which is licensed openly across all these formats is Windows Media."

Aside from Apple, all the major device manufacturers, including Creative Technologies, iRiver and Samsung read Windows Media format. The upshot is a system similar to iTunes and with ease of access of critical importance. As soon as the device is connected to a desktop the user is taken directly to the Soundbuzz music store. "All consumers will need the software for sure because they need it to manage the device," says Yen Ong.

Further strategic relationships with IP servers enable the company to sidestep the potentially thorny issue of payments online. Consumers are reluctant to use credit cards for small ticket items and in Asia credit card usage over the Internet is rarer still. Many consumers may also be too young to even own credit cards. Instead, an agreement with IP servers sees charges tagged onto the monthly bill by the IP server in the same way mobile download fees are tagged on to monthly bills. This has been an essential step in Soundbuzz's success, which divides about 50-50 between mobile and online. "Today we differentiate our business as online and mobile. My guess is that by 2007 we won't," says Sarronwala noting that mobile market penetration is much higher, started earlier and technical convergence is likely to make downloading even more widely accessible.

Next step: China's mainland

Meanwhile, Soundbuzz's preparations for a mainland rollout gathers pace. Sarronwala is clearly excited by the 30 million broadband connections and hundreds of millions of Internet users. "The Chinese spend on mobile music, gaming, matchmaking, and all sorts of online services. The culture of paying for products there is not as alien as people would have us believe."

Pricing will have to be got right though, admits Sarronwala. One song in Hong Kong is worth about US$1 while in India it costs about US$0.40 "for you get a full track which you can burn to a CD and port to your device. The pricing for the main China market is going to have to be reflective of that market," says Sarronwala.

Either way, Asia is going to continue to play the central role in the development of the nascent digital music industry. "The new business models in Asia are dramatically different from those in the West." The US$4 billion Ringtone business is being replaced by "Truetones", "Mastertones" and "ring-back tones", all Asian developments. "Interaction with music is changing dramatically. Even ten years ago, the primary aim of music was to entertain. Now with digital music, a lot of music utilization is for expression. Asia is leading that."
http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/english...ent_482972.htm





RealPlayer, Helix Users At Risk Of Attack
Dawn Kawamoto

Popular media players RealPlayer and Helix Player are at risk of a security vulnerability that could let malicious attackers launch remote attacks on a user's system, security experts say.

A flaw has been discovered in RealNetworks' RealPlayer version 10.0.5.756 Gold and Helix Player 1.0.5.757 Gold running on Linux or Unix operating systems, according to a report released Tuesday by the French Security Incident Response Team, or FrSIRT.

Attack code that takes advantage of the flaw, a so-called exploit, has been posted on the Internet, increasing the security risk to users.

The RealNetworks products are vulnerable because of a format string error that occurs when a malformed .rp or .rt file is clicked and players are launched. Malicious attackers can take advantage of the error to take remote control of users' computer systems.

Bug researcher Contex discovered the flaws and notified RealNetworks about the vulnerabilities, but the company has yet to issue a security update, said Thomas Kristensen, chief technology officer for Secunia, a security firm that rates the vulnerability as "highly critical."

Kristensen, pointing to an advisory issued by Contex on the Open Security Group site, noted that the bug researcher was forced to prematurely publish the exploit code.

"Real has been duly informed about the issue and (they) are fixing (it). Sadly, though, it seems someone is trying to pinch my research. As such, I have been forced to release this advisory sooner than hoped," according to a Contex posting. "Until Real gets a new release out, do not play untrusted media with RealPlayer or Helix Player."

Kristensen noted the reasoning behind publishing the exploit code before a patch has been developed.

"By publishing all the details about the vulnerability, it helps people understand they have to be careful when following the links to the media files affected by these vulnerabilities," Kristensen said.

Representatives from RealNetworks were not immediately available for comment.

RealNetworks has issued several security patches for its media players this past year. The latest was in June, when it released fixes for four vulnerabilities in its popular RealPlayer media player.
http://news.com.com/RealPlayer%2C+He...3-5884096.html





Oyez, yoyez, yeegan, yagen

First Swedish File-Sharing Trial Opens

The first trial against a person accused of file-sharing begins here Tuesday.

The new law against downloading copyrighted material went into effect here on July 1st. This first case is against a 28 year old from Västerås, west of Stockholm, accused of making a popular Swedish film available over the Internet through a file-sharing program.

Meanwhile, the Swedish police have asked the Data Inspection Board if it is legal to post recordings from police interrogations on the Internet. Last spring the police in Ljusdal, north of Stockholm, questioned a person over the telephone twice. That person apparently recorded both interviews and has posted the sound on a website, along with extracts from a letter from the police.

The police say the recordings have nothing to do with case investigations, but they wonder if putting the phone call sound on the Internet violates the privacy of the officer involved.

The Data Inspection Board has not responded but a board lawyer tells the newspaper “Ljusdals-Posten” that harmless material can be put on the Net, but it should be removed if someone feels insulted and asks for its removal.
http://www.sr.se/cgi-bin/Internation...artikel=710807


File-Sharing Evidence Questioned

The first trial against a person accused of file-sharing here has raised a number of questions about the validity of evidence gathered for the police by private interests.

A 28 year old from Västerås, west of Stockholm, is accused of distributing a popular Swedish film over the Internet. But in court Tuesday, he said he had only confessed to downloading music and films, which did not become illegal until later. He says the police never once asked about the film, which he says he never had on his computer.

The evidence against him was gathered by the Anti-Pirate Bureau, a controversial music and film industry lobby group, which says they found the film offered from a specific IP address. Apparently the only police action was to ask an Internet Service Provider who had that address.

The defence spent several hours Tuesday pointing out the uncertainty of using IP addresses, which can be shared among many users or even hijacked. Critics have charged that the screenshots such as those presented by the lobby group can be easily faked.
http://www.sr.se/cgi-bin/Internation...artikel=711619


File Sharing Trial Closes In Confusion

Sweden's first trial concerning illegal file sharing closed on Tuesday having thrown up more questions than answers.

Not only is the old copyright law which the case was based upon unclear and the file sharing technology complicated, but the defendant retracted the admission he made in police interviews.

The 28 year old on trial at Västmanland district court in Västerås admitted to police that he had made the Swedish film Hip Hip Hora available to others via the file sharing programme DC in December last year. Or so investigators thought.

In court, the 28 year old took back his apparent confession and explained that there had been a misunderstanding. He thought he was being charged with downloading copyright-protected material - which was not illegal until 1st July this year, when the new copyright law came into effect.

In the police interview, the man was never questioned directly about the film the case was based upon, but in his evidence to the court he was very clear:

"I have never had that film at home - I have never downloaded that," he said.

The case is founded almost entirely on evidence from the anti-piracy organisation, Antipiratbyrå, (APB), which represents the Swedish film and computer games industries.

APB accessed a local network with the DC programme and found Hip Hip Hora available, recorded the distributor's IP address and reported him to the police. The police turned to the internet service provider Bredbandsbolaget, which was able to confirm that the IP address belonged to the Västerås man.

Torbjörn Persson, the defendant's lawyer, devoted several hours to demonstrating the lack of certainty when an IP address is used as evidence - not least due to the fact that in many blocks of flats there are unencrypted wireless networks which allow anyone to link to the internet.

The judges - who, Swedish media were amused to note, were all in their late middle ages - were treated to a platter of terms such as spoofing, hijacking, sniffer and monkey-in-the-middle, all describing ways of exploiting another user's network connection.

Torbjörn Persson attacked APB which he described as 'informers' and 'provocateurs', and he criticised the police for failings in their investigation.

The case has been front page news in Sweden, where some 800,000 people are said to participate in file sharing, and the outcome was expected to set a precedent for similar cases which are lined up at courts around the country.

But since the old copyright law was in many respects less clear than the new one, the verdict may prove to have the opposite effect.

The prosecutor made no specific demands regarding punishment, saying instead that it was up to the court whether a guilty verdict should result in a fine or a suspended prison sentence.

The verdict is expected on 25th October.
http://www.thelocal.se/article.php?I...&date=20051012





Offering eDonkey Links To Copyrighted Material Constitutes A Violation Of German Copyright Law
Robert W. Smith

Regarding the lawsuit in which the Motion Picture Association of America sought a temporary injunction against the Swiss-hosted website The-Realworld.de (TRW) the opinion of the court has now been made public. Thus in its decision of July 15 2005 the District Court in Hamburg came to the following conclusion: The making available of "edited" links which allow the downloading of installments of TV series via the Internet file-exchange network eDonkey constitutes a violation of the German Copyright Act (UrhG).
Anzeige

The respondent in the case had operated a website which without the consent of the copyright holders in question contained links to eDonkey downloads from a diverse array of TV series such as "Emergency Room," "Sopranos" and "Alf." In the opinion of the judges from Hamburg this particular offer on the Internet gave the copyright holders a claim to injunctive relief in accordance with § 97 UrhG. They alone had the right to disseminate or make public the copyright-protected works of cinematographic art in question, the judges found.

The respondent was to be considered responsible as a disturber, the judges ruled, for as the party responsible for operating the website he had substantially facilitated access to the "pirated movie material." The same applied to the operator of the server on which the website was to be found, the judges noted. The latter had failed to heed a request by the copyright holders to block the website and was therefore also legally answerable. What was more, neither party had taken note of the demand issued to make a declaration of discontinuance with a penalty clause, the judges pointed out.

The ruling by the District Court in Hamburg is one of the first decisions to be reached on this topic. The amount in controversy in the case had been set at 150,000 euros. Whether an appeal against the decision has been filed is not yet known. On his website the operator is still calling for donations to help him fight the lawsuit.
http://www.heise.de/english/newsticker/news/64375





China To Develop Its Own DVD Format

Announced next-generation standard based on HD DVD

For the second time in two years, China has announced plans to develop its own next-generation DVD standard to break the monopoly of foreign companies and avoid paying heavy licensing fees.

If successful, the move could add a new wrinkle to the battle between HD DVD and the competing Blu-ray Disc formats over which will become the dominant new DVD standard.

The official Xinhua News Agency said the new standard will be based on but incompatible with HD DVD, which is being promoted by Toshiba Corp. and Universal Studios, as well as Intel Corp. and Microsoft Corp., the leading suppliers of chips and software for most of the world's personal computers.

The Chinese standard, not expected to reach markets until at least 2008, would provide higher definition, better sound and better anti-piracy measures, Xinhua quoted Lu Da, deputy director of the government-affiliated National Disc Engineering Center, as saying earlier this week.

"With such format and related standards," Lu said, "We could have our own voice in the DVD industry."

The announcement marks China's latest attempt to leverage its manufacturing muscle to play by its own terms in the home video market. Up to 80 percent of DVD players are made in China, but makers have to cough up around 40 percent of the cost of each player to license holders, according to Chinese reports.

China began developing its own DVD standard in 1999, rolling out EVD, or enhanced versatile disc, in November 2003 with a vow to shake off dependence on foreign standards. Despite strong government backing, the initiative fizzled amid a legal battle between the technology's developer and a consortium of Chinese player manufacturers. Protoype EVD players were introduced in 2004 but never established a presence in the market.

Xinhua didn't give a name for the new HD DVD-based standard, and it wasn't clear whether it had borrowed technology from the EVD standard. No directory listing could be obtained for the National Disc Engineering Center on Friday, which was a holiday in China.

HD DVD's backers say they have made inroads with Chinese manufacturers, whose support is vital to quickly deploying the technology at a low price.

Blu-ray is backed by Sony Corp., Apple Computer Inc., Hewlett-Packard Co. and Dell Inc., along with a variety of other tech companies and studios.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/9618578/





Headline Links Can Be Dangerous In Japan
Mike Yamamoto

U.S. courts, by design or default, have generally taken a laissez-faire approach to the digital republication of printed works as long as it adheres to longstanding brick-and-mortar copyright law. But plaintiffs in other lands don't always agree with American law, of course, and some are taking action to stop what they believe is blatant copyright violation here and abroad.

Earlier this year, Agence France Presse sued Google on charges of unauthorized use of the news agency's photos and stories, a case that's still pending in U.S. federal court. Last week, a Japanese newspaper won a Tokyo court decision against Digital Alliance, a small company that was judged to be publishing its news headlines without permission.

Although the Yomiuri Shimbun was awarded only about $2,000 in damages from Digital, which is also based in Japan, the ruling could have enormous ramifications because it means that unauthorized use of headlines alone could be considered illegal. If this kind of judicial interpretation spreads to other nations, it could jeopardize countless sources of information now taken for granted on the Web, such as blogs, search engines, RSS feeds and a seemingly infinite number of sites that provide some form of headline aggregation.

Blog community response:

"Does the first news source to write a headline get to stop everyone else from using it? Think of the mess that would cause after mergers: 'Company X Buys Company Y.' Whoever gets the story out can then stop everyone else from using that headline."
--techdirt

"Copyright law has two expressions: the state's law (the written-down law backed up by the power of the state) and the natural law (the way things work in the absence of state law). Many people don't understand natural law."
--The Angry Economist

"The DMCA is a bad law written by the wrong people with somewhat decent intentions. Though the goal was to update the outdated copyright code for the online world, it's had a million unintended effects that have done anything but protect copyrights and creativity."
--Plagiarism Today

http://news.com.com/2061-11199_3-5892643.html





Japan's Music Industry Wants Fee on Sales of Latest Digital Players
Martin Fackler

In the United States, recording labels want a bigger slice of Apple's success in digital music by seeking higher prices on downloaded songs. Japan's music industry has a different idea: putting a fee on iPods.

The industry has asked the Japanese government to charge a royalty, to be added to the retail price of portable digital music players like Apple's iPod, which has been explosively popular here. Money earned from the fee, which will be probably be 2 to 5 percent of the retail price, would go to recording companies, songwriters and artists as compensation for revenue lost from home copying.

It is a familiar story of vested interests feeling threatened by new technologies. Like their counterparts in the United States, Japanese recording companies are struggling to catch up with the Internet and the advances in digital recording technology that are transforming their industry.

But in Japan, the proposed fee has also touched off an unusual public battle over the influence that industry groups here still wield over the government and economy.

As a powerful political lobby, Japan's recording industry expected to get its way when it first asked for the fee last fall. Instead, its proposal remains stalled in one of Japan's government committees. The news media, meanwhile, mock the fee as the "iPod tax."

"This is typical of how industry groups try to manipulate government at the expense of consumers," said Hiroko Mizuhara, head of the Consumers Union of Japan. "A lot of things in Japan have changed, but this hasn't."

The recording industry has already succeeded in slowing the arrival of Apple's iTunes music download service to Japan through its reluctance to negotiate licensing deals, people in the industry said.

Apple opened a Japanese version of iTunes in August, two years after its introduction in the United States, but without songs from the major Japanese labels like Sony Music Entertainment and Warner Music Japan, which still have not signed licensing agreements.

ITunes received a warmer welcome from Japanese consumers, who bought one million songs in the first four days, according to Apple, which declined to comment for this article.

The proposed fees in Japan come as the music industry in the United States appears to be jealously looking at Apple, whose iPod and iTunes dominate their respective global markets. Record executives in the United States have recently said that they wanted to renegotiate and raise prices of songs sold by iTunes when licensing agreements expire next spring.

"Recording industries on both sides of the Pacific are trying to find all kinds of schemes to make more money," said Tim Bajarin, an analyst at the Creative Strategies consulting firm in Campbell, Calif. "They have this alternative commercial channel, and they're just trying to block it or tax it."

The proposed fee would affect portable digital players that store data on internal hard-disk drives and flash memory computer chips - which include not only iPods but rivals like the Sony Walkman and other portable devices.

A fee of 2 percent is already imposed on devices using earlier digital recording technologies, like compact disc and minidisc recorders. Japanese manufacturers have been longtime opponents of such fees. The fees are similar to a 2 percent surcharge imposed by the United States government in 1992 on sales of digital tape recorders, the first generation of digital home recording equipment, also to compensate for copying.

The current fight in Japan has particular political significance because it is taking place in a government advisory committee, which helps the powerful bureaucracies set policy. These committees are usually tame panels that reflect vested interests because they are packed with insiders from the industries being regulated.

The committee, under the Agency for Cultural Affairs, is split over the issue of whether royalties included in the price of music at online stores allow users to copy songs to portable players. The recording industry says the royalties only cover transmission to the listener's personal computer, not for copying from there to a player like an iPod. Opponents counter that consumers copying to a player for their personal use should not be forced to pay twice to get a song from iTunes to their iPod.

"It's like charging riders when they board the bus, and then again when they get off," said Naoki Koizumi, a law professor in Tokyo at Keio University who serves on the committee.

The Japanese recording industry complains that the sudden rise of the portable digital players is robbing it of the revenue that used to come from the fees on CD and MD recorders. Earnings from fees have fallen last year to 2.2 billion yen ($20 million) from 3.8 billion yen in 2000, according to the Japanese Society for Rights of Authors, Composers and Publishers. "Now everyone who used to be using CD's and MD's are using iPods," said Koichi Numamura, head of the society's recording rights department. "We can't just sit by silently while we lose money."
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/10/10/te...G2ouS6FUsSYzXw





Friday Morning Quarterback

Adelstein Hosts Town Meeting in Iowa On Deregulation

FCC Commissioner Jonathan Adelstein hosted a public forum at the University of Iowa (dubbed "Town Meeting on the Future of the Media"), addressing local concerns surrounding state of media consolidation and deregulation.

The forum, attended by citizens and broadcasters served as a pulpit for the necessity of local news media, with Commissioner Adelstein stating, "What we've done over the years is to pull our own fangs, and we have become basically a toothless tiger. The public is better served hearing many voices rather than a handful of giant voices across a number of outlets they own. There's virtually no coverage of local issues."

"I want your perspective on how well broadcasters are meeting the needs of your community," stated Adelstein before asking a series of questions. "Are they providing sufficient coverage of issues of local concern, including local elections? Do you have enough choice in news sources? Are broadcasters providing sufficient family friendly programming? Are you hearing local artists played on the radio?"

"We need your input on these vital issues. This is an opportunity for all members of the community to give their perspective on how issues of concern to them are treated. I encourage you to speak out and become part of the solution in this new media landscape. Your input will help assure that the commission is more responsive to the public in future media ownership reviews."

Adelstein expressed his desire to see that what the FCC does serves the public interest and corporate bottom lines as they move toward redrafting new rules that can avoid irreversible damage to local ownership at the hands of further corporate consolidation.
http://www.fmqb.com/Article.asp?id=129878


Clear Channel CEO Still Behind Media Ownership Changes
Mark Mays

In a speech given to the Progress And Freedom Foundation, Clear Channel President/CEO Mark Mays called for Congress to further loosen media ownership rules, to allow terrestrial radio stations to better compete with newer musical mediums. "Free radio is struggling. The cost of competing with new technologies and increased listener choice is staggering and profits are down," Mays said

Mays listed iPods, satellite radio, Internet radio and wireless phones as new competition for terrestrial radio stations, all of which he said is unregulated in comparison. "Free radio companies do not have the same freedom and flexibility as our competition, free radio companies are not able to move fast enough," he said.

Mays discussed at length the 1996 Telecommunications Act, which deregulated many ownership rules, and called for further relaxing of the rules, calling them "outdated restrictions." He added that broadcasters should be given the option to combine their resources to better roll out HD Radio. Specifically, Mays called for raising the ownership cap from 8 to 10 stations in markets with 60 or more stations. And in markets with 75 or more stations, Mays said the ownership cap should go up from 8 to 12.

Not everyone agrees with Mays' thoughts. Senator Byron Dorgan (D-ND) spoke to Reuters, asking, "How much bigger does one need to get? We already have too much concentration in ownership."
http://www.fmqb.com/Article.asp?id=123561





P2P File Sharing Declines In September, But Total Usage Up

A new report from BigChampagne shows that while P2P usage saw a slight drop in September, the total amount of users continues to skyrocket. In the U.S., the total number of unique users sharing simultaneously in September to 6.75 million, down from 6.87 million in August, which was the second-biggest number ever recorded. Globally there was a slight dip of 3.5 percent from August to September.

Meanwhile, the overall amount of total P2P users has shot up when compared to data from the past two years. In the States, the average number of simultaneous users jumped up 43.9 percent when compared to September of 2004. And when compared to September 2003, usage is up a shocking 133.3 percent. The global averages are not too far off, though the U.S. still makes up 72.7 percent of worldwide P2P traffic.

The RIAA continues to file lawsuits against illegal file-sharers, though as reported yesterday, many of those being sued are innocent of the charges.
http://www.fmqb.com/Article.asp?id=129521





Streaming Soars Among News/Talk Stations

A new study from News Generation looks at the new, second wave of streaming radio content online. Fifty News and Talk stations were surveyed in the top 50 markets, with 54 percent saying they are now streaming 90 percent of their on-air content. Additionally, 40 percent reported streaming all of their on-air content.

The stations reported that their overall goal with streaming audio is to keep listen drop-off to a minimum, with 54 percent saying their use their Web sites to keep their audience tuned it at all times. Only 26 percent said they were using the Web to bring in new listeners.

And who is maintaining station Web sites nowadays? According to the News/ Talk stations surveyed, 46 percent have their programming department managing their sites, with 28 percent reporting public affairs personnel and 24 percent saying their promotions department.

Stations are also ramping up on-air mentions of their Web sites, with 40 percent saying they require jocks to mention the station's site three times an hour.
http://www.fmqb.com/Article.asp?id=129079





Star Wreck - The Free Movie Going Around The Internet...
Seb

Broadband users have for some time been making use of their connections for downloading music, often over peer-to-peer (p2p) networks which have included both legal and illegal downloads, a matter discussed in the press every few days with legal action taken against a few users to make an example of copyright abuse. The Internet however offers many opportunities for new talent to shine whether it is in writing, music, film or any other area.

The open-source community has been developing software for years which has been free to use and modify but now a community has produced a feature length movie which is available for free download via p2p and their website at www.starwreck.com

"Star Wreck: In the Pirkinning" is a movie parody produced by Star Trek and Babylon 5 fans with an almost zero budget, excluding the time and dedication of hundreds of volunteers, the key actors, crew and in particular producer Samuli Torssonen. Much of the equipment was borrowed, scenes shot in Samuli's living room, and computer graphics were used to fill in many of the scenes. Without becoming a film critic, this low budget film is however of surprisingly good quality. In light of the free support received, the producer released the movie under the Creative Commons License which allows you to freely distribute the work.

Although many short movies are available on the Internet, and indeed this is not the first Star Wreck movie, it represents the next step in demonstrating how the Internet and broadband is likely to change yet another industry. We don't predict the end of the traditional film industry, but they will increasingly be challenged by the wider population dedicated to a cause. Having taken six years to produce, dedication is paramount.

Download and watch the movie from here.

Update 09/10/05 23:50 [seb]: The original article linked to the wrong Creative Commons license type for this work. Although anyone can freely distribute it, no derivative work or commercial use is allowed. More details of this can be found here.





The Bold Shall Make The Earth Rethink All Its Business Models

Internet entrepreneur Julie Meyer says gutsy start-ups need investors with vision

In December 2003, Lady Lynn de Rothschild, founder of several successful telecoms firms, addressed the Ariadne third anniversary party on the theme of The Next Big Thing. In her speech, she mentioned a little known start-up called Skype. In the back of the same room was Niklas Zennstrom, the founder of Skype, who looked frankly shocked to have been mentioned.

Skype, now a leading VoIP (voice over internet protocol) provider, had built up a base of 54 million active users by the time it was sold to eBay for $4.1 billion last month.

'Disruptive' technologies and business models that require gutsy entrepreneurs and ambitious investors are back on the agenda. What Skype did well was become a phenomenon through massive PR, and by having a downloadable free application that offered a built-in incentive to get others to use it. Just like with fax machines, if you're the only one with one, you can't fax anyone. The Skype 'early adopters' encouraged friends and family to download Skype so that they could call up.

Skype's success was founded on Zennstrom's decade of experience in the telecoms industry. The emergence of mass- market broadband made the time right for Skype, although there were many start-ups that had been facilitating free phone calls over the PC through the internet. Skype linked the free internet calls over your PC with a peer-to-peer (P2P) architecture, giving it an inherent advantage over major telcos in terms of cost structure and customer benefit.

What lessons does Skype's success have for us?

First, Skype suggests to European investors who want to blame their poor financial results on a lack of good entrepreneurs that their lack of vision and ability to help start- ups scale their businesses globally might be the problem - rather than the dearth of the right people to back.

Second, Skype reminds us that the bold inherit the earth. One of the most amusing meetings I've ever attended was with Zennstrom and 12 executives from a big US telco who were eager to meet Niklas in early 2004; Skype was getting better known, but the US telco was still not realising how threatened it should be by Skype. Instead, it presented very elaborate details of what it thought it could offer Skype in terms of a partnership. Gradually, it started to dawn on it that Skype simply did not have to pay for the development of its network. In other words, Skype had an inherent structural advantage by virtue of being a P2P application. Because of this, Skype was rolling out a business model of free phone calls and paid-for services that would force telcos to change their business models forever.

At the World Economic Forum in Davos this year, everyone was fêting the Google founders - the new billionaires who had taken the concept of internet search to a new level. Few seemed to know Zennstrom at Davos. That will change next year: the impact of the acquisition by eBay has had the effect of a tsunami throughout the European business community.

The point is that great internet entrepreneurs do exist in Europe; and indeed, it is possible to become one if one chooses an industry one knows about, understands how technology can make it more efficient or deliver a better customer benefit, has the right capital partner and addresses a global market.

Something global for the internet has finally come out of Europe post Tim Berners-Lee, who is considered the father of the world wide web. And lots of investors missed it. Skype chose a strategy of becoming ubiquitous rather than profitable. Many investment committees of venture capital firms in Mayfair will be thinking hard about that as they evaluate their start-ups this week.

Merger rumours were swirling all summer as talks with Murdoch and Google came and went. As one investor in Skype said to me recently: 'It was a good deal for eBay.'

Whether you believe that eBay over- or underpaid, value, like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder. You can count on one hand the number of companies that started from scratch in Europe over the past 30 years and have become billion-dollar businesses, let alone the ones that have achieved this status in three years. Skype enlarges that elite group, and will inspire a new group of men and women to live unbalanced lives for a couple of years, being unreasonable about success as they work to change the world.

· Julie Meyer is CEO and founder of investment firm Ariadne Capital, which was an adviser to Skype.
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/busin...587849,00.html





MLDonkey
Jason Norwood-Young

Before I get into a review of peer-to-peer (p2p) software, a disclaimer: Please only use this software to download legal files. Tectonic does not support the pilfering of copyrighted content in any way. It's quite unfortunate that such a great technology's main use seems to be to break copyright laws, as it undermines the usefulness of p2p as a way to share legal content for all of us.

But if you're going to go trolling through the massive p2p networks for juicy open source and creative commons-licenced material, the best place to start would be MLDonkey. While there are hundreds of p2p clients out there, nothing comes close to this one. Some p2p applications span one, two, or even three types of file sharing networks – MLDonkey covers a staggering 12 protocols which represent even more networks. The eDonkey protocol, the KAD network (Kazaa's file sharing system), Open Napster, Bittorrent, Gnutella, Gnutella2 and more ... MLDonkey isn't a p2p client, it's a p2p super-client.

It started life in 2001 as a Linux client for the eDonkey network as a project by Fabrice Le Fessant from French computer science research institute INRIA. By using a client-server architecture programmed in Objective Caml (MLDonkey is actually a server in its own right), it proved flexible enough to incorporate the other protocols, some of which were reverse-engineered for MLDonkey.

Since MLDonkey is truly a server, there are a host of clients that offer an interface to control this hungry beast. The easiest way to control it is with a web browser. Just point your browser at your own computer on port 4080 and you have a fairly ugly but super-functional interface. Alternatively you can telnet to the server on port 4000 for more technical but very powerful control.

For those of us who like flashy graphical user interfaces, Mldonkey has numerous gui's, including its own Mldonkey-gui. Clients are also available for KDE, Gnome, X11, Mac OS X, Palm OS, Windows, Web-based clients and Java. The server itself runs on Linux, Windows, Solaris, FreeBSD, OpenBSD, NetBSD, BeOS and Mac.

Although you would typically run the server on the same machine as the client (default security will only allow the host machine to connect as a client), it is technically possible to run Mldonkey on remote machines and control it from your desktop through one of the many available clients. If you happen to have an offshore server at your disposal, this makes for an interesting exercise in avoiding South African bandwidth limitations – you can simply log on when a file is done and download it, without using South African bandwidth for uploading or for failed downloads.

Mldonkey is licensed under the GNU public license, and we encourage you to use its infinite power for good, not evil.
http://www.tectonic.co.za/view.php?id=637





Targeted Attacks Increase on Instant Messaging Networks

The IMlogic Threat Center, the industry's first global consortium to provide threat detection and protection for instant messaging (IM) and peer-to-peer (P2P) applications, today issued its Third Quarter 2005 threat report on the rise of IM security threats. The report highlights a 3295 percent increase in Q3, 2005 over Q3, 2004 bringing the year-to-date increase to 2083 percent over 2005 YTD.

The report released today provides key metrics on the continued attacks IM networks are experiencing from malicious code and worm writers. Key data points released include:

713 unique IM and P2P threats including IM-specific attacks and blended threats, which target IM and P2P applications
87 percent of reported incidents include IM worm propagation; 12 percent are known to hijack IM file transfer capability to deliver viruses; one percent of reported incidents utilize known client vulnerabilities or exploits
62 percent of reported incidents over IM networks targeted the MSN Messenger Client, Windows Messenger Client and MSN Network
seven percent of reported incidents over IM networks targeted the Yahoo Messenger Client and Yahoo Messenger Network
31 percent of reported incidents over IM networks targeted the AOL Instant Messenger Client, AOL Instant Messenger Network, ICQ Client and ICQ Network
The IMlogic Threat Center Forecasts Accelerated IM Threat Growth Through the Remainder of 2005.

Trend analysis provided in the IMlogic Threat Center Q3 2005 report suggests that IM-borne attacks will continue to increase as hackers capitalize on the growing popularity of IM in both consumer and corporate environments. The increasing popularity of consumer IM networks, combined with the emergence of federated enterprise IM environments, continues to drive IM as a popular medium for attacks.

The IMlogic Threat Center encourages consumers to protect themselves by keeping operating system patches and anti-virus software up to date, and to exercise caution when using embedded links or file transfer capabilities over the IM channel. Corporate IT departments can additionally leverage IM management and security technology to protect their networks from the risks associated with unmonitored and uncontrolled IM usage.
http://www.govtech.net/magazine/channel_story.php/96927





Securing IM To Improve Communications
Dr Horst Joepen

Instant Messaging (IM) has triumphed in the past two to three years among personal Internet users as well as within companies. There are now few school children not in touch with their friends via ICQ, MSN or AOL Messenger - but also stockbrokers, currency dealers, and the IT department are constantly 'chatting' with their most important contacts via Messenger software.

According to a recent Gartner poll, instant messaging is used today in 70 per cent of all companies. According to the Yankee Group, however, only 15 to 20 per cen of companies operate a solution for IM administration. In the remaining 50 per cent, IM constitutes a huge, rampant infrastructure usage that poses a severe security risk for firms. The same is true for the use of peer-to-peer services, such as music exchange services, which have also become pervasive in many organisations, but lack any administrative supervision whatsoever. These Peer-to-Peer (P2P) services entail both security and legal risks.

IM is suitable for all areas where quick, immediate contact among a known and manageable group of people is crucial. As with SMS, short messages can be swapped and, for instance, a deal team can finalise and authorise the terms of an offer. Technicians helping a customer on location can send queries back to company headquarters via IM, and obtain immediate answers from customer support specialists, without their queries being buried under an avalanche of e-mails or suffer from constantly engaged phones. Stockbrokers can also instantly swap the latest market rumours via IM and act upon what they learn.

In companies with more complex and clearly defined workflows and processes, where flexible decision-making and coordination timed to the minute play a lesser role, it is questionable whether instant messaging is beneficial. Private chat sessions, and the constant distraction from larger tasks by incoming instant messages, can bring about a drop in productivity. A derogatory comment made by IM can be just as much of a legal problem as one made by e-mail so there could also be exposure to potential litigation. However, what is decisive is not the question of whether your company needs IM, as much as the answer that your company very probably already has IM without your knowledge.

Speaking technically, instant messaging tools, similar to peer-to-peer exchanges, function as 'wild', non-standard protocols, which mount on HTTP or HTTPS protocols. They are capable of transferring not just active technologies such as scripts and macros but also all kinds of data attachments (word files, zip archives, and so on), and thus can transfer all currently known carriers of viruses and worms. Content exchanged via peer-to-peer services also entail a considerable legal risk.

A study of Gnutella P2P traffic showed that 47 per cent of requests related to pornography and 97 per cent infringed existing copyright. It is also evident that such content is often infected with viruses. Thus instant messaging and P2P exchanges pose threats every bit as dangerous as the flow of data into the company from e-mail or Web. By contrast, however, IM data flow cannot be controlled by firewalls, simple Web filters and URL blockers.

So is your company helpless in the face of instant messaging? No! The use of special IM and P2P filters allows instant messaging to benefit the company while controlling the security risks that it involves. In order to implement a uniform security policy simply and consistently, the IM filter should preferably be part of a comprehensive, integrated Content Security Management Suite.

This enables company, group and user specific configuration of the security profile, and its consistent application to the entire data flow and all standard and 'wild' application protocols. A typical 'policy' could, for instance, block all IM clients who send requests to unauthorised, public messaging servers, and permit requests only to the company's own messaging server(s).

As was also the case with the wave of spam, IM-connected security problems first occurred in the US. As a result, for instance, Sarbanes Oxley made mandatory the permanent monitoring and protocolling of instant message traffic in all US financial institutions. In current US tenders for content security solutions, the filtering of instant message data flows is a standard requirement. US companies' were triggered into action by very real breaches of security.

Instead of waiting for the wave to break here as it did in the US, companies in this country should take advantage of the 'early warning system' and have their content filtering systems upgraded now - not least because the cost of improving IT security is more than offset by the ensuing increase in productivity.
http://www.biosmagazine.co.uk/op.php?id=290





Messaging Agreement Expected by 2 Rivals

Microsoft and Yahoo plan to announce Wednesday that their competing instant messaging systems will interconnect, making it possible for users to send messages between the previously incompatible systems, according to a person involved in the announcement.

Until now the major instant messaging systems have been isolated from each other. Time Warner's America Online service has the dominant share of the instant messaging market, with MSN Messenger from Microsoft and Yahoo Instant Messenger ranked second and third.

Although Microsoft and Yahoo both offer voice as well as text chat services, the two systems will not initially offer interconnection for voice calls.

In August, Google entered the instant messaging market with a service called Google Talk, which is based on an industry standard known as Jabber and which has been widely promulgated by the open source software movement.
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/10/12/technology/12aol.html





The $761 Million Deal: Microsoft, Real To Work Together

With antitrust settlement, ex-rivals plan media interoperability
Dean Takahashi

Ending its last major private antitrust case, Microsoft will pay $761 million to settle a lawsuit with RealNetworks and created a multi-pronged partnership to collaborate in digital entertainment.

Under the deal, Microsoft will pay cash or the equivalent of it in free marketing services to Seattle-based RealNetworks, which will end its antitrust litigation on a global basis and support Microsoft with music services that will help the Redmond software giant compete with rivals such as Apple Computer and Google.

Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates and RealNetworks CEO Rob Glaser joined each other on stage at a press conference to announce the settlement and said that the deal will be lead to more choice for consumers on how to access digital entertainment.

``We're ending one chapter and starting another in our relationship with Microsoft,'' said Glaser, who worked at Microsoft for a decade before founding Real in 1995. He said he has long admired Gates as a businessman and philanthropist.

Gates, calling Glaser a ``good friend,'' said, ``This goes beyond a settlement. We see this as just the beginning.''

Both said that they needed to make their products work together to take advantage of the explosion of digital music, with the unsaid subtext that rivals are doing a better job exploiting demand from consumers.

``Both companies are seeing digital media explode and recognize it's in our interests to have interoperable services so that we can give consumers the most choice,'' said Dan Sheeran, senior vice president of consumer services, in an interview.

The two companies have been working for weeks on integrating RealNetworks' Real music player into Microsoft's own software. The companies are also integrating Real's Rhapsody subscription music service so that it can be promoted through Microsoft's search software, its MSN web site, and its MSN Instant Messenger service. Real will provide games and other entertainment for Microsoft's web sites as well as its upcoming Xbox Live Arcade online gaming service for the Microsoft's Xbox 360 video game console.

Real will throw its support behind Microsoft's digital rights management technology, which is key to Real's efforts to expand beyond PCs and cell phones to other portable devices. With Microsoft's DRM, it is much easier for Real's music subscribers to take their music and move it to any device, whether it supports Real or Microsoft formats.

Microsoft will pay Real $301 million in cash and provide services over 18 months in support of Real's entertainment products. For every customer who originates from Microsoft's web sites and signs up for Real's subscription service, Microsoft gets credits toward the $301 million. Also, Microsoft will pay $460 million in cash for damages related to the antitrust claims.

RealNetworks filed the antitrust lawsuit in 2003, alleging that Microsoft used its Windows operating system monopoly to favor its own Windows Media Player, which was available for free with Windows, to freeze out RealNetworks' competing Real media player technology. But Real's business has been evolving. The company launched its music subscription service, Rhapsody, two years ago and now music, game and other subscriptions are 60 percent of its business.

As a result, RealNetworks need to promote the subscription businesses. That hasn't been easy since Apple has sold more than 20 million iPod music players with its iTunes music service. Since Apple has 70 percent of the music player market, Real needed marketing help from Microsoft, whose MSN portal draws millions of visitors a month. Consumers will start seeing the benefits of the alliance starting in the fourth quarter and through the first half of next year, Glaser said.

``Clearly, this is a coordinated attack against Apple's dominance in the digital music arena,'' said Aram Sinnreich, an analyst at Radar Research.

The settlement follows similar deals with Time Warner, Sun Microsystems, and others who tangled with Microsoft on antitrust issues in the 1990s. And as with the Sun and Time Warner deals, the partnership allows Microsoft to turn a one-time foe into an ally against other rivals.

``The enemy of my enemy is my friend,'' said Michael Gartenberg, an analyst at Jupiter Research. ``A competitor from the last century is joining ranks of IBM, Sun, Netscape and others and Microsoft can now focus on going forward against competitors for the next century like Google, Yahoo and Apple.''

It remains to be seen if the European Union will continue with its investigation of Microsoft. That last major investigation was instigated with the help of RealNetworks, but Sheeran said Real would no longer participate in that investigation.

``Our industry is very dynamic and it's an important milestone to put the issues from the 1990s behind us,'' said Brad Smith, general counsel at Microsoft, who said he expected European regulators to review the settlement but make their own decision on continuing.

Sheeran said that the deal to promote Real's subscription services is set for 18 months, but both companies will try their best to make the relationship mutually profitable so the agreement can be extended.
http://www.siliconvalley.com/mld/sil...y/12875727.htm





In a Challenge to TiVo, DirecTV Promotes Its Own Box
Jane L. Levere

DIRECTV, the satellite television operator, is introducing a $30 million advertising campaign on Monday to promote its highly anticipated digital video recorder.

The campaign, created by the New York office of BBDO Worldwide, is DirecTV's first widespread public effort to distance itself from TiVo. Of DirecTV's 14.7 million customers, 2.3 million now subscribe to TiVo. DirecTV, which pays TiVo a monthly fee of $1.13 per TiVo subscriber, hopes those users will switch to its own service.

The software for the new service is provided by NDS, a subsidiary of the News Corporation, which also owns a controlling interest in DirecTV.

DirecTV's standard DVR, originally set to be released this past June, will be introduced in late October, and another model featuring high-definition service will be introduced in mid-2006. The standard DVR will feature up to 100 hours of recordable space, compared with TiVo's 70 hours.

DirecTV will continue to support the TiVo service without marketing it, and both services will be priced at $5.99 a month. The company's current contract with TiVo is set to expire in early 2007. DirecTV has not said if it will continue the contract after that.

Bruce Leichtman, a media analyst based in Durham, N.H., said of DirecTV, "They're doing this for the bottom line, to save over $1 per TiVo subscriber per month."

Another motive for the new service, according to Laura Behrens, a media analyst for Gartner, is the desire of News Corporation's chairman and chief executive, Rupert Murdoch, to "have his companies work for his companies."

"It's been an important strategic goal ever since he took over DirecTV."

Eric Shanks, a senior vice president of DirecTV, said the company viewed the introduction of its own DVR as a kind of "silver bullet" to "attract, satisfy and addict customers."

"The longer someone stays with us, the less we have to spend to get new customers. It costs us $650 - for hardware, installation and marketing - to get one subscriber, so we prefer keeping subscribers as long as we can so we don't have to spend that kind of money to get new ones."

Yet another factor is increased competition from cable companies. Many of them also offer DVR service; in fact, some, including the No. 1 cable operator, Comcast, and the No. 6 cable operator, Cablevision, recently made a deal to offer their subscribers TiVo's DVR.

"Cable operators are trying to focus consumers' attention on buying video with data or video with data and voice, and the Bells are trying to get into video to do the same thing," said Douglas Shapiro, a media analyst with Banc of America Securities. Since satellite providers can offer only one of these three services - video - DirecTV's strategy must be to "offer the best possible video product it can," he said.

The new ad campaign strives to explain the benefits of DirecTV's new DVR service in language easily understood by people who are not early adopters of technology, said Tracy Devine, vice president for advertising at DirecTV.

"We've taken everyday real situations, and are balancing people's passion for TV with their passion for their families and other things in their lives," said Al Merrin, vice chairman and executive creative director of the New York office of BBDO, which is a unit of the Omnicom Group.

To that end, a print ad shows the roof of a house against a starry night sky; one arrow in the sky points up to the DirecTV satellite that "broadcasts the amazing hole in one" of a golf game while another arrow points down to the DirecTV DVR in the house that "lets you watch it over and over without missing the next hole." The ad also describes features including the ability to record a whole season of shows, and to pause and rewind live TV.

One TV spot depicts a child asking his father, who is watching a football game on TV, to read to him; the father can do this and record the game simultaneously, thanks to his DVR. In another spot, a teacher asks a student to name her favorite person; the student says it is her "daddy, because he lets me watch cartoons all the time, even during the game."

The tagline on all the advertising is "Somebody up there loves you, DirecTV."

The campaign is running on network and cable television on shows like "Desperate Housewives," "CSI: NY" and "SportsCenter," and in magazines like Entertainment Weekly, Men's Journal and Cargo. Ads will also run on radio and in newspapers in the Top 20 markets in the United States.

DirecTV, which is based in El Segundo, Calif., plans to spend $30 million on the DVR campaign in the fourth quarter. According to TNS Media Intelligence, the company's advertising expenditures have increased annually since 2001, growing from $175 million that year to $237 million last year.

Media industry observers had mixed reactions to the campaign. Mr. Leichtman, the media analyst in New Hampshire, said the TV spots resemble previous TV advertising for DVR's by Time Warner Cable and others. He also said that the campaign seemed to try too hard. "What people like most about DVR's is that they're an easier way to record programs," he said. "They're trying to explain too much."

Ms. Behrens of the Gartner Group said "a lot of factors argue in the campaign's favor."

"DirecTV is doing more marketing and it's been quiet for a while. Consumers will buy as high in the line as they can afford. DirecTV will stop marketing the TiVo box and drive new subscribers to its model. And it's the fourth quarter, when people buy electronics for the holidays."

One factor that could affect DirecTV is a suit that TiVo has filed against EchoStar Communications, which offers its own DVR service. TiVo claims EchoStar's DVR infringes on its patents.

The judge hearing the case issued a preliminary ruling in August that TiVo has said it believes supports its position; the trial begins later this month. Should TiVo win, that could set a precedent for future DVR patent infringement suits.

Edward Lichty, vice president for corporate development at TiVo, said that "if we believed the NDS product violated TiVo's intellectual property, one course of action we would have would be to sue NDS and possibly DirecTV."

"I imagine the lawyers for DirecTV are paying close attention to what happens with the EchoStar case."

Josh Bernoff, an analyst with Forrester Research, predicted that if TiVo won the EchoStar suit, "it will go after DirecTV."

"The most likely outcome would be payments to TiVo for every DirecTV unit shipped. They could end up getting almost as much money as they do now."

Both DirecTV and EchoStar declined to comment on the suit.
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/10/07/business/07adco.html





Winning the Gadget Wars
Daintry Duffy, CIO

CIOs and CISOs will need smart policies, good awareness programs and judicious enforcement to manage risks presented by the latest techno-trends.

A double-sided painting by Wassily Kandinsky plays a prominent role in John Guare's play Six Degrees of Separation. One side, called "Chaos", is a vivid mix of colour; all splashes and slashes of paint. The flip side of the painting, titled "Control", is dour, geometric and restrained. The canvas is designed to be set at an angle and spun so that the viewer experiences it as a single work. In one scene, the painting's owner spins it for a guest, chanting, "Chaos, Control, Chaos, Control".

This mantra should feel familiar to CIOs; because it's a spin cycle they are all too frequently stuck in.

Technologies - particularly those marketed to the individual - are evolving rapidly and in unpredictable ways, which places CIOs and security executives in the uncomfortable position of trying to set controls on a constantly shifting and mutating target. Need an example? Then look no further than the new mobile phone in your hand (or the hands of the sales and marketing types in your organization), which has morphed into a multifunction device incorporating a PDA, camera and MP3 player.

The trickiest aspect of the problem is that many of these technologies are valuable business tools when used with the appropriate security controls. However, all too often, eager employees purchase, download or otherwise acquire these groovy gadgets and programs, and enthusiastically integrate them into their work environment, heedless of the holes they are punching in the company's security net.

Take Skype, the free, downloadable Internet telephony system that launched in August 2003. Skype users can make free phone calls to other computers all over the world. A great idea, right? Not if security is a high priority, because Skype encrypts all of its traffic and skirts firewalls. That's a bonus for users, but a nightmare for CIOs who can neither monitor nor stop the traffic. In the 51 days following Skype's launch, the company registered an impressive 1.5 million downloads and 100,000 simultaneous users. When programs like this catch on, they spread like dandelions in spring. At its one-year anniversary, Skype boasted approximately 9.5 million subscribers and 1.5 million users per day.

So how do CIOs and security heads kill the weeds without burning the grass? We took a look at four rowdy technologies: camera phones, portable data storage devices, wireless computing and the joint threat posed by peer-to-peer technologies (P2P) and Web-based services. They are well-meaning and widely used tools that can be office assets, but also can wreak havoc when used carelessly or maliciously. We sought the advice of security executives and other experts on the best steps to take to establish some control in the midst of the chaos.

Camera phones

Prying eyes. At many companies, a camera phone - great for office party snapshots or for capturing an interesting presentation slide - wouldn't raise an eyebrow. At Cardinal Health, mobile phones equipped with cameras are a physical security threat.

Cardinal Health has its hand in almost every facet of a drug's life cycle - from development, manufacturing, packaging and delivery to pharmaceutical distribution. To allow photographs of how valuable drugs move through these stages could create security vulnerabilities. Cardinal Health also handles personal medical information that falls under the US Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) regulations. "To allow cameras anywhere near the process, from when we receive [the product] to when we deliver it to the end users, would be a huge vulnerability, and it's not one we're willing to accept," says Tim Gladura, the company's CSO.

That said, camera phones are particularly challenging to contain because they're not connected to any platform that the company controls. Gladura says that a "no cameras" policy and an ongoing awareness campaign that conscripts employees into the security ranks works best. "I'd rather have 55,000 sets of eyes out there than just my department," he notes. But even that is not enough. His department also has enacted other policies that help to keep cameras out of sensitive areas. For example, employees at the distribution facilities are discouraged from taking lunch in the parking lot - to allow security to better discern if other, unauthorized individuals are sitting in the lot to observe loading dock operations. The doors that cover employee lockers are grated, offering security personnel a view of the contents. And random security searches are not unheard of.

At Tommy Hilfiger USA, camera phones pose a different kind of threat: the potential loss of intellectual property. David Jones, vice president of corporate loss prevention and security, worries about visitors who enter the company's design studios. "For anyone in our business, the design patents are the innovations that the company lives off," says Jones. A covertly snapped picture of a dress for the new summer line that is e- mailed to a competitor represents a real loss.

Jones also relies on a no-camera policy to protect the design areas, but he worries about the increasing prevalence of camera phones and their shrinking forms. His fears are well-founded. According to InfoTrends/Cap Ventures, research suggests that by 2009, 89 percent of all new mobile phone handsets will include a camera. And the technology is advancing so quickly that it is harder and harder to tell which mobile phones can take snapshots. "On older phones you could tell if there was a camera; now you can hardly tell, so we have a policy that we can't really enforce beyond awareness and training," Jones says. He adds that to his knowledge a theft by camera phone has not yet occurred, "but the threat is always there for it to happen".

CIOs and security execs also need to worry about protecting their employees' privacy when camera phones are around. One security executive, who declined to be identified because of the sensitivity of the situation, recounted a case where employees using the company's shower facilities after lunchtime workouts became concerned about a man who always seemed to be talking on his mobile phone in the changing area. Public locker rooms and gyms frequently have "no mobile phone" rules, and locker rooms provided by an employer should be no different.

"Information about people [photographic or personal data] is way more valuable than information about anything else," says Stephen Cobb, author of Privacy for Business (Dreva Hill, 2002), a book that offers executives advice on safeguarding privacy of customer data. "Companies often focus on protecting financial secrets, but information about people can cost the company more."

At First Data, which specializes in money transfers and credit card processing, CISO Phil Mellinger has an employee dedicated to examining mobile devices and other technologies that employees want to bring into work, and who gives written approval from security where appropriate. Without that approval, the device is banned. "We used to approve general security configurations," says Mellinger. "For example, if someone used a wireless device, there were two approved configurations for security. But now each device has its own security configuration, so we have to get down to the device level." Mellinger also notes that camera phones are not just a security issue but an HR issue and a procurement issue as well. "You have to get so many different entities in the company focused on the problem and approach it from different perspectives, but it is a massive problem," he says.

According to industry sources, the Pentagon and defence contractors have long had mobile detection equipment, but that kind of technology is now going mainstream. Companies that offer mobile phone detection technologies - such as Phoenix-based Cellbusters - are gaining traction in corporate markets. The CellBuster device can detect a mobile phone that is switched on (even if it is not in use) within a range of 30 metres, and it issues an audio alert that tells the user to shut off her phone. It can also operate in a silent mode, alerting security personnel with a flashing light. This kind of product is ideal for companies that have certain targeted areas within their facility that should be camera phone-free, whether it's the boardroom or the locker room.

Keychain storage drives

Data a-go-go. The threat posed by USB mini-drives has burgeoned during the past year. Plug one of these keychain-size storage devices into a USB port and any information you can access just became portable. Employees can download gigabytes of data off your network and simply walk out the front door. Just 1GB of data is roughly comparable to a pickup truck loaded with documents, notes Dan Geer, vice president and chief scientist at data security vendor Verdasys. Some of these devices can hold up to 60GB. But thumb drives aren't the only form of digital storage media giving CIOs and security executives heartburn. MP3 players and even iPods, the ubiquitous cool gadget of the moment, can be used to download and store any kind of file (not just music).

Marcus Rogers, an associate professor in the Department of Computer Technology at Purdue University, works with the Centre for Education and Research in Information Assurance and Security (CERIAS) to study iPod forensics. "You can have an entire bootable drive on your iPod and, depending on the operating system, you can carry your entire workstation around with you," he says. "Also a lot of times if you hook an iPod to your system it's not going to show up on the network. Because it's at the local machine level it doesn't get an IP address. Only if [security] is doing active probing 24/7 might they find that extra storage device." Rogers notes that the iPod comes with the Windows file system, so the problem isn't limited to Apple systems.

"USB has absolutely exploded in the last year," says Michele Lange, a staff attorney with Kroll Ontrack, which offers software and services for data forensics and electronic discovery. "I've been doing this about four or five years," says Lange, "and I would say that [USB storage devices] are now an issue in a large majority of our cases." Lange adds that most of those cases are employment-related situations where an employee has tried to harm a company by stealing trade secrets. Of course, intellectual property leakage can happen just as easily when one of these tiny drives is lost or stolen.

However, there are steps CIOs and security heads can take. The first is to practise rigorous file security; employees should have access only to the information that they need. But since many employees have access to valuable information, companies have taken steps to deal with the issue more emphatically. Some have chosen to disable all of the USB ports on every system at the BIOS level and have taken away administrative privileges so that savvy users can't re-enable the ports.

Cobb, the privacy book author, says he knows companies that have a locked-down configuration and don't allow the user to change anything. "This can be quite effective on two levels: on a practical level, and on a psychological level by making it clear computers can only be used for company business and won't work if you try to use them for anything else." Some companies have taken more drastic steps. Geer recounts a story of one company that tried to address the problem by filling each USB port with hot epoxy glue (before eventually realizing the impracticality of the strategy - most notably that it would take forever).

CIOs and CISOs have to ensure they're not preventing employees from conducting their regular business duties. USB ports are, after all, there for a reason. USB flash drives are not all bad news either. They can be incredibly useful tools and some are available with advanced encryption standard, or AES, data protection. For an executive who can't live without his USB drive, the best solution might be to provide him with one handpicked by the security team.

Policy also has a role to play here. Dev Bhatt, director of corporate security for Airlines Reporting Corporation (ARC) - a company owned by the airlines that handles aspects of ticketing as well as data and analytical services - has crafted his company's acceptable use and enterprise security policies to focus on the forbidden acts of removing corporate data or connecting an unapproved device, rather than on the device itself. The emergence of new, small, multifunction devices is happening so rapidly that companies must ensure that their policies are broad enough to include emerging technologies. If the policy is too device-specific, the CIO or CSO will end up having to rewrite the rules every few months.

Wireless

Roaming hazard. It's a sign of the times that in some cases security teams have to behave like hackers to be successful. Sniffing out ad hoc wireless networks in a "no wireless allowed" work environment is one such case. Most of the security executives we spoke with have found unauthorized wireless networks at their companies. These networks are so cheap and easy to set up that they will continue to be a problem in many companies. But detecting a clandestine Wi-Fi network two floors down is a breeze compared to the problem security executives encounter when their employees utilize wireless networks outside the office.

Wi-Fi is built into most laptops, and wireless computing is so liberating that few untethered employees can resist the lure of a coffee shop or hotel access point. But unless users are educated about the specifics of wireless security, they could be laying the corporate network bare to any curious or malicious bystander. Security policies must spell out who can access the network, how, when and where. A software-based firewall and encryption technology - whether it is wired equivalency protocol (WEP), Wi-Fi Protected Access (WPA) or ideally WPA2 (the latest version of 802.11i) - must be used to ensure that casual roamers aren't hopping aboard.

Employees also need education about the different scams that can affect wireless users. Christopher Faulkner, founder and chief executive of Web hosting firm C I Host, has also launched "The Wi-Fi Guy" travel blog that tracks Wi-Fi and cultural information in cities across the US. He warns CSOs in particular about the dangers of "evil twin" wireless networks. An evil twin is a rogue wireless access point that a hacker-type sets up near a legitimate Wi-Fi access point. Unwary wireless users can wind up with their computers connecting to the strongest signal available; in the evil twin scenario, the users think they're on the legitimate network but are actually connected to the hacker's machine, allowing him to capture whatever data they transmit. "I tried this at an airport, and within four minutes had three people connected to my laptop doing unsecured computing in plain text," says Faulkner. In a variation of that scenario - a sort of Wi-phishing - a hacker sets up another access point near a legitimate one, lures a user to connect and then prompts him for his user name and password. When providing that info doesn't lead to a connection, the mystified user usually reboots and logs onto the real network, but the hacker has already siphoned off what he wanted. Later he'll be able to log onto the network with the user's ID.

These kinds of scams frequently snare people who are in a hurry and will disregard something that looks a little unusual in their haste to get online. Educate employees to use wireless carefully and to avoid sending company confidential or sensitive information over wireless unless it is absolutely necessary and the system's safeguards have been approved by corporate security.

Peer-to-peer and Web-based services

The casualties of convenience. Peer-to-Peer (P2P) technologies and Web-based services are different animals, but they have three important qualities in common. These tools and programs are easily downloaded by employees, they frequently offer what workers see as a useful productivity-enhancing service, and most of them tunnel right through the corporate firewall, bypassing all security measures.

Take GoToMyPC, a Web-based service owned by Citrix Online. An employee can download the GoToMyPC software to his office PC, and it allows him to access the contents of his office workstation remotely from any PC connected to the Internet by typing in a user name and password. The GoToMyPC folks have published a 10-page white paper touting their security, but some basic control issues exist that should concern security executives. First, no matter how secure the program is, the security and network data are out of the CIO's direct control. Second, security executives have no control over the machine that the employee uses to remotely access the corporate network. It could be an Internet cafe where a hacker has installed keystroke loggers, or it could be a home PC using an unsecured wireless network. P2P technologies such as Instant Messenger and Skype are just as alluring and raise the same questions.

At First Data, Mellinger uses a proxy server from Blue Coat Systems to limit these kinds of external connections. Blue Coat enables Mellinger to control certain kinds of connections and provide appropriate warnings for others. Of course Mellinger doesn't want to interfere with the regular course of business, so he cautions that you have to work through the kinks with any product to ensure that employees can still access all the tools they need. "We have lawyers who need to go out and look at certain sites that we would otherwise not allow employees to visit," he says. Mellinger and his team are fine-tuning Blue Coat to match their exact needs.

At ARC, Bhatt has found that communicating with his employees is an effective way to deal with a lot of the P2P and Web activity. "Almost 100 percent of the time, people are just trying to get something done," says Bhatt. He tells employees that he wants them to feel comfortable asking questions about new products and online services without fear that they will be frowned on. If there is a cool new service that an employee wants to use, security will check it out; if they're not comfortable with that system, they'll seek a secure alternative. If there is none, security will explain why not and why that kind of activity puts the company at risk. "When users know what the danger is, it works well," says Bhatt.

First Data has also taken an added step that Mellinger believes insulates the company from many of the problems that these services can let in. The company has separate firewalls protecting each of its business units so that if a virus or breach occurs in one unit it can be easily unplugged from the others to prevent the damage from spreading. "A lot of times a company looks at itself as a monolithic entity," says Mellinger, "and we don't want to put ourselves in a position where anything that makes it into the company can impact the whole company. We use the same security controls between business units that we use between business units and the outside world."

Stay on top of trends

One key to dealing with all of these developments is for CIOs and their security teams to commit themselves to an ongoing learning process focused on new tools and technologies and the novel ways they will affect corporate security. Companies tend to go overboard with overly draconian security measures when a trend takes them by surprise. "There's a line of sensibility here," says Mellinger. "The object is to stay ahead of the people who aren't doing anything [malicious], who just have no security awareness at all. As long as I can stay ahead of that crowd, I'm in good shape." v

Security Measures for Camera Phones

· Educate and remind employees about your company's policy on cameras and other audiovisual equipment. Enlist their help to report violations.

· Consider mobile detection technology for particularly sensitive areas such as executive suites or areas with ready access to intellectual property.

· Ensure that your camera policy protects employee privacy as well as corporate assets.

· Work with corporate procurement to ensure that employees who should not have camera phones are not buying or being provided with those devices.

Security Measures for Mini-Storage Devices

· For employees who need a USB drive, look into drives with built-in encryption.

· Disable USB ports and take administrative privileges away from the user.

· Make acceptable-use policies general enough to include emerging technologies. They should focus on the unacceptable behaviours rather than the kind of device that is used.

· Ensure that your security team members track new portable storage devices so that they can recognize unapproved devices.

· Educate employees about what devices are forbidden and why.

Security Measures for Wireless

· In the workplace, take steps to securely authenticate users and control network access.

· If you don't want wireless used at the office, keep sniffing, don't buy laptops with Wi-Fi and educate workers about unsecured wireless hazards.

· Educate employees who use wireless about scams like evil-twin networks.

· Build security policies around how and when users can access wireless networks.

· Use the best encryption standards available.

· Equip mobile devices with a software-based firewall and isolate connecting devices on the corporate network.

Security Measures for Peer-to-Peer and Web-Based Services

· Look into tools such as proxy servers that allow the security team to block access to undesirable services.

· Explain why some tools are dangerous, and look for ways to provide the same service securely.

· Design your security knowing that some of these programs will slip through your defences.

http://www.cio.com.au/index.php/id;1...8;fp;16;fpid;0





Researcher, Qynergy Corp. to Develop Long-Lasting Power Source

For years scientists who have studied areas in the far reaches of space or remote areas on the earth have had a problem with providing power to a variety of sensors and electronic equipment needed to accumulate the data. That problem is now solved, thanks to a partnership between scientists at the University of Missouri-Columbia’s Research Reactor (MURR) and Qynergy Corporation, who have devised a power cell that will provide continuous power for years.

MURR scientists and researchers from Qynergy Corporation developed an optimum design of betavoltaic power cells, an alternative power source for electronic devices. The partnership has yielded the highest energy conversion efficiency ever recorded for such cells. This discovery will create new capabilities for applications that require longer power life in compact, low volume containers. The cells have the potential for continuously generating small amounts of electricity for nearly 20 years.

“In our research, we were able to obtain an energy conversion efficiency of 11 percent, while the highest success to date had only been 5 percent,” said David Robertson, associate director of research and education at MURR. “Our previous research at MURR that developed isotopes for radiopharmaceuticals made it an ideal place to develop and produce the isotopes needed for these compact power sources for homeland security, defense and other applications.”

The technology used in betavoltaic power cells is similar to solar power generation, but uses radioisotopes as the energy source rather than sunlight. The cells use isotopes that are fully contained within the power cell—similar to the radioactive source found in many household smoke detectors—and can be used without external risk.

The technology transforms the energy of beta particles into electrical power—with the capacity to generate electricity for months or years, depending on the energy and half-life of the isotope used. The power cells, called QynCells™, are rugged, safe and portable, and are capable of operating in harsh environments and extreme temperatures with no required maintenance.

The project was funded by the Air Force Research Laboratory, Space Vehicles Directorate. The QynCell™ can be used as a stand-alone power source or coupled with a variety of power storage and power generation technologies, either to extend the overall power system lifetime or to generate extra power. Future work might lead to integrating the QynCells™ with super capacitors and rechargeable lithium ion batteries and using the technology for micro and nano systems.

The Air Force is extending funding for the development of QynCell™ designs for specific Department of Defense applications using two isotopes, promethium-147 and krypton-85, for devices with lifetimes ranging from one to 20 years and for power ranging from microwatts to tens of milliwatts depending on the needs and requirements of the specific application.

Editor’s Note: For reference, a “milliwatt” is 1,000 times greater than a “microwatt.” Additional information about MURR and Qynergy follows.
http://www.newswise.com/articles/view/515211/?sc=swtn

[JackSpratts]

School sux, occasionally

Congress Considers Illegal File Sharing In Dorms
Alexandra Aaron

Tougher measures against illegal file sharing are on their way to college campuses, according to speakers at a September congressional hearing on movie and music piracy.

The hearings, which included representatives from the University of Florida, the University of Texas and the Motion Picture Association of America, discussed new technology that could enable colleges to control how students share copyrighted material.

"College campuses today harbor some of the swiftest computer networks in the country and that, unfortunately, has led to a situation where a significant level of piracy is taking place around the clock at our nation's campuses," said Richard Taylor, senior vice president of Motion Picture Association of America, in a statement to the House courts, Internet and intellectual property subcommittee.

The University of Florida's "Icarus" program is among the technologies being discussed. The program limits the size of files students can share and prohibits use of unapproved file-sharing applications in university dormitories.

Subcommittee Chairman Rep. Lamar Smith, R-Texas, said he is pleased with the University of Florida's answer to the piracy issue.

"The recent hearing was an opportunity to learn why some universities have clearly stepped up to the plate of educating their students, while others have not. The Subcommittee will continue to hold hearings on [illegal file sharing] to monitor progress and to update Congress on what still needs to be done," he said.

But many students are not thrilled with the sudden move to curb free music and movie downloads.

"It's ridiculous to ban [file sharing]," said New York University sophomore Jessica Bhargava. "I'm paying $45,000 a year to go to college and I'm a struggling artist, so if there's free music or movies out there, I'm going to take it."

Sales of compact discs have dropped over the last three years because of both legal and illegal downloading of music, according to the Web site of the Recording Industry Association of America.

George Washington University senior Adam Conner said that music companies are driving away remaining customers with measures designed to prevent illegal file sharing.

"I bought a couple of CDs for the first time in months, and when I tried to put them on my iPod I was told that the CD security prohibited it," he said.

The music and film industry trade groups have been pushing Congress to pass a bill that would permit the Federal Communications Commission to mandate copy protection in digital music and video players. Congress has not introduced a bill on the issue yet.

As for file sharing, the controversy has just begun. Smith said he supports the passage of anti-piracy legislation.

"I am in full support of peer-to-peer technology for the sharing of non-copyrighted materials. But I think the illegal sharing of copyrighted materials should be stopped," Smith said.

"Universities are where peer-to-peer piracy flourishes. I am pleased to see progress in combating such piracy," said the representative in a statement.
http://www.dailycollegian.com/vnews/.../434b1be941601





File-Sharing Student Faces The Music


JAY TAYLOR/daily bruin senior staff


After settling RIAA suit, Li warns others to play it safe
Shaun Bishop

She's a self-described music lover.

A fifth-year electrical engineering student, she has been a member of Random Voices, an all-female a cappella group, for three years. She plays the piano.

At one time, she downloaded music on the Internet.

But this summer, Diana Li found out she was being sued by the Recording Industry Association of America for sharing copyrighted music online.

"You don't think it really happens until it happens to someone you know," Li said.

"I just think I'm an average person ... which I am," she laughed. "I don't think I'm a lawbreaker."

Li was one of five UCLA students sued by the RIAA in a round of lawsuits filed May 26 against users of i2hub, a file-sharing program which uses the high- speed Internet2 on many college campuses.

A round of lawsuits filed Sept. 29 by the RIAA also targeted one UCLA user of i2hub.

All lawsuits against those using UCLA's network have been "John Doe" suits, meaning the RIAA refers only to the IP address of the alleged infringer and must ask the university, via a subpoena, to reveal the person's name.

That anonymity was shattered for Li when a Federal Express package arrived at her quiet apartment on Veteran Avenue in late July. Enclosed was a letter from UCLA notifying her of the lawsuit.

That was the most frightening time of the whole scenario, she said.

"It slowly started sinking in. ... What did I do? What does this mean?" Li said. "It was scariest when I didn't know what they were going to do."

After discussing her options with some friends, Li decided to tell her parents about the suit. She said her family came to her rescue and quickly hired a patent lawyer, who negotiated a settlement by late August.

Counting the settlement and lawyer fees, the incident cost around $4,000, she said.

She saw few options at the time, and with a sense of relief in her voice, said those first few days were "very emotionlly draining."

"There's no way to fight it. ... They know everything," she said.

It could have been worse, Li said – federal copyright law provides for damages as high as $150,000 per infringement – but still she is not completely satisfied with how the situation unfolded or the penalty.

While she won't ever share copyrighted music online again – "no, definitely not, no," – Li believes in the concept of being able to trade music online, and buys CDs more often than most of her friends.

She also believes the consequences were disproportionately severe. She said she was sharing a few hundred files, far fewer than some of her friends.

The industry has said in previous statements that those being sued are among the most egregious sharers of copyrighted music.

Jenni Engebretsen, a spokeswoman for the RIAA, said the association does not comment on specific cases, but reiterated the recording industry's position that "this is theft, you can be caught, and there are consequences for those actions."

Some time after the settlement, Li's friend James Szeto suggested she make a Web site to ask for donations to help her recoup some of the financial losses.

He helped her create it, and the site has generated $1,000 to date from a few dozen donors, according to the site's counter.

"I just wanted to help her in any way I could," said Szeto, a fourth-year computer science student.

Li also recorded an original song written by a friend from Random Voices, called "Weakness," with her singing and playing the piano, as an offering to those who visit the donation page.

Szeto helped Li record the song and said they thought it would be appropriate to offer a free, legal, non-copyrighted song for those who donate.

The song's opening lines seem appropriate to the context in which it was recorded.

"Sometimes I wish I had just turned away ..." Li begins.

She admits the RIAA's legal campaign to curb illegal file sharing is effective, if harsh.

"It's working, but at the great expense of me and my family," she said, adding that most of her friends have since stopped sharing files online.

Li said she was not disciplined by UCLA for file sharing and that after the initial letter, the university had little to do with the process.

Judy Lin, a UCLA spokeswoman, said that because of privacy rules, the university could not comment on whether students had been disciplined by the university for illegal file sharing. Breaking local, state or federal laws is a violation of the student code of conduct.

Li's warning to others who share copyrighted files is a predictable one: It can happen to you, too.

"Everyone kind of knows, but we still fileshare anyway. It's just something you do in college," she said. "I just didn't know how dangerous it was. I just wanted to download music just like everyone else."
http://www.dailybruin.ucla.edu/news/...s.asp?id=34426





Upside Download

Has file-sharing doomed the music business?
Corey Levitan

The best-selling CD in the world is blank. And so may be the future of the music business.

At least 10 billion songs are downloaded for free each year, through illegal Peer-to- Peer (P2P) services. At the same time, worldwide CD sales have been in free-fall since 1999, the year file-sharing began to take hold. They now represent 70 percent of what they did then.

"People are getting more free music on mp3s than they're getting on CDs," said Eric Garland, CEO of the music-tracking firm Big Champagne Online Media Measurement. "And nearly all those mp3s are illegally downloaded."

Much has been written recently about the proliferation of legal downloading services, which charge consumers to download (either by the month or by the song), then pay a portion of the fee to copyright holders. Companies with names such as Rhapsody, Peer Impact and Mashboxx have joined established names such as Wal-Mart, AOL and Yahoo in the enterprise.

None of these services is remotely as popular as Apple's iTunes, however, which in turn isn't remotely as popular as illegal downloading. In its four-year history, iTunes has sold a cumulative 500 million downloads.

In other words, the number of songs illegally downloaded last year alone is about 20 times the number of songs ever downloaded through iTunes.

"And 10 billion songs per year is a very conservative estimate," Garland added.

The last time consumers demanded a new music format, in 1989, the record industry made a killing because everybody replaced their old vinyl and cassettes with CDs. Now the CD is the format getting killed -- by an entire generation of kids entering adulthood without entering a record store.

"As an industry, you can live with a low-grade fever, but you cannot live with a cancer - - and that's the level that we're currently at," said Jenni Engebretsen, spokeswoman for the Recording Industry Association of America, the Washington-based lobbying arm of the American record industry.

The problem is a change in lifestyle as well as in music format. Too many people in music's traditional age demographic, 18-to-24, associate obtaining computer files with not paying for them.

"It's just [because of] money," said an El Camino College student who admitted packing her iPod with music files she downloaded from the free P2P service LimeWire.

"I'm a full-time student and I don't have a job," she explained.

That student, who asked that her name not be used, was one of a dozen young adults wandering the South Bay college campus on a recent weekday, telltale white Apple iPod headphone wires dangling from their ears.

"Most people, most of the time, get their music free," Garland said. "And that's not a marketplace. In fact, it directly threatens the concept of the music marketplace."

Extent of the damage

Just how deep the damage goes depends on the answer to the following question: Are consumers downloading songs because it's free and easy and they wouldn't otherwise have an interest -- or because they no longer want to pay for their music?

A recent Harvard study suggested the former, a University of Texas study the latter.

"It's an existential question," Garland said. "To answer it, you'd have to get between the ears of everyone who downloads for free, every time they download something."

Three El Camino College iPod-toters interviewed admitted illegally downloading tunes they would never purchase as well as ones they probably would have (but now don't need to). And all three described their music purchases (CDs and legal downloading) as down from a few years ago.

Back when her music occupied a CD book in her high-school locker, the El Camino College student who prefers to remain anonymous found enough money to buy a dozen new albums a year. This year, the only CD she purchased was "Lullabies to Paralyze" by Queens of the Stone Age, which was released in March.

And why did she buy that CD?

"I don't know," she said. "It was irrational. I just bought it. I was walking around Target and bought it."

Since any CD she bought would be transferred to her iPod anyway, she said that saving a step, not to mention $20, is simply too tempting.

"And I don't really have the dollar to buy each song," she added, referring to iTunes' 99-cents-per-pop price tag.

This is bad news for an industry that survives on profit generated by successful CDs, most of which goes to cover the millions of dollars funneled into developing, recording and marketing unsuccessful ones. (Although the cost of manufacturing a CD is mere pennies, more than 5,000 CDs are released by major labels in the U.S. every year, and only a couple hundred turn a profit.)

The results already are being felt by the "Big Five" record labels (Universal, EMI, BMG, Warner and Sony). They've been firing staffs and consolidating to such an extent, they're now the Big Four. (Sony and BMG merged last year, and rumor has Warner and EMI following suit).

But the pinch is also being felt by your favorite musicians.

First-week U.S. sales of Pennywise's 2003 album, "From the Ashes" were 18,000, according to Nielsen's Soundscan service. For the band's "The Fuse," released in August, that figure was 14,000.

Of course, sales figures don't prove anything. Maybe Pennywise fans didn't like the band's new album as much. Maybe their record company didn't do as good a job promoting it. Maybe punk fans just don't have as much discretionary income as they did two years ago.

Nevertheless, those who still think illegal downloading cuts only negligibly into profits are about as rare as those who still think global warming isn't real.

"People are like, 'I've got eight Pennywise records,' " said Jim Lindberg, singer for the popular Hermosa Beach punk band. " 'Why do I need to go out and buy the packaging when I can just download it?' "

Lindberg acknowledges that file-sharing is good for small bands.

"They just want exposure," he said. "They're like, 'Please, download my songs.' And the Metallicas and the big bands, they've already sold 12 million and they're still selling that. But it's really tough for a band like us."

Putting on the brakes

The RIAA maintains that the music industry can curtail the downloading and save itself.

"It's not our goal to wipe out piracy entirely," Engebretsen said. "It is our goal to bring it to a level of manageable control -- just as our industry has lived with physical piracy on the street for a number of years."

Unsympathetic to the plight of music-hungry college students on limited budgets, Engebretsen's organization has been suing file-sharers for copyright infringement since September 2003. (That's undoubtedly why only three of a dozen El Camino College students wished to go public with their downloading habits, and those three requesting anonymity.)

More than 12,000 file-sharers have been sued so far, for up to $150,000 per song -- although most settle for around $3,500 in total. No case has yet gone to trial.

"Theft is theft," Engebretsen said. "When you log onto an illegal service and download music for free without compensation to the artists, the songwriters, the publishers, the musicians -- all those thousands of individuals whose hard work and great talent has gone into making that music possible -- there is no difference between that and walking into a Wal-Mart and shoplifting a CD."

So far, courts worldwide echo that view. In June, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that users of Grokster and Morpheus are liable for copyright infringement -- as are the companies themselves. (The RIAA has since fired off cease-and-desist letters to LimeWire, EDonkey, BearShare and four other P2P companies.)

And Australia's top court followed with a decision that bankrupted the owners of Kazaa, which took over from the shuttered Napster as the biggest P2P service in 2001. (Napster came back, as a legitimate though comparably unpopular enterprise, two years later.)

Not so clear cut?

But not everyone sees the case so clearly -- not even all record executives.

"If something's that exciting, we should go towards that epicenter rather than sue it," said Daniel Glass, president and CEO of Artemis Records, the New York-based independent label whose roster includes Steve Earle, the Fabulous Thunderbirds and Sugarcult.

"I think mistakes are made when we don't embrace technology centers, like Napster wasn't embraced," Glass said. "I think if you just negotiate with people, you can do something constructive, because I think the intent [of P2P] is to create an exciting village of people sharing music from all over the world. And I think it sets up an artist's career and gets you in bed with a fan base."

Artemis actually is supporting illegal P2P companies by contributing to the only income stream they have: advertising.

"We're going on the front pages of these sites and featuring Artemis music," Glass said. "We're not advocating stealing. But I think the traffic is there, there's a fascination and a rock 'n' roll element to it. And I find that people respect it. They say, 'You know what? OK, I'll pay.' "

Glass reports his ads generate "a couple of thousand" dollars a month.

"It's not great," he said, "but it's still money."

The RIAA still prefers the notion of beating 'em to joining 'em. It claims its lawsuits have a significant deterrent effect.

"Growth in the illegal marketplace is just minimal in comparison [to the legal marketplace]," Engebretsen said. "And I think what that indicates is that our efforts have helped."

However, Garland, of the media-tracking firm Big Champagne, said that comparing growth rates for legal versus illegal downloading is deceptive because legal started from next-to-zero at the same time illegal hovered around the broadband saturation level. Big Champagne's data -- the most widely accepted, being the Beverly Hills company is hired by the record industry to compile it -- shows twice as many Americans illegally trading copyrighted songs at any given time in April 2005 (8.6 million) as in September 2003, when the RIAA lawsuits began.

"And I think lawsuits, antagonizing and threats are not the way to embrace the youth," Glass added. "I have three kids. And I know when you yell at them and turn their television off, they're gonna sneak into their room at 2 a.m. and they're gonna wind up watching that show."

The El Camino College student said she's concerned about getting caught, yet still plans to continue downloading for free. She also dismissed the RIAA's moral argument.

"I don't think that would really be a good incentive for me to want to go out and buy more CDs -- 'Oh, they're not getting paid enough,' " she said.

A recent poll on the Spin magazine Web site, spin.com, suggests just how permanently entrenched file-sharing is. Visitors were given three choices to describe their reaction to a new pay-per-download record label being launched by the Warner Music Group. Here's how 1,600 respondents voted:

A great way for young bands to get exposure (28 percent).

Another way the major labels are too controlling of music downloads (32 percent).

Futile, because I'm still file-sharing anyway (40 percent).

And download-hungry consumers will always have a place to share their files with one another. That's because, unlike Napster, which was a Web site that could be (and was) shut down, today's illegal P2P servers are merely software applications. Clicking on your computer's Kazaa icon will forever put you in touch with every other Kazaa user browsing the Internet at that particular time.

"It's just like if Sony went out of business," Garland said. "Your Sony television would still function."

Uniform licensing fee

One novel solution is offered by music journalist David Adelson, who recently taught a UCLA course called Tracking the Decline of the Current Music Business. He suggests a uniform licensing fee on hardware manufacturers and Internet Service Providers.

Adelson's fee would be added to everyone's Internet bill (and mp3 player cost) and distributed to copyright holders in the same manner that performance-rights organizations (ASCAP and BMI) administer radio royalties -- on an estimated per-play basis.

"Doesn't it make sense to try and figure out a way to legally license them to do what they're already doing?" Adelson asked.

Half of Adelson's solution, an iPod tax, is already about to become law in the Netherlands. (The greater the mp3 player's hard drive, the greater the tax.) And a British Internet Service Provider called Play Louder is trying to secure licenses to allow their customers to swap music freely.

But the RIAA won't even entertain such a notion for America -- at least not yet.

"I guess I would respond by saying that in June, the United States Supreme Court ruled unanimously that the uploading and downloading of songs, in violation of copyright, is illegal," Engebretsen said. "And, I think, against that backdrop, it's quite straightforward."

Even if the music industry continues its downward spiral, the business of music is likely to continue -- albeit with different players on a different field.

"There's always going to be a need for gatekeepers who perform the service that record labels do now," Garland said. "Otherwise, it's just noise, pure cacophony. Most people who are not A&R (Artist & Repertoire) executives don't want to sort through tens of thousands of contenders to find 50 things that sound great."

And it's on this new field that musicians will still be able to earn a living -- a lot less of a living than Bruce Springsteen and Madonna earned from their music, but it's not like they'll be working at the Starbucks that once sold their CDs.

"Clearly, they're going to have to concentrate on building a solid touring base and creating a community of loyal fans who would like to participate," Adelson said. "They'll have to create fan clubs and offer their customers extra value on the Internet.

"What did the railroad industry do when the automobile came?" Adelson asked. "It became a different business."
http://www.dailybreeze.com/rave/articles/1783036.html



Free Music Only Way To Rock
Zach Wingerter

If a movement was made to shut down libraries for sharing books for free, it would be looked at as preposterous. The file sharing issue is the same thing: music is made to be listened to, just as books are made to be read.

The Recording Industry Association of America casts a bad light on file sharing even though it has been known to help artists. During my freshman year, a friend of mine sent me his band's EP via AOL Instant Messenger and asked me to leave a peer-to-peer program online with his songs in my upload folder. He and other members of the band asked more friends to do the same.

The files were downloaded hundreds of times from my computer alone. Three years later, that band - The Junior Varsity - is on a national tour and signed to Victory Records, the nation's second-largest indie record label.

Contrary to what the RIAA preaches, every download is not a lost sale. I have not purchased a CD in the last three years without having an MP3 of the artist on my computer beforehand, whether it be from legally downloading the file from a Web site such as www.purevolume.com, receiving the song from a friend via instant messenger or by other means.

I had Green Day's "American Idiot" one week before its release last September. I was excited about its leak onto the Internet and listened to it for that whole week, fell in love with it and promptly bought the album the day it came out.

Since then, I've spent over $250 on Green Day concert tickets and tour merchandise for my girlfriend and me, and that's all because I was able to preview the album before heading to the record store and pocketing the original $15 in fear of purchasing an album I may not have liked.

Being given the chance to preview a CD is beneficial to artists. I've never gone to a band's show without first downloading its music. Any time I try out a new band and like it, I do my best to get its CD or T-shirt or see it live.

File sharing gives potential consumers a chance to enjoy something they may never have spent money on.

Peer-to-peer networks are being singled out as wrong, but there are many extremely similar legal alternatives to file sharing that are ignored. Yahoo! has a music Web site, www.launch.com, which has thousands of music videos available to anyone who has a free Yahoo! account.

Anyone who wants to see a video or hear a song by an artist just has to type in the artist's name, click on the video they want to see and sit through a 30-second commercial before the chosen video appears. If used correctly, this Web site is essentially a huge iTunes library - many unpurchased videos and songs are available for free and the artists are getting no kickback for consumer use of the Web site.

Furthermore, anyone using any free Internet radio can easily make homemade MP3s if they use a sound recording device and record the computer's .wav output. Anything from the Yahoo! Web site or PureVolume can become a free MP3 as well. Targeting and fining file sharers won't stop anything from happening.

Artists already make bundles of money from concert ticket sales and merchandise sales at places such as Hot Topic, so how much does file sharing really hurt them? The RIAA and artists supporting the organization are simply wrong on this issue.
http://www.westerncourier.com/media/...-1017915.shtml





Review

Share Your Office Desktop: We Review Four P2P File-Sharing Applications
Robert Vamosi

In the past, if you needed remote access to a sales document or a presentation or if you were collaborating with a coworker in another office, you had three options: send the file via snail mail or e-mail; open a temporary FTP site from which you could obtain the file; or maintain a permanent VPN--with the latter two requiring the services of an IT department. With the rise of peer-to-peer file sharing, however, there's yet another option.

Groove Virtual Office, Laplink ShareDirect, FolderShare, and BeInSync are online services that allow you to open a folder or a series of folders and share the contents with others. Groove offers built-in virtual meeting tools and many customization options. ShareDirect provides the strongest encryption and, like Groove, offers built-in virus protection. FolderShare works with either Windows or Mac and can transfer large files easily. BeInSync works only with Windows and allows you to share with groups of up to nine others simultaneously.

Con’t.





Groove Mobile Scores Another Mobile Music First: The Only Service Included in the Official UK Charts
Press Release

Artists Now Benefit From Purchases on the Groove Mobile Network With Improved Chart Positions

Groove Mobile, the world's leading mobile music service, today announced that over-the-air downloads direct to mobile phones on the Groove Mobile network are the first and only mobile data contributing to the UK's "Combined Official Singles Chart" compiled by The Official Charts Company.

"The mobile music business is a growth area for music sales," said Paul Want, Operations Director for the Official UK Charts Company. "It is important that the Official Charts accurately reflect the music purchased each week, and including the purchases of mobile music lovers using the Groove Mobile platform is a welcome addition to the charts."

Downloads on the Groove Mobile network, which powers Orange's Music Player, are now included on the "Combined Official Singles Chart." Groove Mobile, which currently supplies its data to the "Digital Download Chart," is now the only mobile download service in the UK whose sales have a direct impact on artists' ranking on the "Combined Chart" released each Sunday.

"A top chart position in the UK can literally make an artist's career," said Adam Sexton, Groove Mobile Vice President, Marketing and Product Management. "Since every song purchased on Groove Mobile's platform now counts in the 'Combined Official Singles Charts,' Groove Mobile will quickly become a core part of marketing the hottest new songs and increasing their sales. We look forward to adding other labels to our service, so their artists can also enjoy improved chart positions when fans purchase their songs."
http://www.prnewswire.com/cgi-bin/st...4166190&EDATE=





File-Sharing: How the Net Was Won
Thomas Mennecke

For millions of years, the universe existed in relative stasis. Although several million years appears to be an eternity to Earth’s human inhabitants, it reflects a mere nanosecond in the universe’s apparently endless span of existence. During this eternity, significant events would alter the history of the cosmic plane; the big bang, the formation of complex proteins, and the great rupture of the time-space continuum.

The first two events had an ever-lasting effect on today's world. The Big-Bang, one of the leading theories on the formation of the universe, contends that all of the current matter that exists was at one point confined to an area no larger than the head of a pin. How long this matter was contained in this space is unclear, however at some point – perhaps as much as 15 billion years ago – this matter was expelled and created the universe we know today.

Over the course of several more billion years, the ensuing chaos that developed would later become more organized. Galaxies, stars and planets would soon form, giving rise to another important event; the rise of life.

We can only speak of what we know, and so far life as we know it only exists on Earth. Space exploration so far has yielded some hope that we are not alone in the universe. Various missions to Mars and the moons of Jupiter and Saturn hold some promise we might find evidence of past – and perhaps present – life in the form of single celled organisms.

While the Big Bang and the advent of life are significant events whose impact is only realized over the course of billions of years; the great rupture of the time-space continuum impacted the universe in significantly less time.

2.5 million years ago, an event happened that would alter the course of history. A dying star known only from its remnant light signature collapsed upon itself and thus created a black hole. The massive gravitational pull caused surrounding solar systems – stars, planets, asteroids, and comets – to be drawn in. Over the course of several thousand years, hundreds of star systems were drawn into this hellish cataclysm. However this event did not occur alone.

If the universe is a winding string floating through space, as String Theory suggests, and several other strings run parallel, this event occurred in at least one other dimensional universe. For the intentions of this article, we will assume there is only one parallel universe.

As the black hole expanded, time-space became so distorted on both planes that for a millionth of a second, matter from an alternate universe was ejected into our own. Once the two black holes interacted, the resultant force canceled the gravitational pull of the other, thereby restoring normal time-space in both parallel universes.

Yet the expelled matter was now in our own universe. The expelled matter was the remnant of a world rich in organic molecules, obliterated by the gravitational pull of the black hole. The remnant matter; which consisted of a complex network of adenine, guanine, cytosine, and thymine, was now adrift and was being pulled by another gravitational pull – this time caused by a medium sized planet that would later be called Earth.

During this period of the Earth’s history, modern man had not yet evolved. Instead, a proto human called Australopithecus Africanus was the dominant humanoid specie. While fairly smart, this proto human had little in the way of great intellect, as they could not use fire or express themselves through art or mathematics. The greatest use of technology was perhaps through some primitive flint tools.

The network of organic molecules was now pulled into Earth’s orbit. Because of the highly advanced nature of this organic network, it was able to create an electromagnetic energy shield, protecting it during reentry. However, the network of organic molecules was not able to sustain itself, and deteriorated over southern Africa.

The remnants of the network, now only independent strands of adenine, guanine, cytosine, and thymine, found its way into the Australopithecus Africanus specie. These organic molecules, the foundations of DNA, radically altered the destiny of this specie. What appeared to be a hopeless experiment in evolution suddenly erupted into the founding of a new genre of hominid – the “homo” or “handy man.” In perhaps one of the greatest extra-terrestrial influences to life and evolution (since the theory life on Earth came from Mars), the organic network brought about radical changes in human evolution that would lead mankind to where it is today.

Millions of years later, this network would resurface – this time a manifestation of humanities inexplicable desire to once again reconnect through computers within a great community of organic beings.
http://www.slyck.com/news.php?story=952





Declaration of InDRMpendence
David Berlind

Is your anti-virus or anti-spyware technology warning you about the Digital Rights Management software on your computer? If not, it should be. It's a Trojan horse of the worst kind.

Earlier today, after describing to a close friend the rock and the hard place that I'm between since I can't easily play the 99 cent songs I buy through Apple's iTunes music store on my $20,000 whole home entertainment setup, he said "Dave… check out Sonos' solution. It'll solve your problem for about $500 per room."

Not that I have another $500 per room to spend, but I checked into it and the solution is indeed very cool. The units that you put into each room wirelessly form a self-organized mesh and just one of them needs access to your music library on a computer or network attached storage (NAS) device. Unfortunately, if I buy Sonos' gear, it appears as though I'll run in the same problem that I'm already having. According to a technical specifications page on Sonos Web site, "DRM-encrypted and Apple or WMA Lossless formats not currently supported." In other words, songs purchased through iTunes that are wrapped in Apple's FairPlay digital rights management (DRM) envelope won't work. Neither will songs you buy from stores based on Microsoft's DRM technology found in content purchased through PlaysForSure-logoed merchants (eg: Napster-to-Go). While I hate to be the breaker of bad news, I sent him an e-mail explaining the situation.

But now that DRM is coming up on my radar every day, and the more I read about it (on the Web, in our TalkBacks, and in my e-mail), the angrier I get. To vent, I've decided to start regularly ranting about DRM. Dating back to cassette tapes (which came before VCRs) and probably something before that, the entertainment industry has never liked the idea of people copying its content. To Hollywood, the digital age is a double edged sword. On one edge exists a highly scalable infrastructure that can ruin the profit potential of any single piece of content in a matter of hours. On other edge is the scalable control that Hollywood can finally retake over the duplication of its content through DRM technologies.

What you need to know is that DRM can be, and has proven to be, a Trojan horse. In a back and forth thread of e-mails, the Electronic Frontier Foundation's John Gilmore described to me how DRM technology basically allows those who sit at the controls of it to arbitrarily change the rules. For example, one day, with Apple's iTunes, we were able to burn the same playlist as many as ten times. A day later, it was seven. Unlike before, when we could take our vinyl records and CDs and do pretty much anything we wanted with them (to facilitate our personal use) or even sell them (or will them to family members), the "R" in DRM is much less about what we have the right to do and more about the Restrictions that can be arbitrarily and remotely asserted over something we paid good money for. So far, the best suggestion I've heard to dodge the CRM bullet is seek used CDs. It may not be a la carte song buying. But it's not a premium price for a bunch of music you may not want anyway.

Microsoft and Apple couldn't have asked for a better gift horse (Hollywood) to come their way, seeking a solution that ultimately gives back to it what it has for so long wanted. Both companies had a razor (the DRM playback technology) and all they needed were some blades (the music). Today, with every individual DRM-wrapped piece of content that gets sold, we are securing the futures of the DRM licensors (mostly Apple and Microsoft). That content will forever be useless unless you have something that includes their playback technologies.

The fact that you have 1000 iTunes store-bought songs means that you will be paying Apple to use that music for the rest of your life (directly for devices like iPods or indirectly through licensee's products like Motorola iTunes phones). With Microsoft aggressively licensing its DRM technology to multiple device manufacturers (for both audio and video) and multiple online content merchants, I've already said that its DRM technology is positioned to follow in Windows' footsteps as the next dominant technology monoculture even though Apple's players continue to sell like hot cakes. By continuing to buy DRM-wrapped content, we as consumers are actually unwittingly co-conspiring with Hollywood to give Microsoft and Apple the keys to the kingdom.

Go ahead. Ask your favorite iPod owner if he or she knows that by buying songs from the iTunes store, they're actually assuring Apple's legacy. Apple could sell the songs at its cost and it would still be fantastically profitable forever while having unprecedented control over Hollywood. It's no wonder Warner Music CEO Edgar Bronfman Jr. is threatening to put his foot down now. He sees control over his business — for example, who sets the price of the music he sells — slipping away to the tech titans. Perhaps he's just now realizing that his company (and his industry) may have sold its soul (no pun intended) to the devil.

The aforementioned Sonos anecdote represents the perfect opportunity to inspire this first rant because the first time I saw Sonos' gear was at a previous MIT Emerging Technologies Conference and, yesterday, while attending the most recent of that series of conferences, I had a chance to ask Motorola CEO Ed Zander one question while he was on stage discussing his vision of the wireless world. Motorola is the only company besides Apple itself that sells a device (the recently announced iTunes phone) that can play FairPlay-wrapped music. That's because Apple licensed the technology to Motorola for usage in that phone.

I asked Zander if, in his role as a licensee that's thrusting DRM- enabled products into the market, he didn't think that we were on the verge of anointing another technology monoculture. The reason I asked this is that the number of handsets greatly outnumbers the number of computers and if everyone of them has either Apple or Microsoft's DRM technology on it, the market penetration of a major proprietary infrastructure control point will make the Windows monopoly look paltry by comparison. As I said earlier in this blog, Microsoft is aggressively licensing its multimedia and DRM technologies — a phenomenon that I've been documenting in this blog's Media Juggernaut category.

Zander never did answer the question. He did however mention that he's licensing DRM technologies from both companies for separate phones (Motorola has a Windows Mobile-enabled phone as well). He also said that he'd like to see a single standard emerge. I'll give him the benefit of the doubt by saying he probably meant "open standard" (one where neither he nor Hollywood would be beholden to Microsoft or Apple). But in replaying my question and his answer in his mind, I now wish I came back with a second question which would have been "Don't you think it kind of stinks that your selling two products that are incompatible with each other?" In other words, if I decide to move to the Windows Mobile-based phone from the iTunes phone, none of the music I have stored on the iTunes phone can be transferred. Imagine, for example, if the phone numbers you had for your friends worked on one phone, but not the other. Wouldn't that royally suck?

The EFF's Gilmore has admonished me in e-mail for not being absolutely clear about my position on DRM. When I omitted the qualifier "open" in my first discussion of why we'd be better off with a single standard that everyone complied with, Gilmore was quick to say "Be careful what you ask for." PlaysForSure or FairPlay could easily become the de facto standard (a.k.a. monopoly). I should have said "open standard." Even so, I'm not sure that I even favor an open standard at this point. Not if it's going to be used for Digital Restriction Management.

You shouldn't take any of this to mean that I don't believe in compensating content copyright holders with whatever royalties they're due (DRM's other role is to assure such compensation to some extent). But as long as DRM technology stands in the way of legitimate use of the content that I've paid for, I as an informed buyer will vote with my dollars by going elsewhere for my content (for example, sites where the artists offer their music for free). You should too. That's my Declaration of InDRMpendence. Don't let this plague spread beyond the epidemic level that it has already reached. Just say no to DRM (stop buying DRM-wrapped content before it's way too late and oppose any DRM-related laws under consideration by any legislative body).

I know it's not the most corporate IT-esque of topics (our charter here), but this issue has really got me steamed. And, believe it or not, to the extent that it could lead to another monoculture, there are corporate implications. So, stay tuned for more regular rants about my DRM-free campaign. And, if you have a good name for that campaign or want to submit some artwork for its logo, let me know at david.berlind@cnet.com. If you just want to show your support by being a co-signer of this Declaration, please just enter a message below in our comments section (and a co-signer you will become!).
http://blogs.zdnet.com/BTL/?p=1952





The Shape of Things to Come: Morphology Database Going Global

A Florida State University researcher who specializes in the evolutionary history of wasps is now creating a buzz about a new way for scientists to store, share and study plant and animal images.

Fredrik Ronquist, a professor in the School of Computational Sciences, is one of the founders of MorphBank, an international Web database that contains thousands of high-resolution photographs and other images of plant and animal specimens. Now he is leading an interdisciplinary team of FSU scientists to expand the database, thanks to a $2.25 million grant from the National Science Foundation.

"It used to be that there was a limited body of knowledge of plant and animal specimens - a scientist could read all the books and papers," Ronquist said. "Now, our body of knowledge is so vast, we need the help of machines."

Researchers from across the globe can deposit images documenting animal or plant specimens in MorphBank and retrieve images deposited by their colleagues. The NSF grant will allow the FSU team to develop commercial quality software to make the system more user friendly and offer more advanced search techniques, according to project manager David Gaitros of the computer science department. Scientists also will be able to add comments to the images and search comments made by other scientists - a quick and efficient way to communicate research results.

"We're hoping to achieve a change in the way scientists work when they do research," Ronquist said. "That's one of the biggest challenges - changing habits. We need to convince scientists that this is a better way of working with their material and presenting their research. It's a matter of having a system that works well with lots of interesting images. That will go a long way to change people's attitudes."

Because journals often do not publish all the images that illustrate an article, researchers now must go to a museum or depository to view the specimens or arrange for a loan. Ronquist envisions a system in which authors would deposit images into MorphBank, and journals could point readers to the database to view them.

Considering that only 1 million of the 10 million species on Earth are known or named, Ronquist said a vast database would be the only way to manage information as more discoveries are made. MorphBank currently contains about 40,000 images and is expected to increase to more than 1 million images in the next few years.

The NSF grant also will provide funds for the FSU team to protect the database by setting up a network of MorphBank "mirrors" around the world. Distributing the images on several machines ensures there are backup copies and can reduce both the amount of disk space on each machine and the cost to any one institution.

Although scientists will be the only ones to have access to the system to deposit, retrieve or comment on items, the system is free and may be viewed by anyone.

"Everyone from kindergartners to the top researchers in the world, when they want to see or examine a specimen, they can go to MorphBank to find it," Gaitros said. "They'll see the image, the organism's scientific name, common name, who found it and where, what publications it has been in and related species. Any and all relevant information we put in MorphBank."

In the future, it may be possible to take a photo of a plant or an animal, send the image to the database and get back a reliable species identification, Gaitros said.

Ronquist was working in Sweden in 1998 when he and insect specialists from the United States and Spain started MorphBank as a way to share the more than 1,000 microscopic photos they had taken in their comprehensive study of a group of parasitic wasps. The name of the database refers to the term morphology, which is the study of the shape and structure of plants and animals.

Ronquist brought the project to FSU in 2003 when he was hired here. Besides him and Gaitros, the team includes Austin Mast and Greg Erickson of biology; Robert van Engelen of computer science; Greg Riccardi, Corinne Jorgensen and Peter Jorgensen of the College of Information; Gordon Erlebacher of mathematics; and Anuj Srivastava of statistics.
http://www.newswise.com/articles/view/515273/





Squaring Cubicles With Reality

Companies are rethinking how they look at office space
Mike Drummond

The cubicle is undergoing a makeover.

And even some cubicle manufacturers concede it's about time.

The ubiquitous workstation has served companies for more than four decades. Despite its blandness, businesses embraced the cube's simple functionality and relative cost-savings. No need to blow out walls and remodel when you could plant a cubicle farm.

But knowledge- and service-based industries that put a premium on collaboration increasingly view the cubicle as a barrier to interaction and productivity. And a new breed of workers, weaned on peer-to-peer computer file sharing, always-on wireless hot spots and instant access to information, has pushed companies to rethink cubicles, design consultants and others say.

For many, the conventional cubicle is a quaint, even contradictory anachronism. How can you think outside the box when you're working inside one?

The modern cubicleless floor plan started gaining traction even as cubicle production and sales reached their heights during the late 1990s dot-com era. Although cubicles allow for quick accommodation of personnel, some companies were taking a dim view of the cube by 2000.

Muzak, the Fort Mill, S.C., company that pipes music to retail and other workplaces, was among them. It deployed a blend of shared, artsy workstations and glass offices when it moved into its warehouse headquarters in 2000.

The company "created a city in a box," based on the Italian piazza model, said Muzak's marketing-campaign coordinator Karen Vigeland. That city grew over the last year, when the company added more than 100 employees and converted more warehouse space — without using conventional cubicles. The result is a complex of transparent offices and shared workstations set along boulevardlike aisles, all spilling into open areas.

In September, the Charlotte design firm that helped configure Muzak's digs embarked on its own makeover. Little Diversified Architectural Consulting will knock out walls to create a mix of low-wall cubicles, see-through offices and communal work tables, similar to another part of its building. The move reflects a broader trend away from installing cubicles to accommodate head count.

"The idea is to move people, not walls," said James Thompson, the firm's interior design director.

The standard cubicle environment is a language that signals "all the bad working behaviors," said Christopher Budd of Studios Architecture in Washington. Those include isolation, false "entitlement to privacy" and individual over collective achievement, he said.

His idyllic workplace borrows from a European model, where wireless laptops allow employees to work where needed — kind of a hipper version of the precubicle office, without the rows of assigned desks and gray in-boxes.
http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/ssistory...siness/3392204





Internet Carried On Power Lines

Firm finishes hooking up manassas
Yuki Noguchi

The Washington area is a major hub for technology that transmits high-speed Internet connections over power lines, and yesterday the city of Manassas celebrated becoming one of the first communities in which the service is commercially available.

Chantilly-based Communication Technologies Inc. announced it had completed citywide installation of the technology and will step up marketing it to Manassas's 12,500 households.

"This is an achievement of a major national milestone," said Joseph E. Fergus, founder and chief executive of Communication Technologies, or Comtek, which so far has 700 paying residential customers in Manassas. He said the technology "will be deployed within two years to scores of communities across the U.S."

Comtek charges $38.95 a month for the service and shares revenue with the city, which provided access to municipal power and fiber-optic networks. It has been testing the service there since 2001.

Germantown-based Current Communications Group LLC has a similar trial in Potomac and launched a commercial version of its service in Cincinnati last year. The Cincinnati network reaches 50,000 homes, and Current has thousands of paying customers.

For years, broadband-over-power-line technology, which allows access to the Internet through any electrical socket in the home or office, has been touted as a potential alternative to service from cable and phone companies. The technology still has its skeptics, who note that PPL Corp. announced earlier this week that it would end its trial in the Lehigh Valley region of eastern Pennsylvania because it could not get enough customers to generate a profit.

"The technology works, but the business model is still up in the air," said Scott Cleland, chief executive of the Precursor Group, a research firm.

Companies such as Comtek and Current say they have a key advantage over the competition because they tap into an infrastructure that already exists. They partner with power companies to tap the electric grid and the network of power lines that already run into the home, so communities can hook up to another source of the Internet without having to dig up trenches to lay new cables in the streets.

The technology is far less expensive than deploying fiber-optic cable, or even deploying digital subscriber line service, said Jay Birnbaum, president of Current, which in July received financial backing from Google Inc. and investment firm Goldman Sachs & Co. The company is conducting six trials, including in Los Angeles and Honolulu.

Comtek is in discussions to deploy its technology in nine additional communities, Fergus said. Comtek installs its equipment on power lines, which transmit the Internet connection over a high-frequency signal that does not interfere with power transmission. At home or in the office, users have a modem that adapts the signal to computers. Fergus said he hopes that over time, Comtek also will be able to offer Internet telephony service over those lines.

Christine Williamson, a Manassas resident, said she was among the first 13 testers of the Comtek service. Williamson, who also subscribes to Comcast Corp.'s cable modem service, said she may eventually rely solely on her power-line Internet service because it goes out less frequently than the cable service and is comparably fast and costs less.

"It's not competition yet, but . . . it may turn out to be yet another way in which people are competing with us," said Eric Rabe, a spokesman for Verizon Communications Inc., the main phone and DSL high-speed Internet provider in the Washington area.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...100501982.html





ILN News Letter
Michael Geist

Israel Cracks Down On Internet Music And Film Sharing

The Haifa District Court in Israel has ruled against music file-sharing Web sites, including Shift, Lala, Lionetwork, and Subcenter. The lawsuit was filed by 27 music recording companies. The petitioners claimed that the sites were violating their copyright. The sites' operators were ordered to pay an interim sum of NIS 500,000 until damages to the petitioners are assessed.
http://tinyurl.com/d4ce3


JBoss Denies Trademark Claims

A man who claims to be a co-founder of Jboss claims that JBoss' trademark policy contradicts the open-source ideology. The company insists that it is merely protecting its brand.
http://news.com.com/2100-7344_3-5893015.html





Apple Unveils Video iPod, ABC TV Deal
Duncan Martell

Apple Computer Inc. on Wednesday introduced a version of its market-leading iPod that also plays videos and unveiled a deal with Walt Disney Co. to sell television shows like "Desperate Housewives" after their first broadcast.

Apple has long aimed to make its devices the hub for digital entertainment inside and outside the home, and Chief Executive Steve Jobs said the ABC deal was a turning point in bringing television to the Web.

"I think this is really pretty big and I think it's just the beginning," Jobs said in an interview.

The video iPod -- a long-rumored product that could further spark sales of the popular brand -- has a 2.5-inch screen and comes with 30 or 60 gigabytes of memory. The sleeker, thinner version will sell for $299 and $399, respectively, and holds up to 150 hours of video.

As part of its deal with Disney's ABC network, iPod users will be able to download five shows including ABC's "Desperate Housewives" and "Lost." Current-season episodes of the series will be made available at the iTunes music store the day after broadcast.

The entire first season of "Desperate Housewives" and "Lost" will be available immediately. The television shows are only available in the United States and cost $1.99 per episode, without commercials.

Media companies and computer companies have traditionally been at odds over bringing entertainment to the Web, given rampant piracy of music online, and Disney and Apple said their deal was a watershed.

"This is the first giant step in terms of making content available to more people in more places," said Disney Chief Executive Robert Iger. "This is just the beginning of what we believe will be a long and prosperous relationship between Apple and Disney."

Both the deal with Disney and the new products -- which also include an iMac with a remote control that acts as a home entertainment hub -- give Apple a chance to forge a leading position in online media, said Cross Research technology analyst Shannon Cross.

"They are positioning themselves as the company that will connect video content to the end users and control your living room," Cross said.

The company also plans to offer music videos for $1.99 each at its iTunes online music store. It will also offer short films from Pixar Animation Studios Inc., which is also led by Jobs.

But Nitin Gupta, an analyst at Yankee Group, questioned how much the video iPod would boost sales of the devices, saying it will be hard to sell shoppers on the idea of watching "on-the- go" video on a little screen.

"The market is likely small for people who want to watch a portable video on a little screen," he said. "That will not be the main reason people buy the iPod. It is just an enhancement."

Apple has already sold more than 28 million iPods since their introduction in October 2001 and now has about 75 percent of the market for digital music players, representing a booming business that has helped the company's stock triple in the past year.

The company has also refreshed the iPod line-up many times since its introduction. Apple on September 7 unveiled the iPod nano, a pencil-thin device that uses memory chips instead of hard disk drives to store songs.

The new iMac computer, which the company said would stand as an entertainment hub for DVDs, music and photos, will also compete directly with Microsoft Corp.'s Media Center.

The new products come after Apple on Tuesday reported a fiscal fourth-quarter profit that quadrupled from a year ago as revenue rose 56 percent and unit sales of iPods more than tripled.

But the company's stock fell as sales of the iPod -- 6.5 million in the quarter -- were less than some analysts' estimates, which were as high as 8 million.

Apple shares fell $2.32, or 4.5 percent, to $49.27 in late afternoon on Wednesday on Nasdaq.
http://today.reuters.com/news/NewsAr...PUTER-IMAC.xml





NetFlix for Free . . . Plus a DVD-Copying Tip
David Battino

Man, are public libraries a fantastic resource! In addition to the expected books and magazines, my local library has a surprisingly good collection of CDs and DVDs. Because the discs are in such great demand, though, finding ones I wanted to try had been an exercise in serendipity.

Then I discovered that by entering my library card number and PIN on the library’s site, I could search for and reserve materials from the entire county library system. The items I request are shipped to my local library, which sends me an e-mail when they arrive. I then have a week to pick them up. It’s like getting NetFlix or Amazon for free, although you have to return the materials after three weeks. (Actually, in many cases, you can renew the materials online as well, so you get more time.)

Today, I checked the site to see when my books and discs were due, and discovered that two DVDs I’d borrowed last week had already expired. Apparently they’re so popular that they only lend for seven days. Because you can’t renew overdue materials and I didn’t know when they’d show up again, I decided to copy them to my Mac. That will save the library the time and expense of reshipping and storing the discs for me. It will also allow other library patrons to see the discs sooner.

After I watch the movies, I’ll delete the copied files; I have no interest in piracy, just time-shifting. As Matthew Russell pointed out in “How Intellectual Property Laws Can Drain Your Battery's Juice,” watching a DVD from your laptop hard drive saves energy as well.

Copying the commercial DVD was free and simple. I fired up MacTheRipper, selected “RCE 1” from the RCE Region menu, and hit Go. (Even though the program creates files that will play in any region, you need to specify the disc’s native region if it exists already.) Fifty-seven minutes later, the DVD and all its bonus features were converted to files in a 4.36GB folder called VIDEO_TS on my hard drive.

Those files were unplayable, so I used another freeware program, DVD Imager, to package them as a disk image. When I subsequently double-clicked the disk image, Apple DVD Player launched and played the movie. Had I wanted, I could have burned the image to a blank DVD-R, but as I said, I wasn’t interested in pirating the disc, just watching it once at a convenient time. However, I’m sure I’ll be using this simple two-step system to make backup copies of my own discs. Many of the library DVDs I check out are so scratched they’re barely playable.
http://www.macdevcenter.com/pub/wlg/8050





Yahoo Tunes Into Podcasting With New Search Tools

Hoping to tune into the latest craze in digital media, Yahoo Inc. is introducing tools for finding, organizing and rating ``podcasts'' -- the audio programs designed to be played on Apple Inc.'s iPod and many other portable music players.

The Sunnyvale, Calif.-based company, which operates the world's most visited Web site, plans to begin testing the new service Monday at http://podcasts.yahoo.com.

Although it can do several things, the free service focuses on making it easier for people to sift through the tens of thousands of podcasts currently available on the Web to find the programming best suited to their personal interests.

``We intend to be the most comprehensive source for podcast content,'' said Geoff Ralston, Yahoo's chief product officer.

Yahoo isn't the first Web site to search podcasts. Specialty Web sites such as Odeo.com and Podcast.net already do the same thing.

But Yahoo is the first Internet heavyweight to tackle the task. ``We feel like we are really getting ahead of the curve with this,'' Ralston said.

It's only a matter of time before Yahoo's rivals, including online search engine leader Google Inc., introduce similar podcasting features, predicted Phil Leigh, an analyst for Inside Digital Media in Tampa, Fla.

``Beyond a shadow of a doubt, the future of search is in audio and video. Searching through text on the Internet has really reached a maturity point,'' he said. ``If you look 10 years down the road, everyone is going to be searching for podcasts.''

All the major search engines are adding more bells and whistles in an effort to retain and attract visitors. The traffic is crucial because the search engines need a substantial audience to continue generating the ad sales that account for most of their profits.

Yahoo estimates that up to 5 million people currently listen to podcasts, which run a gamut of topics. Everything from the president's weekly address to ordinary citizens ranting about their pet peeves are available on podcasts.

The potential market is much larger. Apple so far has sold more than 20 million iPods, accounting for about three-fourths of the MP3 players in the United States.

But the podcasting phenomenon remains a mystery to most of the country -- something that Yahoo believes it can change by delivering more comprehensive search results and enabling users to store the podcasts in their computer's music players, including Apple's iTunes and Microsoft Corp.'s Windows Player in addition to Yahoo's.

That way, people can listen to the podcasts at their convenience, even if they don't have an iPod or another portable device that plays MP3 audio files.

Besides the iPod, Yahoo's service also is compatible with the iRiver player, Dell Inc.'s DJ and Creative Technology Ltd.'s Zen.

Yahoo's service is built strictly for listeners. Unlike Odeo's site, Yahoo isn't providing any tools for creating podcasts, although there are plans to do so eventually, said Joe Hayashi, Yahoo's director of product management.

``This is all about discovery for now,'' Hayashi said. ``Step One is all about growing the ecosystem.''
http://www.siliconvalley.com/mld/sil...l/12865848.htm





Panel: E-voting Vulnerable
Anne Broache

Overlooked bugs and malicious code pose a plausible threat to software on electronic voting machines, a panel of election experts said Friday.

At a conference held by the National Institute of Standards and Technology, part of the U.S. Commerce Department, election officials, computer scientists and academics weighed in on steps that should be taken before, during and after elections to protect the voting systems against software- related problems. Voting has gone increasingly electronic during the past couple of election cycles, but the devices remain without national, uniform security standards.

Keeping electronics systems safe is not just about fending off hackers, members of the panel said.

"All of you running voting systems now are assuredly running software that has bugs in it--presumably in most cases not malicious--but software is buggy," Ron Rivest, a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, told the audience, composed largely of election officials from various parts of the country.

It's those bugs, the panel suggested, that are probably most likely to blame for irregularities in election outcomes. The problem can be quelled to an extent, the panel said, by insisting on a meticulous, higher-quality approach to software development, by certifying all products, and by openly disclosing the source code used.

The openness of voting systems is fundamental to a democratic system, said Michael Shamos, a Carnegie Mellon University computer science professor who has been a longtime election equipment certifier for Pennsylvania.

"If you spend three hours with a voting system, you can figure out how it works and you can replicate it yourself," Shamos said. "I think we need disclosure."

But the idea of exposing the code to outside eyes--not a new one--has spawned criticism from software industry groups such as the Information Technology Association of America, which say they worry it could breed election fraud.

Being able to account for the software's point of origin is also critically important, said Paul Craft, chief of voting systems certification for the state of Florida. He and others said problems have arisen when election workers didn't install the appropriate certified software on the machines in the first place.

The question that remained was just how realistic a threat malicious, deliberate attacks are--and how difficult they'd be to detect.

Shamos of Carnegie Mellon said he, for one, would bet money that no one, even an "omniscient hacker," could create software that "alters the outcome of an election, but does it in such a clever way that no amount of testing either before, after or during the election can reveal it."

He suggested that a tactic known as "parallel testing" could help detect irregularities. Using that method, select voting machines are discreetly "cordoned off" on election day and used only by a special team of people who pose as normal voters. The testers know in advance what the vote totals are supposed to be for those test machines, and the mock voters' behavior is videotaped, so if the ballot numbers don't match up, the testers know there's something wrong with the software.

Others disagreed with Shamos' reasoning. "It's another fence an adversary would have to jump over, but if he knew about it ahead of time, he could use measures to defeat parallel testing," Rivest said.

Some panelists imagined scenarios in which attackers posing as voters could slip corrupted "smart cards" into electronic voting machines that rely on such media or use a "signal"--say, a series of touch screen presses--that would trigger the software to swap votes to another candidate.

They also expressed concern that, if voting machines were hooked up to wireless signals, someone could sit outside the warehouse where the machines were stored--or simply use a PDA inside the polling place--to transmit malicious software to the voting machines.

The solution? Design the systems with as few additional frills as possible.

"I don't know if I'm going out on a limb on this, but wireless and voting do not mix," Shamos said, drawing applause from the audience.
http://news.com.com/Panel+E-voting+v...3-5891237.html





The War Of WinMX Is On - Intrigue, Backstabbing, And More
Posted by napho

From one of the producers of WinMX caches
Dont Let Vladd Take Your WinMX

Below you will see our petition to stop Vladd from taking over your WinMX. This is a statement from WinMX World on behalf of the real owners of WinMX, the users. Please note that the quotes below are taken from a document of a meeting of Operation PIE.


Vladd
We petition you to take a greater look at your actions. Please think of the good of WinMX and not the glory of yourself. We petition you to stop allowing the planning of attacks on the ws2_32.dll or any other means KM releases that allows users to connect. We petition you to also stop the planing of this take over of WinMX to change it into your personal p2p ie: PieMX. Its in the interest of WinMX that you reconsider your actions and take a look at your motives. This program doesnt belong to you, or any ONE individual. WinMX belongs to the users. Your actions and lack of actions would give way for users to think that your intentions are to take somthing that does not belong to you, and to destroy any one that doesnt fit into your PIE Patch agenda, and team. It is the position of WinMX World that you have no rights to take WinMX and make decisions that effect the entire user base with out their consent or knowledge. Control of WinMX no more belongs to Vladd44.com or Operation PIE then it does to WinMX World or WinMX Group.


[15:06] Vladd44: our end of the line date for everything being ready on the push is oct 31st, i want to start pushing b4 then, but thats when everything must be in full effect

[15:06] Nobby: yes Sabre, i do agree i have discussed begining some press releases with Vladd, but we will need to be assured the peer caches can take any increased demand first
[15:07] Vladd44: if we push the numbers and we cant handle them, we are in trouble, and will never recover
[15:07] Gemini777: agreed
[15:07] Jimmy: or a hit from the .dll servers too
[15:07] Vladd44: so we have to be ready when it happens
[15:07] Nobby: perhaps Sabre can update us as to where we are, i for one would like to ear him have the floor for a min or 2?
[15:07] Ranma?: i'm working on udp validation. if we manage to get it working we should be able to handle more queries
[15:07] Nobby: hear*
[15:07] Vladd44: which also means getting that dll off of more peoples comps

[15:08] love005_2004@yahoo.com (E-mail Address Not Verified): we need to put on V's site to tell ppl to remove the dll patch
[15:09] Vladd44: almost 10,000 people downloaded piepatch 2.6 from me at days end yesterday
[15:09] love005_2004@yahoo.com (E-mail Address Not Verified): but implications of that?
[15:09] Vladd44: so in 24 hours another 10,000 people got it from site

[15:09] love005_2004@yahoo.com (E-mail Address Not Verified): ppl r using pie patch fine ... they all get the info and many look in for updates
[15:10] love005_2004@yahoo.com (E-mail Address Not Verified): but the official word needs to go out to stop using KM's patch
[15:10] love005_2004@yahoo.com (E-mail Address Not Verified): like on the front page

[15:10] love005_2004@yahoo.com (E-mail Address Not Verified): but seriously like what Matt said we need to get KM's patch off his site or something as drastic as that to stop ppl from using it.

[15:14] Vladd44: if in doubt, and they cant host a peer cache send them to research
[15:15] Vladd44: bc thats the 2 things we need in place to bury this
[15:15] Vladd44: we need more people running peer caches
[15:15] Vladd44: and we need more places to post about JesusMX :P

[15:25] Vladd44: thats after the 30 day period of recovery
[15:25] Vladd44: we have to keep enough of a userbase to make a built in migration

[15:28] Nobby: this will help me and other team members work out how the fuck to reach 8 million ppl
[15:28] Nobby: i do ofc understand the tech guys must be prepared for this first

[15:28] Nobby: i have ideas, but we need more
[15:29] Nobby: this is bigger than most of u could imagine
[15:29] Nobby: no disrespect indended

[15:48] SABre'911: (sorry, gathering thoughts, lost them)
[15:48] SABre'911: I have asked hollow, who I think is overloaded at present, for a Search and Destory of ws2_32.dll to be added to the next installer.
[15:48] Vladd44: yes
[15:49] Vladd44: it needs to go

[15:49] SABre'911: The 2.7 version of the host file well have at least 1 or 2 new caches in it, and probably remove KM's caches.

[15:50] Vladd44: i have mixed views about pulling all of his servers out
[15:50] SABre'911: I dont.
[15:50] Vladd44: lol
[15:50] Vladd44: i was speaking from political terms
[15:50] SABre'911: It was already stated ``I didnt do it the winmx way''.

[15:52] Vladd44: people will go to where they know
[15:52] Vladd44: and a lot of people know v44
[15:52] Vladd44: and love is building a rep on help
[15:52] Vladd44: but we need to get more involved in helping
[15:52] Vladd44: thats the key
[15:53] Vladd44: i will start trying to crack a whip

[16:07] Vladd44: no reason to argue battles that breaking even is winning
[16:07] Vladd44: its pointless
[16:07] Vladd44: not on the forum
[16:07] Vladd44: in a channel
[16:07] Vladd44: on a street corner
[16:07] Vladd44: so i implore everyone to abstain
[16:07] Vladd44: simply ignore it
[16:07] Vladd44: if someone is wrong it will bear out
[16:07] Vladd44: you dont need to prove them wrong
[16:08] Vladd44: its lose lose
[16:08] Jimmy: do not boot them
[16:08] Camille Le On: or ban
[16:08] Vladd44: that would be admitting you heard them
[16:08] Jimmy: we have a plan
[16:08] Vladd44: people do not talk to walls
[16:08] SABre'911: lmfao some do
[16:08] Vladd44: lol true
[16:08] Jimmy: thier plan is to disturb our plan

[16:08] Jimmy: that's all they have
[16:08] Vladd44: just go forward
[16:09] Vladd44: look to the agenda you have
[16:09] Vladd44: the reasons you are doing this
[16:09] Vladd44: each of us is doing this for their own set of reasons, most of us are just to stubborn to walk away
[16:09] SABre'911: ``I must hijack winmx'' Oh, wait, already done... next!
[16:09] Vladd44: dont get sidetracked by someone else

[16:10] Sable: whats wrong with hijacking winmx ?
[16:10] Sable: freon hijacked TSC and i dit LVHC lol
[16:10] Nobby: how far are u prepared to go with that Vladd, i cant allow too much bad PR to the ppl, as i said earlier

[16:13] Nobby: this is more important than a name, its almost a corporate identity, excuse the phrase, but from a pr point of view, its crucial
[16:13] Gemini777: lol
[16:13] Sable: i vote for sabmx )
[16:14] Sable: piemx
[16:14] Vladd44: nah
[16:14] Vladd44: not piemx
[16:14] Vladd44: MXpie
[16:14] Sable:
[16:14] Nobby: we already have an identity, go with it, it will score with public support
[16:14] love005_2004@yahoo.com (E-mail Address Not Verified): it must start with winmx or mx
[16:14] SABre'911: Carefull of trademark
[16:14] Nobby: im with MXpie
[16:14] Subhuman_Bob: if we change the name, then why are we trying to save WinMX? We may as well start over from scratch, whcih is what a name change would be. People use WinMX because they've heard of it.
[16:14] Sable: PieMX
[16:15] love005_2004@yahoo.com (E-mail Address Not Verified): I like it ... MXPie or MXpie?
[16:15] K?I???'?.: hijackMX
[16:15] Sable: lol
[16:15] *** JIM-921 has left the conversation.
[16:15] Vladd44: if there is a clone, or update bob, it cant be named winmx
[16:15] Nobby: because Bob, we ae now our own entity
[16:15] Vladd44: ok
[16:15] Vladd44: well i like MXpie
[16:15] Vladd44: but thats just me
[16:15] Vladd44: or MXPie
[16:15] Nobby: MXpie, is my vote
[16:15] Vladd44: i wasnt taking a vote :P

[16:16] K?I???'?.: i vote with the majority
[16:17] love005_2004@yahoo.com (E-mail Address Not Verified): hey we get them to use it first ... THEN we tell them the origin of it
[16:17] Nobby: thats 6, 1 more
[16:17] Camille Le On: you got to get them to trust it first
[16:17] Camille Le On: users are like sheep
[16:17] Camille Le On: they stick to what they know

[16:36] * Vladd44 seriously any objects to this being available?
[16:36] SABre'911: Nope
[16:36] Vladd44: its going to be available anyway
[16:36] love005_2004@yahoo.com (E-mail Address Not Verified): mass distribute it
[16:36] SABre'911: we should not be able to be branded as working behind closed doors.
[16:36] love005_2004@yahoo.com (E-mail Address Not Verified): more ppl need to know what we r doing.
[16:36] Vladd44: agreed sabre
[16:36] Gemini777: agreed sabre
[16:36] Subhuman_Bob: I don't think anything was said that people shouldn't hear
[16:36] Camille Le On: true
[16:36] Camille Le On: so share it
[16:36] Nobby: 100%
[16:36] Camille Le On: let them see it
[16:37] Vladd44: ok
[16:37] Subhuman_Bob: if people want to accuse us of hiding things, they'll just claim the logs were edited before they were posted.
[16:37] Vladd44: then i am done

I hope that all of the readers here see exactly what your trying to do, and realize that no one group should be in control of WinMX, proven by your own words here. For anyone that wants to read this entire text document or feels we may have taken the above quotes out of context I invite you to download the document itself, made public at
Transcript
Incase they had second thoughts about editing this document its been also uploaded to here:
Transcript
Feel free to compare the creation dates to verify we have not edited this. Feel free to ask Vladd yourself, we did and he states that this tracscript is correct.
Please send your opinions of this to vladd44@vladd44.com and help us tell him he can not have mx for himself. Or post your views here:
Open Letter To Vladd


©2005 WinMXWorld.com. All rights reserved. Page last updated Thu Oct 13 2005
http://www.p2p-zone.com/underground/...ad.php?t=22064





New AT&T Comcast Information Raises Concerns About Future of the Internet
Mark Wahl

Comcast and AT&T refuse to reveal terms of AOL ISP agreement

In an article released 9/16 in Electronic Media magazine, Diane Mermigas raises new concerns about the AOL agreement with AT&T Comcast to gain access to its high-speed Internet network. At stake now is not only the Internet service provider's ability to create a relationship with its subscribers, but to offer the very services that distinguish broadband from dial-up Internet access. A dangerous precedent is being set that will have negative implications for the future of the Internet and the public interest.

Several weeks ago, Comcast and AT&T announced an agreement with AOL Time Warner to settle issues of control over Time Warner Entertainment as a part of the review process for the impending AT&T Comcast merger. In this settlement, AOL was to gain access to a portion of the merged company's subscribers to offer high-speed Internet service. CDD, the Media Access Project, Consumers Union and Consumer Federation of America have already voiced significant concerns about the agreement, noting that AOL's competitive position would be hampered by its inability to create direct relationships with consumers, as well as by unfavorable revenue sharing terms.

But Mermigas' article reveals a much more insidious set of terms with broad implications for the future of the Internet. Citing "well-placed industry sources," she reports that the agreement prohibits AOL broadband from offering any services that "would directly compete with AT&T-Comcast's digital cable content, such as streaming video." In short, AT&T Comcast will eliminate AOL's ability to compete in offering the bandwidth-intensive content and services that drive residential broadband adoption. These terms set AT&T Comcast up to be the exclusive and unassailable provider of broadband Internet service on its networks.

This news comes as Comcast and AT&T continue to refuse to submit for FCC review the terms of their carriage agreement with AOL. As a part of the merger review process, these companies are required to make available all relevant documents describing the terms of the merger to the FCC. Yet they have refused to do so in the case of the AOL ISP agreement, and 9/13 filed a rebuttal of CDD and the other consumer group's request to have these terms entered into the record.

In their filing, Comcast and AT&T argue that the AOL ISP agreement is a "market-driven, commercially- negotiated solution" to ISP access, and as such has "no place in this proceeding." Yet this statement only emphasizes how out-of-touch the companies are with the history of the Internet as an open and diverse medium. The ISP agreement reveals not only their heavy-handed vision for the future of high-speed communications, but also their strategic power to implement that vision to the disadvantage of competing ISPs and the public interest.

The prospect of AOL being forced to agree to a non-compete clause in order to gain access to a portion of the AT&T Comcast network should set off alarm bells not only with competing ISPs, but with anyone who cherishes the Internet as a place for openness and diversity. Not only should the FCC demand to review the AT&T Comcast/AOL ISP agreement, but it should also launch an immediate investigation into the potential anticompetitive issues raised by the market power that the merging companies already appear to be wielding. So should the Federal Trade Commission, Department of Justice and Congress. The future of the Internet and the public interest demands it.
http://www.democraticmedia.org/news/...TTComcast.html





Spyware Threat Escalating, Expert Warns
Will Sturgeon

Spyware is becoming increasingly pernicious and sophisticated, according to security experts who are warning that users are still failing to take basic steps to protect themselves against the threat.

It's a problem that should scare big businesses as they face up to the fact that important data could be leaking out of their organizations daily. And yet too many organizations are failing to properly educate or protect their employees, one expert says.

"You'd be surprised at the amount of data these things collect," said Eric Chien, a senior researcher at Symantec.

Chien said techniques such as screen capture, key logging, behavioral analysis and common word recognition are all methods employed by spyware applications to build a profile of a user. Presenting at the Virus Bulletin conference in Dublin, Ireland, Chien also detailed the ways in which spyware can get onto a machine.

"At their most basic, they will be able to find your name, your gender, your age, the amount of time you spend online, what you search for, what you buy and what Web sites you visit," he said.

Chien proved this point by showing the detailed data relayed by one piece of common spyware.

Such applications won't discriminate between personal and corporate data, though the latter tends to be of far higher value.

Chien also showed conference delegates a more advanced spyware application that is programmed to kick in when any one of hundreds of Web sites are visited and certain words encountered on the page.

Such an application, for example, was able to take and relay screenshots whenever the user was on particular retailers' Web sites where the word "confirm" appeared.

"If you're hitting 'confirm,' then what information is going to be visible on that Web page? Credit card number, name, expiry date, billing address, shipping address." Chien said.

Tracking the users
And it gets far more worrying for users. The application is also programmed to start sending screenshots whenever users are on any page of certain banks' Web sites.

Chien said users shouldn't put too much faith in perceptions of security as presented in 'https' style URLs.

"Some of these applications can read all https traffic," said Chien, though the danger exists only when accessing such sites from an infected machine.

In fact, the only way users can be protected against such threats is to ensure spyware doesn't exist on their computers.

That requires a balance of technical and educational approaches.

Companies should all have anti-spyware protection in place on all machines, but users must also realize the threat posed by activities such as installing non-essential software and clicking on pop-ups from unknown or untrustworthy sources.

According to research out today from another security vendor, Trend Micro, around a quarter of employees in the U.S. in both the small business and enterprise sector have fallen victim to spyware while at work.

In total, 87 percent of respondents said they are aware of a threat posed by spyware while 57 percent said they want more education on the threat and 40 percent believe their IT department could be doing more to protect them.
http://news.com.com/2100-1029_3-5893267.html





Governor Signs Bill On Violent Games

Renting, selling them to minors becomes illegal
Dean Takahashi

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger signed a bill Friday that makes it illegal to sell or rent violent video games to minors in California.

The signing of the bill, written by Assembly Speaker Pro Tem Leland Yee, shows how far the video game industry has fallen out of political favor in a few short months. California joins Illinois and Michigan in passing an anti-violent video game bill in the past year alone, and similar bills have been proposed in just about every state, even though the courts have found prior prohibitions unconstitutional.

The law takes effect Jan. 1, although the video-game industry is already vowing to challenge it in court.

The governor said in a statement, ``Today I signed legislation to ensure parent involvement in determining which video games are appropriate for their children. The bill I signed will require that violent video games be clearly labeled and not be sold to children under 18 years old. Many of these games are made for adults, and choosing games that are appropriate for kids should be a decision made by their parents.''

Yee's bill stalled last year and again in the spring in the Assembly, but it passed easily this time. Yee said in an interview that many legislators were ready to sign on the heels of the video game industry's worst public relations gaffe: Hidden sex scenes were uncovered this summer in ``Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas,'' causing the game's maker to pull the game from stores.

`Terminator' safe

Until now, California stores have had only a voluntary obligation to restrict the sale of games rated for adults, and kids can walk into some stores and buy whatever they want.

The new law doesn't use the game industry's own rating system, which labels games as ``mature'' or ``adults only'' for those 17 and up. Yee said that courts have held that states can't endorse a private industry rating system.

Instead, the bill bans the sale or rental of ``violent video games'' to minors, where such games are defined as those that include killing, maiming, dismembering or sexually assaulting an image of a human being. The bill says the game's sale to minors would be banned if a ``reasonable person, considering the game as a whole, would find appeals to a deviant or morbid interest of minors.''

The law also classifies a game as subject to the ban if the violence in it is ``patently offensive,'' ``cruel,'' ``depraved,'' or ``heinous.''

Opponents said this will lead to confusion about which games are affected and will lead to case-by-case decisions by juries. But Yee said that retailers themselves won't be held responsible for categorizing games. The burden, he said, falls on the game publishers or their distributors to put 2-inch-high ``18'' labels on the games that have such violent images in them.

Asked if the ban would cover the games based on the governor's own movies, such as the ``Terminator'' games rated ``teen'' for ages 13 and up, Yee said he didn't expect that teen games would wind up being banned under the new law's categorization.

Based on studies that show that violent games make children more aggressive, various teacher, medical, psychological and youth groups supported the legislation. But the game industry cites studies that suggest there's no harm from playing violent games.

The law will lead to legal challenges from the game industry's trade group, the Entertainment Software Association, which notes that no such ban applies to violent movies or racy music.

``We are disappointed that politicians of both parties chose to toss overboard the First Amendment and free artistic and creative expression in favor of political expediency,'' Doug Lowenstein, president of the ESA, said in a statement. ``The ESA intends to file a lawsuit to strike this law down and we are confident that we will prevail.''

Jeff Brown, a spokesman for Electronic Arts, the biggest independent publisher of video games with headquarters in Redwood City, said in a statement, ``The certainty of a constitutional challenge makes this a hollow gesture. Several courts have affirmed that games enjoy the same constitutional protections as movies, books and television and I expect they will come to the same conclusion in California.''

Sledgehammer effect

But one observer said the new law would have impact.

``I think the reality of the California video game law will hit the video game business like a sledgehammer,'' said Dennis McCauley, editor of the Web site www.game politics.com. ``I mean, this is California, the heart of the game industry.''

Industry representatives on Friday were critical of the governor as well as the legislation.

``It's kind of ironic he's protecting kids from himself,'' said Jason Della Rocca, executive director of the International Game Developers Association. ``It's an interesting public relations move where he bunches together all these things to protect children. We are seeing continuing ignorance on the part of politicians and critics on the games industry.''
http://www.siliconvalley.com/mld/sil...l/12851768.htm





Buried Clause Could Tag Films, TV Shows As Porn
Brooks Boliek

Tucked deep inside a massive bill designed to track sex offenders and prevent children from being victimized by sex crimes is language that could put many Hollywood movies in the same category as hard-core, X-rated films.

The provision added to the Children's Safety Act of 2005 would require any film, TV show or digital image that contains a sex scene to come under the same government filing requirements that adult films must meet.

Currently, any filmed sexual activity requires an affidavit that lists the names and ages of the actors who engage in the act. The film is required to have a video label that claims compliance with the law and lists where the custodian of the records can be found. The record-keeping requirement is known as Section 2257, for its citation in federal law. Violators could spend five years in jail.

Under the provision inserted into the Children's Safety Act, the definition of sexual activity is expanded to include simulated sex acts like those that appear in many movies and TV shows.

"It's a significant and unprecedented expansion of the scope of the law," one industry executive said. "I don't think the studios would like being grouped in with the hard-core porn industry."

The provision, written by Rep. Mike Pence, R-Ind., could have ramifications beyond simply requiring someone to ensure that the names and ages of actors who partake in pretend lovemaking as compliance with Section 2257 in effect defines a movie or TV show as a pornographic work under federal law. Industry sources say the provision was included in the bill at the behest of the Justice Department. Calls to Pence's office and the Justice Department went unreturned Tuesday.

On Pence's Web site, the congressman contends that the provision is meant to crack down on "so-called 'home pornographers' that use downloading on the Internet and digital and Polaroid photography to essentially create an at-home cottage industry for child pornography."

Industry officials contend that the way the provision is written, a sex scene could trigger the provision even if the actors were clothed. While the language is designed to capture "lascivious exhibition of the genitals," other legal decisions have said that "lascivious exhibition" could occur when the genitals are covered.

The bill, with the Section 2257 provision included, already has been approved by the U.S. House of Representatives and is waiting consideration by the Senate Judiciary Committee.

Industry executives worry that the provision, which is retroactive to 1995, will have a chilling effect on filmmakers. Faced with the choice of filing a 2257 certificate or editing out a scene, a filmmaker might decide it's not worth getting entangled with the federal government and let the scene fall to the cutting-room floor, the executives said.

"From the creative side of the street, there's concern that the government of federal law enforcement would get involved in what you were doing," one industry source said. "At some point, people would be faced with the decision: 'Do I include the scene and register a 2257 or leave it out?' "

In 1988, a similar provision was ruled unconstitutional by the federal court here. Congress later rewrote it so that it included only actual sex acts, not the pretend acts in movies and TV shows.

The 2257 provision also has ramifications beyond the artistic as a federal tax provision designed to stem runaway production is unavailable to anyone required to register a 2257. Many state incentives designed to entice filmmakers to shoot on location also contain similar language.

Industry officials contend that the law is unnecessary. California laws and industry practices protecting children from harm are among the most stringent.

"The California law goes from soup to nuts," one industry executive said. "There's not one shadow of any evidence that the movie industry doesn't protect children."

While the provision is designed to ensure that children aren't abused, its critics say it will do little to stem child sex abuse.

"Guys who are making this stuff don't care about reporting requirements," one source said. "When they're caught, they're looking at 30 years in prison. There's no indication they're going to fill out the paperwork."
http://today.reuters.com/news/newsAr...LM-PORN-DC.XML





Playboy's Strip Tease

Playboy appears to scale back, but it's actually going in for some augmentation surgery.
Rick Aristotle Munarriz

In yet another publishing-industry retrenchment, Playboy has announced that it will scale back on its base rate. Going from a circulation of 3.15 million monthly issues to 3 million may not seem like much, but it's the company's first step back in 10 years.

Then again, it's not fair to call this a retreat. The company's advertising rates are going up by 8%, and its namesake magazine's cover price will be going up by a buck starting with the January issue. So let's not fall for the lower base rate here. Like many of its photogenic centerfolds, the company is looking to accomplish more with less.

In fact, it will go from 18 different international Playboy editions to 20 once it adds Argentina and Ukraine to the mix. In yesterday's filing, Playboy also announced a video-on-demand deal with Comcast.

Reining in the base rate makes sense, given that the company began to offer its popular magazine online just last month. Playboy has been a dot-com institution for ages, but this is the first time that the actual magazine will be available on the Internet in its entirety.

Some may argue that Playboy is late in migrating its entire publication online, but the adult-entertainment giant's timing is actually pretty good. A lot of the press surrounding the recent closings of popular peer-to-peer file sharing networks has been dedicated to its impact on the music industry. Sure, the move is a positive for major record labels such as Warner Music Group and Vivendi's Universal, but a lot of smut was also being swapped through these now-darkened gateways. That may help the online purveyors of hardcore pornography such as New Frontier Media or the website arm of Rick's Cabaret more than a company like Playboy, which favors the softer side of adult entertainment. But it should still be a favorable influence for the company that Hugh Hefner built.

So, sure, let the headlines have you believe that Playboy is actually scaling back. We all know that it's got more than a few appointments lined up for augmentation surgery on its business model.
http://msnbc.msn.com/id/9671844/





Iraq-Corpse Web Site Operator Held For Obscenity

The American operator of a Web site which posted grisly pictures of people killed in the Iraq and Afghan conflicts (WiR 10-8) was arrested on obscenity charges unrelated to the war photos, police officials in Florida said.

The Polk County sheriff's office said Christopher Michael Wilson was arrested on Friday and faces one count of wholesale distribution of obscene material and 300 misdemeanor charges relating to the Web site and pornographic photos.

The charges were unrelated to the photos of corpses from Iraq and Afghanistan, which the site states were provided by U.S. troops in exchange for free access to pornographic material.

Several of the graphic pictures showed men wearing what looked like U.S. military uniforms, standing over charred corpses, mutilated bodies and severed body parts.

Many were accompanied by captions making light of the corpses. One photo of a charred body was dubbed "Cooked Iraqi."

The Pentagon has said it found no evidence any of the photos were posted by soldiers.

Wilson was being held in jail under a $151,000 bond, the Polk County sheriff's office said.

"In my 33 years of law enforcement experience, this is one of the most horrific examples of filthy, obscene materials we have ever seized," Sheriff Grady Judd said in a statement. He did not elaborate.

Judd said the investigation was continuing and any pertinent information would be shared with the U.S. Army Criminal Investigations Division.

Judd told the Orlando Sentinel newspaper his investigation was not spurred by federal authorities.

Wilson lives in Lakeland, Florida, but hosts the site out of Amsterdam, Netherlands, according to an article last month in the Online Journalism Review of the Annenberg School for Communications at the University of Southern California.

The controversy sparked by the photographs of war dead followed the publication a year and a half ago of photos showing U.S. soldiers abusing Iraqi prisoners at Abu Ghraib jail. That scandal prompted international condemnation of the United States.
http://today.reuters.com/news/newsAr...Michael+Wilson


















Until next week,

- js.


















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