Peer-To-Peer News - The Week In Review - May 10th, '08

[JackSpratts]

Since 2002


































"Americans have come to expect the Internet to be open to everyone. The Internet was designed without centralized control, without gatekeepers for content and services. If we allow companies with monopoly or duopoly power to control how the Internet operates, network providers could have the power to choose what content is available." – Rep. John Conyers, D-Michigan


"The problem Professor Duffy identified at least arguably invalidates every decision of the patent court decided by a three-judge panel that included at least one judge appointed after March 2000." – Adam Liptak


"All of the data out there is suspect." – KC Claffy


"I got thrown out of music school for even listening to Fats Domino and Ray Charles." – Steve Winwood


"Well, i guess i won't be buying Mass Effect then." – Olegdr


"This is the Indiana Movie that you were dreading." – ShogunMaster


































May 10th, 2008




In One Flaw, Questions on Validity of 46 Judges
Adam Liptak

Law professors are sometimes influential, but in a general way. Their insights can help shape the law, over time and at the margins.

But John F. Duffy, who teaches at the George Washington University Law School, is a different kind of law professor. He has discovered a constitutional flaw in the appointment process over the last eight years for judges who decide patent appeals and disputes, and his short paper documenting the problem seems poised to undo thousands of patent decisions concerning claims worth billions of dollars.

His basic point does not appear to be in dispute. Since 2000, patent judges have been appointed by a government official without the constitutional power to do so.

“I actually ran it by a number of colleagues who teach administrative law and constitutional law,” Professor Duffy said, recalling his own surprise at finding such a fundamental and important flaw. He thought he must have been missing something.

“No one thought it was a close question,” Professor Duffy said.

Charles Miller, a spokesman for the Justice Department, said the government had no comment. “There is really nothing we can say at this time,” he said.

But the Justice Department has already all but conceded that Professor Duffy is right. Given the opportunity to dispute him in a December appeals court filing, government lawyers said only that they were at work on a legislative solution.

They did warn that the impact of Professor Duffy’s discovery could be cataclysmic for the patent world, casting “a cloud over many thousands of board decisions” and “unsettling the expectations of patent holders and licensees across the nation.” But they did not say Professor Duffy was wrong.

If it was a legislative mistake, it may turn out to be a big one. The patent court hears appeals from people and companies whose patent applications were turned down by patent examiners, and it decides disputes over who invented something first. There is often a lot of money involved.

The problem Professor Duffy identified at least arguably invalidates every decision of the patent court decided by a three-judge panel that included at least one judge appointed after March 2000.

The appeals court, the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, ducked the question in January, which was easy to do because the company on the losing side raised it only after the court had already issued its decision. The company, Translogic Technology, was frank in explaining the delay: it had not known of the issue until Professor Duffy published his article.

Last month, Translogic asked the Supreme Court to consider the question.

Some provisions of the Constitution are open to interpretation, but some are clear. The Constitution says, for instance, that some government officials may be appointed only by the president, the courts or “heads of departments” like the attorney general or the secretary of commerce.

But a 1999 law changed the way administrative patent judges are appointed, substituting the director of the Patent and Trademark Office for the secretary of commerce. Jennifer Rankin Byrne, a spokeswoman for the office, said 46 of the 74 judges on the patent court, the Board of Patent Appeals and Interferences, were appointed under the new law.

“That method of appointment is almost certainly unconstitutional,” Professor Duffy wrote in his paper, first published last summer on an influential patent law blog.

There are two possible contrary arguments. One is that the patent judges are not the sort of “inferior officers” to whom the Constitution’s appointments clause applies, but instead mere employees (and thus inferior to inferior officers). But the Supreme Court has already ruled, in Freytag v. Commissioner in 1991, that special trial judges of the tax court are inferior officers, and the patent judges have more power and discretion than they do.

The other possible argument is that the director of the patent office is entitled to appoint the judges because he is the head of a department. The Freytag decision “pretty clearly forecloses” that argument, Professor Duffy wrote. Freytag said the departments referred to in the Constitution are “executive departments like the cabinet-level departments.” But the patent office is part of the Commerce Department, and its director is an under secretary of the department — not its head.

The question of who gets to appoint “inferior officers” may seem a trivial one. But the Constitution’s framers cared about it.

The “manipulation of official appointments” was “one of the American revolutionary generation’s greatest grievances against executive power,” Justice Harry A. Blackmun explained in Freytag. The framers understood, he continued, “that by limiting the appointment power they could ensure that those who wielded it were accountable to political force and the will of the people.”

The Office of Legal Counsel at the Justice Department, which is supposed to catch constitutional problems in pending legislation, only last year published a 41-page memorandum on the importance and limits of the appointments clause. People who wield the delegated sovereign powers of the federal government are officers subject to the appointments clause, the memorandum said, and judges certainly wield such power.

“Appointments clause issues were our bread and butter,” said John O. McGinnis, a law professor at Northwestern who was deputy assistant attorney general in the Office of Legal Counsel from 1987 to 1991. Professor McGinnis said Professor Duffy’s analysis appeared correct.

“You have to understand that O.L.C. looks at just an enormous number of bills,” he added. “A line attorney might just miss it.”

The Supreme Court will soon decide whether to take up the question, in the case involving Translogic, one with $86 million at stake.

“An improperly constituted tribunal should not be deciding the case,” said a lawyer for Translogic, Robert A. Long of Covington & Burling in Washington. “You have to go back and have the decision made by a properly constituted panel.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/06/wa.../06bar.html?hp





Freenet 0.7.0 "Darknet" Released!

The Freenet Project is very pleased to announce the release of Freenet 0.7.0.

Freenet is software designed to allow the free exchange of information over the Internet without fear of censorship, or reprisal. To achieve this Freenet makes it very difficult for adversaries to reveal the identity, either of the person publishing, or downloading content. The Freenet project started in 1999, released Freenet 0.1 in March 2000, and has been under active development ever since.

Freenet is unique in that it handles the storage of content, meaning that if necessary users can upload content to Freenet and then disconnect. We've discovered that this is a key requirement for many Freenet users. Once uploaded, content is mirrored and moved around the Freenet network, making it very difficult to trace, or to destroy. Content will remain in Freenet for as long as people are retrieving it, although Freenet makes no guarantee that content will be stored indefinitely.

The journey towards Freenet 0.7 began in 2005 with the realization that some of Freenet's most vulnerable users needed to hide the fact that they were using Freenet, not just what they were doing with it. The result of this realization was a ground-up redesign and rewrite of Freenet, adding a "darknet" capability, allowing users to limit who their Freenet software would communicate with to trusted friends. This would make it far more difficult for a third-party to determine who is using Freenet.

Freenet 0.7 also embodies significant improvements to almost every other aspect of Freenet, including efficiency, security, and usability. Freenet is available for Windows, Linux, and OSX. It can be downloaded from:

http://freenetproject.org/download.html

If you have any difficulty getting Freenet to work, or any questions not answered in the faq, please join us on IRC on #freenet on irc.freenode.net. Thank you.

This release would not have been possible without the efforts of numerous volunteers, and Matthew Toseland, Freenet's full time developer. Matthew's work is funded through donations via our website (as well as a few larger sponsors from time to time). We ask that anyone who can help us to ensure Matthew's continued employment visit our donations page and make a contribution at:

http://freenetproject.org/donate.html
http://freenetproject.org/news.html





If Music DRM is Dead, the RIAA Expects its Resurrection
Jacqui Cheng

Despite widespread declarations of the death of DRM in music, the Recording Industry Association of America insists that it's far from dead. At the Digital Hollywood conference taking place in Los Angeles this week, the organization argued that DRM is still used in the large majority of music distribution methods. Not only that, but DRM is poised to make a comeback to make up for where it has fallen.

"(Recently) I made a list of the 22 ways to sell music and 20 of them still require DRM," RIAA technology unit head David Hughes said during a panel discussion, according to CNet. "Any form of subscription service or limited play-per-view or advertising offer still requires DRM. So DRM is not dead."

Hughes' statement comes just four months after the last of the Big Four music labels decided to ditch DRM for some sales. Sony BMG joined EMI, Universal, and Warner in selling DRM-free MP3 files through Amazon's MP3 service (in addition to a rather large handful of independent labels), making Amazon the only online destination that sells unprotected music from all of the majors. Other music stores offer some DRM-free selections too, like the iTunes Store, the Zune Marketplace, eMusic, and Amie Street, to name a few.

Still, it's true that DRM still exists in the music world. The majority of songs from the iTunes Store still utilize DRM, many stores continue to sell tracks with Windows-centric DRM, and practically all subscription services still use it. Other services, such as web-based music service Last.fm, offer free ad-supported streaming, but users are limited to listening over the web and cannot take the files with them offline. And, of course, subscription-based services use DRM to ensure that the downloaded music expires once users cancel their subscriptions.

Hughes believes that per-track purchases are going the way of the dodo in favor of these other models, and that's why DRM will have a resurgence. "I think there is going to be a shift," he said. "I think there will be a movement towards subscription services and they will eventually mean the return of DRM." Hughes did acknowledge that users would rather live in a world where DRM stayed out of their way by saying that as long as they get to use files how they want, users don't care about DRM.

The problem with DRM is that users can't use the files how they want, which is why they do care. And we're miles away from the kind of magical solution solution envisioned by the Hughes that would create the perfect, unnoticeable DRM scheme. Others on the panel realize this. Digimarc Corp. director of business development Rajan Samtani pointed out that there are too many ways for the "kids" to get around DRM and that it's time to "throw in the towel."

Aside from incompatibility, there's another major danger with DRM: having your music licenses disappear on you one day. This most recently happened with MSN Music, which announced that users will need to either commit to their authorized computers for life or circumvent the DRM by burning the music to a CD and re-ripping.

The industry's recent willingness to drop DRM and embrace other, nontraditional models led us to believe that the music industry was finally "getting it." Given Hughes' comments, however, perhaps the Big Four labels and RIAA never will.
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post...urrection.html





Microsoft May Build a Copyright Cop Into Every Zune
Saul Hansell

If you like to download the latest episodes of “Heroes” or other NBC shows from BitTorrent, maybe you shouldn’t buy a Microsoft Zune to watch them on.

A future update of the software for Microsoft’s portable media player may well include a feature that will block unauthorized copies of copyrighted videos from being played on it.

Tuesday, Microsoft announced that it would start selling video programming for the Zune, mainly TV shows. These include programs from NBC Universal, which has pulled its shows off Apple’s iTunes Store.

Late Tuesday afternoon I reached J. B. Perrette, the president of digital distribution for NBC Universal, to ask why NBC found Microsoft’s video store more appealing than Apple’s.

He explained that NBC, like most studios, would like the broadest distribution possible for its programming. But it has two disputes with Apple.

First, Apple insists that all TV shows have an identical wholesale price so that it can sell all of them at $1.99. NBC wants to sell its programs for whatever price it chooses.

Second, Apple refused to cooperate with NBC on building filters into its iPod player to remove pirated movies and videos.

Microsoft, by contrast, will accept NBC’s pricing scheme and will work with it to try to develop a copyright “cop” to be installed on its devices.

For now, both issues are rather theoretical. NBC does have some variation in its wholesale price schedule, although Mr. Perrette declined to describe it. Microsoft has chosen to absorb the differences and sell all shows for about $1.99.

Nonetheless, Mr. Perrette said, NBC wants the flexibility to sell older shows at lower prices and hit shows at higher prices than the standard Apple has set. It also wants to create various deals that would, for example, allow a discount for people buying a season or other group of episodes at one time.

“That separation of the wholesale pricing flexibility and what the retailer decides to charge is core to us,” Mr. Perrette said. “Zune was willing to provide that.”

Similarly, the copyright filtering system is still in development and its exact form has not been set.

Mr. Perrette said the plan is to create “filtering technology that allows for playback of legitimately purchased content versus non-legitimately purchased content.”

He said this would be similar to systems being tested by Microsoft, Google and others that are meant to block pirated clips from video sharing sites. NBC is also working with Internet service providers like AT&T to put similar filters right into the network.

Mr. Perrette added that NBC is trying to develop similar hardware technology with SanDisk, through whom NBC also sells its programming.

Adam Sohn, a spokesman for Microsoft, declined to discuss details of this effort other than to say that the software company is exploring anti-piracy measures with NBC. He said Microsoft, which suffers from its own piracy problems, is sympathetic to Hollywood’s concerns.

At the same time, it will be difficult for Microsoft to add features that consumers don’t like to its Zune products, which already lag far behind Apple in the market.

Mr. Perrette said NBC understands the potential resistance. “In the short term, this will not win us a lot of friends,” he said. “In the long term, the consumer wants there to be quality premium-produced content, and in order for that to continue to be a viable business, there needs to be significant protection around it.”
http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/0...une/index.html





Copy Protection/Activation
Olegdr

Joined: 03 May 2008 Posted: Saturday, 03 May 2008 02:40PM
Hello everybody,

I'm really excited about Mass Effect coming to the PC, and i plan to buy it the moment it is released here, but first I would like to know what kind of copy protection MEPC will use and if it will require any kind of online activation to play? I have no plan or desire to copy the game DVD(s), but i refuse to buy the game if it will have any kind of activation system in place.

Last year i didn't buy Bioshock for that very reason.

I don't need to ask permission to play my own legally purchased games!

_________________
Derek French
Technical Producer

Joined: 16 Oct 2001
From: Euphoria Posted: Saturday, 03 May 2008 04:20PM

Mass Effect uses SecuROM and requires an online activation for the first time that you play it. Each copy of Mass Effect comes with a CD Key which is used for this activation and for registration here at the BioWare Community. Mass Effect does not require the DVD to be in the drive in order to play, it is only for installation.

After the first activation, SecuROM requires that it re-check with the server within ten days (in case the CD Key has become public/warez'd and gets banned). Just so that the 10 day thing doesn't become abrupt, SecuROM tries its first re-check with 5 days remaining in the 10 day window. If it can't contact the server before the 10 days are up, nothing bad happens and the game still runs. After 10 days a re-check is required before the game can run.

Please feel free to ask any follow up questions in this thread and I will try and answer them when I can.
----------------
DISCLAIMER: The above statement was made with the currently available information. Its true right now (check the time stamp on the post) but may not be in the future. Relax. Chill. Enjoy life. Thanks!

_________________
Olegdr

Joined: 03 May 2008 Posted: Saturday, 03 May 2008 04:35PM
Well, i guess i won't be buying Mass Effect then.

When playing your legally purchased game is more troublesome than playing a pirated copy, somebody somewhere should realise the system is fraked.
http://masseffect.bioware.com/forums...8375&forum=125





EA Loosens Spore, Mass Effect DRM
Chris Kohler

In response to criticism of the security measures that it had planned for its major upcoming PC game releases, Electronic Arts has backed off of the harsher parts of its plan.

Specifically, EA's plan to dial in to game owner's computers every ten days to check whether they were running a legitimate version of their software has been scrapped, ShackNews reports. EA had planned to use the validation method for upcoming titles Mass Effect and Spore. EA now says that validation will now only occur when a user attempts to download new content for either game.

Chief among the voices in opposition to this measure were members of the armed forces, who pointed out that they could not rely on having an internet connection every ten days.
http://blog.wired.com/games/2008/05/...sens-spor.html





Universal to Allow Free Music Downloads

• Qtrax promises about 25m tracks with ads embedded
• Website uses peer-to-peer networks to transfer tunes

Owen Gibson

Some of the biggest music labels could soon allow free legal downloads, after an ambitious ad-funded file-sharing service, Qtrax, signed a deal with Universal, the world's largest record label and home to U2, Kanye West and Mariah Carey.

Qtrax announced its imminent launch in January, making up to 25m tracks available for download free. It said it would piggy-back on existing illegal peer-to-peer download services but clear all the rights with labels and publishers and make money through advertising.

When it emerged that several deals were not yet fully in place or had lapsed, analysts expected the service to disappear in the ensuing backlash. But it has since signed deals with Beggars, the UK's largest independent label, home to Dizzee Rascal and the White Stripes, and the publishing arms of EMI and Sony/ATV.

The contract with Universal is the first with a major label to cover both publishing and recording rights, meaning that it should be able to offer music by its artists within the next month or so. The Universal deal is initially understood to cover only the US.

Qtrax is just one of several sites trying to make money from the concept of free, ad-funded downloads and streaming.

Earlier this year We7, backed by Peter Gabriel, began offering downloads with embedded audio adverts and signed a deal with Sony BMG to offer its catalogue on a streaming basis.

Other sites such as Imeem and Last.fm have also signed deals with leading labels to offer streaming services that act as vast, ad-supported online jukeboxes. Adverts are displayed during the search and downloading processes.

Spiralfrog, a New York-based site that has been striving for two years to establish a user base in the US and Canada, also has a deal with Universal.

Qtrax has promised that tracks downloaded through its browser can be kept by users for ever as long as they regularly log in to renew the rights management software. It will also enable iPod users to transfer the tracks to their audio players, which could hit sales of downloads through Apple's iTunes Music Store.

As well as selling advertising, it will offer merchandise, concert tickets and other music-related items.

Major record label executives claim they are keen to experiment with new revenue models that could help plug the gap in earnings caused by the rise of online piracy and the corresponding slump in CD sales.

However, they are wary of signing long-term deals that could backfire and their hesitancy, plus the licensing minefield of negotiating with a range of rights holders, has caused frustration for some of the new entrants.

In addition to sites offering ad-funded music, labels are also exploring new licensing models for subscription-based or bundled offerings such as Nokia's Comes With Music and MusicStation and beginning tentative discussions with internet service providers about packaging music downloads into monthly broadband subscriptions.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2008...a.digitalmusic





Florida Judge Smacks Down RIAA
NewYorkCountryLawyer

The RIAA is going to have to face the music in Tampa, Florida, and answer the charges of extortion, trespass, conspiracy, unlicensed investigation, and computer fraud and abuse that have been leveled against them there. And the judge delivered his ruling against them in in pretty unceremonious fashion — receiving their dismissal motion last night, and denying the motion this morning.

The RIAA's unvarying M.O., when hit with counterclaims, is to make a motion to dismiss them. It did just that in one Tampa case, UMG v. Del Cid, but the judge upheld 5 of the 6 counterclaims. The RIAA quickly settled that one. When a new case came up in the same Tampa courthouse before the very same judge, and the same 5 counterclaims were leveled against the record companies, I opined that "it is highly unlikely that the RIAA will make a motion to dismiss counterclaims," since I knew they'd be risking sanctions if they did.

Well I guess I underestimated the chutzpah — or the propensity for frivolous motion practice — of the RIAA lawyers, as they in essence thumbed their nose at the judge, making the dismissal motion anyway, telling District Judge Richard A. Lazzara that his earlier decision had been wrong. The judge wasted no time telling the record companies that he did not agree (PDF).
http://news.slashdot.org/article.pl?.../05/06/1954237





Conviction in Swedish File Sharing Case

A 31-year-old man at the heart of Sweden’s largest file sharing case to date was convicted in Linköping District Court on Monday.

Andreas Karlsson was given a suspended sentence and fined the equivalent of 40 days’ pay for violating Sweden’s copyright protection laws.

Karlsson had been indicted for making approximately 4,500 music files and more than 30 films available for downloading on the internet.

The court ruled that fines, which up until now had been the punishment handed down in similar cases, were not sufficient when considering the number of films and songs included in the case.

In its ruling, the court found that “a task for the use of the state’s powers is to, via legislation or other means, take the measures judged necessary” in order to find a solution to the problem.

In addition, the court stated in its judgment that the film and recording industries must also take some responsibility. As a result, the 31-year-old was not sent to prison but instead given a suspended sentence.

The case is the largest tried so far in Sweden, and is therefore important as a matter of principle, according to Sweden’s Anti-Piracy Agency (APB).

“It’s clear that the court takes seriously the extensive infringement of which the man is guilty. The huge amount of illegal file sharing which takes place in Sweden causes creators tremendous harm,” said Sara Lindbäck, a lawyer with APB, in a statement.

However the Piracy Agency (Piratbyrån), a lobbying group which defends file sharing, doesn’t see the ruling as especially interesting.

“The judgment isn't really interesting because it has to do with an older file sharing program, Direct Connect, which is used by fewer people. The penalty is based on there being so many files to which this person shared, but with new file sharing programs you can’t see all the files that any one person decides to share,” said Magnus Eriksson, spokesperson for the The Piracy Agency.

“If the ruling has any affect at all, it will be that more people stop using the Direct Connect program.”
http://www.thelocal.se/11550/20080505/





ILN News Letter
Michael Geist

DC Court Rules File Sharer May Not Retain Anonymity on First Amendment Grounds

BNA’s Electronic Commerce & Law Report reports that the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia has ruled that a student accused of copyright infringement has minimal expectation of privacy under the First Amendment when allegedly using a public online peer-to peer network to disseminate copyrighted sound recordings.

Because the student did not have a legitimate expectation of privacy, the student cannot invoke his First Amendment rights to anonymous speech to quash a subpoena seeking to identify him from his IP address, Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly held.

Case name is Arista Records LLC v. Does 1-19. [BNA]

Subscription required https://pubs.bna.com/ip/bna/eip.nsf/eh/a0b6k2q7m4





MPAA Defeats TorrentSpy
Thomas Mennecke

A Los Angeles Federal court has rendered a $110 million judgment against Valence Media, the company which operates the now defunct TorrentSpy. This judgment represents the culmination of a lengthy decline for TorrentSpy, which was slowly strangled to death by the movie industry.

“This substantial money judgment sends a strong message about the illegality of these sites,” said Dan Glickman, Chairman and CEO of the MPAA. “The demise of TorrentSpy is a clear victory for the studios and demonstrates that such pirate sites will not be allowed to continue to operate without facing relentless litigation by copyright holders.”

Unlike many other BitTorrent websites such as The Pirate Bay, MiniNova, or isoHunt, TorrentSpy was never quite able to shake off the MPAA's legal pursuit. Much like BitTorrent, Inc., TorrentSpy attempted many avenues of legitimacy. This included creating a program which allowed copyright holders to remove indexed torrents, and a policy of blocking US search requests. None of this seemed to matter, as TorrentSpy took residence in the United States, where the political climate is notoriously hostile to P2P development - the exception being BitTorrent, Inc.

According to the judgment posted on PACER, an injunction was also ordered against TorrentSpy. Interestingly, Valence Media can retain possession of the site, however is barred from indexing copyrighted works in the future.

"Defendant, and its officers, agents, servants, employees, and attorneys, and all those in active concert or participation with Defendant who receive actual notice of this Permanent Injunction shall immediately and permanently be enjoined from directly, indirectly, contributorily, or vicariously infringing in any manner any Copyrighted Works..."

Additionally, Judge Florence-Marie Cooper ruled that "Plaintiffs are awarded statutory damages of $30,00 per infringement pursuant to 17 U.S.C. § 504(c), for each of the 3,699 infringements shown, for a total judgment in the amount of $110,970,000..."

But what's $970,000 between friends?

So comes to an end the BitTorrent site known as TorrentSpy. Its sister site isoHunt, which has the fortunate situation of being based in rather P2P friendly land of Canada, is currently safe and operational. Although TorrentSpy closed its doors on March 24, 2008, barring some type of miracle today's rendering should close the chapter on this once successful BitTorrent indexing site.
http://www.slyck.com/story1686_MPAA_Defeats_TorrentSpy





TorrentSpy Won't Pay $111 Million Court Order, Lawyer Says
David Kravets

A day after a U.S. judge dinged TorrentSpy with one of the largest fines in copyright history, the lawyer for the torrent-tracking search engine said Thursday the $111 million judgment won't get paid.

Nevis-based Valence Media, the owner of TorrentSpy, filed for bankruptcy protection in England last week "and has no appreciable assets," attorney Ira Rothken said. "This was a Hollywood publicity stunt."

The Motion Picture Association of America sued the search engine in Los Angeles federal court, alleging the site facilitated copyright infringement of Hollywood movies. The MPAA won a default judgment last year after TorrentSpy refused to turn over internal documents, and a federal judge levied the $111 million penalty and ordered the site never to return online.

"It certainly is not a lesson for other search engines to look at what the rules are as they relate to dot-torrent files," Rothken said. "There was no analysis of the copyright."

Elizabeth Kaltman, an MPAA spokeswoman, said "We will pursue enforcement of the judgment."

The legality of torrent-tracking services have never been litigated on the merits in the United States, said Charles Baker, a Houston IP lawyer who defended Grokster and is Limewire's attorney in a case accusing the peer-to-peer software maker of facilitating copyright infringement.

The MPAA, he said, wants "other torrent owners and operators to look at the $111 million figure and say, 'I'm getting out of the business.'"

The TorrentSpy case, Baker said, "is another example of the studios eating these guys to death. They haven't tried the merits of the case."

Gary Fung, the operator and founder of tracking service Isohunt, said the TorrentSpy decision worries him, but he's not going to cave to Hollywood.

"I'm worried," he said. "I wouldn't be able to pay something like a $100 million. I fully know the risk I'm taking."

The United States' largest copyright fine, $115 million, was against the Kazaa file sharing service two years ago.

The MPAA's case against Fung is pending in U.S. District Court in Los Angeles, a case that is likely to set legal precedent in the United States and perhaps abroad on the legalities of torrent-tracking services that the MPAA claims facilitate wonton copyright infringement.

The TorrentSpy penalty is being appealed to the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco, Rothken said. He has already appealed last year's default judgment in the case that allegedly was built on the back of a hacker who was paid $15,000 to obtain private e-mail and financial information. Both sides are briefing that case.
http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/200...tspy-wont.html





MPAA Demands $15 Million from The Pirate Bay
Ernesto

The MPA(A) has announced that it is demanding $15.4 million from the Pirate Bay in the upcoming court case, to cover the damages they suffered from 4 movies and 13 TV-episodes that were made available via the popular BitTorrent tracker.

The movie titles they are claiming damages for are Harry Potter, Syriana, The Pink Panther and Walk the Line and the 13 episodes of the popular TV-show Prison Break. MPAA demands 222,50 kronor ($37) for each download. For Harry Potter, 261,50 kronor ($43) and for the first season of Prison Break 416 kronor ($68).

‘The Pink Panther’ is the most popular title among Pirate Bay users; the least popular, by a mile, is ‘Syriana’. The movies have been downloaded 49,593 and 3,679 times respectively, according to MAQS, the law firm which represents MPAA.”

Pirate Bay’s Peter Sunde (Brokep) is not impressed by Hollywood’s claims, he told TorrentFreak in a response: “They know they are losing, and try to make us look like big criminals by adding some zeros to a claim for a made-up crime.”

“The worst thing is that I lost 100 kronor on a bet on the number they would come up with,” Sunde added. “And, it sucks that they didn’t claim more than for Napster and the other sites. It’s cooler to break the record.”

When Monique Wadsted, MPAA’s lawyer and a talkshow host, was asked whether the MPAA really thinks every download is a lost sale, she said: “We don’t know that, but the copyright law doesn’t care about that. It says that if you have downloaded something illegally, you must pay regardless, if you would’ve bought it or not.”

Wadsted expects the worst now she has announced the claims, even being hacked by Pirate Bay fanboys: “I know that they have an increased interest in my person and that they try to ridicule me. I also count on having my computer hacked. As a business lawyer, I’m not used to these kinds of reactions.”

MPAA is not the only organization claiming damages. A month ago, IFPI claimed $2.5milion in damages and earlier today Antipiratbyrån asked for (1.1 million. This January, prosecutor Håkan Roswall asked the court for a $188,000 fine for four individuals - Fredrik Neij (”TiAMO”), Gottfrid Svartholm (”Anakata”), Peter Sunde and Carl Lundström.

There is no date set for the court case yet, but it will probably take a few more months before the trial starts.
http://torrentfreak.com/mpaa-demands...te-bay-080508/





Pirate Bay: MPAA's $15.4 Million Damage Claim a Fabrication
Ryan Paul

The MPAA wants popular BitTorrent tracker site The Pirate Bay to hand over $15.4 million in damages for allegedly facilitating copyright infringement, but The Pirate Bay's fearless captain Peter Sunde thinks that the movie industry's case doesn't have a peg leg to stand on.

The law firm that is representing the MPAA in Sweden has identified a selection of popular content owned by MPAA members that is made available for unauthorized download by users through The Pirate Bay. The lawyers based the requested damages on the value of each movie or television episode (ranging between $37 and $68) and the number of estimated downloads (ranging between thousands and tens of thousands). How they selected the individual works and determined the total number of downloads isn't clear.

The unflappable Sunde isn't impressed with the claims. He told Swedish newspaper SvD that the figure is a fabrication and that the content industry should be thanking him instead of attempting to sue him. "We might be able to pay in Monopoly money. This proves that they are out of touch with reality. They might as well ask for a billion crowns. This is fear-based propaganda; they're trying to make it sound serious when we link to things that you download from elsewhere," Sunde told SvD. "We should send them an invoice instead. All research shows that file-sharing grows the market for the movie industry. I go by research; they make it up as they go."

We asked the MPAA for additional details and comments, but the organization declined to provide further clarification, and said only that "a claim for damages has been filed and it is now a matter for the Swedish court."

The increasingly embattled Pirate Bay is also facing an onslaught from Swedish prosecutors as well as litigation from the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI), which wants $2.5 million.

Although the situation looks stormy for The Pirate Bay, the feisty torrent tracker has recovered from far worse in the past. Following a raid conducted by Swedish law enforcement agents in 2006, The Pirate Bay recovered and was seaworthy again within three days despite being declared completely sunk by the MPAA.
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post...brication.html





isoHunt Tells Judge It's Just Another Search Engine
Eric Bangeman

While the RIAA has waged a full-on legal assault against individual file-sharers, the MPAA has instead chosen to go after individual web sites. In 2006, the motion picture industry trade group filed copyright infringement lawsuits against a number of BitTorrent sites, including TorrentSpy and isoHunt. TorrentSpy lost, thanks to its admins' willful destruction of evidence, but isoHunt is fighting back. A recent filing in the case opposes the MPAA's motion for summary judgment, arguing that isoHunt is just another search engine.

"There are hundreds of public torrent sites, some limited to a specific subject matter, others general aggregators like isoHunt, who like Google, try to cover as much of the Internet as possible," reads isoHunt's filing. "The essential functions performed at a torrent site are also performed at a comprehensive search site like Google or Yahoo!."

isoHunt then makes a series of comparisons to search engines, inviting the judge to visit Google himself to compare. The torrent site only gives users a "means to obtain content," again like Google, but not the content itself. All isoHunt does is collect data, index it, cache content, and add user-uploaded .torrent files to its database. Any actual copyright infringement occurs only on the part of the user once he or she launches a BitTorrent client.

The torrent site accuses the MPAA of playing fast and loose with the truth about the BitTorrent download process in order to build its case against. Instead of occupying a "central position or power of control," isoHunt and other torrent sites have "no meaningful existence other than through collective existence." Every function performed throughout the course of a BitTorrent download or upload is dispersed, and no single site has any "power of control."

Saying that a BitTorrent site is responsible for infringement is ridiculous, according to isoHunt. Using the odd illustration of a "Gun and Boot Store," the site's admins argue that they are no more responsible for copyright infringement than the owner of the hypothetical firearms and footwear outlet would be if someone bought a gun and pair of boots there, and subsequently robbed someone.

In making its case against isoHunt, the MPAA relies heavily on the famous MGM v. Grokster decision, in which the Supreme Court held that anyone who distributes a device with the intention that it will be used for copyright infringement can be liable for subsequent third-party infringements. That ruling is irrelevant, argues isoHunt, because it only applies to "products" and "devices," not search engines or "sites that manifest hyperlinks to dot torrent files." If that standard were used, search engines like Google or Yahoo would be liable under the MGM v. Grokster ruling if any of their search results led to copyrighted content.

It's impossible to know how the judge will rule, but, in order to prevail, isoHunt will have to convince the judge that it is the functional equivalent of a search engine. That might be a tough argument to make, since isoHunt's primary purpose is to collect an index of and links to one particular type of content. In contrast, search engines are largely data-agnostic—Google's stated intent is to index all of the world's data.

No matter which way the ruling goes, this could prove to be an important milestone for the MPAA's fight against BitTorrent sites. The MPAA has a few notches in its bedpost, but those have come from settlements which resulted in shuttered sites, or, in the case of TorrentSpy, resulted from malfeasance on the part of the defendants. And even if isoHunt convinces the judge to rule in its favor on the MPAA's motion for summary judgment, the case will still be headed for a jury trial.
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post...ch-engine.html





MPAA Silently Drops Case Against BitTorrent Site
Ben Jones

In 2005, DVDr-core was the first BitTorrent site that was targeted by the MPAA outside the US. A classic story: Man runs site, man gets sued over site, nothing more is ever heard. Whilst in most cases, this means that the defendant bowed to pressure, paid an out of court settlement, and promised not to do it again, that is not the case here.

For those that don’t remember, lets recap. It was a little over three years ago that Hollywood took their first blast against a BitTorrent site in Europe with a lawsuit against DVDr-core. The notification (see end), served at the home address of the domain owner one Saturday morning in March 2005, led to more than a few anxious nights for fellow torrent site admins and users, wondering who would be next to get a knock at the door.

The site, which closed in December 04, after Hanff and the site’s administrators heard about raids in Holland, was not administered by Hanff, but by some online friends of his. Shortly after this dawn raid by a process server, Hanff -who had just started a new job- appeared on an episode of the BBC show “NewsNight”. The day after it aired, he was fired, for having views on copyright that the company felt were incompatible with its own, and for not disclosing the case.

That was the situation at the end of 2005 anyway. And now, more than two years have passed and he has heard nothing new. Despite the claims in the letters he has received, Hanff doesn’t think the case went any further, and was quietly dropped. “The last thing I had was a letter from the MPAA lawyers with a copy of a motion for a default [judgment]”, he told TorrentFreak. “That was November 2005 – had that motion been granted I should have heard from the courts.” The hearing in question would have been around the middle of December 2005. “I haven’t even received anything from the court about that hearing – which I should have done – so I am sceptical as to whether or not it actually went ahead”

Perhaps the MPAA felt they didn’t need to proceed any more, after all, thanks to the case, Mr Hanff lost his job, and they didn’t have to run the risk of an adverse judgment in court. As has been discussed in the past, the anti-filesharing litigation campaigns seems to be less about compensating the artists, and more about harassment, and manufacturing cases to boost lobbying efforts. It would appear that this is just more of the same – mudslinging in lieu of any actual case. The document received by Mr. Hanff is certainly full of accusations, threats, and exaggerations – something that recently cost a French Lawyer her ability to practice law.

It does bring into some doubt the ability or the desire for the MPAA to litigate outside the cozy confines of the US. It also seems to indicate the way the oink case will go, as it just had it’s bail date extended again, although it is a criminal case, whilst dvdr-core is a civil case. Nevertheless, the extension of the case with no action except the initial accusation does draw the similarities closer.

In the meantime, Mr Hanff has been spending his energies tacking Phorm, the illegal and widespread invasion of browsing privacy to target adverts via deep packet inspection in association with UK ISPs. His dissertation on the subject can be read here.
http://torrentfreak.com/mpaa-drops-b...t-case-080503/





Use BitTorrent To Verify, Clean Up Files

I found a new (for me at least) use for BitTorrent.
jweatherley

I had been trying to download beta 4 of the iPhone SDK for the last few days. First I downloaded the 1.5GB file from Apple's site. The download completed, but the disk image would not verify. I tried to install it anyway, but it fell over on the gcc4.2 package.

Many things are cheap in India, but bandwidth is not one of them. I can't just download files > 1GB without worrying about reaching my monthly cap, and there are Doctor Who episodes to be watched. Fortunately we have uncapped hours in the night, so I downloaded it again. md5sum confirmed that the disk image differed from the previous one, but it still wouldn't verify, and fell over on gcc4.2 once more. Damn.

I wasn't having much success with Apple, so I headed off to the resurgent Demonoid. Sure enough they had a torrent of the SDK. I was going to set it up to download during the uncapped night hours, but then I had an idea. BitTorrent would be able to identify the bad chunks in the disk image I had downloaded from Apple, so I replaced the placeholder file that Azureus had created with a corrupt SDK disk image, and then reimported the torrent file.

Sure enough it checked the file and declared it 99.7% complete. A few minutes later I had a valid disk image and installed the SDK. Verification and repair of corrupt files is a new use of BitTorrent for me; I thought I would share a useful way of repairing large, corrupt, but widely available, files.
http://tech.slashdot.org/article.pl?.../05/04/2230252





Researchers Use Akamai to Find Local BitTorrent Peers
John Timmer

The rise of P2P traffic as a percentage of total network use has left ISPs looking for ways to limit its impact on their capacity. Comcast, notably, has chosen to throttle some P2P traffic, but that solution is generally viewed as a temporary fix. Testing of the hardware used for throttling P2P traffic reveals that it performs poorly when challenged with obfuscated or encrypted P2P traffic. Other ISPs, such as Verizon, are considering working with P2P software makers to help keep P2P traffic on local networks, and thus less burdensome. But computer science researchers from Northwestern University have been experimenting with ways of keeping the traffic local that don't require the cooperation of ISPs; the researchers provided Ars with a publication detailing some of the results.

Systems such as those used by Verizon speed P2P transfers and reduce their burdens on ISPs by providing network topology and traffic information to P2P clients. Those clients can then use this information to identify local peers with clear paths, speeding the transfer and putting less strain on the ISPs' larger network. These systems, however, require the explicit cooperation of ISPs, which have to consistently update the network information.

The new method of identifying local peers seeks to accomplish the same thing without getting ISPs involved. It relies on the fact that commercial content distribution systems such as the one operated by Akamai obtain or generate the equivalent information in order to redirect users to a local copy of a popular web site or video. Thus, if a two computers get redirected to the same Akamai content cache, they're likely to have local access to each other.

The researchers have implemented this logic via a Java-based plugin called Ono that works with the Azureus BitTorrent client. When Ono starts up, it polls a number of Akamai caches and creates a table of the IP addresses of local Akamai servers (the system works with other caching systems; Akamai is simply the most popular). Ono continues to poll the servers, but, the longer the results remain unchanged, the longer it takes before polling again. The net result is that the traffic for location determination is minimal, 18Kb upstream and 36Kb downstream a day even in the worst case.

That information is transferred to peers for comparison if they are using the Ono plug-in, and those peers that share a similar set of Akamai caches are favored for use. These don't get used exclusively, however, in order to ensure that new and potentially closer peers continue to be identified. Given that not everyone will be using Ono, peers that are obtained without Ono are subjected to reverse DNS lookups in order to increase the chances of identifying local peers.

The researchers also set up Ono so that it could gather traffic data, such as ping times, traceroutes, and transfer rates, and report it back in to the researchers. Using a 15-day period from last December, they found the system worked as intended. Over a third of the peers identified by Ono did not require going outside of the local ISP's network. The median distance of Ono-identified peers was six hops, while the median of total peers (including those picked by Ono) was nearly 14 hops, resulting in a latency of only six milliseconds for Ono and 530ms for everyone else.

Oddly, this large difference in the quality of peers did not always affect the download experience. Here, the policy of ISPs regarding network throttling played a significant role, so that Ono users in different networks could have vastly different experiences. The popularity of a download could also dilute the impact of Ono use, given that even local peers can get overloaded by requests. Another thing noted by the researchers was that not all caching networks gave equal performance; for example, information derived from the CNN cache outperformed that from many other popular websites.

Ono seems to make life easier for ISPs, but it still requires their cooperation, in that they will need to ensure that local traffic doesn't get throttled. It also could become the victim of its own popularity as even the low impact of a single client might cause Akamai problems if there are millions of active Ono users. Given that P2P will likely be a source of tension between ISPs and users for the indefinite future, however, the Ono data certainly has the potential to inform future practices.
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post...ent-peers.html





Internet Mysteries: How Much File Sharing Traffic Travels the Net?
Ryan Singel

How much of the traffic on the internet is peer-to-peer file trading?

Everyone seems to agree it represents a lot of the traffic, but the truth is no one knows (with the possible exception of the ISPs and backbone providers in the middle, and they aren't telling or sharing raw data).

One of the most recent reports on P2P traffic came from a traffic optimization firm called Ellacoya in June 2007. Their report said that http-based web traffic had overtaken peer-to-peer traffic on the net, thanks to streaming media sites like YouTube.

Ellacoya, since acquired by Arbor Networks for its traffic-shaping technology, pegged http traffic at 46 percent of the net's volume, with P2P traffic close by at 37 percent.The company says the data was based on about 1 million North American broadband subscribers.

But little is known about when, how and where the company collected the data, or how it analyzed the packets.

Independent internet researchers, including KC Claffy of the Cooperative Association for Internet Data Analysis, ran their own tests in 2003 and 2004 -- following conflicting reports that file sharing was decreasing and increasing.

Using data from an internet backbone link in San Jose, California, the researchers found that P2P traffic was steady, if not increasing. For instance, BitTorrent grew some 100 percent in popularity from 2003 to 2004, but the researchers found that it was getting harder to track P2P bits, since P2P traffic was increasingly using encryption and random ports, making it harder to quickly identify the application that a packet was coming from.

The last time Sprint published an analysis of 30 large internet links (January 10, 2005), it found that file sharing accounted for less than 6 percent of the packets in the tube, with regular web traffic clocking in at more than 50 percent of the flow.

Speaking at Supernova conference last July, Claffy expressed confusion at how the government can have a public policy debate about network management when no one except the network operators knows anything about traffic on the net.

NBC filed something with the FCC using the Cache Logic study, done a year after the Pew Internet study, saying that file sharing was dropping and our study showing file sharing was increasing. And the Cache Logic study just came out with a number -- no trends, just that file sharing was 30 to 50 percent of traffic, and NBC uses that number -– way old, no peer review, no methodology -- to say 'You guys, the FCC, have to start policing the network and getting this file sharing off the network.'

All of the data out there is suspect.

The information is vital. Comcast claims that torrents of purloined pop music and movies are filling the internet's tubes -- requiring them to block, divert and dam peer-to-peer traffic. And AT&T says it's going to create technology to detect such sharing by its customers.

In Washington, D.C., Congress is once again considering legislating rules for ISPs, while the five-member Federal Trade Commission is publicly wringing its hands over whether to fine or censure Comcast for its BitTorrent blocking and whether to adopt stricter net-neutrality guidelines generally.

For the next couple of weeks, Threat Level is taking a hard look at some of the unsolved mysteries of the internet. This is the first one.

We would love to know if good measurements of P2P traffic are out there or if, indeed, the debate over net neutrality is taking place without the slightest bit of verifiable data
http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/200...ch-file-s.html





U.S., Singapore ISPs Most Likely To Block BitTorrent

New Glasnost Project allows users to test their ISP
Karl

Torrentfreak directs our attention to the Glasnost Project, a new Java applet project aimed at testing whether ISPs are fiddling with user BitTorrent traffic. A growing number of ISPs are deploying a variety of monitoring and traffic shaping hardware but aren't willing to talk about it. That makes shopping for a broadband connection a more difficult affair.

As a result, a growing number of outfits are trying to make these practices more transparent to the end user, who may not have the networking knowhow to test their own connection with applications like Wireshark.

Preliminary results show widespread blocking of BitTorrent transfers only in the U.S. and Singapore. The results highlight throttling, as well as the number of times that transfers to the Glasnost Project servers are interrupted by RST packets generated by some ISP along the path.

So far the project has only tested 5358 nodes across 78 countries, so I imagine they'd welcome your data. A more detailed explanation of their test can be found here which explains precisely how they determine a BitTorrent connection to be "blocked." As you might expect, Comcast doesn't exactly shine when tested.
http://www.dslreports.com/shownews/U...tTorrent-94205





IFPI to Sue Swedish ISP for Facilitating Copyright Infringement
Ernesto

The last year has seen the IFPI shift its focus from the individual filesharer, to their ISPs. After Denmark, Norway and Ireland, the anti-piracy lobbyists have now announced that they will go after a Swedish ISP, claiming that the company facilitates copyright infringement.

Ideally, the IFPI wants every ISP to act as the Internet police, by restricting their customers access to websites they claim are facilitating copyright infringement.

So far, the IFPI has had little success with their lobby, that’s probably why they decided to put legal pressure on the ISPs. “We believe that ISPs have a special part to play in this and must help us. The discussions we’ve tried to have with the ISPs haven’t led anywhere,” IFPI’s Managing Director in Sweden, Lars Gustafsson, said in response to their recent announcement.

The IFPI claims to have studied several ISPs practices, but according to Lars Gustaffson they intend to focus on one particular company which they claim facilitates filesharing on the Internet. One of the services they hope to stop is their nemesis, The Pirate Bay.

Gustafsson was advised by his legal team not to disclose the name of the ISP yet, but many people think the ISP Bahnhof will be the most likely target, since they are recommended by the pirate community because of their high stance on integrity.

“The ISPs don’t believe they have any responsibility to help when it comes to hindering filesharing,” says Lars Gustafsson. IFPI already sent out letters to several service providers, urging them to start monitoring their customers and filtering websites.

Most ISPs refuse to cooperate with the IFPI though. Last month, Telia Sonera, a large Swedish ISP responded to the IFPI’s request by stating that such actions are illegal under EU law. Norwegian ISPs later responded with similar arguments.

On the other hand, the IFPI claims that restricting access to filesharing sites might actually benefit ISPs. “Illegal P2P file-sharing may have helped drive broadband subscriptions in the past, yet today these activities, particularly in respect of movies, are hogging bandwidth,” they state.

Thus far, the IFPI has won in Denmark. In February, a Danish court ordered the ISP ‘Tele2′ to block its customers from accessing The Pirate Bay. The decision is currently under appeal, and the Pirate Bay recently announced that they will demand compensation for the block.
http://torrentfreak.com/ifpi-to-sue-...gement-080502/





RIAA: Don't Let Net Neutrality Hurt Piracy Fight
Anne Broache

The Recording Industry Association of America's chief voiced skepticism on Tuesday about the need for Net neutrality rules, but warned that the government may need to step in if Internet service providers don't become more proactive in fighting digital piracy.

The House of Representatives subcommittee hearing was further evidence that the now years-old debate over Net neutrality is taking on a new dimension, in which concerns about Internet piracy are entering the debate. Net neutrality, of course, refers to the idea that network operators should be barred from discriminating against or prioritizing Internet content that travels on their pipes.

RIAA CEO Mitch Bainwol told the panel that a Net neutrality bill proposed this year by Rep. Edward Markey (D-Mass.) isn't all bad because it views "unlawful" content, such as copyright-infringing material, as unworthy of protection by Internet service providers. He said he hopes that approach may even help to pressure ISPs to "focus on the piracy problem."

Still, Bainwol said he strongly prefers that the entertainment industry and Internet service providers work together on the piracy question in an unregulated fashion.

"My fear is that legislation will take time," Bainwol said. "We have a problem that is right now."

If private sector action doesn't pan out, Bainwol said the RIAA would return to the committee for its "help" on the matter.

Markey attempted to reassure copyright holders that his bill will do nothing to hamper ISPs' ability to block "unlawful" pirated content, vehemently taking issue with any suggestions to the contrary.

"This whole idea that this legislation helps piracy is 100 percent wrong," Markey said. "It's a red herring. We should put an aquarium out here because there are so many red herrings floating around to mislead about what the intent of Net neutrality is."

The bill that Markey introduced in February would enshrine certain Internet nondiscrimination principles into law--namely, that the government should adopt and enforce "baseline protections to guard against unreasonable discriminatory favoritism for, or degradation of, content by network operators based upon its source, ownership, or destination on the Internet."

As in the past, the effort is mostly supported by Democrats, although Rep. Chip Pickering (R-Miss.) is also a co-sponsor. They argue that it's necessary to keep the Internet open and democratic. Some Republicans on Tuesday argued new laws are unnecessary because of a lack of visible discrimination problems by Internet service providers--because they could harm ISPs' antipiracy efforts.

A 1998 law known as the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, or DMCA, says Web hosts and ISPs aren't generally liable for infringing activity on the part of their users, provided that they don't condone infringement, that they remove infringing material when notified, and that they aren't deriving financial benefit from it. But some ISPs, such as AT&T, are exploring ways to filter their networks for pirated content, even though they arguably aren't legally required to do so.

"It would be remiss for us as a body to interfere in these efforts," said Mary Bono Mack (D-Calif.), the widow of singer Sonny Bono. "I think this bill would do that."

Bainwol, for his part, said he was "heartened" to see that Markey's bill recognizes "that Internet freedom isn't synonymous with a Wild West in which the taking of our property is accepted or, at best, ignored." But he worried that the bill could unwittingly limit forms of "network management" used to police networks for copyright infringement.

His remarks are similar to those made earlier this year by the Motion Picture Association of America, which argued that attempts to prohibit network operators from discriminating against or prioritizing Internet content could limit their ability to police their networks for copyright infringement. Recently, the cable industry, which has long opposed Net neutrality regulations, raised similar concerns.

Steve Peterman, co-creator and executive producer of the hit children's series Hannah Montana, said he strongly condemns piracy, but he argued the Net neutrality bills put forth by Markey and the senators would do nothing to harm those efforts. Peterman spoke on behalf of the Writers Guild of America, which says Net neutrality laws will ensure a diversity of new content can surface without interference from big-media "gatekeepers."

"We don't want (the piracy issue) to be an excuse for limiting our access to the Internet as a means of communicating with an enormous new audience," Peterman said.

The event marked the second hearing on Net neutrality legislation in two weeks. Senate Democrats have also renewed their call for the antidiscrimination rules, with a particular focus on whether the Federal Communications Commission has the necessary authority to take action against network operators found to be interfering unreasonably with their customers' network traffic.

Comcast, which is under investigation by the FCC for its handling of BitTorrent file-sharing traffic, was the focus of a large chunk of the Senate hearing but didn't attract as much attention at Tuesday's House event.

Republicans and some Democrats have long argued that Net neutrality regulations are unnecessary and will stifle the growth of new broadband networks. But Pickering, the bill's co-sponsor, said his measure is necessary because of contentions by Comcast and others that the FCC doesn't have the power to enforce its own broadband principles, which say consumers have the right to access the lawful Internet content and applications of their choice.

"I think this legislation is very helpful," Pickering said, "in that it says very clearly we will codify these principles."
http://www.news.com/8301-10784_3-9937153-7.html





House Passes PRO IP Bill
Susan Butler

The U.S. House of Representatives has just passed, under suspension of House rules, the Prioritizing Resources and Organization for Intellectual Property (PRO IP) Act. An official quorum vote is expected on the House floor this evening.

Introduced by House Judiciary Committee chairman John Conyers Jr. last December, the Act (H.R. 4279) would create the office of a U.S. Intellectual Property Enforcement Representative in the White House to represent and advise the president on IP issues. The representative would produce a national joint strategic plan to protect and enforce IP rights, and would be responsible for seeing its implementation by various government agencies.

Conyers says that the Act will: (1) prioritize intellectual property protection to the highest level of our government; (2) make changes to IP law to enhance the ability of IP owners to effectively enforce their rights; (3) make it easier to criminally prosecute repeat offenders; and (4) increase penalties for IP violations that endanger public health and safety.

"This bill will go a long way towards making sure law enforcement agencies have what they need to get the job done," says David Israelite, president/CEO of the National Music Publishers' Assn. and former Justice Department chairman of the Intellectual Property Task Force. "Of note is the fact that this legislation garnered support from a bipartisan majority of members, and a diverse group of industry, trade groups and labor unions."

The Act would also establish a formal IP Enforcement Division within the office of the Deputy Attorney General. Currently, the DOJ has an IP Task Force. An IP Enforcement Officer, appointed by the attorney general and reporting to the deputy attorney general, would head the division.

"This is a strong, common sense measure that provides new tools and resources to help protect one of this nation's most important economic engines," says Mitch Bainwol, chairman/CEO of the RIAA. "We are transitioning from a nation whose economy was driven by what we created with our hands to one driven by what we create with our minds. This creative and economic genius deserves to reach its full potential, and this bill is an important step toward achieving that goal. The unanimous bipartisan support for this legislation speaks to a widespread recognition by policymakers of the economic importance of the creative industries and the necessary tools to protect it."

Specifically, federal civil law would be amended to: (1) provide a safe harbor for copyright registrations that contain inaccurate information so such technical errors would not prevent a judgment for infringement; (2) provide that copyright registration requirements, like the necessity of filing a registration before suing an infringer, apply to civil -- not criminal -- infringement actions; (3) require courts to issue protective orders to prevent disclosure of seized records relating to copyright infringement; (4) revise standards for civil damages in copyright infringement and counterfeiting cases; and (5) prohibit importing and exporting of infringing copies of copyrighted works.

Federal criminal law would be amended to: (1) enhance criminal penalties for infringement of a copyright, for trafficking in counterfeit labels or packaging, and for causing serious bodily harm or death while trafficking in counterfeit goods or services; and (2) enhance civil and criminal forfeiture provisions for copyright infringement and provide for restitution to victims of such infringement.

No companion bill has yet been introduced in the Senate.
http://www.billboard.biz/bbbiz/conte...8a825cc2f79780





Why The 'Right' Gets Net Neutrality Wrong
Art Brodsky

Just in time for the House Telecommunications Subcommittee's hearing tomorrow (May 6) on Net Neutrality legislation, former House Majority Leader Dick Armey (R-TX) and the American Spectator are out with new attacks on the simple idea that people should not have their Internet experiences subject to the whims of telephone and cable companies.

My day-job employer, Public Knowledge, even achieved a new level of notoriety when we were prominently mentioned in a blog post on the American Spectator, the publication best known for funneling millions of dollars to investigations of Bill and Hillary Clinton.

The April 28 blog post, cleverly headlined, "Public Know Nothings," -- a play on Public Knowledge -- read like a basic corporate hit job on Net Neutrality of the kind one might read at any number of blogs or by any columnists in the thrall of the corporate world. But the story, combined with Armey's April 22 Washington Times headlined "Spare The Net," raise the inevitable question -- what is it about individual freedom that "conservatives" like the Spectator and Armey don't like?

To be fair, the debate is larger than the Spectator and Armey. Most congressional Republicans oppose the idea of giving consumers freedom on the Internet. They take shelter in their anti-government, anti-regulation rhetoric, preferring to allow Internet freedom to apply to the corporations which own the networks connecting the Internet to consumers, rather than to consumers themselves. There could, of course, be a larger discussion about the meaning of "conservative" and Republican, and whether the two are synonymous.

(To be fairer still, it's not only Republicans. Many a Democrat also speaks out against Internet freedom. They don't have the fig-leaf of misbegotten ideology to hide behind, as they largely back worthwhile government action in many other areas. They are simply servants of corporate and/or union interests. The question applies equally: What about freedom don't they like?)

The clues to discovering how the opposition to individual freedom came about are in the two recently published pieces. Each them, in their own way, shows a tragic misunderstanding of how telecommunications policy, markets and technology worked in the past and how they work today. As a result, their interpretations of Net Neutrality, and the role of government, are also wrong.

At the heart of the opposition is the "mythology of the market," that once government "got out of the way," as Armey put it, new technologies emerged. "Telecom became a text-book case demonstrating that markets work and are good for consumers," as the Internet developed and dial-up modems yielded to broadband connections, Armey wrote.

Similarly, Peter Suderman, writing on the Spectator site, misses his telecom history. He criticized the testimony of actor and Internet entrepreneur Justine Bateman, who spoke to the Senate Commerce Committee about the need for a free and open Internet. Bateman asked whether Google and eBay would have been as successful as they are "without the freedoms we enjoy on the Internet today."

Suderman's analysis: "In fact, not only were all of these companies [eBay and Google] born in an era with no mandated net neutrality, it's utterly unclear that a lack of neutrality would've impeded them in any way whatsoever."

Government Helped Create The Internet

Let us review the history. Even setting aside the very basic fact that the underlying technology for the Internet was created under a government program, and was set free for commercial purposes by Congress, it's still hard to get away from the reality that the Internet as we know it was started, and flourished, in a regulated environment. While the content that went online, through bulletin boards, America Online, CompuServe, Prodigy and the rest, wasn't regulated, the telecommunications carriers to a large extent were.

Before the advent of the cable modem, the telephone companies that carried the online traffic not only were under tight rate-of-return regulation, but they were also subject to the sections of the Communications Act barring unreasonable discrimination (Sec. 202). They also had to sell their services wholesale. Amazingly, with all of that regulation, the first iteration of the online world grew, with thousands of local Internet Service Providers able to afford access to the network so they could offer their services to the public.

The new and fancy equipment came because the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) in 1968 broke through the tariff of then Bell System and allowed outside, customer-owned devices to be connected to the network. That decision brought competition in long distance as well as setting the stage for the fax, modem and other gadgets.

For the record, eBay was founded in 1995. Google came along three years later. It wasn't until 2002 that the FCC under Chairman Michael Powell started the process of classifying nascent cable-modem service as an "information service" under the 1996 Telecommunications Act. Both cable and DSL were taken out from under most regulations by the FCC in 2005, when today's Internet took shape. That decision, combined with some archaic, in-the-weeds technical matters, combined to wipe out the hundreds of local online and Internet Service Providers along with most of the competition for the telephone companies. One of the rules swept away was the prohibition against unreasonable discrimination -- the part of the law that enforced what we now know as Net Neutrality. That's what the proponents of a free and open Internet are trying to reclaim. It's very simple -- those companies carrying traffic can't play favorites.

Google's founders have said repeatedly they wouldn't have been able to get off the ground if they had been required to pay extra fees for telecommunications services to get onto a "fast lane" of service.

Market-Based Myths Abound

The argument against Net Neutrality really goes off-track when it gets into the nature of private property, the state of competition, and the effect of regulation. That's more than one track to be thrown off of, so it's quite the disaster scene. We may need CSI: Telecom to sort it all out.

Public Knowledge earned its headline in the Spectator because of the petition we filed with the FCC asking that companies like Verizon which offer text messaging not be able to decide which groups should be deemed worthy of service and which shouldn't be.

For the American Spectator, PK and our friends are asking for "governmental bullying" that infringes on the rights of a property owner's right to "manage the content that flows" over its network. Our crime is to want to "treat wireless carriers as public utilities rather than as private property owners. It's a fundamental misunderstanding about the nature of widely used private networks."

In the same vein, Armey wrote that Net Neutrality violates the conservative principles of "free market competition and private property rights."

It is true that Verizon is a private company and that the network is its property. It is not true that the government has no authority over it. Much as zoning ordinances restrict what can be built on private property or regulation sets rates for electricity, it's well established that private property is subject to the law.

Verizon's network is not a private network. It is privately owned network, but that's different. A private network is what a company might have to connect its employees. Wireless has 65.2 million retail customers. That would be some humongous private network. Verizon, as with other cellular operators, offers a service to the public in accordance with the Communications Act. It is a public utility, subject to regulation.

In the text-message case, it's our view that Verizon, or any other carrier, should not be in the business of deciding which political views are acceptable to be carried on its network and which are not. That's not network management. It's censorship, and a violation of consumer rights, just as Comcast's continual throttling of peer-to-peer applications is goes beyond network management.

Because of our defense of the rights of free speech for every political view, the American Spectator categorizes Public Knowledge as "a left-leaning tech advocacy organization." If the defense of freedom of Americans to express their political views makes us "left-leaning," then make the most of it.

Also remember that Public Knowledge's singular accomplishment so far is a successful court challenge to an FCC rule that would have expanded the Commission's authority over devices far beyond what was authorized by Congress. In our broadcast flag case, we forced a Republican FCC to retreat when it tried to exercise too much power.

Finally, let's get to the concepts of "competition" and regulation. There is very little competition in the broadband market. To pretend otherwise is folly. If a consumer has two choices among providers, then that consumer is doing well. Most don't. If this were a truly competitive market, then there would be at least some restraint on prices. There isn't. Verizon expects to raise its prices on its fiber-optic FIOS service. Comcast raises its rates, even with FIOS in the neighborhood. This isn't true competition. It's a duopoly. There may be the odds and ends provider to supply service here and there, perhaps in Wyoming, but for the most part people choose between telephone company and cable if they have a choice at all. It's hard to see how, as Armey says, consumers would be left with "fewer choices" if a free and open Internet were mandatory.

Perhaps the worst argument from conservatives about Net Neutrality is that "pervasive regulation," as former FCC Commissioner Rachelle Chong called it, would somehow be such a burden to the poor, deprived telephone and cable companies that their incentives to invest and to innovate would just dry up. Opponents of an open Internet conjure up images of parents unable to protect their children, of government setting up business models, of companies unable to manage their networks.

Those tired-winged canards don't quack here. Net Neutrality is neither pervasive nor burdensome. It allows for innovation and investment. It allows for telephone companies to sell different levels of service to different customers. Parents can still protect their children. What it doesn't allow is discrimination. That's why Michele Combs from the Christian Coalition supports an open Internet, and she is brave and correct to do so in the face of uninformed criticism of her fellow "conservatives."

As it turns out, there is a real world example of how well this works, because there is a company that is currently under a Net Neutrality mandate. As a condition of its purchase of BellSouth, AT&T agreed to a two-year condition in which it is forbidden to provide any service that "privileges, degrades or prioritizes" any packets of data based on "source, ownership or destination."

How's that working out for AT&T? Look at its April 22 first quarter earnings report. Here are some highlights:

Earnings per share up 26.7 percent over first quarter 2007;

$30.7 billion in consolidated revenues, up 6.1 percent from the year earlier;

13.2 percent growth in broadband revenues with a 491,000 net gain in broadband connections in the quarter to reach 14.6 million in service

491,000 net gain in broadband connections in the quarter to reach 14.6 million in service;

first-quarter net gain of 148,000 U-verse subscribers, to reach 379,000 in service, on track to reach target of more than 1 million subscribers by year-end 2008

$4.4 billion in capital expenditures vs. $3.3 billion a year ago.

Those results were achieved under mandated Net Neutrality, the original, fundamental characteristic of the Internet that protects the individual consumer's freedom to innovate without permission and to receive, and pay for, the services he or she chooses. Why a conservative opposes that, I'll never know.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/art-br..._b_100135.html





Senator to ISPs: "Think Twice" About 'Net Neutrality... or Else
Nate Anderson

Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR) stepped in front of a group of tech executives in Washington this morning to deliver a caffeinated and surprisingly sharp defense of network neutrality. Pledging to use "every ounce of my energy to protect network neutrality," Wyden had a message for ISPs who might be pondering new charges for various forms of access: "think twice." If ISPs start down that road, they might soon find that they lose key legal protections including "safe harbors" and tax freedom.

Wyden delivered his ultimatum at a Computer & Communications Industry Association conference in DC, where he cast the entire network neutrality debate in terms of a legislative compromise. Years ago, Congress began protecting ISPs from the twin threats of regulation and taxation; in return, ISPs were expected to deliver an unimpeded connection to the Internet. A move away from a neutral 'Net would undermine the "very philosophical underpinnings of what we fought for for the last 15 years," according to Wyden. If that happens, he sees no reason for Congress to continue sheltering ISPs.

The two specific pieces of legislation encompassed by this threat are the Communications Decency Act and the Internet Tax Freedom Act. While much of the CDA was tossed out by a federal judge on the grounds that it unconstitutionally limited free speech, section 230 of the act survived. 230 provided a safe harbor to ISPs and web sites, exempting them from liability for content posted to or through them, a provision that benefits Ars and every other website that allows user-generated content and comments. The law saved ISPs "vast sums," according to Wyden.

The Internet Tax Freedom Act has also kept most taxes from being applied to Internet connections, even though states have repeatedly shown interest in taxing these links.

In return for helping out ISPs, what did Congress get in return? "Monopolies," according to Wyden, or, in other cases, duopolies where one or two main gatekeepers controlled access to the 'Net for most US citizens. Wyden's rhetoric grew downright militant as he contemplated the various ways that these ISPs might start hitting consumers with fees. "The sword cuts both ways," he said, implying that the ISPs might find themselves having to collect more taxes and pay for more litigation if they continue to agitate Congress by pondering or implementing non-neutral fees.

Part of the reason that the issue gets so much traction is because network neutrality has become one of those wonky crossover issues that stirs up passions even among normal 'Net users. Rep. Anna Eshoo (D-CA), speaking at the same event, issued a reminder of how much popular traction the idea has gained: when she goes into high school classrooms, the kids "ask me about 'Net neutrality," she said.

With Rep. Ed Markey (D-MA) holding an important network neutrality hearing this morning in the House, Eshoo expressed her confidence that Markey's bill would be taken up by Congress but that it would face a serious challenge on the House floor. Should it fail there, "I think the Capitol would fall down around members' ears if the opposition were successful," she said.

Rep. Mike Doyle (D-PA) agreed with Eshoo and noted that the two sides are separated by what now seems to be "almost a religious difference." Doyle chalks up some of the antagonism to a generational divide, as the only people of his generation who grew up using the Internet were the people who invented it. 'Net neutrality isn't a "wild plan to destroy the Internet," Doyle continued, arguing that a younger generation brought up using the Internet understands exactly what's at stake.

Or, as FCC Commissioner Jonathan Adelstein put it later in the day, "Anyone who messes with the open Internet does so at their peril."

Swords, peril, wild plans, and a crumbling Capitol; all we need are wild animals in the streets and possibly a rider on a pale horse for the network neutrality debate to officially complete its ascendancy from a network management issue to a millenarian apocalyptic battle cry. Despite the rhetoric on this issue, it looks unlikely that Congress will actually take any action this year.
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post...y-or-else.html





Lawmakers Introduce New Net Neutrality Bill
Grant Gross

Two Democrats in the U.S. House of Representatives have introduced a bill that would subject broadband providers to antitrust violations if they block or slow Internet traffic.

Representative John Conyers, a Michigan Democrat and chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, has sponsored the Internet Freedom and Nondiscrimination Act along with Representative Zoe Lofgren, a Democrat from the Silicon Valley area of California.

The legislation requires Internet service providers to interconnect with the facilities of other network providers on a reasonable and nondiscriminatory basis. It also requires them to operate their networks in a reasonable and nondiscriminatory manner so that all content, applications and services are treated the same and have an equal opportunity to reach consumers.

Any ISPs that do not follow these net neutrality rules would be subject to antitrust enforcement.

The legislation, introduced Thursday, earned praised from some consumer and online rights groups. Large broadband and mobile phone service providers have begun to discriminate against some content, with Comcast saying it has slowed some customer access to the BitTorrent peer-to-peer protocol during times of network congestion, they say. Other broadband providers have talked about managing their networks or asking some popular Web sites to pay more for fast service, net neutrality advocates have said.

"The bill squarely addresses the issue of the enormous market power of the telephone and cable companies as the providers of 98 percent of the broadband service in the country," said Gigi Sohn, president of Public Knowledge. "The bill restores the principle of nondiscrimination that allowed the Internet to flourish in the dial-up era, making certain that the same freedom and innovation will flourish in the broadband era without burdensome regulation."

But broadband providers and some congressional Republicans have argued that net neutrality legislation isn't necessary. The broadband market is becoming more competitive and net neutrality regulations could hamper investment in broadband networks, some Republicans said during a hearing this week.

Competition is happened at "all levels of the Internet," Representative Fred Upton, a Michigan Republican, said this week. "Our hands-off policy is working."

Conyers and Lofgren were cosponsors of a similar bill introduced in 2006, when Republicans held a majority in the House. With significant Republican opposition, the 2006 bill died, but Democrats were elected to the majority late that year.

"Americans have come to expect the Internet to be open to everyone," Conyers said in a statement. "The Internet was designed without centralized control, without gatekeepers for content and services. If we allow companies with monopoly or duopoly power to control how the Internet operates, network providers could have the power to choose what content is available."
http://www.nytimes.com/idg/IDG_85257...3006A5D55.html





Comcast Scraps P2P 'Bill Of Rights' Idea

Will instead work with the Distributed Computing Industry of America
Karl

Last month Comcast announced that they'd like to develop a P2P "Bill of Rights and Responsibilities" in cooperation with ISPs and P2P companies like Pando networks, who is developing a "P4P" system that will accelerate the delivery of legal P2P content. The proposal arrived two days before a planned network neutrality hearing in Stanford and was painfully vague, seemingly aimed at placating regulators who are investigating the carrier for its throttling of all upstream P2P traffic. Comcast CTO Tony Werner had this to say about the plan at the time:

"By having this framework in place, we will help P2P companies, ISPs and content owners find common ground to support consumers who want to use P2P applications to deliver legal content."

However, NewTeeVee says those plans have already been scrapped, with Comcast instead participating in a working group developed by the Distributed Computing Industry Association. The DCIA consists of P2P companies like Joost, but also has the support of heavy hitters such as AT&T and Verizon.

"DCIA CEO Marty Lafferty told me that the best practices working group is in the process of signing up members right now. The group is supposed to include ISPs and P2P companies, many of which are also cooperating on the development of the P4P protocol, as well as rights holders and the respective trade bodies of the industry. Lafferty said he eventually wants to extend the invitation to consumer advocacy groups like Public Knowledge and Free Press, but added that he believes the industry should form some sort of consensus first."

Why not involve consumer advocates in the process from the ground up? The companies involved are eager to develop policy standards that provide more efficient delivery of legal P2P (Vuze, etc.) traffic. The new system they've cooked up can supposedly speed up P2P by 235% across incumbent networks and up to 898% across international broadband networks. This is done by only serving file parts from local peers to reduce hops.

But the other primary goal of the group is to obtain the clear authority to degrade illegal P2P traffic (the largest bandwidth problem, a competitor to legit P2P, and of obvious interest to content outfits). My guess is that once they've polished up a proposal that stratifies P2P treatment by legality, they can bring the plan to consumer advocates, who'll look unethical if they suggest that illegal P2P traffic should be treated equally.

This of course all relies on filtering and throttling systems that can identify pirated material. Since such systems don't reliably exist yet (or can be bested by encryption), this will be a long walk toward the group's desired end goal of throttling back piracy. As a side note, I should have some additional exclusive information on Comcast's new bandwidth management plans later on today.
http://www.dslreports.com/shownews/C...hts-Idea-94181





Comcast Considering 250GB Cap, Overage Fees

Insider provides details of new 'protocol agnostic' solution
Karl

A Comcast insider tells me the company is considering implementing very clear monthly caps, and may begin charging overage fees for customers who cross them. While still in the early stages of development, the plan -- as it stands now -- would work like this: all users get a 250GB per month cap. Users would get one free "slip up" in a twelve month period, after which users would pay a $15 charge for each 10 GB over the cap they travel. According to the source, the plan has "a lot of momentum behind it," and initial testing is slated to begin in a month or two.

"The intent appears to be to go after the people who consistently download far more than the typical user without hurting those who may have a really big month infrequently," says an insider familiar with the project, who prefers to remain anonymous. "As far as I am aware, uploads are not affected, at least not initially." According to this source, the new system should only impact some 14,000 customers out of Comcast's 14.1 million users (i.e. the top 0.1%).

As a few of you may have noticed, Comcast received a public relations beating and is being investigated by the FCC for their use of Sandvine gear to throttle upstream P2P traffic. This practice of using forged TCP packets to "break" BitTorrent connections was discovered first in our forums in May of last year, some five months before the Associated Press story made national headlines.

According to this source, the new system should only impact some 14,000 customers out of Comcast's 14.1 million users (i.e. the top 0.1%).

Comcast also boots high consumption users from their network for crossing an invisible consumption threshold. Based on user testimony, this limit has varied from 100-600GB per month, depending on regional congestion. Customers who cross the limit are sent this disconnection letter, which fails to tell the user how much consumption is too much. When pressed, Comcast refuses to clarify.

This new plan would seemingly change all that. The process is being built from the ground up around the idea of transparency as an effort to get the FCC off of Comcast's back. But the new system will also be part of a broader, industry-wide anti-piracy movement, part of which I discussed earlier today.

The new cap will be coupled with plans to increase enforcement of DMCA letters sent to P2P pirates. "Up until now, letters sent out to account holders have not been tracked," the source says. "This will change, with progressively increasing penalties, up to disconnection of the account after four letters within a 12 month period." This will be one way Comcast can maintain their promise to be "protocol agnostic," while still booting some high-consumption users.

There's no word yet on whether Comcast will provide customers with a bandwidth-usage tracking system, but it seems likely, says the source. "I know that the customer service folks absolutely do not want people continually calling in to check on their status," they say. "Nor do we want to get into arguments over whose bandwidth monitoring is accurate" they say, referring to users utilizing their own bandwidth measurement tools.

The source isn't certain whether this new cap and overage structure will be accompanied by throttling. Reading between the lines of their new deal with the Distributed Computing Industry Association, it seems likely that they'll ultimately be throttling just illegal P2P traffic, once network hardware evolves.

Keep in mind that this project remains in its preliminary stage and the numbers could easily change. As Comcast has previously noted, they won't officially announce the new system until the end of this year. Comcast has yet to respond to several requests for comment, though I'll be happy to publish their confirmation or denial of the project specifics. I'm currently in the process of digging for additional information.

"Personally, I think this is a step in the right direction and something that will benefit our customers," says my source. I've been writing about this issue for the better part of the last decade. I'm guessing many users will think a 250GB per month cap is too low and the $15 per 10GB overage fee is too high, but at least the new limits, if applied, are honest.

Update:I spoke briefly with Comcast spokesman Charlie Douglas, who has this to say about the 250GB cap: "Comcast is currently evaluating this service and pricing model to ensure we deliver a great online experience to our customers. We have not made any changes to our current service offerings and have no new announcement to make at this time."

Update 2: Looking at the user comments, I feel like the conversation shouldn't be so much about whether 250GB a month is reasonable, but whether it makes sense to open the door to overage charges. Comcast would be the first major U.S. ISP to charge overage fees, and once that door is open, there's nothing to stop the caps from constantly getting lower and the per-GB fees from perpetually getting higher in an uncompetitive and poorly regulated market.
http://www.dslreports.com/shownews/C...age-Fees-94185





Comcast Mocks AT&T For Lawn Cabinets While Deploying Their Own

California residents find Comcast upgrade comes with new lawn ornaments...
Karl

Last week I noted that Comcast was airing ads in the Chicago area making fun of AT&T for their placement of giant VRADs on some customer lawns. It's a necessary evil in order to offer VDSL & IPTV, but it has annoyed communities who say the boxes degrade property value.

However, Comcast apparently is throwing stones in a glass house; the Santa Rosa Press Democrat (via the Consumerist) reporting that network upgrades in the region require the installation of Comcast's own lawn hardware, though considerably smaller than AT&T's.

"I came home to find Comcast had put a green utility box smack-dab in the middle of my lawn," said Cheryl Davison, who lives in northwest Santa Rosa. "You couldn't miss it. My stomach just turned." Davison, an assistant lab director at Kaiser Permanente Hospital in Santa Rosa, spent three weeks trying to get the box removed. It was far more obtrusive than the old Comcast equipment, which had been buried in her yard and covered with a plastic lid that was flush with her grass.

The user ultimately got Comcast to bury the box underground, but says it was quite a fight. AT&T and Comcast can technically bury their cabinets, but underground units run hotter, and the vastly higher costs for cooling/drainage/etc. make the idea highly impractical.

The California Comcast complaints aren't the first; Google brings up similar complaints in Virginia last Fall. Obviously, the world has bigger things to worry about than telecom hardware disrupting pristine suburban lawns, but there certainly is irony in Comcast slamming AT&T for lawn cabinets in one community while deploying them in another.
http://www.dslreports.com/shownews/C...heir-Own-94147





A Technology Consortium Plans a Wireless Network
Matt Richtel

A who’s who of technology and telecommunications companies plans to announce on Wednesday that it intends to build the first of a new generation of nationwide wireless data networks, according to several people briefed on the deal.

The consortium includes a disparate group of partners: Sprint Nextel, Google, Intel, Comcast, Time Warner and Clearwire.

The partners have put the value of the deal at $12 billion, a figure that includes radio spectrum and equipment provided by Sprint Nextel and Clearwire, and $3.2 billion from the others involved.

They expect the network, which will provide the next generation of high-speed Internet access for cellphone users, to be built in as little as two years, but there is no timetable on when it will be available to users and the price is not determined. The partners are seeking to beat Verizon Wireless and AT&T Wireless to the market.

The partnership of such fundamentally different companies underscores the convergence of Internet, entertainment and telecommunications services. The wireless network of the future is expected to be fast enough — rivaling speeds that cable customers have in their homes today — to allow delivery not just of text and simple Web pages, but of video and advertising.

It also faces considerable challenges. Given the peculiarities of the wireless spectrum that the partners intend to use to deliver the data signal, it may not be easy for the group to create a wide-ranging and adequately reliable service, according to Craig Moffett, a telecommunications industry analyst with Sanford C. Bernstein & Company.

He noted that the partners involved were top companies, but that could also work against the interest of the group. Each member has a somewhat different agenda and that could lead to conflicts over operating and managing the network, he said.

Sprint Nextel, which has struggled in recent years against a much stronger Verizon and AT&T, is looking to capitalize on its ownership of spectrum; the cable companies are looking to create an additional service to provide broadband access outside the home; Intel would like to sell its chips and generally expand computer use; and Google hopes to develop another platform for advertising, according to people briefed on the deal.

“Whether it looks good on paper, I’m not sure,” Mr. Moffett said. “There certainly are a lot of question marks that surround the viability of a proposition like this.”

Several of the companies involved in the deal, including Sprint Nextel, Google and Comcast, declined to comment on the partnership.

But three people who had been briefed on it — and who spoke in exchange for anonymity because the arrangement had not yet been announced — said that the group had high if still developing expectations for the technology.

One of these people said that Clearwire, a wireless company started by the telecommunications industry pioneer Craig O. McCaw, would take over management of the project. This person said that the partners were aware that they had differing agendas that might have to be subordinated to some extent to make the project work.

“This has huge possibilities for profit,” the person said. To achieve that, the partners “are going to have to set aside some individual company issues.”

The announcement of the partnership comes as the wireless data business is growing, but one that wireless providers think has vastly more potential. For example, wireless data — predominantly text messaging — constituted 23 percent of Verizon Wireless revenue in the first quarter, up from some 17.5 percent in the period a year earlier, Mr. Moffett said.

The hope of the telecommunications industry is that users will begin using such service for a range of applications, including surfing the Internet on laptops and phones, and downloading music and video more often to those kinds of devices.

The disparate nature of the participants in the Clearwire partnerships also hints at the possibilities. Perhaps most significant is the participation of Google, the search advertising company, which has provided $500 million for the operation.

A person briefed on the deal said Google could provide the search engine abilities for the wireless platform, enabling it to sell advertising there. Google took a similar approach in an initiative to use a free Wi-Fi network in Mountain View, Calif., where the company is based, and in a failed plan for a Wi-Fi network blanketing San Francisco.

The investments by other participants include $1.05 billion from Comcast, $1 billion from Intel and $550 million from Time Warner Cable. Bright House, a cable provider, will invest $100 million, while a private investment group with wireless industry expertise, Trilogy Equity Partners, intends to invest $10 million, according to a person briefed on the arrangement.

Miguel Helft contributed reporting.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/07/te.../07sprint.html




High-Speed Academic Networks and the Future of the Internet
John Timmer

As we recently reported, the Internet's backbone should be able to scale to handle the sheer volume of traffic that it's expected to face in the foreseeable future. But a number of factors complicate any analysis based on the simple volume figures. Many services, such as VoIP and streaming video, create expectations of guaranteed bandwidth that may be tough to maintain in the face of vast volumes of spam and P2P traffic; everything may get there, but not necessarily when we'd like it to. Meanwhile, problems with the "last mile" networks can obscure the capacity of the network backbone.

The academic world has faced similar issues for a while, and will soon be facing a flood of data from the biggest news in physics, the activation of the Large Hadron Collider. The data gathered at the LHC, located at CERN outside of Geneva, will be distributed to a worldwide grid of computer clusters for analysis, which will require sustained transfers well in excess of 10 Gigabits per second. To get a sense of how the academic world is solving its networking needs and what that might mean for the future of general networking, we spoke with executives at Internet2 and the European network provider DANTE.

Academic network structure

Despite differences in detail, both Internet2 and DANTE take similar approaches to providing academic users with dedicated, high-bandwidth capacity. The groups lease capacity on what's termed "dark fiber"—unused capacity on commercial fiber networks. They then purchase equipment to light that fiber. There is nothing special about that equipment, as the providers use the same hardware from companies like Juniper and Alcatel that commercial providers are using.

Both groups typically take the traffic from the dedicated fiber and hand it off to local service providers. The precise details on how that happens differ due to the realities of geopolitical boundaries. In the US, given that geographically remote locations fall within a single national border, these local providers are generally individual companies or organizations. In Europe, where there are a multitude of national boundaries, DANTE hands data off to National Research and Education Networks, or NRENs. These groups are responsible for actually getting the data into the individual research centers.

The networking capacity is typically divided three ways. Some is allocated for a normal, packet-based network, with traffic contending for bandwidth as it does in normal, commercial networks. In addition, both network providers discussed the allocation of dedicated Point-to-Point links, in which a bandwidth is allocated and guaranteed. Finally, Internet2 maintains a parallel capacity that's dedicated for experimental use, designed to test new protocols for enhanced data transfer.

So far, this structure has been able to easily handle the academic world's capacity demands. As Dai Davies of DANTE put it, "in earlier years, network capacity was the issue—that's not true anymore." Davies suggested that, even if demand increased significantly, adding additional capacity wouldn't be a problem; once the structure is in place, "adding capacity incrementally is cheap," he said.

Success stories in science and networking

Both DANTE and Internet2 were happy to emphasize a number of cases where the networking capacity has clearly aided the scientific community. One example both cited was the use of the network for radio astronomy. Facilities like the Very Large Array pioneered the use of interferometry, which uses very fine timing information on signals received by physically separated receivers to reconstruct an image with far higher resolution than any of the individual receivers. That reconstruction means that all the data needs to be on a single computer system at the same time.

Initially, this required that all the individual radio telescopes ship their data on tape to a single data center, a process that could take months. Davies described how the costs for dedicated networking bandwidth wound up being in line with the actual shipping fees, while allowing the data to arrive at the center in real-time. About the only ones that resisted the change, he suggested, were the few observatories that didn't have access to the dedicated network.

The staff at Internet2 (we spoke with CTO Rick Summerhill and deputy operating officer Steve Cotter) were also enthused about some of the research into networking that was being tested on their infrastructure. They specifically described some research that was designed to limit the impact of the packet routing and acknowledgement that forms the basis of current TCP/IP communications. To get around the problem that both sending and acknowledgement are sensitive to traffic conditions, researchers are testing a system where the initial packets of a large data transfer are used to determine the current traffic conditions. If they're favorable, most of the transfer then occurs via a large, point-to-point data flow, avoiding the overhead of the acknowledgements.
Both DANTE and Internet2 also discussed how the technology they develop for specialized uses makes its way back to the commercial arena. In Internet2's case, the work they emphasized was in the software involved in data control, where the technology involved was designed to keep data on the Layer 1 network and out of routers for as long as possible. Davies also described how his organization was frequently involved in the product development of the hardware that will eventually be running future versions of their networks.

Barriers to adoption

Despite these examples and the fact that capacity isn't strained, Davies suggested that people haven't fully taken advantage of the networks. He laid the blame partly on the psychology involved in recognizing and adopting completely new technology. Many in the academic world simply get comfortable with whatever limitations they currently face. People in the humanities in particular just can't be counted on to know about and take advantage of dedicated, high-speed networking. Davies specifically mentioned the art world, where digital imaging now allows key works to be imaged at staggering resolutions. Unfortunately, those data sets rarely leave the location in which they're generated, in part because those that created them simply don't realize that it's possible to make them widely accessible.

Political factors also play a significant role. Davies described how DANTE's current link between Europe and India could easily be expanded to carry 40 Gbps, but is limited to a fraction of that. He blamed the telecommunications market in India, which is dominated by a state-sanctioned monopoly. That monopoly actively thwarts connections that could be viewed as competitive. "We have 10 gigabit connections to the US, and they are as cheap as a 45 megabit connection to India," he said, "Indian scientists are being held back by it—seriously held back." As a result, global scientific cooperation has wound up being uneven.

The biggest barrier, however, is simply the challenges of getting things to work properly. "This isn't exactly plug-and-play," Davies said, noting that, even in cases where high-speed connections are in place, it's often the case that "you connect it to the computer systems at either end, and it doesn't work anymore."

From Internet2's point of view, the challenge is providing the software that lets users control the access to dedicated networking resources. "For example, the LHC requires large data flows between specific sites—2-hour periods with 8 gig flow across the network," Summerhill said, "and we can take that and shunt it to a Layer 1 network without contention, then tear it down when done." Right now, those ad-hoc, dedicated networks are under the control of a limited set of users that have a restricted set of rights but, "we're looking at detection and automation," he said.

The real challenges, as identified by Internet2, is in getting the traffic across the various administrative domains, from campus networks through regional providers, all of which has to occur before the high-speed networks can be leveraged. Everybody has to participate, and all the hardware has to be on board. Internet2 spends a significant amount of time devising techniques to cross these boundaries as well as the software to enable it, all of which is released as open source.

In general, Internet2's comments echoed those of Davies, who suggested that the role of networking providers was changing. Earlier, efforts focused on simply building the network capacity; now, they had an expanded role in providing user-level support in order to ensure that the available capacity is well utilized.

The Large Hadron Collider as the ultimate test

All the discussions of research networks invariably drifted into what will be the ultimate test of their capacity: the Large Hadron Collider, located near Geneva. This will be the biggest, highest-energy collider ever constructed by humankind, and the multiple detectors that are situated along its circumference will generate mountains of data from the collisions that occur within. Due to the high energies involved, the LHC has the potential to both produce particles that have rarely been observed with regularity and reveal particles that have been out of reach of previous colliders.

Going from raw data to basic physics, however, is not a linear process. Collision events produce a spray of particles, any of which may be informative for a variety of experiments. Researchers need to sift through all the data to find traces that are consistent with the particles they are interested in, and then analyze what it tells us about the particles involved. To get all of the data analyzed requires a grid computer with some impressive properties.

The structure that's being put in place is based on multiple tiers. Tier 0 is the LHC facility itself, which sits on DANTE's GÉANT2 network in Europe. From there, data will be streamed out to a series of Tier 1 facilities, which will provide long-term data storage. Tier 1 facilities include about a half-dozen facilities on the GÉANT2 network in Europe, as well as Brookhaven and Fermi National Labs. Each one of these will have a dedicated 10Gbps optical link to the LHC, which allows data to flow out from the collider at a continual rate of several Gigabytes a second. In addition, each Tier 1 facility will have connections to the rest via undedicated networks, including standard Internet connections.

Data on any Tier 1 can be accessed from any of the Tier 2 facilities, which are typically clusters with dedicated local storage. In the US, they include institutions like Caltech, the University of Florida, and the University of California-San Diego. These centers contain local storage, and have a cluster dedicated to analysis of LHC data. All together, the resulting grid will have tens of thousands of CPUs and multiple petabytes of storage.

Is this the next-generation Internet?

It's easy to look at raw numbers on the equipment dedicated to the LHC and find them overwhelming. Even the transfer speeds obtained over the "regular" academic networks can be pretty impressive. That experience can apparently lead to some hyperbolic statements, such as one reporter who decided it was evidence that, "The Internet could soon be made obsolete." It's worth stepping back and looking at what's actually happening to make these numbers a reality.

For starters, none of the academic network providers are using anything other than off-the-shelf hardware. In addition, the actual physical connections between the hardware are little more than excess capacity. Any Internet provider could provide similar connections if it made economic sense for them to do so. Right now, it doesn't.

From a network provider's perspective, the best thing possible is to get the most traffic across the fewest pipes possible, meaning that all packets are contending with plenty of neighbors as they make their way across the network. "We don't oversubscribe," Davies said, "from that point of view, what you get in a research networking context is what you expect to get."

Beyond the basic high-speed networking, something like the LHC work requires dedicated resources from end to end. Both the US and European service providers play key roles in ensuring that traffic flows smoothly across every bit of hardware along the way, or providing custom software that allows users to convince the hardware to play nicely. Even if that sort of personal attention made sense, it works for predefined routes; for the vast majority of users, this really doesn't represent typical usage patterns.

The Internet as we now know it is anything but obsolete. The amount of dedicated hardware and personal attention required to get networks like Internet2 and DANTE working simply makes them uneconomical for most common uses. And, unless a majority of networked content moves onto these dedicated networks, then having access to them may not do users much good. If the academic networks change the commercial ones, they'll do it in an evolutionary way, by providing improved hardware and better software for running traffic within the constraints of the existing economic structure.
http://arstechnica.com/articles/cult...e-internet.ars





Google to Verizon: Don't Shirk Open Access Responsibilities
Marguerite Reardon

Google wants reassurance from Verizon Wireless that it will comply with open access rules that were part of the Federal Communications Commission's recent 700MHz auction.

Verizon Wireless was the winning bidder in the auction of an important sliver of spectrum licenses in the 700 MHz spectrum auction, which raised a record $19.6 billion for the U.S. Treasury. As part of the rules of the auction, the winner of the C-Block licenses is required to allow any device to connect to the network and is also required to allow any application to be downloaded on devices that use the network.

Verizon, which plans to use the new spectrum to build its 4G wireless broadband network, initially opposed the open access rules. And once the rules were adopted, it filed a lawsuit with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit to find those conditions unlawful. It eventually withdrew its appeal after that court denied Verizon's request for an expedited review.

Google filed a petition with the FCC on Friday asking the agency to make sure that Verizon really plans to adhere to these rules before the FCC officially grants the company the licenses in the C-Block of the 700MHz auction.

"We want Verizon to acknowledge their responsibility to comply with the C-Block license conditions," said Richard Whitt, the Washington telecom and media counsel for Google who signed the petition. "In other words, we want them to live up to their side of the bargain. And we want their interpretation and implementation of the rule to be consistent with the spirit and intent in which the FCC adopted those rules."

Google, which also bid on the spectrum during the auction, was one of the main proponents of the open access rules and helped effectively lobby the FCC to include the rules as part of the auction.

Now that the auction is over, Google claims that it wants to make sure that Verizon will really comply with the rules so that software developers can begin working on new innovative applications. It wants Verizon to state publicly that it plans to adhere to all aspects of the open access rules, including a provision the company opposed in written and oral arguments to the FCC as well as in court papers filed with the U.S. Court of Appeals. Specifically, Google wants Verizon to say that it will allow any application to be downloaded on any device using the C-Block network.

Google contends that Verizon has argued previously that the rule should apply only to devices that consumers bring to the network and should not include devices that Verizon sells to its customers.

This reasoning appears to be similar to how Verizon has set up its Open Device Initiative, a program announced in November that will expedite the certification process for device makers to get new devices on Verizon's network. This program is separate from the 700MHz rules, but it could provide some insight into how the company interprets open access.

Whitt said that what Verizon is doing with the Open Device Initiative is commendable. He applauds the company's efforts to embrace openness as a business model, but he said that it's too early to tell if the initiative will live up to the rules that the FCC has mandated for C Block licenses in the 700MHz spectrum auction.

Verizon has not specifically said since the auction that it won't live up to its obligations under the rules of the auction. Whitt said that Google doesn't necessarily mistrust Verizon, but he said that the company is taking Ronald Reagan's advice to "trust but verify" that Verizon will do what's expected.

"We're not trying to delay the process," he said. "And we aren't trying to block Verizon from getting those licenses. What it comes down to is we want to make sure that Verizon Wireless acknowledges and accepts the conditions put on these licenses by the majority of the FCC."

According to FCC procedure, Verizon has an opportunity to file its reply to Google's petition within the next two weeks. A spokesman for the company said it would be doing that, but he didn't seemed alarmed by Google's petition.

"What a surprise," he said in an e-mail. "Google submits yet another regulatory filing to the Federal Communications Commission. Google's filing has no legal standing."

If Verizon responds to the petition and reiterates its position or decides not to address the issues, it will be up to the FCC to decide what it will do next. It is within the FCC's right to deny Verizon access to the licenses, Whitt said. But considering what is at stake, it's likely that won't happen. I'll be following this drama as it unfolds to see how Verizon responds.
http://www.news.com/8301-10784_3-9936712-7.html





Google Will Take Viacom Suit to Supreme Court
Stephen Shankland

Google is willing to fight Viacom all the way to the Supreme Court in the companies' legal battle over YouTube and pirated videos, but Viacom is taking a hard line of its own, executives from the companies said Wednesday.

David Eun, Google's vice president of content partnerships, told Dow Jones Newswires that Google has no plan to resolve the Viacom case outside court. "We're going all the way to the Supreme Court," Eun said. "We're very clear about it."

Separately, Viacom Chairman Sumner Redstone told Dow Jones he's standing up for broader principles.

"When we filed our lawsuit, we not only served our own interests, we served the interests of everyone who owns copyrights that they want protected," said Redstone. "We cannot tolerate any form of piracy by anyone, including YouTube...they cannot get away with stealing our products."

Viacom sued Google for "massive intentional copyright infringement" in 2007, seeking more than $1 billion in damages.

At stake in the fight is a key part of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), the 1998 law that shields Web site owners from copyright infringement involving material published by users. The "safe harbor" provision in the law can protect against infringement claims as long as copyrighted material is removed upon notification.

After the suit, YouTube launched an antipiracy tool that checks uploaded videos against the original content in an effort to flag piracy.
http://www.news.com/8301-10784_3-9938490-7.html





Using Cell Phones to Find Missing Persons Pushes Law

Wireless carriers give location to police without a warrant
Levi Pulkkinen

The call came in to police just after midnight April 16.

Hours before, a distraught young man had phoned his mother, hinting he wanted to kill himself. When he didn't meet her as planned, she telephoned Seattle police and reported her son missing.

Because of increasing advances in technology, officers were able to find the missing man's cellular phone using his wireless network. Two hours after he was reported missing, the man was found alive but unwell lying on his desk and taken to University Hospital for a psychological evaluation.

The night's incident was one of tens of thousands in which a life may have been saved because of the ability to find someone through a cell phone. But life-or-death missing persons cases remain rare, and locater technologies raise questions about warrantless searches.

Missing persons cases present an unusual problem for police -- it's not a crime to disappear. Without a crime, police can't get a search warrant. In a criminal case, no warrant would mean no phone records for authorities.

Instead, King County Sheriff Sue Rahr said, missing persons investigators rely on phone companies to release customers' location information voluntarily. The companies require a statement from police that the phone owner may be in danger.

"The government does not have the right to look at your cellular telephone records," Rahr said. "When we do these ... cases, it's a stretch, to speak candidly."

Each year, law enforcement agencies around the country receive an overwhelming number of missing persons reports. Seattle police alone receive 2,100 to 2,300 missing persons reports a year, or about six a day, said Officer Mark Jamieson, a department spokesman.

Adults account for only 300 to 400 of the missing, Jamieson said. The rest are primarily runaway children, but, in either case, most are found within days of disappearing.

Exceptions stand out. Take the case of Seattle radio host Mike Webb.

Webb's decomposed corpse was found in his Queen Anne home in June, two months after he'd been reported missing. Prosecutors have since charged Webb's houseguest, 29-year-old Scott Brian White, in the killing, claiming that White told police he hacked Webb to death with an ax.

High-profile missing persons cases distort the public's perception of the reasons people disappear, Rahr said.

"It's a very, very small percentage of missing persons cases where it turns out that a crime has been committed," Rahr said. "That doesn't mean we're not investigating them vigorously, but it has to happen in context."

Rahr said investigators should move to acquire a missing person's cell records only if they think something has gone wrong. Before they move forward, they also need to look for other leads -- often bank transactions in missing persons cases -- and make sure that they're not unwittingly reconnecting an abuser with a spouse who has fled.

When nothing else worked, phone records proved invaluable last September in the search for Maple Valley resident Tanya Rider.

Rider had been missing for six days when King County sheriff's deputies obtained her rough location from Verizon Wireless. Searchers using that information found her alive hours later, trapped in her wrecked SUV off of state Route 169.

Since Tanya Rider's rescue, Rahr said she's met with representatives from each major cell phone provider. She's now making plans for a series of training seminars to educate detectives about the uses of the technology in missing persons cases.

In March, sheriff's deputies used the same technology to look for Nicholas Francisco, a SeaTac father of three who went missing in February. Phone records didn't turn up any new leads, Deputy Rodney Chinnick said, but the case remains active.

"It's still a work in progress, and it will continue to be until he's located," Chinnick said.

If they had been looking for Rider or Francisco as part of a criminal investigation, investigators likely would have needed a search warrant to get their cell phone records.

In missing persons cases, though, cell phone providers require that officers assert a customer may be in immediate danger -- "exigent circumstances" in the industry's parlance -- before releasing the information, said Joyce Masamitsu, associate director for state public policy for Verizon Wireless. Verizon alone handled about 26,000 such requests last year.

Masamitsu said Verizon, like other cellular providers, requires detailed follow-up reports from investigators. But she said the company doesn't conduct any independent review of the requests before releasing location information.

"All the officer needs to do is confirm to us that an exigent circumstance exists," she said.

No legal challenges have been filed related to cell locater technology in missing persons cases. But privacy rights advocates say unambiguous guidelines are needed to ensure that the technology isn't misused.

"What you'd want is those rules to be in place, and, as far as we know, they are not," said Rebecca Jechke of the Electronic Frontier Foundation.
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/local/...missing05.html





Police, Prosecutors to Crack Down on Internet ‘’Incitement’’

Police and prosecutors Tuesday began examining if spreading false information on mad cow disease via the Internet and mobile phones is against the law.

A mass text message is urging middle and high school students to skip class on May 17 to protest U.S. beef imports. Police said they could punish those who sent the message by tracking its origin.

A source from the presidential office said, there is a growing consensus that fundamental measures are needed to maintain partiality of public opinion on the Internet.

One police source said the spread of the message could be considered infringement on a student’s right to education.

The Broadcasting and Communications Commission is also reviewing whether the message violates the Basic Law on Electric Communication.
http://english.donga.com/srv/service...=2008050741558





Egypt Asks Mobile Firms to Bar Anonymous Users
Cynthia Johnston

Egypt has asked mobile phone companies to block service to anonymous subscribers as a public security measure, and at least two firms have begun efforts to comply, Egyptian officials and mobile firms said on Monday.

The move comes as Egypt tries to combat a wave of public discontent over rising prices and low wages that have sparked a series of labor and anti-government strikes, organized largely by mobile phone and over the Internet.

The move is expected to affect several hundred thousand customers who did not register their names and addresses when they acquired phone lines -- still a small portion of overall subscribers in the most populous Arab country.

"Everyone who uses the telephone must be known," Trade Minister Rachid Mohamed Rachid told a news conference, adding that the move was needed for "public security."

Vodafone Egypt, one of three mobile operators in Egypt, has started disabling text messaging capabilities for anonymous subscribers, and was asking them to come forward with their details, a company spokesman said.

Rival operator Mobinil <EMOB.CA> linked the move to government plans for mobile number portability, which would allow subscribers to change service providers while keeping their original phone numbers.

"We are contacting our subscribers to update their data in order to avoid future suspension or disconnection," a Mobinil investor relations official said.

Both providers said they were acting based on an Egyptian government request. Egypt's third mobile operator, Etisalat, was not available for comment.

Timing "Raises Eyebrows"

Cairo-based political analyst Elijah Zarwan said there were "legitimate security reasons" for the move by telecoms regulators but expressed skepticism over the timing.

"The timing raises eyebrows because it coincided with the calls for a strike," Zarwan said. "I think it is worrisome."

"In the last strike, the organizers took out new cell phones just for the occasion and were very, very careful of talking on their own phones with the assumption that their phones were already tapped," he said, referring to an April 6 action.

Political activists, mainly liberals and leftists, had called for a new strike on Sunday against rising food prices that coincided with President Hosni Mubarak's 80th birthday, but most Egyptians ignored the call in another sign the opposition lacks the power to mobilize large-scale public protest.

Egypt's financial daily Al-Mal has linked the move over subscribers to fears that anonymous lines could be misused in "acts of terror." The National Telecoms Regulatory Authority, which made the request, had no immediate comment.

Islamist militants carried out bomb attacks on tourist areas in the Sinai peninsula between 2004 and 2006, prompting mass arrests and a security crackdown. The attacks have not recurred.

Egypt has also tried to quash peaceful political dissent in recent years, launching waves of arrests that have primarily targeted the opposition Muslim Brotherhood but have also netted bloggers and activists opposed to the government.

(Additional reporting by Jonathan Wright, Writing by Cynthia Johnston; Editing by Jon Boyle)
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...050501148.html





Egyptian Political Dissent Unites Through Facebook Activists Make Use Of New Technology Across Arab World
Mariam Fam

Facebook here has evolved into more than just a social-networking Web site: It is one of the latest tools for political dissent in Egypt.

Activists using Facebook spearheaded a call for a day of nationwide strikes Sunday to protest price increases, coinciding with President Hosni Mubarak's 80th birthday. Their efforts got a boost when the Muslim Brotherhood, an Islamist group that is the main political challenger of the government, backed the call, saying the strike promotes peaceful opposition.

But the calls found little response Sunday, as traffic appeared as heavy as usual on the streets of the capital amid beefed-up security. On Facebook, some of the members who supported the strike argued that a recent announcement by Mr. Mubarak that his government would boost public-sector salaries by 30% may have damped support for the call. Still, many of them vowed to continue their activism.

The main Facebook group that called for the strike has more than 74,000 users; topping its demands is a proposal to tie salaries to inflation. Facebook activists urged Egyptians to stay home Sunday and boycott purchases of all commodities -- even basic food items like bread -- on Sunday, and meat and poultry through Tuesday.

On Facebook, signs similar to online banner ads promoted the strike. The banners often appeared instead of photographs of members. One red banner read: "May 4, a general strike for the people of Egypt."

The activism on Facebook is part of larger efforts by youths across the Arab world to use technology -- from blogs to cellphone text messages to YouTube -- to challenge their governments and push the envelope on dissent in ways older generations didn't know. In parts of the Middle East such as Beirut and Tehran, local governments immediately jam cellphones if there is civil unrest, to prevent it from spreading.

In a sign the government is taking the challenge seriously, Egyptian security forces last month arrested a young woman, Esraa Abdel Fattah, after she had formed a Facebook group to promote a strike on April 6 over inflation.

Her detention, which lasted just over two weeks, won the site more attention. She was accused of urging people to strike, prompting many Facebook users to campaign for her release on the site.

Egyptian officials have taken notice. Tech-savvy Interior Ministry officers browse the social-networking site to keep an eye on anything they may deem a security threat.

But that hardly deterred activists who in preparation for Sunday continued to use the site to brainstorm and mobilize for the strike.

Ahmed Maher, a 27-year-old engineer and one of the online activists, said technology has opened up infinite and often creative possibilities for youths in the Middle East, who are connecting to the outside world like no other time in their history. "Facebook is an interactive platform. It's like we're in a meeting 24 hours a day," Mr. Maher said. "We see how other people are living, and we reject many government policies."

To some of the young people online, Facebook and other Internet sites offer an alternative to opposition political parties that are weakened by government restrictions and their own divisions and inability to form a popular base of support. Some also see it as a relatively safe medium to voice opposition.

Online activism here is curtailed by the limited Internet penetration in Egypt. Many cyberactivists also rely on more traditional methods for getting the word out, such as writing messages on money notes, distributing fliers and sending text messages on cellphones.

Some Facebook users formed smaller groups against Sunday's strike, saying it opened the door for chaos.

As annual urban inflation hit 14.4% in March and food prices soared, protesters took to the streets last month in the industrial town of Mahalla el-Kobra. That resulted in violent clashes with security forces. In Cairo, the April strikes fizzled because of government warnings and heavy security.

A democracy activist, Hisham Kassem, said Facebook youths are reinvigorating opposition in ways unsettling for the government.

"You're beginning to see the possibility of the end of apathy in political life using personal mass media" such as Facebook, he said. "What will [the government] do about it? Shut down Facebook?"
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB120975285862963213.html





Malaysian Police Raid Blogger Over Murder Article
AFP

Malaysian police raided the home of a top Internet blogger after he posted an article implicating the deputy premier and his wife in the murder of a Mongolian model, reports said Saturday.

Raja Petra Kamaruddin, founder of the popular Malaysia Today site, said police officers questioned him and seized his computers over the article, "Let's send the Altantuya murderers to hell," the Star daily reported.

The newspaper said Raja Petra was being investigated as a result of the article implicating Deputy Prime Minister Najib Razak and his wife in the case.

"I can only speculate that I got a bit too close to the bone and this is frightening some people and they want me to back off," Raja Petra told AFP.

"I suspected they would pounce on it because it was a very hard-hitting article. If we try to be too safe every time, then we'd end up doing nothing."

Najib, who has been named by Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi as his successor, has denied any involvement in the high-profile murder case involving his close associate, political analyst Abdul Razak Baginda.

The analyst was charged with abetting the October 2006 murder of Mongolian woman Altantuya Shaariibuu, 28, whose body was blown up with explosives.

Two police officers from the Special Action Force (UTK), whose duties include guarding Malaysia's prime minister and deputy, are charged with the killing. A court case is ongoing.

Najib's wife, Rosmah Mansor, cautioned readers not to believe the allegations about her, the Star reported.

"Whatever you read on the Internet, don't take it as it is. I guarantee that all the stories... about me are not true," she said, according to the newspaper.

Last year Raja Petra was also questioned by police after posting material that drew allegations of insulting Islam and the king -- triggering condemnation from media watchdogs, which have accused Malaysia of suppressing press freedom.
http://uk.news.yahoo.com/afp/2008050...n-0de2eff.html





US Senator: China Wants Hotels to Filter Internet

US Senator Sam Brownback contends China is requiring US-owned hotels there to filter Internet service during the Olympic Games
Grant Gross

The Chinese government is demanding that US-owned hotels there filter Internet service during the upcoming Olympic Games in Beijing, US Senator Sam Brownback has alleged.

The Chinese government is requiring US-owned hotels to install Internet filters to "monitor and restrict information coming in and out of China," Brownback said Thursday. "This is an insult to the spirit of the games and an affront to American businesses," he said. "I call on China to immediately rescind this demand."

Brownback, a Kansas Republican, made the allegation during a press conference on China's human rights record late last week. Brownback joined six other lawmakers and several human rights groups in criticizing China's human rights record.

Brownback said he got the information on Internet filtering from "two different reliable but confidential sources." Brownback's media office didn't immediate return a phone call on Friday asking for more details.

A spokesman for the Chinese embassy in Washington, DC, also did not immediately return a phone call seeking comment. Spokeswomen for two US hotel chains popular in China, Hyatt and Starwood, were also not immediately available.

Asked Thursday about Brownback's allegations, US State Department spokesman Tom Casey said he wasn't aware of those specific requests from the Chinese government.

"Certainly, we have been concerned by a number of efforts to restrict people's freedom of information," Casey said at a news conference. "We would hope that people in China would be able to have access to all forms of information that are out there, including those that are available online, and that would apply to those who are full-time residents of China as well as those who might be visiting for the Olympics."

The State Department has a continuing dialog with China about freedom of expression, Casey said.

The Olympics are scheduled for August 8 to 24.
http://www.computerworld.com.au/inde...10;fp;2;fpid;1





FBI Targets Internet Archive With Secret 'National Security Letter', Loses
Ryan Singel

The Internet Archive, a project to create a digital library of the web for posterity, successfully fought a secret government Patriot Act order for records about one of its patrons and won the right to make the order public, civil liberties groups announced Wednesday morning.

On November 26, 2007, the FBI served a controversial National Security Letter on the Internet Archive's founder Brewster Kahle, asking for records about one of the library's registered users, asking for the user's name, address and activity on the site.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation, the Internet Archive's lawyers, fought the NSL, challenging its constitutionality in a December 14 complaint to a federal court in San Francisco. The FBI agreed on April 21 to withdraw the letter and unseal the court case, making some of the documents available to the public.

The Patriot Act greatly expanded the reach of NSLs, which are subpoenas for documents such as billing records and telephone records that the FBI can issue in terrorism investigations without a judge's approval. Nearly all NSLs come with gag orders forbidding the recipient from ever speaking of the subpoena, except to a lawyer.

Brewster Kahle called the gag order "horrendous," saying he couldn't talk about the case with his board members, wife or staff, but said that his stand was part of a time-honored tradition of librarians protecting the rights of their patrons.

"This is an unqualified success that will help other recipients understand that you can push back on these," Kahle said in a conference call with reporters Wednesday morning.

Though FBI guidelines on using NSLs warned of overusing them, two Congressionally ordered audits revealed that the FBI had issued hundreds of illegal requests for student health records, telephone records and credit reports. The reports also found that the FBI had issued hundreds of thousands of NSLs since 2001, but failed to track their use. In a letter to Congress last week, the FBI admitted it can only estimate how many NSLs it has issued.

The Internet Archive's case is only the third known court challenge to an NSL, all of which ended with the FBI rescinding the NSL, according to the ACLU's Melissa Goodman.

"That makes you wonder about the the hundreds of thousands of NSLs that haven't been challenged," Goodman said, suggesting that the FBI had collected sensitive information on innocent Americans.

The EFF, joined by the ACLU, initially used the letter to challenge the constitutionality of NSLs generally, saying the gag order violates the First Amendment. They also argued that the specific NSL used was illegal since the Internet Archive is a library, not a communications provider.

The settlement with the government puts an end to that challenge and still keeps Kahle and his lawers from discussing -- even in the most general terms -- what the FBI was after and what public information the Internet Archive turned over to the FBI. For instance, the lawyers declined to say what kind of information the target was looking at or uploading -- such as animal rights information or Muslim literature.

The ACLU has successfully squashed two other NSLs, including one request to a library system asking for web surfing histories of patrons and another to a small New York hosting provider asking for data about a website it hosted. The Internet Archive case is only the second time the courts allowed the recipient of a Patriot Act National Security Letter to reveal his or her identity.

In the case of a NSL sent to a small ISP in New York, a judge ruled that the entire NSL statute is unconstitutional because of the gag order, but that ruling is under appeal. Though the FBI withdrew the request for information on one of the websites the ISP hosted, the target of that letter is still bound by a gag order, though he did write an op-ed for the Washington Post about the experience.

Though Kahle wouldn't say what the feds were after, he stressed that the Internet Archive stores very little non-public information -- only an unverified email address for those who choose to provide it -- and does not log IP addresses.
http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/200...et-archiv.html





Act Now: Stop Secret Spying Deal
Press release

Late Friday night, the ACLU caught wind of a dangerous backroom deal brewing. The “deal” would rush a House vote that would push through a dangerous sellout on government spying powers, possibly in the next few days.

We need you to immediately contact your member of Congress. Let your representative know you’re watching and expect him or her to stand firm. That means no immunity for lawbreaking phone and internet companies, and no spying on Americans without a warrant.

Take action: Let your your members of Congress know you're watching!

Back in February, the House stood up to President Bush’s fear-mongering tactics by letting the so-called “Protect America Act” expire. This ill-named bill eviscerated the protections of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), and violated the constitutional rights of Americans.

This breakthrough victory for civil liberties came only because you and other ACLU activists refused to yield. Because of your calls, and your emails, Majority Leader Hoyer rallied defenders of freedom to hold their ground.

But now, word comes that House leadership may be working hand-in-hand with Senator Jay Rockefeller, the Democratic Chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, who has spearheaded efforts to give immunity to law-breaking phone companies that provided mountains of customer data to the government without warrants.

As discussions continue, it’s critical that House leadership avoid buckling to pressure from the White House or Senator Rockefeller at all costs. House leadership -- and every representative -- need to draw a line in the sand, by rejecting any compromise that would undo the achievement we fought so hard for in February.

Make no mistake: any "compromise" that is acceptable to Senator Rockefeller and the President will undoubtedly let lawbreakers off the hook and seriously put at risk -- or even end lawsuits that may be the only way to get to the bottom of crimes that were committed by phone companies and Bush administration officials.

Act Now. Demand that the House Stand Firm on FISA!

Let’s make it clear. We won’t tolerate:

Backroom deals on telecom immunity. Lawsuits may be our last chance to expose the truth about illegal spying activities by telecom companies and the Bush administration.

Backroom deals that let election year fear-mongering steal our freedom and undermine the rule of law.

Backroom deals that give Bush new powers to spy on Americans without a warrant.

With your help, we have worked relentlessly to protect freedom in the long-running FISA debate. Now, we need to make sure all that work isn’t undone by backroom deals. So, please, act now to urge your representative to stand firm.
https://secure.aclu.org/site/Advocac...ashPage&id=883





Wi-Fi Pirate Radio
Dan Rutter

When technology becomes cheap enough to be effectively disposable, interesting things happen.

Lithium batteries, rare earth magnets and high-intensity LEDs are all pretty young technologies. But all of them are also now cheap enough that people with a few spare bucks can combine all three into cheerful little rainbow-coloured magnetic fireflies - "LED throwies".

Throwies still cost more than 50 cents each, even when you buy your batteries, LEDs and magnets in bulk. But a couple of hundred of 'em can go a long way.

The other day, I was considering what it'd take to make a solar-powered LED throwie. The price could be only a couple of bucks if you've got a source of broken solar cells - you can attach leads to quite small cell fragments, and a small piece of cell per throwie would be enough, especially if you included a flasher circuit to keep the draw down.

But then it occurred to me that autonomous, solar powered, close-to-free Wi-Fi repeaters would be a much cooler idea. You could throw 'em around at random, onto people's roofs, up into trees (well, ones that don't have too many Wi-Fi-eating leaves, anyway), anywhere you liked. It'd be Pirate radio wide-area networking!

At the moment, no such thing exists. About the closest you can get are mesh networking gadgets, like the ones sold by Meraki. The Meraki boxes are too expensive to just toss around the place - and Meraki have only been making them more expensive, with some highly questionable changes to the firmware and licensing. And they also use too much power for guerrilla solar applications. But they illustrate the principle well enough.

Each Meraki box has an antenna, a DC input jack, and an Ethernet port. Basically, if the box can see the Internet through its Ethernet port, then it works as a wireless access point. If there's nothing connected to the Ethernet port, it works as a mesh-network relay. If there's something on the Ethernet port but no Internet access, the box relays and provides Internet access, from any other Meraki boxes on the network that can see the Net.

Meraki have even announced a solar power kit for their waterproof "Outdoor" model. Unfortunately, the Outdoor costs $US99 by itself (the non-waterproof "Mini" is $US49), and it's been months since the solar kit announcement now and they still haven't announced a price for it. Given the other restrictions Meraki gear has sprouted, in arrant contradiction of their original "hackers welcome" policy, it looks like a much better idea to build your mesh from consumer access points running the free OpenWrt firmware. You can buy those off the shelf now from Open-Mesh, a company which appears to actually be doing what Meraki originally promised to do, and is selling ready-to-go boxes for fifty bucks a pop, or only forty if you buy 20.

But no matter which way you go, there's no really cheap option for mesh networking yet.

If you've got a lot of spare money, a ladder and no respect for private property, though, you could already be stealthily deploying Open-Mesh or other such gadgets all over your neighbourhood.

I think trees and roofs would be favourite. Tempting though it is, mesh network relays strapped to telegraph poles probably wouldn't last very long.

These sorts of graffiti-artist escapades are not, of course, very attractive to anybody who can actually afford to buy dozens of solar-powered relay boxes, even if they're now less bulky than they used to be. But once the hardware's own price falls to a few dollars per unit, and the power needed for a mesh relay drops to well under a watt, we'll be in business.

That little power would only require about a $5 battery-charging solar panel, if the new wave of half-price solar cells hit the market as promised. And it won't, of course, be the end of the world if the panel's a bit undersized, so during winter the batteries conk out a couple of hours before dawn. That's just the world telling you to stop playing Team Fortress 2 with other slackers on the neighbourhood net, and go to bed.

A one-watt mesh node may sound like a bit of a tall order, but remember that the OLPC XO-1 laptop-for-kids (which I wrote about a while ago here) has mesh-networking hardware built in. And the whole XO-1 laptop has a power budget of about two watts.

The XO-1's wireless networking is based on a couple of Marvell Libertas chips that have full TCP/IP networking functions built in. This means that the network chips can work as a super-lightweight mesh relay all by themselves, with the rest of the laptop powered down.

The XO-1 maximises battery life by restricting its network speed to a maximum of two megabits per second, but that's A-OK for ordinary Web browsing. And I wouldn't be surprised if the network hardware by itself could be kept working 24/7 by a few solar cells - and maybe even batteries - harvested from old LED garden lights.

Sneaking around in the middle of the night picking garden lights like flowers is another activity I do not recommend. You could actually get this whole deal rolling without breaking any laws at all.

There's nothing at all illegal, here in Australia at least, about Wi-Fi-ifying your whole suburb, as long as you get permission from all of the people on whose property you want to deploy your hardware.

That probably won't be too difficult, if you explain to them that they'll be getting a free (if slow and unsecured) Internet connection out of the deal. That's pretty much how wireless community networks, including more than a few Australian ones, are spreading at the moment.

If you want to sell Internet access in Australia, then you'll need to shell out big bucks for a carrier license. But if you give it away for free, and don't exceed the quite lenient output power restrictions, you'll be golden.

Most ISPs have anti-sharing requirements in their license agreement, but as long as mesh users don't in the aggregate do anything more obnoxious than a typical user would do (and mesh hardware can be set to throttle the bandwidth available to each individual node, preventing one porn fiend from absorbing 99% of the bandwidth 100% of the time), the ISPs a mesh connects to are unlikely to care, or even notice.

I look forward to buying a Dick Smith kit containing those two Marvell chips, an antenna and a battery.

And, perhaps, a magnet.
http://dansdata.com/gz081.htm





How To Make Wifi Signal Booster (DIY)
joe

As I promise before (Cheap Solution for Wireless Signal Booster (Homemade Wireless Antenna)) I would like to give instructions on how to create your own Wifi signal booster. Right now i am using free Wireless connection from school 500 meters from my house. Before this I couldn’t even connect to Google due to terrible wireless signal.

In this tutorial I am using Aztech 802.11b/g USB Adaptor. If you have wireless pci card. the procedure still the same. By doing this you can increase your wireless signal up to 12Db. There are few products out there that you can purchase but that’s not cool at all. Do it yourself!

Building a Wifi booster DIY style

Tool that you need are
Cheap USB wireless, antenna holder, aluminum foil and USB extension cable.

Step 1

The Reflector
I found pre-made template on the internet for this. I just doubled the scale to fit my cardboard.

http://www.imod.co.za/wifi.pdf

Once you already downloaded the template cut it into the shape. I am using plastic file’s case. You may use cardboard get the cheapest one lol. I cut the square hole in the middle to fit the Aztech wireless USB adapter.

Step 2
Cover with the aluminum foil.

Once we the template is ready. Go to the kitchen and grab the aluminum foil. Ask your mom first! Cover the template with aluminum foil and use your sister’s uhu glue.

Step 3
Antenna Holder
Get some material for antenna holder. I am using curtain’s holder for this (no idea what’s the words lol).

Last step

Mount your USB and to test the correct position and direction for the antenna.

Adjust the position of your antenna so you will get the maximum signal gain. This is the difficult part since we don’t know from where the signal coming from. You can use this also as to increase your router signal.

This is my result.

Look at the SMKKB_AP1 the gain is from 7% to 29% the gain is quadrupled plus I got 2 more signals. Good luck!. Experimenting is the best part in this tutorial.
http://technetz.com/index.php/2008/0...l-booster-diy/





Not on Our Blog You Won’t
Lauren Lipton

AT 12:04 P.M. on April 25, a skirmish broke out on Jezebel.com.

It began when the upstart Web site for women, whose slogan is “Celebrity, sex, fashion. Without airbrushing,” posted a photo of Angelina Jolie in a low-cut yellow dress. As part of a popular feature called Snap Judgment, readers offered biting comments on everything from Ms. Jolie’s eye-popping neckline to her possible state of mind.

Then a commenter with the screen name Calraigh wrote that, despite being pregnant, Ms. Jolie looked like “an Ethiopian famine victim.” Within minutes, a half-dozen angry readers had made their own snap judgments of Calraigh:

“You’re gross.”

“Are you serious?”

“That comment is inappropriate. I don’t know what website you think you are on, but that is not how we roll.”

The Jezebel blog was founded last spring by Gawker Media as a smart, feisty antidote to traditional women’s magazines (or “glossy insecurity factories,” as Jezebel describes them). It quickly developed a loyal following and has seen an influx of new visitors, after being name-checked on the official blog for “Gossip Girl,” the prime-time soap opera.

But as Jezebel’s first anniversary approaches on May 21, its readers and editors are learning a lesson right out of high school: popularity has its pitfalls, and mean-girl behavior is hard to quash.

Some readers, in comments on the site, have accused editors of political bias and misogyny. Readers have called one another, by turns, immature, boring and cliquish. This spring the editors responded by banishing certain commenters and putting others “on notice” for being nasty or, worse, not funny.

“I feel like Jezebel is a club more than a blog,” wrote Elizabeth Palin, 26, an accountant from Fayetteville, N.C., who comments under the screen name Muffyn.

All this over a Web site that set out to be — dare one say it? — nice.

When Anna Holmes, the managing editor of Jezebel, was hired to create what her new employers described to her as a “girly Gawker,” she thought long and hard about how much of its parent company’s infamous snarkiness to adopt.

“I wanted Jezebel to be welcoming,” Ms. Holmes said during a rare weekday foray out of her home office in Long Island City.

WRITTEN and edited by a staff of seven women, the blog mixes style commentary and gossip with no-holds-barred posts about politics, the economy, sexism and, certainly, sex.

Recent posts — they go up about every 15 minutes from 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. on weekdays — include commentary on Texas polygamists, a discussion about fertility and a critique of Scarlett Johansson’s singing skills. There are regular features such as Pot Psychology, in which Tracie Egan, an editor, answers readers’ sex questions while under the influence of marijuana, and Cover Lies, a send-up of women’s magazines. (One, in April, bore the headline, “Well Isn’t the Cosmo ‘Sexy Issue’ Just a Sexy Breath of Fresh Sexual Sexy Sex Air!”)

Though the site is still plenty snarky, it steers clear of the vicious remarks about age and weight one finds elsewhere on gossip blogs. Readers of Jezebel find the kinder tone appealing.

“I actually was a commenter on Gawker,” says Jessica Young, 28, a Brooklyn graduate student. “When Jezebel came up, I almost immediately switched over.”

With fewer than 360,000 unique visitors most months, according to Nielsen Online, Jezebel doesn’t come close in scope to larger women’s sites such as iVillage. But in February, after the “Gossip Girl” blog mention, Jezebel saw a spike in traffic, garnering more than an estimated half-million unique visitors for the month, according to Nielsen.

To date, Jezebel’s best month for unique visitors remains July 2007. That month, it posted a photograph of the country music singer Faith Hill, without the significant Photoshop work the shot had received when it was published on the cover of Redbook.

Jezebel paid an undisclosed source $10,000 for the raw photo and concluded that the image had been doctored 11 different ways, the blog said: Ms. Hill’s hair had been digitally thickened, her arms slimmed and her clavicles softened. The post landed Ms. Holmes on NBC’s “Today” show and has garnered over a million page views to date, according to the site.

“It was not one of my favorite moments,” said Stacy Morrison, the editor-in-chief of Redbook.

“Encouraging people to steal proprietary information was a somewhat dubious beginning, but I get it,” she said. “Gossip is fun, which is probably why all the assistants look at Jezebel.” Ms. Morrison said the site is off the radar of most of her readers, many of whom live in “parts of the country that aren’t attached to fashion and flash.”

Like a digital-age upgrade of Sassy, the 1990s-era indie-feminist teenage magazine, Jezebel appeals to a young, urban demographic, with a roster of editors whose strong voices inspire loyal followings. Ms. Egan shares details of her intimate life that are not safe for work. Maureen Tkacik, the site’s features editor, who is known as Moe, gravitates toward politics and speaks out against what she calls the “idiocracy.” Dodai Stewart, the senior editor, pokes fun at magazines and catalogs; in a feature called LOLVogue, she writes satirical captions for fashion spreads.

Jezebel’s readers — they often call themselves “Jezzies” or “Jezebelles”— are permitted to post to the site after a first prospective comment is approved by a Gawker Media staffer, and must adhere to some basic rules: be witty and relevant, no whining and don’t attack people.

Still, such attacks — on one another, and on the editors — happen regularly. When Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton won the New Hampshire primary after getting teary-eyed at a campaign event, Ms. Tkacik fired off a furious rant, accusing women of voting with their emotions. One commenter, a 28-year-old Brooklyn medical biller who uses the screen name SinisterRouge, wrote back: “Seriously, Moe, I know you love Obama. But to say women just up and voted for her because she cries is retarded.”

(Ms. Tkacik, along with Ms. Holmes and Jessica Grose, an associate editor, have contributed freelance articles to Sunday Styles. This reporter has posted comments on Jezebel.com.)

In an interview, Ms. Tkacik said she has been called far worse names by Jezebel readers. “For a while,” she said, “I was like, ‘Where does this desire to really hate me on a personal level come from?’ ”

In March, Ms. Holmes publicly banned some commenters she believed had frequently crossed the line, and issued warnings to others, including SinisterRouge. Instead of showing support for Ms. Holmes’s decision, many readers declared loyalty to the warned Jezebelles, including a core group of longtime commenters who privately identify themselves as “cool kids.”

These core commenters have become friends online and in real life, spinning off their own blogs (such as ButtercupPunch, which has as its slogan “La clique, c’est chic!”) and creating Jezebel Facebook groups. In New York, Jezebelles meet regularly for drinks; in mid-April, almost two dozen old-guard Jezebelles from across the country rented a house in Tennessee for a weekend get-together. (Highlights of the weekend included a pilgrimage to Dollywood.)

Some longtime commenters say the site’s recent “Gossip Girl”-related influx of readers is ruining Jezebel.

“I miss the old days,” said Mary Brewer, one of the old guard who identified herself as an over-35 researcher from the South. “I think we grew really fast, and all of a sudden, it seems like people are just slipping through that shouldn’t be commenting.”
“We’re not there to talk about the prom,” she said. “I don’t want to hear ‘Totes cool’ or ‘She’s cute.’ I’m in it for the snark.”

Jezebel’s editors are continuing to work on these problems. They’ve hired a moderator to keep better tabs on commenters, and they reach out to their readers to a degree that might be astonishing to magazine editors. A few weeks ago, Ms. Tkacik went out for drinks with SinisterRouge, her sometime sparring partner, in the West Village. Despite their political differences, the two women bonded.

“We sat there and drank and joked. It was a really good time,” Ms. Tkacik said. “She’s just really funny, totally one of those girls who’ll say whatever.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/04/fa...jezebel-1.html





Writer Finds Himself in Eye of Media Storm

Human rights issue; Mark Steyn in thick of heated debate
Joseph Brean

As the debate over human rights commissions and free speech became a media gong show this week, it was easy to forget that just two months ago, it was on the fringes of Canadian political discourse, focused on the travails of a little-known white supremacist.

Back then, as right-wing bloggers blasted the country's human rights bureaucracy in harsh, simplistic and often inaccurate terms, the issue was easily ignored by the media because it seemed to recall Oscar Wilde's lament that scandal is gossip made tedious by morality.

But gradually, the issue mushroomed.

Evidence emerged of shady online investigatory practices at the Canadian Human Rights Commission, including the alleged hacking of a civilian's computer, which led to ongoing investigations by police and the Privacy Commissioner.

In Ottawa, a Liberal MP proposed scrapping the commissions' mandate to deal with hate speech, and two Conservative Cabinet ministers expressed their own worries about free speech, despite a rumoured order that the government caucus keep quiet.

And as the focus shifted to the hate speech prosecution of Canada's century-old newsmagazine, Maclean's, and its star columnist, Mark Steyn, special interest groups from across the spectrum started to weigh in with their concerns, including the Canadian Civil Liberties Association, PEN Canada, B'nai Brith Canada and the Canadian Association of Journalists.

"This thing has turned into a circus," said Warren Kinsella, a former Liberal spin doctor and Mr. Steyn's self-appointed nemesis in the battle over section 13-1 of Canada's Human Rights Code, which makes it an offence to spread messages that are "likely to expose" people to "hatred or contempt."

The ever-expanding publicity of that circus -- due largely to the efforts of Ezra Levant, himself the subject of a hate speech complaint in Alberta for publishing the Danish Muhammad cartoons, whose blog has become a clearing house for human rights skepticism -- has also inspired a flurry of libel lawsuits between representatives of the two sides.

This week marked a climax of sorts, as Mr. Steyn's promotional tour for his book America Alone -- an excerpt of which led to the complaint against Maclean's -- rolled through Toronto, and the issue was addressed on the country's top current affairs programs, from CBC's George Stroumboulopoulos to CTS's Michael Coren Show, CTV's Mike Duffy and TVO's Steve Paikin.

Mr. Paikin's show was a particular highlight, because he also hosted three law students who, as members of the Canadian Islamic Congress, are the public face of the complaint against Maclean's.

Having initially refused to debate Mr. Steyn directly, they were forced into it when Mr. Steyn challenged Mr. Paikin, on live television, to moderate an actual debate.

"Oh my, what a show," Mr. Paikin wrote on his blog afterward, calling it "one of the most heated we've ever done," and saying that the students made the right decision to debate, because they "would have looked like hypocrites had they not, given that they've been calling for an open debate on the subject matter for weeks."

But if the feisty rhetoric on television and talk radio brought glee to fans of Mr. Steyn and critics of the commissions', it also served to invigorate their champions.

"It did seem passingly strange to a lot of people that he was prepared to have a debate with a bunch of kids, effectively, but he isn't prepared to debate somebody who is more or less his own size," said Mr. Kinsella, who has challenged Mr. Steyn to a debate next month at the Public Policy Forum in Ottawa and called him a "chickensh**" for not accepting.

Mr. Kinsella, who said he believes the complaint against Maclean's is without merit and has warned the students as much, said critics of human rights law are not thinking of the implications of "castrating or denuding the country of any kind of human rights code, and what the consequences will be for Islamic extremists or neo-Nazis.

"That's what those guys most desire."

At the same time, he says there is "no way that there's going to be wholesale change to the federal human rights code while there's a minority government. It's become too hot an issue."

"I don't know why Warren Kinsella is inserting himself into my hate crime. Why doesn't he get a hate crime of his own?" Mr. Steyn quipped in response.

The answer, of course, is that the human rights prosecution of Maclean's is becoming the scandal du jour, and it is now a recurring theme in the national media, even though the news pages of the Toronto Star and the Globe and Mail have so far ignored the issue.

Just this week came a new development, when an editorial cartoonist for the Halifax Chronicle-Herald became the target of a complaint at the Nova Scotia Human Rights Commission, for his cartoon about the staying of charges in a recent terrorism case.

A Halifax Islamic group filed a complaint with the police and the commission, saying the April 18 cartoon creates "an environment of hate for its depiction a woman in a burka, holding a sign that reads "I want millions" and saying "I can put it towards my husband's next training camp."

If the Maclean's complaint is any guide, Nova Scotian journalists will not take kindly to this challenge to their traditional freedoms, no matter what they think of Mr. Steyn's famously contrarian views, or Mr. Levant's campaign to "denormalize" the commissions.

"Nobody's going to be building statues to me," Mr. Steyn said. "But I think in a few years time, if we retrieve Canadian liberty, then people will forget me and Ezra Levant. We'll be obscure footnotes. But if this thing grows and expands the way [Barbara Hall, Chief Commissioner of the Ontario Human Rights Commission] wants it to expand, then I think people will look back and say, 'God, why didn't we pay attention to Steyn and Levant?'

"I mean, if you were casting this drama in its most appealing light, you would want someone like David Suzuki to have fallen afoul of the human rights commissions, and then everybody would be on board with it. Or Margaret Atwood. But the reality is that there's no reason why that can't happen," Mr. Steyn said.
http://www.nationalpost.com/news/story.html?id=504843






Mysterious Multiplication of Copyright Complaints
Doug Lederman

It’d be hard to argue that Indiana University doesn’t take illegal downloading seriously. As noted on its “Are You Legal” Web site, the university imposes a $50 fine for the first notice university officials receive from entertainment companies about a student’s alleged improper sharing of copyrighted music or video, and cuts off the student’s access to the Indiana network if he or she fails a 10-question quiz within 24 hours. The penalties ramp up from there.

But Indiana officials are now discussing whether they should continue to respond to complaints from the recording industry with the same aggressiveness. It’s not that university leaders have suddenly decided that illegal behavior isn’t wrong; instead, they are beginning to question the legitimacy of the notices the Recording Industry Association of America sends accusing network users of illegally sharing music.

That’s because, like many colleges and universities, officials at Indiana have seen an eye-popping increase in the number of complaints they’ve received at a time when campus administrators say they have not seen any sort of rise in traffic that would suggest more piracy. Instead, college technology experts — lacking an explanation from industry officials for the upturn — suspect that the recording industry has altered the standards it uses to allege illegal behavior, targeting not only instances in which computer users have actively shared music illegally, but instances in which they have stored downloaded music in a folder visible to other users, opening the way to a potential violation.

That has officials at Indiana and elsewhere reconsidering how seriously they take the threats the recording industry aims at their students, which has been part of a continuing disagreement between the entertainment industries and higher education leaders over whether the recording and movie industries are disproportionately singling out college students (and their host institutions) for the broader Internet piracy problem.

“We’ve been handling the notices as allegations of actual infringement,” said Mark S. Bruhn, chief IT security and policy officer in Indiana’s Information Technology Policy Office. “But if they are not allegations of illegal behavior, but of possible future infringement, we may wind up discarding them.”

As Indiana and other institutions reported significant upturns in the number of complaints they were fielding, officials of the RIAA have been relatively silent on the matter, letting prepared statements that say little speak for them, thereby encouraging speculation like Bruhn’s.

In an interview late Monday, Cary Sherman, president of the RIAA, specifically rebutted the idea that the industry had altered its criteria for going after illegal downloaders. Sherman attributed the “phenomenal jump” in the number of complaints to a “major change in the software and hardware” its major vendor uses to detect online infringement. Nothing about the industry’s approach changed, Sherman said: “It’s the same procedures, the same standards, the same list of copyrighted works that we’re using.” The only changes, he said, were a more efficient software and an increased number of servers powering the industry’s searching for possible shared material.

“The Internet is a huge place, and there are millions of people connected to it,” he said. “The amount of resources you put into sending out requests for specific files makes a difference; the more requests you make, the more you’re going to find.”

He added: “We don’t think there’s any more infringement going on. We just think there’s more detection of infringement.”

In the first 20 days of April, Indiana received a total of 70 complaints directing the institution to take down illegally downloaded content. It received 70 notices alone on April 21. April 22 brought 97. The next few weekdays delivered 44, 91, 83, 72 and 58. Other universities, from major ones like the University of Michigan to smaller institutions such as Whitworth University, are also reporting significant increases in notices from recording companies. Most institutions in the Council on Institutional Cooperation, which includes the Big Ten universities and the University of Chicago, reported big rises in a recent survey, according to Bruhn.

He said he and other officials at Indiana have not seen a concomitant increase in actual network traffic, and that the campus is actually emptying out as students finish their final exams and head home. That led Indiana IT administrators to seek an explanation for the dramatic upturn from contractors that the recording companies use to monitor possible illegal file sharing, and Bruhn said that one of the contractors had said that because one student had one of a record company’s songs available to other users in his or her public index of songs, the university would be receiving a DMCA notice.

Entertainment industry lawyers have long maintained — and argued in court — that it is a copyright infringement to “make available” illegally downloaded music or movies, even if the material is not actually shared. That has been among the battleground issues in court cases over peer to peer file sharing, and the terrain remains disputed, even though two of three relatively recent court rulings (including last month’s denial of a summary judgment in the closely watched Atlantic v. Howell case) have rejected the recording industry’s argument that making content available for possible download is just as much copyright infringement as actual dissemination of the material.

That legal fight is among the factors that has Bruhn and other college officials wondering if the recording industry is altering its approach to try to buttress its political and legal standing, especially given the fact that the statistics entertainment officials have leaned on to persuade Congress to target higher education for a crackdown on downloading were acknowledged early this year to be flawed.

Could the industry, they wonder, be ramping up its allegations against college students now to try to reinforce its case to the courts and to Congress that colleges are, in fact, a hotbed of illegal file sharing activity?

Sherman scoffed at that notion. “We have been asking the contractor for years to increase the computing power of its effort, and to search more to detect infringement,” he said Monday. “We’ve had a standing request to maximize efficiency for what they do for us.... We didn’t even know they were putting a new system online.”

Despite the timing, there is “no connection whatsoever” between the upturn and either the court cases suggesting that actual infringement needs to occur for a finding of copyright violation or the perceived need for new data to show Congress that illegal file sharing is rampant on campuses, Sherman said.

“We would have preferred this uptick five years ago,” he said.
http://insidehighered.com/news/2008/05/06/riaa





Getting Beyond Canada's Copyright Myths
Michael Geist

Last week, James Rajotte, the Chair of the Standing Committee on Industry, told a Public Policy Forum conference on intellectual property that Industry Minister Jim Prentice hopes to introduce the highly contentious copyright bill within the next few weeks. The announcement, which comes just days after the United States raised copyright with Prime Minister Stephen Harper at the SPP meeting in New Orleans, suggests that the concerns of business, education, and consumers may be cast aside in order to pacify U.S. pressure on the file.

Indeed, the decision to press ahead with copyright in a manner that Liberal Industry critic Scott Brison recently labeled as "anything but transparent" is particularly troubling given concerns that the bill may be based on five myths that are frequently raised with respect to Canadian copyright.

1. The Importance of Copyright. In recent months, there have been increasing attempts to link copyright reform with the government’s broader innovation agenda. While copyright and intellectual property policies are unquestionably important in this regard, an innovation strategy depends upon far more than just copyright reform. A vibrant venture capital community, competitive tax structure, highly skilled workforce, and world-class communication infrastructure all play a critical role in investment decisions and the commercialization of new innovation. In fact, the World Economic Forum recently pointed to excessive red tape in establishing a new business and the high costs of Internet and wireless access as the weakest part of Canada’s "network readiness."

2. Consultation and Reform. Given the slow pace of copyright reform, it is natural for some to mistakenly believe that Canada has widely consulted on reform with little to show for it. In fact, the opposite is true. The last national consultation on digital copyright reform took place in 2001, a time that pre-dates the introduction of the now-ubiquitous Apple iPod and the emergence of popular sites such as Facebook, MySpace, and Flickr. Although critics decry Canada's "outdated" copyright laws, the reality is that there has been a steady stream of reforms over the past two decades. The Copyright Act faced major overhauls in the late 1980s and 1990s, with smaller amendments in 1992. Moreover, Canada passed new copyright laws related to Internet retransmission in 2002 and anti-camcording legislation last year.

3. Canada in the World. A consistent theme in recent years has been the characterization of Canadian copyright law as "outdated, weak, or ineffective" in comparison to the rest of the world. Much of this criticism comes from the U.S., which has consistently placed Canada on its Special 301 list of countries with intellectual property laws that merit "watching." Yet these inflammatory claims do not withstand even mild scrutiny. The U.S. Special 301 list includes nearly 50 countries representing 4.4 billion people (about 70 percent of the planet) and 13 of the top 20 countries worldwide as measured by GDP. Viewed in that light, Canada is in good company.

Moreover, the World Economic Forum ranked Canada's intellectual property protection fourth in G8, ahead of both the U.S. and Japan. That ranking may reflect the fact that there are many areas where Canadian law is actually far stronger than the U.S., including our more limited fair dealing provision, the existence of crown copyright, the significantly higher copyright fees for broadcasters and educators, as well as Canada's the heavy reliance on copyright collectives.

4. Copyright in the World. Among the most troubling claims associated with copyright are the assertions that Canada must follow the U.S. model in order to comply with the World Intellectual Property Organization's Internet treaties. Nothing could be further from the truth. In recent months, New Zealand passed copyright legislation that includes far more flexibility that the U.S. model, while Israel - well known for an innovative technology sector - rejected the need for WIPO reforms altogether. Canada has the ability to craft a "made in Canada" solution that meets our needs but rejects reforms that have had negative effects on research, security, and consumer rights in other countries.

5. Copyright Consensus. Advocates of immediate reform argue that copyright is too contentious to achieve a broad consensus and that leadership is therefore needed to push ahead with legislation despite the opposition. However, a closer look at the publicly held positions of many key stakeholders reveals that there is an emerging copyright consensus in Canada. Artists groups (Canadian Music Creators Coalition, Appropriation Art), business groups (Balanced Copyright Business Coalition), education groups (Canadian Association of University Teachers, Canadian Federation of Students), and consumer groups have largely coalesced around principles that include a rejection of the U.S. Digital Millennium Copyright Act, preservation of user rights, greater flexibility within fair dealing, and the targeting of clear cases of commercial counterfeiting. Such an approach benefits creators, users, and the business community and therefore holds the promise of a consensus-based roadmap for reform.
http://www.michaelgeist.ca/content/view/2901/159/





Concern Grows as Copyright Law Debate Heats Up

Some fear reworked legislation still won't be good for consumers
Sarah Schmidt

Chris Brand feels a little bit like a criminal every time he breaks the code of a DVD shipped from family in England so he can watch the video.

The British Columbia software programmer thinks he shouldn't feel guilty for recording a television show to watch later or ripping a CD he's purchased to upload to his iPod.

"I don't want to do anything commercial. I just want to do something in my home."

Mr. Brand, of New Westminster, B.C., is waiting to find out whether the federal government is going to expressly permit what is already common practice for millions of consumers in Canada in its much-anticipated copyright law, expected to be tabled at the end of the month.

Concerns are growing over whether it will be good for consumers as representatives of the U.S. government and the entertainment industry met last night with a group of MPs studying intellectual property to talk about cracking down on copyright infringements.

Caucus members are also planning a trip to Washington before the new law is introduced to meet with congressional leaders and other groups working on copyright and piracy issues.

Industry Minister Jim Prentice was set to table the legislation last December, but pulled it at the last minute amid concerns that the legislation too closely resembled the U.S. law.

The U.S. Digital Millennium Copyright Act, favoured by many industry representatives, criminalizes the production of technology that circumvents digital protection mechanisms, prevents consumers from making backup copies of digital material they've purchased and disallows reading material using equipment of their choice.

Jason Kee, director of policy at the Entertainment Software Association of Canada, pleaded his case before the all-party caucus last night alongside his U.S. counterpart, Steven Mitchell.

At minimum, Mr. Kee wants the Canadian legislation to include a prohibition against circumvention devices. Modification chips, freely available for purchase at retail stores, allow consumers to crack security locks and upload pirated computer and video games.

He'd also like to see an Internet service provider liability provision to force ISPs to stop the download of infringing content and block pirated material from moving freely online using peer-to-peer technology.

The association also opposes modernizing the backup copy provision to allow consumers to copy digital data, including DVDs and video games, to protect them if purchased products become corrupted.

Michael Geist, Canada Research Chair in Internet and e-commerce Law at the University of Ottawa, says the government should think twice before tabling copyright legislation that meets these demands.

But he isn't convinced that Mr. Prentice ordered the type of rewrite necessary to make Canada's law distinct from the American model and more balanced for consumers.

"While the bill may be tweaked, this is a bill that may well ignore the concerns of thousands of Canadians, and instead cave to the U.S. and deliver them the goods," he said.

Charlie Angus, NDP digital affairs critic, is leading the charge against importing the U.S. copyright model to Canada.

He said legislation that gets tough on counterfeiting doesn't need to buy in to the idea that regular consumers are "thieves and hackers."

"The Americans have this 'take-no-prisoner' attitude on anybody who downloads any song, and that's simply not a realistic path for the 21st century," said Angus, a musician and author who has relied on income from copyright royalties.
http://www.canada.com/ottawacitizen/...f-ac42b51fee7b





House Wants Copyright Czar, New Piracy Penalties
Anne Broache

A bipartisan proposal to create an intellectual-property czar and impose new penalties on pirates sailed through the U.S. House of Representatives on Thursday.

By a 410-10 vote, the House approved the Prioritizing Resources and Organization for Intellectual Property, or Pro-IP, Act, which is backed by the entertainment industry and other major copyright holders. The proposal is chiefly sponsored by Reps. John Conyers (D-Mich.) and Lamar Smith (R-Texas), the chairmen of the House Judiciary Committee.

The bill would rewrite U.S. law to allow federal officials to seize property--including computers or other equipment used to commit intellectual-property crimes or obtained as a result of those proceeds--from people convicted of making unauthorized copies of music, movies, or live performances. In civil cases, federal agents would have to establish that there was a "substantial connection" between the property and the offense.

In addition, the bill would also create a new position, presidentially appointed within the Executive Office of the President, charged with acting as a chief adviser on intellectual-property enforcement matters. The U.S. Intellectual Property Enforcement Representative, as it would be known, appears to be modeled after the U.S. Trade Representative, which already has some intellectual-property enforcement responsibilities and puts out an annual report on global piracy.

The measure had previously drawn harsh criticism from consumer advocacy groups because of a controversial provision that would have dramatically increased fines in copyright infringement lawsuits. But that section was stripped out during a committee vote, seemingly to avert proposal-killing opposition, though the bill's sponsors said they plan to revisit the issue.

Thursday's vote may have arrived scarcely a week after the House Judiciary Committee lent its backing to the bill, but it seems unlikely to be on a fast track to becoming law, thanks to vocal objections from the Bush administration.

The U.S. Department of Justice has complained that establishing such a new White House-based intellectual-property officer is unnecessary and could undermine its traditional authority in prosecuting copyright cases.
http://www.news.com/8301-10784_3-9939265-7.html





NY Attorney General Backs Film Piracy Bill

New York's attorney general proposed legislation on Monday that would set heavier penalties for people who record movies in theaters to illegally sell or distribute.

The legislation will make it a felony for people who repeatedly record movies for commercial purposes without permission.

The measure is designed in part to fight the economic harm caused by the selling of counterfeit DVDs of movies, which New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo said costs 140,000 jobs annually.

U.S. film studios lost $6.1 billion in 2005 to piracy globally, according to a study commissioned by the Motion Pictures Association of America.

Movie counterfeiters often attend movies in theaters and surreptitiously record what's on screen with hidden video cameras.

"This is modern-day organized crime," Cuomo said, adding in a statement: "The wide distribution of pirated films originating from New York costs our state vital economic resources, including thousands of jobs and millions of dollars in tax revenue."

The Piracy Protection Act would make illegal recording a misdemeanor for first-time offenders, who would face up to one year in jail and a $1,000 fine. Repeat offenders would be charged with a felony, which carries higher penalties.

The illegal recording of films in movie theaters is now considered a misdemeanor, like a parking ticket, and not a felony, Cuomo said.

Regulators said the nationwide distribution of such movies is organized by crime syndicates.

Cuomo also said he would name a special assistant attorney general to coordinate the efforts of local and state police against film piracy.

General Electric's (GE.N) NBC Universal Chief Executive Jeff Zucker, who joined Cuomo at a news conference to announce the legislation on Monday, said, "Enhanced penalties and specialized, dedicated enforcement resources are key to fighting piracy and counterfeiting."

(Reporting by Kenneth Li; Editing by Brian Moss)
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...050501095.html





New York Piracy Law Smells Fishy Says Pirates
Ben Jones

A new anti-piracy law, proposed yesterday by New York State Attorney General Andrew Cuomo has been criticized as pointless pandering to lobby groups, and ‘cronyism’. Worse, the bill is based on date from the widely discredited LEK study of 2006.

The new law proposes to make the recording of films in a cinema a class A misdemeanor with penalties of up to a year in prison, and a $1,000 fine for a first offender. Repeat offenders would be charged with a felony, and correspondingly higher penalties.

Unusually, however, the bill is unnecessary, as the Family Entertainment and Copyright Act of 2005 (link) already criminalized this action, with much stronger penalties. The question then seems to be not what the act is about, but WHY?

Fortunately. The answer isn’t hard to guess at with some digging. Mr Cuomo, has, like the MPAA chairman Dan Glickman, strong ties to the Clintons. Cuomo was considering running for the US Senate in 2000, but allowed current presidential candidate Hillary Clinton to run for that seat instead.

At the time, he was a Cabinet Secretary in her husband Bill’s, White House, serving as ‘Secretary of Housing and Urban Development’, during the same period that current MPAA chairman Dan Glickman was serving as ‘Secretary of Agriculture’. To some, that seems more than coincidence.

It is little surprise then, that the announcements for the law contain data from the MPAA’s 2006 LEK study as their only supporting evidence. A study which has not only been widely ridiculed (including by me), but which the MPAA has themselves undermined earlier this year.

Speaking out against the bill has been the US Pirate Party, calling it “a disgusting act of cronyism”. Ray Jenson, the Party’s operations officer , commented on the bill saying, “There can be no justice in this country, if a lobby group can effectively ‘buy’ former colleagues to propose laws like these.” The Party also hinted that they would soon be releasing a study, showing a more realistic view of the damage caused by ‘cinema camming’.

Whilst the law hasn’t been passed yet, the support shows that at least some of the millions the MPAA has pumped into its lobbying efforts have not been in vain. Meanwhile the chairman of the US Pirate Party, Andrew Norton, had this comment to offer. “In the end, no amount of laws will save the horse-and-cart that is the Entertainment Industry right now, from technological progress in this automobile age.”

The NY Attorney General’s office had not replied to calls for comment at the time of publication.
http://torrentfreak.com/ny-piracy-la...-fishy-080506/





Los Angeles Says Piracy 'Detrimental to the Public Health, Safety'
David Kravets

Local governments in California and the United States have long had the power to declare property a public nuisance when their owners allow their land to become denizens of drugs, gangs, prostitution and gambling.

The Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors, following New York's lead, is adding a new category: music and video piracy.

In an ordinance just adopted, the five-member board is declaring that piracy "substantially interferes with the interest of the public in the quality of life and community peace, lawful commerce in the county, property values, and is detrimental to the public health, safety, and welfare of the county's citizens, its businesses and its visitors."

The regulation was crafted at the urging of the Motion Picture Association of America and the Recording Industry Association of America.

The county retains the right to shutter a property for up to a year for violating ordinance 13.90.010 and also gives local authorities the right to bring a civil action to "temporarily restrain, preliminarily enjoin, and/or permanently enjoin the person or persons intentionally conducting, or knowingly maintaining or permitting the public nuisance from further conducting, maintaining, or permitting such a public nuisance."

Property owners who knowingly permit such activity can also be dinged $1,000 for each counterfeited work produced on the property.
http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/200...geles-say.html





How Viacom Can Sink the Pirates
Anders Bylund

Sumner Redstone, who controls the twin media giants Viacom and CBS, is leaning on Internet service providers and online media outlets to do his heavy lifting. Speaking at the Seoul Digital Forum 2008, the 84-year-old media mogul came down particularly hard on YouTube, equating the video platform with piracy and demanding that ISPs and web sites do more to police content.

"Solutions turn on enlisting the aggregators—ISPs, device manufacturers, hosting companies, and site operators—this effort," Redstone said, according to the Associated Press. "We ask that companies that become aware of piracy using their facilities do something about it."

Redstone's statements make sense in the light of his long-running legal campaign against piracy in general and YouTube in particular (Viacom is suing YouTube for $1 billion at the moment). It's also far from a unique stance among studio bigwigs. But is it really fair to ask the service providers to beat piracy on behalf of the content producers, when the networks and studios already have much better tools at their disposal?

Game theory

Matt Mason, in his book The Pirate's Dilemma (look for our review next week), shows how a culture of piracy tends to grow up whenever and wherever a human need meets draconian restrictions—economic, legal, what have you. The establishment that gave birth to hip-hop, Wikipedia, disco, and YouTube must change in the end or risk losing out as new players monetize the new market staked out by the pirates. Rap and graffiti started out as rebel yells, then became accepted as art forms, and they have now been integrated into the multibillion-dollar pop culture machinery that once was the enemy. It happened to Dr. Dre because the record companies couldn't silence him and his fans with cookie-cutter pop, so hip-hop quickly became a business model instead.

What Sumner is missing with his comments is the fact that pirates can be beaten—it happens all the time—but not primarily by means of legal threats and lawsuits. No, you subjugate these rebels with the tools of free enterprise. Piracy is just another business model, and the pirates will lose and go away when you come up with a better model (or they will become legitimate players themselves).

Stripped down to the bare essentials, consumers will choose the service with the most attractive balance of price, convenience, and quality. Piracy will always win on price, because you can't really beat free. The other two components are up for grabs, but the media companies are only now starting to seize the opportunity.

Quality

Take YouTube as competition for the Comedy Central cable network, for example. Redstone's Viacom has asked Google to remove clips of Colbert and Jon Stewart, time and again. But a YouTube search on "Colbert" today still returns more than 6,200 results. And if Viacom managed to shut YouTube down entirely, you'd see those clips moving to MySpace Video. Or perhaps Yahoo, MSN, or some platform that doesn't exist yet. The pirates will always keep a steady supply of free clips on hand, if you're willing to chase down the sources and deal with bad quality, clip length limits, and other flaws.

So Comedy Central eventually fought back hard, hosting the complete Daily Show archives online, and tagged the clips to make them searchable. NBC and Fox formed Hulu to distribute their shows with minimal commercials, and ABC and CBS are doing their own experiments with online distribution (ABC offers Lost in HD, for instance).

Make sure the videos are of high quality, preferably in high-def and surround sound. Don't skimp on the extras: if anything, there should be exclusive content online only, not the other way around. Remember, you're creating a new distribution channel, and need to promote it. There's the quality play.

Convenience

If Redstone really wants YouTube to stop "stealing" his viewers, it's easy to do. In fact, his companies are already doing it. Start up a one-stop shop for all the Comedy Central content you want or, even better, everything you'd ever want to watch on any Viacom or CBS property. Some shows are produced by other companies—just tell them to put up with this, or they're off your airwaves. An industry-wide content portal would be even better, but it will take years to sort out the branding, control, and revenue sharing issues there.

Then promote this site. Relentlessly. If you watch just one episode of South Park or Tila Tequila, it should be impossible to walk away without the awareness of a convenient service that will fill you in on missed episodes, shows you never heard of, and all the classics, too. They start on demand and play stutter-free from any PC, Mac, or Linux box, anywhere in the US, any time. There's the convenience play.

So Viacom can concede the price point to piracy, having won the other two battles. Throwing in the towel entirely and charging retail DVD prices for a season of Family Guy may still be a mistake, but with any reasonable scheme, this should become a profitable venture very quickly. Figure out an ad-supported model if you can, or charge less than a dollar per episode. Let people burn it to DVD or play the file on iPhones for a buck.

Endgame

In the end, piracy will force all the big-time content producers to move in this kind of direction. Capitalism, properly applied, will beat the rebels every time, and the odd thing is that the content companies are finally moving full-speed ahead with these new initiatives even as the bosses sometimes seem fixated on the "stick" half of the "carrot and stick" approach. Even Sumner Redstone is starting to understand this.

"Media companies need to make it easy for consumers to obtain our content in a legal manner," said Redstone. "We cannot let the lack of perfect antipiracy tools keep us from forging ahead in providing the best, most innovative, creative content to the consumer over whatever medium they prefer, whenever and wherever they prefer it."

Media companies think they're moving as fast as possible, but consumers are impatient creatures, and have moved even faster.
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post...e-pirates.html





Do You Own Your Software? WoW Glider Case Not Just About Getting to Level 70.
Corynne McSherry

Unbeknownst to most software users, a lawsuit now at a critical stage could drastically expand the ability of software vendors to restrict how their customers can use their software.

Blizzard Entertainment, the company that makes the hugely popular massively multi-player online role-playing game World of Warcraft, sued Michael Donnelly, the developer of Glider, a program that helps WoW users raise their character level to 70 by “playing” for the user while the user goes to get a cup of coffee, read the paper, etc. The WoW licensing agreement ostensibly forbids using programs like Glider. Blizzard says that Donnelly illegally interfered with that agreement by selling Glider and, therefore, encouraging users to breach the license agreement by using the program.

Here’s the scary part: Blizzard also insists that because the license agreement forbids using Glider with WoW, Glider users are committing copyright infringement when they load copies of WoW into RAM in order to play the game. (Blizzard says Donnelly is contributing to that infringement.) If Blizzard’s theory were correct, Glider users could be on the hook for statutory damages, which could start at $750 per RAM copy. Blizzard’s theory would also give software vendors the power to stop the sale of software that interoperates with their product.

But Blizzard’s theory is wrong, because it confuses a copyright holder's intellectual property rights in the software it develops with a buyer's rights in the actual copy of the software. An owner of software has a right to copy it if that copy is essential to the customer’s use of the software. (See Section 117 of the Copyright Act.) This rule is a crucial part of the balance Congress crafted between the rights of the copyright holder to manage and benefit from its expressive work, and the rights of the public to innovate, recreate and otherwise use and build on that work.

Blizzard argues that players aren’t owners but merely software licensees, so section 117 doesn’t apply. But court after court has held that the question of whether a user is an owner for purposes of Section 117 depends the substance of the transaction, not just how one party wants to describe it. For example, if you buy the software, keep it on your own computer and don’t have to return it when you are done, you probably own it.

This is not to say that there might not be a contract, like the license agreement, that restricts use of the software. But violation of that agreement is a matter of contract law, not copyright, which means that different standards apply and there is no minimum statutory damages requirement.

Blizzard has filed for summary judgment on its claims. Given the facts of the case—Glider is, after all, a program that helps some folks cheat at WoW—there is a danger here that the court will lose sight of the implications of its ruling for all software users. Public Knowledge filed an amicus brief last week calling the court’s attention to those implications. We hope the court will take heed, and reject Blizzard’s absurd and overreaching copyright theory.
http://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2008/05...case-not-just-





Friends May Be the Best Guide Through the Noise
Brad Stone

CATHY BROOKS is a typically unapologetic Silicon Valley Web addict. Last week alone, she produced more than 40 pithy updates on the text messaging service Twitter, uploaded two dozen videos to various video sharing sites, posted seven photographs on the Yahoo image service Flickr and one item to the online community calendar Upcoming.

Her friends, similarly peripatetic in their Web journeys, also liberally sprinkled photos, videos, blog items and news-article links across the Internet.

But they all followed one another’s activities in one place: a buzzy, online water cooler called FriendFeed that lets people funnel all their online activities into a single information broadcast, and then blast that broadcast to anyone who wants to listen in.

“It’s a great catch-all way for me to have all my stuff in one place, and it lets me see a more comprehensive view of the ecosystem of my friends,” said Ms. Brooks, 39, a business development director at an online video start-up company in San Francisco.

Companies like FriendFeed — and there seem to be a growing number of them these days — are trying to solve a problem that the Internet itself created. The proliferating number of blogs, user-generated content services and online news sources has created a dense information jungle that no human could machete his or her way through in a lifetime, let alone in an afternoon of surreptitious procrastination at work.

Search engines like Google, so effective for general information hunting, do a poor job of cutting through these thickets of user-generated material. For the Internet-addicted, the problem is further intensified by “lifecasting” services like Twitter and the Google-owned Jaiku, which let people use their cellphones to fire off Haiku-length text notices, both profound and mundane.

“The question from our standpoint is, how you find signal in the noise?” said Peter Fenton, a partner at Benchmark Capital, which recently invested in FriendFeed. “If you assume the volume of information continues to grow exponentially, it is going to keep getting harder and harder to figure out where you want to spend 30 minutes to two hours online.”

That’s where the sites like FriendFeed, Iminta, Plaxo, Readr, Mugshot and others try to harness the wisdom of friends. They let their users choose whose feeds they want to follow — the relationship does not have to be reciprocal — and allow them to restrict their own feeds only to people with whom they feel comfortable.

Following the feeds of people you like and admire, these companies say, allows the serendipitous discovery of needles in the information haystack. “Friends are likely to have some similar interests and tastes. Just the fact that your friends find it interesting should make it more interesting to you,” said Paul Buchheit, one of FriendFeed’s four founders, all of them former Google engineers.

Last week, for example, Mr. Buchheit’s followers on FriendFeed were treated to what he himself had discovered and found valuable online: links to interviews with the investor Peter Thiel in Reason magazine and the Google co-founder Larry Page in Fortune, an article about Justice Antonin Scalia’s views on torture on a political Web site, and a YouTube video of nine kittens moving their heads in rhythm to a song, among other Internet ephemera.

One benefit of the feed sites is that they make conversation around online media both less voluminous and more meaningful. For example, YouTube users left an impenetrable 728 comments, many of them trivial or nonsensical, on the dancing-kitten video. Mr. Buchheit’s friends left two comments about the kittens — perhaps the right amount for a video that speaks for itself. They left 14 thoughtful comments about the Justice Scalia article.

Facebook, the popular social network, was both the early inspiration for these services and has since become one of them. For the last year and a half, Facebook has given each of its users a news feed that offers updates of friends’ activities on Facebook itself.

Last month, bowing to the appeal of feed services, Facebook began to let users share their activities on other sites, like the photo services Flickr and Picasa, and the review site Yelp. The company says it plans to continue to link more Web sites to the social network.

The feed sites work better when people use them circumspectly, following only a few like-minded Internet friends and ignoring the Me Media gluttons who gum up the works with a frivolous blog posting or Twitter text every few minutes.

MS. BROOKS, the FriendFeed user, says she tries to follow people who strike just the right balance between the quality and quantity of their Web musings.

“I usually stop following people not because they are twittering and uploading pictures all the time,” she said, “but because I find what they are saying has no value to me.”

The vital challenge for FriendFeed and its ilk is a familiar one to Silicon Valley start-ups: how to evolve from a service fora relatively small user base of techno-enthusiasts and into a tool valuable for commoners who think that “twittering” is something best left to birds.

Aaron Newton, founder of Iminta, based in San Francisco, says that active Internet users are already authors of personal newsletters every day in the blog postings they write, videos they watch and articles they read. The key, he said, is making that newsletter easy for people to share and for others to find and follow.

"If you buy into the notion that we all make interesting discoveries on the Web as we go about our day, then the market for a product like ours is really as wide as everyone who uses the Internet,” he said.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/04/te...y/04essay.html





Will Microsoft Really Walk?
Andrew Ross Sorkin

Microsoft insists that it would acquire Yahoo only on its own terms. Now it said that it will withdraw its offer, after the Internet giant rebuffed a sweetened $33-a-share bid.

But is Microsoft really going to walk away from the biggest deal of the software giant’s 33-year history?

The company has never denied that it would take a hard line in its negotiations with its target. In fact, Microsoft’s chief executive, Steven A. Ballmer, has regularly talked tough — and may now be adopting perhaps the toughest tactic of all.

The possibility of walking away was always present. Even in February, Christopher P. Liddell, Microsoft’s chief financial officer and an architect of its Yahoo offer, has told The Times that he’s willing to play hardball. “You have to be disciplined and ruthless,” he said. “You have to be willing to walk away.”

More recently, Mr. Ballmer reiterated that dropping its bid was a possible strategy.

In recent weeks, many had expected Microsoft to escalate the fight by beginning a proxy fight. Mr. Ballmer has never shied away from brandishing that club, coupled with a tender offer.

But in a recent town hall with Microsoft employees, Mr. Ballmer seemed to suggest that a proxy fight was a relatively unpalatable option. “There’s a lot of downsides and some upsides associated with that,” he said.

Mr. Ballmer’s letter to Jerry Yang of Yahoo suggests that he didn’t have the appetite for that kind of fight. He acknowledged that the Internet company would fight hard against such a move, and might take steps like linking up with Google.

Microsoft’s chief acknowledged in the letter that his company had indeed raised its bid, by about $5 billion. Given its recent disappointing quarter, the software giant already felt pressured to boost its cash-and-stock bid to win over the recalcitrant Yahoo. The latest offer apparently wasn’t enough to placate Yahoo’s board, which reportedly wanted $37 a share.

Perhaps Mr. Ballmer really feels that he could not in good conscience raise Microsoft’s offer significantly without doing harm to his company. But even back when Microsoft first publicly unveiled its bid, analysts said that the company could afford to pay as much as $35 a share, given its ample horde of cash.

And as DealBook has written before, Mr. Ballmer is under a lot of pressure to clinch a deal. Failure to do so would be seen as a major management blunder, and shareholders could raise questions about his leadership.

One sure effect of Microsoft’s move is that, absent a deal agreement by Monday morning, Yahoo’s stock will take a steep plunge. (Silicon Alley Insider’s Henry Blodget estimated that its shares may fall to the low $20s, potentially a 30 percent drop.) That threat has always hung over Yahoo’s board, who would then have to face a legion of angry shareholders — and potentially lawsuits as well.

Of course, Microsoft could later try to reach a negotiated, lower deal at a later point. And that may have been the objective all along.
http://dealbook.blogs.nytimes.com/20...t-really-walk/





Google's Unhealthy Dominance Will End

As technology changes, so do the players; who's got the terabytes to smash the Googolopoly?
David Rowan

A funky new boardgame is doing the geek rounds - you can easily find it by Googling. It is called Googolopoly, and, just as with traditional Monopoly, you move round the board in single-minded pursuit of global domination. Land on the Yahoo! or Microsoft squares, for instance, and for just 350 Google shares, each is yours to entrap any subsequent visitors; but find yourself on “Income Tax”, and you'll drop 10 per cent of your entire fortune on government lobbyists to defend your avaricious predations. The winner, of course, is the first player “to organise all the world's information” - everything from personal health records to flirtatious phone messages, all stored for ever in a vast unregulated data bank.

They feel pretty damn lucky over in Google's Mountainview headquarters this week, after the $47.5 billion Microsoft-Yahoo! challenge to its omnipotence collapsed into a welter of acrimonious 404-Error messages. Even as analysts were debating whether the emerging giant should be called “Myhoosoft” or “Microhoo”, Google was consolidating its ownership of the online economy, stretching its share of searches to 60 per cent in recent weeks, and boosting its revenue in this year's first quarter by another 42 per cent to $5.2 billion. Add in its plans for phone handsets, social networking tools and its own version of Wikipedia - not to mention the other web giants, such as Doubleclick, that it keeps buying - and you can understand why Google feared the renewed challenge that a well-resourced, large-scale competitor would pose to its ability, in effect, to control the information age.

In the information marketplace, it is in none of our interests for one overweening quasi-monopoly to wield its power to set global advertising rates, determine which information may be censored to placate an oppressive regime, or build detailed profiles of its users based on their e-mail history, their medical concerns and the real-world locations logged by their Googlephone.

And if you think that governments, or enlightened self-interest, will force an ever more dominant Google to place the public interest before its own private whims, just pause awhile to reflect how reliant your own life has become on the internet in the past decade. From nowhere we are now blithely banking and gambling online, Facebooking and navigating to the pub by satellite. Now consider what further technological upheavals, as yet unknown, we will face over the next decade. As one anxious CEO told his staff at a meeting last Thursday: “The future of the way people consume information, the way people socialise and connect, is going to change a lot more in the next ten years even than in the last ten. How you find information, how you consume it, how you share it and connect with your friends... dramatic changes.”

That agitated CEO, by the way, was Steve Ballmer, of Microsoft, which to date has thrown a $10 billion investment at its internet operations without turning a profit. True, his firm's own record on monopolistic abuse of power is pretty colourful, and its cash pile of an estimated $40 billion hardly makes it a minnow.

But Mr Ballmer understands that the “network effect” that made Windows a world-beater - the “everyone else is using it, so I ought to” pressure - is at least as powerful when “everyone else” is using the same location-based services to hook up with friends, or the same advertising service to promote their business. Scale, in this industry, is what matters, and Google has scale in terabytes. Which is why Mr Ballmer confessed to an industry gathering in March: “We've got an aspiration in online. And in online, yeah, it's Google, Google, Google.”

So think of this as a moment of consolidation in an industry that is finally starting to mature. Microsoft may not have gone to the altar with Yahoo! this time but both parties are desperately flirting on the rebound with any reasonable second-chance candidate. AOL is reportedly being courted by both untrothed parties; MySpace (owned by this newspaper's ultimate owner) is fast rising in acquisition value as the sixth-most trafficked website; and let's not forget Facebook, in which Microsoft already owns a stake. There may just be a summer wedding yet - though not before Google has used its competitors' disarray further to strengthen its lead.

The other option for Microsoft and Yahoo!, dare we say it, is to develop more products that people actually want to use. There is a reason that Googlemail kicked sand in Hotmail's face, and Google Maps showed the way to Yahoo! Local: users preferred the experience. For all the inequity of its excessive dominance, Google knows what the marketplace wants, and is prepared to experiment creatively along the way.

Yahoo!, by contrast, is a business-school case history of an industry leader, once worth $134 billion, whose arrogance, mismanagement and lack of strategic vision brought it all the grief that it deserved. From its 2002 offer to buy Google for $3 billion, rejected at the time as insulting, to its latest overestimate to Microsoft of its own share value, the company is a mess, the least of whose problems now will be its share-price plunge.

The only good news to come out of Yahoo!'s last-minute jilting by Microsoft is that the marriage would only have failed dismally. Just like AOL's disastrous $103.5 billion merger with Time Warner in 2001 - possibly the most efficient demolition of shareholder value in economic history - the mismatch would quickly have exposed non-existent “synergies”, incompatible business cultures and technology platforms, and raging egos that would have turned on each other as the regulators and shareholders came calling.

The rest of us, meanwhile, can only sit by our Googlephones and monitor our Googlemail accounts for news of the next challenger to emerge. Or better still, rent yourself a garage and start tinkering with a computer. You never know where it will lead you.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/com...cle3876303.ece





Is There a Real Woman in This Multiplex?
Manohla Dargis

IRON MAN, Batman, Big Angry Green Man — to judge from the new popcorn season it seems as if Hollywood has realized that the best way to deal with its female troubles is to not have any, women, that is.

Not that it hasn’t tried to make nice with the leading ladies, in films like “The Invasion” (with Nicole Kidman) and “The Brave One” (Jodie Foster). Yet, after those Warner Brothers titles fizzled, the online chatter was that the studio’s president for production, Jeff Robinov, had vowed it would no longer make movies with female leads. A studio representative denied he made the comments. And, frankly, it is hard to believe that anyone in a position of Hollywood power would be so stupid as to actually say what many in that town think: Women can’t direct. Women can’t open movies. Women are a niche.

Nobody likes to admit the worst, even when it’s right up there on the screen, particularly women in the industry who clutch at every pitiful short straw, insisting that there are, for instance, more female executives in Hollywood than ever before. As if it’s done the rest of us any good. All you have to do is look at the movies themselves — at the decorative blondes and brunettes smiling and simpering at the edge of the frame — to see just how irrelevant we have become. That’s as true for the dumbest and smartest of comedies as for the most critically revered dramas, from “No Country for Old Men” (but especially for women) to “There Will Be Blood” (but no women). Welcome to the new, post-female American cinema.

Nowhere is our irrelevance more starkly apparent than during the summer, the ultimate boys’ club. Over the next few months the screens will reverberate with the romping-stomping of comic book titans like Iron Man and the Hulk. The sexagenarian Harrison Ford will be cracking his Indy whip (some old men get a pass, after all, especially when Steven Spielberg is on board) alongside the fast-talking sprout from “Transformers.” Hellboy will relock and load, tongue and cigar planted in cheek. Action heroes like Will Smith, Brendan Fraser, Nicolas Cage, Mark Wahlberg and Vin Diesel will run amok, as will funny guys like Adam Sandler, Eddie Murphy, Will Ferrell, Mike Myers, Steve Carell, Jack Black and Seth Rogen.

The girls of summer are few in number, and real women are close to extinct. The teenage Emma Roberts plays a Malibu brat shipped off to boarding school in “Wild Child,” and little Abigail Breslin has gone blond for “Kit Kittredge,” the first big-screen spinoff from American Girl dolls. Meryl Streep stars in the adaptation of the jukebox musical “Mamma Mia!,” and the cast from “Sex and the City” hits the big screen, though as that HBO show’s fans know, its four bosomy buddies are really gay men in drag. Angelina Jolie flaunts big guns in “Wanted” amid a so-called fraternity of assassins. Cameron Diaz stars opposite Ashton Kutcher in the comedy “What Happens in Vegas,” in a role that shrieks Brittany Murphy five years ago.

And in August, Anna Faris stars in a comedy called “The House Bunny,” in which she plays a Playboy Bunny who is ejected from the Mansion because she’s too old. In a trailer for the movie Ms. Faris’s pretty-in-pink character responds to her firing with surprise. “I’m 27!” she yelps. “But that’s like 59 in Bunny years,” a male friend explains. In Hollywood years too, he might as well have added.

I admit that I laughed at the 59 line, mostly because Ms. Faris — who could be the next Judy Holliday but without the right material will, alas, probably end up the next Brittany Murphy — tends to do the dumb-blonde thing with sizable quotation marks. But I also winced. You can’t judge a film by its trailer, so I won’t boil this bunny sight unseen. I’ll just point out that it looks like a clone of “Legally Blonde” (meaning, yet another iteration of “Pretty Woman”), one of those aspirational comedies in which women empower themselves by having their hair and nails done. In this case Ms. Faris’s character takes charge of a sorority of unkempt brainiacs with boy troubles. Cue the group makeover and pop-tune montage.

“The House Bunny” is being released by Sony Pictures, which this summer is also distributing the newest Adam Sandler comedy (“You Don’t Mess With the Zohan,” co-written by Judd Apatow), the latest Will Smith vehicle (“Hancock”) and two Apatow-factory productions (“Step Brothers” and “Pineapple Express”). The studio also has the newly opened “Made of Honor,” which is being sold with the pretty face of Patrick Dempsey and the tag line “It takes a real man to become a maid of honor.” In brief, “Made of Honor” is just a redo of the studio’s 1997 hit “My Best Friend’s Wedding,” with Mr. Dempsey playing the role originated by Julia Roberts, the character who realizes that she (now a he) is in love with her (his) engaged friend.

Such transgender gamesmanship isn’t new in Hollywood, but has reached its apotheosis in Mr. Apatow’s comedies. With his rambunctious court of jesters, this new king of comedy has brilliantly gotten around the tricky, sticky female issue by turning his slackers and dudes into, well, leading ladies. These aren’t the she-males you find in the back pages of The Village Voice, mind you. The Apatow men hit the screen anatomically intact: they’re emasculated but not castrated, as the repeated images of the flopping genitals in “Forgetting Sarah Marshall” remind you. These guys talk plenty dirty, but they’re also kinder, gentler, softer and way weepier than most of their screen brethren. They ache just like women and break like little girls, but they always, always score.

In “Forgetting Sarah Marshall” the lucky guy is Peter (the screenwriter Jason Segel), whose stunning conquest, Rachel (Mila Kunis), is so out of his league as to be in another universe. No matter. Peter snags this prize specifically because — from his full-frontal nudity to his penchant for hugs and voluble crying jags, for which he’s literally mistaken for a woman — he’s basically another chick, or what Arnold Schwarzenegger once called a girlie man. (The softly plumped Mr. Segel even looks as if he could fit into an A cup.) In one scene Peter goes swimming with Rachel only to end up clinging to the side of a cliff. Rachel, who has already taken the plunge, laughingly yells up at him, “I can see your vagina!”

Better a virtual vagina, I suppose, than none at all. Last year only 3 of the 20 highest-grossing releases in America were female-driven, and involve a princess (“Enchanted”) or pregnancy (“Knocked Up” and “Juno”). Actresses had starring roles in about a quarter of the next 80 highest-grossing titles, mostly in dopey romantic comedies and dopier thrillers. A number of these were among the worst-reviewed movies of the year, including “Premonition” (Sandra Bullock) and “The Reaping” (Hilary Swank), the last of which was released by — ta-da! — Warner Brothers. The days of “Million Dollar Baby,” for which Ms. Swank won an Oscar, and “Speed,” which rocketed Ms. Bullock to stardom in the summer of 1994, feel long gone.

There may be more women working in the industry now — Amy Pascal is a co-chairman of Sony Pictures Entertainment — but you wouldn’t know it from what’s on the screen. The reasons are complex and certainly beyond the scope of a seasonal rant like this one. Some point to the lack of female directors, whose numbers in both the mainstream and independent realms hover at around 6 percent. Others blame the female audience, though the success of “Baby Mama” indicates — just as the summer hit “The Devil Wears Prada” suggested two years ago — that if given something decent that speaks to their lives and lets them leave the theater without feeling slimed, women will turn out. The Apatow she-male isn’t bad, but give me the real deal any day.

Among the pleasures of the movies are the new worlds they open up, but there are pleasures in the familiar too, like seeing other women bigger, badder and more beautiful than life. And whether it’s Sigourney Weaver in “Alien,” Rosario Dawson in “Death Proof” or Meryl Streep in whatever, I am there. The black filmmaker Tyler Perry has built his success partly on the truth that when audiences look up at the screen what they want to see are faces much like their own. In 2008, when a white woman and a black man are running for president and attracting unprecedented numbers of voters partly because they are giving a face to the wildly under-represented, you might think that Hollywood would get a clue.

Nah.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/04/mo...l/04dargi.html





‘Iron Man’ Impressive in Opening Weekend
Brooks Barnes

“Iron Man” blasted into the box office stratosphere over the weekend, selling an estimated $100.8 million in tickets at North American theaters and almost certainly establishing a new movie franchise for Marvel Entertainment.

“The word of mouth through the weekend was tremendous,” said David Maisel, chairman of Marvel Studios, the New York entertainment company’s newly created film production unit. “I can’t think of a better start.”

Including international sales “Iron Man” grossed an estimated $201 million, according to Paramount Pictures, which distributed the $135 million film. The totals were slightly short of first-weekend sales for “Spider-Man,” the 2002 blockbuster that holds the record for the top nonsequel superhero movie opening.

Hollywood urgently needed some good news. A winter box office malaise has stretched into spring, dragging ticket sales for the year down 3 percent through Sunday compared with the same period in 2007. The industry is also girding for a potential strike by the Screen Actors Guild, which is locked in plodding negotiations with studios over matters like payments for the distribution of movies on the World Wide Web.

“Iron Man,” directed by Jon Favreau, shouldered the extra weight of kicking off Hollywood’s crucial summer season. Stuffed with big-budget movies, the four-month period between the first weekend in May and Labor Day typically accounts for more than 40 percent of annual ticket sales, according to Media by Numbers, a box office tracking firm.

Studios and theater owners were looking to “Iron Man” for clues about whether declining consumer confidence would keep moviegoers at home. Although movies are relatively inexpensive entertainment — and have even benefited from economic slowdowns in the past — prices for tickets and concessions have risen steadily over the years, prompting worries.

“What I think this says about the marketplace is that if we make really entertaining movies, people will show up for them,” said Rob Moore, president for marketing at Paramount. Hed said “Iron Man” delivered the best opening weekend of any live-action film in Paramount’s history.

Still, establishing box office momentum could be difficult for the studios. Unlike last summer, when Hollywood offered up mostly sequels, this year the big bets are on originals. Total domestic ticket sales for the weekend stood at $165 million, a 13 percent decline from the same weekend last year, when “Spider-Man 3” opened.

Next up is “Speed Racer,” a Warner Brothers movie based on the 1960s-era cartoon. The picture, which opens Friday, has posed substantial marketing challenges because of, among other things, its over-the-top visual style.

There are other questions waiting to be answered as the studios roll out their summer slates. Can the up-and-coming star Shia LaBeouf turn out young women for the latest “Indiana Jones” installment? Does Angelina Jolie, starring in “Wanted” as an assassin, still have the drawing power to open a big movie? Is the Pixar brand powerful enough to sell “Wall-E,” a robot romance that has almost no dialogue?

A variety of factors propelled “Iron Man” to strong results, box office analysts said. Among them: pent-up demand in the marketplace for an event movie and overwhelmingly positive reviews from film critics. A megawatt marketing campaign from Paramount helped create interest in a film about one of the comic book world’s lesser-known characters.

Casting was also crucial. “Iron Man” is the story of Tony Stark, a beyond-brilliant engineer who builds a metal suit that allows him to fly and fight bad guys. Marvel’s decision to cast the seasoned actor Robert Downey Jr. in the title role helped the movie woo adults who might skip a superhero movie, at least on a frenzied opening weekend.

Marvel and Paramount are already discussing a sequel, although the upstart Marvel studio will have a much more expensive project on its hands should that come about. Mr. Favreau, for instance, has not yet signed on for a second installment.

The weekend’s only other movie of significance, Sony’s “Made of Honor,” ran a distant No. 2 but was not trampled as many had predicted. That $40 million comedy, staring Patrick Dempsey as a guy in love with an engaged woman, sold an estimated $15.5 million in tickets at North American theaters.

Two holdover comedies from Universal also performed remarkably well against the competition. “Baby Mama,” starring Tina Fey and Amy Poehler, earned $10.3 million (for a total of $33.2 million), while “Forgetting Sarah Marshall,” the latest from the producer Judd Apatow, earned $6.1 million ($44.8 million overall).

Rounding out the weekend’s Top 5 was “Harold & Kumar Escape From Guantanamo Bay” (Warner Brothers), with $6 million ($25.3 million overall).
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/05/movies/05iron.html?hp





Air Marshals' Names Tagged on 'No-Fly' List
Audrey Hudson

Some federal air marshals have been denied entry to flights they are assigned to protect when their names matched those on the terrorist no-fly list, and the agency says it's now taking steps to make sure their agents are allowed to board in the future.

The problem with federal air marshals (FAM) names matching those of suspected terrorists on the no-fly list has persisted for years, say air marshals familiar with the situation.

One air marshal said it has been “a major problem, where guys are denied boarding by the airline.”

“In some cases, planes have departed without any coverage because the airline employees were adamant they would not fly,” the air marshal said. “I've seen guys actually being denied boarding.”

A second air marshal says one agent “has been getting harassed for six years because his exact name is on the no-fly list.”

Earlier this month the agency issued a new security directive (SD) “to address those situations where air carriers deny FAMs boarding based on 'no-fly list' names matches.”

The memo was issued April 23 from the assistant director of the office of flight operations.

Gregory Alter, spokesman for the Federal Air Marshal Service, said the new directive “mitigates any misidentification concerns by empowering airlines to quickly clear an air marshal’s status after positively identifying their law enforcement status.”

“In rare instances air marshals, like all travelers, are occasionally misidentified as being on a watch because of name or personal identifier similarities to individuals actually on the lists,” Mr. Alter said.

The air marshal service does not release how many agents are employed, and declined to specify the number of agents whose names are similar to those of wanted or suspected terrorists.

The new procedures are classified as “sensitive security information” and address both domestic and international check-in procedures.

“FAMs may encounter situations where this SD has not yet reached every air carrier customer service representative (CSR),” the memo said.

“If a FAM is denied boarding based on 'no fly list' issues, FAMS should request to speak to an air carrier supervisory CSR. If the air carrier continues to deny the FAM a boarding pass, FAMS should contact (their supervisor) as soon as possible for assistance,” the memo said.
http://www.washingtontimes.com/apps/...782525487/1001





The Camera That Wears a Badge
Joe Sharkey

THESE days, the police are much less likely to be hiding behind a billboard waiting to nab someone going over the speed limit. Technology has gone far beyond that.

In recent years, local governments have eagerly adopted photo-enforcement technology — surveillance cameras that take a picture of an offending vehicle and its license plate — to nab those who exceed the speed limit or cross an intersection when the light is red.

As with most technological advances, there have been some unanticipated consequences.

Increasingly, travelers are receiving unpleasant surprises in the mail upon returning home: tickets for reported violations that they may not remember, perhaps from weeks or months earlier.

A spokeswoman for Avis said that citations directly attributed to enforcement cameras increased 25 percent in the last year among its customers. Both Avis and Hertz, the two major car-rental companies, say that they often pay the fine and then bill the customer, adding a processing charge.

Casey W. Raskob III, a lawyer in New York who specializes in traffic violations, said that some states and municipalities “want to get enforcement cameras in so badly to raise revenue” that they have reclassified red-light and speeding summonses issued through camera enforcement as violations like parking tickets, and don’t assign points to a driver’s record as a result.

Although drivers’ rights advocates have argued that some states and municipalities have gone too far with photo enforcement, the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety is a strong advocate. It argues that standard law enforcement doesn’t have the resources to keep pace with violations.

“Between 1995 and 2005, the estimated number of vehicle miles traveled in the United States increased by 23 percent, but the number of municipal law-enforcement officers grew by 12 percent,” Stephen L. Oesch, senior vice president at the organization, told Maryland legislators in February.

“Because speeding is common and viewed as acceptable behavior by many drivers, it is a major factor in motor vehicle crashes,” the institute said in a recent report evaluating the efficacy of speed cameras. Red-light cameras are now in use in 300 jurisdictions and speed cameras in more than 30 jurisdictions in 26 states, the group says.

Critics point to federal statistics showing that 42,642 people died in motor vehicle crashes in 2006, or 4 percent fewer than in 1975, even though roads have become more crowded. What’s needed, the critics say, is better road engineering and law enforcement that concentrates on manifestly unsafe driving.

Drivers, meanwhile, are fighting back with their own technology, as they have since the automobile radar detector became widely popular in the early 1970s.

With tax revenues falling, incentives are growing for municipalities to use photo enforcement to raise cash, said Shannon Atkinson, president of www.Njection.com. With an enforcement camera, he said, “you can pick off 20 people an hour, easily.”

Mr. Atkinson, a network engineer, started his business as a Web site for car and driving enthusiasts, but added a popular feature that merges Google Maps technology with on-site information from motorists that pinpoints real-time speed traps — whether operated by police officers or by camera — at thousands of locations in the United States and abroad.

The feature has drawn many new users, including “drivers whose livelihoods depend on being on the road all the time — your truck drivers, your road warriors who go from city to city,” he said.

NJECTION recently began supplying its speed-trap technology to Garmin, the G.P.S. navigational systems company, and is planning to add others like TomTom, Mr. Atkinson said. Drivers can set their devices to map speed traps on any route, he added.

The identities of tipsters reporting the location of a speed trap are protected, he said.

“We actually hear from police officers about where they hang out on such and such days and times — because what they’re mostly interested in is getting people to drive safely,” he said.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/04/business/04bug.html





Summit County Judge Orders Taser References Deleted from Medical Examiner's Rulings
Karen Farkas

Akron- Summit County Medical Examiner Lisa Kohler must delete any reference that Tasers contributed to the deaths of three men, a Summit County Common Pleas judge ordered Friday.

The deaths of Dennis Hyde and Richard Holcomb, who were on drugs and in an agitated state when police shot them with Tasers, should be ruled accidental, visiting Judge Ted Schneiderman wrote in his ruling. Any reference to homicide or "electrical pulse stimulation" should be deleted from death certificates and autopsy reports, he said.

The order to change the ruling in the death of the third man, Mark McCullaugh, could be more far-reaching.

McCullaugh, who had a history of psychiatric illness, died in Summit County Jail on Aug. 20, 2006, during a struggle with deputies who used Tasers and pepper spray. Five sheriff's deputies were indicted in his death.

Schneiderman ordered Kohler to rule McCullaugh's death undetermined and delete any references to homicide and the death possibly being caused by asphyxia, beatings or other factors.

That pleased Sheriff Drew Alexander. The deputies, three charged with reckless homicide and two with felonious assault, are on unpaid leave.

"This supports my initial beliefs that my employees acted appropriately," Alexander said in a statement.

Schneiderman's order regarding McCullaugh goes far beyond the focus of the case, said John Manley, of the prosecutor's office, who represented Kohler.

"The purpose of the hearing represented a singular and very narrow issue on whether or not the successful deployment of the Taser Model X26 could contribute in any way to the cause of death," Manley said. He may appeal.

Kohler's rulings were controversial because few coroners have said the Taser was a factor in deaths. Other coroners typically cite other contributing factors, such as drug use, heart disease and cardiac arrhythmia due to illegal drug use.

Hyde, 30, died Jan. 5, 2005, during a struggle with Akron police. Three officers used Tasers. Hyde, of Hartville, had broken into a house through a window. He was on methamphetamine and suffered blood loss from cuts from the window.

Holcomb, 18, of Akron, died May 28, 2005, after he attacked a Springfield Township officer in a field. She shot him four times with her Taser. Kohler ruled Holcomb was also in a psychosis from using methamphetamine and Ecstasy.

Taser International maintains the weapon is not a factor if police use it and the suspect later dies. Numerous experts testified on its behalf at the four-day hearing in April.

"Taser International believed from the beginning that these determinations of cause of death must be supported by facts, medical research and scientific evidence," spokesman Steve Tuttle said in a prepared statement Friday.

As of mid-April, 68 wrongful-death or injury lawsuits have been dismissed or judgments entered in favor of Taser, according to the company. The company has not lost any product-liability lawsuits.

"It was an interesting case and an uphill battle," said Manley. "Taser is quite a force to be reckoned with and does everything to protect their golden egg, which is the Model X26."
http://www.cleveland.com/news/plaind...201.xml&coll=2

Read the full text of the decision here – Jack.





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http://dl.nin.com/theslip/signup





An Alternative Approach to Marketing Rock Bands
Robert Levine

On Dec. 11, the Web site for the band Panic at the Disco turned completely white, with no explanation. Before long, curious fans noticed that the source code for the page contained a clue that hinted at the release of the band’s new album, “Pretty. Odd.”

Over the next few weeks, other puzzles appeared that led to samples of songs, a blog entry from the band, and finally — through clues scattered around various Web sites — the cover of the album and the names of the songs on it.

“We timed everything from late December through January to get people talking,” said John Janick, who owns the band’s label, Fueled by Ramen.

In an era of instant downloads, the label made the band’s fans work for everything they could. And after iTunes allowed customers to order the album in late January, Mr. Janick said, it sold 8,000 copies before it arrived in stores.

The album has sold 235,280 copies since its release in late March, according to Nielsen SoundScan; the total is respectable for an alternative rock group that appeals to fans who tend to find music online rather than buy it.

As CD sales continue to decline, Mr. Janick’s instinct for grass-roots promotion has made Fueled by Ramen one of the few labels that consistently scores hits with alternative rock.

Panic at the Disco’s first album has sold 1.7 million copies; the most recent albums by two of the label’s other bands, Paramore and Gym Class Heroes, have gone gold, and Fueled by Ramen bands like Cute Is What We Aim For are building an audience.

The label has a deal with Atlantic Records, a Warner Music Group brand, that lets Atlantic promote, market and distribute Fueled by Ramen bands that are becoming popular. Even by itself, Fueled by Ramen is usually one of the most popular partner channels on YouTube, behind conglomerates like Universal Music and CBS.

The label and its partners “know how to do things on the cheap,” said Bob McLynn, a partner at Crush Management, which represents Panic at the Disco, Fall Out Boy, Gym Class Heroes and several other Fueled by Ramen bands. “The music business doesn’t know how to do that.”

Fueled by Ramen has its acts promote one another as well as the company itself, as indie labels have done since the 1960s heyday of Motown and Stax. But Mr. Janick has brought such cross-promotion into the Internet era, where fans of one band are just a click away from information on another on the label’s Web site. His bands often tour together, and many were discovered by Pete Wentz, of Fall Out Boy, and benefit from his implicit endorsement.

“Fall Out Boy endorsed Panic at the Disco and they got all this attention, and now you have Panic endorsing a couple of other bands,” said Bob Becker, the president of Fearless Records, another independent label with links to the Warner Music Group. “As long as you can keep that going, it works.”

Musically, the bands on Fueled by Ramen do not have much in common. But they share a certain aesthetic, with catchy tunes and lyrics about adolescent angst that are suitable for scrawling in a high school yearbook.

“There’s a built-in audience of people who are genuine fans of the music on the label,” said Alex Greenwald of the Fueled by Ramen band Phantom Planet, who says he thinks that will help his group win a larger following.

Mr. Janick, 29, has been promoting music to high school students since he was one himself, bringing to school copies of albums from independent punk labels like Lookout and Epitaph to sell to his friends in Port Charlotte, Fla. Along with Less Than Jake’s drummer, Vinnie Fiorello, whom he knew from attending local concerts, he started Fueled by Ramen. (Mr. Fiorello later sold his half of the label.)

At the time, he was a freshman at the University of Florida in Gainesville, where he majored in finance and business management and devoured biographies of the mogul David Geffen and the Elektra Records founder Jac Holzman. “I didn’t have much of a college life,” he said.

The label took off in 2003 — after Mr. Janick had moved to Tampa to earn an M.B.A. at the University of South Florida — when it signed Fall Out Boy. Part of the deal was that if the band proved popular, it would move to the major label Island Records, which it did.

Just as important, Mr. Wentz set the pattern for Fueled by Ramen’s marketing strategy: blog often, tour hard and keep expenses down. When Mr. Janick signs bands, he tells them how hard they will work, not how rich they will become.

“When I signed to Fueled by Ramen, Janick said, ‘I think you’re going to do well, but you have to know that our bands work hard and that’s part of the reason they’re successful,’ ” said Alex DeLeon, the lead singer of the Cab. “He said, ‘We want kids to get to know you as a band, so post blogs and studio updates.’ ”

The Cab took this advice to heart: After the bandmates were in an accident in their tour van at the end of January, they posted video of their recovery. By the end of their winter tour, they noticed that some fans knew their songs — a couple of months before their album came out. “A lot of our bands are very open with their fans,” said Adam Samiljan, Fueled by Ramen’s senior director of new media.

Mr. Janick promotes the label the same way. “If I liked a band, I always wanted to know everything about where it came from,” he said.

Mr. Samiljan spends so much time online answering instant messages from fans of the label that he sometimes is recognized at concerts. “I have 17 windows open right now,” he said as he spoke about the label’s Web site. Encouraging bands to promote one another also keeps expenses down, which helps both the groups and the label make money.

Ryan Ross of Panic at the Disco recalled talking over the $500 it would cost to add cello and horns to the band’s debut album, which was made for $18,000. And Mr. Wentz says that Mr. Janick does not like the expense of FedEx, so much so that he sometimes sends out royalty checks by mail. “Instead of spending money on stupid stuff like that,” Mr. Janick said, “I’d rather spend money breaking a record.”

That approach has earned Mr. Janick admirers at the major labels, who have been cutting their budgets for the last few years. “John thrived on not having any money,” said Lyor Cohen, the chief executive of Warner Music Group, who brought Fueled by Ramen to Atlantic. “He’s a true independent-spirited entrepreneur.”

Fueled by Ramen’s strategy does not always work. The last album from the Academy Is sold half of what its previous release did, and the new album from Cobra Starship, another of the label’s bands, may not sell 100,000.

For every success that seems to come out of nowhere, like Gym Class Heroes, the label has a struggling group that has yet to find an audience. And Fueled by Ramen’s exclusive deal with Pete Wentz’s Decaydance Records ended at the end of December, which means that Mr. Janick has lost his best talent scout. But Fueled by Ramen will keep the bands that Mr. Wentz had already signed, and this year it has follow-up albums due from Cute Is What We Aim For, Gym Class Heroes and the Academy Is.

Mr. Janick is also thinking about the future of the music business and how Fueled by Ramen might fit into it. The label already has a merchandise company that sells band T-shirts at stores like Hot Topic, as well as on its Web site.

“The main thing for me is making sure kids can go to one place and get everything from the artist,” Mr. Janick said. “It’s a branding thing.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/05/bu...a/05music.html

[JackSpratts]

Bands are Getting Into Bed with Consumer Brands

As record labels lose their way, bands are getting into bed with consumer brands. Is this the way of the future?
Cliff Jones

Gabriel Hubert, horn player with Damon Albarn’s favourite street-jazz collective, the Hypnotic Brass Ensemble, speaks with the unashamed zeal of a convert: “Every musician needs to beat a path to independence. You’ve got to own the music you make.” An advocate of not signing your life away to a record label, he is, nevertheless, gearing up for the release of a compilation that features his band’s frenetic breed of jazz, fresh from the streets of south-side Chicago, alongside tracks by Lou Reed and Massive Attack. The lineup has all the cachet of a “major label”, but this release has the stamp of an independent boutique imprint. It has been set up by the Dutch denim brand G-Star, for release later this summer.

“Record deals don’t work for musicians like us,” Hubert says. “Being with a brand, we get to tour the world, make connections and grow our own business - without selling the rights to our music for a bowl of chicken soup and a promise.”

Hypnotic Brass are not alone in seeking the patronage of a brand. As the music business undergoes its remake/remodel, and business pages debate which one of DRM-free, subscription, pay-per-listen, embedded advertising and the 360 deal will save the balance sheets of the labels, brands are marching unrepentantly into what was once the majors’ heartland.

From boutique favourites such as Agent Provocateur and Joe Bloggs to icons of the global hyper-mall such as Diesel, Yahoo!, Audi and Coca-Cola, brands have awoken to music’s potential as a powerful communication tool, and a content gold rush is on. Under the “lifestyle” umbrella, household names are seeking out, signing and promoting music. And far from heralding a sellout, taking the corporate shilling may be the smartest career move a struggling artist can make. With unsigned MySpace hopefuls such as the singer-songwriter Tom Glynn partnering Caffè Nero for instore music and branded CDs, and big-name acts such as Madonna, Annie Lennox and Paul McCartney serving divorce proceedings on their labels as they “consider their commercial options”, brands are invading the ground left by the labels’ retreat.

“There’s no doubt we are at a crossroads,” says Steve Levine, producer of Culture Club and a spokesman for artists’ issues with the British Academy of Composers & Songwriters. Having consulted on brand-related music projects, he has seen a marked change in musicians’ attitudes: “It’s as if we’ve suddenly become aware of the truth behind the smoke and mirrors of the record deal. Most artists now understand how the business works and who their fans are. That is always going to be valuable to a brand. It’s certainly a freer, more equal relationship. Record companies have to own everything, because their whole model is based on selling records - ‘Is it a hit, will it make us our money back?’ If brands do nothing other than free musicians from the tyranny of needing a radio-friendly smash to have a career, it has to be a positive.”

It isn’t just financial necessity that is driving artists into the arms of some of our favourite household names. Joe Public’s relationship with brands has also shifted: we love them, and we don’t much care that they are colonising our lives. Marketing gurus have a term for it. According to them, we are all “cheerfully commercial” now. Yet, despite this, the dwindling budgets and the brutal roster-cleansing, the industry still appeared shocked when the dance duo Groove Armada gave into the siren call of Bacardi last month.

Their decision to leave Sony BMG and sign with the drinks giant sent a clear message to labels and brands alike that Bacardi saw a big future in taking its partnership with music beyond mere sponsorship. The one-year deal has the drinks giant releasing the band’s music through its own label and download platforms, as well as paying for a series of “parties” that GA will curate and headline.

“It feels very natural,” says Tom Findlay, one half of the dance duo. “Bacardi have a strong heritage in dance and putting on parties, and so do we. They’re offering a decent sum of money, we get to play in places we would not normally get to, and we keep the copyright in our recordings.”

What of the accusation that they have sold out? It seems everyone is too busy being “cheerfully commercial” to worry. “With sponsorship now such an essential part of the festival scene, it’s something I’m relatively comfortable with,” Findlay says.

The role of brand as benefactor and the structural changes in the music business reflect changes in how we perceive the value of music. The internet will eventually ensure that recorded music is largely free. Meanwhile, the emotional worth of music that makes up our personal soundtracks is as strong as ever. As the dust settles, managers, lawyers and producers will work with brands to bring new artists into the limelight.

Tim Parry, of Biglife, managers of the Verve, Klaxons and Badly Drawn Boy, sees the entry of brands into the fray as exciting, though yet to reach its full potential. “Anyone with a fairer, more interesting approach is going to get our attention,” he says. “But the ideas most brands have are pretty uninspiring. It’s still a buyer’s market out there, so there’s not a lot of incentive to think of creative ways for brands and artists to work together.”

To bridge this gap, a raft of specialist agencies has grown up, helping brands to play a more credible role in the music world.

Dan Dunbar, creative partner at the Sync Agency, in London, has sourced music for hundreds of well-known campaigns, including M&S and Vodafone. He is always mindful of finding a natural fit between brand and band: “Music is a powerful way of telling people what you’re about. Things are developing fast, and brands are really starting to think about how they sound and how they want to sound. Forward-looking brands must think about an approach that works in the long term – the right kind of music literally gives a brand a voice.”

Shubhankar Ray, who is G-Star’s man with the brand plan, sums up the current state of the union between brand and band.

“Brands can still be heavy-handed,” he says. “They wade in, buy up music and stick logos everywhere. It has to be more subtle if it’s going to work, because we’re all more sophisticated now.

“What they should do is take a step back and think about what they want to say and how music will help them say it.” Saying it with music, however, certainly seems to be the way of the future.
http://entertainment.timesonline.co....cle3850368.ece





Steve Jobs Stakes Out the TV Den
David Carr

I don’t own my iPod. It owns me.

A week ago, the family was stuck on I-95 between Washington and New York for seven hours. The Meatgrinder, as it is affectionately known to us, had a little case of congestion and after five hours of quality time, we were reduced to silently hating the intermittent FM signal and the brake lights that framed our existence.

But after we hooked an Apple iPod to a doohickey that works with the radio, the car suddenly filled with an hour’s worth of storytelling from a podcast of “This American Life,” followed by some quality time with Taylor Swift, an improbably gifted teenage country star. The ability to program our temporary purgatory lifted the pall and before we knew it, we were home.

But once we went inside, we hit the halt button on Apple. There was the second season of “Friday Night Lights” on Netflix, “John Adams” from HBO on the digital video recorder and back copies of “Weeds” from Showtime, there for the plucking from the on-demand service.

While a lot of us carry a little bit of Steve Jobs around in our pocket, Apple is now after the remaining bit of life-share that it doesn’t already own, the home front.

On Thursday, the company announced deals with 20th Century Fox, Walt Disney Studios, Warner Brothers, Paramount Pictures, Universal Studios Home Entertainment and Sony Pictures Entertainment, among others, to sell movies for download on iTunes on the same day they are released on DVD.

The “day and date” downloaded movies (as they are called in industry jargon) will play only on Apple gadgets, but that characteristic may finally give the company the toehold in the American den that it has been looking for via Apple TV.

The movie business, because it makes its living on big fat video files that are harder to share than audio files, was able to watch and learn as the music industry shrank under the weight of pirated downloads and then reluctantly embraced a 99-cent solution from Mr. Jobs. And now every song, now and forever, is worth 99 cents, a price that attains for both the red-hot duet by Madonna and Justin Timberlake “Four Minutes,” and the forgotten B-sides he made when he was in a boy band.

The music companies still owned the songs, but Apple owned everything else — pricing, format, distribution and the lucrative revenue stream of manufactured devices.

When it comes to video, Apple has competition. Microsoft, Sony and Hewlett-Packard are vying to offer Web-enabled TV, while Amazon, Blockbuster, CinemaNow and Netflix sell movies digitally. So unlike the music companies, the movie studios seemed to be holding most of the cards.

They still might have blown it.

On the surface, it looks like a great deal for the studios. Apple has agreed to sell new releases for $14.99 and rent them for $3.99 while older, “library” movies go for $9.99 and cost $2.99 to rent. It’s a reasonable price to pay the studios for electronic sell-through, especially when you consider Apple is paying more for the releases than it is charging consumers ($16, according to The Wall Street Journal). That follows Wal-Mart’s use of entertainment as a loss leader to get shoppers in the door.

Given that online movies sales are a tiny business — under $100 million — and that Apple has sold only seven million movies compared with four billion songs, it would seem like a blip. But Mr. Jobs is in the business of changing every game he plays. In spite of the fact that Apple TV — which feeds video from the Web into your television — initially tanked, this latest grab may help Apple take a huge bite out of the home entertainment environment.

Studios may own the copyright and content, but if Apple achieves anywhere near the penetration in movies that it has achieved in music, the studios could become vassals in a closed digital community, ginning up content that is controlled, priced and distributed by someone else.

The movie industry has always wanted to maintain custody of the user experience — in the theater, on home video and on television, which is why you once had to wait for Easter every year to watch “Ben Hur” on the Magnavox. But content’s claim on the crown is being challenged by the user interface that controls the experience. And nobody makes that experience easier than Apple, which came out with a 2.0 version of Apple TV in February that is a beaut, with an intuitive, practical interface and a $229 price that may have consumers taking a second look.

Recently, I downloaded “Dan in Real Life” for $14.99 on iTunes. It took 42 minutes and took up one gigabyte of precious storage space. My new movie will play on my computer and iPod, but not my television without a lot of jerry-rigging. If I had Apple TV, it would have taken up space there, begun playing almost instantaneously and been viewable on the gorgeous widescreen television in my den. (It’s actually a generic 19-inch set I bought at Costco, but you get the idea.)

That makes another Apple device sound pretty handy. But if I buy my movies from iTunes, I will be handing over custody of my film library to Mr. Jobs. (I love my iPod and all 3,000 songs I have on it, but if I had it to do over again, and now I do, I wouldn’t have entered a lifetime partnership with Apple.)

The studios may end up with a similar feeling, having helped Apple build another hardware franchise on the backs of their content. Executives from four studios I talked to said Apple’s purchase on American consumers means the folks from Cupertino will be a player no matter what and pointed out that just sitting still didn’t work out so well for the music industry, with consumers eventually just stealing what they could not buy.

Kevin Tsujihara, president of the Warner Home Entertainment Group, cautioned that the Apple deal is just one more game piece, not a game changer. Time Warner has the largest library and huge influence with it. He suggested that the deal with Apple is far less important than Time Warner’s own day-and-date video-on-demand service, announced by Jeffrey L. Bewkes, the chief executive, Wednesday.

“Apple is just one piece of the puzzle as it relates to digital distribution,” Mr. Tsujihara said. “They sell hardware and we sell software, and we had to come up with a pricing model that works for both parties and allows the consumer to legitimately access our content. The ultimate solution is coming up with a format that allows it to be played anywhere — in your car, on your PlayStation, on your computer.”

The lack of an open standard and the need for branded hardware is critical to Apple because it provides a revenue engine. If selling video online was a no-brainer, why have Amazon, Google, AOL and Wal-Mart, American marketing royalty, struggled to find a way to bring that future forward? If Apple wins, it will be driven by hardware, and regardless of what the studios do, their blockbusters and dramas will be commoditized.

It will take some time. Many homes are still not ready to share digital files; download speeds are sporadic; and the DVD remains the format of choice.

But going forward, everything is up for grabs. And when it comes to a jump ball, best to put your money on Apple.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/05/bu...05carr.html?hp





Why Japan Didn’t Create the iPod

At the end of last year, there were a couple of articles about Japan’s failure to be a giant in the new digital age (Newsweek on Why Apple Isn’t Japanese, and there were some interesting comments in a blog response Japan is no longer a leader in Electronics). Unfortunately, the Newsweek article completely ignores the technical background which forms the basis for Japan’s current position in the digital age. In this post, I want to explore this technical background and show why business-types such as CEO’s and Newsweek readers really do need to understand the underlying technical issues of a problem.

8-bit Computers

The real start of the digital gulf between Japan and the western world started back in the late 1970s and early 1980s when the first 8-bit home computers began to be released. One of the most important factors at this time was the complexity of the Japanese language. Put simply, an 8-bit computer with only 64k of memory simply does not have the capacity to edit Japanese. As an example, the first Japanese word processor to use the modern kana-kanji text entry system was the Toshiba JW-10. The JW-10 was a dedicated word processor with no other functionality. Released in February 1979, the JW-10 weighed 220kg and had a price tag of 6,300,000 yen (around $30,000). Here in the west, we could get similar capabilities with a $300 Commodore Vic-20 connected to a cheap 8-pin dot matrix printer. (In fact, you could argue that the Vic-20 offered better functionality). Before we continue with the history, let’s look at the technical details. (Skip this section if you don’t care).

Technical Details

There are two separate technical barriers for the Japanese language. The first is displaying the characters. For anyone who hasn’t used an Apple II, Commodore-64 or other 8-bit system, here is a screen-shot showing the cutting-edge 8×8 pixel fonts of 1982. For comparison, let’s look at a few common Japanese characters (these are ranked as the 35th, 64th, and 104th most commonly used characters, respectively):

議　選　調

It should be pretty clear that the Japanese are not getting away with 8×8 pixel characters on a 320×200 pixel screen. The NEC PC-9801 was one of the leading Japanese personal computers of the time, and offered a 640×400 display with 16×20 pixel characters. For all 6802 characters defined in the 1978 Japanese Industrial Standards (JIS C 6226-1978), we get 6802×20x16 bits = 265 kBytes of font data. (Compared to a mere 2 kBytes for 256 8×8 ASCII characters).

The second problem is the text entry process - whereby the 100 or so keys on the keyboard are used to select from the 6000 or so characters. In the days of telegraph, this was done using a 94×94 cell table written on a sheet of paper with all of the characters listed on it. The “kuten” codes were the coordinates of the characters in this table. The modern kana-kanji conversion approach involves entering characters phonetically, and converting based on dictionaries. The size of the dictionaries is directly related to how easy it is to enter text. For comparison, the conversion dictionaries on Windows XP are 36 MB. An 8-bit system is pretty much limited to the size of a disk.

Japan 1983

Back to 1983, and we can see the choices available to the Japanese consumer.1) The Nintendo Entertainment System released 1983. 14400 yen (around $70). No keyboard. Japanese text is displayed as graphics stored in the game (only the font data for displayed characters need be included).

2) 8-bit computer with “katakana” Japanese characters. (Examples include the NEC PC-8001 series. The Mark II was released in 1983 was 123,000 yen (around $600)). Katakana is a Japanese phonetic alphabet only requiring 50 characters. Before the advent of computers, katakana was never used to write entire sentences. Computers that only offered katakana had no practical value to home users over the NES, except for computer enthusiasts. Although these computers are similar to the Commodore 64/Apple II in terms of technical capabilities, they are crippled in terms of functionality from the viewpoint of home consumers.

3) 16-bit computers with special hardware for displaying kanji. The NEC PC-9801 was released in 1982 and became the number one selling home computer in Japan. The first model retailed for around 300,000 yen ($1500). The ROM chips containing the kanji font data were extra (50,000 yen - $250), and only support Level 1 characters (around half of the number in the Japanese standards). Kanji input was by kuten code (i.e. you had to type in the hexadecimal number of the characters you wanted to display). The PC-9801 featured a standard resolution of 640×400, which would not be surpassed as a standard in the west until the release of VGA and Macintosh II in 1987.

4) Specialist word processing systems (i.e. the Japanese equivalent of an electronic typewriter). The JW-1 (grandchild of the JW-10 discussed in the intro) was released in 1983 for 500,000 yen (around $2,500).

So, 6 years after the Apple II first brought computers into homes in America, the Japanese still had no reason to buy a home computer unless they wanted to type by entering hexadecimal codes. Whereas computer manufacturers in the west could advertise under the premise of Why Buy Just a Video Game?, Japanese households were faced with a choice between $1500 for a world of hexadecimal nightmare compared to $70 for the world of Mario Bros.

Appliances vs General Computers

Throughout the 1980s, western countries saw explosive growth in general-purpose computing platforms, with even games manufacturer Atari switching from a console to a general-purpose computer (Atari ST). Japan, on the other hand, was deeply immersed in an appliance mentality of computers. Companies like Nintendo, Sega, and Sony dominated the games console market. And while American developers worked on desktop operating systems such as Windows and MacOS for general purpose computers, Japanese engineers were working on embedded operating systems such as TRON and T-Kernel for running embedded devices such as fax machines and car engine control systems. (As an aside, although the name TRON is not well-known among consumers, the number of devices running TRON is on par with the install-base of Windows).

The iPod

By the time the iPod was released in 2001, Japanese mobile phones were already e-mail and internet capable. Although personal computer numbers had grown, more Japanese were accessing the Internet through their mobile phone than through a computer, and Japanese manufacturers were locked into the appliance mindset. As an example, consider the Sharp J-SH51 mobile phone released in 2002 which also offered a built-in MP3 player and digital camera. Despite being one of the most advanced mobile phones in the world at the time, the J-SH51 could not be connected to a computer. So how did you get music onto your phone? Well, you took an analog audio cable and plugged it into the aux. out plug on your CD player.

In the west, the home computer was already being viewed as the central hub of the digital age. It was obvious that devices such as digital cameras and MP3 players would need connectivity with the home computer, and that people would transfer pictures from the digital camera to their computer, or would use their computer as the central storage for music files to upload to their iPod or other music player as needed. The iPod, for example, requires a home computer. Without one, there is no way to get music on or off the device.

In Japan, however, things were different. Perhaps the easiest way to understand the Japanese market at the time is to imagine that home computers did not exist. From this perspective, the direction that the Japanese electronics industry took makes perfect sense. Everything needed to be designed as stand-alone appliance. The basis for much of this was the digital memory card, particularly the SD card. Digital cameras and camera-phones stored everything on a memory stick, and offered DPOF configuration options for configuring printing options. Color printers went on sale offering SD card slots so that these photos could be printed without a computer in the middle. MP3 players took a similar turn, offering either analog cable connectivity or SD card slots for music transfers. New stereo systems also offered an additional SD card slot. The SD card was like the new cassette. Record stores even began offering machines that sold digital music directly stored on your SD card. 3G phone handsets were released in 2001, and Japanese telecoms envisioned a world where consumers would buy and download music directly onto their mobile phones. It all makes sense if nobody owns a home computer, and when the mobile phone is the dominant form of Internet connectivity.

The flip-side of all this support for stand-alone appliances that do not require a home computer is that the Japanese electronics manufacturers offered virtually no support at all for home computers. Many devices simply could not be connected to a PC. For those that could be connected, the support software was unfriendly and extremely primitive. Let’s take the SD card as an example. SD cards offered a ‘feature’ called SD Audio whereby music was stored protected by a DRM system. However, only one manufacturer ever produced USB card readers that actually supported this scheme. Even if you did manage to track down the lone card reader that supported SD Audio, you still can’t transfer music to your SD card. In fact, you now had to purchase a special version of RealPlayer (that’s right, you had to pay for free software).

Of course, this kind of situation wasn’t going to fly in the west, where everyone had a home computer. Even in the Japanese market, this wasn’t going to fly. By the year 2000, most of the technical difficulties facing computers in Japan in the 80s and 90s had been resolved, and home computers were becoming mainstream. Japanese consumers wanted PC connectivity from their appliances, and the iPod offered a well-designed, highly functional package. So Apple created the iPod, and Japanese electronics manufacturers were left to re-evaluate a new world where the home computer is the hub for digital media.

The Future

Japanese manufacturers are finally catching on and have started to offer PC connectivity. Most mobile phones now come with USB cables and software for transferring photos and music to and from a PC. While the latest music-capable phones still come with an SD card, support has been added for Apple’s MP4 format, and files can be transferred using a generic card reader. It’s difficult to say whether the misjudgment of the Japanese electronics companies was a one-off falter, or if it is the start of a trend. The Nintendo Wii is certainly a strong indicator that all is not lost, even if it is back on the Japanese strong ground of an appliance-oriented device.
http://blog.gatunka.com/2008/05/05/w...eate-the-ipod/





Zany Inventors Show off Ideas in Geneva

Among the simplest innovations is artificial nose hair. Two little nubs of coiled pipe cleaner connected by a U-shaped wire block pollen and dust when placed in the nostrils. The "hair" can be washed and reused. "Most people do not have enough nose hair," said its inventor, Gengsheng Sun.

One techie-targeted invention is an e-mail analyzer to determine whether a person met in a chat room is a man or a woman. The computer program, developed by a Malaysian university professor, analyzes e-mails according to the number of words, exclamation marks, emotions and compliments to determine if the sender is male or female. Women tend to be more expressive than men, said Dianne Cheong Lee Mei, but she refused to go into detail about how the program unveils the gender of the unseen Internet partner.

The fair draws 65,000 visitors annually, including investors looking for a brilliant idea in need of financing. According to the fair's organizers, last year's event resulted in licensing contracts worth $40 million (€25.5 million).
http://www.spiegel.de/international/...545204,00.html





Windows XP SP3 Sows Havoc, Users Complain

The problems with XP SP3 range from spontaneous reboots to outright system crashes.
Paul McDougall

Within hours of its release, Microsoft's Service Pack 3 for Windows XP began drawing hundreds of complaints from users who claim the update is wreaking havoc on their PCs.

The problems with XP SP3, according to posters on Microsoft's Windows XP message board, range from spontaneous reboots to outright system crashes.

"My external disks are having trouble starting up, which results in Windows not starting up," complained user Michael Faklis, in a post Wednesday. "After three attempts [to install XP SP3] with different configurations each time, System Restore was the only way to get me out of deep s**t," said 'Doug W'.

Another user said the service pack prevented him from starting his computer. "I downloaded and installed Windows XP Service Pack 3 Network Installation Package for IT Professionals," wrote 'Paul'. "Now I can't get the computer to boot."

Dozens of other posters reported similar problems.

It's not uncommon for major operating system updates to cause problems. Typically, the glitches are due to conflicts with software, such as drivers, system files, or applications already resident on the user's PC. Microsoft has yet to indicate whether it will issue an update to address some of the problems, though it has done so with previous updates.

Microsoft released Windows XP SP3 to broad distribution on Wednesday. It's available from Microsoft's automated Windows Update service or as a file that can be pulled from the Download Center on the company's Web site.

The service pack should offer a number of enhancements over the current version of the OS, which Microsoft is phasing out after June 30th. It includes all updates issued since Windows XP Service Pack 2 was released in 2004, and some new elements.

Among them: A feature called Network Access Protection that's borrowed from the newer Windows Vista operating system. NAP automatically validates a computer's health, ensuring that it's free of bugs and viruses before allowing it access to a network.

Windows XP SP3 also includes improved "black hole" router detection -- a feature that automatically detects routers that are silently discarding packets. In XP SP3, the feature is turned on by default, according to Microsoft.

Additionally, Windows XP SP3 steals a page from Vista's product activation model, meaning that product keys for each copy of the operating system don't need to be entered during setup. The feature should prove popular with corporate IT managers, who often need to oversee hundreds or thousands of operating system installations.

Some users may balk at a feature in XP SP3 that prevents them from downgrading their browser from Internet Explorer 7 to the older IE 6 once the service pack has been installed. XP SP3 also won't install on systems running beta versions of the yet-to-be released IE 8.

Microsoft said the restrictions are designed to prevent system instabilities.
http://www.informationweek.com/news/...leID=207600950





Collusion

Microsoft to Limit Capabilities of Cheap Laptops
Agam Shah

Microsoft is launching a program to promote the use of its Windows OS in ultra low-cost PCs, one effect of which will be to limit the hardware capabilities of this type of device, IDG News Service has learned.

Microsoft plans to offer PC makers steep discounts on Windows XP Home Edition to encourage them to use that OS instead of Linux on ultra low-cost PCs (ULPCs). To be eligible, however, the PC vendors that make ULPCs must limit screen sizes to 10.2 inches and hard drives to 80G bytes, and they cannot offer touch-screen PCs.

The program is outlined in confidential documents that Microsoft sent to PC makers last month, and which were obtained by IDG News Service. The goal apparently is to limit the hardware capabilities of ULPCs so that they don't eat into the market for mainstream PCs running Windows Vista, something both Microsoft and the PC vendors would want to avoid.

Imposing the limitations solves a number of problems for the PC industry, said industry analyst Roger Kay, president of EndPoint Technologies Associates. "It allows PC makers to offer a low-cost alternative, and it prevents eroding of pricing and margins in the mainstream OS market," he said.

Microsoft declined to comment on the documents. "We don't speak publicly about our agreements with [PC makers]," the company said in a statement via its public relations agency.

ULPCs are an emerging class of laptops that carry low price tags -- about $250 to $500. Early examples include the Asus Eee PC and One Laptop Per Child's XO machine. The systems already have limited hardware configurations. Microsoft's program appears designed to ensure that distinction is maintained and to prevent ULPCs from cannibalizing sales of higher-end systems, Kay said.

Twenty or more other designs are expected to enter the market over the next six months, and Microsoft expects 10 million to 13 million of the devices to sell this year, according to the documents. IDC's forecast is more modest: On Thursday it said it expects ULPC sales to hit 9 million units by 2012, up from 500,00 last year.

Microsoft notes that the OSes under consideration for the devices include Windows and Linux. Some PC makers have expressed a preference for Linux because it helps them keep down the cost of the devices.

Microsoft says PC makers are keen to enter the market but want to keep ULPCs as a distinct category from "value" and mainstream PCs. The company's new program, scheduled to launch by the end of June, is designed to help make that happen.

Microsoft plans to charge PC makers US$26 for Windows XP Home Edition for ULPCs sold in emerging markets such as China and India, and $32 for those sold in developed markets, the documents show. PC makers who are eligible for its Market Development Agreement, however, can get a discount of as much as $10 off those prices, the documents say.

That's where the hardware limits come in. Besides limits on the screens and hard drives, to be eligible, the systems can have no more than 1G byte of RAM and a single-core processor running at no more than 1GHz. The program makes an allowance for some chips, including Via Technologies' C7-M processors, which run between 1.0GHz and 1.6GHz, and Intel's upcoming Atom N270.

By offering Windows XP Home Edition at bargain prices, Microsoft hopes to secure its place in the ULPC market and reduce the use of Linux, according to an official at one PC maker, who asked not to be identified because he was not authorized to discuss the program.

"[Low-cost PC makers] have made some good inroads with open-source, and Microsoft wants to put a stop to it," the official said.

The official did not seem opposed to the program. It should stimulate more competition between Windows and Linux in the ULPC market, and it could invigorate sales because consumers who want an easy-to-use PC are likely to prefer Windows, the official said.

Microsoft has said it plans to stop selling new Windows XP licenses after June 30, but it has made exceptions, including for the use of XP Home in ULPCs.
http://www.pcworld.com/businesscente...p_laptops.html





More Computer Brands Chase the '$100 Laptop'

Bye bye, bulk. New lines of tiny PCs fit both in your purse and into third-world classrooms.
Gregory M. Lamb

The laptop computers most people haul around are underutilized. They hardly break a sweat to read e-mail, stream video, view photos, browse the Web, or run word-processing or spreadsheet programs. Their powerful processors are rarely tested except by heavy-duty gamers, scientific researchers, or other specialized users.

So while some PCs continue to bulk up and tout their speed and raw power, others represent a new trend: slimming down. Way down. These smaller, simpler machines are aimed at a potentially lucrative market: the next 1 billion PC users around the planet.

The market segment is so new it doesn't have a name yet or even an agreed-upon set of specifications. Intel, the chipmaker, calls the category "netbooks," recognizing that much of what people do on their laptops involves going on the Net. The new machines are also being called ultra-low-cost PCs, mininotebooks, or even mobile Internet gadgets.

In appearance, they have the familiar clamshell design, but they're smaller, with seven- to 10-inch screens. They offer full keyboards (albeit with smaller keys) and weigh less than three pounds. Perhaps most important, the majority cost less than $500 – some as little as $299.

Intel says it expects more than 50 million of these netbooks to be sold by 2011. It's introduced a tiny, low-power processor to run them called Atom, which puts 47 million transistors on a chip about the size of a penny.

Seventy to 80 percent of tasks people do on computers today are online, says Uday Marty, the marketing director for Intel's netbook products. Intel has created the Classmate PC to show the potential market for students around the world. In Brazil, they're sold under the Postivo brand. In India, Intel partners with HCL Infosystems to produce them.

The Taiwanese computermaker Asus burst out of the gate last fall with its Eee PC, priced at $299 (with the Linux operating system) and $399 (with Windows XP). Hewlett-Packard, Dell, Acer, and others have similar machines in the works.

"There's a lot of potential for these products," says Michael Gartenberg, vice president and research director at Jupiter Research in New York. Ultraportable computers have been around for more than a decade, he says. What's new is the low price, making them "attractive as perhaps a second or third computer for a household, or a primary computer for a student."

They represent the idea of the "ubiquitous computer – the computer that you can have with you at all times," he says. These micro-PCs are more likely to eat into laptop sales than threaten even-smaller hand-held devices, phones with extra features such as Web-browsing, Mr. Gartenberg says.

For one thing, the minilaptops have battery lives of only a few hours, not days, making them not yet ready to be "always on" companions.

"I really think the unknown dynamic is what happens when these $200 to $300 netbooks are unleashed in India and China and Indonesia," said Paul Otellini, president and CEO of Intel, in a conference call to industry analysts on April 15. "And we don't [know]. There is no model for that at this point in time because you are dealing with something that's never existed before."

The tiny laptops, some roughly the size of a large paperback book, are far too large for a pants pocket, but could easily fit inside a purse. The smaller keyboards may work well for children. Many run on an operating system called Linux, favored by the technorati but little known among most computer users. Those that include Microsoft's familiar Windows usually cost a bit more. Microsoft has said it will continue to allow manufacturers to sell its older Windows XP system in the minilaptops, saving on both cost and system operating requirements over the newer Windows Vista.

The nonprofit model

These for-profit ventures follow in the footsteps of the nonprofit One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) project in Cambridge, Mass. Many were skeptical when OLPC announced several years ago that it would develop and distribute small laptops to children across the developing world for $100 each.

In recent months several top executives have stepped down from OLPC, leaving some critics to wonder if its mission is still viable.

While OLPC hasn't reached its original aim of $100 PCs, it is selling its tiny laptop, called the XO, for $189, still lower than the for-profit ventures. That price includes some special educational features and software developed by OLPC for the Linux OS.

Nicholas Negroponte, founder and chairman of OLPC, says that the XO is already Windows capable and he expects it to include a version of Microsoft's operating system in the future. He hopes the new for-profit competition will spur manufacturers to develop better technologies and drive costs even lower.

About 500,000 of the rugged, kid-friendly XO laptops have been ordered so far, with the majority already built and shipped, Mr. Negroponte says.

OLPC has seen Intel, which in January withdrew as a partner in the OLPC project, and other computer companies begin to compete for student markets in the developing world. Sometimes these companies are "dumping" their products at low prices to try to shut out OLPC, Negroponte said in late April. "Last week Asus tried that trick in Turkey," he said.

OLPC is a humanitarian effort, not a business, Negroponte says. He likens the OLPC to the World Food Program, which does not try to compete with McDonald's. "I don't want to compete with anyone," he says.

How low can prices go? OLPC is aiming for a 2.0 version of the XO that will cost only $50, Negroponte says. But don't expect that until late 2010.

Clever solution: 'dumb' computers

Meanwhile Ncomputing in Redwood City, Calif., may be the current price leader for student sales, although its product isn't a laptop. The company's device connects "dumb" terminals to a central computer. That core machine then shares its processing power with each of the networked computers.

This idea of "desktop virtualization" is not new. But what's changed is the mushrooming power of even a single PC. One bottom-of-the-line $350 desktop can act as a server for a half-dozen workstations, or more, at a cost as low as $70 per terminal, says Stephen Dukker, CEO of NComputing. And each student gets his or her own keyboard, mouse, and monitor.

Ncomputing has sold 600,000 of its devices already, says Mr. Dukker. The largest buyer has been the country of Macedonia, which bought 180,000 units for its schoolchildren. The company also has made sales in Malaysia, Indonesia, India, Brazil, and a few African countries.

The "dumb" devices use only about 1 watt of power each, he says, compared with many times that much for PCs. That can be especially important in remote areas where electricity is at a premium.

The costs of maintenance and replacement are lower, too, since when a single computer is replaced or repaired it automatically upgrades or restores all the workstations attached to it.

The workstations can't be taken home by students, as with laptops, but that also means that the school's computers are less likely to be stolen or damaged, Dukker says.

"Our technology represents the beginning of the end of [cost] barriers to access to computing," he says.
http://www.csmonitor.com/2008/0501/p13s02-stct.html





I Know What You Did Last Math Class
Jan Hoffman

ON school days at 2 p.m., Nicole Dobbins walks into her home office in Alpharetta, Ga., logs on to ParentConnect, and reads updated reports on her three children. Then she rushes up the block to meet the fourth and sixth graders’ buses.

But in the thump and tumble of backpacks and the gobbling of snacks, Mrs. Dobbins refrains from the traditional after-school interrogation: Did you cut math class? What did you get on your language arts test?

Thanks to ParentConnect, she already knows the answers. And her children know she knows. So she cuts to the chase: “Tell me about this grade,” she will say.

When her ninth grader gets home at 6 p.m., there may well be ParentConnect printouts on his bedroom desk with poor grades highlighted in yellow by his mother. She will expect an explanation. He will be braced for a punishment.

“He knows I’m going to look at ParentConnect every day and we will address it,” Mrs. Dobbins said.

A profusion of online programs that can track a student’s daily progress, including class attendance, missed assignments and grades on homework, quizzes and tests, is changing the nature of communication between parents and children, families and teachers. With names like Edline, ParentConnect, Pinnacle Internet Viewer and PowerSchool, the software is used by thousands of schools, kindergarten through 12th grade. PowerSchool alone is used by 10,100 schools in 49 states.

Although a few programs have been available for a decade, schools have been using them more in recent years as federal reporting requirements have expanded and home computers have become more common. Citing studies showing that parental involvement can have a positive effect on a child’s academic performance, educators praise the programs’ capacity to engage parents.

In rural, urban and suburban districts, they have become a new fact of life for thousands of families. At best, the programs can be the Internet’s bright light into the bottomless backpack, an antidote for freshman forgetfulness, an early warning system and a lie detector.

But sometimes there is collateral damage: exacerbated stress about daily grades and increased family tension.

“The good is very good,” said Nancy Larsen, headmaster of Fairfield Ludlowe High School in Connecticut, which uses Edline. “And the bad can become very ugly.”

At an age when teenagers increasingly want to manage their own lives, many parents use these programs to tighten the grip. College admission is so devastatingly competitive, parents say, they feel compelled to check online grades frequently. Parents hope to transform even modest dips before a child’s record is irrevocably scarred.

“I tell my son, ‘What you do as a freshman will matter to you as a senior,’ ” Mrs. Dobbins said. “ ‘It will haunt you or applaud you.’ ”

Depending on the software, parents can check pending assignments; incomplete assignments; whether a child has been late to class; discipline notices; and grades on homework, quizzes and tests as soon as they are posted. They can also receive e-mail alerts on their cellphones.

With some programs, not only is a student’s grade recalculated with every quiz, but parents can monitor the daily fluctuations of their child’s class ranking. The availability of so much up-to-the-minute information about a naturally evasive teenager can be intoxicating: one Kansas parent compared watching PowerSchool to tracking the stock market.

Kathleen DeBuys, a mother of four in Roswell, Ga., used to check her e-mail first thing in the morning: the ParentConnect alerts would fly in by 6 a.m. The subject line might read, “Claire has received a failing grade. ...”

“And I’d freak out,” said Mrs. DeBuys, speaking of her oldest child, then a high school freshman. “I’d be waking her up, shouting: ‘Claire! What did you fail? What is wrong with you?’ She’d pull the pillow over her head and say, ‘Leave me alone!’ ”

Usually the explanation was benign: there was an inputting error, or Claire had missed the class because she had been sick or pulled out for a gifted-and-talented program. But the family’s morning was already flayed.

“It was horrible,” Mrs. DeBuys said.

Many students, in fact, like the programs, which let them monitor their records. Their biggest complaint is their parents’ unfettered access. “I don’t think kids have privacy,” said Emily Tarantino, 13, a middle-school student from Farmingdale, N.Y. “It’s not like anyone asked our opinion before they gave parents the passwords.”

In thousands of Facebook postings about the programs, teenagers bitterly denounce parental access as snooping. Emily Cochran, 18, a Pittsburgh senior, writes on Facebook about Edline, “It’s like having our parents or guardians stand over us and watch us all day at school, waiting for us to slip up.”

When teachers post scores before they return tests, parents may even see the grade before the students. On Facebook, in typical Internet shorthand, a teenager writes: “I walk into my house and I don’t even get a ‘hello son, howd your day go?’ I get yelled at bcuz I failed a test.”

Paradoxically, many parents who regularly check their children’s grades online fondly recall that during their own adolescence, subterfuge was a given. “I’ll admit it,” said Chris Tarantino, Emily’s mother. “I got satisfaction in fooling my parents.”

Programs like Edline do away with that sly pleasure. But Mrs. Tarantino, a PowerSchool fan, said the stakes had changed drastically. Academic pressure a generation ago was not nearly as all-consuming.

It is difficult to demonstrate conclusively what impact these programs have on school performance, because of all the variables. Anecdotally, principals report that the programs have motivated otherwise hard-to-reach parents and students. They have helped some middle-school boys, in particular, become better organized.

“Edline opens up communication between parents and teachers,” said Ron Jones, the principal at Huth Middle School, which has a 90 percent minority student population, in Matteson, Ill., a middle-class Chicago suburb. “It helps keep the children minding their p’s and q’s.”

The software can certainly be a boon to working parents. And divorced parents can log on without having to contact each other. A few years ago, India Harris, then a single mother and an Army staff sergeant from Omaha, monitored her son’s math grades while on duty in Iraq, and got him extra help.

In Noblesville, Ind., after a survey indicated that parents felt sufficiently informed by PowerSchool and subsequent e-mail exchanges with teachers, the middle-school principal canceled parent-teacher conferences this spring and gave the time back to classes.

Districts have different rules about who has access to which information. Parents then decide how much they want to know. Katie Mazzuckelli, a mother of twin seventh graders in Alpharetta, Ga., checks ParentConnect daily. “There are two types of parents,” she said. “They either do what I do and embrace it, or they say: ‘They’re in middle school and beyond, and they need to be independent. This is an invasion of their privacy.’ ”

Mrs. Dobbins of Alpharetta, a comfortable Atlanta suburb, checks ParentConnect even on weekends. Although there is only modest data on her fourth grader, she goes through the exercise to prepare the child for the scrutiny that her older children receive. She asks the sixth grader close questions about coming assignments.

And she reminds her high school freshman, whom she describes as a bright student with a tendency to coast, “ ‘My personal philosophy is that you need to be on your own, but if you fail to do your job, I will know about it,’ ” Mrs. Dobbins said.

When he does not turn in his homework, she makes sure it is done that night even if it is too late to get credit for it. “And through ParentConnect,” she said, “I’ll e-mail the teacher, ‘Please let me know if you don’t get it within the next day because that’s part of his punishment.’ ”

MRS. DOBBINS is unapologetic about her monitoring of her children’s schoolwork. “I know,” she said, “I’m the mom with big horns. But it’s been a fabulous parenting tool. I think every school should implement it, especially in high school, when kids don’t talk to parents and parents can’t talk to each teacher.”

The software, some educators say, can be misused as a surrogate for meaningful connection between families and schools. “Some teachers love it because it takes the burden of communication off them,” said Diana Brown, a high school English literature teacher in Georgia who still sends home the occasional handwritten note. “Their attitude is: ‘The parents should know what the kid’s grade is. It’s not my job to contact them.’ ”

Many parents may be confused by the complexity of scoring. Some bemoan that few teachers include comments or context. “There’s nothing telling you that your kid loves the class but isn’t a good test taker,” said Mary Kay Flett, a mother in Roswell, Ga.

Many districts do not educate parents about how to use the programs in a measured, judicious fashion with their children. That lapse is implicit in the angry, humorous and poignant Facebook postings. “My dad checks powerschool like 3 or 4 times a day,” writes one teenager. “Yeah he even came to my school once to tell me about it.”

From another teenager: “Before, the screaming and disappointment only had to be endured four times a year. Now it can happen every night.”

And this: “ive been grounded twice for the same grade ... once when my mom found it on edline and again when I actually got the grade a week later.”

Some parents refuse to use the software, but many students check their grades to the point of obsession. Denise Pope, a Stanford lecturer who consults with secondary schools, worries that these programs can aggravate student anxiety. “When the focus is on the grade so much, you’re saying to kids, ‘It’s more important to get the grade, by hook or by crook, than learn the material,’ ” she said. “And that leads to the rise in rampant cheating.”

Some school districts are experimenting with restricting what information can be seen by parents of high school students. Other districts only post grades three weeks before the end of a marking period, to give students time to turn things around.

For many districts, the grade and attendance software is but a thread in a tapestry of programs, both online and off, to engage students as well as parents. Many teachers provide lively, interactive Web sites and online hours for help with homework.

The success of the online grading programs also depends on the willingness of teachers to update them accurately and to devote time to follow-up e-mail messages. “I’ve had teachers e-mail me, ‘There’s a test coming up, make sure they study certain things, make sure they have breakfast,’ ” Mrs. Tarantino said.

“Family involvement is not about serving parents,” said Joyce Epstein, director of the National Network of Partnership Schools. “It’s about mobilizing all the resources that support student success. These technologies can hurt or help, depending on how they are done. But the interpersonal connections of teachers, parents, students and counselors really are necessary to go beyond the impersonal technologies.”

One challenge she raises is equity. “Some parents do not have access to high-tech services,” said Dr. Epstein, a professor at Johns Hopkins. “Saying that those parents can use the computers at a local library is not equitable.”

These days, Mrs. DeBuys, the mother of Claire, now a graduating senior in Roswell, calls herself a “reformed ParentConnect parent.”

It took her several years to figure out how best to use the program. “You have to connect to it on your terms,” she said.

It can be hard to resist, she said. “It speaks to all your neuroses as a parent, all this need to control, that pressure to make sure everything is perfect,” she said. “How are these kids going to learn to be responsible adults?”

She has since turned off the reminders and the alerts. But she still checks ParentConnect a few times a week. To her freshman son she may say, “ ‘I notice you have three zeros for homework grades, so you need to talk to your teacher.’ ”

She laughed. “And in a perfect world,” she added, “he would.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/04/fashion/04edline.html





China Mounts Cyber Attacks on Indian Sites
Indrani Bagchi

China’s cyber warfare army is marching on, and India is suffering silently. Over the past one and a half years, officials said, China has mounted almost daily attacks on Indian computer networks, both government and private, showing its intent and capability.

The sustained assault almost coincides with the history of the present political disquiet between the two countries.

According to senior government officials, these attacks are not isolated incidents of something so generic or basic as "hacking" — they are far more sophisticated and complete — and there is a method behind the madness.

Publicly, senior government officials, when questioned, take refuge under the argument that "hacking" is a routine activity and happens from many areas around the world. But privately, they acknowledge that the cyber warfare threat from China is more real than from other countries.

The core of the assault is that the Chinese are constantly scanning and mapping India’s official networks. This gives them a very good idea of not only the content but also of how to disable the networks or distract them during a conflict.

This, officials say, is China’s way of gaining "an asymmetrical advantage" over a potential adversary.

The big attacks that were sourced to China over the last few months included an attack on NIC (National Infomatics Centre), which was aimed at the National Security Council, and on the MEA.

Other government networks, said sources, are routinely targeted though they haven’t been disabled. A quiet effort is under way to set up defence mechanisms, but cyber warfare is yet to become a big component of India’s security doctrine. Dedicated teams of officials — all underpaid, of course — are involved in a daily deflection of attacks. But the real gap is that a retaliatory offensive system is yet to be created.

And it’s not difficult, said sources. Chinese networks are very porous — and India is an acknowledged IT giant!

There are three main weapons in use against Indian networks — BOTS, key loggers and mapping of networks. According to sources in the government, Chinese hackers are acknowledged experts in setting up BOTS. A BOT is a parasite program embedded in a network, which hijacks the network and makes other computers act according to its wishes, which, in turn, are controlled by "external" forces.

The controlled computers are known as "zombies" in the colourful language of cyber security, and are a key aspect in cyber warfare. According to official sources, there are close to 50,000 BOTS in India at present — and these are "operational" figures.

What is the danger? Simply put, the danger is that at the appointed time, these "external" controllers of BOTNETS will command the networks, through the zombies, to move them at will.

Exactly a year ago, Indian computer security experts got a glimpse of what could happen when a targeted attack against Estonia shut that country down — it was done by one million computers from different parts of the world — and many of them were from India! That, officials said, was executed by cyber terrorists from Russia, who are deemed to be more deadlier.

The point that officials are making is that there are internal networks in India that are controlled from outside — a sort of cyberspace fifth column. Hence, the need for a more aggressive strategy.

Key loggers is software that scans computers and their processes and data the moment you hit a key on the keyboard.

This information is immediately carried over to an external controller — so they know even when you change your password. Mapping or scanning networks is done as a prerequisite to modern cyber warfare tactics. MEA has a three-layered system of computer and network usage — only the most open communication is sent on something called "e-grams".

The more classified stuff uses old-economy methods — ironically, probably the most secure though a lot more time-consuming. The same is true of other critical areas of the government. But the real gap inside the national security establishment is one of understanding the true nature of the threat.

National security adviser M K Narayanan set up the National Technology Research Organization, which is also involved in assessing cyber security threats. But the cyber security forum of the National Security Council has become defunct after the US spy incident. This has scarred the Indian establishment so badly that it’s now frozen in its indecision. This has seriously hampered India’s decision-making process in cyber warfare.
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/C...ow/3010288.cms





F.B.I. Says the Military Had Bogus Computer Gear
John Markoff

Counterfeit products are a routine threat for the electronics industry. However, the more sinister specter of an electronic Trojan horse, lurking in the circuitry of a computer or a network router and allowing attackers clandestine access or control, was raised again recently by the F.B.I. and the Pentagon.

The new law enforcement and national security concerns were prompted by Operation Cisco Raider, which has led to 15 criminal cases involving counterfeit products bought in part by military agencies, military contractors and electric power companies in the United States. Over the two-year operation, 36 search warrants have been executed, resulting in the discovery of 3,500 counterfeit Cisco network components with an estimated retail value of more than $3.5 million, the F.B.I. said in a statement.

The F.B.I. is still not certain whether the ring’s actions were for profit or part of a state-sponsored intelligence effort. The potential threat, according to the F.B.I. agents who gave a briefing at the Office of Management and Budget on Jan. 11, includes the remote jamming of supposedly secure computer networks and gaining access to supposedly highly secure systems. Contents of the briefing were contained in a PowerPoint presentation leaked to a Web site, Above Top Secret.

A Cisco spokesman said that the company had investigated the counterfeit gear seized by law enforcement agencies and had not found any secret back door.

“We did not find any evidence of re-engineering in the manner that was described in the F.B.I. presentation,” said John Noh, a Cisco spokesman. He added that the company believed the counterfeiters were interested in copying high volume products to make a quick profit. “We know what these counterfeiters are about.”

An F.B.I. spokeswoman, Catherine L. Milhoan, said the agency was not suggesting that the Chinese government was involved in the counterfeiting ring. “We worked very closely with the Chinese government,” she said. Arrests have been made in China as part of the investigation, she said. “The existence of this document shows that the cyber division of the F.B.I. has growing concerns about the production and distribution of counterfeit network hardware.”

Despite Cisco’s reassurance, a number of industry executives and technologists said that the threat of secretly added circuitry intended to subvert computer and network gear is real.

“There are enormous vulnerabilities in our defense and national security infrastructure,” said Peter Levin, a former Clinton administration official who is chief executive of DAFCA, a Framingham, Mass., company that designs systems to prevent malicious tampering with computer chips. “We outsource the manufacturing of computer integrated circuits to places that can manufacture these devices cheaply.”

Last month, the Pentagon’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency began distributing chips with hidden Trojan horse circuitry to military contractors who are participating in the agency’s Trusted Integrated Circuits program. The goal is to test forensic techniques for finding hidden electronic trap doors, which can be maddeningly elusive. The agency is not yet ready to announce the results of the test, according to Jan Walker, a spokeswoman for the agency.

The threat was demonstrated in April when a team of computer scientists from the University of Illinois presented a paper at a technical conference in San Francisco detailing how they had modified a Sun Microsystems SPARC microprocessor by altering the data file on a chip with nearly 1.8 million circuits used in automated manufacturing equipment.

The researchers were able to create a stealth system that would allow them to automatically log in to a computer and steal passwords. The danger of such hidden circuitry is that it could potentially undermine the strongest computer security protections by essentially giving an attacker a secret key to gain access to a network or a computer.

“It’s very difficult to detect and discover these issues,” said Ted Vucurevich, the chief technology officer of Cadence Design Systems, a company that provides design tools for chip makers. “That was one of the reasons” for the testing program.

Modern integrated circuits have billions of components, he said: “Adding a small number that do particular functions in particular cases is incredibly hard to detect.”

The potential threat of secret hardware-based backdoors or kill switches has been discussed for several decades. For example, the issue came up during the 1980s with a Swiss cryptography company, Crypto, which has been under suspicion of having installed back doors in its systems to give the National Security Agency access to encoded messages.

The issue was raised again during the first Iraq war and more recently in the Israeli bombing of a suspected Syrian nuclear plant. In both cases there has been speculation that booby-trapped antiaircraft equipment had been remotely turned off.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/09/te...y/09cisco.html





Fake Media File Snares PC Users
BBC

Almost 500,000 people have been caught out by a booby-trapped media file, says security firm McAfee.

The fake file poses as a music track, short video or movie and has been widely seeded on file-sharing networks to snare victims.

McAfee said the fake media file outbreak was the largest it had seen for about three years.

Those running the fake file get bombarded with pop-up ads and risk compromising the safety of their PC.

The fake file or trojan has been widely distributed on the eDonkey and Limewire file-sharing networks.

The file has many names and is written in different languages to trick people into downloading it.

The titles make the file appear to be music tracks, pornography and full versions of popular movies.

Anyone downloading the trojan and trying to run it is asked to install a codec that will play the supposed media.

FAKE FILE TITLES

girls aloud st trinnians.mp3
changing times earth wind .mp3
heartbroken fast t2 ft jodie.mp3
meet bambi in kings harem.mp3
paralyized by you.mp3
pull over levert.mp3

Instead of playing the media, running the file installs a bundle of adware that plagues a user with pop-ups.

Included in the bundle is an MP3 media player that will only play the tracks included with it.

McAfee said seeing such a large outbreak was rare because hi-tech criminals typically prefer to target their malicious creations to keep numbers manageable and to avoid detection.

In the last seven days McAfee said the trojan had been found on more than 500,000 of the PCs that notify the company when a malicious file is downloaded.

It added that, so far, only 10% seem to have gone as far as to install the fake codec and be plagued with pop-ups.

Other security companies have seen the trojan but not in such large numbers as McAfee.

Only those using Windows are vulnerable to the malicious program.

McAfee urged users to update their security software and to be wary when using file-sharing networks.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/h...gy/7389529.stm





100 E-Mail Bouncebacks? You've Been Backscattered.

E-mail users are receiving an increasing number of bounceback spam, known as backscatter, and security experts say this kind of spam is growing
Robert McMillan

The bounceback e-mail messages come in at a trickle, maybe one or two every hour. The subject lines are disquieting: "Cyails, Vygara nad Levytar," "UNSOLICITED BULK EMAIL, apparently from you."

You eye your computer screen; you're nervous. What's going on ? Have you been hacked? Are you some kind of zombie botnet spammer?

Nope, you're just getting a little backscatter -- bounceback messages from legitimate e-mail servers that have been fooled by the spammers.

Spammers like to put fake information in their e-mail messages in order to sneak them past e-mail filters. Because e-mail filters now just delete messages that come from nonexistent domains, the spammers like to make their messages look like they come from real e-mail addresses. That means, if your e-mail address has been published on the Web somewhere, you're a prime candidate for backscattering.

The spammer finds your address, or sometimes even guesses it, and then puts it in the "from" line of his messages, sending them out to hundreds of thousands of recipients. When the spam gets sent to an address that is no longer active, it can sometimes be bounced back ... to you.

Although Sophos estimates that backscatter makes up just two percent or three percent of all spam, antispam vendors say these messages are on the rise lately.

Users often think that the backscatter may be a sign that their computer has been hacked and is sending out spam messages, said Brad Bartman, a global support manager with Text 100, a public relations consultancy. "They look at it and they're like, 'Whoa, is my PC infected with a virus?'" he said.

Backscatter rarely hits more than one or two employees at the same time, so it isn't particularly disruptive. But it does worry users, he said. "It's mostly a psychological thing."

With their e-mail addresses widely circulated on press releases, Text 100's PR specialists are the ideal candidates for backscatter.

Because backscatter comes from legitimate mail servers, it can cause special problems. In fact, some security researchers believe that the spammers have been intentionally sending messages that will be bounced back as a way to sneak around spam filters. That's because some mail servers bounce back the original message as part of their notice.

Dan Wallach, like Text 100's Bartman, was hit with a flood of backscatter messages earlier this week. Wallach, an associate professor with Rice University's Department of Computer Science, said that many of the messages he received contained links to suspicious executable files hosted on different Web sites.

"I'll bet that some spammer is rationally thinking 'error messages! Maybe I can get my message through via error messages!'" Wallach said in an e-mail interview. "They don't need many responses before this sort of tactic could be considered to be a success."

At its worst the phenomenon can even wipe Internet servers off the map.

Last month, Stephen Gielda, president of Packetderm, upset a fraudster who was trying to use his anonymous Internet service. Soon his servers were inundated with a tidal wave of backscatter messages. At one point, he was being hit by 10,000 bounceback messages per second, enough to throttle the server's Internet connection.

Gielda had to take his site off-line for five days as he waited for the problem to abate. "I'm used to backscatter, but I'd never seen it at this level before," he said.

While backscatter is extremely hard to filter out, it is a problem that can be fixed.

Backscatter comes in three varieties: messages from mail servers, saying that there is no such user available; "out of office" automated reply messages; and so-called challenge-response messages, which tell the sender that his message will be delivered only once he responds to the bounceback and confirms that the e-mail is coming from a legitimate address.

Security experts say that people should simply stop using these last two types of bounceback messages.

As for "no such user" bouncebacks, that can be fixed too. There are a few e-mail standards that could help with the problem: Variable Envelope Return Path (VERP) and Bounce Address Tag Validation" target="_blank">http://mipassoc.org/batv/">Bounce Address Tag Validation (BATV), for example.

But the problem would largely disappear if server administrators configured their mail servers to immediately reject mail that is sent to nonexistent users, rather than accepting it and then bouncing it back to the faked addresses. Some ISPs (Internet service providers), AOL for example, have done this and have largely eliminated their role in the problem.

If there is spam in the backscatter message, antispam software should filter it out, but if a message has an ambiguous subject line, like "Hey" and the spam message stripped out, the backscatter will look like a legitimate bounceback and is probably going to get through, said Dmitry Samosseiko, manager of Sophos Labs Canada.

"This is a serious problem that is hard to deal with, to be honest," he said. "We can blame spammers for causing the issue in the first place, but it exists because of the mail servers that are not configured to deal with spam."
http://www.computerworld.com.au/inde...16;fpid;1;pf;1





Virginia Tries to Ensure Students' Safety in Cyberspace

State-mandated classes on Internet take shape
Theresa Vargas

Alan Portillo didn't think much, if at all, about his online vulnerability. Then the 15-year-old heard technology teacher Wendy Maitland list three pieces of information an online predator would need to find him.

Birth date, she said. Alan's age was on his e-mail.

Gender. His full name was also on his e-mail and topped his MySpace page.

ZIP code. A photo on the page showed an area near his neighborhood, with "Arlington" emblazoned across one building.

"I thought it was nothing. But when I saw the examples, I started thinking, it's a big deal," the Wakefield High School freshman said. After the February lesson, he said, he deleted the photo and his last name from the page.

Virginia public schools will soon launch Internet safety lessons across all grade levels, responding to a state mandate that is the first of its kind in the nation. Even though today's students have known no life without the Internet, only a couple of states have laws that recommend schools teach online safety.

Maryland and the District both offer Internet safety education, but their programs are neither mandated nor spread across all grade levels. Sixteen technology coordinators in D.C. public schools last year received training in Internet safety education, and the District has plugged the topic in public service announcements. The Maryland State Board of Education last year adopted student technology literacy standards for elementary and middle school lessons.

In Virginia, local school systems have been rewriting policies, running pilot programs and putting final touches on lesson plans to be offered from kindergarten through 12th grade starting in September.

"One of the things we realized is there is no one-size-fits-all approach," said Tammy McGraw, the Virginia Department of Education's director of educational technology. "Ultimately what we're trying to do is ensure we have safe and responsible Internet users."

The state's goal is to integrate safety skills into the curriculum, not simply teach them in one lesson. An English lesson on truth and fiction, for example, could require a paper on what information online should be trusted.

"It's not something that we think can really be addressed by bringing children together in an assembly," McGraw said. "We think they have to think about it all the time."

One recent afternoon, two 15-year-old girls at Wakefield High discussed what they learned in a pilot Internet safety class: Misunderstood text messages can lead to hurt feelings; parents, too, can dole out too many details online about their children; and risks abound in using social networking sites.

Lily Pinner, a freshman, sets her MySpace page on private and lists her age as 99. But she said a friend's 4-year-old sister recently ventured onto the site, writing friendly messages with her name and age and noting that she lives "in a big house."

"I said, 'You don't want to tell people that.' She said, 'Why?'" Lily said, adding that it's hard because she doesn't want to scare the girl but wants to keep her safe. "I said, 'Because some people aren't nice.' "

"They still believe everyone is good and the bad guy always loses," added freshman Labiba Ahmed.

One in seven children ages 10 to 17 has been sexually solicited while online, according to the National Center for Exploited and Missing Children. Thirty-four percent of those youths also acknowledged communicating online with individuals they did not know, and more and more are posting personal information and photos on the Internet, according to the organization.

"The reality is, kids have this sense of immortality and can do some remarkably dangerous things, putting themselves at risk," said Ernie Allen, National Center for Exploited and Missing Children's chief executive.

He likened Internet safety classes to driver's education.

"Just like a lot of good things, there is a dark side," he said. "Driving an automobile is a positive thing, but there are risks."

Allen said other states should follow Virginia's "pioneering" effort. Already, he said, politicians and elected officials from other states have contacted his organization for more information. Texas and Illinois also passed laws to promote teaching of Internet safety.

"What we like about the Virginia model is when you mandate it, you can be sure it's going to be done," Allen said. "We know schools have a lot to do, but it's hard to imagine something that is more important and can have greater impact right now."

Virginia Attorney General Robert F. McDonnell (R) has said that more than half the world's Internet traffic flows through Virginia because MCI and America Online operate in the state.

Del. William H. Fralin Jr. (R-Roanoke) said he introduced the Virginia legislation, which passed in 2006, when his oldest child was 10 and had just started using the Internet. He said his wife raised the question of safety.

"She said, 'How do we know who he's talking to and what's going on?' and I said, 'I don't know,' " Fralin said.

The state initiative calls for including parents. One chapter in a state resource book covers "What Parents, Grandparents, and Caregivers Need to Know." In Arlington, some Parent-Teacher Association chapters have heard public service announcements on the subject. And on Thursday, parents met at an Alexandria elementary school to talk about Internet safety.

"I tell parents this all the time, and they are horrified, but e-mail is for old people," said Elizabeth Hoover, Alexandria's instructional technology coordinator. "We have to raise our level of awareness for our teachers and community members. We can't move forward without doing that."

Charlie Makela, library services supervisor for Arlington schools, said that people tend to think of Internet safety in terms of online predators, but that "it's much, much more than that." It's about cyber-bullying, copyright infringement, text messaging and social networking.

"I don't think many children understand that if you post a picture or information on a bulletin board, a physical bulletin board, you can take that picture down and it's gone. If I post it on the Internet, it's never gone," Makela said, adding they also don't realize Facebook owns whatever items are put on its site. "We click on the accept-the-terms-of-use agreement, but we really don't know what we're agreeing to."

Makela said that in pilot programs at elementary, middle and high schools, educators found the children were savvy but still had much to learn. The challenge was finding the best way to reach each group.

"A kindergarten student might be told a virus is something that can make you sick, where at middle school and upper levels, we would talk about Trojan horses," Makela said.

Linda Wilkoff, a guidance counselor at Charles Barrett Elementary School, said children were still singing songs about Internet safety weeks after a class there ended.

To make her points to the youngsters, Wilkoff drew age-appropriate analogies. Posting personal information is like a dinosaur footprint that exists forever. Or like toothpaste: Once it's squeezed out of the tube, it can't be put back in.

"One of my students said, 'You know Ms. Wilkoff, this is making me kind of worry,' " she said. "I said, 'That's good.' "
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...050203831.html





Facesafe

Facebook, States Set New Safeguards
AP

Facebook, the world's second-largest social networking Web site, is adding more than 40 new safeguards to protect young users from sexual predators and cyberbullies, attorneys general from several states said Thursday.

The measures include banning convicted sex offenders from the site, limiting older users' ability to contact subscribers under 18 and participating in a task force set up earlier this year to find ways to better verify users' ages and identities.

"The agreement marks another watershed step toward social networking safety, protecting kids from online predators and inappropriate content," said Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal, who announced the agreement Thursday with his counterparts in several other states.

Officials from Washington, D.C., and 49 states have signed on.

Facebook, which has more than 70 million active users worldwide, already has enacted many of the changes and others are in the works, its officials said Thursday.

"Building a safe and trusted online experience has been part of Facebook from its outset," said Chris Kelly, Facebook's chief privacy officer. "The attorneys general have shown great leadership in helping to address the critical issue of Internet safety, and we commend them for continuing to set high standards for all players in the online arena."

Texas did not endorsed the agreement or a similar one reached in January between MySpace and the other states and the District of Columbia.

Texas officials say they want faster action on verifying users' ages and identities.

The attorneys general have been negotiating for months with Palo Alto, Calif.-based Facebook. The changes are similar to those adopted by MySpace, the world's largest online social network with 200 million users worldwide.

"Social networks that encourage kids to come to their sites have a responsibility to keep those kids safe," North Carolina Attorney General Roy Cooper said. "We've now gotten the two largest social networking sites to agree to take significant steps to protect children from predators and pornography."

MySpace, Facebook and other online networks have created a new venue for sexual predators, who often lie about their age to lure young victims to chat, share images and sometimes meet in person. It also has spawned cyberbullies, who have sent threatening and anonymous messages to classmates, acquaintances and other users.

John Palfrey, executive director of the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard University, said Thursday that research shows online bullies are far more common than sexual predators.

"It's very rare for an adult to meet a child on a social network and to do them harm, although the ones that do occur get a huge amount of attention and they are terrible," he said.

But online bullying, be it through instant-message programs or social networking Web sites, has been on the rise, he said.

The issue gained national attention after recent high-profile cases, including the 2006 suicide of a 13-year-old Missouri girl after she was victimized by an Internet ruse.

Megan Meier hanged herself after receiving nasty online comments from a MySpace friend who turned out to be fictional, invented by two acquaintances and the mother of one of those girls.

"What's going on online is not much different than bullying on the playground," Palfrey said. "It just happens to be playing out in public spaces where kids are spending a lot of time online."

Facebook and MySpace lets users block online bullies and others from contacting them. They also can conceal their "online now" status and use privacy controls to limit who can view their images and other measures.

Among other measures, Facebook agrees to:

- Ensure companies offering services on its site comply with its safety and privacy guidelines.

- Keep tobacco and alcohol ads from users too young to purchase those products.

- Remove groups whose comments or images suggest they may involve incest, pedophilia, bullying or other inappropriate content.

- Continue participating in the Harvard-based task force set up in January under the agreement with MySpace. It includes scholars, a prosecutor, businesses, state officials and child safety advocacy groups.

- Send warning messages when a child is in danger of giving personal information to an adult.

- Review users' profiles when they ask to change their age, ensuring the update is legitimate and not intended to let adults masquerade as children.

The protections included in the MySpace and Facebook pacts could be expanded to smaller services such as Friendster and Bebo, Blumenthal said.

"We're entering a new era in social networking safety," Blumenthal said. "This agreement is open-ended in envisioning advances in technology that will permit even stronger steps in the future toward protecting kids' safety."
http://www.newstimes.com/latestnews/ci_9199526





Ban 'Second Life' in Schools and Libraries, Republican Congressman Says
Anne Broache

Some politicos in the U.S. Congress may be embracing Second Life (pictured here is California Democrat George Miller's press conference in the virtual world last year). But Illinois Republican Mark Kirk says it's a danger zone for children and must be blocked, by law, on school and library computers.
(Credit: Linden Lab)

A Republican congressman who has sponsored legislation banning access to social-networking Web sites in schools and libraries has found a new target of displeasure: Second Life.

Rep. Mark Kirk, who is seeking re-election this year, staged a press conference at a library in his suburban Chicago district on Tuesday to highlight what he called the "dangers" of the virtual world to children. Flanked by local officials, he also released a letter asking Federal Trade Commission Chairman William E. Kovacic to "take action to warn parents of the similar dangers and sexually explicit content found on Second Life."

Kirk said he was appalled that Second Life has no age verification features built into its registration process, and he claimed that there are "countless locations" outside of the service's teen-designated area where virtual prostitution, drug deals, and "other wholly inappropriate activities" occur.

According to a Chicago Tribune report, Kirk recounted an aide's failed attempt to create an avatar on the site as a 10-year-old--and a subsequently successful attempt to log in as an 18-year-old.

"Sites like Second Life offer no protections to keep kids from virtual "rape rooms," brothels, and drug stores," Kirk said, according to a press release. "If sites like Second Life won't protect kids from obviously inappropriate content, the Congress will."

Second Life creator Linden Lab, for its part, released a statement, according to various local news reports, saying, "Members of the Second Life community, including Linden Lab staff, actively monitor against minors accessing the (adult portion of the) service." But Kirk said company officials have acknowledged that it's possible for teens to get into the adult portion of the service, and vice versa.

Kirk's comments were yet another attempt to drum up support for a bill, which he reintroduced last year, known as the Deleting Online Predators Act.

That proposal would require schools and libraries that receive federal subsidies through a program called E-rate to certify that they've put in place a "technology protection measure" on all of their computers that "protects against access to a commercial social-networking Web site or chat room, unless used for an educational purpose with adult supervision."

The definition of "commercial social-networking Web site," however, appears to be broad enough to sweep up blogging and online-journaling services, as well as any site that allows users to create public profiles, from Amazon.com to Slashdot to Yahoo.

The bill would also require the Federal Trade Commission to issue a "consumer alert" outlining the potential "danger" of such Web sites because they can be accessed by child predators.

Similar legislation passed the Republican-controlled House of Representatives by a 410-15 vote in 2006 but died in the Senate.

Despite the overwhelmingly favorable vote two years ago, the bill is not without controversy. The American Library Association is staunchly opposed to the proposal, arguing that it ignores the value of interactive Web applications as a learning tool, could block helpful sites, and would inhibit librarians' ability to teach youngsters about how to use the Web safely.

After all, even police agencies--including the Arlington County Police Department outside of Washington, D.C., just this month--are launching MySpace.com profiles these days.
http://www.news.com/8301-10784_3-9937956-7.html





Penguin Tale Tops List of `Challenged' Books
Hillel Italie

A children's story about a family of penguins with two fathers once again tops the list of library books the public objects to the most.

"And Tango Makes Three," released in 2005 and co-written by Justin Richardson and Peter Parnell, was the most "challenged" book in public schools and libraries for the second straight year, according to the American Library Association.

"The complaints are that young children will believe that homosexuality is a lifestyle that is acceptable. The people complaining, of course, don't agree with that," Judith Krug, director of the ALA's Office for Intellectual Freedom, told The Associated Press on Tuesday.

The ALA defines a "challenge" as a "formal, written complaint filed with a library or school requesting that materials be removed because of content or appropriateness."

Other books on the ALA's top 10 list include Maya Angelou's memoir "I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings," in which the author writes of being raped as a young girl; Mark Twain's "The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn," long attacked for alleged racism; and Philip Pullman's "The Golden Compass," an anti-religious work in which a former nun says: "The Christian religion is a very powerful and convincing mistake."

Pullman's novel, released in 1996, received new attention last year because of the film version starring Nicole Kidman.

Overall, the number of reported library challenges dropped from 546 in 2006 to 420 last year, well below the mid-1990s, when complaints topped 750. For every challenge listed, about four to five go unreported, the library association estimates.

"The atmosphere is a little better than it used to be," Krug says. "I think some of the pressure has been taken off of books by the Internet, because so much is happening on the Internet."

According to the ALA, at least 65 challenges last year led to a book being pulled.

In Louisville, Ky., a high school principal told 150 English students to drop "Beloved," Toni Morrison's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel about an ex-slave who has murdered her baby daughter. At least two parents had complained that "Beloved" includes depictions of violence, racism and sex.

In Burlingame, Calif., Mark Mathabane's "Kaffir Boy," a memoir about growing up poor and black in apartheid-era South Africa, was banned from an intermediate school after a parent complained about a two-paragraph scene in which men pay boys for sex.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080506/...allenged_books





Subject to Shill: Tech Books as Corporate Marketing
Jem Matzan

Originally this article was supposed to be a book review of the upcoming O'Reilly title Subject to Change, but I was so appalled by its content that I felt compelled to shift focus to the more important issue of ethics in publishing. This book reflects a sinister trend in the tech book publishing industry that favors vapid, tedious material that serves to advise readers without revealing the big secrets. The purpose is for the authors (usually a group of writers, and most of them high-level managers) to promote their company and its services by giving readers just enough information. If they want the advanced material, they need to buy the rest at a premium price by going straight to the company for its professional services. Meanwhile, the publisher bathes in a sea of money while the authors relentlessly promote the book on their blogs and in their conference keynotes and panel discussions. Tech books have increasingly become corporate marketing vehicles, sacrificing the exciting A-list technical material that regular tech book buyers and enthusiasts have come to expect from companies like O'Reilly Media and Pearson Education. This isn't the first book I've seen that gives readers a 20,000-word marketing pitch -- that honor belongs to Enterprise Ajax (and it's about three times longer). I'm bothered -- sickened -- to see that not only is this trend continuing unabated, but it's actually become a habit.

Subject to Change is written by four people who hold high positions at a company named Adaptive Path. You've probably heard of that company because its CEO, Jesse James Garrett, is credited with coining the term Ajax in an essay he wrote a while ago. Other than that, there isn't anything particularly remarkable about Adaptive Path, other than the fact that it seems to be a successful consulting firm. But from reading this book, you'd think that Adaptive Path was the second coming. Its logo is splattered across every cover surface, larger and more prominent even than O'Reilly's. The authors speak in the first-person (usually plural, sometimes singular) and turn nearly every subject into a plug for their company.

The book's primary content reads like a marketing pitch for Adaptive Path services. It's packed with enthusiasm but entirely devoid of substance. There are whole paragraphs that meander around non-specific subjects, one leading into another until you're pretty sure you've got the gist of what the authors are trying to say, but you have no idea how to apply it to your business. Each chapter and section contains, in no specific order: Lots of inspirational hand-waving and encouragement, vague and wide-ranging advice on what to avoid in terms of policy, quotes from CEOs and news articles, examples from the industry -- both good and bad -- that are over-generalized and removed from all necessary context, and the brilliant solutions that Adaptive Path has provided its clients to solve these nebulously stated, over-worded, general business problems. Here's an example of the latter from page 118:

At Adaptive Path, we look to the other competencies within an organization and combine design with those to generate more effective solutions.

If that isn't a (badly phrased) line destined for a television commercial or print ad with a beautiful actor leaning toward a desk to point instructively at a computer screen to show guidance to another, seated, less attractive or lower status actor, then I don't know what is. It's the sort of rubbish meant to inspire cigar-chomping pointy-haired CEOs to pick up the phone and yell, "Johnson! Get in my office! I just saw a great TV commercial and I want these 'Adopt-A-Bath' people working for us, pronto!"

And as an example of its empty, overlong, non-promotional content, from the intro to chapter 4:

Creating engaging user experiences requires a solid understanding of the people you want to serve, which inevitably means doing research. Research is a reliable way to gain insight and deal with uncertainty, but to incorporate the ideas from chapter 3 you may need to reconsider how you think about research. In our experience, a lot of research does nothing but keep research staff busy; however, well-executed research can transform your organization's understanding of its customers, and help your team create compelling experiences.

I feel like I just walked in a big circle. I see a lot of words (most of them are one word -- research), but they're all inside of diluted phrases that individually offer a tiny kernel of useful information. This literary hand-waving pervades the entire book to the point that if it were properly condensed into concise, actionable information without any self-promotion, this book's text could fit comfortably on a CD jewel case booklet.

People want to read tech books because they're excited at the prospect of expanding their technical understanding through an impassioned expert's narrative. Had Subject to Change been about Adaptive Path's company history and its business methods and corporate culture as a successful Web 2.0 company on the cutting edge of technology, that might be an interesting read. Similarly, a book that clearly taught all of Adaptive Path's A-list material -- the processes, philosophies, and practices that make it a leader in its industry -- would be successful as a niche book for those interested in industry trends and best practices. But this is neither. It pretends to be a book that teaches readers how to reshape their methods to be more innovation-friendly and client-oriented -- a compelling but not revolutionary concept -- but it offers absolutely no new thinking on the subject. The entire volume of useful information in Subject to Change can be summed up thusly: "Think outside the box, and pay attention to customer needs. And if you can't do that, hire us!" Take that to heart and save yourself the time and money wasted on this book.

Perhaps I should not be so surprised and offended at this book. It's not the first time I've seen it happen. Subject to Change is representative of a growing genre of corporate promotion books that are all wind and no sail. The people who write them are D-list Internet celebrities with successful blogs; they are people who speak at conferences and participate in panel discussions. As a result of their public speaking and presentation careers, these people make excellent book promoters and thus, excellent book authors as far as publishers are concerned. It doesn't matter if the book sucks, because it's going to be promoted as though it were the tech industry's Valley of the Dolls. It will sell regardless of the quality of its content. Having these pseudo-famous people write books is good business for publishers -- at least in the short term, while there is brand equity to burn.

From the author's point of view, such book deals are a once in a lifetime opportunity to promote his business. He doesn't care if he makes any money from book sales. It would take some kind of miracle book to eclipse his salary and stock options. Sure, royalty money is always nice, but the real money will roll in when tens of thousands of potential customers masquerading as readers flood his sales department with impassioned inquiries.

So on the one hand there are publishers that want to produce books that will sell, and having authors who can promote their own books is an added bonus. On the other hand there are potential authors who see an unprecedented opportunity to get more clients and improve their status in the industry. Mix the two together and you have a money-making machine that transfers the publisher's brand equity to the author's company. Eventually it may be that the majority of new, non-reprint technical books are corporate promotion deals -- that is, until readers wise up to this scam and start demanding quality. Maybe what we need is Tim O'Reilly 2.0 to come along and save us from this corporate promotional crap and deliver books that offer fascinating technical facts and details that inspire readers.

It makes my stomach turn to see that one of my heroes and idols -- Tim O'Reilly -- personally approved of Subject to Change and called it a "terrific book" on the inside cover. (However, there were many quotes there that were suspicious to me -- they spoke of the greatness of the general subject of the book without specifically saying why Subject to Change is its embodiment. I suspect these people never read more than a summary or a few pages.) This from the man who started a publishing company because he was upset that his employers wouldn't let him tell the truth about the products and companies he wrote about. Commercial influences, be they internal ("We can't say that about our own product!") or external ("We can't say that about an advertiser's product!") are equally destructive to the integrity of good technical writing. The Week in Review is edited and published by Jack Spratts. They also apply in the opposite direction -- "We MUST say that about our product!" -- and that's what we have with Subject to Change. The editorial mafia tactics that chafed Tim O'Reilly may be long gone in the book industry (even if they're a way of life for magazines and commercial media Web sites), but here he is today replacing them with company insiders who get paid thousands of dollars to write books that educate future clients, giving them a more solid path toward the authors' companies' sales departments. Self-promoting corporate brands and services, and purposefully omitting the most useful actionable information are the two primary methods of operation therein.

So we readers can hope that Tim O'Reilly 2.0 comes along and displaces Tim O'Reilly 1.0, who is likely a big part of the problem here. Subject to Change represents a perfect storm scenario at O'Reilly Media, partially for the above-mentioned reasons, and partially because of a change in the founder's attitude. These days, Tim O'Reilly appears to be more concerned with finding or exposing the next revolutionary technology or business idea than he is about finding the next revolutionary tech book. I wonder when he last sat in on an editorial meeting. I would be willing to bet that this book was his own idea, not because it makes a good book, but because it (badly, probably unbeknownst to him) covers a topic he's in love with and would like to promote. This formula created a situation that supported runaway corporate greed and poor-quality writing; it is why Adaptive Path was so successful at slathering its logo all over the cover and relentlessly promoting its services throughout Subject to Change without regard for readability or reader attention span. No company would be allowed to do that without a Chernobyl-like disregard for ethical safety controls at O'Reilly. What editor would stand in the way of the very publisher himself when it comes to mitigating author demands? No one had the guts to reign in the authors or tell the boss that he was wrong, so now it's up to readers like you and me to vote with our wallets.

As for me, I haven't decided if I should be more selective in the books I agree to write about, or if I should continue to call it like it is, naming-and-shaming the literary turds in the technology book pool. That is, if O'Reilly and Pearson aren't too offended at this article to continue sending me review copies. Frankly, it wouldn't break my heart if that happened -- reading bad books makes me miserable.
http://www.thejemreport.com/mambo/content/view/395/





Publisher Tested the Waters Online, Then Dove In
Steve Lohr

It may be a niche publisher, but the International Data Group has been working out the answers to some big mainstream questions. The biggest one: Can print media survive the transition to the Internet?

The question has taken on new urgency lately. A faltering economy is heightening the pressure on newspapers and magazines to find a sustaining future online, as the flight of readers and advertisers to the Web accelerates.

Just last week, The Capital Times, a 90-year-old daily newspaper in Madison, Wis., ended its print version and began publishing only online.

The journey beyond print is uncertain and perilous, but the experience of I.D.G., the world’s largest publisher of technology newspapers and magazines, suggests that it can be done. A privately held company, whose magazines include Computerworld, InfoWorld, PC World, Macworld and CIO, it appears to have made a profitable migration to the Internet, with revenue from online ads now surpassing print revenue.

Advertisers and readers of high-tech publications have moved online more swiftly than other audiences, so I.D.G. may offer a glimpse of the future of publishing. Yet the transition at I.D.G. came only after years of investment, upheaval and changes in its practice of journalism.

“The excellent thing, and good news, for publishers is that there is life after print — in fact, a better life after print,” said Patrick J. McGovern, the founder and chairman of I.D.G.

The biggest single step in the company’s online shift came on April 2, 2007, when the last print edition of InfoWorld appeared and it became a Web-only publication. InfoWorld, a weekly, started out as Intelligent Machines Journal in 1978; I.D.G. bought it a year later, and it has long been one of the company’s flagship magazines.

There were nervous months after the switch as the company awaited the reaction from advertisers and readers, but before long InfoWorld’s Web audience was growing and its business improved. Today, I.D.G. says, the InfoWorld Web site is generating ad revenue of $1.6 million a month with operating profit margins of 37 percent. A year earlier, when it had both print and online versions, InfoWorld had a slight operating loss on monthly revenue of $1.5 million.

Across the company, the remaining print publications still typically play a vital role, but a lesser one — physically smaller and financially diminished. In 2002, 86 percent of the revenue from I.D.G.’s publications came from print and 14 percent online. These days, 52 percent of the revenue is from online ads, while 48 percent is from the print side.

Last year, print and online publications accounted for 70 percent of I.D.G.’s $3 billion in revenue, with the rest coming from its conference business and its technology research firm, I.D.C.

The giant technology publisher has not just stabilized its business, Mr. McGovern said, but is also now growing at about 10 percent a year — though a severe recession would surely dim its growth prospects this year.

Throughout its far-flung network of 300 print publications and 450 Web sites in 85 countries, I.D.G. has converted smaller magazines to online only, but InfoWorld was the big one. More will come, company executives say, as print magazines slip into the red and are left behind. But they emphasize that the print versions of some publications like CIO, a glossy twice-monthly magazine, are likely to be around for many years.

CIO (for chief information officer) is distributed free to senior technology managers. It is solidly profitable and runs long articles that detail the use of technology in corporations and government institutions. A recent issue included a nine-page article on the effort to use computerized records to improve health care in California’s prison system, under a court-ordered program.

Yet even CIO has adopted what its managers call an “online first” business model. Three years ago, the editorial staff was divided into three people who worked on the Web site only and the rest only on print. Today, there are no print and Web barriers. The total staff size, at 23, is one fewer than in 2005, but now most of them spend 80 percent of their time on the Web, while a handful of writers spend 80 percent of their time on the long centerpiece articles in the print magazine.

But everyone writes for the Web these days. “It’s only fair to people for their career development,” said Michael Friedenberg, the president of CIO. “How can you say to anyone, in this environment, that they can only write in print and not online?”

The most striking change, though, has occurred at more news-oriented publications like InfoWorld, the former weekly, given the Internet’s ability to deliver news instantly to readers and deliver narrowly defined audiences to advertisers.

When Robert Carrigan, the executive in charge of I.D.G. media properties, met with the senior business managers of InfoWorld in February last year, the only thing left to decide was the death date for the print edition. With a controlled circulation of 180,000 copies, the print edition was losing money, while investment and resources had shifted to the InfoWorld Web site. “We were eager to evolve the business and prove what we felt deep down, that we could move beyond print,” Mr. Carrigan said.

There was little surprise in the editorial ranks either. By then, the editorial staff was down to its current level of 17 people, about half the number in 2002, and way below the peak of nearly 100 during the technology spending boom of the late 1990s. The separation of the print and online staffs had ended long before.

Steve Fox, the editor in chief of InfoWorld at the time, said that the most fundamental difference between print and online was the ability to measure precisely how many readers view a particular article on the Web — and how those results influence editorial decisions on what to write about.

The link to the business is direct. When a person views a Web page, ads are automatically presented on the page and the publisher collects a payment.

“It’s wonderful to have the feedback that you get online, but you need enlightened ownership so that you are not a slave to page views,” said Mr. Fox, who left amicably last October to join a social networking start-up.

At InfoWorld, page views are important, said Eric Knorr, the current editor in chief, but as a guide rather than a substitute for editorial judgment. Predictably, he added, certain topics that stir strong opinions among technology readers produce spikes in traffic. “If we were chasing page views, all we’d ever write about is H1-B visas for tech workers, Macs and how bad Microsoft is,” Mr. Knorr said.

Yet as a Web-only publication, InfoWorld is very different from the bygone print edition. Gone, Mr. Knorr says, are the long pieces of more than 3,000 words, with anecdotes and narrative, examining how technology had transformed some company or industry. Instead, he said, the key online is packaging information into “digestible chunks,” typically of no more than a page of text or so, sometimes in lists of “10 things to do” to solve some technology problem in companies.

The Web, Mr. Knorr said, also opens the door to offerings that are impossible in print. He pointed to short animations that explain complex technologies, and an online petition urging Microsoft to keep selling the aging Windows XP operating system beyond its June cutoff date, which has collected 160,000 names.

Without the physical limitations of print, Mr. Knorr said, it becomes easier to explore topics more deeply. InfoWorld presents a stable of bloggers, including 19 freelance writers, who are authorities in niches including data protection, green technology, open source software and cloud computing.

The goal, with reporting and blogging, Mr. Knorr said, is to create “thought leadership and depth” in several subject areas online, and also set up InfoWorld conferences around those topics.

The approach, it seems, resonates with the advertising industry. “Print brands are going to continue to live, but the distribution channels are certainly changing and so is the content,” said Latha Sundaram, a senior vice president at Starcom Worldwide, an advertising buyer. “InfoWorld has focused on the depth of information in technology that is best presented in an online format.”

Stewart Alsop, a journalist turned venture capitalist, was the editor in chief of InfoWorld in the 1990s, when it was thick with ads and its editorial staff was at its peak. “Technology publishing just happens to be at the point of this whole transformation of media,” Mr. Alsop said. “What’s happening at I.D.G. is a fairly accurate map for every other publishing organization. Get over it, it’s going to happen.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/05/bu...dia/05idg.html





Mobile TV Spreading in Europe and to the U.S.
Kevin J. O’Brien

Every day in Switzerland, 40,000 people watch a 100-second television news broadcast on their cellphones. In Italy, a million people pay as much as 19 euros each ($29) a month to watch up to a dozen mobile TV channels.

Tiny TV, the kind that is watched on a cellphone, is spreading beyond Japan and South Korea, where it has been available for about three years. Mobile operators across Europe and the United States are investing in new broadcasting towers, mobile devices, and television programming and promotions, even though it is not yet clear that profit will follow.

On Sunday, AT&T Wireless, with 71.4 million phone customers, started AT&T Mobile TV in the United States. The 10-channel service, costing $15 a month, includes Pix, a channel with movies from Sony Pictures. AT&T will sell cellphones made by LG Electronics and Samsung that can receive the TV broadcasts.

Britain is auctioning wireless spectrum this month that could be used for mobile TV. France plans to award a license for a 13-channel mobile video service in June. In Germany, Mobile 3.0, an investor group led by a South African-based media company, Naspers, plans to start a video service this year.

These services join a handful of other mobile TV offerings like those in Switzerland and Italy, all beamed from special transmission towers to tiny receivers in the mobile phones.

Until the mobile broadcasting technology appeared three years ago, cellphone operators had to send video as prepackaged clips to individual customers over high-speed, third-generation phone networks. That proved costly to both operators and viewers, and the large video packets slowed other voice and data traffic on those networks. Direct mobile broadcasting does not tax the so-called 3G networks.

Japan is the leader in direct mobile television, with 20 million cellphones equipped with TV receivers, followed by South Korea with 8.2 million, according to In-Stat, a research and consulting firm in Scottsdale, Ariz. In-Stat estimated that there were 29.7 million mobile TV viewers worldwide at the end of 2007. That is expected to almost double, to 56.9 million, at the end of 2008, driven by growth in Japan.

Italy has been an early leader in Europe, with service beginning in 2006. The largest mobile TV broadcaster on the Continent is 3 Italia, a cellular operator owned by Hutchison Whampoa of Hong Kong, with 800,000 customers, about 10 percent of its total phone clients. The million Italian viewers watch up to a dozen channels.

Swisscom offers a 20-channel viewing lineup, which costs 13 Swiss francs ($12.50) a month.

For some operators, mobile TV remains a niche service. In the United States, Verizon Wireless has offered mobile TV since March 2007, but In-Stat estimated that it had fewer than 100,000 paying viewers.

Robert Briel, publisher of Mobile Broadband News in Amsterdam, an online information service for mobile operators and equipment makers, said he was skeptical about the prospects for mobile TV. People prefer to watch television on larger screens and most adults do not have the time or the need to watch it on a phone, he said.

The European video broadcasts use a standard called DVB-H, short for Digital Video Broadcasting for Hand-helds, which was developed by the DVB Project, a group of 275 media , entertainment and telecommunications companies based in Geneva.

Last July, the European Commission recommended that nations in the European Union use the DVB-H standard for mobile video, but the recommendation was not binding. In the United States, Verizon Wireless and AT&T Wireless use a rival technology called MediaFlo, which was developed by Qualcomm. Japan, South Korea and China use other standards.

All of these technologies let mobile network operators control television broadcasts by selling receiver-equipped cellphones and programming packages.

“It is fair to say that no single global standard has emerged as dominant yet,” said Lars Felber, product marketing manager at Elgato, a company in Munich that makes U.S.B.-stick TV receivers for Apple computers. “What appears to be emerging is a collection of different, complementary technologies.”

While it is unclear which standard will prevail, equipment makers like Telegent Systems, of Sunnyvale, Calif., produce chips for all the standards.

“This is really a phenomenon that is going to change viewing habits around the world,” said Weijie Yun, a founder and chief executive of Telegent.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/05/bu.../05mobile.html





Erosion in Young Audience Shows Cracks in 'Idol' Future
David Bauder

The fevered response to the latest loopy Paula Abdul episode, where she judged a phantom performance, just goes to show how "American Idol" continues to dominate television in its seventh season.

Yet while "Idol" is still a hit, it's no longer necessarily hip.

You can hear it in the lack of enthusiasm in 14-year-old Katharine Bohrs' voice.

"Last year I was really into it, and the year before that," said the high school freshman from Brookline, Mass. "This year in the beginning I was, but then track started up and I have a lot of homework. It's two hours long and I don't have the time."

She used to watch regularly with a friend. Now her friend records it and watches only occasionally, Bohrs said.

Statistics back up the anecdote. Audience declines for "American Idol" are steepest among youthful viewers, the people who set the pop culture agenda and are most likely to buy music made by the show's winners. These are not the people you want to turn off.

Make no mistake, "American Idol" is still the biggest thing on television. It is the reason why Fox will end the TV season later this month as the nation's most-watched network for the first time in history.

The show is averaging 28.7 million viewers this year, according to Nielsen Media Research. That's down 7 percent from the nearly 31 million viewers who watched last year. It's also typical -- maybe better than typical: in this writers strike-marred season, "CSI: Crime Scene Investigation" has shed 19 percent of its viewers, "Grey's Anatomy" is down 20 percent and "Survivor" is off 9 percent from last spring's edition.

"We're not in denial that the ratings are down," said Preston Beckman, Fox's chief scheduling executive. "There are things that we can control and there are things that we can't control. I defy anyone to show you a hit show that has been on for seven seasons that is at the level this one is on relative to where it started."

Among women aged 18 to 34, the "American Idol" audience has slipped 18 percent this year. Isolate teenagers 12-to-17, and the drop is 12 percent.

The median age of an "American Idol" viewer, once in the mid-30s, is now up to 42, Nielsen said.

And -- horror of horrors -- viewership is actually UP this season among people aged 50 and over. Those are the folks many television tastemakers pretend don't exist.

At the beginning of "American Idol," contestants like winner Kelly Clarkson seemed more sincere and devoted to their singing, said Chrissy Will, 16, a resident of California's suburban Orange County. Now they seem more focused on publicity and fame, she said.

"It's completely repetitive," Will said. "It's the same thing as the year before."

Her friend, Tina Oram, 17, said "Idol" now seems boring and over-promoted. She's more interested in watching dance contests (ABC's "Dancing With the Stars" is up in the ratings this season.)

"You can't not put your heart into dancing," she said.
http://www.newstimes.com/ci_9167822





Iraq Vet, Talk Show Pioneer Pair For Anti - War Film

Phil Donahue met thousands of intriguing people during three decades as a top TV talk show host, but it was an inert Iraq war veteran in a hospital bed that led him to the most compelling story in his life.

"I met Tomas at Walter Reed and he wasn't communicating anything," Donahue remembers of his visit to the Washington DC military hospital. "He didn't meet me, I met him. He was totally medicated. As I stood next to his bed, his mother explained the gravity of his injuries."

U.S. Army soldier Tomas Young was paralyzed from the chest down at 25 years of age after a bullet pierced his spine in his first week serving in Iraq. Donahue, now 72, couldn't get Young out of his head and set the wheels in motion to make his first documentary, "Body of War," now showing in U.S. theaters.

Donahue and filmmaker Ellen Spiro tell in graphic detail the challenges of the young man in his wheelchair -- his pain, frustration and difficulties managing bodily functions. One scene shows his mother inserting a catheter so he can urinate on a road trip.

But Donahue and Spiro don't stop at the physical aspects of Young's life. They follow the veteran's conversion into an anti-war activist as he goes on the TV news magazine "60 Minutes" and addresses church and veterans groups across the United States.

Even when he could hardly finish sentences, Young quipped "Soldiers voting for President Bush is like chickens voting for Colonel Sanders." With statements like that, Donahue and Spiro knew they had a star.

"This is a huge sacrifice," Donahue told Reuters ahead of the Los Angeles premiere. "This man can't walk. You know, prime of life and we don't see this. And I just think it is wrong. If you are going to send people, we have the responsibility to show the sacrifice that is being made."

'How Did This Happen?'

But Donahue wanted to go further than simply illustrating the hardships endured by Young to drive home his own opposition to the war, which has killed over 4,000 U.S. troops and injured 29,000 in five years.

"I didn't just want a film of this young man struggling," Donahue said. "We wanted people to see how we got here. How did this happen?"

He decided "Body of War" should have a parallel track showing the U.S. Congress voting in October 2002 to give President Bush authorization to go to war against Iraq.

Donahue reviewed more than 100 hours of debate in Congress on the vote and noticed a pro-war script taking hold with phrases like: "Inaction is worse than action" and "A smoking gun will become a mushroom cloud."

The star of the political storyline is then octogenarian Democratic Senator Robert Byrd, the longest serving member in the history of the Senate and opponent of the war who calls the 2002 vote the most important in his career.

"Byrd makes the case that if you scare the people, they will always come along and do the bidding of the leaders," said Donahue, his blue eyes bulging with anger over the proceedings.

When Donahue met Young a few years later, he started thinking about the old Byrd and the youngster Young getting together to talk, and he makes that happen, providing one of the most poignant scenes in the film in which they review the historic Senate vote.

Throughout his long career on TV, Donahue hosted over 7,000 one-hour daily shows and pioneered a talk show format that thrives today, but he never had designs on documentaries and is surprised how much his first film moved him.

"It has been a singular experience of my lifetime," he said. "I have never been this close to something this real, this challenging, this complicated, this political."

(Reporting by Mary Milliken; Editing by Bob Tourtellotte)

(For multimedia click on http://www.reuters.com/news/globalcoverage/iraqveterans)
http://www.reuters.com/article/lates.../idUSN02366750





Indiana Jones and the Savior of a Lost Art
Terrence Rafferty

“THIS is a recreational activity for me” is surely among the last things you’d expect to hear from the director of a huge, costly, dauntingly complex summer action movie as it nears completion, with its release date just a few weeks away.

But that is what Steven Spielberg said not long ago, speaking by phone from a dub stage where he was supervising the sound mixing of “Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull” (opening May 22), the first new installment in 19 years of the crowd-pleasing adventure-movie franchise that began in 1981 with “Raiders of the Lost Ark.” “In 1989,” Mr. Spielberg said, referring to the year “Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade” came out, “I thought the curtain was lowering on the series, which is why I had all the characters literally ride off into the sunset at the end. But ever since then the most common question I get asked, all over the world, is, ‘When are you going to make another Indiana Jones?’ ”

It’s a fair guess that theater operators and executives at Paramount Pictures have asked that question at least as frequently as the ticket-buying public has, and perhaps with a shade more urgency: the three Indy pictures — “Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom” (1984) was the one in the middle — have raked in well over a billion dollars worldwide from their theatrical releases alone. The anticipation, on the part of both the fans and the suits, falls somewhere between keen and breathless. And for most filmmakers that level of expectation might appear in their clammier dreams as a giant boulder bearing down on them and picking up speed.

“I’m having a great time,” Mr. Spielberg said. And, unlikely though this may seem, you can’t help believing him; he certainly sounds excited, and the secret of the Indiana Jones movies’ success has always been their free-spirited inventiveness, a what-the-hell quality that can’t (or shouldn’t) be faked, even on a gigantic budget.

Weirdly, authenticity — not faking it — is very much on his mind when he makes one of these unabashedly preposterous movies, whose hero (still played by Harrison Ford) is a two-fisted, bullwhip-wielding academic archaeologist zipping around the globe in search of rare mystical artifacts and in the process running afoul of Nazis, creepy human-sacrifice cults and other exemplars of unambiguous, unadulterated evil.

Even by the extremely flexible standards of high-adventure pulp, the Indy pictures are a pretty stern test of the audience’s willingness to suspend disbelief. (At times you feel as if it were hanging, as the hero periodically does, over a mass of writhing, fang-baring snakes, or a river full of famished crocodiles.) The authenticity Mr. Spielberg is concerned with here is something other than the historical realism of, say, “Schindler’s List” or “Munich”; what he wanted to talk about was the physical integrity of the action, of which there is, in an Indiana Jones movie, plenty.

The tone and style of the films derive from the movie serials of the 1930s and ’40s, which Mr. Spielberg, growing up in the ’50s, used to see on Saturday mornings at a revival theater in Scottsdale, Ariz.

“They made a great impression on me, both because of how exciting they were and because of how cheesy they were,” he said. “I’d kind of be involved in the stories and be ridiculing them at the same time. One week they’d give us a cliffhanger with the good guy going off the cliff, the car crashing on the rocks below and blowing up, and then the next week he’s fine. They forgot to show us the cut of the guy jumping out of the car? That we weren’t going to do in the Indiana Jones series.”

In fact, Mr. Spielberg said, he tries to cut as little as possible in these movies’ action sequences, because “every time the camera changes dynamic angles, you feel there’s something wrong, that there’s some cheating going on.” So his goal is “to do the shots the way Chaplin or Keaton would, everything happening before the eyes of the audience, without a cut.”

Warming to the subject, he went on: “The idea is, there’s no illusion; what you see is what you get. My movies have never been frenetically cut, the way a lot of action is done today. That’s not a put-down; some of that quick cutting, like in ‘The Bourne Ultimatum,’ is fantastic, just takes my breath away. But to get the comedy I want in the Indy films, you have to be old-fashioned. I’ve studied a lot of the old movies that made me laugh, and you’ve got to stage things in full shots and let the audience be the editor. It’s like every shot is a circus act.”

And in 1981, in “Raiders of the Lost Ark,” that approach was so old-fashioned it looked new. (It’s difficult to remember now just how stodgy and joyless the action genre had become; even the James Bond movies, reliably sprightly in the ’60s, turned into slow-footed, campy behemoths in the ’70s with entries like “Moonraker.”)

In the 27 years since, practically every action filmmaker has tried to drink from the grail of Indiana Jones, to tap into the movie’s quasi-mystical kinetic (and commercial) power: the pace had to be blindingly fast; the stunts insanely elaborate, the villainy extra-villainous; the hero’s attitude blithe, insouciant, almost sociopathically cool. Mr. Spielberg and George Lucas — who produces the movies and who dreamed up the basic idea of the series — have a lot to answer for.

The sad truth is that the enormous influence of the Indiana Jones films has been a distinctly mixed blessing. Action movies are, over all, a good deal snappier than they were 30 years ago, but they also tend to be a good deal less intelligible. They skimp on the exposition and go straight for sensation, as if cutting to the chase were not a metaphor but literally the cardinal rule of filmmaking. And that’s true not only of the most egregious Indiana Jones knockoffs — the “Mummy,” “National Treasure” and “Lara Croft” movies spring, unwelcomely, to mind — but of nearly every studio picture that features more action than, say, “My Dinner With André.” It’s no accident that movies of this sort, ubiquitous in summertime, are so often blurbed as “thrill rides”: they can be that exhausting, and that pointless.

Pointlessness is, however, in the eye of the beholder. When asked what kind of films he enjoyed most as a boy, Mr. Spielberg replied, simply, “Anything with a lot of movement,” and quite a few of us would say the same. Swift, thrilling motion is the hook that pulls young imaginations into movies, and although your taste might get a tad more refined over the years, vivid, intricate, ingeniously choreographed action can still give you that Saturday-matinee charge of pleasure.

The perilously long and complicated opening sequence of “Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom” for example — in which a song-and-dance number (“Anything Goes,” sung in Mandarin) turns into a wild slapstick action scene involving a diamond, a poisoned drink and an elusive vial of antidote, and ends with Indy and his companions jumping out of a plane in a rubber raft — delivers that sort of giddy, mildly deranging stimulation. The staging and the cutting have the “can you top this?” audacity of a silent comedy, and the timing is slyly impeccable: it’s about the length of a Keaton two-reeler.

It hardly matters that the “Anything Goes” set piece was originally planned for “Raiders of the Lost Ark.” The big action scenes in the Indiana Jones movies are almost risibly inorganic to the narratives that contain them. This kind of randomness is risky — not to be tried at home, or by any filmmaker less prodigiously gifted than Mr. Spielberg. You need a rigorous imagination for visual comedy to make movies as exhilaratingly ridiculous as these.

“John Williams and I have a word we use when we have something we think the audience will love,” Mr. Spielberg said, referring to the composer who has scored all the Indiana Jones movies. “Maybe it’ll be a little over the top, and we ask each other, ‘Are we being too shameless?’ In a way I think we’ve both grown kind of proud of being shameless.”

When the jokes are good, as they frequently are in the Indy pictures, there’s every reason for pride. These goofy movies tell you as much about Steven Spielberg as his more serious work does. Movies truly are a form of recreation for him, and he’s the kind of artist who reveals himself fully in the intensity of his play. In the Indiana Jones movies he revives the spirit of silent comedy in the adventures of an intellectual with a bullwhip. And that’s a feat that, whether you think it’s worth doing or not, at least deserves high marks for degree of difficulty. If only everybody else in Hollywood hadn’t tried to imitate him, he’d have nothing to be ashamed of at all.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/04/mo...al/04raff.html





Indiana Jones Is Battling the Long Knives of the Internet
Michael Cieply

Now comes the part where Indiana Jones dangles over the snake pit of public opinion.

Actually, a handful of Web reviewers have already struck at the film “Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull,” despite an intense effort by the director Steven Spielberg, the executive producer George Lucas and Paramount Pictures to keep this highly anticipated sequel out of sight until Sunday, May 18.

On that day, this fourth Indiana Jones movie is scheduled to make its debut at the Cannes Film Festival with an afternoon press screening, and another one at night.

At about the same time, the picture, which opens in theaters on the following Thursday, is expected to be screened for the news media and industry insiders at multiple showings in Manhattan and Los Angeles, while other screenings are scheduled around the world.

Mr. Spielberg is unusually fastidious when it comes to protecting his films from advance word that can diminish excitement or muddy a message planted by months of carefully orchestrated publicity and expensive promotions (including, in this case, a February cover article in Vanity Fair, complete with Annie Leibovitz photos of the cast, and leather bullwhips delivered weeks ago to newsrooms).

Mr. Spielberg customarily avoids leaky test screenings. Even Marvin Levy, his publicist of more than 30 years, said he had not yet seen the new movie.

Still, there it was, at 6:42 a.m. on Thursday: a harshly critical review on aintitcoolnews.com, from a poster who identified himself as “ShogunMaster.” Rife with details from the film, the review said, “This is the Indiana Movie that you were dreading.”

By that afternoon two other less critical, but less than sparkling, reviews also appeared on the Web site.

The man who posted as ShogunMaster, reached via the Web site, said he is a theater executive who saw the film at an exhibitors’ screening this week. He spoke on condition of anonymity to avoid reprisal from the studio.

Paramount had shown the film to a handful of theater company executives at its Los Angeles lot and elsewhere.

Movie studios increasingly tend to protect their biggest bets from advance showings. Two years ago, for instance, Sony Pictures screened “The Da Vinci Code” for critics at the Cannes Film Festival only two days before its opening in the United States. But exhibitors’ screenings can open a window for determined reviewers.

Such screenings are required in about two dozen states that have laws against blind-bidding, a practice in which theater owners were once asked to bid on films they had not seen.

As a practical matter, there is little or no actual bidding in the contemporary theater business, which relies instead on negotiations between distributors and theater owners. But distributors continue to hold screenings for theater company executives in the weeks before a film’s release, whether as a courtesy or as a way to avoid conflict with a patchwork of state laws.

Theater executives may have an incentive to play down a movie’s prospects after such a screening, to get better terms. In any case, many fans will most likely flock to “Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull,” if only to make their own judgments about Mr. Spielberg’s decision to revisit the franchise fully 19 years after its last installment. Still, bad notices could keep the more ambivalent moviegoers from attending and thwart a truly huge box office haul.

According to Mr. Levy, who spoke by telephone on Thursday, Mr. Spielberg has kept a watchful eye on virtually every aspect of the film’s marketing campaign. “He gets involved with everything,” Mr. Levy said. “Every TV spot, every line in every ad, every advertising concept.” (Among the marketing tie-ins were Indiana Jones fedoras, available at Blockbuster stores.)

The current campaign has been engineered to create excitement around the opening date, May 22 — some billboards feature the date, in flame-colored letters, and little else — without telling too much about the film. Last year the movie’s producers went so far as to file a lawsuit against a bit player who had publicly discussed the film’s plot, which involves the exploits of an aging archaeological adventurer, still played by Harrison Ford, now 65.

The campaign has been effective so far. Fandango, which sells film tickets online, said this week that it was “seeing brisk advance ticket sales” to “Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull,” identified as the summer’s most anticipated film in a poll Fandango conducted of moviegoers.

But a better gauge of success is likely to be the extent of online sales in the few days after the film screens at Cannes — and after many reviewers have weighed in.

Tim Ryan, a senior editor at Rottentomatoes.com, which compiles film reviews, said he expected those of “Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull” to surface “maybe an hour or two” after the Sunday afternoon press screening in France. His company will have someone on hand to post them immediately, Mr. Ryan said.

As rated by Rottentomatoes, the earlier “Indiana Jones” films enjoyed strong reviews. The worst-reviewed of the three — the second, “Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom,” released in 1984 — was still the third-most-popular movie of the year.

Mr. Spielberg, Mr. Levy said, may not be the first to know if the aging Indy manages to wriggle past any negative early notices to score another hit. “When a movie opens, he usually disappears,” Mr. Levy said. “He usually doesn’t want to know all the details about how it’s doing.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/10/movies/10indy.html





A Man of Steel With Feet of Clay
Michael Cieply

TWICE in the last month visits to the Sony Pictures lot here went much the same way.

The normally efficient guards at the gate struggled with their computers. They were unable, on the first trip, to find a trace of the writer-producer Akiva Goldsman or, on the second, of the actor and director Peter Berg.

“Why aren’t these people in the system?” snapped an exasperated young man in the booth on the second visit.

Actually, both Mr. Goldsman and Mr. Berg are in the system. Sort of.

Lately the two men are fixtures at Sony, where they have spent the breezy spring weeks in meeting rooms and darkened stages, wrangling the last round of work on a film, “Hancock,” that will occupy thousands of America’s movie screens over the July 4 weekend.

In a larger sense, however, the two are exactly what they seemed during those hang-ups at the studio gate: consummate insiders with just enough of the outsider about them to keep the Hollywood system on edge.

Both make big movies for big companies. “Hancock,” with Will Smith — by some accounts the most valuable star in the world right now — will cost roughly $150 million to produce, and a similarly large amount to market worldwide.

Yet neither can resist the kind of movie that nudges a studio one step beyond its safety zone. “Mr. & Mrs. Smith,” of which Mr. Goldsman was a producer, was a tale of love-struck assassins trying to kill each other; “The Kingdom,” directed by Mr. Berg, was an unlikely action caper set in Saudi Arabia.

“Hancock” is probably two steps past safe. This time Mr. Smith, who shares a penchant for pushing the envelope (think of “Ali,” undertaken when he was still an action-comedy star), plays a superhero who swills bourbon, hates his job and looks unnervingly like Mr. Berg, who was considerably bedraggled in the final weeks of work on his film. (According to Mr. Goldsman, Mr. Smith, on meeting Mr. Berg in one of his work-worn states, said: “Oh. Oh. He is Hancock.”)

Along with, among others, Michael Mann, one of the producers of “Hancock,” and James Lassiter, Mr. Smith’s longtime producing partner, the two belong to what Mr. Goldsman likes to call a loose collective of like-minded filmmakers. By their own account they keep pushing an increasingly corporate entertainment industry to do what scares it a little — and not just stick to a summerful of sequels and animated sure shots.

“It is more difficult, and more necessary, at the same time,” Mr. Mann said recently, speaking of the ticklish art of making movies that keep the system from boring itself, and the audience along with it.

So “Hancock,” whether it succeeds or fails, will most likely be remembered for having forced Hollywood to reach a bit farther than it likes to go. That has happened in the past with unconventional hits like “Star Wars,” “Titanic” and “The Sixth Sense,” and with dozens of flops like “Last Action Hero” and “Heaven’s Gate.”

Eleven weeks before the release of “Hancock” Mr. Berg and company were still testing the creative boundaries. Their picture has a spot on the schedule filled last year by Paramount’s toy-driven crowd-pleaser, “Transformers.” As of mid-April, however, it had been twice to the ratings board and tagged each time with an R, not acceptable for a movie that must ultimately be rated PG-13 to reach its intended broad audience.

“We had statutory rape up until three weeks ago,” Mr. Berg said, describing just one of the elements that has turned “Hancock” into an exercise in brinkmanship.

Sipping coffee in a studio kitchenette, having finally been allowed through the gate, three-day growth and worn Macalester Scots T-shirt notwithstanding, he spoke with a candor usually reserved for the retrospective DVD commentary.

The film, he said, remained surprisingly sexual, violent and true in spirit to an original script that was viewed as brilliant but unmakable when its creator, Vincent Ngo, first circulated it more than a decade ago under the title “Tonight, He Comes.”

Keeping it that way became what Mr. Berg called “an epic game of chicken.” The filmmakers, for instance, long ago conceded that their hero should not get drunk with a 12-year-old. But their concession was a bargaining chip, aimed at keeping a similar situation with a 17-year-old in the final version, which was still weeks from being locked as Mr. Berg spoke in April. Another touchy area, Mr. Berg said, involved flying, never mind driving, under the influence.

Asked about the process, Amy Pascal, Sony’s co-chairwoman, took a chipper view. “Will Smith playing a superhero in a movie that’s funny and has tons of action, that’s not so hard,” she said in a telephone interview.

Pressed a bit, however, Ms. Pascal acknowledged that “Hancock” does break some ground. “It’s scary in that it goes farther than we’ve gone before,” she said.

By Mr. Berg’s lights the executives became comfortable with the film only recently. That occurred when they settled on a marketing approach that played down drama in favor of action and humor. In one of the trailer’s highlights Mr. Smith heaves a beached whale out to sea and smashes a sailboat.

“The ad campaign for this movie is much friendlier than the film,” Mr. Berg noted.

That Sony would stake its summer on an unusually alienated superhero — even the Batman of “The Dark Knight” does not sleep on a bus bench — owes much to its enduring relationship with Mr. Smith. Beginning with “Bad Boys” in 1995, he has made seven films with the studio, all of them successes. “Will Smith in anything makes it even better,” Ms. Pascal said.

That Mr. Smith in turn would stake his platinum persona on such an unlikable (by design) character owes a great deal to Mr. Goldsman, who has made a career out of movies that are just subversive enough to let the biggest star feel he is sneaking past the studio gate.

The best of those films can look like sure bets in retrospect, but at the time they often were not. “A Beautiful Mind” had taxed Universal with its story of a schizophrenic mathematician. Yet Russell Crowe rode the role to an Academy Award nomination in 2002, and the movie won the Oscar for best picture and a writing Oscar for Mr. Goldsman.

Warner Brothers proved similarly skittish over its smash horror hit “I Am Legend,” a movie that starred Mr. Smith, with Mr. Goldsman as both a writer and a producer.

“It’s a silent movie, Will doesn’t make a single joke, we kill a dog and then kill” the hero, Mr. Goldsman said, describing studio reservations about his version of the “Legend” script.

Almost as dapper as Mr. Berg is grizzled, Mr. Goldsman is at ease in a sport coat and delights in playing the cheerful provocateur. Over a Cobb salad in Sony’s commissary, he recalled offering Mr. Ngo’s far more difficult screenplay to Warner executives, who were then busy trying to revive their Superman franchise. As he remembered it, they said: “No. No. No, no, no.”

Later he persuaded a college friend, Richard Saperstein, to acquire an option on the script for an independent company, Artisan Entertainment, where Mr. Saperstein was an executive. Mr. Mann, another friend, agreed to direct it, but at a crucial moment chose to do “Miami Vice” for Universal instead, though he remained a producer.

Artisan disappeared in a corporate shuffle. Vince Gilligan (the “X-Files” television series and the AMC series “Breaking Bad”) and John August (“Big Fish”) eventually did rewrites. First Jonathan Mostow (“Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines”) and then Gabriele Muccino (“The Pursuit of Happyness”) were expected to direct, before Mr. Berg finally took over.

(Mr. Ngo declined to be interviewed for this article. His agent said that Mr. Ngo, who was born in Vietnam, intends to build a school in that country with his money from “Hancock.”)

Along the way Mr. Goldsman persuaded Mr. Smith to play the role and took the project once more to Warner — which again passed, allowing Ms. Pascal and Sony to step in.

“This is about why Superman can’t get a date,” Mr. Goldsman said, speaking of Warner’s reluctance to make a movie that dares to parody one of its most enduring characters. Hancock, he explained, cannot spend the night with a woman he meets at a party. “The physical impracticalities of this, this is what we play with,” he said.

The material is sufficiently risqué that Mr. Goldsman said he now believes the system — executives, agents, leery handlers — might have warned Mr. Smith away from it, had Mr. Goldsman not traded directly on a working friendship rooted in his earlier involvement with both “I Am Legend” and “I, Robot.” (Mr. Smith did not respond to requests, through his publicist, to be interviewed for this article.)

It also helped that Mr. Goldsman is no stranger to Sony, confusion at the guard stand aside. He has adapted both “The Da Vinci Code” and its sequel, “Angels & Demons,” for the studio and Imagine Entertainment.

Still, executives must be mindful of the risks into which Mr. Goldsman and his associates have drawn the company. It has its own superhero franchise to protect, in “Spider-Man,” and a star who has made Sony a fortune when he has been inspirational, as in “The Pursuit of Happyness” in 2006, or lovable, as in “Hitch” a year earlier.

But the best ones are always a bit intimidating. “So was Jack Nicholson in ‘As Good as It Gets,’ ” a Sony film for which he won an Oscar, Ms. Pascal said.

And, as Mr. Goldsman noted, the business still yearns, in its wary way, for life on the edge.

“Everybody knows that you want to break the box,” he said. “It’s just that the act of breaking the box is really frightening.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/04/mo...al/04ciep.html





Uma Thurman’s Pursuer Is Found Guilty of Stalking
Anemona Hartocollis and John Eligon

Jack Jordan, a University of Chicago graduate turned drifter who lived in his car, was found guilty on Tuesday of stalking the actress Uma Thurman, the star of edgy, violent movies like “Kill Bill” and “Pulp Fiction.”

He was also found guilty of one count of second-degree aggravated harassment, but was acquitted of two additional counts of second-degree aggravated harassment.

During the jury trial in State Supreme Court in Manhattan, Mr. Jordan testified in his own defense, describing his elaborate visions — which he called the daydreams of an artistic soul — that he was predestined to meet Ms. Thurman and live a happy life with her and her two children.

The trial attracted widespread attention because Ms. Thurman testified, along with her mother, Birgitte, a former Ford model known to friends as Nena, her father, Robert, a professor of Indo-Tibetan studies at Columbia University, and her brother, Dechen.

Mr. Jordan testified for about five hours with the calm, neutral demeanor of someone at a college or job interview. His father, a nuclear physicist, and brother attended some of the trial, his lawyer said. Mr. Jordan carried an overstuffed hiking backpack to court every day, and was photographed sleeping on a street in Chelsea during the trial.

Mr. Jordan faced one count of stalking Ms. Thurman from 2005 to 2007, with a hiatus of about a year in 2006, and three counts of aggravated harassment by sending her and people around her notes and letters.

Both charges are misdemeanors, and he faces up to 90 days in jail on the stalking charge, with possibly more time for the aggravated harassment. His lawyer said that Mr. Jordan had turned down a prosecution offer to plead guilty to aggravated harassment in return for a sentence of 18 months in inpatient psychiatric treatment, which would be reduced to a violation once completed.

Under the legal definition of stalking and aggravated harassment, whether he was convicted depended a great deal on the jury’s assessment of Mr. Jordan’s and Ms. Thurman’s states of mind — whether he intended to scare her, and whether she, in turn, was reacting in a natural and predictable way by being scared of him.

Mr. Jordan testified that he never thought of himself as a stalker. He said he was engaged “in a game of cat and mouse,” with Ms. Thurman, and that he sometimes thought of her as the cat, “courting” him. He said he had seen coincidences between what happened to her characters in her movies and his own life.

He said he continued to pursue Ms. Thurman because he thought she might want to meet him, but was being prevented by an “infrastructure” of assistants and security around her. He said he never realized that she might feel threatened by the cards he sent her. “I see it now,” he said. “I’ve been shocked at how everyone responded.”

His defense lawyer, George Vomvolakis, portrayed him as a social misfit with a strange sense of humor who was meek and harmless.

Mr. Vomvolakis suggested that the jury could identify with Mr. Jordan, if they tried. “Think about your lives and what you have done in your lives in the name of love,” he urged. “Think about the stupid things you have done.”

Mr. Vomvolakis said his client was being prosecuted because the district attorney’s office was protecting a celebrity, and that Mr. Jordan’s would not have led to such charges if he had become fixated on an ordinary woman.

He urged the jury to set aside their layman’s idea of a stalker — someone who was fixated, obsessed, infatuated — essentially conceding that Mr. Jordan fit that profile. They should focus, he said, on whether Mr. Jordan had broken the law by being knowingly threatening to Ms. Thurman.

The prosecution portrayed him as a calculating, manipulative liar, who knew he was making Ms. Thurman fear for her life and that of her children.

“He wanted to be with Uma Thurman and he would not take no for an answer,” Ms. Taub said. “I mean, really, the manipulation here, you have to see it.”

Mr. Jordan, 37, one of the younger of eight children, grew up in Maryland and graduated from the University of Chicago with a literature degree in 1994. He testified that he developed a crush on Ms. Thurman, 38, after seeing her in “The Adventures of Baron Munchausen” while he was in high school.

After college, he co-founded a hiking and study abroad nonprofit organization called Go Trek, although he seemed to drift away from it, focusing on bureaucratic duties like fund-raising while holding what he described as healthy jobs where he could clear his mind, like pool-cleaning.

In the fall of 2004, he heard Robert Thurman being interviewed on public radio about his book, “Circling the Sacred Mountain.” He testified that he “took an instant liking” to Professor Thurman, and began writing to him, asking if he would become a board member of Go Trek.

Professor Thurman politely rebuffed Mr. Jordan’s e-mail messages, and testified that “air-raid sirens” went off in his head as Mr. Jordan wrote e-mail messages saying, for instance, that Ms. Thurman’s two children were illusions.

Mr. Jordan testified that by “illusion,” he was making a literary observation, because Ms. Thurman’s daughter, Maya’s name literally meant an illusion and her son’s name, Levon, spelled backward was “novel.”

During the time he was writing to Professor Thurman, he said, he saw Ms. Thurman’s movie, “Kill Bill.”

“I was overcome by a strong feeling of affection for her,” he testified. “To me it had sort of an esoteric feeling. It was unexplainable. I had never experienced that before in my life.”

By the following May, Mr. Jordan began focusing his attention on Ms. Thurman, trying to contact her through her father, mother and brothers. Nena Thurman testified that Mr. Jordan threatened to commit suicide if they did not help him contact Ms. Thurman. They were alarmed and tried to talk him out of it, they said, and Dechen Thurman even talked to Mr. Jordan’s mother.

In his testimony, Mr. Jordan said that he had looked up the telephone number of the Thurman family house in Woodstock, N.Y., on 411.com. He said he had been reluctant to talk about his feelings, because he thought they might be interpreted as psychosis, but trusted Nena Thurman because he knew she had psychoanalytic training, and thought she might help him. He said he told her that he “suspected that Uma might be waiting to meet me.”

In November 2005, Mr. Jordan tracked the actress to the set of a movie, “My Super Ex-Girlfriend,” that she was making in SoHo. He delivered, through her entourage, a package of notes, including a child’s confirmation card and a drawing of himself, as a stick figure, walking across an Acme razor blade with Ms. Thurman, another stick figure, waiting below near an open grave.

He testified that the messages had intricate layers of meaning. They were sly references to, among other things, the Acme warehouse in Loony Tunes cartoons and the violence in her movies, which he thought would amuse Ms. Thurman and endear himself to her through his wit.

A picture of a headless bride was both a reference to her being shot in a movie and, he said, “possibly artistically in a way I didn’t understand at the time reflected a sense of my own anonymity.”

He also sent Ms. Thurman a card with tiny words written on it in a spiral pattern. Most of the words were crossed out, and those remaining were what he in his testimony called “raunchy” words like “butter,” “chocolate,” “mouth,” and the phrase, “My hands should be on your body.”

The inked-out words in the spiral note, he said, were like the marks of a censor preventing him from meeting his true love.

During cross-examination, the lead prosecutor, Jessica Taub, asked Mr. Jordan how he would feel about such a message if he were a woman. “I have some insight into the feelings of women,” Mr. Jordan replied. “My best friends growing up were my two little sisters.” But then he seemed to think better of his answer, and ended, “I don’t know.”

After Mr. Jordan’s visit to the movie set, a private investigator hired by the production company contacted his parents, who had him committed to a mental institution for a month. Mr. Jordan testified that his parents mistakenly understood that he had sent Ms. Thurman an envelope full of razors, not just a picture of a razor, and that he had been forcibly medicated.

He then took graduate courses in education in California, and left Ms. Thurman alone for about a year in 2006-7, though he sent a poem for each letter of the alphabet to her publicist, he testified. When he failed the public-school teacher test, he drove to New York, thinking he would find wealthy families to hire him as a tutor.

He began sleeping in his car — he noted that his Go Trek experience made him well versed in survival skills — and working as a lifeguard in Midtown, he said, until he could get a New York title for his car and sell it to earn a “nest egg.” During that time, in August 2007, he walked zig-zag from 30th Street to the financial district until he recognized Ms. Thurman’s Greenwich Village town house from a photograph. Her street was so beautiful, he testified, that he parked his car there and began ringing her bell day after day, once at midnight, trying to talk to her.

He put two notes in her mailbox, the basis of two of the counts of aggravated harassment (the third was the package he gave to her on the movie set). And he dropped dollar bills into her mail slot; they were symbols, he said, of his devotion and his poverty.

Ms. Thurman was on vacation in the Bahamas, but her house-sitter called the police, who gave Mr. Jordan a ticket for trespassing.

The police, he said, told him not to go west of Fifth Avenue or south of 14th Street. He obeyed, he said, because he wanted to keep his “freedom.” He camped out in his car on the Lower East Side, waiting for his Oct. 30 court date on the summons, and was arrested in early October, based on a complaint from Ms. Thurman.

Mr. Jordan said he had been humiliated by the proceedings. “What I thought was private has been made public,” he said, adding, as if correcting himself, “but that’s not the issue here.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/07/ny.../07uma.html?hp





Yotta, yotta, yotta

HP Brings Storage, Servers into One Rack
Stephen Lawson

To help IT departments prepare for the coming onslaught of data, Hewlett-Packard Co. today introduced a platform that combines storage and computing in one rack with a single file system and management console.

The HP StorageWorks 9100 Extreme Data Storage System (ExDS9100) is designed for businesses facing bigger challenges in storage than in computing. Those include Web 2.0 companies such as photo-sharing and social networking sites, as well as specialized industries such as genetics, oil and gas, said David Roberson, senior vice president and general manager of HP's StorageWorks division.

Demand for storage is doubling every 18 to 24 months, and within five years, Roberson expects to see a "yottabyte year" when the industry as a whole ships 1 yottabyte, or 1,000 zettabytes, of storage capacity. HP is investing heavily in this area because it sees a big opportunity: Enterprises will be putting much of their focus and spending there in the next two years, Roberson said. Currently, 45% of all hard drives in the world, from PCs to data centers, are sold by HP, he said.

Managing many terabytes of storage is far different from taking care of a few hundred gigabytes on a PC, said Enterprise Strategy Group Inc. analyst Mark Peters.

"You reach a point where just the sheer scale of what you're managing becomes the problem," Peters said.

Many vendors are moving toward this kind of system, including IBM, with its recent acquisition of Israeli start-up XIV, and EMC Corp., Peters said. But the ExDS9100 promises to be a good solution because of the care HP is putting into it, he said.

"There's nothing huge, bulk, cheap, easy to use that's already on the market," Peters said.

The ExDS9100 will help companies scale up their storage and computing capacity and more easily manage that capacity, according to HP. Today, in organizations with large amounts of data, it may take several administrators to manage one petabyte of data. HP wants to turn that around so a single administrator can manage several petabytes, Roberson said.

The platform consists of an HP BladeSystem chassis with room for 16 blade servers, in a rack that also accommodates storage controllers and high-density "storage blocks" with as many as 82 hard drives. A base configuration will consist of four blade servers and three storage blocks, with 246TB of storage. Customers will be able to add either type of capacity independently of the other. One rack will hold as much as 820TB, but an extra rack of storage can be added for a total of 1.64 petabytes.

Applications that access the storage will run directly on the blade servers, taking advantage of HP file-clustering software. This eliminates a tier of software, according to HP. Both servers and storage can be managed through one management console. In addition, the high density of the platform allows for efficient use of space, cooling and power, according to HP.

The ExDS9100 is scheduled to ship in the fourth quarter. HP predicted that it will cost less than $2 per gigabyte in a typical configuration.
http://www.computerworld.com/action/...&intsrc=kc_top





Hard Drive Recovered from Columbia Shuttle Solves Physics Problem

An experiment that flew on the Columbia shuttle achieves closure
JR Minkel

HARDENED DRIVE: Engineers from NASA's Johnson Space Center recovered this hard drive, a cold-plate mounted Seagate containing roughly 400 megabytes of data from the CVX-2 experiment, taken from the wreckage of Space Shuttle Columbia in February 2003. They sent this image to CVX-2 engineers in October, alerting them that the hard drive had withstood the shuttle's destruction.
NASA

Researchers have finally published the results of data recovered from a cracked and singed hard drive that fell to Earth in the debris from the Space Shuttle Columbia, which broke up during reentry on February 1, 2003, killing all seven crew members.

The hard drive contained data from the CVX-2 (Critical Viscosity of Xenon) experiment, designed to study the way xenon gas flows in microgravity. The findings, published this April in the journal Physical Review E, confirmed that when stirred vigorously, xenon exhibits a sudden change in viscosity known as shear thinning. The same effect allows whipped cream and ketchup to go from flowing smoothly like liquids to holding their shapes like solids.

Although the CVX-2 results may not change anyone's life, Robert "Bobby" Berg, the lead investigator for CVX-2 and a physicist at the National Institute of Standards and Technology in Gaithersburg, Md., says the publication caps a 20-year research project that has occupied his thoughts daily since 2003. "It was a load off my shoulders to finally get it published," says the 52-year-old researcher.

The CVX-2 experiment was designed to measure xenon's viscosity close to the critical point, or the combination of temperature and pressure at which liquid and vapor are essentially indistinguishable. Near that point, a gas should "twinkle," Berg says, as droplets quickly condense and evaporate within the thick fog. According to the theory behind shear thinning, as an object swishes through these droplets more vigorously, it should begin slicing through individual droplets and hence feel less resistance.

To test for the effect, the CVX team sent up 0.37 fluid ounces (11 milliliters) of xenon sealed in a vessel that contained a thumbnail-size nickel mesh capable of vibrating at a range of amplitudes [see image]. The group downloaded about 85 percent of the data from the 370-hour experiment while Columbia was in orbit—enough to see that it was working as expected—but the test depended on the full data, which was locked in a nearly 400-megabyte commercial hard drive ensconced in a metal "card cage" and housed with other electronics in a larger vessel in the shuttle's cargo bay.

After the reentry, Berg says, when it was not immediately recovered, "we assumed that it fell out of the cage and burned up and that was it." But engineers from Johnson Space Center had actually found the apparatus in the hanger at Kennedy Space Center where workers had laid out the Columbia debris, says James Myers of the Glenn Research Center in Cleveland, the project's lead engineer.



When the Glenn engineers learned that the hard drive had indeed survived, they sent it to Ontrack Data Recovery in Minneapolis to extract whatever data remained in the cracked hard drive disk [see image]. The data came back about 99 percent complete, but the results were so complex that isolating the shear-thinning effect took an additional several years, Berg says.

He notes that the experiment could have only worked in microgravity, to prevent the xenon from settling under its feather-light weight. With NASA's priorities shifting away from basic research, he says, "this is the sort of experiment that won't be duplicated for a long time, if ever."
http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=...olumbia&sc=rss





Melting Defects Could Lead to Smaller, More Powerful Microchips
Chandra Shekhar

As microchips shrink, even tiny defects in the lines, dots and other shapes etched on them become major barriers to performance. Princeton engineers have now found a way to literally melt away such defects, using a process that could dramatically improve chip quality without increasing fabrication cost.

The method, published in the May 4 issue of Nature Nanotechnology, enables more precise shaping of microchip components than what is possible with current technology. More precise component shapes could help manufacturers build smaller and better microchips, the key to more powerful computers and other devices.

"We are able to achieve a precision and improvement far beyond what was previously thought achievable," said electrical engineer Stephen Chou, the Joseph C. Elgin Professor of Engineering, who developed the method along with graduate student Qiangfei Xia. Chou's lab has previously pioneered a number of innovative chip making techniques, including a revolutionary method for making nanometer-scale patterns using imprinting.

Microchips work best when the structures fabricated on them are straight, thin and tall. Rough edges and other defects can degrade or even ruin chip performance in most applications. In integrated circuits, for instance, such flaws could cause current to leak and voltage to fluctuate. In optic devices, they could interfere with the transmission of light. In biological devices, they could impede the flow of DNA and other biomaterials.

"These chip defects pose serious roadblocks to future advances in many industries," Chou said.

To deal with this problem, researchers try to improve the process used to make the microchips. However, Chou said such an approach works only to a point; eventually chip makers will run up against fundamental physical limits of current manufacturing techniques. In particular, the electrons and photons that are used like chisels to carve out the microscopic features on a chip always have some random behavior. This effect becomes pronounced at very small scales and limits the accuracy of component shapes.

"What we propose instead is a paradigm shift: Rather than struggle to improve fabrication methods, we could simply fix the defects after fabrication," said Chou. "And fixing the defects could be automatic -- a process of self-perfection."

These electron microscope images show before (left column) and after (right column) examples of a new technique, developed at Princeton University, for perfecting nanometer-scale structures. (Stephen Chou/Nature Nanotechnology)

Chou's method, termed Self-Perfection by Liquefaction, achieves this by melting the structures on a chip momentarily, and guiding the resulting flow of liquid so that it re-solidifies into the desired shapes. This is possible because natural forces acting on the molten structures, such as surface tension -- the force that allows some insects to walk on water -- smooth the structures into geometrically more accurate shapes. Lines, for instance, become straighter, and dots become rounder.

Simple melting by direct heating has previously been shown to smooth out the defects in plastic structures. This process can't be applied to a microchip for two reasons. First, the key structures on a chip are not made of plastic, which melts at temperatures close to the boiling point of water, but from semiconductors and metals, which have much higher melting points. Heating the chip to such temperatures would melt not just the structures, but nearly everything else on the chip. Second, the melting process would widen the structures and round off their top and side surfaces, all of which would be detrimental to the chip.

Chou's team overcame the first obstacle by using a light pulse from a so-called excimer laser, similar to those used in laser eye surgery, because it heats only a very thin surface layer of a material and causes no damage to the structures underneath. The researchers carefully designed the pulse so that it would melt only semiconductor and metal structures, and not damage other parts of the chip. The structures need to be melted for only a fraction of a millionth of a second, because molten metal and semiconductors can flow as easily as water and have high surface tension, which allows them to change shapes very quickly.

To overcome the second obstacle, Chou's team placed a thin quartz plate on top of the melting structures to guide the flow of liquid. The plate prevents a molten structure from widening, and keeps its top flat and sides vertical, Chou said. In one experiment, it made the edges of 70 nanometer-wide chromium lines more than five times smoother. The resulting line smoothness was far more precise than what semiconductor researchers believe to be attainable with existing technology.

A technique invented in the lab of Princeton engineer Stephen Chou allows for the easy correction of defects and refinement of shapes in nanostructures. The "open" method involves using a laser to briefly melt defects, which self-correct before cooling. The "capped" method prevents the technique from rounding off the structures. The "guided" version causes the structures to grow toward a nearby plate, causing them to become not only smoother, but taller and thinner, which are all desirable traits for creating smaller, more powerful computer chips. (Stephen Chou/Nature Nanotechnology)

The conventional approach to fixing chip defects is to measure the exact shape of each defect, and provide a correction precisely tailored to it -- a slow and expensive process, Chou said. In contrast, Chou's guided melting process fixes all defects on a chip in a single quick and inexpensive step. "Regardless of the shape of each defect, it always gets fixed precisely and with no need for individual shape measurement or tailored correction," Chou said.

One of the big surprises from this work is observed when the guiding plate is placed not in direct contact with the molten structures, but at a distance above it. In this situation, the liquid material from the structures rises up and reaches the plate by itself, causing line structures to become taller and narrower -- both highly desirable outcomes from a chip design perspective.

"The authors demonstrate improved edge roughness and dramatically altered aspect ratios in nanoscale features," said Donald Tennant, director of operations at the NanoScale Science and Technology Facility at Cornell University. The techniques "may be a way forward when nanofabricators bump up against the limits of lithography and pattern transfer," he said.

Next, Chou's group plans to demonstrate this technique on large (8-inch) wafers. Several leading semiconductor manufacturers have expressed keen interest in the technique, Chou said.

The work was supported by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency and the Office of Naval Research.
http://www.princeton.edu/main/news/a...ion=topstories





Samsung, Intel, TSMC to Work on Next - Gen Chip Format

Samsung Electronics <005930.KS>, the world's top maker of memory chips, on Tuesday said it would cooperate with top rivals Intel <INTC.O> and TSMC <2330.TW> to develop next-generation bigger silicon wafers to boost efficiency in chip manufacturing.

Samsung said in a filing that it would work with U.S.-based Intel Corp, the world's top maker of semiconductors, and Taiwan's TSMC <TSM.N>, the world's largest contract chip maker, to help migration of manufacturing standards from the current 12-inch (300 mm) silicon wafers to 18-inch (450 mm) discs that would yield more than double the number of chips.

The South Korean company said the cooperation plan called for a first pilot line to be operable by 2012.

The world's largest chip makers have been exploring the move to pizza-sized silicon wafers to help them grab market share as demand surges for gadgets such as Apple Inc's <AAPL.O> iPod.

"Increasing cost due to the complexity of advanced technology is a concern for the future," Mark Liu, TSMC's senior vice president of Advanced Technology Business, said in a statement.

"Intel, Samsung, and TSMC believe the transition to 450mm wafers is a potential solution to maintain a reasonable cost structure for the industry."

The size of a wafer, the silvery disks from which tiny chips are diced, is critical to make production more efficient. A new generation of larger wafers typically comes out each decade or so.

The group is planning to cooperate with the whole semiconductor industry in order to establish common standards through the International Sematech Manufacturing Initiative (ISMI) consortium.

Still, some analysts say cost is a major hurdle and the industry -- from semiconductor makers to the companies that make their equipment -- needs to agree on how to proceed.

A factory designed to make chips on 18-inch wafers could cost $10 billion or more to build, nearly triple the price of a current 12-inch wafer factory.

Only the biggest companies, like Intel, Samsung and TSMC, have the resources to be the first adopters of the new technology, while smaller chip makers, such as those in China, are unlikely to buy into the expensive plan soon, they say.

(Reporting by Marie-France Han and Baker Li; Editing by Nick Macfie)
http://www.reuters.com/article/compa...14823620080506





CCTV Boom Has Not Cut Crime, Says Police Chief
Kevin Dowling

Billions of pounds spent on Britain’s 4.2 million closed-circuit television cameras has not had a significant impact on crime, according to the senior police officer piloting a new database.

Detective Chief Inspector Mick Neville said it was a “fiasco” that only 3 per cent of street robberies in London were solved using CCTV.

Mr Neville, who heads the Visual Images, Identifications and Detections Office (Viido) unit, told the Security Document World Conference that the use of CCTV images as evidence in court has been very poor.

“Billions of pounds have been spent on kit, but no thought has gone into how the police are going to use the images and how they will be used in court,” he told the conference.

“It’s been an utter fiasco: only 3 per cent of crimes were solved by CCTV. Why don’t people fear it? [They think] the cameras are not working.”

The aim of the Viido unit is to improve the way that CCTV footage is processed, turning it into a third forensic specialism alongside DNA analysis and fingerprinting.

Britain has more CCTV cameras than any other country in Europe. But Mr Neville is reported in The Guardian as saying that more training was needed for officers who often avoided trawling through CCTV images “because it’s hard work”.

Viido had launched a series of initiatives including a new database of images that will be used to track and identify offenders using software developed for the advertising industry. This works by following distinctive brand logos on the clothing of unidentified suspects. By backtracking through images officers have often found earlier pictures of suspects where they have not been hiding their features.

Mr Neville said that Viido would be publishing pictures of suspects in mugging, rape and robbery cases on the internet from next month and building a national CCTV database that will hold images of convicted criminals and unidentified suspects.

Richard Thomas, the information commissioner, said: “We would expect adequate safeguards to be put in place to ensure the images are used only for crime detection purposes, stored securely and that access to images is restricted to authorised individuals. We would have concerns if CCTV images of individuals going about their daily lives were retained.”
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/new...cle3877670.ece





Stupid Hacker Tricks: The Folly of Youth

Tech-savvy delinquents set the Net aflame with boneheaded exploits that earn them the wrong kind of fame
Andrew Brandt

Ah, youth. Ready to take on the world, today's generation of dynamic, tech-immersed youngsters have grown up alongside the Internet. Firsthand, and sometimes single-handedly, they have advanced some of today's hottest technology trends, from peer-to-peer networking, to massively multiplayer online games, to social networks and instant messaging. And along the way, a small, sociopathic number of them have behaved very, very badly.

Even the very definition of poor online behavior has been advanced by these cyberschnooks. Armed with broadband and lots of unsupervised free time in front of the computer, shielded by the relative anonymity of the Web, they've managed to transform themselves from Those Neighborhood Kids Who Set Fires and Torture Small Animals into international menaces who destroy online communities, damage the reputation and utility of online services, and steal anything worth taking from the Net -- all while mangling the English language as thoroughly as possible.

Fortunately for the rest of us, while using the Net's multiplier effect to their nefarious benefit, most are as sloppy and egotistical as we've come to expect from the young and delinquent, leaving a bread-crumb trail a mile wide for authorities to follow. And when they cross the line, as many of these tech-savvy Nelson Muntzes eventually do, it's with more than a little schadenfreude that white-hat vigilantes posse up to take them down.

It is to these ne'er-do-wells that this latest installment of 0 "Stupid hacker tricks" is dedicated. Call it Portrait of the Stupid Hacker as a Young Man.


You got Rbot in Mytob, you Zlob

Perp: Farid "Diab10" Essebar

Status: Currently a guest of the Moroccan prison system. His prison sentence is scheduled to end later this year.

Dossier: In 2005, at the ripe old age of 18, Farid Essebar probably thought he was untouchable. Working with accomplices in his home country of Morocco and in Turkey, the Russian-born Essebar wrote and distributed the Mytob, Rbot, and Zotob botnet Trojans. The malware infected thousands of computers at large corporations, US government departments, and media companies and was built to log keystrokes and steal financial and personal data.

Among the targets reported to have major outbreaks on August 15, 2005, were Daimler Chrysler, ABC News, CNN, The New York Times, the US Senate, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Affected computers typically got into a cycle where they rebooted constantly, spread the malware to other computers on the network, then provided remote access to infected computers to a bot herder. The Zotob variant spread rapidly, taking advantage of unpatched Windows computers using a vulnerability disclosed only days earlier.

Essebar also fell prey to the braggadocio bug, a common ailment. When University of Pennsylvania security researcher David Taylor deliberately infected a computer with Zotob, and stumbled into one of Essebar's botnet IRC channels, he struck up a conversation with him. Surprisingly, Essebar responded, gloating that he earned substantial sums using his bot to install adware on infected computers.

But within seven days, the FBI, working in concert with local law enforcement and Microsoft employees, sent teams of computer experts to Rabat, Morocco, and Ankara, Turkey. On August 25, less than two weeks after the outbreak began, authorities arrested Essebar, as well as then-20-year-old Achraf Bahloul in Rabat. The team in Ankara paid a visit to, and arrested, then-21-year-old Atilla "Coder" Ekici, alleging that he paid Essebar to write the Zotob variant. A bit more than a year after the initial arrest, Moroccan authorities convicted Essebar of illegal access to computer systems, theft, credit card fraud, and conspiracy, and sentenced him to two years in prison.

Authorities were able to clearly identify Essebar as the author of the worm; not only had he signed it with the words "by Diabl0" buried in the source code, but he'd written the worm using Microsoft's Visual Studio, which embeds information about the computer on which the code is written into the compiled program -- in this case, the directory path "C:\Documents and Settings\Farid." D'oh!

When Moroccan cops seized his computer, Essebar had formatted the hard drive. Forensic specialists helped recover the source code, which had not been completely wiped clean from the drive. In contrast, Turkish authorities had a more difficult time establishing evidence against Ekici because he'd physically removed and thrown out his hard drive days earlier.

Lessons learned: If you don't want to draw attention to yourself, avoid targeting major media organizations with your poorly designed malware attacks. Always throw out your hard drive that contains all the source code and evidence of your criminal malware creations before the cops arrive. Name your account on your malware creation computer something innocuous, like "user." Also, neither Turkish nor Moroccan prisons are places you want to be. Ever.


When the DDoS ain't stoppin' expect the cops to come knockin'

Perps: Ivan Maksakov, Alexander Petrov, and Denis Stepanov

Status: All three are guests of the Russian penal system, sentenced to eight years at hard labor and a 100,000 ruble fine

Dossier: Looking to make a little extra money while at college in 2003, Ivan Maksakov, then 22, devised an inventive, entrepreneurial scheme that probably sounded good at the time: He created a botnet to engage in DDoS (distributed denial-of-service) attacks and then blackmailed online gambling sites based in the UK, threatening to take the sites down during major sporting events.

However, Maksakov -- a student at the Balakov Institute of Engineering, Technology, and Management -- couldn't anticipate that the Russian government, looking to demonstrate its resolve in dealing with cybercriminals, would make an example of him.

The botnet, based in Houston, was directed to launch DDoS attacks against the UK-based bookmaking Web sites and online casinos only if Maksakov's demands weren't met. According to Russian news reports, Maksakov, along with co-conspirators Alexander Petrov and Denis Stepanov, attacked nine Web sites from the US autumn of 2003 until the US spring 2004. The sites were initially attacked for a short time, before a ransom demand was e-mailed.

In one example, the attacks crippled a site run by Canbet Sports Bookmakers during the Breeders' Cup horse races, costing the firm US$200,000 for each day it was offline. But even when the firm paid a US$40,000 ransom to a Western Union account in Riga, Latvia, the attacks continued.

Authorities allege that the attacks for which the trio were convicted cost the UK-based Web site operators upward of US$4 million, not including an additional US$80 million the companies paid out for additional bandwidth and security hardware designed to thwart DDoS attacks. Charges weren't filed for 54 similar attacks the group is alleged to have engaged in, affecting companies in 30 other countries.

Britain's intelligence services tracked the IP address used to send commands to the botnet to Maksakov's home computer. When the British government provided the information to the Russian Federation's Interior Ministry, the three were arrested. Authorities say at least 13 others who have not been arrested were involved in the scheme, including 10 people working as "money mules" in Riga, two other cyberattackers in Kazakhstan, and one more in Russia.

Lessons learned: Russia's a terrible place to base your operations for a criminal enterprise, unless you like taking long vacations in Siberia. Kazakhstan and Latvia seem to be much more agreeable. Also, if someone sends you 40 large, don't wait: Turn off the damn DDoS before MI-5 gets involved.


Punked over a prank

Perp: Shawn Nematbakhsh

Status: Currently employed as a software engineer with a medical data company.

Dossier: One of the hottest technology topics of 2003 was how election systems were vulnerable. With the first presidential election since the Bush v. Gore fiasco coming up the following year, technologists were up in arms about the unreliability and untrustworthiness of electronic balloting systems, and were eager to prove their point.

Enter Shawn Nematbakhsh, computer science undergraduate at the University of California. Was he eager -- perhaps a bit too eager -- to make a point about the electronic balloting system that the university employed to hold student council elections, when he cast 800 votes for a fictitious candidate named American Ninja? Sadly, no.

"I really wasn't making any point at all," Nematbakhsh admits, debunking news reports to the contrary. "It was a senior prank, a silly thing."

The student council elections were held over the Web. Students could log in to a special page and cast their ballots for student council members and student body president. Unfortunately, the election system suffered from a serious internal weakness: "There was some input that was not bounds-checked, so using certain input you could vote as anyone," Nematbakhsh explains. "I wrote a script that would log in, cast a vote, log out, then log in again, cast another vote, and so on."

But seriously, American Ninja? "That year I remember watching that really stupid movie and talking about it with my friends, and it was the first thing that came [to mind]," he said.

Nematbakhsh says the jig was up when campus police called him in to discuss the incident. He'd told some friends about the vulnerability he had discovered in the voting system, and his name had eventually surfaced in the investigation. When asked, Nematbakhsh immediately admitted his involvement in the prank.

"I confessed to doing it, thinking it wasn't such a big deal. I thought they might fine me, or suspend me for a quarter or something," he says. That did happen, but a month later, he also faced criminal charges that could have landed him prison time.

In the end, he arranged a deal to accept a misdemeanor charge. His sentence: "I had to pick up trash on the weekends for three or four months, and pay back the cost of the election -- a couple thousand dollars."

Lessons learned: "Getting caught was kind of a wake-up call, that the Internet was not some kind of playground and I couldn't do what I wanted to all the time. I had to obey the law. The prank was not well received by a lot of people at the school."

Nematbakhsh's advice to potential election pranksters: "Things like that seem funny when you're doing them, but when you get caught, it's not much fun. I'd caution against silly pranks like the one I did."


The worst paid cybercriminal in federal prison

Perp: Robert Moore

Status: Moore is currently a guest of the federal prison system and will remain so until 2009.

Dossier: As one of the oldest members of this youthful brigade of miscreants, Robert Moore, 23, was involved in crimes that caused among the greatest financial losses to his victims of anyone featured in this rogue roundup -- though he didn't reap many financial rewards himself.

Federal agents claim in court papers that Moore, and the ringleader of the scheme Edwin Pena, defrauded at least 15 VoIP phone companies to the tune of more than US$300,000 each in broadband service charges by hacking into the VoIP companies' networks and then reselling stolen phone call minutes at a deep discount.

Pena, who lacked the technical skills to pull off the scam alone, recruited Moore to do his hacker thing, which he accomplished with aplomb. But while Moore did manage to pull off the scam for nearly two years before getting caught, his success wasn't due to any superior hacking skills on his part.

In an interview Moore gave just before his incarceration began, he explained that his job was made all the easier by system administrators who never changed the passwords on their Cisco routers and Quintum Tenor VoIP gateways from the default factory settings. Moore threw together an application that scanned IP address ranges for vulnerable boxes and then used those routers to send the call traffic through the busiest hacked networks, which masked the large amounts of data.

Pena made well over US$1 million reselling the more than 10 million stolen minutes; Moore was reported to have been paid just US$20,000 by Pena for his part in the scheme. With his ill-gotten proceeds, Pena bought houses in six states, luxury cars (including two BMWs and a Cadillac Escalade), and a 40-foot Sea Ray MerCruiser yacht. Moore reportedly is more annoyed that he cannot use a computer than the fact that he was sentenced to two years in federal pokey.

"It's so easy, a caveman can do it," Moore said in the interview. Cavemen were reportedly pissed at, once again, being presented in a negative light by a guy who himself got shafted -- twice -- by his partner in crime.

Moore ended up surrendering when federal agents showed up at his door. When Pena was arrested, the mother of Pena's girlfriend put up two of her properties as collateral on Pena's bail; once out of jail, Pena promptly fled the country and is believed to be in Venezuela, leaving everyone high and dry.

Lessons learned: If your partner in your massive criminal enterprise is making 50 times what you're making, but you're both sharing an equal risk of prosecution, look for a better-paying job in another criminal enterprise. Also, if you're the mastermind's girlfriend (or her mom), and you've paid for his bail with your house, for the love of god hide his passport.


Tweener virtual worlds: Training grounds for tomorrow's cyberschnooks

Perp: "Helgi B"

Status: Scared straight (or so we hope)

Dossier: If you need proof that youth and innocence don't necessarily go together, you need look no further than the woeful tale of a 13-year-old sociopathic script kiddie who, for reasons of privacy, we'll refer to only by his "handle," Helgi B.

Helgi B has already learned the fine art of theft of online account information through social engineering. While even moderately sophisticated adults can easily see through his clumsily crafted scams, impressionable kids have already fallen victim. His target: Habbo Hotel game account information.

If you're not a Western European middle-schooler who plays online games, then you probably don't know that Habbo Hotel is an incredibly popular online environment, a kind of blocky, pixelated, isometric Second Life designed for Euro tweens. It's not so much a game as a hangout spot, one where you can have your own "room" and decorate it with furniture (or, in Habbo lingo, "furni") you buy using the in-game currency, "coins," which you obtain using real money through Habbo Hotel's online shopping page.

Helgi B's scam is to connive other Habbo players into giving him their account information, or paying him for dodgy "hacking" programs or for what he claims are discounted coins in bulk, at impossibly low prices. Of course, anyone with your account details can log in to your account and transfer your coins or furni to an accomplice, just as if someone with your bank account information logged in and transferred your entire balance to an untraceable account in Hackistan.

When security researcher Chris "Paperghost" Boyd began digging into Helgi B's online shenanigans, he had no idea where it would lead: YouTube videos demonstrating so-called game-hacking tools; downloadable phishing kits; archives full of stolen passwords and commercial software license keys; remote access Trojans he claims to have created; and worst of all, forum posts where he brags about his 1337 h4x0r skilz.

"When did we become so jaded that we didn't just tolerate anonymous punks hacking us but gave a green light to 13-year-olds screwing us over and doing it in full view?" Boyd writes on his blog at Vitalsecurity.org. "Sigh. These kids are openly and wantonly peddling their leet hacking tools across all manner of websites -- worse, they don't even bother to do it anonymously anymore."

So Boyd took it to the next level: He began, as he describes it, "14+ solid hours of non-stop beatdowns" on all of Helgi B's Web sites that peddle illegal goods. One after another, Boyd contacted the various Web hosting providers and ISPs where Helgi had set up shop, providing them with documentary evidence, including screenshots, detailing the broad scope of illegal activities the forum was engaging in.

The only glitch: One of the service providers hosting Helgi B's stolen-passwords/license-keys forum seems reluctant to take down the site. It goes down for an hour or two and then comes back online. Four days later, the Web host finally pulls the plug permanently -- but only after Boyd threatens to report the hosting company to law enforcement.

Lessons learned: Just because you may not have reached puberty doesn't mean you can't be arrested and prosecuted for cybercrimes. It just means your parents might go to jail also/instead, or have to pay a huge fine, and then who's going to drive you to band practice or soccer games? Remember: Going to jail is like being grounded ... in a jail cell. And for you Web hosts out there: Getting another $5 or $10 from some message board operator isn't worth having your head-end ISP pull the plug on you for violating their terms of service, so turn off those illegal sites when someone reports them. Fast.
http://www.computerworld.com.au/inde...16;fpid;1;pf;1





Server Theft Knocks Peter Gabriel Off the Web
Drew Cullen

Peter Gabriel's online music empire is reduced to a holding page, following the theft of servers from his web host over the weekend.

According to the web monitoring firm Netcraft, Gabriel's servers are hosted (http://searchdns.netcraft.com/?posit...tergabriel.com) by Rednet Ltd, although that appears to be a defunct brand of a UK company called Opal Telecom (http://www.red.net/about-us/), which in turn is a wholly owned subsidiary of Carphone Warehouse.

But details are sketchy and as it's a public holiday in the UK, we'll fill in the gaps tomorrow.

In the meantime here is the message posted at time of writing on the web-savvy musician's site, PeterGabriel.com (http://www.petergabriel.com).
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/05..._server_theft/





Web Firm Sounds Alert on Criminal Data Trove
Mark Trevelyan

A Web security firm said on Tuesday it had tipped off international banks and police after finding a huge trove of stolen business and personal data amassed on a server in the space of just three weeks.

Finjan Inc said it had notified the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation, police in various countries and more than 40 financial institutions in the United States, Europe and India about the discovery of the so-called "crimeserver".

"This server was running for about three weeks and within this period it managed to collect 1.4 gigabytes of data. It is indeed the largest treasure we've found in this very short time," Yuval Ben-Itzhak, chief technology officer of the California-based firm, said in a phone interview from Israel.

The stolen data consisted of 5,388 unique log files including 1,037 from Turkey, 621 from Germany, 571 from the United States, 322 from France, 308 from India and 232 from Britain.

It included company personnel files, insurance details, social security numbers, medical records, credit card details and exchanges of confidential business email, in one case including details of a pending court case.

Ben-Itzhak said it was striking that the crimeserver itself was not security-protected, meaning anyone could potentially have accessed it over the Internet.

"The server was not secure at all. It indicates that these people that are doing the crime today, they are not security experts, they are not computer science experts.

"They are people who are buying the crime toolkits ... software packages that hackers, the smart people, are selling," he told Reuters.

"The person that operated this server had no clue on security, he had no clue about how to configure a Web server. He just took a ... toolkit and started to use it and in three weeks he managed to have this fortune, this treasure on his server."

'Trojan' Software

The crimeserver had a 'command and control' application that enabled the user to define what types of target to infect with 'trojan' software.

"Online statistics reports are included in this command and control. They can tell you who you managed to infect; where they are coming from; if the trojan that is now installed on their machine is sending you data, how much data you're getting -- you get all these online reports as well."

The hosting server was located in Malaysia and the Web domain was registered to a Russian individual with a Moscow address. Ben-Itzhak said this could not be validated because domains can easily be registered in false names.

He said the discovery highlighted a growing trend for criminals to target commercial data. Details of pricing, company policies and stock-sensitive earnings results were all at risk.

"It's not just individuals at home doing their online banking and someone is stealing their password...The big picture is these criminals are looking for business data."

(Editing by Robert Woodward)
http://www.reuters.com/article/inter...080506?sp=true





CoreCodec Apologizes for Wrongful Google DMCA Takedown
Ryan Paul

CoreCodec, the company behind the high-performance CoreAVC H.264 implementation, issued an apology this morning for its recent abuse of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), a law that broadly prohibits circumvention of copy-protection mechanisms.
In a DMCA takedown notice sent to Google over the weekend, CoreCodec demanded that Google cease hosting coreavc-for-linux, an open source project that provided a Linux compatibility layer for the CoreAVC codec. The DMCA notice claimed that the open-source project infringes CoreCodec's copyright and includes CoreAVC code. Although Google complied with the notice and removed the project, the allegations made by CoreCodec were entirely without merit. The coreavc-for-linux project contains no infringing code and is merely a compatibility wrapper that enables legitimately purchased copies of CoreAVC to be used by Linux users.

In a statement published today in CoreCodec's community forums, cofounder Dan Marlin apologized and said that the company is working with Google to get the project back online. He explains that CoreCodec had some concerns about reverse-engineering that they were working privately to resolve with Alan Nisota, the lead developer of the coreavc-for-linux project, and that the DMCA notice was sent because the company's overzealous legal counsel wrongfully believed that it was a necessary part of the process.

"The DMCA does allow for reverse engineering for compatibility purposes and hence in the end no matter what the 'other points' are the DMCA takedown request was wrongly sent," wrote Marlin in a public statement. "I'd like to publicly apologize to Alan for the disconnect between him and us as well as the disruption to the project as there was no ill will intended and we were already working on a resolution with him before this went public."

Marlin says that that CoreCodec has established a new internal process for handling intellectual property issues so that they won't improperly use the DMCA again in the future. CoreCodec will also be assisting Nisota with his ongoing development efforts to ensure that coreavc-for-linux users can continue buying and using the CoreAVC codec. In the long-term CoreCodec also hopes to release a GStreamer-based CoreAVC codec so that they can officially support Linux users.

This situation highlights some of the serious flaws of the DMCA. Companies often issue takedown notices without fully understanding the situation and hosting providers often acquiesce in order to avoid any potential liability. All too often, DMCA takedown notices are used as a tool to censor and intimidate rather than a vehicle for addressing instances of infringement.
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post...-takedown.html





"Grand Theft Auto" First Week Sales Top $500 Million

Take-Two Interactive Software Inc <TTWO.O> scored more than $500 million in global sales of criminal action game "Grand Theft Auto 4" in its first week, marking what it said on Wednesday is one of the most lucrative entertainment events in history.

The interactive software publisher, which is facing a takeover offer from rival Electronic Arts Inc <ERTS.O>, said it sold about 3.6 million units globally at its debut on April 29, and some 6 million units in total in the week.

Retail chains such as GameStop Corp <GME.N> and Best Buy Co Inc <BBY.N> took advance orders for weeks of GTA 4, which has been lavished with near-universal accolades.

The first-week sales of Grand Theft Auto, a game hailed as a brutal and satirical masterpiece equal to films like "The Godfather," beat the $400 million scored by last year's "Halo 3" from Microsoft Corp <MSFT.O>.

"Grand Theft Auto IV's first week performance represents the largest launch in the history of interactive entertainment, and we believe these retail sales levels surpass any movie or music launch to date," said Strauss Zelnick, chairman of Take-Two, in a statement.

Made by Take-Two's Rockstar studio, the game casts players as an Eastern European immigrant who runs drugs, shoots cops and beats up prostitutes after falling in with a crime syndicate -- stuff that has drawn fire from family groups and politicians.

Take-Two shares closed on Tuesday at $26.35 on Nasdaq, higher than EA's offer price of $25.74 per share. Take-Two management has rejected EA's offer as too low and has suggested that it might start discussions once the game was launched.

(Reporting by Franklin Paul; Editing by Steve Orlofsky)
http://www.reuters.com/article/compa...55678120080507





Milestones

Steve Winwood - A Sixties Rock 'N' Roller Turning 60

Turning 60, Steve Winwood is starting to believe rock 'n' roll may be a younger man's game. Maybe.

"I think to be a musician (at 60) is fine but to be a rock 'n' roller at a ripe old age is maybe slightly questionable," said the singer, guitarist and organist who played with 1960s rock legends the Spencer Davis Group, Traffic and Blind Faith.

"If rock 'n' roll is indeed what I play, I'm not sure whether it is, as I try and combine bits of folk and jazz.

"The music I write I feel is not the kind of music for a 25-year-old," Winwood acknowledged in an interview.

Half a lifetime ago, Winwood was aware of the contradiction of an aging musician playing essentially youthful music. "'Cause my rock 'n' roll is putting on weight/ and the beat it goes on," he sang on his 1980 album, "Arc of a Diver."

Winwood has been performing for 45 years -- as long as the Rolling Stones, who are still playing well into their 60s.

Whatever the definition of his music, Winwood has played his share of genres, from backing blues greats like Muddy Waters and Howlin' Wolf, performing with Eric Clapton, arranging English folk with Traffic and recording artfully produced 1980s hits like "Higher Love" in the early years of MTV. His new solo album, "Nine Lives," just came out.

Tour With Petty

Asked how he felt about turning 60 on May 12, the youthful-looking Englishman was philosophical. "I'm OK, I'm lucky to still be doing what I love to do.

"I might slow down a little bit after 60 but I'm going out on a long tour this summer with Tom Petty and I still enjoy playing live. So as long as people want to come and hear me or buy the record, I shall keep going, I think."

Winwood, whose father was a dance band musician, burst onto the scene in 1965, with his older brother "Muff," in the Spencer Davis Group. They had hits with "I'm a Man" and "Gimme Some Lovin"' featuring Winwood's driving organ and distinctive voice.

While still at high school, Winwood was playing and singing in church and also clubs in Birmingham, even playing with U.S. blues and R&B greats when they toured Britain.

It was his love of the blues that he shared with fellow Britons Mick Jagger, Keith Richards, Clapton, Robert Plant and Jeff Beck, that got him kicked out of a music school.

"It's an often-asked question, 'Why did all these spotty white English boys suddenly start playing blues in the '60s?'

"It was recognized as this kind of vibrant music and when I first started playing in a blues band I just wanted to bring it to a wider public who hadn't really heard it," said Winwood.

Jazz and blues were not readily accepted in 1960s England. "I got thrown out of music school for even listening to Fats Domino and Ray Charles," said Winwood.

"I was asked, 'What kind of music do you like to listen to?' and I said, 'Well, I do like Paul Hindemith and Igor Stravinsky but I also like Fats Domino and Ray Charles and they literally said, 'Either forget about that or leave.'

"I was doing a few gigs around town so I said, 'Thank you very much,' and I was gone."
http://www.reuters.com/article/enter...52156720080507





Memoirs of a Girl From the East Country (O.K., Queens)
Anthony DeCurtis

IT is one of the most evocative images of Greenwich Village in the 1960s. An attractive young couple are walking down the middle of a snow-covered street. His head is down and tilted toward her. He’s wearing an artfully half-buttoned brown suede jacket, but his hands are stuffed in his jeans’ pockets against the cold. She is smiling, huddling against him. Shot in February 1963, the photo would come to epitomize the romantic youth culture of the time — its freedom and fragility, its rootlessness and sense of purpose.

The couple is Bob Dylan and Suze Rotolo, then his girlfriend, and the photograph graced the cover of Mr. Dylan’s groundbreaking second album, “The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan” (Columbia), which came out three months later. “Freewheelin’ ” — which includes songs like “Blowin’ in the Wind,” “A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall” and “Masters of War” — established Mr. Dylan, who had just turned 22, as the spokesman of his generation.

Last month, more than 45 years after that photograph made her a nationally known figure, Ms. Rotolo, now 64, stood on the spot on Jones Street where it was taken and eyed the reporter accompanying her warily. “I don’t do re-enactments,” she said, laughing.

After rarely discussing her relationship with Mr. Dylan since they broke up in 1964, Ms. Rotolo has looked back, mostly with affection. Her book “A Freewheelin’ Time: A Memoir of Greenwich Village in the Sixties” comes out this week, and a similar photo from the “Freewheelin’ ” session serves as its cover.

Looking elegant in a lightweight black coat, a long gray skirt and black boots, Ms. Rotolo, who is now a visual artist, recalled the original photo shoot. “We were facing this way,” she said on Jones Street, as she pointed north toward Fourth Street. “I figured they’d choose one of Bob by himself, so it was astounding, really surprising.”

With her long light-brown hair, Ms. Rotolo became a model to emulate for young women and an object of desire for men at the time. She does not recall it that way, however. “It was freezing out,” she said. “He wore a very thin jacket, because image was all. Our apartment was always cold, so I had a sweater on, plus I borrowed one of his big, bulky sweaters. On top of that I put a coat. So I felt like an Italian sausage. Every time I look at that picture, I think I look fat.”

In “A Freewheelin’ Time” Ms. Rotolo walks a delicate line between not wanting to exploit her relationship with Mr. Dylan but needing to address people’s understandable curiosity about it. “Feeding the beast” is how Ms. Rotolo describes the futility of trying to gratify the endless hunger of Dylan fanatics. “When you know that someone is human, to make them godlike is disconcerting,” she said. “I’m not a rapacious Dylan junkie.”

When the couple first met in July 1961 at a folk concert at Riverside Church at which Mr. Dylan performed, they were just two of countless young people who had made their way to Greenwich Village to reinvent themselves. He had left his native Minnesota to pursue his dream of following the path blazed by his idol Woody Guthrie. Ms. Rotolo meanwhile had grown up in Queens, the daughter of working-class Italian Communists during the height of the McCarthy era. Well read, artistically inclined and intellectually adventurous, she yearned for an environment in which her interests did not seem weird, let alone dangerous, for a 17-year-old girl. In the 20-year-old Mr. Dylan she encountered a “kindred spirit,” she said.

They lived together in a small apartment on West Fourth Street and fed each other’s ravenous hunger for meaning. “We created this private world,” Ms. Rotolo recalled over lunch in an Italian restaurant on Waverly Place. “We were searching for poetry, and we saw that in each other. We were so ultrasensitive, both of us. That’s why it was a good relationship, but also why it was difficult.”

Mr. Dylan has been a gnomic figure for so long that it’s sometimes hard to recollect the Chaplinesque aspect that characterized him in his youth. His boundless enthusiasm proved a delight for the more reserved Ms. Rotolo. For his part Mr. Dylan soaked up her passion for the likes of William Blake, Bertolt Brecht and Arthur Rimbaud; he inscribed a paperback edition of Byron’s poems to her “Lord Byron Dylan.” Equally important, her political activism, particularly in the civil rights movement, spurred his thinking and writing about those issues.

“She’ll tell you how many nights I stayed up and wrote songs and showed them to her and asked her: ‘Is this right?’ ” Mr. Dylan told his friend and eventual biographer Robert Shelton. “Because I knew her father and mother were associated with unions and she was into this equality-freedom thing long before I was.”

Their romance, then, began on the basis of an equality that became impossible to sustain. She would soon feel overwhelmed by the obsessive attention the world focused on Mr. Dylan. Having made the symbolic journey across the East River to discover herself and what she might become, she felt lost once again, reduced to being Mr. Dylan’s chick and urged even by her most well-intentioned friends to accommodate her life in every way to his genius.

In approaching Ms. Rotolo about doing the book, Gerry Howard, an editor at Broadway Books, mentioned “Minor Characters,” a memoir by Joyce Johnson, who had been Jack Kerouac’s lover at a similar stage in his career. “I’m a great fan of ‘Minor Characters,’ and I thought Suze stood in exact relation to Dylan as Joyce Johnson did to Kerouac,” Mr. Howard said. “They were present at liftoff and then had to live in the backwash of all that.”

It turned out that Ms. Rotolo too was a fan of “Minor Characters,” which is something of a pre-feminist classic, and saw her story in similar terms. In part for that reason she chose to write the book herself rather than with a collaborator. (Disclosure: I share a book agent with Ms. Rotolo.)

For his part Mr. Dylan was no less disoriented by his rising success than Ms. Rotolo was, and he resented Ms. Rotolo’s need for distance. A nearly six-month trip she took to Europe with her mother in 1962, for example, left him distraught. The pained letters he sent her (“Yes maybe I wish maybe you didn’t cut your hair — it’s so good ... it’ll grow back tho huh?”) reveal a vulnerable side of Mr. Dylan that has rarely been seen.

In the grip of his own struggle, he turned to other women for support, most notably Joan Baez, who, having become a star herself when she was barely 20, could help him negotiate this strange new terrain. Their romantic involvement, which included Ms. Baez’s frequent requests that he perform with her, also significantly expanded his audience, a fact not lost on Mr. Dylan.

“He needed somebody who could guide him,” Ms. Rotolo said. “I could not be the person he needed at that time. I needed that myself. I was still finding out who I was. I had no sense of mission or dead-on ambition, whereas he did. It’s a male-female thing, and it’s also of the time. I knew I was an artist, but I loved poetry, I loved theater, I loved too many things. Whereas he knew what he wanted and he went for it.”

When Ms. Rotolo became pregnant, she and Mr. Dylan agreed that she would have an abortion, which was illegal (and often dangerous) at the time. That further strained their relationship.

“The alliance between Suze and me didn’t turn out exactly to be a holiday in the woods,” Mr. Dylan wryly concludes in his 2004 memoir, “Chronicles, Volume One.” (Mr. Dylan declined to be interviewed for this article.) But he describes their first meeting in more glowing terms: “She was the most erotic thing I’d ever seen. She was fair skinned and golden haired, full-blood Italian. The air was suddenly filled with banana leaves.”

He often wrote about their love affair, most prominently in “Don’t Think Twice, It’s All Right,” “Tomorrow Is a Long Time,” “Boots of Spanish Leather” and “One Too Many Mornings,” and most caustically in “Ballad in Plain D,” in which he castigates her mother and older sister, who did not approve of him. In his liner notes to “The Times They Are A-Changin’ ” (1964), Mr. Dylan wrote, “ah but Sue/she knows me well/perhaps too well/an is above all/the true fortune teller of my soul.”

On a perfect spring afternoon Ms. Rotolo agreed to stroll through Greenwich Village and reminisce about some of the sites she writes about in “A Freewheelin’ Time.” After the stop on Jones Street, she walked toward Fourth Street, where the drones of a man playing a sitar floated from the Music Inn, a crowded instrument store that looked unchanged from the ’60s. “Musicians would just come and play at Allan Block’s,” she said, referring to the famed sandal store and folkie hangout that had been next door, “the way they would at Izzy Young’s Folklore Center on MacDougal Street. If they didn’t have an instrument, they could go to the Music Inn and borrow one.”

A few doors east stood 161 West Fourth Street, where she lived with Mr. Dylan in a two-room walk-up for $60 a month. “Well, some things have changed,” she notes, as she eyes the “exotic novelties” shop that has replaced Bruno’s Spaghetti Store on the ground floor. Their apartment “was in the rear,” she said, “and we looked out on this little garden. There was a pizza place somewhere, so there was always a smell of stale sauce.”

Further west on Sheridan Square she pointed out the newspaper stand on a small island in Seventh Avenue where she and Mr. Dylan awaited the early edition of The New York Times that included Mr. Shelton’s review, now legendary, of Mr. Dylan’s performance at Gerde’s Folk City. The rave, which ran on Sept. 29, 1961, led to Mr. Dylan’s record contract with Columbia Records.

Ms. Rotolo still lives nearby, in the East Village, where she bought a loft, she said, “when they were giving them away.” She has been married many years, and her son, Luca, is a musician and guitar maker who also lives in the city. She has been an illustrator and a painter, and now calls herself a “book artist,” work she described in an e-mail message as reinterpreting “the book as an art object” and combining “drawing, painting, collage, and found objects.” “Reliquaries,” an exhibition of her work, will be on display through mid-July at the Medialia Gallery in Manhattan.

At the Italian restaurant Ms. Rotolo explained how “No Direction Home,” the 2005 documentary that Martin Scorsese directed about Mr. Dylan, inspired her to tell her own story. She is in occasional, if infrequent, touch with Mr. Dylan, and is extremely respectful of his privacy. That he would sanction Mr. Scorsese’s film, in which she appears, and publish his own memoir made her feel more secure about coming forward.

“The feeling I had was, sure, it’s about Dylan, he’s the focal point, but it was my life,” she said about “No Direction Home.” “This is what we all lived through, and what an exciting and pivotal time it was. I came to grips with the fact that this is important, and I should stop being so private.”

Still, she is not nostalgic. “All this indulgence of the ’60s, ay-yi-yi, get over it,” she said. Every era and place hold magic for people willing to live intently in them, she believes. “Everything occurs again, just differently,” she said. “There will always be creative people who feel that they’re different and create a community of some kind. Whether it’s a physical neighborhood or an Internet neighborhood, in Bushwick or in Greenwich Village, it’s not over."
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/11/ar...ted=3&ref=arts





The Day the Music Died

This is a letter I sent to my father to explain what it means that Microsoft is pulling support for MSN Music. Tech issues like this often bubble up into the media that he reads, but they are rarely explained well. My father assumes I have an opinion on such stories, and he is rarely wrong.

Actually, it is still technically in the future tense. The day the music dies will be August 31, 2008.

But first, some backstory.

It was the Dark Ages, around 2004 or so. The iTunes Store was new and booming. Microsoft, in its bid to be the center of everything without having to deal with pesky “end users”, decided that the way to fight Apple was to create a developer platform. This developer platform would handle all the technical details of ensuring that people could “purchase” music files from a variety of online vendors, and play these music files on their (Windows) PC or on a variety of handheld music players. This developer platform would also ensure that such “purchased” music files could not be copied. This involves a lot of fancy math (encryption) which Microsoft was happy to license to companies running online music stores and companies making handheld music players, as well as including by default in all modern versions of Windows.

Bruce Schneier, a famous cryptologist — or at least as famous a cryptologist as cryptologists are likely to get in this century — once described attempts to make digital bits uncopyable as “trying to make water not wet.”

Microsoft named this developer platform “PlaysForSure”, and they (and their partners) ran many, many ads decrying the fact that music purchased from Apple’s iTunes Music Store would “only” play in iTunes and on iPods. This was, technically speaking, true — and indeed it is still true, and it is why I have cautioned Dora and you and anyone else who would listen that you should never “purchase” anything from the iTunes Music Store that you might want to “own” longer than Apple was willing to allow. Nor should you “purchase” anything from a “PlaysForSure”-compatible music store, and for the same reasons, only with the word “Apple” crossed out and “Microsoft” written in in crayon.

To their credit, if that’s the right word, you can now purchase some music from the iTunes store that is unencrypted and plays anywhere. Apple calls these songs “iTunes Plus”, because it sounds so much better than calling everything else “iTunes Minus.” Apple has also promoted podcasts and other non-traditional sources of “things you might want to download onto our handheld devices where we make all of our money.” Steve is many things, but he is not an idiot.

To demonstrate the awesomeness of their developer platform, Microsoft opened their own online store, MSN Music, so they could compete directly with their business partners who also offered “PlaysForSure”-compatible music downloads. Because there’s nothing end users love more than fake choices.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) — to whom I donate money every year because they are the digital embodiment of Tom Lehrer’s description of folk singers as “the people who get up on stage and come out in favor of all the things that everyone else in the audience is against, like peace and justice and brotherhood and so on” — has also been warning anyone who would listen that they should not “purchase” encrypted music from these services, since if these services go under then all that “purchased” music will no longer… what’s the word… “play”. But mostly people ignored them (and me), because, you know, Microsoft was at the center of it all, and nobody ever got fired for “buying” from Microsoft. Or something.

So what happens on August 31, 2008? On that day, Microsoft will turn off the servers that they maintain for the sole purpose of validating that the songs that people have already “purchased” through MSN Music are still theirs to play. Those people (hereafter “the victims”) will not notice the change right away. The victims will only notice it when they purchase a new computer, or when they upgrade the operating system on their current computer, or when the hard drive in their computer dies and needs to be rebuilt/reinstalled. At that point — transferring the music files they have “purchased” to another drive or a new computer — the Microsoft music player running on the victim’s PC (like iTunes, but all Microsoft-y instead of Apple-y) will make a call to Microsoft’s validation servers to verify that the music files were legitimately purchased. This call will fail, since the servers are not responding, since Microsoft has intentionally turned them off. The Microsoft music player will then conclude, incorrectly but steadfastly, that the music files were downloaded illegally and that the victim is a filthy pirate, and it will refuse to play them. In this case, the left hand knows exactly what the right hand is doing: they’re both giving you the finger.

It is at this point that I am reminded of one classic call that I fielded when I worked at the AT+T Relay Service. One Friday night, a deaf person called Pizza Hut to, well, I don’t know, but probably to order a pizza of some kind, and the guy answered the phone with “Pizza Hut, we’re out of dough… can I help you?” Can you make me a pizza? No, we’re out of dough. Do you make anything else? No. Then you can’t help me! Does your music player play this music I “purchased”? No. Does your music player do anything other than play music? No. Then you can’t help me either.

Outside the EFF, a few of the smarter industry analysts (not this guy) have been predicting this doomsday scenario for a while. In 2006, Microsoft tacitly admitted that its PlaysForSure strategy wasn’t working when they announced that they were going to sell their own handheld music player (the “Zune”, which competes with the iPod… and with all the other handheld music players from Microsoft’s “PlaysForSure” business partners) and start a second music service (which would directly compete with the iTunes Store… and Microsoft’s “PlaysForSure” business partners… and Microsoft’s own MSN Music store). End users, it turns out, aren’t so bad after all; they just can’t be trusted to make the right choices.

Also, to ensure that no one could screw this one up except Microsoft, this new music service and new handheld music player would use an entirely new encryption system that was incompatible with “PlaysForSure”, and the encryption system would not be available for licensing. Any victim who had “purchased” music through Microsoft’s old MSN Music store had no upgrade/migration path to transfer those music files to their new Microsoft Zune; the victim would have to re-purchase the same music all over again. But the victims were assured that their existing MSN Music “purchases” would continue to work as long as they owned “PlaysForSure”-compatible devices. Except now they won’t, because Microsoft is turning off the servers that verify that the music they “purchased” a long time ago is still theirs to play.

As you might expect, the EFF is just bursting with joy at the prospect of rubbing salt in the wound and saying “I told you so.” This is their “I told you so” letter. I would join in their jubilation, but frankly I’m tired of being right all the time. It was fun for a while, but now it’s just depressing.
http://diveintomark.org/archives/200...the-music-died


















Until next week,

- js.



















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