Peer-To-Peer News - The Week In Review – May 14th, '05

[JackSpratts]

Quotes Of The Week


"Estonian lawmakers OK Internet voting." - AP


"Your motivation was not only the benefit of free access. It was to enhance your personal reputation and to be a member of an organization at the leading edge of technology, crossing the legal boundary." – Judge Paul Focke


"It is not a coincidence that during the 60's and early 70's, at the height of the protest against the war in Vietnam, the civil rights movement and widespread experimentation with psychedelic drugs, personal computing emerged from a handful of government-and corporate-funded laboratories, as well as from the work of a small group of hobbyists who were desperate to get their hands on computers they could personally control and decide to what uses they should be put." - John Markoff


"The whole beauty of it is that I don't have to censor myself." - Jason Evangelho


"No matter what I was saying in public, I knew in my heart of hearts that there was no way that a P2P was going to keep going on like it was." – Wayne Rosso


"More than 4 million terabytes of information were produced and stored magnetically in 2002–-more than double the 1.7 million terabytes produced and stored in 2000." - Jun Naruse

















Helping, Not Hindering, Creativity
Eugene Zinovyev

Today, entertainment lobby groups are consciously trying to prevent technological and creative progress in the United States.

Late in March, Ted Olson, the former solicitor general under the current President Bush and counsel for the Recording Industry Association of America and Motion Picture Association of America, wrote an op-ed for the Wall Street Journal arguing against peer-to-peer file-sharing networks, likening them to services that allow users to exploit others' property illegally with no legal repercussion. Yet, the analogy between his scenario and the sharing of music and movies is deeply flawed, because digital movies and songs are not property in the same sense that a car or a pair of shoes are.

Here is how Olson lays out his clever analogy: Imagine if he created a service that allowed anyone with a computer and an Internet connection to gain free access to anyone's car, house or other property. The person could use that property however he or she wishes. Of course, Olson's service would tell you that you should not do anything illegal with the service that he offers, but he is not going to do anything to you if you do.

Olson rightfully points out that such a service would be a serious threat to the property rights of all Americans and would be immediately shut down. He then makes the logical leap that the system he describes is exactly the same as the one now in place on peer-to-peer (P2P) networks, which enable free sharing of digital information among computer users -- except instead of cars and houses, songs and movies (which are the property of artists) are exploited.

Because the government protects the rights of property owners when it comes to cars, it should do the same when it comes to digital songs. Solution: it should institute a policy that would ban P2P networks. Specifically, the U. S. Supreme Court should rule in favor of MGM Studios in its suit against Grokster, a popular P2P network.

Yet songs and movies are not the same as cars for one fundamental reason: Digital songs, unlike cars, are noncompetitive. In other words, when I listen to a song that I downloaded through Grokster, it does not prevent you from listening to that song; in fact, it makes it more likely that you will, because there is now one more source for you to download from. If I drive your car, however, you obviously cannot drive it at the same time. Because I deprive you of your car by driving it without your permission, laws exist to make such an action a crime. Yet, I do not deny anyone the ability to listen to a song by downloading it onto my computer. Thus, I do not deny anyone of their property. Hence, there is no reason that the U.S. government should institute any policy to make such an action illegal.

The P2P debate brings up the larger point of how the U.S. government should treat digital and intellectual property. Olson further tries to mislead the reader by arguing that the framers of the Constitution considered intellectual (and, implicitly, digital) property rights so important that they included a clause in the Constitution that gave Congress the power to "to promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries." Yet the current copyright regime put in place by the U.S. government actually discourages progress, rather than encouraging it.

As pointed out by Stanford law professor Lawrence Lessig in "Free Culture" (Penguin Press, 2004) most creative art, as well as technological innovation, has been derivative. (Mickey Mouse, Lessig points out, was based on a Buster Keaton character. For most of U.S. history, this was possible because works entered the public domain quickly and often. Yet during the past 30 years, Congress, under pressure from such lobbying groups as the Recording Industry Association of America and the Motion Picture Association of America, has extended copyright protection further and further, to the point that now anything from a piece of software code that could be used to create the next Google to a poem that could be put to music by the next Schubert, would be excluded from the public domain for 70 years plus the life of the author.

As a result, a lot of creative art and technology never materializes, because the creators cannot pay the licensing fee to obtain the rights to use the piece of copyright material. By treating intellectual property, which, like digital music, is noncompetitive, as tangible property, the U.S. government actually discourages innovation and creativity.

Congress and the U.S. Copyright Office should, in fact, reverse the trends of the past 30 years and reduce, but not eliminate, the exclusive rights that the creators of intellectual property posses. By reducing the length of copyright terms, and by encouraging, instead of hampering, the operation of networks that spread noncompetitive goods, Congress would finally be able to live up to its constitutional duty to "promote the progress of science and useful arts."
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/articl...DGEQCMI8R1.DTL


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Downhill Battle Seeking Musicians Who Support File-Sharing
Jordan Running

Downhill Battle is helping musician Harry Bergund gather testimony from musicians who support file-sharing. He’s going to take the voices of supporters and compose a song around them, and then presumably distribute it in some meaningful way that will raise awareness of the legitimate uses of P2P. If you’re a musician who recognizes the value of P2P, head on over and lend him your voice.
http://p2p.weblogsinc.com/entry/1234000623042922/


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Fandom Shows That File Sharing Can Create "Gained Fans" Not "Lost Customers"
Joi Ito

While preparing for my talk in Melbourne, I was IM'ing with my sister who I steal a lot of my material from these days. We were talking about Naruto, which I blogged about earlier in the context of the Naruto Matrix Reloaded AMV. On the site, the author says, "To clarify, it's as much of a Naruto advertisement as it is a Matrix parody" (emphasis added) We were talking about the amazing fan community around Naruto.

If you go to the site that lists the BitTorrent files of Naruto, you will see that fans have subtitled the episodes into a variety of languages like Hebrew, Portuguese, French... When new episodes of Naruto come out, the fans get together on IRC and other fora and collaborate and create subtitled versions and put them online. If you search for Naruto on Amazon.com, you find a page where the fans are voting for the DVD release and the notice says that they will notify the publisher of the voting. (It would be interesting to find out if the publisher or the fans initiated this.) It also appears that when a local DVD is released, the fans take down their subtitled episodes for that region. By allowing the fans to create demand, the publishers are using these file sharing networks and illegal derivative works as an extremely efficient form of marketing. Thanks to the network of Internet anime fans, Naruto is still niche, but popular globally.

This kind of publisher approved "piracy" is not a new thing. Dojinshi, are comics created by fans of Japanese comics. They are illegal derivative works. They make their own stories using famous comics as the base. They have huge conventions and it's an amazing community. The publishers of most of these comics encouraged this dojinshi culture because they realized that this increases the demand for the originals. These derivative works and sharing creates "fans" not "lost customers".

Some will argue that this is niche stuff, but I talked to a marketing guy at TV Tokyo and he said that they are now focused on niche. In the past they tried to appeal to a wide audience including young children and they tried to get a small amounts of money from a lot of people. (Like Pokemon stuffed animals.) Now, with box sets and special edition DVDs, they are finding that niche oriented adults and otaku will spend thousands of dollars on one show. They are able to collect more money from fewer people. I think this is one of the key marketing lessons that we're getting to. Before you tried to get a tiny bit of money from everyone who listened to a song or watched a show. Maybe if we focus on getting more money from fewer people, we can design business models around relationships and physical things rather than the content itself. Digital content might be better viewed as a marketing tool or metadata of the actual property or asset that is being promoted.

My sister's been getting most of this information about fandom from her research assistant Rachel Cody.
http://joi.ito.com/archives/2005/05/...customers.html


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Judge Tosses Part of S.C. Internet Law
AP

A federal judge has blocked South Carolina from enforcing a law making it a felony to distribute visual sexually explict material to minors over the Internet.

The First Amendment challenge was brought by booksellers and publishers who distribute graphic arts, literature and health-related information. They argued the four-year-old law restricts the right of adults to constitutionally protected
materials.

U.S. District Judge Patrick Duffy this week issued an injunction against the state enforcing the law. He said Internet filters are less restrictive than requiring Web site operators to seek age verification or label all the pages of their sites.

An attorney for the plaintiffs, Michael Bamberg, said laws like South Carolina's have been struck down in six other states.

According to the State Attorney General's office there have not been any cases tried under this law in its 4 year history.
http://www.wltx.com/news/news19.aspx?storyid=27215


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MPAA Targets TV Download Sites
John Borland

Continuing its war on Internet file-swapping sites, the Motion Picture Association of America said Thursday that it has filed lawsuits against a half-dozen hubs for TV show trading.

The trade association said that piracy of TV programming is growing quickly online, and that shows are as important to protect as big-budget films. This is the first legal action from the group that has focused most heavily on TV content.

"Every television series depends on other markets (such as) syndication and international sales to earn back the enormous investment required to produce the comedies and dramas we all enjoy," MPAA Chief Executive Officer Dan Glickman said in a statement. "Those markets are substantially hurt when that content is stolen."

The latest round of suits retains a focus on BitTorrent technology, which has been widely used online to distribute movies and films.

The suits are focused on the sites that serve as traffic directors for BitTorrent swaps, rather than on individual computer users uploading and downloading content. The MPAA also has sued individuals, but has not said how many people have been targeted.

The six sites sued Thursday include ShunTV, Zonatracker, Btefnet, Scifi-Classics, CDDVDHeaven and Bragginrights.
http://news.com.com/MPAA+targets+TV+...3-5705142.html


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Internet Attack Called Broad and Long Lasting by Investigators
John Markoff and Lowell Bergman

The incident seemed alarming enough: a breach of a Cisco Systems network in which an intruder seized programming instructions for many of the computers that control the flow of the Internet.

Now federal officials and computer security investigators have acknowledged that the Cisco break-in last year was only part of a more extensive operation - involving a single intruder or a small band, apparently based in Europe - in which thousands of computer systems were similarly penetrated.

Investigators in the United States and Europe say they have spent almost a year pursuing the case involving attacks on computer systems serving the American military, NASA and research laboratories.

The break-ins exploited security holes on those systems that the authorities say have now been plugged, and beyond the Cisco theft, it is not clear how much data was taken or destroyed. Still, the case illustrates the ease with which Internet-connected computers - even those of sophisticated corporate and government networks - can be penetrated, and also the difficulty in tracing those responsible.

Government investigators and other computer experts sometimes watched helplessly while monitoring the activity, unable to secure some systems as quickly as others were found compromised.

The case remains under investigation. But attention is focused on a 16-year-old in Uppsala, Sweden, who was charged in March with breaking into university computers in his hometown. Investigators in the American break-ins ultimately traced the intrusions back to the Uppsala university network.

The F.B.I. and the Swedish police said they were working together on the case, and one F.B.I. official said efforts in Britain and other countries were aimed at identifying accomplices. "As a result of recent actions" by law enforcement, an F.B.I. statement said, "the criminal activity appears to have stopped."

The Swedish authorities are examining computer equipment confiscated from the teenager, who was released to his parents' care. The matter is being treated as a juvenile case.

Investigators who described the break-ins did so on condition that they not be identified, saying that their continuing efforts could be jeopardized if their names, or in some cases their organizations, were disclosed.

Computer experts said the break-ins did not represent a fundamentally new kind of attack. Rather, they said, the primary intruder was particularly clever in the way he organized a system for automating the theft of computer log-ins and passwords, conducting attacks through a complicated maze of computers connected to the Internet in as many as seven countries.

The intrusions were first publicly reported in April 2004 when several of the nation's supercomputer laboratories acknowledged break-ins into computers connected to the TeraGrid, a high-speed data network serving those labs, which conduct unclassified research into a range of scientific problems.

The theft of the Cisco software was discovered last May when a small team of security specialists at the supercomputer laboratories, trying to investigate the intrusions there, watched electronically as passwords to Cisco's computers were compromised.

After discovering the passwords' theft, the security officials notified Cisco officials of the potential threat. But the company's software was taken almost immediately, before the company could respond.

Shortly after being stolen last May, a portion of the Cisco programming instructions appeared on a Russian Web site. With such information, sophisticated intruders would potentially be able to compromise security on router computers of Cisco customers running the affected programs.

There is no evidence that such use has occurred. "Cisco believes that the improper publication of this information does not create increased risk to customers' networks," the company said last week.

The crucial element in the password thefts that provided access at Cisco and elsewhere was the intruder's use of a corrupted version of a standard software program, SSH. The program is used in many computer research centers for a variety of tasks, ranging from administration of remote computers to data transfer over the Internet.

The intruder probed computers for vulnerabilities that allowed the installation of the corrupted program, known as a Trojan horse, in place of the legitimate program.

In many cases the corrupted program is distributed from a single computer and shared by tens or hundreds of users at a computing site, effectively making it possible for someone unleashing it to reel in large numbers of log-ins and passwords as they are entered.

Once passwords to the remote systems were obtained, an intruder could log in and use a variety of software "tool kits" to upgrade his privileges - known as gaining root access. That makes it possible to steal information and steal more passwords.

The operation took advantage of the vulnerability of Internet-connected computers whose security software had not been brought up to date.

In the Cisco case, the passwords to Cisco computers were sent from a compromised computer by a legitimate user unaware of the Trojan horse. The intruder captured the passwords and then used them to enter Cisco's computers and steal the programming instructions, according to the security investigators.

A security expert involved in the investigation speculated that the Cisco programming instructions were stolen as part of an effort to establish the intruder's credibility in online chat rooms he frequented.

Last May, the security investigators were able to install surveillance software on the University of Minnesota computer network when they discovered that an intruder was using it as a staging base for hundreds of Internet attacks. During a two-day period they watched as the intruder tried to break into more than 100 locations on the Internet and was successful in gaining root access to more than 50.

When possible, they alerted organizations that were victims of attacks, which would then shut out the intruder and patch their systems.

As the attacks were first noted in April 2004, a researcher at the University of California, Berkeley, found that her own computer had been invaded. The researcher, Wren Montgomery, began to receive taunting e-mail messages from someone going by the name Stakkato - now believed by the authorities to have been the primary intruder - who also boasted of breaking in to computers at military installations.

"Patuxent River totally closed their networks," he wrote in a message sent that month, referring to the Patuxent River Naval Air Station in Maryland. "They freaked out when I said I stole F-18 blueprints."

A Navy spokesman at Patuxent River, James Darcy, said Monday said that "if there was some sort of attempted breach on those addresses, it was not significant enough of an action to have generated a report."

Monte Marlin, a spokeswoman for the White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico, whose computers Stakkato also claimed to have breached, confirmed Monday that there had been "unauthorized access" but said, "The only information obtained was weather forecast information."

The messages also claimed an intrusion into seven computers serving NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. A computer security expert investigating the case confirmed that computers at several NASA sites, including the propulsion laboratory, had been breached. A spokesman said the laboratory did not comment on computer breaches.

Ms. Montgomery, a graduate student in geophysics, said that in a fit of anger, Stakkato had erased her computer file directory and had destroyed a year and a half of her e-mail stored on a university computer.

She guessed that she might have provoked him by referring to him as a "quaint hacker" in a communication with system administrators, which he monitored.

"It was inconvenient," she said of the loss of her e-mail, "and it's the thing that seems to happen when you have malicious teenage hackers running around with no sense of ethics."
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/10/te...rtner=homepage


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Hackers Did Not Hijack Google

The most likely explanation for Google's outage was that "somebody in charge of Google's DNS did something dumb ... (it) doesn't mean that the entire DNS system has been compromised," said Tom Liston of the SANS Internet Storm Center.

Google and security experts said Monday a brief weekend outage of the Internet search giant's website was not due to a hacker attack, despite fears it was linked to a new type of Web hijacking.

"It was not a hacking or a security issue," a statement from Google said.

"Google's global properties were unavailable for a short period of time. We have remedied the problem and access to Google has been restored worldwide."

For a brief time, however, security experts were abuzz over the possibility the outage was linked to a so-called "poisoning" of the Internet domain name system (DNS) -- a growing security threat.

For several weeks, experts have been concerned about the threat in which a hacker can direct users from an authentic website to an alternative or fake site. And the concerns grew when some Google users reported they were redirected to another site called "SoGoSearch."

"Google went bye-bye for 15 minutes. Or perhaps it was an hour. It depends on who you ask," said Tom Liston of the SANS Internet Storm Center, a site maintained by academic and private sector security specialists.

"But what of the mysterious 'redirects' to other search pages?"

Liston said some computer systems are programmed to search for an alternate site if it gets no response from the initial effort, and ended up with the site google.com.net, owned by SoGoSearch.

"If an overzealous browser tried to 'fix' an unavailable Google.com, it's quite likely that you could end up looking at the SoGo search engine," he said.

Google did not elaborate on the cause of the malfunction. But Liston said the most likely explanation was that "somebody in charge of Google's DNS did something dumb ... (it) doesn't mean that the entire DNS system has been compromised."
http://www.newsfactor.com/news//stor...d=023001J61OHT


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Flaw Found In VPN Crypto Security
Dan Ilett

A flaw in a popular VPN technology could allow hackers to obtain a text version of encrypted communications with only "moderate effort," a tech security body has warned.

Britain's national emergency response team, the National Infrastructure Security Coordination Centre, issued a serious warning this week the safety of virtual private networks that use IPsec encryption and tunneling to connect remote workers to corporate networks.

The flaw, which the NISCC rates as "high" risk, makes it possible for an attacker to intercept IP packets traveling between two IPsec devices. They could then modify the encapsulation security payload--a subprotocol that encrypts the data being transported. This could ultimately expose this data to an unauthorized third party.

On its Web site, NISCC stated: "By making careful modifications to selected portions of the payload of the outer packet, an attacker can effect controlled changes to the header of the inner (encrypted) packet…If these messages can be intercepted by an attacker, then plaintext data is revealed."

The NISCC includes a number of solutions to this issue in its advisory.
http://news.com.com/Flaw+found+in+VP...3-5705185.html


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Two Plead Guilty To $530,000 In Counterfeit Software Sales
AP

Two Silicon Valley business owners pleaded guilty Monday to trafficking in counterfeit software valued at more than $500,000 and promised to pay Microsoft Corp. more than $380,000 in restitution.

Perry Zheng, 51, of Cupertino, and William Jin, 44, of Sunnyvale, told U.S. District Court Judge Ronald M. Whyte they possessed and sold $531,961 worth of counterfeit Microsoft software. The men sold the programs through PTI Inc., a San Jose-based software distribution business.

Each faces a maximum of 10 years imprisonment and a $2 million fine. Whyte will sentence Zheng and Jin a hearing scheduled for June 20.

As part of their plea agreements, the men agreed to forfeit $27,550 that they made from selling counterfeit software to undercover law enforcement officers and pay $387,228 to Redmond, Wash.-based Microsoft.

Troubles for Zheng and Jin began in 2002, when police obtained a search warrant and found $116,000 worth of counterfeit products found in a storage locker, triggering a two-year investigation by the FBI, IRS and other agencies.
http://www.siliconvalley.com/mld/sil...l/11604721.htm


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Three British Men Jailed Over Software Piracy Ring
AP

Three British men who gained no money by helping crack security codes to run one of the largest international software piracy rings on the Internet were sentenced Friday to jail terms ranging from 18 months to 2 1/2 years.

The three men -- plus a fourth who received a suspended jail sentence -- were behind the British end of DrinkOrDie, an international code cracking group that U.S. and British authorities believe cost the software industry billions of dollars in sales every year.

The group, which gained notoriety by releasing a pirated copy of the Windows 95 operating system two weeks before Microsoft Corp. released it, was shut down by authorities in the United States, Australia, Britain and other countries following raids in 2002. More than 20 people in the United States were convicted the same year.

British prosecutors said that the four men sentenced Friday were not involved in the syndicate for money, instead cracking security codes to release the software on the Internet for free.

``They may see themselves as latter-day Robin Hoods, stealing from the rich to give to the poor, but in reality it is a cover for fraud,'' prosecutor Bruce Houlder told the Old Bailey Criminal Court during the trial. ``Computers are their universe. They live and breathe a world of computer software.''

Banker Alex Bell, 29, was sentenced to 2 1/2 years in jail, and Steven Dowd, who is 39 and unemployed, was sentenced to two years after they were both found guilty of conspiracy to defraud at a trial earlier this year. IT manager Mark Vent was sentenced to 18 months after pleading guilty to conspiracy to defraud.

Andrew Eardley, a former school IT worker, was given an 18 month sentence, suspended for two years. The suspension means that with good behavior, he may not serve the jail sentence.

Judge Paul Focke said he had imposed the jail terms as a deterrent to other potential Internet pirates.

``The activities of all four of you struck at the heart of the software trade,'' he said. ``The loss of software to owners through piracy is staggering. Also, the effect on related businesses and the lives of employees can be rendered catastrophic.''

Focke said that an estimated third of software being used in Britain was pirated and resulted in a loss of revenue that was impossible to quantify.

Focke also dismissed the claims the four men intended to provide free access to everyone.

``Your motivation was not only the benefit of free access,'' he said. ``It was to enhance your personal reputation and to be a member of an organization at the leading edge of technology, crossing the legal boundary.''
http://www.siliconvalley.com/mld/sil...l/11581750.htm


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Estonian Lawmakers OK Internet Voting
AP

Lawmakers authorized Internet voting Thursday for Tallinn's local elections in October as the first step toward a nationwide system.

Voters will need an electronic ID card, an ID-card reader and Internet access. There are plans to use the system also in the next parliamentary elections in 2007.

The approved bill was initiated by the Parliament's constitutional affairs committee.

The national electoral committee has conducted trials since early this year.

Dubbed E-Stonia by some, Estonia has the most advanced information infrastructure of any formerly communist eastern European state.

It is estimated that nearly 1 million of Estonia's 1.4 million residents already have an official electronic ID card. The ID cards, launched in 2002, include small microchips and offer secure e-signing through a reader attached to their computers.

Internet voting has been conducted in U.S. primary elections, British local tax votes and Swiss local referendums. But last year, the Pentagon scrapped a trial that would have let as many as 100,000 military and overseas citizens from seven states vote online in the November general elections.

The Pentagon announcement came two weeks after outside security experts urged the program's cancellation in a scathing report. Four experts on a 10-member Pentagon peer-review committee said Internet voting cannot be made secure using today's technologies because the Internet is inherently prone to hacking and viruses.
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories...CTION=BUSINESS


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Singaporean Shuts Blog, Apologises After Libel Threat
Geert De Clercq

A Singapore student said on Monday he has shut down his blog and apologised unreservedly after a government agency threatened to sue for defamation. Chen Jiahao, a 23-year-old graduate student in the United States, told Reuters he closed down his personal Web site after A*STAR, a Singapore government agency focusing on science and research, threatened legal action for what the agency said were untrue and serious accusations.

International freedom of speech and media advocates have criticised the agency's methods.

The U.S.-based Committee to Protect Journalists said last week it was alarmed that the threat of defamation lawsuits was being used to inhibit criticism of the government in cyberspace, much as it has in Singapore's traditional media.

Chen said he had removed all material from his site and posted an apology on April 26 after receiving e-mails from the agency's chief. He added that the agency told him last week his apology was insincere and that they wanted a new apology.

On Sunday he posted the new apology on his "Caustic Soda" blog, saying "I unreservedly apologise to A*STAR, its Chairman Mr. Philip Yeo, and its executive officers for the distress and embarrassment caused to them."

"They sent me an e-mail with these words," Chen told Reuters on Monday by telephone from the United States, where he studies chemical physics at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

A*STAR's Yeo said in a statement on Monday he accepted Chen's apology and considered the matter closed. "We wish him well. My invitation to Mr. Chen to meet for tea in the fall still remains," Yeo said.

Paris-based Reporters without Borders said the case highlighted the lack of free expression in Singapore, which is among the 20 lowest-scoring countries in the organisation's worldwide press freedom index.

"Chen criticised some of A*Star's policies but there was nothing defamatory in what he wrote," Julien Pain, head of Reporters without Borders' Internet freedom desk, told Reuters.

A*STAR said in a statement that it recognised the value of a diversity of views and welcomed that in all media. "But the particular public blog had statements which went way beyond fair comment." It did not elaborate.

Bloggers are generally not journalists, but some of the thousands of private online blogs -- short for Web logs -- on the Internet have gained political relevance. The campaign for the May 5 election in Britain saw an explosion of blogs, much like in last year's U.S. presidential election.

"We are troubled that the (Singapore) government has raised the spectre of costly legal action to chill commentary on the Internet," Ann Cooper, Executive Director of the Committee to Protect Journalists, was quoted on a CPJ Web site as saying.

Singapore-based politicians as well as international media organisations have paid large amounts of damages in libel cases brought by senior government figures.

Singapore leaders have defended their use of defamation lawsuits, saying that such actions are necessary to safeguard their reputation.
http://uk.news.yahoo.com/050509/80/fidhf.html


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Eminem's Label Agrees To Settlement Over Apple Ad
AP

Rapper Eminem's music label has agreed to an undisclosed financial settlement with Apple Computer Inc. in a lawsuit over copyright infringement claims.

In February 2004, Ferndale-based Eight Mile Style filed a lawsuit in U.S. District Court in Detroit against MTV, Apple, MTV's parent Viacom Inc. and advertising agency TBWA/
Chiat/Day. The recording company claimed Apple used one of the rapper's hit songs in an advertisement without permission.

``The parties were able to reach an amicable resolution,'' Howard Hertz, a lawyer for Eight Mile Style and Eminem, said Monday.

Elizabeth McNamara, a lawyer for MTV and Viacom, said Monday that the case was ``amicably resolved.'' Both declined to elaborate. A lawyer for Apple declined comment.

Apple featured a 10-year-old singing Eminem's Oscar-winning song ``Lose Yourself'' in an ad on MTV for the computer company's iPod music player and iTunes music service.

The television ad appeared many times during three months beginning in July 2003 and on Apple's Web site, despite the fact that the computer company had unsuccessfully sought Eminem's permission for the campaign.

Eminem, 32, who was born Marshall Mathers III, attended high school in Warren and now lives in the Detroit suburb of Rochester Hills.
http://www.siliconvalley.com/mld/sil...l/11610997.htm


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Apple Plugs Security Hole In iTunes
Dawn Kawamoto

Apple Computer has patched a flaw in iTunes that could open the door to a remote attack on a person's computer.

The fix was released as part of the company's iTunes 4.8 update on Tuesday. Earlier versions of the music software have a vulnerability within MPEG-4 file parsing, Apple said in a security advisory. A person who accesses a malicious MPEG-4 file could trigger a buffer overflow exploit, which could then allow an attacker to gain remote control of their computer without their knowledge or crash iTunes.

"This is considered highly critical because it doesn't require significant user interaction," said Thomas Kristensen, chief technology officer at Secunia, which released an advisory on the security hole on Tuesday. "If you visit a malicious Web site and have an MPEG-4 data stream handled by an iTunes application, you could be affected."

The iTunes update is designed to improve the validation checks that are used when MPEG-4 files are loaded. It is available for Mac OS X, Microsoft Windows XP and Microsoft Windows 2000.

Apple's move follows the release last week of 20 fixes for holes in its Mac OS X operating system software.

The company plugged an earlier hole in iTunes in January in its version 4.7 update to the software, fixing a flaw in the handling of playlists, Kristensen said. That earlier vulnerability could also be exploited to terminate iTunes and execute arbitrary code.
http://news.com.com/Apple+plugs+secu...3-5701556.html


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I.B.M. Expected to Buy Start-Up to Advance Open-Source Strategy
Steve Lohr

I.B.M. is increasingly betting that it can build a big business around open-source software. The latest step in that strategy is the purchase of Gluecode Software, an open-source start-up.

The Gluecode acquisition, which I.B.M. plans to announce today, is small in size but significant in the evolution of the company's plans in open-source software, according to industry analysts.

The two companies did not disclose the price of the deal, but analysts estimated it at less than $100 million.

I.B.M. has long supported open-source software like the Linux operating system and the Apache Web server. And it has made money indirectly, mostly by selling computers that run open-source software or selling I.B.M. proprietary software that works with Linux or Apache.

But Gluecode is a stand-alone open-source business, and the purchase will give I.B.M. a stake in the lower-end market for server software for running business applications.

Gluecode, based in El Segundo, Calif., sells support and service for an open-source server, called Geronimo, that is used by companies for applications including customer service, electronic commerce Web sites and work-sharing Web sites.

I.B.M. offers its own proprietary server, WebSphere, for business applications. It does not see Gluecode and Geronimo as potential competition in that area, but rather as a way to enter new markets.

WebSphere, I.B.M. executives say, is built to handle advanced computing tasks like stock trading and banking, and its transaction-processing engine borrows from the company's mainframe technology.

But WebSphere may be too big and too costly for some customers, I.B.M. says, like departments of large companies or small and medium-size companies with fewer than 1,000 employees.

"This widens our market," said Steven Mills, the senior vice president for software. "Some customers may later move up to WebSphere if they choose to go in that direction. But if they don't, they don't. This is its own business."

I.B.M. executives say they are not worried. Yet open-source projects, in which programmers collaborate to improve the code, often grow and the software becomes more powerful and reliable.

"It's inevitable that there will be overlap with WebSphere," said Amy Wohl, an independent technology analyst in Narberth, Pa., "but that will probably not be for a while."

The Gluecode acquisition can also be seen as a defensive tactic for I.B.M, which ran the risk of ceding the lower end of the business application server market to others, like JBoss, another open-source start-up, which has grown rapidly recently.

Gluecode was founded in 2003 and, in March 2004 received $5 million from two venture capital firms, Palomar Ventures and Rustic Canyon Partners.

"We're very complementary to the strategy that WebSphere has now," said Chet Kapoor, chief executive of Gluecode. "They sell software at the high end, and we have a support and subscription business model for small and medium-sized businesses and departmental projects in big companies."
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/10/te...gy/10blue.html


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DVD Format Talks Lean To Sony Technology-Source

Talks between Japan's Sony Corp. and Toshiba Corp. to unify next-generation DVD formats are leaning toward a disc structure supported by Sony, a source close to the matter said on Tuesday.

Sony and Toshiba, heading rival groups, have waged a three-year war to have their new technology standards adopted by the industry and gain pole position in the multi-billion-dollar markets for DVD players, PC drives and optical discs.

But the companies said last month they were in talks to develop a common standard, in a move to avoid VHS/Betamax-like dual formats that could discourage consumers from shifting to advanced discs and stifle the industry's growth.

Sony's Blu-ray technology is backed by a group including Dell Inc., Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd., Philips Electronics NV and Matsushita Electric Industrial Co. Ltd., maker of Panasonic products.

The source said a unified format based on Blu-ray's disc structure was being discussed in the talks, held between Sony, Toshiba and Matsushita.

He added, however, it was unclear whether and when the two sides would reach a final agreement on a common format.

The Nihon Keizai newspaper said earlier that Sony and Toshiba were in final talks eyeing a new format based on Blu-ray's disc structure and Toshiba's software for efficient data transfer and copyright protection.

In Blu-ray, a layer to hold data is put on the surface of a substrate and covered by thin protective layers, while in HD DVD discs, which are supported by Toshiba, a memory layer is sandwiched between two substrates.

The two sides agree that it would be best for consumers to have a common format, but shifting to a rival standard could mean a delay in product development and the commercial launch, making unification difficult.

Toshiba, which supports HD DVD technology along with NEC Corp. and Sanyo Electric Co. Ltd., said in a statement nothing had been decided on the unified format.

At the core of both formats are blue lasers, which have a shorter wavelength than the red lasers used in current DVD equipment, allowing discs to store data at the higher densities needed for high-definition movies and television.

Member companies in the Blu-ray camp are set to meet in Tokyo next week to discuss technological and promotional matters.

Shares in Sony were down 0.74 percent at 4,000 yen in afternoon trade, while Toshiba fell 1.1 percent to 448 yen. Both underperformed the Tokyo stock market's electric machinery index, which was down 0.22 percent.
http://today.reuters.com/news/newsAr...FORMATS-DC.XML


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Let's Make Some Magic, With No Strings Attached
Virginia Postrel




WIRELESS technology has always had a glamorous aura. The word "glamour," after all, originally referred to a magic spell, an illusion that makes things look different from what they really are.

Wireless technology does just that, through means as occult to most people as any witchcraft. It bestows on ordinary mortals the power to pluck from the atmosphere unheard voices and unseen images, whether broadcasted or recorded. Wireless communication creates the illusion of proximity, immediacy, even intimacy. It transports us from our real surroundings.

Glamour isn't only about movie stars or sex appeal. The theatrical, imaginative process we now call glamour thrives wherever something evokes an audience's desires and makes them seem attainable, or at least imaginable. Through a special combination of grace, mystery and seeming perfection, a glamorous person, setting or object leads us to project ourselves into a better world. Glamour's idealism and ease offer escape from the limitations of our own lives.

That, of course, is also the promise of wireless technology - to cut the ties that literally bind us to our desks, our homes, our mundane existences. Marketers take that promise and try to distill it into glamorous images that will inspire us to take the wireless plunge. It isn't an easy task.

"How do you communicate what wireless does, the freedom wireless gives you to take all this cool stuff with you in life?" said Michael Linton, the chief marketing officer for Best Buy stores.

To promote its wireless products, Best Buy takes a marionette's point of view, imagining a life unbound by strings. "I'm free, I'm free," the marionette sings as he skips across a lawn with his laptop computer in a TV commercial. The marionette is goofy: "We don't need to be glamorous to sell glamorous stuff," Mr. Linton said, but by granting the puppet's most profound wish, the commercials suggest that we, too, can transcend the everyday. Wireless technology will set us free.

"The first wireless product with glamour would have to be the pocket transistor radio," said David Hall, who runs Ephemeranow.com, an online museum of midcentury advertising images. In the 1960's, the tiny radios came to symbolize the freedom of youth. The 1966 movie "The Endless Summer" follows two surfers traveling the world with their boards and, almost as prominently, their transistor radio.

Giving surfing glamour a futuristic twist, a current commercial for Intel's Centrino wireless technology shows a Blue Man Group member zipping by on a hoverboard. "See what it's like to fly" it promises.

Wireless technology used to take seaside imagery a little more literally. For portable computing, a single glamorous image was until recently an advertising and editorial cliché: the laptop at the beach. This picture evoked an alluring mix of escapism and productivity. With the right technology, it suggested, you could do your work and have your fun at the same time.

The more people actually use laptops, however, the less compelling that image becomes. Experience destroys the fantasy. Laptop users know that bright sunlight makes their screens nearly impossible to read, and they also know that working at the beach is still working. Laptops and cellphones make escape harder, not easier.

In the real world, said David Olsen, a photographer in Hawaii, "I have yet to see anybody using a laptop at the beach." He has taken stock shots of men and women using computers and cellphones on the shores of Hawaii, including a particularly glamorous photo of a woman working in a hammock at sunset. But, as beautiful and evocative as these images are, the photographs have had few sales. A laptop at the beach simply looks too much like work.

One of the best places to find wireless glamour isn't in ads for high-tech products. It's in images of stylish lamps in catalogs for companies like Crate & Barrel and Chiasso. Whether through careful composition or a little digital magic, the lamps seem to have no cords. Like bills piled on the kitchen counter or muddy footprints on the floor, the utilitarian realism of electrical wires would break the spell of domestic perfection. Glamour's grace is the art that conceals art.

What is truly glamorous about wireless technology is the fantasy that it requires no wires. Portable they may be, but all those laptops, cellphones, music players and digital assistants have to be plugged in at least occasionally, whether to gather new data or to recharge their batteries.

If the power plants black out, so, eventually, will your wireless gadgets. Similarly, while wireless networks may connect the Internet to your laptop, some sort of cable almost always brings the Internet to the local network.

At the 2003 TED conference (for Technology Entertainment and Design), Jeffrey P. Bezos, the Amazon.com chief executive, gave a speech about the early stages of technology. He drew laughs recounting how the breakthrough technology of 1908 - the electric washing machine - required running a cord from its typical spot on the front porch to the home's light socket. The electrical outlet hadn't been invented.

Now we have outlets, but our breakthrough technologies are still a long way from the sleek glamour of our imagination. "This is what it looks like under my desk," Mr. Bezos said, flashing a photo of a jungle of about two-dozen cables, some emerging from the wall, others swooping down from unseen origins. All those cables are the backstage reality behind the glamour of even the most wireless high-tech life. "We really haven't progressed that much since 1908," he said. "It's a total, total mess."

We may not have cut the cords, but we can still dream.
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/04/te...04postrel.html


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Bandwidth Advance Hints at Future Beyond Wi-Fi
John Markoff

ONE barrier that has held back the much-hyped convergence of the computer and consumer electronics industries has been the tangle of wires that is needed to connect the cascade of home video, audio, Internet and game gadgets.

Now the drive to unwire the living room is about to get a push.

In March, the Federal Communications Commission took a significant step toward breaking an industry deadlock over setting a single standard for a new wireless technology called ultrawideband, or UWB.

While traditional radio technologies have transmitted and received analog signals only on specific frequencies, UWB uses inexpensive computing power to send short radio pulses across much of the radio spectrum. Because it does not use a single frequency, UWB offers several advantages, including the capacity to send high volumes of information quickly and the ability to share frequencies and resist interference. It's like breaking a truck's cargo into loads small enough to be carried on bicycles that can weave through a traffic jam.

The technology's potential, as yet unproven, is that it will be able to increase the capacity of the radio spectrum drastically by allowing users to share with existing licensed users.

Many computer and consumer electronics executives think that UWB will become the next big thing in the second half of this decade, a convenient alternative for all the cables that are now used to connect everything from high-definition television monitors to stereo speakers and anything in between. Moreover, some experts think that UWB also has a future as a wireless networking technology that will eventually replace the now ubiquitous Wi-Fi wireless standard.

"I look at UWB as the third wave of wireless at the edge," said Bill Tai, a partner at the venture capital firm Charles River Ventures and an investor in Staccato Communications in San Diego, one of many start-up companies that are trying to capitalize on the potential radio spectrum bonanza created by the F.C.C.'s approval of the new technology.

"The potential is that there will be no cables hanging from your shiny new flat-panel monitor that will be attached to the wall," Mr. Tai said.

Staccato is one of more than 40 companies that have joined with the WiMedia Alliance, an industry consortium led by Intel that is pressing for a standard that will serve as a wireless alternative to the popular USB cable standard.

Until recently, the WiMedia Alliance has been engaged in a standards war with the UWB Forum, an opposing consortium of more than 100 companies, led by Motorola, that has been pushing for an alternative technical approach to UWB.

With the F.C.C. approval, both sides have declared a temporary truce, and it is now certain that the first products will begin to emerge later this year or early next year.

That has led many in the industry, like Mr. Tai, to be increasingly optimistic that UWB technologies will move into consumer applications more rapidly than the two previous standards, Bluetooth and Wi-Fi.

"This should be a very freeing experience," Mr. Tai said. "This may cross the chasm between consumer electronics and home PC."

And that is truly what the industry is dreaming of. With the widespread availability of UWB, it would be possible to buy a new high-definition television, plug it in and instantly receive a video stream from a DVD playing in a personal computer that was set up in the study, not the living room, without connecting any wires. In the future, it may be possible to transmit wirelessly two multiple HDTV signals simultaneously. A computer in the study, say, can send one program to a television in the living room while receiving and storing another program coming from a set-top box elsewhere in the house.

Still, other technology designers have even broader ambitions for UWB. Rajeev Krishnamoorthy, the founder and chief executive of TZero Technologies, in Sunnyvale, Calif., helped lead the development of the first Wi-Fi 802.11b chipsets at Agere Systems as an engineer in the 1990's.

Mr. Krishnamoorthy said he had set out on that project when he saw that the F.C.C. in 1996 had made available a band of unlicensed radio spectrum to be used freely.

"I looked at their decision on UWB a couple of years ago and I thought, 'déjà vu,' " he said.

While many of the UWB companies are aiming at the market for replacing cables wirelessly, TZero wants to build a technology with much higher speed and greater range. As a result, the company will have to meet vexing technical challenges to make a system that is more immune to interference, which could range from competing transmitters to hair dryers.

Though the challenges are significant, so are the opportunities. Today's Wi-Fi systems are limited to about 100 megabits of data a second, a rate that will realistically support no more than a single high-definition television video stream in the home, whereas UWB's capacity is 500 megabits and faster.

The future, as Mr. Krishnamoorthy envisions it, will include wireless home networks that will need to simultaneously interconnect multiple screens, computers and audio and video streams.

"This is obvious, everyone can see the potential," he said.

What is yet to be proven by the nascent UWB industry, researchers say, is whether the new technology will be able to share the radio spectrum with existing users.

"My concern is still interference," said Laurence Milstein, a professor of electrical and computer engineering at the Center for Wireless Communications at the University of California, San Diego. "The original logic of UWB is that you spread over wide frequency and if you transmit at a low enough power then you won't interfere with other users," Mr. Milstein said.

While it is possible that the industry will be able to reach that goal, it has yet to prove that it can be done without creating the radio equivalent of a traffic jam, he said.

The answer will begin to emerge in the next year as the first UWB products reach the market. The future of the digital living room lies in the balance.
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/04/te...04markoff.html


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You're Ice Cold at a Hot Spot: 7 Reasons Why
David Pogue

YOU'VE bought a wirelessly equipped laptop. You sit down in an airport, hotel or coffee shop where there's supposed to be a hot spot - an invisible bubble of radio waves that lets laptops get onto the Internet at high speed without cables. A message pops up on your screen indicating that the laptop has indeed detected that it's in a hot spot. That's when you discover that, in fact, you can't get online.

So much for the wireless life.

As it turns out, the distance between your wireless laptop and the Internet is a lot longer than you might have imagined. In between is a labyrinth of software, settings and people that often deprives road warriors of the pleasure that a wireless laptop is supposed to provide: instant, hassle-free connections.

What can go wrong? Let us count the ways.

Obstacle 1

You forgot to open your browser. In an ideal world, here's how hot-spot hopping would work: You open your laptop. A dialogue box (on the Mac) or a taskbar balloon (Windows) announces that it has found a hot spot. You click Connect, and you're ready to start e-mailing or surfing the Web.

And indeed, at many conferences, libraries, hotel lobbies and schools, that's exactly how it goes. Life is sweet.

At commercial hot spots, though - the ones where you have to pay for daily or monthly use of the network - you can't just open your e-mail or chat program and start communicating. Instead, you must first open your Web browser, like Internet Explorer, Safari or Firefox. (Some free hot spots require you to first open your Web browser, too.) If you don't realize that a Web browser must be the first stop - even if all you want to do is check your e-mail - your wireless adventure will be very, very short.

Once you open your browser, you see a Web page representing the operator of the wireless network. At Starbucks, Kinko's and many airports, for example, a T-Mobile Web page appears; at many hotels and other airports, it's a Wayport page. Here's where you plug in your credit-card number; or, if you have an existing account, sign in.

It's worth noting, by the way, that the wireless companies often have roaming agreements. If you have an AT&T or British Telecom wireless Internet account, for example, but find yourself at a T-Mobile hot spot, just choose your company's name from the Roaming or Partner pop-up menu.

At this point, clicking the Connect button opens a connection to the Internet. You can now use your Web browser, e-mail program, chat software and other functions that require your machine to be online.

Obstacle 2

You don't have a home page. Actually, it's not enough to open your Web browser. You have to try to visit a Web page. Some people have set up their Web browsers to open to an empty screen rather than a preferred starting page; their laptops won't make the connection. If you're staring at a blank page, try to visit a Web page - any Web page - to nudge your machine onto the network. The wireless company's page will appear instead of the page you requested.

Obstacle 3

The hot spot isn't for public use. Occasionally, your laptop will "see" a wireless network and connect to it, but you won't be able to pull up a Web page or send e-mail. In this case, you have stumbled onto a network that's intended for internal use, not for the public. Whoever set up the access point (that is, the wireless transmitter) has deliberately turned off the feature, called DNS serving, that can connect outsiders to the Internet.

It's also possible that you have encountered a wireless network that's not connected to the Internet at all. It's just a circle of computers connected to each other, a closed network created so that some friends can play a game against one another, or so that conference attendees can chat among themselves during a talk, for example.

If you're technically inclined, here's a geeky but quick way to confirm that this is the problem: Inspect your laptop's current I.P. address (Internet Protocol; that is, its Internet address). On the Mac, open the program in your Utilities folder called Network Utility. In Windows, choose Run in the Start menu; type "cmd" and press Enter; type ipconfig /all and press Enter. Either way, if you have joined a closed network, you'll see an I.P. address beginning with 169.254 - for example, 169.254.1.5.

The bad news: "It's like a gentle 'Keep Out' sign," said Brian Jepson, who edits books on wireless technology and co-wrote "Linux Unwired." "You'll have to find some other way to get online."

Obstacle 4

You need a password. These days, many wireless networks don't let you online without a password, whether they're free or commercial hot spots. (You'll know when a password box appears on your screen.)

Sometimes the password is yours for the asking. Sometimes you get it when you pay, for example, a hotel desk clerk for access. And sometimes a company has installed the password just to keep riffraff like you off its private network. Of course, most network designers hide such networks' signals altogether, so that your laptop doesn't even discover them.

Obstacle 5

The access point is broken. If your laptop sees the hot spot but can't connect you to the Internet, another possibility is that the transmitter (the access point) is configured incorrectly. If you can find somebody in authority - whoever's behind the hotel desk, for example - you may be able to persuade that person to hit the Reset button on the access point, which may do the trick. In some cases, there's even a toll-free number stickered to the access point, bearing the name of the geek who sets up wireless networks for this particular chain of hotels or coffee shops. That person, sitting in a cubicle miles away, may know what to do.

Obstacle 6

You have a conscience. Suppose your laptop cheerfully reports that it has found a hot spot called Default or LinkSys. (Those are the typical names of newly purchased wireless access points, at least until you give them more creative names.)

Now, in a typical wireless coffee shop, the hot spot usually bears the coffee shop's name. "Ask the person behind the counter," Mr. Jepson said. "If they look at you funny, you know the hot spot probably isn't theirs."

In this case, some hapless individual's private Internet bubble is probably bleeding through the walls - somebody who didn't, or couldn't, change the hot spot's default name. The only obstacle is the ethical one: should you enjoy a free connection by exploiting somebody's cluelessness?

(If you have deliberately set up a hot spot for the convenience of passersby, save your visitors confusion by naming it something like "Dave's Free Hot Spot.")

Obstacle 7

You're in Boston. If your laptop discovers a free network called the South Station Wi-Fi Bubble, you must be in the South Station train terminal in Boston. You can get onto the Web, all right - but it's not the big one, the one you're used to. It's a very tiny Web indeed, one whose few pages are dedicated to South Station, its history and its characters. You have stumbled onto an electronic community-building experiment established by Michael Oh, founder of a local wireless consulting company.

That doesn't mean you can't get onto the big Internet instead. You can also hop onto the commercial wireless network that's available in South Station. Assuming, of course, that everything else goes well.
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/04/te...l/04pogue.html


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Spreading the Fun Around
J. D. Biersdorfer

DIGITAL media is here to stay, whether it's music, photographs or movies. Unfortunately, the digital files tend to stay on the computer, which in most homes is in a spot more suitable for a single person rather than for blasting out songs for the whole house to enjoy, gathering the family together to watch a movie or showing off vacation slides to Grandma.

"We've lost that social element," said Anthony Fonzo, marketing manager for home-entertainment networking products at Philips Electronics, about how the digital multimedia boom is shifting people from shared experiences to more isolated activities. With its Connected Planet product line, Philips is among the many electronics companies making devices that help bridge the world of old and new audio-video technology.

So how do you get the social element back without stringing cables all over? One way is to use a wireless home network to tap into the content on the computer. With some hardware and patience, you can link it to your home-entertainment system and play the songs, videos and slide shows stored there.

The first step is to have a wireless home network in place. These work like radio stations: the main transmitter broadcasts a signal that a radio can receive, but instead of pop songs, the transmitter is broadcasting a network signal. Instead of a transmitter tower, your home network sends out the signal with a wireless router, a small box with little antennas.

Each computer connected to the network has a wireless network card installed, acting as the radio receiver, pulling in the signal.

Using your home network to play music files or view photos and video on your home-entertainment system requires adding a link (often called a wireless music player or wireless media player) that lets the stereo and TV communicate with the network and the computer. The devices vary, depending on whether you want to do something simple, like playing MP3 files through the stereo, say, or you want sound and pictures.

Cranking Up the Music

One way to free the digital music on your PC is to use a wireless music player device like the Roku Soundbridge or Netgear's MP 101 Wireless Music Player to link the home network to the home-entertainment center and "stream" the songs over your network's airwaves to the stereo.

Many network music players have their own wireless card so they can receive the signal from your network. Each player also has jacks on it so that can connect it to an audio jack on your stereo receiver. Depending on your stereo's connections, you can use standard audio cables with the red and white RCA plugs or the newer digital fiber-optic cables to hook up the player.

Once you install and configure the player's software on your computer, the device can see your music files. Most players come with remote controls to select songs and playlists displayed on the device's screen. Once you press "play," the song streams over the network, through the wireless music player connected to the stereo and out the speakers. Songs converted to MP3 or other digital formats usually do not sound as lush as they do on a CD, but quantity may trump quality.

Bypassing the PC

Besides linking devices, you can take the computer out of the picture entirely. Audio systems like the Wireless Music Center WACS700 from Philips Electronics, due out later this summer, take over the CD-conversion, wireless networking and file-storage chores from the PC.

The Wireless Music Center can store the tracks from up to 750 discs on its own 40-gigabyte hard drive. It can join an existing wireless network or form its own, and comes with a central unit and one remote Wireless Music Station, a stand-alone player that connects wirelessly to the central unit to stream the music stored on the hard drive.

Slide Shows and Video

You can also get a device that displays digital photos and video on your television and streams music. Typically called wireless media players or media receivers, devices like the ADS Media-Link or D-Link's MediaLounge cost around $200.

A wireless media player also has a network card inside it that can communicate with your home network and tap into photo, video and audio files on the PC. The back of the player includes jacks to connect the stereo and TV with standard audio and video cables like S-Video.

The media player usually comes with software that needs to be installed on the computer, so you can add it to the wireless network and catalog all the multimedia files on the hard drive for browsing on the TV screen. Once the parts are connected, you can sit on the couch and call up photos, videos and music from the computer's hard drive with the player's remote control.

If you have a TiVo Series2 digital video recorder, the TiVo itself can tap into digital photo and audio files from the computer without adding another box to your home system. For more information, go to tivo.com/4.9.asp.

And Keep in Mind

There are some things to consider before whipping out the credit card for any of these devices. Check the media or music player's packaging for the specifications to make sure it will work with your computer's hardware and software.

Your wireless network's speed may be an issue, especially for streaming big video files. Early home-networking hardware used a wireless standard called 802.11b, which transferred data up to 11 megabits per second, but it might not handle a large video file without some stuttering. Much of the new networking products use a similar standard, which can transfer data up to 54 megabits a second, for smoother streaming.

You should also make sure the media or music player is compatible with the media files you want to stream, whether they are in MP3, WMA, AAC or other file formats. Some products are advertising compatibility with Microsoft's Windows Media Connect software for Windows XP, which makes setting up compatible media players on the wireless network fairly painless - as long as you use Windows.

Many media players are designed for the PC, but companies like Elgato Systems makes a media player called the EyeHome for the Macintosh, which works with Apple's AirPort Express wireless base station.

With a bit of research, a dash of hardware and a spot of time to set things up, your wireless network can connect all your home-entertainment appliances, and Grandma will be much more comfortable on the couch in the living room when you show off your vacation photos rather than perched in front of a PC.
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/04/te...al/04jude.html


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EchoStar Sues TiVo, Humax Over Patents
Richard Shim

EchoStar communications has filed a patent infringement lawsuit against digital video recorder company TiVo and electronics maker Humax. The suit, filed on April 29 in U.S. district court in Texas, alleges that TiVo and Humax infringe on four EchoStar patents related to DVR technology.

TiVo filed a suit against EchoStar in January of last year alleging infringement of its "multimedia time warping system" patent. That has been a slow- moving case, with jury selection set for Oct. 4. The lawsuit figures prominently in TiVo's efforts to enforce its patent portfolio.

Humax licenses TiVo's technology and manufactures and sells consumer electronics devices that include DVR features.
http://news.com.com/EchoStar+sues+Ti...3-5696631.html


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The Web Behind the Scrawl
Ethan Todras-Whitehill

THE East Village neighborhood in Manhattan is no stranger to graffiti. In the morass of cryptic tags, stickers and drawings, however, one piece doesn't quite fit. It is scrawled on the base of a lamppost near First Avenue in permanent marker and reads "click here," with "here" written in blue and underlined.

"Click here" is an example of grafedia, a new and growing form of street art that brings together the wireless and physical worlds.

Here is how it works: the person posting the piece of grafedia uploads an image to the grafedia site (www.grafedia.net) and chooses a word to associate with it ("here"). That person then writes the word in a public place (street, print media, Internet) and underlines it in blue (the mark that distinguishes grafedia from graffiti; a full e-mail address is also a tip-off).

On the other end, when people see the writing and recognize it as grafedia, they send a text message or e-mail note to the appropriate e-mail address (the underlined word plus @grafedia.net, or here@grafedia.net in the East Village example), and are sent the image.

Founded by a New York University graduate student, John Geraci, last December, grafedia has gotten attention primarily from blogs and other Web sites, and in March and April the site logged an average of a few hundred requests for images daily. More than 2,000 images have been uploaded to the server from all over the world, for diverse uses, from advertising personal Web sites to running a treasure hunt at an Australian art school, Mr. Geraci said.

Similar projects to grafedia include Yellow Arrow, which uses yellow arrow stickers and text messages to annotate public space, and Murmur, which has been posting phone numbers around Toronto letting visitors call and hear a story set in their location.

Christina Ray, an artist, recently used grafedia as part of an interactive feature in her online magazine, Glowlab, which explores "psychogeography," the effect of spaces on people.

Ms. Ray wrote "heystranger @grafedia.net" on clear tape and posted it in a dozen locations around Williamsburg, Brooklyn. Her image depicts a white shadow on a brick wall with the words "Hey stranger, what are you up to today?" and another e-mail address. Ms. Ray takes the responses she gets and posts them at www.glowlab.com.

The project's goal, which is part of Mr. Geraci's work in the N.Y.U. interactive telecommunications program, is to "extend the borders of the Web out to physical surfaces," he said. "The separation between the online and the physical universes is artificial anyway." He attributes grafedia's appeal to the public's picking up on the natural merging of wireless and physical spaces, and its desire to explore the trend.

Other recent wireless phenomena attest to Mr. Geraci's assertion. Wardriving, the hobby of driving around with a wireless-enabled laptop computer searching for and recording the locations of open wireless networks, became popular in 2001 and was followed by warchalking, the practice of indicating the presence of these same networks on walls or sidewalks with chalk symbols. Neighbornode, Mr. Geraci's previous project, encourages people to set up open Internet hot spots that send users first to a community bulletin board, effectively bringing neighbors together through wireless Internet access.

"Taking the Internet into the physical world gives it boundaries and a character or voice that is otherwise lacking," he said. Graffiti, of course, is often simple vandalism, but Mr. Geraci doesn't think he is promoting criminal behavior. He says most grafedia users have never posted graffiti before, and a lot of the grafedia he encounters is done in chalk or on less permanent surfaces like paper, cardboard or a person's skin.

But grafedia could be picked up by traditional graffiti artists, said Karla L. Murray, a co-author of two books on graffiti. Ms. Murray said that graffiti's essence is fame. "The artists are very adaptable," she said. "If grafedia helped them get their name out there, they'd use it."

Mr. Geraci said he might rank the most popular grafedia tags on his Web site, so graffiti artists may have a reason to embrace grafedia. On the whole, though, he is just happy to be part of the larger phenomenon.

"It's unquestioned in my mind that the streets will be a point of digital exchange for people in the future," he said. "Whether grafedia will be part of that, I don't know."
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/04/te...l/04ethan.html


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EC Demands Microsoft Compliance 'Within Weeks'
Ingrid Marson

The European Commission is talking tough as it waits for Microsoft to comply with last year's antitrust ruling

Microsoft is under growing pressure to comply with the European antitrust ruling within a matter of weeks, an EU spokesman said on Wednesday.

The European Commission's competition spokesman said that if the matter is not resolved soon, it may fine Microsoft a significant sum of money.

"Our patience is in terms of weeks rather than months," said the spokesman. "They've had over a year now. Microsoft knows that if they don't comply to our satisfaction we can fine them up to five percent of their [daily global] turnover every day."

He said that Microsoft was aware of the specific date by which it must comply with the ruling, but the EC has decided not to publicise the date, as a "negotiation tactic".

The initial antitrust ruling on March 24 2004 demanded that Microsoft disclose information to rival makers of server software to enable their products to be interoperable with Windows and that it offer a version of Windows without Media Player.

The EC rejected Microsoft's proposed solution to the server interoperability in March this year, due tofour concerns. One of its main objections was the high level of royalties that Microsoft had proposed, said the spokesman. "The level of royalties should reflect the degree of innovation in the product, rather than [Microsoft's] monopoly power," said the spokesman.

Although Microsoft announced last month that they had addressed the majority of the EC's concern in this area, the EC spokesman said it was still talking to the software giant "concerning the proper implementation of the interoperability remedy." There are also issues regarding the version of Windows without Media Player that are yet to be resolved, said the spokesman.

A Microsoft spokesman was unable to comment on the deadline that the EC has imposed or its work towards complying with the ruling.

"I wouldn't want to talk about timing or what the dialogue is about," said the Microsoft spokesman. "We continue to work diligently and quickly to resolve the outstanding issues."

The EU competition commissioner Neelie Kroes met Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer at the end of April to discuss the software giant's failure to comply with the ruling. Kroes said Microsoft must comply with the decision 'urgently and in full'.
http://uk.news.yahoo.com/050511/152/fil05.html


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Microsoft Eyes Mobile Work Force
Alorie Gilbert

Microsoft has invested an undisclosed sum in Laplink Software and agreed to license some of Laplink's mobile-worker technology, the companies said Tuesday.

The investment gives Microsoft a minority stake in the 50-person company and demonstrates the software titan's growing interest in technology for the mobile work force, Microsoft said.

Laplink, a closely held company in Kirkland, Wash., makes programs that give people access, via the Internet, to their computer's files and e-mail messages, and to calendars on other machines. People can use the program, called Laplink Everywhere, to access information on desktop machines, laptops, handheld computers and some mobile phones. The service costs $8.95 a month.

"We think Laplink has good technology in the collaboration and mobile work force area," said Kenneth Lustig, managing director of intellectual-property acquisitions and investments at Microsoft. "Collaborating with Laplink could be beneficial to Microsoft as we develop more technology for the mobile work force."

Representatives from both companies declined to discuss exactly which Laplink technology Microsoft has agreed to license or the details of the arrangement.

Laplink, which has been in business for more than 20 years, has numerous ties to Microsoft. Laplink's chief executive and majority investor, Thomas Koll, is a former Microsoft vice president. In addition, Laplink licenses several Windows communications protocols, which helps Microsoft hold up its end of an antitrust settlement with the U.S. Justice Department.

In April, Laplink introduced a new version of its Everywhere product that supports Microsoft's Remote Desktop Protocol. The protocol is designed to reduce the hassle of providing remote access to Windows machines that are protected by firewalls. Laplink's products are also designed to work smoothly with various Microsoft programs, including the Internet Explorer Web browser and the Outlook e-mail and calendar system.

Laplink recently introduced a product called ShareDirect, a Windows add-on for setting up peer-to-peer file-sharing networks for businesses.
http://news.zdnet.com/2100-3513_22-5702056.html


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In a Reverse, Microsoft Says It Supports Gay Rights Bill
Sarah Kershaw

Microsoft, faced with unrelenting criticism from employees and gay rights groups over its decision to abandon support of a gay rights bill in Washington state, reversed course again yesterday and announced that it was now in support of the bill.

Steve Ballmer, the company's chief executive, announced the reversal in an e-mail message sent to 35,000 employees in the United States. "After looking at the question from all sides, I've concluded that diversity in the workplace is such an important issue for our business that it should be included in our legislative agenda," Mr. Ballmer said.

He added: "I respect that there will be different viewpoints. But as C.E.O., I am doing what I believe is right for our company as a whole."

Long known for its internal policies protecting gay employees from discrimination and offering them benefits, Microsoft sparked an uproar when officials decided to take a "neutral" stance on the antidiscrimination bill this year, after having supported it the two previous years.

Critics, including employees who said they were told that Microsoft would back the bill, said the decision to withdraw support had been made under pressure from a local evangelical preacher who threatened to boycott the company if it supported the legislation this year. Company officials have disputed the accusation.

The bill, which would have extended protections against discrimination in employment, housing and other areas to gay men and lesbians, failed by one vote on April 21. But it is automatically up for a new vote next year because bills introduced in the Washington Legislature are active for two years even if they are voted down the first time.

After the defeat, Mr. Ballmer sent an e-mail message to company employees, defending the decision to withdraw support. In that note, Mr. Ballmer said that he and Microsoft's founder, Bill Gates, personally supported the measure but felt the company needed to focus its legislative efforts on measures that had a more direct connection to their business.

In yesterday's message Mr. Ballmer suggested that employees' responses had helped persuade Microsoft officials to renew their backing of the measure. More than 1,500 employees signed an internal petition demanding that the company support the bill, and scores wrote in protest to Mr. Ballmer and Mr. Gates.

A Microsoft executive, speaking on condition of anonymity, said that senior company officials met after Microsoft's widely publicized turnaround on the bill prompted an uproar, and that they had decided to change the company's stance because of pressure from employees.

"This issue got attention at the highest levels of the company in a way it didn't before," said the executive, who did not attend the meeting but was briefed on it. "It was a rocky path, but we got to the right place."

Some lawmakers had said that Microsoft, based in Redmond, Wash., could have lent crucial backing to the legislation through influence on lawmakers representing Redmond and the suburbs outside Seattle.

In explaining why the company had not supported the bill this year, Mr. Ballmer and other Microsoft officials had said over the last two weeks that they were re-examining their legislative priorities and debating when and whether to become involved in public policy debates.

Gay rights groups said they were contacted by Microsoft officials before Mr. Ballmer's statement was publicly released. They applauded the decision.

"We're very happy," said Joe Solmonese, president of the Human Rights Campaign, a national gay advocacy group.

Mr. Solmonese met recently with several Microsoft employees after he learned of the earlier decision not to back the bill, which was first disclosed by The Stranger, an alternative weekly newspaper in Seattle.

The Microsoft officials, Mr. Solmonese said, "took it very seriously."

"They said that there had been a huge outpouring of concern via e-mail, both internally and externally," he said.

Ed Murray, an openly gay state legislator from Seattle and a sponsor of the bill, said of the company's reversal: "I think it's important. It sent a message that this issue is not simply a so-called social issue or cultural war issue, but it's an issue that is good for business, and it's an issue that business considers important."

But the company's decision disappointed others, including Microsoft employees who belong to the Antioch Bible Church in Redmond. The church is led by the Rev. Ken Hutcherson, who met with Microsoft officials twice about the bill and claimed to have persuaded them to change their position on it.

"I feel that it's been kind of a stressful day," said a Microsoft employee who is a member of the church and who spoke on condition of anonymity. "I feel that it was wrong for the company to say that they will be supporting issues such as this. Businesses should not actually be publicly taking a stance on that, regardless of their internal policies."

The employee, who has worked at Microsoft for four years, said the company should "stay out of it" when it comes to the debate over gay rights.

Dr. Hutcherson, whose church offices are near Microsoft's headquarters, said earlier that he believed his boycott threat had persuaded Microsoft not to support the bill. He did not respond to messages left yesterday on his cellphone and at his office.
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/07/national/07gay.html?


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Sweat Scent Study Suggests Gay Men's Brains Differ

A compound taken from male sweat stimulates the brains of gay men and straight women but not heterosexual men, raising the possibility that

homosexual brains are different, researchers in Sweden reported on Monday.

It also strengthens the evidence that humans respond to pheromones -- compounds known to affect animal behavior, especially mating behavior, but whose role in human activity has been questioned.

The pheromone in question is a derivative of testosterone called 4,16-androstadien-3-one, or AND.

"AND is detected primarily in male sweat," the researchers write in this week's issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

In a previous study, Ivanka Savic of Karolinska University Hospital in Stockholm and colleagues found that the hypothalamus region of the brain became activated when women smelled AND and when men smelled a corresponding compound in female urine called EST.

This time they compared the reactions of 12 women, 12 heterosexual men and 12 homosexual men.

They let them smell EST, AND, and ordinary odors such as lavender, and used positron emission tomography to watch their brain responses.

"In contrast to heterosexual men, and in congruence with heterosexual women, homosexual men displayed hypothalamic activation in response to AND," Savic's team wrote.

And a region of the brain called the anterior hypothalamus responded most strongly -- an area that in animals "is highly involved in sexual behavior."

But other smells were processed the same in all three groups.

"These findings show that our brain reacts differently to the two putative pheromones compared with common odors, and suggest a link between sexual orientation and hypothalamic neuronal processes," Savic's team wrote.

In most animals, pheromone signals go to the hypothalamus region of the brain via a pit-like structure in or near the nose called the vomeronasal organ.

People have a vomeronasal pit but there are no nerves connecting it to the brain, leading biologists to question whether humans respond to pheromones.
http://today.reuters.com/news/newsAr...ROMONES-DC.XML


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California Dreaming: A True Story of Computers, Drugs and Rock 'n' Roll
Andrew Leonard

WHAT THE DORMOUSE SAID
How the Sixties Counterculture Shaped the Personal Computer Industry.
By John Markoff.
Illustrated. 310 pp. Viking. $25.95.

Engineers can be so cute. In the early 1960's, Myron Stolaroff, an employee of the tape recorder manufacturer Ampex, decided to prove the value of consuming LSD. So he set up the International Foundation for Advanced Study and went about his project in classic methodical fashion.

Test subjects - almost all engineers - were given a series of doses under constant observation and expected to take careful notes on their own experience. A survey of the first 153 volunteers revealed that "83 percent of those who had taken LSD found that they had lasting benefits from the experience." (Other results: increase in ability to love, 78 percent; increased self-esteem, 71 percent.) Such precision might seem antithetical to the fuzzy let-it-all-hang-outness of the psychedelic experience. But John Markoff, a senior writer for The New York Times who covers technology, makes a convincing case that for the swarming ubergeeks assembling in the San Francisco Bay Area in the 1960's, approaching drugs as they might any other potentially helpful tool or device - from a soldering iron to a computer chip - was only natural. The goals were broad in the 60's: the world would be remade, the natural order of things reconfigured, human potential amplified to infinity. Anything that could help was to be cherished, studied and improved.

It is no accident, then, that the same patch of land on the peninsula south of San Francisco that gave birth to the Grateful Dead was also the site of groundbreaking research leading the way to the personal computer. That the two cultural impulses were linked - positively - is a provocative thesis.

Revisionist histories of the 60's often make an attempt to separate the "excess" of the era from the politics. In this view, all those acid-gobbling, pot-smoking, tie-dyed renegades were a distraction from the real work of stopping the Vietnam War and achieving social justice. But Mr. Markoff makes a surprisingly sympathetic case that it was all of a piece: the drugs, the antiauthoritarianism, the messianic belief that computing power should be spread throughout the land.

"It is not a coincidence," he writes, "that, during the 60's and early 70's, at the height of the protest against the war in Vietnam, the civil rights movement and widespread experimentation with psychedelic drugs, personal computing emerged from a handful of government- and corporate-funded laboratories, as well as from the work of a small group of hobbyists who were desperate to get their hands on computers they could personally control and decide to what uses they should be put."

Judging by the record presented in "What the Dormouse Said," it is indisputable that many of the engineers and programmers who contributed to the birth of personal computing were fans of LSD, draft resisters, commune sympathizers and, to put it bluntly, long-haired hippie freaks.

This makes entertaining reading. Many accounts of the birth of personal computing have been written, but this is the first close look at the drug habits of the earliest pioneers. "What the Dormouse Said" may not reach the level of the classics of computing history, Tracy Kidder's "Soul of a New Machine" and Steven Levy's "Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution." But there is still plenty of fun between its covers.

A central character - and one of the early volunteers at Stolaroff's foundation - is Douglas Engelbart, a man worthy of his own book. His team at the Augmented Human Intellect Research Center at the Stanford Research Institute was the first to demonstrate the potential of the computing future. The research demonstration that he conducted for a packed auditorium in San Francisco in 1968 is still talked about in Silicon Valley with the reverence of those who might have witnessed Jehovah handing Moses the Ten Commandments. The mouse, man! Engelbart gave us the mouse! But Mr. Engelbart's story is not a happy one. He saw further ahead than most, but had a difficult time articulating his vision. He became heavily involved with Werner Erhard's human potential movement, EST, and his laboratory ultimately ended up losing both its way and its government financing. Many of his researchers went on to the Xerox Palo Alto Research Center, where the first personal computer, the famous Alto, was invented, while he lapsed into semi-obscurity. As a metaphor for the 60's, which exploded with promise and ended in disarray, he's just about perfect.

Looking back at the 60's from the jaundiced perspective of the early 21st century, it's easy to wonder what was really accomplished, outside of the enduring split of the nation into two irreconcilable ideological camps. Sure, there was the civil rights campaign, women's liberation, environmentalism and a movement that eventually brought a war to heel, but the era is as likely to be ridiculed in modern memory as to be revered. But what happens if we add the birth of personal computing to the counterculture's list of achievements? Does that change the equation?

The answer depends on how one rates the personal computer as consciousness-enhancing device. Remember, after all, what the dormouse did say, in the stentorian full-throttle voice of Jefferson Airplane's Grace Slick: "Feed your head!"

By choosing that as his title, Mr. Markoff makes clear his belief that computers, like psychedelic drugs, are tools for mind expansion, for revelation and personal discovery. And to anyone who has experienced a drug-induced epiphany, there may indeed be a cosmic hyperlink there: fire up your laptop, connect wirelessly to the Internet, search for your dreams with Google: the power and the glory of the computing universe that exists now was a sci-fi fantasy not very long ago, and yes, it does pulsate with a destabilizing, revelatory psychic power. Cool!

But wasn't the goal of those 60's experimenters to make the world a better place? One has to wonder - and this is a question Mr. Markoff doesn't really address - whether the personal computer achieved that goal. Or has it only allowed all of us, heroes and villains alike, to be more productive as the world stays exactly the same?

Andrew Leonard is a staff writer at Salon.
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/07/bo...ew/07leon.html


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As the iPod Stays Hot, It Risks Losing Its Cool
Ken Belson

SO President George W. Bush listens to an iPod, it was learned recently. How uncool is that?

You'd think any marketer would love a little product placement with the consumer in chief. But the iPod - and Apple products generally - have reached near-cult status partly because they cultivate an image as the electronic toys of the anti-establishment set.

If someone as mainstream as President Bush has caught on to something allegedly so hip, what can Apple do to keep iPod chic and cutting edge?

Many successful gadget makers have wrestled with this issue and few have conquered it. Nokia's handsets, treasured for their sleekness just a few years ago, are now ridiculed as clunky blocks. Palm organizers, once signature accouterments in Silicon Valley and on Wall Street, barely register a yawn when they are pulled out at dinner parties.

Even TiVo, which is now synonymous with the digital video recorder, has lost its cachet as cable and satellite operators introduce their own versions.

The stakes, though, may be higher for Apple, a company that for two decades has cultivated the aura of techno-chic. Apple promotes the iPod, for instance, with a counterculture package of freewheeling dancers, psychedelic coloring and raucous music. The company's devotees are almost as fanatical as the Deadheads who followed the Grateful Dead on tour.

With simple styling and an easy-to-use format, it is little surprise that even the president has stumbled upon the iPod. Apple has a daunting 75 percent of the digital music player market, dominating companies like Dell and Samsung.

But these and other rivals are bound to catch up, which means Apple must continue to innovate to stay cool. "It's no longer, 'Will the iPod stay fashionable?' but 'Can Apple keep the tempo up?' " said Paul Saffo, a strategist at the Institute for the Future in Palo Alto, Calif.

Apple isn't standing still. It has extended its iPod line to include iPod Minis - smaller, cheaper versions of the iPod with less memory - and the iPod Shuffle, a stripped-down player that Apple promotes for its ability to play songs randomly.

Apple has also encouraged the development of accessories, including a flashlight that snaps on to iPods. And despite resisting at first, Apple has introduced the iPhoto, which lets users download digital photos from their computers.

It has also latched onto musicians to share some of their luster. Apple makes an iPod U2 Special Edition complete with the autographs of each of the band's members. Its online iTunes store is also a repository of exclusive songs and hip tastes.

"When I look at that store, it's clear Apple has a music director who manages the store, like a radio station manager," said Joe Wilcox, who tracks the industry for Jupiter Research. "It's a subtle thing, but it feeds into the whole cool factor."

Cool, though, is temporal, particularly in an industry as ever-changing as consumer electronics. "There could be something out there that is on the verge of coming out that has a new delivery system that could knock it out quickly," said Irma Zandl, the head of the Zandl Group, a research firm based in New York that tracks youth trends.

One school of iPod watchers says Apple should connect its mobile machines to the Internet, much like the Blackberry and cellphone. This would let people download songs on the run.

Cellphone companies are thinking the same thing; several have released handsets with digital music players inside. Motorola plans to release handsets that can download songs from the iTunes Web site.

Others say Apple has to integrate the iPod into everyday items like cars and exercise treadmills. The company now works with carmakers to make room on their dashboards for the players.

Still others say Apple needs to do for DVD's what it did for CD's - let people download movies quickly and cheaply and move them to their players with little fuss.

Apple is not alone in trying to find a new paradigm. Sony has spent a quarter of a century massaging the Walkman brand to keep its flame burning. Sony has released waterproof players, ever-thinner designs and even a line specially made for children. Walkman morphed from a cassette player into a CD player in 1984, and a mini-disc player in 1992.

Yet despite its ubiquity, the Walkman has limped recently as an MP3 player because Sony's format is harder to use than Apple's.

Which all shows that even the most recognizable and stylish brands lose their shine.

Geoffrey Moore, author of "Crossing the Chasm," an exploration of the life cycle of electronics, notes: "Anything truly edgy necessarily has its own mortality, like Baudelaire or Jimi Hendrix."
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/08/we...son.html?8hpib


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Whoops! We Seem to Have Misplaced Your Identity
Randall Stross

THE diesel-powered utility van is the unappreciated speed demon of the digital age. Even lumbering along city streets in stop-and-go traffic, it can move a trillion bytes of corporate data across town far faster than if they were sent across the Internet.

The homely Ford Econoline 350 is the workhorse of Iron Mountain, the dominating presence in the off-site data protection business. Its customers include more than three-fourths of Fortune 500 companies, and it had revenue of $1.82 billion last year, earned largely out of public sight as its unmarked vans shuttled among the back-office operations of its clients.

Last week, however, Iron Mountain lost the luxury of going about its rounds invisibly. Time Warner, one of its clients, disclosed that personal information - including names and Social Security numbers for 600,000 current and former employees - had gone missing six weeks earlier while in the care of an unnamed "leader in data storage."

The data had been, in fact, in an Iron Mountain van, and the few details about the incident that it and Time Warner have grudgingly divulged - such as the fact that the pick-up at Time Warner was 1 of 19 the van made bouncing around Manhattan on the fateful day - raise all sorts of questions.

To begin with, why would such sensitive information be handled less like a guard-this-with-your-life briefcase entrusted to Brinks than like a fungible bundle handed to the Dy-Dee Diaper Service? Why was the data unencrypted? And why were trucks involved at all?

Why wasn't the backup done via a secure online connection, an option that Iron Mountain offers as well as physical pickup? Why doesn't Iron Mountain eliminate the risk of midroute problems and retire its fleet of Econolines?

Time Warner blamed Iron Mountain for the potential breach of confidential employee information and would say nothing more about the event. Its tapes were last seen on Iron Mountain's vans, so its position is that it's Iron Mountain's responsibility; end of discussion.

Iron Mountain, for its part, gallantly declined to take Time Warner to task. It could have done so by saying how foolish Time Warner had been to send out sensitive personnel files in unencrypted form. Then again, Iron Mountain itself had failed to advise clients to encrypt files until April 21, when it issued a press release on the subject. This was too late to help Time Warner, whose tapes had disappeared a month earlier.

Time Warner has now publicly vowed to floss regularly and encrypt always.

Iron Mountain has adopted a scattershot approach in its public appeal for exoneration. Disappearing tapes - what its chief executive, C. Richard Reese, calls "inadvertent disclosures" - are a rare problem: 12 instances for every five million pick-ups or deliveries. Mr. Reese said he viewed the rarity of error as exemplary.

Jim Stickley, one of the founders and the chief technical officer of Trace Security, a consulting firm based in Baton Rouge, La., is not impressed: "Imagine the Secret Service said that about presidents: 'Well, we protected most of them.' "

Another argument pressed by Iron Mountain is that it knows of no instance when the loss of tapes has "resulted in the unauthorized access of personal information." Then again, have previous problems involved tapes filled with 600,000 names and matching Social Security numbers thoughtfully left unencrypted?

Iron Mountain also takes too much comfort in the fact that the missing tapes are labeled only with a bar code. The company reasons that a thief in search of Time Warner's employees would not know which van to hit and which tapes to grab.

But why assume a crime of planning and cunning? If the tapes landed accidentally in the hands of someone, who knew someone with the technical competence to take a look at their contents - in unencrypted form, not a difficult feat - what person of ill motive would toss aside those 600,000 names and Social Security numbers?

Iron Mountain's best defense is that its reliance on trucks, which must be loaded and unloaded by all-too-fallible humans, is unavoidable for technical reasons. Online backups are not feasible for large companies, given the sheer mass of data, which has grown faster than the bandwidth of corporate Internet connections.

Illustrative numbers provided by Iron Mountain would seem to settle the question. Consider a customer with 22,500 gigabytes (22.5 terabytes) of data that need to be ready for recovery from a disaster. Compressed - and, one hopes, encrypted - these fit onto 300 backup tapes, easily transported by the Econoline.

Now consider the challenge of alternatively moving that data over the wire. Even with a pair of OC3 lines, each with 250 times the bandwidth of a home broadband connection, you would need more than 82 hours to send one set - though let's not forget that 8 to 10 hours are saved because tapes do not have to be created.

And if disaster were to strike, it would take 82 hours to send these terabytes back over the wire for restoration. That's why "we're not driving the truck out of the equation," Mr. Reese said.

THE example, however, best matches a picture in which the computing resources of the largest corporation consist of a single mainframe, all of its many terabytes of data concentrated in one place, susceptible to a single disaster.

Bud Stoddard, the chief executive of AmeriVault, a rival company based in Boston that offers online backup services, says corporate data is distributed across thousands of servers and desktops. "Disasters happen every day, but they hit a server, or a department, or a building." he said. "They do not take out an enterprise's total data set."

His company - as well as Iron Mountain - offers online disaster protection by copying data via the Internet to off-site servers. This eliminates the problem of limited bandwidth, as only incremental changes to a file, not the entire file, need to be sent. It also eliminates another potential problem: a faulty tape, discovered only when it is needed for restoration.

Because of falling storage and bandwidth costs, it's now economically feasible to prepare for disaster by going digital instead of diesel, using a secure Internet connection to make an offsite mirror image of a corporation's vital data.

And should catastrophe strike, a company need not wait hours or days for its backup data to return by wire: AmeriVault can load 500 gigabytes of backed-up data onto a portable drive, then speed it to a client. For that rare emergency, the trusty Econoline can be summoned for duty.

Had Time Warner used the Internet to back up its data, the company would not now find itself reassuring its millions of subscribers - 21.7 million on AOL alone - that only employee information was in the missing tapes.

The company has offered to the individuals listed in the database a one-year subscription to Equifax's Credit Watch service. Iron Mountain has not stepped forward to pick up the bill. It adheres to the same view as photo processors: if something goes wrong when your film is in their possession, they'll replace the film, but they take no responsibility for the lost photos.

"Under standard liability, we are not responsible for the information stored on the tape," said Melissa Burman, an Iron Mountain spokeswoman. "That's because we never know what information is stored on any particular backup tape."

But when a missing tape could expose hundreds of thousands of people to identity theft through no fault of their own, many of whom may retain lawyers happy to work on contingency, Iron Mountain and similar companies are probably glad they never know the contents.

This unfortunate event, seemingly similar to a long list of recently revealed security incidents involving other companies and organizations, should stand apart for one reason: it could have been avoided so easily. It would have been a nonevent had Time Warner encrypted its personnel files before shipping them.

Mr. Stickley of Trace Security advocates making encryption a matter of law: "The government should be stepping in and say, 'You must encrypt information that can ruin people's lives,' " he said. "It's that simple."
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/08/business/08digi.html


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Now, Audio Blogs for Those Who Aspire to Be D.J.'s
John R. Quain

What do the pope and Paris Hilton have in common? They're both podcasters - and you can be one too.

Ranging from the sublime to the ridiculous, podcasts are essentially do-it-yourself recorded radio programs posted online. Anyone can download them free, and, using special software, listeners can subscribe to favorite shows and even have them automatically downloaded to a portable digital music player.

Despite what the name suggests, podcasts can be played not just on iPods but on any device that has an MP3 player program, including PC's and laptops.

Podcasts are the natural technological offspring of Web logs or blogs, those endlessly meandering personal Web musings that now seem to be everywhere online. Similarly, many podcasters have a diaristic bent, ranging from Mr. X, in upstate New York (ifthensoftware.blogspot.com), who has recorded his ruminations while driving to work, to Dan Klass, an underemployed actor in California whose podcast, "The Bitterest Pill" (www.thebitterestpill.com), has been known to feature invectives against Elmo.

There are celebrity podcasts like Paris Hilton's (houseofwaxmovie .warnerbros.com), intended to promote movies. Another, more high-minded site, Catholic Insider (www.catholicinsider.com), links to podcasts of Pope Benedict XVI from Vatican Radio.

Many radio stations are embracing the technology. WGBH in Boston, Q107 in Toronto and BBC Radio are already offering regular podcasts. Tomorrow, Sirius Satellite Radio will begin broadcasting a best-of-podcasting program with the podfather of podcasting, Adam Curry, formerly of MTV, as host.

Taking the experiment a step further, Infinity Broadcasting plans to restart its San Francisco talk station KYCY-AM (1550) with an all-podcasting format beginning Monday. KYCY's broadcasts will feature amateur programs from around the Web, but because of Federal Communications Commission regulations, each will be screened in advance.

Record companies are also beginning to use podcasts to fish for fans. "We think podcasts are a great way to form a relationship with our fans," said Damian Kulash, the lead singer of the rock band OK Go, which has an album coming out this summer on Capitol Records. When the band is on tour, OK Go phones in its podcasts (www.okgo.net).

Finding and Listening

For those wanting to find a podcast, there are online directories that list thousands of them, including Podcast.net (www.podcast.net), Podcasting News (podcastingnews.com), Podcast Alley (www.podcastalley.com) and iPodder.org (www.ipodder.org).

Several free software programs - like Doppler (www.dopplerradio.net) and iPodder (www.ipodder.org) - help users subscribe to and download podcasts. IPodder comes in Windows and Mac versions. The program includes a directory of podcasts available for subscribing on a scheduled basis or for downloading at will. The Web address of a podcast that is not listed can be cut and pasted into iPodder to add it to a user's roster of subscriptions.

Podcasts are usually indicated by an orange logo with the initials RSS (for really simple syndication) or XML (for extensible markup language), standing for the technologies that make such subscriptions possible.

IPod enthusiasts and Mac owners might also consider iPodderX (www.ipodderx.com), a $19.95 program that not only downloads programs but also puts them directly into the iTunes manager so that they can be automatically copied to a connected iPod player.

Unencumbered by professional standards or government broadcast rules, podcasts can devolve into fits of uncontrollable giggling and include more than their share of expletives. (Family Friendly Podcasts, at www.familyfriendlypodcasts.com, has some suggestions for those who prefer tamer shows.) Still, it is the freedom that has inspired many homegrown podcast producers.

"The whole beauty of it is that I don't have to censor myself," says Jason Evangelho, host of "Insomnia Radio," which showcases independent radio (hardcoreinsomniaradio.blogspot.com). "And I can say 'um.' "

Programs dedicated to music still dominate the podcast universe. Many offer an eclectic mix of underground music, but there are also classical music shows like "Your Daily Opera." While most get only a handful of listeners, some programs have developed a devoted fan base.

"I'm averaging about 10,000 to 11,000 listeners per show," says Brian Ibbott, whose "Coverville" (www.coverville.com) originates from his basement outside Denver. Mr. Ibbott's podcasts feature rare and unusual cover songs. He has a sponsor to offset the $30 to $40 a month he says he pays his hosting service for the extra traffic that his listeners create downloading his shows.

Making and Distributing

In addition to the chance to be heard by millions of Internet users, the relative ease of producing a show has driven the popularity of podcasting. A group of college friends unable to get their film careers off the ground, for example, decided to tell their stories, which are a cross between Firesign Theater and Hunter S. Thompson, in a podcast at the Peanut Gallery (www.thepeanutgallery.info). Those looking for a similar creative outlet need only a computer with a connected microphone and Web access.

Stay-at-home disc jockeys can record tracks using the basic recording software included with the Mac and Windows operating systems. Free software like EasyPodcast (www.easypodcast.com) can help upload efforts to a Web site. Services like Liberated Syndication (www.libsyn.com) will provide Web hosting for as little as $5 a month.

Many podcasters end up creating digital studios, using more expensive microphones, mixers and audio editing software, like Adobe Audition ($299, www.adobe.com). Audition lets a podcaster carefully edit voiceovers, mix up to 128 stereo sound tracks and even correct the pitch of a recording. Unfortunately, Audition does not include the tools for uploading to the Web.

Consequently, a new class of software designed for podcasters is beginning to emerge. Two noteworthy examples are Propaganda ($49.95, www.makepropaganda.com) and iPodcast Producer ($149.95, www.industrialaudiosoftware.com). Both Windows applications enable producers to record, mix multiple tracks and automatically post shows to the Web.

Of course, unlike a live radio broadcast or streaming music online, podcasts are downloaded and stored in their entirety. So the programs have the potential to generate thousands of copies of songs, raising legal issues. "Podcasters, like the users of any other sound recordings, must obtain the appropriate licenses from the copyright owners, or their designees," the Recording Industry Association of America said.

At "Insomnia Radio," Mr. Evangelho plays only independent bands that own the rights to their own songs, and gets permission directly from the artists to play their music. At "Coverville," to satisfy the royalties owed to songwriters and composers, Mr. Ibbott pays annual licensing fees totaling about $500 to Ascap and B.M.I. The R.I.A.A. has not specified if or how podcasters should pay the labels.

The programs are stored in the MP3 file format, and companies that use MP3 compression must pay a licensing fee to Thomson, a co-creator of the technology. But according to Rocky Caldwell at Thomson's licensing unit, fees are not applicable unless users make at least $100,000 a year from their podcasts. Now that's the kind of problem many podcasters wish they had.
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/12/te.../12basics.html


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Control Through DRM
Russell McOrmond

How can liberal thinkers trust transnational corporations more than their own neighbors?

One of the most interesting areas to be politically involved in at the moment is technology law. This is an arena where, “To err is human, to really fowl things up requires misunderstanding a computer”.

When you take political positions offered by various groups and filter them through an understanding of how computers work, you end up with conflicting situations. And I say that as someone who's been building, repairing and programming various types since 1981.

The most heated debate in digital copyright today centers on Digital Rights Management (DRM). Most people commenting on DRM do so from the interpretation offered by those selling it: that it gives copyright holders digital control over whether someone can copy their work. They claim that with DRM in place, only those who are authorized to copy will be able to.

The problem is, the technology needed to directly accomplish this goal can't exist.

At the point where a copy might be made, only two entities have control: the owner of the device, and the DRM vendor. Copyright holders can never be given direct control and must always chose between which of those two groups they trust most. These DRM vendors are transnational corporations headquartered predominantly in the United States.

Ironically, in Canada, it's parliament's Heritage Committee, and the various creator organizations, such as the writers' union, that have been rushing to ratify the 1996 WIPO treaties, which would give additional legal protections for DRM. These treaties are based on the same laundered policy proposals (1995 Lehman report) that were implemented in the highly controversial Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) in the USA.

Heritage has traditionally been a cultural sovereigntist and opponent of the negative effects of media concentration. Thus far, it's had the opposite opinion on this area of policy. We need to realize as creators and as liberals that we don't want legal protection for DRM, but that we do need strong legal protection FROM DRM.

If you don't understand DRM and TPMs, you are not alone as this technology is misunderstood by both proponents and opponents . When the Canadian Internet Policy and Public Interest Clinic (CIPPIC) documents their opposition to DRM, they do so based on the intended effects of DRM as stated by the proponents of DRM, not based on the actual effects based on an understanding of the technology.

One of the strongest proponents of DRM has been the recording industry. Past RIAA ceo Hilary Rosen recently sent a letter to Apple complaining about the fact that she could not copy her music to competing media players, even though this the intended purpose of the DRM which her industry demanded that Apple adopt with their iTunes service.

When you properly interpret her complaint what she is really saying is that Apple should have signed up to the Microsoft controlled DRM which the recording industry has been promoting, rather than use competing DRM which Apple would have independent control over. The suggestion that Apple become dependent on Microsoft would have been market suicide. It turns out that Ms. Rosen is now an on-air business and political commentator for Microsoft's MSNBC, and thus is simply promoting the special interests of her new employer.

To understand the limits of technology, and how misunderstandings are being abused, it's important to examine what it's useful for, as well as what it's not so useful for, and one of the best ways to discuss this is to take a look at cryptography.

In its simplest form, cryptography can be seen as mathematics which take a message (called “plaintext”, even though it can be music or any other message) and encrypt it. This is called “cypertext" and it, which can't be decrypted without the right math to return it to plaintext, which usually calls for an encryption key. We can think of this process as putting a message into a locked box and then unlocking it with specific keys so we can read it.

Cryptography has two categories of keys: symmetric and public.

With symmetric, the key that locks the box is the same one that unlocks it. If you want to send me a message, you lock it with a specific key and send it to anyone who has a copy of that same key. This is the type of key most people are familiar with in the physical world - ie, the key that unlocks your door is the same one that locks it, and anyone with access to it can make a copy.

Public key cryptography is a bit different in that there are a pair of keys. If you lock the box with one of the keys you must unlock it with the other. You can't lock and unlock the box with the same key.

This type of system is extremely powerful because it allows us to keep one key secret, never making copies. The other key is made public. If you want to send me a message that you want to be certain only I can open, you encrypt it with my public key, and I decrypt it with my private key. If I want to know for certain that it came from you, I can ask you to encrypt it in your private key. Then, when I decrypt it with your public key, I know it really did come from you.

When you mix these types of keys together, you end up with a technology that can protect privacy and authenticity.

Privacy is protected because an unauthorized person wouldn't be able to decrypt the message without having the right keys.

Public key cryptography protects authenticity in that you know the message decoded with a specific public key was encoded by a specific private key. And you know who the person is who has access to that private key.

Copyright, however, is a type of legal protection that seeks to limit what can be done by authorized recipients of a message. For an audience member to open the message and view it, they need access to the appropriate key. Once they've opened the message, they have access to the plaintext,and can technologically do anything they wish with that message.

DRM keys are embedded
The way DRM deals with this is by embedded the keys within multimedia devices instead of handing them out.

As an example, every DVD player has a key that's specific to a manufacturer and which can decrypt the encrypted movies. A DVD movie is encrypted with a symmetric key and key information is encrypted in each of the public keys where the DVD player manufacturer is trusted to obey a legal agreement it has with those who encode the movies.

The theory is: this will stop people from making copies. But if you understand computers, you know you can easily open any DVD player and extract its key. These keys aren't a secret because they're publicly distributed inside consumer electronics. While it may be illegal to extract them, in reality, this has little meaning.

In other words, this technology has an absolutely minimal effect on criminal behavior.

It does, however, have an effect on law abiding citizens.

You'll notice that a DVD player can only play a movie if that movie was encoded to the key embedded in the DVD player. We've effectively created a system that ties the watching of a movie in with a DVD player authorized by those who encoded the movie.

This legally protected tie between encoded content and devices authorized to access the content is what past RIAA CEO Hilary Rosen was complaining about with regards to online music services such as iTunes. This type of tied selling is something that should be regulated by the Government under competition laws.

And as I've already pointed out, the people who encode the movies have agreements with those who have the decoding keys. Moreover, they'll only encode the movie if they have an agreement.

This agreement could be innocent in that it requires that the device obey copyright restrictions. But it could also contain clauses meant to control markets in other ways.

One of the known controls relates to regional encoding meant to ensure a movie released in North America will only be viewable on a North American DVD player. So if you're traveling and buy a movie outside of North America, you won't be able to watch it on your North American player. And there can easily be many other controls that give further power to those who hold them.

It turns out the people who control these keys strongly influence exactly what content will be distributed, with an effect that could be far worse for creators than those understood from media concentration.

While the stated purpose was to protect the interests of creators, we find we've instead created a situation where creators are forced into positions where their ability to reach an audience depends solely on powerful media intermediaries.

As a creator, I long ago decided that no matter how many private citizens infringe my copyright, I trust citizens a whole more than I do any media intermediary.

My audiences are people with whom I can build healthy relationships, but copyright law still exists as a tool to stop people who continue to infringe my rights.

I strongly oppose DRM because it effectively takes control away from me and my audiences, and transfers that control to powerful media intermediaries.

And I see these as a far greater threat to my rights than any amount of copyright infringement.
http://p2pnet.net/story/4797