Peer-To-Peer News - The Week In Review - November 12th, ’05

[JackSpratts]

"Downloading is pretty common among my friends. It's really becoming quite mainstream. You don't have to pay outrageous prices for DVDs." – Pete Morison


"The advancement in peer-to-peer technology has given consumers more power to distribute products, which is a new environment that the music industry must adapt to." – Civil Action


"You will no longer be able to pop a tape into your VCR and know that you will necessarily be able record what you want. This will put a huge cap on innovation. No one will be able create a new kind of digital TV." – Jerry James


"I'm horribly disappointed that this important measure failed to pass. This bill was designed to protect the free-speech rights of Americans whose only alleged crime is wanting to use the Internet to express their opinions." – Rep. Mark Kennedy, R-Minn


"We don't allow child pornography on the Internet. We don't exempt it from consumer safety laws...We don't because we think those laws are important. Campaign finance regulations should be extended [to the Internet] as well." – Rep. Marty Meehan, D-Mass


"All of the hoo-rah-rah...is incorrect." – Rep. Zoe Lofgren, D-CA


"We can kid ourselves, but in the end it's probably porn that people want." – Thomas McInerney


"You can't uninstall it, you can't find it." – Jason Schultz


"Sony to Suspend Making Antipiracy CDs." – AP






































November 12th, 2005







Sony to Suspend Making Antipiracy CDs
Ted Bridis

Stung by continuing criticism, the world's second-largest music label, Sony BMG Music Entertainment, promised Friday to temporarily suspend making music CDs with antipiracy technology that can leave computers vulnerable to hackers.

Sony defended its right to prevent customers from illegally copying music but said it will halt manufacturing CDs with the "XCP" technology as a precautionary measure. "We also intend to re- examine all aspects of our content protection initiative to be sure that it continues to meet our goals of security and ease of consumer use," the company said in a statement.

The antipiracy technology, which works only on Windows computers, prevents customers from making more than a few copies of the CD and prevents them from loading the CD's songs onto Apple Computer's popular iPod portable music players. Some other music players, which recognize Microsoft's proprietary music format, would work.

Sony's announcement came one day after leading security companies disclosed that hackers were distributing malicious programs over the Internet that exploited the antipiracy technology's ability to avoid detection. Hackers discovered they can effectively render their programs invisible by using names for computer files similar to ones cloaked by the Sony technology.

A senior Homeland Security official cautioned entertainment companies against discouraging piracy in ways that also make computers vulnerable. Stewart Baker, assistant secretary for policy at DHS, did not cite Sony by name in his remarks Thursday but described industry efforts to install hidden files on consumers' computers.

"It's very important to remember that it's your intellectual property, it's not your computer," Baker said at a trade conference on piracy. "And in the pursuit of protection of intellectual property, it's important not to defeat or undermine the security measures that people need to adopt in these days."

Sony's program is included on about 20 popular music titles, including releases by Van Zant and The Bad Plus.

"This is a step they should have taken immediately," said Mark Russinovich, chief software architect at Winternals Software who discovered the hidden copy-protection technology Oct. 31 and posted his findings on his Web log. He said Sony did not admit any wrongdoing, nor did it promise not to use similar techniques in the future.

Security researchers have described Sony's technology as "spyware," saying it is difficult to remove, transmits without warning details about what music is playing, and that Sony's notice to consumers about the technology was inadequate. Sony executives have rejected the description of their technology as spyware.

Some leading antivirus companies updated their protective software this week to detect Sony's antipiracy program, disable it and prevent it from reinstalling.

After Russinovich criticized Sony, it made available a software patch that removed the technology's ability to avoid detection. It also made more broadly available its instructions on how to remove the software permanently. Customers who remove the software are unable to listen to the music CD on their computer.
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories...CTION=BUSINESS





Grokster To Stop Distributing File-Sharing Service
Andy Sullivan

File-sharing service Grokster Ltd. has agreed to stop distributing software that allows users to copy songs over the Internet after losing its case before the U.S. Supreme Court, a recording industry trade group said on Monday.

The settlement with the Recording Industry Association of America follows the high court's unanimous ruling in June that Grokster and other "peer to peer" networks can be held liable if they induce users into violating copyright laws.

Grokster, the lead defendant in the case, agreed to stop activity that leads to copyright infringement.

"There are legal services for downloading music and movies. This service is not one of them," read a notice on Grokster's Web site. "Grokster hopes to have a safe and legal service available soon."

The recording industry believes that its five-year sales slump can be traced to networks like Grokster that allow millions of users to copy movies, songs and other files directly from each others' computers.

The RIAA has sued more than 15,500 peer-to-peer users for copyright infringement.

"At the end of the day, this is about our ability to invest in new music. An online marketplace populated by legitimate services allows us to do just that," RIAA chairman Mitch Bainwol said in a statement.

The victory is largely symbolic because Grokster has steadily lost users over the years to more innovative services, said an expert who tracks file-trading traffic.

"It's a very famous brand primarily because of a Supreme Court case," said BigChampagne CEO Eric Garland. "Most people have read about Grokster in the newspaper but have not actually used their software."

A Grokster attorney was not immediately available for comment.

Decentralized Nature

Grokster users will still be able to copy music, movies and software directly from each others' hard drives, as the decentralized nature of most peer-to-peer software makes it impossible to control once it is released on the Internet.

Traffic remains steady over two other popular peer-to-peer services, WinMX and eDonkey, that announced plans to shut down in September, Garland said.

Digital sales from download services and mobile-phone ring tones tripled in the first half of 2005 to about $790 million, or 6 percent of all sales, according to the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry.

But peer-to-peer usage increased as well. An average of 9.2 million users were logged on to peer-to-peer networks in October, up from 6.3 million a year ago, according to BigChampagne.

Grokster is in the process of being sold to Mashboxx LLC, a company that intends to develop an industry-approved peer-to-peer service.

A Grokster rebirth would not be unprecedented. Pioneering file-trading service Napster re-emerged as a pay service after recording industry lawsuits forced it to shut its doors in 2001.

RIAA members include Vivendi Universal, Warner Music Group Corp., EMI Group Plc. and Sony BMG Music Entertainment.
http://today.reuters.com/news/newsAr...&srch=Grokster





Korea's Largest P2P Service Forced To Shut Down
Scott M. Fulton, III

Complying with a district court order handed down against it last August, Soribada, the South Korean peer-to-peer file sharing service that was the subject of heated controversy throughout Southeast Asia last summer, shut down its service yesterday - the same day that one of its American counterparts, Grokster, settled with representatives of the US recording industry, and shut its service down.

Last 31 October, according to reports in the Korean press, charging the company with non- compliance with the August order, the district court penalized Soribada at a rate equivalent to $10,000 USD per day, for each day the company continued its service. Soribada lost a suit filed against it by Korea's main recording industry association, presenting the court with a list of 810,000 illegal postings, mostly of songs which the service made available for free and unlicensed sharing.

In a statement released yesterday, John Kennedy, the chairman and CEO of IFPI – which represents the world's recording agencies in anti-piracy activities - said, "Courts in three continents - in the US, Australia, Korea and Taiwan - have handed down successive judgments against peer-to-peer services that have built businesses on copyright infringement. The landscape of the music industry is changing, and, as the Grokster settlement shows, it is moving in favor of those who want to use technology the legitimate way, to create a thriving legal digital music market."

In response to the court's decision last week, a spokesperson for Civil Action, a Korean activist group, was quoted by Korea Times as saying, "The advancement in peer-to-peer technology has given consumers more power to distribute products, which is a new environment that the music industry must adapt to."

While the service was held responsible for Korean copyright violation, Soribada's executives were cleared of personal liability in a court finding last January. Last September, Korea's largest file streaming service, Bugs Music, was also forced to shut down in the wake of a similar court finding brought forth by the same plaintiffs.
http://www.tgdaily.com/2005/11/08/so...n_south_korea/





Unrepentant Soribada to Launch Free P2P Site

Korea’s biggest provider of peer-to-peer file sharing services Soribada, only recently closed down under pressure from the recording industry, was unrepentant on Friday, saying it will roll out new P2P software soon. The move is expected to inflame the powerful music industry, which says file-swapping sites violate its copyright.

“We will launch a new P2P service called Open Soribada… to replace Soribada 3, which was shut down by a court,” the firm’s chief Yang Jung-hwan said. The Open Soribada software simply supports file-sharing between Internet users, but additional services on the website including registration and reward points will be scrapped.

The Soribada webmaster will no longer ask members for personal information or charge them for providing the service in an apparent bid by the firm to place itself beyond the reach of the law.

“The service recently suspended by court order was limited to Soribada 3, but not all P2P services were banned,” Yang said. “I’m wracking my brain to develop various models that don’t infringe on rights of Internet users and allow us to allocate revenues to copyright holders.”

Yet the music industry claims that given the court order to shut down Soribada’s services, albeit provisional, it is evidently illegal for the firm to launch a fresh P2P service.

Yun Seong-wu of the Korean Association of Phonogram Producers argued the court ruling “banned Soribada from profiting from its software because it was in violation of copyright laws, but [the company] is ignoring the verdict and evading the law.”
http://english.chosun.com/w21data/ht...511110027.html





Study: Smaller Singapore Firms Skirt Copyrights
Aaron Tan

While small and midsize businesses in Singapore are aware of the island state's new copyright laws, nearly a third of respondents in a recent survey are still not compliant.

Under Singapore's Copyright Act, revised early this year, it is a criminal offense for a person or company to obtain a commercial advantage from unlicensed or pirated software. Offenders face a fine of up to $12,250 (S$20,000) and up to six months in prison.

The study, conducted by research firm Intercedent Asia, polled 100 small and midsize businesses (SMBs) in Singapore to gauge their level of compliance since the amended laws came into effect in January of this year, said Liew Woon Yin, director general of the Intellectual Property Office of Singapore (IPOS), which commissioned the survey.

According to the study, awareness of the new law is high among SMBs, with three-quarters of respondents saying they are aware of the copyright legislation.

About 28 percent of respondents said they were already compliant. These businesses also indicated they have taken measures to ensure they only buy software from credible sources. In addition, 65 percent said they conduct regular software audits.

Among those that said they were not compliant, 47.3 percent are small businesses with fewer than 10 workstations. "This clearly points to the fact that the smaller companies are still facing problems to be compliant," Liew said.

"One reason provided by (survey) respondents for not being compliant is the relative high cost of software," she said.

To help SMBs become compliant, the respondents suggested vendors change the way their software is priced or packaged, and give the businesses more time to ensure compliance. The SMBs also noted that the use of open-source software would help them stay compliant.

Liew said that after IPOS presented its findings from the survey, software vendors responded by launching a new software licensing program that offers discounts of up to 60 percent for business software.

The program will include software from Adobe Systems, Autodesk, Borland, Computer Associates International, Microsoft, Novell, Siacad, Sun Microsystems and Symantec. The program started Nov. 1 and will end Dec. 23 this year, with the exception of Sun and CA, whose promotions will continue through March of next year.

"We hope (we will see) not just the larger companies, but more of the smaller enterprises, come forward to take this opportunity and become compliant," Liew said.
http://news.com.com/Study+Smaller+Si...3-5928396.html





Boycott Meatballs

Sollentuna Man Fined For File Sharing

A 27 year old man was fined 17,600 kronor on Wednesday by Sollentuna district court for having made the film "The third wave" available on the internet.

The case in Sollentuna was almost identical to that held in Västmanland district court two weeks ago. In both cases the games and film industry body, Antipiratbyrån (APB), informed the police that the individuals had made a film accessible using the file sharing programme Direct Connect++.

Both courts also upheld the argument that file sharing of this sort can be considered "public display" and therefore breaks copyright laws.

The difference between the cases was that the 27 year old in Sollentuna admitted to the crime and that his hard drive was confiscated.

The fact that both trials ended in fines could mean that it will be harder in future for the police to investigate this kind of crime. For the police to be able to demand personal details from internet service providers and to carry out house raids, the crime needs to be one which results in at least a conditional jail sentence.

But Daniel Westman, a researcher in legal informatics at Stockholm University, maintains that it is too early to draw any conclusions.

No judgement has yet written into law and the Västerås verdict is subject to appeal.

"It's partly a new issue, how you judge the value of punishing this kind of crime when it isn't commercial but still involves wide distribution," he said.

"If the verdict stands at a higher level, you won't be able to investigate cases where it's just single copyrighted works. But that says nothing about cases with many more files - and they are the most common, after all," said Westman.
http://www.thelocal.se/article.php?I...&date=20051109





File-Sharing Lawsuits Fail to Deter P2P Downloaders
RIAA v. The People: Two Years Later

It's been two years since the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) started suing music fans who share songs online. Thousands of Americans have been hit by lawsuits, but both peer-to-peer (P2P) file sharing and the litigation continue unabated.

In a report released Thursday, "RIAA v. The People: Two Years Later," the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) argues that the lawsuits are singling out only a select few fans for retribution, and many of them can't afford either to settle the case or defend themselves. EFF's report cites the case of a single mother in Minnesota who faces $500,000 in penalties for her daughter's alleged downloading, as well as the case of a disabled veteran who was targeted for downloading songs she already owned.

"Out of the millions of people who download music from P2P systems every day, the RIAA arbitrarily picks a few hundred to sue every month," said EFF Senior Staff Attorney Fred von Lohmann. "Many of those families suffer severe financial hardship. But despite all the publicity, studies show that P2P usage is increasing instead of decreasing."

"RIAA v. The People" was released in conjunction with the first annual P2P Litigation Summit in Chicago on Thursday, which brings together defense attorneys, clients, advocates, and academics to discuss the latest developments in the lawsuits.

Three other reports released Thursday were aimed at helping lawyers representing music fans sued by the RIAA. "Typical Claims and Counter Claims in Peer to Peer Litigation" is a general discussion of the lawsuits, while "Parental Liability for Copyright Infringement by Minor Children" and "Copyright Judgments in Personal Bankruptcy" both tackle important issues arising in defending families from devastating judgments.

"After two years of lawsuits, there's only one conclusion to draw," said von Lohmann. "Suing music fans is no answer to the P2P dilemma."

For "RIAA v. The People: Two Years Later": http://www.eff.org/IP/P2P/RIAAatTWO_FINAL.pdf

For "Typical Claims and Counter Claims in Peer to Peer Litigation: http://www.eff.org/IP/P2P/ RIAA_v_ThePeople/P2P_witkin.pdf

For "Parental Liability for Copyright Infringement": http://www.eff.org/IP/P2P/ Parent_Liability_Nov_2005.pdf

For "Copyright Judgments in Personal Bankruptcy": http://www.eff.org/IP/P2P/RIAA_v_ThePeople/ P2P_bktcy_memo.pdf

For more on the P2P Litigation Summit: http://www.eff.org/IP/P2P/p2p_litigation_summit.php
http://www.commondreams.org/news2005/1103-05.htm





Former RIAA Chief Joins Board of P2P File Sharing Company
Scott M. Fulton, III

Saratoga Springs (New York) - In the clearest indication yet that the recording industry may be prepared to drop its objections to peer-to-peer networking as a technology, Jason Berman - who for nearly 13 years headed the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) - has joined the board of directors of Wurld Media, the company behind Peer Impact, the most prominent distributor of licensed multimedia content over P2P.

In a statement released yesterday by Wurld Media, Berman said, "Digital distribution has forever changed the way that consumers discover and purchase their music and other entertainment content. Peer Impact has been at the forefront of providing users with a legal way to share that content. I am very pleased to be joining a team who is committed to creating the future." Berman currently serves as Chairman Emeritus of IFPI, a consortium of recording companies worldwide that support anti-piracy causes.

Wurld Media made news last July, just prior to the launch of Peer Impact, when its CEO, Greg Kerber, testified before the Senate Commerce Committee as the sole representative of the pro-licensing side of the P2P industry. There, Kerber addressed senators' concerns over the nature of P2P, defending the technology while promoting the use of business models to entice music publishers, and to grow a new industry. Peer Impact has since quickly garnered the support of the four major publishers, and a great many independent publishers and labels.

In his company's statement yesterday, Kerber said that Berman "served on the front lines during the birth of the file-sharing revolution, and we are fortunate to gain his insight as we continue to build the file-sharing model of the future."

Wurld Media's announcement comes one day after a decision by Grokster - the company whose historic defeat in the US Supreme Court sparked July's Senate hearings - to shut down its file sharing service.
http://www.tgdaily.com/2005/11/08/fo...s_wurld_media/





iMesh's Music Filters Skipping A Bit
John Borland

The new iMesh, launched last week as the first record label-approved file-swapping service, has a Led Zeppelin problem.

Like its peers in the digital music business, from Napster to Apple Computer's iTunes, iMesh does not have the legal rights to distribute recordings from the popular 1970s rockers. But using the company's new service, it requires only a quick point and click of the mouse to download several of Led Zeppelin's biggest hits.

In a sample of searches performed by CNET News.com, the same was true of songs from Green Day's latest album, a handful of tunes from The Black Eyed Peas, and other copyrighted works--precisely what the company's new filtered file-swapping model was created to avoid.

It is far too early to say whether this is a serious flaw, or bugs that will be cleaned up in just a few days of frantic code-tweaking. But the continued availability of copyrighted tunes on the iMesh network shows just how high the hurdles remain for this ambitious experiment with legal file swapping.

"We don't see this as a long-term challenge," said iMesh Executive Chairman Bob Summer. "Given that we're in an early beta phase technology, issues are to be expected. These are isolated problems which we are diligently working on fixing."

iMesh carved out a unique role for itself last year, as the first formerly unregulated file-swapping network to settle a copyright lawsuit with the big record labels that included a deal allowing it to transform itself into a "legitimate" music service.

The Israeli company agreed to pay the labels $4.1 million, and in return it was allowed to continue operating unmolested while it developed a new version of the service that would filter out copyrighted works and sell users individual songs or monthly subscriptions instead.

The company adopted song-recognition technology from Audible Magic that helps it identify songs as they are being downloaded, by comparing an audio "fingerprint"--essentially a digital representation of a song's sonic characteristics--against the known signatures of copyrighted songs. It tapped MusicNet, a wholesale digital music service that feeds Yahoo, AOL and other rivals, to provide the back end for the iMesh subscription.

MusicNet's catalogue of more than 2 million songs was also used to help create the master database of audio fingerprints, along with information directly from labels for songs not yet in MusicNet's files.

The new service, which launched early last week, allows people to download subscription versions of more than a million songs that will be free for a month or two, but which will require a payment of $6.95 a month to listen to afterward. But it allows people to search the unregulated file-swapping network for other noncopyrighted songs, and this is where the glitches lie.

The new service is supposed to identify unprotected versions of the record labels' copyrighted works as they are being downloaded, and block them before they reach a computer's hard drive. In many, if not most, cases this works flawlessly. However, works by Led Zeppelin, Green Day, Franz Ferdinand and others slipped through the filters seemingly without problem.

iMesh co-founder Talmon Marco said that some of the songs slipping through may be because the service does not yet have fingerprints on hand, or is still in the process of analyzing the fingerprints. The company does have a process in place to let record labels claim tracks, which will let those tracks be blocked in the future, he said.

The issues are reminiscent of the last major experimentation with installing filters on an active file-swapping service, when a federal court ordered the original Napster to block illegal swapping on its network in 2001.

That company installed an early generation of filters that was easily evaded by the user base, and was subsequently criticized harshly by the courts. A subsequent generation of filters cleaned virtually everything off the network, and the company shut down the service not long afterward.

Representatives of record labels and music publishers contacted about the new iMesh service declined to comment, but said they were continuing to look at the issue.
http://news.com.com/iMeshs+music+fil...3-5929468.html





Tech Firms Asked To Pledge To Free Speech
AP

A group of investors and researchers is pledging to watch the action of technology companies doing business in countries with less than stellar human rights reputations, and is asking the company to proclaim their commitment to freedom of expression.

The 25 participants representing about $21 billion in assets are all signatories to a "joint investor statement on freedom of expression and the Internet," an initiative spearheaded by the media watchdog group Reporters Without Borders.

The statement comes in the wake of several instances where technology companies have been criticized for cooperating with governments, notably China, in order to get stronger market positions.
http://www.siliconvalley.com/mld/sil...y/13105047.htm





China Reportedly Shuts Down Blog
AP

Chinese authorities have blocked a pro-democracy Web log after it was nominated for a freedom of expression award by a German radio station, a press freedom group said Thursday.

The blog, titled Wang Yi's Microphone, dealt with "sensitive subjects" and was maintained by a teacher from Sichuan province, Paris-based Reporters Without Borders said in a statement.

China's communist government encourages Internet use for education and business, but blocks material deemed subversive or pornographic.

Dissidents have been arrested under vaguely worded national security laws for posting items critical of the government.

Reporters Without Borders said Wang's blog was ordered closed by the authorities in Hainan province, where the site's host company, Tianya, is located.

The site was nominated for a "Best of the Blogs" award in the freedom of expression category by the German public radio station Deutsche Welle.

On its Web site, the radio station described Wang as an "anti-government Chinese intellectual" who used the blog to fight for justice. It did not give details.

The Reporters Without Borders statement said one of Wang's most recent posts dealt with a campaign by peasants in the southeastern province of Guangdong to remove a village chief accused of corruption.

China has the world's second-largest population of Internet users, with 100 million people online.
http://www.siliconvalley.com/mld/sil...y/13070884.htm





Egyptian Blogger Arrested

Egyptian police have detained a blogger for his anti-Islamic and anti-government writings and confiscated his books and copies of his articles, his family and other bloggers said Thursday.

Abdolkarim Nabil Seliman, a 21-year-old law student at Al-Azhar University, was arrested on Oct. 26. His whereabouts are not known.

"A group of seven police officers knocked at the door at 3 a.m. and asked about Abdolkarim,'' his mother, who identified herself as Yousseria, told The Associated Press by telephone from Alexandria.

She said the police searched the house, confiscated Seliman books and copies of his articles, which he posts to his blog.

"Since then, I didn't see him,'' she said, adding that his brother learned from police that Seliman was taken to a detention cell on Wednesday.

Police declined to comment when asked about Seliman's detention.

"He is stubborn, he has ideas that contradict the true religion and he posts that on the Internet, serving no one but himself,'' his mother said when asked about his writings.

Seliman belongs to a pious Muslim family - his parents were performing umra, or a minor Islamic pilgrimage, in Mecca, Saudi Arabia, just days before his arrest.

He is also a student of Al-Azhar, the world's highest seat of learning for Sunni Muslims.

Another blogger, Malik Moustafa, closely followed Seliman's detention and accused followers of the fundamentalist Islamic Salafi movement in Alexandria of being behind the arrest.

Moustafa said the arrest followed articles in which Seliman accused the Salafis of inciting the latest sectarian tensions in his neighborhood of Mouharm Bay.

Seliman was detained three days after posting an article to his blog commenting on the violent riots that erupted when thousands of security forces clashed with streams of angry Muslim worshippers in front of a Coptic Christian church over a play put on by Christians deemed offensive to Islam.

The play had gone unnoticed when it was first performed at St. George's two years ago.

Though it has not been performed recently, it caught Muslims' attention when, according to security officials, Islamic extremists may have been distributing DVDs.

Titled "The Naked Truth of Islam as I saw it in Mouharm Bay,'' Seliman said of the riots: "Muslims revealed their true ugly face, and appeared to all the world that they are at full of brutality, barbarism and inhumanity.''

In addition to his anti-Islamic writings, Seliman posted several articles blatantly attacking Egypt's President Hosni Mubarak regime and describing it as a "symbol of dictatorship.''

It is the first security crackdown on an Egyptian blogger, a growing community that has flourished in Egypt over the last couple of years. - AP
http://thestar.com.my/news/story.asp...1555&sec=world





Libya Reportedly Puts Blogger In Prison
Jasper Mortimer

Libya has sent to prison for 18 months a blogger who criticized the government on the Internet, Human Rights Watch says in a report that inspired a series of Web tributes to the dissident Friday.

A Tripoli court convicted Abdel Raziq al-Mansuri of illegal possession of a handgun and sentenced him to 18 months' imprisonment on Oct. 19, the New York-based rights group said in an e-mail to The Associated Press in Cairo.

"The gun charges are a ruse," said the Middle Eastern director of HRW, Sarah Leah Whitson. "The authorities went after al-Mansuri because they did not like what he wrote."

Al-Mansuri, 52, was detained in Tobruk, his hometown, in January after publishing about 50 articles critical of Libyan society and government on a dissident Web site based in Britain, http://www.akhbar-libya.com, the rights group said Thursday.

Libyan government officials were not available for comment Friday as the country was celebrating the Eid al-Fitr holiday that follows the holy month of Ramadan.

The rights group, who visited al-Mansuri in Tripoli's Abu Selim prison on May 5, said his family published the outcome of his trial in an Oct. 27 letter to the government, media and rights organizations that condemned al-Mansuri's detention and sentence.

"Such outspoken criticism is rare in Libya," said Human Rights Watch. Politics has been tightly controlled in the country since Col. Moammar Gadhafi seized power in 1969.

The letter said the authorities had asked family members to denounce al-Mansuri as mentally deranged.

"If defending the right to free speech, and asking for basic human rights is insane in our country, then welcome to a family that is, from its oldest to its youngest, insane," the letter said, according to Human Rights Watch.

The letter added that in sentencing al-Mansuri, the court had refused to give him credit for the months in detention he had already served.

The rights group said that after detaining al-Mansuri, Libyan security officials searched his home and "found an old pistol that belonged to his father."

The group reported the head of the Internal Security Agency, Col. Tuhami Khaled, as denying that al-Mansuri was arrested for his Internet writings.

"He was arrested because he had a gun without a license," the group quoted Khaled as telling its representatives in May.

Asked why the Internal Security Agency was detaining al-Mansuri instead of the police, Khaled replied that the pistol was "a job for internal security," the group said.

On Friday, the Web site http://www.akhbar-libya.com carried numerous statements of support for al-Mansuri from Libyans in exile and human rights groups.

"With his courage and truthful words, Abdel Raziq managed to break the barrier of fear. He has moved from the big prison (Libya) to a smaller one," said Ahmed Masoud Al- Ghabali, a Libyan who recalled meeting al-Mansuri in Britain.

The site itself said he had been arrested for writing articles that "demanded freedom of expression and denounced human rights abuses in Libya."
http://www.siliconvalley.com/mld/sil...l/13081331.htm





Democrats Defeat Election-Law Aid For Bloggers
Declan McCullagh

Democrats on Wednesday managed to defeat a bill aimed at amending U.S. election laws to immunize bloggers from hundreds of pages of federal regulations.

In an acrimonious debate that broke largely along party lines, more than three-quarters of congressional Democrats voted to oppose the reform bill, which had enjoyed wide support from online activists and Web commentators worried about having to comply with a tangled skein of rules.

The vote tally in the House of Representatives, 225 to 182, was not enough to send the Online Freedom of Speech Act to the Senate. Under the rules that House leaders adopted to accelerate the process, a two-thirds supermajority was required.

"I'm horribly disappointed that this important measure failed to pass," said Rep. Mark Kennedy, R-Minn. "This bill was designed to protect the free-speech rights of Americans whose only alleged crime is wanting to use the Internet to express their opinions."

The Federal Election Commission is under court order to finalize rules extending a controversial 2002 campaign finance law to the Internet. Unless Congress acts, the final regulations are expected to be announced by the end of the year. (They could cover everything from regulating hyperlinks to politicians' Web sites to forcing disclosure of affiliations with campaigns.)

Opponents of the reform plan mounted a last-minute effort to derail the bill before the vote on Wednesday evening. Liberal advocacy groups circulated letters warning the measure was too broad and would invite "corrupt" activities online, and The New York Times wrote in an editorial this week that "the Internet would become a free-fire zone without any limits on spending."

Rep. Marty Meehan, a Massachusetts Democrat who opposed the bill, said during the floor debate: "We don't allow child pornography on the Internet. We don't exempt it from consumer safety laws...We don't because we think those laws are important." Campaign finance regulations should be extended as well, he said.

Rep. Lloyd Doggett, a Texas Democrat, said that if the bill were approved, the public would have "no idea whether Internet campaign ads are being financed by secret soft money." Soft money is a general term referring to funds not regulated by election laws.

The House reform proposal, only one page long, simply says that the portion of federal election law that deals with publications aimed at the general public "shall not include communications over the Internet." It may eventually receive another vote under a slower, normal procedure that requires only a majority.

Not every Democrat opposed the campaign finance reform proposal. Rep. Zoe Lofgren, a Democrat whose district includes part of Silicon Valley, said her colleagues should not believe the editorials in The New York Times and Washington Post. "What the bill does is a lot more modest than what the rhetoric would have us believe," Lofgren said. "All of the hoo-rah-rah...is incorrect."
http://news.com.com/Democrats+defeat...3-5929587.html





ACLU Challenges Patriot Act
Declan McCullagh

The American Civil Liberties Union urged the 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals on Wednesday to uphold two separate lower court rulings that whittle away at provisions of the U.S. Patriot Act that allow the FBI to secretly demand public information from public libraries and Internet service providers.

At issue in today's hearing are two challenges brought by the ACLU in New York and Connecticut regarding a surveillance provision that was dramatically expanded by Section 505 of the Patriot Act.

The Patriot Act, passed in 2001 in the wake of the terrorist attacks in New York City and Washington, D.C., on Sept. 11 of that year, requires public libraries, universities, Internet service providers and any other type of communication provider--including telephone companies--to comply with secret "national security letters," or NSLs, from the FBI. Those letters can ask for information about subscribers--including home addresses, what telephone calls were made, e-mail subject lines and logs of what Web sites were visited.

Companies or institutions that receive these letters are not suspected of any wrongdoing, but the Patriot Act provisions in question prevent them forever from telling anyone that the FBI demanded records.

The first case was brought by the ACLU on behalf of an anonymous Internet service provider. Judge Victor Marrero, a U.S. District Judge in the Southern District of New York, struck down the entire NSL statute on Sept. 29, 2004, saying "democracy abhors undue secrecy." In the ruling, the court said that the unlimited gag imposed by the NSL law violates free speech rights under the First Amendment.

The court also said that the FBI's demands for records without giving recipients of NSLs an opportunity to test the validity of the request in front of a judge is a violation of the Fourth Amendment's protection against unreasonable searches and seizures.

In the Connecticut case, the ACLU is representing a member of the American Library Association that possesses sensitive information about library patrons, including circulation records and records relating to Internet usage. The ACLU argued that the gag law limits free speech, especially at a time when Congress is debating the expansion of the Patriot Act, which expires at the end of this year.

In its lawsuit, the organization said it had the right to describe its experience to Congress in general terms--without disclosing details of the NSL. A federal district court agreed that the First Amendment permitted such general disclosure, but the 2nd Circuit didn't.

The issue went all the way to U.S. Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who rejected the library group's request to lift its gag order, sending the decision back to the 2nd Circuit.

There is no specific timetable for the justices in the 2nd Circuit to hand down their decision.

"It's difficult to say how the court will rule," said Ann Beeson, associate legal director for the ACLU, who argued the case before the 2nd Circuit. "We just have to wait and see. We asked the court to decide the Connecticutt case first because it deals with a narrower legal question. The appeals process for the New York case (involving the ISP) could take much longer, because it deals with broader legal issues."

As Congress debates proposals to renew the Patriot Act, it's considering ways to give recipients more options after receiving a national security letter from the FBI.

Under current law, recipients are legally prohibited from disclosing that they received an NSL even to their attorney.

One measure already approved by the U.S. House of Representatives permits the recipient to consult with an attorney, who can ask a court to modify an NSL if it's "unreasonable." A second bill being considered in the Senate, takes a similar approach.

Either version would, after being signed into law by President Bush, effectively halt the two lawsuits before the 2nd Circuit by rewriting the NSL procedures to make them less vulnerable in court. At the very least, the ACLU would have to start over and likely would face a more difficult legal battle.

Some civil libertarians have objected to both bills in Congress, saying that even after the changes, the FBI would still be able to send secret NSLs to Internet providers, casinos, car dealerships and many other institutions--without prior court approval and without any requirement that the investigation be related to terrorism.

A final version of the legislation is expected to be approved by the end of next month.
http://news.com.com/ACLU+challenges+...3-5928827.html





EU Optimistic Over Wider Governance Of Internet
Huw Jones

The European Commission hopes a meeting next week will come up with an agreement to allow governments more direct influence over the domain name system that guides traffic around the Internet.

A U.N. report has put forward a more multi-national approach to running the Internet which serves a billion users worldwide, saying this would be more democratic and transparent, a view the 25-nation European Union shares.

Day-to-day handling of domain names is done by the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), a California-based non-profit organization created by the U.S. Commerce Department.

ICANN's governments committee has only an advisory role.

A final round of diplomatic talks on the report is due on Saturday ahead of the World Summit on the Information Society in Tunis on November 16-18.

Internet governance is seen by many outside the United States as being too heavily skewed in favor of America, though David Gross, the U.S. State Department ambassador who is heading the U.S. delegation in Tunis, told Reuters last month that it was the private sector that leads in running the Internet.

The Commission said it has made much progress with its aims.

"We are entering into the final phase of negotiations with quite an optimistic point of view," Jean-Francois Soupizet, deputy head of international relations at the Commission said.

"We have already the elements for an agreement, notably a workable definition of Internet governance," Soupizet told a forum on convergence in the media.

Software and Internet firms fear that wide government involvement will mean more regulation and taxes.

Soupizet said the EU was against setting up a new U.N. mechanism to intervene in developing the Internet infrastructure, which the EU says should be left to current operators on a day-to- day basis.

"Only when this is not working properly, then we could consider intervention. This point is now widely shared by all parties at WSIS ... and will be reflected in the Tunis agenda for action," Soupizet said.

Some 80 to 90 percent of plan of action to be signed off in Tunis has already been agreed, he added.

The U.N. report has raised hackles among U.S. politicians. "We cannot allow the U.N. to control the Internet," Republican senator Norm Coleman has said.

Other politicians have called for the U.S. role in Internet governance to be maintained, with the Commerce Department still overseeing ICANN.

Theresa Swinehart, a general manager at ICANN, told the conference that ICANN did not "run or control or govern the Internet, but coordinates".

Wider representation of countries and other interested parties is already emerging but was not perfect yet, she said. "The WSIS process needs to make sure it does not put at risk the 35 years to develop the Internet to date."

Bernard Benhamou, director of Internet governance in the French Prime Minister's office, said more democratic governance of the Internet was needed as its power to intrude into people's lives increases, and the need to tackle civil liberties issues such as identity theft and spam.
http://today.reuters.com/news/NewsAr...NTERNET-EU.xml





Officials Vow to Protect Intellectual Property

Two top level Bush administration officials today vowed that enforcement of laws against theft of 'intellectual property' will be a top priority for the government, but warned that education, diplomacy, and use of the civil courts, not new and broader statutes, are the most effective way to combat when has become a $250 billion a year crime, 1200 WOAI news reported today.

"Our economy now grows on the basis of ideas," U.S. Commerce Secretary Carlos Gutierrez told a conference on intellectual property law and enforcement at the University of Texas school of law in Austin. "We cannot create a world environment where copyright protections mean nothing."

Gutierrez said the problem of intellectual property theft is growing at an alarming rate, he said 10% of all pharmaceuticals sold today are counterfeit.

Intellectual property is defined as copyrights and patents covering processes, ideas, and artistic expression, including music, movies, and software. Congressman Lamar Smith (R-Texas) who chairs the House Subcommittee on Courts, the Internet and Intellectual Property, told the conference that the term didn't even exist fifteen years ago.

"High tech is now responsible for 40% of the increase in the productivity of our economy, and half of our gross domestic product reflects some form of intellectual property," Smith said. "Failure to protect that intellectual property threatens to destroy that productivity increase."

Senator John Cornyn (R-Tx) echoed that, saying 'innovation' not natural resources or cheap labor, is America's economic advantage today.

But Gutierrez and Attorney General Alberto Gonzales both expressed concerns that passing 'too many new laws' may discourage innovation, and urged the government and industry to rely on education and diplomacy to resolve many of the key issues.

"There are places right now in the U.S. and overseas that a customer can buy a knockoff of a $100 handbag for $5," Gutierrez said, "and I bet many of those customers think that's pretty cool. Those people need to know that it's not cool."

Gutierrez said there are 'entire societies' which 'celebrate the art of copying,' and which actually encourage the theft of products ranging from pharmaceuticals to software. He did not identify the countries he was referring to, but he did cite Thailand as an violator of copyright and industrial property laws.

Ronald Mann of the University of Texas School of Law pointed out that today's copyright laws date from 'before the invention of software.'

"Innovation has clearly outpaced the law," he said. "But the key is to make sure any new laws don't restrict and stifle new innovation."
http://www.woai.com/news/local/story...A-9D7A0F11E38B





Chat Room That Built the World
Robert Andrews

In the past few years, some of the most revolutionary software emerged not from Silicon Valley startups or high- powered universities, but from a humble online chat room.

Many in the tech industry are beginning to recognize that a string of influential concepts can be traced to a single Internet Relay Chat channel called #Winprog.

The IRC channel has played virtual incubator to a gamut of fledgling developers for more than a decade, helping Shawn Fanning polish the earliest versions of Napster and acting as code consultancy when Gnutella developer Justin Frankel wrote Winamp.

Devotees say the channel has become an under-the-radar institution to the Windows programming world. Many of its veterans have landed jobs at leading technology firms, and Microsoft staff even tap regulars for help with their own operating system.

It's better, members say, than any Silicon Valley business park.

"Except for not having any cash, #Winprog puts most tech incubators to shame," said Ben Knauss, a channel veteran and Microsoft consultant who has managed several big software projects, including the software that powered the first iPod.

"My own experience with incubators was something akin to, 'Come work in our offices and give us half your stock, and we'll answer your telephone and pretend we're providing lots of other resources.' With #Winprog, you get technical support, advice, critical review and at times even manpower to help finish your project."

It is the kind of supportive environment that lured Fanning, aka "Napster," to the channel in 1999, looking for input on his nascent file-sharing application.

Many of the #Winprog old guard remember the teen as "an annoying newbie" who needed help writing Napster's user interface.

"I actually remember making fun of (him) because of his bad design," said Chris Redekop, a channel devotee of nine years whose Alberta, Canada, software firm Replicon is among the many to have hired programming talent out of #Winprog's gene pool.

"When he first joined the channel, he knew next to nothing of Windows programming," Redekop said. "His coding skills weren't that advanced."

IRC is where both Fanning and Frankel eventually met other programmers, marketers and business people who would help ready their software for public release. Both also used other chat rooms, of course.

But they are not the only ones to benefit from #Winprog's critical and surprisingly wide-ranging influence. Members of the channel also counsel the likes of DVD encryption cracker John Lech Johansen, SmartFTP developer Mike Walter, Electronic Arts game developers, Windows Vista engineers and contractors for NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. As many as two dozen Microsoft developers hang out in the channel every day, getting support -- as well as giving it.

"There is not one area of major software today that is not touched in some way by #Winprog, be it the Windows OS or your TurboTax software; each member has contributed in major ways to the digital community," said Knauss, who first logged onto the channel in 1994.

"It's innovation in its purest form, without ego, money or fame as its goal," he added. "These are kids sitting around, chatting, saying, 'Hey, you know what, I built that,' and a hundred other people saying 'No, no, make it better, make it do this, make it faster, oh my God it's ugly.'"

Indeed, anything other than brutal honesty from the channel's roughly 140 participants would jeopardize its elite and unforgiving reputation.

While many real-world incubators are loath to criticize their startups, #Winprog "smacks you in the face with your failure," Knauss said, through robust dissection of bad ideas, a low tolerance for mundane questions and a high barrier to entry. Often, seeking advice is a baptism of fire.

"You could often get useful help there at some price, like dignity," said Justin Frankel, alias "Burn."

Frankel flourished writing code in chat rooms between 1996 and 1999, he said, but felt hamstrung when his Nullsoft software house later became a subsidiary of the AOL empire.

"Programmers who were using the internet for real-time text communication back in the day had a ton of opportunities," he said. "Most of the testing for Winamp was done on IRC although in a different channel, #mpeg3, and that surely contributed to its success an order of magnitude more than #Winprog.

"Having people who know the Win32 API around was very helpful. There are some knowledgeable people in there, and usually someone will have some bit of experience to help," Frankel said.

Channel veterans say developers could now learn more from #Winprog in an hour than they could in coders' classes lasting weeks.

"The help you can get is invaluable, in my opinion," Redekop said. "I think it's possibly my most valuable resource as a programmer -- Google's coming up a close second, though."
http://www.wired.com/news/technology...,69394,00.html





CEA and HRRC Encourage Congress to Not Arbitrarily Suppress Technological Development
Press Release

Congress should be extremely concerned about the proposals from the content community to suppress technological development on arbitrary or insufficient bases, stated Consumer Electronics Association (CEA) vice president of technology policy Michael Petricone in testimony delivered today before a congressional committee. Testifying on behalf of CEA and the Home Recording Rights Coalition (HRRC), Petricone made his comments before a hearing held by the House Judiciary Committee's Subcommittee on Courts, the Internet and Intellectual Property exploring "Content Protection in the Digital Age: The Broadcast Flag, High-Definition Radio and the Analog Hole."

Petricone discussed the "HD Radio Content Protection Act," "Analog Content Protection Act" and "Broadcast Flag Authorization Act." He addressed each act as separate and distinct issues and asked the Committee that these subjects not be "conflated or confused."

"The proposal to lock down free, over the air radio is especially pernicious. Unlike the video 'flag,' the proposal is aimed at stopping private and noncommercial recording of lawfully acquired content. The only apparent way to accomplish this would be through encryption.

"The rollout of terrestrial digital radio is well underway. Over 500 stations are broadcasting digitally, thousands of radios have already been sold; over 25,000 are forecast to be in the market by year end, with tens if not hundreds of thousands to follow in 2006. Since no encryption system currently exists, an encryption requirement would render both the transmission infrastructure and the initial radios obsolete, stopping the rollout of this new technology in its tracks.

"In essence, the Recording Industry Association of American (RIAA) is trying to use this Committee to leverage the satellite radio industry on the eve of negotiation for a new performance royalty. And, without saying so, RIAA is trying to gut the 'Audio Home Recording Act' written by this Subcommittee.

"Next the 'Analog Content Protection Act.' This draft is immensely broad and complicated and confusing. This bill would impose a massive government design mandate on every product capable of digitizing analog video signals - not just PCs and television, but even those found in airplanes, automobiles, medical devices and technical equipment.

"A key concern is that one of the two required copy protection technologies is largely unknown as to its cost, operation and licensing status. In addition, all key decisions would be left up to the Patent & Trademark Office (PTO). With due respect, it is unclear how the PTO could make these decisions, or who would exercise oversight over its judgment.

"CEA and HRRC are not opposed to addressing the 'analog hole' issue. Unfortunately, the current draft legislation in no way resembles a multi-industry consensus and CEA and HRRC oppose its enactment in its current form.

"The 'Broadcast Flag Authorization Act' language is close to a reinstatement of what the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) did in its original Order, but we are concerned that it grants discretion to the FCC to change everything in the future. Also, we believe it is deficient in not addressing ways in which the flag can be misused. We urge the Committee to include narrow exceptions for local news and public affairs programming, and allow schools and libraries to use broadcast excerpts for distance learning.

"If Congress is going to provide more protection to copyright holders, it should also safeguard the rights of consumers to enjoy the works that they lawfully acquire. That is why, should Congress move forward with any proposals discussed today, HR 1201 should be part of the package.

In closing, Petricone said, "As we consider these bills, please do not ignore the larger issue of U.S. competitiveness. While other countries are busy developing their technology industries to compete with America, we face attempts from the media companies to suppress technological development on arbitrary grounds. This is a trend that ought not to be encouraged."

HRRC is urging concerned consumers to visit its web site, www.HRRC.org, and to send a message to Members of Congress.
http://www.ehomeupgrade.com/entry/1601/cea_and_hrrc





Unsecured Wi-Fi Would Be Outlawed BY N.Y. County
Declan McCullagh

According to a new proposal being considered by a suburb of New York City, any business or home office with an open wireless connection but no separate server to fend off Internet attacks would be violating the law.

Politicians in Westchester County are urging adoption of the law--which appears to be the first such legislation in the U.S.--because without it, "somebody parked in the street or sitting in a neighboring building could hack into the network and steal your most confidential data," County Executive Andy Spano said in a statement.

The draft proposal offered this week would compel all "commercial businesses" with an open wireless access point to have a "network gateway server" outfitted with a software or hardware firewall. Such a firewall, used to block intrusions from outside the local network, would be required even for a coffee shop that used an old-fashioned cash register instead of an Internet-linked credit card system that could be vulnerable to intrusions.

Scott Fernqvist, special assistant to the county's chief information officer, said Friday that he thought "the law would apply" to home offices as well.

"It was just introduced; it's a draft," Fernqvist said. "We're hoping it's enacted early next year, but this can change."

The proposed law has two prongs: First, "public Internet access" may not be provided without a network gateway server equipped with a firewall. Second, any business or home office that stores personal information also must install such a firewall-outfitted server even if its wireless connection is encrypted and not open to the public. All such businesses would be required to register with the county within 90 days.

The proposal echoes a slew of bills in Congress and in state legislatures that are being considered in the wake of recent security problems involving Bank of America, payroll provider PayMaxx and Reed Elsevier Group's LexisNexis service. But the other proposals tend to follow approaches such as requiring notification of breaches or restricting use of Social Security Numbers--as opposed to regulating wireless links.

According to the Westchester proposal, public Internet access sites also would have to post a sign saying: "You are accessing a network which has been secured with firewall protection. Since such protection does not guarantee the security of your personal information, use discretion." Violations of any part of the law would be punishable with fines of $250 or $500.

Representatives from the county's information technology department drove around downtown White Plains, N.Y., with laptop computers and detected 248 open wireless connections in less than half an hour, the county reported. Half lacked "visible security" features.
http://news.com.com/Unsecured+Wi-Fi+...3-5934194.html





New Legislation Would Block Satellite Radio Recording
Mark Hachman

Draft legislation reportedly authored by the MPAA would place recording limitations on portable satellite radio players, handicapping their functionality. A trio of proposed bills began circulating this week on Capitol Hill, all designed to place limits on content broadcast over the airwaves: the "Analog Content Security Preservation Act of 2005"; the "Broadcast Flag Authorization Act of 2005," which would re-enable the broadcast flag in 2009; and the "HD Radio Content Protection Act of 2005".

According to industry sources, all were either authored or co-authored by the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) or the Recording Industry of American Artists (RIAA). Like the ACSPA act that would plug the "analog hole," the HD Radio Content Protection Act seeks to prevent devices like the Delphi MyFi XM2Go or Sirius S50 which act as a portable radio cache of music and programs recorded from a satellite radio network. Users can record a song or block of songs by pressing a button, and organize a playlist based upon metadata describing the song or genre. Both of those capabilities would be outlawed if the bill goes into effect. The proposed bill would amend the law to ensure that devices like the MyFi would be designed to prevent transferring music or other content from the device to the outside world, and would also limit their ability to store content to a few "permitted recording" features.

Representatives from XM Radio declined to comment on Thursday until they had reviewed the legislation. Representatives from Sirius Satellite Radio were unable to be contacted. "Permitted recording" would force the following restrictions: permit recording only of specific programs, channels, or time periods, as selected by the user, of no less than 30 minutes duration; limit total recording to 50 hours; and force the recorder to act as a buffer, deleting content as new content is recorded. The bill would also restrict players from recording or playing back content based on metadata, such as searching for a specific song, artist, genres, or "user preferences". The first restriction would essentially prevent recording on a song-by-song basis. Moreover, the bill would not permit the "automated disaggregation of the copyrighted material," such as separating a music stream into component songs.

In testimony before the House Committee on the Judiciary's Subcommittee on Courts, the Internet, and Intellectual Property Thursday afternoon, RIAA executives compared devices like the MyFi to a portable iTunes player. The radio services allow users to capture perfect versions of songs and take them wherever they choose, according to Mitch Bainwol, chairman and chief executive of the RIAA. (A PC Magazine review of the MyFi technology noted that the ten seconds or so of a song were not recorded by the player.) "It's way beyond time shifting," Bainwol said. "These devices effectively allow ownership.

It sounds attractive, and it is." Bainwol's position was refuted by two other executives asked to testify before the House committee: Gigi Sohn, president of the nonprofit think tank Public Knowledge, and Michael Petricone, who testified that the laws would essentially gut the Audio Home Recording Act, designed to defend the "fair use" principle whne making recordings for the home. "This legislation would extinguish the long-held consumer right to record radio broadcasts," Sohn said. "Why would consumers buy digital consumer radio when it would have less functionality than the comparable analog technology?" Sohn asked.
http://www.extremesatelliteradio.com...ng/164427.aspx





Broadcast Flag Bill Writers Run Drafts Up The Pole
Brooks Boliek

Lawmakers on the House Judiciary Committee are circulating drafts of three bills that would give federal agencies the ability to write regulations preventing digital radio and TV broadcasts from being pirated.

Two of the legislative proposals would give authority to the Federal Communications Commission to approve so-called "broadcast flag" regulations that would prevent digital broadcasts from being uploaded on the Internet.

A third would prevent companies from manufacturing, importing or selling devices that convert copy-protected digital broadcast program into an analog program. Converting digital broadcasts into analog broadcasts is known as the "analog hole." The Patent and Trademark Office would develop the regulation regarding the analog hole.

In May, the federal appeals court here threw out a broadcast flag regulation adopted by the FCC. The case argued by Public Knowledge, a nonprofit organization supporting fair use, contended that the FCC did not have the authority to write the regulation.

The legislative proposals are being circulated as the Judiciary Committee's copyright panel is planning a hearing on the issue on Thursday. While Motion Picture Assn. of America (MPAA) president and CEO Dan Glickman, Recording Industry Assn. of America (RIAA) president and CEO Mitch Bainwol and Public Knowledge president Gigi Sohn are scheduled to testify on the issue, the hearing may get postponed.

Plugging the "analog hole" and installing a "broadcast flag" are considered by copyright holders as critical to the transition to digital TV. Without the copyright protections, entertainment industry executives contend that high- value programing will migrate from free, over-the-air broadcasting to pay platforms that already have adequate copyright protections.

"The draft appears to be in sync with industry consensus on both analog hole and broadcast flag and we look forward to working through the legislative process to get them enacted quickly," said MPAA spokesperson Gayle Osterberg.

Radio comes under a different legal regime. Since radio broadcasters don't have to pay royalties to record companies, the record companies can't withhold their products from over-the- air digital radio service. The recording industry wants to ensure that digital radio functions like the current analog service, and not as a free distribution service.

"We are raising the issue with Congress that whatever the platform is, whether it's over-the-air digital radio, HD radio or satellite radio, that there's a new functionality coming where there will be a convergence of platforms," the RIAA's Bainwol said. "There's the capability to cherry-pick songs, store them in players and avoid a purchase. That's a concern to creators."

Opponents of the proposals argue that they give too much control to the copyright holders over the design of video and audio equipment.

"We are willing to work with the Hill on these issues, but we of course have serious reservations about the draft bills," said Public Knowledge spokesman Art Brodsky. "They would give the FCC and the Patent and Trademark Office wide-ranging power and control over the development of technology while depriving consumers of rights they have enjoyed for years. These are unwarranted technological mandates."

Bainwol dismissed those arguments.

"This isn't about technological mandates. It's about common sense copyright protection," he said. "We're agnostic on the cure, but want to make sure the problem is addressed."
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...rss_technology





RIAA Complains To Congress About Satellite Radio
Carlo

The RIAA was annoyed that new satellite radios would let users record shows off the air -- the modern-day equivalent of kids recording songs from FM onto cassettes -- and has gone crying to Congress, backing the HD Radio Content Protection Act of 2005. The act would essentially undermine the Audio Home Recording Act of 1992, which permits consumers to record music in their homes for non-commercial use, and force makers of digital and satellite radios with recording functionality delete recordings after a certain amount of time. Being able to make tape recordings of FM broadcasts didn't bring the recording industry to its knees, and this won't either, and never mind that home recordings are protected by law. But that means little to the entertainment industry, which would love to do away with things like fair use. Anyway, if people are really determined to record stuff, there's always the analog out -- oh wait, that want to get rid of that, too.
http://techdirt.com/articles/20051109/1235223_F.shtml





New Bill Could Bring End To Video Recording
Steve Shinney

A bill currently being discussed in Senate and House committees could prevent people from recording their favorite shows ever again. The bill, sponsored by both the Motion Picture Association of America and the Recording Industry of America Association, is aimed at giving the Federal Communications Committee the power to add a broadcast flag to all TV signals.

Jerry James, an assistant professor of computer science at Utah State University, is one of many people across the nation worried about this new flag.

According to James, the broadcast flags are a group of bits in the TV signal that would regulate what the program could be used for on the receiving end.

"You will no longer be able to pop a tape into your VCR and know that you will necessarily be able record what you want," James said. Using the broadcast flag, those broadcasting the signal would be able to decide if those receiving it would be able to save the program onto any format or be able to use a service like TiVo to pause or skip commercials.

If enacted, the bill would also give power to the FCC to regulate the kinds of technology that TV and VCR companies can use in making their products.

"This will put a huge cap on innovation," James said. "No one will be able create a new kind of digital TV."

James said that the legal battle over these flags goes back a while. A few years ago, the MPAA and RIAA went to FCC and asked for them to be able to start sending these flags with all signals to protect materials being transmitted from being saved.

According to Cnet, a prominent technology news Web site in November 2003, the FCC made a rule saying all products sold in the United States after July 2005 would be required by law to recognize these broadcast flags.

In May of this year, the U.S. Court of Appeals, D.C Circuit, ruled that the FCC didn't have the right to limit digital TV signals in that way, the FCC didn't have authority from Congress to make such "sweeping changes."

James says that the bill currently being discussed is aimed at giving the FCC this power.

James has already written to Robert Bishop, the area's representative of the House, about the issue. Bishop is not on the Subcommittee on Telecommunications and the Internet, which is currently discussing the bill, but he says he is planning to vote against it should it come up for a vote.

According to the U.S House of Representatives Web Site, no Utah or Idaho representatives are on the committee.

James recommends the best way for those concerned to help out is to be informed.

"The information is all out there, right now it's just on the tech sites," he said. "They may get away with this if the public doesn't start howling."
http://www.dailycollegian.com/vnews/.../4366ee71b8def





Weighing Webcasters' Rights to Content
Jonathan Krim

Battles over illegal sharing of music online are so last summer. The hot fight now is over copying of video from television or the Internet that generally has been considered freely available to the public.

If television broadcasters and webcasters have their way in international treaty talks, they would gain new, 50-year rights to virtually any video they beam out, even if no one owns the rights to the content.

So, for example, say ABC or Yahoo offers a broadcast or webcast of a movie no longer under copyright protection, historical footage of a news event or a live feed of a breaking story -- no one could make a copy of that program and rebroadcast it to others.

The result, according to digital rights advocates, is that the viral power of the Internet to expose millions (or billions) of people to news or unprotected creative works will be in jeopardy. The seemingly instant, online cycle of people posting information, seeing it, linking to it or retransmitting it -- as happened with the amateur tsunami videos -- could be dragged into a morass of new ownership questions.

"This new layer turns every distributor into yet another owner," argues James Love, head of the Consumer Project on Technology, which is fighting the treaty. When it comes to content in the public domain, Love contends, there should be no restrictions on who can use the work.

That's a bunch of alarmist hooey, responds Benjamin F.P. Ivins, senior associate general counsel of the National Association of Broadcasters.

Ivins argues that users could still make copies of such broadcasts for private use; they simply could not turn around and redistribute them commercially. When a broadcaster spends money to prepare and distribute footage of an event or a historical work, it should be assured that somebody else can't benefit from that investment by copying the program and retransmitting it, he says.

Ivins and his allies, including the federal government, see the treaty as a simple effort to standardize international laws on what they call "signal theft." In certain Caribbean countries, for example, cable programming has been effectively intercepted and pirated by rival broadcasters.

Internet companies such as Yahoo Inc. and America Online Inc., which are pushing into webcasting of video content, say they are entitled to the same rights as TV broadcasters.

Seth Greenstein, an attorney for the Digital Media Association, which represents many webcasters, argues that protecting the transmissions of webcasters will encourage them to show obscure works that the public might otherwise never see.

The minutiae and complexity of rights and treaties in those matters are enough to cure a small nation of insomnia.

But the battle demonstrates yet again the high stakes and tensions of an era in which information is king, yet products and services are being produced at lightning speed to make information ever more copyable, malleable and portable.

"We do have an economy that operates on market principles," says Michael Keplinger, a senior counsel at the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. "And intellectual property rights have served very well to help that market function."

At a fundamental level, digital-rights advocates agree. But that does not mean, they argue, that everything should be owned. They see social value in some works and information being freely accessible, especially in an interconnected world.

For example, say an independent filmmaker releases a movie on a cable TV station. If someone copies it and gets permission from the creator to post some or all of it on a Web site, should that person also need rights from the first broadcaster?

Increasingly, some artists are making their works available under nonrestrictive copyright terms. Would they need to retool those agreements to trump the distribution rights set forth in the proposed treaty?

And then there is the public event, which might be as local as a school board meeting or as international as a war. If Yahoo has the feed, either from its own employee or someone else, what rights does it have as the conduit for millions of viewers?

Broadcasters and webcasters insist that the balance of fair use and public domain works will not be upset by the treaty. Even if the treaty passes and the United States signs it, Congress then must pass implementing rules, and the broadcasters and webcasters say they have no desire to change U.S. laws.

Opponents fear the balance will be upset, noting the support Congress has consistently given to intellectual property holders.

It all might come to a head over the next several months at the World Intellectual Property Organization. At this point, there appears to be sufficient support for proposed rules governing broadcasters, though that could change. U.S. negotiators are in a distinct minority in seeking parity for webcasters.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...110203187.html





Amazon To Allow Individual Book Pages To Be Purchased
AP

Book buyers, soon you'll be able to pay by the page.

With its new Amazon Pages service, Amazon.com Inc. plans to let customers to buy portions of a book -- even just one page -- for online viewing. A second program, Amazon Upgrade, will offer full online access when a traditional text is purchased.

Both services are expected to begin next year.

``We see this as a win-win-win situation: good for readers, good for publishers and good for authors,'' Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos told The Associated Press on Thursday.

For Amazon Pages, Bezos said, the cost for most books would be a few cents per page, although readers would likely be charged more for specialized reference works. Under Amazon Upgrade, anybody purchasing a paper book could also look at the entire text online, at any time, for a ``small'' additional charge, Bezos said. For instance, a $20 book might cost an extra $1.99.

Copyright holders would determine whether the pages could be printed or downloaded.

``We feel strongly that copyright holders get to make these decisions,'' Bezos said.

The Amazon announcement came on the same day that Google Inc. began serving up the entire contents of books and government documents that aren't entangled in a copyright battle over how much material can be scanned and indexed from five major libraries.

The Authors Guild and five major publishers are suing to prevent Google from scanning copyrighted material in the libraries without explicit permission. Because it plans to show only snippets from copyrighted books, Google argues its scanning project constitutes ``fair use'' of the material.

``The Amazon programs are the way copyright is supposed to work,'' the Authors Guild's executive director, Paul Aiken, said Thursday. ``You provide access to readers and some compensation flows back to rights holders. It seems like a positive development.''

Amazon issued a statement of support from Holtzbrinck Publishers LLC, which owns Farrar, Straus & Giroux, St. Martin's Press and several other publishers.

``We look forward to working together with Amazon as they develop these innovative new programs to expand the market for digital content,'' said Holtzbrinck CEO John Sargent.

Meanwhile, Random House Inc. released a statement Thursday saying it will ``work with online booksellers, search engines, entertainment portals and other appropriate vendors to offer the contents of its books to consumers for online viewing on a pay-per-page-view basis.''

Random House, the country's largest general trade publisher, listed a number of ``key components'' for any deal, including that ``Books will be available for full indexing, search and display'' and ``No downloading, printing or copying will be permitted.''

Richard Sarnoff, president of the Random House corporate development group, said in an interview that the publisher had already been talking to a number of vendors, but expects Amazon to be the first to sell Random House books on a per-page basis.

Sarnoff was generally favorable to Amazon Pages -- ``We think it's a great idea and hope it's implemented as brilliantly as it's intended'' -- but said the publisher was concerned about Amazon Upgrade.

``We're worried about pricing. We will not participate on the basis of some small, incremental charge,'' he said. ``We think digital text has real value and we're not interested in making it just this adjunct to the print product.''

The new Amazon programs are an extension of the company's ``Search Inside the Book,'' which lets users browse a book's contents for free. Over the summer, the company also launched Amazon Shorts, which offers brief, original fiction and nonfiction for 49 cents each.
http://www.siliconvalley.com/mld/sil...y/13074223.htm






Electronic Paper Moves From Sci-Fi To Marketplace
Niclas Mika

In Neal Stephenson's sci-fi novel "The Diamond Age," a young girl's companion is a book with amazing qualities -- it talks, and the words magically change with the story.

A decade after Stephenson's book was published, what was once labeled science fiction is finding its way to the real-world market.

"Electronic paper" is a display technology that makes possible flexible or even rollable displays which, unlike current computer screens, can be read in bright sunlight.

But, much like when LCD displays came to the market, consumers are first likely to see the technology in clocks and watches. The popular example of an electronic newspaper that automatically updates itself wirelessly is still years away.

A number of companies are currently working on such displays -- LG.Philips LCD and Massachusetts-based E Ink announced last month that they have developed a protype 10-inch display, and Fujitsu showed a color display in July.

Philips' Polymer Vision unit aims to mass-produce a rollable 5-inch display by the end of 2006, and among the first consumer products is a watch with a curved electronic paper display from Seiko Epson, due to hit the Japanese market next year.

Electronic paper was invented in the 1970s at Xerox' Palo Alto Research Center by Nick Sheridon, who now works as research director at Xerox subsidiary Gyricon, which makes electronic paper signs.

"If you remember the green-screen monitors -- it drove him crazy and he was looking for something that was easier on the eyes," Gyricon spokesman Jim Welch said.

Electronic Or Paper?

The technology at the heart of electronic paper? Tiny black and white particles that are suspended in capsules about the diameter of a human hair.

The particles respond to electrical charges -- a negative field pushes the negatively charged black particles away to the surface, where they create a black dot. Positively charged white particles create the opposite effect.

At a 10th of a millimeter, the thickness of an ordinary sheet of paper, electronic paper is much thinner than the liquid-crystal displays (LCDs) used in today's computers and mobile phones.

It also consumes 100 times less power because it does not require a back light and only needs electricity to change the image, not to hold it.

Like ordinary paper, it reflects light, making it readable even in difficult conditions such as direct sunlight.

Michigan-based Gyricon is already selling e-paper signs and message boards that can be updated wirelessly -- allowing, for example, to centrally update room signs throughout a building.

Mobile Internet

But it is the potential for boosting mobile Internet use that makes electronic paper displays particularly attractive, said Karl McGoldrick, Chief Executive of Polymer Vision.

Displays that can be rolled up mean that while the screen gets bigger, the actual device can stay small.

"Beyond smart phones, beyond PDAs, displays are simply too small to have any value from a mobile Internet perspective," McGoldrick said.

"This year, there will be something like 700 million mobile phones sold and, out of those, just 5 percent will be smart phones. If you want to bring the mobile Internet to the mainstream, you need to attack the other 670 million phones."

In the first step, McGoldrick envisions a pocket-size standalone device that can download content directly from a PC, via the mobile network or wireless Internet. He said Polymer Vision was currently talking to manufacturers and content providers alike to put such a device together.

The firm says its 5-inch display will be priced comparably with LCD displays of the same size.

Ted Schadler, an analyst at market research group Forrester, cautioned that manufacturers needed to make sure their devices did not end up being a "solution looking for a problem."

"It's not enough to build a product. You have to build an end-to-end solution. Of course Apple <AAPL.O> has done that brilliantly with the iPod, and they're continuing to push the envelope there, but they're about the only ones," Schadler said.

An electronic newspaper, when the technology is finally available to produce one, still may not be the device to rescue newspaper publishers from an aging readership and dwindling circulation numbers.

Such a device could well be sold by newspaper publishers who would subsidize it in order to sell subscriptions, but it would have to offer other sources to be attractive, Schadler said.

"If you would lock consumers into just one news service, they will not find it interesting. Users might want to read a blog, a competitor, a magazine, a book -- not just the Financial Times, the Herald Tribune, the New York Times," he said.

"They have to be really careful how they open the access to make it more valuable," Schadler said.
http://today.reuters.com/news/newsAr...-PLUGGEDIN.xml





Google Resumes Book Scanning
Colin Barker

The search giant risks the wrath of the book publishing industry as it resumes its strategy of scanning 'the libraries of the world', with a new focus on out-of-print titles

Google is to start scanning and copying the world's books again after announcing on Tuesday that its self-imposed suspension is over.

The company says it will resume scanning books but will focus on out-of-print titles and wants to get publishers' permission to scan in-print books as part of Google Print.

The company said in August it was temporarily halting scanning books after facing stiff opposition from book publishers and the prospect of a 'massive' copyright suit.

According to The Wall Street Journal, Google will be trying to get publishers' permission to digitise books that are still on sale in bookshops. Google claims that this strategy will not hurt book publishers as it tries to stay away from the readily available bestsellers and targets books that people find it harder to track down.

According to Google Print product manager Adam Smith, the August moratorium was held so that "any and all copyright holders can tell us which books they'd prefer that we not scan if we find them in a library".

Google launched its Google Print programme in October 2004. At the time, it claimed it was a way "for publishers to make their books discoverable by the millions of people who search on Google".
http://uk.news.yahoo.com/051101/152/fvqqz.html





Market Growing For Refurbished, Used iPods
Antony Bruno

The popular iPod Nano and the just-released video iPod are expected to lead a surge of holiday sales for Apple Computer. Research firm Fulcrum Global

Partners predicts Apple will sell 10 million iPods in the fourth quarter, a strong follow-up to the 7 million sold in the previous quarter. But not all of these sales will be to new iPod owners.

Piper Jaffray analysts say about 30 percent of the iPod purchasers are now repeat buyers who are either replacing an existing, earlier-generation iPod or adding to their range of styles (such as an iPod Shuffle and a video iPod).

If the average lifespan of an iPod is about 1.5 years, what happens to the older models?

Analysts say most users hand down their iPods to friends or family once they purchase a new one. Some simply throw them away.

Increasingly, however, consumers are capitalizing on the growing iPod phenomenon by selling their used iPods for cash or as a trade-in toward a new device.

And it is not just for bargain hunters, either. With the popular iPod Mini being discontinued, many fans have turned to the refurbished market to track down a favorite color in what is becoming a cult-nostalgia item.

"There is an emerging market for older iPods," Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster says. "Apple discontinues successful products that people feel some sort of connection to. They're the retro-cool thing."

Cottage Industry

Internet auction site eBay has literally thousands of iPod and iPod-related products for sale. The site is considered a leading resource for those seeking an inexpensive way to join the iPod revolution. So is Web site Craigslist.

With 28 million iPods sold worldwide, the potential for iPod refurbishment and sales has created a cottage industry of sorts.

Small Dog Electronics, for instance, is an established Apple reseller that has for years sold refurbished Macintosh computers and other accessories. The company now sells around 500 used and refurbished iPods per month from its Web-based store at significant discounts. A refurbished third-generation, 30GB iPod that cost $400 in 2003 now runs for about $210, for example.

The company offers up to $100 off the price of a new iPod to anyone trading in a used one. According to CEO Don Mayer, the pace of such replacements is expected to increase as iPod sales continue to grow.

"You have a curve that's getting larger every quarter for the installed base of iPods," he says, "so the used and refurbished ones are getting more and more prevalent. All that increases with volume."

Another company, PodSwap, takes it a step further by not only offering cash for used iPods but also shipping players loaded with music that has been authorized for such distribution by artists who own the necessary rights.

Both companies collect the used devices, determine and classify their condition, make whatever repairs are necessary and then clear the memory of any music files before shipping.

Collections For Sale

It is a bit more loose on Craigslist and eBay. Several iPods up for auction include the sellers' music collection and instructions on how to transfer the music from the iPod to the buyer's computer. Some even take requests for additional songs to be added prior to shipping.

One video iPod for sale contains an entire season of TV show "King of Queens" included.

Even Apple competitors have tried to use the swap as a promotional tool. Dell offered a $100 mail-in rebate to any customer turning in an old iPod when buying one of its MP3 players.

Interestingly, all the deals are better than what Apple itself offers. The company began offering iPod owners a 10 percent discount on new iPods when they trade in an older device. That translates to anywhere from $45 off a 60GB video iPod to $10 off the iPod Shuffle.
http://today.reuters.com/news/newsAr..._0_US-IPOD.xml





Me, Myself, I-Pod
Peter Aspden

A marketing report lands on my desk, its central theme emblazoned across its cover: “Is this the most ‘Me’ focused generation ever?” The question is rhetorical and it is a bold claim to make. Are people really more egocentric than the children of the 1960s and 1970s, Tom Wolfe’s Me Generation, who leapt away from postwar austerity towards pointless material comforts, indulging their drippy narcissism with Californian singer-songwriters, ersatz analysts and suspect versions of eastern religions? Don’t knock masturbation, said Woody Allen, the era’s most acute chronicler: it’s sex with the one you love.

Yet the report makes a confident case. It is based on three main ideas. The first is that, despite being better “connected” than any other generation in history, today’s young adults are actually less engaged with the wider world than ever. Even the icons of youth in 2005 - hooded tops, iPods, mobile phones - sever users from the community at large. They are potentially better informed about the world, but care about it less.

Second, there is the monster known as hyper-consumerism - not only an insatiable beast, but one that barks a message to the young consumer: you are in charge, you decide, have it your own way. Because you’re worth it. The emotional clumsiness of adolescence and young adulthood has turned into a terrifying self-confidence. Marketing power, rather than the dull accumulation of emotional wisdom, delivers self-esteem. Scary.

Finally, and more prosaically, there is the extraordinary pace of technological change and its societal effects. Broadsheet newspapers, dusty record shops - symbols of authoritativeness and purveyors of communal values - are under threat from podcasts and blogs, highly atomised forms of information transmission. We are entering the world of helmet cams, simple-to-use editing software and a desperate desire to upload. Everyone’s story will be available to everyone else; so who will be interested in the grand narrative?

This all seems pretty convincing. When people first talked of the information superhighway, they failed to imagine that we would get embroiled in the lay-bys. Or that we would simply race past each other, with barely a glance sideways. The idea, touchingly optimistic, was that we would travel, and connect. But the travel is all in the mind, and the connections are faulty.

By far the most fascinating thing about this fairly gloomy report is its source: it falls under the auspices of MTV, the popular music television channel. It is not styled as a report at all, in fact, but as a “new multi-platform global youth trend feed” in magazine form. Its name? “MTV Sticky”, a slick reference to Post-it notes.

It is easy to think, after watching one Britney Spears video too many, that MTV is not an organisation that thinks terribly profoundly about life. But that would be wrong. I recall interviewing Bill Roedy, one of its senior executives, in his office in Camden Town in the 1990s and spotting a chunk of the Berlin Wall standing proudly on his bookshelves. Roedy, a graduate of West Point military academy no less, was convinced that the channel had played a role in the death of communism. All that noise, movement and, not to put too fine a point on it, sex, zapping across borders that could impede bodies but not images, proved too irresistible a temptation. This was worthy of taking axes to the masonry.

Here, if you accept Roedy’s view, was the power of an art form to cause revolution. Just as it had done in the 1960s, popular music was inspiring a whole generation to throw off its shackles and fight for freedom. In the western world of 40 years ago, it was largely a liberation from class and sex tyranny; in the eastern European world of the 1980s, it meant something even more momentous. What could be more communal, less egocentric?

But the misty-eyed idealism of eastern Europe’s downtrodden youngsters overthrowing their political masters to the sounds of Massive Attack and De La Soul only takes us so far. The more brutal truth is that they were attracted by pop’s accoutrements: the wealth, the glamour, the sheer Me-ness of it all. Roedy explained how MTV took its social responsibilities seriously - they ran prominent campaigns urging young people to vote, for example - but those earnest reflections always seemed to be at odds with the channel’s music, which was, and continues to be, vacuous and narcissistic, give or take the odd Leonard Cohen moment.

So I’m sure it will come as no surprise to those analysts at MTV to hear that we are living in the ultimate Me era. Indeed I read that the channel had already recorded a podcast examining the implications of p2p (peer to peer) media. It makes sobering listening. We are all seemingly intent on stripping our lives bare to anyone who can be bothered to engage. Some 80,000 blogs are created every day. The newest technology does not make the world smaller, but bigger. The multiplicity of voices does not sound as one chorus; it produces a strange and new cacophony.

But perhaps all is not lost. I loved the zesty trailer for the second edition of MTV Sticky: “Next issue: ‘We.’ Ciao!” Watch this pod.
http://news.ft.com/cms/s/4bc9ffdc-4c...0779e2340.html

[JackSpratts]

Is that an iPod in your pocket or are you just excited to watch me?

Usenet Search Engine Preps Porn For Video iPod
Adam Pasick

It may not be quite what Steve Jobs had in mind, but an online search engine called Guba is set to offer vast amounts of pornography and other video files, specifically tailored for Apple's new iPods.

Guba is a subscription-only search engine that culls video files from the Usenet newsgroups, a huge repository of online content -- much of it adult, pirated, or both.

Beginning this month, Guba will convert video files from Usenet into the format used by the iPod, known as H.264. Apple Chief Executive Steve Jobs launched the video-enabled iPod last month along with deals to sell downloadable music videos and TV shows.

Although Guba offers up a wide variety of video, from the satirical news program "The Daily Show" to Japanese animation, its "erotica" section is likely to be the biggest draw.

"We can kid ourselves, but in the end it's probably porn that people want," said Guba Chief Executive Thomas McInerney. He noted that the site offers a "safe mode" to filter out adult content.

Usenet predates the World Wide Web by more than a decade, and it has developed alongside more mainstream file-sharing networks like Kazaa and BitTorrent.

Guba specifically searches through Usenet's multimedia content, which is not indexed by popular search engines such as Yahoo or Google. It also converts video into standard formats, and lets users stream small versions from its Web site.

At a time when movie studios are hyper-vigilant about online piracy, Guba's easily accessible videos could raise hackles among Hollywood's content owners.

Guba counters that it will strictly abide by the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, which requires search engines to take down any content upon request of the copyright holder. It has also blocked access to music files and videos longer than 70 minutes.

McInerney said Guba is blocking MP3 music files "because there has been so much litigation about music, and the RIAA (Recording Industry of America) has been so aggressive about it." However, Guba does offer TV files, because "the TV guys seem to understand the Internet ... they seem to be the next industry after music to go online," McInerney said.

A search of Guba revealed a wide range of TV shows, including Disney's "Lost" and "Desperate Housewives," which are both sold online at Apple's iTunes Music Store.

McInerney said that Guba, which charges $14.95 per month, is profitable and has about 15 employees.

"What we'd really like to do, and what we'll need to do, is partner with a large content company," he said. "They're getting wise to the Internet, and they're understanding that they can't litigate it away."
http://today.reuters.com/news/newsAr...RTRS&srch=porn





TDC Activates Child Porn Filter
John Tilak

Danish telco TDC has activated a nationwide filter to help fight child pornography on the internet. The filter, which covers TDC customers, has been developed in cooperation with the national police and Save the Children.

The filter works by blocking internet access for internet addresses containing illegal child pornographic material. The national police prepare the list of addresses for TDC. The national police assess the addresses and the content in cooperation with Save the Children, an organization that identifies and gathers information on where there is child porn on the internet at an international level.

The amount of child pornographic material as well as traffic to the illegal web pages on the internet is increasing. In Norway the internet filter daily blocks 10,000–12,000 attempts to get access to addresses with child porn, and in Sweden, 20,000– 30,000 attempts are blocked.
http://www.dmeurope.com/default.asp?ArticleID=10886





Chicago Judge Refuses To Drop R. Kelly Porn Case

A judge on Friday refused to dismiss child pornography charges against Grammy Award-winning vocalist R. Kelly, rejecting arguments that the period in which the offenses were supposed to have occurred was too vague.

Judge Vincent Gaughan of the Cook County Criminal Court said the 14-count indictment against the 36-year-old entertainer would stand and "the evidence is sufficient for Mr. Kelly to prepare a defense."

Prosecutors have a tape showing Kelly having sex with a girl they claim was underage at the time it was recorded, which they say was sometime between January 1998 and November 1, 2000.

Kelly's lawyers had sought to have the charges dismissed, saying the length of the period in which the tape was supposed to be recorded made it impossible for him to defend against because he could not provide an alibi for any specific date.

Kelly, whose 1996 single "I Believe I Can Fly" won three Grammies, was originally indicted on 21 counts of child pornography in 2002. Some of the charges were later dismissed.

Prosecutors contend the girl on the tape was 14 years old at the time of the filming. Kelly, who was not in court on Friday, has pleaded not guilty to the charges and his lawyers have said the girl on the tape will not testify against him.
http://today.reuters.com/news/newsAr...RTRS&srch=porn





Child-Porn Bill Might Get Rewrite
Brooks Boliek

The chief author of legislation that would treat steamy Hollywood films the same as hard-core pornography said Tuesday that he is willing to alter his bill in an effort to get at child pornographers but leave the mainstream film industry alone.

Rep. Mike Pence, R-Ind., said the legislation wasn't intended to target the mainstream movie and television industry but to catch pedophiles who make pornographic visual material at home using underage children.

"I do know there are some concerns in the entertainment industry about reporting requirements being extended," Pence said. "We're in conversations now with the legitimate entertainment industry."

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

"We are working with Rep. Pence on keeping the focus on preventing child pornography and eliminating any unintended consequences," MPAA spokeswoman Gayle Osterberg said.

The Senate Judiciary Committee is hoping to vote on the bill Thursday (October 20), industry sources said, but it's unclear whether the Pence amendment is included in the current draft of that bill.

Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, the primary author of the Senate version, wants to leave controversial items out of the bill to ensure its swift passage, sources said.

But that doesn't spell the end of the Pence amendment because the House and Senate will have to work out differences in the two versions of the bill in a conference committee later.

Documenting Details

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

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

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

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

It was unclear what changes could be made to the language to catch pedophiles who videotape children and put the illicit films on the Internet. The studios fear that enacting the provision, in effect, puts them in the same legal position as the adult film industry.

While Pence said he wanted to ensure that "children are protected in the creation of entertainment products," studio executives argue that their industry and state laws, particularly in California, already create a safe-child environment.
http://today.reuters.com/news/newsAr...RTRS&srch=porn





Can Hollywood Evade the Death Eaters?
Laura M. Holson

BY all outward appearances, Warner Brothers Entertainment should be having one of its best years ever. For the 21st year in a row, it is expected to show a profit, propelled by a string of television hits like "ER," "The O.C." and "Friends," which is a hot seller on DVD. Warner has also revitalized its DC Comics movie franchise with the summer hit "Batman Begins." And later this month, it will release "Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire," the fourth installment of a juggernaut that has already brought in $3.7 billion.

But instead of the popping of Champagne corks, the sound you are likely to hear on the Warner lot is that of a cleaver falling. Executives have been poring over thick binders filled with next year's budget, hoping to cut hundreds of millions in studio expenses. Warner Brothers, the television and film production unit of Time Warner, is anticipating a slowdown in growth in its lucrative home video division. And that, combined with rising costs and uncertainty about new forms of digital distribution, has the studio fretting about its growth prospects.

On Tuesday, Warner laid off 260 employees, or about 6 percent of its staff of 4,500 in Burbank, Calif., with more job cuts expected in its overseas offices. And the studio is starting to re-evaluate everything from when and where it markets movies to how and what it pays its stars. Indeed, Warner executives met recently with agents at Creative Artists Agency and warned that top-tier actors, directors and producers would have to be flexible on upfront fees or else movies would be harder to make.

What makes the upheaval so remarkable is that it is happening at a studio that has long been considered one of the most stable television and movie businesses around. But the challenges facing the division, particularly its movie production unit, Warner Brothers Pictures, reflect a bleak new reality in Hollywood. Film lovers are starting to shun theaters, the threat of digital piracy is growing, and the industry is only beginning to grapple with how to deliver new content for cellphones, video games and other portable devices, like the new video iPod.

George Clooney, the actor who has a longtime production deal at Warner Brothers Pictures with the director Steven Soderbergh, put it this way: "If Warner is having its best year and they are going to have cutbacks, what does it mean for the rest of Hollywood?"

Of course, it doesn't help Warner Brothers that Carl C. Icahn, the billionaire investor, has increased his stake in Time Warner and is pressuring the company's management to bolster the stock price by cutting costs.

But the most likely answer to Mr. Clooney's question is this: more trouble for an industry that has had its share. NBC Universal, a part of General Electric, said this summer that it would cut $400 million in its film and ailing television businesses. Two other media companies - Sony and Walt Disney - recently announced losses in their film divisions. A third, Paramount Pictures, which is owned by Viacom, is still trying to find its way after a management shakeup almost a year ago. And earlier this year, DreamWorks Animation and Pixar Animation Studios reported higher-than-expected DVD movie returns from retailers.

Both Barry Meyer, the chief executive of Warner Brothers Entertainment, and Alan Horn, its president, said the division's cuts were not mandated by Time Warner in New York. "We have done it more quietly in the past," Mr. Horn said. "But this time Barry and I said, 'Let's be a little tougher about this.' "

Besides, Mr. Horn said that there was a practical side to the studio's recent corporate soul-scrubbing. "I don't lose sleep over this, and I'm not nervous," he said. "But the challenge to growth is really daunting. If we grew 10 percent that would be great, but we haven't said we expect a certain rate. It is a healthy exercise to stop and look at what is going out the door."

Mainstream, With a Twist

Jeff Robinov has to deal with his share of divas and disasters.

Last year, Mr. Robinov, the Warner Brothers Pictures head of production, replaced the director of "Superman Returns" after he refused to board a plane to Australia days before filming was to start. A year earlier, Warner took a $25 million hit when it moved the set of "Troy" to Mexico from Morocco after studio executives feared that unrest in the Middle East would endanger the cast and crew.

But that's not what is giving Mr. Robinov fits. It's the amount of time he spends trying to figure out which films will attract moviegoers. The industry is in the midst of a major shift as people increasingly turn to video games, big-screen televisions and the Internet for entertainment; movie attendance in the United States is down 8 percent for the year.

"Something is changing in the movie experience," Mr. Robinov said in an interview at his office on the Warner lot last month. "Is it piracy? Is it commercials? Is it the availability of movies? Or are we not creating enough things to drive people out of the home? My biggest fear is having a movie that deserves to be seen, but is not."

Three years ago, Mr. Robinov and Mr. Horn, who oversees the movie division, said they would make about 25 movies a year, including at least four so-called event movies with global appeal. The strategy has largely worked. In 2004, the movie division brought in a record $3.41 billion at the worldwide box office, powered by the likes of "Troy," "Ocean's Twelve" and "Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban." Last summer, it scored again with "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory" and "Batman Returns." What's more, the studio's two-year-old independent-movie arm also had its first bona fide hit, "March of the Penguins," for which it paid $1.6 million for distribution rights and some voice-overs; the film has brought in $77 million at the domestic box office.

Mr. Robinov attributed some of Warner's recent success to pairing familiar stories with unexpected choices in directors and actors who, not coincidentally, can be cheaper to hire. With 483 movies released in theaters in 2004, many with similar specials effects and tapping a limited pool of big-name stars, he worried that the industry suffers from too much sameness. As DVD sales growth slows, Warner has begun seeking more partners to help finance films, he said. And Mr. Robinov suggested that the studio might make one or two fewer films each year. "When revenue projections change, it puts more pressure on a movie," he said. "With profit margins smaller, the movie becomes harder to justify making."

Mr. Robinov and Mr. Horn were among the studio's executives who took part in the breakfast meeting at Creative Artists Agency and told agents that, in some cases, it could not afford to pay top talent what they had grown accustomed to. "My message was, 'Look, we may be asking people to understand the pressures we are under and that it may have implications to what we can pay,' " Mr. Horn said.

For any studio looking for cuts, that is a logical place to start: a $30 million movie can quickly become a $50 million movie or more if a studio hires someone like Julia Roberts.

As a result, the kind of deal Warner recently struck with Brad Pitt is starting to become more commonplace. Mr. Pitt agreed to take less money upfront for "The Assassination of Jesse James," a $32 million Western that the actor wanted to make.

"We needed help," Mr. Robinov said. "We had to sit down and say, 'To make this movie you have to make financial concessions.' "

Of course, those deals can also limit the studio's rewards because they often include profit-sharing. Mr. Clooney and Mr. Pitt earned more cash on "Ocean's Eleven" by agreeing to take a percentage of the profits than they would have by getting a big upfront fee.

Mr. Clooney said he was willing to take a gamble on roles that interested him. His "Good Night, and Good Luck" cost $7.5 million and wouldn't have been made if he had demanded a $20 million salary for acting in and directing the movie.

"Economically, it is getting harder and harder," Mr. Clooney said. "If studios are forced to pay top dollar, the film gets compromised. You can't get the other actors you want. The edges get knocked off. It is better to participate, because then you get to do the films you want."

Sell, Sell, Sell

"Marketing costs are just skyrocketing, and if we don't address this we are going to put ourselves out of business," said Dawn Taubin, the president of Warner Brothers Pictures' domestic theatrical marketing, speaking about the industry.

Consider this: the average cost to market a film domestically in 2004 was $34 million, roughly half the $64 million average price tag to make one, according to the Motion Picture Association of America. Blockbusters cost even more to market: as much as $60 million domestically and $125 million worldwide.

On Wednesday, Time Warner announced that operating income before depreciation and amortization for filmed entertainment - which includes New Line Cinema, Warner's sister company - was down 30 percent, in part because of movie marketing costs.

These are confusing times for marketers like Ms. Taubin, who have found that spending buckets of money on traditional advertising - including newspapers and television - doesn't corral moviegoers the way it used to. Teenagers are now more spontaneous about their movie choices, which means that studios have a harder time reaching them through magazines and television. Not surprisingly, more and more young people are relying on the Internet to help them decide what to see; according to the studio's own survey, 30 percent of teenagers said they learned about "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory" online. It is conceivable that studios could forsake newspapers altogether someday.

"It's a possibility," Ms. Taubin said. "But it depends on whether there are other forms of advertising to replace it."

A shift has already taken place at major studios: last year, their spending fell for newspaper and television ads in the United States and increased for the Internet and trailers. For Warner's part, it combined its domestic home video and theatrical media buying - which includes television, radio and newspapers - so it would have the flexibility to adjust marketing campaigns and negotiate better rates. The studio has adopted a similar strategy in Britain and Germany, said Sue Kroll, president of international theatrical marketing.

But perhaps the biggest driver of changes in marketing is the speed at which DVD's are coming to store shelves. Some DVD's are now arriving in stores less than four months after a movie hits theaters. Instead of creating two campaigns - one for the theater and another for home video - Warner is considering whether to consolidate its marketing operations under one umbrella.

"Clearly, it makes a lot of sense to create a cohesive marketing plan," said Mr. Meyer, the chief executive.

Many analysts tend to agree. "Warner has to come to grips on its spending," said Richard Bilotti, a media analyst at Morgan Stanley. "They don't need all that to open a film when Wal-Mart is more important."

Indeed, Ms. Taubin said the studio was reviewing costs, even those for the oh-so-important awards season. But that also poses a challenge as competitors are more than willing to foot the bill for an Oscar campaign to snag a favored actor or director away from Warner Brothers.

"The first phase of a campaign can be helpful because it can bring people's attention to a movie," Ms. Taubin said. "But we've all looked at an ad and said, 'What? Are they kidding?' I've even done that."

Just Staying Home

Here is a statistic from Time Warner's Web site that shows the force of Warner Brothers in the home video market: for six of the last eight years, the studio has been No. 1 in DVD and VHS sales and rentals, with a market share of 19.7 percent in 2004.

That is why Hollywood was stunned when Warner Brothers ousted the president of its home video unit two weeks ago and folded it into a newly reconfigured digital distribution division along with online operations, wireless and video games, and emerging technology. For many analysts, it signaled a radical shift - that in an increasingly digital world, DVD's would no longer be the dominant way the studio distributed content.

In the 1990's, Warner was credited with invigorating the DVD format, forcefully marketing its vast library of already released movies and, later, popular television shows to bolster the studio's bottom line. Days before he was replaced, James Cardwell, the president of the home video unit, said, "We've grown accustomed to sales growth rates of 20 percent a year."

The future does not look so promising. Warner's DVD sales growth is expected to slip to a single digit in 2006, Mr. Cardwell said. But even then Mr. Horn is cautious about how high - or low - that number will be. "Much of this is related to new releases and I can't tell," he said.

So why the slowdown now? Some analysts suggest that studios should have been better at forecasting demand. Late adopters of the DVD technology are more likely to rent than buy DVD's, while consumers who bought DVD players early on already own many of the discs they want. The market is flooded with products. According to the DVD Release Report, an industry newsletter, 50,936 titles have already been released on DVD, with an additional 1,055 to be released by the end of next March.

"Home video gave us a cushion that made it easier to grow," Mr. Horn said. "Now that it has leveled off, we don't have the cushion. It's very hard to grow profitability when you are at capacity."

Kevin Tsujihara, the new president of Warner's Home Entertainment Group, said one reason home video is now a part of the new digital group is that the interests of established clients, like Wal-Mart or movie theater owners, need to be balanced with those of consumers, who want content on demand. "There are certain constituencies that need to be part of the discussions," he said. "It needs to be managed and explained to established clients like Wal-Mart to preserve the ecosystem."

Chasing a Moving Target

Don't tell Dan Fellman, Warner's president of domestic theatrical distribution, that moviegoers are fed up with high ticket prices, jammed parking lots or too-long commercials at theaters. "The situation works just fine; it's really not broken," said Mr. Fellman, swatting at the air in his office as if shooing away invisible critics. "I hate to use the old cliché; but every household has a kitchen, yet on Saturday night it's still hard to get a restaurant reservation."

But clichés are clichés for a reason. Hollywood's image of Saturday date night or the family piling into the car for an evening at the multiplex is quickly changing in a wired world. Flat-screen high-definition televisions offer a first-rate theater experience. And consumers are already watching movies or television shows on hand-held devices, like the PlayStation Portable or the video iPod, which can play past episodes of Disney shows including "Desperate Housewives."

Indeed, consumers' quick adoption of new technology has much of Hollywood scrambling to stay ahead in a digital universe. In consolidating Warner's digital distribution efforts into one division, Mr. Meyer, the chief executive, hopes that the studio can exploit opportunities that offer the greatest growth potential, including online games and wireless content.

Still, the studio's first order of business is to protect Warner's theatrical releases, despite pressure from some filmmakers and consumers to offer movies simultaneously over the Internet, on DVD or through video-on-demand.

Movies earn money in several ways: first at the theater, then on DVD and later through sales to network and cable television. But with digital downloads or video-on-demand, studios increase their ability to offer consumers a menu of movies, television shows and games at different times and for a variety of prices. The trick is to explore new, potentially lucrative ways of digital delivery while keeping theater owners and DVD retailers happy.

"The business is made much more complex by windows and audiences that are fragmenting," Mr. Meyer said. "The story for the next 10 years is how content is going to adapt. You won't find your audience in any one place anymore."

Warner is already developing a short animated program based on "The O.C." for cellphones. It has been quietly producing video games for more than a year, although the business has yet to take off. And Mr. Tsujihara, who is overseeing Warner's digital efforts, said international television clients and traditional retailers alike are already asking to extend rights on programming to video-on-demand, pay-per-view and digital downloads in one package.

But Warner, unlike Disney, is still skeptical about offering its movies and television shows for the video iPod or other portable devices. One concern is that the content will be easier to copy and share, compounding the problems the studio is already experiencing with piracy.

"I don't know if we are ready to do that," Mr. Meyer said. "I want to see how the Disney experiment works, how it affects the television affiliates and video retailers. A lot of people are affected by it. We want to be responsive, but everything has the overlay that we don't want to put anything out that has a negative effect on how we manage our digital rights."
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/11/06/bu.../06warner.html





Local news

Movie Theaters Plug Into Passion For Music Concerts
Heather Barr

Nineteen-year-old Danielle Hagstrand has seen the band Green Day in concert eight times.

"It's an obsession," she said.

That's why she was excited about a new opportunity to see Green Day.

On Tuesday, National CineMedia's Branford 12 Theatre held a premiere for the band's latest DVD, "Bullet In A Bible," which is not due in stores until Nov. 15.

The DVD was shown at 68 theaters nationwide. Fans got tantalizing pieces of what they would see when the DVD hits shelves. The show had footage of two of the band's largest live concerts as well as interviews with the band's members and backstage footage.

A couple of theaters in Los Angeles sold out of tickets. In New York City, there was such a strong demand for the event that it was moved a bigger venue.

Hagstrand, a Naugatuck Valley Community College student, had to work at her job at Strawberries Music & Video in Southbury on Tuesday, but said the DVD premiere "is an interesting idea. It is almost like a sneak preview."

Since hatching the idea of showing music events in theaters, National CineMedia has shown a series of concerts, including DVD premieres and live shows. It calls them "Big Screen Concerts."

National CineMedia's theater circuit is made up of Regal Cinemas, United Artists Theatres and Edwards Theatres. About 100 of those movie theaters are equipped for the concert events.

The Branford theater, about an hour away from Danbury, is the only theater in Connecticut equipped to show the concerts.

It might explain why many music fans don't even know the concert events exist.

Danbury High School junior Erin Tarsi loves Green Day, but she didn't know about the Big Screen Concert.

University of Connecticut freshman Jeff Halliwell was also in the dark.

The New Milford resident thinks the idea of a concert or a DVD premiere at a movie theater is "pretty cool. I would definitely see one of those."

And the price for the screening — $10 to $15 — is "a great deal," said Halliwell.

The 18-year-old usually attends a concert every six months. He said while the theater event "would not have the same energy" as a concert, "it would have more of a relaxed feeling."

His friend, Joey Palmisani, 18, who is in the Coast Guard, wasn't aware of the Big Screen Concerts, either, but said "it is the closest thing to being at a concert. It is more life size."

Some, though, want the real deal, not the "reel" deal.

Fifteen-year-old Paige Groski, a Danbury High School sophomore, would rather road-trip 45 minutes to Hartford's Webster Theatre to see a "real concert" than see a concert on the big screen.

"It's stupid," she said.

Seconding Groski, Dustin Macuirzynski, 17, a Danbury High School junior, said he wouldn't waste his time.

"It's weak," he said. "You've got to go and experience it."

National CineMedia's premiere events include a live simulcast of Prince's first show on his Musicology Tour in March 2004.

Some 25,000 fans watched the simulcast in 43 cities across the country.

In February, the first show of Phish's 2004 summer tour "Phish: Live at Coney Island" was shown in theaters. Some 30,000 watched it in 47 cities.

Even dead rockers can have their concerts featured at a Big Screen Concert event — Elvis Presley's '68 Comeback Special DVD premiere was shown in February.

"We tend to attract really good crowds," said Dan Diamond, vice president of digital programming with National CineMedia. "They find it convenient, affordable and fun."

At last summer's "Phish — Live at Coventry" Big Screen Concert event, "fans were streaming out of the theaters literally hugging me," he said. "They said it was the most amazing experience."

Many Phish fans said they didn't get to see their favorite band in person for one reason or another and "it was so cool to have an opportunity to see them on the big screen," Diamond said.

The Big Screen Concert events are not the typical movie environment where people are told to be quiet and sit in their seats.

At country singer Keith Urban's Big Screen Concert event in September, after the first song, fans stood, held up their cell phones and sang and danced, Diamond said.

When the band Kiss had a Big Screen Concert event at a theater in New York City, people threw confetti off the balcony during the band's hit "Rock and Roll All Night," as fans do at Kiss concerts.

"Suddenly it was not a movie theater," said Diamond.

On average, National CineMedia has about two Big Screen Concert events per month.

Diamond said the company is looking into providing more top-level music artists and hopes to expand the Big Screen Concert events.

Danbury High School senior Kim Swenson, 17, thinks "a lot of people would go" if the series were expanded.

Alicia Paliotti, 13, a Newtown Middle School seventh-grader, would enjoy taking in a show: "That's hot," she said.

For concert dates and information log onto www.BigScreenConcerts.com.
http://leisure.newstimeslive.com/story.php?id=76360





Hollywood Finds New Ways To Battle Piracy
Peter Gotting

Pete Morison, a film studies graduate living in Cambridge, England, cannot wait for new episodes of "The Simpsons" to be broadcast on British TV months after their U.S. premieres.

Thanks to file-sharing sites with names such as The Pirate Bay and TVTorrents, he doesn't have to.

"Downloading is pretty common among my friends," said Morison, 23, who has used the Internet to build a video library that includes almost every episode of the cartoon series.

"It's really becoming quite mainstream. You don't have to pay outrageous prices for DVDs."

Morison and millions of others are downloading free, unauthorized copies of the world's most popular TV shows and movies long before they are released on DVD. It is a practice entertainment companies such as Walt Disney Co., Viacom Inc. and News Corp.'s Fox say will cost them $5 billion in revenue this year.

They are fighting back by prosecuting file-swappers and selling content on the Internet.

"There is a recognition they don't want to follow the path that was trodden by the music industry," says Paul Stevens, a law partner specializing in media at Olswang.

"They are looking to stop it in its tracks."

On Oct. 12, Disney said it would offer TV programs such as "Desperate Housewives" and "Lost" for sale on Apple Computer Inc.'s iTunes online store. Files sell for $1.99 and can be viewed on computers or on a video iPod.

"This is the first giant step in making content available to more people in more places more often," Disney Chief Executive Officer Robert Iger said. "It is the future."

Apple says more than 1 million video downloads were bought in the service's first three weeks. With only about 2,000 video files available, the venture will not be a big source of revenue for either company, says Roger Kay, president of market researcher Endpoint Technologies.

"The purpose of it is to put video functionality out there," Kay said. "It's a serious experiment but not a serious business."

Apple spokeswoman Amy Gardner declined to comment on the company's online video sales.

Viacom lets Internet users download free clips and episodes of shows from its Nick youth network and MTV music channels. Visitors to the company's Web site can download games and videos, with ads inserted between segments.

The threat to revenue from free Web file-sharing comes at a time when studios and major TV networks are feeling the pinch. Broadcasters are trying to avoid the fate of record companies, which blame unauthorized downloading for contributing to a decline in revenue.

"Piracy is obviously a growing problem because broadband is growing and peer-to-peer systems are becoming more efficient," said John Malcolm, director of worldwide anti- piracy operations at the Motion Picture Association of America. "Online pirates are proving very resourceful, but so are we."

The MPAA said losses from Internet downloading will grow to $5.4 billion this year from $3.5 billion in 2004.

While U.S. companies continue to search for an Internet-sales strategy, the British Broadcasting Corp. is introducing ways for viewers to watch content online.

The BBC is testing an early version of MyBBCPlayer, which will let U.K.-based Web users download free radio and TV programs for as long as a week after they are broadcast. The software will restrict content to British users.

For now, though, the efforts to close down Internet file-sharing sites will not deter Morison.

"People will just shift to another one that pops up," he said.
http://www.nwherald.com/BusinessSect...3719909722.php





TiVo, Yahoo Collaborate On TV Recording

TiVo Inc. and Yahoo Inc. on Monday launched a service that allows TiVo users to program their digital video recorders remotely using Yahoo's television information Web sites.

While terms of the deal were not disclosed, the companies said that in the coming months TiVo and Yahoo would also offer Yahoo services like photos, traffic, and weather as part of their collaboration.

Shares of TiVo rose 6 percent on Nasdaq, but some analysts questioned whether the deal would drive subscriptions for TiVo, whose DVR service lets users pause live TV and save massive amounts of programming.

Cable and satellite companies are increasingly offering their own video recording services, leading to concerns about TiVo's growth prospects.

"I don't see how it's going to drive new incremental subscribers for TiVo. I don't see how it's going to drive incremental revenue for TiVo," said analyst April Horace of Hoefer & Arnett, who added that the deal still appeared "incrementally positive" for the company.

TiVo's latest results in August showed that additions to its fee-based TV recording service in the second quarter fell to 254,000 subscribers from 288,000 a year earlier.

Key to that drop was a 5 percent decline in new customers from DirecTV Inc., its biggest source of new customers, which has said it plans to cease marketing TiVo's product.

In the Yahoo deal, TiVo hopes it can keep new subscribers and win over more by increasing its offerings and making the service more convenient for users.

Starting Monday, users can log onto any computer and use the Yahoo site to set TiVo to record TV programs and events.

Subscribers with a TiVo Series2 box and a standard Yahoo ID may use the service, the companies said.

Yahoo TV offers such information as show times, program descriptions and cast photographs as well as exclusive content like information from the "Entertainment Tonight" TV program and Mark Burnett Productions, which produces "The Apprentice,"

TiVo shares were up 29 cents at $5.41 on Nasdaq. Yahoo was down 31 cents at $37.56.
http://today.reuters.com/news/newsAr...archived=False





A Journey to the Center of Yahoo
James Fallows

I have never known how to think about Yahoo. I often turn to it for movie listings and driving maps. I have joined numerous Yahoo-based discussion groups, in which I read and occasionally write messages about various recreational interests. Of the more than 400 million Yahoo e-mail accounts worldwide, one belongs to me.

But while I know that eBay is at heart an auction site and Amazon.com a retailer, I have not been sure what Yahoo "is" - apart, of course, from a company with a $53 billion market value and weekly revenue of more than $90 million, whose sites make up the largest single presence on the Internet and, according to company officials, account for 13 percent of all page views.

Last month, I spent a day at the company's headquarters in Sunnyvale, Calif., asking officials what they had in mind. My visit was prompted by the accelerating stream of new Yahoo offerings, often based on acquisitions. Two years ago, Yahoo had no search engine of its own and licensed Google for its searches. One after another, it bought other leading search companies - notably Inktomi, AltaVista and Overture - and built its own new Web search system, which now rivals Google's in speed and accuracy.

Late last year, Yahoo made a deal with the tiny X1 Technologies company, which had created the best desktop search system for files on Windows computers. (X1 rivals the Spotlight desktop search, which is built into the latest Macintosh operating system.) As a stand-alone product, X1 sells for $75 and up; under the name Yahoo Desktop Search, Yahoo's Web site offers its version free.

This year, Yahoo also bought Flickr, a system for storing, sharing and commenting on photographs; a scheduling application called Upcoming; and the mail utility Oddpost, on which it is basing a new e-mail system. Last year, Yahoo overtook Hotmail to become the world's most-used free e-mail service. Its new e-mail system, now running in a limited beta version and scheduled for release next year, applies technology called Ajax, discussed in a previous column, to mimic the speed and power of a normal desktop program.

When I tried the beta release of the new mail program, I was amazed that I could, for instance, quickly view the contents of an e-mail message without opening it, via a "preview pane" like Outlook's - while operating over a normal Web browser. Yahoo, meanwhile, has intensified operations in its offices in Santa Monica, Calif., to bring more music, video and news content to its sites.

What's this all about? After talking with the chief executive, Terry S. Semel, and other officials, I came away with two big impressions. One is that while Yahoo is ever conscious of Google and determined to match it head to head in familiar keyword search, in the long run its plans for search seem quite different from Google's. The other is that Yahoo views the very scale and sprawl of its operations - the seemingly random assemblage of sites and functions, the 200 million active users in more than 20 countries - as a crucial competitive advantage.

The awareness of Google came through in nearly every conversation. I was reminded repeatedly that blind-test panels had found no difference in speed or accuracy between Yahoo's results and those of "another leading company." The chief technology officer, Farzad Nazem, said that Google now had the exciting sheen of being "the newest kid on the block" and the fastest-growing company. "I know all about that, because that's how it was for us back in '99, 2000," he said. "We sneezed; it was like it was from God. I understand the whole thing."

But Mr. Nazem and everyone else really wanted to discuss what lay beyond these keyword searches of the entire Web. "You can look at the evolution of search as a play in three acts," said Jeff Weiner, the senior vice president for search and marketing. "The first is the 'public' Web, where if different people type the same query they'll all get the same results." The second, he said, was purely personal search - finding a file or photo, usually on your own machine.

"The third is the one that we are very interested in," Mr. Weiner said. This is "social" or "community" searching, in which each attempt to find the right restaurant listing, medical advice site, vacation tip or other bit of information takes advantage of other people's successes and failures in locating the same information.

The idea that human judgment can improve a search engine's automatic findings is hardly new. From the dawn of the Web's history - that is, over the last 15 years - companies have invented tools to help users assess the quality and relevance of information, often by relying on others' opinions. Examples include Amazon's user reviews, eBay's feedback ratings and "trusted networks" created on many sites.

What is different is Yahoo's systematic plan to build "community intelligence" into nearly all aspects of its operation - and in turn, to entice users to spend more and more of their time on Yahoo sites, where they can see Yahoo ads. The clearest example, of many I heard about, can be seen at http://myweb2.search.yahoo.com, the beta version of a new search site.

A query from this page will return results from three sources. One is "My Web," or pages each user has marked and asked Yahoo to save for later reference. (These pages are saved by Yahoo itself, on its servers, and don't gum up your own machine.) Another is "Everyone's Web," the general Internet. Finally, there is "My Community's Web," pages marked as interesting or valuable by members of a social network. Thus, a search for information on new cars would bring up normal Web results, but also listings you had seen and wanted to retain, as well as friends' advice on brands and dealers they had tried.

Setting up a social network to provide advice can take time. But Caterina Fake, one of the founders of Flickr and now a Yahoo executive, pointed out that virtually everyone under 30 had already created such networks. What about those not young or hip enough to have done so yet? Eventually, according to Ms. Fake, more users would create networks as the process became easier and more worthwhile. Mr. Nazem said, "We're really about getting the average consumer to move their lives online."

Why should Yahoo's community intelligence be better than others' half-successful earlier attempts? This is where its argument about scale comes in. "It is a key strength that our community is so large," said Mr. Semel, who has seen Yahoo's user base double in his four years as chief executive. With hundreds of millions of users, there is critical mass to create social networks that cover most locations and interests - for instance, a large and active user group among women in the United Arab Emirates.

VAST scale presents its challenges. "You can think about the way people will interact, as you sit in the usability lab, but until you put it in front of very large numbers of real people, you don't really know," Ms. Fake said. "So you have to release products early and often, like perpetual beta."

But the advantages, she said, are greater. More than one billion photos are now available for public view on Flickr. "The value of the system is in the aggregate," she said.

When millions of people place their comments on a billion-plus photos, surprising patterns emerge: what is interesting, what is offensive, what information people want to share about themselves.

I still am not sure how to think about Yahoo. But I will think about it more than I used to.
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/11/06/bu.../06techno.html





Copernicus Remains Believed Found In Poland

Polish archaeologists are all but certain they have located the skeletal remains of Nicholas Copernicus, the 16th-century cleric whose heliocentric theory was to revolutionize astronomy.

Professor Jerzy Gassowski, whose team of archaeologists had been searching for the astronomer's final resting place for over a year, told a symposium on Thursday he believed the remains found beneath an altar of medieval Frombork Cathedral on Poland's Baltic coast were those of Copernicus.

The age of the skull and bones, the place of burial reserved for canons like Copernicus, as well as certain facial features prompted Gassowski to declare he was "97 percent certain these are Copernicus' remains, but only DNA testing could fully authenticate the find."

A computer reconstruction of the skull carried out in cooperation with police forensic experts showed the head of a grey-haired man of 70, the age Copernicus died. It matched the scar above the left eye and broken nose seen in the astronomer's contemporary portraits.

A Catholic priest, he left no known descendants, but a search for the burial sites of his relatives, including his uncle Lukasz Watzenrode, may provide the necessary DNA samples.

In his treatise "On the Revolution of Celestial Bodies," Copernicus asserted that the earth and the other planets revolved around the sun, toppling the then widespread belief that the world was the center of the universe.

The astronomer did not announce his heliocentric theory during his lifetime for fear of antagonizing his Church.
http://today.reuters.com/news/newsAr...rch=Copernicus





DoCoMo To Buy Top Stake In Tower Records

NTT DoCoMo Inc., Japan's largest mobile operator, has agreed with Tower Records Japan Inc. to become the main shareholder in the privately held music retail chain, the two companies said on Monday.

DoCoMo said it will invest 12.8 billion yen for a 42 percent stake, marking its first acquisition of a non-mobile-related retailer.

"We thought this would be the best way to provide users with a convenient and fun service while contributing to revenues," said Takeshi Natsuno, senior vice president and managing director of DoCoMo's multimedia services department.

The deal, which is expected to close by late November, will allow the two companies to integrate in-store promotions with marketing efforts via mobile phones.

Tower Records will also install equipment in all its stores allowing DoCoMo users to make purchases by using their "wallet" phone like a debit card.

In addition, the companies are considering a partnership to offer a music download service.

Tower Records Japan, which has more than 100 outlets in Japan, is independently run and separate from U.S.-based Tower Records, which emerged from Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in March 2004.

Tower Records Japan said it plans to spend the proceeds of the deal on installing scanners in its stores for DoCoMo's wallet phones and on new businesses.

After the deal is closed, Nikko Principal Investments, the former lead shareholder, will have a 16.5 percent stake. Itochu Corp. <8001.T> and Dwango Co. Ltd. <3715.T> will each hold an 8.1 percent stake.
http://today.reuters.com/news/newsAr...archived=False





US FCC Says No Cutoff For Internet Phone Customers
Jeremy Pelofsky

Internet telephone providers do not have to cut off U.S. subscribers even if they are not provided enhanced 911 emergency service which gives dispatchers their location and phone number, U.S. communications regulators said on Monday.

Internet telephone providers like Nuvio Corp. had worried that the Federal Communications Commission rules adopted in May had required them to suspend by November 28 service for subscribers who cannot receive enhanced 911 (E911) service.

Existing customers did not have to be disconnected, but the FCC said Internet telephone providers would have to cease marketing and accepting new customers in areas where they are not connecting 911 calls with the person's location and phone number, according to guidance issued on Monday.

Nuvio and other providers of Internet phone service, known as Voice over Internet Protocol (VOIP), last week filed challenges with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit seeking to stay the November 28 date pending their challenge.

VOIP providers have complained that they face numerous hurdles to offering enhanced 911 service, including accessing the necessary databases operated by other telecommunications providers.

"Our concern is that this marketing restriction will slow down our deployment of E911 because it gives clear incentives to some of our competitors, who control access to the 911 systems, to delay every way possible," said Chris Murray, vice president for government affairs at Vonage Holdings Corp., the biggest U.S. VOIP provider.

The FCC adopted several E911 rules for VOIP in May, including requiring 911 calls be routed to live dispatchers and the caller's location and number be identified. The move followed instances in which customers had trouble reaching help when they dialed 911.

The FCC had eased an earlier requirement that VOIP providers suspend service for those customers who failed to acknowledge the limitations of 911 capability with it.

The Voice On the Net Coalition, which represents many VOIP providers, said that roughly 750,000 customers could be affected if they had to suspend service to those who did not have enhanced 911 service available.

Less than half of the dozen VOIP providers surveyed by the coalition, 42 percent, said they would be able to provide enhanced 911 service to 100 percent of their customers with a primary fixed location by November 28.
http://today.reuters.com/news/newsAr...ECOMS-VOIP.xml





Yak Launches Free Peer-to-Peer VoIP
Press release

Yak Communications Inc. is offering free peer-to-peer VoIP services with the help of CounterPath Solutions Inc., formerly Xten Networks Inc.

Yak says it expects to launch “yakForFree” VoIP service, which will use CounterPath’s eyeBeam SIP softphones, in mid November.

CounterPath says when one of its softphones is connected to a service provider's network, the user can make and receive calls to and from other "on-net" callers or "off-net" callers with the same quality of service as an IP handset.

Calling to landline phones requires a package upgrade, which incurs a subscription fee.
http://www.newtelephony.com/news/5bh8101036.html





Sony's Anti-File-Sharing CD Causes A Firestorm Of Anger
Dwight Silverman

Since the dawn of file-sharing in the late 1990s, the music industry has struggled with keeping its wares from being traded freely.

Recording labels have tried all kinds of approaches, from suing their own customers to Draconian copy protection to changing formats. The one that has worked the best — surprise! — has been to offer a low-cost way to buy music that allows users to do pretty much what they want to do with the tunes they purchase.

It's almost as though there's a Good Side and a Dark Side to the musical force. Over time, you'd think the business would get that the Good Side will win more converts.

That is, until you see something like the strange case of the Sony rootkit.

On Halloween, a developer with an Austin-based software company posted on his blog a detailed report on a troubling discovery — a CD from Sony BMG had installed software on his PC that uses the same technique for hiding itself as the most pernicious type of spyware.

Mark Russinovich of Sysinternals also discovered that the software, known as a rootkit, could then be used by the creators of viruses and worms to hide their own malicious payloads.

A rootkit works at the very lowest levels of the Windows operating system to cloak files. Spyware purveyors use the technique to hide their code from programs designed to find and remove it.

In Sony's case, the rootkit was part of a media player designed to restrict how a CD's tunes are played, stored to a computer's hard drive or copied, and was used to hide those files, making it difficult to get around the protection.

The software was installed when the CD's buyers — in Russinovich's case, Van Zant's Get Right with the Man — first tried to play the disc on a PC. The disc can't be used in a PC without Sony's player.

The rootkit hid the software by looking for a particular sequence of characters in the name. Any files that included the sequence were cloaked.

Russinovich had to jump through hoops to find the software, trace its source and remove it. When he did, he found the process disabled his CD drives, which were no longer visible in Windows Explorer.

His report, at http://www.sysinternals.com/blog/200...al-rights.html, concluded:

"The entire experience was frustrating and irritating. Not only had Sony put software on my system that uses techniques commonly used by malware to mask its presence, the software is poorly written and provides no means for uninstall. Worse, most users that stumble across the cloaked files ... will cripple their computer if they attempt the obvious step of deleting the cloaked files.

"While I believe in the media industry's right to use copy protection mechanisms to prevent illegal copying, I don't think that we've found the right balance of fair use and copy protection, yet. This is a clear case of Sony taking DRM (Digital Rights Management) too far."

Russinovich later discovered the software also phoned home, sending a CD identification number back to Sony as it requested update album art and lyrics for the player.

The report resulted in an online firestorm. Russinovich's post drew a strong reaction, with the words "I'm never buying a Sony product again" popping up on blogs and message boards across the Net.

A poor response

Sony tried to quell the furor. Its representatives pointed out that only about 20 CDs have this particular type of copy protection, designed by England-based First 4 Internet, and that newer CDs would have a different way of cloaking the copy protection.

First 4 Internet Chief Executive Mathew Gilliat-Smith in an interview called fears of spyware makers exploiting the rootkit "theoretical," although Russinovich in his report had shown how easy it was to do.

Sony and First 4 Internet issued a new version of the software to remove the cloaking qualities. Initially it was available only if you agreed to install a browser plug-in; First 4 later posted a version that did not require the plug-in.

But it did not remove the Digital Rights Management software itself . To do that without damaging the computer, users had to file a request through Sony's tech support. The software does not include an uninstaller, considered by Microsoft to be a fundamental part of any Windows program.

John Wagner, a Houston-based public relations executive who authors a blog about customer relationships in the online world, wagnercomm.blogspot.com, said Sony's making a classic mistake — doing the minimum and hoping the story will just go away.

"Twenty years ago, it would just go away," Wagner said. "But today, that is just not going to happen. The consumer has a more powerful voice through blogs, the Internet and the sharing of information in a way that spreads that information like wildfire."

A textbook case

And it's a lesson the technology industry should have learned long ago. It has a textbook case to draw from.

In 1994, Intel became an Internet laughingstock after it was announced that the initial version of the Pentium chip had a flaw in the way it handled numbers. The flaw was minor, and Intel felt its effects would not be felt by most users. But the folks who it would have been affected — software developers, scientific users and other hardcore techies — were the ones who cared the most, and they had access to the megaphone that is the Internet.

Intel initially refused to replace the chips, a fact picked up by the mainstream media. The company became the butt of jokes, such as: "At Intel, quality is job 0.999999998."

Intel eventually saw the light, offering to replace the defective chips.

That's what Sony should have done immediately — offered buyers of the copy-protected CDs a non- protected replacement disc. And it should immediately have posted software that removed the DRM software without making users jump through hoops to get it.

Don't hold your breath. Gilliat-Smith said he believes Sony and First 4 did the right thing by issuing a patch to fix the "theoretical" problem. And Sony spokesman John McKay said to combat music piracy, Sony BMG eventually hopes to copy-protect all its CDs.

"This is about saving jobs," McKay said.

Of course, customers will ultimately decide whether to put up with it — and if they reject ham-handed schemes like this one, it could cost Sony even more jobs than casual ripping and burning.

With the CD format on the decline in favor of digitally distributed music, in the end it may be moot.
http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/ssistory...siness/3445666





For instance…

Italian Police Asked to Investigate Sony DRM Code

Also, Computer Associates brands Sony code 'spyware.'
Robert McMillan

The fallout continues over Sony BMG Music Entertainment's controversial XCP copy protection software, with an Italian digital rights organization now taking the first step toward possible criminal charges in the matter.

Separately, security vendor Computer Associates International said today it is now classifying Sony's software as spyware and will begin searching for and removing XCP with its antispyware software, starting on November 12.

A group based in Milan called the ALCEI-EFI (Association for Freedom in Electronic Interactive Communications - Electronic Frontiers Italy) filed a complaint Friday about Sony's software with the head of Italy's cyber- crime investigation unit, Colonel Umberto Rapetto of the Guardia di Finanza.

Complaint Details
The complaint alleges that XCP violates a number of Italy's computer security laws by causing damage to users' systems and by acting in the same way as malicious software, according to Andrea Monti, chair of the ALCEI-EFI. "What Sony did qualifies as a criminal offense under Italian law," he said in an e-mail interview.

Should police determine that a crime has been committed, prosecutors will be required to begin criminal proceedings against Sony, Monti said.

Sony declined to comment on the story. XCP, used on about 20 of the company's music titles, according to Sony, prohibits Windows users from making more than three copies of any XCP-protected CD. The software does not run on non-Windows operating systems such as Mac OS or Linux.

Within the next seven days, ALCEI-EFI also plans to ask the European Union to investigate the matter, Monti said. "The irony of the case is that pressure from industry lobbies ... have led to weird legislation in Italy that treats copying as a criminal offense," he said. "By spreading a virus-like anticopy device (entertainment companies such as Sony) become the criminals under another, more reasonable, law."

Awash in Criticism

Sony's use of XCP has been widely criticized over the past week, since it was first revealed that the software uses many of the same techniques as spyware and computer viruses to disguise its existence. XCP's developer, a U.K. company called First 4 Internet, has said these techniques were necessary in order to prevent illegal copiers from circumventing the digital rights management (DRM) software, but critics say First 4 has gone too far and that the product may be a security risk.

Sam Curry, vice president of eTrust security management with Computer Associates, said the company will direct its eTrust PestPatrol product to remove XCP from customers' PCs. "We have a scorecard, and there are 22 points that we go through examining how the software behaves," he said. "In this case, XCP is falling down."

Search and Remove

XCP installs itself without adequately notifying users of what it will do to their computers, it is too difficult to uninstall, and it also appears to be in secret communication with Sony servers, Curry said.

Even a software patch released by Sony last week to decloak the hidden digital rights management software counts as spyware, Curry added. "Unfortunately the patch also fails our scorecard," he said. "It fails to notify you about what it's doing, and it can cause the system to crash."

Though XCP uses sophisticated tricks to hide itself from system tools, it can actually be circumvented by disabling the Windows Autorun feature, which launches XCP as soon as the CD is placed into a drive, Curry said.

Autorun can be turned off using Windows system tools, but Curry also suggested a much simpler technique to temporarily disable the feature: Holding down the left shift key when installing an XCP-protected CD.

However, CA has instructions on how to disable the Autorun function here.
http://www.pcworld.com/news/article/0,aid,123454,00.asp





Sony's Antipiracy May End Up On Antivirus Hit Lists
Matt Loney

Antivirus companies are considering protecting their customers from the digital rights management software used by Sony on some CDs.

Kaspersky Lab has classed Sony's DRM software as spyware because, among other things, it can cause crashes and loss of data, and it can compromise system integrity and security.

Explaining its decision, Kaspersky said it used the definition of spyware provided by the Anti-Spyware Coalition. Sophos, another security company, is similarly scathing of Sony and is calling the software "ineptware."

The issue reaches much further than the individual PCs of those users who buy particular Sony CDs, the antivirus companies say. The DRM software uses what is known as a "rootkit," which means that it is invisible to the operating system, to most antivirus and security software and to IT departments trying to cope with security on desktop and notebook computers.

Furthermore, say the antivirus companies, the rootkit software can be exploited by hackers and viruses and used to cloak any file from the operating system. A rootkit takes partial control of a computer's operating system at a very deep level in order to hide the presence of files or ongoing processes.

"The Sony rootkit can be used to hide any files from the operating system, so we think the way that Sony has implemented this is somewhat flawed," said Graham Cluley, the senior technology consultant at Sophos. "The danger is that other malware (malicious hardware) may come along which exploits the Sony rootkit."

Due to what Cluley said is a lack of malicious intent on Sony's part, Sophos is not defining the rootkit itself as malicious software, preferring instead to refer to it as "ineptware."

"We don't really believe this is malware, and so we don't currently detect it," Cluley said. However, he said detection for rootkits like that used by Sony will be built into Sophos Antivirus version 6, due out in 2006.

"This is potentially unwanted software, and we will add the capability to detect the bad stuff and give the enterprise more control over what is on their PCs," he said. "This software is the sort of thing we will consider adding."

David Emm, a senior technology consultant at Kaspersky Lab, said he was also dismayed to see Sony using rootkits. "We don't have an issue with Sony taking steps to protect its legal rights and licensing," he said. "But given that over the past 12 to 18 months we have seen an increasing use of rootkits (by criminals), to see similar technology being implemented from someone supposedly on the good side is particularly worrying."

Use of techniques that are usually the preserve of criminals by companies such as Sony are causing problems to antivirus and security companies. "Previously it has been possible to say a rootkit equals a bad thing, but now we're having to deal with things that are not so clear cut," he said.

Kaspersky uses the term "riskware" to define programs that behave like malicious software but may not have malicious intent behind them. Although it attempts to detect riskware, so that users can be asked what they would like to do with it and so that policies can be created, it does not currently detect the rootkit used by Sony's DRM. "At the moment this is still under discussion and no final decision has been made," Emm added.

Sony's use of techniques usually employed by hackers and virus writers makes it much more difficult to differentiate between malicious and benign software, said Kaspersky on its viruslist.com blog. "Rootkits are rapidly becoming one of the biggest issues in cybersecurity. Vendors are making more and more of an effort to detect this kind of threat. So why is Sony opting to use this dubious technology?" the Kaspersky posting said.

"Naturally, we're strongly against this development," it continued. "We can only hope that this message comes across loud and clear to the people who have a say in this at Sony and elsewhere. We'd hate to see the use of rootkits becoming a habit among mainstream software manufacturers when there are so many security and ethical arguments against such use."
http://news.com.com/Sonys+antipiracy...3-5933428.html





Viruses Exploit Sony CD Copy-Protection Scheme
AP

A controversial copy-protection program that automatically installs when some Sony BMG audio CDs are played on personal computers is now being exploited by malicious software that takes advantage of the antipiracy technology's ability to hide files.

The Trojan horse programs -- three have so far been identified by antivirus companies -- are named so as to trigger the cloaking feature of Sony's XCP2 antipiracy technology. By piggybacking on that function, the malicious programs can enter undetected, security experts said Thursday.

``This could be the advanced guard,'' said Graham Cluley, senior technology consultant at the security firm Sophos. ``We wouldn't be surprised at all if we saw more malware that exploits what Sony has introduced.''

The copy protection program is included on about 20 popular music titles, including releases by Van Zant and The Bad Plus, and disclosure of its existence has raised the ire of many in the computing community, who consider it to constitute spyware.

Sony BMG Music Entertainment and the company that developed the software, First 4 Internet, have claimed that the technology poses no security threat. Still, Sony posted a patch last week that uncloaks files hidden by the software.

On Thursday, Sony released a statement ``deeply regretting any disruption that this may have caused.'' It also said it was working with Symantec and other firms to ensure any content-protection technology ``continues to be safe.''

Neither Sony spokesman John McKay nor First 4 Internet CEO Mathew Gilliat-Smith returned messages seeking additional comment.

Windows expert Mark Russinovich discovered the hidden copy-protection technology on Oct. 31 and posted his findings on his Web log. He noted that the license agreement that pops up said a small program would be installed, but it did not specify it would be hidden.

Manual attempts to remove the software can disable the PC's CD drive. Sony offers an uninstallation program, but consumers must request it by filling out two forms on the Internet.

``What they did was not intentionally malicious,'' Cluley said. ``If anything, it was slightly inept.''

The copy-protection software, which Sony says is a necessary ``speed bump'' to limit how many times a CD is copied, only works on Windows-based PCs. Users of Macintosh and Linux computers are not restricted.

The viruses also only target Windows-based machines.

The infection opens up a backdoor, which could be used to steal personal information, launch attacks on other computers and send spam, antivirus companies said.

Sony also is facing legal headaches. On Nov. 1, Alexander Guevara filed suit in Los Angeles County Superior Court seeking class action staus. He claims Sony's actions constituted fraud, false advertising, trespass and violated state and federal laws barring malware and computer tampering.

His attorney, Alan Himmelfarb, did not immediately return calls seeking comment.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation, an online civil liberty group, said it is hearing from people who have run into problems with the copy protection software. It is considering filing its own lawsuit, said EFF staff attorney Jason Schultz.

``You can't uninstall it, you can't find it, and it's vastly more invasive in terms of privacy and personal property than any other (digital rights management) program to date,'' he said.
http://www.siliconvalley.com/mld/sil...y/13134753.htm





DRM - Digital Rights Minimization
Mike Evangelist

The latest episode in the war between music companies and their paying customers (the one where Sony decides it’s OK to surreptitiously take over your PC so you can’t make a copy of the music you thought you bought from them) has finally pushed me over the edge.

I’ve been a big buyer of prerecorded ‘media’ for over 35 years. I have two or three hundred vinyl LPs, several dozen 45’s, a hundred or so audio cassettes, and roughly 60 prerecorded reel-to-reel tapes. They are jammed in my closet with a couple hundred VHS tapes, 450 CDs, and 500-odd DVDs. (Mercifully, I skipped the 8-track, Betamax and laserdisc formats.)

I have to believe the record companies and movie studios would consider me a good customer. But with every day that passes it becomes more and more obvious that the greedy bastards who run these media companies prefer to treat me (and all their customers) like criminals. They continually expect us to pay more for less, and even then they are not satisfied. They want to pretend to ‘sell’ us their product, but they don’t want us to actually have it. Well I’ve had enough.

From this day forward I will never spend a another dime on content that I can’t use the way I please. If I can’t copy it to my hard drive and play it using the devices I want, when and where I want, I won’t be buying it. Period.

They can all take their DRM, and their broadcast flags, and their rootkits, and their Compact Discs that aren’t really compact discs and shove them up their bottom-lines.
http://writersblocklive.com/?p=62





Insurer Launches $10 Million Open-Source Policy
Martin LaMonica

Three organizations have partnered to offer corporate customers some insurance against the legal risks that can stem from the use of open-source software.

Insurance underwriter Kiln, which is a Lloyd's of London division, and Miller Insurance Services on Monday said they will offer open-source compliance insurance. New York-based Open Source Risk Management will be the exclusive risk assessor.

The insurance will cover up to $10 million in damages, including profit losses related to noncompliance with an open-source software license. The policy could, in some cases, cover the cost of repairing code that was found to infringe on open-source licenses such as the General Public License, which is used with the Linux operating system.

The insurers said more than 30 legal claims in the last two years have involved infringements on open-source licenses. In each case, the plaintiffs were able to restrict the use of their code.

"The emerging open-source model of worldwide collaborative technology development introduces novel business risks that traditional insurance products can, but have not, addressed," said Matthew Hogg, an underwriter for Kiln Risk Solutions.

Daniel Egger, CEO of Open Source Risk Management, said many companies inadvertently expose themselves to legal risks when they use open- source software.

In particular, companies may infringe on copyright laws when distributing their own software--which could include open-source products--to business partners or customers, Egger said.

"Allowing people to log on to your database is not distribution. But sending them a CD-ROM with a copy of software that lets them do data analysis on that database would be," he said.

Egger said his firm advises clients how to sidestep violations, which are infrequent. However, more and more corporations are using open-source software. "Open source itself is not separable," he said. "It's hard to imagine an enterprise system without tight links to open-source components."
http://news.com.com/Insurer+launches...3-5924112.html





Breathalyzer Source Code Must Be Disclosed
Declan McCullagh

Florida police can't use electronic breathalyzers as courtroom evidence against drivers unless the innards are disclosed, a state court ruled Wednesday.

A three-judge panel in Sarasota County said that a defense expert must have access to the source code--the secret step-by-step software instructions- -used by the Intoxilyzer 5000. It's a simple computer with 168KB of RAM (random access memory) that's manufactured by CMI of Owensboro, Ky.

"Unless the defense can see how the breathalyzer works," the judges wrote, the device amounts to "nothing more than a 'mystical machine' used to establish an accused's guilt."

The case, one of the first to test whether source code used in such devices will be divulged, could influence the outcome of hundreds of drunk-driving prosecutions in the state. So far, Florida courts have been split on the topic, with some tossing out cases involving breath alcohol tests and others concluding that the information about the machine's workings should remain a trade secret.

In one similar 1988 case, Florida defense attorneys discovered that the police had mechanically modified a breath test machine so much that its results were no longer valid and could not be admitted as evidence in a prosecution.

The Sarasota judges didn't require the public disclosure of the source code. Rather, they ordered that it must be given to a defense expert who will keep it in confidence and return it when his analysis is complete. That analysis could show bugs or reveal that the code was modified after the Intoxilyzer was certified for use by the state--meaning the device's output could not be used in court.
http://news.com.com/Breathalyzer+sou...3-5931553.html


















Until next week,

- js.


















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