Peer-To-Peer News - The Week In Review - July 9th, ’05

[JackSpratts]

"I think that anybody who believes that the government and other powerful institutions should be closely and aggressively watched should feel a chill up their spine today." – Bill Keller, NY Times executive editor


"If journalists cannot be trusted to guarantee confidentiality, then journalists cannot function and there cannot be a free press. The right of civil disobedience is based on personal conscience, it is fundamental to our system and it is honored throughout our history." – Judith Miller, jailed NY Times journalist


"Repeatedly, those I had interviewed for my books or stories for the Post had cited my willingness to protect a source such as Deep Throat for nearly 30 years as a reason they were willing to talk about some of the most sensitive and Top Secret deliberations in the U.S. government.

It is critical that confidential sources feel they would be protected for life. There needed to be a model out there where people could come forward or speak when contacted, knowing they would be protected." – Bob Woodward


"While I think it has legal value it will be meaningless." – Hilary Rosen
























New York Times Reporter Jailed for Keeping Source Secret
Adam Liptak and Maria Newman

A federal judge today ordered Judith Miller of The New York Times to be jailed immediately after she again refused to cooperate with a grand jury investigating the disclosure of the identity of a covert C.I.A. operative.

Another reporter who had been facing jail time on the same matter, Matthew Cooper of Time magazine, agreed today to testify to a grand jury about his confidential source on the same matter, thus avoiding jail. Mr. Cooper said he had decided to do so only because his source specifically released him from promises of confidentiality just before today's hearing.

The judge, Thomas F. Hogan of Federal District Court in Washington, rejected a request by Ms. Miller and her lawyers that she be allowed to serve her detention at home or in Connecticut or elsewhere, and ordered that she be put in custody and taken to a jail in the District of Columbia area until October, or until she changed her mind about testifying.

Ms. Miller herself told the court that she would not reveal her source no matter how long they jailed her.

"If journalists cannot be trusted to guarantee confidentiality, then journalists cannot function and there cannot be a free press," she read from a statement as she stood before Judge Hogan. "The right of civil disobedience is based on personal conscience, it is fundamental to our system and it is honored throughout our history," she said before court officers led her away, looking shaken.

The executive editor of The Times, Bill Keller, said outside the courthouse that Ms. Miller's decision to go to jail rather than disclose her source was a "brave and principled choice."

"Judy Miller made a commitment to her source and she's standing by it," he said. "This is a chilling conclusion to an utterly confounding case."

Arthur Sulzberger Jr., the publisher of The New York Times, said in a statement that "there are times when the greater good of our democracy demands an act of conscience."

"Judy has chosen such an act in honoring her promise of confidentiality to her sources," he said. "She believes, as do we, that the free flow of information is critical to an informed citizenry."

Judge Hogan made his decision after an hourlong hearing here this afternoon in which a special prosecutor and lawyers for both journalists presented their respective cases for why the two should or should not be jailed.

Mr. Cooper told the judge that he had been prepared to go to jail until shortly before the hearing.

"Last night I hugged my son good-bye and told him it might be a long time before I see him again," Mr. Cooper said. But just before today's hearing, he had received "in somewhat dramatic fashion" a direct personal communication from his source freeing him from his commitment to keep the source's identity secret.

"It's with a bit of surprise and no small amount of relief that I will comply with the subpoena," he told the judge.

Ms. Miller will be the first Times reporter to serve time behind bars for refusing to disclose sources since M.A. Farber spent 40 days in a New Jersey jail in 1978. In the Farber case, The Times itself was also fined $286,000. Four years later, Gov. Brendan T. Byrne pardoned Mr. Farber, who is now retired, as well as the paper.

Last October, Ms. Miller and Mr. Cooper were sentenced to 18 months in jail for civil contempt of court, but those sentences were stayed pending appeal. Last week, the Supreme Court refused to take up the case.

Judge Hogan said last week that the two reporters now faced serving only 4 of the original 18 months of their sentence, because that is all the time left in the term of the current grand jury investigating the leak case. Civil contempt is meant to be coercive rather than punitive.

A lawyer for Ms. Miller, Floyd Abrams, emphasized after the hearing that "Judy Miller has not been accused of a crime or convicted of a crime," adding that "she has been held in civil contempt of court."

Mr. Abrams also said that Judge Hogan had said, "She has the key to her own cell."

The special prosecutor, Patrick A. Fitzgerald, has suggested that the reporters may also face criminal prosecution, which could entail additional penalties.

The case highlights a collision of the press's right to protect its sources, the government's ability to investigate a crime and even the Bush administration's justification for going to war in Iraq.

It began two years ago, when the identity of the C.I.A. operative, Valerie Plame, was first disclosed by the syndicated columnist Robert Novak, presumably after the information was provided by someone in government. Three days later, Mr. Cooper, in an article that also carried the bylines of two other reporters, made a similar disclosure on Time magazine's Web site.

Ms. Miller, on the other hand, did not publish any such disclosures in The Times or elsewhere.

In his column, Mr. Novak, who identified Ms. Plame as the wife of a former diplomat who was critical of American policy on Iraq, cited as his sources two senior Bush administration officials whom he did not identify.

Mr. Fitzgerald is investigating whether by telling reporters about Ms. Plame people in the Bush administration broke a law meant to protect the identities of covert intelligence operatives. As part of that inquiry, several senior administration officials have testified before the grand jury.

Ms. Plame's husband, Joseph C. Wilson IV, a former United States ambassador, has maintained that his wife's cover was blown in revenge for an Op-Ed article that he had written for The New York Times questioning Bush administration assertions about weapons of mass destruction that served as sizable justification for going to war with Iraq.

Mr. Novak, who has not been held in contempt or publicly threatened with jail time, has not commented on his involvement in the investigation. Legal experts following the case have said they presume he has cooperated with the special prosecutor.

But Mr. Novak has come under increasing criticism from other journalists and columnists for not disclosing what he knows and what cooperation, if any, he has given to Mr. Fitzgerald. Mr. Novak said recently that he "will reveal all" after the matter is resolved, adding that it is wrong for the government to jail journalists.

The judge's decision to jail Mr. Cooper comes despite Time magazine's decision last week to provide the special prosecutor with Mr. Cooper's notes and other documents after the Supreme Court refused to hear the case. In a filing on Tuesday, Mr. Fitzgerald said that he had reviewed the documents and determined that Mr. Cooper's testimony "remains necessary."

"Journalists are not entitled to promise complete confidentiality - no one in America is," Mr. Fitzgerald told the judge on Tuesday.

Mr. Fitzgerald also said in the court papers that the source for both Mr. Cooper and Ms. Miller had waived confidentiality, giving the reporters permission to reveal where they got their information. The prosecutor did not identify that person, nor say whether the source for each reporter was the same person.

Mr. Cooper told the judge today while he had been told his source had signed a general waiver of confidentiality, he would only act with a specific waiver from his source, which he said he got today.

Mr. Fitzgerald, who until then had been restrained in his public filings, was also harshly critical of the position taken by Ms. Miller and of statements supporting her by The Times.

"The court should advise Miller that if she persists in defying the court's order that she will be committing a crime," Mr. Fitzgerald wrote. "Miller and The New York Times appear to have confused Miller's ability to commit contempt with a legal right to do so."

He added: "Much of what appears to motivate Miller to commit contempt is the misguided reinforcement from others (specifically including her publisher) that placing herself above the law can be condoned." Mr. Sulzberger, the publisher of The Times, has repeatedly said the newspaper supports Ms. Miller.

Today, after Ms. Miller was taken into custody, Mr. Keller said that prosecutors had failed to disclose what crime, if any, they were investigating.

"It's confounding because of the mystery about exactly what crime has been committed and what exactly the special prosecutor hopes to accomplish by the draconian act of punishing an honorable journalist," he said. "It's chilling because it's likely to serve future cover-ups of information that happens in the recesses of government and other powerful institutions.

"I think that anybody who believes that the government and other powerful institutions should be closely and aggressively watched should feel a chill up their spine today," he said.

Adam Liptak reported from Washington for this article and Maria Newman reported from New York.
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/07/06/po...d-leak.html?hp





Witnesses Post Instant Photos on the Web to Capture Drama
Louise Story

Cian O'Donovan is not a photojournalist, but when he heard about the subway bombings not far from his home in London, he decided to try to photograph them.

By the end of the day, Mr. O'Donovan had taken about 40 photos, most with his Nokia cellphone.

Mr. O'Donovan posted 17 of his photos online at flickr.com, where they joined hundreds of photos of the aftermath of the bombings by nonprofessional photographers.

Online photo-sharing sites and Web blogs began chronicling the attacks soon after they occurred, posting material often gathered before professional news organizations arrived on the scenes.

The BBC posted photographs and videos taken by witnesses, and The Guardian posted experiences that readers submitted on a running Web log.

The attacks were not the first recorded by witnesses with cellphone and other digital cameras. Online experts like operators of photography sites and photography agencies said the pictures of the explosions were posted in greater numbers and with greater speed than they had seen in other major events.

Not only has the technology for taking the photographs become more widespread in the last few years, the experts said, but posting photographs has also become easier.

Flickr.com, a site owned by Yahoo that lets people post photographs free, had more than 300 bombing photos posted within eight hours after the attacks.

The site had 7,000 photos from the intercontinental Live 8 concerts on Saturday, and the co-founder of the site, Caterina Fake, said it expected many more from the London attacks in a few days. "These are people who are in the crowds being rushed out of the train station," Ms. Fake said. "All of these sort of like man-in-the-street experiences are very compelling, and they're very moving."

One frequently posted image was of a young man who covered his mouth with a cloth after his train had stopped and filled with smoke. Wikipedia, the online encyclopedia, one of the sites that posted the photo, identified the photographer as Adam Stacey and said he and others in the subway had escaped by smashing train windows. Mr. Stacey, the Web site said, was fine other than suffering smoke inhalation.

Moblog.co.uk, which also posted the photo, said that as of 6:20 p.m. yesterday it had been viewed 36,300 times.

Photos posted by witnesses of disasters and important events proliferated last year after the Asian tsunami disaster, said Kurt Pitzer, a spokesman for World Picture News, which represents professional and amateur photographers. It posted about 40 messages by 11 a.m. yesterday offering to represent photographers with London photos. Within two hours, World Picture News had heard from 10 to 15 photographers, Mr. Pitzer said.

Images captured by witnesses have been a growing phenomenon since a bystander videotaped a black man, Rodney King, being beaten by police officers in 1991 in Los Angeles. The photos have begun spreading much faster as high-bandwidth Internet connections have become more common, Mr. Pitzer said.

Tim Bradshaw, who posted photos from around London on flickr.com, said in an e-mail message he was not sure at first whether he would post them.

"It seemed kind of wrong," Mr. Bradshaw wrote. "The BBC and other news Web sites were so overwhelmed it was almost like an alternative source of news.

"I think it's really interesting how many camera-phone pictures made it onto the national news."

Dan Gillmor, founder of Grassroots Media, which promotes what it calls "citizen journalism," said witnesses' photos and online accounts would reshape the role of traditional news media over time. As more and more photographs and blogs go online with major events, Mr. Gillmor said, the mainstream news media should search those postings and point their readers to the best ones.

"A lot of what's being done by the citizen-journalist will be most useful as people start pulling together the best images and stories," he said. "There was a cliché that journalists write the first draft of history. Now I think these people are writing the first draft of history at some level, and that's an important shift."
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/07/08/in...pe/08blog.html





Apple’s Steve Jobs Calls Family of Teenager Killed for iPod
Kareem Fahim

As Errol Rose made preparations on Monday to bury his 15-year-old son, Christopher, who was killed last week in Brooklyn during a fight over an iPod, he received a telephone call from a stranger. The man spoke in tones that the grieving father said had momentarily quieted his anguish.

The stranger, Mr. Rose soon learned, was Steve Jobs, chief executive of Apple Computer, the company that makes the iPod.

"I didn't know who he was," Mr. Rose said yesterday. "He called me on my cellphone, at 4 maybe. Or maybe it was 5." Mr. Rose said he had stopped noticing the passage of time since his son was killed.

The men spoke for a few minutes.

Calling him by his first name, Mr. Jobs asked how Mr. Rose was doing, he said, and conveyed his sympathies. "He told me that he understood my pain," Mr. Rose said. "He told me if there is anything - anything - anything he could do, to not be afraid to call him. It really lightened me a bit."

On Saturday afternoon, Christopher set out with three of his friends in the Farragut section of East Flatbush. They planned to take the subway to the Port Authority Bus Terminal and catch a bus to Pennsylvania, where Christopher attended school, to watch a fireworks display. Soon after they left Christopher's house, as many as a dozen teenagers attacked the four boys, beat them and stole their valuables, which included an iPod, the police have said.

During the fight, one of the teenagers stabbed Christopher twice in his chest, killing him. Darran Samuel, 16, of Brooklyn, is being held without bail on charges of second- degree murder and attempted robbery in connection with the attack.

Prosecutors say the fight started with a demand for the iPod, the popular digital music players that have sold in the millions since Apple introduced them in October 2001.

In recent months, city authorities have noted a rise in subway crime, driven principally by thefts of cellphones and iPods. The most frequent victims, the police said, are teenagers who are robbed after school.

In the days since Christopher's death, Mr. Rose has spoken of finding meaning in his family's misfortune, and of working to help teenagers like the ones who attacked his son.

Christopher's parents had sent him to a school in Bushkill, Pa., hoping to keep him safe from exactly the kind of violence that overtook him on the streets of East Flatbush last week. Mr. Rose, a mason and a construction worker, commuted three hours every day between New York and Pennsylvania, spending long spells away from his wife, Sharon, and their other children.

Mr. Rose said that in the last few days he had taken phone calls from friends and relatives all over the world, and had received visitors including Betsy Gotbaum, the public advocate, and Councilwoman Yvette D. Clarke and her mother, Una Clarke.

One of Mr. Jobs's assistants contacted a reporter for The New York Times on Monday and asked for Mr. Rose's telephone number.

"Some people talk to you like they're something remote," Mr. Rose said. "He was so familiar. After every word, he paused, as if each word he said came from his heart."

A spokesman for Mr. Jobs declined to comment on the phone call yesterday.

Apart from the iPod, the boys who attacked Christopher and his friends stole tennis shoes and a cellphone, the police have said.

"We live in a world which is changing rapidly," Mr. Rose said. "We have the technology that can give us the iPod and everything else, but it's not all these things. We have to work on the minds and the hearts.

"We're failing these kids. We're not loving them like we're supposed to."

Matthew Sweeney contributed reporting for this article.
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/07/06/nyregion/06ipod.html





U.S. File Sharing Is Officially Illegal. Who Cares?
Simon Beck

Thou shalt not encourage young folk to illegally download, said the United States Supreme Court this week. But just as Moses' own vintage set of dos and don'ts falls mostly on deaf ears these days, will the Gang of Nine's ruling make a difference?

When the robed ones agree unanimously on anything, you know it's a big deal. They may be split down the middle on whether God created the Earth, but they sure agree that when two Mountain Dew guzzlers share a Nine Inch Nails song on the Internet, it's a very bad thing. And although the music and movie industries greeted the 9-0 ruling against file-sharing services Grokster and StreamCast (maker of the Morpheus software) with cheers, the peer-to-peer generation were blissfully zoning out to their iPods.

Plus ça change. One imagines the Supremes were young enough to have been ardently taping their lawyer-friends' Neil Diamond albums to cassette back in the 1970s (hmmm . . . maybe not). At the very least, they will remember the 1984 ruling handed down by their predecessors, which absolved Sony of any liability for copyright infringement that might occur via the then-groundbreaking invention, the VCR. (Did the networks really believe that anyone would want to make tapes of Three's Company?)

The entertainment industry has been fighting piracy ever since some bright spark dreamed up the term intellectual property. It has sometimes lost, as in the Sony case, but has never given up blaming copyright infringement on every woe that ails it, from plunging CD sales to declining box office grosses. There's no doubt file sharing is immense: An estimated 240 million songs were downloaded for free from P2P networks in March alone, while only 26 million songs were purchased from pay sites such as Apple's iTunes. But the link between file sharing and lower sales -- as opposed to other obvious factors such as unappealing product -- has not been definitively proven.

In any case, imagine if Sony had lost that 1984 case and the VCR had effectively been kiboshed; where would the billions that movie studios make from video (and now DVD) releases have come from?

But now that the door is open for the likes of Grokster to be sued, we end with this sobering thought from the firm's own website: "Purchase of Grokster Pro is not a licence to upload or download copyrighted material. Grokster urges you to respect copyright and share responsibly."

You have (snicker, snicker) been warned, dude.
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servl...siness/General





Opera Adds BitTorrent to Web Browser
Nate Mook

Opera Software has released a test version of its flagship Web browser that adds an embedded BitTorrent client for downloading content using the popular file sharing protocol. Although Opera has not officially announced the beta, which is dubbed a "technology preview," the release is available from the company's FTP server.

The addition makes Opera the first Web browser to natively support BitTorrent downloads, which normally require a separate external client. Alongside the BitTorrent feature, Opera 8.02 will also introduce a number of bug fixes including an update for Web pages using Flash.

BitTorrent has found immense popularity as a way to download files due to its distributed architecture, although its use thus far has largely been for sharing copyrighted content such as movies.

Operationally, a "seed" file, or one complete file, is all that is needed to initiate a BitTorrent download. Once initiated, seeds are downloaded by file sharers who obtain "bits" of the master file over peer-to-peer networks. The efficiency of distribution scales upward as more file sharers download.

But just like P2P networks, BitTorrent has drawn the attention of authorities that have shut down a number of Web sites related to the protocol. BitTorrent has been used by a number of legitimate organizations to distribute large files, however, including Linux distributions of Red Hat and Mandriva.

The Opera 8.02 Technology Preview is available for Windows, Mac OS X and Linux.
http://www.betanews.com/article/prin...ser/1120670921





Pirated Live 8 DVDs On eBay, Industry Protests

Internet auction site eBay said on Tuesday it had begun removing illegal DVD copies of the Live 8 poverty awareness pop concerts from its Web site, after the record industry complained.

Some of the pirate recordings on the site early on Tuesday were on sale within 24 hours of Saturday's concerts ending, and have been attracting bids of up to 16.99 pounds ($31) each.

One of them boasts footage from huge concerts in London's Hyde Park and Philadelphia.

Ten concerts took place in all, from Tokyo in the east to near Toronto in the west, and more than a million people turned up to see the greatest line-up of rock stars ever assembled.

While the concerts were free, British media said record company EMI paid millions of pounds for the rights to release the official DVD of the event, which Bob Geldof organized to put pressure on world leaders to do more to beat poverty.

"There are too many people out there who believe music is for stealing, regardless of the wishes of artists and the people who invest in them," said David Martin, director of anti-piracy at the British Phonographic Industry (BPI).

"Sadly we are not at all surprised by this incident."

EBay said it had begun removing the listings.

"The unauthorized copies of Live 8 DVDs we have been told about have been taken down, because the sale of fake items is not permitted on eBay.co.uk," the site said in a statement.

EBay has already been labeled an "electronic pimp" by Geldof after free Live 8 tickets appeared on the site ahead of Saturday's concerts.

It suspended some of the accounts of users who placed hoax bids for the tickets of up to 10 million pounds in order to sabotage the sales.

Geldof also organized the Live Aid charity gigs 20 years ago to raise money for Ethiopian famine victims, and brought out a re-recording of the 1984 "Do They Know It's Christmas?" track to try to prevent bootleggers profiting from the original.

The BPI urged eBay to toughen its safeguards against piracy, noting a dramatic rise in illegal sales.

In 2001, the BPI arranged for the removal of 2,315 illegal online auctions, but in the first six months of this year that number had risen to 13,280.
http://today.reuters.com/news/newsAr...UP-LIVE-DC.XML






Sony Battles PSP Hackers Over Hijacked Games

Hackers have cracked piracy protections on Sony's PlayStation Portable in the United States, the latest chapter in the company's battle to block unauthorized game use on its new handheld device.

The world's top maker of video game consoles rolled out a downloadable fix for the software flaw that opened the door for the latest attack by hackers, who quickly cracked the original version of the PSP shortly after its release in Japan late last year.

In their latest move, hackers have enabled PSP users to download some games from pirate Web sites onto removable memory sticks and then to insert the games to run on the PSP.

Currently available titles include "Mercury," Ubisoft's "Lumines," "Coded Arms" from Konami, Taito's "Puzzle Bobble" and Sony's own "Intelligent License," according to gaming Web sites.

The new game-duplicating trick works on the PSP's 1.5 version firmware, which serves as the PSP operating system. The PSP was released in the United States in March with the 1.5 version firmware.

Sony released firmware version 1.51 in May, patching the hole that made room for the hack. Upcoming game titles will require that PSP users run updated firmware, a move aimed at preventing users from copying games.

Sony Computer Entertainment America said in an e-mailed statement that hacking or the operation of "homebrew" software programs may damage the PSP and void the warranty.

The PSP boasts a high-resolution viewing screen and has been in the sights of technology enthusiasts and software programmers, who want to use it to run copies of everything from games and music to e-books to movies.

Groups of hackers are close to releasing new technology that would allow any copied game--rather than the current, limited set- -to be played on the PSP, an editor at gaming site PS2NFO.com, who identified himself as "CJ," said in an e-mail Tuesday.

The PSP European launch is set for September.
http://news.com.com/Sony+battles+PSP...3-5775932.html




Hacking For Dollars
Joris Evers

Hackers have traded fame for financial gain, experts say.

In the past, lone hackers defaced Web sites or launched global worm attacks, mainly to gain notoriety among their peers.

Today, they use their skills for profit. They hunt for security flaws and find ways to exploit them, hijack computers and rent those out for use as spam relays, or participate in targeted attacks that steal sensitive information from individuals or spy on businesses.

"In the last year, we have seen a dramatic shift to hacking for financial gain," said Oliver Friedrichs, a senior manager at Symantec Security Response. "The benefit of creating a widespread worm on the Internet has really been superseded by the potential of monetary gain."

Though the shift could mean the end of big worms like last year's Sasser, it still spells trouble. The targeted attacks crafted by businesslike hackers can hit individuals and organizations harder--and in the pocket, rather than just in the PC.

There is an underground market. A hacker who finds a way to exploit a security hole in Windows could earn up to $1,000, or much more if the hole is not yet known to Microsoft or anyone else, said Dmitri Alperovitch, a research engineer at security vendor CipherTrust.

That flaw could then be used to hijack PCs. These compromised systems, called zombies, can then be used to relay spam, to host malicious Web sites or to launch denial-of-service attacks--at a price. Spammers, phishers and others who want to rent out a network of about 5,500 zombies typically pay about $350, according to security company Symantec.

These zombie networks, known as "botnets," are sometimes used to extort companies, who are threatened with a denial-of-service onslaught aimed at hurting their business. British online payment processing company Protx went offline after an attack and was warned that problems would continue unless a $10,000 payment was made, according to a recent report in The New York Times.

New breed
As the motive of those involved has changed, so has their profile, Symantec's Friedrichs said. "In the past, they were teenagers or others who did it to gain notoriety. Today's hackers are white-collar criminals and criminals in foreign countries," he said.

Among that group, though, are coders who realized that they could take the hobby they had for years and turn it into a profitable business, CipherTrust's Alperovitch said. "Unless they are really good at it, they probably won't become millionaires. But it is a good side business," he said.

The change has been accompanied by an increasing ingenuity in crafting attacks. Phishing scams, for example, are becoming aimed at smaller groups of victims. Also, companies are being targeted with Trojan horses meant to get access to corporate networks or to enable industrial espionage.

"The deception techniques are getting better, and the payload is also getting more sophisticated," said Dan Hubbard, a senior director at Websense, a San Diego, Calif.-based security vendor. "As more money gets made, the attacks get more sophisticated."

All this means that stakes are higher for individuals and for businesses whose systems suffer an attack. With a worm, they might have had to apply a patch or reinstall a PC. With financially motivated threats, victims could have sensitive corporate information or their identity stolen.

One fraud area seeing a rise in activity--and therefore, a likely lift in scam revenue--is phishing. These scams typically combine spam and fake Web pages that look like trusted sites to try to trick the victim into divulging sensitive information such as passwords or credit card numbers. The number of phishing e-mails tracked by IBM's Global Business Security Index reached an all-time high in May, the company said. It saw 9.14 million messages sent to its customers, up from a previous high of 7.7 million in January.

Credit card data sells for up to $100 per account, according to a report on the economy of phishing, released in June by San Francisco antispam provider Cloudmark. The price depends on how high the limit is and how much supporting information is supplied, though--an account with little supporting information will go for much less. American Express cards fetch more, as those come without a preset spending limit, experts said.

Symantec has seen a clear change in the malicious code, such as Trojan horses, used in attacks. In the final six months of last year, 54 percent of the attack code was targeted at obtaining personal data. That is up from 36 percent in the same period in 2003.

But as victims lose more money, consumers' defenses in general go up, Websense's Hubbard said. Many people now realize the importance of installing security software and patches, and technology to fight phishing, such as browser toolbars, is becoming increasingly popular. Also, Microsoft has said it will include phishing protection in Internet Explorer 7, a test version of which is due out this year.

MessageLabs, an e-mail security company, has also spotted the trend of targeted attacks--but this time, aimed at businesses. This week, it said it had stopped e-mail messages containing a malicious attachment that was sent to only 17 addresses at a global company. It appeared to be an attempt to gain access to the company's network.

"The motivation behind today's new e-mail-borne threats is far more sinister than traditional large-scale attacks," Mark Sunner, chief technology officer at MessageLabs, said.

Hackers are getting paid to create the malicious programs, which could then be used in industrial espionage or to collect sensitive company data.

In late May, Israeli police made 18 arrests in a case of industrial espionage using Trojan horses. The programs were designed to spy on computer systems and had been planted on the computers of some of the country's top companies.

Sneaky worms
That market means that programs that exploit security holes in software are worth too much these days to waste on an attention-grabbing worm. Such major outbreaks get detected soon, triggering mass patching by users and investigations by law enforcement agencies.

Instead, hackers are more likely to create a slow, stealthy attack that will get malicious software installed on many machines, said Steven Hofmeyr, the chief scientist at Sana Security.

"There is no real incentive to write those kinds of mass worms other than the graffiti incentive," Hofmeyr said.

The lure of money likely is not solely responsible for the lull in large worm outbreaks, experts said. After a string of worms in 2003 and Sasser last year, many people realized the importance of security software and patching their systems.

Also, Microsoft, whose software is often the target of worms, has been working to improve its act. Windows XP Service Pack 2, a large security-focused update for the desktop operating system, was released last year. On the server, Windows Server 2003 is deemed more secure than its predecessors.

"The world has become much more aware of malicious activity," Debby Fry Wilson, a director at Microsoft's Security Response Center, said.

In the future, intrusion prevention products could play a part in protecting systems against targeted security threats. Some tools look at the behavior of software and block suspect activity. Other products look more closely at the data leaving a corporate network and can block the transmission of credit card data, for example.

Attacks have changed, not vanished. Security companies and Internet users face increasing challenges to fight the sophisticated threats that often fly under the radar. With money as a spur, hackers are motivated to keep creating new attacks--and to keep one step ahead of the competition.

"I call it the chess game, where the bad guys have the white pieces and always get to go first," Gartner analyst John Pescatore said.
http://news.com.com/Hacking+for+doll...3-5772238.html





Sasser Computer Worm Author Confesses in Trial

The man on trial for writing the Sasser computer worm that wreaked havoc in big businesses and homes across the world last year has confessed to all the charges against him, a German court said on Tuesday.

Katharina Kruetzfeldt, judge at the court in the western town of Verden, said Sven Jaschan, 19, admitted to data manipulation, computer sabotage and interfering with public corporations in one of the biggest Internet attacks of its kind.

After emerging around May last year, versions of the Sasser worm went on to knock out an estimated 1 million computer systems among home users and companies by spreading on the ubiquitous Microsoft Windows operating system.

Sasser victims ranged from the British Coastguard to the European Commission, Goldman Sachs and Australia's Westpac Bank. Some security firms called it the most destructive worm ever.

State prosecutor Silke Streichsbier said she was "highly satisfied" with progress made at the trial, which is closed to the public as Jaschan was a minor when some of the offences took place. A verdict is expected Thursday.

Jaschan, who had previously confessed to having created the worm to police, could face a maximum sentence of five years in prison as well as having to pay compensation to his victims.

Prosecutors said damages amounting to some 130,000 euros ($154,600) had so far been reported by victims of the worm, but the figure could spiral into millions if everyone affected worldwide were to report financial losses caused by the worm.

How the 19-year-old was expected to pay such compensation was not immediately clear.

Jaschan, described by authorities as a "computer freak," was identified as the author after Microsoft offered a reward of $250,000 for information leading to his arrest.

It is believed he began creating programs, including the Netsky virus, to seek out and destroy other viruses.
http://mads.com.com/mac-ad?SP=16&_RG...2/606789_wc.ca





European Parliament Fails to Agree on Computer Patents
Paul Meller

European parliamentarians are expected to reject legislation on Wednesday on the patenting of computer-related inventions, ending a testy four- year debate without resolution.

The main political parties in the European Parliament agreed late Tuesday to abandon the proposal rather than risk an inadequate compromise; they are to vote against the proposal at their plenary meeting on Wednesday in Strasbourg, France.

"It is clear that the proposal is dead," the conservative parliamentarian from Germany, Klaus-Heiner Lehne, said in a telephone interview late Tuesday from Strasbourg.

The proposed directive was originally meant to reconcile existing laws on computer-related patents to make it easier for inventors to register their innovations across Europe. It was seen as a crucial element in Europe's drive to become more competitive.

But during the protracted and sometimes vitriolic debate, the proposal was reshaped twice: first by the Parliament two years ago, when it tried to make it difficult to patent anything related to software; and again earlier this year, when national governments went in the opposite direction, granting much greater scope for patent protection than intended in the European Commission's original draft.

Like the politicians, industry has also been divided over the shape of the draft law, with large patent owners, including Microsoft, Nokia, Royal Philips Electronics and SAP, firmly in favor of the version allowing greater patent protection. Other software companies, among them Red Hat and Sun Microsystems, and the free software movement have warned that such a law would damp innovation, in particular in open-source software.

Thomas Vinje, a partner at the Clifford Chance law firm whose clients include Red Hat and Oracle, said, "The open-source software business model would have been seriously threatened" if the tighter law was adopted. He welcomed the moves to reject the proposed directive. "Big money has lost," he said.

Europe pioneered the concept of open-source software development, and its supporters have argued that the only way for Europe to catch up with the United States in software is by nurturing the open-source movement.

"We are quite pleased with today's debate," said Mark Webbink, Red Hat's senior legal counsel, speaking from Strasbourg. "It may not be the most positive outcome, but it's a close second."

The patent lobby was less enthusiastic. "A rejection would be unfortunate," said Les Hayman, a so-called ambassador at SAP who reports directly to the chief executive, Henning Kagermann.

Francisco Mingorance, a consultant with the Business Software Alliance, a trade group whose members include Microsoft, said, "If the Parliament decides not to have a directive, we'll respect that,"

Conservatives, liberals and socialists in the European Parliament are urging the European Commission to try to secure agreement on a broader patent policy before trying to tackle the thorny area of computer-related patents.

The European Union has been trying for many years to agree on a community patent policy covering all types of inventions, but has failed because some smaller countries insist that patents be translated into all the official languages of the group.
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/07/06/bu.../06patent.html






The End Of Free Innovation
Evert Mouw

When Pythagoras invented a new way to make calculations with triangles, there was not yet an European Patent Organization. Bad luck, because everybody knows that patents stimulate innovation. Pythagoras invested much time in contemplation. Now, anyone could use this new mathemathical method for free. How could others be stimulated to make the same investment for no financial benefit?

As a matter of fact, Pythagoras was very important for the further development of mathematics - exactly because it was free and stimulated others do build on it's foundations. The same applies for software, which consist of ideas and the actual implementation of those ideas in computer language, often called "code". The implemantation, the code, is protected with copyright. That means that you can freely implement and improve any idea, but you have to provide for your own implementation. Otherwise, the effort and investment of others would be hurted. The ideas flow freely, so that the competition on the implementational level may be even harder. One company implements the idea of a word processor in a way that attracts many people, while another company tries to attract students. Competition is good and drives innovation. One can observe this in the open source world, where competition is often heated.

Now enter the world of patents. We start to limit the ideas. If some company, usually a big one, patents an idea, other companies are no longer able to use that idea without a penalty. For example, image a hyperlink. Each time you click on a search result, you use a hyperlink. If that was patented (it nearly was), then such technology would be restricted. Of course, the new European Patent Organization would not patent such existing and widely avaiable technology. Or would it? Not very long ago, the hyperlink was a revolutionary idea. Now it is used everywhere. That is the way innovation in Information Technology works: the revolution of today will be the foundations of tomorrow's innovations. A typical small computer program typically involves thousands of such revolutionary ideas of the past. By restricting these new ideas, and only allow the "inventors" of the ideas to implement it, innovation will be slowed down.

Patents will protect big companies, who have enough staff and many to scare away smaller companies with patent wars. The big companies know thet violate each other's patents, which is unavoidable, but resorts to gentleman's agreements. The smaller companies and the open source movement have no defence againt them because they do not have the means to make such gentleman's agreements. Even governments who like to use open source are likely to suffer, and will become more dependant on big companies.

The open source movement will be forced to hide and seek freedom in encrypted storage, communication, and private networks. Already, completely private information sharing is possible with systems like Freenet. Such systems and tools will be improved and their popularity will grow. Such technologies are very useful for music pirating and other illegal activities. To drive honest open source programmers to private techonogies means to stimulate the development of software which can be used in less legal ways.

The question remains: why software patents? Obviously, the big companies have made up a good story. But software patents don't add much to the already existing copyright restrictions. They limit the widespread implementation of new ideas. They threaten small companies, governments and open source. And pirating will be stimulated.
http://www.osnews.com/story.php?news_id=10942





Are The Movies Dying?
Ty Burr

Let me rephrase that. Are movies the way we have understood them for several generations -- as suspenseful and/or comic and/or soul-altering shadow plays shared by large audiences in theatrical settings -- in their red-star end stage? {bull} Don't dig the grave just yet, but, yes, they probably are. {bull} This is more than standard, cyclical hand- wringing. Movie theaters are enduring their worst slump in two decades: Despite such recent opening-week successes as ''Star Wars: Episode III -- Revenge of the Sith," ''Mr. & Mrs. Smith," and ''Batman Begins," summer box office is down 10 percent from 2004, and the year as a whole is down 7 percent. True, a little movie called ''The Passion of the Christ" skewed last year's figures, but grosses have been dropping for three years now, and, worse, after you adjust for inflation, it becomes clear that attendance is down even further, anywhere from 8 to 10 percent depending on who's talking. {bull} People are simply not going to the multiplex as often as they used to. The question is not only why but whether the trend is reversible or if it's part of a much larger cultural shift in the way we entertain ourselves. Results of an AP-America Online poll released this month strongly supported the latter, with 73 percent of respondents saying they prefer to watch movies at home and only 22 percent saying they would rather go to a theater.

The easiest explanation for the slump is that the movies have gotten lousier, and, indeed, almost half the AP-AOL respondents agreed with that sentiment. It's hard to dispute when you're limping from the combined onslaught of ''House of Wax," ''A Lot Like Love," and ''The Longest Yard." Oddly, Hollywood feels comfortable with this argument since it implies that better movies will fix everything. The studios are certain they can do that, as long as ''better" means bigger and noisier.

Nostalgia aside, though, movies aren't really demonstrably worse than five years ago, or 10, or 20. (This argument stops holding water when you get to 1939.) Spring 2005 also brought us ''Sin City," ''Kung Fu Hustle," and ''Cinderella Man," big-screen experiences that do what they set out to do with skill and creativity. In our selective cultural memory we forget not only the terrible films that came out when we were young but also the endless reels of mediocrity. They weren't all ''Chinatown," Jake. Many of them were ''Freebie and the Bean." Never heard of that one? I rest my case.

Another much-bandied argument is that going to the movies is less pleasurable than it used to be. Now we're getting somewhere. When my wife and daughters and I head to the multiplex to see the latest Pixar or ''Fever Pitch" or what you will, the experience is often about everything but the movie. It's about costly tickets, snacks priced at three times the market rate so the theater owner can cover his ''nut," 20 minutes of aggressively loud commercials and coming attractions, followed by a print unspooling with a big green gouge in it while two morons in the row behind us talk about somebody named Denise. In the early 21st century, that's entertainment, and that's a problem.

Granted, you have to feel for the theater owners; film exhibition is a hard business with a nasty profit margin, and the studios hold most of the cards. Expensive popcorn and commercials can sometimes mean the difference between solvency and a dark screen.

But -- and here's the nub of the dilemma -- why should we put up with it when the home-viewing experience can be as good, if not superior? Why shell out $40 for sticky floors when you can buy the DVD for $20 and watch it on your plasma TV with Dolby 5.1 surround sound? Or punch it up on-demand for $4.95 and pause whenever you need to run to the kitchen? The medium has evolved, as mediums do, in the direction of ease and efficiency. If there's still a reason to go to a movie theater -- call it communal dreaming -- exhibitors are chipping away at it to make their weekly payroll.

Worse, with the gradual shortening of time between the theatrical and home-video ''windows" -- once it was a year before you could rent a copy; now the norm is four months -- there's little incentive to see a movie early. Hollywood doesn't care, since the studios make almost three times as much money from DVDs than from movie theaters; while the box office has been sagging, DVD sales and rentals have increased 676 percent since 2000. In effect, the big-screen version now functions as an ad to raise brand awareness for the home-video release.

You can still get teenagers and college kids into theaters if you promise sensation and star-wattage; for the under-30 crowd, going to the movies remains an accepted social event. A lot less than it used to be, though, because competition is fierce. The multiplex is one diversion out of many, including the Internet (usage up 76 percent in five years) and video games (up 20 percent). Now that TiVo and other digital video recorders have broken the shackles of television's programming grid, it's possible to stay home and catch that episode of ''Gilmore Girls" you missed. Or you could just illegally pirate films off the Net.

As for grown-ups, the film industry has by and large written them off. This may be a smart business move -- most of my peers are too exhausted to do much beyond popping in a Netflix movie and falling asleep 30 minutes later -- but it leaves filmmakers and audiences with depressingly few options. In the Hollywood calendar, there is Academy Award season and there is the rest of the year, with the Oscars continuing to represent the industry's lip service toward quality product. It's worth noting that the major studios no longer bother with straight-up dramas and awards bait, leaving such films to boutique wings that know how to turn a movie out cheaply. Even then, profits are rare.

Yes, there are foreign and smart indie films -- movies that, outside of a Michael Moore-size fluke or random ''Napoleon Dynamite" explosion -- play to a tiny fraction of the moviegoing public. And there are savvy art-house theaters like the Coolidge and the Brattle and the Kendall and the West Newton that cater to a self-selective audience of informed culturati. With luck, such theaters will survive as shrines to an art form and to the best way to see it. Just as jazz started mutating in the 1950s from a commercial sound into music for cerebral iconoclasts, so too do the most creative impulses of American film now play to the converted in small, clublike settings.

By contrast, the larger arena of mass-market movies is on the verge of a profound morph, one whose dimensions we can only guess at. For a hint as to how that might unfold, consider the revolution pop music is currently undergoing -- a radical transformation not of content but of distribution and perception. Albums and their associated tactile pleasures are dead. With the rise of the iPod and legal digital downloading, songs are free once more of the album format and even of the individual artist, the way they were back in the Tin Pan Alley era. Your neighbor's teenage kid takes in music on an iPod Shuffle that functions as both a mobile jukebox and eternal soundtrack for the movie that is his life. My daughters consider liner notes, even photos of the band, distinct curiosities. An immediate, disposable, and startlingly pure relationship between listener and song has achieved primacy, one that trumps even the glory days of the 45 single and ''American Top 40."

Movies will evolve differently, to be sure, if only because we have to sit still to watch them. Also, one person can still make a song, whereas many people are traditionally needed to make a film. That is, unless you're Jonathan Caouette, the creator of last year's critically acclaimed ''Tarnation," who created a ''mix film" of his fractious life using home movies and an Apple computer. Again, technology proceeds in the direction of ease and efficiency, and the digital filmmaking explosion means we'll be seeing a lot more Jonathan Caouettes. Whether you think that's a good thing or not is very much beside the point.

How will ease and efficiency affect watching movies? There's one school of thought that foresees the IMAX-ization of every small-town multiplex. Others believe nothing short of lowering ticket prices and scrapping the commercials will bring audiences back. Still others are sure that the movement from mass audiences to small, fragmented group or even solo viewing is unstoppable.

George Lucas wants to see digital projectors in every movie theater in America, but unless he intends to personally bankroll the conversion, it's not going to happen soon. Which may be a shame; the visual warmth that is arguably lost when you go from analog projection to digital is offset by the potential expansion in content choice. Cheap, high-quality 3-D and live concert feeds are suddenly within an exhibitor's reach, and so is the as-yet-unexplored notion of theatrical movies on demand.

Think about it: Since you can theoretically download any film to a digital projector's server, why not program your own night at the movies, invite your friends, and split the proceeds with the theater owner? Pull your favorite classic out of mothballs, screen that underrated horror film, arrange a weeklong festival the way Amazon puts up user guides.

Or go Jonathan Caouette one better: Take that private epic you shot on digital video and edited on your iMac, and zap it straight to theaters. If the shadow plays of Hollywood aren't filling the seats, maybe our own flickering dreams will do the trick. Something had better, and soon, before a tipping point is reached, theatrical exhibition is suddenly no longer economically viable, and movie houses start blinking out. Entertainment formats and mass mediums can and do go extinct; the big screen could yet go the way of vaudeville, the art form it killed off.

But what could possibly replace it? How would movies make that necessary mass-market splash before fragmenting onto DVD, cable, and on-demand? More critically, what would we do as a society without the shared narrative experience? Since before we started taking notes and calling it history, human beings have felt a yearning to sit in a crowd of ecstatic strangers and be awed by the bigness of stories. DVDs and a $4 bag of M&Ms aren't going to make that need disappear, but they may unfortunately spell the end of the best way to indulge it we've yet invented.
http://www.boston.com/news/globe/liv..._movies_dying/





Hardware Torture Tests

How much "wear-&-tear" can a product take before it gives up the ghost? To find out, we chucked several vital hardware tools around until they broke.
Michael Cahlin

Over the years, my notebooks, digital cameras, music players, and mobile phones have hit the floor more often than a wrestler. I have accidentally lost a digital camera at sea, dry-cleaned an SD Card, and run over a cell phone, all without really trying.

Which raises the question: Just how reliable are the tech products we depend on every day? Can a notebook survive a 6-foot drop? Will your USB memory key still work after taking a spin in a washing machine? Will an iPod sing after it's been dropped in the sand? I set out to get some rough answers to these tough questions. I collected a variety of widely used mobile products – including a notebook computer, a digital camera, a cell phone, a smart phone, an MP3 player, a USB memory key, and an SD media card – and put them through informal, simulated accidents to see how much maltreatment these electronic gadgets could withstand.

I dropped a few onto the floor, spilled liquid on them, and generally banged them around. I even drove my car over a few. None of my tests were entirely scientific, but in some cases I really pushed the limits, subjecting the products to the kind of abuse that could only be expected to destroy them. In most of those cases, I got my wish. Please don't think badly of me – I did it in the name of curiosity (and maybe a little payback for all the times my tech products have failed me).

For the most part, the products I tested were stronger and more durable than they looked. But without exception, each would have fared even better had it been inside some kind of protective case or covering. And while you can't always prevent accidents, you can prepare for them.

If your work takes to you locations with extreme conditions, chances are you'll product that's built to endure hard knocks. We looked at a couple of ruggedized laptops to see how much rough handling they could weather. We found that the notebooks stood up to our abuse amazingly well.

Drowning a notebook

To test a Gateway 3018GZ notebook (sadly not available in the UK) with a 14.1-inch wide-aspect screen, I packed it in a Kensington shoulder bag, and then deliberately banged it against doors and walls. While it was still in the bag, I dropped it off a 6-foot- high bookcase onto a carpeted floor to simulate a drop from an airplane's overhead bin.

I held my breath every time the bagged notebook ricocheted off a wall or crashed to the floor. But the Gateway responded like a cagey fighter trained to withstand damaging body blows and get up off the canvas. It consistently rebooted and recognized my wireless network without fail. Surprisingly, no plastic pieces cracked, though on several occasions the battery became slightly dislodged and the optical drive popped open.

I then removed the notebook from the bag, closed it, and knocked it off my desk onto the carpeted floor. The notebook continued to take the punishment. Again, the battery dislodged and the optical drive opened, but otherwise the system continued to work.

Dropping the Gateway onto a hardwood floor caused severe physical damage. The notebook's screen cracked, and the black plastic moulding above the keyboard popped out. Plastic splinters littered the floor, and the optical drive refused to open. I inserted a paper clip into the hole next to the open/ close button to release the drive, however, and it continued to work. Though scratched, scraped, and pretty banged up, the Gateway could still operate.

Coffee spilled onto the notebook's chassis was the coup de grace. I tipped coffee in my travel-size mug onto the keyboard, causing a slight sizzle, after which the Gateway's blue light winked out like the HAL 9000 computer in 2001. Like a frenzied ER physician, I quickly turned off the machine, removed the battery, drained the liquid, mopped the keys, set the unit aside, and waited – but the patient died on the table. None of my efforts resuscitated the critically wounded laptop.

Though many notebooks have "water-resistant" features such as a protected keyboard, my advice is not to drink anywhere near your hard drive. Or at the very least, use a travel mug or bottle with a closable mouthpiece, and keep it shut.

Camera on concrete

A digital camera has loads of fragile components, so it's prone to damage when it takes a fall. Case in point: The Canon PowerShot A510 digital camera proved to be the most delicate of all the gadgets that I looked at.

I dropped the Canon from my desk onto the carpet – a fall it just about survived. Dropping it onto the hardwood floor popped open the SD Card slot, opened the chassis, knocked out the batteries, and broke the flash. Luckily, all the pieces snapped back in easily, and the camera happily resumed shooting pictures.

A concrete patio proved to be the camera's undoing. I placed the Canon on the edge of a table and tipped it over onto the ground. The camera body opened slightly on the initial crash, but I was able to close it and still operate the camera. Over the course of the second and third drops, the shutter button came off, the rubber terminal cover flap and the SD Card slot both popped open, and the zoom lens became sluggish, requiring hands-on help to literally pull out the lens. Still, the Canon could take pictures (without the flash), and every internal feature I tested worked perfectly.

Drop nine finally killed the camera. The viewfinder lens broke, and the zoom lens no longer worked. The chassis cracked open on the top and then on the left side, though both pieces could be snapped back into place. The camera still turned on and the colour display flashed the blue Canon logo. I could hear the zoom lens' internal mechanism chugging, but then the screen went blank. A mysterious white "E18" appeared in the lower-left corner, and the camera shut off.

To tweak the old adage about lawyers, a digital camera without a protective case has a fool for an owner. Not only does a padded case protect the camera, but often it also has built-in pockets for batteries and memory cards.

Cell phone vs. BMW

More than a basic handset, the pocket-friendly Motorola V220 flip phone includes a colour screen, an integrated camera, a USB 2.0 port, and a speakerphone, and it lets you surf the Web. I severely tested the V220's solid construction, a challenge it passed with flying colours.

I first started beating up the V220 in my car, by placing it on the dashboard and taking sharp turns. It banged against the windshield and doors, and eventually bounced to the floorboard. The barrage of knocks barely marred the sleek silver-and-black casing, and all features continued to work.

Dropping the phone on wet grass also produced no ill effects – a quick wipe, and it was as good as new. Repeated pavement poundings popped the battery on occasion and added several surface nicks, but the V220 remained unfazed.

Finally, I closed the phone and ran over it with my 1987 BMW 325i on my paved driveway. I moved the car s-l-o-w-l-y and then rested its full weight on the V220, three times. I figured that would pretty much demolish the device. The display cracked, leaving a blue and red Rorschach blot, and the back cover burst loose, taking the battery with it.

But surprisingly, the car did not crush the phone, crack the back cover, or destroy – let alone dent – the battery. What's more, I was able to fit all the phone's loose pieces back into place perfectly. Even more amazing, the V220 was still able to receive and place phone calls, though the sound was a little tinny and sometimes crackled. Every feature tied to the shattered display – autodialing, caller ID, address book, Web surfing, text messaging, and camera – was completely inoperable. Nevertheless, the fact that I could still make calls was impressive.

MP3 player gets crunchy

I took a 6GB silver iPod Mini along in my car for a bouncy ride, dropped it on wet grass and dry pavement, knocked it off a desk onto carpeted and hardwood floors, and dropped it in dry sand.

Like a nervous runway model, the iPod Mini looks great but spooks easily. Bouncing inside the car caused a couple of skips. Drops on soft wet grass and carpet had no ill effect, though the pretty player practically begs to be wiped clean.

Dropping it from the car seat to the curb, and off a desk onto a hardwood floor, produced a few nicks and caused songs to skip and the device to shut down repeatedly. Still, all the unit's features continued to work after the abuse, and songs played.

But my Mini did not like the beach. Without the benefit of a protective case or plastic display covering on the unit, sand wedged under the scroll wheel, affecting all controls. I could see the feature settings and highlight them, but the crunching sand somehow prevented the Mini from launching them. The unit turned on, but could not turn off. I had to wait several minutes for the iPod's automatic shutdown feature – which kicks in after a few minutes without play – to take effect.

Although I was able to turn the player back on, the screen was jumpy, and settings could be highlighted but not set. After I blew off the external sand with compressed air and gently shook the unit, the Mini pulled itself together and began to work properly. Unfortunately, I found no easy way to open the case and blow out the sand that remained trapped inside. I could still hear the grains crunching under the wheel and inside the unit. What's more, weeks after the test, the unit is still slow to turn on and off, sometimes requiring that I press the wheel several times before it wakes up or shuts down. Nevertheless, to its credit, all of the iPod Mini's features work.

Mighty memory card

My biggest complaint with portable storage devices like the SanDisk SD 64MB media card is that they're so easy to misplace. The media card's durability, though, is spectacular. I swatted it off a desk onto a hardwood floor, dropped it, stepped on it, and buried it in the sand. I also "forgot" it in a jeans front pocket, where it underwent a two-rinse cycle in the wash and then tumbled in the dryer for an hour on a high "cotton" setting.

The SanDisk memory card aced every torture test. During its dryer spin, the card tumbled out of the pants pocket. I finally found it nestled in a sheet, and after taking it out, it still worked.

Then, I placed the card in the Canon camera where it was repeatedly dropped. It survived every test, data intact. I'll likely lose this card long before it ever loses any data.

Risk assessment

So what I have learned? These products are surprisingly tough, but many have an Achilles' heel – liquid in the case of the notebook, sand for the iPod, and hardwood and concrete floors with the digital camera. While you may get away with a couple of accidental spills and drops, the best way to safeguard your gear is to use a protective case. Some are more cushioned than others, though, so be prepared to shop around to find the perfect one for you. As for me, well, I have even more respect for my tech products. Gone is my need for payback for all the destroyed drives and dropped calls I've endured over the years. Now, if only I could find that memory key's protective rubber cap...
http://www.digitmag.co.uk/features/i...FeatureID=1280





Analysis: What The Ruling Against Grokster Really Means
Scott Fulton

As this morning's 55-page US Supreme Court decision in MGM v. Grokster has now had time to be fully disseminated and analyzed, consensus is taking shape that even peer-to-peer services not named in the lawsuit may find themselves in legal hot water very soon. By vacating a Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruling and remanding the case back to that circuit, legal analysts told Tom's Hardware Guide, the high court may have made fuzzy what was once a clear interpretation of fair use law: specifically, the matter of secondary copyright infringement liability.

As the syllabus of the Court's decision reads, "Despite offsetting considerations, the argument for imposing indirect liability here is powerful, given the number of infringing downloads that occur daily using respondents software [Grokster and Morpheus]. When a widely shared product is used to commit infringement, it may be impossible to enforce rights in the protected work effectively against all direct infringers, so that the only practical alternative is to go against the device's distributor for secondary liability on a theory of contributory or vicarious infringement. One infringes contributorily by intentionally inducing or encouraging direct infringement, and infringes vicariously by profiting from direct infringement while declining to exercise the right to stop or limit it."

In short, states the syllabus, it may be impossible to sue millions of infringing downloaders, so a plaintiff's only alternative may be to argue that the software manufacturer contributed to those millions of alleged infringements by encouraging them, promoting them, or simply by doing nothing to stop them.

In its landmark 1984 ruling in Sony v. Universal Studios--known worldwide simply as "The Betamax Case"--the Supreme Court established the legal principle that the manufacturer of a recording medium (in this case, Sony) could not be held liable for uses that might infringe upon copyright (in this case, television shows produced by Universal) if that medium was not specifically designed for that purpose. The ruling was the basis for Grokster's and Streamcast's defense against MGM. This morning's ruling makes multiple references to the 1984 Sony case. But it appears to define new circumstances in which the classic "Betamax defense" may no longer apply.

"What's scary--and I use that word advisedly--is that we have, by virtue of this ruling, now exchanged the really pretty clear and economic beneficial certainty for innovators and developers of creative devices and software, that we've been living with under the Sony Betamax case for the last 20 years, for a new and clearly fact- intensive and ultimately litigation-intensive set of untried tests," said Adam Eisgrau, Executive Director of P2P United, a peer-to-peer industry trade group. "While the Court clearly feels that the conduct of a technologist, or the people who market a technology, should be relevant to the calculus as to whether they've culpably helped people infringe copyright, that is really going to be a nightmare as a practical matter."

In a twist of irony, Sony--the plaintiff defending its Betamax technology in the 1984 case--is today the parent company of MGM, the plaintiff attacking P2P technology today.

The issue of secondary liability

Secondary liability--the subject of the Betamax case--refers to the responsibility of a media manufacturer for how its media is put to use. Determining the extent of secondary liability, states today's decision, is a matter of establishing the original intent of the manufacturer-- whether its employees intended or even knew that their media could be put to illegal or infringing use. "As anybody who deals with the law [knows], intent is always the squishy thing that people argue about all the time," said legal expert Richard Santalesa, former Executive Editor of NetGuide magazine. Santalesa told us his reading of the decision indicates the high court found extensive evidence that Grokster and Morpheus software were intended to be used for infringement purposes.

But the Court stopped short of finding Grokster and Streamcast, respectively, guilty of infringement, leaving that for the lower court to determine. "I think this puts emphasis on lower courts looking at the intent of the parties putting forth the software and the system," stated Santalesa. "If they don't put in their ads, 'Steal software! Steal music!' and they do try and make some kind of mechanisms to get rid of some copyrighted work, then I don't think they're going to be held liable for infringement based on this case." So while this decision is clearly bad news for Grokster, Santalesa believes, "in terms of the P2P market overall, I don't think this is the death knell at all."

Pamela Jones, a paralegal and editor of Groklaw, believes the high court made some efforts to protect the language in the 1984 Sony case. "While Grokster is squished, [the] Sony [decision] survived," Jones told Tom's Hardware Guide. "And in the big picture, that is most important. I think the justices made a real effort to protect Sony, and that is gratifying."

One of the most telling paragraphs in the decision, as Jones and Santalesa both cited, comes not in the body of the text, but in footnote #12: "Of course, in the absence of other evidence of intent, a court would be unable to find contributory infringement liability merely based on a failure to take affirmative steps to prevent infringement, if the device otherwise was capable of substantial noninfringing uses. Such a holding would tread too close to the Sony safe harbor." Jones told us MGM was attempting to attain an infringement percentage--a sort of line in the sand representing the standard plaintiffs must meet to establish intent--from the high court, which the company ultimately didn't get.

"Every time there is a new technology," Jones added, "you see this kind of pushing and shoving in the courts, and eventually everyone settles down and technology wins." The use of litigation as a tool in the evolution of technology, she added, "can't be stopped, only directed."

Can ads, promotions, and disclaimers reflect a company's intent?

John Barrett, Director of Research at Parks Associates, believes the Court's decision is ambiguous with regard to whether a P2P system proprietor can simply absolve itself from responsibility by posting boilerplate disclaimers. "There's a lot of grey area in my opinion," Barrett told us. "If Grokster comes out tomorrow and has a thousand warnings splashed all over it saying, 'Do not use this music illegally...' does that absolve them, then? Are they no longer liable? Somehow, I don't think that will make anybody happy, and they'll just be back in court arguing over whether or not they're 'encouraging' piracy. It's going to be a mess, that's for sure."

"We're disappointed in the Court's decision in Grokster," stated Jason Schultz, a staff attorney with the Electronic Frontier Foundation, "because we think it had a great opportunity to clarify clear boundaries for what constitutes legal versus illegal technologies. This is particularly important for garage innovators, startups, to know where the lines are drawn, so they know what they can do and what they can't. The Court basically issued a very vague and somewhat schizophrenic ruling about exactly what companies in the digital media space can and can't do." On the one hand, stated Schultz, the Court states that a P2P proprietor cannot encourage infringement; but on the other hand, the decision leaves it to others--perhaps the lower court--to determine what such encouragement entails.

"This rule is not specific to file-sharing technology," remarked Schultz. "It's to any technology. So we're talking about iPods, CD burners, Web servers, TiVo. We're talking about any technology that uses copyrighted content as its sources, because all those people have to be worried about lawsuits like this, not just P2P networks. Apple ran a 'Rip/Mix/Burn' campaign. Was that inducing people to infringe? That could be questioned; you could take them to court under this ruling." Schultz added that he believes 90% of iPod owners currently utilize unlawfully obtained music. Obviously Apple makes money from these users, Schultz claimed, so he asks, could they be sued using the Grokster case as precedent? Could TiVo be sued over the ability of its DVD burner-endowed model to make permanent copies of digital programming, based on how TiVo technology has been promoted and advertised?

"Sure, [plaintiffs] could try and sue these companies based on trying to show that the advertisements were promoting infringement uses," responded Santalesa, "but again, it comes back to the intent element. If those ads are fairly neutral, and aren't inducing copyright infringement, then the burden is really on the plaintiffs to show that the meaning of that ad was to induce infringement." The success rate of such lawsuits, Santalesa believes, is doubtful.

"The Supreme Court sort of hinted today," added Eisgrau, "that what a company names itself could conceivably illuminate what was in its head," referring to Grokster having named itself after Napster, whose original P2P network was taken off-line after the Ninth Circuit ruling against Napster in 2001. The decision states that Grokster apparently targeted Napster's former users with its choice of name, thereby perhaps indicating Grokster's intention to solicit unlicensed file-sharers.

Schultz also cited where the decision refers to Streamcast's having developed promotional material that alluded to copyright infringement, but never actually used it in a campaign. The material was found during the case's discovery phase, as cited in the decision's syllabus. "This has opened up a whole fishing expedition for litigious lawyers who want to go poke around in your e-mails and design documents, looking for a smoking gun document."

The implications for future litigation

"We're getting into shades of subjectivity, stated P2P United's Eisgrau, "that may well stretch the credulity [of courts] and the ability of courts to deal with. For a technology-driven economy, what you want is an environment in which innovators feel safe to innovate, and investors feel safe to invest in innovators. This opinion today, regrettably, is scary because it swapped that universe of relative certainty for a brave and alarming new world in which there is no such assurance and, in fact, quite the contrary, now I think the watchword for inventors has to be, 'Be afraid; be very afraid.'"

"I suspect [litigants] will spend the next five to ten years arguing over what exactly is 'intent,'" said Parks Associates' Barrett. "The issue is, is it enough if you make everybody digitally sign off on some disclaimer that says, 'I'm not going to use it to trade illegal files?'" Will networks have to actively search for and purge illegal files, or filter out files from being disseminated, or only allow certified content to be traded? Barrett asks. "It's going to be a mess, because you've got to start down that road where the P2P guys are obviously going to try to paper over something with some disclaimers and a few splashy warnings, that just get ignored by everybody.

"It's the same thing as when you go to the college library," added Barrett, "[and] you see this little sign by the Xerox machine saying, 'Copyright infringement in this area is a crime, etc., etc.,' and then everybody just copied the books and ignored the sign."

If litigation only increases as a result of this decision, as analysts are predicting, what options are available to defendants? "In the vast majority of cases," answered Eisgrau, "whether they feel they're right or wrong, the prudent answer is probably going to be, settle. And we're never going to know what kind of innovation was lost to the leverage that plaintiffs will be able to generate through the threat of litigation, especially where it's a David-and-Goliath situation. What inventions will never see the light of day because the threat of litigation killed them in your cradle?"

The final question of how future plaintiffs can establish intent to infringe, stated Santalesa, may be up to the Ninth Circuit to decide. "The Ninth Circuit, as a lot of people know, has the dubious distinction of being the most reversed circuit in the country," said Santalesa. A lot will depend on the mixture of judges comprising the review panel, which has recently been indeterminate. "It's really going to be interesting to see how the Ninth Circuit responds," he remarked, "[which] is what the other circuits will take away from this, in terms of, 'How much intent, how much inducement do you need?' There are still a lot of questions left unanswered. This isn't the definitive word on this topic at all."
http://www.tomshardware.com/hardnews...27_193031.html





File-Sharing Lives On. Honest
John Naughton

Once, when pressed for a decision on some issue, the movie mogul Sam Goldwyn famously said: 'I'll give you a definite maybe.' Last Monday, the US Supreme Court, pressed to decide on the question of peer-to-peer (P2P) file-sharing, said something fairly similar.

This is not how it was initially reported, of course. The mainstream media saw it as an open and shut case. 'File- sharing suffers major defeat,' burbled BBC Online. 'The US Supreme Court has ruled that file-sharing companies are to blame for what users do with their software. The unanimous ruling is a victory for recording companies and film studios in what is widely seen as one of the most important copyright cases in years.' Grim-faced corporate lawyers popped up everywhere declaring war on 'pirates' and promising to prosecute anything that moved on the net. The grown-ups were back in charge, at last.

On closer inspection, however, things become distinctly murky. The case had its origins in a legal action brought by movie and record companies against Grokster and StreamCast Networks, both makers of P2P software. Lower courts decided that the companies could not be held liable for what users did with their programs - even though this mainly involved the illicit sharing of copyrighted material. There was much harking back to the landmark 1984 Sony case, which held that the manufacturer of a video cassette recorder could not be held liable if a customer used it to make illicit copies of videotapes.

The Supremes did not accept that this precedent was relevant to the Grokster case. Instead they concluded there was 'substantial evidence' the defendants had profited by promoting copyright infringement. The action now shifts back to a lower court, where the petitioners will doubtless press for substantial damages.

The case kept a lot of people awake at night because there was an important principle at stake. If the Supremes decided that a software company could be held liable for what users did with its products, then this might have a chilling effect on innovation. Who would risk time and energy developing revolutionary software if there was a prospect that, one day, he might be sued by some giant corporation for uses over which he had no control?

The good thing about Monday's ruling is that it stops short of such a draconian verdict. Instead it proposes a test: have the makers or proponents of a technology engaged in active inducement of users to employ it in illicit ways? If yes, then they are liable; if no, they are not. On that test, Grokster and StreamCast were deemed liable. But since their business models seem to have been built around inducing people to adopt their software in the full knowledge that most of the resulting use would be illicit, they presented a relatively straightforward case.

So I expect Grokster and StreamCast to disappear under a hail of punitive damages, much as the original Napster collapsed under a hail of lawsuits. But that will make little impact on the problem that led MGM and Co to go to law in the first place. For one thing, the file-sharing genie is out of the bottle, as the extraordinary statistics produced by a Cambridge company, CacheLogic, have been showing for months. They reveal that file-sharing is currently the dominant generator of data traffic on the net, with volumes ranging between two and 10 times those of web traffic, depending on the time of day. These are staggering numbers, and no amount of legal posturing or threats is likely to reduce them: not even the record industry can afford to prosecute every teenager in the western world.

Secondly, the disappearance of Grokster and StreamCast will simply drive file-sharers to look for more capable P2P programs, such as BitTorrent. And although I am sure that aggressive lawyers will have a go at it, BitTorrent seems to pass the 'active inducement' test set by the Supremes. As Professor Ed Felten of Princeton puts it, BitTorrent 'was originally created to support noninfringing sharing (of concert recordings, with permission). Its creator, Bram Cohen, seems interested only in noninfringing uses, and has said all the right things about infringement.

BitTorrent is nicely engineered, offering novel benefits to infringing and non-infringing users alike. It is available for free, so there is no infringement-based business model. In short, BitTorrent looks like a clear example of the kind of dual-use technology that ought to pass the court's active inducement test.

Thus we have a strangely paradoxical outcome. The movie studios and record companies have apparently won a famous legal victory in their war against file-sharing. But the main consequence of this victory will be to drive file-sharers to use P2P software that is not only much more powerful than anything Grokster and StreamCast could contrive, but also looks immune to legal challenges. If this is victory, can you imagine what defeat would be like?
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/busin...519785,00.html





The Imps of File Sharing May Lose in Court, but They Are Winning in the Marketplace
Tom Zeller Jr.

NOT more than an hour after the Supreme Court ruled last week against a pair of file-sharing software companies, Hilary Rosen, the former head of the Recording Industry Association of America, had this to say on her Web log at The Huffington Post:

"Wow. We won big. Unanimous. That doesn't happen very often," she wrote. "I was right. Winning is a big psychological lift."

And yet, she was not sanguine about the future. "Knowing we were right legally really still isn't the same thing as being right in the real world," she wrote.

Having arrived at the helm of the R.I.A.A. at precisely the moment in 1998 when revolutionary terms like MP3, Napster, and peer-to-peer were entering the popular lexicon, Ms. Rosen steered the recording industry's antipiracy battle tank.

By the time she stepped down in 2003, Napster had been sued into oblivion, its successors, Grokster and StreamCast, appeared similarly fated, and lawsuits against individual file sharers were in the offing.

Despite the music industry's legal victories against file sharing, Ms. Rosen wrote, the strategy has not earned the industry any more control over a marketplace forever changed by digital technology - "no matter how many times it was hoped it would."

Among Internet technorati, her words brought groans of incredulity. "Why didn't she ever say any of this when she was actually in a position to make a difference?" wrote Michael Masnick, president and chief scribe at Techdirt.com, the blog connected to his technology consulting and corporate intelligence firm. "Instead, she walked the industry down deeper into a hole that is becoming increasingly difficult for them to climb out of."

Even the most ardent supporters of Big Entertainment concede that, in the long run, copyright holders are no match for the ability of file-sharing technology to adapt, mutate, evolve and expand. In fairness to Ms. Rosen, it is a stark reality she noted early on.

"As a practical matter going forward," she told Salon.com in early 2000, "lawsuits get a lot of headlines and they raise a lot of passion - I understand that. But ultimately the future of music on the Internet is not going to be about legalities and litigation, it's going to be about how are we bringing music to fans."

Or, perhaps more accurately, it's about how fans are demanding that music be brought to them.

"I have always thought that people were just putting their finger in the dam with litigation and other kinds of enforcement," Ms. Rosen said in a phone call last week.

Indeed, almost from the moment in the late 1980's when researchers at the Fraunhofer Institute in Germany developed an audio compression technology that would become known as MP3, disruption of the music industry's equilibrium became inevitable. In the digital age, the music industry faces two basic choices - either make it too risky to upload and download copyrighted files (or to even create software that allows people to do so), or completely rethink the business.

So far, the industry has relied on the former strategy. But each new court victory arrives years behind the next digital innovation, born in some college dorm where an abiding geekiness is the motivator and earning profits means little. However valid the industry's desire to protect its products, trying to stop file sharing has become a Sisyphean exercise.

Consider the Freenet Project, which involves collective tweaking by participants around the world to develop an anonymous communication and file-sharing software.

The Freenet Web site, freenet.sourceforge.net, suggests that copyright enforcement, which requires monitoring of online communications, is inconsistent with freedom of speech. "It is for this reason that Freenet, a system designed to protect freedom of speech, must prevent enforcement of copyright," the project says.

Last week's Supreme Court decision "will have little or no effect on file sharing," said the project's founder, Ian Clarke, who is based in Edinburgh. American companies hoping to commercialize file sharing might find life more difficult, Mr. Clarke said, but companies based elsewhere, or anonymous software creators uninterested in profit, "will continue to work on new, faster, and more powerful file-sharing applications, for as long as there is a public demand." And in the borderless, largely ungovernable world of the Internet, it's that public demand that ultimately dictates the future.

"It's not feasible to think this will be somehow hammered out as a compromise," said Eric Garland, chief executive of Big Champagne, a company that measures usage on peer-to-peer file-sharing networks. "It is the consumers' increasingly powerful position," he said, that will define the new marketplace.

Along those lines, even the file-sharing company Mashboxx, which announced last week that it had entered a deal with Sony BMG to become "the first P2P authorized by a major label," might prove, at 99 cents per download, just a pit stop on the road to a day when music and film content flows freely over the Internet, as it does now in radio and television broadcasts over the airwaves.

In Mr. Garland's vision, that might mean charging all users a flat media fee, paid through their Internet service providers, which in turn would pay the studios. In return, copyrighted media files would be unleashed for unrestricted swapping, sharing, sampling and saving - which is, after all, what millions of people all over the world are already doing.

The problem, Mr. Garland said, is that even law-abiding citizens now expect to be able to exchange content freely on the Internet. "It really may one day have to become a utility," he said, "like water from a tap."

So where does that leave the entertainment industry's victory in the Supreme Court last week? "While I think it has legal value," Ms. Rosen said, "it will be meaningless."
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/07/04/te...gy/04link.html





From 2003

Web's Lack Of Bell Curve Is Alarming
John Naughton

There are, as is well known, lies, damned lies and statistics. And within statistics there is the bell curve. This is the shape of the frequency distribution one gets when conducting measurements of just about anything in the natural world.

It first came to prominence in the early nineteenth century when Adolph Quetelet, the Belgian Astronomer Royal, collected data on the chest measurements of Scottish soldiers and the heights of French soldiers, and found that when both sets of measurements were plotted they tended to cluster in a symmetrical shape around a mean. Or, less technically, most soldiers were in a height range fairly close to the average.

The bell curve became so ubiquitous in measurements of natural phenomena that it was eventually christened the 'normal distribution', and it has conditioned our thinking about statistical data ever since But there is at least one important sphere where the bell curve doesn't hold - the web. There are hundreds of millions - perhaps more than a billion - websites out there. If the normal distribution applied, then we would expect that most of them would cluster around an average in terms of size and link density. But this is not what is observed: although the web has a huge number of very small sites, the probability of encountering a big site is nevertheless quite high.

Bernardo Huberman, a leading researcher in the area, puts the contrast between the natural and virtual world like this: 'One would find it very surprising to be walking in a city and to find someone measuring two or three times the height of 5ft 10ins [but] it is quite likely to find a site many times larger (in terms of number of pages or links) than the average size.' And there a few sites on the web which are positively gargantuan, both in relative size and density of links.

The same phenomenon has been observed in the linking structure of weblogs. In this world, where everyone is equal - in the sense of being free to publish and link - you might expect the bell curve to hold. But it doesn't. Instead, a relatively small number of blogs attract the lion's share of the links. According to one study, the top two sites accounted for 5 per cent of all in-bound links and the top 12 per cent accounted for more than half of all links.

Mathematicians have a name for this kind of skewed phenomenon - they call it a 'power law' distribution (for the grisly details, see the footnotes link below). And they are discovering that this seems to be an endemic feature of complex networks generally. In other words, whereas normal distributions seem to be endemic in the natural world, power- law distributions are the norm (as it were) in cyberspace. For those of us who are interested in freedom of expression and access to media, this is a troubling discovery. For up to now we have argued that the concentrations of media power and audience share that exist in the real world are the product of capitalist accumulation or inadequate regulatory regimes. But the web and the blogging culture are completely open.

Yet, even in those ideal conditions, we see concentrations of power and audience emerging. Deep waters, eh? And is that curious noise the sound of Rupert Murdoch laughing up his sleeve?
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/busin...972764,00.html





Live Surgical Webcasts Play to Potential Patients
Barnaby J. Feder

MEDICAL advertising tends to involve glowing testimonials from fit-looking former patients, or commercials describing vague health problems that sign off with "Ask your doctor if our drug is right for you." Hospitals broadcast images of state-of-the-art facilities, eminent doctors and attentive nurses.

But slp3d, a small Webcasting specialist in West Hartford, Conn., is demonstrating that there is a small but avid audience for far more realistic and detailed information about medical treatments.

Slp3d began marketing its live Webcasts from hospital operating rooms as an educational tool that would allow top surgeons to lecture far-flung doctors in the same branch of medicine. These days, though, when doctors are appearing on slp3d's Web site, www.OR-live.com, the expectation is that a majority of the audience will be potential patients.

"About 70 percent of the viewers are consumers," said Ross Joel, executive vice president for sales and marketing at slp3d.

The Webcasts last an hour or more. They often feature complex operations like heart valve replacements and organ transplants, and they can showcase new medical devices. Some procedures focus on life-threatening conditions, but viewers have also seen surgeons deal with torn rotator cuffs, degenerated knees, varicose veins and excess folds of skin left after gastric bypass surgery for weight loss.

The patients give their permission to be shown in the Webcasts, which still retain their original educational function in most cases. They often include taped segments that have been prepared in cooperation with accredited medical schools. Specialists can serve as hosts and field questions that have been e-mailed during the procedure.

Doctors who log in can take an online quiz at the end to receive continuing education credits. And anyone who has downloaded RealPlayer, a free video software program, is able to log in and send questions without charge.

Slp3d, originally known as Storyline Productions, now markets its ability to build Internet audiences along with its production skills. By sending listings of future operations to chat rooms and relevant Web sites, slp3d and its clients regularly attract hundreds and in some cases thousands of potential patients and their loved ones to the operations. Even larger numbers have viewed archived Web broadcasts that are available at OR-live.com and other medical sites.

"The ripple effects of Webcasting are pretty broad," said Jill Fazakerly, marketing director for Methodist Healthcare, which puts online four operations a year from Methodist University Hospital in Memphis. The budget - well over $100,000 - is roughly the same that Methodist devotes to a promotional campaign on a Memphis television station on which it broadcasts "health care minutes" three days a week.

Other Slp3d customers include Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston and the Texas Heart Institute at St. Luke's Episcopal Hospital in Houston.

Slp3d charges $35,000 to $40,000 for the Webcasts, which the hospitals are willing to pay if they think doctors will refer patients to them as a result. And consumers thinking about getting treatment may decide they want the doctors on the computer screens to provide it.

Methodist University Hospital said it received 80 inquiries from potential patients after its Webcast showing a device that allows surgeons to repair a spinal disk hernia through a thumbnail-size incision in the lower back.

With Webcasting, of course, there is the risk that the operation may not go as planned. Last September, for example, a broadcast from Italy to cardiologists meeting in Washington showing a new procedure to insert an aortic heart valve in an elderly woman was terminated when problems arose. She died soon afterward. Cardiologists at the meeting, who were aware that the procedure was a last resort for a patient believed to be too frail to survive regular surgery, said they did not view the result as a public relations disaster for the Italian cardiologist or the manufacturer of the new valve.

But consumers, especially those with the medical condition on display, may not be so forgiving. Thus slp3d and the hospitals have been Webcasting procedures that are relatively new but less daring than those seen at medical conferences. Mr. Joel said excessive bleeding in one case and the discovery of a tumor during a diagnostic procedure were the only instances of Webcasts featuring unexpected drama.

Mr. Joel said that slp3d's revenues are growing at about 40 percent and should top $6 million this year. To push sales, slp3d has begun marketing its Webcasts to device makers as well as hospitals. Medtronic's heart valve division, for example, has sponsored five Webcasts.

John Mack, senior director of marketing for the division, said the Webcasts attracted viewers that the company would not have thought to invite to a normal product demonstration, including patients and cardiologists who do not work with the devices themselves but want to know more about them.

In addition to archiving the Webcasts, Medtronic makes CD's of them that it gives to its sales representatives. Its sales personnel in Europe often invite customers to watch the live Webcasts originating in the United States.

"It's a small part of our marketing budget but it's very strategic," Mr. Mack said.
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/07/06/bu...ia/06adco.html