Peer-To-Peer News - The Week In Review - October 17th, '09

[JackSpratts]

Since 2002


































"This is a code red cloud disaster." – Eric Zeman


"Possibly the media pirate's perfect movie and music streamer." – Norman Chan


"If it's helping you, or not hurting you, spending money on [piracy] enforcement is an unnecessary cost." – Brian O'Leary


"The state is going to get unlimited power to monitor citizens' data traffic." – Peter Rådberg


"I’m good with you pirating my book!" – Peter Cooper



































October 17th, 2009




In Norway, Group Takes The Pirate Bay to Court
Jeremy Kirk

A trial began in Norway on Monday in which the entertainment industry wants a major service provider to block access to The Pirate Bay, a BitTorrent search engine.

Norwegian operator Telenor refused to block access to the site in June after it received a petition for a temporary injunction from a group of copyright holders, including the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry.

Telenor maintains it will preserve access to The Pirate Bay barring a court order. Under Norwegian law, a service provider is not responsible for illegal activities enabled by providing Internet access, Telenor contends. The trial, in the district court for Asker and Bærum, is expected to last five days, according to a court official.

The Pirate Bay is a search engine and tracker for torrents, which are small files that enable the download of data from multiple sources on a peer-to-peer file-sharing system. The content is not stored by The Pirate Bay but instead on individual users' PCs around the world.

After legal trouble in its home country of Sweden, The Pirate Bay's operators have now distributed the servers that run the site around the world, although ISPs are easily able to block access to the domain.

The Pirate Bay -- one of the most popular BitTorrent sites -- has been a frequent target for the entertainment industry, with lawsuits filed other countries such as Italy, Denmark and the Netherlands.

In Denmark, some operators block The Pirate Bay while others don't, while in Italy efforts to block the site failed. A Netherlands court recently fined three men associated with The Pirate Bay for failing to block access to the site, but the case is on appeal.

(Mikael Ricknäs in Stockholm contributed to this report)
http://www.pcworld.com/article/17346..._to_court.html





Pirate Bay Takes Bias Claims to Supreme Court
Ernesto

Two of the main judges appointed to the upcoming Pirate Bay appeal have been accused of a conflict of interest, since they have both been members of pro-copyright groups. The appeal court decided that the judges are not biased, but the defense has announced that it will take the case to the Supreme Court, which is likely to delay the trial.

On April 17th all four defendants in the Pirate Bay trial were found guilty and sentenced to one year in prison and a fine of $905,000 each. Despite this verdict The Pirate Bay continued to operate while the defense filed for an appeal.

The appeal is scheduled to start in November and will be handled by three judges. As with the initial trial, controversy surrounds the appointment of the judges in question. According to defense lawyer Per E Samuelsson, two of them could be susceptible to bias.

One of the judges, Ulrika Ihrfelt, has been a member of the Swedish Copyright Association (SFU). The second controversial judge, Christina Boutz, is a member of the Swedish Association for the Protection of Industrial Property (SFIR).

A few weeks ago Samuelsson submitted his complaints to the Court of Appeal, but failed to get the desired result. The Court ruled that the connections of the two judges to the various pro-copyright groups will not influence their judgment.

Samuelsson did not agree with the verdict of the Appeal Court and announced that he will take the bias question to the Supreme Court, and possible delay the appeal schedule.

“There is obviously a possibility that the Supreme Court says no quickly, but it would be strange,” Samuelsson commented, adding that it will probably mean that the current trial planning will be delayed.

The defense team had previously requested the trial to be postponed because of personal reasons, but this request was denied last week. Now, with the question of bias being tested by the Supreme Court, they may get what they want after all.
http://torrentfreak.com/pirate-bay-t...-court-091016/





Swedes Deny Owning File-Sharing Site Pirate Bay in Dutch Court
AP

Lawyers for three Swedish men denied in Dutch civil court Thursday that the men are the owners of The Pirate Bay Web site.

The site, one of the largest on the Web, provides an index to BitTorrent files, which are commonly used for trading movies, music and computer games.

The three men were protesting an earlier decision by the court to fine them 30,000 euros ($42,000) a day for failing to block all traffic between the Web site and the Netherlands.

Lawyer Ernst-Jan Louwers said that one of the men, Peter Sunde, had never owned the site. He said the two others, Frederik Neij and Gottfrid Warg, had once owned it but sold it in 2006. However, under questioning from Judge Wil Tonkens, he conceded he could not say to whom they had sold it or produce any evidence of the sale.

In April, a Swedish court found the three men and another Swedish national connected with the site had helped millions of people download copyright-protected material. They were given one-year prison terms and ordered to pay a fine of 30 million kronor ($3.9 million) — a decision under appeal.

Stichting Brein, which represents copyright holders, said those arguments were not credible.

"Playtime is over," said lawyer Joris van Manen. "It's time to stop this."

Separately, Stichting Brein sought a summary judgment against Seychelles-registered company Reservella, the Pirate Bay's registered owner, also seeking to halt traffic between the site and the Netherlands. But no one for Reservella showed up in court.

A ruling in both cases is due in two weeks
http://www.siliconvalley.com/news/ci...nclick_check=1





Opinion: P2P Law Would do Nothing but Make Congress Feel Good
Ira Winkler

In response to some incidents in which peer-to-peer (P2P) file sharing caused sensitive information to show up on computers that it shouldn't be on, Congress reasonably decided to hold hearings in anticipation of actions it might take that would prevent future compromises. Unfortunately, one of the actions that Congress has taken is to consider passage of the most useless law imaginable.

One positive result of the hearings was the call by the chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee for a ban on the use P2P software on all government and contractor computers and networks. That would be useful, and enforceable, legislation. But apparently Rep. Mary Bono Mack wanted to show voters that she is protecting their interests as well. She demonstrated this concern by introducing the laughably pointless Informed P2P User Act (HR 1319).

At first glance, the law seems logical. It requires vendors of P2P software to clearly explain to users whether and how their files will be shared, to clearly inform them about which files are being made available for searching and sharing, and to give users the opportunity to explicitly agree to any file sharing.

But how will this play out in reality? Vendors will incorporate new language to satisfy most of the law in the boilerplate of their user agreements. I don't think I'm making a controversial statement if I say that the vast majority of users do not bother to read software licensing terms before clicking "I agree" and getting on with the installation. I assume that readers of this column are more computer savvy than the general population, but how often do you thoroughly review terms of service and default settings on new software settings?

OK, so the general principles of file sharing are likely to be glossed over by most users. But they still will have the opportunity to confirm which of their files they will allow to be shared. Once again, though, things look different when theory meets reality. Very few users are likely to go through all of their files and specify which ones they want shared. They are more likely to just agree to "All" when presented with an option.

But aren't I being too harsh? Wouldn't this law give users the chance to say whether their files will be shared at all, and isn't that something worth legislating? Well, yes, it would do that. But there is no need for it. A lot of people who install P2P software do so in order to get data from other people and have no interest in making their own data available. They are able to do this now, without Mack Bono's law, because every P2P software package I have ever seen makes it abundantly clear how to do this.

In short, there is nothing in the law that actually makes P2P file sharing more secure. If anything, it would expose people to more liability because they would be agreeing to terms that acknowledge the sharing of files. For example, if music files are unknowingly in the shared directories, the MPAA can now claim that the sharing was purposeful. If there was any intellectual property or secret data in the directories, any thefts of the data from any source will no longer be crimes, because the data is available to the general public. Likewise, people and companies can sue each other for intentional breaches, because they theoretically acknowledged the sharing of the data.

Two ongoing cases demonstrate that people don't review terms of service and similar information, even when it really matters. In one case, software designed to protect children by monitoring their online activity actually collects data that is then sold to marketers. The Sentry and FamilySafe software sold by EchoMatrix Inc. feed data into the company's data mining service. While EchoMatrix hides the data collection to a certain extent, parents who research the tool adequately can uncover it.

Similarly, McAfee and Symantec embed very troubling automatic renewal terms into their terms of service when you purchase or renew the software online. Although the state of New York has fined the companies for unfair business practices, the terms still exist and people continue to be ignorant of them, simply because they choose not to read terms of service.

Given a record that suggests that users do not pay attention to the information available in licensing agreements, why does Bono Mack believe that her proposed law would improve the security of P2P file sharing?

This law will probably be passed. Passage is likely to make members of Congress feel that they demonstrated that they understand the Internet and are helping to protect it. The reality is that they have once again shown their ignorance and wasted a great deal of time and effort. In the greatest irony, Bono Mack is not only not protecting the average citizen, but also solidifying their legal liability for any loss.
http://www.computerworld.com/s/artic... ?taxonomyId=





Spanish Govt Moves On P2P
Howell Llewellyn

The Spanish government appears at last ready to act against unauthorized P2P file-sharing - although there is no big hurry.

In a brief note, the Council of Ministers said it had agreed to set up an inter-ministerial working commission "to advise on the fight against the violation of intellectual property rights through Internet pages, with the aim of dedicating as a priority the study of said violations."

The note adds that the study will be focussed on analyzing existing legislation, as well as activities that will "improve legal action in the civil and penal areas."

The Commission's conclusions must be presented before Dec. 31, a day before Spain assumes the six-month presidency of the European Union. During that time, telecommunications ministers or secretaries of state from 27 European countries will meet in Madrid in May, when digital downloading and P2P file-sharing are expected to be among subjects discussed.

The government news coincides with the Oct. 14 release of the 2nd Digital Content Report by the Multi-Sector Association of Information Technology, Communication and Electronic Companies (Asimelec).

"The legal insecurity with regards to intellectual property protection is a basic factor that could delay, or even prevent, the takeoff of this [digital] industry", says Asimelec president Martín Pérez.

The report shows that €2.5 billion ($3.7 billion) was spent on "sectors with business models linked to the online distribution of the most developed digital contents." The Spanish "media and entertainment business" grew 12.1% in 2008 to €27.2 billion ($40.7 billion), says Asimelec, making it Europe's fifth biggest market behind the United Kingdom, Germany, France and Italy.

Asimelec's 2008 figures show that an 8.1% growth in digital music distribution did not compensate for a 12.4% drop in turnover of physical sales. The report covers music, video, videogames, television, social networks, advertising, the press and books.
http://www.billboard.biz/bbbiz/conte...b66a876e75e32e





Labour MP: Disconnecting File-Sharers is Futile
enigmax

With the support of at least 18 other politicians, UK Labour Party MP Tom Watson has tabled an Early Day Motion in which he questions government proposals to disconnect or throttle alleged file-sharers. Calling the measures “futile,” Watson says those accused should have the right to legal redress in a court of law.

Tom Watson is a Labour Party politician for West Bromwich East in the United Kingdom. Famous for becoming the first MP to start his own blog, Watson was a Parliamentary Secretary at the Cabinet Office until his resignation in June this year.

During his time in the Cabinet Office, Watson says he spent 18 months “immersed in conversation with the UK’s digital pioneers” and is convinced that the country’s economic future depends on “developing a set of economic and regulatory arrangements (which includes copyright, the legislative mechanism at the heart of the filesharing debate) to hothouse our digital natives”.

Watson has been most vocal in his opposition to the proposals by the government to throttle, disconnect or otherwise interfere with the Internet connections of alleged file-sharers. “Not only do the sanctions ultimately risk criminalising a large proportion of UK citizens,” he said, “they also attach an unbearable regulatory burden on an emerging technology that has the power to transform society, with no guarantees at the end that our artists and our culture will get any richer.”

Taking his opposition to these proposals to the next level, Watson has now tabled an Early Day Motion (EDM) on the issue. An EDM is a device used by Members of Parliament to demonstrate the level of support among other MPs for a particular point of view. Although EDMs tend not to achieve results directly, they can attract the attention of the press, which fosters further debate and discussion.

Tom Watson – EDM 1997 – ILLICIT FILE SHARING – 12.10.2009

That this House notes with concern the Government’s proposals on file sharing which would allow rights holders to request internet service providers to disconnect for a period of time, or throttle, the internet connection of people who may be accused of copyright infringement via peer to peer networks; believes that disconnecting alleged offenders will be futile given that it is relatively easy for determined file-sharers to mask their identity or their activity to avoid detection; acknowledges that illicit file-sharing only costs rights-holders money when people download infringing content in preference to buying it; further notes that identifying offenders using the Internet Protocol address of a specific machine may punish those who share a web connection; and calls on the Government to ensure that any citizen accused of illicit file-sharing is given the right to legal redress in a court of law before sanctions are imposed.

At the time of writing this EDM tabled by Tom Watson has the support of 18 other MPs, and not solely from his own Labour Party either. Support is coming in from across the political spectrum, from Labour through to their opposition in the Conservative Party, Liberal Democrats, Social Democratic and Labour Party and Plaid Cymru.
http://torrentfreak.com/labour-mp-ca...futile-091014/





Meet the 42 Lucky People Who Got to See the Secret Copyright Treaty

The Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement is a proposed copyright treaty that contains provisions that criminalize non-commercial file-sharing; require net-wide wiretapping for copyright infringement and border-searches of hard-drives and other devices; and disconnection from the Internet for people accused of violating copyright. The actual text of these provisions is a secret, though, as the treaty is being negotiated away from the UN, behind closed doors; the Obama administration denied a Freedom of Information Act request for it on the grounds that it is a matter of "national security."

The NGO Knowledge Ecology International pressed the US Trade Rep on this, and received a reply stating that 42 DC insiders -- including some reps from activist groups -- have been shown the treaty, after signing a vow promising to treat it as classified. KEI has researched the 42 people and their bios and corporate affiliations. Sherwin Siy of Public Knowledge describes his experiences with the secret treaty:

Our first exposure to any text was on fairly short notice. We were allowed to view a draft of one proposed section as we sat in a room at USTR with some of its negotiators and counsel. We were not allowed to take any copies of the text with us when we left the meeting about an hour later.We were urged to keep any notes we took secure, and not to discuss the substance of what we saw unless USTR confirmed that the other party had also seen the text. The meeting proceeded with USTR discussing each point of the text in turn as we viewed it for the first time and compared the text to existing statutes, trade agreements, and treaties.

We were invited to set up additional meetings or call USTR to confirm our recollections if we wanted to verify what we remembered from the meeting, as we were not allowed to photograph, scan, or (presumably) transcribe the documents. We were told that some edits might be made in the near future to account for various concerns.

A meeting a few weeks later convened a range of people who had been cleared to see the text, and functioned as a roundtable, at this meeting, a slightly altered version was shown, which in some areas was slightly better, in some slightly worse, but without some of the most troubling aspects resolved.

http://www.boingboing.net/2009/10/13...-lucky-pe.html





The Copyright Lobby's Secret Pressure On the Anti-Spam Bill
Michael Geist

As I posted earlier today, the Electronic Commerce Protection Act comes to a conclusion in committee on Monday as MPs conduct their "clause by clause" review. While I have previously written about the lobbying pressure to water down the legislation (aided and abetted by the Liberal and Bloc MPs on the committee) and the CMA's recent effort to create a huge loophole, I have not focused on a key source of the pressure. Incredibly, it has been the copyright lobby - particularly the software and music industries - that has been engaged in a full court press to make significant changes to the bill.

The copyright lobby's interest in the bill has been simmering since its introduction, with lobbyists attending the committee hearings and working with Liberal and Bloc MPs to secure changes. The two core concerns arise from fears that the bill could prevent surreptitious use of DRM and block enforcement initiatives that might involve accessing users' personal computers without their permission.

The DRM concern arises from a requirement in the bill to obtain consent before installing software programs on users' computers. This anti-spyware provision applies broadly, setting an appropriate standard of protection for computer users. Yet the copyright lobby fears it could inhibit installation of DRM-type software without full knowledge and consent. Sources say that the Liberals have introduced a motion that would take these practices outside of the bill. In its place, they would define computer program as, among other things, "a program that has as its primary function...inducing a user to install software by intentionally misrepresenting that installing that software is necessary to safeguard security or privacy or to open or play content of a computer program." This sets such a high bar - primary function, intentional mispresentation - that music and software industry can plausibly argue that surreptitious DRM installations fall outside of C-27.

Even more troubling are proposed changes that would allow copyright owners to secretly access information on users' computers.

PIPEDA currently features a series of exceptions to the standard requirements for obtaining consent for the collection of personal information (found in Section 7). Bill C-27 includes a provision that bars those exceptions in cases involving computer harvesting of email addresses and the "collection of personal information through any means of telecommunication, if the collection is made by accessing a computer system or causing a computer system to be accessed without authorization." In other words, email harvesting and spyware would not be permitted and would not qualify for the PIPEDA exceptions found in Section 7.

The copyright lobby is deeply concerned that this change will block attempts to track possible infringement through electronic means. The Section 7(1)(b) exception in PIPEDA currently states that collecting personal information without consent or knowledge of the individual is permitted if it is reasonable to expect that the collection "would compromise the availability or accuracy of the information" and the collection is "related to investigating a breach of an agreement or a contravention of the laws of Canada."

One can well imagine how this exception could be used for investigations targeting the violation of a user agreement or alleged copyright infringement. With the changes in C-27, the exception would no longer apply to harvesting email addresses or to accessing personal information on computers without authorization. For the copyright lobby, this would block investigations that involve capturing user information on computers without knowledge or consent. In response, sources advise that the Liberals have tabled a motion that would exclude Section 7(1)(b) from C-27 - effectively restoring the exception in these circumstances.

On top of these provisions, sources say the Liberals have also tabled motions to extend the exemptions for telecom providers. The bill currently includes an exemption for telecom providers where they act as intermediaries in the transmission of a spam message (Section 6(6) of the bill). This obviously makes sense as telecom providers should not be treated as the message sender when they are merely the messenger. Yet there is a proposed motion that would also create an exception for telecom providers to the requirement to obtain express consent before users install programs on their computers. It states that the section does not apply to telecom providers providing a telecom service, which is defined to include:

"providing computer security, user account management, routing and transmission of messages, diagnostics, technical support, repair, network management, network maintenance, authorized updates of software or system firmware, authorized remote system management, and detection or prevention of the unauthorized, fraudulent or illegal use of a network, service, or computer software, including scanning for and removing computer programs"

These proposed changes are simply outrageous and it is disappointing that the Liberals have brought forward motions on behalf of the lobby in this manner. With the hearing on Monday, it is critical for Canadians to speak out - yet again - to ensure that C-27 does not leave the door open to private surreptitious surveillance. Write to Industry Minister Tony Clement, your MP, or the members of the Industry Committee today asking them to reject these changes.
http://www.michaelgeist.ca/content/view/4464/125/





BSA: 41% of Software on Personal Computers is Pirated

Individuals are turning to P2P networks and auction sites in staggering numbers to acquire or transfer illegal software and in doing so are harming the economy whilst exposing themselves to malware, identity theft and criminal prosecution, according to a report from the Business Software Alliance.

The report, entitled Software Piracy on the Internet: A Threat To Your Security, offers a peek into the scale and impact of online software piracy, including a retrospective look at the past year’s notable enforcement actions.

In particular, this year’s report zeros in on P2P networks and auction sites, both of which are a hotbed for the transfer of illegal software. As a longtime leader in the fight against software piracy, BSA monitors peer-to-peer networks and auction sites, issuing “takedown requests” when it finds suspicious software being offered. In the first half of 2009, BSA stepped up its efforts in this area and issued almost 2.4 million takedown notices related to P2P and BitTorrent file sharing, an increase of more than 200 percent over the same period in 2008.

Likewise, in the first half of 2009, BSA more than doubled its impact with its in-house Internet “crawler” requesting the removal of almost 103,000 torrent files from nine of the largest BitTorrent hosting sites worldwide. These torrent files were being used by nearly 2.9 million individuals to download software with a retail value of more than $974 million.

“Peer-to-Peer networks are ideal for distribution of a wide variety of materials that can be legally shared with large groups and are a tool used by more businesses to enhance productivity. Unfortunately, P2P technology is also a favorite channel for software pirates who see it as the perfect channel through which to distribute illegal and potentially dangerous software. One of the great disappointments of this technology, for all of its benefits, is that it is now too often seen as the domain only for pirates and malcontents who place no value on the work of software developers and designers,” commented Jenny Blank, Senior Director of Legal Affairs for the BSA.

With respect to illegal auctions, BSA issued around 19,000 takedown requests in the first half of 2009, a 4% increase on the same period a year earlier. The centerpiece of BSA’s efforts is the Online Auction Tracking System (OATS), a proprietary tool that monitors auction sites and BitTorrent networks on a continuous basis.

Beyond P2P and auction site piracy, the report also draws correlations between Internet piracy and the spread of malware such as viruses, trojans and spyware, which often exploit vulnerabilities in illegal software that does not benefit from security updates provided by manufacturers. Although the correlation is not universal, geographies with high instances of software piracy suffer from high instances of malware.

“Software piracy is a threat on multiple fronts. Pirated software can be a breeding ground for malware and can also open users up to crimes such as identity theft. Those who decide to acquire illegal software harm the economy and companies of all sizes. Moreover, those who engage in piracy open themselves up to civil and criminal prosecution” said Blank of BSA.

Among the notable cases highlighted in this year’s report is that of Tommy Rushing, recently sentenced to three years in federal prison for copyright infringement linked to four for-profit Web sites that offered pirated copies of Adobe and Macromedia software. Likewise, Timothy Dunaway was sentenced to 41 months in prison for selling counterfeit computer software through 40 different Web sites.

Outside of the US, a District Court in Taiwan sentenced two individuals to six months’ imprisonment for illegal duplication of software, while Hungarian authorities raided the country’s largest illegal software distribution company and seized approximately 250 terabytes of illegal content stored on 43 computer servers. The largest case in the world was in China, where the government shut down and convicted the leaders of tomatolei.com, a Web site offering free downloads of massive quantities of illegal software originally published by Adobe, Autodesk, Microsoft, and Symantec.

Alongside enforcement, this year’s Internet Piracy Report also highlights how BSA works proactively to educate users about the dangers of online piracy. Pirated products often fail to function properly, or worse still, they are capable of infecting users’ PCs with malware that has the potential to cause serious damage.
http://www.net-security.org/secworld.php?id=8325





Device Would Zap Pirate Camcorders

Near-infrared LEDs set up behind theater screens
Mark Schilling

While increased vigilance and harsher penalties have yet to put a major dent in film piracy, a little bit of high-tech know-how just may do the trick.

Isao Echizen of the National Institute of Informatics, in cooperation with Sharp, a leading Japanese electronics maker, has devised a technology for foiling camcorder pirates at the theater, NII has announced.

Special near-infrared LEDs are set up behind the movie screen and turned on while a film is playing, beaming light through tiny holes in the screen. Pirates who record the pic with camcorders or other devices end up with an image spattered with red and green blotches. Viewers in the theater see nothing, since the light emitted by the LEDs is not in the range of the human visual spectrum.

Sharp aims to commercialize the technology within two or three years.

The Motion Picture Producers Assn. of Japan, or Eiren, estimates that pirates have trimmed 10%, or $220 million, off the $2.2 billion annual local B.O., while taking a similarly large chunk from the DVD biz. And pirates have been steadily improving the quality of their images with better equipment.

Eiren-affiliated theaters now run spots before every screening warning camcorder pirates of possible fines and prison sentences, but results have not yet lived up to expectations.

But there's no doubt blotchy copies would be tough to sell.
http://www.variety.com/article/VR1118009774.html





Judge Refuses to Punish Lawyer for Anti-RIAA Blogging
David Kravets

An attorney defending against a music-piracy lawsuit didn’t cross ethical bounds by filing motions broadly attacking the recording industry and posting them on his blog, a magistrate judge has ruled, rejecting demands from the RIAA for monetary sanctions.
Attorney Ray Beckerman was “less than forthcoming at times” in defending a client against an RIAA lawsuit, but the music industry’s concerns were “largely overstated,” New York Magistrate Judge Robert M. Levy wrote Friday.

“Although defendant’s counsel took an unusually aggressive stance and, at times, veered into hyperbole and gratuitous attacks on the recording industry as a whole, I do not find clear evidence of bad faith on counsel’s part,”

Levy also ruled that the RIAA, which has sued 30,000 individuals, was not a vexatious litigant, shooting down Beckerman’s counter-complaint against his courtroom opponents. “Plaintiffs have doggedly pursued their copyright infringement claim, but I find no evidence of undue vexatiousness or ill motive on their part,” Levy wrote.

The opinion is not binding on the federal judge who presided over the RIAA’s case against Marie Lindor, Beckerman’s client who was accused of making copyrighted music available on the Kazaa file sharing program. After five depositions and three years of legal maneuvering, the RIAA has dropped the case against the woman whom Beckerman said has “never turned on a computer.”

The RIAA claimed evidence tampering thwarted its case.

“I’m gratified that the motion was denied. It was based on gross misstatements of fact. I would have preferred for the judge’s language to be stronger. But the result is the same,” Beckerman said during a brief telephone interview.

Beckerman, a New York attorney, runs the Recording Industry vs The People blog, which takes every opportunity to criticize the music industry’s litigation arm.

The RIAA, in seeking sanctions, said Beckerman “has maintained an anti-recording industry blog during the course of this case and has consistently posted virtually every one of his baseless motions on his blog seeking to bolster his public relations campaign and embarrass plaintiffs,” the RIAA wrote in court briefs. “Such vexatious conduct demeans the integrity of these judicial proceedings and warrants this imposition of sanctions.”

The RIAA claimed that Lindor, her family and Beckerman “intentionally provided false information, attempted to misdirect plaintiffs as to relevant facts and events, and concealed critical information and evidence regarding the infringement at issue.”
http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/200...tious-charges/





What's Replacing P2P, BitTorrent as Pirate Hangouts?

RapidShare, others provide 'essentially your own private FTP server'
Eric Lai

Driven by increased crackdowns on BitTorrent sites such as The Pirate Bay, software pirates are fast-moving their warez to file-hosting Web sites.

Sites such as RapidShare, Megaupload, and Hotfile let anonymous users upload large files such as cracked software for free.

Hyperlinks to the software can then be distributed by pirates via Web sites, instant messages, or social media sites such as Twitter, said Vic DeMarines, vice-president of products at anti-piracy software vendor V.I. Labs.

"It's incredibly easy to use. And what you get is essentially your own private FTP server," DeMarines said.

While sites such as RapidShare allow free downloads, they make their money by charging heavy downloaders for premium memberships. These memberships, such as the 30-day premium access for $6.99 Euros at Rapidshare, let users download files immediately and without any caps on bandwidth.

Trade in pirated digital goods, whether it is movies, music or e-books or software, is what drives the popularity and business model of firms like RapidShare. The site told The New York Times earlier this year that it hosted 10 petabytes of data and up to 3 million downloaders at a time.

The Association of American Publishers estimates that half of the pirated books found by its members were linked to Rapidshare.

"There's a lot of money being made," said DeMarines. "Without hosting pirated goods, I'm not sure what their revenue model would be."

According to a recent investigation by V.I. Labs into the availability of pirated software from a sample of 43 vendors, 100% were on RapidShare.

A spokeswoman for Cham, Switzerland-based Rapidshare declined to comment on the V.I. Labs report, saying she would need more information.

The site is already among the top twenty most popular in the world, according to Alexa. Uploads and downloads to Rapidshare account for 5% of all Internet traffic globally, says German networking vendor Ipoque.

Though Rapidshare has faced lawsuits related to piracy, DeMarines says it and other file-hosting sites are tricky to prosecute legally becuase uploaders are not required to register or identify themselves. Also, Rapidshare tries to distance itself from any knowledge of the pirated goods by not filtering or monitoring the content on its servers.

"For us, everything is just a file, no matter what," a spokeswoman told The Times in March. DeMarines said Rapidshare does comply with the Safe Harbor Provisions of the U.S.' Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) by quickly taking down pirated files when notified by the copyright holders.

The company even grants certain organizations direct access into their service, so that they can go ahead and delete the hyperlinks and pirated files themselves, DeMarines said.

Peer-to-peer networking (P2P) does still remain the largest channel for distributing pirated software, movies and other digital content. Ipoque said it enables between 43% to 70% of piracy, depending on the region of the world.

The most popular network remains BitTorrent, which is used by six out of 10 P2P users, V.I. Labs said.

eDonkey is a distant second, with 20% share, despite hosting almost 900,000 users and 77 million files at any given time. Once-popular Gnutella is ranked third, with a market-share in the single digits.

But file-hosting is growing much faster, Ipoque said, already enabling between 15% to 35% of digital piracy, depending on the region of the world.

DeMarines said he expects file-hosting sites to eventually supplant P2P. "P2P is on its way down. They're too visible, and so the copyright organizations are going to take these BitTorrent tracker sites out," he said.

Other long-running methods for distributing warez are either stagnant or shrinking. Usenet newsgroups, for instance, have lost popularity due to the large amount of pornography and malware mingled in with the warez, DeMarines said.

Internet Relay Chat (IRC) is "not favored" as a way to transmit files, though announcements and links on IRC to warez hosted on file-hosting sites is growing, DeMarines said.
http://www.computerworld.com/s/artic...rate_hangouts_





Adobe Exploit Puts Backdoor on Computers
Ivica Miskovic

A new zero-day exploit targeting Adobe Reader, as well as 9.1.3 and earlier versions of Adobe Systems' Acrobat, drops a backdoor onto computers using JavaScript, Trend Micro researchers warned on Friday.

Trend Micro identified the exploit as a Trojan horse dubbed "Troj_Pidief.Uo" in a blog post. It arrives as a PDF file containing JavaScript-based malware, "Js_Agent.Dt," and then drops a backdoor called "Bkdr_Protux.Bd."

The exploit affects Microsoft Windows 98, ME, NT, 2000, XP, and Server 2003, according to Trend Micro.

The blog post provides technical details on how the malware works, specifically the activity of its shell code, the piece of code that delivers the payload. The JavaScript is used to execute arbitrary codes in a technique known as "heap spraying."

"Based on our findings, the shell code (that was heap-sprayed) jumps to another shell code inside the PDF file" before extracting and executing the backdoor, Trend Micro said. The backdoor "is also embedded in the PDF file and not the usual file downloaded from the Web."

Variants of the Protux backdoor typically provide an attacker unrestricted user-level access to a compromised machine and previously exploited vulnerabilities in Microsoft Office files, according to Trend Micro.

Adobe announced on Thursday that it would release an update to fix the hole on Tuesday, the same day as Microsoft's Patch Tuesday.
http://www.aroundglobe.net/2009/10/a...ckdoor-on.html





Court Overturns Ruling in Audio Book Piracy Case
David Landes

Swedish broadband provider ePhone is not obligated to hand over customer information to five book publishers, according to a decision by the Svea Court of Appeal which overturns a lower court ruling.

The case, which ePhone initially lost in June in Solna District Court, is significant because it is the first to go to trial since the passage of a law designed to crack down on internet piracy in Sweden.

The law, which is based on the EU’s Intellectual Property Rights Enforcement Directive (IPRED), came into force on April 1st and says that internet providers can be forced by a court order to provide data about customers targeted in copyright infringement investigations.

“After all that’s been written that we should have released the information, it actually feels really nice that the court has ended up agreeing with what we’ve said the whole time: that the evidence wasn't good enough. I think it’s just great,” said ePhone CEO Bo Wigstrand to the TT news agency following the ruling.

ePhone argued that the five audio book publishers who filed the lawsuit had not been able to prove that anyone other than users from Sweden’s Anti-Piracy Bureau (Antipiratbyrån) had accessed a server containing sound files for 27 titles which the publishers claimed had been made available for downloading by the general public.

The appeals court agreed with ePhone, finding that the book publishers failed to show that there was probable cause to believe copyright infringement had occurred.

In overturning the lower court’s ruling, the Svea Court of Appeal argued that the copyright protected material on the server, which was linked to an ePhone customer, had not been made available to the public or even to a select group of people.

Since users were required to log into the server and there had been no investigation to indicate that login information had been widely shared, the court concluded that the publishers had not convincingly shown that the audio books had been available to the public.

“This is a real shame and it really complicates our operations, which are based on copyright and on protecting copyrighted material,” Shadi Bitar, CEO of Earbooks, one of the publishers behind the law suit, told TT.

The main issue in the case was whether or not the audio books on the server really were accessible by the public.

“Our assessment is that it has not been shown that there is probable cause to believe that the material was available to the public. It’s also possible that only a limited group of people had access to the sound files,” said appeals court judge Ulrika Ihrfelt to TT.

The four-judge panel which presided over the appeal was split 2-2 following initial voting on whether or not to overturn the case, meaning the case was ultimately decided by the added weight given to the court’s presiding judge, who ruled in favour of ePhone.

The court of appeal’s ruling can be appealed to the Supreme Court.
http://www.thelocal.se/22630/20091013/





Legal Win for iiNet in Copyright Battle
Andrew Colley

EMBATTLED Perth internet service provider iiNet has won an important victory in its legal battle against a group of entertainment companies suing it for copyright infringement in the NSW Federal Court.

Federal Court judge Dennis Cowdroy yesterday allowed admission as evidence to a group of documents dating from mid-2006 detailing communications between the internet industry, an anti-piracy group representing the movie studios and the federal government.

A spokesman for iiNet said the documents would strengthen the company's efforts to sustain a key pillar of its defence against the copyright allegations.

The studios have alleged the ISP breached copyright laws when it refused to take "reasonable steps" to stop some of its customers sharing movie and music files on its network.

iiNet said that the set of documents, particularly a submission on online piracy by a group representing the studios in Australia, lodged with the federal attorney-general in 2006, would help it build a strong argument that there were no reasonable steps it could take.

The submission was signed by officials from Australian Federation Against Copyright Theft, an anti-piracy group acting on behalf of 34 companies involved in the trial.

iiNet is expected to argue that AFACT statements in the submission contradict the arguments it is currently bringing before the court.

In its submission, AFACT told the attorney-general that it "understands the need to ensure that a proposal such as this does not overreach the legitimate needs of copyright owners or unnecessarily burden the Federal Magistrates Court or ISPs".

iiNet is arguing that the document goes to the heart of part of its defence that taking action against alleged infringers would have imposed an unreasonable burden on the company.

AFACT's lead barrister, Tony Bannon SC, applied to have the documents excluded from the proceedings but Justice Cowdroy allowed them on the grounds they were important in assessing the question of whether iiNet could take reasonable steps to stop the infringements.

"It is not the conduct of other ISPs that is being called in question, rather the question is whether, against the factual matrix relating to iiNet and other ISPs, any measures taken by iiNet were reasonable, or whether there was a failure to take a reasonable step that could be taken," Justice Cowdroy wrote in a formal decision handed down yesterday.

Last week, the court heard that AFACT sent more than 5000 infringement notices to iiNet over 17 weeks that contained internet addresses of customers alleged to be engaged in illegal file-sharing using the BitTorrent platform.

The notices were accompanied by demands that the ISP take action to put an end to the piracy.

iiNet's lead barrister Richard Cobden SC last week said the proceedings amounted to a "statutory test" of whether AFACT's notices changed the legal landscape for internet companies.

The notices were sent to iiNet as part of a 59-week commercial sting operation funded by AFACT and the studios.

Last week, Mr Bannon told the court that AFACT's investigator, DeTecNet, discovered that iiNet customers illegally shared 29,000 movie and music titles from 86 entertainment catalogues presented by the foundation's members.

As the proceedings entered their fifth day yesterday, the court learned through cross-examination of AFACT executive director Neil Gane that the titles were part of a list that the studios had "authorised for litigation in Australia".

During cross-examination of AFACT investigators, it was also revealed that the studios actively monitored 190 Australian ISPs and narrowed its focus to four -- Optus, Internode, Exetel and iiNet -- before directing all its investigative power against iiNet.
http://www.australianit.news.com.au/...-15317,00.html





Finland Makes 1Mb Broadband Access a Legal Right
Don Reisinger

Finland's Ministry of Transport and Communications has made 1-megabit broadband Web access a legal right, YLE, the country's national broadcasting company, reported on Wednesday.

According to the report, every person in Finland (a little over 5 million people, according to a 2009 estimate) will have the right of access to a 1Mb broadband connection starting in July. And they may ultimately gain the right to a 100Mb broadband connection.

Just more than a year ago, Finland said it would make a 100Mb broadband connection a legal right by the end of 2015. Wednesday's announcement is considered an intermediate step.

France, one of a few countries that has made Internet access a human right, did so earlier this year. France's Constitutional Council ruled that Internet access is a basic human right. That said, it stopped short of making "broadband access" a legal right. Finland says that it's the first country to make broadband access a legal right.

But Finland's definition of "access" to broadband is a little fuzzy. According to the Helsinki Times when it reported the 100Mb target last year, the Finnish government said that no household "would be farther than 2 kilometers from a connection capable of delivering broadband Internet with a capacity of at least 100 megabits of data a second." It did say, though, that "about 2,000 (households) in far-flung corners of the country" wouldn't be included. Ostensibly, Finland plans to keep that same distribution when its 1Mb broadband access is implemented.

Finland has long been a tech-industry leader that has done a fine job investing in technology, more than many of its European counterparts. It's also home to Nokia, among other tech firms.
http://news.cnet.com/8301-17939_109-10374831-2.html





U.S. Broadband Study Says "Open Access" Fosters Competition

Open access policies have helped other leading industrialized nations develop more competitive broadband markets by lowering entry barriers, according to a study commissioned by the U.S. Federal Communications Commission.

The study, commissioned by the FCC, examines global broadband plans and practices and comes as the agency is devising a plan aimed at increasing broadband usage in rural and urban areas of the United States.

The FCC released a draft of the document on Wednesday and issued a call for public comment on the findings.

The study says that in countries where "an engaged regulator enforced open access obligations, competitors using these open access facilities provided an important catalyst for the development of robust competition."

The 232-page study by Harvard University's Berkman Center for Internet and Society, added that, in most cases, competition contributed to strong broadband performance.

"The lowest prices and highest speeds are almost always offered by firms in markets where, in addition to an incumbent telephone company and a cable company, there are also competitors who entered the market, and built their presence, through use of open access facilities," the study said.

The study says open access has largely been treated as a closed issued in U.S. policy debates since a series of FCC decisions in 2001 and 2002 backed away from this form of regulation for broadband.

In other findings, the study said that like the United States several countries plan to use economic stimulus funds to support the roll-out of high capacity networks.

An FCC task force has said preliminary estimates indicate that investments in the range of $20 billion to $350 billion may be needed for wireless and landline infrastructure, depending on the speed of service. The range indicates the slowest speeds to premium fast speeds.

According to the FCC, the majority of Americans have Internet service at home, one-third have access to broadband but have not subscribed, and another 4 percent have no access.

(Reporting by JoAnne Allen; Editing by Greg Mahlich)
http://www.reuters.com/article/techn...59E16J20091015





National Amusements to Keep Theaters After Stock Sale

National Amusements Inc said it planned to sell shares of CBS Corp (CBS.N) and Viacom Inc (VIAb.N), allowing it to fully pay off debt and retain control of its movie theater chains.

National Amusements, Sumner Redstone's holding company for his controlling stakes in CBS and Viacom, said it expected to sell about $945 million in stock for the two media companies.

The proceeds, along with the anticipated sales of other assets, will enable National Amusements to keep a controlling stake of more than 75 percent in each company, it said on Wednesday. It will also retain full ownership of all its theaters in the UK and Brazil and its "core theater assets" in the United States.

"As a result of our actions, National Amusements will be out of debt with its existing creditors and will still control its most important assets," Redstone, the company's chairman and chief executive officer, said in a statement.

Redstone is also chairman of CBS and Viacom.

Earlier this year, National Amusements, which operates more than 1,500 movie screens, reached an agreement with its lenders to restructure about $1.6 billion in debt.

Separately on Wednesday, CBS affirmed its 2009 forecast of operating income before depreciation and amortization of $1.725 billion to $1.925 billion.

(Reporting by Franklin Paul; Editing by Lisa Von Ahn)
http://www.reuters.com/article/innov...59D2BL20091014





Still Hoping to Sell Music by the Month
Brad Stone

The idea of selling monthly subscriptions to a vast catalog of online music has met with only limited success. That isn’t stopping a new batch of entrepreneurs from trying to make it work.

The latest and perhaps most surprising entrants to the field are the European entrepreneurs Niklas Zennstrom and Janus Friis. In 2001, they created and financed Kazaa, one of the original peer-to-peer file-sharing services that hurt the music industry. The two have created and financed a secretive start-up called Rdio, with offices in Los Angeles and San Francisco.

Rdio and similar start-ups are reinventing a concept pioneered earlier this decade by Rhapsody, a service majority-owned by RealNetworks, and the tamed version of Napster, now owned by Best Buy. A few hundred thousand Rhapsody and Napster subscribers pay monthly fees of around $15 for the right to stream an unlimited number of songs, at any time, from their PCs and mobile devices.

But with modest membership growth at best, neither service has managed to challenge iTunes, with its many millions of users — or enticed music lovers from pirating music. Moreover, Yahoo, AOL and MTV Networks have abandoned their own music subscription efforts.

But as CD sales continue to plummet, and the music industry searches for a profitable future, entrepreneurs with various approaches say they believe they can finally make music subscriptions work. Rdio is hoping to introduce a music subscription service by early next year that offers seamless access to music from both PCs and cellphones. The big challenge will be to get licenses from the major music labels, which have not viewed past digital music efforts by Mr. Zennstrom and Mr. Friis favorably.

“The ironies are very interesting,” said Drew Larner, Rdio’s chief executive, who says talks with music labels are continuing and confidential.

Since they started and sold Kazaa years ago, the founders “have shown they understand content and they have always been up front with the labels about what they are trying to do.”

Mark Piibe, the head of digital business development at the EMI music label, confirmed that talks were under way with Rdio and said there was no reluctance to deal with the pair. “They’re businessmen with a real track record of innovation,” he said. “They are bringing a lot of new ideas to music distribution and there is no reason why we wouldn’t talk to them seriously.”

Two other new music subscription companies will most likely beat Rdio to the United States market. Spotify, a year-old company that offers a free, ad-supported service but tries to get users to sign up for about $16-a-month ad-free version, already has several million users in Europe.

Spotify says it hopes to bring the service to the United States early next year, but it could look somewhat different here. American music labels are increasingly resistant to the idea of licensing their catalogs to any new service offering free music with ads, because they have already backed free music downloading sites like MySpace Music and Imeem.

“We like Spotify as our partner in Europe, but we would like them to move more toward a paid subscription environment,” said Thomas Hesse, president of global digital business at Sony Music.

That raises the possibility that a lesser known company will lead the wave of new music subscription services — Mog, a three-year-old blogging network that recently raised $5 million, led by the venture capital firm Menlo Ventures. Mog has licensing deals with all four major American music labels: the Universal Music Group, Sony Music Entertainment, the Warner Music Group and EMI Music, plus thousands of independent labels through the digital distributors Orchard and Ioda.

Based in Berkeley, Calif., Mog is getting specific about its plans for its “All Access” service, which it says it will introduce by Thanksgiving. For $5 a month, members can listen to as much music as they want from their computer; for $12 to $15, users can access music on their mobile devices as well.

The service is a sort of cross between Pandora, the free online radio site, and music subscription services like Rhapsody. Users can listen to the songs of any artist and build a playlist with only that music. By manipulating a slide bar, users can also gradually add a smattering of tunes by similar artists, in effect customizing their own online radio station. People can then share their playlists from their site on the Mog service.

David Hyman, Mog’s founder and the former chief executive of Gracenote, calls it “radio without restriction.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/14/te...t/14music.html





Looking at Life as One Big Subscription
Damon Darlin

EVERYWHERE you look these days, businesses are selling subscriptions. Cable television, Internet and cellphone services are sold that way. So are business software, office printing and car rentals like Zipcars.

For a business model that was used by publishers of periodicals back in the 17th century, subscriptions seem as functional and popular as ever for a variety of goods and services. Periodicals themselves are suffering — Condé Nast announced last week that it was closing Gourmet and three other magazines — but not because there’s anything wrong with the practice of selling subscriptions.

Marketers like them for good reason: Convince someone to take a subscription, and the revenue flows in for months to come. “It is amazing how inertia takes over,” says Peter S. Fader, a marketing professor at the University of Pennsylvania. Anyone who has signed up for a gym membership that is paid for but not used understands the genius behind subscriptions.

There is another reason that marketers use them: When a product has built-in obsolescence, like new versions of software or a magazine with a short newsstand life, subscriptions extend the ownership period. “It removes the impedance to upgrading,” says Erica Mina Okada, an associate professor of marketing at the University of Hawaii.

Most of us mentally account for nearly all the money we spend, whether or not we realize it. We assign a book value to a purchase, Professor Okada says, based on what we pay. Usually we won’t replace that product until we think we’ve gotten our money’s worth. That explains why some people continue to wear ill-fitting shoes rather than chucking them.

The rational way to think about your purchases, says V. Seenu Srinivasan, a Stanford business school professor, is to replace a product when the benefits of a new version outweigh the costs — financial and psychological — of upgrading. (He has developed a mathematical model for forecasting when consumers will upgrade, based on this theory.)

A subscription moves consumers over the hurdle of mentally depreciating an existing asset. When you go on vacation and don’t get any movies from Netflix, it is easier to accept having wasted $30 for your subscription that month than it would be to have bought a $30 DVD and never watched it.

Marketers love the subscription concept, but is it any good for consumers? It sometimes seems as if cellphone deals were designed to alienate customers rather than to lure them into that sweet garden of inertia.

How many times have you heard someone say, “I can’t wait to get out of my cellphone contract”? In many cases, the customers think they are paying too much because they don’t understand that the subscription bundles the price of the phone with the price of the service. (That’s one purpose of early termination fees, to cover the cost of the hardware. Another is to keep you from canceling your subscription.)

Some of the madness of the recent housing bubble can be blamed on an extension of the subscription mentality. What exactly were homeowners doing when they bought a house for little or no money down with the intention of holding it for two or three years before upgrading to a better home? They were treating an investment in real estate as though it were just another consumable product, to be disposed of with the same emotion one shows in recycling a monthly magazine.

People who thought of their home that way got away with it only as long as the home’s value grew enough to let them sell and trade up.

But thinking of other kinds of purchases as subscriptions may actually be useful, especially when they are often-replaced products.

My colleague Saul Hansell has pointed out in the Bits blog of The New York Times that you essentially do that when you buy PCs or digital cameras. Those who love technology might pay $900 every two years to get a new and improved product, and more utilitarian users might spend $300 every four years. Those who see technology as a bother might shell out $150 every eight years to upgrade.

Frugality is a virtue, as we remind ourselves during this recession. But it’s not ridiculous to spend on upgrades. Certainly some people value them more than others, just as some value the premium HBO cable package or unlimited texting on their cellphone plan. But a consumer can become more efficient by upgrading to a more fuel-efficient car or by buying a computer that crashes less often or boots more quickly. A new smartphone gives a person access to information everywhere, a liberating experience for anyone searching for a restaurant or a theater where no computer, bookstore or newsstand is nearby.

PROFESSOR OKADA, who has studied how marketers persuade consumers to replace what they have, says, “People don’t upgrade as frequently as they should if they were acting rationally.”

If more people thought this way, it could fuel consumption. Of course, it would also be likely to expand our disposal society. The two-year-old DVD player from Best Buy or the lightly used Leksvik bookcase from Ikea will be piled out by the curb next to old newspapers and magazines.

The publishers of those magazines and newspapers recognize that the curbside stack is dwindling, and most know that they must offer their products online. Every media company on the Web seems to be trying to figure out how to return to paid subscriptions. It may be a lost cause, but new electronic reading devices like the Kindle or the rumored Apple tablet computer could offer a means to wean readers from the free business model.

“It’s hard to initiate subscriptions,” Professor Fader says. “But once you get them over that hurdle, great things happen.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/11/business/11every.html





Sirius XM Execs Reportedly Sell Off Stocks
FMQB

Five top executives at Sirius XM have reportedly sold off seven million shares of the satcaster in recent months, netting $3.2 million. According to today's Wall Street Journal, CFO David J. Frear; President/Chief Content Officer Scott Greenstein; President of Operations and Sales James E. Meyer; general counsel Patrick L. Donnelly and Chief Administrative Officer Dara Altman collectively received almost 10 million restricted shares of Sirius XM on May 19, with the shares to vest gradually over about 40 weeks. The executives disclosed plans to sell all of the shares off upon vesting.

Jonathan Moreland of InsiderInsights.com told the Journal, "That's not a bullish evaluation...If I were a shareholder, I'd be upset these executives are being given some sort of financial kudo. I don't think these guys deserve any bonuses, given the performance of their stock." A spokesman for Sirius XM told the paper the shares were given to the executives as short-term incentive pay.

The WSJ notes that the last Sirius XM insider to purchase more than a few hundred dollars worth of shares in the satcaster, it was CEO Mel Karmazin in August of 2008. Karmazin bought two million shares shortly after the merger of XM and Sirius.

Sirius XM shares closed at 58 cents/each on Tuesday, down two cents from the day before and down over 70 percent from their worth at the time of the merger.
http://www.fmqb.com/article.asp?id=1535213





Why Won't Apple Let Indies Create Their Own iTunes LPs?
Josh Fruhlinger

I'm on the record (ha ha, "record," get it?) as being underwhelmed by the iTunes LP concept; it strikes me a little bit too much like as an awkward attempt to reproduce as non-virtual object on a computer. iTunes is probably one of OS X's most important applications, but how many people are just sitting at their keyboard looking at it while music plays, and will some video and still images get them to do so? Still, I always like to give things a fair shake. My very favorite band, the Mountain Goats, released a new record last week, and they've always had great and hilarious liner notes and art; it seemed at least possible that they might sign up for the new format on iTunes.

Of course, as you'd find out if you clicked on that iTunes link, they hadn't; in fact, as became clear this weekend, they weren't going to anytime soon, because indie labels have been shut out of the iTunes LP marketplace for now. Chocolate Lab Records, a Chicago-based indie label, reportedly contacted Apple about getting iTunes LP albums up for their artists, and was told that only the majors are being considered, and they'd have to pay $10,000 for design costs. The Mountain Goats are on 4AD -- a pretty big-sized label as indies go, but not big enough to shell out ten grand for each iTunes LP design.

A lot of the controversy over this has been focused on the subject of the large dollar figure being bandied about. But when it comes to design, you do get what you pay for, and I have no doubt that the slick iTunes LP offerings currently in the store cost that much to have put together. What's more puzzling to me is why Apple is taking that money for the design in the first place. iTunes LP packages aren't some secret proprietary format that only Apple can author; they're essentially bundles of based on the technologies used to build ordinary Webpages, and frankly anyone with enough Web design know-how could hack one together. Sure, it wouldn't be as slick as the ones you could buy from the iTunes Store from Mika or the Dave Matthews Band -- but frankly, there are plenty of indie musicians whose recordings aren't as technically slick as the records from Mika or the Dave Matthews Band, and the iTunes Store is still happy to sell them.

To bring this point into sharp relief, you actually can get a non-Apple-authorized iTunes LP album: It's Listen, by a band named Tryad. The album was under a creative commons license, and an outfit called iLongPlay put together the iTunes LP version as a proof of concept.
http://www.itworld.com/personal-tech...own-itunes-lps





His Way, No Pressure

Storrs Resident Releases His Third Album, Seven Years Since His Last
Eric R. Danton

It's not a question of one imitating the other: Life and art are deeply interconnected for Ken Cormier.

They intertwine in a self-perpetuating creative loop through Cormier's activities: He's a musician, poet, occasional radio host and full-time doctoral student at the University of Connecticut. He lives in Willington.

His new album, "Nowhere Is Nowhere" (Cosmodemonic Telegraph), is but one step removed from the work he's doing for his dissertation, which is about the audio presentation of creative works. It includes experimental sound pieces featuring his poetry and fiction.

"It does occur to me that maybe I'll make a record of those at some point," Cormier, 41, says by phone during a rare break in his schedule.

In the meantime, there's "Nowhere Is Nowhere," a collection of off-kilter pop songs with vivid (sometimes weird) imagery and carefully crafted arrangements of guitar, keyboards and drums. It's his third album and first since 2002.

"I felt no pressure about this record at all," says Cormier, who is married with an 8-month-old son. "I kind of decided that I wanted to do another record, but that I wouldn't have any kind of schedule for it. I would just kind of record songs as they occur to me, and I usually write songs as I record them."

These 14 tunes blend old themes with new ones, as Cormier layered current ideas on top of old demo recordings he revisited.

"It's really exciting having had a set of ideas back then and a whole new set of ideas now," he says. "It's interesting to go back to those old recordings, which kind of hit dead ends at the time, maybe. I have a ton of instrumental tracks that I never finished or lost inspiration for. It's nice to listen to those again and think, 'Wow, this is really interesting.'"

Although he performs occasionally, there are other things about music that Cormier loves more.

"My favorite thing about music since I've been a teenager has been the recording part," he says. "I've just always loved four-track recording. I feel satisfied hearing arrangements in my head and then recording them."

Couple his love of recording with technological changes in the way people find and collect music since Cormier's last record, 2002's "Radio-Bueno," and he's finding it easier than ever to reach an interested audience on his own terms.

"I can see myself settling into a period here when I can release records the way I want them to be with not much pressure at all," he says. "Whatever audience I can find is fine, but the stakes are lower, because it doesn't cost as much."
http://www.courant.com/entertainment...,1522677.story





Shelby Singleton, Nashville Producer, Dies at 77
Bill Friskics-Warren

Shelby Singleton, a colorful Nashville record producer and entrepreneur who revived the careers of singers like Roger Miller and Jerry Lee Lewis and who later resurrected the historic Sun Records catalog, died here on Wednesday. He was 77.

He had been hospitalized with brain cancer, according to the producer and guitarist Jerry Kennedy, a friend and protégé, who confirmed the death.

Mr. Singleton was probably best known for his 1969 purchase of Sun Records and the subsequent marketing of the label and its legacy, including the early rockabilly hits of Elvis Presley, Carl Perkins and Johnny Cash. Among these recordings are Presley’s “That’s All Right,” Cash’s “I Walk the Line” and Perkins’s “Blue Suede Shoes.”

Before acquiring the Sun catalog, however, Mr. Singleton had for almost a decade worked as a cultivator of musical talent for Mercury Records. From offices in Nashville and New York, he oversaw the careers of country singers like Mr. Miller, Ray Stevens and Mr. Lewis, as well as those of rhythm and blues acts like Clyde McPhatter, Brook Benton and, for a brief time, James Brown.

In 1962, after hearing the Texas singer Bruce Channel’s regional hit “Hey! Baby,” Mr. Singleton purchased the master and rereleased the record on the Mercury subsidiary Smash. It reached the top of the Billboard pop chart for three consecutive weeks.

“He had the ears of a record buyer,” Mr. Kennedy said of Mr. Singleton’s commercial instincts. “People like me, who are immersed in the actual making of music, don’t necessarily always have that advantage.”

Mr. Kennedy became Mr. Singleton’s second in command and eventually succeeded him at Mercury. Perhaps his most memorable session working with Mr. Singleton, he said, was the one that produced “Harper Valley P.T.A.”

The song, a sendup of small-town hypocrisy written by Tom T. Hall, became a No. 1 pop and country hit for Mr. Singleton’s Plantation label in 1968. It also made Jeanne Carolyn Stephenson, an aspiring singer whose name Mr. Singleton changed to Jeannie C. Riley for the session, an overnight sensation.

“He was so sure that he had something magic with that one that he had an acetate of it made just as soon as the session was over,” said Mr. Kennedy, who played the indelible Dobro guitar part on the record. That evening Mr. Singleton got the music into the hands of Ralph Emery, a tastemaking disc jockey at WSM in Nashville, and by the following morning it was making its way up the charts.

Shelby Singleton was born on Dec. 16, 1931, in Waskom, Tex. Reared in nearby Shreveport, La., he entered the Marines after high school before going to work for “Louisiana Hayride,” a popular live radio show, in the 1950s. He became a field promotion representative for Starday-Mercury Records later in the decade and, after the two labels dissolved their partnership, went to work as a talent scout for Mercury.

By the early ’60s Mr. Singleton was presiding over Mercury’s creative division, where he was known for holding recording sessions using black and white musicians at a time of often strained race relations in the South.

“He didn’t know color lines,” Mr. Kennedy said. “The black artists who came to town to record couldn’t stay in the local motels. There was only one place where they could stay, at the old Eldorado Hotel in north Nashville. But instead of putting them up there, Shelby would put them up at his house in Hendersonville.”

Mr. Singleton is survived by his wife, Mary; three sons, Stuart, Steve and Sidney; a daughter, Shana; and several grandchildren. He is also survived by his brother, John, with whom he continued to preside over Sun Records’ catalog and business interests until only recently.

“Shelby was the all-around record man,” Mr. Kennedy remarked. “He was a producer, a marketing guy, a merchandising guy, a publisher and a promoter. He did it all, and he was doing it right up until the end.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/11/ar...singleton.html





A ’70s Flashback, Replete With Flaws
Jonah Weiner

MICHAEL JAI WHITE doesn’t seem like the kind of guy who plays dress-up in his spare time. Mr. White, 6-foot-2 and 225 pounds, typically appears in films as a no-nonsense bruiser. His breakthrough role came as Mike Tyson in a 1995 HBO biopic, and in the years since he has brawled onscreen opposite Jean-Claude Van Damme, David Carradine and Steven Seagal. In between roles, he has earned black belts in seven martial arts.

But in early 2006, Mr. White donned an Afro wig, a bright blue leisure suit dotted with rhinestones and a fake mustache roughly the size and shape of a croissant. He gripped a revolver in one hand and nunchucks in the other, and took a scowling photograph that he described as “totally ridiculous.”

“I’d been listening to James Brown’s ‘Super Bad’ on repeat,” Mr. White, 40, said during a recent telephone interview from his Los Angeles home, “and the idea for this character popped into my head”: a ninja-slaying, lady-melting, blaxploitation-style hero he would eventually name Black Dynamite. Mr. White decided to build a movie around the character, and the portrait became his pitch.

“When Mike showed that picture to me, just off the visual alone, I said, ‘This is a movie we can get made,’ ” recalled the director Scott Sanders, who cast Mr. White as a class-obsessed thug in the 1998 crime comedy “Thick as Thieves” and who immediately signed to direct the new project.

Written by Mr. White, Mr. Sanders and the actor Byron Minns, “Black Dynamite” will arrive in theaters on Friday. Set in 1970s Los Angeles, the movie spoofs blaxploitation cinema at its least polished, nodding to ambitious films like “The Mack” and “Shaft” but hewing closer to daffier specimens like “Coffy” and “Willie Dynamite.” The plot is ludicrous (it involves a heroin epidemic among orphans and a government conspiracy to sell African-Americans poisonous malt liquor); fourth-wall-busting mistakes accumulate gleefully (a boom mike makes a cameo early on); and the acting comes in two flavors: hammy and hammier.

None of which, Mr. Sanders stressed, would be very much out of place in a film like “Dolemite” from 1975.

“We tried to have a light touch with the satire,” the director said. “It’s funnier that way, because at a certain point blaxploitation movies were almost parodies of themselves.”

The blaxploitation era was short but robust. It began in the early ’70s with “Cotton Comes to Harlem,” “Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song” and the blockbuster “Shaft.” Six years and many dozens of films later, the phenomenon had effectively run its course, but blaxploitation has never fully dropped out of the popular imagination, thanks to parodies like “I’m Gonna Git You Sucka” by the Wayans brothers, caricatures like Tim Meadows’s purring ladies’ man on “Saturday Night Live” and rappers like Snoop Dogg, who makes reference to the style, slang and values of ’70s pimps.

“These days, you can go to Halloween shops in the suburbs and buy pimp costumes,” said Arsenio Hall, who shows up in “Black Dynamite” as a flamboyant procurer, remarking on how blaxploitation imagery has permeated popular culture. “I saw one with a little white kid on the package, wearing a red suit and a big hat.”

But Mr. Sanders explained that “Black Dynamite” sprang, in part, from a sense that recent homages (“Undercover Brother” is another example) were incomplete. “There have been tangential riffs, that’s it; a whole bunch of details hadn’t been covered,” he said. “We wanted to make the most direct blaxploitation movie since they made blaxploitation movies.”

Blaxploitation’s legacy goes deeper than Afro-sporting ladies’ men and Cadillac-driving pimps. The genre threw open Hollywood’s gates for the first time to wide-scale African-American participation.

“All of a sudden you saw black people filling the screen with black images, black stories, black music, black style, black fashion,” said Manthia Diawara, the director of New York University’s Institute of Afro-American Affairs and the editor of “Black American Cinema.”

Not everyone saw this as cause for celebration. The term “black exploitation” was coined by the N.A.A.C.P., which argued that the films trafficked in negative stereotypes and offered black creativity a circumscribed freedom at best.

In “Black Dynamite,” though, it was by inhabiting a decades-old stereotype of the brawny, black fisticuffs artist that Mr. White was able to transcend his own present-day pigeonholing as, well, a brawny, black fisticuffs artist: his performance radiates a sly wit and charisma other roles haven’t allowed him to express so fully.

Born in 1969, Mr. White was raised in Brooklyn by his mother, a schoolteacher. He discovered the genre in early adolescence. “It was the first time we saw black alpha males in movies,” he said. “Before, black men were depicted as buffoons, servants. I remember watching blaxploitation and logging all the dead white people, like, ‘Wow!’ I’d never seen movies where a black guy killing white people was permitted.”

That transgressive streak, Mr. Diawara said, linked the genre to the late-’60s paroxysms of the civil rights movement. “Black power had been suppressed, either by the F.B.I. or just because black people wanted to integrate into mainstream American society,” he said. “The hero in blaxploitation movies carries the black-nationalist baggage, but sometimes he wants to get rid of it, too, to get his own pleasure in the system.”

“Black Dynamite” may be a lark, but the film pays winking tribute to the politics of the period. At one point, Black Dynamite reluctantly teams up with a group of quixotic black militants. “That whole concept in blaxploitation movies of five random black guys plotting to overthrow the government is funny to me,” Mr. Sanders said. “We could overthrow the government from my living room — if only we all knew karate!”

Mr. Sanders, 41, whose grandfather E. V. Wilkins was the first black mayor of Roper, N.C., and whose mother currently holds the same office, said that unlike Mr. White, his appreciation for blaxploitation has always been tongue-in-cheek. “Even when I was 12, I felt like I was watching something from the past that was funny,” he said.

Jon Steingart, who produced the film with his wife, Jenny, said a similar reaction would help “Black Dynamite” connect with younger audiences. “The movie reminds me of amateur filmmaking on YouTube, where people get off on seeing imperfections,” he said. “These days, with films like ‘Avatar’ and ‘Transformers,’ the technology’s so good it’s totally immersive. This is the other end of the pendulum, where you see all the seams.”

Shooting “Black Dynamite” in 22 days on a budget of $2.9 million, Mr. Sanders found imperfections easy to come by. “We made it like they made blaxploitation movies, shooting quick and coming up with solutions on the fly,” he said. “We weren’t faking being broke. We were really broke.” (The money for the film came from Mr. Steingart, his wife and several of their friends, including one of the founders of the clothing line Alice + Olivia.)

There was one unforeseen development the filmmakers particularly enjoyed: the election of Barack Obama as president. For Mr. Sanders and Mr. White, much of the appeal of the movie — which features a climactic kung-fu showdown at the White House between Black Dynamite and Richard Nixon — lies in the differences between the world it evokes and the world today.

“People in the ’70s who made these movies never imagined they would see a black president, that the culture would change that much,” Mr. Sanders said.

Still, some things never change, and at least one aspect of blaxploitation is as relevant in 2009 as ever: contempt for The Man. “There are always powerful evil dudes” for the rest of us to hate, Mr. Sanders said, adding: “These days, Wall Street functions really well as The Man. Bernie Madoff would make a great blaxploitation villain. Except it’s not just black people who want to beat him up.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/11/movies/11wein.html





Marty Forscher, Tended Cameras and Owners, Dies at 87
Margalit Fox

Marty Forscher, whose intimate knowledge of the anatomy and physiology of the camera — and of the myriad ways in which photographers can unsettle them — made him for decades the most sought-after camera repairman in the country, died on Sept. 30 in Pittsfield, Mass. He was 87 and lived in Pittsfield.

The cause was heart failure, said his wife, Marian Forscher.

For more than 40 years, Mr. Forscher ran Professional Camera Repair Service in Midtown Manhattan. Founded in 1946, the shop was a Mecca for generations of camera owners, from the world’s most celebrated fashion, advertising and news photographers to wedding portraitists, threadbare students, bejeweled celebrities and anxious tourists.

Among the shop’s well-known clients were the photographers Richard Avedon, Joel Meyerowitz, Annie Leibovitz and Mary Ellen Mark.

Though renowned as a repairman, Mr. Forscher was perhaps best described as an armorer. For if news photographers were foot soldiers in the fight for social justice, as he long maintained, then he was intent on equipping them soundly. As a result, many of the seminal events of mid-20th-century history — World War II, the American civil rights movement, the Vietnam War — were recorded in part by cameras he had repaired, donated or adapted.

“The attitude was that these photojournalists are the ones that have to stick their heads up out of that foxhole to get the pictures, so their cameras damn well better work,” Noah Schwartz, a former machinist’s assistant in Mr. Forscher’s shop, said in a telephone interview on Tuesday. “So every camera we fixed was with that attitude.”

To the supplicants who thronged his counter, and the others who placed frantic calls from obscure corners of the world at obscure hours of the night, Mr. Forscher was equal parts detective, diagnostician, conjurer and psychotherapist. Many photographers referred to him as the Savior. The more concision-minded simply called him God.

When the shop went out of business in 2001 (Mr. Forscher had sold it to colleagues when he retired in 1987), the photographic community heaved a collective shudder of panic.

Whether one’s camera had plunged into the sea, fallen from a skyscraper, been smashed in a riot or been otherwise sorely treated, Mr. Forscher could almost always find a solution. He knew, for instance, when to give a camera a bath (after an unplanned ocean dip, to flush out the saltwater), when to take it to the gas station (after the curative freshwater bath, to blow out the residue with the compressed-air hose), and when to bake it in the oven (after returning from the gas station, to dry out any lingering moisture).

Presiding over a staff of specialists — Nikon men, Leica men, Hasselblad men, movie-camera men — Mr. Forscher, in his red apron, was a learned generalist. An accomplished inventor, he adapted equipment so his clients could capture better pictures atop tall buildings, beneath the sea, on the battlefield and inside the human body.

His best-known invention, patented in 1982, was the Pro-Back, a Polaroid attachment for a 35-millimeter camera that gave photographers an immediate proof print, letting them test a shot without having to wait for the film to be developed. Mr. Forscher also created an early compact motor drive for still cameras.

Martin Hubert Forscher was born in Manhattan on Nov. 25, 1921. His father, a furrier and gambler, ran off with his bookkeeper when Marty was about 6, leaving his mother to weather the Depression by selling lingerie door to door in financial district offices.

After graduating from Stuyvesant High School, Marty entered the City College of New York intending to become a doctor, but left before graduating to help support his mother. He found a job as an errand boy for a downtown camera shop and before long was fixing cameras.

In World War II, Mr. Forscher worked in Washington as a repairman for the Navy photographic unit run by the eminent photographer Edward Steichen. After the war, he opened Professional Camera Repair Service. Originally at 480 Lexington Avenue in Midtown, the shop was located for many years afterward at 37 West 47th Street.

In the early 1960s, Mr. Forscher began begging discarded cameras from magazines, fixing them and sending them South. There, members of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee used them to document the civil rights movement in images published in newspapers and magazines around the world. Some were of signal events, like Bloody Sunday — March 7, 1965 — when state troopers beat black marchers in Selma, Ala. Others captured small daily victories, like a black child learning to read at a Mississippi Freedom School.

When the cameras were dashed to the ground or drenched by police fire hoses, Mr. Forscher repaired them and sent them back again.

Besides his wife, the former Marian Hamilton, whom he married in 1945, Mr. Forscher is survived by two sons, Paul and Gregg, and a grandchild.

Since 1990, the Marty Forscher Fellowship has been awarded to students and young professionals specializing in humanistic documentary photography. The fellowship is given annually by Photo District News, a trade publication, and Parsons the New School for Design.

In reminiscences on the Web last week, clients also paid tribute to Mr. Forscher’s Holmesian deductive abilities. Some years ago, as recounted in a posting to The Online Photographer, a photo-news site, a man walked into Mr. Forscher’s shop wearing a Pentax MX and a pained look.

“Without batting an eye,” the posting continued, “this impish, graying, stoop-shouldered guy looks at my face, looks at the camera and says: ‘Lemme guess. The diodes flicker in the finder and jump all over the place when you meter.’ ”

Mr. Forscher was spot-on, and there was a reason. A few days before, he had seen another customer with the same camera, the same problem and precisely the same facial expression.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/11/ny...1forscher.html





Hands-On with Western Digital's TV Live HD Media Player
Norman Chan

Possibly the media pirate's perfect movie and music streamer

Yesterday, Western Digital officially announced the second generation of their WD TV HD media player. In our review of the original device, we loved its ability to play back almost any video we tossed at it, but lamented its inability to handle encrypted media files. Since then, Western Digital has issued a series of firmware updates that improve format compatibility (including DivX), but the new WD TV Live adds new hardware features as well. Most notable is the addition of an Ethernet port to connect the WD TV Live to your home network. That means you can not only stream movies from your desktop PC or NAS boxes to the WD TV Live, but also get video, music, and photo content from the internet. We received a retail sample of the new system, and tested it to see if these new features are worth the $50 price bump.

First, a quick briefing on how the WD TV Live and its previous iteration work. The WD TV system is a media player, but video and music files aren't stored on the device itself. You connect USB hard drives or flash keys to either of the two USB ports on the back and the top of the player, and the WD TV reads files off of those storage drives to play onto a connected television or monitor. The first WD TV launched with support for most standard video formats (MPEG, WMV, H.264), 1080p resolution and high-bitrate playback, and used HDMI or Composite video connections. Its support for community-adopted video containers, like MKV and H.264 AVI files, made it a popular alternative to the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 for media playback.

In addition, the firmware for the WD TV has been open source, which has led to 3rd-party firmware updates that have added neat functionality to the player, including USB optical drive and limited network adapter support. The WD TV Live utilizes new internal hardware, so it's unclear that existing 3rd-party firmware will run on it.

The WD TV Live's packaging is very similar to the original's. Included in the box is the player (which is about the size of a portal hard drive, only thicker), an IR remote, AAA batteries, power adapter, and video cables. The box includes both Composite and Component cables, though they're cables with 3.5mm jacks on one end to plug into the WD TV. Neither the first WD TV nor the WD TV Live include an HDMI cable, though everyone knows they're relatively cheap to buy from monoprice.com.

Also new is a warning sticker on the back of the WD TV Live, reminding you not to stack USB hard drives on top of the player. In our experience, the player gets pretty hot when playing back 1080p video, though we've never had one of these devices die on us from overheating. Still, it's a good idea to keep the player on its side during use, and avoid placing it on top of or around other hot gadgets.

Physically, the WD TV Live is exactly the same dimensions as the original. WD opted for a matte grey finish as opposed to the glossy black of the original, which was prone to greasy fingerprints. We still prefer the black finish. The HDMI logo has also been removed from the front face of the device.

On the rear of the player, you can see the new Ethernet port as well as the modified Composite and Component video out ports. If you choose to use the Component connection, you'll have to output audio from the Composite port (for stereo sound) or use the Optical port for 5.1 audio playback. The HDMI connection outputs both audio and video.

Here's a quick glance at the differing format support, as indicated from the packaging. The original WD TV box is a little out of date, since new firmware has expanded what type of files the WD TV can play, including a wide range of soft subtitles. DRM-protected files are stil not yet supported. But enough about specs -- let's turn this thing on!

System boot up on is a tad faster than the new player, but the thing we noticed most was how responsive the new menu is. Optimizations in hardware and the OS software have paid off, and navigating around the WD TV doesn't feel sluggish at all. This is a necessary improvement, since there are more menu categories to browse around this time around.

The actual menus aren't changed much from the first WD TV. Cosmetic changes like a darker blue background aren't a big deal -- you still navigate around the layered menus using the arrow keys. You can use the included remote to work the menu system, or pair the WD TV with a universal remote like the Logitech Harmony series.

The first thing you'll want to do is set up the Network configuration. The WD TV has an automated setup process that detects your router settings and DLNA network drives, including Home Servers and NAS boxes.

We ran the WDTV through the gamut of numerous video and audio files of varying size, bitrate, and formats, and the WD TV Live handled them all with ease. Everything from MP4s ripped from DVDs using Handbrake, 1080P WMV movies from Microsoft, or even MKV H.264 Blu-Ray rips with embedded subtitles and 5 audio channels played back without problems.

HD video stored on a Windows Home Server was instantly detected and flowed over a wired connection without any loss of quality. When we connected the WD TV Live to a hacked router that acts as a wi-fi bridge to try streaming video over 802.11g, video playback was a little more limited -- very high bitrate files occasionally stuttered. You definitely want to be on a 802.11n network to stream high def content. Western Digital plans on selling its own wireless Ethernet adapter for the WD TV Live, but there's no work on what wi-fi standards it'll support.

On to the new connected features. WD TV can tap into Youtube to play video, but browsing options are pretty limited. You can enter channels showing the newest, most popular, highest rated, or "featured" videos, but searching for specific content is a tedious process. Entering search terms is done with the arrow keys on your remote, and it took us at least 5 minutes to find specific movie and game trailers. However, you can log into your Youtube account to visit favorited channels and user subscriptions.

By default, Youtube will stream the Hi-Quality of HD version of a video if its available. You can turn this off if you're on a slow or shakey internet connection.

Online music streaming is actually a pleasure to use. Menu entries for Pandora and Live365 let you log into an account and access online radio feeds. The player experience replicates the features of those services you'd find on their respective sites, as well. We're not sure how many people actually want to stream online radio to their TV, but the option is there.

Finally, you can browse Flick's photo content with pre-configured feeds, such as the last week's worth of "interesting" photos. Again, this is more of a novelty feature than an actual practical one -- we don't envision many people rummaging through Flickr on their TVs out of boredom.

One disappointment is that most of the pictures we opened from the Flickr feed turned out to be the low-resolution photo, which then isn't stretched out to fill the screen.

From our early tests, the WD TV Live looks to be a worthy successor to the WD TV. It's most attractive features haven't changed -- video aficionados and media pirates alike will still be drawn to it for its wide file format support. The Ethernet connectivity and streaming feature, however, really makes this a true contender as the dominant media player in your home theater setup. The device's small profile, relatively low power usage, and whisper quiet operation makes it more ideal than the Xbox 360 or PlayStation 3 for in-network media streaming. Whether that's worth $150 or adding another media player to your TV stand is up to you.
http://www.maximumpc.com/article/web...e_media_player





The Cloud

Sidekick customers, during this service disruption, please DO NOT remove your battery, reset your Sidekick, or allow it to lose power.

Updated: 10/10/2009 12:35 PM PDT

T-MOBILE AND MICROSOFT/DANGER STATUS UPDATE ON SIDEKICK DATA DISRUPTION

Dear valued T-Mobile Sidekick customers:

T-Mobile and the Sidekick data services provider, Danger, a subsidiary of Microsoft, are reaching out to express our apologies regarding the recent Sidekick data service disruption.

We appreciate your patience as Microsoft/Danger continues to work on maintaining platform stability, and restoring all services for our Sidekick customers.

Regrettably, based on Microsoft/Danger's latest recovery assessment of their systems, we must now inform you that personal information stored on your device - such as contacts, calendar entries, to-do lists or photos - that is no longer on your Sidekick almost certainly has been lost as a result of a server failure at Microsoft/Danger. That said, our teams continue to work around-the-clock in hopes of discovering some way to recover this information. However, the likelihood of a successful outcome is extremely low. As such, we wanted to share this news with you and offer some tips and suggestions to help you rebuild your personal content. You can find these tips in our Sidekick Contacts FAQ. We encourage you to visit the Forums on a regular basis to access the latest updates as well as FAQs regarding this service disruption.

In addition, we plan to communicate with you on Monday (Oct. 12) the status of the remaining issues caused by the service disruption, including the data recovery efforts and the Download Catalog restoration which we are continuing to resolve. We also will communicate any additional tips or suggestions that may help in restoring your content.

We recognize the magnitude of this inconvenience. Our primary efforts have been focused on restoring our customers' personal content. We also are considering additional measures for those of you who have lost your content to help reinforce how valuable you are as a T-Mobile customer.

We continue to advise customers to NOT reset their device by removing the battery or letting their battery drain completely, as any personal content that currently resides on your device will be lost.

Once again, T-Mobile and Microsoft/Danger regret any and all inconvenience this matter has caused.
http://forums.t-mobile.com/tmbl/board?board.id=06





Cloud Goes Boom, T-Mo Sidekick Users Lose All Data
Eric Zeman

This week has been a rough one for T-Mobile's Sidekick users. T-Mobile's Sidekick service experienced a prolonged data outage and today came the really bad news. The servers Microsoft, T-Mobile and Danger use to store all the data for Sidekicks have crashed, and all user data appears to have been lost.

This is a code red cloud disaster. Sidekick users noticed downed data services earlier this week. T-Mobile and Microsoft/Danger have been in constant touch with those customers, letting them know that they're on it. Today's update was not happy news.

According to all parties involved, if users haven't pulled their battery or otherwise reset their device, there's hope they can make a local back-up somewhere. A problem like this underscores the problem with cloud-based services.

T-Mobile isn't alone in the service they provide. Other mobile companies, such as Google, Apple, Palm, and Microsoft, have cloud-based data management systems that users can take advantage of. I think the bottom line here is pretty clear. Cloud storage can certainly provide for a back-up that's mostly trustworthy, but making sure you back-up data locally can prevent real disasters
http://www.informationweek.com/blog/...KH4ATMY3 2JVN





T-Mobile Says Sidekick Owners May Recover Lost Data
Saul Hansell

T-Mobile said on Monday that some of the phone numbers, photographs and other data that its customers using Sidekick phones lost as a result of the failure of a Microsoft computer system might be recoverable.

There are about one million Sidekick users, but not all of them have lost data. Initially, Microsoft cautioned that the data might be gone forever, but now Microsoft engineers are optimistic that much of it can be recovered, said David Beigie, vice president for communications at T-Mobile.

Mr. Beigie added that customers who experienced a significant loss of data would receive a $100 credit from T-Mobile.

Sidekick phones, produced by a subsidiary of Microsoft, are made to send e-mail and text messages quickly. The phones link to a service operated by Microsoft that maintains a backup of their owners’ data.

Microsoft’s servers failed on Oct. 2, cutting off Sidekick users from e-mail, Web browsing and most other services apart from voice calls and text messages.

Those services were restored over the next week. But in the process, data on the Sidekick server and its backup server became corrupted.

A Microsoft spokeswoman, Brandy Bishop, said engineers “have been working 24 hours a day” to restore the data.

The Microsoft servers mainly assist users by keeping a copy of their data so that, if necessary, the server can restore the information. The Sidekick devices lose all of their data when power is cut off, like when the battery is removed.

Microsoft and T-Mobile are advising Sidekick users not to do anything to cut off power to their phones or to reset them.

Ms. Bishop declined to discuss the potential cost to Microsoft of making good on the problem with T-Mobile and its customers. She added that the software that failed had come from Danger, the company behind the Sidekick, which Microsoft acquired last year.

Microsoft offers several other online backup services for cellphones and computers that do not use the same software.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/13/te...3sidekick.html





Microsoft Recovers Sidekick Data

The data loss worried those switching to cloud computing
BBC

Microsoft says it has now recovered the personal data lost when its Sidekick servers suffered an outage on 13 October.

The online service backs up contacts, photos, calendar appointments and other personal data stored on the mobile phones of Sidekick T Mobile customers.

Microsoft Corporate Vice President Roz Ho says that all data will be restored, beginning with personal contacts.

She believes that only a minority of Sidekick users are still affected.

"The outage was caused by a system failure that created data loss in the core database and the back up," she wrote in an open letter to customers.

The number of customers affected was not released, but Sidekick is believed to have more than one million subscribers overall.

Microsoft says it has installed a "more resilient back-up process" to safeguard against a repeat incident.

The issue has been seen by industry experts as the largest failing for cloud computing in recent memory.

"This is the most spectacular loss of data on the web to date," Harry McCracken, editor of Technologizer.com told BBC News at the time.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/8309218.stm





Striking It Rich: Is There An App For That?

Seeking fortune and fame, entrepreneurs rushed to create programs for Apple's App Store. That's not always what they found.
Tony Dokoupil

Steve Demeter seems like the perfect poster boy for Apple. Two years ago, the 30-year-old computer programmer became one of the first people to sell his product—a puzzle game called Trism—through Apple's App Store, a virtual marketplace where third-party software developers connect with customers wanting downloads for their iPhones. He pulled in $250,000 in just two months and quit his job writing code for ATMs. Demeter's success caught the eye of Apple's public-relations team, which profiled him in an inspirational video at Apple.com and gave him a shout out at its June 2009 World Wide Developers' Conference (WWDC). Media hailed the San Francisco resident an "App Store Millionaire" who would never have to work again—a happy financial reality that Demeter confirms. "Nine-to-five is no longer a concept for me," he tells NEWSWEEK.

Only that's not because of Apple.

Demeter's new-found wealth—he won't specify the exact amount in case people bombard him for loans—comes from investing his earnings in Apple's archrival Palm. "I bought Palm's stock for $1.76 and sold it for $12," he says. "It's kind of ironic."

Ironic, but not altogether unusual. The App Store, which launched in the summer of 2008, is thought to be a portal to big bucks for code geeks looking to make a mark. They sell their wares online, setting their own price and keeping 70 percent of the proceeds. But how many programmers really strike it rich? Apple doesn't release individual sales figures for its App Store, and it declined NEWSWEEK's request for comment. But 18 months after it launched and online prospecting began, the App Store isn't developing many new millionaires. Not only have most sellers failed to turn a profit—a fact that is perhaps not surprising given the difficulty of making money in any retail environment these days—even developers with high-ranking games and applications have made far less than commonly thought. Many come nowhere near recouping their investment at all.

In almost a dozen interviews conducted by NEWSWEEK, Apple consultants and programmers jettison the idea that the App Store is a world of easy opportunity, or a fast track to quitting the rat race. Instead they describe an anxiety-wracked marketplace full of bewildering rules, long odds, and little sense of control over one's success or failure. "It's kind of a crapshoot," says Demeter, who spent the last two weekends partying in Las Vegas and New York. "I think we've reached a point where people are thinking I shouldn't quit my day job for this."

More than 125,000 programmers have flocked to write for the App Store, lured by its generous revenue-sharing deal, as well as Apple's feel-good promotional videos buttressed with motivational slogans ("Make This Your Year," "Come Code with the Pros"), blow-out conferences (Norah Jones performed at one this year), big-deal design awards that are covered throughout the tech world, and a download counter that calls to mind McDonald's boast of "100 BILLION served." Last month, Apple claimed to surpass the 2 billion mark. The App Store, as Greg Joswiak, Apple vice president of iPod and iPhone product marketing, said in a keynote address last spring, "levels the playing field and it makes it so the small guys can succeed as well."

But while the chance for success may indeed exist, the odds of triumphing are still pretty long, as David Barnard found out the hard way. Raised in a family of entrepreneurs, the 30-year-old Texan thought the App Store was an opportunity too big to miss. So in 2008 he borrowed $24,000 from his parents, set up a company, and built Trip Cubby, which logs driving miles and expenses for harried business people. The application garnered top-shelf reviews, a spot on Apple's "What's Hot" list, and earned Barnard more than $45,000 in revenue in less than three months. Then came the expenses: $29,000 for programmers, $15,000 living costs, $14,000 to Apple, $7,000 for marketing, $5,000 for legal and administrative services, $4,000 for logo and Web-site art, and $1,800 in loan repayment. By the time he was done, Barnard says, he was several thousand dollars in the red. "My wife and I ended up selling our car to get by," he says. Today, Barnard's follow-up app, Gas Cubby, which tracks fuel economy, is one of the most popular utility programs in the store, helping him earn more than $200,000 to date. "But we spent a hell of a lot of money to get there," he says. *(Editor's Note: $200,000 reflects Barnard's gross revenue, not including expenses that totaled "way more than 50 percent" of that figure and reduced his average hourly wage to around $10, he says.)

Despite the high costs, Barnard was one of the lucky ones. Most apps take at least six months of full-time work and cost between $20,000 and $150,000 to develop, according to Forrester Research, which covers the tech industry. Apple rejects almost 60 percent of submissions at least once, often—according to programmers—with little more than infuriatingly vague or inconsistent explanations. Of the 85,000 that have been accepted, only a few hundred sellers have much chance of supporting full-time work. "It's a lot like the music business," says Barnard, who left a job in record engineering to develop applications full time. "Some indie bands make money, but most don't. Most are not the Michael Jacksons and Madonnas of the world."

But even App Store equivalents of the King of Pop and the Material Girl are struggling. In 2009, Ethan Nicholas left a job with Sun Microsystems after making $800,000 in just five months with his simple artillery game called iShoot. Today, the App Store icon from North Carolina is himself staring down the barrel of a gun, struggling to produce another hit game after iShoot was buried by competitors and copycats. "It's terrifying," says Nicholas, who says he is "not a millionaire" and describes iShoot's success as "pure luck." Despite spending eight months and more than six figures developing a second shooting game to be released this month, he says that he is still "very worried about being a one-hit wonder."

Nathan Hunley is another programmer whose App Store success has not led to commensurate financial or emotional security. His Dizzy Bee game was one of the first 500 products in the App Store in July 2008, and like Demeter, he stars in an Apple promotional video. The opening scene, shot through a honey-glazed lens on the streets of Tokyo and scored with inspirational music, shows Hunley with a look of spalike tranquility on his face. But while developing for the iPhone has given him the flexibility to travel the world while working, it hasn't wiped away his worries. Despite a couple of top 50 hits, Nathan and his cofounder "still go from game to game" and question whether they can afford to continue selling. "We made enough to live, but not nearly as much as if we kept our jobs at a regular game company," he says by e-mail, adding: "We're far from calling ourselves 'app store millionaires.' "

So, it seems, are most other App Store developers. The iPhone's popularity means that mom-and-pop programmers must now compete with some of the world's biggest brands and game developers, many of whom have recently decided that the mobile market is too important to leave to the little guys. Half of the top 10 paid (as in not "free") apps of 2008 were produced by small developers, according to Forrester. Today, only one app in the top 10—RedLaser—was built by an independent developer. Jeff Powers and Vikas Reddy, the 20-something makers of RedLaser, a bar-code reader that makes instant online price comparisons, say that they are "still in the hole" despite more than $100,000 in revenue. "We've upgraded from Ramen Noodles to Cup O'Noodles, and pretty soon we'll be on to Campbell's," Powers likes to joke.

Anything more exciting than canned soup may be a long way off for most full-time developers. Over the past 18 months the average price of apps has crashed: now three out of four cost 99 cents or less, according to the tracking firm 148apps.biz, in part because the Big Brands offer their applications for free as marketing tools rather than as revenue streams. "Speaking as a small developer who's been releasing Mac software for over a decade, the App Store is broken," Gedeon Maheux, cofounder of the software company Iconfactory, wrote on his blog last month under the headline LOSING RELIGION.

Of course, Apple's loss is potentially its competitors' gain. Palm, Google, Microsoft, Nokia, and RIM, the makers of BlackBerry, have each launched software stores in recent months, and are welcoming disgruntled App Store programmers who want to swing their pick on a new mountain. Let the next gold rush begin.
http://www.newsweek.com/id/216788





BlackBerry, Upgraded, Aims to Suit Every User
Saul Hansell and Ian Austen

The Storm was supposed to be the smartphone that would keep Verizon Wireless customers from deserting to Apple’s iPhone, which runs on AT&T’s network.

Research In Motion, the company that created the BlackBerry phones that business users find so addictive, gave Verizon exclusive rights to sell its first touch-screen phone in order to reach the vast consumer market.

But the Storm failed to live up to its name. About a million devices were sold, so it was not a flop. But many customers and some reviewers found it buggy and hard to use.

Meanwhile, the iPhone’s allure grew with new versions and a rapidly growing catalog of applications.

This week, Verizon and R.I.M. are trying again with a Storm do-over, the Storm 2. Among its many improvements, the new phone gives the user the sensation of pushing a physical button when pressing a number on the glass touch screen.

Lowell C. McAdam, the chief executive of Verizon Wireless, has been carrying the revamped device for a few weeks, looking for any evidence that this time it will catch on. Mr. McAdam said that while he was recently visiting the Verizon store in New York’s SoHo district, he started talking to a couple of students from New York University who were shopping for cellphones.

“I let them play with the second-generation Storm device,” he said. “They came back and said ‘Oh, my gosh.’ They were very excited. This is what they hoped the original Storm should be.”

If enough people share that opinion, R.I.M. could finally have the hit with consumers it has long sought. The Canadian company remains the top seller of smartphones in North America (and second to Nokia worldwide). But Apple is catching up quickly, and a huge crop of new smartphones is heading to stores based on new operating systems from Microsoft and Google. Even Verizon is hedging its smartphone bets with a major deal to develop handsets based on Google’s Android operating system.

R.I.M. has been slow to develop touch-screen technology, and its BlackBerrys are sluggish at browsing the Internet, industry analysts say. And developers have written only about 2,000 applications to run on BlackBerrys, compared with 85,000 for the iPhone and 10,000 for Android phones.

Investors are increasingly worried that R.I.M. cannot keep up with the pace of innovation. R.I.M.’s shares plunged 17 percent in one day last month after the company reported slightly less revenue than analysts expected for the quarter that ended in August.

Analysts were also alarmed because the company said the average price it expected to get from phones sold to wireless carriers would fall to $320, from $350.

“Times are getting tougher for R.I.M. as they move more into the consumer space,” said Carolina Milanesi, an analyst for the Gartner Group. “There is a lot more competition, and consumers don’t care much about the security and other things they sell to enterprises.”

Jim Balsillie, R.I.M.’s co-chief executive, said in a recent interview that investors were misreading the most recent financial results. Prices are falling largely because the company is moving out its inventory of old models in preparation for the new versions of the Storm and the Bold, its top-of-the line, keyboard-based phone.

Moreover, since R.I.M.’s component costs are falling, profit margins are holding steady. “I have never felt more enthusiastic about our business,” he said.

Despite its consumer push, much of R.I.M.’s effort is still tilted to pleasing business customers. Mr. Balsillie said the company planned to shake up the market in November when it will open its private communication network, which will allow BlackBerry users to receive their e-mail and a constant flow of social network updates and entertainment content from other sources.

“The way people love the BlackBerry, e-mail is the way they will love doing a lot more with it,” Mr. Balsillie said.

R.I.M. has been written off many times before. Skeptics said that its first gadgets, which were little more than glorified pagers with keyboards, could not survive in a world of cellphones. Instead of failing, R.I.M. was the fastest-growing company in the world from 2006 through 2008, according to calculations by Fortune magazine.

R.I.M. was not hard hit by the recession, which has forced some of the big companies that have been the heart of its market to lay off workers. And R.I.M. was helped because BlackBerrys have started to become a family phone, too.

The company has also cut the manufacturing cost of BlackBerrys by using variations on its existing designs that have allowed retailers to sell the devices at prices matching much simpler phones. For example, the BlackBerry Curve, R.I.M.’s most popular phone, is offered at Wal-Mart for about $50 with a contract. About 80 percent of R.I.M.’s sales this year have been to consumers, not to employers.

Mike Lazaridis, R.I.M’s other co-chief executive, says that the low cost of BlackBerrys allows cellular carriers to make more profit from the BlackBerrys than from other touch-screen handsets.

“We help carriers be profitable,” he said. “We gave them a way to get into the data business. Now we are giving them a way to manage their costs when they are worried that all they have to sell is highly subsidized smartphones.”

Mr. Lazaridis said that R.I.M. was about to release version 5.0 of its BlackBerry software, which promises to be easier to use, with a better Internet browser and longer battery life.

Applications remain a weak point. Developers say it is harder to write programs for the BlackBerry, especially ones with spiffy graphics and multimedia features. “When you create an application for R.I.M., you have to put in 30 to 40 percent more effort to make it look like what it would look like on the Android or the iPhone,” said Walter Doyle, the chief executive of uLocate Communications, which makes applications to locate businesses on maps.

“Yes, it is a little more difficult to develop on R.I.M.,” Mr. Lazaridis said. The company is working on new tools that will speed the work of applications programmers. But to serve the needs of its big corporate clients, he said, applications will still have to comply with sometimes cumbersome security procedures.

“It’s not a free-for-all,” he said.

That security is a crucial selling point for many customers, including President Obama, probably the best-known BlackBerry user. Mr. Lazaridis says R.I.M.’s precautions protect everyone.

“You’re starting to do banking on your handset,” he said. “Which would you rather use: something that can be hacked in five minutes or something the F.B.I. uses?”
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/14/te...es/14rimm.html





Avoid Windows Malware: Bank on a Live CD
Brian Krebs

An investigative series I've been writing about organized cyber crime gangs stealing millions of dollars from small to mid-sized businesses has generated more than a few responses from business owners who were concerned about how best to protect themselves from this type of fraud.

The simplest, most cost-effective answer I know of? Don't use Microsoft Windows when accessing your bank account online.

I do not offer this recommendation lightly (and at the end of this column you'll find a link to another column wherein I explain an easy-to-use alternative). But I have interviewed dozens of victim companies that lost anywhere from $10,000 to $500,000 dollars because of a single malware infection. I have heard stories worthy of a screenplay about the myriad ways cyber crooks are evading nearly every security obstacle the banks put in their way.

But regardless of the methods used by the bank or the crooks, all of the attacks shared a single, undeniable common denominator: They succeeded because the bad guys were able to plant malicious software that gave them complete control over the victim's Windows computer.

Why is the operating system important? Virtually all of the data-stealing malware in circulation today is built to attack Windows systems, and will simply fail to run on non-Windows computers. Also, the Windows-based malware employed in each of these recent online attacks against businesses was so sophisticated that it made it extremely difficult for banks to tell the difference between a transaction initiated by their customers and a transfer set in motion by hackers who had hijacked that customer's PC.

The now-infamous hack against Bullitt County, Ky. illustrated how thieves use malware to defeat two of the major lines of defense commonly used by banks to thwart unauthorized activity. Many banks offer customers the option for so-called "dual controls" - requiring at least two authorized employees to sign off on any money transfers. In that attack, thieves used malware planted on the treasurer's system to effectively add themselves as an authorized approver of transactions.

Banks also often keep track of the Internet addresses used by their customers, and erect additional security measures when those customers access their online accounts via unfamiliar addresses or computers. In the case of Bullitt County and at least three other victims I've interviewed in the past three months, the attackers used their malicious software to route their connection to the bank's Web site by tunneling through the victim's own Internet address and computer.

Malicious software also is helping thieves defeat so-called two-factor authentication, which generally involves requiring online banking customers to enter something they have in addition to their user name and password, such as the code generated by a key fob that creates a new, six-digit number that changes every 30 seconds.

Over the past two months, I wrote about the plight of two companies that were victims of online bank fraud despite the fact that their banks required the use of these security tokens.

David Johnston, owner of Modesto, Calif. based Sign Designs, lost nearly $100,000 on July 23 due to Windows-based malware. Johnston's bank requires customers to enter the code from a Vasco security token. But the thieves - armed with malware on the company controller's PC - were able to intercept one of those codes when the controller tried to log in, and then delay the controller from logging in. Indeed, Johnston said the company's computer logs show that the controller logged into the system while the series of thefts was already in progress.

Thieves used the same approach to steal $447,000 from Ferma Corp., a demolition firm in Santa Maria, Calif. whose bank also required customers to enter a code from a security token.

I'm not the only one recommending commercial online banking customers consider accessing their accounts solely from non-Windows systems. The Financial Services Information Sharing and Analysis Center (FS-ISAC) - a industry group supported by some of the world's largest banks -- recently issued guidelines urging businesses to carry out all online banking activities form "a stand-alone, hardened and completely locked down computer system from where regular e-mail and Web browsing is not possible."

In direct response to this series reported and published by Security Fix, the SANS Technology Institute, a security research and education organization, challenged its students with creating a white paper to determine the most effective methods for small and mid-sized businesses to mitigate the threat from these types of attacks. Their conclusion? While there are multiple layers that of protection that businesses and banks could put in place, the cheapest and most foolproof solution is to use a read-only, bootable operating system, such as Knoppix, or Ubuntu.

Also known as "Live CDs," these are generally free, Linux-based operating systems that one can download and burn to a CD-Rom. The beauty of Live CD distributions is that they can be used to turn a Windows-based PC temporarily into a Linux computer, as Live CDs allow the user to boot into a Linux operating system without installing anything to the hard drive. Programs on a LiveCD are loaded into system memory, and any changes - such as browsing history or other activity -- are compeltely wiped away after the machine is shut down. To return to Windows, simply remove the Live CD from the drive and reboot.

More importantly, malware that is built to steal data from Windows-based systems won't load or work when the user is booting from LiveCD. Put simply: even if the Windows installation on the underlying hard drive is completely corrupted with a keystroke-logging virus or Trojan, that malware can't capture the victim's banking credentials if that user only transmits his or her credentials after booting up into one of these Live CDs.

The Arc of Steuben, a Bath N.Y.-based not-for-profit that provides care for developmentally disabled adults, has taken this advice to heart. In September, I wrote about how thieves had used malware to steal nearly $200,000 from the organization. Since then, the organization has restricted access to its online bank account to a Linux system on its network, according to an Oct. 1 report in the local Star Gazette.

"I would strongly recommend looking at whatever systems you're using if you're doing electronic banking," the Gazette quotes Bernie Burns, the Arc's executive director. "And if it is a Microsoft system, perhaps looking at something different."

Of course, a Mac computer would probably work just as well, but the focus here is on Windows users who may be looking for a cheap way to harden their existing setup to avoid malicious software.

If you've never used a Live CD and are interested in learning how, or if you just want to take a Linux operating system for a test drive, check out my tutorial on this topic here.
http://voices.washingtonpost.com/sec...e_bank_on.html





USA Today Likely to Fall To No. 2 in Circulation
Shira Ovide

USA Today, long the country's largest newspaper by weekday circulation, said Friday it had experienced a circulation decline, which is likely to knock it down to No. 2 when the next audited circulation figures are released on Oct. 26.

The Wall Street Journal, owned by News Corp., has recently been the nation's second-largest newspaper by circulation. Last year it reported circulation of just over two million weekday copies, based on the average for the six-month period ended September 2008. After USA Today's memo, the Journal said it is now the largest U.S. newspaper by weekday circulation.

USA Today, owned by Gannett Co., said it expects to report a decline in average weekday circulation of about 398,000 copies for the six months ended in September, compared with the six months ended September 2008. That would take circulation down to 1.9 million copies from 2.3 million, if measured by the most recent figures released by the Audit Bureau of Circulations.

The paper has been hit by a slowdown in business travel, which diminishes its historic strength in copies sold to hotels. In a memo Friday to employees, Publisher David Hunke said he expects the paper's circulation to rebound as the economy does.

Mr. Hunke, named publisher in April, said USA Today remains the country's top newspaper by total print circulation. The Journal's circulation as of September 2008 included nearly 356,000 subscribers to its Web site.

News of USA Today's circulation decline was reported earlier by Editor & Publisher.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB125513318195777441.html





Skype Sees Off One Patent Threat...
Joe Fay

Skype is claiming a victory in one of the many IP suits that are plaguing the P2P phone company at the moment.

Robert Miller, Skype's general counsel, said in a blog post the other day that the US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit had ruled in favour of Skype and sort-of-ex-parent eBay, over a brace of patents asserted by Peer Communications Group.

The Court of Appeals ruling affirmed a judgment from the District Court of the Eastern District of Texas, that the two patents were invalid, said Miller. The patents related, unsurprisingly, to peer-to-peer communications networks.

"We will always fight against allegations of patent infringement that lack merit and protect Skype's interests to the full extent necessary," Miller thundered.

Peer Communications is part of Acacia Research, a powerhouse of tech IP and related litigation.

But while Skype may have seen off this case, IP uncertainty still swirls around the VoIP platform.

eBay offloaded a majority stake in Skype last month and was promptly sued by Joltid, which is owned by Skype founders Janus Friis and Niklas Zennstrom.

The pair filed suit in Northern California US District Court over peer-to-peer technology included in Skype software, according to court documents, specifically the Global Index software. Friis and Zennstrom claim the technology fully belongs to them.

Just for good measure, Friis and Zennstrom are suing the former chairman of their web TV firm in a trade secrets spat.

It just makes you wonder why these people can't just talk things out. Maybe they've been using Skype.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/10...e_patent_spat/





Japanese Court Upholds Copyright

Producers' appeal nixed by Supreme Court
Mark Schilling

Japan's Supreme Court has nixed an appeal by two producers of DVDs accused of violating copyrights.

The DVDs in question are 12 titles from Akira Kurosawa and nine from Charlie Chaplin, all released before 1952.

The companies making the DVDs claimed that the copyrights for the pics had expired under the copyright law in effect until 1970, which provided protection for 33 years after the original release.

In 1971, however, the law was amended to extend copyright protection to 50 years post release.

The court ruled on Thursday that the pics fell under a provision of the older law that protected pics released under the primary creator's own name for 38 years after their deaths.

Since Kurosawa died in 1998, his pics are protected until 2036. Seven of the nine pics by Chaplin, who died in 1977, are protected until 2015. The remaining two are covered by the newer law, which extends protection even further.

The plaintiffs make and sell cheap DVDs of classic pics in outlets throughout Japan, including train stations and bookstores.

The ruling could have a large impact on the video market in Japan, which has been operating on the assumption that the date of release, not the death of a pic's helmer, should define the limit of copyright protection.
http://www.variety.com/article/VR111...goryid=19&cs=1





Packaged Media Rentals Increase

Blu-ray, Redbox fuel surge in spending
Marcy Magiera

If the lackluster economy this year has been good to one business, it's DVD rentals.

U.S. consumer spending on rentals of DVDs and Blu-ray discs surged 9.9% in the third quarter over the same period in 2008, according to Rentrak's Home Video Essentials, as consumers cocooned with inexpensive entertainment.

Rental spending across both formats and all retail channels hit $1.6 billion in the quarter, fueled by big gains in Blu-ray and the growing popularity of Redbox.

For the full year through September, overall rental spending is up 8.2% to $5 billion, according to Rentrak. Top rental titles for the third quarter included "Knowing," "I Love You, Man" and "Push."

But DVD sales are another story. Consumer spending on DVD and Blu-ray purchases fell 13.8% in the third quarter, Rentrak estimates.

Consumers spent more than $111 million renting Blu-ray discs through bricks-and-mortar and online outlets in the third quarter, 44.5% more than a year earlier. Year-to-date Blu-ray rentals are up 53.8% to $313 million, Rentrak reports.

"The widespread distribution of Blu-ray titles into the primary rental channel is supporting the rapid adoption of the format by consumers, greater than what we saw on DVD," Rentrak VP Brad Hackley said.

DVD rentals through traditional and online retailers are off 2.8% for the year to $4 billion.

Kiosk rentals such as Redbox still represent just about 14% of all rentals but have grown by more than 120% this year, as Redbox now has more than 17,000 kiosks in stores and Blockbuster and NCR gear up their kiosk joint venture.

Kiosks face new challenges in the fourth quarter, however, as 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment, Universal Studios Home Entertainment and Warner Home Video all impose a window for kiosks of four weeks or more after their titles' general release. The three studios combined represent about 40% of the rental business.

The studios are concerned that inexpensive kiosk rentals and the used DVD inventory they create cannibalize higher-margin revenue streams, particularly DVD sales.
http://www.variety.com/article/VR1118009763.html





Libraries and Readers Wade Into Digital Lending
Motoko Rich

Kate Lambert recalls using her library card just once or twice throughout her childhood. Now, she uses it several times a month.

The lure? Electronic books she can download to her laptop. Beginning earlier this year, Ms. Lambert, a 19-year-old community college student in New Port Richey, Fla., borrowed volumes in the “Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy” series, “The Lovely Bones” by Alice Sebold and a vampire novel by Laurell K. Hamilton, without ever visiting an actual branch.

“I can just go online and type my library card number in and look through all the books that they have,” said Ms. Lambert, who usually downloads from the comfort of her bedroom. And, she added, “It’s all for free.”

Eager to attract digitally savvy patrons and capitalize on the growing popularity of electronic readers, public libraries across the country are expanding collections of books that reside on servers rather than shelves.

The idea is to capture borrowers who might not otherwise use the library, as well as to give existing customers the opportunity to try new formats.

“People still think of libraries as old dusty books on shelves, and it’s a perception we’re always trying to fight,” said Michael Colford, the director of information technology at the Boston Public Library. “If we don’t provide this material for them, they are just going to stop using the library altogether.”

About 5,400 public libraries now offer e-books, as well as digitally downloadable audio books. The collections are still tiny compared with print troves. The New York Public Library, for example, has about 18,300 e-book titles, compared with 860,500 in circulating print titles, and purchases of digital books represent less than 1 percent of the library’s overall acquisition budget.

But circulation is expanding quickly. The number of checkouts has grown to more than 1 million so far this year from 607,275 in all of 2007, according to OverDrive, a large provider of e-books to public libraries. NetLibrary, another provider of e-books to about 5,000 public libraries and a division of OCLC, a nonprofit library service organization, has seen circulation of e-books and digital audio books rise 21 percent over the past year.

Together with the Google books settlement — which the parties are currently modifying to satisfy the objections of the Department of Justice and others — the expansion of e-books into libraries heralds a future in which more reading will be done digitally.

“As young people become used to reading virtually everything online,” said Paul LeClerc, president of the New York Public Library, “that is going to propel a change in terms of readership of e-books rather than readership of physical books.”

For now, the expansion will be slowed in part because, with few exceptions, e-books in public libraries cannot be read on Amazon’s Kindle, currently the best-selling electronic reader, or on Apple’s iPhone, which has rapidly become a popular device for reading e-books. Most library editions are compatible with the Sony Reader, computers and a handful of other mobile devices.

The bulk of digital books in libraries are treated like printed ones: only one borrower can check out an e-book at a time, and for popular titles, patrons must wait in line just as they do for physical books. After two to three weeks, the e-book automatically expires from a reader’s account.

But some publishers worry that the convenience of borrowing books electronically could ultimately cut into sales of print editions.

“I don’t have to get in my car, go to the library, look at the book, check it out,” said John Sargent, the chief executive of Macmillan, the publishing giant that owns imprints including Farrar, Straus & Giroux and St. Martin’s. “Instead, I’m sitting in the comfort of my living room and can say, ‘Oh, that looks interesting’ and download it.”

As digital collections grow, Mr. Sargent said he feared a world in which “pretty soon you’re not paying for anything.” In part because of such concerns, Macmillan does not allow its e-books to be offered in public libraries. The company publishes authors like Janet Evanovich, Augusten Burroughs and Jeffrey Eugenides.

Simon & Schuster, whose authors include Stephen King and Bob Woodward, has also refrained from distributing its e-books to public libraries. “We have not found a business model that works for us and our authors,” said Adam Rothberg, a spokesman.

For now, the advent of e-book borrowing has not threatened physical libraries by siphoning away visitors, because the recession has driven so many new users seeking free resources through library doors. And in some cases, few library patrons seem to know that e-book collections even exist.

In the Brooklyn Public Library system recently, eight people were waiting for three digital copies of “The Lost Symbol,” Dan Brown’s follow-up to “The Da Vinci Code,” while 715 people were waiting for 526 print copies.

Some librarians suggest that because digital books never wear out, take no shelf space and can be read by multiple people at the same time, the business model should be different than it is for print.

Pam Sandlian Smith, library director of the Rangeview Library District, which serves a suburban community north of Denver, said she would prefer to buy one copy of a digital book and pay a nominal licensing fee each time a patron downloaded it.

“It would help us with physical space, and we would be able to serve so many more people,” Ms. Smith said.

Publishers, inevitably, are nervous about allowing too much of their intellectual property to be offered free. Brian Murray, the chief executive of HarperCollins Publishers Worldwide, said Ms. Smith’s proposal was “not a sustainable model for publishers or authors.”

Some librarians object to the current pricing model because they often pay more for e-books than consumers who buy them on Amazon or in Sony’s online store. Publishers generally charge the same price for e-books as they do for print editions, but online retailers subsidize the sale price of best sellers by marking them down to $9.99.

“ ‘The Lost Symbol’ is $9.99 on the Sony Reader book page, and I just paid $29.99 for that for the library,” said Robin Bradford, the collection development librarian at the Indianapolis-Marion County Public Library. Ms. Bradford said she would consider buying additional digital copies if the price were lower. But “to buy nonphysical copies at the same price,” she said, “I just won’t do it.”

Academic publishers have been more willing to experiment with subscription models, inviting libraries to pay an annual fee for unlimited access to certain books. Scholastic Inc., the children’s book publisher, also offers library subscriptions to BookFlix, a collection of picture books that children can read online.

Steve Potash, the chief executive of OverDrive, said publishers should regard library e-books as a form of marketing. Many people who browse a library’s online catalog end up buying the books, he said, although he could provide no evidence of that.

Some publishers agree that library e-books, like print versions, can attract new customers. “We’ve always strongly believed that there is a conversion point where they do start to buy their own,” said Malle Vallik, the director of digital content at Harlequin Enterprises, the romance publisher.

In libraries, readers are attracted to free material. Nancy Gobel, a dental hygienist who already downloads digital audio books from her library in Indianapolis, said she currently buys print books. But she is considering purchasing an electronic reader so she can borrow them for free. “I would still continue to buy, but I would download as much as I can,” she said. In many cases, she said, buying “doesn’t make sense.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/15/bo...libraries.html





Book Trade Can Avoid Music Labels' Mistakes
Georgina Prodhan - Analysis

Book publishers are better equipped to ride the digital revolution than the music industry was a decade ago, using options for selling and enhancing their products that their counterparts at record labels lacked.

The book trade is on the brink of a sharp increase in demand for electronic books, driven by devices like Amazon's (AMZN.O: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz) Kindle and online distribution from Google (GOOG.O: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz) -- and it dreads following the music industry into years of decline.

But the different ways music and books are enjoyed, as well as the different stages the two industries have reached in their development, mean parallels are not necessarily useful.

At the Frankfurt Book Fair this week, representatives of both industries berated themselves for not acting faster and more decisively to defend their copyright and exploit new opportunities offered by the Internet.

"We have to act at once. We can't afford to observe, analyze, observe again," said Alexander Skipis, chief executive of Germany's book trade association, during a panel discussion entitled 'Learning from the Music Industry'.

The book-publishing industry certainly fears a spread of the digital piracy that some blame for the music labels' woes, with most consumers by now believing Web content equals free content.

But, by comparison, the book industry is far ahead of where the music industry was when online music-sharing site Napster burst onto the scene 10 years ago, paving the way for a multitude of illegal MP3 file-sharing sites.

At that time, Apple's (AAPL.O: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz) iTunes online music store -- still the world's most popular way for legally buying music online -- was still two years away, but the market was already ripe for music distribution via the Web.

By contrast, legal marketplaces for e-books are fast establishing themselves today, with 3 million e-readers expected to be sold in the United States this year.

On Thursday, Google (GOOG.O: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz) announced it was entering the fray with an online store for e-books accessible from any device with a Web browser.

Opportunities

Music industry revenues have been in decline in Europe since 2001 and are not expected to start growing again until 2011. According to Forrester, file-sharing is nearly four times more widespread than paid downloading among Europeans aged 16 to 19.

The European recorded-music market is now worth about 7 billion euros ($10 billion) a year, compared with almost 12 billion euros in 2001.

By contrast, book publisher revenues rose 1 percent in the United States last year to $40.3 billion, according to Book Industry Trends 2009.

In Frankfurt, at the world's biggest book fair, the mood is muted this year, with visitor and exhibitor numbers slightly down and many events -- including the Random House party that was the show's social highlight -- canceled.

But electronic book distribution does present opportunities -- such as allowing for reader feedback, selling advertising alongside texts, extras like author interviews, or releasing chapters of books, serial-style -- that print books do not.

Piracy

Even piracy, probably the industry's greatest fear as it gingerly moves online, may not be the threat it is made out to be, a study by Magellan Media consultancy presented at the book fair shows.

The study followed sales of 66 titles from publisher O'Reilly -- whose bestsellers include "iPhone, The Missing Manual" and "The Twitter Book" -- to monitor the effects of piracy on sales of physical and digital versions of those titles over a year.

It found that legal sales of the 21 titles that were pirated peaked after the piracy began -- suggesting that for certain niches of the market may actually benefit from piracy as a kind of free marketing.

Magellan concedes the sample size is too small for firm conclusions, and is seeking partners for a much bigger experiment.

"If it's helping you, or not hurting you, spending money on enforcement is an unnecessary cost," Brian O'Leary, a principal consultant at Magellan, told Reuters.

He added he considered comparisons with the music industry to be false. "There's a world of difference between a 15-hour commitment to reading a book and a 30-second song clip."

Consumer Wins

In the end, the consumer may not care.

The music industry in its day stoked fears that piracy would destroy the quality of recorded music: If the music labels did not earn enough revenue, they would not be able to nurture the talent enjoyed by so many, the argument ran.

Ten years on, music is enjoyed by many more people more cheaply than before, without a noticeable deterioration in quality -- despite threats by artists including British pop singer Lily Allen to quit because it is too hard to make money.
http://www.reuters.com/article/reute...59F17N20091016





What I’ve Earned (And Learned) From Writing “Beginning Ruby”
Peter Cooper

As the author of Beginning Ruby, I make money for every copy sold in print and electronic formats (as well as some miscellaneous income I’ll cover later). It’s not much money – but that wasn’t the motivation for writing the book.

In this post I’m going to show you how it all works from my point of view including sales figures, pictures of my royalty statements, information about my advance, and similar gruesome stuff. There’s even a section at the end about how Apress pissed me off a bit (though I don’t regret the experience with them) and why I’m happy with you pirating my book if you so choose.

The Advance

The “advance” is a sum of money you get from your publisher up-front while writing the book. Ostensibly the advance supports you while writing the book, but really it’s to ensure you get the book finished. For the first edition back in 2006 I got an advance of $6000. Apress gives you a third at a time at these points: 1) when three chapters are completed and approved, 2) when two thirds of the book is completed, and 3) when the manuscript is complete. So my $6000 was spread over about 9 months.

Note: Some non-writers make the mistake that an advance is a type of grant or bursary and that once the book is out, you earn more money per copy sold. The word “advance” is well chosen, because the payment is simply royalties in advance. So if you get a $1000 advance and make $1000 in royalties in the first year, you get no extra money. The royalties made once the book is actually selling “pay back” the advance you received earlier. The only advantage to you is that if your book bombs and doesn’t even sell enough copies to pay back the advance, you (usually) don’t have to give the publisher back a penny.

How Much Do I Get Per Book?

Print Copies

The retail price (RRP) of Beginning Ruby is $40 (give or take a penny) but my publisher, Apress, makes a varying amount per book – I don’t know why. An “average net price” is shown on my royalty statements but this fluctuates. It’s usually anywhere between $18.00-$19.00. Let’s say $18.50. Of this $18.50, I get:

10% ($1.85) for each of the first 4000 copies sold
12.5% ($2.31) on copies 4001-8000
15% ($2.77) on copies 8001-12000
17.5% ($3.23) on copies 12001-25000
20% ($3.70) thereafter

Note: If I promote the book with an affiliate link to Amazon.com and make 4% commission on their $26 sale, I can add another dollar per sale.

E-book / PDF Copies

Despite selling the e-book directly at $27.99, the net price for the e-book comes to about $18.00 overall. Since there are no printing or supply chain costs, though, you get double the royalties on e-books. If your print copies are currently earning a 10% royalty, say, you get 20% on the e-book sales. This means at the 10% mark, it’s $3.70 per e-book, $4.62 at the 12.5% level, $5.54 at the 15% level, and so on.

Sales Figures

As an introductory book to a programming language, Beginning Ruby has seen perennial sales – it’s not a time specific book (like, alas, 90%+ of Rails books). The biggest burst was around launch – as for most tech books – but the sales didn’t drop off significantly for the first edition over its lifespan. In 2 years (8 full quarters), 7673 paper copies and 486 e-books were sold. The sales in early 2009 boosted this up to approximately 8500 paper copies and 500 e-books total for the first edition, although the statements since 2008 are so hard to read I haven’t got an exact figure.

The second edition of Beginning Ruby was commissioned in late 2008 and came out in August 2009, so there are no sales figures for it at all yet. Once there are, I’ll be posting again. It’ll be interesting to see if the second edition experiences a similar burst to the first. Other Apress authors have suggested it will.

In the grand scheme of things, selling about 9000 copies of a technical book is neither cause for a great celebration or despair. The book easily paid back its advance in the first two quarters and it’s provided Apress with about $170,000 in net revenue over two years (of which about $19,000 has ended up with me).

Royalty Statements

The salient details have been given above but I want to show off some of Apress’s royalty statements. Back in 2007 they looked like this.

Note: You might appreciate seeing John Resig’s royalty statement for roughly the same period for Pro JavaScript Techniques. Somehow my book outsold his, but he got a better advance

I thought these statements were pretty cool. I couldn’t always figure out why the reserve was being calculated as it was or what the “licensed rights” were, but I could easily see how many copies I’d sold in both print and e-book format per quarter and had a good history and breakdown of my payment.

Note: See the 30% withholding in taxes at the bottom right? It turns out if you don’t identify as a US tax payer (and have the required number – which, alas, forces you to then file tax returns in the US), the US tax man will still steal 30% of your royalties (though oddly not your advances) to fund all sorts of nefarious nonsense. Luckily, if you’re in one of several countries with a tax treaty with the US at least, you can claim back some or all of the withheld tax from your local income tax. It’s not easy though.

In 2008 Apress implemented a new, supposedly better backoffice system, and now royalty statements are like thi.

Apologies for the image quality; I took it on my iPhone and Photoshopped it.

This statement turned up today and it merely covers some e-book sales that occurred in the gap between the first and second edition (which is why it only covers about 150 sales). So, it’s one of the simpler statements I’ve received but I still feel like a degree in steganography to figure it out. I get the jist, but they do crazy things like split a 12.5% royalty up into a section for the 10% and another for the 2.5%.. then you have “proportional ebook royalty” sections added on. You also get your “reserve” back after 18 months and when you add those in as well.. it’s a train wreck compared to the 2007-style statements. I know I’m not the only Apress author to feel this way.

Reserves

If you didn’t see the reference to “reserves” in the above royalty statements, scroll back up and check. Essentially you get a cut of your royalties hidden away for 18 months (technically “6 periods” – but since a period is a quarter, that’s 18 months) in order to pay for any “returns” – books that bookstores send back to the publisher which they can’t sell. In 2007 I believe – though I’m not sure – that I had $2200 of royalties taken away as reserves. I then got these amounts back sometime recently. Curiously, the taxes for these reserves were taken away back in 2007, so even though it was “income” US tax wise, the income didn’t materialize till 2009. This confuses me as much as I’m sure it would you.

Licensed Rights

On the royalty statements above, you should see references to “Licensed Rights.” My first editor told me that these are payments you receive for foreign versions of your book, for inclusion on systems like O’Reilly Safari, and “similar.” I’ve asked a couple of times now but I’ve never found out what these amounts are specifically for and I’m not aware of any translated editions of Beginning Ruby.

The Second Edition – A New Advance, and Royalties Go Back to 10%..

In late 2008, an editor at Apress – Michelle Lowman – got in touch with me about writing a second edition of Beginning Ruby. Since 2006, a number of library preferences had changed, URLs had changed, and there were quite a few updates or new sections to do (such as references to Ruby 1.9, new libraries, GUI development, and alternative Web frameworks).

Now, I wasn’t particularly keen on doing a second edition for a variety of reasons, but the Apress contract states that if you don’t, they have the right to do it without you, have someone else’s name slapped on the book, and, I believe, you get money taken out of your royalties to pay for various bits of extra work. Having my book pulled from under my feet didn’t sound appealing so I signed up to do it.

The weird thing about doing a second edition is that it’s not really treated as a “second edition.” Instead, it’s like an all new book. You get a new advance ($6500 in my case – $500 more than my first but significantly worse due to the USD-GBP rate at the time) and you have to go through all the same motions as with a new book. Your royalty rate and sales figures are even reset back to square one! So you’re straight back to a 10% royalty after clawing your way up to 15% after 8000+ sales. Ick.

The Free PDF Fiasco (or How Apress Really Pissed Me Off)

Since the money wasn’t too hot and I’m more interested in print sales anyway, I went into second edition negotiations with an insistence that the electronic/PDF version of the book could be freely available – as in beer, rather than speech. After all, the e-book’s sales were poor – the print edition outsold it 17 to 1 – and Apress had made a pitiful $7500ish over 2 years from it. Like Seth Godin and, well, hundreds of other authors, I believe free electronic copies can significantly increase mindshare and print sales. With a book like Beginning Ruby, the majority of readers want a print book, so it seemed a no-brainer to keep sales strong in a market with growing competition (from Manning, particularly).

I have no reason to believe my editor didn’t fight my corner, but whenever she took it to the meetings (where all the top Apress honchos decide what books to publish and how) she came back saying that the top brass weren’t keen. I begged and begged, wrote a couple of pleas, and offered to talk directly to these people to get my ideas across, but nope – nothing. The only compromise that was reached was that a couple of chapters could be released per month, separately – which is about as appealing to readers as getting a tenth of an orgasm at a time. Even this didn’t make it into my contract, and I did push on it.

Eventually the book was published in August 2009 and I have yet to see how it will sell. What really flipped my lid, though, was seeing other Apress books like Dive Into Python and Pro Git getting the treatment I wanted. You can read both of these awesome titles online, in full, for free. Offering electronic content for free to promote print book sales isn’t an alien concept to Apress so someone’s playing favorites over there.

Pirate My Book?

My reaction to seeing other Apress books getting the free, electronic version treatment is: I’m good with you pirating my book! Now, of course, I can’t actively participate in pirating my book but, heck, it’s around on plenty of “free e-book” sites and on RapidShare. There are even links on Twitter to torrents like this. I am happy for you to pirate my book, but I’m NOT A LAWYER, and I can’t guarantee what Apress would do about it – so you’d be doing it off your own back! So, uhm, don’t pirate it? The only condition, of course, if you do is that if you like the book and you think a print copy would be swell to own, please buy one – even if it’s just for someone you know who wants to learn to program!

Now, according to my contract, I own the copyright to the entire book except for the cover, table of contents, and the indexes. My contract also states that I have exclusively allowed Apress to publish and reproduce my content. So.. I suspect that if you took my book, removed the cover, contents and indexes, and turned it into a PDF with a cover of your own creation, Apress couldn’t do anything about it because everything would be my copyright. Now, I cannot allow you to do this, but I would not pursue you or enforce my copyrights if you did So, er, don’t do it!

Conclusions

As a way to become well known, to have something awesome for your résume, or to satisfy an ambition to “write a book and have it published”, writing a book and getting it published by a major publisher isn’t a bad way to spend your time. If a little fame and respect are all you want, one book is enough. If you want to earn a serious income from books, you need to pump out several books. That’s why most tech books seem to be by authors who’ve written a single book or many books (I seem to recall Knuth making that observation once).

I’d argue that unless you’re writing a very niche book (that’s unlikely to earn back its advance) or a book that’s likely to be extremely popular, you should avoid the major publishers and instead find a mid-sized publisher that can offer more attractive royalties. Advances look appealing but if your royalty rate sucks, it makes no difference unless you think you’ll never earn it back. Instead, look for a publisher like The Pragmatic Bookshelf that can offer you 50% royalties. Even if I’d sold only 2000 books for $18 net (versus 8500 at Apress), I’d have made the same money! The marketing that a publisher like Apress can provide doesn’t quadruple your sales, so you’d be ahead. Smaller publishers are also easier to talk to (from what I’ve heard) and you can negotiate better licensing deals with them.

I certainly couldn’t say I regret my Beginning Ruby experience, though. The above is all stuff I’ve learned because of this process and there’s a lot you don’t know as a no-book newbie. Getting even one book under your belt with a “regular” publisher can open your eyes and have a big effect on your way of thinking. I’ve also got to work with some really interesting people at Apress (most of whom who have, sadly, left or been fired in the big scaledown they did recently). The effect of Beginning Ruby has only been positive to me, even if it hasn’t gone as smoothly as I’ve wanted.. and it could certainly be worse than receiving random checks with indecipherable royalty statements every few months!
http://beginningruby.org/what-ive-earned-and-learned/





100 Years of Industry FUD

It's almost a truism in the tech world that copyright owners reflexively oppose new inventions that do (or might) disrupt existing business models. But how many techies actually know what rightsholders have said and written for the last hundred years on the subject?

The anxious rhetoric around new technology is really quite shocking in its vehemence, from claims that the player piano will destroy musical taste and the "national throat" to concerns that the VCR is like the "Boston strangler" to claims that only Hollywood's premier content could make the DTV transition a success. Most of it turned out to be absurd hyperbole, but it's interesting to see just how consistent the words and the fears remain across more than a century of innovation and a host of very different devices.

So here they are, in their own words—the copyright holders who demanded restrictions on player pianos, photocopiers, VCRs, home taping, DAT, MP3 players, Napster, the DVR, digital radio, and digital TV.

The gramophone and the player piano

In 1906, famous composer John Philip Sousa took to Appleton's Magazine to pen an essay decrying the latest piratical threat to his livelihood, to the entire body politic, and to "musical taste" itself. His concern? The player piano and the gramophone, which stripped the life from real, human, soulful live performances.

"From the days when the mathematical and mechanical were paramount in music, the struggle has been bitter and incessant for the sway of the emotional and the soulful," he wrote. "And now in this the twentieth century come these talking and playing machines and offer again to reduce the expression of music to a mathematical system of megaphones, wheels, cogs, disks, cylinders, and all manner of revolving things which are as like real art as the marble statue of Eve is like her beautiful living breathing daughters."

In fact, things were so bad that amateur music-making was threatened, something that could lead indirectly to the rampant sissification of the entire country. "Under such conditions," Sousa believed, "the tide of amateurism cannot but recede until there will be left only the mechanical device and the professional executant. Singing will no longer be a fine accomplishment; vocal exercises so important a factor in the curriculum of physical culture will be out of vogue. Then what of the national throat? Will it not weaken? What of the national chest? Will it not shrink?"

This sounds ridiculous, and in many ways it was. (Sousa opened the piece by admitting he might well be "reckoned an alarmist" on this topic.) But it wasn't completely crazy—recorded music did have an effect on the Victorian middle-class practice of singing songs around the piano for evening entertainment, and many Americans today don't sing regularly in groups at all unless they attend church or join a school choir.

Sousa's interest went beyond the "national throat and chest," though. What he really cared about was the rampant copying of his compositions for use of player pianos and other playback devices without any payment for the use of his work. "When I add to this that I myself and every other popular composer are victims of a serious infringement on our clear moral rights in our own work I but offer a second reason why the facts and conditions should be made clear to everyone alike in the interest of musical art and of fair play," he wrote.

His piece concluded, "Do they not realize that if the accredited composers who have come into vogue by reason of merit and labor are refused a just reward for their efforts a condition is almost sure to arise where all incentive to further creative work is lacking and compositions will no longer flow from their pens or where they will be compelled to refrain from publishing their compositions at all and control them in manuscript? What, then, of the playing and talking machines?"

Sousa was making the argument at the heart of copyright: that it promotes innovation, and that without any protection for works, many will never be created. Though player pianos didn't put an end to composition and gramophones certainly didn't put an end to music—indeed, we're lost in our own personal libraries today—Sousa's "alarmist" rhetoric about the effects of new technology continued throughout the twentieth century and into our own. Indeed, the rhetoric increased both in volume and apocalyptic fervor, even as copyright law granted ever more rights to creators.

Photocopiers

When technological innovation took off after World War II, new products like the photocopier quickly changed entire ways of doing business. By the 1970s, such devices had caught the attention of the increasingly well-organized and professional content industries, which routinely deployed lawyers or lobbyists (and often both) to address threats to their business models.

We are going to bleed and bleed and hemorrhage, unless this Congress at least protects one industry that is able to retrieve a surplus balance of trade and whose total future depends on its protection from the savagery and the ravages of this machine.

The photocopier, invented by Xerox, became a target. In 1972, Time quoted UCLA law professor Melville Nimmer as saying, "the day may not be far off when no one need purchase books" thanks to the sinister uses of the copier. But books were hard to copy, and the process cost money. Academic journals, though, were high-priced, had low subscriber bases, and were stuffed with easily copiable articles. The copier thus represented a particular threat to these publications, several of which filed lawsuits.

One of the most famous came from Williams & Wilkins, a medical journals publisher, who went after the US government for allowing or making photocopies of articles in journals at the National Library of Medicine and the National Institutes of Health. The worry was clear: no academic would subscribe to journals anymore, but simply copy relevant articles from library copies, thereby reducing the potential market for such journals even further.

The government claimed the use was fair "since no more than one copy was made in response to each request, that the copies were made in the interest of furthering research, and that the technique was simply a mechanical improvement on the long-accepted practice of hand-copying material." The courts agreed, within certain limits (though as anyone in academia knows the issue remains contentious especially as applied to course packs).
The VCR

The copier didn't destroy academic publishing or the book business, just as the player piano and gramophone failed to destroy music. But the rhetoric around new devices just kept spiraling further out of control. In 1982, when the movie and music businesses were engaged in a full court press to shut down the hot new VCR, the warnings about its sinister effects made Sousa sound like a wimp.

Chief movie lobbyist Jack Valenti appeared at a Congressional hearing on the VCR and famously went hog-wild. "This is more than a tidal wave. It is more than an avalanche. It is here," he warned after reciting VCR import statistics. "Now, that is where the problem is. You take the high risk, which means we must go by the aftermarkets to recoup our investments. If those aftermarkets are decimated, shrunken, collapsed because of what I am going to be explaining to you in a minute, because of the fact that the VCR is stripping those things clean, those markets clean of our profit potential, you are going to have devastation in this marketplace… We are going to bleed and bleed and hemorrhage, unless this Congress at least protects one industry that is able to retrieve a surplus balance of trade and whose total future depends on its protection from the savagery and the ravages of this machine."

I am one who has a belief that before the next few years the Japanese will have built into their machines an automatic situation that kills the commercial.

Blood, hemorrhage, devastation, avalanche, tidal wave, and—savagery? (Many of Valenti's comments stressed the "Japanese" nature of the VCR threat, since most devices were made there, giving his whole speech an unpleasant undertone.) But really, these comparisons were just the warmup. One lobbyist (rightly) contended that "the VCR is the greatest friend that the American film producer ever had," to which Valenti responded, "I say to you that the VCR is to the American film producer and the American public as the Boston strangler is to the woman home alone."

This wasn't just about film producers; even the American public was defenseless, alone, at the mercy of a throat-throttling invader who lurked outside in the night.

But Valenti's actual concern was far more pragmatic, much less sinister, and not really about the American public at all. He was worried about commercial skipping.

"86.8 percent of all these owners erase or skip commercials. I have here, Mr. Chairman, if you are not aware of how this works—this is [a] Panasonic. This is a little remote control device that you use on machines. It has on here channel, rewind, stop, fast forward, pause, fast advance, slow, up, down, and visual search, either going left or right…

"Now, what does that mean, Mr. Chairman? It means that when you are playing back a recording, which you made two days ago or whenever—you are playing it back. You are sitting in your home in your easy chair and here comes the commercial and it is right in the middle of a Clint Eastwood film and you don't want to be interrupted. So, what do you do? You pop this beta scan and a one-minute commercial disappears in two seconds."

When asked if that was "all bad," Valenti responded in his typically colorful way. "If you are watching a Clint Eastwood film it is the most cheerful thing you can do. However, if you are an advertiser who has paid $280,000 a minute to advertise, he feels a very large pain in his stomach as well as in his checkbook because it destroys the reason for free television, the erasure, the blotting out, the fast forwarding, the visual searching, the variable beta scans. The technology is there and I am one who has a belief that before the next few years the Japanese will have built into their machines an automatic situation that kills the commercial."

And that, in turn, meant the total death of free over-the-air television.

Analog cassettes, and then, DAT

Wikimedia Foundation

Free TV is still with us today, the VCR made billions for Hollywood, and no one was strangled, covered by an avalanche, or drowned beneath a tidal wave. But even as the VCR became a profit center both for Hollywood and the consumer electronics firms that made the devices, another threat loomed large—this time against the music industry. And once again, a famous rhetorical campaign attempted to argue that the analog cassette was literally destroying an entire industry.

That campaign was "Home Taping is Killing Music," and the music business worried that home recording from the radio and from friends' albums and cassettes spelled the end of making money with recorded music. The campaign even had its own logo, and it led to years of Congressional pressure, but music survived.
Thus, there is no personal use exemption, nor any fair use immunity for home taping. Contrary to the premise of the question, there is no distinction between commercial and home personal taping.

Later in the 1980s, the cassette threat diminished in importance as digital audio tape (DAT) appeared on the market. Capable of recording digitally, without the degradation that analog copies always suffer, pristine copies of recordings could be produced and traded infinitely without compromising the sound. Forget cassettes—it was DAT that was finally going to bury the music industry.

So the industry did what it always does: it innovated asked Congress to cripple the format. In 1987, RIAA President Jason Berman appeared before Congress to testify that "DAT poses the most significant technological threat the American music industry has ever faced."

"The studies, the market statistics, and economic analysis of the home taping problem vividly document home taping’s adverse effect on sales of records and prerecorded tapes," Berman added. "Thus, there is no personal use exemption, nor any fair use immunity for home taping. Contrary to the premise of the question, there is no distinction between commercial and home personal taping."

Initial attempts to ban and then cripple consumer DAT recorders failed, but in 1992 the music industry got Congress to pass the Audio Home Recording Act (AHRA), which mandated SCMS copy protection on DAT devices and slapped a levy on DAT tapes.
Digital music goes mainstream: MP3 players and Napster

In the 1990s, MP3 players were the new piracy threat, and the RIAA went to court against Diamond Multimedia in an effort to halt the sale of such devices. The issue went back to AHRA; was an MP3 player a covered device under the law, and did it therefore have to incorporate SCMS and collect royalties on each sale? According to the RIAA, MP3 players were covered under the law and did have to collect the royalty.

Without being able to control MP3 players, the RIAA argued, innovation would suffer. "Diamond's product Rio was destined to undermine the creation of a legitimate digital distribution marketplace," said RIAA head Hilary Rosen in 1998, "and as such we remain committed to working together with companies that make portable digital recording devices for music, so that everyone benefits."
We've come full circle here, as this is the inverse of Sousa; a new technology won't eliminate the amateurs, it will eliminate all the professionals and leave nothing but amateurs.

The RIAA initially won a temporary restraining order, but the litigation eventually went against it. MP3 players were not digital audio recording devices under AHRA, they were not required to use SCMS, and they did not need to collect royalties.

MP3 players were bad enough when it was still tough to get music off the Internet; once that became both quick and easy, a real problem developed. The music industry then turned its focus from the devices to the online services.

In 1999, the RIAA went to Napster. According to a Hilary Rosen press conference at the time, "We told them that we thought they had developed an interesting technology but that their business model was a violation of our member's copyrights. At the time they had a few thousand users. We suggested that they suspend the service and seek licenses in the same manner that all businesses that want to use copyrighted material are required to do when they start up. When they did not respond favorably we filed a lawsuit in December 1999."

Again, the service posed an existential threat to the "development of the legitimate online music market." Because of their interest in controlling that market, the labels had "been working diligently over the last two years to bring a new digital marketplace to consumers." The results were dismal; label-backed services PressPlay and MusicNet were clunky, ugly, and laden with DRM. In 2001, the Department of Justice began investigating whether the whole setup was being used for collusion, in order to gain access to sensitive pricing and contractual information, and in order to keep prices high.

After an important legal victory in the case, an RIAA press release quoted "Hound Dog" songwriter Mike Stoller, and the "death of an industry" rhetoric was trotted out once more. "Today I fear for the seventeen year old songwriter looking forward to a career in the music business," he said, "Napster.com and other companies like it are threatening not only to my retirement; they are jeopardizing the future of music itself. If Napster gets away with its thievery, it will turn that teenager's future livelihood into a mere hobby and in doing so, it will ensure that fewer and fewer talented individuals can afford to devote their efforts to expanding America's musical heritage."

We've come full circle here, as this is the inverse of Sousa; a new technology won't eliminate the amateurs, it will eliminate all the professionals and leave nothing but amateurs.

The DVR killed the video star

It's theft.

In 2002, as the digital video recorder began to creep into living rooms across America, worried TV execs wondered how to respond. Jamie Kellner, the CEO of Turner Broadcasting, knew exactly what the call the DVR and its easy commercial skipping: a tool for thieves.

In a Cableworld interview, Kellner ranted about ad skipping. "It's theft," he said. "Your contract with the network when you get the show is you're going to watch the spots. Otherwise you couldn't get the show on an ad-supported basis. Any time you skip a commercial or watch the button you're actually stealing the programming."

The comment was puzzling; had any American ever signed or agreed to such a contract? Furthermore, the interviewer pointed out that commercials have always been skipped: "What if you have to go to the bathroom or get up to get a Coke?"

Kellner was unmoved. "I guess there's a certain amount of tolerance for going to the bathroom. But if you formalize it and you create a device that skips certain second increments, you've got that only for one reason, unless you go to the bathroom for 30 seconds. They've done that just to make it easy for someone to skip a commercial."

The uneasy relationship with DVRs continued for years. In 2006, an ABC exec said that he would love nothing better than to shut down the fast-forward button on DVRs.

Radio and TV try to turn back the digital tide

In 2004, it was radio's turn to complain about digital. Going "digital" produced copies that were just too good, and something had to be done. As the industry began its shift to HD Radio, the RIAA objected to doing this without some sort of "broadcast flag" or device limitation that would make it illegal to sell certain devices—those that could read the artist information for each song, for instance, and build up an archive of digital music by that artist.

"We're in favor of HD radio," said the RIAA's Mitch Bainwol in a 2004 interview. "It offers great benefits for consumers and everyone involved, but we're not blind to several concerns. Someone could cherry-pick songs off a broadcast and fill up a personal library and then post it on Kazaa… We're concerned for ourselves and the artists. If you don't have protection, it undermines the future investment in music."

The same worries extended to HDTV, which was just too good to allow without a broadcast flag that could restrict further copying. Hollywood promptly innovated went to the government, demanding a TV broadcast flag. In addition, the studios wanted the FCC to mandate the TVs and recording devices sold in the US abide by the flag, essentially using the government to dictate technological specs (the same thing would be done with DRM for the new DVD format, but through private licensing rather than government fiat).

Rather amazingly, the FCC agreed to this in 2003. The agency was convinced by Hollywood's threat to not release any of its "high value" content for digital distribution without such protection.

"In this Report and Order, we conclude that the potential threat of mass indiscriminate redistribution will deter content owners from making high value digital content available through broadcasting outlets absent some content protection mechanism," wrote the FCC. "Although the threat of widespread indiscriminate retransmission of high value digital broadcast content is not imminent, it is forthcoming and preemptive action is needed to forestall any potential harm to the viability of over-the-air television."

And if you had any doubt that each content industry believes entirely in the "content is king" mantra, consider this line: "Supporters of a content protection system state that compelling digital broadcast programming is critical to the DTV transition and that such content is inherently at a greater risk of widespread redistribution as compared to its analog counterpart because digital media can be easily copied and distributed with little or no degradation in quality. Content owners and broadcasters uniformly assert that DTV broadcast content must be protected and that, in the absence of some protection mechanism, high value content will be withheld from broadcast television and migrate to pay services."

Not only did Hollywood make a threat to withhold content, it actually argued to the FCC that the DTV transition wouldn't work unless such content was available.

A federal court soon stomped all over this ruling, telling the FCC it couldn't dictate the way that devices would be designed just to please one industry.

Despite Hollywood's fear-mongering, the DTV transition went ahead successfully.

Conclusion

Content owners aren't always wrong to say they're being unfairly harmed (one thinks of writers like Dickens and Tolkien whose works were reprinted in the US withouth payment, though it did help fuel a lucrative lecture business for Dickens), and lobbyists and trade groups would be derelict if they didn't conjure up worst-case scenarios and try to keep them from happening. Unfortunately, though, as we look over the statements above, the total result of this resistance to new technology is clear: it limits (or attempts to limit) innovation.

Copyright expert William Patry put it strongly at the conclusion of his new book, Moral Panics and the Copyright Wars, writing, "I cannot think of a single significant innovation in either the creation or distribution of works of authorship that owes its origins to the copyright industries."

The great irony of these debates is that most new devices become popular only because buyers really want them, which means they open whole new markets that can then be monetized by rightsholders.
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/n...-own-words.ars





"New" Michael Jackson Single a "Mistake"

Michael Jackson didn't do it his way after all.

Hours after the pop singer's first posthumous single "This Is It" was released amid great hype on Monday, it emerged that the tune had been recorded 18 years ago by an obscure Puerto Rican singer.

Moreover the co-author of that tune, "My Way" songwriter Paul Anka, threatened to sue Jackson's estate for proper credit and his share of royalties.

The administrators of the estate quickly acknowledged Anka's claims and granted him 50 percent of the copyright, a potentially massive payday for the 68-year-old Canadian crooner. And an equally massive loss for the estate.

"They realize it's a mistake, they realize it's my song, they realize it's my production of his vocal in my studio and I am getting 50 percent of the whole project, actually, which is fair," Anka said in a video posted on the TMZ gossip Web site.

The song dates back to 1983, when it was known as "I Never Heard" -- a co-write between Jackson and Anka -- and intended for inclusion on an Anka album. But the pair fell out, Jackson took the master tapes and Anka got them back.

The song was eventually released in 1991 after Anka placed it with an unknown Latin singer named Sa-Fire.

Both "I Never Heard" and "This Is It" share the same vocal and piano line, although the latter track boasts new overdubs from Jackson's brothers.

But "This Is It" had been promoted as a new Jackson recording, one of a multitude of unreleased recordings likely to come out in the next few years.

It was released online around the world nearly four months after the singer died in Los Angeles of a prescription drug overdose at the age of 50.

Fans will be able to buy it when a two-disc album hits the shelves in two weeks to coincide with the October 28 worldwide release of the Jackson rehearsal-footage movie "This is It."

Lyrics Fit The Bill

"The song was picked because the lyrics were appropriate because of the name Michael gave his tour," said a spokesman for Jackson's estate. "We are thrilled to present this song in Michael's voice for the first time, and that Michael's fans have responded in unprecedented numbers. The song was co-written by the legendary Paul Anka."

A spokeswoman for Sony Music declined to comment. One of the estate's two administrators, John McClain, worked with Jackson at the Sony Corp unit. The other executor is music attorney John Branca.

McClain, who is also a co-producer of the "This is It" album, had said in a statement earlier on Monday that the song "only defines, once again, what the world already knows -- that Michael is one of God's greatest gifts."

Some critics begged to differ. Jon Pareles, the chief pop critic of The New York Times, said in a blog it "won't be on anyone's list of best Michael Jackson songs, even if it's a long list" and hoped there was something better in the Michael Jackson vaults of album outtakes.

The "This Is It" movie is based on rehearsal video shot in Los Angeles in the weeks before Jackson's planned 50 comeback concerts in London. It was the subject of a $60 million deal between Jackson's estate and closely held concert promoter AEG Live and Sony's Sony Pictures unit.

Sales of Jackson's records spiked after his death and the release of the movie and album will add to the value of the "Thriller" singer's estate, estimated at around $400 million.

Sony Music said the first disc of the album will feature some of Jackson's greatest hits plus two versions of the "new" single.

The second disc will include unreleased versions of some of the singer's classic tracks and a spoken word poem entitled "Planet Earth" performed by Jackson and never heard before.

(Reporting by Jill Serjeant and Dean Goodman; editing by Bill Trott)
http://www.reuters.com/article/enter...59B17I20091013





Schwarzenneger Signs New Anti-Paparazzi Law

Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger has signed an anti-paparazzi law that makes it easier for celebrities to fight back against photographers who invade their privacy.

Schwarzenegger signed an amendment Sunday to a decade-old law that allows fines against paparazzi who illegally or offensively take photos or recordings. The amendment allows celebrities to sue media outlets that pay for and make first use of material they knew was improperly obtained.

Tabloid magazines, TV shows and internet sites often pay millions of dollars for celebrity shots.

In 1998 Schwarzenegger had his car surrounded by paparazzi as he picked up his child from school. Many celebrities have been involved in car crashes they say were caused by aggressive photographers, In October, 2005, Lindsay Lohan suffered cuts and bruises whe she said her Mercedes was run off the road by paparazzi.

Just last week, actress Nicole Richie was rear-ended in Beverly Hills by a car driven by a paparazzo. The photographer, Eduardo Arrivebene, was arrested and charged with driving without a license.

The amendment takes effect January 1st, 2010.
http://www.ktla.com/news/landing/ktl...,3679358.story





Guardian Gagged from Reporting Parliament

The only fact the Guardian can report is that the case involves the London solicitors Carter-Ruck. Photograph: John D McHugh/AFP

The Guardian has been prevented from reporting parliamentary proceedings on legal grounds which appear to call into question privileges guaranteeing free speech established under the 1688 Bill of Rights.

Today's published Commons order papers contain a question to be answered by a minister later this week. The Guardian is prevented from identifying the MP who has asked the question, what the question is, which minister might answer it, or where the question is to be found.

The Guardian is also forbidden from telling its readers why the paper is prevented – for the first time in memory – from reporting parliament. Legal obstacles, which cannot be identified, involve proceedings, which cannot be mentioned, on behalf of a client who must remain secret.

The only fact the Guardian can report is that the case involves the London solicitors Carter-Ruck, who specialise in suing the media for clients, who include individuals or global corporations.

The Guardian has vowed urgently to go to court to overturn the gag on its reporting. The editor, Alan Rusbridger, said: "The media laws in this country increasingly place newspapers in a Kafkaesque world in which we cannot tell the public anything about information which is being suppressed, nor the proceedings which suppress it. It is doubly menacing when those restraints include the reporting of parliament itself."

The media lawyer Geoffrey Robertson QC said Lord Denning ruled in the 1970s that "whatever comments are made in parliament" can be reported in newspapers without fear of contempt.

He said: "Four rebel MPs asked questions giving the identity of 'Colonel B', granted anonymity by a judge on grounds of 'national security'. The DPP threatened the press might be prosecuted for contempt, but most published."

The right to report parliament was the subject of many struggles in the 18th century, with the MP and journalist John Wilkes fighting every authority – up to the king – over the right to keep the public informed. After Wilkes's battle, wrote the historian Robert Hargreaves, "it gradually became accepted that the public had a constitutional right to know what their elected representatives were up to".
http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2009...ing-parliament

The report and question that The Guardian is being gagged for - wikileaks to the rescue.





China Cracks Down on Tor Anonymity Network

A leading anonymity technology is targeted by the Chinese government for the first time.
David Talbot

For the first time, the Chinese government has attacked one of the best, most secure tools for surfing the Internet anonymously. The clampdown against the tool, called Tor, came in the days leading up to the 60th anniversary of China's "national day" on October 1. It is part of a growing trend in which repressive nations orchestrate massive clampdowns during politically sensitive periods, in addition to trying to maintain Internet firewalls year-round.
Credit: Technology Review

"It was the first time the Chinese government has ever even included Tor in any sort of censorship circumvention effort," says Andrew Lewman, the executive director of Tor Project, the nonprofit that maintains the Tor software and network. "They were so worried about October 1, they went to anything that could possibly circumvent their firewall and blocked it."

Tor is one of several systems that route data through intermediate computers called proxies, thereby circumventing government filters. To anyone watching Internet connections, the traffic then seems to be coming from the proxies. Tor provides stronger anonymity protection than most others, because it uses several such proxies and encrypts the Internet protocol (IP) addresses at each step. The downside is that Tor slows down Internet access considerably.

The potential for Tor's IP address to be blocked has always existed, especially since Tor Project publishes them openly in an online directory. Until late September, however, China never bothered to block it. Then, on September 25, Tor usage by Chinese citizens plunged from thousands of users (between 8,000 and 10,000 Tor requests from China were active at any given moment in the preceding days) to near zero. "Based on what we tested, it appears that they pulled the list on September 18, and it took until September 25 to get that into their firewall apparatus," says Lewman. On Tuesday, Tor Project published an analysis of China's effort.

The analysis found some good news. The use of workarounds called "bridges"--IP addresses of volunteer computers who have agreed to connect users to the otherwise-blocked Tor network--soared during the period, helping many Tor users back online. The distribution of these bridge addresses was coordinated through various instant-messaging services in China. While hard numbers were not available, Lewman says bridge use increased 70-fold.

The events of late September showed that China is stepping up its blocking efforts, said Wendy Seltzer, a law professor and research fellow at the University of Colorado who founded and developed the Chilling Effects Clearinghouse, a project to fight unjustified legal threats to the Internet. "Watching China step up blocking around nationally significant events shows the degree of control they are trying to exercise," added Seltzer, who is also an uncompensated member of Tor's board. "The experience helped to validate Tor's strategy of having lots of defenses in queue."

Tor is now working out ways to more efficiently and rapidly disseminate bridge addresses in the future, including via Twitter. "The issue is, obviously, that the Chinese government could also use Twitter to receive the bridges, and block those, too," adds Lewman. He is working on ways to time responses to such requests to make things more difficult for the government to block. "Writing the code is the easy part. The logic behind it--that's the hard part."

In 2006, the OpenNet Initiative--a research collaboration among several universities--reported filtering in 25 of 46 nations tested. In another forthcoming study, the OpenNet Initiative will report that these efforts are expanding, says Ronald Deibert, a political scientist and director of the Citizen Lab at the University of Toronto, one of the participating universities.

The trend of time-sensitive national crackdowns has increased in the past four years, Deibert says. "Often governments block access to information not as static or passive filtering walls, but rather at key moments in time when the information has most value, such as during public demonstrations, key historical events, or election periods," notably including, in recent months, the disputed Iranian election, he adds.
http://www.technologyreview.com/web/23736/page1/





[openmoko-announce] WikiReader
Sean Moss-Pultz sean at openmoko.com
Tue Oct 13 07:51:42 CEST 2009

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Dear Community!

Today, with the greatest of pleasure, I am ready to share with you the
birth of our third product -- WikiReader. Three simple buttons put
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WikiReader takes our original ideas of openness and accessibility to
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From the "Aha!" moment when we held our first prototypes, to the last
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Sales start today at http://thewikireader.com. Enjoy. Tell your
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http://lists.openmoko.org/pipermail/...er/000036.html





Computers Faster Only for 75 More Years

Physicists determine nature's limit to making faster processors.
Lauren Schenkman

With the speed of computers so regularly seeing dramatic increases in their processing speed, it seems that it shouldn't be too long before the machines become infinitely fast -- except they can't.

A pair of physicists has shown that computers have a speed limit as unbreakable as the speed of light. If processors continue to accelerate as they have in the past, we'll hit the wall of faster processing in less than a century.

Intel co-founder Gordon Moore predicted 40 years ago that manufacturers could double computing speed every two years or so by cramming ever-tinier transistors on a chip. His prediction became known as Moore's Law, and it has held true throughout the evolution of computers -- the fastest processor today beats out a ten-year-old competitor by a factor of about 30.

If components are to continue shrinking, physicists must eventually code bits of information onto ever smaller particles. Smaller means faster in the microelectronic world, but physicists Lev Levitin and Tommaso Toffoli at Boston University in Massachusetts, have slapped a speed limit on computing, no matter how small the components get.

"If we believe in Moore's laW ... then it would take about 75 to 80 years to achieve this quantum limit," Levitin said.

"No system can overcome that limit. It doesn't depend on the physical nature of the system or how it's implemented, what algorithm you use for computation … any choice of hardware and software," Levitin said. "This bound poses an absolute law of nature, just like the speed of light."

Scott Aaronson, an assistant professor of electrical engineering and computer science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, thought Levitin's estimate of 75 years extremely optimistic.

Moore's Law, he said, probably won't hold for more than 20 years.

In the early 1980s, Levitin singled out a quantum elementary operation, the most basic task a quantum computer could carry out. In a paper published today in the journal Physical Review Letters, Levitin and Toffoli present an equation for the minimum sliver of time it takes for this elementary operation to occur. This establishes the speed limit for all possible computers.

Using their equation, Levitin and Toffoli calculated that, for every unit of energy, a perfect quantum computer spits out ten quadrillion more operations each second than today's fastest processors.

"It's very important to try to establish a fundamental limit -- how far we can go using these resources," Levitin explained.

The physicists pointed out that technological barriers might slow down Moore's law as we approach this limit. Quantum computers, unlike electrical ones, can't handle "noise" -- a kink in a wire or a change in temperature can cause havoc. Overcoming this weakness to make quantum computing a reality will take time and more research.

As computer components are packed tighter and tighter together, companies are finding that the newer processors are getting hotter sooner than they are getting faster. Hence the recent trend in duo and quad-core processing; rather than build faster processors, manufacturers place them in tandem to keep the heat levels tolerable while computing
speeds shoot up. Scientists who need to churn through vast numbers of calculations might one day turn to superconducting computers cooled to drastically frigid temperatures. But even with these clever tactics, Levitin and Toffoli said, there's no getting past the fundamental speed limit.

Aaronson called it beautiful that such a limit exists.

"From a theorist's perspective, it's good to know that fundamental limits are there, sort of an absolute ceiling," he said. "You may say it's disappointing that we can't build infinitely fast computers, but as a picture of the world, if you have a theory of physics allows for
infinitely fast computation, there could be a problem with that theory."
http://www.insidescience.org/researc..._75_more_years





Sweden Loses its Internet Connection

The internet connection for the whole of Sweden went down for almost an hour when routine maintenance broke every single .se address.
Tom Chivers

At 9:45pm local time on Monday 12 October, every Swedish website went down, and no emails to or from Swedish domains could be received. Around 900,000 domains were affected.

The problem was caused by an “incorrectly configured script” in an update of the .se domain, according to Pingdom, a Swedish web monitoring company.

Apparently a single missing full stop at the end of the code meant that the Domain Name Systems (DNS) failed to recognise .se as the “top-level" (country-wide) domain.

The missing dot was not spotted during tests of the script. Once the software was running, surveillance systems noticed, and a new file created.

The new script was issued at 10:43pm local time. However, because the information on the old script was cached at internet service providers (ISPs), the web addresses remained broken until they flushed their systems. As many were outside Sweden and unaware of the problem, this may have taken some time.

Worse, because the .se system has a 24-hour delay before new scripts go live, some users may have been locked off the internet for a day or more.

It is not uncommon for single sites to have problems with their DNS, but it is enormously rare for an entire top-level domain to break.

Pingdom points out that, while it was bad enough for nearly a million Swedish domains to break, in a sense it was a lucky escape. If the same problem had struck the .com domain, more than 80 million domain names and all their dependent websites and email addresses would have been broken.

The Telegraph called the Swedish Embassy in London to ask for an estimate of the damage the problem caused to the country’s economy, but at the time of writing no-one was available to take the call.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worl...onnection.html





Sweden Passes Divisive Wiretapping Law

An amended version of Sweden's controversial new signals intelligence law was passed in the Riksdag on Wednesday, with 158 members voting in favour and 153 against.

Liberal Party member of parliament Camilla Lindberg abstained, making her the only MP from the governing centre-right coalition not to vote in favour of the law.

But the opposition was quick to announce that the last word had not yet been spoken on the issue. Anders Karlsson, chairman of the Social Democrats' parliamentary defence committee, said his party would rip up the law if voted into power at next year's election.

"We'll rip it up, redo it, and do it right," he said.

The law had been the focus of the autumn season's first parliamentary debate earlier in the day, as politicians once again argued over the amended bill.

"Are we really, in a democratic country, going to implement a system which entails wire tapping the masses?" the Left Party's Alice Åström asked her colleagues in the Riksdag, according to the Svenska Dagbladet (SvD) newspaper

The controversial law gives sweeping surveillance powers to Sweden’s National Defence Radio Establishment (Försvarets radioanstalt – FRA).

Despite extensive criticism from the public and the opposition parties, as well as a slew of internal challenges from prominent politicians in the centre-right Alliance government, the bill – referred to as the FRA-law – initially passed in June of last year.

An additional round of negotiations last September resulted in a number of amendments, including one calling for the creation of a special court which would rule on exactly what sort of cable-bound communications traffic FRA would be able to monitor.

While the changes were meant to assuage the FRA-law’s many critics, the government’s efforts to update the bill haven’t swayed everyone, including longstanding opponent and Riksdag member Camilla Lindberg of the Liberal Party (Folkpartiet).

“I’m all alone in my party and as far as I know there are no other centre-right parliamentarians who aren’t going to vote yes” to approve the amendments, Lindberg told the TT news agency ahead of Wednesday’s debate.

According to Anders Karlsson, the government isn’t interested in creating a just law, and has made no attempt to reach across party lines to develop a compromise that would satisfy political opponents.

“Personal privacy has been trampled in the name of political prestige,” he said.

The Green Party’s Peter Rådberg claimed the FRA-law was “one of the most important questions of our time”.

“The state is going to get unlimited power to monitor citizens' data traffic,” he warned.

Karin Enström of the Moderate Party countered that the opposition is trying to spread horrifying rumours about the government and the centre-right parties behind the proposal.

She said the opposition’s demand to appoint another commission to investigate the issue is simply a delay tactic meant to “bury the issue for several years”.

The law, which went into effect in January 2009, gives FRA -- a civilian agency despite its name -- the right to tap all cross-border internet and telephone communication.

Human rights organisations, politicians, the media and even the former head of the Swedish intelligence agency Säpo have vehemently criticised the legislation in both its original and amended form, citing fears of civil liberties violations and the creation of a "big brother" state.

Among other things, the amendment specifies that only the government and the military can ask FRA to carry out surveillance, that a special court must grant an authorisation for each case of monitoring, and that all raw material must be destroyed after one year.

It also limits eavesdropping to cases defined as "external military threats", "peacemaking or humanitarian efforts abroad", "international terrorism", and "development and proliferation of weapons of mass destruction", among others.

It also bars FRA from monitoring emails where both the senders and recipients are in Sweden, after critics pointed out that even emails sent between two people in Sweden can cross the border to be transmitted by servers located abroad.

Those who have been monitored must also be informed.
http://www.thelocal.se/22656/20091014

















Until next week,

- js.



















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