Peer-To-Peer News - The Week In Review - April 7th, '07

[JackSpratts]

"Things will never be the same." – Phil Leigh


"Comcast and I are not on speaking terms." – Frank Carreiro


"We don’t have to obey the laws of physics anymore." – Kevin Cunningham


"The major labels wanted to kill the single. Instead they killed the album. The [RIAA] wanted to kill Napster. Instead it killed the compact disc. They’re not fighting a war any more than the folks who put on Civil War regalia and re-enact the Battle of Gettysburg are." – Tony Sachs and Sal Nunziato


"These f*cking [RIAA] idiots are going after a campaign that the label signed off on." – Recording industry source


"Ironically, with its numerous pirated downloads available, the whole [NIN] album has not leaked yet. According to a source, the only leaks are the ones Reznor approved himself." – Michael Paoletta


"They said there wasn't a limit - for downloading - but that I was downloading too much, about 550 gigs [a month]. I backed off to about 450 gigs, but they still suspended us." – Cameron Smith


"The [copyright] rules for running it through your 3-D scanner are pretty much the same as running it through your photocopier." – Jessica Litman


"Josh gave up his freedom for 224 days because he believes that a free and independent press cannot exist without a trusting relationship between a journalist and his information sources." – Lucie Morillon


" 'What the Dead Know,' like the best books in this tradition, is doubly satisfying. You read it once just to move breathlessly toward the finale. Then you revisit it to marvel at how well Ms. Lippman pulled the wool over your eyes." – Janet Maslin


"The energy that reaches Earth from sunlight in one hour is more than that used by all human activities in one year." – Ashton Partridge


"April 7, 1969: Birth of That Thing We Call the Internet." – Tony Long





































April 7th, 2007






EMI Drops DRM
Jeff Leeds

EMI Group, the British music giant, broke ranks with the music industry’s biggest corporations yesterday by announcing a deal to sell songs online through Apple’s music service without copy protection.

The move by EMI, which ranks last among the four music companies in sales of new music in the United States, represents a significant change of course at a time when the music industry is straining to bolster digital sales as the business of selling the two-decade-old compact disc format continues to erode.

Like the industry’s other major companies, EMI, home to groups like the Rolling Stones and Korn, had long insisted on the sale of its music online with electronic locks to reduce piracy.

The shift means that consumers who buy music by EMI acts may have an easier time navigating the current jumble of incompatible software in the digital music world. Consumers who buy the unprotected music from the iTunes store will be able to play the music on a variety of devices — not just iPods — and be able to burn unlimited play lists of songs.

The unprotected music will come at a higher price, $1.29 a song, though Apple said the songs would have better sound quality. Standard-quality versions of the same songs, with copy protection, will still be available for 99 cents. But to entice more consumers to buy full albums, Apple will sell albums from EMI artists — without the antipiracy software and in the higher quality — for the regular price, which is generally $9.99.

Many analysts viewed the deal, announced in London by EMI’s chief, Eric L. Nicoli, and Apple’s chief, Steven P. Jobs, as a first step in a broader shift toward all music being sold without antipiracy software. Some expressed hope it could also jumpstart digital sales for the music industry. Since the start of the year, the slide in plastic CD sales has accelerated, down more than 20 percent, according to Nielsen SoundScan data.

“Things will never be the same,” said Phil Leigh, a senior analyst at Inside Digital Media, a Florida-based research company.

But others suggest that the partnership is a more isolated instance of two companies joining up amid overlapping agendas. EMI has been working to right itself after a management shake-up and a series of setbacks, including two profit warnings this year. Apple, for its part, has been trying to resolve complaints from European consumer advocates, who say its system should be made to work with rivals’ hardware and software.

Apple may yet have more headaches looming, however. European Commission officials confirmed yesterday that the company — and the major record companies — are facing an antitrust inquiry over the pricing of songs on the iTunes service.

Jonathan Todd, spokesman for Neelie Kroes, the European Union’s competition commissioner, said in Brussels that Apple and several of the major music companies, including EMI, Warner and Universal, were being investigated over concerns that the sale of music through iTunes flouts the union’s antitrust regulations.

Mr. Todd said the commission last week sent a formal “statement of objections” to Apple and the record companies contending that iTunes was breaching competition rules by preventing consumers in one country from downloading songs more cheaply from the Apple Internet store in another country. He said this violated antitrust rules because prices differed across the 27-member bloc, limiting consumer choice.

The use of copy protection software has meant in practice that songs purchased from iTunes can be played only on the company’s iPod. Apple has declined to share its proprietary protection software with competing companies, effectively locking them out of the iPod. As a result, some music labels have considered dropping their demand for protection software altogether to allow rival music services to sell music that could play on Apple’s device.

While some of EMI’s rivals have been testing sales of music in unprotected form, the company’s move did not appear to prompt any immediate retreat from antipiracy software. A spokesman for Warner Music Group declined to comment but referred back to comments made in February by the company’s chief executive, Edgar Bronfman Jr., who said, “There is no reason to conclude that music is the one content category that should not or cannot be protected simply because there is an unprotected legacy product available,” referring to CDs.

Representatives for the two bigger music companies — the Universal Music Group of Vivendi and Sony BMG, a partnership between Sony and Bertelsmann — declined to comment yesterday.

Mr. Jobs, however, was unequivocal in his prediction that the industry would eventually reduce its use of copy protection. He said that he expected more than half of the songs on iTunes would be available in unprotected versions by year’s end.

Apple executives predicted the new structure would lead to a surge in sales, but if it did not, the company might benefit by soothing tensions with European authorities. Critics ranging from Norway’s principal consumer rights group to lawmakers in France have taken Apple to task — and to court — for making music purchased from iTunes compatible only with the iPod.

Some of the Europeans most critical of Mr. Jobs and iTunes praised the move yesterday. “Today marks the beginning of a new era — an era where the entertainment industry works with the customer and not against them,” Torgeir Waterhouse, a senior adviser in Norway’s Consumer Council, said in a statement.

The music companies had resisted freeing up their digital tracks from restrictions because they were afraid consumers would make copious copies that would deprive the companies and their recording artists of revenue.

But peer-to-peer Internet services that freely trade music files have flourished anyway, with 5 billion downloads last year, compared with 509 million songs downloaded from official digital music services, according to NPD Group.

Mr. Nicoli said early market tests showed EMI that consumers overwhelmingly preferred to purchase tracks without copy protection, even at a higher cost. Unrestricted tracks outsold the others at a rate of 10 to one, Mr. Nicoli said.

Mr. Jobs emphasized how much the music labels had benefited from sales over iTunes. The service, he said, “has brought more than $1 billion in revenues to the record companies at no addition cost to them.”

To some in the music industry, though, EMI’s move only punctuated the fact that the industry has failed to build a more robust digital business after years of watching its sales base crumble.

“This appears to be the final acknowledgment on the record companies’ part that the guiding principles of their digital distribution strategies have been fundamentally flawed,” said Ken Hertz, a longtime music industry lawyer who represents artists including Beyoncé and the Black Eyed Peas.

Mr. Hertz said injecting higher prices into iTunes would drive more consumers to download music from unlicensed free services. “The consumer’s conscience, which is all we had left, that’s gone, too.”

Thomas Crampton contributed reporting.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/03/te...y/03music.html





Apple Stokes a Digital Music Standards War

Apple's recent deal with EMI to sell DRM-free songs from the publisher's catalog on iTunes may clinch the iPod's AAC format as the industry standard
Arik Hesseldahl

A few months ago I was at a big family dinner at Capsouto Frères, a fancy French bistro in Tribeca. One of the partygoers runs a small computer and electronics shop and considers himself an authority on computers and consumer electronics. His opinions on Apple (AAPL) and its products bug me (to put it simply).

I held my tongue as he chattered on about all the supposedly fascinating things he was doing with his Microsoft (MSFT) Windows machines. We barely know each other, and he had no idea what I write about for a living. But when the subject turned to the iPod, he gave me an opening I couldn't resist. "Oh those iPods," he said dismissively. "People are always bringing them into the shop with complaints, and they don't even play standard MP3 songs like all the others."

"Absolutely not true," I said, breaking my silence. "I don't know where you got that idea, but it's patently false."

A Popular Misconception

His convoluted explanation, as best I could understand it, was that he thought iPods played some "Apple-only" format, which he called ACC (it's actually AAC, as in Advanced Audio Coding, and it isn't "Apple-only"). I explained that the iPod plays every major digital audio format save two, Windows Media Audio (WMA) and Ogg Vorbis.

He had somehow gotten it into his head that all online music stores, save iTunes, sell MP3s on which there are no copy restrictions. Noting that he was vastly misinformed, I told him that in in fact no online music store sells unprotected MP3s—the exception being eMusic.com—while Napster (NAPS) and Yahoo! Music (YHOO), for instance, sell heavily protected WMA files, which are compatible with a wide range of portable players, but not the iPod. Where he got his set of ideas, I don't know.

I was reminded of our conversation earlier this week when Apple announced a deal with British recording label EMI Group (EMIPY) to sell music on iTunes that has been shorn of its digital rights management (DRM) copyright protections (see BusinessWeek.com, 4/3/07, "Will the Apple-EMI Deal End DRM?"). And guess what? The newly unprotected catalog of EMI songs (sans the Beatles, for now), which will sell for $1.29 a track, will be encoded as 256-kilobit AAC files.

Loosening the DRM Stranglehold

The accord marks a fundamental change in the digital music landscape, a feat Apple is pulling off with increasing regularity of late. If I were an employee of Microsoft and involved with its confusing digital-music efforts, built around its highly DRM-protected WMA format, I'd be sweating right now.

But one of the truly remarkable aspects of the pact is how Apple is pulling it off. Having floated the rhetorical trial balloon for selling unprotected music files via iTunes in his landmark essay "Thoughts on Music," Apple Chief Executive Steve Jobs in hindsight appears to have been deliberately ambiguous about the file format he preferred. It's now clear why. He didn't mean selling unprotected MP3s, but unprotected AAC songs. The decision will have important long-term effects, especially as more labels follow EMI's lead.

Using AAC is brilliant for several reasons. First, for Apple, whose stated market aim is to do everything in its power to sell more of its highly profitable iPods (and beginning in June, presumably profitable iPhones), the choice of AAC means more non-Apple devices will be able to play songs purchased on iTunes.

Before the EMI deal announcement, the AAC-formatted songs sold on iTunes were encoded in Apple's DRM technology called FairPlay (see BusinessWeek.com, 10/25/06, "Apple, Tear Down This Wall"). When FairPlay is no longer an obstacle, other players that support AAC can give their owners a ticket to the iTunes party.

Opening iTunes to New Players

AAC-format supporters include some notable names, including Microsoft's Zune. So come May, the 16 people who own one will be able to buy EMI tracks from iTunes and presumably play them on that device. Sony's (SNE) PlayStation Portable also supports the format, as do a few of its Walkman-branded MP3 players. I can find one player each from SanDisk (SNDK), Creative Technology (CREAF), and Sharp (SHCAY) that include AAC support. Palm (PALM) and Research In Motion (RIMM) both support AAC via software that runs on the Treo and BlackBerry Pearl smartphones. IPod sales, which are crucial to Apple's bottom line are unlikely to get much competition from these devices, as none are as good at the stripped-down interface, and none can touch the iPod's inherent status factor.

Having stripped the iPod-only restrictions, at least from the EMI catalog, on iTunes means there is even less shackling an iTunes customer to the iPod than before, which may help Apple fight off the antitrust complaints of European regulators.

But the real target is Microsoft. What we now have is a good old-fashioned standards war heating up, and it is pitting the old foes Apple and Microsoft against each other once again. Saying Apple has the upper hand is giving Microsoft more credit than it deserves.

Spurned Plays for Sure Partners

All of those companies that have been "partners" of Microsoft—Samsung, Creative, Archos, and SanDisk, to name a few—have been treated pretty poorly by Redmond recently. Before the Zune, Microsoft had a branding program called "PlaysForSure" that was intended to indicate wide-ranging compatibility. Buy a song on Napster, or Yahoo, or MTV Networks' (VIA) URGE, or any one of a score of other online music stores, and they were guaranteed to play on devices with the PlaysForSure brand. (Some people had another phrase for it, which I won't reproduce here, but the third word rhymed with "bit.")

Those partners were all left holding the bag as Microsoft walked away from PlaysForSure, when it launched the Zune and the companion Zune Marketplace. Now these same members of Microsoft's gang, at least those lucky enough to have players on the market that support AAC, will be only too proud to brag on their packaging that they are, at least in some limited way, compatible with iTunes.

In turn this will make Microsoft's WMA format—and all its expensive licensing terms—a lot less attractive. The next generation of non-Apple MP3 players heading to market will be notable for two things: AAC support, and maybe, just maybe, a lack of WMA support.

Finally, Compatibility

Online music stores, like Napster, Yahoo Music, URGE, and all the others that sell WMA songs will be forced to consider jumping into the DRM-free AAC camp, and thus become "iPod compatible," and in so doing become competitors of iTunes. Apple will no doubt be fine with the longer list of online music rivals, because in its range of priorities, anything that sells more iPods can only be a good thing. With time, practically all music stores will be selling iPod-compatible songs. This will be considered a Richter 10 event at Microsoft.

If more labels follow EMI's lead, and the other online music stores of the world are offered the same conditions on DRM-free music as Apple, Microsoft will have completely failed to corner the digital-music market, and by this time next year, there will be talk of it pulling the plug on its WMA-based efforts entirely. Or it will be forced by market forces to follow Apple's lead entirely rather than, as it has with the Zune and Zune Marketplace, copy it poorly. Think of it: Microsoft labeling its second Zune player as "compatible with iTunes."

All of this will of course, be lost on my annoying relative. But then, just as some people deserve Windows, they also deserve to remain oblivious.
http://www.businessweek.com/technolo...404_499334.htm





Microsoft Set to Unlock EMI Songs

The software giant is on the verge of a deal similar to Apple's with EMI to sell tracks without anti-piracy protection
Jonathan Richards

Microsoft has hinted that it may be close to reaching a deal with EMI to sell songs without anti-piracy protection via its Zune platform.

The comments from Jason Reindorp, head of marketing for Zune, come in the same week that EMI announced a deal with Apple to sell songs without the protection, known as ‘digital rights management’ (DRM), through iTunes stores.

Mr Reindorp said: “We've been saying for a while that we are aware that consumers want to have unprotected content.

“This does open things up a little bit. It potentially makes the competition more of a device-to-device or service-to-service basis, and will force the various services to really innovate.”

EMI declined to comment on the speculation, though it reiterated that iTunes was just one of a number of digital music stores from which it anticipated selling DRM-free tracks “in the coming weeks".

An EMI spokesman said: “Negotiations with other platforms, such as Zune, are ongoing.”

Zune, a competitor device to the iPod, which has not yet been released in the UK, is struggling to make inroads against the iPod, which retains about 70 per cent of the market for MP3 players, although Microsoft has said it is on target to sell 1 million Zunes by the middle of the year.

On Monday, EMI announced that customers would be able to buy premium quality tracks without DRM software attached from iTunes for 99p, while standard sound quality would still be available with DRM for 79p.

Those who have purchased standard tracks with DRM will be able to upgrade their music for 20p per track.

EMI’s decision – which will put pressure on other major labels to follow – was prompted by the disappointing growth in digital music sales, and complaints from customers that they could not play music bought from iTunes on other devices.

Several labels have experimented with removing DRM, which was implemented to prevent rampant copying, but EMI has been the first to make its entire online catalogue DRM-free.

Edgar Bronfman, the chief executive of Warner Music, has previously dismissed the argument to remove DRM as being “completely without logic or merit”.
http://business.timesonline.co.uk/to...cle1618585.ece





EU Launches Antitrust Probe Into iTunes

European Commission confirms it has opened antitrust probe into Apple's iTunes
Constant Brand

The European Commission confirmed Tuesday it had opened an antitrust probe into Apple's iTunes and the way it sells music online in coordination with major music companies.

The commission alleged distribution agreements Apple has signed with the record labels to sell their music on the iTunes online stores in EU countries "contain territorial sales restrictions which violate" EU competition rules.

People can only download singles or albums from the iTunes store in their country of residence, the commission said.

"Consumers are thus restricted in their choice of where to buy music and consequently what music is available, and at what price," it said in a statement. "For example, in order to buy a music download from the iTunes' Belgian online store a consumer must use a credit card issued by a bank with an address in Belgium."

Apple spokesman Steve Dowling said Monday the company wanted to operate a single store for all of Europe, but music labels and publishers said there were limits to the rights that could they could grant to Apple.

"We don't believe Apple did anything to violate EU law," he said. "We will continue to work with the EU to resolve this matter."

The cost of buying a single song across the 27-nation bloc varies among the available iTunes stores in EU nations.

For example, downloading a single in Britain costs $1.56, in Denmark $1.44, while in countries using the euro such as Germany and Belgium, a single costs $1.32.

The "statement of objections" EU regulators sent to Apple does not allege the Cupertino, Calif.-based company is in a dominant market position.

Apple has two months to answer questions issued in the letter, the commission said. If found guilty of violating EU competition rules, Apple could face hefty fines, which in theory could total up to 10 percent of the company's worldwide annual turnover.

The EU investigation comes amid moves by European consumer rights groups in Germany, France, the Netherlands and Nordic countries to force Apple to change the rules it imposes on its online music store customers.

The groups are demanding Apple lift limits preventing consumers from playing their downloads on digital players other than Apple's iPod. In February, Norway, which is not a member of the EU, declared those limits illegal and gave Apple until Oct. 1 to change its compatibility rules or face legal action and possible fines.

The EU investigation does not deal with these concerns, however.

Apple has said it is willing to open iTunes to players other than iPods if the world's major record labels moved to change their anti-piracy technology.

Apple and EMI announced a deal on Monday that would allow EMI's music to be sold on iTunes minus anti-piracy software that limits its use on some players. The move is expected to be watched and likely followed by other record labels.
http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/wireStory?id=3003016





Apple to Work With EU on Antritrust Charge
AP

Apple, accused by European Union regulators of restricting consumers' choices by forcing them to buy music from the iTunes online store in their country of residence, said Tuesday that it did not do anything wrong and would work to resolve the issue.

"Apple has always wanted to operate a single, pan-European iTunes store accessible by anyone from any member state, but we were advised by the music labels and publishers that there were certain legal limits to the rights they could grant us," Apple said in a statement. "We don't believe Apple did anything to violate EU law. We will continue to work with the EU to resolve this matter."

Universal Music Group, the world's largest record company, EMI and Warner Music Group said they had also been contacted by the EU.

Sony, the world's biggest maker of video-game console, cut the price of its PlayStation Portable a second time to attract younger players and win sales from Nintendo's DS hand-held player.

The suggested retail price will drop 15 percent to $169.99 from $199.99, the company said.

Sony has sold seven million PSPs in the United States, fewer than the 9.9 million DS units sold by Nintendo, according to the market researcher NPD Group. Nintendo cut the price of the DS player to $129.99 from $149.99 in August 2005.

Qualcomm filed additional patent infringement complaints against Nokia in two U.S. courts.

The lawsuits were filed in federal courts in Texas and Wisconsin, Qualcomm said in a statement. The Wisconsin suit concerns speech-encoder patents. The Texas suit concerns patents for downloading applications and other digital content over a wireless network.

Qualcomm previously filed two other patent infringement lawsuits in the U.S. against Nokia, based in Espoo, Finland. Similar cases are pending in Britain, France, Germany, Italy and China.

U.S. telephone companies have been told by the Federal Communications Commission that they must require customers to provide a password to access their records by telephone. The telecommunications industry's customer data policies attracted the FCC's scrutiny after the practice of impersonating a customer to access phone records was alleged during a scandal.

Greenpeace International placed Apple last in its rankings of major electronics makers for their environmental friendliness, while Chinese manufacturer Lenovo Group moved to the top of the list. The environmental group ranked 14 companies according to their efforts to limit the use of hazardous chemicals in production and in ensuring that goods that become broken or obsolete are recycled.

A Chinese Web site will offer what its producer describes as the country's first show to focus on gay issues and the first with an openly homosexual host. The weekly, hourlong Internet TV show "Tongxing Xianglian," or "Connecting Homosexuals," will debut Thursday on www.phoenixtv.com.

Comcast, the largest cable systems operator in the United States, said that it was buying a New Jersey cable operator for about $483 million in cash. Patriot Media is five years old. Its customers generate twice as much cash flow as the average subscriber, a Comcast spokeswoman said.
http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/04/.../techbrief.php





SoundExchange Files With CRB To Uphold Proposed Royalty Rates
FMQB

SoundExchange has filed with the Copyright Royalty Board (CRB) to oppose the motion to reconsider royalty rates for Internet broadcasters. The organization asks that the motions be dismissed, on the grounds that "no new material facts or fresh evidence has suddenly materialized to give the CRB valid reason to revisit its decision."

"Just because you don't like the outcome of a fairly played game doesn't mean you should ask the referee to order the game replayed," said John Simson, Executive Director of SoundExchange, in a statement. "Yes, Internet radio is important to the music community, but that doesn't mean that artists and record labels don't deserve fair compensation for their works."

Yesterday, NPR filed its own motion with the CRB, on behalf of itself and all its member stations, asking for a rehearing on the increased royalty rates.
http://fmqb.com/Article.asp?id=381405





Piracy Move on China Seen as Near
Edmund L. Andrews

After months of prodding China to crack down on pirated copies of American movies, music and software, the Bush administration appears ready to escalate the dispute into a legal confrontation.

In recent weeks, administration officials have strongly hinted that they are close to filing a formal trade complaint against China at the World Trade Organization, saying that China has failed to prosecute all but a small fraction of the ubiquitous and visible street trade in bootlegged American entertainment.

“The United States has made it clear that formal W.T.O. consultations will be necessary without concrete actions by China in this area,” the office of the United States trade representative warned this week in its annual trade report to Congress.

The administration went on to complain about “inadequate” enforcement of intellectual property rights — copyrights, patents and trademarks — in movies, music, books, pharmaceuticals, software and many other areas.

The China Copyright Alliance, an industry coalition that includes Hollywood studios, independent movie and television producers and the recording industry, has been pushing the administration for months to file a formal legal complaint. Administration officials have made it clear they are preparing to do so.

“We’re all going to run out of patience at some point, and that’s going to be sooner rather than later,” said Susan C. Schwab, the United States trade representative, in a speech on Feb. 22.

Bloomberg News, citing industry executives who said they had been briefed by the administration, said Ms. Schwab was likely to file two complaints against China as early as next week.

Sean Spicer, a spokesman for the trade representative, refused to comment on administration plans. But industry executives have been expecting a formal complaint.

“It’s a sign of growing impatience, including within the business community,” said William A. Reinsch, president of the National Council on Foreign Trade, an association that represents companies on international trade issues.

Industry executives said they had been waiting for the Bush administration to file two separate complaints. One addresses what American companies say is China’s reluctance to use criminal laws for people caught selling DVDs with pirated material on them.

A second complaint would be about expanding “market access” for American products in China.

If the United States files the twin actions, it would be the third time this year that the Bush administration has sought to pressure China for its trade practices, signaling a tougher policy after taking a largely conciliatory approach for six years.

On March 30, the United States announced it would reverse more than 20 years of practice and impose potentially steep tariffs on Chinese manufactured goods on the ground that China is illegally subsidizing some of its exports.

In February, the administration leveled a complaint with the world trade group that China subsidizes a number of industries in violation of trade rules.

The growing American trade deficit with China, which reached a record $232.5 billion last year, has been denounced by Democrats as the cause of hundreds of thousands of lost jobs. Many Democrats elected last fall campaigned for a tougher policy on trade with China, and Democrats have threatened to pass legislation to retaliate. Any new legal actions against China over intellectual property could be an effort to preempt those.

Chinese authorities have made moves in recent days to head off a legal confrontation. On March 26, China’s National Anti-Piracy and Pornography Office announced that it had raided a storage facility in Guangzhou, after receiving information from the Motion Picture Association, and seized what it said were about 1.6 million pirated copies of movies and television shows.

This week, the Chinese Embassy in Washington announced that China’s Supreme Court had issued a “new judicial interpretation” that would lower the threshold under which prosecutors are allowed to charge people under criminal laws against piracy.

Until this week, prosecutors could impose administrative penalties only on people caught with fewer than 1,000 illegal DVDs. Now the threshold will be just 500 DVDs

But those moves are not enough to satisfy the movie industry or the recording industry. Nor are they likely in themselves to make a serious dent in the open sales of bootlegged music and software. In big cities like Shanghai, vendors sell pirated goods along major thoroughfares like the Nanjing Road as well as along bridges, small roads and alleyways.

Dan Glickman, president of the Motion Picture Association of America, told a Congressional hearing in February that movie producers were worried that pirated copies of American movies would not only lead to lost sales in China but be exported around the world and even back to the United States.

“We have walked a long way down the China road, looking and hoping for improvement,” Mr. Glickman testified. “We may be nearing the end of that course and deciding on whether to take another.”

The broader issue is how China reacts to any legal complaint that the United States might bring. It is unclear whether the W.T.O. would agree with the United States, and it is even less clear what kind of punishments it would allow even if it did rule against China.

If the new complaints are filed, under the trade organization’s rules, the United States would formally ask for “consultations” with China. After 60 days, it would be allowed to ask for an independent panel of the World Trade Organization to consider the dispute. That process often takes years to complete.

David Barboza contributed reporting from Shanghai.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/07/bu...s/07trade.html





Chinese Police Seize Fake CDs, DVDs at Factory

Chinese police seized nearly 2 million fake CDs and DVDs when they raided a factory in the country's largest crackdown on entertainment industry pirates, the official New China News Agency said.

The high-tech operation could use 30 machines spread over 11 warehouses to churn out more than 300,000 fake discs in one night, the news agency quoted a top anti-piracy official as saying.

The factory was in Guangzhou, capital of southeastern Guangdong province, near Hong Kong.
http://www.latimes.com/technology/la...ck=2&cset=true





No tube for you

Thai Web Crackdown Blocks YouTube
Thomas Fuller

Thailand's military-appointed government has blocked access to YouTube and several other Internet sites in a crackdown on material that denigrates the country's monarch, officials said Wednesday.

"We have blocked YouTube because it contains a video insulting to our king," said Winai Yoosabai, head of the censorship unit at the Ministry of Communication and Information Technology.

Thailand's ban of the popular video-sharing Web site came after YouTube's owner, Google, refused to remove the video clip, the communications minister, Sitthichai Pookaiyaudom, said.

The clip, crude and amateurish and lasting less than a minute, depicts the king with a pair of feet being placed over his head, a highly insulting gesture in Thailand.

Insulting King Bhumibol Adulyadej is a serious criminal offense. Last week a Swiss man convicted of vandalizing images of the king and Queen Sirikit was sentenced to 10 years in prison.

Since the military government came to power with the overthrow last September of Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra, it has banned Web sites, instructed the news media to minimize reporting about Thaksin and has at times blacked out broadcasts of international news channels like CNN and the BBC. Reporting in newspapers remains lively and apparently uncensored, except for criticism of the monarchy.

Sitthichai told The Associated Press that the government will continue its crackdown. "It's not about freedom of expression," he said. People who create Web sites insulting the monarchy "are abusing their rights and clearly don't mean well for the country."

But the government also appears to have broadened its crackdown to sites critical of the September coup, including www.saturdayvoice.com, run by a group demanding that coup leaders transfer power to a democratically elected government.

For the technologically savvy in Thailand, accessing YouTube is still possible.

Users could bypass the ban by calling a dial-up number in a foreign country or using "anonymizer" Web sites that mask the underlying codes of the censored Web sites, said David Bicknell, a Bangkok-based telecommunications consultant.

Google, which is based in California, did not immediately respond to e-mail queries for comment.

Pornnapa Wongakanit contributed reporting from Bangkok.
http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/04/04/news/thai.php





Tokyo Requests YouTube Delete Candidates' Speeches

Tokyo's election commission Thursday asked the popular video sharing website YouTube to take off clips of candidates for the local governor's race, saying it gave some of them unfair advantages.

The election commission said it wanted to "ensure fairness" among candidates ahead of Sunday's election in the world's largest metropolis.

"We made the requests via e-mail and fax to the YouTube office in the United States," said commission official Hiroyoshi Yone.

"The site has allowed only certain candidates' speeches to be viewed freely on the site, with which we cannot ensure the fairness of the election," he said.

But the commission has not received any reply from the operator of the US website, he said.

Japanese election law limits the broadcasting of speeches, which are aired only on public broadcaster NHK.

Soon after the race kicked off last month, the speech by one fringe candidate, street musician Koichi Toyama, 36, has become a popular attraction on YouTube due to his eccentric, confrontational approach.

YouTube, which was bought in November by Google, has faced trouble in Japan before.

In February, it agreed to post a copyright infringement warning in Japanese under pressure from media and copyright protection bodies.

This week Thailand's military-installed government banned YouTube entirely after it failed to block a video considered insulting to King Bhumibol Adulyadej, a revered figure in the country.
http://www.physorg.com/news95008106.html





Turkey to Block 'Insulting' Web Sites
AP

A parliamentary commission approved a proposal Thursday allowing Turkey to block Web sites that are deemed insulting to the founder of modern Turkey, weeks after a Turkish court temporarily barred access to YouTube.

Parliament plans to vote on the proposal, though a date was not announced. The proposal indicates the discomfort that many Turks feel about Western-style freedom of expression, even though Turkey has been implementing widespread reforms in its bid to join the European Union.

On Thursday, lawmakers in the commission also debated whether the proposal should be widened to allow the Turkish Telecommunications Board to block access to any sites that question the principles of the Turkish secular system or the unity of the Turkish state -- a reference to Web sites with information on Kurdish rebels in Turkey.

It is illegal in Turkey to talk of breaking up the state or to insult Ataturk, the revered founder of modern Turkey whose image graces every denomination of currency and whose portrait hangs in nearly all government offices.

Ataturk is held to be responsible for creating a secular republic from the crumbling, Islamic Ottoman Empire.

Several prominent Turkish journalists and writers, including Nobel Prize winner Orhan Pamuk, have been tried for allegedly insulting Ataturk or for the crime of insulting "Turkishness."

European calls for free speech have angered some nationalist Turks, who view the recommendations as interference in their internal affairs.

Last month, Turkey blocked access to the popular video-sharing site YouTube after a complaint that some videos insulted Ataturk. The ban was lifted two days later.
http://www.cnn.com/2007/TECH/interne....ap/index.html





Forget YouTube: Go To These Sites If You Want Hard Core Copyright Infringing Content
Michael Arrington

YouTube is clearly the most popular video sharing site on the web. But limits on video length, DMCA takedown notices and billion dollar lawsuits have damaged YouTube’s ability to facilitate serious copyright infringement. The smaller guys are now stepping in to fill the void.

Full length copies of well known TV shows and/or movies are readily available on a number of YouTube competitors. Watch, for example, The Office on DailyMotion, Scrubs on GoFish, or SouthPark on Veoh.

And if searching for the shows on these sites is just too much work, there are other sites that aggregate and organize this content, and embed it on their own sites. Watch any episode from any of the 11 seasons of SouthPark on Allsp.com. And new site VideoHybrid is in a class of its own, with dozens of full length movies and virtually every popular TV show. VideoHybrid even give statistics showing exactly how many times copyrights have been violated.

Its not clear if the MPAA and networks just aren’t focusing on these smaller video sharing sites yet, or if DMCA notices are simply being ignored. These sites aren’t hiding out and trying to evade the law - they’re funded by well known venture capitalists and, in Veoh’s case, copyright holders. And GoFish is actually a public company.
http://www.techcrunch.com/2007/04/04...nging-content/





YouTube’s Favorite Clips
Dan Mitchell

ON YouTube, copyrighted video clips of movies and TV shows are far less popular compared with noncopyrighted material than previously thought, according to a new study.

On their face, the results could have serious implications for YouTube’s owner, Google, and the media companies, most notably Viacom, with which it has been negotiating. But not everyone agrees.

Vidmeter, which tracks the online video business, determined that the clips that were removed for copyright violations — most of them copyrighted by big media companies — comprise just 9 percent of all videos on the site. Even more surprising, the videos that have been removed make up just 6 percent of the total views (vidmeter.com).

Google is in negotiations with big media companies in hopes of reaching agreements that would allow YouTube to feature clips of movies and television shows. Viacom, owner of MTV Networks, is suing Google over the showing of copyrighted material like clips from “The Daily Show” and “South Park” on the site.

“This finding,” writes Henry Blodget on his Internet Outsider blog, “is the opposite of consensus, which assumes that Big Media videos account for a small percentage of total videos, but a large percentage of views.” It means, he adds, that Google has “a lot more leverage in the YouTube-Big Media negotiations than was commonly thought” (internetoutsider.com).

But the consensus might not have been so far off after all, writes Adario Strange on the Epicenter blog at Wired News (blog.wired.com/business). The study is flawed because it examined only those videos that YouTube removed after receiving a complaint from a copyright holder, he writes. It “fails to take into account the vast number of copyrighted videos that slip under the radar daily, existing on YouTube sometimes for months before any removal request is made.”

How large that number is, however, remains unknown. Far from this giving Google a leg up in its negotiating power, Mr. Strange says just the opposite may occur. “None of this will slow the Viacom lawsuit,” he writes. “In fact, the report’s finding may even bolster the company’s claims. Vidmeter found that Viacom was the leader in terms of pirated content on YouTube.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/07/te.../07online.html





Push Comes to Shove for Control of Web Video
Richard Siklos

FOR now, the biggest news in the exploding realm of online video is not much more than a news release. Still, the recent announcement from the News Corporation and NBC Universal of a new online video venture shows a big change in how traditional media companies are trying to confront their digital futures without looking like dinosaurs dodging comets.

At the same time, the companies’ tactics are a striking attempt to shift the old-fashioned way that most audiences have obtained their media into the wide-open digital maw.

Last year, Google’s acquisition of YouTube, the Internet’s most-visited video Web site, was a clear signal for media companies. Ever since, they have been scrambling to find ways to make money and to keep as much control as possible over their output.

YouTube, of course, has very little revenue right now, but its huge popularity and implied money-making potential were reflected in the $1.65 billion that Google paid for it. (And as far as proven Internet concepts go, media companies are not smitten by the economics of Apple’s iTunes, either, even though many networks including NBC and Fox, owned by the News Corporation, are selling shows on it.)

Inevitably, the control-hungry media giants have asked themselves these questions: Why should we let savvy intermediaries like Google or Apple hog the relationships with consumers or advertisers? And why should we allow them to create valuable new businesses in the process? NBC Universal and the News Corporation spent months trying to recruit other players like Viacom and Walt Disney to fight back, but they have set out alone, leaving an open invitation for others to join their merry band. They’ve agreed to pool all their video content on the Web to create what is effectively a syndication service that will distribute it to other established Web sites and through a new online site they plan to unveil this summer.

Neither the company’s name nor its management team is in place — details, shmetails — and clearly this gambit faces big hurdles when you consider both the track record of media joint ventures and big media companies’ ability to create breakout Internet plays.

But the big news from these strange bedfellows — NBC is owned by the square-jawed General Electric and the News Corporation pumps with the pulsing rebel heart of Rupert Murdoch — is that they have deals in place to distribute their video fare via four of the Web’s biggest destinations: AOL, Yahoo, Microsoft’s MSN, and MySpace, also owned by Mr. Murdoch’s company.

Most of the joint venture’s offerings will be current and past TV shows supported by advertising, though some content will be user-created clips and movies for paid download. It’s notable that the planned service intends to offer only TV shows that are already available via Web sites like NBC.com and Fox.com, and movies that can be downloaded elsewhere. Indeed, the Web is full of places to find TV shows — including sites like AllofTV.net and Alluc.org — and they can be viewed with no ads or distracting promotions.

So what’s the big deal? Advertising, apparently. Video is the fastest-growing segment of the fastest-growing medium — the Internet, of course — but online video grabs a tiny fragment of the $60 billion spent annually on broadcast and cable TV ads. Skeptics rightly point out that it is far from clear whether putting video onto the Web adds any revenue to the media companies’ coffers — although plenty of media executives swear that it does — or whether it will cannibalize TV viewing.

And while video is clearly the next big thing online, it is uncertain how much appetite there is for TV shows and movies on computer screens. Will the main attraction be existing fare distributed online, or new sources of original content like, say, the new video clips from The Onion, the satirical newspaper?

So let’s look at what this News/NBC venture is really about. It’s clearly trying to sop up advertising dollars by creating a one-stop shop for advertisers to buy shows they already know from companies they already know. It’s also about putting those shows and ads in front of a huge audience available at Web destinations where people already spend a lot of time, like AOL and Yahoo.

Mostly, though, it’s about the control and the split — the amount of money that the media companies get to keep versus what they will share with the big Web sites.

Several people involved in News/NBC say that 90 percent goes to the new company and 10 percent to the Web sites. News/NBC will have to share some of its take with the other media companies that provide their content to the service.

Media companies are also talking to YouTube about displaying their content. When the talk turns to revenue, the proposed split by YouTube, according to one media executive involved in such negotiations, is roughly 70 percent to the content owner and 30 percent to YouTube. (The executive requested anonymity because the talks are confidential.)

But more important than the cold numbers is Google’s insistence that it handle the ad business for video. YouTube has the image of a happy-go-lucky site where anyone can put up videos they like, but it has serious ambitions to take advantage of Google’s proven mastery of unobtrusive, relevant ads in text and make a few dollars in video.

It all comes down to control. The site’s terms of use warn users not to “post advertisements or solicitations of business.” That means that NBC and Fox, which want YouTube’s huge young audience, still post clips there but, for now, ad-free. (Certainly advertising does appear elsewhere on the site, including a product placement for chewing gum last week on the much-discussed Web drama, “lonelygirl15.”) In general, YouTube’s advertising game plan is a very different from Google’s core search business — roughly the equivalent of Google telling people that their Web pages will be included in its search results, but only if they contain no ads on them.

Most strikingly, the News/NBC venture represents a nod to the truisms that, even in the age of consumer choice, proximity matters and audiences are still sheep. For all the Web’s efforts at personalization, from bookmarks to RSS feeds to widgets, having these shows on AOL or Yahoo might still make a big difference in ensuring a broad audience. One Web executive who has worked on the new venture even coined a horrific new oxymoron when he summed up the strategy to me: “exclusive ubiquity.”

THAT’S no different from how media have been marketed and distributed for decades. Nothing makes a song a hit like radio play, nothing matters more to the success of a film than how it does on opening weekend, and nothing ensures the popularity of a new channel like where it sits on the cable dial. And who wins the nightly news ratings can be determined as much by the preceding shows on the schedule than the mix of the news or the anchor’s hair.

Putting your video where people will actually see it on the Web is the equivalent of basic cable distribution or a wide opening at the theater. At least that’s what the folks behind News/NBC are betting on, hoping that more big media companies will climb aboard and give the venture the heft to continue to dictate terms.

The only problem is that, for now, the two-year-old YouTube is far and away the most popular site for video online. And rival start-ups like Joost, from the guys who created Skype, are coming up fast. Clearly, the last breathless press release on the subject has yet to be written.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/01/bu.../01frenzy.html





Verizon Admits That Their Unlimited Data Plan is Limited to 5GB Per Month
Ryan

Back in August of 2006 I wrote about a guy who had his unlimited Verizon EVDO Wireless Data Service canceled because buried deep into the Terms of Service (TOS) they mentioned some things that were unacceptable. Some of these things included downloading/streaming music and videos…which is what the Internet is all about these days.

At the time Verizon didn’t explicitly state that their unlimited service really was limited, but I was looking at the service once again yesterday for someone and decided to see what the terms look like 7–months later. Now they explicitly come out and say that their unlimited plan can only be used for up to 5GB a month otherwise your usage will be considered unacceptable and your service will be terminated (the bold text points out the important things):

Unlimited Data Plans and Features (such as NationalAccess, BroadbandAccess, Push to Talk, and certain VZEmail services) may ONLY be used with wireless devices for the following purposes: (i) Internet browsing; (ii) email; and (iii) intranet access (including access to corporate intranets, email, and individual productivity applications like customer relationship management, sales force, and field service automation). The Unlimited Data Plans and Features MAY NOT be used for any other purpose. Examples of prohibited uses include, without limitation, the following: (i) continuous uploading, downloading or streaming of audio or video programming or games; (ii) server devices or host computer applications, including, but not limited to, Web camera posts or broadcasts, automatic data feeds, automated machine–to–machine connections or peer–to–peer (P2P) file sharing; or (iii) as a substitute or backup for private lines or dedicated data connections. This means, by way of example only, that checking email, surfing the Internet, downloading legally acquired songs, and/or visiting corporate intranets is permitted, but downloading movies using P2P file sharing services and/or redirecting television signals for viewing on laptops is prohibited. A person engaged in prohibited uses, continuously for one hour, could typically use 100 to 200 MBs, or, if engaged in prohibited uses for 10 hours a day, 7 days a week, could use more than 5 GBs in a month.

For individual use only and not for resale. We reserve the right to protect our network from harm, which may impact legitimate data flows. We reserve the right to limit throughput or amount of data transferred, and to deny or terminate service, without notice, to anyone we believe is using an Unlimited Data Plan or Feature in any manner prohibited above or whose usage adversely impacts our network or service levels. Anyone using more than 5 GB per line in a given month is presumed to be using the service in a manner prohibited above, and we reserve the right to immediately terminate the service of any such person without notice. We also reserve the right to terminate service upon expiration of Customer Agreement term.

So all the service is really good for is viewing websites and sending emails since you cannot download or upload anything. They say that sending emails is okay, but what about if you constantly have large attachments in your email which results in high bandwidth usage? Does that fall under the download/upload restriction that can terminate your account, or is that considered acceptable use since it is an email?

One of the other restrictions that they mention is that you must have another Internet service as well since you cannot use it as a substitute or backup of a dedicated Internet connection. Even if all you do is check emails for work, you must have another Internet connection as your primary source for access.

So why would anyone use the service? Many people use it because their employers pay for it, and I’m sure they never inform their employees about what they can and can’t do with it. For that reason, a lot of people are “inappropriately” using the service which is good news for Verizon because they can terminate your account whenever they want. I look at it as Verizon’s way to cover their own back since they can sell the service to as many people as they possibly can, and then when their network starts to see a pattern of overall heavy usage, they can just terminate the people who use their accounts the most. This will maximize their revenue while keeping the network usage to a minimum.

I definitely understand their reasoning for limiting the service to only 5GB of bandwidth per month, but what boggles my mind is how they can advertise this as unlimited when they explicitly say that any usage over 5GB will cause your account to be terminated?
http://tech.cybernetnews.com/2007/04...5gb-per-month/





Comcast Cuts Off Bandwidth Hogs

The telecom giant is warning customers to avoid excessive bandwidth consumption or risk being disconnected for up to a year.

Man your PCs. The bandwidth hogs are revolting and Comcast is the recipient of their virtual torches and pitchforks.

Customers across the country have been contacted by the telecom giant with a warning to curb excessive bandwidth consumption or risk a one-year service termination. Comcast, however, is refusing to reveal how much bandwidth use is allowed, making it impossible for customers to know if they are in danger of violating Comcast's limit.

The move has driven customers to sign up with other service providers.

"Comcast and I are not on speaking terms," said Frank Carreiro, a West Jordan, Utah resident who had his Internet service terminated by Comcast in January.

Carreiro said he received a message from a Comcast Security Assurance representative in December, who warned him that he was hogging too much of the company's bandwidth and needed to cut down. When Carreiro contacted customer service about the call, they had no idea what he was talking about and suggested it was a prank phone call. Unconvinced, Carreiro contacted Comcast several more times, but was again told there was no problem.

A month later, he woke up to a dead Internet connection. Customer service directed him to the Security Assurance division, which Carreiro said informed him he would now be without service for one year.

Carreiro said he told Security Assurance that customer service had cleared him of any wrongdoing, but Security Assurance reportedly told him that customer service is not kept abreast of bandwidth issues for security purposes. Comcast also refused to tell Carreiro how much bandwidth he would have been allowed to use to avoid service termination.

"It was a very frustrating experience," he said.

Carreiro has since switched to DSL service from Qwest, which became available in his neighborhood in late February. Again connected to the Web, he has taken his fight to the blogosphere with an online journal (http://comcastissue.blogspot.com) detailing his troubles.

Admitted "Internet junkie" and Chattanooga resident Cameron Smith also had his service cut off in January for one year. "They said there wasn't a limit - for downloading - but that I was downloading too much, about 550 gigs. I backed off to about 450 gigs, but they still suspended us."

Smith has since switched to DSL service from BellSouth AT&T. "I don't like it," he said, but it is the only other high-speed option available in Chattanooga and he refuses to ever return to Comcast again.

Smith also pondered the possibility of a class-action lawsuit against Comcast, but has been delayed by funding issues. "If I could afford it, then I would do it in a heartbeat because it's a bait-and-switch with their customer service," he said.

As of press time, repeated calls to Comcast were not returned, nor were messages left for Comcast Security Assurance or e-mails sent to that department's manager, Jay Opperman.

In a February statement regarding Carreiro's case, Comcast said that "customers who are notified of excessive usage typically consume more than 100 times the average national Comcast bandwidth usage" and apologized for "for any miscommunication that this customer may have received about this process."

What About the Others?

Several other top U.S. service providers admitted to monitoring network traffic and contacting bandwidth hogs, though none were aware of any customers who had actually been denied service.

"We do not disconnect customers," said Mark Harrad, senior vice president of corporate communications at Time Warner Cable. But the company does "employ various network-management tools to ensure excessively high users are not allowed to degrade the online experience of other customers."

Harrad said that "excessive use varies" depending on whether it is a peak traffic period, how many "top talkers" are online at the same time and what is occurring with regular network traffic patterns. "It is not so much an issue of exceeding a speed limit as a pattern of behavior over time," he maintained.

At Verizon, "it is in our terms and conditions that you cannot generate excessive amounts of Internet traffic and you cannot host any kind of server," said Bobbi Henson, director of media relations.

But Verizon does not have any "set measurements" on how much is too much, Henson said. "We look at it in the aggregate. We will monitor - the network - and if we see an issue, we'll try to rebalance the traffic before pulling a customer's service."

Henson is not aware of any incidents when Verizon has had to notify a customer about excessive use or cancel their service because of bandwidth issues.

Cox Communications provides data on its Web site ( www.cox.com/policy/limitations.asp ) about how much bandwidth a user is allowed to use under the company's three service plans.

"Cox does not spend a large amount of time enforcing byte caps, however, we do communicate with customers when their usage is so egregious as to impact the performance of the network for others," said David Grabert, director of media relations.

Having clear guidelines posted online "makes for fair and clear dialogue when issues arise," Grabert said.

Blame Video

Across the country, consumers are spending a significant amount of their time online viewing video content, according to a March report from the Consumer Electronics Association (CEA) that examined what users are doing with their bandwidth.

Of the more than 2,000 adults CEA surveyed in late 2006 and early 2007, researchers found that 70 percent were accessing content via online streams. Of that 70 percent, 49 percent connected to the Web for news content, 33 percent went online for movie downloads and 28 percent were gaming, the report said.

"Some of these people who are bandwidth hogs are - Comcast's - best broadband customers," said Adam Thierer, director of the Center for Digital Media Freedom at D.C. think tank Progress & Freedom Foundation. By angering this base, "you're just given your competitors a way to step in" and steal customers.

"What mystifies me is why no one is willing to propose tiered pricing" for broadband, he said. "Obviously, one potential reason is that it is wildly unpopular with people. There is something about the all-you-can-eat, buffet-style pricing that people just love. I think with broadband, we've just already become accustomed to the idea that is should be offered at a flat rate."

Update: Comcast sent us the following response soon after this article was published:

"More than 99.99% of our customers use the residential high-speed Internet service as intended, which includes downloading and sharing video, photos and other rich-media. Comcast has a responsibility to provide these customers with a superior experience, and to address any excessive or abusive activities usage issues that may adversely impact that experience."

"The customers who are notified of excessive use typically and repeatedly consume exponentially more bandwidth than an average residential user, which would include, for example, the equivalent of sending 256,000 photos a month, or sending 13 million e-mails every month (or 18,000 emails every hour, every day, all month). In these rare instances, Comcast's policy is to proactively contact the customer via phone to work with them and address the issue or help them select a more appropriate commercial-grade Comcast product."
http://www.physorg.com/news94981460.html





For AT&T Chief, Nagging Questions About Broadband Strategy
Matt Richtel

Edward Whitacre Jr., the chairman and chief executive of AT&T, is captivating several hundred employees in an Atlanta auditorium with a pep talk about the rosy future of the world's largest telephone company. His demeanor is commanding, but cut with a practiced avuncular charm.

Then he opens the floor to questions and, for just an instant, is tripped up. The first question, from a man near the front row, is about whether AT&T's much-debated strategy for deploying broadband on the cheap will give consumers what they need.

Whitacre begins to answer, pauses, chooses another path, then stops and smiles. "Where did you get this question?" he finally responds, feigning exasperation with fine comedic timing, prompting an eruption of appreciative laughter.

It is a moment that sums up the new state of affairs for Whitacre and AT&T. In December, the company closed on an $86 billion acquisition of BellSouth, capping a string of multibillion-dollar takeover deals, and leaving the company ready and needing to compete through execution, not acquisition.

Wall Street is thus far charmed, having endorsed the acquisition strategy by sending the stock on a steady two-year rise to $39 from around $20. And Whitacre, never a shrinking violet, has the swagger of a man whose grand plan has worked.

But there are nagging questions. Is AT&T's broadband strategy flawed? Is its foray into television in shambles and destined for failure? Has the revenue growth from acquisition obscured more fundamental, underlying vulnerabilities?

"Mr. Whitacre is a very, very smart man," said Dave Burstein, editor of DSL Prime, an online newsletter that follows the broadband industry. "He knows what he's doing. He's making good short-term decisions, and risking the long run."

Whitacre has plenty of promoters, who credit him with transforming Southwestern Bell, the smallest of the seven Bells when he took it over in 1990, into SBC, the telecommunications giant that swallowed AT&T and took its name. For his part, the 65-year-old Whitacre - a native Texan and company man who started as a facilities engineer with Southwestern Bell in 1963 - says the heaviest lifting may at last be done.

"I've always been trying to put all the pieces together," he said. "We've got them now." The drama for AT&T is what happens now that it has all those pieces in place, and now that it seems, at last, Whitacre is sated.

In late 2005, a year before the company closed on the BellSouth deal, it completed the $16 billion acquisition of AT&T. A year before that, Cingular Wireless, jointly owned by SBC and BellSouth, closed on a $41 billion acquisition of AT&T Wireless. In the late 1990s, Whitacre's company acquired Pacific Telesis, Southern New England Telecommunications and Ameritech.

The new AT&T has 66.5 million land-based telephone lines, 61 million wireless subscribers and 12 million broadband lines. It sells local phone service in 22 states and has 302,000 employees. AT&T's $245.5 billion market capitalization by far surpasses that of the next largest phone company, China Mobile, at $170 billion, and is double that of the nearest American competitor, Verizon Communications, at $109.6 billion.

But there is potential downside for AT&T, too, analysts said, particularly when it comes to its closely linked broadband and television strategies. Some analysts say that AT&T has set itself up poorly to compete in those areas, which are considered essential to the telecommunications product bundle.

In the case of TV, the strategy is called U-verse, and it entails delivering programming over the Internet. But the service has been plagued by delays and glitches and, even now, takes, on average, more than six hours to install in a home.

"If it cannot be called a complete failure, it's at least struggling," said Phillip Swann, president and publisher of TVPredictions.com, a Web site that tracks the television technology industry. He said that if things did not pick up soon, AT&T might have to get back into the acquisition game to buy a TV distributor, like a satellite or cable company. Whitacre declines to comment about such a purchase. But he and other executives say that U-verse needs a chance to flourish and, they say, it is an essential piece of the company's overall strategy.

The television initiative is tied in closely with AT&T's strategy for deploying a high-speed fiber optic network, which will deliver the TV programming. That strategy is called "fiber to the node" because it brings high-speed fiber optic cables within 4,000 feet of individual homes. Then it delivers the last part of the digital signal over conventional copper wires.

That strategy stands in contrast to "fiber to the premises," a strategy being pursued by Verizon, which entails connecting fiber optic cables directly to individual residences.

Verizon's version of fiber to the premises allows it to give customers data speeds of 100 megabits, while AT&T's can deliver around 25 megabits. On the other hand, AT&T's concept is projected to cost $5.1 billion - $15 billion less than it says it would cost to lay fiber to the premises. The question of which strategy is ultimately superior depends on how much bandwidth customers will need in the future.

"It's an outstanding question for everybody in the industry," said John Stankey, the president of the network operations support group at AT&T. "The question for us is whether we're investing enough. The thing I go home thinking about at night is: What is the amount of bandwidth the customer is going to need in the future?"

For Whitacre, the answer is that AT&T's strategy is the right one, unequivocally.

It's a "no-brainer," he said. He asserts that as technology improves, AT&T will be able to increase its speeds from 25 megabits without facing the expense of laying fiber to every household. "I have no doubt that the bandwidth will be plenty large," he said.

Eric Dash contributed reporting.
http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/03/27/business/att.php





City Opposes AT&T Cabinets

Danbury says phone company's new equipment is a safety hazard
Mark Langlois

Danbury is joining Bridgeport and Stamford to fight AT&T's installation of hundreds of metal cabinets on city telephone poles across the state.

The cabinets -- an estimated total of 60 in Danbury, 60 in Stamford, and 150 in Bridgeport -- are being attached to telephone poles next to city sidewalks.

They are part of a $336 million expansion of the company's equipment so it can start offering television services.

The cabinets are hung at pedestrian-level, and city officials say they may be a safety hazard to walkers and bicyclists using the sidewalks. They may also block the view of passing motorists.

"I have a bad feeling about it," said Liz Shannon of Danbury, who owns a house with other family members at 29 Coal Pit Hill Road in Danbury. The three-family house is next to the Lions Way intersection.

A cabinet was installed on a telephone pole between Shannon's house and Lions Way. "We think it creates a possible traffic problem," she said. "It's bigger than we thought it would be."

The cabinets measure about 25 by 61 by 55 inches.

"You've got some very sharp edges here," said Public Works director Antonio Iadarola, inspecting a cabinet on Rose Hill Avenue near Beaver Street.

The cabinet narrows the walkway on Rose Hill because it blocks 18 inches of the sidewalk on one side, Iadarola said, and the telephone guy wire blocks the other side. That leaves only about 57 inches for people to walk through.

Iadarola said when he contacted AT&T about this, senior counsel George Moreira told the city in a legal memo that the state Department of Public Works is in charge of AT&T and it doesn't give any city the right to control these installations.

Moreira couldn't be reached for comment Monday.

Seth Bloom, a spokesman with AT&T, said the company wants to work with cities and towns to find alternatives if the pole AT&T picks creates a hazard.

"This is the first rollout across the country," Bloom said. "This will be full TV to compete with the cable television providers."

Bloom said the rollout will take several years to complete, but the service will be offered on a limited basis later this year.

Danbury wasn't given a chance to discuss the installation of the cabinets with AT&T before they put them in, Iadarola said, and he suggested a simple step like walking the site with someone from AT&T might have led the company to pick different poles and create a safer situation.

City sidewalks have been broken during the installations, and the city is liable for injuries caused by the boxes once they're installed.

"We're always liable, because it's in our right of way," Iadarola said.

Iadarola said every other utility, such as Connecticut Light & Power, Yankee Gas and others, tell the city when it's coming to town, and that gives the city time to makes arrangements for traffic control, pedestrian detours and other safety precautions.

"We had a sidewalk blocked by a backhoe on the corner of Sandpit and Germantown Road when they installed the cabinet there," said Fran Lollie, permit inspector with Public Works.

"We had a lady complain, and who blames her? She couldn't use the sidewalk. Who wants to walk downhill on Sandpit?"

Iadarola is cooperating with public works officials in Bridgeport and Stamford, who have similar worries. Danbury plans to hire a lawyer to work with those cities to fight how the cabinets are being installed.

The appropriation will be discussed at the Common Council meeting tonight.

"We have the same problems," said Melanie Howlett, associate city attorney for Bridgeport, where the same size boxes on the same kind of telephone poles are appearing along sidewalks.

Howlett said she wouldn't discuss the strategy for fighting the cabinets because it is pending litigation. She also said she worked for the state Department of Public Utility Control for 14 years.

"I believe if you have a problem with a regulated industry, you go see the regulators," Howlett said.
http://www.newstimeslive.com/news/story.php?id=1042265





Online Odyssey Stoking Interest In New NIN Album
Michael Paoletta

Trent Reznor could have just given a few interviews to explain Nine Inch Nails' new album, "Year Zero." But instead, he's utilizing a multifaceted Internet scavenger hunt, and in some cases, his own rabid fans, to help gradually build the story of the project, due April 17 via Nothing/Interscope.

Dystopian, apocalyptic themes are pervasive on the album, echoing topics the group has explored since 1989's classic "Pretty Hate Machine." Neither Reznor, his manager nor Interscope reps would speak to Billboard about the campaign, which has encompassed everything from cryptic phrases on T-shirts to Orwellian Web sites to MP3s found on USB drives in bathrooms at NIN concerts. But a source with knowledge of the project says Reznor may very well perceive it all not as a marketing campaign, but as "a new entertainment form."

Indeed, the source says the campaign forms the body of the "Year Zero" experience: "It is the CD booklet come to life. It precedes the concept album and the tour. And it will continue for the next 18 months, with peaks and valleys. No one has assembled the full story yet. The new media is creating the story as it goes."

"Year Zero" came to life in early February when Web-savvy fans discovered that highlighted letters inside words on a NIN tour T-shirt spelled out "I am trying to believe." Savvy fans added a ".com" to the five words and, voila, located a thought-provoking, eerie Web site. Other associated sites created by 42 Entertainment, where a dark future reigns supreme, were soon discovered. Within days, the blogosphere was rich with anxious NIN fans sharing their experiences on message boards.

According to one post, a male fan, allegedly by happenstance, found a USB drive in a bathroom stall during a NIN concert at the Coliseum in Lisbon, Portugal. This flash drive (yes, Reznor's idea) contained an MP3 of album track "My Violent Heart." Additional USB drives were purportedly found in Barcelona and Manchester, England; they included MP3s of album tracks "Me, I'm Not" and "In This Twilight," respectively.

Excited fans then began swapping and sharing these music files online. Another Web posting alleged that all this activity resulted in entertainment blog Idolator and other sites receiving e-mail from the Recording Industry Association of America, demanding that they remove the MP3s from their sites. An RIAA representative confirms this, a move that boggles the minds of many. "These f*cking idiots are going after a campaign that the label signed off on," the source says.

Ironically, with its numerous pirated downloads available, the whole album has not leaked yet. According to a source, the only leaks are the ones Reznor approved himself. And whether he realizes it or not, Reznor may be building a new option for presenting music that augments the existing CD/tour scenario. "It's not about slapping something on top of an existing experience," the source says. "It must be its own entity. Make the experience as immersive as possible for fans."
http://www.billboard.com/bbcom/news/..._id=1003565585


Ironically x 2 – Pirates will out: The whole album has leaked and is being traded in its entirety. – Jack





Of note

Is 'Making Available' Copyright Infringement?
Ray Beckerman

In 2003, the Recording Industry Association of America began a massive litigation campaign on behalf of the four major record companies against end users of peer-to-peer file-sharing programs, alleging widespread infringement of their sound recording copyrights. Somewhere in the neighborhood of 20,000-25,000 suits have been brought to date, with hundreds of new complaints filed monthly.

While at first blush this battle might appear to be a simple fight between record companies and some alleged music file-sharers, it is actually much more significant because the litigation campaign rests upon a legal argument about the Copyright Act that, if accepted, would represent a major expansion of the present boundaries of U.S. copyright law. This theory could have an enormous impact on the Internet as we know it.

The argument is that even if a defendant has never copied or distributed a file illegally, the fact that he or she possesses a computer with a shared-files folder on it that contains copyrighted files "made available" over an Internet connection, this in and of itself constitutes infringement of the "distribution" rights of the sound recording copyright holder under Section 106(3) of the Copyright Act.

A motion to dismiss in the case, Elektra v. Barker, 05 CV 7340, scheduled to be argued Jan. 26 in the Southern District of New York, might represent either the death knell of this theory or the enthronement of it as a binding rule of law.

RIAA Research Behind Claims
The roots of the "making available" issue lie not in the RIAA lawyers' draftsmanship skills but in the limited investigation upon which the lawsuits are predicated. The RIAA's research begins and ends with its investigator, Tom Mizzone, who works for "antipiracy" company MediaSentry. Armed with proprietary software, Mizzone uses a pretextual P2P file-sharing account on Kazaa, Gnutella, iMesh, LimeWire and other P2P software providers to locate shared-file folders that contain recordings whose copyrights are owned by the Big Four.

Mizzone takes a screenshot, downloads a few of the songs and, through another proprietary process, determines the dynamic IP address assigned to the screenshot. Then the RIAA, armed with a court order, goes to the Internet service provider to get the name and address of the owner of the Internet-access account to which the dynamic IP address had been assigned at the time the screenshot was taken.

The RIAA then closes its investigation and simply sues the owner of the account identified by the ISP.

In its complaints, which are virtually identical in all 20,000-plus cases, it alleges, in conclusory terms, that the defendant is using an "online digital distribution system" to "download, distribute and/or make available for distribution" plaintiffs' recordings.

Since it does not know of any downloads or distributions, the RIAA can allege none except in conclusory terms. The one thing plaintiffs can allege with specificity is, in essence, "Here is a list of songs that someone with your Internet account was making available at a certain time and date."

The Players, the Arguments
The defendant in Barker is a Bronx nursing student. She moved to dismiss the complaint for failure to state a claim under Fed. R. Civ. P. 12(b)(6), arguing chiefly that the complaint failed with respect to "downloading" and "distributing" because it does not allege any specific acts of downloading or distributing. (The motion cites Marvullo v. Gruner & Jahr, 105 F.Supp.2d 225, 230 (S.D.N.Y. 2000); DiMaggio v. International Sports Ltd., 1998 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 13468 (S.D.N.Y. 1998); Brought to Life Music, Inc. v. MCA Records, Inc., 2003 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 1967 (S.D.N.Y. 2003); Lindsay v. The Wrecked and Abandoned Vessel R.M.S. Titanic, 1999 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 15837(S.D.N.Y. 1999); and Stampone v. Stahl, 2005 WL 1694073 (D.N.J. 2005).)

In addition, the motion argues that merely "making available," without actual dissemination, is not a copyright infringement. (Barker cites Arista Records, Inc. v. MP3Board, Inc., 2002 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 16165 (S.D.N.Y. 2002); National Car Rental System, Inc. v. Computer Associates International, Inc., 991 F.2d 426, 434 (8th Cir. 1993) (citing 2 Nimmer on Copyright § 8.11[A], at 8-124); and In re Napster, Inc., 377 F.Supp.2d 796, 802 (N.D.Cal. 2005).)

The RIAA, in opposition, argues that "making available" would indeed constitute a violation of plaintiffs' right to "distribute" granted by 17 USC 106(3), relying chiefly upon the decision of the U.S. 4th Circuit Court of Appeals in Hotaling v. Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, 118 F.3d 199 (1997), in which a chain of libraries had distributed a number of concededly unauthorized copies of the subject work to its various branches and included them in card catalogs, but kept no circulation records, thus making it impossible for plaintiff to prove actual dissemination.

In reply, Barker distinguished Hotaling as being limited to its unusual set of facts.

Upon learning of the RIAA's argument that merely "making available" is in and of itself a copyright infringement, several organizations sought, and were granted, leave to file amicus curiae briefs in support of Barker's motion.

The Computer & Communications Industry Assn. and U.S. Internet Industry Assn. filed a joint amicus brief arguing that the "distribution" right set forth in the Copyright Act is a specific, defined term and that the RIAA's proposed expansion would, if adopted by the court, "sweep into the reach of copyright law many activities not now covered by copyright law," making the boundaries of the distribution right "indeterminate and unpredictable, creating chilling effects on members of amici and virtually every other participant on the Internet."

As an example, they argued: "Companies routinely include in their Web pages hyperlinks that enable persons to navigate easily to other sites throughout the Web by use of browser software. Indeed, the Web is a collection of hyperlinks. Even though the use of hyperlinks makes content located elsewhere available to a Web user, it does not constitute a distribution of that content under section 106(3)."

The Electronic Frontier Foundation also submitted an amicus brief in support of Barker's motion, emphasizing an entirely different argument. EFF essentially assumed, for purposes of argument, that the complaint had adequately alleged Internet transmissions, and it argued that the "distribution right," as opposed to other rights under the Copyright Act, can never be implicated by mere ephemeral transmissions but relates solely to the dissemination of physical, tangible, material "copies" and "phonorecords." Picking up on the question raised by the U.S. 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals in Agee v. Paramount, 59 F.3d 317 (2d Cir. 1995) -- whether "disseminations must always be in physical form to constitute 'distributions' " -- EFF argued in the affirmative based primarily on the language of 17 U.S.C. 106(3), its legislative history and the reasoning of Agee.

The MPAA came into the picture with an amicus brief supporting the RIAA.

And the U.S. Department of Justice weighed in, submitting a "Statement of Interest," in which it confined itself to rebutting EFF's argument. DOJ specifically disclaimed having any "interest" in the RIAA's "making available" argument, pointing out that it had never prosecuted anyone under the copyright laws for "making available."

Barker filed additional papers, one responding to the EFF's amicus brief, one responding to the DOJ's statement of interest, each pointing out that it was not necessary to reach the "ephemeral transmission vs. tangible physical object" issue because the RIAA had not pleaded any instances even of "ephemeral transmissions" with sufficient specificity to satisfy normal copyright infringement pleading standards.

Ready for Argument
The motion is fully briefed and is scheduled for oral argument this week before Judge Kenneth Karas.

I am not aware of any other cases attacking the sufficiency of the RIAA's complaint in which all of the principally affected industries and interests have weighed in as amicus curiae. It is indeed unusual for a case at the district court level to receive this level of attention, thus accentuating the importance of the issues at stake.

While Elektra v. Barker would appear to be just a procedural pleading standards case, it is more than that because the RIAA does not actually possess more information to allege, so there is no possibility of curing the problem by repleading. Nor has it asked for leave to replead if defendant's motion is granted.

Since the RIAA uses a single, standard complaint in all of its litigations, the decision could affect huge numbers of litigants. As the CCIA and USIIA persuasively argue, there is almost no scenario under which the court's holding would not have far-reaching consequence to the technology and Internet world, regardless of which way the motion is decided.

And if the RIAA loses and the case is dismissed, it will no doubt appeal. The issues -- including possibly a revisiting of Agee in the context of Internet transmissions -- would then come before the 2nd Circuit, or possibly up to the U.S. Supreme Court.

About the author: Ray Beckerman is a member of Vandenberg & Feliu in New York and the author of the blog The Recording Industry vs. The People, which tracks file-sharing litigation. He is one of the attorneys representing defendant Tenise Barker in Elektra v. Barker.
http://www.hollywoodreporteresq.com/..._id=1003535810





Judge Denies RIAA Motion to Compel Ms. Lindor's Son to Turn Over His Desktop Computer

Orders limited deposition as to other devices
Ray Beckerman

The Magistrate has denied the RIAA's motion, in UMG v. Lindor, to compel Ms. Lindor's son to turn over his desktop computer, reasoning that Plaintiffs have offered little more than speculation to support their request for an inspection of Mr. Raymond's desktop computer, based on than his family relationship to the defendant, the proximity of his house to the defendant's house, and his determined defense of his mother in this case. That is not enough. On the record before me, plaintiffs have provided scant basis to authorize an inspection of Mr. Raymond's desktop computer.

The Court did, however, provide that the RIAA could take a limited deposition of Mr. Raymond to ascertain whether he had any other devices in his custody, possession, or control at the time the screenshot was taken, and whether he'd hooked them up to his mother's internet connection:

March 30, 2007, Order Denying RIAA Motion to Compel

http://recordingindustryvspeople.blo...compel-ms.html





JO's Investigation of the Pirate Bay Raid is Done
Andreas G

The web hotel PRQ and The Pirate Bay was the target of one of the most talked-about raids of the 21st century in Sweden. During the raid the police didn't just confiscate Pirate Bay's servers but also a load of other unrelated servers; a total of 186 servers were confiscated from PRQ's server rooms. This led to that a big number of companies and a lot of small and large websites lost their servers and in many cases their primary livelihood. Both the police and the prosecutor were charged for official misconduct, but none of the charges led to an investigation. The judge came to the conclusion that during the circumstances it was justified to confiscate all of the servers.

Ombudsmen of Justice (JO) has since then been investigating if there have been any irregularities. There were quite a lot of rumors going around that MPA, IFPI and other lobby organizations, but also the American embassy, was trying to steer ministers and other high officials to pressure the police and prosecutors to act against The Pirate Bay.

The report that have been published clearly states that IFPI, MPA and the American embassy had contacted the current Minister of Justice Thomas Bodström and the Secretary of State Dan Eliasson in an attempt to make them force the police into action. Although, JO has come to the conclusion that none of the two have done anything to wrong nor have they tried to influence the police or prosecutor. Eliasson wrote the following in his reply to the American authorities;

"(a)ccording to the Swedish constitution, it is not possible for the Government or the Ministry to intervene in a specific case. I can however assure you that I follow closely the actions taken by the police and the prosecutors in respect of copyrights infringements on the Internet and I will not, if necessary, hesitate to initiate further measures to improve their effectiveness"

JO also says that the police could've acted a lot faster when it comes to the confiscated servers. It took them over a week before they decided to give back some of the servers that was not related to Pirate Bay (from May 31 to 2-8 June). JO adds though that the decision to remove the servers was correct as it, according to the police, would take a lot longer to investigate them in place than at the station.

JO did not buy the explanation that they had to remove the servers because otherwise someone could've come in from the outside and delete material. JO though that they could just as well have unplugged the TP cable, but the time argument was enough to not charge anyone for misconduct.
http://www.nordichardware.com/news,6020.html





Hamachi 1.0.2

Create a Zero Configuration Network

Verdict: Excellent tool for setting up your own private and secure network in seconds.

These days owning more than one computer is the norm. They're just so cheap, so we often have one in the living room, one in our home office and the kids usually have their own machine too.

However, we don't all have the same operating system, but we do want to be sharing our music, files and network games around the house.

How many of us really know how to configure our machines so they can talk to each other, without having to spend hours attempting to get them to talk or spending money employing someone to do it for us?

Hamachi is a zero-configuration virtual private networking application that resides on all the computers you want to connect within your network.

It's based on peer-to-peer technology, which 'just works' out of the box. However, this is closed peer-to-peer, which means that only people within your network can connect to your machine(s).

If the computers you want to join your local network are situated outside your home, they can join too, which means you can have your own file sharing or game network between people within your local neighbourhood.

Note that Linux and Mac OS X versions are available to download on the Hamachi homepage.
http://www.atomicmpc.com.au/download/hamachi-102.aspx





µTorrent 1.7 Beta 1085
Firon

Yes, a public beta after all these months. The biggest thing is probably full Vista support. Test away!

--- 2007-04-05: Version 1.7 (build 1085)

- Change: Tooltips over status bar and toolbar are now native tooltips instead of custom-drawn
- Fix: Bandwidth Allocation selection bug fixed
- Fix: Modal dialog boxes now give focus on close to the proper window (add button in RSS now gives focus back to RSS window, for example)
http://forum.utorrent.com/viewtopic.php?id=21979





WiPeer

The Freedom to Share – No Strings Attached
WebBlurb

What is WiPeer ?

WiPeer enables sharing files directly among computers, playing multi-player games, chatting, and collaboration over both Wi-Fi and home/office networks.
Who needs WiPeer ?

- You are visiting your friends and would like to transfer photos of a shared trip from your laptop to theirs. Wouldn't it be great if you could share your files with them directly from one computer to the other?

- You are sitting in a boring lecture. You and your friends all have laptops, but your university has not installed an access point in the lecture room. Wouldn't it be great if you could play a game of Chess or Reversi against them, or even gossip with them about yesterday's football match?

- You are stuck in an airplane for a long flight and you are looking for something to do. If you could only play a game of Chinese checkers with other passengers...

- You have a home network, or even a small office network, and you'd like to share files among your computers without having to set up a dedicated server. There has to be a simple way of doing this.
http://www.wipeer.com/





Uni-Verse

P2P & Collaboration Tools for Researchers
paolo

• LionShare — LionShare
LionShare is a secure P2P file sharing application for higher education, enabling legal file sharing for Penn State university and beyond.. Find and share legal academic content in a secure P2P environment. LionShare 1.1 is available for download now.
(tags: p2p, Java, academia, papers, research)

• The Bibshare Project Website
Bibshare is a new framework for bibliography management that allows writers to use the same bibliography collection(s) regardless of the word processing system they use at any moment.
(tags: bibliography, academia, researcher)

• Bibster
Bibster is a Java-based system which assists researchers in managing, searching, and sharing bibliographic metadata (e.g. from BibTeX files) in a peer-to-peer network. Probably abandoned.
(tags: distributed, bibliography, p2p, java, semantic_web, research, academia)

• Complore-Come Xplore.
Complore is a vision to connect people from diverse backgrounds through collaboration and networking and provide them a common platform to collectively explore their areas of interest. Thus complore provides people to think and work as a team.
(tags: academia, research, bibliography)

• Connotea: free online reference management for clinicians and scientists
Similar to Citeulike.org, but I prefer citeulike. An effort of "Nature". Big plus: it is Free software available under under GPL licence!
(tags: bibliography, academia, research, papers, Social_software, folksonomy)

• CiteULike: A free online service to organise your academic papers
CiteULike is a free service to help academics to share, store, and organise the academic papers they are reading. When you see a paper on the web that interests you, you can click one button and have it added to your personal library. CiteULike automatica
(tags: academia, papers, research, bibliography, folksonomy, web2.0, Social_software)

• BibblyWiki - Harness the power of TiddlyWiki to organize your library, bibliography and book notes!
An online tool for keeping a bibliography. I still have to udnerstand how it works in practice.
(tags: bibliography, research, papers, academia)

• getCITED: Academic research, citation reports and discussion lists
getCITED is an online, member-controlled academic database, directory and discussion forum. Its contents are entered and edited by members of the academic community.
(tags: academia, papers, research)

• Computer and Information Science Papers CiteSeer Publications ResearchIndex
An aggregator of papers. The first really complete. Not too up to date at the moment.
(tags: academia, research, papers)

• Google Scholar
Provides a search of scholarly literature across many disciplines and sources, including theses, books, abstracts and articles.
(tags: academia, bibliography, research, papers)

• Rexa Search Engine
Community of people that share academic resource (papers)
(tags: papers, academia, research)

• Getting Things Done in Academia
Advice for graduate students on creativity, scholarship, communication, and time management

All links at source – Jack.

http://www.gnuband.org/2007/04/03/links_2007_04_03/





Cut-and-Paste Is a Skill, Too
Jason Johnson

I have a confession to make: Today I plagiarized multiple documents at work. I took the writing of others and presented it to my supervisor as if it were my own. It was an open secret that my entire report, written "by Jason Johnson," had been composed by others and that I had been merely an editor. Instead of a reprimand, I was rewarded with a post-briefing latte.

But on some level, it still felt wrong. Before coming to work at my current company, I spent most of the past 15 years as an educator, advising students from second-graders to college seniors that taking the work of others and presenting it as your own is morally wrong and intellectually dishonest. I've fretted over proper citations and labored with students over the highly subjective art of paraphrasing.

Now I watch my former teaching colleagues grade papers not simply by marking a dangling participle here or an incomplete thought there, but by Googling phrases from their students' work, searching for the suspected source of yet another cut-and-paste job. I wonder if that's really what teachers should be doing. As kids today plagiarize more and more from the Internet, the old-fashioned term paper -- composed by sweating students on a typewriter as they sat elbow-deep in reference books -- has no useful heir in the digital age. It's time for schools and educators to recognize the truth: The term paper is dead.

Students' work today looks more like the slick work report I had "written" than any original academic achievement. The problem isn't due to a dramatic decline in young people's moral character, nor the rise of the Internet and its endless bounty. The problem is that schools have relied too long and too heavily on the paper as the most significant method of evaluating students. But that's going to have to change.

Internet plagiarism is growing at a rapid pace, according to recent studies and the anecdotal evidence I hear from my former colleagues in education -- and there's no end in sight.

Research papers -- of varying lengths, written without the instructor's direct supervision -- are an academic staple. They've been a successful way for teachers and professors to evaluate students because they allow the students to create something that tangibly displays their skills and knowledge without using any class time. But despite all its attractive qualities, the paper is an extremely weak link in academic assessment, largely for the same reasons that it has been successful -- the work is done outside the classroom.

Schools have responded by upping their use of academic integrity pledges and search engines such as TurnItIn.com, which checks student work against a large database of previously written material. But the rise of such measures hasn't reduced plagiarism at all; in fact, students and teachers are more likely to spar over plagiarism than ever before.

Young people today are simply too far ahead of anything schools might do to curb their recycling efforts. Beyond simply selling used term papers online, Web sites such as StudentofFortune.com allow students to post specific questions and pay for answers.

Enterprising young scholars can also upload their completed homework assignments, and the site will broker a sale to someone who is stumped while using the same textbook. For a fee of $1, for instance, user "brittanymarie" from "calloway country high school" can get the answer to this burning query: "During the process of transcription, DNA serves as the template for making what?" The people behind StudentofFortune, not so far removed from their school days themselves, say this isn't cheating -- it's just a chance for students to "ask their colleagues for help on difficult problems."

The proliferation of sites like these leaves teachers with an even more vexing problem: how to test what students really know. The time-honored paper now teaches students a very different skill set, one that appears to be unintentional and largely unrecognized -- but one that's much closer to what I do at work these days. One university professor, writing anonymously on his "concernedprofessor" blog, notes that students today create "hyper-plagiarism which becomes harder and harder to catch. While these chimera-esque papers can, most of the time, be easily spotted through the mixing of language styles, clever students can pass these off throughout their academic careers with little worry."

My transfer from education to the world of business has reminded me just how important it is to be able to synthesize content from multiple sources, put structure around it and edit it into a coherent, single-voiced whole. Students who are able to create convincing amalgamations have gained a valuable business skill. Unfortunately, most schools fail to recognize that any skills have been used at all, and an entire paper can be discarded because of a few lines repeated from another source without quotation marks.

The most obvious choice for teachers and schools is to simply change the way they assess students. Schools could turn to in-class assignments as a more reliable way of evaluating what students know and how well they can express it. The problem with this is that it takes up valuable teaching time, and in-school resources for such assignments, from libraries to technology, vary greatly.

Nevertheless, the educational system needs to acknowledge what the paper is today: more of a work product that tests very particular skills -- the ability to synthesize and properly cite the work of others -- and not students' knowledge, originality and overall ability.

I envision a time when TurnItIn.com's database contains millions of essays on Charlotte Bronte's "Jane Eyre." At that point educators may finally understand that no high school student will be able to write another original word on the subject.

So let's declare "The paper is dead" before the database makes the declaration for us. And let's recognize what the paper has become, so that we can declare, "Long live the paper!" jjohnsoned@gmail.com
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...301612_pf.html





School Ends Program to Equip Students with Personal Computers

SYRACUSE, N.Y. (AP) -- One of the first high school laptop computer programs in the country will be phased out over the next three years.

The Liverpool School Board agreed to end the program because teachers complained the machines had become a distraction in class, with some students downloading music and games.

Liverpool initiated its voluntary computer leasing, rent-to-own program seven years ago. About 1,550 of the high school's 1,962 students were enrolled in the laptop lease program, said Maureen Patterson, assistant superintendent for instruction.

Administrators said they wanted to put control of technology back in the hands of teachers. Too much emphasis was placed on the technology and not on how laptops could be used as a tool within the lesson, they said.

The school will continue to train students to use computers and other technology, Patterson said.

The school board on Monday unanimously adopted a 2007-2008 school budget that did not include money for the program.

Incoming juniors and seniors will be able to continue leasing laptops from the school for the next two years but the program will not be available to incoming 10th-graders next year.
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories...EAST&TEMPLATE=





Record Industry Refuses to Address Real Problems
Thomas Nolan

The RIAA is spending millions of dollars trying to stop time.

One of the most important things I have taken away from economics class is that consumer markets dictate themselves. Demand for goods and services change with factors like consumer preferences, expectations and incomes; fluctuating prices of related goods and, most relevantly, changes in technology.

With the information age causing rapid change worldwide, almost every industry has been revolutionized. The entertainment industry is no exception.

Music is now almost completely accessible to anyone with an Internet connection; technology has changed the market. Because of this, music is now demanded at a much lower price than it was when compact disks and audio tapes were the best solution for audio entertainment. Physical storage devices are now almost completely obsolete.

And record companies are hopelessly trying to recover a lost market.

The RIAA is threatening legal action against music listeners who engage in peer-to-peer "piracy." The association is trying to convince consumers to observe the rules it has dictated for the music industry, which involve paying high prices based on outdated technology. In other words, the association is trying to force the status quo on the market, even though technological advances have made obtaining music much more convenient. If the RIAA has its way, consumers will continue to pay high CD prices for music, negating the accessibility that the Internet has given to music listeners. Obviously, that isn't going to happen.

Piracy is crime driven by technology and economy. It will never go away as long as there is no legal alternative. And the issue is about accessibility more than anything.

Truth be told, if the RIAA wants to punish those responsible for music sharing, it should turn its lawyers toward whoever developed the Internet.

The record industry is changing; so its major players must change accordingly. Record companies will inevitably fail, but that's economics. Candle makers struggled when the light bulb was invented. Technology has provided a better way of doing things, and that's the way it is.

That is not to say record companies have to accept free music sharing. I think steps should continually be taken to eliminate illegal music sharing, but no improvements will be made until record companies have provided a reasonable, legal alternative. People are naturally listening to more music, and a dollar per song is just more than they are willing to pay. This is evidenced by the fact that many music listeners are willing to risk the possibility of landing an overblown RIAA lawsuit by using peer-to-peer music sharing networks.

The solution? Record companies will have to develop cheaper downloading services that will allow users to take advantage of the accessibility that the Internet has to offer. Record companies might not make as much, but the market demands what the market demands.

If the RIAA wants to make an attempt to stop consumers from downloading music illegally that will be taken seriously, it will have to change its strategy toward developing an answer. The association's current strategy just displays a futile resistance to change.
http://www.purdueexponent.com/index....&story_id=5166





Get Your Hands Off My Music!
Patrick Pineyro

With the RIAA coming down hard on university students who download music illegally, the whole issue of the condition of the "music industry" has now become quite relevant to millions of people like us around the country. Thought I will never admit it in a court of law, I haven't exactly spent hundreds on the hundreds of albums I enjoy having on my computer.

But what's the reason why sharing music is a good thing? The fact that music is an art form, first and foremost, not an industry.

Of course, getting hundreds of albums for free hurts the bottom line of the big record companies and radio stations around the country. Sure, it's sort of like stealing. But in the blatantly capitalist music industry, a plethora of subpar artists makes it big, while the truly relevant musicians trudge along in the underground, figures straight out of Dostoevsky.

So where does file sharing come in? For one thing, having an unlimited availability of choices creates a competitiveness that will only help music as an art thrive. The downloaders get to pick and choose which artists are viable, as opposed to MTV stuffing low quality pish-posh down a our throats. To their credit, MTV did provide a generation with great music, playing bands like Van Halen, The Police, Nirvana, Radiohead, etc.

But the internet changed the world dramatically. File sharing has become something people see as a right, not a privilege. So with increased competition, the music industry will inevitably have to move to other sources of revenue. People will still buy CD's of bands that they are loyal to, and if not, they will still buy their merchandise. Concerts are still pretty fun, too. Sure, you can see the Mona Lisa on Wikipedia, but isn't it way better to go see it at the Louvre and bask in all its glory, enjoy its subtleties?

While all these things are good in theory, I still have to accept the fact that hard-working artists like Metallica and Sheryl Crow are getting shorted thousands of dollars. But what do the little guys say? One band probably very few people have heard of, The Books, explicitly plead fans not to steal their music. They privately fund their own music, and barely make ends meet as it is. I felt bad reading this, so I bought some vinyls and a t-shirt.

But it's hard to assume that little-known artists in general wouldn't support the idea of file sharing. For one, it makes their music easily accessible to an infinite number of new fans who will end up buying coffee mugs and concert tickets if the music sounds good enough.

In the end, the fact remains that file sharing will be a highly disputed issue with arguments working for both sides. Let's just hope America has enough sense left to stop putting dollar signs all over the beautiful, untouchable things of humanity.
http://media.www.thehurricaneonline....-2819161.shtml





Congress Flunks P2P Test
Roy Mark

Congress still has knotted knickers over illegal peer-to-peer (P2P) file sharing, once again showing how utterly out of touch lawmakers can be in a rapidly changing digital world.

So when Hollywood began bleating about the high rate of online piracy at colleges and universities, Congress decided to do something about it.

Our lawmakers seem utterly baffled that the widespread theft of copyrighted music didn't immediately cease following the 2005 Supreme Court Grokster decision ruling P2P services that induce users to infringe are illegal business models.

Of course, these are the same people who are still scratching their heads over why the CAN-SPAM Act has failed to staunch the tide of unsolicited e-mail. They are the same lawmakers whose attempts to curb pornography on the Internet are routinely rejected by the courts as violating the most basic of free-speech rights. And they are the same people whose campaign coffers are regularly filled by the entertainment industry.

As is the case when Congress tries to do something about a problem it can't control, troubled logic becomes epidemic. It started this time with the bashing of college officials as being soft on intellectual property theft.

What got Congress riled up this time is a study by the University of Richmond's Intellectual Property Institute claiming more than half of all college students download music and movies illegally. Another report from the research firm NPD said college students get more of their music from illegal peer-to-peer (P2P) services than the rest of the population.

Therefore, Congress reasoned as the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) whispered in its ear, colleges and universities are running a virtual bazaar in stolen music and movies.

"Unfortunately, many schools have turned a blind eye to piracy," Hollywood Howard Berman (D-Calif.), chairman of the House Subcommittee on Intellectual Property, admonished administrators at a recent hearing. "Current law isn't giving universities enough incentive to comply."

Rep. John Conyers (D-Mich.), chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, complained campus piracy is still "rampant and widespread" and "too many schools do little or nothing about it. That's an unacceptable response."

Berman and Conyers, in their new turns as committee chairmen, seem as in the dark as their Republican predecessors. And not because campus piracy isn't a problem -- it is. But because colleges and universities are not to blame.

When the graduating classes of 2007 began college, schools were already incorporating copyright-infringement issues as part of basic orientations. Student codes of conduct had already been written to expel infringers. Systems administrators were already shaping bandwidth by type of traffic to limit possible illegal P2P activity.

The schools are hardly paying mere lip service to campus piracy, willingly facilitating the RIAA's thousands of copyright-infringement lawsuits filed against students over the last few years.

What Congress can't seem to grasp is this one simple truth: colleges and universities can't do much about the piracy because large chunks of the illegal activity takes place off campus. At most colleges and universities, the majority of students connect to the Internet using non-school computers and Internet service providers.

Lawmakers, though, must think every college student is using school systems to swap music files. After all, that's what the RIAA told them at the last campaign fundraiser.

But not to fear, at least one lawmaker has a solution. Rep. Ric Keller, a Florida Republican, proposed this week to allow colleges and universities to apply for expensive filtering funding from the government. The systems can cost more than $1 million up front and require licensing fees of $250,000 or more annually.

There's no real proof any of these systems work with any great efficiency. So as Rep. Keller would have it, millions of taxpayer dollars would be spent on filtering technology that may or may not work to use on systems that most students don't use in the first place to swap tunes.

That knots my knickers.
http://www.internetnews.com/commenta...le.php/3669056





Your tax dollars at work – against you

New Bill Lets Colleges Use Federal Funds to Fight P2P
Nate Anderson

Representative Ric Keller (R-FL) feels that colleges in America are teaching students more than literature, history, and computer science. They are also dens of thievery, places where students learn to steal "billions of dollars in intellectual property from hardworking people whose jobs hang in the balance." Rep. Keller is talking about illegal file-swapping, of course, and his new bill (HR 1689) could give schools more money to combat the P2P scourge.

The bill is called the "Curb Illegal Downloading on College Campuses Act of 2007." It amends the Higher Education Act, a bill that supplies federal money to universities, allowing that money to be used for programs that reduce illegal downloading of copyrighted content.

The goal is to free up university money that would otherwise be spent on bandwidth costs and to keep networks more secure by keeping out viruses that may attach themselves to P2P files. The bill notes that "computer systems at colleges and universities are intended primarily to aid in educating and increase research capability among students and faculty;" clogging a campus network with BitTorrent traffic does not fall under the school's educational mandate.

The Higher Education Act (HEA) generally allows schools to spend the money they receive only on certain prescribed areas such as financial aid grants and Pell loans. The new bill would allow that money to be used for more things, but does not contain a request for additional funding. Whether schools would be interested in using a limited pool of federal money to police student file-swapping remains to be seen.

There's no guarantee that the bill will make it to a vote, of course. It has already been shunted to the House Committee on Education and Labor, and might languish there until the end of this Congressional term except for the fact that the HEA needs to be reauthorized, and soon. The HEA expires this summer, and Congress will certainly find a way to extend it yet again or fully reauthorize it, since few things look worse than cutting massive student aid programs.

Campuses have come under plenty of scrutiny in the past few weeks, with the RIAA and the MPAA calling schools out for high levels of illicit P2P usage. Individual representatives in Congress have also taken an interest in the issue; can it be long before the carrot of additional funds for security is supplemented with the stick of penalties for not addressing the problem?
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post...fight-p2p.html





MPAA Names its Top 25 Movie Piracy Schools
Ken Fisher

The MPAA may be gearing up for an RIAA-inspired assault on US colleges and universities. Last week the group announced its support for the "Curb Illegal Downloading on College Campuses Act (2007)," and MPAA head Dan Glickman said that his organization would work with school administrators to put an end to movie piracy on campuses, which Glickman says costs the industry $500 million annually.

Most telling, the group has heard the call of Representative Howard Berman and has compiled a list of the most piracy-ridden schools in higher education. This is a page straight out of the RIAA playbook. Here they are, the schools that made the MPAA's "dishonor roll" and the number of students identified as making unauthorized use of copyrighted materials:

Editor’s note: Outstanding work all, with my special emphasis for a few true standouts - Jack.

Columbia University - 1,198 - #1!

University of Pennsylvania - 934
Boston University - 891
University of California at Los Angeles - 889
Purdue University – 873 - Top 10 with both the RIAA/MPAA. Highest Ranking Overall!

Vanderbilt University - 860
Duke University - 813
Rochester Institute of Technology - 792

University of Massachusetts – 765 - Top 10 with both the RIAA/MPAA

University of Michigan - 740
University of California at Santa Cruz - 714
University of Southern California - 704
University of Nebraska at Lincoln - 637
North Carolina State University - 636
Iowa State University - 586
University of Chicago - 575
University of Rochester - 562
Ohio University – 550 - #1 with the RIAA!

University of Tennessee - 527
Michigan State University - 506
Virginia Polytechnic Institute - 457
Drexel University - 455
University of South Florida - 447
Stanford University - 405
University of California at Berkeley - 398

A number of schools have the dubious distinction of being on both the MPAA and the RIAA list. The overachievers are: Ohio University (#1 RIAA/#18 MPAA), Purdue University (#2, #5), University of Nebraska at Lincoln (#3/#13), UMASS (#6/#9), Michigan State (#7/#20), North Carolina State (#9/#14), University of South Florida (#11/#23), Boston University (#15/#3), and the University of Michigan (#18/#10). In all, 10 schools appear on both lists, and Purdue University wins the Gold Medal for highest overall ranking between the two combined.

Whether or not the MPAA will get into the trenches and follow the RIAA's pre-litigation strategy is not yet clear, and historically the MPAA has been less eager to wage a public campaign against file sharing. But like Santa, the MPAA is making a list and checking it twice... the question is, are they merely humoring Representative Berman or planning something more aggressive?
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post...y-schools.html





More Web Regulation Doesn't Make Any Sense
Michael Geist

The Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission has faced seemingly continuous criticism for years, however in May 1999 it released a decision that generated near-universal praise.

The New Media Decision, which adopted a hands-off regulatory approach to new media (the CRTC's press release overstated the ruling by headlining that the "CRTC Won't Regulate the Internet"), was widely regarded as the right decision at the right time.

Since that ruling, a remarkable array of new media services – including podcasting, Internet streaming and online video sites – have emerged outside of the traditional broadcast regulation model. Despite the success, recent submissions to the CRTC suggest that a growing number of stakeholders are increasingly wary of their unregulated counterparts and may be gearing up for a fresh look at Internet regulation.

The issue began to percolate last June, when Canadian Heritage Minister Bev Oda asked the CRTC to conduct a six-month consultation on the effects of changing technology on the radio and television industries. The CRTC report, which was quietly released in mid-December, went almost unnoticed, yet submissions from broadcasters, copyright collectives and labour unions all point to an increased regulatory role for the CRTC.

The underlying theme of many stakeholder submissions is that unregulated new media represents a threat to the current regulated Canadian content model. For example, SOCAN, a copyright collective, implausibly argues, "Canadians have fewer Canadian programming choices available to them when they use new technologies than they do when they access conventional television and radio stations."

Based on that analysis, SOCAN argues for a reversal of the new media decision, stating that "there is no reason why those who use new technologies to broadcast content should not be subject to the Broadcasting Act's Canadian Content requirements – including Internet service providers, other new media, satellite radio and mobile television broadcast undertakings."

SOCAN is by no means alone in promoting more Internet regulation in the name of Canadian content. ACTRA, which represents more than 21,000 performers, argues that the CRTC should be "the catalyst for the commission to review its New Media Decision as early as possible."

The Friends of Canadian Broadcasting go even further, maintaining that "Canadian broadcasting policy should recognize new delivery systems such as MP3 players, satellite radio receivers, and interactive Web clients as part of the new Canadian broadcasting system. If the commission is unable or unwilling to regulate their content, it should be charged with ensuring that a percentage of the revenue they generate from the distribution of these services is circulated into the system."

While the CRTC is unlikely to join Viacom in seeking a slice of YouTube's revenues, both the Friends of Canadian Broadcasting and the Canadian Conference of the Arts buck Industry Minister Maxime Bernier's emphasis on telecommunications deregulation by pointing to that industry as a potential source of revenue for Canadian cultural funding.

The broadcaster perspective surprisingly also envisions greater regulatory involvement. Although the Canadian Association of Broadcasters does not call for the re-consideration of the new media decision (it actually seeks lighter regulation for all broadcasting media), it expresses concern about the implications of Internet video – particularly streaming video from U.S. broadcasters – for the Canadian market.

The CAB seeks to recast Canadian broadcast history by maintaining that "from its very beginnings, a separate rights market has been a central objective of the Canadian broadcasting system and an underpinning of Canadian broadcasters' ability to support Canadian content."

According to the CAB, a core goal of Canadian broadcast policy has been the reliance on cheap and profitable U.S. content in order to subsidize the creation of unprofitable Canadian content.

With the growing popularity of Internet streaming, the CAB fears that U.S. broadcasters will simply stream their programming into Canada and thereby diminish the value of those programs on Canadian television networks. Indeed, all the major U.S. networks already freely stream some of their prime-time programming within the U.S., and last month NBC and News Corp., the owner of the Fox Network, unveiled plans for a YouTube competitor.

In response, the CAB seemingly wants the CRTC to erect barriers to Internet streaming, concluding that "all reasonable public policy measures and instruments will be needed to maintain the integrity of a separate and distinct Canadian program rights market."

While the CAB is right that the Internet is erasing the distinction between geographic markets and that U.S. broadcasters are likely to stream on a global basis in the near future, the likely impact on Canadian content is precisely opposite of what it suggests.

Rather than reducing the production of Canadian content, Internet streaming and new media create incentives for more Canadian productions since profitability in the emerging environment will depend upon original content that can be distributed across all platforms, old and new.

If Canadian broadcasters are unable to rely on cheap U.S. programming, they will be forced to compete by investing in their own original content. This will dramatically alter Canadian content production from one mandated by government regulation to one mandated by market survival.

It is increasingly clear that the blossoming of new media is a threat to old business models, not to Canadian content. Eight years after the CRTC's new media decision, it still stands as the right decision at the right time.
http://www.thestar.com/sciencetech/article/198334





Mortimer is dead

Warner’s Digital Watchdog Widens War on Pirates
Laura M. Holson

Hollywood studios spend millions every year trying to get people to watch their movies. At Warner Brothers Entertainment, Darcy Antonellis is trying to get them to stop watching — illegally, that is.

Ms. Antonellis oversees the studio’s growing worldwide antipiracy efforts as Hollywood’s attention shifts from bootleg DVDs made in China to the problem of copyrighted television and movie clips showing up on sites like YouTube and MySpace.

While producers and celebrities garner most of the attention in Hollywood, technology executives like Ms. Antonellis are at the forefront of the industry as they try to protect the studio’s control over its content.

With movies like the “Harry Potter” series and “Ocean’s 11” franchise and television series like “Friends,” Warner has one of the largest libraries in Hollywood. As a result, it can exert more influence over its relationships with online partners, making it one of the most-watched studios both inside and outside the industry.

“People want to be more interactive and have a voice,” said Ms. Antonellis. “We need to consider all the opportunities.”

Piracy may seem like the biggest threat to Hollywood, but Ms. Antonellis suggested instead that changing consumer behavior will have a greater impact on the entertainment business.

Movie studios, like their peers in music and television, are in the midst of a significant and frightening shift as almost every form of media is becoming ubiquitous on the Internet. And through sites like YouTube, viewers have grown accustomed to seeing whatever they want to see, free.

“People thinking it is O.K. to take this stuff for free on a worldwide basis has a bigger impact than anything,” said Ms. Antonellis.

Many entertainment companies are growing impatient watching companies like YouTube distribute clips of movies and television shows free. At the same time they are concerned that YouTube earns advertising revenue from Web sites that offer pirated movies for sale on the site. Even while negotiating with YouTube, NBC Universal and Fox announced their own joint video service, and Viacom filed a $1 billion lawsuit against Google, which owns YouTube.

Missteps made today could have grave consequences for the future, particularly when it comes to consumers’ willingness to pay for movies and television shows online, she believes. To illustrate the point, she tells of her niece’s fish, named Mortimer, who one day leaped from his bowl, flopped on the table and gasped for air.

“Mortimer took the leap to freedom,” she said. “He said, ‘I’m free, but I’m dead,’ ” said Ms. Antonellis.

Warner and other entertainment companies are moving cautiously ahead, but their interests are divided. All want to share their content online with consumers but are, at the same time, imposing constraints that risk alienating a younger, Web-oriented audience.

On the piracy front, Ms. Antonellis said Warner has created four small teams that range from a two-person operation to nearly a dozen people in a larger group.

The teams are based in Burbank, London and Hong Kong, and most have dual roles in piracy and other Warner operations, like the legal department. Ms. Antonellis said she wanted the teams to understand both areas because “you can’t hand down policies in a vacuum. It doesn’t work.”

Warner’s emphasis shifts depending on where piracy is most rampant. As well as cracking down in countries like China, where pirated DVDs are sold on street corners for as little as $1 on the same day a movie is released, the company also works with the United States Trade Representative’s office to monitor pirated movies.

Like many studios, Warner can trace the origin of movies that have been copied using camcorders, but they are particularly aggressive on this front. Russia is particularly difficult to police because of the vast amount of money available to finance the making and sale of black market DVDs.

Recently the Hollywood studios took their case to Washington, with celebrities like Will Smith and Clint Eastwood in tow, to educate legislators on the damaging impact of piracy on their business. Ms. Antonellis was there; she is the piracy liaison for Warner to the Motion Picture Association of America, the industry’s lobbying group.

For her part, Ms. Antonellis and her team review all the deals Warner seeks, particularly those online and for distributing content over mobile phones. She has considerable sway; Warner deal makers rely on her expertise to tell them how a deal should be structured.

When it comes to YouTube, Time Warner is in a delicate position. In 2005, Google spent $1 billion for a stake in America Online, a division of Time Warner, and expanded its strategic alliance. Google bought YouTube last year.

Not surprisingly, Ms. Antonellis is conservative in her comments about the media companies’ negotiations with YouTube.

“Clearly the lawsuit has sent out a message,” she said of Viacom’s suit. “We are hopeful that social networks such as YouTube will put in place proper systems which will reflect our intellectual property and will facilitate legal offerings.”

Ms. Antonellis is the rare Hollywood executive who never planned on a studio career. The 44-year-old former college tennis pro hoped to become a journalist until, as she put it, she learned writing was not her gift. She had an aptitude for math, though. After her freshman year at Temple University, two hours from her hometown, Newark, Ms. Antonellis decided to sign up for the electrical engineering program instead.

She did not abandon her interest in news, though. She graduated in 1984 and headed to New York City where she got an engineering internship at CBS working with Chris Cookson, the chief technology officer of Warner Brothers Entertainment who was then an executive in the technical operations department of CBS. In 1988 she moved to Washington where Mr. Cookson appointed her director of Washington operations for the CBS news bureau.

“We’re the folks behind the curtain who make the broadcast look as seamless as possible,” said Ms. Antonellis.

If anything prepared Ms. Antonellis for a career in Hollywood, perhaps it was the two months she spent in Kuwait during the gulf war as director of technical operations for CBS News. Then she worked for well-known and demanding bosses, among them the news anchor Dan Rather. She was a skillful negotiator, bartering with locals for a generator to light the set. And she was quick to adapt, dressing like a military officer because women were not allowed to drive.

In Washington she was exposed to other divisions: sports, news magazines, even soap operas, which were sometimes filmed in the studio.

“One day the elevator door opened and a pot-bellied pig walked out,” said Ms. Antonellis, who has won two Emmy Awards for her technical prowess. “I thought, ‘O.K., we are doing a story on a pot-bellied pig. Do we bring him to the green room? Do we have to worry about him eating all the crudités?’ ”

She left Washington in 1991 and moved back to New York and worked in operations and engineering for CBS Sports, covering three Olympics, including the 1998 Winter Olympics in Nagano, Japan. That same year Mr. Cookson recruited her to Warner to help with the studio’s transition to a digital world.

“We share here a belief and understanding in new technology and that consumers want to experience our movies and television shows differently,” Mr. Cookson said. “Darcy really understands the whole equation.”

Ms. Antonellis believes that the next three months will be most critical for Hollywood as the need to offer legal movies and television shows to consumers intensifies. When asked about criticism that studios aren’t moving quickly to offer content online, she pointed to a deal Warner made last year with BitTorrent, a movie-swapping site that approached the Motion Picture Association of America about selling movies legally.

“We were criticized for not being aggressive enough,” she said. “At the same time, we can’t be faulted for being radical in our approach.”

Indeed, Warner spends millions in research to understand what consumers want. And the results can be surprising. In Britain, Warner recently found that consumers there were more interested in watching feature films, as opposed to television programs, on portable devices because their commutes were twice as long.

“If we don’t encompass the last piece in our thinking — how consumers want to use content — then we are going to miss it,” said Miss Antonellis. “Just think how consumer behavior has evolved in the last two years.”

Last year Steven P. Jobs, the chief executive of Apple and a director of the Walt Disney Company, announced a deal with Disney to offer movies on Apple’s video iPod. Despite that, many of Disney’s competitors remained holdouts. At the heart of the debate are the standards governing digital rights management, commonly called D.R.M. Studios want stricter rules on copying, while Mr. Jobs supports a more liberal approach, particularly with music.

“There may be opportunities down the road but we have to come to some agreement about what the offerings will be,” said Ms. Antonellis of Warner’s and Apple’s discussion. “The term D.R.M. is steeped and mired in its legacy definition. Today, call it something else. I don’t care what you call it. Get rid of it. But we need to make this work so we can get a deal.”

Ms. Antonellis may have to rely not only her technical expertise but the valuable communication skills she learned at CBS.

“Part of my responsibility is to take technology-based ideas and take it out of the techie space,” she said. “If executives look at me like I have three heads, then I’ve failed as an executive.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/02/bu.../02warner.html





Ding Dong, the Witch is Dead
Marc Wagner

Yeah, I know it's a little early to declare the DRM 'witch' to be dead but EMI and Apple may very well put the first nail in her coffin!

Music piracy was born in the early 1970s. The cassette tape recorder was new and the Dolby B encoding (for reducing background 'hiss') was even newer. The 'state of the art' was long-playing records — made of vinyl, LP's had their own shortcomings but when new they produced surprisingly high-quality recordings. (Nearly as good as reel-to-reel tape – and far more accessible to consumers.)

Seeing the appeal of cassettes, record companies embarked on a two-tiered approach to selling music. The serious listener still bought LP's for their quality but portability made the cassette a superior choice for the 'on-the-go' consumer so the industry also sold pre-recorded cassettes of their record library. By and large, these pre-recorded cassettes were of clearly inferior sound quality.

It didn't take long to figure out that two or three people could share the cost of two LP's and a blank cassette and, using Dolby B encoding, make high-quality recordings of these brand new LP's while spending less than they would have on pre-recorded cassettes. Was this legal? Nope. But this kind of 'casual piracy' was tolerated by the music industry because they knew that high-quality reproduction was pretty-much limited to first-generation copies. With the development of the CD, in the 1980's, digitally-recorded music could be copied over-and-over with no loss of quality. Still, piracy remained 'in-check' in large part because distribution of digital music remained friend-to-friend.

Fast-forward twenty years and friends are still sharing the cost of music with their friends. The CD remains the gold standard for audio (as is the DVD for video) and the MP3 is the CD's 'lower-quality' sibling. Only now, the "CD-player" is a computer and copying a recording is as simple as copying a data file. If distribution were still friend-to-friend, the impact of this 'casual piracy' would still be small but today distribution is often peer-to-peer between computers connected to the Internet (and taking place largely without human intervention).

Unscrupulous peer-to-peer software vendors are turning their unwitting 'customers' into large-scale pirates subject to federal prosecution. What's worse, shortsighted recording companies are going after those same unwitting 'customers' instead of the real culprits — those making money off of the piracy of music (and video). Rather than embracing the distribution technology (and using it to their advantage to cut costs), the recording industry turned to DRM (digital rights management), a catch-all approach which does nothing to deter those 'pirates for profit' — yet makes enemies out of lots of paying customers.

In Steven Jobs' open letter of 6 February 2007, entitled Thoughts on Music, he points out that over 90% of the music sold today is on CD and therefore DRM-free already. So, how much impact can DRM have in stopping wholesale piracy?

NOT MUCH. After all, if most music sold is already DRM-free, piracy via peer-to-peer networks will continue to run rampant.

Is it really worth it to the recording industry to alienate so many customers by continuing to force DRM technology on us?

PROBABLY NOT. Defeating DRM today is no more difficult than defeating copy-protection schemes for software (and VCR tapes) was in the 1990's — but unlike those tools, simply possessing DRM-defeating tools is a felony, even if used legally. Forcing customers to commit a felony to use their own music in a legal fashion is not good for business. For most of us, all DRM does is alienate us by keeping us from playing our music wherever and whenever we want.

Well, things may be changing: EMI, Apple partner on DRM-free premium music. Finally, a major player in the recording industry (EMI) has decided to partner with Apple to sell DRM-free music via iTunes (granted at a premium price). To sweeten the pot for the premium price, Apple and EMI will distribute DRM-free music which was recorded at a higher bit-rate of 256Kbps.

Thanks EMI (and Apple) for recognizing that customer needs and desires are legitimate. It's time for the rest of the members of the RIAA to come on board. And its time for your congressmen and mine to repeal those portions of the DCMA (Digital Millenium Copyright Act) which criminalize the use of DRM-circumventing technologies when doing so does not infringe upon the copyright holder.
http://blogs.zdnet.com/BTL/?p=4770





Hoping to Move Guitar Notations Into the Legal Sunshine
Bob Tedeschi

IF budding guitarists fail to master “Stairway to Heaven” in the coming months, they can no longer blame the music publishers.

Because of an agreement in March between MusicNotes, an online music publisher and the Harry Fox Agency, which represents 31,000 music publishers, guitar tablature — a popular system for teaching and learning guitar — will enter the legitimate business realm for the first time.

Last year popular sites like Olga.net, MxTabs.net and others — where users post tablature, usually called “guitar tabs,” for rock songs — suspended operations after the music publishing industry threatened them with copyright infringement lawsuits. Under the new initiative, MxTabs, which is owned by MusicNotes, will share an undisclosed portion of advertising revenue with music publishers, who in turn will give a portion to artists.

The effort could face a chicken-or-egg problem, in that publishers may balk if they do not see enough potential for advertising revenue, and advertisers may balk if publishers do not free enough of their music to attract a big audience. Advertising analysts suggest the revenue could be significant, but even a little is better than none.

“It’s a huge opportunity, in that this is a revenue stream publishers haven’t had before,” said Gary L. Churgin the chief executive of Harry Fox Agency. “In a sense, the sky’s the limit.”

The initiative is still in the early stages, and Mr. Churgin has not yet formally asked publishers if they would like to participate. Artists are even less familiar with the agreement.

Still, Mr. Churgin said, he has not yet encountered resistance. “We’re a step and a half away from knowing how much it will be embraced,” he said. “But the informal feedback we’ve gotten since the announcement has been enthusiastic.”

Irwin Z. Robinson, chief executive of Famous Music, Viacom’s music publishing division, said: “This gives us, for the first time, the opportunity to get something that’s been given away or stolen for all these years. I’m very positive about it.”

Mr. Robinson, whose company represents Linda Perry, a songwriter for Christina Aguilera and Pink among others, said that about 2 percent of the songs in the company’s catalog have licensed guitar tablature associated with them.

For the remaining songs in Famous Music’s catalog — and the vast majority of the music publishing industry’s collective catalog — there is insufficient demand to justify the costs of publishing tablature.

As a result, guitarists who want to know how to play less mainstream songs have gone to sites where amateurs post tablature. Under this agreement, MusicNotes, publishers and artists will essentially earn money from an army of volunteers, who are creating content that the publishers are not creating on their own.

Tim Reiland, chairman and chief financial officer of MusicNotes, which is based in Madison, Wis., said publishers would receive “a very healthy split” of the advertising dollars.

“We’ve got lots of work here to get the publishers signed up, but we think they should,” Mr. Reiland said. “We think it’s a good deal.”

MusicNotes bought MxTabs.net, one of the most popular guitar tablature sites, last year as it came under legal attack by music publishers. Publishers claimed that even incorrect versions of music notation violate copyright laws, since the postings represent “derivative works” related to the original compositions, to use the legal parlance.

The guitar tablature sites were typically small operations, running on little more than revenue gleaned from Google text ads. Many shut down rather than challenge the publishers in court. (Ultimate-Guitar.com, which has a New Jersey phone number but claims that it is based in Russia and that it complies with Russian copyright laws, still operates. Its advertisers include AOL, T-Mobile and Dell, among others.)

Mr. Reiland said MxTabs has more than 100,000 tabs in its files. Those tabs will remain under wraps until the site’s re-emergence this summer — assuming his company can clear at least 50,000 of those tabs with publishers. “We’d have to have at least that many to make it a good experience for the customer,” he said.

Mr. Reiland and Kathleen Marsh, the chief executive of MusicNotes, are now making plans to sell advertising. That is a new realm for the company, since it has subsisted until now on fees charged to users for downloading sheet music and a small number of guitar tablatures generated by publishing houses.

Ms. Marsh said the site “already has a lot of interest” from advertisers. “This demographic — teenage boys to young adults — is very similar to the demographic for gaming. There are a lot of advertisers who are interested in that group.”

Shar VanBoskirk, an analyst with Forrester Research, said tablature sites could also join other online publishers and anonymously track the Internet travels of their users. The budding guitar players might somehow show that they were shopping for a car, for instance, or other expensive goods. Suddenly, she said, “these users are really valuable targets for sellers of all kinds.”

Lauren Keiser, the president of the Music Publishers’ Association, and the chief executive of Carl Fischer, a music publisher in New York, said he would offer the MusicNotes proposal to his board this month to gauge their reaction. “As a publisher, I want to see this baby walk,” he said. “And we’ll see. There might be a whole bunch of other deals coming out of this.”

Representatives from Ultimate-Guitar did not respond to calls seeking comment. Cathal Woods, the director of Olga, wrote via e-mail that he had, in the past, approached Harry Fox, the Music Publishers’ Association and the National Music Publishers’ Association with similar business deals.

Those groups “have always rejected out-of-hand any requests about licensing,” Mr. Woods wrote. “I’m somewhat surprised by this.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/02/te...gy/02ecom.html





Sports Organizations' New Event: Guarding Online Revenue
Doreen Carvajal

When the Pan American Games start in Brazil in July, thousands of top athletes will run, wrestle and leap, but they will not be able to indulge in one popular daily exercise: blogging.

Neither will their physicians, coaches or massage therapists, in a blanket ban affecting some 7,000 people during two weeks of competition ending July 29 in Rio de Janeiro.

That rule may make some participants wince in virtual pain, but it reflects a spreading trend among international sports institutions to impose vigorous controls over the online use of game information and photographs.

In February, a dispute broke out between the International Rugby Board and the World Association of Newspapers over new restrictions that will be imposed during the Rugby World Cup, which starts in Paris in September.

In return for Rugby Cup press credentials, the rugby board is limiting the number of game photos that can be published in online news sites during competition. It is also demanding that headlines not be superimposed over photographs, a rule designed to protect corporate sponsors like Heineken and Toshiba.

"We're not being draconian," said Greg Thomas, head of communications for the International Rugby Board, which is based in Dublin. "It's just in some instances we need to protect ourselves if people step over the mark. This is just in case we feel an organization is doing something untoward, such as blatantly putting something over the background where it obscures obviously our sponsors, who are keen to get as much exposure as they can."

The Rugby Cup's executives argue that they are "unashamedly" guarding potential revenue during an expansion period for the sport. But critics have argued that sports institutions are also seizing more power to manage and burnish their images.

"There's a natural trend among sports organizations to expand their territory," said Jens Sejer Andersen, director of Play the Game, a nonprofit sports ethics research group in Denmark. "This is normal for any business that tries to expand its control of the market. But it goes to the core of the functioning of the independent media in our society. The danger is that no real discussion about events on and off the sports field can take place, reducing us to millions of passive sports-consuming robots."

Since the late 1990s, tensions about online publication of game photos has often surfaced in connection with the media credentials issued by the sports authorities. These authorities wield the power to grant journalists access to photograph games, provided the journalists abide by rules that are constantly evolving with the development of online news sites.

In the United States in 1997, for instance, the National Football League threatened to revoke the press credentials for The Florida Times-Union if the paper failed to sign waiver forms barring it from posting photographs of Jacksonville Jaguar games on its Web site. The Times-Union countered by warning that it would not cover the Jaguars, and the dispute sputtered out.

This form of saber rattling has continued since then, from big game to big game, with news organizations and sports institutions loath to press the issue in court and instead relying on alternative forms of leverage.

In 2004, for example, British newspapers countered efforts by the dominant English Premier soccer league to seek more control over the online use of sports photos by shunning game shots that showed the logos of sponsors like Coca-Cola and Barclays.

Last year, the World Association of Newspapers also successfully challenged FIFA, the international soccer association, by approaching top sponsors to complain about proposed restrictions on the use of game photos - a tactic that is now an option in its current dispute with rugby officials.

"Sports organizations are taking a much harder view on limiting access for commercial gain, and it's not isolated," said Larry Kilman, a spokesman for the newspaper association, an industry group with 18,000 members, based in Paris. "They look at each other to see what each is doing.

"We don't have any objection to their licensing agreements and the exclusive rights that they provide to broadcasters." he continued. "But we think that these restrictions are not needed and they're being overly cautious."

At stake for big-league sports organizers is the potential revenue they could reap through new forms of media. The International Rugby Board, for instance, chose to limit the online publication of still photographs to five for each half of the game - in part because it wanted to protect the exclusivity of its own subscription-based "match tracker," which features game commentary online along with a running assortment of still photographs.

For similar reasons, the authorities of the Pan American Games wanted to protect the exclusivity of their events by barring athletes from blogging or "vlogging" with audio or video content. Eloyza Guardia, a spokeswoman for the organizers, said they were simply following the lead of the International Olympic Committee.

A similar ban was imposed during the Winter Olympics in Turin in 2006. Emmanuelle Moreau, a spokeswoman for the International Olympic Committee in Lausanne, Switzerland, said the organization was still gathering opinions about a new policy that will be drawn up in time for the Summer Olympics in Beijing next year.

Typically, there is a divide on this issue between dominant sports organizations and lesser-known competitions that are trying to build audiences. The America's Cup sailing match, which starts April 16 in Valencia, Spain, attracts less television coverage than some international events and is placing no restrictions on blogging and is allowing liberal use of still photos; a maximum of three pictures per minute can appear online. The Volvo Ocean Race last year actually required its sailors to blog.

Jeff Bukantz, captain of the U.S. fencing team, which is bound for the Pan American Games, was unaware until recently that competition blogging was banned.

In 2004, he published a running personal commentary when he was captain of the U.S. Olympic fencing team, which won a gold medal. He describes athlete blogging in general as a cathartic outlet for pressured competitors to release pent-up thoughts and feelings.

"Our athletes will abide by whatever the local rules are," he said, but he called the blogging ban "shocking."

"It's certainly an egregious form of censorship," he said.
http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/04/01/news/sports.php





Canada to Trademark 'Winter' for 2010 Olympics
Ian Austen

The Winter Olympics are coming to Vancouver, British Columbia, in 2010, and the Canadian team is boasting that it will "own the podium." If a bill before the Canadian Parliament is passed, the organizers of those games will own something even more rarefied: the trademark on the word "winter."

With little fanfare, the Canadian government recently introduced legislation that breaks with conventional trademark law and would grant the Vancouver organizing committee rights to "winter" and a long list of other common words, among them: "gold," "silver," "medals," "sponsor," "games," "21st," "2010," as well as the name of the host city itself. The legislation would also give the committee special enforcement powers.

The measure is part of a worldwide effort by the brand-conscious International Olympic Committee to thwart what it calls "ambush campaigns," sports-themed advertising during the Olympics by companies that are not Olympic sponsors.

Other countries, including Britain, have passed similar legislation. But in Canada, the plan has met with criticism from those who dislike the notion of common words becoming private property, even temporarily. The law would expire at the end of 2010.

Under the proposed law, marketers would infringe on the new trademarks only if they used the protected words in certain combinations. For instance, "gold medals," or "Vancouver 2010." (Journalists are exempted from the law.)

"It's highly problematic," said Michael Geist, a law professor at the University of Ottawa who first raised criticisms of the proposed law. "It creates the prospect of a David and Goliath fight over free speech."

Doug Clark, the director of patent policy at Industry Canada, a government department, said the measures are part of a Canadian government promise to the Olympic committee "to ensure protection for the Olympic brand and to prevent ambush advertising."

When asked why the government was not offering to outlaw ambush advertising for other large, limited-time events like concerts, Clark replied: "Rock concerts are not publicly subsidized events. Rock concerts do not cost $2.45 billion."

The law would also allow the organizing committee, a private group, to act like a government agency when it comes to enforcement. That means it would be able to obtain a court injunction without proving that an infringement of its trademark for, say, "winter games," has caused it "undue harm."

A lawmaker, Scott Brison, of the opposition Liberal Party, said that he would seek to modify the bill, particularly focusing on its inclusion of common words.

"Generally we support protecting the Olympic brand," Brison said. "But we are concerned that any proposed remedy is absolutely defensible and does not unduly compromise the rights of citizens and individual businesses."
http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/04/...s/olympics.php





'Children of Men' HD DVD Hits Xbox 360 Playback Snag?

We've received numerous reader reports that Universal's new 'Children of Men' HD DVD is a bit of lemon for some Xbox 360 owners, due to incompatibility problems with the console's HD DVD add-on drive.

'Children of Men' hit stores earlier this week on March 27, as one of the most highly-anticipated HD DVD releases on the format thus far, and as our Kenneth Brown wrote in his recent review of the disc, it apparently boasts stellar video and audio. Unfortunately, more than a few Xbox 360 owners have had issues playing it on the device's popular HD DVD add-on drive, with many of our readers writing in to say that the disc simply won't play, and that even multiple returns of the disc have produced the same issue.

When testing the disc out on our own Xbox 360 add-on HD DVD drive, we had the same results -- the disc spins in the tray, but is seemingly unrecognized by the system. A black screen and a reboot threw us back to the Microsoft Dashboard menu regardless of how many times we continued to try and load the film. We tried this dic on another Xbox 360 and found the same problem. Strangely, that tryout was even more unsuccessful -- we didn't even make it to a black screen, it simply spun the disc longer than usual and remained at the Dashboard menu.

We should note that since word of these issues first emerged, readers have also written in to say that the disc plays back fine on their Xbox 360 devices, while others have reported playback problems with the disc on Toshiba's XA2 player (we had no such issues on our XA2).

We've contacted both Microsoft and Universal, but have not yet received any official word on whether it is a hardware problem, a software problem, or both.

We'll certainly keep you posted as soon as official word comes in. In the meantime, we've set up a dedicated thread in our Forums area to discuss playback problems with 'Children of Men' on the Xbox 360 HD DVD add-on drive.

Stay tuned...
http://hddvd.highdefdigest.com/news/show/552





First AACS Blu-Ray/HD-DVD Key Revoked
Thomas Charron

"An update posted for Intervideo WinDVD 8 confirms that it's AACS key has been possibly revoked. WinDVD 8 is the software which had it's device key compromised, allowing unfettered access to Blu-Ray and HD-DVD content, resulting in HD movies being made available via many torrent sites online. This is possibly the first known key revocation which has taken place, and little is known of the actual process used for key revocation. According to the release, 'Please be aware that failure to apply the update will result in AACS-protected HD DVD and BD playback being disabled,' which pretty much confirms that the key revocation has already taken place for all newly released Blu-Ray and HD-DVD discs."
http://it.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/04/07/1417253





Usenet Server to Return Shortly
Thomas Mennecke

For some, a day without Usenet (the newsgroups) might as well be a day without oxygen. The newsgroups have become an important aspect of the file-sharing community, challenging heavyweights such as BitTorrent and eDoneky2000 as the most resourceful mediums of information. However, Usenet’s more centralized nature is more susceptible to widespread failure - and as UseNet Server (UNS) customers have discovered, has resulted a sporadic newsgroup blackout for the last day.

The situation arose on March 28, when a 250 amp breaker protecting one of UNS primary distribution units failed. That alone only caused a short outage, however the failure of the breaker snowballed into additional problems. According to UNS, “when the breaker failed only one phase of the breaker went out, leaving two phases on-line. The failure resulted in the supply cables to overheat and compromise their integrity. Our electricians have strongly recommended that we replace all three 150 feet (each) of the supply lines.” What was predicted to be a several hour delay slowly migrated into a massive quandary. Replacement of the main power wires began on April 2nd.

Being these are the main power leads to UNS’ server farm, the replacement of these heavy gauge wires required their service to go off line. Additionally, the difficulty in replacing the wires required downtime of up to two days. Although going two days without newsgroup access may be considered a tragedy to some, the repairs should ensure trouble-free service – at least with respect to UNS’ power supply. Two days later, it appears progress is being made, and UNS’ service will be incrementally restored within two hours.

"The work is almost complete now,” a representative of UNS posted on the Slyck forums. “They have finished pulling the old cable out which is the hardest and most time consuming portion. They just completed the new wire run and are now terminating the new wire on the PDU (power distribution units) and break panels. In about 2 hours we should be able to let customers back in. When we turn back up we will slow allow more connections so users will likely see 'connection refused' errors for up to an hour after we get the system back online.”
http://www.slyck.com/story1452.html





New Bar Codes Can Talk With Your Cellphone
Louise Story

It sounds like something straight out of a futuristic film: House hunters, driving past a for-sale sign, stop and point their cellphone at the sign. With a click, their cellphone screen displays the asking price, the number of bedrooms and baths and lots of other details about the house.

Media experts say that cellphones, the Swiss Army knives of technology, are quickly heading in this direction. New technology, already in use in parts of Asia but still in development in the United States, allows the phones to connect everyday objects with the Internet.

In their new incarnation, cellphones become a sort of digital remote control, as one CBS executive put it. With a wave, the phone can read encoded information on everyday objects and translate that into videos, pictures or text files on its screen.

“The cellphone is the natural tool to combine the physical world with the digital world,” that executive, Cyriac Roeding, the head of mobile-phone applications for CBS, said the other day.

In Japan, McDonald’s customers can already point their cellphones at the wrapping on their hamburgers and get nutrition information on their screens. Users there can also point their phones at magazine ads to receive insurance quotes, and board airplanes using their phones rather than paper tickets. And film promoters can send their movie trailers from billboards.

Advertisers say they are interested in offering similar capabilities in the United States, but cellphones in the States do not come with the necessary software. For now, consumers have to download the technology themselves.

Still, big advertising and technology companies like Hewlett-Packard and the Publicis Groupe, an advertising conglomerate, are pushing to popularize the technology here.

Until now, in most parts of the world, Web surfing has been separate from everyday activities like riding the train, watching television and driving. But the new technology may erode that distinction.

“You’ve picked up this product, and you don’t want to go back to your PC,” said Tim Kindberg, a senior research at the Bristol, England, lab of Hewlett-Packard. “Or you’re outside this building, and you want more information. We call it the ‘physical hyperlink.’ ”

In much the same way that Web publishing took off because of the ability to link to other people’s sites, cellphone technologies linking everyday objects with the Web would reveal the digitally encoded attributes of tangible things on grocery shelves or newsstands.

“Everything in the physical world has information related to it somewhere electronically, including yourself and the desk you’re sitting in,” said Chas Fritz, chief executive of NeoMedia Technologies, a company developing these cellphone capacities.

The most promising way to link cellphones with physical objects is a new generation of bar codes: square-shaped mosaics of black and white boxes that can hold much more information than traditional bar codes. The cameras on cellphones scan the codes, and then the codes are translated into videos, music or text on the phone screens.

American universities and technology companies have been experimenting with the codes in their labs for several years. Now, as more cellphones come equipped with cameras and the ability to run small computer programs, the codes are beginning to appear on some state drivers’ licenses and on some mailing labels, mostly for commercial use.

There are other technologies being developed for consumers to scan objects, including radio waves, computer chips or satellite location systems, but the bar code technology is the most developed — and simple and cheap enough even for individuals to publish them on printed materials or on Web sites.

But Hewlett-Packard and the Publicis Groupe are meeting for the second time with cellphone companies in May to advocate for the technology. Technology companies like Motorola and Microsoft have also been researching uses for the codes.

In Japan, the codes did not become mainstream until the largest cellphone companies started loading the code readers on all new phones a few years ago. Now, millions of people have the capability built into their phones, and businesses, in turn, are using them all over — on billboards, street signs, published materials and even food packaging.

In the late 1990s, several dozen start-up companies tried to create devices that would scan print content and ads and then reveal extra information to the reader. But consumers balked at using a special device only to interact with publications.

But now the time seems right for cellphones, ubiquitous and increasingly sold with cameras, to be pressed into service as the scanners.

“There are three things you tend to carry — your keys, your wallet and your phone,” said Rishad Tobaccowala, chief executive of Denuo, a unit of the Publicis Groupe that focuses on emerging and future technologies. “I can see something in advertising in one place, scan it with my phone and recall it later when I am shopping. Or, imagine, I can buy it using my phone.”

About a third of the 84 million households with cellphones in the United States have phones that have cameras on them, according to Forrester Research, and that number is expected to grow as consumers replace their phones. But few people with those phones have downloaded the software to read the codes.

In Japan, some highway billboards have codes large enough for passing motorists to read them with their phones. Hospitals put them on prescriptions, allowing pharmacies to instantly scan the medical information rather than read it. Supermarkets stick them on meat and egg packaging to give expiration dates and even the names of the farmers who produced them.

One of the most popular uses in Japan has been paperless airline tickets. About 10 percent of the people who take domestic flights of All Nippon Airways now use the codes on their cellphones instead of printed tickets.

Yasuko Nishigai, 22, used her cellphone recently to buy a ticket from Tokyo to the Japanese tropical island of Okinawa. To board her flight, she waved the code on her cellphone screen over a scanner.

“I didn’t use a single piece of paper, just my phone,” she said.

The codes are “a natural extension of print,” said Nina Link, the president of the Magazine Publishers Association. “How many times have you engaged with a magazine and you’ve seen something and you’ve said, ‘Boy, I’d really like to remember to get that information.’ And you have to remember to write down the URL.”

The new technology would allow phones to read the codes from computer screens, too. Commuters rushing out the door could scan Web sites on their computer screens with their phones to take the content with them. MySpace users could put a code on their personal pages, so that their friends can quickly transfer the profiles to their phones.

The technology would also allow advertisers to do something they could never effectively do before: monitor the impact of their ads in old media like magazines and billboards by measuring how often their codes are clicked.

In the Philippines, the Daily Philippines newspaper has run ads with the codes. In Britain, News Group Newspapers, the division of the News Corporation that includes newspapers like The Sun, is testing the codes along with some of its sports articles. Readers can scan the code in the newspaper and then see videos relating to the article. Similarly, Economie Matin, a magazine in France, is testing the codes.

In the United States last fall, the Canadian alternative rock band Barenaked Ladies placed the codes on concert posters. The publisher Prentice Hall is including the codes in a new marketing textbook for undergraduates so that they can get updates on case studies using the codes.

Executives at Verizon, AT&T and Sprint declined to say whether they were in discussions with the companies that make the code reading technology. Bar code companies said the carriers stood to benefit from the codes because they might encourage consumers to add Internet service plans to their accounts and spend more time on their phones.

The wireless companies have other options to help cellphones interact with the physical world. They could, for instance, adopt image recognition software, which would allow phones to recognize anything — a Coca-Cola can, for example — and deliver related messages. Or, text messaging, currently the most common way that advertisers interact with consumers on their phones, has many advertiser applications.

Advertisers have also experimented with Bluetooth wireless devices and radio frequency identification to beam messages from billboards to consumers’ cellphones, but those technologies are more expensive than the codes.

Even if the wireless companies adopt the bar codes, they will have several formats to choose from. The most widely used ones have names like Semacode, QR Code and Qode.

Getting consumers to use new technologies like these codes takes a lot of marketing by the carriers, said David Oberholzer, associate director of content programming at Verizon Wireless. He said Verizon is just starting to profit from the work it did to create interest in text messaging.

“The consumer needs a reason to do it,” said Jim Levinger, chief executive of Nextcode, a bar code company. “They don’t just wake up and say, ‘Hey, let’s go scan some bar codes.’ ”

Martin Fackler contributed reporting from Tokyo.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/01/business/01code.html





Solar Power Breakthrough at Massey
Mervyn Dykes

New solar cells developed by Massey University don't need direct sunlight to operate and use a patented range of dyes that can be impregnated in roofs, window glass and eventually even clothing to produce power.

This means teenagers could one day be wearing jackets that will recharge their equivalents of cellphones, iPods and other battery- driven devices.

The breakthrough is a development of the university's Nanomaterials Research Centre and has attracted world-wide interest already - particularly from Australia and Japan.

Researchers at the centre have developed a range of synthetic dyes from simple organic compounds closely related to those found in nature, where light-harvesting pigments are used by plants for photosynthesis.

"This is a proof-of-concept cell," said researcher Wayne Campbell, pointing to a desktop demonstration model.

"Within two to three years we will have developed a prototype for real applications. "The technology could be sold off already, but it would be a shame to get rid of it now."

The key to everything is the ability of the synthetic dyes to pass on the energy that reaches them - something that mere coloured water could not do.

"We now have the most efficient porphyrin dye in the world," said the centre's director, Ashton Partridge.

"It is the most efficient ever made. While others are doing related work, in this aspect we are the world leaders."

The development of the dyes has taken about 10 years and was accomplished with funding from the Royal Society of New Zealand for fundamental work and the Foundation for Research, Science and Technology in the later stages.

Now the team is seeking extra funding to go commercial.

"This particular technology does not require the large infrastructure required for silicon chips and the like," said Professor Partridge. It lends itself to being taken up by local and New Zealand industries.

Other dyes being tested in the cells are based on haemoglobin, the compound that gives blood its colour.

Dr Campbell said that unlike silicone-based solar cells, the dye- based cells are still able to operate in low-light conditions, making them ideal for cloudy climates.

They are also more environmentally friendly because they are made from titanium dioxide - an abundant and non-toxic, white mineral available from New Zealand's black sand.

Titanium dioxide is used already in consumer products such as toothpaste, white paints and cosmetics.

"The refining of silicon, although a very abundant mineral, is energy- hungry and very expensive," he said.

Professor Partridge said the next step was to take the dyes and incorporate them in roofing materials, tinted window glass and wall panels where they could generate electricity for home owners.

The aim was to develop a solar cell that could convert as much sunlight as possible to electricity.

"The energy that reaches Earth from sunlight in one hour is more than that used by all human activities in one year."
http://www.stuff.co.nz/4017784a13.html





Can the Star Maker Make Himself a Star?
Kelefa Sanneh

TIMBALAND is not an invisible man — not exactly. He has released four major-label albums, none a big hit but all respectfully received. He tried to become a music mogul by starting his own label, Beat Club, which didn’t take off. For years he has popped up in music videos: hiding in the shadows of Aaliyah’s “Are You That Somebody,” haunting Justin Timberlake’s “Cry Me a River.” He has popped up on albums too, murmuring encouragement to Missy Elliott or seconding Jay-Z’s boasts.

But he has spent much of the last decade hidden in plain sight, his name buried in the liner notes. He long ago established himself as the most exciting producer in pop music, a composer who has changed the way rappers and singers — and their fans — think about rhythm. It’s no exaggeration to compare him to James Brown, another rhythm fanatic who found new possibilities in old grooves. The only difference: James Brown was a bona fide star.

Timbaland has never seemed very comfortable in front of the camera, and collaborators have occasionally complained about his gruff mixing-board-side manner. Nonetheless over the last year or two he has redoubled his efforts to achieve pop stardom, even if he’s not well suited for it. He has been writing himself into the hit songs he produces, turning his clients into duet partners. He spars with Justin Timberlake on “SexyBack” and “My Love” and flirts awkwardly with Nelly Furtado on “Promiscuous” and with the Pussycat Dolls on “Wait a Minute.”

All this has been building up to the release, on Tuesday, of “Timbaland Presents Shock Value” (Mosley Music Group/Interscope), his fifth album and his most ambitious. Timbaland now has more clout than ever. Over his sharp and twitchy beats, teen heartthrobs sound daring, established pop stars sound hip, rough rappers sound radio-friendly. “Shock Value” proves that just about everyone returns his phone calls. The guest list ranges from Fall Out Boy to Elton John, from Dr. Dre to 50 Cent. And for the first single, “Give It to Me,” he delivers a verse alongside Mr. Timberlake and Ms. Furtado.

Nowadays a real star needs a real feud, so Timbaland used “Give It to Me” to vent long-simmering frustration with Scott Storch, the Miami-based producer (and, before a rift, a Timbaland collaborator) who has emerged as a hitmaker in his own right. “I’m a real producer and you just the piano man,” Timbaland sneers, and those two words, “real producer,” suggest a whole constellation of claims and paradoxes. How can some guy who plays the piano compare himself to Timbaland, who ... wait, what exactly does he do again?

Ever since there have been pop stars, there have been people charged with making them sound their best; these people soon realized that working in a recording studio could be a musical job, not just a mechanical one. But often being a producer meant being a bandleader: Phil Spector worked with the musicians known as the Wrecking Crew, and Norman Whitfield worked with the Funk Brothers.

As electronic production took over, the process of music-making got more abstract, and it got harder for a nonexpert to figure out exactly what tools a producer was using. (Although we’re all pretty sure computers are involved.) It has become much easier to see the product — the star, the video, the live performance — and much harder to picture the process. Producers who want to be players in the image-driven world of pop music have to find ways to fight off obscurity.

In hip-hop the answer is simple: Start rapping. That’s what Dr. Dre did (effectively), and what Kanye West did (brilliantly). You can create an outrageous character for yourself, as Lil Jon has done; no doubt many listeners don’t realize that the doofus with the pimp cup is also a first-rate knob-twiddler. Or you can demand attention in other ways. The New Orleans-raised hip-hop producer Mannie Fresh appends a ridiculous — and attention-getting — announcement to every song he produces. (“Yo! Rednecks, coloreds, Asians, Africans, Ethiopians, whatever you is: It’s your boy, Freshly Snipes, ya heard?”) Even if the song circulates on MP3, with no liner notes attached, there can be no mistaking who made it.

Timbaland, 35, was born Timothy Mosley in Norfolk, Va., and he spent about a decade as a D.J. and fledgling producer. He broke through in 1996, the year he produced Ginuwine’s space-age mating call, “Pony,” and Aaliyah’s live come-on, “If Your Girl Only Knew” The next year he produced “Supa Dupa Fly,” the dazzling debut album from Ms. Elliott, an old high school friend.

Also in 1997 Timbaland made his full-length rapping debut when he joined with the Virginia rapper Magoo to release the album “Welcome to Our World.” It was a modest success, and though it didn’t turn either man into an A-list rapper, it was a sleek showcase for Timbaland’s signature style: heavy, indolent beats enlivened by skittering syncopation. (Like James Brown before him, he found a way to emphasize the downbeat, not the backbeat.) Then as now Timbaland was a rapper whose main subject was producing: “It’s time to change my style/My rhythm, my ism, my prism, my beat mannerism.”

Since then Timbaland has never stopped making hits, although some years were better than others. (The year of Ms. Elliott’s “Get Ur Freak On,” 2001, was one triumphant year; 2006 was another.) And as part of his long campaign for visibility he never stopped making albums, all of which have included at least a fistful of breathtaking tracks. His 1998 solo debut, “Tim’s Bio: From the Motion Picture: Life From Da Bassment,” was fidgetier and more severe than his earlier work. (It also introduced the world to a young rapper billed as “Ludichris.”)

His next album with Magoo, “Indecent Proposal,” from 2001, scrambled influences and rhythms and samples: fluttering tabla drums here, a smudgy house track there. And in 2003 the two released “Under Construction Part II,” a sequel of sorts to Ms. Elliott’s “Under Construction”; it was full of sparse, drum-driven dance music.

Throughout, the common lyrical theme was frustration: Timbaland complained that he wasn’t being given his due. No doubt most producers feel this way, including Timbaland’s current antagonist, Mr. Storch. In “Built Like That,” his rather lame response to Timbaland’s “Give It to Me,” Mr. Storch takes credit for Mr. Timberlake’s “Cry Me a River.” (Mr. Storch is listed as one of three songwriters, alongside Timbaland and Mr. Timberlake; he isn’t listed as a co-producer but does receive a credit for playing keyboards.) He also mentions Timbaland’s protégé Nate Hills, known as Danja, who is emerging as a first-rate producer with a knack for melody. (He helped produce five of these songs, including “Give It to Me,” and produced one himself.)

Mr. Storch raps, “Your boy Danja got to hate you with a passion, man/He makes the hits while you taking all the credit, damn.” It’s inevitable, perhaps, that a beef between producers would devolve into a squabble over liner notes.

In any case Timbaland wins this round, not just because of his decadelong track record but also because “Give It to Me” sounds so much better than “Built Like That.” It’s an instantly addictive song built from a muscular rhythm and a few well-placed synthesizer notes. And Timbaland’s half-rapped, half-sung verse fits snugly between Ms. Furtado’s spooky segment (she always sounds as if she’s just seen a ghost) and Mr. Timberlake’s boyish taunts.

Not every collision on “Shock Value” works this well, but all of them are worth hearing, even for those perverse people who don’t consider themselves Timbaland fanatics. “The Way I Are,” featuring Keri Wilson and D.O.E., is a swirling electronic come-on. “Oh Timbaland,” the album’s only true solo track, is built from a playful piano loop, menacing syncopations and strobed synthesizers. (He’s obsessed with this last technique right now; you can hear it in Mr. Timberlake’s “My Love” and in Omarion’s “Icebox.”)

Even more intriguing are his experiments with rock, which dominate the album’s second half. “One & Only,” the Fall Out Boy collaboration, must be the most futuristic emo song ever: Timbaland creates a breakneck rock ’n’ roll backbeat and then, after the second chorus, shifts to half time, changing the rhythm while keeping most of the sounds the same. “Apologize” showcases One Republic, a young band based in Los Angeles; Timbaland’s hissing counterrhythms turn a handsome rock ballad into something even better.

Inevitably, there are times when this CD feels more like a compilation, and times when Timbaland goes overboard trying to prevent that. Elton John’s appearance comes at the end, in a song called “2 Man Show.” He doesn’t sing, he only plays piano, but Timbaland goes out of his way to remind listeners who they’re listening to. “Come on, Elton,” he keeps saying. Doesn’t he trust us to read the liner notes?

Maybe not, and who can blame him? In an age when songs are often mislabeled or unlabeled or sold without production information (as often happens at the iTunes shop), liner notes themselves are starting to seem obsolete. One day Timbaland will get his box set, including all the hits but also the shoulda-been-hits, by Brandy and Ms. Jade and Petey Pablo and — well, it’s a long list. In the meantime you can’t blame him for seeking the spotlight any way he can. Unlike Mr. West, Timbaland will never be mesmerizing on the microphone, and so he’ll probably never be an old-fashioned star. But maybe he’s a new-fashioned star: a spectral one.

Even when he doesn’t have the microphone, Timbaland often overshadows whoever does. He’s not one of those musical therapists who make singers sound more like themselves. On the contrary, he prides himself on challenging his clients. They have to find a way to work around his weird beats. (Many of his productions don’t really make sense until you hear them a few times; he loves songs that sound wrong at first.) His music isn’t predictable, but it’s definitely recognizable. In that sense he’s among the most assertive pop producers of all time.

“Shock Value” includes a track called “Bounce,” featuring Ms. Elliott, Mr. Timberlake and Dr. Dre. There’s a heavy downbeat that almost sabotages the rapped verses; you can feel some syncopation, but you can’t quite hear it. And then, at the end, everything stops. All that’s left is a looped hiccupping sound — the syncopation you thought you had imagined. It had been there the whole time, pushing the track forward, mischievously throwing the rappers off balance. And once you’ve heard it clear, it’s impossible to ignore. Everything else about the song seems like an afterthought; that tricky little rhythm is the star.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/01/ar...ic/01sann.html





If at First You Don’t Succeed, Write a Check
Randall Stross

SIX months ago, Microsoft stood in front of the world and rather bravely stated the question on everyone else’s mind: Why on earth does the world need another search engine?

Before supplying the answer, the company acknowledged in full-page advertisements that, yes, it was late to the game, and, yes, it was confronting the prospect of “becoming a footnote in search history.” But it had decided to forge ahead and “write a few new chapters.”

It cast the competition — read: Google — as eggheads whose “complicated mathematical equations” retrieve all too many results, which overwhelm the average user. Microsoft’s copywriters boasted that its employees had developed entirely new ways to filter and display search results that would set its service clearly apart. It could not resist adding that those new features had been developed, in part, by those who “didn’t even pass calculus. Imagine that.”

Nowhere outside of a high school lunchroom would this pass as biting criticism. But Microsoft deserves credit for trying to compete on the basis of the intrinsic quality of the search experience. The tag line for this campaign was: “Algorithm. Meet Humanity.”

Microsoft would soon learn, however, that those amusingly incomprehensible mathematical equations used by Google produced a search engine that grew ever stronger. While the quality of results among different search engines is hard to judge objectively, Google enjoys the benefits of a network effect. Its software is tuned to learn from the clicks of its users, and the more users it attracts, the smarter the software evolves, the more users are drawn in, and on the virtuous cycle revolves. Humanity. Meet Algorithm.

In that matchup, algorithm wins. Google had a 50 percent share of searches in the United States in October 2006, while Yahoo had 24 percent, and Microsoft, 9 percent, according to Nielsen/NetRatings. The most recent data, for February of this year, show that Microsoft had climbed a bit, to a 9.6 percent share, but that Google had jumped much farther ahead, to 56 percent. (Yahoo’s executives had something to ponder, too: its share slipped by three points.)

Watching your principal competitor widen its lead with organic growth, unaided by advertising, makes you receptive to trying something else — anything else. Microsoft has decided that the search business needs a sort of “frequent flier” rewards program to attract and hold on to users: Microsoft Service Credits for Web Search.

John Battelle broke the story last month on his Searchblog. Adam Sohn, director of global sales and marketing for Windows Live, confirmed that Microsoft would pay large companies $2 to $10 a user annually — the more searches, the larger the bounty earned — in credits that can be used for Microsoft products and training services.

“We’re the underdogs in this business,” Mr. Sohn acknowledged. Breaking users of their inclination to use what he called “the incumbent” — he would not use the “G” word if he could help it — requires a willingness to depart from standard practice, and to weather sniping from outside critics. “There’s always controversy when anyone tries something new,” he said.

Microsoft is seeking 30 companies, each with at least 5,000 PCs, who are willing to sign up and install on employees’ computers a small program — a “browser helper object” — that will count the number of searches performed with Microsoft Live Search.

The notion that a lagging search engine would offer monetary incentives directly to end users is not wholly new. A year ago, Yahoo appeared to be readying a rewards program for its search users that would be offered first to Yahoo Mail customers. A Yahoo survey, asking what would entice e-mail customers to designate Yahoo as their primary search engine, offered ideas like five free music downloads a month, a discount to Netflix, or 250 frequent-flier miles each month that could be transferred to most major airline mileage programs.

After completing the survey, Yahoo decided not to start the service. Whether it had discovered that its own e-mail customers withheld enthusiasm for the idea of making Yahoo their default search engine is not known. A company spokeswoman last week declined to discuss the survey or the subsequent decision to abort the plans for a rewards program.

Microsoft also tested the idea of rewarding search users last year, when its MSN unit put up a promotional Web site, “MSN Search and Win,” which provided instant prizes ranging from a Starbucks gift certificate to a Panasonic high-definition television. The promotion lasted about five months and, according to Mr. Sohn, “drove tens of millions of queries and for a relatively small amount of money.”

Both Yahoo and Microsoft’s MSN were thinking about the problem of customer acquisition in the same way. But Microsoft’s new program brings an entirely new approach to acquiring customers: buying them at wholesale, instead of retail. Microsoft need only persuade the I.T. department in order to achieve broad adoption at a large company, rather than slogging, cubicle by cubicle, to win loyalty one employee at a time. If the employees prove recalcitrant and continue to use “the incumbent,” that will be for I.T. to handle.

Microsoft, stuck in distant third place and losing ground to the leader with every lap, should realize that the airlines’ frequent-flier programs may not work well as a model for the software business. Mara Lederman, an assistant professor of strategic management at the University of Toronto who has closely studied the airlines’ programs, said one feature that has been essential to their popularity among business travelers is that customers earn the rewards but do not pay for the product — their employers do.

“If the fare for your preferred airline is $100 more, you don’t care because you don’t pay,” she said. “You just want the points because you want to take the family to Hawaii.”

In the case of search, who pays isn’t an issue because the price is zero. But under Microsoft’s program, Professor Lederman said, “there’s no reward going directly to the individual carrying out the search.” She predicted that employers would have to take an active role, offering monetary incentives or applying administrative pressure, in order to obtain the desired outcome of full participation of the work force.

Airlines have benefited from another feature: frequent-flier awards are more alluring than they deserve to be. The frequent-flier programs give away only empty seats, which is why the actual cost of the rewards is exceedingly cheap. (That’s also why it’s hard to redeem your miles for any flight that doesn’t leave at 5:30 a.m. on a Tuesday.) “Microsoft does not seem to understand this,” Professor Lederman said.

IF Microsoft has determined that it is futile to compete with Google head-to-head, and if, as seems to be the case, it is willing to cast dignity aside and adopt marketing gimmicks in an attempt to gain market share, why stop at half measures? Why not go all the way, as iWon.com has done ever since its founding in 1999? That portal, which includes a search service powered by its sister company, Ask.com, runs sweepstakes. Performing searches, up to a certain number each day, is the easiest way to increase one’s odds of winning a $10,000 prize awarded daily. On Tax Day, however, a special prize will be bestowed: $1 million.

The market share of IWon is not measured in the standard industry surveys, but we can speculate that as April 17 approaches, “I’m Feeling Lucky” users from Google may temporarily take their positive premonitions there.

To bolster its struggling search service, Microsoft should forget pitching I.T. managers with penny-ante discounts and give the million-dollar sweepstakes a try. If frequent fliers are gullible enough to think that they won’t need zillions of miles for great seats to Hawaii, then frequent searchers may be no less susceptible to the lure of a jackpot, no matter the odds.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/01/bu...ey/01digi.html





Survey: Most People Know About Vista But Few Intend to Upgrade
John Pospisil

A recent Harris Poll has found that while most online computers users are aware of Microsoft’s Windows Vista, few are intending to switch over to the new operating system anytime soon.

The Harris Poll of 2223 US online adults in early March found that 87% were aware of Vista. Unfortunately for Microsoft, only 12% of Vista-aware respondents were intending to upgrade to Vista in the next 12 months.

The poll revealed that 39% of those intending to move over to Vista planned to upgrade their existing computer so it would meet Vista requirements, 35% planned to buy a new computer with Vista preinstalled, 17% planned to purchase a new “Vista-ready” computer, and 8% said that they would install Vista on their existing computer without any upgrade.

A similar Harris Poll in December 2006, just one month before Vista’s consumer launch, found that 47% of those online were aware of Vista, and that 20% intended to upgrade in the coming year.

It seems that while Microsoft’s “Wow Starts Now” marketing campaign has boosted awareness of Vista, it hasn’t substantially increased the total number of people planning to upgrade.

The survey does indicate, however, that the release of the new operating system has affected the timing of the purchase of a new computer for 40% of the respondents who were aware of Vista: one in five said they had delayed the purchase of a new computer, and one in five said they would bring forward the purchase of a new computer.

According to Milton Ellis, Vice President of Harris Interactive’s Technology Group, said Microsoft has some way to go to convert the awareness of Vista into sales.

“In order to generate that ‘WOW’ factor, Microsoft will have to put forth a value proposition that will move the majority to the upgrade category in the years ahead. Vista promised better performance, reliability, security, and a revolutionary user interface - but it appears consumers looking to upgrade are not ready to buy into the promise whereas new computer buyers will want the latest and greatest,” said Ellis.

“Microsoft has faced this challenge before with operating system upgrades. Consumers tend to wait until a few service packs have been released to fix real or perceived problems. No doubt, Microsoft understands these issues and will proceed accordingly.”
http://tech.blorge.com/Structure:%20...nd-to-upgrade/





Hasta la Vista Baby, Say PC Makers

TAIPEI: After all the hype surrounding its January launch, Microsoft’s new Vista operating system has yet to brighten the outlook for PC makers and could even lead to oversupplies for those who had built up inventory.

Top PC makers, such as Dell, Hewlett-Packard and Lenovo may now have to resort to sales of lower-margin computers in emerging markets such as China, Eastern Europe and Latin America for their growth this year.

Featuring high-definition video and audio functions and three-dimensional graphics, Vista is being billed as a major upgrade of its predecessor, Windows XP.

But the software, which runs on more memory and superior graphic cards, has not taken off as fast as some had hoped, leading to concerns of potential inventory woes for makers of those products, analysts and industry players said. “Vista has had no big help,” said Acer’s president Gianfranco Lanci, adding that PC makers are really not counting on Vista to drive high demands for the industry. Samsung Electronics, the world’s top memory chip maker, also said that demand for DRAM computer memory chips from Vista hasn’t materialised as fast as it had predicted.

“We had expected the ‘Vista impact’ on DRAM around April, but now we see it being delayed into the second half,” said Hwang Chang-gyu, semiconductor business president of Samsung Electronics.

But many PC vendors were already sceptical on fresh demand from Vista even before the product’s launch in January, better preparing them for a potential disappointment, said JP Morgan analyst Charles Guo.

Major PC players like Asustek Computer, also the world’s top motherboard maker, said Vista might have warmed up the market but significant results have not been seen.

“We aren’t seeing any effects yet and compatibility issues will take at least six months to resolve,” said an executive at Asustek, who declined to be identified.

He added that many corporate customers — who tend to buy in much larger volumes than individual consumers and therefore can make a bigger impact — were staying on the sidelines for now as individuals accounted for new buying.

“We’ve carried out numerous surveys recently with IT managers and they’ve all said they are not planning to migrate to Vista, and we are not expecting a major influx anytime soon,” said Bryan Ma, an analyst at IDC, expressing a similar view.

Different forms of Microsoft’s various Windows operating systems now run more than 90% of the world’s PCs.

Computer makers are now looking to strong buying from emerging markets such as China, Eastern Europe and Latin America to boost business.

Dell announced earlier this week a super cheap computer costing as little as 2,599 yuan ($336) specifically for China, now the world’s second largest PC market by unit sales.

“Emerging markets are still a key driver for growth in the PC sector. Global PC shipments this year should grow by low double digits, in the 10% range,” said Mr Lanci.

The comment by Acer, which is trying to overtake China’s Lenovo as the world’s No 3 PC maker, was in line with the outlook for the broader industry.

IDC expects worldwide PC shipments to reach about 253 million units this year, up 11% from 228 million in 2006. That 2007 growth rate is up from the 9.6% posted last year.

Vista’s newness aside, analysts also say the right computing platform, which is needed to run the operating system smoothly, is a main factor that will determine whether the software will be accepted in the near term.

“Intel’s main Santa Rosa platform needed to support Vista features won’t be launched until May 10, and in the last five to 10 years, the biggest PC driver is still price,” said JP Morgan analyst Alvin Kwock. Microsoft founder Bill Gates said last month that Vista has been well received and that PC vendors have seen a nice lift in their sales.

A week before his comments, chief executive Steve Ballmer had said that Vista would only create a ‘small surge’ in PC sales for its fiscal year starting in July, and would not spur a big increase in normal growth rates.

“Vista was very popular in the first couple of weeks, but let’s not just focus on that. Dell and Hewlett-Packard don’t even advertise much on PCs with Vista,” said JP Morgan’s Kwock.
http://infotech.indiatimes.com/Hasta...ow/1830472.cms





PC Makers to Microsoft: "Vista Is Not a Seller. You Suck"
Jesus Diaz

This may feel like Groundhog Day for you and Steve Ballmer, but according to computer and component manufacturers, Vista is not the hotcake that they were hoping for. The not-so-shiny-shiny-anymore OS is not helping sales at all and some companies may end with a whole bunch of unsold stuff in their warehouses.

Take Acer's president, Gianfranco Lanci, who has just said that "PC makers are really not counting on Vista to drive high demands for the industry." Or Samsung Electronics, who now says that DRAM demand has not matched anyone's predictions based on Vista's now failed projections, something that is being echoed by the industry as a whole.

So forget about Señor Gates' words on Vista pushing PC sales. You may want to punch us, Bill, but apparently those 20 million copies sold are indeed business as usual.
http://gizmodo.com/gadgets/software/...uck-248336.php





Russian School Principal Faces Trial for Microsoft Piracy
AP

A Russian school principal accused of installing pirated Microsoft software in school computers was ordered Tuesday to stand trial for a second time, in a case widely seen as a misguided attempt to crack down on software bootlegging.

The Perm regional court overturned a lower court's February ruling to end the prosecution of Alexander Ponosov, said court spokesman Anatoly Sobolev. The lower court had said the case was insignificant.

Ponosov a small-town school director in the Ural Mountain region of Perm, about 620 miles east of Moscow, had been charged with violating intellectual property rights by installing bootleg versions of the Windows operating system and Microsoft Office software. He insisted that the computers came with the software already installed.

Microsoft Corp. said it had nothing to do with the charges, and that the company declined to file a civil action against the teacher last year.

Both Russian and Western officials say Russia - the biggest producer of pirated goods after China - needs to be tougher on bootleggers of audio recordings, DVDs and software.

Violations of intellectual property law were cited as a major impediment to an agreement with the U.S. - signed in November after years of wrangling - paving the way for Russia to join the World Trade Organization.

But President Vladimir Putin has called Ponosov's trial "utter nonsense," saying manufacturers of pirated goods should be targeted, not consumers.
http://www.komotv.com/news/microsoft/6747952.html





Vista Protected Processes Bypassed
Anonymous Hero

"Security Researcher Alex Ionescu strikes again, this time with a proof of concept program that will arbitrarily enable and foremost disable the protection of so-called 'protected processes' in Windows Vista. Not only threatening Vista DRM and friends, it's also another step towards hardened and even more annoying malware. Normally, only specially signed processes made by special companies (decided by Microsoft) can be protected, but now the bad guys can protect any evil process they want, including the latest version of their own keylogger, spambot, or worm, as well as unprotect any 'good' one."
http://it.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/04/07/1426200





Addonics CompactFlash Adapters Replace Notebook Hard Drives
Charlie White

Now here's a great idea from Addonics: replace a laptop's 2.5" hard disk with flash memory, using a $30 adapter that lets you boot from CompactFlash cards. Suddenly you've converted that lappy into a solid-state notebook without spending an arm and a leg. That's what Addonics has done with its CompactFlash Hard Drive Adapters for notebooks, available in both SATA and IDE flavors and accommodating either single or dual CompactFlash cards.

So let's say you get yourself a couple of 12GB CompactFlash cards—that would cost you about $260, and they're capable of read and write speeds of about 9MB per second. Not the fastest drives in the world, but still serviceable. For under $300, you have yourself a solid-state laptop. But 24GB isn't going to be enough storage space, is it?

We've heard talk of Samsung cranking out 64GB CompactFlash cards before too long, though they won't cost any $130, that's for sure. Anyway, if you don't need that much storage space, low-priced solid-state notebook conversions just got a whole lot easier.
http://gizmodo.com/gadgets/periphera...ves-249594.php





For Chatting Face to Face, Webcams With a Clearer View
Anne Eisenberg

SEEING people on screen while talking with them by phone has its advantages, but consumers have been slow to take to the video technology and its often grainy images. Now, better cameras and video services may change all that.

Companies that once offered only instant messaging services have been adding and improving video messaging programs that allow subscribers to see and talk to one another, too, with tolerable sound and image quality.

To tap this potential world of video buddies, manufacturers are offering high-quality portable Web cameras that clip neatly onto laptops, or pack up in small containers to be taken along on business trips.

The cameras are about the size of a lipstick and plug directly into the U.S.B. port on a computer. They have built-in microphones and wide-angle lenses. Because they can be mounted securely to the top of the monitor, they will not wobble or produce unflattering, under-the-chin views of faces, as desktop Webcams are prone to do when perched on the arm of a chair or hitched temporarily to a laptop.

The Webcams may have particular appeal for people who want to try video chatting but don’t want to buy a new laptop with an embedded Webcam solely for the camera.

The better portable Webcams typically cost at least $60 because of the quality of components like lenses. But the overall price of video chatting is modest because the major players in the industry, like Windows Live Messenger and other video message services, are free, supported in part by advertising.

So if you are already paying for a broadband connection like D.S.L. or cable, which are essential for video streaming, a clip-on Webcam may yield the benefits of face-to-face conversations with business contacts, friends or far-away relatives, at no additional cost beyond the camera.

To test how well the portable Webcams worked, I tried two models and asked several neighbors to experiment with them, too. We tested the Microsoft LifeCam NX-6000 ($75 to $100 on the Web), and the QuickCam for Notebooks Pro ($66 to $90), from Logitech. Our consensus is that both cameras do the job — and are easy to set up and use.

Be aware, though, that the images in live video chatting will not be as crisp as, say, still photographs taken by the same Webcams. Sending highly defined images and refreshing them many times a second requires more available bits per second than instant messaging services can usually provide.

But the quality of the images transmitted by the two cameras was surprisingly good, and after an initial investment of an hour or so to set up the software and hardware, you can talk for as long as you want with no worry about the phone bill.

A neighbor of mine, Li Wah Lai, a graphic designer at Standard & Poor’s, agreed to try both cameras with her laptop. Ms. Lai is an old hand at using Webcams: at Christmas her two sons, then planning an extended trip to China, bought her a desktop Webcam so that the family could stay in touch. The boys have Webcams that are built into their laptops — one a Mac, the other a PC.

Both sons are now in China, and Ms. Lai often has video chats with them when she is home in New York City. But she also travels a lot, and wants to keep in touch with her family at those times, too. After plugging in the new Webcams and testing them for a week, Ms. Lai decided that buying a portable camera would be a great help. “I’m getting one,” she said.

She said that both Webcams worked well, but that she preferred the Microsoft model for several reasons, including its lens, which is retractable. It sits within the camera when you’re traveling and then, with a push, pops out.

A number of instant messaging programs support video chatting, including those from AOL, Skype, Yahoo and Microsoft. Ms. Lai and her sons, Mickey, 20, who is studying in Shanghai, and Ming, 22, teaching English in Qingdao, all use Skype.

I decided to try the cameras with a different system, Windows Live Messenger, and the e-mail service with which it is paired, Hotmail. First, I signed up for both and installed the camera software, which comes on a CD and offers special features like on-screen controls that let you zoom in, pan and tilt. That took about 10 minutes.

Once the software was installed and the screen gave the go-ahead, I plugged the camera into a U.S.B. port. I read a bit of text into the microphone in a normal voice and adjusted the controls. Then I started getting used to the sight of myself on the screen. All of that took another 10 minutes.

Finally, after clicking on the name and e-mail address of a friend I had persuaded to sign up, I pressed the Live Call button, and we were in business.

We talked and typed, sending still pictures with one click and short videos with another. I had expected the video to have some distortion, but on screen my chat buddy sounded and looked very close to his in-person self.

I tried out the Logitech camera with Skype Video Messaging. The Logitech Webcam has a slightly snugger fit on the screen lid than the Microsoft version, and is a bit more compact. It compensates well for dim lighting. The sensor on its camera has 1.3 megapixels, versus 2 megapixels for the Microsoft version.

But I saw no difference in the instant-messaging video images of the two cameras; both were diminished by the transmission process, which typically reduces the 30 frames a second the cameras can produce to 15.

“We can do 1.3 megapixels at 30 frames a second,” Andrew Heymann, senior global product manager at Logitech, said of its Webcam. But the instant messaging services ask for far fewer megapixels at 15 frames a second, “so we compress the data off the camera,” he said.

Despite the imperfect images that result primarily from data compression on the messaging services, Ms. Lai is highly pleased with the images of her sons when she talks with them.

“It makes me feel good just to see their faces,” she said. “With the camera, it’s like they are next door.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/01/bu...y/01novel.html





Thousands Are Laid Off. What’s New?
David Carr

When executives at Circuit City decided last Wednesday to cut costs by laying off 3,400 of their most experienced salesclerks, they undoubtedly went through a number of calculations: that they could save $250 million over two years; that consumers are inured to bad service; and that the layoffs would be a one-day blip in the news.

They were right about the last part. After hearing a fairly expansive report on public radio’s Marketplace late Wednesday, I woke up the next morning eager to read more.

USA Today ran a short article on the front page, The Wall Street Journal ran a brief on B4, The New York Times published a wire report inside its business pages, while The Washington Post and The Los Angeles Times gave the news a bit more room.

Only the piece in The Baltimore Sun really explored the broader implications, while most of the coverage stuck to the usual suspects and themes. There were a few quick mentions on the evening news, but I saw no cable-talk umbrage at what this meant. And the next day, it was yesterday’s news.

Media outlets could not be blamed for having a little fatigue when it comes to layoffs, which have become an organic part of American life. With Detroit laying off more than 70,000 people in the last few years, the approximately 8 percent of Circuit City’s work force who got the heave-ho as a result of a “wage management initiative” — yet another advance in corporate-speak — do not seem like a big deal. (Nor did the news have legs on Wall Street, apparently. On Friday, Circuit City closed at $18.53, down 25 cents from the week before.)

But there are larger issues here. Circuit City, pushed by other big retailers and the consumer’s desire for low prices, could not compete. So they fired the cream of their work force, not even giving those employees a chance to re-apply immediately for their job at lower wages until after a cooling-off period of 10 weeks. In doing so, the company engaged in a kind of domestic outsourcing.

“The fact that this was a nonstory is as emblematic of our times as the firings themselves,” said Harley Shaiken, a professor who teaches labor issues at the University of California, Berkeley. “What makes this troubling is that this is not an auto parts supplier in Michigan under global pressure; this is a retail giant jettisoning its most experienced workers because it is under pressure from the Best Buy across the street. That is a big story.”

In the 1980s and ’90s, the heroic narrative of business reporting began to focus on executives, in which a new pantheon — executives like Jeff Bezos, Bill Gates and, um, Jeffrey K. Skilling — were touted as beings who had left the gravitational pull of traditional economics.

Even now, the corner office is where reporters usually go when it’s time to cover business. According to Christopher R. Martin, an associate professor of journalism at Miami University, of the top 25 newspapers in the country, only four have reporters assigned to the labor beat.

“Newspapers have shifted from going after mass audiences to targeting upscale audiences. This is a great story,” Mr. Martin said, referring to the Circuit City layoffs, “but it’s about working people. There have been dual wage systems before, but here you have something completely different — the wholesale firing of people who did their jobs well.”

Last summer, I needed some gadgets for a multimedia project, so I walked in to a Best Buy. A young man walked me around the floor, assembling a bag of components before promising me that it would all work. It did and I’ve been back to Best Buy twice since then, not because I checked prices, but because I knew they had well-priced merchandise with knowledgeable sales help.

Circuit City seems to have forgotten that the customer interaction — the user interface, to use contemporary language — is their point of difference in an age when consumers can have perfect pricing information with the click of a mouse. “In a service economy where all the books say you are supposed to put the customer first, Circuit City is doing exactly the opposite,” Mr. Martin said.

True, these aren’t the kind of union jobs with benefits and wages that made America what it is today. But increasingly, America is nation of clerks — not adolescents in their first jobs, but heads of households struggling to get by on the desiccated compensation that working in retail provides. Newsrooms, which should know something about layoffs, have trouble fathoming that many people work in retail because it is the only work they can find.

In a bit of happy coincidence, The New York Times did have an article on Thursday in its business section demonstrating that the top 300,000 Americans had almost as much income as the bottom 150 million Americans. The explanation was just a flip of the page away in the brief about Circuit City.

The Circuit City pratfall does have an executive level narrative as well: if you add up salary, bonus, stock options, and other perks, Philip J. Schoonover, chief executive, and W. Alan McCollough, chairman, received almost $10 million in various kinds of compensation last year for steering the company to its imperiled state.

Circuit City retains a rhetorical commitment to the people it just axed on its Web site: “Our associates are our greatest assets. We expect every associate to demonstrate that they respect and value others for their efforts, their knowledge and the diversity that they bring.”

By Thursday, there was a lot less of that to go around. But it’s clear the only time the clerk at a big-box store is going to get any ink is when he fetches you a replacement cartridge for your printer.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/02/bu...ia/02carr.html





Spinning Into Oblivion
Tony Sachs and Sal Nunziato

DESPITE the major record labels’ best efforts to kill it, the single, according to recent reports, is back. Sort of.

You’ll still have a hard time finding vinyl 45s or their modern counterpart, CD singles, in record stores. For that matter, you’ll have a tough time finding record stores. Today’s single is an individual track downloaded online from legal sites like iTunes or eMusic, or the multiple illegal sites that cater to less scrupulous music lovers. The album, or collection of songs — the de facto way to buy pop music for the last 40 years — is suddenly looking old-fashioned. And the record store itself is going the way of the shoehorn.

This is a far cry from the musical landscape that existed when we opened an independent CD shop on the Upper West Side of Manhattan in 1993. At the time, we figured that as far as business ventures went, ours was relatively safe. People would always go to stores to buy music. Right? Of course, back then there were also only two ringtones to choose from — “riiiiinnng” and “ring-ring.”

Our intention was to offer a haven for all kinds of music lovers and obsessives, a shop that catered not only to the casual record buyer (“Do you have the new Sarah McLachlan and ... uh ... is there a Beatles greatest hits CD?”) but to the fan and oft-maligned serious collector (“Can you get the Japanese pressing of ‘Kinda Kinks’? I believe they used the rare mono mixes”). Fourteen years later, it’s clear just how wrong our assumptions were. Our little shop closed its doors at the end of 2005.

The sad thing is that CDs and downloads could have coexisted peacefully and profitably. The current state of affairs is largely the result of shortsightedness and boneheadedness by the major record labels and the Recording Industry Association of America, who managed to achieve the opposite of everything they wanted in trying to keep the music business prospering. The association is like a gardener who tried to rid his lawn of weeds and wound up killing the trees instead.

In the late ’90s, our business, and the music retail business in general, was booming. Enter Napster, the granddaddy of illegal download sites. How did the major record labels react? By continuing their campaign to eliminate the comparatively unprofitable CD single, raising list prices on album-length CDs to $18 or $19 and promoting artists like the Backstreet Boys and Britney Spears — whose strength was single songs, not albums. The result was a lot of unhappy customers, who blamed retailers like us for the dearth of singles and the high prices.

The recording industry association saw the threat that illegal downloads would pose to CD sales. But rather than working with Napster, it tried to sue the company out of existence — which was like thinking you’ve killed all the roaches in your apartment because you squashed the one you saw in the kitchen. More illegal download sites cropped up faster than the association’s lawyers could say “cease and desist.”

By 2002, it was clear that downloading was affecting music retail stores like ours. Our regulars weren’t coming in as often, and when they did, they weren’t buying as much. Our impulse-buy weekend customers were staying away altogether. And it wasn’t just the independent stores; even big chains like Tower and Musicland were struggling.

Something had to be done to save the record store, a place where hard-core music fans worked, shopped and kibitzed — and, not incidentally, kept the music business’s engine chugging in good times and in lean. Who but these loyalists was going to buy the umpteenth Elton John hits compilation that the major labels were foisting upon them?

But instead, those labels delivered the death blow to the record store as we know it by getting in bed with soulless chain stores like Best Buy and Wal-Mart. These “big boxes” were given exclusive tracks to put on new CDs and, to add insult to injury, they could sell them for less than our wholesale cost. They didn’t care if they didn’t make any money on CD sales. Because, ideally, the person who came in to get the new Eagles release with exclusive bonus material would also decide to pick up a high-speed blender that frappéed.

The jig was up. It didn’t matter that even a store as small as ours carried hundreds of titles you’d never see at Best Buy and was staffed by people who actually knew who Van Morrison was, or that Tower Records had the entire history of recorded music under one roof while Costco didn’t carry much more than the current hits. A year after our shop closed, Tower went out of business — something that would have been unthinkable just a few years earlier. The customers who had grudgingly come to trust our opinions made the move to online shopping or lost interest in buying music altogether. Some of the most loyal fans had been soured into denying themselves the music they loved.

Meanwhile, the recording industry association continues to give the impression that it’s doing something by occasionally threatening to sue college students who share their record collections online. But apart from scaring the dickens out of a few dozen kids, that’s just an amusing sideshow. They’re not fighting a war any more than the folks who put on Civil War regalia and re-enact the Battle of Gettysburg are.

The major labels wanted to kill the single. Instead they killed the album. The association wanted to kill Napster. Instead it killed the compact disc. And today it’s not just record stores that are in trouble, but the labels themselves, now belatedly embracing the Internet revolution without having quite figured out how to make it pay.

At this point, it may be too late to win back disgruntled music lovers no matter what they do. As one music industry lawyer, Ken Hertz, said recently, “The consumer’s conscience, which is all we had left, that’s gone, too.”

It’s tempting for us to gloat. By worrying more about quarterly profits than the bigger picture, by protecting their short-term interests without thinking about how to survive and prosper in the long run, record-industry bigwigs have got what was coming to them. It’s a disaster they brought upon themselves.

We would be gloating, but for the fact that the occupation we planned on spending our working lives at is rapidly becoming obsolete. And that loss hits us hard — not just as music retailers, but as music fans.

Tony Sachs and Sal Nunziato own an online music retail business.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/05/op...nunziato.html?