Peer-To-Peer News - The Week In Review - March 25th, ’06

[JackSpratts]

"She's been chancellor of Stanford, she's got the patent resume of somebody that has serious skill. She loves football. She's African-American, which would kind of be a big coon. A big coon. Oh my God. I am totally, totally, totally, totally, totally sorry for that." – Dave Lenihan


"The DMCA is anti-competitive. It gives copyright holders—and the technology companies that distribute their content—the legal power to create closed technology platforms and exclude competitors from interoperating with them. Worst of all, DRM technologies are clumsy and ineffective; they inconvenience legitimate users but do little to stop pirates. Fortunately, repeal of the DMCA would not lead to intellectual property anarchy." – Timothy B. Lee


" This is an not an attempt to close the business, but an attempt to see it is run in a lawful manner." – Chief State's Attorney Christopher Morano


"When people are aware the cameras are on, they are more apt to watch their behavior." – Detective Lt. James Fisher


"We will always be subject to government subpoenas, but the fact that the judge sent a clear message about privacy is reassuring." – Nicole Wong


"Unashamedly 'disposable' cheap goods, you could argue, are turning us into traders rather than curators of our possessions. It is another victory for capitalism: we have internalised the unsentimental stock control of the modern retailer." – Andy Beckett


"I'm very flattered by all the positive light this is being shown in internationally, it's not every day the world has nice things to say about [France], but I must point out that IT enthusiasts over here are miserably decrying this law, and would probably be in the streets themselves if they weren't already chocablock with students demonstrating :-( ." – Exaton






































March 25th, ’06






Study: P2P Users Buy More Music; Apathy, Not Piracy, The Problem
Ken Fisher

When the movie or music industry commissions a study, it's usually to serve either a public relations purpose or lobbying need (or both). Sometimes, however, the study produces results that fall short of meeting the needs of the industry. That is what looks to have happened with a recent study commissioned by the Canadian branch of the RIAA, the Canadian Record Industry Association. While the study still shows that piracy is indeed a problem for the industry, it also shows that P2P users buy more music than is typically conceded; when people aren't buying music, P2P isn't the primary cause; and among those who use P2P, legitimate methods of obtaining music still dominate.

P2P users buy music

Three out of four P2P users admitted to purchasing music after downloading it online, with 21 percent of P2P users saying that they have bought tracks they have also downloaded on more than 10 occasions. 25 percent admitted to purchasing previously- downloaded tracks only once or twice, while an additional 27 percent claimed to have done it less than 10 times, but more than twice. The end result is clear: people are buying music after downloading it on P2P, meaning that the industry has failed to recognize the marketing- like effects of P2P. Just as important, this should caution the industry against assessing each and every download to a "loss" to piracy, since the statistics clearly show that those engaging in P2P do buy music in not- insignificant numbers.

The industry's biggest cause of lost sales: apathy

But what of declining album sales? Of those polled, those claiming to have purchased less music over time have cited myriad reasons for doing so. Apathy is the major culprit, with 14 percent citing no interest, 9 percent saying that their music collections are sufficient already, 7 percent saying that the radio is enough, and another 4 percent citing no reason. Thus, more than a third (34 percent) of the respondents were just not that interested. That number can be inflated when we consider that 13 percent said that they had no time to listen to music, while another 6 percent cited changes in their own music preference. Where does P2P sit in this mix? Only 10 percent of those people buying less music say that they do so because they can get materials off of P2P networks. This number is smaller than the 16 percent who cited the cost of new music as the reason for their declining purchases.

Yarr Matey, what be on your computer?

And what of these pirates? Users who admit to downloading music from P2P services nonetheless have music collections primarily composed of music obtained legally, either via ripping CDs (36 percent of the average collection), buying songs online (20 percent), or obtaining them from artists' websites (7 percent). Music tracks obtained from P2P networks (33 percent) or family and friends (9 percent) were significantly higher, however. With the average number of music files per computer sitting at 500, this suggests that the average P2P downloader in the study had roughly 210 songs obtained from these unauthorized channels.

None of this suggests that P2P is entirely harmless, or that the music industry should embrace P2P like a long- lost friend. It does demonstrate, however, that the rhetoric from the industry doesn't match reality, at least in Canada. Michael Geist, who raised awareness of the study's existence, aptly noted the irony of having the CRIA provide evidence against itself; far from a doomsday scenario, the situation appears to be almost the opposite of what we've been told. Furthermore, Geist noted that it is the teenagers specifically who are leading the way in buying music. This runs contrary to the tale that kids these days don't bother buying anything they can pirate. Individuals aged 13- 24 years bought roughly 11 CDs and DVDs in the last six months compared to only 4 or less for persons aged 55 and older. The hotter 25- 34 demographic was actually outshone by the older 35- 44 crowd, turning in 8.5 purchases compared to 9.7, respectively.
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20060320-6418.html





Launch Of New P2P Technology For Television
M&C

Press release

The Workshop on Technical and Legal Aspects of Peer-to-Peer Television is being held in Amsterdam on Friday 17 March 2006 and deals with a revolutionary manner of distributing TV programmes via the Internet. The new peer-to-peer Tribler system, based on open-source software, will be launched in the course of this workshop.

Various public broadcasting corporations, commercial TV stations and cable and telecommunications companies are all showing keen interest in the distribution of television programmes via the Internet. While the current method makes use of centrally located computer systems, research is now being conducted at Delft University of Technology (among other institutes) into TV distribution through peer-to-peer systems. This type of distribution is carried out through large groups of (normal) PCs operated by normal users.

This method enables TV programmes to be broadcast at almost no cost and opens the way to new TV stations operating through the Internet. Moreover, this method guarantees a much more direct linking of the programme makers with the viewers. “If the public broadcasting corporations were to make use of peer-to-peer technology, then the high costs of data distribution, such as was recently the case during the Olympic Games, would be a thing of the past”, says Johan Pouwelse, a researcher involved in the development of the Tribler software.

When using this method of transmission it is crucial that the rights to the visual material be carefully handled and protected. The use of Creative Commons licences presents one possible solution to a number of legal sticking points. In the workshop the current state of this promising technology will be discussed by researchers, domestic and foreign TV producers and experts in the field of licensing.

The organisers of the workshop are active participants in the (state funded) I-Share project, which forms part of the Freeband BSIK programme, and in Creative Commons Nederland/ Kennisland, an Amsterdam-based foundation for knowledge projects.

For more information on the Tribler software see http://Tribler.org
http://www.tudelft.nl/live/pagina.js...0ea7ce&lang=en





French Lawmakers Approve Bill To Open iPod, iTunes
Larry Angell

French lawmakers have voted to approve the online music interoperability bill that would force Apple to open its copy-protection technology and break the exclusive tie between downloads from the iTunes Music Store and the iPod. As reported earlier today, “the draft law—which also introduces new penalties for music pirates—would force Apple Computer Inc., Sony Corp. and Microsoft Corp. to share proprietary anti-copy technologies so that rivals can offer compatible services and players.” The French Senate will give a final vote on the bill in coming weeks.
http://www.ilounge.com/index.php/new...n-ipod-itunes/





FCC Chief: AT&T Can Limit Net Bandwidth
Preston Gralla

FCC Chief Kevin Martin yesterday gave his support to AT&T and other telcos who want to be able to limit bandwidth to sites like Google, unless those sites pay extortion fees. Martin made it clear in a speech yesterday that he supports such a a "tiered" Internet.

Martin told attendees at the TelecomNext show that telcos should be allowed to charge web sites whatever they want if those sites want adequate bandwidth.

He threw in his lot with AT&T, Verizon, and the other telcos, who are no doubt salivating at the prospect at charging whatever the market can bear.

He did throw a bone to those who favor so-called "net neutrality" -- the idea that telcos and other ISPs should not be allowed to limit services or bandwidth, or charge sites extra fees. He said that the FCC "has the authority necessary" to enforce network neutrality violations. He added that it had done so already, when it stepped in to stop an ISP from blocking Vonage VoIP service.

But Martin's interpretation of "net neutrality" is far too narrow, and almost besides the point. By siding with telcos who want to be able to offer adequate bandwidth to sites that pay up, and to limit bandwidth to sites that don't, he'll help kill off new sites that can't afford to fork over the money.

That could help end Internet and network innovation, and we simply can't afford that.
http://www.networkingpipeline.com/bl...ief_att_c.html





Right-Wing Think-Tank Hates DRM
Cory Doctorow

The Cato Institute, an ultra-libertarian, right-wing think tank, has released a white paper damning the US Digital Millennium Copyright Act's ban on breaking the anti-copying systems used to cripple digital media, like DVDs and iTunes songs.

It's amazing to watch crippleware come under attack from all points of the compass -- Marxists and anarchists hate DRM. Libertarians hate DRM. Media studies people, economists, and musicians hate DRM.

But it takes sharp free-market types like the Cato characters to bust out elegant critiques like this one:

The movie industry has every right to segment the worldwide market for DVDs, but it should bear the costs of doing so. Those costs might include requiring no-resale contracts with distributors and monitoring sales in low-price countries to make sure DVDs were not being resold outside their intended market. Deciding whether those costs would be worthwhile might be difficult. The industry’s desire for market segmentation is not, however, a good reason to outlaw the sale of unofficial DVD players. The role of government is not to ensure that a private business’s pricing strategy succeeds, and consumers, who have not agreed to help enforce the DVD cartel’s segmentation scheme, are under no obligation to respect it.

I've heard for years that the Cato Institute was divided on DRM and copyright, so it's good to seem them taking a stand now. I think they've only scratched the surface, though. Of special interest to free-marketeers should be the way that DRM lets Apple hijack the music companies' copyright monopoly and turn it into a tax on Apple customers who switch from an iPod to a competing product. You can keep your MP3s if you switch from Windows to Mac, but if you switch from iPod to Creative, kiss your iTunes goodbye. Talk about anti-competitive!

And how about TiVo updating its devices to cripple them after their customers have already paid for them? Or Macrovision using its monopoly over DVD anti-analog tech to jack up its licensing prices to the movie industry? If you like free markets, DRM are a nightmare from top to bottom.
http://www.boingboing.net/2006/03/21...hinktank_.html





Policy Analysis

Circumventing Competition: The Perverse Consequences of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act
Timothy B. Lee

Timothy B. Lee is a policy analyst at the Show-Me Institute in St. Louis. He holds a degree in computer science from the University of Minnesota and is the science and technology editor of the online magazine Brainwash and a contributor to the Technology Liberation Front website.

Executive Summary

The courts have a proven track record of fashioning balanced remedies for the copyright challenges created by new technologies. But when Congress passed the Digital Millennium Copyright Act in 1998, it cut the courts out of this role and instead banned any devices that "circumvent" digital rights management (DRM) technologies, which control access to copyrighted content.

The result has been a legal regime that reduces options and competition in how consumers enjoy media and entertainment. Today, the copyright industry is exerting increasing control over playback devices, cable media offerings, and even Internet streaming. Some firms have used the DMCA to thwart competition by preventing research and reverse engineering. Others have brought the weight of criminal sanctions to bear against critics, competitors, and researchers.

The DMCA is anti-competitive. It gives copyright holders—and the technology companies that distribute their content—the legal power to create closed technology platforms and exclude competitors from interoperating with them. Worst of all, DRM technologies are clumsy and ineffective; they inconvenience legitimate users but do little to stop pirates.

Fortunately, repeal of the DMCA would not lead to intellectual property anarchy. Prior to the DMCA's enactment, the courts had already been developing a body of law that strikes a sensible balance between innovation and the protection of intellectual property. That body of law protected competition, consumer choice, and the important principle of fair use without sacrificing the rights of copyright holders. And because it focused on the actions of people rather than on the design of technologies, it gave the courts the flexibility they needed to adapt to rapid technological change.
http://cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=6025





Marvel Comics: Stealing Our Language
Cory Doctorow

Marvel Comics is continuing in its bid to steal the word "super-hero" from the public domain and put it in a lock-box to which it will control the key. Marvel and DC comics jointly filed a trademark on the word "super-hero." They use this mark to legally harass indie comic companies that make competing comic books.

A trademark's enforceability hinges on whether the public is likely to associate a word or mark with a given company -- in other words, when you hear the word "super-hero," if you think "Marvel and DC," then Marvel will be able to go on censoring and eliminating its competition.

One way of accomplishing this dirty bit of mind-control is by adding a ™ symbol after the word "Super-Hero." That TM lets the world know that you claim ownership over the word it accompanies. If you can get other people to do it, too, eventually you may in fact get the world to believe that the word is your property -- and then, it becomes your property.

"Super-hero" isn't Marvel's property. They didn't invent the term. They aren't the only users of the term. It's a public-domain word that belongs to all of us. Adding a ™ to super-hero is a naked bid to steal "super-hero" from us and claim it for their own.

The latest trick in its move to steal the word is using the ™ symbol in the bump for its California science centre show -- they've recruited a science museum to help them steal "super-hero."

Here's a proposal: from now on, let's never use the term "super-hero" to describe a Marvel character. Let's call them "underwear perverts" -- as Warren Ellis is wont to -- or vigilantes, or mutants. Let's reserve the term "super-hero" exclusively to describe the heros of comics published by companies that aren't crooked word-thieves.
http://www.boingboing.net/2006/03/18...cs_steali.html





Universal Launches Film Downloads
Tim Castle

Universal Pictures has launched a new service in Britain that will sell digital downloads of movies such as "King Kong" along with a DVD copy, tapping into the online video market now dominated by Apple's iTunes.

From April 10, consumers will be able to download two digital copies of selected movies -- one for a computer and one for a portable device -- and receive a DVD in the mail.

Universal's partner, Lovefilm, already has a movie download service that provides films from Warner Brothers on a rental basis. The new service announced on Thursday is download-to-own, meaning that the downloads will not expire.

"It gives instant access, it gives portability and it gives much greater flexibility for the consumer to consume his product any way they want," said Universal Pictures UK Chairman Eddie Cunningham. Universal Pictures is part of General Electric's NBC Universal unit.

Hollywood studios have been reluctant to sell digital versions of their blockbusters for fear they would be copied and pirated online.

The new service will use Microsoft's digital rights management technology, which is designed to prevent consumers from duplicating the movies, burning them to disc or uploading them to the Internet.

Lovefilm Chief Executive Mark Livingstone said he expected Warner Brothers and other Hollywood studios to follow Universal's lead in the download-to-own market.

Universal will start the service with "King Kong" as part of an initial collection of 35 movies, including "Pride and Prejudice" and "Serenity." "King Kong" will sell for 19.99 pounds, roughly equal to the retail price.

The download-to-own service will also be available through AOL, whose UK online movie service is operated by Lovefilm.
http://news.scotsman.com/latest.cfm?id=456792006





Police Blotter: Judge Orders Gmail Disclosure
Declan McCullagh

"Police blotter" is a weekly News.com report on the intersection of technology and the law.

What: In a lawsuit brought by the Federal Trade Commission, a subpoena is sent to Google for the complete contents of a Gmail account, including deleted e-mail messages. This is unrelated to the Department of Justice's own subpoena to Google for search terms and excerpts from its search database.

When: U.S. Magistrate Judge Elizabeth Laporte in San Francisco ruled on Jan. 31 and March 13.

Outcome: Judge grants subpoena and orders that all e-mail messages, including deleted ones, be divulged.

What happened, according to the court: In November 2003, the Federal Trade Commission sued AmeriDebt and founder Andris Pukke on charges that the company deceived customers about credit counseling and failed to use customers' money to actually pay their creditors.

AmeriDebt settled, but the courts are still trying to uncover the location of Pukke's apparently sizeable assets. (A Washington Post article in September said the IRS is seeking $300 million from Pukke. His attorney at the venerable firm of Jones Day charges a hefty $575 an hour.)

Pukke's missing money has been linked to a Belize developer called Dolphin Development, which counts a fellow named Peter Baker as a shareholder. The court-appointed receiver in the FTC case, Robb Evans & Associates, sent a subpoena to Google on Nov. 1 asking for the complete contents of Baker's Gmail account.

Baker objected to the subpoena, saying it could disclose confidential information, including attorney-client conversations.

The subpoena asks for not only current e-mail but also deleted e-mail: "All documents concerning all Gmail accounts of Baker...for the period from Jan. 1, 2003, to present, including but not limited to all e-mails and messages stored in all mailboxes, folders, in-boxes, sent items and deleted items, and all links to related Web pages contained in such e-mail messages."

Google's privacy policy says deleted e-mail messages "may remain in our offline backup systems" in perpetuity. It does not guarantee that backups are ever deleted. Baker estimated he may have tens of thousands of e-mail messages in his Gmail account.

In a Jan. 31 ruling, Laporte rejected Baker's request. She said his attorney could withhold "truly protected" information but must "err on the side" of disclosure.

Baker asked the judge to reconsider. On Monday, Laporte reiterated her decision, saying the argument about confidentiality "is baseless" because her earlier order creates an exception for such e-mail messages.

Excerpt from Laporte's Jan. 31 opinion: "Conspicuously absent from Baker's briefs is any denial that he is linked to the (Gmail) account, Pukke and/or Pukke-controlled entities. On the contrary, Baker relies entirely on formalistic objections and never once attacks the substance of the receiver's theories or facts. And, ironically, while he argues that the receiver has not submitted any admissible evidence to support its contentions, the only evidence Baker submitted are declarations by his attorneys that only support his claim that some documents may be protected by the attorney-client privilege but do not address his other claims about privacy interests."

Excerpt from Laporte's March 13 opinion: "(Baker) argues that being forced to pay his attorneys to screen these documents and to create a privilege log would 'necessarily involve an exorbitant amount of attorney time, resulting in the incurrence of thousands of dollars of attorneys' fees for which Mr. Baker will not be reimbursed...Within five court days of this order, Baker shall immediately turn over all documents to the receiver, withholding only those documents that are shielded from discovery by the attorney-client privilege, or those which are truly protected by a legitimate privacy interest."
http://news.com.com/Police+blotter+J...3-6050295.html





Labor Will Make ISPs Filter Porn On Net

Labor's plan to protect children from online pornography and graphic violence has been backed by family groups, but dismissed by the government and internet industry.

Opposition Leader Kim Beazley said a Labor government would force internet service providers (ISPs) to block violent and pornographic material before it reached home computers.

Under the "clean feed" system, pioneered in Britain, users would be unable to access any content banned by the Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) because it contained graphic sexual or violent material, rated R or higher.

Mr Beazley said all households would be included in the policy unless they opted out.

He said the current system, which required ISPs to offer all subscribers cheap or free filter software for their own computers, was not working.

"The reality is that cost and poor computer literacy mean almost two-thirds of parents don't have internet filters on their family computers," Mr Beazley said.

"That is not good enough when research suggests that the exposure of children and others in the community to this sickening content can lead to aggression towards women and child abuse."

Communications Minister Helen Coonan said PC-based internet filters, which ISPs must offer to subscribers at a cheap price, were better and had been taken up by more than one in three families using the net.

"PC-based filters are more effective at blocking all manner of offensive content, provide greater control to parents of the content their children are exposed to and do not affect the performance of the internet for all users," Senator Coonan said.

She said a recent study by internet safety body NetAlert found the kind of filtering proposed by Labor could slow connection speeds by up to 78 per cent without being as effective as a filter on a home computer.

But Family First leader Senator Steve Fielding said blocking all porn at the ISP level, then allowing adults to "opt in", was a good solution.

"Parents feel powerless," Senator Fielding said.

"We know we have to let our kids roam the internet for study, yet we can't be watching over their shoulders all the time to monitor what they are seeing."

However, Internet Industry Association executive director Peter Coroneos said the current system in Australia, which involved three enforceable codes of practice, was world-class.

"No child in Australia need be exposed to harmful and offensive content," Mr Coroneos said.

"A family who takes advantage of (filter programs) will have a far greater degree of confidence in limiting the kind of material their children are likely to access than would occur if we adopt the limited clean feed model."

Mr Coroneos said the problem lay in educating parents and teachers about the use of filter systems.

The ACMA is currently auditing the top 25 ISPs, which cover about 95 per cent of internet users in Australia, for compliance with the codes of practice.

Any ISPs found in breach of the codes could face fines of up to $27,500 a day.
http://smh.com.au/news/National/Labo...703333305.html




WB Censors Its Own Drama for Fear of F.C.C. Fines
Bill Carter

Concerned about the recent decision by the Federal Communications Commission to fine television networks for material deemed indecent, the WB network will broadcast a new drama next week that it has censored over the objections of the program's creator.

But first, the network will offer the uncut version of the pilot episode on its Web site, starting today — a further example of the new strategies network television may be pursuing, both to escape government-imposed restrictions and to find alternative ways of reaching viewers. It is the first time a network has offered on another outlet an uncut version of a program it has been forced to censor.

The show, "The Bedford Diaries," was created by Tom Fontana, whose long résumé includes award-winning shows like "St. Elsewhere" and "Homicide" for network television and the far more graphic prison drama "Oz" for HBO, a pay-cable channel with no content restrictions.

The pilot episode of "The Bedford Diaries," which concerns a group of college students attending a class on human sexuality, had already been accepted by WB's standards department. After the F.C.C. decision last week to issue millions of dollars in fines against broadcast stations, the network's chairman, Garth Ancier, contacted Mr. Fontana and asked him to edit a number of specific scenes out of the show, including one that depicted two girls in a bar kissing on a dare and another of a girl unbuttoning her jeans.

"I said no," Mr. Fontana said in an interview Wednesday. "I told him I found the ruling incomprehensible. He said the censor would do the edit."

The decision, several network executives said yesterday, could represent a further step in the spread of alternative means for television programs to reach viewers, including iPods and computers. It could also increase the risk that network television will be seen as passé by some of its audience, especially younger viewers.

"The message here is that they'll be forced to go alternative ways of looking at shows if they want to see the real thing," Mr. Fontana said. "It's like they're telling people that broadcast television now has much less interesting stuff than you see on the Web or cable."

WB executives acknowledged that the decision to censor Mr. Fontana's new show was entirely driven by concerns raised by the fines the F.C.C. levied last week against television stations for broadcasting programs it called indecent. The commission ordered by far the biggest fine, $3.6 million, for 111 stations affiliated with or owned by CBS, for an episode of the crime drama "Without a Trace" that contained a scene depicting teenagers engaged in sex. CBS protested the fine and said the show was not indecent.

Mr. Fontana praised Mr. Ancier for being "a thorough professional and complete gentleman" about the issue. He said he had no problem at all with WB's decision, conceding that the network had to do what it believed was necessary to avoid being fined.

But he added, "In more than 20 years in the business, this is the most chilling thing I've ever faced."

In a statement, Mr. Ancier said: "The WB takes its responsibility as a broadcast network very seriously and we have always been mindful of the F.C.C.'s indecency rules. While we believe that the previous uncut version of 'The Bedford Diaries' is in keeping with those rules, out of an abundance of caution, we decided to make some additional minor changes to the premiere episode of the series, which is set to debut next Wednesday, March 28. We also decided to make the original version available on the Internet at TheWB.com, which allows those interested in seeing the producer's creative vision to do so while at the same time recognizing the special rules that apply to the broadcast medium."

In a telephone interview, Mr. Ancier said the network respected the effort Mr. Fontana had made to produce a show that was both creatively interesting and socially responsible. "Our feeling was that Tom had worked very hard with our standards people and they came up a final edit of the show which we all had found acceptable," he said.

The uncut version of the "Bedford Diaries" pilot will be available on the WB site beginning at 3 p.m. Eastern time today, a network spokesman said. The decision to offer it on the Web was less complicated for WB because it has twice before offered previews of new series on the Internet — though in both those cases the network versions of the shows were identical to the Web versions, not censored.

Those previews were offered for promotional value, and the network considered them highly successful in generating initial interest in the two series, "Jack and Bobby" and "Supernatural."

Promotional value is all the network can realize from streaming the uncut episode of 'The Bedford Diaries" on its Web site, because it will run without commercials. The Hollywood creative guilds do not permit a commercial use of the program online.

Network executives said yesterday that the industry was still working through what impact the threat of heavy fines from the F.C.C. will have on the content of coming shows. One senior network program executive said it would now be unlikely that a show with the subject matter of "The Bedford Diaries" would be ordered by a network.

Asked whether this might lead to the diversion of more network programming to other distribution outlets, Mr. Ancier said: "It's a really good question. I just don't know."
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/23/arts/23bedf.html





Online News Popular On Broadband, Study Finds
AP

Americans with high-speed Internet connections at home are far more likely than dial-up users to go online for news, a new study finds.

The Pew Internet and American Life Project says 43 percent of broadband users turn to the Internet to get news, compared with 26 percent for dial-up users. Broadband users are also more likely to read a national newspaper, but less likely to turn to local television.

"Local TV, in particular, takes a hit ... when people start spending more time with online news," said John Horrigan, Pew's associate director for research.

Still, local television is the leading source of news, used by 65 percent of dial-up users and 57 percent of broadband users. National television and radio are also popular sources across the board.

Among dial-up users, the local paper is the next leading source, but among broadband users, the Internet has a slight edge — 43 percent vs. 38 percent. The margin of sampling error is plus or minus 3 percentage points for questions asked only of broadband users.

The study also finds Americans largely unwilling to pay for news — only 6 percent of Internet users have bought video clips, articles or other news items online — but more than half have registered at free news sites by providing information about themselves.

The study of 3,011 U.S. adults was conducted Nov. 29 to Dec. 31 and has a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 2 percentage points.
http://www.ctv.ca/servlet/ArticleNew...22?hub=SciTech





Justices Reach Out to Consider Patent Case
Andrew Pollack

For the first time in a quarter-century, the Supreme Court will hear on Tuesday a case involving the basic question of what type of discoveries and inventions can be patented.

Both sides say the case, which involves a blood test for a vitamin deficiency, could have a wide-ranging impact on the development of diagnostics, perhaps threatening many of the underlying patents for genetic and other medical tests.

But the array of companies filing supporting briefs — including American Express, Bear Stearns and I.B.M. — indicates that intellectual property in other fields might also be affected.

Some patent specialists say they think the Supreme Court agreed to hear the case, against the advice of the United States solicitor general, to rein in patenting.

"The Supreme Court reached out and grabbed this case," said Edward R. Reines, a patent attorney at Weil, Gotshal & Manges who is not involved in the case. "These circumstances suggest that some members of the court believe there are too many patents in areas where there should be none."

At issue is whether relationships between a substance in the human body and a disease — for example, the familiar association between high cholesterol and a higher risk of heart attacks — can be the basis of a patent, or whether such relationships are unpatentable natural phenomena.

This case, LabCorp v. Metabolite Laboratories, stems from a 1990 patent awarded to scientists at the University of Colorado and Columbia University. They found that a high level in the blood of homocysteine, an amino acid, indicated a deficiency of either vitamin B12 or another B vitamin called folic acid.

Much of the patent describes a specific way to measure homocysteine, and those claims are not at issue. But the 13th claim of the patent is more general: it covers a way of determining vitamin deficiency by first testing blood or urine for homocysteine by any means and then correlating elevated levels with a vitamin deficiency.

The patent is owned by Competitive Technologies, a publicly traded patent management firm in Fairfield, Conn., and licensed to Metabolite Laboratories, a tiny company based at the University of Colorado. LabCorp, one of the biggest clinical testing companies in the nation, with 2005 revenues of $3.3 billion, sublicensed the test from Metabolite.

At first, LabCorp, whose full name is Laboratory Corporation of America Holdings, tested for homocysteine using the specific method described in the patent and paid royalties to Metabolite and Competitive Technologies. But in 1998 it switched to a newer and faster test developed by Abbott Laboratories.

Metabolite and Competitive sued, charging LabCorp with violating Claim 13 of the patent. In 2001 a federal jury in Denver ruled against LabCorp, and the company was eventually ordered to pay $7.8 million in damages and attorneys' fees. The appeals court that handles patent cases affirmed the lower court decision in 2004.

In asking the Supreme Court to overturn the lower court decisions, LabCorp is arguing that Claim 13, because it does not specify how testing is to be done, patents nothing more than the natural relationship between homocysteine and vitamin B deficiencies, blocking other inventors from developing better tests.

"The present-day implications of such a holding are limitless — and dangerous," LabCorp wrote in its brief. "Anyone who discovers a new medical correlation could stifle medical treatment through a 'test plus correlate' claim."

But Metabolite and its allies argue that such correlations are the basis of diagnostics and that not allowing patents would stifle development of new tests. There are tests, for instance, that look at mutations in particular genes to predict a high risk of breast cancer or to predict which AIDS drugs will not work.

"Hundreds, if not thousands, of patents would at once be called into question" if the ruling goes against Metabolite, said a brief jointly submitted by Perlegen Sciences, a company developing genetic tests, and Mohr Davidow Ventures, a venture capital firm that backs diagnostics companies.

Another question in the case is whether doctors could infringe the patent merely by looking at a test result for homocysteine and then thinking about vitamin deficiency. Indeed, the lower courts said LabCorp had not directly infringed but rather had induced doctors to infringe by performing the correlation.

Partly with that in mind, the American Medical Association, the American Heart Association and AARP have submitted briefs in support of LabCorp, arguing, in the words of the heart association, that the patent could have "devastating effects on patient health care."

Millions of homocysteine tests are done each year because high levels of the amino acid are associated with an increased risk of heart attack, stroke, birth defects and other diseases; people often take B vitamins to lower homocysteine and reduce the risk. (Clinical trial results announced last week, however, suggested that taking B vitamins did not prevent heart attacks.)

Court precedents have held that laws of nature, natural phenomena and abstract ideas cannot be patented. "Einstein could not patent his celebrated law that E = mc2; nor could Newton have patented the law of gravity," the Supreme Court wrote in a 1980 decision. '

But in a 1981 decision in Diamond v. Diehr — the last time the Supreme Court considered the issue — the court upheld a patent on a method of curing rubber that made use of a well-known equation governing chemical reactions. The court said that the equation was only part of a broader invention.

Glenn K. Beaton, an attorney for Metabolite, said that as in that 1981 case, "it's not the correlation itself that is patented here," but rather "the use of that correlation to determine B12 and folate deficiencies."

In recent years, controversial patents have been granted on software and on business methods, such as ways of managing investment portfolios or of allowing people to order merchandise on Amazon.com with one click of a mouse.

Bear Stearns, Lehman Brothers and the Computer and Communications Industry Association filed briefs urging the court to use the LabCorp case to restrict such business method patents, or at least not expand them. Other companies, including American Express and I.B.M., say the LabCorp case is not relevant to business method patents.

The solicitor general, in urging the court not to hear the case, said there was not enough of a record from the lower courts on the question of patenting natural phenomena. That is because LabCorp did not raise that argument in the lower courts, instead trying to get the claim invalidated on other grounds. If LabCorp wins the case in a way that weakens patents on diagnostic tests, it could be one of the bigger losers. The company, based in Burlington, N.C., is counting on high-priced, patented genetic tests to fuel its growth.

Bradford T. Smith, executive vice president for corporate affairs at LabCorp, disputed that. "We think this case can be decided very narrowly," without undermining other patents, many of which rely on more than just correlations, he said.
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/20/bu...20patent.html?





Amazon Says Technology, Not Ideology, Skewed Results
Laurie J. Flynn

Amazon.com last week modified its search engine after an abortion rights organization complained that search results appeared skewed toward anti-abortion books.

Until a few days ago, a search of Amazon's catalog of books using the word "abortion" turned up pages with the question, "Did you mean adoption?" at the top, followed by a list of books related to abortion.

Amazon removed that question from the search results page after it received a complaint from a member of the Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice, a national organization based in Washington.

"I thought it was offensive," said the Rev. James Lewis, a retired Episcopalian minister in Charleston, W.Va. "It represented an editorial position on their part."

Patty Smith, an Amazon spokeswoman, said there was no intent by the company to offer biased search results. She said the question "Did you mean adoption?" was an automated response based on past customer behavior combined with the site's spelling correction technology.

She said Amazon's software suggested adoption-related sources because "abortion" and "adoption" have similar spellings, and because many past customers who have searched for "abortion" have also searched for "adoption."

Ms. Smith said the "Did you mean adoption?" prompt had been disabled. (It is not known how often searches on the site turn up any kind of "Did you mean..." prompt.)

Customers, however, are still offered "adoption" as a possibility in the Related Searches line at the top of an "abortion" search results page. But the reverse is not true.

Ms. Smith said that was because many customers who searched for abortion also searched for adoption, but customers who searched for "adoption" did not typically search for topics related to abortion.

Still, the Rev. Jeff Briere, a minister with the Unitarian Universalist Church in Chattanooga, Tenn., and a member of the abortion rights coalition, said he was worried about an anti-abortion slant in the books Amazon recommended and in the "pro-life" and "adoption" related topic links.

"The search engine results I am presented with, their suggestions, seem to be pro-life in orientation," Mr. Briere said. He also said he objected to a Yellow Pages advertisement for an anti-abortion organization in his city that appeared next to the search results, apparently linked by his address.

Web software that tracks customers' purchases and searches makes it possible for online stores to recommend items tailored to a specific shopper's interests. Getting those personalized recommendations right can mean significantly higher sales.

But getting it wrong can cause problems, and Amazon is not the first company to find that automated online recommendations carry risks.

In January, Walmart.com issued a public apology and took down its entire cross-selling recommendation system when Web customers who looked at a boxed set of movies that included "Martin Luther King: I Have a Dream" and "Unforgivable Blackness: The Rise and Fall of Jack Johnson" were told they might also appreciate a "Planet of the Apes" DVD collection, as well as "Ace Ventura: Pet Detective" and other irrelevant titles.
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/20/te...20amazon.html?





'South Park'-Scientology Battle Rages On
Erin Carlson

"South Park" has declared war on Scientology. Matt Stone and Trey Parker, creators of the animated satire, are digging in against the celebrity-endorsed religion after a controversial episode mocking outspoken Scientologist Tom Cruise was yanked abruptly from the schedule Wednesday — with Internet rumors it was covert warfare by Cruise that led to its departure.

"So, Scientology, you may have won THIS battle, but the million-year war for earth has just begun!" the "South Park" creators said in a statement Friday in Daily Variety. "Temporarily anozinizing our episode will NOT stop us from keeping Thetans forever trapped in your pitiful man-bodies... You have obsructed us for now, but your feeble bid to save humanity will fail!"

Internet bloggers accused Cruise of threatening to not promote "Mission Impossible 3," a surefire summer blockbuster, if the offending episode ran. Comedy Central is owned by Viacom, as is Paramount, which is putting out "MI:3."

But Cruise's representative, Arnold Robinson, told The Associated Press Friday that the mega-star made no such demands.

"Not true," Robinson said. "I can tell you that he never said that."

A call by The Associated Press to a Paramount representative was not returned Friday.

The episode in question, "Trapped in the Closet," which first aired last November, shows Scientology leaders hailing Stan, one of the show's four devilish fourth graders, as a savior. A cartoon Cruise locks himself in a closet and won't come out. An animated John Travolta, another famous Scientologist, enters the closet to try to get him out.

In another dig at the famously secretive religion, the credits at show's end are filled with names like "John Smith" and "Jane Smith."

The battle began in earnest earlier this week when Isaac Hayes, another celebrity Scientologist and longtime show member — voicing the ladies' man Chef — quit the show, saying he could no longer tolerate its religious "intolerance and bigotry."

Stone and Parker didn't buy that either.

On Monday, Stone told The Associated Press, "This is 100 percent having to do with his faith in Scientology...He has no problem — and he's cashed plenty of checks — with our show making fun of Christians."

A Comedy Central spokesman said Friday that the network pulled the controversial episode to make room for two shows featuring Hayes.

"In light of the events of earlier this week, we wanted to give Chef an appropriate tribute by airing two episodes he is most known for," the spokesman said.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060317/.../tv_south_park





Defense: 'Da Vinci' Prosecution in Tatters
Thomas Wagner

A lawyer for the publisher of "The Da Vinci Code" wrapped up the defense's case Friday by telling London's High Court that two authors' claim for copyright infringement was "in tatters."

Setting out closing arguments as the three-week trial nears its end, defense attorney John Baldwin said it was clear that Dan Brown's best-selling thriller had not copied from work by Michael Baigent and Richard Leigh.

Baldwin said that while many of the incidents in "The Da Vinci Code" had been described before, "no one has put them together, and developed and expressed them, in the way Mr. Brown did. That is why he has a best seller.

"The claimants' case is now in tatters," said Baldwin, who represents publisher Random House.

Baigent and Leigh are suing Random House for copyright infringement, claiming Brown "appropriated the architecture" of their 1982 nonfiction work, "The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail."

During three days of testimony that ended Wednesday, Brown acknowledged that he had reworked other writers' material but rejected claims that he copied Baigent and Leigh's work for his sensational and controversial page-turner, first released March 18, 2003. The novel has sold more than 40 million copies worldwide and remains high on best seller lists upon its third anniversary of publication.

Both books explore theories — dismissed by theologians — that Jesus married Mary Magdalene, the couple had a child and that the bloodline survives.

Baldwin said it was clear "that Mr. Brown did not copy ('The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail') as alleged by the claimants.

"However, even if Mr. Brown had taken these ideas from (the book), the claimants will still fail. The ideas are of too general a nature to be capable of copyright protection," he said. "The claimants' claim relates to ideas at a high level of generality, which copyright does not protect."

Baldwin's four-hour closing argument indicated how seriously Random House takes the fundamental issue of copyright law regarding basic issues such as plot, themes, historical information and interpretations used in novels.

Before he addressed the court, Baldwin presented it with a 95-page copy of his closing argument, including 127 footnotes.

Judge Peter Smith, who often questioned Baldwin, said that Baigent and Leigh had been original in their examination of several issues, such as Jesus' bloodline, and they believe that Brown used a substantial part of their themes in "The Da Vinci Code."

The issue, Smith said, is whether that amounted to a copyright violation.

If Baigent and Leigh succeed in securing an injunction to bar the use of their material, they could hold up the scheduled May 19 film release of "The Da Vinci Code," starring Tom Hanks. Sony Pictures says it plans to release the film as scheduled.

Brown has acknowledged that he and his wife, Blythe Brown, read "The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail" while researching "The Da Vinci Code," but said they also used 38 other books and hundreds of documents, and that the British authors' book was not crucial to their work.

Asked about passages from "The Da Vinci Code" that were similar to those in "The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail," Brown acknowledged "reworking of the passage — that's how you incorporate research into a novel."

But Brown, who traveled from his New Hampshire home for the trial, denied copying. The author, who has made few public appearances over the past year, did not attend Friday's court session.

Random House lawyers argued that many of the ideas in "The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail" do not feature in Brown's novel, which follows fictional professor Robert Langdon as he investigates the murder of an elderly member of an ancient society that guards dark secrets about the story of Jesus and the quest for the Holy Grail.

The prosecution will present its closing argument Monday, with a verdict possible next week.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060317/...RrBHNlYwM3NjI-





Government Orders Spoof Site Shut
Louisa Hearn

A spoof John Howard website that featured a soul searching "apology" speech for the Iraq war has been shut down under orders from the Australian Government.

Richard Neville, an Australian futurist and social commentator was "mystified" to discover his satirical website johnhowardpm.org had been blocked on Tuesday with no explanation from either his web hosting company, Yahoo or the domain name registrar, Melbourne IT.

He said that after two days of silence, a customer service representative from Melbourne IT today informed him by telephone that the site had "been closed on the advice from the Australian Government".

Mr Neville's satirical "apology" speech ran on a mocked-up version of a spoof website that resembled Mr Howard's own, and after going live on Monday, received 10,500 visits within 24 hours.

Bruce Tonkin, the chief technology officer at Melbourne IT, said the site had been shut down in response to a request from the Prime Minister's office on basis that it looked too similar to its own site.

"If we receive a complaint from an intellectual property basis claiming that a website directly infringes the rights of another site we would check it, and if it is a direct copy we would suspend the site," he said.

He said the issue of whether or not the content was satirical was of no consequence to Melbourne IT. "To us it looks like a phishing site," he said.

Mr Neville contests that there are any similarities between a satirical website and a phishing operation, which would typically carry an intent of data or financial theft.

"I don't see how you can make judgements that ignore the content or intention of the site. To give the satire more impact it was important to make it look like an official speech. Obviously there was no hacking of the original site, and I did not choose to make it too close to the actual design, and my name and address were readily accessible," he said.

He added that one of the reasons he had chosen Yahoo's hosting service was because it did not have any obvious policies that restricted the nature of content that could be published.

"If there were objections to the content on the site, isn't there a democratic tradition that I be informed of it," he said.

Mr Neville describes the parody as an act of satire and culture jamming, and is now running a link to a PDF copy of the speech on his website.

He has been involved in satirical publishing since the 1960's when he edited Oz magazine, which covered contentious issues of the time. However some of the subject matter led to obsenity charges for him and his colleagues, that were later overturned.
http://www.smh.com.au/news/breaking/...098638843.html





Hacking Made Easy

Automated Tools Gather Victims' Keystrokes, Upload Passwords to Illicit Database
Brian Krebs

When Graeme Frost received an e-mail notice that an expensive digital camera had been charged to his credit card account, he immediately clicked on the Internet link included in the message that said it would allow him to dispute the charge. As the 29-year-old resident of southwestern England scoured the resulting Web page for the merchant's phone number, the site silently installed a password-stealing program that transmitted all of his personal and financial information.

Frost is just one of thousands of victims whose personal data has been stolen by what security experts are calling one of the more brazen and sophisticated Internet fraud rings ever uncovered. The Web-based software employed by ring members to manage large numbers of illegally commandeered computers is just as easy to use as basic commercial office programs. No knowledge of computer programming or hacking techniques is required to operate the software, which allows the user to infiltrate and steal financial information from thousands of PCs simultaneously.

The quality of the software tools cyber criminals are using to sort through the mountains of information they've stolen is a clear sign that they are seeking more efficient ways to monetize that data, experts say.

"We believe this to be the work of a group, not a single person," said Vincent Weafer, senior director of security response at Cupertino, Calif.-based computer security giant Symantec Corp. "This type of sophistication really shows the ability that [criminals] have to do 'data mining' on where all this stolen information is coming from."

Frost's data, along with information stolen from thousands of other victims, made its way to a Web site hosted by a Russian Internet service provider. The site is currently the home base of a network of sites designed to break into computers through a security hole in Microsoft's Internet Explorer Web browser. The data thieves use the IE flaw to install programs known as "keyloggers" on computers that visit the specially coded Web pages. The keyloggers then copy the victims' stored passwords and computer keystrokes and upload that information to the database.

The central database feeds the stolen data back to Web sites running the hacking software, where hackers can sort it by any number of variables, such as financial institution or country of origin -- powerful tools for anyone trying to squeeze as much income as possible out of their illegal activities.

To Weafer, the software appears to have been professionally designed for sale or rent to organized criminal groups. His team was tracing the origins of a new password- stealing program in February when it spotted at least three of the hacking Web sites.

The software -- viewed by a reporter on one of the sites, which washingtonpost.com is not naming because it remains active -- displays detailed graphs showing the distribution of victims by country. At time of this publication, the site harboring Frost's information was receiving a stream of illicit data from a network of roughly 3,000 infected PCs mostly located in Spain, Germany and Britain.

The hacking software also features automated tools that allow the fraudsters to make minute adjustments or sweeping changes to their networks of hacked PCs. With the click of a mouse or a drag on a pull-down menu, users can add or delete files on infected computers.

They can even update their spyware installations with new versions tailored to defeat the most recent anti-virus updates. With one click on the Web site's "Add New Exploit" button, users can simultaneously modify all of the keylogger programs already installed on their networks.

Symantec and other security experts also have spotted earlier versions of the software installed on at least two other Web sites, one of which is still active and has harvested password information from nearly 30,000 victims, the bulk of whom reside in the United States and Brazil.

Watching While You Type

Keyloggers are fast becoming among the most prevalent and insidious online threats: More than half of the viruses, worms and other malicious computer code that Symantec now tracks are designed not to harm host machines but to surreptitiously gather data from them. In fact, none of the victims interviewed for this story were aware their computers had been seeded with the invasive programs until contacted by a washingtonpost.com reporter.

These keylogger-control Web sites follow a trend toward automation in other realms of online fraud, such as virus-creation programs, spamming software and pre- packaged toolkits to help fraudsters set up "phishing" sites -- Web pages designed to trick people into giving away their personal and financial data at what looks like a legitimate e-commerce or banking site.

"This type of plug-and-play, click-and-hack software simply represents the commercialization of criminal activity, and in many respects lowers the technical knowledge barrier of entry to this type of crime," Weafer said.

Microsoft released a patch in January to fix the software flaw that hackers used to break into Frost's computer, which involves the way IE processes certain types of digital images. As early as two weeks before the patch's release, online criminals were already hacking into thousands of small-merchant Web sites and embedding code that would silently install keyloggers when users browsed the sites with IE.

Frost blames himself for the theft of his personal information. He said the Web site that launched when he clicked on the link in the fraudulent e-mail belonged to a legitimate online camera store, and that the woman he spoke with at that store even told him that her site had been hacked and that it had probably downloaded "some kind of virus to his computer."

Frost also admits he ignored her warning and put off installing the latest patch, something he said he plans to rectify after re-installing the operating system on his computer. Meanwhile, he's had to arrange new online login credentials for his bank and reset his eBay and Paypal passwords, all of which were found on the hacking Web site.

Still, one detail is gnawing on Frost's mind: The timestamp on the text files containing his password information indicate his data was stolen on Feb. 22, yet neither his bank nor eBay nor PayPal has since reported any suspicious activity on the account. "I'm relieved to know it could have been a lot worse."

Eric Sites, vice president of research and development at Sunbelt Software, an anti-spyware company in Clearwater, Fla., said it is likely that Frost's data had not yet been sold or transferred to other criminal syndicates who specialize in laundering money in Frost's geographic region.

"This sorting process allows the bad guys to zero in on the countries that they have experience with and sell the data to criminals who can make the most of it in that country," Sites said. "We have seen this type of data being sold before, and some of the stolen information will filter all the way down to criminals on the street using a [counterfeit] credit card."

John Bambenek, a security incident handler at the Bethesda, Md.-based SANS Internet Storm Center, which monitors hacking trends, agreed.

"The reason there is often a delay is that a lot of the people who actually install a lot of these keylogger programs are not that sophisticated," Bambenek said. "In most cases, they're teenage hackers who flip the information to more organized criminal groups for some quick cash."

The scourge of keylogger programs is pervasive and growing, Bambenek said. He recently conducted an analysis for SANS estimating that nearly 10 million U.S. households own a computer that is infected with some type of keystroke logging program. Although not every PC user whose keystrokes are being logged has experienced financial losses -- perhaps because hackers are busy sifting their illicit logs for rare kinds of data -- Bambenek estimates that organized-crime groups have access to roughly $24 billion in bank assets from accounts associated with the owners of those infected machines.

Point, Click, Hack

Sunbelt began tracking one of the keylogger control Web sites back in August 2005, when the criminal group behind the site was using an earlier known Internet Explorer flaw to break into Windows PCs and collect data from thousands of victims.

washingtonpost.com is not naming that site because it too is still online. The company that hosts the site, District of Columbia-based HopOne Internet Corp., did not return calls and e-mails seeking comment.

Larry Johnson, special agent in charge of the criminal investigative division at the U.S. Secret Service, said the agency is keeping close tabs on the keylogger sites, which he said offer invaluable intelligence on the workings of online financial fraud groups.

"We know where these guys are and what they're doing, and we could probably take them off of that hosting site, but it just becomes a Whac-a-Mole problem, where we lose them for a while and then may not know what they're doing," Johnson said.

Johnson stopped short of saying whether the Secret Service had opened an investigation into the matter. "We do have a few things going on right now that we feel will disrupt some of these types of operations," Johnson said. "We're not interested in just sitting idly by."

Sunbelt's Sites said the proliferation of keylogger-driven fraud signifies that the hackers and criminals using malware to steal peoples' personal information are seeking a better system to manage the stolen data because they are so successful at stealing it.

"The amount of stolen data has become overwhelming to security researchers who find it while tracking down the bad guys," Sites said.

Keyloggers programs have been around for years, but only recently have security experts begun finding large online troves of keylogged information organized in large back-end databases for remote Web sites.

Last week, Sites discovered another currently active keylogger control Web site registered to an individual in Russia. One of the files on that site was a large text document containing the raw keylogged data from hundreds of computers infected with "Winldra.exe," a popular keylogger program. Winldra is attributed to the owners of Ratsystems.org, a Russian site that sells a variety of malicious software and identity theft services.

Kingsland, Ga., resident Justin Rollins, 28, was among those whose private data was stored on the Russian server. Rollins said he's not sure how the keylogger got onto his Windows XP computer, but he confirmed that the information found in the text file included the user names and passwords he had stored in IE for his eBay, Paypal, credit union and Hotmail accounts. The text file indicates the keylogger began uploading his account information on Valentine's Day.

"I guess it's one of the down sides of the Internet that it makes things more convenient, and then you have people design stuff like this to make things miserable for people," Rollins said.

Some of the more advanced keylogger programs in use today can even take snapshots of the image on the computer screen when the victim visits a Web site that requires a user name and password. Experts say this "screen scraping" functionality originally was built into many keystroke loggers to defeat anti-keylogger security measures -- used mainly in Britain and South America, where the threat is the worst -- that require online customers to log in by using a mouse to click on a keyboard image on their screens rather than type on their actual keyboards.

Vulnerability Can Be Contagious

The following account, pieced together by tracing the trail of keylogged data, illustrates how even companies that follow all of the best precautions on computer security can fall victim to cyber crime when their business partners have been compromised.

One massive trove of keylogged data on a Web site discovered by Sunbelt included screen grabs for several victims, including an employee of Blueox Corp., an Oxford, N.Y., heating, air conditioning and fuel delivery service. Blueox's data was inside a folder titled "United States," which included user names and passwords from at least a hundred other infected computers around the country. Other folders on that site contained password data from victims in more than 60 other nations.

Just after noon ET on March 10, a keylogger was planted on the computer used by the company's controller, according to the time stamp and name at the top of the text file that contained her data.

The keylogger on her computer had recorded and transmitted to the attackers' Web site the user name and password for Blueox's corporate bank account, as well as the credentials that the company uses to purchase fuel supplies online from Gulf Oil. Along with the text file containing the stolen login data were two screen shots that the attackers apparently took at the moment she logged into each account.

That same keylogger Web site held sensitive password data belonging to BPP Management, a company that oversees a string of gas stations in the White Plains, N.Y., area. The attackers had installed a keylogger on the computer used by BPP's controller, compromising the credentials the company uses to access its accounts at a major New York bank.

Earlier this week, both companies discovered how the attackers broke in: The intruders had compromised Gulfoil.com, a site which employees of both Blueox and BPP Management visit regularly as wholesale buyers.

Graham Spinney, director of information technology at Gulf Oil, confirmed that sometime on March 10, hackers broke into the company's Web site and planted code that redirected visitors to another site. The false site informed visitors that they needed to install a security update to continue logging in to their Gulfoil.com accounts.

The "security update" was in fact a keystroke logger. The attackers' site also installed a software tool used to remotely view, add or delete files on victims' computers.

David Martin, who oversees all of Blueox's computer operations, called the keylogger infestation "his worst fears come true" after verifying the company's login information with a reporter.

"You know, you think you've covered all your bases security-wise, and then something like this happens," Martin said. The company is still in the process of checking whether the attackers used the information to steal any money.

"I thought we had our arms around the computer situation," Martin said, "but apparently we don't."

One reason keyloggers are becoming so prevalent and stealthy is that far too many Windows users rely on anti-virus programs to stop attacks while continuing to ignore safe-computing advice, according to Ken Dunham, director of rapid response for Reston, Va.-based iDefense, a security subsidiary of VeriSign.

That advice has changed little since the first computer viruses appeared: Stay up to date on security patches and be extremely wary of clicking on links and attachments that arrive unbidden in instant messages and e-mail.

"The number one thing the majority of the malicious code we're seeing now does is disable or delete anti-virus and other security software," Dunham said. "In a lot of cases, once the user clicks on that attachment, it's already too late."
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...031600916.html





Calling All Eyes

E. Orange Seeks Volunteers To Tell Of Crime Via Web
Kevin C. Dilworth

The East Orange Police Department is getting ready to greatly enlarge its public safety ranks, with what's being called the Virtual Community Patrol, Police Director Jose Cordero said yesterday.

Soon-to-be-chosen residents will get access to a a Web site that provides panoramic views of their block, allows them to type in general complaints, pinpoint a problem location, immediately send that information to police headquarters, and simultaneously activate hidden police surveillance cameras, Cordero said.

With its potential to include a vast number of crime-fighting community participants, the Virtual Community Patrol may be the first such project of its kind in the nation, Cordero said.

"We plan on giving the community control of a very powerful technology," Cordero said.

The program will be tested in two troubled neighborhoods -- Lenox Avenue, off South Arlington Avenue, and Amherst Street, off Central Avenue -- by the end of this month.

"We want to now give them shared virtual control of their community," Cordero said. "Essentially, when they see something that alarms them, they can go to the Web site, type in information, and hit send.

"We will then get an alert in our community center, and, automatically, video cameras will turn to what they (the neighborhood resident) are looking at, or what they are complaining about," Cordero said. "We'll see what they're seeing. We'll be able to respond quicker."

For example, an individual might see suspicious drug activity around a parked car, get on the Internet, type in a brief description of what's happening, use a cursor to pinpoint the trouble spot on one of six neighborhood still pictures that pop up, then transmit that information to the police command communications center, he said.

The police, after receiving that information, can view a live video feed of the suspicious or criminal activity, and dispatch officers and patrol cars accordingly, detective Andrew DiElmo said.

The Virtual Community Patrol is an outgrowth of the installation of surveillance cameras around the city, as well as an acoustic gunshot sensor system linked to the same camera network.

The other major initiative included the installation of police barricades along a two-block stretch of Lenox Avenue and of Amherst Street, to control who drives through the neighborhoods.

The surveillance cameras and barricades have produced dramatic drops in complaints of trouble from each of those locales, Cordero said.

Before those anti-crime initiatives were launched, the police department had been averaging 79 problem calls per month on Lenox Avenue, and 75 on Amherst Street. After, the complaints dropped to about 11 calls a month in each location, Cordero said.

With plans afoot to remove the barricades by the month's end, the Virtual Community Patrol effort, hopefully, will make the streets just as safe, and continue to help reduce the fear of crime, Cordero said.

Beginning next week, members of the police department's community services unit will hold meetings with both Lenox Avenue and Amherst Street residents to explain how the new initiative works, start soliciting volunteers, then pick program participants, Cordero said.

The cost to the city has been minimal, with only the cost of extra surveillance cameras being borne by East Orange, Cordero said.

The city's contracted video surveillance camera provider -- PackeTalk, a Manhattan company that provides broadband networks for law enforcement organizations -- jumped at the anti-crime initiative, when city police first came up with the idea four or five months ago, and voluntarily helped turn the dream into reality, Cordero said.
http://www.nj.com/search/index.ssf?/...ger?nex&coll=1



Update:
David Pescovitz

Allen Knutson points out how closely the Virtual Community Patrol resembles the notion of Neil Stephenson's Global Neighborhood Watch as envisioned in a 1998 Wired article. Link.
http://www.boingboing.net/2006/03/15..._citizen_.html





Google Avoids Surrendering Search Requests
Michael Liedtke

A federal judge on Friday ordered Google Inc. to give the Bush administration a peek inside its search engine, but rebuffed the government's demand for a list of people's search requests — potentially sensitive information that the company had fought to protect.

In his 21-page ruling, U.S. District Judge James Ware told Google to provide the U.S. Justice Department with the addresses of 50,000 randomly selected Web sites indexed by its search engine by April 3.

The government plans to use the data for a study in another case in Pennsylvania, where the Bush administration is trying to revive a law meant to shield children from online pornography.

Ware, though, decided Google won't have to disclose what people have been looking for on its widely used search engine, handing a significant victory to the company and privacy rights advocates.

"We will always be subject to government subpoenas, but the fact that the judge sent a clear message about privacy is reassuring," Google lawyer Nicole Wong wrote on the company's Web site Friday night. "What his ruling means is that neither the government nor anyone else has carte blanche when demanding data from Internet companies."

Attempts to reach a spokesman for the Justice Department late Friday weren't immediately successful.

The government had asked for the contents of 5,000 randomly selected search requests, dramatically scaling back its initial demands after Google's vehement protests gained widespread attention.

When the Justice Department first turned to Ware for help in January, the government wanted an entire week's worth of Google search requests — a list that would encompass queries posed by millions of people.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060318/...NlYwN5bmNhdA--





Are You Liable If Someone Does Something Illegal On Your WiFi?
from the you-shouldn't-be... dept

For years, whenever the press has written one of their fear-mongering stories about open WiFi, they almost always include some tidbit about how if someone uses your network to do something illegal, you can be arrested for it. It's one of the popular open WiFi horror stories -- but is it true? Well, of course, you can be arrested, but it's unlikely that there would be any legal grounds for the arrest.

The latest debate on this issue comes from a tech writer at the Houston Chronicle who is taking Tim Lee to task for an op-ed piece Tim wrote in the New York Times about open WiFi. The Chronicle writer says Tim is missing the real security issue, about how the RIAA can go after you if someone downloads music on your open WiFi. While it is true that they can go after you, there are valid legal defenses for this -- as has been discussed for years. If you are legally sharing your WiFi, then you are a service provider, and under current laws you are not liable for what others do with the service. That's what it says in the Communications Decency Act, and it clearly applies here. In fact, we've even heard stories of people purposely leaving their WiFi open for this very reason -- as it gives them a legal defense should the industry ever come after them.

Of course, it's worth noting two things. First, the entertainment industry likes to pretend this defense doesn't exist, even though it's pretty clear in the law -- and they could convince some judges to ignore it. Second, none of this takes into account whether or not your service provider allows you to share your connection via WiFi -- as most do not. However, that doesn't take away from the defense that you aren't responsible for what others do with your connection. You may be investigated for it -- but the use of your network does not automatically make you guilty, and there's a very reasonable defense against it.
http://techdirt.com/articles/20060320/1636238.shtml





Fined For Using Someone Else's WiFi
from the where's-the-loss? dept

While many, many people still feel there's absolutely nothing wrong with piggybacking on someone's open WiFi, the police don't always agree. We've had a few stories in the past about people getting arrested for using someone else's WiFi, or even threatening to arrest people for simply using a cantenna.

The latest such story, sent in by Steve, involves a guy in Illinois who was fined $250 for "theft of services" after a police officer spotted him sitting in a car, using the open WiFi of a non-profit agency in the middle of the night. The police go on about how you could get a year in jail for this. Again, though, it's not clear why this is a crime. If the guy were trespassing, that's one thing. However, if he's sitting on public property, using an open WiFi signal that went beyond the property boundaries... it should have been up to the agency to secure their WiFi. Also, there's no way anyone can claim any real loss in this situation. It was the middle of the night. No one else was using the broadband connection.

The police are quoted warning others to beware that they, too, can get arrested and spend a year in jail if spotted using a laptop in a car. Can't wait until someone using an EVDO or HSDPA cellular data card in their car gets arrested by a police officer who doesn't recognize the difference.
http://techdirt.com/articles/20060323/0930256.shtml





Lexar JumpDrive Music
thrall

Lexar makes very popular Thumbdrives. They also have a line of small MP3 players called “JumpDrive Music”.

I got one of these a year ago, It’s a nifty little device and can be used as a music player or a thumbdrive. DRM never crossed my mind because I had no problem just putting MP3’s on it and frankly , it was a lot better than my old DRM enabled players and software.

But recently I just updated it’s firmware and found out something interesting. Lexar’s update not only added some new features but it also updated the DRM technology. It has WMA DRM Technology from none other then Microsoft.

I did some hacking around with the DRM DLL’s and found Lexar implements the DRM into the firmware so it’s always availible. I even have a theory that it is constantly on (even with non DRM’d files). With the recent talk about DRM and battery life I decided to do some reverse engineering.

The first thing I did was of course check out the BIN file. I used a hexeditor and a program I used previously for Bin files. I found out the file had a very small amount of program and a ton of space (nothing but 0000’s). When I removed these the bin file went from 652kb to 52kb. And yes , The bin worked fine!

I then edited the DLL’s for the DRM and took everything out and had a blank file. I did this for all the DRM related files. I then did some reverse engineering on the updater and unblocked the settings tab of the updater (it was blocked previously). I checked some settings but nothing would help me update it with fake files. So I did some editing and was able to run the program from OLLYDBG bypassing the stupid checksum check.

When I updated the device with the empty DLL’s and edited Bin file I turned the device off. The next thing I found out amazed me. The player booted up 10 seconds faster. It not only opened up faster but it plays music files with far less battery usage on non DRM’d files.

The only problem is that WMA files don’t work anymore. But I don’t think that will be an issue.

If anyone is interested I can post a tutorial of how to do this and/or an optimized version of the latest firmware.
http://damagedintransit.com/2006/03/...mpdrive-music/





Hard Disk Drive Organization Announces a New Sector Length Standard

IDEMA, the International Disk Drive, Equipment, and Materials Association, has announced the results of an industry committee assembled to identify a new and longer sector standard for future magnetic hard disk drives (HDDs). This Committee recommended replacing the 30 year-standard of 512 bytes with sectors having ability to store 4096 bytes.

Dr. Ed Grochowski, executive director of IDEMA US, says that adopting a 4K-byte sector length facilitates further increases in data density for hard drives which will increase storage capacity for users while continuing to reduce cost per gigabyte.

"Increasing areal density of newer magnetic hard disk drives requires a more robust error correction code (ECC), and this can be more efficiently applied to 4096 byte sector lengths," explained Dr. Martin Hassner from Hitachi GST and IDEMA Committee member. "Today, hard drives are a major storage product for essentially all computer and consumer applications, and increased capacities are required to meet customer needs for more storage."

The IDEMA Long Data Block Committee was composed of members representing the major hard drive developers, as well as electronics and software companies. The Microsoft Corporation participated in this Committee and plans to include a 4K-byte sector capability in their upcoming operating system named Windows Vista.

The Committee foresees the first hard drive products becoming available later this year or in 2007, and is asking the computer industry to recognize this new standard and prepare for its availability. Backward compatibility with existing 512-byte products, both in hardware and in software, will be defined and accommodated during the phase over period. It is projected that most disk drives will be eventually formatted for 4K-byte sectors.
http://www.geekzone.co.nz/content.asp?contentid=6076





US Government Backs Apple Against French Law

US Commerce Secretary Carlos Gutierrez backed angry protests by Apple Computer over a new French law that would throw open Apple's popular online music store to competitors.

Speaking on the CNBC network, Gutierrez said he needed to make further study of the copyright law passed by the French parliament's lower house this week.

"But any time something like this happens, any time that we believe that intellectual property rights are being violated, we need to speak up and in this case, the company is taking the initiative," he said.

"I would compliment that company because we need for companies to also stand up for their intellectual property rights," Gutierrez said.

"If we all do that, have the government work with other governments, have companies defend and protect their own intellectual property, then we'll be able to make more progress on a worldwide basis."

The French legislative chamber on Tuesday passed a bill that would force Apple to make its downloads work on all digital music players and not just on the iconic iPod.

Analysts said Apple would have to choose between sharing the secrets of the exclusive online music technology that has helped make it a market leader -- or, more likely, stop selling music downloads from the iTunes store in France.

Supporters of the French legislation argue it will better protect the rights of musicians and other artists whose work is sold online.

But Apple has condemned the French bill, which has yet to be passed by the upper house, as no more than "state-sponsored piracy".

"If this happens, legal music sales will plummet just when legitimate alternatives to piracy are winning over customers," it said.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20060323...E0BHNlYwN0bWE-





Sign This!





Georgia College Pushes For iPod Ingenuity
Greg Bluestein

The campus of Georgia College & State University boasts traditional college fare - spacious greens, historic architecture and a steady stream of students with the familiar white headphones of iPods dangling from their ears. But here in the antebellum capital of Georgia, students listening to iPods might just as well be studying for calculus class as rocking out to Coldplay - after the school's educators worked to find more strategic uses for the popular digital music and video players.

At least 100 of the rural school's employees are turning iPods into education or research tools - impressive for a college with only about 300 faculty. But it's more than simply making class lectures available - a practice now routine at many colleges and even a few high schools.

History professor Deborah Vess asks students to download 39 films to their video-capable iPods so she doesn't have to spend class time screening the movies. Psychology professor Noland White has found a new-age answer to office hours: a podcast of the week's most asked questions.

And the 5,500-student campus has organized a group of staff and faculty to conjure up other uses for the technology. Called the iDreamers, the team bats around ideas that could turn iPods into portable yearbooks and replace campus brochures with podcasts.

"The more you free up your classroom for discussion, the more efficient you are," said Dorothy Leland, the school's president.

Campuses throughout the nation have transformed the gadgets into education tools, a trend iPod maker Apple Computer Inc. hopes to capitalize on with "iTunes U," a nationwide service that makes lectures and other materials available online. And GCSU isn't the only school that wants the music players to be more than just a tool for catching up on missed lectures.

At North Carolina's Duke University, where incoming freshmen have been handed the devices as welcoming gifts, foreign language students use iPods to immerse themselves in coursework.

Administrators at Pennsylvania's Mansfield University want to use podcasts - broadcast messages that can be downloaded to iPods and other players - to recruit high schoolers to the 3,000-student campus. The school also used a podcast to address student and faculty concerns after a New York man who had contracted anthrax visited campus with a dance troupe.

Yet few campuses have embraced the new technology as doggedly as GCSU, which was rewarded for its iPod ingenuity when it was chosen to host Apple's Digital Campus Leadership Institute in November.

The school has been a leader in "integrating the iPod into the curriculum to enhance teaching and learning in creative ways going all the way back to the original iPod," said Greg Joswiak, Apple's vice president of iPod product marketing.

After Leland and Jim Wolfgang, the school's chief information officer, began seeing iPods around campus in 2002, they decided to explore educational applications for the devices. They started by farming out 50 donated iPods to faculty who offered the best proposals.

Soon Wolfgang's office was flooded with applications from educators suggesting new uses. Now some 400 college-owned iPods are floating around campus - some loaned to students in certain classes, others available for checkout at libraries.

The iPods run the technology gamut, from the bulky first-generation devices to the latest video-capable models.

Hank Edmondson, a government professor known around campus as "The Podfather," was among the first to use iPods to supplement his course lectures. Edmondson now makes lectures, language study programs, indigenous music and thumbnail art sketches available for download to the iPods of students in a three-week study-abroad program he leads.

During a recent visit to the Prado in Madrid, he recorded a 20-minute lecture on the museum's artwork. Downloading it in advance will let students spend their time at the museum exploring, not listening to Edmondson talk.

"You want to pack everything in, but you've got a lot of travel time," he said.

Vess said having her history students screen films on their iPods allows her to dedicate class time to discussion and analysis. Ditto for the weekly graduate course on historical methods that she teaches.

"Now I can devote my whole three hours to Socratic dialogue," she said with a grin.

While iPods can be useful tools for reviewing coursework, some critics argue donning a pair of earphones is not the same as actively engaging with material in a classroom.

"Learning is through interaction, discussion, critical questioning and challenging of assumptions," said Donna Qualters, director of the Center for Effective Teaching at Northeastern University in Boston. "Those cannot be duplicated on an iPod - you have to be there to experience that learning."

GCSU officials say the school makes sure its iPod lessons supplement classroom work.

"We don't have any project that repeats what's going on in the classroom," Wolfgang said. "All this is value-added."

He said the school's iPod ingenuity is helping promote GCSU's decade-old effort to remake itself as Georgia's only public liberal arts college. Long a school that attracted a regional crowd of students who often left for other schools after a year, Wolfgang believes the focus on iPods is helping retain more students.

This school year, it started iVillage, a virtual community that encouraged incoming students to start communicating before the start of classes. The first dozen freshmen recruited for the effort were asked to think up innovative uses for the iPods.

The team is creating an iPod-based freshmen survival guide that includes advice on classes, dorms and nightlife in this sleepy community 100 miles south of Atlanta.

Bobby Jones, a freshman from Rome, said he's found life in a "virtual community" surprisingly satisfying.

"(You) think it will never get the same sense of community living together, but we definitely found that sense of belonging," he said.
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories...MPLATE=DEFAULT





How Pop Sounded Before It Popped
Jody Rosen

FOR a couple of months now my iPod has been stuck on Stella Mayhew's "I'm Looking for Something to Eat." It's a lurching little waltz-time pop tune, drawled over brass-band accompaniment. The lyric is hilarious, the lament of a gal on a diet who can't stop eating, and it climaxes with a glutton's soul cry: "I want some radishes and olives, speckled trout and cantaloupe and cauliflower/ Some mutton broth and deviled crabs and clams and Irish stew." I can't get it out of my head — so far, it's my favorite record of 2006.

As it happens, it's also my favorite record of 1909. It is an Edison Phonograph Company wax cylinder, recorded 97 years ago by Mayhew, a vaudeville star who liked to poke fun at her considerable girth. In certain ways, the song is up to date: the satire on dieting is plenty relevant in the early 21st century, and Mayhew's slurred talk- singing is a bracingly modern sound. But the noisy, weather-beaten recording is unmistakably a product of the acoustic era — the period from about 1890 to the mid- 1920's, before the advent of electric recording — when musicians cut records while crammed cheek-by-jowl-by-trombone around phonograph horns in rackety little studios.

Mayhew's record is just one of several thousand cylinders, the first commercially available recordings ever produced, that have recently become available free of charge to anyone with an Internet connection and some spare bandwidth. Last November, the Donald C. Davidson Library at the University of California, Santa Barbara, introduced the Cylinder Digitization and Preservation Project Web site (cylinders.library.ucsb.edu), a collection of more than 6,000 cylinders converted to downloadable MP3's, WAV files and streaming audio. It's an astonishing trove of sounds: opera arias, comic monologues, marching bands, gospel quartets. Above all, there are the pop tunes churned out by Tin Pan Alley at the turn of the century: ragtime ditties, novelty songs, sentimental ballads and a dizzying range of dialect numbers performed by vaudeville's blackface comedians and other "ethnic impersonators."

For decades, these records languished unheard by all but a few intrepid researchers and enthusiasts. Now, thanks to the Santa Barbara Web site and the efforts of a small group of scholars, collectors and independent record labels, acoustic-era popular music is drifting back into earshot, one crackly cylinder and 78 r.p.m. disc at a time. These old records hold pleasant surprises, but they also carry a larger lesson about gaping holes in the story of American pop.

While historians have exhaustively investigated blues, jazz, rock and their offshoots, the mainstream pop music of the early 20th century has received only glancing treatment, the victim of a variety of prejudices entrenched in popular music culture. Listeners accustomed to the crispness of modern studio recording have been put off by the primitive sound of the old records, with their limited frequency response and harsh bursts of noise. Pop-song purists have scorned the music as the height of Tin Pan Alley's factory-produced pap — the gruesome stuff that came before Jerome Kern, Cole Porter et al. swooped in to transform popular music into a legitimate art form. Nearly everybody has been repelled by the content of songs that date from a time when coarse racial caricature was one of America's favorite sources of amusement.

Then there is the anti-pop sentiment that has dominated rock-era historiography, the tendency to trace rock's roots exclusively to folk sources — Delta bluesmen, Appalachian balladeers and other romantically hard-bitten bumpkins — while dismissing as inauthentic anything with a whiff of Broadway about it. But turn-of-the- century pop was roots music in its own right, and the period that gave us the very first star singers and hit records deserves a central place in the historical narrative.

"Acoustic-era music is the historical underdog," said Richard Martin, the co-owner with his wife, Meagan Hennessey, of Archeophone Records, a label that specializes in acoustic-era pop. "These are scratchy records, with 19th-century aesthetics, with racist material all over the place, with artists you've never heard of. This stuff is completely unknown, and it's a treasure trove."

Today, a flurry of activity is reviving those antique musical treasures, and strengthening the challenge they present to critical orthodoxy. Archeophone (archeophone.com), a tiny mom-and-pop label based in St. Joseph, Ill., has released dozens of superb compilations chronicling the careers of the period's top recording artists, including Henry Burr, a prolific warbler of sentimental ballads, and the acoustic era's biggest star, Billy Murray, who wrapped his reedy pipes around virtually every hit of the day, including George M. Cohan's "Yankee Doodle Boy" (1905) and Irving Berlin's "Alexander's Ragtime Band" (1911). The label's current top seller is a two-disc feat of audio archaeology, "Lost Sounds: Blacks and the Birth of the Recording Industry, 1891-1922," released in conjunction with a groundbreaking book by the historian Tim Brooks.

Meanwhile, the Internet is crammed with specialists sharing knowledge and posting audio files of their own collections. By far the biggest online resource is the Santa Barbara site. It took $350,000 and several painstaking years for archivists to digitize the university's vast cylinder collection — the third-largest after the Library of Congress's and Syracuse University's — using a newly invented electric cylinder player that extracts information from the ancient grooves with startling clarity. The response has been overwhelming, with more than 750,000 songs downloaded and streamed in the four months since the site went up.

"I thought the site would be used primarily for scholarly research," said David Seubert, the project's director. "I had no idea that so many people would want to hear the records."

Spend a little time browsing the site and a lost musical world opens to you. The range of music is staggering: whistling soloists, xylophonists playing polkas, John Philip Sousa leading his band through famous marches. Hacks abound — tone-deaf songbirds mauling treacly ballads — but there are also some real virtuosi. There are dozens of catchy records by Harry Lauder, the Scottish music hall star with a lustrous vocal tone and a flair for comedy. There's the banjoist Vess Ossman, whose fleet- fingered renditions of cakewalks and rags reveal that rhythmically dynamic improvisation entered American music years before the rise of jazz. Pop vocalists like Murray don't exactly swing, but there is a briskness and cheer in their singing that is infectious — the sound of American pop shrugging off its Victor Herbert-light opera complex and becoming something definitively Yankee Doodle.

It is a commonplace that sitcoms and stand-up comedy are contemporary extensions of vaudeville, but we have lost sight of pop music's vaudeville roots. The popular theater was the main performance outlet for Tin Pan Alley's tunes, and you can hear that vaudeville lineage on acoustic-era records, in the singers' booming, shout-down- the-rafters vocal styles and in lyrics packed with punch lines. It was a time when pop music and comedy were virtually one and the same, and one of the delights of the period's big hits is the glee and unpretentiousness with which they aim for the funny bone. That emphasis on jokes and novelty has done the music no favors with historians who equate art with gravity.

But the best of these novelties were artful, with indelible melodies and flashes of wit, and many have endured: "Give My Regards to Broadway," "Yes, We Have No Bananas," "Shine On, Harvest Moon," "The Darktown Strutters' Ball," "Carolina in the Morning." Period recordings of these standards can be revelatory. Consider "Take Me Out to the Ball Game": it's one of the most frequently sung songs in the United States, but few people know the verses on Edward Meeker's 1908 record. It turns out "Take Me Out" was a comedy number about shifting gender roles, starring a baseball-crazed young woman.

Katie Casey was base ball mad.

Had the fever and had it bad

Just to root for the home town crew

Ev'ry sou Katie blew.

These lines, belted out by Meeker with an audible twinkle in his eye, carry us back the social tumult of the Progressive era, to an America moving swiftly and anxiously into a post-Victorian phase. Songwriters were obsessed with topicality, charting every fad and invention and bubble in the melting pot, and the recordings from the period are unusually rich artifacts — far more historically evocative, for instance, than the 32-bar variations on the theme "I Love You" that dominated popular song for years afterwards.

Yet most public archives and record companies have been cavalier about conserving these valuable artifacts. (The preservation of silent film reels has been a far bigger priority, although the very earliest records, delicate brown wax cylinders from the 1890's, are far more imperiled.) The most notorious episode occurred in the early 1960's, when RCA dynamited the Camden, N.J., warehouse that held the masters for Victor Records' thousands of acoustic-era 78's. The rubble was bulldozed into the Delaware River and a pier was built atop it: a huge part of our musical heritage, entombed in a watery grave.

And while scholars and critics have lavished attention on early roots music recordings — no rock snob's record collection would be complete without Harry Smith's "Anthology of American Folk Music" and an Alan Lomax field recording or two — they have almost completely ignored this other recorded legacy. Pop critics are currently in the throes of post-"rockist" revisionism, thinking through their longstanding biases against commercial pop music. Maybe it's time to look at how those same prejudices, projected back into history, have distorted our vision of pop's distant past.

The truth is, beneath their quaint rhythms and lyrics about "spooning" under stretching boughs, acoustic-era songs are thematically quite similar to rock and even hip-hop, awash in sex and dancing and a cheery anti-authoritarianism. (Little wonder that moralists of the day thundered against Tin Pan Alley's "suggestive" songs and the pernicious moral effects of ragtime.) You hear that spirit in the Columbia Quartet's 1911 recording of Irving Berlin's "Everybody's Doing It Now," in the salacious relish with which the singers deliver the lines "Everybody's doing it/ Doing it?/ Doing what?" Berlin's song is nothing less than an anthem of youth rebellion, an ode to kids going nuts doing racy dance moves — precisely the kind of song that, according to conventional wisdom, did not crack the pop mainstream until sometime around 1954.

Of course, the biggest obsession of songwriters during this period was ethnic pastiche, and you won't get too far into the Web site without bumping up against "How Can They Tell That I'm Irish?," "I'm a Yiddish Cowboy" or "Ching-a-Ling's Jazz Bazaar." And then there are the ubiquitous "coon songs" — hundreds upon hundreds of them, filled with racial epithets, chomped watermelon and other grotesqueries. No period in American music has been as bound up with the question of racial representation, and it is embarrassment about minstrelsy more than anything else that that has kept this stuff tucked in the darkest corners of sound archives.

"Some of it was probably better forgotten for a while," Mr. Seubert said. "I think coon songs would have been a pretty hard thing for a folklorist to try to resurrect during the civil rights era."

Now, though, minstrelsy is a hot scholarly topic, and much of the current interest in the acoustic era revolves around blackface and black performers. By far the most talked-about figure is the brilliant vaudeville singer Bert Williams, the first African-American pop star, who specialized in blackface material. (Archeophone has released three volumes of Williams's recordings.) But if we really want to know acoustic-era pop music, we need to look at the white minstrels, ask some hard questions and rein in our instincts to dismiss their acts as racist trash, full stop.

Some of the most compelling voices of the period belong to female "coon shouters" — Mayhew, May Irwin, Sophie Tucker — who eventually washed the burnt cork off their faces and graduated to a thrillingly insouciant singing style. That style owed everything to minstrelsy but was no longer explicitly "black."

Then there are even trickier cases, like that of Al Bernard, a blackface comedian and female impersonator who specialized in fiercely swinging ragtime and minstrel numbers. Are we ready to admit that unequivocally racist songs, delivered by white singers in the thickest possible dialect, might not only be historically significant music, but great music?

Students of pop history will be mulling over such questions for some time to come. In the meantime, there are thousands of new records to be listened to — some of them more than a century old. "Some of this stuff is dreadful, you'd really rather not listen to it," Mr. Martin allowed. "But there's some really enjoyable stuff along the way."

One enjoyable record, which distills the period's pleasing mix of pop hooks, belly laughs and sheer strangeness, is the vaudevillian Eddie Morton's "Don't Take Me Home," a jaunty ragtime novelty about a husband who runs off to war to hide out from his henpecking wife. Morton sings the verses pretty straight, but in the fiendishly catchy chorus — "Don't take me home!/ Pleeeease, don't take me home!" — his voice ripples across the frantic oompah beat, a long sobbing phrase that's halfway between an Irish tenor's flourish and the yelp of a dog whose tail has been stepped on. It's unclear what impact the record made when it was released in 1908. In 2006, it sounds like a hit.
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/19/ar...=1&oref=slogin





Weekends With Dad, Courtesy of D.S.L.
Lynette Clemetson

WITH work and the school week behind them, Charles A. Mason III and his daughter, Arielle, who live more than 1,500 miles apart, prepared for their scheduled weekend visit. There was no packing involved, no plane tickets, no car rides or drop-offs. All it took was some instant messaging on their home computers and a little fidgeting in front of their respective Webcams, and father and daughter were chatting, playing checkers and practicing multiplication tables.

"It's funner than talking on the phone, because I can see him," said Arielle, 10, who lives with her mother in Longmont, Colo., but has regular "virtual visits" with her father as part of the custody arrangement her parents worked out after her mother moved eight years ago. "It's just like being in front of him, but with games and computer stuff added."

As for Mr. Mason, who lives in Warrenton, Va., the video chats are a vast improvement over telephone calls, during which his daughter — like many children her age — is often monosyllabic and easily distracted.

"I can barely hold her attention on the phone for five minutes," he said. "When we can play checkers and look at one another, I can keep her talking about school and life for an hour or more."

As divorce has remained a constant, custody arrangements have evolved over the last half-century. Increased awareness of the toll divorce can take on children and fathers' increased involvement as parents, combined with the demands of working parents who often have to move in order to get and keep jobs, have made for increasingly creative and sometimes complex custody agreements.

As the legal system begins to acknowledge the potential benefits of technology in bridging the physical and emotional distance caused by divorce and separation, more families are experimenting with computer-assisted custody sharing.

Although any separating couple can opt for virtual visits in their custody agreement, debate surrounding the issue is unfolding on the state level as advocates push to have the option spelled out in state laws in order to broaden awareness of the practice and enable judges to grant such visits where they see fit.

In January the Wisconsin Legislature passed a measure allowing judges to grant virtual visits in custody agreements. If Gov. James E. Doyle signs the bill, Wisconsin will become the second state officially to allow such visits, following Utah, which entered virtual visits into its state code in 2004.

Efforts to push similar legislation are in various stages in several states, including Virginia, Illinois, Missouri, Florida, California and New York.

But not everyone gives virtual visits a ringing endorsement. In addition to concerns that it may be used to limit in-person visits, some lawyers and noncustodial parents also worry that it may be used to bolster the case for a custodial parent's contested relocation.

In 2001 an appeals court in New Jersey overruled a lower court decision denying a custodial parent's request to move out of state, reasoning that the court did not consider computer-assisted visits as an option for the noncustodial parent who objected to the move.

A Massachusetts court ordered video visits in 2002 in another contested relocation dispute. The father in the case, who argued that video visits were being imposed to replace in-person visits with his children, lost his appeal to stop the move.

"The danger is that it will become a substitute for real time," said David L. Levy, chief executive of the Children's Rights Council, based in Hyattsville, Md., which advocates for children affected by divorce and separation. "Virtual time is not real time. You can't virtually hug your child or walk your child to school. We don't want this to be seen as an excuse to encourage move-aways."

The Utah and Wisconsin regulations specify that virtual visits should be used as a supplement to, not a substitute for, traditional visits. The Wisconsin bill also specifies that virtual visits should not be used to justify a custodial parent's relocation. The laws define "electronic communication" as contact by video conference, e-mail, instant message, telephone or other wired or wireless technology.

"I think that most judges understand that children require physical one-on-one contact with the absent parent," said Cheryl Lynn Hepfer, president of the American Academy of Matrimonial Lawyers.

Mr. Mason, who sees Arielle in person over spring and summer breaks and alternating holidays, said virtual chats allow him to maintain a comfortable rapport with his daughter between visits. At one point during a recent call, Arielle repositioned the camera toward her piano keyboard and played him a few songs she had learned.

"I have always wanted to attend my daughter's recitals," said Mr. Mason, 42, a director of information systems for the Wolf Trap Foundation for the Performing Arts. "And here it was, Sunday afternoon, and I was getting a private recital just for me. It makes me feel closer, like I have some input."

Some parents fear that incorporating a Webcam into their children's computer activities will make them vulnerable to online predators. Those who allow virtual visits say the equipment involved requires the same parental supervision as any other technology in the home.

Vada Dreisbach, Arielle's mother, said she maintains control of the Webcam and the passwords for logging on to the necessary computer programs. She also has the computer set up so that Arielle can receive instant messages from only her father. She logs her daughter on and off before and after each visit.

"It's a very isolated connection," said Ms. Dreisbach, 43, a meteorological systems engineer. "There is a lot of coordination involved, but the more comfortable a person is with the technology, the less scary it is."

Despite the demand for long-distance custody arrangements, those who support virtual visitations say it is an option that is still relatively unknown. Some lawmakers and lawyers said legislation is needed, if only to raise awareness among lawyers.

"Lawyers and judges tend to be behind the technology curve," said Brian M. Hirsch, a family lawyer in Reston, Va., who represented Mr. Mason in his custody case. "We tend to look at something new and immediately think, 'How can this be abused?' And the judges I have asked to do this have had a very negative reaction to it."

Judge James C. Hallock, an associate judge in Kane County, Ill., who supports virtual visit legislation, said many judges need the parameters of such measures spelled out for them. "Some judges my generation and older never even turn on a computer," he said. "That makes it difficult to understand how this could be a good supplement to a relationship."

State Senator Jay O'Brien of Virginia said he introduced virtual visiting legislation this year after witnessing a divorced relative's difficulty with trying to see his children. His bill failed to pass Virginia's Senate Courts of Justice Committee, which decided that since there was nothing expressly barring virtual visits, there was no need to permit it officially.

Senator O'Brien said he plans to work on the language of his bill and reintroduce it. "In my own life I have seen a family member struggle with this, and if his requests weren't specifically permitted by the code, it was not going to be granted in his case," he said. "I think it is necessary to inform courts and attorneys to ask for this where it is appropriate."

John M. Speer, a financial consultant in Palm Valley, Tex., says he could benefit from state involvement. Though technically permitted by the terms of his custody agreement to visit with his three children every other weekend, such visits have become financially prohibitive since he moved from the Chicago area, where his children live, to Texas in 2001.

"Flying all three children here so often, or flying myself there and paying for a hotel, as much as I want to, I just can't do that all that often," Mr. Speer said. "Having another way to see one another and communicate would prevent the distance from growing between us during the months we're apart."

Because his ex-wife, he said, has yet to approve his requests for Web visits, having the option of such visits written into Illinois statute would allow a judge to approve the visits over her objections.

Michael Gough, who successfully lobbied for the Utah provision after his ex-wife and daughter, who was 4 at the time, moved to Wisconsin in 2003 and led the advocacy effort for the Wisconsin legislation, is working with lawyers and noncustodial parents around the country to push for similar legislation in other states.

Mr. Gough, a computer security consultant, runs a Web site called www.internetvisitation.org, which tracks legislation, offers divorce resources and gives user testimonials. He also runs a how-to site called www.videocalltips.com that walks users through the mechanics of video conferencing and rates software and Webcams.

Still, some families have found virtual visits more hassle than they're worth. When Alex Tomaszczuk moved to California in 2004, he bought a Webcam for himself and one for his ex-wife and children, who remained in Virginia. The image on the screen broke up if the kids moved around too much, and coordinating visits around the three children's busy schedules proved difficult.

"In some respects it's just easier to pick up the cellphone when I'm on the freeway and talk to them for 45 minutes," said Mr. Tomaszczuk, 50, a government contracts litigator who still works from Virginia part time and sees his children in person at least twice a month.

Jim Buie and his son Matthew struggled with myriad technical problems when they began experimenting with video visits in 1999. Matthew, then in high school, was living with his mother in North Carolina, and Mr. Buie was living in Maryland. But as the technology improved, Web visits became a cherished link between father and son, and they continue them, even though Matthew is now 22.

Matthew, who directs audio systems for a cruise line, took a break in a cafe in Aruba during a recent Caribbean cruise to check in with his dad via Webcam.

The two chatted about Matthew's forthcoming cruise schedule and joked about the bold Caribbean shirt he was wearing. Mr. Buie remarked that he still had not met his son's new girlfriend and asked him to bring her along for an introduction on their next virtual visit.

"This way of communicating has become something special that we share," said Mr. Buie, 51. "Of course it's not as good as seeing him in person. But at least I can see him. It has kept us close."
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/19/fa...r=1&oref=login





Microsoft Takes on Craigslist in the Battle for Classified Ads
Bob Tedeschi

CRAIGSLIST has taken on many giants. Can it survive a challenge from Microsoft?

The software behemoth late last month started Windows Live Expo (expo.live.com), another node in its growing network of Internet services, and a direct stab at Craiglist's vital organs: free, local classified ads.

In doing so, Microsoft is treading on ground that has swallowed many other companies, and one that Google has also recently begun to explore. But Microsoft is taking a more comprehensive approach than others, using its instant messaging, mapping and blogging services to help people sell items among groups of local friends and acquaintances.

Craigslist has no such weapons in its arsenal, but it is expanding quickly from its San Francisco base into new markets, making it harder for competitors to generate enough classified listings to attract an audience. Whether it is establishing a defensible position quickly enough, though, is an open question.

"It's going to be tough for anyone to compete with Craigslist in the Bay area," said Charlene Li, an analyst with Forrester Research. "But I think it's still wide open in many other places."

At first glance, Expo looks like countless other Craigslist pretenders, with a list of categories on the home page, which users can localize by ZIP code or city. Users may also search for specific items. When users post new listings, they are asked to tag their listing by ZIP code, and they may also include their exact address for advertising garage sales or for listing real estate for sale or rent. Then, when prospective customers click on the ad, they can see a satellite image of the home.

More important, perhaps, is the feature that allows Expo users to choose to view only listings from people in their MSN Messenger contact list or personal e-mail groups. MSN Messenger users will see a pulsating star next to the name of anyone on their list who has recently placed a new item for sale on Expo or made a new posting on MSN Spaces, Microsoft's popular blogging service.

With 205 million people signed up as Messenger users, and another 40 million users of MSN Spaces (and 100 million Spaces visitors in the last 16 months), the company already has a strong network of potential classifieds customers, said Garry Wiseman, Microsoft's product unit manager for Windows Live Expo.

"I've seen some sites attempt to create these kinds of services, but they have to build it up, which takes forever," Mr. Wiseman said. "We already had this massive network."

Mr. Wiseman said Microsoft would not charge for classified listings in the short term, but might charge businesses to post job or auto listings, as Craigslist does. He also said Microsoft was exploring a way to distribute the ads in print publications owned by other companies, and share in the revenue.

Ms. Li, the Forrester analyst, said Microsoft was wise to use the array of services within Windows Live to help users sell goods and services more easily. "It's a fantastic idea," she said. "People love eBay so much because it's about community. Expo has the potential to have it, whereas classifieds don't have that soul."

Fans of Craigslist — many of whom bare their most intimate thoughts on the site's discussion boards — would disagree, and perhaps reel at the notion of Microsoft having more soul than their beloved, humble servant of a Web site, with its staff of 19.

Whatever the label, Microsoft may find that the wheels of commerce will roll more even quickly among people who are more closely connected than the like-minded strangers who congregate on Craigslist.

Of course, Microsoft's idea has been tried before, back when Friendster was the future star du jour. Tribe.net, a social networking site, received backing from three major newspaper chains in 2003 on the logic that it might help them win back some of the classified advertising revenue that has migrated online in recent years.

But social networking sites have so far failed to generate nearly as many classified advertising listings as Craigslist, analysts said, partly because users have seen those sites more as places to hook up for romance or friendship than for local commerce — an area Craigslist has increasingly ruled in the last year.

Just as eBay has built a sizable lead against competing services because it has exponentially more merchandise to offer, so too has Craigslist become a go-to site for anyone looking for housing and other products and services in markets like San Francisco and New York. Likewise, sellers now flock to the site in those markets because that's where the buyers are.

According to comScore Networks, an online consultant, 8.5 million people visited a Craigslist Web site in February, up from 3.7 million a year earlier. The closest competitor was the Trader Publishing Company, a Norfolk, Va.-based publisher of classified ad magazines and Web sites largely devoted to certain categories of goods, like boats, automobiles and luxury homes. Tribe, meanwhile, attracted 740,000 users. The stakes are high for the category winner. Forrester predicts that online classifieds will generate $3.1 billion in sales this year — a 17 percent jump from last year — and will reach $4.7 billion by 2010. Newspaper classifieds, by contrast, will reach about $15 billion, up just 5 percent from last year.

Craigslist, which is privately held, does not disclose revenue. Its growth has come from its expansion into new locations — as of last week, it had 205 sites covering cities in every state, as well as cities in 35 foreign nations.

Jim Buckmaster, the chief executive of Craigslist, said the company was concentrating more on starting multilingual sites than other features or services.

"We can't match them resource for resource, even if we were so inclined," Mr. Buckmaster said of his competitors. "But we don't try to match them in technology bells and whistles, since that's not the kind of thing our users request."

Craigslist has, Mr. Buckmaster said, sustained its growth rate despite Google's recent introduction of Base, which many people have used to post classified ads (Base's numbers, which Google would not disclose, are still small enough not to register on commonly used Internet statistics), and the introduction in foreign cities of classified sites by eBay's Kijiji unit. (Ebay own a 25 percent stake in Craigslist). "The need for this kind of service is so vast that many companies can address it together," he said. "I don't think it has to be a zero sum game."

Still, Mr. Buckmaster suggests he could be wrong.

"Now at least we'll get to see whether our philosophy and way of running things is as important as we think it is," he said. "Who knows? Maybe incremental technological bells and whistles mean a lot. But the experiment has begun."
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/20/te...y/20ecom.html?





Exploit Unleashed for IE Hole
Ryan Naraine

Microsoft has issued a pre-patch advisory with workarounds for a "highly critical" vulnerability that could put millions of Internet Explorer users at the mercy of malicious hackers.

The advisory confirms the existence of a code execution hole that was discovered and publicly reported by Secunia Research of Copenhagen, Denmark.

"When Internet Explorer displays a Web page that contains certain unexpected method calls to HTML objects, system memory may be corrupted in such a way that an attacker could execute arbitrary code," the software maker said.

Separately, the SANS ISC (Internet Storm Center) warned that a proof-of-concept code has already been unleashed that could be easily modified into a dangerous exploit.

The ISC's threat meter has been raised to "yellow" to sound alarm bells for what is deemed a "significant" new threat./p>

Secunia said in an alert that the vulnerability is due to an error in the processing of the "createTextRange()" method call applied on a radio button control.

"This can be exploited by a malicious Web site to corrupt memory in a way that allows the program flow to be redirected to the heap," Secunia said in the alert, warning that successful exploitation allows execution of arbitrary code whenever the target visits the rigged Web site.

The vulnerability was confirmed on a fully patched system with IE 6.0 and Microsoft Windows XP SP2. It has also been confirmed in IE 7 Beta 2 Preview, Secunia said.

The MSRC (Microsoft Security Response Center) said in a blog entry that users of the new refresh of the IE7 Beta 2 Preview announced at Mix '06 are not affected.

Lennart Wistrand, a program manager in the MSRC, recommended that IE users turn off Active Scripting to prevent a possible attack.

"Customers who use supported versions of Outlook or Outlook Express aren't at risk from the e-mail vector since script doesn't render in mail [being read in the restricted sites zone]," Wistrand added.

The latest warning comes just 24 hours after the discovery, and public release, of a denial-of-service bug in the dominant Web browser.
http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1895,1941507,00.asp





Microsoft's Next Browser

Finally, an armored Explorer

Back in the mid-1990s, security experts warned Microsoft that integrating a Web browser deeply into Windows was a mistake. A decade and countless security vulnerabilities later, Microsoft is tacitly conceding the critics had it right. The new version of Internet Explorer to be released as part of the Vista version of Windows this fall -- and separately for Windows XP -- loses much of the privileged relationship with Windows that the Microsoft browser has long enjoyed
http://www.businessweek.com/mediacen...u_03_09_06.htm





60% Of Windows Vista Code To Be Rewritten
David Richards

Up to 60% of the code in the new consumer version of Microsoft new Vista operating system is set to be rewritten as the Company "scrambles" to fix internal problems a Microsoft insider has confirmed to SHN.

In an effort to meet a dealine of the 2007 CES show in Las Vegas Microsoft has pulled programmers from the highly succesful Xbox team to help resolve many problems associated with entertainment and media centre functionality inside the OS. The team are also working closely with engineers from the Intel Viiv team. and it is now expected that the next version of Viiv could be delayed to line up with the launch of the consumer version of Vista at the 2007 CES Show in Las Vegas.

One of the key components of the consumer version of Vista is the Media Centre code. This will be an optional package in the same way that Microsoft currently sell a Professional and Home version of XP. With Vista there will not be a seperate Media Centre SKU.

Microsoft has also admitted that it has major problems in it's Windows division and has has immediatly initiated a total restructure of the division, a move that comes after a costly delay in rolling out its Vista program.

The company has said that it is restructuring its Platforms & Services Division and 'enhancing' the leadership team. At the heart of the changes is the elevation of Steven Sinofsky to senior vice president of the Windows and Windows Live Group. 'Steven`s leadership, management and technical skills are well documented and evident in the kinds of products he ships and the type of work environment he creates,' said Ray Ozzie, Microsoft`s chief technology officer.

'I`m looking forward to working with Steven and his team in delivering software-based services that extend the value of our offerings by providing a more seamless connection between our desktop products and the Web.' Analysts estimate that Microsoft`s delays in releasing the next generation of its operating system, known as Vista, have cost it about $500 million.
http://www.smarthouse.com.au/Computi...forms/R7G5G6U4





Microsoft Vista: Not 'People Ready'
Daniel Lyons

The new version of Microsoft Windows, called Vista, has slipped again. It was originally going to ship in 2003. Then 2005. Then 2006. Now in early 2007. I'm not surprised, having seen a demo of Microsoft's new programs at an "event" for tech buyers in New York last week.

The new programs are phenomenally complex, with scores of buttons and pull-down menus and myriad connections among various applications. A Microsoft VP zipped through a demo, moving information from Outlook to Powerpoint to Groove to some kind of social networking program that lets you see how your colleagues and your colleagues' colleagues rate various Web sites.

Meanwhile, 500 tech buyers sat there in the dark, their eyes glazing over from the sheer mind-numbing pointlessness of most of this stuff. The audience laughed out loud when the Microsoft guy showed off a kludgey system that lets you fetch Outlook e-mail messages using voice commands from a cell phone.

The system has all the charm of those automated phone systems you encounter when you call customer service: Your call is very important to us. And while it is cool and futuristic to have a computer "read" your e-mail to you, uh, dude--we all have BlackBerrys anyway. In fact, many in the audience weren't even watching the voice-activated e-mail demo--they were checking mail on their BlackBerrys.

Even more ironic is that Microsoft has ginned up a new slogan, "People Ready," which apparently is meant to describe its software, or maybe it describes companies that use its software, or whatever. Who knows? It's one of those phrases that means anything, and so means nothing. Who makes this stuff up? Do they actually pay this person? And is Microsoft just figuring out now that its programs are used by--gasp--people?

Microsoft execs also talked about "Impacting People," then they dragged out fashion designer Tommy Hilfiger, who seemed very "impacted" as he sang praise for Microsoft programs. Actually, he was reading meaningless statements from a TelePrompTer. Here is one of his quotes, verbatim: "When you combine people and technology, you have a very powerful combination." Think about that. Just let it sink in for a minute.

And then there were the hacks. The press folks. Corralled down in back. Some were just talking out loud during SteveBallmerSteve Ballmer's keynote speech, not even bothering to keep their voices down. Yeah. It was that kind of show.

Worse yet was the grumbling afterward in the press room. Why the hell did they drag us here? we wondered. We'd been promised big news and some earth-shattering announcements by Microsoft flacks who insisted this was something we shouldn't miss. Instead, we got a demo that was about as compelling as a root canal followed by a 15- minute press conference with Ballmer, the Microsoft chief executive who seems incapable of speaking at any level softer than a bellow. Ballmer took a few potshots at IBM, claiming the computer giant doesn't innovate anymore.

No one mentioned the fact that in 1997, Microsoft held a similar event in New York City to declare that IBM's "big iron" was dead, because Windows NT--remember Windows NT?- -was going to "scale up" and replace the mainframe. I wonder if Ballmer ever feels like the guy in Groundhog Day, reliving the same press conference, over and over. I know I do.

Oddly enough, some of the language of the Microsoft event was eerily similar to language about innovation in the new huge advertisements that IBM started running a few days later in newspapers. Did Microsoft somehow get wind of the ads? Who knows. But the event seemed thrown together to blunt the new ad campaign from IBM.

Worst of all, I can't believe Microsoft actually held this big nonevent "event" only a few days before announcing another screw-up in Vista. If Ballmer knew he was about to announce a delay and still had this event, he's crazy. If he didn't know Vista was about to slip again, then Microsoft is in worse shape than anyone realizes.

Microsoft can't afford to screw up like this. There are free alternatives to everything Microsoft sells, like the Linux operating system and the Open Office application suite. Rivals like Novell, Red Hat, Sun Microsystems and, yes, IBM are pushing those programs big time.

Given Microsoft's delays I can't believe open-source stuff still hasn't caught on for desktop computers. It's amazing, but people will wait months and months for products that are so complicated that no ordinary person can figure out how to use them.

Why not at least switch to an Apple Computer Mac? Apple's new operating system is stable, reliable and easy to use. The applications are simple, gorgeous and work well together. And they're here. Today. Steve Jobs must be waking up a happy man this morning.
http://www.forbes.com/technology/200...microsoft.html





Patriot Act Game Pokes Fun At Government
Wayne Parry

In this send-up of "Monopoly," players don't pass "Go" and they don't go directly to jail - they go to Guantanamo Bay.

Instead of losing cash for landing on certain squares, they lose civil liberties. And the "Mr. Monopoly" character at the center of the board is replaced by a scowling former Attorney General John Ashcroft.

"Patriot Act: The Home Version" pokes fun at "the historic abuse of governmental powers" by the recently renewed anti-terrorism law.

But while it may be fun, creator Michael Kabbash, a graphic artist and Arab civil rights advocate, is serious about how he feels the law has curtailed Americans' freedom.

The object of the game is not to amass the most money or real estate, but to be the last player to retain civil liberties.

"I've had people complain to me that when they play, nobody wins. They say `We're all in Guantanamo and nobody has any civil liberties left,'" he said. "I'm like `Yeah, that's the point.'"

The real Patriot Act, passed after the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks and renewed earlier this month, gave law enforcement new investigative and prosecutorial powers. Critics say it unacceptably impinges on civil liberties, but the government defends the law as a vital tool that has helped prevent another terror attack.

Kabbash decided to keep Ashcroft as the visual focus of the game, even though he stepped down in January 2005, because "he really is the icon that people associate with the Patriot Act."

In a nod to President Bush's prewar comments, the "Go" space in is renamed "Bring It On!" Players roll the dice to determine how many civil liberties they start out with, accumulating them from a variety of categories: U.S. citizens get 5; non-citizens 1. Whites and Asians get 5; Arabs 1. Ultra right-wingers get 6; Democrats 3 or 4.

Instead of landing on, say Oriental Avenue, players land on a color-coded spaces corresponding to the national terror alert. A player who lands on a red space loses one civil liberty, as does anyone else within five spaces. A player who lands on an orange space gets to designate another player to lose one civil liberty.

"Chance" cards are now "Homeland Security Cards," with orders such as, "FBI wants you for questioning; Lose one turn;" and "You provide the local authorities with speculative information on your next door neighbor; Collect one civil liberty from each player."

Kabbash, of Green Brook, created a few full board sets but is also distributing the game free over the Internet, with the game board and playing cards all printable. More than 2,000 copies have been downloaded since it debuted in 2004.

"I wanted it to be not only a parody but a teaching tool," said Kabbash, 38, who teaches graphics at the College of New Jersey. "This is my way of putting my political ideas forward, hoping people will wake up. There's a lot of apathy, and we have to realize that we're in a democracy, that we're all allowed to say something."

Ashcroft had no comment on the game when asked about it Saturday during a crime conference in Miami Gardens, Fla., but he laughed when told "jail" had been replaced with Guantanamo Bay. U.S. Justice Department public affairs did not immediately return a call Saturday seeking comment.

Kabbash says his next project will probably have something to do with the National Security Agency's domestic eavesdropping program. He is reasonably certain "there's a file on me somewhere."

Asked if the FBI keeps a file on Kabbash, a bureau spokesman refused to comment.
http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald...t/14131885.htm





Local news

Strip Club Must Install Cameras
John Pirro

Lights. Camera. No action.

At least that's what city officials are hoping will happen after a judge ordered the owner of the GoGo Joint bar to install a video surveillance system so police can monitor activity inside the Shelter Rock Road strip club.

State and local authorities expect the cameras – and the signs that owner Vincent Mavilia must post advising customers about them – will curb the blatant acts of prostitution that led to the closure of the club last week.

"When people are aware the cameras are on, they are more apt to watch their behavior," said Detective Lt. James Fisher, head of Special Investigations Division of the Danbury Police Department.

Judge Douglas Mintz this week extended the temporary restraining order keeping the GoGo Joint closed through at least Monday. But the bar can't reopen until police inspect the video system and certify it's operational.

Local police and personnel from the Office of the Chief State's Attorney shut down the club, which previously operated under the names Bada Bing Bar and Wiggles, under the state's nuisance abatement law last week.

"This is an not an attempt to close the business, but an attempt to see it is run in a lawful manner," Chief State's Attorney Christopher Morano said. "This location has been the subject of multiple complaints over the past two years."

In the past seven months, undercover police officers and SID detectives have arrested seven GoGo Joint dancers on prostitution charges. Most of the arrests occurred last August, when investigators witnessed multiple incidents of sexual activity taking place around the club's rectangular bar and were approached by dancers who offered to have sex with them for money.

Mintz said installation of the cameras must be supervised by police to ensure the system "yields clear enough images for investigative purposes."

The images will be transmitted to a video recorder located in an area of the club not accessible to the public, and the tapes must be labeled by date and retained for three weeks for possible police inspection.

"That's pretty standard in nuisance abatement cases throughout the state, and has been used in other abatement cases in Danbury," Fisher said.

Mintz also said club employees must undergo criminal records checks and barred the seven women previously arrested for prostitution from working at the GoGo Joint again.

In addition, he ordered Mavilia to reimburse police for the costs of the investigation, up to a maximum of $10,000.

Attempts to contact Mavilia on Wednesday were unsuccessful. No one was at the bar and a phone number listed in his name in Brookfield was no longer in service.

Mayor Mark Boughton said he "was very pleased" with Mintz's ruling, and predicted the restrictions ordered by the judge "would have a huge impact on behavior."

Boughton also said Mavilia has indicated to city officials he wants to sell the business, which the mayor said "would be the best thing."

Court order.

http://news.newstimeslive.com/story....&channel=Local





Anti-War Artists Give Benefit Concert
Paul Burkhardt

Michael Stipe, Susan Sarandon, Cindy Sheehan and others marked the third anniversary of the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq with a concert to benefit groups campaigning against the war.

Organizers of Monday night's "Bring 'Em Home Now!" concert said 3,000 tickets were sold.

"I was raised by peace activists," Moby announced to the crowd at Hammerstein Ballroom from a stage flanked by two oversized peace symbols. He then accompanied Laura Dawn in a rendition of Buffalo Springfield's Vietnam-era song, "For What It's Worth."

Sheehan, whose son was killed in Iraq, gained international attention last summer with her monthlong protest outside President Bush's Texas ranch.

"It's awesome to me because there are more and more kids getting involved," Sheehan said before the concert.

Sarandon said artists were playing their part in the anti-war effort by attending the concert and through the movies Hollywood is producing.

"Look at `Syriana,' look at `Good Night, and Good Luck,'" Sarandon said of two recent films that deal with issues of war and censorship.

The actress, who said she was in talks to portray Sheehan in a film, said the activist "gave a face to all that was going on."

Profits from the ticket sales will go to anti-war groups including Gold Star Families for Peace, which counts Sheehan among its founding members, and Veterans Against the War.
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories...MPLATE=DEFAULT





By George?

A Guest Blogger, and an Unwritten Law
Tom Zeller Jr.

ONE could almost imagine George Clooney, robed and slippered, taking to the veranda of his Italian lakeside villa and hunkering over a laptop for his maiden voyage into the blogosphere, which appeared in the form of a passionate left-wing call to arms at HuffingtonPost.com last week.

"We can't demand freedom of speech then turn around and say, 'But please don't say bad things about us,' " the Oscar-winning actor wrote, adding his voice to dozens of other luminaries that Arianna Huffington, the columnist, former candidate for governor of California and freelance liberal gadfly, has drawn to her blog fold since starting The Huffington Post nearly a year ago. "You gotta be a grown-up and take your hits," Mr. Clooney concluded. "I am a liberal. Fire away."

But just as the great digital chinwag was taking note of the newcomer ("If Clooney blogs, does that make it sexy?" wondered the wits at Gawker), Mr. Clooney dropped a bomb, asserting that although the sentiments in the post were his, they were cobbled together from past interviews with Larry King of CNN and The Guardian, a British newspaper.

And more important, the blog was not written by him.

So was born Clooneygate, which began the week looking like a minor collision between a celebrity's handlers and a celebrity pundit's ambitions for her Web site, and ended amid knotty questions of journalistic integrity and the nature of blogs.

The basic facts are not in dispute. Ms. Huffington wanted Mr. Clooney — an outspoken critic of the war and American foreign policy — blogging on her site, but the actor, she said, wasn't familiar with the form.

So she culled some published Clooneyisms — essentially answers to questions he'd been asked in previous interviews — fashioned them into an essaylike blog entry, and added a few flourishes of her own, including the punchy "I am a liberal. Fire away" bit.

She then e-mailed it to one of his representatives, Lisa Taback. (The original post has since been removed from HuffingtonPost, but it can still be viewed here: snipurl.com/ClooneyBlog.)

"Lisa, here is a blog put together from different interviews George has given," Ms. Huffington wrote in a Feb. 17 e-mail message, which she shared to help clarify what happened. "Would love to get his approval with any changes he wants and then we'll post it on HuffPost and send to Yahoo."

Ms. Taback responded the same day, saying "I will get it to him and get back to you as soon as I hear anything," and then three days later: "Of course this is fine, Arianna! Thank you."

The scant 360-word blog posting that Ms. Huffington had put together was untouched, and that's how it appeared at The Huffington Post — packaged like every other posting there, topped with a pithy headline ("George Clooney: I Am a Liberal. There, I Said It!"), and accompanied by a picture of the author and a short biography.

The ensuing bluster signified different things for different people.

For Mr. Clooney and his representatives — and for a growing brood of loyal "HuffPo" fans who proved, over the course of the week, to be even more loyal to blog purity — it was a simple matter of honesty. Indeed, as early as Tuesday, Mr. Clooney had issued a statement that cut directly to the heart of the matter.

"These are not my writings — they are answers to questions and there is a huge difference," Mr. Clooney said.

But that difference seemed to be lost, at least at first, on Ms. Huffington, who repeatedly pointed to the clear breakdown in Mr. Clooney's public relations machinery, and then later suggested, in a post on her blog, that in any case, "the medium isn't the message; the message is the message."

And that's where, it seems, Ms. Huffington disconnected from many of her readers, blog purists and media critics — all of whom seemed to know, tacitly or otherwise, that the medium carries a message, too.

At The Huffington Post, the colors, logos, headshots, bios, rubrics and timestamps visually unify all of the blog postings and say "we are of a kind." And it is to Ms. Huffington's credit that the quirks of each individual's posting at the site — Mr. Clooney's name and picture, as well as his syntax, his supposed choice of paragraph breaks and punctuation and his gathering rhetorical pitch — have the same implications as those of any reputable publication.

They say, "Hello, I'm the person responsible for putting these ideas together in this way. I then posted them to this blog. Or I e-mailed them to Arianna. Or I scribbled them onto a cocktail napkin and sent them to her by carrier pigeon. But at some point I crafted this train of thought in this way, and now I'm sharing it with you here."

It's not printed anywhere, of course, but the medium — the blog — carries that message.

It was a point that an increasing number of Ms. Huffington's readers and fellow bloggers — from Elizabeth Snead at The Los Angeles Times to Jeff Jarvis at BuzzMachine — were looking for her to acknowledge by week's end.

"Say you're sorry, Arianna," Ms. Snead wrote at The Envelope blog (theenvelope.latimes.com). Jeff Jarvis, who blogs at BuzzMachine.com and has served as a consultant to The New York Times on Web matters, condemned the puppetry of assembling a blog post for Mr. Clooney.

"If you're not really writing your blog, if you're having or allowing someone else to do it for you," Mr. Jarvis wrote on Friday morning, "then you're gaming me, lying to me, insulting me."

And dozens of Huffington Post readers agitated for an apology. "I think that the whole George Clooney thing was appalling on your part," one commenter wrote. "Regardless of the communication that you had with George's people, you misled your readers."

On Saturday morning, admirably, Ms. Huffington came to agree, admitting in a post titled "Lessons Learned" to a "big mistake" for failing to source the quotes and for writing the post for Mr. Clooney in the first place.

This will not happen again, she wrote, because "it diminishes the amazing work of bloggers who day in and day out put their hearts and souls into writing their blogs."

Ms. Huffington also suggested that, going forward, when she comes across a published interview, or when someone prominent says something to her that she thinks is "really important and should have as wide an audience as possible," she will quote it in her own section of the blog — much as James Boswell documented the comings and goings of Samuel Johnson, she said.

Indeed, she intends to name the form for Boswell: "BozBlogging."

Or, you could just call it journalism.
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/20/business/20link.html





TiVo Has Been Cutting Out More Than Just the Commercials Lately
Eric A. Taub

The first episode in the new season of "The Sopranos" ended in a classic cliffhanger moment, with Tony on the floor after being shot by his uncle Junior. But some viewers who recorded the show on their TiVo digital video recorders to watch later might not know how close Tony came to being whacked.

Because of a software glitch in some machines, TiVo customers have been discovering over the last few months that some of the shows they had set to record were cut off before the programs ended.

"I lost the last 15 minutes of 'Lost,' as well as 'C.S.I.,' " said Monica Sharma, a marketing solutions manager in Piscataway, N.J. "Regrettably, the big things happened at the end."

The first notice of the problem came in November, when a few befuddled TiVo users posted complaints on TiVo's Web site. Customers also wrote about the glitch more recently at tivocommunity.com, an independent site for TiVo aficionados. A TiVo employee who monitors the sites posted a response there saying the company was on the case.

One of the main selling features of digital video recorders is their ability to record programs without the viewer having to enter start and stop times. It was unclear why certain shows were cut short on the malfunctioning TiVo's. The company's engineers isolated the problem to Series 2 machines (TiVo units integrated into DirecTV receivers were not affected).

The engineers first suggested a temporary fix that is the high-tech equivalent of hitting the side of a TV: pull the plug on the machine and then power it back up. It seemed that the abrupt cuts happened only on machines that had been in use for a long time and had never been rebooted.

TiVo says it has since created an upgrade to its operating system — which is being downloaded automatically to all Series 2 TiVo boxes — and that it should solve the problem permanently.

Fortunately for TiVo, even people like Loretta Mears, a Manhattan chiropractor who never got to see the final minutes of recent episodes of "Boston Legal" and "Lost," do not seem to hold it against the machine.

"I absolutely love TiVo," Ms. Mears said. "It's made it possible for me to watch black-and-white movies that are on at 3 a.m."
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/20/te...arzRx93TYsP53g





Podcast News: Podcasts Outnumber Radio Station Worldwide
SiliconRepublic.com:

There are now more podcasts than there are radio stations worldwide, matching a prediction made on an Irish blog site last year.

According to the article, there are 36,000 radio stations worldwide. (Book “I Am An Oil Tanker” cited). And we outnumber them!

Think about it for a second… The radio industry has been building radio stations for about 100 years now. They’ve branded their call letters (WKRP in Cincinnati?) in our head for years now!

On the other hand, Podcasting has been around for about 2 years. Actually, It’s just recently taken off over the past 3-6 months. But we’re already kicking radio’s butt!!!

So yeah, the “Pod People” are taking over…
http://www.podcastlikeachamp.com/blog/?p=15





Law Professor Bans Laptops In Class, Over Student Protest
AP

A group of University of Memphis law students are passing a petition against a professor who banned laptop computers from her classroom because she considers them a distraction in lectures.

On March 6, Professor June Entman warned her first-year law students by e-mail to bring pens and paper to take notes in class.

"My main concern was they were focusing on trying to transcribe every word that was I saying, rather than thinking and analyzing," Entman said Monday. "The computers interfere with making eye contact. You've got this picket fence between you and the students."

The move didn't sit well with the students, who have begun collecting signatures against the move and tried to file a complaint with the American Bar Association. The complaint, based on an ABA rule for technology at law schools, was dismissed.

"Our major concern is the snowball effect," said law school student Jennifer Bellott. "If you open the door for one professor, you open the door for every other professor to do the same thing."

"If we continue without laptops, I'm out of here. I'm gone; I won't be able to keep up," said student Cory Winsett, who said his hand-written notes are incomplete and less organized.

Law School Dean James Smoot said the decision was up to the professor, but the conflict has caused faculty to consider technology issues as the school prepares to move to a more advanced downtown facility in coming years.
http://www.usatoday.com/tech/news/20...tm?POE=TECISVA