Peer-To-Peer News - The Week In Review - January 28th, '12

[JackSpratts]

Since 2002


































"All I can think is: we gave you the Internet. We gave you the Web. We gave you MP3 and MP4. We gave you e-commerce, micropayments, PayPal, Netflix, iTunes, Amazon, the iPad, the iPhone, the laptop, 3G, wifi--hell, you can even get online while you're on an AIRPLANE. What the hell more do you want from us?" – Nat Torkington



































January 28th, 2012




On Pirates and Piracy

The media industry's wholesale takeover of creativity is the real piracy.
Mike Loukides

We've heard a lot about "piracy" in the last few months. But as you'd expect, there's a lot of confusion, particularly by the folks doing the name-calling, about what pirates really are.

Pirates aren't petty thieves, snatching a video or two from the local video rental shop. Pirates were (and are) after the big kill: the galleons filled with gold from the new world, the oil tanker that can be held for a few million dollars in ransom. If we're going to talk seriously about piracy, it's not kids downloading the odd song or TV episode, nor is it third-world software developers downloading the ebooks that I've edited and written. That's shoplifting at worst, and while I'm not going to condone shoplifting, it's a cost of doing business, and not a particularly large one. As Tim O'Reilly has argued, and as O'Reilly's sales indicate, the additional exposure you get through piracy more than compensates for any "lost sales," especially since the sales you lose are the sales you were never going to make in the first place. Sites that sell copyrighted music that they have not been licensed to sell are a more serious problem, but again, this is a problem that's easily solved by making your work as widely available and as easily accessible as you can; this will put parasites out of business.

That's not to say that piracy isn't an issue. Just that it's a different issue than the one the MPAA wants us to think about. There is some major league piracy going on, and it's all about the abuse of copyright by the major copyright holders. It's hard to think about Righthaven except as an instance of piracy. (And Righthaven ended up where most pirates historically ended up.) The Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), which has been widely used to suppress parody, unfavorable reviews, and the like, was a huge intellectual property land grab that fully deserves the name "piracy." At O'Reilly, we had a narrow escape a few years ago. "Head First Java" starts each chapter with an image taken from an old movie for which the copyright had expired, placing the movie in the public domain. Someone collected several of those movies into DVDs and copyrighted the DVD. Luckily, we discovered it (and were able to find new images) before we published the book and ended up with a court summons. That too is piracy. So is much of the patent trolling that's currently going on: one small but particularly painful example is Luma Labs' decision to take their product off the market because of a worthless patent claim. They determined that they'd almost certainly win in court, since their product was demonstrably based on prior art going back to 1885, but they'd almost certainly go bankrupt paying the legal fees.

The Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and the PROTECT IP Act (PIPA) have to be understood in this light: it's just another IP land grab. It's an attempt to frighten those who would compete with the established media companies, an attempt to assert monopolistic control over creativity. The ability to take domains offline without due process, even on the basis of inadvertently linking to copyrighted material, is nothing if not an attempt to legitimize theft on a grand scale. Because there is no due process, a defendant can't respond until he's already out of business; and then, it's a matter of whether the defendant can outlast Hollywood in their ability to pay legal fees. "Justice" is meaningless if you run out of money before you get to the end of your case.

Let's look at what would have happened historically if we had today's copyright regime. Many of Shakespeare's plays are based on older works. Many of the histories go back to Holinshed's " "Chronicles of England, Scotland, and Ireland," and if you've read Holinshed and Shakespeare side by side (I have), there's more than just an occasional chance echo. What would Shakespeare have owed to the Holinshed family? Would they have been able to take him "offline" under the DMCA? "Hamlet" is believed to be based on a lost, earlier "Hamlet" (called the Ur-Hamlet, possibly written by Thomas Kyd, one of Shakespeare's contemporaries) that has been lost. With modern IP law, we'd still be paying royalties to the unknown author of the Ur-Hamlet, and we wouldn't have Shakespeare's masterpiece.

Then as now, borrowing wasn't limited to theatre. Mashups, which have been repeatedly attacked by the entertainment industry, are by no means a new art form; they've been central to creativity for years (related examples are embedded below). Bach's "Goldberg Variations" incorporate a number of popular songs of the era, including the always popular "Cabbages and Beets drove me away from you," in its entirety, along with "Get closer to me, baby" (that's what the German really means, except the "baby" part). So did Beethoven's sonatas, particularly the second movement of the magnificent Opus 110 piano sonata ("Our cat had kittens" and " I'm a slob, you're a slob"). I could list examples for pages; musicologists spend entire careers searching for this stuff. The complexity with which these songs are woven into a much greater piece is amazing, but they're there, they've obviously there once you know what to look for, and they go way beyond what would survive "fair use" and the DMCA, let alone SOPA and PIPA.

Even more fundamentally, there is no such thing as creativity that doesn't rely on the past. Sometimes the links are very subtle and hidden; sometimes they're out in the open, and we don't notice them only because we've declared Bach and Beethoven "great composers" and forgotten the popular music of their day. Our peculiar post-Romantic notion that all real artists somehow create their works out of nothing is partly to blame. Nothing could be further from the truth. And it's not just art. In a very rare moment of humility, Isaac Newton said "If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of Giants."

So the notion that creativity can be owned, and that any use of someone else's ideas requires compensation, is nothing but an attempt to steal all of creativity. Whoever can pay their lawyers the most wins. Anyone smell pirates in the room? I am not willing to sacrifice this generation's great artists on the altar of Hollywood. I'm not willing to have the next Bach, Beethoven, or Shakespeare post their work online, only to have it taken down because they haven't paid off a bunch of executives who think they own creativity.

The Constitution of the United States provides a legal basis for copyright and patent, but it's for a specific purpose: it's "To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts." We've gone way beyond that now, with patent and copyright piracy: our notion of intellectual property is now hindering both science and art.

In Book IV, section 4, of St. Augustine's "The City of God", Augustine tells the parable of a pirate captain who is captured and brought before Alexander the Great. The emperor says "How dare you terrorize the seas"? The pirate captain replies, "How dare you terrorize the whole world? Because I only have one ship, I'm called a pirate; because you have a great navy, you're called an emperor." The difference between a pirate and an emperor is one of scale only. And that's the position we find ourselves in here: the Motion Pictures Association of America (MPAA) and its allies have twisted the discussion so we're talking about the wrong thing. We shouldn't be talking about the small-scale piracy of individual movies (which probably helps sales in the long run, as we've observed in the publishing business). We should be talking about the real piracy, the wholesale takeover of creativity by the media industry. That's the piracy we should be outlawing.
http://radar.oreilly.com/2012/01/on-...nd-piracy.html





Copyright Industry Calls For Broad Search Engine Censorship
Ernesto

At a behind-closed-doors meeting facilitated by the UK Department for Culture, Media and Sport, copyright holders have handed out a list of demands to Google, Bing and Yahoo. To curb the growing piracy problem, Hollywood and the major music labels want the search engines to de-list popular filesharing sites such as The Pirate Bay, and give higher ranking to authorized sites.

It’s no secret that the entertainment industries believe search engines are not delivering enough when it comes to protecting copyright works. Just last month, the RIAA and IFPI accused Google of massively profiting from piracy, while putting up barriers to make life difficult for rightsholders.

If the copyright industry had their way, Google and other search engines would no longer link to sites such as The Pirate Bay and isoHunt. In a detailed proposal handed out during a meeting with Google, Yahoo and Bing, various copyright holders made their demands clear.

The document, which describes a government-overlooked “Voluntary Code of Practice” for search engines, was not intended for public consumption but the Open Rights Group obtained it through a Freedom of Information (FOI) request.

In short, the rightsholders want the search engines to make substantial changes so that pirated content becomes harder to find, or is de-listed entirely. In addition, they want to boost the rankings of licensed content. Below are the three new measures they propose.

• Assign lower rankings to sites that repeatedly make available unlicensed content in breach of copyright
• Prioritize websites that obtain certification as a licensed site under a recognised scheme
• Stop indexing websites that are subject to court orders while establishing suitable procedures to de-index substantially infringing sites

In the document rightsholders explain that they find it inexcusable that some websites – Pirate Bay and Isohunt in particular – are still indexed by all major search engines even though courts have ruled they facilitate copyright infringement.

Not surprisingly, there is no mention of the collateral damage that such a broad filter would bring with it – many artists and other legitimate individuals are known to use these websites to share their works.

The document further details how many of the top search results for music, movies and books crrently link to pirated copies. In order to stop this, the rightsholders propose that Google and other search engines systematically assign a lower ranking to possibly infringing pages.

“We propose that in order to further protect consumers and to encourage responsible behaviour among websites, the extent of illegal content on a website should become a factor influencing the ranking of that website in search results returned to consumers,” they write.

This should be doable according to the rightsholders, as Google already influences its search results based on various other criteria, such as the lower rankings that are assigned to so-called content farms.

“Given that Google already de-ranks and de-lists sites that do not meet its own ‘quality guidelines’ or otherwise violate its policies, we do not believe that search engines would face significant legal exposure if they were to de-rank or de-list sites using an objective measure, based on their actions in response to legal DMCA complaints, in pursuit of the legitimate objective of preventing their service being used to facilitate copyright infringement,” they write.

Conversely, it’s argued that search engines should also boost the ranking of legitimate sites for certain ‘relevant’ searches. A list of relevant terms to match to these relevant searches should be provided by pro-copyright groups. In the proposal, the rightsholders give the following example in the case of music files.

“We would propose that prioritisation be enabled for searches that contain any of the following key search terms: “mp3″, “flac”, “wma”, “aac”, “torrent”, “download”, “rip”, “stream” or “listen”, “free”, when combined with an artist name, song or album title contained on a list to be regularly updated and provided to a search engine by a recognised and properly mandated agency representing rights holders for a particular sector, such as BPI.”

Aside from these new proposals, the document also calls on the search engines to improve the censorship measures already in place, such as Google’s keyword filter for their “instant” and “autocomplete” services.

Although the proposal from the rightsholders is not a direct threat as it is a long way from being accepted, it clearly shows that rightsholders see censorship as the way forward. The search engines on the other hand were not impressed and are expected to supply a proposal of their own in a future meeting. Again behind closed doors.
https://torrentfreak.com/copyright-i...orship-120127/





A Post PIPA Post

On my way from a breakfast meeting to the office yesterday I got a phone call on my cell phone with a 202 area code on it. I picked up the call and on the other end of the line was someone in Congress who I've known for a decade or more. He told me that the Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid was going to pull the PIPA bill in about thirty minutes. He also told me that the technology/Internet community had done a great job fighting the SOPA and PIPA bills and that the fight was over for now. I thanked him for the call and then I told him that we need to find a different way to address the online piracy problem because otherwise the technology community was in for a game of whack a mole with the content industry every year or two with our elected officials getting caught in the middle. He agreed.

I'm not in the mood to celebrate in the wake of the news that SOPA and PIPA are dead. Because the online piracy issue is still very much on the table and the content industry is not going to just walk away from the it. And as I've said in most every post on this issue, I am sympathetic to their concerns.

I think what Anonymous did in the wake of the Megaupload shutdown is deplorable and I am not a fan of vigilantes and mob rule. In stark contrast, I am extremely proud of the online demonstrations we all participated in over the past month to change the mood in Washington over the two bills. We showed that the Internet can be a medium for "peaceful demonstration" and we do not need and should not resort to stunts like Anonymous pulled this week.

I'd like to make a couple points about this whole SOPA/PIPA fight and then go on to where we go from here.

First, the Internet community's opposition to these two bills was never coordinated by a central organization. When my partner Albert first raised the alarm bells on what was then called COICA back in September 2010, we could not find anyone other than a few policy wonks who had this on their list of issues. Our industry does not have an MPAA or an RIAA. For the past 15 months we have been working with various individuals, a few companies, and a few advocacy groups to fight these bills. We found each other over the Internet, coordinated efforts (or not) over the Internet, and used the Internet to protect the Internet. The opposition was chaotic, distributed, diverse, uncoordinated and extremely effective in the end. Just like the Internet.

Second, these two bills were drafted by the MPAA and the RIAA and walked into Washington without an iota of conversation with the technology industry. I can't tell you how many Senators and Representatives have told me that they were told by the MPAA and the RIAA that the technology industry was on board and that these issues would not impact the Internet and tech community adversely. This is no way for one industry to propose that Congress regulate another industry. I think it is absurd that one industry would have the arrogance to think it is appropriate to ask Congress to regulate another industry for them. And yet that is what went down on these bills.

So where do we go from here? I think we should come up with an entirely new framework to think about online piracy. The PIPA/SOPA framework was litgation heavy and very invasive. It was "we are going to do this to you." It's not surprising the tech industry didn't like it one bit.

We need a new framework that is based on a shared set of goals and objectives. The tech industry will benefit if the content industry makes more money online. And though they seem not to believe it, the content industry can make a lot more money online. So we should be able to get alignment around that issue. We can help each other. The tech industry has already helped the content industy many many times. On that topic, I love this Nat Torkington rant:

All I can think is: we gave you the Internet. We gave you the Web. We gave you MP3 and MP4. We gave you e-commerce, micropayments, PayPal, Netflix, iTunes, Amazon, the iPad, the iPhone, the laptop, 3G, wifi--hell, you can even get online while you're on an AIRPLANE.

So I've been busy over the past few days thinking about a framework that is based on a partnership between the content and technology industries. I have a bunch of ideas on this and I've heard a number of good ideas from others in the past few days as well. I have no doubt that a group of leaders from the tech community would be happy to sit down with the content industry and come up with an entirely new way to think about and address online piracy. But before that happens, the content industry, as represented by the MPAA and the RIAA, needs to understand that a litigation heavy invasive approach will not fly and they need to forget about that framework and come ready to come up with an entirely new one. I hope they can do that.
http://www.avc.com/a_vc/2012/01/a-post-pipa-post.html





The Behind-the-Scenes Campaign To Bring SOPA To Canada
Michael Geist

The Internet battle against SOPA and PIPA generated huge interest in Canada with many Canadians turning their sites dark (including Blogging Tories, Project Gutenberg Canada, and CIPPIC) in support of the protest. In writing about the link between SOPA and Canada, I noted that the proposed legislation featured an aggressive jurisdictional approach that could target Canadian websites. Moreover, I argued that the same lobby groups promoting SOPA in the U.S. are behind the digital lock rules in Bill C-11.

While SOPA may be dead (for now) in the U.S., lobby groups are likely to intensify their efforts to export SOPA-like rules to other countries. With Bill C-11 back on the legislative agenda at the end of the month, Canada will be a prime target for SOPA style rules. In fact, a close review of the unpublished submissions to the Bill C-32 legislative committee reveals that several groups have laid the groundwork to add SOPA-like rules into Bill C-11, including blocking websites and expanding the "enabler provision"to target a wider range of websites. Given the reaction to SOPA in the U.S., where millions contacted their elected representatives to object to rules that threatened their Internet and digital rights, the political risks inherent in embracing SOPA-like rules are significant.

The music industry is unsurprisingly leading the way, demanding a series of changes that would make Bill C-11 look much more like SOPA.

For example, the industry wants language to similar to that found in SOPA on blocking access to websites, demanding new provisions that would "permit a court to make an order blocking a pirate site such as The Pirate Bay to protect the Canadian marketplace from foreign pirate sites." Section 102 of SOPA also envisioned blocking of websites:

A service provider shall take technically feasible and reasonable measures designed to prevent access by its subscribers located within the United States to the foreign infringing site (or portion thereof) that is subject to the order, including measures designed to prevent the domain name of the foreign infringing site (or portion thereof) from resolving to that domain name’s Internet Protocol address. Such actions shall be taken as expeditiously as possible, but in any case within 5 days after being served with a copy of the order, or within such time as the court may order.

The music industry also wants Internet providers to be required to adopt a termination policy for subscribers that are alleged to be repeat infringers. According to the industry document:

To incent service providers to cooperate in stemming piracy by requiring them to adopt and reasonably implement a policy to prevent the use of their services by repeat infringers and by conditioning the availability of service provider exceptions on this being done.

This demand would move Canada toward the graduated response policy that could result in loss of Internet service for Internet users. There is no indication in the music industry document of due process or even proof of infringement.

Several lobby groups also want language similar to that found in the infamous Section 103 of SOPA. That provision, which spoke of sites "primarily designed or operated for the purpose of...offering goods or services in a manner that engages in, enables, or facilitates" infringement, raised fears that it could be used to shut down mainstream sites such as YouTube.

According to the music industry document, Bill C-11's "enabler provision" should be expanded to include "services that are primarily operated to enable infringement or which induce infringement." Those demands are echoed by the Entertainment Software Association of Canada, which called on the government to "amend the enabling provision to ensure that it applies to services that are "designed or operated" primarily to enable acts of infringement." Both groups also want statutory damages added to the enabler provision so that liability can run into the millions of dollars for a target website.

Just as there are questions whether SOPA is even needed in the U.S. (the takedown of Megaupload suggests that current laws are effective), the same is true with the enabler provision in Bill C-11, given that the music industry is already suing IsoHunt, the Canadian-based torrent search site, using current law. The expansion of the enabler provision to include sites that operate to enable or induce infringement could extend far beyond so-called "pirate sites", since many user generated content sites (such as YouTube) and cloud-based service sites can be said to enable or induce infringement, particularly in a country like Canada that does not have a fair use provision.

As for the government's plans, C-11 committee member Dean Del Mastro specifically referenced changes to the enabler provision in a recent interview about potential changes and there are rumours that the U.S. government is pushing the Canadian government to toughen the enabler provision (while keeping the digital lock rules unchanged). That suggests that just as the U.S. is moving away from SOPA in its own laws due to the political uprising against it, the Canadian government may be headed toward a similar quagmire as the U.S.-backed lobby groups lead it down a politically risky path.
http://www.michaelgeist.ca/content/view/6257/125/





Australia: US Copyright Colony or Just a Good Friend?
Myles Peterson

Collectively, we Australians can be a cowardly bunch, so scared of an unknown invader that we will sell our sovereignty for the illusion of protection. This fear is symbolised in the movie ‘Tomorrow When the War Began,’ a film of dubious quality that portrays an Australia under invasion from some shadowy Asiatic power.

The foundation-stone of Australia’s defence policy is our alliance with the United States. Known as the ANZUS treaty, on paper this alliance guarantees mutual defence. In practice, the friendship is far from equal.

As with their treatment of sovereign nations the world over, the Americans have no qualms about interfering in our domestic politics and local legal systems. The kind of behaviour that, if reciprocated, would swiftly end the alliance. The latest front in this meddling is the crossover between file-sharing and intellectual property.

Individually, Australians can show enormous courage. Currently, an Australian is enduring a lengthy legal battle that may see him end up as an inmate at Guantanamo Bay, or worse.

Julian Assange and the Wikileaks organisation he help found shone a sterilising light on the behaviour of the US Embassy in Australia’s capital, Canberra. For his bravery Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard, a trained lawyer, prejudiced any future legal action by prematurely labelling Assange’s actions “illegal.” She has since sacked the Attorney-General whose job it was to give legal advice on the Wikileaks matter, but the damage has been done and the comment has never been retracted.

While the Gillard Government was quick to shoot the messenger, it has remained eerily silent on the message – one of potential interference in domestic legal affairs by a foreign power and so-called ally.

The Canberra Wikileaks cables revealed the US Embassy sanctioned a conspiracy by Hollywood studios to target Australian communications company iiNet through the local court-system, with the aim of establishing a binding common-law precedent which would make ISPs responsible for the unauthorised file-sharing of their customers.

Both the location, Australia, and the target, iiNet, were carefully selected. A precedent set in Australia would be influential in countries with comparable legal systems such as Canada, India, New Zealand and Great Britain. Australian telecommunications giant Telstra was judged too large for the purposes of the attack. Owing to its smaller size and more limited resources, iiNet was gauged the perfect candidate.

The involvement of major American studios in the offensive was suppressed. “The case was filed by … the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) and its international affiliate, the Motion Picture Association (MPA), but does not want that fact to be broadcasted,” the US Embassy, Canberra wrote. “We will monitor this case … to see whether or not the ‘AFACT vs. the local ISP’ featured attraction spawns a ‘giant American bullies vs. little Aussie battlers’ sequel.”

The Wikileaks cables also revealed a number of Australian political power-brokers were US informers. Prominent union leader Paul Howes and Federal Senator Mark Aribib were both named in the cables as “protected” informants. Both were instrumental in elevating the current Prime Minister to office in 2009 in what many commentators described as a “bloodless coup.”

Had either been caught spilling secrets to any other national government, with the possible exception of Great Britain, they would have seen their reputations destroyed at best. At worst, been put on trial for treason. The mere hint of back-room dealings with Australia’s largest trading partner, China, has toppled political careers.

Senator Arbib was recently promoted to Assistant Treasurer by the Prime Minister he helped put in office. Without further leaks, we cannot know if Arbib still reports to his American handlers.

Prime Minister Gillard made her feelings towards America known when she addressed the US Congress in March, 2011 and proclaimed, somewhat sycophantically, “You can do anything.” This is not the diplomatic language of allies. It is the language of worship.

Many Australians believe we are special, that the US really does hold us in the highest regard, reinforced by frequent utterings from successive US administrations that America “has no better friend” than Australia. Unfortunately, such a reality is challenged by the even more frequent utterings that the US has no better friend than Canada, Great Britain, France, Italy, Israel, Japan, Poland and South Korea.

The “Australian” Federation Against Copyright Theft (AFACT), a consortium of American movie studios with token Australian representation, began legal action against iiNet in November, 2008.

The MPA and US Embassy badly misjudged their target. In tenacious Australian fashion, iiNet put up the legal fight of their lives. AFACT lost the case and all subsequent appeals. Next month, the final episode of this long saga will culminate with a full ruling of the Australian High Court.

AFACT is already preparing for a loss in February by shifting its focus to lobbying the Australian Government directly. The process began behind closed doors late last year when meetings were held between AFACT, linked copyright industry lobbyists, the Federal Attorney-General’s department and a coalition of Australian ISPs. The voting public have not been told what was discussed or what plans have been developed.

If the High Court rules against AFACT and its Hollywood and US Government backers, as every lower court has done thus far, Australia will be faced with a test of national sovereignty. Only Australia’s Federal Parliament can overturn the decision.

With a Prime Minister visibly enamoured with the United States and known informers in the Federal Ministry, there is a strong likelihood any win for iiNet will herald changes in Australian law. It is unlikely those changes will be friendly to an open file-sharing culture.
https://torrentfreak.com/australia-u...friend-120121/





Ireland and EU to Sign Controversial ACTA Treaty Tomorrow

IRELAND IS TO sign a controversial international agreement tomorrow which promises a major international crackdown on the trade of counterfeit goods – and illegal internet filesharing.

Irish representatives will sign the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) at a ceremony tomorrow – as will representatives from each of the other 26 European Union member states, and the EU itself.

Once the agreement is signed, it can then be formally ratified and adopted into law once it has been cleared by the European Parliament. The treaty will be signed tomorrow in Tokyo by Ireland’s ambassador to Japan, John Neary.

Although the treaty is primarily aimed at stopping the trade of counterfeited physical goods, it contains provisions which demand that participating countries offer equal protection and enforcement procedures against digital copyright infringement.

The deal – which is unrelated to the controversial ‘Irish SOPA’ legislation – has been criticised by many, including the digital rights group Electronic Frontier Foundation, for its potential impact on privacy and freedom of expression.

Specifically, it sees member states agree to allow Internet Service Providers (ISPs) disclose a user’s information to a copyright holder, where the latter has a sufficient claim that the user is breaching their copyright.

No circumventing

It also says member states will have to offer “effective legal remedies” to ensure that anti-theft measures – such as the Digital Rights Management (DRM) protection on purchased music files – cannot be circumvented.

The clause could potentially mean that Apple, for example, would have to disable its MP3 recording facility in iTunes – because it could be used to remove the DRM protections from a piece of music purchased through its iTunes store.

Other critics of the treaty suggest that it will forbid the distribution of cheap generic drugs – because they would infringe the copyright of pharmaceutical companies whose research led to their discovery.

A European Commission spokesman said ACTA would not create new intellectual property rights, but would merely serve to enforce existing ones – and would not lead to constant monitoring of internet traffic.

Michele Neylon of Carlow-based internet hosting company Blacknight said the treaty could force internet hosts to deal directly with orders issued by copyright holders, instead of being able to ensure that such orders were handed down by a court.

“If we’ve been given a court order, fine – there’s no discussion, a judge has made a decision – but that’s not what happens, you don’t get your day in court.”

Neylon said it was a matter of “basic economics” that companies like his could not run up significant legal fees, ensuring that court procedures were followed, when those legal fees vastly exceeded the money it received to host sites in the first place.

He added that the current Irish legal situation, where there is no formal definition of ‘fair use’, meant even the likes of personal blogs could be subject to takedown orders if they included a company’s logo without permission, for example.

$200bn industry

The agreement is aimed at clamping down on the trade of counterfeit consumer and electronic goods, which the OECD believes was worth some $200 billion in 2007 – the equivalent of around 2 per cent of all legal trade worldwide that year.

All Irish government Departments will have to confirm that Ireland has the legal means to implement ACTA before it can be formally adopted.

A government spokesperson said, however, that Ireland did not expect to have to amend its current legislation – believing that the provisions of the deal were already accounted for in Irish law.

She added that negotiations on the deal had included representatives from the Department of Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation and members from Ireland’s permanent representation at the EU in Brussels.

News of ACTA being ratified by Poland earlier this week drew the wrath of Anonymous and another group called Polish Underground, which attacked the websites of many government departments in protest at Poland’s signature of the treaty.

The United States, Canada, Mexico, Australia, New Zealand, Japan, South Korea, Singapore and Morocco – all of which took part in negotiating the treaty – signed up to ACTA in October of last year.

The European Union and Switzerland said at the time that they would offer their support for the treaty and would sign it as soon as was practicable.

Other interested countries can sign up to the deal before May 2013.
http://www.thejournal.ie/ireland-and...36764-Jan2012/





The ACTA Fight Returns: What Is at Stake and What You Can Do
Michael Geist

The reverberations from the SOPA fight continue to be felt in the U.S. (excellent analysis from Benkler and Downes) and elsewhere (mounting Canadian concern that Bill C-11 could be amended to adopt SOPA-like rules), but it is the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement that has captured increasing attention this week. Several months after the majority of ACTA participants signed the agreement, most European Union countries formally signed the agreement yesterday (notable exclusions include Germany, the Netherlands, Estonia, Cyprus and Slovakia).

This has generated a flurry of furious protest: thousands have taken to the streets in protest in Poland, nearly 250,000 people have signed a petition against the agreement, and a Member of the European Parliament has resigned his position as rapporteur to scrutinize the agreement, concluding that the entire review process is a "charade."

Some are characterizing ACTA as worse than SOPA, but the reality is somewhat more complicated. From a substantive perspective, ACTA's Internet provisions are plainly not as bad as those contemplated by SOPA. Over the course of several years of public protest and pressure, the Internet provisions were gradually watered down with the removal of three strikes and you're out language. Other controversial provisions on statutory damages and anti-camcording rules were made optional rather than mandatory.

While the Internet provisions may not be as bad as SOPA, the remainder of the agreement raises many significant concerns.

Countries such as India have expressed concern that it conflicts with the TRIPS Agreement. Other elements of the agreement increase the standards in the WIPO Internet Treaties and the commercial scale definition at the WTO. The agreement adds new criminal provisions, pressures ISPs to take greater action, and heightens border measures. There remains ongoing debate as to whether the substance of ACTA requires legislative change in many signatory countries (a somewhat dated site on many ACTA issues here).

Beyond the substantive concerns, the ACTA process remains a major issue as it sets a dangerous precedent for international IP agreements. For years, the ACTA process was shrouded in secrecy, with only the occasional leak bringing plans to light. Wikileaks cables confirmed that the secrecy was viewed as a serious problem in many participant countries. In fact, even as most countries supported greater transparency and the release of draft texts, the U.S. steadfastly refused, using transparency as a bargaining chip to extract concessions from other negotiating partners. In addition to the transparency problems during the negotiations, the express exclusion of many countries from the process raises real fears that they will face increased pressure to meet ACTA standards in the years ahead.

Given the ongoing concerns, the big question now is whether much can be done. The majority of ACTA countries have signed the agreement, but it will only take effect once five countries have formally implemented and ratified it. That is not expected until at least May 2013, opening the door to stopping the agreement from taking effect. While there are global initiatives such as the AccessNow petition, much of the activity has shifted to specific countries or regions:

• Europe is home to the most active anti-ACTA effort since there is still a possibility that the European Parliament may reject the treaty. There remain serious doubts about whether ACTA is consistent with the EU Acquis. Learn more about what can be done at La Quadrature du Net, EDRI, the Open Rights Group, and FFII.
• In Canada, the Department of Foreign Affairs is conducting an open consultation on ACTA. Email your comments to the department or write Consultations and Liaison Division (BSL), Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA), Foreign Affairs and International Trade Canada, Lester B. Pearson Building, 125 Sussex Drive, Ottawa, Ontario, K1A 0G2. A March 2011 Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage report recommended limiting Canada's ACTA commitments.
• In the U.S., much of the focus is on whether ACTA must be approved by Congress. Senator Wyden has raised questions about the issue. KEI has extensive coverage of the U.S. perspective on ACTA.
• In Australia, the Joint Standing Committee on Treaties is accepting submissions on ACTA until January 27, 2012 (Kim Weatherall's submission here). Australia tabled the agreement in Parliament on November 21, 2011 and has taken the position the agreement will not require any legislative changes. The Australia Productivity Commission recommended in 2010 that Australia not include IP provisions in trade agreements.
• The New Zealand government has posted information on ACTA on its website.
• Switzerland and Mexico have yet to sign ACTA.

The dangers associated with ACTA are not limited to this particular agreement. The agreement opens the door to further secretive negotiations, such as the Trans Pacific Partnership, which contain extensive IP provisions that extend beyond ACTA. The SOPA battle was a big win for those concerned with balanced copyright and the open Internet, but it is by no means the end of the fight.
http://www.michaelgeist.ca/content/view/6269/125/





European Parliament Official In Charge Of ACTA Quits, And Denounces The 'Masquerade' Behind ACTA
Mike Masnick

This is interesting. Kader Arif, the "rapporteur" for ACTA, has quit that role in disgust over the process behind getting the EU to sign onto ACTA. A rapporteur is a person "appointed by a deliberative body to investigate an issue." However, it appears his investigation of ACTA didn't make him very pleased:

I want to denounce in the strongest possible manner the entire process that led to the signature of this agreement: no inclusion of civil society organisations, a lack of transparency from the start of the negotiations, repeated postponing of the signature of the text without an explanation being ever given, exclusion of the EU Parliament's demands that were expressed on several occasions in our assembly.

As rapporteur of this text, I have faced never-before-seen manoeuvres from the right wing of this Parliament to impose a rushed calendar before public opinion could be alerted, thus depriving the Parliament of its right to expression and of the tools at its disposal to convey citizens' legitimate demands.”

Everyone knows the ACTA agreement is problematic, whether it is its impact on civil liberties, the way it makes Internet access providers liable, its consequences on generic drugs manufacturing, or how little protection it gives to our geographical indications.

This agreement might have major consequences on citizens' lives, and still, everything is being done to prevent the European Parliament from having its say in this matter. That is why today, as I release this report for which I was in charge, I want to send a strong signal and alert the public opinion about this unacceptable situation. I will not take part in this masquerade.

Pretty rare to find such direct honesty in political circles. That's quite a direct and clear condemnation of the entire process. In terms of process, it will be interesting to see if this has an impact. While the EU did sign on to ACTA today, it still needs to be ratified by the European Parliament (more on that in a little while). Having Arif quit makes a pretty big statement, and hopefully makes it easier for Parliament Members to speak out loudly against ACTA... Still, this is an uphill battle. The supporters of ACTA have been working to get ACTA approved for years. To them, this is basically a done deal.
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/201...ind-acta.shtml





The President's Challenge

What More Does Government Want — or Deserve — From the Tech World?
Nat Torkington

There's an old joke. Heavy rains start and a neighbour pulls up in his truck. "Hey Bob, I'm leaving for high ground. Want a lift?" Bob says, "No, I'm putting my faith in God." Well, waters rise and pretty soon the bottom floor of his house is under water. Bob looks out the second story window as a boat comes by and offers him a lift. "No, I'm putting my faith in God." The rain intensifies and floodwaters rise and Bob's forced onto the roof. A helicopter comes, lowers a line, and Bob yells "No, I'm putting my faith in God."

Well, Bob drowns. He goes to Heaven and finally gets to meet God. "God, what was that about? I prayed and put my faith in you, and I drowned!"

God says, "I sent you a truck, a boat, and a helicopter! What the hell more did you want from me?"

As SOPA looks shakier, the President handed a challenge to the technical community:

"Washington needs to hear your best ideas about how to clamp down on rogue Web sites and other criminals who make money off the creative efforts of American artists and rights holders," reads Saturday's statement. "We should all be committed to working with all interested constituencies to develop new legal tools to protect global intellectual property rights without jeopardizing the openness of the Internet. Our hope is that you will bring enthusiasm and know-how to this important challenge."

All I can think is: we gave you the Internet. We gave you the Web. We gave you MP3 and MP4. We gave you e-commerce, micropayments, PayPal, Netflix, iTunes, Amazon, the iPad, the iPhone, the laptop, 3G, wifi--hell, you can even get online while you're on an AIRPLANE. What the hell more do you want from us?

Take the truck, the boat, the helicopter, that we've sent you. Don't wait for the time machine, because we're never going to invent something that returns you to 1965 when copying was hard and you could treat the customer's convenience with contempt.
http://radar.oreilly.com/2012/01/the...challenge.html





White House Petitioned to Investigate MPAA Bribery
Ernesto

The public has started a petition asking the White House to investigate comments made by MPAA CEO Chris Dodd a few days ago on Fox News. Closing a tumultuous week of wide protest against PIPA and SOPA – two MPAA backed anti-piracy bills – Dodd threatened to stop the cash-flow to politicians who dare to take a stand against pro-Hollywood legislation. Clear bribery, the petition claims, and already thousands agree.

Responding to the mass protests against the PIPA and SOPA bills on Wednesday, the MPAA has revealed its true nature.

First, MPAA CEO Chris Dodd described the blackouts of Wikipedia, Reddit and others as corporate PR stunts which manipulated and exploited the sites’ users.

“Some technology business interests are resorting to stunts that punish their users or turn them into their corporate pawns,” Dodd said.

Then, a few days later when many lawmakers had already dropped their support for the anti-piracy bills, the MPAA’s comments turned even more grim. Talking to Fox News, the MPAA’s boss threatened to stop contributing to politicians who don’t back legislation designed to protect Hollywood.

“Those who count on quote ‘Hollywood’ for support need to understand that this industry is watching very carefully who’s going to stand up for them when their job is at stake. Don’t ask me to write a check for you when you think your job is at risk and then don’t pay any attention to me when my job is at stake,” Dodd said.

Although it’s no secret that the movie industry has a powerful lobby in Washington, explicitly admitting that bribery is one of the tactics the MPAA uses to have their way wasn’t well received by the public. A few hours ago a White house petition was started to investigate Chris Dodd and the MPAA for alleged bribery.

“This is an open admission of bribery and a threat designed to provoke a specific policy goal. This is a brazen flouting of the ‘above the law’ status people of Dodd’s position and wealth enjoy,” the petition reads.

“We demand justice. Investigate this blatant bribery and indict every person, especially government officials and lawmakers, who is involved.”

In just a few hours the petition amassed more than 5,000 votes and this number is increasing rapidly. As a former Senator, Chris Dodd has many friends in Washington so it’s unclear whether the petition will accomplish anything, but if the numbers grow big enough the White House won’t be able to ignore it either.

The MPAA’s response to the PIPA and SOPA opposition this week is a sign that they might be losing control in Washington. At the very least, they are starting to lose their patience and become frustrated, which may not help their cause at this point.
https://torrentfreak.com/while-house...ribery-120122/





Dodd's Disgrace: Shilling For SOPA
Colin McEnroe

We plain people of Connecticut would be well advised to limit the activities of U.S. Sen. Richard Blumenthal, simply because we cannot afford to have another current or former senator join the ranks of the intensely disliked.

The Lieberman Problem has been lavishly chronicled in this space. Last week, it was former Sen. Chris Dodd's turn to ooze, Jabba-like, into the spotlight and croak unpalatable nonsense while decent people looked on, horrified.

Dodd now pulls down $1.2 million as the front man for the lobbying arm of the movie industry. As Salon's Glenn Greenwald pointed out last week, this would seem to fly in the face of his 2010 avowal that he would do no lobbying.

As most people know, Dodd has devoted his recent hours — when not swanning around at the Golden Globes — to seeking the passage of the Stop Online Piracy Act, legislation that inspires such widespread revulsion that a whole bunch of major and minor websites went dark Wednesday in protest.

Dodd called the blackout a "dangerous" tactic and an "an abuse of power." To see this as anything more than the disgraceful posturing of a well-paid shill, you'd have to believe that society was somehow endangered by the absence of reddit.com. The biggest hole punched in the Internet was the blackout of Wikipedia, but how was that dangerous? Because people had to go look up things from original sources?

What's more, Wikipedia is offered to all without charge, mostly though volunteer efforts. Somehow, according to Dodd, shutting it down for a day violates some unspoken social covenant.

SOPA shuddered to a stop late Wednesday as key senators pulled out their support, despite having been co-sponsors. Their comments suggested they hadn't quite understood the bill they were co-sponsoring.

I won't pretend to understand it either, despite quite a lot of time spent trying. Here is what I will say. Almost since the dawn of the Internet, big entertainment companies have understandably resented the way their content flows up onto sites like YouTube. They also don't like the current model for dealing with this, which requires them to catch it and complain about it.

Hence Viacom's billion-dollar lawsuit against YouTube, even though the latter was obediently scrubbing off Paramount movies and Sponge Bob episodes whenever the former asked them to.

Not good enough. The entertainment industry is in a protracted battle — bigger than any single piece of legislation — to make Internet companies afraid of what would happen if copyright-infringing content turned up on their sites. Forty-eight hours of content are uploaded to YouTube every minute. Making sure that info-typhoon includes no episodes of Viacom's TV show"I Just Want My Pants Back"is a daunting problem.

SOPA men like Dodd claim the legislation is aimed only at offshore sites, but the language of the bill makes it seem easier for a company like Viacom to prevail against YouTube or — even more likely — against whatever the next YouTube is.

Meanwhile Dodd took his case to the airwaves on television's single most overrated "news" program "Morning Joe," a daily bazaar of Beltway harlotry unconvincingly dressed up as journalism.

None of his repulsively chummy questioners challenged his dubious claim that movie piracy costs jobs. I challenge it now. Dodd cited the 21 million illegal downloads of "Avatar." Does he think for a second that James Cameron will stop making movies because of it? Piracy hurts profits, not jobs.

Dodd continued to babble about counterfeited "brake pads, hand bags and bulletproof vests," as though this had anything to do with SOPA. At the end of five minutes, co-host Mika Brzezinski chirped, "Say hi to Jackie [Dodd's wife] for me!" Apparently this is in lieu of waving an actual flag that says "I am not a real journalist. This was not a real interview."

Meanwhile, Greenwald spoke for many in calling Dodd's SOPA pony show "base, corrupted subservience to industry."

So we must keep Blumenthal from acting like a Connecticut senator. Fortunately, his signature moment of last week was a stern lecture to shoe retailer Zappos on behalf of its customers, a not-isolated sign that he still thinks he's attorney general.
http://www.courant.com/news/opinion/...3320032.column

Note: Blumenthal is a co-sponsor of PIPA, and is standing by it - Jack.





Wil Wheaton Says Chris Dodd Is Lying About Lost Jobs; Says MPAA Accounting Creates More Losses Than Piracy
Mike Masnick

We've discussed a few times in the past about how actor Wil Wheaton seems to understand that piracy isn't an enforcement issue, but a business model/service issue. He's also been somewhat vocal (since before many others caught on) concerning his opinion that SOPA/PIPA are a bad idea. And now he's responded to our story about Chris Dodd threatening politicians that the MPAA has financially backed if they don't pass PIPA/SOPA, by not only calling Dodd completely tone-deaf, but also noting that Dodd is lying about lost jobs:

“I have lost more money to creative accounting, and American workers have lost more jobs to runaway production, than anything associated with what the MPAA calls piracy. Chris Dodd is lying about piracy costing us jobs. Hollywood’s refusal to adapt to changing times is what’s costing the studios money. That’s it.”

Indeed, we've explained how highly questionable Hollywood accounting is used to keep actors from getting paid, even on some of the most successful movies ever. And, Wheaton is absolutely right. As we've been saying for the better part of a decade, the best way to deal with "piracy" is to properly compete with it. But Dodd and the MPAA still just don't get that. Actually innovating and competing in the market just isn't how things are done in Washington DC, I guess.
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/201...n-piracy.shtml





Wikipedia Founder Jimmy Wales: MPAA Chairman Christopher Dodd Should be Fired
Jennifer Van Grove

Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales had fighting words for Motion Picture Association of America chairman Christopher Dodd, calling the former Senator and current lobbyist out on his recent threats and pronouncing that the MPAA should fire its chief.

“Candidly, those who count on quote ‘Hollywood’ for support need to understand that this industry is watching very carefully who’s going to stand up for them when their job is at stake,” Dodd said to Fox News recently. “Don’t ask me to write a check for you when you think your job is at risk and then don’t pay any attention to me when my job is at stake.”

Wales argued that these transparent statements make the MPAA out to be a corrupt, Congress-buying organization. He also challenged Dodd’s assertion that Wikipedia’s decision to blackout its site in protest of SOPA, an effort Wales said was a “massive success,” constituted an abuse of power.

10 million people contacted Congress, Wales said. “That’s not an abuse of power, that’s democracy,” he said. “[Dodd] had best get used to it.”

The heated war of words between Wales and Dodd has to do with each others’ opposing viewpoints on SOPA and PIPA, two almost-dead pieces of legislation that would give the U.S. government and copyright holders the authority to seek court orders against foreign websites associated with infringing intellectual property. Wales is so opposed to the legislation that he helped champion a web-wide protest.

But Wales told the audience at the Design Life Digital conference in Munich that he believes digital piracy is a very real problem that needs to be addressed with better legislation. “I hope to see … a window of opportunity for Hollywood to come to the table and talk to Silicon Valley with a little more humility,” Wales said. “The laws need to be tweaked … but we do not need a Draconian new regime.”

Disclosure: The Digital Life Design conference paid my way to Munich. VentureBeat’s coverage of the conference remains objective and independent.
http://venturebeat.com/2012/01/24/wales-versus-dodd/





Sundance 2012: MPAA's Chris Dodd Calls Piracy Defeat a 'Watershed Event'

Speaking at the festival's daily Cinema Cafe series, Dodd said the tech community's ability to mobilize the public was a game-changing phenomenon that he hadn't seen in more than three decades in public office.
Jay A. Fernandez

Monday morning, as part of the Sundance Film Festival's daily Cinema Café speaker series at the Filmmaker Lodge, New York Times writer David Carr moderated a wide-ranging discussion with MPAA chairman Christopher Dodd, independent producer Christine Vachon and NATO president John Fithian. While many issues relating to exhibition and independent film made the agenda, Dodd was the first to address "the elephant in the room," as he put it: the SOPA and PIPA legislation designed to combat online piracy that was recently derailed by an unprecedented public outcry.

"It's a watershed event, what happened," Dodd admitted, noting that opponents' "ability to organize and communicate directly with consumers" was a game-changing phenomenon that he hadn't seen in more than three decades in public office. Fithian agreed, saying that the turnaround in November was "the greatest backlash I've ever seen. This was historic."

Dodd seemed to have a sense of humor about the recent beating he's taken as spokesman for the mainstream entertainment industry, the kind of "chaos" that the former Senator had hoped to leave behind when he left office in January 2011. "Up until a week ago I thought that was a pretty good decision," he joked. But the message Dodd most seemed to want to get across was that "the white noise has
made it impossible to have a conversation about this," he said. "We've gotta find a better way to have that conversation than we have in the last two weeks."

He seemed genuinely distressed that while the underlying issue of combating piracy is one everyone can agree on, a hyperbolic "hysteria" was stirred up that convinced people they would lose freedom of speech or the internet would be broken if the legislation passed. Dodd claimed that a discussion about "unintended consequences" was valid, as well as other concerns, but that those issues will not be addressed positively in the current climate. To illustrate the point, Fithian noted that his son angrily asked him why he was trying to take away his Internet.

Meanwhile, the audience was treated to a variety of concrete examples of independent filmmakers affected by theft. Carr admitted that his daughter had illegally burned Drive not long ago, even as he had gone to a downtown theater to see the same film, and during the Q&A indie filmmaker Adam Lipsius (16-Love) voiced his frustration with the "hundreds of thousands" of illegal downloads through Bit Torrent that had sapped his film and its backers of any shot at a profit.

There was some back and forth about how best to combat piracy, with some in the audience advocating a strategy that supplies more content in new, affordable avenues to undercut the temptation to steal, and Fithian arguing that cheap-prices-up-front approaches such as Netflix streaming and $1 Redbox kiosks are "bad business models."

On another front, much discussion involved how independent filmmakers could get their films on movie screens, and how arthouse theater owners can successfully make the expensive transition to digital equipment. One developing strategy that both Vachon and Fithian seemed to endorse was a more direct transaction between filmmakers and arthouse theater owners. Once all those one-and-two-screen theaters make the conversion to digital, 21st century filmmakers can cut print costs by 90 percent and simply cut a deal with the individual theater to deliver the film digitally.
http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/ris...-piracy-284190





Big Victory on Internet Buoys Lobby
Somini Sengupta

The unlikely coalition of companies and consumer groups that last week helped quash antipiracy legislation on Capitol Hill is now weighing the future of what might be called lobbying 2.0. Can the Internet industry, along with legions of newly politicized Web users, be a new force in Washington? And if so, what else can they all agree upon?

If labor unions once amplified the legislative agenda of certain American industries, the antipiracy fight showed the potential power of a different force: young Americans who live and breathe the Internet.

A Pew Research Center poll this week found that the antipiracy legislation was the most closely followed news topic among Americans under the age of 30; even news of the presidential elections failed to get as much attention in this age group.

The bills in the House and Senate, backed by the entertainment industry, encountered a surprising defeat after a vast alliance of chip makers, Internet service providers, rival Web companies and digital rights groups cast them as a means of censoring the Web. Several sites went dark for a day in protest, and in Washington e-mail servers were deluged with messages from citizens opposing the bills. Soon even sponsors of the bills — the Stop Online Piracy Act, or SOPA, and Protect I.P. Act, or PIPA — had backed down.

But if the Internet industry was buoyed by support from its users on this particular issue, they may find themselves on opposing sides in other cases. Consider the prospect of Washington seeking to restrict the use of facial recognition technology, which Facebook uses to speed the process of adding the names of friends to photos. It is hard to imagine Facebook users lobbying on Facebook’s behalf.

“The lesson here is not that the tech industry has millions of people blindly doing what it suggests,” said Eli Pariser, former executive director of MoveOn.org and now a member of its board. “I don’t think Google will be able to count on all the people who took action on SOPA not to challenge Google when it does something that feels counter to the ethos of the Internet.”

The scruffy nature of the digital protests was summed up by one of their informal spokesmen, Alexis Ohanian, 28, a co-founder of the popular social news site Reddit. “No one can predict what will catch on,” he said. “If SOPA and PIPA are any indication, if it’s something that threatens the Internet, I believe we can recreate this.”

Mr. Ohanian is not unlike many in his generation. He grew up in Maryland, but had not been to the Capitol until last November, when he met with members of Congress as part of a tech lobby against the antipiracy bills. He studied history in college, he voted and he consumed political news mostly through “The Daily Show With Jon Stewart” — and of course, he read what bubbled up on Reddit. “My focus was on building technology,” he said. “I was not engaged.”

That changed last fall. Friends alerted him to SOPA. They were starting a Web site, americancensorship.org. “I thought, O.K., let me see how can I help.”

Mr. Ohanian turned to Reddit users to find out what to say to members of Congress. To his surprise, Congress listened. “I’ve come out of this very optimistic,” he said. “Americans still do run Washington, not lobbyists — at least in this case.”

Now he is part of a flurry of online discussion about what to tackle next. There are some who oppose a global treaty called the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement, which the United States and many European countries have already signed. Others want to block a bill that would compel Internet providers to retain data on users’ online travels.

And some even want to take on political finance reform. Jimmy Wales, a founder of Wikipedia, one of the Web sites that went dark to protest SOPA, was asked to lend his bully pulpit to that cause. He declined. “We as a community would not be able to find consensus on the question,” he said on his talk page on Wikipedia, “nor should we even try.”

Of course, the Internet industry is already involved in more old-fashioned lobbying, and spending by Silicon Valley companies has ballooned in recent years. A report compiled by the Center for Responsive Politics showed that the computer and Internet industries spent $125 million on lobbying in 2011, outpacing the $122 million spent by the entertainment industry. Google more than doubled its spending to $11.4 million in 2011, and Facebook’s $1.4 million represented a 288 percent increase from the previous year. Copyright, patent reform and privacy were their top issues.

Silicon Valley has also become a lucrative trough for political campaigns, with President Obama’s re-election campaign frequently taking him to California for fund-raising events, including one hosted recently by Sheryl Sandberg, Facebook’s chief operating officer.

Despite the industry’s growing muscle, it is improbable that political opinion in Washington about the antipiracy bills could have been swayed by corporate lobbying alone. On this issue, there was an unusual confluence of events.

“It’s the first emergence of a broad-based Internet community that brings together not only tech giants and the users, but all the young innovators and investors,” said Leslie Harris, president of the Center for Democracy and Technology, an advocacy group backed by several technology companies. “It’s hard to predict when and how they’ll come together. What unified them was a threat to an open Internet.”

No one seems to have been more surprised by the bills’ defeat than their backers. Christopher J. Dodd, a former senator who is now chairman of the Motion Picture Association of America, marveled at the technology industry’s “ability to organize and communicate directly with consumers.” Speaking at the Sundance Film Festival this week, he called it “a watershed event” the likes of which he had not witnessed in his 30 years in politics.

In some ways, it was the awakening of a generation that has come to rely on its right to digital freedom.

“What this did show is as a citizen in the Internet age, you have to add the Internet and your digital rights and liberties onto the list of things you need to be worried about if you want to retain your political freedoms,” said Rebecca MacKinnon, a fellow at the New America Foundation and the author of a book on digital rights, “Consent of the Networked.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/27/t...net-lobby.html





Music Sales Fall Again in 2011, But Optimism Grows
Mike Collett-White

Digital music revenues rose eight percent in 2011 to $5.2 billion, but it was not enough to prevent another annual decline in the overall market to $16.2 billion from $16.7 billion in 2010.

Figures released on Monday by record industry body the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI) confirmed expectations that a downward trend which began in the late 1990s continued last year.

The good news was that the 2011 decline of around three percent was smaller than the eight percent drop in 2010, and there were signs that the industry was finally beginning to get on top of the rampant online piracy it blames for its woes.

Record label bosses were cautiously optimistic that music revenues would finally return to growth in 2013, a view not shared by everyone in the business.

"The future is looking extremely bright. Has the industry turned a corner? I'm definitely more positive now than I've ever been," said Rob Wells, president of global digital business at Universal Music Group, the world's biggest label.

"I think 2013 is probably a safe bet," he told an IFPI briefing in London. "However, despite all the good news, still great effort needs to be put on the piracy problem that still exists."

Edgar Berger, president and CEO International at Sony Music Entertainment, added: "I think the environment is changing favorably and we're going from headwind to tailwind."

Frances Moore, chief executive of the IFPI, said major legal digital music services spread dramatically last year to 58 countries from 23 in 2010.

She welcomed the arrival of new models for accessing music, including cloud-based services like iTunes Match, and said the number of subscribers to sites like Spotify and Deezer had jumped to 13.4 million from 8.2 million in 2010.

But despite signs that governments were taking the issue of piracy more seriously, it continued to undermine the recording industry's efforts to return to growth.

The IFPI estimated that 28 percent of internet users accessed unauthorized services on a monthly basis.

Wells said piracy's significance could not be played down.

"Spain, which should be the powerhouse of repertoire for Latin America and the U.S. Latin market, is effectively a dead market," he said. "Yet in South Korea, where we have new anti-piracy laws, the market is surging and now spreading its repertoire far beyond its own borders."

"Pirate" Battles

The IFPI report came just days after the U.S. government shut down the Megaupload.com content sharing website, the latest skirmish in the battle against the piracy of movies and music.

Soon after, FileSonic, another website providing online data storage, disabled its file-sharing services.

The movie and music industries want Congress to crack down on Internet piracy and content theft, but major Internet companies including Google and Facebook have complained that current drafts of the legislation would lead to censorship.

A priority for 2012, the IFPI's Moore said, would be to encourage search engines like Google to do more to prioritize legal music sites and help prevent the funding of illegal sites through advertising.

In 2011, the IFPI estimated that 3.6 billion downloads were purchased globally, combining singles and album downloads, an increase of 17 percent.

The most popular digital single last year was Bruno Mars' "Just the Way You Are" with 12.5 million downloads.

Industry executives interviewed by the IFPI said they saw growth potential in both main models of online music services -- "ownership" and "access" -- and improved technology and broadband penetration should also help.

There were encouraging signs for the album format, too, with digital album volumes surging 24 percent in 2011 and defying predictions that the download age would spell the end of the LP as listeners cherry picked their favorite singles.

Overall the music market has shrunk every year since 2004, despite digital revenues rising.

In 2004, when digital sales first registered in IFPI statistics, the overall music industry was worth $24.3 billion, according to the latest adjusted figures.

Other sectors, like publishing and movies, are concerned that the pain the recording industry has gone through for the best part of a decade awaits them in the future.

Digital sales accounted for 32 percent of global music revenues in 2011, compared with five percent for newspapers, four percent for books and just one percent for films.

(Reporting by Mike Collett-White, editing by Paul Casciato)
http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/...80M15T20120123





Digital Music Sales Grow Worldwide, But Big Music Still Frets About Pirates
Peter Kafka

Give people a choice, and they might pay for digital music, after all.

Also, it helps if they can’t steal it.

That’s the takeaway from a new survey from the IFPI, the music industry’s global trade group. It says global digital music sales grew 8 percent last year; that’s the first time that growth rate has increased since 2004, when the IFPI started tracking the statistic.

A good chunk of that increase may have come from subscription music services like Spotify and Deezer. The IFPI says subscription services have 13 million paying users, up from eight million last year.* There are also smaller increases in sales at more conventional outlets like Apple and Amazon, which generate much more revenue for the industry overall.

And while digital music sales still make up a minority of the music industry’s revenue worldwide, they are increasingly important: They now account for 32 percent of sales, up from 29 percent last year. (In the U.S., digital just edged physical last year, for the first time.)

All of which sounds fairly straightforward. But the IFPI is a trade group; it wants to hammer at one of its key points, which is that piracy is a big problem for the industry, which has seen sales cut in half since the Napster era. It figures more than a quarter of all Web users “access unauthorized services on a monthly basis.”

So, if piracy is a problem, why are sales increasing? In part, the trade group argues, because of anti-piracy legislation and industry moves.

The report highlights France’s “three strikes” rule, which allows the government to fine pirates and take away their Internet access. It cites a study arguing that French iTunes sales have increased more than 20 percent because of the policy, and the suggestion is clear: This would be a good idea worldwide.

The IFPI, which has singled out Google for criticism in the past, once again complains that the search engine makes it too easy to find illegal stuff. It also clearly went to the printer before the weekend, because its report refers to SOPA/PIPA as works in progress that are “set to be debated further in early 2012.”

*That number sounds several million high to me, but perhaps my rough estimate is missing a couple of big players.
http://allthingsd.com/20120123/digit...about-pirates/





After Terrific Year, Music Biz Demands that World Adopt "SOPA Plus"
Nate Anderson

In order to protect itself from piracy, the worldwide recording industry needs a few favors from governments and corporations around the globe, and a major new digital music report (PDF) from the industry's worldwide lobby IFPI lays them out. When placed end-to-end, it's a lengthy list—and its one that comes after a year of surprisingly strong growth for the industry.

The wishlist

First: Graduated response schemes, in which rightsholders can easily pass along notices about file-sharing to the accused party, possibly disconnecting them from the Internet. This requires the cooperation of Internet service providers. Also, strong deterrents are needed, such as eventual Internet disconnection.

Second: Site blocking. The industry wants the ability to wall off infringing sites, however defined, at country borders. The site might still be "up," but if local residents can't see it, who cares? ("Site blocking is effective in dealing with the various new forms of infringement such as cyberlockers and websites," says the report. "However, an approach based exclusively on website blocking is insufficient by itself, given the importance of major P2P services that are decentralised and therefore not covered by blocking.")

Third: Search engines need to help—and not just by removing links to infringing content that rightsholders identify, which most already do. The music biz wants more, like "prioritization" of links. Search engines need to rank search results factoring in clear indication of legality or illegality," the report says. "A basic measure such as this would help consumers not only avoid viruses and malware, but also being directed unwittingly towards content piracy."

Fourth: Payment processors should cut off pirates voluntarily. This was a theme of the recent Stop Online Piracy Act in the US, which originally featured a section encouraging companies like MasterCard to take unilateral actions against websites, and provided legal immunity for doing so. IFPI touts a deal with the City of London Police and credit card companies in which "IFPI supplies the City of London Police with evidence that illegal downloads are being made available from an infringing site. The police review the evidence, verify its integrity and notify payment providers that their services should not be provided to such sites."

Fifth: Ad networks need to cut off funds to pirates. "Advertisers can also help restrict the funding of illegal sites," says the report. "Important steps forward were taken in these areas in 2011, but more cooperation will be needed."

Sixth: Mobile operators need to get involved. Outside the US, piratical behavior increasingly takes place through phones and other mobile devices. The industry push for ISP involvement isn't just targeted at traditional wireline operators but also at "mobile service providers."

Seventh: Keep suing the big sites. "Litigation has also played its part in the US recovery," says the report, pointing to the Limewire closure. "The percentage of the US internet population using a P2P file-sharing service fell from 16 per cent in the fourth quarter of 2007 to 9 per cent in the fourth quarter of 2010, when Limewire ceased its file-sharing operations."

Middlemen, please put on this badge

These are not measures to be adopted piecemeal, as though legislators can choose their preferred morsels from this tasty policy buffet. Instead, the industry says all are needed.

What binds the ideas together? Most involve intermediaries, the middlemen who can be deputized to help the industry address its piracy problem. "The music industry sees cooperation from online intermediaries, such as internet service providers (ISPs), payment providers, advertisers, mobile service providers and search engines, as indispensable in addressing the problem and significant progress was made with all these parties in 2011," says the report.

IFPI has pioneered ideas wherever it has found willing legislators. South Korea has blocked some sites, as have a few European ISPs after judicial orders. France has been trialling graduated response, as has New Zealand; London police have helped with payment processors; US bills—now derailed—were to be the proving ground for the full move against search engines and ad networks.

The disastrous attack on end users appears over; the music business has aimed all of its guns at the intermediaries.

You'd be forgiven for thinking that such a comprehensive approach would be needed because things had been going so badly. But the opposite is true—and IFPI CEO Frances Moore tries to explain the discrepancy.

"With a healthy 8 per cent increase in our digital revenues in 2011—the first time the annual growth rate has risen since records began in 2004—some might feel tempted to say that a troubled era for the music industry is coming to an end," she writes. "Such complacency now, however, would be a great mistake. The truth is that record companies are building a successful digital music business in spite of the environment in which they operate, not because of it."

Perhaps. But let's look at IFPI's own numbers when it comes to the massive US market. The percentage of US Internet users making use of "infringing P2P services" fell from 16 percent in 2007 to just 9 in 2010. How was this miracle possible? It wasn't thanks to search engine "prioritisation," SOPA, site blocking, or even graduated response—none of which exist in the US.

Yes, piracy exists. Yes, it appears to have some effect on recorded music sales and subscription services (estimates vary as to the extent of this effect). Yes, rightsholders should have the ability to takedown infringing items if they choose to execute that right. And yes, the P2P number has probably dropped just because people have switched to easier (and less-easily watched) cyberlockers and HTTP streaming services.

But legal services have also proliferated in that time, as the industry rightly notes with pride. The days of getting gouged for $16 for a CD have ended for good, and the industry is no longer looking back so longingly to an era that won't ever return. Indeed, 52 percent of record companies revenues in the US now come from digital services. Even VEVO, the industry-backed music video hub, was initial designed "principally" for marketing; in two years, it threw off more than $100 million in royalties to labels.

In such an environment, where the industry is now experiencing real growth and earning real money from digital, where P2P use has shown dramatic declines, and where the labels already have the tools to go after Limewire and Megaupload, we're faced with a choice. Is the best path forward for society and the Internet the industry's worldwide "SOPA plus" wishlist?

Despite a reputation for working in smoke-filled rooms, rightsholders have generally been quite upfront about their enforcement goals. For a few years it involved suing everyone in sight, then it moved to graduated response, and now it means roping in all key Internet players. Expect to see many parts of this plan show up in national capitals around the globe throughout 2012.
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/n...-sopa-plus.ars





Universal Music May Have Inadvertently Exposed a Flaw in the YouTube Takedown Process

One rap artist speaks out against UMG, YouTube, and SOPA.
Eriq Gardner

Last month, before federal authorities shut down Megaupload, the popular file-storage website got into a legal brawl with Universal Music Group over a video that was removed from YouTube.

Megaupload hasn't experienced much success thus far in pressing claims that UMG misused its copyrights by removing the video, which featured many stars purportedly endorsing Megaupload. But the lawsuit did reveal something that wasn't known -- YouTube had granted UMG the powers to remove videos from the video-sharing website at will, "based on a number of contractually specified criteria."

The contract between UMG and YouTube over use of a "Content Management System" remains secret, but the ability to remove videos from YouTube could become controversial quickly. Just witness what happened to one rap group who found it impossible to put up one of its own songs on YouTube.

The rap group known as After the Smoke had created a song entitled, "One in a Million."

The song included a dancing keyboard rhythm and a scattered beat that was catchy enough that it became the underlying music to a track, "Far From A Bitch" by another rap group artist known as Yelawolf, signed to a UMG label.

When Yelawolf's song was leaked without authorization, UMG allegedly stepped in and had the song removed.

But in the aftermath, YouTube's filtering technology, perhaps on the lookout for any reposted copies, took down "One in a Million," angering group member Whuzi. "We were like, 'Wait a minute? What's going on?'" Whuzi told Vice Magazine. "When I looked into it deeper and tried to contact YouTube and went through the all the correct procedures, they told me the entity that owns the copyright to our song was Universal."

After the Smoke is not signed to any Universal label.

Does this expose a flaw in the whole removal-and-subsequent-filtering process? And does UMG bear any responsibility for what happened?

UMG wouldn't comment publicly on our requests for an explanation. But the company did release its claim over the video.

Meanwhile, we reported over the weekend that Megaupload had dropped UMG from its lawsuit over the "Megaupload Mega Song" video, but was continuing to fight anonymous John Does. As such, Megaupload pushed for discovery in an effort to ascertain who should be blamed for what transpired.

A hearing was held earlier this week, in which Megaupload's attorney, Ira Rothkin, told the judge that he now was only seeking the terms of the confidential agreement between UMG and YouTube. Megaupload said that the agreement would facilitate an analysis of what claims, if any, it could make from the brief removal of its video from the internet.

'California federal judge Jacqueline Scott Corley has now denied that request, saying that it might be efficient for Megaupload, but that the troubled file-storage company hadn't articulated a persuasive reason to go on such a fishing expedition. "The problem with Plaintiff's argument...is that it applies to nearly every case," she said in her decision.

The future of Megaupload's lawsuit is now up in the air.

If copyright owners are abusing YouTube's takedown process, it might be up to other plaintiffs to make the case. Still pending is a lawsuit brought by Stephanie Lenz against UMG for allegedly abusing the takedown process on YouTube by having her video of a toddler dancing to a Prince song removed. Also of note is an ongoing lawsuit by songwriter Matt Heart, whose "Eternal Knight" song got booted off of YouTube, iTunes, and Amazon. Heart has experienced some preliminary success in his copyright misrepresentation claims against Summit Entertainment, which based the takedown on some of its Twilight intellectual property.

As for Whuzi, he hasn't said whether the rap group is thinking about a lawsuit, but does offer that even if given a chance to sign with UMG, he wouldn't take it. "With the whole SOPA protest, people realize they have power when they see a negative thing going on and act on it," he says.

For an industry that's pursuing copyright reform, the portrayal of a copyright regime that works against young artists can't be a good thing.
http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/thr...l-music-285298





Twitter Puts Its DMCA Takedown Requests Up For All To See
Devin Coldewey

Yesterday’s announcement that Twitter would be selectively censoring tweets based on country was not well-received. But part of that announcement was the assurance that the process would at least be transparent. A spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down.

They also mentioned that they were working with Chilling Effects to make notices and orders sent to Twitter publicly available. At the time of the post yesterday, the site wasn’t up yet, but you can now browse it at chillingeffects.org/twitter.

It’s a good thing, certainly, though not quite a successful saving throw versus the localized-censorship piece. The database has several thousand DMCA takedown requests right now, but is not quite up to date — it isn’t clear at what rate they’re updating the database, but there aren’t many from this month so it seems to be something less than weekly.

Browsing the listings is a good way to waste 15 minutes, looking at the different ways people tend to provoke a DMCA takedown request. There’s a lot of cricket being linked to, apparently. And there are the inevitable copyrighted avatars.

What’s interesting to me is that there are a number of requests that in themselves request dozens of tweets to be taken down; this one, for example, points out a number of pirated movies being linked to, and the accounts are clearly bots. The DMCA request is only for the movies the rightsholder is concerned with — which is at once both correct and perverse. The account only exists to link to copyrighted material and has done so thousands of times, but everyone involved would rather snip out individual tweets one by one. Talk about a Sisyphean task.

Presumably this database will also house the official requests by governments who wish to restrict tweets based on content. While most won’t agree with Twitter’s decision to accede to these repressive entities’ wishes, it can at least be hoped that it will be done so with maximum transparency. The best thing Twitter users can do, perhaps, is to make sure this database is up to date and reflective of the restrictions being placed on tweets. Until a solution comes along, reducing the harm this new policy does and making sure it’s well understood should take priority.
http://techcrunch.com/2012/01/27/twi...or-all-to-see/





Megaupload Takedown Questioned By Users, Lawyers

Scrutiny increases from users and lawyers regarding the DOJ's decision to block legally uploaded content and pursue criminal charges against file-sharing company..
Mathew J. Schwartz

Did U.S. authorities overstep their jurisdiction when they pulled the plug on cyberlocker service Megaupload last week?

To make its case that the file-sharing site needed to be shuttered, the Justice Department Thursday seized Megaupload's servers and released a 72-page indictment accusing seven Megaupload executives of racketeering, money laundering, and copyright violations, which allowed them to amass $175 million in "criminal proceeds" since the company was founded in 2005.

Legally speaking, the feds were able to execute their takedown of Megaupload in part because the company, which is based in Hong Kong, hosted many of its servers in Virginia and Washington, D.C..

But the founder of Megaupload, Kim Dotcom (aka Kim Tim Jim Vestor, aka Kim Schmitz), has denied all of the charges leveled against him. Dotcom appeared Monday in a New Zealand courtroom, together with three other Megaupload executives who'd been apprehended in that country at the request of U.S. authorities. All four men have requested bail, but police have labeled Dotcom a flight risk, saying he might have access to secret bank accounts abroad. Accordingly, the presiding judge said he'll review the matter and issue a ruling by Wednesday, according to media reports, which will likely apply to all four men. Parole questions aside, experts estimate that extradition proceedings, if initiated by the United States, could take up to a year.

[ Read about how hacktivist group Anonymous retaliated for the DOJ's takedown of Megaupload. Anonymous Retaliates For Megaupload Raids: 10 Key Facts. ]

Currently, Megaupload's servers remain offline, and browsing to the site resolves to a graphic announcing that "this domain name associated with the website Megaupload.com has been seized pursuant to an order issued by a U.S. District Court." The statement provides no indication of when any of the data stored by the site might be restored, if ever.

In response to the FBI's crackdown on Megaupload, file-sharing site Filesonic immediately disabled link sharing for uploaded content. According to a notice posted on the site: "All sharing functionality on FileSonic is now disabled. Our service can only be used to upload and retrieve files that you have uploaded personally."

But users' inability to access content that they'd legally stored on Megaupload has been leading to a populist backlash against the takedown. Academic Steve Su, for example, told The Sydney Morning Herald in Australia that the FBI's mass takedown had inappropriately blocked legitimate content that he'd uploaded for sharing with his students.

"It's like confiscating everyone's mobile phone because terrorists used them," he said. "I don't think it's correct to penalize the technology because, based on that logic, shouldn't the Internet be taken down, as this is how people infringe copyright?"

Meanwhile, veteran Spanish privacy attorney Carlos Snchez Almeida, who's based in Barcelona, said the takedown may have violated people's privacy rights under Spanish law. Accordingly, he's threatened to file suit over the Megaupload takedown. On his Jaque Perpetuo blog, Almeida wrote Friday that "Spanish citizens who had accounts in Megaupload should collect as much information about the files that they had hosted, for the purposes of a possible claim" against the U.S. government. In particular, the U.S. government's actions may conflict with Spanish data-access and privacy laws, especially if U.S. authorities begin accessing data that was stored by Megaupload.

Interestingly, the majority of Megaupload's user traffic came from outside the United States, based on statistics from traffic measurement company Alexa. The greatest share of user traffic came from France (10%), followed by Brazil (8.8%), the United States (7.3%), and Spain (7.2%), reported The Daily Caller.

The Justice Department's tactics, including accusing a file-sharing website of racketeering, money laundering, in addition to copyright violations, has some U.S. legal experts asking whether the case would stand up in court. "These actions, more suitable to the type of steps that the government takes against an organized-crime enterprise dedicated to murder, theft, and racketeering, are astonishing," said Jeff Ifrah, an attorney who co-chairs the American Bar Association's criminal justice section and committee on white collar crime, via phone.

"The government seems to have ignored the fact that other popular content-sharing sites have successfully defended themselves in civil cases by using the safe harbor provisions of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, which provide immunity to a site that promptly takes down infringing content," he said.

To make the Justice Department's case, prosecutors must prove that safe harbor rules didn't apply to Megaupload. Accordingly, the indictment accused Megaupload executives of failing to remove copyrighted material from their site, even after copyright holders had requested it be removed. But Ifrah said it's not clear whether Megaupload's failure to remove certain pieces of content reached the level of criminal intent. Perhaps, instead, the company didn't receive some takedown notices, or disagreed with certain requests.

Furthermore, the government's racketeering charge--typically only used for mob cases involving drugs or gambling--suggests to Ifrah that prosecutors are overreaching. "The allegations here are very similar to the allegations that were made in the YouTube case," in which Viacom accused the video-sharing site of hosting almost 160,000 unauthorized pieces of content, he said. "Certainly no one accused YouTube of having mob-like activities."
http://informationweek.com/news/secu...ient/232500305





Did the Music Industry Set-Up Megaupload to Be Shut Down?

The US government says that Megaupload founder Kim Dotcom masterminded a vast file sharing conspiracy that swindled the entertainment industry out of millions by letting users illegally download movies and songs.

By putting Dotcom behind bars, the feds didn't just end Megaupload though, once one of the most visited sites on the Web. By ending the operation, authorities have also pulled the plug on an endeavor that was scheduled to launch later this year that could have legitimately disrupted Hollywood by letting users download songs — and rewarding the artists with compensation unheard of in the industry.

The project was already launched last year during a trial and Dotcom, born Kim Schmitz, said in December that it was met with overwhelming success. It was called Megabox, and Dotcom was intending on making it available to the public in 2012. The site would expand on Megaupload’s file sharing service, but allow users to legally download songs, some for free, while still allowing the artists to collect compensation. It was going to be a partnership between Megaupload execs and others in the online industry, including Amazon — but it was also going to be a big thorn on the side of record labels.

The subject of allegations involving copyright infringement and illegal file sharing, Megaupload was already an opponent of the industry. Universal Music Group, the largest record company in America, had attacked Megaupload before last week’s raid of Dotcom’s New Zealand mansion and others had opposed the site as well. New revelations about Megabox suggest that it could be more than just a coincidence that the file sharing mogul was about to unleash some serious competition that would reward the musicians that are regularly raped of royalties.

"UMG knows that we are going to compete with them via our own music venture called Megabox.com, a site that will soon allow artists to sell their creations directly to consumers while allowing artists to keep 90 percent of earnings," Dotcom told the website Torrentfreak this past December.

Letting the artist make money? It seems to make a lot of sense but is a preposterous idea within the industry. According to research conducted by the Information Is Beautiful website, a song sold on Apple’s iTunes platform usually returns a cut of around 63 percent to the label; from there, the average musician only collects 15 percent of that figure. To say that Megabox would be a godsend to struggling artists is an understatement then, but it also could have majorly crippled the labels.

Even with hard copies of compact discs, the artists’ royalties rarely add up to 20 percent of the revenue made. Dotcom wanted to more than quadruple that by offering artists 90 cents for every dollar spent on downloading songs and even compensate them for tunes acquired for free. In a press release from last year, Dotcom even acknowledged that, “Yes that’s right, we will pay artists even for free downloads.”

Such an attitude is often absent from the music industry insiders, though. As a result, many hopes of a career in the biz have been broken after realizing that the rock and roll lifestyle isn’t oh-so obtainable. “To get to the nuts and bolts of things, unless you're Rihanna or something, you don't really make money from record sales anymore,” Mickey Melchiondo of Ween told USA Today last summer. Over the course of more than two decades, Ween released more than a dozen albums and toured internationally several times over, but the guitarist says that royalties are rare. ''I don't have sympathy for the record companies,'' Melchiondo told the New York Times in 2003. ''They haven't been paying me royalties anyway.'' After a slew of releases on the major labels, the band began recording and releasing albums on their own. Now when he isn’t performing, Melchiondo, 41, subsidizes his income by offering fishing trips on board his own boat. If you don’t buy a Ween record, you can support the band by spending a few hundred dollars to fish for striped bass with Captain Melchiondo in the Atlantic.

Before they were shut-down, Dotcom said,“You can expect several Megabox announcements next year including exclusive deals with artists who are eager to depart from outdated business models. Instead though, the only news fans of Megaupload and its now famous founder got was that one of the biggest sites on the Web was wiped off the map.

Authorities raided Dotcom’s house last Thursday and he has been denied bail twice since. American officials arrested several people that they say were involved in the conspiracy much to the dismay of Megaupload’s fans. Hours after the news broke last week, a massive online campaign waged by hacktivists with Anonymous and other Internet collectives targeted Universal and others. Within hours, the websites for UMG and the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) were taken offline after a massive distributed denial of service attack, or DDoS. The websites of the FBI, US Copyright Office and the US Department of Justice were also taken down in the assault.

Attorneys writing for the Crime in the Suites website wrote of the FBI’s indictment of Dotcom that it is “riddled with inconsistencies,” and others have suggested that it was a matter of the federal government using the case to make an example of Megaupload. Other sites that use file-sharing voluntarily shut down after the raid in fear that they would be the next to be targeted by law enforcement.

With Washington calling the shots — and getting money for that ammo by way of Hollywood — they might have been very right in packing up. In 2002, then Universal Chairman Edgar Bronfman Jr. donated $10,000 towards the reelection campaign for Democratic California Governor Gray Davis and similar contributions by way of industry-aligned PACs have continued in the ten years since. Former Senator Chris Dodd left his position in Congress to take a $1.2 million-a-year job as lobbyist for the Motion Picture Association of America, who was also targeted in the Anonymous-led raid. In 2009, the MPAA lobbied Congress to the tune of $1.66 million. Hollywood also handed President Obama $3.5 million during his 2008 campaign. General Electric, which lists Universal Music and other Hollywood entities among its subsidiaries, spent $84.35 million in lobbying between 2008 and 2010.

Did Kim Dotcom break the law by operating Megaupload? Maybe yes and maybe no. But when those laws are made and enforced by people in the pockets of Hollywood, you can imagine that Washington isn’t exactly interested in hearing what Megaupload has to say in their defense. Even less likely, however, would be letting Dotcom finally put some money in the pockets of musicians.
http://rt.com/usa/news/megabox-indus...ad-dotcom-803/





Flamboyant Online Tycoon Kept Low Profile in Rural NZ
Michael Perry

Megaupload founder Kim Dotcom's online profile was larger-than-life, with fast women, faster cars and chartered planes, yet he lived like a virtual recluse in a sprawling, manicured estate on the outskirts of New Zealand's biggest city, Auckland.

Dotcom, also known as Kim Schmitz, faces extradition to the United States over charges of masterminding a scheme that made more than $175 million by infringing copyrighted content without authorization on his online file-sharing website.

The German national, who denies the charges, is currently in custody in a jail cell, and a New Zealand judge is due to decide by Wednesday whether he will get bail.

Neighbors in this nouveau riche community of hobby farms, vineyards and equestrian clubs sometimes saw Dotcom on the winding roads in one of his luxury cars, but no one Reuters spoke to had actually met the multi-millionaire, former hacker.

"We see him driving around, but he keeps to himself and we're quite close neighbors. I've seen him driving around with his 'GUILTY' number plate," said Libbi Darroch, as she groomed her 7-year-old showjumper Muffy at the Coatesville Pony Club.

Living just over the hill from Dotcom's rented 30-acre property, the Darrochs drive past the estate's back entrance, guarded by a security outhouse and surveillance cameras, to reach the shops or take their daughter to school.

"I've never seen him walking or anything. I think he does all his business in his mansion. All I thought was he had a funny number plate. People knew he was incredibly wealthy because of the huge rent he was paying," said Darroch.

Dotcom, 38, rents what is reportedly New Zealand's most expensive house, built by the founders of Chrisco Christmas hamper fame and worth an estimated NZ$30 million, with a monthly rental put at NZ$30,000-NZ$40,000.

At the nearby Coatseville general store, garage, cafe and gift shop, everyone told the same story - no one has actually met Dotcom, who reportedly stands two meters (six ft six inches) tall and weighs more than 130 kg (285 lbs).

Nor has anyone met his wife, who is heavily pregnant with twins, or his three children or know where they go to school.

Champagne Lifestyle Online

Since taking up residence here in 2010, Dotcom has ordered some NZ$4 million ($3.2 million) of renovations to the mansion, including a heated lap pool with underwater speakers, imported spring water and a NZ$15,000 custom ladder, according to media.

But any work on the estate, which looks like a world-class golf course with clipped lawns and staff moving about in golf carts, is organized by someone in his entourage, say locals.

Adding to the reclusive image, Dotcom claims to have become the world's top player of the video game "Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3" after racking up 702 hours of gaming in just months.

On New Year's Eve, Dotcom uploaded a video of his achievements on YouTube, looking at the camera and punching the air. The time lapse video shows Dotcom sitting in a chair playing the game on his computer as the sun goes up and down. (here)

Dotcom spent NZ$500,000 for a 2010 New Year's Eve fireworks display over Auckland, but few city officials have publicly admitted meeting him. Former Auckland mayor John Banks said he met him after his fireworks donation, but added he hardly knew the multi-millionaire.

"He has been very generous to many charities and good causes as I understand it, and he was very generous to Auckland City when he volunteered to fund the fireworks display and did," Banks told local media Tuesday.

Banks said he had dined at Dotcom's estate once. "I'm a car enthusiast and he had a nice collection of cars. I got to speak to him for a few minutes," he said.

Local Sympathy

This all contrasts with Dotcom's online image, with one video showing him surrounded by topless women and men spraying champagne on board a superyacht during a "crazy weekend" in Monaco that cost a reported $10 million.

"Fast cars, hot girls, superyachts and amazing parties. Decadence rules," said the commentary accompanying the so-called fun documentary, which Dotcom dedicated to "all my fans."

Dotcom was arrested Friday in a high-octane raid by New Zealand police, backed by helicopters, on his home in Coatesville, during which the former hacker was found holed up in a safe room.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation estimates Dotcom personally made around $115,000 a day during 2010 from his empire. The list of assets seized when he was arrested, included nearly 20 luxury cars, one of them a pink Cadillac, works of art, and NZ$10 million invested in local finance companies.

Megaupload's lawyer has said the company simply offered online storage and has sought Dotcom's release on bail, but prosecutors say he is an extreme flight risk as he holds German and Finnish passports and probably has access to secret funds.

Despite having no contact with Dotcom, many people in this sleepy village were sympathetic, believing he has been treated harshly for someone not charged with a violent crime.

"He's innocent until proven guilty," said one woman at the Fernleigh Cafe. Another local protested that the police raid on Dotcom's house was heavy handed, with police rappelling down from a helicopter and busting down his bedroom door.

Jeff Ifrah, a U.S.-based white collar defense lawyer, wrote in a blog that the U.S. government had raised the stakes by treating the Megaupload case as though it was dealing with organized crime and ignoring that other online file-sharing sites had successfully defended themselves.

"These actions, more suitable to the type of steps that the government takes against an organized crime enterprise dedicated to murder, theft and racketeering, are astonishing," he wrote.

Tuesday, while Dotcom sat for a fifth day in a prison cell, there was little activity at his estate, bar the security guards moving about quietly in golf carts.

A Finnish flag flew above his mansion, while two statues of giraffes stood high on a hill overlooking the main entrance.

(Editing by Ed Davies and Ian Geoghegan)
http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/...80K07Q20120124





Megaupload Boss Says He's Innocent, Rival Stops File-Sharing
Michael Perry

The founder of file-sharing website Megaupload was ordered to be held in custody by a New Zealand court on Monday, as he denied charges of internet piracy and money laundering and said authorities were trying to portray the blackest picture of him.

Prosecutor Anne Toohey argued at a bail hearing that Kim Dotcom, a German national also known as Kim Schmitz, was a flight risk "at the extreme end of the scale" because it was believed he had access to funds, had multiple identities and had a history of fleeing criminal charges.

"The FBI believes the sums located are unlikely to represent all the overseas bank accounts owned by Mr Dotcom," she said.

But Dotcom's lawyer said he posed no threat of absconding or restarting his businesses, arguing that his client had cooperated fully, his passports had been seized and his funds frozen, and also that he had a distinctive appearance.

"He is not the sort of person who will pass unnoticed through our customs and immigration lines and controls," said defense lawyer Paul Davison of the former hacker, reportedly 2 meters (6ft 6ins) tall and weighing more than 130 kg (285 lbs).

Judge David McNaughton said the bail application was too complicated for an immediate ruling, adding he would issue a written decision no later than Wednesday.

"Given the breadth of issues covered in this bail application and the seriousness of the issues, I am going to reserve my decision," the judge said.

U.S. authorities want to extradite Dotcom on charges he masterminded a scheme that made more than $175 million in a few short years by copying and distributing music, movies and other copyrighted content without authorization. Megaupload's lawyer has said the company simply offered online storage.

Prosecutor Toohey said two other men sought on global warrants for involvement in Megaupload had been arrested in Europe.

The shockwaves of the case appeared to be spreading among rival websites offering lucrative file-sharing. FileSonic, a website providing online data storage, said in a statement on its website that it had halted its file-sharing services.

"All sharing functionality of FileSonic is now disabled. Our service can only be used to upload and retrieve files that you have uploaded personally," it said.

Barricaded In Safe Room

Dotcom, 38, and three others, were arrested on Friday after New Zealand police raided his country estate at the request of the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation. Police cut Dotcom out of a safe room he had barricaded himself in, because, according to his layer, he was frightened and panicked.

Presenting the case for flight risk, the prosecutor said 45 credit cards in three wallets were found in the mansion under Dotcom's various names, while three passports were also found. But his defense lawyer said: "My client collects them (credit cards), most of them are out of date."

Dotcom smiled and waved at around 20 supporters who filled the courtroom and spoke to them after the judge's decision.

"Hey guys thanks for turning up, I appreciate it," he said, wishing a female supporter a "happy birthday."

Defense lawyer Davison said Dotcom was "realistic about what is happening."

"He would obviously prefer to be at large. He doesn't want to be there any longer than he absolutely has to be," he told reporters outside the court.

Media reported that Dotcom ordered around NZ$4 million ($3.2 million) of renovations to the sprawling mansion that he leased near Auckland, with its manicured lawns, fountains, pools, palm-lined paths and extensive security.

The case is being heard as the debate over online piracy reaches fever pitch in Washington, where Congress is trying to craft tougher legislation.

Lawmakers stopped anti-piracy legislation on Friday, postponing a critical vote in a victory for Internet companies that staged a mass online protest against the fast-moving bills.

The movie and music industries want Congress to crack down on Internet piracy and content theft, but major Internet companies such as Google and Facebook have complained that current drafts of the legislation would lead to censorship.

Critics of the U.S. Stop Online Piracy Act, or SOPA, and Protect IP Act (PIPA), quickly showed their opposition to the shutdown of Megaupload.com, with hackers attacking the public websites of the Justice Department, the world's largest music company Universal Music, and the two big trade groups that represent the music and film industries.

Dotcom's New Zealand lawyer Davison said in court that Megaupload's business was being misrepresented and authorities were being aggressive to add drama to the case.

"His business did not reproduce or copy material as alleged," he told the court, adding that copyright holders had been given access to Megaupload to identify improper posting of material. He likened the site to the popular YouTube video site, where people "promoted their creativity."

In New Zealand, questions are being asked about how Dotcom, who moved to the country in 2010, could be given permanent residency under a business investor scheme despite criminal convictions for insider trading.

Lavish Lifestyle

A legal expert said extradition arrangements between New Zealand and the United States were reasonably straightforward and standard, but there were some important factors.

"The offence for which extradition is sought must be an offence in the jurisdictions of both states," said Otago University law professor Kevin Dawkins, adding that an accused must be tried on the offence for which they are extradited.

New details emerged about Dotcom's lavish lifestyle and tastes, with reports that he had a heated lap pool built just off the master ensuite, with underwater speakers, imported spring water and a custom ladder worth around NZ$15,000.

"It's insane, and it gets more insane inside. When we were there we called it 'extreme home makeover, millionaire edition'," a source close to the teams that did renovation work the New Zealand Herald.

A film posted on the Internet shows Dotcom, surrounded by topless women and men spraying champagne on board a superyacht during a "crazy weekend" in Monaco reported to have cost $10 million.

"Fast cars, hot girls, superyachts and amazing parties. Decadence rules," said the commentary accompanying the so-called fun documentary, which Dotcom dedicated to "all my fans."

The FBI estimates that Dotcom personally made around $115,000 a day during 2010 from his empire. The list of property to be seized, includes nearly 20 luxury cars, one of them a pink Cadillac, works of art, and NZ$10 million invested in local finance companies.

($1 = 1.2433 New Zealand dollars)

(Additional reporting by Gyles Beckford in Wellington and Ed Davies in Sydney; Editing by Ed Davies and Alex Richardson)
http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/...80K07Q20120123





Hong Kong Freezes Megaupload Assets
Chester Yung

In an enforcement action Friday, Hong Kong Customs froze more than 300 million Hong Kong dollars (US$39 million) in assets held by the popular file-sharing site Megaupload.com, which was shut down by the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation Thursday.

It was another in a series of international repercussions arising from the shutdown. Megaupload is registered in Hong Kong. Four company employees, including Kim Dotcom—named in the FBI indictment as the company's founder and until last year its chief exectuive—were arrested in Auckland, New Zealand.

In a statement Friday, Customs said "targeting the organised and transnational nature of [intellectual property]-infringing activities in the wake of technology development, the Hong Kong Customs will continue to monitor the situation and co-operate with the [intellectual-property-rights] industry and overseas law-enforcement agencies so as to suppress infringing activities effectively."
http://online.wsj.com/article_email/...jEyNDIyWj.html





Megaupload Could Spawn Caselaw More Destructive than SOPA
David Banham

It’s very early days in the case against Megaupload, and the Americans haven’t fully revealed their strategy as yet. There is one part of their rhetoric that really worries me, however.

The full text of the indictment is available here.

The argument is that Megaupload are not eligible for the safe harbour provisions in the DMCA because they knew about infringing content, yet did not remove it. The evidence tendered is as follows:

On or about August 15, 2007, BENCKO sent VAN DER KOLK an e-mail message indicating “the sopranos is in French :( (( fuck.. can u pls find me some again ?

So they knew they were hosting The Sopranos and they did not delete it. What they did not know, was that that copy of The Sopranos was not sanctioned by HBO or their French affiliate. It would, in this case, be a fairly reasonable assumption that it wasn’t and that’s why this example has been chosen. If this becomes precedent, however, we are in very dangerous territory.

The decision as to what is “obviously infringing” and what is not is incredibly murky. What if, for example, the French dialogue was a fansub. Is that sufficiently transformative that it would be considered fair use?

Say a book is uploaded. Who published it? Is it still within copyright? In what region was it created? It might have different lengths of applicable copyright. It might well have been uploaded by an independent author who wishes to gain exposure.

We recently had a video created for Pinion. When the final render was done, the artist placed it on Megaupload as it allowed files greater than 300mb with no hassle. This is the standard way he distributed completed work to clients. We went to download it on the day the raid was completed and got nothing.

This was a video on which we assert copyright. It is, by all definitions, a copyrighted work. And yet, it was placed on Megaupload and we were very annoyed when it was not available via Megaupload.

It is easy to generalise, in the vein of SOPA, that all these smart people working in tech should just make sure that no-one uploads copyrighted material to their services. It’s easy right? If someone uploads a Hollywood movie just delete it! In reality, though, every time any file was uploaded, an extensive search would need to be conducted to determine whether, where, how, and by whom it was copyrighted. The rightsholder would then need to be contacted to determine whether or not the use was permitted. In the case of transformative or derivative works, the decision would have to be made (and the associated risk assumed!) by the service.

That burden can never be placed on those shoulders. It would be crippling for Google. It would be completely impossible for any startup out there and would stifle a massive amount of innovation.

SOPA merely (merely!) required that every link be checked against a blacklist provided by the US government. If the allegations in this indictment are allowed to stand, industry will not only have to enforce that blacklist, but create and curate it.

The Internet has taken up arms against SOPA/PIPA, but the fight is not just on that front. I am confident the EFF will file an amicus brief in this case. I fervently hope that it is enough.
http://blog.davidbanham.com/?p=52





Megaupload Founder Faces Lengthy Extradition Battle

Efforts by the United States to extradite the mastermind of an alleged Internet piracy scheme from New Zealand to face copyright infringement and money laundering charges are likely to be long and complex.
Reuters

Kim Dotcom, a German national also known as Kim Schmitz, will be held in custody in New Zealand until February 22 ahead of a hearing of a U.S. extradition application.

U.S. authorities claim Dotcom's file-sharing site, Megaupload.com, has netted $175 million since 2005 by copying and distributing music, movies and other copyrighted content without authorization. Dotcom's lawyers say the company simply offered online storage and that he will fight extradition.

"It could take some considerable time to get through the whole thing," said senior New Zealand lawyer Grant Illingworth, adding there were rights of appeal and procedural review to both sides.

Dotcom, 38, and three others, were arrested on Friday after a police raid at his rented country estate, reputedly New Zealand's most expensive home, at the request of the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation.

Under New Zealand's extradition law the prosecution must show there is enough evidence that would substantiate charges against Dotcom and the other accused of breaching local copyright laws.

"What the judge has to do is decide whether there is a prima facie case that would justify the person being put on trial if the offence had occurred in New Zealand," Illingworth said.

"If the evidence doesn't make out, what under New Zealand law amounts to a prima facie case, then the person walks away."

A 1970 extradition treaty between the United States and New Zealand gives the U.S. 45 days from the time of Dotcom's arrest to request extradition. The New Zealand Extradition Act, passed in 1999, gives the United States preferential status to access a streamlined process for making its request.

The judge who refused Dotcom bail said he could not assess whether the United States had a strong enough case against Dotcom, nor whether he had a good defense.

"All I can say is that there appears to be an arguable defense, at least in respect of the breach of copyright charges," Judge David McNaughton wrote in his judgment.

Civil Matter

Copyright infringement and illegal file sharing are normally civil matters in New Zealand, but there is a provision for criminal charges and a maximum 5-year jail term for serious breaches.

Rick Shea, a partner at Lowndes Jordan in Auckland, said there were some differences between New Zealand and U.S. copyright law, in terms of knowledge, that could be an issue.

Douglas McNabb, a U.S. lawyer who specializes in extradition defense, said extraditions to the United States have to meet probable cause - the same standard that is required for making arrests in the United States.

Although the extradition hearing is not a test of guilt or innocence, McNabb said Dotcom's lawyers may argue they should be allowed a limited discovery process to show that probable cause has not been met.

Prime Minister John Key said the issues raised were serious and New Zealand would co-operate with the U.S. authorities.

"This is the largest, most significant case in Internet piracy so New Zealand is certainly going to work with the United States authorities to allow them to extradite Kim Dotcom," he said on TV3.

According to Shea, New Zealand has never had an extradition proceeding involving copyright law. "I wouldn't expect this to be sorted out quickly," he said.

Aggressive Charges

Anthony Falzone, Director for Copyright and Fair Use at Stanford Law School's Center for Internet and Society, said it was too early to comment on the strength of the case, but questioned whether some of the allegations in the indictment would actually push Megaupload outside the safe harbor provisions of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.

The indictment "pushes some pretty aggressive theories", Falzone said.

The most recent Supreme Court case to deal with similar issues was in 2005. In MGM v Grokster, the U.S. court highlighted the importance of intent in determining if an Internet firm was liable for its users infringing copyright.

"A lot of the Megaupload case may also rise and fall on the question of intent," said Falzone.

With MGM, the court found the intent of the Internet company from the beginning was to build a tool to facilitate illegal sharing.

"Maybe that's what the Feds (FBI) think they have here, too," said Falzone.

(Reporting by Gyles Beckford in WELLINGTON and Rebecca Hamilton in NEW YORK; Editing by Lincoln Feast and Ian Geoghegan)
https://www.nytimes.com/reuters/2012...tradition.html





NinjaVideo.net Founder Gets 14 Months

The website offered illegal access to movies and TV programs, according to the U.S. Department of Justice
Nancy Gohring

A Virginia judge sentenced Matthew David Howard Smith, a founder of the NinjaVideo.net website, to 14 months in prison, the U.S. Department of Justice announced Friday.

Smith was indicted along with four others late last year. The DOJ charged that they illegally provided copyright-protected movies and TV programs for download from the NinjaVideo.net website. The site operated from February 2008 until authorities shut it down in June 2010.

The DOJ accused Smith of developing operational elements of the website and said that he and his colleagues collected more than US$500,000 from website users.

In addition to prison and probation, Smith has been ordered to pay $172,387 and turn over five financial accounts and computer equipment. He was tried in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia.

Smith's attorney did not immediately reply to a request for comment on his sentence.

One of Smith's colleagues, Hana Amal Beshara, was also recently sentenced for her alleged role at NinjaVideo.net to 22 months in prison and ordered to pay $210,000. Two others are awaiting sentencing, and an arrest warrant has been issued for another who lives in Greece. The fifth person was charged separately and has pleaded guilty, the DOJ said.
http://www.techworld.com.au/article/...gets_14_months





Cyberlocker Ecosystem Shocked As Big Players Take Drastic Action
enigmax

In the wake of last week’s Megaupload shutdown, some of the biggest names in the market are taking drastic action. During the last 48 hours many sites have completely withdrawn their systems for paying uploaders when their files are shared with others, but one of the most dramatic moves came first from Filesonic and today Fileserve. Both services now forbid people from downloading any files they didn’t upload themselves.

While the shutdown last week of Megaupload and the arrest of its founder and management team was certainly dramatic, a situation of perhaps even greater gravity is beginning to emerge.

Over the past 48 to 72 hours, the operators of many prominent cyberlocker services have been taking unprecedented actions that can not simply be explained away by mere coincidence. The details in the Megaupload indictment clearly have some players in the file-hosting world spooked.

One of the key allegations is that between 2005 and mid 2011, Megaupload ran a program that rewarded users for uploading infringing material. A cited internal email allegedly shows staff members discussing cash payments going to people uploading “full popular DVD rips” and “software with keygenerators (Warez)”.

Although Megaupload stopped paying out rewards in July 2011, that didn’t stop the site from getting raided. Other cyberlocker services are clearly hoping they will be more lucky.

Last evening Filesonic, a top 10 player in the file-sharing world with a billion pageviews a month, not only withdrew its affiliate rewards program, but also banned any third parties downloading files. Simply put, users can now only download files from the service that they uploaded themselves.

But according to reports, there’s no guarantee of that. Account owners report that their files are being mass deleted, that’s if their entire account has been banned already.

Fileserve, another leading player, also ended its affiliate program this weekend. Additionally, this morning TorrentFreak received news that Fileserve has now joined Filesonic in banning all 3rd party downloads.

Fileserve Nuke

“I just paid for a premium account and can now only download my own fucking files an unlimited number of times,” said one angry user. “What use is that?”

Other users of Fileserve are experiencing an even further degraded level of service. Reports describe mass deletion of their uploads and the banning of accounts on apparent ‘Terms of Service’ violations.

Fileservenuke2

But the changes at these two services appears to be just the tip of a very big and very complex iceberg. Developments at other file-hosting services are widespread.

As previously reported, Uploaded.to banned all US IP addresses in what appears to be an effort to distance itself from US jurisdiction. Its affiliate program is still listed as operational but the same cannot be said about those run by some of its competitors.

VideoBB and VideoZer have both reportedly closed their rewards program and according to reports have also been mass deleting accounts and huge numbers of files. Other sites closing their affiliate programs and/or deleting accounts/files include FileJungle, UploadStation and FilePost.

Another interesting development involves so-called ‘release blogs’, sites that report on leaked material but either provide links to the material on cyberlockers or allow their users to do the same. The number of overall releases hasn’t changed much but the links currently being posted on some of these sites show less variety and volume than they did this time last week.

Do you know of other file-hosts/cyberlockers taking similar action? Send us your stories and screenshots to the usual address.

Update: Smaller host UploadBox calls it quits. “All files will be deleted on January 30th. Feel free to download the files you store with UploadBox until this date.”

Update2: Another host, x7.to, shuts down.

Update 3: TorrentFreak has seen evidence that on request PayPal is refunding cash paid to Filesonic over the weekend.
https://torrentfreak.com/cyberlocker...action-120123/





MegaUpload Replacement Not Linked to Us, Anonymous Says
Emily Jackson

Hacktivists planning to replace file sharing website MegaUpload.com after the FBI shut it down last week have raised the ire of the Anonymous movement itself.

Anonyupload.com wants to buy server space so users can share videos and music after the high profile government arrest of MegaUpload’s founder in a bid to quell online piracy.

Anonyupload needs the cash to “ensure rapid transfer” and will host its infrastructure in Russia to circumvent American laws. The self-proclaimed Anonymous supporters hope to raise enough money to launch their website by Friday, but PayPal has shut down its donations account.

It plans to run using “Wikipedia’s economic system,” refutes all accusations that it’s fake and puts out requests for donations on its Twitter account.

Anonymous, infamous for its activism regarding freedom of speech and Internet distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks on those it disagrees with, denied any link to the service on one of its Twitter accounts.

“FYI - We have NO affiliation with this site, and by the looks of it, this is a SCAM - anonyupload.com,” @YourAnonNews alleged.

While the hacker community often rallies to create replacements after major sites are shut down (for example, after NinjaVideo’s demise in 2010), a number of Anonymous news sources have alleged Anonyupload isn’t legitimate.

Anonymous crippled several websites with DDoS attacks in retaliation to MegaUpload’s closure, including that of the FBI, the Department of Justice and Universal Music.

MegaUpload’s founder has been charged with Internet piracy and money laundering.

The debate over online piracy and copyright heated up last week with a large scale online protest against proposed U.S. government bills Stop Online Piracy Act, or SOPA, and Protect IP Act (PIPA) – and hackers weren’t the only ones making noise. Wikipedia blacked out its entire website and Google censored its logo to support the opposition.
http://www.thestar.com/business/arti...anonymous-says





Megaupload Fans Flock to Rival File-Sharing Services After FBI Shuts Down Site and Arrests Founder
Rob Waugh

• Instead of abandoning file-sharing, users flock to rival sites
• Huge surge in traffic to rivals such as Rapidshare
• One site, 4Share is twice the size Megaupload was before it shut down

Rivals to Megaupload have seen a huge rise in traffic after file-sharing site Megaupload was shut down by the FBI and its flamboyant founder arrested in a high-profile raid.

After the FBI shut down file-sharing site Megaupload and charged staff such as flamboyant founder Kim Dotcom - formerly Kim Schmitz - with copyright violations, users have flocked to rivals such as RapidShare, Hotfile and 4Shared.

If the American authorities hoped that the move would dent the popularity of such 'cyber-locker' sites which are mainly used for sharing music and video for free they have been very much mistaken.

Rapidshare, Hotfile and 4Shared, have reaped the rewards of the arrest of Megaupload's 'pirate captain' Kim Dotcom.

One site, 4Shared, which has 2.5bn page views per month, is now twice the size Megaupload was before it shut down and the others have seen the numbers using their services nearly doubled.

4Shared is currently the subject of legal action in New Jersey, with a firm, Modulo Security Solutions, seeking to reveal the identities of individuals who uploaded and shared confidential documents.

The 'cyberlocker' sites let users store large files and download them from anywhere.

MegaUpload, which the U.S. government shut down, was a Hong Kong-based ‘cyberlocker’ service that allegedly allowed users to download pirated films, TV shows, music and e-books with just a few clicks.

It is accused of costing copyright owners £322million in lost earnings and of making £113million by selling advertising and premium subscriptions.

The traffic surge following Megaupload's closure is an embarrassment to many of the firms involved as it shines an unwelcome spotlight on how they operate.

Such sites are keen to emphasise their legality in the wake of Megaupload's difficulties.

'This case has a great negative impact on file storage services and the Internet overall,' a 4Shared spokesman said.

'4shared has some of the most strict house rules among all other file storage services and there’s no need for any changes.'

Cyberlocker sites are legal, and operate in the same way as YouTube - in that they take down illegal files whenever told to by copyright holders.

As with YouTube, the volume of files means that every upload cannot be manually inspected.

Megaupload is accused of knowingly violating copyright.

Several Megaupload staff were arrested in New Zealand last week on copyright charges. The FBI also allege that the site was used for money-laundering.

Its founder, 'Kim Dotcom' - formerly Kim Schmitz - owned a £3million collection of 25 cars which was confiscated at the time of his arrest – mainly top-of-the range Mercedes with number plates such as ‘STONED’, ‘HACKER’ and ‘GUILTY’ but also including Maseratis, a vintage pink Cadillac and Dotcom’s runabout, a £300,000 Rolls-Royce Phantom with the number plate ‘GOD’.

Although music stars such as Kanye West and Alicia Keys have supported MegaUpload, film and record companies say the seven-year-old file-sharing site is making a fortune off their work without paying them a penny.

Hollywood film companies have been the main victims of piracy. The seven accused MegaUpload executives – including two other Germans and a Dutchman also seized in New Zealand – are each charged with five counts of racketeering, copyright infringement and conspiracy, and could be jailed for up to 20 years.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencete...lose-site.html





Pirate Party to Sue FBI for Closing Megaupload File-Sharing Site
Khidr Suleman

The Pirate Party is planning to launch legal proceedings against the FBI in retaliation for shutting down Megaupload, a popular file-sharing site that has been accused of being a haven for pirated content.

Megaupload was closed by the US Department of Justice and the Federal Bureau of Investigation on 19 January and no content has been accessible since.

A statement on Pirata.ca claims that closure of Megaupload has impeded the access to millions of archives of non-infringing content, and accuses the FBI of violating Articles 197 and 198 of the Spanish Penal Code by misappropriating personal data.

"The widespread damage caused by the sudden closure of Megaupload is unjustified and completely disproportionate to the aim intended," the statement said.

"For this reason Pirates of Catalonia, in collaboration with Pirate Parties International and other Pirate Parties (including the Pirate Party of the UK), have begun investigating these potential breaches of law and will facilitate submission of complaints against the US authorities in as many countries as possible, to ensure a positive and just result."

The web site allows users to add their support to the complaint by providing their details, including what type of membership they had to Megaupload.

"This initiative is a starting point for legitimate internet users to help defend themselves from the legal abuses promoted by those wishing to aggressively lock away cultural materials for their own financial gain," it added.

Megaupload was based in Hong Kong and its closure represented a coup for the US authorities as they look to clamp down on internet piracy.

The site was at one point the thirteenth most visited in the world and had tens of millions of visitors every day.

Executives, including the founder Kim Dotcom, were arrested in New Zealand and the US has asked for them to be extradited to stand trial. The closure of Megaupload along with sister web sites including Megavideo caused uproar amongst internet activists.

Notorious hacktivist group, Anonymous briefly took down the web site for the US Department of Justice (DoJ) hours after the seizure in retaliation.
http://www.v3.co.uk/v3-uk/news/21419...e-sharing-site





An Awful Lot of File Sharing in Brazil
Jonathan Wheatley

When the US Justice Department shut down Megaupload.com on January 19, it must have expected a furious reaction. Under the banner of hacker collective Anonymous and using the slogan Mega Tango Down, global attacks were launched almost immediately that, among other things, briefly removed all content from the website of CBS, the US network, on Sunday.

A lot of the hacker action happened in Brazil, where more than 100 government sites were blocked over the weekend along with the Brazilian sites of Visa, Mastercard, and singer songwriter Paula Fernandes, a rising pop phenomenon.

How so? According to DomainTools, an internet analytics website, Megaupload drew 8.4 per cent of its traffic from Brazil (click on the Site Profile tab to view) - second only to France, responsible for 10.3 per cent.

From the Brazilian end, Megaupload is even bigger. Sandvine, an internet analysis site, says the file sharing site accounted for an extraordinary 11.39 per cent of all internet traffic in Brazil before its abrupt end.

Part of a broader problem of copyright infringement? Brazil has been criticised for years for failing to protect intellectual property. In spite of some recent crackdowns, pirated CDs and DVDs are readily available at street markets around the country. File sharing sites – and there are plenty of others apart from Megaupload – have spread like forest fires.

It may also reflect the fact that Brazil faces its own version of SOPA, the US anti-piracy bill delayed last week by vigorous internet-based lobbying. Brazil’s bill has been before Congress since 2003 but the debate over SOPA and the related bill PIPA has brought it back under public attention.

If nothing else, shutting down Megaupload should free up a lot of bandwidth in Brazil. Perhaps internet users will take the opportunity to access legitimate sources of free music. Perhaps.

Which gives us a flimsy excuse to offer this YouTube clip of Paula Fernandes with guests Victor & Leo – 27m hits and counting.
http://blogs.ft.com/beyond-brics/201...ing-in-brazil/





Piracy is Part of the Digital Ecosystem
Frédéric Filloux

In the summer of 2009, I found myself invited to a small party in an old bourgeois apartment with breathtaking views of the Champ-de-Mars and Eiffel Tower. The gathering was meant to be an informal discussion among media people about Nicolas Sarkozy’s push for the HADOPI anti-piracy bill. The risk of a heated debate was very limited: everyone in this little crowd of artists, TV and movie producers, and journalists, was on the same side, that is against the proposed law. HADOPI was the same breed as the now comatose American PIPA (Protect Intellectual Property Act) and SOPA (Stop Online Piracy Act). The French law was based on a three-strikes-and-you-are-disconnected system, aimed at the most compulsive downloaders.

The discussion started with a little tour de table, in which everyone had to explain his/her view of the law. I used the standard Alcoholic Anonymous introduction: “I’m Frederic, and I’ve been downloading for several years. I started with the seven seasons of The West Wing, and I keep downloading at a sustained rate. Worse, my kids inherited my reprehensible habit and I failed to curb their bad behavior. Even worse, I harbor no intent to give up since I refuse to wait until next year to see a dubbed version of Damages on a French TV network… In can’t stand Glenn Close speaking French, you see…” It turned out that everybody admitted to copious downloading, making this little sample of the anti-Sarkozy media elite a potential target for HADOPI enforcers. (Since then, parliamentary filibuster managed to emasculate the bill.)

When it come to digital piracy, there is a great deal of hypocrisy. One way another, everyone is involved.

For some large players — allegedly on the plaintiff side — the sinning even takes industrial proportions. Take the music industry.

In October 2003, Wired ran this interesting piece about a company specialized in tracking entertainment contents over the internet. BigChampagne, located in Beverly Hills, is for the digital era what Billboard magazine was in the analog world. Except that BigChampagne is essentially tracking illegal contents that circulates on the web. It does so with incredible precision by matching IP numbers and zip code, finding out what’s hot on peer-to-peer networks. In his Wired piece, Jeff Howe explains:

BigChampagne’s clients can pull up information about popularity and market share (what percentage of file-sharers have a given song). They can also drill down into specific markets – to see, for example, that 38.35 percent of file-sharers in Omaha, Nebraska, have a song from the new 50 Cent album.

No wonder some clients pay BigChampagne up to 40,000$ a month for such data. They use BigChampagne’s valuable intelligence to apply gentle pressure on local radio station to air the very tunes favored by downloaders. For a long time, illegal file-sharing has been a powerful market and promotional tool for the music industry.

For the software industry, tolerance of pirated contents has been part of the ecosystem for quite a while as well. Many of us recall relying on pirated versions of Photoshop, Illustrator or Quark Xpress to learn how to use those products. It is widely assumed that Adobe and Quark have floated new releases of their products to spread the word-of-mouth among creative users. And it worked fine. (Now, everyone relies on a much more efficient and controlled mechanism of test versions, free trials, video tutorials, etc.)

There is no doubt, though, that piracy is inflicting a great deal of harm on the software industry. Take Microsoft and the Chinese market. For the Seattle firm, the US and the Chinese markets are roughly of the same size: 75 million PC shipments in the US for 2010, 68 million in China. There, 78% of PC software is pirated, vs. 20% in the US; as a result, Microsoft makes the same revenue from the Chinese than from… the Netherlands.

More broadly, how large is piracy today? At the last Consumer Electronic Show, the British market intelligence firm Envisional Ltd. presented its remarkable State of Digital Piracy Study (PDF here). Here are some highlights:

- Pirated contents accounts for 24% of the worldwide internet bandwidth consumption.

- The biggest chunk is carried by BitTorrent (the protocol used for file sharing); it weighs about 40% of the illegitimate content in Europe and 20% in the US (including downstream and upstream). Worldwide, BitTorrent gets 250 million UVs per month.

- The second tier is made by the so-called cyberlockers (5% of the global bandwidth), among them the infamous MegaUpload, raided a few days ago by the FBI and the New Zealand police. On the 500 million uniques visitors per month to cyberlockers, MegaUpload drained 93 million UVs. (To put things in perspective, the entire US newspaper industry gets about 110 million UVs per month). The Cyberlockers segment has twice the users but consumes eight times less bandwidth than BitTorrent simply because files are much bigger on the peer-to-peer system.

- The third significant segment in piracy is illegal video streaming (1.4% of the global bandwidth.)

There are three ways to fight piracy: endless legal actions, legally blocking access, or creating alternative legit offers.

The sue-them-untill-they-die approach is mostly a US-centric one. It will never yield great results (aside from huge legal fees) due to the decentralized nature of the internet (there is no central servers for BitTorrent) and to the tolerance in countries in harboring cyberlockers.

As for law-based enforcement systems such has the French HADOPI or American SOPA/PIPA, they don’t work either. HADOPI proved to be porous as chalk, and the US lawmakers had to yield to the public outcry. Both bills were poorly designed and inefficient.

The figures compiled by Envisional Ltd. are indeed a plea for the third approach, that is the creation of legitimate offers.

Take a look at the figures below, which shows the peak bandwidth distribution between the US and Europe. You will notice that the paid-for Netflix service takes exactly the same amount of traffic as BitTorrent does in Europe!

These stats offer a compelling proof that creating legitimate commercial alternatives is a good way to contain piracy. The conclusion is hardly news. The choice between pirated and legit content is a combination of ease-of-use, pricing and availability on a given market. For contents such as music, TV series or movies, services like Netflix, iTunes or even BBC iPlayer go in the right direction. But one key obstacle remains: the balkanized internet (see a previous Monday Note Balkanizing the Web), i.e. the country zoning system. By slicing the global audience in regional markets, both the industry (Apple for instance) and the local governments neglect a key fact: today’s digital audience is getting increasingly multilingual or at least more eager to consume contents in English as they are released. Today we have entertainment products, carefully designed to fit a global audience, waiting months before becoming available on the global market. As long as this absurdity remains, piracy will flourish. As for the price, it has to match the ARPU generated by an advertising-supported broadcast. For that matter, I doubt a TV viewer of the Breaking Bad series comes close to yield an advertising revenue that matches the $34.99 Apple is asking for the purchase of the entire season IV. Maintaining such gap also fuels piracy.

I want Netflix, BBC iPlayer and an unlocked and cheaper iTunes everywhere, now. Please. In the meantime, I keep my Vuze BitTorrent downloader on my computer. Just in case.
http://www.mondaynote.com/2012/01/22...tal-ecosystem/





Is it OK to Steal “Downton Abbey”?

Obsessive TV fans are turning into shameless online pirates, as cult shows air in the U.K. before making it here
By John Sellers

In an otherwise civil discussion of “Downton Abbey’s” second season, actor Hugh Bonneville let loose on an interviewer who casually let it slip that she’d gone online and viewed a pirated version of the British period drama’s Christmas special, which aired in the U.K. in December but won’t hit PBS until Feb. 19. This turned out to be the wrong thing to tell the man who plays proud patriarch Robert Crawley.

“I wish you hadn’t told me you watched it illegally,” said Bonneville, choosing words that suggested he shouldn’t be writing dialogue for the nobleman otherwise known as the Earl of Grantham. “That’s really pissing me off. Shame on you. Be ashamed.”

Like so many other nerdy “Downton” fans, I also greedily consumed the Christmas special over the holidays in some dark corner of the Internet — but without feeling any such shame.

The reason? Over the past few years, with potential spoilers lurking behind every clicked Web link, rabid American fans of cult-friendly British programming have grown increasingly frustrated that television hasn’t truly gone global. Well into the age of YouTube, iTunes and on-demand viewing, obsessive fans are still thwarted by international restrictions that prevent them from accessing episodes as they become available, even on official sites. And the region-specific system of DVD coding still exists to drive all but the most tech-savvy Anglophiles from ordering copies when they are released overseas (as the second season of “Downton Abbey” was back in November).

Instead, fans are forced to make an outdated choice: Wait it out — sometimes for months — until new episodes of our favorite overseas shows make their U.S. debuts, or find pirated versions somewhere online that abet a ravenous craving to stuff their eyeholes with tweedy goodness. (The controversial SOPA bill, stalled indefinitely in Congress after protests, were aimed, in part, at stopping this kind of downloading. Sites like the Pirate Bay, hosted by overseas servers, often contain access to torrents of full seasons of shows; but truth is, a good Google search will turn up much of what you’re looking for, as well.)

With the old model of importing shows at the speed of a steamship chugging across the Atlantic as obsolete as Mr. Carson’s job in an industrialized Britain, and with few sensible solutions, it’s no surprise that a growing number of superfans feel like their piracy is justified. (Especially when PBS is free anyway! Who loses?)

“I only download when it’s something I just can’t bear to wait for,” says a Brooklyn-based friend of mine, who requested anonymity not for fear of getting outed as a mega-geek but of being charged with copyright infringement. A self-described “nerdy American Gen-Xer who grew up watching the classic ‘Doctor Who’ series when it aired on PBS in the ’70s and ’80s,” he has no qualms about using outlaw means to watch his pet programs, which include ITV’s “Downton Abbey” and the BBC’s boffo “Sherlock” adaptation.
He says that he does so for two logical reasons — for his own gratification, and so that he can geek out with his English friends and others who have viewed the shows as they air or shortly thereafter. But he also says that the versions that air here are subtly different than they were in the U.K.

“I’m kind of wary of waiting for British TV to show up on PBS or BBC America,” he says. “It’s not only the time lag that’s maddening, but the way those versions of the shows sometimes get edited. PBS rejiggered the first season of ‘Downton Abbey’ for reasons I still don’t understand, and BBC America sometimes cuts down shows to jam in more commercials and adds gratuitous intros or voice-overs that I have no use for.”

According to Rebecca Eaton, the executive producer of “Masterpiece Theatre,” there’s not much PBS can do about either problem. In an interview, she jokingly refers to people like my friend as “pirates” and further disparages them by growling “arrrrgh” in her best Blackbeard voice. But it’s with a sense of humor and resignation. “We are completely separate networks, and we program differently than ITV,” she explains. “It’s literally the difference between the way one network broadcasts and the way the other one does.”

When I press Eaton to elaborate on what might be holding them back from making the episodes available more quickly, she is quick to say, “ITV is a commercial station, they have ads, and their shows have to be reformatted to fit the ‘Masterpiece’ time slots.” The reformatting includes editing for length and adding PBS branding. “And ‘Masterpiece,’ every year, has to avoid certain weeks because of pledge,” she adds. “It’s a puzzle of where to fit programs in here.” Her advice to fans here in the States: embrace the concept of delayed gratification.

Eaton does admit that, with a bit of scheduling luck, the turnaround time could be shortened, to a month or so instead of four, as it was with both “Downton” seasons. But, she says, people would still complain about not being able to watch episodes in sync with the Brits. “If they aired a day later,” she says, “illegal pirating would be going on.”

BBC America has satisfied many U.S.-based “Doctor Who” aficionados by airing new episodes of the exuberantly bizarre sci-fi program on the same calendar day as the BBC. “We listened to our fans who wanted to be part of a global conversation,” said Richard De Croce, BBC America’s senior vice president of programming. While the feed still arrives to East Coast viewers a few hours after it airs in the U.K., it’s not much different than American networks delaying broadcasts so that viewers in Western time zones can watch in prime time. But unlike PBS, BBC America has the benefit of being part of the BBC.

So why haven’t TV entities and producers from both countries gotten together and figured out a solution to the issue, especially when there are so many fanatics on both sides of the pond — and, to be clear, this problem goes in both directions — who would be willing to pay for the pleasure, and legality, of instantaneous viewing?

Until international immediacy is embraced by the television industry as a whole, American superfans of British programming who aren’t into delayed gratification will continue to seek out ways to view their shows as if they lived abroad. And, as any shoplifter could tell you, there is an associative thrill that comes with sneaking stuff out of the store. When I asked her to take a stab at what Maggie Smith’s gloriously wry Dowager Countess might say about all of this, Eaton summed up the issue nicely: “Piracy, how thrilling!”
http://www.salon.com/2012/01/27/is_i...bey/singleton/





Steal This Book!
Jon Evans

Nobody wants to be told that their business model is obsolete. Ask Kodak. Or Hollywood. And the publishing industry is slower on its feet than most. Bookstores don’t want to believe that they’ll ultimately lose 75% of their pre-e-book business to that scourge plus Amazon delivery. (I’m assuming e-book market share will eventually plateau somewhere north of 50%.) Meanwhile, publishers cling to the model wherein readers purchase books individually, usually before they’ve been read: a model so entrenched that many seem to find it literally impossible to believe that alternatives might exist.

I’ve been lamenting that paucity of imagination in my columns here for some time now. It’s why publishers have lashed out so ineptly at any suggestion of a subscription model. But I’ve also been saying for five years that publishing’s business model will ultimately become even less restrictive than that. In the end, lo these many decades from now, most books–and all novels–will be free to read, and their readers will decide whether and how much to pay for them after reading them.

I know, big talk, no action, right? So:

The rights to my technothriller Invisible Armies finally reverted to me last month. It’s my personal favorite among my thrillers; it’s won acclaim from The Economist, Bruce Sterling, and a host of others — and now I’m releasing it and its sort-of-sequel Swarm1 online, for free, under a Creative Commons license. You can download them to the device of your choice from Feedbooks. (Which, by the way, is awesome. Android users: the mega-popular Aldiko e-reader app is one of several with built-in Feedbooks integration)

Links: Invisible Armies, Swarm.

(Some Kindle users may have to sideload, I’m afraid. Sorry. Talk to Amazon.)

Anyone who wants to pay for either book after they read it can buy an e-copy from iBooks or the Kindle Store2 at their leisure. (I’m deliberately not linking to either here.) That’s pretty clumsy, I know: I expect that in the future e-books will come with a “Pay What You Want” interface on the very last page. But hey, you have to start somewhere.

Obviously I’m far from the first to free my books. The Baen Free Library has been around for years. Tim O’Reilly says, “In my experience, losses due to piracy are far outweighed by the benefits of the free flow of information, which makes the world richer, and develops new markets for legitimate content.” And Cory Doctorow, of course, has been doing it for his entire oeuvre from day one.

But Cory is kind of sui generis. The real test is whether a critical mass of hundreds, if not thousands, of writers — especially ones who, like me, have been previously anointed as Real Authors by the almighty dinosaurs of the publishing industry — start doing it. And, well, here’s one more small step in that direction. Let’s see where we all end up.

1Invisible Armies is about hackers, anti-corporate protestors, globalization, and the surveillance society; Swarm is about fleets of UAVs in The Wrong Hands.

2Unless you live in Canada, where HarperCollins still claims those e-rights. Sorry. The whole international-publishing-rights thing is a colossal mess, and will remain that way for some time.
http://techcrunch.com/2012/01/21/steal-this-book/





Tablet, E-Reader Ownership Almost Double Over Holidays: Survey

The number of Americans owning a tablet computer or e-reader nearly doubled over the holiday period as Kindles, Nooks and iPads proved to be popular gifts, a new study found.

In early January, 19 percent of Americans surveyed by Pew owned an e-reader, up from 10 percent in December, with identical results for tablets, according to a report released on Monday by the Pew Internet and American Life Project.

As a result, the percentage of Americans owning at least one digital reading device rose to 29 percent in January from 18 percent, according to the survey.

Amazon.com Inc and Barnes & Noble Inc each introduced new tablets and cheaper versions of their Kindle and Nook devices respectively ahead of the holidays, while Apple Inc's iPad continued to be popular.

The report also found that men and women were equally likely to own a device but that ownership was also more likely among people with higher education and higher income.

The figures are from several surveys conducted by Pew. The first, pre-Christmas survey of 2,986 Americans 16 and older was conducted in November and December, while the second and third were done about 2,000 adults in January.

(Reporting By Phil Wahba)
http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/...80M0ZG20120123





350,000 Textbooks Downloaded From Apple’s iBooks in Three Days
John Paczkowski

Though nascent and unproven, Apple’s new textbook initiative appears to be gaining lots of momentum — and quickly, too. Within days of its debut, Apple’s iBooks textbook store had already racked up a significant number of downloads. Same thing with the company’s textbook authoring tool.

According to Global Equities Research, which monitors Apple’s iBook sales via a proprietary tracking system it doesn’t much care to discuss, more than 350,000 textbooks were downloaded from the company’s iBooks Store within the first three days of availability.

And there were some 90,000 downloads of iBooks Author, Apple’s free textbook-creation tool, during the same time.

If those numbers are accurate, Apple’s textbook effort would seem to be off to a good start. Which is good news for everyone involved — particularly textbook publishers, who stand to make more money on books sold through iBooks than those sold at retail.

According to Global Equities Research, the supply chain markup on textbooks ranges between 33 percent and 35 percent. So there’s savings to be had in cutting out that publisher-to-distributor-to-wholesaler-to-retailer process.

Add to this the lower cost of iBook production, which the research outfit estimates to be 80 percent less than print publication; and a system under which textbooks are sold directly to students, who use them for a year, rather than to schools which keep the texts for an average of five years — and the math here starts to looks pretty good.

Said Global Equities Research analyst Trip Chowdhry, “[This is] a recipe for Apple’s success in the textbook industry.”
http://allthingsd.com/20120123/35000...in-three-days/





Delicate Balance: Scientific Freedom and National Security

Two legal scholars argue that the U.S. government’s request that the journals Science and Nature withhold scientific information related to the genetically modified H5N1 virus because of biosecurity concerns does not violate the First Amendment

The U.S. government’s request that the journals Science and Nature withhold scientific information related to the genetically modified H5N1 virus because of biosecurity concerns does not violate the First Amendment, say two Georgetown University professors. They caution, however, that a fair, transparent process undertaken by research organizations is preferable to governmental constraints on disseminating scientific information.

A Georgetown University Medical Center release reports that John D. Kraemer, JD, MPH, assistant professor of health systems administration at Georgetown University School of Nursing & Health Studies, and Lawrence O. Gostin, the Linda D. and Timothy J. O’Neill Professor of Global Health Law and faculty director of the O’Neill Institute for National and Global Health Law at Georgetown University Law Center, wrote an article in the current issue of Science in which the explore the balance of scientific freedom and national security.

In 2011 two research teams genetically modified the H5N1 avian influenza virus. Their work, funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH), demonstrates the ability to alter a virus in such a way that it could possibly spread rapidly among humans — killing more than half who contract it (the research was conducted in an animal model believed to represent human behavior of the virus). The research prompted the National Science Advisory Board for Biosecurity (NSABB), which advises the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), to recommend that Science and Nature redact key information prior to publication. Both NSABB and HHS expressed concerns that published details about the papers’ methodology and results could become a blueprint for bioterrorism.

“The NSABB process seems to have worked well in this instance,” says Kraemer. “It raised legitimate security concerns while avoiding censorship of the scientific press. But there remains a need to strengthen precautions around this type of research before it occurs.”

To date, Science and Nature have not yet announced their intentions regarding the government’s request.

In their commentary, Kraemer and Gostin write “HHS’ request reveals a troubled relationship between security and science.” The authors, however, point out that “Given the absence of legal force or undue inducements or penalties, the government’s request to withhold information does not violate the First Amendment.”

Kraemer and Gostin say the First Amendment, “affords considerable protection to political artistic and scientific expression, triggering ‘strict scrutiny’ by the Supreme Court.” They point out that had the government compelled either the researchers or the journals to withhold publication, that act would have violated the First Amendment.

In their opinion piece, the authors explore various court cases that challenge and support the government’s rights to go further with such an issue. They say the federal government has the power to prevent dissemination of sensitive life science research, but warn, “… there are good reasons to exercise that power sparingly.”

Looking beyond the current dilemma, Kraemer and Gostin ask: “Can the review process for high-risk biologic research be improved further?”

The origins of the National Science Advisory Board for Biosecurity can be traced to the National Research Council’s Fink Report issued in 2004. The Fink Report endorsed, among other things, expanded self-governance by researchers toward issues of biosecurity, as well as the formation of a national advisory board to help guide both the government and research community in addressing issues involving dual-use research.

Kraemer and Gostin, however, point out that vital recommendations in the Fink Report have not yet been implemented, including the need to employ an institutional review process for biological “experiments of concern” patterned on the Institutional Biosafety Committees (IBC) required for recombinant DNA research.

Kraemer and Gostin make the following recommendations to improve the review process:

HHS, in partnership with institutions, will have to ensure that the IBC model works effectively: (1) institutions must develop the requisite expertise to review dual use research; (2) HHS must specify the categories of research requiring institutional review — minimally including the 7 types of high-risk experiments; and (3) HHS must set clear and consistent standards for institutional review. If IBCs are formally designated to conduct the institutional review function, HHS will have to clarify whether NSABB will guide and oversee the process.

Kraemer and Gostin suggest that such a process can ensure a, “sound balance between scientific freedom and national security. A fair, transparent process undertaken by research institutions, with a balanced approach to scientific benefits and public safety, together with HHS guidance and oversight of high-risk research, is preferable to government constraints on scientific information by force of law.”

— Read more in John D. Kraemer and Lawrence O. Gostin, “The Limits of Government Regulation of Science” Science (19 January 2012) (DOI: 10.1126/science.1219215)
http://www.homelandsecuritynewswire....ional-security





Scientist Plays Down Danger of Flu Strain
Donald G. McNeil Jr.

A Wisconsin virology team that created a more contagious form of bird flu did not produce a highly lethal superflu, as a Dutch team famously and controversially did last year, according to the leader of the Wisconsin team.

Dr. Yoshihiro Kawaoka of the University of Wisconsin-Madison and the University of Tokyo said in a commentary published online by Nature magazine that his team’s virus had infected ferrets through the air, but that it did not kill any of them. Ferrets catch flu just as humans do. Also, he said, “Current vaccines and antiviral compounds are effective against it.”

By contrast, a virus created by Ron Fouchier of Erasmus Medical Center in the Netherlands had both the high lethality of the H5N1 avian flu and the ability to transmit easily among ferrets, touching off fears that his virus could be devastating in people.

However, a flu expert who serves on an American scientific advisory panel that looked at both Dr. Fouchier’s work and Dr. Kawaoka’s said the panel still believed key details should be censored from both papers before they are published to keep terrorists or rogue scientists from being to replicate the work, since the gene-manipulation techniques and intermediate mutations are as potentially dangerous as the end products.

Some scientists believe that Dr. Fouchier created what is potentially the most lethal virus in history — a flu that would transmit through a sneeze and kill more than 50 percent of those who caught it. That has led to calls for restrictions. Some — including the editorial board of The New York Times — have argued that the virus stocks should be destroyed; others want the virus restricted to a small number of laboratories with the highest biosecurity levels.

Some scientists, including Dr. Fouchier, argue that the fear of his virus is exaggerated. What works in ferrets does not always work in humans, they argue, and the true lethality of avian H5N1 is unknown because there have been fewer than 600 confirmed human cases and many milder ones might exist.

The debate about Dr. Kawaoka’s work is likely to be less heated since what he produced is less dangerous.

In his commentary for Nature, published online on Wednesday, Dr. Kawaoka said his team took the hemagglutinin gene from the avian H5N1 — which produces the “spike” that allows it to attach to receptors on cells in the human nose — and attached it to the other seven genes of the virus that caused the H1N1 “swine flu” pandemic in 2009.

That virus — once called “a real mutt” by a top virologist — was a novel mixture of genes from flus previously found in humans, birds, North American pigs and Eurasian pigs. It spread easily through humans but — despite having caused panic when it filled emergency rooms in Mexico City, where it was first noticed — ultimately turned out to be less lethal than most seasonal flus.

In an e-mail message, Dr. Kawaoka said that there were some mutations in the hemagglutinin gene he got from avian H5N1, but that he “could not comment on the specifics.”

A vaccine created to protect humans against infection with avian H5N1 virus also worked against his version of the virus, he said.

Asked if it was possible that his virus could be passed around among laboratories for further work while Dr. Fouchier’s virus ought to be more highly restricted, he said, “That judgment has to be made in discussions with the international scientific community.”

After reading Dr. Kawaoka’s commentary, Dr. Fouchier said it appeared that Dr. Kawaoka’s virus was less lethal than the one he created, although he reiterated that he did not think what he had created was as dangerous as it had been portrayed.

But, he said, “I have not seen Kawaoka’s data, so I would not know the details of his study.”

Richard H. Ebright, a chemistry professor and bioweapons expert at Rutgers University who has long opposed unrestricted research into making flu viruses more lethal, said his impression was that Dr. Kawaoka’s virus was less lethal than Dr. Fouchier’s, but that if the only vaccine against it was an experimental H5N1 vaccine that is not widely stockpiled, “it still has significant pandemic potential.”

Even if the virus is safe enough to be studied in labs with only medium-high biosecurity levels, he said, “This virus will not be the endpoint; the first experiment that will be done with it will be an effort to enhance its lethality.” That process, he argued, should not go forward without national or international review.

“These are decisions that cannot be left to the individual investigators,” he said.

Michael T. Osterholm, director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota and a member of the National Science Advisory Board for Biosecurity, said the panel still wanted the details of Dr. Kawaoka’s work censored as it did Dr. Fouchier’s.

“We have concerns both about the organisms and about how you manufacture them,” he said.
https://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/26/h...dangerous.html





Police Chiefs at White House to Discuss Domestic Radicalization

Law enforcement officials from state and local agencies across the United States gathered on Wednesday at the White House to discuss the delicate balance between safeguarding against domestic extremism and maintaining the trust of the residents they serve

Officials met at the White House to discuss domestic radicalization // Source: laodong.com.vn
Law enforcement officials from state and local agencies across the United States gathered on Wednesday at the White House to discuss the delicate balance between safeguarding against domestic extremism and maintaining the trust of the residents they serve.

With growing concerns over domestic radicalization ranging from Islamic fundamentalism, right wing extremists, white supremacists, local police officers have struggled to distinguish between those who simply hold extreme ideologies and those that acutely intend to commit violence or incite others.

“Where do you draw the line between what they say and what they do,” questioned Robert Haas, the police commissioner of Cambridge, Massachusetts, who attended the meeting along with forty-six other senior local, state, and federal law enforcement officials.

The meeting was the first time administration officials had discussed the issue of countering violent extremism with so many senior law enforcement officials in the same room.

“The important role of local law enforcement is a key part of the administration’s approach to countering violent extremism in the homeland,” said John Brennan, President Obama’s counterterrorism adviser. “Law enforcement officials work with communities every day and understand how to build partnerships to address this tough challenge.”

According to analysts from the FBI, DHS, and National Counterterrorism Center, an individual’s origin, religion, ethnic background, and socioeconomic status are not good indicators for violent extremism.

In their examination of sixty-two cases of homegrown extremists, analysts identified several key similarities between the cases that law enforcement officials could use to help detect emerging threats. Key indicators included increasingly speaking out against the government, purchasing weapons, ammunition, or explosive materials, or joining a group that advocates violence.

The White House stressed that Muslim communities should not be singled out, and more importantly, viewed as allies in the fight against terrorism. Unnecessarily focusing on Muslim communities or monitoring them can lead to distrust as it has in New York, where the police department has come under heavy criticism for collecting intelligence on the daily lives of Muslim residents, even those without criminal records.

“We don’t want to be seen as taking a step back and violating that trust that we have with folks,” Haas said.
http://www.homelandsecuritynewswire....radicalization





Justices Say GPS Tracker Violated Privacy Rights
Adam Liptak

The Supreme Court on Monday unanimously ruled that the police violated the Constitution when they placed a Global Positioning System tracking device on a suspect’s car and monitored its movements for 28 days.

But the justices divided 5-to-4 on the rationale for the decision, with the majority saying that the problem was the placement of the device on private property. That ruling avoided many difficult questions, including how to treat information gathered from devices installed by the manufacturer and how to treat information held by third parties like cellphone companies.

Walter Dellinger, a lawyer for the defendant in the case and a former acting United States solicitor general, said the decision “is a signal event in Fourth Amendment history.”

“Law enforcement is now on notice,” he said, “that almost any use of G.P.S. electronic surveillance of a citizen’s movement will be legally questionable unless a warrant is obtained in advance.”

Though the ruling was limited to physical intrusions, the opinions in the case collectively suggested that a majority of the justices are prepared to apply broad Fourth Amendment privacy principles unrelated to such intrusions to an array of modern technologies, including video surveillance in public places, automatic toll collection systems on highways, devices that allow motorists to signal for roadside assistance and records kept by online merchants.

The case decided Monday, United States v. Jones, No. 10-1259, concerned Antoine Jones, who was the owner of a Washington nightclub when the police came to suspect him of being part of a cocaine-selling operation. They placed a tracking device on his Jeep Grand Cherokee without a valid warrant, tracked his movements for a month and used the evidence they gathered to convict him of conspiring to sell cocaine. He was sentenced to life in prison.

The United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit overturned his conviction, saying the sheer amount of information that had been collected violated the Fourth Amendment, which bars unreasonable searches.

The Supreme Court affirmed that decision, but on a different ground. “We hold that the government’s installation of a G.P.S. device on a target’s vehicle, and its use of that device to monitor the vehicle’s movements, constitutes a ‘search,’ ” Justice Antonin Scalia wrote for the majority. Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and Justices Anthony M. Kennedy, Clarence Thomas and Sonia Sotomayor joined the majority opinion.

“It is important to be clear about what occurred in this case,” Justice Scalia went on. “The government physically occupied private property for the purpose of obtaining information. We have no doubt that such a physical intrusion would have been considered a ‘search’ within the meaning of the Fourth Amendment when it was adopted.”

In a concurrence for four justices, Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. faulted the majority for trying to apply 18th-century legal concepts to 21st-century technologies. What should matter, he said, is the contemporary reasonable expectation of privacy.

“The use of longer term G.P.S. monitoring in investigations of most offenses,” he wrote, “impinges on expectations of privacy.” Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen G. Breyer and Elena Kagan joined the concurrence.

“We need not identify with precision the point at which the tracking of this vehicle became a search, for the line was surely crossed before the 4-week mark,” Justice Alito wrote. “Other cases may present more difficult questions.”

The leading Supreme Court precedent in the area, United States v. Knotts in 1983, allowed the use of a much more primitive technology, a beeper that sent a signal that grew stronger as the police drew closer and so helped them follow a car over a single 100-mile trip from Minnesota to Wisconsin.

The Knotts case was different, Justice Scalia wrote, because the police had placed the beeper in a container of chemicals before the suspect accepted it. In the Jones case, by contrast, “officers encroached on a protected area.”

Justice Scalia added that the majority did not mean to suggest that its property-rights theory of the Fourth Amendment displaced the one focused on expectations of privacy.

“It may be that achieving the same result through electronic means, without an accompanying trespass, is an unconstitutional invasion of privacy, but the present case does not require us to answer that question,” he wrote. .

He acknowledged that Monday’s decision left “thorny problems” for another day. But “there is no reason for rushing forward to resolve them here,” he wrote

Justice Sotomayor joined the majority opinion, agreeing that many questions could be left for another day “because the government’s physical intrusion on Jones’s Jeep supplies a narrower basis for decision.”

But she seemed to leave little doubt that she would have joined Justice Alito’s analysis had the issue he addressed been the exclusive one presented in the case.

“Physical intrusion is now unnecessary to many forms of surveillance,” Justice Sotomayor wrote. In the case of G.P.S. devices, she wrote, “I would ask whether people reasonably expect that their movements will be recorded and aggregated in a manner that enables the government to ascertain, more or less at will, their political and religious beliefs, sexual habits, and so on.”

She went on to suggest that “it may be necessary to reconsider the premise that an individual has no reasonable expectation of privacy in information voluntarily disclosed to third parties.”

“People disclose the phone numbers that they dial or text to their cellular providers; the URLs that they visit and the e-mail addresses with which they correspond to their Internet service providers; and the books, groceries, and medications they purchase to online retailers,” she wrote. “I for one doubt that people would accept without complaint the warrantless disclosure to the government of a list of every Web site they had visited in the last week, or month, or year.”

Justice Alito listed other “new devices that permit the monitoring of a person’s movements” that fit uneasily with traditional Fourth Amendment privacy analysis.

“In some locales,” he wrote, “closed-circuit television video monitoring is becoming ubiquitous. On toll roads, automatic toll collection systems create a precise record of the movements of motorists who choose to make use of that convenience. Many motorists purchase cars that are equipped with devices that permit a central station to ascertain the car’s location at any time so that roadside assistance may be provided if needed and the car may be found if it is stolen.

“Perhaps most significant, cellphones and other wireless devices now permit wireless carriers to track and record the location of users — and as of June 2011, it has been reported, there were more than 322 million wireless devices in use in the United States.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/24/u...itutional.html





Judge: Americans Can be Forced to Decrypt Their Laptops
Declan McCullagh

American citizens can be ordered to decrypt their PGP-scrambled hard drives for police to peruse for incriminating files, a federal judge in Colorado ruled today in what could become a precedent-setting case.

Judge Robert Blackburn ordered a Peyton, Colo., woman to decrypt the hard drive of a Toshiba laptop computer no later than February 21--or face the consequences including contempt of court.

Blackburn, a George W. Bush appointee, ruled that the Fifth Amendment posed no barrier to his decryption order. The Fifth Amendment says that nobody may be "compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself," which has become known as the right to avoid self-incrimination.

"I find and conclude that the Fifth Amendment is not implicated by requiring production of the unencrypted contents of the Toshiba Satellite M305 laptop computer," Blackburn wrote in a 10-page opinion today. He said the All Writs Act, which dates back to 1789 and has been used to require telephone companies to aid in surveillance, could be invoked in forcing decryption of hard drives as well.

Ramona Fricosu, who is accused of being involved in a mortgage scam, has declined to decrypt a laptop encrypted with Symantec's PGP Desktop that the FBI found in her bedroom during a raid of a home she shared with her mother and children (and whether she's even able to do so is not yet clear).

"I hope to get a stay of execution of this order so we can file an appeal to the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals," Fricosu's attorney, Phil Dubois, said this afternoon. "I think it's a matter of national importance. It should not be treated as though it's just another day in Fourth Amendment litigation."

Dubois said that, in addition, his client may not be able to decrypt the laptop for any number of reasons. "If that's the case, then we'll report that fact to the court, and the law is fairly clear that people cannot be punished for failure to do things they are unable to do," he said.

Today's ruling from Blackburn sided with the U.S. Department of Justice, which argued, as CNET reported last summer, that Americans' Fifth Amendment right to remain silent doesn't apply to their encryption passphrases. Federal prosecutors, who did not immediately respond to a request for comment this afternoon, claimed in a brief that:

Public interests will be harmed absent requiring defendants to make available unencrypted contents in circumstances like these. Failing to compel Ms. Fricosu amounts to a concession to her and potential criminals (be it in child exploitation, national security, terrorism, financial crimes or drug trafficking cases) that encrypting all inculpatory digital evidence will serve to defeat the efforts of law enforcement officers to obtain such evidence through judicially authorized search warrants, and thus make their prosecution impossible.

While the U.S. Supreme Court has not confronted the topic, a handful of lower courts have.

In March 2010, a federal judge in Michigan ruled that Thomas Kirschner, facing charges of receiving child pornography, would not have to give up his password. That's "protecting his invocation of his Fifth Amendment privilege against compelled self-incrimination," the court ruled.

A year earlier, a Vermont federal judge concluded that Sebastien Boucher, who a border guard claims had child porn on his Alienware laptop, did not have a Fifth Amendment right to keep the files encrypted. Boucher eventually complied and was convicted.

Prosecutors in this case have stressed that they don't actually require the passphrase itself, and today's order appears to permit Fricosu to type it in and unlock the files without anyone looking over her shoulder. They say they want only the decrypted data and are not demanding "the password to the drive, either orally or in written form."

Because this involves a Fifth Amendment claim, Colorado prosecutors took the unusual step of seeking approval from headquarters in Washington, D.C.: On May 5, Assistant Attorney General Lanny Breuer sent a letter to Colorado U.S. Attorney John Walsh saying "I hereby approve your request."

The question of whether a criminal defendant can be legally compelled to cough up his encryption passphrase remains an unsettled one, with law review articles for at least the last 15 years arguing the merits of either approach. (A U.S. Justice Department attorney wrote an article in 1996, for instance, titled "Compelled Production of Plaintext and Keys.")

Much of the discussion has been about what analogy comes closest. Prosecutors tend to view PGP passphrases as akin to someone possessing a key to a safe filled with incriminating documents. That person can, in general, be legally compelled to hand over the key. Other examples include the U.S. Supreme Court saying that defendants can be forced to provide fingerprints, blood samples, or voice recordings.

On the other hand are civil libertarians citing other Supreme Court cases that conclude Americans can't be forced to give "compelled testimonial communications" and extending the legal shield of the Fifth Amendment to encryption passphrases. Courts already have ruled that that such protection extends to the contents of a defendant's minds, the argument goes, so why shouldn't a passphrase be shielded as well?

Fricosu was born in 1974 and living in Peyton as of 2010. She was charged with bank fraud, wire fraud, and money laundering as part of an alleged attempt to use falsified court documents to illegally gain title to homes near Colorado Springs that were facing "imminent foreclosure" or whose owners were relocating outside the state. Some of the charges could yield up to 30 years in prison; she pleaded not guilty. Her husband, Scott Whatcott, was also charged.
http://news.cnet.com/8301-31921_3-57...their-laptops/





What Will You Do When the US Comes for You?

Australian data hosted in the cloud my be subject to US law, say lawyers.
Nate Cochrane

Hosting your cloud onshore may not protect you when American cops come knocking.

Australian organisations destined for the cloud now have the dilemma of dealing with warrantless demands from US law enforcement as part of their due diligence, a partner at a top international law firm said.

Connie Carnabuci, a Hong Kong-based partner in global No.2 law firm Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer, said recent cases such as the Megaupload.com arrests this week and the overreach of US anti-terrorism legislation since 2001 laid bare Australians' data.

In a fillip for her host Macquarie Telecom, which stands to gain from promoting the idea of onshore cloud computing as it pitches for business against US data centres, Carnabuci said interpretation of the US Patriot Act was so broad it captured almost any communication or data held in the US or by Australian businesses with US "connections".

She related the story of how a Canadian Privacy Commissioner sided with US authorities to force CIBC to divulge private customer records because the bank outsourced data processing to a US company.

The Alberta commissioner's subsequent report advised government agencies not to outsource operations to the US, especially because US secrecy provisions made it difficult to monitor how the law was used.

The Australian Government's cloud computing directions paper in April said agencies need to be aware of legislative and regulatory requirements as compliance may be a challenge for agencies, for example, the Patriot Act".

The Australian Defence Signals Directorate strongly encourages agencies to "choose either a locally-owned vendor or a foreign-owned vendor that is located in Australia and stores, processes and manages sensitive data only within Australia".

"Foreign-owned vendors operating in Australia may be subject to foreign laws such as a foreign government's lawful access to data held by the vendor," DSD wrote in a paper titled Cloud Computing Security Considerations.

Carnabuci said the Patriot Act gave the US a big stick "to compel disclosure of non-US data, which is stored outside the US".

But she said its interpretation was so broad as to capture an employee of an Australian organisation in Australia using a server located on Amazon Web Services (AWS) as could using webmail services such as Gmail: "We don't have a clear answer".

Carnabuci said in each case, it was subject to US laws and may have to fight here and in the US demands for its records.

Australian organisations could face a "damned if I do, damned if I don't" paradox, compelled by the US to divulge information that was illegal to hand over under Australian privacy laws.

Although he was charged under US copyright statutes, the recent arrest of Kim Dotcom or Schmitz, the founder file-sharing site Megaupload.com, highlighted US extraterritoriality, Carnabuci said. US authorities relied on the fact it had servers in the US and was a .com.

"What we're seeing is the legislation is being used quite liberally and connections to terrorism is quite remote and may be speculative," she said.

"The American economy is still in the doldrums and is an economy where there's a very strong imperative to position one's self in a protectionist way."

Australia was in a position to become a safe haven for data outside the reach of US law enforcement owing to our strong privacy laws but there was a tension between the political and commercial, she said.

"International data handling will become a free-trade issue; most businesses are so heaviy weighted in handling info, they are heavily data dependent."
http://www.smh.com.au/it-pro/cloud/w...125-1qhc1.html





ISP Data Retention Still an Issue, Ludlam Warns
Renai LeMay

Greens Senator Scott Ludlam has warned that a secretive proposal — known as ‘data retention’ — by the Attorney-General’s Department to force internet service providers to store a wealth of information pertaining to Australians’ emails and telephone calls is still an issue, with the public needing to remain vigilant on how the Government handles Internet surveillance.

The proposal — known popularly as ‘OzLog’ — first came to light in June 2010, when AGD confirmed it had been examining the European Directive on Data Retention to consider whether it would be beneficial for Australia to adopt a similar regime. The directive requires telcos to record data such as the source, destination and timing of all emails and telephone calls – even including internet telephony.

In August the Attorney-General’s Department confirmed to iTNews that it was still considering the introduction of a data retention regime separately from the sort of watered down data ‘preservation’ rules being introduced in new cybercrime legislation. Delimiter has this week filed a Freedom of Information request with the Attorney-General’s Department in an effort to ascertain the precise current state of the data retention proposal.

Speaking at Electronic Frontiers Australia’s ‘War on the Internet’ event on Saturday in Melbourne (full video available online here), Ludlam, who is the Communications Spokesperson for the Greens, said much of the thinking around the data retention proposal had been integrated into new cybercrime legislation introduced in mid-2011.

Ludlam said the proposal had been narrowed down to a degree to which most people would find ‘reasonable’, in that law enforcement agencies could, for example, request ISPs to keep all available data on people suspected of committing major crimes such as terrorism — a technique he described as “hold that person’s everything, until we tell you not to any more”.

However, the Greens Senator warned, that cybercrime legislation could “mutate” into something completely different. “Maybe let’s trap all the data of these categories of people,” he said, appearing to refer to the political activist community, many members of whom had gathered at the Melbourne event. “Or these postcodes of people.”

“We know that that agenda is there,” Ludlam said, referring to the potential to “broaden out” the applications of the data retention system. “And it’s going to take sustained work to prevent that from happening. Once these systems and structures are in place, they are abused, almost by definition.”

Ludlam highlighted a Sydney Morning Herald article published several weeks ago which revealed that the Federal Resources and Energy Minister, Martin Ferguson, had secretly pushed for increased surveillance by police of environmental activists who had been protesting peacefully at coal-fired power stations and coal export facilities, with some of the work being carried out by a private contractor, the National Open Source Intelligence Centre (NOSIC).

The Greens Senator said his party would be filing freedom of information requests with the Government to find out why it thought it was appropriate, “at taxpayer’s expense, to surveil” activists who were legitimately drumming up interest in the environment. Ludlam said he presumed the Government was also tracking animal rights and anti-nuclear campaigners as well.

Hacker luminary Jacob Appelbaum, who also spoke at the event, said data retention weakened the whole of society as such systems would eventually be compromised by criminals both in Australia and internationally. With data retention, authorities could “retroactively police the population,” he acknowledged.

However, once a database like that existed, he said, that database would be stolen, leading to a point where criminals would find it very easy to commit crimes because they would be able to generate a precise pattern of people’s personal movements from the data — for example, “knowing where a car is regularly parked so you can steal it”.

Appelbaum encouraged Australian telecommunications engineers to find the points in their networks where law enforcement officials were able to connect to conduct surveillance such as wire tapping and disclose those points to the public. “Find those, and expose them. Tell journalists. Tell MPs like this guy over here,” he said, pointing at Ludlam. Ludlam highlighted the fact that it was only through the efforts of such public spirited individuals — which leaked the proposal to the media — that the data retention proposal had come to light in the first place.

Ludlam also warned of the potential for a reshuffle of cybercrime resources within the Federal Government to lead to dangerous outcomes in the area. In late December, a new cybersecurity unit was quietly formed within the Prime Minister’s Department, although the Government has not yet clarified what its responsibilities will be.

“We have a major restructure that just occurred in the commonwealth — a super-portfolio, drawn together in the Prime Minister’s office from fragments in Defence, Foreign Affairs, Communications, some presumably copyright stuff and commercial stuff that has all come together,” Ludlam said. “… really most of that sat in the former Attorney-General’s Office … [it was] picked up and moved to the PM’s office. And that’s important. We are getting a cyber-safety strategy at some point this year. That’s going to be very important to watchdog to watch how they’re thinking and what they’re doing, because all kinds of sneaky and nasty agendas are going to creep into that thing.”
http://delimiter.com.au/2012/01/24/i...-ludlam-warns/





Hawaii May Keep Track of All Web Sites Visited
Declan McCullagh

Hawaii's legislature is weighing an unprecedented proposal to curb the privacy of Aloha State residents: requiring Internet providers to keep track of every Web site that their customers visit.

John Mizuno, a Democratic state legislator in Hawaii, wants to require virtual dossiers to be compiled on state residents: two years' worth of their Internet browsing.

Its House of Representatives has scheduled a hearing this morning on a new bill requiring the creation of virtual dossiers on state residents. The measure, H.B. 2288, says their "Internet destination history information" and "subscriber's information" such as name and address must be saved for two years.

H.B. 2288, which was introduced last Friday, says the dossiers must include a list of Internet Protocol addresses and domain names visited. Democratic Rep. John Mizuno of Oahu is the lead sponsor; Mizuno also introduced H.B. 2287, a computer crime bill, at the same time last week.

Last summer, Texas Rep. Lamar Smith managed to persuade a divided committee in the U.S. House of Representatives to approve his data retention proposal, which doesn't go nearly as far as Hawaii's. (Smith, currently Hollywood's favorite Republican, has become better known as the author of the controversial Stop Online Piracy Act, or SOPA.)

It's not exactly clear what prompted Mizonu to introduce this measure, and he and the other sponsors did not immediately respond to a request for comment from CNET today.

"I assume it's to make the data available to be subpoenaed when the state is pursuing people suspected of serious crimes, but I haven't heard anything from the representatives themselves," says Daniel Leuck, the chief executive of Honolulu-based software design boutique Ikayzo.

Mizuno's proposal currently specifies no privacy protections, such as placing restrictions on what Internet providers can do with this information (like selling user profiles to advertisers) or requiring that police obtain a court order before perusing the virtual dossiers of Hawaiian citizens. Also absent are security requirements such as the use of encryption.

Because the wording is so broad and applies to any company that "provides access to the Internet," Mizuno's legislation could sweep in far more than AT&T, Verizon, and Hawaii's local Internet providers. It could also impose sweeping new requirements on coffee shops, bookstores, and hotels frequented by the over 6 million tourists who visit the islands each year.

"H.B. 2288 raises all of the traditional concerns associated with data retention, and then some," Kate Dean, head of the U.S. Internet Service Provider Association, which counts Verizon and AT&T as members, told CNET today. "And this may be the broadest mandate we've seen."

Even the Justice Department has only lobbied the U.S. Congress to record Internet Protocol addresses assigned to individual users--users' origin IP address, in other words. It hasn't publicly demanded that companies record the destination IP addresses as well.

In Washington, D.C., the fight over data retention requirements has been simmering since the Justice Department pushed the topic in 2005, a development that was first reported by CNET. Proposals publicly surfaced in the U.S. Congress the following year, and President Bush's attorney general, Alberto Gonzales said it's an issue that "must be addressed." So, eventually, did FBI director Robert Mueller.

Democrat Jill Tokuda, the Hawaii Senate's majority whip, has introduced a companion bill, S.B. 2530, in the Senate. No hearing has been scheduled on Tokuda's bill.
http://news.cnet.com/8301-31921_3-57...sites-visited/





Hawaiian Politician Backs Away from Web Dossier Law
Declan McCullagh

A Hawaii politician who proposed requiring Internet providers to record every Web site their customers visit is now backing away from the controversial legislation.

Rep. Kymberly Pine, an Oahu Republican and the House minority floor leader, told CNET this evening that her intention was to protect "victims of crime," not compile virtual dossiers on every resident of--or visitor to--the Aloha State who uses the Internet.

"We do not want to know where everyone goes on the Internet," Pine said. "That's not our interest. We just want the ability for law enforcement to be able to capture the activities of crime."

Pine acknowledged that civil libertarians and industry representatives have leveled severe criticisms of the unprecedented legislation, which even the U.S. Justice Department did not propose when calling for new data retention laws last year. A Hawaii House of Representatives committee met this morning to consider the bill, which was tabled.

The bill, H.B. 2288, will likely now be revised, Pine said. The idea of compiling dossiers "was a little broad," said Pine, who became interested in the topic after becoming the subject of a political attack Web site last year. "And we deserved what we heard at the committee hearing."

What the House Committee on Economic Revitalization and Business heard from opponents today was that the bill was actually anti-business and would do no nothing to revitalize the economy.

Laurie Temple, a staff attorney at the American Civil Liberties Union of Hawaii, wrote a letter calling H.B. 2288 a "direct assault on bedrock privacy principles." Instead of keeping more and more records about users, good privacy practices require deleting data that's no longer needed, the ACLU said.

NetChoice, a trade association in Washington, D.C. that counts eBay, Facebook, and Yahoo as members, sent a letter warning that H.B. 2288's data collection requirements "could be misused in lawsuits." And the U.S. Internet Service Provider Association warned in its own letter that H.B. 2288 would be incredibly expensive to comply with. "Narrower" national requirements would cost much more than $500 million in just short-term compliance costs, the letter said, and Hawaii's legislation is broader.

On the other side was the city of Honolulu. Christopher Van Marter, the city's senior deputy prosecuting attorney, wrote a letter to the committee saying H.B. 2288 was perfectly reasonable: "We recognize that some smaller service providers may not currently retain records of a customer's internet history. However, many of the larger service providers do keep and maintain such content."

Last summer, U.S. Rep. Lamar Smith (R-Texas) managed to persuade a divided committee in the U.S. House of Representatives to approve his data retention proposal, which doesn't go nearly as far as Hawaii's. (Smith, currently Hollywood's favorite Republican, has become better known as the author of the controversial Stop Online Piracy Act, or SOPA.)

Even though H.B. 2288 was just introduced last Friday, it's already being savaged by members of the Hawaiian Internet community, some of whom showed up at today's hearing. "This bill represents a radical violation of privacy and opens the door to rampant Fourth Amendment violations," says Daniel Leuck, chief executive of Honolulu-based software design boutique Ikayzo, who submitted testimony opposing the bill. He adds: "Even forcing telephone companies to record everyone's conversations, which is unthinkable, would be less of an intrusion."

For her part, Pine told CNET that:

& H.B. 2288 wasn't primarily based on her own experience of being subjected to a political attack site. "It's really all the victims that have come forward after this," she said. And crimes "relating to child pedophiles and things like that."

& Hawaiians should not be alarmed by how broad the bill is, because there's time to fix it. "Sometimes things are drafted by our legislative drafting office, and it was brought to us, and we talk about it in committee and agree on changes." The Hawaiian phrase for it, she said, is ho?oponopono.

& Internet providers and prosecutors have only a short time to reach a deal. "We asked the two sides to get together, and they have a month to discuss it and present to us what they'll be happy with," she said.

The lead sponsor of H.B. 2288 in the House is Democratic Rep. John Mizuno of Oahu; Mizuno also introduced H.B. 2287, a computer crime bill, at the same time last week. Democrat Jill Tokuda, the Hawaii Senate's majority whip, has introduced a companion bill, S.B. 2530.

Pine was targeted by a disgruntled former contractor, Eric Ryan, who launched KymPineIsACrook.com and claims she owes him money, according to an article last summer in the Hawaii Reporter. The article said Pine would advocate for "tougher cyber laws at the Hawaii State Capitol" as a result, and Tokuda says Pine's "own personal experience in this area" was instructive. (Ryan told CNET that Pine is "the biggest cyber-criminal in Hawaii," and Pine says "I'll be taking him to court very soon.")

H.B. 2288 currently specifies no privacy protections, such as placing restrictions on what Internet providers can do with this information (like selling user profiles to advertisers) or requiring that police obtain a court order before perusing the virtual dossiers of Hawaiian citizens. Also absent are security requirements such as mandating the use of encryption.

After today's public outcry, in an echo of the SOPA and Protect IP experience last week, even some sponsors are backing away from their own legislation. "Rep. Lee is a cosponsor but not a primary introducer," a spokesman for Democratic Rep. Marilyn Lee said today. "Primary introducers are strong supporters. Co-sponsors may generally agree with the proposal but may not be fully comfortable with the legislation."

Even the Justice Department has only lobbied the U.S. Congress to record Internet Protocol addresses assigned to individuals--users' origin IP address, in other words. It hasn't publicly demanded that companies record the destination IP addresses as well.

In Washington, D.C., the fight over data retention requirements has been simmering since the Justice Department pushed the topic in 2005, a development that was first reported by CNET. Proposals publicly surfaced in the U.S. Congress the following year, and President Bush's attorney general, Alberto Gonzales said it's an issue that "must be addressed." So, eventually, did FBI director Robert Mueller.
http://news.cnet.com/8301-31921_3-57...b-dossier-law/





Stallman: Facebook IS Mass Surveillance

The father of free software philosophy spoke to RT on evil developers, spying social networks, the almost-legitimacy of Anonymous hacks and the condition under which he would take a proprietary program and a million dollars.

Stallman is the man behind the concept that every computer program must be free for users to study and modify as they want. This is the only way to ensure that by using the software users do not compromise their human rights, he says.

“Free software literally gives you freedom in the area of computing. It means that you can control your computing. It means that the users individually and collectively have control over their computing. And in particular it means they can protect themselves from the malicious features that are likely to be in proprietary software,” he told RT.

“This doesn’t automatically give you freedom in some other area of life. To get that you have to fight for it. But human rights support each other. In an age when a lot of what we do, we do with computers, if we don’t have freedom in our computing, that makes it harder for us to defend or fight for freedom in other areas. You lose one set of rights – and it’s harder for you to keep the others.”

There are many ways how people can be stripped of their freedom through the software they use. One of the latest examples is the scandal with Carrier IQ’s software, which is being accused of logging every keystroke on devices, which run it.

“This is an example of malicious features in non-free software. Those mobile phones are being run by non-free software, so it’s no surprise that they have malicious features in them. The most commonly used non-free programs do,” Stallman sadly pointed out.

Another example is Facebook’s data-mining activities, which includes massive spying on people browsing the internet.

“Facebook does massive surveillance. If there is a ‘like’ button in a page, Facebook knows who visited that page. And it can get IP address of the computer visiting the page even if the person is not a Facebook user. So you visit several pages that have ‘like’ button and Facebook knows that you visited all of those, even if it doesn’t really know who you are,” he said.

But the public awareness of the danger is rising, and they start resisting it. For instance, operations of the Anonymous hacker group are basically an online version of protest demos, Stallman says.

“The Anonymous protests for the most part work by having a lot of people send a lot of commands to a website, that it can’t handle so many requests. This is equivalent of a crowd of people going to the door of a building and having a protest on the street. It’s basically legitimate. And when people object to this, let’s look at who they are and what they do. Usually they are people who are doing much worse things,” he believes.

Another vivid example is the rise of pirate parties in Europe, which have started winning seats in elected bodies there.

“I more-or-less agree with their positions and I’m glad to see that these issues are becoming election issues. I don’t necessarily endorse pirate parties because to do that I would have to know what all the other parties are and these are not the only issues I think are important. For instance, putting a limit on global heating is extremely important. Many pirate parties don’t take a position on that. So I might choose to support a green party instead,” he said.

At the same time Stallman points out that many people endorse piracy for absolutely wrong reasons. They want to have a right to use proprietary software free of charge, while they should not do it at all.

“Why is it bad to use an unauthorized copy of a proprietary program? Because it’s proprietary! So an unauthorized copy is almost as nasty as an authorized copy of the same program. They are both nasty because they are proprietary. The users don’t have control over them. If they pay developer – that makes it worse, because they are rewarding this delinquency. That’s why the authorized copy is worse. But they are both bad because they are both proprietary software. If you want freedom, you have to get rid of them both, because they both control you,” he explained.

“I don’t use that software. If you offered me an authorized copy and you wanted to pay me a million dollars to take it, I still wouldn’t take it, unless I could throw it away immediately. Yeah – if I could take the million dollars and throw away the program, then I would say yes,” Stallman added.

The visionary says the shrinking of software development industry, should that be caused by wider introduction of free software, would be absolutely irrelevant in the face of the benefit would bring.

“Who cares? What good is a so-called industry that’s creating tools to subjugate people? I won’t use the non-free software at all! I dedicate my effort to getting away from it! So if they stop making it – that would be great! I wish they would. I hope for the day when they won’t make non-free software anymore,” he said.

Certainly, such a turn of events may damage innovative industries, but Stallman says the direction where software development heads now harms it more anyway.

“With software patents the US has become a dangerous place for software development, including innovative software development, because when a program is innovative, that means it has some new ideas in it. But it also has lots of well-known ideas in it. A large program combines thousands of ideas. So if you have some new ideas and you want to use them, in order to use them you have to combine them with a lot of other ideas that are well-known. And if you are not allowed to do that because those other ideas are patented, you can’t use your new idea,” he explained.

For answers to your questions asked via Twitter and Facebook, watch the full video version of the interview.

Also don’t miss RT’s Spotlight program on December 17, in which Richard Stallman elaborated on his convictions and activism.
https://rt.com/news/richard-stallman-free-software-875/





The World’s First Computer Password? It Was Useless Too
Robert McMillan

If you’re like most people, you’re annoyed by passwords. You’ve got dozens to remember — some of them tortuously complex — and on any given day, as you read e-mails, send tweets, and order groceries online, you’re bound to forget one, or at least mistype it. You may even be one of those unfortunate people who’ve had a password stolen, thanks to the dodgy security on the machines that store them.

But who’s to blame? Who invented the computer password?

Like the invention of the wheel or the story of the doorknob, the password’s creation is shrouded in the mists of history. Romans used them. Shakespeare kicks off Hamlet with one — “Long live the King” — when Bernardo must prove he’s a loyal soldier of the King of Denmark. But where did the first computer password show up?

It probably arrived at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the mid-1960s, when researchers at the university built a massive time-sharing computer called CTSS. The punchline is that even then, passwords didn’t protect users as well as they could have. Technology changes. But, then again, it doesn’t.

Nearly all of the computer historians contacted by Wired in the past few weeks said that the first password must have come from MIT’s Compatible Time-Sharing System. In geek circles, it’s famous. CTSS pioneered many of the building blocks of computing as we know it today: things like e-mail, virtual machines, instant messaging, and file sharing.

Fernando Corbató — the man who shepherded the CTSS project back in the mid-1960s — is a little reluctant to take credit. “Surely there must be some antecedents for this mechanism,” he told us, before questioning whether the CTSS was beaten to the punch by IBM’s $30 million Sabre ticketing system, a contraption built in 1960, back when $30 million could buy you a handful of jetliners. But when we contacted IBM, it wasn’t sure.

According to Corbató, even though the MIT computer hackers were breaking new ground with much of what they did, passwords were pretty much a no-brainer. “The key problem was that we were setting up multiple terminals which were to be used by multiple persons but with each person having his own private set of files,” he told Wired. “Putting a password on for each individual user as a lock seemed like a very straightforward solution.”

Back in the ’60s, there were other options, according to Fred Schneider, a computer science professor at Cornell University. The CTSS guys could have gone for knowledge-based authentication, where instead of a password, the computer asks you for something that other people probably don’t know — your mother’s maiden name, for example.

But in the early days of computing, passwords were surely smaller and easier to store than the alternative, Schneider says. A knowledge-based system “would have required storing a fair bit of information about a person, and nobody wanted to devote many machine resources to this authentication stuff.”

The irony is that the MIT researchers who pioneered the passwords didn’t really care much about security. CTSS may also have been the first system to experience a data breach. One day in 1966, a software bug jumbled up the system’s welcome message and its master password file so that anyone who logged in was presented with the entire list of CTSS passwords. But that’s not the good story.

Twenty-five years after the fact, Allan Scherr, a Ph.D. researcher at MIT in the early ’60s, came clean about the earliest documented case of password theft.

In the spring of 1962, Scherr was looking for a way to bump up his usage time on CTSS. He had been allotted four hours per week, but it wasn’t nearly enough time to run the detailed performance simulations he’d designed for the new computer system. So he simply printed out all of the passwords stored on the system.

“There was a way to request files to be printed offline by submitting a punched card,” he remembered in a pamphlet written last year to commemorate the invention of the CTSS. “Late one Friday night, I submitted a request to print the password files and very early Saturday morning went to the file cabinet where printouts were placed and took the listing.”

To spread the guilt around, Scherr then handed the passwords over to other users. One of them — J.C.R. Licklieder — promptly started logging into the account of the computer lab’s director Robert Fano, and leaving “taunting messages” behind.

Scherr left MIT in May 1965 to take a job at IBM, but 25 years later he confessed to Professor Fano in person. “He assured me that my Ph.D. would not be revoked.”
http://www.wired.com/wiredenterprise...uter-password/





Tim Berners-Lee. Confirming The Exact Location Where the Web Was Invented
David Galbraith

I wrote to Tim Berners-Lee after exploring CERN last week, looking for the location where the web was invented, his replies regarding the exact locations are below (I’ve put up photos of the excursion as an Oobject list, [url=http://www.oobject.com/category/oobject-search-for-web-birthplace-at-cern]here[/url).
[ Update, Jan 2012: One of the more interesting consequences of the details below, that hasn't been picked up anywhere, is that technically the web was invented in France, not Switzerland.

I'll bet if you asked every French politician where the web was invented not a single one would know this. The Franco-Swiss border runs through the CERN campus and building 31 is literally just a few feet into France. However, there is no explicit border within CERN and the main entrance is in Switzerland, so the situation of which country it was invented in is actually quite a tricky one. The current commemorative plaque, which is outside a row of offices where people other than Tim Berners-Lee worked on the web, is in Switzerland. To add to the confusion, in case Tim thought of the web at home, his home was in France but he temporarily moved to rented accommodation in Switzerland, just around the time the web was developed. So although, strictly speaking, France is the birthplace of the web it would be fair to say that it happened in building 31 at CERN but not in any particular country! How delightfully appropriate for an invention which breaks down physical borders. ]

There is a plaque in a corridor in building 2, but no specific offices are indicated and there is some ambiguity as to what happened where, in building 31. Thomas Madsen-Mygdal has a gallery showing locations in building 31 and 513, but there are very few places on the web documenting these places. I took photos of the plaque, such as the one here, with Creative Commons licenses, so that they could be used elsewhere.

The reason I’m interested in this is that recognizing the exact places involved in the birth of the web is a celebration of knowledge itself rather than belief, opinion or allegiance, both politically and spiritually neutral and something that everyone can potentially enjoy and feel a part of.

Secondly, many places of lesser importance are very carefully preserved. The place where the web was invented is arguably the most important place in 2 millennia of Swiss history and of global historical importance.

Lastly, this kind of information is perhaps overlooked as being so obvious as to be common knowledge, exactly the sort of thing that sometimes gets forgotten. I’m not suggesting that the locations have indeed been overlooked, but they are not preserved or all indicated and the people I spoke to didn’t know the full details. So just in case…

DG: Where were you (at CERN and which building/rooms or home) when you thought of or were writing the original proposal for the web in 1989?

TBL: I wrote the proposal, and developed the code in Building 31.
I was on the second (in the European sense) floor, if you come out of the elevator (a very slow freight elevator at the time anyway) and turn immediately right you would then walk into one of the two offices I inhabited. The two offices (which of course may have been rearranged since then) were different sizes: the one to the left (a gentle R turn out of the elevator) benefited from extra length as it was by neither staircase nor elevator.
The one to the right (or a sharp R turn out of the elevator) was shorter and the one I started in. I shared it for a long time with Claude Bizeau.
I think I wrote the memo there. [ dg: proposal for the web was written, i.e. web was 'invented' in room 2-010 ]
When I actually started work coding up the WWW code in September 1990, I moved into the larger office. That is where I had the NeXT machine, as I remember it. [ dg: larger office, i.e. where first web server was and software was written, where web was 'created', is room 2-012 ]
The second floor had pale grey linoleum, the first floor, where Peggie Rimmer had her office, had red lino; the third floor had pale yellow lino. The ground floor had I think green lino. Also on the second floor was the Documentation et Données, later Computing and Networking, HQ with David Williams at one point heading it up.

DG: For the development of the web, can you remember which offices were used in building 31 or off the corridor shown in building 2 in the attached image?

TBL: Building 2 I never had an office in. Robert Caulliau did, and various students, including Henrik Frysyk Nielsen and Hakon Lie, and Ari Luotonen, worked there.

DG: Was some of it inspired at home and was that here: Rue de la Mairie, Cessy (France)?

TBL: My house was [exact address removed since people live there] Rue de la Mairie, but I rented it out for some time around 1990 and actually lived in Les Champs Blancs, Chavannes de Bois [Switzerland]. But then we moved back to Cessy for a year before leaving.
http://davidgalbraith.org/uncategorized/the-exact-location-where-the-web-was-invented/2343/





The New French Hacker-Artist Underground
Jon Lackman

A mysterious band of hacker-artists is prowling the network of tunnels below Paris, secretly refurbishing the city's neglected treasures.

Thirty years ago, in the dead of night, a group of six Parisian teenagers pulled off what would prove to be a fateful theft. They met up at a small cafè near the Eiffel Tower to review their plans—again—before heading out into the dark. Lifting a grate from the street, they descended a ladder to a tunnel, an unlit concrete passageway carrying a cable off into the void. They followed the cable to its source: the basement of the ministry of telecommunications. Horizontal bars blocked their way, but the skinny teens all managed to wedge themselves through and ascend to the building’s ground floor. There they found three key rings in the security office and a logbook indicating that the guards were on their rounds.

But the guards were nowhere to be seen. The six interlopers combed the building for hours, encountering no one, until they found what they were looking for at the bottom of a desk drawer—maps of the ministry’s citywide network of tunnels. They took one copy of each map, then returned the keys to the security office. Heaving the ministry’s grand front door ajar, they peeked outside; no police, no passersby, no problem. They exited onto the empty Avenue de Sègur and walked home as the sun rose. The mission had been so easy that one of the youths, Natacha, seriously asked herself if she had dreamed it. No, she concluded: “In a dream, it would have been more complicated.”

This stealthy undertaking was not an act of robbery or espionage but rather a crucial operation in what would become an association called UX, for “Urban eXperiment.” UX is sort of like an artist’s collective, but far from being avant-garde—confronting audiences by pushing the boundaries of the new—its only audience is itself. More surprising still, its work is often radically conservative, intemperate in its devotion to the old. Through meticulous infiltration, UX members have carried out shocking acts of cultural preservation and repair, with an ethos of “restoring those invisible parts of our patrimony that the government has abandoned or doesn’t have the means to maintain.” The group claims to have conducted 15 such covert restorations, often in centuries-old spaces, all over Paris.

What has made much of this work possible is UX’s mastery, established 30 years ago and refined since, of the city’s network of underground passageways—hundreds of miles of interconnected telecom, electricity, and water tunnels, sewers, catacombs, subways, and centuries-old quarries. Like computer hackers who crack digital networks and surreptitiously take control of key machines, members of UX carry out clandestine missions throughout Paris’ supposedly secure underground tunnels and rooms. The group routinely uses the tunnels to access restoration sites and stage film festivals, for example, in the disused basements of government buildings.

UX’s most sensational caper (to be revealed so far, at least) was completed in 2006. A cadre spent months infiltrating the Pantheon, the grand structure in Paris that houses the remains of France’s most cherished citizens. Eight restorers built their own secret workshop in a storeroom, which they wired for electricity and Internet access and outfitted with armchairs, tools, a fridge, and a hot plate. During the course of a year, they painstakingly restored the Pantheon’s 19th- century clock, which had not chimed since the 1960s. Those in the neighborhood must have been shocked to hear the clock sound for the first time in decades: the hour, the half hour, the quarter hour.

Eight years ago, the French government didn’t know UX existed. When their exploits first trickled out into the press, the group’s members were deemed by some to be dangerous outlaws, thieves, even potential inspiration for terrorists. Still, a few officials can’t conceal their admiration. Mention UX to Sylvie Gautron of the Paris police—her specialty is monitoring the city’s old quarries—and she breaks into a wide smile. In an era when ubiquitous GPS and microprecise mapping threaten to squeeze all the mystery from our great world cities, UX seems to know, and indeed to own, a whole other, deeper, hidden layer of Paris. It claims the entire city, above- and belowground, as its canvas; its members say they can access every last government building, every narrow telecom tunnel. Does Gautron believe this? “It’s possible,” she says. “Everything they do is very intense.”

It is not at all hard to steal a Picasso, Lazar Kunstmann tells me. One of UX’s early members and the group’s unofficial spokesman, Kunstmann—the name is almost certainly a pseudonym, given its superhero-like German meaning, “Art-man”—is fortyish, bald, black-clad, warm, and witty. We’re sitting in the back room of a student cafè, downing espressos and discussing the spectacular theft in May 2010 of 100 million euros’ worth of paintings from the Museum of Modern Art of the City of Paris. He disputes the contention of a police spokesperson that this was a sophisticated operation. According to an article published in Le Monde, a solitary individual unscrewed a window frame at 3:50 am, cut a padlock from a gate, and strode through the galleries lifting one work each by Lèger, Braque, Matisse, Modigliani, and Picasso. “The thief was perfectly informed,” the officer told the newspaper. If he hadn’t known the window had a vibration detector, he would’ve just broken it. If he hadn’t known the alarm and part of the security system were broken, he wouldn’t have wandered throughout the museum. If he hadn’t known the schedule of night rounds, he wouldn’t have arrived in the middle of the longest quiet period.

Impressive, right? No, Kunstmann says. “He ascertained that nothing was working,” Kunstmann sighs, knowing full well the shoddy security of the museum in question. “The exterior is full of graffiti artists, the homeless, and crack smokers,” he goes on. This would have made it easy for the thief to blend in and surreptitiously watch the windows all night, observing how the guards circulated.

A serious thief, Kunstmann says, would have taken an entirely different approach. In the same building, a sprawling and grand old structure called the Palais de Tokyo, is a restaurant that stays open until midnight. An intelligent thief would order a coffee there and then wander off through the building. “Lots of things have alarms,” Kunstmann goes on. “But you try to set them off and they don’t sound! Why? Because they don’t get turned on until 2 am.” (The museum claims that the alarms work 24 hours a day.) Moreover, there are whole stretches of wall where all that separates the museum from the rest of the building is a flimsy drywall partition. “You just—” Kunstmann makes a punching motion with his hand. “If the guy had been at all professional, that’s what he would have done.”

UX has made a study of museum security, in keeping with its concern for Paris’ vulnerable treasures—a concern not always shared by the city’s major cultural institutions. Once, after a UX member discovered appalling security lapses in a major museum, she wrote a memo detailing them—and left it, in the middle of the night, on the desk of the security director. Rather than fix the problems, the director went to the police, demanding they press charges against the perpetrators. (The police declined, though they did tell UX to cool it.) Kunstmann feels sure that nothing has changed since the break-in at the Museum of Modern Art; the security remains just as subpar as ever, he says.

Kunstmann has a gloomy view of contemporary civilization, and in his eyes this affair illustrates many of its worst faults—its fatalism, complacency, ignorance, parochialism, and negligence. French officials, he says, bother to protect and restore only the patrimony adored by millions—the Louvre, for example. Lesser-known sites are neglected, and if they happen to be out of public view—underground, say—they disintegrate totally, even when all that’s needed is a hundred-dollar leak repair. UX tends the black sheep: the odd, the unloved, the forgotten artifacts of French civilization.

It’s difficult, though, to give an accounting of just how extensive those labors of love have been: The group cherishes its secrecy, and its known successes have been revealed only inadvertently. The public learned of the group’s underground cinema after a member’s bitter ex-girlfriend told the police. Reporters caught wind of the Pantheon operation because UX members erred in supposing they could safely invite the building’s director to maintain his newly fixed clock (more on that later). In general, UX sees communicating with outsiders as perilous and unrewarding. Kunstmann does tell me a story from a recent job, but even that is shrouded in misdirection. Some members had just infiltrated a public building when they noticed kids horsing around on the scaffolding at a construction site across the street, climbing through open windows, and doing dangerous stunts on the roof. Pretending to be a neighbor, one member phoned the foreman to warn him but was chagrined at the response: “Instead of saying, ‘Thanks, I guess I’ll close the windows,’ the guy says, ‘What the fuck do I care?’”

An outsider might wonder whether the teens who founded UX were really so different from those thrill seekers across the street today. Would they rat out their former selves? But when UX members risk arrest, they do so with a rigorous, almost scientific attitude toward the various crafts they aim to preserve and extend. Their approach is to explore and experiment all through the city. Based on members’ interests, UX has developed a cellular structure, with subgroups specializing in cartography, infiltration, tunneling, masonry, internal communications, archiving, restoration, and cultural programming. Its 100-odd members are free to change roles and are given access to all tools at the group’s disposal. There is no manifesto, no charter, no bylaws—save that all members preserve its secrecy. Membership is by invitation only; when the group notices people already engaged in UX-like activities, it initiates a discussion about joining forces. While there is no membership fee, members contribute what they can to projects.

I can’t help but ask: Did UX steal the paintings from the Museum of Modern Art? Wouldn’t that be the perfect way to alert the French to the appalling job their government does protecting national treasures? Kunstmann denies it with a convincing curtness. “That,” he says, “is not our style.”

The first experiment by UX, in September 1981, was an accidental one. A Parisian middle schooler named Andrei was trying to impress a couple of older classmates, boasting that he and his friend Peter often snuck into places and were about to hit the Pantheon, an enormous former church that towers over the fifth arrondissement. Andrei got in so deep with his boast that to save face he had to follow through—with his new friends in tow. Like Claudia and Jamie in that famous children’s book From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler, they hid out inside the building until it closed. Their nocturnal occupation turned out to be shockingly easy—they encountered no guards or alarms—and the experience electrified them. They thought: What else could we do?

Kunstmann, a classmate of Andrei and Peter’s, joined the group early on. They quickly branched out from mere infiltration. Obtaining the tunnel maps from the ministry of telecommunications and other sources greatly expanded their access. Many Parisian buildings connect to these passages through their basements, which are as badly secured as the tunnels themselves. Most officials, Kunstmann says, act as if they believe in this absurd principle: Tunnel access is forbidden, thus people don’t go there. This, he adds sardonically, is “a flawless conclusion—and what’s more, a very practical one, because if people don’t go there, then it’s unnecessary to do more than lock the entrances.”

It wasn’t until I went down into the tunnels myself—which is illegal and punishable by a fine of up to 60 euros, though explorers rarely get caught—that I understood why French officials are so complacent. Finding an unlocked entrance, without UX’s know-how, required a 45-minute walk from the nearest subway. UX has access to dry and spacious tunnel networks, but the more easily entered ones that I traveled that day were often tiny and half-flooded. By the time I’d retraced my steps, I was exhausted, filthy, and bleeding all over from scrapes.

In some places, UX has been able to create covert connections between networks, using (among other tricks) an invention they call the rolling basin. This is a passage in the bottom of a tunnel that appears to be a grate with water under it; in fact, both grate and water are part of a movable tray on rollers. Voilè0—a trapdoor to another tunnel in a different network. The tray itself is made of concrete, so even if someone raps it with a stick, it sounds solid. Kunstmann says UX has a certain weakness for such contrivances but will never possess enough time and cash to build them as extensively as he’d like. “If tomorrow everyone in UX became billionaires, we’d set dues at a billion euros,” he jokes. (But, he adds, “we’ll never be billionaires, because we’re working as little as possible so we can spend as much time as possible on UX.”)

So what does the group do with all this access? Among other things, it has mounted numerous clandestine theater productions and film festivals. On a typical festival evening, they screen at least two films that they feel share a nonobvious yet provocative connection. They don’t explain the connection, leaving it up to the audience to try to discover it. One summer, the group mounted a film festival devoted to the theme of “urban deserts”—the forgotten and underutilized spaces in a city. They naturally decided the ideal venue for such a festival would be in just such an abandoned site. They chose a room beneath the Palais de Chaillot they’d long known of and enjoyed unlimited access to. The building was then home to Paris’ famous Cinèmathèque Franèaise, making it doubly appropriate. They set up a bar, a dining room, a series of salons, and a small screening room that accommodated 20 viewers, and they held festivals there every summer for years. “Every neighborhood cinema should look like that,” Kunstmann says.

The restoration of the Pantheon clock was carried out by a UX subgroup called Untergunther, whose members are devoted specifically to restoration. The Pantheon was a particularly resonant choice of site, since it’s where UX began, and the group had surreptitiously screened films, exhibited art, and mounted plays there. During one such event in 2005, UX cofounder Jean-Baptiste Viot (one of the few members who uses his real name) took a close look at the building’s defunct Wagner clock—an engineering marvel from the 19th century that replaced an earlier timepiece. (Records indicate the building had a clock as far back as 1790.)

Viot had admired the Wagner ever since he first visited the building. He had meanwhile become a professional horologist working for the elite firm Breguet. That September, Viot persuaded seven other UX members to join him in repairing the clock. They’d been contemplating the project for years, but now it seemed urgent: Oxidation had so crippled the works that they would soon become impossible to fix without re-creating, rather than restoring, almost every part. “That wouldn’t be a restored clock, but a facsimile,” Kunstmann says. As the project began, it took on an almost mystical significance for the team. Paris, as they saw it, was the center of France and was once the center of Western civilization; the Latin Quarter was Paris’ historic intellectual center; the Pantheon stands in the Latin Quarter and is dedicated to the great men of French history, many of whose remains are housed within; and in its interior lay a clock, beating like a heart, until it suddenly was silenced. Untergunther wanted to restart the heart of the world. The eight shifted all their free time to the project.

They first established a workshop high up in the building, just below its dome, on a floor where no one (including guards) ever went anymore—”a sort of floating space,” as Kunstmann describes the room, punctuated by narrow slits for windows. “It looked down on all of Paris from a height of 15 stories. From the outside it resembled a kind of flying saucer; from the inside, a bunker.” The workshop was outfitted with eight overstuffed armchairs, a table, bookshelves, a minibar, and red velvet drapes to moderate the ambient temperature. “Every element had been conceived to fold up into wooden crates, like the ones visible throughout the monument,” Kunstmann says. In the dead of night, they climbed endless stairs, hauling up the lumber, drills, saws, clock repair equipment, and everything else required. They updated the workshop’s outdated electrical wiring. They spent 4,000 euros on materials, in all, out of their own pockets. On the terrace outside they set up a vegetable garden.

Like at the Museum of Modern Art, where a thief made off with millions in precious art with shocking ease, security at the Pantheon was slipshod. “No one, neither police nor passersby, worried over people entering and leaving the Pantheon by the front door,” Kunstmann says. Nevertheless, the eight equipped themselves with official-looking fake badges. Each had a photograph, a microchip, a hologram of the monument, and a barcode that was “totally useless but impressive,” Kunstmann says. Only very rarely did passing policemen ask questions. At most, it went something like this:

“You’re working at night? Can we see your badges?”

“Here.”

“OK, thanks.”

Once the workshop was complete and thoroughly cleaned, the eight got to work. The first step was to understand how the clock had gotten so degraded—”a sort of autopsy,” Kunstmann says. What they discovered looked like sabotage. It appeared that someone, presumably a Pantheon employee tired of winding the clock once a week, had bludgeoned the escape wheel with an iron bar.

They brought the clock’s mechanism up to the workshop. Viot trained the group in clock repair. First, they cleaned it with what’s called the clockmaker’s bath. This started with 3 liters of water carried up from the public bathrooms on the ground floor. To that was added 500 grams of soft, highly soluble soap, 25 centiliters of ammonia, and 1 tablespoon of oxalic acid—all mixed at a temperature of more than 280 degrees Fahrenheit. With this solution, the group scrubbed and polished every surface. Then they repaired the mechanism’s glass cabinet, replaced broken pulleys and cables, and re-created from scratch the sabotaged escape wheel (a toothed wheel that manages the clock’s rotation) and missing parts like the pendulum bob.

As soon as it was done, in late summer 2006, UX told the Pantheon about the successful operation. They figured the administration would happily take credit for the restoration itself and that the staff would take over the job of maintaining the clock. They notified the director, Bernard Jeannot, by phone, then offered to elaborate in person. Four of them came—two men and two women, including Kunstmann and the restoration group’s leader, a woman in her forties who works as a photographer—and were startled when Jeannot refused to believe their story. They were even more shocked when, after they showed him their workshop (“I think I need to sit down,” he murmured), the administration later decided to sue UX, at one point seeking up to a year of jail time and 48,300 euros in damages. Jeannot’s then-deputy, Pascal Monnet, is now the Pantheon’s director, and he has gone so far as to hire a clockmaker to restore the clock to its previous condition by resabotaging it. But the clockmaker refused to do more than disengage a part—the escape wheel, the very part that had been sabotaged the first time. UX slipped in shortly thereafter to take the wheel into its own possession, for safekeeping, in the hope that someday a more enlightened administration will welcome its return.

Meanwhile, the government lost its lawsuit. It filed another, which it also lost. There is no law in France, it turns out, against the improvement of clocks. In court, one prosecutor characterized her own government’s charges against Untergunther as “stupid.” But the clock is still immobile today, its hands frozen at 10:51.

The members of UX are not rebels, subversives, guerrillas, or freedom fighters, let alone terrorists. They didn’t repair the clock to embarrass the state, nor do they entertain dreams of overthrowing it. Everything they do is intended for their own consumption; indeed, if they can be accused of anything, it’s narcissism. The group is partly responsible for the fact that it is misunderstood. Its members acknowledge that most of its external communications are intended as misdirection—a way to discourage public officials or others from meddling in its operations. They try to hide themselves within the larger mass of Parisians who venture into the city’s recesses simply as partiers or tourists.

Why do they care about these places? Kunstmann answers this question with questions of his own. “Do you have plants in your home?” he asks impatiently. “Do you water them every day? Why do you water them? Because,” he goes on, “otherwise they’re ratty little dead things.” That’s why these forgotten cultural icons are important—”because we have access to them, we see them.” Their goal, he says, isn’t necessarily to make all these things function once again. “If we restore a bomb shelter, we’re certainly not hoping for new bombardments so people can go use it again. If we restore an early 20th-century subway station, we don’t imagine Electricitè de France will ask us to transform 200,000 volts to 20,000. No, we just want to get as close as possible to a functioning state.”

UX has a simple reason for keeping the sites a secret even after it has finished restoring them: The same anonymity that originally deprived them of caretakers “is paradoxically what’s going to protect them afterward” from looters and graffiti, Kunstmann says. They know they’ll never get to the vast majority of interesting sites that need restoration. Yet, “despite all that, the satisfaction of knowing that some, maybe a tiny fraction, won’t disappear because we’ll have been able to restore them is an extremely great satisfaction.”

I ask him to elaborate on their choice of projects. “We can say very little,” he replies, “because to describe the sites even a bit can give away their location.” That said, one site is “belowground, in the south of Paris, not very far from here. It was discovered relatively recently but elicited very strong interest. It totally contradicts the history of the building above it. In examining what’s belowground, one notices that it doesn’t correspond to the information one can obtain about the history of the site. It’s history in reverse, in a way; the site was dedicated to an activity, structures were placed there, but in fact the site had been dedicated to this activity for quite a long time.”

Walking across the Latin Quarter alone on a balmy evening, I try to guess what site Kunstmann is describing, and the city transforms before my eyes, below my feet. Did counterfeiters once operate out of the basement of the Paris Mint? Was the Saint-Sulpice church founded on the site of an underground pagan temple? Suddenly, all of Paris seems ripe with possibility: Every keyhole a peephole, every tunnel a passageway, every darkened building a theater.

But it’s also clear that UX retains its love affair with its first and best canvas, the Pantheon. While this story was closing, a colleague needed to reach Kunstmann about a fact-checking question. Kunstmann had told her to call “any time,” so even though it was 1 am in Paris, she rang. When he picked up the phone, he was panting—from moving a couch, he said. She asked her question: When the clock had stopped chiming after the repair, what time remained frozen on its face? As it happened, Kunstmann was in the Pantheon at that very moment. “Hold on,” he said. “I’ll look.”
http://www.wired.com/magazine/2012/01/ff_ux/all/1





Hackers Manipulated Railway Computers, TSA Memo Says
Aliya Sternstein

Hackers, possibly from abroad, executed an attack on a Northwest rail company's computers that disrupted railway signals for two days in December, according to a government memo recapping outreach with the transportation sector during the emergency.

On Dec. 1, train service on the unnamed railroad "was slowed for a short while" and rail schedules were delayed about 15 minutes after the interference, stated a Transportation Security Administration summary of a Dec. 20 meeting about the episode obtained by Nextgov. The following day, shortly before rush hour, a "second event occurred" that did not affect schedules, TSA officials added. The agency is responsible for protecting all U.S. transportation systems, not just airports.

"Amtrak and the freight rails needed to have context regarding their information technical centers," the memo stated. "Cyberattacks were not a major concern to most rail operators" at the time, adding, "the conclusion that rail was affect [sic] by a cyberattack is very serious."

While government and critical industry sectors have made strides in sharing threat intelligence, less attention has been paid to translating those analyses into usable information for the people in the trenches, who are running the subways, highways and other transit systems, some former federal officials say. The recent TSA outreach was unique in that officials told operators how the breach interrupted the railway's normal activities, said Steve Carver, a retired Federal Aviation Administration information security manager, now an aviation industry consultant, who reviewed the memo.

"This TSA program is a start to bring, at a higher level, an understanding of the national impact to cyberattacks," Carver said. The U.S. Computer Emergency Readiness Team and the Pentagon's National Security Agency "have provided great information on the particular threat. They don't say how it has affected others. TSA tells you how it affected others."

The incident summary praised several TSA personnel for explaining the unfolding situation in context. When TSA investigators began to suspect the exploit was an intentional act rather than a glitch, they acted under the assumption it could present a broader danger to the U.S. transportation system, according to the memo.

"Some of the possible causes lead to consideration of an overseas cyberattack," the write-up stated. Investigators discovered two Internet access locations, or IP addresses, for the intruders on Dec. 1 and a third on Dec. 2, the document noted, but it does not say in which country they were located.

"Information stating the incidents were a targeted attack was not sent out" until midday on Monday, Dec. 5, according to the memo. The data that train operators needed to diffuse the situation was made available to them, officials wrote. Alerts listing the three IP addresses went out to several hundred railroad firms and public transportation agencies, as well as to partners in Canada.

"The processes set in place for government to work with the industry in real-time communications regarding a cyber event aligned superbly," the recap stated.

Participants in the Dec. 20 meeting included representatives from information technology firm Indus Corp., the Association of American Railroads, and Boeing Co., as well as government officials from TSA, the Homeland Security Department's cybersecurity divisions, the Transportation Department, and the U.S. Coast Guard.

But, on Monday, officials at the Homeland Security Department, which oversees TSA, said following additional in-depth analysis, it appears that the rail infiltration may not have been a targeted attack.

"On December 1, a Pacific Northwest transportation entity reported that a potential cyber incident could affect train service," DHS spokesman Peter Boogaard said. "The Department of Homeland Security, the FBI and our federal partners remained in communication with representatives from the transportation entity in support of their mitigation activities and with state and local government officials to send alerts to notify the transportation community of the anomalous activity as it was occurring."

Based on the memo, it is unclear if other railway companies have experienced similar network incidents. Companies often are reluctant to discuss computer breaches openly for fear of scaring off customers. And, sometimes, businesses never detect the intrusions, they add.

For government to improve cyber emergency response, "the biggest thing is to start with the communications staff," Carver recommends. "There needs to be an interpreter who can take the information coming out of the U.S. CERT, take that, extract that out, and determine what it means for operations."

Rail industry representatives said they were not at liberty to discuss the contents of the government memo.
http://www.nextgov.com/nextgov/ng_20120123_3491.php





Railroad Association Says Hack Memo Was Inaccurate
Kim Zetter

A government memo saying a railway was hacked in a targeted attack was incorrect, according to a spokeswoman for the Association of American Railroads.

“There was no targeted computer-based attack on a railroad,” according to spokeswoman Holly Arthur. “The memo on which the story was based has numerous inaccuracies.”

Asked if there was an “untargeted” incident that disrupted train service nonetheless, Arthur declined to comment, leaving the public in the dark about what exactly was right and wrong in the memo.

A DHS spokesman had previously told Threat Level on Tuesday that the incident wasn’t a “targeted” attack, but refused to provide additional details to explain the exact nature of the incident that affected the railway service.

Sources, who asked not to be identified, have told Threat Level that the person who wrote the memo misunderstood what was said about the incident in a meeting and wrote that it was a targeted attack focused on the railway, when in fact it was not targeted at the railroad.

Though no one is willing to provide details about what exactly happened, it appears that a cyber incident did occur, but it may have been aimed at another entity, not the railway. Somehow the railway suffered collateral effects from that attack. No one has been willing to say how exactly that occurred.

The incident went public earlier this week when NextGov reported that it had obtained a government memo written by an unidentified person, which described a breach that had occurred at an unidentified railway in the Pacific Northwest in December.

According to the memo, train service on the railroad “was slowed for a short while” on Dec. 1, and rail schedules were delayed about 15 minutes after the interference. The next day, shortly before rush hour, a “second event occurred,” but this one did not affect schedules.

An investigation determined that hackers — possibly from overseas — had penetrated the system from three IP addresses, according to the memo, which did not name the country from which the hack occurred.

The AAR spokeswoman said her organization was concerned that the NextGov story “leaves readers with the impression that railroads are not taking effective steps to actively secure our networks from cyber attacks.”

“In addition to security measures, railroads like other high tech industries have multiple backup capabilities and ultimately manual operation procedures to address virtually any type of disruption,” she wrote in an e-mail, without elaborating on what those backup capabilities were or whether they were at play in the December incident.
http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2012/01/railroad-memo/





Hacking Stunt: Stealing Smartphone Crypto Keys Using Plain Old Radio

Smartphone radio-wave crypto grab to be demonstrated at RSA by Cryptography Research
Ellen Messmer

Encryption keys on smartphones can be stolen via a technique using radio waves, says one of the world's foremost crypto experts, Paul Kocher, whose firm Cryptography Research will demonstrate the hacking stunt with several types of smartphones at the upcoming RSA Conference in San Francisco next month.

Security: From Anonymous to Hackerazzi: The year in security mischief-making

"You tune to the right frequency," says Kocher, who described the hacking procedure as involving use of a radio device much like a common AM radio that will be set up within about 10 feet from the smartphone. The radio-based device will pick up electromagnetic waves occurring when the crypto libraries inside the smartphone are used, and computations can reveal the private key. "We're stealing the key as it's being used," he says, adding, "It's independent of key length."

Kocher says the goal of the hacking demo, which Cryptography Research will demonstrate throughout the RSA Conference at its booth, is not to disparage any particular smartphone manufacturer but to point out that the way crypto is used on devices can be improved.

"This is a problem that can be fixed," he says, noting Cryptography Research is working with at least one of the major smartphone makers, which he declined to name, on the issues around these types of radio-based attacks.
https://www.networkworld.com/news/2012/012612-rsa-crypto-keys-255379.html





Censoring of Tweets Sets Off #Outrage
Somini Sengupta

It started five years ago after a young engineer in San Francisco sketched out a quirky little Web tool for telling your friends what you were up to. It became a bullhorn for millions of people worldwide, especially vital in nations that tend to muzzle their own people.

But this week, in a sort of coming-of-age moment, Twitter announced that upon request, it would block certain messages in countries where they were deemed illegal. The move immediately prompted outcry, argument and even calls for a boycott from some users.

Twitter in turn sought to explain that this was the best way to comply with the laws of different countries. And the whole episode, swiftly amplified worldwide through Twitter itself, offered a telling glimpse into what happens when a scrappy Internet start-up tries to become a multinational business.

“Thank you for the #censorship, #twitter, with love from the governments of #Syria, #Bahrain, #Iran, #Turkey, #China, #Saudi and friends,” wrote Björn Nilsson, a user in Sweden.

Bianca Jagger asked, almost existentially, “How are we going to boycott #TWITTER?”

Zeynep Tufekci, an assistant professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, took the other side. “I’m defending Twitter’s policy because it is the one I hope others adopt: transparent, minimally compliant w/ law, user-empowering,” she wrote.

Twitter, like other Internet companies, has always had to remove content that is illegal in one country or another, whether it is a copyright violation, child pornography or something else. What is different about Twitter’s announcement is that it plans to redact messages only in those countries where they are illegal, and only if the authorities there make a valid request.

So if someone posts a message that insults the monarchy of Thailand, which is punishable by a jail term, it will be blocked and unavailable to Twitter users in that country, but still visible elsewhere. What is more, Twitter users in Thailand will be put on notice that something was removed: A gray box will show up in its place, with a clear note: “Tweet withheld,” it will read. “This tweet from @username has been withheld in: Thailand.”

Think of it as the digital equivalent of a newspaper responding to old-fashioned government censorship with a blank front page.

“We have always had the obligation to remove illegal content. This is a way to keep it up in places where we can,” said Alex Macgillivray, general counsel at Twitter. “We have been working on this awhile. We needed to figure out how to deal with this as a company.”

The majority of Twitter’s 100 million users are overseas and it has several offices abroad working to expand its business and drum up local advertising. Twitter’s president, Jack Dorsey, said this week that it would open an office in Germany, which prohibits Nazi material online and offline.

The announcement signals the choice that a service like Twitter has to make about its own existence: Should it be more of a free-speech tool that can be used in defiance of governments, as happened during the Arab Spring protests, or a commercial venture that necessarily must obey the laws of the lands where it seeks to attract customers and eventually make money?

Tim Wu, a professor at Columbia Law School and author of “The Master Switch,” said the changes could undermine the usefulness of Twitter in authoritarian countries.

“I don’t fault them for wanting to run a normal business,” he said. “It does suggest someone or something else needs to take Twitter’s place as a political tool.”

Professor Wu urged the company to use discretion: “Twitter needs to be careful not to be in a position where it’s no longer helpful to a rebellion against oppressive governments. It needs to remain its old self in some circumstances.”

Twitter’s policy of allowing its users to adopt pseudonyms made it particularly useful to many protest organizers in the Arab world, and its chief executive went so far as to call it “the free-speech wing of the free-speech party.”

But Professor Wu wondered aloud if the new policy would have allowed Egyptians to organize protests using the service.

Twitter insists its new system is a way to promote greater transparency, not less. The company says it will not filter content before it is posted. It will not remove material that may be offensive, only that which it thinks is illegal. And it said it would also try to notify users whose posts had been withheld by sending them an e-mail with an explanation.

The company identifies the locations of its users by looking at the Internet Protocol addresses of their computers or phones. But it also allows users to manually set their location or choose “worldwide.” Essentially that is a way to circumvent the blocking system entirely. A user in Syria can simply change her location setting to “worldwide” and see everything.

Jillian C. York, director for international freedom of expression at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a civil liberties group, successfully tried this herself after Twitter announced its new approach. “Unfortunately it is a necessary evil when offering a service in certain countries,” Ms. York said of the new system.

Critics on Twitter surmised that the company had been pressed to adopt country-specific censorship after a major investment by a Saudi prince, a theory that Mr. Macgillivray quickly dismissed..

Facebook also handles requests to remove content that is illegal in certain countries, though it does not explain what it removes and for what reason. In its search results, Google signals what it is required to redact under a certain country’s law — and in the case of YouTube, a Google product, it can block content country by country.

Twitter has followed in Google’s footsteps in another respect. It has opted to post some of the removal requests it receives on Chilling Effects, a site jointly run by the Electronic Frontier Foundation and several American universities. Mr. Macgillivray was previously on the legal team at Google and, as a student at Harvard, he worked on Chilling Effects.

“We have always tried to let people talk and tweet. That has not been good for despots,” Mr. Macgillivray said in response to the criticism. “There is no change in policy. What this does is it strengthens, when we are legally required to, our ability to withhold something and to let people know it has been withheld.”

Still, not long after the announcement, there were calls for a silent protest on Saturday — and naturally, a hashtag to go with it.

“I’m joining the #TwitterBlackout & won’t tweet tomorrow,” wrote a user identified as Omar Johani. “Time to go back to getting news 12 hours after it happened.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/28/technology/when-twitter-blocks-tweets-its-outrage.html





Banned Android Apps May Soon Have a Place to Go
Jared Newman

Despite the Android Market being more “open” than the iPhone App Store – there’s no approval process to get in — Google still bans Android apps on occasion, including emulators, legally-questionable music services, tethering apps and one-click root apps. Soon, these banned apps may have an app store to call their own.

Koushik Dutta, a developer of the popular CyanogenMod firmware for Android, is tossing around the idea of a black market app store — my words, not his – filled with apps that will only work on rooted Android phones.

“We also need an app store for apps that are getting shut down for no good reason, other than carrier, or some random corporation doesn’t like it,” Dutta wrote on Google+.

A “rooted” Android phone is roughly the equivalent of a jailbroken iPhone, allowing the user to tweak the phone in ways the manufacturer doesn’t allow out of the box. (One big difference, though: Android phones can install apps from outside the Android Market without rooting, while iPhones are restricted to the App Store.) Rooted users often install CyanogenMod, a fairly clean version of Android that removes any bloatware included with the phone.

Dutta hopes a CyanogenMod app store would cater to these users while also providing some revenue, which he says would go toward hardware costs and server costs for future versions.

I like the idea of an underground Android app store, but only if it’s done right. Because illicit apps can sometimes come with malware or adware, the CyanogenMod team should implement an approval process — something that even Google doesn’t do — just to weed out harmful software. With a low volume of exclusive, useful apps that are safe to use, the CyanogenMod team could be onto something.
http://techland.time.com/2012/01/23/banned-android-apps-may-soon-have-a-place-to-go/





Android Will be the Platform of Choice for Developers, Study Says
Roger Cheng

It seems the Android momentum can't be stopped.

This guy is everywhere now.

Google's Android will become the preeminent platform for developers over the next 12 months, edging ahead of Apple's iOS, according to a study by research firm Ovum. Nearly all developers, however, will support both platforms.

Ovum's call comes as Android continues to suck up market share, with more companies using the platform to crank out a wave of mobile devices. While iOS has seen its market share growth slow in the recent years, it has always been seen as a more lucrative location for developers to make money. As a result, most apps came to iOS first, and the other platforms second.

That, however, could all change in the coming months, Ovum said. Android's prevalence is getting hard to ignore, and developers have incorporated new business models such as advertising and in-app purchases to spur revenue.

Ovum also said there is growing developer interest in Windows Phone and BlackBerry OS. The results come as both Microsoft and Research in Motion attempt to woo developers over to their respective camps.

"The growing momentum behind Windows Phone indicates that Microsoft has managed to convince developers that its platform is worthy of investment; its challenge now is to persuade consumers," said Ovum analyst Adam Leach.

The study also said developers are abandoning mobile-centric development tools such as Java, Flash and WAP, and moving to HTML5, a Web-based standard that can run across multiple devices and platforms.
http://news.cnet.com/8301-1035_3-57363809-94/android-will-be-the-platform-of-choice-for-developers-study-says/





Massive Android Malware Op May Have Infected 5 Million Users

Many of the 13 'Android.Counterclank'-infected apps remain on the Android Market
Gregg Keizer

The largest-ever Android malware campaign may have duped as many as 5 million users into downloading infected apps from Google's Android Market, Symantec said today.

Dubbed "Android.Counterclank" by Symantec, the malware was packaged in 13 different apps from three different publishers, with titles ranging from "Sexy Girls Puzzle" to "Counter Strike Ground Force." Many of the infected apps were still available on the Android Market as of 3 p.m. ET Friday.

"They don't appear to be real publishers," Kevin Haley, a director with Symantec's security response team, said in an interview today. "These aren't rebundled apps, as we've seen so many times before."

Haley was referring to a common tactic by Android malware makers to repackage a legitimate app with attack code, then re-release it to the marketplace in the hope that users will confuse the fake with the real deal.

Symantec estimated the impact by combining the download totals -- which the Android Market shows as ranges -- of the 13 apps, arriving at a figure between 1 million on the low end and 5 million on the high. "Yes, this is the largest malware [outbreak] on the Android Market," said Haley.

Android.Counterclank is a Trojan horse that when installed on an Android smartphone collects a wide range of information, including copies of the bookmarks and the handset maker. It also modifies the browser's home page.

The hackers have monetized the malware by pushing unwanted advertisements to compromised Android phones.

Although the infected apps request an uncommonly large number of privileges -- something that the user must approve -- Haley argued that few people bother reading them before giving their okay.

"If you were the suspicious type, you might wonder why they're asking for permission to modify the browser or transmit GPS coordinates," said Haley. "But most people don't bother."

Android.Counterclank is a minor variation on an older Android Trojan horse called Android.Tonclank that was discovered in June 2011.

Some of the 13 apps that Symantec identified as infected have been on the Android Market for at least a month, according to the revision dates posted on the e-store. Symantec, however, discovered them only yesterday.

Users had noticed something fishy before then.

"The game is decent ... but every time you run this game, a 'search icon gets added randomly to one of your screens," said one user on Jan. 16 after downloading "Deal & Be Millionaire," one of the 13. "I keep deleting the icon, but it always reappears. If you tap the icon you get a page that looks suspiciously like the Google search page."

All 13 suspected apps are free for the downloading.

Symantec's researchers have told Google of their discovery, said Haley. Google, however, did not immediately reply to questions and a request for confirmation on the security firm's claims.

Haley said Symantec's researchers are still "peeling back the layers of the onion," and added that the company would publish more information on the threat as it unearthed details. "What's interesting here is that instead of taking legitimate apps, [malware authors] have created apps similar to legitimate ones," said Haley. "That, and the big numbers of downloads, of course."

Symantec has published a list of the 13 infected apps on its website.
https://www.computerworld.com/s/arti..._million_users





Android Tablets Closing In On iPad: Researcher

Tablet computers using Google's Android software narrowed the lead of Apple's iPad on the global market in the fourth quarter, research firm Strategy Analytics said on Thursday.

Global tablet shipments reached an all-time high of 26.8 million units in the fourth quarter, growing 2-1/2 fold from 10.7 million a year earlier, the research firm said.

"Dozens of Android models distributed across multiple countries by numerous brands such as Amazon, Samsung, Asus and others have been driving volumes," analyst Neil Mawston said in a statement.

Android's market share rose to 39 percent from 29 percent a year earlier, while Apple's share slipped to 58 percent from 68 percent a year before.

The tablet computer market grew 260 percent last year to 66.9 million units as consumers are increasingly buying tablets in preference to netbooks and even entry-level notebooks or desktops.

Strategy Analytics said Microsoft had a 1 percent share of the global tablet market last quarter.

(Reporting By Tarmo Virki; Editing by Tim Dobbyn)
http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/...80P0DT20120126





Apple Has Spent 100 Million+ Dollars On Android War
LiAqAt

The never-ending war on Android has cost Apple more than $100 million, according to latest estimates. While a huge chunk of that money was spent (read wasted) in claims against HTC.

Newsweek reporter Dan Lyons mentioned these figures in a blog post. He said,

“A person close to the situation tells me there’s a rumor going around among the lawyers that Apple spent $100 million just on its first set of claims against HTC. Who knows if it’s true, but if so, Apple didn’t get a lot for its money.”

So far, 84 claims have been filed against different Android manufacturers (HTC, Samsung etc.) for patent infringments, out of which only 10 were proved to have been infringed and only one ruling has gone in Apple’s favour.

“So Apple started out with 10 patents — presumably its best ones — and ended up with a tiny victory on just one. Was that worth $100 million?”

Actually, most of the infringements were a small feature of the software such as tapping phone number in an email or webpage to call or send a text — that means the other party can simply resolve that by either removing the feature or implement it in a different way, and that’s exactly what HTC and Samsung did. icon wink Apple Has Spent 100 Million+ Dollars On Android War

Using its patents to keep competitors out of the market has proved to be a bad idea for Apple. What you think of this? Let us know in comments.
http://www.gizmocrazed.com/2012/01/a...r-100-million/





In China, Human Costs Are Built Into an iPad
Charles Duhigg and David Barboza

The explosion ripped through Building A5 on a Friday evening last May, an eruption of fire and noise that twisted metal pipes as if they were discarded straws.

When workers in the cafeteria ran outside, they saw black smoke pouring from shattered windows. It came from the area where employees polished thousands of iPad cases a day.

Two people were killed immediately, and over a dozen others hurt. As the injured were rushed into ambulances, one in particular stood out. His features had been smeared by the blast, scrubbed by heat and violence until a mat of red and black had replaced his mouth and nose.

“Are you Lai Xiaodong’s father?” a caller asked when the phone rang at Mr. Lai’s childhood home. Six months earlier, the 22-year-old had moved to Chengdu, in southwest China, to become one of the millions of human cogs powering the largest, fastest and most sophisticated manufacturing system on earth. That system has made it possible for Apple and hundreds of other companies to build devices almost as quickly as they can be dreamed up.

“He’s in trouble,” the caller told Mr. Lai’s father. “Get to the hospital as soon as possible.”

In the last decade, Apple has become one of the mightiest, richest and most successful companies in the world, in part by mastering global manufacturing. Apple and its high-technology peers — as well as dozens of other American industries — have achieved a pace of innovation nearly unmatched in modern history.

However, the workers assembling iPhones, iPads and other devices often labor in harsh conditions, according to employees inside those plants, worker advocates and documents published by companies themselves. Problems are as varied as onerous work environments and serious — sometimes deadly — safety problems.

Employees work excessive overtime, in some cases seven days a week, and live in crowded dorms. Some say they stand so long that their legs swell until they can hardly walk. Under-age workers have helped build Apple’s products, and the company’s suppliers have improperly disposed of hazardous waste and falsified records, according to company reports and advocacy groups that, within China, are often considered reliable, independent monitors.

More troubling, the groups say, is some suppliers’ disregard for workers’ health. Two years ago, 137 workers at an Apple supplier in eastern China were injured after they were ordered to use a poisonous chemical to clean iPhone screens. Within seven months last year, two explosions at iPad factories, including in Chengdu, killed four people and injured 77. Before those blasts, Apple had been alerted to hazardous conditions inside the Chengdu plant, according to a Chinese group that published that warning.

“If Apple was warned, and didn’t act, that’s reprehensible,” said Nicholas Ashford, a former chairman of the National Advisory Committee on Occupational Safety and Health, a group that advises the United States Labor Department. “But what’s morally repugnant in one country is accepted business practices in another, and companies take advantage of that.”

Apple is not the only electronics company doing business within a troubling supply system. Bleak working conditions have been documented at factories manufacturing products for Dell, Hewlett-Packard, I.B.M., Lenovo, Motorola, Nokia, Sony, Toshiba and others.

Current and former Apple executives, moreover, say the company has made significant strides in improving factories in recent years. Apple has a supplier code of conduct that details standards on labor issues, safety protections and other topics. The company has mounted a vigorous auditing campaign, and when abuses are discovered, Apple says, corrections are demanded.

And Apple’s annual supplier responsibility reports, in many cases, are the first to report abuses. This month, for the first time, the company released a list identifying many of its suppliers.

But significant problems remain. More than half of the suppliers audited by Apple have violated at least one aspect of the code of conduct every year since 2007, according to Apple’s reports, and in some instances have violated the law. While many violations involve working conditions, rather than safety hazards, troubling patterns persist.

“Apple never cared about anything other than increasing product quality and decreasing production cost,” said Li Mingqi, who until April worked in management at Foxconn Technology, one of Apple’s most important manufacturing partners. Mr. Li, who is suing Foxconn over his dismissal, helped manage the Chengdu factory where the explosion occurred.

“Workers’ welfare has nothing to do with their interests,” he said.

Some former Apple executives say there is an unresolved tension within the company: executives want to improve conditions within factories, but that dedication falters when it conflicts with crucial supplier relationships or the fast delivery of new products. Tuesday, Apple reported one of the most lucrative quarters of any corporation in history, with $13.06 billion in profits on $46.3 billion in sales. Its sales would have been even higher, executives said, if overseas factories had been able to produce more.

Executives at other corporations report similar internal pressures. This system may not be pretty, they argue, but a radical overhaul would slow innovation. Customers want amazing new electronics delivered every year.

“We’ve known about labor abuses in some factories for four years, and they’re still going on,” said one former Apple executive who, like others, spoke on the condition of anonymity because of confidentiality agreements. “Why? Because the system works for us. Suppliers would change everything tomorrow if Apple told them they didn’t have another choice.”

“If half of iPhones were malfunctioning, do you think Apple would let it go on for four years?” the executive asked.

Apple, in its published reports, has said it requires every discovered labor violation to be remedied, and suppliers that refuse are terminated. Privately, however, some former executives concede that finding new suppliers is time-consuming and costly. Foxconn is one of the few manufacturers in the world with the scale to build sufficient numbers of iPhones and iPads. So Apple is “not going to leave Foxconn and they’re not going to leave China,” said Heather White, a research fellow at Harvard and a former member of the Monitoring International Labor Standards committee at the National Academy of Sciences. “There’s a lot of rationalization.”

Apple was provided with extensive summaries of this article, but the company declined to comment. The reporting is based on interviews with more than three dozen current or former employees and contractors, including a half-dozen current or former executives with firsthand knowledge of Apple’s supplier responsibility group, as well as others within the technology industry.

In 2010, Steven P. Jobs discussed the company’s relationships with suppliers at an industry conference.

“I actually think Apple does one of the best jobs of any companies in our industry, and maybe in any industry, of understanding the working conditions in our supply chain,” said Mr. Jobs, who was Apple’s chief executive at the time and who died last October.

“I mean, you go to this place, and, it’s a factory, but, my gosh, I mean, they’ve got restaurants and movie theaters and hospitals and swimming pools, and I mean, for a factory, it’s a pretty nice factory.”

Others, including workers inside such plants, acknowledge the cafeterias and medical facilities, but insist conditions are punishing.

“We’re trying really hard to make things better,” said one former Apple executive. “But most people would still be really disturbed if they saw where their iPhone comes from.”

The Road to Chengdu

In the fall of 2010, about six months before the explosion in the iPad factory, Lai Xiaodong carefully wrapped his clothes around his college diploma, so it wouldn’t crease in his suitcase. He told friends he would no longer be around for their weekly poker games, and said goodbye to his teachers. He was leaving for Chengdu, a city of 12 million that was rapidly becoming one of the world’s most important manufacturing hubs.

Though painfully shy, Mr. Lai had surprised everyone by persuading a beautiful nursing student to become his girlfriend. She wanted to marry, she said, and so his goal was to earn enough money to buy an apartment.

Factories in Chengdu manufacture products for hundreds of companies. But Mr. Lai was focused on Foxconn Technology, China’s largest exporter and one of the nation’s biggest employers, with 1.2 million workers. The company has plants throughout China, and assembles an estimated 40 percent of the world’s consumer electronics, including for customers like Amazon, Dell, Hewlett-Packard, Nintendo, Nokia and Samsung.

Foxconn’s factory in Chengdu, Mr. Lai knew, was special. Inside, workers were building Apple’s latest, potentially greatest product: the iPad.

When Mr. Lai finally landed a job repairing machines at the plant, one of the first things he noticed were the almost blinding lights. Shifts ran 24 hours a day, and the factory was always bright. At any moment, there were thousands of workers standing on assembly lines or sitting in backless chairs, crouching next to large machinery, or jogging between loading bays. Some workers’ legs swelled so much they waddled. “It’s hard to stand all day,” said Zhao Sheng, a plant worker.

Banners on the walls warned the 120,000 employees: “Work hard on the job today or work hard to find a job tomorrow.” Apple’s supplier code of conduct dictates that, except in unusual circumstances, employees are not supposed to work more than 60 hours a week. But at Foxconn, some worked more, according to interviews, workers’ pay stubs and surveys by outside groups. Mr. Lai was soon spending 12 hours a day, six days a week inside the factory, according to his paychecks. Employees who arrived late were sometimes required to write confession letters and copy quotations. There were “continuous shifts,” when workers were told to work two stretches in a row, according to interviews.

Mr. Lai’s college degree enabled him to earn a salary of around $22 a day, including overtime — more than many others. When his days ended, he would retreat to a small bedroom just big enough for a mattress, wardrobe and a desk where he obsessively played an online game called Fight the Landlord, said his girlfriend, Luo Xiaohong.

Those accommodations were better than many of the company’s dorms, where 70,000 Foxconn workers lived, at times stuffed 20 people to a three-room apartment, employees said. Last year, a dispute over paychecks set off a riot in one of the dormitories, and workers started throwing bottles, trash cans and flaming paper from their windows, according to witnesses. Two hundred police officers wrestled with workers, arresting eight. Afterward, trash cans were removed, and piles of rubbish — and rodents — became a problem. Mr. Lai felt lucky to have a place of his own.

Foxconn, in a statement, disputed workers’ accounts of continuous shifts, extended overtime, crowded living accommodations and the causes of the riot. The company said that its operations adhered to customers’ codes of conduct, industry standards and national laws. “Conditions at Foxconn are anything but harsh,” the company wrote. Foxconn also said that it had never been cited by a customer or government for under-age or overworked employees or toxic exposures.

“All assembly line employees are given regular breaks, including one-hour lunch breaks,” the company wrote, and only 5 percent of assembly line workers are required to stand to carry out their tasks. Work stations have been designed to ergonomic standards, and employees have opportunities for job rotation and promotion, the statement said.

“Foxconn has a very good safety record,” the company wrote. “Foxconn has come a long way in our efforts to lead our industry in China in areas such as workplace conditions and the care and treatment of our employees.”

Apple’s Code of Conduct

In 2005, some of Apple’s top executives gathered inside their Cupertino, Calif., headquarters for a special meeting. Other companies had created codes of conduct to police their suppliers. It was time, Apple decided, to follow suit. The code Apple published that year demands “that working conditions in Apple’s supply chain are safe, that workers are treated with respect and dignity, and that manufacturing processes are environmentally responsible.”

But the next year, a British newspaper, The Mail on Sunday, secretly visited a Foxconn factory in Shenzhen, China, where iPods were manufactured, and reported on workers’ long hours, push-ups meted out as punishment and crowded dorms. Executives in Cupertino were shocked. “Apple is filled with really good people who had no idea this was going on,” a former employee said. “We wanted it changed, immediately.”

Apple audited that factory, the company’s first such inspection, and ordered improvements. Executives also undertook a series of initiatives that included an annual audit report, first published in 2007. By last year, Apple had inspected 396 facilities — including the company’s direct suppliers, as well as many of those suppliers’ suppliers — one of the largest such programs within the electronics industry.

Those audits have found consistent violations of Apple’s code of conduct, according to summaries published by the company. In 2007, for instance, Apple conducted over three dozen audits, two-thirds of which indicated that employees regularly worked more than 60 hours a week. In addition, there were six “core violations,” the most serious kind, including hiring 15-year-olds as well as falsifying records.

Over the next three years, Apple conducted 312 audits, and every year, about half or more showed evidence of large numbers of employees laboring more than six days a week as well as working extended overtime. Some workers received less than minimum wage or had pay withheld as punishment. Apple found 70 core violations over that period, including cases of involuntary labor, under-age workers, record falsifications, improper disposal of hazardous waste and over a hundred workers injured by toxic chemical exposures.

Last year, the company conducted 229 audits. There were slight improvements in some categories and the detected rate of core violations declined. However, within 93 facilities, at least half of workers exceeded the 60-hours-a-week work limit. At a similar number, employees worked more than six days a week. There were incidents of discrimination, improper safety precautions, failure to pay required overtime rates and other violations. That year, four employees were killed and 77 injured in workplace explosions.

“If you see the same pattern of problems, year after year, that means the company’s ignoring the issue rather than solving it,” said one former Apple executive with firsthand knowledge of the supplier responsibility group. “Noncompliance is tolerated, as long as the suppliers promise to try harder next time. If we meant business, core violations would disappear.”

Apple says that when an audit reveals a violation, the company requires suppliers to address the problem within 90 days and make changes to prevent a recurrence. “If a supplier is unwilling to change, we terminate our relationship,” the company says on its Web site.

The seriousness of that threat, however, is unclear. Apple has found violations in hundreds of audits, but fewer than 15 suppliers have been terminated for transgressions since 2007, according to former Apple executives.

“Once the deal is set and Foxconn becomes an authorized Apple supplier, Apple will no longer give any attention to worker conditions or anything that is irrelevant to its products,” said Mr. Li, the former Foxconn manager. Mr. Li spent seven years with Foxconn in Shenzhen and Chengdu and was forced out in April after he objected to a relocation to Chengdu, he said. Foxconn disputed his comments, and said “both Foxconn and Apple take the welfare of our employees very seriously.”

Apple’s efforts have spurred some changes. Facilities that were reaudited “showed continued performance improvements and better working conditions,” the company wrote in its 2011 supplier responsibility progress report. In addition, the number of audited facilities has grown every year, and some executives say those expanding efforts obscure year-to-year improvements.

Apple also has trained over a million workers about their rights and methods for injury and disease prevention. A few years ago, after auditors insisted on interviewing low-level factory employees, they discovered that some had been forced to pay onerous “recruitment fees” — which Apple classifies as involuntary labor. As of last year, the company had forced suppliers to reimburse more than $6.7 million in such charges.

“Apple is a leader in preventing under-age labor,” said Dionne Harrison of Impactt, a firm paid by Apple to help prevent and respond to child labor among its suppliers. “They’re doing as much as they possibly can.”

Other consultants disagree.

“We’ve spent years telling Apple there are serious problems and recommending changes,” said a consultant at BSR — also known as Business for Social Responsibility — which has been twice retained by Apple to provide advice on labor issues. “They don’t want to pre-empt problems, they just want to avoid embarrassments.”

‘We Could Have Saved Lives’

In 2006, BSR, along with a division of the World Bank and other groups, initiated a project to improve working conditions in factories building cellphones and other devices in China and elsewhere. The groups and companies pledged to test various ideas. Foxconn agreed to participate.

For four months, BSR and another group negotiated with Foxconn regarding a pilot program to create worker “hotlines,” so that employees could report abusive conditions, seek mental counseling and discuss workplace problems. Apple was not a participant in the project, but was briefed on it, according to the BSR consultant, who had detailed knowledge.

As negotiations proceeded, Foxconn’s requirements for participation kept changing. First Foxconn asked to shift from installing new hotlines to evaluating existing hotlines. Then Foxconn insisted that mental health counseling be excluded. Foxconn asked participants to sign agreements saying they would not disclose what they observed, and then rewrote those agreements multiple times. Finally, an agreement was struck, and the project was scheduled to begin in January 2008. A day before the start, Foxconn demanded more changes, until it was clear the project would not proceed, according to the consultant and a 2008 summary by BSR that did not name Foxconn.

The next year, a Foxconn employee fell or jumped from an apartment building after losing an iPhone prototype. Over the next two years, at least 18 other Foxconn workers attempted suicide or fell from buildings in manners that suggested suicide attempts. In 2010, two years after the pilot program fell apart and after multiple suicide attempts, Foxconn created a dedicated mental health hotline and began offering free psychological counseling.

“We could have saved lives, and we asked Apple to pressure Foxconn, but they wouldn’t do it,” said the BSR consultant, who asked not to be identified because of confidentiality agreements. “Companies like H.P. and Intel and Nike push their suppliers. But Apple wants to keep an arm’s length, and Foxconn is their most important manufacturer, so they refuse to push.”

BSR, in a written statement, said the views of that consultant were not those of the company.

“My BSR colleagues and I view Apple as a company that is making a highly serious effort to ensure that labor conditions in its supply chain meet the expectations of applicable laws, the company’s standards and the expectations of consumers,” wrote Aron Cramer, BSR’s president. Mr. Cramer added that asking Apple to pressure Foxconn would have been inconsistent with the purpose of the pilot program, and there were multiple reasons the pilot program did not proceed.

Foxconn, in a statement, said it acted quickly and comprehensively to address suicides, and “the record has shown that those measures have been successful.”

A Demanding Client

Every month, officials at companies from around the world trek to Cupertino or invite Apple executives to visit their foreign factories, all in pursuit of a goal: becoming a supplier.

When news arrives that Apple is interested in a particular product or service, small celebrations often erupt. Whiskey is drunk. Karaoke is sung.

Then, Apple’s requests start.

Apple typically asks suppliers to specify how much every part costs, how many workers are needed and the size of their salaries. Executives want to know every financial detail. Afterward, Apple calculates how much it will pay for a part. Most suppliers are allowed only the slimmest of profits.

So suppliers often try to cut corners, replace expensive chemicals with less costly alternatives, or push their employees to work faster and longer, according to people at those companies.

“The only way you make money working for Apple is figuring out how to do things more efficiently or cheaper,” said an executive at one company that helped bring the iPad to market. “And then they’ll come back the next year, and force a 10 percent price cut.”

In January 2010, workers at a Chinese factory owned by Wintek, an Apple manufacturing partner, went on strike over a variety of issues, including widespread rumors that workers were being exposed to toxins. Investigations by news organizations revealed that over a hundred employees had been injured by n-hexane, a toxic chemical that can cause nerve damage and paralysis.

Employees said they had been ordered to use n-hexane to clean iPhone screens because it evaporated almost three times as fast as rubbing alcohol. Faster evaporation meant workers could clean more screens each minute.

Apple commented on the Wintek injuries a year later. In its supplier responsibility report, Apple said it had “required Wintek to stop using n-hexane” and that “Apple has verified that all affected workers have been treated successfully, and we continue to monitor their medical reports until full recuperation.” Apple also said it required Wintek to fix the ventilation system.

That same month, a New York Times reporter interviewed a dozen injured Wintek workers who said they had never been contacted by Apple or its intermediaries, and that Wintek had pressured them to resign and take cash settlements that would absolve the company of liability. After those interviews, Wintek pledged to provide more compensation to the injured workers and Apple sent a representative to speak with some of them.

Six months later, trade publications reported that Apple significantly cut prices paid to Wintek.

“You can set all the rules you want, but they’re meaningless if you don’t give suppliers enough profit to treat workers well,” said one former Apple executive with firsthand knowledge of the supplier responsibility group. “If you squeeze margins, you’re forcing them to cut safety.”

Wintek is still one of Apple’s most important suppliers. Wintek, in a statement, declined to comment except to say that after the episode, the company took “ample measures” to address the situation and “is committed to ensuring employee welfare and creating a safe and healthy work environment.”

Many major technology companies have worked with factories where conditions are troubling. However, independent monitors and suppliers say some act differently. Executives at multiple suppliers, in interviews, said that Hewlett-Packard and others allowed them slightly more profits and other allowances if they were used to improve worker conditions.

“Our suppliers are very open with us,” said Zoe McMahon, an executive in Hewlett-Packard’s supply chain social and environmental responsibility program. “They let us know when they are struggling to meet our expectations, and that influences our decisions.”

The Explosion

On the afternoon of the blast at the iPad plant, Lai Xiaodong telephoned his girlfriend, as he did every day. They had hoped to see each other that evening, but Mr. Lai’s manager said he had to work overtime, he told her.

He had been promoted quickly at Foxconn, and after just a few months was in charge of a team that maintained the machines that polished iPad cases. The sanding area was loud and hazy with aluminum dust. Workers wore masks and earplugs, but no matter how many times they showered, they were recognizable by the slight aluminum sparkle in their hair and at the corners of their eyes.

Just two weeks before the explosion, an advocacy group in Hong Kong published a report warning of unsafe conditions at the Chengdu plant, including problems with aluminum dust. The group, Students and Scholars Against Corporate Misbehavior, or Sacom, had videotaped workers covered with tiny aluminum particles. “Occupational health and safety issues in Chengdu are alarming,” the report read. “Workers also highlight the problem of poor ventilation and inadequate personal protective equipment.”

A copy of that report was sent to Apple. “There was no response,” said Debby Chan Sze Wan of the group. “A few months later I went to Cupertino, and went into the Apple lobby, but no one would meet with me. I’ve never heard from anyone from Apple at all.”
The morning of the explosion, Mr. Lai rode his bicycle to work. The iPad had gone on sale just weeks earlier, and workers were told thousands of cases needed to be polished each day. The factory was frantic, employees said. Rows of machines buffed cases as masked employees pushed buttons. Large air ducts hovered over each station, but they could not keep up with the three lines of machines polishing nonstop. Aluminum dust was everywhere.

Dust is a known safety hazard. In 2003, an aluminum dust explosion in Indiana destroyed a wheel factory and killed a worker. In 2008, agricultural dust inside a sugar factory in Georgia caused an explosion that killed 14.

Two hours into Mr. Lai’s second shift, the building started to shake, as if an earthquake was under way. There was a series of blasts, plant workers said.

Then the screams began.

When Mr. Lai’s colleagues ran outside, dark smoke was mixing with a light rain, according to cellphone videos. The toll would eventually count four dead, 18 injured.

At the hospital, Mr. Lai’s girlfriend saw that his skin was almost completely burned away. “I recognized him from his legs, otherwise I wouldn’t know who that person was,” she said.

Eventually, his family arrived. Over 90 percent of his body had been seared. “My mom ran away from the room at the first sight of him. I cried. Nobody could stand it,” his brother said. When his mother eventually returned, she tried to avoid touching her son, for fear that it would cause pain.

“If I had known,” she said, “I would have grabbed his arm, I would have touched him.”

“He was very tough,” she said. “He held on for two days.”

After Mr. Lai died, Foxconn workers drove to Mr. Lai’s hometown and delivered a box of ashes. The company later wired a check for about $150,000.

Foxconn, in a statement, said that at the time of the explosion the Chengdu plant was in compliance with all relevant laws and regulations, and “after ensuring that the families of the deceased employees were given the support they required, we ensured that all of the injured employees were given the highest quality medical care.” After the explosion, the company added, Foxconn immediately halted work in all polishing workshops, and later improved ventilation and dust disposal, and adopted technologies to enhance worker safety.

In its most recent supplier responsibility report, Apple wrote that after the explosion, the company contacted “the foremost experts in process safety” and assembled a team to investigate and make recommendations to prevent future accidents.

In December, however, seven months after the blast that killed Mr. Lai, another iPad factory exploded, this one in Shanghai. Once again, aluminum dust was the cause, according to interviews and Apple’s most recent supplier responsibility report. That blast injured 59 workers, with 23 hospitalized.

“It is gross negligence, after an explosion occurs, not to realize that every factory should be inspected,” said Nicholas Ashford, the occupational safety expert, who is now at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. “If it were terribly difficult to deal with aluminum dust, I would understand. But do you know how easy dust is to control? It’s called ventilation. We solved this problem over a century ago.”

In its most recent supplier responsibility report, Apple wrote that while the explosions both involved combustible aluminum dust, the causes were different. The company declined, however, to provide details. The report added that Apple had now audited all suppliers polishing aluminum products and had put stronger precautions in place. All suppliers have initiated required countermeasures, except one, which remains shut down, the report said.

For Mr. Lai’s family, questions remain. “We’re really not sure why he died,” said Mr. Lai’s mother, standing beside a shrine she built near their home. “We don’t understand what happened.”

Hitting the Apple Lottery

Every year, as rumors about Apple’s forthcoming products start to emerge, trade publications and Web sites begin speculating about which suppliers are likely to win the Apple lottery. Getting a contract from Apple can lift a company’s value by millions because of the implied endorsement of manufacturing quality. But few companies openly brag about the work: Apple generally requires suppliers to sign contracts promising they will not divulge anything, including the partnership.

That lack of transparency gives Apple an edge at keeping its plans secret. But it also has been a barrier to improving working conditions, according to advocates and former Apple executives.

This month, after numerous requests by advocacy and news organizations, including The New York Times, Apple released the names of 156 of its suppliers. In the report accompanying that list, Apple said they “account for more than 97 percent of what we pay to suppliers to manufacture our products.”

However, the company has not revealed the names of hundreds of other companies that do not directly contract with Apple, but supply the suppliers. The company’s supplier list does not disclose where factories are, and many are hard to find. And independent monitoring organizations say when they have tried to inspect Apple’s suppliers, they have been barred from entry — on Apple’s orders, they have been told.

“We’ve had this conversation hundreds of times,” said a former executive in Apple’s supplier responsibility group. “There is a genuine, companywide commitment to the code of conduct. But taking it to the next level and creating real change conflicts with secrecy and business goals, and so there’s only so far we can go.” Former Apple employees say they were generally prohibited from engaging with most outside groups.

“There’s a real culture of secrecy here that influences everything,” the former executive said.

Some other technology companies operate differently.

“We talk to a lot of outsiders,” said Gary Niekerk, director of corporate citizenship at Intel. “The world’s complex, and unless we’re dialoguing with outside groups, we miss a lot.”

Given Apple’s prominence and leadership in global manufacturing, if the company were to radically change its ways, it could overhaul how business is done. “Every company wants to be Apple,” said Sasha Lezhnev at the Enough Project, a group focused on corporate accountability. “If they committed to building a conflict-free iPhone, it would transform technology.”

But ultimately, say former Apple executives, there are few real outside pressures for change. Apple is one of the most admired brands. In a national survey conducted by The New York Times in November, 56 percent of respondents said they couldn’t think of anything negative about Apple. Fourteen percent said the worst thing about the company was that its products were too expensive. Just 2 percent mentioned overseas labor practices.

People like Ms. White of Harvard say that until consumers demand better conditions in overseas factories — as they did for companies like Nike and Gap, which today have overhauled conditions among suppliers — or regulators act, there is little impetus for radical change. Some Apple insiders agree.

“You can either manufacture in comfortable, worker-friendly factories, or you can reinvent the product every year, and make it better and faster and cheaper, which requires factories that seem harsh by American standards,” said a current Apple executive.

“And right now, customers care more about a new iPhone than working conditions in China.”

Gu Huini contributed research.
https://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/26/b...-in-china.html





Poll Finds Consumer Confusion on Where Apple Devices Are Made
Marjorie Connelly

Apple, meanwhile, remains a hugely popular American company. More than three-quarters of respondents said they had a very favorable or mostly favorable opinion of Apple.

The Times poll found that most Americans considered it very important to buy American-made products.

Over all, 52 percent of the public said it was very important that the products they buy were made in the United States; only 42 percent of owners of Apple products agreed.

Outsourcing, they say, is clearly a cause of fewer jobs domestically. And two-thirds of the public wants American companies to shoulder a lot of responsibility to keep manufacturing jobs in the United States.

“Things would be more expensive if they were made here, and companies want to cut costs. Everything seems to be about money,” said Dannie Gilchrist of Oskaloosa, Iowa, in a follow-up interview. “I would be willing to pay more for items manufactured here,” he added, volunteering that he owned an iPad. “I think if people knew products were made entirely overseas they wouldn’t buy as much of them.”

Owners of Apple products were largely aware that Apple products had a large foreign manufacturing component. Most, 54 percent, said they were made partly in the United States and partly overseas, 18 percent said entirely overseas, 8 percent said entirely in the United States and 20 percent said they did not know.

“I had no idea where they are made. But 90 percent of the products we have in America are made overseas,” Mariann Bellville of Haverhill, Mass., said. “We don’t like it, but we don’t have a heck of a choice. You can’t get a coffee pot made totally in this country.”

The poll, conducted Nov. 18-21, interviewed 951 adults using both landlines and cellphones. Percentages for all adults have a margin of sampling error of plus or minus three percentage points; for owners of Apple devices it is plus or minus five percentage points.
https://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/26/b...facturing.html





A5 Jailbreak ‘Absinthe Installed Almost 1M Times Over the Last 3 Days
Jake Smith

On Friday, the Chronic-Dev team (along with a few other contributors) released “Absinthe,” the long-awaited free unteathered jailbreak tool for the iPhone 4S and iPad 2. Today, the team updated us with a few interesting statistics. The shocker is that 1 million people jailbroke their A5 device in under three days.

The Chronic-Dev team were able to get such exact numbers thanks to statistics from Cydia, the popular app marketplace that comes bundled with the jailbreak. The team was able to specifically pen-point how many installs were on each device: 491,325 on an iPhone 4S; 308,967 on an iPad 2; and, 152,940 on an iPad 2 that had been previously jailbroken (iOS 4). These are certainly impressive numbers.

Like always, the Chronic-Dev team reminds you not upgrade off of 5.0.1 if you intend to keep the jailbreak. Did you jailbreak your A5 device this weekend? If you did not, make sure to check out the tutorial after the break:
http://9to5mac.com/2012/01/23/a5-jai...e-last-3-days/





Europe Weighs Tough Law on Online Privacy
Somini Sengupta

Europe is considering a sweeping new law that would force Internet companies like Amazon.com and Facebook to obtain explicit consent from consumers about the use of their personal data, delete that data forever at the consumer’s request and face fines for failing to comply.

The proposed data protection regulation from the European Commission, a copy of which was obtained by The New York Times, could have significant consequences for all Internet companies that trade in personal data, whether it is pictures that people post on social networks or what they buy on retail sites or look for on a search engine.

The regulation would compel Web sites to tell consumers why their data is being collected and retain it for only as long as necessary. If data is stolen, sites would have to notify regulators within 24 hours. It also offers consumers the right to transport their data from one service to another — to deactivate a Facebook account, for example, and take one’s trove of pictures and posts and contacts to Google Plus.

The proposed law strikes at the heart of some of the knottiest questions governing digital life and commerce: who owns personal data, what happens to it once it is posted online, and what the proper balance is between guarding privacy and leveraging that data to aim commercial or political advertising at ordinary people.

“Companies must be transparent about what they are doing, clear about which data is being used for what,” the European Commission’s vice president for justice, Viviane Reding, said in a recent telephone interview. “I am absolutely persuaded the new law is necessary to have, on the one hand, better protection of the constitutional rights of our citizens and more flexibility for companies to utilize our Continent.”

Ms. Reding is scheduled to release the proposed regulation on Wednesday in Brussels. The European Parliament is expected to deliberate on the proposal in the coming months, and the law, if approved, would go into effect by 2014.

The regulation is not likely to directly affect American consumers. For American companies, its silver lining is that it offers one uniform law for all 27 countries in Europe. Currently each country, and sometimes, as in the case of Germany, each state, has separate laws about data protection.

Even so, many of the provisions are likely to be costly or cumbersome. And the proposed penalties could be as high as 2 percent of a company’s annual global revenue, according to a European diplomat who did not want to publicly discuss unreleased legislation.

“Individuals are getting more rights. The balance is tilting more to the individual versus the companies,” said Françoise Gilbert, a lawyer in Palo Alto, Calif., who represents technology companies doing business in Europe. “There is very little that’s good for the companies other than a reduction of administrative headaches.”

Perhaps for historical or cultural reasons, Europeans tend to be more invested in issues of data privacy than Americans. Certainly, the proposed regulation is evidence that European politicians consider it to be a more urgent legislative issue than members of the United States Congress. Privacy bills have languished on Capitol Hill. Those that have been proposed, by Senator John Kerry and others, have none of the strict protections included in the draft European regulations.

For the most part, American companies have pushed for a system of self-regulation and regard European-style regulations as a hindrance to innovation.

Ronald Zink, chief operating officer for European affairs at Microsoft, pointed to the potential difficulty of obtaining explicit consent. He gave the example of Microsoft’s Xbox Kinect system, which stores body measurements so it can visually recognize repeat players. He worried that the proposed law would require players to provide consent every time they played a game, even if the information never left the game console, requiring more time and effort on the player’s part. “We have designed the product to be private,” Mr. Zink said. “We put a lot of thought into how this controls our work in terms of privacy by design.”

One of the most contested provisions of the European law is the so-called right to be forgotten, which refers to an Internet user’s right to demand that his or her accumulated data on a particular site be deleted forever. “When a citizen has asked to get it back, then the data has to be given back,” Ms. Reding said in the interview. “When an individual no longer wants his data to be processed, it will be deleted.”

Critics warn that it is not so simple. Data does not always stay in one place; if it is transferred to another company it cannot easily be withdrawn. A company might license some of the data it collects to a third party to analyze market sentiments or social trends: reviews of kebab joints in Amsterdam or public opinion about burqas. Moreover, it may be less feasible to erase someone’s credit history, for instance, or employment record than to, say, do away with her shopping history on Amazon.

“You’re not going to get a unilateral right for someone to say I want you to destroy all the information you have about me,” said David Hoffman, global privacy officer for Intel. “It would be preferable for people to be able to post something and then realize they made a mistake and have it taken down. However, if you were going to do that by law, it’s not going to apply in all contexts, because of situations where it is perfectly reasonable to expect an organization to be able to keep the data.”

Ms. Reding sought to temper expectations when she said in a speech at a technology conference in Germany on Sunday that the law would apply to information that a user had furnished to a Web site, and was not meant to erase unfavorable content about the person online.

“It is clear that the right to be forgotten cannot amount to a right of the total erasure of history,” she said. “Neither must the right to be forgotten take precedence over freedom of expression or freedom of the media.”

Malte Spitz, a Green Party politician from Germany and an advocate for strict data protection laws, said the regulation should restrict how companies hold onto personal information. “Lots of companies are collecting as much information as possible, and lots of this information isn’t really necessary,” Mr. Spitz said. “The right to be forgotten will change the work of companies that are doing profiling or targeted advertising.”

Facebook, which has been investigated by European regulators for its data retention practices, warned last year against rules that might not keep up with the pace of change on the Internet. “There is a risk that an excessively litigious environment would impede the development of innovative services that can bring real benefit to European citizens,” the company said in comments submitted to the European Commission, according to Reuters.

The European regulation, once passed, could serve as a template for other countries, as they draft or revise their data protection policies. “There are very few countries that don’t copy what is happening in Europe,” said Ms. Gilbert, who has written a book on privacy laws worldwide.

Kevin J. O’Brien contributed reporting from Berlin.
https://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/24/t...user-data.html





Man Who Downloaded Recipes On How to Make Explosive Devices Jailed

A man who downloaded recipes on how to make explosive devices onto a pen drive has been jailed.

Asim Kauser, aged 25, of Bardon Close, Halliwell, Bolton, pleaded guilty to four offences under Section 58 of the Terrorism Act 2000 at an earlier hearing. The particulars are that Kauser was in possession of records of information of a kind likely to be useful to a person committing or preparing an act of terrorism.

He has today, 27 January 2012, been sentenced to two years and three months in prison at Manchester Crown Court, Crown Square. Kauser was arrested and charged following an operation by the North West Counter-Terrorism Unit.

Police first became involved when officers from Bolton were called to investigate a burglary that happened overnight between 1 and 2 June 2011 at Kauser's family home, in which the thieves stole a car.

Kauser's father gave police a USB stick which was thought to contain CCTV images of the burglary.

However, when it was examined it contained recipes on how to make explosive devices and poisons, anti-interrogation techniques and details on how to kill efficiently.

A further examination of the stick revealed a letter, addressed to an unknown recipient, in which the author - again anonymous but referring to himself as a 24-year-old man - seeks spiritual guidance and says he has prepared himself physically and financially for jihad.

Officers also recovered a list that contained prices in both pounds and rupees of a number of items, including an AK47 rifle, rounds of ammunition, a grenade launcher and other survival or combat material.

Forensic analysis of the pen drive revealed the material had been downloaded in the spring of 2010.

Explosive experts were consulted who confirmed the recipes on the stick were viable ways of making explosive devices.

Detective Chief Superintendent Tony Porter, head of the North West Counter-Terrorism Unit, said: "The materials we discovered on that pen drive were clear and viable instructions on how to make explosive devices.

"When you combine that with the letter and the 'shopping' list that was found in Kauser's bedroom which contained pricing details for guns, ammunition and other survival equipment it builds up a picture of his state of mind.

"This case has never been about proving an endgame and we may never know what his intentions were, but when you have significant evidence of how to make explosive devices and pricing lists for weapons, we had to act quickly.

"The North West Counter-Terrorism Unit has to act on any information or suggestion of terrorist activity - in situations like these there can be absolutely no delay.

"Throughout this investigation, we have worked with members of our community, who were understandably anxious to see this case resolved, to keep them informed and we would like to thank those people for their support.

"I also want to stress that this case is not about policing people's freedom to browse the Internet. The materials that were downloaded were not stumbled upon by chance - these had to be searched for and contained very dangerous information that could have led to an explosive device being built. That is why we had to take action.

"All forms of violent extremism present a threat to our communities and we all have a role to play in protecting them."

If you have any concerns about violent extremist activity within your community, please contact your local Neighbourhood Policing Team or call the confidential Anti-Terrorist Hotline on 0800 789 321.
http://www.thisislancashire.co.uk/ne...evices_jailed/





FBI Looking for App to Monitor Twitter and Facebook For Threat Data
Dennis Fisher

The FBI is in the early stages of developing an application that would monitor sites such as Twitter and Facebook, as well as various news feeds, in order to find information on emerging threats and new events happening at the moment. The tool would give specialists the ability to pull the data into a dashboard that also would include classified information that's coming in at the same time.

As the country's national police force, the FBI has found itself in the middle of the fight against cybercrime and in many cases, it has been outmanned and outgunned by the attackers. The cybercrime ecosystem changes minute by minute and hour by hour, and new threats and techniques evolve virtually every day. One of the interesting things that's emerged in the last year or so, is that attackers have taken to either warning people of or bragging about new attacks on social platforms, especially Twitter.

To help deal with this rapidly changing landscape, as well as with other physical threats and situations, the FBI is turning to the software industry for help. The agency is looking for someone who can build an app that will pull information and data from a wide range of platforms and be used to give agents a better picture of what's happening.

One of the key capabilities of the new application, for which the FBI has sent out a solicitation, would be to "provide an automated search and scrape capability for social networking sites and open source news sites for breaking events, crisis and threats that meet the search parameters/keywords defined by FBI/SIOC."

The FBI's Strategic Information and Operations Center is looking to use the application to help it collect better open source intelligence for use in investigations and breaking events. The bureau's solicitation says that the app must be secure, lightweight and "have the ability to rapidly assemble critical information and open source information and intelligence that will allow the SIOC to quickly vet, identify and geo-locate breaking events, incidents and emerging threats."

The FBI also wants the application to be able to cache the data that is collected from the social networks and news sites, giving it a history of users' activity on those networks. It's also vital that the app have a function that enables the FBI to map ongoing events and add historical and current data on terrorist activity to the maps.

The solicitation that the FBI published is only a preliminary request for information and not yet a request for proposals from vendors.

In addition to the mapping and scraping capabilities, the FBI is interested in having an application that would provide the ability to monitor specific keyword searches on Twitter and elsewhere and enable agents to push information from the app to other law enforcement agencies and government officials. Responses to the FBI's solicitation are due by Feb. 10.
https://threatpost.com/en_us/blogs/f...at-data-012712





AT&T Posts Massive Quarterly Loss

AT&T Inc (T.N) posted a massive quarterly loss due to a break-up fee for its failed T-Mobile USA merger and a pension-related charge on top of costly subsidies for smartphones such as Apple Inc's (AAPL.O) popular iPhone.

As a result, the telephone company posted a loss of $6.68 billion or $1.12 per share, compared with a profit of $1.09 billion, or 18 cents per share in the year ago quarter.

Revenue rose to $32.5 billion from $31.36 billion and compared with Wall Street expectations for $31.95 billion, according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S.

The No. 2 U.S. mobile provider said it added 717,000 subscribers in the quarter, beating the average expectation for 570,000 from seven analysts.

AT&T had to scrap its plans for a purchase of Deutsche Telekom's (DTEGn.DE) T-Mobile USA in December after regulatory opposition.

(Editing by Maureen Bavdek)
http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/...80P0VC20120126





AT&T Caps Netflix Streaming Costs At $68K/Yr
theodp

What would you say if you went to join a gym and were told that it could cost you anywhere from $360 a year to $68,000 a year for the exact same usage? Don't be ridiculous, right? Well, that's really not so different from what the potential costs of streaming video on an AT&T smartphone are.

According to AT&T's Data Usage Calculator, 1,440 minutes worth of streaming video consumes 2.81GB, which — if you manage to keep Netflix fired up all day and night — would result in a $360 annual bill under the grandfathered $30-monthly-unlimited-data plan, or $68,376 under the new $20-monthly-300MB plan.

Still, that didn't stop a spokesman from characterizing the new AT&T data plans as "a great value" for customers.
http://mobile.slashdot.org/story/12/...costs-at-68kyr





Letter

Ottawa, 20 January 2012

Our Reference: 545613

BY EMAIL

Mr. Ken Thompson
Director and Counsel Copyright and Broadband Law
Rogers Communications Inc.
333 Bloor Street, East
Toronto, ON M4W 1G9
ken.thompson@rci.rogers.com



Dear Mr. Thompson:

Re: File 545613,
Internet Traffic Management Practice (“ITMP”),
Section 36 of the Telecommunications Act, S.C. 1993, c. 38, as amended (“Act”), and Paragraphs 126 and 127 of Telecom Regulatory Policy CRTC 2009-657 (“TRP CRTC 2009-657”)

I am writing with respect to the above noted file that was transferred to the Compliance and Enforcement Sector by the Telecommunications Sector on October 27, 2011.

Compliance and Enforcement Sector staff has been reviewing this file since its referral to our sector. Based on the preliminary results of our ongoing investigation, Commission staff is of the belief that Rogers Communications Inc. (“Rogers”) applies a technical ITMP to unidentified traffic using default peer-to-peer (“P2P”) ports. On the basis of our evidence to date, any traffic from an unidentified time-sensitive application making use of P2P ports will be throttled resulting in noticeable degradation of such traffic. Enclosed please find a summary of our evidence. Full details, if necessary can be obtained by request through my office.

As you know, prior Commission approval is required pursuant to section 36 of the Act, as described at paragraphs 126 and 127 of TRP CRTC 2009-657, for implementing a technical ITMP that results in:

• noticeable degradation to time-sensitive traffic, or
• the slowing of non-time-sensitive traffic to the extent that it amounts to blocking the content and therefore controlling the content and influencing the meaning and purpose of the telecommunication.

Within two weeks, I look forward to you either presenting us with a rebuttal of our evidence or providing us with a plan to come into compliance with the Act. Failure to provide a meaningful rebuttal or an effective plan will result in my recommendation to Commissioners to hold a show-cause hearing. I look forward to your response by 12:00 pm, February 3, 2012.

Sincerely,



Andrea Rosen

Chief Compliance and Enforcement Officer



Summary of Evidence

File 545613

This attachment summarizes evidence pursuant to the above noted file, which is an ongoing investigation of Rogers Communications Inc.’s (“Rogers”) Internet Traffic Management Practice (“ITMP”) by the Compliance and Enforcement Sector.

The Compliance and Enforcement Sector’s ongoing investigation includes examining a number of key performance indicators (“KPIs”), such as:

• TCP resets, TCP syn/acks, connection status
• Latency in milliseconds
• TCP Window size
• Packet loss
• Packets per second
• Average packet sizes
• Retransmission of packets
• Dropped connections
• Active connections/sessions
• Upstream available bandwidth limits
• Packet sequence numbers
• Other TCP and UDP traffic statistics and analysis.

As Cisco is Rogers’ vendor,1 the Compliance and Enforcement Sector had and continues to have tests conducted against information from the website of Cisco Systems, Inc. (“Cisco”). Preliminary testing results indicate that unidentified traffic using default P2P ports, as identified in the Cisco SCA BB Protocol Reference Guide,2 is throttled. Such results further indicate that:

default P2P ports for TCP traffic are subject to throttling, except port 6969, and
until December 20, 2011, all default P2P ports for UDP traffic were subject to throttling.

Compliance and Enforcement Sector staff also notes Rogers’ disclosure of its network management policy, which indicates that an application may not attain full speed if encrypted and not using a standard port for the application/protocol in question.3 Moreover, while Rogers has stated that misclassification occurs in only a few cases,4 staff notes that Cisco identifies various applications that may have been misclassified.5

1 Rogers letter dated September 27, 2011, at 3.

2 Cisco SCA BB Protocol Reference Guide: <http://www.cisco.com/en/US/docs/cabl...broadband_app/
protocol_ref_guide/protocol_ref_guide.html> [Cisco SCA BB Protocol Reference Guide].

3 Rogers Network Management Policy: <http://www.rogers.com/web/content/network_management> [Rogers Network Management Policy].

4 Rogers letter, supra note 1 at 3.

5 Cisco Service Control Application for Broadband Protocol Pack Notes, available online: <http://www.cisco.com/en/US/docs/cabl...broadband_app/
protocol_pack/PP_Note_current.html> [Cisco PP Notes].

http://www.crtc.gc.ca/eng/archive/2012/lt120120.htm





Dear Comcast, I'm Leaving You Because..
Blake Gentry

For the past 10 months, I’ve lived without a cable TV subscription, solely relying on Comcast cable internet for all forms of entertainment. The cable-free experiment has been great overall (but is certainly a subject for another post).

Though I’ve long detested Comcast’s shady business practices, they were my only option for a sufficiently fast internet connection at my old San Francisco apartment. I was out of range for Monkeybrains wireless, the only other high-speed provider that I was aware of in my area.

But then, about a month ago, a post appeared on Hacker News asking readers to pledge to cancel their Comcast subscription in light of the company’s open support for SOPA/PIPA. In the comments, a user pointed out that Sonic.net offers bonded DSL service that could deliver up to 40mbit speeds. I immediately scheduled an installation.

The installation process has been a bit rocky due to the aging wiring in my apartment building, but it’s all settled now. My apartment now has a ~24mbit connection from an amazing local ISP. The peak rate is slightly slower than my cable internet, but it’s well worth it for a company that’s easily 1000x more deserving of my money than Comcast.

Because I’ve been looking forward to calling Comcast to cancel my service, I decided to draw up a list of reasons why I was happy to be taking my money elsewhere. In no particular order…

Dear Comcast, I’m leaving you because:

1. You are openly in favor of stripping constitutionally protected freedoms with some of the most toxic legislation ever conceived, SOPA & Protect-IP.
2. You send me at least 1 snail-mail advertisement per month trying to sell me the exact level of internet service I’m already paying for.
3. You enforce an archaic 250GB monthly bandwidth limit that was barely sufficient 4 years ago when it was instituted. Meanwhile, you’ve raised service prices while your costs to transfer a gigabyte of data have surely halved or quartered.
4. Users who exceed the bandwidth limits are arbitrarily cut off from service with no opportunity to pay for additional bandwidth.
5. You enforce arbitrary traffic shaping to severely limit your customers' abilities to use the data they are paying for with the services of their choice.
6. You actively lobby against Net Neutrality because it would prevent you from being able to exploit your customers by charging them the type of per-service fees associated with your cable TV subscriptions.
7. You think that Netflix somehow owes you money to deliver its data to your customers. You know, the users that are already paying you for their internet service.
8. You’re so desperate to act like you aren’t losing cable TV subscribers that it’s generally cheaper to get a package with TV and internet service than it is just to get standalone internet.

http://bgentry.posterous.com/dear-co...g-you-because?





New Book Says Strategic Use of Favorite Music Can Ease Life's Stresses
Carin Lane

Every time I hear the Black-Eyed Peas song "Let's Get it Started," I think "Party!" When a family friend walked down the aisle to Pachelbel's Canon in D, memories of my deceased father and my wedding day flashed in my head. According to a new book, "Your Playlist Can Change Your Life," these emotions and memories don't just happen by chance. Music, because of its effect on the human brain, is an easy, inexpensive and natural way to heighten awareness and heal our bodies.

The book was co-authored by Joseph Cardillo, former professor at the University at Albany and Hudson Valley Community College, Dr. Galina Mindlin and Don DuRousseau.

Rhythm and harmony affect our brain frequencies and can change our moods and motivations and affect our ability to focus and our organizational powers and pleasure levels. The book says that by playing the right song (or songs) at key moments, you can change a behavior -- and your life -- in a few weeks. In an interview, Cardillo explained how it works:

Q: What findings prompted you, and co-authors Mindlin and DuRousseau, to write this book?

A: My co-authors, Galina Mindlin, who is an M.D. and Ph.D. in neuropsychology and neurophysiology, and Don DuRousseau, who is a neuroscientist, and I were each working on various aspects of music's influences on the mind and the body. What drew us together was that we had arrived at a similar, important conclusion, and that is that with just a little guidance on how music can be used to train the brain, individuals could use their favorite songs like a speed dial to their most optimum mindset and could bring the full range of their best brain activity to bear on any specific day-to-day goal.

Q: How does it work?

A: We all know how good it feels to hear our favorite song. The neat thing about music is that it affects every part of the brain at very fast speeds. So it's able to influence everything from your thoughts and feelings before you go to sleep at night to how well you can remember things or even how fast you jog.

Q: Early on, the book states that by our 14th week of life, children can distinguish their mother's footsteps from anyone else's. This influence on our brain stays with us throughout our lifetime and can actually guide us to our own ultimate medicinal playlist?

A: Yes, that's a true and very wonderful detail. Rhythm is ingrained in every cell of our making and because of this we can use it our entire life long. Let's say that mom used to sit in a park along the Mohawk River and listen to the soft whooshing sounds of the waves to relax, say while she was pregnant. That particular sound will now also work to calm the baby down--after the child is born and really for as long as that child maintains a good feeling about his or her parent. Mom's personal calming sounds and songs can be used to calm the baby when he or she is born and really can be that child's way of bringing calmness into its life even into adulthood.

Q: The word "flow" seems to be the key in making our brains "free-flowing and feeling good." Briefly explain flow and why it's so important to our health.

A. Flow is conventionally defined as a state of mind in which you are completely absorbed in whatever you are doing -- to the point that a considerable amount of time could pass and it would feel like no time at all. Flow is important because it combats stress and the damage that stressful days, weeks, months and years can have on your health. Irritable bowel syndrome, Crohn's disease, fibromyalgia, and celiac disease are illnesses associated with stress and anxiety. Music's ability to alter your blood chemistry and your brainwaves is what gives it the ability to put you into a state of flow, keep you there, and transfer that strong and happy mindset to other tasks.

Q: You discovered that we don't necessarily have to download songs. Our brain waves are an individual's one-of-a-kind playlist. How does this work and how do you tap into it?

A: This "download" is known as Brain Music Treatment (BMT). This is music created from your own brain waves and you can download it onto any iPod, MP3 or CD. We talk about this procedure in the last chapter of our book. In a nutshell, your brainwaves are recorded with an EEG. They are converted to musical sound and then placed on two files, a fast one and a slow one. Then based on what you need throughout the day, you use your fast file to perk up or the slow file to calm down or to fall asleep whenever you need. I should mention that, anyday now, a Common BMT File will be available for download at http://www.brainmusictreatment.com.

Q: How do you start building the ultimate medicinal playlist?

A: First, pick songs you like a lot. Pay attention to how you are feeling when you hear certain songs. Look for songs that are calming songs in specific situations. Look for songs that energize you in specific situations. Pay attention to when a certain song works and when it doesn't. Make a variety of task-oriented playlists and start using them -- e.g. driving to work, studying for a test, getting out of the house on time, going to a business meeting, going to the doctor's. Play them before and after specific tasks -- 7 to 12 minutes before and after. You will see positive results within 2 weeks and full results within 3 months. At that point, your mind will start going there all on its own -- even without the music.

Q: What are some of your favorite healing songs? Do find yourself following your own tips from time to time?

A: Absolutely! I take my personal music prescription every single day. I often like "Every Breath You Take" by the Police. or "Here Comes the Sun," by George Harrison. I, and all of the authors of "Your Playlist," could go on with our favorites but everyone has to find his or her own tunes to get the most benefit from a playlist.
http://www.newstimes.com/news/articl...an-2682697.php





Debate Rages as Spotify, MOG, and Rdio Kill / Save the Music Industry
Paul Miller

For the conscience-laden music consumer, streaming music services present an interesting quandary. By separating the concept of "legal access to music" from the age-old paradigm of "paying the artist for an entire song or album," they've presented us with a whole new set of ethical dilemmas to worry about. Instead of buying your music, you pay a subscription fee that is in some way filtered down from Spotify to record label to artist, based on some opaque algorithm of pay-per-play, which is based on some opaque deal struck between the label and Spotify, and then the label's opaque individual contract with each of its artists.

I suppose what I really want is some sort of "free range" sticker slapped on my music consumption, so that I know the artist was ethically treated in this transaction. Unfortunately, the current state of the industry is rife with finger-pointing, and I have no idea who devours — and who's getting screwed out of — the $9.99 I drop into this darkened pool every month.

What I do know for a fact is that some artists aren't happy with streaming services. Notable pullouts include Coldplay, Adele, and the Black Keys (each of whom have removed their most recent albums from one or all of the services), while many artists and catalogs have never been available at all.

The telling quote to me is from the Black Keys interview where they explained their decision to pull their new album, El Camino, from streaming. "I always pay for music," says Patrick Karney, the drummer and apparent spokesman for the band, as if to say that paying for a streaming service is different than paying an artist for music.

He goes on to say that "there's a lot of stuff about some of these services that a lot of people don't really know," and that deals are "more fair" for labels than artists. This lack of knowledge is a big hangup for a lot of the parties involved, and before we can all embrace the beautiful future that streaming services provide, it might be nice if somebody could clarify who exactly these deals are "more fair" for.

I spoke with the CEOs of Rdio and MOG about this, and neither could shed much light on these mysterious deals. Their agreements with labels are mostly confidential, and the payout contracts labels have with artists differ artist-to-artist. One problem is that song royalties aren't the only money that's changing hands — services pay for exclusivity, and labels cut deals to get their artists more heavily promoted by a service, and those upfront costs and windfalls may or may not be passed along to artists.

Still, the general consensus from everybody I talked to is that a "larger revenue pie" in music can only be a good thing, as long as it's distributed well. "The average iTunes consumer spends $40 a year," says MOG CEO David Hyman, "of which the labels are getting about 60-70%." In comparison, labels get 65% or so of MOG's income, which is $10 a month for a premium subscription (though $5 subscriptions and a free service are also available).

"The average American spends only $17 a year on music"

"I have my own black hole in knowledge when it comes to individual deals between artists and labels," admits David, "but I do know that the content owners, the labels and the publishers, are getting a lot more money out of these subscription services than they're getting from iTunes."

Things look even better for streaming services when you consider that the average American spends only $17 a year on music, a number cited to me by an indie label executive who wished to remain anonymous. "If you get more folks spending $17 a month on music," he says, "there's a bigger pot of money to split up and it lets us use the power of our own marketing rather than gatekeepers to develop fans and convert that most precious commodity — attention — into revenue, however that consumer might choose to engage."

The word "attention" is very important, because while many people get hung up on straight revenue (you know, people who like making money), streaming services are also a perfect place for artists to be discovered, and subsequently promoted, by people who wouldn't risk buying their album blind. Of course, that's the line piracy proponents have been pushing for a decade, but when you combine painless exploration with an actual "revenue pie" to be divied up, things get very exciting for the future of music.

My indie exec says Spotify is already "a top revenue account worldwide," along with YouTube. "But they are also promotional. That's why this is all so interesting... a video on the home page of YouTube is a incredible promotion, but it's also cha-chinging." I don't know what the word "cha-chinging" means in labelspeak, but it sounds like a positive adjective.

In fact, the primary "cha-chinging" innovation in streaming services right now is all centered around discovery. According to David, the internal mantra at his company is that "MOG does the work for you." They personalize the home screen based on personal interests, and have been working hard on their radio algorithms, monitoring tracks you skip and favorite, and working in deeper cuts over time from artists you like. If it sounds a lot like Pandora, that's probably intentional.

Spotify is doing similar work on "radio" playback. "Radio contributes to the overall music discovery experience," a Spotify representative told me, "which is why Spotify Radio has recently undergone a top-to-bottom overhaul making it a bigger, smarter and an altogether cooler music discovery experience."

Rdio's on board as well: "Passive listening is something that's critical in the overall experience," says Drew Larner, the service's CEO.

Despite Pandora's big head start, the huge libraries and lack of radio-style licensing restrictions on for-pay streaming services means there's a ton of opportunity here to offer something people have never heard before — namely, everything. And the seamless operation is a big leg up on ad hoc music piracy: "Even if 14 million songs were free, people would still gravitate to radio services," says David. "I hate to say it, but my mom listens to the music stations that come with her cable TV."

Still, as these services grow to prominence, they're outmatched by iTunes in terms of library control and management. Of the "Facebook wave" of streaming services (Spotify, Rdio, MOG), only Spotify offers a local app that can play regular MP3s, while Rdio and MOG live entirely in the cloud. Both CEOs admitted to me that they consider making a move to offer a "locker service" like Google Music, Amazon, or iTunes, on a regular basis, but that they have other priorities right now.

"[Rdio's] hope is that in time it's not going to be necessary," says Drew. That hope is a hope in the magic of "scale," and a dream that everything anybody would want to listen to will be available for streaming. Having a 14 million song library can do wonders for a streaming service CEO's self confidence.

"It's been on [MOG's] roadmap for years, but it's always the bastard child that never gets done, because there are almost more important things that we end up doing" says David. What's more interesting for MOG is the possibility of scanning local collections to further improve recommendations, and David doesn't think it's that hard to just switch apps when you want to get your music from a different source.

""The best chance we have for interoperability is Facebook""

Something else that isn't being addressed just yet is playlist lock-in. In the beginning there were iTunes playlists and burned CDs, but these days I have dozens of playlists across Rdio, Spotify, MOG, iTunes, and Rhapsody (I admit, I have a bit of a loyalty problem). It's even worse when I consider all the playlists my friends have made on services I'm not on that I therefore don't have access to. I've been trying to wean myself off Rdio this week in favor of Spotify's superior, hiccup-free playback, but losing the ambient recommendations of my peers (most of which use Rdio) is really troubling.

I asked Drew if Rdio was looking into helping me move to Spotify, and he didn't seem very interested: "From a competitive standpoint, why would we do that?"

MOG sees the need, but David says that all efforts at a single standard for playlists (I'm not sure which efforts he's referring to, he admits that the streaming CEOs don't chat regularly) have all failed in the past. "The best chance we have for interoperability is Facebook," he says. He seems to be right. While my highly curated Rdio friends list can't follow me everywhere, it's hard to go anywhere on the internet these days without knowing what my general Facebooks friends list is listening to right now.

"Cannibalization claims are 'absolutely bogus'"

While music streaming services aren't a "new" idea in internet years, they've really brought serious change to the industry in the past year or so. Perhaps part of the problem with understanding that change is that it's different place to place, and artist to artist. Even the Black Keys admit that streaming services are great for discovering smaller artists, while larger artists like themselves don't necessarily need the exposure. Of course, while that dissension gets a lot of exposure, it's a minority view — in fact, a good number of the notable holdouts, like Metallica, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Gillian Welch, and the Black Keys themselves, are all represented by a single management company called Q Prime, who is rumored to have a dispute with labels over the streaming deals. I reached out to Q Prime for comment, but didn't receive a response.

A recent study by analyst group NPD, which came to the obvious conclusion that streaming services like Spotify discourage the purchase of music in other formats, prompted STHoldings to pull more than 200 labels of music from streaming services — mostly in electronic music genres, in case you didn't notice the disappearance. Meanwhile, Universal Music Group's Rob Wells, who is a client of NPD, says that cannibalization claims are "absolutely bogus," and that each of the bands it's been tracking on Spotify over the last six months "has earned more money from its album being on Spotify than it has from being on any other services."

While the debate still rages in the US, in countries like Spain and Sweden where piracy had totally destroyed commercial music distribution, streaming services have been an unqualified godsend — creating significant revenue where there was none.

Hopefully we'll eventually get more transparency about how these deals work. Widespread piracy has caused so much outcry from labels and artists, so it would be nice if widespread monetization could get some more vocal proponents from the same camp. In the meantime, the hope is that someday soon artists won't have to step out in faith when putting their music up on Rdio or Spotify or MOG, betting their paychecks on streaming services making them more money than iTunes and physical sales alone — it'll just be fact.
http://www.theverge.com/2012/1/26/27...music-industry





ReDigi Defends Used Digital Music Market

ReDigi has fired back, opposing Capitol Records's motion for a preliminary injunction
NewYorkCountryLawyer

In his opposition declaration, ReDigi's CTO Larry Rudolph explains in detail (PDF) how the technology employed by ReDigi's used digital music marketplace effects transfer of a music file without copying, but by modifying the record locator in an "atomic transaction," and how it verifies that only a single instance of a unique file can enter the ReDigi cloud system.

ReDigi's opposition papers also point out plaintiff's own admissions that mp3 files are not "material objects" or "phonorecords" under the Copyright Act, and therefore not subject to the Copyright Act's distribution right, and defend ReDigi's used digital music marketplace and cloud storage system on a number of grounds, including the First Sale exception to the distribution right applicable to a "particular" copy, the Essential Step exception to the distribution right applicable to a copy essential to the running of a computer program, and Fair Use space shifting.
http://yro.slashdot.org/story/12/01/...l-music-market





The Pirate Bay Wants You to Download Physical Objects Now
Sam Laird

File-sharing site The Pirate Bay is apparently expanding its reach into letting users pass one another physical objects to download.

Well, that’s actually not the case just yet. But the site is introducing a new category called “Physibles” in anticipation of a day in which “you will print the spare parts for your vehicles.”

Physibles are “data objects that are able (and feasible) to become physical,” the site says in its announcement blog post.

In other words, files meant for 3D printers. Such printers and scanners are not widespread but do already exist. The Pirate Bay, however, believes that 3D technology will become commonplace before long.

“You will download your sneakers within 20 years,” the blog post says.

At the time of this writing, the Physibles category contained just three files available for download. Included were apparent data files for a whistle, a model robot and a 1970 Chevrolet Chevelle muscle car.

The Pirate Bay says that what it believes to be the imminent advent of 3D printing and file-sharing will be tremendously beneficial to society.

“No more shipping huge amount of products around the world,” according to the blog post. “No more shipping broken products back. No more child labor. We’ll be able to print food for hungry people. We’ll be able to share not only a recipe, but the full meal.”

The Pirate Bay has long connected users with massive collections of music and movie files, without regard for copyright infringement concerns. If it’s able to do they same for 3D files, the site could indeed help revolutionize the ways in which people not only consume media, but acquire goods as well. But that’s assuming, of course, that people actually have the hardware to print out their new cars and sneakers.
http://mashable.com/2012/01/24/pirat...ect-physibles/





When Breast Isn’t Best: Outcry Over Comic’s Post
Dave Itzkoff

Two months after she gave birth to twins, Ahna Tessler was feeling confined in her Manhattan apartment and in need of artistic expression. So on Jan. 14 Ms. Tessler, a comedian who lives on the Upper West Side, did what came naturally: she recorded a humorous skit that incorporated her routine of breast-feeding her babies, Madelyn and Elliot, and tried to post the video on the online comedy site Funny or Die.

But a few hours after uploading the video, Ms. Tessler discovered that it had not been published — and that all of her previous Funny or Die videos had been taken down, and her account with the site had been suspended. When she asked Funny or Die for an explanation, she was told “the breast-feeding video” was the cause.

After an inquiry from The New York Times, Funny or Die restored Ms. Tessler’s account and her videos. But the incident was the latest example of how the depiction of nursing bedevils popular Web sites, online communities and other mass media, and left Ms. Tessler uncertain about Funny or Die’s overall standards.

“If I wanted to shock them,” Ms. Tessler said in a telephone interview, “I would have shown my breasts in a very sexual manner. I wouldn’t have been feeding my children.”

In the video, called “Leah got a job!,” she plays a vulgar character who has been hired as a children’s art teacher, and who declares that she hates kids even as she is shown with an infant at either breast. (The video, which contains coarse language, was also posted on YouTube.)

On the afternoon of Jan. 14 Ms. Tessler reached out to Funny or Die in a public area of the site, noting that the video had not been posted and that another video she had previously published was missing. That evening a site administrator replied, “Sorry, but your latest video got flagged as obscene, and we removed your account in response.”

When Ms. Tessler wrote back to say she “had no idea you couldn’t swear” on the site, the response was, “It was the breast-feeding video, not swearing.”

Asked why Ms. Tessler’s video and account had been removed, Ken Scott-Hlebek, vice president for engineering at Funny or Die, said in a statement: “We get a lot of content uploaded. A first-time uploader with a short video of breast-feeding can easily get mistaken for a spammer, which is a constant issue for us. It doesn’t have to be obscene to get taken down — anything that looks like spam or not in the spirit of the site can be removed. With the volume we have, and to protect the site and our users, we have to err on the side of caution whether it’s obscenity, advertisements, spam, or copyright concerns. We’re always happy to reconsider any decisions, and, of course, we apologize if she felt she wasn’t heard. We are in the process of reinstating the account and apologizing to the uploader.”

The site’s press representatives added, “Funny or Die supports breast-feeding in all forms, especially among consenting adults.”

In recent weeks social networks like Facebook have come under fire for deleting pictures that show children breast-feeding and for closing accounts of the mothers who posted the photos. In some of these cases the mothers were told they had violated the site’s terms of service by publishing sexual or obscene material. A separate online campaign has urged the children’s television series “Sesame Street” to show more images of breast-feeding.

Funny or Die, which is directed at an 18-and-over audience, often posts R-rated movie trailers and other bawdy content. But it does not appear to have a strict no-nudity policy: bare breasts can be seen in blooper videos on the site, and in the short “Jon Benjamin’s Ultimate Trick Shot Video” the camera frequently lingers on the genitals of a naked man.

Ms. Tessler said she was not seeking to test the boundaries of Funny or Die when she posted her video, but simply wanted to find something constructive in one of the more mundane aspects of new motherhood.

“I’m not performing, I’m not doing anything, ” she said. “It’s the hardest thing I’ve ever done, and I was thinking I have to get something out of this for me. I have to find the humor in this because it’s so insane right now, the amount of work and how exhausting it is.”

Ms. Tessler said she was glad to have her account back but ultimately unsure why her video had caused any trouble.

“My main question is, What were the rules to begin with?” she said. “I want to say so many inappropriate things, but you’re writing this down, so I can’t.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/25/a...ing-video.html





Photographers Face Copyright Threat After Shock Ruling
Chris Cheesman

Photographers who compose a picture in a similar way to an existing image risk copyright infringement, lawyers have warned following the first court ruling of its kind.

UK souvenir maker Temple Island Collection Ltd has won a ruling against New English Teas which it had accused of breaching copyright by using a photo of a London bus on its packaging.

Welcoming the news, Temple Island Collection's managing director Justin Fielder – who shot the image in August 2005 and then manipulated it using Photoshop – said: 'As creator of the Red Bus image, and originators of the product concept, we gave New England Teas the opportunity to license with us and work collaboratively, but this was declined.'

The case, heard at the Patents County Court in London on 12 January, could have serious implications for photographers, according to photographic copyright expert Charles Swan, a lawyer at Swan Turton, who said: 'His honour Judge Birss QC decided that a photograph of a red London bus against a black and white background of Big Ben and the Houses of Parliament, with a blank sky, was similar enough to another photograph of the same subject matter to infringe copyright.'

He added: 'The decision is perhaps surprising, given the commonplace subject matter of the photographs. The judge himself admitted that he found it a difficult question, but in the end he decided that a substantial part of photograph one [Temple Island's image] had been reproduced in photograph two [New English Teas'].'

Swan warned: 'The Temple Island case is likely to herald more claims of this kind. The judgement should be studied by anyone imitating an existing photograph or commissioning a photograph based on a similar photograph.

'“Inspiration' and “reference” are fine in themselves, but there is a line between copying ideas and copying the original expression of ideas which is often a difficult one to draw.'

Though, in the past, the cost of such court actions has made them 'uneconomic to pursue' this is all about to change, added Swan. 'The UK government has accepted a recommendation in the Hargreaves Report that the Patents County Court… should operate a small claims procedure for intellectual property claims under £5,000.'

Though the images are not identical, the judge ruled that Fielder's composition of the image, to include such features as the 'visual contrast' of the bright red bus and monochrome background, were the photographer's 'intellectual creation'.

The two images can be seen HERE

The full judgement can be read HERE
http://www.amateurphotographer.co.uk... _311191.html





Zynga Accused of Cloning Hit Indie iPhone Game Tiny Tower
Kris Graft

San Diego, CA-based independent iPhone game developer Nimblebit is accusing social games giant Zynga of ripping off its popular mobile title Tiny Tower.

Zynga last week launched on the Canadian App Store Dream Heights, a free-to-download tower-building game with in-app purchases that has clear similarities to summer 2011's Tiny Tower, which received Apple's 2011 iPhone Game of the Year.

"Clones" of games are a common occurrence on mobile platforms, but the Tiny Tower versus Dream Heights conflict has gained quick notoriety on the web due to the David and Goliath scenario of a massive public company allegedly copying the ideas of a three-person team.

Nimblebit's Ian Marsh got word out about the similarities between Dream Heights and Tiny Tower with an image that's still making the Twitter rounds. The image is made up of screenshots showing how Dream Heights' interface and gameplay mechanics appear strikingly similar to Tiny Tower's.

"We noticed you are about to launch a new iPhone game called Dream Heights! Congratulations!" reads the image, which was addressed to "all 2,789" of Zynga's employees. "We wanted to thank all of you guys for being such big fans of our iPhone game of the year, Tiny Tower!"

The sarcastic statement continues, "Good luck with your game, we are looking forward to inspiring you with our future games! Sincerely, (all 3 of us) -- Nimblebit."

Marsh also said on Twitter that Zynga "did try to go the honest route and try to acquire us first." He added that inside Dream Heights' app binary, the Zynga project "is named 'TowerVille' and its inhabitants are named zitizens" -- Tiny Tower's are called "bitizens."

Nimblebit and Zynga did not immediately reply to Gamasutra's requests for further comment.
http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/3...ny_Tower.ph p





The SOPA War: A Frantic Call, an Aborted Summit, and Dramatic New Details on How Hollywood Lost
Kim Masters

In the desperate hours of early January, with chatter spreading that the White House was poised to make a devastating statement opposing parts of proposed anti-piracy legislation that Hollywood studios considered key to the industry's very survival, MPAA president Christopher Dodd made a phone call to DreamWorks Animation CEO Jeffrey Katzenberg.

Katzenberg's company is not an MPAA member, but a list of the top 10 fund-raisers bundling money for President Obama would include not only Katzenberg but also his political adviser, Andy Spahn. It would not include any of the chiefs whose studios belong to the MPAA. So the former U.S. senator reached out, he says, to find out about the thinking inside the White House.

"The rumors were running rampant," says Dodd. "I was trying to use all the information points I could to find out what was going on."

Dodd says that at the time of his call, he had been assured no major actions were imminent. Then, on Jan. 14, the administration said it would not support legislation "that reduces freedom of expression, increases cybersecurity risk or undermines the dynamic, innovative global Internet."

"They just made up their mind to do it," says Dodd. "I raised issues about it, but they were going to march ahead."

So it was that Silicon Valley trampled Hollywood with a simple -- and, to the studios, absurd -- argument: that the anti-piracy bills would somehow "break the Internet." Seemingly overnight, the country had made up its mind -- the mere mention of "Hollywood" elicited boos from the audience during a debate among GOP candidates. MPAA members, who believed they had carefully laid the groundwork with the White House and Congress and that they had already made major concessions to placate their adversaries in the tech community, felt bitterly betrayed.

The legislation is in limbo now, though a source says there is movement -- however incremental -- toward a compromise. The MPAA says it's in the midst of a major reset on how to approach the issue. And the blame game has begun, with many wondering how Hollywood allowed itself to be beaten so decisively.

In the days after the controversial House version of the bill, the Stop Online Piracy Act, was derailed, Dodd belittled those who opposed it and threatened Democrats who had fled when the bill became radioactive. Perhaps his worst post-defeat move came Jan. 19 when he told Fox News that "those who count on, quote, 'Hollywood' for support need to understand this industry is watching very carefully who's going to stand up for them when their job is at stake." There was an instant outcry, including a petition on the White House website calling on the administration to investigate Dodd for "bribery." (In less than a week, it had attracted more than 21,000 signatures.)

Dodd, who says he was simply stating facts on Fox News, seemed to have done a thorough job making himself the face of those who would, according to critics, trample Internet freedom. Within days, however, he altered his tone. At a Jan. 23 Sundance panel, he acknowledged the defeat as "a watershed event." But even as Dodd dialed back his message, certain studio chiefs are continuing to rattle their sabres, letting it be known that their support for Obama has cooled because of the administration's opposition to elements of the bill.

Such threats seem to be part of the disconnect that doomed the SOPA legislation. "They didn't understand the politics of the Internet, the power of the Internet, the perception people had of the things they were proposing," says an aide to a congressman who opposed the legislation. "The MPAA and the different lobbying organizations are trying to do it old-school and by the book. They ran into new technologies, new strategies, new techniques. I imagine they're sitting around discussing how they got beat."

Not so long ago, says Andrew Schwartzman, senior vp of the D.C. public-interest organization Media Access Project, such a defeat would have seemed impossible. For years, the MPAA used a combination of "sophisticated effort and a lot of money" to win battles over issues like copyright protection. It used to be that the industry's bill "passed with huge margins and the opposition just got crushed." For a time, it looked like that would happen with the anti-piracy legislation, too. And the studios went for the gold, not so much in the Senate but in the House with the broader SOPA. "They teed up what many people thought were needlessly draconian measures, going for the best possible version of what they wanted," says Schwartzman.

Michael O'Leary, the MPAA's senior executive vp global policy and external affairs, acknowledges that some of the House bill's "sharp edges finally could have been softened" but adds, "That assumes the opposition wanted to make some kind of accommodation." And the MPAA says the enemy (aka Google) wasn't interested in that. Instead, the studios believe Google's real agenda was protecting revenue from advertising on illegal sites.

But there was little effort to make it appear, at least, that the studios and their supporters tried to negotiate with Google. When the House Judiciary Committee held a Nov. 16 hearing on SOPA, there was only one witness on the list testifying in opposition: Google's policy counsel, Katherine Oyama. "It was a stacked hearing," says Sherwin Siy of the Washington nonprofit Public Knowledge. (The committee chairman, Republican Lamar Smith of Texas, declined comment.)

By the time the committee met Dec. 15-16 to mark up the bill, the battle was no longer so one-sided. Various opponents tried to amend the bill and were voted down. The markup turned into something of a circus, with some members conceding that they didn't fully understand provisions of the bill, says Siy, who adds, "I was incredulously tweeting a lot of it." The mark-up "really drove home a lot of the problem to the broader grassroots," he says.

With SOPA stuck in committee, Congress went on recess until Jan. 17, allowing more time for the bill's enemies to rally the troops. By early January, the MPAA had started to pick up signals that the Obama administration was unhappy with certain elements. Of course, the White House had little interest in antagonizing its wealthy Hollywood supporters in an election year -- but it had even less interest in upsetting young Internet users or big tech companies, employees of which have given $52 million to the Democratic party since 2007, up $12 million from the 2001-06 period, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.

A few days after the White House posted its Jan. 14 statement, protest blackouts by popular websites such as Wikipedia sealed the deal. Support for the legislation collapsed -- most strikingly on the Senate side, where four of the bill's original backers withdrew, including longtime industry friend Orrin Hatch, R-Utah. Schwartzman says he can't remember when so many co-sponsors bailed on a bill.

The MPAA's O'Leary concedes that the industry was outmanned and outgunned in cyberspace. He says the MPAA "is [undergoing] a process of education, a process of getting a much, much greater presence in the online environment. This was a fight on a platform we're not at this point comfortable with, and we were going up against an opponent that controls that platform."

Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., had tried to broker a high-level meeting of the antagonists as recently as the week of Jan. 9, but Disney CEO Bob Iger -- contacted because Feinstein is unable to talk to Dodd due to lobbying restrictions -- declined the invitation. Dodd says he doubts the issue will be addressed again in the heat of an election year.

It now may be hard to win grassroots support for even a compromise bill, given the general distrust aroused by any attempt to legislate around the Internet. As for the industry's relationship with Obama, Schwartzman figures that will improve with time because Hollywood has no place else to go.

And what about Dodd? Given the degree to which he's been demonized during this fight, it's unclear how effective he can be in seeking a solution. "I can't figure out how such a seasoned and prestigious legislator blew it," says one Hollywood political operative. But the studios say they aren't blaming him. "He didn't design this legislation," says one high-level insider. "He played the cards he was dealt."
http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/new...-battle-284869
















Until next week,

- js.



















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