Peer-To-Peer News - The Week In Review - May 27th, ’06 - P2P-Zone

JackSpratts · 25-05-06, 11:07 AM

"They will have entire digital jukeboxes of covertly acquired telephone conversations, and suddenly someone in Eastern Europe is going to be very wealthy." – Philip R. Zimmermann

"German officials said they had technology for intercepting and decrypting Skype phone calls." – John Markoff

May 27th, ’06

Search whomever and whenever you want – as long as it’s not ever us

F.B.I. Raid Divides G.O.P. Lawmakers and White House
Carl Hulse

After years of quietly acceding to the Bush administration's assertions of executive power, the Republican-led Congress hit a limit this weekend.

Resentment boiled among senior Republicans for a second day on Tuesday after a team of warrant-bearing agents from the Federal Bureau of Investigation turned up at a closed House office building on Saturday evening, demanded entry to the office of a lawmaker and spent the night going through his files.

The episode prompted cries of constitutional foul from Republicans — even though the lawmaker in question, Representative William J. Jefferson of Louisiana, is a Democrat whose involvement in a bribery case has made him an obvious partisan political target.

Speaker J. Dennis Hastert raised the issue personally with President Bush on Tuesday. The Senate Rules Committee is examining the episode.

Representative John A. Boehner of Ohio, the House majority leader, predicted that the separation-of-powers conflict would go to the Supreme Court. "I have to believe at the end of the day it is going to end up across the street," Mr. Boehner told reporters gathered in his conference room, which looks out on the Capitol plaza and the court building.

A court challenge would place all three branches of government in the fray over whether the obscure "speech and debate" clause of the Constitution, which offers some legal immunity for lawmakers in the conduct of their official duties, could be interpreted to prohibit a search by the executive branch on Congressional property.

Lawmakers and outside analysts said that while the execution of a warrant on a Congressional office might be surprising — this appears to be the first time it has happened — it fit the Bush administration's pattern of asserting broad executive authority, sometimes at the expense of the legislative and judicial branches.

Pursuing a course advocated by Vice President Dick Cheney, the administration has sought to establish primacy on domestic and foreign policy, not infrequently keeping much of Congress out of the loop unless forced to consult.

"It is consistent with a unilateral approach to the use of authority in Washington, D.C.," Philip J. Cooper, a professor at Portland State University who has studied the administration's approach to executive power, said of the search.

"This administration," Dr. Cooper said, "has very systematically and from the beginning acted in a way to interpret its executive powers as broadly as possible and to interpret the power of Congress as narrowly as possible as compared to the executive."

Some Republicans agreed privately that the search was in line with what they saw as the philosophy of the Justice Department in the Bush administration. They said the department had often pushed the limits on legal interpretations involving issues like the treatment of terrorism detainees and surveillance.

Republicans may have a potential self-interest beyond defending the institutional prerogatives of the legislative branch. With some of the party's own lawmakers and aides under scrutiny in corruption inquiries tied to the lobbyist Jack Abramoff and the former lawmaker Randy Cunningham, Republicans would no doubt like to head off the possibility of embarrassing searches of their members' offices.

But lawmakers of both parties said they had no interest in protecting criminal activities or Mr. Jefferson. Their fear, they said, is that the search set a dangerous precedent that could be used by future administrations to intimidate or harass a supposedly coequal branch of the government.

"No member is above the law, but the institution has a right to protect itself against the executive department going into our offices," said Representative Steny H. Hoyer of Maryland, the No. 2 Democrat in the House. "We all have in our offices information, letters, correspondence, speeches, etc., that we have written, some of which we may have given to the public, put on the public record, some may not be, which is confidential information, just as the White House has confidential information."

Mr. Hoyer and other Congressional leaders said they were uncertain of what their legal or procedural response might be, though several said a "protocol" for carrying out such a search should be worked out between the Justice Department and Congress. Such an arrangement could cover things like prior consultation with leaders or other notice, how the search would be conducted, who would be present and other details.

"I think it is necessary for us to assert our own prerogatives," said Representative Eric Cantor of Virginia, the deputy Republican whip.

There is no sign that Congressional Republicans' discontent over this particular matter may spread into a more general challenge to the administration's expansive view of executive authority. But the friction has underscored the growing willingness of Republicans on Capitol Hill to distance themselves from the administration at a time when Mr. Bush's poll numbers are touching new lows, prompting the White House to try to repair relations with Congress.

At the Justice Department, Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales sought to smooth ruffled Congressional feathers. Mr. Gonzales said that private discussions were taking place to resolve the dispute and that he and his agency "have a great deal of respect for the Congress as a co-equal branch of government."

He and other officials suggested that the search had been made necessary by a lack of response to an earlier subpoena. "We shouldn't lose sight of the fact that the Department of Justice is doing its job in investigating criminal wrongdoing, and we have an obligation to the American people to pursue the evidence where it exists," Mr. Gonzales said.

Members of Congress are mindful that much of the public is not familiar with the speech and debate clause, which, among other things, requires that lawmakers be "privileged from arrest during their attendance at the session of their respective Houses, and in going to and returning from the same." Many people may wonder why a Congressional office cannot be searched in a criminal case and what members of Congress are complaining about.

To many lawmakers, that is secondary to the larger separation-of-powers principle they see at risk.

"I clearly have serious concerns about what happened," Mr. Boehner said, "and whether the people at the Justice Department have looked at the Constitution."
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/24/wa... tner=homepage

One Month of Torrents is Worth More Than The GDP of France
Donny's Blog

We have all heard how the RIAA is suing people over piracy, giving figures such as "300 million dollars a year" in lost revenues due to piracy. However, what you might not have heard is that this figure is actually lowballed - they are actually losing significantly more!

Lately we've been hearing more and more about the RIAA suing people over downloading music. Many people are skeptical of of the figures of lost revenue the RIAA reports, giving arguments like not every song downloaded equals a song that would have been bought. With all of this talk, I decided to investigate the cost of piracy, using the perfectly reasonable figures given by the RIAA: $150,000 per infringement.

The Copyright Act permits a copyright owner to claim $150,000 per infringement, and the RIAA has been using that figure when they've sued individuals. However, they claim that they only lose 300 million per year due to piracy, which would equate to only 2000 songs downloaded per year. Clearly something is wrong - to find out the real cost of piracy, I went to http://www.thepiratebay.org to find out how many songs are downloaded in a month, in order to make a more accurate estimate of the losses to the music industry.

First, I used the "Browse Torrents" link to view only music torrents. By browsing through the torrents, I found that (as of the time of writing) the torrents on pages 330 through 409 were all posted in January 2006. Then I wrote a quick Java program to download all those pages, parse it for the size of the torrent and the number of people who downloaded it, and made an educated guess as to how many infringements there were. If you want, you can see the raw output of my program. Here are the results:

In January 2006, there were approximately 2370 music torrents posted. By estimating that each music file is 5 megs, we can estimate the number of infringements as the number of downloads multiplied by the estimated number of songs. I ran my program, and when I saw the results I was shocked! Using those figures, there were approximately 76,272,931 infringements caused by the torrents posted in January! Using the RIAA's value of $150,000 per infringement, the total cost to the music industry was $11,440,939,650,000!

Now, it may be hard to grasp just how large a value that is, so I have provided a friendly chart which compares the net worth of Bill Gates, the 2005 Gross Domestic Product of France, and the cost of one month of torrents from one site:

Yea, you see that line in the bottom left, where you can't even see what color it is because it's too small? That's Bill Gates' net worth (46.5 billion according to Forbes 2005) compared to the cost of piracy, using figures from the RIAA.

With monthly losses of eleven trillion caused by one torrent site, it's a wonder we have a music industry at all. Please RIAA, keep on suing people, and stop letting them settle for less! Take it to the courts, make sure you get the full billion from that eleven year old girl, or the 80 year grandmother! It's well deserved, and it's the only way we can keep the music industry alive!
http://donnysblog.com/one-month-of-t...-riaa-rant.php

Newzbin.com Closes User Registration
Thomas Mennecke

Newzbin.com is often regarded as one of the larger Usenet (newsgroup) indexing sites, whose importance has become more substantial in recent months. Like BitTorrent or eDonkey2000 indexing sites, the entertainment industry has pursued websites that index NZB files. The effort is part of an ongoing campaign to lessen the effects of Internet piracy.

The success of this campaign remains dubious, as many of the targeted indexing sites resided in the United States. Although international efforts to close indexing sites have netted some major victories such as SuprNova and ShareReactor, enclaves such as ThePirateBay.org continue to cause headaches for the entertainment industry.

Newsgroup indexing sites were considered largely immune from the entertainment industry’s legal pursuit; however this notion quickly changed in February of 2006. On February 23, the MPAA targeted five BitTorrent and one eDonkey2000 indexing sites – fairly standard business. However for the first time, three newsgroup indexing sites were named in the MPAA’s federal lawsuit.

Since the arrival of NZB technology and simplistic newsgroup clients, this ancient Internet technology is quickly approaching mainstream usage. Newsgroup indexing sites categorize NZB files, which contain all the information necessary to find and download the necessary message archive automatically. The days of digging through headers and newsgroups (other than for browsing) were over, and clients such as Grabit were retrofitted to accommodate this new technology.

This situation has put Newzbin.com in a difficult position. While the site benefits from a large traffic draw, it has found itself walking a fine legal line. Based in the United Kingdom, it has thus far avoided the MPAA’s legal push against similar websites. However to mitigate any potential legal trouble, Newzbin.com closed their forums on March 16. They have yet to reopen.

In a move seemingly unrelated to the current political and legal climate surrounding file-sharing, Newzbin.com announced today they will no longer accept new registrations.

“With immediate effect, we are no longer accepting any new user signups/registrations.”

Large service oriented sites like ThePirateBay.org share similar technical requirements as Newzbin.com, which take an enormous amount of bandwidth, software and hardware power to successfully operate. As the newsgroups become more popular, administrators are constantly battling to keep equipment online – or face dreaded downtime.

“The primary reason is that we simply feel we have enough members now. The hardware behind the site is not going to cope with much more load without significant overhaul, and we want to keep the site quick and responsive for our existing members.”

How long this policy will stay in effect has not been determined, as the administrators of Newzbin.com hint this change may not be permanent. It is also possible a “invite” type registration of 10-20 people per day may also be implemented.

“How long this will last is undetermined; it most likely will not be permanent, but we don't know how long it will remain in force….We may move to a restricted signup (probably 10 or 20 per day, something like that) in the future if it looks workable, or perhaps a "introduce a member" scheme.”
http://slyck.com/news.php?story=1194

TV Networks Fight Back Amid Online Turmoil

Television is last medium to hit the Net, but it may be first to get it right
Michael Rogers

This week marks the start of the television “up-front,” when advertisers traditionally buy much of their commercial time for the upcoming season.

No one’s quite sure how it will go this year: advertisers are worried about the rapid proliferation of the digital video recorders that let viewers zap their commercials, so they may see television as less valuable. Marketers are also reserving more of the dollars they once spent on television for the Internet. But at the same time, the television folks are embracing the Internet, with one big advantage: as the last medium to come to the Web, they have some history to look back on. And both print and the music industry provide key lessons in what not to do.

Magazines and newspapers were the first on the Web in the mid-1990s and adopted the then-reigning ethos: everything for free. We can always start charging later, went one theory.

More visionary folks saw that the Internet would someday be an incredibly powerful advertising medium: We’re going to make it up on advertising. But it turned out there is enormous competition for ad dollars on the Web — community sites, games, search engines, and soon even application software, all competitors that print never had to face in the real world.

While many magazines and newspapers are attracting a large Web audience and lots of advertising, the revenue may never match what they made in the real world. Print’s future on the Web: downsizing.

Next up was the music industry. Early on there were smart people in the recording industry who saw the potential of legal downloading: What business wouldn’t like to sell direct to the consumer with no physical distribution costs?

But the industry was both complacent and overly concerned about upsetting the existing CD distribution chain. Thus they dragged their feet on downloading and were entirely overwhelmed — with no legal alternative to offer — when Napster appeared in 1999. Seven years later, illegal downloads still vastly outnumber legal online sales.

Now that video-capable broadband reaches more than half of American homes, it’s television’s turn to leap. And they’re doing something that’s collectively very smart.

Five networks — ABC, NBC, CBS, Fox and WB — have announced a panoply of varied Internet initiatives that include both streaming and downloading, both for-pay and advertiser-supported, and even a deal with BitTorrent, the current number-one technology used by those offering illegal video downloads.

Some of the approaches virtually ignore the local stations (the current distributors); others cut them in on the deal. When you step back, it almost looks like an industry-wide research project, throwing a half-dozen business models at the wall to see which ones stick. As soon as winners emerge, you can bet the rest will follow — television executives are, if nothing else, very good at copying each other.

But what’s the Internet upside for television? Print and music, of course, get to shed the costs of physical distribution — no more mailing magazines or shipping CDs.

Television, on the other hand, is already electronically distributed, in a way that makes lots of money for the networks and stations. But there’s a different benefit for television — getting out from under the cable and satellite owners. It didn’t take long, for example, for network TV executives to figure out that interactive advertising was going to be controlled by the set-top box.

In other words, if CBS sells an ad where the viewer clicks on Ashlee Simpson’s sweater to buy it, under the current distribution model the cable or satellite company is going to get a cut of the action. With video delivered on the Web, the network could get 100 percent of the deal.

So when do we all start watching television on the Web? Certainly not anytime soon.

Computer manufacturers need to sell more media-centric machines, such as Media Center PCs, that connect directly to the big screen in the living room. Delivery to cell-phones must also be standardized and simplified. Apple could provide a boost when it finally provides a living-room Mac with full television compatibility— not to mention a video iPod phone.

Television producers have to be convinced that digital rights management systems will protect them from the illegal downloading of the music industry. And then Internet picture quality needs to improve. That last is inevitable: video compression and bandwidth will only get better. And MP3s and iTunes have already demonstrated that consumers will give up some quality in return for convenience and control.

Finally, it’s once again worth looking at history. Ten years after newspapers went onto the Web, print circulation is beginning to drop substantially for many papers, while their Internet properties grow by double digits. On the music side, the value of legal downloads tripled in 2005 even as CD sales fell 7 percent, and neither trend is slowing.

It’s only logical to assume that five or 10 years out, the television landscape will see a similar shift. Cable, broadcast, satellite — plus the new telephone company fiber-optic systems — will still deliver lots of video, especially high definition. But both consumer video buying and advertising spending will increasingly move to the Internet.

It’s still very early days for the television industry on the Internet, but so far it seems to be doing an excellent job at keeping its business options open. Ironically enough, even though Internet entrepreneurs have always glorified the “first-mover advantage,” television may demonstrate that the last to arrive at the party may occasionally still have the best time.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/12759674/

An Online Market Blooms for Video Clip Reruns
Bob Tedeschi

YOU might not care that a student pilot in Idaho flipped his plane while landing last month and left himself with an injured hand and a cranky flying instructor. You might care even less to know that a local news station got film of the plane lying belly up in a field, and that the clip is now available online.

But someone cares. And on the Internet these days, as long as someone cares, cash flows.

In this case, the beneficiary is KTVX, an ABC affiliate in northern Utah owned by Clear Channel Communications. Until recently the station was like other local broadcasters in that it had little use for its news clips aside from posting them on its Web site for a couple of days and then relegating them to the digital vault. Now a new online service, ClipSyndicate, is finding Web sites like AeroSpaceNews.com that are happy to show these reruns and share the advertising revenue that may follow.

The idea behind ClipSyndicate is to give local television stations, which have long watched as online upstarts have stolen viewers and advertising dollars, their own foothold on the Web. Local stations have failed miserably in attracting audiences to their Web sites. But given the fascination with online video, that model is now serendipitously flipping. After all, why struggle to build an audience of your own when new Internet businesses will find video-starved viewers for you in the far-flung corners of the Web?

"Web sites and bloggers would love to add video, and news outlets would love to give it to them, but they haven't figured out a way to do it without getting ripped off," said Allen Weiner, an analyst with Gartner, a technology consulting firm. "So this addresses a major pain point."

ClipSyndicate, a service of the online video search company Critical Mention, indexes videos from Bloomberg, The Associated Press and other news outlets. Web publishers then visit ClipSyndicate.com and search for clips they like. ClipSyndicate allows Web sites to show the clips only as long as they are not broadcast companies themselves (and as long as they do not also show pornography).

Publishers either pay an undisclosed fee to ClipSyndicate each time they show a clip — then display their own ads with the clip — or they can run the videos with ads sold by ClipSyndicate and earn 5 percent of the advertising revenue. The video's owners, meanwhile, receive 30 percent of whatever revenue is generated from each clip.

Mr. Weiner, of Gartner, said ClipSyndicate was the only service of its kind at the moment, but he expected many competing online video companies, like Veoh and Revver to introduce similar initiatives.

Television networks are also embarking on efforts that can help them find more eyeballs for their local stations' video assets, without having to share the proceeds with an outside company.

Take NBC Universal, for one. Late last month the company said it would form the National Broadband Company, a joint venture between the network and its roughly 230 affiliates. NBBC, as the venture is known, will syndicate video from the affiliates, the NBC Universal library and other content on sites throughout the Web.

According to Mike Steib, who is overseeing the formation of NBBC, the venture will, among other things, collect and categorize clips according to their type, so NBBC can offer an entire channel of consumer news, for instance, for other sites and its own affiliates to show online.

Mr. Steib said the company was still signing up affiliates to distribute its videos, and NBBC was also determining how to derive revenue from the clips, be it from a pay-per-view approach, advertising, or both. The venture, though, is getting closer to an official introduction.

"It'll happen in a handful of months," Mr. Steib said. "I'm using a sand wedge, not a driver."

The ClipSyndicate service has not yet signed up major advertisers to show its ads, but Sean Morgan, Critical Mention's chief executive, said he did not expect any difficulty in attracting marketers. "We haven't put any advertisers on yet because we're still focused on aggregating content, but all the advertisers we're talking to say it sounds like it's going to work," he said.

Mr. Weiner, of Gartner, agreed that ClipSyndicate would be interesting to marketers. "It gives stations a viral audience that's potentially as large as what they'd get through their commercial medium," he said. "And because a significant part of the audience may be outside the local area, regional or national advertisers have a reason to be part of the mix."

That may not yet be the case with KTVX, but the station is certainly gaining a wider audience than before. According to Jason Gould, general manager of Inergize Digital Media, a unit of Clear Channel that manages the online operations of Clear Channel stations and others, the service provides "a whole new revenue stream."

The company had sought ways to generate revenue from the roughly 500 stories its affiliated stations broadcast daily — and the trove of videos from the past two years — but with little success. While some of the stories can be shown on the Web sites of other stations within Inergize's stable, "there hasn't been a mechanism for us to take them to the marketplace beyond our stations," Mr. Gould said. "So ClipSyndicate was a no-brainer to jump into."

Internet companies that show the videos are also pleased so far with the service. "This has worked beautifully for us," said Richard D. Stamberger, chief executive of SmartBrief, which distributes e-mail newsletters to roughly one million subscribers, and who recently began including videos from ClipSyndicate in those newsletters.

Subscribers have clicked on links to the videos at the same rate they click on links to text stories in the newsletters, which typically focus on a particular industry. But since marketers pay more for video ads than text ads, Mr. Stamberger said the videos would probably help SmartBrief's revenues.

"We haven't sold any ads yet but our initial conversations with advertisers have been very positive," Mr. Stamberger said. "This is right on the money in terms of hitting the market just as video is exploding."
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/22/te...gy/22ecom.html

Politicos Propose New Action On Net Neutrality
Anne Broache

The push for new laws mandating Net neutrality principles appears to be gaining steam on Capitol Hill.

The leaders of the U.S. House of Representatives Judiciary Committee released a five-page bill on Thursday that would embed new provisions requiring so-called network neutrality in existing federal antitrust laws.

Unlike existing proposals in both houses of Congress, the bill was endorsed not only by Democrats but by Committee Chairman Jim Sensenbrenner, a Wisconsin Republican. Michigan Democrat John Conyers, who serves as the committee's co-chairman, California Democrat Zoe Lofgren and Virginia Democrat Rick Boucher co-sponsored the measure.

Called the "Internet Freedom and Nondiscrimination Act," the bill is designed to "provide an insurance policy for Internet users against being harmed by broadband network operators abusing their market power to discriminate against content and service providers," Sensenbrenner said in a statement.

Citing government statistics that 98 percent of Americans have at most two choices for broadband service, Sensenbrenner said such a "virtual duopoly" is ripe for anticompetitive practices, and "a clear antitrust remedy is needed."

Net neutrality, which critics charge is impossible to define, centers on the idea that broadband providers must not be permitted to favor some Web sites or Internet services over others. Network operators argue that they should be entitled to charge bandwidth hogs extra for faster transmission and prioritized placement in order to help finance vast build-outs of broadband infrastructure.

The Judiciary bill would make it illegal under antitrust law for network operators to impose such fees or to fail to provide their services on "reasonable and nondiscriminatory terms." It also borrows language from an earlier House proposal co-sponsored by Boucher that would, for instance, bar broadband providers from blocking, impairing or degrading sites or services and from stopping users from attaching the devices of their choice to the network.

The committee's action was not unexpected, as members had voiced concern over the issue--and asserted their jurisdiction to make new rules--at a recent hearing convened by the committee's antitrust task force.

At a press conference on Thursday, Rep. Edward Markey, a Massachusetts Democrat who has been a vocal proponent of similar legislation in the House Energy and Commerce Committee, said he was unaware of the proposals in the rival committee and couldn't comment. He said he remained determined to reintroduce a Net neutrality amendment when a pending telecommunications bill goes to the floor for a vote by the full slate of legislators.

That proposal, which enjoyed support mostly from fellow Democrats, was soundly defeated twice by fairly large margins during earlier votes on a broadband bill in his committee.

"Our goal is to have a full debate and record...where every member stands" on Net neutrality, Markey said at an outdoor press conference where Grammy-nominated musician Moby also spoke out in favor of the bill.

Sparking controversy
Net neutrality became an arguably unintended focus during the first round of the Senate Commerce Committee's sweeping attempt to rewrite the Telecommunications Act of 1996.

The hearing was supposed to focus on components of the bill dealing with video franchising and the Universal Service Fund, with a separate hearing on Net neutrality scheduled for May 25. But a handful of senators and witnesses testifying before them couldn't resist voicing their opinions on what has become an increasingly volatile topic.

Sen. Byron Dorgan, a North Dakota Democrat, said he planned to introduce an amendment that would deal with Net neutrality, though it was unclear Thursday what shape that would take. "It's complicated, no doubt about it, but I think Internet freedom is very, very important," he said. That action likely wouldn't come until later, with a vote on the bill tentatively scheduled for June 20.

California Sen. Barbara Boxer, also a Democrat, said that if Congress didn't take action to protect Net neutrality principles, "We're going to put a lot of people in the slow lane--as a matter of fact, we're going to have a lot of people not able to access the Internet, and it's a very unfair system."

Right now, the Senate's telecommunications bill contains a provision that would direct the Federal Communications Commission to keep an eye on incidents that could be considered violations of Net neutrality and report to Congress on its findings. That's exactly the right approach, Kyle McSlarrow, president of the National Cable and Telecommunications Association, told the senators Thursday.

"This is the kind of issue that is most appropriately studied a lot more," he said.

Sen. Gordon Smith, an Oregon Republican, said he'd hate to see the Senate's proposal get "hung up" over the topic of Net neutrality but acknowledged the politicians wouldn't succeed in getting broad approval unless they "find a way to accommodate the legitimate interests being put forward on both sides."

Meanwhile, resistance to such new laws is also growing. On Wednesday, several of the world's largest hardware makers sent a letter to Congress decrying new Net neutrality laws.

Republican Sens. Jim DeMint of South Carolina and Sam Brownback of Kansas also have joined the opposition against the idea of legislating Net neutrality. In a one-page letter to their Senate colleagues dated May 16, they argued that doing so would "penalize broadband access providers for making major improvements to the Internet."

The senators also charged that such rules would "deprive parents of new technologies they may use to protect their families from online harm."

As of now, the issue of Net neutrality is being addressed by Congress in a couple of other forms aside from the Markey amendment and the new House Judiciary bill, but each of those measures would have a number of hurdles to clear before becoming law. The first standalone bill came in March from Sen. Ron Wyden, an Oregon Democrat, and prescribes the same kind of detailed rules found in the latest proposals. Critics of the laws charge that they amount to unprecedented regulation of the Internet.

The House broadband bill that Markey would like to amend includes a provision that would permit the FCC to police violations of its broadband policy statement, which outlines expectations that broadband providers will allow their users to view sites, run applications and connect devices to the network as they wish, within legal bounds. Net neutrality proponents have criticized that approach as too weak to prevent what they decry as a "fast lane" for those who can afford to pay extra to network operators.
http://news.com.com/Politicos+propos...3-6074108.html

Google Faces Lawsuit Over Search Suggestions
Jeremy Kirk, IDG News Service

A Belgian company has refiled a lawsuit over search terms offered by Google's toolbar that it claims directs users to pirated software.

The suit, originally filed in February, was refiled Wednesday by ServersCheck BVBA, a small company that makes network monitoring software, over Google's "Suggest" feature, included in the latest version of its search toolbar for Web browsers. When a user types in keywords for a search, the toolbar shows a drop-down menu of guesses related to those words.

If ServersCheck is entered, Google generates suggested search terms such as "serverscheck crack," "serverscheck pro crack," and "serverscheck keygen," which lead to pirated software, said Maarten Van Laere, chief executive officer of ServersCheck.

Van Laere said he was told by Google that Web sites with illegal content would be removed from their index, but that it couldn't tweak the Suggest feature. So Van Laere filed suit, an action he said is an expensive option for a small company against a behemoth such as Google.

He's trying to get Google to change the Suggest results. Van Laere uses Google's tool for analyzing Web traffic and found that about 93 percent of ServerCheck's customers come to their Web site by way of the popular search engine.

"We don't have any problems with the fact that in Google you can find illegal copies of our software," Van Laere said. "There are people who will never buy the product at the end of the day.

"But people that are looking for your company's name in good faith are then being suggested by Google to go and look for a crack. That is a complete different ballgame," Van Laere said.
Censorship Concerns

In response to the suit, a Google attorney told a Belgian newspaper on Wednesday that they could not filter the results of Google Suggest, citing censorship concerns.

Van Laere said the defense isn't accurate, since it appears that Google Suggest will not try to complete tracking numbers for shipping items or offer alternate suggestions for sexually-related terms. In a test, Google Suggest did not offer any related words for the terms "pornography," "naked" and "sex."

An attorney based in Belgium for Google was not immediately available for comment.

The latest problem is not the only run-in ServersCheck has had with Google. In its original lawsuit, ServersCheck complained that Google was allowing a competitor to use its brand name in an advertisement, falsely claiming that ServersCheck's software could be downloaded, Van Laere said.

Google agreed while the suit was making its way through court to halt advertisements on its AdWords service that used ServersCheck's name, Van Laere said.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/pcworld/2006...pcworld/125758

XM Defends Against RIAA Claims

XM calls the record industry's lawsuit from last week regarding being able to record satellite radio programming to a new wave of devices meritless.

In an open, passionate letter posted lasted week on their Web site, XM Satellite Radio has come out swinging against the RIAA, who is suing the satellite radio provider over its latest receiver/recorder devices (like the Pioneer Inno) which can save up to 50 hours of XM programming for later listening. The suit seeks damages against XM for every instance of a song copied by XM customers to one of these devices.

In their letter, XM states the new portable devices they’ve released are completely legal and that the RIAA has in effect filed a lawsuit to stop people’s “ability to choose when and where you can listen”. Seeing the lawsuit as “meritless”, XM compares products like the Pionner Inno to other devices over the decades, like VCRs and Tivo, which have recorded copyrighted programming off the airs for personal use.

XM said they will “vigorously defend these radios in court and before Congress” and that they expect to prevail.
http://news.digitaltrends.com/news_p...ndly10489.html

Sony Rootkit Settlement Gets Final Nod
Anne Broache

A federal judge on Monday gave final approval to a settlement in a class action suit against Sony BMG Music Entertainment over anticopying software the company had embedded in some music CDs.

The agreement (click for PDF) covers anyone who bought, received or used CDs containing what was revealed to be flawed digital rights management (DRM) software after Aug. 1, 2003. Those customers can file a claim and receive certain benefits, such as a nonprotected replacement CD, free downloads of music from that CD and additional cash payments.

The court action picked up last fall when security researchers discovered vulnerabilities posed by two pieces of software, First4Internet's XCP and SunnComm's MediaMax, which are automatically installed on a user's computer upon loading certain Sony BMG music CDs. The software's presence was masked by a "rootkit" that can make the PC more vulnerable to viruses and other hacker attacks.

The software also allegedly transmitted information about the listener's computer use back to Sony BMG, although a company-commissioned privacy assessment later determined that it collected only "non-personal information tied to a particular album and its usage."

At least 15 different lawsuits were filed by class action lawyers against the record label, and the New York cases were eventually consolidated into one proceeding. The parties reached a preliminary settlement with Sony BMG in December, leaving it up to a judge in a U.S. District Court in New York to make it official.

Sony BMG had already begun taking steps to remedy the situation. It yanked the affected discs off the shelves, suspended production of CDs containing the technology and issued a recall of the 4.7 million XCP CDs, offering MP3 downloads in return.

Under the terms of the final settlement, Sony BMG definitively agreed to continue halting manufacture or distribution of CDs containing the two programs. (It stopped using XCP on its products in November 2005 and ceased using MediaMax about a month later, according to court filings.)

For the duration of the settlement, which lasts until the end of 2007, the company is expected to take a number of steps before putting any new copy protection software on its wares. These steps would include submitting the software for review by an independent security expert and including a brief, written description of the copy protection tool on any CD that contains it.

Sony BMG told CNET News.com on Monday that it was "pleased" that the settlement in this case had secured the court's final approval.

Electronic Frontier Foundation Legal Director Cindy Cohn, whose organization participated in the settlement negotiation process on behalf of the plaintiffs, urged anyone in possession of the offending CDs to stake their claims against Sony. Doing so, she predicted, may send a message to Sony BMG and other music labels to "think twice before wrapping songs in DRM."

Sony BMG still faces a separate lawsuit "over materially the same subject matter" from the Texas attorney general, as well as inquiries from the Federal Trade Commission and other state attorneys general, according to the text of the settlement. That document indicated that the company would pursue similar settlements in those cases, too.
http://news.com.com/Sony+rootkit+set...3-6075370.html

Sony Introduces New Digital Projector
Gary Gentile

After more than a decade of talking about it, movie theaters and studios are finally rolling out digital projectors that show sharper, brighter images without cracks, pops or hisses.

This weekend, Sony Electronics will enter the field with a projector that displays the sharpest resolution envisioned under a set of standards issued for digital cinema.

Movie studios last year agreed on such technology standards, which will allow components made by different manufacturers to be interoperable. Those components include the projector itself, the computer that stores the movie and sound, software that compresses the huge digital files and security systems that prevent piracy.

And, after years of debate about who would pay for the systems, studios and companies that sell digital cinema systems agreed to share the cost.

Studios stand to save millions each year by delivering digital versions of their films to theaters instead of the clunky film prints that get scratched and dirty after only a few weeks and have to be replaced.

But the studios agreed to forgo those savings for 10 years in order to finance the cost of replacing current 35-millimeter film projectors with digital cinema systems.

Two financing groups have been established to install projectors that display images with "2K" resolution, or about 2 million pixels — dots of light that make up a digital image. The main benefit of 2K projection is a more stable, consistent image, although one trade-off is that color is often not as deep and rich as that provided by film.

Both groups hope to have hundreds of systems installed by the end of this year and as many as half of the nation's 36,000 screens within the next 10 years.

This weekend, Sony will begin a test of its new "4K" projector, which displays images at 8 million pixels horizontally.

The company has installed one of the projectors at a theater in Los Angeles that will show Sony Pictures' "The Da Vinci Code." The company, in conjunction with National CineMedia, a joint venture of AMC Entertainment Inc., Cinemark USA Inc. and Regal Entertainment Group, will install projectors in two other theaters next month in yet to be determined locations.

Movies can be distributed in one of several ways. In the current test, the Sony projector will play the movie from a computer disk. Movies can also be beamed to theaters via satellite or sent over fiber-optic cables, as is the case with a similar test in Japan being conducted by Warner Bros. and Sony Pictures.

The 4K projectors promise richer color and better contrast that draws moviegoers into the image. The major difference, however, will be seen by those who sit closest to the movie screen, who will see sharper images without noticing individual pixels, which can occur in a theater with 2K projection.

Sony recently tested its system using a clip from the 1965 classic "The Sound of Music." When it was projected in 4K, viewers were able to pick out two hairs sticking up from Julie Andrews' head and see details of the weave in her dress.

"Anything that enhances the visual experience, that better supports the artistry, the story of the motion picture being exhibited, anything that raises the bar of higher quality is a benefit to the moviegoer," said Andrew Stucker, general manager of the digital cinema systems group at Sony Electronics.

The increased quality is strongly desired by theater owners, who are looking for ways to attract more business, especially as home theater systems become more sophisticated.

"There's a strong desire to differentiate cinema from home and that's where 4K comes in," said Michael Karagosian of MKPE Consulting.

But in the end, Karagosian suggests, moviegoers will not base their decision to visit the local megaplex on technology alone.

"It's a social experience and at bottom line it's about the content," he said. "I may remodel my kitchen, but I still like to go out to eat once in a while."

Digital projectors are installed in about 500 U.S. theaters today. That number is expected to rise to about 1,500 by the end of the year.

Current digital projection systems cost about $100,000, with 4K systems expected to be higher initially, although the price should come down once the market develops.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060518/...MwBHNlYwM3Mzg-

Hollywood Reportedly In Agreement To Delay Forced Quality Downgrades For Blu-ray, HD DVD
Ken Fisher

As the DVD format welcomes two potential heirs to its kingship as the commercial video medium of choice, there are mounting concerns that these new heirs are nothing but pretenders. Blu-ray and HD DVD—the two competing "standards" for the next-generation of video discs—are both shackled with technologically-forged chains, but those chains may be broken by a consumer electronics industry wary of how their existence could hamper sales.

One of the most controversial aspects of these next-generation products is something called the Image Constraint Token (ICT), a security "feature" that allows studios to force-downgrade video quality on players that lack a special video output that was designed to thwart piracy. This "HDMI" connector standard is part of a "protected pathway" for video that was meant to combat piracy by making it impossible for pirates to tap into high-definition video output and press "Record," as it were. Many fear, however, that the only success HDMI will have is in making honest users miserable, inasmuch as consumers could be left with a product that plays at low quality or not at all if HDMI is not present on one's player or TV.

The conundrum isn't apparently lost on the consumer electronics industry or Hollywood. According to German-language Spiegel Online, there is reportedly a behind-the-scenes, unofficial agreement between Hollywood and some consumer electronics manufacturers, including Microsoft and Sony, not to use ICT until 2010, or possibly even 2012. Without providing more details, the report suggests that Hollywood isn't exactly happy with the situation, and could very well renege on the agreement, such that it is. But the agreement is there nonetheless, presumably to help the industry transition to HDMI. This could explain why the very same studios that pushed for HDMI and ICT have recently announced that they would not use it for the time being.

The report's claims could also shed some light on two of the more baffling consumer electronics moves as of late. Sony stunned onlookers when it announced that the low-end PlayStation 3, which will retail for US$499, will not have HDMI. This put Sony in the awkward position of downplaying HDMI as a "must have" feature for a next-generation optical disc player. Kaz Hirai, CEO of Sony Computer Entertainment of America, sidestepped the lack of HDMI by painting it as a high-end standard that wouldn't be aesthetically appreciated by many consumers.

"The only difference is HDMI – and at this point, I don't think many people's TV's have that. The ultimate result, to my eyes anyway, is there's not a discernible difference between what you get between HDMI and other forms of high definition," he said.

On one level, he's correct. Few consumers will appreciate the difference between 1080i on a component cable (analog) and 1080p on HDMI. What he ignored is the real trade-off: without HDMI, that 1920x1080 (1080i/p) or 1280 x 720 (720p) picture, analog or not, could be rendered at a less impressive 960x540 (540p) if the ICT was present and obeyed. While 540p is indeed better than today's DVD standard, few consumers would spend $500-$1000 on a new player and as much as $10 more per movie to get it. If part of Sony's big pitch for the PS3 is "hey, this thing is also futureproof because it does Blu-ray!," then ditching support for HDMI doesn't make sense in a world where the absence of HDMI could negate much of the promise of Blu-ray.

Then there's Microsoft. The company launched the Xbox 360 last November sans HD DVD drive, which turned out to be a wise thing to do, as both HD DVD and Blu-ray were delayed by setbacks with the new AACS security system. Microsoft nevertheless intends to support HD DVD on the Xbox 360 by shipping an external HD DVD player for the console in time for the 2006 holiday season. The add-on drive will connect to the Xbox via a USB 2.0 cable, but the console currently lacks an HDMI connector, just like the low-end PS3. Microsoft has not announced support for HDMI for the Xbox 360, though speculation is ripe that the company will release a dongle for the console after Lik-Sang posted a product page for it. For that dongle to do the trick, however, Microsoft would need to be able to add HDMI support via a firmware update, and their current proprietary output connector would need to meet HDMI standards. It is not yet clear if HDMI can be added to the Xbox 360 without a hardware revision, but that question may be seen as "moot" if in fact HDMI won't be a barrier to true 720 or 1080i/p until 4 to 6 years from now.

If indeed there is an "agreement" of sorts between companies like Microsoft and Sony and the studios (including Sony's own entertainment interests), this could certainly help to explain why these consoles are shipping today without HDMI support. But such unofficial agreements are gentlemanly in nature: at any time, all bets could be off. In the meantime, it appears as though Hollywood is playing it safe, hoping to keep the boogeyman of HDMI at bay while consumers weigh their options. Whether or not the strategy is ultimately about keeping users happy or lulling them into a false sense of security remains to be seen, but we're fairly certain that ICT was designed to be used, and used it will be.
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20060521-6880.html

Samsung Debuts Hybrid Hard Drive
Barry Levine

Imagine a Windows laptop that could boot up as much as 25 seconds more quickly than usual, last up to 30 minutes longer on battery power, and be as much as five times more reliable than existing PCs. That is Samsung's vision for the value of its new Hybrid Hard Drive (HHD), a next-generation drive that combines flash memory with traditional rotating magnetic storage.

The company announced the drive on Wednesday and will be showing it at the Windows Hardware Engineering Conference in Seattle, Washington, next week.

The magnetic storage part of the drive will provide the high storage densities found in standard hard-drive technology, while the flash part of the drive will provide the reliability, the fast read-write access, and the low power consumption, Samsung said.

Vista Coordination

When flash memory is being used, the hard drive remains idle which, according to Samsung, can save battery power and make the drive less susceptible to damage. The hard drive spins to "flush out" memory a few times every 10 to 20 minutes, then returns to its idle state unless it is needed.

Microsoft sees the product as complementing the upcoming Windows Vista operating system.

"Hybrid hard disks and Windows ReadyDrive Technology are integrated advancements that improve the performance and reliability of computers using Windows Vista, especially notebook computers," said Mike Sievert, Microsoft's corporate vice president in the Windows Client Marketing division, in a statement.

It is expected that the hybrid drives will be marketed under the ReadyDrive brand name and released in coordination with Vista's rollout.

Experts Divided

Industry observers were divided on the value and viability of this hybrid approach. "These kinds of drives have the best of both worlds and this could be a great drive for consumers wanting to use their PCs for entertainment," said Nicole d'Onofrio, an analyst at research firm Current Analysis. "I estimate we'll see other manufacturers with hybrids by the end of this year or beginning of 2007."

But Joseph Unsworth, a principal analyst at Gartner, questioned whether Intel's upcoming Robson technology could overtake this market need. "Robson offers flash right on the chipset," he said. "We're going to see a lot of notebooks with Robson, and you don't need Vista to run it." He said he expects Robson to be out in first quarter of 2007.

Gartner analyst John Monroe downplayed the value of the Samsung HHD technology. "There is nothing new in having cache on a hard drive -- it's been done for years," he said. "The basic difference here is that it is bigger and nonvolatile. The main reason you would need it is because Vista takes so long to boot."

With mobile devices, it might have some value, he said. "But probably not with desktop machines, which are often left on."
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nf/20060518/... kBHNlYwMxNjk1

Google's Goal: A Worldwide Web of Books
Leslie Walker

It's odd to hear Vinton Cerf, regarded as one of the founding fathers of the Internet, to gush over ink-on-paper books.

The electronic pioneer and computer scientist, who now works as Google's chief Internet evangelist, is also a bibliophile who has a collection of about 10,000 hard-copy volumes lining shelves at his home in McLean.

These days, Cerf is busy promoting Google's plan to marry his two passions -- books and the Internet -- by digitizing millions of library books. He recently dropped by my office to explain the controversial plan and talk about its implications for book lovers.

As Cerf talked about his personal book collection and the limitations of having knowledge fixed on paper, he got me thinking about how reading will be transformed when static libraries join the more dynamic world of cross-referenced knowledge on the Web.

For starters, Cerf said, libraries are not exactly easy to navigate.

"Think for a moment about the dead-tree problem," he said. "When you stand in your own personal library looking for something and you realize that A, you can't remember which book it was in, and B, there's no way you can go through manually looking at all the pages, then you think, 'God, I wish all this stuff was online.' "

That's the stated goal of Google's library project, to create a massive electronic card catalog that will help people find information in published books, much as Google already does with Web pages.

Google has vowed to create a full-text index of seven-million books in the University of Michigan library, along with millions more in the university libraries at Harvard, Stanford and Oxford, as well as the New York Public Library. The idea is similar to Amazon.com's "search inside the book" feature, eventually allowing anyone using Google's free book search ( http://books.google.com/ ) not only to see sample pages from books but also search their contents and find excerpts matching search terms.

Google is not alone in trying to digitize library books. Yahoo, Microsoft and other Internet players have joined a collaborative effort called the Open Content Alliance, which is planning to digitize not only library books but other types of multimedia, as well, making them all accessible on the Web.

Google, however, has embarked on a solo book project that is much further along than the collaborative effort. The Internet search leader has developed technology for bulk scanning of books and started scanning them at the University of Michigan, much to the consternation of the publishing industry. The Authors Guild and a group of publishers have accused the search giant of copyright infringement in two lawsuits filed last fall.

Several of those same publishers were -- and still are -- Google's partners in a program announced in the fall of 2004 to scan in-print books provided by publishers. That plan called for making books searchable online and sharing with publishers the revenue Google gets from showing text ads alongside book search results.

But publishers cried foul a few months later when Google announced it was expanding its book search to include millions of library tomes. Unlike the initial plan, the library project involves scanning many books that are either clearly under copyright or for which the copyright status is unclear.

Google contends the project falls within the "fair use" exemption to copyright law, because it is not providing full access to copyrighted books, merely letting people search inside and see excerpts. Google's book search service, still in trial mode, allows people to only read the full text of books in the public domain and shows sample pages from books for which publishers have granted Google sampling rights.

But for most books it is scanning, Google argues the copyright status is unclear and therefore shows more limited excerpts. Google refers to them as "snippets," raggedy images of a few lines of text from inside, with information about who published each book and when.

But at least five publishing houses disagree that the "snippets" constitute fair use. In a lawsuit filed in October, McGraw-Hill, Simon & Schuster and three other publishers charged that Google is violating copyright law because, in order to prepare the snippets, it is making and storing on computers unauthorized full copies of their books. And while Google tells the public its goal is simply to make books searchable, the suit alleges that Google's aim is to get more visitors so it can sell more ads.

"The question you have to ask is whether book search is an asset to Google," said Allan Adler, vice president for legal and government affairs for the Association of American Publishers. "Of course it is. It's one way it can differentiate itself from the competition."

Cerf thinks publishers fail to appreciate that Google probably will help them sell more books by making them searchable. Helping people locate a book and know what's in it, he said, are key steps toward getting them to buy it. And for many books are available for sale, Google provides links to Amazon.com and other online sellers. Google does not sell books.

For now, Google is showing no ads alongside search results involving books from libraries, only books provided by publishers. In those cases, publishers are receiving a share of the ad revenue.

Google also recently announced it will soon allow publishers and copyright holders to sell full electronic access to books through Google book search, either by letting people read the text online or downloading copies. Google will take a 30 percent commission on any fees publishers collect.

What Google has not announced, but is likely to one day, are ways it might help publishers and authors enhance pages from printed books once they are online.

Cerf refers to this as "books that talk to each other," an idea to make them more like the rest of the Web where pages are cross-linked and visitors can annotate and tag text as is done with Web logs.

"Because the Internet is a computing environment, a software environment, it's possible to create a much richer kind of information than what we are typically accustomed to in books," Cerf said. Digitized books, he said, can be searched and updated easily, linked to related material, and enhanced with audio and video. But they can also be changed, which means that the book you read a year ago may look different the next time you consult it.

As his attention turned back to his personal book collection, his eyes lit up as he imagined searching its contents from a BlackBerry. Listening to him, I couldn't help thinking how inevitable it is that library books will move online and come alive with hyperlinks and annotations, the way the Web already is.

And then everyone, not just the Vinton Cerfs of the world, will have access to vast personal libraries from the comforts of home.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...051702016.html

The Eternal Value of Privacy
Bruce Schneier

The most common retort against privacy advocates -- by those in favor of ID checks, cameras, databases, data mining and other wholesale surveillance measures -- is this line: "If you aren't doing anything wrong, what do you have to hide?"

Some clever answers: "If I'm not doing anything wrong, then you have no cause to watch me." "Because the government gets to define what's wrong, and they keep changing the definition." "Because you might do something wrong with my information." My problem with quips like these -- as right as they are -- is that they accept the premise that privacy is about hiding a wrong. It's not. Privacy is an inherent human right, and a requirement for maintaining the human condition with dignity and respect.

Two proverbs say it best: Quis custodiet custodes ipsos? ("Who watches the watchers?") and "Absolute power corrupts absolutely."

Cardinal Richelieu understood the value of surveillance when he famously said, "If one would give me six lines written by the hand of the most honest man, I would find something in them to have him hanged." Watch someone long enough, and you'll find something to arrest -- or just blackmail -- with. Privacy is important because without it, surveillance information will be abused: to peep, to sell to marketers and to spy on political enemies -- whoever they happen to be at the time.

Privacy protects us from abuses by those in power, even if we're doing nothing wrong at the time of surveillance.

We do nothing wrong when we make love or go to the bathroom. We are not deliberately hiding anything when we seek out private places for reflection or conversation. We keep private journals, sing in the privacy of the shower, and write letters to secret lovers and then burn them. Privacy is a basic human need.

A future in which privacy would face constant assault was so alien to the framers of the Constitution that it never occurred to them to call out privacy as an explicit right. Privacy was inherent to the nobility of their being and their cause. Of course being watched in your own home was unreasonable. Watching at all was an act so unseemly as to be inconceivable among gentlemen in their day. You watched convicted criminals, not free citizens. You ruled your own home. It's intrinsic to the concept of liberty.

For if we are observed in all matters, we are constantly under threat of correction, judgment, criticism, even plagiarism of our own uniqueness. We become children, fettered under watchful eyes, constantly fearful that -- either now or in the uncertain future -- patterns we leave behind will be brought back to implicate us, by whatever authority has now become focused upon our once-private and innocent acts. We lose our individuality, because everything we do is observable and recordable.

How many of us have paused during conversation in the past four-and-a-half years, suddenly aware that we might be eavesdropped on? Probably it was a phone conversation, although maybe it was an e-mail or instant-message exchange or a conversation in a public place. Maybe the topic was terrorism, or politics, or Islam. We stop suddenly, momentarily afraid that our words might be taken out of context, then we laugh at our paranoia and go on. But our demeanor has changed, and our words are subtly altered.

This is the loss of freedom we face when our privacy is taken from us. This is life in former East Germany, or life in Saddam Hussein's Iraq. And it's our future as we allow an ever-intrusive eye into our personal, private lives.

Too many wrongly characterize the debate as "security versus privacy." The real choice is liberty versus control. Tyranny, whether it arises under threat of foreign physical attack or under constant domestic authoritative scrutiny, is still tyranny. Liberty requires security without intrusion, security plus privacy. Widespread police surveillance is the very definition of a police state. And that's why we should champion privacy even when we have nothing to hide.
http://www.wired.com/news/columns/1,70886-0.html

Government To Force Handover Of Encryption Keys
Tom Espiner

The UK Government is preparing to give the police the authority to force organisations and individuals to disclose encryption keys, a move which has outraged some security and civil rights experts.

The powers are contained within Part 3 of the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act (RIPA). RIPA was introduced in 2000, but the government has held back from bringing Part 3 into effect. Now, more than five years after the original act was passed, the Home Office is seeking to exercise the powers within Part Three of RIPA.

Some security experts are concerned that the plan could criminalise innocent people and drive businesses out of the UK. But the Home Office, which has just launched a consultation process, says the powers contained in Part 3 are needed to combat an increased use of encryption by criminals, paedophiles, and terrorists.

"The use of encryption is... proliferating," Liam Byrne, Home Office minister of state told Parliament last week. "Encryption products are more widely available and are integrated as security features in standard operating systems, so the Government has concluded that it is now right to implement the provisions of Part 3 of RIPA... which is not presently in force."

Part 3 of RIPA gives the police powers to order the disclosure of encryption keys, or force suspects to decrypt encrypted data.

Anyone who refuses to hand over a key to the police would face up to two years' imprisonment. Under current anti-terrorism legislation, terrorist suspects now face up to five years for withholding keys.

If Part 3 is passed, financial institutions could be compelled to give up the encryption keys they use for banking transactions, experts have warned.

"The controversy here [lies in] seizing keys, not in forcing people to decrypt. The power to seize encryption keys is spooking big business," Cambridge University security expert Richard Clayton told ZDNet UK on Wednesday.

"The notion that international bankers would be wary of bringing master keys into UK if they could be seized as part of legitimate police operations, or by a corrupt chief constable, has quite a lot of traction," Clayton added. "With the appropriate paperwork, keys can be seized. If you're an international banker you'll plonk your headquarters in Zurich."

Opponents of the RIP Act have argued that the police could struggle to enforce Part 3, as people can argue that they don't possess the key to unlock encrypted data in their possession.

"It is, as ever, almost impossible to prove 'beyond a reasonable doubt' that some random-looking data is in fact ciphertext, and then prove that the accused actually has the key for it, and that he has refused a proper order to divulge it," pointed out encryption expert Peter Fairbrother on ukcrypto, a public email discussion list.

Clayton backed up this point. "The police can say 'We think he's a terrorist' or 'We think he's trading in kiddie porn', and the suspect can say, 'No, they're love letters, sorry, I've lost the key'. How much evidence do you need [to convict]? If you can't decrypt [the data], then by definition you don't know what it is," said Clayton.

The Home Office on Wednesday told ZDNet UK that it would not reach a decision about whether Part 3 will be amended until the consultation process has been completed.

"We are in consultation, and [are] looking into proposals on amendments to RIPA," said a Home Office spokeswoman. "The Home Office is waiting for the results of the consultation" before making any decisions, she said.

The Home Office said last week that the focus on key disclosure and forced decryption was necessary due to "the threat to public safety posed by terrorist use of encryption technology".

Clayton, on the other hand, argues that terrorist cells do not use master keys in the same way as governments and businesses.

"Terrorist cells use master keys on a one-to-one basis, rather than using them to generate pass keys for a series of communications. With a one-to-one key, you may as well just force the terrorist suspect to decrypt that communication, or use other methods of decryption," said Clayton.

"My suggestion is to turn on all of Part 3, except the part about trying to seize keys. That won't create such a furore in financial circles," he said.
http://news.zdnet.co.uk/0,39020330,39269746,00.htm

Voice Encryption May Draw U.S. Scrutiny
John Markoff

Philip R. Zimmermann wants to protect online privacy. Who could object to that?

He has found out once already. Trained as a computer scientist, he developed a program in 1991 called Pretty Good Privacy, or PGP, for scrambling and unscrambling e-mail messages. It won a following among privacy rights advocates and human rights groups working overseas — and a three-year federal criminal investigation into whether he had violated export restrictions on cryptographic software. The case was dropped in 1996, and Mr. Zimmermann, who lives in Menlo Park, Calif., started PGP Inc. to sell his software commercially.

Now he is again inviting government scrutiny. On Sunday, he released a free Windows software program, Zfone, that encrypts a computer-to-computer voice conversation so both parties can be confident that no one is listening in. It became available earlier this year to Macintosh and Linux users of the system known as voice-over-Internet protocol, or VoIP.

What sets Zfone apart from comparable systems is that it does not require a web of computers to hold the keys, or long numbers, used in most encryption schemes. Instead, it performs the key exchange inside the digital voice channel while the call is being set up, so no third party has the keys.

Zfone's introduction comes as reports continue to emerge about the government's electronic surveillance efforts. A lawsuit by the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a privacy rights group, contends that AT&T has given the National Security Agency real-time access to Internet communications.

In the wake of 9/11, there were calls for the government to institute new barriers to cryptography, to avoid its use in communications by enemies of the United States. Easily accessible cryptography for Internet calling may intensify that debate.

"I'm afraid it will put front and center an issue that had been resolved in the individual's favor in the 1990's," said James X. Dempsey, policy director for the Center for Democracy and Technology, a Washington-based public policy group.

The Federal Communications Commission has begun adopting regulations that would force Internet service providers and VoIP companies to adopt the technology that permits law enforcement officials to monitor conventional telephone calls. But for now, at least, F.C.C. regulation exempts programs that operate directly between computers, not through a hub.

"From the F.C.C.'s perspective you can't regulate point-to-point communications, which I think will let Phil off the hook," said Marc Rotenberg, director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center, an advocacy group in Washington.

Zfone may face more of a challenge in Europe, where the British government is preparing to give the police the legal authority to compel both organizations and individuals to disclose encryption keys.

But Mr. Zimmermann, 52, does not see those fearing government surveillance — or trying to evade it — as the primary market. The next phase of the Internet's spyware epidemic, he contends, will be software designed to eavesdrop on Internet telephone calls made by corporate users.

"They will have entire digital jukeboxes of covertly acquired telephone conversations, and suddenly someone in Eastern Europe is going to be very wealthy," he said.

While Mr. Zimmerman is giving away his software so far, his goal is to attract VoIP software and hardware developers to license his technology and embed it in their products.

Zfone can automatically encrypt any call between users of freely available VoIP software programs like X-Lite, Gizmo or SJphone. It can be downloaded at www.philzimmermann.com.

The system does not work with Skype, the VoIP system acquired by eBay, which uses its own encryption scheme. But at a conference last week in Cyprus, German officials said they had technology for intercepting and decrypting Skype phone calls, according to Anthony M. Rutkowski, vice president for regulatory affairs and standards for VeriSign, a company that offers security for Internet and phone operations.

Mr. Zimmermann said he had not yet tested Zfone's compatibility with Vonage, another popular VoIP service.

Mr. Zimmermann contends that the nation is better off with strong cryptography. Indeed, Zfone can be considered an asset, he said, because it allows people to have secret conversations without hiding their Internet protocol addresses, which could be traceable geographically. Those observed having a secured conversation could come under suspicion, of course. But for that reason, he argued, sophisticated criminals or terrorists are unlikely to use the technology.

"I'm sympathetic to the needs of the intelligence community to catch the bad guys," he said. "I specifically protect the content the criminals want, while simultaneously not interfering with the traffic analysis that the N.S.A. is trying to do. You could make the case that I'm being socially responsible."
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/22/te...22privacy.html

England further isolates itself

UK Law Will Criminalise IT Pros, Say Experts
Graeme Wearden and Tom Espiner

IT and security professionals who make network monitoring tools publicly available or disclose details of unpatched vulnerabilities could be convicted under a proposed UK law, experts have warned.

The Police and Justice Bill will update the UK's existing Computer Misuse Act (CMA), bringing in new powers to address the rise of organised cybercriminals and offences such as denial-of-service attacks. It was passed by the House of Commons earlier this month, and will be considered by the House Of Lords over the next couple of months.

Leading figures in the UK technology sector believe that the bill, as it currently stands, would outlaw a range of innocent activities.

Section 41 of the bill would amend the CMA to include a new offence of "making, supplying or obtaining articles for use in computer misuse offences".

It reads:

A person is guilty of an offence if he makes, adapts, supplies or offers to supply any article —

(a) intending it to be used to commit, or to assist in the commission of, an offence under section 1 or 3 [of the Computer Misuse Act]; or
(b) believing that it is likely to be so used.

Dr Richard Clayton of Cambridge University believes that part (b), as currently laid out, would catch a wide range of IT tools and activities that are not meant to be used in hacking, but potentially could be.

Clayton cited the Perl scripting language, created by Larry Wall in 1987, as an example of a useful technology that could fall foul of the law.

"Perl is almost universally used on a daily basis to permit the Internet to function," said Clayton. "I doubt if there is a sysadmin on the planet who hasn't written a Perl program at some time or another. Equally, almost every hacker who commits an offence under section 1 or section 3 of the CMA will use Perl as part of their toolkit. Unless Larry is especially stupid, and there is very little evidence for that, he will form the opinion that hackers are likely to use his Perl system. Locking Larry up is surely not desirable."

People who distribute networking vulnerability scanning tools such as nmap or Nessus could also be caught up in part (b), Clayton warned.

"The effect will be that people will stop offering these tools on their sites. Why should the only place to fetch Perl and nmap be from hacker sites in Eastern Europe, where the risk is that they carry Trojans? This makes the Internet less safe," argued Clayton.

Malcolm Hutty, regulation officer at the London Internet Exchange, shares Clayton's fears about the bill. He believes it would make people much more reluctant to make useful software tools available to the public.

"We are concerned that the scope of [section 41 of] the bill is too broad, and could criminalise a lot of innocent people," said Hutty.

He said organisations such as LINX have been urging the Home Office to have the bill altered. Some amendments were made following these lobbying efforts, but Hutty believes the government should have gone further.

He also believes that section 41 could be interpreted as including the supply of information about security vulnerabilities, as that advice could be used to commit a criminal offence.

"You could reveal details of a security flaw, and someone could hear that and decide that not everyone would be patched yet," said Hutty, adding that this could even include media outlets which reported on security flaws.

The Home Office denies suggestions that the bill will criminalise systems administrators by outlawing software which could be used in cybercrime attacks.

"There is a hacking amendment, but it doesn't criminalise those innocent of hacking attacks," said a Home Office spokeswoman. "[It] shifts the emphasis on to those intending to deliberately develop tools for criminal use."
http://news.zdnet.co.uk/business/leg...9270045,00.htm

Gonzales Says Prosecutions of Journalists Are Possible
Adam Liptak

The government has the legal authority to prosecute journalists for publishing classified information, Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales said yesterday.

"There are some statutes on the book which, if you read the language carefully, would seem to indicate that that is a possibility," Mr. Gonzales said on the ABC News program "This Week."

"That's a policy judgment by the Congress in passing that kind of legislation," he continued. "We have an obligation to enforce those laws. We have an obligation to ensure that our national security is protected."

Asked whether he was open to the possibility that The New York Times should be prosecuted for its disclosures in December concerning a National Security Agency surveillance program, Mr. Gonzales said his department was trying to determine "the appropriate course of action in that particular case."

"I'm not going to talk about it specifically," he said. "We have an obligation to enforce the law and to prosecute those who engage in criminal activity."

Though he did not name the statutes that might allow such prosecutions, Mr. Gonzales was apparently referring to espionage laws that in some circumstances forbid the possession and publication of information concerning the national defense, government codes and "communications intelligence activities."

Those laws are the basis of a pending case against two lobbyists, but they have never been used to prosecute journalists.

Some legal scholars say that even if the plain language of the laws could be read to reach journalists, the laws were never intended to apply to the press. In any event, these scholars say, prosecuting reporters under the laws might violate the First Amendment.

Mr. Gonzales said that the administration promoted and respected the right of the press that is protected under the First Amendment.

"But it can't be the case that that right trumps over the right that Americans would like to see, the ability of the federal government to go after criminal activity," he said. "And so those two principles have to be accommodated."

Mr. Gonzales sidestepped a question concerning whether the administration had been reviewing reporters' telephone records in an effort to identify their confidential sources.

"To the extent that we engage in electronic surveillance or surveillance of content, as the president says, we don't engage in domestic-to-domestic surveillance without a court order," he said. "And obviously if, in fact, there is a basis under the Constitution to go to a federal judge and satisfy the constitutional standards of probable cause and we get a court order, that will be pursued."
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/22/wa...2gonzales.html

Apple Sues iPod Rival Over Patents

Apple Computer, maker of the iPod music player, is suing Creative Technology, raising the stakes in the legal dispute over competing devices.

Apple claims Creative Labs, the U.S. division of Creative Technology, infringes four patents in its hand-held digital players. The suit was filed in a Wisconsin District Court on May 15, the same day Creative filed a lawsuit and a trade complaint against Apple.

"Creative proactively held discussions with Apple in our efforts to explore amicable solutions," Phil O'Shaughnessy, a spokesman for Creative, said. "At no time during these discussions or at any other time did Apple mention to us the patents it raised in its lawsuit."

Creative filed a complaint with the U.S. International Trade Commission seeking an order to block imports of the iPod, most of which are made in China. A lawsuit the company filed against Apple in District Court in San Francisco is likely to be put on hold while the trade complaint is heard.

The iPod controls 77 percent of the U.S. market, compared with less than 10 percent for Creative.
http://www.iht.com/articles/2006/05/...iness/ipod.php

Can you spot the spot?

Broadcasters Are Becoming Bigger Stage Parents To Brands Seeking Roles
Stuart Elliott and Julie Bosman

For decades, the broadcast television networks have urged advertisers to buy time during the commercial breaks in dramas, sitcoms, reality series and other programs. This week, as the broadcasters present their prime-time schedules for the 2006-07 season, they are working almost as hard to promote the opportunities inside their shows as outside them.

Those opportunities come in the form of what is called branded entertainment or product integration. They include mentioning brands in lines of dialogue, placing products in scenes so they are visible to viewers, and giving advertisers roles in plots of shows, whether it is a desperate housewife showing off a Buick at a shopping mall or a would-be apprentice trying to sell a new flavor of Crest toothpaste.

The goal of branded entertainment is to expose ads to viewers in ways that are more difficult to zip through or zap than traditional commercials. Devices like digital video recorders and iPods are making it easier than ever to avoid or ignore conventional sales pitches.

Although product integration has been available for years, it is playing a larger role in the presentations the networks have been making during what is known as upfront week. The name derives from the fact that the broadcasters are promoting their lineups - and hoping to make deals with marketers - ahead of the autumn season.

The networks that have so far devoted significant portions of their presentations to branded entertainment are My Network TV, a new venture of News Corp., and Univision Communications networks aimed at Hispanic consumers.

"With commercials getting lost in the clutter, with viewers changing channels, this is another way to get your product out there," said Shari Anne Brill, vice president and programming director at Carat USA in New York, part of the Carat media agency owned by Aegis Group.

"For the networks, it's an opportunity for them to have another revenue stream," Brill said, in addition to the sale of conventional commercial time.

That is particularly important for broadcast networks, which unlike their cable counterparts do not derive revenue from subscriber fees.

The debate over product integration has raged almost as long as the practice has been in vogue. Critics call it invasive and wonder whether the sponsors gain influence over the contents of the programs in which they appear.

Marketers and agencies, for their part, say they try to be sensitive to viewer sensibilities and not step over the line into exploitation. If an advertiser does go overboard, "it can come across as assault and battery on the consumer," Brill said, adding that the goal is to avoid being "heavy-handed."

The writers who create scripts for series, and their union, have been vocal in opposition to branded entertainment and stepped up the public outcry at a news conference Wednesday.

Seven writers and producers, sponsored by the Writers Guild of America, West, appeared at the news conference at Le Parker Meridien hotel in Midtown Manhattan. Their intent was to put network executives and advertisers on notice about a trend they described as intrusive and creatively inhibiting.

To make their point, the writers played video clips of what they deemed the more egregious examples, from reality shows like "Extreme Makeover: Home Edition" and scripted dramas like "7th Heaven." In one clip, an actor proposed marriage by inserting an engagement ring into the filling of an Oreo cookie.

The writers did not make specific demands but said they wanted more involvement in the decision-making process for branded entertainment.

Money is a factor, too. Although the president of the union chapter, Patric Verrone, said that "it's not just about compensation," many writers want a share of the revenue generated for the networks from product integration.

That revenue can only rise if marketers take advantage of all the opportunities peddled to them in the upfront week. For instance, during the My Network TV presentation Tuesday, Bob Cesa, executive vice president for advertising sales, spoke about what he called "flexible branded integration, sponsor placement and virtual insertion" of product images. He showed a video clip demonstrating how brands like Apple, Cadillac, Cartier, Evian, Lexus and Nokia could be incorporated into scenes in episodes of his network's series.

At the presentation Wednesday by Univision Communications, Bert Medina, senior vice president and operating manager for the TeleFutura network, discussed product integration in a new weeknight game show, "¿Qué Dice la Gente?" a Spanish-language version of "Family Feud," and "Objetivo Fama," a combination talent and reality series.

Alina Falcón, executive vice president and operating manager for the Univision network, described what she called "even more exciting opportunities to link your brands" to shows on her network, which include "Belleza Latina," a combination beauty pageant and reality series; "Cantando por un Sueño," or "Singing for a Dream"; "Bailando por un Sueño," or "Dancing for a Dream"; and "Sábado Gigante," a venerable Saturday variety-game show.
http://www.iht.com/articles/2006/05/...iness/adco.php

Surfing Dishonestly To A Higher Test Score
Jonathan D. Glater

At the University of California at Los Angeles, a student loaded his class notes into a handheld e- mail device and tried to read them during an exam; a classmate turned him in.

At the journalism school at San Jose State University in California, students tried to use spell checkers on their laptops when part of the exam was designed to test their ability to spell.

And at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, after students photographed test questions with their cellphone cameras, transmitted them to classmates outside the exam room and got the answers back in text messages, the university put in place a new proctoring system.

"If they'd spend as much time studying," said an exasperated Ron Yasbin, dean of the UNLV College of Sciences, "they'd all be A students."

With their arsenal of electronic gadgets, students these days find it easier to cheat. College officials are struggling to outwit would-be cheaters this exam season with a range of strategies - cutting off Internet access from laptops, demanding the surrender of cellphones before tests or simply requiring that exams be taken the old-fashioned way, with pens and paper.

Some students said they thought cheating these days was more a product of the mind-set, not the tools at hand.

"Some people put a premium on where they're going to go in the future, and all they're thinking about is graduate school and the next step," said Lindsay Nicholas, a third-year student at UCLA. She added that pressure to succeed sometimes "makes people do things that they shouldn't do."

In a survey of nearly 62,000 undergraduates on 96 U.S. campuses over the past four years, two-thirds of the students admitted to cheating. The survey was conducted by Don McCabe, a Rutgers professor who has studied academic misconduct and helped found the Center for Academic Integrity at Duke.

Whatever the reasons for cheating, college officials say the battle against it is wearing them out.

Though Brian Carlisle, associate dean of students at UCLA, said most students did not cheat, he spoke wearily about cases of academic dishonesty.

He told of the student who loaded his notes onto the Sidekick portable e-mail device last autumn, students who have sought help from friends with such devices and students who have pre-programmed calculators with formulas.

The use of iPods is also a concern, Carlisle added, pointing out that with a wireless earpiece, these would be hard to detect. The telltale iPod headphone wire proved the downfall of a Pepperdine University student a few years ago, after he had dictated his notes into the portable music player and tried to listen to them during an exam.

"I have taught for 30 years and each year something new comes on the scene," Sonia Sorrell, the professor who caught the student, said in an e-mail message.

At the Anderson School of Management at UCLA, the building's wireless hotspot is cut during finals to thwart Internet access.

Richard Craig, a professor at the School of Journalism and Mass Communications at San Jose State, who caught students using spell check last year, said that for tests, he arranged the classroom desks so that the students faced away from him but he could see their desktop screens.

"It was just a devilishly simple way to handle it," Craig said.

In some classes at Butler University in Indianapolis, professors use software that allows them to observe the programs running on computers students are taking tests on, so they can make sure no one is seeking answers on the Internet. And some institutions even install cameras in examination rooms.

To take a final exam last week, Alyssa Soares, a third-year law student at UCLA, had to switch on software that cut her laptop's Internet access, wireless capability and even the ability to read her own saved files. Her computer, effectively, became a glorified typewriter. Soares said she did not mind.

"This is making sure everyone is on a level playing field," she said.
http://www.iht.com/articles/2006/05/...ness/cheat.php

US Government Restricts China PCs

The US State Department says the 16,000 computers it bought from a Chinese firm with links to the Beijing government will not be used for classified work.

Assistant Secretary of State Richard Griffin said the department would also alter its procurement process to ensure US information security was guaranteed.

His comments came after Rep Frank Wolf expressed national security concerns.

The company Lenovo insisted such concerns were unwarranted and said the computers posed no security risk.

Last year, Lenovo - the world's number three PC maker - bought the IBM PC Division and moved its executive headquarters from China to the US.

A Chinese government agency owns 28 percent of Lenovo, while IBM still has about a 13 percent stake in the company.

'Classified network'

In a letter to Mr Wolf, Mr Griffin said government security experts had recommended the computers "be utilised on unclassified systems only".

He said the government was committed to ensuring the purchase would not "compromise our information and communication channels".

And he said the state department would change the way it buys its technology "in light of the changing ownership of IT equipment providers."

His letter did not refer to Mr Wolf's specific concern that at least 900 of the computers were to be used "as part of the classified network deployed in the United States and around the world in embassies and consulates".

Mr Wolf, Republican chairman of the committee that oversees the department's funds, told reporters that China's spying efforts were "frightening".

It was "no secret that the US is a principal target of Chinese intelligence services", he said, adding: "No American government agency should want to purchase from them".

'No security risk'

But Lenovo insisted the state department computers, which were made at former IBM facilities in North Carolina and Mexico, posed no security threat.

"We are absolutely confident in the security of our manufacturing process," Jeff Carlisle, the firm's vice-president of government relations, said.

"These computers do not present a risk to US security."

He said the Chinese Academy of Sciences, an arm of the Chinese government, had a "minority interest" in the company and was not involved in its day-to-day operations.

"We're not a state-owned enterprise," Mr Carlisle added.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/h...as/4997288.stm

Your Telco Owes You $1,000
This Damn Blog

If your telephone company is one of the companies that decided to take financial compensation from the federal government in exchange for illegally proving your records to them it seems to me that they owe you $1,000. Now IANAL but this seems pretty damn clear cut to me.

The Stored Wire and Electronic Communications and Transactional Records Access, Section 2703(c) outlines exactly five reasons that a phone company can disclose your records to the fed:

a warrant
a court order
the customer’s consent
for telemarketing enforcement
administrative subpoena

Keep in mind that the NSA does not have subpoena power and it is easy to see that not only is your federal government breaking the law by stripping you of your expectation of privacy in your papers and effects but that the Telcos are breaking the law by supplying this info to the Fed.

Section 2707 of the Communications Act says that the phone company are liable for $1000 per individual violation of the Act and outlines a private right of action to any customer “aggrieved by any violation.”

So there you go, a clear cut explanation of why your phone company ( unless you are lucky enough to be a Qwest customer ) owes you $1,000. If there is one thing that big corporations understand is profit and loss - I think handing out millions of thousand dollar checks will get their attention.
http://www.thisdamnblog.com/your-tel...s-you-1000.php

DIY Phone Club Channels PC Past
Elizabeth Biddlecombe

Matt Hamrick hates standard-issue mobile phones almost as much as he loves tinkering with them to make them better.

The software security expert reckons he's spent around $3,000 over the past two years trying to get his calendar and e-mail to sync between his Apple computer and his phone.

"The phones aren't getting any better," he says. "I've been looking for a phone that would meet my requirements for 10 years now."

That quest gained new momentum this month when the Silicon Valley Homebrew Mobile Phone Club, a group Hamrick co-founded, attracted about 40 people to its first meeting.

The fledgling organization owes its name and inspiration to the famous Homebrew Computer Club of the 1970s, which many historians now credit with innovations that paved the way for the personal computing revolution. Members hope something equally climactic will arise from their new association.

Hamrick admits that some of his requirements are advanced. For instance, he would like to be able to access more than just one of his many different e-mail accounts.

Other things he'd like: a stopwatch that doesn't stop when the phone goes into power-save mode, voicemails delivered to his phone, a broader choice of messaging systems than just AOL's Instant Messenger.

In short, Hamrick wants his phone to be even more of a computer than it is now. He wants a platform that's open enough to run applications he writes himself. But he also sees some basic problems that need fixing.

Hamrick and others feel that innovation is being locked away by the established phone manufacturers in much the same way that computer development was monopolized by IBM 30 years ago.

"The barrier for entry for people just testing out new ideas is pretty high," says Hamrick.

It is often prohibitively expensive for independent developers to get their hands on trial gear. In addition, while Hamrick bears manufacturers no grudge, he says they "have no great motivation to open up the field to more-capable devices."

This and similar complaints have led some people to start making their own mobiles, and others to predict that operators might even start catering to the DIY phone set (see Larry Cohen's open phone proposal).

But Tamara Colby, a product marketer at a Silicon Valley startup, says the new club is "not about bashing the handset makers" but taking advantage of the convergence of cellular and internet protocol networks.

"It's about sharing ideas and thinking about what we can do with phones that they don't already do. The phone is going through a complete metamorphosis," she says.

Lee Felsenstein, co-founder of The Fonly Institute and onetime moderator of the Homebrew Computer Club, points out that "the parallels are not exact" between the clubs. Most people attending the original club did not have access to computers. Mobile phones are ubiquitous today.

But he adds that the Homebrew Computer Club was about "dealing with forbidden knowledge." (For a video clip about the club click here.) The degree of information sharing was a hallmark of the club and paved the way for today's open-source movement.

"That was, in effect, our innovation," says Felsenstein.

That ethic is a key tenet of the mobile phone club. At the inaugural meeting, organizer Hamrick talked about his own SqueakyMoPho development project. Craig Hughes, CTO at gumstix, spoke on his company's single-board computers that can be used for making handsets. Shuman Zhai, a research staff member at IBM's Almaden Lab, talked about his new ShapeWriter input method.

Zhai said that these innovators can think in new ways about mobile phones since they are unfettered by the legacy issues that embroil established manufacturers. "I wouldn't be surprised if something quite dramatic could be done," he says.

Whether the innovators go on to set up new companies or sell their ideas to existing ones is their choice, according to Hamrick. He even theorizes that there could be a secondary market for handset customization on top of what is already offered by the operators and handset makers.

The next meeting is planned for June. Hamrick hopes that those people who can't attend in person will use the website to find like-minded types and set up similar clubs elsewhere. That's one trick the original homebrewers couldn't do.
http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,70929-0.html

MIT Plans To Convert Cell Phone Users Into Podcasters
Robyn Peterson

A new research project at MIT's Media Lab aims to turn every cell phone or PDA carrying member of the public into a podcaster, and every mobile device into a virtual podcasting studio.

The first reportedly working prototype was built on a Motorola A1000 cell phone, and is currently being tested in Spain as part of the Electronic Lens project. A live demo of the new project, which has been dubbed "RadioActive," should be available soon.

According to Judith Donath, director of the Sociable Media Group at MIT, the inspiration arose out of a complaint from one of her students.

"She received [a lot of] phone calls from people who didn't really have anything to say, but were bored," Donath said. "They were walking or driving, so they took out their phone and called their friends looking for entertainment."

By and large, more people are turning to their mobile devices for entertainment, says Donath, but rather than call, and potentially annoy, a friend, it would be ideal to "conveniently drop into an [ongoing] discussion and drop out when you're done."

The RadioActive project, which Donath created with student Aaron Zinman, defines a large-scale asynchronous audio messaging system, or mobile audio forum. In this system, voice messages, which are short audio sound bytes, are exchanged between groups of users via mobile devices, like cell phones or PDAs, as a method of "discussion-on-demand."

The messages are then collected in threads similar to how a common Internet discussion forum, like discuss.pcmag.com or even Slashdot, organizes text posts. Each message contains a subject, body, and author, as well as other metadata, and can range the spectrum from quick blurbs to full-length podcasts.

Since it can be time consuming to listen to long threads of voice messages as compared to scanning text in a discussion forum, community moderation has been incorporated into the system. "If lots of people say [a message] is not interesting, it's important that it fade into the background," Donath explained.

Just like an email application or an RSS reader, RadioActive supplies its users with an inbox, which displays the first message of discussion threads that have been subscribed to or are contextually relevant. For instance, location may be one factor the system takes into account when determining contextual relevance. In this scenario, threads relating to New York City restaurants may appear in the inbox as the user walks around Manhattan.

The user can then navigate through messages in an active manner, by using the graphical interface (GUI) with a keyboard or voice command, or in a passive manner, in the so-called "Radio" mode. In the GUI, visual cues are displayed that allow the user to quickly determine interest level, size, age, and whether or not the message has been heard. The user can then play messages in a specific thread or jump between threads. In Radio mode, the system plays messages sequentially so that the user can concentrate on other tasks, like driving.
http://www.pcmag.com/print_article2/...=178692,00.asp

MIT 'Big Brother' Project Studies Origins of Language
Bary Alyssa Johnson

In a bid to understand the underlying processes of early cognitive development in children, a number of big names in the IT storage arena have agreed to donate their time, expertise, and a jointly built peta-byte (1 million gigabyte) disk storage system to aid MIT in its work on the Human Speechome Project.

"This is a research project about how children acquire language," said Alexandra Kahn, spokesperson for MIT Media Lab. "The storage element comes in because there's so much data being amassed in this project that new approaches to data storage, management, and mining are being developed."

The Human Speechome Project is being run by MIT Media Lab's Associate Professor Deb Roy, head of the Cognitive Machines research group. The National Science Foundation provided some funding for the project, and Bell Microproducts, Seagate Technology, Marvell, and Zetera have donated a colossal high-tech storage system.

"The project has three components: research into early childhood; data visualization and mining tools; high-performance computing and storage infrastructure to analyze data," said Frank Moss, director of MIT's Media Lab, during a recent Webcast. "It's a great marriage between industry and the academic world."

The project, which commenced in mid-2005 and is slated to run until 2008, will record and analyze approximately 400,000 hours of audio and video data in order to understand how humans acquire language in the context of their primary social setting. To accomplish this, Roy has volunteered his own home and family as research subjects; he has installed a surveillance system of sorts in his home to study his 9-month-old son's educational undertakings.

Roy has installed 11 omni-directional video cameras and 14 ceiling-mounted microphones to capture all activity that goes on in his home. The audio and video data are stored temporarily in Roy's basement before being transferred to the media lab for thorough analyses. Roy's team has been working to develop speech- and video-processing algorithms to analyze and identify behavioral communication patterns found in the data.

"Equally exciting are the 'spin-off' opportunities that could result from this research," Moss said in a prepared statement. "The innovative tools that are being developed for storing and mining...speech and video data offer enormous potential for breaking open new business opportunities in a broad range of industries--from security to Internet commerce."

To take advantage of such opportunities, Bell Microproducts, Seagate, Marvell, and Zetera have collaborated to create and donate a peta-byte disk storage system that MIT will use for the project. MIT identified a number of core requirements for the storage system including scalability in excess of 1 terabyte, 100-percent data redundancy, file access by computers using multiple operating systems, virtualized storage fabric, and more.

"What we're seeing here is an indication of the future," Moss said during the Webcast. "We have close collaboration on a large-scale project of global significance between the academic and industrial world. From an industrial perspective there are more questions, issues, and innovations to be dealt with than any single company can handle."

Zetera has contributed its Z-SAN technology as the core architecture for MIT's storage system. Zetera's Z-SAN architecture uses Internetworking Protocol (IP) as the storage fabric and was designed to enable Storage-over-IP (SoIP). Zetera says it expects SoIP to transform the storage industry similar to how VoiP has changed the field of telecommunications.

Bell Microproduct's Hammer Storage division has integrated its Z-Rack Storage enclosures to up the ante in terms of performance using Ethernet switches. Marvell has offered Ethernet-based switching technology via its Orion Processor and Prestera edge and core XGE Ethernet switches. Lastly, Seagate has contributed SATA hard disk drives.

"DVDs have been considered a high-capacity storage drive until now," Moss said. "The storage array for the Speechome Project will hold the equivalent of 200,000 DVDs which is more feature films than Hollywood has filmed since 1895."

The IT infrastructure for MIT's Speechome Project will include 3,000+ SATA drives, 300 Z-Rack storage enclosures, 100 10G/GbE switches and 400 blade processors upon completion. Duplicate copies of all audio and video feed will protect against potential data loss.

"This project is about storage intensiveness," said David Reinsel, program director at IDC. "It's not about consumers needing peta-bytes of storage, but it is indicative of the types of projects that can be done by research labs like MIT, where we are trying to capture digitally a ton of information from a ton of different sources and process that to look for meaningful trends and results."
http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,1895,1963240,00.asp

Rootkit Trojans

Alert Raised for MS Word Zero-Day Attack
Ryan Naraine

A zero-day flaw in the ubiquitous Microsoft Word software program is being used in an active exploit by sophisticated hackers in China and Taiwan, according to warnings from anti-virus researchers.

Symantec's DeepSight Threat Analyst Team has escalated its ThreatCon level after confirming the unpatched vulnerability is being used "against select targets."

The exploit arrives as an ordinary Microsoft Word document attachment to an e-mail. However, when the document is launched by the user the vulnerability is triggered to drop a backdoor with rootkit features to mask itself from anti-virus scanners.

The SANS ISC (Internet Storm Center) said in a diary entry that it received reports of the exploit from an unnamed organization that was targeted. "The e-mail was written to look like an internal e-mail, including signature. It was addressed by name to the intended victim and not detected by the anti-virus software," said Chris Carboni, an ISC incident handler tracking the attack.

When the .doc attachment is opened, it exploits a previously unknown vulnerability in Microsoft Word and infects a fully patched Windows system. The exploit functioned as a dropper, extracting and launching a Trojan that immediately overwrites the original Word document with a "clean," uninfected copy.

"As a result of the exploit, Word crashes, informs the user of a problem, and offers to attempt to re-open the file. If the user agrees, the new 'clean' file is opened without incident," the ISC explained.

Microsoft has been notified and is working with security researchers to investigate the bug.

Roger Thompson, chief technical officer at Atlanta-based Exploit Prevention Labs, said the attack "feels like espionage, perhaps industrial."

After looking at a sample of the malware code, Thompson said the backdoor is programmed to call back to a server in China to report information about what the infected system looks like.

In addition to providing reconnaissance, the backdoor can connect to specified addresses to receive commands from the malicious attacker.

Finnish anti-virus vendor F-Secure said a successful exploit allows the attacker to create, read, write, delete and search for files and directories; access and modify the Registry; manipulate services; start and kill processes; take screenshots; enumerate open windows; create its own application window; and lock, restart or shut down Windows.

The ISC said the attack was traced to the Far East, with domains and IP addresses associated with the Trojan registered in China and Taiwan. "The [attack] e-mails received originated from a server in that region. The attackers appear to be aware that they have been 'outed,' and have been routinely changing the IP address associated with the URL above," the Storm Center said.

Symantec's DeepSight team said the exploit successfully executes shellcode when it is processed by Microsoft Word 2003. The malicious file caused Microsoft Word 2000 to crash, but shellcode execution did not occur.

As a temporary mitigation method, Symantec is recommending that Microsoft Word document e-mail attachments be blocked at the network perimeter. "Furthermore, extreme caution should be exercised while processing Microsoft Word attachments received as an unexpected e-mail Attachment," company officials said.
http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1895,1965042,00.asp

For Tiny Screens, Some Big Dreams
Lorne Manly

IN a nondescript office park, hard by a freeway and other markers of suburbia like Circuit City and Trader Joe's, a band of creative souls is working on another staple of the American experience: new forms of entertainment for people to fill the few remaining gaps in their media-oversaturated days.

Digital Chocolate is this company's name, and the business focuses solely on developing games and applications for mobile phones. Although it has some trappings of a Silicon Valley start-up, circa 1999 — one recent morning a 20-something employee rolled up for work here on a skateboard — Digital Chocolate differs in one significant way. Its founder and chief executive, Trip Hawkins, is not a typical bootstrapping young entrepreneur.

Mr. Hawkins, 52, was employee No. 68 at Apple Computer before he left that company in 1982 to start Electronic Arts, now the pre-eminent video game maker. Never shy about expressing his opinions, Mr. Hawkins, not surprisingly, brandishes a theory about programming for the mobile phone.

"Content is just a means to an end, so there's something to talk about," he said. In other words, social connection trumps all.

Accordingly, Digital Chocolate's creations appear decidedly low-tech, the easiest-to-use games possible without fancy graphics or elaborate storytelling. And its newest games and entertainments are designed to foster conversation, flirting and in the case of M.L.S.N. Sports Picks (for Mobile League Sports Network), a little friendly trash talking.

In this interactive sports game show, which costs $2.99 a month, people can compete against friends by predicting outcomes of sporting events, like how many points Tim Duncan of the San Antonio Spurs will score in his next game. The system keeps track of the standings for bragging rights.

That resulting connection, that social interaction, can be much more lucrative than costly, classic content, in Mr. Hawkins's estimation. The first big mobile hit will be a completely original creation, he contends. "If you're going to really establish something as a new medium, you can't do that with content that is derivative and a second-class version of another medium," Mr. Hawkins said.

Needless to say, plenty of entertainment and media companies do not share that pointed opinion. From Hollywood to the Bristol, Conn., campus of ESPN, companies are spending hundreds of millions of dollars to adapt their current brands in television, movies, games and news and information to the tiny screens of mobile phones, and creating new programming.

The creative team behind "Lost" on ABC plans to produce video diary segments, two to three minutes long, for cellphones. CBS is pushing ahead with a made-for-mobile soap opera. Last week, HBO's "Entourage" began shooting mini mobile episodes focusing on the exploits of two of its characters, Turtle and Johnny Drama. And NBC is creating casual games based on the fractured, deadpan humor of "The Office"; they will be available this summer.

Ultimately, whoever guesses correctly the kind of bite-sized, time-wasting distractions people want to snack on over their phones could be showered with a bonanza of profits, at a time when technology is squeezing the traditional businesses of media and entertainment companies.

Still unclear, however, is how eager Americans will be for all this mobile phone content and how much they will want to spend on top of already-hefty monthly cellphone bills. "Consumers right now are not really looking at the phone as more than a way to communicate," said Linda Barrabee, an analyst at the Yankee Group, a research firm based in Boston.

In the United States, analysts estimate that only about five million people own third-generation, or 3G, phones, the ones designed to play decent-quality video and music. Only about two million have signed up for data and video packages, which cost anywhere from $10 to $25 a month.

The Yankee Group estimates that pure mobile entertainment — games, music and video — accounted for about $500 million last year, less than 5 percent the wireless carriers' data revenue. And the data revenue represented a small fraction of voice revenue. While people are watching video on their phones in increasing numbers, another researcher, eMarketer, predicts that even by 2009, fewer than 10 million subscribers will be willing to pay for premium services.

STUDYING such numbers convinced Mr. Hawkins to tailor his games to a more lucrative piece of the mobile phone business. (He started Digital Chocolate in 2003 with an investment of $8.3 million from two venture capital firms as well as Robert W. Pittman, the former chief operating officer of AOL Time Warner; an additional $13 million, from other investors, came in 2004.)

"Because it's when you're mobile, you're the most socially needy and vulnerable and insecure, and that's when the one platform you have is the mobile, wireless platform," Mr. Hawkins said.

Digital Chocolate's summer release, The Hook-Up: Ava Flirting, allows players to create an avatar, an image representing the user in a virtual reality, and interact with others' avatars, in a PG-13 setting. People willing to spend $2.99 a month can decide everything from their avatar's hair color to shoe choice and then socialize in settings ranging from a hip nightclub to a library. Then they can compare notes with friends about their adventures.

There is also the potential, if the two avatars hit it off and are willing, to exchange text messages and perhaps meet in real life.

While he says he believes that this kind of original material will be the most successful form of mobile programming, Mr. Hawkins concedes that conventional media offerings — movies, music and games — will also find a market on cellphones, just not a particularly valuable one.

"Of course you're going to use the devices and the network for a variety of things," he said. "But it's not going to be your favorite way to watch a TV show or watch a movie or listen to high-fidelity music, or play an immersive game. There are bigger screens, there are bigger boxes, with more power electronics in them, that are in environments that are more conducive to a high-fidelity experience." Entertainment and video game companies, he added, "have big businesses they need to protect, so it's just a natural tendency to play defense."

Mr. Hawkins's disdain of established entertainment company behavior, however, may be in part recognition of his competitive situation. He finds himself up against bigger companies like Electronic Arts, which has solidified its lead in the mobile game marketplace through mobile versions of hits like Madden NFL and Need for Speed and the $680 million acquisition last year of Jamdat Mobile, home to Tetris. He has also been wrong before. His early 1990's foray into digital video console and games development, 3DO, floundered, and eventually filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in 2003.

Digital Chocolate does not disclose revenues, but it has said it expects to be profitable in the next year.

At traditional media conglomerates, some early financial figures on mobile-content revenue, though small, cheer top executives. In a conference call last month with analysts, Leslie Moonves, chief executive of the CBS Corporation, said the company's deal with Verizon Wireless to show CBS material — including video clips of "Survivor" and "The Late Show With David Letterman" — on its VCast network will bring in about $3 million in subscription revenue this year.

Peter F. Chernin, president and chief operating officer of the News Corporation, said at a Milken Institute conference last month that the short-form series spun off from the Fox series "24" was profitable thanks to payments from wireless carriers around the world. (He declined to disclose the profits.) And for its newest miniaturized series, "Prison Break: Proof of Innocence," Fox sold a sponsorship and product integration package to Toyota.

There is some common ground between wildcatters like Mr. Hawkins and Fortune 500 executives in trying to crack the elusive code for moneymaking products in this new medium. In theory, everyone agrees that merely plunking down reformatted programming from other media, like television, does not work because that does not make the most of the mobile phone's particular attributes, like text messaging.

BUT the big entertainment and game companies are loath to toss away the brand names in which they've invested so heavily just to start fresh in a new medium. Van Toffler, president of MTV Networks Music/Logo Group, said that in the short term, with an audience unfamiliar with what is possible on a phone, well-known brands can cut through the clutter of games, ring tones, wallpaper and other cellphone accessories. More people will gravitate toward outtakes from "Punk'd," the MTV show in which the actor Ashton Kutcher plays pranks on unsuspecting victims, than will embrace a made-for-mobile program like the new "Dingo Ate My Video," in which odd-looking puppets dissect music videos with loving derision.

Salil Dalvi, vice president for digital media/wireless at NBC Universal, frames the issue a bit more bluntly. "Why would we throw away the huge brand equity from 'Access Hollywood?' " he said.

As with many early efforts in a burgeoning medium, the first mobile shows and games borrow more from the past than truly inhabit their new homes. And the creative quality can sometimes be questionable. The early reviews of Fox's miniaturized series, for which the company trademarked the term "mobisode," have not been particularly strong. The biggest knock on "24: Conspiracy" was the lack of involvement of the show's writers and cast.

Fox executives, however, point proudly to an Emmy nomination in the new category of broadband and mobile content, and are pleased with the new "Prison Break" episodes made for cellphones. But the latest batch of "24" mobile content is merely regular TV episodes boiled down to two-minute bite-sized chunks.

The "24" experience of creating second-tier material for cellphones weighed on the thinking of Carlton Cuse and Damon Lindelof, the executive producers of "Lost," as executives at ABC and its parent, the Walt Disney Company, urged them to venture into wireless storytelling. "Conceptually for us, the key was it had to be up to the quality standards of the series, and that required me and Damon to oversee it," Mr. Cuse said.

The executive producers insisted on using their cast members. ABC, after much wrangling, hammered out deals with the various Hollywood unions, including the Screen Actors Guild. "For us, putting two strange, non-S.A.G. people on the island isn't 'Lost,' " he said. "We don't want people to feel cheated or ripped off."

The point of departure for their cellphone series, called "The Lost Diaries," will be the discovery of a video camera. That will allow Mr. Cuse and Mr. Lindelof — who plan to write the two- to three-minute episodes — to use the tiny screens of cellphones to provide more intimate portraits. "It allows you to get deeper into the character, like a diary entry allows you to see deeper into someone's life," Mr. Cuse said.

This kind of experimentation has begun to yield some insights into what kinds of content appeal to consumers and how that programming should be delivered. Ryan Hughes, director of content and programming at Verizon Wireless, said that comedy and entertainment shorts do much better than news clips.

Jeremy Laws, a senior vice president of the Universal Studios Consumer Products Group who runs its mobile entertainment unit, said games with clear identities, like its Battlestar Galactica single-shooter game and offshoots of the "Fast and Furious" series, were doing well.

Eric Kessler, president of sales and marketing at HBO, said it discovered that subscribers to HBO Mobile on Cingular Wireless (paying $4.95 a month) wanted recaps of its Sunday night original television series — immediately. The results were five-minute versions of "The Sopranos" and "Big Love." made available the next day.

AT the media company that is arguably embracing the mobile world most aggressively — ESPN — there appears to be no limit to the amount of personalized information that consumers demand. It has made a big bet on Mobile ESPN, deciding to sell a special phone under its own brand name and to handle all the customer support.

For monthly fees ranging from $39.99 to $199.99, subscribers can get game updates, breaking news and other material. To watch video and to get news alerts, they have to pay an additional $24.99 a month.

Even though the editors and product managers understood that the first buyers for this phone would be die-hard sports fans, "I don't think we realized how voracious sports fans are," especially those in fantasy sports leagues, said J. Kieren Portley, product realization manager for Mobile ESPN.

As Mr. Portley, the Mobile ESPN editor Anthony Mormile and others adapt material to the phone, they have learned some tricks of the trade. Wide-angle shots are to be avoided, while slow-motion clips are to be welcomed. The sweet spot for video clips appears to be between 45 and 75 seconds. Short clips of confrontational conversations, like the big finish on the talk show "Pardon the Interruption," are popular, and the network's hosts and guests can satiate users' hunger by providing punchy, informal commentary that they do not have time to deliver on the air.

Just how lucrative ESPN and other companies' mobile efforts will be remains murky. In a conference call earlier this month, Tom Staggs, Disney's chief financial officer, told analysts that the ESPN phone had not quite performed to financial expectations, but he expected lower pricing and new marketing to remedy that.

All content providers face an unclear business model, with subscriptions, à la carte sales and ad-supported free models jockeying for position. They also have to deal with carriers who have different technical specifications and provide, in effect, the world's smallest retail mall because of the tiny nature of their phones' screens. And they must figure out the role that user-generated content will play in the mix.

"Most content providers get it," said John R. Burbank, vice president for marketing at Cingular Wireless, referring to their understanding that they must create compelling new content. "But the fact is, no one knows what 'it' is.

"We don't know the secret formula, and it's not going to be something that will be divined by sitting in a room and thinking about it."
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/21/bu...rtner=homepage

Never Mind the Clip-On Ties, Geek Squad Can Fix Your PC
Damon Darlin

Robert Stephens, the founder of the Geek Squad, has made a very good living solving the problems of technophobes and people who thought they were technically adept.

So it may have seemed a bit odd to interview him at the recent Maker Faire in San Mateo, Calif., a weekend festival of technology tinkerers who play polo on Segways or build steam-engine robots and pool heaters out of barbecue grills. These people, after all, are ardent do-it-yourselfers, people who derive real joy from never ever having to hire help.

"The do-it-yourself crowd is a dying breed," Mr. Stephens said as blasts from a nearby flamethrower mounted on an old fire truck periodically punctuated the conversation. He wasn't being nasty, because his technicians were at the ready to support the fair exhibitors just in case. He made that statement because it explains why the company he founded as a college student in 1994 has grown and grown.

When he sold the Geek Squad to Best Buy in 2002, his computer repair company had 60 employees, or agents. Today, it has 12,000 men and women dressed in black pants, white shirts, a black clip-on tie and white socks who arrive at customers' homes in black and white Volkswagen Beetles.

The conversation with Mr. Stephens, who is chief inspector of the Geek Squad for Best Buy, helps to explain the success and, indeed, the proliferation of services that do what most Americans are unwilling to do themselves. It is not confined to oil changes, maid service or hiring a gardener or handyman. Almost every time you buy electronics you are offered a service contract either by the manufacturer or the retailer.

Beyond service contracts, though, consumers need some insight into how to be smarter about deciding when to call for help. It all boils down to the classic choice between time and money.

Sure, one can point to another giant of retailing, Home Depot, and argue that there is better evidence that the do-it-yourself trend is strong. Mr. Stephens has economics on his side. Economists say people who call in a technician, even one who will charge, as the Geek Squad does, $159 to install a wireless network or $229 to wipe out a computer virus, can be acting rationally. These tasks may not be worth your time. Indeed, Home Depot has hedged its bets and is increasingly marketing its installation services for contractors to hang your kitchen cabinets or roof your garage.

Economists say industrialized societies are spending less on the basics of life — food, clothing and shelter — and more on leisure pursuits. Indeed, Robert Fogel, the Nobel-winning economics professor from the University of Chicago, has gone so far as to predict that by 2040 it will take the average American household only 300 hours of work a year to supply its basic needs.

As leisure time becomes more valued, Americans are loath to give it up. We spend money to get more of it. How much we are willing to spend depends on what we make as well as a more intuitive process of how we measure what our leisure time is worth.

The results from two online calculators that determine what your time is worth may surprise you. Try http://hughchou.org/calc/realwage.php or http://moneycentral.msn.com/investor..._time/main.asp. First, your hourly rate may be lower than you think. For instance, someone making $70,000 a year, but who puts in 50 hours a week and commutes an hour each way, may discover the hourly rate is not $33, but about half that.

So does that mean you hire a handyman only when he costs less than $16 an hour? It's more complicated than that. With only about 12 hours of true leisure time a day, each precious hour is bought with more than 5 hours of work. According to the calculator, each hour of spare time would then be worth about $85.

How an economist measures the value of leisure time is inexact because do-it-yourselfers sometimes have a stronger motivation than saving money. They enjoy the process. Because seeking joy is less understood than seeking money, economists are still struggling to decide whether growing tomatoes or making drapes is rational.

Putting a little joy into repair work is what motivated Mr. Stephens. "Computers were the best thing that happened to my generation," said Mr. Stephens, 37. As a student at the University of Minnesota in the early 1990's, Mr. Stephens said he didn't have a lot of money. "So I started fixing things. I saw people buying computers, so that's why I went into tech support."

He had yearned to do something glamorous until he had an insight: "The world is dominated by plumbers and drywall contractors — the boring businesses," he said. "What if a creative person went into a boring business?" By age 24, he had created the Geek Squad.

"The best thing that happened to me was that I had no money," he said. It forced him to be creative. The uniform, which pokes fun at the image of the socially awkward tech-proficient person, was a way to establish a brand and concept that would be harder for others to copy. "I wanted it to look low-tech, like the guy at the service station, Ernie, who you knew all your life."

The flat fee for services, rather than an hourly rate, was an effort to avoid the expense of paperwork and monitoring the staff for fraud.

Mr. Stephens sees the world of service moving toward flat fees. "We are a flat-rate society because people are willing to pay for simplification," he said.

It is easier for consumers to understand and they are less likely to feel cheated, he said. "People hate the hourly rate. They hated it when it applied to cellphones and Internet service."

Not all on-call technicians work that way. Rescuecom, a franchise of computer technicians with 100 offices nationwide, charges hourly rates between $88 for an appointment and $250 for an emergency call. "Support is in an abysmal state," said David A. Milman, the chief executive and founder. "You have manufacturers slicing and dicing the price of computers. There is no way they can afford to provide free support."

Both Dell and Hewlett-Packard, the top PC sellers, provide enhanced customer support for a fee. Dell, for instance, will walk you through setting up a home network for $99.

Mr. Milman said he thought consumers ought to make the decision to seek professional help not on the value of their time, but on the value of the data that is on their computer.

The Geek Squad divides the world into three distinct sets of consumers. One is, of course, the do-it-yourselfers. Another is the "do it for me" crowd, those who have made the calculation that they have better use of their time. And the third set, which Mr. Stephens calls the "I thought I could do myselfers," holds some unrecognized potential.

This is the group that starts out calling customer service when faced with a technical stumbling block, only to find themselves sitting on the phone, immobile, for several hours as the problem is lobbed from one call center employee to another. After that, he said, they are more willing to consider an alternative. "They've sat on the phone one time too many," Mr. Stephens said.

Many of the hardware makers offer service contracts, because they are quite lucrative. But they are lucrative only if they can avoid sending someone to your home to fix the problem. They are designed so you end up paying extra — with your time.

That's not to say that a flat-fee service isn't also designed to help you part with your money. Mr. Stephens the Geek Squad, as part of Best Buy, turning into consultants who advise Best Buy customers on products before buying. He said that's going to become more important as Americans try to figure out how to expand home networks to link the television, PC, stereo and storage devices. "You'll see Best Buy pushing installation services," he said. "For me, service is nothing but a profit center."

And what if, by some miracle, technology becomes easier to use? No worries, he said. "The easier computers got, the more they needed us when they crash." That's because people did more things with their computers and sought help to do even more.

"Sure you can do it yourself, but it is a lot like changing your oil," he said. "Why would you?"
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/20/te...y/20money.html

It's Here; It's There; It's Spyware
Dan Mitchell

FOR all the improvements in computer security, using the Internet is growing only more dangerous — both at home and at work.

The annual Web@Work survey, conducted by Harris Interactive for the security firm Websense, found that the number of companies reporting spyware infestations had jumped 50 percent in the last year alone, and now nearly 92 percent of companies report that they have found spyware on their networks (websense.com).

Spyware is a somewhat loose term, and can mean anything from often innocuous Web cookies to Trojan programs that can hijack a computer.

But more dangerous varieties of spyware are on the rise, said Michael Newman, a vice president at Websense. He told John Gordon of "Future Tense" on American Public Media (futuretense.publicradio.org) that information technology managers were increasingly finding keylogging software on their systems. This "particularly malicious" type of spyware detects every keystroke made on a computer and can pick up passwords and other sensitive information, Mr. Newman said.

Pornography sites are among the most dangerous, with many of them replete with pop-up ads and spyware. The good news is that the number of employees reported to have visited a porn site at work dropped to 12 percent from 17 percent the last year. Of those, 95 percent said their visits to porn sites were "accidental." Whoops!

Meanwhile, SiteAdvisor, the Web safety service recently acquired by the security firm McAfee, reported this week that search engines offered little protection from dangerous sites (siteadvisor.com). This includes paid and unpaid search results. In fact, SiteAdvisor found, sponsored results on average contain two to four times the number of malicious sites as do regular results.

Some of the most popular kinds of searches lead Internet users to dangerous sites, SiteAdvisor reported. Often, the sites offer downloads like file-sharing software and screensavers that contain malicious programs. Up to 72 percent of the results from keywords like "Bearshare" or "screensaver" lead to sites that pose a risk.
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/20/te.../20online.html

This Knee Doesn't Jerk at Every Deal
Ken Belson

Qwest Communications, the smallest of the four big Bell phone companies, has been largely out of the spotlight in the year since it lost a bidding war for MCI to Verizon Communications and settled government investigations into accounting issues.

Yet Richard C. Notebaert, Qwest's chief executive, has been anything but idle. He has cut costs and debt, added broadband and wireless customers and, in the first quarter, turned a profit without relying on one-time gains.

While Mr. Notebaert has not gone after anything the size of MCI, Qwest has sought smaller, complementary targets, including OnFiber Communications, which provides high-speed data connections for companies and the government.

Qwest also made headlines last week when its former chief executive, Joseph P. Nacchio, said that he denied a government request in 2001 to hand over customer records. That came after USA Today reported that AT&T, Verizon and BellSouth had cooperated. The paper also said that Mr. Notebaert continued Mr. Nacchio's policy after he took over for him in 2002.

Mr. Notebaert will not comment on national security issues.

But, in an interview last week, he did discuss other challenges facing Qwest. Following are excerpts:

Q. You said on your most recent earnings call that Qwest had turned a corner. What corner?

A. We don't talk about turning the corner because I don't think you ever do. But we had a number of milestones. For example, revenue in 2002 was declining at nearly 8 percent and now we're positive. We've had negative cash flow. Last year we did $904 million of cash flow adjusted and this year we'll do $450 million to $600 million more. Then getting all that litigation with the government squared away. And now, to hit profitability, without any adjustments, that feels very good to everybody.

Q. There's been consolidation in the industry, but Qwest has not really found a partner in the big dance. Does Qwest need to do a deal?

A. We have two filters that we run everything through. Whether you're a buyer or a seller, you run it through the same filter. What is the strategic complement of what you're going to do? And then, secondly, what's your price point?

We are constantly looking at all the companies that you would think of and some you probably are not. For example, a systems integrator or hosting companies as well as traditional people in the communications business. We're very, very, very disciplined. We have lots of organic growth opportunity just doing what we do. So we don't have to knee- jerk into anything.

Q. Might you be more of an acquisition target?

A. If I looked at it as a consultant or an adviser, I would look at Qwest today and say most of the things that made me uncomfortable before are gone. Again, the government — at every level we're O.K. The debt load's down, profitability's up. Everything's squared away and there's no threat of bankruptcy, which you might have thought about a few years ago. And the company has solid performance characteristics. And it's throwing off good cash. It's profitable. And it's got a wonderful group of employees. So I don't think we're unattractive.

Q. On the wireless side, you resell Sprint. A huge portion of the profits at Verizon come from Verizon Wireless. Would it make sense to own your own wireless business?

A. Well, it doesn't matter. We don't. You play the hand you're dealt.

Q. There are midtier wireless operators that are increasingly national.

A. There's a company like U.S. Cellular that's outstanding. To go out and buy them would be challenging to say the least.

Q. You resell DirecTV, but given what AT&T and Verizon are doing with television and the enormous capital that involves, do you see Qwest going down that road?

A. You still have to push high bandwidth out to the customer. The key is to do it in a very disciplined way so that your return on invested capital is there. About 35 percent of our capital investment this year will be bandwidth improvements.

Q. Wall Street compares you with Verizon and AT&T, which have video projects. Do you think you're viewed negatively because you don't?

A. There is nothing wrong with being a fast follower. In fact, there are a lot of advantages to being a fast follower versus the bleeding edge. Instead of generic 2.0, I'll be at 2.5.
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/20/te...interview.html

Pixar's 'Cars' Got Its Kicks on Route 66
Phil Patton

THE cars of "Cars," the animated Pixar film that opens nationally on June 9, were designed on Route 66.

But not entirely — they were also designed at Pixar's headquarters in Emeryville, Calif., where 800 animators and other dreamers work on 3,000 computers inside a former fruit processing plant. But to hear Michael Wallis, a historian of the highways, tell it, they were inspired by research expeditions to racetracks, styling studios and car shows.

Inspiration also flowed from the ruins of a Packard plant on East Grand Boulevard in Detroit and from the Detroit Institute of Arts, with its car-factory murals by Diego Rivera — and from what's left of the legendary Route 66, an artery through the heart of the American Dream.

A tour guide and author of "Route 66: The Mother Road," among other books, Mr. Wallis led the Pixar crew along Route 66.

The most lovable character in "Cars" is Mater, a rusty tow truck with the voice of Larry the Cable Guy. That's Mater, as in "Tow-Mater," an aptly cornball pun. Mr. Wallis recalls the time and place he was created. "There was an old wrecker in an empty lot by Route 66 in Galena, Kan.," he said. "Joe Ranft, the studio's head of story and a key member of the Pixar team, stopped and noticed it, and Mater was born."

Acting as a consultant for the Pixar team — Mr. Ranft; John Lasseter, the director; and other top animators — Mr. Wallis played Beatrice to their Dante.

Just as auto designers have produced cars that come close to cartoons — think of the gangsteresque Chrysler PT Cruiser, the pull-toy Volkswagen New Beetle, the biceps-bulging Chrysler 300 — the designers of cartoons have turned to creating cars.

It is not as easy as it seems, Mr. Lasseter said. In January 2005, he came to the Detroit auto show and spoke about his project at the AutoWeek Design Forum. The crucial decision, he said, was to forgo the usual idea of the "face" of a car, with the headlights serving as the eyes and the grille as the mouth. He moved the eyes to the windshield to keep the cars from looking empty and driverless.

The team took constant pains "to keep the cars from looking rubbery, " Mr. Lasseter said. Much effort and computer-processing power went into rendering realistically shifting reflections on the cars' metal surfaces, from the rust of old trucks to the metal-flake custom cars, using a computer technique called ray tracing.

The release of "Cars" was delayed seven months during the negotiations that led to Disney's recent purchase of Pixar for $7.4 billion in stock. The formal premiere is Friday on four giant screens erected on Turn 2 of Lowe's Motor Speedway near Charlotte, N.C. That location is courtesy of Humpy Wheeler, president and general manager of the speedway and Nascar's éminence grise, who provides the movie voice of Tex, a 1959 Cadillac Coupe de Ville with long horns above his grille. Richard Petty, the racing legend, also has a speaking role.

The cars tend to types. George Carlin plays Fillmore, a VW bus whose front license plate suggests a beatnik's goatee. Sarge is a Jeep, Flo a waitress (inspired, Mr. Wallis says, by a real waitress, Dawn Welch, at the Rock Café in Stroud, Okla.). A 1957 Motorama show car, Flo boasts (through chrome lips) of selling "the best gas in 50 states."

Ramone, the '59 Chevy Impala lowrider, has the voice of Cheech Marin, the stoner comedian. Lightning McQueen's archrival, Chick Hicks, is a tough, intimidating competitor in the vein of the late Dale Earnhardt.

The more you know about cars and car movies the richer the experience of watching. Paul Newman gives voice to Doc Hudson, a wise retired racer turned mechanic. It helps if you know that the Hudson Hornet, for which the Pixar team dug up vintage paint chips to assure realism, was once a Nascar racer and that Newman acted in a film called "Hud." Yes, the car has blue eyes.

The sheriff of Radiator Springs is a 1949 Mercury, and its voice is Mr. Wallis's. The author is delighted with his role. "That car has always been one of my favorites, and it fits my personality," he said. "My rapidly whitening mustache looks more like that Mercury's grille every day."

Mr. Lasseter recounted how the idea for the film was born in the summer of 2000 when, exhausted after nearly a decade of work on films like "Toy Story" and "Monsters, Inc.," he decided to take a cross-country road trip with his wife and five sons.

A large man habitually garbed in a capacious Hawaiian shirt — a look that suggests a perpetual fantasy vacation — Mr. Lasseter is the son of a onetime Chevrolet parts manager in Whittier, Calif. He had long wanted to make a film about the car culture.

When he returned to the studio from his vacation, he plunged into the new project. One of the first things he did was contact Mr. Wallis, who led the Pixar animators on two trips across Route 66 to research the film. Bypassed by Interstate 40 and other modern highways, Route 66 — the pieces that remain — has been reborn as a tourist road. Real motels and restaurants served as models for those in Radiator Springs, like the Cozy Cone Motel and V-8 Cafe.

"They saw the teepee-shaped motels and gas stations," Mr. Wallis said in the rawhide tones he uses on his road tours. "They felt the wind through the winter wheat. They gulped it all in."

The theme is a tried and true one that grew out of Mr. Lasseter's own experience: getting out of the fast lane and understanding that the journey is the reward — a phrase often used both by Mr. Lasseter and by Steven P. Jobs, Pixar's co-founder.

The film follows its hero, Lightning McQueen, a Corvettelike racer with the voice of Owen Wilson, as it travels the racing circuit from town to town, combining the narrative device of the road trip with bursts of action. But the racecar gets sidetracked in Radiator Springs.

"He's speedy and arrogant," Mr. Wallis said. "In our bypassed town we teach him to slow down. In turn, he inspires us to rebuild our town."

Mr. Wallis, along with his wife, Suzanne Fitzgerald Wallis, also wrote a book about the making of the film. The lush pastel and color pencil sketches in "The Art of Cars" (Chronicle, $40) show that Pixar's ideas have roots in the hand, not just in the computer. Sketches by Nat McLaughlin for flowers in the film — their blossoms shaped like taillights — are works of art.

Mr. Lasseter and his group visited design studios for the Big Three automakers in Detroit but particularly hit it off with J Mays, the Ford Motor Company's group vice president for design. "We are on the same wavelength," Mr. Mays said.

He said he had admired the cars in "The Incredibles," another Pixar film, because they demonstrated a knowledge of auto history and design. "You could see they had done a lot of research," said Mr. Mays, who is thanked in the credits for "Cars."

Mr. Mays and Mr. Lasseter bonded and exchanged studio visits. Mr. Lasseter learned how real cars are designed. Mr. Mays was impressed with Pixar's obsessive attention to detail. "They want to get things right even if no one can tell," he said. "If it was wrong, they would know."

The cars in "Cars" are much more sophisticated than those in "The Incredibles." Computers used for the new film are four times as fast as those, and 1,000 times as fast as the ones for "Toy Story." What gives the cars character is the way they move on their wheels, like creatures on feet.

Of course, designing cars for computer animation is not designing for the real world, but it has similarities. To orchestrate the motion, Pixar used a shared platform, a system not unlike a real carmaker's. The film's cars have a common software "chassis," a "universal rig" of 100 animation controls known as avars. Suspensions are customized: the 50's cars are looser and bouncier.

Pixar had to design a whole landscape. In a world of cars, Mr. Lasseter explained, "a restaurant is a gas station and a doctor is a mechanic." The town of Radiator Springs includes a tire (shoe) store run by Luigi, a Fiat with a hairpiece whose voice is that of Tony Shalhoub of the television series "Monk."

The Western landscape of so many auto advertisements is echoed in the film's Ornament Valley, where mountains look like tailfins. The vista was inspired by a visit to Don Sommer of Clawson, Mich., who collects vintage hood ornaments and whose company, American Arrow, makes reproductions. The Cadillac Range of mountains was inspired by a visit to the Cadilllac Ranch art installation near Amarillo, Tex.

For Route 66, Mr. Wallis loaded the animators into rented white Cadillacs. "We rode three big new Detroit sleds," he said. The animators decorated the cars by attaching items found on the roadside: sheaves of wheat, bunches of thistles, sunflowers, snake skins and a road-kill armadillo. "We called this stuff Okie hood ornaments," Mr. Wallis said.

At trip's end, he said, "We buried it all in the high desert," adding: "We had a ceremony. I spoke some words and one of the animators, Bud Luckey, played a few bars on his harmonica. I'll never forget it."
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/21/au...es/21AUTO.html

What a field day for the heat

Police Requests for Corporate Data Multiply

Businesses juggle law-enforcement demands for information about customers, suppliers
Robert Block

Since the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, law enforcement efforts to secure corporate information about clients and suppliers have reached such levels that some companies have had to create special units that do nothing but deal with these demands, a process often called "subpoena management."

Banks, Internet-service providers and other companies that possess large amounts of data on their customers say that police and intelligence agencies have been increasingly coming to them looking for tidbits of information that could help them stop everything from money launderers to pedophiles and terrorists.

"Corporate counsel that used to see law-enforcement-related requests five times a year are now getting them sometimes dozens of times a day," says Susan Hackett, a senior vice president and top attorney for the Association of Corporate Counsel, which represents the legal departments of leading U.S. companies.

In short, phone companies currently caught up in a controversy over reports that they gave the National Security Agency access to records of customers' calls are hardly the only businesses fretting over how to cooperate with the government in the war on terror. Internet and financial companies also are frequently targeted by intelligence and law enforcement agencies, forcing them into situations where they must choose between customers' rights to privacy and their own corporate desire to help the government without being seen as agents of the government.

The situation is made even more complicated when the companies are government contractors, vying for federal business or in an industry subject to complicated regulation.

Time Warner Inc.'s America Online Inc. employs more than a dozen people, including several former prosecutors, handling almost 12,000 requests a year from federal state and local police agencies. The unit works 24 hours a day, seven days a week and maintains a special hotline that police or federal agents can call to help them with their queries and tailor their requests. For the last five years the company has published a "Law Enforcement Training Manual" complete with information about how long the company retains basic subscriber information and unread email, to sample subpoena and court-order wordings to speed processing of the police demands.

According to AOL executives, the most common requests in criminal cases relate to crimes against children, including abuse, abductions, and child pornography. Close behind are cases dealing with identity theft and other computer crimes. Sometimes the police requests are highly targeted and scrupulously legalistic, while other times they were seen by the company as little more than sloppy fishing expeditions. AOL says that most requests get turned down.

"We have a very rigorous review process here," said John Ryan, AOL's vice president and associate general counsel. "Every request that comes in from law enforcement is vetted, and before any information is turned over an attorney with years of experience reviews it and determines whether or not any turn-around or process is required. I can say -- ballpark figure -- for every five requests that come in maybe one will fit the standard to a certain level and will be honored."

In other cases, companies have no choice but to surrender records. New powers granted to the government under the Patriot Act mean that Washington can secretly access people's records from businesses without having to provide any notification or seek a judge's permission. Companies are in fact prohibited by the law from disclosing that they had received such requests.

The Justice Department last month reported that the FBI last year issued 9,200 administrative subpoenas known as National Security Letters, seeking information on 3,501 U.S. citizens and legal residents from their banks, credit card, telephone and Internet companies without a court's approval. The records are supposed to be about people in terrorism and espionage investigations, but the FBI is not required to show how they are connected to any terrorism case.

Some companies have been wrestling with how far to cooperate with government investigations even before 9-11. AOL first noticed law-enforcement agencies' burgeoning interest in their members' online activities in the mid-90s in child-porn cases. FedEx Corp. and United Parcel Service Inc. struggled with the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Drug Enforcement Agency over the agencies' attempts to get unfettered access to the shippers' systems as part of the war against drug traffickers.

Since 2001, the pressure on them has grown as the amount of electronic information provided to or compiled by companies has grown to include everything from customer names and addresses to shopping preferences and pastime activities. The Departments of Homeland Security, Defense and Justice as well as the CIA have increasingly viewed this data as a veritable treasure trove that can be tapped to help thwart crimes and identify potential terrorist attacks in the making.

Ms. Hackett of the organization of corporate counsel said that corporate lawyers often spend their energies negotiating with the government to limit the scope of their demands rather than to refuse them outright. "Companies want to be cooperative, but also have to protect their interests and their clients, and the best way to do that is determine upfront, right away about what the government is going to get and when," she said. "Often the government agrees because it doesn't want to go public with a fight."

Fights are sometimes inevitable. Last year, the Justice Department demanded that AOL, Yahoo, Microsoft MSN and Google hand over customer search records in a bid to prove that filtering software doesn't screen kids from online porn. Google refused, saying that the government was abusing its subpoena power by seeking information that had nothing to do with criminal prosecution. A judge ultimately ruled that Google need turn over only 50,000 Web addresses, not the one million originally subpoenaed.

But even when companies can push back they are not always willing to do so. Because they are so heavily regulated, phone companies have a long history of contact with the federal government. And the government has long been one of the telecom companies' biggest customers offering multimillion contracts for services. One key federal technology-service contract called "Networx" worth roughly $20 billion is up for grabs now. It's likely it will parceled out to several telecom companies over the next year or so.

--Dionne Searcey and Jay Solomon contributed to this article
http://online.wsj.com/public/article...html?mod=blogs

Lawyer Demands U Fla Cops' Documents On Fiction Writer
Cory Doctorow

Mitchell L Silverman, an attorney in Hollywood, Florida, was so outraged by the story of University of Florida cops leaning on a grad student who published fiction on his LiveJournal recounting a murder that he's filed an official request with the U Fla police for copies of all the police notes on the file. The cops have a legal obligation to disclose these records under state law.

Philip Sandifer is the U Fla grad student in Gainesville from whom the campus police demanded DNA and fingerprints. Sandifer had published a short story about a murderer who cites his crimes in a letter to the Special Forces as qualifications for a job with them. The cops' rationale was that even if it was fiction, you can't be too safe, and besides, they didn't think that English students should be writing about murder.

It looks like the original complaint came from people whom Sandifer had argued with over Wikipedia -- a message-board for disgruntled Wikipedians contains a discussion of Sandifer's story and the mischief that could be had by complaining the university about it, noting, "it wouldn't take much to put him in a position where he either decides to leave Wikipedia or decides that he doesn't need a Ph.D. after all." Sandifer told the police about this, but they continued to pressure him for DNA samples, threatening to obtain them from his garbage if he refused to comply.

The U Fla police refused to speak with me, and (via a university spokesman) denied asking for Sandifer's prints and DNA and condemning his writing -- but Sandifer's story is corroborated by his advisor, Sid Dobrin, who was present during one of their interviews with him.

Silverman is acting on his own in this request for documents -- he's not Sandifer's attorney. He's just an outraged Floridan who wants to know why the cops in his state are policing fiction. Link
http://www.boingboing.net/2006/05/24...nds_u_fla.html

Open Letter to Ministers Oda and Bernier

Canadian Federation of Students, Ottawa, 17 Apr 06

The Honourable Maxime Bernier P.C., M.P.
Minister of Industry
5th floor, West Tower
C.D. Howe Building
235 Queen St.
Ottawa, Ontario K1A 0H5

The Honourable Bev Oda P.C., M.P.
Minister of Canadian Heritage
25 Eddy Street
Gatineau, Quebec
K1A 0M5

April 17, 2006

Dear Ministers,

Re: Copyright Legislation

I am writing on behalf of over one-half million members of the Canadian Federation of Students.

In the next year, Parliament will likely examine a Bill to amend the Copyright Act. Students in Canada are greatly concerned about reasonable access to information and knowledge as digital technology increasingly plays an instrumental role in learning and research. Canada’s students have concerns with respect to calls from other stakeholders for legislation that would restrict access to materials on the internet and impose unwarranted and unmanageable fees on libraries, educational institutions and students. We are writing to urge the Canadian government to reject proposals for restrictive copyright laws, and to instead embrace policies that will support Canada’s vibrant and open knowledge community.

Bill C-60, An Act to Amend the Copyright Act, died on the order paper with the fall of the 38th Parliament. While students in Canada were pleased with some of the proposed amendments, the bill could have gone much further to promote Canada’s best interests.

Specifically, our issues include:

1. Legal Protection for Technological Protection Measures (TPMs) and Digital Rights Management (DRM) Developments over the past year have demonstrated that legal protection of TPMs and DRM is unnecessary and would be harmful to Canada’s students. Lobbyists are stating such protections are necessary as an incentive to use such technologies and build “new business models” around them. However, even without special legal protection, the content industry is increasingly rolling out TPMs and DRM. As the Sony BMG “rootkit” DRM amply demonstrated, these technologies are being used not to control copying, but to segment markets and to tie consumers to specific devices, and are dangerous to consumers’ privacy. DRM and TPMs replaces copyright’s balanced allocation of rights
with one dictated by the content distributor. These often infringe on students’ rights to
practice fair dealing with digital works, such as reverse engineering. We call on the
Canadian government to refrain from legislating special protection for DRM and TPMs.

If the government chooses to so legislate, it should do so in a way that:

• Is consistent, and does not replace, copyright law;

• Recognizes appropriate limits on the invasiveness and scope of such technologies; and

• Does not outlaw the “tools” and “devices” that are essential to academic research but that may be used to circumvent TPMs or tamper with DRM.

2. Internet Service Provider (ISP) Liability – “notice and takedown” vs. “notice and notice”:

Previous discussions on this issue have focused on two methods of insulating ISPs from liability for the infringing activities of their customers: “notice and takedown” and “notice and notice”. We urge the government to adopt the “notice and notice” approach to ISP liability, as was outlined in Bill C-60. We oppose a “notice and takedown” procedure, because:

• it aims to silence an alleged infringer without proving infringement;

• it bypasses the mechanisms IP law has developed to arrest use of allegedly infringing material prior to a judgment;

• notice and takedown inhibits freedom of speech; and

• there is evidence that this system is already abused in the United States.

We urge the government to maintain the current “notice and notice” procedure as it was
proposed in Bill C-60. This procedure is preferable because:

• it achieves exactly what the law requires: notice of the allegation of infringement;

• it is up to the content user at that point to decide whether or not to continue with the allegedly infringing activity; and

• the ISP remains neutral in the dispute, and can focus on providing Internet services, not taking sides in a dispute to which it is not a party.

3. Fair Dealing

A shortcoming of the current copyright law to address is the narrow scope of Canada’s “fair dealing” defense. Students in Canada would like to see fair dealing revised to be more in line with the “fair use” defense enjoyed by students in the United States, Canadian students ask this government to amend the Act as follows:

• Eliminate fair dealing’s restrictive, categorical approach (“for the purposes of...”) in favour of an “inclusive” approach (“for purposes including...“)

• Harmonize Canadian laws with American laws to clarify that fair dealing may include making multiple copies of copyrighted materials for classroom use

• Clarify that fair dealing embraces reverse engineering, parody, and the educational use of digital materials.

4. Digital Interlibrary Loan and Distance Learning

Canadian educational institutions are increasingly relying on distance education tools to improve the opportunities for learning enjoyed by Canadian students. Copyright law must support, not impede, this development. Canada’s students increasingly rely on interlibrary loan. Libraries and students need the flexibility and support that this service can provide. We supported Bill C-60’s approach to digital interlibrary loan and distance education, but reject the wastefully burdensome and technologically-partisan manner in which it sought to curtail these user rights. In our view, the Act should not unfairly and needlessly hinder educational institutions, libraries and students. We call on this government to clarify that distance learning and digital interlibrary loan are user rights, and to implement them in a manner that is fair, productive, and technologically neutral.

5. Statutory Damages

We call on this government to reform Canada’s statutory damages regime. Statutory damages have no place in license bargaining between collectives and Canada’s public institutions. Statutory damages are an effective tool to address enforcement of IP rights in commercial piracy cases. Educational institutions, libraries and archives are not commercial pirates. They should not suffer the threat of statutory damages. Students are concerned that the collectives and the major publishing and recording industries– entities motivated by profit–have been wielding too much influence in the process to-date, thereby drowning the legitimate concerns of teachers, researchers, librarians, and students.

In drafting new legislation, we ask members of Parliament to establish widespread consultations with diverse stakeholders on the matter. The last round of consultations was already five years ago and there have been many technological advances and legal developments since then. Students have previously not participated in such consultations and we ask that we be represented in such consultations.

We would welcome the opportunity to discuss these issues with you.

Sincerely,

[Signed in original]

Angela Regnier
National Deputy Chairperson
Canadian Federation of Students

cc: Patricia Neri, Director General, Copyright Policy, Department of Canadian Heritage, Susan Bincoletto, Director General, Marketplace Framework Policy Branch, Industry Canada
http://action.web.ca/home/cfs/en_ale...ee 5fa6fe93a4

JackSpratts · 25-05-06, 11:10 AM

The Shifting Future Of Wireless Voice
David Haskin

The technology is in its early stages, there's no proven business model, and there's strong disagreement about how the trend will play out. But most experts agree that voice over IP (VoIP) will eventually combine with new types of wireless broadband to change how businesses and consumers acquire and use mobile and fixed voice services.

That means you eventually could walk down the street talking over a cellular network, and the call will seamlessly switch to voice over WLAN when you enter your office, which would cut down on the number of cellular minutes you and your company must purchase. Another example: Software in your phone will automatically route your calls over a voice-over-WLAN system when you are inside a warehouse where the cellular signal is weak and switch to the cellular network when you are outside where the WLAN doesn't reach.

Most important, perhaps, is the possibility that this emerging trend -- and the convergence technology behind it -- could create new challengers to cellular and landline operators. That, in turn, could lead to new and more intense competition.

"Cellular operators aren't thrilled about this idea yet," said Derek Kerton, principal of Kerton Group, a telephone market research and consulting firm. "If [subscribers] think they could cut their [cellular] service from, say, 1,000 minutes to 200 minutes, that explains why they're not too excited."

"Everything is starting to blend, and there are no clear lines about who will provide what kind of service," acknowledged Tony Krueck, vice president of product development for Sprint. "It'll take a while to work itself out."

The technologies

At the heart of this issue are some brand-spanking-new technologies and some new twists on older technologies that converge high-speed landline and wireless Internet access with VoIP. These technologies enable VoIP, which is already a reality in many homes and offices, to become mobile.

The furthest along of these emerging wide-area wireless technologies are wide-area Wi-Fi mesh networks, which proponents claim can cover entire metropolitan areas. Cities such as Philadelphia have received the lion's share of attention about their citywide mesh networking plans, but this technology is already in place in a number of smaller cities.

Some believe that citywide Wi-Fi alone will change the mobile voice landscape, opening the way for increased adoption of mobile VoIP. However, others, such as Phil Redman, a research vice president at Gartner, don't believe Wi-Fi mesh is up to the task.

"One big reason municipal [Wi-Fi] services will fail is that there's no control," Redman said. "This is unlicensed spectrum, so if I blast you with my private networks, there's nothing much you can do about it."

Also, he noted that the current Wi-Fi standard doesn't have built-in quality of service to ensure voice quality, an issue that will be resolved when the next Wi-Fi standard, 802.11n, is ratified later this year or early next.

Interestingly, Wi-Fi's reputed failings aren't discouraging Sprint. Krueck disclosed that his company is working on a consumer-level phone, which internally is called the Combophone, that can handle both voice over Wi-Fi and cellular calls.

"When you enter your home, there will be a special wireless [Wi-Fi] router that would pair with the Combophone," Krueck said. "Once you leave the house again, you'd use the [cellular] network for your calls."

Krueck stressed, however, that Sprint's Combophone won't work over Wi-Fi outside the home -- the planned Sprint router is necessary to make the VoIP part of the system work, and that router will be available only for in-home installation. He said he expects Sprint's Combophone to launch in the first half of next year.

While use of Wi-Fi for VoIP has its detractors, more robust and far-reaching mobile wireless technologies also are emerging. The best known of these technologies is mobile WiMax. Fixed WiMax is already a fully ratified standard, and the mobile version could be approved as soon as the end of this year.

In addition, IPWireless' UMTS TDD and Qualcomm's FLASH-OFDM are already mobile and available. All three of these technologies create wide-area IP-based networks and usually operate in licensed portions of spectrum, which makes them less prone than Wi-Fi to problems such as interference.

Benefits of converged technologies

The result of all this technology is that users can eventually have a single phone that converges cellular, fixed and mobile VoIP. One market segment in which that idea will be particularly attractive is health care, where doctors and nurses in large facilities such as hospitals spend much of their day walking around visiting patients and colleagues and attending meetings. As in the warehouse scenario mentioned earlier, in-building cellular coverage can be spotty and, besides, VoIP is less expensive. As a result, many health care organizations already have given medical personnel voice-over-WLAN phones, and phones that combine cellular and VoIP would have obvious attractions.

In order for the vision of voice convergence to work, however, technology is needed to hand off calls between cellular and IP-based networks. Here, too, new technologies are emerging. The two with the most momentum are Unlicensed Mobile Access and IP Media Subsystem (IMS). In simple terms, the former technology is for use with GSM-based cellular networks such as those deployed by Cingular and T-Mobile in the U.S., while IMS is IP-based and uses SIP technology already commonly in use with fixed VoIP systems.

Technologies like these are essential for the vision of mix-and-match cellular and VoIP calling to work. Cellular operators and cell-phone manufacturers must incorporate technologies such as these into their infrastructures and phones before these transparent handoffs between networks can occur. The phone manufacturers, which ultimately will sell phones no matter what type of network is used, have been testing the technology and pushing carriers to adopt it. Similarly, vendors of infrastructure equipment used by cellular operators, such as base stations, have also been testing the technology. The carriers, however, have been less than eager, since the change would tend to migrate cellular minutes to VoIP. And that potentially would bring in a slew of new competitors.

The missing business models

If the technology behind this potential sea change is up in the air, the business models are even more so. Nobody's quite sure who the major players will be and exactly what services they will provide.

The cellular operators obviously want to stay in the game. Sprint's Combophone, for instance, gives that company the potential to gain revenue for in-home fixed-line voice service from its cellular subscribers. However, many smaller players are also trying to get a piece of the action.

"We're very interested in voice because it's still a killer application," said Jeff Thompson, CEO of TowerStream, an already-profitable ISP providing fixed WiMax-class access to enterprises in six U.S. cities. He said his company is particularly well positioned to take advantage of mobile VoIP.

"When you use WiMax, you have a much lower cost than legacy infrastructure, plus it's all IP-based," Thompson said. However, he added this potentially gnarly question: "Everybody likes mobility, but how do you make money with mobility? We definitely think voice is a killer app and we have to support it. But whether we do it as a partner or ourselves, we haven't decided yet."

At the other end of the spectrum is Gartner's Redman, who is less certain that there will be a lot of new players in the mobile voice game.

"Hundreds of billions of dollars have been spent on creating robust cellular networks," Redman said. "There's nobody who can compete with that." However, while he doubts that companies like TowerStream can become major players, he acknowledges that new applications for wireless VoIP will emerge.

"It'll fill niches. It will help with in-building capabilities and for specific industry applications," Redman said. "But will it be disruptive to cellular? Companies like TowerStream might like to think so, but you look at a company like Cingular -- they're huge."

Sprint's Krueck falls somewhere in between Thompson's and Redman's points of view. Sprint has one advantage that no other U.S. cellular operator has -- a lot of licensed spectrum in the 2.5-GHz range, which it acquired when it merged with Nextel. The Federal Communications Commission has told Sprint it must use the spectrum or lose it.

Krueck confirmed what many industry analysts have been speculating about: Sprint plans to use that spectrum for wireless broadband and, potentially, for voice over IP. Nextel ran field trials of FLASH-OFDM before the merger, and Sprint currently is testing WiMax and UMTS TDD.

"We'll do trials this year on a couple of different wireless broadband technologies," Krueck said. "Sometime this year we'll actually select a technology, and sometime in 2007 we could start seeing something come into production."

But Sprint hasn't decided what it actually will do with its new technology and, in particular, whether it will use it for voice, Krueck said.

"We're strategizing now about what the business model would look like for giving access to various types of applications over the IP network," Krueck said. "With [VoIP], we could block it, accept it or establish a business model with vendors like [VoIP provider] Vonage where, if you want to mobilize VoIP, we could charge for the relationship. Those discussions haven't happened yet, but that's an option. Any way you look at it, wireless companies that carry that traffic will have to be compensating, or we'll go out of business."

Krueck stressed that Sprint and the other cellular carriers didn't spend billions to build out their networks just to have their revenue taken away by VoIP over other types of wireless networks.

"It doesn't make sense to move our 50 million customers off an existing infrastructure," Krueck said. "Still, over time we might cap that network and grow the other [IP-based] network."

Even a potential competitor like TowerStream is still trying to figure out a sensible business plan, TowerStream's Thompson acknowledged.

"It's tough to predict the future, but I do see a lot of technologies that are maturing that will allow people to deploy [VoIP] -- if they find the right business model," Thompson said. He acknowledged that, like Sprint, his company is still trying to figure out just how to do that.

Despite the differing opinions, Kerton, the market researcher, believes that these new voice technologies will play a role in the future that will benefit enterprise and individual users alike. Depending on the business models that emerge, that role could be significant.

"At the very least, it will fill a significant niche," Kerton said. "If citywide coverage isn't feasible, there still will be a role [for wireless VoIP] in the home or enterprise."

David Haskin is a freelance writer specializing in mobile and wireless issues.
http://www.computerworld.com/action/...icleId=9000647

Pearl Jam's “Life Wasted” Video Released Under A CC License
Eric Steuer

The new music video for Pearl Jam's "Life Wasted" was released today under the Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial-NoDerivs license, so that people anywhere can legally copy, distribute, and share the clip. This is the first Pearl Jam video to be released in eight years and, as far as we know, the first video produced by a major label ever to be CC-licensed. Pearl Jam and J Records are offering the video as a free download at Google Video from today, May 19th, through May 24th. After May 24th, the clip will be made available for sale. For more information, check out PearlJam.com and CC's press release.
http://creativecommons.org/weblog/entry/5913

Better Sound in Small Packages
Michel Marriott

Not long ago, Pamela Henning, an executive at a New York-based film company, listened to her music over an expensive stereo system loaded with 2,000 of her favorite CD's. But, she said recently, it was a bit too much to handle. She bought a five-CD changer, later replaced with a single-CD player. Eventually, she chucked it all.

"I found the old-world technology so time-consuming," said Ms. Henning, senior vice president for integrated marketing for the Weinstein Company.

She decided to transfer all of her music, from Shirley Bassey to Trane, onto Apple iPods, and then back up the iPods on a hard drive, backed up by a second hard drive.

Finally, her music was portable and quickly accessible. And when she wanted to listen in her Upper West Side apartment in Manhattan, she often snapped one of her four iPods into a stereo docking system.

There was just one drawback, she noted: the musical experience was not as rich as the one her old stereo provided.

With the popularity of iPods and other hand-held digital music players — 140 million were sold worldwide last year — many consumers have made a similar compromise, trading music fidelity for portability. The era of big-box home loudspeakers with broad-shouldered stereo amplifiers and their full-bodied sound has been overtaken by microchip-driven miniaturization and home theater systems that tend to be optimized for listening to movies, not music.

"The thing that has changed is the consumers' perspective of what they expect from audio," said Dweezil Zappa, the 36-year-old musician who is performing the music of his late father, Frank Zappa, for new audiences. "I think younger consumers aren't familiar at all with really high-quality audio because for them a CD is the best thing they have ever heard."

But innovation is restless, suggested Mahesh Sundaram, vice president for marketing for Audistry, an Australian-based audio company established early this year as a subsidiary of Dolby Laboratories.

He said technologies that helped put consumers' music at their fingertips could also be used to make that music sound much better than what many have grown accustomed to. "Their reference point is going to shift dramatically," he noted.

The goal, many audio experts say, is to improve sound quality both on portable devices and in the living room. The methods are taking different paths. In some instances, digital technologies are being applied to a new crop of audio components, including speakers, headphones and portable music players, to enhance existing audio recordings. Other approaches include attempts to create richer, fuller recordings in studios and in live performances.

Major audio electronics companies like Creative and SRS Labs, along with Audistry, are increasingly turning to psychoacoustic technologies, which manipulate sound waves to convince listeners that they are hearing much more than they actually are.

Others, like the chip maker Advanced Micro Devices, are investing in supporting PC-like platforms to help musicians, recording studio engineers and producers to capture, store and mix music more accurately. Charlie Boswell, director of Advanced Micro's digital media and entertainment group in Austin, Tex., said the goal was recordings that sound vastly better and computer-driven technologies that do not get in the way of the artistic process.

For example, equipment using Advanced Micro's latest dual Opteron processor was used last month in New York to record the Jammys, an awards event honoring live music performances. Mr. Boswell said the program, which included, among others, Peter Frampton, Dweezil Zappa and Richie Havens, would be available in the fall on a special 5.1 surround-sound DVD (using five speakers and a subwoofer).

The DVD, as well as a series of others made with Advanced Micro chips, can be played in any DVD player but is best appreciated on higher-end music and home-theater systems, offering nuances, warmth and dynamics often not found in live recordings, whether on CD or vinyl, Mr. Boswell said.

Frank Filipetti, a Grammy-winning studio engineer and producer, said he was so impressed with the audio possibilities of DVD's that he is pushing for the recording industry to use them exclusively and phase out CD's. DVD's have enough storage capacity for an album's worth of uncompressed music on them; CD's require compression, though not as much as MP3's and other formats read by digital audio players.

"Why shouldn't the listener at home hear what I hear in here?" Mr. Filipetti said during an interview in a Midtown Manhattan studio while playing back a Frank Zappa track he was readying for a new collection.

But companies that work mostly with compressed music say much can still be done to make it sound better. "We are trying to add back a layer of quality, a layer of experience that people don't realize that they are missing," said Chris Bennett, president of Audistry.

One of his company's offerings is a "sound space expander." Its purpose, Mr. Bennett said, is to convince listeners that music played from speakers that have very little physical separation from one another, as in portable stereos and many music docking stations, sound as if they do. By using a series of proprietary algorithms that will run on the system's microprocessors, Audistry technologies create an impression that the sound is being heard from widely separated speakers, Mr. Bennett said.

At the same time, the technology creates what Audistry calls a "wide stereo image," meaning the space between the music's instruments also seems to widen without distorting vocals at the center of the mix.

Some of the first consumer products using Audistry audio enhancements are going on sale in the United States this month. Among them is the SD-SP10, a 2.1 home audio-video system by Sharp Electronics. The system will cost $350, said Sharp said.

Similarly, Creative Technology, the Singapore-based digital audio pioneer, is turning attention to improving sound quality in consumer products, said Steve Erickson, general manager and vice president for Creative audio products. Last year, Creative released its Sound Blaster X-Fi Xtreme Fidelity processor, which is armed with 51 million transistors and is 24 times as powerful as the company's previous audio chip, Mr. Erickson said.

A number of versions of the sound card with varying abilities are available for use in PC's, ranging in price from $130 to $400. But this year Creative's audio enhancement technologies are migrating to a broader range of applications and products. For example, aspects of its digital signal processing abilities could be applied to stereo headphones to create a more natural three-dimensional sound than current headphones can, Mr. Erickson said.

SRS Labs, with its headquarters in Santa Ana, Calif., offers what David Frerichs, the company's executive vice president for strategic marketing and corporate development, calls a "whole eco-system of things we do to leverage our experience" with high-quality audio technologies.

One of the company's newest advances is SRS Mobile HD, designed for digital broadcast and downloads. The technology also enables headphones made for mobile phones and portable media devices to play audio in 5.1 surround sound.

SRS said the technology was so new that it had not yet been licensed to any manufacturers. But one of its similar technologies, called SRS WOW HD, is integrated into a number of consumer products, including a range of MP3 players by Samsung and Alienware.

Like many consumers, Ms. Henning, the film company executive, said she was not overly concerned with the details. She only wants to get the best sound she can with the ease of pressing a button.

Mr. Bennett of Audistry said he was confident that the electronics industry could deliver on that. But he cautioned that consumers should listen not just to claims, but to the approaching waves of improved audio.

"Nothing," he said, "speaks louder than someone hearing it themselves."
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/25/te...y/25sound.html

Christie's to Hold 'Star Trek' Garage Sale
Chris Michaud

Trekkies will be setting their phasers to "bid" this fall when Christie's holds the first official studio auction of memorabilia from all five "Star Trek" television series and 10 movie spinoffs.

CBS Paramount Television Studios is cleaning out its vaults for the sale, comprising more than 1,000 lots totaling some 4,000 items, to be held from October 5 to 7 in conjunction with the 40th anniversary of the original "Star Trek" series, Christie's announced on Thursday.

Fans and collectors will have a chance to acquire "Star Trek" artifacts ranging from models of the "Starship" USS Enterprise to Capt. James Kirk's uniform or Capt. Jean-Luc Picard's jumpsuit in an auction where Christie's expects to raise more than $3 million.

Other items to hit the block include props, weapons, prosthetics and set dressings unearthed from five Paramount warehouses.

Among the highlights are a miniature of the Starship Enterprise used in visual effects for the film "Star Trek: The Undiscovered Country," expected to sell for $15,000 to $25,000, and a replica of Kirk's chair from the original TV series that was recreated for the 1996 "Star Trek: Deep Space Nine" episode "Trials and Tribble-ations," which is estimated at $10,000 to

$15,000.

Fans with more modest budgets can train their sights on a host of Trekkie ephemera like the 10-inch Resikkan nonplaying prop brass flute used by Patrick Stewart as Picard in the episode "The Inner Light" in "Star Trek: The Next Generation," which carries a low estimate of just $300.

Cathy Elkies, director of special collections at Christie's, said the value of the objects was difficult to gauge because "we don't factor in that emotional fury generated around this kind of material."

Past estimates for auctions associated with the likes of Marilyn Monroe or Jacqueline Kennedy, who enjoyed dedicated followings, have been far off the mark as actual sale prices soared to five, 10 and even 100 times presale projections. "Star Trek" fans, with their Web sites, conventions and clubs, have proven among the most wildly devoted in all of pop culture.

'Cultural Icon'

"To several generations of people, 'Star Trek' was a cultural icon that represented our dreams, our hopes and our aspirations -- what we can become as a species, what we aspire to," said Mike Okuda, a graphic designer on four of the TV series and seven of the motion pictures as well as co-author of "The Star Trek Encyclopedia." "And to have a tangible piece of that is to have a tangible piece of a dream."

With the original captain's chair from the first "Star Trek" series in the Museum of Science Fiction in Seattle and the original Enterprise miniature at the Smithsonian's Air and Space Museum in Washington, other items from the 1960s show could be the most sought-after at auction.

Okuda said many of the first "Star Trek" props were reused, destroyed or disappeared. But the auction will feature a mustard-colored mini-dress from the first series as well as costumes worn by guest stars, such as a gown worn by famed attorney Melvin Belli who played an evil alien entity.

"Star Trek" fans will get a peek at the collection when the memorabilia goes on tour this week in Germany.

Conceived by author Gene Roddenberry in the mid-1960s, the original "Star Trek" series debuted in 1966.

The last TV series, "Enterprise," set in the early 22nd century, about 100 years before the adventures of Kirk's five-year mission, ended its run on the UPN network in 2005.
http://today.reuters.com/news/newsAr...E-STARTREK.xml

Connecticut: # 1 for MySpace pervs

Police: Newtown Man Lured Underage Bethel Girls On MySpace
Marietta Homayonpour

A Newtown man was charged today with risk of injury to a child after allegedly engaging in sexual conversations with Bethel girls he met on www.MySpace.com.

Eric Bassett, 25, of Birch Hill Road, was also charged with attempted risk of injury to a minor and attempted second degree sexual assault.

He is being held on a $50,000 bond with an arraignment date of Monday.

Bethel police Det. Tom Murphy said the investigation that led to Bassett’s arrest began about two weeks ago, when the parents of two female juveniles contacted police.

Police said that about four months ago the two girls — friends who were both 13 at the time— met Bassett on MySpace and began having conversations of a sexual nature.

"That evolved into instant messaging via AOL and moved on to (the girls) giving out telephone numbers," Murphy said.

Police said Bassett met in person with the two girls on one occasion and met again with one of the girls on at least one other occasion.

All the meetings were in Bethel.

Bassett's father, Fred Bassett, of Newtown, said his son is an active duty member of the U.S. Army and two years ago suffered a brain injury.

"He’s not the same person he was before the brain injury," said Fred Bassett.

Fred Bassett said his son has a neurological problem, is seeing a neurologist and was diagnosed with psychological problems, including depression.

The injury was caused in an auto accident while Eric was on duty at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, N.Y. where he is still stationed.

In the past, said Fred Bassett, his son did security duty for the Army at the summer Olympics in Utah and after 9/11 did security duty in Connecticut at the Groton submarine base and at Oxford Airport.

Eric Bassett, who is a graduate of Newtown High School, has been in the Army for six years and is a private first class, said his father.

When Bassett was arrested at his Newtown home today, computers and related items were seized under a search and seizure warrant executed by Bethel school resource officer George Bryce.

The Bethel arrest is the latest of a series of MySpace-related arrests in Connecticut.

After two men were charged earlier this year with sexually molesting Connecticut girls they met on MySpace, the social networking site began posting warnings on the site.

One public service announcement said, "1 in 5 kids online is sexually solicited. Online predators know what they're doing. Do you?"

MySpace officials also hired a Microsoft executive to oversee safety, education, privacy and law enforcement affairs.

A division of News Corp., the company that owns the Fox television network, MySpace has more than 60 million members. It is more popular than Google, the Internet search engine.

Users post profiles that can include photos of themselves and such details as where they live and what music they like.

Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal has been especially critical of the Web site.

In late March, Blumenthal sent MySpace a laundry list of proposed safeguards. Blumenthal has proposed raising the site's minimum age from 14 to 16 and providing free software to parents so they can block the Web site if they so choose.

The company made the blocking software available on the site, but Blumenthal argued it is too difficult for parents to find. The attorney general’s office has a parents’ guide to MySpace posted on its Web site, http://www.ct.gov/ag.

Bethel police urged parents to be vigilant.

"Parents should take an interest in where their children are going online," said Murphy, the Bethel detective.
http://news.newstimeslive.com/story....category=Local

For Teens, MySpace.com Is Just So Last Year
Jillian Cohan

MySpace's notoriety could be a turnoff for young people who are looking for an online community of their own, said Amanda Lenhart, a senior researcher for the Pew Internet and American Life Project. Lenhart has studied teens' online behavior since the late 1990s. "Teens will go where their friends go," she said.

When it became all the rage to have a MySpace page, Luly Larios joined the social networking Web site.

She rarely posts on her MySpace page, though. Instead, the high school sophomore logs on to Bebo.com, a site for high school and college students. The interface is simple, the graphics are better, and she finds more of her friends from school there.

"I'm computer illiterate," Larios said. "The easier it is to work the better."
Losing Appeal

MySpace recently eclipsed more traditional Web sites to become one of the Top 10 Internet destinations. The site has also raised concerns about user safety, thanks to several widely publicized incidents of cyberstalking.

However, the biggest social-networking spot may not stay on top for long. Teens like Larios are increasingly finding other social networks that meet their needs -- and that aren't as well known to their parents.

MySpace's notoriety could be a turnoff for young people who are looking for an online community of their own, said Amanda Lenhart, a senior researcher for the Pew Internet and American Life Project. Lenhart has studied teens' online behavior since the late 1990s.

"Teens will go where their friends go," she said. "They're always looking for new places to gather. If those places become viewed as more regulated, they'll move on."

MySpace may be reaching that point for its young users. Some no longer think it's cool, while others prefer more closed communities like Bebo and Facebook.com, which target their age group.

As this shift continues, plenty of other sites are on the horizon, anticipating movement away from MySpace.

While much of the concern about MySpace has come from parents afraid their children will meet strangers online, some of the site's competitors are succeeding because they link teens with their in-town friends at another school or in a different neighborhood.

That's the draw for 17-year-old Yesenia Aguilar.

Aguilar's Bebo page identifies her as a North High junior and lists about 50 other teenagers as her friends. Most live in the Wichita, Kan. area.

In response to a message, Aguilar wrote that she and her friends use Bebo to catch up with their buddies.

"We go on this site because a lot of our friends are on here," she said. "We just mostly talk to our friends while we're in class."

Choosing Wisely

Wichita high school senior Rachel Wetta also prefers a more limited social network. She has pages at MySpace, Xanga and Facebook, but she settled on Facebook, a site that's open only to those with an e-mail address ending in ".edu."

Xanga doesn't let her send messages to friends, and she only uses MySpace when someone else writes to her.

"I like Facebook because I can find anybody," Wetta said. "I have a circle of Facebook friends, some from Wichita that I've never met. I use it every day to catch up. There are new people being added constantly."

Recent reports of sexual predators using social networking sites to meet young people don't worry her, Wetta said, and she's not concerned about her personal information getting into the hands of school administrators or potential employers.

"I control it," she said. "I can block people. Only the ones I've approved can see what I write."

Because she's happy with her experience on Facebook, Wetta doesn't plan to join other online communities, but that could change.

"If something else came along that caught on like Facebook, I might look at it," she said.

Newer entrants into the social networking game are banking on that and are already building sites they think improve on the current generation. Here are a few to watch:

Buzznet.com

What it is: An Internet community that connects users through shared interest in pop culture using blogs, music, video and photos. Users don't have to register to access content but must register if they want to contribute content. A few high-profile members, called "buzzmakers," highlight new and notable entries on the site.

Why it's different: "We put more emphasis on media content that you can share," said chief executive Anthony Batt. "You can connect with other people that way, instead of focusing on your personal profile." Users might post video from a rock show they attended, or pictures from a vacation, then find others in the Buzznet community who like the band, or stayed at the same bed and breakfast.

How many users: About 200,000 have registered; Buzznet estimates that it gets millions of unique visitors monthly.

Security: Buzznet hasn't had problems facing some of the profile-based sites, Batt said, because the community polices itself. "You're traversing media, not trolling profiles," Batt said. "It's more like looking at pictures in a magazine, where social networks are sort of like a dating site where no phone numbers are exchanged."

Friendsorenemies.com

What it is: A social network mainly for pop-punk music lovers. The site name started as a spoof of MySpace's motto: "A place for friends." Not everyone in your circle can be classified as a friend, site creators Shawn Hilgart and Nicholas Scimeca reasoned, so their site allows users to link to "friends," but also to maintain a list of "enemies."

Why it's different: Unlike MySpace, where individual member profiles are the draw, FriendsOrEnemies focuses on content generated by a few VIP members who keep journals on the site. In their day jobs, Hilgart and Scimeca design Web sites for the music industry. Because of their connections to indie music, they've enlisted celebrities like Fall Out Boy bassist Pete Wentz and Good Charlotte singer Joel Madden. "A lot of the musicians we have left MySpace because it lost its cool factor in about five minutes," Scimeca said.

How many users: About 40,000

Security: The site has an appropriate-use policy and so far has catered only to teens and 20-somethings. "If users are behaving weird, we could delete them from our site," Scimeca said. So far, it's small enough that users police each other. "We're like the parents [on the site]. If the kids need our help, they can ask us."

Tagworld.com

What it is: A social networking site that gives users one gigabyte of storage for photos, music, user profiles and other things. All content on the site can be indexed with user-generated keywords, called tags.

Why it's different: Its interface is very similar to MySpace, but TagWorld aims to become a one-stop shop for all the online services people use, including blogs, photo and video hosting, music selections and e-commerce . One of the biggest draws is that users have the freedom to create a personal Web site without learning HTML, said Paula Gould, TagWorld's PR director. "Our endeavor is to cultivate the way people live their lives online, and that goes way beyond where social networking is now."

How many users: Nearly 1.5 million

Security: The site is designed to limit older users' contact with teenagers. "When I log on, it knows my age," Gould said. "I'm over 21, so it won't let me search for people under 18."

· The FBI offers the following tips as to how to keep kids safe online:
· Ask teenagers what sites they're on.
· Keep Web-enabled computers in a common room.
· Explain to kids why it's important not to disclose personal information online.
· Check kids' profiles to see what they're posting online.
· Encourage kids to follow the safety guidelines provided on the sites.
· Immediately report inappropriate activity to the Web site operators and at www.missingkids.com/cybertip.
http://www.technewsworld.com/story/A...ast-Year.xhtml

A Weinstein Will Invest in Exclusivity
Maria Aspan

Most popular Internet communities, like Facebook.com or MySpace .com, measure their success by their ability to attract new members. A notable exception to this rule is aSmallWorld.net, an exclusive online community that is about to get bigger.

The Weinstein Company, the production business started by Bob and Harvey Weinstein after they left Miramax, has invested in aSmallWorld, the company will announce today. The Weinsteins, whose multimedia portfolio includes Miramax Books and a magazine publishing company, Niche Media, head a team of investors including Robert W. Pittman, former chief operating officer of AOL Time Warner. The company declined to put a dollar figure on its investment, describing it only as "significant." The Weinstein Company was attracted to aSmallWorld by the community's social networking and advertising opportunities, Harvey Weinstein said in an interview. This is the company's first investment in an online venture.

ASmallWorld, a private company founded in 2004, has approximately 130,000 members, or about half the number who join MySpace each day. On its log-in page, it describes its members as "like-minded individuals" who share the "same circle of friends, interests and schedule."

Invitations are difficult to come by: only some members have the right to invite friends to join. According to Erik Wachtmeister, the site's founder and the son of a former Swedish ambassador to the United States, a panel considers 12 to 15 variables before permitting certain users to issue invitations.

"You don't want to let just anyone invite," Mr. Wachtmeister said. Asked what those variables were, he replied that it's a "secret sauce."

Mr. Wachtmeister said he had the initial idea for the community in 1998, having lived in 10 cities. While traveling, "you see the same people over and over, gravitating toward each other," he said.

Once admitted, members have access to "trusted and select information," the site says, like nightclub or restaurant recommendations from other members. Those who abuse the system by trying to network with celebrity members can quickly find themselves out of the club.

"We keep track of people's behavior and we actually do kick people out," Mr. Wachtmeister said. Although he declined to identify celebrity members, media reports have named Quentin Tarantino, Ivanka Trump and Naomi Campbell.

The Weinstein Company's investment may affect the community's size, if not its purpose and membership. According to Mr. Weinstein, his company will be expanding aSmallWorld, while maintaining its membership restrictions and its appeal to a "smaller, more select" audience. "I think we'll become very successful with one million people," he said, "but we have to find the right one million."
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/22/te...weinstein.html

Interns? No Bloggers Need Apply
Anna Bahney

ON the first day of his internship last year, Andrew McDonald created a Web site for himself. It never occurred to him that his bosses might not like his naming it after the company and writing in it about what went on in their office.

For Mr. McDonald, the Web log he created, "I'm a Comedy Central Intern," was merely a way to keep his friends apprised of his activities and to practice his humor writing. For Comedy Central, it was a corporate no-no — especially after it was mentioned on Gawker.com, the gossip Web site, attracting thousands of new readers.

"Not even a newborn puppy on a pink cloud is as cute as a secret work blog!" chirped Gawker, giddily providing the link to its audience.

But Comedy Central disagreed, asking him to change the name (He did, to "I'm an Intern in New York") and to stop revealing how its brand of comedic sausage is stuffed.

"They said they figured something like this would happen eventually because blogs had become so popular," said Mr. McDonald, now 23, who kept his internship. "It caught them off guard. They didn't really like that."

This is the time of year when thousands of interns and new employees pour into the workplace from college campuses, many bringing with them an innocence and nonchalance about workplace rules and corporate culture.

Most experienced employees know: Thou Shalt Not Blab About the Company's Internal Business. But the line between what is public and what is private is increasingly fuzzy for young people comfortable with broadcasting nearly every aspect of their lives on the Web, posting pictures of their grandmother at graduation next to one of them eating whipped cream off a woman's belly. For them, shifting from a like-minded audience of peers to an intergenerational, hierarchical workplace can be jarring.

Companies are beginning to recognize the schism and, prodded by their legal and public relations departments, are starting to adopt policies that address it.

"It is important that corporations make a choice as to what type of blogging they will allow," said Alfred C. Frawley III, director of the intellectual property practice group at the law firm Preti Flaherty in Portland, Me.

While there are differences in laws among jurisdictions, from a legal perspective, he said, it is generally accepted that companies have the right to impose controls on their employees' use of computers and other equipment used for communication.

As for content — information generated within a company — the law also allows employers to set limits, even on airing the company laundry outside the office, he said. Private employees do not receive the protection of the First Amendment because there is no government action involved, he said.

"If an employee deviates from the policy, it may be grounds for termination," Mr. Frawley said.

Viacom, the parent company of Comedy Central, now has an explicit policy. In a section on confidentiality, it states that the employee is "discouraged from publicly discussing work-related matters, whether constituting confidential information or not, outside of appropriate work channels, including online in chat rooms or 'blogs.' "

The problem for the employers is that, in a few highly publicized cases, public airing of workplace shenanigans has proved to be lucrative — and young people entering the workplace know it.

"The Devil Wears Prada," Lauren Weisberger's veiled account of her time working as an assistant to Anna Wintour, the Vogue editor, ushered in the modern "underling-tell-all" genre, abetted by other revenge-of-the-employee tales like "The Nanny Diaries," by Emma McLaughlin and Nicola Kraus. Both became best sellers that will be showing up on movie screens, with "Devil" opening next month.

Busted bloggers like Jessica Cutler (a former Capitol Hill intern whose blog, Washingtonienne, is now a novel), Nadine Haobsh (a former beauty editor whose blog Jolie in NYC earned her a two-book deal) and Jeremy Blachman (a lawyer whose blog Anonymous Lawyer is being released as "Anonymous Lawyer: A Novel" this summer) were all interns, entry-level employees and worker bees who traded up on in-the-trade secrets.

The generation entering the work world has noticed.

"Everybody I've read about that got fired for having a blog is on to such great things," said Kelly Kreth, 36, who was fired from her job as the marketing and public relations director at a real estate firm in Manhattan last fall for blogging about her co-workers.

"I've had my online diary for six years, and it is very important to me," Ms. Kreth said, calling the firing the best thing that happened to her. "It led to me opening my own business and making triple what I was making before."

Corporations have been slower to get the message.

"The vast majority of organizations don't have policies in place," said Jennifer Schramm, a workplace trends and forecasting manager at the Society for Human Resource Management in Washington.

The group found last year that only 8 percent of the 404 human resource professionals it polled had blogging policies, while 85 percent did not. (The other 7 percent did not know.)

Ms. Schramm said that is just as bad for the employee as for the employer. "Right now it is tough for individuals to know what is happening because so few organizations have a clear policy about employee blogging," she said.

Of course, as long as there have been managers and underlings, there have been disgruntled workers gabbing around the water cooler or over drinks at happy hour. E-mail and instant messages are merely a quicker way to say, "You wouldn't believe what a jerk my boss is."

Blogging takes the grumbling to another level, but one that makes sense when considering how much of it is going on out there. According to the Pew Internet and American Life Project, about 11 million people have created blogs at one time or another.

A blog and a job don't necessarily have to clash, some bloggers say.

Alexx Shannon's celebrity blog, www.britboyla.com, came up during his interviews for his internship at Paramount Pictures in Los Angeles this spring because he lists it on his résumé.

Mr. Shannon, 21, who is British and is spending a year at the University of California, Los Angeles, before finishing his studies at Kings College, London, said he signed an employee confidentiality agreement with both Paramount and Beacon Pictures, where he is now an intern. Beacon made clear that his blog, while about celebrities, would not include information he picked up at work.

"I suppose they did take kind of a risk," said Mr. Shannon, who confessed he sometimes had to sit on some truly juicy bits of celebrity gossip that he encountered at work.

Neither Paramount nor Beacon returned calls for comment.

"I just knew that I didn't want to jeopardize anything for my career," Mr. Shannon said. "My real life is more important to me than my online life." But other young employees don't see it that way.

Ms. Schramm of the human resources group said young people do not see their job as their identity. Dennis Kennedy, a lawyer and legal technology consultant with his own firm in St. Louis, said that attitude makes them more willing to take chances.

"It's like, 'This is who I am,' " he said. " 'Consequences are what they are. I'll go work for someone who doesn't have a problem with it.' "

But that's not as easy in fields with only a handful of jobs, as Jessa Jeffries Werner, a marine zoologist, found out.

This month, Ms. Werner, 25, who blogged under the name Jessaisms about jobs she held at Adventure Aquarium in Camden and the Academy of Natural Sciences in Philadelphia, was fired by the academy. Officials there also asked her to remove posts and pictures related to them from her site and her myspace.com page, and she did.

The confrontation was traumatic, Ms. Werner recounted, not always with perfect spelling or grammar, on another Web site: "I was still sobbing kind of quietly but I didn't want them to think that I was ashamed of what I had written. My parents read my blog. My old college friends keep up with my life through my blog. I took my badge off and looked at the mean HR lady who was smiling smuggly at me. She told me perhaps next time I would be more wise in my lifestyle and decision making choices regaurding work."

In an interview, she said she regretted crossing the line: "I came to the realization that I probably shouldn't have been blogging about work."

But it is the success stories that can embolden a determined blogger. Ms. Kreth was able to create her own public relations business out of the fallout. Because of his blog, Mr. Shannon was asked to be on a television pilot. For Mr. McDonald, the Comedy Central intern, it was the call of literary agents.

Now back in Kenosha, Wis., where he is finishing up his degree in English at the University of Wisconsin, Parkside, Mr. McDonald is hard at work on a book — a novel about a guy from Wisconsin who gets a job in New York.
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/25/fa...tern.html?8dpc

The Rove Da Vinci Code
Frank Rich

IF we're to believe the reviews, "The Da Vinci Code" is the most exciting summer blockbuster since, well, "Poseidon." But the "Da Vinci Code" marketing strategy is a masterpiece: a perfect Hollywood metaphor for the American political culture of our day.

The Machiavellian mission for the hit-deprived Sony studio was to co-opt conservative religious critics who might depress turnout for a $125-million-plus thriller portraying the Roman Catholic Church as a fraud. To this end, as The New Yorker reported, Sony hired a bevy of P.R. consultants, including a faith-based flack whose Christian Rolodex previously helped sell such inspirational testaments to Hollywood spirituality as "Bruce Almighty" and "Christmas With the Kranks."

Among Sony's ingenious strategies was an elaborate Web site, The Da Vinci Dialogue, which gave many of the movie's prominent critics a platform to vent on the studio's dime. Thus was "The Da Vinci Code" repositioned as a "teaching moment" for Christian evangelists — a bit of hype "completely concocted by the Sony Pictures marketing machine," as Barbara Nicolosi, a former nun and current Hollywood screenwriter, explained to The Times. The more "students" who could be roped into this teaching moment, of course, the bigger the gross.

Ms. Nicolosi remains a vociferous opponent of the film. On her blog she chastises Sony's heavenly P.R. helpers for coaxing "legions of well-meaning Christians into subsidizing a movie that makes their own Savior out to be a sham." But you do have to admire the studio's chutzpah, if the word may be used in this context. It rivals Tom Sawyer's bamboozling of his friends into painting that fence. The Sony scheme also echoes much of the past decade's Washington playbook. Politicians, particularly but not exclusively in the Karl Rove camp, seem to believe that voters of "faith" are suckers who can be lured into the big tent and then abandoned once their votes and campaign cash have been pocketed by the party for secular profit.

Nowhere is this game more naked than in the Jack Abramoff scandal: the felonious Washington lobbyist engaged his pal Ralph Reed, the former leader of the Christian Coalition, to shepherd Christian conservative leaders like James Dobson, Gary Bauer and the Rev. Donald Wildmon and their flocks into ostensibly "anti-gambling" letter-writing campaigns. They were all duped: in reality these campaigns were engineered to support Mr. Abramoff's Indian casino clients by attacking competing casinos. While that scam may be the most venal exploitation of "faith" voters by Washington operatives, it's all too typical. This history repeats itself every political cycle: the conservative religious base turns out for its party and soon finds itself betrayed. The right's leaders are already threatening to stay home this election year because all they got for their support of Republicans in the previous election year was a lousy Bush-Cheney T-shirt. Actually, they also got two Supreme Court justices, but their wish list was far longer. Dr. Dobson, the child psychologist who invented Focus on the Family, set the tone with a tantrum on Fox, whining that Republicans were "ignoring those that put them in office" and warning of "some trouble down the road" if they didn't hop-to.

The doctor's diagnosis is not wrong. He has been punk'd — or Da Vinci'd — since 2004. Though President Bush endorsed the federal marriage amendment then, there's a reason he hasn't pushed it since. Not Gonna Happen, however many times it is dragged onto the Senate floor. The number of Americans who "strongly oppose" same-sex marriage keeps dropping — from 42 percent two years ago to 28 percent today, according to the Pew Research Center — and there will never be the votes to "write discrimination into the Constitution," as Mary Cheney puts it.

The real Republican establishment — including Laura Bush, who has repeatedly refused to disown the many gay families at this year's White House Easter Egg Roll — senses the drift of the culture. "Will & Grace" may have retired to reruns last week, but it's been supplanted by a gay "Sopranos" tough guy who out-brokebacks Jack and Ennis.

The religious right's hope for taming that culture is also doomed, however much Congress ceremoniously raises indecency fines in an election year. The major media companies, heavy donors to both parties, first get such bills watered down, then challenge the Federal Communications Commission's enforcement in court.

The mogul most ostentatiously supportive of Republican causes, Rupert Murdoch, may perennially fan the flames of a bogus "war on Christmas" on Fox, but he's waging his own, far more lethal war on the Christian right by starting a companion TV network this fall to match MySpace.com, his hugely popular and hugely libidinous Internet portal. Mr. Murdoch's new gift to America's youth, My Network TV, "will showcase greed, lust, sex," according to The Wall Street Journal. Conservatives fretting about his fund-raiser for Hillary Clinton don't even know what's about to hit them.

But for all these betrayals, Dr. Dobson and Company won't desert the Republicans come Election Day. If Mr. Rove steps up his usual gay-baiting late in the campaign, as is his wont, maybe the turnout of those on the hard-core right will eke out a victory for the party that double-crossed them not just on cultural issues but also on secular conservative principles (like fiscal responsibility and immigration-law enforcement). If so, they'll promptly be Da Vinci'd yet again. A Republican retreat on stem-cell research is already under way. If there's electoral fallout from the South Dakota Legislature's Draconian abortion ban — the Republican governor's job-approval rating fell from 72 percent to 58 percent in a single month after he signed it — the pro-life checklist in Congress will suffer as well.

Whatever happens in November, the good news is that the religious right leaders most stroked by Mr. Rove, many of them past 70, may no longer command such large blocs of voters anyway. As Amy Sullivan writes in the latest New Republic, Mr. Rove has reason to worry about "another group of evangelicals: the nearly 40 percent who identify themselves as politically moderate and who are just as likely to get energized about AIDS in Africa or melting ice caps as partial-birth abortion and lesbian couples in Massachusetts." The bad news is that no sooner does the religious-right base show signs of cracking in a youthquake than the Democrats trot out their own doomed Da Vinci strategy.

This idiocy began the morning after Election Day 2004, when a vaguely worded exit-poll question persuaded credulous party leaders that "moral values" determined their defeat (as opposed to, say, their standard-bearer's campaign). Their immediate response was to seek out faith-based consultants not unlike those recruited by Sony, and practice dropping the word "values" and biblical quotations into their public pronouncements. In the House, they organized, heaven help us, a Democratic Faith Working Group.

As the next election approaches, they're renewing this effort, to farcical effect. The Democrats' chairman, Howard Dean, who proved his faith-based bona fides in the 2004 primary season by citing Job as his favorite book in the New Testament, went on the Pat Robertson TV network this month and yanked his party's position on same-sex marriage to the right. (He apologized for his "misstatement" once off the air.)

Not to be left behind, Senator Clinton gave a speech last week knocking young people for thinking "work is a four-letter word" and for having TV's in their rooms, home Internet access and, worst of all, that ultimate instrument of the devil, iPods. "I hope that we start thinking some very old-fashioned thoughts," she said. (She also subsequently apologized, once her daughter complained, joining the general chorus of ridicule.) However "old-fashioned" Mrs. Clinton's thoughts, don't expect her to turn back Mr. Murdoch's campaign cash in protest against his steamy new TV channel.

The one New York politician even more disingenuous in this racket is Rudolph Giuliani. He outdid John McCain's appearance with Jerry Falwell by campaigning last week for Ralph Reed in the lieutenant governor's race in Georgia. Any religious conservative who mistakes "America's mayor," an adamant supporter of abortion rights and gay rights, for a fellow traveler is in desperate need of an intervention, if not an exorcism.

But that hypothetical, easily duped voter may no longer exist. Like the Bush era, the cynical Rove strategy of exploiting faith-based voters may be nearing its end. For proof, just take a look at the most craven figure in American politics: the Senate majority leader, Bill Frist. To flatter the far right, this Harvard-trained surgeon misdiagnosed Terri Schiavo's vegetative state from the Senate floor, and justified abstinence-only sex education in AIDS prevention by telling ABC's George Stephanopoulos that he didn't know for certain that tears and sweat couldn't transmit H.I.V. But increasingly it's not only liberals who see through him. One of his latest stunts, a proposed $100 gas-tax rebate, provoked Rush Limbaugh to condemn him for "treating us like we're a bunch of whores."

When senators as different as Mr. Frist and Mrs. Clinton both earn bipartisan ridicule for their pandering, you have to believe that there's a god other than Karl Rove watching over American politics after all.
http://select.nytimes.com/2006/05/21...on/21rich.html

'Da Vinci' Theater Projector Lenses Stolen
AP

A movie theater was forced to close on the opening night of ''The Da Vinci Code'' after 20 projector lenses were stolen, but the manager said he did not think the theft was related to protests of the film.

A sign on the door of the Carmike 10 Theaters Friday night told moviegoers that ''The Da Vinci Code'' would be shown at another Carmike-owned theater in the city. Showings of nine other movies were canceled.

Some Christian groups have decried ''The Da Vinci Code'' -- based on Dan Brown's best selling novel -- as sacrilegious, and Christian leaders in China, Singapore, India, South Korea, Thailand and elsewhere have tried to get the film censored or banned.

Protesters -- some holding signs that said ''Boycott Hollywood'' and ''Pray for Dan Brown'' -- said the theft was not connected to their demonstration.

Manager Richard Melby also said he did not think the protest and theft were related.

''It's their right to do what they're doing, and I don't have a problem with it,'' he said.

Investigators made no immediate connection between the theft and the movie.
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/arts...ode-Theft.html

'Da Vinci Code' Has 2nd-Biggest Opening, Hauls in $224M Worldwide
Gary Gentile

Moviegoers gave their blessing to the "The Da Vinci Code" over the weekend, spending an estimated $77 million to see the Tom Hanks religious thriller.

While the film didn't set a domestic box office record, it was the largest weekend opening of the year so far and became the second largest worldwide release after "Star Wars: Episode III." It garnered some $224 million worldwide, according to Sony Pictures.

The film also was the best domestic opening for both Hanks and director Ron Howard.

The movie's performance, combined with the family film "Over the Hedge" debuting in second place with $37.2 million, was a welcome contrast to the last two weekends that saw disappointing results from "Poseidon" and "Mission: Impossible III."

The total box office was down about 2.8 percent from the same weekend last year, according to studio estimates released Sunday. But that's a tough comparison given that last year's numbers included the record-setting debut of "Star Wars: Episode III."

"'Da Vinci' opening this big just tells you that people do want to go to the movies, they just need the right movie to go," said Paul Dergarabedian, president of box-office tracker Exhibitor Relations.

Sony Pictures took a risk in the marketing of "The Da Vinci Code," keeping the adaptation of the Dan Brown best-seller under wraps until a few days before its opening.

The film received mixed reviews and protesters picketed outside a number of theaters, upset over the story's suggestion that Jesus Christ was married and had a child. But the controversy did little to deter moviegoers, who packed theaters in almost every country the film debuted.

"You had a built-in audience from the book and the awareness levels were so high from this film," Dergarabedian said. "You would have to live under a rock not to know this movie was opening."

The movie also set opening-weekend records in Italy and Spain, Sony Pictures said.

"This is a fantastically great surprise for us this morning," said Jeff Blake, vice chairman of Sony Pictures.

It was good news for the studio, which had been struggling of late and had been counting on "The Da Vinci Code" to boost its fortunes.

"This is starting out to be a very good year," studio chief Amy Pascal said.

The animated film "Over the Hedge" had a strong showing with its $37.2 million as part of a counter-programming strategy from distributor Paramount Pictures. While the opening was slightly low for a computer-animated family movie, the studio believes the film will hold its own next weekend as children have the Memorial Day holiday off.

"We thought we could very easily coexist with `The Da Vinci Code' and I think the numbers bear that out," said Dan Harris, executive vice president at Paramount.

The Tom Cruise action film "Mission: Impossible III" crossed the $100 million mark in its third weekend with a total domestic box office take of $103 million.

Estimated ticket sales for Friday through Sunday at U.S. and Canadian theaters, according to Exhibitor Relations. Final figures will be released Monday.

1. "The Da Vinci Code," $77 million.

2. "Over the Hedge," $37.2 million

3. "Mission: Impossible III," $11 million.

4. "Poseidon," $9.2 million.

5. "RV," $5.1 million

6. "See No Evil," $4.4 million

7. "Just My Luck," $3.4 million.

8. "An American Haunting," $1.7 million.

9. "United 93," $1.4 million.

10. "Akeelah and the Bee," $1 million.

---

Universal Pictures and Focus Features are owned by NBC Universal, a joint venture of General Electric Co. and Vivendi Universal; DreamWorks is a unit of DreamWorks SKG Inc.; Sony Pictures, Sony Screen Gems and Sony Pictures Classics are units of Sony Corp.; Paramount and Paramount Classics are divisions of Viacom Inc.; Disney's parent is The Walt Disney Co.; Miramax is a division of The Walt Disney Co.; 20th Century Fox and Fox Searchlight Pictures are owned by News Corp.; Warner Bros., New Line and Warner Independent are units of Time Warner Inc.; Lionsgate is owned by Lionsgate Entertainment Corp.; IFC Films is owned by Rainbow Media Holdings, a subsidiary of Cablevision Systems Corp.
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories...MPLATE=DEFAULT

'An Inconvenient Truth': Al Gore's Fight Against Global Warming
Andrew C. Revkin

The frustrations of a man whose long-sought goal remains out of reach are vividly on display in the first few minutes of "An Inconvenient Truth," a new documentary about former Vice President Al Gore's quest to spur action against global warming.

And the scene has nothing to do with the Supreme Court vote that denied Mr. Gore a chance to win the 2000 presidential election.

He is tapping on his laptop, adding yet another tweak to the illustrated climate lecture he has given more than 1,000 times since 1989 in ever more sophisticated ways: first with flip charts, then slides, then a mix of digital imagery, animation and high-tech stagecraft, and now through this film itself, which was screened at Cannes and opens on Wednesday in New York and Los Angeles.

He laments being unable so far to awaken the public to what he calls a "planetary emergency" despite evidence that heat-trapping smokestack and tailpipe gases are warming the earth, and even after Hurricane Katrina and Europe's deadly 2003 heat wave, which he calls a foretaste of much worse to come.

"I've been trying to tell this story for a long time, and I feel as if I've failed to get the message across," Mr. Gore muses.

The question now is whether the documentary, with the potential to reach millions of people instead of a roomful of listeners at a time, can do the job.

For the moment, opinions on its prospects range from hopeful to scornful, not so much a reflection on the film's quality as the vast distance between combatants in the fight over what to do, or not do, about human-caused warming.

In a recent interview in Manhattan, Mr. Gore said he was convinced that Americans would move on the issue, not just because of his documentary (and companion book), but also because of the vivid nature of recent climate-related disasters.

"The political system, like the environment, is nonlinear," he said. "In 1941 it was impossible for us to build 1,000 airplanes. In 1942 it was easy. As this pattern becomes ever more clear, there will be a rising public demand for action."

"An Inconvenient Truth" came about after Laurie David, a prominent Hollywood environmentalist, saw Mr. Gore give a short version of his presentation two years ago at an event held just before the premiere of the climate disaster movie "The Day After Tomorrow."

Ms. David said she was stunned by the power of Mr. Gore's talk and helped organize presentations in New York and Los Angeles for people involved in the news media, environmental groups, business and entertainment. By the time she had done the Los Angeles event, "I realized we had to make a movie out of it," she said. "What's the guy going to do? There are not physically enough hours in the day to travel to every town and city to show this thing."

She helped recruit a team of filmmakers and investors and, after pressing Mr. Gore, persuaded him to be followed by a film crew.

In the film, directed by Davis Guggenheim, Mr. Gore comes across as a professorial guide who uses science, humor, his own life lessons, depictions of perilous climate-driven events and even cartoons to make his case.

Mr. Gore — who said he had veto power over all elements of the film but did not exercise it — tries just about every possible tactic to make his points.

One moment he is delivering his climate talk before an invited audience on a Los Angeles sound stage, rising in an electric lift to point to a soaring graph illustrating the buildup of heat-trapping gases. And in the next there are golden-hued restagings of wrenching moments in Mr. Gore's life. These include the loss of his sister Nancy to lung cancer, a subject explored as he discusses how industries, from tobacco to oil and coal, have run expensive media and lobbying campaigns to emphasize uncertainties in the science that points to risks of their products.

Mr. Gore tries to connect the dots between human-driven warming and recent shifts in mosquito-borne diseases, drought patterns, rates of extinction, storm strength and the pace of melting of polar ice sheets and sea ice on the Arctic Ocean.

In a lawyerly way, he often chooses his words to avoid making direct causal links that most scientists say are impossible to substantiate, but uses imagery and implication to convey that humans are fiddling with planet-scale forces.

Longtime critics of Mr. Gore and opponents of cuts in greenhouse gases who attended a Washington screening last Wednesday quickly assembled lists of complaints about his portrayal of the science, saying the dangers of warming are grossly overstated.

The libertarian Competitive Enterprise Institute, in a clear jab at both the film and recent news media coverage focused on worst-case climate risks, unveiled two television commercials last week that amounted to a defense of the main gas linked to warming, each with the tag line: "Carbon dioxide. They call it pollution. We call it life."

In interviews and e-mail exchanges, many climate specialists who have seen the film quibbled about details but tended to agree with Eric Steig, a University of Washington geochemist who posted his reactions at the Web log realclimate.org after a recent Seattle screening: "The small errors don't detract from Gore's main point, which is that we in the United States have the technological and institutional ability to have a significant impact on the future trajectory of climate change."

Initial media coverage, rather than focusing on the film's message, has examined it mainly through the lens of presidential politics.

Mr. Gore and his staff have repeatedly swept aside questions about 2008, insisting that Mr. Gore is not running for office, but is racing to save the planet.

But many Democrats are watching Mr. Gore closely in the belief that he could emerge as a strong opponent from the left to the woman viewed as the front-runner for her party's nomination, Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York. The film does not do much to dispel this thesis. While it is being billed as an environmental call to arms, it begins, ends, and is peppered throughout with politics.

The film opens with Mr. Gore greeting an audience with his most famous, and anguished, punch line: "I'm Al Gore, and I used to be the next president of the United States."

It includes a few shots at Republicans including a piece of news film from the 1992 presidential campaign showing the first President Bush saying that Mr. Gore was so environmentally extreme that "we'll be up to our necks in owls and out of work for every American."

The film concludes with Mr. Gore stating that the one element missing in the fight against global warming was political will.

In a line that some have interpreted as a hint of electoral ambitions, Mr. Gore adds, "In America, political will is a renewable resource."

Some scientists said they were worried that Mr. Gore's inherently political nature would further polarize the issue and distract from the underlying science. But some environmental specialists played down the political angle, saying that if someone were seeking a political boost, climate change was hardly the issue to address.

"There are lots of things he could do with his life, and this is what he's chosen," said Jonathan Lash, the president of the World Resources Institute, a private research group in Washington. "I admire him as a political leader who's chosen to use his platform to speak about this issue, and to do so in both scientific and moral terms."

Adam Nagourney contributed reporting from Washington for this article.
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/22/movies/22gore.html

BBC Freeview High Definition Service Hacked
Martin Pipe

The BBC’s Freeview HD trial may well be being carried out under strict Ofcom guidelines, which prevent the corporation from showing the test transmissions to anyone outside of its 550 strong test group, but that hasn’t stopped enthusiasts from hacking the feed.

It’s not that difficult. I have received the broadcast well outside of its London catchment area, using a PC installed with a Hauppauge Nova-t DVB-T tuner card and the TSreader software. With this rig I was able to capture the BBC’s HD transport stream to the PC’s hard drive. To play back the material I used a ‘trialware’ Elecard player, which has an H.264 video decoder ‘plug-in’. Unfortunately, the results weren’t that great. Both vision and sound stuttered, even on a PC running a dual-core 3.2GHz Pentium 4 Extreme Edition processor. But what I did see was an eye opener.
http://avzombie.com/blog/2006/05/16/...ervice-hacked/

Sticky

Free Hotel Porn
Hammerman

Here’s a tip for those of you that stay in Marriot hotels. Marriot has, to my knowledge, installed a pay-per-view (PPV) system nationwide called “On Command”. This system is probably similar to many such systems used in hotels today. As far as I can tell, there is a radio frequency module attached to the TV that signals some master hotel unit to order movies and add charges to your hotel bill.

I spent several months in a Marriot and found a way to tap into free porn movies without paying a penny. It all started in the exercise room. Early one morning, I noticed that my favorite cable news channel had not been programmed into the wall mounted TV. No one was around, so I just accessed the menu function and scrolled up the “raw” channels so that I could add my channel. As I hit channels 40, 41, and 42, I found porn. No scrambling and no requests for billing authorization. Nervously, I just skipped past and added my channel. When back in my room, I found that those three channels were unavailable and the menu function was not available on the room TV.

This got me thinking. The exercise room TV was just a regular TV with no PPV box on the back, unlike my room TV. So, did this mean that I could hook up a regular TV in my room and see these channels? I pulled the dresser away from the wall to get a good look at the back of the TV. All of the cable connections had plastic protectors that made it impossible to disconnect. It looked like a single cable came out of the wall and then connected into the On Command PPV module. Out of this box it went into the back of the TV. I dove into my computer bag, pulled out a screw driver, and removed the wall plate from the hotel wall. Behind this place was a common cable splitter—with no plastic protectors. Bingo!

I now had a way to splice into the cable system before it got to my TV. At that point, all I had to do was hook a regular TV up and see if I could get those channels. Now, the maid would certainly sound the alarm if she found a second TV hooked up. Not an option. Instead, I ran down to the local electronics superstore and bought a device that would let me watch TV on my computer (Pinnacle PCTV Deluxe). Radio Shack provided a short cable, a 1-to-2 splitter, and some connectors. I figured, if it didn’t work, I could just return it all.

Then, I waited until until late at night to try my hack. If I accidently brought the hotel’s cable system down, I wanted to do it in the middle of the night when few viewers were watching and I could plead ignorance. I just added my Radio Shack splitter between their splitter and my TV’s cable. That created one new empty cable jack for my computer’s use. I then connected my new cable and hooked it up to my new Pinnacle box. I opened the software and presto, ABC was playing on my computer. The picture was great. I checked the TV and it was also functioning fine. Both my TV and computer got great pictures and I could watch different channels. Both my TV and Pinnacle box had remotes, so I could lie on the bed and watch two channels at one time.

But, what would I find at channels 40 thru 42? Well, non-stop porn actually. This is what I think is going on. When navigating the PPV menus on the TV, there are two options for the adult channels. First, you can order specific movies for about $10 each. Second, you can pay them $40 or $50 and have 24 hours of porn on your TV. I think what happens is, when you select the all-day option, they just open up channels 40 – 42 and let you see these movies that run in a long loop. Since you are not selecting individual titles, there is no need for their radio controlled system to start/stop any one movie.

Now, I was really paranoid that I was somehow racking up PPV charges. So, the next morning (after hiding my cables behind the dresser), I paid up my bill to date. Had there been a $50 charge for PPV, I’d have paid it and never tried that again. But, there was no charge. So, for the rest of my stay, I had free access to three channels of non-stop porn. My Pinnacle box even allowed me to capture video and use my computer like a VCR.

Now, I don’t know if every hotel system works like this, but if you’re at a Marriot hotel (Courtyard, Rennaisance, Fairfield, etc.) and they have the On Command system, it can be defeated. Good luck.
http://www.totse.com/en/media/cable_...orn169280.html

New Media Player: Nice Features, but It's No ITunes
Rob Pegoraro

Microsoft has spent the last few years getting smacked around by Apple in the digital-music market, and it must be getting tired of this treatment. So it's doing something drastic: It's throwing its own MSN Music store under the bus and launching a new music program that spotlights another company's service.

Microsoft's new Windows Media Player 11, released in test form last week, looks and works little like older versions of the company's music and video organizer -- starting with its front-and-center placement for Urge, a new music store from MTV.

Microsoft and MTV say this integration of software and store offers an ease and simplicity to match iTunes. But if a week's trial of the service is any clue, Urge will have a hard time competing with such also-rans as Rhapsody, Yahoo and Napster, let alone Apple.

Urge's biggest departure from earlier Microsoft-based music stores is also its biggest problem: its integration into Windows Media Player 11. Not only does this new, Windows XP-only software promote Urge to the exclusion of other retailers, you can't shop at this store-- or even just play your Urge downloads -- in any earlier version of Windows Media Player.

But Windows Media Player 11 ( http://www.microsoft.com/windowsmedia ) isn't any old beta release; it's essentially a system upgrade, one that can be removed only with XP's System Restore tool. Nobody should install this kind of preview software lightly.

The immediate reward for taking that risk is a cleaner, simpler interface. Instead of the dense, screen-filling track lists of earlier releases, Windows Media Player 11 displays songs on your computer as a collection of thumbnail views of album covers (it fetches these images automatically from online databases). It cleverly represents how many songs you have in a given category -- from one artist, in one genre, released in a particular year and so on-- by stacking these thumbnails on top of each other.

Aside from the way this redesign still places the play/pause/stop buttons at the bottom of the screen, as far as possible from every other control, this interface is a smart, creative way to organize a digital music library.

It's too bad that Windows Media Player didn't locate cover-art images reliably -- most of my library was illustrated with generic blank-CD icons. For every obscure indie artist's cover art that the program found, it missed two or three releases from big-name acts. And this feature doesn't work at all if your music files (like many Internet downloads) haven't been tagged with the right artist and album data; Windows Media Player 11 is supposed to fill in such missing information automatically but often did not.

Fortunately, this new software provides a search box at the top-right corner that, as in iTunes, finds songs as you type a query instead of waiting for you to hit the Enter key. Windows Media Player 11 also catches up to iTunes by simplifying the process of collecting a set of songs to transfer to a player or burn to a CD -- and it passes Apple's software by letting you copy music from a player to your library.

Lastly, this update makes it easier to change many settings -- instead of diving into a program-options window, you can select commands from the menus that drop down from the tabs at the top of the window.

The right-most tab links to the new MTV Urge music service. Urge sells music under the same basic terms as other stores: Songs (99 cents each) and albums (usually $9.99) can be played on five computers at any one time, and you can burn seven audio CDs from any one playlist of these downloads.

Urge also lets you rent songs: $9.95 a month (or $99 a year) lets you download all the tracks you want to a computer, while $14.95 ($149 a year) lets you transfer those downloads to most newer Windows Media-compatible players. These rented songs can't be burned to CD and go silent if you stop paying the fees.

By comparison, Napster and Rhapsody offer the same price plans but also let people play entire songs for free -- an unlimited number at Napster, though you can't cue up multiple songs, and 25 a month at Rhapsody. Yahoo's subscription services cost about a third less than Urge, and both it and Rhapsody give subscribers a discount on song purchases.

Urge's inventory of about 2 million songs appears no better than anybody else's, but with a few strange omissions (for example, D.C. punk rockers Fugazi) that may only reflect its relative youth. Its search function shows matching songs as you type a query, often with awkward stutters as it scans through that sizable catalogue. It also has the irritating, unhelpful habit of padding out search results with songs and albums that aren't for sale.

Downloads don't come with any of the extras, such as lyrics, printable booklets and bonus videos, that are bundled with many new albums on iTunes -- you can't even print a CD cover or a track listing.

The biggest omission at Urge, however, is MTV's own identity. Except for a set of custom playlists and "Informer" blogs covering particular genres, little here says "I'm MTV." Urge's Web radio stations are all computer-driven -- and the one I sampled played many of the same songs on consecutive days. This store doesn't even sell music videos (although some can be streamed for free) or any of MTV's own shows.

Like every other Windows Media-based store, Urge suffers from the Not iPod problem -- its downloads don't work on Apple's elegant music players. Instead, you can choose from a wide assortment of other devices that all seem to fall short of the iPod's high standards. Consider the new iRiver Clix: This handsome rectangle of glossy white plastic stuffs its shuffle-playback option two menus deep and shuts off its screen after a minute instead of just dimming it.

But Urge's downloads also can't be played on Windows Mobile handheld organizers and smartphones. If you try to open one, you're sent to a Web page inviting you to install the desktop versions of Windows Media Player 11 and Urge, an impossibility on a mobile device. The final annoyance comes when you copy purchased songs to another computer. Urge will treat them as rented downloads, incapable of being burned to CD, until you sit through a "Restore My Library" procedure that downloads new copies of the music.

Not only has MTV failed to match iTunes, it has repeated some of the worst mistakes of earlier iTunes challengers.

Apple needs -- and customers deserve -- vigorous competition. But that's not going to happen if the best Apple's rivals can manage is a combination of beta software of dubious reliability and a tie-in to a music TV channel that devotes most of its airtime to things besides music.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...052000118.html

I Do Have a Life; I'm Watching It Now
Warren ST. John

FOR Angela Jackson, a homemaker in Pittsburg, Calif., and an admitted TV obsessive, this is a sacred time of year. It's sweeps season, and after months of devoted viewing, Ms. Jackson is in a finale frenzy, getting the answers to questions that have nagged her all season and hanging on to every last dramatic plot twist.

She learned last Sunday who won "Survivor: Panama-Exile Island" (Aras Baskauskas), and on Monday that Michael and Lincoln got away on "Prison Break." On Wednesday she learned that Danielle Evans is "America's Next Top Model." And don't even get her started on "American Idol," which will crown a winner on Wednesday.

Asked if she might venture out of the house for, say, food or water with friends this week, Ms. Jackson said, "No way."

"I don't miss TV in May," she said. "All the shows are good, and they have all the special guest appearances. I cook early and I make sure everything is done by the time my show's up."

As American television has moved from episodic sitcoms to serialized shows that end, not unlike baseball or the N.F.L. seasons, in a playoffs-style showdown, the miniseason known as sweeps has become an all-consuming national event. There are season finales (till next time, "24") and series finales (farewell, "Will & Grace"), two-part finales and finale postgame recaps.

Many shows, like "Lost" and "24," have thriving online communities, which fans check the morning after, to see what fellow viewers make of it all. The obsession with "American Idol," which has nearly as many voters as a major presidential candidate, has reached kooky "Truman Show" levels. (Got your back, Taylor. Bring it home bro.)

But there's a dark side to the sweeps orgy, one people don't talk much about: Beyond all those finales and tearful farewells lies a gaping existential void, a deep abiding loneliness that no rerun can alleviate.

"It's really, really sad," Ms. Jackson said. "You know, the shows take up a big part of what I do in the evening." She said she tried to cope by reading, renting movies, watching her daughter's cheerleading practice. But it's not the same.

"I really miss my shows," she said.

Susan Squire, a Manhattan writer who is obsessed with "Grey's Anatomy" and "The OC," said she could already feel a post-sweeps hangover coming on, and a sense of doom weighing down on her.

"I'm feeling major depression," she said. "I wait all week. It's such a great moment — but it's going to go away." She likened her sweeps viewing habits to a cocaine binge, and said last week that she had been asking herself a question most addicts asked at one time or another: "Was it worth it — really worth it?"

For Katie Cray, who works in marketing in Manhattan — that is, when she's not watching "Lost," "House" or "24" — the sweeps are about not medicating. She said she lays off her much-needed allergy medicine so she won't get drowsy during her shows. At the end of sweeps, she said, "It's like I lost a bunch of friends."

TiVo was supposed to change all that. Empowered by the ability to record whole series with ease, and then to skip the commercials and the boring parts, hard-core viewers were promised that technology would free them from the shackles of appointment viewing. Viewers would be in control. What on earth happened?

For one thing, the TiVo foul: the act of discussing the outcome of a previously broadcast show without first checking with those present to find out if they saw it live, or if the show still awaits them, unwatched, on their home DVR's.

Elisabeth Diana, 26, of San Francisco said she would have been content to record her shows and watch them at her leisure, "so long as my friends keep their big mouths shut." Sadly, she said, it didn't always work out that way.

Another problem is that simply logging on to one's e-mail or checking a news site can mean running into a spoiler headline, since sites like Yahoo! News cover television happenings with at least as much zeal as real world happenings: "Mischa Barton's 'OC' Character Killed," blared Yahoo! News on a Friday morning, just hours after the broadcast. Sorry TiVo suckers!

Then there are those souls for whom television serves as a kind of glue for their social lives. Blair Beakley, 25, a buyer for a gift store in Manhattan, said TiVo-ing "Desperate Housewives" would be the equivalent of putting her relationship with her mother on hold.

"My mom and I call each other when we're watching 'Desperate Housewives,' " she said. "We live eight states away, so it enables us to communicate. Our relationship is going to suffer after this season is over."

Cathy Garrard, a journalist who lives in Brooklyn and who described herself as "totally, totally, totally" devoted to "Project Runway," said she and a group of friends have an e-mail powwow the morning after each episode of "Lost," so TiVo-ing is out.

"I would never not watch it live," Ms. Garrard said by way of explaining what happened to most of her Wednesday nights this year. "I look forward to it each week. If you went to a grocery store and bought the ingredients for a great meal, why would you wait to make it?"

Some well-adjusted types say they look forward to being unburdened by the end of the TV season. Jessica Lam, 27, a health care worker in Atlanta who considers herself a moderate fan of "American Idol," said she was happy at the prospect of getting her life back. "It's relieving," she said. "I feel somewhat couch potato-like for having to tune in that much."

Ms. Lam said she was pretty certain that Taylor Hicks, the Alabama rocker, would win this week, and that she would be watching.

So will Sara Coffman of Overland Park, Kan., who said she had recruited her husband Scott and even their 2-year-old into an "American Idol" fixation. "Our 2-year-old is a big music fan," she said. "He dances and plays his 'Sesame Street' guitar. He was a big fan of Carrie Underwood last year — he just stared at her. He likes big hair."

"We actually have a life," Mrs. Coffman added, after a moment's reflection. So what does her family plan to do for life after the sweeps?

"We'll probably go back to golfing," she said.
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/21/fa...elevision.html

'Web Ready For Next Big Leap'

Amsterdam - The world wide web is on the cusp of making its next big leap to become an open environment for collaboration, and its inventor said he has not been so optimistic in years.

Still, Tim Berners-Lee, the Briton who invented and then gave away the world wide web, warns that internet crime and anti-competitive behaviour must be fought tooth and nail.

A lot of new technology is becoming available after many years to make the web smarter and easier to use, he said.

"My personal view is that a lot of it is coming together now. That is very gratifying to see... I'm very optimistic at this moment," Berners-Lee said in a telephone interview ahead of the annual world wide web conference, which opens in Edinburgh on Monday.

"The whole industrial environment is more exciting. We had the bubble and the burst, but now you see a low of young companies again. There's renewed enthusiasm among VCs (venture capitalists) to invest in start-ups. I get a feeling of upsurge in activity."

Roughly twice as much money is being invested in European internet start-ups than the figure two years ago, according to venture capitalist community Tornado-Insider.

"Four years ago, the patent problems were getting in the way. A lot of us were worried, because it looked like the whole thing could get bogged down," Berners-Lee said, referring to attempts by private companies to patent software needed on web sites and charge royalties for usage.

Thanks to the help of many, royalty-free licences are now available, said the man who never saw a cent of royalties for his invention, which set off an industry now generating hundreds of billions of euros (dollars) in revenues a year.

Realising a vision

Berners-Lee, while at the European Particle Physics Laboratory CERN in Geneva, designed key parts of the web to let scientists work together when in different parts of the world.

Currently the director of the world wide web Consortium (W3C), which is a US-headquartered forum of companies and organisations to improve the web, he is only now realising his early vision of a two-way web where people can easily work together on the same page and the content on a page can be recognised by computers.

Some early examples of websites that combine data from different sources include Google Maps, whose geographic maps turn up on other sites combined with services, and photo-sharing site Flickr, where members comment on each other's postings and developers can use the pictures to create new applications.

"Several years ago we said: 'What a shame that we can't go to that website and find all that stuff in there.' We had a loose roadmap five years ago. Steadily we've been making progress," said Berners-Lee, adding that most of the work had been done.

"Of course there are people who say: 'Why didn't Tim do that from the start?' But it's more complicated," he said.

Elements are already filtering through, such as Web sites that do not have to be refreshed entirely when only parts are being updated.

A new query language, SPARQL (pronounced "Sparkle"), is designed to make web pages easier for machines to read, allowing all sorts of different data to be put to work on the web.

"SPARQL will make a huge difference," Berners-Lee said.

"You can see so many ways the web is taking off in so many different directions," he said.
http://www.news24.com/News24/Technol...936066,00.html

HONG KONG: BitTorrent Plans Legal Chinese Film Service

Hong Kong and mainland companies in talks to distribute Chinese-language films through legal fire-sharing program
Vivienne Chow

Cannes --- Using BitTorrent software to download Chinese-language films could be legal by year's end -- the owner of the world's most popular file-sharing program plans to offer them for legitimate downloading.

Speaking yesterday at the Cannes Film Festival, BitTorrent's co-founder and president, Ashwin Navin, revealed that over the past couple of months, the company had been negotiating with various film companies in Hong Kong and on the mainland about the possibility of launching a service.

BitTorrent uses a technique called "file swarming" to distribute large files. Rather than download a single large file from one central computer, BitTorrent assembles files from separate bits of data downloaded from other computer users across the internet.

"We are very interested in Cantonese and Mandarin films and TV shows for distribution in the Chinese-speaking market and also for expats living in non-Chinese- speaking territories," Mr Navin said. "In some cases when there's a small Chinese population the best way to reach them is through the internet. [Otherwise] there's no way of distribution."

Mr Navin said he had spoken to several Hong Kong film companies but would not specify which ones.

"They've been very receptive. Everyone knows what BitTorrent is. If there's a way for them to protect their films and distribute their films legally, making the money they are not making now, I think there's mutual interest for BitTorrent and the Hong Kong film industry.

"We hope the service [of providing Chinese-language content] can be up this year."

This might be realised after a ground-breaking deal last week signed between Warner Bros Home Entertainment Group and BitTorrent to distribute entertainment content using the file-sharing software legally. The service is intended to be launched in the US this summer. Warner Bros intends to use BitTorrent's ability to quickly download large files to rent and sell its films on the same day the movies are released on DVD.

Pricing has not been set but individual TV shows could cost as little as US$1 and movies would be sold for about the price of a DVD.

BitTorrent earlier reached an agreement with the Motion Picture Association of America to prevent film piracy and promote innovation in online digital distribution of content. Studios believe reasonably priced, legal alternatives will be preferable to downloading files that could contain viruses or poor quality copies of films.

The Hong Kong movie industry recently obtained a court order to retrieve from internet service providers the identities of 49 users who had illegally uploaded or downloaded local movies with BitTorrent software. The industry plans to take them to court for piracy.

Despite only a fraction of downloaders paying to use legitimate music downloading services, Mr Navin is optimistic about the future of paid movie downloading.

"It won't happen immediately. But we are going to work together. If we don't get it right from day one, soon after we'll have the right service. People will want to use it because it's still the most convenient way to get movies online."

Mr Navin denied that other studios were being cautious about collaborating with BitTorrent and wanted to wait and see the result of the Warner Bros deal.

"We have negotiated with other studios and record labels as well. A number of them want to be innovative and want to try new models of distribution."

He predicted that popularising online distribution of film content could help foster the creation of independent films, which usually find it difficult to get screened at theatres.

"There is quite a bit of content created for PC consumption. But as soon as it becomes a viable, decent-sized market, major studios will create content exclusively for internet. That's the next phase."
http://www.asiamedia.ucla.edu/articl...parentid=46357

Vast Data Cache About Veterans Is Stolen
David Stout and Tom Zeller Jr.

Personal electronic information on up to 26.5 million military veterans, including their Social Security numbers and birth dates, was stolen from the residence of a Department of Veterans Affairs employee who had taken the data home without authorization, the agency said Monday.

The department said that there was no evidence any of the information had been used illegally and that whoever stole it, in a burglary of the employee's home this month, might be unaware of its nature or how to use it. The stolen data do not include any health records or financial information, the agency said.

But it was immediately clear from the sheer numbers involved, as well as the tone of the announcement and the steps taken in the aftermath of the theft, that the breach was deeply embarrassing to the agency.

"As a result of this incident, information identifiable with you was potentially exposed to others," Jim Nicholson, the secretary of veterans affairs, wrote in a letter being sent to the veterans who might be affected.

As measured by the number of people potentially affected, the data loss is exceeded only by a breach last June at CardSystems Solutions, a payment processor, in which the accounts of 40 million credit card holders were compromised in a hacking incident.

But in that breach, any exposure could be addressed by simply canceling those accounts. In the latest incident, three crucial keys to unlocking a person's financial life — name, Social Security number and date of birth — may have been set loose. Those cannot be canceled, and a clever thief can use them to begin trying to open new accounts, secure loans, buy property and otherwise wreak havoc on the victim's credit history.

At a news conference on Monday afternoon, Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales said there was "no reason to believe at this time that the identities of these veterans have been compromised." Mr. Gonzales, who spoke after the first working meeting of an identity theft task force established by President Bush on May 10, added that he had directed prosecutors "to exercise zero tolerance" if cases of identity theft were traced to loss of the data.

The breach follows more than a year of intense debate over the security of private consumer data. That controversy stemmed from the disclosure in February 2005 that thieves had duped the world's largest commercial data broker, ChoicePoint, into providing them information on more than 150,000 consumers.

Since then, consumer groups estimate, records of various types involving some 55 million consumers — credit card and bank account data, Social Security numbers, dates of birth and other information — have been lost, stolen or otherwise made vulnerable. The figure does not include the breach made public on Monday.

In the aftermath of the ChoicePoint debacle, several states have passed tough legislation aimed principally at forcing companies, schools and other handlers of private data to notify consumers when their information has been compromised. Other new laws permit consumers to freeze their credit as a way of foiling would-be thieves, or force new security standards on data handlers.

Several pieces of legislation are also pending in Congress, but so far the interests of the financial services and credit industries, which seek to limit inhibitions on data handling and the penalties for security breaches, have competed with those of consumer advocates. As a result, no consensus has emerged.

In the Veterans Affairs case, Matt Burns, a spokesman for the department, said the data involved veterans who were discharged from 1975 onward, as well as some who were discharged earlier and then filed a claim with the agency.

The case is under investigation by the department's inspector general and the F.B.I. Mr. Burns, noting that the inquiry was continuing, would not say when the theft was discovered.

But a Congressional aide briefed on the matter, granted anonymity because he was not authorized to speak publicly about it, said the information was on disks. Secretary Nicholson, speaking at the same news conference as Attorney General Gonzales, said the worker had taken the data home to work on a department project. Mr. Nicholson described the worker, who has not been identified, as a longtime employee of the agency. He lives in suburban Maryland, a law enforcement official said.

There could be no immediate definitive answer to the most important question: whether those with the stolen data would use the information. But Beth Givens, the director of the Privacy Rights Clearinghouse, a consumer advocacy group based in San Diego, said there was good reason to be concerned.

"There is no telling what kind of path the data is going to take," Ms. Givens said. The combination of names, Social Security numbers and dates of birth "means that 26.5 million people could — could — become victims of identity theft," she said.

The Department of Veterans Affairs acknowledged as much in advising veterans to be "extra vigilant" and to monitor their bank statements, credit card records and the like. Veterans can go to firstgov.gov and www.va.gov/opa for information, or call a toll-free number: 1 (800) 333-4636.

Criticism of the agency began almost as soon as the data breach was disclosed Monday.

"Someone needs to be fired, the perpetrators need to be caught, and the security system at the V.A. needs to be massively overhauled," said Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts, the 2004 Democratic presidential nominee.

Another Democrat, Senator Charles E. Schumer of New York, said, "If the government is going to tell private companies that they have to secure Americans' personal and financial data, then it has to set a much better example itself."

Mr. Schumer introduced a far-reaching computer security bill in 2005, but it failed to gain enough support.

David Stout reported from Washington for this article, and Tom Zeller Jr. from New York.
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/23/wa...rtner=homepage

In the Quest for Coolness, Science Could Really Use a Vito Corleone
Dennis Overbye

Somewhere out there, more elusive than a snow leopard, more vaunted in its imagined cultural oomph than an Oprah book blurb, is the Science Movie.

You know, the film that finally does for science and scientists what "The Godfather" did for crime and what "The West Wing" did for politics, accurately reproducing the grandeur and grit of science while ushering its practitioners into the ranks of coolness.

I went to the Tribeca Film Festival recently in search of that movie. I didn't find it, but I didn't expect to. Like some foggy quantum possibility still lurking beyond the limits of measurement, that movie doesn't exist — yet. The best you can hope for is a glimpse, like fragments of a not-yet-dreamed dream, of a genre slouching toward birth.

Scientists often say nice things about science-oriented plays, like "Copenhagen," "Arcadia," "QED" and "Proof" — to name a few that have been on Broadway in the last few years. But you get mostly silence when you ask about movies, except for imprecations about directors who get the curtains right while the science and the characters are loony. For my money, "Apollo 13" did a great job of showing the heroics of the everyday smartness of rocket scientists, but then again, that was a true story.

I was going to ignore Tribeca this year. But my wife, Nancy, noticed in an article in this newspaper that a Spanish movie at the festival, "The Mist in the Palm Trees," was being heralded by its makers as "the first quantum movie." How could I resist a movie whose sections are named for quarks?

Directed by Lola Salvador and Carlos Molinero, "Mist" is a presented as fictional documentary about a Spanish photographer and physicist, one Santiago Bergson. In it, the dead Bergson muses on his atomized life and lack of memory as old photographs and grainy home film clips shuffle past, over and over again, arcing from his childhood in Asturia, in northern Spain, to the cataclysmic climax of the Manhattan Project. In one much-repeated grainy clip, a man in a suit leaps headfirst over a row of chairs on the lawn and lands in a somersault.

Bergson, whose voice is done by a woman, complains at one point that he has no memories; they have been replaced by images, "dead photons."

Instead of becoming familiar the way they would in a conventional narrative, however, the people in these images become more mysterious, and their relationships become more confusing as the movie goes on.

When I asked Ms. Salvador and her colleagues what made this a "quantum film," I was braced to hear some new-age mumbo jumbo about art, consciousness and randomness, perhaps the destructive impact of modernism.

Instead, they began to lecture me about the famous and deeply subversive quantum physics exercise known as the double slit experiment, a staple of college labs and pop-sci books. In it, an electron or some other elementary particle is shot at a screen that has a pair of slits. In seeming contravention of common sense, the particle appears to pass through both slits at once and then interferes with itself, splatting into a pattern that looks like overlapping waves on the far wall.

It turned out that one of the screenwriters, Ricardo Enríquez, is a former particle physicist. Over coffee, he and his colleagues explained how he had prevailed on Ms. Salvador to forgo a classical narrative for one that enfolds quantum principles.

Films usually follow a narrative that unfolds in a straight line in accordance with cause and effect, he said, adding, "That's not true in quantum mechanics, and that's not true either in 'The Mist in the Palm Trees.' "

And so in the movie's conceit, Bergson, like the electron traversing two slits at once, does not have one life, he has many lives, which interfere with one another, like the conflicting versions of a fight on a childhood Thanksgiving told by quarreling cousins.

The result is confusion, a braided arc of love, memory and loss, whose details keep slipping through your fingers. That is to say, it really is a quantum film. But it's not about quantum mechanics, and there is no exam.

"It's not a scientific commentary," Mr. Molinero said. "It's just art."

Since being mystified is my normal state, I enjoyed "Mist." But it may not be for everyone.

At the other end of the scale at Tribeca was "Kettle of Fish," a screwball romantic comedy involving a frog biologist and a jazz saxophonist. That movie, directed and written by Claudia Myers and filmed in my very own Upper West Side neighborhood, was replete with polysyllabic jokes about pair bonding and the courting habits of frogs.

You could argue that every romantic comedy is about biology. Despite a sneaky plot that, among other things, has the biologist making the first pass, however, "Kettle" hews a little too closely to the stereotype of the scientist as socially inexperienced, if not inept. The most fetching relationship is between the saxophonist's fish, Daphne, and a frog named Casanova.

"Kettle" was one of several films and screenplays making its debut under the imprimatur of the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, as part of its program for the public understanding of science.

Every spring some of the foundation's flowers bloom at Tribeca in the form of staged readings of screenplays under development, and it is in these readings and the discussions that follow that one can perhaps most clearly discern the shape of the cultural beast still fighting to be born.

Two of these screenplays have now been signed to production deals. Just before Tribeca opened, the foundation announced that Peter Bogdanovich, best known for "The Last Picture Show," would direct "The Broken Code." Written by David Baxter, "Code" is based on the book by Ann Sayre about the genetics pioneer Rosalind Franklin, whose work led to the discovery of the double helix structure of DNA.

Last week at Cannes it was announced that David Strathairn, of "Good Night, and Good Luck," would star in a production of "Challenger," about the physicist Richard Feynman and his adventures investigating the explosion of the space shuttle Challenger in 1986.

Doron Weber, who heads the Sloan program, noted that Nicole Perlman, the author of "Challenger," first received a Sloan grant years ago as a film major at New York University, adding, "I believe we're spotting talent (and exposing it to science) at a very early stage, and that this group of Sloan winners will be running Hollywood and indie films in the coming decades."

"Challenger" and "Project Mustard," a comedy about a British entry into the 1960's race to land men on the moon, were the subjects of a staged reading one morning by professional actors, including Judd Hirsch in the role of Feynman, during the festival.

A brunch and a panel discussion afterward devolved into a referendum on the direction of the nation's space program over the last 20 years and reminded me that the romance of space was an enduring and perhaps easier hook for people who might not be ready to embrace quantum mysteries.

That longing is at heart of "The Starry Messenger," a portrait of an astronomy teacher at the Hayden Planetarium in New York, by the writer Kenneth Lonergan.

Excerpts from the play, which has a date with Broadway next year and then Hollywood, were read by a group including Matthew Broderick at an invitation-only event one night during the festival. The title comes from Galileo's 1610 book "Sidereus Nuncius," in which he first reported his telescopic observations.

Mr. Lonergan, who was born in New York City, grew up going to the old Hayden Planetarium, which was closed in 1997 to make way for the new Rose Center. The play is set in the period leading up to its demolition.In a panel discussion after the reading, Mr. Lonergan made no bones about his dismay over the loss of the old planetarium building and his distaste for its successor. He joked that the movie version of his play would have to be shot at the Griffith Observatory in Los Angeles.

This clearly irked Neil deGrasse Tyson, the planetarium's director, who was on hand and said that he too had grown up with the old planetarium. Its night sky was his first night sky, he said, but by the time it was torn down, Dr. Tyson argued, the old planetarium wasn't appealing to young kids anymore.

He and Mr. Lonergan were able to agree, however, on the glories of the old Zeiss 6 projector they had both grown up with, which started every planetarium show with the skyline around Central Park.

Mr. Lonergan said that once upon a time he could not look at the sky without getting lost in the wonder and terror of it all, but that the day to day drudgery of life and teaching could dull those feelings. He reported sadly that he could look at the sky without that fear and trembling now. "Something has been lost," he said.

Something like this seems to have happened to the teacher in his play, who aspired to a career in research but, as a teacher, is only one of the low-level communicators of science, not unlike your faithful correspondent.

He has lost his faith, but I'm not giving up on him. I am a starry messenger too, and I am hoping for Mr. Lonergan's play to ennoble us all. It might be asking too much to make us cool.
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/23/science/23essa.html

State Department Yields on PC's From China
Steve Lohr

Long story short, an influential member of Congress played the China card, and the State Department folded.

It was a drama that reached a conclusion late last week, when the State Department, responding to fears that its security might be breached by a secretly placed device or hidden software, agreed to keep personal computers made by Lenovo of China off its networks that handle classified government messages and documents.

The damage to Lenovo is more to its reputation than to its pocketbook. The State Department will use the 16,000 desktop computers it purchased from Lenovo, just not on the computer networks that carry sensitive government intelligence.

Yet the episode does point to how much relations between the United States and China have become a tangled web of political, trade and security issues. Mutual economic dependence and mutual distrust, it seems, go hand in hand.

To the Lenovo side, the outcome was a matter of anti-China politics overriding economic logic.

Last year, the Chinese company completed the purchase of the personal computer business of I.B.M., after the Bush administration concluded a national security review. Given the nod, Lenovo figured it was free to do business in America just like any other personal computer company.

But the State Department decision suggests that it is not that simple. "Unfortunately, we're in a situation where certain people in Congress and elsewhere want to make a political issue of this," said Jeffrey Carlisle, vice president of government relations for Lenovo. "They are trying to create as uncomfortable an atmosphere as possible for us in doing business with the federal government."

Mr. Carlisle characterizes the worry that the Chinese government might secretly slip spying hardware or software on Lenovo computers shipped to the State Department as "a fantasy." The desktop machines, he said, will be made in Monterrey, Mexico, and Raleigh, N.C., at plants purchased from I.B.M.

"It's the same places, using the same processes as I.B.M. had," Mr. Carlisle said. "Nothing's changed."

Representative Frank R. Wolf, a Virginia Republican, said the change of ownership changes a lot. In a letter to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice earlier this month, he wrote that because of the Chinese government's "coordinated espionage program" intended to steal American secrets, the Lenovo computers "should not be used in the classified network."

Mr. Wolf is the chairman of the House subcommittee that oversees the budget appropriations for the State Department, Commerce Department and Justice Department.

In an interview yesterday, Mr. Wolf said the security concerns about the State Department's use of Lenovo computers had been brought to his attention by two members of the United States-China Economic and Security Review Commission, a bipartisan group appointed by Congress. "They deserve the credit for this," Mr. Wolf said.

Larry M. Wortzel, a member of the review commission and former military attaché to the American embassy in Beijing, said he and another commission member, Michael R. Wessel, began looking into the sale in March. What most concerned them, he said, was that 900 of the Lenovo computers were intended for use on the State Department's classified networks.

Lenovo is partly owned by the Chinese government, which holds 27 percent. "This is a company owned and beholden to agencies of the People's Republic of China," Mr. Wortzel said. "Our assumption is that if the Chinese intelligence agencies could take action, they would take action."

After meetings with American government and securities agencies, including classified briefings, Mr. Wortzel and Mr. Wessel concluded that it would be possible for the Chinese government to put clandestine hardware or software on personal computers that might be able to tap into American intelligence.

"This is not off the wall as to whether there are potential security concerns here," Mr. Wessel said.

Both Mr. Wortzel and Mr. Wessel insisted that theirs is not an anti-China stance or even anti-Lenovo.

"I'm sure they are good computers," Mr. Wortzel said. "I would use them in my home. But I would not use one on a classified network at the State Department."

The State Department said last Thursday that it would not use the Lenovo computers on its classified networks. In a letter to Mr. Wolf, Richard J. Griffin, assistant secretary of state for diplomatic security, said that the department had "consulted with U.S. government security experts and is recommending that the computers purchased last fall be utilized on unclassified systems only."

The letter added that the State Department was "initiating changes in its procurement processes in light of the changing ownership" of computer equipment suppliers. A spokesman said that "to allay any possible fears and any possible concerns, this is where we came out."

Certainly, there are fears aplenty these days in any matter related to China. Mr. Carlisle of Lenovo insists any security fears about its computers are unfounded.

The company's computers and the software loaded on it are routinely tested inside the company and, on the State Department sale, by third-party American contractors, like CDW.

"If anything were detected, it would be a death warrant for the company," Mr. Carlisle said. "No one would ever buy another Lenovo PC. It would make no sense to do it."

Lenovo, industry analysts say, may well have the stronger argument, but it may still suffer.

"Basically, this is much ado about nothing," said Roger Kay, president of Endpoint Technologies Associates. "Unfortunately, perceptions count. And the damage has already been done."
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/23/wa.../23lenovo.html

The Dead Formats Society
Momus

The Ise Shrine in Japan is the Shinto religion's most sacred site. Much too important to preserve, like some rotting monument, in its original materials, the shrine is instead torn down every 20 years, replaced by a new, identical shrine built alongside it -- not a replica, but a re-creation, say the Shinto priests who model the process on nature. It contains three legendary items dating back 2000 years; a mirror, a string of jewels and a sword.

I wonder if we aren't doing something similar with our own sacred memories. The formats we use to remember things keep changing. Yet we're sustained by a touching faith that, no matter how temporary their containers, somehow our mirror, jewels and sword will keep showing up.

The other day I tried to watch a Flash media piece my friend Florian Perret and I made back in 2002 for the L.A. Museum of Contemporary Art's Digital Gallery. It wouldn't play because, according to MoCA's error page, "Suffusia: A Beautiful Life requires the current Flash Player." Flash 8 wasn't good enough for the MoCA website; it wanted Flash 6 or nothing.

Eventually I was able to reach the file by another route. But it made me think about just how quickly formats die these days. I remembered how, back in 2000, blown away by Mumbleboy's Flash work, I speculated that, had this program been around when I was 20, I'd have dedicated my life to making Flash files instead of pop records. After all, we tend to fall in love with media, programs, idioms or formats even before we have anything to say in them.

Seeing the 4-year-old Flash piece appearing to slip out of reach, I thought about how precocious and precarious that first rush of enthusiasm for Flash had been. Sure, Flash 8 can play Flash 6 files, it's backward compatible, even if the MoCA website isn't forward-compatible. But nobody at this point knows whether the Flash medium itself is just a flash-in-the-pan. Who's going to think of something like that as a vocation? Who's going to try to be "the Tolstoy of Flash" when we don't know whether Flash will even be around in 10 years, let alone a hundred?

Ten years ago I taught myself to use Macromedia Director (it was release 4.0 at the time) and made a CD-ROM called This Must Stop! I put as much effort into it as I put into my records, but just 10 years later This Must Stop! has, indeed, stopped. Or, to be precise, it runs so fast on today's computers that it's a meaningless blur. My CD-ROM is accessible only to cranks and connoisseurs, members of the "dead formats society" who've invested in the dead tech required to play it.

Suddenly, my whole life replays before my eyes as a succession of transient formats. My teens were spent in the age of Betamax video, games consoles with no carts, Pong burnt in ROM, audio delivered on vinyl, cassette tape and 8-track. In my 20s those formats were replaced by exciting new ones: VHS, laser disks, CDs, snap-in console carts, games on floppy disk that you slotted into your "multimedia personal computer," pale faxes. And each time the new thing came along, the old thing became a sideshow, a curiosity ... and, eventually, inaccessible, along with all the memories encoded on it.

Of course, if it mattered at all, content was soon re-made to fit the new format. Sometimes this transience was sold to us as permanence. Most of us spent the "postmodern" 1980s re-buying every album we'd ever bought on CD, because CD had "perfect sound forever." This wasn't just great for the music industry, it fitted the fashions of the '80s. Boomers doing well were happy to spend their money on a little silver memorial to their 1960s youth. Rock magazines went into retro mode, celebrating elderly rock stars or the young bands that sounded like them.

The cycles of obsolescence got tighter, faster. My 30s mapped to the '90s, a decade in which I went through two formats of video tape (Video 8 and DV), three formats of audio mastering (half-inch magnetic tape, DAT and CD), and three consumer music formats (CD, MiniDisc, mp3). Each time a new technology came along with its new format, there were decisions to be made (personal as well as corporate decisions) about what content would make the jump to the new format and what content would gather dust in junk stores, a curio for crank collectors clinging obstinately to dead tech.

In 1995, Jacques Derrida, the high priest of postmodernism, published a book called Archive Fever, which joined up the dots between Freud and e-mail, advancing the idea that "archiving represents both attempting to preserve something to be remembered and leaving out something to be forgotten." This fever to archive, said Derrida, was as much a desire to sublimate and suppress the past as to preserve it.

George Orwell may have been wrong about 1984 being an age of socialist totalitarianism, but his image of Winston Smith going through the archives of The Times selectively re-writing them was spot on. The '80s really felt like that; the '90s even more so. Which of my Video 8 tapes would I transfer to DVD, and which would I consign to the furnace Orwell called, with grim irony, the "Memory Hole"?

Wasn't there something unsettling about having to make this decision every couple of years, about discovering that each new "permanent" and "infallible" medium just seemed to die quicker than the temporary, fallible one it replaced? What did those faxes say, and what files were on these old CD-ROMs, before they faded and failed?

In his 2001 book Double Fold: Libraries and the Assault on Paper, Nicholson Baker says that since the 1950s American libraries have followed a policy of "destroying to preserve," replacing newspapers and brittle books with microfilmed copies. As a result, he says, few complete editions of America's great newspapers exist. The microfilm these archives were transferred to is illegible, colorless and prone to decay.

"Destroying to preserve," of course, sounds a lot like what goes on at the Ise Shrine. Some of our treasures are too important to be made to change form and format over and over. Others are too important not to.
http://www.wired.com/news/columns/0,...?tw=wn_index_2

Google Users Promised Artificial Intelligence
Richard Wray

A search engine that knows exactly what you are looking for, that can understand the question you are asking even better than you do, and find exactly the right information for you, instantly - that was the future predicted by Google yesterday.

Speaking at a conference for Google's European partners, entitled Zeitgeist '06, on the outskirts of London last night Google chief executive Eric Schmidt and co-founder Larry Page gave an insight into perhaps the most ambitious project the Californian business is undertaking - artificial intelligence (AI).

"The ultimate search engine would understand everything in the world. It would understand everything that you asked it and give you back the exact right thing instantly," Mr Page told an audience of the digerati representing firms from Warner Music and AOL to BSkyB and the BBC. "You could ask 'what should I ask Larry?' and it would tell you."

Speaking after what was tabled an end of day 'fireside chat', Mr Page said one thing that he had learned since Google launched eight years ago was that technology can change faster than expected, and that AI could be a reality within a few years.

Certainly in that short period of time, Google has gone from a start-up in Mountain View to one of the most recognised brands in the world. As evidence of its meteoric rise, the Hertfordshire hotel in which the conference took place was also home to the England football team. The post-conference press roundtable was briefly interrupted by assistant manager Steve McLaren who had evidently got the wrong room.

Google's executives were also forced to defend their tactics. While suggesting the business could one day capture a 20% share of the $800bn (£424bn) global advertising market, Mr Schmidt explained that the apparently scatter-gun approach to research that lets engineers spend a fifth of their time working on pet projects, also allows the company to innovate faster than any rival.

While this has created some products (such as shopping service Froogle) that have not been a great success, it also led to the Gmail email service which despite still being only in test form is rapidly catching up with market leaders such as Hotmail.

But Mr Schmidt admitted that the company is spending more energy than perhaps it has in the past on integrating some of these seemingly random ventures back into its core revenue-generating search tool, something that could be seen as a sea change within the business, though Google executives maintain it is not going through a major consolidation phase.

But the lack of a visible pipeline of development from Google - which never gives a clear indication of what it is working on until it is released - infuriates some of its stockholders, who would rather it concentrated on a few lucrative services.

"We are very clear and I want to be clear and on the record," said Mr Schmidt. "We run the company for the benefit of our end-users globally."

Looking at the current court case in Houston where Kenneth Lay and Jeffrey Skilling, former executives of collapsed energy giant Enron, await the outcome of their trial for fraud, he added: "Speaking as an American company chief executive, when the management team starts focusing on the stock price rather than focusing on its business and customers you get a really bad outcome. We are focused on doing the right thing for the long-term"

Mr Schmidt also attacked suggestions from some major US cable companies that providers of capacity-hungry internet services - such as video and TV - should be charged to run their services over the web. This presents a challenge to what is generally seen as the internet's neutrality, that everyone should be able to get on to it.

"We believe this violates one of the founding principles that built the internet today and it could stifle the next wave of innovation," he said.

In fact Google is currently working on its own video tool. While adamant that the company is not looking to get into the provision of content itself, it is looking to produce a video tool that will allow broadband TV viewers to find the shows they want from the hundreds that are available across the world. It is looking for media partners interested in using such a tool.

Mr Schmidt also had a few consoling words for the traditional media business which sees its profitability being utterly eroded by online rivals. He said usage of traditional media placed online is rising rapidly, but circulations - the revenue generator - are declining. "You don't have a lack of audience problem, you have a business model problem," he said.
http://technology.guardian.co.uk/new...781121,00.html

Congress Bars Military Funeral Protesters
Jim Abrams

Demonstrators would be barred from disrupting military funerals at national cemeteries under legislation approved by Congress and sent to the White House Wednesday

The measure, passed by voice vote in the House hours after the Senate passed an amended version, specifically targets a Kansas church group that has staged protests at military funerals around the country, claiming that the deaths were a sign of God's anger at U.S. tolerance of homosexuals.

The act "will protect the sanctity of all 122 of our national cemeteries as shrines to their gallant dead," Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, R-Tenn., said prior to the Senate vote.

"It's a sad but necessary measure to protect what should be recognized by all reasonable people as a solemn, private and deeply sacred occasion," he said.

Under the Senate bill, approved without objection by the House with no recorded vote, the "Respect for America's Fallen Heroes Act" would bar protests within 300 feet of the entrance of a cemetery and within 150 feet of a road into the cemetery from 60 minutes before to 60 minutes after a funeral. Those violating the act would face up to a $100,000 fine and up to a year in prison.

The sponsor of the House bill, Rep. Mike Rogers, R-Mich., said he took up the issue after attending a military funeral in his home state, where mourners were greeted by "chants and taunting and some of the most vile things I have ever heard."

"Families deserve the time to bury their American heroes with dignity and in peace," Rogers said Wednesday before the Hosue vote.

The demonstrators are led by the Rev. Fred Phelps of Topeka, Kan., who has previously organized protests against those who died of AIDS and gay murder victim
In an interview when the House bill passed, Phelps said Congress was "blatantly violating the First Amendment" rights to free speech in passing the bill. He said that if the bill becomes law he will continue to demonstrate but would abide by the restrictions.

Sen. Pat Roberts, a Republican from Kansas, said the loved ones of those who die have already sacrificed for the nation and "we must allow them the right to mourn without being thrust into a political circus."

In response to the demonstrations, the Patriot Guard Riders, a motorcyle group including many veterans, has begun appearing at military funerals to pay respects to the fallen service member and protect the family from disruptions.

More than a dozen states are considering similar laws to restrict protests at nonfederal cemeteries. The American Civil Liberties Union has filed a lawsuit against a new Kentucky law, saying it goes too far in limiting freedom of speech and expression.
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories...MPLATE=DEFAULT

Kids Turn "Teen Repellent" Sound Into Teacher-Proof Ringtone
Cory Doctorow

Kids in the UK have co-opted an annoying noise sold to retailers as teenager-repellent and turned it into a ringtone.

Mosquito is a high-pitched sound "audible only to teenagers" sold by Britain's Compound Security. It is sold to shopkeepers to use as a teenager repellent -- the idea is to play it loudly in and around shops and "chase away those annoying teenagers!!!"

The kids have reportedly converted the high-pitched noise and turned it into a ringtone, which, being inaudible to grownups, can then be used to receive texts and calls in class without alerting teachers.

This is either a magnificent hoax or just plain magnificent -- either way, I love this Little Brother Watches Back parable.
Schoolchildren have recorded the sound, which they named Teen Buzz, and spread it from phone to phone via text messages and Bluetooth technology.

Now they can receive calls and texts during lessons without teachers having the faintest idea what is going on.

A secondary school teacher in Cardiff said: 'All the kids were laughing about something, but I didn't know what. They know phones must be turned off during school. They could all hear somebody's phone ringing but I couldn't hear a thing.
Link (Thanks, Seth and WIll!)

Update: JS sez, "Considering that such high tones are virtually unattainable for the cell-phone loudspeakers I find the story highly suspect. Besides, the sound used as a ringtone would be compressed in some way (maybe not in the newer models, but would all kids have them?), further reducing the possibility that such high frequency content is preserved. I did little research and found this link where cell-phone audio capabilities are presented in detail. According to them the cell-phone's piezoelectric speaker caps its frequency response about at 10khz, while the Teen Buzz plays at 18khz to 20khz."

I had similar doubts -- which suggests that these kids have done something even more subversive than creating an adult-proof ringtone: they've convinced adults that there's an inaudible sound that they can all hear.
http://www.boingboing.net/2006/05/24...een_repel.html

Honda Says Brain Waves Control Robot
Yuri Kageyama

In a step toward linking a person's thoughts to machines, Japanese automaker Honda said it has developed a technology that uses brain signals to control a robot's very simple moves.

In the future, the technology that Honda Motor Co. developed with ATR Computational Neuroscience Laboratories could be used to replace keyboards or cell phones, researchers said Wednesday. It also could have applications in helping people with spinal cord injuries, they said.

In a video demonstration in Tokyo, brain signals detected by a magnetic resonance imaging scanner were relayed to a robotic hand. A person in the MRI machine made a fist, spread his fingers and then made a V-sign. Several seconds later, a robotic hand mimicked the movements.

Further research would be needed to decode more complex movements.

The machine for reading the brain patterns also would have to become smaller and lighter - like a cap that people can wear as they move about, said ATR researcher Yukiyasu Kamitani.

What Honda calls a "brain-machine interface" is an improvement over past approaches, such as those that required surgery to connect wires. Other methods still had to train people in ways to send brain signals or weren't very accurate in reading the signals, Kamitani said.

Honda officials said the latest research was important not only for developing intelligence for the company's walking bubble-headed robot, Asimo, but also for future auto technology.

"There is a lot of potential for application to autos such as safety measures," said Tomohiko Kawanabe, president of Honda Research Institute Japan Co.

Asimo, about 50 inches tall, can talk, walk and dance. It's available only for rental but is important for Honda's image and has appeared at events and TV ads.

At least another five years are probably needed before Asimo starts moving according to its owner's mental orders, according to Honda.

Right now, Asimo's metallic hand can't even make a V-sign.
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories...MPLATE=DEFAULT

It's Dixie Chicks vs. Country Fans, but Who's Dissing Whom?
Kelefa Sanneh

At the Academy of Country Music awards on Tuesday night, the host, Reba McEntire, made an unfunny joke. "If the Dixie Chicks can sing with their foot in their mouths, surely I can host this sucker," she said. The setup was pretty awkward. And when you stopped to think about it, the punch line really wasn't one. But none of that mattered. The line earned one of the night's most enthusiastic ovations.

It has been more than three years since Natalie Maines, the Dixie Chicks' lead singer, told a London audience, "Just so you know, we're ashamed the president of the United States is from Texas." The comment, delivered less than two weeks before the invasion of Iraq, sparked a feud with Toby Keith and, it seemed, the entire country-music establishment.

Mr. Keith has since moved on, but country fans clearly haven't. As the Dixie Chicks promote their new album, "Taking the Long Way" (Open Wide/Columbia), they are clearly country-music pariahs. Country radio is snubbing the album. And you know you've got an image problem when even Ms. McEntire is piling on.

It's not hard to sympathize with Ms. Maines and her two band mates, Martie Maguire and Emily Robison. They say they have had to contend with violent threats, and former fans call them bimbos and worse. (For female stars being outspoken carries particular risks.) Against this backdrop the three are presenting themselves as free-speech heroes, pilloried for expressing their political beliefs.

But this isn't really a fight about President Bush or freedom of speech. This is a fight about the identity of country music. There's a contract that binds country singers to their fans, and the Dixie Chicks have broken it.

The Dixie Chicks were once considered too country for country radio. They didn't take off until Ms. Maguire and Ms. Robison, who are sisters, replaced their twangy old singer with Ms. Maines, who has always seemed like a pop star. Two brilliant albums — "Wide Open Spaces," from 1998, and "Fly," from 1999 — made them the era's top-selling country act. When their brash (and sometimes mischievous) songs crossed over to pop radio, many country fans felt proud to see a group of their own doing so well.

Country fans are loyal, but they're not low-maintenance. By the time Ms. Maines made her statement in 2003, many were already questioning the trio's commitment: would they leave their old supporters behind?

For mistrustful listeners in search of an answer, Ms. Maines's comments provided one. Forget about President Bush: she had used the words "ashamed" and "Texas" in the same sentence, and she had done it on foreign soil. She meant to insult the president, but some former fans thought they heard her insulting Texans, and therefore Southerners, and therefore nonmetropolitan listeners everywhere.

This interpretation may seem specious. And yet Ms. Maines and her band mates seem to be going out of their way to prove their detractors right. Instead of fighting for their old fans, the Dixie Chicks seem to be dismissing them.

On "60 Minutes" Ms. Maguire told Steve Kroft that their concerts weren't typical country concerts. "When I looked out in the audience, I didn't see rednecks," she said. (Did her lip curl slightly as she pronounced the r-word?) "I saw a more progressive crowd."

And in a Time magazine cover story she said the group would rather have "a smaller following of really cool people who get it," as opposed to "people that have us in their five-disc changer with Reba McEntire and Toby Keith." (It would seem Ms. McEntire got her revenge.) Perhaps there's a difference between this attitude and simple snobbery, but you can't blame country fans if they don't much feel like splitting hairs.

The contract between country stars and their fans involves more than a little make-believe. Globe-trotting millionaires often pander to suburban middle-class listeners by evoking a mythical rural life. You can hear a hint of anti-Maines sentiment in "Boondocks," the recent hit by the Chicks-influenced group Little Big Town: "I feel no shame/I'm proud of where I came from/I was born and raised in the boondocks."

The Nashville establishment is not politically monolithic. The most depressing thing about this whole episode is the way the Dixie Chicks have conflated politics and culture, Bush supporters and "rednecks." The unintended implication is that only sophisticated city folk oppose the war in Iraq, and only "rednecks" support the president.

Faith Hill and Tim McGraw, country music's most popular couple, made headlines — without, it seems, losing fans — when they criticized the government's handling of Hurricane Katrina at a news conference in March. Mr. McGraw blamed "the leader of the free world" for not holding people accountable for rebuilding the region.

And even as Ms. Maines cites the famously pro-Kerry rock star Bruce Springsteen as a role model, the country channel CMT has been broadcasting an hourlong special on the making of Mr. Springsteen's most recent album, which happens to be full of protest songs. These days Mr. Springsteen might be more visible on CMT than the Dixie Chicks are.

The first single from "Taking the Long Way" is "Not Ready to Make Nice," a defiant song that hasn't, of course, found a home on country radio or CMT. (The follow-up is a gentler — but still defiant — love song, "Everybody Knows.") And while the Dixie Chicks would love to position themselves as underdogs, the truth is that they have probably never been more beloved by the mainstream media. It's hard to complain about your musical career when you're plastered on the front of Time.

The Dixie Chicks are still a joy to hear, and they'll have plenty of fans no matter what. The Nashville game is hard work; it brings out the best in some singers and frustrates others. If the Dixie Chicks don't want to play that game, that's certainly their prerogative. But they might at least acknowledge that they've been playing it for years, and reaping its rewards. And they shouldn't be too surprised if some fans jeer — angry, but also disappointed — as they walk off the court.
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/25/ar...ic/25sann.html

Listening to Rock and Hearing Sounds of Conservatism
Ben Sisario

It is a primal moment in rock. In the Who's "Won't Get Fooled Again," Roger Daltrey sings about gladly fighting in the street for a "new revolution," and with a virtual mushroom cloud of guitar behind him, lets out a fearless cry. But what is the political message?

Classic conservatism, says National Review, the venerable conservative magazine, which in its latest issue offers a list of the "top 50 conservative rock songs of all time." Its No. 1 choice is "Won't Get Fooled Again," which ends with the cynical acceptance that nothing really changes in revolution: "Meet the new boss/Same as the old boss."

"It is in my view a counterrevolutionary song," John J. Miller, the author of the article, said in a phone interview yesterday. "It's the notion that revolutions are often failures, like the French Revolution leading to Napoleon. The song is skeptical about revolutionary idealism in the end, and that's a very conservative idea."

Among the other conservative ideas that Mr. Miller found in the songs — most of them hits, many of them classics — are opposition to taxation ("Taxman" by the Beatles, at No. 2) and a preference for abstinence before marriage ("Wouldn't It Be Nice" by the Beach Boys, at No. 5).

Mr. Miller, 36, a political reporter for the magazine, said the list was meant to take issue with the idea that rock's politics are essentially liberal, and to offer an alternative view.

"Any claim that rock is fundamentally revolutionary is just kind of silly," he said. "It's so mainstream that it puts them" — liberals — "in the position of saying that at no time has there ever been a rock song that expressed a sentiment that conservatives can appreciate. And that's just silly. In fact here are 50 of them."

Asked to comment on the list, Dave Marsh, the longtime rock critic and avowed lefty, saw it as a desperate effort by the right to co-opt popular culture. "What happened was, my side won the culture war, in the sense that rock and related music is the dominant musical form, not only in the U.S. but around the world," he said. "Once you lose that battle, you lose the war, and then a different kind of battle begins: the battle over meaning."

The list comes at a time when liberal protest songs are gaining popularity. Public approval of the Bush administration and the Iraq war is at a low, and the patriotic sentiments expressed in some rock and country songs in the aftermath of 9/11 seem to have vanished.

Mr. Miller's criteria were broad: the songs had to be good and express classically conservative ideas "such as skepticism of government or support for traditional values." Mr. Miller posted an item on the magazine's Web site, www.nationalreview.com, late last year and received hundreds of responses, he said.

The choices, accompanied by quotations from the lyrics and pithy remarks by Mr. Miller, can be surprisingly persuasive. (The entire list, with explanations, is at nytimes.com/arts.) Lynyrd Skynyrd's "Sweet Home Alabama" (No. 4) is "a tribute to the region that liberals love to loathe," and "Der Kommissar" by After the Fire (No. 24) is praised for criticizing Communist East Germany. A few seem a stretch, like Sammy Hagar's "I Can't Drive 55" (No. 38), called "a rocker's objection to the nanny state."

Mr. Miller said that in choosing the songs, "I made an effort for a fair amount of diversity" in the ages of the artists represented. But the list is also overwhelmingly white and male. Among the few black or female artists are Living Colour ("Cult of Personality," No. 18) and Chrissie Hynde of the Pretenders ("My City Was Gone," No. 13), Dolores O'Riordan of the Cranberries ("The Icicle Melts," No. 41) and Tammy Wynette ("Stand by Your Man," N0. 50).

Sean Wilentz, the Princeton history professor, who has also written liner notes for Bob Dylan, said it was no surprise that such ideas can be traced through rock. "Of course there's 'conservatism' in rock 'n' roll," he wrote in an e-mail message. "There's everything in rock 'n' roll, just as there's everything in America."
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/25/ar...ic/25rock.html

Until next week,

- js.

Current Week In Review

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[size=1]Jack Spratts' Week In Review[i] is published every Friday. Please submit letters, articles, and press releases in plain text English to jackspratts (at) lycos (dot) com. Include contact info.

25-05-06, 11:07 AM	#1
JackSpratts Join Date: May 2001 Location: New England Posts: 10,016	Peer-To-Peer News - The Week In Review - May 27th, ’06 "They will have entire digital jukeboxes of covertly acquired telephone conversations, and suddenly someone in Eastern Europe is going to be very wealthy." – Philip R. Zimmermann "German officials said they had technology for intercepting and decrypting Skype phone calls." – John Markoff May 27th, ’06 Search whomever and whenever you want – as long as it’s not ever us F.B.I. Raid Divides G.O.P. Lawmakers and White House Carl Hulse After years of quietly acceding to the Bush administration's assertions of executive power, the Republican-led Congress hit a limit this weekend. Resentment boiled among senior Republicans for a second day on Tuesday after a team of warrant-bearing agents from the Federal Bureau of Investigation turned up at a closed House office building on Saturday evening, demanded entry to the office of a lawmaker and spent the night going through his files. The episode prompted cries of constitutional foul from Republicans — even though the lawmaker in question, Representative William J. Jefferson of Louisiana, is a Democrat whose involvement in a bribery case has made him an obvious partisan political target. Speaker J. Dennis Hastert raised the issue personally with President Bush on Tuesday. The Senate Rules Committee is examining the episode. Representative John A. Boehner of Ohio, the House majority leader, predicted that the separation-of-powers conflict would go to the Supreme Court. "I have to believe at the end of the day it is going to end up across the street," Mr. Boehner told reporters gathered in his conference room, which looks out on the Capitol plaza and the court building. A court challenge would place all three branches of government in the fray over whether the obscure "speech and debate" clause of the Constitution, which offers some legal immunity for lawmakers in the conduct of their official duties, could be interpreted to prohibit a search by the executive branch on Congressional property. Lawmakers and outside analysts said that while the execution of a warrant on a Congressional office might be surprising — this appears to be the first time it has happened — it fit the Bush administration's pattern of asserting broad executive authority, sometimes at the expense of the legislative and judicial branches. Pursuing a course advocated by Vice President Dick Cheney, the administration has sought to establish primacy on domestic and foreign policy, not infrequently keeping much of Congress out of the loop unless forced to consult. "It is consistent with a unilateral approach to the use of authority in Washington, D.C.," Philip J. Cooper, a professor at Portland State University who has studied the administration's approach to executive power, said of the search. "This administration," Dr. Cooper said, "has very systematically and from the beginning acted in a way to interpret its executive powers as broadly as possible and to interpret the power of Congress as narrowly as possible as compared to the executive." Some Republicans agreed privately that the search was in line with what they saw as the philosophy of the Justice Department in the Bush administration. They said the department had often pushed the limits on legal interpretations involving issues like the treatment of terrorism detainees and surveillance. Republicans may have a potential self-interest beyond defending the institutional prerogatives of the legislative branch. With some of the party's own lawmakers and aides under scrutiny in corruption inquiries tied to the lobbyist Jack Abramoff and the former lawmaker Randy Cunningham, Republicans would no doubt like to head off the possibility of embarrassing searches of their members' offices. But lawmakers of both parties said they had no interest in protecting criminal activities or Mr. Jefferson. Their fear, they said, is that the search set a dangerous precedent that could be used by future administrations to intimidate or harass a supposedly coequal branch of the government. "No member is above the law, but the institution has a right to protect itself against the executive department going into our offices," said Representative Steny H. Hoyer of Maryland, the No. 2 Democrat in the House. "We all have in our offices information, letters, correspondence, speeches, etc., that we have written, some of which we may have given to the public, put on the public record, some may not be, which is confidential information, just as the White House has confidential information." Mr. Hoyer and other Congressional leaders said they were uncertain of what their legal or procedural response might be, though several said a "protocol" for carrying out such a search should be worked out between the Justice Department and Congress. Such an arrangement could cover things like prior consultation with leaders or other notice, how the search would be conducted, who would be present and other details. "I think it is necessary for us to assert our own prerogatives," said Representative Eric Cantor of Virginia, the deputy Republican whip. There is no sign that Congressional Republicans' discontent over this particular matter may spread into a more general challenge to the administration's expansive view of executive authority. But the friction has underscored the growing willingness of Republicans on Capitol Hill to distance themselves from the administration at a time when Mr. Bush's poll numbers are touching new lows, prompting the White House to try to repair relations with Congress. At the Justice Department, Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales sought to smooth ruffled Congressional feathers. Mr. Gonzales said that private discussions were taking place to resolve the dispute and that he and his agency "have a great deal of respect for the Congress as a co-equal branch of government." He and other officials suggested that the search had been made necessary by a lack of response to an earlier subpoena. "We shouldn't lose sight of the fact that the Department of Justice is doing its job in investigating criminal wrongdoing, and we have an obligation to the American people to pursue the evidence where it exists," Mr. Gonzales said. Members of Congress are mindful that much of the public is not familiar with the speech and debate clause, which, among other things, requires that lawmakers be "privileged from arrest during their attendance at the session of their respective Houses, and in going to and returning from the same." Many people may wonder why a Congressional office cannot be searched in a criminal case and what members of Congress are complaining about. To many lawmakers, that is secondary to the larger separation-of-powers principle they see at risk. "I clearly have serious concerns about what happened," Mr. Boehner said, "and whether the people at the Justice Department have looked at the Constitution." http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/24/wa... tner=homepage One Month of Torrents is Worth More Than The GDP of France Donny's Blog We have all heard how the RIAA is suing people over piracy, giving figures such as "300 million dollars a year" in lost revenues due to piracy. However, what you might not have heard is that this figure is actually lowballed - they are actually losing significantly more! Lately we've been hearing more and more about the RIAA suing people over downloading music. Many people are skeptical of of the figures of lost revenue the RIAA reports, giving arguments like not every song downloaded equals a song that would have been bought. With all of this talk, I decided to investigate the cost of piracy, using the perfectly reasonable figures given by the RIAA: $150,000 per infringement. The Copyright Act permits a copyright owner to claim $150,000 per infringement, and the RIAA has been using that figure when they've sued individuals. However, they claim that they only lose 300 million per year due to piracy, which would equate to only 2000 songs downloaded per year. Clearly something is wrong - to find out the real cost of piracy, I went to http://www.thepiratebay.org to find out how many songs are downloaded in a month, in order to make a more accurate estimate of the losses to the music industry. First, I used the "Browse Torrents" link to view only music torrents. By browsing through the torrents, I found that (as of the time of writing) the torrents on pages 330 through 409 were all posted in January 2006. Then I wrote a quick Java program to download all those pages, parse it for the size of the torrent and the number of people who downloaded it, and made an educated guess as to how many infringements there were. If you want, you can see the raw output of my program. Here are the results: In January 2006, there were approximately 2370 music torrents posted. By estimating that each music file is 5 megs, we can estimate the number of infringements as the number of downloads multiplied by the estimated number of songs. I ran my program, and when I saw the results I was shocked! Using those figures, there were approximately 76,272,931 infringements caused by the torrents posted in January! Using the RIAA's value of $150,000 per infringement, the total cost to the music industry was $11,440,939,650,000! Now, it may be hard to grasp just how large a value that is, so I have provided a friendly chart which compares the net worth of Bill Gates, the 2005 Gross Domestic Product of France, and the cost of one month of torrents from one site: Yea, you see that line in the bottom left, where you can't even see what color it is because it's too small? That's Bill Gates' net worth (46.5 billion according to Forbes 2005) compared to the cost of piracy, using figures from the RIAA. With monthly losses of eleven trillion caused by one torrent site, it's a wonder we have a music industry at all. Please RIAA, keep on suing people, and stop letting them settle for less! Take it to the courts, make sure you get the full billion from that eleven year old girl, or the 80 year grandmother! It's well deserved, and it's the only way we can keep the music industry alive! http://donnysblog.com/one-month-of-t...-riaa-rant.php Newzbin.com Closes User Registration Thomas Mennecke Newzbin.com is often regarded as one of the larger Usenet (newsgroup) indexing sites, whose importance has become more substantial in recent months. Like BitTorrent or eDonkey2000 indexing sites, the entertainment industry has pursued websites that index NZB files. The effort is part of an ongoing campaign to lessen the effects of Internet piracy. The success of this campaign remains dubious, as many of the targeted indexing sites resided in the United States. Although international efforts to close indexing sites have netted some major victories such as SuprNova and ShareReactor, enclaves such as ThePirateBay.org continue to cause headaches for the entertainment industry. Newsgroup indexing sites were considered largely immune from the entertainment industry’s legal pursuit; however this notion quickly changed in February of 2006. On February 23, the MPAA targeted five BitTorrent and one eDonkey2000 indexing sites – fairly standard business. However for the first time, three newsgroup indexing sites were named in the MPAA’s federal lawsuit. Since the arrival of NZB technology and simplistic newsgroup clients, this ancient Internet technology is quickly approaching mainstream usage. Newsgroup indexing sites categorize NZB files, which contain all the information necessary to find and download the necessary message archive automatically. The days of digging through headers and newsgroups (other than for browsing) were over, and clients such as Grabit were retrofitted to accommodate this new technology. This situation has put Newzbin.com in a difficult position. While the site benefits from a large traffic draw, it has found itself walking a fine legal line. Based in the United Kingdom, it has thus far avoided the MPAA’s legal push against similar websites. However to mitigate any potential legal trouble, Newzbin.com closed their forums on March 16. They have yet to reopen. In a move seemingly unrelated to the current political and legal climate surrounding file-sharing, Newzbin.com announced today they will no longer accept new registrations. “With immediate effect, we are no longer accepting any new user signups/registrations.” Large service oriented sites like ThePirateBay.org share similar technical requirements as Newzbin.com, which take an enormous amount of bandwidth, software and hardware power to successfully operate. As the newsgroups become more popular, administrators are constantly battling to keep equipment online – or face dreaded downtime. “The primary reason is that we simply feel we have enough members now. The hardware behind the site is not going to cope with much more load without significant overhaul, and we want to keep the site quick and responsive for our existing members.” How long this policy will stay in effect has not been determined, as the administrators of Newzbin.com hint this change may not be permanent. It is also possible a “invite” type registration of 10-20 people per day may also be implemented. “How long this will last is undetermined; it most likely will not be permanent, but we don't know how long it will remain in force….We may move to a restricted signup (probably 10 or 20 per day, something like that) in the future if it looks workable, or perhaps a "introduce a member" scheme.” http://slyck.com/news.php?story=1194 TV Networks Fight Back Amid Online Turmoil Television is last medium to hit the Net, but it may be first to get it right Michael Rogers This week marks the start of the television “up-front,” when advertisers traditionally buy much of their commercial time for the upcoming season. No one’s quite sure how it will go this year: advertisers are worried about the rapid proliferation of the digital video recorders that let viewers zap their commercials, so they may see television as less valuable. Marketers are also reserving more of the dollars they once spent on television for the Internet. But at the same time, the television folks are embracing the Internet, with one big advantage: as the last medium to come to the Web, they have some history to look back on. And both print and the music industry provide key lessons in what not to do. Magazines and newspapers were the first on the Web in the mid-1990s and adopted the then-reigning ethos: everything for free. We can always start charging later, went one theory. More visionary folks saw that the Internet would someday be an incredibly powerful advertising medium: We’re going to make it up on advertising. But it turned out there is enormous competition for ad dollars on the Web — community sites, games, search engines, and soon even application software, all competitors that print never had to face in the real world. While many magazines and newspapers are attracting a large Web audience and lots of advertising, the revenue may never match what they made in the real world. Print’s future on the Web: downsizing. Next up was the music industry. Early on there were smart people in the recording industry who saw the potential of legal downloading: What business wouldn’t like to sell direct to the consumer with no physical distribution costs? But the industry was both complacent and overly concerned about upsetting the existing CD distribution chain. Thus they dragged their feet on downloading and were entirely overwhelmed — with no legal alternative to offer — when Napster appeared in 1999. Seven years later, illegal downloads still vastly outnumber legal online sales. Now that video-capable broadband reaches more than half of American homes, it’s television’s turn to leap. And they’re doing something that’s collectively very smart. Five networks — ABC, NBC, CBS, Fox and WB — have announced a panoply of varied Internet initiatives that include both streaming and downloading, both for-pay and advertiser-supported, and even a deal with BitTorrent, the current number-one technology used by those offering illegal video downloads. Some of the approaches virtually ignore the local stations (the current distributors); others cut them in on the deal. When you step back, it almost looks like an industry-wide research project, throwing a half-dozen business models at the wall to see which ones stick. As soon as winners emerge, you can bet the rest will follow — television executives are, if nothing else, very good at copying each other. But what’s the Internet upside for television? Print and music, of course, get to shed the costs of physical distribution — no more mailing magazines or shipping CDs. Television, on the other hand, is already electronically distributed, in a way that makes lots of money for the networks and stations. But there’s a different benefit for television — getting out from under the cable and satellite owners. It didn’t take long, for example, for network TV executives to figure out that interactive advertising was going to be controlled by the set-top box. In other words, if CBS sells an ad where the viewer clicks on Ashlee Simpson’s sweater to buy it, under the current distribution model the cable or satellite company is going to get a cut of the action. With video delivered on the Web, the network could get 100 percent of the deal. So when do we all start watching television on the Web? Certainly not anytime soon. Computer manufacturers need to sell more media-centric machines, such as Media Center PCs, that connect directly to the big screen in the living room. Delivery to cell-phones must also be standardized and simplified. Apple could provide a boost when it finally provides a living-room Mac with full television compatibility— not to mention a video iPod phone. Television producers have to be convinced that digital rights management systems will protect them from the illegal downloading of the music industry. And then Internet picture quality needs to improve. That last is inevitable: video compression and bandwidth will only get better. And MP3s and iTunes have already demonstrated that consumers will give up some quality in return for convenience and control. Finally, it’s once again worth looking at history. Ten years after newspapers went onto the Web, print circulation is beginning to drop substantially for many papers, while their Internet properties grow by double digits. On the music side, the value of legal downloads tripled in 2005 even as CD sales fell 7 percent, and neither trend is slowing. It’s only logical to assume that five or 10 years out, the television landscape will see a similar shift. Cable, broadcast, satellite — plus the new telephone company fiber-optic systems — will still deliver lots of video, especially high definition. But both consumer video buying and advertising spending will increasingly move to the Internet. It’s still very early days for the television industry on the Internet, but so far it seems to be doing an excellent job at keeping its business options open. Ironically enough, even though Internet entrepreneurs have always glorified the “first-mover advantage,” television may demonstrate that the last to arrive at the party may occasionally still have the best time. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/12759674/ An Online Market Blooms for Video Clip Reruns Bob Tedeschi YOU might not care that a student pilot in Idaho flipped his plane while landing last month and left himself with an injured hand and a cranky flying instructor. You might care even less to know that a local news station got film of the plane lying belly up in a field, and that the clip is now available online. But someone cares. And on the Internet these days, as long as someone cares, cash flows. In this case, the beneficiary is KTVX, an ABC affiliate in northern Utah owned by Clear Channel Communications. Until recently the station was like other local broadcasters in that it had little use for its news clips aside from posting them on its Web site for a couple of days and then relegating them to the digital vault. Now a new online service, ClipSyndicate, is finding Web sites like AeroSpaceNews.com that are happy to show these reruns and share the advertising revenue that may follow. The idea behind ClipSyndicate is to give local television stations, which have long watched as online upstarts have stolen viewers and advertising dollars, their own foothold on the Web. Local stations have failed miserably in attracting audiences to their Web sites. But given the fascination with online video, that model is now serendipitously flipping. After all, why struggle to build an audience of your own when new Internet businesses will find video-starved viewers for you in the far-flung corners of the Web? "Web sites and bloggers would love to add video, and news outlets would love to give it to them, but they haven't figured out a way to do it without getting ripped off," said Allen Weiner, an analyst with Gartner, a technology consulting firm. "So this addresses a major pain point." ClipSyndicate, a service of the online video search company Critical Mention, indexes videos from Bloomberg, The Associated Press and other news outlets. Web publishers then visit ClipSyndicate.com and search for clips they like. ClipSyndicate allows Web sites to show the clips only as long as they are not broadcast companies themselves (and as long as they do not also show pornography). Publishers either pay an undisclosed fee to ClipSyndicate each time they show a clip — then display their own ads with the clip — or they can run the videos with ads sold by ClipSyndicate and earn 5 percent of the advertising revenue. The video's owners, meanwhile, receive 30 percent of whatever revenue is generated from each clip. Mr. Weiner, of Gartner, said ClipSyndicate was the only service of its kind at the moment, but he expected many competing online video companies, like Veoh and Revver to introduce similar initiatives. Television networks are also embarking on efforts that can help them find more eyeballs for their local stations' video assets, without having to share the proceeds with an outside company. Take NBC Universal, for one. Late last month the company said it would form the National Broadband Company, a joint venture between the network and its roughly 230 affiliates. NBBC, as the venture is known, will syndicate video from the affiliates, the NBC Universal library and other content on sites throughout the Web. According to Mike Steib, who is overseeing the formation of NBBC, the venture will, among other things, collect and categorize clips according to their type, so NBBC can offer an entire channel of consumer news, for instance, for other sites and its own affiliates to show online. Mr. Steib said the company was still signing up affiliates to distribute its videos, and NBBC was also determining how to derive revenue from the clips, be it from a pay-per-view approach, advertising, or both. The venture, though, is getting closer to an official introduction. "It'll happen in a handful of months," Mr. Steib said. "I'm using a sand wedge, not a driver." The ClipSyndicate service has not yet signed up major advertisers to show its ads, but Sean Morgan, Critical Mention's chief executive, said he did not expect any difficulty in attracting marketers. "We haven't put any advertisers on yet because we're still focused on aggregating content, but all the advertisers we're talking to say it sounds like it's going to work," he said. Mr. Weiner, of Gartner, agreed that ClipSyndicate would be interesting to marketers. "It gives stations a viral audience that's potentially as large as what they'd get through their commercial medium," he said. "And because a significant part of the audience may be outside the local area, regional or national advertisers have a reason to be part of the mix." That may not yet be the case with KTVX, but the station is certainly gaining a wider audience than before. According to Jason Gould, general manager of Inergize Digital Media, a unit of Clear Channel that manages the online operations of Clear Channel stations and others, the service provides "a whole new revenue stream." The company had sought ways to generate revenue from the roughly 500 stories its affiliated stations broadcast daily — and the trove of videos from the past two years — but with little success. While some of the stories can be shown on the Web sites of other stations within Inergize's stable, "there hasn't been a mechanism for us to take them to the marketplace beyond our stations," Mr. Gould said. "So ClipSyndicate was a no-brainer to jump into." Internet companies that show the videos are also pleased so far with the service. "This has worked beautifully for us," said Richard D. Stamberger, chief executive of SmartBrief, which distributes e-mail newsletters to roughly one million subscribers, and who recently began including videos from ClipSyndicate in those newsletters. Subscribers have clicked on links to the videos at the same rate they click on links to text stories in the newsletters, which typically focus on a particular industry. But since marketers pay more for video ads than text ads, Mr. Stamberger said the videos would probably help SmartBrief's revenues. "We haven't sold any ads yet but our initial conversations with advertisers have been very positive," Mr. Stamberger said. "This is right on the money in terms of hitting the market just as video is exploding." http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/22/te...gy/22ecom.html Politicos Propose New Action On Net Neutrality Anne Broache The push for new laws mandating Net neutrality principles appears to be gaining steam on Capitol Hill. The leaders of the U.S. House of Representatives Judiciary Committee released a five-page bill on Thursday that would embed new provisions requiring so-called network neutrality in existing federal antitrust laws. Unlike existing proposals in both houses of Congress, the bill was endorsed not only by Democrats but by Committee Chairman Jim Sensenbrenner, a Wisconsin Republican. Michigan Democrat John Conyers, who serves as the committee's co-chairman, California Democrat Zoe Lofgren and Virginia Democrat Rick Boucher co-sponsored the measure. Called the "Internet Freedom and Nondiscrimination Act," the bill is designed to "provide an insurance policy for Internet users against being harmed by broadband network operators abusing their market power to discriminate against content and service providers," Sensenbrenner said in a statement. Citing government statistics that 98 percent of Americans have at most two choices for broadband service, Sensenbrenner said such a "virtual duopoly" is ripe for anticompetitive practices, and "a clear antitrust remedy is needed." Net neutrality, which critics charge is impossible to define, centers on the idea that broadband providers must not be permitted to favor some Web sites or Internet services over others. Network operators argue that they should be entitled to charge bandwidth hogs extra for faster transmission and prioritized placement in order to help finance vast build-outs of broadband infrastructure. The Judiciary bill would make it illegal under antitrust law for network operators to impose such fees or to fail to provide their services on "reasonable and nondiscriminatory terms." It also borrows language from an earlier House proposal co-sponsored by Boucher that would, for instance, bar broadband providers from blocking, impairing or degrading sites or services and from stopping users from attaching the devices of their choice to the network. The committee's action was not unexpected, as members had voiced concern over the issue--and asserted their jurisdiction to make new rules--at a recent hearing convened by the committee's antitrust task force. At a press conference on Thursday, Rep. Edward Markey, a Massachusetts Democrat who has been a vocal proponent of similar legislation in the House Energy and Commerce Committee, said he was unaware of the proposals in the rival committee and couldn't comment. He said he remained determined to reintroduce a Net neutrality amendment when a pending telecommunications bill goes to the floor for a vote by the full slate of legislators. That proposal, which enjoyed support mostly from fellow Democrats, was soundly defeated twice by fairly large margins during earlier votes on a broadband bill in his committee. "Our goal is to have a full debate and record...where every member stands" on Net neutrality, Markey said at an outdoor press conference where Grammy-nominated musician Moby also spoke out in favor of the bill. Sparking controversy Net neutrality became an arguably unintended focus during the first round of the Senate Commerce Committee's sweeping attempt to rewrite the Telecommunications Act of 1996. The hearing was supposed to focus on components of the bill dealing with video franchising and the Universal Service Fund, with a separate hearing on Net neutrality scheduled for May 25. But a handful of senators and witnesses testifying before them couldn't resist voicing their opinions on what has become an increasingly volatile topic. Sen. Byron Dorgan, a North Dakota Democrat, said he planned to introduce an amendment that would deal with Net neutrality, though it was unclear Thursday what shape that would take. "It's complicated, no doubt about it, but I think Internet freedom is very, very important," he said. That action likely wouldn't come until later, with a vote on the bill tentatively scheduled for June 20. California Sen. Barbara Boxer, also a Democrat, said that if Congress didn't take action to protect Net neutrality principles, "We're going to put a lot of people in the slow lane--as a matter of fact, we're going to have a lot of people not able to access the Internet, and it's a very unfair system." Right now, the Senate's telecommunications bill contains a provision that would direct the Federal Communications Commission to keep an eye on incidents that could be considered violations of Net neutrality and report to Congress on its findings. That's exactly the right approach, Kyle McSlarrow, president of the National Cable and Telecommunications Association, told the senators Thursday. "This is the kind of issue that is most appropriately studied a lot more," he said. Sen. Gordon Smith, an Oregon Republican, said he'd hate to see the Senate's proposal get "hung up" over the topic of Net neutrality but acknowledged the politicians wouldn't succeed in getting broad approval unless they "find a way to accommodate the legitimate interests being put forward on both sides." Meanwhile, resistance to such new laws is also growing. On Wednesday, several of the world's largest hardware makers sent a letter to Congress decrying new Net neutrality laws. Republican Sens. Jim DeMint of South Carolina and Sam Brownback of Kansas also have joined the opposition against the idea of legislating Net neutrality. In a one-page letter to their Senate colleagues dated May 16, they argued that doing so would "penalize broadband access providers for making major improvements to the Internet." The senators also charged that such rules would "deprive parents of new technologies they may use to protect their families from online harm." As of now, the issue of Net neutrality is being addressed by Congress in a couple of other forms aside from the Markey amendment and the new House Judiciary bill, but each of those measures would have a number of hurdles to clear before becoming law. The first standalone bill came in March from Sen. Ron Wyden, an Oregon Democrat, and prescribes the same kind of detailed rules found in the latest proposals. Critics of the laws charge that they amount to unprecedented regulation of the Internet. The House broadband bill that Markey would like to amend includes a provision that would permit the FCC to police violations of its broadband policy statement, which outlines expectations that broadband providers will allow their users to view sites, run applications and connect devices to the network as they wish, within legal bounds. Net neutrality proponents have criticized that approach as too weak to prevent what they decry as a "fast lane" for those who can afford to pay extra to network operators. http://news.com.com/Politicos+propos...3-6074108.html Google Faces Lawsuit Over Search Suggestions Jeremy Kirk, IDG News Service A Belgian company has refiled a lawsuit over search terms offered by Google's toolbar that it claims directs users to pirated software. The suit, originally filed in February, was refiled Wednesday by ServersCheck BVBA, a small company that makes network monitoring software, over Google's "Suggest" feature, included in the latest version of its search toolbar for Web browsers. When a user types in keywords for a search, the toolbar shows a drop-down menu of guesses related to those words. If ServersCheck is entered, Google generates suggested search terms such as "serverscheck crack," "serverscheck pro crack," and "serverscheck keygen," which lead to pirated software, said Maarten Van Laere, chief executive officer of ServersCheck. Van Laere said he was told by Google that Web sites with illegal content would be removed from their index, but that it couldn't tweak the Suggest feature. So Van Laere filed suit, an action he said is an expensive option for a small company against a behemoth such as Google. He's trying to get Google to change the Suggest results. Van Laere uses Google's tool for analyzing Web traffic and found that about 93 percent of ServerCheck's customers come to their Web site by way of the popular search engine. "We don't have any problems with the fact that in Google you can find illegal copies of our software," Van Laere said. "There are people who will never buy the product at the end of the day. "But people that are looking for your company's name in good faith are then being suggested by Google to go and look for a crack. That is a complete different ballgame," Van Laere said. Censorship Concerns In response to the suit, a Google attorney told a Belgian newspaper on Wednesday that they could not filter the results of Google Suggest, citing censorship concerns. Van Laere said the defense isn't accurate, since it appears that Google Suggest will not try to complete tracking numbers for shipping items or offer alternate suggestions for sexually-related terms. In a test, Google Suggest did not offer any related words for the terms "pornography," "naked" and "sex." An attorney based in Belgium for Google was not immediately available for comment. The latest problem is not the only run-in ServersCheck has had with Google. In its original lawsuit, ServersCheck complained that Google was allowing a competitor to use its brand name in an advertisement, falsely claiming that ServersCheck's software could be downloaded, Van Laere said. Google agreed while the suit was making its way through court to halt advertisements on its AdWords service that used ServersCheck's name, Van Laere said. http://news.yahoo.com/s/pcworld/2006...pcworld/125758 XM Defends Against RIAA Claims XM calls the record industry's lawsuit from last week regarding being able to record satellite radio programming to a new wave of devices meritless. In an open, passionate letter posted lasted week on their Web site, XM Satellite Radio has come out swinging against the RIAA, who is suing the satellite radio provider over its latest receiver/recorder devices (like the Pioneer Inno) which can save up to 50 hours of XM programming for later listening. The suit seeks damages against XM for every instance of a song copied by XM customers to one of these devices. In their letter, XM states the new portable devices they’ve released are completely legal and that the RIAA has in effect filed a lawsuit to stop people’s “ability to choose when and where you can listen”. Seeing the lawsuit as “meritless”, XM compares products like the Pionner Inno to other devices over the decades, like VCRs and Tivo, which have recorded copyrighted programming off the airs for personal use. XM said they will “vigorously defend these radios in court and before Congress” and that they expect to prevail. http://news.digitaltrends.com/news_p...ndly10489.html Sony Rootkit Settlement Gets Final Nod Anne Broache A federal judge on Monday gave final approval to a settlement in a class action suit against Sony BMG Music Entertainment over anticopying software the company had embedded in some music CDs. The agreement (click for PDF) covers anyone who bought, received or used CDs containing what was revealed to be flawed digital rights management (DRM) software after Aug. 1, 2003. Those customers can file a claim and receive certain benefits, such as a nonprotected replacement CD, free downloads of music from that CD and additional cash payments. The court action picked up last fall when security researchers discovered vulnerabilities posed by two pieces of software, First4Internet's XCP and SunnComm's MediaMax, which are automatically installed on a user's computer upon loading certain Sony BMG music CDs. The software's presence was masked by a "rootkit" that can make the PC more vulnerable to viruses and other hacker attacks. The software also allegedly transmitted information about the listener's computer use back to Sony BMG, although a company-commissioned privacy assessment later determined that it collected only "non-personal information tied to a particular album and its usage." At least 15 different lawsuits were filed by class action lawyers against the record label, and the New York cases were eventually consolidated into one proceeding. The parties reached a preliminary settlement with Sony BMG in December, leaving it up to a judge in a U.S. District Court in New York to make it official. Sony BMG had already begun taking steps to remedy the situation. It yanked the affected discs off the shelves, suspended production of CDs containing the technology and issued a recall of the 4.7 million XCP CDs, offering MP3 downloads in return. Under the terms of the final settlement, Sony BMG definitively agreed to continue halting manufacture or distribution of CDs containing the two programs. (It stopped using XCP on its products in November 2005 and ceased using MediaMax about a month later, according to court filings.) For the duration of the settlement, which lasts until the end of 2007, the company is expected to take a number of steps before putting any new copy protection software on its wares. These steps would include submitting the software for review by an independent security expert and including a brief, written description of the copy protection tool on any CD that contains it. Sony BMG told CNET News.com on Monday that it was "pleased" that the settlement in this case had secured the court's final approval. Electronic Frontier Foundation Legal Director Cindy Cohn, whose organization participated in the settlement negotiation process on behalf of the plaintiffs, urged anyone in possession of the offending CDs to stake their claims against Sony. Doing so, she predicted, may send a message to Sony BMG and other music labels to "think twice before wrapping songs in DRM." Sony BMG still faces a separate lawsuit "over materially the same subject matter" from the Texas attorney general, as well as inquiries from the Federal Trade Commission and other state attorneys general, according to the text of the settlement. That document indicated that the company would pursue similar settlements in those cases, too. http://news.com.com/Sony+rootkit+set...3-6075370.html Sony Introduces New Digital Projector Gary Gentile After more than a decade of talking about it, movie theaters and studios are finally rolling out digital projectors that show sharper, brighter images without cracks, pops or hisses. This weekend, Sony Electronics will enter the field with a projector that displays the sharpest resolution envisioned under a set of standards issued for digital cinema. Movie studios last year agreed on such technology standards, which will allow components made by different manufacturers to be interoperable. Those components include the projector itself, the computer that stores the movie and sound, software that compresses the huge digital files and security systems that prevent piracy. And, after years of debate about who would pay for the systems, studios and companies that sell digital cinema systems agreed to share the cost. Studios stand to save millions each year by delivering digital versions of their films to theaters instead of the clunky film prints that get scratched and dirty after only a few weeks and have to be replaced. But the studios agreed to forgo those savings for 10 years in order to finance the cost of replacing current 35-millimeter film projectors with digital cinema systems. Two financing groups have been established to install projectors that display images with "2K" resolution, or about 2 million pixels — dots of light that make up a digital image. The main benefit of 2K projection is a more stable, consistent image, although one trade-off is that color is often not as deep and rich as that provided by film. Both groups hope to have hundreds of systems installed by the end of this year and as many as half of the nation's 36,000 screens within the next 10 years. This weekend, Sony will begin a test of its new "4K" projector, which displays images at 8 million pixels horizontally. The company has installed one of the projectors at a theater in Los Angeles that will show Sony Pictures' "The Da Vinci Code." The company, in conjunction with National CineMedia, a joint venture of AMC Entertainment Inc., Cinemark USA Inc. and Regal Entertainment Group, will install projectors in two other theaters next month in yet to be determined locations. Movies can be distributed in one of several ways. In the current test, the Sony projector will play the movie from a computer disk. Movies can also be beamed to theaters via satellite or sent over fiber-optic cables, as is the case with a similar test in Japan being conducted by Warner Bros. and Sony Pictures. The 4K projectors promise richer color and better contrast that draws moviegoers into the image. The major difference, however, will be seen by those who sit closest to the movie screen, who will see sharper images without noticing individual pixels, which can occur in a theater with 2K projection. Sony recently tested its system using a clip from the 1965 classic "The Sound of Music." When it was projected in 4K, viewers were able to pick out two hairs sticking up from Julie Andrews' head and see details of the weave in her dress. "Anything that enhances the visual experience, that better supports the artistry, the story of the motion picture being exhibited, anything that raises the bar of higher quality is a benefit to the moviegoer," said Andrew Stucker, general manager of the digital cinema systems group at Sony Electronics. The increased quality is strongly desired by theater owners, who are looking for ways to attract more business, especially as home theater systems become more sophisticated. "There's a strong desire to differentiate cinema from home and that's where 4K comes in," said Michael Karagosian of MKPE Consulting. But in the end, Karagosian suggests, moviegoers will not base their decision to visit the local megaplex on technology alone. "It's a social experience and at bottom line it's about the content," he said. "I may remodel my kitchen, but I still like to go out to eat once in a while." Digital projectors are installed in about 500 U.S. theaters today. That number is expected to rise to about 1,500 by the end of the year. Current digital projection systems cost about $100,000, with 4K systems expected to be higher initially, although the price should come down once the market develops. http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060518/...MwBHNlYwM3Mzg- Hollywood Reportedly In Agreement To Delay Forced Quality Downgrades For Blu-ray, HD DVD Ken Fisher As the DVD format welcomes two potential heirs to its kingship as the commercial video medium of choice, there are mounting concerns that these new heirs are nothing but pretenders. Blu-ray and HD DVD—the two competing "standards" for the next-generation of video discs—are both shackled with technologically-forged chains, but those chains may be broken by a consumer electronics industry wary of how their existence could hamper sales. One of the most controversial aspects of these next-generation products is something called the Image Constraint Token (ICT), a security "feature" that allows studios to force-downgrade video quality on players that lack a special video output that was designed to thwart piracy. This "HDMI" connector standard is part of a "protected pathway" for video that was meant to combat piracy by making it impossible for pirates to tap into high-definition video output and press "Record," as it were. Many fear, however, that the only success HDMI will have is in making honest users miserable, inasmuch as consumers could be left with a product that plays at low quality or not at all if HDMI is not present on one's player or TV. The conundrum isn't apparently lost on the consumer electronics industry or Hollywood. According to German-language Spiegel Online, there is reportedly a behind-the-scenes, unofficial agreement between Hollywood and some consumer electronics manufacturers, including Microsoft and Sony, not to use ICT until 2010, or possibly even 2012. Without providing more details, the report suggests that Hollywood isn't exactly happy with the situation, and could very well renege on the agreement, such that it is. But the agreement is there nonetheless, presumably to help the industry transition to HDMI. This could explain why the very same studios that pushed for HDMI and ICT have recently announced that they would not use it for the time being. The report's claims could also shed some light on two of the more baffling consumer electronics moves as of late. Sony stunned onlookers when it announced that the low-end PlayStation 3, which will retail for US$499, will not have HDMI. This put Sony in the awkward position of downplaying HDMI as a "must have" feature for a next-generation optical disc player. Kaz Hirai, CEO of Sony Computer Entertainment of America, sidestepped the lack of HDMI by painting it as a high-end standard that wouldn't be aesthetically appreciated by many consumers. "The only difference is HDMI – and at this point, I don't think many people's TV's have that. The ultimate result, to my eyes anyway, is there's not a discernible difference between what you get between HDMI and other forms of high definition," he said. On one level, he's correct. Few consumers will appreciate the difference between 1080i on a component cable (analog) and 1080p on HDMI. What he ignored is the real trade-off: without HDMI, that 1920x1080 (1080i/p) or 1280 x 720 (720p) picture, analog or not, could be rendered at a less impressive 960x540 (540p) if the ICT was present and obeyed. While 540p is indeed better than today's DVD standard, few consumers would spend $500-$1000 on a new player and as much as $10 more per movie to get it. If part of Sony's big pitch for the PS3 is "hey, this thing is also futureproof because it does Blu-ray!," then ditching support for HDMI doesn't make sense in a world where the absence of HDMI could negate much of the promise of Blu-ray. Then there's Microsoft. The company launched the Xbox 360 last November sans HD DVD drive, which turned out to be a wise thing to do, as both HD DVD and Blu-ray were delayed by setbacks with the new AACS security system. Microsoft nevertheless intends to support HD DVD on the Xbox 360 by shipping an external HD DVD player for the console in time for the 2006 holiday season. The add-on drive will connect to the Xbox via a USB 2.0 cable, but the console currently lacks an HDMI connector, just like the low-end PS3. Microsoft has not announced support for HDMI for the Xbox 360, though speculation is ripe that the company will release a dongle for the console after Lik-Sang posted a product page for it. For that dongle to do the trick, however, Microsoft would need to be able to add HDMI support via a firmware update, and their current proprietary output connector would need to meet HDMI standards. It is not yet clear if HDMI can be added to the Xbox 360 without a hardware revision, but that question may be seen as "moot" if in fact HDMI won't be a barrier to true 720 or 1080i/p until 4 to 6 years from now. If indeed there is an "agreement" of sorts between companies like Microsoft and Sony and the studios (including Sony's own entertainment interests), this could certainly help to explain why these consoles are shipping today without HDMI support. But such unofficial agreements are gentlemanly in nature: at any time, all bets could be off. In the meantime, it appears as though Hollywood is playing it safe, hoping to keep the boogeyman of HDMI at bay while consumers weigh their options. Whether or not the strategy is ultimately about keeping users happy or lulling them into a false sense of security remains to be seen, but we're fairly certain that ICT was designed to be used, and used it will be. http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20060521-6880.html Samsung Debuts Hybrid Hard Drive Barry Levine Imagine a Windows laptop that could boot up as much as 25 seconds more quickly than usual, last up to 30 minutes longer on battery power, and be as much as five times more reliable than existing PCs. That is Samsung's vision for the value of its new Hybrid Hard Drive (HHD), a next-generation drive that combines flash memory with traditional rotating magnetic storage. The company announced the drive on Wednesday and will be showing it at the Windows Hardware Engineering Conference in Seattle, Washington, next week. The magnetic storage part of the drive will provide the high storage densities found in standard hard-drive technology, while the flash part of the drive will provide the reliability, the fast read-write access, and the low power consumption, Samsung said. Vista Coordination When flash memory is being used, the hard drive remains idle which, according to Samsung, can save battery power and make the drive less susceptible to damage. The hard drive spins to "flush out" memory a few times every 10 to 20 minutes, then returns to its idle state unless it is needed. Microsoft sees the product as complementing the upcoming Windows Vista operating system. "Hybrid hard disks and Windows ReadyDrive Technology are integrated advancements that improve the performance and reliability of computers using Windows Vista, especially notebook computers," said Mike Sievert, Microsoft's corporate vice president in the Windows Client Marketing division, in a statement. It is expected that the hybrid drives will be marketed under the ReadyDrive brand name and released in coordination with Vista's rollout. Experts Divided Industry observers were divided on the value and viability of this hybrid approach. "These kinds of drives have the best of both worlds and this could be a great drive for consumers wanting to use their PCs for entertainment," said Nicole d'Onofrio, an analyst at research firm Current Analysis. "I estimate we'll see other manufacturers with hybrids by the end of this year or beginning of 2007." But Joseph Unsworth, a principal analyst at Gartner, questioned whether Intel's upcoming Robson technology could overtake this market need. "Robson offers flash right on the chipset," he said. "We're going to see a lot of notebooks with Robson, and you don't need Vista to run it." He said he expects Robson to be out in first quarter of 2007. Gartner analyst John Monroe downplayed the value of the Samsung HHD technology. "There is nothing new in having cache on a hard drive -- it's been done for years," he said. "The basic difference here is that it is bigger and nonvolatile. The main reason you would need it is because Vista takes so long to boot." With mobile devices, it might have some value, he said. "But probably not with desktop machines, which are often left on." http://news.yahoo.com/s/nf/20060518/... kBHNlYwMxNjk1 Google's Goal: A Worldwide Web of Books Leslie Walker It's odd to hear Vinton Cerf, regarded as one of the founding fathers of the Internet, to gush over ink-on-paper books. The electronic pioneer and computer scientist, who now works as Google's chief Internet evangelist, is also a bibliophile who has a collection of about 10,000 hard-copy volumes lining shelves at his home in McLean. These days, Cerf is busy promoting Google's plan to marry his two passions -- books and the Internet -- by digitizing millions of library books. He recently dropped by my office to explain the controversial plan and talk about its implications for book lovers. As Cerf talked about his personal book collection and the limitations of having knowledge fixed on paper, he got me thinking about how reading will be transformed when static libraries join the more dynamic world of cross-referenced knowledge on the Web. For starters, Cerf said, libraries are not exactly easy to navigate. "Think for a moment about the dead-tree problem," he said. "When you stand in your own personal library looking for something and you realize that A, you can't remember which book it was in, and B, there's no way you can go through manually looking at all the pages, then you think, 'God, I wish all this stuff was online.' " That's the stated goal of Google's library project, to create a massive electronic card catalog that will help people find information in published books, much as Google already does with Web pages. Google has vowed to create a full-text index of seven-million books in the University of Michigan library, along with millions more in the university libraries at Harvard, Stanford and Oxford, as well as the New York Public Library. The idea is similar to Amazon.com's "search inside the book" feature, eventually allowing anyone using Google's free book search ( http://books.google.com/ ) not only to see sample pages from books but also search their contents and find excerpts matching search terms. Google is not alone in trying to digitize library books. Yahoo, Microsoft and other Internet players have joined a collaborative effort called the Open Content Alliance, which is planning to digitize not only library books but other types of multimedia, as well, making them all accessible on the Web. Google, however, has embarked on a solo book project that is much further along than the collaborative effort. The Internet search leader has developed technology for bulk scanning of books and started scanning them at the University of Michigan, much to the consternation of the publishing industry. The Authors Guild and a group of publishers have accused the search giant of copyright infringement in two lawsuits filed last fall. Several of those same publishers were -- and still are -- Google's partners in a program announced in the fall of 2004 to scan in-print books provided by publishers. That plan called for making books searchable online and sharing with publishers the revenue Google gets from showing text ads alongside book search results. But publishers cried foul a few months later when Google announced it was expanding its book search to include millions of library tomes. Unlike the initial plan, the library project involves scanning many books that are either clearly under copyright or for which the copyright status is unclear. Google contends the project falls within the "fair use" exemption to copyright law, because it is not providing full access to copyrighted books, merely letting people search inside and see excerpts. Google's book search service, still in trial mode, allows people to only read the full text of books in the public domain and shows sample pages from books for which publishers have granted Google sampling rights. But for most books it is scanning, Google argues the copyright status is unclear and therefore shows more limited excerpts. Google refers to them as "snippets," raggedy images of a few lines of text from inside, with information about who published each book and when. But at least five publishing houses disagree that the "snippets" constitute fair use. In a lawsuit filed in October, McGraw-Hill, Simon & Schuster and three other publishers charged that Google is violating copyright law because, in order to prepare the snippets, it is making and storing on computers unauthorized full copies of their books. And while Google tells the public its goal is simply to make books searchable, the suit alleges that Google's aim is to get more visitors so it can sell more ads. "The question you have to ask is whether book search is an asset to Google," said Allan Adler, vice president for legal and government affairs for the Association of American Publishers. "Of course it is. It's one way it can differentiate itself from the competition." Cerf thinks publishers fail to appreciate that Google probably will help them sell more books by making them searchable. Helping people locate a book and know what's in it, he said, are key steps toward getting them to buy it. And for many books are available for sale, Google provides links to Amazon.com and other online sellers. Google does not sell books. For now, Google is showing no ads alongside search results involving books from libraries, only books provided by publishers. In those cases, publishers are receiving a share of the ad revenue. Google also recently announced it will soon allow publishers and copyright holders to sell full electronic access to books through Google book search, either by letting people read the text online or downloading copies. Google will take a 30 percent commission on any fees publishers collect. What Google has not announced, but is likely to one day, are ways it might help publishers and authors enhance pages from printed books once they are online. Cerf refers to this as "books that talk to each other," an idea to make them more like the rest of the Web where pages are cross-linked and visitors can annotate and tag text as is done with Web logs. "Because the Internet is a computing environment, a software environment, it's possible to create a much richer kind of information than what we are typically accustomed to in books," Cerf said. Digitized books, he said, can be searched and updated easily, linked to related material, and enhanced with audio and video. But they can also be changed, which means that the book you read a year ago may look different the next time you consult it. As his attention turned back to his personal book collection, his eyes lit up as he imagined searching its contents from a BlackBerry. Listening to him, I couldn't help thinking how inevitable it is that library books will move online and come alive with hyperlinks and annotations, the way the Web already is. And then everyone, not just the Vinton Cerfs of the world, will have access to vast personal libraries from the comforts of home. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...051702016.html The Eternal Value of Privacy Bruce Schneier The most common retort against privacy advocates -- by those in favor of ID checks, cameras, databases, data mining and other wholesale surveillance measures -- is this line: "If you aren't doing anything wrong, what do you have to hide?" Some clever answers: "If I'm not doing anything wrong, then you have no cause to watch me." "Because the government gets to define what's wrong, and they keep changing the definition." "Because you might do something wrong with my information." My problem with quips like these -- as right as they are -- is that they accept the premise that privacy is about hiding a wrong. It's not. Privacy is an inherent human right, and a requirement for maintaining the human condition with dignity and respect. Two proverbs say it best: Quis custodiet custodes ipsos? ("Who watches the watchers?") and "Absolute power corrupts absolutely." Cardinal Richelieu understood the value of surveillance when he famously said, "If one would give me six lines written by the hand of the most honest man, I would find something in them to have him hanged." Watch someone long enough, and you'll find something to arrest -- or just blackmail -- with. Privacy is important because without it, surveillance information will be abused: to peep, to sell to marketers and to spy on political enemies -- whoever they happen to be at the time. Privacy protects us from abuses by those in power, even if we're doing nothing wrong at the time of surveillance. We do nothing wrong when we make love or go to the bathroom. We are not deliberately hiding anything when we seek out private places for reflection or conversation. We keep private journals, sing in the privacy of the shower, and write letters to secret lovers and then burn them. Privacy is a basic human need. A future in which privacy would face constant assault was so alien to the framers of the Constitution that it never occurred to them to call out privacy as an explicit right. Privacy was inherent to the nobility of their being and their cause. Of course being watched in your own home was unreasonable. Watching at all was an act so unseemly as to be inconceivable among gentlemen in their day. You watched convicted criminals, not free citizens. You ruled your own home. It's intrinsic to the concept of liberty. For if we are observed in all matters, we are constantly under threat of correction, judgment, criticism, even plagiarism of our own uniqueness. We become children, fettered under watchful eyes, constantly fearful that -- either now or in the uncertain future -- patterns we leave behind will be brought back to implicate us, by whatever authority has now become focused upon our once-private and innocent acts. We lose our individuality, because everything we do is observable and recordable. How many of us have paused during conversation in the past four-and-a-half years, suddenly aware that we might be eavesdropped on? Probably it was a phone conversation, although maybe it was an e-mail or instant-message exchange or a conversation in a public place. Maybe the topic was terrorism, or politics, or Islam. We stop suddenly, momentarily afraid that our words might be taken out of context, then we laugh at our paranoia and go on. But our demeanor has changed, and our words are subtly altered. This is the loss of freedom we face when our privacy is taken from us. This is life in former East Germany, or life in Saddam Hussein's Iraq. And it's our future as we allow an ever-intrusive eye into our personal, private lives. Too many wrongly characterize the debate as "security versus privacy." The real choice is liberty versus control. Tyranny, whether it arises under threat of foreign physical attack or under constant domestic authoritative scrutiny, is still tyranny. Liberty requires security without intrusion, security plus privacy. Widespread police surveillance is the very definition of a police state. And that's why we should champion privacy even when we have nothing to hide. http://www.wired.com/news/columns/1,70886-0.html Government To Force Handover Of Encryption Keys Tom Espiner The UK Government is preparing to give the police the authority to force organisations and individuals to disclose encryption keys, a move which has outraged some security and civil rights experts. The powers are contained within Part 3 of the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act (RIPA). RIPA was introduced in 2000, but the government has held back from bringing Part 3 into effect. Now, more than five years after the original act was passed, the Home Office is seeking to exercise the powers within Part Three of RIPA. Some security experts are concerned that the plan could criminalise innocent people and drive businesses out of the UK. But the Home Office, which has just launched a consultation process, says the powers contained in Part 3 are needed to combat an increased use of encryption by criminals, paedophiles, and terrorists. "The use of encryption is... proliferating," Liam Byrne, Home Office minister of state told Parliament last week. "Encryption products are more widely available and are integrated as security features in standard operating systems, so the Government has concluded that it is now right to implement the provisions of Part 3 of RIPA... which is not presently in force." Part 3 of RIPA gives the police powers to order the disclosure of encryption keys, or force suspects to decrypt encrypted data. Anyone who refuses to hand over a key to the police would face up to two years' imprisonment. Under current anti-terrorism legislation, terrorist suspects now face up to five years for withholding keys. If Part 3 is passed, financial institutions could be compelled to give up the encryption keys they use for banking transactions, experts have warned. "The controversy here [lies in] seizing keys, not in forcing people to decrypt. The power to seize encryption keys is spooking big business," Cambridge University security expert Richard Clayton told ZDNet UK on Wednesday. "The notion that international bankers would be wary of bringing master keys into UK if they could be seized as part of legitimate police operations, or by a corrupt chief constable, has quite a lot of traction," Clayton added. "With the appropriate paperwork, keys can be seized. If you're an international banker you'll plonk your headquarters in Zurich." Opponents of the RIP Act have argued that the police could struggle to enforce Part 3, as people can argue that they don't possess the key to unlock encrypted data in their possession. "It is, as ever, almost impossible to prove 'beyond a reasonable doubt' that some random-looking data is in fact ciphertext, and then prove that the accused actually has the key for it, and that he has refused a proper order to divulge it," pointed out encryption expert Peter Fairbrother on ukcrypto, a public email discussion list. Clayton backed up this point. "The police can say 'We think he's a terrorist' or 'We think he's trading in kiddie porn', and the suspect can say, 'No, they're love letters, sorry, I've lost the key'. How much evidence do you need [to convict]? If you can't decrypt [the data], then by definition you don't know what it is," said Clayton. The Home Office on Wednesday told ZDNet UK that it would not reach a decision about whether Part 3 will be amended until the consultation process has been completed. "We are in consultation, and [are] looking into proposals on amendments to RIPA," said a Home Office spokeswoman. "The Home Office is waiting for the results of the consultation" before making any decisions, she said. The Home Office said last week that the focus on key disclosure and forced decryption was necessary due to "the threat to public safety posed by terrorist use of encryption technology". Clayton, on the other hand, argues that terrorist cells do not use master keys in the same way as governments and businesses. "Terrorist cells use master keys on a one-to-one basis, rather than using them to generate pass keys for a series of communications. With a one-to-one key, you may as well just force the terrorist suspect to decrypt that communication, or use other methods of decryption," said Clayton. "My suggestion is to turn on all of Part 3, except the part about trying to seize keys. That won't create such a furore in financial circles," he said. http://news.zdnet.co.uk/0,39020330,39269746,00.htm Voice Encryption May Draw U.S. Scrutiny John Markoff Philip R. Zimmermann wants to protect online privacy. Who could object to that? He has found out once already. Trained as a computer scientist, he developed a program in 1991 called Pretty Good Privacy, or PGP, for scrambling and unscrambling e-mail messages. It won a following among privacy rights advocates and human rights groups working overseas — and a three-year federal criminal investigation into whether he had violated export restrictions on cryptographic software. The case was dropped in 1996, and Mr. Zimmermann, who lives in Menlo Park, Calif., started PGP Inc. to sell his software commercially. Now he is again inviting government scrutiny. On Sunday, he released a free Windows software program, Zfone, that encrypts a computer-to-computer voice conversation so both parties can be confident that no one is listening in. It became available earlier this year to Macintosh and Linux users of the system known as voice-over-Internet protocol, or VoIP. What sets Zfone apart from comparable systems is that it does not require a web of computers to hold the keys, or long numbers, used in most encryption schemes. Instead, it performs the key exchange inside the digital voice channel while the call is being set up, so no third party has the keys. Zfone's introduction comes as reports continue to emerge about the government's electronic surveillance efforts. A lawsuit by the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a privacy rights group, contends that AT&T has given the National Security Agency real-time access to Internet communications. In the wake of 9/11, there were calls for the government to institute new barriers to cryptography, to avoid its use in communications by enemies of the United States. Easily accessible cryptography for Internet calling may intensify that debate. "I'm afraid it will put front and center an issue that had been resolved in the individual's favor in the 1990's," said James X. Dempsey, policy director for the Center for Democracy and Technology, a Washington-based public policy group. The Federal Communications Commission has begun adopting regulations that would force Internet service providers and VoIP companies to adopt the technology that permits law enforcement officials to monitor conventional telephone calls. But for now, at least, F.C.C. regulation exempts programs that operate directly between computers, not through a hub. "From the F.C.C.'s perspective you can't regulate point-to-point communications, which I think will let Phil off the hook," said Marc Rotenberg, director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center, an advocacy group in Washington. Zfone may face more of a challenge in Europe, where the British government is preparing to give the police the legal authority to compel both organizations and individuals to disclose encryption keys. But Mr. Zimmermann, 52, does not see those fearing government surveillance — or trying to evade it — as the primary market. The next phase of the Internet's spyware epidemic, he contends, will be software designed to eavesdrop on Internet telephone calls made by corporate users. "They will have entire digital jukeboxes of covertly acquired telephone conversations, and suddenly someone in Eastern Europe is going to be very wealthy," he said. While Mr. Zimmerman is giving away his software so far, his goal is to attract VoIP software and hardware developers to license his technology and embed it in their products. Zfone can automatically encrypt any call between users of freely available VoIP software programs like X-Lite, Gizmo or SJphone. It can be downloaded at www.philzimmermann.com. The system does not work with Skype, the VoIP system acquired by eBay, which uses its own encryption scheme. But at a conference last week in Cyprus, German officials said they had technology for intercepting and decrypting Skype phone calls, according to Anthony M. Rutkowski, vice president for regulatory affairs and standards for VeriSign, a company that offers security for Internet and phone operations. Mr. Zimmermann said he had not yet tested Zfone's compatibility with Vonage, another popular VoIP service. Mr. Zimmermann contends that the nation is better off with strong cryptography. Indeed, Zfone can be considered an asset, he said, because it allows people to have secret conversations without hiding their Internet protocol addresses, which could be traceable geographically. Those observed having a secured conversation could come under suspicion, of course. But for that reason, he argued, sophisticated criminals or terrorists are unlikely to use the technology. "I'm sympathetic to the needs of the intelligence community to catch the bad guys," he said. "I specifically protect the content the criminals want, while simultaneously not interfering with the traffic analysis that the N.S.A. is trying to do. You could make the case that I'm being socially responsible." http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/22/te...22privacy.html England further isolates itself UK Law Will Criminalise IT Pros, Say Experts Graeme Wearden and Tom Espiner IT and security professionals who make network monitoring tools publicly available or disclose details of unpatched vulnerabilities could be convicted under a proposed UK law, experts have warned. The Police and Justice Bill will update the UK's existing Computer Misuse Act (CMA), bringing in new powers to address the rise of organised cybercriminals and offences such as denial-of-service attacks. It was passed by the House of Commons earlier this month, and will be considered by the House Of Lords over the next couple of months. Leading figures in the UK technology sector believe that the bill, as it currently stands, would outlaw a range of innocent activities. Section 41 of the bill would amend the CMA to include a new offence of "making, supplying or obtaining articles for use in computer misuse offences". It reads: A person is guilty of an offence if he makes, adapts, supplies or offers to supply any article — (a) intending it to be used to commit, or to assist in the commission of, an offence under section 1 or 3 [of the Computer Misuse Act]; or (b) believing that it is likely to be so used. Dr Richard Clayton of Cambridge University believes that part (b), as currently laid out, would catch a wide range of IT tools and activities that are not meant to be used in hacking, but potentially could be. Clayton cited the Perl scripting language, created by Larry Wall in 1987, as an example of a useful technology that could fall foul of the law. "Perl is almost universally used on a daily basis to permit the Internet to function," said Clayton. "I doubt if there is a sysadmin on the planet who hasn't written a Perl program at some time or another. Equally, almost every hacker who commits an offence under section 1 or section 3 of the CMA will use Perl as part of their toolkit. Unless Larry is especially stupid, and there is very little evidence for that, he will form the opinion that hackers are likely to use his Perl system. Locking Larry up is surely not desirable." People who distribute networking vulnerability scanning tools such as nmap or Nessus could also be caught up in part (b), Clayton warned. "The effect will be that people will stop offering these tools on their sites. Why should the only place to fetch Perl and nmap be from hacker sites in Eastern Europe, where the risk is that they carry Trojans? This makes the Internet less safe," argued Clayton. Malcolm Hutty, regulation officer at the London Internet Exchange, shares Clayton's fears about the bill. He believes it would make people much more reluctant to make useful software tools available to the public. "We are concerned that the scope of [section 41 of] the bill is too broad, and could criminalise a lot of innocent people," said Hutty. He said organisations such as LINX have been urging the Home Office to have the bill altered. Some amendments were made following these lobbying efforts, but Hutty believes the government should have gone further. He also believes that section 41 could be interpreted as including the supply of information about security vulnerabilities, as that advice could be used to commit a criminal offence. "You could reveal details of a security flaw, and someone could hear that and decide that not everyone would be patched yet," said Hutty, adding that this could even include media outlets which reported on security flaws. The Home Office denies suggestions that the bill will criminalise systems administrators by outlawing software which could be used in cybercrime attacks. "There is a hacking amendment, but it doesn't criminalise those innocent of hacking attacks," said a Home Office spokeswoman. "[It] shifts the emphasis on to those intending to deliberately develop tools for criminal use." http://news.zdnet.co.uk/business/leg...9270045,00.htm Gonzales Says Prosecutions of Journalists Are Possible Adam Liptak The government has the legal authority to prosecute journalists for publishing classified information, Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales said yesterday. "There are some statutes on the book which, if you read the language carefully, would seem to indicate that that is a possibility," Mr. Gonzales said on the ABC News program "This Week." "That's a policy judgment by the Congress in passing that kind of legislation," he continued. "We have an obligation to enforce those laws. We have an obligation to ensure that our national security is protected." Asked whether he was open to the possibility that The New York Times should be prosecuted for its disclosures in December concerning a National Security Agency surveillance program, Mr. Gonzales said his department was trying to determine "the appropriate course of action in that particular case." "I'm not going to talk about it specifically," he said. "We have an obligation to enforce the law and to prosecute those who engage in criminal activity." Though he did not name the statutes that might allow such prosecutions, Mr. Gonzales was apparently referring to espionage laws that in some circumstances forbid the possession and publication of information concerning the national defense, government codes and "communications intelligence activities." Those laws are the basis of a pending case against two lobbyists, but they have never been used to prosecute journalists. Some legal scholars say that even if the plain language of the laws could be read to reach journalists, the laws were never intended to apply to the press. In any event, these scholars say, prosecuting reporters under the laws might violate the First Amendment. Mr. Gonzales said that the administration promoted and respected the right of the press that is protected under the First Amendment. "But it can't be the case that that right trumps over the right that Americans would like to see, the ability of the federal government to go after criminal activity," he said. "And so those two principles have to be accommodated." Mr. Gonzales sidestepped a question concerning whether the administration had been reviewing reporters' telephone records in an effort to identify their confidential sources. "To the extent that we engage in electronic surveillance or surveillance of content, as the president says, we don't engage in domestic-to-domestic surveillance without a court order," he said. "And obviously if, in fact, there is a basis under the Constitution to go to a federal judge and satisfy the constitutional standards of probable cause and we get a court order, that will be pursued." http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/22/wa...2gonzales.html Apple Sues iPod Rival Over Patents Apple Computer, maker of the iPod music player, is suing Creative Technology, raising the stakes in the legal dispute over competing devices. Apple claims Creative Labs, the U.S. division of Creative Technology, infringes four patents in its hand-held digital players. The suit was filed in a Wisconsin District Court on May 15, the same day Creative filed a lawsuit and a trade complaint against Apple. "Creative proactively held discussions with Apple in our efforts to explore amicable solutions," Phil O'Shaughnessy, a spokesman for Creative, said. "At no time during these discussions or at any other time did Apple mention to us the patents it raised in its lawsuit." Creative filed a complaint with the U.S. International Trade Commission seeking an order to block imports of the iPod, most of which are made in China. A lawsuit the company filed against Apple in District Court in San Francisco is likely to be put on hold while the trade complaint is heard. The iPod controls 77 percent of the U.S. market, compared with less than 10 percent for Creative. http://www.iht.com/articles/2006/05/...iness/ipod.php Can you spot the spot? Broadcasters Are Becoming Bigger Stage Parents To Brands Seeking Roles Stuart Elliott and Julie Bosman For decades, the broadcast television networks have urged advertisers to buy time during the commercial breaks in dramas, sitcoms, reality series and other programs. This week, as the broadcasters present their prime-time schedules for the 2006-07 season, they are working almost as hard to promote the opportunities inside their shows as outside them. Those opportunities come in the form of what is called branded entertainment or product integration. They include mentioning brands in lines of dialogue, placing products in scenes so they are visible to viewers, and giving advertisers roles in plots of shows, whether it is a desperate housewife showing off a Buick at a shopping mall or a would-be apprentice trying to sell a new flavor of Crest toothpaste. The goal of branded entertainment is to expose ads to viewers in ways that are more difficult to zip through or zap than traditional commercials. Devices like digital video recorders and iPods are making it easier than ever to avoid or ignore conventional sales pitches. Although product integration has been available for years, it is playing a larger role in the presentations the networks have been making during what is known as upfront week. The name derives from the fact that the broadcasters are promoting their lineups - and hoping to make deals with marketers - ahead of the autumn season. The networks that have so far devoted significant portions of their presentations to branded entertainment are My Network TV, a new venture of News Corp., and Univision Communications networks aimed at Hispanic consumers. "With commercials getting lost in the clutter, with viewers changing channels, this is another way to get your product out there," said Shari Anne Brill, vice president and programming director at Carat USA in New York, part of the Carat media agency owned by Aegis Group. "For the networks, it's an opportunity for them to have another revenue stream," Brill said, in addition to the sale of conventional commercial time. That is particularly important for broadcast networks, which unlike their cable counterparts do not derive revenue from subscriber fees. The debate over product integration has raged almost as long as the practice has been in vogue. Critics call it invasive and wonder whether the sponsors gain influence over the contents of the programs in which they appear. Marketers and agencies, for their part, say they try to be sensitive to viewer sensibilities and not step over the line into exploitation. If an advertiser does go overboard, "it can come across as assault and battery on the consumer," Brill said, adding that the goal is to avoid being "heavy-handed." The writers who create scripts for series, and their union, have been vocal in opposition to branded entertainment and stepped up the public outcry at a news conference Wednesday. Seven writers and producers, sponsored by the Writers Guild of America, West, appeared at the news conference at Le Parker Meridien hotel in Midtown Manhattan. Their intent was to put network executives and advertisers on notice about a trend they described as intrusive and creatively inhibiting. To make their point, the writers played video clips of what they deemed the more egregious examples, from reality shows like "Extreme Makeover: Home Edition" and scripted dramas like "7th Heaven." In one clip, an actor proposed marriage by inserting an engagement ring into the filling of an Oreo cookie. The writers did not make specific demands but said they wanted more involvement in the decision-making process for branded entertainment. Money is a factor, too. Although the president of the union chapter, Patric Verrone, said that "it's not just about compensation," many writers want a share of the revenue generated for the networks from product integration. That revenue can only rise if marketers take advantage of all the opportunities peddled to them in the upfront week. For instance, during the My Network TV presentation Tuesday, Bob Cesa, executive vice president for advertising sales, spoke about what he called "flexible branded integration, sponsor placement and virtual insertion" of product images. He showed a video clip demonstrating how brands like Apple, Cadillac, Cartier, Evian, Lexus and Nokia could be incorporated into scenes in episodes of his network's series. At the presentation Wednesday by Univision Communications, Bert Medina, senior vice president and operating manager for the TeleFutura network, discussed product integration in a new weeknight game show, "¿Qué Dice la Gente?" a Spanish-language version of "Family Feud," and "Objetivo Fama," a combination talent and reality series. Alina Falcón, executive vice president and operating manager for the Univision network, described what she called "even more exciting opportunities to link your brands" to shows on her network, which include "Belleza Latina," a combination beauty pageant and reality series; "Cantando por un Sueño," or "Singing for a Dream"; "Bailando por un Sueño," or "Dancing for a Dream"; and "Sábado Gigante," a venerable Saturday variety-game show. http://www.iht.com/articles/2006/05/...iness/adco.php Surfing Dishonestly To A Higher Test Score Jonathan D. Glater At the University of California at Los Angeles, a student loaded his class notes into a handheld e- mail device and tried to read them during an exam; a classmate turned him in. At the journalism school at San Jose State University in California, students tried to use spell checkers on their laptops when part of the exam was designed to test their ability to spell. And at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, after students photographed test questions with their cellphone cameras, transmitted them to classmates outside the exam room and got the answers back in text messages, the university put in place a new proctoring system. "If they'd spend as much time studying," said an exasperated Ron Yasbin, dean of the UNLV College of Sciences, "they'd all be A students." With their arsenal of electronic gadgets, students these days find it easier to cheat. College officials are struggling to outwit would-be cheaters this exam season with a range of strategies - cutting off Internet access from laptops, demanding the surrender of cellphones before tests or simply requiring that exams be taken the old-fashioned way, with pens and paper. Some students said they thought cheating these days was more a product of the mind-set, not the tools at hand. "Some people put a premium on where they're going to go in the future, and all they're thinking about is graduate school and the next step," said Lindsay Nicholas, a third-year student at UCLA. She added that pressure to succeed sometimes "makes people do things that they shouldn't do." In a survey of nearly 62,000 undergraduates on 96 U.S. campuses over the past four years, two-thirds of the students admitted to cheating. The survey was conducted by Don McCabe, a Rutgers professor who has studied academic misconduct and helped found the Center for Academic Integrity at Duke. Whatever the reasons for cheating, college officials say the battle against it is wearing them out. Though Brian Carlisle, associate dean of students at UCLA, said most students did not cheat, he spoke wearily about cases of academic dishonesty. He told of the student who loaded his notes onto the Sidekick portable e-mail device last autumn, students who have sought help from friends with such devices and students who have pre-programmed calculators with formulas. The use of iPods is also a concern, Carlisle added, pointing out that with a wireless earpiece, these would be hard to detect. The telltale iPod headphone wire proved the downfall of a Pepperdine University student a few years ago, after he had dictated his notes into the portable music player and tried to listen to them during an exam. "I have taught for 30 years and each year something new comes on the scene," Sonia Sorrell, the professor who caught the student, said in an e-mail message. At the Anderson School of Management at UCLA, the building's wireless hotspot is cut during finals to thwart Internet access. Richard Craig, a professor at the School of Journalism and Mass Communications at San Jose State, who caught students using spell check last year, said that for tests, he arranged the classroom desks so that the students faced away from him but he could see their desktop screens. "It was just a devilishly simple way to handle it," Craig said. In some classes at Butler University in Indianapolis, professors use software that allows them to observe the programs running on computers students are taking tests on, so they can make sure no one is seeking answers on the Internet. And some institutions even install cameras in examination rooms. To take a final exam last week, Alyssa Soares, a third-year law student at UCLA, had to switch on software that cut her laptop's Internet access, wireless capability and even the ability to read her own saved files. Her computer, effectively, became a glorified typewriter. Soares said she did not mind. "This is making sure everyone is on a level playing field," she said. http://www.iht.com/articles/2006/05/...ness/cheat.php US Government Restricts China PCs The US State Department says the 16,000 computers it bought from a Chinese firm with links to the Beijing government will not be used for classified work. Assistant Secretary of State Richard Griffin said the department would also alter its procurement process to ensure US information security was guaranteed. His comments came after Rep Frank Wolf expressed national security concerns. The company Lenovo insisted such concerns were unwarranted and said the computers posed no security risk. Last year, Lenovo - the world's number three PC maker - bought the IBM PC Division and moved its executive headquarters from China to the US. A Chinese government agency owns 28 percent of Lenovo, while IBM still has about a 13 percent stake in the company. 'Classified network' In a letter to Mr Wolf, Mr Griffin said government security experts had recommended the computers "be utilised on unclassified systems only". He said the government was committed to ensuring the purchase would not "compromise our information and communication channels". And he said the state department would change the way it buys its technology "in light of the changing ownership of IT equipment providers." His letter did not refer to Mr Wolf's specific concern that at least 900 of the computers were to be used "as part of the classified network deployed in the United States and around the world in embassies and consulates". Mr Wolf, Republican chairman of the committee that oversees the department's funds, told reporters that China's spying efforts were "frightening". It was "no secret that the US is a principal target of Chinese intelligence services", he said, adding: "No American government agency should want to purchase from them". 'No security risk' But Lenovo insisted the state department computers, which were made at former IBM facilities in North Carolina and Mexico, posed no security threat. "We are absolutely confident in the security of our manufacturing process," Jeff Carlisle, the firm's vice-president of government relations, said. "These computers do not present a risk to US security." He said the Chinese Academy of Sciences, an arm of the Chinese government, had a "minority interest" in the company and was not involved in its day-to-day operations. "We're not a state-owned enterprise," Mr Carlisle added. http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/h...as/4997288.stm Your Telco Owes You $1,000 This Damn Blog If your telephone company is one of the companies that decided to take financial compensation from the federal government in exchange for illegally proving your records to them it seems to me that they owe you $1,000. Now IANAL but this seems pretty damn clear cut to me. The Stored Wire and Electronic Communications and Transactional Records Access, Section 2703(c) outlines exactly five reasons that a phone company can disclose your records to the fed: a warrant a court order the customer’s consent for telemarketing enforcement administrative subpoena Keep in mind that the NSA does not have subpoena power and it is easy to see that not only is your federal government breaking the law by stripping you of your expectation of privacy in your papers and effects but that the Telcos are breaking the law by supplying this info to the Fed. Section 2707 of the Communications Act says that the phone company are liable for $1000 per individual violation of the Act and outlines a private right of action to any customer “aggrieved by any violation.” So there you go, a clear cut explanation of why your phone company ( unless you are lucky enough to be a Qwest customer ) owes you $1,000. If there is one thing that big corporations understand is profit and loss - I think handing out millions of thousand dollar checks will get their attention. http://www.thisdamnblog.com/your-tel...s-you-1000.php DIY Phone Club Channels PC Past Elizabeth Biddlecombe Matt Hamrick hates standard-issue mobile phones almost as much as he loves tinkering with them to make them better. The software security expert reckons he's spent around $3,000 over the past two years trying to get his calendar and e-mail to sync between his Apple computer and his phone. "The phones aren't getting any better," he says. "I've been looking for a phone that would meet my requirements for 10 years now." That quest gained new momentum this month when the Silicon Valley Homebrew Mobile Phone Club, a group Hamrick co-founded, attracted about 40 people to its first meeting. The fledgling organization owes its name and inspiration to the famous Homebrew Computer Club of the 1970s, which many historians now credit with innovations that paved the way for the personal computing revolution. Members hope something equally climactic will arise from their new association. Hamrick admits that some of his requirements are advanced. For instance, he would like to be able to access more than just one of his many different e-mail accounts. Other things he'd like: a stopwatch that doesn't stop when the phone goes into power-save mode, voicemails delivered to his phone, a broader choice of messaging systems than just AOL's Instant Messenger. In short, Hamrick wants his phone to be even more of a computer than it is now. He wants a platform that's open enough to run applications he writes himself. But he also sees some basic problems that need fixing. Hamrick and others feel that innovation is being locked away by the established phone manufacturers in much the same way that computer development was monopolized by IBM 30 years ago. "The barrier for entry for people just testing out new ideas is pretty high," says Hamrick. It is often prohibitively expensive for independent developers to get their hands on trial gear. In addition, while Hamrick bears manufacturers no grudge, he says they "have no great motivation to open up the field to more-capable devices." This and similar complaints have led some people to start making their own mobiles, and others to predict that operators might even start catering to the DIY phone set (see Larry Cohen's open phone proposal). But Tamara Colby, a product marketer at a Silicon Valley startup, says the new club is "not about bashing the handset makers" but taking advantage of the convergence of cellular and internet protocol networks. "It's about sharing ideas and thinking about what we can do with phones that they don't already do. The phone is going through a complete metamorphosis," she says. Lee Felsenstein, co-founder of The Fonly Institute and onetime moderator of the Homebrew Computer Club, points out that "the parallels are not exact" between the clubs. Most people attending the original club did not have access to computers. Mobile phones are ubiquitous today. But he adds that the Homebrew Computer Club was about "dealing with forbidden knowledge." (For a video clip about the club click here.) The degree of information sharing was a hallmark of the club and paved the way for today's open-source movement. "That was, in effect, our innovation," says Felsenstein. That ethic is a key tenet of the mobile phone club. At the inaugural meeting, organizer Hamrick talked about his own SqueakyMoPho development project. Craig Hughes, CTO at gumstix, spoke on his company's single-board computers that can be used for making handsets. Shuman Zhai, a research staff member at IBM's Almaden Lab, talked about his new ShapeWriter input method. Zhai said that these innovators can think in new ways about mobile phones since they are unfettered by the legacy issues that embroil established manufacturers. "I wouldn't be surprised if something quite dramatic could be done," he says. Whether the innovators go on to set up new companies or sell their ideas to existing ones is their choice, according to Hamrick. He even theorizes that there could be a secondary market for handset customization on top of what is already offered by the operators and handset makers. The next meeting is planned for June. Hamrick hopes that those people who can't attend in person will use the website to find like-minded types and set up similar clubs elsewhere. That's one trick the original homebrewers couldn't do. http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,70929-0.html MIT Plans To Convert Cell Phone Users Into Podcasters Robyn Peterson A new research project at MIT's Media Lab aims to turn every cell phone or PDA carrying member of the public into a podcaster, and every mobile device into a virtual podcasting studio. The first reportedly working prototype was built on a Motorola A1000 cell phone, and is currently being tested in Spain as part of the Electronic Lens project. A live demo of the new project, which has been dubbed "RadioActive," should be available soon. According to Judith Donath, director of the Sociable Media Group at MIT, the inspiration arose out of a complaint from one of her students. "She received [a lot of] phone calls from people who didn't really have anything to say, but were bored," Donath said. "They were walking or driving, so they took out their phone and called their friends looking for entertainment." By and large, more people are turning to their mobile devices for entertainment, says Donath, but rather than call, and potentially annoy, a friend, it would be ideal to "conveniently drop into an [ongoing] discussion and drop out when you're done." The RadioActive project, which Donath created with student Aaron Zinman, defines a large-scale asynchronous audio messaging system, or mobile audio forum. In this system, voice messages, which are short audio sound bytes, are exchanged between groups of users via mobile devices, like cell phones or PDAs, as a method of "discussion-on-demand." The messages are then collected in threads similar to how a common Internet discussion forum, like discuss.pcmag.com or even Slashdot, organizes text posts. Each message contains a subject, body, and author, as well as other metadata, and can range the spectrum from quick blurbs to full-length podcasts. Since it can be time consuming to listen to long threads of voice messages as compared to scanning text in a discussion forum, community moderation has been incorporated into the system. "If lots of people say [a message] is not interesting, it's important that it fade into the background," Donath explained. Just like an email application or an RSS reader, RadioActive supplies its users with an inbox, which displays the first message of discussion threads that have been subscribed to or are contextually relevant. For instance, location may be one factor the system takes into account when determining contextual relevance. In this scenario, threads relating to New York City restaurants may appear in the inbox as the user walks around Manhattan. The user can then navigate through messages in an active manner, by using the graphical interface (GUI) with a keyboard or voice command, or in a passive manner, in the so-called "Radio" mode. In the GUI, visual cues are displayed that allow the user to quickly determine interest level, size, age, and whether or not the message has been heard. The user can then play messages in a specific thread or jump between threads. In Radio mode, the system plays messages sequentially so that the user can concentrate on other tasks, like driving. http://www.pcmag.com/print_article2/...=178692,00.asp MIT 'Big Brother' Project Studies Origins of Language Bary Alyssa Johnson In a bid to understand the underlying processes of early cognitive development in children, a number of big names in the IT storage arena have agreed to donate their time, expertise, and a jointly built peta-byte (1 million gigabyte) disk storage system to aid MIT in its work on the Human Speechome Project. "This is a research project about how children acquire language," said Alexandra Kahn, spokesperson for MIT Media Lab. "The storage element comes in because there's so much data being amassed in this project that new approaches to data storage, management, and mining are being developed." The Human Speechome Project is being run by MIT Media Lab's Associate Professor Deb Roy, head of the Cognitive Machines research group. The National Science Foundation provided some funding for the project, and Bell Microproducts, Seagate Technology, Marvell, and Zetera have donated a colossal high-tech storage system. "The project has three components: research into early childhood; data visualization and mining tools; high-performance computing and storage infrastructure to analyze data," said Frank Moss, director of MIT's Media Lab, during a recent Webcast. "It's a great marriage between industry and the academic world." The project, which commenced in mid-2005 and is slated to run until 2008, will record and analyze approximately 400,000 hours of audio and video data in order to understand how humans acquire language in the context of their primary social setting. To accomplish this, Roy has volunteered his own home and family as research subjects; he has installed a surveillance system of sorts in his home to study his 9-month-old son's educational undertakings. Roy has installed 11 omni-directional video cameras and 14 ceiling-mounted microphones to capture all activity that goes on in his home. The audio and video data are stored temporarily in Roy's basement before being transferred to the media lab for thorough analyses. Roy's team has been working to develop speech- and video-processing algorithms to analyze and identify behavioral communication patterns found in the data. "Equally exciting are the 'spin-off' opportunities that could result from this research," Moss said in a prepared statement. "The innovative tools that are being developed for storing and mining...speech and video data offer enormous potential for breaking open new business opportunities in a broad range of industries--from security to Internet commerce." To take advantage of such opportunities, Bell Microproducts, Seagate, Marvell, and Zetera have collaborated to create and donate a peta-byte disk storage system that MIT will use for the project. MIT identified a number of core requirements for the storage system including scalability in excess of 1 terabyte, 100-percent data redundancy, file access by computers using multiple operating systems, virtualized storage fabric, and more. "What we're seeing here is an indication of the future," Moss said during the Webcast. "We have close collaboration on a large-scale project of global significance between the academic and industrial world. From an industrial perspective there are more questions, issues, and innovations to be dealt with than any single company can handle." Zetera has contributed its Z-SAN technology as the core architecture for MIT's storage system. Zetera's Z-SAN architecture uses Internetworking Protocol (IP) as the storage fabric and was designed to enable Storage-over-IP (SoIP). Zetera says it expects SoIP to transform the storage industry similar to how VoiP has changed the field of telecommunications. Bell Microproduct's Hammer Storage division has integrated its Z-Rack Storage enclosures to up the ante in terms of performance using Ethernet switches. Marvell has offered Ethernet-based switching technology via its Orion Processor and Prestera edge and core XGE Ethernet switches. Lastly, Seagate has contributed SATA hard disk drives. "DVDs have been considered a high-capacity storage drive until now," Moss said. "The storage array for the Speechome Project will hold the equivalent of 200,000 DVDs which is more feature films than Hollywood has filmed since 1895." The IT infrastructure for MIT's Speechome Project will include 3,000+ SATA drives, 300 Z-Rack storage enclosures, 100 10G/GbE switches and 400 blade processors upon completion. Duplicate copies of all audio and video feed will protect against potential data loss. "This project is about storage intensiveness," said David Reinsel, program director at IDC. "It's not about consumers needing peta-bytes of storage, but it is indicative of the types of projects that can be done by research labs like MIT, where we are trying to capture digitally a ton of information from a ton of different sources and process that to look for meaningful trends and results." http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,1895,1963240,00.asp Rootkit Trojans Alert Raised for MS Word Zero-Day Attack Ryan Naraine A zero-day flaw in the ubiquitous Microsoft Word software program is being used in an active exploit by sophisticated hackers in China and Taiwan, according to warnings from anti-virus researchers. Symantec's DeepSight Threat Analyst Team has escalated its ThreatCon level after confirming the unpatched vulnerability is being used "against select targets." The exploit arrives as an ordinary Microsoft Word document attachment to an e-mail. However, when the document is launched by the user the vulnerability is triggered to drop a backdoor with rootkit features to mask itself from anti-virus scanners. The SANS ISC (Internet Storm Center) said in a diary entry that it received reports of the exploit from an unnamed organization that was targeted. "The e-mail was written to look like an internal e-mail, including signature. It was addressed by name to the intended victim and not detected by the anti-virus software," said Chris Carboni, an ISC incident handler tracking the attack. When the .doc attachment is opened, it exploits a previously unknown vulnerability in Microsoft Word and infects a fully patched Windows system. The exploit functioned as a dropper, extracting and launching a Trojan that immediately overwrites the original Word document with a "clean," uninfected copy. "As a result of the exploit, Word crashes, informs the user of a problem, and offers to attempt to re-open the file. If the user agrees, the new 'clean' file is opened without incident," the ISC explained. Microsoft has been notified and is working with security researchers to investigate the bug. Roger Thompson, chief technical officer at Atlanta-based Exploit Prevention Labs, said the attack "feels like espionage, perhaps industrial." After looking at a sample of the malware code, Thompson said the backdoor is programmed to call back to a server in China to report information about what the infected system looks like. In addition to providing reconnaissance, the backdoor can connect to specified addresses to receive commands from the malicious attacker. Finnish anti-virus vendor F-Secure said a successful exploit allows the attacker to create, read, write, delete and search for files and directories; access and modify the Registry; manipulate services; start and kill processes; take screenshots; enumerate open windows; create its own application window; and lock, restart or shut down Windows. The ISC said the attack was traced to the Far East, with domains and IP addresses associated with the Trojan registered in China and Taiwan. "The [attack] e-mails received originated from a server in that region. The attackers appear to be aware that they have been 'outed,' and have been routinely changing the IP address associated with the URL above," the Storm Center said. Symantec's DeepSight team said the exploit successfully executes shellcode when it is processed by Microsoft Word 2003. The malicious file caused Microsoft Word 2000 to crash, but shellcode execution did not occur. As a temporary mitigation method, Symantec is recommending that Microsoft Word document e-mail attachments be blocked at the network perimeter. "Furthermore, extreme caution should be exercised while processing Microsoft Word attachments received as an unexpected e-mail Attachment," company officials said. http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1895,1965042,00.asp For Tiny Screens, Some Big Dreams Lorne Manly IN a nondescript office park, hard by a freeway and other markers of suburbia like Circuit City and Trader Joe's, a band of creative souls is working on another staple of the American experience: new forms of entertainment for people to fill the few remaining gaps in their media-oversaturated days. Digital Chocolate is this company's name, and the business focuses solely on developing games and applications for mobile phones. Although it has some trappings of a Silicon Valley start-up, circa 1999 — one recent morning a 20-something employee rolled up for work here on a skateboard — Digital Chocolate differs in one significant way. Its founder and chief executive, Trip Hawkins, is not a typical bootstrapping young entrepreneur. Mr. Hawkins, 52, was employee No. 68 at Apple Computer before he left that company in 1982 to start Electronic Arts, now the pre-eminent video game maker. Never shy about expressing his opinions, Mr. Hawkins, not surprisingly, brandishes a theory about programming for the mobile phone. "Content is just a means to an end, so there's something to talk about," he said. In other words, social connection trumps all. Accordingly, Digital Chocolate's creations appear decidedly low-tech, the easiest-to-use games possible without fancy graphics or elaborate storytelling. And its newest games and entertainments are designed to foster conversation, flirting and in the case of M.L.S.N. Sports Picks (for Mobile League Sports Network), a little friendly trash talking. In this interactive sports game show, which costs $2.99 a month, people can compete against friends by predicting outcomes of sporting events, like how many points Tim Duncan of the San Antonio Spurs will score in his next game. The system keeps track of the standings for bragging rights. That resulting connection, that social interaction, can be much more lucrative than costly, classic content, in Mr. Hawkins's estimation. The first big mobile hit will be a completely original creation, he contends. "If you're going to really establish something as a new medium, you can't do that with content that is derivative and a second-class version of another medium," Mr. Hawkins said. Needless to say, plenty of entertainment and media companies do not share that pointed opinion. From Hollywood to the Bristol, Conn., campus of ESPN, companies are spending hundreds of millions of dollars to adapt their current brands in television, movies, games and news and information to the tiny screens of mobile phones, and creating new programming. The creative team behind "Lost" on ABC plans to produce video diary segments, two to three minutes long, for cellphones. CBS is pushing ahead with a made-for-mobile soap opera. Last week, HBO's "Entourage" began shooting mini mobile episodes focusing on the exploits of two of its characters, Turtle and Johnny Drama. And NBC is creating casual games based on the fractured, deadpan humor of "The Office"; they will be available this summer. Ultimately, whoever guesses correctly the kind of bite-sized, time-wasting distractions people want to snack on over their phones could be showered with a bonanza of profits, at a time when technology is squeezing the traditional businesses of media and entertainment companies. Still unclear, however, is how eager Americans will be for all this mobile phone content and how much they will want to spend on top of already-hefty monthly cellphone bills. "Consumers right now are not really looking at the phone as more than a way to communicate," said Linda Barrabee, an analyst at the Yankee Group, a research firm based in Boston. In the United States, analysts estimate that only about five million people own third-generation, or 3G, phones, the ones designed to play decent-quality video and music. Only about two million have signed up for data and video packages, which cost anywhere from $10 to $25 a month. The Yankee Group estimates that pure mobile entertainment — games, music and video — accounted for about $500 million last year, less than 5 percent the wireless carriers' data revenue. And the data revenue represented a small fraction of voice revenue. While people are watching video on their phones in increasing numbers, another researcher, eMarketer, predicts that even by 2009, fewer than 10 million subscribers will be willing to pay for premium services. STUDYING such numbers convinced Mr. Hawkins to tailor his games to a more lucrative piece of the mobile phone business. (He started Digital Chocolate in 2003 with an investment of $8.3 million from two venture capital firms as well as Robert W. Pittman, the former chief operating officer of AOL Time Warner; an additional $13 million, from other investors, came in 2004.) "Because it's when you're mobile, you're the most socially needy and vulnerable and insecure, and that's when the one platform you have is the mobile, wireless platform," Mr. Hawkins said. Digital Chocolate's summer release, The Hook-Up: Ava Flirting, allows players to create an avatar, an image representing the user in a virtual reality, and interact with others' avatars, in a PG-13 setting. People willing to spend $2.99 a month can decide everything from their avatar's hair color to shoe choice and then socialize in settings ranging from a hip nightclub to a library. Then they can compare notes with friends about their adventures. There is also the potential, if the two avatars hit it off and are willing, to exchange text messages and perhaps meet in real life. While he says he believes that this kind of original material will be the most successful form of mobile programming, Mr. Hawkins concedes that conventional media offerings — movies, music and games — will also find a market on cellphones, just not a particularly valuable one. "Of course you're going to use the devices and the network for a variety of things," he said. "But it's not going to be your favorite way to watch a TV show or watch a movie or listen to high-fidelity music, or play an immersive game. There are bigger screens, there are bigger boxes, with more power electronics in them, that are in environments that are more conducive to a high-fidelity experience." Entertainment and video game companies, he added, "have big businesses they need to protect, so it's just a natural tendency to play defense." Mr. Hawkins's disdain of established entertainment company behavior, however, may be in part recognition of his competitive situation. He finds himself up against bigger companies like Electronic Arts, which has solidified its lead in the mobile game marketplace through mobile versions of hits like Madden NFL and Need for Speed and the $680 million acquisition last year of Jamdat Mobile, home to Tetris. He has also been wrong before. His early 1990's foray into digital video console and games development, 3DO, floundered, and eventually filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in 2003. Digital Chocolate does not disclose revenues, but it has said it expects to be profitable in the next year. At traditional media conglomerates, some early financial figures on mobile-content revenue, though small, cheer top executives. In a conference call last month with analysts, Leslie Moonves, chief executive of the CBS Corporation, said the company's deal with Verizon Wireless to show CBS material — including video clips of "Survivor" and "The Late Show With David Letterman" — on its VCast network will bring in about $3 million in subscription revenue this year. Peter F. Chernin, president and chief operating officer of the News Corporation, said at a Milken Institute conference last month that the short-form series spun off from the Fox series "24" was profitable thanks to payments from wireless carriers around the world. (He declined to disclose the profits.) And for its newest miniaturized series, "Prison Break: Proof of Innocence," Fox sold a sponsorship and product integration package to Toyota. There is some common ground between wildcatters like Mr. Hawkins and Fortune 500 executives in trying to crack the elusive code for moneymaking products in this new medium. In theory, everyone agrees that merely plunking down reformatted programming from other media, like television, does not work because that does not make the most of the mobile phone's particular attributes, like text messaging. BUT the big entertainment and game companies are loath to toss away the brand names in which they've invested so heavily just to start fresh in a new medium. Van Toffler, president of MTV Networks Music/Logo Group, said that in the short term, with an audience unfamiliar with what is possible on a phone, well-known brands can cut through the clutter of games, ring tones, wallpaper and other cellphone accessories. More people will gravitate toward outtakes from "Punk'd," the MTV show in which the actor Ashton Kutcher plays pranks on unsuspecting victims, than will embrace a made-for-mobile program like the new "Dingo Ate My Video," in which odd-looking puppets dissect music videos with loving derision. Salil Dalvi, vice president for digital media/wireless at NBC Universal, frames the issue a bit more bluntly. "Why would we throw away the huge brand equity from 'Access Hollywood?' " he said. As with many early efforts in a burgeoning medium, the first mobile shows and games borrow more from the past than truly inhabit their new homes. And the creative quality can sometimes be questionable. The early reviews of Fox's miniaturized series, for which the company trademarked the term "mobisode," have not been particularly strong. The biggest knock on "24: Conspiracy" was the lack of involvement of the show's writers and cast. Fox executives, however, point proudly to an Emmy nomination in the new category of broadband and mobile content, and are pleased with the new "Prison Break" episodes made for cellphones. But the latest batch of "24" mobile content is merely regular TV episodes boiled down to two-minute bite-sized chunks. The "24" experience of creating second-tier material for cellphones weighed on the thinking of Carlton Cuse and Damon Lindelof, the executive producers of "Lost," as executives at ABC and its parent, the Walt Disney Company, urged them to venture into wireless storytelling. "Conceptually for us, the key was it had to be up to the quality standards of the series, and that required me and Damon to oversee it," Mr. Cuse said. The executive producers insisted on using their cast members. ABC, after much wrangling, hammered out deals with the various Hollywood unions, including the Screen Actors Guild. "For us, putting two strange, non-S.A.G. people on the island isn't 'Lost,' " he said. "We don't want people to feel cheated or ripped off." The point of departure for their cellphone series, called "The Lost Diaries," will be the discovery of a video camera. That will allow Mr. Cuse and Mr. Lindelof — who plan to write the two- to three-minute episodes — to use the tiny screens of cellphones to provide more intimate portraits. "It allows you to get deeper into the character, like a diary entry allows you to see deeper into someone's life," Mr. Cuse said. This kind of experimentation has begun to yield some insights into what kinds of content appeal to consumers and how that programming should be delivered. Ryan Hughes, director of content and programming at Verizon Wireless, said that comedy and entertainment shorts do much better than news clips. Jeremy Laws, a senior vice president of the Universal Studios Consumer Products Group who runs its mobile entertainment unit, said games with clear identities, like its Battlestar Galactica single-shooter game and offshoots of the "Fast and Furious" series, were doing well. Eric Kessler, president of sales and marketing at HBO, said it discovered that subscribers to HBO Mobile on Cingular Wireless (paying $4.95 a month) wanted recaps of its Sunday night original television series — immediately. The results were five-minute versions of "The Sopranos" and "Big Love." made available the next day. AT the media company that is arguably embracing the mobile world most aggressively — ESPN — there appears to be no limit to the amount of personalized information that consumers demand. It has made a big bet on Mobile ESPN, deciding to sell a special phone under its own brand name and to handle all the customer support. For monthly fees ranging from $39.99 to $199.99, subscribers can get game updates, breaking news and other material. To watch video and to get news alerts, they have to pay an additional $24.99 a month. Even though the editors and product managers understood that the first buyers for this phone would be die-hard sports fans, "I don't think we realized how voracious sports fans are," especially those in fantasy sports leagues, said J. Kieren Portley, product realization manager for Mobile ESPN. As Mr. Portley, the Mobile ESPN editor Anthony Mormile and others adapt material to the phone, they have learned some tricks of the trade. Wide-angle shots are to be avoided, while slow-motion clips are to be welcomed. The sweet spot for video clips appears to be between 45 and 75 seconds. Short clips of confrontational conversations, like the big finish on the talk show "Pardon the Interruption," are popular, and the network's hosts and guests can satiate users' hunger by providing punchy, informal commentary that they do not have time to deliver on the air. Just how lucrative ESPN and other companies' mobile efforts will be remains murky. In a conference call earlier this month, Tom Staggs, Disney's chief financial officer, told analysts that the ESPN phone had not quite performed to financial expectations, but he expected lower pricing and new marketing to remedy that. All content providers face an unclear business model, with subscriptions, à la carte sales and ad-supported free models jockeying for position. They also have to deal with carriers who have different technical specifications and provide, in effect, the world's smallest retail mall because of the tiny nature of their phones' screens. And they must figure out the role that user-generated content will play in the mix. "Most content providers get it," said John R. Burbank, vice president for marketing at Cingular Wireless, referring to their understanding that they must create compelling new content. "But the fact is, no one knows what 'it' is. "We don't know the secret formula, and it's not going to be something that will be divined by sitting in a room and thinking about it." http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/21/bu...rtner=homepage Never Mind the Clip-On Ties, Geek Squad Can Fix Your PC Damon Darlin Robert Stephens, the founder of the Geek Squad, has made a very good living solving the problems of technophobes and people who thought they were technically adept. So it may have seemed a bit odd to interview him at the recent Maker Faire in San Mateo, Calif., a weekend festival of technology tinkerers who play polo on Segways or build steam-engine robots and pool heaters out of barbecue grills. These people, after all, are ardent do-it-yourselfers, people who derive real joy from never ever having to hire help. "The do-it-yourself crowd is a dying breed," Mr. Stephens said as blasts from a nearby flamethrower mounted on an old fire truck periodically punctuated the conversation. He wasn't being nasty, because his technicians were at the ready to support the fair exhibitors just in case. He made that statement because it explains why the company he founded as a college student in 1994 has grown and grown. When he sold the Geek Squad to Best Buy in 2002, his computer repair company had 60 employees, or agents. Today, it has 12,000 men and women dressed in black pants, white shirts, a black clip-on tie and white socks who arrive at customers' homes in black and white Volkswagen Beetles. The conversation with Mr. Stephens, who is chief inspector of the Geek Squad for Best Buy, helps to explain the success and, indeed, the proliferation of services that do what most Americans are unwilling to do themselves. It is not confined to oil changes, maid service or hiring a gardener or handyman. Almost every time you buy electronics you are offered a service contract either by the manufacturer or the retailer. Beyond service contracts, though, consumers need some insight into how to be smarter about deciding when to call for help. It all boils down to the classic choice between time and money. Sure, one can point to another giant of retailing, Home Depot, and argue that there is better evidence that the do-it-yourself trend is strong. Mr. Stephens has economics on his side. Economists say people who call in a technician, even one who will charge, as the Geek Squad does, $159 to install a wireless network or $229 to wipe out a computer virus, can be acting rationally. These tasks may not be worth your time. Indeed, Home Depot has hedged its bets and is increasingly marketing its installation services for contractors to hang your kitchen cabinets or roof your garage. Economists say industrialized societies are spending less on the basics of life — food, clothing and shelter — and more on leisure pursuits. Indeed, Robert Fogel, the Nobel-winning economics professor from the University of Chicago, has gone so far as to predict that by 2040 it will take the average American household only 300 hours of work a year to supply its basic needs. As leisure time becomes more valued, Americans are loath to give it up. We spend money to get more of it. How much we are willing to spend depends on what we make as well as a more intuitive process of how we measure what our leisure time is worth. The results from two online calculators that determine what your time is worth may surprise you. Try http://hughchou.org/calc/realwage.php or http://moneycentral.msn.com/investor..._time/main.asp. First, your hourly rate may be lower than you think. For instance, someone making $70,000 a year, but who puts in 50 hours a week and commutes an hour each way, may discover the hourly rate is not $33, but about half that. So does that mean you hire a handyman only when he costs less than $16 an hour? It's more complicated than that. With only about 12 hours of true leisure time a day, each precious hour is bought with more than 5 hours of work. According to the calculator, each hour of spare time would then be worth about $85. How an economist measures the value of leisure time is inexact because do-it-yourselfers sometimes have a stronger motivation than saving money. They enjoy the process. Because seeking joy is less understood than seeking money, economists are still struggling to decide whether growing tomatoes or making drapes is rational. Putting a little joy into repair work is what motivated Mr. Stephens. "Computers were the best thing that happened to my generation," said Mr. Stephens, 37. As a student at the University of Minnesota in the early 1990's, Mr. Stephens said he didn't have a lot of money. "So I started fixing things. I saw people buying computers, so that's why I went into tech support." He had yearned to do something glamorous until he had an insight: "The world is dominated by plumbers and drywall contractors — the boring businesses," he said. "What if a creative person went into a boring business?" By age 24, he had created the Geek Squad. "The best thing that happened to me was that I had no money," he said. It forced him to be creative. The uniform, which pokes fun at the image of the socially awkward tech-proficient person, was a way to establish a brand and concept that would be harder for others to copy. "I wanted it to look low-tech, like the guy at the service station, Ernie, who you knew all your life." The flat fee for services, rather than an hourly rate, was an effort to avoid the expense of paperwork and monitoring the staff for fraud. Mr. Stephens sees the world of service moving toward flat fees. "We are a flat-rate society because people are willing to pay for simplification," he said. It is easier for consumers to understand and they are less likely to feel cheated, he said. "People hate the hourly rate. They hated it when it applied to cellphones and Internet service." Not all on-call technicians work that way. Rescuecom, a franchise of computer technicians with 100 offices nationwide, charges hourly rates between $88 for an appointment and $250 for an emergency call. "Support is in an abysmal state," said David A. Milman, the chief executive and founder. "You have manufacturers slicing and dicing the price of computers. There is no way they can afford to provide free support." Both Dell and Hewlett-Packard, the top PC sellers, provide enhanced customer support for a fee. Dell, for instance, will walk you through setting up a home network for $99. Mr. Milman said he thought consumers ought to make the decision to seek professional help not on the value of their time, but on the value of the data that is on their computer. The Geek Squad divides the world into three distinct sets of consumers. One is, of course, the do-it-yourselfers. Another is the "do it for me" crowd, those who have made the calculation that they have better use of their time. And the third set, which Mr. Stephens calls the "I thought I could do myselfers," holds some unrecognized potential. This is the group that starts out calling customer service when faced with a technical stumbling block, only to find themselves sitting on the phone, immobile, for several hours as the problem is lobbed from one call center employee to another. After that, he said, they are more willing to consider an alternative. "They've sat on the phone one time too many," Mr. Stephens said. Many of the hardware makers offer service contracts, because they are quite lucrative. But they are lucrative only if they can avoid sending someone to your home to fix the problem. They are designed so you end up paying extra — with your time. That's not to say that a flat-fee service isn't also designed to help you part with your money. Mr. Stephens the Geek Squad, as part of Best Buy, turning into consultants who advise Best Buy customers on products before buying. He said that's going to become more important as Americans try to figure out how to expand home networks to link the television, PC, stereo and storage devices. "You'll see Best Buy pushing installation services," he said. "For me, service is nothing but a profit center." And what if, by some miracle, technology becomes easier to use? No worries, he said. "The easier computers got, the more they needed us when they crash." That's because people did more things with their computers and sought help to do even more. "Sure you can do it yourself, but it is a lot like changing your oil," he said. "Why would you?" http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/20/te...y/20money.html It's Here; It's There; It's Spyware Dan Mitchell FOR all the improvements in computer security, using the Internet is growing only more dangerous — both at home and at work. The annual Web@Work survey, conducted by Harris Interactive for the security firm Websense, found that the number of companies reporting spyware infestations had jumped 50 percent in the last year alone, and now nearly 92 percent of companies report that they have found spyware on their networks (websense.com). Spyware is a somewhat loose term, and can mean anything from often innocuous Web cookies to Trojan programs that can hijack a computer. But more dangerous varieties of spyware are on the rise, said Michael Newman, a vice president at Websense. He told John Gordon of "Future Tense" on American Public Media (futuretense.publicradio.org) that information technology managers were increasingly finding keylogging software on their systems. This "particularly malicious" type of spyware detects every keystroke made on a computer and can pick up passwords and other sensitive information, Mr. Newman said. Pornography sites are among the most dangerous, with many of them replete with pop-up ads and spyware. The good news is that the number of employees reported to have visited a porn site at work dropped to 12 percent from 17 percent the last year. Of those, 95 percent said their visits to porn sites were "accidental." Whoops! Meanwhile, SiteAdvisor, the Web safety service recently acquired by the security firm McAfee, reported this week that search engines offered little protection from dangerous sites (siteadvisor.com). This includes paid and unpaid search results. In fact, SiteAdvisor found, sponsored results on average contain two to four times the number of malicious sites as do regular results. Some of the most popular kinds of searches lead Internet users to dangerous sites, SiteAdvisor reported. Often, the sites offer downloads like file-sharing software and screensavers that contain malicious programs. Up to 72 percent of the results from keywords like "Bearshare" or "screensaver" lead to sites that pose a risk. http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/20/te.../20online.html This Knee Doesn't Jerk at Every Deal Ken Belson Qwest Communications, the smallest of the four big Bell phone companies, has been largely out of the spotlight in the year since it lost a bidding war for MCI to Verizon Communications and settled government investigations into accounting issues. Yet Richard C. Notebaert, Qwest's chief executive, has been anything but idle. He has cut costs and debt, added broadband and wireless customers and, in the first quarter, turned a profit without relying on one-time gains. While Mr. Notebaert has not gone after anything the size of MCI, Qwest has sought smaller, complementary targets, including OnFiber Communications, which provides high-speed data connections for companies and the government. Qwest also made headlines last week when its former chief executive, Joseph P. Nacchio, said that he denied a government request in 2001 to hand over customer records. That came after USA Today reported that AT&T, Verizon and BellSouth had cooperated. The paper also said that Mr. Notebaert continued Mr. Nacchio's policy after he took over for him in 2002. Mr. Notebaert will not comment on national security issues. But, in an interview last week, he did discuss other challenges facing Qwest. Following are excerpts: Q. You said on your most recent earnings call that Qwest had turned a corner. What corner? A. We don't talk about turning the corner because I don't think you ever do. But we had a number of milestones. For example, revenue in 2002 was declining at nearly 8 percent and now we're positive. We've had negative cash flow. Last year we did $904 million of cash flow adjusted and this year we'll do $450 million to $600 million more. Then getting all that litigation with the government squared away. And now, to hit profitability, without any adjustments, that feels very good to everybody. Q. There's been consolidation in the industry, but Qwest has not really found a partner in the big dance. Does Qwest need to do a deal? A. We have two filters that we run everything through. Whether you're a buyer or a seller, you run it through the same filter. What is the strategic complement of what you're going to do? And then, secondly, what's your price point? We are constantly looking at all the companies that you would think of and some you probably are not. For example, a systems integrator or hosting companies as well as traditional people in the communications business. We're very, very, very disciplined. We have lots of organic growth opportunity just doing what we do. So we don't have to knee- jerk into anything. Q. Might you be more of an acquisition target? A. If I looked at it as a consultant or an adviser, I would look at Qwest today and say most of the things that made me uncomfortable before are gone. Again, the government — at every level we're O.K. The debt load's down, profitability's up. Everything's squared away and there's no threat of bankruptcy, which you might have thought about a few years ago. And the company has solid performance characteristics. And it's throwing off good cash. It's profitable. And it's got a wonderful group of employees. So I don't think we're unattractive. Q. On the wireless side, you resell Sprint. A huge portion of the profits at Verizon come from Verizon Wireless. Would it make sense to own your own wireless business? A. Well, it doesn't matter. We don't. You play the hand you're dealt. Q. There are midtier wireless operators that are increasingly national. A. There's a company like U.S. Cellular that's outstanding. To go out and buy them would be challenging to say the least. Q. You resell DirecTV, but given what AT&T and Verizon are doing with television and the enormous capital that involves, do you see Qwest going down that road? A. You still have to push high bandwidth out to the customer. The key is to do it in a very disciplined way so that your return on invested capital is there. About 35 percent of our capital investment this year will be bandwidth improvements. Q. Wall Street compares you with Verizon and AT&T, which have video projects. Do you think you're viewed negatively because you don't? A. There is nothing wrong with being a fast follower. In fact, there are a lot of advantages to being a fast follower versus the bleeding edge. Instead of generic 2.0, I'll be at 2.5. http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/20/te...interview.html Pixar's 'Cars' Got Its Kicks on Route 66 Phil Patton THE cars of "Cars," the animated Pixar film that opens nationally on June 9, were designed on Route 66. But not entirely — they were also designed at Pixar's headquarters in Emeryville, Calif., where 800 animators and other dreamers work on 3,000 computers inside a former fruit processing plant. But to hear Michael Wallis, a historian of the highways, tell it, they were inspired by research expeditions to racetracks, styling studios and car shows. Inspiration also flowed from the ruins of a Packard plant on East Grand Boulevard in Detroit and from the Detroit Institute of Arts, with its car-factory murals by Diego Rivera — and from what's left of the legendary Route 66, an artery through the heart of the American Dream. A tour guide and author of "Route 66: The Mother Road," among other books, Mr. Wallis led the Pixar crew along Route 66. The most lovable character in "Cars" is Mater, a rusty tow truck with the voice of Larry the Cable Guy. That's Mater, as in "Tow-Mater," an aptly cornball pun. Mr. Wallis recalls the time and place he was created. "There was an old wrecker in an empty lot by Route 66 in Galena, Kan.," he said. "Joe Ranft, the studio's head of story and a key member of the Pixar team, stopped and noticed it, and Mater was born." Acting as a consultant for the Pixar team — Mr. Ranft; John Lasseter, the director; and other top animators — Mr. Wallis played Beatrice to their Dante. Just as auto designers have produced cars that come close to cartoons — think of the gangsteresque Chrysler PT Cruiser, the pull-toy Volkswagen New Beetle, the biceps-bulging Chrysler 300 — the designers of cartoons have turned to creating cars. It is not as easy as it seems, Mr. Lasseter said. In January 2005, he came to the Detroit auto show and spoke about his project at the AutoWeek Design Forum. The crucial decision, he said, was to forgo the usual idea of the "face" of a car, with the headlights serving as the eyes and the grille as the mouth. He moved the eyes to the windshield to keep the cars from looking empty and driverless. The team took constant pains "to keep the cars from looking rubbery, " Mr. Lasseter said. Much effort and computer-processing power went into rendering realistically shifting reflections on the cars' metal surfaces, from the rust of old trucks to the metal-flake custom cars, using a computer technique called ray tracing. The release of "Cars" was delayed seven months during the negotiations that led to Disney's recent purchase of Pixar for $7.4 billion in stock. The formal premiere is Friday on four giant screens erected on Turn 2 of Lowe's Motor Speedway near Charlotte, N.C. That location is courtesy of Humpy Wheeler, president and general manager of the speedway and Nascar's éminence grise, who provides the movie voice of Tex, a 1959 Cadillac Coupe de Ville with long horns above his grille. Richard Petty, the racing legend, also has a speaking role. The cars tend to types. George Carlin plays Fillmore, a VW bus whose front license plate suggests a beatnik's goatee. Sarge is a Jeep, Flo a waitress (inspired, Mr. Wallis says, by a real waitress, Dawn Welch, at the Rock Café in Stroud, Okla.). A 1957 Motorama show car, Flo boasts (through chrome lips) of selling "the best gas in 50 states." Ramone, the '59 Chevy Impala lowrider, has the voice of Cheech Marin, the stoner comedian. Lightning McQueen's archrival, Chick Hicks, is a tough, intimidating competitor in the vein of the late Dale Earnhardt. The more you know about cars and car movies the richer the experience of watching. Paul Newman gives voice to Doc Hudson, a wise retired racer turned mechanic. It helps if you know that the Hudson Hornet, for which the Pixar team dug up vintage paint chips to assure realism, was once a Nascar racer and that Newman acted in a film called "Hud." Yes, the car has blue eyes. The sheriff of Radiator Springs is a 1949 Mercury, and its voice is Mr. Wallis's. The author is delighted with his role. "That car has always been one of my favorites, and it fits my personality," he said. "My rapidly whitening mustache looks more like that Mercury's grille every day." Mr. Lasseter recounted how the idea for the film was born in the summer of 2000 when, exhausted after nearly a decade of work on films like "Toy Story" and "Monsters, Inc.," he decided to take a cross-country road trip with his wife and five sons. A large man habitually garbed in a capacious Hawaiian shirt — a look that suggests a perpetual fantasy vacation — Mr. Lasseter is the son of a onetime Chevrolet parts manager in Whittier, Calif. He had long wanted to make a film about the car culture. When he returned to the studio from his vacation, he plunged into the new project. One of the first things he did was contact Mr. Wallis, who led the Pixar animators on two trips across Route 66 to research the film. Bypassed by Interstate 40 and other modern highways, Route 66 — the pieces that remain — has been reborn as a tourist road. Real motels and restaurants served as models for those in Radiator Springs, like the Cozy Cone Motel and V-8 Cafe. "They saw the teepee-shaped motels and gas stations," Mr. Wallis said in the rawhide tones he uses on his road tours. "They felt the wind through the winter wheat. They gulped it all in." The theme is a tried and true one that grew out of Mr. Lasseter's own experience: getting out of the fast lane and understanding that the journey is the reward — a phrase often used both by Mr. Lasseter and by Steven P. Jobs, Pixar's co-founder. The film follows its hero, Lightning McQueen, a Corvettelike racer with the voice of Owen Wilson, as it travels the racing circuit from town to town, combining the narrative device of the road trip with bursts of action. But the racecar gets sidetracked in Radiator Springs. "He's speedy and arrogant," Mr. Wallis said. "In our bypassed town we teach him to slow down. In turn, he inspires us to rebuild our town." Mr. Wallis, along with his wife, Suzanne Fitzgerald Wallis, also wrote a book about the making of the film. The lush pastel and color pencil sketches in "The Art of Cars" (Chronicle, $40) show that Pixar's ideas have roots in the hand, not just in the computer. Sketches by Nat McLaughlin for flowers in the film — their blossoms shaped like taillights — are works of art. Mr. Lasseter and his group visited design studios for the Big Three automakers in Detroit but particularly hit it off with J Mays, the Ford Motor Company's group vice president for design. "We are on the same wavelength," Mr. Mays said. He said he had admired the cars in "The Incredibles," another Pixar film, because they demonstrated a knowledge of auto history and design. "You could see they had done a lot of research," said Mr. Mays, who is thanked in the credits for "Cars." Mr. Mays and Mr. Lasseter bonded and exchanged studio visits. Mr. Lasseter learned how real cars are designed. Mr. Mays was impressed with Pixar's obsessive attention to detail. "They want to get things right even if no one can tell," he said. "If it was wrong, they would know." The cars in "Cars" are much more sophisticated than those in "The Incredibles." Computers used for the new film are four times as fast as those, and 1,000 times as fast as the ones for "Toy Story." What gives the cars character is the way they move on their wheels, like creatures on feet. Of course, designing cars for computer animation is not designing for the real world, but it has similarities. To orchestrate the motion, Pixar used a shared platform, a system not unlike a real carmaker's. The film's cars have a common software "chassis," a "universal rig" of 100 animation controls known as avars. Suspensions are customized: the 50's cars are looser and bouncier. Pixar had to design a whole landscape. In a world of cars, Mr. Lasseter explained, "a restaurant is a gas station and a doctor is a mechanic." The town of Radiator Springs includes a tire (shoe) store run by Luigi, a Fiat with a hairpiece whose voice is that of Tony Shalhoub of the television series "Monk." The Western landscape of so many auto advertisements is echoed in the film's Ornament Valley, where mountains look like tailfins. The vista was inspired by a visit to Don Sommer of Clawson, Mich., who collects vintage hood ornaments and whose company, American Arrow, makes reproductions. The Cadillac Range of mountains was inspired by a visit to the Cadilllac Ranch art installation near Amarillo, Tex. For Route 66, Mr. Wallis loaded the animators into rented white Cadillacs. "We rode three big new Detroit sleds," he said. The animators decorated the cars by attaching items found on the roadside: sheaves of wheat, bunches of thistles, sunflowers, snake skins and a road-kill armadillo. "We called this stuff Okie hood ornaments," Mr. Wallis said. At trip's end, he said, "We buried it all in the high desert," adding: "We had a ceremony. I spoke some words and one of the animators, Bud Luckey, played a few bars on his harmonica. I'll never forget it." http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/21/au...es/21AUTO.html What a field day for the heat Police Requests for Corporate Data Multiply Businesses juggle law-enforcement demands for information about customers, suppliers Robert Block Since the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, law enforcement efforts to secure corporate information about clients and suppliers have reached such levels that some companies have had to create special units that do nothing but deal with these demands, a process often called "subpoena management." Banks, Internet-service providers and other companies that possess large amounts of data on their customers say that police and intelligence agencies have been increasingly coming to them looking for tidbits of information that could help them stop everything from money launderers to pedophiles and terrorists. "Corporate counsel that used to see law-enforcement-related requests five times a year are now getting them sometimes dozens of times a day," says Susan Hackett, a senior vice president and top attorney for the Association of Corporate Counsel, which represents the legal departments of leading U.S. companies. In short, phone companies currently caught up in a controversy over reports that they gave the National Security Agency access to records of customers' calls are hardly the only businesses fretting over how to cooperate with the government in the war on terror. Internet and financial companies also are frequently targeted by intelligence and law enforcement agencies, forcing them into situations where they must choose between customers' rights to privacy and their own corporate desire to help the government without being seen as agents of the government. The situation is made even more complicated when the companies are government contractors, vying for federal business or in an industry subject to complicated regulation. Time Warner Inc.'s America Online Inc. employs more than a dozen people, including several former prosecutors, handling almost 12,000 requests a year from federal state and local police agencies. The unit works 24 hours a day, seven days a week and maintains a special hotline that police or federal agents can call to help them with their queries and tailor their requests. For the last five years the company has published a "Law Enforcement Training Manual" complete with information about how long the company retains basic subscriber information and unread email, to sample subpoena and court-order wordings to speed processing of the police demands. According to AOL executives, the most common requests in criminal cases relate to crimes against children, including abuse, abductions, and child pornography. Close behind are cases dealing with identity theft and other computer crimes. Sometimes the police requests are highly targeted and scrupulously legalistic, while other times they were seen by the company as little more than sloppy fishing expeditions. AOL says that most requests get turned down. "We have a very rigorous review process here," said John Ryan, AOL's vice president and associate general counsel. "Every request that comes in from law enforcement is vetted, and before any information is turned over an attorney with years of experience reviews it and determines whether or not any turn-around or process is required. I can say -- ballpark figure -- for every five requests that come in maybe one will fit the standard to a certain level and will be honored." In other cases, companies have no choice but to surrender records. New powers granted to the government under the Patriot Act mean that Washington can secretly access people's records from businesses without having to provide any notification or seek a judge's permission. Companies are in fact prohibited by the law from disclosing that they had received such requests. The Justice Department last month reported that the FBI last year issued 9,200 administrative subpoenas known as National Security Letters, seeking information on 3,501 U.S. citizens and legal residents from their banks, credit card, telephone and Internet companies without a court's approval. The records are supposed to be about people in terrorism and espionage investigations, but the FBI is not required to show how they are connected to any terrorism case. Some companies have been wrestling with how far to cooperate with government investigations even before 9-11. AOL first noticed law-enforcement agencies' burgeoning interest in their members' online activities in the mid-90s in child-porn cases. FedEx Corp. and United Parcel Service Inc. struggled with the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Drug Enforcement Agency over the agencies' attempts to get unfettered access to the shippers' systems as part of the war against drug traffickers. Since 2001, the pressure on them has grown as the amount of electronic information provided to or compiled by companies has grown to include everything from customer names and addresses to shopping preferences and pastime activities. The Departments of Homeland Security, Defense and Justice as well as the CIA have increasingly viewed this data as a veritable treasure trove that can be tapped to help thwart crimes and identify potential terrorist attacks in the making. Ms. Hackett of the organization of corporate counsel said that corporate lawyers often spend their energies negotiating with the government to limit the scope of their demands rather than to refuse them outright. "Companies want to be cooperative, but also have to protect their interests and their clients, and the best way to do that is determine upfront, right away about what the government is going to get and when," she said. "Often the government agrees because it doesn't want to go public with a fight." Fights are sometimes inevitable. Last year, the Justice Department demanded that AOL, Yahoo, Microsoft MSN and Google hand over customer search records in a bid to prove that filtering software doesn't screen kids from online porn. Google refused, saying that the government was abusing its subpoena power by seeking information that had nothing to do with criminal prosecution. A judge ultimately ruled that Google need turn over only 50,000 Web addresses, not the one million originally subpoenaed. But even when companies can push back they are not always willing to do so. Because they are so heavily regulated, phone companies have a long history of contact with the federal government. And the government has long been one of the telecom companies' biggest customers offering multimillion contracts for services. One key federal technology-service contract called "Networx" worth roughly $20 billion is up for grabs now. It's likely it will parceled out to several telecom companies over the next year or so. --Dionne Searcey and Jay Solomon contributed to this article http://online.wsj.com/public/article...html?mod=blogs Lawyer Demands U Fla Cops' Documents On Fiction Writer Cory Doctorow Mitchell L Silverman, an attorney in Hollywood, Florida, was so outraged by the story of University of Florida cops leaning on a grad student who published fiction on his LiveJournal recounting a murder that he's filed an official request with the U Fla police for copies of all the police notes on the file. The cops have a legal obligation to disclose these records under state law. Philip Sandifer is the U Fla grad student in Gainesville from whom the campus police demanded DNA and fingerprints. Sandifer had published a short story about a murderer who cites his crimes in a letter to the Special Forces as qualifications for a job with them. The cops' rationale was that even if it was fiction, you can't be too safe, and besides, they didn't think that English students should be writing about murder. It looks like the original complaint came from people whom Sandifer had argued with over Wikipedia -- a message-board for disgruntled Wikipedians contains a discussion of Sandifer's story and the mischief that could be had by complaining the university about it, noting, "it wouldn't take much to put him in a position where he either decides to leave Wikipedia or decides that he doesn't need a Ph.D. after all." Sandifer told the police about this, but they continued to pressure him for DNA samples, threatening to obtain them from his garbage if he refused to comply. The U Fla police refused to speak with me, and (via a university spokesman) denied asking for Sandifer's prints and DNA and condemning his writing -- but Sandifer's story is corroborated by his advisor, Sid Dobrin, who was present during one of their interviews with him. Silverman is acting on his own in this request for documents -- he's not Sandifer's attorney. He's just an outraged Floridan who wants to know why the cops in his state are policing fiction. Link http://www.boingboing.net/2006/05/24...nds_u_fla.html Open Letter to Ministers Oda and Bernier Canadian Federation of Students, Ottawa, 17 Apr 06 The Honourable Maxime Bernier P.C., M.P. Minister of Industry 5th floor, West Tower C.D. Howe Building 235 Queen St. Ottawa, Ontario K1A 0H5 The Honourable Bev Oda P.C., M.P. Minister of Canadian Heritage 25 Eddy Street Gatineau, Quebec K1A 0M5 April 17, 2006 Dear Ministers, Re: Copyright Legislation I am writing on behalf of over one-half million members of the Canadian Federation of Students. In the next year, Parliament will likely examine a Bill to amend the Copyright Act. Students in Canada are greatly concerned about reasonable access to information and knowledge as digital technology increasingly plays an instrumental role in learning and research. Canada’s students have concerns with respect to calls from other stakeholders for legislation that would restrict access to materials on the internet and impose unwarranted and unmanageable fees on libraries, educational institutions and students. We are writing to urge the Canadian government to reject proposals for restrictive copyright laws, and to instead embrace policies that will support Canada’s vibrant and open knowledge community. Bill C-60, An Act to Amend the Copyright Act, died on the order paper with the fall of the 38th Parliament. While students in Canada were pleased with some of the proposed amendments, the bill could have gone much further to promote Canada’s best interests. Specifically, our issues include: 1. Legal Protection for Technological Protection Measures (TPMs) and Digital Rights Management (DRM) Developments over the past year have demonstrated that legal protection of TPMs and DRM is unnecessary and would be harmful to Canada’s students. Lobbyists are stating such protections are necessary as an incentive to use such technologies and build “new business models” around them. However, even without special legal protection, the content industry is increasingly rolling out TPMs and DRM. As the Sony BMG “rootkit” DRM amply demonstrated, these technologies are being used not to control copying, but to segment markets and to tie consumers to specific devices, and are dangerous to consumers’ privacy. DRM and TPMs replaces copyright’s balanced allocation of rights with one dictated by the content distributor. These often infringe on students’ rights to practice fair dealing with digital works, such as reverse engineering. We call on the Canadian government to refrain from legislating special protection for DRM and TPMs. If the government chooses to so legislate, it should do so in a way that: • Is consistent, and does not replace, copyright law; • Recognizes appropriate limits on the invasiveness and scope of such technologies; and • Does not outlaw the “tools” and “devices” that are essential to academic research but that may be used to circumvent TPMs or tamper with DRM. 2. Internet Service Provider (ISP) Liability – “notice and takedown” vs. “notice and notice”: Previous discussions on this issue have focused on two methods of insulating ISPs from liability for the infringing activities of their customers: “notice and takedown” and “notice and notice”. We urge the government to adopt the “notice and notice” approach to ISP liability, as was outlined in Bill C-60. We oppose a “notice and takedown” procedure, because: • it aims to silence an alleged infringer without proving infringement; • it bypasses the mechanisms IP law has developed to arrest use of allegedly infringing material prior to a judgment; • notice and takedown inhibits freedom of speech; and • there is evidence that this system is already abused in the United States. We urge the government to maintain the current “notice and notice” procedure as it was proposed in Bill C-60. This procedure is preferable because: • it achieves exactly what the law requires: notice of the allegation of infringement; • it is up to the content user at that point to decide whether or not to continue with the allegedly infringing activity; and • the ISP remains neutral in the dispute, and can focus on providing Internet services, not taking sides in a dispute to which it is not a party. 3. Fair Dealing A shortcoming of the current copyright law to address is the narrow scope of Canada’s “fair dealing” defense. Students in Canada would like to see fair dealing revised to be more in line with the “fair use” defense enjoyed by students in the United States, Canadian students ask this government to amend the Act as follows: • Eliminate fair dealing’s restrictive, categorical approach (“for the purposes of...”) in favour of an “inclusive” approach (“for purposes including...“) • Harmonize Canadian laws with American laws to clarify that fair dealing may include making multiple copies of copyrighted materials for classroom use • Clarify that fair dealing embraces reverse engineering, parody, and the educational use of digital materials. 4. Digital Interlibrary Loan and Distance Learning Canadian educational institutions are increasingly relying on distance education tools to improve the opportunities for learning enjoyed by Canadian students. Copyright law must support, not impede, this development. Canada’s students increasingly rely on interlibrary loan. Libraries and students need the flexibility and support that this service can provide. We supported Bill C-60’s approach to digital interlibrary loan and distance education, but reject the wastefully burdensome and technologically-partisan manner in which it sought to curtail these user rights. In our view, the Act should not unfairly and needlessly hinder educational institutions, libraries and students. We call on this government to clarify that distance learning and digital interlibrary loan are user rights, and to implement them in a manner that is fair, productive, and technologically neutral. 5. Statutory Damages We call on this government to reform Canada’s statutory damages regime. Statutory damages have no place in license bargaining between collectives and Canada’s public institutions. Statutory damages are an effective tool to address enforcement of IP rights in commercial piracy cases. Educational institutions, libraries and archives are not commercial pirates. They should not suffer the threat of statutory damages. Students are concerned that the collectives and the major publishing and recording industries– entities motivated by profit–have been wielding too much influence in the process to-date, thereby drowning the legitimate concerns of teachers, researchers, librarians, and students. In drafting new legislation, we ask members of Parliament to establish widespread consultations with diverse stakeholders on the matter. The last round of consultations was already five years ago and there have been many technological advances and legal developments since then. Students have previously not participated in such consultations and we ask that we be represented in such consultations. We would welcome the opportunity to discuss these issues with you. Sincerely, [Signed in original] Angela Regnier National Deputy Chairperson Canadian Federation of Students cc: Patricia Neri, Director General, Copyright Policy, Department of Canadian Heritage, Susan Bincoletto, Director General, Marketplace Framework Policy Branch, Industry Canada http://action.web.ca/home/cfs/en_ale...ee 5fa6fe93a4

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