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Old 24-10-12, 08:09 AM   #1
JackSpratts
 
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Default Peer-To-Peer News - The Week In Review - October 27th, '12

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"Internet access has become an essential service in the digital age. Just as we restrict the power of utilities to turn off services to their customers, we should not allow content owners to cause Internet access providers to degrade or suspend their services without adequate due process." – Corynne McSherry



































October 27th, 2012




LimeWire to Hollywood: Want $100 Million? Not So Fast

Upon a call for a quick summary judgment ruling, LimeWire puts up a defense to copyright infringement claims.
Eriq Gardner

There's no such thing as a free lunch, especially one that might cost the caterers $100 million.

When 20th Century Fox, Viacom, Comedy Partners, Disney, Paramount, and Warner Bros. collectively sued LimeWire in February, they may have been hoping that the ill-fated file-sharing network would pay them to go away.

After all, in May 2011, LimeWire settled up with the big record labels to the tune of $105 million.

But in the Arista case, LimeWire put up a fight -- at least for a while -- attempting to get big record labels to prove lost profits. On the verge of damages trial, there was a settlement.

Earlier this month, the big film and TV studios made a motion for partial summary judgement in their own legal fight against LimeWire.

On Tuesday, LimeWire answered, indicating that at least for now, it intends to make the movie industry prove that LimeWire facilitated copyright infringement.

According to the movie studios, there can be no question of this.

In a memorandum supporting its motion, the studios point out that in the Arista case, Judge Kimba Wood was pretty firm about LimeWire's liability, ruling in May 2010 that there was "overwhelming evidence that [the defendants] engaged in purposeful conduct that fostered [copyright] infringement" through the distribution of a P2P file sharing software.

The movie studios think that should add up to a nice, quick win in their own case.

"Under well-settled principles of collateral estoppel, Plaintiffs in this case now seek to hold the same LW Defendants liable for the same conduct adjudicated in the Arista case," they say.

LimeWire has an answer for that.

"Any findings pertaining to [defendants'] conduct or intent in promoting or encouraging use of the LimeWire Software in the Arista Records litigation, relate to conduct or intent in periods that predate 2009-2010," says the latest court filing by LimeWire.

Because of statute of limitations, the movie companies only have claims back to the last three years. And so, LimeWire adds, "The LimeWire software program promoted in 2009-2010 was drastically different than that in years prior because of significant changes to LimeWire's business intended to reduce or eliminate infringing uses of its software and network."

Whether that's true or not remains to be seen. LimeWire is a popular legal target nowadays not only because it was a popular P2P platform back in the day, but also because it was founded by Mark Gorton, who was a very successful financial trader on Wall Street before he founded the Lime Group. He's got money, as proven by the $105 million settlement with the RIAA. Does he have liability and a willingness to settle up with the MPAA too?

LimeWire says in its new court papers that during the 2009-2010 period at issue in the litigation, "Gorton did not hold any position at LimeWire, and had no role in the day-to-day operations of the company."

Instead, the defendants say an "entirely new management team primarily comprised of entertainment industry veterans" took control of LimeWire in its late period in order to attempt to negotiate license deals with copyright holders and eliminate infringing uses of the software. The team allegedly attempted to negotiate deals with Disney, Lionsgate, Sony, iTunes and others.

Thus, the defense seems to be that the LimeWire of the disputed period was vastly different than the LimeWire of yore.

Maybe the company is erecting the best possible posture in advance of settlement discussions. A judge's forthcoming summary judgement decision will determine how hard Hollywood is going to have to sweat to earn its keep.
http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/thr...million-383143





Torrent Site Webhost Ordered to Pay “Piracy” Damages
Ernesto

Hollywood-backed anti-piracy outfit BREIN has won a landmark case against XS Networks, the former hosting provider of torrent site SumoTorrent. The Court of The Hague ruled that the provider is responsible for damages copyright holders suffered through the torrent site’s activities. The Dutch verdict has far-reaching implications for the liability of hosting providers for the conduct of their clients.

For years Dutch anti-piracy group BREIN has tried to find out who is behind the SumoTorrent website.

After being initially hosted in the Netherlands, the site moved to Canada to escape BREIN’s jurisdiction, but it later returned as a client of hosting provider XS Networks.

Having won cases against other torrent site hosters in the past, the anti-piracy group was quick to ask XS Networks to shut SumoTorrent down and hand over the personal details of its owner. XS Networks refused, however, and said it would only respond to a court order.

The provider and SumoTorrent eventually agreed to voluntarily hand over some personal details, but not before the torrent site had moved to a new host in the Ukraine. To make matters worse for BREIN, the personal details on record at the hosting provider turned out to be false.

So SumoTorrent “escaped” again.

According to BREIN the Dutch hosting provider was to blame for this outcome, and in response went on to sue the company earlier this year in pursuit of damages. BREIN argued that XS Networks acted negligently when it refused to take the site down when asked to do so.

Today the Court of The Hague handed down its verdict in which it sides with BREIN.

The Court ruled that SumoTorrent is clearly facilitating copyright infringement and states that XS Networks should have taken the site offline when BREIN asked them to.

“The unlawful characteristics of the (activities on) SumoTorrent were evident. Moreover they were obvious to XS Networks, or should have been obvious to XS Networks,” the verdict reads.

By keeping the site online, the Court adds, the provider acted unlawfully against the interests of copyright holders represented by BREIN.

Aside from thousands of euros in legal costs, the provider must now pay damages for the infringing content that was shared via SumoTorrent. How much XS Networks will have to pay is yet to be determined.

The Court also ordered XS Networks to hand over all personal information they have on the operator of SumoTorrent or pay a penalty of 10,000 euros a day.

The ruling is a crucial one concerning the liability of hosting providers for websites that are operated by their customers. According to the verdict groups representing copyright holders can demand websites be taken offline, and it’s then up to the provider to determine whether this request is legitimate.

In other words, providers themselves have to determine whether a site is facilitating copyright infringement, as opposed to the court.

With this ruling in hand BREIN can ask for the shutdown of any site they deem to be infringing, as well asking for the personal details of the site owner. Providers who refuse to cooperate will make themselves liable for damages caused by the website in question.

A dangerous precedent, both from privacy and censorship perspectives.
https://torrentfreak.com/torrent-sit...amages-121024/





More Piracy Sites Faced with Blocking as BPI Contacts UK ISPs
Dave Lee

The UK's major internet service providers have been asked to block three more file-sharing websites, the BBC can reveal.

The British Phonographic Industry (BPI), which acts on behalf of rights holders, wants ISPs to prevent access to Fenopy, H33t and Kickass Torrents.

The BPI alleges that the sites are illegally distributing music.

The ISPs told the BBC they would comply with the new demand, but only if a court order is put in place.

It follows a separate court order in April which saw popular file-sharing site The Pirate Bay blocked in the UK.

The biggest ISP, BT, said it was also "currently considering" its options.

The letter, which was not intended to go public, was sent to six ISPs last week, namely BT, Sky, Virgin Media, O2, EE and TalkTalk.

It is understood that the BPI is hoping all three sites will be blocked before Christmas - far more quickly than the process has taken previously.

According to web monitoring firm Nielsen, over a million unique users from the UK visited the three websites in September.
Pirate Bay precedent

In April, the BPI was successful in getting a high court judge to order the same six ISPs to block The Pirate Bay, which was regarded as one of the most visited file-sharing websites on the web.

"Like The Pirate Bay, these websites are profiting illegally from distributing music that isn't theirs, without permission and without paying a penny to the musicians, writers and producers who created it," a spokesman for the BPI told the BBC.

"It is plain wrong. The existence of these sites damages the growth of Britain's burgeoning digital music sector."

Over the following months, all of the ISPs complied with the ruling, blocking access to the site for their customers.

With this latest request, the BPI is looking to avoid such a lengthy process. However, none of the ISPs said they were prepared to block the sites voluntarily, and would only do so if forced by the courts.

Adam Rendle, a copyright specialist with London-based law firm TaylorWessing, said it is possible that the process to block Fenopy, H33t and Kickass Torrents could be quicker than in previous cases thanks to precedents set previously.

"Whether the BPI can do that in time for Christmas is a question of the court's availability," he said.

"Two months to issue the proceedings and get a decision? It's ambitious but it's not impossible - if the court can be convinced that it should be dealt with that quickly."

Loss of traffic

Jim Killock, a campaigner with the Open Rights Group, argued that consumers' interests were not being properly represented.

"Web blocking is an extreme response," he told the BBC.

"If courts are being asked to block websites they need to be taking into consideration the rights of users and any legitimate usage of those sites.

"It isn't clear whether a conversation between a judge, ISPs and rights holders is going to sufficiently represent the needs of users."

Critics of website blocking say it is ineffective.

Days after the Pirate Bay blocking, various other services were set up allowing users to access the site through alternative means.

One ISP, which did not want to be named, revealed that despite an initial dip, illegal download traffic on its network recovered quickly within just a week of the Pirate Bay block.

However, the BPI defended the action, saying that the block had a significant effect on the amount of traffic visiting the Pirate Bay site.

This claim is backed up by Nielsen, who told the BBC that since the April court order, The Pirate Bay has lost three quarters of its visitors.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-20026271





Rights Groups Wary as ISPs Roll Out Copyright Alert System

Content creators say online alert system aims to educate users; analysts not so sure
Jaikumar Vijayan

Privacy advocates and consumer rights groups are keeping a wary eye on a new copyright enforcement mechanism set to be rolled out by major Internet Service Providers.

The so-called Copyright Alert System (CAS) aims to warn Internet users who illegally download and share music, videos and other copyrighted content over peer-to-peer file sharing networks.

Internet users identified as engaging in illegal file sharing will receive a graduated set of warnings from their ISP.

Initial alerts will be "educational" in nature, informing users about the consequences of copyright infringement, according to a description of the program by the Center for Copyright Infringement (CCI), the entity in charge of the system.

Internet users who continue to illegally share content sharing will next receive a so-called "acknowledgment" alert requiring them to click a link on their browser to acknowledge they have seen the notices.

"For accounts where alleged infringing activity continues, enhanced alerts that contain 'mitigation measures' will follow. These mitigation measures will vary by ISP and range from requiring the subscriber to review educational materials, to a temporary slow-down of Internet access speed," the CCI noted in its announcement last week.

The CCI did not specify what would happen to users who continued illegal file-sharing activities even after receiving warnings. But it insisted that ISPs would not terminate a consumer's Internet service under the Copyright Alert System.

"Contrary to many erroneous reports, this is not a "six-strikes-and-you're-out" system that would result in termination. There's no "strikeout" in this program," it said.

The CCI last week noted that ISPs will begin to implement the program over the next two months.

The CCI is a collaborative anti-piracy effort involving U.S. content creators and five major ISPs. Members of the initiative include the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA), the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), AT&T, Comcast, Verizon and Time Warner Cable. The group also includes several associations that represent independent film and music producers.

Under the Copyright Alert System, content owners will be responsible for monitoring file-sharing networks and for identifying any alleged illegal activity. The ISP will then send out graduated alerts to the owners of the IP addresses associated with the infringing activity.

In an email to Computerworld, a spokesman from Verizon said CCI's blog post last week accurately describes the Copyright Alert System being rolled out by Verizon. AT&T, Comcast and Time Warner Cable (TWC) did not respond to request for comment on the program.

In comments made to Techhive, a TWC spokesman is quoted as saying the company will follow the same procedures outlined by the CCI last week.

However, the TWC spokesman said that it will temporarily cut off Internet services for users who receive a fifth warning.

The suspension will remain in place until the account holder calls Time Warner Cable "so you can listen to us preach about copyright infringement," the TWC spokesman is quoted as saying in the Techhive story.

Internet users who believe they have been wrongly accused of copyright infringement by ISPs will have a right to appeal the suspension through the American Arbitration Association, a neutral dispute resolution organization, according to the CCI.

In the case of TWC at least, Internet users will need to pay an upfront fee of $35 to file an appeal. The fee will be refunded if the appeal is upheld, according to Techhive.

David Sohn, general counsel and director of the Center for Democracy and Technology's (CDT) Project on Copyright and Technology said the Copyright Alert System could serve a useful purpose if used purely for its stated purpose of educating users.

The key though will be the manner in which it is implemented by ISPs, Sohn said.

"If it stays focused on informing and educating people we think it could make a positive contribution to reducing infringement," Sohn said. However, the system could have the opposite effect if used as a tool to impose punishment, he said.

"It can play a positive role towards education but not for meting out punishment," Sohn said.

Stakeholders need to ensure that the system is not used by ISPs to cut people off the Internet based purely on the basis of private notices from content creators, he cautioned.

CDT is one of several advocacy and rights organizations that have been called into to play an advisory role in the CCI.

The Copyright Alert System formalizes a practice that ISPs have quietly used for several years against egregious copyright infringers said Gigi Sohn, president and CEO of Public Knowledge, another advocacy group that is advising the CCI.

The system is set up to minimize false alerts and will ostensibly be used to issue alerts only to those who download or distribute entire copyrighted works, said Gigi Sohn (no relation the CDTs David Sohn).

Considerable effort has been put by the CCI into ensuring that the alerting is not done is a "very finger wagging way because that would just not work," she said.

ISPs have a vested interest in ensuring that the Copyright Alert System becomes a success, Sohn said. U.S. content creators have been relentless in their effort to curtail piracy and would have lobbied Congress heavily for some sort of legislation if ISPs had not gone along, she addd.

Corynne McSherry, intellectual property director at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, expressed serious reservations overthe alerting system.

The graduated response mechanism is triggered by a mere allegation by content creators, she said.

The system offers no easy way for users to independently investigate the allegations against them or to hold content owners responsible for false allegations, McSherry said. Subscribers also get very little time to defend the allegations against them, she added.

"Internet access has become an essential service in the digital age," McSherry said. "Just as we restrict the power of utilities to turn off services to their customers, we should not allow content owners to cause Internet access providers to degrade or suspend their services without adequate due process."
https://www.computerworld.com/s/arti...t_Alert_System





Six-Strikes “Independent Expert” Is RIAA’s Former Lobbying Firm
Ernesto

Next month the file-sharing habits of millions of BitTorrent users in the United States will be monitored as part of an agreement between the MPAA, RIAA, and all the major ISPs. To guarantee the accuracy of the evidence that will be used for the accusations the parties agreed to hire an impartial and independent technology expert. However, their commitment to this promise is now in doubt as the hired experts have turned out to be a former RIAA lobbying group.

In an effort to curb online piracy, the MPAA and RIAA teamed up with five major Internet providers in the United States to launch the Center for Copyright Information (CCI).

The parties agreed on a system through which subscribers are warned that their alleged copyright infringements are unacceptable. Starting next month, ISPs can then take a variety of repressive measures to punish the alleged infringers.

The evidence for these allegations will be collected by an external company, MarkMonitor. Because tracking companies have made false allegations in the past, the CCI agreed to hire an “independent and impartial technical expert” to review the “accuracy and security” of the technology used.

This requirement for an impartial expert review was set in stone in the Memorandum of Understanding, and from an announcement last week the CCI appeared to have kept its word.

“We’ve worked hard to set up a program that is accurate, fair and protects consumer interests at every step in the process. For example, we retained a recognized technology expert, Stroz Friedberg, to evaluate the content community’s system (run by MarkMonitor) for identifying alleged infringement over peer-to-peer networks.”

“Stroz Friedberg has completed its initial review of MarkMonitor’s methodologies and found that the system is accurate and works properly,” the CCI concluded.

While this may sound like good news, it is actually quite a shocker considering the history of the company retained to safeguard the accuracy of “six-strikes” scheme.

Stroz Friedberg is indeed a technology expert, but the group was also the RIAA’s lobbying firm for half a decade.

Between 2004 and 2009 Stroz Friedberg lobbied extensively in Washington on behalf of the RIAA. This consulting job earned the company more than half a million dollars ($637,000).

One of the leading lobbyists on record was Executive Managing Director Beryl Howell, who lobbied U.S. Congress and Senate for copyright laws regarding digital music.

Howell’s anti-piracy past hit the headlines in 2011 since she is currently a federal judge ruling on mass-BitTorrent lawsuits. In this position she continues to protect the interests of copyright holders, and in a recent ruling she pointed out that ISPs are not doing enough to stop copyright infringements.

While Stroz Friedberg may be excellent at what they do, it is hard to see the company as “independent and impartial” as the Memorandum of Understanding requires.

Given the skepticism and sensitivities of the public regarding the “six-strikes” anti-piracy scheme, the appointment is rather unfortunate and quite unbelievable.

This sentiment is shared by University of Idaho Law Professor Annemarie Bridy, who previously concluded that the copyright alert system lacks transparency and favors copyright holders.

“It’s a disappointing choice, particularly in light of CCI’s professed desire to build public confidence in CAS and the fairness of its processes. It would have been refreshing to see an academic computer scientist or some other truly independent party appointed to fill that important role,” Bridy tells TorrentFreak.

“CCI’s choice of a former RIAA lobbying firm makes it clear that the copyright owner parties to the Memorandum of Understanding were more interested in appointing someone they trust than in appointing someone the public can trust,” she adds.

Why CCI did not pick a more neutral party as a technology expert will remain a mystery for now. Choosing to shroud itself in secrecy, the group has stopped responding to our inquiries entirely.
https://torrentfreak.com/six-strikes...g-firm-121022/





Righthaven Agrees to Turn Hard Drives Over to Creditor
Steve Green

Las Vegas copyright company Righthaven LLC appears eager to comply with the latest court order entered against it Tuesday, as noncompliance could cost its CEO a fine of $500 per day.

U.S. Magistrate Judge Peggy Leen in Las Vegas, ruling during a hearing, ordered Righthaven to turn over to a creditor hard drives from its computers so the creditor could determine if Righthaven has any assets that can be liquidated for the benefit of Righthaven’s creditors.

She gave Righthaven two weeks to surrender the drives or mirror images of them and said noncompliance would result in a daily sanction of $500 against the company and its CEO.

After the hearing, Righthaven CEO and Las Vegas attorney Steven Gibson fired off a letter to Righthaven’s attorney, Shawn Mangano, ordering him to comply with the directive.

“You are hereby instructed to follow without any departure whatsoever every aspect of the order made today in the case, just as you have been instructed to follow every previous order of every court,” Gibson wrote in the letter.

It appeared that Gibson sent the letter, with a copy to the judge, as an insurance policy, as Mangano had earlier told Leen he’d be happy to arrange the turnover of the drives to the creditor.

Tuesday’s action was the latest proceeding in a yearlong effort by the creditor, former federal prosecutor Thomas DiBiase, to recover $119,488 in legal fees he was awarded after he beat back the Righthaven suit against him. All told, Righthaven owes DiBiase and other creditors $318,000 for legal fees after Righthaven failed with its copyright lawsuits against them.

Righthaven is a company, not a law firm. It partnered with the Las Vegas Review-Journal and the Denver Post to file 275 no-warning copyright infringement lawsuits in 2010 and 2011 against parties that used content from those papers without authorization.

Federal judges in three states rejected the lawsuits because Righthaven lacked standing as the newspapers — not Righthaven — maintained control of the material Righthaven was suing over. Some defendants also were cleared by the fair use concept in copyright law allowing some uses of copyrighted material within limits.

In the aftermath of Righthaven’s legal debacle, the company shut down and claimed to be broke. Creditors in another case seized its website and trademark and auctioned them. They also seized the copyrights it sued over, but they didn’t sell.

Gibson, in the meantime, has been pursuing an appeal of one of Righthaven’s legal setbacks and believes if the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals finds Righthaven had standing to sue, the company could get back in the copyright lawsuit business.

Creditors, in the meantime, are continuing with their collection efforts that have included a still-unresolved effort to have Righthaven’s court-appointed asset receiver fire Gibson.

Gibson has countered that he did a good job as CEO and that as a Righthaven creditor he’s owed “months, if not years’’ of his six-figure salary that he voluntarily gave up in about July 2010 for the good of the company.

DiBiase, represented by the San Francisco-based digital rights group the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) of San Francisco, until Tuesday had been frustrated in efforts to gain financial information from Righthaven to see if it has assets that could be sold to benefit him and other creditors.

The frustration related to Righthaven shutting down and putting its computers into storage, claims by Mangano earlier in the year that the company didn’t have certain records it could turn over to the EFF, and Mangano in February going missing from the case and not communicating with Gibson without explanation until he reappeared publicly this month.

Mangano has said he was missing from the Righthaven cases without formally withdrawing as its attorney because he was distracted by personal issues. He also claims to have been frustrated with criticism he received for representing Righthaven, which defense attorneys say was set up as a legal shakedown operation, and that he’s owed money for Righthaven legal services dating to 2011.

Mangano has now formally moved to withdraw from representing Righthaven, but Leen said she won’t allow that until the company complies with her order Tuesday on the hard drives.

Kurt Opsahl, an attorney for the EFF, has for months been urging Leen to hit Gibson with “coercive sanctions” for Righthaven’s failure to turn over information that will help the EFF find Righthaven assets.

The hard drives Leen ordered produced on Tuesday may include information on the company’s finances and assets, including special software Righthaven claimed to own that helped it detect alleged copyright infringements.

Mangano told Leen on Tuesday that Righthaven didn’t have any money to extract the hard drives from the computers sought by the EFF and go through them to remove any privileged information.

Opsahl agreed that should Righthaven turn over the drives without removing privileged information, he wouldn’t disclose it or use in the case. Leen ordered the drives turned over at Righthaven’s expense.

Opsahl complained to Leen on Tuesday that while Righthaven claims to be broke, it’s been able to pay expenses it wants to pay.

“After Righthaven claimed to be out of funds, it nevertheless continued to pay Mr. Mangano for several months and in April it hired a new attorney in a different case (in the appeals court). It seems to have funds when it wants to have funds,” Opsahl said. “We’ve had nothing but obstruction and delay.’’

“Steven Gibson is now going to have to show some responsibility,” Opsahl said. “The CEO of Righthaven remains responsible for taking care of the business of the company.”
http://www.vegasinc.com/news/2012/oc...es-turn-hard-/





French Music Streaming Service Is Taking On the World, but Omitting America
Eric Pfanner

Most of the biggest Internet companies got their start in the United States or expanded there quickly. One of the most successful European start-ups, on the other hand, hopes to turn itself into a global powerhouse by ignoring America.

The company, Deezer, is one of the biggest players in digital music streaming, trailing only the market leader, Spotify, in the number of paying customers it has attracted globally. Like Spotify, which is based in London, Deezer, with headquarters in Paris, offers subscribers unlimited access to millions of songs on demand, via PCs, mobile phones and other devices.

Deezer just got a big endorsement for its approach. Access Industries, the owner of Warner Music Group, pumped 100 million euros, or about $130 million, into Deezer this month, in what analysts described as one of the biggest investments ever in a French start-up.

“This shows that they think the music market is beginning to turn around,” Axel Dauchez, chief executive of Deezer, said in an interview.

Deezer, which started in 2007, has just moved into a slick new headquarters, where employees conduct business meetings on lawn chairs and on sofas disguised as musical keyboards. “Paint it black,” reads a neon sign on the somber-toned wall behind Mr. Dauchez. Like the Rolling Stones, Deezer is on a mission to blot out the color red — in this case, from the ailing music industry’s ledgers.

After a battle with piracy that has cut its sales in half in just over a decade, the music industry has high hopes for streaming, which is growing faster than digital purchases, as many listeners decide that ownership makes less sense than in the days of plastic and vinyl.

While Deezer and Spotify are still losing money, their sales are growing rapidly. Deezer generated about 50 million euros in revenue last year, and Mr. Dauchez has set a goal of 1 billion euros in sales in 2016.

With more than two million paying customers, Deezer trails Spotify, which has more than four million. Spotify introduced an American version last year, and it has been growing quickly. But Deezer has turned its back on the United States and plans to use its new money to finance an expansion into more than 160 other countries.

“Like a canny general who decides to march around a heavily fortified stronghold and thus effectively leave it stranded behind enemy lines, so Deezer expects the streaming war to be waged on different shores,” Mark Mulligan, a music industry analyst, wrote on his Web site. “They are both right and wrong.”

Analysts say Deezer is right to worry about competition in the United States, where Spotify competes with services like Rhapsody, Pandora and Rdio, even though their business models all vary slightly.

Mr. Mulligan says there is room for growth in the United States, because premium streaming services remain too expensive for most consumers. But the field is less crowded outside the United States, where Spotify is the clear leader in streaming in many of the markets it has entered — except France, where Deezer reigns.

Spotify, too, is planning for the battles ahead. Several people briefed on the company’s plans said it had begun a new round of fund-raising, seeking to secure several hundred million dollars in new investment.

New financing is essential for Deezer and Spotify because they are burning through significant amounts of cash. To attract new listeners, both companies offer free versions of their services, subject to certain restrictions. Yet both companies must pay a royalty to a recording company every time someone listens to one of their tracks.

While streaming services sell advertising to cover some of the costs of free listening, Mr. Dauchez said raising revenue in this way had proved to be more challenging than expected. So Deezer now sees its free service primarily as a way to entice listeners into paying for its premium offerings, which include things like unlimited streaming and special content and recommendations, along with no ads.

This makes expanding into new markets expensive. While Deezer says it was profitable last year, it expects to lose money until 2014 as it enters new markets. The company set up sites in several other European countries in 2011 and accelerated its global expansion this month.

“It’s an incredibly difficult business to be in,” said Giles Cottle, an analyst at Informa Telecoms and Media. “The only way to reach profitability is to achieve massive scale or to rewrite the record industry deals, which is unlikely to happen.”

Deezer has reached something approaching a large scale in France, home to the majority of its subscribers. Many of them were added via a marketing partnership with a Deezer shareholder, France Télécom, which includes the service in certain mobile phone packages.

Some analysts question whether customers acquired through bundled deals are as valuable as those who actively seek out a certain music service. But others say such partnerships are important because the differences between services like Spotify and Deezer are relatively minor.

Each offers catalogs with millions of songs and a premium subscription, including smartphone access, priced at about 10 euros a month in much of Europe or 10 pounds, or $16, in Britain.

To try to differentiate itself from Spotify and other streaming services, and to compete with unlicensed, illegal music offerings, Deezer emphasizes its social features and the editorial content of its sites. Deezer editors select playlists and offer users information on local performances by their favorite artists, for example.

“We don’t just want to be a ‘smart jukebox,’ ” as some people refer to streaming sites, Mr. Dauchez said. “If you want to rebuild the value of music, you have to rebuild the engagement with the listener.”

Access Industries, the owner of Warner Music that made the big investment in Deezer, is a vehicle of Len Blavatnik, a Russian-born American investor. Mr. Blavatnik declined, via a spokesman, to comment for this article.

Analysts said it was desirable for Warner and the major music companies, which also own stakes in Spotify, to maintain diversity in the distribution of digital music.

They want to avoid repeating the early days of digital, when there was only one major legitimate platform, iTunes, which could largely dictate the terms of licensing deals.

Mr. Dauchez said the new investors were also attracted to Deezer’s international strategy. The United States accounts for about half of worldwide digital music sales, compared with about a quarter of the overall music business, he noted, so there is room for the rest of the world to catch up.

“I’m not saying we will never be in the U.S., but if you start in the U.S., you are too U.S.-centric,” he said.
https://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/22/t...n-us-beat.html





USPTO Invalidates Apple's "Rubber-Banding" Patent Asserted Against Samsung
Mikey Campbell

It was discovered in a Monday court filing from Samsung that the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office tentatively invalidated Apple's bounce scroll, or "rubber-banding," patent, possibly putting the Apple v. Samsung jury's decision regarding the property at risk.

First reported by FOSS Patent's Florian Mueller, the filing notes that the USPTO invalidated all claims of Apple's U.S. Patent No. 7,469,381, including two rejections on claim 19 which was successfully asserted against Samsung in the companies' high-profile California trial.

From the USPTO's examination:

Rejections:

The following rejections are utilized by the Examiner below, referencing the proposed prior art listed on pages 23-85 of the Request:

Rejection A: Claims 1-6, 8-12, 16, 19, and 20 as being anticipated by Lira

Rejection B: Claims 7 and 13-15 as being obvious over Lira

Rejection D: Claims 1-5, 7-13, and 15-20 as being anticipated by Ording


Samsung points out in its statement to Judge Lucy Koh that the USPTO published the finding on its website on Oct. 22, following an ex parte examination of the patent. It was reported in May that an anonymous request to reexamine the '381 patent, along with Apple's U.S. Patent No. 7,479,949 for touchscreen heuristics. At the time, it was thought that Android maker Google lodged the request, however it could have been any number of rival companies in the business of building smartphones.

Rejection A and Rejection D are based on prior art considerations, one from PCT Publication No. WO 03/081458 on "controlling content display," by AOL/Luigi Lira, published on October 2, 2003 and U.S. Patent No. 7,786,975 on a "continuous scrolling list with acceleration," with named inventors Bas Ording, Scott Forstall, Greg Christie, Stephen O. Lemay and Imran Chaudhri.

A finding of anticipation means no inventive step was found between the prior art and Apple's '381 patent claims. The company must now prove to the patent office, or the appeals court that the IP was both new and its claimed inventive step is tenable.

Judge Koh is currently hearing so-called Rule 50 motions, or those that overrule jury decisions, from Samsung and Apple. The USPTO's non-final finding may play a role in her decision regarding the devices affected by the '381 patent, and if a final Office action comes in invalidating the claims, the patent could be unenforceable.

As Mueller notes, however, Apple has a chance to persuade the patent office as more than on non-final Office action can be reached, and final Office action can be reconsidered by the Central Reexamination Division. The last decision by the division can then be appealed to the Board of Patent Appeals and Interferences, and that outcome can be appealed to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit. Finally, a Federal Circuit decision can be appealed to the Supreme Court, though the matter is unlikely to reach such extremes.

As for Samsung, the Korean company already developed a workaround to the overscroll bounce patent, but if the invention were to be found invalid, it is probable that the feature would make a return to handsets sold in the U.S.
http://appleinsider.com/articles/12/...gainst-samsung





Following The Letter Of The Law: Apple Publishes Non-Apology To Samsung On Its Website To Comply With U.K. Court Ruling
Natasha Lomas

After losing an appeal in a UK high court last week against a judgement that Samsung’s Galaxy Tab tablets do not infringe the design of the iPad because their design is just not cool enough, Apple has now published an acknowledgement of the court’s judgement on its U.K. website — in line with the court order. You can’t call it an apology — quite the opposite: Apple makes it clear it does not agree with the court’s decision by pointing out that it has had court wins against Samsung for the same design patent in Germany, and noting its huge win against the Korean gadget maker in the U.S this summer.

Apple also focuses on the judge’s reasons for dismissing its patent claim — quoting the judge’s detailed ruling on exactly what makes the iPad’s design so much cooler than the Galaxy Tab, in which he talks almost lovingly of the “extreme simplicity” of the iPad’s design; its “undecorated surfaces”; “crisp edge” and “combination of curves”.

Apple then contrasts that with what the judge had to say about the Galaxy Tab: “very thin, almost insubstantial” with “unusual details on the back” — and the conclusion: “not cool”.

Here’s Apple’s acknowledgment in full

Samsung / Apple UK judgment

On 9th July 2012 the High Court of Justice of England and Wales ruled that Samsung Electronic(UK) Limited’s Galaxy Tablet Computer, namely the Galaxy Tab 10.1, Tab 8.9 and Tab 7.7 do notinfringe Apple’s registered design No. 0000181607-0001. A copy of the full judgment of the Highcourt is available on the following link http://www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWHC/...2012/1882.html.

In the ruling, the judge made several important points comparing the designs of the Apple and Samsung products:

“The extreme simplicity of the Apple design is striking. Overall it has undecorated flat surfaces with a plate of glass on the front all the way out to a very thin rim and a blank back. There is a crisp edge around the rim and a combination of curves, both at the corners and the sides. The design looks like an object the informed user would want to pick up and hold. It is an understated, smooth and simple product. It is a cool design.”

“The informed user’s overall impression of each of the Samsung Galaxy Tablets is the following. From the front they belong to the family which includes the Apple design; but the Samsung products are very thin, almost insubstantial members of that family with unusual details on the back. They do not have the same understated and extreme simplicity which is possessed by the Apple design. They are not as cool.”

That Judgment has effect throughout the European Union and was upheld by the Court of Appeal on 18 October 2012. A copy of the Court of Appeal’s judgment is available on the following link www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWCA/Civ/2012/1339.html. There is no injunction in respect of the registered design in force anywhere in Europe.

However, in a case tried in Germany regarding the same patent, the court found that Samsung engaged in unfair competition by copying the iPad design. A U.S. jury also found Samsung guilty of infringing on Apple’s design and utility patents, awarding over one billion U.S. dollars in damages to Apple Inc. So while the U.K. court did not find Samsung guilty of infringement, other courts have recognized that in the course of creating its Galaxy tablet, Samsung willfully copied Apple’s far more popular iPad.


The acknowledgement has not been published on the homepage of Apple’s U.K. website but there is a link to it — right at the bottom of the page, next to the notification about Apple’s use of cookies

In addition to the online acknowledgement of the court’s judgment, Apple is required to publish an acknowledgment as adverts in U.K. newspapers.
http://techcrunch.com/2012/10/26/app...-court-ruling/





Samsung Shipped a Stunning 57M Smartphones in Q3 — Twice as Many as Apple
John Koetsier

Samsung shipped 56.9 million of the 162 million smartphones sold globally in the third quarter of 2012, according to the latest research from Strategy Analytics. That adds up to a massive 35 percent global share in a market that is also growing at 35 percent annually.

“This was the largest number of units ever shipped by a smartphone vendor in a single quarter,” Neil Mawston, Strategy Analytics’ executive director, said in a statement.

In other words, Samsung is putting the pedal to the not-so-metaphorical metal.

Legal issues, billion-dollar lawsuits, ITC judgements — none of it seems to be interfering with Samsung’s focus, which is winning with the customer. While Samsung shipped 56.9 million units, Apple — which just reported good but not great financial results in its recent quarter — shipped 26.9 million iPhones.

Apple and Samsung appear to be almost the only companies that matter in mobile. Maybe Robert Scoble was right when he said Apple’s billion-dollar judgement was actually a win for Samsung.

“Samsung and Apple combined now account for over half of all smartphones shipped worldwide, up from around one-third a year ago,” said Neil Shah, an analyst at Strategy Analytics. “Volumes have polarized around those two brands.”

The once-mighty Nokia has dipped to single digits, winning just four percent of the smartphone market by moving 6.3 million units. That’s less than half of the 16.8 million it shipped in the equivalent quarter last year.

“Nokia has now slipped outside the top three global smartphone rankings for the first time in history,” added Shaw.
http://venturebeat.com/2012/10/25/sa...many-as-apple/





Analysis: Most Companies Won't Be Early Adopters of Windows 8
Bill Rigby

There was once a time when the launch of a new Windows operating system was a huge deal for the technology departments in many businesses. Not anymore. Microsoft Corp's release of Windows 8 on Friday is likely to be a non-event for most companies -- and some experts say many may never adopt it.

The system may appear to offer something for everyone: touch-screen functionality for tablet enthusiasts, a slick new interface for the younger set, and multiple versions to make it compatible with traditional desktop PC software.

Many businesses, though, say there is no compelling reason to adopt. Indeed, a large number have yet to make the transition to Windows 7 from Windows XP.

"Windows 8 is, frankly, more of a consumer platform than it is a business platform, so it's not something that makes any sense from a business perspective at this juncture," said Doug Johnson, head of risk management policy at the American Bankers Association, whose members are among the world's biggest technology buyers. "There is really no additional business functionality that Windows 8 gives you that I see."

For most of the past two decades, that sort of comment about a new version of Windows might have set off panic in Microsoft's Redmond, Washington, headquarters. Not now. Windows 8, in a stark reflection of how the technology business is changing, will rise or fall on how it is received in the consumer market.

That doesn't mean Microsoft executives are publicly saying they won't be going after enterprise customers with the radical new version of its flagship product.

"The lines between the consumer and the enterprise are blurring," said Ron Markezich, head of Microsoft's Enterprise & Partner Group. "Business customers are looking forward to Windows 8 because they don't have to compromise between tablet and PC."

But Microsoft's main goal is to show it can master the new touch-optimized, mobile forms of computing pioneered by Apple Inc and Google Inc. Its colorful, action-packed advertising for the system are aimed at a young, free-wheeling audience, and its new Surface tablets are being positioned squarely as consumer devices.

LUKEWARM

Corporate customers have been lukewarm about the product even after test versions have been available for more than a year.

Car maker Volkswagen, which only last year moved 60,000 PCs onto Windows 7, is not planning to make another drastic shift anytime soon.

VW's head of IT, Martin Eickhoff, said his team was "excited to evaluate the new tablet features" but would wait until Windows 8's release to assess its potential benefits.

That's not unusual, as corporations generally test a new system for 12-18 months before planning to adopt it, meaning enterprise take-up of most versions of Windows -- except for the unpopular Vista -- have only usually happened two or three years after launch.

This time even that pattern might not happen.

Michael Silver, an analyst at technology research firm Gartner, expects minimal corporate adoption over the life of the new system: "We believe 90 percent of large organizations will not deploy Windows 8 broadly, and at its peak, we expect about 20 percent of PCs in large organizations will run Windows 8," he said.

WINDOWS RECEDES

This may not be a huge problem for Microsoft.

For one thing, the company gets 40 percent of its overall revenue from multi-year licensing deals with enterprises -- companies, government departments and universities -- which typically give customers rights to the newest version of its software.

Essentially, Microsoft gets paid regardless of what version of Windows many big customers actually use.

And Windows is also declining in financial importance for Microsoft, although the sales of PCs often determine the strength of Microsoft's earnings. Five years ago, it accounted for almost 30 percent of Microsoft's sales. Last year it was 25 percent.

Microsoft's success in selling to businesses, in the short term at least, depends less on Windows than on its Office products and its fast-growing server and tools division.

One institution that has made an early move to Windows 8 is Seton Hall University in New Jersey. The school has already deployed tablets and laptops running pre-release versions of Windows 8 to its freshman and junior classes -- with help from Microsoft, which subsidized the effort with free consulting time.

"The benefit of the upgrade to Windows 8 for me is that it's touch friendly. Lots of the devices that we have in the community could benefit," said Stephen Landry, Seton Hall's chief information officer.

Landry said his students overwhelmingly liked the new system, after a brief training session, but he acknowledged that many of his peers in higher education were not ready to move so fast.

"Talking to a lot of CIOs, they are not ready to jump into Windows 8 with both feet yet. They are taking a wait-and-see attitude. They are thinking 'That's a lot of work, I need to upgrade System Center (Microsoft's IT management platform), I need to have a little different process for managing the back end.' A lot of CIOs I've talked to, they are saying I'm not really seeing a benefit."

Steven Hanna, chief information officer of Kennametal Inc, an industrial parts and tools manufacturer based in Latrobe, Pennsylvania, said his company has only just moved onto Windows 7, and has no plans to introduce Windows 8 broadly in the near future. But he may deploy it selectively for employees who can make use of the touch-screen, such as traveling sales reps.

"The mobility for the sales force, to put all the material and the ability to do basic transactions in their hands, is going to be a phenomenal driver for us," said Hanna. "We're doing some piloting with iPads, but I'm excited to see the Windows stuff come out."

This appears to be the most likely route for Windows 8 into the workplace. But even this will not be simple because Windows 8 is really two operating systems.

The standard Windows 8 for devices with Intel Corp x86 chips will run old Microsoft applications and generally fit seamlessly into companies' networks and security systems, just like any Windows PC. But Windows RT, the version for devices powered by ARM Holdings chips -- such as Microsoft's new Surface tablet -- will not run legacy applications and require more work to integrate.

MOVING FROM XP

Even as it launches Windows 8, a key priority for Microsoft is to get customers off the decade-old Windows XP -- which still runs on 41 percent of the world's 1.5 billion PCs. For the last three years, it has urged enterprise customers to move to Windows 7, and it has said it does not expect organizations to drop those plans because of Windows 8.

That effectively means many companies will downgrade new PCs to run on Windows 7, not 8, over the next few years.

But if people start bringing Microsoft's new Surface tablet to work, or any of the other new Windows 8 devices, Microsoft is hoping corporate IT managers will welcome them with open arms.

"Some organizations, when they look at Windows 8 Intel tablets, they are going to like them because they are manageable," said Michael Cherry, an analyst at Directions on Microsoft, an independent consultancy that helps customers understand the company. "When they look at RT they are going to be disappointed, because it's no easier to manage than an iPad."

(Reporting By Bill Rigby; Editing by Jonathan Weber, Martin Howell)
http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/...89L03N20121022





Microsoft Exec Says Rampant Cyber Crime Made His Company Fall Behind on Smartphones
Brad Reed

Microsoft (MSFT) development director Craig Mundie knows that his company has fallen way behind on smartphones but he insists that it’s not the company’s fault. In an interview with Spiegel, Mundie says that Microsoft would have had a lot more time to focus on developing and promoting mobile computing devices such as smartphones if it weren’t for those meddling cyber criminals.

“During [the time that Apple was building the iPhone], Windows went through a difficult period where we had to shift a huge amount of our focus to security engineering,” said Mundie. “The criminal activity in cyberspace was growing dramatically ten years ago, and Microsoft was basically the only company that had enough volume for it to be a target. In part because of that, Windows Vista took a long time to be born.”

Mundie also defended his company’s long-term vision and strategic thinking throughout the last decade and said that Microsoft had already built the same kinds of products that made Apple famous but that it didn’t devote enough resources to them.

“We had a music player before the iPod,” he said. “We had a touch device before the iPad. And we were leading in the mobile phone space. So, it wasn’t for a lack of vision or technological foresight that we lost our leadership position. The problem was that we just didn’t give enough reinforcement to those products at the time that we were leading. Unfortunately, the company had some executional missteps, which occurred right at the time when Apple launched the iPhone. With that, we appeared to drop a generation behind.”
http://bgr.com/2012/10/25/microsoft-...d-smartphones/





Android to Beat Windows in 2016: Gartner

Google's Android operating system will be used on more computing devices than Microsoft's Windows within four years, data from research firm Gartner showed on Wednesday, underlining the massive shift in the technology sector.

At the end of 2016, there will be 2.3 billion computers, tablets and smartphones using Android software, compared with 2.28 billion Windows devices, Gartner data showed.

That compares to an expected 1.5 billion Windows devices by the end of this year, against 608 million using Android.

Android, which reached the market only in 2008, has risen fast to be the dominant smartphone platform, controlling two-thirds of that market. It has taken the No. 2 spot in the fast-growing tablet computer market.

The proliferation of the free software gives Google its edge on the search market - its key profit generator.

Worldwide shipments of personal computers fell by over 8 percent in the third quarter, the steepest decline since 2001, as more consumers flock to increasingly powerful tablets and smartphones for more basic computing.

Microsoft's Windows has dominated the personal computer industry for decades, but the company has struggled to keep up with shift to wireless, and in smartphones its market share is around 3 percent.

(Reporting By Tarmo Virki; Editing by Sophie Hares)
http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/...89N11J20121024





Tech CEOs Trade Barbs, Warm Up for Holiday Tablet Wars
Poornima Gupta and Alistair Barr

The biggest names in consumer technology, stung by a string of disappointing quarterly results this month, are suiting up for what's shaping to be the fiercest holiday battle in years.

Investors and consumers have already largely written off flaccid quarterly numbers from tech behemoths like Microsoft, Apple, Google and Amazon. What counts is the next 60 days, when the biggest names in technology do battle at a near-unprecedented scale and pace.

Just on Thursday, Amazon compared its Kindle Fire with Apple's new iPad mini, point by point, in its earnings release, an unusual forum to name rivals. Apple CEO Tim Cook compared Microsoft's Surface tablet to an over-engineered car that can fly and float. And Microsoft went for the iPad, saying its Surface boasted twice its storage.

All three tablets will vie for the shrinking consumer dollar these holidays. By tech standards, it's getting ugly.

"The tablet space is where the growth is. That's why they are all fighting over it. PC shipments are down and some tablet buyers may never buy another PC," said Michael Allenson, strategic consulting director in the Technology and Telecom Research Group at Maritz Research.

"Last holiday season, we saw a lot of buying of tablets in the $200 to $300 price range. This year, the iPad mini and Amazon's Kindle Fires are targeted as large gifts. They are trying to ride that wave and win as much as they can."

The impending clash is far from decided.

Odds-on favorite Apple has lost some of its aura of invincibility, with Google's Android and Samsung making inroads into its reign in smartphones, Microsoft's quickening marketing blitz, and Amazon's Kindle nipping at its heels as the No. 2 tablet in the United States market.

That competition has weighed on Apple's share price, which is at three-month lows after it reported a second straight quarter of disappointing results, sullying its reputation for blowing away Wall Street estimates.

Google is struggling to figure out the dollars and cents of the mobile market and Microsoft is facing witheringly unimpressed reviews for its new Windows 8 platform and Surface tablet.

Meanwhile, Amazon's outlook for the holiday season is being taken as a disappointment, and Best Buy warned late Wednesday that sales and margins are falling.

CLAWS COME OUT

Tech companies hope lackluster calendar third-quarter results mean consumers have held off from buying gadgets so they can save up for something new and shiny this Christmas -- from the lowest-end Fire at $159 to a Surface around $499 or the biggest, fastest, newest iPad at $829.

The technology industry is grappling with a fundamental shift from deskbound computers or heavy laptops to sleek mobile devices like tablets, which are upending the traditional PC model and prompting companies like Google and Microsoft to invest deeply in hardware manufacturing.

Their entry however is raising the competitive stakes. Companies like Apple usually spend most of their time talking about how great their own products are, but with the competition more intense than ever, Apple CEO Cook spared a not-so-kind thought for Microsoft on Thursday.

"I haven't personally played with the Surface yet, but what we're reading about it, is that it's a fairly compromised, confusing product," he said, later adding "I suppose you could design a car that flies and floats, but I don't think it would do all of those things very well."

Cook may have been going for levity, but the Twitterati booed his joke, since after all most gadget-heads would be very content with a flying, floating car.

Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer, for his part, was pretty impressed with the company's handiwork, notwithstanding reviews that used words like "disappointing" and "undercooked."

"We have a device that's uniquely good at being a tablet and a PC (with) no compromise on either one," Ballmer told Reuters Television ahead of the Windows 8 launch event in New York on Thursday. "Work. Play. Tablet. PC. Boom! One product."

Google Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt, in a talk this month, took a shot at Apple, which has faced a barrage of complaints about glitches in its mapping software since dumping Google's service from its iPhone.

"What Apple has learned is that maps are really hard. They really are hard," he said. "Apple should have kept with our maps."

Not to be outdone in the sniping, Amazon Chief Executive Jeff Bezos took a subtle swipe at Apple's high prices in the Internet retailer's quarterly results statement Thursday, saying "our approach is to work hard to charge less."

Right below those comments, Amazon listed head-to-head comparisons between its $299 8.9-inch Kindle Fire HD tablet, its $199 7-inch Kindle Fire HD device and Apple's iPad mini, which was unveiled on Tuesday.

Analysts were taken aback by how brazen Amazon was being in taking shots at peers.

"I have never seen them directly compare products in a results release like this, and in so much detail clearly calling out their competitors," said RJ Hottovy, an equity analyst at Morningstar. "This shows they are taking the tablet wars very seriously."
(Additional reporting by Bill Rigby in Seattle; Writing by Ben Berkowitz; editing by Edwin Chan and Raju Gopalakrishnan)
http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/...89P01320121026





Gadgets Add Complexity to Brutal Bank Layoffs
Sarah White

In the high-tech, gadget-addicted world of investment banking, layoffs are becoming more complex and brutal as firms try to stop sensitive data leaving with employees.

Sackings are usually swift, with bankers escorted out, a few belongings thrown into boxes and Blackberries and phones disabled the minute they get their marching orders.

But weeks of trawling through old emails and planning software lockdowns now precede and follow the job cuts that are happening in thousands, adding a new layer of indignity to the process.

"It used to be that you would take away any access to the building and maybe prevent someone from lifting their Rolodex," said Stephen Bonner, a former Barclays executive now a partner in the information protection business at consultancy KPMG.

"Now there is extensive compliance, with for example reviews of the last six months of email activity, for signs of a large amount of material being sent to personal accounts."

Companies have to make sure they can block access to work systems that employees may be using on their own computers, while occasionally calling in lawyers to ask fired staff to destroy data they may have already downloaded.

The crackdown has taken on new relevance after a series of banking scandals such as the rigging of Libor interest rates. Records of emails and voice mails underpinned a case by regulators against Barclays for manipulating Libor, which was settled in June.
Layoffs in banking have long been a particularly brutal affair, justified by firms because of the sensitive information handled by deal advisers and traders.

Anecdotes abound about the half-eaten sandwiches left behind by colleagues called to a meeting with their manager and human resources, never to return. Those allowed to collect their belongings often do so with a security escort.

More bankers are likely to get a taste of the dismissal procedures in the coming months as economic woes hurt revenue.

Deutsche Bank and Nomura have been among those shrinking headcount again recently, with layoffs at major players adding up to well over 130,000 since 2011.

PRACTICE RUN

With hundreds of bankers sometimes leaving on the same day in big redundancy rounds, the huge IT operations take meticulous planning, sometimes with unnerving consequences for staff.

One analyst laid off last year along with his team said their Blackberries stopped working for 15 minutes a week before they were unexpectedly laid off. In retrospect they believed it had been a practice run.

"That made us feel a bit sick," the former analyst said, speaking on condition of anonymity.

But recurring incidents of data theft, and other breaches and scandals mean banks will likely only step up their checks.

"I've never yet run one investigation during a round of redundancies where we haven't found things that were concerning for the company," Bonner at KPMG said.

A former Goldman Sachs computer programmer was recently charged with stealing a high-frequency trading code from the firm before leaving for a job at a start-up.

Systems sweeps can extend to looking for signs of downloads onto memory sticks in the months before an employee's departure.

Banks store valuable client data in relationship management systems for example, listing intimate details of their every transaction, which junior bankers could try to take with them.

While preventing these breaches is not always possible, banks will notify each other if they believe former employees have taken data they were not entitled to and collaborate between firms, Bonner said.

As in other industries, there is also the risk that a disgruntled, fired employee will return to his desk and send off angry company-wide emails -- but worse can happen too.

A computer programmer at U.S. mortgage association Fannie Mae was convicted in 2010 for planting a computer virus designed to destroy all the data on its servers the day he was fired.

WEDDED TO GADGETS

Most bankers do leave on good terms, however -- usually a condition to getting a generous redundancy payout.

But although many concede big packages are the trade-off for working in such a cut-throat world, the impersonal format of layoffs is still tough, and dependence on technology such as Blackberries has made things worse.

Being suddenly cut off from the systems so many are wedded to can exacerbate the feelings of worthlessness and bereavement people experience during redundancy, psychologists say.

"People are handed these gadgets and tools...and it becomes entrenched in their way of being," said Michael Sinclair of the City Psychology Group. "It's what they do at night times, and it's about 'who am I'."

The lack of a human connection in banking redundancies can add to the problem, he said, as does the stigma attached to seeking counseling, which can be seen as a weakness.

But the large scale of redundancies at banks and their frequency, correlated to cycles of rising and falling markets, make it unlikely they will be handled any differently, despite efforts to give employees and managers more training to cope since the 2008 financial crisis.

"The only other way in is the more personal way, and I don't know how one could do that," said Kirsty Tifft from The Career Psychologist, who previously worked in finance, including at Morgan Stanley and Merrill Lynch.

"Once you go down that route, you have to invest a lot of time. When hundreds of people leave on the same day, it's hard to see how that could be managed."

(Editing by Anna Willard)
http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/...89M0MH20121023





A Bandwidth Breakthrough

A dash of algebra on wireless networks promises to boost bandwidth tenfold, without new infrastructure.
David Talbot

Academic researchers have improved wireless bandwidth by an order of magnitude—not by adding base stations, tapping more spectrum, or cranking up transmitter wattage, but by using algebra to banish the network-clogging task of resending dropped packets.

By providing new ways for mobile devices to solve for missing data, the technology not only eliminates this wasteful process but also can seamlessly weave data streams from Wi-Fi and LTE—a leap forward from other approaches that toggle back and forth. "Any IP network will benefit from this technology," says Sheau Ng, vice president for research and development at NBC Universal.

Several companies have licensed the underlying technology in recent months, but the details are subject to nondisclosure agreements, says Muriel Medard, a professor at MIT's Research Laboratory of Electronics and a leader in the effort. Elements of the technology were developed by researchers at MIT, the University of Porto in Portugal, Harvard University, Caltech, and Technical University of Munich. The licensing is being done through an MIT/Caltech startup called Code-On Technologies.

The underlying problem is huge and growing: on a typical day in Boston, for example, 3 percent of packets are dropped due to interference or congestion. Dropped packets cause delays in themselves, and then generate new back-and-forth network traffic to replace those packets, compounding the original problem.

The practical benefits of the technology, known as coded TCP, were seen on a recent test run on a New York-to-Boston Acela train, notorious for poor connectivity. Medard and students were able to watch blip-free YouTube videos while some other passengers struggled to get online. "They were asking us 'How did you do that?' and we said 'We're engineers!' " she jokes.

More rigorous lab studies have shown large benefits. Testing the system on Wi-Fi networks at MIT, where 2 percent of packets are typically lost, Medard's group found that a normal bandwidth of one megabit per second was boosted to 16 megabits per second. In a circumstance where losses were 5 percent—common on a fast-moving train—the method boosted bandwidth from 0.5 megabits per second to 13.5 megabits per second. In a situation with zero losses, there was little if any benefit, but loss-free wireless scenarios are rare.

Medard's work "is an important breakthrough that promises to significantly improve bandwidth and quality-of-experience for cellular data users experiencing poor signal coverage," says Dipankar "Ray" Raychaudhuri, director or the Winlab at Rutgers University (see "Pervasive Wireless"). He expects the technology to be widely deployed within two to three years.

To test the technology in the meantime, Medard's group set up proxy servers in the Amazon cloud. IP traffic was sent to Amazon, encoded, and then decoded as an application on phones. The benefit might be even better if the technology were built directly into transmitters and routers, she says. It also could be used to merge traffic coming over Wi-Fi and cell phone networks rather than forcing devices to switch between the two frequencies.

The technology transforms the way packets of data are sent. Instead of sending packets, it sends algebraic equations that describe series of packets. So if a packet goes missing, instead of asking the network to resend it, the receiving device can solve for the missing one itself. Since the equations involved are simple and linear, the processing load on a phone, router, or base station is negligible, Medard says.

Whether gains seen in the lab can be achieved in a full-scale deployment remains to be seen, but the fact that the improvements were so large suggests a breakthrough, says Ng, the NBC executive, who was not involved in the research. "In the lab, if you only find a small margin of improvement, the engineers will be skeptical. Looking at what they have done in the lab, it certainly is order-of-magnitude improvement—and that certainly is very encouraging," Ng says.

If the technology works in large-scale deployments as expected, it could help forestall a spectrum crunch. Cisco Systems says that by 2016, mobile data traffic will grow 18-fold—and Bell Labs goes farther, predicting growth by a factor of 25. The U.S. Federal Communications Commission has said spectrum could run out within a couple of years.

Medard stops short of saying the technology will prevent a spectrum crunch, but she notes that the current system is grossly inefficient. "Certainly there are very severe inefficiencies that should be remedied before you consider acquiring more resources," she says.

She says that when her group got online on the Acela, the YouTube video they watched was of college students playing a real-world version of the Angry Birds video game. "The quality of the video was good. The quality of the content—we haven't solved," Medard says.
http://www.technologyreview.com/news...-breakthrough/





Children’s Media Usage Skyrockets During Past Year [STUDY]
Fran Berkman

Good news: Your teenage sons and daughters have doubled their productivity over the last year.

No, they’re not doing twice as much homework or eating double servings of vegetables. Young teenagers are, however, sending twice as many text messages on average compared with 2011.

Ofcom’s latest annual report on children’s media habits shows that those ages 12-15 are averaging 193 text messages each week, more than double last year’s average of 91. Of that group, girls tend to send about 35% more messages than boys.

“Children’s take-up and use of different media is growing at a rapid pace, with some areas such as texting and smartphone ownership fast outstripping the general population,” said Claudio Pollack, Ofcom’s consumer group director.

The study also shows that the era of television’s monopoly on children’s attention may be waning as Internet usage equaled children’s self-reported television time. Each activity garnered about 17 hours per week. The children also said it was their cellphones, not their TVs, that would miss the most if forced to give them up.

It seems children’s media usage are soaring across the board. Smartphone ownership, tablet usage and social media usage have all increased prodigiously among children under 15, since 2011.
https://mashable.com/2012/10/24/childrens-media-usage/





Give Social Networks Fake Details, Advises Whitehall Web Security Official
Brian Wheeler

A senior government official has sparked anger by advising internet users to give fake details to websites to protect their security.

Andy Smith, an internet security chief at the Cabinet Office, said people should only give accurate details to trusted sites such as government ones.

He said names and addresses posted on social networking sites "can be used against you" by criminals.

His advice was described by Labour MP Helen Goodman as "totally outrageous".

Ms Goodman, shadow culture minister, told BBC News: "This is the kind of behaviour that, in the end, promotes crime.

"It is exactly what we don't want. We want more security online. It's anonymity which facilitates cyber-bullying, the abuse of children.

"I was genuinely shocked that a public official could say such a thing."

'Sensible'

Mrs Goodman, MP for Bishop Auckland, in the North-East of England, said she had been contacted by constituents who have been the victims of cyber-bullying on major social networking sites by people hiding behind fake names.

Mr Smith, who is in charge of security for what he described as the "largest public services network in Europe", which will eventually be accessed by millions of people in the UK, said giving fake details to social networking sites was "a very sensible thing to do".

"When you put information on the internet do not use your real name, your real date of birth," he told a Parliament and the Internet Conference in Portcullis House, Westminster.

"When you are putting information on social networking sites don't put real combinations of information, because it can be used against you."

But he stressed that internet users should always give accurate information when they were filling in government forms on the internet, such as tax returns.

"When you are interacting with government, or professional organisations - people who you know are going to protect your information - then obviously you are going to use the right stuff.

But he said that fraudsters gather a lot of personal information "from Google, social networking sites, from email footers, all sorts of places".

He added that they were "bringing this information together and cross-collerating information and then they are using it against you".

'Be cautious'

Mr Smith's comments were backed by Lord Erroll, chairman of the Digital Policy Alliance, a not-for-profit policy studies group which claims to speak for industry and charities, who was chairing the panel. He said he had always given his date of birth as "1 April 1900".

Asked by BBC News to clarify his remarks, Mr Smith, who is head of security at the Public Sector Technical Services Authority, said there was a "balancing act" to be struck between giving details to reputable sites and posting them on websites where the need to confirm identity was not so vital.

He said: "Don't put all your information on websites you don't trust.

"If it's somewhere you trust - and obviously with government you really do need to put accurate information. Large commercial sites you are going to put the right information.

"If you are not sure about something then just be very, very cautious of what you put up, what you expose if you really don't want to be used against you."

'Educating consumers'

Culture minister Ed Vaizey said he had not seen Mr Smith's remarks but that he "wouldn't encourage people to put false identities on the internet".

"The way of viewing this issue is that we should work with Facebook to ensure people feel secure using those sites and that there is not a threat of identity theft," he said.

"It's also important for the government to work with consumers, to educate consumers about the threat of identity theft and what kind of details we should and shouldn't put online."

Citing an anecdote about novelist Salman Rushdie - who won a battle last year to use his commonly used middle name rather than his actual first name Ahmed on his profile page - he said: "Facebook doesn't allow you to put on false details and they will take you off if they discover you have."
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-20082493





China Blocks Web Access to Times After Article
Keith Bradsher

The Chinese government swiftly blocked access Friday morning to the English-language and Chinese-language Web sites of The New York Times from computers in mainland China in response to an article in both languages describing wealth accumulated by the family of the country’s prime minister.

The authorities were also blocking attempts to mention The Times or the prime minister, Wen Jiabao, in postings on Sina Weibo, an extremely popular mini-blogging service in China that resembles Twitter.

The Foreign Ministry spokesman on duty in Beijing early Friday morning did not answer phone calls seeking comment.

China maintains the world’s most extensive and sophisticated system for Internet censorship, employing tens of thousands of people to monitor what is said, delete entries that contravene the country’s extensive and unpublished regulations and even write new entries that are favorable to the government.

Rebecca MacKinnon, a senior fellow specializing in Internet free expression and privacy issues at the New America Foundation, a nonpartisan group headquartered in Washington, said that the Chinese interruption of Internet access was typical of the response to information that offended leaders.

“This is what they do: they get mad, they block you,” she said.

The English-language and Chinese-language Web sites of The Times are hosted on servers outside mainland China.

A spokeswoman for The Times, Eileen Murphy, expressed disappointment that Internet access had been blocked and noted that the Chinese-language Web site had attracted “great interest” in China.

“We hope that full access is restored shortly, and we will ask the Chinese authorities to ensure that our readers in China can continue to enjoy New York Times journalism,” she said in a statement, adding, “We will continue to report and translate stories applying the same journalistic standards that are upheld across The New York Times.”

Former President Jiang Zemin of China ordered an end to blocking of The New York Times Web site after meeting with journalists from The Times in August 2001. The company’s Web sites, like those of most other foreign media organizations, have remained mostly free of blocking since then, with occasional, temporary exceptions.

By 7 a.m. Friday in China, access to both the English- and Chinese-language Web sites of The Times was blocked from all 31 cities in mainland China tested. The Times had posted the article in English at 4:34 p.m. on Thursday in New York (4:34 a.m. Friday in Beijing), and finished posting the article in Chinese three hours later after the translation of final edits to the English-language version.

Publication of the article about Mr. Wen and his family comes at a delicate time in Chinese politics, during a year in which factional rivalries and the personal lives of Chinese leaders have come into public view to a rare extent and drawn unprecedented international interest.

The Times’s statement called China “an increasingly open society, with increasingly sophisticated media,” adding, “The response to our site suggests that The Times can play an important role in the government’s efforts to raise the quality of journalism available to the Chinese people.”

The New York Times is not the first international organization to run into trouble with Chinese censors. Google decided to move its servers for the Chinese market in January 2010, to Hong Kong, a semiautonomous Chinese territory outside the country’s censorship firewalls, after the company was unable to reach an agreement with the Chinese authorities to allow unrestricted searches of the Internet.

Bloomberg published an article on June 29 describing wealth accumulated by the family of Vice President Xi Jinping, who is expected to become the country’s next top leader as general secretary of the Communist Party during the coming Party Congress.

Since then, Bloomberg’s operations have encountered a series of problems in mainland China, including the blocking of its Web site, which is in English.
https://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/26/w...ork-times.html





Anonymous’ Wikileaks like Project Tyler to Launch in December
Ravi Mandalia

A hacker, who claims to be a member of the hacking collective Anonymous, has revealed that the hacktivist group is working on a Wikileaks like service dubbed Tyler and that it will be launched on December 21.

Anonymous’ member revealed that the service will be decentralized and will be based on peer-to-peer service unlike Wikileaks thus making Tyler rather immune to closure and raids. The site will serve as a haven for whistle blowers where they can publish classified documents and information.

The hacker revealed to Voice of Russia in an emailed interview “Tyler will be P2P encrypted software, in which every function of a disclosure platform will be handled and shared by everyone who downloads and deploys the software.”

One time supporter of Wikileaks, Anonymous criticized the whistle blowing site because of the recent funding techniques it employed – a paywalled access to the files which were previously available without any restrictions. Anonymous released a statement claiming that Wikileaks "betrayed" the hacking collective by using methods such as "rabid scrounging for money". Following this they not only withdrew support for the site but also Julian Assange.
http://paritynews.com/web-news/item/...ch-in-december





Bowker: Number of Self-Published Books up 287% Since 2006
Laura Hazard Owen

New statistics from Bowker show that the self-publishing industry in the United States is growing rapidly, with four companies dominating the space. Amazon’s CreateSpace accounts for the most self-published print books, while Smashwords accounts for the most ebooks.

In a new report on self-publishing, Bowker — the company that handles ISBNs (book identifier codes) and other bibliographic info for books published in the U.S. — says that the number of print and ebooks self-published annually is up by 287 percent since 2006 and now totals over 235,000 titles.

Bowker finds that 148,424 print books were self-published in 2011 — that means that 43 percent of all print books published in the U.S. in 2011 were self-published. 87,201 ebooks were self-published. Publishers Lunch notes a few important caveats: Bowker only counts titles with ISBNs, so “KDP exclusives and other sources that still don’t use ISBN numbers” aren’t included. That means the number of self-published ebooks is likely much higher than 87,201. In addition, the print and digital editions of a single title may be counted twice.

Bowker finds that four large companies dominate the self-publishing space. In 2011, Amazon’s CreateSpace was behind the creation of 58,412 titles, or 39 percent of all self-published print books.

Smashwords was the largest ebook producer, accounting for 40,608 titles, or 47 percent of all self-published ebooks.

Author Solutions, which Penguin acquired earlier this year, and Lulu accounted for 47,094 titles and 38,005 titles, respectively. Author Solutions and Lulu allow customers to self-publish both print and ebooks.

“Beyond those four players, no company has more than 10 percent of market share,” Bowker reports. The company found that small presses, which it defines as publishers who have produced 10 or fewer books, produced 34,107 self-published titles in 2011. The number of print books produced by small presses “increased more than 74 percent between 2006 and 2011″ but that figure is “dwarfed by CreateSpace’s 1702 percent increase during the same period.”
http://paidcontent.org/2012/10/24/bo...87-since-2006/





How To Strip DRM from Kindle E-Books and Others
Charlie Sorrel

You love your Kindle, but you hate the DRM. What do you do? Well, if you like, we’ll tell you how to strip the copy-protection from your e-books, leaving a plain, vanilla e-book file in the format of your choice. This doesn’t just work for Kindle book, either. The method, detailed by Apprentice Alf, will also remove DRM from Mobipocket, Barnes and Noble, Adobe Digital Editions and Fictionwise books, making these stores much more attractive to buyers.

For the meat of the how-to, you should visit Apprentice Alf’s blog post, which is both straightforward and detailed. I managed to get it up and running in a couple minutes. For a quick version – focussing on the Kindle, read on.

First, get a copy of the free e-book manager, Calibre. This catalogs and converts your e-books from format to format. With a couple of plugins, it will also strip all DRM from them.

Next, you need those plugins, also linked from Alf’s post. Depending on what kind of books you want to fix-up, you may have to configure these plugins. For the Kindle, you need only install it in the right place.

Then download Kindle for Mac or Window, and from there download the books you have already bought and want cracked. Then locate the downloaded files on your hard-drive. Mac users will find them in a folder called My Kindle Content, inside the documents folder. These are titled with non-human-friendly names like “B002AU7MEK_EBOK.azw”, so just pick anything that seems to be a big enough file for an e-book (500k-plus). Then drag these files into Calibre.

That’s it. Your files are now DRM-free, and you can use Calibre to convert then to any format. EPUB is the one you need for the iPad or iPhone, but you can choose pretty much anything.

Oddly, since I tried this over the weekend, Kindle books have become a lot more attractive to me. Previously I was buying novels and things I might read once only. Now I’m looking at cookbooks and reference books, pricier purchases that I didn’t make before in case one day I stopped using the Kindle, or if Amazon decided to revoke my ownership of a book like it did, infamously, with Orwell’s 1984. Now, with my books safely converted, I can buy anything, and use it anywhere.
http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2011/...ks-and-others/





Jailbreaking Now Legal Under DMCA for Smartphones, But Not Tablets

Arbitrary rulings illustrate fundamental brokenness of the DMCA.
Timothy B. Lee

The Digital Millennium Copyright makes it illegal to "circumvent" digital rights management schemes. But when Congress passed the DMCA in 1998, it gave the Librarian of Congress the power to grant exemptions. The latest batch of exemptions, which will be in force for three years, were announced on Thursday.

Between now and late 2015, there will be five categories of circumvention that will be allowed under the Librarian's rules, one fewer than the current batch of exemptions, which was announced in July 2010. The new exemptions take effect October 28.

The new batch of exemptions illustrate the fundamentally arbitrary nature of the DMCA's exemption process. For the next three years, you'll be allowed to jailbreak smartphones but not tablet computers. You'll be able to unlock phones purchased before January 2013 but not phones purchased after that. It will be legal to rip DVDs to use an excerpt in a documentary, but not to play it on your iPad. None of these distinctions makes very much sense. But Congress probably deserves more blame for this than the Librarian of Congress.

Disability access to e-books

The first exemption applies to "literary works, distributed electronically, that are protected by technological measures which either prevent the enabling of read-aloud functionality or interfere with screen readers or other applications or assistive technologies." The work must have been purchased legitimately through "customary channels," such that "the rights owner is remunerated."

A similar version of the exemption was offered in 2010, but that one allowed circumvention only if "all existing e-book editions of the work contain access controls" that inhibit disabled access. Disability groups urged the Librarian to drop this restriction, arguing that "despite the rapid growth of the e-book market, most e-book titles remain inaccessible due to fragmentation within the industry and differing technical standards and accessibility capabilities across platforms." That meant that the rule effectively required disabled users to own multiple devices—a Kindle, a Nook, and an iPad, for example—in order to gain access to a full range of e-books. The Librarian accepted this argument and allowed circumvention by disabled users even if a work is available in an open format on another platform.

Jailbreaking for iPhones but not iPads

The new rules allow circumvention of "computer programs that enable wireless telephone handsets to execute lawfully obtained software applications, where circumvention is accomplished for the sole purpose of enabling interoperability of such applications with computer programs on the telephone handset." In other words, jailbreaking is permitted for "telephone handsets," as it was under the 2010 rules.

What about tablets? No dice. The Librarian "found significant merit to the opposition’s concerns that this aspect of the proposed class was broad and ill-defined, as a wide range of devices might be considered 'tablets,' notwithstanding the significant distinctions among them in terms of the way they operate, their intended purposes, and the nature of the applications they can accommodate. For example, an e-book reading device might be considered a 'tablet,' as might a handheld video game device or a laptop computer."

The Librarian ruled that "the record lacked a sufficient basis to develop an appropriate definition for the 'tablet' category of devices, a necessary predicate to extending the exemption beyond smartphones."

No more unlocking

In 2006 and 2010, the Librarian of Congress had permitted users to unlock their phones to take them to a new carrier. Now that's coming to an end. While the new rules do contain a provision allowing phone unlocking, it comes with a crippling caveat: the phone must have been "originally acquired from the operator of a wireless telecommunications network or retailer no later than ninety days after the effective date of this exemption."

In other words, phones you already have, as well as those purchased between now and next January, can be unlocked. But phones purchased after January 2013 can only be unlocked with the carrier's permission.

Why the change? The Librarian cited two key factors. One is a 2010 ruling that held that when you purchase software, you don't actually own it. Rather, you merely license it according to the terms of the End User License Agreement. The Librarian argued that this undermined the claim that unlocking your own phone was fair use.

Also, the Librarian found that there are more unlocked phones on the market than there were three years ago, and that most wireless carriers have liberal policies for unlocking their handsets. As a result, the Librarian of Congress decided that it should no longer be legal to unlock your cell phone without the carrier's permission.

DVDs: Excerpts, but no space-shifting

The most complicated exemption focuses on DVDs. Between now and 2015, it will be legal to rip a DVD "in order to make use of short portions of the motion pictures for the purpose of criticism or comment in the following instances: (i) in noncommercial videos; (ii) in documentary films; (iii) in nonfiction multimedia e-books offering film analysis; and (iv) for educational purposes in film studies or other courses requiring close analysis of film and media excerpts, by college and university faculty, college and university students, and kindergarten through twelfth grade educators." A similar exemption applies for "online distribution services."

The Librarian also allowed DVDs to be decrypted to facilitate disability access. Specifically, it's now legal "to access the playhead and/or related time code information embedded in copies of such works and solely for the purpose of conducting research and development for the purpose of creating players capable of rendering visual representations of the audible portions of such works and/or audible representations or descriptions of the visual portions of such works to enable an individual who is blind, visually impaired, deaf, or hard of hearing, and who has lawfully obtained a copy of such a work, to perceive the work."

But the Librarian did not allow circumvention for space-shifting purposes. While public interest groups had argued that consumers should be allowed to rip a DVD in order to watch it on an iPad that lacks a built-in DVD drive, the Librarian concluded that no court has found that such "space shifting" is a fair use under copyright law.

Public Knowledge, one of the groups that had advocated the exception, argued that the Librarian's ruling "flies in the face of reality." PK's Michael Weinberg noted that this reasoning implies that "every person who has ever ripped a CD to put on her iPod is a copyright infringer. Even the RIAA has recognized that such activity is, in their words, 'perfectly lawful.'"
A broken system

The space-shifting ruling is a good illustration of the fundamental brokenness of the DMCA. In order to convince the Librarian to allow DVD ripping in order to watch it on an iPad, a court would first need to rule that doing so falls under copyright's fair use defense. To get such a ruling, someone would have to rip a DVD (or sell a DVD-ripping tool), get sued in court, and then convince a judge that DVD ripping is fair use. But in such a case, the courts would probably never reach the fair use question, because—absent an exemption from the Librarian of Congress—circumvention is illegal whether or not the underlying use of the work would be a fair use. So no fair use ruling without an exemption, and no exemption without a fair use ruling. A classic catch-22.

This "triennial review" process is broken in other ways as well. Exemptions apply to the act of circumvention, but not to the separate provisions prohibiting "trafficking" in circumvention tools. So blind people who happen to be programmers are now free to write their own software to strip the DRM off their Kindle e-books in order to have them read aloud. But most blind people are not programmers. And anyone who supplies a blind person with the software needed to strip DRM from e-books is violating the "trafficking" provisions of the law even if the customer's use of the software is otherwise legal.

Finally, the case-by-case nature of the exemption process makes it inevitable that we'll get arbitrary results. For example, there's no logical reason why it should be legal to jailbreak an iPhone but illegal to jailbreak an iPad. But because no one presented the Librarian of Congress with a sufficiently precise definition of "tablet," this illogical result will be the law of the land for the next three years.

Here's a better approach: circumventing copy protection schemes shouldn't be against the law in the first place. DRM schemes harm legitimate users more than they deter piracy. Indeed, as the phone unlocking example illustrates, many uses of DRM have nothing to do with copyright infringement in the first place. Rather, they're a convenient legal pretext for limiting competition and locking consumers into proprietary products. We shouldn't be using copyright law as a backdoor means to give such anti-competitive practices the force of law.
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2...t-not-tablets/





United States Copyright Office: Ripping is Illegal
Michael Weinberg

Today the Register of Copyrights and the Librarian of Congress announced the 1201 exemptions. You may remember that the 1201 review is the triannual process where organizations, communities, and individuals request permission to circumvent Digital Rights Management (DRM) technologies that prevent them from doing otherwise perfectly legal things. This time around, Public Knowledge requested an exemption that would allow people to rip DVDs they already own in order to transfer the movie to a device that cannot play DVDs (like a tablet).

That request was rejected. Furthermore, the Register and the Librarian explained that they were unconvinced that space shifting was fair use at all. That has huge implications well beyond people who want to watch the movies they own on DVD on their iPad.

“Space Shifting” is what you do any time to take a file and move it from one medium to another. The best known example of this is probably ripping CDs to move the songs on to digital music devices like iPods. If you think it is ridiculous that such activity is illegal, you are right.

And the RIAA and the MPAA agree with you. In 2005, their lawyer (now the Solicitor General of the United States) assured the Supreme Court that “The record companies, my clients, have said, for some time now, and it’s been on their Website for some time now, that it’s perfectly lawful to take a CD that you’ve purchased, upload it onto your computer, put it onto your iPod."

Movie executives agree as well. Mitch Singer, the Chief Technology Officer of Sony Pictures Entertainment explained to author Robert Levine that the idea for the movie industry’s UltraViolet program evolved out of Singer’s own frustration with transferring movies between PCs in his home.

So do members of Congress. Earlier this year, Representative Darrell Issa did a IAmA on Reddit. Rep. Issa told Redditors that it was already perfectly legal to make personal copies of DVDs for their own use.

If all of this, combined with the fact that all major media management software comes with space shifting technology built into it out of the box, is not enough for the Register of Copyrights and the Librarian of Congress, then it is time to for Congress to step up.

Public Knowledge has already proposed a bill, hosted on the Internet Blueprint,that would incorporate noncommercial personal uses into the definition of fair use. Congress needs to pass the bill in order to make clear that the millions of Americans who have copied songs they own onto their iPods and movies they own onto their laptops and tablets are not copyright infringers.
http://publicknowledge.org/blog/unit...ripping-illega

















Until next week,

- js.



















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