Peer-To-Peer News - The Week In Review - December 17th, ’05

[JackSpratts]

"lol no its not its a virus." – New Virus


"Loudeye announced that Overpeer, Inc., Loudeye's wholly-owned content protection subsidiary, has ceased operations effective immediately." – Press release


"There's always been something to replace it that's groovier." – Stacey Snider


"If I visit my family at Thanksgiving and copy 100 gigs from a brother/sister/mother/father/ cousin/niece/nephew/aunt/uncle/family friend, am I likely to want to go out and buy more from iTunes? Is there a backlash against the RIAA and the recording industry in general for their heavy handed tactics and a general increasing hatred towards them and thus a shifting view culturally on the imperative for paying for music vs. getting it for free?" – Thomas Hawk


"I don't understand why we would tinker with the model that has been so wildly successful." – U.S. Rep. Edward J. Markey, D-Mass


"There's no reason to compromise right to due process, the right to a judicial review, fair and reasonable standards of evidence in the pursuit of our security." – U.S. Sen. John E. Sununu, R-N.H.,


"The consumer's paying for 20 megabits coming into their home. They should be able to use that 20 megabits to use whatever services they want." – Alan Davidson


"We feel violated. For them to just come along and destroy our community has prompted a lot of death-in-the-family-type grieving. They went through the astonishment and denial, then they went to the anger part of it, and now they are going through the sad and helpless part of grieving. I work in the health-care industry, and it's very similar." – Carolyn R. Hocke


"I was having the most wonderful dream. I had a hat, a tie and no pants on." – Homer Simpson


"Good morning, and welcome to the last show on terrestrial radio." – Howard Stern


"What Slump?" – Lorne Manly



































December 17th, ’05





Harvard Group Finds Sharing Can Drive Music Sales

The Berkman Center for Internet and Society at the Harvard Law School and Gartner have released a report focusing on the importance of sharing to the music business.

Key Findings from the report

· Nearly one-fourth of frequent online music users say that the ability to share music with others in some fashion is an important criteria when selecting an online music service.
· One-tenth of early adopters stated that they often make music purchases based on others' recommendations.
· One-third of early adopters of digital media surveyed by Gartner stated that they were interested in online music discovery and recommendation technology that is actually powered by their taste in music.
· Some of the most-regular users of online music services, whether free peer- to-peer (P2P) or paid services, are the most interested in consumer-generated recommendation tools.

The report also predicts that 25 percent of online music store transactions will be driven directly from consumer-to-consumer taste-sharing applications by 2010.
http://digitalpodcast.com/podcastnew...g_of_music_sal

Report – Jack.





Telecoms Want Their Products To Travel On A Faster Internet

Major site owners oppose 2-tier system
Hiawatha Bray

AT&T Inc. and BellSouth Corp. are lobbying Capitol Hill for the right to create a two-tiered Internet, where the telecom carriers' own Internet services would be transmitted faster and more efficiently than those of their competitors.

The proposal is certain to provoke a major fight with Google Inc., Yahoo Inc., Time Warner Inc., and Microsoft Corp., the powerful owners of popular Internet sites. The companies fear such a move would give telecommunications companies too much control over a fast-growing part of the Internet.

The battle is largely over video services. Several major telecom companies are working on ways to deliver broadcast-quality television over the Internet. Currently, online video can be slow to download and choppy to watch, even with higher-speed Internet services.

The proposal supported by AT&T and BellSouth would allow telecommunications carriers to offer their own advanced Internet video services to their customers, while rival firms' online video offerings would be transmitted at lower speed and with poorer image quality.

AT&T and other telecoms want to charge consumers a premium fee to connect to the higher-speed Internet. The companies could also charge websites a premium to offer their video to consumers on the higher- speed Internet. That could mean that a company like Yahoo might have to pay AT&T to send high-quality video to AT&T subscribers.

The prospect of a tiered Internet with ''regular" and ''premium" broadband services is spawning fierce debate as Congress takes up a major overhaul of telecom regulations. The House of Representatives last month held hearings on a preliminary draft by two GOP congressmen, Joe Barton of Texas and Fred Upton of Michigan, that would give the telecom companies the freedom to establish premium broadband services. The telecom bill is due for action early next year.

A change along these lines would be different from the way the Internet has operated. ''The Internet model has been that carriers cannot interfere with the choices that consumers make," said Alan Davidson, Google's Washington policy counsel.

Google is fighting the proposal, along with other large Internet companies including Amazon.com Inc. and eBay Inc. They fear they may have to pay telecoms millions of dollars to gain access to customers who use the premium Internet services. In addition, they argue, many small Internet start-ups would be unable to pay the fees, which could reduce consumer choice.

''Some of the most valuable new services won't be competitive," Davidson said.

The telecom companies said that since they are spending billions of dollars to build new fiber-optic networks that can carry more data, they are entitled to give their own offerings the bulk of Internet bandwidth, and to charge others for higher-speed access.

''When costs are being driven into an equation, they have to be recovered somewhere," said Bill Smith, chief technology officer of BellSouth. ''Why do fundamental business economics not apply to the Internet?"

Bill McCluskey , director of media relations for BellSouth, said the premium plan would boost profits and encourage higher-speed broadband network deployment. ''The more we are able to make, the faster we will be able to roll out high-speed Internet to 100 percent of our customers," he said.

Verizon Communications Inc., one of the biggest Boston-area Internet service providers, did not return calls seeking comment.

Telecom companies like AT&T, BellSouth, and Verizon use a technology called DSL to provide high-speed Internet access to about 16 million US subscribers -- mostly homes and small businesses. Cable TV companies like Comcast Corp. have invaded the telecoms' main business, telephone service. The telecoms want to strike back by offering Internet-based television. They want to offer all the programs now available on cable, as well as movie and game trailers, and full- length films.

But standard Internet service is ill-suited to TV distribution. Video signals have to arrive in a steady stream, but all Internet messages are made up of tiny data packets that travel over the network, and are reassembled at their destinations. Often these packets arrive out of order, or are delayed by a few seconds. This doesn't matter with e-mail or Web pages, but would ruin a TV broadcast or degrade the quality of an Internet phone call.

The solution is to tag the TV or telephone packets with codes that give them a higher priority on the network. These packets would be delivered more quickly, ensuring a sharp picture and clear sound. The telecoms must build additional network capacity to handle these large, tagged files.

Most content providers want equal access to the premium, higher-speed bandwidth, while telecom carriers want the right to treat this premium pipeline as a private Internet. In addition to exclusive voice and video services, telecom carriers could also use it to offer their own Internet services like search and e-mail, delivering them more quickly and with richer features than rival services that could only use the ''regular" Internet.

This could mean big trouble for today's major online information providers. Google doesn't object to broadband providers' efforts to charge consumers more for faster service but wants all content providers to get equal access.

''The consumer's paying for 20 megabits coming into their home," Davidson said. ''They should be able to use that 20 megabits to use whatever services they want."

Davidson has an ally in US Representative Edward J. Markey, Democrat of Malden. ''I don't understand why we would tinker with the model that has been so wildly successful," Markey said.

Markey said he's engaged in ''intense private negotiations" with telecom companies and congressional colleagues in search of a compromise.
http://www.boston.com/business/techn...ster_internet/





Loudeye to Exit Content Protection Services Business, Reducing Cost Structure
Press Release

Seattle, WA — December 9, 2005 — Loudeye Corp. (Nasdaq: LOUD), a worldwide leader in business-to-business digital media solutions, today announced an important step in its effort to focus its business and reduce its cost structure. Loudeye announced that Overpeer, Inc., Loudeye's wholly- owned content protection subsidiary, has ceased operations effective immediately and will continue to pursue options to maximize the value of its assets.

As a result, Loudeye has reduced its quarterly consolidated cost structure by approximately $1.6 million, or 10%, compared to third quarter 2005 levels. Overpeer expects to incur approximately $200,000 in severance and related payroll costs associated with the closing of its operations, which is expected to be paid during December 2005. In addition, Overpeer may incur additional wind-down costs to terminate property or equipment leases, and other contracts. The cessation of the Overpeer operations may also result in the acceleration of depreciation or amortization or the impairment of certain fixed and intangible assets. Loudeye anticipates that the net assets and results of operations for Overpeer will be presented as discontinued operations in its consolidated financial statements.

"We continue to focus our business on growth opportunities with digital distribution. Our actions to exit content protection services will substantially improve our go-forward cost structure," said Mike Brochu, Loudeye's president and chief executive officer.

About Loudeye Corp.
Loudeye is a worldwide leader in business-to-business digital media solutions and the outsourcing provider of choice for companies looking to maximize the return on their digital media investment. Loudeye combines innovative products and services with the world's largest digital music archive, a broad catalog of licensed digital music and the industry's leading digital media infrastructure enabling partners to rapidly and cost effectively launch complete, customized digital media stores and services. For more information, visit www.loudeye.com.
http://www.loudeye.com/en/news/relea...sreleaseid=269





Overpeer Promo Copy –

overpeer provides powerful solutions for content owners and creators to protect digital media assets

Overpeer, a Loudeye Company, is the leading worldwide provider of digital media data mining, anti-piracy and promotional solutions. Overpeer provides creators and copyright owners with valuable market intelligence on the unauthorized digital distribution of their content assets as well as anti-piracy and promotional tools to protect content and capitalize on previously untapped revenue opportunities across file sharing networks. As a result, our partners gain valuable insight into the unauthorized digital distribution of their content assets and can access to important tools to make strategic business decisions around digital distribution.

Overpeer provides:

Powerful data mining and analytical tools and comprehensive information on digital music, video, game and software usage

Provides view into over 25 billion attempted transmissions every month from 150 million unique users

Highly effective anti-piracy solutions to disrupt the illegal sharing of copyrighted material

Targeted promotional services for companies to capitalize on previously untapped revenue streams across content sharing networks.

If you are interested in learning more about Overpeer's solutions, click here.
http://www.overpeer.com/


anti-piracy solutions

Overpeer's patented technology integrates seamlessly and transparently into the world's most popular file sharing networks - which are responsible for 90% of worldwide file sharing traffic. Overpeer monitors downloading activity on a real-time, 24x7 basis and can be highly effective in minimizing the availability of pirated titles and hindering consumer copyright infringement.

Overpeer operates a fully redundant, fully scaled architecture that enables our partners to respond cost-effectively to the tremendous volume of illegal file trading around the world. Our engineers, all experts in peer to peer networking, have created an extremely efficient, robust, and configurable system that can protect, market, and saturate our client titles on the major file sharing networks.

In an average month, Overpeer experiences over 25 billion digital download hits against its servers, effectively blocking the illicit reproduction of copyrighted material across 150 million unique user sessions. Our effectiveness is verified daily by independent third parties.
http://www.overpeer.com/antipiracy.asp





Clogger of P2P Networks To Shut Down
John Borland

A leading service that attempted to dissuade people from using file-trading networks like Kazaa, by planting millions of fake files online, is being shut down.

Seattle-based Loudeye said Friday that it is shuttering its Overpeer division, effective immediately, in an attempt to bolster the parent company's bottom line.

Executives did not immediately return a request for comment. However, in a filing with federal regulators in November, Loudeye said the Overpeer division had seen declining revenue through much of 2005 and that a major client had dropped its services at the end of the second quarter.

Overpeer rose to prominence in 2002, at the height of the Net's love affair with peer-to-peer networks, offering record companies and movie studios a way to discourage would-be file-swappers looking for hit music or films.

The company used banks of servers around the world to plant false files, so that when a file-trader downloaded the latest Matrix movie, for example, it would often turn out to be garbage data, or an advertisement.

Over time, peer-to-peer networks added features that let users rate files or otherwise make better guesses about the authenticity of downloads. In its financial filing, Loudeye--which purchased Overpeer in 2004--said these tools had diminished the effectiveness of its offering.

The company is seeking to sell the Overpeer assets, it said in a statement.
http://news.com.com/Clogger+of+P2P+n...3-5989758.html





Media Defender Duels With Pirates
Joshua Chaffin

IF media executives were to conjure an image of the digital pirates who illegally share films and music over the internet, costing them billions of dollars a year, it might well resemble the youthful employees of Media Defender.

Based in Marina Del Rey, California, and dressed like college students, they tend to sport the distant gaze of souls who have spent too much time staring into cyberspace.

As it turns out, Media Defender's troops constitute one of the last lines of defence for film studios and record companies in the fight against piracy. Over the past five years, the company has gained prominence in the industry for protecting some of its most valuable properties.

Media Defender, which boasts 95 per cent success rate, offers no technological quick fixes. Instead, it engages the pirates in a constant duel, seeking to outsmart or frustrate them on behalf of clients who pay a monthly fee.

"There's no magic bullet for this, and there will not be a magic bullet," says Octavio Herrera, one of the company's co-founders. "We sell a service, not a product."

Piracy has become an epidemic, costing the film industry an estimated $US3.5 billion ($4.6 billion) last year and wiping out five years of growth for the music business. New technologies, such as the encryption on forthcoming high-definition DVDs, or tracking software that could be implanted in the next generation Microsoft media player, have occasionally raised hopes that a cure might be at hand.

But Jon Diamond, chief executive of Artist Direct, which acquired Media Defender earlier this year for $US42.5 million, believes that entertainment companies may instead have to settle for long-term treatment.

Diamond argues that while the new protections may be more robust, someone, somewhere - perhaps a teenager in Morocco or Marina Del Rey - will eventually pierce them.

"When a DVD or certain encryption method reaches certain adoption levels, they have almost always been hacked or cracked," Mr Diamond said.

Rather fittingly, Mr Herrera and his partner, Randy Saaf, got the idea for Media Defender five years ago when they were working as software developers at Raytheon, the defence company, on advanced radars for the B-2 bomber. The aim was to develop radar that would allow a pilot to locate his prey before being detected himself, and then jam its systems. "It's electronic warfare," Mr Herrera says.

Media Defender takes a similar approach. It monitors peer-to-peer file-sharing networks, constantly searching for the files specific songs or films that users are seeking from one another. If someone requests a song Media Defender has been hired to protect, then it springs into action. It might flood the network with tens of thousands of decoy files, creating a "needle-in-a-haystack" situation.

Another strategy is to send out thousands of its own requests for the same song, confusing the system. The idea is to frustrate file-sharers, although the company insists that it does not actually intrude on people's computers, the move that recently landed record company Sony BMG in hot water.

At first, the industry largely dismissed Media Defender, preferring instead to fight piracy with lawsuits. But that changed as companies such as Napster were displaced by open-source networks such as Gnutella, decentralised file-sharing communities that no person or entity technically controlled.

"There was no one to sue," Herrera says. "That's when we really started to get used."

Nowadays, Media Defender works with the four big record labels and all but one of the seven largest Hollywood film studios. At any one time, it protects tens of thousands of songs. Its pricing depends on such factors as the level of protection a company demands, the type of content to be protected, and the length of time.

The company has begun to use its monitoring capabilities to sell media companies market data about which of their songs and films are being downloaded and by whom. These would-be pirates can then be sent advertisements or offers for legal downloads.

Yet the company's main mission remains security. "There's nothing harder to protect than the No1 song in the country," Herrera says.
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au...E36375,00.html






Darknets vs. Lightnets
Jason Boog

From Napster LLC's dramatic legal showdown to HarperCollins Publishers Inc.'s plan to erect virtual walls around its digital library, Internet file sharing has always been presented as an either/or situation: Either the Napster generation would keep stealing content, or the monolithic corporations would figure out how to end peer-to-peer activity.

Recently, two prominent Web developers have initiated a conversation that could replace that zero-sum game mentality with the complementary ideas of "Darknets" and the "Lightnet."

Both concepts were created like pieces of open-source code, accepting ideas and modifications from the Internet community. A Darknet is a hidden Web nook where a small group shares digital files. Lightnet refers to a theoretical push towards an Internet where sharing and remixing files is encouraged.

In May, J.D. Lasica initiated the dialogue with his book, "Darknet: Hollywood's War Against the Digital Generation." The Web consultant riffed on a 2002 research paper that studied how micro-networks illegally shared music, movies and other digital media—the biggest threat to creators' digital rights after the fall of Napster.

"A Darknet describes a space or environment for private file sharing," Lasica said in an interview with Publish.com. "The Darknet can be a force for good (at least in my book), when people act in a secure space to exchange files or information for legitimate purposes."

Multimedia-sharing company Grouper Networks launches a set of video tools. Click here to read more.

Ultimately, Lasica began to see consumers' desire to play with digital media in new ways: using MP3s as marketing tools, remixing digital music or sharing video clips. He concluded that these Darknets marked an irreversible shift in media relations.

"Customers are redefining DRM so that the 'rights' in DRM flow both ways, not just in the direction dictated by the media giants," he said. As these guerrilla networks evolved, something fundamental was changing—users were pushing for a more interactive relationship with media.

Let There Be Light…

At the Open Media Conference last October, Web developer Lucas Gonze imagined replacing covert Darknets with a file- sharing-friendly vision of a Lightnet. A variety of Webloggers and developers have since helped develop and circulate the idea.

"In a Lightnet world, New York Times audio and video will be about as accessible as text," Gonze said. "Anybody will be able to e-mail the link to a friend, incorporate the item in a playlist, comment on the item on their own home page, and perhaps make a derived work in the form of a remix, Podcast, or videoblog."

In Gonze's best possible scenario, every kind of media, from Hollywood movies to Wall Street Journal articles, would have an accessible URL so bloggers and Web users could play with the content.

Corporations may want to take their cue from The Washington Post, which recently began celebrating bloggers who circulate and link to Post articles, instead of burying articles behind an unlinkable subscription pay-wall.

The trick is convincing content producers to adopt these new modes of consumer interaction. Gonze said he appreciated the two-way nature of MySpace Music, a Web site that combines the small-community sharing aspect of Darknets while allowing musicians to sell music straight off the site.

...But Not Too Much Light

Some corporate analysts caution against utopian fever.

"A young musician still needs to put food on his table," said Andy Moss, Senior Director of Technical Policy at Microsoft Corp. "People who create things that can be digitized are wrestling with what to do with it. It's creating possibility before people can decide what to do with it."

While acknowledging that file sharing has already revolutionized content distribution, Moss predicted that a viable P2P network—the kind that corporations and users can use to cooperate—is still a few years away. But Gonze believes once this paradigm shift occurs, the growth of Lightnets will outpace Darknets.

"Lightnet content will tend to be more popular than Darknet content," Gonze said. "Publishers will give away some content in order to be able to sell other content, and they will find new revenue sources when they become remixers themselves."

Many musicians are undecided on the issue of DRM (digital rights management). Read more here.

Web consultant Clay Shirky said he agrees with Gonze's market shift, and he took the message to his prominent clients, including Nokia, the BBC and the Library of Congress.

"What the corporations have to realize is that real revolutions don't involve an orderly transition from one business model to another," he told Publish.com. "Ironically, the thing that changed Internet advertising was the recession!"

Shirky tempered his advice with some grim realities: Bloggers are undermining journalists' integrity, musicians can't sell enough records and book sales are lagging. Media corporations must adapt to this new environment, or fade away.

To illustrate, Shirky explained how the New York Times Select feature could hurt the august news organization. "David Brooks is now locked behind a Times Select wall. There's a conservative audience that would read David Brooks, but they won't read the Times overall."

According to Shirky, Lightnet technologies could help the Times sell bite-sized pieces of content to micro-audiences, instead of selling the newspaper as a traditional, complete content entity.

The future, it seems, belongs to companies that can compromise between file sharing and content control. The Lightnet could signal a possible truce in the war between the Napster generation and old media distributors.
http://www.publish.com/article2/0,1895,1900773,00.asp





Peers And Pals
Chan Chi-Loong

Content companies and carriers can no longer ignore peer-to-peer (P2P) networks. Some have even started to partner them.


Tech take: Legal P2P platforms may soon become the content distribution model of choice.

Biz take: P2P is here to stay, and content companies and carriers must learn to work with it.


Peer-to-peer (P2P) networks are alive and well.

Despite all the lawsuits that have been hurled at P2P firms and end-users, P2P networks have evolved and thrived. Despite all the regulations slapped on free P2P voice-over-IP (VoIP) Skype traffic in countries like China and India, P2P VoIP continues to flourish.

In fact, according to CacheLogic, a P2P networks analytics firm, P2P traffic is booming across the globe.

Says Andrew Parker, CacheLogic's CTO: "The single largest traffic type by volume on any ISP network is often P2P traffic." He estimates that on average, at least 50% to 60% of all downstream traffic and 70% of all upstream traffic on an ISP is P2P.

This means that a staggering amount of P2P data is transmitted across global networks. According to research firm TeleGeography, the US consumed about 1,125 Tbps of international bandwidth last year. This translates to about 50 exabytes (50 x 1018 bytes) of P2P data being downloaded in the US every day on average. This is the equivalent of 10 trillion songs, assuming a typical song size of 5MB.

Anecdotal evidence points to P2P proliferation as well. Slyck, a P2P news site, estimates that there are 8 million to 10 million users on polled P2P networks at any one time. Parker says the actual number could be more than double this, as the poll excludes some P2P networks like the popular BitTorrent.

It goes without saying that such large-scale adoption of P2P worry the producers, distributors and carriers involved in the content supply chain.

Legal troubles

From a distribution standpoint, many content lobby groups and their powerful conglomerate backers view P2P networks as the root of all evil.

Often seen as abettors (or at least enablers) of piracy, P2P networks are continually harangued by the likes of the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) and the International Federation of Phonogram and Videogram Producers (IFPI).

Unfortunately for them, however, P2P networks, like the mythical hydra, never seem to expire. Lop off one head, and two more spring forth to bare their fangs.

For example, when Napster, the first popular P2P file sharing application, was slain by the RIAA in 2001, AudioGalaxy rose to take its place. When AudioGalaxy keeled over in an out-of-court settlement with RIAA in 2002, its users turned to a slew of second-generation P2P networks. These include FastTrack (with file-sharing clients like Kazaa, Grokster and iMesh) and Gnutella (with clients like LimeWire, Morpheus and BearShare). Instead of being based on a centralized search server like Napster or AudioGalaxy, these resilient second-generation networks do not use a centrally indexed server, making them hard to bring down.

Technology, however, cannot shield these networks from a legal hailstorm, as seen in the current prominent cases of Grokster vs. MGM and Kazaa vs. ARIA (Australia Recording Industry Association).

Another interesting trend is that the typical size of objects being shared has grown over time. In 2002, the average P2P object was musical in nature and about 5MB in size. Today, the vast majority of P2P traffic is due to TV programs or movies measuring over 100MB.

The evolution has led to a growth in newer P2P networks better equipped to share big files. BitTorrent and e-Donkey are the most prominent of these networks, and comprise a large proportion of P2P traffic, according to CacheLogic. In Asia, for instance, these two networks account for more than 80% of tracked popular P2P networks (see chart below). Singapore has about 70% BitTorrent and 12% e-Donkey traffic. In contrast, South Korea, with its entrenched Korean e-Donkey client Pruna, uses mostly the e-Donkey P2P network (more than 90%).



Co-opt the enemy

Shunning the approach that a few belligerent lobby groups have adopted -- suing their customers -- some content providers are looking at a smarter way of tackling the problem -- by co-opting P2P networks into their ranks.

This revolution started with music. Apple's iTunes Music Store, which opened in 2003, lets users purchase songs via download, hugely contributing to the iPod's success as a lifestyle device. A raft of other sites like MSN music and Soundbuzz followed the trail blazed by Apple.

Come next year, video will walk down this route, but with a twist. It will be free, and via legal P2P networks. Companies like BBC and AOL are going to offer free TV via Kontiki's commercial P2P platform. With In2TV (AOL's ad-supported P2P TV) and BBC's iMP slated to roll out by next month, there is little doubt that legal P2P content will soon become a force to be reckoned with.

Developments like these will definitely worry carriers. If content providers start bypassing them, carriers will loose yet another revenue source. P2P VoIP is already hurting their earnings, and being a pure dumb pipe player won't be a prospect most carriers relish.

Daryl Dunbar, director of 21CN from carrier BT, agrees: "Customers buy services, not networks. You don't want everyone else to extract value above you."

To that end, BT is embarking on its ambitious 21CN plan, which will convert its entire network to the IP platform. It is spending about US$7 billion to migrate 30 million copper lines in four years, hoping to roll out compelling triple-play services - voice, video and data - after that.

Not being able to offer services like IP-TV will spell doom for many telcos -- besides battling cable companies, they will soon have to fend off competition from P2P TV.

Bandwidth, monitoring problems

Revenue losses from content providers aside, P2P poses bandwidth challenges for carriers. P2P traffic gobbles up bandwidth, potentially causing quality of service (QoS) problems and incurring peering costs.

"If your traffic crosses peering links -- and our research shows that 92% of P2P traffic does so -- it can cost quite a bit if you have to pay for expensive transit bandwidth," says CacheLogic's Parker. However, not all carriers experience this problem or will state outright that they monitor P2P.

Singapore cable operator StarHub, for instance, says that P2P is "not high priority for their business" when queried on this issue. A spokesperson says the operator cannot open up the traffic and do deep packet inspection because this will "violate privacy issues" with consumers.

Other carriers like PCCW Global, which offers enterprise services, do state that they track P2P traffic.

Says Dan Lovatt, CEO of PCCW Global, who was in Singapore for VoIP Asia last month: "P2P does have an impact on the bottom line, and it needs to be managed and kept balanced between peering networks."

He adds that monitoring is necessary because when too much traffic flows one way, the truncating carrier can move to charge for it.
http://www.cmpnetasia.com/oct3_nw_vi...ion=Fe atures





The Blue Web

Adult-content providers push the envelop to develop new Internet technologies, allowing downloadable rentals and purchases, putting them a step ahead of the mainstream.

“Without the adult companies, the Internet wouldn’t exist in the way it does today,” pronounced Jeff Williams of the Prague-based William Higgins ‘Drake’s of LA, one of the world’s leading producers of gay porn. Adult companies were the first to earn substantial incomes through the Internet years ago, as users took advantage of the relative privacy and ease of use. Williams adds that the Internet grew on the back of adult- content providers.

Pushing the envelope

Technologies pioneered or first used effectively by adult content providers

· Video and audio streaming of content
· Fee-based services and subscriptions (now provides a major source of revenue for portals)
· Location software, (similar to GPS) which identifies where users live
· Segmented content to reach niche markets
· Mobile payments (which allow fast and anonymous purchases)
· Spam
· Popup ads
· Cookies

The industry played an important role in the spread of:

· Internet
· VHS
· DVD

And it will likely play a decisive role in the battle for the industry standard to the successor of the current DVD format between Toshiba’s high-definition DVD and Sony’s Blue Ray.
“If anyone wants to challenge that, they can try googling ‘sex’ and any other word on the Internet and see the huge difference in the number of results,” said Jonathan Taylor, from BAOL, known in the industry as Bel Ami Online, another Czech- based gay adult content provider.

Last year BAOL launched its own video rental project based on Microsoft’s digital rights management, which allows copyrighted video content to be safely transferred to devices running Microsoft software. The software also allows users to access music and film content and even make copies on disc without breaking copyright rulings.

“You can rent one of our movies [via the Internet] and play it on your computer, TV, mobile phone, or any handheld device,” Taylor said.

BAOL has developed its own software that allows for online rental and runs the pay-per-view and rental services of about a dozen adult content companies. “Adult content companies are more prepared to try innovative things than the mainstream industry in general,” said Williams, adding that the adult content providers aren’t necessarily as worried about copyright infringement than are other providers of content over the Internet.

“I want to be the first company to offer purchasable, downloadable movies,” Taylor said. Currently, no provider of video, adult-content or otherwise, offers lifetime copyrights for digital downloads.

In stores, new releases of BAOL DVDs can run as high as $70 (Kč 1,700), Taylor said, but a downloadable version could be sold for less than half that price, since it cuts out distribution costs.

From a technological point of view, buying movies via the Internet is already feasible, according to Taylor. But the user would have to renew the product key every 30 days. So for now, the company is sticking to rentals. “But we are ahead of the game even here,” Taylor said.

Most companies that allow Internet rentals focus on individual rentals, he explained. But BAOL has developed a system to track customer rentals using points, which are then reflected in the rental price.

A customer gains rental points for being a member of the Web site, for renting a certain number of movies, and for other purchases from the Web site.

Instead of paying $15 for a 15-day rental, a renter will pay only $11 for a 30-day rental, Taylor said.

Fighting piracy

While no official figures exist for Internet porn sales, industry watchers put revenues in the neighborhood of $750 million–1 billion per year in the United States, by far the largest market. Only about a third of sexually explicit material is sold in Europe.

Originally, the music industry took the biggest hit from Internet pirates because music files were smaller and therefore easier to download. But now, with faster Internet connections and bigger bandwidths, it is increasingly easier to download video.

According to a study of an 18-day period by U.S.-based Internet security firm Palisade Systems, some 42 percent of searches on the underground peer-to-peer (P2P) network Gnutella were for pornographic video content, compared to 38 percent for audio files.

The vast majority of piracy attempts are made on new releases, according to William Higgins, owner of the eponymous company. “After 90 days, they aren’t even interested in stealing [new releases],” he said.

Adult content providers consider making inexpensive digital movies legally accessible over the Internet the most effective way to tackle the piracy issue.

“Piracy can’t be stopped, we aren’t naive, but it can be minimized,” Taylor said, adding that he estimates that 50–60 percent of his company’s content is stolen.

William Higgins is working on its own version of a digital rights management system in the hope of minimizing thefts by hackers.

“When Microsoft comes up with a new product, there’s always someone who tries to hack it,” he said, adding that custom-software won’t be as vulnerable. Moreover, Microsoft’s DRM is too complicated, he added.

Improved search engines

This year the adult-movie industry trade show in Berlin presented some 15,000 movies for heterosexual audiences and 1,400 gay movies. With so much content, Internet marketers of the films have recognized the importance of effective search tools.

“The question is how to define your product on Google so that your company will come up first,” Higgins said. His company is currently revamping their Web site, including an enlargement of their search engines to multiple categories, incorporating the latest customer request, and searches by date.

BAOL said it was devising an even more powerful search engine on its Web site. “It’s called ‘Fantasy Find’ and will be ready soon,” Taylor said. Similar to Amazon.com’s search engine, the new search will not only track what the customer likes and make suggestions, but it will also allow the client to specify the type of movie or scene the customer wants. “He can say I want a blond guy with long hair doing such-and-such in the forest,” and the search will provide the relevant offerings.
http://www.cbw.cz/phprs/2005110701.html





Illegal File Sharing Drops Post Grokster
Nate Mook

According to research firm NPD Group, illegal peer-to-peer file sharing has dropped for the first time since the RIAA began its legal assault in 2003. Since that initial victory, P2P usage has only gone up -- until the June U.S. Supreme Court ruling against Grokster.

In June, an estimated 6.4 million United States households downloaded at least one music file, but by October that number had dipped to 5.7 million, an 11 percent decrease. NPD says the change is the first significant drop it has seen that is not related to "seasonality," such as students returning to school.

The firm largely attributed the drop to the record and entertainment industry's victory against file sharing service Grokster in June. The Supreme Court ruled that Grokster and other P2P networks can be held liable for the actions of their users, depending on how they market their services.

Grokster officially shut its doors in November, joining WinMX and eDonkey, and agreed to pay $50 million to settle music and movie piracy claims. Grokster, like iMesh, has plans to resurface as a legit music download network utilizing technology from its new parent company Mashboxx.

StreamCast Networks, maker of Morpheus and Kazaa owner Sharman Networks have pledged to continue their legal battle against the RIAA and MPAA, although it's unclear how long the two P2P services will remain standing.

But despite the decrease in terms of P2P usage, the number of actual files being traded has gone up since June from 258 million to 266 million. NPD said the difference indicates that major file swappers -- the small percentage of users sharing the vast majority of content -- have not given up.

Also, it's not clear how many users have moved away from public networks to private ones, which are harder to monitor and track. With BitTorrent quickly becoming the new file sharing standard, closed groups have formed around the technology to keep the prying eyes of the RIAA out.

According to another research firm, BigChampagne, illicit P2P use continues to rise, even after the June Grokster decision. The number of average global users peaked above 9.5 million in August and remains over 9 million, say the company's statistics, which are compiled by counting unique nodes and files on popular networks.
http://www.betanews.com/article/Ille...ter/1134598859





File sales dropping

Why Are Online Music Sales Down?
Thomas Hawk

Apple May Be Holding Back The Music Biz: "According to Nielsen SoundScan, average weekly download sales as of Nov. 27 fell 0.44% vs. the third quarter. Says independent media analyst Richard Greenfield: 'We're not seeing the kind of dramatic growth we should given the surge in sales of iPods and other MP3 players.'"

How big is the appetite for paid legal downloads, or more specifically, paid legal downloads from iTunes? BusinessWeek Online is out with an article saying that despite iPod sales being up, online song sales most recently are down. Is the case, as BusinessWeek suggests, that legal downloads may be losing their luster?

Certainly the bloom may be off the rose a bit and as BusinessWeek reminds us, "as has been true since the start, iPod owners mostly fill up their players from their own CD collections or swipe tunes from file-sharing sites." But there also may be more going on here as well. A few other things to think about.

1. To what extent are free podcasts cannibalizing music sales? Although I've never purchased a single music track from Apple, I do know that personally my own mix between listening to podcasts and music has changed over the last year. As more and more compelling free podcasts have been made available, I actually listen to a lot less music on my AudioVox SMT5600 than I used to. Sometimes I'm in a mood to just veg and listen to music but a lot of the time I'm more in a mood to feed my mind. As people generally have a fixed amount of "iPod Time" per week (commuting and exercising mostly) could it be that with more great podcasts out there people are less interested in buying music?

2. Have video downloads cannibalized iTunes music sales over the last quarter? Certainly the type of person who might download a video from Apple's iTunes to try it out probably has a high likelihood of already being a current iTunes customer. Have the 3 million or so video downloads to date distracted typical iTunes music downloaders while they play around with the novelty and newness of iTunes video downloads?

3. Is sneakernet gaining traction? One unknown out there has always been how many mp3s are being shared from ripped CDs. As the prices on blank media, as well as cheap external storage drives, continues to drop, are more people copying legally ripped tracks from their friends and family? If I visit my family at Thanksgiving and copy 100 gigs from a brother/sister/mother/father/ cousin/niece/nephew/aunt/uncle/family friend, am I likely to want to go out and buy more from iTunes? If a certain number of people have abandoned peer to peer because of the irrational fear of a lawsuit, does sneakernet represent a new free and easy way to get music without the fear of a lawsuit? Is there a relationship between the price of media and hard drives dropping and music sales dropping?

4. As BusinessWeek mentions there is now more competition from subscription services.

5. Is there a backlash growing against Apple for it's continued use of proprietary formats? Although people love the iPod, do (a few) resist buying iTunes tracks because they don't like the idea that legal music on an iPod MUST come from iTunes and not other sources?

6. Is there a backlash against the RIAA and the recording industry in general for their heavy handed tactics and a general increasing hatred towards them and thus a shifting view culturally on the imperative for paying for music vs. getting it for free?

So why also do people buy iTunes downloads in the first place? There are a few reasons. Convenience. Adequate disposable income. A moral or ethical belief that it is a superior way to consume music than via free peer to peer or sneakernet sources.

As the popularity of the iPod grows, and it becomes cheaper and less and less of an early adopter or upper middle class toy, perhaps the demographics of it's user base are also changing and the mix of income, alternative sources (aka convenience), and less RIAAthinklike individuals may be having an impact as well.

Of course, in all of this, let's be frank, really Steve Jobs could care less if music download sales are down or not. He doesn't make any money on music downloads. Well, he does care to the extent that it affects his ability to negotiate with the music industry going forward -- but as far as he and Apple are concerned it doesn't matter what people are listening to as long as they are listeing to something and as long as it's on an iPod. This is one reason why you've seen Apple so aggressively offering up free podcasts on iTunes and Jobs probably doesn't lose any sleep about the fact that peer to peer and sneakernet are still alive and well. As BusinessWeek correctly reminds us: "So will Jobs change his tune? Not unless he has to. Apple can barely keep up with demand for iPods, which reap as much as 25% gross margins, vs. minimal profits for each iTunes track. So right now there's no reason for the company to alter the way it sells music or make its player compatible with other services."
http://www.ehomeupgrade.com/entry/1792/why_are_online





Indie Music Available To Podcasts

Songs by acts signed to UK indie record labels are to be made available to podcasters on a trial basis.

The Association of Independent Music is selling six-month worldwide licence deals for its members' music to be used on download radio programmes.

Podcasters will buy licences to access a fixed list of labels' music. Commercial broadcasters will pay an additional percentage of their revenue.

Acts signed to UK indie labels include Franz Ferdinand and The Prodigy.

Previously, few podcasters were able to get licences to use copyrighted material, forcing them to either use copyright- free songs or remove all music from podcasts.

Successful acts

AIM chairman and chief executive Alison Wenham said podcasters who took up the temporary licences would be able to work "without the fear of operating illegally".

She said: "In the absence of an industry wide scheme, AIM has moved to fill the current void, and has created attractive licensing conditions for the use of music from the independent sector of the UK.

"We believe there will be huge global demand for the AIM podcast licence."

The full list of music on offer will be made available on the AIM website as labels sign up to it.

Other acts signed to AIM's 900 member labels who might be part of the deal include Bloc Party, Stereophonics, The White Stripes, The Strokes, Basement Jaxx, Paul Weller and Arctic Monkeys.

Restrictions will be placed on licencees with regard to the amount and manner of use of the agreed music.

An AIM spokesman said the body was determined not to "create a mechanism to enable the creation of free or ultra- cheap compilation albums".

Martin Goldschmidt is managing director of Cooking Vinyl, whose artists include Richard Thompson and Billy Bragg.

He said: "I see podcasting and subscription services as playing a big role in where the music consumer wants to go."
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/4500094.stm





Wordsmiths Hail Podcast Success

The term 'podcast' has been declared Word of the Year by the New Oxford American Dictionary.

The term is defined as "a digital recording of a radio broadcast or similar program, made available on the internet for downloading to a personal audio player".

The word is derived from a combination of "broadcasting" and "iPod".

It will be added to the online version of the dictionary during the next update early next year.

Rising popularity

Podcasts have grown quickly in popularity over the past 12 months as they are an easy way of getting digital content and playing it when and where you want.

The term was coined by journalist Ben Hammersley and although originally derived from combining "broadcasting" and "iPod", this definition has become something of a misnomer as podcasts can be listened to on any digital music player.

Some have criticised the term for giving too much credit to Apple, which had little to do with the development of the technology and some have tried to suggest alternative terms such as blogcasting or audioblogging.

Podcasts have become popular because anyone with a microphone, computer, software and a net connection, can produce one themselves.

Their rising popularity is challenging conventional radio's broadcasting and business model.

As a result, many radio stations such as the BBC are making their shows available as downloadable MP3 files.

The BBC began a seven-month podcasting trial in May. Around 20 programmes are taking part in the trial, including Radio 4's Today programme and Five Live's Sportsweek.

Podcasting received a big boost in June, when Apple added a podcast directory to its iTunes online music store.

"Podcast was considered for inclusion last year, but we found that not enough people were using it, or were even familiar with the concept," said Erin McKean, editor-in-chief of the New Oxford American Dictionary.

"This year it's a completely different story. The word has finally caught up with the rest of the iPod phenomenon."

Losing words

Among the words that did not make it were two other terms popular in tech circles.

One was lifehack, which refers to a more efficient way of completing an everyday task.

The other was rootkit, defined as software installed on a computer by someone other than the owner, intended to conceal other programs or processes, files or system data.

The term hit the headlines when Sony was found to have included a rootkit as part of the copy protection system on some of its music CDs.

Other words that did not make it include bird flu, sudoku and trans fat.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/4504256.stm





Sony BMG Repents Over CD Debacle
Mark Ward

Sony BMG is rethinking its anti-piracy policy following weeks of criticism over the copy protection used on CDs.

The head of Sony BMG's global digital business, Thomas Hesse, told the BBC that the company was "re-evaluating" its current methods.

It follows widespread condemnation of the way anti-piracy software on some Sony CDs installs itself on computers.

The admission came as Sony faced more censure over the security failings of one of its copy protection programs.

Bad publicity

The row began in November when software developer Mark Russinovich discovered that Sony BMG's XCP anti-piracy programs used virus-like techniques
to hide itself on a PC.

The row ended with Sony recalling all the CDs that use XCP and offering to swap customers' existing discs for ones that do not use the much-criticised software.

Speaking to the BBC News website, Thomas Hesse, president of Sony BMG's global digital business, said all the bad publicity had made it think hard about its approach to stopping people making illegal copies.

"The key point to remember is that copyright infringement is a huge issue for the recording industry as a whole and that's where we came from originally," he said.

"But this whole story has led us to look at the approach we have to take going forward," Mr Hesse said.

The furore about the XCP software had lead Sony BMG to "diligently re-evaluate" how it protects music on CDs.

He said it was too early to say where Sony was in the evaluation process or what might result, but he said the company was taking the re-examination very seriously.

Patch problems

Sony came in for more criticism this week over SunComm's MediaMax anti-piracy program used on 32 CDs released in the US and Canada.

The problem with the MediaMax software was revealed in a joint statement Sony BMG issued with digital rights group the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

In that statement Sony urged users to install a patch that closed the security loophole that MediaMax opened on PCs.

However, the discovery by independent security researchers that this patch suffered the same security problems as the original program led the EFF to withdraw its support.

The loophole introduced by MediaMax and the patch could have let malicious hackers hijack the programs to gain control of a PC. The new program issued by Sony BMG on 8 December closes the hole in the patch.

"It's a fairly common issue often found in PC games," said Robert Horton, a security expert from NGS Software brought in by Sony to vet its latest patch.

"Its fairly common and the fix is easy to provide through a software update."

He said it was unlikely that any attacker would have been able to exploit the bugs in MediaMax and its patch.

"Even if the issue is only a slight one, at Sony BMG we are very clear that any software security issues are taken with the utmost seriousness," said Mr Hesse.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/4514678.stm





Software Industry Shifts Piracy Strategy
Roy Mark

The U.S. strategy for its war on global software piracy is shifting from focusing on the financial damage of intellectual property theft to the economic benefits of copyright protection.

A new study released today by the Business Software Alliance (BSA) concludes that countries with the highest software piracy rates stand to reap the greatest economic gains by protecting intellectual property rights.

"When countries take steps to reduce software piracy, just about everyone stands to benefit," said Robert Holleyman, BSA president and CEO. "Workers have new jobs, consumers have more choices, entrepreneurs are free to market their creativity and governments benefit from increased tax revenues."

The BSA's research, conducted independently by the International Data Corporation (IDC), claims that cutting the current global piracy rate of 35 percent by 10 percentage points over four years could globally create 2.4 million new jobs, $400 billion in economic growth and $67 billion in new tax revenues.

John Gantz, chief research officer of IDC, added that the study "provides a comprehensive snapshot of what we have known all along: reducing software piracy delivers real results in the form of more funding for education, job training, health care and overall economic growth."

According to IDC, a 10-point reduction in software piracy in China, ranked third in worldwide piracy (90 percent), could create 2.6 million new IT jobs by 2009, as many IT jobs as the U.S. has been able to create over the last 30 years.

Russia, a country with the fifth highest software piracy rate in the world (87 percent), could see its IT industry triple in size -- growing from $9.2 billion today to $30 billion in just four years.

"There is a recognition by countries that professional intellectual property protection is a priority for their governments to stimulate their economies," said Chris Israel, coordinator for International Intellectual Property Enforcement at the U.S. Department of Commerce. "There is tangible evidence that supports this recognition.

Israel noted that China has committed to make legal purchases of software for its government agencies by the end of this year. Next year, Beijing promises to bring stricter intellectual property protections to its enterprise sector, including state-owned businesses.

"All of the commitments China has made to us are achievable. We have very high expectations," Israel said.

Despite having the world's lowest software piracy rate (21 percent), the study found that the United States stands to gain more than any other nation from a 10-point piracy cut over four years, boosting its economy by $125 billion.

Although the U.S. IT sector is already projected to grow by almost a third between 2004 and 2009, it could grow more than 10 percentage points faster with further piracy reductions.

The study also concluded that while the global IT sector is currently projected to grow 33 percent through 2009, a 10-point reduction in software piracy could spur the global IT industry to grow 45 percent larger by 2009.
http://www.internetnews.com/bus-news...le.php/3569561





Pirate Trader Sold £3 Million Of Sham Software
Jeremy Kirk

A UK pirate trader sold £3 million of counterfeit software before its website was closed down. Nacha Alexander, head of Microsoft head of Microsoft antipiracy in the UK, said that Zoobon, which was closed down in January, was subject to many complaints from customers after buying goods from the company on eBay. The company's website was shut down following an out-of-court settlement.

As part of the settlement, details of the case could not be discussed until Thursday, Alexander said. Other terms of the agreement were also not made public, she said.

The illegal software is believed to have come from outside the UK, Alexander said.

"We're very, very protective of our customers," she added. "We are really trying to work very hard to close down these types of traders."

From August through October, about 21,000 counterfeit Microsoft products were withdrawn from eBay, Alexander said. About 60 percent of those were low-quality recordable CDs and DVDs, she said.
http://www.techworld.com/application...gePos=3&inkc=0





Movie Company Files Federal Piracy Suit Against Tri-State Man

Defendant argues someone else tapped into wireless network
John London

A DVD that retails for $21.99 could cost a local man more than $100,000, News 5's John London reported. Russell Lee is either a slick film pirate or an unwitting victim of someone who fits that description. Paramount, which distributes "Coach Carter," presents an unflattering picture of him, saying he not only obtained the movie illegally, but that he uploaded it to an online system called eDonkey so others could steal it, too. "I don't even know what they're talking about," Lee said. "I didn't do it."

Paramount has looked at all four computers in Lee's home, alleging he had one of them cleaned to erase evidence. The company has filed a federal lawsuit against the Blue Ash man.

But Lee claims that because his wireless connection was unsecured at the time, anyone could have parked near or in front of his home, tapped in and then driven off. "If I can do anything to make people understand that please, if you're using wireless Internet, have somebody install it that knows what they're doing," he said. "Because if you don't, they could get in trouble just like me."
http://www.channelcincinnati.com/hea...20/detail.html





Merry Christmas From The RIAA
Roy Mark

The music industry dropped 751 copyright-infringement lawsuits in the mail today, bringing the total number of legal actions this year against alleged peer- to-peer (P2P) infringers to more than 7,000.

The John Doe lawsuits filed Thursday cite individuals for illegally distributing copyrighted music on the Internet through P2P services, such as LimeWire and Kazaa. In addition to the John Doe suits, the major music labels also filed lawsuits against 105 named defendants.

"At stake is the music industry's ability to invest in the next generation of music and a chance for legal online music services to flourish," Cary Sherman, president of the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), said in a statement.

The latest batch of RIAA lawsuits comes a day after market research firm NPD Group issued numbers claiming illegal downloads have fallen 11 percent since the Supreme Court ruled in June that Grokster and other P2P companies were operating illegal businesses.

Those numbers, however, were disputed by Eric Garland, CEO of media measurement firm BigChampagne.

"In fact, in every month since Grokster, P2P activity is actually higher than it was in May/June, or at any other point," he said in an e-mail to internetnews.com.

Whether the amount of illegal P2P downloading is up or down, the RIAA pledged to continue its lawsuits.

"We must do everything to protect the integrity of the marketplace. That means educating fans about steering clear of pirated products and continuing to enforce our rights to send a clear message that stealing music will bring consequences," Sherman said.

The John Doe lawsuits included students at Drexel University, Harvard and the University of Southern California.
http://www.internetnews.com/bus-news...le.php/3571296





Students Raise Funds For Roommate Sued By RIAA
Ross Liemer

Delwin Olivan '08 might be luckier than the other 23 University students charged with music piracy by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) last spring — his friends created a website and t-shirt line to defray the cost of his settlement.

Olivan stands accused of distributing songs via the file-sharing network i2hub, which closed in November following a cease and desist letter from the RIAA.

"When the three-inch-thick outline of the court case against me arrived in the mail, I realized I really had no choice but to settle," Olivan said.

An RIAA representative phoned Olivan on November 5, and told him to settle the case for $5,000 within 60 days or face far greater claims in court.

"These guys want $5,000 from him, and I get choked up thinking about it," roommate Sean Gleason '08 said. "His bank account doesn't have $5,000. He's not an old money Princeton student who gets a $5,000 monthly allowance."

Olivan and Gleason devised a novel way to lessen the financial burden on Olivan's mother — the Free Delwin Fund.

James Hamm '08, a friend down the hall, registered the domain name freedelwin.org. Gleason designed the website. Olivan posed for t-shirts. The roommates then proceeded to flyer Forbes.

"During Fall Break, we worked morning to night," Olivan said.

The Free Delwin site opens with a "manifesto," a tongue-in-cheek introduction to Olivan and his legal woes.

"Thanks to The Eagles, Tracy Chapman and Sting, Delwin now cries whenever he thinks of music," the statement reads. "But what exactly was his crime? Philanthropy. The key to avoiding a subpoena like the one Del is facing is to refrain from sharing, and he knew this."

Olivan does not plead innocence, only financial need.

"Clearly, on the website I don't deny file sharing," he said.

Sympathizers can donate directly to the Free Delwin Fund or pay $10 for a Free Delwin t-shirt. The shirts bear a likeness of Olivan akin to the iconic visage of Argentinian-born revolutionary Che Guevara.

"Delwin has the potential to dominate the world, to be dictator of not one, but two countries simultaneously," Gleason joked.

Supporters have bought more than 50 shirts so far, Olivan said.

He and Gleason plan to sell shirts to their friends at home over Winter Break; many have already pledged their solidarity with the Delwin cause.

"The money is all going to the RIAA. We set up separate PayPal accounts for students who have PayPal accounts and students who donate through PayPal with credit or debit cards. We keep cash donations locked in a box. It's completely legitimate," Gleason said.

Olivan and Gleason said donations and student interest have exceeded their expectations; they will probably order a second batch of t-shirts. Still, they doubt Free Delwin will raise enough money to fully cover Olivan's $5,000 settlement.

The roommates readily acknowledge that people might deem their fund frivolous.

"We're not saying this is like Save the Whales," Gleason said. "It's fun. We hope the website gets people to smile, to maybe donate a few bucks, to post on the message board.

"How many people have really never shared music? Delwin was just one of the unlucky ones who got caught."
http://www.dailyprincetonian.com/arc...ws/14093.shtml





Online Pirates Fail To See Impact Of Mass Downloading
Alex Gelhar

Don’t lie, we’ve all done it at one point or another. Your favorite band releases a new CD, and you already spent your last paycheck taking your significant other to dinner and a movie. What next? Do you wait two weeks until the next paycheck rolls in? Of course not. That’s why there is the internet.

I, like most teenagers, am one of the millions of users who have turned to Peer-to-Peer websites to download a few songs. For awhile, I evaded my guilty conscience by arguing, “The musicians can suffer, they make enough money.” Boy, was I ever wrong, for it is not the musicians that suffer.

In actuality, music downloads barely hurt the artist’s salary, if at all. By contract, they are entitled to a certain chunk of the sales, their royalties if you will. The repercussions of music downloads trickle down the corporate ladder until middle class workers are being laid off.

Now, by no means am I attacking the downloading of music. Yes, I am against illegally downloading music, but that is not the purpose of this column. The purpose of this column is not to simply fill space, but rather to inform.

Far too many people don’t realize the consequences of an action as simple as downloading music from free sites such as Limewire or Grokster. While some analysts have gone as far as saying music will disappear if downloading isn’t stopped, most have merely acknowledged the deleterious effects it has had in recent years.

What most fail to remember, however, is that the industry faced a similar crisis back in the late 1970’s. With the invention of the cassette recorder, people were able to record music from the radio, and bypass the actual purchasing of the album.

Record labels back then campaigned for the end of cassette recorders, in a similar fashion to how companies are now campaigning for the end of illegal downloading. Analysts back then prophesized the end of music, yet it still remains today.

There are actually benefits to this practice as well. Up and coming bands are able to get their music to a wider fan base much quicker with free downloads, and people are able to sample CD’s before they buy them.

In the end, what it all comes down to are your own personal beliefs. But with options like Napster that are cheap, and legal, it is a wonder why more users haven’t jumped on the opportunity.
http://www.the-index.org/cgi-bin/story.pl?1024pirates





Korean Bill Attacks Internet File Sharing

Internet community says proposed law will kill industry
Roberto Spiezio

Programs like Kazaa, Emule, Limewire, Soribada, Pruna and the ancestor Napster are popular among many Internet users who use them to download songs and videos with the so-called peer-to-peer protocol, or P2P.

This habit violates copyright laws nearly all over the world, including South Korea. But the "music" could change soon, if a national bill aimed at stopping file sharing is approved.

Uri Party Representative Woo Sang Ho proposed a law requiring Internet companies to supervise file transfers between their users and stop transfers when the contents are subject to copyright. MP3s, music videos and movies are surely on the blacklist. Companies that don't abide by the proposed law risk fines up to 50 million won (US$48,000).

The control system should be implemented by the Internet Service Providers through filters and monitoring tools, but the law shouldn't affect services like instant messaging and Web mail.

Woo's staff claims the lawmaker will push the proposal, which could be approved by the end of this month, according to the Korea Times on Dec. 7.

This initiative triggered outrage and protests from Internet companies and Internet users, who overloaded Uri Party's Web site and other Web portals like Naver with messages against the bill.

The Korea Internet Corporations Association said in an official note that the idea of such a law is "naive," and it "would kill the emerging Internet industry."

Even if there are advantages for copyright protection in the short run,, in the long run there won't be advantages for the copyright holders, let alone Internet users and providers, the association said.
http://english.ohmynews.com/rolling_...4&ad_tim e=50





Song Sites Face Legal Crackdown
Ian Youngs

The music industry is to extend its copyright war by taking legal action against websites offering unlicensed song scores and lyrics.

The Music Publishers' Association (MPA), which represents US sheet music companies, will launch its first campaign against such sites in 2006.

MPA president Lauren Keiser said he wanted site owners to be jailed.

He said unlicensed guitar tabs and song scores were widely available on the internet but were "completely illegal".

Mr Keiser said he did not just want to shut websites and impose fines, saying if authorities can "throw in some jail time I think we'll be a little more effective".

Bitter battles

The move comes after several years of bitter legal battles against unauthorised services allowing users to download recordings for free.

Publishing companies have taken action against websites in the past, but this will be the first co-ordinated legal campaign by the MPA.

The MPA would target "very big sites that people would think are legitimate and very, very popular", Mr Keiser said.

"The Xerox machine was the big usurper of our potential income," he said. "But now the internet is taking more of a bite out of sheet music and printed music sales so we're taking a more proactive stance."

David Israelite, president of the National Music Publishers' Association, added his concerns.

"Unauthorised use of lyrics and tablature deprives the songwriter of the ability to make a living, and is no different than stealing," he said.

"Music publishers and songwriters will consider all tools under the law to stop this illegal behaviour."

Sandro del Greco, who runs Tabhall.co.uk, said the issue was not serious enough to warrant jail time and sites like his were not necessarily depriving publishers of income.

Learn

"I play the drums mainly but I play the guitar as well. I run the website and I still buy the [tab] books," he said.

"The tabs online aren't deadly accurate so if someone really wants to know it they'll buy the book.

"But most of the bands I listen to don't have tab books to buy so if you get them online, that's the only way you can really learn it unless you work it out yourself."

The campaign comes after lyric-finding software PearLyrics was forced off the internet by a leading music publishing company, Warner Chappell.

'No alternative'

PearLyrics worked with Apple's iTunes, searching the internet to find lyrics for songs in a user's collection.

"I just don't see why PearLyrics should infringe the copyright of Warner Chappell because all I'm doing is searching publicly-available websites," PearLyrics developer Walter Ritter said.

"It would be different if they had an alternative service that also provided lyrics online and also integrated [with iTunes] like PearLyrics did.

"But they don't offer anything like that at all."

Warner Chappell were unavailable for comment.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/4508158.stm





Communities

For Online Star Wars Game, It's Revenge of the Fans
Seth Schiesel

For two and a half years, Emily E. LaBeff, chairwoman of the sociology department at Midwestern State University in Wichita Falls, Tex., spent 30 hours or more each week playing the online computer game Star Wars Galaxies. Not for research, but for fun.

Logging on to the game on weekends and many nights after class, Ms. LaBeff directed Athena Wavingrider, a powerful Jedi she created, through the far corners of the Star Wars universe, fighting on behalf of the Rebel Alliance against the tyranny of the Galactic Empire. Like millions of other online gamers, Ms. LaBeff, 54, discovered a camaraderie and friendship with other players that were far more important than the play itself - relationships that can be hard to replicate in "real life."

"It's replaced my television time, and I don't go to the movies anymore," she said, chuckling. "I don't keep my car as clean as I used to. But it's not because of the game itself. It's because of the people." She added, "We all had this wonderful second life together."

And now it's all gone, at least in any form that Ms. LaBeff and thousands of other Star Wars Galaxies veterans would recognize.

Last month, LucasArts and Sony's online game division, which have jointly run Star Wars Galaxies since its introduction in 2003, suddenly turned the game upside down, making the most sweeping changes ever made to a persistent online game. ("Persistent" means that the game world is constantly running, and players may log in and out as they please.) Unsatisfied with the product's merely moderate success, the companies radically revamped the game in an attempt to appeal to a younger, more trigger-happy audience.

Previously, the game was unabashedly complicated, appealing to mature, reflex-challenged gamers with its strategic combat style and deep skill system, which allowed players to carve out profitable, powerful niches as entertainers, architects and politicians. Now the game has become self-consciously simple, with a basic point-and-click combat system that is meant to evoke the frenetic firefights of the "Star Wars" films.

To Sony and LucasArts, the changes are a necessary step to help the game appeal to a broader audience. (The companies do not release subscriber figures, but many gaming experts believe that before the changes, Star Wars Galaxies had about 200,000 subscribers, each paying about $15 a month.) But to thousands of players, the shifts have meant the destruction of online communities that they might have spent hundreds or even thousands of hours constructing. Now many Galaxies players are canceling their accounts and migrating to other online games. They are swapping tales on "refugee" Web sites with names like Imperial Crackdown (imperialcrackdown.com). Ms. LaBeff, for instance, said that she had canceled all three of her Galaxies accounts and had joined a new guild in World of Warcraft, another game, with her old Star Wars friends.

"Someone might wonder, well, it's just a game, what's the big deal?" said Robert Kruck, 54, an engineer for Motorola who lives in Schaumburg, Ill., who said he had canceled seven of his eight Galaxies accounts. "But for many people it is much more than a game," he said. "It is a part of their lives where they have invested huge amounts of time building a community. And that community has been based on a sophisticated, mature game. So now, for them to take an adult-level combat and economics simulation and turn it into a mindless game for 10-year-olds is a violation of that community."

For Sony and LucasArts, the idea has been to make the game more "Star Wars-like," tying it more explicitly to the films.

"We really just needed to make the game a lot more accessible to a much broader player base," said Nancy MacIntyre, the game's senior director at LucasArts. "There was lots of reading, much too much, in the game. There was a lot of wandering around learning about different abilities. We really needed to give people the experience of being Han Solo or Luke Skywalker rather than being Uncle Owen, the moisture farmer. We wanted more instant gratification: kill, get treasure, repeat. We needed to give people more of an opportunity to be a part of what they have seen in the movies rather than something they had created themselves."

Ms. MacIntyre said Galaxies had lost "significantly more" than the 3 to 5 percent of players who typically leave any online game every month. She said she expected the game to return to its previous subscriber levels in six months, a process she hoped would be accelerated by the introduction of a new television infomercial hawking Galaxies later this month.

"We knew we were taking a significant risk with our existing player base, but we felt so strongly that we needed to make these changes for the sake of the game's long-term future that we all held hands, LucasArts and Sony, and went forward," Ms. MacIntyre said.

It may, however, be a rocky path, because the revamped game is receiving mostly horrible reviews from players. On Gamespot.com, a leading game Web site, about half of the more than 600 players evaluating the game have rated it "abysmal." Some 14 percent have called it "terrible," and 6 percent have described it as merely "bad." The game is described as "perfect" by about 12 percent and "other" by 18 percent.

"We just feel violated," said Carolyn R. Hocke, 46, a marketing Web technician for Ministry Medical Group and St. Michael's Hospital in Stevens Point, Wis. Ms. Hocke said she once had as many as 10 separate Galaxies accounts but has canceled all but one in the last two weeks.

"For them to just come along and destroy our community has prompted a lot of death-in-the-family-type grieving," she said. "They went through the astonishment and denial, then they went to the anger part of it, and now they are going through the sad and helpless part of grieving. I work in the health-care industry, and it's very similar."
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/10/arts/10star.html

[JackSpratts]

Surveillance

Bush Lets U.S. Spy on Callers Without Courts
James Risen and Eric Lichtblau

Months after the Sept. 11 attacks, President Bush secretly authorized the National Security Agency to eavesdrop on Americans and others inside the United States to search for evidence of terrorist activity without the court-approved warrants ordinarily required for domestic spying, according to government officials.

Under a presidential order signed in 2002, the intelligence agency has monitored the international telephone calls and international e-mail messages of hundreds, perhaps thousands, of people inside the United States without warrants over the past three years in an effort to track possible "dirty numbers" linked to Al Qaeda, the officials said. The agency, they said, still seeks warrants to monitor entirely domestic communications.

The previously undisclosed decision to permit some eavesdropping inside the country without court approval was a major shift in American intelligence-gathering practices, particularly for the National Security Agency, whose mission is to spy on communications abroad. As a result, some officials familiar with the continuing operation have questioned whether the surveillance has stretched, if not crossed, constitutional limits on legal searches.

"This is really a sea change," said a former senior official who specializes in national security law. "It's almost a mainstay of this country that the N.S.A. only does foreign searches."

Nearly a dozen current and former officials, who were granted anonymity because of the classified nature of the program, discussed it with reporters for The New York Times because of their concerns about the operation's legality and oversight.

According to those officials and others, reservations about aspects of the program have also been expressed by Senator John D. Rockefeller IV, the West Virginia Democrat who is the vice chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, and a judge presiding over a secret court that oversees intelligence matters. Some of the questions about the agency's new powers led the administration to temporarily suspend the operation last year and impose more restrictions, the officials said.

The Bush administration views the operation as necessary so that the agency can move quickly to monitor communications that may disclose threats to the United States, the officials said. Defenders of the program say it has been a critical tool in helping disrupt terrorist plots and prevent attacks inside the United States.

Administration officials are confident that existing safeguards are sufficient to protect the privacy and civil liberties of Americans, the officials say. In some cases, they said, the Justice Department eventually seeks warrants if it wants to expand the eavesdropping to include communications confined within the United States. The officials said the administration had briefed Congressional leaders about the program and notified the judge in charge of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, the secret Washington court that deals with national security issues.

The White House asked The New York Times not to publish this article, arguing that it could jeopardize continuing investigations and alert would-be terrorists that they might be under scrutiny. After meeting with senior administration officials to hear their concerns, the newspaper delayed publication for a year to conduct additional reporting. Some information that administration officials argued could be useful to terrorists has been omitted.

Dealing With a New Threat

While many details about the program remain secret, officials familiar with it say the N.S.A. eavesdrops without warrants on up to 500 people in the United States at any given time. The list changes as some names are added and others dropped, so the number monitored in this country may have reached into the thousands since the program began, several officials said. Overseas, about 5,000 to 7,000 people suspected of terrorist ties are monitored at one time, according to those officials.

Several officials said the eavesdropping program had helped uncover a plot by Iyman Faris, an Ohio trucker and naturalized citizen who pleaded guilty in 2003 to supporting Al Qaeda by planning to bring down the Brooklyn Bridge with blowtorches. What appeared to be another Qaeda plot, involving fertilizer bomb attacks on British pubs and train stations, was exposed last year in part through the program, the officials said. But they said most people targeted for N.S.A. monitoring have never been charged with a crime, including an Iranian-American doctor in the South who came under suspicion because of what one official described as dubious ties to Osama bin Laden.

The eavesdropping program grew out of concerns after the Sept. 11 attacks that the nation's intelligence agencies were not poised to deal effectively with the new threat of Al Qaeda and that they were handcuffed by legal and bureaucratic restrictions better suited to peacetime than war, according to officials. In response, President Bush significantly eased limits on American intelligence and law enforcement agencies and the military.

But some of the administration's antiterrorism initiatives have provoked an outcry from members of Congress, watchdog groups, immigrants and others who argue that the measures erode protections for civil liberties and intrude on Americans' privacy.

Opponents have challenged provisions of the USA Patriot Act, the focus of contentious debate on Capitol Hill this week, that expand domestic surveillance by giving the Federal Bureau of Investigation more power to collect information like library lending lists or Internet use. Military and F.B.I. officials have drawn criticism for monitoring what were largely peaceful antiwar protests. The Pentagon and the Department of Homeland Security were forced to retreat on plans to use public and private databases to hunt for possible terrorists. And last year, the Supreme Court rejected the administration's claim that those labeled "enemy combatants" were not entitled to judicial review of their open-ended detention.

Mr. Bush's executive order allowing some warrantless eavesdropping on those inside the United States - including American citizens, permanent legal residents, tourists and other foreigners - is based on classified legal opinions that assert that the president has broad powers to order such searches, derived in part from the September 2001 Congressional resolution authorizing him to wage war on Al Qaeda and other terrorist groups, according to the officials familiar with the N.S.A. operation.

The National Security Agency, which is based at Fort Meade, Md., is the nation's largest and most secretive intelligence agency, so intent on remaining out of public view that it has long been nicknamed "No Such Agency." It breaks codes and maintains listening posts around the world to eavesdrop on foreign governments, diplomats and trade negotiators as well as drug lords and terrorists. But the agency ordinarily operates under tight restrictions on any spying on Americans, even if they are overseas, or disseminating information about them.

What the agency calls a "special collection program" began soon after the Sept. 11 attacks, as it looked for new tools to attack terrorism. The program accelerated in early 2002 after the Central Intelligence Agency started capturing top Qaeda operatives overseas, including Abu Zubaydah, who was arrested in Pakistan in March 2002. The C.I.A. seized the terrorists' computers, cellphones and personal phone directories, said the officials familiar with the program. The N.S.A. surveillance was intended to exploit those numbers and addresses as quickly as possible, they said.

In addition to eavesdropping on those numbers and reading e-mail messages to and from the Qaeda figures, the N.S.A. began monitoring others linked to them, creating an expanding chain. While most of the numbers and addresses were overseas, hundreds were in the United States, the officials said.

Under the agency's longstanding rules, the N.S.A. can target for interception phone calls or e-mail messages on foreign soil, even if the recipients of those communications are in the United States. Usually, though, the government can only target phones and e-mail messages in the United States by first obtaining a court order from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, which holds its closed sessions at the Justice Department.

Traditionally, the F.B.I., not the N.S.A., seeks such warrants and conducts most domestic eavesdropping. Until the new program began, the N.S.A. typically limited its domestic surveillance to foreign embassies and missions in Washington, New York and other cities, and obtained court orders to do so.

Since 2002, the agency has been conducting some warrantless eavesdropping on people in the United States who are linked, even if indirectly, to suspected terrorists through the chain of phone numbers and e-mail addresses, according to several officials who know of the operation. Under the special program, the agency monitors their international communications, the officials said. The agency, for example, can target phone calls from someone in New York to someone in Afghanistan.

Warrants are still required for eavesdropping on entirely domestic-to-domestic communications, those officials say, meaning that calls from that New Yorker to someone in California could not be monitored without first going to the Federal Intelligence Surveillance Court.

A White House Briefing

After the special program started, Congressional leaders from both political parties were brought to Vice President Dick Cheney's office in the White House. The leaders, who included the chairmen and ranking members of the Senate and House intelligence committees, learned of the N.S.A. operation from Mr. Cheney, Lt. Gen. Michael V. Hayden of the Air Force, who was then the agency's director and is now a full general and the principal deputy director of national intelligence, and George J. Tenet, then the director of the C.I.A., officials said.

It is not clear how much the members of Congress were told about the presidential order and the eavesdropping program. Some of them declined to comment about the matter, while others did not return phone calls.

Later briefings were held for members of Congress as they assumed leadership roles on the intelligence committees, officials familiar with the program said. After a 2003 briefing, Senator Rockefeller, the West Virginia Democrat who became vice chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee that year, wrote a letter to Mr. Cheney expressing concerns about the program, officials knowledgeable about the letter said. It could not be determined if he received a reply. Mr. Rockefeller declined to comment. Aside from the Congressional leaders, only a small group of people, including several cabinet members and officials at the N.S.A., the C.I.A. and the Justice Department, know of the program.

Some officials familiar with it say they consider warrantless eavesdropping inside the United States to be unlawful and possibly unconstitutional, amounting to an improper search. One government official involved in the operation said he privately complained to a Congressional official about his doubts about the program's legality. But nothing came of his inquiry. "People just looked the other way because they didn't want to know what was going on," he said.

A senior government official recalled that he was taken aback when he first learned of the operation. "My first reaction was, 'We're doing what?' " he said. While he said he eventually felt that adequate safeguards were put in place, he added that questions about the program's legitimacy were understandable.

Some of those who object to the operation argue that is unnecessary. By getting warrants through the foreign intelligence court, the N.S.A. and F.B.I. could eavesdrop on people inside the United States who might be tied to terrorist groups without skirting longstanding rules, they say.

The standard of proof required to obtain a warrant from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court is generally considered lower than that required for a criminal warrant - intelligence officials only have to show probable cause that someone may be "an agent of a foreign power," which includes international terrorist groups - and the secret court has turned down only a small number of requests over the years. In 2004, according to the Justice Department, 1,754 warrants were approved. And the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court can grant emergency approval for wiretaps within hours, officials say.

Administration officials counter that they sometimes need to move more urgently, the officials said. Those involved in the program also said that the N.S.A.'s eavesdroppers might need to start monitoring large batches of numbers all at once, and that it would be impractical to seek permission from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court first, according to the officials.

The N.S.A. domestic spying operation has stirred such controversy among some national security officials in part because of the agency's cautious culture and longstanding rules.

Widespread abuses - including eavesdropping on Vietnam War protesters and civil rights activists - by American intelligence agencies became public in the 1970's and led to passage of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which imposed strict limits on intelligence gathering on American soil. Among other things, the law required search warrants, approved by the secret F.I.S.A. court, for wiretaps in national security cases. The agency, deeply scarred by the scandals, adopted additional rules that all but ended domestic spying on its part.

After the Sept. 11 attacks, though, the United States intelligence community was criticized for being too risk-averse. The National Security Agency was even cited by the independent 9/11 Commission for adhering to self-imposed rules that were stricter than those set by federal law.

Concerns and Revisions

Several senior government officials say that when the special operation began, there were few controls on it and little formal oversight outside the N.S.A. The agency can choose its eavesdropping targets and does not have to seek approval from Justice Department or other Bush administration officials. Some agency officials wanted nothing to do with the program, apparently fearful of participating in an illegal operation, a former senior Bush administration official said. Before the 2004 election, the official said, some N.S.A. personnel worried that the program might come under scrutiny by Congressional or criminal investigators if Senator John Kerry, the Democratic nominee, was elected president.

In mid-2004, concerns about the program expressed by national security officials, government lawyers and a judge prompted the Bush administration to suspend elements of the program and revamp it.

For the first time, the Justice Department audited the N.S.A. program, several officials said. And to provide more guidance, the Justice Department and the agency expanded and refined a checklist to follow in deciding whether probable cause existed to start monitoring someone's communications, several officials said.

A complaint from Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly, the federal judge who oversees the Federal Intelligence Surveillance Court, helped spur the suspension, officials said. The judge questioned whether information obtained under the N.S.A. program was being improperly used as the basis for F.I.S.A. wiretap warrant requests from the Justice Department, according to senior government officials. While not knowing all the details of the exchange, several government lawyers said there appeared to be concerns that the Justice Department, by trying to shield the existence of the N.S.A. program, was in danger of misleading the court about the origins of the information cited to justify the warrants.

One official familiar with the episode said the judge insisted to Justice Department lawyers at one point that any material gathered under the special N.S.A. program not be used in seeking wiretap warrants from her court. Judge Kollar-Kotelly did not return calls for comment.

A related issue arose in a case in which the F.B.I. was monitoring the communications of a terrorist suspect under a F.I.S.A.-approved warrant, even though the National Security Agency was already conducting warrantless eavesdropping.

According to officials, F.B.I. surveillance of Mr. Faris, the Brooklyn Bridge plotter, was dropped for a short time because of technical problems. At the time, senior Justice Department officials worried what would happen if the N.S.A. picked up information that needed to be presented in court. The government would then either have to disclose the N.S.A. program or mislead a criminal court about how it had gotten the information.

Several national security officials say the powers granted the N.S.A. by President Bush go far beyond the expanded counterterrorism powers granted by Congress under the USA Patriot Act, which is up for renewal. The House on Wednesday approved a plan to reauthorize crucial parts of the law. But final passage has been delayed under the threat of a Senate filibuster because of concerns from both parties over possible intrusions on Americans' civil liberties and privacy.

Under the act, law enforcement and intelligence officials are still required to seek a F.I.S.A. warrant every time they want to eavesdrop within the United States. A recent agreement reached by Republican leaders and the Bush administration would modify the standard for F.B.I. wiretap warrants, requiring, for instance, a description of a specific target. Critics say the bar would remain too low to prevent abuses.

Bush administration officials argue that the civil liberties concerns are unfounded, and they say pointedly that the Patriot Act has not freed the N.S.A. to target Americans. "Nothing could be further from the truth," wrote John Yoo, a former official in the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel, and his co-author in a Wall Street Journal opinion article in December 2003. Mr. Yoo worked on a classified legal opinion on the N.S.A.'s domestic eavesdropping program.

At an April hearing on the Patriot Act renewal, Senator Barbara A. Mikulski, Democrat of Maryland, asked Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales and Robert S. Mueller III, the director of the F.B.I., "Can the National Security Agency, the great electronic snooper, spy on the American people?"

"Generally," Mr. Mueller said, "I would say generally, they are not allowed to spy or to gather information on American citizens."

President Bush did not ask Congress to include provisions for the N.S.A. domestic surveillance program as part of the Patriot Act and has not sought any other laws to authorize the operation. Bush administration lawyers argued that such new laws were unnecessary, because they believed that the Congressional resolution on the campaign against terrorism provided ample authorization, officials said.

The Legal Line Shifts

Seeking Congressional approval was also viewed as politically risky because the proposal would be certain to face intense opposition on civil liberties grounds. The administration also feared that by publicly disclosing the existence of the operation, its usefulness in tracking terrorists would end, officials said.

The legal opinions that support the N.S.A. operation remain classified, but they appear to have followed private discussions among senior administration lawyers and other officials about the need to pursue aggressive strategies that once may have been seen as crossing a legal line, according to senior officials who participated in the discussions.

For example, just days after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on New York and the Pentagon, Mr. Yoo, the Justice Department lawyer, wrote an internal memorandum that argued that the government might use "electronic surveillance techniques and equipment that are more powerful and sophisticated than those available to law enforcement agencies in order to intercept telephonic communications and observe the movement of persons but without obtaining warrants for such uses."

Mr. Yoo noted that while such actions could raise constitutional issues, in the face of devastating terrorist attacks "the government may be justified in taking measures which in less troubled conditions could be seen as infringements of individual liberties."

The next year, Justice Department lawyers disclosed their thinking on the issue of warrantless wiretaps in national security cases in a little-noticed brief in an unrelated court case. In that 2002 brief, the government said that "the Constitution vests in the President inherent authority to conduct warrantless intelligence surveillance (electronic or otherwise) of foreign powers or their agents, and Congress cannot by statute extinguish that constitutional authority."

Administration officials were also encouraged by a November 2002 appeals court decision in an unrelated matter. The decision by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court of Review, which sided with the administration in dismantling a bureaucratic "wall" limiting cooperation between prosecutors and intelligence officers, cited "the president's inherent constitutional authority to conduct warrantless foreign intelligence surveillance."

But the same court suggested that national security interests should not be grounds "to jettison the Fourth Amendment requirements" protecting the rights of Americans against undue searches. The dividing line, the court acknowledged, "is a very difficult one to administer."

Barclay Walsh contributed research for this article.
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/16/po...rtner=homepage





House Ready, Senate Balks on Patriot Act
Jesse J. Holland

The GOP-controlled House plans to quickly renew portions of the USA Patriot Act before they expire at the end of the year. Some Republicans say the nation's safety could be endangered if the Senate doesn't follow suit.

The House on Wednesday was expected to pass a White House- backed bill that would renew more than a dozen provisions of the Act - the government's premier anti-terrorism law - which are due to expire Dec. 31.

But saving those provisions will be more difficult in the Republican-controlled Senate, where some GOP and Democratic senators are unsatisfied with the compromise bill, which was worked out last week between key Republicans in the House and Senate.

At least one senator, Democrat Russ Feingold of Wisconsin, is threatening a filibuster.

House leaders and Attorney General Alberto Gonzales on Tuesday warned the bill's opponents that they could be putting the country in danger by holding up the Act's reauthorization.

"The consequence of the Patriot Act expiring on December 31st is going to be putting the American people at greater risk," House Judiciary Committee Chairman James Sensenbrenner, R-Wis., said.

Added Gonzales: "The tools in the reauthorization of the Patriot Act are very important to the success of the Department of Justice in protecting this country."

For the White House and congressional Republicans, renewing the centerpiece of President Bush's war on terror is a top priority with the midterm elections coming up next year.

Bush devoted his Saturday radio address to the subject and Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, R-Tenn., added his voice Sunday.

Congress overwhelmingly passed the Patriot Act after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. The law expanded the government's surveillance and prosecutorial powers against suspected terrorists, their associates and financiers.

The vast majority of the Patriot Act would remain in force even if the House-Senate agreement to renew the expiring provisions fails. The reauthorization language would extend for four years two of the Patriot Act's most controversial provisions - authorizing roving wiretaps and permitting secret warrants for books, records and other items from businesses, hospitals and organizations such as libraries.

Those provisions would expire in four years unless Congress acted on them again.

About a dozen Republicans and Democrats in the Senate are complaining that the Patriot Act gives government too much power to investigate people's private transactions, including bank, library, medical and computer records. They also say it doesn't place enough limits on the FBI's use of National Security Letters, which compel thirds parties to produce those documents during terrorism investigations.

Senate Democrats joined by some libertarian-leaning Republicans want to extend the expiring provisions of the law by three months to give Congress time to add more protections against what they say are excessive police powers.

"There's no reason to compromise right to due process, the right to a judicial review, fair and reasonable standards of evidence in the pursuit of our security," said Sen. John E. Sununu, R-N.H., one of several senators urging Congress to move the expiration date to March 31.

Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., supports efforts to delay the vote, including a filibuster threatened by Feingold, "so there will be more time to work on a good bipartisan bill," said his spokesman, Jim Manley.
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories...M&SECTION=HOME






EU Approves Data Retention Rules
BBC

The European Parliament has approved rules forcing telephone companies to retain call and internet records for use in anti-terror investigations.

Records will be kept for up to two years under the new measures.

Police will have access to information about calls, text messages and internet data, but not exact call content.

The UK, which pressed European member states to back the rules, said that data was the "golden thread" in terrorist investigations.

The parliament voted by 378 to 197 to approve the bill, which had already been agreed by the assembly's two largest groups, the European People's Party and the Socialists.

Compromises

The measures were proposed by Britain after the bomb attacks in London in July.

They still need to be formally approved by EU member states.

UK Home Secretary Charles Clarke said the approval showed the European institutions - the Parliament, the Council, the Commission - standing firm against terrorism and serious organised crime.

"This sends a powerful message that Europe is united against terrorism and organised crime," he said.

"All three institutions have worked closely together and been willing to compromise in order to reach agreement on this important measure."

The measures will require firms to store:

· data that can trace fixed or mobile telephone calls
· time and duration of calls
· location of the mobile phone being called
· details of connections made to the Internet
· details, but not the content, of internet e-mail and internet telephony services

Details of connected calls that are unanswered, which can be used as signals to accomplices or used to detonate bombs, will also be archived where that data exists.

Costs

But the telecommunications industry has raised some concerns about the measures, which firms say could be expensive to implement.

Thierry Dieu, spokesman for European Telecommunications Networks Operators' Association, said that because the proposed measures go much further than the current practices, especially for the internet data, "it is clear that there will be a lot of investment for the industry to make".

A spokesman for the Internet Service Providers' Association (ISPA) said it remained to be seen how the measures would affect providers once incorporated into UK law.

He said there was already some voluntary co-operation with the authorities, but mandatory data retention would result in significant costs. ISPs would have to create ways of holding the data, managing it and providing access to it for the authorities, he said.

"At the end of the day ISPs are not law enforcement agencies so they should not have to pay for it all," he said.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/4527840.stm





Music Industry Seeks Access To Private Data To Fight Piracy

· Plea to Europe to widen scope of anti-terror laws
· Civil rights fears over phone and email records

Bobbie Johnson

The music and film industries are demanding that the European parliament extends the scope of proposed anti-terror laws to help them prosecute illegal downloaders. In an open letter to MEPs, companies including Sony BMG, Disney and EMI have asked to be given access to communications data - records of phone calls, emails and internet surfing - in order to take legal action against pirates and filesharers. Current proposals restrict use of such information to cases of terrorism and organised crime.

"The scope of the proposal should be extended to all criminal offences," says a letter to European representatives from the Creative and Media Business Alliance, an informal lobby group representing media companies. "The possibility for law enforcement authorities to use data in other cases ... is essential." The attempt to pressure MEPs comes as they prepare to vote on an extension to the period for which data must be held by telephone networks and internet service providers. The plans, championed by the British government, would harmonise and extend the broad range of policies across the continent.

The Home Office says such moves are necessary in order to assist proper investigation of suspected terrorist activity. But if successful, it would mean communications companies would be obliged to keep information on phone calls, emails and internet use for as long as three years.

"It is not for us to get involved in the wider issue of national security," said a spokesman for international music industry association IFPI, parent body of the CBMA.

If the demands were met by European legislators, it would open use of such private information across any number of criminal cases. "Even the Bush administration is not proposing such a ludicrous policy, despite lobbying from Hollywood," said Gus Hosein, a senior fellow at Privacy International.

The music industry has already pursued a large number of cases against illegal downloaders, but the letter claims that wider access to private information would be an "effective instrument in the fight against piracy" and help secure more legal actions. Critics say it is simply a case of litigious industries attempting to gain access to protected data by the back door.

The proposals, to be put to the vote on December 13, have already faced censure. More privacy-conscious nations such as Germany have voiced concerns about long-term data retention, and telecoms companies say they cannot afford to keep more information about their customers.

"The passing of the data retention directive would be a disaster not just for civil liberties and human rights in Europe," said Suw Charman, director of digital rights campaigners, Open Rights Group.

The music industry has been waging war against illegal filesharing for some time, with film companies closely behind. An Australian court this week ordered Kazaa, one of the biggest file-swapping services, to filter out copyrighted music from its systems or face closure. Last week the British Phonographic Industry announced its latest batch of cases against illegal downloaders, taking the total number of UK actions to over 150.

Such prosecutions already rely on voluntary data supplied by internet providers, but the music industry would like it made compulsory. At the same time, the legitimate digital download industry continues to grow at a startling pace.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/arts/netmu...651273,00.html





Live Tracking of Mobile Phones Prompts Court Fights on Privacy
Matt Richtel

Most Americans carry cellphones, but many may not know that government agencies can track their movements through the signals emanating from the handset.

In recent years, law enforcement officials have turned to cellular technology as a tool for easily and secretly monitoring the movements of suspects as they occur. But this kind of surveillance - which investigators have been able to conduct with easily obtained court orders - has now come under tougher legal scrutiny.

In the last four months, three federal judges have denied prosecutors the right to get cellphone tracking information from wireless companies without first showing "probable cause" to believe that a crime has been or is being committed. That is the same standard applied to requests for search warrants.

The rulings, issued by magistrate judges in New York, Texas and Maryland, underscore the growing debate over privacy rights and government surveillance in the digital age.

With mobile phones becoming as prevalent as conventional phones (there are 195 million cellular subscribers in this country), wireless companies are starting to exploit the phones' tracking abilities. For example, companies are marketing services that turn phones into even more precise global positioning devices for driving or allowing parents to track the whereabouts of their children through the handsets.

Not surprisingly, law enforcement agencies want to exploit this technology, too - which means more courts are bound to wrestle with what legal standard applies when government agents ask to conduct such surveillance.

Cellular operators like Verizon Wireless and Cingular Wireless know, within about 300 yards, the location of their subscribers whenever a phone is turned on. Even if the phone is not in use it is communicating with cellphone tower sites, and the wireless provider keeps track of the phone's position as it travels. The operators have said that they turn over location information when presented with a court order to do so.

The recent rulings by the magistrates, who are appointed by a majority of the federal district judges in a given court, do not bind other courts. But they could significantly curtail access to cell location data if other jurisdictions adopt the same reasoning. (The government's requests in the three cases, with their details, were sealed because they involve investigations still under way.)

"It can have a major negative impact," said Clifford S. Fishman, a former prosecutor in the Manhattan district attorney's office and a professor at the Catholic University of America's law school in Washington. "If I'm on an investigation and I need to know where somebody is located who might be committing a crime, or, worse, might have a hostage, real-time knowledge of where this person is could be a matter of life or death."

Prosecutors argue that having such information is crucial to finding suspects, corroborating their whereabouts with witness accounts, or helping build a case for a wiretap on the phone - especially now that technology gives criminals greater tools for evading law enforcement.

The government has routinely used records of cellphone calls and caller locations to show where a suspect was at a particular time, with access to those records obtainable under a lower legal standard. (Wireless operators keep cellphone location records for varying lengths of time, from several months to years.)

But it is unclear how often prosecutors have asked courts for the right to obtain cell-tracking data as a suspect is moving. And the government is not required to report publicly when it makes such requests.

Legal experts say that such live tracking has tended to happen in drug-trafficking cases. In a 2003 Ohio case, for example, federal drug agents used cell tracking data to arrest and convict two men on drug charges.

Mr. Fishman said he believed that the number of requests had become more prevalent in the last two years - and the requests have often been granted with a stroke of a magistrate's pen.

Prosecutors, while acknowledging that they have to get a court order before obtaining real-time cell-site data, argue that the relevant standard is found in a 1994 amendment to the 1986 Stored Communications Act, a law that governs some aspects of cellphone surveillance.

The standard calls for the government to show "specific and articulable facts" that demonstrate that the records sought are "relevant and material to an ongoing investigation" - a standard lower than the probable-cause hurdle.

The magistrate judges, however, ruled that surveillance by cellphone - because it acts like an electronic tracking device that can follow people into homes and other personal spaces - must meet the same high legal standard required to obtain a search warrant to enter private places.

"Permitting surreptitious conversion of a cellphone into a tracking device without probable cause raises serious Fourth Amendment concerns, especially when the phone is monitored in the home or other places where privacy is reasonably expected," wrote Stephen W. Smith, a magistrate in Federal District Court in the Southern District of Texas, in his ruling.

"The distinction between cell site data and information gathered by a tracking device has practically vanished," wrote Judge Smith. He added that when a phone is monitored, the process is usually "unknown to the phone users, who may not even be on the phone."

Prosecutors in the recent cases also unsuccessfully argued that the expanded police powers under the USA Patriot Act could be read as allowing cellphone tracking under a standard lower than probable cause.

As Judge Smith noted in his 31-page opinion, the debate goes beyond a question of legal standard. In fact, the nature of digital communications makes it difficult to distinguish between content that is clearly private and information that is public. When information is communicated on paper, for instance, it is relatively clear that information written on an envelope deserves a different kind of protection than the contents of the letter inside.

But in a digital era, the stream of data that carries a telephone conversation or an e-mail message contains a great deal of information - like when and where the communications originated.

In the digital era, what's on the envelope and what's inside of it, "have absolutely blurred," said Marc Rotenberg, executive director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center, a privacy advocacy group.

And that makes it harder for courts to determine whether a certain digital surveillance method invokes Fourth Amendment protections against unreasonable searches.

In the cellular-tracking cases, some legal experts say that the Store Communications Act refers only to records of where a person has been, i.e. historical location data, but does not address live tracking.

Kevin Bankston, a lawyer for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a privacy advocacy group that has filed briefs in the case in the Eastern District of New York, said the law did not speak to that use. James Orenstein, the magistrate in the New York case, reached the same conclusion, as did Judge Smith in Houston and James Bredar, a magistrate judge in the Federal District Court in Maryland.

Orin S. Kerr, a professor at the George Washington School of Law and a former trial attorney in the Justice Department specializing in computer law, said the major problem for prosecutors was Congress did not appear to have directly addressed the question of what standard prosecutors must meet to obtain cell-site information as it occurs.

"There's no easy answer," Mr. Kerr said. "The law is pretty uncertain here."

Absent a Congressional directive, he said, it is reasonable for magistrates to require prosecutors to meet the probable-cause standard.

Mr. Fishman of Catholic University said that such a requirement could hamper law enforcement's ability to act quickly because of the paperwork required to show probable cause. But Mr. Fishman said he also believed that the current law was unclear on the issue.

Judge Smith "has written a very, very persuasive opinion," Mr. Fishman said. "The government's argument has been based on some tenuous premises." He added that he sympathized with prosecutors' fears.

"Something that they've been able to use quite successfully and usefully is being taken away from them or made harder to get," Mr. Fishman said. "I'd be very, very frustrated."
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/10/te...y/10phone.html





Military's Information War Is Vast and Often Secretive
Jeff Gerth

The media center in Fayetteville, N.C., would be the envy of any global communications company.

In state of the art studios, producers prepare the daily mix of music and news for the group's radio stations or spots for friendly television outlets. Writers putting out newspapers and magazines in Baghdad and Kabul converse via teleconferences. Mobile trailers with high-tech gear are parked outside, ready for the next crisis.

The center is not part of a news organization, but a military operation, and those writers and producers are soldiers. The 1,200-strong psychological operations unit based at Fort Bragg turns out what its officers call "truthful messages" to support the United States government's objectives, though its commander acknowledges that those stories are one-sided and their American sponsorship is hidden.

"We call our stuff information and the enemy's propaganda," said Col. Jack N. Summe, then the commander of the Fourth Psychological Operations Group, during a tour in June. Even in the Pentagon, "some public affairs professionals see us unfavorably," and inaccurately, he said, as "lying, dirty tricksters."

The recent disclosures that a Pentagon contractor in Iraq paid newspapers to print "good news" articles written by American soldiers prompted an outcry in Washington, where members of Congress said the practice undermined American credibility and top military and White House officials disavowed any knowledge of it. President Bush was described by Stephen J. Hadley, his national security adviser, as "very troubled" about the matter. The Pentagon is investigating.

But the work of the contractor, the Lincoln Group, was not a rogue operation. Hoping to counter anti-American sentiment in the Muslim world, the Bush administration has been conducting an information war that is extensive, costly and often hidden, according to documents and interviews with contractors, government officials and military personnel.

The campaign was begun by the White House, which set up a secret panel soon after the Sept. 11 attacks to coordinate information operations by the Pentagon, other government agencies and private contractors.

In Iraq and Afghanistan, the focus of most of the activities, the military operates radio stations and newspapers, but does not disclose their American ties. Those outlets produce news material that is at times attributed to the "International Information Center," an untraceable organization.

Lincoln says it planted more than 1,000 articles in the Iraqi and Arab press and placed editorials on an Iraqi Web site, Pentagon documents show. For an expanded stealth persuasion effort into neighboring countries, Lincoln presented plans, since rejected, for an underground newspaper, television news shows and an anti-terrorist comedy based on "The Three Stooges."

Like the Lincoln Group, Army psychological operations units sometimes pay to deliver their message, offering television stations money to run unattributed segments or contracting with writers of newspaper opinion pieces, military officials said.

"We don't want somebody to look at the product and see the U.S. government and tune out," said Col. James Treadwell, who ran psychological operations support at the Special Operations Command in Tampa.

The United States Agency for International Development also masks its role at times. AID finances about 30 radio stations in Afghanistan, but keeps that from listeners. The agency has distributed tens of thousands of iPod-like audio devices in Iraq and Afghanistan that play prepackaged civic messages, but it does so through a contractor that promises "there is no U.S. footprint."

As the Bush administration tries to build democracies overseas and support a free press, getting out its message is critical. But that is enormously difficult, given widespread hostility in the Muslim world over the war in Iraq, deep suspicion of American ambitions and the influence of antagonistic voices. The American message makers who are wary of identifying their role can cite findings by the Pentagon, pollsters and others underscoring the United States' fundamental problems of credibility abroad.

Defenders of influence campaigns argue that they are appropriate. "Psychological operations are an essential part of warfare, more so in the electronic age than ever," said Lt. Col. Charles A. Krohn, a retired Army spokesman and journalism professor. "If you're going to invade a country and eject its government and occupy its territory, you ought to tell people who live there why you've done it. That requires a well-thought-out communications program."

But covert information battles may backfire, others warn, or prove ineffective. The news that the American military was buying influence was met mostly with shrugs in Baghdad, where readers tend to be skeptical about the media. An Iraqi daily newspaper, Azzaman, complained in an editorial that the propaganda campaign was an American effort "to humiliate the independent national press." Many Iraqis say that no amount of money spent on trying to mold public opinion is likely to have much impact, given the harsh conditions under the American military occupation.

While the United States does not ban the distribution of government propaganda overseas, as it does domestically, the Government Accountability Office said in a recent report that lack of attribution could undermine the credibility of news videos. In finding that video news releases by the Bush administration that appeared on American television were improper, the G.A.O. said that such articles "are no longer purely factual" because "the essential fact of attribution is missing."

In an article titled "War of the Words," Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld wrote about the importance of disclosure in America's communications in The Wall Street Journal in July. "The American system of openness works," he wrote. The United States must find "new and better ways to communicate America's mission abroad," including "a healthy culture of communication and transparency between government and public."

Trying to Make a Case

After the Sept. 11 attacks forced many Americans to recognize the nation's precarious standing in the Arab world, the Bush administration decided to act to improve the country's image and promote its values.

"We've got to do a better job of making our case," President Bush told reporters after the attacks.

Much of the government's information machinery, including the United States Information Agency and some C.I.A. programs, was dismantled after the cold war. In that struggle with the Soviet Union, the information warriors benefited from the perception that the United States was backing victims of tyrannical rule. Many Muslims today view Washington as too close to what they characterize as authoritarian regimes in Saudi Arabia, Egypt and elsewhere.

The White House turned to John Rendon, who runs a Washington communications company, to help influence foreign audiences. Before the war in Afghanistan, he helped set up centers in Washington, London and Pakistan so the American government could respond rapidly in the foreign media to Taliban claims. "We were clueless," said Mary Matalin, then the communications aide to Vice President Dick Cheney.

Mr. Rendon's business, the Rendon Group, had a history of government work in trouble spots, In the 1990's, the C.I.A. hired him to secretly help the nascent Iraqi National Congress wage a public relations campaign against Saddam Hussein.

While advising the White House, Mr. Rendon also signed on with the Joint Chiefs of Staff, under a $27.6 million contract, to conduct focus groups around the world and media analysis of outlets like Al Jazeera, the satellite network based in Qatar.

About the same time, the White House recruited Jeffrey B. Jones, a former Army colonel who ran the Fort Bragg psychological operations group, to coordinate the new information war. He led a secret committee, the existence of which has not been previously reported, that dealt with everything from public diplomacy, which includes education, aid and exchange programs, to covert information operations.

The group even examined the president's words. Concerned about alienating Muslims overseas, panel members said, they tried unsuccessfully to stop Mr. Bush from ending speeches with the refrain "God bless America."

The panel, later named the Counter Terrorism Information Strategy Policy Coordinating Committee, included members from the State Department, the Pentagon and the intelligence agencies. Mr. Rendon advised a subgroup on counterpropaganda issues.

Mr. Jones's endeavor stalled within months, though, because of furor over a Pentagon initiative. In February 2002, unnamed officials told The New York Times that a new Pentagon operation called the Office of Strategic Influence planned "to provide news items, possibly even false ones, to foreign news organizations." Though the report was denied and a subsequent Pentagon review found no evidence of plans to use disinformation, Mr. Rumsfeld shut down the office within days.

The incident weakened Mr. Jones's effort to develop a sweeping strategy to win over the Muslim world. The White House grew skittish, some agencies dropped out, and panel members soon were distracted by the war in Iraq, said Mr. Jones, who left his post this year. The White House did not respond to a request to discuss the committee's work.

What had begun as an ambitious effort to bolster America's image largely devolved into a secret propaganda war to counter the insurgencies in Iraq and Afghanistan. The Pentagon, which had money to spend and leaders committed to the cause, took the lead. In late 2002 Mr. Rumsfeld told reporters he gave the press a "corpse" by closing the Office of Strategic Influence, but he intended to "keep doing every single thing that needs to be done."

The Pentagon increased spending on its psychological and influence operations and for the first time outsourced work to contractors. One beneficiary has been the Rendon Group, which won additional multimillion-dollar Pentagon contracts for media analysis and a media operations center in Baghdad, including "damage control planning." The new Lincoln Group was another winner.

Pentagon Contracts

It is something of a mystery how Lincoln came to land more than $25 million in Pentagon contracts in a war zone.

The two men who ran the small business had no background in public relations or the media, according to associates and a résumé. Before coming to Washington and setting up Lincoln in 2004, Christian Bailey, born in Britain and now 30, had worked briefly in California and New York. Paige Craig, now 31, was a former Marine intelligence officer.

When the company was incorporated last year, using the name Iraqex, its stated purpose was to provide support services for business development, trade and investment in Iraq. The company's earliest ventures there included providing security to the military and renovating buildings. Iraqex also started a short-lived online business publication.

In mid-2004, the company formed a partnership with the Rendon Group and later won a $5 million Pentagon contract for an advertising and public relations campaign to "accurately inform the Iraqi people of the Coalition's goals and gain their support." Soon, the company changed its name to Lincoln Group. It is not clear how the partnership was formed; Rendon dropped out weeks after the contract was awarded.

Within a few months, Lincoln shifted to information operations and psychological operations, two former employees said. The company was awarded three new Pentagon contracts, worth tens of millions of dollars, they added. A Lincoln spokeswoman referred a reporter's inquiry about the contracts to Pentagon officials.

The company's work was part of an effort to counter disinformation in the Iraqi press. With nearly $100 million in United States aid, the Iraqi media has sharply expanded since the fall of Mr. Hussein. About 200 Iraq-owned newspapers and 15 to 17 Iraq-owned television stations operate in the country. Many, though, are affiliated with political parties, and are fiercely partisan, with fixed pro- or anti-American stances, and some publish rumors, half-truths and outright lies.

From quarters at Camp Victory, the American base, the Lincoln Group works to get out the military's message.

Lincoln's employees work virtually side by side with soldiers. Army officers supervise Lincoln's work and demand to see details of article placements and costs, said one of the former employees, speaking on condition of anonymity because Lincoln's Pentagon contract prohibits workers from discussing their activities.

"Almost nothing we did did not have the command's approval," he said.

The employees would take news dispatches, called storyboards, written by the troops, translate them into Arabic and distribute them to newspapers. Lincoln hired former Arab journalists and paid advertising agencies to place the material.

Typically, Lincoln paid newspapers from $40 to $2,000 to run the articles as news articles or advertisements, documents provided to The New York Times by a former employee show. More than 1,000 articles appeared in 12 to 15 Iraqi and Arab newspapers, according to Pentagon documents. The publications did not disclose that the articles were generated by the military.

A company worker also often visited the Baghdad convention center, where the Iraqi press corps hung out, to recruit journalists who would write and place opinion pieces, paying them $400 to $500 as a monthly stipend, the employees said.

Like the dispatches produced at Fort Bragg, those storyboards were one-sided and upbeat. Each had a target audience, "Iraq General" or "Shi'ia," for example; an underlying theme like "Anti-intimidation" or "Success and Legitimacy of the ISF," or Iraqi Security Forces; and a target newspaper.

Articles written by the soldiers at Camp Victory often assumed the voice of Iraqis. "We, all Iraqis, are the government. It is our country," noted one article. Another said, "The time has come for the ordinary Iraqi, you, me, our neighbors, family and friends to come together."

While some were plodding accounts filled with military jargon and bureaucratese, others favored the language of tabloids: "blood-thirsty apostates," "crawled on their bellies like dogs in the mud," "dim-witted fanatics," and "terror kingpin."

A former Lincoln employee said the ploy of making the articles appear to be written by Iraqis by removing any American fingerprints was not very effective. "Many Iraqis know it's from Americans," he said.

The military has sought to expand its media influence efforts beyond Iraq to neighboring states, including Saudi Arabia, Syria and Jordan, Pentagon documents say. Lincoln submitted a plan that was subsequently rejected, a Pentagon spokesman said. The company proposed placing editorials in magazines, newspapers and Web sites. In Iraq, the company posted editorials on a Web site, but military commanders stopped the operation for fear that the site's global accessibility might violate the federal ban on distributing propaganda to American audiences, according to Pentagon documents and a former Lincoln employee.

In its rejected plan, the company looked to American popular culture for ways to influence new audiences. Lincoln proposed variations of the satirical paper "The Onion," and an underground paper to be called "The Voice," documents show. And it planned comedies modeled after "Cheers" and the Three Stooges, with the trio as bumbling wannabe terrorists.

The Pentagon's media effort in Afghanistan began soon after the ouster of the Taliban. In what had been a barren media environment, 350 magazines and newspapers and 68 television and radio stations now operate. Most are independent; the rest are run by the government. The United States has provided money to support the media, as well as training for journalists and government spokesmen.

But much of the American role remains hidden from local readers and audiences.

The Pentagon, for example, took over the Taliban's radio station, renamed it Peace radio and began powerful shortwave broadcasts in local dialects, defense officials said. Its programs include music as well as 9 daily news scripts and 16 daily public service messages, according to Col. James Yonts, a United States military spokesman in Afghanistan. Its news accounts, which sometimes are attributed to the International Information Center, often put a positive spin on events or serve government needs.

The United States Army publishes a sister paper in Afghanistan, also called Peace. An examination of issues from last spring found no bad news.

"We have no requirements to adhere to journalistic principles of objectivity," Colonel Summe, the Army psychological operations specialist, said. "We tell the U.S. side of the story to approved targeted audiences" using truthful information. Neither the radio station nor the paper discloses its ties to the American military.

Similarly, AID does not locally disclose that dozens of Afghanistan radio stations get its support, through grants to a London-based nonprofit group, Internews. (AID discloses its support in public documents in Washington, most of which can be found globally on the Internet.)

The AID representative in Afghanistan, in an e-mail message relayed by Peggy O'Ban, an agency spokeswoman, explained the nondisclosure: "We want to maintain the perception (if not the reality) that these radio stations are in fact fully independent."

Recipients are required to adhere to standards. If a news organization produced "a daily drumbeat of criticism of the American military, it would become an issue," said James Kunder, an AID assistant administrator, He added that in combat zones, the issue of disclosure was a balancing act between security and assuring credibility.

The American role is also not revealed by another recipient of AID grants, Voice for Humanity, a nonprofit organization in Lexington, Ky. It supplied tens of thousands of audio devices in Iraq and Afghanistan with messages intended to encourage people to vote. Rick Ifland, the group's director, said the messages were part of the "positive developments in democracy, freedom and human rights in the Middle East."

It is not clear how effective the messages were or what recipients did with iPod-like devices, pink for women and silver for men, that could not be altered to play music or other recordings. Mr. Ifland said they were designed so "only a consistent, secure official message can be disseminated."

To show off the new media in Afghanistan, AID officials invited Ms. Matalin, the former Cheney aide and conservative commentator, and the talk show host Rush Limbaugh to visit in February. Mr. Limbaugh told his listeners that students at a journalism school asked him "some of the best questions about journalism and about America that I've ever been asked."

One of the first queries, Mr. Limbaugh said, was "How do you balance justice and truth and objectivity?"

His reply: report the truth, don't hide any opinions or "interest in the outcome of events." Tell "people who you are," he said, and "they'll respect your credibility."

Carlotta Gall and Ruhullah Khapalwak contributed reporting from Afghanistan for this article.
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/11/po...gewanted=print





Air Marshals to Expand Their Mission
Leslie Miller

Federal air marshals are expanding their work beyond airplanes, launching counterterror surveillance at train stations and other mass transit facilities in a three-day test program.

As of Wednesday, the Transportation Security Administration said, teams of undercover air marshals and uniformed law enforcement officers were descending on bus stations, ferries and transit systems across the country to protect them from potential terrorists.

"We just want to develop the capability to enhance security outside of aviation," said air marshal spokesman David Adams.

Air marshals stepped outside of their usual role of flying undercover on airliners after Hurricane Katrina struck New Orleans. They were sent to keep order at Louis Armstrong International Airport, where thousands of evacuees converged after the levees were breached.

The so-called "Visible Intermodal Protection and Response" teams - or VIPER teams - will patrol Amtrak's Northeast Corridor and Los Angeles rail lines; ferries in Washington state; bus stations in Houston; and mass transit systems in Atlanta, Philadelphia, Washington and Baltimore.

The teams will consist of two air marshals, one TSA bomb-sniffing- canine team, one or two transportation security inspectors and a local law enforcement officer.

Adams said there is no new intelligence indicating that terrorists are interested in targeting transportation modes.

Rather, the TSA is trying to expand the role of air marshals, who have been eager to conduct surveillance activities beyond the aircraft, and tighten security at public transit stations over the holiday.

Some members of the team will be obvious to the traveling public and wear jackets bearing the TSA name on the back. Others will be plainclothes air marshals scanning the crowds for suspicious individuals.

"TSA expects to find new ways to quickly deploy resources, in the event of an actual threat, that adds complexity to security measures outside of the aviation domain," the agency said in a statement.

Thousands of air marshals were rushed into service after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. The service has been shunted among different agencies since then, starting out at the Federal Aviation Administration, moving to the TSA, then to Immigration and Custom Enforcement and, recently, back to the TSA.

Though the exact number of air marshals is classified, pilots estimate that they cover only a small percentage of flights. Efforts were made to expand coverage by cross-training other law enforcement officers to perform air marshal duties, but Congress put a stop to it.

Air marshals last week shot and killed a passenger in Miami who they said made a bomb threat.

The Washington Post first reported the deployment of the VIPER teams.
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories...M&SECTION=HOME





A Little Sleuthing Unmasks Writer of Wikipedia Prank
Katharine Q. Seelye

It started as a joke and ended up as a shot heard round the Internet, with the joker losing his job and Wikipedia, the online encyclopedia, suffering a blow to its credibility.

A man in Nashville has admitted that, in trying to shock a colleague with a joke, he put false information into a Wikipedia entry about John Seigenthaler Sr., a former editor of The Tennessean in Nashville.

Brian Chase, 38, who until Friday was an operations manager at a small delivery company, told Mr. Seigenthaler on Friday that he had written the material suggesting that Mr. Seigenthaler had been involved in the assassinations of John and Robert Kennedy. Wikipedia, a nonprofit venture that is the world's biggest encyclopedia, is written and edited by thousands of volunteers.

Mr. Seigenthaler discovered the false entry only recently and wrote about it in an op-ed article in USA Today, saying he was especially annoyed that he could not track down the perpetrator because of Internet privacy laws. His plight touched off a debate about the reliability of information on Wikipedia - and by extension the entire Internet - and the difficulty in holding Web sites and their users accountable, even when someone is defamed.

In a confessional letter to Mr. Seigenthaler, Mr. Chase said he thought Wikipedia was a "gag" Web site and that he had written the assassination tale to shock a co-worker, who knew of the Seigenthaler family and its illustrious history in Nashville.

"It had the intended effect," Mr. Chase said of his prank in an interview. But Mr. Chase said that once he became aware last week through news accounts of the damage he had done to Mr. Seigenthaler, he was remorseful and also a little scared of what might happen to him.

Mr. Chase also found that he was slowly being cornered in cyberspace, thanks to the sleuthing efforts of Daniel Brandt, 57, of San Antonio, who makes his living as a book indexer. Mr. Brandt has been a frequent critic of Wikipedia and started an anti-Wikipedia Web site (www.wikipedia-watch.org) in September after reading what he said was a false entry about himself.

Using information in Mr. Seigenthaler's article and some online tools, Mr. Brandt traced the computer used to make the Wikipedia entry to the delivery company in Nashville. Mr. Brandt called the company and told employees there about the Wikipedia problem but was not able to learn anything definitive.

Mr. Brandt then sent an e-mail message to the company, asking for information about its courier services. A response bore the same Internet Protocol address that was left by the creator of the Wikipedia entry, offering further evidence of a connection.

A call by a New York Times reporter to the delivery company on Thursday made employees nervous, Mr. Chase later told Mr. Seigenthaler. On Friday, Mr. Chase hand- delivered a letter to Mr. Seigenthaler's office, confessing what he had done, and later they talked at length.

Mr. Chase told him that the Seigenthaler name had come up at work and that he had popped it into a search engine and was led to Wikipedia, where, he said, he was surprised that anyone could make an entry.

Mr. Chase wrote: "I am truly sorry to have offended you, sir. Whatever fame comes to me from this will be ill-gotten indeed."

Mr. Seigenthaler said Mr. Brandt was "a genius" for tracking down Mr. Chase. He said he "was not after a pound of flesh" and would not take Mr. Chase to court.

Mr. Chase resigned from his job because, he said, he did not want to cause problems for his company. Mr. Seigenthaler urged Mr. Chase's boss to rehire him, but Mr. Chase said that, so far, this had not happened.

Mr. Chase said that as Mr. Brandt and the news media were closing in and he realized how much he had hurt Mr. Seigenthaler, he decided that stepping forward was "the right thing to do."

Mr. Seigenthaler, founder of the First Amendment Center, said that as a longtime advocate of free speech, he found it awkward to be tracking down someone who had exercised that right.

"I still believe in free expression," he said. "What I want is accountability."

Jimmy Wales, who founded Wikipedia, said that the site would make more information about users available to make it easier to lodge complaints. But he portrayed the error as something that fell through the cracks, not a sign of a systemic problem. "We have to continually evaluate whether our controls are enough," he said.
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/11/bu...dia/11web.html





ILN News Letter
Michael Geist

Terror Groups Lack Ability To Mount Serious Cyber Attacks

Louis Reigel III, the FBI's top cyber crime official, says Al-Qaida and other terror groups are more sophisticated in their use of computers but still are unable to mount crippling Internet-based attacks against US power grids, airports, and other targets.
<http://tinyurl.com/7qq4e> [Washington Post]


Secret US ID Law Goes To Court

A three-judge panel of the 9th US Circuit Court of Appeals heard arguments yesterday on tech entrepreneur and Internet freedom fighter John Gilmore's challenge to a secret government order forcing airline passengers to show identification or submit to a pat-down search. Gilmore contends that the policy violates his right to travel and that the additional search of those who do not show ID is a form of punishment.
http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,69773,00.html


EFF and CIPPIC Launch New Online Rights Organization

The Electronic Frontier Foundation and the Canadian Internet Policy and Public Interest Clinic have joined forces to create Online Rights Canada, a new grassroots organization focused on technology and information policy issues. ORC is initially focused on Internet surveillance and copyright reform. Release at
<http://www.eff.org/news/archives/2005_12.php#004244>


BSA Study Targets Infringing Software Worldwide

Research group IDC found in a study commissioned by the Business Software Alliance that the global rate of illegal software is currently around 35 percent, coming down only 1 percent a year. The study, covering 70 countries that represent 99 percent of the world's information technology spending, claimed that a worldwide reduction of infringing software by 10 percentage points to 25 percent could generate 2.4 million jobs and $400 billion of economic growth.
http://www.wired.com/news/business/0,1367,69785,00.html


Tougher Penalties Sought Over Bootleg Movies

As part of its worldwide campaign against infringing copying, the film industry is pushing for tougher penalties for smuggling a camcorder into a cinema in New York. A bill pushed by the MPAA would make operating recording equipment inside a theatre a criminal misdemeanour, raising the maximum punishment to a $1,000 fine and a year in jail. http://www.siliconvalley.com/mld/sil...l/13357024.htm


FBI And China Discuss Counterfeit Goods

The FBI has initiated talks with senior Chinese officials to develop a closer working relationship to reduce computer-related crime and intellectual-property infringement in China. Louis Reigel III, assistant director of the FBI's cyber division, said he had met with his counterparts in China's Ministry of Public Security to discuss a wide range of issues.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB113401077660817070.html


Sony Works To Patch Patch For Rootkit Vulnerabilities

Sony BMG is replacing a patch for its CD copy protection software after Princeton University researchers found a security flaw in the update. Princeton computer science professor Ed Felten wrote in his blog on Wednesday that a recent patch could open computers to attack by hackers. Sony executives said yesterday that they were working as closely as possible with security professionals to address the issues identified by Felten, and would have a new patch available by midday.
http://news.com.com/2100-1002_3-5987776.html


State To Fight Challenge To Utah Porn Law

Utah is fighting a challenge to a new state law that requires ISPs to give customers a way to block porn sites. Attorney General Mark Shurtleff filed a motion in federal court to dismiss a lawsuit submitted on Nov. 17 by the Free Speech Coalition, a trade association for the adult entertainment industry.
http://kutv.com/topstories/local_story_341233425.html





"lol no its not its a virus"

New IM Bug Chats With You
Nancy Gohring

A new breed of malicious instant-message bots is on the loose, according to IMlogic, the developer of enterprise instant messaging security applications.

On Monday, IMlogic first published details of a new threat known as IM.Myspace04.AIM. Once the computer of an AIM (American Online IM) user is infected by the IM.Myspace04.AIM bot, the bot sends messages to people on the infected user's buddy list, making the messages appear to come from the infected user. The infected user isn't aware the messages are being sent. If recipients click on a URL sent with a message, they'll also become infected and start spreading the virus.

A bot is a program that can automatically interact with people or other programs. AOL, for example, has bots that let users ask questions via IM, such as directory queries, and the bot responds.

The unusual part of this bot is that it replies to messages. If a recipient responds after the initial message, the bot replies with messages such as "lol no its not its a virus" and "lol thats cool." Because the bot mimics a live user interaction, it could increase infection rates, IMlogic said.

IMlogic continues to analyse this particular threat but so far it seems not to be affecting users.

Some similar IM worms install spybots or keyloggers onto users' computers, said Sean Doherty, director of services in Europe, Middle East and Africa for IMlogic. Such malicious programs record key strokes or other user activity in an effort to discover user passwords or other information.

"What we're seeing with some of these worms is they vary quickly so the initial one may be a probe to see how well it infected users and then a later variant will be one that may put a spybot out," Doherty said. The initial worm could be essentially a proof of concept coming from the malware writers, he said.
http://www.techworld.com/security/ne...ePos=20&inkc=0





Microsoft Warns Of 'Critical' Windows Security Flaw

Microsoft Corp. on Tuesday warned users of its Windows operating system of a "critical" security flaw in its software that could allow attackers to take complete control of a computer.

The world's largest software maker issued a patch to fix the problem as part of its monthly security bulletin. The problem mainly affects the Windows operating system and Microsoft's Internet Explorer Web browser.

Computer security experts and Microsoft urged users to download and install the patch available at www.microsoft.com/security.

Microsoft said the vulnerability exists in its Internet Explorer Web browser, which an attacker could exploit to take over a PC by running software code after luring users to malicious Web pages.

Microsoft also issued one other security warning it rated at its second-highest level of "important."

A vulnerability defined as "important" is one where an outsider could break into a machine and gain access to confidential data but not replicate itself to other computers, Microsoft said.

Microsoft defines a flaw as "critical" when the vulnerability could allow a damaging Internet worm to replicate without the user doing anything to the machine.

The "critical" flaw affects Internet Explorer which is a part of Windows while the "important" flaw is a vulnerability in the fundamental code that the higher level functions of Windows are all based on.

For more than three years, Microsoft has been working to improve the security and reliability of its software as more and more malicious software targets weaknesses in Windows and other Microsoft software.

More than 90 percent of the world's personal computers run on the Windows operating system.
http://today.reuters.com/news/newsAr...archived=False





HarperCollins Will Create a Searchable Digital Library
Edward Wyatt

In the latest move in the battle between publishers and search engines, HarperCollins Publishers said yesterday it would create its own digital library of all of its book and audio content and make it searchable by consumers on the Internet. Web users will be able to search the HarperCollins archive via search engines like Google and Yahoo or the specialized programs of retailers like Amazon.com.

The move is intended to allow HarperCollins, a unit of the News Corporation, to maintain control over digital content rather than cede that control to other companies, Jane Friedman, chief executive, said.

Rather than give copies of books to search services like Google for those companies to scan as it currently does, HarperCollins would keep the material on its own computers, and users would be pointed there by the search engine, Ms. Friedman said. The company expects to have at least part of the service operating by the middle of next year.

In the end, the development is not likely to make much difference in what consumers see, said Brian Murray, group president of HarperCollins. Currently, the Google Book Search site returns anywhere from a few lines to a few pages of a particular book's contents, depending on whether the book is under copyright and whether the publisher participates in its program. That's not likely to change.

But, Mr. Murray said, HarperCollins might offer consumers access to more of a book on its own site. HarperCollins, which released its announcement yesterday after it was first reported in The Wall Street Journal, said that all of its publishing companies around the world would participate in the program.

Other large publishers, like Random House Inc., a subsidiary of Bertelsmann, have long been digitizing all of their new content for in-house use, as well as many older books that remain in print.

But the HarperCollins announcement shows that at least one major publisher is seeking ways to work with Google and other Internet companies to make books and other material, like audiobooks, widely searchable.

Some publishers have filed lawsuits against Google for making digital copies of books in major research libraries while that material is still under copyright protection. Google maintains that because its searches return only a few lines of copyrighted material, its actions are allowed by the "fair use" provision of copyright law. The publishers have said that simply by making digital copies, Google is violating copyright law.
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/13/books/13harp.html





Companies To Build IPv6 Test Center
Grant Gross

Two companies have announced a partnership to create a large IPv6 test centre.

The goal is to create the world's leading IPv6 testing facility, said Spirent Federal Systems, one of the partners in the project. The centre, which will be used to test networks and products for IPv6 compatibility, will focus on serving US government agencies, said Ellen Hall, president and chief executive officer of Spirent Federal.

Teaming with Spirent Federal will be v6 Transition, the consulting and training arm of IPv6 Summit, which organises IPv6 conferences. IPv6 Summit is led by Alex Lightman, one of the leading advocates of the widespread transition to IPv6.

The test centre, to be located in northern Virginia, will be operational "very soon," Hall said. While details about the size of the centre are still being finalised, it will be large enough to conduct IPv6 tests for "several agencies at one time," she said.

Hall called the partnership with v6 Transition a "significant" pairing, combining v6 Transition's expertise on implementing IPv6 with Spirent Federal's contacts with U.S. government agencies such as the Department of Defense.

"We already have really good relationships with government agencies," Hall said.

The Defense Department has set 2008 as a target for making its computer systems compatible with IPv6. The White House Office of Management and Budget announced in June that US government agencies must be IPv6 compatible by June 2008.

Backers of IPv6 call it a major improvement over IPv4. IPv6 has several advantages, including built-in security, multicasting functionality and better support for mobile devices, backers say. More use of IPv6 could lead to better Internet TV, videoconferencing and military-grade security.

In a separate announcement, the University of New Hampshire's InterOperability Laboratory, joined by 10 companies and the US military, tested several IPv6 functions on the Moonv6 network, the world's largest multivendor IPv6 network. Testers successfully made international VoIP calls, as well as testing some security and mobility functions. The VOIP calls, between New Hampshire and South Korea, tested IPv4 equivalency using an IPv4/IPv6 tunnel.
http://www.techworld.com/networking/...gePos=7&inkc=0





DirecTV To Pay For Do-Not-Call Violations
Andrew Bridges

DirecTV Inc. will pay $5.35 million to settle charges that its telemarketers called households listed on the national do-not-call registry to pitch satellite TV programming, Federal Trade Commission officials said Tuesday.

The proposed settlement, if approved by a federal judge in Los Angeles, would be the FTC's largest civil penalty in a consumer protection case.

The DirecTV complaint, filed by the Department of Justice at the FTC's request, named the company and five telemarketing firms it hired, as well as six principals of those firms.

"This multimillion-dollar penalty drives home a simple point: Sellers are on the hook for calls placed on their behalf," FTC Chairwoman Deborah Platt Majoras said in a statement.

DirecTV issued a statement saying it has terminated its relationship with the telemarketing firms that made inappropriate calls and has implemented new procedures to ensure there is no repeat of the violations.

"DirecTV wholly supports the national do-not-call registry and our agreement with the FTC reflects our commitment to prevent unwanted and unlawful telemarketing calls to existing and potential DirecTV customers," said the company, which has 15 million subscribers.

The complaint alleged that DirecTV and the various telemarketing firms violated do- not-call rules beginning in October 2003, the month the registry debuted.

The registry, which contains more than 110 million phone numbers, was designed to prevent consumers from receiving unwanted calls from telemarketers.

Telemarketers must match their contact lists against the registry every 31 days. Companies that have recently done business with households are exempt, as are charities, pollsters and callers on behalf of politicians.

On Monday, in an unrelated case, DirecTV Inc. promised to reimburse unhappy customers and to make its advertised offers clearer, according to a settlement reached with 22 states over deceptive marketing complaints.
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories...MPLATE=DEFAULT





All aboard!

Can This Man Reprogram Microsoft?
Steve Lohr

THINK back to Round 1 of the Internet, when things really got rolling in 1995. The computing landscape was shifting, and a cool, fast-growing young company symbolized the new order: Netscape. At the time, Microsoft looked to be a lumbering old war horse, trapped in the yesteryear of desktop personal computer software, word processors, spreadsheets and operating systems. It seemed, in other words, so 1980's.

But, of course, Microsoft emerged a winner. It embraced the Internet and vanquished the Netscape threat with hard work, ingenuity and strong-arm tactics that a federal court ruled violated the nation's antitrust laws. Microsoft's shares soared to a record high at the end of 1999.

The Internet, Round 2, is now under way. Again, the computing terrain is changing remarkably, helped along by free software like Linux and the spread of high-speed Internet access. Today, all kinds of computing experiences can be delivered as services over the Internet, often free and supported by advertising. Clever Internet software can now turn flat, view-and-read Web pages into snappy services that look and respond to a user's keystrokes much like the big software applications that reside on a PC hard drive. New companies are even sprouting up to offer Web-based word processors and spreadsheets, products long regarded as mature - and long dominated by Microsoft's desktop programs.

Champions of the Internet services model range from I.B.M. to start-ups. But the totemic company in this next big evolutionary step in computing is Google, the Internet search power whose ambitions appear to be growing as fast as its profits.

And Microsoft? It once more finds itself surrounded by doubt and dismissed as a laggard. Some of its own senior engineers have defected to Google and elsewhere, and its stock price has barely budged in three years, despite solid earnings growth, because others appear to be winning the race for the future.

The familiar pattern of a decade ago begs the question that Bill Gates was asked when he met last month with a group of executives and journalists from The New York Times: Will you do to Google what you did to Netscape?

Mr. Gates, the Microsoft co-founder and chairman, paused, looked down at his folded hands and smiled broadly, as if enjoying a private joke. "Nah," he replied, "we'll do something different."

The man whom Mr. Gates is counting on to make a difference is Ray Ozzie, a soft-spoken 50-year-old who joined the company just eight months ago. He has the daunting task of galvanizing the troops to address the Internet services challenge, shaking things up and quickening the corporate pulse.

The forces arrayed against Microsoft, analysts say, may well prove more formidable than ever. "The problem Microsoft faces today is that there is a totally different model emerging for how software is created, distributed, used and paid for," said George F. Colony, the chairman of Forrester Research, a technology consultant. "That's why it's going to be so difficult for Microsoft this time."

Yet there are optimists. Big industry shifts, they say, create opportunity. Inevitably, they note, Internet computing erodes Microsoft's power to set technology standards, but the company can still benefit as the overall market expands. That's what happened in the 1990's. They say that if Microsoft shrewdly devises, for example, online versions of its Office products, supported by advertising or subscription fees, it may be a big winner in Internet Round 2.

"There's a tremendous opportunity for Microsoft to expand its business," said Richard Sherlund, an analyst at Goldman Sachs, who has a buy recommendation on the company. "But Microsoft had better be sure it is the one that capitalizes before others cannibalize their business."

AT first blush, Mr. Ozzie, whose title is chief technical officer, seems an unlikely person to meet the threat of Google and its brethren. He has only a small staff and no direct control over Microsoft's vast product groups. "It's soft power," Mr. Ozzie said in an interview here last week, referring to the foreign-policy concept that influence need not be measured in bombs and battleships.

And few doubt Mr. Ozzie's influence. "Ray Ozzie is someone with a tremendous technical reputation and an outsider, who Bill Gates trusts, and he's come in and said things have to change," said Michael A. Cusumano, a professor at the Sloan School of Management at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Mr. Ozzie is a software wizard whose geek gene was evident early. Growing up in suburban Chicago, he had a passion for Heathkits, which were do-it-yourself projects for electronics hobbyists. He was constantly building radios, tape players and other electronics gear, recalled Jack Ozzie, his younger brother. "There was always a smell of solder in the back bedroom," said Jack, who is a software engineer.

At the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in the early 1970's, Mr. Ozzie wandered into the building that housed Plato, a computer system with terminals linked to a mainframe in a network that, remarkably for its time, had instant messaging, e-mail and online discussions. Mr. Ozzie became a senior programmer on the Plato system.

Mr. Ozzie recalled that he was "forever changed" by his experience with Plato. It gave him, he said, "a peek at what the Internet would ultimately become. It was a microcosm, an online community in an era when there weren't online communities."

In the 1980's, Mr. Ozzie applied that perspective to the new technology of the day: personal computers. At the time, PC's were mainly stand- alone machines for word processing, spreadsheet calculations and desktop publishing. Mr. Ozzie recognized that PC's could also be powerful tools for communications and collaboration. He led the team that created Lotus Notes, an early program for corporate e-mail and sharing information in digital workspaces, anticipating the kind of computing that would become commonplace only later with the rise of the Internet and the Web. In 1995, I.B.M. paid $3.5 billion for Lotus Development Corporation and the prize was Lotus Notes.

In 1997, Mr. Ozzie founded Groove Networks to make advanced collaboration software using Internet peer-to-peer technology, well before the arrival of Napster and peer-to-peer networks for sharing music. Groove was a technological triumph, but not a big commercial success. Microsoft bought Groove this year to pick up its technology - and Mr. Ozzie.

Years ago, when Mr. Ozzie was a Microsoft competitor, Mr. Gates called him one of the world's great programmers. So, in Microsoft's engineering culture, Mr. Ozzie brings a lot of clout to his job.

He hit the ground quickly after he arrived in April. At first, he said, some executives told him that it was a big company and that he should get to know it for a year or so before deciding what to focus on. "That lasted about two weeks," he said.

In meetings of senior executives, the subject of how to cope with the Internet services shift in computing, how to turn it into an opportunity for Microsoft, was a constant theme - and one that deeply interested Mr. Ozzie. "Within a month, Ray was putting his thoughts on software-as- services on paper," noted Jeff Raikes, president of Microsoft's business division, which includes the Office products and corporate software.

Mr. Ozzie then spent the next few months meeting with people across the company to see what work was being done in product groups. Simultaneously, he was devising a plan to help Microsoft capitalize on Internet services by blending the new technology - and economic models - with Microsoft's traditional software business.

In late October, Mr. Ozzie presented his ideas in a seven-page, 5,000-word memo, "The Internet Services Disruption." At first, it was e-mailed to fewer than 100 senior managers and engineers at Microsoft. But they passed it along to colleagues, and by early November it had leaked out to the press; copies are now posted on the Web. Microsoft has used such memos over the years to educate its corporate troops and to stir them up to combat major competitive challenges.

In a two-page note that accompanied the Ozzie memo, Mr. Gates compared it to one he wrote in 1995, "The Internet Tidal Wave," which assessed the Internet challenge of a decade ago. Microsoft, he wrote in the introduction to the Ozzie memo, was at similar crossroads. "This coming 'services wave' will be very disruptive," Mr. Gates wrote, and later emphasized, "The next sea change is upon us."

The Ozzie memo analyzes the Internet services trend, the competition and Microsoft's strengths and shortcomings, and it suggests how the company must change. The document is also a call to action: "It's clear that if we fail to do so, our business as we know it is at risk," Mr. Ozzie wrote. "We must respond quickly and decisively."

The memo is peppered with technical acronyms, and rivals are named. While Microsoft is progressing on several fronts, Mr. Ozzie wrote, "a set of very strong and determined competitors is laser-focused on Internet services and service-enabled software."

"Google is obviously the most visible here," he added.

There is an implicit critique of Microsoft's software-building practice of relying so much on product cycles measured in years. The last major release of Windows - XP - was in 2001, while the next one, Vista, has been scheduled for next year after repeated delays. The memo chastises no product by name, but it extols the virtues of speed and simplicity in software design.

"Complexity kills," Mr. Ozzie wrote. "It sucks the life out of developers, it makes products difficult to plan, build and test, it introduces security challenges, and it causes end-user and administrator frustration."

HIS comments all but echo those of some estranged engineers who have left Microsoft recently. Mark Lucovsky, a former senior engineer at Microsoft who joined Google, wrote in his blog earlier this year, "Microsoft used to know how to ship software, but the world has changed." The companies to watch, Mr. Lucovsky wrote, have "embraced the network, deeply understand the concept of 'software as a service' and know how to deliver incredible value to their customers efficiently and quickly."

Mr. Ozzie is understandably careful in what he writes and says; his role at Microsoft is mainly to lead and encourage rather than to criticize. He emphasizes the importance of Microsoft's big desktop products like Windows and Office, and he says that Internet services should be seen primarily as a way to continually update and improve its offerings. Those updates and improvements, he said, should make Microsoft software teams happier by moving their work into the marketplace faster.

"People like to have fun doing what they're doing, and people who build software have fun by having people use their stuff," Mr. Ozzie said in the interview.

Yet Microsoft will also selectively offer Web services that do over the Internet some of what Office and Windows do on the desktop. The company took measured steps in that direction last month, when it introduced Windows Live and Office Live. Windows Live lets consumers manage their e-mail, instant messaging, blogs, photos and podcasts in one site. Office Live enables small businesses to set up Web sites and e- mail systems, and to provide collaboration sites for teams. Both will be supported by advertising and perhaps some subscription fees.

In the future, Mr. Ozzie suggests, Microsoft will go further, offering parts of Office - like Word, Excel or PowerPoint - as Web services. "I think there are potentially different or enhanced ways that we can take things that have traditionally been done with the Office suite and offer that to customers," Mr. Ozzie said. "That's absolutely what we're focused on."

The new approach, it seems, is a striking departure from Microsoft's longtime practice of bundling more and more software features into its big integrated products. The bundling has not been merely a design preference, but also a business strategy. With more than 90 percent of the desktop PC market for operating systems and office productivity applications, Microsoft has bundled outstanding programs with mediocre ones, and all of them typically became the industry standards.

But Internet services represent a more open, competitive model. "Software itself is going to be free, and you get paid for services that are supported either by ads or by subscription charges," said Mitchell Kapor, the founder of Lotus Development who is president of the Open Source Applications Foundation, which develops free software for personal information like calendars and contacts. "For Microsoft, this is a bigger challenge than the rise of the Internet itself in 1995."

RECENT innovations have enabled Web-based software to look and respond more like desktop applications. Offering Internet alternatives to traditional PC programs are a new breed of start-ups, including Writely.com, for word processing; NumSum, for spreadsheets; and Zimbra and Scalix, both e-mail. I.B.M. has Web-based software called WorkPlace that is used by millions of workers. And Salesforce.com has built a fast- growing business by supplying customer relationship management software as an Internet service.

"No piece of software will replace Microsoft's Outlook, Word or Excel, but Web services will eat away at core areas of its Office suite over the next couple of years," said Marc Benioff, chief executive of Salesforce.com.

If that happens, Microsoft's business could be battered. Mr. Colony of Forrester Research predicts that Microsoft's profit margins, under pressure from Internet services, could fall by 40 percent or so over the next four years. A wild card is the hand that Google will play beyond search and how successful it may be. Mr. Colony, for example, says he thinks that Google will make a big difference. "I believe Google will revolutionize the software business," he wrote in a recent report.

Google has desktop search software and a Web-based e-mail service, two offerings aimed at parts of Microsoft's stronghold. How much further it plans to go in providing alternatives to Microsoft's software is uncertain, though it certainly looks interested.

Google was among the companies that attended a meeting last month at I.B.M.'s headquarters in Armonk, N.Y., of the Open Document Foundation, a group formed to agree on freely available formats for word processing, spreadsheets and other office documents; the idea is to come up with alternatives to Microsoft's proprietary Office formats. And for the last few months, Google has talked with Wyse Technology, a maker of so-called thin-client computers (without hard drives).

The discussions are focused on a $200 Google-branded machine that would likely be marketed in cooperation with telecommunications companies in markets like China and India, where home PC's are less common, said John Kish, chief executive of Wyse. "Google is on a path to developing a stack of software in competition with the Microsoft desktop, and one that is much more network-centric, more an Internet service," Mr. Kish said. "And this fits right into that."

For his part, Mr. Ozzie is curious about the plans at Google but is by no means obsessed by it. Google, he said, is "obviously a very strong technology company, and we'll see what they do with that."

Yet Mr. Ozzie's view is that Microsoft's fate is in its own hands. If it charts its technology and business plans wisely, harnessing the talents of its army of smart people, he said, it should grow and prosper in this next wave of Internet computing. He speaks of a thriving "ecosystem" of open competition in which developers and customers have many choices and in which Microsoft's future is not in crushing rivals but in becoming an attractive choice.

In the past, Microsoft executives have decried free software, with its collaborative open-source development style, as akin to communism, if not downright evil. Not Mr. Ozzie. "I consider open-source software to be part of the environment, like the Internet," he said. "It's not the enemy and it's not going to go away. It's great for developers.

"And if we don't keep continually updating our offerings and develop better offerings," Mr. Ozzie added, "then shame on us."

The Microsoft strategy, he said, has to be to develop tools and technology that make it easier to build software for the Internet-services era and easier for users to have more productive and enjoyable computing experiences. In a sense, it's a reinvention of old Windows vision of computing, but in a very different competitive context from the desktop world that Microsoft ruled.

The new game plan, Mr. Ozzie said, is "obviously not an altruistic thing, but it doesn't even resemble the environment of old."
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/11/bu...y/11micro.html





Tuning In Satellite-Free Digital Radio

With cheaper receivers, more people may listen to the free broadcasts. But the quality may not be worth the hardware.

You probably don't know it, but 21 radio stations in the Los Angeles area are broadcasting in digital, even though only a handful of listeners have the equipment to hear it.

Digital radio signals, which offer the potential of better sound quality and the elimination of static and interference, are being simulcast along with the traditional analog signals from such well-known stations as all-news KNX-AM, pop KPWR-FM, rock KROQ-FM and classical KUSC-FM.

The technology could allow an old-fashioned medium to better compete with numerous all-digital competitors, such as satellite radio, pod-casting and Internet streaming.

But building an audience for digital radio has been slow going. Although stations began rolling out the simulcasts in 2003, the only home receiver available has been a Yamaha Electronics Corp. unit that costs $1,800.

Asked recently how many people were listening to digital radio, Robert Struble, chief executive of Ibiquity Digital Corp., which developed the technology, had a ready answer: "Dozens," he said with a smile.

Last week, however, the price of a digital receiver dropped drastically. Boston Acoustics Inc., best known for its audio speakers, began shipping a stereo tabletop radio that can receive digital AM and FM, as well as analog signals. Called the Recepter Radio HD, it costs $499.

Two more tabletop models are scheduled to be introduced next year: Radiosophy is bringing one out for $269 and a Polk Audio unit that can also play CDs and MP3s will cost $599.

A car radio that can receive digital AM and FM signals is available from Panasonic for $499 and others are due to debut next year. The Panasonic model also can receive XM satellite radio, but one advantage of digital AM and FM is that the broadcasts are free for consumers. Satellite radio, which also is digital, costs about $13 a month.

The satellite services — XM Satellite Radio Holdings Inc. and Sirius Satellite Radio Inc. — command these fees because each has more than 100 channels, many of which are commercial-free, that can be heard nationwide in digital sound. Earthbound stations have distance limitations, but that's also somewhat to their advantage: They can gear their programming to local audiences.

The arrival of the Recepter raises the question: Is now the time to take the plunge into digital radio?

Based on what I've heard from the Boston Acoustics unit, probably not.

Although AM broadcasts sound dramatically better in digital, the overall experience does not yet justify the outlay of that much money for what is essentially a fancy clock radio — unless you're a hard-core early adopter. (Still have your laser disc collection?)

But the Recepter does offer a tantalizing peek at what could be the future of broadcast radio.

The unit is similar in looks and operation to the company's nondigital, mono Recepter model that goes for $149. The main difference in appearance is that the digital Recepter has a second, detached speaker.

A highly readable screen provides a frequency read-out as the tuning dial is turned. Analog stations come in as usual. If a digital signal is detected, the initials "HD" start flashing at the top of the screen. While flashing, the reception is still analog, and then after several seconds the signal locks in and the reception switches to digital.

With the radio's AM and FM antennas hung out a window of The Times' building in downtown Los Angeles, I was able to receive 17 local digital stations.

How big of a difference did digital make?

A huge one in AM: The switch-over to digital on KNX sounded as if someone who had been talking to me on a cellphone had walked into the room, in mid-sentence. In fact, the first time I heard it, the change was so dramatic I thought I had mistakenly switched the band to FM.

The reason AM sounds so much better, according to Ibiquity, is that analog AM signals carry a myriad of noises and interference picked up along the way from transmitter to receiver. But digital signals carry little or no noise. Also, digital more than doubles the range of audio spectrum that can be carried in AM, resulting in far richer sound.

The sound-quality boost in digital FM is more subtle because analog FM signals carry a lot less noise than analog AM signals do anyway. Also, the FM sound frequency range — already superior to AM — gets only slight improvement with digital.

The sound upgrade is generally most noticeable when listening to classical music. Cesar Franck's Symphony in D minor on KUSC sounded luminous in digital. Jazz also sounded better on stations such as KKJZ-FM.

But little, if any, improvement could be detected on pop and rock stations KPWR and KROQ. That's partly because pop and rock recordings are engineered for the current sound parameters of FM.

"When you are working on a record, you always have how it will sound on radio in the back of your mind," said music producer Jimmy Jam, who has worked with Gwen Stefani, Usher, Elton John and Mary J. Blige. With the expanded digital bandwidth, he said, "You don't have to be so aware of the limitations you face with radio."

The major benefits of digital FM probably will go to the broadcasters. It lets them split the spectrum in such a way that it can allow as many as four channels. These additional channels can be added without going through the arduous and expensive process of purchasing more frequencies.

But as the spectrum is sliced up because of multicasting, music quality can suffer. For example, the commercial classical station KMZT-FM is one of two local stations already experimenting with digital multicasting. On its regular channel is the classical service and on KMZT-2, as it shows up on the screen, is KKGO-AM, an easy-listening station that has the same owner.

This made for the odd juxtaposition of Amilcare Ponchielli's "Dance of the Hours" on the classical side and Gene Autry singing "Here Comes Santa Claus" on the other during a recent listening test.

The Ponchielli — best known as the music for the hippo dance in the original "Fantasia" — sounded only slightly better in digital. After all, it had only half the digital spectrum with which to work. Ibiquity executives said that stations were still making adjustments to their digital transmission equipment and that they expected quality to increase, even in multicasting channels.

Whatever the technical challenges, the radio industry clearly is serious about digital. So far, 598 stations nationwide are broadcasting in digital, according to Ibiquity, and each paid $80,000 to $100,000 — plus an approximately $7,000 licensing fee — to make the upgrade. In addition, 420 more stations have licensed the technology and probably will activate their digital signals soon.

It's such a heavy investment — and multicasting is so potentially lucrative — that you figure broadcasters are going to work hard to make it a success. With improved sound and the promise of additional channels (and please, take a tip from satellite radio and reduce the commercials), it might very well pay off.

The question is, will the listening experience be good enough to get people to buy new receivers, or will digital radio just be the next laser disc?
http://www.latimes.com/technology/la...ck=1&cset=true





Media Frenzy

Satellite Radio: Out of the Car and Under Fire
Richard Siklos

IN the early 1990's, when the pioneers of satellite radio raised the first of the billions they needed to get their ventures aloft, the premise was fairly simple: create services that would be to old-fashioned radio what cable television was to broadcast TV. That meant providing scores of niche radio channels with high-quality signals in exchange for a monthly subscription fee. By blanketing the nation with signals beamed from on high, there would be no need for all those transmitting towers, no utter dependence on advertising and no pesky etiquette rules from the Federal Communications Commission to observe. And, the early prospectuses argued, there was a huge, natural market of people who spend hours in their vehicles, often bored out of their skulls.

Skeptics - let me raise a hand - observed that in most cities, there were many more channels of radio available free over the air than there were TV stations when cable came on the scene. Moreover, if the objective was to provide entertainment choices to the millions of commuters and professional drivers on the open road, there was already a popular alternative to listening to the radio or singing show tunes out loud: playing CD's and cassettes in car stereos.

Today, Sirius Satellite Radio and XM Satellite Radio, which went public in 1994 and 1999, respectively, have yet to make a penny in profit but together are approaching 10 million subscribers, most paying nearly $13 a month. Doubters, deal with it: Satellite radio looks as if it is here to stay.

A landmark event in the industry's evolution is approaching in January, when the radio jock Howard Stern moves from his longtime home at Infinity Broadcasting, now part of the Viacom monolith, to Sirius.

But while Mr. Stern's well-compensated antics are sure to gain plenty of attention - and, Sirius expects, a bump in subscribers to gain ground on the larger XM - an equally controversial new act is appearing on satellite radio in the form of portable receivers.

Like Mr. Stern's arrival, these new gadgets from XM and Sirius show how far satellite has come. But they also show how far all media businesses have to go to fulfill their digital potential. The new players, the XM MyFi and Sirius S50, are really the equivalent of what TiVo's and their ilk are to television: digital recorders that let music lovers record any song for future listening.

We'll leave it to the gizmo gurus to compare the virtues of the new gadgets, but they operate off the same idea: both XM and Sirius offer 100-plus channels, so why not let listeners keep their favorite songs or shows handy? Why not enjoy the satellite service if you are in a tunnel or leave your car to go into a basement gym for a workout?

Most conveniently, midway through a song on one of the satellite radio channels, a listener can press a button and record it in its entirety; it is automatically sorted by artist. (The Sirius machine even has a clever little heart graphic that pops up on its screen when you do so, signifying the devotion you have just shown.) And you can even prerecord blocks of programming from your favorite channel - and later fast-forward through the songs and cherry-pick the ones to keep. In the same spirit, you can download MP3 files of songs onto these machines from a computer.

In other words, if the devices work as well as they're supposed to, they represent an intriguing alternative to pay-per-download services like Apple's iTunes and its omnipotent iPod. For executives in the satellite radio industry, of course, this sounds like a no-brainer: they are merely mirroring the evolution of the cable model. To some music industry executives who regard this as yet another way for people to circumvent paying the full price for their songs, it looks like another potential doomsday device.

Not surprisingly, the music industry is starting to make a ruckus - demanding more compensation or contemplating a push to limit some of these features, perhaps by having the recorded songs expire after a set period. The satellite jockeys, on the other hand, say they have not only twisted themselves into pretzels to make these devices legally compliant, but they have also designed them to promote artists and the music.

For instance, both XM and Sirius point out that songs saved on the machines from their services cannot be uploaded to a computer or shared in any way. XM even has a version coming out in a too-clever-by-half partnership with - of all companies - the rehabilitated and revamped Napster, through which any songs saved on the satellite player can be automatically bought through the Web site if the listener wants a more pristine copy or one that can be copied onto a CD or other MP3 player. And XM also maintains that people who use its service buy more CD's than those who don't. Besides, argues Hugh Panero, XM's chief executive, the service falls under fair-use laws.

"What has been disturbing," Mr. Panero said in an interview, "is that the efforts by the music industry of late seem to signal a desire to encroach on a longstanding tradition of consumers to record off the air for their personal use."

At a Merrill Lynch conference in September, his rival Mel Karmazin at Sirius also pointed out that the music industry was already getting a much better licensing fee from satellite than it did from the nation's 10,000 terrestrial radio stations. "When I have lunch with those guys, they're paying for my lunch," Mr. Karmazin said. "I'm not paying for their lunch."

In some ways, the looming debate over satellite radio's new machines is a warm-up for the bigger tussle forming in Washington over whether a coming generation of digital broadcasts from terrestrial radio stations ought to include so-called flags that prohibit or curb the saving and swapping of songs straight off the air.

At a Congressional hearing last month, Mitch Bainwol, the chairman of the Recording Industry Association of America, warned that the use of digital radio to create personal jukeboxes "threatens to rival or even surpass" the loss of sales suffered by his industry with the advent of Napster 1.0 and its Internet file-sharing spawn. The message is: It's theft, and that's un-American.

LINED up on the other side are consumer groups and electronics manufacturers who argue this is just the latest rhetoric intended to preserve the status quo and to stifle innovation and choice. Their message: That's even more un-American.

Where satellite radio is concerned, the pressure to come to the table and to resolve the dispute without a big court battle is urgent. Both Mr. Karmazin and Mr. Panero say they want to be good partners and grow old and rich together with the music industry. Mr. Stern's arrival on satellite radio comes at a watershed moment when both the beleaguered music-makers and the satellite jockeys need to prove that the sky is indeed paved with gold.
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/11/bu...y/11frenz.html





Online Playlists May Kill Radiostar

Study finds music fans favor setting their own preferences
Lucy M. Caldwell

If “video killed the radio star,” as British band The Buggles famously sang in 1979, then online playlists might put the nail in the coffin for FM disk jockeys.

“Many music fans are not content to simply listen passively to what radio DJs play,” according to Derek A. Slater ’05-’06, co-author of a report that will be released today by Harvard Law School’s Berkman Center for Internet and Society and the Gartner Group, a research firm.

Slater wrote in an e-mail that listeners “want to be DJs too, sharing their tastes online through playlists and creating their own downloadable radio-style shows. In this way, they might take away the power of radio and other traditional tastemakers in shaping tastes.”

Slater, a government concentrator in Winthrop House who will graduate from the College Phi Beta Kappa in January, has worked at the Berkman Center for the past three and a half years. He is the first undergraduate ever to be named a student fellow at the Berkman Center. Several people, including professors, have even called the law school and asked to speak with “Professor Slater,” according to Berkman Center spokeswoman Amanda R. Michel.

Slater co-authored the report with the Gartner Group’s research director, Michael McGuire. The Gartner Group, based in Stamford, Conn., provides analysis about the information technology industry and counted over $894 million in revenue last year, according to its website.

The report by Slater and McGuire found that playlists yield cultural benefits by exposing listeners to a greater variety of music. Moreover, the lists introduce music fans with similar tastes to one another, reinforcing online communities.

Slater and McGuire recommend that record companies study the dynamics of playlist sites so they can restructure their marketing strategies accordingly. In addition, Slater and McGuire encourage online music services to improve playlist-publishing capabilities and to solidify links to other consumer-to-consumer music-sharing sites in order to attract more traffic to their Web pages.

Slater, an avid music fan who spends much of his free time attending concerts, began studying internet and copyright issues because he has a genuine love for music.

“The struggle over music file sharing has unfortunately turned ‘sharing’ into a bad word,” Slater said in a Berkman Center press release. “Whatever one thinks of illegal downloading, much can be gained from giving music fans a chance to share their musical tastes in a variety of ways.”

The use of consumer-to-consumer recommendation tools such as playlists is becoming increasingly common, the report finds. According to the report, 20 percent of online music listeners use these tools at least five days a week, and more than 25 percent of online listeners use the tools between one and four days a week.

Slater and McGuire predicted that by 2010, 25 percent of online music transactions will be driven directly by consumer-to-consumer sharing applications.
http://thecrimson.com/article.aspx?ref=510544





Stern Fans Enjoy Last Day of Free Speech

The free ride for Howard Stern fans ended Friday.

Stern, a New York radio fixture for 20 years and host of a syndicated show for 12 million daily listeners, bid farewell to his fans with a final show on terrestrial radio. On Jan. 9, Stern makes his move to satellite radio - where his once-free speech will cost listeners $12.95 a month.

"Good morning, and welcome to the last show on terrestrial radio," Stern said to start his grand finale. The sound of taps played in the background.

The show opened with a Stern-centric remake of the classic "What A Wonderful World," and John Lennon's "Imagine."

As the show went on, several thousand people stood in a steady drizzle along 56th Street between Fifth and Sixth avenues; many waved signs praising Stern and attacking the Federal Communications Commission. Among those onstage there were Stern regulars "Jeff the Drunk" and "Beetlejuice," who led a sing-along.

"I'm a dedicated listener. I wanted to see this happen," said Chris Casavant, who drove up at 4:30 a.m. from Farmington, N.J.

Asked why she was there, Donna Casavant made a face and pointed at her husband.

After the show wrapped up at 10 a.m. EST, Stern took a "victory lap" through midtown Manhattan, standing on the top level of a double-decker bus as fans screamed and waved.

"What a day, it's crazy," Stern said as the bus rambled through Times Square while an image of the self-described "King of All Media" appeared on a giant television screen above. "You don't get to do something like this too often."

Addressing his fans from a stage before the bus ride, Stern bellowed "Long live the `Howard Stern Show' audience," before departing like a rock star.

Fans screamed for an encore, but they were left to wait until his "reincarnation" next month. The crowd on 56th Street was a circus, with a Stern look-alike standing near the stage. Stern's parents appeared to huge cheers, while the station manager at WXRK-FM - the shock jock's terrestrial home - was booed loudly.

Stern leaves behind a plethora of imitators spawned in the wake of his radio success, when his show enjoyed an unprecedented ratings run to hit No. 1 in New York, Philadelphia, Washington and Los Angeles.

His move from Infinity Broadcasting to Sirius Satellite Radio, while somewhat risky, comes with a huge financial reward: Stern signed a five-year, $500 million contract to jump. He's creating two new channels for Sirius, with the salaries, overhead and other programming costs coming out of his windfall.

Across his career, Stern evolved into the center of attention in First Amendment issues and censorship. Infinity paid $1.7 million in 1995 to settle FCC complaints against Stern. In April 2004, Clear Channel that dumped Stern from six stations in April 2004 over his show's content.

Sirius is depending on Stern to reverse the company's money-losing ways. Since the 51-year-old shock jock announced his move last year, the number of Sirius subscribers jumped from 600,000 to more than 2.2 million - and that figure was expected to hit 3 million by the end of this year.
http://www.forbes.com/home/feeds/ap/...ap2397771.html

[JackSpratts]

TV Stardom on $20 a Day
Robert Mackey

AMANDA CONGDON is a big star on really small screens - like the 4½- inch window she appears in on computer monitors every weekday morning or the 2½ inches she has to work with on the new video iPod. Ms. Congdon, you see, is the anchor of a daily, three-minute, mock TV news report shot on a camcorder, edited on a laptop and posted on a blog called Rocketboom, which now reaches more than 100,000 fans a day.

In terms of subject matter, Rocketboom is actually quite a standard - one might even say traditional - Web log: Ms. Congdon comments on intriguing items she, and the site's producer, Andrew Baron, have found on the Web, and includes links to them which appear just below clear, smooth-playing video. The items tend to be developments in Internet culture (robots and flash mobs, say, or flash mobs of robots) with a sprinkling of left-leaning political commentary (Ms. Congdon announced the posting of Representative Tom DeLay's mug shot while wearing a party hat and blowing a noisemaker) and samples of Web video from around the world.

What makes Rocketboom so different from most of the other video blogs, or vlogs, that have popped up in the last year or so is that the daily episodes are consistently entertaining. With Mr. Baron, 35, the designer who created the site and films the episodes, Ms. Congdon, 24, has fashioned a quirky, charming persona, with an inventive take on the news that is closer in spirit to Letterman than CNN.

The fact that she is an attractive young woman probably doesn't hurt either. Regular visitors to the site tend to check in at the start of each workday, soon after new episodes are posted from the Rocketboom production studio - also known as Mr. Baron's one-bedroom apartment on the Upper West Side. "They won't always like it. It won't always be their cup of tea," Ms. Congdon said, "but they know a lot of times they will and, regardless, I'm not like screaming at them or telling them what to do. I'm kind of just like 'Hey, I'm here - this is what I think is cool.' "

It's not just cool, though, it's prescient. The vlog has been up and running for 14 months, but it's only in the last two that Web video has become new media's favorite new medium - since Apple Computer's iTunes online store began stocking vlogs, calling them video podcasts and making it easy to download them for free viewing on the new iPods. In fact, the day Steve Jobs, Apple's chief executive, introduced the video iPod to developers, he showed a playlist of video podcasts on his computer. Rocketboom was at the top.

In case you're wondering, it has occurred to Mr. Baron and Ms. Congdon that they just might be sitting on a gold mine. At a cost of about $20 an episode, they reach an audience that some days is roughly comparable in size to that of, say, CNN's late, unlamented "Crossfire" political debate show. They have no background in business, but Jeff Jarvis, who tracks developments in technology and culture on his blog, BuzzMachine.com (and who has served as a consultant to The New York Times on Web matters), pointed out to them that they might be able to charge $8,000 for an interactive ad at the end of the show, which would bring in about $2 million annually.

The financial opportunity here has occurred to others, too. TiVo, which can now be used to watch Web video on home television sets, just signed a deal to list Rocketboom in the TiVo directory - making it as easy to record as conventional television programs like "60 Minutes" and "Monday Night Football." Giving up no creative control, Ms. Congdon and Mr. Baron will get 50 percent of the revenue from ads sold by TiVo to appear before and after their newscast, and their show will gain access to more than 300,000 TV sets connected to those new TiVo boxes. (That won't include Mr. Baron, though, since he gave up watching television years ago, and doesn't even own a set. He briefly considered buying one this year, but the thought passed. "I guess I'm going to hold out," he said.)

THE rapid expansion in the number of vlogs and Web sites offering video podcasts strongly suggests how bored viewers are getting with standard commercial TV: a growing number of them are willing to seek out alternatives online, or just create one themselves. As recently as a year ago there were fewer than two dozen active vlogs. In mid- October, just after Mr. Jobs name-checked Rocketboom, and Apple added the category of "Video Podcast" to the default menu of the new iPod, the site Vlogmap.org showed 415 vlogs worldwide. A month later Mefeedia.com, a site that allows users to watch and subscribe to vlogs, had 1,100 sites in its directory. Two weeks after that Mefeedia boasted of "2,017 vlogs and counting." Rocketboom includes reports from vloggers both near (Boston) and far (Prague), with regular contributors based in Los Angeles, Minneapolis and "the German-speaking part of Europe."

Many of the world's other vlogs are closer in form to diaries or home movies - with all the tedium that can imply. Still, some have their fans, such as the filmmaker Ross McElwee, whose personal documentaries, including "Sherman's March," have elevated the home movie into a serious art form. "Most of the vlogs are quite boring," he said recently by e-mail, "but now and then there is one that for some reason seems to have something special." Mr. McElwee cited one called Mom's Brag Vlog that documents events like trick-or-treating at the mall and a spider spinning a web outside a family's house. "It's so mundane and down-to-earth that it's charming," he said, "in small doses."

On most vlogs, that's the only dose available. The average video runs no longer than a pop song and, as with blogs, it's easy to dip in to and back out of any site that fails to hold your interest. In the right hands, vlogs can become microdocumentaries of surprising beauty, wit and intelligence. The diarist Michael Verdi, for instance, uses his camcorder to deliver improvised monologues that Mr. McElwee said "celebrate the frustrating banality" of those in-between moments, waiting for lights to turn green or planes to take off, that would be edited out of most biographies. One reviewer on Mefeedia wrote, "Verdi is a household name amongst vloggers."

Rocketboom's Minneapolis correspondent, Chuck Olsen, profiles other people on his main site, Minnesota Stories, but also maintains a video diary called Secret Vlog Injection. One post there uses video that Mr. Olsen shot without permission during an indie-rock concert at a local club. The result records not only a great performance by the band but also Mr. Olsen's argument with the club's manager, who tried to confiscate his camera. The story evolves into a smart, funny discussion of copyright issues and the philosophical difference between the world-views of the vloggers and traditional media companies. "There's no economic motive," Mr. Olsen says in titles that appear on the screen like a news crawl, noting that the viewer is not being charged for the video. "The point is to capture, and share, fantastic, fleeting moments."

The twist is that Mr. Olsen used his stolen images to make what might be one of the best music videos of the year, which could easily have been shown on MTV as an advertisement for the band. But not all vloggers are interested in making video that could be televised.

Charlene Rule, who makes artful short pieces that appear on her vlog, Scratch Video (and have been shown at the Anthology Film Archives in the East Village), uses fragments of her own life - like parts of a surprisingly long phone conversation with a wrong number, or a few seconds with a dress-maker helping her to "make breasts" for the bridesmaid's outfit she wore to a friend's wedding.

She takes a different approach from those vloggers who, she said, "mimic TV." Instead, she points to an ideal of personal filmmaking advocated by the director François Truffaut nearly 50 years before vlogs were invented (which she quotes on her site): "The film of tomorrow" he wrote in 1957, "will be even more personal than an individual and autobiographical novel, like a confession, or a diary. The young filmmakers will express themselves in the first person and will relate what has happened to them: it may be the story of their first love or their most recent; of their political awakening. ... The film of tomorrow will resemble the person who made it, and the number of spectators will be proportional to the number of friends the director has."

The amount of spare time they have may also be a factor. "One of the vlogs I stumbled upon recently," said Mr. McElwee, who also teaches documentary film at Harvard, "said 'If you have a few hours to kill, check out my photo blog that accompanies this vlog' - but it seems like years since I've 'had a few hours to kill.' "

But the new technology of podcasting solves that problem. Just as videocassette recorders first made it possible to watch television shows when you wanted rather than when they were broadcast, podcasting allows you to have shows (audio or video) sent directly to your computer, portable players or TiVo box for viewing at your leisure.

A site like Ms. Rule's Scratch Video, which has about 8,000 subscribers, suggests that it may soon be possible for video producers to distribute their programs directly through the Internet - and possibly even make a living doing it, in much the same way novelists with small but loyal followings can build a career without ever cracking the best-seller list. Until now, both the television and film industries have been built on a model that requires producers to appeal to millions of people or be considered failures. If Amanda Congdon at one end of the spectrum and Charlene Rule at the other continue to add viewers at the rate they're going, they and the best of the other vloggers might just provide a viable alternative to that lowest-common-denominator business model.

In other words, the revolution may just be vloggerized.
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/11/ar...on/11mack.html





Cable Relents on Channels for the Family
Ken Belson and Geraldine Fabrikant

Yielding to pressure from regulators, lawmakers and interest groups, the country's biggest cable companies say they expect to introduce packages of family-friendly channels as early as the first quarter of 2006.

Kyle McSlarrow, the head of the National Cable and Telecommunications Association, which represents cable companies and programmers, told lawmakers yesterday that at least six cable companies, including the two largest, Comcast and Time Warner Cable, were developing packages of channels that would appeal to parents who want to shield their children from potentially offensive shows.

Mr. McSlarrow said each cable company would come up with its own family-oriented packages and that they would be purchased like other bundles. He did not say how much the bundles would cost and added that cable operators still must solve some technical problems and revisit their contracts with programmers.

The move is the latest effort by cable companies to head off pending legislation that might obligate them to block certain programming or sell channels to consumers on an à la carte basis. The cable industry has long opposed efforts to regulate its offerings and has argued that technology already in place lets parents filter out unwanted shows.

The industry has also fought calls from advocacy groups that want to pay only for the channels they want to watch. Cable operators say that the amount of programming would shrink if consumers bought only a few channels, because the most popular networks effectively subsidize the less popular ones.

But in recent weeks, Kevin J. Martin, the chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, and several congressmen have pressured the cable industry to remedy the concerns of advocacy groups that oppose sex, violence and profanity on the airwaves.

In acceding to that pressure, the cable industry may have addressed the decency debate that has percolated at least since Janet Jackson's breast was bared on national television during the halftime show at the 2004 Super Bowl. But the cable industry may have unwittingly taken a step toward offering more à la carte programming, not less.

The problem, industry analysts say, is that one home's definition of family-friendly programming can be very different from another's. One family, for instance, may want to buy a bundle of cartoons, while another may want religious programs and yet another may not want violent movies.

For now, cable companies are expected to devise a few types of family packages to appease them. But inevitably, advocacy groups and lawmakers are expected to push cable companies to give consumers even more options to pick their channels.

Yesterday's announcement was a move by the cable industry "to fend off à la carte for as long as possible and wrap itself in the flag of family friendliness," said Ford Cavallari, an analyst at Adventis, a telecommunications consultant. "But the fraying of the family-friendly package could lead to an à la carte world."

The Parents Television Council, one of the loudest voices calling for à la carte programming, yesterday called the industry's offer to introduce family-friendly tiers a "red herring." The industry would determine what is family friendly and their control would be the equivalent of "the fox guarding the henhouse," said L. Brent Bozell, council president.

Mr. Cavallari said the splintering of family packages was just one reason cable companies were likely to sell more programs on an à la carte basis in the future.

Already, major studios like Disney are selling individual programs for the Apple iPod. Yesterday, Sprint Nextel said it would start streaming full-length movies to its customers' mobile phones for $6.95 a month.

Cable operators overseas have introduced an à la carte model and found that they have not lost money and that viewers prefer it, Mr. Cavallari said.

Still, the cable industry and television channels, which have been trying for months to head off calls for à la carte programming, are unlikely to give in easily. Cable network executives say à la carte offerings would make it harder to develop niche programming because there would not be enough subscribers to pay the cost. "C-Span could not survive," said Paul Colichman, the chief executive of "Here," a subscription video-on-demand service for gays and lesbians. "It is one thing to have a gay and lesbian à la carte channel with a community that is wealthy enough to support it. But other minority groups may not be so fortunate."

Still, skeptics argue that à la carte service will not save consumers money because they will end up paying almost as much for a handful of individual channels as they would for a standard plan of 60 or 70 channels.

Other executives, including Ken Solomon, the chief executive of the Tennis Channel, say that consumers will not want to choose a few channels from a list of hundreds and will end up choosing an existing package, just as they do now.

"If consumers had to sit down and choose the channels themselves, they would end up overwhelmed and be confused about the choices," he said.
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/13/bu...a/13cable.html





MPAA gives film about itself an NC-17

Film will air on IFC - uncut, uncensored, and commercial-free - in Fall 2006
Press Release

IFC, the first and largest network dedicated to independent film, announced today that the IFC Original Documentary, "This Film Is Not Yet Rated," from Academy Award-nominated director Kirby Dick and producer Eddie Schmidt, will premiere at the 2006 Sundance Film Festival and air on IFC in Fall 2006. The documentary, a breakthrough investigation into the MPAA film ratings system and its profound effect on American culture, is executive produced by IFC's Alison Palmer Bourke and Evan Shapiro.

On November 30, the ratings board, an anonymous group whose mandate is to classify films for the MPAA from the perspective of "the average American parent," screened this documentary and gave it an NC-17 rating for "some graphic sexual content." An NC-17 rating generally limits a film's avenues of exhibition: many theater chains will not show it, media outlets will not run its advertisements and video store chains will not stock it.

IFC, however, will present the film uncensored and uninterrupted. Alison Palmer Bourke, IFC's VP of Documentaries and Features states: "Kirby's film is a natural for IFC. Our 'tv, uncut.' mandate is to give filmmakers a platform for free expression, and we let our viewers decide for themselves what is appropriate and of interest to them."

Kirby Dick agrees, "It is important that this film be seen by as many people as possible, as it deals with an insidious form of censorship resulting from a ratings process that has been kept secret for more than 30 years."

The documentary asks whether Hollywood movies and independent films are rated equally for comparable content; whether sexual content in gay-themed movies is given harsher ratings penalties than their heterosexual counterparts; whether it makes sense that extreme violence is given an R rating while sexuality is banished to the cutting room floor; whether Hollywood studios receive detailed directions as to how to change an NC-17 film into an R, while independent film producers are left guessing; and finally, whether keeping the raters and the rating process secret leaves the MPAA entirely unaccountable for its decisions.

The MPAA has established itself as the lobbying arm of the American motion picture, home video and television industries in the US since its inception in 1922. On its board of directors are the Chairmen and Presidents of the seven major producers and distributors of motion picture and television programs in the United States -- Sony, WB, Paramount, MGM, Fox, Disney and Universal. When Jack Valenti became president of the MPAA in 1966, he created a rating system to replace the old Hays code, first adopted in 1930. Valenti's voluntary rating system, modified only slightly over the years, has become an icon in American culture, with its letter ratings of G, PG, PG-13, R, and NC-17 (formerly X) used to classify films according to age-based appropriateness.

Until today's announcement, the subject matter of "This Film Is Not Yet Rated" was kept under wraps by the filmmakers during more than a year of research into the MPAA's rating practices. Director Kirby Dick ("Twist of Faith," "Derrida") interviews filmmakers, critics, attorneys, authors and educators. Ultimately, Dick tries to uncover Hollywood's best kept secret -- the identities of the ratings board members themselves.

Filmmakers who speak candidly in "This Film Is Not Yet Rated" include John Waters ("A Dirty Shame"), Kevin Smith ("Clerks"), Matt Stone ("South Park"), Kimberly Peirce ("Boys Don't Cry"), Atom Egoyan ("Where the Truth Lies"), Darren Aronofsky ("Requiem for a Dream"), Mary Harron ("American Psycho"), actress Maria Bello ("The Cooler") and distributor Bingham Ray (co-founder, October Films and former President, United Artists).

When Jack Valenti stepped down in September 2004, Dan Glickman succeeded him as president and CEO. However, Valenti continued to supervise the ratings process until September 2005, when the MPAA announced that it would be splitting its leadership duties between Los Angeles-based president and COO, Bob Pisano, and Glickman, who has been appointed the Washington DC-based CEO and chairman and now oversees the ratings system.
http://biz.yahoo.com/prnews/051207/nyw108.html





'Brokeback Mountain' Leads Globe Nods
David Germain

The gay cowboy romance "Brokeback Mountain" positioned itself as a key Oscar competitor Tuesday, roping in seven Golden Globe nominations, including best dramatic picture and honors for actor Heath Ledger and director Ang Lee.

Other best drama picture contenders were the murder thriller "The Constant Gardener," the Edward R. Murrow tale "Good Night, and Good Luck," the mobster story "A History of Violence" and "Match Point," a drama about infidelity.

The Globes were a triumph for smaller budgeted films over big studio productions.

"This is the first time in the history of the Golden Globes that all of the best (dramatic) film nominees are independent movies made for under $30 million," said Philip Berk, president of the Hollywood Foreign Press Association, which presents the awards.

The Globes have a separate category for musical or comedy films. Nominated were the theater tale "Mrs. Henderson Presents," the Jane Austen costume pageant "Pride & Prejudice," the Broadway musical "The Producers," the divorce story "The Squid and the Whale," and the Johnny Cash film biography "Walk the Line."

The Globes were the latest recognition for "Brokeback Mountain," a critical darling that has received top honors from critics groups in New York City, Los Angeles and Boston.

Still, the film has an uphill trail to the Oscars, whose voters may hesitate to anoint a gay-themed movie as its champion.

"It's going to be a front-runner, but it really has a mountain to climb, because never have we seen a gay romance in the best-picture race before," said Tom O'Neil, who runs theenvelope.com, an awards Web site.

Movies with gay angles have earned acting honors, Tom Hanks winning for "Philadelphia" and Hilary Swank for "Boys Don't Cry," but those movies did not break into the best-picture pack.

Yet "Brokeback Mountain" has proved a favorite at film festivals and debuted with huge box- office grosses last weekend, taking in almost $550,000 in just five theaters. The movie goes into wider release over the next few weeks, its backers hoping it will find a broad audience despite the subject matter.

"Clearly, we felt that because the film speaks a very universal emotional language; it's going to surprise people, when it comes out, how accessible it is," said James Schamus, a producer on "Brokeback Mountain" and co- president of Focus Features, the NBC Universal banner that released the film.

Best dramatic actor nominee Ledger plays a husband concealing a homosexual affair with an old sheepherding buddy from his family. Other nominees included three actors playing real-life figures: Russell Crowe as Depression- era boxer Jim Braddock in "Cinderella Man," Philip Seymour Hoffman as author Truman Capote in "Capote," and David Strathairn as newsman Murrow in "Good Night, and Good Luck." The fifth nominee was Terrence Howard as a small-time pimp-turned-rap singer in "Hustle & Flow."

"Good Night, and Good Luck" was tied for second-most film nominations with four, along with "Match Point" and "The Producers." The Murrow tale earned a best-director nomination for George Clooney, who also had a supporting actor movie nomination for the oil industry thriller "Syriana."

Felicity Huffman received two nominations - best dramatic actress in a film for her role as a man preparing for sex-change surgery in "Transamerica" and best actress in a TV musical or comedy for "Desperate Housewives." Her "Desperate Housewives" co-stars Marcia Cross, Teri Hatcher and Eva Longoria also were nominated, and the ABC show earned a best TV comedy bid.

ABC also scored three nominations for best dramatic TV series: "Commander in Chief," "Grey's Anatomy" and "Lost." Bids also went to Fox's "Prison Break" and HBO's "Rome." Other nominees for best comedy or musical TV series were HBO's "Curb Your Enthusiasm" and "Entourage," UPN's "Everybody Hates Chris," NBC's "My Name is Earl" and Showtime's "Weeds."

Other best dramatic film actress nominees were Maria Bello as a wife learning painful secrets about her husband in "A History of Violence," Gwyneth Paltrow as an unstable math genius' daughter in "Proof," Charlize Theron as a woman leading a sexual harassment lawsuit in "North Country" and Ziyi Zhang as a poor girl who becomes the belle of Japan's geisha houses in "Memoirs of a Geisha."

Based on a short story by Annie Proulx, "Brokeback Mountain" grabbed a supporting actress nomination for Michelle Williams as Ledger's wife, who chooses to ignore his affair with a man (Jake Gyllenhaal) to hold her family together. The movie also scored a directing nomination for Lee and received nominations for best screenplay, score and song.

For best actor in a movie, musical or comedy, Globe voters nominated Pierce Brosnan as a burned-out hit man in "The Matador," Jeff Daniels as a husband unglued by divorce in "The Squid and the Whale," Johnny Depp as candyman Willy Wonka in "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory," Nathan Lane as a Broadway con man in "The Producers," Cillian Murphy as a cross-dressing Irishman in "Breakfast on Pluto," and Joaquin Phoenix as country legend Cash in "Walk the Line."

Best musical or comedy film actress nominees: Judi Dench as a 1930s British dame who opens a nude theatrical review in "Mrs. Henderson Presents," Keira Knightley as the romantic heroine in "Pride & Prejudice," Laura Linney as a divorcing wife in "The Squid and the Whale," Sarah Jessica Parker as a woman hated by her fiance's relatives in "The Family Stone," and Reese Witherspoon as country singer June Carter in "Walk the Line."

Besides Lee and Clooney, the directing contenders were Woody Allen for "Match Point," Peter Jackson for "King Kong," Fernando Meirelles for "The Constant Gardener," and Steven Spielberg for "Munich."

In addition to Clooney, supporting movie actor nominees were Matt Dillon for "Crash," Will Ferrell for "The Producers," Paul Giamatti for "Cinderella Man," and Bob Hoskins for "Mrs. Henderson Presents."

Playing a bigoted cop who dotes on his sickly dad, Dillon was the lone acting nominee from an ensemble of great performances in "Crash," which interweaves multiple story lines on a single tension-filled day in Los Angeles.

"It was honest and truthful to what I believed was an L.A. cop, not typical of what every cop is," Dillon said. "It went and explored these two extremes ... bitter racist cop and really loving son who cares about his sick father. These are the complicated things we see in life."

Supporting actress nominees: Scarlett Johansson for "Match Point," Shirley MacLaine for "In Her Shoes," Frances McDormand for "North Country," Rachel Weisz for "The Constant Gardener," and Williams for "Brokeback Mountain."

Two years ago, the Golden Globes correctly predicted Oscar winners in all key categories, including best-picture champ "The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King."

But a year ago, the Globes missed the mark, picking "The Aviator" as best picture, an honor that went to "Million Dollar Baby" at the Oscars.

Winners of the Golden Globes will be announced Jan. 16, five days before polls close for Oscar voters. Oscar nominations come out Jan. 31, and the awards will be presented March 5.
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories...MPLATE=DEFAULT





The Bear Who Was There at the Start of It All
Dave Itzkoff

IN a courtroom scene from "The Simpsons" that has since entered into the television canon, an argument over the ownership of the animated characters Itchy and Scratchy rapidly escalates into an existential debate on the very nature of cartoons. "Animation is built on plagiarism!" declares the show's hot-tempered cartoon-producer-within-a- cartoon, Roger Myers Jr. "You take away our right to steal ideas, where are they going to come from?"

It's hard to imagine here that the flesh-and-blood producers of "The Simpsons" weren't pointing their fingers, squarely but affectionately, at the legendary animators William Hanna and Joseph Barbera, and their enduring ursine mascot, Yogi Bear. From his debut in 1958 on "The Huckleberry Hound Show," Yogi never missed an opportunity to announce that he was smarter than the average bear. He seems to have outwitted a few copyright lawyers along the way: he took his moniker from the celebrated Yankees catcher, of course, and his tilted porkpie hat, his tie, his sonorous voice and his hipster mannerisms from Art Carney's portrayal of Ed Norton on "The Honeymooners." And didn't his anthropomorphic, picnic basket-robbing, park-ranger-outwitting antics suggest the work of another popular cartoon studio, doc?

Despite - or perhaps because of - his many obvious appropriations, Yogi became Hanna-Barbera's first breakout star, earning his own TV series in 1961 ("The Yogi Bear Show," newly released on DVD from Warner Home Video). In the process, he provided his creators with a modus operandi that would yield many more hit characters and shows: by 1962, Hanna-Barbera had turned Sergeant Bilko into a wily alley cat named Top Cat; they had transformed Bert Lahr into a mangy pink lion named Snagglepuss; they had slapped loincloths on "The Honeymooners" and called them "The Flintstones"; they had sent "The Flintstones" into the future and called them "The Jetsons."

In an uncharitable worldview, it's possible to see Hanna-Barbera as black marketers of animation, repackaging properties they didn't create for viewers who wouldn't recognize knockoffs when they saw them. But it's far more reasonable to think of them as innovators, who, at the birth of what we now know as American popular culture, while working in a medium that was meant to appeal simultaneously to children and adults, were just discovering the power of the pop-cultural reference. To his youthful audience, Yogi Bear was a funny-talking woodland creature, but to grown-ups, he was a signifier - a wink and a nod that told them they were allowed to be in on the joke, too.

If we're really going to give credit where it's due, then let's acknowledge Hanna-Barbera for establishing a tradition of cultural homage that has shaped animation for the better. If nostalgic cartoonists had never borrowed from "Fritz the Cat," there would be no "Ren & Stimpy Show"; without the Rankin-Bass and Charlie Brown Christmas specials, there would be no "South Park"; and without "The Flintstones," "The Jetsons" and the countless other cartoons that it unapologetically cribs from, "The Simpsons" would cease to exist. And then there would be no reason for a lovingly crafted fantasy sequence in which that obvious Fred Flintstone stand-in, Homer Simpson, imagines that he is Yogi Bear. "I was having the most wonderful dream," Homer says, waking up from his reverie. "I had a hat, a tie and no pants on."
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/11/ar...on/11itzk.html





Doing the Hollywood Math: What Slump?
Lorne Manly

SCANNING the weekly box-office reports has been a mighty sobering experience in 2005, the litany of gloom seemingly blurring into one recurring headline: Moviegoing Plummets Again. But a closer look at the movie business, in all its global reach and various outlets, tells a different story. "It's still a healthy business," said Stacey Snider, chairwoman of Universal Pictures.

Yes, in an age of hundreds of cable channels, video games and other distractions, the domestic box office so far this year is down about 6 percent from the same time period in 2004, and off from 2003 and 2002 levels. But the money flowing into the coffers of movie studios is greater than ever.

Special-effects-laden blockbusters, from "War of the Worlds" to the "Harry Potter" franchise, show no sign of weakening. The home-video market - namely the sale of movie DVD's - remains strong here and is more robust overseas. The overall global marketplace, in fact, for the first time accounts for more than half of the studios' annual revenue, and growth from emerging markets like Russia are expected to widen that divide.

Executives in Hollywood, however, are not Pollyannaish about the future. "The audience has become much more discriminating about what they go to," said Michael Lynton, chairman and chief executive of Sony Pictures Entertainment, adding that "it's the middle that has gotten hurt."

American moviegoers are increasingly passing up the chance to hoot and holler in the dark with hundreds of strangers if the films are not big events or smaller genre ones. The number of movies in the $100 million to $200 million box-office range has fallen dramatically the last two years. As a result, executives at the major studios are more closely scrutinizing midrange films - those with budgets from $50 million to $75 million.

In addition, domestic DVD sales have slowed from their gangbusters growth rate of a few years ago. But the slack has been taken up by the surprisingly strong performance of television DVD's like "Seinfeld" and straight-to-DVD movies like "Lion King 1½." And most of the money made off of these DVD's goes to the same entertainment conglomerates that own the movie studios.

To Ms. Snider and others in the film industry, the possibilities of the on-demand world - one perfectly customized to a viewer's life - offer Hollywood the next big leap forward. Videocassette recorders did not, as feared, become the Boston Strangler of the movie studios. And while VHS may be near death's door, the rise of the DVD has more than made up for that disappearing revenue. "There's always been something to replace it that's groovier," Ms. Snider said. "Portable, wireless devices are pretty irresistible."

But two significant obstacles confront the studios before they will see substantial incomes from making movies available to watch anytime on a big-screen television or tiny iPod: piracy and pricing. In other words, show business won't be good business if you pick their pocket, or they pick yours.
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/11/movies/11manl.html





Computer Spots A Blockbuster From Box Office Flop

Hollywood producers fretting over this year's box office downturn should take heart.

A scientist in the United States says he has come up with a computer programme that helps predict whether a film will be a hit or a miss at the box office long before it is even made.

"Our goal is to try to find oil in a way," said Professor Ramesh Sharda of the Oklahoma State University on Wednesday.

"We are trying to forecast the success of a movie based on things that are decided before a movie has been made," he told Reuters by telephone.

Sharda, an expert in information systems, has been working on the model for seven years and analysed more than 800 films before publishing a paper which appears in "Expert

Systems With Applications" early next year.

Sharda applied seven criteria to each movie; its rating by censors, competition from other films at the time of release, star value, genre, special effects, whether it is a sequel and the number of theatres it opens in.

Using a neural network to process the results, the films are placed in one of nine categories, ranging from "flop", meaning less than $1 million at the box office, to "blockbuster", meaning more than $200 million.

The results of the study showed that 37 percent of the time the network accurately predicted which category the film fell into, and 75 percent of the time was within one category of the correct answer.

Sharda said he was in discussions with a "major" Hollywood studio about further developing the system to make it more accurate.

He did not name the studio, but added that the network could be used commercially in the notoriously risky world of cinema.

"I think it has real world applications, and that's why we've been trying to get to work with this one studio," he said.

The system correctly predicted, for example, that the Harry Potter series would be a smash hit. The four films released so far have ammassed well over $3 billion worldwide.

Sharda may have picked the ideal moment to publish his findings.

As of mid-November, North American ticket receipts stood at $7.6 billion, around seven percent down on the same stage in 2004, although that was before the release of three big films; "Harry Potter & the Goblet of Fire", "The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe", and "King Kong".
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What Men Want: Neanderthal TV
Warren St. John

THERE was a heart-wrenching moment at the end of last season's final episode of the ABC series "Lost" when a character named Michael tries to find his kidnapped son. Michael lives for his child; like the rest of the characters in "Lost," the two of them are trapped on a tropical island after surviving a plane crash. When word of Michael's desperate mission reaches Sawyer - a booze-hoarding, hard-shelled narcissist who in his past killed an innocent man - his reaction is not what you would call sympathetic. "It's every man for hisself," Sawyer snarls.

Not so long ago Sawyer's callousness would have made him a villain, but on "Lost," he is sympathetic, a man whose penchant for dispensing Darwinian truths over kindnesses drives not only the action but the show's underlying theme, that in the social chaos of the modern world, the only sensible reflex is self-interest.

Perhaps not coincidentally Sawyer is also the character on the show with whom young men most identify, according to research conducted by the upstart male-oriented network Spike TV, which interviewed thousands of young men to determine what that coveted and elusive demographic likes most in its television shows.

Spike found that men responded not only to brave and extremely competent leads but to a menagerie of characters with strikingly antisocial tendencies: Dr. Gregory House, a Vicodin-popping physician on Fox's "House"; Michael Scofield on "Prison Break," who is out to help his brother escape from jail; and Vic Mackey, played by Michael Chiklis on "The Shield," a tough-guy cop who won't hesitate to beat a suspect senseless. Tony Soprano is their patron saint, and like Tony, within the confines of their shows, they are all "good guys."

The code of such characters, said Brent Hoff, 36, a fan of "Lost," is: "Life is hard. Men gotta do what men gotta do, and if some people have to die in the process, so be it."

"We can relate to them," said Mr. Hoff, a writer from San Francisco. "If you watch Sawyer on 'Lost,' who is fundamentally good even if he does bad things, there's less to feel guilty about in yourself."

Gary A. Randall, a producer who helped create "Melrose Place," is developing a show called "Paradise Salvage," about two friends who discover a treasure map, for Spike TV. He said the proliferation of antisocial protagonists came from a concerted effort by networks to channel the frustrations of modern men.

"It's about comprehending from an entertainment point of view that men are living a very complex conundrum today," he said. "We're supposed to be sensitive and evolved and yet still in touch with our Neanderthal, animalistic, macho side." Watching a deeply flawed male character who nevertheless prevails, Mr. Randall argued, makes men feel better about their own flaws and internal conflicts.

"You think, 'It's O.K. to go to a strip club and have a couple of beers with your buddies and still go home to your wife and baby and live with yourself,' " he said.

The most popular male leads of today stand in stark contrast to the unambiguously moral protagonists of the past, good guys like Magnum, Matlock or Barnaby Jones. They are also not simply flawed in the classic sense: men who have the occasional affair or who tip the bottle a little too much. Instead they are unapologetic about killing, stealing, hoarding and beating their way to achieve personal goals that often conflict with the greed, apathy and of course the bureaucracies of the modern world.

"These kinds of characters are so satisfying to male viewers because culture has told them to be powerful and effective and to get things done, and at the same time they're living, operating and working in places that are constantly defying that," said Robert Thompson, the director of the Center for the Study of Popular Television at Syracuse University.

Consequently, whereas the Lone Ranger battled stagecoach robbers and bankers foreclosing on a widow's farm, the enemy of the contemporary male TV hero, Dr. Thompson said, is "the legal, cultural and social infrastructure of the nation itself."

Because of competition from the Web, video games and seemingly countless new cable channels, television producers are obsessed with developing shows that can capture the attention of young male viewers.

To that end Spike TV, which is owned by Viacom and aims at men from 18 to 49, has ordered up a slate of new dramas based on characters whose minds are cauldrons of moral ambiguity. They will join antiheroes on other networks like Vic Mackey, Gregory House, Jack Bauer of "24," and Tommy Gavin, the firefighter played by Denis Leary on "Rescue Me" who sanctions a revenge murder of the driver who ran over and killed his son.

Paul Scheer, a 29-year-old actor from Los Angeles and an avid viewer of "Lost," said that not even committing murder alienates an audience. "You don't have to be defined by one act," he said.

"Three people on that island have killed people in cold blood, and they're quote-unquote good people who you're rooting for every week," Mr. Scheer said. The implication for the viewer, he added, is, "You can say 'I'm messed up and I left my wife, but I'm still a good guy.' "

Peter Liguori, the creator of the FX shows "The Shield" and "Over There" and now the president of Fox Entertainment, said that most strong male protagonists on television appeal to male viewers on an aspirational level. Those aspirations, though, he said, have changed over time.

In the age of "Dragnet," "everything was about aspiring to perfection," Mr. Liguori said. "Today I think we thoroughly recognize our flaws and are honest about them. True heroism is in overcoming those flaws."

Part of the shift to such complex and deeply flawed characters surely has to do with the economics of television itself. Cable channels, with their targeted niche audiences, are no longer obliged to aim for Middle America, and can instead create dramas for edgier audiences.

The financial success of networks like FX and HBO has also opened the door for auteurism that has embroidered scripts with dramatic complexities once reserved for film and literature, where odious protagonists - think of Tom Ripley, the murderous narcissist protagonist in Patricia Highsmith's "The Talented Mr. Ripley" - have long been common.

Still the morally struggling protagonist has been evolving over time, Mr. Ligouri said, pointing to Detective Andy Sipowicz on "NYPD Blue." Sipowicz was an alcoholic who occasionally fell off the wagon, and he often flouted police procedure in the name of tracking down criminals. Like all good protagonists, Sipowicz was also exceedingly good at his job.

Mr. Liguori took the notion of the flawed protagonist to new levels in the creation of Vic Mackey on "The Shield." At the end of the pilot for that show, Mr. Liguori said, Mackey turned to a fellow cop he knew to be crooked and shot him in the face.

"There was a great debate at FX about how the audience would react," he said. "I thought 50 percent would say that's the most horrible thing, and 50 percent would say he was a rat." Mr. Chiklis, who plays Vic Mackey, won an Emmy for his performance in that episode, which was the highest rated at the time in the history of the network.

"The ability to let the audience make that judgment was my 'aha' moment," Mr. Liguori said. "I think that moral ambiguity is highly involving for an audience. Audiences I believe relate to characters they share the same flaws with."

Mr. Liguori added that in a world where people are increasingly transparent about their own flaws - detailing them on blogs, reality TV, on talk shows and in the news media - scripted TV drama had to emphasize characters' weaknesses.

"The I.M.-ing and social Web sites, they're all being built on being as open and honest as possible," he said. "You cannot go from that environment to a TV show where everyone is perfect."

With the success of shows featuring deeply flawed leads, the challenge for networks is to rein in the impulse to create ever more pathological characters. Pancho Mansfield, the head of original programming for Spike TV, said he could see network television going the route of "Scarface."

"With all the competition that's out there and all the channels, people are pushing the extremes to distinguish themselves," Mr. Mansfield said. But for now, he argued, the complexity of characters on serialized TV shows is a kind of antidote to the increasingly superficial characters in Hollywood films, which he said, have come more to resemble the simplistic television dramas of yore.

Dr. Thompson agreed. "On one level you could see the proliferation of these types of characters as an indication of the decline of American civilization," he said. "A more likely interpretation may be that they represent an improvement in the sophistication and complexity of television." If you accept that view, he added, "Then the young male demographic has pretty good taste."
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/11/fa...les/11MEN.html





Would You Like Some Fries With That Download?
Julie Bosman

If the Walt Disney Company has its way, McDonald's Happy Meal toys could be replaced with portable media players that hold Disney movies, music, games or photos, according to a pending patent application. Users could add files to the devices by earning points with food purchases.

The plan could work something like this: A customer enters a restaurant and buys a meal, receiving the portable media player and an electronic code that authorizes a partial download of a movie, video or other media file, which can be downloaded while in the restaurant, according to a United States Patent and Trademark Office application filed by Disney. Then, with each subsequent return, the customer earns more downloadable data, eventually getting an entire movie or game.

Earning a large file, like a movie, might require five trips - a compelling incentive for a customer to return to the restaurant.

"The reward for eating at a restaurant, for example, could be the automatic downloading of a segment of a movie or the like, or a short animated clip or cartoon," according to the patent application. While the application mentions McDonald's as a potential restaurant partner, such a device could apparently be licensed to other restaurants or businesses as well.

The British journal New Scientist, which recently reported on the patent application, said that the portable media players could be used as part of a McDonald's promotion and create marketing opportunities for electronics companies. They could also carry advertisements aimed at children and teenagers, the most likely targets of the promotion, and customers could transfer downloaded files to other media devices, potentially sharing their files with other users. (A Disney spokeswoman declined comment; McDonald's executives could not be reached.)

The patent application follows efforts by McDonald's to enhance wireless capabilities at its restaurants. The company began outfitting its restaurants with wireless Internet connections in 2003, and since then has installed Wi-Fi services in more than 6,200 restaurants worldwide. For now, Wi-Fi is primarily intended for McDonald's customers to surf the Internet and check e-mail messages on laptops. The restaurant charges customers for Wi-Fi usage and trades promotional coupons and prepaid cards for Wi-Fi time.

The portable media players would require "networking systems, such as Wi-Fi or any other suitable wireless Internet access systems," the application said. By continuing to install Wi-Fi capability, McDonald's may be gearing up for the portable media player to be a staple of its promotional lineup.

But McDonald's customers should not plan on the devices appearing anytime soon. Patent applications currently take an average of 30 months for final approval.

"It hasn't even begun to be reviewed," a spokeswoman for the Patent and Trademark Office said.
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/12/te...mcdonalds.html





Toshiba to Delay HD DVD Player Launch
Hiroko Tabuchi

Japanese electronics maker Toshiba Corp. said Tuesday copy protection issues would delay the Japan launch of the first players supporting its HD DVD format, the latest development in the high-stakes battle for the next generation of video discs.

Players will not hit the Japanese market until details of a copy protection system for the players are worked out, Toshiba said in a statement, reversing its earlier intention to roll out the first players in Japan by the end of the year. Toshiba did not give a specific release date.

But the company said it would continue to push for a U.S. launch early next year.

The delay brings the launch of the HD DVD, jointly developed by Toshiba and NEC Corp., closer to the expected debut of its main competitor, the Blu-ray disc, which is backed by Sony Corp.

PlayStation 3, Sony's popular next-generation video game console, is expected in Japan early next year and will read Blu-ray discs.

The two formats are incompatible, raising fears of a repeat of the VHS- versus-Beta battle over the format for videotape recorders in the early 1980s.

The HD DVD is backed by Universal Studios, Warner Bros. and Intel Corp., as well as Microsoft Corp., which hopes its new Xbox 360 video game console will challenge the longtime dominance of Sony's PlayStation.

Blu-ray is backed by Apple Computer Inc., Hewlett-Packard Co. and Dell Inc., along with a variety of other tech companies and studios.
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Media, Tech Companies Team Up On High-Definition TV

Several of the world's biggest media and electronics companies on Wednesday said they would work together on high-definition television and audio standards for sophisticated home-entertainment networks.

The alliance was founded by cable operator Charter Communications, electronics manufacturer Mitsubishi Digital Electronics America Inc., General Electric Co.'s NBC Universal television networks, Korea's Samsung and server computer-maker Sun Microsystems.

They said in a joint press release that they'll consult with industry organizations, such as the Consumer Electronics Association, CableLabs and the Motion Picture Association of America.

The group's initial goals include looking at ways to make it possible to simultaneously watch, pause and record up to five high-definition video channels; developing sophisticated universal remote controls for home audio-video networks; and securely sharing high-definition content between personal computers and portable devices.
http://today.reuters.com/news/newsAr..._0_US-HDTV.xml





Hollywood Urges China Reforms Before Olympics
Brooks Boliek

Hollywood's top lobbyist has urged the Chinese to crack down on movie piracy and open its markets to additional American-made films by the 2008 Olympics.

Speaking on Tuesday at an industry convention in Beijing, Motion Picture Assn. of America chairman and CEO Dan Glickman said the Olympics is a perfect time to prove the nation's commitment to ending copyright piracy and opening its markets, according to an advance copy of the speech provided by the trade body.

"In 2008, China will be at the center of the world stage, hosting the 29th Olympic Games. It will be a terrific moment of pride for the country," he said according to the speech. "And so I would like to plant this challenge: by 2008, to have more legal than illegal DVDs sold in China, to have more American movies in Chinese theaters and to have more Chinese movies in American theaters."

Motion picture piracy in China costs U.S. studios nearly $300 million a year, according to industry estimates. While the Chinese allow as many as 20 U.S. theatrical releases into the country each year, the average number of U.S. films admitted is 14.

Glickman said where the Chinese have a will, they find a way to crack down on copyright piracy. He pointed to news reports that found a scarcity of counterfeit Olympics-logo goods there.

"It is virtually impossible to find counterfeit Olympics goods in China. Why? As one of the Chinese officials said, it is because fakes dilute the value of the logo, the intellectual property upon which the Chinese have invested to finance the games," he said. "The value of that intellectual property is worth protecting for all film producers, everywhere. It's the same value that exists for that independent Chinese filmmaker who was in my office and for all the other filmmakers from around Asia and the world whose collective creative spirit is such a commodity."
http://today.reuters.com/news/newsAr...archived=False





Macedonia's Special Movie Effects
David Reid

These days major film producers use so many effects in their movies that they have to outsource much of the work from places like Eastern Europe and the Balkans. David Reid found out the part Macedonia is playing.

Macedonia is a nice place to shoot a movie, and there is no shortage of companies there whose sights are set on coaxing business out of Hollywood.

They are not, however, so interested in touting the former Yugoslav republic as a filming location.

Instead, the scenery they are looking to sell comes directly out of a computer.

So seamless are digitally generated effects these days that they are difficult for film producers to resist.

The pixel is replacing the panorama, as faking it becomes cheaper and easier than the real thing.

The increased demand means that media companies in developing countries like Macedonia are getting the chance to have a hand in Hollywood blockbusters.

Film producers in the US are looking to outsource the more labour-intensive animation projects.

This is highly skilled and intricate work, and involves painting in the backgrounds of scenes that have already been shot.

One scene from The Aviator was filmed in a giant studio, and Macedonia's FX3X was given the job of converting the green backdrop into the harbour where Howard Hughes' Spruce Goose performed its maiden, and only, flight.

Miso Ristov, visual FX supervisor at FX3X, told Click Online: "Basically everything was shot handheld or stuck on some cranes. First we had to track the footage and then blend with the background and make a seamless blend.

"You have to do it manually, frame by frame, so we spent two and a half months for probably a couple of minutes of footage.

"We worked 15 hours a day, maybe. No sleep, no seeing your girlfriend, no stuff like that."

Strength in numbers

Buoyed by some initial successes, a number of companies are hoping to club together to tout Macedonia as a new media hub.

In bringing all the workshops under one roof they are aiming for strength in numbers and economies of scale.

"The point is to out-grow the capability of any individual company", said FX3X's Kristijan Danilovski.

"Jointly they will be able to share the costs and invest in joint infrastructure that would help all of them create one virtual large company, a big player in the market."

The more hands you have on deck the better, and in a place like Macedonia, if you want a large pool of digital media workers you have to go straight back to the source.

FX3X used a US government-funded schools computer network to teach some 400 students how to use animation software.

But not all the country's talent is training at home. One rising star, Ana Nikolovska, is flying to the US on an animation scholarship.

Her success abroad will no doubt fuel the enthusiasm at home for animation and special effects.

She says: "There is a growing interest in 3D animation in Macedonia and it is becoming very popular, especially these last two years.

"I think lately everyone wants to be in the entertainment industry. In the past people wanted to be actors, now they want to be animators."

Hollywood is fond of rags to riches stories, and this former Yugoslav republic may well fit the script.

Many here hope that the country's enthusiasm for new media could make it a future player in the digital dream factory.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programme...ne/4513744.stm





The Baltic Life: Hot Technology for Chilly Streets
Mark Landler

Visiting the offices of Skype feels like stumbling on to a secret laboratory in a James Bond movie, where mad scientists are hatching plots for world domination.

The two-year-old company, which offers free calls over the Internet, is hidden at the end of an unmarked corridor in a grim Soviet-era academic building on the outskirts of this Baltic port city. By 5 p.m. at this time of year, it is long past sunset, and a raw wind has emptied the streets.

Inside Skype, however, things are crackling - as they are everywhere in Estonia's technology industry. The company has become a hot calling card for Estonia, a northern outpost that joined the European Union only last year but has turned itself into a sort of Silicon Valley on the Baltic Sea.

"We are recognized as the most dynamic country in Europe" in information technology, said Linnar Viik, a computer science professor who has nurtured start-ups and is regarded as something of a guru by Estonia's entrepreneurs. "The question is, How do we sustain that dynamism?"

Foreign investors are swooping into Tallinn's tiny airport in search of the next Skype (rhymes with pipe). The company most often mentioned, Playtech, designs software for online gambling services. It is contemplating an initial public offering that bankers say could raise up to $1 billion.

Indeed, there is an outlaw mystique to some of Estonia's ventures, drawn here to Europe's eastern frontier. Whether it is online gambling, Internet voice calls or music file-sharing - Skype's founders are also behind the most popular music service, Kazaa - Estonian entrepreneurs are testing the limits of business and law.

And by tapping its scientific legacy from Soviet times and making the best of its vest-pocket size, Estonia is developing an efficient technology industry that generates ingenious products - often dreamed up by a few friends - able to mutate via the Internet into major businesses.

These entrepreneurs grow out of an energetic, youthful society, which has embraced technology as the fastest way to catch up with the West. Eight of 10 Estonians carry cellphones, and even gas stations in Tallinn are equipped with Wi-Fi connections, allowing motorists to visit the Internet after they fill up.

Such ubiquitous connectivity makes Tallinn's location midway between Stockholm and St. Petersburg seem less remote.

Even the short icebound days play a part, people here say, because they shackle software developers to the warm glow of their computer screens. For the 150 people who work at Skype, Estonia is clearly where the action is.

"What Skype has shown the world is that you can take a great idea, with few resources, and conquer the world," said Sten Tamkivi, the 27-year-old head of software development.

Whether Skype poses a mortal threat to telephone companies, as some enthusiasts suggest, is an open question. But it has become an undisputed technology star - a status cemented in September when eBay, the Internet auction giant, bought the company in a deal worth $2.5 billion.

More than 70 million people have downloaded Skype's free software from the Internet, Mr. Tamkivi said, and it is adding registered users at a rate of 190,000 a day. On a recent evening, 3.7 million people were logged on to the service, nearly three times the population of this country.

Professor Viik and others relish the attention that Skype has brought Estonia. But he says his country cannot build a long-lasting technology industry on a single hit or even a few hits: Kazaa was hugely popular before it ran into a blizzard of copyright-infringement lawsuits.

Silicon Valley, Mr. Viik noted, is composed of clusters of companies that feed off one another. Skype is a closed company, with proprietary software and owners who are so secretive about their plans that for a time local journalists did not know where its offices were.

The company's two founders are not even Estonian. Niklas Zennstrom is a Swede, and Janus Friis is a Dane. Skype's legal headquarters are in Luxembourg; its sales and marketing office is in London. Although Estonian developers wrote Skype's basic code, only a fraction of the eBay bonanza went into Estonian pockets.

Part of the problem for Estonia's entrepreneurs is the nation's inexperience in capital markets. It regained its independence only in 1991, after the collapse of the Soviet Union. Estonia's entrepreneurs do not yet have the Rolodexes of their Scandinavian counterparts. Recently, Tallinn got its first high-tech venture capital firm.

Then, too, there is its small size. Estonia's entire software development industry employs roughly 2,500 people, less than the research and development staff at a major American technology company.

"Let's be frank," said Priit Alamae, the 27-year-old founder of Webmedia, another leading software design firm. "Estonia has 1.3 million people; we have 200 I.T. graduates a year; we do not have the resources to develop our own Microsoft."

The competition for talented recruits is driving up salaries more than 20 percent a year, he said. While Estonia remains cheaper than neighbors like Finland or Sweden, the gap is narrowing rapidly.

In some ways, however, Estonia's labor shortage has contributed to its success. Companies here are extraordinarily efficient. And they tend to focus on niche products or on business models - like Skype's or Kazaa's - that can expand from a small base by word of mouth.

Skype and Kazaa are powered by so-called peer-to-peer technology, which allows computers to share files or other information on a network without the need for a centralized server to route the data. In Kazaa's case, the files being swapped are songs. In Skype's case, they are voices.

"There is no new technology in Skype," Mr. Viik said. "It is an example of how you put together bits and pieces of technology in a clever way. Estonians are very good at putting together bits and pieces."

Necessity is the mother of invention, but what is it about Estonians that makes them the Baltic's answer to Bill Gates?

"People here are kind of introverted and into technology," said Jaan Tallinn, a tousled-haired man who looks younger than his 33 years and wrote the software code that is the basis of Kazaa and Skype. "We have long, cold winters when there isn't much to do, so it makes sense."

Other people cite history: Estonia's long subjugation by the Soviet Union, and the euphoria that came with freedom.

"It's as if a young country suddenly came into independence with great hopes but few material resources," said Steve Jurvetson, a venture capitalist in Silicon Valley. Mr. Jurvetson, whose family has Estonian roots, has invested in a few start-ups here, most notably Skype.

Estonia owes one thing to its former oppressor. In the 1950's, the Soviets chose the Baltic states as the site for several scientific institutes. Estonia wound up with the Institute of Cybernetics - basically a computer sciences center - that now houses Skype and many other firms.

That scientific legacy remains embedded in society, people say. It is most visible in Estonia's receptiveness to new technology. Internet penetration is estimated by the telecommunications industry to be 49 percent of the population.

Estonians use mobile phones to pay for parking, among other things. Most conduct their banking online, and more than 70 percent file their taxes on the Internet. The state issues a digital identification card, which allows citizens to vote from their laptops.

In a rare disappointment, less than 2 percent of the electorate, or 10,000 people, voted electronically during recent local elections. One hurdle was that voters had to buy a card reader to authenticate their ID's. The government hopes for better numbers for the next election, in March 2007.

Some people contend that Estonia's success is a function of hard work and happy circumstance rather than raw talent.

"I can't say that Estonians are the greatest software programmers," said Allan Martinson, who last June started the first high-tech venture capital fund to be based here. "You can find more talent in Russia."

While entrepreneurs complain about the shortage of skilled workers, more and more young foreigners are ready to trek to this northernmost Baltic nation for a job. Skype employs people from 30 countries; in the halls, one hears plenty of English, and even some Spanish.

Oliver Wihler, 38, a Swiss software developer, moved to Tallinn from London in 1999, drawn by the heady professional atmosphere and by Estonia's parks and forests. Now he and a business partner, Sander Magi, 28, run a company called Aqris, which reformats Java software.

"The commute in London was a drag, and I missed not having any green space," Mr. Wihler said.

Estonia offers plenty of that. But Skype is relying on more than a pleasant lifestyle; it is taking a more traditional approach in its recruitment by offering stock options in eBay. But Mr. Tallinn says that is only part of the company's appeal.

"The other draw," he said, "is that if you want to work for a company that influences the lives of tens of millions of people, and you want to do it in Tallinn, there really isn't any other choice."
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/13/te...rtner=homepage





Energy-Free Communications

According to the laws of physics, you have to expend energy to communicate. It turns out, though, that you don't have to send that energy to the other party. This is useful because communications that happen without sending energy to another party are theoretically impervious to eavesdroppers.

A study by a Texas A&M University researcher shows that two parties can communicate without putting energy into the communications channel by modulating and monitoring the channel's natural noise.

In ordinary communications, signals are transmitted using light or electricity. In contrast, the researchers' scheme uses ever present temperature fluctuations or zero-point energy. Zero-point energy consists of virtual particles like photons that pop in and out of existence in a vacuum. Because eavesdropping on such a signal either alters the characteristics of the noise in the channel or throws off the timing of signals, it is always possible to detect any eavesdroppers.

The method could eventually be used to provide potentially perfectly secure communications.
http://www.trnmag.com/Roundup/2005/T...communications





Quantum Cryptography

Quantum cryptography, which taps properties of photons to represent information, can, in theory, provide perfectly secure communications.

Alice, for instance, can send Bob perfectly secure messages using quantum key distribution because the method allows them to tell for sure whether the encryption keys they are using to lock and unlock messages have been copied.

Quantum key distribution systems use single photons to represent the binary numbers, or bits, that make up encryption keys. The use of single photons is what guarantees security. If there were two or more photons per bit, eavesdropper Eve could siphon off extra photons to make a copy of a key without being detected.

The systems use polarized photons to represent bits. Photons have both electric and magnetic fields. The electric field of ordinary photons vibrates in all directions perpendicular to the photon’s course. Polarized photons have electric fields that vibrate in only one of four directions: vertical, horizontal and the two diagonals.

Two pairs of polarizations, vertical and horizontal, and the two diagonals, can each be used to represent the 1s and 0s of digital information. For example, vertical could represent 1 and horizontal could represent 0.

To send an encryption key to Bob, Alice transmits a string of randomly polarized photons and records how each photon was polarized. Bob measures the photons, but because of a quirk of quantum physics-the Heisenberg uncertainty principle-he can only look for one of the two pairs of states in each photon. Bob has to choose which type of polarization to look for, and he only gets one look because the act of measuring the photon destroys it.

Bob randomly chooses whether to look for vertical and horizontal or the diagonal orientations. He tells Alice, over a regular unsecure communications channel, how he measured the photons and she tells him which ones he chose correctly.

Alice and Bob use this common string of photon polarizations as a binary encryption key. Alice uses the key to encrypt a message, then sends the encrypted message to Bob over an open channel. Bob then uses the bit string to decrypt the message. Because the bit string was generated at random, there is no mathematical basis for decoding the message without knowing the key. And by using a new encryption key for every message, Alice and Bob can thwart code breakers who deduce keys by looking for common patterns across messages.

The quirky nature of photons makes it impossible for an eavesdropper to intercept single photons and successfully replace them. This is because, like Bob, Eve has to guess which way to measure the photons. If she chooses to measure a photon to see if it is a 1 or 0 based on the vertical and horizontal orientations but Alice encoded the bit in the diagonal orientations, Eve will get a false reading.

This means Eve could correctly measure about half of the photons she intercepts, and so half of the substitutes she sends to Bob would be polarized randomly. By chance, half of the randomly polarized photons would be correct, making about 25 percent of the substitute bits wrong.

Alice and Bob check the error rate by comparing a few of the bits Bob chose correctly. If the error rate is higher than even one percent, they can decide that the chance that Eve has intercepted their key is too high, and throw it out and transmit another.
http://www.trnmag.com/Stories/2005/1...hy_111405.html





Among Makers of Memory Chips for Gadgets, Fierce Scrum Takes Shape
Martin Fackler

Nestled in a valley in central Japan, surrounded by forested hills and terraced rice paddies, is one of the world's most sophisticated - and secretive - semiconductor plants.

Inside the windowless plant, built by the Japanese electronics maker Toshiba, tiny cranelike robots shuffle along automated production lines, moving stacks of silicon wafers the size of dinner plates. Masked technicians watch as rows of tall machines grind the wafers, etch circuits on their surfaces and cut them into tiny rectangular computer chips.

Inside, visitors are allowed to peek through windows at only a small part of the factory floor. Toshiba is anxious to guard the secrets beyond because it needs them to wage one of the most ferocious battles in today's electronics industry, for control of the fast-growing market for the advanced memory chips at the heart of portable music devices like the Apple iPod Nano.

The fight pits Toshiba and its partner, SanDisk of Sunnyvale, Calif., a maker of memory cards, against Samsung Electronics of South Korea. Both camps are spending billions to build new factory lines, hire engineers and develop more powerful chips in a bid to gain supremacy.

The chips, called NAND flash memory chips, differ from earlier computer memory chips in that data on them can be easily erased and replaced and they can store data even after the power is turned off. That makes them like miniature hard-disk drives, only much more durable because they lack moving parts. The newest flash memory chips are the size of a fingernail and can store two gigabytes, the equivalent of every word and image printed in nine years of a newspaper.

While Toshiba invented the chips more than a decade ago, Samsung has seized the lead with bigger production volumes and lower prices. In the three months that ended in September, Samsung had a market share of 50.2 percent of the $2.97 billion in total global NAND sales, according to iSuppli, a market research firm based in El Segundo, Calif. Toshiba's share was 22.8 percent. SanDisk is not included in iSuppli's figures because it does not sell its chips, but instead uses them all in its own memory products.

But Toshiba is fighting back. It plans, with SanDisk, to spend some $2.5 billion to expand the Yokkaichi plant, which is owned by Toshiba but is used by both companies to make the NAND chips. The new production lines will allow the plant to produce 48,750 wafers a month by March 2007, five times the current output. Each wafer yields hundreds of chips, though Toshiba will not say exactly how many.

And competition is only getting more intense, as more than a half-dozen other chip makers try to muscle in. Hynix Semiconductor of South Korea has rapidly gained a 13.2 percent market share since starting production of NAND chips last year, according to iSuppli. Intel, the world's largest chip maker, said last month that it would team up with another American chip manufacturer, Micron Technology, and that each would spend $2.6 billion over the next three years to make NAND chips. Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corporation of Shanghai, China's largest chip maker, also says it plans to produce the chips next year.

"This is one of the hottest markets in the industry," said Joseph Unsworth, an analyst for Gartner, a market research company based in Stamford, Conn.

The fight has also moved into the courts, where Toshiba and SanDisk are trying to repel newcomers by defending their patents on many of NAND's basic technologies. On Wednesday, SanDisk filed the latest in a series of lawsuits against Swiss-based STMicroelectronics, which started making NAND chips last year. In September, Toshiba filed a complaint with the United States International Trade Commission alleging that Hynix had infringed on three NAND patents.

At stake is one of the fastest-selling electronics devices in recent years, though one that consumers may not have heard of because it sits inside other products.

The chips allow people to store hundreds of songs on pocket-size portable music players, like the Nano or the U10 from iRiver. Flash memory chips also make possible everything from digital cameras to flash drives and memory cards.

Meanwhile, the chips keep getting more powerful, even as manufacturers compete to shrink circuits etched on the silicon's surface, allowing chips to hold even more data. Chang-Gyu Hwang, chief executive of Samsung's chip business, caused some eyebrows to rise in skepticism in September when he predicted that the chips would soon hold enough data to make hard-disk drives obsolete, paving the way for lighter, thinner and tougher laptop computers.

NAND chips are "the backbone of the mobile electronics era," Mr. Hwang said.

Demand for NAND chips has exploded in recent years. Global sales rose to $10.7 billion this year, from $1.5 billion in 2000, according to Gartner, which forecasts that sales will almost double again in three years, to $18 billion.

Demand is so hot, in fact, that manufacturers say they cannot keep up. Toshiba says it has had to turn down new customers and estimates that manufacturers can meet only about 70 to 80 percent of global demand. Big buyers like Apple and its rival Sony, maker of the Walkman, are signing multiyear deals with chip makers to ensure supply. Shrinking supplies of chips have forced some smaller music-device makers in China to stop production, analysts say.

But scarcity has not driven up prices, as might be expected when demand surpasses supply. That is because companies have continued to slash prices in a cutthroat race for market share, say analysts. This year alone, critical prices will probably drop 56 percent, according to Gartner.

One of the most aggressive price-cutters has been Samsung, which this year beat Toshiba to become the main supplier of memory chips for the Apple Nano. While details of the deal are not public, Samsung's price was so low that the Fair Trade Commission in South Korea said last month it was investigating to see if Samsung, the second-largest chip maker after Intel, had used its size to unfairly squelch competition. Samsung says it has not broken any laws.

Samsung enjoys a commanding lead despite the fact that it still pays royalty fees to Toshiba for licensing NAND technology 10 years ago. Asked if it regretted selling the technology to Samsung, Toshiba said a second supplier was necessary at the time to kick-start the market for an unknown and untested product.

"The one that bought the technology is now the leader," admits Shozo Saito, a vice president at Toshiba who runs the memory chip division. "No matter how much we invest, it'll be hard to catch up."

To cement its advantage, Samsung said in September that it planned to spend $33 billion over the next seven years to expand production at its sprawling Hwaseong computer chip plant, though it will not say how much of that will be devoted to NAND chips. Samsung also said it would hire 5,000 more engineers to increase research and development of new chips. Not to be outdone, Toshiba said it planned to begin making a similar chip by the same time.

At Toshiba's Yokkaichi plant, there is a palpable determination to catch up with the larger Korean rival. Engineers work in shifts around the clock to speed up development and production of new chips.

Noriyoshi Tozawa, the plant's manager, said he kept workers on their toes with little reminders of darker times. One is an elevator that has been kept out of use since 2001; a sign on the doors says that it was turned off after a crash in computer chip prices almost forced the closure of the plant, which used to produce DRAM, another type of memory chip.

"You have to always be at the leading edge to stay alive in this industry," Mr. Tozawa. "We know what it's like to lose."
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/12/te...y/12flash.html





Microsoft, MCI Plan PC-To-Phone Service[
Elizabeth M. Gillespie

Microsoft Corp. and MCI Inc. said Monday they'll soon offer a service that lets customers place calls from their personal computers to regular phones.

But the service will permit only outbound calls at first, even as rivals Yahoo Inc. and America Online Inc. allow instant messaging users to receive calls from conventional phones as well as to call out.

Microsoft, the world's largest software maker, and MCI, the telecommunications provider being acquired by Verizon Communications Inc., said they will begin a test run of the service in the United States this week. Broader availability is set for the first half of next year.

The service will use technology from Teleo Inc., a small startup Microsoft acquired in August. Teleo's Internet telephony software lets people make voice calls by clicking on phone numbers appearing on a Web pages.

It's the latest offering to use Voice over Internet Protocol, or VoIP, technology. Calls are broken into data packets that get routed over the Internet, an approach that is cheaper and more efficient than the traditional circuit-switched phone system.

Last week, Yahoo announced it would add computer-to-phone calling capabilities to its instant- messaging service, after a similar retooling of the rival AOL Instant Messenger service from Time Warner Inc. earlier this fall.

Microsoft and MCI's new service, which the companies have dubbed "MCI Web Calling for Windows Live Call," will allow users of MSN Messenger, Microsoft's instant messaging service, to call land lines or cell phones. Microsoft said it was working to add additional capabilities, including inbound calls.

Rates will start at 2.3 cents a minute during the test period. Pricing for the final version will be set when the service launches next year.

Customers will sign up for the computer-to-phone calling service through its new Windows Live Messenger software, which will eventually replace MSN Messenger, and buy prepaid calling time from MCI in $5, $10 and $25 blocks. MCI will handle account management, customer service and billing.

The companies did not disclose the value of what they called a "multi-year agreement," or specify how many years the deal will last.

The latest versions of MSN Messenger and other instant messaging programs already let people talk to each other from computer to computer.

There are also low-cost Internet phone providers like Skype Technologies SA, acquired by Internet auction house eBay Inc. in October, which give away software that lets people talk for free over the Internet using computers and microphones.
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories...CTION=BUSINESS





Study: Online Music Sharing Can Spur Sales
Joan Anderman

The record industry has long considered online file sharing a serious threat to its livelihood. But a new study scheduled to be released today suggests that consumer-to-consumer music recommendations -- a growing feature of online music stores and websites -- will benefit the industry, artists, and fans alike.

The report, released by the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard Law School and research firm Gartner Inc., surveyed 475 so- called early adopters, or computer users who are among the first wave of frequent music downloaders. The findings suggest that the opportunity to give and receive recommendations could become an important force in the online music business.

Nearly one quarter of frequent online music users say that the ability to share music with others is a key factor when selecting an online music service. And a third were interested in technology that helps them discover and recommend music, such as tools that allow Internet users to publish and rank lists of their favorite songs. Perhaps most important for the recording industry, a tenth of those surveyed said they frequently make music purchases based on others' recommendations.

''The industry has fought all forms of sharing for eight years," says Berkman Center fellow and study coauthor Derek Slater, ''and the fight has largely been a miserable failure. We argue that [they need to] embrace . . . what's already happening. Word of mouth has always been the most powerful marketing tool."

For example, Slater notes that more than 500,000 playlists have been published at MusicStrands (www.musicstrands.com) since the site opened early this year. Visitors can hear 30-second clips of each track on a playlist and then click ''Get It" to find locations where the song can be purchased. The iTunes music store's iMix feature allows people to publish playlists of songs available in the store's catalog (www.apple.com/ itunes/playlists/). Since September, more than 1.3 million users have ranked the site's 320,000 posted playlists.

It's no surprise peer-to-peer programming is taking off. While traditional music spaces, such as neighborhood record stores, offer a logically laid out shopping experience, Internet music sites can be more difficult to navigate. With thousands of artists, millions of songs, and more than 300 legal online music sites, the need for tools to refine searches is growing.

Slater and his collaborator, Gartner research director Michael McGuire, predict that by 2010, 25 percent of online music store purchases will be driven by such consumer-to-consumer recommendations. But to encourage and sustain legal downloading, the authors say, the industry must relax its licensing and use rules to allow consumers to easily publish playlists and include music in podcasts or on blogs.

Considering the bad rap online sharing has among record companies and artists, this will require industry insiders to tweak their perspective.

''Rights holders and policy makers have been distracted by illegal downloading, but sharing isn't equivalent to stealing," says McGuire. ''As labels look at this, some of the people who should be at the forefront of discussions are the A & R [artists and repertoire] and marketing and promotions people. This is an easy way to get attention for a new act or a back catalog, too."

That's not news to Courtney Holt, head of new media and strategic marketing at major label Interscope Records, part of the Universal Music Group.

''I have a Rolodex of hundreds and hundreds of narrow-casting, blogging, and niche-community websites that target the audience I'm trying to reach," says Holt. ''I make sure the core people get information early. It's in its infancy, but peer-to-peer music discovery is going to be invaluable. People used to find out about music from friends at school or in their neighborhood. In an online space, that friend potential increases exponentially. Some of those people are going to turn into the influential music programmers of tomorrow."

The Gartner/Berman study also emphasizes the importance of online music services enhancing their playlist-publishing capabilities and strengthening links to fan sites.

''There will always be people trying to get [music] for free," says McGuire. ''But if you continue to enhance the legitimate services so that they're more compelling and less complicated, if it's frictionless, you make it much more attractive."
http://www.boston.com/ae/music/artic...an_spur_sales/





Wilco's Jeff Tweedy Says Shutting Down File-Sharing Like Closing A Library
AP

Shutting down file-sharing is like closing a library.

That's according to Wilco frontman Jeff Tweedy, who's on a solo acoustic tour after the band's recent release of the live double CD Kicking Television. After a recent performance, Tweedy answered the following questions about songwriting, performing live and when it's good to steal music.

AP: At what point did you realize that music was something you could create?

Tweedy: I don't really remember when music became the most important thing in my life. My mother claims that I would stand and point at the stereo when I first learned how to walk, before I learned how to talk.

AP: What was your first instrument?

Tweedy: Guitar.

AP: The first song you ever wrote?

Tweedy: I wrote a song with a guy that lived in my home town for his band when I was 15, 16 called Your Little World, and they made a single out of it, but it was a local release.

AP: Do you remember what you were thinking when you wrote it?

Tweedy: It was just a pop song about a girl.

AP: Do you listen to the radio or contemporary music? Specifically, what do you like or hate about it?

Tweedy: Honestly, I don't listen to the radio very much.

AP: What's the first thing you do after you've written a song?

Tweedy: I tend to have a lot of things working at once. Like works in progress. But if I get the main idea of a song together I usually play it for my wife, or my kids, and see how they react to it. Eventually, I play it for my bandmates to see how they react to it. And if things keep going with some sense of encouragement, we record it and finish it.

AP: During last night's show, the crowd was calling out songs they wanted you to play. How much have those requests influenced your set list over the years?

Tweedy: I don't really have a set when I do a solo performance. I put a list on stage that (contains) way more songs than I will ever be able to play in one night. I just use it if I can't think of a song. Mostly I just go with what feels right to play next.

AP: After being dropped by Reprise Records in 2001, Wilco released Yankee Hotel Foxtrot on the web for free. Was that simply to get your music out there, or because you were disenchanted by the corporate process?

Tweedy: We had a tour booked, and we wanted to go out and play our songs that we had been rehearsing and were most excited about, which was our new record. And so we could have done (the tour) without people knowing those songs, but we thought that it would be more fun if people had a heads-up to what we might be playing. And also I think the real sense that we had in the band at that point was we never made any money from selling a record. We had never recouped on any of our records. We had never gotten a royalty check. We had always been able to support ourselves by working hard and playing a lot of shows on the road, and that was a lot more important to us than having people pay us for our record. At that point in time, it was a very real decision.

AP: You've said that you don't see music file sharing as a threat, mainly because of quality issues?

Tweedy: That's just part of it. I don't think that the quality is the same. But I don't see it as a threat because I don't feel that it's a threat to have people more interested in music. I think what's happening with file sharing is that you have a lot more people hearing a lot more music, and I think more than anything else it has engendered an enthusiasm for music. It's a no-brainer that it should be embraced, that's kind the whole point of making music, to be heard.

The only thing that stands in the way of (that) making sense to most people is greed. . . . File sharing sites don't just have new material, they have archival material, they have spoken word, they have tons of material that I never had access to growing up. At their fingertips, people have all this amazing stuff, and I'd like to see what's going to come out of that in the future. If you shut that down, it's like closing a library.

AP: So the record industry's approach is driven by fear?

Tweedy: Do you remember home taping as killing music? It's the same thing. The sky is falling. Ultimately, I think it's an excuse for incompetence.

AP: Maybe the best argument is the Grateful Dead, who let fans tape their shows?

Tweedy: That's the difference. If people aren't willing to go out and play music live, and use that as a part of how they define themselves as a band, then it's definitely going to hurt you. You can't just sit in your home studio and crank out records and get rich. Because people are going to be sharing (the music). But you foster a relationship with an audience, and nurture some good will by allowing taping. Most importantly, like the Grateful Dead, whatever you think of their music, they had it right, in my opinion philosophically, that this music that you're making requires a listener.

AP: One last question. When will Wilco tour?

Tweedy: Not until next year. That's kinda it for a while.

http://www3.cjad.com/content/cp_arti...s/e120919A.htm
















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- js.

















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