Peer-To-Peer News - The Week In Review - March 17th, '12 - P2P-Zone

JackSpratts · 14-03-12, 07:12 AM

Since 2002

"Guess what--we found a large number of Mega accounts from U.S. government officials, including the Department of Justice and the U.S. Senate." – Kim DotCom

March 17th, 2012

PirateBox Takes File-Sharing Off The Radar and Offline, For Next To Nothing
enigmax

When confronted with a doomsday scenario where mainstream online file-sharing becomes a thing of the past, it’s not uncommon for people to refer to days gone by, when files were swapped freely offline using discs and other mediums. Now, an interesting and compact system can deliver the [g]olden days of data swapping with a modern twist, by turning any open space into a wireless and anonymous file-sharing system at a rock-bottom price.

With the advent of the personal computer and with it the ability to endlessly copy data, the human desire to share has skyrocketed. Shifting data from A to B, wherever those points may be on a global scale, is now something easily achieved by billions across the world.

While the immense capabilities of the Internet has made sending and receiving data child’s play, there are others who find the transfer of bits and bytes across much shorter distances just as fascinating.

In 2009 we reported on the Kiosk of Piracy, an offline copy of The Pirate Bay accessible via local WiFi. Although a neat little project, the Kiosk was in one specific location in Germany, meaning anyone out of range would not be able to access it. But now a cool little tool means that anyone, anywhere, can offer a similar file-sharing service for just a few dollars.

Inspired by the local transmitting power of traditional pirate radio, NYU art professor David Darts created the PirateBox, a WiFi hotspot and server providing easy and anonymous access to the files held within.

In a previous incarnation the PirateBox – which utilized a full-size wireless router and a USB stick for storage – was housed in a fairly cumbersome metal lunchbox.

The whole thing cost around $100 to build, a not unreasonable price considering the features, but a new breakthrough update (thanks Numerama) means that not only is its physical footprint massively reduced, but also its cost. Depending on the amount of storage space required for files, for less than $50 anyone can now run a PirateBox wireless file-sharing system.

The huge price cut has been made possible by using new hardware, specifically the TP-LINK TL-MR3020 3G Wireless N Router, available from Newegg at just $39.99. Once obtained, all people have to do is follow the PirateBox installation instructions here, insert a USB stick full of files and power on. As can be seen below, it looks rather good.

Users wirelessly accessing the device are presented with a web interface which allows them not only to download files but upload them too. No logs or other identifying information is stored in the device.

Although great for anyone to share files within its range, considering the pressure currently being applied to university students by record labels and their anti-piracy partners, the chances of music-stuffed PirateBoxes popping up on campuses all around the world increases every day.

And considering that The Pirate Bay can now fit on the smallest of USB sticks, every PirateBox could also contain a copy of the world’s most famous torrent site.
https://torrentfreak.com/piratebox-t...othing-120311/

Transfer Files Inside Facebook, Thanks to Pipe
David Meyer

File transfer is coming to Facebook early next week in the form of a new app called Pipe.

The app is set to go into beta on Monday after an official unveiling at the London Web Summit.

Yes, it’s already possible to transfer files on Facebook as message attachments, but that method doesn’t work for large slabs of data and, frankly, most people don’t realise it’s there. Pipe uses some rather clever wrangling of Adobe technology to let users of the social network send each other files of up to 1GB in size, using not much more than drag-and-drop.

The people behind Pipe have big plans for their tool, but those ambitions are contingent on Facebook being a successful first platform.

“We’re starting on Facebook because it gives us viral reach,” CEO Simon Hossell told me. When the user wants to send a file to a friend, the friend gets a Facebook chat message with a link to the app and an explainer video; they install the app to get the file… and so it spreads.

A native iOS version of Pipe is waiting in the wings, currently in alpha stage, and the plan is to port that over to Android soon after.

What is it for? Hossell recoils at the mention of the word “file-sharing” for two reasons. He reckons the term has negative connotations of copyright infringement, an exercise which people are unlikely to carry out when it’s attached to their personal Facebook profiles. But file-sharing also implies one-to-many transmission, and Pipe is purely one-to-one, peer-to-peer.

None of the data sent in the file transfer goes through Facebook’s servers, or Pipe’s servers for that matter. The app uses Adobe’s Real Time Media Protocol Flow (RTMFP) communication protocol, which was designed to let Flash or AIR apps talk to each other, to load the file into the recipient’s cache – the emptier the cache, the bigger the file that can be transferred.

RTMFP isn’t technically supposed to be used for file transfer, according to Adobe’s own documentation, but that’s what Pipe’s using it for anyway.

Pipe team: Marco Rydmann, Philip Eggersglüss, Simon Hossell (L-R)Pipe’s Berlin-based team team has a fair amount of pedigree. Hossell was for many years European sales director for Gracenote, the service that catalogues ripped files for iTunes and others.

And product chief Marco Rydmann and operating head Philip Eggersglüss were the guys behind Songbeat, an online music search-and-download business that achieved some success before attracting the fatal attention of Warner. That piece of tech ended up in the music player of Simfy, the German Spotify rival.

Although Facebook is apparently just the staging point for Pipe’s dreams, it’s worth noting that at the end of February, the social network itself bought a San Francisco-based startup called Caffeinated Mind, which dealt in — you guessed it — in-browser file transfer.

“We’ll be developing internal tools to improve the inner workings of the company and product, applying our technical and product expertise to their rapidly growing service,” the Caffeinated Mind team said at the time, leaving it less than clear as to whether the acquisition was a talent or tech grab.

So Pipe had better move fast and be ready to jump to other platforms if and when Facebook makes its own large-file-transfer play.
http://gigaom.com/2012/03/16/transfe...hanks-to-pipe/

BitTorrent & Magnets: How Do They Work?
Tim Brookes

As we recently reported, The Pirate Bay has switched from using .torrent file downloads to magnet links with no opt-out policy. The tracker has offered magnet downloads for a good while now, but this is the first time we’ve seen such a large public tracker use embedded links exclusively.

So what does it mean for the army of BitTorrent junkies out there? Not an awful lot, it turns out. Magnets don’t operate in precisely the same way as standard .torrent files but it won’t take long for you to get your head around the new standard.

Magnets Explained

Magnets are not a particularly recent addition to the arsenal of filesharing technologies out there. Those of you who remember Freenet and eDonkey 2000 will recall similar methods being used as long ago as 2002. While the standard is still evolving, magnets use largely the same technology that these old P2P networks relied on.

Unlike .torrent files, magnets can be embedded directly into a webpage as nothing more than a link. This link is made up of several parts and prefixed with the magnet: identifier. These links comprise of several identifiers (like the “exact topic” (xt) ?xt=urn:btih:<hash> prefixing the BitTorrent info hash), a hash value of the torrent file and sometimes other information like trackers (tr) and file name data (dn). The parts that make up a magnet link do not need to be presented in any particular order.

These links contain all necessary information to begin downloading files from other peers directly, either using tracker information stored in the link or distributed hash tables (DHT) and peer exchange (PEX).

DHT & PEX

These two aren’t particularly new either, and you’ve probably been using both for years without realising it. DHT was first demoed in 2005 and works by searching for peers who are downloading the same file without contacting any trackers. This essentially creates a “trackerless torrent” and is something TPB have been pushing for a while now.

If you click a magnet link that does not specify a tracker (tr) the first peer will be found using DHT. Once you’ve got a peer, peer exchange kicks in too.

PEX is a similar concept to DHT except there is no way of introducing a new peer to the swarm (users sharing a particular torrent) without first communicating via tracker or DHT. The method used in PEX involves your client asking all peers that you are connected to for the peers that they are connected to. PEX is no good from a cold start, but often provides better results than querying a tracker or swarm via DHT.

How Does This Affect Me?

Your world won’t be rocked by the switch from downloadable .torrent files to magnet links, though there are a few key differences. First up you’re going to need a magnet-compatible client, and there’s a very good chance you’re already using one. uTorrent, Vuze, BitComet, Transmission, Deluge and qBitTorrent all support magnet links, and most clients that are still being actively developed will probably add the functionality at some point.

The main complaint I see come up time and time again is the inability to select which files to download when adding a magnet link to your BitTorrent client. While this is true, it’s easy to change this once the torrent is on its way down.

Perhaps the question should be “how does it affect the tracker?” then, as it makes quite a difference on that end. For starters the lack of downloadable .torrent files saves on bandwidth, as all magnet links are embedded directly into the webpage. From the tracker’s perspective this removes much of the paper trail – after all, magnet links can be shared anyway you see fit. Find them on trackers, stick them in an email, IM or print them and send them as postcards – it makes very little difference as no “download” took place between you and (in this instance) The Pirate Bay.

Mirrors are also now a lot easier to organize, as the need to host downloadable files has been completely removed. This would in effect make it harder for copyright enforcers to curb piracy, even if the original web page with the magnet links is taken offline another is bound to spring up with the exact same content. Throw DHT into the mix and even if the tracking server is down people will still be able to share files.

What did we learn?

Magnet links mean more of a change for the trackers and index sites than they do for end users. The switch towards trackerless technology using existing foundations like DHT and PEX protects the trackers by eliminating that initial .torrent file download, being able to discover peers in a completely decentralised manner and of course making it very difficult to keep a site distributing magnet links down for long thanks to the easy mirroring procedure.

It seems that the cat-and-mouse game played between filesharing advocates and the copyright enforcers is far from over.
http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/bittorr...ogy-explained/

File-Sharing Services Maintain Their Popularity -- at Work
Jeremy Kirk

When technicians from Palo Alto Networks installed one of the company's firewalls in a Fortune 100 company, they were surprised when the device began examining a massive data stream in and out of the network.

A server within the company was exchanging up to 300 GB per day of data from one of the major browser-based file-sharing networks, one of dozens of websites on the Internet where content such as movies and music are offered and shared without the permission of the copyright holder.

The server "was constantly downloading and uploading," said Matt Keil, senior research analyst at Palo Alto Networks, which said it did not have clearance to identify the company.

The amount of data traded by the company's server is on the extreme side, but a study by Palo Alto Networks of data traffic within companies that use its firewall product shows that use of file-sharing services is common within workplaces. And there's a good chance that the trade in data isn't solely for company business.

Palo Alto Networks examined the traffic transmitted by 1,636 organizations between April and November 2011 and found browser-based file-sharing services in use on 92 percent of those companies' networks. Those kinds of services share content on port 80, the same port as regular "http" web traffic.

One of the most famous browser-based file-sharing services, Megaupload, was shut down by law enforcement authorities in January in several countries. Its operators have been criminally indicted in the U.S. and are awaiting extradition proceedings to begin in August in New Zealand.

Palo Alto Networks also found that 82 percent of the 1,636 organizations had some kind of peer-to-peer file-sharing client running, with organizations running an average of six different applications each.

One of the most popular peer-to-peer clients is uTorrent, a small application that uses small data files called torrents to download content from different computers around the world offering a file.

Users may use file-sharing services at the office because the broadband connections may be faster, Keil said. But downloading content without permission of the copyright owners could put a company at risk of being targeted by copyright infringement lawsuits.

While it is possible that the file-sharing services are being used legally, Keil said many of the sites are geared more towards entertainment rather than services, such as Dropbox or YouSendit.

Many of the browser-based file-sharing services offer users incentives for uploading more content, such as faster speeds when downloading content from the network, Keil said.

Use of browser-based file-sharing services that trade content on port 80 are harder to detect because the traffic looks like normal web traffic and may be harder for organizations to analyze.

Keil said Palo Alto Networks developed a technology called App-ID which identifies exactly what applications employees are using on port 80 and other ports.

Megaupload was very popular. During the last half of 2011, 57 percent of the corporate networks analyzed by Palo Alto Networks had exchanged data with the website.

After its shutdown, users unsurprisingly moved to peer-to-peer based and browser-based file-sharing services. Palo Alto Networks noticed a surge of traffic to Putlocker, another browser-based storage service, as well as 4shared, Keil said.

An email sent to Putlocker with questions regarding its business lately was replied to with an unrelated response that read: " Hello, All access to reported files has been blocked and files are now removed. Thank You."
https://www.pcworld.com/article/2513...y_at_work.html

The BSA's "Nauseating" Anti-Piracy Tactics

The Business Software Alliance (BSA) has been accused of heavy-handed tactics that could drive small companies to incriminate themselves.

The issue came to light after one small-business owner approached PC Pro with a letter received from the BSA, an industry anti-piracy body whose members include Microsoft and Adobe.

The business owner believes the demand was sparked by a tip-off from a disgruntled employee using the BSA’s incentive scheme, which pays up to £20,000 for such information. The BSA says a quarter of cases involve payments to informants.

“I’m quite nauseated by the BSA’s tactics,” the owner of the 15-employee company told PC Pro. “It is basically harvesting allegations from disgruntled employees and farming them out to expensive law firms. It seeks proof of compliance, but we’re a small company with nine-year-old PCs – even though someone could stand and wave a finger and say ‘You should know exactly what’s on those systems’, but the truth is I don’t. The reality of running a small business, particularly in a recession, is that you don’t.”

The letter accused the small business of running unlicensed software and demanded the firm submit to a software audit, asking for receipts for software purchased as long as seven years ago. The BSA letter “required” the audit to be submitted within 21 days, and warned that courts may award “damages in respect of flagrant infringement” – even though the BSA told PC Pro it hasn’t pursued a single court case in the past five years. Neither does the BSA have the power to search a company’s computers under warrant.

Legal letters

The letters are vague about what action the BSA would take if the company refused to submit to the audit, but the strong wording could convince companies to pay up to make the problem go away.

The BSA’s tactics were criticised by the Open Rights Group (ORG), which says rights holders – and their representatives – must be clear about what action they can take. “Businesses do need to use licensed software, but where intermediary firms are used there needs to be real care around how the proposition is communicated, so that it doesn’t lead to people being unfairly strong-armed into paying settlements or submitting themselves to onerous auditing,” said Peter Bradwell, a copyright campaigner at the ORG.

The letter, seen by PC Pro, was sent by law firm Bristows, and states that the “BSA has received a complaint alleging that your company is using unauthorised or unlicensed copies of software”. The letter demands the recipient conduct a full software audit, saying that if it reveals improper copies of software, the companies could “claim various remedies, including that the unlicensed installations be deleted” and “compensation in the form of damages be paid for the period of unlicensed use”.

The letters appear to be having the desired effect: the BSA won £2.2 million in settlements and licensing fees in 2010, without taking a single case to court. The most recent case publicised by the BSA saw an architecture firm pay £15,000 in damages, plus £18,000 to “correct the under-licensing”, while last year a plumbing firm paid £19,000 in total, and a labelling company paid £24,000.

The BSA has confirmed to PC Pro that it keeps the damages, but not the licensing fees, generated via its actions to “go towards BSA’s running costs, helping to fund BSA’s activities, including local education programmes”.

The BSA makes no secret of its tactics, or the scale of its operations, with the company last year publicising a campaign targeting 1,500 companies in Yorkshire, asking them “to declare the software of BSA members installed on company-owned computers, devices and networks to check that it is fully licensed”. Businesses were directed to complete an online self-audit form.

According to the BSA, any company flagged as under-licensed is given 30 days to become legally compliant or face “investigation and potential legal action”. The BSA said it only instructs solicitors to start action if it’s convinced an offence has been committed, so companies taking part in a self-audit could be incriminating themselves.

“The BSA’s solicitors only contact businesses with requests for software audits when the BSA strongly believes there to be a case of under-licensing/software infringement,” said Julian Swan, director of compliance marketing for the BSA in Europe. “If a company continues to deny that it’s using illegal software, against all the evidence, then the BSA may resort to legal action via the courts.”

“Scaring recipients”

As the BSA letters tend not to lead to court cases, one lawyer suggested the letters were written to generate maximum impact without necessarily having much power to act.

“It’s designed to scare the recipient into thinking that they’re obliged to provide certain information when, in fact, it’s difficult to see that they are,” said David Woods, a senior associate within the IT team at Pinsent Masons. “There are references to an unspecified complaint that seems to have been made, and after that it’s a fishing exercise.”

The right course of action for any company receiving such a letter would depend on the circumstances, but two lawyers told PC Pro that companies should think twice before submitting to the BSA’s demands. “I would expect that, in terms of a business model, what the BSA will not be doing is pursuing each of these matters to their ultimate conclusion,” said Woods.
http://www.pcpro.co.uk/news/enterpri...piracy-tactics

Rob Reid on Understanding Copyright Math
Joe Brockmeier

If you watch only one TED talk this year, you should be sure to watch Rob Reid's talk "The $8 billion iPod."

Reid, the founder of Rhapsody, debuts Copyright Math (TM), the field of study "based on actual numbers from entertainment industry lawyers and lobbyists." In that time, Reid completely skewers the entertainment industry's inflated claims of damages that result from copyright infringement.

For example, take the MPAA's claims (PDF) that the U.S. economy loses $58 billion in economic output annually "due to copyright theft of movies, music, packaged software and video games."

Reid says, "Music revenues are down by about eight billion dollars a year since Napster first came on the scene. So that's a chunk of what we're looking for. But total movie revenues across theaters, home video and pay-per-view are up. And TV, satellite and cable revenues are way up. Other content markets like book publishing and radio are also up. So this small missing chunk here [$50 billion] is puzzling... What we're looking at here is the insidious cost of ringtone piracy. 50 billion dollars of it a year, which is enough, at 30 seconds a ringtone, that could stretch from here to Neanderthal times."

Take a few minutes this weekend and watch Reid's presentation. You'll be glad you did.
https://www.readwriteweb.com/enterpr...nding-copy.php

European Parliament Blocks Copyright Reform With 113% Voter Turnout
Rick Falkvinge

In an unexpected turn of events, one of the key committees in the European Parliament voted recently to weaken a reform of the copyright monopoly for allowing re-publication and access to orphan works, pieces of our cultural heritage where no copyright monopoly holder can be located.

When a work has gone orphan, it means that it is effectively lost until the copyright monopoly expires, 70 years after the creator’s death. You can only hope that somebody has kept a copy illegally and copied it across new forms of storage media as they go in and out of fashion as the decades come and go, or it will be lost forever.

The vote in committee on March 1 was supposed to end that (or, more technically, recommend a course of ending that to the European Parliament as a whole). However, the copyright industry lobby won key points in the voting procedure with 14 votes against reform and 12 in favor of it, according to the just-published protocol. This is according to a fresh report from our Brussels office – I cannot yet find the protocol on the EU’s web pages (which are notoriously disorganized; it may actually be published).

There’s a problem with this. There are 24 seats in the committee, and one group (non-inscrits) was absent, lacking deputies to fill that person’s vote. So, there should have been 23 votes at the most. But we just counted 12 votes for reform and 14 against. That’s 26.

Yes, your reactions are correct here – that means that voter turnout on this copyright reform issue was 113%. Also, if there were 12 reform-friendly people with actual voting rights, then there would necessarily have been 11 against – causing reform to prevail, and the copyright monopoly to be substantially weakened in the European Union in favor of preserving our cultural heritage.

This rather embarrassing issue was pointed out to the committee, the fact that there were three votes too many, and that these three votes determined the outcome. When this was done, along with formally requesting a re-vote, that re-vote on the points in question was denied.

“What can I say? There is a lot of room for improvement when it comes to democracy in the European Union”, says Christian Engström, Member of the European Parliament for the Swedish Pirate Party and member of the committee in question.

The final kicker here is that the 113-per-cent voter turnout happened in the Legal Affairs committee (JURI), which has the responsibility of safeguarding the integrity and trustworthiness of the legal framework as a whole in Europe. MEP Engström’s assistant, Henrik Alexandersson, called the phenomenon “a temporary form of democratic surplus” in a scathing blog post.

(Finally, in the interest of full disclosure and context, it shall be said that there’s no clear picture yet on the overall state of orphan works reform. This was about amendments to that reform in the JURI committee, where these 14-against-12 votes went in the wrong direction: against a good and useful reform. The proposal as a whole is still going to the European Parliament floor for a vote – but in what shape or form remains to be seen.)
http://falkvinge.net/2012/03/14/euro...voter-turnout/

European Commission Blames Social Networks For ACTA Failure; Worried About Its Imminent Directive On Copyright Enforcement
Glyn Moody

Now that the EU's ratification of ACTA has departed from the original script of everyone just waving it through, the European Commission is clearly trying to come up with Plan B. Some insights into its thinking can be gained from the minutes (pdf) of a recent Commission meeting, pointed out to us by André Rebentisch.

Here's what the President of the European Commission, José Manuel Barroso, said about ACTA:

The President introduced the topic, commenting on the intensity and scale of the public debate and the organised campaign against the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA). There were those in particular who felt that the agreement would lead specifically to an unwarranted restriction on freedom of expression and democracy on the Internet, and would distort the reasonable balance between intellectual property rights and other fundamental rights.

He therefore felt that the Court of Justice of the European Union should be asked to confirm the Commission’s position in this matter, namely that ACTA was consistent and compatible with the Treaties and with the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union. He suggested that that day’s discussion should consider that point, but also the question of when would be an appropriate time to refer the matter to the Court, and the possibility of consulting Parliament and the Council with a view to adopting a common approach in this matter.

The suggestion that the anger over ACTA was somehow part of an "organised campaign" looks like a continuing failure to grasp that the protests were about all Internet users across Europe coming together to defend their online community. As for the "common approach" with the European Parliament, it's easy to see why the European Commission would want this: it would allow the referral of ACTA to the European Court of Justice to be framed in such a way as to increase the likelihood of a positive response from the court. It will be interesting to see whether the European Parliament acquiesces in this, or continues to take a hard line on the need for more searching questions to be asked.

Barroso's comments were followed by some observations from Karel De Gucht, the European Commissioner with direct responsibility for ACTA, who made some revealing remarks:

He noted that opposition had increased in the run-up to January’s planned vote in the US Congress on two legislative initiatives -- the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and the Protect Intellectual Property Act (PIPA) -- aimed at increasing the protection of intellectual property rights on the Internet; in the end the vote had not been held, following a hostile campaign by social networks and the loss of White House support.

It's interesting to see De Gucht linking the growing hostility to ACTA with the storm generated by SOPA/PIPA, and giving the credit for stopping those US bills to a "hostile campaign" waged by social networks. You can tell this really worries him, because he says something similar about social networks and ACTA immediately afterwards:

Despite the signature of ACTA in January by the Commission, the Union Presidency and twenty-one other Member States, the intense media campaign which was unleashed in Europe, instigated largely by the social networks, had since led a number of Union Heads of State or Government to decide to delay signature or ratification of the agreement by their national parliaments. He added that the campaign had also had a considerable influence on Members of the European Parliament and, following recent contacts with various political groups, he now felt it would be difficult to muster a majority in favour of ACTA within the EP.

What's extraordinary is that no less than three other commissioners also spoke at the meeting about the importance of social networks, and the need to grapple with them.

Viviane Reding:

She concluded by highlighting the rising influence of social networks on the Internet and the need for the Commission to take account of this in its communication policy and in dealing with various dossiers. Instructions had already been given to the communication units in the Directorates-General.

Neelie Kroes:

She concluded by stressing the need for appropriate communication on the agreement, without waiting for the Court’s opinion, targeted particularly at the various stakeholders involved and social networks.

Michel Barnier:

was also of the opinion that the key role of social networks in public debate in Europe forced the Commission to think carefully about adapting some of its means of communication and that Members should discuss the matter as soon possible.

What emerges very clearly from this is that the most senior politicians in the European Union are completely nonplussed by the power of social networks to mobilize not just Net activists but ordinary Internet users, and are struggling to deal with it. I think we can expect to see attempts to neutralize that new force by "reaching out" to social networks in a variety of ways in the coming months. One area where that will clearly happen is for the forthcoming update on the EU's "IPR Enforcement Directive", generally known as IPRED. The Commission meeting referred to it explicitly:

As regards the planned revision of the 2004 Directive on enforcement of intellectual property rights, the Commission needed to adopt a prudent and balanced approach to this politically delicate exercise, and take account of existing texts on the protection of data and privacy in the areas of telecoms and fundamental rights.

The EC knows that it must be very careful here, because the measures already mooted for the next version of IPRED are very close to some of SOPA's bad ideas -- for example, turning ISPs into copyright cops. The European Commission has observed what happened in the US, and is clearly very concerned that the IPRED update will meet the same opposition from those mysterious, uncontrollable social networks as SOPA/PIPA did and ACTA is now doing.
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/201...orcement.shtml

Estonian ISP Fined for Illegal File-Sharing Archive

An Internet service provider in Narva and its director have been fined for making and distributing unauthorized copies of copyrighted music and films through the company's file sharing system.

Under plea bargaining procedure, Feliks Korkiainen received a fine of 1,740 euros, payable in a year, and his company Fill OÜ received a fine of 3,500 euros.

The illegal activity took place from 2005 to 2009. At the end of the pretrial investigation, Korkiainen was accused of reproduction of copyright protected works for the purpose of distribution and illegal public performance of the works and making pirated copies available for commercial purposes.

The head of the Estonian copyright protection organization, Erik Mandre told uudised.err.ee that many Internet service providers in Ida-Viru County still use a business model where they maintain file sharing environments for customers on FTP servers with restricted access.

ISPs compete with each other by offering attractive collections of files, over 10 TB in size.

"There have been cases where customers have changed their ISP in Ida-Viru only because the other ISP had a newer and more appealing content in their FTP server. This sort of activity that promotes illegal content among ISPs curtails the legal market for content services in Ida-Viru County and the violators must be punished," said Mandre.
http://news.err.ee/sci-tech/48122934...9-ae63dfe11373

Indian ISPs Must Block 100+ Music Sites
enigmax

Every single ISP in India has been ordered to block 104 sites offering unauthorized music. A total of 387 ISPs must block the sites immediately via DNS and IP address blocking, backed up with Deep Packet Inspection. While the IFPI praised the action, their Indian counterparts are singing are more interesting tune – they don’t want to destroy their opponents, but bring them into the business.

“Content theft is a global problem and we must have a global commitment to solving it. This is an important opportunity for the Indian government to move forward with strong protections against online theft,” MPAA chairman and CEO Chris Dodd told the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry conference this week in Mumbai.

“We encourage the Indian film industry to reject as we have, the false argument that you cannot be pro-technology and pro-copyright at the same time,” he continued.

In framing “content theft” as a problem affecting the county’s middle-classes and alongside a clear dig at the likes of Google and Wikipedia, Dodd’s words could have been pulled verbatim from any pro-SOPA speech. But unlike the United States, India doesn’t need new legislation to allow site blocking – they already have it – and Dodd must be as jealous as hell.

Indian film companies have previously obtained court orders to have sites blocked at the ISP level but in recent weeks the IMI, the RIAA-like Indian Music Industry trade group, has shown the movie industry how it’s really done.

In a series of court actions at the Calcutta High Court, 142 music companies of the IMI have succeeded in obtaining orders to force every ISP in India – 387 in total – to block 104 sites (list here) the industry accuses of online piracy.

And when it comes to implementing the blocks, there are no half-measures. ISPs have been ordered to implement DNS and IP address blockades and for those thinking of using a DNS outside India, Deep Packet Inspection will step in to ensure the domains remain blocked.

“This decision is a victory for the rule of law online and a blow to those illegal businesses that want to build revenues by violating the rights of others,” said IFPI CEO Frances Moore in a statement.

But in a clear signal that for the music and movie industries even the toughest of anti-piracy measures are never enough, Moore says that current developments are a good start.

“The court ruled that blocking is a proportionate and effective way to tackle website piracy,” Moore noted, adding that the Indian government should now “build on this progress” by advancing further legislation to tackle digital piracy.

As tough as the Indian court orders are, already their weaknesses are being probed. One of the key sites on the lists – Songs.pk – has already circumvented the blockade by resurfacing with the new URL of Songspk.pk since the blockade was incapable of physically taking the Czech-hosted site offline.

But although the Indian labels have taken the nuclear option in blocking huge numbers of sites, Apurv Nagpal, CEO of Saregama, one of India’s largest music labels says that they don’t want to destroy their opponents. Interestingly, Saregama acknowledges the pirate sites’ “passion for music” and says the industry wants to befriend them.

“We don’t want these sites to be shut down, we want them to pay a license fee and flourish as a business,” Saregama said. “There are legitimate businesses in operation too. The scope is there, and we want these sites to be legal.”

It would be a cold day in hell before Westerners heard the likes of Chris Dodd or Frances Moore make a statement as radical as that. But if the stick is to work long-term it has to be backed up with a sizable carrot, and if the pirate sites really do only want money, surely that’s their Achilles’ heel right there.
https://torrentfreak.com/court-order...-sites-120316/

Police Launch New Probe Into the Pirate Bay

After Swedish file-sharing haven the Pirate Bay in February received the blow that the Supreme Court wouldn’t grant them the right to appeal, their newly registered Swedish domain has prompted a new police investigation.

“Both police and prosecutors have contacted us,” said Erik Arnberg from the Swedish company Binero that registered the site to daily Expressen.

Lundström, along with Gottfrid Svartholm Warg, Peter Sunde and Fredrik Neij were convicted in April 2009 on charges of being accessories to copyright violations. they were sentenced to a year's imprisonment apiece and a combined fine of 30 million kronor ($4.4 million).

All four appealed their sentences, with the Svea Court of Appeal ruling in November to uphold the convictions, with the exception of Svartholm Warg who was absent due to illness.

The three remaining pirates then petitioned Sweden's Supreme Court for leave to appeal.

But in February 2012, the court announced that the defendants' request had been denied and that the appeal's court sentence therefore will stand.

However, the site thepiratebay.org has been impossible to access for some time, with visitors redirected to a new address; thepiratebay.se. The domain was registered with Swedish company Binero by Fredrik Neij.

According to Expressen, police and prosecutors got in touch with the company in February wanting the details of the person who registered the site, and were given the publicly available information surrounding the registration.

“Someone has bought and registered the domain with us, but the customer hasn’t placed any content with us or used our name server,” Arnberg told the paper, unwilling to disclose any more information to anyone.

To Binero the integrity and confidentiality of customers is very important, said Arnberg to the paper.

According to Expressen, the preliminary investigation against The Pirate Bay is headed by prosecutor Fredrik Ingblad, who has significant experience in copyright law and file-sharing offences.

“There are currently investigations into bit torrent sites, but I can’t disclose against which ones,” Ingblad told the paper.
http://www.thelocal.se/39658/20120314/

RapidShare Under Court Order To Filter User Uploads – All Of Them

The whole file-sharing business is the big target these for entertainment industry and now book publishers with every day bring new reports, and court decisions, of how the business is under attack and being painted as the worst thing to happen on the web since .. well … Napster.

The newest target that has gotten itself hit with what has to be an onerous decision is Swiss-based RapidShare, regardless of the fact that the company has been trying extremely hard to work with all the various rights holders and deal promptly with any copyright infringement claims.

As for the decision that was handed down by the Higher Regional Court in Hamburg it puts RapidShare in the position that it now has to monitor all user uploads in order to ensure that now copyright material is being stored on their servers.

One of the groups celebrating this decision is the German Booksellers Association, even though there has been no written copy of the court’s verdict made public yet.

“Internet sites can no longer avoid their responsibilities, and profit from copyright infringing uploads of anonymous users,” says Alexander Skipis, chief executive of the German Booksellers Association.”

However, as with all legal decisions there is always the problem with unintended consequences and in the case of decisions going against file-sharing or file locker sites one has to wonder when the companies behind cloud based file storage are going to start being affected. Companies like Dropbox and efforts like SkyDrive from Microsoft are all basically the same idea which means they could see themselves facing the same types of court battles in the future.
http://www.inquisitr.com/206517/rapi...s-all-of-them/

MegaUpload's Users May Include U.S. Government Officials
Dara Kerr

The cyberlocker's founder Kim Dotcom says that he recently learned a "large number of Mega accounts" were being used by people in the Department of Justice and the U.S. Senate.

When the file-swapping site MegaUpload was shuttered by the U.S. government--and consequentially its offices raided, $42 million of its assets frozen, and its leader Kim DotCom arrested--some officials might not have thought of unintended consequences, such as the loss of legitimate files.

They also might not have realized that they too might be outed as having used MegaUpload.

During an interview with TorrentFreak this week, DotCom said, "Guess what--we found a large number of Mega accounts from U.S. government officials, including the Department of Justice and the U.S. Senate."

Released on bail earlier this month, DotCom said he got this information through his dealings to get the Department of Justice to grant users temporary access to the site to download their personal data and files. According to TorrentFreak, the MegaUpload raid in January disabled hundreds of thousands of files that were not infringing on copyright laws, including personal photos and work-related documents.

"MegaUpload's legal team is working hard to reunite our users with their data," DotCom told TorrentFreak. "We are negotiating with the Department of Justice to allow all Mega users to retrieve their data."

The Electronic Frontier Foundation is also looking into how MegaUpload users will be able to recoup their personal files. At the end of January, the nonprofit launched a campaign called MegaRetrieval, which has the goal of creating an inventory of all users with lost data.

"EFF is troubled that so many lawful users of MegaUpload.com had their property taken from them without warning and that the government has taken no steps to help them," EFF staff attorney Julie Samuels said in a statement. "We think it's important that these users have their voices heard as this process moves forward."

It remains unclear who and how many people in the U.S. government actually used MegaUpload and whether the Department of Justice will restore the site temporarily to let users access their personal files.
http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-573...ent-officials/

UK Backs U.S. Extradition for File-Sharing Suspect

Britain's Home Secretary has backed a decision to extradite to the United States a British student who ran a website allowing users to access films and TV shows illegally, the Home Office said on Tuesday.

Richard O'Dwyer is wanted by U.S. authorities for copyright infringement offences in connection with his TVShack website, which did not host any illegal content but provided links to other online sites where it could be accessed.

In a London court hearing in January, his lawyers argued that by linking to other websites, he had done nothing more than the likes of Google or Yahoo.

However, a judge rejected his argument and Home Secretary Theresa May has upheld the decision to extradite the 23-year-old.

He can still appeal to London's High Court against the ruling.

Campaigners argue O'Dwyer's is the latest in a series of cases that demonstrate Britain's extradition rules with the United States are lopsided, allowing suspects to be extradited without criminal charges from British authorities.

The most high-profile is that of British computer hacker Gary McKinnon, who was arrested in 2002 after allegedly hacking into U.S. security systems including the Pentagon and NASA and who is still fighting to avoid extradition.

"Today, yet another British citizen is being sold down the river by the British Government," O'Dwyer's mother Julia was quoted by media as saying.

Before his court hearing in January, O'Dwyer told media that he started the project to improve his computer programming skills and help him get a work placement. The student said he sold advertising space to pay for the server fees.

U.S. authorities, who have cracked down far harder on illegal file-sharing to protect its film, television and music industries, said he had earned $230,000 from the venture.

"The district judge found the allegations were comparable to an offence under UK law and it was appropriate for any trial to be held in the U.S.," a Home Office spokesman said.
http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/...8EDAOD20120313

Megaupload's Short-Lived Effort to Go Legit
Jon Healey

Before the feds shut down Megaupload, the file-sharing site accused of criminal copyright infringement, operators of the company were in talks with French technology firm UbicMedia about converting online pirates into legitimate buyers and sellers.

There's no guarantee that the Hollywood studios, record labels and other copyright holders would have supported the effort. In fact, history suggests otherwise. Nevertheless, I can't help but wonder what would have happened if Megaupload had moved sooner to incorporate UbicMedia's security and e-commerce technology.

Olivier Pfeiffer, the company's director of business development, offered the following explanation for UbicMedia's approach to digital rights management:

Rather than wrapping a file in an electronic lock, UbicMedia's technology modifies it in a way that renders it unplayable unless a second, considerably smaller file is streamed to the user's device. To get that second file, users have to comply with whatever terms the copyright owner sets -- pay a fee, watch ads, sign onto a mailing list, you name it.

Here's where things get interesting. The streamed information unlocks the file just once, after which it returns to its unplayable state. Each time someone wants to play it, they have to enter a valid code into UbiqMedia's client software to start the streaming of the all-important second file. Users can share the original file, but each new user will have to obtain a new code from the cloud. That enables the copyright owner to track and monetize every time a file is played -- capabilities well suited to file-sharing networks and other forms of peer-to-peer distribution.

Pfeiffer said the technology makes more sense for rentals than purchases, which makes it a better fit for movies and games than for songs. Another likely use is in enabling copyright holders to send screeners and promotional copies of their work to awards voters and reviewers.

Pfeiffer said Megaupload approached UbicMedia's chief executive, Alain Rosset, before the feds' crackdown in January. "Obviously, they could feel the wind turning against them, and they were looking at ways of getting more legal," he said.

Megaupload planned to use UbicMedia's technology to give copyright owners a way to use the service to generate sales. Specifically, Megaupload would have given rights holders who found unauthorized copies of their works on the site a new choice: In addition to simply having the file removed, they could make a UbicMedia-enabled version available in its place.

According to an article Rosset posted in a French technology forum, Megaupload's Emmanuel Gadaix told the French Senate eight days before the raid that his company would use UbicMedia's technology "for the legal distribution of content with full control for the rights holders, so that they can use our platform as a hosting website and take advantage from our millions of users as well as our global presence.” Rosset also cited a European study suggesting that upward of 10% of all unauthorized downloaders would have paid for the files, which represents a potential revenue stream at least as large as worldwide box-office receipts.

It's worth noting that the indictment accuses Megaupload of not actually removing the files it supposedly took down at copyright holders' requests. Instead, the indictment alleges, the company just removed one of the multiple links that could be used to access the file. So if Megaupload had suggested the UbicMedia alternative, copyright owners probably would have insisted that the company prove first that it could actually take down pirated files.

Still, Pfeiffer said, "It was very interesting for us, obviously, because it’s an enormous reservoir of viewers ... who had accepted the fact of paying a monthly fee to access content they were interested in." Megaupload's distributed infrastructure also was a good match for UbicMedia's cloud-based technology, he said.

The major entertainment companies are more supportive of online innovators than they used to be, but they've been particularly slow to support peer-to-peer or user-driven distribution models for anything other than promotional material. With a few notable exceptions, such as YouTube, they've also been reluctant to work with companies that have taken advantage of users' infringements to build large audiences. Those factors make Megaupload's plans to win over content owners with UbicMedia's help seem like a long shot.

Most of the French company's business is in Europe, but it's trying to gain a foothold in the United States by having Pfeiffer open an office in Los Angeles. Its clients include Starz Network, which is using the technology to help sell episodes of the Web-based video series "Online Gamer," and Box, a content storage and sharing platform.
http://www.latimes.com/business/tech...0,530924.story

Digital Notes: Turntable.fm Says It Has Reached Deals With Labels
Ben Sisario

Sometimes it’s best to go legit.

On Tuesday the online music service Turntable.fm said that it had reached licensing deals with all four major record companies, allowing it to leave the legal gray zone it had been operating in and expand into international markets.

Seth Goldstein, the company’s chairman, announced the deals at a panel at South by Southwest in Austin, Tex., and confirmed the news by phone shortly afterward.

“Basically this means we’re legitimate,” Mr. Goldstein said. “There are no eggshells, no wondering whether or not what we’re doing is viable as it relates to rights holders.”

Turntable, with lets people play D.J. for friends or strangers in online “rooms,” became a minor sensation within weeks of its introduction last summer. At the beginning, it did not have licenses with labels, but instead obtained its music through a third party and operated under the protections and restrictions of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, the federal law that says how online services can use material without permission.

One rule of the copyright act, familiar to Pandora users, is that for “noninteractive” streams that resemble radio, a user cannot pick exactly what songs are listened to — only a channel or stream, with songs programmed by someone else. As many industry observers saw it, Turntable pushed at the limits of that law, since a user could participate as either a passive listener (which is O.K.) or a D.J. who chooses specific songs to play (which is the tricky part).

The new licenses clear up that ambiguity, Mr. Goldstein said, and also open the door for the service to expand into other countries as well as to work directly with artists and record companies in marketing campaigns. The company is in the process of making deals with music publishers as well, Mr. Goldstein said.

Turntable got off to a big start last year, but lost a good deal of its traffic as its novelty wore off. Mr. Goldstein said that its audience had started gaining again, and added that over the life of the service — which is only about nine months — it had 130 million streams of music.
http://mediadecoder.blogs.nytimes.co...s-with-labels/

Digital Notes: Sony Offers $8 Million Settlement Over Royalties
Ben Sisario

Ending a six-year dispute, Sony has offered an $8 million settlement in a class-action lawsuit over royalties for digital music. The case, originally filed by the Allman Brothers and Cheap Trick, was one of the first in what is now a wave of litigation by artists accusing major record companies of underpaying royalties by counting downloads as “sales,” like CDs, instead of as “licenses,” which pay much higher rates. (Royalties might be anywhere from 5 percent to 20 percent for sales, while 50 percent on a license is standard.)

The Allman Brothers and Cheap Trick have since settled their own claims in the suit, which was filed in 2006. But two other acts took their places as lead plaintiffs — the folk-rock band the Youngbloods and Elmo Shropshire, who sang “Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer” — and a large pool of acts may be eligible for class status. According to the terms of the settlement, which is subject to court approval, $7.65 million of the settlement would go to artists who have sold a minimum of 28,500 tracks on iTunes; lawyers’ fees would be taken out of that portion. A pot of $300,000 would go to artists with lower sales.

Last year, a group of producers for Eminem won a similar suit against Universal. In the wake of that decision, numerous artists have sued, including Sister Sledge, Chuck D. and the estate of Rick James.
http://mediadecoder.blogs.nytimes.co...ver-royalties/

RIAA Chief: ISPs to Start Policing Copyright by July 12

Comcast, Time Warner and Verizon are among the ISPs preparing to implement a graduated response to piracy by July, says the music industry's chief lobbyist.
Greg Sandoval

The country's largest Internet service providers haven't given up on the idea of becoming copyright cops.

Last July, Comcast, Cablevision, Verizon, Time Warner Cable and other bandwidth providers announced that they had agreed to adopt policies designed to discourage customers from illegally downloading music, movies and software. Since then, the ISPs have been very quiet about their antipiracy measures.

But during a panel discussion before a gathering of U.S. publishers here today, Cary Sherman, CEO of the Recording Industry Association of America, said most of the participating ISPs are on track to begin implementing the program by July 12.

Supporters say this could become the most effective antipiracy program ever. Since ISPs are the Internet's gatekeepers, the theory is that network providers are in the best position to fight illegal file sharing. CNET broke the news last June that the RIAA and counterparts at the trade group for the big film studios, had managed to get the deal through--with the help of the White House.

Sherman told attendees of the Association of American Publishers' annual meeting, that planners had always said that setting up an antipiracy program like this could take a year. He told CNET following his panel that the process isn't as easy as turning on a switch.

"Each ISP has to develop their infrastructure for automating the system," Sherman said. They need this "for establishing the database so they can keep track of repeat infringers, so they know that this is the first notice or the third notice. Every ISP has to do it differently depending on the architecture of its particular network. Some are nearing completion and others are a little further from completion."

The program, commonly referred to as "graduated response," requires that ISPs send out one or two educational notices to those customers who are accused of downloading copyrighted content illegally. If the customer doesn't stop, the ISP is then asked to send out "confirmation notices" asking that they confirm they have received notice.

At that time, the accused customers will also be informed of the risks they incur if they don't stop pirating material. If the customer is flagged for pirating again, the ISP can then ratchet up the pressure. Participating ISPs can choose from a list of penalties, or what the RIAA calls "mitigation measures," which include throttling down the customer's connection speed and suspending Web access until the subscriber agrees to stop pirating.

The ISPs can waive the mitigation measure if they choose and not one of the service providers has agreed to permanently terminate service.

The partnership with the major bandwidth providers was years in the making and the deal pumped lots of confidence into the entertainment sector. After the White House and state and federal lawmakers showed support for the deal, leaders at the RIAA and Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) believed they had the momentum to get anti-piracy legislation passed in Congress.

They were wrong of course. The Stop Online Piracy Act and Protect IP Act were run off the rails mostly by the tech sector. It will be interesting to see how the tech sector reacts once accused Internet pirates begin having their Web access suspended.
http://news.cnet.com/8301-31001_3-57...ht-by-july-12/

“Send Them Your Money” Campaign Suggests You Pay the MPAA and RIAA for Piracy Losses with Copied Currency

MPAA Piracy piracy losses RIAA send them your money
Eric Limer

When it comes to battling piracy, there’s a pretty huge semantic problem that is getting in the way of dealing with the real issue. Organizations like the RIAA and the MPAA tend to treat pirated copies of software as stolen copies of software when they’re calculating their (inaccurate) annual losses to piracy. In actuality, piracy — while illegal — is not theft; it’s piracy. That’s why it’s called piracy, not theft. In a bid to drive this point home, a little project called Send Them Your Money has suggested an elegantly flippant way to “appease” the MPAA and RIAA: Send them full compensation for their losses in the form of copied dollar bills.

The project hearkens back to a case heard by the Japanese judge Ōoka Tadasuke hundreds of years ago. In that case, an innkeeper accused a student of stealing the fumes of his food. The student would often eat his dull food while the innkeeper was cooking and the innkeeper argued that this meant the student was stealing the smells and using them to flavor his food. The ultimate ruling was that the student was to pass some money from one of his hands to the other, the thought being that the smell of food was more or less equal to the sound of money.

The same idea is at work here. If the RIAA and the MPAA are going to argue that copies of software — which by their very nature do not diminish the souce from which they are copied — are for all intents and purposes the genuine item, they should be happy with copies of money since, by their logic, that is as good at the real thing. Now, I’d like to be crystal clear here and say that piracy is not legal and it’s not ethical, but that being said, it’s also not theft. This project has nothing to do with affirming the legitimacy of piracy; it has everything to do with highlighting the inconsistent logic organizations like the MPAA and RIAA use in regards to piracy and weighing its affects.

“Now wait,” you say, “isn’t copying money illegal?” Not if you do it right. Reproducing images of money (in the United States at least) is perfectly legal under three conditions:

• The copy has to be one-sided
• The copy has to be the wrong size. It has to be at least 75% smaller or 150% larger than an actual bill
• You have to destroy the negatives, graphic files, or “digitized storage mediums” after their final use

The last one is a little unclear as it seems to apply specifically to physical copies of money, but it seems relatively reasonable to assume that their final use is getting emailed to someone, or posted on a website, they’re fine so long as they adhere to rules 1 and 2.

If digital copies of money still make you uncomfortable, Send Them Your Money also provides a handy ASCII version, for those of us who are a little strapped for fake cash. Now you actually can email some fake money to the RIAA and the MPAA if you really want to, but I think more than anything else, this serves as a particularly useful thought experiment that really brings home the differences between theft and piracy and what “a copy” really is (and isn’t). There’s probably little you could do to get the RIAA and MPAA to change their tune, and sending them fake money is unlikely to make them see any light, but it is certainly good for a chuckle, and an important lesson in semantics.
http://www.geekosystem.com/send-them...money-project/

Report: Walmart To Charge $2-$4 Per DVD To Convert Movies To UltraViolet Cloud
Dan Rayburn

Tomorrow at 1pm ET, Walmart along with UltraViolet partners Universal, Paramount, Warner Brothers, Sony Pictures and Fox will announce Walmart's UltraViolet offering. Studio execs I have spoken with say that consumers will be able to bring their DVDs into Walmart, which will then charge the consumer between $2-$4 per DVD to give the consumer access to that movie in the UltraViolet cloud locker system. DVDs will then be stamped at the store, so they can't be used by multiple people and I'm told pricing for converting the DVD to digital will vary based on either SD or HD quality.

I'm sure the studios and Walmart are going to talk about how great this is for consumers and they will probably use a term like "nominal" to describe the fee consumers will have to pay. In reality though, the studios are doing exactly what consumers don't want, which is forcing them to pay multiple times for the same piece of content. The fact that consumers already spent money to buy the DVD apparently is not good enough to allow them access to a free digital copy, which they could easily get if they ripped the DVD on their own. It costs the studios almost nothing to store the movie in the cloud, about two cents per movie, and it only costs about four cents, at most, for them to pay a CDN to stream the movie to the user. So at $2 per DVD, a user would have to watch the movie 50 times from the cloud before the studio was losing money from digital.

Consumers have been vocal in saying they want more content digitally, at a fair price, and many of the studios are acting like they are giving consumers what they want, when in reality, they aren't. You can get digital, but only of you pay for the movie again. And you can get a digital copy with the Blu-ray disc, but only if you pay between $5-$10 more for a copy that includes a digital copy. Pricing seems to be all over the map for a Blu-ray with digital copy, but they are clearly much more expensive than just the Blu-ray only disc.

While there have been a lot of technical issues with the UltraViolet system that have been well documented in the media, those issues could be resolved over time, but it's no guarantee. UltraViolet is not easy to use, it requires multiple accounts with multiple websites, there is very little device support and Disney and Apple refuse to join the consortium. Physical Blu-ray copies with digital are more expensive and studios are charging so much for their download and own offerings, between $15-$25 a movie, that it makes more sense for a consumer to rent the movie for $3.99 instead of buying. Many studios have gotten so greedy that they are pricing themselves out of the digital download to own market. In addition, with the way the content windowing works for content going from theatre, PPV, rental, purchase etc. the studios are now going to have to augment that window in some way to allow for the new UltraViolet offering.

Aside for all of this, UltraViolet is a cloud based system that requires you to have to be connected to the Internet. As far as I know of, there is no way to play your movies from the cloud locally on your machine if you don't have access to the Internet. You have to connect to UltraViolet's system to get you license key and if you can't you won't be able to play any content. Unless UltraViolet comes up with an option for local playback, your entire library of movies and content will be in the cloud not accessible locally. That's not going to be ideal for a lot of people and it also requires consumer to once again choose between one quality over another. Studios should want to deliver consumers the best quality video available, yet they are going to force many users away from HD, simply due to price. That's not the best user experience.

Another topic one has to wonder about is privacy. UltraViolet is going to know every movie you stream from the cloud. And with so many studios, broadcasters, CE manufactures etc. in the program, what you what and when you watch it is going to be known. Who has access to that information? I can't find any language on the UltraViolet website that talks to the privacy of one's account in the cloud. Are they going to be data mining our usage habits and sharing that with third party companies? If they do, and I expect they will, that data is worth a lot of money to advertisers who will then know the demographics of who is watching their movies. That is very powerful data that UltraViolet is collecting, which they can make a ton of money from.

And what if UltraViolet starts using that information to track what you do outside of UltraViolet? Can they now deny you access to a movie in the cloud if they notice your IP address shows up in a torrent site? Can they now disable your UltraViolet account? In the end, do you really own the content that is in the cloud? I think this could be a major concern if the service starts to get some traction and is something UltraViolet will need to address

In January, Paramount rolled out a service to sell ten year old movies via the UltraViolet cloud for $22.99 for HD. Many of these same movies are available via Blu-ray for $8-$10 cheaper and I still can't find any definition from UltraViolet on what they classify as an "HD" movie. What exactly is the quality? How was it encoded? Is the digital copy in the cloud comparable to the Blu-ray disc? I highly doubt it as it would probably require 8-10Mbps to stream, which means the studios are selling HD digital copies, which are less quality than the Blu-ray, yet are charging consumers more for it. And the studios think this is something consumers won't notice?

Every year the studios seem to come up with new ideas and ways to try and charge consumers for movies. First it was the studios delivering two-hour movies to cell phones, even though consumers weren't and still aren't asking for the service. Then came the studios charging more for a digital download over the physical DVD. That was quickly followed by Sony charging $24.95 for a 24-hour rental and admitting it does not want to upset Walmart and the studios own DVD business. Then you had studios charging consumers more for movies on USB drives, and you also have some of the studios forcing Netflix and Redbox (and library's) from renting physical DVDs for 28 or 56 days, because the studios are trying to force consumers to buy more DVDs. Not to mention you constantly have the MPAA complaining about piracy. I don't condone stealing, but what do the studios think will happen when they aren't giving customers what they want at a fair price and will do everything in their power to prevent consumers from copying their own DVDs?

As a whole, the studios still don't get it. They aren't listening to consumers, they haven't truly changed their way of thinking and their pricing and business models don't make sense. In reality, a back-end system like UltraViolet that would allow such seamless viewing across all devices still hasn’t been created and it won't be the studios that make it happen.
http://www.typepad.com/services/trac...6763b58a79970b

Crowdsourced Movie Studio Creates a Bold New Kind of Sci-Fi Series
Hugh Hart

A new sci-fi web series teams Hollywood visual effects artists with a global scattering of up-and-coming animators, all of whom are working for free to craft CGI elements for a wigged-out futuristic saga.

The New Kind project is being spearheaded by visual effects hot shots whose resumes include Star Wars, Avatar and Hugo. These moonlighting pros are sharing their expertise with 200 anime enthusiasts to produce a crowdsourced labor of love made possible because the cost of CGI animation tools has dropped several hundred thousand dollars in the past few years.

“Somebody in Malaysia or Greece who lives in their mom’s basement can now create visual effects with a $2,000 computer and a $3,000 software license that’s on par, or even superior to, what you would have seen in Jurassic Park,” New Kind creator Peter Hyoguchi said in a phone interview with Wired. “If you know how to find them, there’s a glut of visual effects artists out there.”

Judging from concept art and an eerie teaser clip that’s already become a viral sensation, Hyoguchi may be on to something big. While risk-averse Hollywood studios increasingly rely on blockbuster brands and nine-figure budgets, Hyoguchi is experimenting with a super-cheap production model that costs nearly nothing to implement. Everybody works on spec, and creative talent will be paid for their efforts if the 80-episode adventure turns a profit, according to Hyoguchi, who plans to post the series for free, but make money on merchandising and by charging viewers $1 for a sneak preview of the following week’s episode. He estimates that $1 million in assets have been created since The New Kind project launched last spring, and his Kickstarter campaign, running through Friday, aims to raise $100,000 in cash to finish the first two episodes.

The New Kind pulls in top-tier digital artists who are eager to collaborate simply because they love the genre. According to Hyoguchi, a typical New Kind contributor normally does effects for mainstream popcorn flicks, but would rather be making anime. “Everything’s about DC and Marvel superheroes, but what I’ve discovered is that people my age are not really loving it,” said the 40-year old writer-director. “There’s this entire generation of visual effects artists who grew up on anime and Robotech. Hollywood doesn’t want to make those kinds of movies, so when I present them with this story, they want to be part of it.”

That story, set 30 years in the future on the heels of a global economic meltdown, focuses on teenage protagonists Darvin, from Texas, and Yuka, from Japan. The two traverse urban wastelands dotted with self-illuminated graffitti and populated by robotic street gangs wearing mecha suits. Ruling the chaos is The Dark Order, whose members live in opulence and secretly manipulate countries, industries and religions. Darvin and Yuki have never met, but they’re psychically linked, and if they ever get together their union will lead to an evolutionary upgrade for humanity and spell doom for Dark Order villains.

The project’s visual style pays open homage to the work of anime legend Shinji Aramaki, who designed the original Transformers action figures for Hasbro in 1983, and later pioneered the mecha genre in Japan. The mid-1980s Japanese cartoon Robotech also influences New Kind characters, who routinely clamp themselves into Iron Man-like mecha suits to do battle.

The plot owes much to Japan’s “New Type” sub-genre, in which children or young adults represent the next evolutionary step for the human species. It’s a ‘bot-fueled narrative aesthetic that dangles like catnip for anime nerds and sci-fi geeks, but doesn’t do much for Hollywood execs.

Hyoguchi learned that the hard way over a decade ago. Son of an architect and a mother who animated Hanna-Barbera cartoons, the Marin County native dropped out of high school to make his first film, then lived in his car and squatted in an abandoned house in Berkley, California, for a year before moving to Los Angeles. In L.A., Hyoguchi wrote several unproduced screenplays, including a 1997 Ray Bradbury collaboration called The Waking. After directing festival circuit favorite First, Last and Deposit, he successfully pitched an early version of The New Kind to MTV in 2000, but the deal collapsed when Viacom acquired the music network.

Disheartened, Hyoguchi temporarily quit show biz and moved to Japan. “The New Kind just sat on the shelf until the world changed a couple of years ago,” says Hyoguchi. “I realized I could do it on my own without having to give up rights or anything like that because the software had become so cheap and so many artists knew how to use it.”

Last April, a freshly emboldened Hyoguchi, by now CEO of the Strike.TV webotainment site, pitched matte painting maestro Christopher Evans to volunteer as art director on The New Kind. Evans, who was neighbors with Hyoguchi growing up, is a legend in certain circles – he helped bring to life the worlds of Star Wars, Alice in Wonderland, Captain America and dozens of other movies.

“I thought it was an intriguing idea,” Evans recalled. “I said, ‘Sure I’ll be happy to do some concept sketches of the opening shots.’” Evans adds, “Of course you have to make a living, but people in this business who are good love to work, whether it’s for a famous director like Steven Spielberg or David Fincher, or someone who’s unknown. Peter has a great imagination and that’s what I responded to.”

Getting Evans on board proved to be a turning point for Hyoguchi’s fortune. With concept art to show off, Hyoguchi got Industrial Light & Magic model maker Fon Davis to send an e-mail blast to industry colleagues urging them to jump on the New Kind bandwagon. Soon, a Who’s Who of virtual effects artists were on board: Hugo effects artist M. Alexendar Weller, Ice Age visual effects supervisor Stephen Jenkins, Coraline editor Margaret Andres, The Matrix texture artist Devorah Petty, The Simpsons director David Silverman, Avatar motion capture producer Reuben Langdon and others.

“I’d tell somebody like David Wolgemuth II, who worked as a compositor on the last Harry Potter movie, ‘I don’t have any money, but I will give you a team of 20 people who will do all the heavy lifting,” Hyoguchi recalls. “All you have to do is supervise and make sure they’re hitting the quality.’”

To leverage New Kind‘s traction with the Hollywood VFX community, Hyoguchi posted Evans’ art on a Facebook page, then trawled forums and YouTube pages for talented unknowns. “You tell them, ‘Would you like to be part of this? I’ve got the texture designer who worked on The Matrix,’ and they start jumping up and down,” said Hyoguchi.

The collaboration works like this: volunteer digital artists, working from concept art approved by Hyoguchi, sculpt 3-d digital environments, objects and characters. They upload the files to a central FTP server in San Francisco. Next, riggers access the files and embed each object with motion controllers. Five supervisors sort the contributions into folders, and dole them out to the specific animators, texture artists and lighting techies tasked with different pieces of the project. Those volunteers add motion capture data, texture, color and lighting effects to each element. Compositing teams then blend all the pieces into a video file. In Portland, Oregon, editor Margaret Andres downloads these .mov files and cuts scenes with Final Cut Pro, consulting via Skype with Hyoguchi and sound designer Chris Thomas to craft the final product.

That’s the same kind of production pipeline you’d find at places like Industrial Light & Magic, Digital Domain and other big CGI outfits. But unlike secretive studios, The New Kind Facebook page posts hundreds of elements-in-progress and invites strangers to weigh in. ”It’s like having an open-door discussion at ILM,” laughed Hyoguchi. “Anybody can walk in and say, “I think that’s too blue!”

For Martin Lindgren, a 28-year old freelance graphic artist working on the project from Sweden, New Kind’s web-powered production chain provided all the assets needed to assemble a killer trailer piece. “We created the city behind the wall using matte-paintings,” he said proudly. “Then we added atmospheric layers and created the final look.”

The far-flung artists working from home in their spare time see The New Kind as a way to buff up their demo reels while getting an opportunity to work with high-powered mentors. “I loved just knowing that Chris Evans was involved,” said 25-year old Turkish modeler Kerem Açıkgöz. By day, he churns out 3-D elements for Japanese TV commercials and videogames. By night, Açıkgöz obsesses over fantastical pistols for evil Dark Order cops using off-the-shelf Maya software “I get a lot of Facebook or e-mail messages from people who want me to do projects but they’re very amateur and don’t have much future,” Açıkgöz said in an e-mail interview. “I don’t have time for that. But when Peter saw another mech model I did on my YouTube page and sent me a message about this New Kind project, I really liked the story.”

It remains to be seen if Hyoguchi’s dream translates into commercial success, but at the very least, The New Kind makes its mark as an entirely new kind of filmmaking. Part open source project, part artistic incubator, the project exerts a powerful spell on its participants.

“For the teaser clip I was tasked with creating and animating the cloud drifting in front of the moon,” Lindgren said. “It looked real for a second or two but then the clouds all fell apart and I had no idea how to nail it. I asked Chris what to do. He gave me great advice about adding small whispery edges to the cloud and described how the light from the moon should interact with the cloud. Chris taught me about stuff thats going to be useful my whole career.”
http://www.wired.com/underwire/2012/...-anime-series/

Rush Limbaugh Scandal Proves Contagious for Talk-Radio Advertisers
John Avlon

Ninety-eight major advertisers—including Ford and Geico—will no longer air spots on Premiere Networks’ ‘offensive’ programs. Insiders say the loss will rock right-wing talk radio.

Rush Limbaugh made the right-wing talk-radio industry, and he just might break it.

Because now the fallout from the “slut” slurs against Sandra Fluke is extending to the entire political shock-jock genre.

Premiere Networks, which distributes Limbaugh as well as a host of other right-wing talkers, sent an email out to its affiliates early Friday listing 98 large corporations that have requested their ads appear only on “programs free of content that you know are deemed to be offensive or controversial (for example, Mark Levin, Rush Limbaugh, Tom Leykis, Michael Savage, Glenn Beck, Sean Hannity).”

This is big. According to the radio-industry website Radio-Info.com, which first posted excerpts of the Premiere memo, among the 98 companies that have decided to no longer sponsor these programs are “carmakers (Ford, GM, Toyota), insurance companies (Allstate, Geico, Prudential, State Farm), and restaurants (McDonald’s, Subway).” Together, these talk-radio advertising staples represent millions of dollars in revenue.

Valerie Geller, an industry insider and author of Beyond Powerful Radio, confirmed the trend. “I have talked with several reps who report that they're having conversations with their clients, who are asking not to be associated with specifically polarizing controversial hosts, particularly if those hosts are ‘mean-spirited.’ While most products and services offered on these shows have strong competitors, and enjoy purchasing the exposure that many of these shows and hosts can offer, they do not wish to be ‘tarred’ with the brush of anger, or endure customer anger, or, worse, product boycotts.”

There are already tangible signs that the three dozen national and local advertisers that have pulled their ads from The Rush Limbaugh Show are having a financial impact.

For example, the ads that ran on Limbaugh’s WABC show in New York on Thursday consisted primarily of public-service announcements. Among the few actual advertisements were spots from a Newt Gingrich–associated super PAC, Lear Capital, and the conservative Hillsdale College. Media Matters has been monitoring national trends along the same lines. When PSAs for nonprofit organizations like Big Brothers/Big Sisters and the United Negro College Fund run in place of actual advertisements on radio, it means the show starts losing money for the local station. And make no mistake, money is the only barometer of success the industry ultimately cares about.

Limbaugh helped prove that right-wing talk radio could be big business—promoting the idea that only conscious conservative bias could balance the unconscious liberal bias of what was termed the “mainstream media.” In the fragmented media environment that emerged after the heyday of the “big three” national TV networks, narrow but intense niche audiences provided the most reliable listeners and viewers and the highest comparative ratings. Limbaugh’s outsize talent helped spawn scores of imitators—but none as successful, and some strikingly unsuccessful. Attempts to create left-wing talk-radio corollaries proved no less offensive but far less popular, like the little-lamented Air America.

But this latest controversy comes at a particularly difficult time for right-wing talk radio. They are playing to a (sometimes literally) dying demographic. Rush & Co. rate best among old, white males. They have been steadily losing women and young listeners, who are alienated by the angry, negative, obsessive approach to political conservations. Add to that the fact that women ages 24–55 are the prize advertising demographic, and you have a perfect storm emerging after Limbaugh’s Sandra Fluke comments.

As pressure grows for advertisers and radio stations to drop Rush & Co., there will be much talk about the dangers of censorship, with allies talking about a left-wing “jihad” against Rush (language his brother David Limbaugh has already used).

But the irony is that the same market forces that right-wing talk-radio hosts champion are helping to seal their fate. Advertisers are abandoning the shows because they no longer want to be associated with the hyperpartisan—and occasionally hateful—rhetoric. They are finally drawing a line because consumers are starting to take a stand.

An additional irony: just as the technology-driven fragmentation of the landscape allowed partisan media to proliferate, a new technological development is providing the tools to take it down. Social media is making it possible to create a grassroots movement very quickly, voicing grievances very quickly and getting heard at the top of corporate headquarters.

“In the past, a letter, petition, or phone campaign took a few days to put together and longer to execute,” says Valerie Geller. “But now customers[listeners] can instantly rally using Facebook, Twitter, and instant messaging to make their displeasure with a client, product, or service known immediately. These movements can happen fast.”

It is true that these efforts can be “astroturfed”—artificially created by activists with a specific ax to grind—but if they genuinely catch on, it is because they tap into broad sentiment.

Will this bombshell announcement by Premiere—and the decreased revenue from right-wing talk radio—provoke a change in the culture of hyperpartisan talk? It’s certainly possible—after all, they will adjust their approach to follow the money. There is no deeper political principle at stake.

It’s been interesting to see Limbaugh’s allies try to defend him indirectly over the past few days, pointing out (rightly) that the left does not cry foul when liberal political entertainers use derogatory terms about conservative women in politics.

But the left-wing talkers being condemned are actually following a model that Rush & Co created. Complaining about the escalation on the other side while ignoring the ugliness from your ideological allies is the larger problem, and it goes beyond hypocrisy. The only way we are going to stop this cycle of incitement is if we try to apply equal standards to both sides of the aisle. It’s not a complicated concept—it’s nothing more than the golden rule we learned in nursery school: treat others as you would like to be treated. And as political commentators like the radio pioneer Will Rogers once taught us, we can make serious points using satire, humor that is not designed to divide and destroy.

When big money starts shifting, it is a sign of a deeper tide that is difficult to undo, even if you are an industry icon like Rush Limbaugh. It is a sign that the times are changing. Let’s hope that what emerges is an evolution of the industry, away from stupid, predictable, and sometimes hateful hyperpartisanship and toward something a little smarter and more civil.
http://www.thedailybeast.com/article...vertisers.html

Peter Bergman, Satirist With Firesign, Dies at 72
Paul Vitello

Peter Bergman, a founding member of the surrealist comedy troupe Firesign Theater, whose albums became cult favorites among college students in the late 1960s and ’70s for a brand of sly, multilayered satire so dense it seemed riddled with non sequiturs until the second, third or 30th listening, died on Friday in Santa Monica, Calif. He was 72.

The cause was complications of leukemia, said Jeff Abraham, a spokesman for the group.

Mr. Bergman hosted an all-night radio call-in show on KPFK in Los Angeles beginning in 1966, “Radio Free Oz,” which served as the testing ground for the high-spirited Firesign sensibility. Phil Austin and David Ossman, two other founders of the four-man group, were the producer and director of the show; the fourth founder, Phil Proctor, was a frequent guest.

“We started out as four friends, up all night, taking calls from people on bad acid trips and having the time of our lives,” Mr. Austin said in a phone interview Friday. “And that’s what we always were: four friends talking.”

Mr. Bergman and his friends recorded their first album, “Waiting for the Electrician or Someone Like Him,” in 1968, followed the next year by “How Can You Be in Two Places at Once When You’re Not Anywhere At All?”

By 1970, their mordant humor and their mastery of stereophonic recording techniques had made them to their generation of 20-somethings what Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert are to today’s (if Mr. Colbert and Mr. Stewart had a weakness for literary wordplay, psychedelic references and jokes about the Counter-Reformation).

Their records employed sound effects in ways considered pioneering in audio comedy at the time. More generally, they were considered important forerunners of comedy shows like “Saturday Night Live.”

Ed Ward, writing in The New York Times in 1972, described the third Firesign album, “Don’t Crush That Dwarf, Hand Me the Pliers,” as “a mind-boggling sound drama” and a “work of almost Joycean complexity.”

“It’s almost impossible to summarize any Firesign album,” Mr. Ward wrote, because most of their albums were so filled with “intricate wordplay, stunning engineering and use of sound effects, breakneck pacing and, of course, a terribly complex story line.”
When the Library of Congress placed “Don’t Crush That Dwarf” in its National Recording Registry in 2005, The Los Angeles Times described Firesign Theater as “the Beatles of comedy.”

Mr. Bergman told people the ensemble’s albums, unlike most comedy records, were never made to be listened to just once or twice. “He said our records were made to be heard about 80 times,” Mr. Austin said.

While the ensemble continued making albums for three decades, Mr. Bergman also wrote and produced several one-man shows, including “Help Me Out of This Head,” a 1986 monologue-memoir that drew on his childhood in Cleveland. He also wrote interactive games, including a CD-ROM parody of the popular adventure video game MIST.

Mr. Bergman was born on Nov. 29, 1939, in Cleveland, one of two children of Oscar and Rita Bergman. His parents hosted a radio show in Cleveland when he was growing up, “Breakfast With the Bergmans.” His father also worked as a reporter for The Plain Dealer.

Mr. Bergman graduated from Yale and taught economics there as a Carnegie Fellow. He later attended the Yale School of Drama as a Eugene O’Neill playwriting fellow. He moved to Los Angeles in the early 1960s to pursue a writing career.

He is survived by a daughter, Lily Oscar Bergman, and his sister, Wendy Kleckner.

Mr. Bergman got a taste of radio work when he was in high school, according to a biography on Firesign Theater’s official Web site. But he lost his job as an announcer on the school radio system, it said, “after his unauthorized announcement that the Chinese Communists had taken over the school and that a ‘mandatory voluntary assembly was to take place immediately.’ Russell Rupp, the school principal, promptly relieved Peter of his announcing gig. Rupp was the inspiration for the Principal Poop character on ‘Don’t Crush That Dwarf.’ ”
https://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/10/a...ies-at-72.html

The Go-Nowhere Generation
Todd G. Buchholz and Victoria Buchholz

AMERICANS are supposed to be mobile and even pushy. Saul Bellow’s Augie March declares, “I am an American ... first to knock, first admitted.” In “The Grapes of Wrath,” young Tom Joad loads up his jalopy with pork snacks and relatives, and the family flees the Oklahoma dust bowl for sun-kissed California. Along the way, Granma dies, but the Joads keep going.

But sometime in the past 30 years, someone has hit the brakes and Americans — particularly young Americans — have become risk-averse and sedentary. The timing is terrible. With an 8.3 percent unemployment rate and a foreclosure rate that would grab the attention of the Joads, young Americans are less inclined to pack up and move to sunnier economic climes.

The likelihood of 20-somethings moving to another state has dropped well over 40 percent since the 1980s, according to calculations based on Census Bureau data. The stuck-at-home mentality hits college-educated Americans as well as those without high school degrees. According to the Pew Research Center, the proportion of young adults living at home nearly doubled between 1980 and 2008, before the Great Recession hit. Even bicycle sales are lower now than they were in 2000. Today’s generation is literally going nowhere. This is the Occupy movement we should really be worried about.

For about $200, young Nevadans who face a statewide 13 percent jobless rate can hop a Greyhound bus to North Dakota, where they’ll find a welcome sign and a 3.3 percent rate. Why are young people not crossing borders? “This generation is going through an economic reset,” said John Della Volpe, who directs polling at Harvard’s Institute of Politics, which surveys thousands of young people each year. He reports that young people want to stay more connected with their hometowns: “I spoke with a kid from Columbus, Ohio, who dreamed of being a high school teacher. When he found out he’d have to move to Arizona or the Sunbelt, he took a job in a Columbus tire factory.”

In the most startling behavioral change among young people since James Dean and Marlon Brando started mumbling, an increasing number of teenagers are not even bothering to get their driver’s licenses. Back in the early 1980s, 80 percent of 18-year-olds proudly strutted out of the D.M.V. with newly minted licenses, according to a study by researchers at the University of Michigan’s Transportation Research Institute. By 2008 — even before the Great Recession — that number had dropped to 65 percent. Though it’s easy to blame the high cost of cars or gasoline, Comerica Bank’s Automobile Affordability Index shows that it takes fewer weeks of work income to buy a car today than in the early 1980s, and inflation-adjusted gasoline prices didn’t get out of line until a few years ago.

Perhaps young people are too happy at home checking Facebook. In a study of 15 countries, Michael Sivak, a professor at the University of Michigan’s Transportation Research Institute (who also contributed to the D.M.V. research), found that when young people spent more time on the Internet, they delayed getting their driver’s licenses. “More time on Facebook probably means less time on the road,” he said. That may mean safer roads, but it also means a bumpier, less vibrant economy.

All this turns American history on its head. We are a nation of movers and shakers. Pilgrims leapt onto leaky boats to get here. The Lost Generation chased Hemingway and Gertrude Stein to Paris. The Greatest Generation signed up to ship out to fight Nazis in Germany or the Japanese imperial forces in the Pacific. The ’60s kids joined the Peace Corps.

But Generation Y has become Generation Why Bother. The Great Recession and the still weak economy make the trend toward risk aversion worse. Children raised during recessions ultimately take fewer risks with their investments and their jobs. Even when the recession passes, they don’t strive as hard to find new jobs, and they hang on to lousy jobs longer. Research by the economist Lisa B. Kahn of the Yale School of Management shows that those who graduated from college during a poor economy experienced a relative wage loss even 15 years after entering the work force.

Perhaps more worrisome, kids who grow up during tough economic times also tend to believe that luck plays a bigger role in their success, which breeds complacency. “Young people raised during recessions end up less entrepreneurial and less willing to leave home because they believe that luck counts more than effort,” said Paola Giuliano, an economist at U.C.L.A.’s Anderson School of Management. A bad economy can boost a person’s weighting of luck by 20 percent, Ms. Giuliano found.

Notice how popular the word “random” has become among young people. A Disney TV show called “So Random!” has ranked first in the ratings among tweens. The word has morphed from a precise statistical term to an all-purpose phrase that stresses the illogic and coincidence of life. Unfortunately, societies that emphasize luck over logic are not likely to thrive.

In the mid-’70s, back when every high school kid longed for his driver’s license and a chance to hit the road and find freedom, Bruce Springsteen wrote his brilliant, exciting album “Born to Run.” A generation later, as kids began to hunker down, Mr. Springsteen wrote his depressing, dead-end dirge, “The Ghost of Tom Joad.” We need to reward and encourage forward movement, not slouching. That may sound harsh, but do we really want to turn into a country where young Americans can’t even recognize the courage of Tom Joad?

Maybe it’s time to yank out the power cords, pump up the flat bicycle tires or even reopen Route 66 — whatever it takes to get our kids back on the road.
https://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/11/o...eneration.html

12-Year-Old Sues School District Over Facebook Profile Search

A Minnesota school district is sued by a 12-year-old girl who claims that the school pressured her to give up her Facebook password. But, wait, the minimum age on Facebook is 13.
Chris Matyszczyk

It seems that everyone in authority wants to get into your virtual underbelly.

Employers in Maryland seem to think they have the right to search potential hires' Facebook profiles.

And now the Minnewaska school district in Minnesota stands accused of coercing a 12-year-old girl into giving up her Facebook and e-mail passwords, so that a school could spy with their little eye.

CNN reports that she was also twice punished for things she wrote on Facebook.

A lawsuit on behalf of the girl--brought in conjunction with the ACLU--declares that her First and Fourth Amendment rights were violated.

The girl--referred to in the court papers as R.S.--apparently felt that her hall monitor was mean to her and therefore described her as "mean" on her Facebook profile. She claims that no school equipment or property were used to make her postings.

It is unclear how a screenshot of her postings got back to the school principal, but it seems they did. Even one in which she wanted to know--using strong language--who had betrayed her.

It is alleged that the password-demanding incident occurred when the parents of another student objected to a Facebook post in which sex was discussed.

What seems even more pulsating is that the court papers state that she was called to a meeting at which a school counselor and the deputy sheriff were present.

It was at this meeting that she was allegedly "interrogated" and surrendered the passwords to her Facebook and e-mail accounts.

And, no, her mother had allegedly not consented to the search.

The school district told CNN: "The district is confident that once all facts come to light, the district's conduct will be found to be reasonable and appropriate."

There are always more facts than appear in court papers. Who knows what all the facts ultimately were, for example, when a Philadelphia school district was sued by the parents of a 15-year-old for allegedly viewing him at home via remote Webcam on his school-issued laptop?

What did happen is that a $610,000 settlement was reached.

Yet one fact might fascinate some in this peculiar conundrum in which--if the accusations prove true--the school district behaved uncomfortably: You have to be 13 to have a Facebook account.

Facebook's rules are very clear on this. Facebook promises to delete the accounts of all under-13s. (There does seem to be a bizarre exception for babies.)

Moreover, if a child is underage, it's not as if Facebook will simply give his or her parents the child's password and/or posts if they ask for them.

Facebook's Help Center for parents states: "Applicable laws may give parents the right to access personal information their under-13-year-old child has provided before Facebook follows its policy of promptly deleting such accounts."

In such a case, parents have to offer notarized proof that they are the child's legal guardians. In one case, a parent has sued Facebook for allowing a 12-year-old to have an account on which she allegedly posted naughty pictures.

The ACLU declared in a statement: "Students do not shed their First Amendment rights at the school house gate. The Supreme Court ruled on that in the 1970s, yet schools like Minnewaska seem to have no regard for the standard."

Will the school publicly reveal its own version of the facts? Will its claim it was acting "in loco parentis"? Or will its lawyers already be privately mulling the concept of a settlement?
http://news.cnet.com/8301-17852_3-57...rofile-search/

Criminal Charges Dropped in Canada Customs Manga Case

The Comic Book Legal Defense Fund and the Comic Legends Legal Defense Fund are pleased to announce that the Crown has withdrawn all criminal charges in R. v. Matheson, the case previously described as the “Brandon X case,” which involved a comic book reader who faced criminal charges in Canada relating to comic books on his computer. The defendant, Ryan Matheson, a 27-year-old comic book reader, amateur artist, and computer programmer has been cleared of any criminal wrongdoing.

The total legal costs of this case exceeded $75,000. After taking the case last summer, the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund contributed $20,000 to the defense, and the Comic Legends Legal Defense Fund contributed $11,000. The CBLDF also participated in shaping the defense, including recruiting expert testimony for the trial. The organization is currently seeking funds to help pay off the $45,000 debt Matheson incurred as a result of his case, and to create new tools to prevent future cases. To make a contribution to these important efforts, please visit www.cbldf.org.

After a search of his laptop in 2010, Matheson was wrongfully accused of possessing and importing child pornography because of constitutionally protected comic book images on that device. He was subjected to abusive treatment by police and a disruption in his life that included a two-year period during which he was unable to use computers or the internet outside of his job, severely limiting opportunities to advance his employment and education. Mr. Matheson has agreed to plead to a non-criminal code regulatory offense under the Customs Act of Canada. As a result of the agreement, Matheson will not stand trial. The defense of this case was waged by Michael Edelson and Solomon Friedman of Edelson Clifford D’Angelo LLP. The full Notices of Application detailing Edelson’s defense and outlining the outrageous and unlawful treatment Matheson endured are available here: Charter Notice and Jan 15 12 – Matheson Charter Notice.

Speaking out for the first time, Matheson says, “I’m glad to finally put this awful ordeal behind me. Ever since the beginning I knew I had committed no crime, so I was never willing to accept a plea to any criminal charge. The entire legal process is very traumatizing, and the overzealous bail conditions imposed on me were very difficult to endure. Although my defense was extremely strong, all trials are inherently risky and I value my life too much to risk a potential minimum mandatory sentence. I am very grateful for the spectacular work Michael Edelson and his team put into my case, and to all the generous people who supported me and contributed to my defense. I was able to stand up to the very last day and fight for something I believe in.” Matheson has also written a personal statement about his case that appears on www.cbldf.org.

Edelson, who managed the defense says, “The client, and my firm, are grateful to the members of CBLDF and CLLDF for their invaluable financial and moral support with respect to this case, which was of such critical importance to the client, given the very positive outcome we were able to achieve in an area of the law where, here in Canada, the Crown very rarely exercises its discretion to withdraw charges of this nature. The client will have no criminal record, his name will not appear on the Sex Offender Registry in Canada, or elsewhere.”

The Notices of Application available on CBLDF.org detail for the first time the extreme mistreatment Mr. Matheson suffered at the hands of Canadian authorities. He had his right to counsel and Vienna Convention consular rights violated when he was detained without being properly informed of the reason for detention. He was not granted access to counsel, or to the American Embassy. The Application asserts that Customs officers acted as agents for police and conducted an illegal search of his property. Matheson was also the subject of cruel and unusual punishment, including being denied food and blankets. Matheson was even told by police transporting him to prison that “if you get raped in here, it doesn’t count!” The defense detailed these and other abuses and outlined that the comics at issue are constitutionally protected in the United States, the client’s home country. The comics possess artistic merit and are widely available in Canada, Japan and the United States.

Although the outcome of this case is ultimately positive, comic book readers should be aware that there are still dangers for traveling with comics in Canada. Edelson says, “Aside from the very positive outcome to this story, your members should be cautioned concerning the search and seizure regime here in Canada exercised by the Canadian Border Services Agency. Moreover, they should also be aware that although anime and manga is legal in many areas of the United States and Japan, etc., to possess and utilize, the Canadian authorities may take a different view if this material is found on any laptops or mobile devices when you enter the country. Many of the issues that arise in similar circumstances are thoroughly addressed in our comprehensive Notice of Application.”

Edelson’s firm has created a new advisory on traveling with comics and manga in Canada that is available here: CBLDF – Legal Memorandum – Canada Issues. The CBLDF’s previous advisory, which addresses the issues of traveling with comics through international borders is located here: CBLDF Advisory – Comic Book Art at Intl Borders

“This is a good outcome, and we’re glad we were able to contribute to it,” CBLDF Executive Director Charles Brownstein said. “While one always wants to be able to change the rules in court, those opportunities are rare, and in this case, the defense’s extraordinary effort in persuading the Crown to drop criminal charges is a very positive conclusion. We are now focusing our efforts on raising money to pay off Ryan’s legal debt. We are also working with Ryan and experts in the manga community to create educational tools to help prevent others from needing to go through anything like this themselves. We hope that people will donate to the CBLDF to help us achieve these goals quickly.”

Comic Legends Legal Defense Fund board member Leonard Wong said, “We’re glad this is over for Ryan and want to thank him and his attorneys for their willingness to stand up to our government in this matter. We’re also pleased that the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund were able to assist the defense financially and substantively, and are creating new tools to help prevent these kinds of cases in the future. Unfortunately, this could easily happen again, so we continue our stride to establish the CLLDF as a more active ongoing concern. Our immediate focus will now shift towards raising funds and preparing for any future attacks on comics in Canada.”

Please visit www.cbldf.org today to make a donation in support of paying off Ryan’s legal defense and creating new tools to combat abuses like this from happening in the future. You can also support this effort by becoming a member of the CBLDF. Every contribution helps CBLDF get Ryan back on his feet, and furthers our efforts to protect the First Amendment rights of comics and manga.
http://cbldf.org/homepage/criminal-c...ms-manga-case/

‘Vigorous’ Santorum Crackdown May Catch Internet Porn Viewers with Pants Down
Steven Nelson

Internet pornography could conceivably become a thing of the past if Rick Santorum is elected president.

The unapologetic social conservative, currently in second place behind Mitt Romney for the GOP nomination, has promised to crack down on the distribution of pornography if elected.

Santorum says in a statement posted to his website, “The Obama Administration has turned a blind eye to those who wish to preserve our culture from the scourge of pornography and has refused to enforce obscenity laws.”

If elected, he promises to “vigorously” enforce laws that “prohibit distribution of hardcore (obscene) pornography on the Internet, on cable/satellite TV, on hotel/motel TV, in retail shops and through the mail or by common carrier.”

Although the idea of Santorum vanquishing Internet pornography may seem far-fetched, a serious effort to combat online smut might actually be successful, UCLA law professor Eugene Volokh told The Daily Caller.

“If the government wanted to aggressively move against Internet pornography, it could do so,” explained Volokh. “Here’s the deal: In most parts of the country, a lot of pornography on the Internet would plausibly be seen as obscene.” (RELATED: Full coverage of the Santorum campaign)

There are a few approaches that Santorum could pursue in an attempt to eradicate Internet pornography. “It wouldn’t be that difficult to close down a lot of the relatively visible websites that are used for the distribution of pornography, if they’re in the United States,” said Volokh.

Santorum’s administration could take American-based porn distributors to court for violating obscenity laws, said Volokh, and have them shuttered. But that would leave foreign-based sites untouched.

To black out foreign sites, Santorum would likely need legislative action requiring Internet service providers to use “a mandatory filter set up by the government or by the service providers,” said Volokh.

But the government could also prosecute individual citizens who view porn, and already has the legal authority to do it.

“Although the Supreme Court says private possession is constitutionally protected, it has said that private receipt of [pornography] is not protected,” noted Volokh. “You can’t prosecute them all … but you can find certain types of pornography that are sufficiently unpopular” for easy convictions, he explained.

Most contemporary prosecutions for the receipt of pornography are because the government cannot prove its suspicion that the accused has committed more serious crimes, said Volokh. He speculated that there aren’t more prosecutions because “that prosecutor isn’t going to win a lot of votes in the next election.”

The government would probably need to “find some extra money in the budget for additional porn prosecutors,” joked Volokh. He also cautioned that there would be significant outcry because “sometimes it’s viewed by husbands and wives who watch it to spice up their sex lives.”

Jonathan Turley, a law professor at George Washington University, noted that “What constitutes obscenity remains maddeningly vague,” but added that he’s not entirely convinced Santorum would be successful in an attempt to snuf Internet porn.

“What Santorum would consider obscene is obviously far greater than many Americans,” he said. “Sexual films of consenting adults that are watched by consenting adults are generally presumed to be pornographic but not obscene.”

Turley is less sure than Volokh that judges and juries would go along with a crackdown. “Federal courts,” he explained, “are reluctant to define movies or pictures as obscene based on such different opinions in society. For that reason, Santorum’s view of the standard falls well outside of the accepted view of the case law,” he said.

“Santorum’s suggestion of a crackdown also ignores the fact that this material is widely available on the Internet with thousands of foreign sites,” Turley added. “An attempt to prosecute standard pornography would result in bizarrely uneven enforcement.”
In a primary season laser-focused on talk of “job creation,” said Turley, Santorum’s anti-porn proposal would “attempt to criminalize an industry that is supported by millions of Americans.”

“Practically speaking, nobody is enforcing this,” said Volokh, explaining that in the 1990s, Internet porn wasn’t a priority for the Clinton administration, and that by the time the Bush administration took the helm in the early 2000s, “it seemed unlikely that anyone could win the war on porn online.”

But that won’t deter Santorum. He promised in his anti-porn statement to appoint an attorney general who would carry out his wishes.

A spokeswoman for the Santorum campaign didn’t respond to a request for comment about the mechanics of his promised crackdown.
http://dailycaller.com/2012/03/14/vi...th-pants-down/

Sarkozy Wants Internet Giants to Pay Tax in France
AFP

French President Nicolas Sarkozy said on Wednesday he wants "Internet giants" to pay tax in France, shortly before he was due to meet the founder of the micro-blogging site Twitter.

"It is unacceptable that they have a turnover of several billion euros in France without paying tax," he told Le Point magazine, adding that the French government should consider taxing online advertising revenues.

French lawmakers last year rejected plans for a proposed tax on online advertising revenues, fearing the project would hurt small local companies more than global Internet giants like Google, Facebook or Twitter.

A spokesman for Google hit back, arguing that "the Internet offers a wonderful opportunity to generate growth and jobs in France".

Google cited a report from management consultant McKinsey that said Internet companies contributed 60 billion euros ($78 billion) to the French economy in 2009, or 3.2 percent of output, and could create 450,000 jobs by 2015.

"This positive contribution would have a better chance of coming about in an environment that is supportive of the web in France and of investment in the sector. Public policy should support this," the spokesman argued.

The president's comment came as Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey was in Paris to meet with French presidential candidates, including Sarkozy.

Sarkozy urged Twitter to follow other Internet companies and base their European operations in France, the president's office said.

"Jack Dorsey responded positively to this invitation," it added.

Sarkozy argued that France should not "only be a consumer of digital products, but a creator of digital technology and innovative methods" and pointed out that both Google and Microsoft had recently opened offices in France.

Earlier Dorsey had met the front-running Socialist candidate Francois Hollande and with centrist Francois Bayrou, and he met Sarkozy later in the day.

Hollande's campaign team said the candidate and Dorsey discussed the development of innovative companies in France and the Internet sector.
http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp...4m9JKNn02TsppA

Newspaper Advertising was Down 7.3 Percent, Almost $2 Billion, in 2011
Rick Edmonds

The Newspaper Association of America has posted its final tally of newspaper advertising statistics for 2011, and as expected, it is not a pretty picture.

Total advertising revenue was down 7.3 percent, a percentage point worse than in 2010. Print advertising was off 9.2 percent year-to-year.

Digital advertising revenue, after a comparatively weak fourth quarter, grew 6.8 percent for the year.

So the industry posted total ad revenues of $23.9 billion, a decline of $1.9 billion from the previous year. NAA does not have current numbers on circulation revenue and is only starting to assemble data on revenue from such activities as contract printing, events, or social media assistance to businesses.

Figure that those add roughly $10 billion, making newspapers a $34 billion industry. Google alone, by contrast, recorded revenues of $37.9 billion for 2011.

In updating numbers released previously for the first three quarters, NAA identified two shifts occurring late in the year.

Digital grew by only 3.1 percent in the fourth quarter, less than half the rate of growth in any of the earlier quarters.

Retail, by contrast, showed what the industry likes to call “sequential improvement.” It was still down — by 6 percent — in the fourth quarter compared to the same period in 2010, but that was a smaller rate of decline than for the earlier part of the year.

The results are consistent with a number of public company reports that showed fourth quarter digital ad revenue growth slowing, or, in some cases, falling year-to-year.

What’s the hitch in digital? Randy Bennett, senior vice president for business development at NAA, said in a phone interview that one factor could be that the 2010 fourth quarter was extremely strong for digital ad growth (roughly 14 percent year-to-year), so the comparison was tough.

Chris Hendricks, digital chief at McClatchy, said he was unaware of a particular problem. But because of a strong holiday season, especially in November, sales forces may have shifted their focus back to retail business in print.

The numbers are consistent with a recent Project for Excellence in Journalism study that found slow culture change at newspapers and digital ad revenue growth coming nowhere close to replacing print declines. If anything, the problem worsened in 2011 from the 7 to 1 ratio PEJ found from companies it surveyed, drawing mainly on 2010 results.

Bennett said that NAA is aware that its traditional data gathering needs to be revised to capture digital circulation revenue as newspapers phase in digital pay wall systems. Also there is no attempt yet to total revenue from other ventures that some companies have developed quickly over the last two years.

NAA plans to survey its members in coming months, Bennett said, to assess the impact of these new revenue sources on the financial health of the industry.
http://www.poynter.org/latest-news/b...llion-in-2011/

A Code of Conduct for Content Aggregators
David Carr

As words and articles became digitized over the last 15 years, they began to float, there for the plucking and replication elsewhere. Words like “curation” and “aggregation” became the language of the realm, sometimes used as substitutes for describing the actual creation of content. What had once been a craft was rapidly becoming a task.

Traditional media organizations watched as others kidnapped their work, not only taking away content but, more and more, taking the audiences with them. Practitioners of the new order heard the complaints and suggested that mainstream media needed to quit whining and start competing in a changed world, where what’s yours may not be yours anymore if others find a better way to package it.

So where is the line between promoting the good work of others and simply lifting it? Naughty aggregation is analogous to pornography: You know it when you see it.

As custody of content becomes more tenuous, there’s a risk that we may end up passing around and putting topspin on fewer and fewer original works. This has created a growing sense of unease among both digital immigrants and natives that the end of “ownership” could eventually diminish the Web’s value.

Two approaches to giving credit where credit belongs were announced at the South by Southwest Interactive festival here in Austin.

In one instance, an ad hoc group is using a kind of trade association approach to articulate common standards. In the second, someone who makes a living by mining the Web is deploying symbols to create a common shorthand for attribution.

Last July, Simon Dumenco wrote a column for Advertising Age noting that the death of Steve Jobs was competing for digital attention with the salacious story of Anthony Weiner, the disgraced former congressman.

Given that the piece was about what was trending on Twitter at that very moment, his column was immediately picked up by traffic-seekers like The Huffington Post and Techmeme. The Faustian bargain of the digital news ecosystem suggests that people get to pick your pocket a bit and then send back traffic in return. But Mr. Dumenco noticed that The Huffington Post, a huge site with many readers, returned very little traffic, while Techmeme, a much smaller site, kicked up plenty.

He went on something of a rant about it, writing that The Huffington Post’s overly aggressive approach to aggregation at the time — in which content is rewritten, links are buried, and very little is added — yielded all of 57 page views for the original item.

The Huffington Post suspended the writer involved and apologized to Mr. Dumenco. He responded by saying that the site was “singling out — indeed, scapegoating — a young writer for engaging in a style of aggregation long practiced, condoned and encouraged by Huffington Post editorial management.”

After getting an in-box full of examples from other writers who felt similarly aggrieved, Mr. Dumenco decided to pull out the big guns: He has formed a committee aiming to establish standards for aggregation. Buckle up, here comes the Council on Ethical Blogging and Aggregation.

O.K., you can almost hear the digerati seizing with laughter at the idea that a pew full of journalism church ladies is somehow going to do battle with the entire Internet. But Mr. Dumenco compares his effort to the editorial rules promulgated by the American Society of Magazine Editors, which have come to shape how magazines distinguish editorial from advertising. It’s an imperfect system with a fair number of outliers, but over time the magazine group devised guidelines that had significant influence and at least set standards that people could argue about.

An august list of names has signed on to the effort: David Granger, the editor in chief of Esquire; James Bennet, editor in chief of The Atlantic; and Adam Moss of New York magazine. Of course, all three oversee robust Web sites that do a fair amount of aggregating themselves.

The committee includes digital media natives like Elizabeth Spiers, editor in chief of The New York Observer; Mark Armstrong, a founder of Longreads.com; and Jacob Weisberg, chairman and editor in chief of Slate. All of them believe there is value in looking at what might be called best practices when it comes to linking, summarizing and aggregating.

“This is not an anti-aggregation group, we are pro-aggregation,” Mr. Dumenco told me. “We want some simple, common-sense rules. There should be some kind of variation of the Golden Rule here, which is that you should aggregate others as you would wish to be aggregated yourself.”

Kerry Lauerman is the editor in chief of Salon, a site that has been around since the dawn of the consumer Web and has been on both sides of the aggregation equation. He says adopting rules is more than just a way of protecting legacy franchises.

“Increasingly, when people go online, it’s like stepping through the looking glass,” he said. “Whether you follow a link from Twitter, an e-mail, or Pinterest, you wind up on a site where you really don’t know where you are. It would be nice if there was a way of signaling what the standards are and how trustworthy the information is.”

Mr. Dumenco, who presented some of his ideas at a panel discussion this weekend in Austin, said the committee would grind its way to a set of standards and promulgate them over time. The group will have neither carrot nor stick, but could end up with a kind of Good Housekeeping seal, a signal that the consumer has landed on a site that adheres to a common industrial standard.

“We are not some tight little group of scolds,” he said. “This is a conversation that many people from all parts of the industry want to have, and this seemed like a good place to start.”

On another panel in Austin, one in which I participated, Maria Popova, better known as brainpicker on Twitter, suggested that the failure to give credit was growing endemic. On Friday, she and her collaborator, the designer Kelli Anderson, announced the Curator’s Code, a site that offers a way of expressing where things come from.

The Curator’s Code will use a symbol resembling a sideways S to express that a piece of content came directly from another source, and a different figure — a curved arrowlike symbol — to signal what is commonly known as a “hat tip,” or nod to a source that inspired a further thought. The Curator’s Code supplies the appropriate symbol and then the blogger or writer simply puts in a hyperlink behind it as they normally would.

Ms. Popova, who spends hours a day scrounging the Web for remarkable artifacts, has noticed that many idiosyncratic discoveries suddenly become ubiquitous once unearthed. And the source of that little gem, or the credit for someone else who dug it up, often disappears when it is reposted.

“Discovery of information is a form of intellectual labor,” she said. “When we don’t honor discovery, we are robbing somebody’s time and labor. The Curator’s Code is an attempt to solve some of that.”

By creating a language signified by two so-called Unicode characters, they hope to make the business of attribution more standardized and routine.

“What makes the Internet magical to me is that it is a place of radical discovery,” said Ms. Popova, who describes herself as a “curator of interestingness” on the Web. “You can click your way through a chain of attributes and links and find amazing things.”

She is careful about attribution and thinks others should be mindful as well. The Curator’s Code is a shorthand tool to signify that on the Web, most things come from somewhere else.

Neither of these initiatives seems intended to serve as a posse to bring justice and order to the digital Wild West. In a sense, they are an effort to bring back the promise of the consumer Internet, creating visible connections between seemingly disparate pieces of information. It’s called the Web for a reason, after all.
https://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/12/b...on-online.html

We Don’t Need No Stinking Seal of Approval from the Blog Police
Hamilton Nolan

David Carr's column today is partly about a plan masterminded by Ad Age columnist Simon Dumenco to create, quote, a "Council on Ethical Blogging and Aggregation," which will ostensibly serve as a sort of trade group or (nonbinding) credentialing organization for best practices in the blogosphere. Well-intended, and a bad idea.

Who has signed on to be on this "Council" of elders who shall instruct bloggers on proper blogging? The editors of several websites, and—most importantly—famous bloggers like... New York Magazine editor Adam Moss, Esquire editor David Granger and Atlantic editor James Bennett.

The day that I ask the editor of Esquire for a seal of approval on my blogging is the day that I sign a fabulously lucrative contract to write for Esquire.com. And you, Adam Moss—no. No.

Look, what Dumenco is trying to do is simply to codify "how to blog without being a huge prick" guidelines that all decent online writers already know. Give credit to sources of information, link back, don't blockquote to a ridiculous degree (you guys at The Atlantic might want to double check on that one), etc. Everyone who cares about not being a prick already does these things, or tries to do them, and, if notified of not doing them, should correct them. The people who don't do these things are either jerks or just run worthless content recycling mills, like The Huffington Post, which is the place that pissed off Dumenco in the first place. (No disrespect to the actual writers buried deep inside the HuffPo mothership.) In other words, for the writers who care about this issue, such a group is unnecessary; for writers who don't care about this issue, such a group will have no influence. Therefore such a group is worthless.

And there is a more fundamental problem. This sort of top-down, expert-heavy, credential-credulous media structure is exactly what blogging has so brilliantly been destroying for more than a decade. The internet is where the upstarts are on equal footing with the experts. There are few barriers to publication. And there is no need to seek the approval of a committee of elite writers and editors in order to be respected. If there are grievances over these types of editorial blogging issues, there is already a system in place to deal with them: someone writes a pissy diatribe, someone else writes a pissy diatribe in response, and everyone argues over who's right and who's wrong. Thesis, antithesis, synthesis: This is what makes the media blogosphere go. Ceding this discussion to some committee of self-ordained experts would be a bore. Come on, already-famous editors. You guys used to be... well, if not cool exactly, at least, you know, with it.

Many of the people who now want to sit on the Blog Judgment Committee started out as upstarts themselves. So they are self-aware enough to know, deep down, that this sort of endeavor is doomed to fail, simply because it presumes that the upstarts of tomorrow will fall in line. That's not how this blog thing works. There are massive media corporations that make billions of dollars. Then there are newspapers to police them. Then there is Gawker, to mock the newspapers. Then there are the blogs that mock Gawker. Then there are the Tumblrs that mock the bloggers. And so on and so on. Like the human body, it cleans itself of waste. It's a wondrous self-policing system.

It's bloggers all the way down. No room for any committees.
http://gawker.com/5892453

Germany Trying to Cut Publishers In on Web Profits
Eric Pfanner

In a move aimed at helping newspapers generate new revenue from struggling online operations, the German government intends to require search engines and other Internet companies to pay publishers whose content they highlight.

The German governing coalition, led by Chancellor Angela Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union, said last week that it planned to introduce legislation to create a new kind of copyright for online publishers. Under the proposal, Internet aggregators and search engines would have to pay the publishers if they wanted to display all or parts of their articles — even small snippets like those that are shown in search links.

The proposal was cheered by German publishers, who complain that Internet companies like Google have profited hugely from their content, while generating only scraps of digital revenue.

“In the digital age, such a right is essential to protect the joint efforts of journalists and publishers,” the Federation of German Newspaper Publishers said, adding that it was “an essential measure for the maintenance of an independent, privately financed news media.”

But the announcement set off howls of protest from Internet companies and bloggers, who said the proposal could threaten free speech and stunt the development of the digital economy in Germany.

“I fear that such a regulation would slow down the development of the Internet because it creates additional costs and leads to inefficiencies,” Eric E. Schmidt, executive chairman of Google, told the news agency DPA during a visit to the CeBIT technology fair in Hanover, Germany, last week. “The Internet is an important component of Germany’s economic success. That’s why one has to be careful with such changes.”

Mr. Schmidt did not give specific examples, but analysts have suggested that some news aggregators might simply shut down their operations in Germany, rather than pay the fees.

The proposal, in an announcement of the coalition’s legislative agenda, follows intense lobbying by publishers, after the idea was initially put forward several years ago.

The plan authorizes ministers to draft a bill, which is expected to go to the Bundestag, the lower house of Parliament, this summer.

The coalition document says Internet companies, including search engines and news aggregators, would have to pay publishers a fee “for the dissemination of press products (like newspaper articles).” The fees would be gathered and distributed by a collecting society, like those that disseminate royalties to authors and composers. Content would be protected for one year. “In this way, publishers would share in the profits that commercial Internet services have been making with the unpaid use of publishers’ products,” the paper says.

The proposal addresses a debate that has raged since the early days of the Internet: Who benefits more from digital links and the traffic they generate — search engines, aggregators and other online hubs, or the sites that produce the content?

Google does not sell advertising on its German news aggregation service, which displays snippets of articles and links to the originating sites. But the company earns billions of euros from advertising on its search engine and other services.

Most German newspaper publishers, on the other hand, generate only minuscule revenue online from advertising or other sources, like so-called pay walls around their content.

Mathias Döpfner, chief executive of the largest German newspaper publisher, Axel Springer, said last week, as the company announced financial results, that the measure would have a “negligible” effect initially, but could grow into a “significant” source of revenue over the middle to long term.

Analysts are skeptical about whether the fees could ever replace the revenue lost from declines in print advertising.

Details like pricing have yet to be worked out. Publishers say they want a variable-rate system under which the use of full articles would incur a higher fee than the display of a short phrase, like the kind that is typically embedded in search links.

Opponents of the plan say that granting copyright protection to fragments like “International survey: Merkel leads ranking of European politicians — 40 minutes ago,” as the Google search link to one German news story read Friday, could restrict free speech. It might also be cumbersome, they add, to determine which sites should pay and which ones should benefit from the new protection.

“Could every blog register with the collecting society that is to be founded?” wrote Thierry Chervel, co-founder of Perlentaucher, a German cultural Web site. “If so, wouldn’t the financial benefit from the ancillary copyright be rather meager for the newspapers?”

Another question is what to do about journalists, who want a share of any remuneration from the planned fees. Under German copyright law, journalists retain a so-called author’s right, giving them control over uses of their articles after they have been published.

Publishers say these issues will be cleared up when the legislation is drafted in full. Freedom of speech would be protected, they insist, because certain uses, like journalistic citations from other news articles, would be exempt. The coalition document says private Internet users would not have to pay any fees.

Germany is not the only place where publishers are seeking new tools in the struggle to extract revenue from aggregators.

In the United States, a number of publishers, including The New York Times Co., recently joined together to introduce a system called NewsRight, which tracks the unpaid online use of their articles and seeks to turn aggregators into licensed, paying customers.

The German proposal goes further in taking aim at the use of snippets, not just full articles. If it works, publishers say, it could help swing the balance of power in the digital world in their direction.

“There is no other developed country that has given publishers this kind of right against aggregators,” said Christoph Keese, president of public affairs at Axel Springer and co-chairman of a copyright committee of German publishers. “This could be a benchmark.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/12/b...b-profits.html

Court Declares Newspaper Excerpt on Online Forum is a Non-Infringing Fair Use

Late Friday, the federal district court in Nevada issued a declaratory judgment that makes is harder for copyright holders to file lawsuits over excerpts of material and burden online forums and their users with nuisance lawsuits.

The judgment – part of the nuisance lawsuit avalanche started by copyright troll Righthaven – found that Democratic Underground did not infringe the copyright in a Las Vegas Review-Journal newspaper article when a user of the online political forum posted a five-sentence excerpt, with a link back to the newspaper's website.

Judge Roger Hunt’s judgment confirms that an online forum is not liable for its users’ posts, even if it was not protected by the safe harbors of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act’s notice and takedown provisions. The decision also clarifies that a common practice on the Internet – excerpting a few sentences and linking to interesting articles elsewhere – is a fair use, not an infringement of copyright.

Righthaven CEO Steven A. Gibson dreamed of making himself rich off of lawsuits over trivial uses of newspaper articles. Instead, his company is in ruins, his legal theories have been emphatically rejected and he is under investigation by the Nevada State Bar. His financial backer, an LLC affiliated with the Stephens family (who own the Review-Journal), lost a substantial investment with nothing to show for it. Hopefully this example will serve as a warning to those who are considering profiteering through the court system. In the mean time, we can take some small comfort that the debacle led to good rulings on fair use and online infringement.

This case began when Democratic Underground -- represented by the Electronic Frontier Foundation, Fenwick & West LLP, and attorney Chad Bowers -- was sued by Righthaven. The copyright troll asserted, falsely, that it owned the copyright in the article, which remains available for free on the Review-Journal website. Democratic Underground countersued, asking the court to rule that the excerpt did not infringe copyright and is a fair use of the material, and brought Stephens Media, publisher of the Review-Journal, into the case.

Last June, the Nevada federal court dismissed Righthaven's infringement case because the newspaper publisher was the true owner of the article, but Democratic Underground's counterclaim against Stephens Media continued. After initially attempting to defend the bogus assertion of copyright infringement, Stephens Media conceded it was incorrect, paving the way for the court’s declaration.

The original lawsuit against Democratic Underground was dismissed when Judge Hunt found that Righthaven did not have the legal authorization to bring a copyright lawsuit because it had never owned the copyright in the first place. Righthaven claimed that Stephens Media had transferred copyright to Righthaven before it filed the suit, but a document unearthed in this litigation -- the Strategic Alliance Agreement between Righthaven and Stephens Media -- showed that the copyright assignment was a sham, and that Righthaven was merely agreeing to undertake the newspaper's case at its own expense in exchange for a cut of the recovery. In addition to dismissing Righthaven's claim, Judge Hunt sanctioned Righthaven with fines and obligations to report to other judges its actual relationship with Stevens Media. Righthaven, however, has refused to pay the sanctions, without explanation.

Righthaven has filed hundreds of copyright cases based on its sham copyright ownership claims. Despite several attempts by Righthaven and Stephens Media to re-write their Strategic Alliance Agreement, eight judges have ruled against the scheme to turn copyright litigation into a business. Righthaven, which was founded by Las Vegas attorney Gibson exclusively to file lawsuits, has never won a single case, and has been held liable for several defendants’ attorneys fees.

While Righthaven has appealed seven of the district court decisions against it, it failed to meet important filing deadlines in the appeals court, and only three cases are currently moving forward in the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. After Righthaven failed to pay the fees judgments against it, a receiver was appointed to auction off its assets and pay its debts. Righthaven’s domain name was auctioned earlier this year, and last week another Nevada federal judge ordered Righthaven’s intellectual property assets transferred to the receiver.

Meanwhile, Righthaven has continued to refuse to cooperate in the collection efforts against it, failing to pay judgments, provide documents about its assets or -- lately -- even show up at court hearings. Righthaven was ordered to show cause why it should not be held in contempt of court in another case, Righthaven v. DiBiase. EFF, Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati, and Chad Bowers represent Mr. DiBiase. A contempt hearing is set for March 20, where we will be seeking sanctions against Righthaven and CEO Gibson.
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2012/0...nging-fair-use

Global Media Watchdog Names Enemies of Internet
AP

The Arab Spring is changing the face of Internet freedom, according to Reporters Without Borders, which released its latest "Enemies of the Internet" list Monday.

The annual report classifies as "enemies" countries that severely curtail freedom of expression on and access to the Web. It also draws up a list of states "under surveillance."

The group added Bahrain to its enemies list, citing a news blackout and harassment of bloggers in an attempt to quell a yearlong Shiite-led rebellion against the Sunni monarchy.

The country had previously been under surveillance.

"Bahrain offers a perfect example of successful crackdowns, with an information blackout achieved through an impressive arsenal of repressive measures: exclusion of the foreign media, harassment of human rights defenders, arrests of bloggers and netizens (one of whom died behind bars), prosecutions and defamation campaigns against free expression activists, disruption of communications," the Paris-based group's report said.

But the Arab Spring — the name given to a cascade of revolts across the Arab world — has also led to the opening up of some regimes.

Libya, where the repressive rule of Moammar Gadhafi was thrown off in a violent revolt, was removed from the list of countries under surveillance.

"In Libya, many challenges remain but the overthrow of the Gadhafi regime has ended an era of censorship," the report said.

The group said that the Arab Spring had also highlighted the importance of the Internet — and therefore the importance of protecting access to and expression on it.

"The Internet and social networks have been conclusively established as tools for protest, campaigning and circulating information, and as vehicles for freedom," the group said. "More than ever before, online freedom of expression is now a major foreign and domestic policy issue."

The enemies list contains countries that are well known for blocking Internet content, like China, Myanmar and North Korea.

But the list of those under surveillance contains some surprises like Australia and France.

Reporters Without Borders criticized Australia for persuading Internet service providers to create a national content-filtering system, which blocks access to child pornography sites and others deemed inappropriate. The group is concerned that the government is still also pursuing a system of mandatory content-filtering whose criteria are "very broad."

France landed on the surveillance list last year for a series of criminal indictments of journalists for stories they wrote. It remains on the list this year because of a law that could punish people who repeatedly illegally download content by cutting off their Internet access.
http://www.newstimes.com/business/ar...et-3399093.php

Web Giants' Consumer Privacy Strategy Faces Hard Sell
Jasmin Melvin

Emboldened by their victory in quashing online piracy legislation, U.S. Internet companies are gearing up for a battle over whether consumers should be able to restrict efforts to gather personal data.

Google Inc, Facebook, Apple Inc and other tech companies have lobbied against congressional and federal agency proposals that would let Internet users press "do not track" buttons on their browsers to block targeted advertising. Consumers could also edit personal information that has been stored about them.

With the privacy issue, the multibillion-dollar Internet industry faces a challenge larger than potentially harmful legislation or regulations that could limit their advertising and corporate growth. Their efforts to self-regulate continue to suffer setbacks amidst accusations of privacy violations and last year's Federal Trade Commission findings that Facebook and Google engaged in deceptive privacy practices.

The FTC is expected to issue new privacy recommendations in the coming days, and companies are watching several legislative proposals on Capitol Hill.

Privacy advocates are pushing to give consumers greater control over data collection. The companies must convince consumers that they benefit by allowing personal data to be collected and shared.

Their pitch - in efforts like Google's current "Good to Know" advertising campaign - argues that data collection lets companies offer faster, smarter products, like better search results and customized mapping.

Internet companies successfully fought legislation to limit Internet piracy. Medley Global Advisors analyst Jeffrey Silva said Web companies may feel confident that they can tackle other government intervention. "I think the lesson they've learned is if they don't like a certain bill, they can organize and create a lot of static and pushback," Silva said.

A MULTIBILLION-DOLLAR BUSINESS

Internet data collection allows advertisers to target users in a demographic who are more likely to buy their product. These ads often subsidize Web content.

Google, for example, has come under fire for a new policy that took effect March 1 that treats information from most of its products, including Gmail, YouTube and Google+, as a single trove of data for advertisers.

Google contends the change will benefit customers. The company would be able to spot a signed-on user looking for recipes and seamlessly direct them to YouTube cooking videos.

"When we talk about how the Internet will improve and grow for consumers, that's coming from online behavioral advertising," said Daniel Castro, senior analyst at the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation.

Strict privacy rules could lead to substantial cuts in online advertising dollars and an even larger hit to growth over the next five to 10 years, Castro said.

A 2010 study by University of Toronto professor Avi Goldfarb and MIT professor Catherine Tucker revealed a 65 percent decrease in ad effectiveness after European countries implemented data collection rules for targeted advertising. Around 96 percent of Google's $37.9 billion revenue comes from advertising, financial statements showed. Filings ahead of Facebook's much-discussed initial public offering revealed 85 percent of its $3.71 billion in revenue last year came from advertising.

Nearly two-thirds of Apple's fiscal year 2011 net sales came from its iPhone, iPad and related products and services that rely on tracking a user's exact location.

New government data collection policies could have huge implications. "If Google got 65 percent less revenue than it got last year, that would be a big upset to a company like that," Castro said.

MULTI-PRONGED ATTACK

The industry got a break last month when the White House released a blueprint "privacy bill of rights" giving consumers more data control, but relying heavily on voluntary compliance by Internet companies. The FTC's expected recommendations are causing more anxiety. Analysts and privacy advocates predict that the FTC report will have more teeth, in part because FTC Chairman Jon Leibowitz recently described Google's new privacy policy as a "somewhat brutal choice" for consumers.

The FTC report may call for strict enforcement to ensure firms adhere to their privacy policies, according to sources familiar with the agency's thinking.

It may also try to accelerate firms' adoption of the "do not track" technology, which could work like the "do not call" registry that caused telemarketing industry havoc.

Silva said the FTC recommendations come from "people that live and breathe privacy policy and have a greater knowledge of the law, companies' practices and an institutional knowledge of what's happened before. They probably have a better feel for the degree to which self-regulation works or doesn't."

As for legislation, numerous privacy bills are winding their way through Congress.

A notable one is a bipartisan privacy framework from Senators John Kerry and John McCain. It would require companies to reassess their privacy practices for both personally identifiable information and online behavioral advertising profiles.

Critics say it could force more companies to start charging for services like e-mail, social networks and other content currently subsidized by advertising.

"I'm talking about American companies having rules that control their own destiny, before Europe or other trading partners impose their policies on all our companies," Kerry said. "Hell, establishing minimum privacy protections in law can help build consumer trust in the marketplace and in turn increase economic activity."

Tech companies have argued that government regulations could cut its revenues, reduce job growth and hurt the broader economy.

Lawmakers are looking for the "sweet spot" between too much regulation and none at all, Representative Mary Bono Mack, chairman of the House Commerce subcommittee on commerce, manufacturing and trade, said. "Any knee-jerk reactions could have a chilling impact on innovation and e-commerce in the United States and threaten our economic recovery," she said.

WEB FIRMS' FOOTHOLD Internet companies are well-positioned in Washington to push back against regulatory proposals.

With the piracy debate, they came together to argue that bills designed to shut down access to overseas websites trafficking in stolen content or counterfeit goods were too broad. They argued that they could undermine innovation and free speech and compromise the Internet's functioning.

What followed was an unprecedented online protest that saw Wikipedia and other sites go dark while bigger players like Google and Facebook displayed censorship bars and arguments against the bills on their sites. The effort was supported with 3.9 million tweets, 2,000 people a second trying to call their elected representatives and more than 5,000 people a minute signing petitions opposing the legislation.

Privacy regulations are a harder sell, said privacy expert Amy Mushahwar, an attorney with Reed Smith. "Consumers might not be able to immediately recognize that increased privacy obligations could lead to a lesser amount of content on the Web, which is really what the advertising industry is concerned about," said Mushahwar, a registered lobbyist for the Association of National Advertisers. Internet companies have tried to get ahead of mandatory reforms by adopting their own policies. The Digital Advertising Alliance rolled out new data collection principles that take effect this year. They explicitly prohibit collection and use of a person's Internet surfing data for determining their eligibility for employment, credit, insurance and medical treatment. The industry is also using old-school lobbying tactics. It has ramped up its political activities dramatically, spending $1.2 billion between 1998 and 2011. Google spent $9.68 million and Microsoft Corp $7.34 million on federal lobbying in 2011, according to lobbying disclosure reports. Facebook, a latecomer to Washington, has beefed up its lobbying team, adding Joel Kaplan, former deputy chief of staff to President George W. Bush, and Myriah Jordan, also a Bush aide and former general counsel to Republican Senator Richard Burr. Facebook's lobbying expenditures skyrocketed from $351,000 in 2010 to $1.35 million in 2011, reports show. Winning lawmaker support is only part of the battle. The sector also may benefit from the views of average people, said Linda Woolley, executive vice president of government affairs at the Direct Marketing Association. Despite recent controversies over Google's privacy policies, "you didn't hear of people cancelling their Gmail accounts."

"From where I sit, I do not see hordes of Americans running to Capitol Hill saying we need to do something about this," she said.

(Additional reporting by David Ingram; Editing by Karey Wutkowski and Marilyn Thompson; Desking by Stacey Joyce)
http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/...82905K20120310

DOJ Asks Court To Keep Secret Any Partnership Between Google, NSA
Mike Scarcella

The Justice Department is defending the government's refusal to discuss—or even acknowledge the existence of—any cooperative research and development agreement between Google and the National Security Agency.

The Washington based advocacy group Electronic Privacy Information Center sued in federal district court here to obtain documents about any such agreement between the Internet search giant and the security agency.

The NSA responded to the suit with a so-called “Glomar” response in which the agency said it could neither confirm nor deny whether any responsive records exist. U.S. District Judge Richard Leon in Washington sided with the government last July.

A three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit is scheduled to hear the dispute March 20.

EPIC filed a Freedom of Information Act request in early 2010, noting media reports at the time that the NSA and Google had agreed to a partnership following the cyber attacks in China that year against Google.

EPIC asked for, among other things, communication between the NSA and Google about Gmail and Google’s “decision to fail to routinely encrypt” messages before Jan. 13, 2010.

The NSA’s response to the request for records noted that the agency “works with a broad range of commercial partners and research associations” to ensure the availability of secure information systems. The agency, however, refused to confirm or deny any partnership with Google.

The security agency said it routinely monitors vulnerabilities in commercial technology and cryptographic products because the government relies heavily on private companies for word processing systems and e-mail software.

“If NSA determines that certain security vulnerabilities or malicious attacks pose a threat to U.S. government information systems, NSA may take action,” DOJ Civil Division lawyers Catherine Hancock and Douglas Letter said in a brief in the D.C. Circuit in January.

DOJ’s legal team said that acknowledging whether NSA and Google formed a partnership from a cyber attack would illuminate whether the government “considered the alleged attack to be of consequence for critical U.S. government information systems.”

NSA said it cannot provide documents—or confirm their existence—because the information would alert adversaries about the security agency’s priorities, threat assessments and countermeasures.

DOJ said media reports about the alleged Google partnership with NSA do not constitute official acknowledgement.

The Washington Post and The New York Times both reported that Google contacted the NSA after the Jan. 2010 cyber attack, which the company said was rooted in China and targeted access to accounts of Chinese human rights activists. The Wall Street Journal said NSA’s general counsel worked out a cooperative research and development agreement with Google.

EPIC’s attorneys, including Marc Rotenberg, the group’s president, said in court papers that the document request includes records that are not relevant to the NSA’s information assurance mission.

“The NSA mischaracterizes EPIC’s FOIA Request by stating that responsive documents would reveal ‘information about a potential Google-NSA relationship,’” Rotenberg said.

The crux of the records request, Rotenberg said, is Google’s switch to application encryption by default for Gmail accounts soon after the cyber attack. Google in 2008 began allowing users to encrypt mail passing through the company servers, EPIC said in its brief, but encryption was not provided by default.

EPIC’s brief said the failure of the NSA to conduct a search for records “deprives the court of the ability to meaningfully assess the propriety” of the agency’s response that it can neither confirm nor deny the existence of responsive records.

“Without first conducting the search, not even the agency can know whether there is a factual basis for its legal position,” Rotenberg said.

EPIC said its records request does not seek documents about NSA’s role to secure government computer networks. “Google provides cloud-based services to consumers, not critical infrastructure services to the government,” Rotenberg said.
http://legaltimes.typepad.com/blt/20...oogle-nsa.html

Can Google Be Forced By the FBI to Unlock Users' Phones?
Dennis Fisher

Those multi-gesture passcode locks on Android phones that give users (and their spouses) fits apparently present quite a challenge for the FBI as well. Frustrated by a swipe passcode on the seized phone of an alleged gang leader, FBI officials have requested a search warrant that would force Google to "provide law enforcement with any and all means of gaining access, including login and password information, password reset, and/or manufacturer default code ("PUK"), in order to obtain the complete contents of the memory of cellular telephone".

The request is part of a case involving an alleged gang leader and human trafficker named Dante Dears in California. Dears served several years in prison for his role in founding a gang in California called PhD, and upon his release he allegedly went back to his activities with the gang, according to the FBI's affidavit. Agents conducted surveillance on Dears and found that he was using a mobile phone to allegedly communicate with prostitutes and other associates.

Dears had denied to his parole officer that he owned a mobile phone, and in January the parole officer went to Dears's apartment and seized the phone. The FBI subsequently served a search warrant on the parole officer and took the phone, but the bureau's forensics investigators couldn't get past the swipe lock on the Android handset. Once they failed enough times, the phone locked and now requires the user's Google username and password for access. As a result, the FBI is asking that Google be forced to hand over the information to get them into the phone.

The move by the FBI to try and force Google to turn over the information--including email subscriber information, emails, text messages and Internet access data--leads to some interesting questions.

"[i]t suggests that a warrant might be enough to get Google to unlock a phone. Presumably, this is not the first time that the FBI has requested Google unlock a phone, so one would assume that the FBI would request the right kind of order. However, we do not know if Google has complied with the request. Given that an unlocked smartphone will continue to receive text messages and new emails (transmitted after the device was first seized), one could reasonably argue that the government should have to obtain a wiretap order in order to unlock the phone," Chris Soghoian, a privacy advocate and security researcher, wrote in a blog post on the case.

The FBI special agent who wrote the affidavit also requested that Dears not be told about the information request, however the search warrant and affidavit were not sealed.
https://threatpost.com/en_us/blogs/c...-phones-031412

New Interest in Hacking as Threat to Security
Michael S. Schmidt

During the five-month period between October and February, there were 86 reported attacks on computer systems in the United States that control critical infrastructure, factories and databases, according to the Department of Homeland Security, compared with 11 over the same period a year ago.

None of the attacks caused significant damage, but they were part of a spike in hacking attacks on networks and computers of all kinds over the same period. The department recorded more than 50,000 incidents since October, about 10,000 more than in the same period a year earlier, with an incident defined as any intrusion or attempted intrusion on a computer network.

The increase has prompted a new interest in cybersecurity on Capitol Hill, where lawmakers are being prodded by the Obama administration to advance legislation that could require new standards at facilities where a breach could cause significant casualties or economic damage.

It is not clear whether the higher numbers were due to increased reporting amid a wave of high-profile hacking, including the arrest last week of several members of the group Anonymous, or an actual increase in attacks.

James A. Lewis, a senior fellow and a specialist in computer security issues at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a policy group in Washington, said that as hacking awareness had increased, attacks had become more common. He said that the attacks on the nation’s infrastructure were particularly jarring.

“Some of this is heightened awareness because everyone is babbling about it,” he said of the reported rise in computer attacks. “But much of it is because the technology has improved and the hackers have gotten better and people and countries are probing around more like the Russians and Chinese have.”

He added: “We hit rock bottom on this in 2010. Then we hit rock bottom in 2011. And we are still at rock bottom. We were vulnerable before and now we’re just more vulnerable. You can destroy physical infrastructure with a cyberattack just like you could with a bomb.”

The legislation the administration is pressing Congress to pass would give the federal government greater authority to regulate the security used by companies that run the nation’s infrastructure. It would give the Homeland Security Department the authority to enforce minimum standards on companies whose service or product would lead to mass casualties, evacuations or major economic damage if crippled by hackers.

The bill the administration backs is sponsored by Senators Joseph I. Lieberman, independent of Connecticut, and Susan Collins, Republican of Maine. It has bipartisan support, and its prospects appear good. Senator John McCain, Republican of Arizona, is sponsoring a more business-friendly bill that emphasizes the sharing of information and has fewer requirements for companies.

Last week on Capitol Hill, Janet Napolitano, the secretary of Homeland Security; Robert S. Mueller III, the director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation; and Gen. Martin E. Dempsey, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, made their pitch to roughly four dozen senators about why they should pass the Lieberman-Collins bill.

At a closed-door briefing, the senators were shown how a power company employee could derail the New York City electrical grid by clicking on an e-mail attachment sent by a hacker, and how an attack during a heat wave could have a cascading impact that would lead to deaths and cost the nation billions of dollars.

“I think General Dempsey said it best when he said that prior to 9/11, there were all kinds of information out there that a catastrophic attack was looming,” Ms. Napolitano said in an interview. “The information on a cyberattack is at that same frequency and intensity and is bubbling at the same level, and we should not wait for an attack in order to do something.”

General Dempsey told the senators that he had skipped a meeting of the National Security Council on Iran to attend the briefing because he was so concerned about a cyberattack, according to a person who had been told details of the meeting. A spokesman for General Dempsey said the chairman had “sent his vice chairman to the meeting on Iran so that he could attend the Senate meeting and emphasize his concern about cybersecurity.”

“His point was about his presence at the cyber exercise rather than a value judgment on the ‘threat,’ ” the spokesman, Col. David Lapan, said.

Experts say one of the biggest problems is that no part of the government has complete authority over the issue. The Central Intelligence Agency and the National Security Agency give the government intelligence on potential attacks, and the F.B.I. prosecutes hackers who break the law. The Department of Homeland Security receives reports about security breaches but has no authority to compel business to improve their security.

“Nobody does critical infrastructure of the dot-com space where America now relies on faith healing and snake oil for protection,” Mr. Lewis said. “The administration wants it to be the Department of Homeland Security, but the department needs additional authorities to be effective.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/14/u...-security.html

For Apple, Pressure Builds Over App Store Fraud
Evelyn M. Rusli and Brian X. Chen

In a little over an hour, Ryan Matthew Pierson racked up $437.71 in iTunes charges for virtual currency that he could use to buy guns, nightclubs and cars in iMobsters, a popular iPhone game. One problem: Mr. Pierson, a technology writer in Texas, has never played iMobsters.

“This was fraud,” said Mr. Pierson, recalling the November incident. “I woke up, checked my e-mail, and I could see these purchases happening in real time.”

Mr. Pierson raised the issue with Apple and his bank, and the problem was eventually resolved. But his experience is hardly unique, as reflected by hundreds of online complaints saying that Apple’s iTunes Store, and in particular its App Store, which the company portrays as the safest of shopping environments, is not so secure.

The complaints come from consumers like Mr. Pierson, who say that their accounts have been hijacked or that some apps are falsely advertised. And they come from creators of apps, who say they are having to deal with fraudulent purchases that drain their time and resources. Software makers also complain that competition in the App Store has become so brutal that many companies resort to artificially inflating their popularity rankings to grab attention.

It’s a change for Apple, which was once criticized for its micromanaging of the App Store. Now the problem is not too much control, but too little.

“This kind of thing just happens any time a platform is successful,” said David Edery, chief executive of Spry Fox, a small software company that sells games in the App Store. “People start flooding into it and it starts to get crazy.”

The App Store offers more than 600,000 applications for iPhones, iPads and iPod Touches, and has already generated billions in revenue for Apple and its developers. That makes it both the best deal going for software makers and consumers, and also a hulking target for those looking to manipulate the system and cheat people.

Apple declined a request for an interview, but said in a statement that it was working to enhance security. It advised customers whose payment information had been stolen to change their iTunes passwords and to contact their financial institutions.

In the shadowy world of hacking, it’s often unclear how criminals get iTunes passwords or credit card information. But the App Store, and Apple’s broader iTunes Store, have become playgrounds for illicit transactions. And the Web is rife with App Store scams. On Chinese online marketplaces, like Taobao or DHgate, some sellers are offering access to iTunes accounts for as little as $33. One seller on DHgate, for instance, has sold 56 iTunes accounts for less than $35 each, promising thousands of dollars in “credit.”

There are services that claim to generate codes for iTunes gift cards, and forums that explain how to use prepaid Visa cards to get free App Store purchases.

The scale of the problem is difficult to gauge without Apple’s cooperation, though there is widespread anecdotal evidence, even on Apple’s own site. On one Apple support forum, a thread titled “iTunes store account hacked,” there are some 1,370 replies, starting in November 2010 and extending to Thursday. Last week, more than 100 people on Twitter who said they were iTunes users complained about stolen funds.

Last month, Daniel Saewitz, a 20-year-old Syracuse University student, was charged $81 for purchases related to a Chinese iPhone game. He alerted Apple and changed his iTunes password. But 24 hours later, he said, his account was hacked again. In an e-mail, Apple said it was refunding Mr. Saewitz’s money, but added that it was making an exception to its usual rules.

For developers, the scams can cause big headaches, eating up resources and damaging their reputations. Several game makers in China, where many of the hacks appear to originate, said they had lost hundreds of thousands of dollars because of fraud.

Hoolai Game, a Beijing-based developer that introduced an iPhone app last year, looked at its monthly payments from Apple and found that they were roughly 20 to 50 percent less than the sum of the daily reports it gets from the company. Hoolai and others say they believe these missing payments are fraudulent transactions that are wiped out by Apple.

More troubling for developers is that consumers whose accounts have been improperly charged often blame the game makers. The reviews in the App Store for Kingdom Conquest, from the Japanese game giant Sega, include dozens from incensed users who accuse Sega of robbing them. Sega, which first noticed a burst of fraudulent transactions last summer, is still working on the problem, according to Ben Harborne, a brand manager at the company.

“We are very worried about reputation,” said Jian Huang, the president of Hoolai, who hopes to introduce a game in the United States later this year. “We have no way to tell the customer that we’re victims too.”

One successful American game developer, who spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of retribution by Apple, said he started to notice discrepancies in payments last summer. The developer said his team had sent multiple e-mails to Apple, but that it had not addressed whether the missing payments were a result of fraud. Over the last year, the gap has amounted to millions of dollars, according to internal documents provided by the developer.

With little action from Apple, some affected developers have banded together. One Chinese developer, CocoaChina, has created an antifraud alliance of roughly a dozen developers.

While many of the affected consumers and developers said they did not blame Apple for their misfortunes, nearly all said the company could be more responsive, and noted that it lacked even a dedicated phone line to deal with complaints.

“Apple wants to pretend that everything is magic,” said Alex Stamos, co-founder of iSEC Partners, a security firm. “They need to admit that their products can be used by bad people to do bad things.”

One problem, Mr. Stamos said, is that iTunes customers use a single account and password to access all Apple services. For example, the same login can be used to download a $1 game or buy a $2,000 laptop through the Apple Store app. He said that Apple could adopt a two-step verification method like Google’s. For example, if a user wanted to log in to the iTunes store on a new device, Apple could send a message to his iPhone containing a code, which he would enter to verify his identity.

Some App Store problems are the fault of the developers themselves — including those who make it harder for consumers to trust the store by cheating the system. The easiest ways to find new apps are Apple’s Top 25 lists for different categories, including “most downloaded.” But some of those downloads may not be generated by real people.

Walter Kaman, an independent programmer, said he was disheartened by a phone call from a service that offered to put his game in the Top 25. He said the promoter, whom he declined to name so as not to attract clients to the service, had hired someone to build an army of software “bots” that automatically download apps and drive up their rankings. The company wanted $5,000 for this service, said Mr. Kaman, who declined.

Mr. Edery of Spry Fox said his company was approached in October by a firm called GTekna, which offered to push its apps into the Top 25 for $10,000. Chang-Min Pak, GTekna’s chief executive, said in an interview this week that it stopped offering such a service because Apple reminded developers in February that it was not allowed.

Then there are the customers who have been tricked into downloading apps that are not what they seem to be. Apple has strict guidelines for developers, and it has tools and human reviewers to screen apps. But bad ones do slip through. One $2 app, for example, promises extra virtual coins for people playing the game DragonVale. But when customers download the app, no coins appear. The app has received dozens of one-star reviews from customers complaining that it is a scam and should be removed.

John Casasanta, owner of the iPhone app studio Tap Tap Tap, said the issue of developers manipulating the App Store remained largely unaddressed. “Apple has been doing the barest minimum to keep these things under control, because from their perspective, there’s simply not a problem,” Mr. Casasanta said.
https://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/16/t...ore-fraud.html

Former Murdoch Editor Is Said to Be Arrested
Sarah Lyall

Rebekah Brooks, the former chief executive of Rupert Murdoch’s News International, was arrested early Tuesday on suspicion of obstruction of justice, according to a person with knowledge of the arrest. Her husband, Charlie, a decades-long friend of Prime Minister David Cameron from their days at Eton, was also arrested, the person said.

In a statement, the police said that a total of six people in and outside of London had been arrested on Tuesday as part of Operation Weeting, the criminal investigation into phone hacking and other illegal activities at the News of the World and other newspapers.

Following standard procedure, the police did not name the suspects, but said that they had been arrested between 5 a.m. and 7 a.m. and were being interrogated at different police stations on suspicion of “conspiracy to pervert the course of justice,” what the British call obstruction of justice. This could relate to activities like destroying e-mails, computers and other evidence, people with knowledge of the investigation said.

Ms. Brooks, 43, is a confidante of Mr. Murdoch and erstwhile friend of Mr. Cameron. She also worked as the editor of the now-defunct News of the World and the editor of The Sun tabloid before being named chief executive of News International, the British newspaper arm of Mr. Murdoch’s media empire.

So far, the police have arrested more than two dozen people in Operation Weeting and two other ancillary investigations: Operation Tuleta, which is looking into accusations of computer hacking, and Operation Elveden, which is looking into accusations that journalists paid police officers and government officials for information.

It is normal procedure in British police investigations for suspects to be arrested, released, and then charged months afterward. Ms. Brooks, 43, was also arrested last summer as part of the operation, that time on suspicion of phone hacking and illegally paying the police.

She is the highest-ranking News International official to be arrested so far. Andy Coulson, a former News of the World editor who went on to become the chief spokesman for the prime minister, was also arrested last summer as part of Operation Weeting. Other suspects include some of the most prominent reporters and editors at The News of the World and The Sun, a Murdoch-owned tabloid that is Britain’s most popular daily newspaper.

Ms. Brooks and Mr. Coulson have consistently maintained that they knew nothing about phone hacking or other illegal activities. David Wilson, a spokesman for the Brookses, did not return a call seeking comment.

According to a statement from the Metropolitan Police, the ages of the suspects arrested Tuesday ranged from 38 to 49, and all but one were men. Five were arrested at home: two in Oxfordshire (these are believed to be the Brookses); one in Hampshire; one in West London; one in Hertfordshire; and one in East London. The sixth suspect, the police said, was arrested at a business address in East London.

It is unclear how Mr. Brooks, an old Etonian with impeccable establishment credentials, fits in to the operation. But The Guardian reported in July that he was involved in an odd episode featuring a mysterious laptop left in a bag in a garbage can in an underground parking garage near the apartment he shares with his wife in London.

According to the article, the bag, containing the computer and some papers, was unearthed by security guards, who called the police. Mr. Brooks then tried to reclaim the items, but could not prove they were his.

A spokesman for Mr. Brooks told The Guardian that he had “left the bag with a friend who was returning it, but dropped it in the wrong part of the garage.” When asked how the bag ended up in a garbage can, the spokesman replied: “The suggestion is that a cleaner thought it was rubbish and put it in the bin” and said that it was “nothing to do with Rebekah,” the newspaper said.

Mr. Brooks was in the news when it emerged last month that the police had loaned his wife, then working for News International, a police horse which had been retired from active service. The loan was relevant because of the close ties between Ms. Brooks and the police, and because of the close ties between Mr. and Ms. Brooks and Prime Minister Cameron.

After days of deflections and denials, Mr. Cameron admitted that he had gone riding at the Brooks’s country estate and that he had ridden the former police horse, Raisa.

“I’ve been friends with Charlie Brooks for over 30 years, and he’s a good friend and a neighbor of my constituency,” Mr. Cameron said by way of an explanation.
https://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/14/w...-arrested.html

Use of Homeless as Internet Hot Spots Backfires on Marketer
Jenna Wortham

Which product at this year’s South by Southwest technology conference received more attention than perhaps any other?

Homeless people as wireless transmitters.

A marketing agency touched off a wave of criticism and debate when it hired members of the local homeless population to walk around carrying mobile Wi-Fi devices, offering conferencegoers Internet access in exchange for donations.

BBH Labs, the innovation unit of the international marketing agency BBH, outfitted 13 volunteers from a homeless shelter with the devices, business cards and T-shirts bearing their names: “I’m Clarence, a 4G Hotspot.” They were told to go to the most densely packed areas of the conference, which has become a magnet for those who want to chase the latest in technology trends.

The smartphone-toting, social-networking crowds often overwhelm cellular networks in the area, creating a market that BBH Labs hoped to serve with the “Homeless Hotspots” project, which it called a “charitable experiment.” It paid each participant $20 a day, and they were also able to keep whatever customers donated in exchange for the wireless service.

But as word of the project spread on the ground and online, it hit a nerve among many who said that turning down-and-out people into wireless towers was exploitative and discomfiting.

Tim Carmody, a blogger at Wired, described the project as “completely problematic” and sounding like “something out of a darkly satirical science-fiction dystopia.”

A commenter on the BBH Labs blog offered mock praise for the project, then complained that “my homeless hotspot keeps wandering out of range, and it’s ruining all my day trades!”

On Monday, the project’s scheduled last day, BBH Labs was scrambling to explain itself.

Saneel Radia, the director of innovation at BBH Labs who oversaw the project, said the company was not taking advantage of the homeless volunteers. He said that the company had had success with other such experiments, including one in which it gave homeless people in New York cellphones and Twitter accounts as a way to call attention to their plight.

Mr. Radia said he modeled the hot spot project after the street newspapers that homeless people sell for a dollar.

“We saw it as a means to raise awareness by giving homeless people a way to engage with mainstream society and talk to people,” he said. “The hot spot is a way for them to tell their story.”

Mitchell Gibbs, the director of development at Front Steps, the shelter that houses the project volunteers, said he advised Mr. Radia on how best to set up the program. He said he was surprised by all the criticism of the project, which he said had inspired an “entrepreneurial spirit” among its homeless participants.

“It’s an employment opportunity, regardless of who is offering it,” Mr. Gibbs said.

The human hot spots seemed unconcerned as well. One volunteer, Clarence Jones, 54, said he was originally from New Orleans and became homeless in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.

“Everyone thinks I’m getting the rough end of the stick, but I don’t feel that,” Mr. Jones said. “I love talking to people and it’s a job. An honest day of work and pay.”

But the program’s critics zeroed in on the divide between its impoverished vendors and Internet-bubble customers.

Adam Hanft, chief executive of the marketing advisory firm Hanft Projects, said that even if the effort was well intended, it seemed to turn a blind eye to that disconnect. “There is already a sense that the Internet community has become so absurdly self-involved that they don’t think there’s any world outside of theirs,” he said.
https://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/13/t...in-austin.html

Report: 51% of Web Site Traffic is 'Non-Human' and Mostly Malicious
Tom Foremski

Summary: Web site analytics packages record what real people do on a site but most web site traffic comes from other computers often with nefarious intent.

Incapsula, a provider of cloud-based security for web sites, released a study today showing that 51% of web site traffic is automated software programs, and the majority is potentially damaging, — automated exploits from hackers, spies, scrapers, and spammers.

The company says that typically, only 49% of a web site’s visitors are actual humans and that the non-human traffic is mostly invisible because it is not shown by analytics software.

This means that web sites are carrying a large hidden cost burden in terms of bandwidth, increased risk of business disruption, and worse.

Here’s a breakdown of an average web site’s traffic:

- 5% is hacking tools searching for an unpatched or new vulnerability in a web site.

- 5% is scrapers.

- 2% is automated comment spammers.

- 19% is from “spies” collecting competitive intelligence.

- 20% is from search engines - which is non-human traffic but benign.

- 49% is from people browsing the Internet.

The data was collected from a sample of 1,000 websites that are enrolled in the Incapsula service.

I spoke with Marc Gaffan, co-founder of Incapsula. “Few people realize how much of their traffic is non-human, and that much of it is potentially harmful.”

Incapsula offers a service aimed at securing small and medium sized businesses. It has a global network of nine data centers that analyze all traffic to a customer’s site and blocking harmful exploits in real-time, while also speeding up page loading times through cached content closer to users.

“Because we have thousands of web sites as customers, we spot exploits way ahead of others and we can then block them for all our customers. That’s the benefit of scale. We also maintain a virtual patch service that prevents harmful exploits days and sometimes weeks before a patch is ready.”

There is no software or hardware installation required by the customer, a small change in a web site’s DNS records directs traffic through Incapsula’s data centers. And all analytics, and search engine rankings, are unaffected by the change.

Web sites are significantly faster because the company caches content and keeps it close to where users are located.

An important aspect of the service is that it is in compliance with the Payment Card Industry data security standard (PCI) which is essential for online merchants. They risk losing their ability to process credit card payments if they don’t meet strict PCI requirements.

The company offers a free service for sites with less than 25 GB of monthly bandwidth, and premium plans start at $49 a month.

Foremski’s Take: I’m curious to try this service because looking at my server logs I get hit by about 28 ‘robots’ daily, and while some are from legitimate sources such as Google, Yahoo, Microsoft, the majority are unidentified and together, they use as much as one-third of my bandwidth.

This means that the human user experience suffers because my server is trying to deal with all the ‘non-human’ traffic generated by software programs hitting the site.

Incapsula’s ability to block exploits before a patch is available is another attractive feature. I don’t have time to keep up with the many security patches sent out, and then installing and upgrading multiple programs is a chore I’d rather do without.
https://www.zdnet.com/blog/foremski/...malicious/2201

After 244 Years, Encyclopaedia Britannica Stops the Presses
Julie Bosman

After 244 years, the Encyclopaedia Britannica is going out of print.

Those coolly authoritative, gold-lettered reference books that were once sold door-to-door by a fleet of traveling salesmen and displayed as proud fixtures in American homes will be discontinued, company executives said.

In an acknowledgment of the realities of the digital age — and of competition from the Web site Wikipedia — Encyclopaedia Britannica will focus primarily on its online encyclopedias and educational curriculum for schools. The last print version is the 32-volume 2010 edition, which weighs 129 pounds and includes new entries on global warming and the Human Genome Project.

“It’s a rite of passage in this new era,” Jorge Cauz, the president of Encyclopaedia Britannica Inc., a company based in Chicago, said in an interview. “Some people will feel sad about it and nostalgic about it. But we have a better tool now. The Web site is continuously updated, it’s much more expansive and it has multimedia.”

In the 1950s, having the Encyclopaedia Britannica on the bookshelf was akin to a station wagon in the garage or a black-and-white Zenith in the den, a possession coveted for its usefulness and as a goalpost for an aspirational middle class. Buying a set was often a financial stretch, and many families had to pay for it in monthly installments.

But in recent years, print reference books have been almost completely overtaken by the Internet and its vast spread of resources, including specialized Web sites and the hugely popular — and free — online encyclopedia Wikipedia.

Since it was started 11 years ago, Wikipedia has moved a long way toward replacing the authority of experts with the wisdom of the crowds. The site is now written and edited by tens of thousands of contributors around the world, and it has been gradually accepted as a largely accurate and comprehensive source, even by many scholars and academics.

Wikipedia also regularly meets the 21st-century mandate of providing instantly updated material. And it has nearly four million articles in English, including some on pop culture topics that would not be considered worthy of a mention in the Encyclopaedia Britannica.

Mr. Cauz said that he believed Britannica’s competitive advantage with Wikipedia came from its prestigious sources, its carefully edited entries and the trust that was tied to the brand.

“We have very different value propositions,” Mr. Cauz said. “Britannica is going to be smaller. We cannot deal with every single cartoon character, we cannot deal with every love life of every celebrity. But we need to have an alternative where facts really matter. Britannica won’t be able to be as large, but it will always be factually correct.”

But one widely publicized study, published in 2005 by Nature, called into question Britannica’s presumed accuracy advantage over Wikipedia. The study said that out of 42 competing entries, Wikipedia made an average of four errors in each article, and Britannica three. Britannica responded with a lengthy rebuttal saying the study was error-laden and “completely without merit.”

The Britannica, the oldest continuously published encyclopedia in the English language, has become a luxury item with a $1,395 price tag. It is frequently bought by embassies, libraries and research institutions, and by well-educated, upscale consumers who felt an attachment to the set of bound volumes. Only 8,000 sets of the 2010 edition have been sold, and the remaining 4,000 have been stored in a warehouse until they are bought.

The 2010 edition had more than 4,000 contributors, including Arnold Palmer (who wrote the entry on the Masters tournament) and Panthea Reid, professor emeritus at Louisiana State University and author of the biography “Art and Affection: A Life of Virginia Woolf” (who wrote about Virginia Woolf).

Sales of the Britannica peaked in 1990, when 120,000 sets were sold in the United States. But now print encyclopedias account for less than 1 percent of the Britannica’s revenue. About 85 percent of revenue comes from selling curriculum products in subjects like math, science and the English language; 15 percent comes from subscriptions to the Web site, the company said.

About half a million households pay a $70 annual fee for the online subscription, which includes access to the full database of articles, videos, original documents and to the company’s mobile applications. At least one other general-interest encyclopedia in the United States, the World Book, is still printing a 22-volume yearly edition, said Jennifer Parello, a spokeswoman for World Book Inc. She declined to provide sales figures but said the encyclopedia was bought primarily by schools and libraries.

Gary Marchionini, the dean of the School of Information and Library Science at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, said the fading of print encyclopedias was “an inexorable trend that will continue.”

“There’s more comprehensive material available on the Web,” Mr. Marchionini said. “The thing that you get from an encyclopedia is one of the best scholars in the world writing a description of that phenomenon or that object, but you’re still getting just one point of view. Anything worth discussing in life is worth getting more than one point of view.”

Many librarians say that while they have rapidly shifted money and resources to digital materials, print still has a place. Academic libraries tend to keep many sets of specialized encyclopedias on their shelves, like volumes on Judaica, folklore, music or philosophy, or encyclopedias that are written in foreign languages and unavailable online.

At the Portland Public Library in Maine, there are still many encyclopedias that the library orders on a regular basis, sometimes every year, said Sonya Durney, a reference librarian. General-interest encyclopedias are often used by students whose teachers require them to occasionally cite print sources, just to practice using print.

“They’re used by anyone who’s learning, anyone who’s new to the country, older patrons, people who aren’t comfortable online,” Ms. Durney said. “There’s a whole demographic of people who are more comfortable with print.”

But many people are discovering that the books have outlived their usefulness. Used editions of encyclopedias are widely available on Craigslist and eBay: more than 1,400 listings for Britannica products were posted on eBay this week.

Charles Fuller, a geography professor who lives in the Chicago suburbs, put his 1992 edition on sale on Craigslist last Sunday. For years, he has neglected the print encyclopedias, he said in an interview, and now prefers to use his iPhone to look up facts quickly. He and his wife are downsizing and relocating to California, he said, and the Encyclopaedia Britannica will not be coming with them, a loss he acknowledges with a hint of wistfulness.

“They’re not obsolete,” Mr. Fuller said. “When I’m doing serious research, I still use the print books. And they look really beautiful on the bookshelves.”
http://mediadecoder.blogs.nytimes.co...s-the-presses/

Sad But True: Napster '99 Still Smokes Spotify 2012
Andrew Orlowski

The Napster of 13 years ago was vastly superior to any legal music service available today, including Spotify, says Sean Parker, a mover and shaker in both companies. And he's right.

Napster co-founders Sean Parker and Shawn Fanning were speaking at the SXSW Music Festival and Conference this week. Parker is an investor in Spotify, a legal licensed service, unlike the original pirate Napster. So you'd expect him to talk it up – and he does.

But Parker pointed out that even in its rudimentary state, Napster had a real-time chat channel built in, enabling file-sharers to communicate. It also gave you an insight into somebody's personality by allowing you to browse their digital record collection. You can see why he thinks its important: Fanning and Parker originally met on IRC.

Napster also had other advantages, including a wider catalogue, thanks to its disregard for licensing. Today Spotify wins on speed of access – streaming a song extremely rapidly. But of course it doesn't allow you to keep the song in a portable format; offline access is kept within the Spotify software's proprietary encrypted database.

Today Spotify only allows the sharing of playlists, although in reality the songs themselves can be pulled across from peers, if available, rather than from Spotify's central streaming library. That's as "Peer to Peer" as Spotify gets.

Parker has written at length about the differences between Napster's P2P vision and services today, and he commends Spotify for using Facebook as an integration platform. He had previously revealed that many of the social features were on the To Do list, before "the company was taken over by lawyers".
Making P2P legal

In 2001 Napster was finally closed down by a music industry fearful of its impact. But the "evil" aspect of Napster wasn't that it was P2P: it was that it didn't return any money to the creators. But the concept and the software were widely admired, so quiet attempts were made to fix that. Few people know about this part of history, which we wrote about here.

"The Napster subscription model we proposed works. It used fingerprinting, it was a walled garden P2P system," Chris Castle, an attorney at Napster, explained.

The garden would have been open to anyone who wanted to pay.

"Once you threw the 'big switch' and changed to subscription, even if Napster lost 90 per cent of its users there would still be two to three million subscribers. That's a nice little group to start a service with. And you'd have got back some of the people who left if the service was compelling."

Fanning's next venture was Snocap, an attempt to solve the technical challenge of identifying – but not blocking – copyrighted material flowing around a network. With the offer of a music business amnesty, Snocap then approached the pirate services and suggested they could be the next Napster – only a legal version. Nobody stepped up to the challenge:

"These P2P operators looked like little teenage boys who had suddenly realised they weren't going to drive the car this weekend," Castle recalled for us in 2009.

(Which is damning. It was more heroic to pose as the persecuted pirate hero rather than become a successful P2P music entrepreneur.)

There's little doubt that a legal P2P Napster, even at a relatively high price of $50 a month, would have what marketroids call a "rich consumer experience".

What a pity the large labels a decade ago didn't appreciate that Napster was a social network – just one built around music. Who knows, today it might be as big as you-know-who.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/03...ng_on_napster/

Until next week,

- js.

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14-03-12, 07:12 AM	#1
JackSpratts Join Date: May 2001 Location: New England Posts: 10,016	Peer-To-Peer News - The Week In Review - March 17th, '12 Since 2002 "Guess what--we found a large number of Mega accounts from U.S. government officials, including the Department of Justice and the U.S. Senate." – Kim DotCom March 17th, 2012 PirateBox Takes File-Sharing Off The Radar and Offline, For Next To Nothing enigmax When confronted with a doomsday scenario where mainstream online file-sharing becomes a thing of the past, it’s not uncommon for people to refer to days gone by, when files were swapped freely offline using discs and other mediums. Now, an interesting and compact system can deliver the [g]olden days of data swapping with a modern twist, by turning any open space into a wireless and anonymous file-sharing system at a rock-bottom price. With the advent of the personal computer and with it the ability to endlessly copy data, the human desire to share has skyrocketed. Shifting data from A to B, wherever those points may be on a global scale, is now something easily achieved by billions across the world. While the immense capabilities of the Internet has made sending and receiving data child’s play, there are others who find the transfer of bits and bytes across much shorter distances just as fascinating. In 2009 we reported on the Kiosk of Piracy, an offline copy of The Pirate Bay accessible via local WiFi. Although a neat little project, the Kiosk was in one specific location in Germany, meaning anyone out of range would not be able to access it. But now a cool little tool means that anyone, anywhere, can offer a similar file-sharing service for just a few dollars. Inspired by the local transmitting power of traditional pirate radio, NYU art professor David Darts created the PirateBox, a WiFi hotspot and server providing easy and anonymous access to the files held within. In a previous incarnation the PirateBox – which utilized a full-size wireless router and a USB stick for storage – was housed in a fairly cumbersome metal lunchbox. The whole thing cost around $100 to build, a not unreasonable price considering the features, but a new breakthrough update (thanks Numerama) means that not only is its physical footprint massively reduced, but also its cost. Depending on the amount of storage space required for files, for less than $50 anyone can now run a PirateBox wireless file-sharing system. The huge price cut has been made possible by using new hardware, specifically the TP-LINK TL-MR3020 3G Wireless N Router, available from Newegg at just $39.99. Once obtained, all people have to do is follow the PirateBox installation instructions here, insert a USB stick full of files and power on. As can be seen below, it looks rather good. Users wirelessly accessing the device are presented with a web interface which allows them not only to download files but upload them too. No logs or other identifying information is stored in the device. Although great for anyone to share files within its range, considering the pressure currently being applied to university students by record labels and their anti-piracy partners, the chances of music-stuffed PirateBoxes popping up on campuses all around the world increases every day. And considering that The Pirate Bay can now fit on the smallest of USB sticks, every PirateBox could also contain a copy of the world’s most famous torrent site. https://torrentfreak.com/piratebox-t...othing-120311/ Transfer Files Inside Facebook, Thanks to Pipe David Meyer File transfer is coming to Facebook early next week in the form of a new app called Pipe. The app is set to go into beta on Monday after an official unveiling at the London Web Summit. Yes, it’s already possible to transfer files on Facebook as message attachments, but that method doesn’t work for large slabs of data and, frankly, most people don’t realise it’s there. Pipe uses some rather clever wrangling of Adobe technology to let users of the social network send each other files of up to 1GB in size, using not much more than drag-and-drop. The people behind Pipe have big plans for their tool, but those ambitions are contingent on Facebook being a successful first platform. “We’re starting on Facebook because it gives us viral reach,” CEO Simon Hossell told me. When the user wants to send a file to a friend, the friend gets a Facebook chat message with a link to the app and an explainer video; they install the app to get the file… and so it spreads. A native iOS version of Pipe is waiting in the wings, currently in alpha stage, and the plan is to port that over to Android soon after. What is it for? Hossell recoils at the mention of the word “file-sharing” for two reasons. He reckons the term has negative connotations of copyright infringement, an exercise which people are unlikely to carry out when it’s attached to their personal Facebook profiles. But file-sharing also implies one-to-many transmission, and Pipe is purely one-to-one, peer-to-peer. None of the data sent in the file transfer goes through Facebook’s servers, or Pipe’s servers for that matter. The app uses Adobe’s Real Time Media Protocol Flow (RTMFP) communication protocol, which was designed to let Flash or AIR apps talk to each other, to load the file into the recipient’s cache – the emptier the cache, the bigger the file that can be transferred. RTMFP isn’t technically supposed to be used for file transfer, according to Adobe’s own documentation, but that’s what Pipe’s using it for anyway. Pipe team: Marco Rydmann, Philip Eggersglüss, Simon Hossell (L-R)Pipe’s Berlin-based team team has a fair amount of pedigree. Hossell was for many years European sales director for Gracenote, the service that catalogues ripped files for iTunes and others. And product chief Marco Rydmann and operating head Philip Eggersglüss were the guys behind Songbeat, an online music search-and-download business that achieved some success before attracting the fatal attention of Warner. That piece of tech ended up in the music player of Simfy, the German Spotify rival. Although Facebook is apparently just the staging point for Pipe’s dreams, it’s worth noting that at the end of February, the social network itself bought a San Francisco-based startup called Caffeinated Mind, which dealt in — you guessed it — in-browser file transfer. “We’ll be developing internal tools to improve the inner workings of the company and product, applying our technical and product expertise to their rapidly growing service,” the Caffeinated Mind team said at the time, leaving it less than clear as to whether the acquisition was a talent or tech grab. So Pipe had better move fast and be ready to jump to other platforms if and when Facebook makes its own large-file-transfer play. http://gigaom.com/2012/03/16/transfe...hanks-to-pipe/ BitTorrent & Magnets: How Do They Work? Tim Brookes As we recently reported, The Pirate Bay has switched from using .torrent file downloads to magnet links with no opt-out policy. The tracker has offered magnet downloads for a good while now, but this is the first time we’ve seen such a large public tracker use embedded links exclusively. So what does it mean for the army of BitTorrent junkies out there? Not an awful lot, it turns out. Magnets don’t operate in precisely the same way as standard .torrent files but it won’t take long for you to get your head around the new standard. Magnets Explained Magnets are not a particularly recent addition to the arsenal of filesharing technologies out there. Those of you who remember Freenet and eDonkey 2000 will recall similar methods being used as long ago as 2002. While the standard is still evolving, magnets use largely the same technology that these old P2P networks relied on. Unlike .torrent files, magnets can be embedded directly into a webpage as nothing more than a link. This link is made up of several parts and prefixed with the magnet: identifier. These links comprise of several identifiers (like the “exact topic” (xt) ?xt=urn:btih:<hash> prefixing the BitTorrent info hash), a hash value of the torrent file and sometimes other information like trackers (tr) and file name data (dn). The parts that make up a magnet link do not need to be presented in any particular order. These links contain all necessary information to begin downloading files from other peers directly, either using tracker information stored in the link or distributed hash tables (DHT) and peer exchange (PEX). DHT & PEX These two aren’t particularly new either, and you’ve probably been using both for years without realising it. DHT was first demoed in 2005 and works by searching for peers who are downloading the same file without contacting any trackers. This essentially creates a “trackerless torrent” and is something TPB have been pushing for a while now. If you click a magnet link that does not specify a tracker (tr) the first peer will be found using DHT. Once you’ve got a peer, peer exchange kicks in too. PEX is a similar concept to DHT except there is no way of introducing a new peer to the swarm (users sharing a particular torrent) without first communicating via tracker or DHT. The method used in PEX involves your client asking all peers that you are connected to for the peers that they are connected to. PEX is no good from a cold start, but often provides better results than querying a tracker or swarm via DHT. How Does This Affect Me? Your world won’t be rocked by the switch from downloadable .torrent files to magnet links, though there are a few key differences. First up you’re going to need a magnet-compatible client, and there’s a very good chance you’re already using one. uTorrent, Vuze, BitComet, Transmission, Deluge and qBitTorrent all support magnet links, and most clients that are still being actively developed will probably add the functionality at some point. The main complaint I see come up time and time again is the inability to select which files to download when adding a magnet link to your BitTorrent client. While this is true, it’s easy to change this once the torrent is on its way down. Perhaps the question should be “how does it affect the tracker?” then, as it makes quite a difference on that end. For starters the lack of downloadable .torrent files saves on bandwidth, as all magnet links are embedded directly into the webpage. From the tracker’s perspective this removes much of the paper trail – after all, magnet links can be shared anyway you see fit. Find them on trackers, stick them in an email, IM or print them and send them as postcards – it makes very little difference as no “download” took place between you and (in this instance) The Pirate Bay. Mirrors are also now a lot easier to organize, as the need to host downloadable files has been completely removed. This would in effect make it harder for copyright enforcers to curb piracy, even if the original web page with the magnet links is taken offline another is bound to spring up with the exact same content. Throw DHT into the mix and even if the tracking server is down people will still be able to share files. What did we learn? Magnet links mean more of a change for the trackers and index sites than they do for end users. The switch towards trackerless technology using existing foundations like DHT and PEX protects the trackers by eliminating that initial .torrent file download, being able to discover peers in a completely decentralised manner and of course making it very difficult to keep a site distributing magnet links down for long thanks to the easy mirroring procedure. It seems that the cat-and-mouse game played between filesharing advocates and the copyright enforcers is far from over. http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/bittorr...ogy-explained/ File-Sharing Services Maintain Their Popularity -- at Work Jeremy Kirk When technicians from Palo Alto Networks installed one of the company's firewalls in a Fortune 100 company, they were surprised when the device began examining a massive data stream in and out of the network. A server within the company was exchanging up to 300 GB per day of data from one of the major browser-based file-sharing networks, one of dozens of websites on the Internet where content such as movies and music are offered and shared without the permission of the copyright holder. The server "was constantly downloading and uploading," said Matt Keil, senior research analyst at Palo Alto Networks, which said it did not have clearance to identify the company. The amount of data traded by the company's server is on the extreme side, but a study by Palo Alto Networks of data traffic within companies that use its firewall product shows that use of file-sharing services is common within workplaces. And there's a good chance that the trade in data isn't solely for company business. Palo Alto Networks examined the traffic transmitted by 1,636 organizations between April and November 2011 and found browser-based file-sharing services in use on 92 percent of those companies' networks. Those kinds of services share content on port 80, the same port as regular "http" web traffic. One of the most famous browser-based file-sharing services, Megaupload, was shut down by law enforcement authorities in January in several countries. Its operators have been criminally indicted in the U.S. and are awaiting extradition proceedings to begin in August in New Zealand. Palo Alto Networks also found that 82 percent of the 1,636 organizations had some kind of peer-to-peer file-sharing client running, with organizations running an average of six different applications each. One of the most popular peer-to-peer clients is uTorrent, a small application that uses small data files called torrents to download content from different computers around the world offering a file. Users may use file-sharing services at the office because the broadband connections may be faster, Keil said. But downloading content without permission of the copyright owners could put a company at risk of being targeted by copyright infringement lawsuits. While it is possible that the file-sharing services are being used legally, Keil said many of the sites are geared more towards entertainment rather than services, such as Dropbox or YouSendit. Many of the browser-based file-sharing services offer users incentives for uploading more content, such as faster speeds when downloading content from the network, Keil said. Use of browser-based file-sharing services that trade content on port 80 are harder to detect because the traffic looks like normal web traffic and may be harder for organizations to analyze. Keil said Palo Alto Networks developed a technology called App-ID which identifies exactly what applications employees are using on port 80 and other ports. Megaupload was very popular. During the last half of 2011, 57 percent of the corporate networks analyzed by Palo Alto Networks had exchanged data with the website. After its shutdown, users unsurprisingly moved to peer-to-peer based and browser-based file-sharing services. Palo Alto Networks noticed a surge of traffic to Putlocker, another browser-based storage service, as well as 4shared, Keil said. An email sent to Putlocker with questions regarding its business lately was replied to with an unrelated response that read: " Hello, All access to reported files has been blocked and files are now removed. Thank You." https://www.pcworld.com/article/2513...y_at_work.html The BSA's "Nauseating" Anti-Piracy Tactics The Business Software Alliance (BSA) has been accused of heavy-handed tactics that could drive small companies to incriminate themselves. The issue came to light after one small-business owner approached PC Pro with a letter received from the BSA, an industry anti-piracy body whose members include Microsoft and Adobe. The business owner believes the demand was sparked by a tip-off from a disgruntled employee using the BSA’s incentive scheme, which pays up to £20,000 for such information. The BSA says a quarter of cases involve payments to informants. “I’m quite nauseated by the BSA’s tactics,” the owner of the 15-employee company told PC Pro. “It is basically harvesting allegations from disgruntled employees and farming them out to expensive law firms. It seeks proof of compliance, but we’re a small company with nine-year-old PCs – even though someone could stand and wave a finger and say ‘You should know exactly what’s on those systems’, but the truth is I don’t. The reality of running a small business, particularly in a recession, is that you don’t.” The letter accused the small business of running unlicensed software and demanded the firm submit to a software audit, asking for receipts for software purchased as long as seven years ago. The BSA letter “required” the audit to be submitted within 21 days, and warned that courts may award “damages in respect of flagrant infringement” – even though the BSA told PC Pro it hasn’t pursued a single court case in the past five years. Neither does the BSA have the power to search a company’s computers under warrant. Legal letters The letters are vague about what action the BSA would take if the company refused to submit to the audit, but the strong wording could convince companies to pay up to make the problem go away. The BSA’s tactics were criticised by the Open Rights Group (ORG), which says rights holders – and their representatives – must be clear about what action they can take. “Businesses do need to use licensed software, but where intermediary firms are used there needs to be real care around how the proposition is communicated, so that it doesn’t lead to people being unfairly strong-armed into paying settlements or submitting themselves to onerous auditing,” said Peter Bradwell, a copyright campaigner at the ORG. The letter, seen by PC Pro, was sent by law firm Bristows, and states that the “BSA has received a complaint alleging that your company is using unauthorised or unlicensed copies of software”. The letter demands the recipient conduct a full software audit, saying that if it reveals improper copies of software, the companies could “claim various remedies, including that the unlicensed installations be deleted” and “compensation in the form of damages be paid for the period of unlicensed use”. The letters appear to be having the desired effect: the BSA won £2.2 million in settlements and licensing fees in 2010, without taking a single case to court. The most recent case publicised by the BSA saw an architecture firm pay £15,000 in damages, plus £18,000 to “correct the under-licensing”, while last year a plumbing firm paid £19,000 in total, and a labelling company paid £24,000. The BSA has confirmed to PC Pro that it keeps the damages, but not the licensing fees, generated via its actions to “go towards BSA’s running costs, helping to fund BSA’s activities, including local education programmes”. The BSA makes no secret of its tactics, or the scale of its operations, with the company last year publicising a campaign targeting 1,500 companies in Yorkshire, asking them “to declare the software of BSA members installed on company-owned computers, devices and networks to check that it is fully licensed”. Businesses were directed to complete an online self-audit form. According to the BSA, any company flagged as under-licensed is given 30 days to become legally compliant or face “investigation and potential legal action”. The BSA said it only instructs solicitors to start action if it’s convinced an offence has been committed, so companies taking part in a self-audit could be incriminating themselves. “The BSA’s solicitors only contact businesses with requests for software audits when the BSA strongly believes there to be a case of under-licensing/software infringement,” said Julian Swan, director of compliance marketing for the BSA in Europe. “If a company continues to deny that it’s using illegal software, against all the evidence, then the BSA may resort to legal action via the courts.” “Scaring recipients” As the BSA letters tend not to lead to court cases, one lawyer suggested the letters were written to generate maximum impact without necessarily having much power to act. “It’s designed to scare the recipient into thinking that they’re obliged to provide certain information when, in fact, it’s difficult to see that they are,” said David Woods, a senior associate within the IT team at Pinsent Masons. “There are references to an unspecified complaint that seems to have been made, and after that it’s a fishing exercise.” The right course of action for any company receiving such a letter would depend on the circumstances, but two lawyers told PC Pro that companies should think twice before submitting to the BSA’s demands. “I would expect that, in terms of a business model, what the BSA will not be doing is pursuing each of these matters to their ultimate conclusion,” said Woods. http://www.pcpro.co.uk/news/enterpri...piracy-tactics Rob Reid on Understanding Copyright Math Joe Brockmeier If you watch only one TED talk this year, you should be sure to watch Rob Reid's talk "The $8 billion iPod." Reid, the founder of Rhapsody, debuts Copyright Math (TM), the field of study "based on actual numbers from entertainment industry lawyers and lobbyists." In that time, Reid completely skewers the entertainment industry's inflated claims of damages that result from copyright infringement. For example, take the MPAA's claims (PDF) that the U.S. economy loses $58 billion in economic output annually "due to copyright theft of movies, music, packaged software and video games." Reid says, "Music revenues are down by about eight billion dollars a year since Napster first came on the scene. So that's a chunk of what we're looking for. But total movie revenues across theaters, home video and pay-per-view are up. And TV, satellite and cable revenues are way up. Other content markets like book publishing and radio are also up. So this small missing chunk here [$50 billion] is puzzling... What we're looking at here is the insidious cost of ringtone piracy. 50 billion dollars of it a year, which is enough, at 30 seconds a ringtone, that could stretch from here to Neanderthal times." Take a few minutes this weekend and watch Reid's presentation. You'll be glad you did. https://www.readwriteweb.com/enterpr...nding-copy.php European Parliament Blocks Copyright Reform With 113% Voter Turnout Rick Falkvinge In an unexpected turn of events, one of the key committees in the European Parliament voted recently to weaken a reform of the copyright monopoly for allowing re-publication and access to orphan works, pieces of our cultural heritage where no copyright monopoly holder can be located. When a work has gone orphan, it means that it is effectively lost until the copyright monopoly expires, 70 years after the creator’s death. You can only hope that somebody has kept a copy illegally and copied it across new forms of storage media as they go in and out of fashion as the decades come and go, or it will be lost forever. The vote in committee on March 1 was supposed to end that (or, more technically, recommend a course of ending that to the European Parliament as a whole). However, the copyright industry lobby won key points in the voting procedure with 14 votes against reform and 12 in favor of it, according to the just-published protocol. This is according to a fresh report from our Brussels office – I cannot yet find the protocol on the EU’s web pages (which are notoriously disorganized; it may actually be published). There’s a problem with this. There are 24 seats in the committee, and one group (non-inscrits) was absent, lacking deputies to fill that person’s vote. So, there should have been 23 votes at the most. But we just counted 12 votes for reform and 14 against. That’s 26. Yes, your reactions are correct here – that means that voter turnout on this copyright reform issue was 113%. Also, if there were 12 reform-friendly people with actual voting rights, then there would necessarily have been 11 against – causing reform to prevail, and the copyright monopoly to be substantially weakened in the European Union in favor of preserving our cultural heritage. This rather embarrassing issue was pointed out to the committee, the fact that there were three votes too many, and that these three votes determined the outcome. When this was done, along with formally requesting a re-vote, that re-vote on the points in question was denied. “What can I say? There is a lot of room for improvement when it comes to democracy in the European Union”, says Christian Engström, Member of the European Parliament for the Swedish Pirate Party and member of the committee in question. The final kicker here is that the 113-per-cent voter turnout happened in the Legal Affairs committee (JURI), which has the responsibility of safeguarding the integrity and trustworthiness of the legal framework as a whole in Europe. MEP Engström’s assistant, Henrik Alexandersson, called the phenomenon “a temporary form of democratic surplus” in a scathing blog post. (Finally, in the interest of full disclosure and context, it shall be said that there’s no clear picture yet on the overall state of orphan works reform. This was about amendments to that reform in the JURI committee, where these 14-against-12 votes went in the wrong direction: against a good and useful reform. The proposal as a whole is still going to the European Parliament floor for a vote – but in what shape or form remains to be seen.) http://falkvinge.net/2012/03/14/euro...voter-turnout/ European Commission Blames Social Networks For ACTA Failure; Worried About Its Imminent Directive On Copyright Enforcement Glyn Moody Now that the EU's ratification of ACTA has departed from the original script of everyone just waving it through, the European Commission is clearly trying to come up with Plan B. Some insights into its thinking can be gained from the minutes (pdf) of a recent Commission meeting, pointed out to us by André Rebentisch. Here's what the President of the European Commission, José Manuel Barroso, said about ACTA: The President introduced the topic, commenting on the intensity and scale of the public debate and the organised campaign against the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA). There were those in particular who felt that the agreement would lead specifically to an unwarranted restriction on freedom of expression and democracy on the Internet, and would distort the reasonable balance between intellectual property rights and other fundamental rights. He therefore felt that the Court of Justice of the European Union should be asked to confirm the Commission’s position in this matter, namely that ACTA was consistent and compatible with the Treaties and with the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union. He suggested that that day’s discussion should consider that point, but also the question of when would be an appropriate time to refer the matter to the Court, and the possibility of consulting Parliament and the Council with a view to adopting a common approach in this matter. The suggestion that the anger over ACTA was somehow part of an "organised campaign" looks like a continuing failure to grasp that the protests were about all Internet users across Europe coming together to defend their online community. As for the "common approach" with the European Parliament, it's easy to see why the European Commission would want this: it would allow the referral of ACTA to the European Court of Justice to be framed in such a way as to increase the likelihood of a positive response from the court. It will be interesting to see whether the European Parliament acquiesces in this, or continues to take a hard line on the need for more searching questions to be asked. Barroso's comments were followed by some observations from Karel De Gucht, the European Commissioner with direct responsibility for ACTA, who made some revealing remarks: He noted that opposition had increased in the run-up to January’s planned vote in the US Congress on two legislative initiatives -- the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and the Protect Intellectual Property Act (PIPA) -- aimed at increasing the protection of intellectual property rights on the Internet; in the end the vote had not been held, following a hostile campaign by social networks and the loss of White House support. It's interesting to see De Gucht linking the growing hostility to ACTA with the storm generated by SOPA/PIPA, and giving the credit for stopping those US bills to a "hostile campaign" waged by social networks. You can tell this really worries him, because he says something similar about social networks and ACTA immediately afterwards: Despite the signature of ACTA in January by the Commission, the Union Presidency and twenty-one other Member States, the intense media campaign which was unleashed in Europe, instigated largely by the social networks, had since led a number of Union Heads of State or Government to decide to delay signature or ratification of the agreement by their national parliaments. He added that the campaign had also had a considerable influence on Members of the European Parliament and, following recent contacts with various political groups, he now felt it would be difficult to muster a majority in favour of ACTA within the EP. What's extraordinary is that no less than three other commissioners also spoke at the meeting about the importance of social networks, and the need to grapple with them. Viviane Reding: She concluded by highlighting the rising influence of social networks on the Internet and the need for the Commission to take account of this in its communication policy and in dealing with various dossiers. Instructions had already been given to the communication units in the Directorates-General. Neelie Kroes: She concluded by stressing the need for appropriate communication on the agreement, without waiting for the Court’s opinion, targeted particularly at the various stakeholders involved and social networks. Michel Barnier: was also of the opinion that the key role of social networks in public debate in Europe forced the Commission to think carefully about adapting some of its means of communication and that Members should discuss the matter as soon possible. What emerges very clearly from this is that the most senior politicians in the European Union are completely nonplussed by the power of social networks to mobilize not just Net activists but ordinary Internet users, and are struggling to deal with it. I think we can expect to see attempts to neutralize that new force by "reaching out" to social networks in a variety of ways in the coming months. One area where that will clearly happen is for the forthcoming update on the EU's "IPR Enforcement Directive", generally known as IPRED. The Commission meeting referred to it explicitly: As regards the planned revision of the 2004 Directive on enforcement of intellectual property rights, the Commission needed to adopt a prudent and balanced approach to this politically delicate exercise, and take account of existing texts on the protection of data and privacy in the areas of telecoms and fundamental rights. The EC knows that it must be very careful here, because the measures already mooted for the next version of IPRED are very close to some of SOPA's bad ideas -- for example, turning ISPs into copyright cops. The European Commission has observed what happened in the US, and is clearly very concerned that the IPRED update will meet the same opposition from those mysterious, uncontrollable social networks as SOPA/PIPA did and ACTA is now doing. http://www.techdirt.com/articles/201...orcement.shtml Estonian ISP Fined for Illegal File-Sharing Archive An Internet service provider in Narva and its director have been fined for making and distributing unauthorized copies of copyrighted music and films through the company's file sharing system. Under plea bargaining procedure, Feliks Korkiainen received a fine of 1,740 euros, payable in a year, and his company Fill OÜ received a fine of 3,500 euros. The illegal activity took place from 2005 to 2009. At the end of the pretrial investigation, Korkiainen was accused of reproduction of copyright protected works for the purpose of distribution and illegal public performance of the works and making pirated copies available for commercial purposes. The head of the Estonian copyright protection organization, Erik Mandre told uudised.err.ee that many Internet service providers in Ida-Viru County still use a business model where they maintain file sharing environments for customers on FTP servers with restricted access. ISPs compete with each other by offering attractive collections of files, over 10 TB in size. "There have been cases where customers have changed their ISP in Ida-Viru only because the other ISP had a newer and more appealing content in their FTP server. This sort of activity that promotes illegal content among ISPs curtails the legal market for content services in Ida-Viru County and the violators must be punished," said Mandre. http://news.err.ee/sci-tech/48122934...9-ae63dfe11373 Indian ISPs Must Block 100+ Music Sites enigmax Every single ISP in India has been ordered to block 104 sites offering unauthorized music. A total of 387 ISPs must block the sites immediately via DNS and IP address blocking, backed up with Deep Packet Inspection. While the IFPI praised the action, their Indian counterparts are singing are more interesting tune – they don’t want to destroy their opponents, but bring them into the business. “Content theft is a global problem and we must have a global commitment to solving it. This is an important opportunity for the Indian government to move forward with strong protections against online theft,” MPAA chairman and CEO Chris Dodd told the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry conference this week in Mumbai. “We encourage the Indian film industry to reject as we have, the false argument that you cannot be pro-technology and pro-copyright at the same time,” he continued. In framing “content theft” as a problem affecting the county’s middle-classes and alongside a clear dig at the likes of Google and Wikipedia, Dodd’s words could have been pulled verbatim from any pro-SOPA speech. But unlike the United States, India doesn’t need new legislation to allow site blocking – they already have it – and Dodd must be as jealous as hell. Indian film companies have previously obtained court orders to have sites blocked at the ISP level but in recent weeks the IMI, the RIAA-like Indian Music Industry trade group, has shown the movie industry how it’s really done. In a series of court actions at the Calcutta High Court, 142 music companies of the IMI have succeeded in obtaining orders to force every ISP in India – 387 in total – to block 104 sites (list here) the industry accuses of online piracy. And when it comes to implementing the blocks, there are no half-measures. ISPs have been ordered to implement DNS and IP address blockades and for those thinking of using a DNS outside India, Deep Packet Inspection will step in to ensure the domains remain blocked. “This decision is a victory for the rule of law online and a blow to those illegal businesses that want to build revenues by violating the rights of others,” said IFPI CEO Frances Moore in a statement. But in a clear signal that for the music and movie industries even the toughest of anti-piracy measures are never enough, Moore says that current developments are a good start. “The court ruled that blocking is a proportionate and effective way to tackle website piracy,” Moore noted, adding that the Indian government should now “build on this progress” by advancing further legislation to tackle digital piracy. As tough as the Indian court orders are, already their weaknesses are being probed. One of the key sites on the lists – Songs.pk – has already circumvented the blockade by resurfacing with the new URL of Songspk.pk since the blockade was incapable of physically taking the Czech-hosted site offline. But although the Indian labels have taken the nuclear option in blocking huge numbers of sites, Apurv Nagpal, CEO of Saregama, one of India’s largest music labels says that they don’t want to destroy their opponents. Interestingly, Saregama acknowledges the pirate sites’ “passion for music” and says the industry wants to befriend them. “We don’t want these sites to be shut down, we want them to pay a license fee and flourish as a business,” Saregama said. “There are legitimate businesses in operation too. The scope is there, and we want these sites to be legal.” It would be a cold day in hell before Westerners heard the likes of Chris Dodd or Frances Moore make a statement as radical as that. But if the stick is to work long-term it has to be backed up with a sizable carrot, and if the pirate sites really do only want money, surely that’s their Achilles’ heel right there. https://torrentfreak.com/court-order...-sites-120316/ Police Launch New Probe Into the Pirate Bay After Swedish file-sharing haven the Pirate Bay in February received the blow that the Supreme Court wouldn’t grant them the right to appeal, their newly registered Swedish domain has prompted a new police investigation. “Both police and prosecutors have contacted us,” said Erik Arnberg from the Swedish company Binero that registered the site to daily Expressen. Lundström, along with Gottfrid Svartholm Warg, Peter Sunde and Fredrik Neij were convicted in April 2009 on charges of being accessories to copyright violations. they were sentenced to a year's imprisonment apiece and a combined fine of 30 million kronor ($4.4 million). All four appealed their sentences, with the Svea Court of Appeal ruling in November to uphold the convictions, with the exception of Svartholm Warg who was absent due to illness. The three remaining pirates then petitioned Sweden's Supreme Court for leave to appeal. But in February 2012, the court announced that the defendants' request had been denied and that the appeal's court sentence therefore will stand. However, the site thepiratebay.org has been impossible to access for some time, with visitors redirected to a new address; thepiratebay.se. The domain was registered with Swedish company Binero by Fredrik Neij. According to Expressen, police and prosecutors got in touch with the company in February wanting the details of the person who registered the site, and were given the publicly available information surrounding the registration. “Someone has bought and registered the domain with us, but the customer hasn’t placed any content with us or used our name server,” Arnberg told the paper, unwilling to disclose any more information to anyone. To Binero the integrity and confidentiality of customers is very important, said Arnberg to the paper. According to Expressen, the preliminary investigation against The Pirate Bay is headed by prosecutor Fredrik Ingblad, who has significant experience in copyright law and file-sharing offences. “There are currently investigations into bit torrent sites, but I can’t disclose against which ones,” Ingblad told the paper. http://www.thelocal.se/39658/20120314/ RapidShare Under Court Order To Filter User Uploads – All Of Them The whole file-sharing business is the big target these for entertainment industry and now book publishers with every day bring new reports, and court decisions, of how the business is under attack and being painted as the worst thing to happen on the web since .. well … Napster. The newest target that has gotten itself hit with what has to be an onerous decision is Swiss-based RapidShare, regardless of the fact that the company has been trying extremely hard to work with all the various rights holders and deal promptly with any copyright infringement claims. As for the decision that was handed down by the Higher Regional Court in Hamburg it puts RapidShare in the position that it now has to monitor all user uploads in order to ensure that now copyright material is being stored on their servers. One of the groups celebrating this decision is the German Booksellers Association, even though there has been no written copy of the court’s verdict made public yet. “Internet sites can no longer avoid their responsibilities, and profit from copyright infringing uploads of anonymous users,” says Alexander Skipis, chief executive of the German Booksellers Association.” However, as with all legal decisions there is always the problem with unintended consequences and in the case of decisions going against file-sharing or file locker sites one has to wonder when the companies behind cloud based file storage are going to start being affected. Companies like Dropbox and efforts like SkyDrive from Microsoft are all basically the same idea which means they could see themselves facing the same types of court battles in the future. http://www.inquisitr.com/206517/rapi...s-all-of-them/ MegaUpload's Users May Include U.S. Government Officials Dara Kerr The cyberlocker's founder Kim Dotcom says that he recently learned a "large number of Mega accounts" were being used by people in the Department of Justice and the U.S. Senate. When the file-swapping site MegaUpload was shuttered by the U.S. government--and consequentially its offices raided, $42 million of its assets frozen, and its leader Kim DotCom arrested--some officials might not have thought of unintended consequences, such as the loss of legitimate files. They also might not have realized that they too might be outed as having used MegaUpload. During an interview with TorrentFreak this week, DotCom said, "Guess what--we found a large number of Mega accounts from U.S. government officials, including the Department of Justice and the U.S. Senate." Released on bail earlier this month, DotCom said he got this information through his dealings to get the Department of Justice to grant users temporary access to the site to download their personal data and files. According to TorrentFreak, the MegaUpload raid in January disabled hundreds of thousands of files that were not infringing on copyright laws, including personal photos and work-related documents. "MegaUpload's legal team is working hard to reunite our users with their data," DotCom told TorrentFreak. "We are negotiating with the Department of Justice to allow all Mega users to retrieve their data." The Electronic Frontier Foundation is also looking into how MegaUpload users will be able to recoup their personal files. At the end of January, the nonprofit launched a campaign called MegaRetrieval, which has the goal of creating an inventory of all users with lost data. "EFF is troubled that so many lawful users of MegaUpload.com had their property taken from them without warning and that the government has taken no steps to help them," EFF staff attorney Julie Samuels said in a statement. "We think it's important that these users have their voices heard as this process moves forward." It remains unclear who and how many people in the U.S. government actually used MegaUpload and whether the Department of Justice will restore the site temporarily to let users access their personal files. http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-573...ent-officials/ UK Backs U.S. Extradition for File-Sharing Suspect Britain's Home Secretary has backed a decision to extradite to the United States a British student who ran a website allowing users to access films and TV shows illegally, the Home Office said on Tuesday. Richard O'Dwyer is wanted by U.S. authorities for copyright infringement offences in connection with his TVShack website, which did not host any illegal content but provided links to other online sites where it could be accessed. In a London court hearing in January, his lawyers argued that by linking to other websites, he had done nothing more than the likes of Google or Yahoo. However, a judge rejected his argument and Home Secretary Theresa May has upheld the decision to extradite the 23-year-old. He can still appeal to London's High Court against the ruling. Campaigners argue O'Dwyer's is the latest in a series of cases that demonstrate Britain's extradition rules with the United States are lopsided, allowing suspects to be extradited without criminal charges from British authorities. The most high-profile is that of British computer hacker Gary McKinnon, who was arrested in 2002 after allegedly hacking into U.S. security systems including the Pentagon and NASA and who is still fighting to avoid extradition. "Today, yet another British citizen is being sold down the river by the British Government," O'Dwyer's mother Julia was quoted by media as saying. Before his court hearing in January, O'Dwyer told media that he started the project to improve his computer programming skills and help him get a work placement. The student said he sold advertising space to pay for the server fees. U.S. authorities, who have cracked down far harder on illegal file-sharing to protect its film, television and music industries, said he had earned $230,000 from the venture. "The district judge found the allegations were comparable to an offence under UK law and it was appropriate for any trial to be held in the U.S.," a Home Office spokesman said. http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/...8EDAOD20120313 Megaupload's Short-Lived Effort to Go Legit Jon Healey Before the feds shut down Megaupload, the file-sharing site accused of criminal copyright infringement, operators of the company were in talks with French technology firm UbicMedia about converting online pirates into legitimate buyers and sellers. There's no guarantee that the Hollywood studios, record labels and other copyright holders would have supported the effort. In fact, history suggests otherwise. Nevertheless, I can't help but wonder what would have happened if Megaupload had moved sooner to incorporate UbicMedia's security and e-commerce technology. Olivier Pfeiffer, the company's director of business development, offered the following explanation for UbicMedia's approach to digital rights management: Rather than wrapping a file in an electronic lock, UbicMedia's technology modifies it in a way that renders it unplayable unless a second, considerably smaller file is streamed to the user's device. To get that second file, users have to comply with whatever terms the copyright owner sets -- pay a fee, watch ads, sign onto a mailing list, you name it. Here's where things get interesting. The streamed information unlocks the file just once, after which it returns to its unplayable state. Each time someone wants to play it, they have to enter a valid code into UbiqMedia's client software to start the streaming of the all-important second file. Users can share the original file, but each new user will have to obtain a new code from the cloud. That enables the copyright owner to track and monetize every time a file is played -- capabilities well suited to file-sharing networks and other forms of peer-to-peer distribution. Pfeiffer said the technology makes more sense for rentals than purchases, which makes it a better fit for movies and games than for songs. Another likely use is in enabling copyright holders to send screeners and promotional copies of their work to awards voters and reviewers. Pfeiffer said Megaupload approached UbicMedia's chief executive, Alain Rosset, before the feds' crackdown in January. "Obviously, they could feel the wind turning against them, and they were looking at ways of getting more legal," he said. Megaupload planned to use UbicMedia's technology to give copyright owners a way to use the service to generate sales. Specifically, Megaupload would have given rights holders who found unauthorized copies of their works on the site a new choice: In addition to simply having the file removed, they could make a UbicMedia-enabled version available in its place. According to an article Rosset posted in a French technology forum, Megaupload's Emmanuel Gadaix told the French Senate eight days before the raid that his company would use UbicMedia's technology "for the legal distribution of content with full control for the rights holders, so that they can use our platform as a hosting website and take advantage from our millions of users as well as our global presence.” Rosset also cited a European study suggesting that upward of 10% of all unauthorized downloaders would have paid for the files, which represents a potential revenue stream at least as large as worldwide box-office receipts. It's worth noting that the indictment accuses Megaupload of not actually removing the files it supposedly took down at copyright holders' requests. Instead, the indictment alleges, the company just removed one of the multiple links that could be used to access the file. So if Megaupload had suggested the UbicMedia alternative, copyright owners probably would have insisted that the company prove first that it could actually take down pirated files. Still, Pfeiffer said, "It was very interesting for us, obviously, because it’s an enormous reservoir of viewers ... who had accepted the fact of paying a monthly fee to access content they were interested in." Megaupload's distributed infrastructure also was a good match for UbicMedia's cloud-based technology, he said. The major entertainment companies are more supportive of online innovators than they used to be, but they've been particularly slow to support peer-to-peer or user-driven distribution models for anything other than promotional material. With a few notable exceptions, such as YouTube, they've also been reluctant to work with companies that have taken advantage of users' infringements to build large audiences. Those factors make Megaupload's plans to win over content owners with UbicMedia's help seem like a long shot. Most of the French company's business is in Europe, but it's trying to gain a foothold in the United States by having Pfeiffer open an office in Los Angeles. Its clients include Starz Network, which is using the technology to help sell episodes of the Web-based video series "Online Gamer," and Box, a content storage and sharing platform. http://www.latimes.com/business/tech...0,530924.story Digital Notes: Turntable.fm Says It Has Reached Deals With Labels Ben Sisario Sometimes it’s best to go legit. On Tuesday the online music service Turntable.fm said that it had reached licensing deals with all four major record companies, allowing it to leave the legal gray zone it had been operating in and expand into international markets. Seth Goldstein, the company’s chairman, announced the deals at a panel at South by Southwest in Austin, Tex., and confirmed the news by phone shortly afterward. “Basically this means we’re legitimate,” Mr. Goldstein said. “There are no eggshells, no wondering whether or not what we’re doing is viable as it relates to rights holders.” Turntable, with lets people play D.J. for friends or strangers in online “rooms,” became a minor sensation within weeks of its introduction last summer. At the beginning, it did not have licenses with labels, but instead obtained its music through a third party and operated under the protections and restrictions of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, the federal law that says how online services can use material without permission. One rule of the copyright act, familiar to Pandora users, is that for “noninteractive” streams that resemble radio, a user cannot pick exactly what songs are listened to — only a channel or stream, with songs programmed by someone else. As many industry observers saw it, Turntable pushed at the limits of that law, since a user could participate as either a passive listener (which is O.K.) or a D.J. who chooses specific songs to play (which is the tricky part). The new licenses clear up that ambiguity, Mr. Goldstein said, and also open the door for the service to expand into other countries as well as to work directly with artists and record companies in marketing campaigns. The company is in the process of making deals with music publishers as well, Mr. Goldstein said. Turntable got off to a big start last year, but lost a good deal of its traffic as its novelty wore off. Mr. Goldstein said that its audience had started gaining again, and added that over the life of the service — which is only about nine months — it had 130 million streams of music. http://mediadecoder.blogs.nytimes.co...s-with-labels/ Digital Notes: Sony Offers $8 Million Settlement Over Royalties Ben Sisario Ending a six-year dispute, Sony has offered an $8 million settlement in a class-action lawsuit over royalties for digital music. The case, originally filed by the Allman Brothers and Cheap Trick, was one of the first in what is now a wave of litigation by artists accusing major record companies of underpaying royalties by counting downloads as “sales,” like CDs, instead of as “licenses,” which pay much higher rates. (Royalties might be anywhere from 5 percent to 20 percent for sales, while 50 percent on a license is standard.) The Allman Brothers and Cheap Trick have since settled their own claims in the suit, which was filed in 2006. But two other acts took their places as lead plaintiffs — the folk-rock band the Youngbloods and Elmo Shropshire, who sang “Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer” — and a large pool of acts may be eligible for class status. According to the terms of the settlement, which is subject to court approval, $7.65 million of the settlement would go to artists who have sold a minimum of 28,500 tracks on iTunes; lawyers’ fees would be taken out of that portion. A pot of $300,000 would go to artists with lower sales. Last year, a group of producers for Eminem won a similar suit against Universal. In the wake of that decision, numerous artists have sued, including Sister Sledge, Chuck D. and the estate of Rick James. http://mediadecoder.blogs.nytimes.co...ver-royalties/ RIAA Chief: ISPs to Start Policing Copyright by July 12 Comcast, Time Warner and Verizon are among the ISPs preparing to implement a graduated response to piracy by July, says the music industry's chief lobbyist. Greg Sandoval The country's largest Internet service providers haven't given up on the idea of becoming copyright cops. Last July, Comcast, Cablevision, Verizon, Time Warner Cable and other bandwidth providers announced that they had agreed to adopt policies designed to discourage customers from illegally downloading music, movies and software. Since then, the ISPs have been very quiet about their antipiracy measures. But during a panel discussion before a gathering of U.S. publishers here today, Cary Sherman, CEO of the Recording Industry Association of America, said most of the participating ISPs are on track to begin implementing the program by July 12. Supporters say this could become the most effective antipiracy program ever. Since ISPs are the Internet's gatekeepers, the theory is that network providers are in the best position to fight illegal file sharing. CNET broke the news last June that the RIAA and counterparts at the trade group for the big film studios, had managed to get the deal through--with the help of the White House. Sherman told attendees of the Association of American Publishers' annual meeting, that planners had always said that setting up an antipiracy program like this could take a year. He told CNET following his panel that the process isn't as easy as turning on a switch. "Each ISP has to develop their infrastructure for automating the system," Sherman said. They need this "for establishing the database so they can keep track of repeat infringers, so they know that this is the first notice or the third notice. Every ISP has to do it differently depending on the architecture of its particular network. Some are nearing completion and others are a little further from completion." The program, commonly referred to as "graduated response," requires that ISPs send out one or two educational notices to those customers who are accused of downloading copyrighted content illegally. If the customer doesn't stop, the ISP is then asked to send out "confirmation notices" asking that they confirm they have received notice. At that time, the accused customers will also be informed of the risks they incur if they don't stop pirating material. If the customer is flagged for pirating again, the ISP can then ratchet up the pressure. Participating ISPs can choose from a list of penalties, or what the RIAA calls "mitigation measures," which include throttling down the customer's connection speed and suspending Web access until the subscriber agrees to stop pirating. The ISPs can waive the mitigation measure if they choose and not one of the service providers has agreed to permanently terminate service. The partnership with the major bandwidth providers was years in the making and the deal pumped lots of confidence into the entertainment sector. After the White House and state and federal lawmakers showed support for the deal, leaders at the RIAA and Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) believed they had the momentum to get anti-piracy legislation passed in Congress. They were wrong of course. The Stop Online Piracy Act and Protect IP Act were run off the rails mostly by the tech sector. It will be interesting to see how the tech sector reacts once accused Internet pirates begin having their Web access suspended. http://news.cnet.com/8301-31001_3-57...ht-by-july-12/ “Send Them Your Money” Campaign Suggests You Pay the MPAA and RIAA for Piracy Losses with Copied Currency MPAA Piracy piracy losses RIAA send them your money Eric Limer When it comes to battling piracy, there’s a pretty huge semantic problem that is getting in the way of dealing with the real issue. Organizations like the RIAA and the MPAA tend to treat pirated copies of software as stolen copies of software when they’re calculating their (inaccurate) annual losses to piracy. In actuality, piracy — while illegal — is not theft; it’s piracy. That’s why it’s called piracy, not theft. In a bid to drive this point home, a little project called Send Them Your Money has suggested an elegantly flippant way to “appease” the MPAA and RIAA: Send them full compensation for their losses in the form of copied dollar bills. The project hearkens back to a case heard by the Japanese judge Ōoka Tadasuke hundreds of years ago. In that case, an innkeeper accused a student of stealing the fumes of his food. The student would often eat his dull food while the innkeeper was cooking and the innkeeper argued that this meant the student was stealing the smells and using them to flavor his food. The ultimate ruling was that the student was to pass some money from one of his hands to the other, the thought being that the smell of food was more or less equal to the sound of money. The same idea is at work here. If the RIAA and the MPAA are going to argue that copies of software — which by their very nature do not diminish the souce from which they are copied — are for all intents and purposes the genuine item, they should be happy with copies of money since, by their logic, that is as good at the real thing. Now, I’d like to be crystal clear here and say that piracy is not legal and it’s not ethical, but that being said, it’s also not theft. This project has nothing to do with affirming the legitimacy of piracy; it has everything to do with highlighting the inconsistent logic organizations like the MPAA and RIAA use in regards to piracy and weighing its affects. “Now wait,” you say, “isn’t copying money illegal?” Not if you do it right. Reproducing images of money (in the United States at least) is perfectly legal under three conditions: • The copy has to be one-sided • The copy has to be the wrong size. It has to be at least 75% smaller or 150% larger than an actual bill • You have to destroy the negatives, graphic files, or “digitized storage mediums” after their final use The last one is a little unclear as it seems to apply specifically to physical copies of money, but it seems relatively reasonable to assume that their final use is getting emailed to someone, or posted on a website, they’re fine so long as they adhere to rules 1 and 2. If digital copies of money still make you uncomfortable, Send Them Your Money also provides a handy ASCII version, for those of us who are a little strapped for fake cash. Now you actually can email some fake money to the RIAA and the MPAA if you really want to, but I think more than anything else, this serves as a particularly useful thought experiment that really brings home the differences between theft and piracy and what “a copy” really is (and isn’t). There’s probably little you could do to get the RIAA and MPAA to change their tune, and sending them fake money is unlikely to make them see any light, but it is certainly good for a chuckle, and an important lesson in semantics. http://www.geekosystem.com/send-them...money-project/ Report: Walmart To Charge $2-$4 Per DVD To Convert Movies To UltraViolet Cloud Dan Rayburn Tomorrow at 1pm ET, Walmart along with UltraViolet partners Universal, Paramount, Warner Brothers, Sony Pictures and Fox will announce Walmart's UltraViolet offering. Studio execs I have spoken with say that consumers will be able to bring their DVDs into Walmart, which will then charge the consumer between $2-$4 per DVD to give the consumer access to that movie in the UltraViolet cloud locker system. DVDs will then be stamped at the store, so they can't be used by multiple people and I'm told pricing for converting the DVD to digital will vary based on either SD or HD quality. I'm sure the studios and Walmart are going to talk about how great this is for consumers and they will probably use a term like "nominal" to describe the fee consumers will have to pay. In reality though, the studios are doing exactly what consumers don't want, which is forcing them to pay multiple times for the same piece of content. The fact that consumers already spent money to buy the DVD apparently is not good enough to allow them access to a free digital copy, which they could easily get if they ripped the DVD on their own. It costs the studios almost nothing to store the movie in the cloud, about two cents per movie, and it only costs about four cents, at most, for them to pay a CDN to stream the movie to the user. So at $2 per DVD, a user would have to watch the movie 50 times from the cloud before the studio was losing money from digital. Consumers have been vocal in saying they want more content digitally, at a fair price, and many of the studios are acting like they are giving consumers what they want, when in reality, they aren't. You can get digital, but only of you pay for the movie again. And you can get a digital copy with the Blu-ray disc, but only if you pay between $5-$10 more for a copy that includes a digital copy. Pricing seems to be all over the map for a Blu-ray with digital copy, but they are clearly much more expensive than just the Blu-ray only disc. While there have been a lot of technical issues with the UltraViolet system that have been well documented in the media, those issues could be resolved over time, but it's no guarantee. UltraViolet is not easy to use, it requires multiple accounts with multiple websites, there is very little device support and Disney and Apple refuse to join the consortium. Physical Blu-ray copies with digital are more expensive and studios are charging so much for their download and own offerings, between $15-$25 a movie, that it makes more sense for a consumer to rent the movie for $3.99 instead of buying. Many studios have gotten so greedy that they are pricing themselves out of the digital download to own market. In addition, with the way the content windowing works for content going from theatre, PPV, rental, purchase etc. the studios are now going to have to augment that window in some way to allow for the new UltraViolet offering. Aside for all of this, UltraViolet is a cloud based system that requires you to have to be connected to the Internet. As far as I know of, there is no way to play your movies from the cloud locally on your machine if you don't have access to the Internet. You have to connect to UltraViolet's system to get you license key and if you can't you won't be able to play any content. Unless UltraViolet comes up with an option for local playback, your entire library of movies and content will be in the cloud not accessible locally. That's not going to be ideal for a lot of people and it also requires consumer to once again choose between one quality over another. Studios should want to deliver consumers the best quality video available, yet they are going to force many users away from HD, simply due to price. That's not the best user experience. Another topic one has to wonder about is privacy. UltraViolet is going to know every movie you stream from the cloud. And with so many studios, broadcasters, CE manufactures etc. in the program, what you what and when you watch it is going to be known. Who has access to that information? I can't find any language on the UltraViolet website that talks to the privacy of one's account in the cloud. Are they going to be data mining our usage habits and sharing that with third party companies? If they do, and I expect they will, that data is worth a lot of money to advertisers who will then know the demographics of who is watching their movies. That is very powerful data that UltraViolet is collecting, which they can make a ton of money from. And what if UltraViolet starts using that information to track what you do outside of UltraViolet? Can they now deny you access to a movie in the cloud if they notice your IP address shows up in a torrent site? Can they now disable your UltraViolet account? In the end, do you really own the content that is in the cloud? I think this could be a major concern if the service starts to get some traction and is something UltraViolet will need to address In January, Paramount rolled out a service to sell ten year old movies via the UltraViolet cloud for $22.99 for HD. Many of these same movies are available via Blu-ray for $8-$10 cheaper and I still can't find any definition from UltraViolet on what they classify as an "HD" movie. What exactly is the quality? How was it encoded? Is the digital copy in the cloud comparable to the Blu-ray disc? I highly doubt it as it would probably require 8-10Mbps to stream, which means the studios are selling HD digital copies, which are less quality than the Blu-ray, yet are charging consumers more for it. And the studios think this is something consumers won't notice? Every year the studios seem to come up with new ideas and ways to try and charge consumers for movies. First it was the studios delivering two-hour movies to cell phones, even though consumers weren't and still aren't asking for the service. Then came the studios charging more for a digital download over the physical DVD. That was quickly followed by Sony charging $24.95 for a 24-hour rental and admitting it does not want to upset Walmart and the studios own DVD business. Then you had studios charging consumers more for movies on USB drives, and you also have some of the studios forcing Netflix and Redbox (and library's) from renting physical DVDs for 28 or 56 days, because the studios are trying to force consumers to buy more DVDs. Not to mention you constantly have the MPAA complaining about piracy. I don't condone stealing, but what do the studios think will happen when they aren't giving customers what they want at a fair price and will do everything in their power to prevent consumers from copying their own DVDs? As a whole, the studios still don't get it. They aren't listening to consumers, they haven't truly changed their way of thinking and their pricing and business models don't make sense. In reality, a back-end system like UltraViolet that would allow such seamless viewing across all devices still hasn’t been created and it won't be the studios that make it happen. http://www.typepad.com/services/trac...6763b58a79970b Crowdsourced Movie Studio Creates a Bold New Kind of Sci-Fi Series Hugh Hart A new sci-fi web series teams Hollywood visual effects artists with a global scattering of up-and-coming animators, all of whom are working for free to craft CGI elements for a wigged-out futuristic saga. The New Kind project is being spearheaded by visual effects hot shots whose resumes include Star Wars, Avatar and Hugo. These moonlighting pros are sharing their expertise with 200 anime enthusiasts to produce a crowdsourced labor of love made possible because the cost of CGI animation tools has dropped several hundred thousand dollars in the past few years. “Somebody in Malaysia or Greece who lives in their mom’s basement can now create visual effects with a $2,000 computer and a $3,000 software license that’s on par, or even superior to, what you would have seen in Jurassic Park,” New Kind creator Peter Hyoguchi said in a phone interview with Wired. “If you know how to find them, there’s a glut of visual effects artists out there.” Judging from concept art and an eerie teaser clip that’s already become a viral sensation, Hyoguchi may be on to something big. While risk-averse Hollywood studios increasingly rely on blockbuster brands and nine-figure budgets, Hyoguchi is experimenting with a super-cheap production model that costs nearly nothing to implement. Everybody works on spec, and creative talent will be paid for their efforts if the 80-episode adventure turns a profit, according to Hyoguchi, who plans to post the series for free, but make money on merchandising and by charging viewers $1 for a sneak preview of the following week’s episode. He estimates that $1 million in assets have been created since The New Kind project launched last spring, and his Kickstarter campaign, running through Friday, aims to raise $100,000 in cash to finish the first two episodes. The New Kind pulls in top-tier digital artists who are eager to collaborate simply because they love the genre. According to Hyoguchi, a typical New Kind contributor normally does effects for mainstream popcorn flicks, but would rather be making anime. “Everything’s about DC and Marvel superheroes, but what I’ve discovered is that people my age are not really loving it,” said the 40-year old writer-director. “There’s this entire generation of visual effects artists who grew up on anime and Robotech. Hollywood doesn’t want to make those kinds of movies, so when I present them with this story, they want to be part of it.” That story, set 30 years in the future on the heels of a global economic meltdown, focuses on teenage protagonists Darvin, from Texas, and Yuka, from Japan. The two traverse urban wastelands dotted with self-illuminated graffitti and populated by robotic street gangs wearing mecha suits. Ruling the chaos is The Dark Order, whose members live in opulence and secretly manipulate countries, industries and religions. Darvin and Yuki have never met, but they’re psychically linked, and if they ever get together their union will lead to an evolutionary upgrade for humanity and spell doom for Dark Order villains. The project’s visual style pays open homage to the work of anime legend Shinji Aramaki, who designed the original Transformers action figures for Hasbro in 1983, and later pioneered the mecha genre in Japan. The mid-1980s Japanese cartoon Robotech also influences New Kind characters, who routinely clamp themselves into Iron Man-like mecha suits to do battle. The plot owes much to Japan’s “New Type” sub-genre, in which children or young adults represent the next evolutionary step for the human species. It’s a ‘bot-fueled narrative aesthetic that dangles like catnip for anime nerds and sci-fi geeks, but doesn’t do much for Hollywood execs. Hyoguchi learned that the hard way over a decade ago. Son of an architect and a mother who animated Hanna-Barbera cartoons, the Marin County native dropped out of high school to make his first film, then lived in his car and squatted in an abandoned house in Berkley, California, for a year before moving to Los Angeles. In L.A., Hyoguchi wrote several unproduced screenplays, including a 1997 Ray Bradbury collaboration called The Waking. After directing festival circuit favorite First, Last and Deposit, he successfully pitched an early version of The New Kind to MTV in 2000, but the deal collapsed when Viacom acquired the music network. Disheartened, Hyoguchi temporarily quit show biz and moved to Japan. “The New Kind just sat on the shelf until the world changed a couple of years ago,” says Hyoguchi. “I realized I could do it on my own without having to give up rights or anything like that because the software had become so cheap and so many artists knew how to use it.” Last April, a freshly emboldened Hyoguchi, by now CEO of the Strike.TV webotainment site, pitched matte painting maestro Christopher Evans to volunteer as art director on The New Kind. Evans, who was neighbors with Hyoguchi growing up, is a legend in certain circles – he helped bring to life the worlds of Star Wars, Alice in Wonderland, Captain America and dozens of other movies. “I thought it was an intriguing idea,” Evans recalled. “I said, ‘Sure I’ll be happy to do some concept sketches of the opening shots.’” Evans adds, “Of course you have to make a living, but people in this business who are good love to work, whether it’s for a famous director like Steven Spielberg or David Fincher, or someone who’s unknown. Peter has a great imagination and that’s what I responded to.” Getting Evans on board proved to be a turning point for Hyoguchi’s fortune. With concept art to show off, Hyoguchi got Industrial Light & Magic model maker Fon Davis to send an e-mail blast to industry colleagues urging them to jump on the New Kind bandwagon. Soon, a Who’s Who of virtual effects artists were on board: Hugo effects artist M. Alexendar Weller, Ice Age visual effects supervisor Stephen Jenkins, Coraline editor Margaret Andres, The Matrix texture artist Devorah Petty, The Simpsons director David Silverman, Avatar motion capture producer Reuben Langdon and others. “I’d tell somebody like David Wolgemuth II, who worked as a compositor on the last Harry Potter movie, ‘I don’t have any money, but I will give you a team of 20 people who will do all the heavy lifting,” Hyoguchi recalls. “All you have to do is supervise and make sure they’re hitting the quality.’” To leverage New Kind‘s traction with the Hollywood VFX community, Hyoguchi posted Evans’ art on a Facebook page, then trawled forums and YouTube pages for talented unknowns. “You tell them, ‘Would you like to be part of this? I’ve got the texture designer who worked on The Matrix,’ and they start jumping up and down,” said Hyoguchi. The collaboration works like this: volunteer digital artists, working from concept art approved by Hyoguchi, sculpt 3-d digital environments, objects and characters. They upload the files to a central FTP server in San Francisco. Next, riggers access the files and embed each object with motion controllers. Five supervisors sort the contributions into folders, and dole them out to the specific animators, texture artists and lighting techies tasked with different pieces of the project. Those volunteers add motion capture data, texture, color and lighting effects to each element. Compositing teams then blend all the pieces into a video file. In Portland, Oregon, editor Margaret Andres downloads these .mov files and cuts scenes with Final Cut Pro, consulting via Skype with Hyoguchi and sound designer Chris Thomas to craft the final product. That’s the same kind of production pipeline you’d find at places like Industrial Light & Magic, Digital Domain and other big CGI outfits. But unlike secretive studios, The New Kind Facebook page posts hundreds of elements-in-progress and invites strangers to weigh in. ”It’s like having an open-door discussion at ILM,” laughed Hyoguchi. “Anybody can walk in and say, “I think that’s too blue!” For Martin Lindgren, a 28-year old freelance graphic artist working on the project from Sweden, New Kind’s web-powered production chain provided all the assets needed to assemble a killer trailer piece. “We created the city behind the wall using matte-paintings,” he said proudly. “Then we added atmospheric layers and created the final look.” The far-flung artists working from home in their spare time see The New Kind as a way to buff up their demo reels while getting an opportunity to work with high-powered mentors. “I loved just knowing that Chris Evans was involved,” said 25-year old Turkish modeler Kerem Açıkgöz. By day, he churns out 3-D elements for Japanese TV commercials and videogames. By night, Açıkgöz obsesses over fantastical pistols for evil Dark Order cops using off-the-shelf Maya software “I get a lot of Facebook or e-mail messages from people who want me to do projects but they’re very amateur and don’t have much future,” Açıkgöz said in an e-mail interview. “I don’t have time for that. But when Peter saw another mech model I did on my YouTube page and sent me a message about this New Kind project, I really liked the story.” It remains to be seen if Hyoguchi’s dream translates into commercial success, but at the very least, The New Kind makes its mark as an entirely new kind of filmmaking. Part open source project, part artistic incubator, the project exerts a powerful spell on its participants. “For the teaser clip I was tasked with creating and animating the cloud drifting in front of the moon,” Lindgren said. “It looked real for a second or two but then the clouds all fell apart and I had no idea how to nail it. I asked Chris what to do. He gave me great advice about adding small whispery edges to the cloud and described how the light from the moon should interact with the cloud. Chris taught me about stuff thats going to be useful my whole career.” http://www.wired.com/underwire/2012/...-anime-series/ Rush Limbaugh Scandal Proves Contagious for Talk-Radio Advertisers John Avlon Ninety-eight major advertisers—including Ford and Geico—will no longer air spots on Premiere Networks’ ‘offensive’ programs. Insiders say the loss will rock right-wing talk radio. Rush Limbaugh made the right-wing talk-radio industry, and he just might break it. Because now the fallout from the “slut” slurs against Sandra Fluke is extending to the entire political shock-jock genre. Premiere Networks, which distributes Limbaugh as well as a host of other right-wing talkers, sent an email out to its affiliates early Friday listing 98 large corporations that have requested their ads appear only on “programs free of content that you know are deemed to be offensive or controversial (for example, Mark Levin, Rush Limbaugh, Tom Leykis, Michael Savage, Glenn Beck, Sean Hannity).” This is big. According to the radio-industry website Radio-Info.com, which first posted excerpts of the Premiere memo, among the 98 companies that have decided to no longer sponsor these programs are “carmakers (Ford, GM, Toyota), insurance companies (Allstate, Geico, Prudential, State Farm), and restaurants (McDonald’s, Subway).” Together, these talk-radio advertising staples represent millions of dollars in revenue. Valerie Geller, an industry insider and author of Beyond Powerful Radio, confirmed the trend. “I have talked with several reps who report that they're having conversations with their clients, who are asking not to be associated with specifically polarizing controversial hosts, particularly if those hosts are ‘mean-spirited.’ While most products and services offered on these shows have strong competitors, and enjoy purchasing the exposure that many of these shows and hosts can offer, they do not wish to be ‘tarred’ with the brush of anger, or endure customer anger, or, worse, product boycotts.” There are already tangible signs that the three dozen national and local advertisers that have pulled their ads from The Rush Limbaugh Show are having a financial impact. For example, the ads that ran on Limbaugh’s WABC show in New York on Thursday consisted primarily of public-service announcements. Among the few actual advertisements were spots from a Newt Gingrich–associated super PAC, Lear Capital, and the conservative Hillsdale College. Media Matters has been monitoring national trends along the same lines. When PSAs for nonprofit organizations like Big Brothers/Big Sisters and the United Negro College Fund run in place of actual advertisements on radio, it means the show starts losing money for the local station. And make no mistake, money is the only barometer of success the industry ultimately cares about. Limbaugh helped prove that right-wing talk radio could be big business—promoting the idea that only conscious conservative bias could balance the unconscious liberal bias of what was termed the “mainstream media.” In the fragmented media environment that emerged after the heyday of the “big three” national TV networks, narrow but intense niche audiences provided the most reliable listeners and viewers and the highest comparative ratings. Limbaugh’s outsize talent helped spawn scores of imitators—but none as successful, and some strikingly unsuccessful. Attempts to create left-wing talk-radio corollaries proved no less offensive but far less popular, like the little-lamented Air America. But this latest controversy comes at a particularly difficult time for right-wing talk radio. They are playing to a (sometimes literally) dying demographic. Rush & Co. rate best among old, white males. They have been steadily losing women and young listeners, who are alienated by the angry, negative, obsessive approach to political conservations. Add to that the fact that women ages 24–55 are the prize advertising demographic, and you have a perfect storm emerging after Limbaugh’s Sandra Fluke comments. As pressure grows for advertisers and radio stations to drop Rush & Co., there will be much talk about the dangers of censorship, with allies talking about a left-wing “jihad” against Rush (language his brother David Limbaugh has already used). But the irony is that the same market forces that right-wing talk-radio hosts champion are helping to seal their fate. Advertisers are abandoning the shows because they no longer want to be associated with the hyperpartisan—and occasionally hateful—rhetoric. They are finally drawing a line because consumers are starting to take a stand. An additional irony: just as the technology-driven fragmentation of the landscape allowed partisan media to proliferate, a new technological development is providing the tools to take it down. Social media is making it possible to create a grassroots movement very quickly, voicing grievances very quickly and getting heard at the top of corporate headquarters. “In the past, a letter, petition, or phone campaign took a few days to put together and longer to execute,” says Valerie Geller. “But now customers[listeners] can instantly rally using Facebook, Twitter, and instant messaging to make their displeasure with a client, product, or service known immediately. These movements can happen fast.” It is true that these efforts can be “astroturfed”—artificially created by activists with a specific ax to grind—but if they genuinely catch on, it is because they tap into broad sentiment. Will this bombshell announcement by Premiere—and the decreased revenue from right-wing talk radio—provoke a change in the culture of hyperpartisan talk? It’s certainly possible—after all, they will adjust their approach to follow the money. There is no deeper political principle at stake. It’s been interesting to see Limbaugh’s allies try to defend him indirectly over the past few days, pointing out (rightly) that the left does not cry foul when liberal political entertainers use derogatory terms about conservative women in politics. But the left-wing talkers being condemned are actually following a model that Rush & Co created. Complaining about the escalation on the other side while ignoring the ugliness from your ideological allies is the larger problem, and it goes beyond hypocrisy. The only way we are going to stop this cycle of incitement is if we try to apply equal standards to both sides of the aisle. It’s not a complicated concept—it’s nothing more than the golden rule we learned in nursery school: treat others as you would like to be treated. And as political commentators like the radio pioneer Will Rogers once taught us, we can make serious points using satire, humor that is not designed to divide and destroy. When big money starts shifting, it is a sign of a deeper tide that is difficult to undo, even if you are an industry icon like Rush Limbaugh. It is a sign that the times are changing. Let’s hope that what emerges is an evolution of the industry, away from stupid, predictable, and sometimes hateful hyperpartisanship and toward something a little smarter and more civil. http://www.thedailybeast.com/article...vertisers.html Peter Bergman, Satirist With Firesign, Dies at 72 Paul Vitello Peter Bergman, a founding member of the surrealist comedy troupe Firesign Theater, whose albums became cult favorites among college students in the late 1960s and ’70s for a brand of sly, multilayered satire so dense it seemed riddled with non sequiturs until the second, third or 30th listening, died on Friday in Santa Monica, Calif. He was 72. The cause was complications of leukemia, said Jeff Abraham, a spokesman for the group. Mr. Bergman hosted an all-night radio call-in show on KPFK in Los Angeles beginning in 1966, “Radio Free Oz,” which served as the testing ground for the high-spirited Firesign sensibility. Phil Austin and David Ossman, two other founders of the four-man group, were the producer and director of the show; the fourth founder, Phil Proctor, was a frequent guest. “We started out as four friends, up all night, taking calls from people on bad acid trips and having the time of our lives,” Mr. Austin said in a phone interview Friday. “And that’s what we always were: four friends talking.” Mr. Bergman and his friends recorded their first album, “Waiting for the Electrician or Someone Like Him,” in 1968, followed the next year by “How Can You Be in Two Places at Once When You’re Not Anywhere At All?” By 1970, their mordant humor and their mastery of stereophonic recording techniques had made them to their generation of 20-somethings what Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert are to today’s (if Mr. Colbert and Mr. Stewart had a weakness for literary wordplay, psychedelic references and jokes about the Counter-Reformation). Their records employed sound effects in ways considered pioneering in audio comedy at the time. More generally, they were considered important forerunners of comedy shows like “Saturday Night Live.” Ed Ward, writing in The New York Times in 1972, described the third Firesign album, “Don’t Crush That Dwarf, Hand Me the Pliers,” as “a mind-boggling sound drama” and a “work of almost Joycean complexity.” “It’s almost impossible to summarize any Firesign album,” Mr. Ward wrote, because most of their albums were so filled with “intricate wordplay, stunning engineering and use of sound effects, breakneck pacing and, of course, a terribly complex story line.” When the Library of Congress placed “Don’t Crush That Dwarf” in its National Recording Registry in 2005, The Los Angeles Times described Firesign Theater as “the Beatles of comedy.” Mr. Bergman told people the ensemble’s albums, unlike most comedy records, were never made to be listened to just once or twice. “He said our records were made to be heard about 80 times,” Mr. Austin said. While the ensemble continued making albums for three decades, Mr. Bergman also wrote and produced several one-man shows, including “Help Me Out of This Head,” a 1986 monologue-memoir that drew on his childhood in Cleveland. He also wrote interactive games, including a CD-ROM parody of the popular adventure video game MIST. Mr. Bergman was born on Nov. 29, 1939, in Cleveland, one of two children of Oscar and Rita Bergman. His parents hosted a radio show in Cleveland when he was growing up, “Breakfast With the Bergmans.” His father also worked as a reporter for The Plain Dealer. Mr. Bergman graduated from Yale and taught economics there as a Carnegie Fellow. He later attended the Yale School of Drama as a Eugene O’Neill playwriting fellow. He moved to Los Angeles in the early 1960s to pursue a writing career. He is survived by a daughter, Lily Oscar Bergman, and his sister, Wendy Kleckner. Mr. Bergman got a taste of radio work when he was in high school, according to a biography on Firesign Theater’s official Web site. But he lost his job as an announcer on the school radio system, it said, “after his unauthorized announcement that the Chinese Communists had taken over the school and that a ‘mandatory voluntary assembly was to take place immediately.’ Russell Rupp, the school principal, promptly relieved Peter of his announcing gig. Rupp was the inspiration for the Principal Poop character on ‘Don’t Crush That Dwarf.’ ” https://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/10/a...ies-at-72.html The Go-Nowhere Generation Todd G. Buchholz and Victoria Buchholz AMERICANS are supposed to be mobile and even pushy. Saul Bellow’s Augie March declares, “I am an American ... first to knock, first admitted.” In “The Grapes of Wrath,” young Tom Joad loads up his jalopy with pork snacks and relatives, and the family flees the Oklahoma dust bowl for sun-kissed California. Along the way, Granma dies, but the Joads keep going. But sometime in the past 30 years, someone has hit the brakes and Americans — particularly young Americans — have become risk-averse and sedentary. The timing is terrible. With an 8.3 percent unemployment rate and a foreclosure rate that would grab the attention of the Joads, young Americans are less inclined to pack up and move to sunnier economic climes. The likelihood of 20-somethings moving to another state has dropped well over 40 percent since the 1980s, according to calculations based on Census Bureau data. The stuck-at-home mentality hits college-educated Americans as well as those without high school degrees. According to the Pew Research Center, the proportion of young adults living at home nearly doubled between 1980 and 2008, before the Great Recession hit. Even bicycle sales are lower now than they were in 2000. Today’s generation is literally going nowhere. This is the Occupy movement we should really be worried about. For about $200, young Nevadans who face a statewide 13 percent jobless rate can hop a Greyhound bus to North Dakota, where they’ll find a welcome sign and a 3.3 percent rate. Why are young people not crossing borders? “This generation is going through an economic reset,” said John Della Volpe, who directs polling at Harvard’s Institute of Politics, which surveys thousands of young people each year. He reports that young people want to stay more connected with their hometowns: “I spoke with a kid from Columbus, Ohio, who dreamed of being a high school teacher. When he found out he’d have to move to Arizona or the Sunbelt, he took a job in a Columbus tire factory.” In the most startling behavioral change among young people since James Dean and Marlon Brando started mumbling, an increasing number of teenagers are not even bothering to get their driver’s licenses. Back in the early 1980s, 80 percent of 18-year-olds proudly strutted out of the D.M.V. with newly minted licenses, according to a study by researchers at the University of Michigan’s Transportation Research Institute. By 2008 — even before the Great Recession — that number had dropped to 65 percent. Though it’s easy to blame the high cost of cars or gasoline, Comerica Bank’s Automobile Affordability Index shows that it takes fewer weeks of work income to buy a car today than in the early 1980s, and inflation-adjusted gasoline prices didn’t get out of line until a few years ago. Perhaps young people are too happy at home checking Facebook. In a study of 15 countries, Michael Sivak, a professor at the University of Michigan’s Transportation Research Institute (who also contributed to the D.M.V. research), found that when young people spent more time on the Internet, they delayed getting their driver’s licenses. “More time on Facebook probably means less time on the road,” he said. That may mean safer roads, but it also means a bumpier, less vibrant economy. All this turns American history on its head. We are a nation of movers and shakers. Pilgrims leapt onto leaky boats to get here. The Lost Generation chased Hemingway and Gertrude Stein to Paris. The Greatest Generation signed up to ship out to fight Nazis in Germany or the Japanese imperial forces in the Pacific. The ’60s kids joined the Peace Corps. But Generation Y has become Generation Why Bother. The Great Recession and the still weak economy make the trend toward risk aversion worse. Children raised during recessions ultimately take fewer risks with their investments and their jobs. Even when the recession passes, they don’t strive as hard to find new jobs, and they hang on to lousy jobs longer. Research by the economist Lisa B. Kahn of the Yale School of Management shows that those who graduated from college during a poor economy experienced a relative wage loss even 15 years after entering the work force. Perhaps more worrisome, kids who grow up during tough economic times also tend to believe that luck plays a bigger role in their success, which breeds complacency. “Young people raised during recessions end up less entrepreneurial and less willing to leave home because they believe that luck counts more than effort,” said Paola Giuliano, an economist at U.C.L.A.’s Anderson School of Management. A bad economy can boost a person’s weighting of luck by 20 percent, Ms. Giuliano found. Notice how popular the word “random” has become among young people. A Disney TV show called “So Random!” has ranked first in the ratings among tweens. The word has morphed from a precise statistical term to an all-purpose phrase that stresses the illogic and coincidence of life. Unfortunately, societies that emphasize luck over logic are not likely to thrive. In the mid-’70s, back when every high school kid longed for his driver’s license and a chance to hit the road and find freedom, Bruce Springsteen wrote his brilliant, exciting album “Born to Run.” A generation later, as kids began to hunker down, Mr. Springsteen wrote his depressing, dead-end dirge, “The Ghost of Tom Joad.” We need to reward and encourage forward movement, not slouching. That may sound harsh, but do we really want to turn into a country where young Americans can’t even recognize the courage of Tom Joad? Maybe it’s time to yank out the power cords, pump up the flat bicycle tires or even reopen Route 66 — whatever it takes to get our kids back on the road. https://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/11/o...eneration.html 12-Year-Old Sues School District Over Facebook Profile Search A Minnesota school district is sued by a 12-year-old girl who claims that the school pressured her to give up her Facebook password. But, wait, the minimum age on Facebook is 13. Chris Matyszczyk It seems that everyone in authority wants to get into your virtual underbelly. Employers in Maryland seem to think they have the right to search potential hires' Facebook profiles. And now the Minnewaska school district in Minnesota stands accused of coercing a 12-year-old girl into giving up her Facebook and e-mail passwords, so that a school could spy with their little eye. CNN reports that she was also twice punished for things she wrote on Facebook. A lawsuit on behalf of the girl--brought in conjunction with the ACLU--declares that her First and Fourth Amendment rights were violated. The girl--referred to in the court papers as R.S.--apparently felt that her hall monitor was mean to her and therefore described her as "mean" on her Facebook profile. She claims that no school equipment or property were used to make her postings. It is unclear how a screenshot of her postings got back to the school principal, but it seems they did. Even one in which she wanted to know--using strong language--who had betrayed her. It is alleged that the password-demanding incident occurred when the parents of another student objected to a Facebook post in which sex was discussed. What seems even more pulsating is that the court papers state that she was called to a meeting at which a school counselor and the deputy sheriff were present. It was at this meeting that she was allegedly "interrogated" and surrendered the passwords to her Facebook and e-mail accounts. And, no, her mother had allegedly not consented to the search. The school district told CNN: "The district is confident that once all facts come to light, the district's conduct will be found to be reasonable and appropriate." There are always more facts than appear in court papers. Who knows what all the facts ultimately were, for example, when a Philadelphia school district was sued by the parents of a 15-year-old for allegedly viewing him at home via remote Webcam on his school-issued laptop? What did happen is that a $610,000 settlement was reached. Yet one fact might fascinate some in this peculiar conundrum in which--if the accusations prove true--the school district behaved uncomfortably: You have to be 13 to have a Facebook account. Facebook's rules are very clear on this. Facebook promises to delete the accounts of all under-13s. (There does seem to be a bizarre exception for babies.) Moreover, if a child is underage, it's not as if Facebook will simply give his or her parents the child's password and/or posts if they ask for them. Facebook's Help Center for parents states: "Applicable laws may give parents the right to access personal information their under-13-year-old child has provided before Facebook follows its policy of promptly deleting such accounts." In such a case, parents have to offer notarized proof that they are the child's legal guardians. In one case, a parent has sued Facebook for allowing a 12-year-old to have an account on which she allegedly posted naughty pictures. The ACLU declared in a statement: "Students do not shed their First Amendment rights at the school house gate. The Supreme Court ruled on that in the 1970s, yet schools like Minnewaska seem to have no regard for the standard." Will the school publicly reveal its own version of the facts? Will its claim it was acting "in loco parentis"? Or will its lawyers already be privately mulling the concept of a settlement? http://news.cnet.com/8301-17852_3-57...rofile-search/ Criminal Charges Dropped in Canada Customs Manga Case The Comic Book Legal Defense Fund and the Comic Legends Legal Defense Fund are pleased to announce that the Crown has withdrawn all criminal charges in R. v. Matheson, the case previously described as the “Brandon X case,” which involved a comic book reader who faced criminal charges in Canada relating to comic books on his computer. The defendant, Ryan Matheson, a 27-year-old comic book reader, amateur artist, and computer programmer has been cleared of any criminal wrongdoing. The total legal costs of this case exceeded $75,000. After taking the case last summer, the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund contributed $20,000 to the defense, and the Comic Legends Legal Defense Fund contributed $11,000. The CBLDF also participated in shaping the defense, including recruiting expert testimony for the trial. The organization is currently seeking funds to help pay off the $45,000 debt Matheson incurred as a result of his case, and to create new tools to prevent future cases. To make a contribution to these important efforts, please visit www.cbldf.org. After a search of his laptop in 2010, Matheson was wrongfully accused of possessing and importing child pornography because of constitutionally protected comic book images on that device. He was subjected to abusive treatment by police and a disruption in his life that included a two-year period during which he was unable to use computers or the internet outside of his job, severely limiting opportunities to advance his employment and education. Mr. Matheson has agreed to plead to a non-criminal code regulatory offense under the Customs Act of Canada. As a result of the agreement, Matheson will not stand trial. The defense of this case was waged by Michael Edelson and Solomon Friedman of Edelson Clifford D’Angelo LLP. The full Notices of Application detailing Edelson’s defense and outlining the outrageous and unlawful treatment Matheson endured are available here: Charter Notice and Jan 15 12 – Matheson Charter Notice. Speaking out for the first time, Matheson says, “I’m glad to finally put this awful ordeal behind me. Ever since the beginning I knew I had committed no crime, so I was never willing to accept a plea to any criminal charge. The entire legal process is very traumatizing, and the overzealous bail conditions imposed on me were very difficult to endure. Although my defense was extremely strong, all trials are inherently risky and I value my life too much to risk a potential minimum mandatory sentence. I am very grateful for the spectacular work Michael Edelson and his team put into my case, and to all the generous people who supported me and contributed to my defense. I was able to stand up to the very last day and fight for something I believe in.” Matheson has also written a personal statement about his case that appears on www.cbldf.org. Edelson, who managed the defense says, “The client, and my firm, are grateful to the members of CBLDF and CLLDF for their invaluable financial and moral support with respect to this case, which was of such critical importance to the client, given the very positive outcome we were able to achieve in an area of the law where, here in Canada, the Crown very rarely exercises its discretion to withdraw charges of this nature. The client will have no criminal record, his name will not appear on the Sex Offender Registry in Canada, or elsewhere.” The Notices of Application available on CBLDF.org detail for the first time the extreme mistreatment Mr. Matheson suffered at the hands of Canadian authorities. He had his right to counsel and Vienna Convention consular rights violated when he was detained without being properly informed of the reason for detention. He was not granted access to counsel, or to the American Embassy. The Application asserts that Customs officers acted as agents for police and conducted an illegal search of his property. Matheson was also the subject of cruel and unusual punishment, including being denied food and blankets. Matheson was even told by police transporting him to prison that “if you get raped in here, it doesn’t count!” The defense detailed these and other abuses and outlined that the comics at issue are constitutionally protected in the United States, the client’s home country. The comics possess artistic merit and are widely available in Canada, Japan and the United States. Although the outcome of this case is ultimately positive, comic book readers should be aware that there are still dangers for traveling with comics in Canada. Edelson says, “Aside from the very positive outcome to this story, your members should be cautioned concerning the search and seizure regime here in Canada exercised by the Canadian Border Services Agency. Moreover, they should also be aware that although anime and manga is legal in many areas of the United States and Japan, etc., to possess and utilize, the Canadian authorities may take a different view if this material is found on any laptops or mobile devices when you enter the country. Many of the issues that arise in similar circumstances are thoroughly addressed in our comprehensive Notice of Application.” Edelson’s firm has created a new advisory on traveling with comics and manga in Canada that is available here: CBLDF – Legal Memorandum – Canada Issues. The CBLDF’s previous advisory, which addresses the issues of traveling with comics through international borders is located here: CBLDF Advisory – Comic Book Art at Intl Borders “This is a good outcome, and we’re glad we were able to contribute to it,” CBLDF Executive Director Charles Brownstein said. “While one always wants to be able to change the rules in court, those opportunities are rare, and in this case, the defense’s extraordinary effort in persuading the Crown to drop criminal charges is a very positive conclusion. We are now focusing our efforts on raising money to pay off Ryan’s legal debt. We are also working with Ryan and experts in the manga community to create educational tools to help prevent others from needing to go through anything like this themselves. We hope that people will donate to the CBLDF to help us achieve these goals quickly.” Comic Legends Legal Defense Fund board member Leonard Wong said, “We’re glad this is over for Ryan and want to thank him and his attorneys for their willingness to stand up to our government in this matter. We’re also pleased that the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund were able to assist the defense financially and substantively, and are creating new tools to help prevent these kinds of cases in the future. Unfortunately, this could easily happen again, so we continue our stride to establish the CLLDF as a more active ongoing concern. Our immediate focus will now shift towards raising funds and preparing for any future attacks on comics in Canada.” Please visit www.cbldf.org today to make a donation in support of paying off Ryan’s legal defense and creating new tools to combat abuses like this from happening in the future. You can also support this effort by becoming a member of the CBLDF. Every contribution helps CBLDF get Ryan back on his feet, and furthers our efforts to protect the First Amendment rights of comics and manga. http://cbldf.org/homepage/criminal-c...ms-manga-case/ ‘Vigorous’ Santorum Crackdown May Catch Internet Porn Viewers with Pants Down Steven Nelson Internet pornography could conceivably become a thing of the past if Rick Santorum is elected president. The unapologetic social conservative, currently in second place behind Mitt Romney for the GOP nomination, has promised to crack down on the distribution of pornography if elected. Santorum says in a statement posted to his website, “The Obama Administration has turned a blind eye to those who wish to preserve our culture from the scourge of pornography and has refused to enforce obscenity laws.” If elected, he promises to “vigorously” enforce laws that “prohibit distribution of hardcore (obscene) pornography on the Internet, on cable/satellite TV, on hotel/motel TV, in retail shops and through the mail or by common carrier.” Although the idea of Santorum vanquishing Internet pornography may seem far-fetched, a serious effort to combat online smut might actually be successful, UCLA law professor Eugene Volokh told The Daily Caller. “If the government wanted to aggressively move against Internet pornography, it could do so,” explained Volokh. “Here’s the deal: In most parts of the country, a lot of pornography on the Internet would plausibly be seen as obscene.” (RELATED: Full coverage of the Santorum campaign) There are a few approaches that Santorum could pursue in an attempt to eradicate Internet pornography. “It wouldn’t be that difficult to close down a lot of the relatively visible websites that are used for the distribution of pornography, if they’re in the United States,” said Volokh. Santorum’s administration could take American-based porn distributors to court for violating obscenity laws, said Volokh, and have them shuttered. But that would leave foreign-based sites untouched. To black out foreign sites, Santorum would likely need legislative action requiring Internet service providers to use “a mandatory filter set up by the government or by the service providers,” said Volokh. But the government could also prosecute individual citizens who view porn, and already has the legal authority to do it. “Although the Supreme Court says private possession is constitutionally protected, it has said that private receipt of [pornography] is not protected,” noted Volokh. “You can’t prosecute them all … but you can find certain types of pornography that are sufficiently unpopular” for easy convictions, he explained. Most contemporary prosecutions for the receipt of pornography are because the government cannot prove its suspicion that the accused has committed more serious crimes, said Volokh. He speculated that there aren’t more prosecutions because “that prosecutor isn’t going to win a lot of votes in the next election.” The government would probably need to “find some extra money in the budget for additional porn prosecutors,” joked Volokh. He also cautioned that there would be significant outcry because “sometimes it’s viewed by husbands and wives who watch it to spice up their sex lives.” Jonathan Turley, a law professor at George Washington University, noted that “What constitutes obscenity remains maddeningly vague,” but added that he’s not entirely convinced Santorum would be successful in an attempt to snuf Internet porn. “What Santorum would consider obscene is obviously far greater than many Americans,” he said. “Sexual films of consenting adults that are watched by consenting adults are generally presumed to be pornographic but not obscene.” Turley is less sure than Volokh that judges and juries would go along with a crackdown. “Federal courts,” he explained, “are reluctant to define movies or pictures as obscene based on such different opinions in society. For that reason, Santorum’s view of the standard falls well outside of the accepted view of the case law,” he said. “Santorum’s suggestion of a crackdown also ignores the fact that this material is widely available on the Internet with thousands of foreign sites,” Turley added. “An attempt to prosecute standard pornography would result in bizarrely uneven enforcement.” In a primary season laser-focused on talk of “job creation,” said Turley, Santorum’s anti-porn proposal would “attempt to criminalize an industry that is supported by millions of Americans.” “Practically speaking, nobody is enforcing this,” said Volokh, explaining that in the 1990s, Internet porn wasn’t a priority for the Clinton administration, and that by the time the Bush administration took the helm in the early 2000s, “it seemed unlikely that anyone could win the war on porn online.” But that won’t deter Santorum. He promised in his anti-porn statement to appoint an attorney general who would carry out his wishes. A spokeswoman for the Santorum campaign didn’t respond to a request for comment about the mechanics of his promised crackdown. http://dailycaller.com/2012/03/14/vi...th-pants-down/ Sarkozy Wants Internet Giants to Pay Tax in France AFP French President Nicolas Sarkozy said on Wednesday he wants "Internet giants" to pay tax in France, shortly before he was due to meet the founder of the micro-blogging site Twitter. "It is unacceptable that they have a turnover of several billion euros in France without paying tax," he told Le Point magazine, adding that the French government should consider taxing online advertising revenues. French lawmakers last year rejected plans for a proposed tax on online advertising revenues, fearing the project would hurt small local companies more than global Internet giants like Google, Facebook or Twitter. A spokesman for Google hit back, arguing that "the Internet offers a wonderful opportunity to generate growth and jobs in France". Google cited a report from management consultant McKinsey that said Internet companies contributed 60 billion euros ($78 billion) to the French economy in 2009, or 3.2 percent of output, and could create 450,000 jobs by 2015. "This positive contribution would have a better chance of coming about in an environment that is supportive of the web in France and of investment in the sector. Public policy should support this," the spokesman argued. The president's comment came as Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey was in Paris to meet with French presidential candidates, including Sarkozy. Sarkozy urged Twitter to follow other Internet companies and base their European operations in France, the president's office said. "Jack Dorsey responded positively to this invitation," it added. Sarkozy argued that France should not "only be a consumer of digital products, but a creator of digital technology and innovative methods" and pointed out that both Google and Microsoft had recently opened offices in France. Earlier Dorsey had met the front-running Socialist candidate Francois Hollande and with centrist Francois Bayrou, and he met Sarkozy later in the day. Hollande's campaign team said the candidate and Dorsey discussed the development of innovative companies in France and the Internet sector. http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp...4m9JKNn02TsppA Newspaper Advertising was Down 7.3 Percent, Almost $2 Billion, in 2011 Rick Edmonds The Newspaper Association of America has posted its final tally of newspaper advertising statistics for 2011, and as expected, it is not a pretty picture. Total advertising revenue was down 7.3 percent, a percentage point worse than in 2010. Print advertising was off 9.2 percent year-to-year. Digital advertising revenue, after a comparatively weak fourth quarter, grew 6.8 percent for the year. So the industry posted total ad revenues of $23.9 billion, a decline of $1.9 billion from the previous year. NAA does not have current numbers on circulation revenue and is only starting to assemble data on revenue from such activities as contract printing, events, or social media assistance to businesses. Figure that those add roughly $10 billion, making newspapers a $34 billion industry. Google alone, by contrast, recorded revenues of $37.9 billion for 2011. In updating numbers released previously for the first three quarters, NAA identified two shifts occurring late in the year. Digital grew by only 3.1 percent in the fourth quarter, less than half the rate of growth in any of the earlier quarters. Retail, by contrast, showed what the industry likes to call “sequential improvement.” It was still down — by 6 percent — in the fourth quarter compared to the same period in 2010, but that was a smaller rate of decline than for the earlier part of the year. The results are consistent with a number of public company reports that showed fourth quarter digital ad revenue growth slowing, or, in some cases, falling year-to-year. What’s the hitch in digital? Randy Bennett, senior vice president for business development at NAA, said in a phone interview that one factor could be that the 2010 fourth quarter was extremely strong for digital ad growth (roughly 14 percent year-to-year), so the comparison was tough. Chris Hendricks, digital chief at McClatchy, said he was unaware of a particular problem. But because of a strong holiday season, especially in November, sales forces may have shifted their focus back to retail business in print. The numbers are consistent with a recent Project for Excellence in Journalism study that found slow culture change at newspapers and digital ad revenue growth coming nowhere close to replacing print declines. If anything, the problem worsened in 2011 from the 7 to 1 ratio PEJ found from companies it surveyed, drawing mainly on 2010 results. Bennett said that NAA is aware that its traditional data gathering needs to be revised to capture digital circulation revenue as newspapers phase in digital pay wall systems. Also there is no attempt yet to total revenue from other ventures that some companies have developed quickly over the last two years. NAA plans to survey its members in coming months, Bennett said, to assess the impact of these new revenue sources on the financial health of the industry. http://www.poynter.org/latest-news/b...llion-in-2011/ A Code of Conduct for Content Aggregators David Carr As words and articles became digitized over the last 15 years, they began to float, there for the plucking and replication elsewhere. Words like “curation” and “aggregation” became the language of the realm, sometimes used as substitutes for describing the actual creation of content. What had once been a craft was rapidly becoming a task. Traditional media organizations watched as others kidnapped their work, not only taking away content but, more and more, taking the audiences with them. Practitioners of the new order heard the complaints and suggested that mainstream media needed to quit whining and start competing in a changed world, where what’s yours may not be yours anymore if others find a better way to package it. So where is the line between promoting the good work of others and simply lifting it? Naughty aggregation is analogous to pornography: You know it when you see it. As custody of content becomes more tenuous, there’s a risk that we may end up passing around and putting topspin on fewer and fewer original works. This has created a growing sense of unease among both digital immigrants and natives that the end of “ownership” could eventually diminish the Web’s value. Two approaches to giving credit where credit belongs were announced at the South by Southwest Interactive festival here in Austin. In one instance, an ad hoc group is using a kind of trade association approach to articulate common standards. In the second, someone who makes a living by mining the Web is deploying symbols to create a common shorthand for attribution. Last July, Simon Dumenco wrote a column for Advertising Age noting that the death of Steve Jobs was competing for digital attention with the salacious story of Anthony Weiner, the disgraced former congressman. Given that the piece was about what was trending on Twitter at that very moment, his column was immediately picked up by traffic-seekers like The Huffington Post and Techmeme. The Faustian bargain of the digital news ecosystem suggests that people get to pick your pocket a bit and then send back traffic in return. But Mr. Dumenco noticed that The Huffington Post, a huge site with many readers, returned very little traffic, while Techmeme, a much smaller site, kicked up plenty. He went on something of a rant about it, writing that The Huffington Post’s overly aggressive approach to aggregation at the time — in which content is rewritten, links are buried, and very little is added — yielded all of 57 page views for the original item. The Huffington Post suspended the writer involved and apologized to Mr. Dumenco. He responded by saying that the site was “singling out — indeed, scapegoating — a young writer for engaging in a style of aggregation long practiced, condoned and encouraged by Huffington Post editorial management.” After getting an in-box full of examples from other writers who felt similarly aggrieved, Mr. Dumenco decided to pull out the big guns: He has formed a committee aiming to establish standards for aggregation. Buckle up, here comes the Council on Ethical Blogging and Aggregation. O.K., you can almost hear the digerati seizing with laughter at the idea that a pew full of journalism church ladies is somehow going to do battle with the entire Internet. But Mr. Dumenco compares his effort to the editorial rules promulgated by the American Society of Magazine Editors, which have come to shape how magazines distinguish editorial from advertising. It’s an imperfect system with a fair number of outliers, but over time the magazine group devised guidelines that had significant influence and at least set standards that people could argue about. An august list of names has signed on to the effort: David Granger, the editor in chief of Esquire; James Bennet, editor in chief of The Atlantic; and Adam Moss of New York magazine. Of course, all three oversee robust Web sites that do a fair amount of aggregating themselves. The committee includes digital media natives like Elizabeth Spiers, editor in chief of The New York Observer; Mark Armstrong, a founder of Longreads.com; and Jacob Weisberg, chairman and editor in chief of Slate. All of them believe there is value in looking at what might be called best practices when it comes to linking, summarizing and aggregating. “This is not an anti-aggregation group, we are pro-aggregation,” Mr. Dumenco told me. “We want some simple, common-sense rules. There should be some kind of variation of the Golden Rule here, which is that you should aggregate others as you would wish to be aggregated yourself.” Kerry Lauerman is the editor in chief of Salon, a site that has been around since the dawn of the consumer Web and has been on both sides of the aggregation equation. He says adopting rules is more than just a way of protecting legacy franchises. “Increasingly, when people go online, it’s like stepping through the looking glass,” he said. “Whether you follow a link from Twitter, an e-mail, or Pinterest, you wind up on a site where you really don’t know where you are. It would be nice if there was a way of signaling what the standards are and how trustworthy the information is.” Mr. Dumenco, who presented some of his ideas at a panel discussion this weekend in Austin, said the committee would grind its way to a set of standards and promulgate them over time. The group will have neither carrot nor stick, but could end up with a kind of Good Housekeeping seal, a signal that the consumer has landed on a site that adheres to a common industrial standard. “We are not some tight little group of scolds,” he said. “This is a conversation that many people from all parts of the industry want to have, and this seemed like a good place to start.” On another panel in Austin, one in which I participated, Maria Popova, better known as brainpicker on Twitter, suggested that the failure to give credit was growing endemic. On Friday, she and her collaborator, the designer Kelli Anderson, announced the Curator’s Code, a site that offers a way of expressing where things come from. The Curator’s Code will use a symbol resembling a sideways S to express that a piece of content came directly from another source, and a different figure — a curved arrowlike symbol — to signal what is commonly known as a “hat tip,” or nod to a source that inspired a further thought. The Curator’s Code supplies the appropriate symbol and then the blogger or writer simply puts in a hyperlink behind it as they normally would. Ms. Popova, who spends hours a day scrounging the Web for remarkable artifacts, has noticed that many idiosyncratic discoveries suddenly become ubiquitous once unearthed. And the source of that little gem, or the credit for someone else who dug it up, often disappears when it is reposted. “Discovery of information is a form of intellectual labor,” she said. “When we don’t honor discovery, we are robbing somebody’s time and labor. The Curator’s Code is an attempt to solve some of that.” By creating a language signified by two so-called Unicode characters, they hope to make the business of attribution more standardized and routine. “What makes the Internet magical to me is that it is a place of radical discovery,” said Ms. Popova, who describes herself as a “curator of interestingness” on the Web. “You can click your way through a chain of attributes and links and find amazing things.” She is careful about attribution and thinks others should be mindful as well. The Curator’s Code is a shorthand tool to signify that on the Web, most things come from somewhere else. Neither of these initiatives seems intended to serve as a posse to bring justice and order to the digital Wild West. In a sense, they are an effort to bring back the promise of the consumer Internet, creating visible connections between seemingly disparate pieces of information. It’s called the Web for a reason, after all. https://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/12/b...on-online.html We Don’t Need No Stinking Seal of Approval from the Blog Police Hamilton Nolan David Carr's column today is partly about a plan masterminded by Ad Age columnist Simon Dumenco to create, quote, a "Council on Ethical Blogging and Aggregation," which will ostensibly serve as a sort of trade group or (nonbinding) credentialing organization for best practices in the blogosphere. Well-intended, and a bad idea. Who has signed on to be on this "Council" of elders who shall instruct bloggers on proper blogging? The editors of several websites, and—most importantly—famous bloggers like... New York Magazine editor Adam Moss, Esquire editor David Granger and Atlantic editor James Bennett. The day that I ask the editor of Esquire for a seal of approval on my blogging is the day that I sign a fabulously lucrative contract to write for Esquire.com. And you, Adam Moss—no. No. Look, what Dumenco is trying to do is simply to codify "how to blog without being a huge prick" guidelines that all decent online writers already know. Give credit to sources of information, link back, don't blockquote to a ridiculous degree (you guys at The Atlantic might want to double check on that one), etc. Everyone who cares about not being a prick already does these things, or tries to do them, and, if notified of not doing them, should correct them. The people who don't do these things are either jerks or just run worthless content recycling mills, like The Huffington Post, which is the place that pissed off Dumenco in the first place. (No disrespect to the actual writers buried deep inside the HuffPo mothership.) In other words, for the writers who care about this issue, such a group is unnecessary; for writers who don't care about this issue, such a group will have no influence. Therefore such a group is worthless. And there is a more fundamental problem. This sort of top-down, expert-heavy, credential-credulous media structure is exactly what blogging has so brilliantly been destroying for more than a decade. The internet is where the upstarts are on equal footing with the experts. There are few barriers to publication. And there is no need to seek the approval of a committee of elite writers and editors in order to be respected. If there are grievances over these types of editorial blogging issues, there is already a system in place to deal with them: someone writes a pissy diatribe, someone else writes a pissy diatribe in response, and everyone argues over who's right and who's wrong. Thesis, antithesis, synthesis: This is what makes the media blogosphere go. Ceding this discussion to some committee of self-ordained experts would be a bore. Come on, already-famous editors. You guys used to be... well, if not cool exactly, at least, you know, with it. Many of the people who now want to sit on the Blog Judgment Committee started out as upstarts themselves. So they are self-aware enough to know, deep down, that this sort of endeavor is doomed to fail, simply because it presumes that the upstarts of tomorrow will fall in line. That's not how this blog thing works. There are massive media corporations that make billions of dollars. Then there are newspapers to police them. Then there is Gawker, to mock the newspapers. Then there are the blogs that mock Gawker. Then there are the Tumblrs that mock the bloggers. And so on and so on. Like the human body, it cleans itself of waste. It's a wondrous self-policing system. It's bloggers all the way down. No room for any committees. http://gawker.com/5892453 Germany Trying to Cut Publishers In on Web Profits Eric Pfanner In a move aimed at helping newspapers generate new revenue from struggling online operations, the German government intends to require search engines and other Internet companies to pay publishers whose content they highlight. The German governing coalition, led by Chancellor Angela Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union, said last week that it planned to introduce legislation to create a new kind of copyright for online publishers. Under the proposal, Internet aggregators and search engines would have to pay the publishers if they wanted to display all or parts of their articles — even small snippets like those that are shown in search links. The proposal was cheered by German publishers, who complain that Internet companies like Google have profited hugely from their content, while generating only scraps of digital revenue. “In the digital age, such a right is essential to protect the joint efforts of journalists and publishers,” the Federation of German Newspaper Publishers said, adding that it was “an essential measure for the maintenance of an independent, privately financed news media.” But the announcement set off howls of protest from Internet companies and bloggers, who said the proposal could threaten free speech and stunt the development of the digital economy in Germany. “I fear that such a regulation would slow down the development of the Internet because it creates additional costs and leads to inefficiencies,” Eric E. Schmidt, executive chairman of Google, told the news agency DPA during a visit to the CeBIT technology fair in Hanover, Germany, last week. “The Internet is an important component of Germany’s economic success. That’s why one has to be careful with such changes.” Mr. Schmidt did not give specific examples, but analysts have suggested that some news aggregators might simply shut down their operations in Germany, rather than pay the fees. The proposal, in an announcement of the coalition’s legislative agenda, follows intense lobbying by publishers, after the idea was initially put forward several years ago. The plan authorizes ministers to draft a bill, which is expected to go to the Bundestag, the lower house of Parliament, this summer. The coalition document says Internet companies, including search engines and news aggregators, would have to pay publishers a fee “for the dissemination of press products (like newspaper articles).” The fees would be gathered and distributed by a collecting society, like those that disseminate royalties to authors and composers. Content would be protected for one year. “In this way, publishers would share in the profits that commercial Internet services have been making with the unpaid use of publishers’ products,” the paper says. The proposal addresses a debate that has raged since the early days of the Internet: Who benefits more from digital links and the traffic they generate — search engines, aggregators and other online hubs, or the sites that produce the content? Google does not sell advertising on its German news aggregation service, which displays snippets of articles and links to the originating sites. But the company earns billions of euros from advertising on its search engine and other services. Most German newspaper publishers, on the other hand, generate only minuscule revenue online from advertising or other sources, like so-called pay walls around their content. Mathias Döpfner, chief executive of the largest German newspaper publisher, Axel Springer, said last week, as the company announced financial results, that the measure would have a “negligible” effect initially, but could grow into a “significant” source of revenue over the middle to long term. Analysts are skeptical about whether the fees could ever replace the revenue lost from declines in print advertising. Details like pricing have yet to be worked out. Publishers say they want a variable-rate system under which the use of full articles would incur a higher fee than the display of a short phrase, like the kind that is typically embedded in search links. Opponents of the plan say that granting copyright protection to fragments like “International survey: Merkel leads ranking of European politicians — 40 minutes ago,” as the Google search link to one German news story read Friday, could restrict free speech. It might also be cumbersome, they add, to determine which sites should pay and which ones should benefit from the new protection. “Could every blog register with the collecting society that is to be founded?” wrote Thierry Chervel, co-founder of Perlentaucher, a German cultural Web site. “If so, wouldn’t the financial benefit from the ancillary copyright be rather meager for the newspapers?” Another question is what to do about journalists, who want a share of any remuneration from the planned fees. Under German copyright law, journalists retain a so-called author’s right, giving them control over uses of their articles after they have been published. Publishers say these issues will be cleared up when the legislation is drafted in full. Freedom of speech would be protected, they insist, because certain uses, like journalistic citations from other news articles, would be exempt. The coalition document says private Internet users would not have to pay any fees. Germany is not the only place where publishers are seeking new tools in the struggle to extract revenue from aggregators. In the United States, a number of publishers, including The New York Times Co., recently joined together to introduce a system called NewsRight, which tracks the unpaid online use of their articles and seeks to turn aggregators into licensed, paying customers. The German proposal goes further in taking aim at the use of snippets, not just full articles. If it works, publishers say, it could help swing the balance of power in the digital world in their direction. “There is no other developed country that has given publishers this kind of right against aggregators,” said Christoph Keese, president of public affairs at Axel Springer and co-chairman of a copyright committee of German publishers. “This could be a benchmark.” https://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/12/b...b-profits.html Court Declares Newspaper Excerpt on Online Forum is a Non-Infringing Fair Use Late Friday, the federal district court in Nevada issued a declaratory judgment that makes is harder for copyright holders to file lawsuits over excerpts of material and burden online forums and their users with nuisance lawsuits. The judgment – part of the nuisance lawsuit avalanche started by copyright troll Righthaven – found that Democratic Underground did not infringe the copyright in a Las Vegas Review-Journal newspaper article when a user of the online political forum posted a five-sentence excerpt, with a link back to the newspaper's website. Judge Roger Hunt’s judgment confirms that an online forum is not liable for its users’ posts, even if it was not protected by the safe harbors of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act’s notice and takedown provisions. The decision also clarifies that a common practice on the Internet – excerpting a few sentences and linking to interesting articles elsewhere – is a fair use, not an infringement of copyright. Righthaven CEO Steven A. Gibson dreamed of making himself rich off of lawsuits over trivial uses of newspaper articles. Instead, his company is in ruins, his legal theories have been emphatically rejected and he is under investigation by the Nevada State Bar. His financial backer, an LLC affiliated with the Stephens family (who own the Review-Journal), lost a substantial investment with nothing to show for it. Hopefully this example will serve as a warning to those who are considering profiteering through the court system. In the mean time, we can take some small comfort that the debacle led to good rulings on fair use and online infringement. This case began when Democratic Underground -- represented by the Electronic Frontier Foundation, Fenwick & West LLP, and attorney Chad Bowers -- was sued by Righthaven. The copyright troll asserted, falsely, that it owned the copyright in the article, which remains available for free on the Review-Journal website. Democratic Underground countersued, asking the court to rule that the excerpt did not infringe copyright and is a fair use of the material, and brought Stephens Media, publisher of the Review-Journal, into the case. Last June, the Nevada federal court dismissed Righthaven's infringement case because the newspaper publisher was the true owner of the article, but Democratic Underground's counterclaim against Stephens Media continued. After initially attempting to defend the bogus assertion of copyright infringement, Stephens Media conceded it was incorrect, paving the way for the court’s declaration. The original lawsuit against Democratic Underground was dismissed when Judge Hunt found that Righthaven did not have the legal authorization to bring a copyright lawsuit because it had never owned the copyright in the first place. Righthaven claimed that Stephens Media had transferred copyright to Righthaven before it filed the suit, but a document unearthed in this litigation -- the Strategic Alliance Agreement between Righthaven and Stephens Media -- showed that the copyright assignment was a sham, and that Righthaven was merely agreeing to undertake the newspaper's case at its own expense in exchange for a cut of the recovery. In addition to dismissing Righthaven's claim, Judge Hunt sanctioned Righthaven with fines and obligations to report to other judges its actual relationship with Stevens Media. Righthaven, however, has refused to pay the sanctions, without explanation. Righthaven has filed hundreds of copyright cases based on its sham copyright ownership claims. Despite several attempts by Righthaven and Stephens Media to re-write their Strategic Alliance Agreement, eight judges have ruled against the scheme to turn copyright litigation into a business. Righthaven, which was founded by Las Vegas attorney Gibson exclusively to file lawsuits, has never won a single case, and has been held liable for several defendants’ attorneys fees. While Righthaven has appealed seven of the district court decisions against it, it failed to meet important filing deadlines in the appeals court, and only three cases are currently moving forward in the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. After Righthaven failed to pay the fees judgments against it, a receiver was appointed to auction off its assets and pay its debts. Righthaven’s domain name was auctioned earlier this year, and last week another Nevada federal judge ordered Righthaven’s intellectual property assets transferred to the receiver. Meanwhile, Righthaven has continued to refuse to cooperate in the collection efforts against it, failing to pay judgments, provide documents about its assets or -- lately -- even show up at court hearings. Righthaven was ordered to show cause why it should not be held in contempt of court in another case, Righthaven v. DiBiase. EFF, Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati, and Chad Bowers represent Mr. DiBiase. A contempt hearing is set for March 20, where we will be seeking sanctions against Righthaven and CEO Gibson. https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2012/0...nging-fair-use Global Media Watchdog Names Enemies of Internet AP The Arab Spring is changing the face of Internet freedom, according to Reporters Without Borders, which released its latest "Enemies of the Internet" list Monday. The annual report classifies as "enemies" countries that severely curtail freedom of expression on and access to the Web. It also draws up a list of states "under surveillance." The group added Bahrain to its enemies list, citing a news blackout and harassment of bloggers in an attempt to quell a yearlong Shiite-led rebellion against the Sunni monarchy. The country had previously been under surveillance. "Bahrain offers a perfect example of successful crackdowns, with an information blackout achieved through an impressive arsenal of repressive measures: exclusion of the foreign media, harassment of human rights defenders, arrests of bloggers and netizens (one of whom died behind bars), prosecutions and defamation campaigns against free expression activists, disruption of communications," the Paris-based group's report said. But the Arab Spring — the name given to a cascade of revolts across the Arab world — has also led to the opening up of some regimes. Libya, where the repressive rule of Moammar Gadhafi was thrown off in a violent revolt, was removed from the list of countries under surveillance. "In Libya, many challenges remain but the overthrow of the Gadhafi regime has ended an era of censorship," the report said. The group said that the Arab Spring had also highlighted the importance of the Internet — and therefore the importance of protecting access to and expression on it. "The Internet and social networks have been conclusively established as tools for protest, campaigning and circulating information, and as vehicles for freedom," the group said. "More than ever before, online freedom of expression is now a major foreign and domestic policy issue." The enemies list contains countries that are well known for blocking Internet content, like China, Myanmar and North Korea. But the list of those under surveillance contains some surprises like Australia and France. Reporters Without Borders criticized Australia for persuading Internet service providers to create a national content-filtering system, which blocks access to child pornography sites and others deemed inappropriate. The group is concerned that the government is still also pursuing a system of mandatory content-filtering whose criteria are "very broad." France landed on the surveillance list last year for a series of criminal indictments of journalists for stories they wrote. It remains on the list this year because of a law that could punish people who repeatedly illegally download content by cutting off their Internet access. http://www.newstimes.com/business/ar...et-3399093.php Web Giants' Consumer Privacy Strategy Faces Hard Sell Jasmin Melvin Emboldened by their victory in quashing online piracy legislation, U.S. Internet companies are gearing up for a battle over whether consumers should be able to restrict efforts to gather personal data. Google Inc, Facebook, Apple Inc and other tech companies have lobbied against congressional and federal agency proposals that would let Internet users press "do not track" buttons on their browsers to block targeted advertising. Consumers could also edit personal information that has been stored about them. With the privacy issue, the multibillion-dollar Internet industry faces a challenge larger than potentially harmful legislation or regulations that could limit their advertising and corporate growth. Their efforts to self-regulate continue to suffer setbacks amidst accusations of privacy violations and last year's Federal Trade Commission findings that Facebook and Google engaged in deceptive privacy practices. The FTC is expected to issue new privacy recommendations in the coming days, and companies are watching several legislative proposals on Capitol Hill. Privacy advocates are pushing to give consumers greater control over data collection. The companies must convince consumers that they benefit by allowing personal data to be collected and shared. Their pitch - in efforts like Google's current "Good to Know" advertising campaign - argues that data collection lets companies offer faster, smarter products, like better search results and customized mapping. Internet companies successfully fought legislation to limit Internet piracy. Medley Global Advisors analyst Jeffrey Silva said Web companies may feel confident that they can tackle other government intervention. "I think the lesson they've learned is if they don't like a certain bill, they can organize and create a lot of static and pushback," Silva said. A MULTIBILLION-DOLLAR BUSINESS Internet data collection allows advertisers to target users in a demographic who are more likely to buy their product. These ads often subsidize Web content. Google, for example, has come under fire for a new policy that took effect March 1 that treats information from most of its products, including Gmail, YouTube and Google+, as a single trove of data for advertisers. Google contends the change will benefit customers. The company would be able to spot a signed-on user looking for recipes and seamlessly direct them to YouTube cooking videos. "When we talk about how the Internet will improve and grow for consumers, that's coming from online behavioral advertising," said Daniel Castro, senior analyst at the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation. Strict privacy rules could lead to substantial cuts in online advertising dollars and an even larger hit to growth over the next five to 10 years, Castro said. A 2010 study by University of Toronto professor Avi Goldfarb and MIT professor Catherine Tucker revealed a 65 percent decrease in ad effectiveness after European countries implemented data collection rules for targeted advertising. Around 96 percent of Google's $37.9 billion revenue comes from advertising, financial statements showed. Filings ahead of Facebook's much-discussed initial public offering revealed 85 percent of its $3.71 billion in revenue last year came from advertising. Nearly two-thirds of Apple's fiscal year 2011 net sales came from its iPhone, iPad and related products and services that rely on tracking a user's exact location. New government data collection policies could have huge implications. "If Google got 65 percent less revenue than it got last year, that would be a big upset to a company like that," Castro said. MULTI-PRONGED ATTACK The industry got a break last month when the White House released a blueprint "privacy bill of rights" giving consumers more data control, but relying heavily on voluntary compliance by Internet companies. The FTC's expected recommendations are causing more anxiety. Analysts and privacy advocates predict that the FTC report will have more teeth, in part because FTC Chairman Jon Leibowitz recently described Google's new privacy policy as a "somewhat brutal choice" for consumers. The FTC report may call for strict enforcement to ensure firms adhere to their privacy policies, according to sources familiar with the agency's thinking. It may also try to accelerate firms' adoption of the "do not track" technology, which could work like the "do not call" registry that caused telemarketing industry havoc. Silva said the FTC recommendations come from "people that live and breathe privacy policy and have a greater knowledge of the law, companies' practices and an institutional knowledge of what's happened before. They probably have a better feel for the degree to which self-regulation works or doesn't." As for legislation, numerous privacy bills are winding their way through Congress. A notable one is a bipartisan privacy framework from Senators John Kerry and John McCain. It would require companies to reassess their privacy practices for both personally identifiable information and online behavioral advertising profiles. Critics say it could force more companies to start charging for services like e-mail, social networks and other content currently subsidized by advertising. "I'm talking about American companies having rules that control their own destiny, before Europe or other trading partners impose their policies on all our companies," Kerry said. "Hell, establishing minimum privacy protections in law can help build consumer trust in the marketplace and in turn increase economic activity." Tech companies have argued that government regulations could cut its revenues, reduce job growth and hurt the broader economy. Lawmakers are looking for the "sweet spot" between too much regulation and none at all, Representative Mary Bono Mack, chairman of the House Commerce subcommittee on commerce, manufacturing and trade, said. "Any knee-jerk reactions could have a chilling impact on innovation and e-commerce in the United States and threaten our economic recovery," she said. WEB FIRMS' FOOTHOLD Internet companies are well-positioned in Washington to push back against regulatory proposals. With the piracy debate, they came together to argue that bills designed to shut down access to overseas websites trafficking in stolen content or counterfeit goods were too broad. They argued that they could undermine innovation and free speech and compromise the Internet's functioning. What followed was an unprecedented online protest that saw Wikipedia and other sites go dark while bigger players like Google and Facebook displayed censorship bars and arguments against the bills on their sites. The effort was supported with 3.9 million tweets, 2,000 people a second trying to call their elected representatives and more than 5,000 people a minute signing petitions opposing the legislation. Privacy regulations are a harder sell, said privacy expert Amy Mushahwar, an attorney with Reed Smith. "Consumers might not be able to immediately recognize that increased privacy obligations could lead to a lesser amount of content on the Web, which is really what the advertising industry is concerned about," said Mushahwar, a registered lobbyist for the Association of National Advertisers. Internet companies have tried to get ahead of mandatory reforms by adopting their own policies. The Digital Advertising Alliance rolled out new data collection principles that take effect this year. They explicitly prohibit collection and use of a person's Internet surfing data for determining their eligibility for employment, credit, insurance and medical treatment. The industry is also using old-school lobbying tactics. It has ramped up its political activities dramatically, spending $1.2 billion between 1998 and 2011. Google spent $9.68 million and Microsoft Corp $7.34 million on federal lobbying in 2011, according to lobbying disclosure reports. Facebook, a latecomer to Washington, has beefed up its lobbying team, adding Joel Kaplan, former deputy chief of staff to President George W. Bush, and Myriah Jordan, also a Bush aide and former general counsel to Republican Senator Richard Burr. Facebook's lobbying expenditures skyrocketed from $351,000 in 2010 to $1.35 million in 2011, reports show. Winning lawmaker support is only part of the battle. The sector also may benefit from the views of average people, said Linda Woolley, executive vice president of government affairs at the Direct Marketing Association. Despite recent controversies over Google's privacy policies, "you didn't hear of people cancelling their Gmail accounts." "From where I sit, I do not see hordes of Americans running to Capitol Hill saying we need to do something about this," she said. (Additional reporting by David Ingram; Editing by Karey Wutkowski and Marilyn Thompson; Desking by Stacey Joyce) http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/...82905K20120310 DOJ Asks Court To Keep Secret Any Partnership Between Google, NSA Mike Scarcella The Justice Department is defending the government's refusal to discuss—or even acknowledge the existence of—any cooperative research and development agreement between Google and the National Security Agency. The Washington based advocacy group Electronic Privacy Information Center sued in federal district court here to obtain documents about any such agreement between the Internet search giant and the security agency. The NSA responded to the suit with a so-called “Glomar” response in which the agency said it could neither confirm nor deny whether any responsive records exist. U.S. District Judge Richard Leon in Washington sided with the government last July. A three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit is scheduled to hear the dispute March 20. EPIC filed a Freedom of Information Act request in early 2010, noting media reports at the time that the NSA and Google had agreed to a partnership following the cyber attacks in China that year against Google. EPIC asked for, among other things, communication between the NSA and Google about Gmail and Google’s “decision to fail to routinely encrypt” messages before Jan. 13, 2010. The NSA’s response to the request for records noted that the agency “works with a broad range of commercial partners and research associations” to ensure the availability of secure information systems. The agency, however, refused to confirm or deny any partnership with Google. The security agency said it routinely monitors vulnerabilities in commercial technology and cryptographic products because the government relies heavily on private companies for word processing systems and e-mail software. “If NSA determines that certain security vulnerabilities or malicious attacks pose a threat to U.S. government information systems, NSA may take action,” DOJ Civil Division lawyers Catherine Hancock and Douglas Letter said in a brief in the D.C. Circuit in January. DOJ’s legal team said that acknowledging whether NSA and Google formed a partnership from a cyber attack would illuminate whether the government “considered the alleged attack to be of consequence for critical U.S. government information systems.” NSA said it cannot provide documents—or confirm their existence—because the information would alert adversaries about the security agency’s priorities, threat assessments and countermeasures. DOJ said media reports about the alleged Google partnership with NSA do not constitute official acknowledgement. The Washington Post and The New York Times both reported that Google contacted the NSA after the Jan. 2010 cyber attack, which the company said was rooted in China and targeted access to accounts of Chinese human rights activists. The Wall Street Journal said NSA’s general counsel worked out a cooperative research and development agreement with Google. EPIC’s attorneys, including Marc Rotenberg, the group’s president, said in court papers that the document request includes records that are not relevant to the NSA’s information assurance mission. “The NSA mischaracterizes EPIC’s FOIA Request by stating that responsive documents would reveal ‘information about a potential Google-NSA relationship,’” Rotenberg said. The crux of the records request, Rotenberg said, is Google’s switch to application encryption by default for Gmail accounts soon after the cyber attack. Google in 2008 began allowing users to encrypt mail passing through the company servers, EPIC said in its brief, but encryption was not provided by default. EPIC’s brief said the failure of the NSA to conduct a search for records “deprives the court of the ability to meaningfully assess the propriety” of the agency’s response that it can neither confirm nor deny the existence of responsive records. “Without first conducting the search, not even the agency can know whether there is a factual basis for its legal position,” Rotenberg said. EPIC said its records request does not seek documents about NSA’s role to secure government computer networks. “Google provides cloud-based services to consumers, not critical infrastructure services to the government,” Rotenberg said. http://legaltimes.typepad.com/blt/20...oogle-nsa.html Can Google Be Forced By the FBI to Unlock Users' Phones? Dennis Fisher Those multi-gesture passcode locks on Android phones that give users (and their spouses) fits apparently present quite a challenge for the FBI as well. Frustrated by a swipe passcode on the seized phone of an alleged gang leader, FBI officials have requested a search warrant that would force Google to "provide law enforcement with any and all means of gaining access, including login and password information, password reset, and/or manufacturer default code ("PUK"), in order to obtain the complete contents of the memory of cellular telephone". The request is part of a case involving an alleged gang leader and human trafficker named Dante Dears in California. Dears served several years in prison for his role in founding a gang in California called PhD, and upon his release he allegedly went back to his activities with the gang, according to the FBI's affidavit. Agents conducted surveillance on Dears and found that he was using a mobile phone to allegedly communicate with prostitutes and other associates. Dears had denied to his parole officer that he owned a mobile phone, and in January the parole officer went to Dears's apartment and seized the phone. The FBI subsequently served a search warrant on the parole officer and took the phone, but the bureau's forensics investigators couldn't get past the swipe lock on the Android handset. Once they failed enough times, the phone locked and now requires the user's Google username and password for access. As a result, the FBI is asking that Google be forced to hand over the information to get them into the phone. The move by the FBI to try and force Google to turn over the information--including email subscriber information, emails, text messages and Internet access data--leads to some interesting questions. "[i]t suggests that a warrant might be enough to get Google to unlock a phone. Presumably, this is not the first time that the FBI has requested Google unlock a phone, so one would assume that the FBI would request the right kind of order. However, we do not know if Google has complied with the request. Given that an unlocked smartphone will continue to receive text messages and new emails (transmitted after the device was first seized), one could reasonably argue that the government should have to obtain a wiretap order in order to unlock the phone," Chris Soghoian, a privacy advocate and security researcher, wrote in a blog post on the case. The FBI special agent who wrote the affidavit also requested that Dears not be told about the information request, however the search warrant and affidavit were not sealed. https://threatpost.com/en_us/blogs/c...-phones-031412 New Interest in Hacking as Threat to Security Michael S. Schmidt During the five-month period between October and February, there were 86 reported attacks on computer systems in the United States that control critical infrastructure, factories and databases, according to the Department of Homeland Security, compared with 11 over the same period a year ago. None of the attacks caused significant damage, but they were part of a spike in hacking attacks on networks and computers of all kinds over the same period. The department recorded more than 50,000 incidents since October, about 10,000 more than in the same period a year earlier, with an incident defined as any intrusion or attempted intrusion on a computer network. The increase has prompted a new interest in cybersecurity on Capitol Hill, where lawmakers are being prodded by the Obama administration to advance legislation that could require new standards at facilities where a breach could cause significant casualties or economic damage. It is not clear whether the higher numbers were due to increased reporting amid a wave of high-profile hacking, including the arrest last week of several members of the group Anonymous, or an actual increase in attacks. James A. Lewis, a senior fellow and a specialist in computer security issues at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a policy group in Washington, said that as hacking awareness had increased, attacks had become more common. He said that the attacks on the nation’s infrastructure were particularly jarring. “Some of this is heightened awareness because everyone is babbling about it,” he said of the reported rise in computer attacks. “But much of it is because the technology has improved and the hackers have gotten better and people and countries are probing around more like the Russians and Chinese have.” He added: “We hit rock bottom on this in 2010. Then we hit rock bottom in 2011. And we are still at rock bottom. We were vulnerable before and now we’re just more vulnerable. You can destroy physical infrastructure with a cyberattack just like you could with a bomb.” The legislation the administration is pressing Congress to pass would give the federal government greater authority to regulate the security used by companies that run the nation’s infrastructure. It would give the Homeland Security Department the authority to enforce minimum standards on companies whose service or product would lead to mass casualties, evacuations or major economic damage if crippled by hackers. The bill the administration backs is sponsored by Senators Joseph I. Lieberman, independent of Connecticut, and Susan Collins, Republican of Maine. It has bipartisan support, and its prospects appear good. Senator John McCain, Republican of Arizona, is sponsoring a more business-friendly bill that emphasizes the sharing of information and has fewer requirements for companies. Last week on Capitol Hill, Janet Napolitano, the secretary of Homeland Security; Robert S. Mueller III, the director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation; and Gen. Martin E. Dempsey, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, made their pitch to roughly four dozen senators about why they should pass the Lieberman-Collins bill. At a closed-door briefing, the senators were shown how a power company employee could derail the New York City electrical grid by clicking on an e-mail attachment sent by a hacker, and how an attack during a heat wave could have a cascading impact that would lead to deaths and cost the nation billions of dollars. “I think General Dempsey said it best when he said that prior to 9/11, there were all kinds of information out there that a catastrophic attack was looming,” Ms. Napolitano said in an interview. “The information on a cyberattack is at that same frequency and intensity and is bubbling at the same level, and we should not wait for an attack in order to do something.” General Dempsey told the senators that he had skipped a meeting of the National Security Council on Iran to attend the briefing because he was so concerned about a cyberattack, according to a person who had been told details of the meeting. A spokesman for General Dempsey said the chairman had “sent his vice chairman to the meeting on Iran so that he could attend the Senate meeting and emphasize his concern about cybersecurity.” “His point was about his presence at the cyber exercise rather than a value judgment on the ‘threat,’ ” the spokesman, Col. David Lapan, said. Experts say one of the biggest problems is that no part of the government has complete authority over the issue. The Central Intelligence Agency and the National Security Agency give the government intelligence on potential attacks, and the F.B.I. prosecutes hackers who break the law. The Department of Homeland Security receives reports about security breaches but has no authority to compel business to improve their security. “Nobody does critical infrastructure of the dot-com space where America now relies on faith healing and snake oil for protection,” Mr. Lewis said. “The administration wants it to be the Department of Homeland Security, but the department needs additional authorities to be effective.” https://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/14/u...-security.html For Apple, Pressure Builds Over App Store Fraud Evelyn M. Rusli and Brian X. Chen In a little over an hour, Ryan Matthew Pierson racked up $437.71 in iTunes charges for virtual currency that he could use to buy guns, nightclubs and cars in iMobsters, a popular iPhone game. One problem: Mr. Pierson, a technology writer in Texas, has never played iMobsters. “This was fraud,” said Mr. Pierson, recalling the November incident. “I woke up, checked my e-mail, and I could see these purchases happening in real time.” Mr. Pierson raised the issue with Apple and his bank, and the problem was eventually resolved. But his experience is hardly unique, as reflected by hundreds of online complaints saying that Apple’s iTunes Store, and in particular its App Store, which the company portrays as the safest of shopping environments, is not so secure. The complaints come from consumers like Mr. Pierson, who say that their accounts have been hijacked or that some apps are falsely advertised. And they come from creators of apps, who say they are having to deal with fraudulent purchases that drain their time and resources. Software makers also complain that competition in the App Store has become so brutal that many companies resort to artificially inflating their popularity rankings to grab attention. It’s a change for Apple, which was once criticized for its micromanaging of the App Store. Now the problem is not too much control, but too little. “This kind of thing just happens any time a platform is successful,” said David Edery, chief executive of Spry Fox, a small software company that sells games in the App Store. “People start flooding into it and it starts to get crazy.” The App Store offers more than 600,000 applications for iPhones, iPads and iPod Touches, and has already generated billions in revenue for Apple and its developers. That makes it both the best deal going for software makers and consumers, and also a hulking target for those looking to manipulate the system and cheat people. Apple declined a request for an interview, but said in a statement that it was working to enhance security. It advised customers whose payment information had been stolen to change their iTunes passwords and to contact their financial institutions. In the shadowy world of hacking, it’s often unclear how criminals get iTunes passwords or credit card information. But the App Store, and Apple’s broader iTunes Store, have become playgrounds for illicit transactions. And the Web is rife with App Store scams. On Chinese online marketplaces, like Taobao or DHgate, some sellers are offering access to iTunes accounts for as little as $33. One seller on DHgate, for instance, has sold 56 iTunes accounts for less than $35 each, promising thousands of dollars in “credit.” There are services that claim to generate codes for iTunes gift cards, and forums that explain how to use prepaid Visa cards to get free App Store purchases. The scale of the problem is difficult to gauge without Apple’s cooperation, though there is widespread anecdotal evidence, even on Apple’s own site. On one Apple support forum, a thread titled “iTunes store account hacked,” there are some 1,370 replies, starting in November 2010 and extending to Thursday. Last week, more than 100 people on Twitter who said they were iTunes users complained about stolen funds. Last month, Daniel Saewitz, a 20-year-old Syracuse University student, was charged $81 for purchases related to a Chinese iPhone game. He alerted Apple and changed his iTunes password. But 24 hours later, he said, his account was hacked again. In an e-mail, Apple said it was refunding Mr. Saewitz’s money, but added that it was making an exception to its usual rules. For developers, the scams can cause big headaches, eating up resources and damaging their reputations. Several game makers in China, where many of the hacks appear to originate, said they had lost hundreds of thousands of dollars because of fraud. Hoolai Game, a Beijing-based developer that introduced an iPhone app last year, looked at its monthly payments from Apple and found that they were roughly 20 to 50 percent less than the sum of the daily reports it gets from the company. Hoolai and others say they believe these missing payments are fraudulent transactions that are wiped out by Apple. More troubling for developers is that consumers whose accounts have been improperly charged often blame the game makers. The reviews in the App Store for Kingdom Conquest, from the Japanese game giant Sega, include dozens from incensed users who accuse Sega of robbing them. Sega, which first noticed a burst of fraudulent transactions last summer, is still working on the problem, according to Ben Harborne, a brand manager at the company. “We are very worried about reputation,” said Jian Huang, the president of Hoolai, who hopes to introduce a game in the United States later this year. “We have no way to tell the customer that we’re victims too.” One successful American game developer, who spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of retribution by Apple, said he started to notice discrepancies in payments last summer. The developer said his team had sent multiple e-mails to Apple, but that it had not addressed whether the missing payments were a result of fraud. Over the last year, the gap has amounted to millions of dollars, according to internal documents provided by the developer. With little action from Apple, some affected developers have banded together. One Chinese developer, CocoaChina, has created an antifraud alliance of roughly a dozen developers. While many of the affected consumers and developers said they did not blame Apple for their misfortunes, nearly all said the company could be more responsive, and noted that it lacked even a dedicated phone line to deal with complaints. “Apple wants to pretend that everything is magic,” said Alex Stamos, co-founder of iSEC Partners, a security firm. “They need to admit that their products can be used by bad people to do bad things.” One problem, Mr. Stamos said, is that iTunes customers use a single account and password to access all Apple services. For example, the same login can be used to download a $1 game or buy a $2,000 laptop through the Apple Store app. He said that Apple could adopt a two-step verification method like Google’s. For example, if a user wanted to log in to the iTunes store on a new device, Apple could send a message to his iPhone containing a code, which he would enter to verify his identity. Some App Store problems are the fault of the developers themselves — including those who make it harder for consumers to trust the store by cheating the system. The easiest ways to find new apps are Apple’s Top 25 lists for different categories, including “most downloaded.” But some of those downloads may not be generated by real people. Walter Kaman, an independent programmer, said he was disheartened by a phone call from a service that offered to put his game in the Top 25. He said the promoter, whom he declined to name so as not to attract clients to the service, had hired someone to build an army of software “bots” that automatically download apps and drive up their rankings. The company wanted $5,000 for this service, said Mr. Kaman, who declined. Mr. Edery of Spry Fox said his company was approached in October by a firm called GTekna, which offered to push its apps into the Top 25 for $10,000. Chang-Min Pak, GTekna’s chief executive, said in an interview this week that it stopped offering such a service because Apple reminded developers in February that it was not allowed. Then there are the customers who have been tricked into downloading apps that are not what they seem to be. Apple has strict guidelines for developers, and it has tools and human reviewers to screen apps. But bad ones do slip through. One $2 app, for example, promises extra virtual coins for people playing the game DragonVale. But when customers download the app, no coins appear. The app has received dozens of one-star reviews from customers complaining that it is a scam and should be removed. John Casasanta, owner of the iPhone app studio Tap Tap Tap, said the issue of developers manipulating the App Store remained largely unaddressed. “Apple has been doing the barest minimum to keep these things under control, because from their perspective, there’s simply not a problem,” Mr. Casasanta said. https://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/16/t...ore-fraud.html Former Murdoch Editor Is Said to Be Arrested Sarah Lyall Rebekah Brooks, the former chief executive of Rupert Murdoch’s News International, was arrested early Tuesday on suspicion of obstruction of justice, according to a person with knowledge of the arrest. Her husband, Charlie, a decades-long friend of Prime Minister David Cameron from their days at Eton, was also arrested, the person said. In a statement, the police said that a total of six people in and outside of London had been arrested on Tuesday as part of Operation Weeting, the criminal investigation into phone hacking and other illegal activities at the News of the World and other newspapers. Following standard procedure, the police did not name the suspects, but said that they had been arrested between 5 a.m. and 7 a.m. and were being interrogated at different police stations on suspicion of “conspiracy to pervert the course of justice,” what the British call obstruction of justice. This could relate to activities like destroying e-mails, computers and other evidence, people with knowledge of the investigation said. Ms. Brooks, 43, is a confidante of Mr. Murdoch and erstwhile friend of Mr. Cameron. She also worked as the editor of the now-defunct News of the World and the editor of The Sun tabloid before being named chief executive of News International, the British newspaper arm of Mr. Murdoch’s media empire. So far, the police have arrested more than two dozen people in Operation Weeting and two other ancillary investigations: Operation Tuleta, which is looking into accusations of computer hacking, and Operation Elveden, which is looking into accusations that journalists paid police officers and government officials for information. It is normal procedure in British police investigations for suspects to be arrested, released, and then charged months afterward. Ms. Brooks, 43, was also arrested last summer as part of the operation, that time on suspicion of phone hacking and illegally paying the police. She is the highest-ranking News International official to be arrested so far. Andy Coulson, a former News of the World editor who went on to become the chief spokesman for the prime minister, was also arrested last summer as part of Operation Weeting. Other suspects include some of the most prominent reporters and editors at The News of the World and The Sun, a Murdoch-owned tabloid that is Britain’s most popular daily newspaper. Ms. Brooks and Mr. Coulson have consistently maintained that they knew nothing about phone hacking or other illegal activities. David Wilson, a spokesman for the Brookses, did not return a call seeking comment. According to a statement from the Metropolitan Police, the ages of the suspects arrested Tuesday ranged from 38 to 49, and all but one were men. Five were arrested at home: two in Oxfordshire (these are believed to be the Brookses); one in Hampshire; one in West London; one in Hertfordshire; and one in East London. The sixth suspect, the police said, was arrested at a business address in East London. It is unclear how Mr. Brooks, an old Etonian with impeccable establishment credentials, fits in to the operation. But The Guardian reported in July that he was involved in an odd episode featuring a mysterious laptop left in a bag in a garbage can in an underground parking garage near the apartment he shares with his wife in London. According to the article, the bag, containing the computer and some papers, was unearthed by security guards, who called the police. Mr. Brooks then tried to reclaim the items, but could not prove they were his. A spokesman for Mr. Brooks told The Guardian that he had “left the bag with a friend who was returning it, but dropped it in the wrong part of the garage.” When asked how the bag ended up in a garbage can, the spokesman replied: “The suggestion is that a cleaner thought it was rubbish and put it in the bin” and said that it was “nothing to do with Rebekah,” the newspaper said. Mr. Brooks was in the news when it emerged last month that the police had loaned his wife, then working for News International, a police horse which had been retired from active service. The loan was relevant because of the close ties between Ms. Brooks and the police, and because of the close ties between Mr. and Ms. Brooks and Prime Minister Cameron. After days of deflections and denials, Mr. Cameron admitted that he had gone riding at the Brooks’s country estate and that he had ridden the former police horse, Raisa. “I’ve been friends with Charlie Brooks for over 30 years, and he’s a good friend and a neighbor of my constituency,” Mr. Cameron said by way of an explanation. https://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/14/w...-arrested.html Use of Homeless as Internet Hot Spots Backfires on Marketer Jenna Wortham Which product at this year’s South by Southwest technology conference received more attention than perhaps any other? Homeless people as wireless transmitters. A marketing agency touched off a wave of criticism and debate when it hired members of the local homeless population to walk around carrying mobile Wi-Fi devices, offering conferencegoers Internet access in exchange for donations. BBH Labs, the innovation unit of the international marketing agency BBH, outfitted 13 volunteers from a homeless shelter with the devices, business cards and T-shirts bearing their names: “I’m Clarence, a 4G Hotspot.” They were told to go to the most densely packed areas of the conference, which has become a magnet for those who want to chase the latest in technology trends. The smartphone-toting, social-networking crowds often overwhelm cellular networks in the area, creating a market that BBH Labs hoped to serve with the “Homeless Hotspots” project, which it called a “charitable experiment.” It paid each participant $20 a day, and they were also able to keep whatever customers donated in exchange for the wireless service. But as word of the project spread on the ground and online, it hit a nerve among many who said that turning down-and-out people into wireless towers was exploitative and discomfiting. Tim Carmody, a blogger at Wired, described the project as “completely problematic” and sounding like “something out of a darkly satirical science-fiction dystopia.” A commenter on the BBH Labs blog offered mock praise for the project, then complained that “my homeless hotspot keeps wandering out of range, and it’s ruining all my day trades!” On Monday, the project’s scheduled last day, BBH Labs was scrambling to explain itself. Saneel Radia, the director of innovation at BBH Labs who oversaw the project, said the company was not taking advantage of the homeless volunteers. He said that the company had had success with other such experiments, including one in which it gave homeless people in New York cellphones and Twitter accounts as a way to call attention to their plight. Mr. Radia said he modeled the hot spot project after the street newspapers that homeless people sell for a dollar. “We saw it as a means to raise awareness by giving homeless people a way to engage with mainstream society and talk to people,” he said. “The hot spot is a way for them to tell their story.” Mitchell Gibbs, the director of development at Front Steps, the shelter that houses the project volunteers, said he advised Mr. Radia on how best to set up the program. He said he was surprised by all the criticism of the project, which he said had inspired an “entrepreneurial spirit” among its homeless participants. “It’s an employment opportunity, regardless of who is offering it,” Mr. Gibbs said. The human hot spots seemed unconcerned as well. One volunteer, Clarence Jones, 54, said he was originally from New Orleans and became homeless in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. “Everyone thinks I’m getting the rough end of the stick, but I don’t feel that,” Mr. Jones said. “I love talking to people and it’s a job. An honest day of work and pay.” But the program’s critics zeroed in on the divide between its impoverished vendors and Internet-bubble customers. Adam Hanft, chief executive of the marketing advisory firm Hanft Projects, said that even if the effort was well intended, it seemed to turn a blind eye to that disconnect. “There is already a sense that the Internet community has become so absurdly self-involved that they don’t think there’s any world outside of theirs,” he said. https://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/13/t...in-austin.html Report: 51% of Web Site Traffic is 'Non-Human' and Mostly Malicious Tom Foremski Summary: Web site analytics packages record what real people do on a site but most web site traffic comes from other computers often with nefarious intent. Incapsula, a provider of cloud-based security for web sites, released a study today showing that 51% of web site traffic is automated software programs, and the majority is potentially damaging, — automated exploits from hackers, spies, scrapers, and spammers. The company says that typically, only 49% of a web site’s visitors are actual humans and that the non-human traffic is mostly invisible because it is not shown by analytics software. This means that web sites are carrying a large hidden cost burden in terms of bandwidth, increased risk of business disruption, and worse. Here’s a breakdown of an average web site’s traffic: - 5% is hacking tools searching for an unpatched or new vulnerability in a web site. - 5% is scrapers. - 2% is automated comment spammers. - 19% is from “spies” collecting competitive intelligence. - 20% is from search engines - which is non-human traffic but benign. - 49% is from people browsing the Internet. The data was collected from a sample of 1,000 websites that are enrolled in the Incapsula service. I spoke with Marc Gaffan, co-founder of Incapsula. “Few people realize how much of their traffic is non-human, and that much of it is potentially harmful.” Incapsula offers a service aimed at securing small and medium sized businesses. It has a global network of nine data centers that analyze all traffic to a customer’s site and blocking harmful exploits in real-time, while also speeding up page loading times through cached content closer to users. “Because we have thousands of web sites as customers, we spot exploits way ahead of others and we can then block them for all our customers. That’s the benefit of scale. We also maintain a virtual patch service that prevents harmful exploits days and sometimes weeks before a patch is ready.” There is no software or hardware installation required by the customer, a small change in a web site’s DNS records directs traffic through Incapsula’s data centers. And all analytics, and search engine rankings, are unaffected by the change. Web sites are significantly faster because the company caches content and keeps it close to where users are located. An important aspect of the service is that it is in compliance with the Payment Card Industry data security standard (PCI) which is essential for online merchants. They risk losing their ability to process credit card payments if they don’t meet strict PCI requirements. The company offers a free service for sites with less than 25 GB of monthly bandwidth, and premium plans start at $49 a month. Foremski’s Take: I’m curious to try this service because looking at my server logs I get hit by about 28 ‘robots’ daily, and while some are from legitimate sources such as Google, Yahoo, Microsoft, the majority are unidentified and together, they use as much as one-third of my bandwidth. This means that the human user experience suffers because my server is trying to deal with all the ‘non-human’ traffic generated by software programs hitting the site. Incapsula’s ability to block exploits before a patch is available is another attractive feature. I don’t have time to keep up with the many security patches sent out, and then installing and upgrading multiple programs is a chore I’d rather do without. https://www.zdnet.com/blog/foremski/...malicious/2201 After 244 Years, Encyclopaedia Britannica Stops the Presses Julie Bosman After 244 years, the Encyclopaedia Britannica is going out of print. Those coolly authoritative, gold-lettered reference books that were once sold door-to-door by a fleet of traveling salesmen and displayed as proud fixtures in American homes will be discontinued, company executives said. In an acknowledgment of the realities of the digital age — and of competition from the Web site Wikipedia — Encyclopaedia Britannica will focus primarily on its online encyclopedias and educational curriculum for schools. The last print version is the 32-volume 2010 edition, which weighs 129 pounds and includes new entries on global warming and the Human Genome Project. “It’s a rite of passage in this new era,” Jorge Cauz, the president of Encyclopaedia Britannica Inc., a company based in Chicago, said in an interview. “Some people will feel sad about it and nostalgic about it. But we have a better tool now. The Web site is continuously updated, it’s much more expansive and it has multimedia.” In the 1950s, having the Encyclopaedia Britannica on the bookshelf was akin to a station wagon in the garage or a black-and-white Zenith in the den, a possession coveted for its usefulness and as a goalpost for an aspirational middle class. Buying a set was often a financial stretch, and many families had to pay for it in monthly installments. But in recent years, print reference books have been almost completely overtaken by the Internet and its vast spread of resources, including specialized Web sites and the hugely popular — and free — online encyclopedia Wikipedia. Since it was started 11 years ago, Wikipedia has moved a long way toward replacing the authority of experts with the wisdom of the crowds. The site is now written and edited by tens of thousands of contributors around the world, and it has been gradually accepted as a largely accurate and comprehensive source, even by many scholars and academics. Wikipedia also regularly meets the 21st-century mandate of providing instantly updated material. And it has nearly four million articles in English, including some on pop culture topics that would not be considered worthy of a mention in the Encyclopaedia Britannica. Mr. Cauz said that he believed Britannica’s competitive advantage with Wikipedia came from its prestigious sources, its carefully edited entries and the trust that was tied to the brand. “We have very different value propositions,” Mr. Cauz said. “Britannica is going to be smaller. We cannot deal with every single cartoon character, we cannot deal with every love life of every celebrity. But we need to have an alternative where facts really matter. Britannica won’t be able to be as large, but it will always be factually correct.” But one widely publicized study, published in 2005 by Nature, called into question Britannica’s presumed accuracy advantage over Wikipedia. The study said that out of 42 competing entries, Wikipedia made an average of four errors in each article, and Britannica three. Britannica responded with a lengthy rebuttal saying the study was error-laden and “completely without merit.” The Britannica, the oldest continuously published encyclopedia in the English language, has become a luxury item with a $1,395 price tag. It is frequently bought by embassies, libraries and research institutions, and by well-educated, upscale consumers who felt an attachment to the set of bound volumes. Only 8,000 sets of the 2010 edition have been sold, and the remaining 4,000 have been stored in a warehouse until they are bought. The 2010 edition had more than 4,000 contributors, including Arnold Palmer (who wrote the entry on the Masters tournament) and Panthea Reid, professor emeritus at Louisiana State University and author of the biography “Art and Affection: A Life of Virginia Woolf” (who wrote about Virginia Woolf). Sales of the Britannica peaked in 1990, when 120,000 sets were sold in the United States. But now print encyclopedias account for less than 1 percent of the Britannica’s revenue. About 85 percent of revenue comes from selling curriculum products in subjects like math, science and the English language; 15 percent comes from subscriptions to the Web site, the company said. About half a million households pay a $70 annual fee for the online subscription, which includes access to the full database of articles, videos, original documents and to the company’s mobile applications. At least one other general-interest encyclopedia in the United States, the World Book, is still printing a 22-volume yearly edition, said Jennifer Parello, a spokeswoman for World Book Inc. She declined to provide sales figures but said the encyclopedia was bought primarily by schools and libraries. Gary Marchionini, the dean of the School of Information and Library Science at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, said the fading of print encyclopedias was “an inexorable trend that will continue.” “There’s more comprehensive material available on the Web,” Mr. Marchionini said. “The thing that you get from an encyclopedia is one of the best scholars in the world writing a description of that phenomenon or that object, but you’re still getting just one point of view. Anything worth discussing in life is worth getting more than one point of view.” Many librarians say that while they have rapidly shifted money and resources to digital materials, print still has a place. Academic libraries tend to keep many sets of specialized encyclopedias on their shelves, like volumes on Judaica, folklore, music or philosophy, or encyclopedias that are written in foreign languages and unavailable online. At the Portland Public Library in Maine, there are still many encyclopedias that the library orders on a regular basis, sometimes every year, said Sonya Durney, a reference librarian. General-interest encyclopedias are often used by students whose teachers require them to occasionally cite print sources, just to practice using print. “They’re used by anyone who’s learning, anyone who’s new to the country, older patrons, people who aren’t comfortable online,” Ms. Durney said. “There’s a whole demographic of people who are more comfortable with print.” But many people are discovering that the books have outlived their usefulness. Used editions of encyclopedias are widely available on Craigslist and eBay: more than 1,400 listings for Britannica products were posted on eBay this week. Charles Fuller, a geography professor who lives in the Chicago suburbs, put his 1992 edition on sale on Craigslist last Sunday. For years, he has neglected the print encyclopedias, he said in an interview, and now prefers to use his iPhone to look up facts quickly. He and his wife are downsizing and relocating to California, he said, and the Encyclopaedia Britannica will not be coming with them, a loss he acknowledges with a hint of wistfulness. “They’re not obsolete,” Mr. Fuller said. “When I’m doing serious research, I still use the print books. And they look really beautiful on the bookshelves.” http://mediadecoder.blogs.nytimes.co...s-the-presses/ Sad But True: Napster '99 Still Smokes Spotify 2012 Andrew Orlowski The Napster of 13 years ago was vastly superior to any legal music service available today, including Spotify, says Sean Parker, a mover and shaker in both companies. And he's right. Napster co-founders Sean Parker and Shawn Fanning were speaking at the SXSW Music Festival and Conference this week. Parker is an investor in Spotify, a legal licensed service, unlike the original pirate Napster. So you'd expect him to talk it up – and he does. But Parker pointed out that even in its rudimentary state, Napster had a real-time chat channel built in, enabling file-sharers to communicate. It also gave you an insight into somebody's personality by allowing you to browse their digital record collection. You can see why he thinks its important: Fanning and Parker originally met on IRC. Napster also had other advantages, including a wider catalogue, thanks to its disregard for licensing. Today Spotify wins on speed of access – streaming a song extremely rapidly. But of course it doesn't allow you to keep the song in a portable format; offline access is kept within the Spotify software's proprietary encrypted database. Today Spotify only allows the sharing of playlists, although in reality the songs themselves can be pulled across from peers, if available, rather than from Spotify's central streaming library. That's as "Peer to Peer" as Spotify gets. Parker has written at length about the differences between Napster's P2P vision and services today, and he commends Spotify for using Facebook as an integration platform. He had previously revealed that many of the social features were on the To Do list, before "the company was taken over by lawyers". Making P2P legal In 2001 Napster was finally closed down by a music industry fearful of its impact. But the "evil" aspect of Napster wasn't that it was P2P: it was that it didn't return any money to the creators. But the concept and the software were widely admired, so quiet attempts were made to fix that. Few people know about this part of history, which we wrote about here. "The Napster subscription model we proposed works. It used fingerprinting, it was a walled garden P2P system," Chris Castle, an attorney at Napster, explained. The garden would have been open to anyone who wanted to pay. "Once you threw the 'big switch' and changed to subscription, even if Napster lost 90 per cent of its users there would still be two to three million subscribers. That's a nice little group to start a service with. And you'd have got back some of the people who left if the service was compelling." Fanning's next venture was Snocap, an attempt to solve the technical challenge of identifying – but not blocking – copyrighted material flowing around a network. With the offer of a music business amnesty, Snocap then approached the pirate services and suggested they could be the next Napster – only a legal version. Nobody stepped up to the challenge: "These P2P operators looked like little teenage boys who had suddenly realised they weren't going to drive the car this weekend," Castle recalled for us in 2009. (Which is damning. It was more heroic to pose as the persecuted pirate hero rather than become a successful P2P music entrepreneur.) There's little doubt that a legal P2P Napster, even at a relatively high price of $50 a month, would have what marketroids call a "rich consumer experience". What a pity the large labels a decade ago didn't appreciate that Napster was a social network – just one built around music. Who knows, today it might be as big as you-know-who. http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/03...ng_on_napster/ Until next week, - js. Current Week In Review Recent WiRs - March 10th, March 3rd, February 25th, February 18th Jack Spratts' Week In Review is published every Friday. Submit letters, articles, press releases, comments, questions etc. in plain text English to jackspratts (at) lycos (dot) com. Submission deadlines are Thursdays @ 1400 UTC. Please include contact info. The right to publish all remarks is reserved. "The First Amendment rests on the assumption that the widest possible dissemination of information from diverse and antagonistic sources is essential to the welfare of the public." - Hugo Black __________________ Thanks For Sharing

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