Peer-To-Peer News - The Week In Review - December 10th, ’05

[JackSpratts]

"A copy downloaded, played, and retained on one's hard drive for future use is a direct substitute for a purchased copy." – U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit in Chicago


"Before a million people can buy our record, a million people have to hear our music and like it enough to go looking for it. That won't happen without a lot of people playing us for their friends, which, in turn, won't happen without a fair amount of file sharing. As it happened, for a variety of reasons, our label didn't put copy-protection software on our album. What a shame, though, that so many bands aren't as fortunate." – Damian Kulash Jr.


"That shrinking (movie release) window would dramatically affect cinema admissions. If the industry were to convert to simultaneous release on DVD, or with downloads, that would have devastating impact on the cinema industry." – John Fithian


"'The Family Guy' was one of the most traded shows on peer-to-peer networks. A subsequent DVD release containing episodes of the show generated huge sales, which some analysts speculate means that the file-sharing activity helped build interest in the show." – Jonny Evans


"In this country, the state lacks the authority to ban protected speech on the ground that it affects the listener's or observer's thoughts and attitudes." – U.S. District Court Judge Matthew Kennelly


"The trade magazine Mediaweek reported that in 2003, 99 percent of all F.C.C. indecency complaints came from the Parents Television Council." – Caryn James


"For 12 hours a day, 7 days a week, my colleagues and I are killing monsters." – Wandering


"It's unimaginable how big this is. They say that in some of these popular games, 40 or 50 percent of the players are actually Chinese farmers." – Chen Yu


"Music travels much farther than you travel, and it touches people you never met. Whatever comfort you gave people, they offer that comfort back. And it works. It's good medicine." – Mary Travers


































Update

December 10th, ’05




Court Rules Against Mom in Download Suit
Ted Bridis

A federal appeals court late Friday upheld the music industry's $22,500 judgment against a Chicago mother caught illegally distributing songs over the Internet.

The court rejected her defense that she was innocently sampling music to find songs she might buy later and compared her downloading and distributing the songs to shoplifting.

The decision against Cecilia Gonzalez, 29, represents one of the earliest appeals court victories by the music industry in copyright lawsuits it has filed against thousands of computer users. The three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit in Chicago threw out Gonzalez's arguments that her Internet activities were permitted under U.S. copyright laws.

Gonzalez had rejected a proposed settlement from music companies of about $3,500. A federal judge later filed a summary judgment against her and ordered her to pay $750 for each of 30 songs she was accused of illegally distributing over the Internet.

Gonzalez, a mother of five, contended she had downloaded songs to determine what she liked enough to buy at retail. She said she and her husband regularly buy music CDs and own more than 250.

However, the appeals panel said Gonzalez never deleted songs off her computer she decided not to buy, and judges said she could have been liable for more than 1,000 songs found on her computer.

"A copy downloaded, played, and retained on one's hard drive for future use is a direct substitute for a purchased copy," the judges wrote. They said her defense that she downloaded fewer songs than many other computer users "is no more relevant than a thief's contention that he shoplifted only 30 compact discs, planning to listen to them at home and pay later."

Gonzalez could not be reached for comment. Her lawyer, Geoff Baker, said comparing Gonzalez to a shoplifter was "inflammatory" but declined to comment further until he had more time to review the decision, which was released late in the day.

Gonzalez was named in the first wave of civil lawsuits filed by record companies and their trade organization, the Recording Industry Association of America, in September 2003.

"The law here is quite clear," said Jonathan Lamy, a senior vice president for the Washington-based RIAA. "Our goal with all these anti-piracy efforts is to protect the ability of the music industry to invest in the bands of tomorrow and give legal online services a chance to flourish."
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories...CTION=BUSINESS





Angry BellSouth Withdrew Donation, New Orleans Says
Jonathan Krim

Hours after New Orleans officials announced Tuesday that they would deploy a city-owned, wireless Internet network in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, regional phone giant BellSouth Corp. withdrew an offer to donate one of its damaged buildings that would have housed new police headquarters, city officials said yesterday.

According to the officials, the head of BellSouth's Louisiana operations, Bill Oliver, angrily rescinded the offer of the building in a conversation with New Orleans homeland security director Terry Ebbert, who oversees the roughly 1,650-member police force.

City officials said BellSouth was upset about the plan to bring high-speed Internet access for free to homes and businesses to help stimulate resettlement and relocation to the devastated city. Around the country, large telephone companies have aggressively lobbied against localities launching their own Internet networks, arguing that they amount to taxpayer-funded competition. Some states have laws prohibiting them.

BellSouth spokesman Jeff Battcher disputed the city's version of events.

"Our willingness to work with the mayor and the city is still on the table," Battcher said. "We've been working for over two months on this building . . . we are a little surprised by these comments."

Battcher said Oliver spoke directly with the mayor on Tuesday after the WiFi announcement and told him they needed to continue to work through issues regarding the building. He said BellSouth is awaiting the mayor's response.

The police have been scattered in hotels, precinct stations and other makeshift locations since the headquarters was ruined in the hurricane and had been preparing to move to the building after months of discussions with the phone company, city officials said.

The building suffered basement flooding and needs some repairs but has 250,000 usable square feet of space.

Greg Meffert, the city's chief technology officer and a deputy mayor, said he is saddened that BellSouth finds the city's network so objectionable.

"It's a once-in-a-century opportunity to truly show the entire world what can be, instead of just what is, and help write future history in the process," Meffert said. "It's a damn shame they don't see that."

The wireless network covers the central business district and the French Quarter, and the city plans to expand it as the people return.

The network also is used by law enforcement and other city agencies to help speed recovery. Eventually, the city intends to outsource operation of the network's business and consumer services to a private firm, officials said.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...120201853.html





VCR-Like Box Boasts P2P Content At Push Of Button
Lars Pasveer



A Dutch company is offering a new Linux-based home media player designed to give Internet users easy access to content from a variety of peer-to-peer networks, including BitTorrent and eDonkey.

Called the LamaBox, the VCR-sized player is "fully integrated with the Internet, including connection to the big peer-to-peer networks," according to the LamaBox Web site. This, the site says, lets users "choose from an impressive collection of audio and video. The latest movies and television shows, playable on your television at the press of a button."

The device also enables users to burn downloads to DVD.

The fact that the LamaBox is designed to access networks where copyrighted material is routinely shared raises legal issues. But a LamaBox representative denied any wrongdoing and said the device only makes such material accessible, much in the same way Internet providers facilitate access to potentially illegal material.

"The sole responsibility lies with the provider and user of content," said LamaBox.

But if a recent U.S. Supreme Court decision gives any indication of the direction international law will take, the LamaBox could find itself unplugged. This summer, the court ruled that companies that build businesses with the active intent of encouraging copyright infringement should be held liable for their customers' illegal actions.

Currently the LamaBox is set to access BitTorrent, eDonkey, FastTrack (the network used by Kazaa), Gnutella and Overnet. Users can also listen to Internet radio stations and view online video streams.

LamaBox said it has seen a lot of interest from abroad and recently translated its Web site into English.

Because the device is based on Linux, open-source software governed by the GNU Public License, users are allowed to modify the device as they see fit. LamaBox currently delivers several hand-built models: The cheapest one has 40GB of storage and costs 279 euros (US$328). A 400GB LamaBox with DVD burner is also available and costs 479 euros (US$564).

The LamaBox can hold as much as 1.5 terabytes of information when all three hard drive slots are in use, according to the company. The Linux Advanced Media Application media center uses a modestly powered VIA processor, chosen to minimise heat generation and the subsequent need for noisy fans.
http://www.cnet.com.au/hometheatre/0...0058703,00.htm





98% of people unconcerned about RIAA threats

P2P "Legal Issues" Not Driving Paid Downloads
Ipsos-Reid

What the research revealed about consumer preferences in online music was quite astonishing. The entry of an à la carte downloading service at 99 cents per song into this simulated market environment immediately captured 19% consumer preference—much more than the three existing subscription services combined. It also appeared to lure many downloaders who had previously embraced peer-to-peer into a fee-based option.

This clearly suggested that a low-cost transaction-based music service that offered flexible usage rights, portability, and burning would have a significant impact on the market. Indeed, flexibility and ownership appeared to be critical components in a fee-based online music service offer.

Perhaps most telling about this research was that it was conducted nine months prior to the release of Apple’s iTunes Music Store, which offered precisely these consumer benefits, and subsequently ushered in a new era in fee-based online music acquisition.

Three years later, the proportion of Americans who have paid to download music (12%) is now nearly equal to those who have used a file sharing services (13%), underscoring the importance of offering consumer-friendly engagement methods when assembling digital content offers and services. Interestingly, legal threats have played a less visible role in this growth, with primary functional benefits more likely cited by fee-based downloaders as purchase drivers. Of people who paid a fee to download music from the Internet, “I only wanted to purchase one song from the artist” (47%) and “more convenient to download songs from the Internet” (38%) were the most popular reasons cited, versus “concerned about legal issues with downloading music” (2%).

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http://www.ipsos-ideas.com/article.cfm?id=2877





Illegal File-Sharing Three Times As Popular As iTunes

Free songs more attractive to youngsters than paid-for…
Jo Best

Illegal downloads are still beating legal online music in Europe, analysts have found.

A report from analyst house JupiterResearch discovered that consumers are three times more likely to get their digital music from illegal file-sharing networks than pay to download the tracks from online song shops such as iTunes and Napster, with 15 per cent of consumers using P2P sites and five per cent using the legitimate online shops.

The taste for illegal music is strongest amongst the young. Of those consumers between 15- and 24-years-old, 34 per cent are illegal file-sharers and, according to the report, have little concept of music as a paid commodity.

Mark Mulligan, analyst at JupiterResearch, told silicon.com that despite the growth in legal sales from services like iTunes, as well as legal actions against uploaders, illegal file-sharing is here to stay.

"The momentum is with the legal services, there's nothing to suggest legal file-sharing is going to go away," he said. "It's a firmly entrenched behaviour and the fact it's free makes it more difficult."

However, the problem is not purely a digital one - young people are happy to get their music illegally whatever format it's available on.

JupiterResearch found that 43 per cent of younger consumers prefer copying CDs to buying them and 40 per cent believe that CDs aren't value for money.

According to Mulligan, the music industry needs to rethink how it deals with young file-sharers. "There needs to be a sea-change in approach," he said. "Instead of [the industry] paying lip service to legal services... there needs to be a whole new layer of free legal services," such as ad-supported downloads, he said.
http://management.silicon.com/govern...9154663,00.htm





Sober Worm Stalls MSN, Hotmail
Greg Sandoval

The pesky Sober worm is to blame for disrupting e-mail traffic between Comcast account holders and users of Microsoft-based e-mail, Redmond said on Friday.

A variant of Sober known as Win32/Sober.Z@mm is pummeling servers at Hotmail and MSN with "unusually high mail load," causing delays in e-mail delivery to Hotmail and MSN customers, said Brooke Richardson, MSN's lead product manager. Richardson also indicated that Internet service providers besides Comcast may be having problems directing e-mail to Hotmail and MSN servers.

"We are working with Comcast and other ISPs to address (the) issues," Richardson said. "We're actively working to take the appropriate steps to remedy the situation as rapidly as possible. We sincerely apologize for any inconvenience."

Blog reports say that some Comcast subscribers, when sending e-mail to a Hotmail or MSN account, have received an error message saying their message was not received. However, Microsoft says that all e-mails, while some may be delayed, are eventually getting through.

A Microsoft spokesperson other than Richardson said that the problem began earlier this week but would not give a timetable for when it might be fixed.

The Sober worm first appeared in 2003 and can hijack a Windows-based computer and force it to repeatedly send spam e- mails. The continuous e-mailing can lead to overloaded servers and reduced network performance. Last month, a variant of the Sober worm was spread as an attachment that claimed to be an old class photo sent by a schoolmate.
http://news.com.com/Sober+worm+stall...3-5980987.html





Spitzer Gets on Sony BMG's Case

New York's Attorney General has turned his attention to Sony BMG's copyright-protection fiasco

Sony BMG Music Entertainment is getting a lot of unwanted attention for its use of copyright-protection software that left CD users open to computer viruses. It began with the bloggers, who shed light on the matter, and has spread to the scads of consumers who have used the Internet to urge a boycott of Sony BMG CDs.

A Homeland Security Dept. official has weighed in, accusing Sony BMG of undermining computer security. And Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott has alleged, in a suit filed Nov. 21, that Sony BMG violated his state's antispyware laws. Now, the Sony BMG debacle has drawn the scrutiny of New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer.

BUYER, BEWARE. Spitzer's office dispatched investigators who, disguised as customers, were able to purchase affected CDs in New York music retail outlets -- and to do so more than a week after Sony BMG recalled the disks. The investigators bought CDs at stores including Wal-Mart (WMT ), BestBuy (BBY ), Sam Goody, Circuit City (CC ), FYE, and Virgin Megastore, according to a Nov. 23 statement from Spitzer's office.

Sony BMG says it shipped nearly 5 million CDs containing the software, of which 2.1 million had been sold. The company says 52 individual titles are affected.

Spitzer's office urged consumers not to buy the disks, and if they do buy them, not to play them in computers. The disks should be returned to the place of purchase for a refund, Spitzer advises.

MORE PRESSURE. "It is unacceptable that more than three weeks after this serious vulnerability was revealed, these same CDs are still on shelves, during the busiest shopping days of the year," Spitzer said in a written statement. "I strongly urge all retailers to heed the warnings issued about these products, pull them from distribution immediately, and ship them back to Sony."

Sony BMG spokesman John McKay says the company has "commenced a mail-in exchange program and is committed to getting all copies of the 52 affected titles off store shelves. We appreciate the attorney general's reinforcement of our efforts, and on Wednesday [Nov. 23] we sent a follow-up message to remind them to remove XCP content-protected CDs from their inventory." A spokeswoman for Wal-Mart did not return a call seeking comment. A Best Buy spokesman said the company has instructed its stores to remove the CDs from stock and to provide exchanges to customers.

Attention from the aggressive New York attorney general adds to pressure on Sony BMG to resolve a fiasco that came to the public's attention on Oct. 31, when computer-systems expert Mark Russinovich posted a message on his blog revealing that Sony BMG had placed antipiracy software on music CDs that made customers' PCs vulnerable to hacker attacks (see BW 11/17/05, "Sony's Copyright Overreach").

SEEKING FINES. Sony BMG programmed the disks with a software-code set known as a rootkit that secretly installs itself onto a PC's hard drive when the CD is loaded. And computer-security experts have raised questions over whether Sony BMG, a venture of Sony (SNE ) and Germany's Bertelsmann AG, could have known about the rootkit sooner (see BW Online, 11/29/05, "Sony BMG's Costly Deafness").

Spitzer's consumer warning came days after Texas Attorney General Abbott filed the suit against the company in Travis County, Texas. Abbott is seeking fines against Sony BMG of $100,000 per violation. A spokesman for Spitzer's office in New York City declined to comment on the attorney general's plans beyond the consumer warning, other than to say the office is "looking into" the matter.

In April, Spitzer's office had brought suit against Intermix Media, a Los Angeles-based firm. The suit followed a six-month investigation that culminated in allegations that Intermix had installed advertising software on home computers without having given those consumers ample notice. Intermix agreed to settle the suit and was required to pay $7.5 million. The company also had to accept a ban on the distribution of adware programs in the future.

In July, Spitzer secured a $10 million settlement from Sony's Sony BMG Music Entertainment record label to settle a probe into an alleged "payola" scheme. Spitzer's office said in July that it had uncovered evidence that the label had offered inducements, expensive gifts, and expensive travel packages to get music played on the radio.

SALES DRAG. Meanwhile, the rootkit blunder continues to inspire consumer outrage and affect sales of artists who produced the affected CDs. The ranking of Van Zant's Get Right with the Man CD plummeted on Amazon.com's (AMZN ) bestseller list in the wake of Sony BMG snafu (see BW 11/22/05, "Sony's Escalating 'Spyware' Fiasco".

And when Sony BMG started pulling CDs, it didn't have enough replacements lined up, says Ross Schilling, of Van Zant's Nashville-based manager, Vector Management.

Sony BMG had promised the CD would be swapped out with non-rootkit CDs. Instead, the rootkit CDs simply were pulled, Schilling says. "It's obviously very bothersome," he says.

"HARMING THE ARTIST." That means Van Zant's CD and others were not on the shelves for the busiest shopping weekend of the year. Sony BMG has told Van Zant to expect a 50% to 80% decrease in sales when the new numbers come out on Nov. 30. That's in a week that should have seen a 50% to 80% increase in sales. The week of Nov. 9 to 16, Van Zant's sales actually jumped a point, a spurt Schilling attributes to exposure from the Country Music Awards.

Now that retailers are pulling the CD, there's potential for a 50,000- to 60,000-unit loss, Schilling says. "I believe they [Sony] went in with good intentions, but it turned into an unprecedented situation," Schilling says. "It certainly is harming the artist.... There's going to have to be some commitment made on Sony's side to their artists." To say nothing of the assurances Sony BMG may need to make to consumers and a couple of states' attorneys general.
http://businessweek.com/technology/c...128_573560.htm






EFF says “not so fast.”

Sony BMG Urges Consumers To Download Security Fix For CDs
AP

Sony BMG Music Entertainment said Tuesday some 5.7 million of its CDs were shipped with anti-piracy technology that requires a new software patch to plug a potential security breach in computers used to play the CDs.

The security vulnerability was discovered by online civil liberty group Electronic Frontier Foundation and brought to the attention of Sony BMG, which has been under fire in recent weeks over security issues with an unrelated CD copy-protection plan.

The company said Tuesday it brought the issue up with the MediaMax software maker, SunnComm Technologies Inc., which has developed a software patch to fix the problem.

``It's a security vulnerability and therefore needs to be dealt with,'' said Thomas Hesse, president of Global Digital Business for Sony BMG.

The MediaMax Version 5 software was loaded on 27 Sony BMG titles, including Alicia Keys' ``Unplugged,'' and Cassidy's ``I'm A Hustla.''

CD copy-protection software is generally designed to restrict how many times computer users can make duplicate versions of a CD in an effort to stem piracy.

A computer security firm working with EFF discovered the security issue with the MediaMax Version 5 CDs and how it affects computers running Microsoft Corp.'s Windows operating system.

Windows allows for different levels of access to a computer. The copy-protection software installs a file folder in the computer that could allow a guest user to gain unauthorized access to the computer.

``It's a privileged escalation attack,'' said Kurt Opsahl, an EFF staff attorney. ``On Windows you can have users with different privileges, and because of security weakness in the permissions of a folder, it allows a low-ranked user to act as a high-ranked user.''

The problem is commonly found on many computer programs, said Robert Horton, director of NGS Software, which tested SunnComm's software fix for the record company.

The MediaMax problem differs from the security hole discovered last month with the so-called XCP technology by First 4 Internet Ltd. of Oxfordshire, United Kingdom, that Sony BMG placed on more than 50 other CD titles. That copy-protection effort was found to leave computers vulnerable to hackers.

``The main distinction is, with XCP, it was hiding itself so you wouldn't know that it was there,'' Opsahl said.

This one is not hidden, he said, but the average user wouldn't know to look for it unless it was brought to their attention.

Sony BMG recalled the discs with XCP last month and released a way to remove the software from users' computers.

Opsahl said the MediaMax patch addresses the problem, but the EFF, which has a lawsuit pending in California against Sony BMG over its use of copy-protection technology, is continuing to investigate.

``We can't say that the software is now secure,'' Opsahl said. ``We're going to continue to raise these issues with Sony.''

Hesse said the company plans to alert consumers to the patch on artist Web sites and via e-mail, among other measures.

``We have learned that we are in the software business to some extent and we should behave like someone in the software business does ... to make sure the users of our product are safe at all times,'' he said.

Sony BMG is a joint venture of Sony Corp. and Bertelsmann AG.
http://www.siliconvalley.com/mld/sil...y/13347561.htm





Down, but not forgotten

Kazaa Says No to Australians
Thomas Mennecke

Just before the stroke midnight in Sydney, Australia, the Kazaa homepage was altered as expected. Yet there are no pop-ups and no changes to the key word filter. Instead, large red letters appear towards the top of the homepage, warning Australians against the use of Kazaa.

Attention Users in Australia: To comply with order of the Federal Court of Australia, pending an appeal in February 2006, use of the Kazaa Media Desktop is not permitted by persons in Australia. If you are in Australia, you must not download or use the Kazaa Media Desktop.

Other than the above warning, it does not appear that Sharman Networks has made any changes to the Kazaa client. But to Australian users, a much different story exists. When an individual with an ".au" IP address attempts to reach Kazaa.com, an inhibitive website appears. The website warns users "Important Notice: The download of the Kazaa Media Desktop by users in Australia is not permitted."

The rest of the world can see the recognizable Kazaa.com with only the first "Attention" message. All download links and other pages on the site funtion normally. For Australians, the second warning message is all that appears. No site navigation and no download links are available.

Update: Although the Kazaa homepage is unavailable to Australian users, the FastTrack network is still accessible. There were some conflicting reports this morning as to whether Australians were also cut off from connecting to FastTrack, however at this time it does not appear to be the case.

It was expected that Sharman Networks would release a new Kazaa client with 3,000 additional key words added to their existing filter. This does not appear to be the case, at least for now. The banner that Sharman Networks opted for is a far cry from the technical resolution that was anticipated. In all fairness, it's possible the banner may be the start of an extended effort by Sharman Networks.

However judging by the lack of updates in over three years to the Kazaa client, many are questioning whether Sharman Networks even has the technical resources to successfully upgrade their software. The extensive blanket action by Sharman only furthers this speculation.
http://www.slyck.com/news.php?story=1015





KOREA: New Internet Copyright Bill Under Fire

Bill purposes Internet companies to supervise file transactions and enforce transfer termination of copyrighted materials
Cho Jin-seo

A copyright bill to strictly control Internet file transfer is facing fierce protests from Internet users and online service providers.

Proposed by Uri party lawmaker Woo Sang-ho, the bill forces Internet companies to supervise file transactions between their users, and to delete or stop them when the contents are copyrighted materials such as music or video files. The bill also says that the companies would be punished for up to 50 million won in penalty, if they don’t follow the government’s instruction.

After the reports on the bill came out, the homepage of ruling Uri party lawmaker Woo Sang-ho was shut down on Wednesday as Internet users swarmed to the bulletin board to post complaints and even curses. Major portal sites such as Naver were covered with thousands of protests from users, too.

The Korea Internet Corporations Association also said Wednesday that it is opposing Woo’s bill, because it will severely damage both the Internet industry and online contents market of South Korea.

"It is a naïve idea that would kill the emerging Internet industry," said the association in a statement. "even if there can be a short-term effects in protecting digital rights. But in the long term it will not benefit the contents’ owners, let alone the Internet users and service providers."

Despite unfavorable reactions from the public, Woo’s staff said that they are pushing for the bill and expect the National Assembly to approve it within this month. They also said that there was some misinterpretation of the reports bringing negative reaction from the public.

"Instant messaging services such as MSN Messenger, Web mail and portal services will not be subject to the new law. Only peer-to-peer service and Web hard service will be forced to take actions on the illegal file transactions," said Woo’s aide Park Seung-nak.
http://www.asiamedia.ucla.edu/articl...parentid=35128





Music Man Cracks DRM Schemes
Quinn Norton

The ongoing saga of Sony BMG's sneaky, lawsuit-inducing copy-protection software opened a new chapter Monday when the music company released an uninstaller program to allow customers to remove the offending code from their PCs.

The release was Sony's second attempt at erasing its errors -- its previous push of mea-culpaware last month backfired horribly when 24- year-old Princeton University researcher John "Alex" Halderman found that the uninstaller opened up a security hole even worse than the original digital rights management program. And while the discovery shocked outsiders, and embarrassed Sony, it was a little like déjà vu to Halderman, one of a handful of smart researchers who seem determined to hold the recording industry's feet to the fire.

"The same companies keep producing new copy-protection technology, and I keep getting interested in it," says Halderman.

Years before Sony's rootkit scandal made DRM folly a subject of international news, Halderman was already keeping a close eye on the music industry's technological measures. When, in 2003, DRM-maker SunnComm International introduced a new approach to copy protecting audio CDs in its MediaMax software, Halderman checked it out.

His research revealed that the new discs installed software that interfered with the user's ability to copy the audio CD at a kernel level. "It was radically different than anything before; it turned the computer against the user," says Halderman.

The software used a Microsoft Windows feature called AutoRun that executes software on a CD without the user's knowledge or consent. Holding down the Shift key stopped AutoRun and prevented the software from being installed. Halderman wrote about the software, and the "infamous Shift key attack," in an academic paper and posted it online. Within 24 hours, SunnComm was threatening a $10 million lawsuit, and vowing to refer Halderman to authorities for allegedly committing a felony under the controversial Digital Millennium Copyright Act, or DMCA.

By the next day, the company had backed down in the face of public outrage. Looking back, Halderman says, "The whole experience was a whirlwind.... The response was way bigger than (anything I'd) expected."

So Halderman was well prepared when SysInternals security expert Mark Russinovich discovered last October that Sony BMG was using software that works much like SunnComm's MediaMax with an added cloaking technology that could be exploited by more-malicious code.

Halderman and his adviser, Princeton professor Ed Felten, picked up the thread, and began a series of revelatory analyses into the functionality and provenance of the stealthy code, which was called XCP and had been produced by U.K. company First 4 Internet.

His curiosity rewetted by the affair, Halderman even took a second look at the competing SunnComm system -- still in use -- and found new problems, including the fact that MediaMax secretly installs itself even if the user refuses to click on the license agreement giving it permission to do so.

And when Sony released an uninstaller for the First 4 Internet code, it was Halderman who discovered that it came with an ActiveX control that would make users vulnerable to attack through their web browsers.

Sony recalled the uninstaller and went back to the drawing board.

Halderman's interest in copy-protected CDs began when he was an undergrad, and has continued through grad school under the auspices of Felten. "He likes to do work that is relevant, where he can apply his computer-science knowledge to things that matter to regular people," says Felten.

Felten is no stranger to exposing the foibles of DRM schemes. In 2001, the recording industry briefly suppressed Felten's research into a flawed digital-watermarking technology by threatening to invoke the DMCA.

Unlike the situation in 2003, Halderman doesn't see much possibility of a suit against him for his Sony research, but the risk is never far from his mind. He says his chosen field forces him to learn about more than just security and DRM. "It's difficult to be only a scientist in this field, you have to know about law, public policy and the business world."

Halderman doesn't normally encounter CDs with DRM -- he must actively seek them out for his research. "I mostly listen to opera," he says. "There are very few classical-music discs that are copy protected."

The researcher says he plans to dig into Sony's new uninstaller, but he hopes to find nothing negative to report. On future DRM schemes, however, he's not so optimistic. "Manufacturers adopt new tricks with each revision," he says. "If there are new copy-protection programs for CDs, I'll continue to look at them."
http://www.wired.com/news/technology...,69763,00.html





Review: Apple Tiptoes Into Media Center Domain

Apple hopes its latest iMac G5 will make the computer not only a desktop tool, but the focal point of a household's entertainment center.
AP

When asked a few years ago if they might someday offer a Mac that works like a Microsoft entertainment PC, Apple executives joked that they were instead focusing on the convergence of computers and toasters.

The basic concept of a PC powering a living room multimedia hub -- as pushed by Microsoft Corp., at least -- was flawed, they said.

People simply don't interact with a TV the same way they do with a computer, said Apple CEO Steve Jobs.

Fast forward to 2005, and Apple Computer Inc. still hasn't released a better toaster. But it has updated its all-in-one iMac G5 computer with a remote control and a program that shares many of the features of Microsoft's Media Center operating system.

The program, called Front Row, lets you listen to music, watch videos, play DVDs and display photos from a distance with a few clicks of a lighter-sized, six-button remote control.

Its graphically pleasing interface takes over the screen and can be easily viewed from afar.

Apple's way of dealing with the TV problem was to simply ignore it. Front Row doesn't display live TV, though it can be connected to a TV to mirror what's on the computer.

Those missing features certainly make it less functional than a Windows Media Center PC. But, at the same time, the new iMac bundle excels at what it can do.

Sometimes, less is more.

There's still plenty here that, as it evolves in future releases, could end up send the designers of Microsoft's Media Center back to the drawing boards.

Once Front Row is launched by pressing the "Menu" button on the remote, four options are available: Play a DVD, listen to music, watch a video or view photos. They appear on an invisible, virtual lazy susan that's completely controllable by the remote.

The entire program is actually just a shell that makes it easier to control the Mac's underlying programs from a distance with the remote. Each option opens up an underlying library from iTunes (music and video downloads), iPhoto (pictures) or iMovie (home movies).

Throughout, the display is both simpler and pleasing to the eye than the Media Center shell.

Deeper inside, the various menus resemble what you'd find on an iPod's display, and that makes navigating with the remote a lot easier.

Though there is of course no option to view live TV, there are plenty of choices for video. You can watch video podcasts downloaded from iTunes as well as access a number of movie trailers. Home-brewed movies can, of course, be viewed as well.

If you've purchased any episodes of "Desperate Housewives" or "Lost" from the iTunes Music Store, you can watch them on the iMac by choosing "TV Shows."

That's also true of any purchased music videos. (It supports most standard video formats.)

The one thing that you can't do is actually make a purchase through Front Row. That requires running plain old iTunes, which is controlled by sitting close to the computer, moving the mouse and typing on the keyboard.

Unlike a Windows Media Center PC, however, Front Row doesn't dump you in a position where you have to leave the couch and pick up the keyboard. The machine also doesn't have the nasty habit of turning itself back on after it's been put into standby mode.

But even if you don't ever use Front Row or touch the remote, the iMac G5 is an excellent computer. Like previous generations, it's an all-in-one with all the guts of the computer elegantly contained in a white display that's mounted on a silver base.

IMacs now include a video camera built into the top of the screen as well as Apple's recently introduced two-button Mighty Mouse. Both also ship with 512 megabytes of memory, combination recordable CD/DVD drives as well as built-in support for Wi-Fi and Bluetooth wireless.

Despite the added hardware, the new iMac is actually slightly lighter and thinner than its predecessors. And the low-end model, which has a 17-inch screen, 1.9 gigahertz PowerPC G5 microprocessor and 160 gigabyte hard drive, is priced at $1,299 -- the same as the last model with the same screen size.

The higher-end flavor has a 20-inch screen, a 2.1 GHz processor, 250 gigabyte hard drive and a $1,699 price tag that's actually $100 less than the previous 20-inch iMac.

Of course, the all-in-one design seriously limits the expandability -- and it means you'll be stuck with its built-in display if you choose to hook it up to an external TV.
http://www.cnn.com/2005/TECH/ptech/1....ap/index.html





Upload, Store, Play and Share in a Few Clicks
David Pogue

IN Hollywood, young screenwriters have "elevator pitches" always at the ready - pithy descriptions of their screenplays, intended to capture the imagination of passing movie executives. You know: "It's 'Titanic' on a spaceship." "It's a female 'Harry Potter.' " "It's 'Raising Arizona' meets 'Leaving Las Vegas.' "

Most of the time, high-tech companies can describe their products with equal efficiency, but not always. Take, for example, Glide Effortless, a new Web service that went live yesterday. "What is Glide Effortless?" its news release asks. "It is a compatible browser-based online solution with integrated software and service environments, providing powerful file management, creation, communication, sharing and e-commerce capabilities."

Which leaves only one question: "What is Glide Effortless?"

Here's another stab: it's a personal Web site (www.glidedigital.com) to which you can upload your favorite photos, MP3 files, video clips and even Word, PowerPoint or PDF documents. (A separate companion program speeds the uploading process by letting you drag and drop big batches of files at once.) Once everything's posted on the Web site, you can do two things with it: manage it or share it.

TransMedia, the company behind Glide, has some legitimate gripes about the way you have to perform these tasks on a Mac or PC. For example, you have to learn and use a different program to work with each file format: one to play music files, another to display photos, a third to play videos, and so on. Sending your masterpieces to other people is a drag, too. If you attach your photos or videos to e-mail, you usually wind up overflowing the recipient's in-box and causing headaches for everyone. Posting your files on a Web site or a blog (Web log) is a better solution, but that requires more geeky knowledge than average people care to acquire.

Glide avoids all of these problems. It treats each file type - photos, songs, videos, documents - nearly identically, representing each file as a thumbnail icon in your personal stash. You use a menu to switch from one "environment" (say, photos) to another (like music). At the bottom of each environment is an area where you can create "containers" - that is, playlists (for music and video clips), albums (for photos), address book groups (for e-mail), and so on. You fill up these containers by simply dragging the appropriate thumbnails from the top part of the screen. You can even drag music files into photo or video containers, thereby creating musical soundtracks.

When you want other people to see your stuff, you can send invitations by e-mail. (Glide can import your address book from Outlook or Entourage.) When your recipients click the link in your message, they arrive at a Glide Web page, where they can view or play the files.

THIS system means that you never actually send any files, so you don't clog anyone's in-box. More important, you now have total control over the material. From the moment you upload a file to Glide, it's converted into an online preview. Your visitors can listen to one of your songs or watch one of your videos, but they can't download it, keep it, or even replay it without returning to the Web site.

As a result, you can limit how many times somebody plays or watches something, or specify a window of opportunity (say, Dec. 5 to 20) for people's access. You can even play Big Brother by tracking how many times each person has viewed or played a certain goody.

With just a few clicks, you can also publish one of your containers as either a Web page, complete with embedded pictures and videos, or a blog entry. It's almost automatic, although you have no control whatsoever over the layout of the result.

All of this is fun to use, thanks to a full-blown online operating system that Glide designed itself. After all, thought TransMedia, why make the site look like Windows or Mac OS X, when a custom design could be simpler and better tailored to Glide's functions?

In the Glide OS, each object on the screen - thumbnails, containers and so on - bears a tiny "badge" that resembles a pie chart. When you point to it, a round menu sprouts at your cursor tip. It lists commands pertaining to that object (Delete, Edit or Publish, for example), arrayed like colorful slices of a pizza.

Here's where you first get an inkling that for all of Glide's genius, it's also tainted by some profound problems.

For example, you quickly realize that a circle is not a very good shape for a menu. Because each command's name must be squeezed into a triangular wedge, the number of commands and the lengths of their names are severely restricted. As it is, some of Glide's command names (like "Download") barely fit on their slices.

Then there are those rows of thumbnail images. They make it easy to see what you're dealing with; video thumbnails play a snippet of moving images, and music files bear album-cover art. But once your collection grows beyond one screenful, those horizontal rows of icons present an infuriating challenge. You can't resize them to fit more on a page, and you can't view them as a scrolling list; you can only page through them as you would with results of a Google search. They take their sweet time to appear, too.

Worse, although thumbnails excel at conveying visual information, they fail miserably at conveying text information - like their names. Only a few characters of each file's name fit beneath each Glide thumbnail; on song names, all you get is "12 Rolling Th.." and "10 It's Too L.." The only way to see the full names of your songs is to double-click their icons one at a time, opening successive Info panels.

In spots - notably the e-mail and chat environments - the Glide online operating system gets in its own way, requiring ridiculous multistep procedures for what, in Windows or Mac OS X, would be the work of a few keystrokes. For example, addressing an outgoing e-mail message and attaching a file requires switching back and forth between multiple screens.

Figuring out how to do some simple tasks, like backing out of a photo container to your full collection, are challenges for puzzle lovers only. In rejecting the traditional operating-system elements, TransMedia has thrown out significant bits of baby along with the bathwater.

You can sign up for any of three different Glide Effortless plans. There's a free service with a 100-megabyte storage limit for your files; a $5-a-month plan with 1.5 gigabytes of storage; and a $10 monthly plan with three gigabytes of storage, along with video and audio conferencing. (Discounts are available if you pay for a year up front.) Right now, Glide is for Windows only; according to the company, Mac fans can sign up starting on Dec. 25.

The Glide of today is already a vast collection of tools, integrated into a software ecosystem that's half genius and half nuts. But it's nothing compared with what the company says is on the way: a full-blown Internet music store; an online store that lets you order products by dragging their icons into a shopping-cart "container"; a Unix version; a timeline calendar module; a built-in photo-editing suite; playback of music file formats beyond MP3; and even a corporate version "for the sale, promotion and distribution of media to consumers" that will offer a project-scheduling screen, among other perks.

Furthermore, TransMedia says that soon you'll be able to share one of your songs with friends - and if they like it, they can buy a copy-protected version of their own. The company will profit from the sale, of course, but so will you; you'll get a discount on your next music purchase.

Then there's the cellphone version of Glide, the set-top TV boxes and the customized versions the company hopes to sell to cable, phone and entertainment conglomerates.

All this from a company of only 24 people?

It's a little hard to believe. And sure enough, there are some telltale signs that the company may have bitten off more than it could chew. The company acknowledges, for example, that when the Glide music store opens, it won't offer music from the Big Four record companies - only the smaller independents. There's still no user manual or online help screens. And only 48 hours before the grand opening, big chunks of the service were still being snapped into place.

Still, Glide's core idea is unassailably fresh and useful: a centralized, Web-based scrapbook of so many kinds of files, with the ability to share it without actually giving up control of the files. If TransMedia's plans for world domination fall into place, maybe it won't need an elevator pitch. Maybe "you gotta try this" will be the only pitch it needs.
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/01/te.../01pogue1.html





City Is Leader In DVD Piracy
Phyllis Furman

'Revenge of the Sith,' episode three in the Star Wars movies, is a big hit in pirated DVD sales.

Remember the sleazy "Seinfeld" video camera guy who illegally tapes flicks in movie theaters? He's alive and well and thriving in New York.

The city may be known as show biz central, but now it's earned a much less appealing distinction: DVD piracy capital of the world.

Some 50% of those bootlegged discs sold by peddlers on street corners in cities across the globe originate right here, according to figures to be released tomorrow by the Motion Picture Association of America.

Piracy has long been Enemy No. 1 of the movie biz and despite efforts to stop the bootleggers, they're sapping more and more film dollars.

The industry estimates annual losses from piracy of $300 million in the U.S. and $3.5 billion worldwide. Last year, the number of illegal discs seized by the cops nearly doubled to 1.8 million and that number will likely be surpassed this year.

A movie fan can pick up a pirated DVD in Chinatown or in midtown for $8 - a fraction of the $23 cost of a new release at Blockbuster.

"All you have to do is walk down Canal Street to see that New York is the piracy capital of the world," State Assemblyman Joseph Lentol (D-Brooklyn) told the Daily News.

Lentol has sponsored a bill that would make New York's piracy laws much tougher. Tomorrow, he and other state legislators will listen to reps from the movie industry who are coming to town to highlight the bootlegging problem.

For now, New York has some of the most lenient DVD pirating laws in the country. Walking into a dark theater with a camcorder is considered a misdemeanor, no worse than a getting a parking ticket. Lentol's pushing to make illegal camcording a felony, punishable with up to four years of jail time.

New York City has much to lose if movie fans keep buying bogus DVDs. New York's show biz trade generated an estimated $5.4 billion in wages in 2003 from production, post-production, distribution and other entertainment businesses, the MPAA said.

After receiving recent tax breaks, film production is up in New York.

Those who oppose making the laws tougher say they don't want to be prosecuting kids who bring cameras and camcorders into theaters.

But piracy has become big business here in the city where there are labs and distribution centers set up to keep churning out the goods in places like the North Bronx.

As technology has improved, so has the quality of bootlegged flicks. Tens of thousands of illegal copies of films often hit the streets on the same day that they are released on the big screen. A recent anti-piracy raid found bootlegged versions of "Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith" and "Fantastic Four."

Bootleggers slip easily into theaters with four-inch camcorders. They clamp their cameras on to the seat in front of them and plug into the hearing impaired system to improve the sound. A coat is often draped over their cameras.

But the pirated DVDs are still not perfect and the movie industry is cautioning fans to stay away. "You may hear a cough or see some blank tape. It's not such a bargain," said Bill Shannon, deputy director of U.S. anti-piracy operations for the MPAA. "It's a theft."

Recognizing pirated movie

What to watch for, according to the Motion Picture Association of America:

· Movie is still in theaters.
· Packaging is a plastic envelope rather than shrink-wrapped.
· Cover art has sharp-edged corners rather than rounded.
· Cover has "Coming Soon" at bottom (this indicates a photograph of a theater poster).
· Disk itself has no art on label.
· Burned rather than replicated (back of disk is purple or blue, rather than gold or silver).

http://www.nydailynews.com/front/sto...p-316448c.html





French Government Lobbied to Ban Free Software

Friday November 18th, 2005, French Department of Culture. SNEP and SCPP have told Free Software authors: "You will be required to change your licenses." SACEM add: "You shall stop publishing free software," and warn they are ready "to sue free software authors who will keep on publishing source code" should the "VU/SACEM/BSA/FA Contents Department"[1] bill proposal pass in the Parliament.

It appears that publishing Free Software giving access to culture is about to become a counterfeiting criminal offence. Will SACEM sue France Télécom R&D research labs for having published Maay and Solipsis (P2P pieces of software used to exchange data)[2]?

Up to this point, the rather technical debate surrounding the issues addressed by DADVSI bill (copyright and neighbouring rights in the information society) makes one ask: Just how much control do the Big Players in the field of culture want to seize? It now looks like years of quibbling have put an end to compromises.

What should have been the last meeting of CSPLA[2] Sirinelli Commission turned into an arranged battle dealing with the "VU/SACEM/BSA/FA Contents Department" bill. EUCD.INFO[4] cofounder Christophe Espern, representing Creative Commons France, had to argue for 13 hours to defend the right of Free Software to exist, but he lost the argument. The preliminary conclusions seem to regret that the bill "cannot be proposed by CSPLA in before the deadline." Maybe the new meeting scheduled today, November 25th, 2005, at 6:30pm, in the offices of the French Department of Culture, aims to impose the text ?[*]

"Havoc is breaking loose," says Christophe Espern. "How can people possibly both pretend to defend culture and then want to ban the only software giving universal access to it? Actually, the contradiction may be only superficial: I think what they are truly after is the control of the public... culture is just a excuse."

Absurd as it may seem, the DADVSI bill will bring an indifferent public a surprise gift [5] for Christmas nothing less than complete Orwellian control of digital culture.

We could avoid this disaster if the cabinet of Prime Minister started by declaring the DADVSI bill a non emergency issue. This would give the democratic debate a chance.
[*] The Sirinelli Commission adopted the bill proposal. This one will be examined during the next plenary session of the CSPLA (December the 7th).
http://www.fsffrance.org/news/article2005-11-25.en.html





China Wants Mobile Phone Users to Register

China will soon require all mobile phone users to register with telecom providers or face a cutoff in service, state media reported Friday.

The new rule, announced by the Ministry of Information Industry, is part of a crackdown on telephone fraud and illegal text- messaging practices, and the country's thriving trade in counterfeit and otherwise illegally obtained mobile phones.

It is also expected to help authorities control "improper political commentary," the news report said.

Many Chinese mobile phone users already are registered with major telecommunications companies such as China Mobile and China Unicom.

But a large share use prepaid phone cards and buy the subscriber identity module, or SIM, device that activates the phone without any form of registration. Up to 200 million of China's 377 million mobile phone subscribers use prepaid cards, the report said.

Implementation of the new requirement is expected to begin by the end of the year, with customers having to comply within six months or lose their phone services, the state-run newspaper China Daily reported.

Subscribers must present their identity cards in order to register, it said.

"It's unfair if we require only new mobile phone users to register and ignore existing customers," the report quoted Chen Yuping, a senior official at the ministry's China Academy of Telecommunication Research, as saying. "More important, the registration mechanism loses its effectiveness."
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20051202/..._mobile_phones





Artists Ask For Increased Payout From Downloads
Jill Treanor

Composers and songwriters are arguing in the UK copyright tribunal that they should receive 7p to 9p from every track downloaded from the internet, instead of the current 5p. The demand, issued by the Music Alliance, which works on behalf of composers, is being made to counter steps by the record companies' association, the British Phonographic Industry, to cut their earnings to 2p per download. They want the record companies to disclose the amount of money made from downloads, arguing that their pay rise could be recovered from record company profits rather than customers.
http://technology.guardian.co.uk/new...656878,00.html





Senate Summons Pentagon to Explain Effort to Plant News Stories in Iraqi Media
Eric Schmitt and David S. Cloud

The chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee summoned top Pentagon officials to a closed-door session on Capitol Hill on Friday to explain a reported secret military campaign in Iraq to plant paid propaganda in the Iraqi news media. The White House also expressed deep concerns about the program.

Senior Pentagon officials said on Thursday that they had not yet received any explanation of the program from top generals in Iraq, including Gen. John P. Abizaid, Gen. George W. Casey Jr. and Lt. Gen. John R. Vines, the three most senior commanders for Iraqi operations.

After reports about the program circulated this week, General Casey initially protested that it should not be discussed publicly because it was classified.

One senior Pentagon official said, however, that General Casey was told that response was inadequate. The official asked for anonymity to avoid possible reprisals for disclosing the general's reaction.

At a briefing with reporters, the White House spokesman, Scott McClellan, responded to a barrage of questions about the program, which military contractors and officials said also pays friendly Iraqi journalists with monthly stipends.

"We're very concerned about the reports," the White House spokesman said. "We have asked the Department of Defense for more information."

Under the program, the Lincoln Group, a Washington-based public relations firm working in Iraq, was hired to translate articles written by American troops into Arabic and then, in many cases, give them to advertising agencies for placement in the Iraqi news media.

At a time when the State Department is paying contractors millions of dollars to promote professional and independent media, the military campaign appeared to defy the basic tenets of Western journalism.

Senator John W. Warner, a Virginia Republican who heads the Armed Services Committee, said he had directed Pentagon aides to describe and justify the program on Friday in a closed briefing for senators and staff aides.

"I am concerned about any actions that may undermine the credibility of the United States as we help the Iraqi people stand up as a democracy," Mr. Warner said in a statement.

"A free and independent press is critical to the functioning of a democracy, and I am concerned about any actions which may erode the independence of the Iraqi media," the committee chairman's statement said.

Asked about the issue on Thursday, the top military spokesman in Baghdad appeared to defend the practice without referring specifically to the Lincoln Group's activities.

The spokesman, Maj. Gen. Rick Lynch, said that Iraq's most-wanted militant, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the Jordanian-born head of Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, was also using the news media to advance his terrorist goals.

But General Lynch said the similarities ended there because the American military was disseminating truthful information.

"He is conducting these kidnappings, these beheadings, these explosions, so that he gets international coverage to look like he has more capability than he truly has," General Lynch said. "He is lying to the Iraqi people."

General Lynch continued: "We don't lie. We don't need to lie. We do empower our operational commanders with the ability to inform the Iraqi public, but everything we do is based on fact, not based on fiction."

Another military spokesman in Baghdad, Lt. Col. Barry Johnson, later confirmed in an e-mail message that the Lincoln Group's effort was aimed at promoting the allied efforts in Iraq. "We acknowledge that a program exists to get factual information into the Iraqi media," Colonel Johnson said. "Leadership is reviewing this program and how it is being executed, but there has been no decision yet on how to proceed."

One Pentagon official said it was possible that the program began as an effort to buy space in Iraqi publications for articles identified as coming from the United States government and then evolved into something where the government and contractor roles were hidden.

"If the whole intent of this is really an effort to provide false information to the people of Iraq, then that's more of a problem," said the official, who added that officials could decide to refer to the matter to Defense Department inspector general.

The Lincoln Group, which includes some businessmen and former military officials, was hired last year after military officials concluded that the United States was failing to win over Muslim public opinion.

In Iraq, the effort is seen by some senior commanders as an essential complement to combat operations in the field.

Lincoln's media work for the Pentagon in Iraq included a multimillion dollar campaign to influence Sunni Arab voters in Anbar Province before the national referendum on the new Iraqi Constitution in October, according to military contractors and officials.

The campaign, the officials said, included television and radio spots that did not disclose their American sponsorship and the disbursement of more than $1 million in cash.

"It wouldn't be obvious it came from Americans," said one official, referring to the media messages.

Laurie Adler, a spokeswoman for Lincoln, confirmed the company worked for the military in western Iraq but refused to provide any details.

The company's most senior executive in Iraq is Paige Craig. His résumé, contained in Pentagon documents spelling out some of Lincoln's work, highlights his role in "designing and leading the development of numerous government and corporate intelligence projects."

It goes on to say "Paige Craig graduated first in class from the Navy and Marine Corps Intelligence Training Center in 1996."

The descriptions of the Lincoln Group's activities, first reported by The Los Angeles Times on Wednesday, have spurred debate in Washington about how the United States should promote free and independent news media in the Middle East and other parts of the world.

"The State Department is working with journalists in Iraq to help them develop the skills that you all have in terms of reporting and journalistic ethics and practices," the State Department spokesman, Sean McCormack, told reporters on Thursday.

"That's important," the department spokesman said. "This is a country where free media didn't exist for decades, so they are learning. We think it's important to assist them in that."

But if the nascent Iraqi news media are perceived by ordinary Iraqis to be a tool of American interests, that effort will be ruined, some lawmakers said.

"How are people going to get information that's reliable?" said Senator Richard G. Lugar, an Indiana Republican who heads the Foreign Relations Committee. "Who can they trust? If you are a devout Shiite or Sunni, and you suspect that the press has been bought, why, then you wouldn't respect the press."

Jeff Gerth contributed reporting for this article.
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/02/po...ropaganda.html





Ten hut! Deadly P2P!

Computer Misuse Anything But Harmless Fun
Ed Beemer

The next song you download may put your unit, your clearance, your job, or even your life at risk.

Whether you are doing it from a newsgroup, illegal site or a legitimate music provider, it potentially unlocks the door for intruders. The same is true for other related activity. Unauthorized use of a government computer, or the installation of unapproved or illegal software, invites system compromises.

Downloading music or videos, chatting, playing online games, or engaging in similar activities on a government computer is not only illegal use of government resources, but more importantly, it puts information and people at risk.

What might seem like an innocent way to kill free time could allow spyware, aggressive, malicious software or intruders directly into the system. This activity often requires downloading unauthorized software onto an Army computer, a clear violation of AR25-2. Installation of unauthorized Peer to Peer, or P2P, applications is strictly forbidden and network monitoring is being conducted to identify illegal activities associated with users performing such activity.

This problem is widespread, even in the civilian world. Five major Internet companies have formed a coalition to put a stop to sites and advertisers that knowingly download spyware, adware, trackware and other malicious software.

Federal and state laws are being enacted to address such activity as well. While annoying marketing companies generate most of this software development, some applications are capable of recording every keystroke and sending that information to unknown and often untraceable, entities.

Industry sources estimate that approximately 91 percent of civilian computer users have made some modification to their systems to avoid this type of software. They do it to avoid ads; military personnel need to do it to protect information and our forces.

Misuse of government equipment is a punishable offense. But that is not the only crime. More importantly, the use of such subversive technologies exposes your computer, your network, your unit and yourself to cyber attacks, intrusions, and data exfiltration that could end up costing lives.

If after you have downloaded the latest tune or selected your team for fantasy football, the way you log onto your computer, the next briefing you prepare, your sensitive personal information, or your unit’s capabilities could be sent directly to a terrorist, hacker or insurgent group. This information is sent without any indications or warnings, and once sent can never be recovered.

In addition, 9.9 million individuals were affected by identity theft last year. That official document saved on your system may contain personal information such as your social security number that can be unknowingly shared as a result of the illegal software installation.

Personal information is usually sold or traded in underground communities, and accounts or credit cards are rapidly established under your identity. Outcome: it will cost you thousands of dollars and potentially years to correct. And if any download activity violates federal copyright laws it carries a secondary penalty.

The Army is taking this very seriously because of the potential harm to our forces. Every soldier must realize it is their duty to protect their fellow Soldiers and not engage in unauthorized online activities.

If you’re involved in such activity, it’s time to stop and think of the consequences.

Is an online game or a few new songs worth the risk? (Or playing a Sony CD? – Jack.)
http://www.emilitary.org/article.php?aid=5255





Snared in the Web of a Wikipedia Liar
Katharine Q. Seelye

ACCORDING to Wikipedia, the online encyclopedia, John Seigenthaler Sr. is 78 years old and the former editor of The Tennessean in Nashville. But is that information, or anything else in Mr. Seigenthaler's biography, true?

The question arises because Mr. Seigenthaler recently read about himself on Wikipedia and was shocked to learn that he "was thought to have been directly involved in the Kennedy assassinations of both John and his brother Bobby."

"Nothing was ever proven," the biography added.

Mr. Seigenthaler discovered that the false information had been on the site for several months and that an unknown number of people had read it, and possibly posted it on or linked it to other sites.

If any assassination was going on, Mr. Seigenthaler (who is 78 and did edit The Tennessean) wrote last week in an op-ed article in USA Today, it was of his character.

The case triggered extensive debate on the Internet over the value and reliability of Wikipedia, and more broadly, over the nature of online information.

Wikipedia is a kind of collective brain, a repository of knowledge, maintained on servers in various countries and built by anyone in the world with a computer and an Internet connection who wants to share knowledge about a subject. Literally hundreds of thousands of people have written Wikipedia entries.

Mistakes are expected to be caught and corrected by later contributors and users.

The whole nonprofit enterprise began in January 2001, the brainchild of Jimmy Wales, 39, a former futures and options trader who lives in St. Petersburg, Fla. He said he had hoped to advance the promise of the Internet as a place for sharing information.

It has, by most measures, been a spectacular success. Wikipedia is now the biggest encyclopedia in the history of the world. As of Friday, it was receiving 2.5 billion page views a month, and offering at least 1,000 articles in 82 languages. The number of articles, already close to two million, is growing by 7 percent a month. And Mr. Wales said that traffic doubles every four months.

Still, the question of Wikipedia, as of so much of what you find online, is: Can you trust it?

And beyond reliability, there is the question of accountability. Mr. Seigenthaler, after discovering that he had been defamed, found that his "biographer" was anonymous. He learned that the writer was a customer of BellSouth Internet, but that federal privacy laws shield the identity of Internet customers, even if they disseminate defamatory material. And the laws protect online corporations from libel suits.

He could have filed a lawsuit against BellSouth, he wrote, but only a subpoena would compel BellSouth to reveal the name.

In the end, Mr. Seigenthaler decided against going to court, instead alerting the public, through his article, "that Wikipedia is a flawed and irresponsible research tool."

Mr. Wales said in an interview that he was troubled by the Seigenthaler episode, and noted that Wikipedia was essentially in the same boat. "We have constant problems where we have people who are trying to repeatedly abuse our sites," he said.

Still, he said, he was trying to make Wikipedia less vulnerable to tampering. He said he was starting a review mechanism by which readers and experts could rate the value of various articles. The reviews, which he said he expected to start in January, would show the site's strengths and weaknesses and perhaps reveal patterns to help them address the problems.

In addition, he said, Wikipedia may start blocking unregistered users from creating new pages, though they would still be able to edit them.

The real problem, he said, was the volume of new material coming in; it is so overwhelming that screeners cannot keep up with it.

All of this struck close to home for librarians and researchers. On an electronic mailing list for them, J. Stephen Bolhafner, a news researcher at The St. Louis Post-Dispatch, wrote, "The best defense of the Wikipedia, frankly, is to point out how much bad information is available from supposedly reliable sources."

Jessica Baumgart, a news researcher at Harvard University, wrote that there were librarians voluntarily working behind the scenes to check information on Wikipedia. "But, honestly," she added, "in some ways, we're just as fallible as everyone else in some areas because our own knowledge is limited and we can't possibly fact-check everything."

In an interview, she said that her rule of thumb was to double-check everything and to consider Wikipedia as only one source.

"Instead of figuring out how to 'fix' Wikipedia - something that cannot be done to our satisfaction," wrote Derek Willis, a research database manager at The Washington Post, who was speaking for himself and not The Post, "we should focus our energies on educating the Wikipedia users among our colleagues."

Some cyberexperts said Wikipedia already had a good system of checks and balances. Lawrence Lessig, a law professor at Stanford and an expert in the laws of cyberspace, said that contrary to popular belief, true defamation was easily pursued through the courts because almost everything on the Internet was traceable and subpoenas were not that hard to obtain. (For real anonymity, he advised, use a pay phone.)

"People will be defamed," he said. "But that's the way free speech is. Think about the gossip world. It spreads. There's no way to correct it, period. Wikipedia is not immune from that kind of maliciousness, but it is, relative to other features of life, more easily corrected."

Indeed, Esther Dyson, editor of Release 1.0 and a longtime Internet analyst, said Wikipedia may, in that sense, be better than real life.

"The Internet has done a lot more for truth by making things easier to discuss," she said. "Transparency and sunlight are better than a single point of view that can't be questioned."

For Mr. Seigenthaler, whose biography on Wikipedia has since been corrected, the lesson is simple: "We live in a universe of new media with phenomenal opportunities for worldwide communications and research, but populated by volunteer vandals with poison-pen intellects."
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/04/we.../04seelye.html





The DMCA Should Not Protect Spyware
Ed Felten

Yesterday was the deadline to submit requests for limited exemptions from the DMCA’s ban on circumvention of access control technologies. This happens every three years. Alex Halderman and I submitted a request, asking for an exemption that would allow the circumvention of compact disk copy protection technologies that have certain spyware-ish features or create security holes. We’d like to thank Aaron Perzanowski and Deirdre Mulligan of the Samuelson Clinic at UC Berkeley, whose great work made this possible.

Many people decided not to submit exemption requests in this round, because of the way previous rounds have been handled. For example, the EFF argues that the process is so strongly tilted against exemptions, and the Copyright Office tries so hard to find excuses not to grant exemptions, that there is no point in asking for one. Even Seth Finkelstein, the only person who has had any real record of success in the process, decided to sit out this round. I submitted requests for research-related exemptions in 2000 and 2003; and having seen how those requests were handled, I sympathize with the skeptics’ position.

Nevertheless, I think it’s worth asking for this exemption, if only to see whether the Copyright Office will acknowledge that copy protection technologies that install spyware or otherwise endanger the security or privacy of citizens are harmful. Is that too much to ask?

To most readers here, the most interesting paragraph of our exemption request is this one:

Researchers like Professor Edward Felten and Alex Halderman waste valuable research time consulting attorneys due to concerns about liability under the DMCA. They must consult not only with their own attorneys but with the general counsel of their academic institutions as well. Unavoidably, the legal uncertainty surrounding their research leads to delays and lost opportunities. In the case of the CDs at issue, Halderman and Felten were aware of problems with the XCP software almost a month before the news became public, but they delayed publication in order to consult with counsel about legal concerns. This delay left millions of consumers at risk for weeks longer than necessary.

The DMCA exemption process continues, with reply comments due February 2.
http://www.freedom-to-tinker.com/?p=938





amicima Releases amiciPhone P2P Communicator

New product demonstrates the power of amicima's Open-Source Protocol Suite with peer-to-peer Voice-over IP, text messaging, file transfer and user presence.
Press Release

How do users show off the power of an open-source peer-to-peer secure media protocol? amicima answers that question today with its new amiciPhone, a P2P communications application that provides users with two lines of secure Voice-over IP calling, text messaging, file transfer and real-time user presence.

MFP, amicima's Secure Media Flow Protocol, is used by amiciPhone for prioritized, congestion-managed delivery of voice, text, and files over the Internet. MFP encrypts all communications end-to-end using the Advanced Encryption Standard, and uses RSA for authentication and AES key negotiation. MFPNet, amicima's peer-to- peer layer for MFP, handles peer discovery, firewall and NAT traversal, and provides a public-key infrastructure.

"Writing an application like amiciPhone is easy, given the power of the MFP and MFPNet libraries," said Michael Thornburgh, amicima co-founder and one of the amiciPhone developers. "The application developer doesn't need to worry about locating peers, multiplexing real-time voice with lower-priority bulk file transfers, or traversing NAT and firewall devices. MFP and MFPNet handle all those details for you, letting you concentrate on application logic and user interface."

The amiciPhone application may not be the first with these features, but it is the first that is built upon a set of powerful open- source network protocols -- a protocol stack that third parties already are incorporating into other applications they have developed.

"We hope that seeing our technology in action will inspire even more third-party developers to build upon our work and introduce network applications we haven't even thought of," said Matthew Kaufman, the other co-founder of amicima.

Developers and end-users are encouraged to download amiciPhone and use it to exercise the unique capabilities of MFP and MFPNet by quickly transferring files while simultaneously talking over a VoIP call, changing IP addresses of endpoints while calls are in progress, and observing its performance on the real Internet, the best and only place to fully test how Internet protocols perform.

Availability

The amiciPhone application for Windows XP is available for download now at the amicima Web site (www.amicima.com). Also available now are the GPL-licensed MFP and MFPNet libraries, which may be downloaded and used immediately by developers of open-source applications. A commercial license option is available for developers of proprietary applications.

amicima, Inc. is a privately held corporation, founded in 2004 to develop improved Internet protocols for client-server and peer- to-peer networking and to develop new applications and services based on these protocols.

The amicima protocol suite is a secure multi-layer solution for point-to-point and group communication with features specifically suited to peer-to-peer networking.

This layered approach to solving the problem of scalable interactive communication on a global scale is both unique and powerful, and supports the rapid development and deployment of future client-server and peer-to-peer applications by amicima and third- party application developers. The entire protocol suite is implemented in C and runs without modification on Unix, Apple Mac OS X and Microsoft Windows.
http://www.emediawire.com/releases/2.../emw317672.htm





Talk To Anyone For Free, Any Time, Anywhere - ¿Hablas PeerMe?
Press Release

PeerMe Inc. (www.PeerMe.com), a peer-to-peer voice communication technology company, today announced the launch of its first beta product that provides free, unlimited voice communications over the Internet to Spanish speaking internet users world-wide. Targeting users in Mexico, The United States, Spain, Argentina, Brazil, and Latin America, the Spanish version joins the previously available English, Japanese, Korean, and Chinese versions.

PeerMe has developed a messaging environment supporting PC-to-PC and PC-to-handheld voice communications and instant messaging over public Internet connections. PeerMe's technology can be used independently by connecting on a peer-to-peer basis or integrated into Web communities, thus bringing a new generation of interactive connectivity to users. Using industry standard protocols, PeerMe's peer-to-peer voice system provides sound quality almost equal to Public Switched Telephone Network (PSTN), free and unlimited to any Internet connected PC user worldwide.

Announcing the availability of the Spanish version, Tom Lasater, founder and CEO of PeerMe said “With the availability of the Spanish version of PeerMe, we can now supply three out of four of all world-wide internet users with free PC to PC calling and instant messaging services.” “Similar to the impact of mobile telephones, PeerMe allows computer users to communicate with their network of friends, family and colleagues anywhere, anytime – free.” “PeerMe is committed to enabling online communities and helping to bring people around the world together through the use of our easy-to-use technology. What sets PeerMe apart is our technology, which is aimed at voice enabling the Internet.”
http://www.prweb.com/releases/2005/12/prweb318850.htm





AT&T

Cingular Rolls Out 3G Service

Dallas is one of 16 areas to get higher-speed wireless network
Terry Maxon

Cingular Wireless LLC formally rolled out its higher-speed wireless network for computers and cellphones Tuesday, with Dallas among the first 16 metro areas to get the service.

Cingular's so-called third-generation network is designed to handle data at much higher speeds and voice calls more efficiently.

The new system is a step up from Cingular's EDGE service, which transmits data at only 70 to 135 kbps, with bursts to 200 kbps.

Cingular BroadbandConnect will let customers download information at 400 to 700 kilobits a second, comparable to Verizon Wireless' high-speed EV-DO network.

However, Cingular says its technology will support bursts of data transmission of up to 3.6 megabits per second, compared with EV-DO's 2.4 mbps burst speeds.

"Make no mistake about it: Wireless users want the speed and services they've come to expect from their wired connections," Cingular president and chief executive Stan Sigman said at an investment conference. "And today Cingular is delivering on its promises to provide both the speed and reliability customers need."

The initial products to use the service are two third-party wireless cards that will go into laptop computers. Users will be able to get on the Internet anywhere that Cingular's third-generation network reaches.

If the higher-speed network isn't available, the card lets users get on WiFi networks or use Cingular's EDGE network.

Unlimited access is $59.99 a month, with lower rates for users who want more limited access starting at $19.99 for downloads of 5 megabits a month.

Although Cingular began selling the wireless cards with the service, it won't introduce any cellphones with it until early 2006.

Those phones are expected to take advantage of the higher speeds to make music, video and entertainment applications more attractive to users.

The network also launched in Austin, Houston, Baltimore, Boston, Chicago, Las Vegas, Phoenix, Portland, Ore., Salt Lake City, San Diego, San Francisco, San Jose, Calif., Seattle, Tacoma, Wash., and Washington, D.C. It will expand.
http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcont....1347efc3.html





The New Shape Of Broadband
Jack Kapica

Rumours have been buzzing among people who connect to the Internet via cable. Service providers, they claim, are once again mucking about with bandwidth, perhaps going as far as blocking file-sharing services in the process.

It turns out this is partly true.

Rogers Cable, like other cable companies, has in fact been implementing something it calls "traffic shaping," a technology that gives priority to certain on-line activities (such as e-mail, browsing, voice communication) and putting the brakes on other less time-sensitive stuff, such as swapping music files.

In fact, the complaints I received have come from people who noticed the difference when they use peer-to-peer technology specifically to swap music files — and lest we forget, that activity is still legal in Canada, unless and until whichever government we elect next month passes a law banning the activity.

One user, Scott Taylor, a Rogers subscriber in St. Thomas, Ont., has been so upset by the poor performance of software called Limewire, used mostly to swap music files, that he confesses he has made a pest of himself on the issue — so much so that Rogers' legal department felt it had to address him on the subject of his attitude.

His case is interesting because he was not getting the correct information from Rogers, with tech-support people twice denying they use any kind of technology against file-swappers before finally admitting that it's been in place since Dec. 2.

And even that was incorrect. According to a Rogers spokeswoman, the practice has actually been deployed over the past year, which doesn't say much for Rogers' internal communications system. Moreover, it applies only to uploads, which doesn't help out those people who are downloading from other Rogers subscribers, who are therefore uploading.

Moreover, all Mr. Taylor was told is that Rogers is "monitoring bandwidth usage" on peer-to-peer clients, not that it was "shaping traffic."

Not surprisingly, bad information makes for unhappy subscribers.

A more specific case involves Allen Murray, of Cambridge, Ont., who was having the same kind of problem, but it was associated with downloading music and podcasts from Apple's iTunes, a legal service for which Mr. Murray is paying.

Beginning on Nov. 7, he wrote to me, he could no longer connect to the store via broadband. His dial-up connection worked fine with iTunes. He reported that five people he knows in Cambridge are also having similar problems with broadband.

Countless calls to Rogers' technical support, he said, always resulted in "It's not a Rogers problem."

Mr. Murray took the conspiracy position, that Rogers had blocked iTunes because it was pushing its own on-line music service, provided by its content partner Yahoo.

Similar complaints have been aired on various bulletin boards, among them Boing Boing, where one poster got it right ("From what I understand, they are not so much filtering/stopping/blocking downloads as much as capping the bandwidth available to certain protocols"), but failed to stop the rumour mill.

And over at the Apple forums, a reader reported that when trying to reach iTunes, she received a message that says, "iTunes could not connect to the music store. The network connection was reset. Make sure your network connection is active and try again."

Her response was to blame Apple, a reaction that is covered by my Law of Erroneous Error Messages, which states that all error messages are themselves erroneous, and that's why so many computer users have been driven nuts by technology.

Rogers has not been keeping its traffic shaping technology a secret, but has not been very up-front about it either, partly because it's been rolled out in fits and starts. And even then it's been a technology in evolution, and applied haphazardly.

The one thing both Rogers (and all the other cable companies using such technology) should be careful about is how it handles press relations. Any effort to slow down multimedia now will clash with what's coming down the pike for the Internet. We expect a massive increase in demand for bandwidth because Americans are adopting high-speed access in increasing numbers, and multimedia content (movies and music downloads) is increasing exponentially.

Moreover, very large companies — Microsoft and Apple among them — are considering moving to peer-to-peer technology to disseminate operating system security patches and podcasts. Redhat/Fedora, Ubuntu Linux and some television shows are moving to the technology too, and independent musicians who actually want to give away their music are turning to a similar technology, BitTorrent, to spread their gospel.

However traffic shaping shakes out, it's only a temporary measure. When traffic eventually explodes, cable companies will need to either shape it drastically, which will not be good for business, or shape its marketing strategies to accommodate it.

Either way, it will be a major change.
http://www.globetechnology.com/servl...ory/Technology





The Dead's Gamble: Free Music for Sale
Jon Pareles

The Dead did a quick turnabout - call it a half-step uptown toodleloo - this week. First, band representatives told the Live Music Archive, at www.archive.org, which includes countless jam-band concerts in its repository of freely downloadable music, to stop making available its trove of live Grateful Dead recordings, which have been free online for years. Grateful Dead Merchandising (www.gdstore.com) now sells downloads of the band's own concert recordings, and didn't want free competition.

Fans were so furious that within days, the band was forced to relent partway. Now recordings made by audience members are back on the archive, available for download. The Dead's pristine soundboard recordings, with minimal crowd noise, are no longer available for quick downloading, but can be played as streams (and recorded in real time). It's not a complete reversal, but all the music is online again. Now, however, the Dead are going to find out how difficult half measures can be.

The Dead's easygoing attitude toward concert recordings had been a bulwark of its legend. At concerts, there was always an authorized "tapers' section" - a mini-forest of high-quality microphones on long poles - and the band never tried to stop fans from trading the recordings, as long as they weren't sold. The traders' network upgraded through the years from cassettes by mail to digital downloads.

Doubtless there were some cottage-industry sellers of Dead concerts. But on the whole, fans respected a simple ethic: Enjoy, don't profiteer. With no restrictions imposed, fans took it upon themselves to do the right thing. The more committed ones went beyond passive listening to active, time-consuming archiving, editing and processing of the music they cherished: making, for instance, so-called matrix recordings that synched the clean soundboard signal with a touch of audience recording for a more realistic ambience. And it all existed, like so much of the Dead's example and legacy, outside the structures of the recording business.

As in so many other ways, the Grateful Dead set an example for jam bands (and other do-it-yourself types), who found that concert recordings were a great way to build word of mouth. Sites like archive.org sprang up; there's also a Napster-like peer-to-peer interface, the Furthur Network (www.furthur.net, named after the destination sign on the Merry Pranksters' bus, which the Dead once rode). It swaps recordings from an approved list of performers, including the Dead, the Dave Matthews Band and Sigur Ros.

For the Grateful Dead, and the many bands that emulated them, there was logic to the whole libertarian enterprise, as well as to the old hippie spirit. Each improvisational concert was different, and thus worth collecting. The best ones would convince new fans that they had to see the next concert, and the next. The band not only was handsomely paid in the first place for shows that routinely sold out arenas, but also kept its own recordings should it ever want to issue them. (It has done so, in 36 volumes of multiple-CD collections called "Dick's Picks.")

There was also something far less tangible and pragmatic, but no less essential: a generous suggestion that once the music was in the air, it belonged as much to listeners as to the band. The concert recordings were like memories, to be shared and savored, rather than products. On his Web site (www.phillesh.net), the Dead's bassist, Phil Lesh, writes about using archive.org to hear old concerts while writing his autobiography. Even if a Deadhead was not downloading dozens of concerts, the boundless opportunity to do so meant something. There was a bond of trust between the band and its fans - one that is now strained.

The Dead are thus the latest victims of the notion that digital copying is qualitatively different from every recording technology since the invention of music notation. Yes, digital copying is fast; it's exact; it's easy. For a recording business that has realized far too late that it is selling music, not discs, digital copying has destroyed the old monopoly on pressing and distribution.

Digital downloads can also provide numbers for accountants to tabulate and for statistics-mongers to misinterpret. (Just because 10,000 people download a concert doesn't mean 10,000 people would pay for it.) Oddly enough, the numbers also seem to encourage visions of wringing every statutory nickel out of every recording ever made. In conformity to copyright law that was designed for sheet music and discs rather than the Web, visions persist of the Internet not as a cornucopia, but as a pay-per-play jukebox. The Deadheads' old trading network had looked back to an earlier model: music as folklore.

Suddenly, after all these amicable and profitable years, Dead representatives are talking about "rights" to those concert recordings. It's lawyer talk, record-business talk, and entirely valid on those terms; the Dead do hold copyrights and are entitled to authorize or withhold permission to copy their work. (So, incidentally, are those who own the copyrights to Dead concert staples like Buddy Holly's "Not Fade Away." )

Enforcing that permission on the Internet is another matter. Digital-rights management by technical means is iffy at best: widely circumvented by professional pirates and problematic for consumers trying, for instance, to transfer songs from their CD's to an iPod. Sony BMG Music, trying to limit copying of CD's, included software that created security hazards in its paying customers' computers and is now recalling some four million CD's and facing lawsuits. The next Windows operating system may place anticopying mechanisms beyond users' control.

The Dead's problem is more temporal than technical. Grateful Dead recordings, including soundboard recordings, have been circulating since the inception of the Internet and are not going to disappear by fiat.

The Dead had created an anarchy of trust, going not by statute but by instinct and turning fans into co-conspirators, spreading their music and buying tickets, T-shirts and official CD's to show their loyalty. The new approach, giving fans some but not all of what they had until last week, changes that relationship.

No doubt it will sell some additional concert downloads in the short run. But by imposing restrictions, it will also encourage jam-band fans - a particularly Internet-savvy demographic - to circumvent those restrictions, finding the soundboard recordings through unofficial channels. The change also downgrades fans into the customers they were all along. It removes what could crassly be called brand value from the Dead's legacy by reducing them to one more band with products to sell.

Will the logic of copyright law be more profitable, in the end, than the logic of sharing? That's the Dead's latest improvisational experiment.
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/03/ar...ic/03pare.html





Judge: Game Over For Illinois Ban

Court rules state's reasoning for video game ban insufficient
AP

A federal judge ruled Friday that Illinois' restrictions on the sale of violent and sexually explicit video games to minors are unconstitutional and barred the state from enforcing the law.

State officials "have come nowhere near" demonstrating that the law passes constitutional muster, said U.S. District Court Judge Matthew Kennelly.

Democratic Gov. Rod Blagojevich and other supporters of the measure argued that children were being harmed by exposure to games in which characters go on killing sprees or sexual escapades.

Opponents declared the law a restriction on free speech and pointed out that similar laws had been struck down in other states.

"It's unfortunate that the state of Illinois spent taxpayer money defending this statute. This is precisely what we told them would happen," said David Vite, president of the Illinois Retail Merchants Association, one of the groups that sued over the law.

The governor's office did not immediately return a call seeking comment.

Other states recently approved similar legislation after hidden sex scenes were discovered in a popular game, "Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas." California's version, set to go into effect January 1, is among those being challenged in court.

The Illinois law, which also was to go into effect January 1, would have barred stores from selling or renting extremely violent or sexual games to minors, and allowed $1,000 fines for violators.

Kennelly said the law would interfere with the First Amendment and there wasn't a compelling enough reason, such as preventing imminent violence, to allow that.

"In this country, the state lacks the authority to ban protected speech on the ground that it affects the listener's or observer's thoughts and attitudes," the judge wrote.
http://www.cnn.com/2005/TECH/fun.gam....ap/index.html