Peer-To-Peer News - The Week In Review - August 19th, '06

[JackSpratts]

"By holding that even the president is not above the law, the court has done its duty." – Ann Beeson


"Plaintiffs have prevailed, and the public interest is clear, in this matter. It is the upholding of our Constitution." – U.S. District Judge Anna Diggs Taylor


"When all is said and done . . . the residents of New Orleans are going to have a better network serving them than what they had before." – Bill Smith


"I came up with the idea of using hot dogs. You don’t get any protesters coming to your door." – Stephen Gass


"Now we can put our problems on the Web site, and then the government can't say, 'We didn't know'." – Ajaib Singh


"All my friends do it. It just seems like the natural thing to do." – Amy Thomas, 12 year old musician and file-sharer










































The Bright And The Dark Of It

If the problem of sharing isn’t a moral one, and it isn’t for me – I’ve been taping, sharing and promoting since I was a small child, then in this era of intense and growing government scrutiny the problem is a tactical one, and several groups recently announced technical measures designed to address it.

There are essentially two ways to deny prying eyes access to your internet activities. You can simply hide so that they don’t know you exist, or you can camouflage your content so they can’t understand what you’re sharing. You can even do both. WASTE comes to mind whenever the issue arises. A so-called darknet in which trusted users share only with each other, it denies access to outside parties, operating under the theory that if they can’t see you they can’t see what you’re doing. It applies limited encryption, camouflaging some social aspects like chat, then disguises the unencrypted trading content by sending out storms of optional nonsense, or "chaff" to challenge any bit sniffers tapping your tube. It does have a reputation as a geek tool and whether that’s true or not it suffers some serious drawbacks, foremost being the inability of half the people trying it to actually get it going. The good news is there’s always someone to help with the installation and once up it’s nearly bulletproof, but there’s no denying there is room for improvement in several areas.

Now we can add two more systems to our arsenal, each specializing in one of the two strategies.

The Pirate Party has taken an industrial approach with their commercial hiding service. For a fee they will give you a dedicated pipe that layers another Internet Protocol (IP) address, from Sweden as it happens, on top of the one you already have. This way when you’re sending files, which is where you’re vulnerable, the content cops won’t see your real IP address, the one they’d use to track you down; they’ll see instead an IP from another country, one whose laws may be less strict than yours. The idea here is that the Swedes may be more able to turn back subpoenas, or even better, that the statute you may have violated at home won’t apply at all. As with any such service, much depends on the details, in particular the record keeping practices of the quasi-darknet or annonymising service itself (no records mean no searches) and the aggressiveness of local officials applying pressure on behalf of the companies or governments bringing action against you by proxy. So far at least Sweden’s track record leaves a lot to be desired. They rolled right over when Hollywood called, confiscating servers belonging to not only the world’s largest BitTorrent site, but also to banks, unrelated groups having nothing to do with file-sharing and even normally untouchable political parties, then refused to give them back until their legally ambiguous forensic examinations were complete. Caveat Emptor applies.

In something of a twist on the standard encryption scheme an open source American group has released what it cheerfully calls the world’s first "Brightnet." The "Owner-Free Filing" system (OFF) uses mathematical legerdemain to shape content that like Schrodinger's cat exists in multiple simultaneous states until one actually perceives it, at which time it instantly becomes a Britney Spears song, a tasty potato salad recipe or the U.S. Bill of Rights. The theory here is that if the file can be anything, it can be legally nothing, at least as far as copyright violations go, and so can remain safely visible to any and all. You can’t lose a suit to Britney if as far as you’re concerned (and can demonstrate) all you’re hosting is the annual girl scout picnic menu, regardless if other people hear Do It To Me One More Time every other time they peruse the file. It’s a great idea if it works and the courts buy it but in truth all digital content is nothing but meaningless ones and zeros until your intent is determined in the form of the organizational software you use to tease order out of chaos, and this hasn’t prevented judges from going about their business. Caveat Emptor applies here as well.

In the constant back and forth between cleverly ambitious users and an equally determined state, the state will always have the leverage, if only for the severe degree of punishment it can deliver. This isn’t to say its power is absolute. The easy availability of contraband in its various state-defined forms puts lie to that, but its power if limited nonetheless overwhelms. I for one appreciate a little looseness in a society, particularly when it comes to victimless crimes, and my definition of victimless is probably a little looser than many. It is a fact however that for us to win this battle we will have to redefine at the level of the state what it means to be a private person and what it means to forge law. That the courts this week found the President’s mass-wiretapping program unconstitutional is a lucky break for its citizens, and while I’ll take it whenever I can luck like a clever program - or a judge’s whim - is something we shouldn’t have to depend on. We must instead enshrine the right to share, and the right to be safe, secure and private in our persons, our papers and our files, and put that leverage back into those hands where it has always belonged. Ours.
















Enjoy,

Jack





















August 19th, '06






Teenagers Don’t Think Copying CDs Is A Crime

The majority of young people — even those who refuse to download pirated media — see nothing wrong with making a copy of a CD or DVD to share with friends.

A new poll by the Los Angeles Times and Bloomberg News found that among teens ages 12 to 17, 69 percent said they believed it was legal to copy a CD from a friend who purchased the original.

By contrast, only 21 percent said it was legal to copy a CD if the friend got the content for free. Similarly, 58 percent thought it was legal to copy a friend’s purchased DVD or videotape, but only 19 percent thought copying was legal if the movie wasn’t purchased.

The survey results angered the Recording Industry Association of America and the Motion Picture Association of America. Both contend such sharing — they call it “schoolyard piracy” — is illegal and now a greater threat than peer-to-peer downloading.

Evan Collins, 15, expressed his view of the issue: “I think you’re allowed to make, like, two or three copies of a CD you bought and give them to friends,” Collins told the LA Times. “It’s only once you make five copies, or copy a CD of stolen music, that it’s illegal.”

Attorneys told the newspaper that copying a purchased CD for even a single friend can violate federal copyright law. However, the poll found Collins’ attitude pervasive among young people.

Even lawyers admitted the laws are confusing. Distributing free copies of a purchased CD or DVD is only a federal copyright crime if the value of the copied discs exceeds $1,000, Assistant U.S. Attorney Elena Duarte told the Times.

However, giving away even one copied CD or DVD may be a civil violation or break a state law, depending on where the act takes place.

The issue is at the center of huge battle between content owners and copyright activists. To date, courts have generally avoided staking out legal policy on the appropriateness of copying CDs for friends or how many friends constitutes a copyright violation.

However, the personal sharing of favorite media is a long tradition that’s ingrained in American culture. Some argue that such activity is what created the value of the media in the first place.
http://broadcastengineering.com/news...rime_20060818/





Sweden’s Pirate Party Partners with Commercial Provider to Offer "Anonymous File Sharing"
Press Release

Today, the Swedish Pirate Party launched a new Internet service that lets anybody send and receive files and information over the Internet without fear of being monitored or logged. In technical terms, such a network is called a "darknet". The service allows people to use an untraceable address in the darknet, where they cannot be personally identified.

"There are many legitimate reasons to want to be completely anonymous on the Internet," says Rickard Falkvinge, chairman of the Pirate Party. "If the government can check everything each citizen does, nobody can keep the government in check. The right to exchange information in private is fundamental to the democratic society. Without a safe and convenient way of accessing the Internet anonymously, this right is rendered null and void."

File sharing of music, films, and other forms of culture is where the surveillance of Internet addresses has attracted the most attention, largely because the entertainment industry has been so aggressive in suing Internet users for copyright infringement, suing college students and single mothers alike without concern.

"But there are much more fundamental values at stake here than copyright," Rickard Falkvinge says. "The new technology has brought society to a crossroads. The only way to enforce today's unbalanced copyright laws is to monitor all private communications over the Internet. Today's copyright regime cannot coexist with an open society that guarantees the right to private communication."

"Until we have changed the laws to ensure that citizens' right to privacy is respected, we have a moral obligation to protect the citizens from the effects of the current routine surveillance," Falkvinge continues. "This is our technical means to do just that."

The service is provided by the Swedish high-tech company Relakks, which offers a neutral IP on top of your existing ISP service through a strongly encrypted VPN connection. Basically, this gives users the advantage of a Swedish IP address from anywhere in the world.

The cost of the service is 5 euros per month, and it is available now at www.relakks.com. A portion of the subscription fees will go towards the Pirate Party's work in changing the copyright and privacy laws and making the service obsolete.

About the Pirate Party:
The Pirate Party is Sweden's largest political party outside Parliament. It was founded in January, 2006, and is running for office in this fall's general elections. The party only has three issues on its agenda: shared culture, free knowledge, and protected privacy.

About Relakks:
Relakks provides services to help individuals to assure the security and integrity of their information. Relakks' responsibility stems from the strong Swedish tradition of protecting the integrity of private life and all forms of communication between individuals. Relakks - broadband Swedish style

(This is a static page with the press release. We got Dugg pretty hard yesterday and Slashdot just turned up. Welcome! You're late. :-)
Our regular page can be found at www.piratpartiet.se and you can read more and sign up for the Relakks service at www.relakks.com.
One question we get is if this works in the US. Yes, it does. The payment service appears to accept Euros only, but there will be an automatic currency conversion (which your issuing bank may charge you a small fee for) so the amount deducted will be in the vicinity of $6.4USD for a month.)

http://www2.piratpartiet.se/nyheter/...ial_ darknet/





OFF System Development

Have Nothing. Pwn Everything.

Brightnets vs. Darknets

The Owner-Free Filing system has often been described as the first brightnet; A distributed system where no one breaks the law, so no one need hide in the dark.

OFF is a highly connected peer-to-peer distributed file system. The unique feature of this system is that it stores all of its internal data in a multi-use randomized block format. In other words there is not a one to one mapping between a stored block and its use in a retrieved file. Each stored block is simultaneously used as a part of many different files. Individually, however, each block is nothing but arbitrary digital white noise.

Owner-Free refers both to the fact that nobody owns the system as a whole and nobody can own any of the data blocks stored in the system. The latter claim is explained below and supported in the linked works.

Owner-less Data

It seems highly unlikely to most people that the same exact data can be used to represent several things at once. But indeed, the same digital representation can be, “both a floor wax and a dessert topping.”

The misperception is simply a relic of computer metaphors that obfuscate an important reality of the digital world. Traditional rules do not apply. Mathematics is the only law.

Curiously, mathematics says:

1. There are an infinite numbers of ways to digitally represent any given work.
2. Every digital representation can be used to perceive as an infinite number of works.

The OFF System simply chooses one of the infinite ways that is non-copyrightable. There must be at least one, or else every possible digital representation would already be copyrighted. It just so happens that the same representation is already being used for other things.

A simple description of the process is available on this site. http://offsystem.sourceforge.net/wordpress/?page_id=4 A more extensive treatment is done in the paper, “On copyrightable numbers with an application to the Gesetzklageproblem” http://offsystem.info/CopyNumbCJ.pdf

Copyright

No creative works, copyrighted or not, are ever communicated between OFF peers. Only meaningless blocks of random data. No tangible copies of creative works are ever stored on OFF peers. It is completely unnecessary.

All retrieval of creative works is done exclusively on the users local machine. More importantly, no copies of a creative work ever NEED to be made. All works can be accessed in-place and on-demand by locally resident software in the same way that traditional file servers are used.

All storage of creative works is done exclusively on the users local machine. Uniquely, only a single virtual copy of the creative work is made directly into OFF virtual file system. That is all that is EVER needed. As with a traditional file server, that single copy is completely private. It is accessible only through the URL possessed by person who stored the work. Again this appears legally equivalent to making a single copy to your personal disk or server.

Should the person who stored the work want to allow access to others, he simply gives them the URL. The receiver can then access the work in-place without needing to make a copy. This is identical to the way that iTunes allows friends to play each others music via streaming without copying.

We call the OFF System a “Brightnet”. No secrecy is needed as nothing shady is going on.

———————

Footnote: This work builds on previous technology pioneered by David Madore in his paper, “Method of free speech on the Internet: random pads”
http://www.eleves.ens.fr:8080/home/m...reespeech.html
http://offsystem.sourceforge.net/wordpress/?page_id=13





Federal Judge Rules Warrantless Wiretapping Surveillance Program Unconstitutional
Sarah Karush

A federal judge ruled Thursday that the U.S. government's warrantless domestic eavesdropping program is unconstitutional and ordered an immediate halt to it.

U.S. District Judge Anna Diggs Taylor in Detroit became the first judge to strike down the National Security Agency's program, which she says violates the rights to free speech and privacy as well as the separation of powers enshrined in the Constitution.

"Plaintiffs have prevailed, and the public interest is clear, in this matter. It is the upholding of our Constitution," Taylor wrote in her 43-page opinion.

The American Civil Liberties Union filed the lawsuit on behalf of journalists, scholars and lawyers who say the program has made it difficult for them to do their jobs. They believe many of their overseas contacts are likely targets of the program, which involves secretly listening to conversations between people in the United States and people in other countries.

The government argued that the program is well within the president's authority, but said proving that would require revealing state secrets.

The ACLU said the state-secrets argument was irrelevant because the Bush administration had already publicly revealed enough information about the program for Taylor to rule on the case.

"By holding that even the president is not above the law, the court has done its duty," said Ann Beeson, the ACLU's associate legal director and the lead attorney for the plaintiffs.

The NSA had no immediate comment on the ruling.

Taylor dismissed a separate claim by the ACLU over data-mining of phone records by the NSA. She said not enough had been publicly revealed about that program to support the claim and further litigation could jeopardize state secrets.
http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2006/...ng_Lawsuit.php





iMesh Releases Legal BearShare
Carly Mayberry

iMesh is set to unveil on Thursday the latest version of BearShare, its recently acquired fellow peer-to-peer network.

The new and legal service, BearShare 6.0, will continue to offer the traditional benefits of a P2P file-sharing experience but with additional features, iMesh executive chairman Robert Summer said. Among these are a "ToGo" portable music-subscription service and social networking capabilities.

Subscriptions will be free for the next 30 days, after which the service will introduce an as-yet-undetermined monthly fee.

"Ours is a unique offering that addresses that massive audience of free music downloaders that the industry is trying to bring to heel," Summer said.

The existing iMesh service, which went live a year ago, will not be affected by the launch of BearShare 6.0. The two services will co-exist, and sometime this year members of each will be able to interact with members of the other service.

Both BearShare ToGo and iMeshToGo services can be used with most MP3 players and all Plays for Sure portable devices. They are not compatible with Apple Computer's iPods because those market-leading devices do not support subscription services.

Summer said BearShare 6.0 features include instant messaging, the ability to make playlists and manage music collections, advanced search capabilities and significantly improved music discovery tools. A special feature called BearShare People encourages users to express their identity by sharing their musical preferences with other users. The service also keeps a record of purchases and offers ringtones.

"In building in these features that were not fully present in our initial launch, we now have an entirely stable site," Summer said. "It's our expectation that it's going to be exponentially effective in causing free users to become buyers."

The available library consists of 15 million music tracks, among them 2.5 million songs licensed from the major labels.

Founded in 1999, the MusicLab subsidiary iMesh is one of the original P2P services to transition to a commercial model that guarantees payment to its copyright holders.
http://today.reuters.com/news/newsAr...EDIA-IMESH.xml




Dell to Recall 4 Million Batteries
Michael Kanellos

Dell and the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission plan to recall 4.1 million notebook batteries on Tuesday, a company representative confirmed Monday.

The recall affects certain Inspiron, Latitude and Precision mobile workstations and XPS units shipped between April 2004 and July 18, 2006. Sony manufactured the batteries that are being recalled, the representative said.

If they have one of the affected units, consumers are advised to eject the battery from the notebook after powering down and continue using the notebook with its AC power adapter, the CPSC said. Dell has so far received six reports of overheating units that caused property damage, but no injuries.

Dell has faced several issues this year related to exploding or flaming notebooks, and wants to ensure the safety of its customers, the representative said. The 4.1 million units is a subset of the 22 million units shipped during that time frame, he said. Dell said it doesn't expect the cost of the recall to materially affect its earnings. The company reports earnings for the previous quarter this Thursday.

At the moment, this looks like the largest battery recall in the history of the electronics industry, said Roger Kay, an analyst with Endpoint Technologies Associates. "The scale of it is phenomenal."

Customers will be able to go to a Dell Web site (http://www.dellbatteryprogram.com) to determine if they need a new battery. The Web site is expected to go live tomorrow. Dell also plans to launch a toll-free number, 1-866-342-0011, for people affected by the situation, IDC analyst Richard Shim said.
Models in the hot seat

Dell plans to announce a recall of 4.1 million batteries worldwide on Tuesday. Here's a list of the affected models.
Latitude
D410, D500, D505, D510, D520, D600, D610, D620, D800, D810
Inspiron
6000, 8500, 8600, 9100, 9200, 9300, 500m, 510m, 600m, 6400, E1505, 700m, 710m, 9400, E1705
Dell Precision
M20, M60, M70 and M90 mobile workstations
XPS
XPS, XPS Gen2, XPS M170 and XPS M1710

Source: Consumer Product Safety Commission

"It's a huge deal," Shim said, particularly for Dell customers with employees in remote locations or traveling. "If you have people all over the field, then you're asking folks to send in the batteries and run off just AC (alternating current power) until they can get new batteries shipped out to them."

Dell had only six incidents over millions of units, Shim said, but it's "a dangerous situation."

Lithium ion batteries have two to three times the energy density of nickel-cadmium and nickel-metal hydride batteries and four times the energy density of lead-acid batteries. Higher energy density translates to longer battery life. Lithium ion batteries are used in consumer electronics and notebooks, which only require a limited amount of energy. Hybrid cars and power tools, however, generally use more traditional batteries, in part because of the risk of explosion.

What causes the problem?

The problems Dell is having stem from impurities within the anode and cathode of the battery, said Kay, who was briefed on the problems by Dell executives. Over time, those impurities, usually tiny pieces of metal, can work their way to the edge of the anode or cathode and rupture the isolator that sits between the two, he said. Once that happens, you get a short circuit and possibly a fire.

In cell phones, lithium ion batteries can overheat because of a short circuit. If the temperature rises slowly, the battery case may melt. If it rises rapidly, however, enough pressure may be generated to create a small explosion in a lithium ion battery. Consumers have suffered severe burns as a result of these failures. The chemical reaction that produces energy in a lithium-ion battery is considered quite violent.

Several companies, including Valence Technology and PowerGenix, are working on safer lithium ion batteries or batteries which rely on different chemicals.

"The timing of this does buy Dell goodwill with customers and potential customers," said Sam Bhavnani, an analyst with Current Analysis. The first pictures of exploding laptops were posted in June, and the company has moved fairly quickly to investigate whether or not the problems were isolated or more widespread, he said.

It's possible that other PC vendors are using the Sony batteries in their products, Kay said. Dell executives told Kay that the company was one of the first to begin using this type of battery, and that they think other problems will crop up down the road for other PC companies.

But even if two companies use the same batteries, they don't necessarily design the technology that connects the battery to the notebook in the same way, Kay said. For example, Lenovo's notebooks use software that's designed to shut down the battery if it notices a problem and they charge the batteries more slowly than others in the industry, a company representative said. A Dell representative was unable to comment on the specifc technology it uses to enclose its batteries.

A Lenovo representative said the company has not seen an unusual pattern of problems with its notebook batteries, although no PC company is immune to battery issues from time to time. Lynn Fox, an Apple Computer spokeswoman, said, "We are currently investigating whether batteries that have been supplied to Apple for our current and previous notebook lines meet our high standards for battery safety and performance." Representatives for Hewlett-Packard and Gateway were not immediately available to comment.

CNET News.com's Stephen Shankland contributed to this report.
http://news.com.com/Dell+to+recall+4...l?tag=nefd.top





Agency Reviewing All Sony Laptop Batteries
Philipp Gollner

Consumer safety officials said on Tuesday they are reviewing all Sony-made lithium-ion batteries in laptop computers for fire hazards after Dell Inc. <DELL.O> announced the largest electronics recall in the United States.

Dell, the No. 1 maker of personal computers, on Monday said it is recalling 4.1 million notebook batteries made by Sony Corp. <6758.T> because they could overheat and catch fire. A battery of the type involved in the recall was in a Dell laptop that erupted in flames in Japan earlier this year.

The Sony batteries are also used in laptops from Hewlett-Packard Co. <HPQ.N>, Apple Computer Inc. <AAPL.O> and Lenovo Group Ltd. <0992.HK>.

"We are looking at the complete scope of the batteries made by Sony to ensure that no other consumers are in harm's way," U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission spokesman Scott Wolfson said. "We recognize that the batteries manufactured by Sony are not unique to just the Dell notebook computers."

Such batteries are also used in a wide array of gadgets including cellphones, digital cameras, camcorders and music players, and Wolfson added that the safety commission is encouraging companies and consumers to report potential defects in other devices using the battery cells but the focus for now was on laptops.

Dell's recall covers Sony laptop batteries sold from April 2004 through July 18 of this year, including 2.7 million units in the United States.

While no injuries have been tied to these products, Dell said it has received six reports of batteries overheating since December, causing damage to furniture and other items.

"It's probably not Dell-specific," said the president of market researcher Endpoint Technologies Associates, Roger Kay. "If they have the Sony cell, specifically the cell made between April 2004 and June 2006, they have the problem."

He estimated the recall could cost $200 million to $300 million, depending on how many customers participate.

Dell said it expected no "material" financial impact from the recall, while Sony said its cost from the recall has not yet been determined.

A Sony spokesman in Tokyo said on Tuesday the overheating problem is believed to be specific to batteries supplied to Dell, but recall decisions are up to each maker.

Hewlett-Packard, the world's No. 2 PC maker, said it was not affected by recall. "It's a Dell issue," spokesman Ryan Donovan said.

Apple Computer Inc. <AAPL.O> on Monday said it was looking into the matter.

A spokesman for Lenovo Group Ltd. <0992.HK>, the third-largest PC maker by market share, said the company was not recalling any batteries "at this time."

"While no make or model of battery is 100 percent immune from failures or overheating, to date we have not seen any unusual pattern of problems in our notebooks," said the spokesman, Bob Page.

Dell may pay a bigger cost in lost customers as its image takes a beating, Cindy Shaw, an analyst at Moors & Cabot Capital Markets, said in a research note.

"We also believe recall news could sway consumer purchase decisions away from Dell as back-to-school season gets under way ahead of the important holiday season," wrote Shaw, who has a "sell" rating on Dell shares.

The recall comes as Dell is investing $100 million and hiring 2,000 people this year to improve customer service after it was hit with complaints of inferior after-sales service.

Dell said consumers who bought its notebooks in the recall period should remove the batteries and contact Dell for a replacement. Customers can continue using an AC adapter and power cord with the computers, Dell said.
http://today.reuters.com/news/articl...archived=False





Microsoft Patch Can Cause IE Trouble
Joris Evers

Microsoft's security update from Aug. 8 to Internet Explorer is causing browser trouble for some systems.

After people apply the MS06-042 update, rated "critical" by Microsoft, IE may crash when certain Web sites are viewed, the company said in a notice on its customer support Web site. The problem affects IE 6 with Service Pack 1 on Windows XP and Windows 2000 systems, it said.

"Microsoft has identified an issue with the security update MS06-042," the company said in a statement Tuesday. It plans to re-release the bulletin and patch on Aug. 22 for all affected users.

The problem occurs when IE users view Web sites that use version 1.1 of HTTP alongside compression, according to Microsoft's notice. HTTP, or hypertext transfer protocol, is the standard protocol used to browse Web sites.

IE users on security mailing lists have reported browser crashes when using PeopleSoft applications that have Web-based interfaces. Others report running into problems when using other applications, including Microsoft's own customer relationship management, or CRM, tools.

"We are running PeopleSoft for administration systems, and our Windows 2000 SP4 and Windows XP SP1 running Internet Explorer 6.0 SP1 crash when they got into the PeopleSoft pages," Fred Dunn, a systems administrator at the University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio, said in an e-mail interview.

Dunn called Microsoft's product support service, which recommended disabling the use of HTTP 1.1 in IE's advanced settings menu. However, that's not a change that's easily done on all PCs in the university, Dunn said. "Our only workaround was to get the PeopleSoft programmers to turn off compression...which slows down the response," he said.

MS06-042 is an update for IE that addresses eight vulnerabilities in the popular browser. It is one of a dozen security updates that Microsoft released last week on Patch Tuesday.

Patches have caused trouble at times, on occasion prompting Microsoft to fix already released updates. In April, it released a second version of a Windows Explorer update because the original interfered with Hewlett-Packard software and Nvidia drivers. In June, it had to fix a patch that caused network connection trouble for some people.

Microsoft has a temporary fix available for the problems caused by MS06-042. However, this fix is not available for download; people have to call Microsoft's support line.
http://news.com.com/Microsoft+patch+...3-6106039.html





Banned Musician, Aged 12, Lays Siege to BPI HQ
Miffed miss is up in arms

12 YEAR-OLD singer-songwriter Amy Thomas staged a protest outside the headquarters of the British music industry yesterday, following a decision to ban her from a new school kids' music chart because of her views on downloading.

Amy and a "flash mob" of 50 children gathered outside of the office of the British Phonographic Industry (BPI) for 15 minutes holding balloons with messages of support for the young singer.

Amy had been chosen as one of ten young artists to feature on the My Music chart that launches in October across 1,400 UK schools.

But her inclusion was blocked by the BPI after its snoops discovered she is signed to Flowerburger Records, an independent record label which is running an online petition drumming up oposition to the BPI's policy of suing music fans who use p2p websites.

Amy gained a following of schoolies after posting details of her plight on kids' networking site Bebo. Its members are now encouraging each other to boycott the My Music chart in favour of Amy’s debut single, Just Smile, which is released the same week as the schools’ chart.

Holding a balloon with 'Just Smile' emblazoned across it, the publicity-seeking youngster said of the practice of downloading songs from P2P sites: "All my friends do it. It just seems like the natural thing to do."
http://www.theinquirer.net/default.aspx?article=33734





Digitizing Video Signals Might Violate the DMCA
Nate Anderson

Could it become illegal to digitize analog signals? The District Court for the Southern District of New York has come perilously close to saying yes.

It started with a lawsuit. In June of 2005, Macrovision sued Sima Products under section 1210 of the DMCA, claiming that Sima's video processors provided an easy way to circumvent Macrovision's analog copy protection (ACP). Macrovision's best-known form of copy protection inserts noise into the vertical blanking interval found in analog video signals, like those from DVD players and VCRs. This noise is not displayed on a television set, but it does throw off the automatic gain control used by most VCRs, making recording difficult. Sima's products simply convert the analog signal to digital, which eliminates the noise in the blanking interval, then processes the signal and converts it back to analog. Presto—no more copy protection.

Macrovision objected to the devices, which remove its copy protection from both VCR and DVD signals, making it simple for a user to copy movies (though only in analog format). Earlier this year, the Court agreed and issued a preliminary injunction against Sima, which was upheld in June.

The Consumer Electronics Association, concerned about the precedent that the move could set, denounced the ruling. President Gary Shapiro said, "Consumers should be outraged by today's decision. The devices Sima Products manufactures simply allow consumers to use digital techniques to make up for viewing artifacts in analog material—some from age or distortion, and some caused as a result of the use of distortive copy protection techniques. The legislative history of the 1998 Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) is clear that passive analog measures that distort video signals are not 'technical protection measures.'"

Now the injunction is being considered by the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, and an amicus brief has been filed in support of Sima by the American Library Association, the Consumer Electronics Association, the Home Recording Rights Coalition, and the Electronic Frontier Foundation, among others.

The brief makes the point that Congress has already addressed this issue quite explicitly in Section 1201(k) of the copyright code, which prevents analog VCR manufacturers from ignoring automatic gain control copy protection. The coalition notes that this only applies to analog products, and they quote Senator Orrin Hatch's comments to the same effect.

But the main argument is that ACP is not a technological measure that "effectively protects a right of the copyright owner" because ACP does not actually prevent making copies at all. It simply makes it difficult to get good copies. Furthermore, ACP is really a "flag," not a "measure," since it can be either read or ignored without problems. Finally, it is not an effective protection measure because it does nothing to stop digital copying (digital video signals do not require blanking intervals, so digital copies simply do not use the information in the blanking interval at all),

The brief also argues that Sima is not "circumventing" anything—the stripping of the ACP is just a necessary byproduct of digital conversion. "Circumventing" suggests a much more active process.

The case is a long way from a resolution, but it's an interesting one to watch. As the EFF puts it, "If Macrovision wins, digital video innovators will be stuck carrying the albatross of Macrovision's analog noise for years to come." We all know what happens to those who carry an albatross for too long—they start crashing weddings and regaling guests with stories about life at sea. And nobody wants more of that.
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20060816-7517.html





Movie Download Service Sued Over Spyware
Robert McMillan

The state of Washington has sued the owners of the Movieland.com, alleging that the company used spyware to strong-arm users into signing up for its paid movie download service.

Consumers who dowloaded Movieland.com's free three-day trial software would eventually be hit with frequent pop-up ads informing them that they were legally obliged to purchase the product, said Paula Selis, an assistant attorney general with the state. The tactics forced some consumers to give in and pay between $20 and $100 for the service, she said.

Washington State, and other organizations like the U.S. Federal Trade Commission and the Better Business Bureau have received thousands of consumer complaints about Movieland.com, dating back to the end of 2005, Selis added.

"We sued them because we were getting complaints from consumers who felt that they were being harassed and held over a barrel for payments that they didn't agree to make," she said.

Company, Two Officials Named

The suit was filed yesterday in King County Superior Court in Seattle. It charges Movieland.com's parent company, Digital Enterprises, of West Hills, California, with violating the state's antispyware and consumer protection laws. Two company officials are also named in the suit: Easton Herd, and Andrew Garroni, both of Los Angeles.

Garroni and Herd's companies operated a number of video download services, including Moviepass.tv and Popcorn.net, the Washington Attorney General's office said.

Though the company's free trial software does advise users that they will be obliged to purchase a monthly license if they do not cancel, this notice does not sufficiently explain what will happen if the software is installed, Selis said.

Movieland.com's Web site offers downloads saying, "No Spyware," "Virus Free," and "No Extra Charge."

The company did not return a call seeking comment for this story.

Movieland.com is the second company to be sued under Washington's 2005 Computer Spyware Act. In January the Attorney General's office sued Secure Computer of White Plains, New York, alleging that its Spyware Cleaner software failed to work as advertised. That litigation is ongoing, Selis said.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/pcworld/126738





Altnet Hits StreamCast With Law Suit
Simon Hayes

MORPHEUS creator StreamCast Networks is facing yet another legal battle, with Australian-run software developer Altnet launching action over patent violation allegations.

Altnet, run by Australian expat entrepreneur Kevin Bermiester, filed action in the US District Court in Los Angeles today alleging StreamCast violated patents on a file identification technology it owns.

StreamCast is already battling the recording industry in a major music piracy case, and has launched a "RICO" (Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organisations) action against 21 well-known brands.

The patent suit alleges the company and its chief executive Michael Weiss violated three patents Altnet covering Altnet's TrueNames technology.

TrueNames generates unique numbers to identify music, video and text files on peer-to-peer networks.

The technology is used by file-sharing network Kazaa and is the basis of a recently-launched anti-piracy tool, Global File Registry, which Altnet is hoping will be adopted by major record companies to help them license music for distribution online.

"This technology underpins the business of Altnet, but just as importantly it is future-proof technology for a variety of peer-to-peer industries," said Altnet enforcement programs manager Michael Speck.

Comment was being sought from Streamcast.
http://australianit.news.com.au/arti...m=public _rss





TorrentSpy Users Beware - Something Fishy's Going On
adamsucks

TorrentSpy seems to have a suspicious amount of similar torrents for the PC game "Prey". A search for the game pulls 131 results. All of which have similar amounts of seeders. All of them posted anonymously. All of them having slightly varying titles. Anyone in the torrent scene should spot this. Be careful downloading.. it could be a trap.
http://digg.com/security/TorrentSpy_...shy_s_going_on





EMI to Preload Music Videos on Microsoft's Zune
Yinka Adegoke

EMI Group Plc, the world's third-largest music company, said on Thursday it had signed a deal to provide preloaded music videos on Microsoft Corp.'s soon-to-launch Zune digital media player.

The London-based company said the deal would see artists, including American actor Jared Leto's alternative rock band 30 Seconds To Mars and English electro-pop band Hot Chip, featured on the player when it goes to market later this year.

The news dispels speculation in media reports this month that Microsoft would have to delay the introduction of Zune's video capability until after its launch, which is expected to be in time for the year-end holiday season.

Sources at record labels, who have seen the new player, say its wireless capability and a feature that allows some sharing of music between users are what differentiates Zune from Apple Computer Inc.'s market-leading iPod.

"Apple has been an important partner in building the digital music market but any well-funded serious entrant has got to be good news for the artists and industry," Jeff Kempler, executive vice president of EMI unit Virgin Records America, told Reuters.

The iPod has more than half of the digital media player market, according to research company NPD, while Apple's iTunes online music download service has a market share of more than 70 percent of U.S. digital music sales.

Microsoft, which was not immediately available for comment on Thursday, announced plans for Zune last month, in a move seen by industry analysts as a belated attempt to challenge Apple's dominance in both digital audio and video downloads.

EMI said it believes its artists' videos will be preloaded alongside those from other record companies, but declined to discuss the device in detail.

Universal Music, owned by France's Vivendi, said it is in discussions with Microsoft on Zune but would not give any details. Warner Music Group Corp. and SonyBMG Music could not be immediately reached for comment.
http://today.reuters.com/news/articl...rt-R2-Today-11





Terabyte Drive To Debut Later This Year
Michael Kanellos

If there's a storage fanatic in your family, a perfect gift could be coming for her or him toward the end of the year: 1-terabyte hard drives. Desktop hard drives holding 1 terabyte, or 1,000 gigabytes, of storage will likely be announced in 2006, said Bill Healy, senior vice president of product strategy and marketing at Hitachi Global Storage Technologies. These drives, which will have a 3.5-inch diameter, are expected to be incorporated into PCs and home servers. Healy wouldn’t say what companies would announce first. Sources at Seagate, however, said Seagate plans to come out with 1TB 3.5-inch drives by late 2006 or early 2007.

It's not that big of a stretch for some hard drive makers. Hitachi already sells a 500GB drive, while rival Seagate Technology started shipping a 750GB drive to desktop makers in April. Seagate also sells a home storage device with two 500GB drives to make up 1 terabyte. Drive density effectively doubles every two years and increases steadily over the two-year period; hence, a terabyte drive is on the horizon, Healy said.

Granted, few people really need 1 terabyte of storage. But it sounds cool--sort of like you could be running a ballistic missile tracking site in your den. Besides, humans continue to show that they can come up with ways to gobble up hard drive space. High-definition video is expected to greatly expand the need for storage.

These large drives also will get incorporated into televisions and personal video recorders. Hitachi, among others, already sells TVs with integrated hard drives in Japan and other markets.

While large drives start out expensive, the price drops relatively quickly. Computer makers pay something in the 30-cent range for a gigabyte when buying hard drives, Healy said. The price at retail is around 50 cents or less.

Happy birthday, hard drive

On Sept. 13, the hard drive will turn 50. Hitachi and others will be on hand to celebrate the achievement at the Computer History Museum.

It has been a wild half century. The first magnetic drive, the RAMAC created by IBM, weighed a ton and could hold 5MB of data on 50 24-inch circumference platters. Now people can get a one-inch drive that can be held in your hand that holds more than that.

"Twenty years from now, we could (potentially) squeeze a terabyte onto a one-inch drive," Healy said.
http://news.com.com/Terabyte+drive+t...3-6105515.html





Satellite TV Providers Exit FCC Auction
Marguerite Reardon

Satellite TV providers DirecTV Group and EchoStar Communications on Wednesday pulled out of the Federal Communications Commission auction for licenses to deliver advanced wireless services.

The joint venture formed by the two companies, called Wireless DBS, was expected to be one of the hungriest bidders putting up $972.5 million for the auction. But early this week, Wireless DBS began scaling back its bids. Eventually, it withdrew altogether.

Roger Entner, a telecommunications analyst at Ovum Research, believes the price of the licenses was too steep for the satellite companies to swallow.

"When the bulls start fighting, the calves get hurt," he said. "In the first few rounds, when it didn't matter much, the satellite guys were king of the hill. But the moment they got out of the sandbox and into the larger playground, they were sent out financially."

Robert Mercer, a spokesman for DirecTV, declined to comment. EchoStar spokeswoman Kathie Gonzalez confirmed Wireless DBS had stopped bidding, but declined to comment.

Analysts speculated that the satellite TV providers were interested in the spectrum, which falls between 1.7GHz and 2.1GHz, so they could use the airwaves to build a wireless broadband network. Using a technology called WiMax, they could have provided a broadband service offering downloads between 2mbps and 4mbps.

Satellite TV companies, such as EchoStar and DirecTV, are fighting for survival as they face tougher competition from cable operators and now telephone companies, which are selling consumers bundles of services that include high-speed Internet access, telephony and TV service. Currently, satellite only offers TV service. EchoStar and DirecTV have separately partnered with phone companies Verizon Communications and AT&T. But as the phone companies roll out their own TV services, the relationship with satellite operators will likely fade.

For now, dreams of owning their own broadband network will have to wait. The satellite operators could bid on the 700MHz spectrum that will come up for auction by the FCC in 2008, but Entner said it's unlikely the satellite companies could afford this spectrum.

"If EchoStar and DirecTV thought the current spectrum was too expensive in this auction, wait until the 700MHz spectrum auction," he said. "The 700MHz spectrum is better-quality. It can penetrate walls better and propagate over longer distances."

The FCC had expected to raise up to $15 billion during the auction. So far, the sale of 1,122 licenses has raised almost $9.8 billion in 19 rounds of bidding.

T-Mobile and Verizon Wireless lead the bidding. T-Mobile, owned by Deutsche Telekom, is the fourth largest cell phone company in the U.S., and it has the least amount of spectrum. The company was expected to bid aggressively for licenses, so it can build a next-generation mobile network to compete against its rivals, Cingular Wireless, Sprint Nextel and Verizon Wireless.

The auction for the spectrum will continue until bidding stops, which means it could last for several more weeks.
http://news.com.com/Satellite+TV+pro...3-6106513.html





FCC Probes 'Fake News' At U.S. TV Stations
CBC Arts

The U.S. Federal Communications Commission has begun an investigation of the use of video news releases, sometimes called "fake news," at U.S. television stations.

Video news releases are packaged stories paid for by businesses or interest groups. They use actors to portray reporters and use the same format as television news stories.

The FCC has mailed letters to at least 42 stations asking station managers about agreements between the station and the creators of the video news releases.

The action follows an April report on fake TV news by two media watchdog groups, the Center for Media Democracy in Wisconsin and Free Press in Northampton, Maryland. They recorded incidents where video news releases had been used at 77 stations in a study titled Fake TV News: Widespread and Undisclosed.

Of particular concern to the watchdogs were instances where the fake news items had run without informing viewers that they had been created by an outside group.

FCC rules demand that stations disclose "the nature, source and sponsorship of the material they are viewing" in video news releases.

"The public is misled by individuals who present themselves to be independent unbiased experts or reporters, but are actually shills promoting a prepackaged corporate agenda," FCC Commissioner Jonathan Adelstein said in a statement.

The FCC has asked stations whether any "consideration" was given to them in return for airing the material.

"You can't tell anymore the difference between what's propaganda and what's news," Adelstein said.

Among the video news releases uncovered were an item on ethanol plants aired on a Louisiana station that was created by a public relations firm on behalf of Siemens AG, a corporation with a financial stake in the construction of ethanol plants.

In another case, a Boston station edited and re-voiced a video segment produced by an outside company on behalf of Toshiba, Fisher-Price and Scholastic, whose kids' products were featured in it.

The item ran at Christmas, without any indication to viewers it had been created as a news release.

Diane Farsetta, senior researcher with the Center for Media and Democracy and co-author of the study, said stations did not appear to have been paid for airing the stories.

Instead, they aired them because they are free and fill air time.

"The main reason is economy. These are free stories that are given to stations that are continually under-resourced," she said.

The media watchdog group is recommending the FCC fine stations who have violated the rules. The federal regulator can levy fines of up to $32,500 US per violation.

The FCC has given the stations 60 days to respond to its letters.
http://www.cbc.ca/story/arts/nationa...ews-probe.html





Save the crank!

Thai Kids to Get Low-Cost Laptops

The ambitious project to provide low-cost laptop computers to poor children around the world is about to take a small step forward. More than 500 children in Thailand are expected to receive the machines in October and November for quality testing and debugging.

The One Laptop Per Child program, which began at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Media Lab and now is a separate nonprofit organization, hopes to deploy 5 million to 7 million machines in Thailand, Nigeria, Brazil and Argentina in 2007.

Thailand's government is expected to buy 1 million in the first year.

But Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra announced in a nationwide radio broadcast that "if this project is completed" it would reach all Thai elementary students. He said each student would get a free computer "instead of books, because books will be found and can be read on computers."

The creator of the laptop program, Nicholas Negroponte, has set a goal of making the laptops for about $100 each, though he expects the initial figure to be slightly higher and the long-term cost slightly lower.

The machines will use the free Linux operating system, include flash memory instead of a hard drive and run on electricity created by a hand or foot pump.

China and Egypt have also expressed interest, but at least one country initially expected to take part, India, has decided not to be in the first round.

Walter Bender, a Media Lab founder who serves as One Laptop Per Child's president of software and content, said the organization still is talking with Indian officials and non-governmental agencies.

"While India will not be part of the year-one launch, with 25 percent of the world's children, it is within our mission to work with India down the road," Bender said in an e-mail this week.
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories...08-16-17-48-42





Indian Village Uploads Itself Onto Internet
Jonathan Allen

An Indian village has uploaded itself onto the Internet, giving the outside world a glimpse of life in rural India.

Visitors to Hansdehar village's Web site (www.smartvillages.org) can see the names, jobs and other details of its 1,753 residents, browse photographs of their shops and read detailed specifications about their drainage and electricity facilities.

Most of the residents can't yet surf the Hansdehar Web site as the village is not yet connected to the Internet.

But the villagers hope the site -- and their imminent first Internet connection -- will put them in touch with the world beyond the flooded rice fields surrounding Hansdehar, located in a rich agricultural belt in the northern state of Haryana.

"It will be a revolution," said farmer Ajaib Singh.

He and other villagers hope the connection with the outside world will help speed up improvements to Hansdehar's woeful infrastructure and services such as a lack of a pharmacy and unreliable electricity. The village has long been neglected by the Indian government, locals complain.

"Now we can put our problems on the Web site, and then the government can't say, 'We didn't know'," he said.

But younger villagers -- most of whom have yet to send their first e-mail -- plan to use the Internet to help hasten their exit by searching online for college places and jobs in big cities.

In preparation, Jasvir Singh, 21, has hired what is only the second computer in the village to learn to type. He says he can do 25 words a minute and is getting faster.

Singh wants to get into one of India's prestigious institutes of management and one day score a foreign posting.

Quietly spoken Nanki Devi, 21, says her future will be limited to employment as a housemaid if she stays in the village, whose women demurely veil themselves in the presence of unrelated men.

"Only in a city I can be independent," she explained as she looked shyly toward her feet.

These kinds of ambitions are exactly what Kanwal Singh hoped to stir when he set up the Web site for the village he was born in.

New Opportunities

There are few jobs available in Hansdehar beyond farming or running small shops supplying goods to farmers.

While the richest one or two households own cars, most have cows parked in their front yards. The dusty roads are almost completely empty of traffic, bar the occasional farmer chugging past atop a tractor, bhangra music blaring.

The village council -- or panchayat -- is pictured on the Web site holding a meeting about a missing bull. It was never found, villagers say, suspecting theft.

Kanwal Singh, who long ago left to work as a Web site developer for the local government in Chandigarh, said that until recently a lack of opportunities left villagers with few options beyond agriculture.

On a recent visit he gave a dozen or so villagers a mild scolding, telling some of them they lacked initiative. No one answered back.

"Some of the young people here have a lot of potential and they just aren't reaching it," he later told Reuters, visibly frustrated.

Which is why he set about convincing the village council of the benefits a Web site and an Internet connection would bring.

Few villagers had much of an idea about the Internet, but Singh was soon able to explain the fundamentals.

Pick any Bollywood actress, he told them in a slideshow presentation, and you can access hundreds of photographs of her.

But he was quick to highlight the net's other uses.

Now Hansdehar farmers hope they will be able to get better prices for their crops by trading online through the National Commodity & Derivatives Exchange Ltd., cutting out middlemen.

Carpenters and masons will tout their services online. Others will upload their resumes to job hunting Web sites when the village's first Internet point is hooked up in Kanwal Singh's mother's house in the coming weeks.

Hazoor Singh, a local math teacher, will have space on the Web site to publish his forthcoming paper, in which he describes parallels between the nature of God and mathematical set theory.

And at least one young bachelor said he would start browsing for a potential wife.

But the grand aim is to encourage more of India's 640,000 villages to upload themselves and unite in online networks to advance the cause of rural India, home to a tenth of humanity.

"We had to start somewhere, so why not here? Charity begins at home," says Kanwal Singh. "But now all the nearby villages are impressed and they say they want a site of their own."
http://today.reuters.com/news/articl...archived=False





Scandinavians to Meet Apple Over iTunes

Sweden's consumer rights agency on Wednesday said it and other rights groups in Scandinavia will meet Apple Computer to discuss their complaint that the U.S. company's popular iTunes service breaches consumer laws.

In June, consumer agencies in Sweden, Denmark and Norway jointly wrote to Apple alleging that customers had to waive fundamental rights, such as the free use of legally bought products, to download music from iTunes.

The U.S. computer maker has responded in writing, but wants a face-to-face discussion as well, Marianne Abyhammar, Sweden's acting consumer ombudsman, told Reuters.

"They (Apple) have asked to meet the authorities and explain their position," she said. "We will call such a meeting, to be held in Oslo, as soon as possible."

"The ambition is to arrange for a meeting at the beginning of September, but no date has been set yet."

Norway's consumer rights agency has said that one of its main concerns was that iTunes limited customers' right to freely use legally acquired products by implementing software to protect downloaded files from illegal copying and distribution.

The technology, known as Digital Rights Management (DRM), means no portable players other than Apple's own iPods can play files downloaded from iTunes.

In June, the French parliament pulled back from legislation that would have forced stores like iTunes to share their DRM code, effectively removing barriers that keep songs from being played on other companies' devices.

After complaints from Apple and other opponents that the French legislation would open the door to piracy and threatened the future of online music sales, the French parliament passed a watered-down version of the law that left online distributors with significant control over this code.

In its written response to the Scandinavian agencies' complaint, Apple said it might consider changing some of its practices, Abyhammar said.

"But not in those parts that deal with geographical specifications and limitations on other MP3 players than iPods," she said.

The Swedish and Norwegian consumer ombudsmen both said the agencies were not planning any immediate legal action.

"The issue in the first round is how we'll deal with the answer we got from iTunes and what to do about it," Norwegian Ombudsman Lars Helgesen said.

"We will not take legal action immediately...On the points were we disagree we will negotiate further and an eventual (legal) case will come further ahead in time."
http://today.reuters.com/news/newsAr...ived=Falsehtml





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AOL Prepares To Dig For Gold _ Literally
Ted Bridis

Dig this: AOL believes a renegade Internet spammer buried gold and platinum on his parents' property in Massachusetts and wants to bring in bulldozers to search for the treasure and satisfy a $12.8 million judgment it won in federal court.

The family says it knows nothing about any buried treasure and will fight AOL's gold-digging plans.

AOL said Tuesday it intends to search for bars of gold and platinum that the company believes are hidden near the home of Davis Wolfgang Hawke's parents on two acres in Medfield, Mass.

AOL won a $12.8 million judgment against Hawke last year in U.S. District Court in Virginia but has been unable to contact him to collect any of the money he was ordered to pay. AOL accused Hawke of violating U.S. and Virginia anti-spam laws by sending massive amounts of unwanted e-mails to its subscribers. It won its case in a default judgment against Hawke, who didn't show up in court.

"I don't care if they dig up the entire yard. They're just going to make fools of themselves," said Peggy Greenbaum, Hawke's mother. "There's absolutely no reason for them to think that Davis Hawke would be stupid enough to bury gold on our property. My son is long gone."

At the height of Hawke's Internet activities, experts believe, Hawke and his partners earned more than $600,000 each month - much of it cash - by sending unwanted sales pitches over the Internet for loans, pornography, jewelry and prescription drugs.

"They were millionaires, if only briefly," said Brian McWilliams, a journalist who interviewed Hawke and wrote extensively about him in "Spam Kings," a 2004 book about e-mail spammers. McWilliams said Hawke lived a nomadic life as an adult, eschewed luxuries and described burying his valuables.

"Hawke lived like a pauper really," McWilliams said. "He drove a beater of a used car, an old cop car. He never owned a house or anything."

Greenbaum said her husband and father intend to challenge AOL's plans to dig on their property and search their two-story, 3,000-square-foot home in a wooded residential area of Medfield, a small town about 20 miles southwest of Boston. She said AOL's lawyer notified the family that the company intends to use bulldozers and geological teams to hunt for gold and platinum on their property.

Greenbaum said she has not talked with her son in more than a year and complained about the embarrassment and humiliation he brought to the family.

Greenbaum said the family believes Hawke buried gold in the White Mountains 130 miles north of Boston. She said he once confided to her that he used proceeds from sending Internet spam to buy gold - rather than expensive homes or cars - because it would be more difficult to seize in lawsuits.

"We don't know where is he," she said. "We certainly wouldn't allow him to put any gold on our property."

AOL defended its efforts.

The dig isn't something out of "Treasure Island," AOL spokesman Nicholas Graham said. "This is a court-directed, judge-approved legal process that is simply aimed at responsibly recovering hidden assets."

To win a judge's permission for the search, AOL submitted receipts reflecting large purchases by Hawke of gold and platinum bars, Graham said. The company indicated it believes Hawke buried the loot on his parents' property using a shovel.

AOL said it will try to accommodate Hawke's parents by not being too obtrusive.

A former U.S. prosecutor described AOL's efforts as highly unusual. Marc Zwillinger said his law firm has seized plasma televisions, jet skis and other gadgets in unrelated spam and piracy lawsuits.

"But I've never had a case digging up gold bars and bullion," Zwillinger said. "That's definitely unique."
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories...08-16-03-36-32





Group Seeks FTC Inquiry Into AOL
Michael Liedtke

Hoping to trigger a federal investigation, a civil liberties group accused AOL of breaking a promise to protect its subscribers' privacy when the Time Warner Inc. subsidiary recently released millions of Internet search requests - data that touched upon everything from Social Security numbers to murder plots.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation filed a Federal Trade Commission complaint Monday, a week after AOL apologized for posting about 19 million search requests made by about 658,000 subscribers during a three-month period ending in May.

The files containing the search requests were publicly accessible for 10 days before AOL finally removed the information, giving people plenty of time to fetch copies that continue to circulate on the Internet.

In its 11-page complaint, the foundation asserts the AOL breach was serious enough to merit an FTC investigation in hopes of winning an order that would require AOL to provide more details about the gaffe. The San Francisco-based foundation also wants FTC to order AOL to notify all subscribers whose search requests were revealed and pay for a year's protection from a credit monitoring service.

The complaint alleges AOL's unauthorized release of the information, which included creepy search requests like "how to kill your wife," represents an unfair or deceptive trade practice.

The foundation said the released material also included 175 searches containing Social Security numbers, which can provide a stepping stone to identity theft.

While declining to comment on Monday's complaint, AOL spokesman Andrew Weinstein said the company doesn't have a list of the subscribers affected by the breach. The search requests were broken down into groups identified by numbers, with all names removed.

But AOL has acknowledged some of the search requests contained enough personal data to identify the people behind the queries.

"We are conducting our own internal investigation to make sure this kind of thing doesn't happen again," Weinstein said.

An FTC spokeswoman on Monday declined to say whether the agency intends to open an investigation. With few exceptions, the FTC doesn't confirm its investigations.

Another consumer rights group, the World Privacy Forum, plans to file an FTC complaint against AOL later this week, according to Pam Dixon, the group's executive director.

The calls for a federal inquiry threaten to make it more difficult for AOL to move past its self-described "screw up," just as management strives to attract more Web surfers to generate more advertising revenue.
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories...08-14-18-57-28





You Are What You Search

AOL's data leak reveals the seven ways people search the Web.
Paul Boutin

AOL researchers recently published the search logs of about 650,000 members—a total of 36,389,629 individual searches. AOL's search nerds intended the files to be an academic resource but didn't consider that users might be peeved to see their private queries become a research tool. Last weekend, the Internet service provider tried to pull back the data, but by that point it had leaked all over the Web. If you've ever wanted to see what other people type into search boxes, now's your chance.

The search records don't include users' names, but each search is tagged with a number that's tied to a specific AOL account. The New York Times quickly sussed out that AOL Searcher No. 4417749 was 62-year-old Thelma Arnold. Indeed, Arnold has a "dog who urinate on everything," just as she'd typed into the search box. Valleywag has become one of many clearinghouses for funny, bizarre, and painful user profiles. The searches of AOL user No. 672368, for example, morphed over several weeks from "you're pregnant he doesn't want the baby" to "foods to eat when pregnant" to "abortion clinics charlotte nc" to "can christians be forgiven for abortion."

While these case studies are good voyeuristic fodder, snooping through one user's life barely scratches the surface of this data trove. The startup company I work for, Splunk, makes software to search computer-generated log files. AOL's 36 million log entries might look like an Orwellian nightmare to you, but for us it's a user transaction case study to die for. Using the third-party site splunkd.com, I've parsed the AOL data to create a typology of AOL Search users. Which of the seven types of searcher are you? (Click here for tips on how to do this yourself.)

The Pornhound. Big surprise, there are millions of searches for mind-bendingly kinky stuff. User No. 927 is already an Internet legend—click here if you're not faint of heart (and not at the office). When I clicked Splunk's "Show Events by Time" button, though, I found that porn searchers vary not only by what they search for, but when they search for it. Some users are on a quest for pornography at all hours, seeking little else from AOL. Another subgroup, including No. 927, search only within reliable time slots. The data doesn't list each user's time zone, but 11 p.m. Eastern and 11 p.m. Pacific appear to be prime time for porn on AOL's servers. My favorite plots show hours of G-rated searches before the user switches gears—what I call the Avenue Q Theory of Internet usage. User No. 190827 goes from "talking parrots jokes" and "poems about a red rose" before midnight to multiple clicks for "sexy dogs and hot girls" a half hour later. An important related discovery: Nobody knows how to spell "bestiality."

The Manhunter. The person who searches for other people. Again, I used Splunk's "Show Events by Time" function to plot name searches by date and time. Surprisingly, I didn't uncover many long-term stalkers. Most of the data showed bursts of searches for a specific name only once, all within an hour or a day, and then never again. Maybe these folks are background-checking job candidates, maybe they're looking up the new cutie at the office, or maybe they just miss old friends. Most of the names in AOL's logs are too ambiguous to pinpoint to a single person in the real world, so don't get too tweaked if you find your own name and hometown in there. I've got it much worse. There are 36 million searches here, but none of them are for me.

The Shopper. The user who hits "treo 700" 37 times in three days. Here, the data didn't confirm my biases. I'd expected to find window shoppers who searched for Porsche Cayman pages every weekend. But AOL's logs reveal that searches for "coupons" are a lot more common. My favorite specimen is the guy who mostly looked up food brands like Dole, Wendy's, Red Lobster, and Turkey Hill, with an occasional break for "asian movie stars." How much more American could America Online get?

The Obsessive. The guy who searches for the same thing over and over and over. Looking at the search words themselves can obfuscate a more general long-term pattern—A, A, A, A, B, A, A, C, A, D, A—that suggests a user who can't let go of one topic, whether it's Judaism, real estate, or Macs. Obsessives are most likely to craft advanced search terms like "craven randy fanfic -wes" and "pfeffern**sse."

The Omnivore. Many users aren't obsessive—they're just online a lot. My taxonomy fails them, because their search terms, while frequent, show little repetition or regularity. Still, I can spot a few subcategories. There are the trivia buffs who searched "imdb" hundreds of times in three months and the nostalgia surfers on the hunt for "pat benatar helter skelter lyrics."

The Newbie. They just figured out how to turn on the computer. User No. 12792510 is one of many who confuses AOL's search box with its browser address window—he keeps seaching for "www.google." Other AOLers type their searches without spaces between the words ("newcaddillacdeville") as if they were 1990s-era AOL keywords.

The Basket Case. In college I had to write a version of the classic ELIZA program, a pretend therapist who only responds to your problems ("I am sad") with more questions ("Why do you say you are sad?"). AOL Search, it seems, serves the same purpose for a lot of users. I stumbled across queries like "i hate my job" and "why am i so ugly." For me, one log entry stands above the rest: "i hurt when i think too much i love roadtrips i hate my weight i fear being alone for the rest of my life." Me too, 3696023. Me too.

sidebar

If you want to try sifting through the AOL data, install the latest Firefox browser or use Internet Explorer 6. Then go to splunkd.com and click on one of the sites on the "Mirror List." If you're behind a firewall, the URLs with numbers in them ("www.ocs.net:8000") might not work. Once you click, wait a minute for the Splunk interface to load itself into your browser. You should see a search box at the top and something like "36,389,577 events indexed" below it.

To search AOL records, type something into the search box. As you type, a panel will appear that lists the number of possible results for what you've typed so far, such as "slate (2766)." That's a good way to quickly see how many searches for a particular word are in AOL's logs.

After typing a word or two, click the ">" button at the right to run your search. The results page looks like a cross between Google and a nuclear reactor console—a hip, stylish Web 2.0 reactor, of course. For help with the interface, click on "Cheat Sheet" at the upper right. You can also pop open the Splunk Assistant in the lower right corner for as-you-go hints. If all else fails, read the manual. Yes, "Splunk" is a pun on "spelunking," as in data mining.

The format of each search log entry is: user number, search term, time stamp. If the user clicked on one of their search results, there are two more fields: the results rank and the URL of the link they clicked. The results are easier to read if you find Splunk's Preferences menu and turn off Show Event Meta Data—you're not troubleshooting a denial of service attack.
http://www.slate.com/id/2147590/?nav=tap3





Who Benefits from AOL's Released Search Logs?
Kate Greene

Last week, AOL's PR team cringed as the world learned that the company had publicly posted search terms from 650,000 AOL users. They posted the search log on a research site, and subsequently took it down after a flurry of coverage in the blogosphere. Nonetheless, a number of sites have reposted the log.

While specific names of AOL users weren't link directly to searched terms, there was no guarantee of anonymity: AOL had assigned each user a number, and often users searched their own names, and their hometowns. The New York Times was able to track down one AOL user who talked with a reporter about her searches for "numb fingers" and "dog that urinates on everything."

The data dissemination led privacy advocates to trumpet the dangers of search companies storing people's queries. At the same time, though, other people -- Internet researchers, statisticians, sociologists, and political scientists -- silently cheered.

Before the AOL release, all major search engines had kept their data from the public eye. This meant that researchers interested in the activities of users of search engines had to either rely on speculative data from open, infrequently used search engines, or make educated guesses. The AOL search log, which contains more than 30 million search terms, could thus provide some missing insight into how people use the Web, says Matt Hindman, a political scientist at the Arizona State University in Phoenix. A better understanding of Web dynamics has implications for political campaigns, education, and an entire economy built on advertising through Web searches. "For researchers like me," Hindman says, "that's exciting."

Shortly after AOL's goof, a site called AOL Stalker was created. Its main draw is that it allows people to search through the AOL database and view user searches as well as other search data. The author of the site has also posted the first in a series of basic data analyses. This initial number-crunching examines how well the rank of search results can predict a page's click-through rate -- in other words, it shows how well results match what people want to find. According the analysis, in 47 percent of searches, people didn't click on any of the presented results. While the revelation that nearly half of all AOL searches don't go anywhere isn't earth-shattering, further analysis could provide insight into how to make search engines more useful or guide advertisers in their ad placements.

As giddy as this sort of data makes statistics hounds, the creator of AOL Stalker, at least, still seems mindful of the sensitive nature of the information. The site's creator lets anyone request that certain information be hidden from the site's search engine if it's too revealing. As noted in the fine print: "If you find any data that actually makes it possible to identify a user, please let us know using the contact form, and we'll remove those references."
http://www.technologyreview.com/blog...x?id=17312&p=1





Marketers Trace Paths Users Leave on Internet
Saul Hansell

If you use Yahoo’s Web search engine to learn about hybrid cars, the site will quietly note that you fit into a group of users it calls “Consciously Cruising.”

If you click on ads for moving van companies, you will join the “Home Hopping” group. Shop for wedding cakes and reception halls and you might be tagged as a future bride or groom.

Earlier this year, Yahoo introduced a computer system that uses complex models to analyze records of what each of its 500 million users do on its site: what they search for, what pages they read, what ads they click on. It then tries to show them advertisements that speak directly to their interests and the events in their lives.

Yahoo and the many other companies building similar systems say the systems are benign because they typically do not collect personal information like names and addresses.

“We are much more conservative than we need to be” in using information about site visitors, said Usama Fayyad, chief data officer at Yahoo.

Still, just how personal even “anonymous” information can be was shown vividly last week as a list of three months of search queries from 657,000 AOL customers began circulating online. Collectively, a person’s Web searches, it turns out, can create an eerily intimate portrait — one that some privacy advocates say should never be assembled and stored in the first place.

Still, Web companies continue refining their techniques. Advertising on search engines is already a $14-billion-a-year business because the ads can be so closely tied to what people are looking for. Yahoo’s system is meant to use search queries and other actions to select ads people see while checking their e-mail and reading other pages.

AOL is working on a similar system to display ads for products related to a person’s Web search history. MSN from Microsoft just introduced technology to do the same. Other companies use systems that bring together information about users from across many sites. Internet companies call this behavioral targeting, and it is based on the insight that knowing what people do online can be more valuable to a marketer than knowing how old they are or what they do for a living.

“Search behavior is the closest thing we have to a window onto people’s intent,” said Jeff Marshall, a senior vice president of Starcom IP, an advertising agency. “When people are gathering information to make a choice, that means they are often going to spend money.”

Many Internet users have no idea that records of their actions are being collected and used. They might find out about these practices only if they read the fine print of Web site privacy policies.

But AOL’s release of search data has already led some privacy advocates and legislators to call for new limits on how Web sites and advertisers keep and use information about online behavior.

AOL has apologized for the release, saying that its research unit had not been authorized to publish the records. It removed the data from its site, but copies are still available online.

Not all of the behavioral marketing involves search engines. Technology from companies like DoubleClick and AOL’s Advertising.com unit allows marketing messages to follow people around the Web.

Starwood Hotels, for example, alerts members of its frequent-guest program to new promotions by placing ads that will be shown only to people who have previously visited its Web site. These ads can find customers in unlikely places, like the vast social networking site MySpace.

While most MySpace users are more likely to spend money on soda and sneakers, some of the site’s 100 million members do stay in Starwood’s Westin or Sheraton hotels and will see the ads.

Cingular Wireless uses a similar approach to advertise to people who have started shopping for a phone.

“You are no longer targeting people you think will be interested in your product,” said Les Kruger, a senior marketing manager at Cingular. “We know based on your behavior that you are in the market, and we can target you as you bounce around the Internet.”

Most of these marketing systems use cookies, unique numbers that a Web site can place on a computer to spot return visitors. Cookies are also used by companies like Advertising.com that place ads and track visitors across many sites.

Shopping sites like Amazon.com use cookies to greet returning customers by name. But many of the targeting systems try to avoid recording personally identifiable information, like a person’s name and address.

In the late 1990’s, an outcry about an earlier wave of marketing schemes led to some restrictions on how data is shared among sites and to rules that allow users to specify that they do not want to have some data collected about themselves. These options are rarely used.

Yahoo and most of the major Internet companies do not sell profile information to others, as magazine publishers and credit card companies often do. They want to profit directly from the information they gather.

But Web publishers do sometimes trade information among themselves — often simply what sites a particular computer has visited. For example, Seevast, an Internet advertising company, pays Web sites to place its cookies on the computers of users that visit them. That way, Seevast will know more about those users when it chooses which advertisements to display on sites in its network.

Mr. Fayyad of Yahoo said Internet companies were walking a fine line.

“If you get bombarded by ads for minivans on Yahoo, even if you are interested in minivans, it becomes creepy,” he said. “If you want to do this responsibly, you have to restrain yourself.”

For example, he said, Yahoo’s new system is based on monitoring for 300 types of behavior — some as detailed as having shopped for flowers in the last two days — but it does not keep records on more sensitive topics, like specific medical conditions.

Still, Mr. Fayyad argues that some level of targeting is necessary for Internet companies to avoid the fate of television networks.

“Every time I serve the wrong ad to the wrong person, I am training that person to tune out,” he said.

More immediately, Yahoo and many other sites see this sort of targeting as a way to increase advertising rates for material that otherwise would have little appeal to advertisers.

“We sell people, not pages,” said David Morgan, the chairman of Tacoda Systems, which sells technology for behavioral targeting to publishers including The New York Times Company. “The L.A. Times can target car buyers when they are surfing the local news.”

At first, Tacoda offered a service to allow companies to track behavior on their own sites. Now it runs a network across 3,500 sites, so Weather.com, for example, can show lucrative auto ads to its users who recently visited Car.com.

These systems can turn up some surprising results. Alamo Rent a Car, for example, found strong responses to its advertisements among people who had recently read obituaries on newspaper sites. That may have been because they were more likely to be taking a last-minute trip to a funeral, Mr. Morgan said.

Google, which runs both the largest search engine and largest advertising network, picks its targets more narrowly. When Google sells advertisements that appear on other Web sites, it selects the ad by analyzing the subject matter of the page the ads appear on. Those sites can send Google additional hints for use in ad targeting, like ZIP codes.

Google outbid its rivals last week when the News Corporation accepted its offer of $900 million for the right to sell advertising on MySpace and other sites; it helped that Google has sophisticated technology that can make inferences about what ads are best for a particular page.

So far, however, Google has not used information about the past behavior of searchers to target advertisements, even though the company keeps logs of all searches and its privacy policy allows it to use these for advertising. Google does not collect the names of most searchers, but it is doing so increasingly as it offers more personal services like e-mail.

“We have considered every potential targeting option, and we come back every time to the idea that the trust of the user is paramount,” said Tim Armstrong, Google’s vice president for advertising. After the initial outcry over Google’s Gmail service, which displays ads based on the content of individual e-mail messages, the company has been wary of taking actions that would raise privacy concerns.

Mr. Armstrong also challenged the idea that it was effective to show people advertisements based on what they searched for hours or days earlier: “Does a user want to see an ad on cars when they are planning their weekend vacation, or do they want to see an ad related to what they are looking at?”

Indeed, some argue that behavioral targeting may be more trouble than it is worth. Web publishers worry that it will lead clients to buy fewer ads. And advertisers question whether the higher prices the Web sites charge are worth it.

One believer is Panasonic, which has found that users do respond to such advertisements. It ran a series of ads for plasma televisions on entertainment and electronics Web sites. Then it used technology from Tacoda to show ads to people who had once visited those sites while they surfed elsewhere. The response to the ads increased when they were on a site unrelated to televisions.

“The ad is less expected and is playing to your subconscious,” said Lydia Snape, the director of online marketing at Renegade Marketing, Panasonic’s Internet advertising agency.

LendingTree, an online loan broker, has experimented with aiming ads at some of the 300 categories of users in Yahoo’s new system, like newlyweds and people who have just moved. It had by far the best results advertising to people who had searched for and read information about borrowing money.

“People aren’t in the market for loans all the time,” said Darren Beck, LendingTree’s vice president for online advertising. “These behavioral targeting models seem like the holy grail. We can find people exactly when they want a loan.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/15/te...rtner=homepage





Has The Time Finally Come To Stop Using Google?
Jack Schofield

Maybe it has, if you care about your privacy. There's no doubt that Google does care about your privacy, and aims to protect it. Earlier this year, for example, it refused to release anonymous search data demanded by the US government for a study, even though other search engines meekly handed it over. But rather than protecting such data, you might well think Google shouldn't collect it in the first place.

The question has risen to prominence over the past week, after a New York Times reporter phoned "Thelma Arnold, a 62-year-old widow who lives in Lilburn, Georgia" and revealed that he knew altogether too much about her.

Arnold was the first person to be publicly identified from the anonymous search data foolishly released by AOL (America Online). Ms Arnold was shocked: "My goodness, it's my whole personal life," she told the reporter. "I had no idea somebody was looking over my shoulder."

Anyone who has a complete record of your searches might be able to find you too. In fact, it could be easy if you have done any "ego surfing" or looked up things by post code. This could be worrying news if you have searched for child pornography, bomb-making instructions, or a variety of illnesses and afflictions including Aids and mental health issues. At least one person in the AOL data was searching for the best way to kill a wife.

But even if you are as blameless as Thelma Arnold, you'd have to wonder whether you really want Google to record such data forever. Once it exists, it might be released either deliberately or accidentally, it could be hacked, and perhaps even trawled by governments looking for terrorists (justification) or any malfeasance they can find.

The bad news is that Google - which supplies AOL's search results - has all that information and more. If you use Google's Gmail, address book, calendar, maps and other services, it could even tie your search data to things you are really doing. By the way, Google also knows which other websites you visit, if they use AdWords, and when.

Google's argument for collecting and storing all this invasive data is that it can provide better search results and, particularly, better targeted advertisements. The ads are how Google makes its billions. But trading privacy risks for better advertising sounds like a bad deal for users.

One answer is to delete the cookies that Google and other search engines (which are mostly as bad, or worse) put on your hard drive, and do searches via an anonymous proxy, so the search engine cannot tie them to your internet address. Another is to switch to search engines that say they don't record user data. Examples include ixquick (www.ixquick.com/) and Clusty (http://clusty.com).

The Alaskan oil spill from the Exxon Valdez tanker in 1989 spurred massive interest in environmental protection. US advocates have described AOL's data spill as a "Data Valdez" and hope it will make more people care about their privacy.
http://technology.guardian.co.uk/wee...851363,00.html





Keeping Your Identity on a Short Leash
Terry Cutler

The dangers of information and identity theft are many, but by following a few very simple rules, people can drastically lower their odds of being victimized.

Terry Cutler is a Canadian-based support engineer with Novell and a certified Ethical Hacker, and wants to get the news out to people on how they can and should protect their information and their identities from the many pitfalls of the Internet age. The following is a guide that he has provided to canada.com in order to inform our readers.

A new illegal enterprise is preying on our citizens, attracting the likes of criminals, gangs and illicit organizations. Crooks hack into company computers to steal the private information — and sometimes the full identities — of their customers.

And the fact is, many companies who have been hacked fail to inform their customers about what has — or might have — happened to such private information, and there is no law that forces them to do so.

Let’s face it: disclosing that kind of information could be bad for business. And while customers have a right to know what happens to their information, once it is given up to a company, they no longer control it.

It is therefore up to businesses to protect it, and prevent any unauthorized access to it — especially if they want to keep their customers happy.

Unfortunately, there is no way of completely ensuring that any given business or company is guarding your information with 100 per cent accuracy. However, there are steps you can take that will make your identity a little harder for the bad guys to steal.

Below are a few steps you can take to keep your personal information secure.

Watch what you carry

Open your wallet or purse and empty all its contents on a table to have a good look at what confidential and personal information you are actually carrying with you. The following items should stay at home in a safe location:

• Social insurance card
• Passport
• Birth certificate
• Any other cards with your social insurance number as an account number, such as a private health insurance card

Get rid of it the right way

If you want to throw away documents that contain account numbers or other personal information, shred them first. In fact, criminals could still piece together shredded documents if they are very eager, so consider purchasing a cross-cut shredder. While that might seem extreme, consider that over 60 per cent of a person’s identity can be found in his or her garbage can.

Worse yet, it is not illegal to venture into someone else’s trash if it is in a public area.

Keep your PIN private

According to a 2006 national Ipsos Reid poll, more than half (51 per cent) of Canadians are concerned about fraud at Automated Teller Machines (ATMs) after hearing news stories that feature ATM fraud.

A full 15 per cent of Canadians indicate that they are much more concerned than they were before hearing the stories. However, seven out of 10 people surveyed have no plans to change how often they use ATMs.

There are safe ways to use these machines. When you visit an ATM, always type in a bad personal identification number (PIN) first. Doing so will ensure PIN validation and that the machine is really hooked up to the banking service.

In recent years, card duplication has been on the rise — so, for instance, if at a gas station the card reader was switched out for a writer, your card could be copied. While the particle strip on the back of the card does not contain your PIN, the thieves could try to find a way to get it. In fact, the latest technology they are using is an ATM keypad with a keylogger built in that record your password.

To make it more convenient for these thieves, they’ve installed WiFi in the unit so they can access it from the parking lot and download the logs. When using a bank machine or debit card, be on the lookout for any potential cameras around you and try to cover the keypad as much as possible. Type the PIN using your index finger.

There is a plan to have all cards upgraded to a “Chip Card” by 2007. These are more secure because your bank, for example, will program your card with your fingerprint, so instead of just a PIN the chip card will be required when you want to use a bank machine. The card will auto-generate an encrypted certificate to be used for that session, making the card impossible to copy — at least until the criminals come up with a way to circumvent that as well.

Good things are not always what they seem

Ever heard of caller ID spoofing?

Using Vonage or any Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) service, criminals can use an open-source software program to have any number they want appear on a caller ID display.

This trick has already gotten into the hands of people who use this service for fraud. If you receive a call from a person claiming to be a telemarketer, trying to sell you something that seems too good to be true, ask for a number and call back before purchasing. Do not give out any personal information to someone over the phone before verifying his or her identity.

Don’t fall for the phish

Another common form of fraud is the “phishing scam.” Let’s say, for example, you receive an e-mail from eBay asking you to update your personal information. The link appears to be a valid eBay web address, but if you view the source, it is actually another IP address that looks exactly like the real eBay.

Other common phishing scams use e-mails that claim to be from banks, saying your account has been compromised. To avoid getting caught in these kinds of scams, type the web address manually into your browser instead of clicking the link.

Most large companies have an “abuse” e-mail address for customers’ convenience, so consider forwarding the suspicious e-mail to that address, such as "abuse@ebay.com."

Concerns about bank account security should warrant a call to the bank directly. If you’re suspicious about an e-mail you receive, you can also check it out with Hoax Slayer — www.hoax-slayer.com.

Shopper’s paradise

Sometimes we want to take advantage of “online only” specials, and look to make a purchase online. Having a credit card with a relatively small limit (say $250 to $500) instead of using your major card is a good way to protect yourself if the sale is too good
to be true. This ensures that if your information is captured by criminals, they won’t have access to too much money.

Otherwise, consider calling the company directly to give your credit card and personal information over the phone instead of over the Internet.

Keep tabs on your information

Canadians are able to order copies of their credit reports from Equifax and Trans Union Canada for about $15 to $20. These reports contain all the financial and credit history a person owns — including credit cards, loans, lines of credit — as well as phone numbers for the institutions that granted these.

Additionally, anyone who has ever called in and requested your credit history is listed in the reports, with the date and time. It’s a very important and worthwhile investment.

As criminals get savvier, consumers must get wiser. Be alert and pay attention to how you distribute your personal information — your identity depends on it.

Here are a few more tips to keep you, and your identity, safer:

• Your PIN is your electronic signature. Don't write it down — memorize it.
• When selecting a PIN, avoid the obvious — this would include your name, phone number, birthday, and address.
• Never disclose your PIN to anyone. No one but you is legally allowed to use it, including your spouse. No one from a legitimate financial institution, police service or business should ever ask for your PIN.
• Always conduct your ATM transactions when and where you feel most secure. If you are uncomfortable about using the machine for any reason, do it later, or go to another location.
• After completing a transaction, remember to take your bank card and your transaction record. Once you are done with the transaction paper, shred it.
• If your bank card is lost, stolen or retained by an ATM, notify your financial institution immediately. Most institutions have 1-800 numbers and/or 24-hour service for lost or stolen cards.
• Don’t carry too much identification in one place.
• Give your SIN only to those who are entitled by law to ask for it.
• Carefully check your bank and credit card statements monthly.
• Shred important papers before recycling them.

If you have become a victim of theft:

• File a police report.
• Contact all your creditors to advise them of the fraud and to halt all transactions.
• Contact the fraud units of the Credit Bureau as well as Equifax and Trans Union of Canada.

Resources for Canadian victims of identity theft:

PhoneBusters National Call Centre (PNCC)
Ontario Provincial Police Anti-Rackets
Toll Free: 1 888 495-8501
Toll Free Fax: 1 888 654-9426
Email: info@phonebusters.com
Web: www.phonebusters.com

Credit reporting Agencies:

Place fraud alerts on your credit reports by contacting the credit bureaus that operate in
Canada:
• Equifax Canada

Report fraud:
1 800 465-7166
Web: www.equifax.com/EFX_Canada
• Trans Union Canada

Report fraud:
1 877 525-3823
Web: www.tuc.ca

For additional information:
The Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada
112 Kent Street
Ottawa, ON K1A 1H3
E-mail: info@privcom.gc.ca
Visit: http://www.privcom.gc.ca/fs-fi/02_05_d_10_e.asp
http://www.canada.com/topics/technol...c41174&k=85027





Open Source Project Adds "No Military Use" Clause to the GPL
Tina Gasperson

GPU is a Gnutella client that creates ad-hoc supercomputers by allowing individual PCs on the network to share CPU resources with each other. That's intriguing enough, but the really interesting thing about GPU is the license its developers have given it. They call it a "no military use" modified version of the GNU General Public License (GPL).

Tiziano Mengotti and Rene Tegel are the lead developers on the GPU project. Mengotti is the driving force behind the license "patch," which says "the program and its derivative work will neither be modified or executed to harm any human being nor through inaction permit any human being to be harmed."

Mengotti says the clause is specifically intended to prevent military use. "We are software developers who dedicate part of our free time to open source development. The fact is that open source is used by the military industry. Open source operating systems can steer warplanes and rockets. [This] patch should make clear to users of the software that this is definitely not allowed by the licenser."

He says some might think an attempt to prevent military use might be "too idealistic" and would not work in practice, but he references the world of ham radio, whose rules specify that the technology is not to be used commercially. "Surprisingly enough, this rule is respected by almost every ham operator."

The developers readily acknowledge that the "patch" contradicts the original intention of the GPL, to provide complete freedom for users of software and source code licensed under it. "This license collides with paragraph six of the Open Source Definition," is how they word it in the license preamble.

Richard Stallman, the founder of the Free Software movement and author of the GPL, says that while he doesn't support the philosophy of "open source," neither does he believe software developers or distributors have the right to try to control other people's activities through restricting the software they run. "Nonetheless, I don't think the requirement is entirely vacuous, so we cannot disregard it as legally void."

"As a pacifist, I sympathize with their goals," says Russ Nelson, president of the Open Source Initiative (OSI). "People who feel strongly about war will sometimes take actions which they realize are ineffectual, but make it clear that they are not willing to take action which directly supports war."

Tegel says he doesn't fully agree with the inclusion of the clause in GPU's license. "I see the point, and my personal opinion supports it, but I am not sure if it fits in a license," he says. "Like our Dutch military: I can say it is bad because it kills people and costs money. But on the other hand, we were taught by both our leftist and rightist teachers to enjoy our freedom due to the alliance freeing us from Nazis, a thing which I appreciate very much."

Both developers do agree about one aspect of their license clause. It is based on the first of science fiction writer Isaac Asimov's Three Law of Robotics, which states, "A robot may not harm a human being, or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm." That, they say, is a good thing, "because the guy was right," Tegel says, "and he showed the paradox that almost any technological development has to solve, whether it is software or an atom bomb. We must discuss now what ethical problems we may raise in the future."
http://www.newsforge.com/article.pl?.../08/14/1438204





US Satellite Plan 'Will Knock Out Pacific Radio Links'
Kent Atkinson

Pacific Island nations -- and airline pilots around the globe -- could lose high frequency radio links for up to a week if the US goes ahead with a plan to protect its satellite network, Otago University researchers said today.

They warned the Americans plan to protect its satellites from both natural radiation and "airbursts" of nuclear weapons posed a global communications threat.

The US Air Force and the US Defence Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) have proposed using very low frequency radio waves to flush particles from radiation "belts" above Earth and dump them into the upper atmosphere over either one or several days.
This deluge of dumped charged particles would temporarily change the ionosphere from a "mirror" that bounced high frequency radio waves around the planet to a "sponge" that soaked them up, Dr Craig Rodger of Otago University's physics department, said today.

The ionosphere is one of the highest layers of the Earth's atmosphere, starting at about 70km and continuing out to about 640km, and contains ions created when solar radiation tears electrons off atoms in the atmosphere. It is important for reflection of some radio waves.

Dr Rodger, lead researcher on a multinational study also involving scientists from Finland and Britain, said plane pilots and ships would lose radio contact and some Pacific Island nations could be isolated for up to a week, depending on the system's design and how it was operated.

He said GPS services would also likely suffer large-scale disruptions, if signals between ground users and satellites were scrambled in the ionosphere.

The US "radiation belt remediation" was intended to protect hundreds of low earth-orbiting satellites from having their onboard electronics ruined by charged particles in unusually intense radiation belts "pumped up" by powerful solar storms -- or small nuclear weapons deliberately exploded in the atmosphere to disrupt communications.

"Earth's upper atmosphere would be dramatically affected by such a system, causing unusually intense high-frequency (radio) blackouts around most of the world," Dr Rodger said.

The researchers, whose work is published work in August edition of the international journal Annales Geophysicae, called for policymakers to carefully consider the implications of the US scheme.

"If the intense radiation belts resulted from a rogue state detonating a nuclear-tipped missile in the upper atmosphere, using such remediation technology would probably be acceptable to the international community," they said.

But the case for using the system to mitigate the lesser risk to satellites from charged particles injected by naturally-occurring solar storms needed to be considered more closely and weighed against the impact of the disruption to global communications.
Many developed countries use HF radio for communicating with aircraft and ships, international broadcasting, amateur radio, and fixed long-distance communications, and developing countries use it for domestic links - national broadcasters and both mobile and fixed point-to-point communications.

The researchers also considered whether the changes to atmospheric chemistry would harm the ozone layer, but found that ozone depletion would be short-lived.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/st...ectID=10396164





Advanced Micro Is Updating Its Key Chips

Advanced Micro Devices, the maker of processors for personal computers, is updating the Opteron server chips that have driven the company’s market-share gains against Intel.

New versions of the Opteron will connect with a faster type of memory chip, have built-in access for management software and make computers easily upgraded with new chips out next year, said Brent Kerby, a product manager for the company.

Gains by the Opteron since its introduction in 2003 have helped Advanced Micro cut Intel’s share of the market for PC processors to less than 80 percent for the first time in four years. The upgrade of the Opteron comes a month after Intel released the first complete redesign of its Xeon server chip in more than six years. Companies use servers to run their networks and Web sites.

At the end of the second quarter, Advanced Micro, which is based in Sunnyvale, Calif., had 26 percent of the market for servers built on PC chips, more than double the share a year earlier, according to Mercury Research of Cave Creek, Ariz.

The new Opteron chips will have built-in support for so-called virtualization technology, which allows computers to run multiple operating systems, an ability that Intel’s Xeon chips have had since November.
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/16/te...gy/16chip.html





Stalemate Seen In High-Definition DVD War

The battle between two hyped formats for high-definition DVD will confuse shoppers and turn many of them off the whole technology, a London-based research firm predicted on Friday.

Market research analyst Screen Digest also forecast that only $11 billion of the total $39 billion expected to be spent on video discs by 2010 in the United States, Europe and Japan will be generated by the competing high-definition formats, Sony-backed Blu-ray and Toshiba-supported HD DVD.

"The net result of the format war and the publicity it has generated will be to dampen consumer appetite for the whole high-definition disc category," Screen Digest analyst Ben Keen said.

The DVD format exploded into a multibillion-dollar global industry for movie and TV studios in part because the largely universal format delivered a more convenient way to own movies than its predecessor, the VHS videotape.

"This time both formats support similar features," said Graham Sharpless, who wrote the report.

The new formats are being introduced just as DVD sales level off, after consumers built up libraries of their favorite movies and TV shows at deeply discounted prices.

The specter of Betamax
Electronics retailers such as Best Buy and CompUSA are frustrated by the raging format war, fearful of another decade-long tussle similar to the one between VHS and Betamax. They have been predicting a lackluster Christmas selling season, expecting consumers to wait for one format to win out.

Screen Digest predicts that the two formats will co-exist until a combined solution becomes cost-effective, rather than taking the view that one will emerge victorious or that both will flop so badly as to be driven into extinction.

All of the Hollywood studios, except Universal, have said they will release movies on Blu-ray, with the first players and titles having launched earlier this year.

While only three of the major studios have said they will release movies in HD-DVD, Microsoft has thrown its weight behind the format, supporting it in the Windows Vista PC operating system and offering an external drive to connect to its Xbox 360 game console.

Sony is incorporating Blu-ray into its Playstation 3 video game console, due out later this year, to push its format into more homes.

Screen Digest expects that 430,000 standalone Blu-ray and HD-DVD players and recorders will be sold in 2006 and 1.35 million in 2007.

By 2010, it expects about 15 million U.S. households (21 percent of homes with high-definition TV sets), 10 million in Europe (17 percent) and 2.5 million (7.4 percent) in Japan will have bought a standalone unit, while 24 million, 23 million and 15 million high-definition-disc games consoles will have been sold.

As standalone units, a Samsung Blu-ray player sells for about $1,000 and a Toshiba HD-DVD player for about $500.
http://news.com.com/Stalemate+seen+i...3-6104503.html





DVD Giveaways Signal Woes Of Once-Booming Format
Jeffrey Goldfarb

British newspapers are now giving away free as many DVDs as are being purchased in stores, revealing a stealth contributing factor to the decline of Hollywood's cash cow format.

The cover-mounted DVD giveaways, which have included "Star Wars" and "Donnie Darko", devalue the format in the eyes of consumers, one-quarter of whom said they would have bought the same title if they had seen it in shops for a reasonable price, according to a report released on Thursday.

In the first quarter of 2006, about 54 million DVDs were given away to British consumers who bought newspapers and magazines, about the same number as were sold by retailers over the same span, market research firm Screen Digest said, using data supplied by TNS and Ipsos.

That compares with 130 million DVDs that were given away in 2005 by the country's national newspapers, including the Daily Telegraph, the Times, The Sun and the Daily Express, and 211 million that were sold in shops.

Although most of the freebies are old and sometimes forgotten films, Screen Digest estimated that had they been bought the 2005 DVD giveaways would have represented 495 million pounds ($938.4 million) in retail sales.

In more realistic terms, if one-quarter of homes that received a free DVD each bought one additional disc a quarter at a deeply discounted 4 pounds each, additional UK spending on the format would have been about 50 million pounds.

That would have boosted DVD sales by 2.3 percent to 2.3 billion pounds, Screen Digest said, instead of the market staying flat for the first time in the nine-year history of the format.

"It's clear that that kind of quantity of free discs circulating in the market cannot help but have a dampening effect on the purchase of DVDs," said Helen Davis Jayalath, Screen Digest's senior home entertainment analyst.

Newspapers in other European countries, including Italy, France and Spain, also give away DVDs, but they typically charge an extra euro or two for the periodical when including one.

"Even though it's only a couple of euros, it helps maintain the value of the format in the eyes of consumers," Jayalath said.

There are other markets where DVD giveaways have caused controversy. In Greece, for example, retailers have appealed to the government to ban cover-mounts after one Sunday newspaper distributed the hit "Lord of the Rings" trilogy and two discs with extra material over a five-week span.

DVD sales came to a screeching halt across Europe last year, where they flattened at about 11.3 billion euros ($14.52 billion), after experiencing 41 percent growth in 2004 compared with 2003 and even more explosive growth earlier in the decade.

Deep price cuts have been the main culprit. The average price of a DVD in Britain fell 30 percent between 2000 and 2005.

Small gains in the United States and Japan helped lift global DVD sales in 2005 3.5 percent to $36.7 billion.

Although most of the major Hollywood studios oppose the newspaper giveaways, the smaller local distributors who have licensed the films are opportunistically doing deals with publishers for short-term gains that can generate as much as 250,000 pounds for a film.

"The argument in favor of this is that the majority of these films have reached the end of their commercial cycle," Jayalath said. "In many cases, they're no longer stocked because traditional retailers have a limited amount of space. For the rights holder, it can be the last bite of the cherry."
http://today.reuters.com/news/articl...NEWSPAPERS.xml





Pumping Power Onto The Grid From Your Basement
Martin LaMonica

In a 21st century twist on Microsoft's original "PC in every home" vision, a young company has created a home energy-storage appliance that connects to the power grid--and the Internet.

Called GridPoint, the 3-year-old company has developed "intelligent energy management" systems, which it claims can help people lower their electricity bills.

It makes two products: a storage appliance that works in conjunction with a renewable power source, such as solar electric panels, and a back-up power supply unit. Both refrigerator-size boxes are equipped with Net-connected PCs that collect and analyze data on power usage.

Using the company's software, people can lower their energy consumption by having the system shut off appliances at certain times. Or people can power their homes from their batteries on a schedule that makes best use of changing electricity tariffs, according to GridPoint.

The Washington, D.C.-based company is part of a wave of start-ups entering the clean technology sector and seeking to create business opportunities from higher energy prices. A handful of these clean tech companies, including GridPoint, are focusing on technologies that lower power costs, in part by shifting electricity usage to different times of the day.

"Energy shifters change the timing of when energy is drawn off the system--they don't necessarily reduce the use of energy overall," said Rob Day, an investor at Expansion Capital Partners. "They are betting on time-of-use (pricing) working its way more and more into the regulatory environment. That's probably a valid assumption."

In September, GridPoint plans to announce a partnership with a utility industry company to tap into the kilowatt-hours of storage sitting in people's basements, Chief Operating Officer Karl Lewis said.

The idea is that the utility will purchase and install the storage units in customers' homes in a certain region. To avoid potentially expensive spikes in demand, such as hot summer days that could cause blackouts, utilities will draw on the stored electricity in the GridPoint systems, Lewis said.

Having the storage units connected directly to the electricity grid allows the utility to pull the electricity from the disparate appliances, much like servers and PCs exchange data over the Internet.

"This supply-side technology can put elasticity into the electrical grid," said Lewis, adding that the deal involves a product designed specifically for utilities. "We can do that because we have a network operations center, so we can control a set of boxes in the field."

Peak shaving
Peak energy periods can be very costly to utilities, which may have to ramp up production by putting reserved power plants online or to expand capacity by building new power plants. With record heat in the U.S. this summer, for example, utilities in Northeastern states and California urged consumers to scale back use of air conditioning and other power-intensive activities.

Programs to lower energy consumption during the day have been around for some time by utilities interested in balancing energy demand, Lewis said. For example, people could agree to have their radio-equipped water heaters turned off or their air conditioner thermostats turned up during the day.

Lewis said these "negawatt" programs are aimed at smoothing out demand over the course of a day to avoid overtaxing the electrical grid. By contrast, GridPoint is trying to add more supply to the grid network. "It's discharging during periods of grid stress," he said.

The partnership calls for utilities to actually own the storage units and have a "service relationship" with the customer that includes the storage device, he added. But GridPoint also sells directly to consumers and is trying to develop partnerships with building companies that would pre-install storage devices.

The company sells its $10,500 back-up power unit, GridPoint Protect, as a cleaner alternative to diesel generators--which have become more common in places like Florida, as it has been hit with devastating hurricanes in the last few years. The devices, equipped with an Intel PC running Windows CE, can be monitored and serviced over the Internet.

The $11,000 GridPoint Connect, a separate unit, is sold more on the basis of the economic benefit, Lewis said. It acts as a turnkey system, with an inverter and either 7 kilowatt-hours or 10 kilowatt-hours of storage, to accompany a solar electric system. And its data-collecting tools help consumers shave money off their bills.

"The computers in these boxes are making decisions with regards to energy based on the value of energy at that point in time and the historical consumption of that residence," Lewis said, adding that part of the company's management team has a background in software and communications.

Electricity tariffs that change over the course of the day to reflect fluctuations in demand are still not commonplace for U.S. consumers. However, the Energy Policy Act of 2005 (click for PDF) calls on state utility regulatory bodies to explore "time-based metering and communications" next year, which would allow customers to participate in "time-based pricing rate schedules and other demand response programs."

Another company that is trying to capitalize on "peak shaving" or "peak shifting" is Ice Energy, which makes an air-conditioner add-on that freezes water in the evening to cool the refrigerant, rather than run the AC during heat of the day.

Ice Energy sells its units directly to businesses but is also investigating ties with utilities including those in California that are struggling with the costs associated with meeting peak demand.

Extremely high summer temperatures that tax the grid, such as those happening this summer in the U.S., are happening more frequently, according to Ice Energy CEO Frank Ramirez.

"Utilities used to plan for what they call one in 10 (extremely high temperature) events. Now they are finding they are becoming one in three or one in four events," he said.

"The occurrence of sustained high temperatures is wreaking havoc on the ability to maintain the integrity of the grid," Ramirez said.
http://news.com.com/Pumping+power+on...3-6104005.html





Need for Battery Power Runs Into Basic Hurdles of Science
Damon Darlin and Barnaby J. Feder

It always seems to happen: Long before it is time to stow your tray table, your laptop battery gives out, and you spend the rest of your cross-country trip reading the SkyMall catalog.

In the information age, people want their electronics everywhere they go, and they want them to be on all the time. But they rely on batteries that have not improved as rapidly as the devices they power. Moore’s Law, which offers a yardstick for the exponential advances in computer chips, has no counterpart in the world of batteries.

Researchers are certainly trying to improve the situation, in part because there is money to be made. Portable rechargeable batteries are expected to be a $6.2 billion market this year, and more than one billion batteries will be made by some of the largest electronics companies in the world: Sony, Sanyo, Matsushita and Samsung.

But scientists are running into some basic hurdles of chemistry and physics. The more energy they store in a small package, the more volatile and dangerous that package becomes.

The volatility of batteries in laptops, and those powering millions of portable consumer devices from cellphones to power drills, was made apparent Monday with Dell’s recall of 4.1 million laptop batteries. Dell said the batteries, made by Sony, could catch fire because of a problem in the manufacturing process.

Though the chance of a flaming notebook is small, the number of incidents involving burning batteries is rising each year because there are so many more devices using small and powerful power sources.

There is another pressing reason for the quest for improvements: battery-powered cars. An electric car needs a power source that is 2,000 times as powerful as a laptop battery. “That size would be extremely dangerous,” said Sanjeev Mukerjee, a chemistry and chemical biology professor at Northeastern University. “This technology has a downside, and that is that it is very sensitive to how it is manufactured.”

The potential for fire in a lithium-ion battery is a result of its chemical composition. Contained in that small package are all the elements needed for a fierce blaze: carbon, oxygen and a flammable fluid. The battery is made of a thin layer of lithium cobalt oxide, which serves as the cathode, and a strip of graphite, the anode. These are separated by a porous insulator and surrounded by fluid, a lithium salt electrolyte that happens to be highly flammable.

When the battery is charged, lithium ions on the cathode migrate to the anode. As the battery is used, the ions migrate back to provide the energy. In the charged state, the cathode without most of its ions is highly unstable. If a spark occurs, the temperature of the cathode can exceed 275 degrees.

That is hot enough to cause the cathode to decompose and release oxygen. A fire starts, and as heat builds the battery begins what scientists call a “thermal runaway.” In the case of the Sony-made batteries recalled by Dell, a microscopic metal particle that contaminated the electrolyte during manufacturing caused the spark.

Scientists are looking for new battery chemistry that does not involve carbon, oxygen and fuel. One route is to make an electrolyte that is not flammable, said Jai Prakash, associate professor of chemical engineering at the Illinois Institute of Technology. But much of the work is concentrated on replacing the cobalt-based cathode with magnesium. Others want to get the carbon out of the system. Sony, for instance, has a new generation of batteries that use tin.

Valence Technology, a maker of alternatives to lithium-ion batteries in Austin, Tex., uses a phosphate-based cathode. “Consumers do a lot of bad things to battery packs,” said James R. Akridge, Valence’s chief executive. “These provide an extra measure of safety if they shake it or smack it.”

Valence products are used in Segway scooters and hospital diagnostic equipment. But the company has no intentions of competing against the large lithium-ion battery makers in the market for consumer devices. Mr. Akridge said the big companies dominate because they compete on price, and “price is determined by scale.”

As consumers demand more from notebooks and cellphones, the electronics industry may need a whole new way of thinking about power supplies. The most likely candidates are miniaturized versions of the fuel cells that are being developed for cars. Fuel cells use hydrogen, but because hydrogen is hard to store and handle, many microcells get hydrogen from fuels like methanol.

Microcells intrigue companies that make laptops, cellphones and other portable devices because they can store far more energy than comparably sized batteries. Methanol-based microcells, for instance, have roughly 10 times the energy density, creating the prospect of wireless laptops that could run all day without recharging, according to Rick Cooper, vice president for business development of PolyFuel Inc. The company, based in Mountain View, Calif., supplies components to several Asian manufacturers that have been working on such devices.

“The energy capacity of batteries is increasing 5 percent to 8 percent annually, but demand is increasing exponentially,” Mr. Cooper said.

The tweaking of materials and chemicals in the lithium-ion battery will extend its usefulness for at least another decade or more, said Gao Liu, a scientist at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. He expects innovation to come slowly.

“We don’t see any new energy storage devices,” Mr. Liu said. The best bet for the future is probably fuel cells, he said, but it may be more than a decade before they start appearing in mass-market portable devices.

Microcells have been just over the industry’s horizon since Toshiba demonstrated a prototype at a trade show in 2003. Pulling together all of the components has proved more challenging than fuel cell advocates predicted.

Manufacturers of fuel cells have been looking to the military and niche markets like users of professional video cameras as their first customers.

Nanotechnology, the fast-developing field that involves manipulating materials at scales measured in billionths of a meter, is likely to play a significant role in the future of consumer batteries. One essential for further development of current battery designs is the ability to cram more energy into today’s packaging. Nanoscale processes could be used to make the surfaces of electrodes more porous, creating a larger surface area for chemical reactions.

Nanotechnology could also help improve the performance of competing technology like fuel cells. “Designer” molecules and films that could act as improved catalysts in fuel cells are a hot research area.

But to some nanotechnology companies, consumer batteries are too competitive to be a high priority. Altair Nanotechnologies, based in Reno, Nev., claims that its technology has safety advantages over lithium-ion batteries, but Altair executives say the difference would not be enough to win over makers of laptops and cellphones. Nor could Altair compete on cost.

“If you go into laptops, you are competing with well-entrenched companies that make millions of batteries and have been doing it for years,” said Alan J. Gotcher, Altair’s chief executive.
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/16/te...16battery.html





YouTube Fixes Stuff During Outage
Jon Swartz and Michelle Kessler

A database glitch plunged popular video-sharing website YouTube into darkness for at least five hours Tuesday, leaving millions of users without service.

Company officials did not return phone calls, offering only a brief statement.

"We are experiencing a temporary site outage due to a database-related issue," said Julie Supan, YouTube's senior marketing director, in a statement at noon PT. "Our engineering team expects the site to be up and running in the next few hours."

Keynote Systems, which tracks Internet performance, began fielding calls from YouTube users at 8 a.m.. By 1 p.m., the site had been restored.

In the morning, YouTube's site with video links was replaced with a cryptic note and diagram saying it was "putting out some new features, sweeping out the cobwebs and zapping a few gremlins."

By noon, the note had been changed: "OK. We admit it. We're fixing stuff, but we'll be up soon."

The abrupt outage sent YouTube's fervent users into a tizzy for several hours. "NOOOOOO," a blogger named Spartan_mc declared. "Youtube is down, the world is ending!!!!! Now how will (I) waste away the last hour and a half here at work."

"All over the world people are screaming at the top of their lungs," chimed in blogger Bezahlt.org.

Social-networking site MySpace.com and other popular Internet destinations routinely shut down sections of their services for a few minutes, usually at night, for maintenance. But they are rarely down for an extended period during normal business hours.

YouTube is among the fastest-growing websites. It logged 16 million unique visitors in the USA in July, according to researcher ComScore Media Metrix. That was the first time YouTube broke into ComScore's Top 50 list of most-popular websites. Among websites with video, Yahoo Video is tops, with 21.1 million unique viewers in the USA in July.

The outage occurred as YouTube faces competition from Yahoo, MySpace, Google, Microsoft MSN, AOL and a swarm of smaller sites, such as Revver. Google declined to say whether it gained viewers during the outage.

YouTube site specializes in short — typically 2-minute — homemade, comic videos created by users. YouTube serves as a quick entertainment break for viewers with broadband computer connections at work or home.

In June, 2.5 billion videos were watched on YouTube, the company said last month. More than 65,000 videos uploaded daily at that time to YouTube, up from around 50,000 in May.
http://www.usatoday.com/money/indust...e-outage_x.htm





'Digital Prohibition' Inhibits YouTube Culture

Legal obstacles holding back user generated content, warns Lawrence Lessig
Tom Sanders

Copyright restrictions are constraining the user generation content revolution and requires a revolution challenging to force a breakthrough, Stanford law professor Lawrence Lessig charged in an opening keynote at the Linuxworld conference in San Francisco.

Lessig is a founder of the Center for Internet and Society, co-created the Creative Commons license and is a known proponent of reduced legal restrictions on copyright, trademark and radio frequency spectrum, particularly in technology applications.

Copyright restrictions are designed for a world in which a small elite creates media for the masses, but such a structure is an historical anomaly, Lessig pointed out. Consumers were used to produce and create their own entertainment before the creation of mass media.

"Never before had a production been as concentrated and as professionalized, " Lessig noted.

Lessig described the original situation as a read-write structure, where individuals are able to both create and consume media. The copyright restrictions of the twentieth century however form the equivalent of a "read only" culture.

Examples of the "read-write" culture are commonly found on services like YouTube, where consumers mix and match existing media to create new media and express opinions, exercise criticism or propagate political views.

"The law as currently architected smothers this read write creativity," said Lessig.

He added that artist have a right to be compensated for their work, but charged that society needs to strike a balance between preventing piracy and the ability for individuals to "build and spread our culture".

Children today are already practicing the read-write culture, Lessig pointed out.

"We can't kill this, only criminalize it. We can't force them to become the same couch potatoes that we are. We can only make them pirates."

Lessig concluded that we are living in an "age of prohibition" and called upon open source developers to create technologies that challenge the notions around copyright. They have demonstrated an ability to challenge conventions before when they defeated the Windows monopoly, he argued.
b
Several artists for instance have released music under the creative commons license that Lessig co-created, promoting others to mix and use it to create new culture forms. He also referred to services such the Gnash free Flash initiative and the Ogg Vorbis open source audio encoding format.

Open culture isn't just an idealistic, left-wing project, Lessig stressed. It will also foster economic growth.

"Only you can teach that to those outside of your world," Lessig told delegates at Linuxworld. "Elsewhere too few of us get it."
http://www.vnunet.com/vnunet/news/21...ition-inhibits





News From The North



The TankGirl Diaries


12.8.2006

First Verdicts in a Large Finnish Filesharing Case

A trial against two young Finnish filesharers in Lahti, a city of 100.000 inhabitants, started a long chain of trials stemming from the late 2004 raid of Finreactor, a popular Finnish torrent site with 10.000 registered members at the time of the raid. The site including a tracker was running on a rented server in Holland. The server was confiscated and delivered to the Finnish police who thus got access to the user information and could further identify the users. By studying the transfer logs from the ratio based tracker the prosecutors picked 60 people to be charged, including the site administrators and a selection of most active sharers.

The court in Lahti concluded that copyright infringement had taken place but decided not to punish the defendants due to their young age. However, the two boys were ordered to pay compensations to the copyright owners, 2.300 euros (2.830 USD) and 1.150 euros (1.415 USD) respectively. The applied criterion for the compensations was 10 % of the retail price of the shared items. The demand of the plaintiffs was 60.000 euros (74.000 USD) . The defendants announced in the court that they fail to see anything criminal in what they did.

Similar trials will continue in various Finnish cities throughout the autumn until all 60 defendants have got their verdicts. The total compensation demands of the copyright holders - including software, movie and music companies - from the 60 defendants are 3.5 million euros (4.3 million USD). The news from these Finreactor trials will contrast sharply the public filesharing debate going on in the neighbouring Sweden. There the political pressure to legalize private filesharing just keeps growing, and the Swedish Pirate Party is ready to take the fight for legal filesharing into the Swedish Parliament.

16.8.2006

Wanna Bet?

NordicBet, the Scandinavian branch of betting company Betpoint Ltd, has Pirate Party's election result as one of its five political betting targets. The bet is on whether the Pirates will reach the 4 % vote threshold and make it to the Parliament. Yesterday the odds were 40:1 against Pirate Party making it, with wins limited to 100.000 crowns (13.800 USD) per bet. Seemingly there were quite a few gamblers willing to bet for the pirates with those odds, as today the odds had dropped to 25:1. Still a good chance to make big money with a fairly small bet in case the Pirates make it...

16.8.2006

Hardline Justice Minister Softening Up

TV4.se reports how hardline Justice Minister Thomas Bodström - the main government proponent for stricter copyright laws and for the active harassment of filesharers - seems to be softening up. He has admitted what everybody already knows: that the new stricter copyright law has proven totally ineffective if not irrelevant to the Swedish filesharers. They keep sharing files whatever the law says.

Following Pirate Party-promoted launching of Relakks, a p2p-friendly anonymous proxy service, Bodström has come out with a press release where he calls for an evaluation of the new law. He also wants to hurry up the development of consumer-friendly legal alternatives to the highly popular pirate sources. Cecilia Renfors, the Director of the Swedish Broadcasting Commission, has been called as a 'neutral' party to study how the new law should be changed and how the 'legal alternatives' could be developed more rapidly. She has been given time to next May to come up with propositions.

Bodström thinks that there has been a positive development regarding the 'legal availability' of music and movies on Internet but things should move forward faster. "Both copyright owners and consumers should benefit from more and better legal alternatives becoming available", writes Bodström in his press release.

17.8.2006

Pirates Back In The Media

With only a month to the Swedish parliamentary election, the Pirate Party is again very much in the headlines. Following the party-sponsored launching of the anonymizing service Relakks the visitor counts on party's website have skyrocketed, and the membership has started to grow rapidly again. With its 8168 members the party is clearly larger than the Greens (7249 members) and may well catch Moderata ungdomsförbundet (8503 members), the youth section of Moderaterna, the second largest party in Sweden.

Opinion polls give mixed messages about party's prospects in the election. On all online polls the pirates have been doing very well while more traditional polls based on phone calls to voters give almost insignificant support figures for them. One reason for this discrepancy may be the fact that the phone polls are still targeting only people with old fashion landline phone connections while virtually all younger and more modern Swedes have long ago switched to using cellular phones only. Should the pirates turn out to be succesful in the election, the polling institutes will seriously have to consider updaing their old fashioned sampling practices to avoid systematic errors. On September 17 we will know.

The NordicBet betting odds for the Pirate Party are 1:20 at the moment.

19.8.2006

Jonas Birgersson, the Man Behind Relakks, Talks

Jonas Birgersson, the managing director of stock-listed company Labs2, is the man behind the new pirate service Relakks that makes possible anonymous filesharing. The service got world famous practically in a day with the special promotional help from the Swedish Pirates.

"As I see it, it is not filesharing that is important", says Birgersson in an interview to di.se, "but rather the access to the entire Internet without limitations on the information being accessed or software being used, and without fear of retaliation."

Jonas Birgersson sees three reasons why Relakks is needed.

First reason is that in countries like Iran and China the access to Internet is censored. With services like Relakks people can get access to all information on Internet.

Second reason is that in many countries, e.g. in USA, service providers block access to certain services on the net for commercial reasons. For example they may prevent their customers from using other IP-telephone operators.

Third reason are the cases of compromised privacy like AOL's recent misjudged releasing of log files that revealed surfing habits of individual customers. "Relakks opens the possibility to give a better service to Americans, with high security and the house in order", says Birgersson.

But is it not enough for service providers in China, Iran and USA just to block all traffic to Relakks servers and thereby prevent their customers from using the service? "We have checked this from the earlier providers of similar services, even if they offered only narrowband services, and we concluded that it is not so difficult to stay a step ahead of the censors."

There is already a lot of speculation on the net whether Relakks will evolve into a safe haven for serious criminals, terrorists and pedophiles. "Relakks nor any other Swedish Internet service is a free zone for serious criminality. Any crime punishable with minimum two years of jail gives the police access to traffic data from Relakks as from any other Swedish operator." Birgersson also wants to point out that there is already a block list in use in Sweden for child porn sites. All Swedish operators obey this list, and so does also Relakks.

As the service is prepaid, just like a prepaid phone card, Relakks is not allowed to collect any other information than what the customer has given. If the police requests for information about a specific customer, Relakks has nothing else to give but the information given by the customer herself.

When asked whether this is a calculated approach, so that there would be as little information to give as possible, Birgersson says: "No. When we started figuring out Relakks service, we opted for prepayment mainly to minimize credit risks. We also understand that there are users who are nervous to give out their social security numbers. And as we have customers from the entire world, there would be no way to control such numbers anyway."

And why the co-operation with Pirate Party?

"It is in our plans to create a partner program where we would reward anybody finding us new customers with a few crowns. Pirate Party was simply the first and the fastest partner to do that, but later on we will have also other partners from other directions."
http://www.p2p-zone.com/underground/...d.php?p=248133

http://reflectionsonp2p.blogspot.com/





Book review

Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide
author Henry Jenkins
pages 336
publisher New York University Press
rating 10
reviewer Ravi Purushotma
ISBN 0814742815
summary Convergence Culture offers numerous insights on how technology and media professionals can forge better relationships with their customers

In one example, he follows the progression of the Harry Potter franchise after Warner Brothers purchased the film rights. In the interest of protecting their trademark, the studio sent out cease-and-desist letters to an online network of pre/teen [largely] girls who had been writing and sharing stories about Harry Potter as a way of learning to improve their writing skills. Rather than desisting, they coordinated a global protest that became a major P.R. headache for Warner Brothers -- who ultimately had to back down. This is likened to the confused message LucasFilms sent its customers when its movie division attempted to litigate control of the Star Wars storyline away from fans, while at the same LucasArts was trying to encourage players of Star Wars Gallaxies to explore and expand the Star Wars universe.

By themselves, the case studies are perhaps not that dissimilar from the many other accounts of industry execs completely botching their community relations. However, as the director of the Comparative Media Studies program at MIT, Jenkins adds some insightful perspectives on thinking about technology and the structuring of new-media companies in response to internet communities. Contrasting the typical response of U.S. companies to technologies like filesharing, he looks at the attitudes of Japanese anime and manga producers -- outlining how their more open attitudes could have influenced the current popularity of Japanese-origin franchises within the United States. Similarly, he looks at the corporate structure behind the Matrix franchise (in particular the Enter The Matrix video game), demonstrating how elements of The Matrix design process could serve as a model for other industries.

The book also contains a second thread running through it looking at 'collective intelligence.' Basically, this can be thought of as a sort of Wisdom of Crowds view of what happens when customers become so tightly networked with one another that they can overpower media producers. One chapter looks at the tv series Survivor and how online spoiler teams shared satellite data, local knowledge and social networks to determine the show's conclusion before it aired. Rather than simply fighting efforts such as these as was done with Survivor, Jenkins outlines examples of how collective intelligence communities could be harnessed to advance products or causes. Using the extensive accomplishments of the 600,000 players in the popular Alternate Reality Game I Love Bees as a model for what is ultimately possible, he outlines how viral marketing, politics and other domains are changing in response to the increasing collaborative abilities of networked fans.

Having previously taken classes with Professor Jenkins, I had long been looking forward to the release of this book. Reading it, I was glad to find the same clear focus on real-world examples and practical applications that was emphasized in his classes. Overall, it reads far more similar to titles like Steven Johnson's Everything Bad is Good for You or Howard Rheingold's Smart Mobs than anything you'd expect from an academic professor.

As the subtitle "where old and new media collide" suggests, the book contains a pretty even split between traditional broadcast/cinematic media and web/video game/mobile media. Anyone interested only in a single media form probably won't find this book that different from any others on their topic. Rather, most of the more unique insights come from Jenkins's understanding of how these different media forms interact to re-enforce one another, and the ways in which consumers navigate between multiple media forms and online channels.

While most of the theories put forth in the book will likely remain relevant for years to come, a few of the case studies are already showing their age. For example, the Star Wars Gallaxies discussion appears to be written before the recent shakeup at Sony Online. This means readers will need to go beyond the book to remain fully up-to-date with some of the examples.

Overall, any reader should find Convergence Culture an extensively researched book using a conversational writing style that makes it truly engaging to read and clearly accessible. However, those in charge of managing community relations, online presence or designing media to cross multiple platforms would likely benefit from it the most.

Disclaimer Notice: The review author is a former MIT student who took classes taught by Henry Jenkins on this topic."
http://books.slashdot.org/books/06/08/14/1315257.shtml





The Future of the Patents Battle, and the July 12th Hearing

The software patents battle will return this Winter. Nothing much is happening this week, so this isn't a call to arms. This entry is a quick review, a look at what's coming, and a late report from the European Commission's July 12th public hearing "Future Patent Policy in Europe"

Sections:

(Note: the section links don't work in Planet syndications)
Background: European patent governance
The previous battle
The coming battle
What will be our difficulties
What factors are on our side
My 3-minute intervention on July 12th

I've gone into some length, but this is still a summary. If you think I've over-simplified or left anything out, leave a comment or email me at ciaran at fsfe dot org.
Background: European patent governance

There are three powers in the patent system:

1. The law makers - write the rules defining what is patentable
2. The patent office - read the law and approve/reject patent applications
3. The national courts - decide whether a patent is valid or not when litigation occurs

This conforms to the traditional European form of governance: there is a separation of the administrative/executive (patent offices), the legislative (law makers), and the judicial (the courts). The theory is that by seperating these powers, a failure in one power can be spotted and fixed by one or two of the others.

The current status of software patents is that the law says that software is not patentable, the patent offices are approving software patent applications, and the national courts are mostly ruling that software patents are invalid.

Side note: The administrative/executive branch of the patent system suffers from bad design. The EPO answers to no one. They can, if they choose, grant patents for absolutely anything. They are instructed to follow the European Patent Convention (EPC), but there is no one with the power review the practice of the EPO and to fix the EPO if the public, or the law makers, or the judiciary believes that the EPC is not being adhered to. Fixing this design flaw might be the path we eventually have to take to secure a swpat-free EU.

The previous battle

The last battle was about legislation. The law makers were asked to change the law to make software patentable. We countered by asking the law makers to clarify the law to a point where the patent office could no longer justify the granting of software patents.

In July 2005, the proposal to change the legislation was dropped entirely. So neither side won. We didn't win, but we did something very significant. We showed that we are a capable player in the legislative arena. Those in favour of software patents evaluated our ability and decided that the risk that we might win was too high, so they walked away.

The coming battle

Now, those in favour of software patent have decided to try modifying the judiciary power. They don't like that the national courts are dismissing cases where software patent holders try to litigate against people.

They've found two ways to get at the judiciary power. One is the "Community Patent", and the other is the EPLA (European Patent Litigation Agreement).

There are proposals, backed by those in favour of software patents, for either of these to put the European Patent Office (EPO) charge of the judiciary power. So instead of patent litigation cases being decided by the national courts, they would be decided by special patent courts with judges appointed by the EPO. ...and the EPO are the people who say that software is patentable. If this happens, software patents will exist in every measurable sense in the EU.

The argument for having this one court is that a single EU-wide court would be more cost effective and would create EU-wide precedent and prevent conflicting results between states. The argument for giving the EPO control over this court is that the court should be made of experts and the EPO are the experts.

What will be our difficulties

1. In the last battle, we proved ourselves to be particularly capable at working with the European Parliament (EP), but in the Community Patent, the EP have only an advisory role, and in the EPLA they have no influence.
2. The procedure is different. In the last battle, we expended a lot of expert-time in figuring out timetables and what power each body has at each stage and which milestones have effects on the end result that are irreversible or hard to reverse.
3. The media spotlight isn't one this issue anymore.
4. Many of us, the anti-swpat campaigners, have turned our attention to other things.

What factors are on our side

1. There are other factors involved which could greatly delay this. The Community Patent project began in 1968! So it could go on for a long time. The other side of this is that there are people who would love to see this get finished, so if it ever looks finishable, there will be a lot of people pushing to rush it to the finish line.
2. Both the Community Patent and the EPLA are aimed at fixing a perceived problem that patent litigation is too expensive and bureaucratic. This is good for us because it will be hard for anyone to argue simultaneously both that the patent system is very cumbersome and that it should be expanded.
3. The idea of giving the administrative/executive branch control over the judicial branch contradicts the European idea of democracy (and probably most or all regions's ideas of democracy). If this inappropriateness can be pointed out to the public and the media, it shold be easily understandable.

My 3-minute intervention on July 12th

Preface

Below is exactly what I said for my intervention at the hearing. Given more time, I could have done better, but there were limits to what anything I said could achieve, so it wouldn't have been worthwhile to spend much more time on it anyway. My aims were to register the FSFE does not support either current proposal, that democraticly questionable processes were not going unnoticed, and to remind those present that free software must be considered. I was limited to 3 minutes and I had to speak slowly to ensure that the translators could keep up.

My intervention

Last July, the European Parliament rejected a proposal to codify EPO practice with regards to software patents.

One year later, here we are in a room full of businesses and patent lawyers, discussing a proposal to codify EPO practice.

Without any directly elected representatives, and without journalists and the public, it's certainly quieter, but it is not very democratic.

Business is part of the EU, but there are also people.

I'm not fundamentally against a community-wide patent. The problem is in the implementation.

Separation of executive and judiciary is a cornerstone of European democracy.

The EPO is out of control, but instead of being reined in, it is being given control of the judiciary.

Software can be made and distributed like cars, but it can also be made and distributed in many other models. For this reason, patents affect software differently.

Patents are incompatible with many models used by software SMEs, as has been mentioned by some today.

Patents are also incompatible with many models used by Free Software. This is not just about cost, so it doesn't matter if the costs are doubled or halved.

Free Software is software which can be examined, modified, and re-published. Users of Free Software are enabled and free to help themselves and each other.

Software is an area prone to monopolies. This morning, the European Commission felt the need to fine one company 280 million euro. Software is the only sector that has required such intervention by the European Commission.

Free Software such as the GNU/Linux operating system should not be stiffled because a litigation problem was solved carelessly.
http://fsfe.org/en/fellows/ciaran/we...y_12th_hearing





Man on a Mission
Charles J. Murray

Vindication arrived for Stephen Gass on the afternoon of June 28, 2006, when someone finally agreed with him. It had been nearly seven years since Gass invented his skin-sensing table saw, and in that time he’d begun to wonder if anyone would truly see the wisdom behind his device. Over the years, the responses he received from the power tool industry graduated from indifference to hostility. He’d gone from being a rejected outsider to a festering industry sore. And by 2006, Gass himself had considered quitting many times.

But on that June day, everything changed. Someone understood. Acting on a petition from Gass, engineers at the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission recommended that the government begin a “rulemaking process” that could result in mandatory safety standards for table saws. Days later, the agency’s commissioners shocked the power tool industry by concurring with the recommendation. They saw the wisdom in his petition. Suddenly, the ultimate outsider joined the game, and now he was holding a strong hand.

“Here we had an unbiased government agency saying these saws are unreasonably dangerous,” Gass says now. “So, yes, I did feel somewhat vindicated.”

To be sure, the decision could mean little for Gass’s tiny, barn-based business, known as SawStop LLC. Power tool makers undoubtedly will search for other ways to satisfy the Consumer Product Safety Commission, without using SawStop technology. But for Gass, it’s the biggest victory yet in what has been an uncertain, uphill battle. In many respects, his public clash has made Gass a poster child for all inventors who deal with the so-called “not invented here syndrome.” Moreover, Gass’s story adds another human dimension to such dramas, seeing as how it also deals with the very commonplace — and tragic — loss of human fingers. By sitting down in his barn one afternoon in 1999 and finding an innovative way to reduce the sudden amputation of fingers, Gass raised the level of discussion — as well as the level of emotion — in an industry that had long accepted a certain, brutal, status quo. That’s why he sees the Consumer Product Safety Commission’s decision as a form of recognition.
“I suspect that some of the executives at the major tool companies are going to be pretty unhappy about it,” he says.

Meager Beginnings

When Gass first dreamed up the concept for SawStop, he never imagined his relationship with the power tool industry would ultimately be an adversarial one. Gass, now 42, was puttering in his barn-based woodwork shop in 1999 when his “Eureka!” moment struck. A patent attorney with a lifelong passion for woodworking, he wondered if it would be possible to stop a spinning, 4,000-rpm saw blade fast enough to prevent serious injury after an inadvertent touch. Gass, who, in addition to being an attorney also holds a Ph.D. in physics from the University of California at San Diego, began to tick through possible sensing methods for such a project. Proximity sensors? Optical sensors to look for blood? Ultrasonic sensors to check for saw vibrations? After considering those possibilities and more for about 30 minutes, his mind began to settle on another method: electrical capacitance.

“Ultimately, it seemed like the most reliable technique would have to involve contact detection,” Gass recalls. “And because your body has an electrical capacitance, it offers the potential for that. I figured that if you put a voltage into the saw blade, your body could absorb some of that signal. Then the voltage in the saw blade would drop.”

Within a week, Gass formulated most of the idea’s details in his mind. Thirty days later, he completed his first working prototype. Initially, he tested the prototype by touching the side of the saw blade with a finger. And while that proved the saw could stop in a fraction of a second, he still didn’t know if it was quick enough to prevent serious injury. Gass wondered how deep a 4,000-rpm saw blade would cut into human flesh during the microseconds that it took to stop the blade. To answer that, he needed to touch the blade teeth.

“I came up with the idea of using hot dogs, and it worked pretty well,” Gass says. “It’s cheap, readily available, and you don’t get any protesters coming to your door.”

While doing the development work, Gass was still employed as a patent attorney. At the time, he planned to remain in his job, refining and patenting his new technology at night, ultimately licensing it to a table saw manufacturer for a healthy fee.

“I had no desire to start my own saw company, so I called a table saw manufacturer,” Gass remembers. Gass was surprised to find, however, that the table saw maker had no interest in licensing his technology. Undeterred, he partnered with two other lawyers in his firm and hired a consultant to refine the technology, making it look more like a production saw. The consultant, Function Engineering Inc., in Palo Alto, CA, built three new prototypes, which Gass took to the 2000 International Woodworking Machinery and Furniture Supply Fair (IWF), an industry trade show.

“We figured the public would see it and ask the manufacturers to put it on their saws, and then the manufacturers would license the technology from us,” Gass says.

And the public did see it. Despite the fact that Gass rented a tiny 10 × 10 ft booth in a remote third-floor location of the Atlanta-based convention center, crowds formed. They wanted to see the hot dog demonstration. They filled the booth, then spilled out into the aisle, anxious to see “the show,” which was scheduled every 30 minutes. One industry editor told Gass he’d never seen anything like it. “He told us it looked as if we were giving away hundred-dollar bills,” Gass says.

Battle Lines Drawn

Buoyed by the reaction at IWF, and by the prestigious receipt of a Chairman’s Safety Commendation from the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission in 2001, Gass and two colleagues from his law firm decided to pursue full-time product licensing. But within months they began to understand that the power tool industry wasn’t as excited about their technology as the attendees at the IWF show.

One CEO, traveling to Gass’s barn-based headquarters, expressed the industry’s position in terms that shocked Gass. “We sat around a little table and he said, ‘You guys have got to understand. Nobody in this industry likes you,’” Gass recalls. “‘You’ve created a huge problem here.’”

As an attorney, Gass is sympathetic with the industry position. The prospect of implementing a new technology like SawStop raises the potential of investing frightening amounts of capital to re-tool existing production lines.

“It’s not a simple issue for the manufacturers,” he explains. “They have whole product lines of saws. Once the genie is out of the bottle, there’s a huge product liability problem for any manufacturer who doesn’t have this. People will ask, ‘Why didn’t you have this on the saw you sold to us?’”

Product liability experts also hint at another reason for the industry’s lukewarm reaction to SawStop. Today’s saw manufacturers, they say, aren’t legally responsible for the horrific injuries associated with table saws. The unwritten rule applying to such situations is “use it at your own risk,” they say.

“Most of the time, legal cases are dismissed before they get to a jury because the judge agrees with the saw maker that this is an activity entered into by adults who have a general knowledge of the propensity of sharp edges to cut,” notes James T. O’Reilly, a professor of law and product liability expert at the University of Cincinnati College of Law.

Gass believes that the “use it at your risk” legal structure steals the motivation of saw manufacturers to adopt new safety technology. “What you have here is an economic disconnect,” Gass says. “The power tool companies are not paying for the injuries. You and I are paying in terms of medical premiums and workers’ comp. If the (power tool) industry had to pay, this technology would have been on those saws a long time ago.”

The power tool industry, however, has a very different view of the subject. Representatives cite a plethora of technical problems with SawStop technology, including too many “false positives” or “nuisance trips,” cost of replacement cartridges after the brake fires, and difficulties cutting conductive materials, such as moist wood. Moreover, they say, Gass is asking for an 8 percent royalty on each saw sold, a figure they describe as ridiculous.

With battle lines drawn on such issues, SawStop, LLC and the industry settled in for an adversarial relationship. In 2003, the industry, led by the Power Tool Institute, petitioned the U.S. Department of Justice’s Antitrust Division to be allowed to form a joint venture that would include Black & Decker Corp., Hitachi Koki U.S.A. Ltd., Robert Bosch Tools Corp. and others. Its goal: to develop technology for saw blade contact injury avoidance, with the possibility of creating its own skin sensing system.

Meanwhile, SawStop LLC raised the stakes again that same year, approaching the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission to initiate a federal mandate calling for table saws to incorporate new performance standards, which could potentially be satisfied by a technology like SawStop’s.

Opponents of SawStop’s technology — including the Power Tool Institute and Underwriters Laboratories — submitted lengthy comments to the Consumer Product Safety Commission, calling on the agency to reject SawStop’s petition. Many of the comments cited technical deficiencies and fear of a SawStop, LLC monopoly on such technology.

Changing the Status Quo

Following a contentious three-year process involving technical analysis and sometimes-heated public comment, however, the agency granted Gass’s petition in June, setting into motion a series of complex legal steps. Power tool industry members have reacted coolly to the apparent setback, predicting it will have little impact.

“From a legal standpoint, it means nothing to the industry at this point, and it doesn’t change anything,” notes Daniel Lanier, an attorney who handles product liability cases for the power tool industry. “It doesn’t mean that SawStop technology is going to be required on all future saws.”

Indeed, representatives of the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission state that the rulemaking process requires several complex steps and “can take years.” They add that it’s rare for the agency to mandate safety standards, preferring in all cases to have industries agree on voluntary standards. In essence, experts say, industry will do its best to help create voluntary standards that would obviate the need for SawStop.

While both sides await that rulemaking process, the big saw makers continue to develop new safety technology, which they hope will meet any new standards that may emerge. Through their joint venture — which has now been together for three years — they have reportedly created an improved mechanical guard, and a blade avoidance system “somewhat like SawStop’s,” a spokeswoman says.

Gass says the joint venture is just one more battle front in a large-scale assault that’s been leveled against him by the industry.

Still, he is encouraged by the recent U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission decision in support of his petition. The decision, he says, sets the stage for change.

“It establishes the fact that the status quo won’t work,” Gass says. “The most likely practical ramification is that attorneys for people who’ve had their fingers cut off will use this as evidence to show that the saws are defective.”

In the meantime, however, table saw accidents continue. And many of those accidents cost money for employers, as well as insurance companies. Gerald Wheeler, a Little Rock-based cabinet door maker who has had one employee saved by SawStop, says he paid out $95,000 for two other employees who lost fingers before he bought the skin-sensing saw. By purchasing the higher-cost SawStop model, Wheeler says, he saves money by not having to having to pay accident claims.

Given such successes, Gass says he will continue to produce saws. Later this year, his company plans to roll out a contractor’s model. At some point, the company also says it will extend the skin-sensing technology to circular saws, band saws, and miter saws.

For Gass, his life’s work isn’t as lucrative as it was six years ago, when he worked as a patent attorney. He and his partners, he says, now draw salaries that are about one-third of what they made back then.

Still, they plan to forge ahead, building saws that will go head to head with those of the big manufacturers. Ultimately, the company’s founders hope that consumer demand for greater safety will help their company grow and simultaneously force the industry to adopt new safety measures.

“We’re not just doing this for the money,” Gass concludes. “We’re doing this because we feel good about it.”

Injuries from Bench and Table Saws

(Statistics from U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission) A memorandum from the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission in June, 2006 states that “over a 10-15 year lifetime of a table saw, it would generate societal costs of $2,600 to $3,100” from blade contact injuries. Such saws typically have initial costs ranging from about $100 to $300.

The Thumb Was Still Attached

Even amidst the high-pitch whine of the spinning saw blade, Carl Seymour could hear the dreaded “ping.” He’d been hit. He felt the impact in his left thumb. A 12-year veteran of professional woodworking shops, Seymour knew what it meant and instinctively wrapped his good hand around the injured digit. He held tight and sprinted to the nearest bathroom, seized with all the panic-filled emotions of the moment.

“I stood there for about two or three minutes holding my thumb, praying that it wasn’t cut off,” Seymour recalls of the accident, which occurred last March. “I saw the blood dripping through my fingers, but when I opened my hand to check it, the thumb was still attached.”

To Seymour’s amazement, the thumb was not loosely attached. It was fully intact. No bones were showing. When he wiped away the blood, he discovered the wound was little more than a paper cut, not even requiring stitches to close up.

“As soon as he opened his hand and peeked in, he started jumping up and down and hollerin’ and whoopin’ with joy,” notes Gerald Wheeler, co-founder of Cabinet Door Shop (Little Rock, AR) where Seymour works. “The saw blade had barely gone through the first few layers of skin.”
Seymour’s thumb had been saved, however, not because of quick thinking or even good fortune, but because Cabinet Door Shop’s SawStop table saw sensed the difference between flesh and wood, stopped the spinning blade and retracting it back into its cabinet before the teeth could tear through Seymour’s ligaments, tendons and bones.

SawStop, LLC, developer of the technology, counts 52 such “saves,” but those 52 are minuscule when compared to the number of accidents that occur every year. The company currently has approximately 2,000 saws in the field, and hopes to sell about 3,000 in 2006.

“There’s no doubt that more people could be saved by this technology,” says Wheeler, who has seen other employees lose fingers in the past. “What’s so disheartening is that the technology is out there for the taking.” - CM

How SawStop Saves fingers

In developing SawStop, inventor Steve Gass faced two key challenges: sensing flesh and quickly stopping a spinning, 4,000-rpm blade.

To sense the touch of flesh, the unit employs a signal generator to induce a 500-KHz electrical sine wave current on the saw blade. When a woodworker touches the blade, that finger “becomes part of the blade,” Gass says. An electrode adjacent to the blade serves as a sensor and sends that signal back to electronic circuitry via a wire. In the circuitry, a Texas Instruments Digital Signal Processor (DSP) with an analog-to-digital converter then digitizes the analog signal. Every 6 µsec, the DSP samples the voltage at the blade, “looking” for a characteristic drop that would indicate a human body has drawn some current off the blade.
“That’s where we use our software algorithm, to look at the amplitude of the voltage as a function of time,” Gass explains.

One characteristic the algorithm looks for is a precipitous drop in the voltage as the teeth of the blade intermittently cut the skin and move through salty, wet tissue, which conducts electricity more effectively (as the conductivity rises, more current is drawn off the blade). By sensing the voltage as a function of time, the system infers electrical capacitance, and therefore determines if the blade is touching flesh.

Stopping the blade is another matter, made more difficult by the speed with which it must happen.

“You have to stop a 4,000-rpm blade in a few thousandths of a second, or it’s too late,” Gass says.

To do so, Gass employs a compressed spring, held back by a 10 thousandths of an inch fuse wire. When the DSP recognizes flesh, it signals a capacitor to send a surge of electrical current, vaporizing the fuse wire in approximately 15 millionths of a second. When the fuse wire vaporizes, it releases the spring brake, stopping the blade.

Gass says the blade typically stops in about three thousandths of a second.

“We have 52 saves,” he says. “And the vast majority of those walked away with nothing more than a tiny scratch.” - CM

Industry’s View

The following is an excerpt from a letter from the Power Tool Institute to the chairman of the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission on June 12, 2006.

“… The fact is that each manufacturer evaluated and assessed the technology, some more extensively than others, and each independently concluded that licensing the technology was not appropriate, particularly under the terms demanded by Mr. Gass. All of the table saw manufacturers identified significant problems associated with the technology, including such things as a propensity to inadvertently activate when cutting high moisture content wood. Additionally, at the time of each company’s evaluations, the technology was completely unproven and untested; only a prototype had been produced, and it had not been subject to any real world testing over time as would be necessary before any table saw manufacturer would introduce new technology such as this.” - CM

Read comments on SawStop technology through the Freedom of Information Act
http://www.designnews.com/article/CA6360672.html





Microsoft To Enable User-Created Xbox 360 Games

Talking on the eve of its Gamefest event in Seattle, Microsoft has revealed XNA Game Studio Express, a new product which will allow indie developers and students to develop simultaneously on Xbox 360 and PC, and share their games to others in a new Xbox 360 'Creators Club'.

The details of the new tech are as follows: XNA Game Studio Express will be available for free to anyone with a Windows XP-based PC, and will provide them with what's described as "Microsoft's next-generation platform for game development." In addition, by joining a "creators club" for an annual subscription fee of $99, users will be able to build, test and share their games on Xbox 360, as well as access a wealth of materials to help speed the game development progress.

[UPDATE - Further information on the new XNA product has been released by Microsoft as part of an official XNA FAQ, including plenty of specific details on how and when the service will debut, and what pre-requisites to game sharing and collaboration are included.]

In an official statement related to this major announcement, Microsoft suggested that the new product "...will democratize game development by delivering the necessary tools to hobbyists, students, indie developers and studios alike to help them bring their creative game ideas to life while nurturing game development talent, collaboration and sharing that will benefit the entire industry."

The games created with XNA Game Studio Express will not initially be available to regular Xbox 360 users, but a longer-term goal is to create a less restricted distribution market using Xbox Live - the company has commented that "Eventually, you’ll be able to distribute that code to other Xbox 360s, opening up a unique publishing avenue which will democratize game development on consoles."

In the meantime, a second XNA toolset named Game Studio Professional, originally scheduled tentatively for an early 2006 release, is now due in spring 2007, and is intended to cater more directly to professionals aiming for Windows and XBLA game releases.
Microsoft has enlisted the help of several partners for this major announcement - indie publisher/developer GarageGames, technology provider and creator of Marble Blast Ultra, has migrated both its Torque Shader Engine and new Torque Game Builder 2-D visual game designer over to the XNA Game Studio Express platform, and Autodesk announced that game developers and enthusiasts can now more easily incorporate content into XNA Game Studio Express via Autodesk's FBX file exchange format.

In addition, more than 10 universities and their game development schools — including University of Southern California, Georgia Tech College of Computing and Southern Methodist University Guildhall — have already pledged to integrate console game development and XNA Game Studio Express into their curricula for the first time, and Xbox 360 will be the only console at the center of all coursework.

The XNA Game Studio Express beta will be available Aug. 30, 2006, as a free download on Windows XP, for development on the Windows XP platform. The final version of XNA Game Studio Express will be available this holiday season.

Microsoft's general manager of the Game Developer Group, Chris Satchell, commented on this major announcement: "By unlocking retail Xbox 360 consoles for community-created games, we are ushering in a new era of cross-platform games based on the XNA platform. We are looking forward to the day when all the resulting talent-sharing and creativity transforms into a thriving community of user-created games on Xbox 360."
http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/new...hp?story=10458





RIAA Attacks Vietnam Vet
p2pnet.net News Special

The US administration is in rigid lock-step with the corporate entertainment cartels as they use American tax-payer funded resources to further vested, hard-core commercial interests.

The Big Four record labels – Vivendi Universal (France), EMI (Great Britain), Sony BMG (Japan and Germany) and Warner Music (US) - started it, but the movie industry is now close behind and, using the willing mainstream media as their principal print and electronic outlets, the two sectors have successfully escalated a simple commercial concept, copyright infringement, to the level of major crime, ranking it with murder and rape.

At the same time, Dick Cheney and George W. Bush are prosecuting an immensely unpopular war in an oil-rich country far away from their own borders, using charges of 'terrorism' as their excuse.

With both of the above in mind, someone who stood up for his country in Iraq was Tyler Payne, a soldier who on his return to the US became a target of a different kind when he found himself on the Big Four's sue 'em all hit list.

But he isn't alone. Another man put his life on the line for America in another unpopular war and in return, his children are on notice that in 60 days they'll be victimized by RIAA lawyers.

Considering that RIAA stands for Recording Industry Association of America but only one of its owners, Warner Music, is American, that's particularly rich.

The man in question is Larry Scantlebury who flew for America in Vietnam.

Until his death, this June, Scantlebury was an Amazon reviewer. Here's his profile.

I served in Vietnam as a helicopter pilot in the early seventies. I was barely a man, if that at all. While that historical event has become twisted in the telling with self serving political rhetoric and apocryhpal movies, it had an enormous impact on those of us who served and the mothers and fathers and sisters and brothers who waited for us.

The cost was extraordinary in lives and pain, along with lost opportunity, hope and love. Not surprisingly, it changed my life.

I imagine that's what draws me to writers like DeMille, James Lee Burke, and Robert Crais. Their characters, Keith Landry, Dave Robicheaux and Joe Pike, successfully overcome a damaging adolescence and an indifferent public. But they still walk with a limp.

I like to write. I don't think you can write unless you read so to that end, I may read 100 books a year. I normally find something worthwhile in each of them. Rarely, say one book in 50, I'll give up on after 100 pages and write myself a note as to what was the impediment.

I have two novels completed, "Short Days, Long Nights" and "Ashes of our Fathers," but so far I only have dozens of rejection letters to show for the effort. Well, that's not entirely true. I can honestly say with pride while it would be nice I don't write to be published.

I think you have to take it all in stride. I mean everything. Like Bill Wilson wrote years ago, it really is 'one day at a time.'

I wrote this four years ago when I began writing reviews. Not much has changed. A few more grey hairs, a little thicker around the waist. I still have a lovely wife who puts up with my idiosyncratic behavior, and great sons. My oldest son, Colin, is a pilot with Southwest Airlines. I do have three gifted (of course) grandchildren, Sal, Bryant, and Vincent. You can see how the family divided along lines of heritage. My wife Deborah is an RN at a local hospital, looks great in scrubs and I am crazy about her.

I love music and am frequently torn between Ludwig Beethoven and Robert Plante. Someday I'll make a decision. But not today.

Favorite fiction? Probably Clavell's Shogun and Follet's Pillars. Non-fiction? Anything by Kearns, Charles Van Doren's Book of Knowledge, most of the prodigal Ambrose and Manchester. Oh yes. John Keegan. I find myself enjoying first time writers. William Landay and Michael Gruber come to mind.

30 days off? Hang out with Deborah on some island where there's no e-mail. My father taught me how to read books and be discerning with what I put in my head. The best gift he ever gave me. I miss him.

Larry Scantlebury; Ypsilanti, Michigan; 2005

And we're sure Larry's children miss their dad.

The people who run the record labels live in a very sick world, and in the meanwhile, p2pnet reader Rafael Venegas says in a comment post:

Pretending that heirs be made responsible for responding to a lawsuit against their father is a very interesting proposition. Some possible ramifications are...

How about sending to jail the children of criminals who die in jail without completing their sentences? The children would then complete the sentence, unless they prove their father was innocent. Surely some lawyer will make money on the new case.

How about suing a person who is dying or in an irreversible coma, so that the children would have the burden of defending their parent alleged actions?

Here we are deling with a new legal principle and a new low: Sue the dying old. You cannot loose.

But do not underestimate the legal system. A jurisprudence will be found to support the new principle. That is what jurisprudence is for.

If I were a descendant of Al Capone, I would move to another country, as they could send me to prision.

Meanwhile, Kimberly Arellanes, the wife of Frank Arellanes, another serving American soldier, is also in the RIAA's sights, and we're sure there are many more American service people among the 19,000 or so victims of the Big Four's twisted sue 'em all marketing campaign.
http://p2pnet.net/story/9568





RIAA's "Abundance Of Sensitivity" Ends Harassment Of Grieving Family
Cory Doctorow

Last week, we posted about the family of a recently deceased defendant in a lawsuit by the RIAA being given 60 days to grieve before the RIAA went on to depose the dead man's children in a renewed suit against his estate. In the intervening days, the publicity about this despicable act -- suing the family of a dead man -- has mounted. Today, an RIAA spokesperson, Jonathan Lamy, contacted me today with this statement:
Our hearts go out to the Scantleberry family for their loss. We had decided to temporarily suspend the productive settlement discussions we were having with the family. Mr. Scantleberry had admitted that the infringer was his stepson, and we were in the process settling with him shortly before his passing. Out of an abundance of sensitivity, we have elected to drop this particular case.

I wrote back to ask him this followup question:
Where was the "abundance of sensitivity" when the RIAA failed to initially drop its case against the Scantleberry family following the death of the named defendant in the case? Given that this "abundance" only materialized within 24 hours of this story hitting several large news outlets and blogs isn't it fair to say that the RIAA is demonstrating sensitivity to its public image, and not its sensitivity to the Scantleberry family?
To which he declined to further comment.

This is par for the course with the RIAA. A year ago, the RIAA contacted me to say that a takedown notice sent on their behalf to RPG Films was a forgery. When I asked if they intended to sue RPG Films for real, and whether these forgeries were common, and whether the RIAA would investigate the forgery, RIAA Director of Communications Jenni Engebretsen promised me she'd get back to me with answers. After repeated emails and phone calls, I finally took the extraordinary step of calling her from a different, borrowed phone (suspecting that she was ducking my calls) and reached her -- only to be told that the RIAA had no further comment.

The RIAA's approach to PR is much like their approach to culture in general: read-only. The RIAA issues statements like the Pope emitting a bull, and we mortals may squabble over its meaning among ourselves, but they are not available to participate in any further discussion. This is reminiscent of the RIAA's approach to things like YouTube lipsynch videos: "our songs are released to be listened to and nothing more; should you dare to make them part of your life, we will use the copyright law we bought to break you."
http://www.boingboing.net/2006/08/14...ance_of_s.html





Fox to Offer TV Downloads on MySpace
Greg Sandoval

A correction was made to this story. Read below for details.

Fox Entertainment Group is planning to distribute movies and TV shows to consumers from the company's network of Internet sites, including MySpace.com.

Fox, a division of News Corp., announced Monday that digital versions of TV shows such as "24" and "Prison Break," along with feature films, including "X-Men: The Last Stand," will eventually be available for download at Fox sites. Movies will go for $19.99, while TV episodes will cost $1.99.

The move is the latest sign that Hollywood studios are determined not to allow Apple Computer as much control over distribution digital content as the music industry handed over to Apple's music download site, iTunes. Apple has emerged as the gatekeeper when it comes to digital music, selling more songs than any other Web site. Movie and TV executives have said that they want a host of e-tailers offering their content.

Warner Bros. Entertainment has been among the most aggressive of the studios in the pursuit of such a strategy. In recent months, the company cut distribution deals with video-sharing site Guba and file-sharing system BitTorrent.

Apple already offers some Fox TV shows, but they can be watched only on Apple handheld products such as the iPod. In what Fox claims is an industry first, customers will be able to download a TV show or movie to two Windows-based computers, where each can then transfer the content to a single handheld device.

Fox's IGN Entertainment, which makes video games available for download, is providing the distribution platform for all of Fox's sites, and will also offer the first download, on the IGN's Direct2Drive Web site, sometime in October, Fox said in a statement.

The company did not disclose when its other sites will begin selling digital content.
http://news.com.com/Fox+to+offer+TV+...3-6105025.html





CBS to Start Streaming Prime-Time Shows
Gary Gentile

CBS Television will begin showing episodes of several new and returning prime-time shows for free on the Internet, becoming the second network to do so.

CBS already sells downloads of episodes on Apple Computer Inc.'s iTunes Music Store and Google Inc.'s video store. In May, it launched an advertising-supported online channel called "innertube" to stream programming created just for the Web.

The network said Tuesday that starting next month it will begin streaming episodes of a new show, "Jericho," as well as returning shows "CSI: Crime Scene Investigation," "CSI: Miami," "CSI: NY," "NCIS," "Numbers" and "Survivor."

The shows will contain fewer ads than when they are shown on TV. The ads also will be shorter - typically 15 second to 30 seconds - and cannot be skipped, CBS said.

The shows will become available the day after they appear on TV. Episodes of "Jericho" and "Survivor" will remain available online for the entire season, while episodes of the other shows will be online for four weeks following their initial airing.

"Making our new and returning prime-time series available to our viewers is the next step in innertube's programming evolution," Larry Kramer, president of CBS Digital Media, said in a statement.

ABC began showing episodes of four prime-time shows, including "Lost" and "Desperate Housewives" for free online in May. The network was the first to sell episodes on iTunes last October.

ABC recently hailed the success of its later effort, saying that in May and June, the network's site showed 16 million video streams. The network is expected to expand its online offerings in the fall.

NBC does not yet offer prime-time ad-supported episodes online. The network has started a new Web site to stream the pilot episodes of two new shows, "Friday Night Lights" and "30 Rock."

The network also is offering DVDs of two other new shows "Studio 60" and "Kidnapped" through a partnership with Netflix Inc.

The Fox network has not yet begun showing episodes online, although it does sell episodes on iTunes.
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories...08-15-18-11-44





YouTube Aims To Show Music Videos

Video sharing website YouTube is in talks with record labels about offering current and archive music videos.

YouTube co-founder Steve Chen told Reuters news agency it was hoped that within 18 months the site would "have every music video ever created".

The company said it planned to offer the videos free of charge.

YouTube hosts homemade videos, but pirated commercial clips can be found. It claims 60% of videos watched online in the US are viewed on YouTube.

The site plans to allow users to add the music videos to their own profiles and post reviews.

"Right now we're trying to very quickly determine how and what the model is to distribute this content and we're very aggressive in assisting the labels in trying to get the content on to YouTube," said Mr Chen.

Unauthorised videos

Warner Music Group and EMI confirmed to Reuters that they had been in discussions about the plan.

Earlier this year, YouTube agreed a deal with US broadcaster NBC to promote its autumn schedule on the website.

The broadcaster had previously had to ask YouTube to remove unauthorised footage of its shows posted by users.

The site was named one of Time magazine's 50 "coolest websites" of the year on Tuesday.

On the day of the announcement it suffered an unplanned breakdown lasting about six hours.

The outage was due to "database-related issue", YouTube spokeswoman Julie Supan said.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/h...nt/4798133.stm





You Tube - Me Watch

Is the rapidly growing video hosting site in danger of being eclipsed by rapidly growing imitators?
Abram Sauer

Rapid growth, consumer control, hyper word-of-mouth promotion, hungry competitors. Welcome to YouTube's world.

For the uninitiated, YouTube is an online portal through which users can watch and share video content. Currently, it is not just a video site, it is the video site. It has achieved such status so rapidly that it seems fair to wonder where the service will go from here.

Founded in a garage in February 2005, YouTube officially launched to the world in December of that year. Popular media mentions helped the brand rocket to the upper echelons of online pronoun properties with names featuring "I," "Me," "My," and "You."

How high, how rapid? In the month of June, Nielsen/NetRatings data show that YouTube logged 19.6 million unique users; this represents a nearly 300 percent increase from January user-ship. And there appears to be no such thing as a summer lull. For the week of July 9, Nielsen reported 12.8 million unique viewers, up 75 percent from the previous week. That particular week, nearly half of all "Most Viewed" clips were of the 2006 World Cup Zidane "header." Some were recorded TV coverage, but many were user-created original videos such as Zidane head-butt compilation. (Warning: Clicking on the link may lead to countless wasted hours.)

User-created content is at the center of YouTube's web-2.0 pedigree: the idea that the "new" fluid Internet model will be based on user interaction and contribution. But, similar to blogs, copyrighted material is feeding YouTube's success. Copyrighted material for which YouTube does not own the rights. This puts YouTube in a tricky position for the possibility of selling out and compromises its ability to make money through advertising.

Buying out YouTube could put an established media (or other) investor at risk for lawsuits from competing media companies about hosting their content (currently not as big an issue given YouTube's neutrality.)

Advertising could be YouTube's means to profitability. Already, American television network NBC has inked a deal with the site to promote its shows (seen recently in advertising for the film "Pirates of the Caribbean"). But advertisers could seek to interfere with content when it runs counter to their own objectives. Currently it's not clear how much advertising the brand owners are willing to tolerate anyway. Earlier this year, YouTube co-founder Chad Hurley said in an interview with CNN Money, "We're going to sell sponsorships and direct advertisements. But we are building a community, and we don't want to bombard people with advertising."

This idea of "community," plus the site's reliance on copyrighted material, puts YouTube in a very interesting position as a brand. In the conventional sense, a brand is owned by two groups, the brand owner and the brand consumer. The "brand" is where the owner's desires and the users' perceptions meet. In YouTube's case, there are three brand owners. As in the conventional case, YouTube's actions and communications converge with the audience's perception to create the YouTube "brand." The third element is the copyright owners, who have realized that they can leverage YouTube to create interest in their properties, but are quick to pull content if it is not to their liking. YouTube has to manage its brand based on consumer perception, but it doesn't completely control its own product.

An added difficulty for YouTube is that it is lacking an emotional hook to differentiate itself from a pure functional service (think iPod). Users visit YouTube not based on any of the brand's perceived values, but on its ability to give them what they want, when and how they want it. The service offering can easily be replicated elsewhere, better. Online social network Friendster suffered from this and subsequently lost its dominance to MySpace.

YouTube's own challengers are advancing at a rapid rate. AOL is re-engineering its video site to mirror YouTube's success, and CNN is launching CNN Exchange, which will house user-contributed video features. Then there are sites like Eefoof.com, Panjea.com, Revver and Blip.TV, which share up to 50 percent of ad page revenue with the creator of the videos. Others like Dabble.com (currently in beta) sort through all video hosting sites (like YouTube and its competition) for search content, while specialty video sites like Pornotube concentrate on one point of interest.

If YouTube could be said to have a brand position, it might be one of selfless populism. Even if the site's ultimate goal is to make money, the user perception is that it is a power-to-the-people portal through which a community serves each other and the little guy can share and watch for free. Meanwhile, competitor Eefoof's tagline is "Make it. Post it. Profit!" The placement of the one exclamation mark sets a position that the contributor is motivated by more than just an altruistic sense of community.

With a potentially crippling copyright lawsuit on the horizon, it's almost impossible not to compare YouTube to Napster. It's easy to see a future in which YouTube will exist as a brand in recovery, scrapping for survival in a flooded marketplace it basically built. Its very name forever attached to a very short era.
http://www.businessweek.com/innovate...id=bier_innutt





Why You Can't Block Skype

"Talk is cheap and getting cheaper" proclaims a BBC article on VoIP and Skype. Not in the UAE it isn't, nor in other countries that ban internet telephony. But as users find myriad ways to get around the blocks, it's the short-sighted telcos who will ultimately lose out.

Who can forget these clever Chinese men who ran up US$1.25 million worth of calls in the UAE before being apprehended? They're an extreme example, but the reality is that in a heavily restricted, very expensive market, people will be attracted to piracy. Just look at P2P software, music and film piracy.

But when products start becoming affordable and accessible, such as with iTunes' music store, pirates evolve into paid customers. Skype itself isn't free if you want to call international landlines, but it's cheap and convenient enough that people are happy to pay those charges.

A failed ban

By trying to ban VoIP, Middle East telcos such as the UAE's Etisalat have effectively cut themselves out of the game. There are already tens of thousands of people using Skype and similar applications in the UAE alone. Skype.com is blocked, but people download the installer in the freezones. They get it from general software download sites. They get it via P2P. They get friends and family to email it to them. They get it on their laptop while overseas.

Despite the ban, the application works, because once installed, Skype is almost impossible to block. It uses encrypted tunnels, file transfers and instant messaging sessions, all of which are undetectable without filtering. AP Connections CTO Art Reisman set up a computer lab experiment to try and detect Skype traffic whizzing between two PCs. His analysis, according to an interview with Zdnet: "When examining the stream I failed to see any human discernible call set up, so without prior knowledge of a call being made I could never be certain if what I was seeing was a Skype call."

Despite promising to make VoIP legal since 2004, there's no real sign of voice telephony on the UAE horizon. Some predict a "ruling is expected" Q1 2007, but who really knows?

A futile block

The UAE has been so determined to protect the vast amounts of money that it earns from its overpriced telephony system that it doesn't just block Skype, it has removed the address from its DNS servers. People trying to access the page don't even get the regular: "This site has been blocked..."; instead a Network Error message appears. Google Skype blocked and the very first links refer to the block in the UAE.

Efonica, a VoIP company actually based in the UAE, is also blocked. So is the 100 million subscriber Vonage, as well as Net2phone, Webphone, DialPad, Babble, Go2Call, GizmoProject, IConnectHere, Lingo, MutualPhone, Netzero, Nikotel, Packet8, QuantumVoice, SipPhone, SunRocket, TeleSip, TerraCall, VoicePulse, and doubtless myriad others.

But plenty remain unblocked. MindSpring isn't yet blocked, nor is Jajah, VoipCheap, Wengo, BestNetCall, Glophone, StanaPhone, GnomeMeeting/Ekiga, Linphone, NetTelephone, STASoft, Adwell, Ageet or Yate (at least as of Monday 14th August 2006, when this article was published). Downloads.com lists 126 entries under "Web Phones". Google lists millions of pages for "net to phone calls", all of which have dozens of different ads for providers down the side.

Driving businesses away

Quite apart from being impossible to fully block, the ban on VoIP is foolish on so many levels. As well as losing Etisalat a share of the internet telephony pie, it's actively driving businesses away. Telco execs, such as British Telecom's Olivier Campenon, openly admit that there are international companies deciding not to set up in the UAE because of sky-high expensive and restricted communications costs.

It is difficult in cultures that are used to restrictiveness and social oppression to come to terms with an open, uncontrollable phenomenon like the internet. But there is no going back. The internet - and its users - will win every battle, circumvent every block, break every wall that governments, telcos and ISPs put up. The only answer is to embrace the net, and take advantage of the money that people are prepared to pay. And they are prepared to pay for VoIP, so trying to block it is just driving customers into the arms of other providers.
http://www.ameinfo.com/93716.html





PGP Founder Phil Zimmermann and BorderWare Join Forces to Secure VoIP
Press Release

BorderWare is the First Enterprise Security Provider to License Zfone Technology

BorderWare Technologies Inc., and PGP (Pretty Good Privacy) founder Phil Zimmermann, industry leaders in IP communications security, privacy and compliance solutions, today announced an agreement to make BorderWare the first commercial licensee of Zfone, secure VoIP media encryption software, created by Zimmermann. This agreement tightly integrates Zfone with BorderWare's SIPassure VoIP Security Gateway, bringing a new level of security and ease of use to VoIP systems.

VoIP and related real-time communication applications, such as video conferencing and instant messaging, continue to attract considerable interest worldwide, with millions of active private and business VoIP users today. Carriers and enterprises are increasingly seeing the benefits of VoIP services that allow voice messaging and video conferencing to be conducted securely, like email, as communications are transferred freely over traditional phone networks and the Internet.

Together BorderWare and Phil Zimmermann have the security knowledge and IP expertise to provide secure VoIP solutions to the marketplace. BorderWare has a long standing history of being in the security industry for over 12 years protecting email, IM, web and VoIP, for the most demanding networks. Zimmerman has over 20 years experience specializing in cryptography and data security, and is the creator of Pretty Good Privacy, an email encryption software package that was originally made available on the Internet in 1991.

By integrating Zfone media encryption with SIPassure, BorderWare is extending the VoIP security provided to organizations from threats such as Spam to Denial-of-Service attacks to include eavesdropping, spying and wiretapping, while delivering the same level of security and convenience that organizations have come to expect from email.

"We're pleased to be the first security company to license Zfone, as it is poised to become the global standard for VoIP media encryption," said Tim Leisman, CEO of BorderWare. "Phil's reputation and proven track record in email and data encryption offer a very logical foundation for VoIP media encryption, and our vast experience in security makes an unbeatable and reputable combination to deliver VoIP security through the SIPassure offering."

"As VoIP grows into a replacement for the PSTN, we will absolutely need to protect it, or organized crime will be attacking it as intensively as they attack the rest of the Internet today," commented Phil Zimmerman. "VoIP is far more vulnerable to interception than the PSTN. Corporate VoIP calls can be captured and organized on disk for convenient point-and-click wiretapping by criminals half a world away. The combination of Zfone and BorderWare makes it easy to convert an entire installed base of office phones into secure phones in just one stroke, without having to replace them all with ZRTP-enabled phones."

Zfone is secure Voice over IP. It uses a new protocol called ZRTP, which is better than other approaches to secure VoIP because it achieves security without the reliance on a PKI (Public Key Infrastructure), key certification, trust models, certificate authorities or key management complexity that bedevils the email encryption world. It does not rely on SIP signaling for the key management, and in fact, does not rely on any servers at all. It performs its key agreements and key management in a pure peer-to-peer manner over the RTP packet stream. It interoperates with any standard SIP phone, but naturally only encrypts the call if you are calling another ZRTP enabled device or phone. This new protocol has been submitted to the IETF as a proposal for a public standard, to enable interoperability of SIP endpoints from different vendors.

SIPassure is the industries first VoIP Security Gateway - a new class of product that offers the best features of an enterprise firewall, an Application layer gateway (ALG) and a Session Border Controller (SBC) to take security for VoIP applications to the next level. SIPassure is designed to secure all Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) based applications including VoIP services, video conferencing and other messaging applications. SIPassure ensures that organizations using SIP-based applications are safe from abuse and service disruption from internal and external malicious attacks, interference spam and other related threats. SIPassure sets a new standard for price performance for both the enterprise and carrier markets.
http://biz.yahoo.com/prnews/060814/to259.html?.v=33





Mozilla/Firefox Used by 68 Percent of UK Universities and Colleges

Mozilla-based programs and open source software in general are becoming increasingly accepted by UK universities and colleges, according to OSS Watch, a group that provides advice and guidance on free and open source software to UK educational institutions. The OSS Watch Survey 2006 reveals that 68% of the 114 institutions who responded to the survey have deployed Mozilla Firefox or the Mozilla Application Suite on at least some of their campus desktops (the exact term used by the survey was "Mozilla/Firefox browser", which most institutions would presumably infer to mean either Firefox or the Mozilla Application Suite).

The report notes that the 77% of higher education (degree and postgraduate) institutions and 64% of further education (post-16 secondary education) institutions that have deployed Mozilla/Firefox is a significant rise on the last survey in 2003, where these figures were just 44% and 32% respectively. Despite the rise in deployment, the report does note that very few institutions have installed Mozilla/Firefox on all desktops.

Nevertheless, other Mozilla-based products also fared well. 22% of institutions have Mozilla Thunderbird on their systems and 27% use Netscape (though some may be using versions that predate the first Mozilla-based release, Netscape 6). It appears, however, that Mozilla products are generally offered as alternatives rather than the default: every single university and college surveyed have Microsoft Internet Explorer installed on their systems. Microsoft Office also registered a 100% deployment rate.
http://www.mozillazine.org/talkback.html?article=15683