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Old 01-08-07, 07:57 AM   #1
JackSpratts
 
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Join Date: May 2001
Location: New England
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Default Peer-To-Peer News - The Week In Review - August 4th, '07

Since 2002


































"I don't think we've really understood how big he was abroad." – Marie Nyeröd


"We no longer use lever machines. They're gone. I don't see any problems if there is a primary." – Mary Legnard


"It is ironic indeed for the Bancroft family to have to pay 30 shekels of silver to their investment bankers, and 30 shekels of gold to their corporate lawyers, for scaring some of them into betraying their 105-year family loyalty to Dow Jones independence." – James H. Ottaway


"Every day we all run across content we would like to save a copy of. Sometimes, it’s even legal to do so." – Sean P. Aune


"I'm going to go study abroad, actually in film industry and I do not want to be associated with it anymore. I still support the whole concept of piracy and I believe it's the next step in media revolution, but I do not have the time for it anymore." – Andrej Preston


"The movie industry needs to recognize that their audience isn't the enemy. They need to stop treating their fans like criminals." – Cindy Cohn


"I guess now, he’s retired as a serious journalist so the laugh’s on me." – Rafe Klinger



































August 4th, 2007






German Prosecutors Won't Help RIAA Counterpart
NewYorkCountryLawyer

A German court decision ruled that the European counterpart to the RIAA cannot invoke criminal proceedings over petty file sharing incidents. The goal was to find out from ISPs the identity of alleged file-sharing subscribers; the requests have been refused as the judge saw the the proceedings as not in the “public interest”, and little or no economic damage was shown to have been caused to the record companies. Offering a few copyright-protected music tracks via a P2P network client was “a petty offense,” the court declared. Within days, German prosecutors have now indicated that they will no longer permit the use of “criminal proceedings” to procure subscriber information.
http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/08/02/1647221





U.S. Dept of Justice May Help RIAA

Attempt to defend constitutionality of $750-per-song damages theory
Ray Beckerman

In Atlantic v. Boggs, in Corpus Christi, Texas, where the defendant has interposed not just an affirmative defense challenging the constitutionality of the RIAA's $750-per-song file damages theory, but interposed a counterclaim to that effect as well, thus prompting the RIAA to move to dismiss the counterclaim, the United States Department of Justice has requested, and the Court has granted, an extension of time in which to consider intervening in the case to defend the theory.

The Department of Justice has been granted 60 days in which to intervene, if it so chooses.

The validity of the unconstitutionality argument was previously upheld by Judge David G. Trager in UMG v. Lindor where it had been interposed as a defense, rather than as a counterclaim.
http://recordingindustryvspeople.blo...ervene-in.html





U.S. Agents Raid Homes for Pirate Games
AP

U.S. customs agents, said assistance from a software association and other industry members helped lead to raids Wednesday at more than 30 businesses and homes, in a search for devices that let pirated video games play on Sony's PlayStation 2, Microsoft's Xbox and Xbox 360, and Nintendo's Wii.

The alleged sale and distribution of illegal modification chips and copyright circumvention devices for the popular consoles and others included 32 search warrants in 16 states, said the U.S.Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

The agency declined to release the names of those targeted or any other details.

Sales of counterfeit or illegally obtained games costs the industry about $3 billion a year globally, not including Internet piracy, estimates the Entertainment Software Association trade group.

The agency said it had received technical help from the software association and other industry members
http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/08/...iness/game.php





World’s First Conviction for Removing Information from DVD
enigmax

A Georgia man is facing the prospect of years in prison and fines of $750,000 after he admitted being involved in the ‘camming’ of movies and removing ‘copyright management information’ from DVDs. The cost of removing management information from a DVD in the US? 5 years in prison, 2 more than for camming movies.

In the latest of 36 convictions coming out of the FBI’s Operation Copycat, 21 year old Arshad Madhani of Duluth, Georgia is the third person to be convicted for recording or ‘camming‘ a movie in a theater.

During his plea hearing he confessed to being involved in the sourcing and distribution of movies and software. He also admitted organizing and aiding others to ‘cam’ movies still in theaters. The list of movies includes titles such as ‘Cars’, ‘Monster House’, ‘Firewall’, ‘Click’, ‘The BreakUp’ and sundry (forgettable) others. It’s claimed that the movies were then uploaded to servers for other users to download, after they had paid Madhani cash to do so.

For the camming, he’s looking at 3 years in prison, a $250,000 fine and two years of supervised release. Unfortunately, this offense doesn’t carry the longest sentence Madhani faces - we’ll come to that in moment.

From the plea agreement, Madhani appears to be something of a jack-of-all-trades. He admits to being a ‘cammer’ - that is the willful using or directing others in the use of an audio/visual recording device to ‘cam’ or record a movie, currently protected under copyright law.

The most interesting part of the plea is where Madhani further confesses to being a ‘ripper’ by admitting to the circumvention of DVD Digital Rights Management (DRM).

Before making a new ‘master’ from which to take further copies or before uploading to the internet, Madhani removed information from the DVD such as the title, numbers and other markings which identified it as a copyright works - so-called copyright management information.

These actions put Madhani in breach of the DMCA but interestingly, he’s the very first person to be charged for simply removing so-called ‘copyright management information’ from a DVD. Previous cases were all brought for the bypassing of DVD copy-protection mechanisms.

Breaching the DMCA is a serious offense in the US. Just by changing the data held on a DVD, Madhani is facing 5 years in prison plus a $500,000 fine and three years of supervised release.

Madhani also admits to being a ‘racer’, i.e working hard to be the first group or individual to release new movies or software onto the internet for others to download. There doesn’t appear to be any specific punishment for this offense although in the future, the Intellectual Property Enhanced Criminal Enforcement Act of 2007 will surely have it covered.

Sentencing is set for Monday December 17, 2007 in San Jose, California.
http://torrentfreak.com/worlds-first...tion-from-dvd/





Out of the Theater, Into the Courtroom

Brief taping brings charges
Daniela Deane

Jhannet Sejas and her boyfriend were celebrating her 19th birthday by taking in a matinee showing of the hit movie "Transformers" at the theater at Ballston Common mall.

Sejas was enjoying the movie so much that she decided to film a short clip of the sci-fi adventure's climax to get her little brother hyped to go see it.

Minutes later, two Arlington County police officers were pointing their flashlights at the young couple in the darkened theater and ordering them out. They confiscated the digital camera as evidence and charged Sejas, a Marymount University sophomore and Annandale resident, with a crime: illegally recording a motion picture.

"I was terrified," said Sejas, her voice breaking. "I was crying. I've never been in trouble before." She said the assistant manager of the theater saw her holding up the Canon Power Shot and reported it to the general manager, who called police.

Sejas said she had no intention of selling the 20-second film clip. She just wanted to show it to her 13-year-old brother, who had said he wanted to see the movie. She was shocked when the officers showed up.

Sejas faces up to a year in jail and a fine of up to $2,500 when she goes to trial this month in the July 17 incident. Arlington police spokesman John Lisle said it was the decision of Regal Cinemas Ballston Common 12 to prosecute the case, a first for Arlington police.

"They were the victim in this case, and they felt strongly enough about it," he said. The general manager of Regal Cinemas declined to comment yesterday.

Movie pirating cost the industry $18.2 billion worldwide in 2005, the last year for which figures were available, according to the Motion Picture Association of America. Moviegoers are increasingly carrying cellphones, digital cameras and other devices capable of recording.

"Ninety percent of recently released films that are pirated are done by camcording in movie theaters," said Kori Bernards, a spokeswoman for the Motion Picture Association of America. "It's happening all over. And there's been a rash of camcording in the Washington area of late."

Besides facing a misdemeanor charge, Sejas was also banned for life from the movie theater she has frequented. Sejas, a Bolivian immigrant who works two part-time jobs to help finance her education, works at the Victoria's Secret store near the movie theater.

Her boyfriend, Ivar Villazon, said the camera belongs to his sister; the couple borrowed it, Sejas said, to "make memories" on her birthday.

Kendrick Macdowell, general counsel for the Washington-based National Association of Theatre Owners, said that illegal pirating of films costs the industry billions of dollars and that the industry was stepping up efforts to stamp it out.

Because of that, he said, there has to be a "zero-tolerance policy at the theater level."

"We cannot educate theater managers to be judges and juries in what is acceptable," he said. "Theater managers cannot distinguish between good and bad stealing."

Macdowell said the trade association, which represents 28,000 screens nationwide, realizes there is a difference between "egregious acts of stealing our movies and more innocent ones." But he said that distinction needed to be made in court rather than by theater managers.

Not everyone agrees.

"The movie industry needs to recognize that their audience isn't the enemy," said Cindy Cohn, general counsel for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a San Francisco-based nonprofit group that specializes in digital rights issues. "They need to stop treating their fans like criminals. . . . What they're doing is extremely unreasonable, coming down on this poor girl who was actually trying to promote their movie."

Copying a motion picture from a theater performance is a felony under the Family Entertainment and Copyright Act of 2005, punishable by up to three years in a federal prison. Several states, including Virginia, also have anti-piracy laws.

Jason Schultz, senior staff lawyer at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, said he is aware of only one case prosecuted under the federal statute. In September 2005, a Missouri theater employee pleaded guilty to two counts of using a camcorder to copy two movies.

He said he has never heard of a case like Sejas's.

"I've heard of people's devices being confiscated, or them being kicked out of the theater," Schultz said. "This is the first criminal arrest for someone filming for personal use that I know of."

Sandy Hughes, Sejas's attorney, said she hopes she can resolve the case before it goes to trial Aug. 21 in Arlington General District Court.

Villazon said he and his girlfriend had taken a bunch of birthday pictures of each other in the mall, posing with a "guy and girl in a cow suit" at the Chick-fil-A restaurant in the food court.

They got to the movie a few minutes after it started. And even though they paid $15 for two matinee tickets, they missed the end.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...080102398.html





Quebec Movie Chain Sued Over "Abusive" Search
Michael Geist

Cinema Guzzo, a leading Quebec movie chain, is being sued for a rough search of some of its patrons. La Presse reports that a Montreal woman is seeking $60,000 in damages for the way the theatre chain searched her bags. The woman's lawyer argues that there are less invasive ways to search for camcording equipment, such as x-ray detectors. Vincent Guzzo responds that such machines cost $70,000 each (though he also claims that the issue costs the theatre one million dollars annually) and that the theatre typically prefers to target its searches to males between 18 and 35 with backpacks. He adds that the theatre includes clear signage indicating that they reserve the right to search bags. Bill C-59, the new anti-camcording law, creates new penalties for camcording, but does not grant theatre owners any new rights to search patrons.
http://www.michaelgeist.ca/content/view/2133/125/





MPs Outlaw Satire in New Zealand
PA Mediapoint

New Zealand's Parliament has voted itself far-reaching powers to control satire and ridicule of MPs in Parliament, attracting a storm of media and academic criticism.

The new standing orders, voted in last month, concern the use of images of Parliamentary debates, and make it a contempt of Parliament for broadcasters or anyone else to use footage of the chamber for "satire, ridicule or denigration".

The rules apply any to broadcasts or rebroadcasts in any medium.

They also ban the use of such footage for "political advertising or election campaigning", except with the permission of all members shown.

The new broadcasting regime coincides with the introduction of Parliament's own continuous in-house TV feed, which will be made available to broadcasters.

Private broadcasters will still be able to opt to use their own footage, but will be subject to the same rules, which also include an instruction that cameras focus on the Speaker "in the case of general disorder on the floor of the House".

So if a fight breaks out in the debating chamber, as happened in Taiwan recently, anyone who shows it will do so on pain of contempt.

But if private broadcasters opt to rely on Parliament's feed most of the time rather than use their own cameras, they won't have a choice about it as the Parliamentary feed will not show the disorder.

In some respects, the new rules relax the old ones, which required that footage should focus at all times on the head and shoulders of the member speaking. Appropriate reaction shots and coverage of interjections are now permitted.

However, the old rules were frequently breached, as the media often used wider-angled shots or published photographs of MPs napping, reading comics, eating lollies, and in one notable case, giving another MP the finger.

Occasionally, media organisations were punished for this, but only by the withdrawal, for a set period, of their right to attend the chamber.

The new standing orders make a breach a contempt of Parliament, potentially punishable by imprisonment.

Leader of the House and deputy Prime Minister Michael Cullen said the rules were designed to prevent the misrepresentation of what happened in the House through partial editing or other trickery. He insisted that they would be interpreted liberally and would not constrain legitimate debate and comment on politics.

The Green party tried to strike out the no-satire condition, but was voted down 111-6.

The new rules have been widely panned in the media. Vernon Small, chair of the Parliamentary Press Gallery, pointed out that MPs ridicule each other as often as the media join in, and said the rules seemed to be aimed at trying to protect MPs from themselves.

"If MPs want to improve the reputation of the institution, and of themselves, the answer is surely in their own hands, through improved behaviour," he wrote in the Dominion Post.

"It is not in restricting the media and giving themselves protections they do not need or that are unworkable - and therefore bring the institution into further disrepute."

Small also complained that the media was not properly consulted over the changes, and said they were unfair to photographers. Photographers taking still images will still be obliged to focus only on the MP speaking.

Others have pointed out that satire and ridicule rules are probably unenforceable - for example, if someone anonymously posts an overdubbed satirical video on YouTube.

Several academics have taken another tack. They note that the reports of the Standing Orders Committee contain no mention of the NZ Bill of Rights Act, which applies to the legislature and requires that any limits on the freedom to seek and receive information must be reasonable and demonstrably justified in a free and democratic society.

University of Auckland law professor Paul Rishworth told the NZ Herald that the requirement that coverage should not be used for satire or ridicule was worrying "for these can be legitimate tools in the commentator's armoury for offering robust commentary - and freedom of expression certainly protects political debates".

He doubted that the rules were justified. "Having a broad rule in place can deter legitimate speech, even that which would ultimately have been found permissible by a narrow reading of the rule."

The rules would even prevent opposition parties from using, during the election campaign, a clip of an MP lying to the House.

However, there is no mechanism in the Bill of Rights Act to hold Parliament accountable to it. Under the Act, the Attorney-General warns Parliament when a bill is introduced which appears to be inconsistent with the protections in the Bill of Rights. But that process does not apply to Parliament's Standing Orders.

The new rules were passed under a sessional order, so will expire after the length of the present Parliament.
http://www.pressgazette.co.uk/story....code=38302&c=1





Belgian ISP Will Appeal Order to Block File-Sharing

Claims ecommerce directive trumps copyright directive
OUT-LAW.COM

Belgian ISP Scarlet has appealed against a surprise court ruling forcing it to filter customers' traffic for unlawful file sharing. The Belgian ISP Association says the trial judge did not examine the law closely enough.

Scarlet, formerly a wing of Italy's Tiscali, was ordered earlier this month to use Audible Magic software to scan peer-to-peer (P2P) network traffic and block files identified as unauthorised copyrighted material. It was the first time in Europe that an ISP was held responsible for the content of its subscribers' traffic.

ISPs are protected by laws deriving from the E-Commerce Directive, which protect such "mere conduits" from liability for the content of their traffic. The Belgian court's ruling challenges the limits of that protection.

Laws emanating from another EU Directive, the Copyright Directive, in some circumstances run counter to the E-Commerce Directive by giving copyright owners certain powers over intermediaries whose services are used for piracy.

Geert Somers is the head of the legal work group at the Belgian ISP Association (ISPA). He told weekly technology law podcast OUT-LAW Radio that he believes the E-Commerce Directive's protection for ISPs must take precedence over other directives.

"The E-Commerce Directive needs to be seen as prevailing over the Copyright Directive," he said. "As a matter of fact I think that the relationship between various directives – the E-Commerce Directive, the Copyright Directive and the Intellectual Property Rights Enforcement Directive – will have to be further examined by the Court of Appeals."

"As a matter of fact the implementing legislation in Belgium at the moment is not entirely clear and I strongly believe the judge did not examine this relationship sufficiently," said Somers.

The E-Commerce and Copyright Directives were framed at around the same time and were not intended to conflict with one another, but technology lawyer Struan Robertson of Pinsent Masons, the law firm behind OUT-LAW.COM, says a clash was always a possibility.

"The E-Commerce Directive was passed first. It said that intermediaries acting as mere conduits were protected and it prohibited any general obligation to monitor. The Copyright Directive came along next and it said that copyright owners should be able to get court orders against intermediaries if their services are used for piracy," said Robertson.

"The two laws were meant to complement each other but a clash was always possible and it's really always been for a court to decide how exactly we should balance the protection that exists in the E-Commerce Directive and the powers given to copyright owners in the Copyright Directive," he said.

"The Belgian court took the view that there is no clash," said Robertson. "The court claimed that its injunction does not require Scarlet to 'monitor' its network – it tried to distinguish monitoring from filtering; and it also claimed that the mere conduit defence was not lost."

The court said that the E-commerce Directive "does not affect the judge's power of injunction and does not limit the measures that can be taken by the latter vis-à-vis the provider". It said that the mere conduit defence was irrelevant to the case.

It also said the technical solutions "are limited to blocking or filtering certain information transmitted on the Scarlet network; they do not constitute a general obligation to monitor the network". It compared blocking software to anti-virus and anti-spam software, describing it as "a simple technical instrument which as such does not perform any activities involving the identification of internet users".

There are fears that the ruling could affect other ISP businesses in Belgium and could even prompt a re-evaluation of laws elsewhere in Europe. Belgium had not implemented the Copyright Directive into its own laws at the time of the case, so the court focused on the wording of the Directives, which makes the case more significant for other EU countries.

However, one of Belgium's biggest ISPs, Belgacom, rejected the suggestion that the ruling will automatically apply to it.

"The Belgian legal system cannot be compared to legal system in England where you have precedents," said Belgacom spokesman Jean Margot. "It doesn't work that way here; every case has to come up with a different result, a judge could make a different result from another judge in a new case, it is not always the same."

"Probably the next judge will not follow the first judge, there are good arguments, we will have to wait and see," said Margot.

The authors' rights group which brought the court action, SABAM, has already written to Belgium's main ISPs asking them to fall into line with the Scarlet judgment.

"A couple of days ago we addressed the main Belgian access providers to draw their attention to the legal decision that has been made in the case," said Thierry Dachelet, spokesman for SABAM. "Before starting any legal proceedings to impose this decision on all other Belgian access providers on pain of penalty we wished to check whether they are ready to make an agreement or not."
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/07...haring_appeal/





Downloading More Than Ever Before, Brits Care Less About Getting Caught
enigmax

The Brits are downloading more free music than ever before and are less concerned about getting caught than they were last year. Why are they going to download even more next year? 91% say: “Because it’s free!”

According to the Digital Music Survey 2007, downloading unauthorized media is soaring amongst young Britons. Conducted by Entertainment Media Research and intellectual property lawyers Olswang, the survey found that 43% of those questioned admitted to downloading music for free from BitTorrent and other services such as Limewire. This compares to 36% in 2006 and 40% back in 2005.

Of all the men asked, 47% admitted to unauthorized downloading - up from 43% in 2006 - and from the women, 40% admitted doing the same - up from just 29% in 2006.

Asked to look into the future to predict next year’s downloading habits, 18% of those asked said they were likely to download more often, up from 8% in 2006 and just 6% in 2005. 41% said they would download the same next year while an identical number said they would download less.

The number one reason people gave when asked why they would download more next year was “Because it’s free” with a massive 91% of the vote. 42% said it was because of the great choice available on file-sharing networks. However, women were more satisfied with the choices available as 55% manage to find the thing they are looking for on free P2P, compared to just 28% of men.

When asked about legal issues, 33% admitted being worried about being caught, down from 40% in 2006. While 25% felt that they were more familiar with the law, 5% said they didn’t care about it. Just 4% felt it unlikely that they would have legal proceedings brought against them.

When asked about reasons to download less next year, 51% said that their main concerns were getting viruses and spyware, down from 59% in 2006. The report doesn’t breakdown which network’s users were most concerned about such malware but it’s likely the majority of worriers are users of Limewire-like services, as getting viruses and spyware is rare when using BitTorrent.

The report can be downloaded here.
http://torrentfreak.com/downloading-...etting-caught/





Music From Independent Labels to Be Sold via Cellphones
Robert Levine

EMusic, the nation’s second-largest online music seller after Apple’s iTunes, plans to announce a deal with AT&T today that will allow people to buy songs from independent labels through their cellphones, without the need to go through a personal computer.

Several services, including those run by Sprint and Verizon, let people buy songs directly over the air. But they focus on songs by mainstream performers like Prince, who has a deal with Verizon. EMusic sells music only from independent labels, a category that these days includes the new album from Paul McCartney as well as obscure punk bands. The arrangement with AT&T Mobile Music will make those songs available just as easily as the more conventional ones.

Nearly all of the 2.7 million tracks eMusic has the rights to sell will be available through the service, which will work on several handsets by Samsung and Nokia.

“We know that we have a lot of customers in the segment that eMusic is trying to reach,” said Mark Collins, vice president of consumer data services for AT&T’s wireless unit.

Record labels have long believed that selling songs in mobile phone-based music stores will encourage impulse purchases. EMusic will encourage consumers to browse, reading about bands and hearing snippets of songs to discover music they might like.

Tracks will cost more than they do over the Internet — $7.49 for five songs, as opposed to $9.99 for 30 at the online site — because of the expense of sending them over a mobile network to a user’s phone. For that price, however, users can also get another copy of the song, which they can download from the Internet as an MP3.

EMusic, which is owned by Dimensional Associates, the private equity arm of JDS Capital, currently has a marketing deal with AT&T to encourage consumers to “sideload” their phones with MP3s from its existing Internet store — meaning that they can plug their phones into their computers to transfer the music. But this will be its first time selling music on a mobile network.

“We think there are customers that are ready for eMusic, but they haven’t heard of it yet,” said David Pakman, the company’s president and chief executive. “We’ve focused on making this easy to use.”

Few of the albums that eMusic carries are likely to sell as briskly as the kind of pop singles the mobile-phone services have concentrated on selling so far. But its strategy has always been to sell comparatively fewer copies of the vast number of releases available on independent labels. For some of those labels, rarely seen in big-box retail stores, eMusic has become an important partner.

“EMusic isn’t pushing top 40 on you when you get to the front page,” said Allison Robertson, guitarist for the Donnas, a rock band with its own label, Purple Feather. “You find stuff that you can’t find on the iTunes top 100.”

This service could make some independent music even easier to find.

“For eight bucks a month, you can get exposed to music you can’t hear elsewhere, so you might be more likely to experiment,” said Mike McGuire, a vice president of research at Gartner Inc. “It could be an interesting way to discover music.”

AT&T is also the service provider for Apple’s iPhone, but eMusic’s over-the-air service will not work on that device. Although the iPhone is fully compatible with Apple’s iTunes program, it does not allow users to buy songs without signing on to a computer.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/31/bu...a/31music.html





Eminem's Publisher Sues Apple Over Downloads

Rapper's reps spar with company for the second time, now claiming that profits from artist's iTunes sales have not reached them
Elizabeth Montalbano

The music publishing companies that represent rap artist Eminem have filed a multimillion-dollar suit against Apple for selling downloads of Eminem's music on iTunes online music service without compensating them. The suit could have ramifications for the current compensation plan that online music services have for divvying up profits between record labels and the publishing companies that hold rights to artists' songs.

Typically, Apple charges 99 cents per song for music downloaded from iTunes, and then compensates the artist's record label a percentage of that sum. The label then will pay the music publishers of the artist a small portion of that sum.

But the suit, filed Monday in a U.S. District Court in Detroit by Eight Mile Style and Martin Affiliated, Eminem's music publishers, attacks Apple. The publishers claim they are not receiving compensation from Universal Music Group, the record label that publishes Eminem's albums.

Apple declined to comment on the lawsuit.

Mike McGuire, a research vice president at Gartner, said it's odd the publishers are filling suit against Apple for payment they should be getting from labels, unless they "are realizing we could get a straight payment out of Apple and the other online stores instead of waiting for the label," he said.

In their claim, Eight Mile Style and Martin said they have not authorized Universal to distribute digital transmissions of the songs to Apple. They also outline the setup that is typical with music-download services, saying that Apple has "provided and continues to provide digital downloading of [Eminem's] recordings ... on a regular and systematic basis to end-users" but has only shared the compensation it has received from those downloads to Universal. The complaint also said that Apple has provided no compensation to Eight Mile Style or Martin for its use of the songs for which the two companies own the rights.

McGuire said that, depending on the outcome, the suit "could send a chill down the spine of your average music label executive" if Apple and other music services decide to set up direct relationships with music publishers instead of letting the record labels handle the compensation.

"The labels right now, because of the pass-through setups, they control how the money is divvied up," he said. "This might be unnerving for the labels. [It would be] one less thing they control of."

Eight Mile Style and Martin are requesting that the court order Apple to stop selling Eminem's music on iTunes and are seeking profits Apple has earned from selling Eminem's music. Alternatively, the companies seek statutory damages of up to $150,000 per act of infringement, which could tally up to millions of dollars. They are also seeking damages for "suffering" in excess of $75,000.

The suit is the second time Apple and Eminem's publishers have met in a legal dispute. In 2004, Eight Mile Style and Martin also sued the computer and gadget maker for using Eminem's song "Lose Yourself" in a television advertisement for Apple's iTunes online music service. The suit was settled out of court, but the companies did not disclose the financial sum of the settlement.
http://www.infoworld.com/article/07/...wnloads_1.html





Reports: BitTorrent Index SuprNova.org to Rise Again
Greg Sandoval

SuprNova.org, a well-known BitTorrent hub before being forced to shut down three years ago, is apparently making a comeback.

An agreement was reached that allows the operators of The Pirate Bay to use the domain name, according to reports published Thursday on blogs, TorrentFreak and Slyck.com.

Like The Pirate Bay, SuprNova helped users locate BitTorrent files of movies, TV shows, and books. It's believed that a large number of the files are copyright copies and scores of people from all over the world download them in violation of copyright law. Hollywood has accused such sites of encouraging piracy.

TorrentFreak reported that the new SuprNova will debut sometime in the next week. The Pirate Bay founders could not be reached for comment on Thursday.

Like the name suggests, Suprnova was white hot with file sharers before flaming out in Dec. 2004. Founded in Slovenia in late 2000 by Andrej Preston, SuprNova's popularity paralleled the rise of BitTorrent as a file-swapping tool.

The site went dark following worldwide legal action by the Motion Picture Association of America.

Since SuprNova's closure, file sharing has continued to grow despite the MPAA's legal efforts.

Preston told Slyck that he gave permission to The Pirate Bay founders to use the SuprNova domain under the condition that they preserve the "community spirit."

"I'm going to go study abroad, actually in film industry and I do not want to be associated with it anymore," Preston said according to Slyck. "I still support the whole concept of piracy and I believe it's the next step in media revolution, but I do not have the time for it anymore."
http://news.com.com/8301-10784_3-9754292-7.html





BitLet: A Cute Web-Based BitTorrent Client
Ernesto

BitLet is a cute web-based Java applet that allows you to download .torrent files on a computer that doesn’t have a BitTorrent client installed. Very useful if you want to share a torrent with your BitTorrent illiterate friends, or if you’re on a computer that doesn’t have a BitTorrent client installed.

BitLet is still in an early stage of development, but it is already fully functional. More features, such as uploading local .torrent files, will be added to the site and the Java Applet in the near future.

I’ve tried it with a couple of torrents and it seems to be working quite well, just enter the url of the .torrent file and you’re good to go. The download speeds are decent and doesn’t require any configuration, so it’s pretty much idiot-proof.

BitLet also has a very useful code generator so you can offer BitTorrent downloads on your blog or website so that people can easily download, even when they don’t have a BitTorrent client installed. If people click on the link a popup window will appear, and the download starts immediately. Here’s an example download link:

Steal This Film!

If everything works like it should you’ll get a popup window similar to the screenshot below, it currently shows the download speed, percentage completed, and even a status led that signals potential problems (green is good). BitLet uses the Sun Java platform, if you encounter any problems, try installing the latest Java Virtual Machine plugin from Sun.

Personally I think that BitLet is a great way to make BitTorrent available to the occasional downloader who is not familiar with it at all. It could also be very helpful if you want to download a torrent on a PC that doesn’t have a BitTorrent client installed, like work or school for some people. It’s not a replacement for the regular BitTorrent client, but it sure is a great addition.
http://torrentfreak.com/bitlet-a-cut...orrent-client/





Now Mac Users Can Easily Get Into Private BitTorrent Trackers Too
enigmax

Last week we announced the availability of a PC-only application to automate the checking of Private BitTorrent Trackers for open signups. After reading the article a developer contacted us, said he loved the idea and set about coding a version for all the Mac users out there. We have the software here for download, free of charge.

Last week we published an article about the Tracker Checker 2 application for PC. On occasion, invite-only private BitTorrent trackers open up their doors for a limited period where people can signup without an invite. However, this involves visiting the site in question at just the right time as registrations are opened - a very hit and miss task. Tracker Checker 2 automated that process but unfortunately, it’s for PC only.

Shortly after we published, we had a contact from Milen Georgiev Dzhumerov, a regular reader of TorrentFreak and Mac software programmer. “When I saw the Tracker Checker I thought it was a great idea - so simple and useful” he said, “I’m waiting to start uni in October, I’ve got nothing better to do except write software! As I am a Mac user, I decided to create a Mac version of the app.”

The application arrives in .DMG format at just 221kb. Full installation instructions are included in the README file but it’s simply a question of dragging the software’s icon (created by YellowIcon) into the ‘Applications’ folder.

Launching is achieved by browsing to the app and double-clicking it. The .DMG file comes with a trackers.xml file (containing the tracker information) and is pre-configured with 67 trackers. Simply navigate to the .DMG, select the trackers.xml and import it.

There are 4 main buttons on the toolbar (created by Matt Ball Design):

Reload - Manually “reloads” all trackers
Add - Adds a new tracker to the list
Remove - Removes the currently selected tracker
Info - Opens the “Tracker Inspector” allowing the modification of tracker properties.

In the lower right corner there is a setting for selecting how many concurrent connections to open when checking the trackers. Tested on an 8mbit down connection, 15-20 connections produced ideal results.

Positive match type in the ‘Inspector’ is defined as marking the tracker as open if the find string is found and negative is just reversing the result of whatever the positive is returning, i.e if it doesn’t find the string you have selected negative, the tracker will be marked as open.

One of the criticisms leveled at the PC version of Tracker Checker 2 was that it checked sites for signups at a too regular interval of just 60 seconds. The Mac version addresses this with the chance for the user to choose the update interval.

Milen goes on to explain that he had another motive to develop the app: “The other reason for doing it was to actually see how good Cocoa stacks up against .NET/Java for simple applications like this one. I wanted to prove to myself that you can write applications in Cocoa rapidly. I would say that the app took me about a day/day and a half of proper work (I’m subtracting the time where I jumped in to play some games or watch a movie). I didn’t encounter any problems when using Apple’s well-designed frameworks and I’m very happy with how it turned out.”

More features are planned for the next release:

- Localization (definitely German + unconfirmed others)
- Growl support
- HTTP authentication and redirection support

Anyone wishing to translate the app, suggest features or report bugs, should get in touch with Milen on gamehack@gmail.com
http://torrentfreak.com/now-mac-user...-trackers-too/





Pando: 10 Million and Sharing

Peer-to-peer application hits milestone installation in 14 months
Press Release

Pando Networks, Inc., a peer-to-peer content distribution technology developer, announced today that it has surpassed 10 million installations of its free downloadable application whose users download and share large media files. Now averaging more than 40,000 new installations each day, Pando achieved the 10 million milestone in only 14 months.

“We are thrilled to achieve 10 million downloads so quickly,” said CEO Robert Levitan. “When we launched Pando in 2006, we focused on providing a consumer file-sharing application that integrates with online communication tools such as email, IM, and posting to Web sites. Now we are ready to help major content companies distribute high quality video more efficiently to all Web users.”

With its recently announced Pando Publisher, Pando enables commercial content owners and media companies to stream and download full screen HD quality video to unlimited audiences. For companies distributing video, software or games, Pando Publisher’s Web-based media console easily integrates with existing content delivery networks, to improve performance and efficiency while dramatically lowering costs.

With 10 million installs, the capacity of the Pando platform has scaled dramatically. Pando transports hundreds of thousands of media deliveries, totaling more than 80 terabytes of data each day.
http://home.businesswire.com/portal/...&newsLang =en





P2P Takes Two SourceForge Awards
Thomas Mennecke

As it currently stands, P2P related applications are among the most popular projects on SourceForge. SourceForge as many already know is the leading developer/community forum dedicated to the furtherance of open source projects. The top three SourceForge projects are Azureus, eMule, and Ares Galaxy.

It’s not surprising therefore, that P2P technology made an impressive impact on the annual SourceForge Community Choice Awards. Last year, the popular BitTorrent client Azureus won best overall project, with no other P2P projects making the cut (unless you consider Filezilla).

This year, two file-sharing projects made top honors at SourceForge’s annual Community Choice Awards. Awards are categorized into various categories such as, Best Tool or Utility for Developers, Best Project for Gamers, Best Project for Multimedia, Best Project for Communications, Best New Project, Most Collaborative Project, and the coveted, Best Project.

Interestingly, eMule took the “Best New Project” award. This award is given to a project that shows “the newly created project with the most potential for greatness.” This is a bit peculiar as eMule has been part of the P2P community for the better part of 4 years, and many consider to have already achieved greatness. To compensate for this oddity, an honorable mention was given to the project “Launchy”.

Azurues took top honors for “Most Collaborative Project”, which is awarded to a project “most likely to accept your patches and value your input.” Although not quite as glamorous as the “Best Project” award, it’s still a significant recognition of value.

The “Best Project” award this year went to the popular file archiver 7-Zip. Azureus took this top honor in 2006, however was not nominated in 2007. Probably a good thing, as SourceForge would like to see all programs have a chance...
http://www.slyck.com/news.php?story=1552





RIAA Backtracks After Embarrassing P2P Defendant
Eric Bangeman

When the RIAA filed a file-sharing lawsuit against a sergeant in the US Army earlier this year, it included the customary exhibits with screenshots of what it alleges are the defendant's Kazaa library. Along with the 367 sound recordings that Sgt. Nicholas Paternoster is accused of illegally sharing, the exhibit also contained over 4,200 other files—including pornographic images—that had nothing to do with the labels' case. Recognizing its latest gaffe, the RIAA filed a motion asking that the original exhibit be removed from the public record and replaced with a modified exhibit without the superfluous file names.

The case of Warner v. Paternoster started as other P2P actions have, with the defendant sued after MediaSentry, the RIAA's investigative arm, found what it believed was evidence of copyright infringement. After the suit was filed—and the exhibit made public—Sgt. Paternoster decided to fight back, with the Knoxville News Sentinel reporting that he filed a counterclaim accusing the RIAA of violating his privacy and seeking to "shame Counter-Plaintiff... into giving in to their unreasonable demands regarding their copyrighted materials."

In its filing last week, the RIAA noted that Paternoster's attorneys expressed their concerns over the impropriety of the original exhibit listing the 4,604 "personal and private files." The labels then asked the judge to strike the original exhibit from the record as a "professional courtesy" to Paternoster and his attorneys. The judge approved the request and the original exhibit was removed from the public record on July 26.

With the exception of his accusing the RIAA of shaming him by publicizing the contents of the shared folder, Paternoster's counterclaims do not look much different from those made by other file-sharing defendants. That said, the RIAA's decision to disclose the entire contents of what they believe is the defendant's Kazaa share may come back to haunt it once the court considers the counterclaim.

This is not the first time the RIAA has been caught using questionable tactics. After Oregon resident Tanya Andersen, who was mistakenly accused of copyright infringement by the record labels, was exonerated, she sued the RIAA for malicious prosecution. In her complaint, she accused the record labels of trying to contact her then eight-year-old daughter without her knowledge, even calling her elementary school under false pretenses.

Throughout its legal campaign against file-sharing, the RIAA has taken a beating in the court of public opinion. If it continues to be as careless as it has with Tanya Andersen and Sgt. Paternoster, the beatdown may extend to some of the file-sharing lawsuits as well.
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post...defendant.html





FTC Complaint Flags NFL, MLB, Studios for Overstating Copyright Claims
Eric Bangeman

Any fan of the NFL can almost recite the warning by memory: "This telecast is copyrighted by the NFL for the private use of our audience. Any other use of this telecast or any pictures, descriptions, or accounts of the game without the NFL's consent is prohibited." The legitimacy of that broad claim may be determined by the Federal Trade Commission after the Computer & Communications Industry Association filed a lengthy complaint with the FTC this morning. The CCIA is a trade group with members such as Google, Microsoft, Yahoo, RedHat, and others that promotes "open markets, open systems, and full, fair, and open competition." Those companies believe that the overly broad copyright claims "cast a pall" over the tech industry.

The CCIA's complaint fingers the NFL, Major League Baseball, NBC Universal, Morgan Creek, DreamWorks, Harcourt Inc., and Penguin Group (USA) for deceptive trade practices, accusing them of systematically mispresenting the rights of consumers to use copyrighted material. "These warnings that we have been seeing for decades are false," CCIA spokesperson Jake Ward told Ars Technica in a Monday interview. "They are a misrepresentation of the law and a violation of consumers' rights."

Dire consequences

The warnings aired during NFL and MLB telecasts are certainly dire. MLB broadcasts warn viewers that the telecast they are watching "may not be reproduced or retransmitted in any form, and the accounts and descriptions of this game may not be disseminated without express written consent."

It's not just the sports leagues. The complaint also pillories Universal and Morgan Creek for using the following "deceptive" copyright warning in their DVDs: "All material is protected by copyright laws of the United States and all countries throughout the world. All rights reserved. Any unauthorized exhibition, distribution, or copying of this film or any part thereof (including soundtrack) is an infringement of the relevant copyright and will subject the infringer to severe civil and criminal penalties."

According to the complaint, such warnings "materially mispresent" US law. Fair use is given short shrift, and as a result, consumers are left with the impression that any use that the rightsholders do not expressly approve is illegal. "Consumers have the right to use the content in legal, noninfringing ways," Ward said. "Putting these warnings on broadcasts, videotapes, and DVDs is both misleading and threatening."

The proliferation of online video has compelled rightsholders to exert stringent controls over how their footage is presented—that's the biggest reason you don't see any NFL game footage on YouTube. In fact, the NFL's latest Internet video guidelines border on the totalitarian: Internet-only publications are barred from showing any game footage—ever—as online usage "remains exclusive" to NFL.com.

An example of the NFL's copyright overreaching

Both the leagues and studios have found themselves in court over fair use in the past. One recent example of their copyright overreach came earlier this year, when Brooklyn Law School professor and EFF staff attorney Wendy Seltzer found herself receiving some unwarranted attention from the NFL after posting a clip on YouTube containing the aforementioned copyright message in order to illustrate the NFL's lack of attention to fair use.

The NFL sent a DMCA takedown notice to YouTube, to which Seltzer responded with a counternotification affirming that the clip did not infringe on the NFL's rights. Instead of following the provisions of the DMCA, which mandates that rightsholders must respond to DMCA counterclaims in court, the NFL issued yet another takedown notice to YouTube. After Seltzer issued another counternotice to YouTube, the video was restored once again, where it remains.

Spotlight on fair use

For now, all the CCIA wants is an injunction barring rightsholders from using overly-broad warnings. "Our ultimate goal is to expose this for what it is and to make it clear to people that their rights are being violated," explained Ward. "We'll get to the issue of whether fines are necessary down the line."

Indeed, the complaint asks the FTC to order the organizations named in the complaint to stop misrepresenting US copyright law, "including but not limited to consumers' fair use rights." The CCIA also wants the FTC to force the NFL, MLB, and studios to come up with a plan to keep these sort of mispresentations from happening again as well as a model copyright notice that is "accurate, balanced, and consistent with all provisions of the US Copyright Act and Federal Trade Commission Act." Lastly, the CCIA would like to see those named in the complaint forced to foot the bill for fair use education. (Maybe they can pay for Fair Use Day celebrations next July.)

The leagues and studios named are certain to fight the complaint tooth and nail, as their actions have demonstrated that they prefer consumers to remain in the dark about their fair use rights. In the meantime, the lobbying on Capitol Hill for tougher copyright laws—such as this piece of legislation that would impose onerous restrictions on recording radio broadcasts—will continue unabated.
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post...ht-claims.html





Comcast Terms Change: You Lose Right to Sue

If you're the type to just write the checks and throw away the paperwork when bills come in, you may want to take another look at your July Comcast bill.

According to Jane Lawton, Montgomery County's cable administrator, Comcast changed the terms of your subscription agreement.

Customers who do not opt out within 30 days of receiving the Comcast Arbitration Notice will relinquish their right to pursue any legal remedies against Comcast in court, including claims for negligence, fraud or intentional wrongdoing. This means you lose the right to sue Comcast, while Comcast retains the right to sue you.

"On the surface, arbitration sounds like a good thing, but Comcast's proposed change is one-sided," Lawton says. "We are concerned that subscribers will unknowingly give up some of their consumer rights by failing to opt out in time."

The notice was sent out without county approval.

"Vendors should not change the terms of service without first receiving the consent of the consumer, and the fact that Comcast has not done this is disturbing," Montgomery County Executive Isiah Leggett says.

Comcast customers can "opt out" of the Arbitration Notice either online or by mail (include name, address, account number and a statement that you do not wish to resolve disputes with Comcast through arbitration):

Comcast
1500 Market Street
Philadelphia, PA 19102
ATTN: Legal Department/Arbitration

Comcast customers outside of Montgomery County are also wondering if they too are affected by the arbitration notification, but it is unclear.

Comcast declined to provide a spokesperson to speak with WTOP, but provided the following statement:

Comcast strives to resolve customer concerns quickly, without the need for arbitration or litigation. That said, arbitration has been a part of Comcast's terms and conditions of service for several years. Comcast recently revised its existing arbitration policy to be worded in a more consumer-friendly fashion, to include a 30-day opt out provision and more clearly specify the choices customers have for resolving disputes with the company.
http://www.wtop.com/?sid=1201890&nid=25





Verizon's Profit Rises On Mobile, Internet; To Buy Rural Cellular

Verizon Communications Inc. on Monday reported a 4.5% increase in net income during the second quarter, fueled by wireless and broadband growth.

In a separate announcement, the company said joint venture Verizon Wireless agreed to buy Rural Cellular Corp. (RCCC) , which caters to 700,000 customers in smaller markets, for $2.67 billion in cash and assumed debt.

Verizon (VZ) has relied on its fast-growing wireless division to drive sales and offset a long-term decline in its traditional local-phone business. As reported last week, the New York-based phone giant added 1.3 million net mobile users during the quarter.

Verizon has also been building an expensive fiber-optic network to exploit surging growth in Internet traffic and to offer its own pay-television service. Verizon gained 288,000 broadband customers and 167,000 fiber-TV subscribers.

Spurred by that growth, Verizon reported net income of $1.68 billion, or 58 cents a share, compared with $1.61 billion, or 55 cents, earned in the year- earlier period.

Revenue rose 6.3% to $23.27 billion, including a 17.1% increase in wireless sales.

Omitting special items and results from discontinued operations, Verizon said income would have risen 11.4% to $1.7 billion, or 58 cents a share, from $1.53 billion, or 52 cents, a year ago.

Result matched Wall Street's expectations. The company had been projected to earn 58 cents a share on revenue of $22.98 billion, according to analysts' average estimates as compiled by Thomson Financial.

On Friday , shares of Verizon fell 40 cents to close at $42. The stock, part of the Dow Jones Industrial Average, was slightly higher Monday ahead of the Wall Street open.

Wireless results

For only the second time in two years, Verizon failed to add as many wireless customers as top rival AT&T Inc.

AT&T (T) gained 1.5 million net subscribers, including 146,000 iPhone users, in the second quarter.

The much-hyped iPhone by Apple Inc. went on sale in the final two days of the quarter, giving AT&T enough momentum to beat out Verizon.

What also put Verizon behind AT&T was the bankruptcy of Amp'D Mobile, a company that resold Verizon wireless service under its own brand. As a result, Verizon Wireless reported the loss of 300,000 net customer connections.

Verizon Wireless ended the first quarter with 62.1 million subscribers, behind the 63.7 million served by AT&T. Verizon operates its mobile business as part of a joint venture with U.K.-based Vodafone Group PLC (VOD) .

AT&T is set to extend its lead with its pending acquisition of Dobson Communications Corp. (DCEL) , a mobile carrier that serves 1.5 million customers in rural areas. Verizon countered AT&T's move by agreeing to acquire Rural Cellular.

Although Verizon trails in total customers, the company continues to outpace AT&T in terms of overall revenue. Verizon Wireless posted $10.8 billion in sales, compared to $10.4 billion for AT&T. Verizon generates higher mobile sales because it serves more retail customers directly.

The unit's operating margin rose to a company record 27.8%.

Verizon once again achieved an industry low churn of 1.08%, well below AT&T's 1.6% rate. Churn reflects the percentage of customers who cancel service and indicates a company's success in satisfying subscribers.

Average monthly revenue per subscriber rose 3% to $51.84, lifted by higher usage of data services such as text messaging or downloadable music and ringtones.

Wireline results

To complement its strong wireless unit, Verizon hopes to sign up millions of customers for its new fiber-television and fiber-Internet services, while reversing a long-term decline in local-phone customers.

Many of those departed customers have switched to cable operators that now offer phone calling and broadband access. Verizon wants to defend its existing customer base from aggressive cable competitors and counterpunch with its own video service.

In the second quarter, Verizon gained 167,000 fiber-TV customers to end with 515,000. Including customers who sign up with DirecTV satellite service through Verizon, the company serves almost 1.3 million video customers.

The carrier also added 288,000 high-speed Internet customers, including 203, 000 who signed up for a fiber-broadband account. It's the first time fiber- Internet gains have outnumbered DSL Internet additions.

Overall, Verizon ended the quarter with 7.7 million high-speed broadband customers, including 1.1 million fiber accounts.

As a result, Verizon's legacy local-consumer business actually saw a 3.4% increase in sales to $3.8 billion, as more customers upgraded their broadband plans.

Yet total revenue in the consumer division, called Verizon Telecom, dropped 3.2% decline to $8.04 billion from a year earlier. Most of the reduction stemmed from an expected decline in the old MCI consumer long-distance business that Verizon acquired last year.

The number of local-phone lines in service also fell once again, down 7.8% to 43.28 million.

The company's corporate-services division, meanwhile, continues to perk up. Sales in Verizon Business, mostly the old MCI, rose an adjusted 2.4% to $5.3 billion from a year earlier.

Verizon bought MCI to obtain a long-distance network with direct connections to thousands of large corporations around the world.

The sales increase reflected the third straight quarter of year-over-year growth, a trend unmatched by rivals AT&T (T) and Sprint Nextel Corp. (US-S)

Total debt fell to $32.5 billion from $34.7 billion at the end of the first quarter.
http://news.google.com/news/url?sa=t...d=11187222 13





Auction May Not Be a Boon for Consumers
John Dunbar

FCC Chairman Kevin Martin has promised that a pivotal airwaves auction early next year will allow people to buy the cell phones they want, not just those offered by their service providers.

But the promise of consumer benefits in the proposed rules for the airwaves auction - set for a vote Tuesday by the Federal Communications Commission - may not be so bold after all.

The ``open access'' rules will have no impact until at least 2010, probably later; they affect only a third of the airwaves spectrum being auctioned, and serious questions are being raised about their enforceability.

``Consumers will still face restrictive use of their phones and Blackberries for years to come and will only get the benefit of a more open attitude to devices if there is thorough regulatory oversight five years down the road,'' said Gene Kimmelman, vice president for federal affairs for Consumers Union, the nonprofit publisher of Consumer Reports magazine.

The FCC is expected to approve the open-access provision, along with a passel of other rules Tuesday. The dense, technically worded document will guide the auction's conduct. The contents, which are not subject to public scrutiny, have been eagerly anticipated by bidders.

The final wording may persuade some investors to commit billions of dollars to develop new wireless networks; it may persuade others not to bid at all.

The publicly owned spectrum up for auction has been praised for its ability to travel long distances and penetrate walls easily - the same characteristics that made it attractive to broadcasters who are being evicted from it in the move to all-digital television.

The Congressional Budget Office estimates the auction's proceeds will amount to between $10 billion and $15 billion.

A total of 60 megahertz will be auctioned. Twenty-two megahertz will be subject to the ``open access'' rules being pushed by Martin. Another 10 megahertz will be dedicated to a national public safety network, shared between a commercial operator and public safety agencies.

Last April, Martin described the auction as the last best opportunity to introduce a ``third pipe'' competitor to the world of high-speed Internet access, which is largely dominated by cable and telephone companies.

Public interest groups, later joined by Internet search engine giant Google Inc., argued that the best way to ensure that third-pipe competitor was to reserve some of the spectrum for use by a wholesaler.

Google even said it might bid if such a condition were imposed. A wholesale requirement would discourage big cable and telephone companies - who would be unlikely to lease space on the new network to potential competitors - from bidding.

Harold Feld, who studies spectrum issues for the Media Access Project, a nonprofit public interest group, said chances of a wholesale provision passing are virtually nil.

``Politics both inside and outside (the agency) make it a thousand-to-one against a wholesale open-access provision,'' he said.

But the more modest provision backed by Martin appears to have the votes. During questioning by a congressional subcommittee last week, Martin and the two Democrats on the five-member commission said they favor the idea.

But even with a favorable vote, many challenges remain.

The spectrum being auctioned will be occupied by television broadcasters until February of 2009. The winning bidder or bidders (the spectrum is in six geographic pieces) would then have to ``build out'' the network. This could take several years and billions of dollars.

Only 22 megahertz of spectrum is affected by the open access provision, a significant portion, but not enough, say consumer advocates.

In addition, if one of the large existing providers was the winning bidder, it might incorporate the spectrum into its existing network in such a way that the open access requirements would be meaningless.

Finally, there is no indication to date how the FCC intends to enforce the rule.

Whether or not the open access provisions have any real effect won't be known for certain until after the current commission is out of office. Despite the concerns, however, Feld remains hopeful given Martin's forceful public statements.

``He's now staked his reputation on this,'' Feld said.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/worldlates...816128,00.html





FCC's Martin Says No Need For Return Of Fairness Doctrine
FMQB

The "Fairness Doctrine" has been in the news as of late, with rumblings of reinstating the policy of requiring balanced coverage of issues. However, the FCC has no plans to bring back the Doctrine, according to Chairman Kevin Martin.

In a letter to Rep. Mike Pence (R-IN), Martin wrote that, "the events of the last two decades have confirmed the wisdom of the [FCC's] decision to abolish the Fairness Doctrine." The letter was written a month ago and made public this week. It was written in response to a letter from Pence, asking for the Chairman's views on the Fairness Doctrine.

Martin added that he sees "no compelling reason to reinstate the Fairness Doctrine in today's broadcast environment and believe that such a step would inhibit the robust discussion of issues of public concern over the nation's airwaves."
http://fmqb.com/Article.asp?id=447405





Super V-Chip Proposed

For phone and web
Brooks Boliek

The Senate Commerce Committee approved legislation Thursday asking the FCC to oversee the development of a super V-chip that could screen content on everything from cell phones to the Internet.

Sen. Mark Pryor, D-Ark., the sponsor of the Child Safe Viewing Act, claims that the new law is necessary because content is no longer confined to the TV or radio, and he contends the same technology that allows content to increasingly migrate from device to device also can be used to empower parents.

"It's an uphill battle for parents trying to protect their kids from viewing inappropriate programming," Pryor said. "I believe there is a whole new generation of technology that can provide an additional layer of help for these parents."

The bill requires the FCC to review, within one year of enactment, technology that can help parents manage the vast volume of video and other content on television or the Internet.

Under the 1996 Telecommunications Act, TV makers are required to embed the V-chip within televisions to allow parents to block content according to a rating system.

A section of the 1996 law also ordered the FCC to review and implement advanced filtering technology as it is developed, and Pryor said the commission has been dragging its feet on the issue.

"My bill simply lights a fire under the FCC to take a fresh look at new options in the marketplace," he said.

Pryor's legislation is the second anti-content bill approved by the commerce committee. Last month, it approved legislation overturning a federal court decision that found without merit FCC rules punishing broadcasters for a accidentally cussing on the air.

A third bill that aims to regulate violent content much the same as indecent speech is expected to be introduced soon. Sen. Jay Rockefeller, D-W.Va., has plans to introduce the anti-violence bill, but it was unclear when.

Under federal court rulings and commission rules, material is indecent if it "in context, depicts or describes sexual or excretory activities or organs in a patently offensive manner as measured by contemporary community standards for the broadcast medium." Indecent speech can be aired safely from 10 p.m.-6 a.m.

The government's indecency rules do not apply to cable or the Internet. A series of laws attempting to regulate speech on the Internet have failed.
http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/hr/..._id=1003620931





Congress Expresses Concern Over Digital TV Switch
Ed Oswald

The coming transition from analog to digital television here in the United States has some in Congress a little worried that any consumer confusion may come back on them.

On February 18, 2009, broadcasters will be required to stop transmitting programming in analog format. The spectrum freed up once the move is complete would be reassigned to other uses, including frequencies for first responders and new wireless broadband services.

But Congress isn't so excited about the transition, and is wary of consumer backlash. In a hearing Thursday by the Senate Commerce Committee on the subject, some expressed concern that the government wasn't doing enough to educate the public on the transition.

"Far too few of these consumers know that the transition from current analog television technology to digital television, or DTV, is under way," Sen. Dan Inouye (D-Hawaii) said at the hearing.

Others referred to it as a "potential for a train wreck" when it occurs. In any case, those without a digital-capable TV or a converter box may find their televisions suddenly inoperable. Some lawmakers worry those who feel they weren't informed could take it out on their elected officials.

While the digital switch would only truly have the potential to affect the 19 percent of Americans that still receive programming via antenna -- those with cable or satellite would not be affected - it's still a large enough number to concern Capitol Hill. As many as 3 out of every 5 Americans know little or nothing of the pending change, according to polls.

Thus far, government officials are defending themselves, saying they are doing what they can to educate the consumer. $5 million of the government's $1.5 billion allocation for the analog-to-digital switch has been earmarked for "public education."
http://www.betanews.com/article/Cong...tch/1185551205





Top Fall Pilots Leaked Online
James Hibberd

At least half a dozen highly anticipated broadcast network fall pilots have been leaked online.

Copies of NBC’s “Bionic Woman,” ABC’s “Pushing Daisies,” The CW’s “Reaper” and several other shows were available Friday for illegal download on sites such as Torrent Spy, The Pirate Bay and Mininova.

Most of the titles appear to have been uploaded within the past week. The first copy of “Bionic” was listed as uploaded two days ago, while the earliest “Reaper” file was date-marked seven days ago. Other leaked shows include Fox’s midseason “The Terminator” spin-off “The Sarah Connor Chronicles,” ABC’s “Cavemen,” and NBC’s “Chuck” and “Lipstick Jungle.”

Network representatives expressed surprise that the full-length pilots were on the Web and alerted their studio partners. Some said they were anticipating that critic and industry screener copies would leak eventually as smattering of fall pilots have found their way online during the past few years. All networks contacted declined official comment.

TelevisionWeek downloaded and confirmed the content of several pilot files. The videos were of reasonably high quality, akin to the streaming programs on broadcast network Web sites.

“This baby is real and nice quality,” one user posted about "Connor" on Pirate Bay. “Wish I could say more about the content, but there is potential.”

Another user wrote, “A lot better than I'd expected … a bit weird though -- this isn't supposed to air until 2008.”

Most of the leaked shows are among the more anticipated, buzz-heavy titles of the fall (there are many copies of “Bionic” and “Connor” online, for example, but no copies of ABC’s “Carpoolers” or The CW’s “Life is Wild” were found). Given the selection, some downloaders wondered if the networks and studios leaked the programs themselves. Network and studio representatives, however, denied uploading the shows.

“We’re doing everything we can to fight piracy,” said one major studio representative who declined to be identified. “Our piracy department is playing whack-a-mole with these things.”

In recent years, some networks have begun to distribute premiere episodes online in advance of their debuts. Such promotional previews are often carefully timed to hit right before the regular broadcast of the show. Also, network previews are typically streamed via the network’s own Web site, or through other controlled environments such as popular portal and business partners like AOL or MSN.

The copies found online so far will probably be joined by lower-quality versions soon, according to one studio representative who was attending the Comic-Con convention in San Diego. Networks at the comic book convention are currently screening several popular pilots. Judging by the number of handheld video recorders in the audience, the executive said he expected to see more unauthorized copies of network shows online.
http://www.tvweek.com/news/2007/07/t...ked_online.php





'Bourne' Producer Says 4th Film Unlikely

Frank Marshall won't rule out another sequel to the Jason Bourne films, but says the story has already ventured far afield from Robert Ludlum's novels.

"There might be an idea out there that we could go forward with, but right now, the trilogy is done," Marshall said Monday at a screening of "The Bourne Ultimatum."

Matt Damon, who stars as amnesiac assassin Jason Bourne, also attended the screening, a fundraiser for the Boise Contemporary Theater. The event was held at the Egyptian Theatre.

Marshall and Damon have attended screening events in Boise for each Bourne movie. Marshall has local ties to Boise, and has held several premieres in the city to benefit various causes.

Damon said he hoped future projects bring him back to Idaho.

"I'm hoping that a lot of people from the industry come to Idaho - the mountains, the desert, the city, with everything that you have going for you, more movies should be shot out here," the 36-year-old actor said.

"The Bourne Ultimatum" opens in theaters nationwide Friday.
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories...07-31-16-45-16





The Ludlum Conundrum: A Dead Novelist Provides New Thrills
Richard Sandomir

Robert Ludlum died six years ago, but that has done nothing to slow the release of books published under the name of the actor-turned-novelist who specialized in thrillers built on a foundation of paranoia.

Twelve Ludlum books have been released since his death, with a 13th due out in September. The business is deployed now as a kind of film studio, presenting books completed by others or new ones written using his name.

Since early 2006 there have been three alone: “Robert Ludlum’s The Moscow Vector,” the sixth in the “Covert-One” series of paperback originals; “The Bancroft Strategy,” and “Robert Ludlum’s The Bourne Betrayal,” by Eric Van Lustbader.

Mr. Ludlum did not want to be forgotten or leave behind only an enormous backlist that started with “The Scarlatti Inheritance” in 1971. He had little reason to worry: he is now a brand extended far into his afterlife.

“This goes back to 1990 or ’91 when Bob had quadruple bypass,” said Henry Morrison, the agent for Mr. Ludlum. “One day we were talking about what would happen when he was gone. He said, ‘I don’t want my name to disappear. I’ve spent 30 years writing books and building an audience.’ ”

His estate has borrowed from the examples of V.C. Andrews, dead since 1986 but selling well thanks to novels in her name written by an uncredited author; Ernest Hemingway, whose estates issued several books after his suicide; and Tom Clancy and Clive Cussler (both quite alive) who diverted from their skin of solo thrillers to create series written in conjunction with, or solely by, others.

“People expect something from a Robert Ludlum book, and if we can publish Ludlum books for the next 50 years and satisfy readers, we will,” said Jeffrey Weiner, the executor of Mr. Ludlum’s estate. The estate’s post-mortem publishing game plan is reminiscent of licensing and other deals for dead stars like Elvis Presley, Marilyn Monroe and Babe Ruth, and the film industry’s comfort with familiar franchises.

“Publishing does look to the past to see what will work in the future,” said Sara Nelson, the editor in chief of Publishers Weekly. “Series and big-name authors have tended to work well. Publishers, like executives in other creative fields, want Nos. 2, 3 and 4 to work as well as No. 1. And instead of going off to find the new Ludlum, they figure they’ve got this formula and will continue to use it.”

Whether it is fair to readers to publish the Ludlum books posthumously — in the form of spruced-up old manuscripts or new novels written by others — is not a serious concern to the estate or to Grand Central Publishing, the former Warner Books, where the rights to all new novels moved from St. Martin’s Press.

“I don’t think anyone objects as long as you maintain the quality of the book,” Mr. Morrison said. “The Sherlock Holmes novels have been a business since ‘The Seven-Percent Solution,’ and some have been better than others. It’s the characters that interest people.”

Mr. Weiner and Mr. Morris have executed an aggressive plan that has perpetuated the “Covert-One” series of paperback originals that Mr. Ludlum created with the central character of Lt. Col. Jon Smith. He oversaw the first three (two by Gayle Lynds and one by Philip Shelby) before he died, but three more have been published since. A seventh, “The Arctic Event,” by James Cobb, the fifth writer in the series, is due in September.

Three other books have been polished by an uncredited writer (Mr. Morrison said he sought no credit) and editor (also unnamed) from unpolished manuscripts left behind by Mr. Ludlum, including last year’s “The Bancroft Strategy,” which sold 102,000 copies in hardcover, making it to the ninth spot on The New York Times best-seller list, according to Nielsen BookScan, which tracks about 70 percent of retail book sales.

That book, Mr. Morrison said, “sat around in the safe awaiting its turn. There are others that will be finished, as suitable.” He insisted that there are no ghostwriters in a bunker with a laptop writing books in Mr. Ludlum’s name.

Two best sellers by the veteran thriller writer Eric Van Lustbader have lengthened the troubled double life of Jason Bourne, Ludlum’s C.I.A.-handled assassin who had amnesia when readers first met him and whose memories have returned in glimmers like the scent of a certain Scotch.

Mr. Lustbader’s newest novel bears the title “Robert Ludlum’s The Bourne Betrayal” in which the agency believes he has gone rogue by killing two of its own and orders him terminated. The title underscores the franchise and the hope that readers will buy a Ludlumesque book that he only inspired but which displays his name in letters twice as tall as Mr. Lustbader’s.

Mr. Lustbader, who was a friend of Mr. Ludlum’s and is a client of Mr. Morrison’s, was enlisted to refresh the literary Bourne after the success that Matt Damon had in playing the character in the 2002 film, “The Bourne Identity,” very loosely based on Mr. Ludlum’s first Bourne novel of the same name. That and the 2004 film, “The Bourne Supremacy,” have grossed nearly $500 million. (The third film in the franchise, “The Bourne Ultimatum,” opens on Aug. 3.)

The writers met at Mr. Morrison’s annual Christmas party in 1980, the year in which “The Bourne Identity,” and Mr. Lustbader’s “The Ninja,” were published. Mr. Lustbader said that they sat rapt in each other’s company in a corner at the party.

“We talked for hours about characters and story arcs and how to fashion a book in three acts, where one act outdoes the next one. We talked about being the only thriller writers who knew anything about characters and wrote about characters in our books.”

Mr. Weiner suggested to Mr. Lustbader that he write a Bourne novel, but he didn’t take the offer seriously until the plot for “The Bourne Legacy” (St. Martin’s Press) came to him while showering. He admired Bourne and believed that he understood what motivated him; he agreed to a deal with the estate in which he had no obligation to copy Mr. Ludlum’s italicized style, although his pacing and plotting are eerily similar to Mr. Ludlum’s. “The Bourne Legacy” has sold 272,000 hardcover and paperback copies, Nielsen BookScan reported.

“I wanted to preserve the essence of Bourne and his sense of honor,” Mr. Lustbader said. He refreshed Bourne by killing off characters who were central to Mr. Ludlum’s creation and made him ageless, which conforms to the possibility of the Bourne films continuing. James Bond, after all, doesn’t turn into an on-screen geezer; he gets replaced by a younger actor.

Mr. Ludlum sent Bourne into action three times between 1980 and 1990.

“He never intended Bourne to be a series,” Mr. Lustbader added, “so he gave Bourne a wife, Marie, and kids, and made him older. But you can’t have that with continuing characters. So with the O.K. from the estate, I wanted to kill off Marie by natural causes and have the kids shipped to her family in Canada. He needed to start the next chapter of his life.”

Mr. Lustbader’s “The Bourne Betrayal,” has sold 86,000 copies through July 20, and is currently No. 8 on the New York Times hardcover best-seller list.

Mr. Ludlum worked with Ms. Lynds and Mr. Shelby on the “Covert-One” books but never met their successors, Patrick Larkin, or Mr. Cobb, who said that Mr. Morrison, who is also his agent, asked if he had any possible “Covert-One” plots.

“I had one drifting around the back of my head,” Mr. Cobb said by telephone from Tacoma, Wash. “I could file off the serial numbers and bend it to fit the structure. I banged out an outline, and in a few days, they accepted it.”

He added: “I do not pretend to be Robert Ludlum. That would not be fair to him and it would not be fair to me. I just hope it will satisfy readers.”

The estate, which benefits Mr. Ludlum’s heirs, will put that standard to the test with the planned revival of another of the Ludlum characters, Peter Chancellor, who first appeared in “The Chancellor Manuscript” 30 years ago in “The Chancellor Letter.” The first 100 pages of the manuscript — by a veteran science-fiction writer — must still be approved by the estate. In addition, a script based on the original “Chancellor” is being developed for Leonardo DiCaprio.

The estate is also looking at TV series deal surrounding the shadowy Treadstone agency in the Bourne books, but would exclude Bourne if it is produced. A Bourne video game from Vivendi is due out next year.

“It seems like more of a posthumous factory than anybody I can think of,” Ms. Nelson said. “And more of a well-oiled machine than V.C. Andrews’s.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/30/bu.../30ludlum.html





Milestones

Italian Filmmaker Antonioni Dies at 94
Phil Stewart and Nicola Scevola

Michelangelo Antonioni, one of Italy's most famous and influential filmmakers, has died at the age of 94, city officials in Rome said on Tuesday.

Considered the cinematic father of modern angst and alienation, Antonioni had a career spanning six decades which included the Oscar-nominated "Blowup" and the internationally acclaimed "L'Avventura" (The Adventure).

"With Antonioni, not only has one of the greatest living directors been lost, but also a master of the modern screen," said Rome mayor Walter Veltroni. His office said it was making plans for Antonioni's body to lie in state on Wednesday.

Antonioni's deliberately slow-moving and oblique movies were not always crowd pleasers but films such as "L'Avventura" turned him into an icon for directors like Martin Scorsese, who has described him as a poet with a camera.

Antonioni was born in 1912 in the northern Italian city of Ferrara. He directed his first feature, "Cronaca di un amore" ("Story of a Love Affair"), in 1950 at the age of 38.

Over the next two decades Antonioni worked with some of the greatest names in post-war Italian cinema like Marcello Mastroianni but it was not until the 1960s that he emerged on the international stage.

Despite winning favorable reviews at the 1957 Cannes Film Festival with "Il Grido" ("The Outcry") he scored his first real international success in 1960 with "L'Avventura", an exploration of the emotional sterility of modern society.

His second breakthrough picture came in 1966 with the English-language "Blowup", set in "swinging 60s" London, which turned him into a cult figure for moviegoers and moviemakers.

Many audiences found his pictures, with their long lingering shots, plodding and pretentious. Others hailed him as one of the founding fathers of European avant-garde cinema.

Next came the disappointing "Zabriskie Point" in 1970 and "The Passenger", starring Jack Nicholson, in 1975.

He continued working after suffering a paralyzing stroke in 1983.

He was awarded Venice's Golden Lion in 1983 and a U.S. Academy Award in 1995 for his lifetime achievements.
http://www.reuters.com/article/newsO...23838420070731

A Chronicler of Alienated Europeans in a Flimsy New World
Stephen Holden

Decades before it was given a name, Michelangelo Antonioni recognized the malady we now call attention deficit disorder. In his great 1960s films, “L’Avventura,” “La Notte,” “Eclipse” and “Red Desert,” but especially in “L’Avventura,” his masterpiece, it wasn’t diagnosed as a chemical imbalance, but as a communicable social disease.

Spawned in a psychological petri dish in which idleness, boredom and dissatisfaction with the material rewards of life combined to create and spread a chronic, generalized, mild depression, it was an ailment peculiar to the upper middle class. What made audiences susceptible was the glamour that attached to it. As I watched the attractive aristocrats and climbers in his films mope through their empty lives, a part of me wanted to be just like those people: self-absorbed and miserable, perhaps, but also fashionable and sexy.

The ever-acute critic Pauline Kael recognized this contradiction in a famous essay, “Come-Dressed-as-the-Sick-Soul-of-Europe Parties,” which aroused the ire of Antonioni devotees like me. More than four decades later, that contradiction remains unresolved in popular culture. Such is the power of film and television imagery that glamour and sex, no matter how tawdry or morally bankrupt, command our attention and whet our fantasies.

Mr. Antonioni was the movies’ first diagnostician of what back then was called alienation, anomie, angst and decadence. If his films had their silly side (the image of Jeanne Moreau and Marcello Mastroianni, grappling fully clothed in a sand trap in “La Notte”), they were also prophetic. Their melancholy poetry transmuted an overriding mood of self-pity into something deeper and closer to tragedy.

Mr. Antonioni’s death on Monday, so close to Ingmar Bergman’s, should give us pause. Their deaths bring down the final curtain on the high-modernist era of filmmaking, when a handful of directors were artistic gods accorded the respect and latitude of great painters or authors. Among the European masters of the 1960s, only Jean-Luc Godard, that most modern of modernists, remains.

For all their differences of temperament, Mr. Bergman and Mr. Antonioni were staunch moralists. If Mr. Bergman, the Scandinavian, was stern and austere, Mr. Antonioni, the Italian, was a sensuous aesthete who, when it suited him, resorted to painting nature the way he wanted it to look on the screen.

If both had bleak apprehensions of the decline and fall of Western civilization in an increasingly secularized age, Mr. Antonioni’s vision was more urbane and cosmopolitan. The final bleak street-corner montage in “Eclipse” is downright apocalyptic. In that movie, the third part of the trilogy that included “L’Avventura” and “La Notte,” the world is consumed with stock-market fever. Greed trumps love. Sound familiar?

The meticulous compositions in Mr. Antonioni’s films depict a shiny but flimsy new world displacing an older and more solid one. Classic stone architecture constructed to last for centuries is contrasted with bright, new high-rise skyscrapers without character. Nuns in black habits rub shoulders with avaricious starlets and shallow socialites. The affluent new generation senses its own susceptibility to corruption. Sandro, the faithless male protagonist of “L’Avventura,” is a once-serious architect who is bitterly aware that he has sold out his talent.

“L’Avventura” and Federico Fellini’s more flamboyant film “La Dolce Vita,” to which it was continually compared, tugged the European art film toward fashion. Together they inaugurated a vogue among trendy Americans to punctuate their conversations with “Ciao” (often uttered in a petulant, pseudo-Italian accent) instead of “Goodbye.”

As the ’60s wore on, Mr. Antonioni increasingly succumbed to the taint of fashion. His most successful film, “Blowup,” set in swinging London among photographers and models, was clever but shallow. Yet the protagonist’s search for an elusive photographic truth was prescient.

Mr. Antonioni’s vogue ended abruptly in 1970 with the critical and commercial failure of “Zabriskie Point.” At the time, that movie, his first feature made in the United States, was widely misunderstood by fans longing to identify with its young lovers, who dabble in revolutionary politics. When no revolution occurred at the end, the audience that had lined up to see it (I saw its first two New York screenings) left frustrated. In hindsight, its climactic fantasy of a house repeatedly exploding (to the strains of Pink Floyd) predicted the imminent failure of that so-called revolution. The notion that it was just a fantasy was a message nobody wanted to hear.

But Mr. Antonioni’s fashionableness shouldn’t distract us from his accomplishment. He was a visionary whose portrayal of the failure of Eros in a hypereroticized climate addressed the modern world and its discontents in a new, intensely poetic cinematic language. Here was depicted for the first time on screen a world in which attention deficit disorder, and the uneasy sense of impermanence that goes with it, were already epidemic.

The startling conceptual coup of “L’Avventura” was the story’s unexplained disappearance of a young woman, Anna, from a desolate, rocky island where she and a yachting party have landed. Even before the group, which includes Sandro, leaves the island without finding Anna, Sandro puts the moves on her best friend, Claudia (Monica Vitti). She resists his advances, but succumbs once they have returned to the mainland.

As the police search for Anna, the members of the party become distracted. Even for Claudia, the movie’s conscience and Mr. Antonioni’s alter ego, the urgency of finding Anna recedes in the heat of her new relationship. The cycle of betrayal culminates with the final scene: Claudia and Sandro are staying in a hotel, and she awakens to find him gone.

Venturing downstairs, she finds him sprawled on a couch with a prostitute, an exhibitionist with whom they had crossed paths earlier, as the prostitute created a paparazzi frenzy in a village they were passing through. This character may be the movies’ very first “celebutante.” Today she is everywhere.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/01/movies/01appr.html





Ingmar Bergman Dead

Legendary Swedish film director Ingmar Bergman has died at the age of 89. He died on Monday morning at his home on the island of Fårö, his daughter Eva Bergman told news agency TT.

Bergman won three Oscars for Best Foreign Language Film, for The Virgin Spring, Through a Glass Darkly and Fanny and Alexander. He also won the Irving G. Thalberg Memorial Award, presented at the 1971 Oscars ceremony.

Eva Bergman said that her father had passed away "peacefully."

For many movie buffs, Bergman was the greatest of the authorial film-makers of the 1950s and 1960s, outranking even such figures as Federico Fellini, Luis Bunuel or Jean-Luc Godard.

The demanding nature of his work, in particular the gravity of his themes, was such that the general public found him remote, and he was accused in his homeland of being partly responsible for Sweden being presented as a country of neurotics.

Born in 1918 in Uppsala to a Lutheran minister, Bergman became interested in theatre and cinema after leaving Stockholm University, where he never completed his course in literature and art.

Bergman started making films soon after the Second World War. An early film to catch international attention was Summer with Monika (Sommaren med Monika). The nude scenes in the film were controversial abroad, and were credited by some with giving Sweden its reputation as a sexually liberated country.

A number of Swedish actors worked repeatedly with Bergman, including Max von Sydow, Bibi Andersson, Harriet Andersson, Erland Josephson, Gunnar Björnstrand and Liv Ullmann.

Commenting on his death on Monday, Bibi Andersson told tabloid Aftonbladet that she would "miss him enormously."

Known in Sweden mainly as a dramatist, Bergman obtained poor reviews for work that was considered dark and incomprehensible, with its focus on love, loneliness, anguish and relations with God.

Women also occupied a central role in his work, which often dwelt on the mysteries of the female soul. He had loved his mother intensely as a child, and when a doctor advised her to set him aside or he would be damaged for life, he felt the loss deeply.

Mother-son relationships featured prominently in his work, as did his experiences from five marriages.

Bergman made profoundly personal films following his intellectual and spiritual preoccupations and tracing his loss of faith in God.

Bergman's films tended to be low-budget, with Cries and Whispers (1973) costing only $200,000. Aside from the Oscar winners, Bergman received widespread critical acclaim for films including The Seventh Seal (Det Sjunde Inseglet - 1957) Wild Strawberries (Smultronstället -1957) and his 1973 television series Scenes from a Marriage (Scener ur ett Äktenskap).

Fanny and Alexander (1984) was his last major feature, and is regarded as one of his best. He kept working well into old age, producing his last television series, Saraband, in 2003.

Bergman was also an accomplished stage director, and managed and directed both the Malmö City Theatre and the Stockholm Royal Dramatic Theatre (Dramaten). He was also director of the Residenz-Theater of Munich between 1977-84, a period that coincided with a dispute with the Swedish authorities over alleged tax evasion.

Four of Bergman's marriages ended in divorce. His last wife, Ingrid, died in 1995. He had nine children, including one, daughter Linn Ullmann, from his relationship with actress Liv Ullman. http://www.thelocal.se/8037/20070730/

"We Never Understood How Big He Was"

The Swedish film world has been paying its tributes to film director Ingmar Bergman, who died on Monday at the age of 89.

"It feels empty. This was not so unexpected, but it feels gloomy," said veteran Swedish film critic Nils Petter Sundgren.

Sundgren said Bergman had meant "an enormous amount" to Swedish film.

"For me he is, alongside Strindberg, the greatest Swedish dramatic artist."

"Many people in Sweden have found it hard to comprehend how big he is in the rest of the world. But he is the only Swedish artist they ask about, and there is a word, ' Bergmanesque', which means a state of lacking cheerfulness. If you become an adjective, you've become great."

Marie Nyeröd, who made a 2004 series of documentaries detailing Bergman's life and work on the island of Färö, said that Bergman's lifelong fear of death eased in old age.

"He was also convinced that he would be reunited after death with his last wife, Ingrid von Rosen. I hope that's what he's done. And it was best that he died peacefully in his sleep at home."

The director never really recovered from a hip operation last October, Nyeröd said.

She argues that he was Sweden's greatest-ever cultural export.

"I don't think we've really understood how big he was abroad. When I showed my documentaries abroad, in Russia, Argentina and Brazil, I noticed that it is true that he is bigger in other countries than he is in Sweden. People come up to touch me simply because I have sat close to him, as if I could pass on some of his charisma."

Mikael Persbrandt, one of Sweden's leading younger actors, said meeting Bergman was decisive when he choose his career.

"I often turn my mind back to my first meeting with Ingmar Bergman, when I had a bit-part in King Lear, a meeting which in many ways was behind my choice of career. I can see before me all his fantastic film faces. The magic of which he was a master still has me in its grip. There is a great sense of loss," he said.

The Swedish Film Institute has invited people to sign a book of condolences at Filmhuset in Stockholm.

"This is a sad day for film. One of the most important film-makers in the world has passed away," said Cissi Elwin, CEO of the Swedish Film Institute.

"It is almost impossible to imagine the Swedish film industry without Ingmar Bergman. For more than half a century he has led us into his very own cinematic landscape, and forced us to confront ourselves.

"He has repeatedly asked the most important question about humanity, showing our vulnerability and smallness, but also our greatness. His films are a sort of consolation.

"Ingmar Bergman has left us but his films will live on long, long after his death," said Elwin.
http://www.thelocal.se/8039/20070730/





The Pirate Bay Launches Bergmanbits, A Tribute to Ingmar Bergman
Ernesto

The popular BitTorrent tracker The Pirate Bay just launched bergmanbits.com, a tribute to Ingmar Bergman, the legendary Swedish film director, who passed away yesterday. The site lists all the movies he directed, and .torrent links are available for most of them.

Ingmar Bergman was a source of inspiration to other well know flim directors such as Woody Allen, Stanley Kubrick, and Lars Von Trier and he received three Academy Awards for Best Foreign Language Film.

Ingmar Bergman died yesterday at the age of 89, something that didn’t go unnoticed by The Swedish Pirate Bay. On bergmanbits.com we read:

“As big fans of Bergman’s work, we decided to make a tribute site to the films he created and we all love. We want to help people share these works and hope that even though Ingmar is no longer with us more people will experience the films and enjoy them as much as we have.”

The Pirate Bay and friends are know for their responses to recent events. Earlier this year they launched Oscartorrents, with links to all the Academy Award nominees, and EurovisionTorrents, a similar project for the Eurovision song contest. OscarTorrents, the pirate alternative for the Academy Awards turned out to be a great success with Pan’s Labyrinth as the big winner.
http://torrentfreak.com/the-pirate-b...ngmar-bergman/





Tom Snyder of 'Tomorrow Show' Dies at 71
AP

Talk show host Tom Snyder, whose smoke-filled interviews and robust laughter were a staple of late night television, has died after a struggle with leukemia. He was 71.

Snyder died Sunday in San Francisco from complications associated with leukemia, his longtime producer and friend Mike Horowicz told The Associated Press on Monday.

Known for his improvised, casual style, Snyder conducted a number of memorable interviews as host of NBC's "The Tomorrow Show." Among his guests were John Lennon, Charles Manson and Johnny Rotten of the Sex Pistols.

Snyder began his career as a radio reporter in Milwaukee in the 1960s, then moved into local television news. He anchored newscasts in Philadelphia and Los Angeles before moving to late night.

"He loved the broadcast business," said Marciarose Shestack, who co-anchored a noontime newscast with Snyder at KYW-TV in Philadelphia in the 1960s. "He was very surprising and very irreverent and not at all a typical newscaster."

In 1972, Snyder left news to host "The Tomorrow Show," which followed "The Tonight Show" with Johnny Carson.

His catch phrase for the show was: "Fire up a colortini, sit back, relax, and watch the pictures, now, as they fly through the air." Snyder smoked throughout his show, the cigarette cloud swirling around him during interviews.

He gained more fame when Dan Aykroyd lampooned him in the early days of Saturday Night Live.

In 1995, he returned to late night television as the host of "The Late Late Show with Tom Snyder" on CBS. The program followed David Letterman's "Late Show" until 1998, when Snyder was replaced by Craig Kilborn.

Snyder announced on his Web site in 2005 that he had chronic lymphocytic leukemia.

"When I was a kid leukemia was a death sentence," he wrote then. "Now, my doctors say it's treatable!"

Horowicz met Snyder in 1982 and worked with him at WABC in New York before producing the "Tom Snyder" television show.

"He was a great guy and very talented," Horowicz said.

Snyder is survived by his daughter and longtime girlfriend, who live in the Bay Area.
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2007/...n3110969.shtml





Gates Plans His Leave Amid Great Change
John Markoff

Microsoft is beset with competition from all sides, unlike any it has seen in decades, and Bill Gates, who co-founded the company 32 years ago, still intends to step away next year as planned.

But so far, Mr. Gates, Microsoft’s 51-year-old chairman, shows no sign of fading away.

One year into a planned two-year transition, there are few visible cues that Mr. Gates is ready to leave the world’s technology stage to devote his energies principally to the $33 billion foundation he established seven years ago with his wife.

Indeed at the company’s annual financial meeting last week Mr. Gates spoke first, outlining a decade-long agenda, not a mere 12-month outlook.

He described a world in which the widespread availability of broadband networks would reshape computing, giving rise to what he said would be “natural user interfaces” like pen, voice and touch, replacing many functions of keyboards and mice.

Mr. Gates has stayed deeply engaged in the company’s technology strategy. He still frequently participates in high-level strategy planning sessions with Microsoft’s closest partners, like Intel, according to executives who have attended the meetings.

During a wide-ranging interview last week exploring his diminished role at Microsoft, the company’s challenge and its competitors, Mr. Gates insisted that he really has begun stepping back.

“I am in a lucky situation of having way more things that seem interesting to do and very exciting and important, and working with smart people, and highly impactful, way more than a 24-hour day will fit,” Mr. Gates said. To be sure, there is widespread skepticism in the industry about the possibility of Mr. Gates genuinely disengaging. Microsoft’s dominance is being challenged as never before by Google in particular, and Wall Street refuses to believe the company will regain its edge. The company’s stock has largely remained flat since the end of the dot-com era.

“It’s very hard for someone at his age, who has built a company with that much success and with continuing challenges to really walk away,” said David B. Yoffie, a professor at Harvard’s business school. “He will never be a titular leader.”

As he spoke in his office, Mr. Gates was joined by the two Microsoft executives, both veteran technologists, who are succeeding him. Craig Mundie, the chief research and strategy officer, and Ray Ozzie, chief software architect, agreed with Mr. Gates that despite significant industry challenges from all directions, Microsoft is at a perfect historic juncture for Mr. Gates’s departure and the first stage of his withdrawal from Microsoft has been reasonably seamless.

“The weaning process inside the company is inevitable,” said Mr. Mundie, a computer scientist who began his career developing minicomputers and supercomputers before joining Microsoft in 1992.

The greatest danger, according to all three executives, would be if Mr. Gates continues to make decisions while not staying deeply involved. He will remain chairman.

“It can’t be a situation where he’s expected to suddenly, magically come up to speed,” said Mr. Ozzie, a software designer who developed a software collaboration tool called Notes for Lotus and then started Groove Networks, which was acquired by Microsoft in 2005. “You know, did you see the 20 announcements last week that Google did, Yahoo did, Cisco did?”

For his part, Mr. Gates said he planned to remain deeply involved in a few areas indefinitely.

“Other than board meetings, there’s not much in terms of regular meetings,” he said. “It’s much more sitting down a couple hours a month with Craig, sitting down a couple of hours a month with Ray.”

On Thursday, Steven A. Ballmer, who took over the chief executive role from Mr. Gates seven years ago, said the company’s overall performance had never been stronger. Microsoft, he noted, has doubled its revenue and almost doubled its profits in the half decade that he has been at the helm. Despite that growth, the stock price has remained vexingly flat in the period.

Although smooth leadership transitions are infrequent among high tech firms, it appears that Mr. Gates has had the freedom to begin stepping away gracefully because Mr. Ballmer has been largely successful in shouldering the burden of running Microsoft.

Mr. Gates no longer attends senior leadership team meetings, and earlier this month he made what company executives described as a farewell appearance at the annual Microsoft sales force meeting in Orlando, Fla. When Mr. Gates finished his speech to the thousands of sales people at the meeting, they gave him a five-minute standing ovation, underscoring the bond the company still retains with its co-founder, according to a person who attended the event.

But as he cedes Microsoft’s technology leadership to Mr. Mundie and Mr. Ozzie, the company is struggling with a radical transition in the computer industry. Six months ago, Microsoft shipped its long-delayed Windows Vista operating system, and there is widespread belief within the industry that the era of such unwieldy and vast software development projects is coming to an end.

Ubiquitous broadband networks and high speed wireless networks have for the first time given rise to meaningful alternatives to bulky and costly personal computers. In their place are a proliferating collection of smart connected devices that are tied together by a vast array of Internet-based information services based in centralized data centers.

The industry is rushing to “software as a service” models ranging from Salesforce.com, a San Francisco company that sells business contact software delivered via Web browsers, to Apple’s iPhone, which is designed as a classic “thin client,” a computer that requires the Internet for many of its capabilities.

It is a vision that Microsoft itself has at least partially embraced. Microsoft, in contrast, is calling its strategy “software plus services,” an approach that is intended to protect the company’s existing installed base.

During the interview, all three executives indicated that Microsoft is now moving quickly to offer new Internet services for personal computer users. Centralized data storage will make it possible for PC users to gain access to most or all of their information from all of the different types of computers they use, whether they are desktops, laptops or smartphones, and wherever they are located.

During the transition, Mr. Gates has also stayed closely involved in shaping Microsoft’s strategy in the search market where it has been assiduously attempting to catch Google and Yahoo.

“We made all the structural changes we were going to make, and we rode in tandem last year,” said Mr. Mundie. “In the last few months Bill has transitioned to what I start to think of as special project mode.”

If he is stepping away from Microsoft, Mr. Gates has shed none of his trademark combativeness. He rejected the Silicon Valley view that Microsoft has begun to exhibit the same sclerotic signs of middle age that I.B.M. did when it dominated the computer industry, but failed to respond effectively to the challenge of the personal computer.

I.B.M. is no longer at the center of the computer industry, he asserted, for two reasons. First, the industry is now centered on personal computing. “As much as I.B.M. created the I.B.M. PC, it was never their culture, their excellence,” he said. “Their skill sets were never about personal computing.”

Second, the center of gravity in the computer industry has dramatically shifted toward software, he said. “Why do you like your iPod, your iPhone, your Xbox 360, your Google Search?” he said. “The real magic sauce is not the parts that we buy for the Xbox, or the parts that Apple buys for iPhones, it’s the software that goes into it.”

During the interview Mr. Gates rejected the notion that Google could become a successful competitor in the smartphone software market, where Microsoft has about 10 percent market share. The Silicon valley search engine provider has been widely reported to be preparing to enter the cellphone market with its own software and a host of services springing from that software.

Microsoft’s chairman said it was unlikely that Google would be able to make inroads into the Microsoft’s share of market for mobile phone software.

“How many products, of all the Google products that have been introduced, how many of them are profit-making products?” he asked. “They’ve introduced about 30 different products; they have one profit-making product. So, you’re now making a prediction without ever seeing the software that they’re going to have the world’s best phone and it’s going to be free?”

Again, the ability to create compelling software will determine the winners. “The phone is becoming way more software intensive,” he said. “And to be able to say that there’s some challenge for us in the phone market when its becoming software intensive, I don’t see that.”

The new, less central role for Mr. Gates was first formulated more than a year ago at a June 2006 meeting in which the three men worked out how they would divide responsibilities for guiding the technology direction of the $51 billion company, according to Mr. Ozzie, who was a longtime rival of Mr. Gates at companies like Lotus and I.B.M. before joining Microsoft two years ago.

They decided at that meeting that Mr. Mundie and Mr. Ozzie would divide Mr. Gates’s role at the company along three axes. Along one of these lines, Mr. Mundie, who has been described as Microsoft’s “secretary of state” and who is deeply involved in federal government and international policy issues, would take a more public-facing role, while Mr. Ozzie would focus more closely on internal company matters.

In another, Mr. Mundie has tackled the company’s long-range strategic decisions, while Mr. Ozzie has taken over the near-term challenges of weaving together the product development issues. Finally, Mr. Mundie has taken responsibility for software that sits closer to the computer hardware, like the Windows operating system, while Mr. Ozzie has shaped Microsoft’s response to the growing challenge of network software.

“There’s been a very natural shift in the past year where I will engage with a particular software team and Bill will disengage,” said Mr. Ozzie. Mr. Gates insists that his new world of philanthropy will be just as compelling as software has been. “I’ll have also malaria vaccine or tuberculosis vaccine or curriculum in American high schools, which are also things that, at least the way my mind works, I sit there and say, ‘Oh, God! This is so important; this is so solvable,’ ” he said, “You’ve just got to get the guy who understands this, and this new technology will bring these things together.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/30/te...0gates.html?hp





Murdoch Wins His Bid for Dow Jones

Bancroft family agrees to $5 billion offer after deal on fees a new owner for journal
Sarah Ellison and Matthew Karnitschnig

A century of Bancroft-family ownership at Dow Jones & Co. is over.

Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. sealed a $5 billion agreement to purchase the publisher of The Wall Street Journal after three months of drama in the controlling family and public debate about journalistic values.

One of the oldest and best-known franchises in the newspaper industry, beset in recent years by business pressures, now enters a new era as part of a world-wide media conglomerate. The 76-year-old Mr. Murdoch, whose properties range from the Fox television network to the Times of London, negotiated hard to win the paper he long coveted. He has promised to invest more in Dow Jones journalism.

The Bancrofts worried about protecting the reputation of the Journal, the nation's second-largest newspaper. They feared Mr. Murdoch would meddle in the paper's editorial affairs and import the brand of sensationalist journalism found in some of his properties such as the New York Post. Some Bancrofts sought other buyers.

But ultimately, Mr. Murdoch's $60-a-share bid -- a 67% premium above Dow Jones's share price when it became public -- was the only serious offer on the table. Key family members, spurred by Dow Jones's board and advisers, decided they had no choice.

"On the one hand it is quite sad, but on the other it was the only reasonable thing to do," said Elisabeth Goth Chelberg, a Bancroft family member who unsuccessfully tried a decade ago to get the family more involved in management. "Now I look forward to a better Dow Jones. It's going to have more money and a world presence and all of the things that it could have and should have had but didn't."

Opponents of the deal called it a dark day for journalism. Leslie Hill, a family member who opposed the deal, resigned as a Dow Jones director late Tuesday afternoon. In a letter to the board, she conceded the deal was a good one in financial terms, but said it failed to outweigh "the loss of an independent global news organization with unmatched credibility and integrity."

In an increasingly pinched landscape for newspaper companies, the alternative to selling was a future fraught with risk -- in particular, that deep cost cuts would be needed to prop up the stock price and make up for dwindling advertising.

For every person who argued that the News Corp. takeover threatens Dow Jones's reputation for quality, someone else insisted that Mr. Murdoch's deep pockets and strategic know-how could turn around its prospects. Mr. Murdoch said Tuesday in an interview that he might add four pages of news a day to the Journal.

Family's Attention

"The money got [the family's] attention and enforced their consideration of reality," said Peter Kreisky, a media consultant. "It focused the minds of the family and the board on how difficult it would be to maintain the newspaper in the long term as an independent entity."

As of late Tuesday, the company's offer received support from Bancroft family members holding 37.4% of Dow Jones's voting power, more than half of the family's total voting stake of 64.2%. When added to the 29% of Dow Jones's voting stock held by public shareholders -- most of which is expected to go in News Corp.'s favor -- that support gives Mr. Murdoch enough to win a full shareholder vote comfortably. The vote is likely to be held later this year.

News Corp.'s board signed off on the deal at a brief late-afternoon meeting. After the approval, top executives and advisers broke out glasses for a toast. They were served an Australian Shiraz.

The Bancroft family has controlled Dow Jones since 1902. While Dow Jones accounts for less than half the family's fortune of roughly $2.5 billion, the company had long been the Bancrofts' source of pride and prestige. Dow Jones was also the main glue holding together the family, which today consists of nearly three dozen adult members scattered across the globe. Some deliberated on the offer from vacation destinations around the world, including China, Spain, the Austrian Alps and waters off the coast of Corsica.

Their bonds were tested during the debate over the deal. Cousins and siblings were pitted against one another. Parents fought their children.

In the days leading up to the deal, the stress was severe. Just hours before a Monday deadline for the family to vote on the transaction, William Cox Jr., the only living Bancroft who spent his entire career at the company, went into a diabetic shock. He was briefly admitted to a hospital in Massachusetts, where he summers on Nantucket, before returning home, according to relatives.

The final vote tally followed a last-minute scramble by Dow Jones's board and the family's advisers to win over holdouts. Most of the family's shares are held in a series of trusts. News Corp. had won support from shareholders owning only about 25% of voting power by Monday afternoon, shortly before a deadline for votes set by the family's adviser. That crept up to 28% by Monday evening and then topped 30% Tuesday morning, as a collection of small trusts threw their support behind the deal.

M. Peter McPherson, Dow Jones's nonexecutive chairman, personally called resistant family trustees in Boston and Denver to remind them of the risks they were taking in opposing the deal, according a person who was briefed on the calls.

The shareholder making a decisive swing was a group of Bancroft family trusts overseen by a Denver law firm holding 9.1% of Dow Jones's voting shares. The firm, Holme Roberts & Owen, had been holding out for a higher offer from News Corp. -- a request repeatedly rejected by Mr. Murdoch. The Denver trusts pushed other Bancroft family trusts to hold out for more money, at least for the holders of Class B supervoting shares. These shares, which have 10 times the voting power of Class A shares, are mostly held by the Bancrofts. But when some Boston-based trusts consented to a News Corp. deal late Monday, the Denver trustees lost much of their bargaining power.

Dow Jones's board had rejected the request for a higher price for Class B shareholders. Instead, what emerged from the talks was a deal under which Dow Jones agreed to pay the family's legal and banking bills. News Corp. will assume these liabilities when it buys Dow Jones. The family's fees, to be paid to firms including Merrill Lynch, Morgan Stanley and the law firms Hemenway & Barnes and Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz, could total at least $30 million, according to people familiar with the situation. That figure doesn't include fees incurred by the Dow Jones board, which had its own advisers.

The payment serves as a modest sweetener for the Bancrofts. When spread out over the family's 16.5 million Class B shares, the $30 million equals an additional $1.81 a share, a roughly 3% increase for the family. Family members would otherwise have had to bear these fees out of their own pockets, effectively bringing their take below $60 a share.

James H. Ottaway, whose family controls 7% of Dow Jones's voting power, called the fees "outrageous." In a statement, the outspoken opponent of a News Corp. deal said: "It is ironic indeed for the Bancroft family to have to pay 30 shekels of silver to their investment bankers, and 30 shekels of gold to their corporate lawyers, for scaring some of them into betraying their 105-year family loyalty to Dow Jones independence."

Division of the spoils among the advisers promises to create another fight. Merrill Lynch is expecting to receive an $18.5 million fee, according to a person familiar with its plans. Wachtell Lipton's hoped-for fee is expected to be somewhere near $10 million, said one family member, with a host of other fees for a group of lawyers and bankers advising various Bancroft branches.

Christopher Bancroft, one of the most outspoken family opponents of a deal, said that his fiduciary responsibilities required him to vote against any deal not in the best interests of the family and the company. He has called the offer a bad deal for Dow Jones, arguing it undervalues the company's potential. "As a trustee, I could not roll over," he said. Mr. Bancroft, a Dow Jones board member, didn't attend the board meeting to approve the deal.

In an effort to sweeten his victory, Mr. Murdoch telephoned Mr. Bancroft, according to people familiar with the matter. During the call, Mr. Bancroft agreed to abstain from voting on the family's biggest trust -- the so-called Article 3 trust with 13.2% voting power -- in return for written assurance that News Corp. would pay for all family expenses, including personal attorney fees for Mr. Bancroft and other family members. But Dow Jones's board later refused to endorse the proposal, and it appeared that trust rules wouldn't allow him to abstain.

Delicate Situation

Mr. Bancroft's cousin, Jane Cox MacElree, who also opposed the deal, faced a delicate situation because she was a trustee of some trusts whose beneficiaries favored the deal. Ms. MacElree ended up resigning from some trusts -- deferring to her relatives and shielding herself against potential liability -- while voting the Class B shares she owned against the deal.

Some on Wall Street were surprised that the family wasn't able to squeeze out a higher bid from Mr. Murdoch. By the rituals of Wall Street deal making, a buyer's first offer is almost never the final price agreed to in a transaction -- although Mr. Murdoch's first offer in this case represented an unusually generous premium.

Mr. Murdoch was able to hold his ground because he faced no serious rival -- although some of the nation's largest corporations and wealthiest men took a look over the past three months. Billionaire investor Warren Buffett and Microsoft Corp. founder Bill Gates were approached by a family representative to gauge their interest. Both declined to bid.

Several big companies tried to join together to meet the $60 bid, including General Electric Co., which at various points attempted to form a group with Microsoft, IAC/InterActiveCorp's Barry Diller, and Pearson PLC, owner of the Financial Times. Pearson weighed a separate plan, under which it would have contributed the Financial Times to Dow Jones in exchange for stock, according to a person familiar with the situation. But none of these arrangements got off the ground.

Nor did efforts by the union that represents some of Dow Jones's employees to join forces with a California supermarket magnate get much traction. Internet entrepreneur Brad Greenspan tried to put together investors, but fell short of making an offer for the whole company.

Even some who had initially declared firm opposition to the bid softened over time. On the weekend of July 21-22, Bancroft family member Martha Robes hosted former Dow Jones chairman and CEO Peter R. Kann and his family at her house in Maine to celebrate Mr. Kann's retirement. At the gathering, Ms. Robes and her family gave Mr. Kann a handmade green wooden rowboat named "Joy" and a puzzle that depicts various aspects of his life, including a newspaper, a typewriter and a golf cart, according to people familiar with the matter. (Mr. Kann famously crashed a golf cart at a Dow Jones retreat years ago.)

At the gathering, these people say, Mr. Kann, who had been a long-time champion of Dow Jones's independence, told attendees that given the family's divisions, he could see the arguments for a deal with Mr. Murdoch. Some family members saw his comments as permission to vote for the deal, these people said.

Other family members exchanged impassioned views by email and phone about missed opportunities and the family's shortcomings. One supporter of a deal, Crawford Hill, told his relatives in a nearly 4,000-word email that it was time for "reality check."

Once definitive merger agreements are signed by the two companies, Dow Jones will set the date for a shareholder vote to approve the deal. Mr. Murdoch's advisers suggest shareholder approval is a fait accompli. With family members contributing about 38% voting power to support the deal, News Corp. must still win over the remaining shareholders, who control 29% of Dow Jones's voting power.

News Corp. anticipates that about 80% of these shareholders will vote for the deal, meaning another 23% in support of the transaction -- or about 60% approval overall.

That leaves a slim opportunity for the remaining shareholders to threaten to withhold support with hopes of getting a higher price, as happened in recent takeover fights at Clear Channel Communications Inc. That could be why the company sought a greater margin of support from the family as the process entered its last days.

News Corp. will need to get regulatory approval for the deal, although Mr. Murdoch has said he doesn't expect that to be an issue. Assuming the deal is approved, closing could take place by the end of the year.

The deal raises questions about the future of some senior Dow Jones executives, including Chief Executive Richard Zannino. Once Dow Jones becomes a subsidiary of News Corp., Mr. Zannino may eventually move on.

Severance Packages

Some top executives may be eligible for big severance packages once the sale is completed. Dow Jones implemented change-in-control provisions for more than 100 top managers in early June, a month after the bid was made. Mr. Zannino stands to receive some $19 million if he loses his job or has his duties cut after a change in control.

Mr. Murdoch has argued that The Wall Street Journal will be able to take advantage of News Corp. synergies to gain ground in Europe and Asia, take on national rivals in political coverage.

While he has been vilified for years in the media over issues ranging from union-busting to sensationalist journalism, he has always showed a thick skin, secure in his belief that his critics are antibusiness elitists. Still, the drama preceding the sale of Dow Jones exposed him to unprecedented scrutiny and often harsh criticism.

Now Mr. Murdoch must persuade some factions of Dow Jones's newsrooms, and outside critics, that he will act responsibly as he weighs changes to the Journal and other Dow Jones publications.

In letter to readers, Journal Publisher L. Gordon Crovitz wrote, "The same standards of accuracy, fairness and authority will apply to this publication, regardless of ownership."

News Corp. agreed as part of the deal to invite one Bancroft family representative onto its board of directors and to create a committee to protect Dow Jones's journalistic independence. The committee members are slated to be Louis D. Boccardi, retired CEO of the Associated Press; Nicholas Negroponte, co-founder of Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Media Lab; Jack Fuller, former president of Tribune Publishing; Jennifer Blackburn Dunn, a former congresswoman from Washington state; and Thomas Bray, the former editorial-page editor of the Detroit News and a writer for OpinionJournal.com. Mr. Bray will be chairman.

--Dennis K. Berman, Susan Warren and Susan Pulliam contributed to this article.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1185...onsub_page_one





Bubble 2.0 Coming Soon
John C. Dvorak

Every single person working in the media today who experienced the dot-com bubble in 1999 to 2000 believes that we are going through the exact same process and can expect the exact same results—a bust. It's déjà vu all over again. And since this moment in time is only the beginning of the cycle, the best nuttiness has yet to emerge. Nevertheless, this is not to say that a lot of nuttiness hasn't already happened.

If we look closely, the 1999 dot-com bubble was nothing new. We saw all sorts of bubbles before the dot-com one. For instance, there was the CD-ROM bubble. Remember all the CD-ROM companies? Bill Gates's "Information at Your Fingertips" was the watchword. Microsoft itself started a unique division called Microsoft Home. The whole scene collapsed almost overnight.

Each succeeding bubble has been worse than its predecessor. Thus nobody is actually able to spot the cycle, since it just looks like a continuum. I can assure you that after this next collapse, nobody will think of the dot-com bubble as anything other than a prelude.

Before the CD-ROM bubble, pad-based computing was all the rage. Every company and a lot of start-ups were going to make this kind of computer. It was a total bust. Before that we had the software wars, when you could choose from dozens and dozens of word processors and spreadsheets. And don't forget the IBM PC clone wars in there somewhere. These all resulted in one sort of collapse or another.

I think you get the idea.

Each of these bubbles had a distinctive theme. For the dot-com bubble, it was e-commerce—it really should have been called the e-commerce bubble. Everything was focused on how the Internet was going to destroy all existing brick-and-mortar operations. We were told that you'd be buying sandwiches over the Internet and having them delivered the next day by FedEx. Everything was about "eyeballs" and finding ways to attract customers, whether they bought anything or not. Every article in every newspaper in the country parroted the litany as to how you'd be out of business in a year or two if you were not present on the Web in a big way. Of course, this was all crap.

The current bubble, already called Bubble 2.0 to mock the Web 2.0 moniker, is harder to pin down insofar as a primary destructive theme is concerned. A number of unique initiatives, however, are in play here. Let's look at a few of the top ideas floating the new bubble.

Neo-social networking. Today everything from YouTube to the local church has a social-networking angle. And this doesn't even consider the actual social-networking sites, from MySpace to LinkedIn to Facebook to even Second Life. This scene is totally out of control and will contribute to the collapse for sure.

Video mania. With dozens and dozens of YouTube clones cropping up to get on the "throw money away" bandwagon, you must sense that the eventual shakeout in this space will have a negative impact.

User-generated content. This idea has been around since Usenet and just keeps improving. It will make no contribution to the overall collapse except for users reporting the collapse.

Mobile everything. Here is another concept that has been in play since the mid-1990s. It cannot trigger a collapse since it will never fully get off the ground, although the iPhone mania may be a bad sign of something.

Ad-leveraged search. Most search engines will fail as a matter of course. This segment of the industry is mundane. It would be affected by a crash but not trigger one.

Widgets and toolbars. I cannot see the widget scene going crazy, and the jury is still out on toolbars. But there is the potential for nuttiness, I think. The problem here is that these things tend to be dependent on the stability of operating systems and browsers. One bad operating-system patch and suddenly nothing works.

You can come up with your own theories about the next collapse. Your guess as to the cause will be as good as mine. All I can tell you is that it's a sure thing.
http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,1895,2164136,00.asp





Tabloid Eaten by Aliens! Fake Columnist Loses His Job!
Cate Doty

In Ed Anger’s America, Vanna White is the perfect role model for Sarah Lee, Mr. Anger’s overweight daughter. Latino immigrants speak “chili-pepperese” and the obese of America simply need to stop eating as much.

“I’m pig-biting mad!” Mr. Anger screams in his column, “My America by Ed Anger,” which has been running in the tabloid Weekly World News for almost three decades. In that time, he has routinely criticized Communists, immigrants, women, overweight children, liberals and pretty much anyone who is not a conservative white American male.

After years of talk radio and cable-news pundits, Ed Anger’s America may feel very familiar, but Ed Anger himself does not. Perhaps that is because he isn’t real.

“I always thought of him as a little buffoonish, myself,” said Rafe Klinger, who created the Ed Anger persona in 1979, during his stint at The News. “The funny thing is, you have people like Rush Limbaugh and Ann Coulter and Hannity, and to me, they’re not too far from Ed.”

Unlike his more successful real-life counterparts, however, Ed will no longer be able to complain in print. American Media Inc., which also publishes The National Enquirer, The Star and The Globe, announced that it was closing The News last week.

The Weekly World News had long specialized in the sensational and weird — Elvis sightings, UFO abductions, the continuing adventures of Bat Boy — and in attention-grabbing headlines like “Garden of Eden Found: Original Apple Recovered!” and “Grossed-out Surgeon Throws Up Inside Patient.” But its circulation began to lag as competitors turned to full-color (The News remained defiantly black and white) and to celebrity news.

In a March earnings statement, American Media said that single-copy sales of The News had dropped to 83,000 in 2006, down from 153,000 in 2004. Recently, the parent company has been slashing its staff numbers and cutting publications, while struggling with heavy debt.

Bloggers lamented the paper’s demise. “My lifelong dream of writing for them, shattered,” one woman wrote. “Who’s going to report on spontaneous combustion now?”

And while Bat Boy was The News’s most famous creation — an off-Broadway play “Bat Boy: The Musical” appeared in 1997 — Ed Anger epitomized the paper’s say-anything tabloid spirit.

After revelations of child sexual abuse by priests shook the Catholic Church, he suggested that child molesters should be “butchered like hogs.” He also ranted on the use of politically correct language: “When did rain become a ‘precipitation event?’ ” he once complained.

Mr. Klinger said he based the character — a white, middle-aged veteran of the Korean War who displays a portrait of John Wayne in his den — on the anti-Communist rants of a fundamentalist preacher about whom he had once written a straight news story.

“I thought about doing a column with somebody who was kind of like that, who had these ideas that were almost satirical,” said Mr. Klinger, who now writes for The Globe. “But his bible was the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. Even though he was constantly criticizing people, he still believed in freedom of speech.”

Elizabeth Bird, the author of “For Enquiring Minds: A Cultural Study of Supermarket Tabloids,” said that Ed Anger reflected a certain kind of stereotypical xenophobia.

“There was this over-the-top anger, the sort of sense of the beleaguered white male who saw everything going to hell in a handbasket around them — uppity women, foreigners and all that sort of thing,” Ms. Bird said. “That is to some extent like Rush Limbaugh; it’s the same sort of genre.”

Ed Anger stirred up trouble for Mr. Klinger in 1989, when he sued The News for continuing the column after he left the tabloid in 1987. Mr. Klinger claimed that Anger’s persona — and the columns themselves — belonged to him. A federal jury ruled against him in 1994.

After Mr. Klinger left, a number of writers picked up Anger’s pen, including the late Eddie Clontz, who edited The News until 2001 and who was widely revered as the “King of the Supermarket Tabloids.” During Mr. Clontz’s tenure, Anger proposed to pave the rainforests and suggested that Mr. Limbaugh should run for president. (The radio host responded gratefully, saying that “we have the trailer-park crowd all wrapped up.”)

Justin Mitchell, a freelance writer who wrote the “My America” column from 2001 to 2003, said he had difficulty inhabiting the character. “I had to sort of assume an Archie Bunker role in my head to do it, and also rely on some sort of tattered satirical instincts I had,” he said. “There were times I just didn’t have it in me. I couldn’t be outrageous enough.”

Anger’s readership evolved over the years, from those sympathizing with his point of view to a group of mostly male college students who, rather than standing on the supermarket checkout line, laughed at Anger’s columns online.

“In the old days, there were audiences that sort of liked it and believed it,” Ms. Bird said. “But it’s gone to talk radio now, and what’s left is the people reading it and knowing that it’s just a parody.”

American Media said that The News would maintain its Web site (www.weeklyworldnews.com). Anger’s column will appear there, but for Mr. Klinger, it just won’t be the same.

“I guess now, he’s retired as a serious journalist,” Mr. Klinger said. “So the laugh’s on me.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/30/bu.../30weekly.html
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