|
|
|||||||
| Peer to Peer The 3rd millenium technology! |
 |
|
|
Thread Tools | Search this Thread | Display Modes |
24-09-08, 07:40 AM
|
#1 | |||||||||||||||||
Join Date: May 2001
Location: New England
Posts: 10,017
|
Peer-To-Peer News - The Week In Review - September 27th, '08
Since 2002
  "I'm very interested in [P2P]. It's not a silver bullet, but it works well in high-volume environments and it has its place in the consumer world. A number of studies show that people don't use [file-sharing applications] because they want to steal content -- it's about getting what they want when they want it." – Doug Pask, Verizon "I think, while some people want to stamp [file sharing] out, others see it as a reliable alternative for managing network costs." – Sam Farraj, AT&T "This latest in a string of big-money front groups is nothing more than the most concentrated attack on the free and open Internet we have seen to date. Combining the power and influence of AT&T and the entertainment industry means only that both are going to wage an all-out war for the right to filter every bit of data anyone sends across the Internet." – Gigi B. Sohn "Civil copyright enforcement has always been the responsibility and prerogative of private copyright holders, and U.S. law already provides them with effective legal tools to protect their rights." – U.S. Departments of Justice and Commerce "The RIAA now has zero wins at trial." – Richard Koman "We are such spendthrifts with our lives. The trick of living is to slip on and off the planet with the least fuss you can muster. I’m not running for sainthood. I just happen to think that in life we need to be a little like the farmer, who puts back into the soil what he takes out." – Paul Newman September 27th, 2008  RIAA Loses $222K Verdict Against Jammy Thomas Richard Koman The $222,000 verdict against Jammy Thomas for copyright infringement by P2P is no more. U.S. District Court Judge Michael Davis dismissed the verdict, saying it was based on the faulty “making available” theory of distribution. Thomas will face a new trial, in which the RIAA will have to prove actual distribution. The decision means the RIAA now has zero wins at trial, Wired notes. RIAA’s “making available” theory would hold that someone has distributed copyright material merely by creating the potential for distribution. Under the RIAA’s theory, it need not show actual distribution. The judge soundly denied this legal reasoning: Quote:
Quote:
Quote:
http://government.zdnet.com/?p=4040  RIAA Rejects Damage Award, Forces Trial, Looks Hypocritical Eric Bangeman What price innocent infringement? That's the question a San Antonio jury will have to address in mid-November, as the RIAA and 20-year-old Whitney Harper will battle in court over the amount of damages Harper will have to pay to the record labels after being found liable for copyright infringement by a federal judge. Harper was 16 when MediaSentry discovered and downloaded a number of tracks from what proved to be her shared folder on KaZaA. The record labels sued her father, but he was dropped from the suit once Whitney admitted to using KaZaA for downloading and sharing music. Her admission was enough to convince Judge Xavier Rodriguez to hand the RIAA a summary judgment this past August, but he ruled that damages be capped at $200 per song, not the $750 at minimum sought by the RIAA. The reason for the $200 limit was Harper's innocent infringement defense. She admitted to using KaZaA, but said that she didn't know that what she was doing was wrong due to her age at the time and general lack of knowledge about how computers and P2P systems work. There was no warning from KaZaA that the music on the network was "stolen or abused copyrighted material," noted Judge Rodriguez in his opinion. He also agreed with Harper's assertion that she had "no knowledge or understanding of file trading, online distribution networks or copyright infringement" and that she believed there was nothing illegal about her activities. Ignorance of the law may be no defense against being held liable for infringement, but it can put a serious cap on damages. Under the Copyright Act, infringement is normally punishable by fines of up to $750 to $30,000 per act, and the upper limit can be raised to $150,000 if the infringement is deemed malicious. But for cases of innocent infringement, the judge can reduce the damages below the $750 floor. In the case of Maverick v. Harper, the judge told the record labels they could accept damages of $200 per song or have a jury decide what the total damages should be; the RIAA has chosen a jury trial over the damages. The RIAA's decision to reject the judge's award appears a bit hypocritical on a couple of levels. The group has said on numerous occasions that its legal campaign against P2P users isn't about making money—indeed, an industry executive testified during the Jammie Thomas trial that the lawsuits are a money-losing proposition. Instead, the suits are meant, among other things, as a deterrent to copyright infringement and to teach P2P users a lesson. Here, it seems painfully clear that the lesson has been taught. Harper has been found liable for 37 counts of copyright infringement and the judge is willing to award the RIAA $7,400 in damages—almost double what her father would have had to pay had he accepted the terms of the RIAA's prelitigation settlement letter back in 2005. Furthermore, in the 28,000-plus copyright infringement lawsuits filed by the record labels, the RIAA has never once asked for a set monetary damages, saying instead that it would be content with whatever the court deemed appropriate (former RIAA head litigator Richard Gabriel made this very statement during the Thomas trial). Judge Rodriguez did exactly that, and the labels have decided that it wasn't enough. Now, the RIAA will tie up a federal courtroom, a judge, and a jury for a few days before Thanksgiving in hopes of extracting an additional pound of flesh from someone who says she didn't know she was doing anything wrong back when she was just 16 years old. http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post...ocritical.html Danes do Not have to Prove that they are NOT Copyright Violators On 5 September 2008 the Eastern division of the Danish High Court (Řstre Landsret) issued a decision in an appellate case dealing with liability for illegal file sharing over a wireless access point. The decision does not break any new ground in the sense that it follows an established procedural rules under Danish law regarding allocation of burden of proof in compensation claims. However, the decision is noteworthy as it states - what really ought to be self-evident - that in a legal environment that increasingly has been under pressure to accommodate the interests of holders of intellectual property rights as opposed to those of ordinary internet users: copyright holders will have to prove like any other claimants in compensation claim suits that you actually committed a copyright violation and thus cannot - as was asserted by the copyright holders under the case - demand that the burden of proof is reversed to you so that it is you that have to prove that you did not commit the violation. Here are the facts from the two similar cases that resulted in similar decisions from the Danish Appellate Court. The two defendants were both subscribers to Internet connections provided by a large Danish ISP. The defendants had not secured the routers with passwords or the like. People could therefore without permission access both the defendants’ computers and via these the Internet via the open WIFI access points. In both cases the court considered it established through the evidence presented by the plaintiffs that via the two defendants’ internet connections unauthorised illegal copies of music files had in fact been made available for users of certain specific file sharing services. Even though that this is not clear from the court’s decision, the situation seemed to be that someone – according to the defendants, not themselves – had downloaded a file sharing client via the unsecured WIFI access point and installed it on the PC’s of the defendants and thereby made the illegal files found on the file sharing service available through the defendants’ WIFI access points with the PC’s serving as file sharing nodes. The case was brought before the court by a number of Danish music rightsholders and their associations that claimed compensation for their alleged economic losses due to unauthorised making available of the music that had taken place via the defendants’ network connections. The plaintiffs asserted that it was the defendants who were liable for the illegal file sharing that had taken place via the defendants’ internet connections, even though it was not established that the violations had in fact been committed by the defendants. The assertion was that the defendants consequently had to prove that they had not themselves undertaken the file sharing, if they were to avoid being liable for it. In other words, it was the plaintiff’s position that in this case a reverse burden of proof was to be applied when it was established – such as it was the case – that the internet connection had in fact been used for a copyright violation. The Appellate Court found – as did the Court of First Instance – that a rule constituting a reversed burden of proof did not apply in the two cases. As in both cases it was indeed possible that many more users than the defendants had been using the defendants’ network connections and as the plaintiff had not shown that the defendants and nobody else had undertaken the observed file sharing, the court decided to acquit the two defendants. The decision makes it clear that under Danish rules on copyright and civil procedure it is not sufficient for the plaintiff to establish that a specific copyright violation has taken place via an IP-address in order to make the owner of that IP-address liable for the violation. It is also necessary to establish that it is in fact the defendant who has committed the violation. In reality this is merely an application of the normal principle of the allocation of the burden of proof according to Danish law between plaintiff as the claimant and the defendant. The decision makes clear that in the future, rightsowners who have suffered a violation will have difficulties in many cases making Internet users liable for file sharing activities as the IP-address used for the file sharing often will have many actual or potential users. These can be users of an internet connection within a household or unauthorised users who have locked-in or hacked their way into a wireless or wired network. Another venue for the rightsholders - which was not to my knowledge pursued during the two cases - would be to claim that the defendants are liable due to what under American law would probably qualify as contributory negligence. The negligence on the part of the defendants would consist in not securing their WIFI access points. Whether such argument woyuld hold remains to be seen. In a press release (Google translation from Danish into English) the plaintiffs have made clear that they will apply for a permission to have the case tried before the Danish Supreme Court. Furthermore as spokepersons of the plaintiffs have mentioned in the press (Google translation from Danish into English) that if the decision is not granted review before the Supreme Court or if a decision in the Supreme Court confirms the Appellate Court’s decision, the different Danish rightowners’ associations that were part of the plaintiff’s consortium will probably ask the Parliament for a change of law. That a plaintiff will have to prove that the defendant acted in a way that made that person liable – and not the other way around – is a fundamental procedural principle according to Danish law – and I guess also in most other legal systems. It is hard to see why narrow interests of rightsholders should justify any deviation from that principle. The interests of the society as a whole in making it easier for rightsowners to pursue their claims in cases of file sharing seem negligible compared to society’s interests in maintaining firm and fair procedural rules concerning burden of proof. http://suse.groenbaek.net/openlife/2...ght-violators/ Pirate Bay Wins Court Case, Italian Block Lifted Ernesto The Pirate Bay has successfully appealed the decision of an Italian judge who had ordered ISPs to block access to the popular BitTorrent tracker last month. The Court of Bergamo decided that this block was unlawful, and that Italian users should regain access to the site. This August, out of nowhere, The Pirate Bay was “censored” in Italy following a decree from a public prosecutor. The block didn’t prove to be particularly effective, as traffic from Italy only increased. Nevertheless, The Pirate Bay was determined to reverse the decision, and in that mission they have succeeded. The Court of Bergamo has now lifted the block, and ISPs are again allowed to grant their users access to the most frequently used BitTorrent tracker on the Internet. More details on the decision, and the reason why the block was reversed, will be made public later. In a previous interview, Pirate Bay’s lawyers Giovanni Battista Gallus and Francesco Micozzi described the order as “‘original’ or ‘creative’ at best,” and said it should not have been ordered in the first place because of the lack of jurisdiction. In addition, they argued that The Pirate Bay is not breaking any laws since it’s not distributing copyright infringing material. The court’s decision might set an important precedent for BitTorrent sites in Italy, especially for Colombo-BT, the largest Italian torrent site, which was shut down by the same prosecutor responsible for the Pirate Bay block. The action against Colombo-BT was orchestrated by the anti-piracy outlet IFPI, which also hijacked all Italian Pirate Bay visitors following the block. Visitors who were blocked from The Pirate Bay were redirected to an IFPI server, instead of a server operated by the Italian government. This is again an example of how lobby groups such as the IFPI, MPAA and RIAA are treated as government institutions. Since many Pirate Bay visitors claimed their privacy was violated, the Italian Pirate Party and Altroconsumo filed a complaint with the ombudsman earlier this week. http://torrentfreak.com/pirate-bay-w...lifted-080925/ Jack Thompson Disbarred Is it finally game over for Florida lawyer and violent video game opponent Jack Thompson? Judgment has been entered in the case that started last year and came to a head when Judge Dava Tunis recommended permanent disbarment for the bombastic, showboating law man. The court has approved the report and has ordered that JT is officially disbarred as of 30 days from today. The Court approves the corrected referee's report and John Bruce Thompson is permanently disbarred, effective thirty days from the date of this order so that respondent can close out his practice and protect the interests of existing clients. If respondent notifies the Court in writing that he is no longer practicing and does not need the thirty days to protect existing clients, this Court will enter an order making the permanent disbarment effective immediately. Respondent shall accept no new business from the date this order is filed. Note that Thompson still has a chance for a retrial, only due to court sanctions the motion must me submitted by a member of the Florida Bar in good standing, and I don't know that anyone wants to touch this one. It's also worth noting that along with disbarment, Thompson has been ordered to reimburse the Florida Bar fees amounting to $43,675.35. Ouch. http://kotaku.com/5054772/jack-thompson-disbarred Constitutional Battle Brewing After Telecom Immunity Invoked Julian Sanchez Wiretap suits press on in the wake of FISA amendments The government has invoked the retroactive immunity provision of the recently-passed FISA Amendments Act in a motion to end the ongoing lawsuits against telecoms charged with complicity in the National Security Agency's controversial program of extrajudicial wiretapping. The Electronic Frontier Foundation, which is spearheading the litigation, promises to fight the immunity clause on constitutional grounds—and has given Ars Technica a sneak preview of the argument it plans to make. The government's motion to dismiss, submitted to California district judge Vaughn Walker on Friday in anticipation of a hearing scheduled for December 2, was accompanied by Attorney General Michael Mukasey's public certification that the defendant telecoms were immune from civil liability under the FISA Amendments Act. Mukasey also filed a more detailed, classified certification in camera, providing the judge with the specific grounds for the assertion of immunity. Five paths to immunity... There are 50 ways to leave your lover, but only five ways for a company to be entitled to immunity under the FISA Amendments Act. Three are versions of "they provided assistance, but it was lawful under the statutes in effect at the time." Another is not to actually have provided any assistance. The final, and most contentious, is the new form of retroactive amnesty provided by the law: The attorney general can assert that the company provided assistance calculated to prevent a terrorist attack on the United States in the wake of 9/11, pursuant to a written directive from a high administration official assuring them that the surveillance had been authorized by the president and determined to be legal. Mukasey's certification says only that one or more of these excuses applies to all the defendants in the consolidated wiretap litigation, asserting that the public disclosure of any more specific information about the grounds for immunity "would cause exceptional harm to the National Security of the United States." It's therefore impossible to know which of the defendant telecoms provided assistance, or under what circumstances. The attorney general also denied EFF's contention that, in addition to narrowly targeted eavesdropping on suspected Al Qaeda affiliates, there was any broader program of "dragnet collection on the content of plaintiffs' communications." Precisely what this latter contention means is unclear: As Ars noted last week, there is some legal controversy over when, precisely, the "collection" of a communication takes place. Therefore Mukasey's denial could mean that, despite the evidence provided by AT&T whistleblower Mark Klein, there was no blanket interception of communications for keyword analysis. But it could as easily mean that the attorney general does not believe that whatever form of "inside the box" analysis of those communications NSA conducted counts as "collection" for the purposes of FISA or the Fourth Amendment. ... and four arguments against it Does that mean the corpulent contralto should start practicing her warm-up scales? Perhaps not: EFF attorney Cindy Cohn has a four-part constitutional harmony for Judge Walker to hear before he strikes the set. In an interview with Ars Technica last week, she outlined the argument she plans to present. Contra the government's frequent assertions that the NSA's "Terrorist Surveillance Program" was targeted only at communications that were either wholly international or "one-side-foreign," Cohen plans to assert, on the basis of whistleblower Klein's evidence and more recent press reports, that the NSA also broadly intercepted wholly domestic communications. Though, as noted above, Mukasey appears to deny this, we do now know that the program first disclosed by the New York Times in 2005, and scrutinized in congressional hearings, was only one component of a far broader spying effort, elements of which were apparently so controversial that high-ranking Justice Department officials threatened to resign if it was not halted. The Supreme Court ruled in 1972 that domestic national security surveillance is subject to robust Fourth Amendment limitations, while the rules for foreign intelligence collection may be more lax. Similarly, the group plans to argue that the scope of the surveillance conducted went beyond the bounds of the FISA Amendments Act's grant of amnesty for surveillance "designed to detect or prevent a terrorist attack, or activities in preparation for a terrorist attack, against the United States." Like the previous argument, this line of attack relies on a hybrid of constitutional and statutory claims. Courts generally follow a policy of constitutional "avoidance"—meaning that if there are two ways to read a statute, and one of them would violate the Constitution, they'll assume it was meant to be interpreted the other way. Here, EFF wants to argue that a reading of the statute that covered all the NSA surveillance would be unconstitutionally broad, and so it must be more narrowly constructed. One potential wrinkle here is that Judge Walker might well agree with this Fourth Amendment analysis as it applies to the government's conduct, but reject the claim that it presents a barrier to civil immunity for the telecoms. Cohn explained that EFF is also developing a separation of powers argument rooted in the discrete spheres of responsibility the Constitution assigns to Congress and the judiciary under Article I and Article III. In effect, the group wants to claim that with the FISA Amendments Act, which makes immunity hinge on presidential authorizations and attorney general certifications, the legislature has illegitimately usurped a judicial power—deciding the outcome of pending litigation—and assigned it to the executive branch. This argument comes with a corollary due process claim: To wit, the plaintiffs have a corresponding right to have their case decided by a judge, not by the President or Michael Mukasey. Finally, Cohn told Ars, she will make an independent argument against the secrecy provisions of the FISA Amendments Act, grounded in the traditional authority of courts to determine the disposition of their own records. While there is nothing new about the practice of filing sealed in camera documents when classified activities are at issue, Cohn called the Act "unprecedented" in its grant of executive power to "gag the courts," noting that if Judge Walker were to dismiss the lawsuit, he would be barred from explaining publicly precisely why he had dismissed it. The EFF now has until October 16 to file a brief in opposition to the government's motion to dismiss. The government and the telecoms will have a chance to reply to that brief by November 5, and then EFF will get an opportunity to respond to those filings by November 20. The final showdown is slated for the morning of December 2. http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post...y-invoked.html AT& T, Verizon to Refrain From Tracking Users Online Firms Pledge to Get Consent Before Targeting Ads to Consumers Peter Whoriskey AT&T and Verizon, two of the nation's leading Internet service providers, pledged yesterday to refrain from tracking customer Web behavior unless they receive explicit permission to do so. The announcement, made at a Senate committee hearing, represents a challenge to the rest of the Web world, where advertising is commonly delivered by companies that record a consumer's visits across multiple Web sites. The practice, known as "behavioral targeting," is largely invisible to customers and generally done without their consent. "Verizon believes that before a company captures certain Internet-usage data . . . it should obtain meaningful, affirmative consent from consumers," said Thomas J. Tauke, Verizon executive vice president. AT&T's chief privacy officer Dorothy Attwood made a similar pledge to legislators, and then, taking aim at Google she noted that AT&T's promise to get consumer consent is an advance over others in the industry. "Google's practices exemplify the already-extensive use of online behavioral targeting," she said, citing for example its use of tracking cookies through DoubleClick, its display advertising arm. "We encourage all companies that engage in online behavioral advertising . . . likewise to adopt this affirmative advance consent paradigm." Google issued a brief statement citing its membership in an industry group, the Network Advertising Initiative, that has guidelines for protecting consumer privacy. Those guidelines do not include such a broad requirement for consumer consent, however. Google also sought to distinguish between the tracking techniques that it and other Web companies employ from the arguably more invasive methods some Internet service providers have used. Microsoft issued a statement saying they were "reviewing" the proposal. Time Warner Cable, another major Internet service provider, said it supported requiring customer consent but emphasized that it should apply to "all companies involved in targeted online advertising." Exactly how much information Internet service providers and Web sites ought to be able to gather about consumers has become a growing concern on Capitol Hill, Silicon Valley and elsewhere. Companies have built an array of techniques to record the actions of users as they move across the Internet -- namely tracking "cookies," "beacons" and "deep packet inspection," which essentially looks at every packet of information delivered on an Internet line. Those tactics allow companies to record what Web sites customers visit, what products they purchase, even what newspaper articles they read. Advertisers use this information to determine what ads to deliver to that person's computer. The crux of the current dispute is whether consumers should have to "opt in" -- or affirmatively consent -- to be tracked or whether they should merely be given the opportunity to "opt out" of tracking if they don't like the idea. Google, Microsoft and many other Web companies have espoused the "opt out" model. They say this is enough to give consumers "control" over whether their activities are tracked. Moreover, these Web companies minimize the privacy threat posed by the information collection, noting that the data is not linked to a person's name, but to a number or Internet address. Finally, they argue that forcing users to "opt in" could wreck the Internet economy because so much of what is presented on the Web is supported by advertising. If given a choice and clear notice, most people probably would not "opt in" to tracking -- and advertising would suffer, industry officials said. "If Congress required 'opt in' today, Congress would be back in tomorrow writing an Internet bailout bill," said Mike Zaneis, vice president of public policy for the Interactive Advertising Bureau, a trade group. "Every advertising platform and business model would be put at risk." Today, as a matter of practice, only a small percentage of users avail themselves of the "opt out" choice they are commonly given. A Consumer Reports National Research Center poll released yesterday found Americans are concerned and confused about their Internet privacy rights. The poll, which Sen. Byron L. Dorgan (D-N.D.) cited during the hearing, showed that 72 percent of Americans are worried that their online behavior is being tracked and profiled by companies. Many also overestimate the extent to which the law protects their privacy. According to the poll, 43 percent of Americans "incorrectly believe a court order is required to monitor activities online." Another 48 percent "incorrectly believe their consent is required for companies to use the personal information they collect from online activities." House and Senate members have been holding hearings with an eye toward legislation regarding consumer privacy. Some critics viewed yesterday's announcements skeptically, suggesting that even the stricter "opt in" scheme could pose problems. Mildly worded warnings could lull many people to "opt in" despite the risks, they said. "What they should be saying is, 'We are going to be collecting every move of your mouse on every Web site on a second-by-second basis.' But that would scare too many people away," said Jeff Chester, of the Center for Digital Democracy. "They're going to craft some kind of proposal that claims to be informed consent but simply gives them political cover while they engage in full frontal behavioral targeting." http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...504135_pf.html AT&T, NBC Lump Piracy in with Spam, Malware as Net Pollution Nate Anderson Have you heard of "net pollution"? If not, you soon will, because it's a term being pushed by Arts+Labs, the new group backed by AT&T, Viacom, NBC Universal, Cisco, and Microsoft. Arts+Labs wants to be a sort of Internet plumber, using its Roto-rooter to clear all that caked-on nastiness from the tubes, allowing nice, clean—and most importantly, "safe"—content to flow. And, what's more, the biggest beneficiaries of the group's effort will be consumers; the press release even says so. Everyone hates pollution So, this idea of scrubbing the tubes. We're in favor of it. You're in favor of it. Everyone's in favor of it, right? I mean, no one really wants ISP bandwidth choked up by "viruses, malware, hack attacks, [and] spam." This is "net pollution" in its truest sense: nasty, clog-inducing gunk that is not requested by Internet users. But Arts+Labs has one more item to add to the list of pollutants, and if you can't guess what it is, you might consider taking a remedial class in How Corporations Think. That's right—the last item on the list is "illegal file trafficking." Illegal file trafficking is bad—and if you're doing it right now, please stop—but it's a curious item to lump with spam, viruses, and malware. These truly do pollute the Internet, taking up valuable bandwidth even though no 'Net user requests the delivery of such material. But illegal file trafficking is quite a different item; clearly, this is actual 'Net traffic being requested by users. It's only "pollution" in the sense that it's illegal, not that it's unwanted or that the files are too large. Net pollution threatens to "degrade consumers' Internet experience," says the group. One of its key principles is "robust networks" that give operators "the flexibility to manage and expand their networks to defend against net pollution which threatens to congest and delay the network for all consumers." So the issue here appears to be congestion. The Arts+Labs solution? Stop all that illegal trafficking and use the legal alternatives we're pushing on the site: Vuze (which uses P2P), Hulu, Netflix, Fancast, Joost, Veoh, etc. In other words, stop your congestion-causing ways by streaming or downloading copious amounts of video from other sources. Not exactly a solution to the congestion issue, is it, except possibly in the sense that streaming services like Hulu only consume downstream bandwidth and keep uplinks relatively clear (note that Vuze and other legal P2P apps don't even have this advantage, though, and Arts+Labs promotes them). This is obviously an antipiracy play, not a "congestion relief" plan or a "help the consumer" PR push. Given the groups involved, especially AT&T and NBC Universal (both of which have supported ISP filtering plans), this is not a surprising focus, but one wishes they were a bit more upfront about it. Is "content" a king or a serf? Most of what the group wants to do—push "consumer choice," "innovation," and "fairness"—sounds great, as does publicizing the fact that you can watch episodes of The Office online, legally, with few commercials. But one curious aspect of the new campaign is its central claim that "quality content drives the Internet." Quality content is important, of course, but think about what you use the Internet for. Does your decision to buy home or business Internet access actually turn on the availability of content from major rightsholders? Or is the use of data networks like the Internet actually driven by "communications" (e-mail, IM, VoIP, texting) rather than "content"? Dr. Andrew Odlyzko, a leading expert on Internet traffic growth, has long been a proponent of the view that "content is king" is little more than dogma. It's a point he made when we talked earlier this year, and he has reiterated in a recent paper. His comments are worth quoting at length, as content owners really do appear to feel that they drive the Internet and that ISPs, regulators, and legislators must act in defense of their plans. Although content has traditionally (almost invariably) been accorded special care by policy makers, people have always been willing to pay far more for connectivity. That video already dominates in terms of the volume of traffic on the Internet is not a counterargument. Almost two centuries ago, newspapers (the main 'content' of the day) also dominated the traffic carried by postal services, accounting for about 95% of the weight. But at the same time, newspapers provided only about 15% of the postal revenues. What people really cared about, and were willing to pay top dollar for, was connectivity, in the form of first class mail for business and social purposes. Content (newspapers in that case) is what the federal government decided should be subsidized for public policy reasons with the profits from first class mail. For all the hoopla about Hollywood, all the movie theater ticket sales and all the DVD sales in the U.S. for a full year do not come amount to even one month of the revenues of the telecom industry. And those telecom revenues are still over 70% based on voice, definitely a connectivity service. In wireless, there is very rapid growth in data service revenues, but most of those revenues are from texting, another connectivity service (and one that the industry did not design, but stumbled into). So while the Arts+Labs antipiracy agenda is worthy of comment, the attitude it represents—content is king on the Internet—may actually be the most provocative assertion that the group is now making. Instant controversy! Arts+Labs is headed up by Mike McCurry, a former press secretary for Bill Clinton who has been running the anti-net neutrality campaign "Hands off the Internet" until now. The group's apparent interest in ISP filtering, given its membership, has already attracted scathing comment from groups like Public Knowledge. Gigi Sohn, the president of Public Knowledge, said in a statement late yesterday that Arts+Labs is just the "latest in a string of big-money front groups is nothing more than the most concentrated attack on the free and open Internet we have seen to date. Combining the power and influence of AT&T and the entertainment industry means only that both are going to wage an all-out war for the right to filter every bit of data anyone sends across the Internet... We certainly do not condone online theft of copyrighted materials. At the same time, we similarly do not favor the unwarranted intrusion into the Internet that this group promises for the future." http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post...pollution.html ISPs: Self-Regulation Best for Ad Privacy Dawn Kawamoto Several of the nation's largest Internet service providers were called to Capitol Hill on Thursday, as lawmakers delved whether new laws are needed to protect consumers' privacy amid targeted ad campaigns. Representatives of AT&T, Verizon Communications, and Time Warner Cable addressed the U.S. Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation during a hearing on broadband provider practices and consumer privacy. The ISPs urged committee members to forgo passing new laws to regulate the use of targeted online advertising, instead advocating for a self-regulation of the industry to keep consumers' Web surfing habits secure and private. During the hearing, the ISPs, along with Gigi Sohn, president of public-interest advocacy group Public Knowledge, outlined measures that ISPs, advertising networks, and search engine companies should be deploying, as the use of targeted online advertising gains favor with advertisers. Targeted advertising tracks the various Web sites a user visits, culling information on their surfing habits to deliver specific ads to the user based on that information. In describing the deep-packet inspection of a user's Internet traffic, Sohn compared it to a postal worker ripping open a user's mail. "Deep-packet inspection is the Internet equivalent of the postal service reading your mail. They might be reading your mail for any number of reasons, but the fact remains that your mail is being read by people whose job it is to deliver it," Sohn said during the hearing. She added: "Until recently, when you handed that envelope to your ISP, the ISP simply read the address, figured out where to send the envelope in order to get it to its destination, and handed it off to the proper mail carrier. Now we understand (that) more and more ISPs are opening these envelopes, reading the contents, and keeping or using the contents inside for their own purposes or to pass it on to third parties to use." The Internet providers offered several recommendations for members of their industry, as well as advertising networks and search engines, with respect to behavioral-targeted advertising. One recommendation includes requiring users to opt into a deep-packet inspection program, or DPP, rather than automatically signing them aboard. And, more importantly, ensuring that they have the ability to sign out of such a program if they initially allow DPP, said Thomas Tauke, Verizon's executive vice president of public affairs, policy, and communications. Consumers should also have a clear understanding of what the program will do with their information, as well as a prominent location to read about that policy, noted Peter Stern, Time Warner Cable's chief strategy officer. Stern also advocated the safeguarding of the information. Although targeted online advertising is most popular among advertisers, at least one ISP noted that it also is taking advantage of its methods. "AT&T does not use a deep-packet approach but will engage in targeted ads, only after a consumer has consented," said Dorothy Attwood, AT&T Services' vice president of public policy and chief privacy officer. http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-10051244-93.html Comcast: No Complaints on New Internet Management Peter Svensson Comcast Corp. on Friday said its new method of managing Internet traffic may sometimes result in slower Web surfing for subscribers who use their cable modem the most, yet the company has not received a single customer complaint in trial runs in five areas. The new system is set to replace the current one, which drew a sanction from the Federal Communications Commission, for all Comcast subscribers by the end of the year. In its filing Friday, the cable company said the new system kicks in only when Internet traffic in the area approaches congestion. It then identifies which customer accounts are using the greatest amounts of bandwidth and slows down their Internet traffic until the traffic jam eases. "Customers will still be able to do anything they want to online, and many activities will be unaffected, but they could experience things like: longer times to download or upload files, surfing the Web may seem somewhat slower, or playing games online may seem somewhat sluggish," the company said in a filing with the FCC Friday. In a precedent-setting ruling, Comcast was ordered by the Federal Communications Commission in August to institute a new traffic management system, and provide details on its workings by Friday. Under its older system, still in place for the majority of subscribers, Comcast blocks or delays some forms of Internet file-sharing to prevent traffic jams. In its August ruling, a divided FCC sided with consumer groups who had complained that in discriminating against certain forms of traffic, the system violated the FCC's guidelines on the openness of the Internet and the unwritten principle of "Net neutrality." Months before the FCC's order, Comcast responded to the investigation by saying it would institute a new management system that treats different traffic types equally by the end of the year. The new system has been tried out in: Colorado Springs, Colo.; Warrenton, Va.; Chambersburg, Pa.; Lake City, Fla.; and East Orange, Fla. The trials show that less than 1 percent of customers have their traffic slowed on a typical day, Comcast said. "Comcast did not receive a single customer complaint that could be traced to this new congestion management practice, despite having publicized the trials and notifying customers involved in the trials via e-mail," it said. While complying with the FCC's ruling, Comcast has also challenged it in a federal appeals court, saying it was legally inappropriate and unjustified. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...091903422.html New Comcast Plan has ‘Disconnect User’ Option p2pnet news “Comcast Submits Plans to Manage Broadband,” says a Wall Street Journal headline on Comcast’s just-released response to Federal Communications Commission demands that it explain in detail how its traffic throttling scheme works. “Comcast details changes for managing Web traffic,” says Reuters, continuing Comcast has, “provided US regulators details of how it plans to change the way it manages Web traffic over its high speed Internet”. The company’s new people, not protocols scheme may mean high speed for some, but it won’t work for a chosen few. And Comcast has also created a draconian ‘disconnect them’ option for use against anyone who fails to toe the Comcast corporate line. But, emails Robb Topolski (right), the Net protocol expert who originally uncovered Comcast’s blatant efforts to control its customers, the new scheme does offer key take-aways telling P2P users on Comcast how to do what they do without the risk of corporate interference. Loathed and detested There’ve been “No complaints on new Internet management,” says the Associated Press, referring to an apparent lack of negative feedback from users in Comcast’s tiny ‘focus group’ trial areas. There is, however, a qualification to the AP statement. Comcast’s, “new method of managing Internet traffic may sometimes result in slower Web surfing who use their cable modem the most,” admits AP, alluding to the people who use P2P applications to share with each other, a practice loathed and detested mainly by the corporate movie and music cartels who claim, falsely, that sharing is “devastating” them. With that as their excuse, the entertainment industry has been trying to turn ISPs, of which is Comcast is America’s largest, into a vast network of copyright enforcement agencies paid for by subscribers. Could this be a backdoor way of locking up the activities of P2P communities under the guise of “providing the best online experience possible for all of its customers,” as it puts it in its Network Management Policy ? Nahhhhhh. Contributing disproportionately Comcast has, “not received a single customer complaint in trial runs in five areas,” says Reuters, implying Comcast’s plans to block traffic are being met with universal approval. In its network management transition compliance plan, the company says its approach will be, “protocol-agnostic,” which is to say it’ll, “focus on managing the traffic of those individuals who are using the most bandwidth at times when network congestion threatens to degrade subscribers’ broadband experience and who are contributing disproportionately to such congestion at those points in time”. It’s already using Chambersburg, Pennsylvanian; Warrenton, Virginia; Lake City and East Orange, Florida; and, Colorado Springs, Colorado, as test beds and, “If Comcast management deems it necessary to conduct additional trials, they will be announced on Comcast’s Network Management Policy page,” it states. Says a p2pnet Reader’s Write »»» Quote:
Quote:
Responds Comcast’s ‘Jason’ from its national engineering and technical operations »»» Quote:
Or do you? Putting users in a “penalty box” Comcast has an “Excessive Use” capacity of 250 GB (combined upload and download),” says Topolski. Users are allowed to exceed it, but if they also fall within Comcast’s “top 1000 users” list, they may be warned and a, “repeat warning in six months will result in disconnection,” he says, going on »»» Quote:
That’s why Comcast used forged RSTs to attack P2P in the first place. Definitely stay tuned. http://www.p2pnet.net/story/17074 COMCAST NEWSGROUPS The Comcast Newsgroups service has been discontinued. We apologize for any inconvenience. If you have already signed up for Comcast Newsgroups, please be aware that this service will be discontinued on 10/25/2008 http://www.comcast.net/newsgroups/?cookieattempt=1 Comcast Outlines New Broadband Policy Company will use "protocol agnostic" controls to manage traffic. Shaun Nichols US cable provider Comcast has presented its long-term solution for managing broadband traffic. The new system is set at putting to bed a minor scandal that erupted around the company late last year when it was found that Comcast deliberately limited traffic for certain applications. Comcast maintained that it was only trying to prevent users from occupying large chunks of bandwidth with the use of peer-to-peer services, thereby slowing traffic for all users. However, the move came under fire from privacy advocates and lead to intervention from the Federal Communications Commission. Rather than limit traffic based on certain protocols, Comcast's new system will prioritize access based on how much bandwidth a user is occupying. The aim of the plan is to thwart the so-called "bandwidth hogs" without singling out certain applications or protocols. The company said that under its new system, traffic will be analyzed every fifteen minutes. Users who are found to be occupying large amounts of bandwidth will be placed at a lower priority for network access behind users with less bandwidth-intensive traffic. The intended result of the plan will be slower speeds for high-bandwidth service such as peer-to-peer applications, but improved speeds for normal internet tasks such as viewing web pages during peak usage times. The new system will not replace or be related to the company's earlier installment of bandwidth caps, which limited a user's data intake to 250GB per month. Comcast's new plan earned the company praise from some of its former critics. The Electronic Frontier Foundation hailed the plan as an improvement over the previous system. "The new system appears to be a reasonable attempt at sharing limited bandwidth amongst groups of users," wrote EFF staff technologist Peter Eckersley. "Comcast's objective here is still largely to prioritize non-P2P traffic above P2P traffic. But the criterion they use is the amount of data a cable modem sends during each 15 minute period, which is a much fairer rule than examining the traffic protocol." http://www.pcauthority.com.au/News/1...nd-policy.aspx EU Adopts Law to Raise Telecom Competition The European Parliament adopted measures Wednesday to increase competition in EU telecommunications markets in a bid to give consumers a wider choice and less-costly services. The EU telecommunications commissioner, Viviane Reding, who drafted the package, wants to make it easier for new entrants to compete with established operators in the €300 billion, or $440 billion, sector. The EU assembly voted 597 in favor, with 55 against and 29 abstentions, on a proposal to force telecommunication companies to run their network and retail services as separate businesses to give competitors easier access to their networks. Big operators like Deutsche Telekom and France Télécom opposed this "functional separation" measure, which would be a "last resort nuclear option" for national regulators if other pro-competition measures failed. However, the assembly watered down another prime aspect of the package, Reding's proposal for an EU telecom "super regulator" that would also include Internet security. It voted 490 to 105 to create a less powerful alternative, the Body of European Regulators in Telecoms, that would not include Internet security. The body will be financed by a mix of EU and national funds. Reding wanted it paid for solely by the EU, a step she believed would ensure it was fully independent and not beholden to national governments that could be tempted to protect former state-owned operators. "This vote is very good news for European consumers," said Martin Selmayr, a spokesman for Reding. "It's a strong signal for the single market in the EU." National governments have the final say on the package and the assembly's first vote will form the basis of a joint deal with member states. The assembly also voted to scrap Reding's plan to give the European Commission a veto over national competition "remedies." It backed steps to make more efficient EU-wide use of radio frequencies freed up by broadcasters switching from analog to digital so that mobile phone operators can offer new services in several countries. However, the vote ensures that member states remain in charge of spectrum usage nationally, and Reding's aim of stronger EU-wide decision-making on spectrum was diluted. The final measure, to be voted on later, will concern improving consumer protection by strengthening the obligation on operators to provide a minimum service of specific quality at an affordable price. http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/09/...ss/telecom.php CNNIC: China's Internet Will Be Short Of IP Addresses Soon The Internet in China may soon run out. According to the China Internet Network Information Center, under the current allocation speed, China's IPv4 address resources can only meet the demand of 830 more days and if no proper measures are taken by then, new Chinese netizens will not be able to gain normal access to the Internet. Li Kai, director in charge of the IP business for CNNIC's international department, says that if a netizen wants to get access to the Internet, an IP address will be necessary to analyze the domain name and view the pages. At present, most of the networks in China use IPv4 addresses. As a basic resource for the Internet, the IPv4 addresses are limited and 80% of the final allocation IP addresses have been used. By the current allocation speed, China's IPv4 address resource can only meet the demand of 830 more days. If there is no available new resource by then, new netizens will not be able to gain normal access to the Internet and the business expansion of network operators will be impossible. Li says that a new IPv6 network address, which is a basic network resource without these limitations, has been developed in America, but this kind of IP address is only used among educational websites in China. To use the IPv6 network address, network operators need to spend a lot of time and money on equipment updating. CNNIC now has started hosting seminars to remind the operators to apply for the remaining IP addresses as soon as possible for a storage in addition to call for a preparation for the providing of IPv6 addresses to netizens. http://www.chinatechnews.com/2008/09...ddresses-soon/ Browser Speed Tests: The Compiled, Up-to-Date Results Back when Firefox 3's final release candidate dropped, we ran some tests to compare its page-loading, memory use, and technical timing to Internet Explorer 7, Opera, and Safari for Windows. Then Google Chrome arrived, so we pitted it against the betas for Firefox 3.1 and Internet Explorer 8, and shared the results. The tests were by and large the same, but many commenters wisely asked to see all the results, betas or no betas. Well, today we've patched together all our data, thrown in a fresh test of the Opera 9.6 beta, and we're sharing all the graphy goodness. Read on to see a full comparison of the major browsers you can load on Windows. The tests You can read up on our testing methods in their entirety at the original testing feature. I've come to realize, however, that between all three rounds of testing involved, the "8-page load" test may be the most vulnerable to variables—some of the pages included are quite dynamic, so if, say, Gizmodo puts up a large number of videos or huge pictures, it could affect the total loading time. Other than that, though, the page-loading tests are run by a human watching a timer, the JavaScript from Sean Patrick Kane's web test, the CSS from a downloadable form, and memory use from checking Windows Vista's Task Manager. Test 1: Page Loading—Winner: Opera (9.5)! No surprise that Opera 9.6's beta performed just as well as the official release, on start-ups both both cold (right after boot-up) and warm (having launched at least once). I'm heartened to see comparable results between the first batch of browsers I tested and their newer betas. The next speed test, loading eight pages from a bookmark folder, left me scratching my head. Why did the newer betas take so much longer to load a similar set of pages? As stated above, my best guess is the dynamic nature of at least one page in the group, but Opera was tested separately from the other betas, and didn't gain much in speed. Test 2: JavaScript & CSS—Winner: Safari! (by a nose) It's hard to beat Safari's performance in both Cascading Style Sheets and the JavaScript code that fronts so many webapps. It has to be noted, however, that most browsers, other than Internet Explorer, don't out-run one another by a huge stretch in JavaScript; Chrome and Safari, though, pull ahead on CSS. Test 3: Memory Use—Winner: Firefox! It's reassuring that Mozilla puts so much effort into memory usage in Firefox 3 releases—seeing as how most readers of this site are more than open to extension suggestions. So that's all the testing data we have on the latest web browsers here at Lifehacker Labs. Got another set of test results you put faith in? Surprised at any of our outcomes? Tell us about it in the comments. http://lifehacker.com/5055406/browse...o+date-results Android: Google's Dream, Apple's Nightmare? Anita Hamilton A new smartphone is debuting on Sept. 23, and, no, it's not just another iPhone clone. The HTC Dream from T-Mobile will be the first handset to run Google's new mobile operating system, Android. And while it won't look as sleek as the iPhone, it promises to give mobile-phone users a lot more freedom and flexibility. Many of the Dream's features are under wraps until launch, but based on leaked photos and videos along with screenshots released by Google, we already have a pretty good idea of what to expect. The biggest departure from the iPhone design is the inclusion of a physical keyboard, which apparently slides out from underneath the Dream's touchscreen. The Dream will also allow users to run multiple applications at once and more easily share contacts and data between them. And if reports from developers TIME interviewed prove true, mobile-phone users will finally be able to cut and paste text in emails — a function that's frustratingly absent on the iPhone. The Dream, which is expected to go on sale in late October, will also reportedly cost the same as the 3G: $199. The sweetest part of the Dream is the add-on applications available from the Android Market — Google's answer to the Apple App Store. Whereas many Apple apps cost money (typically anywhere from $.99 to $9.99), at launch all Android Market apps will be free. That includes BreadCrumbz, a picture-based navigation program that doesn't just give you a drawing of your route, but also includes real-world photos to keep you on track. Another interesting app, TuneWiki, is a tricked-out music player that encourages mobile karaoke, by synchronizing written lyrics onscreen to the song's YouTube video. It also shows you what songs other TuneWiki users near you are listening to in real time. Since Android is better than the iPhone at running multiple programs at once, you won't have to choose between apps: As Breadcrumbz helps you find your way to a party, TuneWiki can play your favorite Rihanna video and get you in a groovy mood. When it's time to make a right turn, Breadcrumbz will cut in and alert you. Android has several other key advantages over Apple. While Apple takes a top-down approach to app development — the company must approve every app that makes it into its App Store — Google will allow creators to upload any application to the Android Market without its review. Sure that means some duds will make it in, but it will also allow for a much more open and democratic way for favorites to evolve. Perhaps more significantly, users will not be limited to a single phone or carrier for long. While T-Mobile's HTC Dream will be the first phone to run Android, Google is inviting all carriers to develop handsets for the platform. Expect to see other compatible devices early next year. Most of the Dream's other features are expected to go toe-to-toe with the iPhone, including built-in GPS, a tilt sensor for gaming, and a camera. What's more, T-Mobile recently expanded coverage for its 3G data network to 27 major cities. The faster bandwidth promises to make watching videos and downloading websites go smoothly, but if the spotty 3G coverage offered by AT&T for the iPhone is any indication, buyers should treat this promise with deep skepticism. On the downside, don't expect the Dream to be anywhere near as slick and shiny as the iPhone. T-Mobile may be much loved among teens for its colorful, flip-screen Sidekick, but the HTC Dream will likely have a more staid look that lacks the iPhone's panache. Plus, no one can turn on the hype machine quite as well as Steve Jobs. But whatever the Dream may lack in flair, it's no less of a breakthrough when it comes to giving mobile-phone buyers more ways to connect on the go. http://www.time.com/time/business/ar...843164,00.html With Google Phone, HTC Comes Out of the Shadows Miguel Helft and Laura M. Holson When executives from Google and T-Mobile converge on a stage in New York Tuesday to unveil the first mobile phone powered by Google’s software, the event will be a coming-out party of sorts for another, far more obscure, but no less ambitious company — HTC. The Taiwanese electronics manufacturer was chosen by Google more than two years ago to build the first mobile phone based on its “Android” software in large part because of its proven ability to design and build head-turning mobile devices. For HTC, it amounted to another victory in its efforts to do battle for the high end of the phone market with the likes of the iPhone maker Apple, BlackBerry’s maker Research in Motion and others. “I think we are ready,” Cher Wang, a Taiwanese plastics mogul’s daughter who helped found the company in 1997 and serves as its chairwoman. “We have a strong customer base of people who want our devices.” A lot of Americans already use HTC phones — they just do not know it. HTC accounted for about one in six smartphones in the United States in the first half of this year, but the overwhelming majority of them do not carry the HTC brand, according to Nielsen Mobile. For much of the past decade, the company operated in relative obscurity as a contract manufacturer for companies like Compaq, Palm and many cellphone carriers, who stamped their own brands on the products. About two years ago, HTC decided to come out of the shadows with an ambitious goal: establish a global consumer electronics brand that its executives hope will become synonymous with quality. “We are far from being there,” said John Wang, HTC’s chief marketing officer. But Mr. Wang said that the company is off to a good start. The company sold two million units of the HTC Touch, introduced last year, and in just three months, one million of the follow-on Touch Diamond, a slick and slim device that reviewers have compared with the iPhone. The Google-powered phone will be the next step in HTC’s road to global recognition, he said. (Over all, HTC’s revenue, which it reports in Taiwanese dollars, was about $1 billion in the most recent quarter, a 29 percent jump from a year earlier.) The Google phone, which has been called the HTC Dream and the T-Mobile G1, has a touch screen that slides out to expose a five-row keyboard. It offers easy access to Google’s services and to a range of third-party applications. Many analysts and industry insiders say HTC has turned them into believers. “HTC has been pushing the innovation envelope for quite a long time,” said Jeffrey K. Belk, a former senior vice president for strategy at the cellphone chip maker Qualcomm. “It is only now that people are starting to get know to them better.” Still, analysts say that HTC faces long odds in its quest to become a global consumer electronics powerhouse. It is competing against much larger rivals in a market where few niche players have been able to establish themselves. The company began running ads in the United States this year, but a global marketing campaign could be expensive. And unlike some of its most successful competitors, like Apple and Research in Motion, HTC does not control the software that powers its phones. “HTC is trying to compete on better hardware in a point in time when more and more of the differentiation of phones is going to be in the software,” said James Faucette, an analyst with Pacific Crest Securities. Much of HTC’s success to date has been tied to that of a software company, Microsoft. The Windows Mobile operating system powers 12 percent of smartphones sold worldwide and 20 percent of smartphones sold in the United States. HTC accounts for roughly half of those devices. The roots of the collaboration between the two dates back to the late 1990s, when HTC began making Windows-based personal digital assistants, including the first color model in 1999 and the first wireless model in 2002. The same year, HTC built the first Windows-based smartphone, the Orange SPV, which was sold in Europe. “When we decided to get into the phone business in the early 2000s, they were the natural choice,” said Scott Horn, general manager of the mobile communications business at Microsoft. Ms. Wang, the chairwoman, said she got the idea for what would become HTC in the early 1980s, while working for First International Computer, an electronics equipment maker. As part of her job, she was forced to haul cases packed with computer parts she was hoping to sell. “I remember I was in France, early in the morning, and I was dragging these computer cases up and down all these stairs, waiting for a taxi,” she said. She began to ponder what it would be like if the devices could be smaller and not so heavy to carry around, she said. Her father is Wang Yung-ching, a plastics and petrochemicals tycoon who was ranked second on Forbes’s list of the richest people in Taiwan. Ms. Wang attended high school in Oakland, Calif., in the mid-1970s and attended the University of California, Berkeley, as a music major. She quickly changed to economics and graduated in 1981 with a master’s degree. Her own fortune is now measured in the billions as well. One of the co-founders, Peter Chou, who is HTC’s chief executive, also spent several years in the United States working for the Digital Equipment Corporation, a computer industry powerhouse in the 1980s and 1990s. Along with other HTC executives there, they have sought to infuse the company with the style and culture of many Silicon Valley pioneers. For example, three years ago HTC created Magic Labs, a group that in addition to about 50 software, hardware and mechanical engineers and industrial designers, includes a writer and a jewelry designer. They all help brainstorm ideas and design new products. Many have titles like software magician and mechanical wizard. The marketing chief John Wang’s business card reads “Chief Innovation Wizard.” One of the group’s mandates is to generate ideas at a torrid pace with the understanding that most of them will never turn into products. “We have an organization that is designed to fail,” said Mr. Wang, who helped start Magic Labs. “It takes close to 1,000 ideas to turn up a few projects that are worth running.” One idea that the company considered worthy was TouchFLO, the iPhone-like touch screen technology that powers the Touch line of HTC products. During the development of the Android phone, HTC shipped about 30 engineers to work at the “Googleplex” in Mountain View, Calif. “It was quite amazing how similar the culture was to Silicon Valley’s entrepreneurial style,” said Andy Rubin, senior director of mobile platforms at Google. “It was clear that these guys were entrepreneurs. They get moving really really fast.” http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/23/te...y/23phone.html Apple Goes Big Brother on App Store Rejects Rubbish iPhone developers get stern warning Gareth Beavis The App Store... don't mess with Apple or it'll write a letter Apple has decided that enough is enough when it comes to people publishing the reasons they have had their applications rejected from the App Store. Where before people wanted to highlight the reasons why their app had been rejected, Apple no longer wants to have its reputation sullied in this manner. Big brother's rejection Every time a user now gets a rejection, the message: THE INFORMATION CONTAINED IN THIS MESSAGE IS UNDER NON-DISCLOSURE is displayed clearly in the letter. This is a bizarre move indeed faced with Android's open marketplace, which is almost free of restrictions in what can be posted, and coming in to steal some of the application market from Apple. Most rejectees have been upset that an app that took a long time to develop has been rejected only after the program is ready to run, so called on Apple to make the terms and conditions of the development process more transparent. But perhaps just sending a more explicit letter is, well, easier... http://www.techradar.com/news/portab...rejects-470545 Nielson DMCA Takedown So I get a notification on my watchlist that Template:Miami TV and Template:WPB TV were removed by a bot: "Removing TV region templates per DMCA Takedown Notice from Nielsen Media Research, OTRS ticket #2008091610055854" Now I may not be an expert an copyright, but my feeling is that this is completely ridiculous. If I remember correctly, all it was were a list of channels in the marketplace. This is common knowledge. Am I missing something here or has Nielsen become very desperate?--JEF (talk) 04:01, 20 September 2008 (UTC) About to post about this myself. Is there anyway to see what OTRS ticket #2008091610055854 is? I am seriously confused on what the deletions are about and if there is some way around it (removing all Nielsen information, etc). - NeutralHomer • Talk 04:07, 20 September 2008 (UTC) I don't understand what the problem is here either. The only thing I see is that the templates contained a link to the Nielsen site. All the information in the template is public knowledge. Did someone actually talk to Mike? KnightLago (talk) 04:11, 20 September 2008 (UTC) I think the takedown should be submitted to Chilling Effects. BJTalk 04:12, 20 September 2008 (UTC) I wouldn't know how to talk to Mike. I am just trying to find out the reasoning behind it. Because if it is removing market information and Nielsen linkage, we can do that. - NeutralHomer • Talk 04:14, 20 September 2008 (UTC) The WMF Office was consulted on this matter and per an OTRS ticket indicating a DMCA takedown notice, the content was deleted. The entire categorization schema that was in place was copyrighted by Nielsen and could not be used under our GFDL license. SWATjester or Mike Godwin can probably clarify as they were the ones who handled the matter, but the material should NOT be restore by anyone prior to contacting them. By their nature OTRS tickets are private and cannot be released, but it has been confirmed by WMF staff that the ticket number in question is valid. MBisanz talk 04:28, 20 September 2008 (UTC) See your talk page. - NeutralHomer • Talk 04:33, 20 September 2008 (UTC) If people are looking for guidance as to how to define TV station areas, Cary Bass from the WMF office produced a copy-vio free version of TV station data at List_of_television_stations_in_North_America_by_media_market #United_States_of_America. MBisanz talk 04:45, 20 September 2008 (UTC) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Administrators'_noticeboard#Nielson_DMCA_Takedown The Pirate Bay Tops 15 Million Peers Ernesto Today, The Pirate Bay reached a new milestone, as they now have more than 3 million registered users. On top of that, they track close to 15 million unique peers. The largest BitTorrent tracker just keeps growing and growing, and there is no sign that this will be put to a halt anytime soon. When this article is published, The Pirate Bay now tracks nearly 1,288,514 torrents and 14,786,539 unique peers. As a comparison, in December 2006 they tracked 576,080 torrents and 4,274,698 peers, so today’s figures represent quite an increase. TiAMO, one of Pirate Bay’s co-founders and the one responsible for keeping the hardware up and running, is happy with the traffic increase, and writes: “A big thanks to all our users helping to make the site what it is. We’ll keep growing for as long as you keep using the site, filing it with content, sharing.” This traffic increase is apparently placing quite a lot of stress on their server park. In July, the site went offline for more than a day, as the server setup had trouble keeping up with the ever-growing demand. It is estimated that The Pirate Bay currently returns results to between 7 and 8 million searches per day, roughly 230 million a month. The popularity of The Pirate Bay hasn’t gone unnoticed with artists either. Timbuktu, a well known Swedish rapper released his latest single exclusively on The Pirate Bay earlier today. Free of DRM, high quality and free to share and remix of course. http://torrentfreak.com/the-pirate-b...-users-080921/ Activision Sues File-Sharing Gamers Earnest Cavalli Activision, the publisher behind the Guitar Hero and Call of Duty games, are taking the battle over piracy to the courtroom, reports Edge. Court filings uncovered by the European news organization allege that New Yorker James R. Strickland has "violated Plaintiff's exclusive rights of reproduction and distribution" by illicitly copying and distributing Activision's titles -- an act that the firm characterizes as "willful and intentional." The publisher is seeking damages ranging from $30,000 to $150,000 for each of the suit's alleged violations. GamePolitics, in researching the suit, found that Activision has been rigorously litigating file-sharers of late. Six additional suits have been uncovered by GP, many of which result in Activision "garnering big settlements from individuals who are not represented by attorneys and who, as part of their settlements, agree not to discuss the case," the site reports. http://blog.wired.com/games/2008/09/...sion-sues.html Customs Officials Arrest 14 Year Pirate enigmax In their infinite wisdom, customs officials in Hong Kong have arrested a child for sharing music on the Internet. The 14 year old boy, who is too young to be named, is alleged to have uploaded Chinese language pop songs, known as Cantopop, for others to download for free. In order to better understand the position of this teenager and the craziness of today’s society, I’m reading this news through my memory of what it was like to be 14 again. School, friends, acne, the opposite sex - and computers, I loved them, in all their 8-bit glory. So, customs officials in Hong Kong have arrested a 14 year old boy. The boy is suspected to have uploaded 2,000 Chinese-language pop songs onto the Internet. I’d love to be able to tell you this kid’s name, but (un)fortunately the law says he’s too young to be named. I’m sure kids today are much smarter and advanced than I was, so hopefully he’s not too young to understand what’s happening to him. The ‘not knowing’ would add considerably to his ordeal. According to customs spokesman Michael Kwan, the teenager had been sharing Cantonese pop songs, known locally as Cantopop. When I was 14, I had cassette tapes filled with pop music too, all of it copied from anyone who had a copy. I doubt I had 2000 tracks, but I certainly had an impressive arsenal of jam-packed C90’s, and I happily copied them for anyone with a blank tape. In fact, faced with no money but a thirst for pop music, all my friends copied off each other, and the recipients of those copies all shared those with everyone else. It never crossed our minds that we would be arrested for it. Not once, since arrests seemed to be reserved for the glue-sniffing vandals who my parents warned me to stay away from, which I did, happily. Copyright infringements in Hong Kong apparently carry a maximum penalty of four years in jail and a fine of HK$50,000 (US$6,400) for every item violated. A worrying amount for an adult, even ones who have the means to raise the cash. I once ran up a $30 telephone bill for my parents through my generous use of a 1200/75 modem. Through my kid’s vision it seemed like the end of the world, even though the phone company was the boogeyman, not the police or entertainment companies. Mr Kwan, a head at Hong Kong’s Copyright Investigation Division, told at a press conference that the boy made a post on a forum indicating he had the songs for download. A press conference? For a 14 year old kid sharing music? Could I have imagined being arrested at 14 for taping music, taken away and then be the subject of discussion at a government press conference? Hardly. But maybe I should’ve been - they say standards are slipping in society, maybe the police and media companies coming down hard on children is the solution? The Kid With No Name has been set free on a bail of 2,000 Hong Kong dollars, roughly US$260, and has not been charged while the police make further inquiries. Hopefully the investigation won’t interfere too much with his school work and revision at this crucial point in his education. Or maybe any diversion away from school work is cool in the eyes of a hormonal teenager? I think I’d have been happy to have a few disrupted maths lessons, but there again, in hindsight I didn’t understand how important they were. After all, I was just a kid. But of course, eventually all kids grow up. We leave school and start earning our own money and start making those important decisions about where to spend it, which are probably shaped by previous life experiences and dreams for the future. We also decide who to vote for. I didn’t grow up in a ‘lock up pirates and throw away the key’ environment yet i’m still disturbed and concerned at how copyright enforcement is heading. Going to war against today’s potential customers seems foolish. Punishing and polarizing children - tomorrow’s customers - at the behest of big-business, is in a completely different league. http://torrentfreak.com/customs-offi...pirate-080922/ Battle Over Stolen Goods Sold Online Goes to Washington Brad Stone Does the freedom of selling on the Web lure otherwise law-abiding citizens into an addictive world of organized Internet crime? That’s the somewhat overheated claim being made to support three bills now under consideration by the House Judiciary Committee’s subcommittee on crime, terrorism, and homeland security. The subcommittee is hearing testimony Monday afternoon on HR 6713, also known as the “E-fencing Enforcement Act of 2008,” and two similar bills, S 3434 and HR 6491. (Watch it live here from 4:00 p.m. EST.) The bills, proposed and backed by bricks-and-mortar retailers like Wal-Mart Stores and Target, would require that online marketplaces like eBay and Overstock.com promptly investigate and pull down listings when retailers provide “credible evidence” that merchandise is stolen. The bills also make it a felony to sell stolen items online and give retailers new rights to sue Internet companies in federal court if they fail to respond or promptly take down stolen merchandise from their sites. Offline retailers have been pushing these kinds of provisions for several years under their umbrella trade group, the National Retail Federation. Monday’s subcommittee hearing represents one of the most visible platforms yet for the organization’s legislative agenda, and it is employing some new rhetoric for the occasion. In prepared remarks, Joe LaRocca, vice president of loss prevention for the group, tells legislators that selling on the Internet is so addictive, amateur sellers are being sucked into a life of organized Internet crime. From Mr. LaRocca’s testimony: Quote:
“When you think about it, these bills are about traditional retailers being able to get information about their online competitors, in an effort to try to figure out where that competitor is getting his low-cost supply, or to harass that competitor by complaining their goods are stolen,” Mr. DelBianco said. http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/0...to-washington/ Comment: Quote:
White House Opposes Expanded DOJ Copyright Enforcement David Kravets The Bush administration is opposing sweeping legislation granting it the ability to prosecute civil cases of copyright infringement. The legislation, backed by Hollywood, labor unions and manufacturers, sailed through the Senate Judiciary Committee, 14-4, on Sept. 11. In a letter to Sens. Patrick Leahy and Arlen Specter, who were among the sponsors of the legislation, the Justice Department wrote Tuesday it "strongly" opposes expanding its powers. Doing so, the letter said, could undermine the department's prosecution of criminal cases and transform it into an office "serving as pro bono lawyers for private copyright holders." The Justice Department said the private sector should remain responsible for enforcing its copyrights in federal civil lawsuits. "Civil copyright enforcement has always been the responsibility and prerogative of private copyright holders, and U.S. law already provides them with effective legal tools to protect their rights," the Justice Department and Commerce Department wrote. The government agencies wrote that the proposal "could result in Department of Justice prosecutors serving as pro bono lawyers for private copyright holders regardless of their resources. In effect, taxpayer-supported department lawyers would pursue lawsuits for copyright holders, with monetary recovery going to industry." In all, the Bush administration agreed with digital rights groups and others who said the measure goes too far and is a gift to copyright holders who normally use the civil courts to sue copyright infringers. The Recording Industry Association of America, for example, has sued more than 30,000 individuals for infringement. The Enforcement of Intellectual Property Rights Act creates a Cabinet-level copyright-patent czar charged with creating a worldwide plan to combat piracy. The czar would "report directly to the president and Congress regarding domestic and international intellectual property enforcement programs." The bill, nearly identical to the version the House passed last year, encourages government anti-piracy task forces, the training of other countries about IP enforcement and, among other things, institutes an FBI piracy unit. The House version does not contain language granting the Justice Department the ability to sue copyright infringers. The department does prosecute criminal acts of infringement, although rarely. http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/200...?cid=132107654 Google, Internet Users Push Back Against U.S. Copyright Treaty Mark Drajem Internet companies led by Google Inc. joined groups representing Web users in challenging the Bush administration's bid to toughen international enforcement against copyright pirates. Testifying before Commerce Department in Washington today, Google urged the U.S. to exclude from a proposed treaty provisions on the sale of copyrighted movies and music on the Internet. The administration is negotiating the treaty with the European Union, Japan and other nations. The companies said the U.S. courts and Congress are still working out the correct balance between protecting copyrights and the free exchange of information on the Web and a treaty could be counterproductive. They also said their views deserve equal consideration with those of the movie and recording industries. ``There's this assumption that what is good for Disney is what's good for America, but that's an oversimplification,'' Jonathan Band, an intellectual property lawyer representing libraries and high-tech companies, said in an interview. ``There's also what's good for Yahoo and Google.'' The proposed treaty is the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement. The dispute over the accord pits companies like Google, under pressure to crack down on unlicensed distribution of film clips and music videos, against movie and music producers worried about the growth of Internet piracy in countries such as China and Russia. The U.S., Japan, Canada and other nations said last year that they would begin negotiations on an agreement aimed at cracking down on counterfeiting of such goods as watches and pharmaceuticals and the piracy of copyrighted materials such as software and music recordings. No Change for Law The U.S. wants to conclude the agreement this year, arguing it won't require approval by Congress because it doesn't entail changing any U.S. laws. ``We intend to reflect the balance that's in U.S. law'' between copyright holders and the free access to their goods, said Stanford McCoy, the U.S. trade official negotiating the accord. In the two negotiating sessions so far, officials haven't discussed Internet issues, and the U.S. hasn't decided how it wants to address those concerns, McCoy said. Google pressed the Bush administration to drop any Internet issues from the talks. ``Why would we want to enshrine one view of U.S. law'' in a trade agreement, when that ``may change over time,'' Johanna Shelton, policy counsel of Google, told McCoy today, citing pending U.S. court cases. Copyright Theft Band warned against adopting a treaty barring copyright theft that fails to ensure ``fair use'' of information. ``It really could be used as a way of restricting the growth of U.S. Internet companies overseas,'' he said. The Electronic Frontier Foundation, representing Web users, sued the U.S. trade office last week, demanding it reveal details of the negotiations. A leaked draft of the deal showed that the treaty could force Internet service providers to cooperate with copyright holders, the group said. Two entertainment industry trade groups, the Motion Picture Association of America and the Recording Industry Association of America, said any agreement should address the growing threat of illegal copying and distribution on the Web. ``It's hard to see how they work this out,'' said Eddan Katz, international affairs director at the Electronic Frontier Foundation. The accord will either be ``bland and meaningless, or radical and changes the Internet in fundamental ways,'' he said. http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?p...GesPo&refer=us Hollywood Wants Internet Providers to Block Copyrighted Files Saul Hansell This year there has been a lot of discussion in Washington about whether Internet service providers should monitor customers’ surfing to target advertising. Now, there are signs that one topic next year will be whether I.S.P.’s should analyze traffic to block trading of copyrighted files. At least, Hollywood appears to be preparing for that debate. And it is trying to get allies among technology companies and artist groups. On Tuesday, a new lobbying group was announced called Arts + Labs. It is backed by NBC Universal, Viacom, Microsoft, Cisco Systems, AT&T and the Songwriters Guild of America. And it is run by two Washington power lobbyists– Mike McCurry, who was President Bill Clinton’s press secretary, and Mark McKinnon, who has worked as a media adviser to President Bush and Senator John McCain. According to the group’s site, it wants to help “creators” (read media companies) get “fairly compensated for the use of their work.” How? There is talk of public education and discussion among industry participants. As far as I can see, the only real policy issue the site raises is what it calls “robust networks.” The group says “network operators must have the flexibility to manage and expand their networks to defend against net pollution and illegal file trafficking which threatens to congest and delay the network for all consumers.” I interpret “illegal file trafficking” to mean trading copyrighted material. So the group is calling for Internet service providers to have the right to block copyrighted content. That’s not entirely a surprise. NBC has long been interested in having technology companies, such as Internet providers, find ways to block the unauthorized transmission of its content. NBC’s general counsel, Rick Cotton, said as much in our Bits debate on copyright last year. And AT&T has indicated several times it is amenable to such a proposal, including on a panel at the Consumer Electronics Show last year. When I got Mr. McCurry on the phone and asked him what the organization is meant to do, the first thing he said was “find out how to curb illegal file trading.” He said that the group will work to keep Congress from passing laws that might limit the ability of Internet service providers to install systems that would block copyrighted material. “It would be going too far to say we support any specific technology or any specific kind of filtering,” Mr. McCurry said. “I don’t think the companies are there yet.” Mr. McCurry has spent the last two years as the chairman of Hands Off the Internet, a group that opposes proposed laws to create what has been called network neutrality. The group has been criticized by Common Cause (and others) for hiding the fact that it’s backed by major phone companies, including AT&T. (The group’s site now lists its members.) Net neutrality and filtering for copyrighted material are not the same issue, but they are related. The net neutrality proposals are meant to keep Internet providers from discriminating against some content flowing over their networks. Depending on how a net neutrality rule were written, it might or might not restrict the ability of an I.S.P. to block copyrighted material. Internet providers like AT&T are interested in such filtering as a way to reduce the high usage of their networks by people trading video files. Most telephone and cable companies, moreover, are in the video business and need to maintain good relationships with media companies. Mr. McCurry said that the group was born out of discussions between AT&T, Viacom and NBC, and that Microsoft, Cisco and the songwriters were brought in later. Cisco’s participation makes some sense. It has generally supported the telephone companies — some of its largest customers — in opposing network neutrality legislation. And if any system of filtering were used, Cisco would be in line to sell the equipment needed to do it. In general, we support I.S.P.’s being able to manage their networks in a way that facilitates the flow of legal content as well as provides tools to deal with problems like spam, viruses, malware, illegal file trafficking, etc.,” said a Cisco spokeswoman, Jennifer Greeson. Microsoft’s position is more complex. In 2006, it joined Google and other technology companies in supporting net neutrality. Late that year, it withdrew its support for at least one net neutrality group which wanted restrictions imposed on AT&T as a condition of its purchase of BellSouth. Since then, Microsoft has kept a low profile on the issue. As for using filters to block piracy, the company also appears conflicted. It does use a system to block copyrighted work from being uploaded to its video sharing site, Soapbox. As part of a deal to put NBC television shows on its Zune portable player, Microsoft left NBC with the impression it would create a system that would keep illegally recorded programs off of the Zune. When I posted this, Microsoft said that while it agreed to discuss the topic with NBC, it has no plans to actually put filters on the Zune. With respect to the Arts + Labs group, Thomas C. Rubin, Microsoft’s chief counsel for intellectual property strategy, told me that Microsoft does not support any particular lobbying agenda by the group. “We think that this is an opportunity to work with leaders across industries to put our heads together to discuss the opportunities that exist to facilitate the promotion of the availability of legitimate content on the Internet,” he said. But he added, “We are not in favor of filtering at the network level.” Not surprisingly, the formation of the group has already brought outraged calls from Public Knowledge, a group that has been active in pressing for Net Neutrality laws. Gigi B. Sohn, the group’s president, issued this statement: Quote:
The media companies believe strongly that something more needs to be done to help protect their business, and they will do as much as they can to make that case. http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/0...righted-files/ IP bill Passes Senate, no Civil Enforcement Power for DoJ Julian Sanchez The PRO-IP Act, which would ramp up enforcement of intellectual property laws and stiffen penalties for infringers, won approval by unanimous consent in the Senate Friday—but only after legislators stripped out a controversial provision that would have empowered the Department of Justice to litigate civil suits on behalf of content owners and hand over the winnings. Until recently dubbed the Enforcement of Intellectual Property Rights Act, S.3325 was rebranded as the "Prioritizing Resources and Organization for Intellectual Property Act," or PRO-IP, to match its sibling in the House of Representatives. It also now resembles the House bill, which passed overwhelmingly in May, in that it lacks a clause that would have given the Justice Department authority to bring civil suits against patent and copyright infringers, turning the damages over to the IP holders. The civil suits provision had drawn heavy fire not only from online rights groups, who blasted it as an "enormous gift" to Big Content, but from the Justice Department itself. In a letter to the Senate earlier this week, DoJ had complained that the law threatened to turn government attorneys into ""pro bono lawyers for private copyright holders regardless of their resources." Several other provisions to which objections had been raised were stricken or altered when the bill was marked up in committee. The Bush administration had also objected to a provision that remains in the bill, creating an IP "czar" within the White House to coordinate IP enforcement efforts. Justice had argued that this amounted to a congressional usurpation of a presidential prerogative, and therefore a constitutionally dubious encroachment on the separation of powers. Most observers, however, believe this objection is unlikely to result in a presidential veto. Also preserved in today's bill are provisions increasing penalties for infringement, targeting the import or export of infringing goods, increasing civil forfeiture powers in infringement cases, and establishing greater coordination between state, federal, and international anti-piracy efforts. Content industry groups, unsurprisingly, rejoiced at the news. RIAA head Mitch Bainwol called the legislation "music to the ears of all those who care about strengthening American creativity and jobs," while the US Chamber of Commerce dubbed it "a win for both parties and, more importantly, for America's innovators, workers whose jobs rely on intellectual property, and consumers who depend on safe and effective products." Less sanguine was Gigi Sohn of Public Knowledge, who though relieved at the removal of the civil enforcement language, argued that the bill "only adds more imbalance to a copyright law that favors large media companies." The House version of the Senate language has been placed on the suspension calendar for Saturday, when it is expected to pass easily. http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post...r-for-doj.html European Parliament Buries Three-Strikes Legislation MarkJ The European Parliament has canned a number of controversial amendments to its updated 'Telecoms Package', which could have resulted in ISPs being forced to disconnect customers for involvement in illegal file-sharing of copyright material. The "Three-Strikes" style proposal would have involved giving customers warnings, followed by a possible temporary account suspension, with complete disconnection to follow if the activity persisted. We explained this in more detail with our 'To Ban or Not to Ban (Illegal File Sharers)' article during March. It's understood that two amendments, opposing disproportionate sanctions (i.e. cutting off your connection) and supporting the importance of open access to digital content, were voted through. Measures that could have obliged ISPs to enforce copyright were also voted out. Naturally campaigners are pleased with the vote and point to the fact that both amendments seek not to restrict users where limitations may conflict with fundamental rights; emphasising a proportionate response against those breaking the law. To put it another way, restrictions that risk infringing a users rights must first be ruled on by a judge. Interestingly a proposal aimed at encouraging regulators to oversee a joint industry solution process between ISPs and the content industry was dropped without a vote. However the vote will have little impact over this side of the channel, where the bill has barely any influence and a voluntary solution between the content industry and six of the country’s largest ISPs (original news) is already being trialled. http://www.ispreview.co.uk/news/EkkkuEyVkATqxNIAOW.html Taiwan Cabinet Approves Amendment to the Copyright Law Shih Hsiu-Chuan The Cabinet yesterday approved an amendment to the Copyright Law (著作權法) that would authorize Internet Service Providers (ISPs) to take down content on their servers that infringes on the copyright of original creators. The law was amended in an attempt to crack down on Internet piracy. The Ministry of Economic Affairs said in a press release that it would set up a “Notice & Take Down” mechanism so original creators and ISPs can work together to stem infringement. Internet users who claim they have the legitimate right to use content removed by ISPs can send counter notifications to ISPs to demand restoration, the ministry said. The amendment said that ISPs would assume no responsibility for determining infringement or non-infringement, nor would they be liable for any compensation for removal of contents. The Cabinet yesterday also approved an amendment to the Employment Service Law (就業服務法), which the Council of Labor Affairs (CLA) said was designed to revise the inadequate regulations of foreign labor brokers. CLA said that the amendment suggested abolishing regulations that require foreigners to obtain work permits from the central government before coming to the country to engage in religious activities. If the amendment passes the legislature, foreigners will be allowed to enter the country for missionary work with visas for religious workers issued by the foreign ministry. The amendment also suggested extending the time period that local businesses are allowed to employ foreigners in certain jobs from two years to three years, the CLA said. http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/taiw.../26/2003424274 New Zealand Parody/Satire Review Announced Judith Tizard Commissioning rule to be repealed and parody/satire review announced Associate Commerce Minister, Judith Tizard has introduced to the House an amendment to the Copyright Act that would repeal the commissioning rule. She also announced that a review on whether there should be a copyright exception for the purpose of parody and satire has begun. The general rule is that the creator of a work holds the copyright to it. However, the commissioning rule, which affects artistic workers such as photographers, has been an exception to this, meaning that the commissioner of a work is the default copyright holder. "This is an important step in the promotion of creators’ rights to copyright ownership and will assist New Zealand photographers in particular to be more competitive, it also brings us in line with many other common law counties," said Judith Tizard. The United Kingdom repealed their commissioning rule in 1988, in Australia commercial photographers have default copyright over their works, and Ireland and Canada have either amended or repealed their commissioning provisions or are in the process of doing so. Currently, the commissioning rule allocates copyright ownership by default to the commissioner for artistic works, sound recordings and for the taking of a photograph or the making of a film. The rule does not apply to dramatic works or literary works (except computer programmes). The recommendation to repeal comes after two rounds of consultation in both 2006 and 2007. “Repealing the rule is intended to simplify the law by ensuring consistent application of default copyright ownership across all categories of commissioned works. It could also assist creators to retain copyright in their original works, which would in turn expand their ability to create future works,” said Judith Tizard. A repeal of the commissioning rule will provide greater consistency across all commissioned works using the example of an author who is commissioned to write and illustrate a book. “Currently in this situation, the default rule states that the commissioner automatically owns copyright in the illustrations as they are an ‘artistic work’, whereas the author as the creator automatically owns copyright in the literary aspect of the work," she said. "With a repeal, the new default rule will allocate copyright ownership to the author in both the artistic and literary aspects of the work.” There will be no alteration to section 105 of the Copyright Act which provides privacy protection for private commissioners of photographs or films. It includes a requirement that the commissioner’s permission be sought to use the work where copyright in that work is owned by someone other than the commissioner. For the majority of private commissions, creators use standard form contracts to assert copyright ownership; therefore section 105 provides an important privacy protection mechanism and will continue to do so after the commissioning rule is repealed. Judith Tizard pointed out the contracting out clause will be retained. “What will not change with a repeal is the ability for either the creator or the commissioner to negotiate out of the default rule.” The Minister also used this opportunity to announce the commencement of a review on whether there should be a copyright exception for the purpose of parody and satire. "The impetus for the review is to ensure the Copyright Act continues to provide clarity to copyright users, rights-holders and internet service providers as to what constitutes infringing material," she said. “The Copyright Act is currently silent on the issue of parody and satire. With the recent introduction of the Copyright (New Technologies) Amendment Act, there is further need to ensure our legislation remains unambiguous when assessing what amounts to copyright infringement.” Key considerations in the review will be whether a parody and satire exception is necessary in New Zealand, and whether providing such an exception would disrupt the balance between the competing interests of copyright creators, owners and users. A discussion document on the issue of parody and satire is planned for public release in December 2008. http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/PA0809/S00481.htm Steven Tyler Sues Bloggers For Impersonation Alex Dobuzinskis Aerosmith frontman Steven Tyler sued unknown bloggers who the singer said impersonated him on the Web, writing about the death of his mother and other "intimate details" from his life. In a lawsuit filed in Los Angeles, Tyler, 60, said he didn't know the real names of those who have impersonated him and girlfriend Erin Brady on the Web, but he believes the same group was responsible for similar postings in 2007. At that time, Tyler asked Google to remove the blogs, and the Internet company complied. The latest batch of impersonator blogs, which show pictures of Tyler, the lead singer for the rock group Aerosmith, were posted at Blogspot.com, the lawsuit said. One posting had 31 entries for 2008, and another written by "Brady" had seven entries in recent months, the lawsuit said. "The impersonated statements relating to (Tyler's) mother are perhaps most hurtful given that she recently passed away," the lawsuit stated. Tyler's lawsuit accuses the bloggers of public disclosure of private facts, making false statements and misappropriation of likeness. It also seeks an injunction to have the defendants stop impersonating him online or elsewhere. Yesterday, the blogs Tyler's lawsuit describes as being written by impostors were unavailable for public viewing. A statement on each of the blog pages said, "This blog is under review due to possible blogger terms of service violations." http://www.billboard.biz/bbbiz/conte...18d0c1830ff938 Olympic Mottoes Borrow Lines from O Canada CBC News Two phrases borrowed from Canada's national anthem have been chosen as the mottoes for the 2010 Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games, and organizers have already moved to protect the commercial rights to the lines. The lines "With glowing hearts" from the English version and "Des plus brillants exploits" from the French version will soon be emblazoned on Olympic merchandise and promotional material as a national campaign to promote the mottoes is rolled out across Canada this fall. The phrases were recently trademarked by the Vancouver Olympic Organizing Committee in anticipation of the announcement, it was revealed Wednesday. "'With glowing hearts' is connected and familiar to all Canadians through our anthem, O Canada, and it also embodies what it takes to be an Olympic or Paralympic athlete," VANOC chief executive officer John Furlong said in a statement Thursday. "'With glowing hearts' captures in a few simple, time-honoured words what it means to be Canadian, the deep pride we have in our country and who we are," said Furlong. "It embodies the emotions every athlete will feel — no matter where they are from or what flag they stand under — when they have the honour to represent their own country on the world's grandest international stage in 2010," he said. While the French and English mottoes are different, Furlong said they are drawn from the same inspiration. "'Des plus brillants exploits' references the pinnacle of achievement and the extraordinary feats of human endeavour that will occur, both for the athletes and for everyone involved in staging the 2010 Winter Games," said Furlong. No charge for singing anthem Despite the trademark placed on the lines, VANOC said it has no desire to own the phrases and VANOC's use of the mottoes in no way changes how the national anthem is used by Canadians. VANOC would only challenge the commercial use of the mottoes if a business began using them to create a specific, unauthorized commercial association with the 2010 Winter Games, said the statement. O Canada is over 100 years old and, according to the Department of Canadian Heritage, is in the public domain so may be used without permission from the government. The committee is so serious about protecting the Olympic brand it managed to get a landmark piece of legislation passed in the House of Commons last year that made using certain phrases related to the Games a violation of law. The list includes the number 2010 and the word "winter," phrases that normally couldn't be trademarked because they are so general. Vancouver organizers have already taken small businesses in the Vancouver area to court for using the word Olympic in their names — even ones in existence long before the Games were awarded to Vancouver — and have launched lawsuits against people who've tried to register Olympic-related domain names on the internet. Hockey fans used to singing the anthem with gusto before a game or schoolchildren who sing it every morning shouldn't worry. "That would not constitute infringement of the mark," said Neil Melliship, a Vancouver trademark lawyer. "It just doesn't make sense. They are not using it in a commercial sense here, they are not selling something with that mark, they are just singing a song." http://www.cbc.ca/canada/british-col...-o-canada.html NBC Finds Formula for Fighting Piracy Greg Sandoval The days when anyone, anywhere could post a funny clip from Saturday Night Live or The Office on to YouTube and share them with millions of appreciative viewers are quickly disappearing. Executives at NBC Universal say they have found a "template" for protecting videos from online piracy. By the looks of things, they might be right. The company is seeing unprecedented success at removing unauthorized videos posted to the Web and cited last month's Olympic Games and the recent SNL skit with actress Tina Fey as proof. More than 99 percent of all the Internet video views of the Olympic Games in Beijing were watched on NBC.com or NBCOlympics.com as opposed to on the likes of YouTube or Dailymotion, according to Rick Cotton, NBC's general counsel. Fey's impersonation of Republican vice presidential hopeful Sarah Palin was a smash hit. Within minutes of NBC's airing of the show, attempts were made to post copies of the show to YouTube. It's unclear, however, whether any of the full-length copies of the skit actually made it on to YouTube. All that is certain is that some clips of TV news coverage of the skit, featuring only snippets from the show, were available. Whether this is the end of video sharing as we know it--where any member of the public could distribute clips of professionally made TV shows--remains to be seen. But big media companies have been waiting for any kind of technological breakthrough in copyright protection and have always said that the lack of one would stymie efforts to make money from Web video. "What has happened up to now is the ability to access and download infringing content has been trivially simple, and the lesson it teaches people is that if it's that easy it can't be wrong," Cotton said. According to Cotton, at the forefront of NBC's success at fighting piracy is technology. Many in the tech community had told NBC that trying to block digital content from being swapped online was a waste of time, he said. "Historically, there was a period where the conversation focused on the capability of technology to provide wondrous new access and wondrous new distribution," Cotton said Monday in an interview with CNET News. "In that old conversation technology's capability to define the rules of the road was dismissed, I would say by self-interested voices. But technology has an enormous amount to contribute in setting rules of the road." The ability of YouTube, Dailymotion, Veoh, and Microsoft's Soapbox to track unauthorized clips and automatically remove them is the game changer, according to Cotton. Executives from some of the big entertainment companies have been critical in the past of YouTube's efforts to protect copyright material, but now they say YouTube's filtering and take-down systems have dramatically improved. Cotton said that YouTube and competing video sites have the ability to pull an unauthorized video very soon after posted. It's important to note that not every copyright owner wants his or her work removed. Some give YouTube permission to place advertisements near unauthorized copies of their work so they can share in the ad revenue generated from it. Another part of NBC's approached calls for government intervention. In the case of the Olympics, NBC worked with Chinese authorities to help thwart piracy on Chinese video-sharing sites. Better non-infringing alternatives And yet another part of NBC's antipiracy efforts focuses on offering the public an attractive alternative to copyright infringement. NBC has been promoting its own Web site as well as Hulu, the video portal that NBC launched in partnership with News Corp., as places to find full-length TV shows and movies in higher quality video than at YouTube. As an illustration of how the public is catching on, Cotton said when YouTube fans found notices that the Fey skit had been removed, they found the clips at NBC.com. The clip was watched more than 7 million times at NBC.com in the week following its broadcast. This doesn't even take into consideration the views it received at Hulu, which doesn't disclose such numbers. "Technology has to teach," Cotton said. "What people learned very quickly was what would stay up at YouTube were still photos of the (events at the Olympics)," Cotton added. "They could find photo galleries at YouTube and for video they went to NBCOlympics.com." To some, this could signal that NBC is ready to return its content to YouTube. In talking to Cotton and other executives at the company, however, I don't get the sense that they need to promote shows there. The company now has multiple distribution points in which to market its shows, including Yahoo and MSN, as well as on its own broadcast channels. The idea seems to be to get people accustomed to going to Hulu or NBC.com for full-length shows. At the same time, YouTube has been convincing those in Hollywood that the site is a great place to promote content. YouTube is also working with studios and TV broadcasters to create original content exclusively for YouTube, sources familiar with the company's plans have told me. Meanwhile, NBC will continue to work together with YouTube to scrub the site of unauthorized clips, which is a much different approach than the one chosen by Viacom, which last year filed a $1 billion suit against Google's YouTube. "It's has been an evolution. We have done this without a great deal of friction," said Cotton, who added that copyright owners need to work hand-in-hand with video-sharing sites. "This can't work on a casual basis. It has to have the support of the entire ecosystem." http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-10048949-93.html Hole in Adobe Software Allows Free Movie Downloads Daisuke Wakabayashi A security hole in Adobe Systems Inc (ADBE.O: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz) software, used to distribute movies and TV shows over the Internet, is giving users free access to record and copy from Amazon.com Inc's (AMZN.O: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz) video streaming service. The problem exposes online video content to the rampant piracy that plagued the music industry during the Napster era and is undermining efforts by retailers, movie studios and television networks to cash in on a huge Web audience. "It's a fundamental flaw in the Adobe design. This was designed stupidly," said Bruce Schneier, a security expert who is also the chief security technology officer at British Telecom. The flaw rests in Adobe's Flash video servers that are connected to the company's players installed in nearly all of the world's Web-connected computers. The software doesn't encrypt online content, but only orders sent to a video player such as start and stop play. To boost download speeds, Adobe dropped a stringent security feature that protects the connection between the Adobe software and its players. "Adobe is committed to the security of all of our products, from our players to our server software. Adobe invests a considerable amount of ongoing effort to help protect users from potential vulnerabilities," it said in a statement. Adobe said it issued a security bulletin earlier this month about how best to protect online content and called on its customers to couple its software security with a feature that verifies the validity of its video player. An Amazon spokesman said content on the company's Video On Demand service, which offers as many as 40,000 movies and TV shows on its Web site, cannot be pirated using video stream catching software. However, in tests by Reuters, at least one program to record online video, the Replay Media Catcher from Applian Technologies, recorded movies from Amazon and other sites that use Adobe's encryption technology together with its video player verification. "Adobe's (stream) is not really encrypted," said Applian CEO Bill Dettering. "One of the downfalls with how they have architected the software is that people can capture the streams. I fully expect them to do something more robust in the near future." How It Works The free demo version of Replay Media Catcher allows anyone to watch 75 percent of anything recorded and 100 percent of YouTube videos. For $39, a user can watch everything recorded. One Web site -- www.tvadfree.com -- explains step-by-step how to use the video stream catching software. Amazon.com's Adobe-powered Video On Demand service allows viewers to watch the first two minutes of a movie or TV show for free. It charges up to $3.99 to rent a movie for 24 hours and up to $14.99 to download a movie permanently. Amazon starts to stream the entire movie during the free preview -- even though it pauses the video on the Web browser after the first two minutes -- so that users can start watching the rest of the video right away once they pay. "It's the traditional trade-off, convenience on the one hand and security on the other," said Ray Valdes, analyst at research group Gartner. However, even if a user doesn't pay, the stream still sends the movie to the video catching software, but not the browser. Amazon's Video On Demand is the Web retailer's answer to declining sales of packaged movies and TV shows and the growth in demand for digital content that can be viewed and stored on the Internet. Unlike Amazon, videos from Hulu.com, NBC.com and CBS.com are already free although the TV programs are interrupted by commercials. However, the stream catching software separates the commercials and the program into two separate folders, so people can keep the programs without the advertising. Hulu.com, a video Web site owned by News Corp's (NWSa.N: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz) Fox network and General Electric's (GE.N: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz) NBC Universal, was the big networks' answer to YouTube, the popular video-sharing Web site where many users began uploading TV shows and other content owned by media companies. The networks scrambled to post videos on their own sites in a bid to capture another stream of advertising revenue from a growing audience, but they have struggled with how best to show commercials which fund the programing when played on the Web. YouTube, which started the online video boom before being bought by Google Inc (GOOG.O: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz) for $1.65 billion in November 2006, has also struggled to cash in on its popularity even though its user base continues to mushroom. Destroying Business Models One possible solution would be to protect the video with a digital rights management (DRM) system. A Seattle-based company called Widevine Technologies has a DRM system that can encrypt online videos using Flash. "The fundamental problem here is that Adobe's lack of technology is not allowing the business models to be preserved," said Widevine Chief Executive Brian Baker. The lack of content protection, according to Baker, threatens all the business models used today to fund video on the Web. Apple Inc (AAPL.O: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz), which sells movies and television shows at its online iTunes store, uses its own DRM technology called FairPlay, but it only works for video bought on iTunes. Forrester analyst James McQuivey said he doesn't believe the video stream catching technology will entirely derail the advertising-supported business model used by the networks for online video. "It's too complicated for most users," said McQuivey, noting that file-sharing services like BitTorrent already exist but only a small percentage of people use them. "People want something easy to find and easy to use." (Editing by Peter Henderson, Richard Chang) http://www.reuters.com/article/ousiv...080926?sp=true Labels Launch slotMusic Format, Miss Point of Digital Music Jacqui Cheng Now that the online music market is hoppin', it's time to introduce a new, not-very-ubiquitous physical format! That's the thought that apparently ran through the collective minds of SanDisk and the Big Four music labels, it seems, as they announced an "innovative" physical format called slotMusic on Monday morning. slotMusic is actually a tiny, flash-based microSD card with a full album's worth of MP3s slapped onto it, which will then be sold through a number of brick-and-mortar and online stores. The idea is to sell full albums in a smaller and more portable format than CD that can supposedly be played directly on a variety of devices. The problem is that the physical format ship has sailed, and slotMusic is destined to sink. According to SanDisk, slotMusic cards "enable consumers to instantly and easily enjoy music from their favorite artists without being dependent on a PC or internet connection." After purchasing the SD card from a Best Buy or Wal-Mart, for example, listeners will be able to stick it into a microSD-capable phone or MP3 player and listen to the album instantly—no downloading or annoying DRM authorization required. The cards will even be packaged with a USB card reader so that users can connect them to their computers and listen to the music or transfer it off the card. The DRM-free MP3s on the card will be available in a reasonably high-quality 320kbps. Artists and albums have not yet been announced, but the selection will come from EMI, Sony BMG, Universal Music Group, or Warner Music, so you can expect that major acts will be well represented at the onset. Finally, users can transfer their own data to the 1GB microSD cards, like other music or their own notes, documents, videos, etc. There are apparently no restrictions on what can be done with the cards once they are purchased. The purpose of slotMusic, as evidenced by the video on the product's main page, is basically to provide another option for customers who might otherwise cherry pick their favorite tracks by inventing a new way to sell full albums on something other than CDs or vinyl, and to do so on something tiny. SanDisk touts the fact that slotMusic can be used on multiple devices, and the obvious goal is to sell to those who are on the run and want to pop a microSD card into their phones or portable music players. But how many people do you know who have phones and portable music players with microSD cards? There might be a few, but at least from our perspective, they certainly don't make up a majority—or even a large minority—of the population. I, personally, don't own a single device that takes microSD cards except for my digital camera, and that seems to be the case for most of the Ars staff. Granted, some BlackBerrys take microSD cards, so there are a couple of us who could make use of slotMusic if we wanted to. But why would we want to? In a world where we can easily purchase all the music we could ever want online without ever having to set foot inside of a Wal-Mart—and increasingly, purchase it wirelessly right from our mobile devices—exactly which segment of the market SanDisk is going after remains a mystery. Digital music is all about convenience, and requiring someone to walk into a store or wait for something to be shipped in an unfamiliar format is not convenient. There's a reason why CD sales are tanking—and it's not because they're too big to pop right into your BlackBerry. http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post...tal-music.html Analyzing Music the Digital Way Computers have exquisite ears Tom Avril Ge Wang was every bit the image of an orchestra conductor. Clad all in black, with a dramatic mane of shoulder-length hair parted in the middle, he used fluid gestures to summon forth an auditorium full of sound. Yet there were some curious differences from what you might see at the Kimmel Center. His musicians were sitting cross-legged on the stage floor, for one thing. And their instruments, linked by a wireless network, were laptop computers. Electronic wizardry has been an instrumental part of music for decades, at least since Wendy Carlos released Switched-On Bach in 1968 and played a Brandenburg Concerto on a Moog synthesizer. But the international crowd of engineers, musicians and computer types who gathered at Drexel University last week are pushing their trade in directions your grade-school piano teacher never imagined. Computers are used not only to play music, as Wang and the Princeton Laptop Orchestra did on Wednesday night, but now they also can "listen" to it as well - breezing through complex tasks that would defeat their slower human masters. The five-day event was the International Conference on Music Information Retrieval, an annual gathering that represents the flowering of a new academic discipline: harnessing the power of computers to analyze and manage the world of sound. Need a friendly guide for a live performance of Mahler's Eighth Symphony? A computer program developed at Swarthmore College and Drexel can meet your needs by monitoring the progress of the orchestra and supplying written lyrics and commentary at just the right time. Can't get the hang of improvising a jazz tune on the piano? Looking for music that exactly matches the tempo of your morning jog? Unable to remember the name of that catchy tune stuck in your head? Sophisticated statistical software can guide the way in each case, to hear the various exhibitors tell it. The event was first held in 2000, in Plymouth, Mass., with music theorists and librarians heavily represented among the few dozen attendees. Now it's a high-tech extravaganza, with curious industry representatives among the 270 people on hand this year at Drexel's airy Bossone Center. Some of the technologies had the whiff of things that could end up in iPods in the next 18 months, perhaps to help listeners sort through an unruly music collection. Others seemed more like the outgrowth of unbridled intellectual curiosity - the sorts of what-if academic exercises scholars tackled because no one told them not to. "There are no preconceived notions of what it is exactly they should be doing," marveled Swarthmore's Jon Kochavi, a visiting assistant professor of music who came to the event with 10 students in tow. "It is fascinating." It's no surprise, perhaps, that a new academic discipline should arise at the confluence of music and computers. It is often said that aptitude for music and math go hand in hand; Albert Einstein was a violinist, after all. And the celebrated mathematician and philosopher Gottfried Leibniz once said: "Music is nothing but unconscious arithmetic." That quotation was projected onto a screen before another musical performance at the conference last week, by the University of Southern California's Elaine Chew. But here's betting that Einstein and Leibniz never imagined anything like the software that accompanied Chew on her Yamaha grand piano. As she launched into Fętes (Variations on Happy Birthday) by Ivan Tcherepnin, a visual representation of the tonal structures in the piece was projected on a giant screen as she played. The image was a whirling array of spirals, displaying the musical keys, triads and pitches as they came. Beforehand, members of the laptop orchestra produced a range of electronic sounds, tapping vigorously on their keyboards and "bowing" their track-pads. One piece evoked the rushing wind and was described as "a sonic rumination of crystal caves in the clouds." A key part of the conference each year is the announcement of results from a sort of software shoot-out - a competition in which various universities pit their music-analysis algorithms against one another. Entrants from more than a dozen countries competed in 18 tasks, using their computers to "listen" to selections of music, then identify such things as the genre, mood, composer or title. The eventual goal: to help people search for music they might like by combing through millions of audio files in a database. Competition organizer J. Stephen Downie, an associate professor of library and information science at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, was especially taken with the entrants' success at identifying cover songs by different artists. For example, given one rendition of Led Zeppelin's "Stairway to Heaven," the electronic listeners had to sift through 1,000 songs and pick out 10 performances of "Stairway" by other artists, one of them on the banjo. A team from Barcelona, Spain, won that challenge, with a 75 percent success rate. In another task, the computer had to identify tunes that someone hummed. "The idea is, you go into the karaoke bar and start humming, and the computer retrieves your song," Downie said. The five-day conference was not just about getting the computer to listen. Engineers from Drexel programmed a robot to dance in response. The team cooked up software to extract the drumbeat from music, then analyze it to pinpoint the beat. That information is then sent from a laptop to a 12-inch humanoid robot, which begins moving its arms and legs in time with the piece. The robot drew an admiring crowd Thursday as it gyrated to a pulsing techno beat, while Drexel engineering student David Grunberg watched. He said larger versions of the robot might be useful to choreographers, in case they need to try out a dance step but cannot immediately hire a troop of dancers. Or such robots might prove useful in studying the difference between random movement and creativity - the psychology of what makes us human, said Drexel's Youngmoo Kim, an assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering. "When does an action become art?" Kim said. One spectator tried to tinker with the robot's software so it would perform a salsa step. Another, presumably speaking for more than one person in attendance, said simply: "It's pretty cool." http://www.philly.com/inquirer/enter...site_ears.html iTunes Under Threat as Bands Take Their Business Elsewhere Bands concerned for the ongoing commercial viability of albums are adding to the pressures on iTunes, says Brian Boyd The previously unremarkable rap-rocker Kid Rock had a huge worldwide hit this summer with the single All Summer Long. The album it came from, Rock'n'Roll Jesus, has now sold more than two million copies. It didn't escape the attention of his record label, Warners, that Kid Rock's career-high sales have been amassed without the single or album being available on Apple's iTunes music store. Since its introduction in 2003, iTunes has sold more than five billion songs and is now the biggest music retailer in the US. In the UK, it is fast closing in on Woolworths' current number-one position. Inspired by Kid Rock's success, Warners decided to carry out a little experiment and picked out the British R&B singer, Estelle, to act as their guinea pig. Estelle released her Shine album earlier this year. It boasted one huge hit single in American Boy. Looking at Estelle's iTunes sales figures, Warners found that almost everyone was downloading the American Boy song and not bothering with anything else on the album. Warners pulled the Shine album off iTunes in the US, which meant that all those people who still wanted to buy American Boy were forced to buy the full album. The predictable happened: Estelle's US sales figures plummeted, and hilariously (if you weren't Estelle or Warners) a limp cover version of American Boy by an act called Studio All-Stars soared up the iTunes download charts in Estelle's absence. A few weeks ago, Warners rather meekly put Shine back up on the US iTunes store. Shine was never a strong enough album with which to test how firm the stranglehold iTunes has over the music market. On Oct 20, though, this year's biggest-selling album, in all probability, will be released and it, too, won't be available on iTunes. If AC/DC's Black Ice performs, it could have serious long-term consequences for the pre-eminent position of iTunes as a music retailer. If the album is the year's biggest seller - and with U2 not releasing No Line On The Horizon until January, there's only Coldplay's Viva La Vida in the way - then many acts already harbouring grievances against iTunes might well be persuaded to join AC/DC on the other side of the digital divide. The Australian no-nonsense rockers refuse to allow their work to be sold on iTunes because they argue that their albums are complete pieces of work that represent them at a certain time and place in their musical career and are not just a bunch of individual downloads to be cherry-picked by fans. Because iTunes steadfastly refuses to "lock" any album (the vast majority of songs on the site can be downloaded as individual tracks), AC/DC don't just boycott the online store, but are now active anti-iTunes evangelists. "We don't make singles, we make albums," says guitarist Angus Young. "Way back in the Seventies, we drew these figures on the back of an envelope for our record company. "We showed them how much they earned from us if we sold one million singles and how much they earned if we sold one million albums. The difference was staggering. "That was to get them off our back because we only very grudgingly release singles. Our real reason is that we honestly believe the songs on any of our albums belong together. "If we were on iTunes, we know a certain percentage of people would only download two or three songs from the album - and we don't think that represents us musically." Young happily points out that projected sales figures show that AC/DC's 1980 Back in Black album will soon leapfrog Michael Jackson's Thriller album to become the biggest-selling album ever - and it won't be available on iTunes. Though the Beatles' back catalogue is still not available on iTunes, this will be the first time in the music store's short history that it will be deprived of a major current release. For good or ill, iTunes has changed how we consume music. Though it rightly boasts that it helped the music industry recover ground from the damage done by the illegal downloading pandemic, iTunes makes it easier for us to pay only for the hit singles, not the 10 other "filler" tracks on an album. Katy Perry has sold 2.2 million downloads of I Kissed a Girl on iTunes, but only 282,000 copies of her album. That sort of singles-to-album sales ratio simply never happened pre-iTunes. Guy Garvey, the lead singer of this year's Mercury Music prize winners, Elbow, says: "iTunes is responsible for the death of the album." As with AC/DC, he calls for the site to offer artists the choice of "locking" their album. "The album is a piece of work that we laboured over and not a bunch of downloads flung together to satisfy a contractual demand." There are also financial reasons for opposing iTunes. With no packaging or distribution costs, royalty rates should be higher, says Kid Rock. This is the reason he won't allow his work on iTunes. Angus Young says that two big name rock acts are now rethinking their presence on iTunes because the singles vs albums sales equation simply isn't working for them. "I met these bands and they were asking me all about not being on iTunes," he says. "I told them that since iTunes came into existence, we've actually increased our back catalogue sales without being on the site, and at the time we were sternly warned by our management team and our record label that the complete opposite would be the case." Young wouldn't confirm the names of those acts. But recently, the Wall Street Journal published sales figures that showed, of the six biggest back catalogue selling acts in the world, the Rolling Stones, despite being available on iTunes, limped into sixth place, with the top two acts on the list (the Beatles and AC/DC) being iTunes refuseniks. The release of Black Ice will be a major blow for iTunes' claim to be the world's biggest music retailer, but three days before that October 20 release date, a more significant threat to the company takes place when the mobile phone company Nokia begin to sell their new "Comes With Music" phone in UK stores. The much-hyped Apple iPhone was supposed to shore up iTunes sales (which it did) but Nokia are making a bold raid on Apple's music download market. The "Comes With Music" phone will allow users to download all the music they want for a fixed monthly subscription fee (the price of which is yet to be revealed by the company). Each of the four major music labels have already agreed to make their entire catalogues available for the "Comes With Music" phone. The phone requires an initial 12-month contract, but this does not need to be renewed. In the future we will all receive our music under a subscription model. Apple have advanced plans to release an "iTunes Unlimited", all-you-can-eat subscription service, but Nokia have stolen a march on the normally latest-greatest-most-up-to-datest company. For Apple, "when troubles come, they come not in single spies" but as a Nokia music phone blasting out Whole Lotta Rosie. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/arts/main...mitunes125.xml  Jean Shin’s “Sound Wave,” in the Museum of Arts and Design’s first exhibitions at 2 Columbus Circle. Covered in ads but DRM-free MySpace Rolling Out Music Service Ad-supported service aims to surpass iTunes Michael Liedtke Make room, iTunes. MySpace is hoping to shake up the digital music scene. In a bid to spruce up its popular online hangout, MySpace plans to flip the switch today on a much-anticipated service that will give its roughly 120 million users free access to hundreds of thousands of songs from the world's largest recording labels. The catch: The music can be played only on personal computers connected to the Internet and listeners have to tolerate advertising splashed across the screen. Anyone who wants to transfer a song to a portable device like Apple's iPod will have to buy the music through Amazon.com's year-old downloading service, which sells songs for as little as 79 cents apiece. Unlike much of the material at Apple's iTunes store, the music sold through MySpace's new service won't contain the protections that limit how many times a track can be copied. MySpace is hoping to set itself apart from iTunes even further by allowing its users to create an unlimited number of playlists containing up to 100 songs apiece — a sharing concept similar to music services already offered by Imeem and Last.fm. If MySpace's plan pans out, people will regularly post different playlists on their profiles and expose their friends to new music. The recording labels are betting these implicit recommendations will cultivate more interest in more songs and eventually generate revenue to help recoup some of the revenue that has evaporated as CD sales have plunged from $12 billion in 1999 to a projected $5 billion this year. "We have to unlock the social value of our music," said Michael Nash, executive vice president of digital strategy and business development for Warner Music Group. Besides Warner, the three other major recording labels — Sony BMG Music Entertainment, Universal Music Group and EMI Music — also are opening up their libraries to the MySpace service, which will operate as a joint venture with the music industry. Sony ATV/Music Publishing and the Orchard also have joined the MySpace alliance. MySpace is starting with several hundred thousand songs, but expects to surpass the 8.5 million songs at Apple's iTunes store. The music labels are hoping that the MySpace service can lessen the dominance of iTunes, which has sold more than 5 billion songs since its 2003 inception and now ranks as the largest music retailer. Apple has vexed the music industry by refusing to allow higher prices to be charged for the most popular songs. Several other services, mostly peddling monthly subscription fees for access to large music libraries, have tried to tackle iTunes with little success.Despite its musical bent, MySpace isn't positioning its service as an iTunes killer. "We see this as more of a complement to what Apple is doing and create even more demand for digital music devices," said Chris DeWolfe, MySpace's CEO. "And we think it can create an ecosystem for both music artists and labels to make more money." http://www.siliconvalley.com/news/ci...nclick_check=1 Revieww Music for Only $0.14/Song at SoundsBox! SoundsBox is a relatively new music site starting in late June 2007. With its friendly customer service and their willingness to please the customer, this shop is a standout with me. I look forward to their daily new arrivals, because they are usually different than other sites that I go to. They also have very prompt arrivals of new releases in mainstream as well as independent releases. The site’s goals are to offer quality downloads at the cheapest prices possible, to maintain site availability to their customers and they are proud of their prompt releases on new material. Pricing / Payment Options / Bonus Schemes SoundsBox has a very fair pricing policy at only 14 cents a download, with a 10% added bonus, if you buy the whole album. They will also give you up to 45% bonus on $100 deposit. At the present time they are accepting Master Card and Visa credit cards as payment. Music Catalogue When looking for a music site my first criteria is its catalogue. The catalogue of Soundsbox consists of 35,100 artists, 2,000,000 songs and 142,500 albums. They also have many new independent releases that I also see on eMusic, as well as very prompt releases of all the mainstream releases that I am also interested in. This, to me, creates a well balanced catalogue that keeps me going there daily, keeps me interested and draws me in. Audio Formats / Bit Rates SoundsBox has a sampler that samples in full quality 90 seconds - but as of now only works properly in IE. They have said they will fix this to work in Firefox as well. Until then you can use the Firefox add-on: IE Tab to make the site fully functional. The site administrators say that their average download is 192 vbr. It varies on some of the older titles but on newer titles I see more consistency in quality. Personally, to my ears, their downloads all sound of good quality, which says to me that they use excellent source material. Most importantly their downloads are DRM free, which means you can use them anywhere you choose. Interface SoundsBox is an attractive site but with a bit too much flash content for my taste. It has an interface that helps you find the contents of its catalogue. You must point and click to a letter in the alphabet and it will take you to all the artists under that chosen letter. Unfortunately you can not input an artist or an album in the search box, because it does not work properly. I have been told that this will be fixed at the end of the year, when they intend to make site upgrades. Another way to search is by genre: click on the browse by genre tab and you will be taken to another page with various genres and sub genres, a quite impressive list. On that page you will also find new releases. I prefer to have the new releases on the front page, because this is one of the great draws to this site. On the album page you can find out such information as release date, total time, genre, time, file size and bit rate. Everything you need to know before making a purchase. One small problem is that I find page loading is a little slow with IE. Using Firefox will speed up your page loading, when visiting Soundsbox. Support / Assistance The assistance at Soundsbox is excellent and very responsive. I like that “hands on” approach to customer service. When you make a request, usually in a day or so, you will see it appear on the site. You feel that you are being listened to, and at the same time help to develop the site into a place you want to visit. Technical questions and results may take a little longer; but from personal experience I can tell you, it will be worked out. This is one of the reasons, I am such a big fan of the site. Conclusion If you are looking for a music site that offers great new diverse releases, great customer service and music at a great price, then Soundsbox is a place you might like to spend some time with. They are a relatively new site, so I’m personally looking forward to their future development and growth. I know if they continue on their current path, we (the music lovers) have a great deal to look forward to. http://stereotune.com/2008/09/26/sou...-only-014song/ Wal*Mart Shutting Down DRM Server, Nuking Your Music Collection -- Only People Who Pay For Music Risk Losing it to DRM Shenanigans Posted by Cory Doctorow Hey suckers! Did you buy DRM music from Wal*Mart instead of downloading MP3s for free from the P2P networks? Well, they're repaying your honesty by taking away your music. Unless you go through a bunch of hoops (that you may never find out about, if you've changed email addresses or if you're not a very technical person), your music will no longer be playable after October 9th. But don't worry, this will never ever happen to all those other DRM companies -- unlike little fly-by-night mom-and-pop operations like Wal*Mart, the DRM companies are rock-ribbed veterans of commerce and industry, sure to be here for a thousand years. So go on buying your Audible books, your iTunes DRM songs, your Zune media, your EA games... None of these companies will ever disappear, nor will the third-party DRM suppliers they use. They are as solid and permanent as Commodore, Atari, the Soviet Union, the American credit system and the Roman Empire. Boy, the entertainment industry sure makes a good case for ripping them off, huh? Buy your media and risk having it confiscated by a DRM-server shutdown. Take it for free and keep it forever. Quote:
(Thanks, Dorri!) http://www.boingboing.net/2008/09/26...tting-dow.html PlayStation 3 Video DRM: Two Strikes and You're Out Ben Kuchera The Sony Video Store on the PlayStation Network is filled with a good selection of movies, and you can't beat the convenience of renting or even buying movies from your couch and watching them on your big screen with your PlayStation 3. Renting movies is a joy on the system, although it would be nice to have longer than 24 hours to watch the content, but what happens when you buy a movie? As one Ars reader found out, and Sony confirmed for us, you have to be careful about what happens to your system once it's filled with video content: you have one download, one redownload, and that's it. Noise, a forum-goer, sent out a warning after he deleted some video content to make room on his hard drive and then found he couldn't redownload the content. The PlayStation 3 support page is perfectly clear on this matter. "Purchased content can be downloaded to a single PLAYSTATION 3 or a single PSP system," it reads. "Content cannot be redownloaded once it has been downloaded to either a PLAYSTATION 3 or PSP system." You're allowed to keep the content on one system, and you can move it to up to three PSP systems, but if you have to delete the content for any reason, it's gone? Sort of. Lincoln Davis, who handles media relations for the PlayStation Network, told Ars that you are in fact allowed one extra download, but you have to contact Sony. "If a consumer deletes a purchased movie from their PS3, they will not be able to redownload the movie without assistance from SCEA's consumer services," he told Ars. "Consumer service can issue a redownload as a one-time courtesy, as provided by our guidelines, for the title to allow the consumer to go back and download the movie from their PSN download list." That helps Noise, who can now get his content back—once—but it's important that PS3 owners realize just how ephemeral the bought content is. This isn't like the issue of Spore DRM where customer service seems to be willing to hand out new codes like they're candy; Sony is very clear that you can only redownload your content once after it has been purchased. When we're discussing a system that seems to release new hardware configurations every few months and a company that actively encourages you to swap hard drives yourself, it appears users are going to run into problems if they ever decide they want to switch out their hard drive or even upgrade into a larger system; the information on the back-up utility makes it clear that video content can't be moved over to new system, although new hard drives should be safe. Sony claims that the PS3 is operating on a 10-year timeline: is one extra download, which you need to contact customer service to apply for, good enough for the next decade? It's hard to know if this limit is Sony's doing, or if content providers have demanded this level of DRM on the movies sold through Sony's online service. Nonetheless, this could cause customers to be very cautious with their hardware or space managements; no one would dare free up the space knowing that after the one redownload their purchase is gone forever. It's also unknown what will happen with these files when you purchase a PS4—if you'd like to look that far into the future. Sony's policy is a sobering reminder that DRM can turn your purchases into rentals at anytime, with Sony and the content providers tightly holding onto the key. http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post...youre-out.html EA Respond To DRM Complaints Kotaku.com Electronic Arts have sent us a statement regarding their roundly-criticized Spore DRM policy. In it, EA Games Label President Frank Gibeau states that the company assumed consumers would understand the need for DRM because "if games that take 1-4 years to develop are effectively stolen the day they launch, developers and publishers will simply stop investing in PC games" but concedes that a number of customers have strong objections and that EA need to adapt their policy to accommodate them. Full details of the changes can be found after the jump, but it is worth noting that Gibeau does not address the concerns that many gamers have about the choice of SecuROM as Spore's copy protection in particular. Quote:
Microsoft to Buy Back $40 Billion of Stock AP Software giant Microsoft Corp. said Monday its board approved a plan to buy back up to another $40 billion of its shares. The program expires on Sept. 30, 2013. As of July 28, Redmond, Wash.-based Microsoft had about 9.13 billion shares outstanding, according to a regulatory filing. The company said it has completed its previous $40 billion stock repurchase program. Microsoft also raised its quarterly dividend to 13 cents from 11 cents. The dividend is payable Dec. 11 to shareholders of record on Nov. 20. The company's board has also authorized debt financings of up to $6 billion. As part of this authorization, Microsoft has established a $2 billion commercial paper program. The company plans to use the proceeds for general corporate purposes, including buybacks and funding for working capital. On Monday, Moody's Investors service assigned an ''Aaa'' senior unsecured debt rating to Microsoft, with a stable outlook. The ratings agency said this reflects the company's ''position as the world's largest software company with a strong and defensible market position throughout its diverse core offerings.'' Shares rose $1.22, or 4.9 percent, to $26.38 in premarket trading. http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/busi...t-Buyback.html Palin Hacker's IP Address Linked to Tennessee College Dorm Sam Gustin The hacker who broke into GOP vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin's e-mail account used the internet service provider of a Knoxville, Tennessee student housing complex under federal investigation. Federal agents executed a search warrant early Sunday morning at the apartment of a University of Tennessee student in connection with the probe. In the days since news of the Palin hack broke, Web sleuths have focused on the 20-year-old student, whose father is a Democratic state representative in Tennessee. But Portfolio.com has learned that the IP address used by the Palin hacker originated from an Illinois-based ISP called Pavlov Media, which provides internet service to The Commons at Knoxville, a University of Tennessee student housing complex. In an interview with Portfolio.com, Gabriel Ramuglia, who runs Ctunnel.com, a proxy service used by the hacker to try to disguise his identity, said federal investigators asked him about a single IP address which has become the focus of the government's probe into the hacking of Palin's Yahoo e-mail account. Ramuglia quickly matched the IP address to one found in his logs, which he said displayed Web activity "consistent with what web sites the hacker was expected to have visited through my service." "The person visited Yahoo Mail, 4chan.org, and the Web addresses that were visible in the posted screenshots," Ramuglia told Portfolio.com Sunday night. Ramuglia declined to provide the user's full IP address, but Portfolio.com has learned that the address falls within the range operated by Pavlov Media, formerly known as Fusion Broadband, which was created through a 2004 merger between Noment Networks and Distributed Management Information Systems, Inc. (DMISI). Pavlov Media operates the internet service for The Commons at Knoxville apartment complex, which has become the center of attention in the Palin hack probe. The FBI showed up early Sunday morning at the apartment of the student, the son of a Democratic state representative from Memphis. The student was apparently hosting a party at his apartment when the feds arrived. WBIR of Knoxville reported that a Justice Department spokesperson confirmed "investigatory activity" in Knoxville related to the Palin case, and a separate law enforcement source confirmed that a search warrant was served. As of Sunday evening, no charges had been filed in the case. News of the search warrant came just days after someone named "rubico" posted a mea culpa on 4chan.org, an online bulletin board frequented by individuals associated with "Anonymous," an amorphous, largely unorganized movement of hackers who gained notoriety after some adherents targeted the Church of Scientology. Internet sleuths have compiled a list of evidence pointing to the student as the culprit, but again, no charges have been filed. Meanwhile, legal experts say they expect the hacker, if found guilty, to receive a light sentence, according to Wired.com, not least of all because of ambiguity in the Justice Department's own policy regarding the legal status of e-mail that has been read, but not discarded. http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post...lege-dorm.html Little or No Jail Time Likely for Palin Hacker Kim Zetter It might seem obvious to most people that the hacker who gained unauthorized access to the private e-mail account of Republican vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin violated the Stored Communications Act. Under that law, a violation is committed by anyone who “(1) intentionally accesses without authorization a facility through which an electronic communication service is provided;” or “(2) intentionally exceeds an authorization to access that facility; and thereby obtains...[an] electronic communication while it is in electronic storage in such system.” But Kurt Opsahl, senior staff attorney at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, says not so fast. Although the law seems clear on such a matter, the Department of Justice has taken a position on the law that could thwart its own prosecution of the hack under the SCA. (Before anyone jumps to conclusions, the hacker could still be prosecuted under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act. Keep reading to see discussion below about the CFAA.) Electronic storage is defined in the Stored Communications Act as "any temporary, intermediate storage of a wire or electronic communication incidental to the electronic transmission thereof." E-mail that has arrived in a recipient's inbox on his ISP's server and that has not yet been opened would fall into this category. The law also refers to electronic storage as "any storage of such communication by an electronic communication service for purposes of backup protection of such communication." E-mail that has been read, but not deleted would fit this description. In a U.S. 9th Circuit precedent, the court regarded both read and unread e-mail, or received and unreceived e-mail, as being in "electronic storage" under the SCA (See Theofel v. Farey-Jones, 359 F.3d 1066, 1075 -- 9th Cir. 2003). "[W]hen the recipient accesses an email but does not delete it, it moves from storage incident to transmission to backup storage under the second part of the SCA's 'electronic storage' definition," Opsahl writes in a post on the EFF's blog. But Opsahl says the DOJ has taken a different view of the SCA. He points to the DOJ's Prosecuting Computer Crimes Manual, which says that read e-mail is no longer stored communication. The manual says, "If the recipient chooses to retain a copy of the communication on the service provider's system, the retained copy is no longer in 'electronic storage' because it is no longer in 'temporary, intermediate storage ... incidental to ... electronic transmission,' and neither is it a backup of such a communication." According to Opsahl: Quote:
"While the DOJ guidelines are not binding on the DOJ, they certainly have persuasive authority," he said. "In this case I think the DOJ would be bound by its own interpretation of the statute and probably could not prosecute [the hacker under that statute] simply because of its own interpretation of the statute." As mentioned above, the hacker could still be prosecuted under the CFAA, though likely for a misdemeanor, not a felony, since there was no actual loss that resulted from the hack. More specifically, he'd be prosecuted under 18 U.S.C. 1030(a)(2)(C), accessing a protected computer without authorization to obtain information. Rasch says if the hacker were charged with a misdemeanor, he would likely face a sentence of zero to six months, depending on his history, attitude and contrition. If the hacker were to come forward and apologize to Palin and tell the FBI exactly what he did, prosecutors might take this into consideration. "If the government treats this for what it really is, which was a kid who was curious to see if he could do this . . . then the kid should be in reasonably good shape" and face "little, if any, jail time," Rasch said. Although there is also a possibility the government could charge the hacker with a felony under the CFAA depending on the whim of the prosecutor and whether he argued that the invasion of Palin's privacy was a tortious act. Rasch likened the situation to the government's charges against Lori Drew in the MySpace suicide case. "It would be a stretch to charge a felony [in the Palin case], but if they want to be hard on [the hacker], they could do that," Rasch said. "I wouldn't have predicted that they would use that argument in the MySpace case, but they did. So they could certainly do that to [Palin's hacker]." http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/200...hack-migh.html No Indictment in Palin Hacking Case Robert Vamosi A grand jury in Chattanooga, Tenn., investigating who hacked Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin's Yahoo e-mail ended its meeting on Tuesday without indicting a Tennessee lawmaker's son. Speculation on the Internet has centered on 20-year-old David Kernell, a University of Tennessee student. On the Internet forum 4Chan.org, where the e-mail break-in was first announced, posts attributed to someone named "Rubico" more or less described how the Yahoo account had been compromised using the password recovery feature. The e-mail address used for Rubico has been linked to Kernell. Kernell's father, Democratic Tennessee state representative Mike Kernel, further fueled speculation last week when he confirmed his son was the subject of the investigation. On Saturday, investigators searched David Kernell's campus apartment. Justice Department spokeswoman Laura Sweeney told the AP that the "government's inquiry into this matter is ongoing." http://news.cnet.com/8301-1009_3-10049106-83.html Nevada Deadline on E-Mail Encryption Looming What happens in Vegas, may stay locked down in Vegas. On Oct. 1, the state of Nevada will be requiring the encryption of all transmissions, such as e-mail, for all businesses that send personal, identifiable information over the Internet. The statute was signed into law in 2005 and is about to kick in as an enforceable law next month. Three years flies when you're raking in chips at casinos and enjoying the rising popularity of poker. The Nevada law is stated as such: Quote:
Think about all the hotels, resorts, golf courses, pawn shops, nightclubs, check cashing, ski lodges and small businesses this is going to effect. Not to mention all the businesses--the vice-ridden ones legal to Nevada only and otherwise--that incorporate in the tax-friendly state. Nevada is the West's version of Delaware (albeit a much sexier state, sorry Delaware). Beyond the infrastructure impact, the statute itself looks like swiss cheese. Bryce K. Earl, a Las Vegas-based attorney with Santoro, Driggs, Walch, Kearney, Holley & Thompson, has been following the issue closely and believes there are some problems with the statute as it is on the books right now, namely the broad definition of encryption, the lack of coordination with industry standards and the unclear nature of penalties both criminal and civil. "The statute's lack of specificity with regard to penalties will perhaps create the unintended consequence of opening up more liability," said Earl. That doesn't sound good, but again, nothing has happened just yet. Earl explained why the broad definition of "encryption" by the state is potentially problematic. Here is the definition from the state's Web site: Quote:
Moreover, how the heck will Nevada enforce this? Earl said at this time it was unclear, but he thinks that the state--which holds legislative session every other year--could address the statute for more clarity next year when the Nevada state government reconvenes. A possible-pending lawsuit may also help to better define the law for clearer interpretation, but as Earl hinted, that doesn't necessarily mean it will help that potential lawsuit. The challenge for Nevada is that its intentions were good in trying to stem the tide of identity theft and criminal behavior online. But once again, the legal system and the IT industry are faced with potentially bigger compliance and liability issues than they probably intended. The disconnection is real. As of posting time, representatives of the state had not gotten back to me with comment. What should businesses do about this issue? UPDATE: A spokesman for the state has directed me to a state assemblyman (who I will follow up with), but more interestingly, has pointed out this provision in the law: Quote:
Posted by Donald Sears on September 19, 2008 2:14 PM http://blog.baselinemag.com/bottom_l...n_looming.html US Responsible for the Majority of Cyber Attacks SecureWorks published the locations of the computers, from which the greatest number of cyber attacks were attempted against its clients in 2008. The United States topped the list with 20.6 million attempted attacks originating from computers within the country and China ran second with 7.7 million attempted attacks emanating from computers within its borders. This was followed by Brazil with over 166,987 attempted attacks, South Korea with 162,289, Poland with 153,205, Japan with 142,346, Russia with 130,572, Taiwan with 124,997, Germany with 110,493, and Canada with 107,483. Computer security can be greatly improved by keeping your web browser and operating system up to date, using the latest versions of antivirus and antispyware software, following safe computer practices such as being wary of the websites you visit, and not clicking on attachments and links within emails until verifying that the sender intentionally sent the enclosed link or attachment. These findings illustrate the ineffectiveness of simply blocking incoming communications from foreign IP addresses as a way to defend your organization from cyber attacks, as many hackers hijack computers outside their borders to attack their victims. The Georgia/Russia cyber conflict was a perfect example of this. Many of the Georgian IT staff members thought that by blocking Russian IP addresses they would be able to protect their networks, however, many of the Russian attacks were actually launched from IP addresses in Turkey and the United States so consequently they were hit hard. This was a perfect example where we saw Russian cyber criminals using compromised computers outside their borders. China's hackers do create botnets from spamming through email and blogs, but a relatively larger percentage of the compromised hosts under Chinese control are simply machines in schools, data centers, companies - in other words, on large networks - that are mostly unguarded and consequently are entirely controlled by hacker groups, as opposed to distributed bots harvested from widely distributed international spam runs. Often the groups have an insider in the networks they own. We also see many local hacker groups in Japan and Poland compromise hosts within their own country to use in cyber attacks, so the Chinese hackers are not alone in using resources within their own borders. With hackers utilizing computer resources inside and outside of their borders, SecureWorks suggests that in addition to securing computers with ongoing system and security updates and patches, organizations should utilize a black list to block inbound communications from known malicious IP addresses. Organizations should also block outbound communications to foreign countries known to harbor hackers and block outbound communications to hostile networks known to host criminal activity. This way if your organization does have an infected host within its network, then the host will be blocked from sending personal or company data to the cyber criminals. Of course, some of these hostile networks do support a handful of legitimate sites. In addition to a blacklist, your organization can use a separate whitelist to allow outbound communication only to trustworthy sites on those otherwise hostile networks. http://www.net-security.org/secworld.php?id=6554 Clickjacking: Researchers Raise Alert for Scary New Cross-Browser Exploit Ryan Naraine Researchers are beginning to raise an alarm for what looks like a scary new browser exploit/threat affecting all the major desktop platforms — Microsoft Internet Explorer, Mozilla Firefox, Apple Safari, Opera and Adobe Flash. The threat, called Clickjacking, was to be discussed at the OWASP NYC AppSec 2008 Conference but, at the request of Adobe and other affected vendors, the talk was nixed until a comprehensive fix is ready. The two researchers behind the discovery — Robert Hansen (left) and Jeremiah Grossman — have released droplets of information to highlight the severity of this issue. So, what exactly is Clickjacking? According to someone who attended the semi-restricted OWASP presentation, the issue is indeed zero-day, affects all the different browsers and has nothing to do with javascript: In a nutshell, it’s when you visit a malicious website and the attacker is able to take control of the links that your browser visits. The problem affects all of the different browsers except something like lynx. The issue has nothing to do with JavaScript so turning JavaScript off in your browser will not help you. It’s a fundamental flaw with the way your browser works and cannot be fixed with a simple patch. With this exploit, once you’re on the malicious web page, the bad guy can make you click on any link, any button, or anything on the page without you even seeing it happening. If that’s not scary enough, consider than the average end user would have no idea what’s going on during a Clickjack attack. Ebay, for example, would be vulnerable to this since you could embed javascript into the web page, although, javascript is not required to exploit this. “It makes it easier in many ways, but you do not need it.” Use lynx to protect yourself and don’t do dynamic anything. You can “sort of” fill out forms and things like that. The exploit requires DHTML. Not letting yourself be framed (framebusting code) will prevent cross-domain clickjacking, but an attacker can still force you to click any links on their page. Each click by the user equals a clickjacking click so something like a flash game is perfect bait. According to Hansen, the threat scenario was discussed with both Microsoft and Mozilla and they concur independently that this is a tough problem with no easy solution at the moment. Grossman confirmed that the latest versions of Internet Explorer (including version 8) and Firefox 3 are affected. In the meantime, the only fix is to disable browser scripting and plugins. We realize this doesn’t give people much technical detail to go on, but it’s the best we can do right now. http://blogs.zdnet.com/security/?p=1972# Prevent Unwanted Presidencies with Paper Ballots Lucas Mearian While attending MIT's Emerging Technologies Conference in Cambridge today, I quickly found out that this country is still plagued with many of the same electronic ballot problems as it had in the presidential election of 2004, and now there seems to be a move afoot -- as odd as it may sound -- to get back to paper to ensure accuracy and legitimacy of election results. California Secretary of State, Debra Bowen, joined three other e-voting experts at MIT's Kresge Auditorium to address the public's concern with the accuracy of today's polling systems. Bowen, who took office in 2006, ordered a complete review of the state's voting technology, which produced some surprising revelations as to problems many states, not just California, may face come November. Bowen said the review was in response to a "backlash" against electronic voting systems. Prior to 2000, people already were voicing concerns about new electronic voting systems but it was the "Help America Vote Act", passed by Congress in 2002 that brought the issue to a head. The bill included close to $4 billion in federal money to encourage states to buy or upgrade voting technology. "Many jurisdictions not knowing what technology to get, took that as a signal to buy DREs," according to Doug Chapin, director of electionline.org, which has conducted research and analysis of states’ election technology since 2000. DREs or direct-recording electronics instantly record votes through the use of mechanical buttons or touch screen displays. But, Chapin said DRE technology in many cases didn't pass security muster. Bowen testified to that fact, saying "all of the systems [in California} had security issues." For example, California's touch screen machines were using two security stickers on one side of the machine to prevent tampering with inner components, but, Bowen said, with a screw driver "you can remove two screws from the other side, open the clamshell ... and have total access to everything there and close it back up again with the security stickers intact." In other instances, Bowen's office found that voting machines were being delivered to polling places two or three weeks in advance, giving anyone with access to a memory card the potential to virally replicate or upload software as a means of changing votes as they were cast. Yet another problem with touch screens, Bowen said, was residents would step up to vote and see the wrong ballot in front of them, a problem stemming from poorly designed software and the fact that California had 330 different ballots because of local elections. One method of addressing software issues associated with the vast majority of proprietary e-voting applications out there is to move to using open source, especially for applications residing on optical scanners, which have been particularly troublesom. The concern is that IT administrators can't look at the software to correct errors or tweak it for a particular county's needs. Open source would go a long ways to disclosing problems associated with today's propretary e-voting applications, Bowen said. "In any election -- it's Murphy's Law -- there's going to be a problem," Bowen said. "The question is, is it the type of problem you can recover from." Bowen and others on the panel said a more basic requirement of any e-voting system, no matter the technology used, is there must be a paper trail left behind for auditing purposes after the electronic count. Ronald L. Rivest, a professor of electrical engineering and computer science at MIT, said the two biggest issues facing e-voting technology are maintaining the privacy of the voters and the verifiability of the results. Rivest, who has a background in cryptology and computer security, said the public considers the hand count the gold standard, but that method is no longer viable considering America now has the "most complicated ballot system in the world." Bowen agreed noting that California often has 120 races in a single election. "If you had to start a hand count of 120 different races at 9 o'clock at night, I think we'd introduce more errors," Bowen said. All of the panelists agreed the country remains a hodge-podge of voting systems. The most widely used voting method is the paper ballot, only today it's a preprinted list of candidates and initiatives, the choice for which can be indicated with some type of marker that is then recorded electronically with optical scanning equipment. The next most popular voting method is electronic touch screens, which make up about 30% of the systems throughout the country. And, yes, there are still hand-counted ballots in several states. California is no exception and has its own patchwork of voting systems, with around 30 counties using electronically scanned paper ballots and about 27 counties still using DREs. Broken technology has also created confusion among voters as states have gone back and forth between voting systems in a search for the right one. In Florida, for example, since 2000, counties have gone from using paper punch cards to DREs back to paper ballots in combination with electronic optical scanners. Confusion can often lead to casting the wrong vote. While there are calls by the public and officials to develop a ubiquitous Internet-based voting system, such a method would still lack any reliable way of verifying who is casting the vote on the other end of the pipe. "Because we don't have any kind of national ID card, we have no method for doing that," Bowen said. A much more pragmatic problem is avoiding the selling of votes through Internet casting because if someone is giving a PIN number, as is used with Internet stock proxies, there's no way of verifying the number actually came from the voter. Another wrench in the works of e-voting is that there's no standardized method to choose technology, not just state to state but also county to county. "In California, as in most states -- if not all -- it's not the secretary of state who purchases voting technology. It's the counties," Bowen said. There are 58 counties in California, ranging from 16 million people in Los Angeles County to just over 1,200 residents in Alpine County. So you're basically asking a county IT person who may or may not have crypto or physical security experience to purchase a voting system. The software is proprietary and in most cases the person purchasing it has no legal right to review the software, Bowen said. Then there are the politics of e-voting. "The CEOs of one of the major voting machine companies was featured in a fund raising ad in which he pledged to deliver the state of Ohio to President Bush," electionline.org's Chapin said. And, that is the point at which the electronic voting debate took a sharp turn to focus on verifiability. Another problem that e-voting systems have introduced is "exact match" voter registration lists. Voters with unusual sir names, Latino names or just names with unusual spellings can confuse verification applications, Bowen said. Even someone who simply uses the name John on their driver's license but registered to vote under the name of Jonathan, could experience problems. "Computers are not good at knowing that John and Jonathan are the same person," Bowen said. "California went through this in 2006 and the exact match list resulted in 26% of all voters registered in Los Angeles County not going on the [registration] list." "We have to get this under control in terms of uniformity," Bowen said. Perhaps one solution to e-voting technology issue is to simply allow a do-over, a mulligan if a voter slips up and makes a mistake. The need for precision in any e-voting technology is extremely high, and as technology is changed out or upgraded, there is a greater chance for mistakes. All of which bolsters the argument for not abandoning paper. Chapin believes that a paper audit wouldn't mean pollsters counting every ballot, but that taking a statistically significant review of the ballots in any given county would be an acceptable way of measuring the accuracy of an election. http://blogs.computerworld.com/votin..._be_a_hand_job Asus Recovery DVD Scandal: How it Happened anthony For those who haven’t already heard, the PC OEM company Asus was involved in a major scandal where a directory on the recovery DVD and inside c:\Windows\ConfigSetRoot\ contained a software crack for the WinRar program, software serial numbers, a resume (presumably for a now-jobless Asus employee), an internal Asus powerpoint describing “known compatibility issues”, Asus source code, and even an OEM issued Microsoft document, which mainly says “do not distribute DR-DOS with any computers”. We now know from an OEM source how exactly the files got where they did in the first place, and it isn’t very surprising. An Asus representative said they would be investigating the matter, and while someone is still going to lose their job over this just so Asus can say so, the way the files made it to thousands of PCs is pretty common. An OEM employee (name not mentioned here) discussing the matter said that during the vista installs, the generic vista disc installing the OS looks for an XML file (unattend.xml) on a flash drive, and upon finding it the installation parses it and runs the XML code as installation instructions so nobody has to go through the installation menu for the hundreds of synchronous installations (hence the unattend). BUT… there is another twist: If a certain tag or attribute is present, all files other than unattend.xml itself on the flash drive will be copied to c:\windows\configsetroot - see the connection? So apparently an Asus employee happened to have a personal flash drive, and stored his resume (presumeably, conspiracy theorists may disagree) as well as a few ‘harmless’ keygens and serials on it as well, in his defence in case maybe he lost the serial to winrar or other programs. Apparently the same employee used the flash drive to store or back up confidential Asus documents and source code, as well. So if the Asus internally distributed unattend.xml file was copied to this unnamed (and jobless) employee’s personal flash drive, and included the xml tag/attribute to copy over everything to the system root and, therefore, recovery DVD as well, then voila! Then the only way somebody could come under fire because of this is because of oh, I don’t know, not checking the installation root once everything was installed! So now we know HOW exactly this whole ordeal was started, and there is a lesson to be learned here…. somewhere. http://thecoffeedesk.com/news/index.php/archives/30 Businesses Can Win the Competition Against Open-Source Technology Bill Snyder How can a business compete with a free product? It’s not easy, and it’s more than just a theoretical question. U.S. newspapers are finding it difficult to compete with free news and the commentary of bloggers and other internet sources. And in the software world, the rise of open source products, which are available for free on the internet, is reshaping the technology industry. One solution: “Divide and conquer,” says Haim Mendelson, the Kleiner Perkins Caufield and Byers Professor in the Graduate School of Business. Commercial firms, he says, have three levers to gain competitive advantage when they compete with a free product: Timing, product features, and the skillful use of network effects across market segments. A recent paper on this topic by Mendelson, coauthored with Deishin Lee, PhD ’04, now a faculty member at Harvard Business School, is not a how-to manual for hard-pressed executives. Rather the researchers have built a theoretical model explaining the choices open to commercial firms. “Although open source is the lead example of our work, the principles certainly apply to other businesses, including, for example, the media business,” says Mendelson. Underpinning the research is the concept of network effects, which holds that the value of a good or service to a potential customer increases as greater numbers of other customers own the good or are users of the service. In software, for example, Microsoft’s Office Suite enjoys great popularity partly because so many people use it. Having such a large user base encourages businesses to buy it since employees are probably already familiar with it and won’t need much training. And the more people who use the software, the less likely it will be that incompatibility will be a problem. With that in mind, Mendelson says the ideal scenario for the commercial vendor is to bring its product to market first, to judiciously improve its product features, to keep its product “closed” so the open source product cannot tap into the network already built by the commercial product, and to segment the market so it can take advantage of a divide-and-conquer strategy. Many products are sold into more than one market segment (consumers or small businesses, for example) with different characteristics. The divide and conquer strategy leverages the advantages the commercial vendor achieves across those segments: One segment is used to “seed” the network so the product can achieve critical mass, which makes it more attractive to buyers in other segments who then end up choosing the more popular product over the free product. Some products, Microsoft Office is a good example, initially were targeted at a commercial market. As its popularity grew, it made sense to sell Office to consumers, many of whom had become familiar with it at work. Other products, such as Apple’s computers and iPhones, were first popular in the home market but that success led to their use in an office setting. In either case, it makes sense for a vendor to seed the market by selling a product relatively cheaply to the first market segment and then charge the second segment more, says Mendelson. There are times, however, when the open source product gets to market first. In that case, the commercial vendor does well to enter the market with a compatible product and then invest in new product features to make its product compelling even though it costs more—a strategy sometimes known as “embrace and extend.” In this case, being “open” (or compatible) helps the commercial firm tap into the network created by the free product. Then, the commercial firm must compete by out-innovating the free product. In fact, frequently adding features to a commercial product is important no matter who gets to market first. New and improved features can outweigh the price advantage of an open source product. In the media world, the network effects are indirect: Content providers prefer to publish where there is a large audience, and audiences prefer to go where there is a good selection of high-quality content. As a result, a larger audience attracts content providers, which in turn is attractive to audiences, which creates the “virtuous cycle” of network effects. In this space, competing with the avalanche of free material is very challenging, and different providers compete in different ways. In the area of news, standards are largely open and free content has been abundant for years. As a result, content providers find it difficult to exploit the network effects, and the main lever available to them is product innovation. In the area of music, Apple managed to create a closed network based on the “virtuous cycle” of the iPod device making the iTunes online music network more attractive, and vice versa. In spite of the prevalence of “free” music, the combination of innovative products, a superior user experience, and a closed network, which is incompatible with competing devices and music stores, created growing and highly profitable music offerings. Ultimately, from the point of view of the buyer, free products provide an important benefit. “Even if consumers do not end up adopting the free product, it can act as a credible threat to the commercial firm, forcing it to both lower prices and invest more in product innovation,” says Mendelson. http://www.gsb.stanford.edu/news/res..._div_conq.html Earl Palmer, 84, a Jazz Session Drummer, Dies AP Earl Palmer, a session drummer whose pioneering backbeats were recorded on classics like Little Richard’s “Tutti Frutti” and the Righteous Brothers’ “You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feelin’,” died on Friday at his home in Los Angeles. He was 84. His death was confirmed by his spokesman, Kevin Sasaki. Mr. Palmer was born in New Orleans in 1924 and worked extensively both there and in Los Angeles, where he later moved. He recorded on thousands of tracks, and his session credits include artists as diverse as the Monkees, Neil Young and Frank Sinatra. His beats form the backdrop on Ike and Tina Turner’s “River Deep, Mountain High,” “The Fat Man” by Fats Domino and “I Hear You Knockin”‘ by Smiley Lewis. He also played for Phil Spector and Motown. Ed Vodika, the pianist in the Earl Palmer Trio, recalled that the group’s weekly gigs in Los Angeles attracted a host of big-name musicians, from Bonnie Raitt to Ringo Starr. “He worked with so many people in his career, you never knew who would be in the audience,” he said. Mr. Palmer was inducted into the Rock ’n’ Roll Hall of Fame in 2000. According to the institution’s Web site, rockhall.com, Little Richard wrote in his autobiography that Mr. Palmer “was probably the greatest session drummer of all time.” Mr. Palmer was married four times and is survived by seven children. His biography by Tony Scherman, “Backbeat: Earl Palmer’s Story,” was published in 1999. http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/22/ar.../22palmer.html Doctor Expects Recovery for 2 Musicians in Crash The medical director of the burn hospital where former Blink-182 drummer Travis Barker and DJ AM are being treated says both men are expected to make full recoveries.  The musicians were critically injured in a South Carolina plane crash that killed four people late Friday. Dr. Fred Mullins said Sunday morning that both men are being treated for second- and third-degree burns at a Georgia hospital. Mullins says recovery from such burns can take as long as a year but notes the men had no other injuries. Mullins says Barker was burned on his torso and DJ AM, whose real name is Adam Goldstein, was burned on his hands and part of his head. The doctor says both men are still in critical but stable condition. http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080921/...Xb6JBdK4pH2ocA Muxtape Is Dead - Favtape Emerges as a Great Alternative Frederic Lardinois While Muxtape's Justin Ouellette just posted a dire story about the shutdown of the popular mixtape service and his dealings with the music industry, Favtape has updated its service dramatically. Muxtape will effectively remain closed for the general public and will only return as a music hosting service for bands. Favtape, on the other hand, now looks like Muxtape on steroids, with embeddable playlists, album art, integrated YouTube search, a shuffle mode, and the ability to create tapes based on your last.fm and Pandora bookmarks. Favtape: Muxtape on Steroids While Favtape once started out as a simple Muxtape clone, this new release goes far beyond Muxtape's feature set. One of the most important differences with Muxtape is that you do not have to upload any songs to create a mixtape. Instead, Favtape lets you search for your music and add it to your playlists. To do this, Favtape makes use of SeeqPod's APIs. Favtape does not host any of the songs itself, but solely relies on SeeqPod's index for its music. SeeqPod indexes MP3s anywhere on the Internet, which surely leaves some doors open for copyright infringement claims by the RIAA. As Ars Technica reports, SeeqPod has already been sued by the RIAA for exactly this business model of providing a 'playable search engine.' If SeeqPod shuts down, Favtape will be left without any music to play. From a user's perspective, however, Favtape is everything one could wish for in a mixtape service, including a list of the top songs on iTunes and Last.fm, as well as iPhone support and the ability to share your tapes by email or as a Twitter message. Favtape also includes numerous social features and lets you vote for tapes you like. While we are sad to see the Muxtape we once loved disappear, it is great to see other services jumping into the breach and building upon Muxtape's foundation. It's probably not the perfect streaming music service, but it comes pretty close. Now we just have to hope that it will not be shut down too soon. http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives...lternative.php FCC Offers New Proposals to Auction Public-Safety Spectrum Grant Gross The FCC has proposed new rules for auctioning a block of spectrum intended for police and fire departments -- with many of the rules similar to the first failed attempt at selling the spectrum. The proposal the FCC approved Thursday would again auction the so-called D block of spectrum to a private company, which would be required to build a nationwide voice and broadband network shared by public safety agencies and a commercial service. In an auction of the 700 MHz band of spectrum early this year, the D block failed to get the minimum bid of US$1.3 billion set by the FCC. The new proposal, which will be available for public comment, would allow the spectrum to be sold in 58 regional pieces or in one nationwide block. The FCC proposed a new minimum bid of $750 million for the entire 10 MHz of spectrum, which would be paired with another 10 MHz controlled by the Public Safety Spectrum Trust (PSST), the nonprofit group of public safety agencies. But the FCC also asked for comments about whether the minimum price should be lowered. During the 700 MHz auction, which ended in March, the FCC received one $472 million bid for the D block. The winner of the spectrum would also have to spend billions of dollars to build the network. Commissioner Jonathan Adelstein expressed doubts about the new proposal. An attempt to put together a similar auction to the one that failed is "fraught with difficulty," he said. The proposed $750 million minimum bid is not based on "solid economic or technical" analysis of the value of the spectrum, or on the cost to bidders for building the network, Adelstein added. "We are offering for sale a valuable asset, but not one of unlimited value," he said. "And we are expecting major investments to be made by private enterprise to meet the needs of public safety. Despite these hurdles, we have not undertaken to assess whether the costs we are asking the private sector to bear have any relationship to the returns it can expect." The proposal would set the cost of monthly service for each public safety worker at $48.50, and some public safety agencies may not be able to afford those fees, added Michael Copps, a commission member. "A network that is too expensive for first responders to use is little better than no network at all," Copps said. But commission Chairman Kevin Martin said the FCC has few other choices than a partnership between public safety agencies and a private network operator if it wants a nationwide public safety network. Let us be clear about what is at stake," he said. "Without the partnership, there are no other viable tools for the commission to ensure that this network can be built in a timely manner, with a maximum level of interoperability for use by all public safety entities small and large, rural and urban." The U.S. Congress has not agreed to fund the nationwide network, making a public-private partnership the only real option, added commission member Robert McDowell. U.S. lawmakers began pushing for a nationwide public safety network after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks on the U.S. Many police and fire departments responding to the airplane crashes that day could communicate with each other because they were using a wide variety of radio equipment that operated on different blocks of spectrum. It may not be the best time for an auction because of the shaky U.S. economy, but the public safety network needs to be built, Martin said. "We -- and more importantly public safety and the American people -- cannot afford to wait," he said. "In the seven years since 9/11 we have experienced enormously destructive hurricanes and tornadoes and deadly bridge collapses. Fortunately we have not experienced another terrorist attack. Simply put, we cannot afford to wait until we do." http://www.itworld.com/government/55...afety-spectrum Complaints Pour in After Digital TV Test Some Wilmington, N.C., viewers had problems receiving new digital signals MSN Tech and Gadgets John Dunbar Even if all goes smoothly, next February's digital television shift is likely to generate hundreds of thousands of complaints from television viewers around the country. A major problem during a test run in Wilmington, N.C., was the inability of over-the-air viewers to receive new digital signals, according to figures collected after the test. Commercial broadcasters in the North Carolina city volunteered to cease analog programming on Sept. 8, well before the rest of the nation. Of the 1,828 people who complained to the Federal Communications Commission in the first five days, slightly more than half were unable to tune in one or more channels. All full-power television stations must turn off their analog signals by Feb. 18. Viewers who receive programming through an antenna and do not own newer-model digital TV sets by the time of the changeover must buy a converter box. The government is providing two $40 coupons per household to help defray the cost. The largest number of calls to the FCC from Wilmington were from viewers of the NBC affiliate, WECT-TV. That station's analog broadcast covers far more ground than its digital signal, meaning some viewers could watch that channel before the switchover but not afterward. A total of 553 complaints were attributed to that issue. FCC Chairman Kevin Martin said a smaller digital footprint may affect as many as 15 percent of television markets in the U.S. The agency is still calculating what impact that may have nationwide. Some Wilmington callers were able to watch NBC programming from another market. But an undetermined number could not, an issue generating concern at the FCC and Congress. It's not certain what — if anything — the FCC or broadcasters can do for these viewers, short of recommending that they buy a bigger antenna. Martin told members of the Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee Tuesday that a possible solution would be for broadcasters to erect special "repeater" antennas to expand their reach. "Our goal is to ensure that all viewers in the Wilmington area and the country have access to the same television signals that they did prior to the transition," he said. Nielsen Media Research said as of July that there are about 13.4 million television households in the U.S. that receive their programming over the air only, about 12 percent of all homes with TVs. In Wilmington, the total is 15,110, or 8.4 percent. If the Wilmington complaint rate were applied nationally, there would be more than 1.1 million calls to the FCC in the first five days after the change. Or not. Wilmington broadcasters transmitted an informational crawl over an analog signal that included the hot line number. Federal law makes no such allowances after Feb. 17 — all full-power analog signals must cease, so viewers may not know where to turn with problems. Committee Chairman Sen. Daniel Inouye, D-Hawaii, said he was concerned that "even with a Herculean investment of time and resources" in Wilmington, there was still a large number of calls. "On a national level, this may translate to millions of calls," he said. "Unless more is done, Feb. 17, and 18, and 19 will be very long days indeed." There are also concerns that Wilmington was not representative. Citizens were subjected to an intense public education campaign. The terrain is relatively flat, and as a percentage, fewer viewers rely on over-the-air broadcasting than the nation as a whole. Democratic FCC Commissioner Michael Copps, who recommended the test-market idea, wants the agency to conduct more field tests, ramp up the agency's call center and find a way to broadcast an analog message to consumers following the transition. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/26858298/ Houston TV Web Sites Draw World Viewers to Ike Video Brian Stelter In the aftermath of Hurricane Ike, the national media’s attention was quickly diverted by the financial crisis and the presidential election last week. But the four local stations in Houston used the Internet to extend their reach, streaming their exhaustive coverage online and drawing viewers around the world by providing an alternative to the chatter on cable news. “The reach of local broadcasters has never been greater,” Keith Connors, the news director for KHOU, the CBS affiliate in Houston, said in a telephone interview Saturday night. He said the station’s Web site had seen “incredible amounts of streaming.” The Houston stations have barely had time to catch their breath since Ike made landfall early on the morning of Saturday, Sept. 13, and knocked out power to most of the Houston metropolitan area. They have extended their local newscasts to update viewers on damage assessments, power outages and relief efforts. “I’ve told our people to approach this as a public utility,” Mr. Connors said. National networks quickly moved from Ike to the Wall Street quake last week. “I’m hearing from friends around the U.S. that surprisingly little information about Ike is being broadcast or printed,” Skip Valet, the news director for KPRC, the NBC affiliate in Houston, wrote in an e-mail message to the “NBC Nightly News” anchor Brian Williams last Wednesday. Mr. Williams reprinted the message on his blog Thursday, and on Friday said he would travel to Texas soon. As the hurricane approached on Friday, Sept. 12, the KHOU Web site drew more than 8 million page views and 250,000 views of the channel’s live stream. The next day, the site recorded about 9.2 million page views and 225,000 streams. The video viewing continued, to a lesser degree, last week. The station received e-mail messages from viewers in Australia, Belgium, India, Norway, Saudi Arabia and elsewhere, thanking them for the video stream. Houston evacuees also said they watched the online streams to stay informed. At KPRC, Mr. Valet said the station’s Web site had averaged five million page views a day “as people watch all of the wall-to-wall coverage.” http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/22/bu...dia/22ike.html GE-Branded TVs Make a Comeback Ryan Nakashima More than two decades after exiting the television manufacturing business, General Electric Co. is entering a new joint partnership that will make GE-branded flat panel TVs that connect to the Internet. The giant conglomerate, based in Fairfield, Conn., is granting the use of its brand for 10 years and taking a 49 percent stake in the venture with Tatung Co. of Taiwan to make liquid crystal displays that also play Internet videos. The online functionality requires a separately sold set-top box which the venture hopes to eliminate in later versions. For now, a standard remote—without a keyboard or mouse—will direct online and TV programming. "Instead of just flipping through channels, people want to command and control it," said Peter Weedfald, chief marketing officer for the joint venture, General Displays & Technologies LLC. But longtime former GE executive Noel M. Tichy, a professor at the School of Business at the University of Michigan, downplayed the investment for the company, which posted $173 billion in revenue last year. "This is not a huge strategic move," said Tichy. "The revenues off this are going to be a rounding error." The product, to be made at Tatung's plants in China, Taiwan and Mexico, is expected to hit shelves in March or April in North America. Pricing has not been determined. General Electric sold its GE and RCA divisions to Thomson SA in 1987 and ended 66 years of GE-branded TVs in 2005. The company hopes to capitalize on studies showing that most of the many people who use computers to watch TV programs would prefer to watch them on regular TV sets. Initially, GE will use its subsidiary, NBC Universal, to supply Internet videos and overcome the technical difficulties in doing so. "Being part of the GE family, those conversations happen seamlessly," said Darren Feher, NBC Universal's chief technology officer. Weedfald said GE had high expectations for the venture. "Their expectation of us is to grow and be a major player over the next three to seven years." http://www.newstimes.com/ci_10536681 Simpson Trial Figure Claims Fees Steve Friess The man who arranged the hotel-room confrontation that led to armed robbery and kidnapping charges against O.J. Simpson testified Monday that he received a at least $210,000 from various media outlets including ABC News in exchange for interviews, photos and portions of audio of the incident he recorded secretly. Thomas Riccio, a collectibles dealer whose surreptitious recordings in September 2007 became the central evidence in the trial against Mr. Simpson, catalogued for the jury the fees he collected in the days after the encounter. The payments included $150,000 for excerpts of the audio to the celebrity gossip site TMZ.com, and $15,000 from ABC News and $25,000 from the television program “Entertainment Tonight” for interviews with them, Mr. Riccio said. ABC News and Entertainment Tonight publicists denied the claim and insisted the payment was not for an interview but for other materials. A spokeswoman for TMZ.com declined comment. Mr. Riccio’s claims came at the start of the second week of testimony in the trial of Mr. Simpson, who is accused of committing a dozen felonies when he gathered a group of five friends to raid a Las Vegas hotel room to take memorabilia to his Hall of Fame football career. The items were in the possession of two collectibles dealers, Bruce L. Fromong and Alfred Beardsley, who say at least one of the men accompanying Mr. Simpson brandished a gun. Mr. Simpson insisted he did not know of or see any guns and that he only wanted to retrieve a list of personal and professional keepsakes that were stolen from his home. The meeting had been called by Mr. Riccio, 45, who told Mr. Fromong and Mr. Beardsley that an interested buyer wanted to browse the items. Instead, Mr. Simpson and his group came and departed with what Mr. Fromong estimated was $100,000 worth of collectibles related to the careers of Mr. Simpson as well as other athletes. Mr. Simpson and one of his group face a potential life sentence in the current trial; the four other men involved struck plea agreements and are expected to testify against the co-defendants. Mr. Riccio recorded the planning and execution of the encounter and sold about six minutes of the audio — the part including the raid — to TMZ.com before informing the police that the recordings existed. That fact was widely known, but Mr. Riccio had never disclosed the sum he received from TMZ.com nor had he previously said that he received payments from other media outlets. At the trial Monday, he initially refused to state that he had received $150,000 from TMZ.com because he had signed a non-disclosure agreement but District Judge Jackie Glass ordered him to do so. Mr. Simpson’s attorney, Yale Galanter, then inquired about the other outlets in an effort to undermine Mr. Riccio’s testimony by painting him as a profiteer. Mr. Riccio testified that producers from both ABC News and “Entertainment Tonight” told him they could not pay him for an interview, but when he told them he wouldn’t cooperate unless paid, he was offered payment for photos of himself with Mr. Simpson and rights to use the audio. TMZ.com was straightforward about their dealings, Mr. Riccio said, but “everybody else wanted to make it seem like they were buying something else.” “But they really wanted the interview?” Mr. Galanter asked. Mr. Riccio agreed. Jeffrey Schneider , a spokesman for ABC News, said the news division never pays for interviews and that the network paid Mr. Riccio for the rights to broadcast on “Good Morning America” portions of the recordings as well as several photos of Mr. Riccio and Mr. Simpson together on the day of the incident. Mr. Riccio was interviewed for the program as well. “I think Mr. Riccio is confused as to what he testified today,” Mr. Schneider said. “At the time, he was talking to a lot of people. When he was talking to our producers, he was fielding phone calls from other people. He kept confusing NBC and ABC in conversations with us. He seemed to have been very busy.” A spokeswoman for Entertainment Tonight said the celebrity newsmagazine “does not pay for interviews. As common practice for a news organization, we do however license third-party materials.” Kelly McBride, a media ethics instructor for the journalism thinktank Poynter Institute, said if Mr. Riccio’s testimony were true, it would reveal an unsavory journalistic practice that is rumored but rarely confirmed. News organizations generally do not pay for interviews because doing so taints the credibility of the information, Ms. McBride said. “We’ve always known that organizations, especially broadcast organizations and some tabloid magazines, pay for pictures, video or audio and pay a lot of money, but we’ve always been told no, we don’t pay for access or interviews,” she said. “What this testimony does is open the door to a conversation about something that most of us hoped it wasn’t that blatant, but apparently it is.” http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/23/us/23simpson.html?hp Michael Moore’s Election-Year Freebie Brian Stelter Michael Moore, the political provocateur behind the films “Fahrenheit 9/11” and “Sicko,” is releasing a new film Tuesday. But you will not be able to find “Slacker Uprising” at any theater. Instead he is placing the film on the Internet for free viewing, at SlackerUprising.com. Mr. Moore said the unorthodox rollout is a gift to his fans and a rallying cry for the coming election. “At times there’s nothing wrong with preaching to the choir,” he said in a telephone interview from his office in Traverse City, Mich. Liberals have been “pretty beaten down over the last 28 years.” “The choir, especially on our side of the political fence, is often fairly dejected,” he observed, “and could use a good song every now and then.” The song in this analogy is a 100-minute look at Mr. Moore’s tour of college campuses during the fall of 2004. Cameras followed him to 62 cities as he urged young people to vote for John Kerry. The resulting footage sat on the shelf for a few years before Mr. Moore spliced together a version of the film, then titled “Captain Mike Across America,” and showed it at the Toronto International Film Festival a year ago. After the festival screening Mr. Moore returned to the editing room to give the film “more heft and substance,” he said. It includes exchanges with Mr. Moore’s detractors and their attempts to interrupt his tour, raising free-speech issues and creating some comedic moments. Some critics (including those for The Michigan Daily, at the University of Michigan, and Inside Toronto) have said the film amounts to little more than a “highlight reel” of Mr. Moore’s trip, suggesting that its theatrical prospects were dim. Mr. Moore disputes that, saying that his agent, Ari Emanuel, believed the film could net $20 million to $40 million. (“Sicko” brought in $24.5 million domestically.) “I prohibited him from contacting any studios to ask them whether they were interested,” Mr. Moore said. “I just said straight up, ‘I want to give this away for free.’ He thought I should have my head examined.” The Weinstein Company owned the distribution rights to the project, so Mr. Moore bought back the North American rights for an undisclosed amount. “The irony is that I believe people should see movies in theaters,” Mr. Moore said, praising what he called the communal experience. “You get so much more out of it, emotionally, cathartically.” Perhaps for that reason Mr. Moore said he hoped fans would set up screenings and use the film to raise money for candidates. Visitors to the Web site will be able to stream and download it free, thanks to Mr. Moore’s partnership with Blip.tv, a company distributing online videos; additionally a $10 DVD will be distributed, and free copies can be requested for libraries. Robert Greenwald — another member of the small fraternity of advocate filmmakers, whose production company specializes in tying video projects to off-line organizing — said a supporter in Alaska was already planning a screening. The film is “quite an adrenaline boost, even though it’s got a sad ending,” he said. The ending, of course, is the re-election of George W. Bush in 2004. The film notes that voters under the age of 30 were the only demographic that Mr. Kerry won outright. “Unfortunately,” reads a graphic at the end of the film, “their parents voted for Bush.” Mr. Moore suggested that the 2004 election results were a prelude to the Obama movement, which was “ignited by young people.” “The road to getting where we want to be has to be filled with a certain amount of failure,” he said, drawing a parallel to the United Auto Workers’ labor movement 70 years ago. Mr. Moore remains coy about the subject of his next movie, although he said filming was well under way. He has denied rumors that it will be a sequel to “Fahrenheit 9/11,” but he has not quashed reports that his next film will explore what he views as American imperialism. The recent turmoil of the financial markets may be giving him even more material. “Some weeks, like this past week, I wonder if we’re going to have to credit others with the screenplay,” he said. http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/23/movies/23moor.html Slacker Uprising’s Torrent Available Worldwide, by Accident Ben Jones Michael Moore’s new film about the run up to the 2004 US election was released online today, only for US and Canada residents. In order to maximize capacity, they’ve even embraced BitTorrent, and the official download is using the Pirate Bay tracker. To the dismay of their lawyers, however, this also lifts the geographical restrictions. The film, intended by Moore “to bring out millions of young and new voters on November 4th.”, covers his tour just prior to the 2004 US Presidential election, rallying to protest against President Bush. It covers a 42 day tour, over 60+ cities, and the obstacles put in place by Republicans. To some this might not seem like a worthy event for TorrentFreak to cover, after all, films come out every week. However, this film markets itself as “…the first time ever that a major feature-length film is debuting as a free download on the Internet – legally.” - a title that could arguably fall to Steal This Film. Yet, its the interaction between the legal and technical aspects that are the biggest story here. First and foremost, the film’s website states that downloads are available in the US and Canada only. It states this not just once, but twice AND uses an IP lookup system to check. If you fail the IP check, you are told that the lawyers have said the film can only be offered to people in those countries. It’s such a ’shame’ then, that they have used BitTorrent. Worse, they’ve used a set of public trackers (including The Pirate Bay), and allowed the use of both Peer Exchange and DHT. Clearly, all it needs is for someone to offer the .torrent to other people, and they can download the film, as the torrent protocol has no methods for limiting by geographical location. Indeed, as you can see on this screenshot, there are plenty of people on the torrent from outside North America. Is this deliberate, or accidental? Moore is known for his disregard of rules (and laws) in making films (such as his Cuba trip for Sicko), and this could be the latest example. Alternatively, it could be a lack of understanding on the part of those that are providing the technical backend. However, with a budget of $2 million for distribution, Brave New Films could have done better, and have set up their own tracker, enforcing a US and Canada only download. Not that this would have helped much. It’s the Internet, and once it’s downloaded, it can be retorrented. In that they might be foresighted enough to try and keep the downloads together, strengthening the swarm. http://torrentfreak.com/slacker-upri...cident-080924/ New DVDs: ‘The Godfather: The Coppola Restoration’ Dave Kehr Many of Francis Ford Coppola’s films, including the recent “Youth Without Youth,” have been haunted by the passing of time and an acute awareness of its destructive handiwork — the sense that once a treasured moment has been lost, nothing can be done to recover it. But now a piece of Mr. Coppola’s own youth, which also happens to be one of the greatest works in American film, has been recovered, and spectacularly so. On Tuesday Paramount Home Entertainment is issuing the three films that make up Mr. Coppola’s “Godfather” saga, miraculously rejuvenated by a team of digital restoration experts under the supervision of the film preservationist Robert A. Harris. Offered both in high-definition Blu-ray and standard DVD editions, Mr. Coppola’s three films seem to have reclaimed the golden glow of their original theatrical screenings — a glow that has been dimmed and all but extinguished over the years through a series of disappointing home video editions. Most of Mr. Harris’s work has gone into the first (1972) and second (1974) films in the trilogy. The later and less well-received third installment (1990) did not need as much effort, having been shot on a newer generation of film stock and never subjected to the abuse that nearly destroyed Parts I and II. By all accounts, the original negatives of the first two films were so torn up and dirty that they could no longer be run through standard film laboratory printing equipment, and so the only option became a digital, rather than a photochemical, restoration. The final product, which the studio is calling “The Godfather: The Coppola Restoration,” combines bits and pieces of film recovered from innumerable sources, scanned at high resolution and then retouched frame by frame to remove dirt and scratches. The color was brought back to its original values by comparing it with first-generation release prints and by extensive consultation with Gordon Willis, who shot all three films, and Allen Daviau, a cinematographer (“E.T.”) who is also a leading historian of photographic technology. The tight grain of the image, so important a component of Mr. Willis’s original low-light photography, has returned to particularly spectacular effect in the four-disc Blu-ray edition. The effect is not unlike that of a pristine 35-millimeter print projected in perfect focus — a rare enough phenomenon in a movie theater and, until quite recently, inconceivable in the living room. The “Godfather” films remain the 20th-century answer to Shakespeare’s plays of royal succession, with the twist that here Prince Hal grows up, not into Henry V, but Richard III. Al Pacino’s performance as Michael Corleone, the introverted youngest son of a wise and ruthless monarch, remains a model of modulation. The shape of his face, the set of his eyes, the weight of his body all seem to evolve imperceptibly (at least until the aggressive intervention of makeup in Part III). A puppyish kid who might have been played by Dustin Hoffman in his “Graduate” period becomes a figure of immense gravity and chilling emotional reserve, a portrait worthy of Walter Huston or Max von Sydow. Watching the first film, you are struck again by how little screen time Marlon Brando actually occupies. Most of his work is done in the 20-minute opening sequence, as the Godfather sits in his study, receiving supplicants on the day of his daughter’s wedding. This is a piece of superbly efficient expository writing, setting out an exotic milieu, describing its rules and moral configuration, and establishing the larger-than-life figure who presides over and protects it. And Brando plays it like the master he was, balancing just enough exaggeration (the cotton-stuffed cheeks, the asthmatic voice) with pure behavioral naturalism (the eyes that go blank when he is bored or distracted) to create a figure that both belongs to this world and is too big for it. After that sequence his work is effectively done, and the character can recede into the background of the action (he spends much of the rest of the movie recovering from an assassination attempt) without surrendering his dominant presence. Like another venerated American epic, “Gone With the Wind,” the first “Godfather” film is essentially a study in vanishing feudalism: the old, aristocratic masters who made their empires out of sweat and blood are fading into the background, to be replaced by the middle-class, mercantile interests represented in “Gone With the Wind” by the blockade runner Rhett Butler and in the first “Godfather” by the drug-dealing upstart Sollozzo (Al Lettieri). Part II takes place in a more modern world, where capitalism is king, and it is difficult to tell where gangsterism leaves off, and normal business procedures begin. The action shifts to a global scale, as the Corleones conquer Nevada and, very nearly, Cuba — and Mr. Coppola rises to the occasion with a sense of physical scale and epic conflict that no amount of computer-generated-imagery enhancement has yet been able to reproduce. At the center of it all, of course, remains the family drama. In an increasingly rootless country American audiences envied the Corleones for their powerful sense of ethnic and family identity, the privilege of belonging to an extended, self-reliant and self-protecting group. At the same time the family itself is a constant source of anguish, shot through by betrayals, suspicions and carefully erected barriers. (Who can forget the doors that slowly close on Diane Keaton’s Kay at the climaxes of Parts I and II?) Michael can protect his family only by destroying it. Eighteen years after the sting of disappointment has passed, Part III no longer seems the total disaster it once did, but the grandeur of the first two films has slipped irretrievably away. By this point in his career, Mr. Pacino had become a very different actor, trading stealth and retention for actorly tricks: the staggering old man’s gait; the sudden explosions of vein-popping rage. The intrigue is now international (the plot draws on the scandals surrounding the Vatican bank at the time) but seems somehow smaller than what has come before, more of a screenwriter’s conceit than a peek behind the curtain of power. But as Michael becomes weaker, his baby sister, Connie, whose wedding opened the first film, has evolved into a figure out of Greek tragedy or Italian opera: a Medea or a Medici. Played by Talia Shire, Mr. Coppola’s sister, Connie seems to possess the calm, dark resolve that has abandoned her increasingly sentimental brother: a Godmother who almost seems capable of carrying the plot dynamics to a fourth, more satisfying final installment. (Paramount Home Entertainment, Blu-ray, $124.99; standard definition, $69.99; R.) http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/23/movies/23dvds.html Source: Universal Music Group Plans 'Hulu-like' Site Greg Sandoval Universal Music Group, the largest of the major recording companies, plans to launch a "Hulu-like" video portal, a source close to the company told CNET News. The new venture would offer professionally produced music videos as well as other original programming that features the label's artists. The Killers, Mariah Carey, Kanye West, and Amy Winehouse are just a few of the company's acts. A Universal spokesman declined to comment. Doug Morris, Universal's chairman and CEO, wants to squeeze more revenue out of music videos and offer artists a new and more polished platform to display their talents than what's available online now, the music industry source said. What is paramount to Morris is drawing larger numbers of premium advertisers to music videos. Right now, YouTube has become the most prominent online venue for music videos, and all four of the major labels have licensed music to the video-sharing site. YouTube's troubles at attracting top-tier advertisers are well chronicled. It's been reported that while Hulu, the long-form video destination site created by NBC Universal (NBCU has no affiliation with UMG) and Rupert Murdoch's News Corp., is selling ads against 100 percent of its videos, YouTube is estimated to see ad revenue from only 3 percent. The reason for that is simple. NBC Universal offers full-length TV shows and movies that are professionally made. Advertisers feel far more comfortable attaching their brands next to that than they do user-generated content, which is what YouTube mostly offers. The user experience between the sites is also an issue. The video quality at YouTube is grainy while Hulu's images are offered in much higher quality. A YouTube representative said via e-mail late Thursday evening: "We have great partnerships with major music labels all over world that understand the benefit of using YouTube as another way to communicate with their fans." It's important to note that Universal will soon be in talks about renewing its licensing agreement with YouTube. Their deal ends at the end of the year. According to my music industry source, Universal and the other three major labels are happy with the promotional benefits that YouTube provides. But Morris wants to change how music videos are perceived, the source said. They cost too much to produce and generate too much interest to be used exclusively as a promotional tool, the source told me. Morris wants to extend his initiative to monetize music videos and create more revenue from them. This may not be easy. MTV once built an empire on top of music videos but since then they have become a commodity online. Before YouTube reached agreements with the top labels, music videos were easily pirated and distributed via YouTube and other user-generated sites. In a digital world, concert performances are videotaped with the use of cell phones and posted to YouTube even while the performance is occurring. But what the labels have in their favor is that people are still interested in watching music videos. Of the top 20 most-viewed clips of all time on the site, more than half are music videos. Singer Avril Lavigne's "Girlfriend" is the top viewed video ever with more than 102 million hits. Universal's channel on YouTube has generated over 2.6 billion views over the past year, making it the most watched channel on YouTube. http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-10051246-93.html Kuwait Plans to Block YouTube Over Islam Content Kuwait has ordered local Internet service providers to block online video-sharing website YouTube over clips that could offend Muslims. "Since the website displays the Koran in the form of songs sung with the oud (stringed instrument) ... and displays disrespectful pictures of the Prophet Mohammad ... please proceed with immediate effect in blocking the website www.youtube.com," read a copy of a memo obtained by Reuters. The Ministry of Communications was not immediately available for a comment. The website could still be accessed in Kuwait on Monday. Islamist and tribal groups managed to increase their grip on parliament in the pro-Western Gulf Arab state's May elections with some deputies demanding Kuwaiti broadcasters show more religious content. YouTube is a unit of Internet search engine Google Inc. (Reporting by Ulf Laessing; Editing by Sami Aboudi) http://uk.news.yahoo.com/rtrs/200809...t-b86c26b.html Wikipedia Bans a Fairfield County High School after Profane Edits Susan Tuz Wikipedia, the online collaborative encyclopedia, has had a block in effect since last October that makes it impossible for users of Ridgefield High School's Internet address to edit its entries. Wikipedia allows readers to edit information in articles, but some Ridgefield High students had been abusing the site. Since September 2005, vandalism had occurred on Wikipedia listings from the school ranging from brief obscene comments to obscene and pornographic comments about specific female students. Click here to read all Wikipedia edits registered through the Ridgefield High School I.P. address. Warning: Many edited items are both graphic and profane. There were brief pornographic stories about sexual interactions that specific students were supposed to have had with specific film actresses edited into listings on the actresses. Next to another entry a comment was edited in making vulgar and derogatory comments about a specific student. Two entries made on Oct. 15, 2007, led to the year-long block that a Wikipedia monitor imposed on the school's IP address. That block was the last in a series of blocks that ranged in length from 24 hours to six months dating back to December 2005. "(Vandalism: Has a long history of vandalism)" the Wikipedia Block Log reads next to the final ban last October. Wikipedia representative Jay Walsh said Tuesday that "It's not uncommon for IP addresses, either specific addresses or more commonly ranges of addresses, to be blocked from editing Wikipedia for specific periods of time." "Most commonly, a range of addresses are blocked, sometimes those relate to a specific institution," Walsh said. Ridgefield resident Chris McQuilkin discovered the block when he was researching another entry made on Wikipedia about an unrelated subject. He contacted the Wikipedia monitor who had enforced the block against Ridgefield High on a different issue and discovered it. "I don't like that Ridgefield High is being blocked and that it is happening because of this pornographic and offensive language," said McQuilkin, who brought the block to readers attention on his Web site, RidgefieldLive.com. "The block will be lifted in three weeks and I hope the school has done something to assure this doesn't start up again," McQuilkin said. "It looks like the comments were being volleyed back and forth during a class by the dates and times they were posted on Wikipedia." Superintendent of Schools Debbie Low was "disgusted" to discover the postings and to learn some Ridgefield High School students had engaged in such language and behavior. "Clearly, this is disgusting behavior," Low said Tuesday. "We've traced some of the entries back in terms of time and date and can narrow them down to a classful of students. "The last entries on Oct. 15, 2007, were made during a Social Studies class that consisted of seniors," she said. "The students who were the most likely suspects have since graduated." Low said the school's administration was not aware the posting occurred or that Wikipedia banned the school's address until The News-Times called to ask for comment. "It's been a sleeping dog," Low said. "We were not aware of it. We don't ask students to post on Wikipedia and teachers don't assign Wikipedia research. So, no one had said, 'I can't post on Wikipedia.'" Low said the school educates students on Internet use as well as on character development and will keep doing that. Students are taught not to use "sexually insulting, graphic language" or "racial slurs," as some Wikipedia edits contained, she said. "This is disgusting behavior and unfortunately, it goes beyond the days of graffiti on bathroom walls," Low said. "Now it has a townwide audience, a nationwide and even an international audience. I don't think kids are aware of that." Low said student use of the computer labs will be monitored not only by the teacher in the room but by accessing computer records on what postings occurred from computers and when if a violation is suspected. Internet use policies are in place at the high school with disciplinary actions for violations from detentions to suspension, and computer privileges will also be revoked for any student violating the policies, she said. Certain Web sites are now blocked at the school, including gambling, pornographic and social Web sites like Facebook and MySpace. Students are not given e-mail accounts and there is always teacher supervision in computer labs, she added. http://www.newstimes.com/latestnews/ci_10545821 Foreign National ID Card Unveiled BBC The first identity cards from the government's controversial national scheme have been unveiled. The biometric card will be issued from November, initially to non-EU students and marriage visa holders. Home Secretary Jacqui Smith said the cards would allow people to "easily and securely prove their identity". Critics say the roll-out to some immigrants is a "softening up" exercise for the introduction of identity cards for everyone. The card will also include information on holders' immigration status. "We want to be able to prevent those here illegally from benefiting from the privileges of Britain," she said. Employers and colleges want to be confident people are who they say they are, she said, and immigration and police officers want to verify identity and detect abuse. "We all want to see our borders more secure, and human trafficking, organised immigration crime, illegal working and benefit fraud tackled. ID cards for foreign nationals, in locking people to one identity, will deliver in all these areas," she added. The UK Border Agency will begin issuing the biometric cards to the two categories of foreign nationals who officials say are most at risk of abusing immigration rules - students and those on a marriage or civil partnership visa. Both types of migrants will be told they must have the new card when they ask to extend their stay in the country. The cards partly replace a paper-based system of immigration stamps - but will now include the individual's name and picture, their nationality, immigration status and two fingerprints. Immigration officials will store the details centrally and, in time, they are expected to be merged into the proposed national identity register. The card cannot be issued to people from most parts of Europe because they have the right to move freely in and out of the UK. The Conservatives oppose the UK's identity card scheme but say they support the use of biometric information in immigration documents. FOREIGN NATIONAL ID CARDS: • Students and marriage applicants first • Others to follow over coming decade • 50,000 cards by next April • Costs Ł311m to 2018 • Visa charges to cover costs "The Government are kidding themselves if they think ID cards for foreign nationals will protect against illegal immigration or terrorism - since they don't apply to those coming here for less than three months," said shadow home secretary Dominic Grieve. Liberal Democrat shadow home secretary Chris Huhne said identity cards "remained a grotesque intrusion on the liberty of the British people" and the scheme "will prove to be a laminated Poll Tax". "The government is using vulnerable members of our society, like foreign nationals who do not have the vote, as guinea pigs for a deeply unpopular and unworkable policy," he said. SNP Home Affairs spokesman Pete Wishart MP said his party had opposed ID cards from the outset but the government's "abysmal record on data protection" was reason enough to cancel them. He said the government looked "absurd" for pushing ahead with such a costly project. "These cards will not make our communities more secure, they will not reduce the terrorist threat and they will not make public services more efficient," said Mr Wishart. Phil Booth, head of the national No2ID campaign group, attacked the roll-out of the cards as a "softening-up exercise". "The Home Office is trying to salami slice the population to get this scheme going in any way they can," Mr Booth told the BBC. "Once they get some people to take the card it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. "The volume of foreign nationals involved is minuscule so it won't do anything to tackle illegal immigration." But Sir Andrew Green of Migrationwatch UK said the cards should be supported. "We welcome the introduction of ID cards for foreign nationals as part of wider measures to tackle illegal immigration," he said. "These reforms are essential if we are to restore order to our immigration system as the public certainly wish to see." http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/1/h...cs/7634111.stm A Gloomy Vista for Microsoft Hiring a TV star from the 1990s to fix Vista's reputation only adds to the impression that Microsoft is in a time warp. Daniel Lyons Last year I was meeting with the CEO of a PC company who offered to give me a demo of his company's gorgeous new top-of- the-line notebook, a machine that cost several thousand dollars and came loaded with Windows Vista, the latest version of Microsoft's operating system. He flipped open the laptop, pressed the power button, and … nothing. We waited. And waited. It was excruciating. He tried control-alt-delete. He tried holding down the power button. Finally he removed the battery and snapped it back into place. The machine started up—slowly—while the CEO sat there fuming. Speaking in a carefully measured tone, he acknowledged that he had been less than pleased with Vista, and confided that he'd visited Microsoft's headquarters in Redmond, Wash., to express this displeasure in person. I would not have wanted to be across the table from him at that meeting. "Nobody here looks at Vista as a fiasco," says Brad Brooks, a Microsoft marketing vice president. If that's true, and nobody at Microsoft thinks Vista has been a public-relations nightmare, then the company is in trouble. Vista first shipped in January 2007, after several delays, and immediately had problems. It was sluggish. It had trouble going to sleep and waking up. It wouldn't work with some printers and accessories. Users launched a massive online petition begging Microsoft not to discontinue its old operating system, XP, which is stable, fast and, after six years of patches, pretty reliable. Many consumers like me, who'd bought new PCs loaded with Vista, reloaded them with XP. Microsoft seems to be getting the message. Working in collaboration with its PC-maker partners, it says it has ironed out the glitches. It has embarked on a $300 million advertising blitz aimed at rehabbing Vista's reputation. But that too has gotten off to a rocky start. Microsoft teamed Jerry Seinfeld with Bill Gates in ads, and then, after two weeks, announced there would be no more Seinfeld. Microsoft says this was the plan all along. More likely, it was reacting to the fact that the quirky ads made no sense. Also, hiring a TV star from the 1990s only added to the impression that Microsoft is stuck in a time warp, at a time when Apple is seen as the king of cool and is gaining market share. It's important to point out that the struggle to get Vista on its feet hasn't hurt Microsoft financially. In fact, Windows revenue grew 13 percent to $17 billion last fiscal year (a record year for Microsoft), even after the company cut prices on Vista to spur demand. Microsoft says it has sold more than 180 million copies of Vista, which is in line with the adoption rate of Windows XP, and Brooks says 89 percent of users surveyed claim to be satisfied or very satisfied. To drive home that point, Microsoft has launched ads around what it calls the "Mojave experiment," where it grabs people who hold a low opinion of Vista and shows them a new operating system called "Mojave." When the subjects rave about Mojave, Microsoft springs the trick: it's actually Vista. Yet the fact that Microsoft has to run ads like that speaks to the kind of perception problems Vista has had. Why advertise at all, when almost everyone who buys a PC today will get Vista on it, whether they like it or not? For one thing, big corporations—Microsoft's bread and butter—have been slow to migrate from XP to Vista and need to be convinced that it's now safe to make the move. It's the same with smaller customers like Mouli Ramani, vice president of business development at Lilliputian Systems, a tech company in Wilmington, Mass. He's sticking with XP because he knows it won't conk out on him. "I'm not willing to risk my career on Vista," he says. Meanwhile, Apple's Mac computers, which run Apple's OS X operating system instead of Windows, have been gaining share, reaching 11 percent of the U.S. consumer market, according to researcher NPD. That's a small slice compared with Microsoft, whose software runs on 90 percent of the world's PCs. But Apple users tend to be the kind of people marketers refer to as "influencers" or "tech elites," the in-the-know folks who adopt the coolest new technology and set trends. The Week in Review is edited and published by Jack Spratts. Apple's highly effective "I'm a Mac" ads have done a great job of positioning Apple as the machine for hipsters, and Windows-based PCs as the choice for dorks. Remember how AOL used to be cool, but then became the service used only by people who didn't know any better? Microsoft is heading down that path. "You fly business class today, and it's nothing but Macs," says one former Microsoft executive, who's now carrying a Mac himself, albeit with Vista loaded on it. Yet another challenge for Microsoft comes from PC makers themselves, who are sending mixed messages about Vista. HP insists it is committed to Vista, but also touts the fact that its engineers have created little Linux-based software modules so that HP customers can perform basic tasks, like checking e-mail and playing DVDs, without booting Vista at all. HP calls this "innovating on top of Vista," though "sidestepping" might be a more accurate description. At Lenovo, a team of engineers has been working with Microsoft for the past year to improve Vista. And Lenovo loads Vista on machines it sells to customers. For its own use, however, Lenovo still runs Windows XP as its corporate standard. Make of that what you will. http://www.newsweek.com/id/160064 Solar Panels Are Vanishing, Only to Reappear on the Internet Kate Galbraith Solar power, with its promise of emissions-free renewable energy, boasts a growing number of fans. Some of them, it turns out, are thieves. Just ask Glenda Hoffman, whose fury has not abated since 16 solar panels vanished from her roof in this sun-baked town in three separate burglaries in May, sometimes as she slept. She is ready if the criminals turn up again. “I have a shotgun right next to the bed and a .22 under my pillow,” Ms. Hoffman said. Police departments in California — the biggest market for solar power, with more than 33,000 installations — are seeing a rash of such burglaries, though nobody compiles overall statistics. Investigators do not believe the thieves are acting out of concern for their carbon footprints. Rather, authorities assume that many panels make their way to unwitting homeowners, sometimes via the Internet. Last November, someone tried to sell solar panels stolen from a toll road in Newport Beach for $100 each on eBay. Detectives from the local police department entered the bidding and won the panels, which were worth nearly $1,500 apiece, according to Sgt. Evan Sailor, a Newport Beach police spokesman. When Nathan Tyrone Mitchell, a resident of Santa Monica, showed up to hand over the panels, the police greeted him with handcuffs. Mr. Mitchell, who was charged with possession of stolen property, has pleaded not guilty. His lawyer, Charles Stoddard, said that his client had bought the panels from someone on Craigslist and then tried to resell them on eBay for a profit. “Our contention is that Mr. Mitchell is just an innocent purchaser who kind of got caught up in this thing,” Mr. Stoddard said. In Contra Costa County, detectives accustomed to handling thefts of copper began to notice solar panels going missing in the last six months, according to Jimmy Lee, a spokesman for the county sheriff’s office. This summer, an officer on patrol became suspicious when he spotted a man trying to sell solar panels to a home builder who had advertised on Craigslist that he was seeking panels. The officer confiscated the panels and, after detectives found that they matched panels stolen from a school, a California man was charged. Mr. Lee says that law enforcement agencies are investigating about a half-dozen other solar-panel thefts in his area. “We were surprised and kind of caught off guard” by the solar thefts, said Mr. Lee, who recommends people engrave their driver’s license numbers onto their panels for better identification. For Tom McCalmont, president of Regrid Power, a solar installation business near San Jose, the problem hit home in late June. His own headquarters was struck by thieves, who took more than $30,000 worth of panels from the roof. The panels were disassembled expertly, he said, leading him to suspect that someone in the solar industry had done it. He urges clients to install video cameras and alarms for their solar arrays, and likens his own revamped security system to Fort Knox. “This is the crime of the future,” Mr. McCalmont said. After suffering a solar theft, some victims find unusual ways to protect their property. Ms. Hoffman, of Desert Hot Springs, could not sleep for several weeks during the string of thefts from her roof. One night, she waited beside a nearby building and watched her house in an attempt to catch the thieves, causing a suspicious neighbor to call the police. She vows that if she ever catches the culprits, “they’re not going to leave walking” — especially if she feels threatened. So far, with the losses still modest, homeowners’ insurance is processing the claims with little resistance. Ms. Hoffman’s insurer, State Farm, is paying $95,000 to replace her entire system. She plans to install an alarm, and possibly a video camera. Not far from Ms. Hoffman, in the town of Palm Desert, Jim and Shayna Powell were devastated after thieves took 19 of their solar panels in June, causing their electricity bill to shoot from $3 to $300 just when they needed air-conditioning the most. “Of all the times of year to steal the panels,” Mr. Powell said in frustration. Beyond California, solar-power markets are comparatively small, so thefts are still rare — but they are spreading. In the last 18 months, Oregon’s highway department has lost a few panels used to power portable traffic message boards. In Minnesota, the Sauk River Watershed District has lost at least eight small panels, worth $250 each, in the last few years, according to Melissa Roelike, who coordinates the water quality monitoring program there. In response, the district has taken steps to protect the panels, including putting them in trees and atop poles. Thieves promptly stole one such panel. “Obviously, hoisting them 20 feet in the air on a metal pipe does not work,” Ms. Roelike said. In Europe, where the solar industry is well-established, thievery is entrenched, and measures to ward it off have become standard, including alarm systems and hard-to-unscrew panels. But in the United States, installers are just coming to grips with the need for alarms, video cameras and indelible engraving of serial numbers. Some people fancy simpler solutions. Ken Martin Jr. lost 58 panels, which will cost $75,000 to replace, this spring from the roof of a half-empty office building in Santa Rosa, Calif., that he owns. He is considering slapping paint on some parts of his remaining panels — bright pink paint. “At least if someone comes across them and they’re painted, they’ll know that’s my color,” he said. http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/24/te...y/24solar.html Agreement Reached on Internet Royalties Thomas Mennecke The contentious issue of digital royalty rates has reached a tentative conclusion, at least as far as putting agreements on paper is concerned. In an announcement made today, the warring parties entered what is termed a "historic" agreement. Whether this new agreement will challenge the Magna Carta in 800 years remains to be seen. However, in the meantime it appears the feud has been settled for interactive music services and limited download services, but the Internet radio debate remains unresolved. Whenever an Internet radio station plays a song, it has to pay a royalty. That royalty rate remained firm at $0.000768 from 1995 until all hell broke loose in 2007. In early 2007, the US Copyright Royalty Board (a bizarre sect of the Legislative branch) increased the rates substantially. And not by a few hundred thousandths of a dollar - we're talking somewhere on the order of 300%-1200%, enough to make Internet broadcast giants such as Pandora contemplate ceasing operations. Oh, and for added kicks the rate would be retroactive to January 2006. Fortunately for Internet radio stations, the massive rate hike hasn't taken hold just yet. Internet radio is no joke, and the technology may represent the future of broadcasting, much in the way the Internet is replacing TV as the video entertainment mechanism of choice. The demand for internet radio is significant, and with WIFI coming to the automobile, terrestrial radio's days could be numbered. With the economic potential of Internet radio facing a mortal crisis, the Congress of the US introduced the Internet Radio Equality Act in an attempt to reverse the CRB's decision. The bill hasn't made significant progress since its introduction. Negotiations between SoundExchange, the organization that collects royalties from digital entities (internet radio, XM, Sirius), Internet broadcasters, represented by DiMA, and of course the RIAA ensued. But today's announcement resolves only two issues: interactive streaming music and limited digital downloads. But it's a start. Limited download services include online stores such as Napster to Go, where the end user can keep the music he or she downloads - albeit for a "limited" time. Interactive media sites allow the end user to pick and choose the song he or she wishes to listen to. Both these concepts are different from internet radio, where like terrestrial radio, the play list is determined by the radio operator. Unfortunately for sites like Pandora, the agreement leaves their issues unresolved. "Limited download and interactive streaming services will generally pay a mechanical royalty of 10.5 percent of revenue, less any amounts owed for performance royalties. In certain instances, royalty-free promotional streaming is allowed. Outside the scope of the draft regulations, the parties confirmed that non-interactive, audio-only streaming services do not require reproduction or distribution licenses from copyright owners." DiMA was particularly pleased with the results: “Innovative music services will enjoy a more stable business environment because of this agreement and that will benefit music fans and music creators alike,” stated Jonathan Potter, Executive Director of DiMA. “DiMA is particularly pleased with the agreement to end litigation and threats of litigation involving several of our member companies, so that they can focus on building innovative businesses that can effectively fight piracy, the music industry’s greatest threat.” DiMA, which represents the larger broadcasters such as Pandora (who is not covered by the agreement) may be satisfied; however, many of the smaller broadcasters not represented have yet to comment. Internet radio services such as Pandora are still threatened by the royalty hike approved by the CRB, but today's agreement provides hope that a reasonable solution is possible . http://www.slyck.com/story1768_Agree...rnet_Royalties  “My Back Pages” (2006-2008) by Paul Villinski, in the Museum of Arts and Design’s first exhibitions at 2 Columbus Circle, NYC. New Content Comes To HD Radio FMQB iBiquity Digital Corp. has announced a new expansion on content for HD-2 and HD-3 side channels, including new formats and consumer data services. The new content includes real-time traffic; movie, sports and weather information and more. "We're seeing a renaissance in radio programming and a whole new group of consumer services that have never existed before," said Bob Struble, President/CEO of iBiquity Digital Corporation. "This is reminiscent of the early days of FM - bold experimentation, creative ideas and services, and an atmosphere of infinite possibility. It's wonderful to see this level of talent and enthusiasm embracing HD Radio opportunities." ESPN Radio HD will provide exclusive content for HD stations, allowing broadcasters to create customized, localized ESPN channels using the Sports network's library of content. CBS Radio is also revamping its HD-2 offerings, with new formats launched this summer including the NASCAR Channel, the Psychic Channel and the AMP Channel. As recently announced, WorldBand Media is now offering programming for South Asian natives on HD side channels in New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Washington, D.C. and northern California. Bands can upload their music online for consideration by Bonneville International's "iChannel," which plays global and unsigned acts. Last month, the channel held a concert for independent artists and fans called "i-FEST." In addition to the much-vaunted iTunes Tagging, other new technological innovations are being added to HD Radio. Twelve broadcasters are helping develop a national network to distribute traffic data and other "location-based information" along with NAVTEQ. NPR, Towson University and Harris Corporation are preparing to launch HD channels for deaf/hard of hearing and visually impaired listeners. NPR will broadcast a captioned radio text stream as well as a "digital radio reading channel," with the text of daily periodicals read aloud. Also, Microsoft plans to launch its MSN Direct HD location-based HD Radio service in Q1 2009. The MSN Direct HD content suite includes current traffic information from Clear Channel Total Traffic Network as well as a radio program guide, weather, gas prices, movie information, news and stock information, 'send destination to GPS' and more. http://fmqb.com/Article.asp?id=893669 ThePirateCity.org Video Streaming Site? | Irony: The Pirate Bay Gets Pirated Anyone who regularly downloads over peer to peer networks or torrent sites will have heard of The Pirate Bay. But have you heard of The Pirate City? The Pirate Bay is currently one of the largest torrent tracking sites in the world, with 3 million registered members and over 15 million unique downloaders. I wish the MPAA and RIAA good luck in tracking all of them down. From Torrents To Streaming? At the moment, The Pirate Bay only deals in torrents, although the range of content varies from movies, television shows, music files, games and applications, some of which are obviously copyrighted and illegally shared. However, there was speculation today that The Pirate Bay could be about to launch its own video streaming site, which would basically be YouTube without the DMCA takedown notices. The Pirate City Opens This isn’t the first time such a move has been rumored. Back in May 2007 the Pirate Bay announced it would be creating a video on demand site. News of the launch of this video streaming site started flying around after several websites were tipped off about a new site. ThePirateCity.org was supposedly to be the domain for the new TPB-owned video streaming site, with the launch being timed to coincide with the 30th birthday of Brokep, one of The Pirate Bay’s founders, whose real name is Peter Sunde. The Pirate City looks great with many movies and TV shows available to watch instantly in reasonable quality - no downloads required. Just check out HanCock. Tipster Or Charlatan? Techcrunch ran with the story, as did a few other high profile sites. But, all is not as it seems, and thanks to a nice piece of investigative journalism over at NewTeeVee, it has been revealed that not only does The Pirate City have nothing to do with The Pirate Bay (as confirmed by Brokep himself), but that the tipster is actually the person behind the imposting site. There is some irony in the pirates themselves being pirated, The Pirate City even copied the pirate ship from The Pirate Bay logo. The Pirate Bay’s Streaming Plans As for The Pirate Bay moving in to the world of video streaming, that rumor still persists, with Brokep refusing to confirm or deny whether it will happen. The only thing that is sure is that it won’t be located at thepiratecity.org. It would make sense for The Pirate Bay to make this transition to streaming, as the television shows and movies already available on the site would surely be lapped up if the need to download was removed. Meanwhile, the MPAA and associated authorities must be angered by the Pirate Bay rip-off and the prospect of a streaming site from TPB on the horizon. http://www.webtvwire.com/is-the-pira...-oh-the-irony/ uTorrent For Mac Makes Its Way to The Pirate Bay Don Reisinger In what will surely make every BitTorrent lover jump for joy, a rough alpha version of uTorrent for the Mac has surfaced on The Pirate Bay and BitTorrent isn’t too happy about it. uTorrent, which was acquired by BitTorrent in 2006, has always been a Windows-only service. But ever since the acquisition, BitTorrent has promised that uTorrent would be coming to the Mac. For almost two years, Mac users have waited for uTorrent to make an appearance and it finally has — much to the dismay of BitTorrent. Speaking to TorrentFreak, BitTorrent’s product development VP Simon Morris said the leaked alpha version is not for public use and those that try it out should be warned that it’s still in development. Quote:
http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/09/26...he-pirate-bay/ P2P Scheme Said to Ease File Distribution R. Colin Johnson Peer-to-peer (P2P) digital content distribution used to be about copyright violations, and users sending unauthorized music and videos to each other over the Internet. Now, Kontiki Inc. says it has created a way of using P2P content distribution to ease corporate network congestion, without adding new hardware. Kontiki (Sunnyvale, Calif.) claims its delivery management software enables corporations to securely distribute files among many users without the need for high-speed, centralized servers. It also claims the system is based on a P2P scheme that is legal and ultrasecure. "Legitimate uses of peer-to-peer communication are not about copyright violations, but about distributed computing--large networks of machines achieving a common goal together better than they used to do alone," said Wade Hennessey, Kontiki's CTO. Rather than distributing digital content from large central servers, Kontiki's approach uses secure P2P networks to distribute digital content among users' machines, "thereby delivering it more efficiently--both in terms of network utilization and in terms of bandwidth utilization," Hennessey added. Kontiki's Delivery Management System uses computers and their networks to distribute documents without additional hardware. Instead, software is installed on each user's computer to coordinate P2P communications among network nodes. When a file is to be distributed among users, copies are sent over the Internet to one user on each LAN, after which P2P communication is used to distribute to the rest of the users. Kontiki's software uses an interactive graphical user interface based on Adobe Flex, which provides real-time client and server-side metrics that monitor deliveries and track usage patterns. The system automatically scales as networks grow by adding new peer-assisted delivery avenues as users are added. Standard XML and Web service application programmer interfaces allow integration with corporate intranets. http://www.eetimes.com/news/latest/s...leID=210603332 AT&T and Verizon Are Down With P2P Betsy Schiffman AT&T and Verizon execs expect file-sharing applications will become widely-used tools, mostly because they're efficient and inexpensive distribution platforms. "I'm very interested in [P2P]," said Doug Pask, a senior technologist at Verizon, while speaking at a panel at Streaming Media West. "It's not a silver bullet, but it works well in high-volume environments and it has its place in the consumer world. A number of studies show that people don't use [file-sharing applications] because they want to steal content -- it's about getting what they want when they want it." Pask's comments come just a few days after cable broadband provider Comcast admitted it made a practice of blocking peer-to-peer applications since 2005 -- although it has vowed to adopt a "protocol agnostic" approach to traffic management. "I think, while some people want to stamp [file sharing] out, others see it as a reliable alternative for managing network costs," said Sam Farraj, an assistant vice president at AT&T. http://blog.wired.com/business/2008/...ll-go-mai.html Judge Declares Mistrial in RIAA-Jammie Thomas Trial David Kravets A federal judge on Wednesday set aside the nation's first and only federal jury verdict against a peer-to-peer file sharer for distributing copyrighted music on a peer-to-peer network without the labels' authorization. U.S. District Judge Michael Davis of Duluth, Minnesota, declared a mistrial in the case of Jammie Thomas, a Minnesota mother of three, setting aside the $222,000 penalty levied by a federal jury last year for copyright infringement -- $9,250 for each of the 24 infringing music tracks she made publicly available on the Kazaa file sharing network. Davis' decision means the Recording Industry Association of America's five-year copyright infringement litigation campaign has never been successful at trial. Most of the 30,000 cases have settled out of court for a few thousand dollars and have never broached the hot-button legal issue that ultimately prompted Davis to declare a mistrial. Thomas was the nation's only RIAA target to take her case to trial, which last year ended in an RIAA victory. The case emboldened the recording industry's resolve to continue its public relations effort against file sharing through a nationwide litigation campaign. The legal brouhaha prompting Davis to declare a mistrial focused at the heart of all file sharing cases: What level of proof was necessary for the RIAA to prevail. Davis had instructed the jury last year that the recording industry did not have to prove anybody downloaded the songs from Thomas' open Kazaa share folder. Davis read Jury Instruction No. 15 to jurors saying they could find unauthorized distribution -- copyright infringement -- if Thomas was "making copyrighted sound recordings available" over a peer-to-peer network "regardless of whether actual distribution has been shown." But Davis had second thoughts and, without any urging from the litigants in the case, summoned the parties back to his courtroom in August, writing in a brief order that he may have committed a "manifest error of the law." He heard arguments from both sides and said he would issue a ruling soon. With Wednesday's opinion, Davis made his revised position official and ordered a retrial -- one with different jury instructions. "Jury Instruction No. 15 was erroneous, and that error substantially prejudiced Thomas' rights. Based on the court's error in instructing the jury, it grants Thomas a new trial," the judge ruled (.pdf). The RIAA, which is the music industry's lobbying and litigation arm, fought hard to keep Jury Instruction No. 15 in play. The group told the judge that copyright infringement on peer-to-peer networks is implied, and that it shouldn't have to provide proof of an actual transfer -- because it's impossible. "Requiring proof of actual transfers would cripple efforts to enforce copyright owners' rights online – and would solely benefit those who seek to freeload off plaintiff's investment," RIAA attorney Timothy Reynolds said in a court filing. It was the third time a federal judge had ruled against the RIAA on the making-available claim. The decisions in the other two cases were in a pretrial stages, one case of which was dismissed in the RIAA's favor because a judge concluded the defendant had tampered with evidence and ordered him to pay $40,000. Still, Judge Davis' decision does not derail the RIAA's case against Thomas on retrial or any other pending or future case. Davis ruled that the downloads from Thomas' open share folder that RIAA investigators made, 24 in all, "can form the basis of an infringement claim." The RIAA's investigators make downloads in every case. Still, during the trial, the RIAA went to great lengths to demonstrate to jurors that Thomas had unlawfully downloaded the 1,000 songs from Kazaa -- the same songs she was sharing on Kazaa. The RIAA charged her with 24 song violations. Violations of the Copyright Act carry fines of up to $150,000 per music track. The act says a rights holder has the exclusive right "to distribute copies or phono-records of the copyrighted work to the public by sale or other transfer of ownership, or by rental, lease or lending." One juror told Wired.com after the verdict that some panelists wanted to level $150,000 for each track, but they settled on $9,250 per download. The RIAA sues after online detectives log onto Kazaa, Limewire and other file sharing services. They look into open share folders, take screenshots of the music listed and download some of the songs. They also obtain IP addresses, which are easily determined on open networks. With those addresses, the RIAA subpoenas internet service providers to cough up the identity of the account holder. The RIAA then sues the account holder, who usually settles out of court because it is substantially cheaper than hiring a lawyer and fighting. Only one other federal judge has ruled that the downloads made by RIAA investigators count as evidence of unauthorized distribution.The U.S. Supreme Court has never decided the issue. Digital rights groups say downloads made by RIAA investigators should not count against a defendant because the detectives were authorized by the music industry to make the downloads. The judge also took a few pages to decry as exorbitant the award the jury rendered against Thomas and urged Congress to change the law. "While the court does not discount plaintiffs' claim that, cumulatively, illegal downloading has far-reaching effects on their businesses, the damages awarded in this case are wholly disproportionate to the damages suffered by plaintiffs. Thomas allegedly infringed on the copyrights of 24 songs -‐ the equivalent of approximately three CDs, costing less than $54, and yet the total damages awarded is $222,000 – more than 500 times the cost of buying 24 separate CDs and more than 4,000 times the cost of three CDs." Still, a looming and unsettled issue has recently surfaced involving RIAA file sharing cases. It involves whether RIAA investigators broke the law when they gathered evidence, as they are not licensed investigators. http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/200...r-publica.html Milestones Paul Newman, a Magnetic Titan of Hollywood, Is Dead at 83 Aljean Harmetz Paul Newman, one of the last of the great 20th-century movie stars, died Friday at his home in Westport, Conn. He was 83. The cause was cancer, said Jeff Sanderson of Chasen & Company, Mr. Newman’s publicist. If Marlon Brando and James Dean defined the defiant American male as a sullen rebel, Paul Newman recreated him as a likable renegade, a strikingly handsome figure of animal high spirits and blue-eyed candor whose magnetism was almost impossible to resist, whether the character was Hud, Cool Hand Luke or Butch Cassidy. He acted in more than 65 movies over more than 50 years, drawing on a physical grace, unassuming intelligence and good humor that made it all seem effortless. Yet he was also an ambitious, intellectual actor and a passionate student of his craft, and he achieved what most of his peers find impossible: remaining a major star into a craggy, charismatic old age even as he redefined himself as more than Hollywood star. He raced cars, opened summer camps for ailing children and became a nonprofit entrepreneur with a line of foods that put his picture on supermarket shelves around the world. Mr. Newman made his Hollywood debut in the 1954 costume film “The Silver Chalice,” but real stardom arrived a year and a half later, when he inherited from James Dean the role of the boxer Rocky Graziano in “Somebody Up There Likes Me.” Mr. Dean had been killed in car crash before the screenplay was completed. It was a rapid rise for Mr. Newman, but being taken seriously as an actor took longer. He was almost undone by his star power, his classic good looks and, most of all, his brilliant blue eyes. “I picture my epitaph,” he once said. “Here lies Paul Newman, who died a failure because his eyes turned brown.” Mr. Newman’s filmography was a cavalcade of flawed heroes and winning antiheroes stretching over decades. In 1958 he was a drifting confidence man determined to marry a Southern belle in an adaptation of “The Long, Hot Summer.” In 1982, in “The Verdict,” he was a washed-up alcoholic lawyer who finds a chance to redeem himself in a medical malpractice case. And in 2002, at 77, having lost none of his charm, he was affably deadly as Tom Hanks’s gangster boss in “Road to Perdition.” It was his last onscreen role in a major theatrical release. (He supplied the voice of the veteran race car Doc in the Pixar animated film “Cars” in 2006.) Few major American stars have chosen to play so many imperfect men. As Hud Bannon in “Hud” (1963) Mr. Newman was a heel on the Texas range who wanted the good life and was willing to sell diseased cattle to get it. The character was intended to make the audience feel “loathing and disgust,” Mr. Newman told a reporter. Instead, he said, “we created a folk hero.” As the self-destructive convict in “Cool Hand Luke” (1967) Mr. Newman was too rebellious to be broken by a brutal prison system. As Butch Cassidy in “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid” (1969) he was the most amiable and antic of bank robbers, memorably paired with Robert Redford. And in “The Hustler” (1961) he was the small-time pool shark Fast Eddie, a role he recreated 25 years later, now as a well-heeled middle-aged liquor salesman, in “The Color of Money” (1986). That performance, alongside Tom Cruise, brought Mr. Newman his sole Academy Award, for best actor, after he had been nominated for that prize six times. In all he received eight Oscar nominations for best actor and one for best supporting actor, in “Road to Perdition.” “Rachel, Rachel,” which he directed, was nominated for best picture. “When a role is right for him, he’s peerless,” the film critic Pauline Kael wrote in 1977. “Newman is most comfortable in a role when it isn’t scaled heroically; even when he plays a bastard, he’s not a big bastard — only a callow, selfish one, like Hud. He can play what he’s not — a dumb lout. But you don’t believe it when he plays someone perverse or vicious, and the older he gets and the better you know him, the less you believe it. His likableness is infectious; nobody should ever be asked not to like Paul Newman.” But the movies and the occasional stage role were never enough for him. He became a successful racecar driver, even competing at Daytona in 1995 as a 70th birthday present to himself. When he won his event, he made the Guinness Book of Records as the oldest winner in his race class. In 1982, as a lark, he decided to sell a salad dressing he had created and bottled for friends at Christmas. Thus was born the Newman’s Own brand, an enterprise he started with his friend A. E. Hotchner, the writer. More than 25 years later the brand has expanded to include, among other foods, lemonade, popcorn, spaghetti sauce, pretzels, organic Fig Newmans and wine. (His daughter Nell Newman runs the company’s organic arm.) All its profits, of more than $200 million, have been donated to charity, the company says. Much of the money was used to create a string of Hole in the Wall Gang Camps, named for the outlaw gang in “Butch Cassidy.” The camps provide free summer recreation for children with cancer and other serious illnesses. Mr. Newman was actively involved in the project, even choosing cowboy hats as gear so that children who had lost their hair because of chemotherapy could disguise their baldness. Several years before the establishment of Newman’s Own, on Nov. 28, 1978, Scott Newman, the oldest of Mr. Newman’s six children and his only son, died at 28 of an overdose of alcohol and pills. His father’s monument to him was the Scott Newman Center, created to publicize the dangers of drugs and alcohol. It is headed by Susan Newman, the oldest of his five daughters. Mr. Newman’s three younger daughters are the children of his 50-year second marriage, to the actress Joanne Woodward. Mr. Newman and Ms. Woodward both were cast — she as an understudy — in the Broadway play “Picnic” in 1953. Starting with “The Long, Hot Summer” in 1958, they co-starred in 10 movies, including “From the Terrace” (1960), based on a John O’Hara novel about a driven executive and his unfaithful wife; “Harry & Son” (1984), which Mr. Newman also directed, produced and helped write; and “Mr. & Mrs. Bridge” (1990), James Ivory’s version of a pair of Evan S. Connell novels, in which Mr. Newman and Ms. Woodward played a conservative Midwestern couple coping with life’s changes. When good roles for Ms. Woodward dwindled, Mr. Newman produced and directed “Rachel, Rachel” for her in 1968. Nominated for the best-picture Oscar, the film, a delicate story of a spinster schoolteacher tentatively hoping for love, brought Ms. Woodward her second of four best-actress Oscar nominations. (She won the award on her first nomination, for the 1957 film “The Three Faces of Eve,” and was nominated again for her roles in “Mr. & Mrs. Bridge” and the 1973 movie “Summer Wishes, Winter Dreams.”) Mr. Newman also directed his wife in “The Effect of Gamma Rays on Man-in-the-Moon Marigolds” (1972), “The Glass Menagerie” (1987) and the television movie “The Shadow Box” (1980). As a director his most ambitious film was “Sometimes a Great Notion” (1971), based on the Ken Kesey novel. In an industry in which long marriages might be defined as those that last beyond the first year and the first infidelity, Mr. Newman and Ms. Woodward’s was striking for its endurance. But they admitted that it was often turbulent. She loved opera and ballet. He liked playing practical jokes and racing cars. But as Mr. Newman told Playboy magazine, in an often-repeated quotation about marital fidelity, “I have steak at home; why go out for hamburger?” Beginnings in Cleveland Paul Leonard Newman was born on Jan. 26, 1925, in Cleveland. His mother, the former Teresa Fetzer, was a Roman Catholic who turned to Christian Science. His father, Arthur, who was Jewish, owned a thriving sporting goods store that enabled the family to settle in affluent Shaker Heights, Ohio, where Paul and his older brother, Arthur, grew up. Teresa Newman, an avid theatergoer, steered her son toward acting as a child. In high school, besides playing football, he acted in school plays, graduating in 1943. After less than a year at Ohio University at Athens, he joined the Navy Air Corps to be a pilot. When a test showed he was colorblind, he was made an aircraft radio operator. After the war Mr. Newman entered Kenyon College in Ohio on an athletic scholarship. He played football and acted in a dozen plays before graduating in 1949. Arthur Newman, a strict and distant man, thought acting an impractical occupation, but, perhaps persuaded by his wife, he agreed to support his son for a year while Paul acted in small theater companies. In May 1950 his father died, and Mr. Newman returned to Cleveland to run the sporting goods store. He brought with him a wife, Jacqueline Witte, an actress he had met in summer stock. But after 18 months Paul asked his brother to take over the business while he, his wife and their year-old son, Scott, headed for Yale University, where Mr. Newman intended to concentrate on directing. He left Yale in the summer of 1952, perhaps because the money had run out and his wife was pregnant again. But almost immediately, the director Josh Logan and the playwright William Inge gave him a small role in “Picnic,” a play that was to run 14 months on Broadway. Soon he was playing the second male lead and understudying Ralph Meeker as the sexy drifter who roils the women in a Kansas town. Mr. Newman and Ms. Woodward were attracted to each other in rehearsals of “Picnic.” But he was a married man, and Ms. Woodward has insisted that they spent the next several years running away from each other. In the early 1950s roles in live television came easily to both of them. Mr. Newman starred in segments of “You Are There,” “Goodyear Television Playhouse” and other shows. He was also accepted as a student at the Actors Studio in New York, where he took lessons alongside James Dean, Geraldine Page, Marlon Brando and, eventually, Ms. Woodward. Then Hollywood knocked. In 1954 Warner Brothers offered Mr. Newman $1,000 a week to star in “The Silver Chalice” as the Greek slave who creates the silver cup used at the Last Supper. Mr. Newman, who rarely watched his own films, once gave out pots, wooden spoons and whistles to a roomful of guests and forced them to sit through “The Silver Chalice,” which he called the worst movie ever made. His antidote for that early Hollywood experience was to hurry back to Broadway. In Joseph Hayes’s play “The Desperate Hours,” he starred as an escaped convict who holds a family hostage. The play was a hit, and during its run, Jacqueline Newman gave birth to their third child. On his nights off Mr. Newman acted on live television. In one production he had the title role in “The Death of Billy the Kid,” a psychological study of the outlaw written by Gore Vidal and directed by Arthur Penn for “Philco Playhouse”; in another, an adaptation of Ernest Hemingway’s short story “The Battler,” he took over the lead role after James Dean, who had been scheduled to star, was killed on Sept. 30, 1955. Mr. Penn, who directed “The Battler,” was later convinced that Mr. Newman’s performance in that drama, as a disfigured prizefighter, won him the lead role in “Somebody Up There Likes Me,” again replacing Dean. When Mr. Penn adapted the Billy the Kid teleplay for his first Hollywood film, “The Left Handed Gun,” in 1958, he again cast Mr. Newman in the lead. Even so, Mr. Newman was saddled for years with an image of being a “pretty boy” lightweight. “Paul suffered a little bit from being so handsome — people doubted just how well he could act,” Mr. Penn told the authors of the 1988 book “Paul and Joanne.” By 1957 Mr. Newman and Ms. Woodward were discreetly living together in Hollywood; his wife had initially refused to give him a divorce. He later admitted that his drinking was out of control during this period. With his divorce granted, Mr. Newman and Ms. Woodward were married on Jan. 29, 1958, and went on to rear their three daughters far from Hollywood, in a farmhouse on 15 acres in Westport, Conn. That same year Mr. Newman played Brick, the reluctant husband of Maggie the Cat, in the film version of Tennessee Williams’s “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof,” earning his first Academy Award nomination, for best actor. In 1961, with “The Hustler,” he earned his second best-actor Oscar nomination. He had become more than a matinee idol. Directed by Martin Ritt Many of his meaty performances during the early ’60s came in movies directed by Martin Ritt, who had been a teaching assistant to Elia Kazan at the Actors Studio when Mr. Newman was a student. After directing “The Long, Hot Summer,” Mr. Ritt directed Mr. Newman in “Paris Blues” (1961), a story of expatriate musicians; “Hemingway’s Adventures of a Young Man” (1962); “Hud” (1963), which brought Mr. Newman a third Oscar nomination; “The Outrage” (1964), with Mr. Newman as the bandit in a western based on Akira Kurosawa’s “Rashomon”; and “Hombre” (1967), in which Mr. Newman played a white man, reared by Indians, struggling to live in a white world. Among his other important films were Otto Preminger’s “Exodus” (1960), Alfred Hitchcock’s “Torn Curtain” (1966) and Jack Smight’s “Harper” (1966), in which he played Ross Macdonald’s private detective Lew Archer. In 1968 — after he was cast as an ice-cold racecar driver in “Winning,” with Ms. Woodward playing his frustrated wife — Mr. Newman was sent to a racing school. In midlife racing became his obsession. A Web site — newman-haas.com — details his racing career, including his first race in 1972; his first professional victory, in 1982; and his partnership in a successful car racing team. A politically active liberal Democrat, Mr. Newman was a Eugene McCarthy delegate to the 1968 Democratic convention and appointed by President Jimmy Carter to a United Nations General Assembly session on disarmament. He expressed pride at being on President Richard M. Nixon’s enemies list. When Mr. Newman turned 50, he settled into a new career as a character actor, playing the title role — “with just the right blend of craftiness and stupidity,” Janet Maslin wrote in The New York Times — of Robert Altman’s “Buffalo Bill and the Indians” (1976); an unscrupulous hockey coach in George Roy Hill’s “Slap Shot” (1977); and the disintegrating lawyer in Sidney Lumet’s “Verdict.” Most of Mr. Newman’s films were commercial hits, probably none more so than “The Sting” (1973), in which he teamed with Mr. Redford again to play a couple of con men, and “The Towering Inferno” (1974), in which he played an architect in an all-star cast that included Steve McQueen and Faye Dunaway. After his fifth best-actor Oscar nomination, for his portrait of an innocent man discredited by the press in Sydney Pollack’s “Absence of Malice” (1981), and his sixth a year later, for “The Verdict,” the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences in 1986 gave Mr. Newman the consolation prize of an honorary award. In a videotaped acceptance speech he said, “I am especially grateful that this did not come wrapped in a gift certificate to Forest Lawn.” His best-actor Oscar, for “The Color of Money,” came the next year, and at the 1994 Oscars ceremony he received the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award. The year after that he earned his eighth nomination as best actor, for his curmudgeonly construction worker trying to come to terms with his failures in “Nobody’s Fool” (1994). In 2003 he was nominated as best supporting actor for his work in “Road to Perdition.” And in 2006 he took home both a Golden Globe and an Emmy for playing another rough-hewn old-timer, this one in the HBO mini-series “Empire Falls.” Besides Ms. Woodward and his daughters Susan and Nell, , he is survived by three other daughters, Stephanie, Melissa and Clea; two grandchildren; and his brother. Mr. Newman returned to Broadway for the last time in 2002, as the Stage Manager in a lucrative revival of Thornton Wilder’s “Our Town.” The performance was nominated for a Tony Award, though critics tended to find it modest. When the play was broadcast on PBS in 2003, he won an Emmy. This year he had planned to direct “Of Mice and Men,” based on the John Steinbeck novel, in October at the Westport Country Playhouse in Connecticut. But in May he announced that he was stepping aside, citing his health. Mr. Newman’s last screen credit was as the narrator of Bill Haney’s documentary “The Price of Sugar,” released this year. By then he had all but announced that he was through with acting. “I’m not able to work anymore as an actor at the level I would want to,” Mr. Newman said last year on the ABC program “Good Morning America.” “You start to lose your memory, your confidence, your invention. So that’s pretty much a closed book for me.” But he remained fulfilled by his charitable work, saying it was his greatest legacy, particularly in giving ailing children a camp at which to play. “We are such spendthrifts with our lives,” Mr. Newman once told a reporter. “The trick of living is to slip on and off the planet with the least fuss you can muster. I’m not running for sainthood. I just happen to think that in life we need to be a little like the farmer, who puts back into the soil what he takes out.” http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/28/mo...newman.html?hp Until next week, - js. Current Week In Review  Recent WiRs - September 20th, September 13th, September 6th, August 30th, August 23rd, August 16th Jack Spratts' Week In Review is published every Friday. Submit letters, articles, press releases, comments, questions etc. in plain text English to jackspratts (at) lycos (dot) com. Submission deadlines are Thursdays @ 1400 UTC. Please include contact info. The right to publish all remarks is reserved. "The First Amendment rests on the assumption that the widest possible dissemination of information from diverse and antagonistic sources is essential to the welfare of the public." - Hugo Black |
|||||||||||||||||
|
|
|
| Thread Tools | Search this Thread |
| Display Modes | |
|
|
Similar Threads
|
||||
| Thread | Thread Starter | Forum | Replies | Last Post |
| Peer-To-Peer News - The Week In Review - September 22nd, '07 | JackSpratts | Peer to Peer | 3 | 22-09-07 06:41 PM |
| Peer-To-Peer News - The Week In Review - May 19th, '07 | JackSpratts | Peer to Peer | 1 | 16-05-07 09:58 AM |
| Peer-To-Peer News - The Week In Review - December 9th, '06 | JackSpratts | Peer to Peer | 5 | 09-12-06 03:01 PM |
| Peer-To-Peer News - The Week In Review - September 16th, '06 | JackSpratts | Peer to Peer | 2 | 14-09-06 09:25 PM |
| Peer-To-Peer News - The Week In Review - July 22nd, '06 | JackSpratts | Peer to Peer | 1 | 20-07-06 03:03 PM |
Linear Mode
