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Old 19-12-07, 07:56 AM   #1
JackSpratts
 
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Join Date: May 2001
Location: New England
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Default Peer-To-Peer News - The Week In Review - December 22nd, '07

Since 2002


































"Once you’re on MySpace, you’re trapped. You spend all your time online just trying to keep the negative stuff about you from spreading." – Jake Dobson, age 12


"I worry this is all going to disappear in a few months, and I’ll have to wait tables again. I get anxiety-ridden, and I can’t relax. I should sing my own songs to myself." – Ingrid Michaelson


"Were it not for radio's free promotional airplay of music on stations all over America, most successful recording artists would still be playing in a garage." - Dennis Wharton


"I took that same introduction [from Ike Turner's 'Rocket '88'] and made 'Good Golly, Miss Molly'. I took that same thing and made a huge hit." – Little Richard


"Apple and Think Secret have settled their lawsuit, reaching an agreement that results in a positive solution for both sides. As part of the confidential settlement, no sources were revealed and Think Secret will no longer be published." – Nick Ciarelli, publisher


"TorrentSpy.com is liable for extensive movie piracy because it destroyed evidence in a copyright case." – Bloomberg


"Accounts indicate that the involvement of White House officials in the discussions before the destruction of the tapes in November 2005 was more extensive than Bush administration officials have acknowledged." – New York Times reporters Mark Mazzetti and Scott Shane


"The New York Times’ inference that there is an effort to mislead in this matter is pernicious and troubling." – White House press secretary Dana Perino


"Pernicious (pər-nĭsh'əs) adj. 1) a. Tending to cause death or serious injury; deadly: a pernicious virus. b. Causing great harm; destructive: pernicious rumors. 2). Archaic. Evil; wicked." – The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language: Fourth Edition
















"So here we are–facing a final decision on whether the telecommunications companies will get off the hook for good. The president’s allies are as intent as they ever were on making that happen. They want immunity back in this bill at all costs.

But what they’re truly offering is secrecy in place of openness. Fiat in place of law.

And in place of the forthright argument and judicial deliberation that ought to be this country’s pride, two simple words from our president’s mouth: 'Trust me.'

I cannot speak for my colleagues–but I would never take that offer, not even in the best of times, not even from a perfect president. I would never take that offer because our Constitution tells us that the president’s word is subject to the oversight of the Congress and the deliberation of the courts; and because I took an oath to defend the Constitution; and because I stand by my oath.

'Trust me.' It is the offer to hide ourselves in the waiting arms of the rule of men. And in these threatened times, that offer has never seemed more seductive. The rule of law has rarely been so fragile."


– Chris Dodd, The Democratic Senator from Connecticut

































December 22nd, 2007





In Trade Ruling, Antigua Wins a Right to Piracy
James Kanter and Gary Rivlin

In an unusual ruling on Friday at the World Trade Organization, the Caribbean nation of Antigua won the right to violate copyright protections on goods like films and music from the United States — up to $21 million — as part of a dispute between the two countries over online gambling.

The award follows a W.T.O. ruling that Washington had wrongly blocked online gaming operators on the island from the American market at the same time it allowed online wagering on horse racing (see WiR-Nov. 18 ‘06).

Antigua and Barbuda had claimed damages of $3.44 billion a year. That makes the relatively small amount awarded Friday, $21 million, something of a setback for Antigua, which had been struggling to preserve its gambling industry. The United States claimed that its behavior had caused $500,000 damage to the Antiguan economy.

Yet the ruling is significant in that it grants a rare form of compensation: the right of one country, in this case Antigua, to violate intellectual property laws of another — the United States — by allowing it to distribute copies of American music, movie and software products.

“That has only been done once before and is, I believe, a very potent weapon,” said Mark Mendel, a lawyer representing Antigua, after the ruling. “I hope that the United States government will now see the wisdom in reaching some accommodation with Antigua over this dispute.”

Though Antigua is best known for its pristine beaches and tourist attractions, the dozens of online casinos based there are vital to the island’s economy, serving as its second-largest employer.

By pressing its claim, trade lawyers said, Antigua could set a precedent for other countries to sue the United States for unfair trade practices, potentially opening the door to electronic piracy and other dubious practices around the world.

Still, implementation will prove difficult, the lawyers say.

“Even if Antigua goes ahead with an act of piracy or the refusal to allow the registration of a trademark, the question still remains of how much that act is worth,” said Brendan McGivern, a trade lawyer with White & Case in Geneva. “The Antiguans could say that’s worth $50,000, and then the U.S. might say that’s worth $5 million — and I can tell you that the U.S. is going to dog them on every step of the way.”

The United States has aggressively fought Antigua’s claims.

A W.T.O. panel first ruled against the United States in 2004, and its appellate body upheld that decision a year later. In April 2005, the trade body gave the United States a year to comply with its ruling, but that deadline passed with little more than a statement from Washington that it had reviewed its laws and decided it has been in compliance.

From the start, the United States has claimed that it never intended to allow free, cross-border gambling or betting. Those activities are restricted in the United States, though some form of gambling is legal in 48 of 50 states.

In May, the UnitedStates announced that it was rewriting its trade rules to remove gambling services from the jurisdiction of the W.T.O. Washington has already agreed on deals with the European Union, Canada and Japan to change the treaty but it has yet to reach agreements with several other nations, including Antigua.

On Friday, the United States Trade Representative issued a stern warning to Antigua to avoid acts of piracy, counterfeiting or violations of intellectual property while negotiations are under way. Such behavior would “undermine Antigua’s claimed intentions of becoming a leader in legitimate electronic commerce, and would severely discourage foreign investment in the Antiguan economy.”

James Kanter reported from Paris, and Gary Rivlin from New York.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/22/bu...2gambling.html





RIAA Backs Down On "Unlicensed Investigator"
NewYorkCountryLawyer

Texas grandmother Rhonda Crain got the RIAA to drop its monetary claims against her after she filed counterclaims against the record companies for using an investigator, MediaSentry, which is not licensed to conduct investigations in the State of Texas. The RIAA elected to drop its claims rather than wait for the Judge to decide the validity of Ms. Crain's charges that the plaintiff record companies were "aware that the... private investigations company was unlicensed to conduct investigations in the State of Texas specifically, and in other states as well... and understood that unlicensed and unlawful investigations would take place in order to provide evidence for this lawsuit, as well as thousands of others as part of a mass litigation campaign." Similar questions about MediaSentry's unlicensed investigations were raised recently by the State Attorney General of Oregon in Arista v. Does 1-17
http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/12/16/2033207





RIAA Writes its Own "News" for Local TV Stations
Nate Anderson

The holidays: they can be stressful for everyone, even local TV news producers who need to fill that two-minute gap between the waterskiing squirrel story and the house fire in the next state that injured no one. You could assign "reporters" to dig up some local "news" of actual community value, but that takes time and money, and frankly, who wants to watch anything that might make them think at 10 PM? Much easier just to let industry send the news in premade packets. This Christmas season, the RIAA has a present for local news divisions: a video news release about music piracy, complete with exhortations to buy iTunes gift cards and cell phone ringtones.

An anonymous reader, who claims to work for the company that distributed the video package, has posted the alleged video news release online. The video is shockingly bad—the narrator talks too slowly, the pacing is poor, and the "fly-in" bullet points look like they were produced in Windows Movie Maker.

Still, for the first half of the clip, it's generally accurate information about recent busts at duplication facilities. And then come the bullet points. "Watch for compilation CDs that could only exist in the dreams of a music fan," viewers are warned, a statement that only serves to highlight the fact that pirates do a better job of providing what music lovers want than the industry does. Whoops.

Beware the bullets

Then there's this gem: "Audio quality on pirated CDs is usually atrocious." Someone alert the RIAA to how digital copying actually works, please.

From there, the clip moves into straight-ahead advertising. "Make sure the music you buy is legitimate," says the narrator. How? Simple! Just use the "cool, innovative ways to get your favorite music" that the industry offers. The video then shows iTunes digital album gift cards and a cell phone, for which you can buy Christmas-themed ring tones.

The production values of the video initially led us to suspect it of being a fake, but the leaker has provided Ars with a copy of an alleged press advisory that went out promoting the clip. It's directed to "news assignment desk/consumer reporters," who are more likely to use the footage and basic "storyline" themselves than to simply run the unedited report. The RIAA has not yet responded to our request for authentication of the video.

Lending credence to the video, though, is the fact that it follows a recent RIAA press release almost exactly. Though that release says nothing about a video news feed, it does mention that the RIAA is launching a "holiday anti-piracy campaign" that "offers shoppers innovative gift ideas and tips for avoiding pirate product." The campaign is set to focus on 15 cities with "exceptionally high piracy rates" (every major US city, apparently).

For an industry already the target of so much consumer suspicion, feeding misleading claims and self-serving footage to ostensibly objective "news" outlets just doesn't seem like a great idea. Yes, piracy is bad; yes, we should shut down illegal commercial stamping operations. But trying to turn the news into such an explicit commercial? Unhelpful.
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post...-own-news.html





Student Lawyers Act for Students in RIAA Case
p2pnet news

A student law clinic is about to cause a revolution in the P2P filesharing war launched by Warner Music, EMI, Vivendi Universal and Sony BMG.

In what’s probably a world’s first, not lawyers, but student attorneys at the University of Maine School of Law’s Cumberland Legal Aid Clinic have themselves taken up the fight on behalf of fellow students.

Hannah Ames and Lisa Chmelecki from the Cumberland clinic are now officially representing two Maine students.

Ames and Chmelecki are being guided by clinic director and U of M assistant professor Deirdre Smith (right).

They’ve filed a reply to the US Supreme Court decision in Bell Atlantic v Twombly, and the subsequent California decision, Interscope v Rodriguez, which dismissed the RIAA’s “making available” complaint as mere “conclusory”, “boilerplate” “speculation”.

“The two students represented by Cumberland join eight others represented by a Portland law firm, bringing to 10 the number of University of Maine students moving to dismiss the RIAA’s case,” says Recording Industry vs The People.

This could be the true beginning of the end for the RIAA in its attempts to bring students to heel, turning them into compliant consumers of corporate product under threat of legal persecution and severe financial penalties no student can afford.

If other student from clinics not only in the US but around the world follow the examples of Ames and Chmelecki, the stage will be set for a series of confrontations and lightning strikes even the highly paid expert Big 4 legal teams won’t be able to handle.

Smith is on the Maine Supreme Judicial Court’s Advisory Committee on the Rules of Evidence, and governor John Baldacci’s Select Committee on Judicial Appointments.

She’s a former member of the Board of Directors of the Maine Bar Foundation and a founding board member of KIDS Legal.
http://www.p2pnet.net/story/14433





TorrentSpy Operators Held Liable

Online file-sharing service TorrentSpy.com is liable for extensive movie piracy because it destroyed evidence in a copyright case, a federal judge has ruled, handing a victory to Viacom Inc.'s Paramount Pictures and other studios.

TorrentSpy operators Justin Bunnell, Forrest Parker and Wes Parker were held liable for infringement because they deleted important case files and gave false statements, said the ruling by U.S. District Judge Florence-Marie Cooper in Los Angeles.

The defendants "engaged in widespread and systematic efforts to destroy evidence and have provided false testimony under oath in an effort to hide evidence of such destruction," Cooper said in the Dec. 13 order, adding that sanctions were appropriate in this case because of "extraordinary circumstances."

No date was set for a hearing to determine damages.

Members of the Motion Picture Assn. of America, a film industry trade group, sued TorrentSpy in 2006, accusing it of illegally allowing users around the world to download and store full-length movies using software called BitTorrent. The software lets users share large files with others on the same network, making it popular for exchanging music and games.

TorrentSpy is based in Amsterdam, where its servers are located. The defendants are U.S. citizens.
http://www.latimes.com/business/la-f...ninav-business





uTorrent Gains Popularity, Azureus Loses Ground
Ernesto

With an install rate of more than 5% on Windows PCs worldwide, uTorrent is now by far the most popular BitTorrent client. Azureus, the most installed BitTorrent application of last year fell back to the third place.

The graph on the right (click to enlarge) is based on data published by Digital Music News based on reports from PC Pitstop, a company that gathers data by “inspecting” the computers of users that try their free online virus / spyware scanners. The data used in this report are collected from Windows registry and table entries of over a million PC’s.

The percentages reflect the percentage of PCs that has these applications installed. September last year Azureus was installed on more than 3% of all PCs but their install rate has declined by more than 30% this year, while uTorrent’s install rate nearly tripled.

In the table below we have listed the 5 most installed BitTorrent applications. It is interesting to not that Azureus moved from the first to the third spot over the past year. The BitTorrent mainline client is now runner up. This means that BitTorrent Inc. now owns the two most popular BitTorrent clients.

The percentages in the table indicate the install base of the most popular BitTorrent clients:

Rank Application Installed on % Desktops
1. uTorrent 5.56%
2. BitTorrent (a.k.a. mainline) 2.28%
3. Azureus 2.11%
4. Bitcomet 1.89%
5. Bitlord 1.27%


From the data where the report is based on we further learn that Limewire’s popularity is slowly declining. However, with an install base of almost 18% it is still the P2P application that is installed on most desktop computers. Unfortunately Digital Music News has trouble interpreting their own data, they claim in their press release that it is 36.4%, but that is the market share compared to other P2P clients (shame on you!).

Apart from this tiny mistake, there are a few more concerns about the usability of the data. For example, install rates do not equal usage. The fact that someone installed a P2P client does not mean that they actually use it. So the report can’t say much about the popularity of a filesharing network or application. Secondly, it could be that Azureus and BitTorrent Mainline are installed on almost an equal number of PCs, but that the BitTorrent mainline client is hardly ever used. For instance, novices may start with the mainline client, but move on to better BitTorrent clients later on. Lastly, the report is based on a sample of people who voluntarily did an online spyware scan, something to think about.

Perhaps an even more important comment on the data collection for this report, uTorrent doesn’t necessarily use the Windows registry. So the real install rate for uTorrent might be even higher. Also, Azureus is a true multi-platform client, whilst this test is only for windows based systems.

In summing up we think it is (despite all the flaws) safe to say that uTorrent is becoming more popular while Azureus is losing ground. Whether this is due to negative factors affecting Azureus (such as the rebranding to Vuze, Java or the heavy use of resources), or positive factors around the mainline and µTorrent clients (such as the small install size, and low system requirements) it certainly shows a slide for Azureus.
http://torrentfreak.com/utorrent-gai...ground-071216/





MediaDefender Stock Plunges Due to Leaked Emails
Ernesto

It has been a rough year for MediaDefender and their parent company ArtistDirect. This September nearly 700mb of MediaDefender’s emails leaked to the public. Initially it didn’t seem to affect the stock price much, but after the financial consequences became apparent, their net worth plunged.

With still a few days to go it is probably safe to say that MediaDefender is one of the biggest losers of 2007. The leaked emails, published by the notorious “MediaDefender-Defenders“, gave away a lot of sensitive information and details about how MediaDefender sabotaged BitTorrent trackers and other file-sharing networks. Despite the fact that their decoy and spoofing operations were hugely ineffective on most BitTorrent sites, the company collected millions of dollars from the entertainment industry for protecting their content.

Unfortunately for them, one of their employees was stupid enough to forward all his work email to his Gmail account, without using a proper password. To make it even worse, more sensitive information started to leak as the email leak was soon followed by a p2p tracking database, a phone call and a collection of anti-piracy tools they used for their daily operations.

Soon after this sensitive information became public, the Pirate Bay launched a counterattack. They decided to use the information from the emails to file charges against some of MediaDefenders customers including Paramount Home Entertainment, Twentieth Century Fox and Universal Music Group for corrupting and sabotaging their BitTorrent tracker.

The leak did not have any effect on the stock price initially, but after the company announced that it had cost them $825,000, it started to drop hard. It turned out that MediaDefender’s parent company ArtistDirect spent $600,000 to compensate their customers and the rest of the money was used to cover legal expenses.

So what will happen now, will the company walk the plank to bankruptcy? Many people think it will, but MediaDefender still sees a future in the anti-piracy business. Sure, they were devastated by the leaks, but remarkably, they believe that it didn’t hurt the goodwill of the company. Makes you wonder what is needed to hurt this then, because it can’t get any worse if you ask me.

I’m sure we will hear from them again in 2008.
http://torrentfreak.com/mediadefende...emails-071222/





Chuck Norris Sues, Says His Tears no Cancer Cure
Christine Kearney

Tough-guy actor and martial arts expert Chuck Norris sued publisher Penguin on Friday over a book he claims unfairly exploits his famous name, based on a satirical Internet list of "mythical facts" about him.

Penguin published "The Truth About Chuck Norris: 400 facts about the World's Greatest Human" in November. Author Ian Spector and two Web sites he runs to promote the book, including www.truthaboutchuck.com, are also named in the suit.

The book capitalizes on "mythical facts" that have been circulating on the Internet since 2005 that poke fun at Norris' tough-guy image and super-human abilities, the suit said.

It includes such humorous "facts" as "Chuck Norris's tears cure cancer. Too bad he has never cried" and "Chuck Norris does not sleep. He waits," the suit said, as well as "Chuck Norris can charge a cell phone by rubbing it against his beard."

"Some of the 'facts' in the book are racist, lewd or portray Mr. Norris as engaged in illegal activities," the lawsuit alleges.

Norris, who rose to fame in the 1970s and 1980s as the star of such films as "The Delta Force" and "Missing in Action," says the book's title would mislead readers into thinking the facts were true.

"Defendants have misappropriated and exploited Mr. Norris's name and likeness without authorization for their own commercial profit," said the lawsuit.

The suit, filed in Manhattan federal court, seeks unspecified monetary damages for trademark infringement, unjust enrichment and privacy rights.

Norris, whose real name is Carlos Ray Norris, claims in the suit he is protective of what his name is associated with. He has recently made U.S. headlines for backing Republican presidential candidate former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee.

A spokesman for Penguin, owned by Britain's Pearson, was not immediately available for comment.

(Editing by Michelle Nichols and Todd Eastham)
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20071222/...ris_lawsuit_dc





Yahoo! Found Guilty of Mass Copyright Infringement
enigmax

It is being reported by the IPFI that Yahoo China’s music search feature violates the law when it deep links users to pirated music. Yahoo China’s music search has been confirmed illegal in a Beijing court ruling which states that under new copyright laws it facilitates mass copyright infringement.

After being hounded by the IFPI since April 2006, Yahoo! China - partly owned by one the world’s most prominent internet businesses, Yahoo! - today had its music search (via deep linking) deemed illegal by a Beijing Court, who said the service violates Chinese law by facilitating mass copyright infringement.

Yahoo! China had appealed against the guilty verdict reached in the case in April, but this was today dismissed by the Court.

In an earlier case it was decided that another company, Baidu, also facilitated copyright infringement when it used similar methods to Yahoo!, but under Chinese laws in operation at the time they had committed no offense. However, new copyright laws came into force in 2006 and it was under these that Yahoo! China was found guilty, as explained by John Kennedy, Chairman and CEO of the IFPI:

“We are disappointed that the court did not find Baidu liable, but that judgment was about Baidu’s actions in the past under an old law that is no longer in force.”

The IFPI say that when sites like Yahoo! and Baidu - or even Google - deep-link “to hundreds of thousands of pirate tracks” they are “a huge drain on efforts to develop a legitimate music market in China.”

According to IFPI statistics, music sales in China were just $76 million in 2006, with 99% of all music downloading done in a way that infringes copyright.

They also claim that Yahoo! China and Baidu “account for the bulk of the problem” so presumably now that both site’s searches are going to disappear, Chinese internet piracy will virtually end over night. That’s China sorted, then. Next stop, Russia.

John Kennedy said: “The ruling against Yahoo! China is extremely significant in clarifying copyright rules for internet music services in China. By confirming that Yahoo! China’s service violates copyright under new Chinese laws, the Beijing Court has effectively set the standard for internet companies throughout the country.”

“Our member companies seek partnership, not conflict, with China’s internet companies” he said, presumably as he decides who to take action against next.
http://torrentfreak.com/yahoo-found-...gement-071220/





Turn In A Software Pirate, Collect $500

Anyone who unwittingly buys fake software from an online fraudster can receive up to $500 if they report the scam to the Software & Information Industry Association.
Paul McDougall

A tech industry group is offering consumers up to $500 for reporting software counterfeiters who sell their goods on online auction sites like eBay.

Under the plan offered by the Software & Information Industry Association, anyone who unwittingly buys fake software from an online fraudster can receive up to $500 if they report the scam.

The SIIA said it hopes tipsters will use the reward money to buy legitimate, replacement software, but under the program rules they're free to use it any way they want.

SIIA officials said the program is a "don't get mad, get even" approach to stopping software piracy. It's "a way for unsuspecting buyers to get even with auction sellers who rip them off," said SIIA VP Keith Kupferschmid, in a statement.

The SIIA said it was forced to implement the program because it doesn't get enough anti-counterfeiting help from eBay and other online auctioneers. "These sites are unwilling to take the actions necessary to reduce the high-volume software piracy taking place on their sites," said Kupferschmid.

The campaign, launched December 13, is slated to run through January 30, 2008.

The SIIA membership includes dozens of major software developers, including Adobe, Symantec and Quark. Of late, it's been increasingly vigilant toward software pirates.

Earlier this month, the SIIA filed a lawsuit against the prestigious Philadelphia law firm Fox Rothschild. The group claimed the firm is using illegally copied versions of commercial software on its internal systems. The SIIA said it learned of the alleged violations from a tipster.

Fox Rothschild hasn't commented on the lawsuit.

Software piracy costs commercial developers billions of dollars in lost revenue each year, according to various industry estimates.
http://www.informationweek.com/softw...leID=205100007





BBC iPlayer Welcomes Linux (and Macs)
h4rm0ny writes

After previously limiting their iPlayer to only the Windows platform (as we discussed earlier here and here), the BBC's content is now available to UK-based users of Linux and Mac OSX. From their site: "From today we are pleased to announce that streaming is now available on BBC iPlayer. This means that Windows, Mac and Linux users can stream programs on iPlayer as long as their computer has the latest version of Flash. Another change is that you do not have to register or sign in any more to download programs..." It seems that the BBC have listened to people who petitioned them for broader support and an open format. Well, Flash isn't exactly open, but its a lot more ubiquitous than Windows Media and Real Player formats.
http://linux.slashdot.org/article.pl.../12/17/0323202





Apple, Think Secret Settle Lawsuit

December 20, 2007 - PRESS RELEASE: Apple and Think Secret have settled their lawsuit, reaching an agreement that results in a positive solution for both sides. As part of the confidential settlement, no sources were revealed and Think Secret will no longer be published. Nick Ciarelli, Think Secret's publisher, said "I'm pleased to have reached this amicable settlement, and will now be able to move forward with my college studies and broader journalistic pursuits."
http://www.thinksecret.com/news/settlement.html





First Carrot, Now Stick
Fake Steve Jobs

Another update. Now they are really pissed. Just got another PDF letter from the same Rambo attorney (photo above; but I won't print his name) saying that in response to my last post about doing things transparently he wants to remind me that while this "course of action" is of course mine to take, he feels it is his duty to inform me that Apple's lawyers have identified at least three posts in my archive that they "deem to be actionable." He says Apple hopes this can be a "conversation rather than a confrontation" [isn't Johnnie Cochran dead? ed.] and that before I turn this into a public fight by continuing on my current "course of action" I should perhaps consider the potentially serious consequences to myself and my family of doing so.

This is followed by a recommendation that I retain an attorney to represent me. And then, I swear to friggin God, there's a list of my assets with an estimated value for each and I suppose the implied threat that I stand to lose them. Which kinda scares the living shit out of me, to be honest, since they've got a pretty thorough list, which means they've been doing some research on this and the offer didn't just come out of thin air. Their lists includes my home address, most recent assessed value of my house and all the information about my mortgage; a rental property that we own; my bank accounts and investment accounts, including the college funds for our kids, whose names are used; and our boat and two cars.

Damn. And right at Christmas. I am going to go make myself a drink.
http://fakesteve.blogspot.com/2007/1...now-stick.html





Earth to Pogue

The Generational Divide in Copyright Morality
David Pogue

I've been doing a good deal of speaking recently. And in one of my talks, I tell an anecdote about a lesson I learned from my own readers.

It was early in 2005, and a little hackware program called PyMusique was making the rounds of the Internet. PyMusique was written for one reason only: to strip the copy protection off of songs from the iTunes music store.

The program's existence had triggered an online controversy about the pros, cons and implications of copy protection. But to me, there wasn't much gray area. "To me, it's obvious that PyMusique is designed to facilitate illegal song-swapping online," I wrote. And therefore, it's wrong to use it.

Readers fired back with an amazingly intelligent array of counterexamples: situations where duplicating a CD or DVD may be illegal, but isn't necessarily *wrong.* They led me down a garden path of exceptions, proving that what seemed so black-and-white to me is a spectrum of grays.

I was so impressed that I incorporated their examples into a little demonstration in this particular talk. I tell the audience: "I'm going to describe some scenarios to you. Raise your hand if you think what I'm describing is wrong."

Then I lead them down the same garden path:

"I borrow a CD from the library. Who thinks that's wrong?" (No hands go up.)

"I own a certain CD, but it got scratched. So I borrow the same CD from the library and rip it to my computer." (A couple of hands.)

"I have 2,000 vinyl records. So I borrow some of the same albums on CD from the library and rip those."

"I buy a DVD. But I'm worried about its longevity; I have a three-year-old. So I make a safety copy."

With each question, more hands go up; more people think what I'm describing is wrong.

Then I try another tack:

"I record a movie off of HBO using my DVD burner. Who thinks that's wrong?" (No hands go up. Of course not; time-shifting is not only morally O.K., it's actually legal.)

"I *meant* to record an HBO movie, but my recorder malfunctioned. But my buddy recorded it. Can I copy his DVD?" (A few hands.)

"I meant to record an HBO movie, but my recorder malfunctioned and I don't have a buddy who recorded it. So I rent the movie from Blockbuster and copy that." (More hands.)

And so on.

The exercise is intended, of course, to illustrate how many shades of wrongness there are, and how many different opinions. Almost always, there's a lot of murmuring, raised eyebrows and chuckling.

Recently, however, I spoke at a college. It was the first time I'd ever addressed an audience of 100 percent young people. And the demonstration bombed.

In an auditorium of 500, no matter how far my questions went down that garden path, maybe two hands went up. I just could not find a spot on the spectrum that would trigger these kids' morality alarm. They listened to each example, looking at me like I was nuts.

Finally, with mock exasperation, I said, "O.K., let's try one that's a little less complicated: You want a movie or an album. You don't want to pay for it. So you download it."

There it was: the bald-faced, worst-case example, without any nuance or mitigating factors whatsoever.

"Who thinks that might be wrong?"

Two hands out of 500.

Now, maybe there was some peer pressure involved; nobody wants to look like a goody-goody.

Maybe all this is obvious to you, and maybe you could have predicted it. But to see this vivid demonstration of the generational divide, in person, blew me away.

I don't pretend to know what the solution to the file-sharing issue is. (Although I'm increasingly convinced that copy protection isn't it.)

I do know, though, that the TV, movie and record companies' problems have only just begun. Right now, the customers who can't even *see* why file sharing might be wrong are still young. But 10, 20, 30 years from now, that crowd will be *everybody*. What will happen then?
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/20/te...gue-email.html





F.C.C. Eases Media Ownership Rule
Stephen LaBaton

By the narrowest of margins, the Federal Communications Commission adopted proposals by its chairman to tighten the reins on the cable television industry while loosening 32-year-old restrictions that have prevented a company from owning both a newspaper and a television or radio station in the same city.

Last month the chairman, Kevin J. Martin, suffered a setback when he was unable to find two commissioners to support his proposal to more tightly regulate cable television.

But in a highly contentious meeting on Tuesday, Mr. Martin re-established control when he became the pivotal vote on two rules that could significantly reshape the nation’s media landscape by determining the size and scope of the largest news and cable companies.

In one 3-to-2 vote, he sided with the agency’s two other Republicans to relax the newspaper-broadcast cross-ownership rules in the 20 largest markets. As part of that order, the commission also granted dozens of permanent waivers of newspaper-broadcast combinations in large and small markets that had been given temporary waivers as they awaited the outcome of the rulemaking.

In a second 3-to-2 vote, Mr. Martin joined with the two Democratic commissioners to impose a limit that would prevent the nation’s largest cable company, Comcast Communications, from growing much larger. Under that rule, no company can control more than 30 percent of the market. Analysts say that Comcast is close to that limit.

Mr. Martin has said that a relaxation of the ownership rules was a modest, though vital step toward assisting the newspaper industry as it struggled financially as advertising and readership migrates rapidly to the Internet. He has been critical of the cable television industry for raising rates far greater than the rate of inflation and for failing to offer consumers enough choices in subscription packages.

“We cannot ignore the fact the media marketplace is considerably different than when the media ownership rule was put in place more than 30 years ago,” he said of the newspaper-broadcast rule.

The dissenting commissioners complained strongly about the outcome.

Michael J. Copps, a Democratic commissioner who has led a nationwide effort against relaxing the media ownership rules, said the rule was nothing more than a big Christmas present to the largest conglomerates.

“In the final analysis,” Mr. Copps said, “the real winners today are businesses that are in many cases quite healthy, and the real losers are going to be all of us who depend on the news media to learn what’s happening in our communities and to keep an eye on local government.”

“Despite all the talk you may hear today about the threat to newspapers from the Internet and new technologies, today’s order actually deals with something quite old-fashioned,” Mr. Copps said. “Powerful companies are using political muscle to sneak through rule changes that let them profit at the expense of the public interest.”

And Robert M. McDowell, a Republican commissioner, was sharply critical of the cable restrictions.

“The cap is out of date, is bad public policy and is not needed in today’s public market,” he said. He called the cable rule “archaic industrial policy” that would surely be struck down by an appeals court, as an earlier rule was six years ago.

Although Mr. Martin appears to have won a high-stakes battle within the commission over some of the most important proposals of his tenure, he has expended significant political capital and made political enemies of powerful industry groups and influential lawmakers.

For opposite reasons, both proposals approved on Tuesday have been criticized by industry. The Newspaper Association of America has attacked the proposal for being too modest, and said that Mr. Martin did not go far enough.

“Today’s vote is only a baby step in the actions needed to maintain the vitality of local news, in print and over-the-air, in all communities across the nation,” the president of the Newspaper Association, John F. Sturm, said. “Eliminating the cross-ownership ban completely would enhance localism by enabling broadcasters to increase local news and would not distract from the diversity of viewpoints available to local audiences.”

The cable television industry has said it has repeatedly been an unfair target of Mr. Martin, and that his efforts to regulate the industry are at odds with the broader policies of the Bush administration to remove or lessen regulations.

Over the last year, the commission has approved a series of proposals over the objections of the cable television industry, including one last December to force municipalities to accelerate the local approval process for the telephone companies to offer video services in new markets. Another one last October struck down thousands of contracts that gave individual cable companies exclusive rights to provide service to an apartment building.

Consumer groups, which have long pushed for tighter cable television regulation, were split over the media ownership rules. Some were relieved that it did not go nearly as far as they had feared and that Mr. Martin tightened a loophole by making it more difficult for companies to get exemptions from the rules in smaller markets. Other groups were critical because they said the rule could open the door to further consolidation and a decline in the diversity of voices on the airwaves.

Moreover, a significant chorus in Congress has been deeply critical of Mr. Martin and repeatedly requested that he delay action on the media ownership vote. Earlier this week, 25 senators led by Senator Byron Dorgan, Democrat of North Dakota, sent Mr. Martin a letter in which they vowed to take legislative action to revoke any new rule or nullify Tuesday’s vote. But the administration expressed support for Mr. Martin.

In a significant victory for the newspaper and broadcast industries, Mr. Martin has signaled that he will not use the new rules to force any companies that already have waivers or exemptions to sell some assets. Some companies, including The New York Times Company, have been able to own both a newspaper and a radio station in the same market under permanent waivers because they held both properties before the restrictions were imposed in 1975. Others have been granted what are supposed to be temporary waivers while the agency considered how to rewrite the rules.

Under Tuesday’s order, 42 newspaper-broadcast combinations that had previously been granted temporary or grandfathered exemptions will not be forced to sell any assets to comply with the new rule.

Both the newspaper-broadcast ownership rule and the cable rule are certain to be reviewed by federal appeals courts. Three years ago, a federal appeals panel in Philadelphia struck down a series of deregulatory measures proposed by Mr. Martin’s predecessor, Michael K. Powell, including one that loosened the cross-ownership rules.

The court said that the agency had the authority to relax the rules, and that it also had the authority to impose some limits on ability of a conglomerate to own both a newspaper and a television or radio station in the same city. But the judges also concluded that that the commission had not provided a reasoned analysis to support the limits that it chose. The court has continued to hold the case and asked the commission to report back to it once it reconsidered the rules.

The cable concentration caps, as they are known, have long been the subject of debate and litigation at the commission. Six years ago a federal appeals court in Washington struck down a rule that was similar to the one adopted on Tuesday.

The three-judge panel concluded that the commission had failed to provide an adequate justification to overcome the First Amendment rights of the cable companies. But commission officials said that they had provided a different justification for the new rule, which they hoped would pass court muster.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/18/bu...18cnd-fcc.html





Reverse Payola: Group Pushing Radio Stations to Pay Performers
Adrian McCoy

In the past, the radio industry was plagued by payola scandals: Stations took money from record companies in exchange for airplay. Now, a group representing recording artists is seeking to turn the pay-for-play strategy on its head: It wants radio stations to pay artists and their record labels when the stations play their music.

Under the current copyright system, songwriters and music publishers are compensated by radio stations through royalties when a song is played on the radio, but the people performing on the record -- from superstars to session musicians -- are not. That's what the musicFIRST (Fairness in Radio Starting Today) Coalition is pushing to change.

Formed this summer, the coalition of music unions, performing artists and recording industry organizations including the Recording Industry Association of America is lobbying for a law requiring performance royalty payments to all performers on a recording, as well as to the label that released it. Other forms of radio -- including satellite, Internet radio and cable music services -- do this, as do radio stations in Europe and Canada.

"For almost the entire 50 years since the Grammys were created, artists have been talking about this inequity in compensation," says Daryl Friedman, vice president for advocacy and government relations at the Recording Academy, the organization behind the Grammy awards. "The key issue is fairness. Every other platform compensates the creator of the recording -- except terrestrial radio. If radio is making a $20 billion business around playing sound recordings, the least they can do is compensate those who created them."

The musicFIRST initiative comes in the middle of a second contentious battle being waged by Internet broadcasters, who are required to pay performance royalties. Last March, the Copyright Royalty Board approved an increase in fees that Webcasters say will drive many of them, small and large, out of business. The Webcasters' efforts to reverse that decision is headed to the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Washington, D.C., in February, with hearings scheduled throughout the coming months.

The musicFIRST push also is akin to the issue that is at the heart of the Hollywood film and TV writers' strike: The writers want to be compensated for their work that appears over the Internet. And like that very public and prolonged strike, in which the broadcasters have dug in their heels, radio station owners don't appear willing to cede any ground to the upstart coalition.

"Were it not for radio's free promotional airplay of music on stations all over America, most successful recording artists would still be playing in a garage," says Dennis Wharton, executive vice president of media relations at the National Association of Broadcasters, the radio/TV/broadcasting trade association.

Wharton believes the record labels should look for other ways to improve revenues for the artists they represent.

"The giant record companies have not adapted to the times and have seen their revenues shrinking because they didn't make music available on a digital basis. Instead of adapting their business model, they've spent the last few years suing college kids and grandmothers'' over illegal downloads of online music. "Now they see radio stations as an opportunity to make up the losses that are the result of really bad business decisions on their part."

Broadcasters also say they're providing a valuable service to performers by playing and promoting the music, and generating record and concert ticket sales. "The relationship between radio and recording artists is a symbiotic one," says John Rohm, regional vice president for radio giant Clear Channel. "The relationship as it exists is the appropriate one. It's been a working model that has been in place for decades."

But musicFIRST's supporters argue that radio's promotional punch isn't what it used to be, since both listeners and artists have other options for exposure to new music.

"We're going through a transformation," says Rich Bengloff, president of the American Association of Independent Music, an organization representing independent music labels in the United States. "It used to be that people went to a music store and bought music and took it home and listened to it. It was a pretty simple model and easy to work with.''

"Consumer trends have changed'' since those days, he said. "We're going from a model where people purchased music to a model where people are now doing more listening to music" -- through satellite radio, Webcasting, music on cable TV and podcasts, in addition to terrestrial radio. "More and more people are not being collectors of music in the conventional sense. Consumers are dictating how the business works."

As this new model evolves, Bengloff says, independent artists and labels "felt they were going to get less out of these new revenue streams. The people who create the music and the labels that invest in that creativity need to be compensated."

It's not clear where this dispute will end up. The musicFIRST coalition is hoping to get legislation introduced in Congress to revise the royalty rules for radio, which haven't changed in decades. Broadcasters contend such a change would force many local radio stations out of business or to stop playing music. "In a lot of cases, it could be devastating" for radio stations, said Clear Channel's Rohm.

But observers note that there really aren't that many "local'' stations left in the country -- the vast majority are owned by huge radio conglomerates such as Clear Channel, the nation's largest, with more than 1,200 stations.

While a precise dollar amount has yet to be established for the performance royalties -- the NAB has put estimates in the hundreds of millions to billions of dollars -- advocates of the plan say large conglomerates such as Clear Channel would be able to afford it. But to protect smaller stations, college stations and public stations whose revenues fall under an established limits, musicFIRST is proposing exemptions or reduced fees.

From the independent labels' perspective, Independent Music's Bengloff says, small and noncommercial stations are "our lifeline to get access into the marketplace. In many markets, they're the only ones who are playing our music, and we would never allow anything to happen to them that would cause them to run into financial difficulty."
http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/07336/837887-42.stm





Jay Leno, Conan O'Brien to Return to the Air Jan. 2

Because they are members of the Writers Guild of America, the move is seen as a blow to the union. Both say that by resuming their shows, they won't have to fire non-writing staff members.
Matea Gold, Maria Elena Fernandez and Richard Verrier

On a day when NBC's Jay Leno and Conan O'Brien dealt a blow to striking film and television writers by announcing that they would cross the picket line to go back on the air -- and ABC's Jimmy Kimmel prepared to do the same -- the Writers Guild of America flexed its own muscles by denying waivers to the producers of the Golden Globes and the Oscars.

The decision means that Dick Clark Productions and the Foreign Press Assn. will not be able to employ writers to craft the script for the Globes, which airs Jan. 13 on NBC, and the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences will not be allowed to show clips of movies and past award shows in the February telecast of the Oscars without paying residuals for their use.

People close to the guild's board said the union also decided it would not permit writers to work on the Oscars, although the academy has not asked for such a waiver.

The WGA's stance essentially makes the high-gloss awards shows "struck productions." As such they probably would be boycotted by Hollywood's A-list writers and the actors sympathetic to their cause. The WGA said Monday that it was too early to discuss picketing plans. The move underscores the tensions between the guild and the major studios, which typically enjoy major promotional pushes from the telecasts.

In letters sent Monday night to the producers, Patric M. Verrone, president of WGA West, said the union decided that granting their requests would not help the guild's position in the 6-week-old strike.

"We must do everything we can to bring our negotiations to a swift and fair conclusion for the benefit of writers and all those who are being harmed by the companies' failure to engage in serious negotiations," Verrone wrote. "Our board concluded, reluctantly, that granting a waiver . . . would not advance that goal."

Bruce Davis, executive director of the academy, said he was taken aback by the WGA's refusal to grant the organization a waiver to use the film clips. The academy was planning to wait to make its request for a writing waiver for host Jon Stewart and his writing staff after "the dust settles," an effort that now appears futile.

"This is striking more at the heart of what we do," Davis said.

In a statement, Dick Clark Productions expressed its disappointment that its request was denied but said it hoped to work out a separate deal with the WGA so it could employ writers for the Globes.

The union's decision about the awards programs came on the heels of NBC's announcement that Leno and O'Brien would go back on the air Jan. 2. ABC plans to announce today that host Kimmel will return to the air the same night, according to a source familiar with the discussions.

The NBC comedians, who are both WGA members, said they supported their writing staff but must return to work to save the jobs of hundreds of others who work on the shows. Since NBC laid off the production crews at the end of November, Leno and O'Brien have been paying the salaries of their staff members themselves, a significant expenditure they appeared unwilling to shoulder indefinitely.

"Now that the talks have broken down and there are no further negotiations scheduled, I feel it's my responsibility to get my 100 non-writing staff, which were laid off, back to work," Leno said in a statement. "We fully support our writers, and I think they understand my decision."

O'Brien, who described himself as an "ardent supporter" of the guild, said in a separate statement that he had to decide whether to "go back to work and keep my staff employed or stay dark and allow 80 people, many of whom have worked for me for 14 years, to lose their jobs."

The decision by the NBC hosts to return to the air after their shows languished in reruns for six weeks marks a sobering turn for the union, which last month trumpeted Leno's appearance on the picket line as evidence of the high-profile support for the writers' cause.

NBC's Carson Daly, who is not a WGA member, had been the only late-night host to resume production in late November, a move that drew derision from many writers. The guild also lambasted Ellen DeGeneres last month when she resumed taping her syndicated daytime talk show.

The union's response to the decision by Leno and O'Brien seemed muted by comparison.

"NBC forcing Jay Leno and Conan O'Brien back on the air without writers is not going to provide the quality entertainment that the public deserves," the guild said in a statement.

Similarly, the shows' own writers took pains not to criticize Leno or O'Brien, whose personal payments to their staffs earned them substantial goodwill.

"We knew it was just a matter of time before late night would come back," said Joe Medeiros, head writer for "The Tonight Show With Jay Leno," as he picketed outside NBC's Burbank headquarters. "But Jay has been very supportive to us, and we support him."
The news about Leno and O'Brien came two days after David Letterman's production company, Worldwide Pants, said it was seeking an interim deal with the guild that would allow its programs -- "Late Show With David Letterman" and "The Late Late Show With Craig Ferguson" -- to return to the air with their writing staffs. Such an agreement, which the guild said it was open to making, could put both CBS shows at a significant advantage over their competition, especially if prominent guests refuse to cross the WGA picket line to appear on the NBC programs.

Unlike Letterman, Leno and O'Brien do not own their shows and cannot make similar arrangements. Comedy Central's Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert are also unable to make separate deals with the WGA because their programs are owned by their networks. On Monday, a Comedy Central spokesman said it was unclear when they would return to the air.

The sharp ratings declines suffered by most of the late-night programs contributed to a sense of urgency among the programs' producers in recent weeks. As the strike has dragged on, reruns of the shows have performed poorly, with NBC weathering the steepest drops. Both "Late Night" and "The Tonight Show" -- the latter earns $50 million in profit a year for NBC -- were down 38% during the first five weeks of the strike compared with the same period last year.

Debbie Vickers, executive producer of "The Tonight Show," said the slumping viewership wasn't the main factor behind the hosts' decision to return.

"I don't think it was the driving force," she said. "These guys want to do shows."

Jeff Ross, executive producer of "Late Night," said, "We put it off as long as we could."

NBC will begin paying the salaries of some producers and bookers this week as the shows ramp up, with Leno and O'Brien covering the rest of the payroll until the end of the year.

In announcing their return, the network compared Leno and O'Brien to Johnny Carson, who returned to the air without his writers during the 1988 writers strike. However, unlike his NBC successors, Carson was not a guild member and was able to perform his own material.

As members of the union, Leno and O'Brien face a trickier challenge. Under WGA strike rules, they are prohibited from writing material that otherwise would have been penned by guild writers -- including themselves.

"If they are employed as writers on the show, the rule as we see it is that they are barred from performing writing services," said Tony Segall, general counsel of WGA West.

That stance could rankle NBC executives, who said they hoped Leno and O'Brien would be able to write their own jokes.

O'Brien pledged to talk up the writers' cause on the air, adding that without his staff, "my show will not be as good. In fact, in moments it may very well be terrible."

The two programs will probably try to add more guest interviews to fill time, a prospect that presents its own hurdles because many actors have sided publicly with the WGA and could be reluctant to cross the picket line to appear on the program.

But some Hollywood veterans said they believed that many actors would have no problem appearing on the shows.

"You're going to find very few stars who are not going to go on," publicist Howard Bragman said.

Producers of both shows said they had heard similar sentiments recently from representatives of prospective guests.

"It does seem like people are warming to the idea," Vickers of "The Tonight Show" said. "January feels better than December did."

"I think there is some strike fatigue," she added. "You want to give everyone the opportunity to have resolution. But if there aren't resolutions, we can't just wait and wait and wait."

However, getting prominent actors to walk the red carpet at the Globes and the Oscars could be more difficult, if the past is any indication. In 1980, the Emmy Awards were held during a Screen Actors Guild strike. In a show of support for their union, 51 of the 52 nominated performers boycotted the event.

"I don't think there's anybody involved who's nominated who won't have this on his mind in a major way even if turns out there is no picket line," David Cronenberg, director of "Eastern Promises," said last week after being nominated for a Golden Globe. "It'd be hard to celebrate full blast given the way people are hurting. It makes it a difficult situation."
http://www.latimes.com/news/printedi...ck=3&cset=true





More TV Viewers Turn to Web: Poll

More television viewers are turning to the Internet to watch videos, films and TV episodes, according to a new survey.

In the past year, YouTube has widened its lead as the top destination for online videos, while search engines and television networks have gained ground.

Approximately 65 percent of the 2,455 U.S. adults surveyed by Harris Interactive said they have watched a video on YouTube, compared to 42 percent during the same time last year.

"Viewing videos online seems to inspire a sense of adventure, particularly among younger viewers," Joan Barten Kline, a spokeswoman for the company, said in a statement.

More than one-third of viewers overall and half of those 18 to 24 said there is something they really enjoy about discovering a cool video online.

"They seem to take particular pride in their finds online and share them with friends," Barten Kline added.

More than 42 percent of YouTube viewers said they visit the site frequently, up from 33 percent last year.

Apart from YouTube, which most people favored because they felt it had almost every video they could find, 43 percent said they have watched a video on a TV network Web site, followed by 35 percent on news sites and less than 30 percent on search engines such as Yahoo and Google.

Social networks such as MySpace and Facebook as well as music site iTunes also had a lower share of online viewers.

Online viewers said they would watch more TV episodes and full-length movies if more were available. There was less interest in viewing more amateur or user-generated videos, news and sports, according to the survey.

(Reporting by Claire Sibonney; Editing by Patricia Reaney)
http://www.reuters.com/article/lifes...61913620071219





Bell Labs Is Gone. Academia Steps In.
G. Pascal Zachary

PAY me now, and pay me later.

That’s the new mind-set at some leading research universities in dealing with business — and the essence of an emerging model for how corporations can tap big brains on campus without having to pay their salaries.

Corporations have long been able to license intellectual property from universities, but these deals are cumbersome to negotiate and tend to work best when corporate researchers know exactly what they need to create.

They don’t always. Often, they explore scientific and technological frontiers without a map. After blue-sky thinking and random experimentation, they build new products without relying on neatly defined patents or published scientific papers — the bread-and-butter of academic knowledge production.

In the bygone days of innovation, large corporations — like RCA, Xerox and the old AT&T — maintained internal laboratories like Bell Labs. These corporate labs were essentially research universities embedded in private companies, and their employees published academic papers, spoke at conferences and even gave away valuable breakthroughs. Bell Labs, for instance, created the world’s first transistor after World War II — and never earned a dollar from the innovation.

Almost no corporate labs based on the Bell or Xerox model remain, victims of cost-cutting and a new appreciation by corporate leaders that commercial innovations may flow best when scientists and engineers stick to business problems.

The obsession with marrying research and markets, while generally a strength of American capitalism, leaves some needs unmet. To fill them, “companies need boots on the ground at universities,” says Henry Chesbrough, a business professor who studies innovation at the University of California, Berkeley.

A vanguard group of universities is giving corporations greater access to ivory-tower laboratories — for a price. Stanford has paired with Exxon Mobil in a deal worth $100 million over 10 years. The University of California, Davis, is getting $25 million from Chevron. And Intel has opened collaborative laboratories with Berkeley, the University of Washington and Carnegie Mellon.

The appeal of these arrangements is that “we get broad engagement with universities,” says Andrew A. Chien, Intel’s director of research. “Their researchers work on frontiers, in unexplored territory. We want explorers.”

Intel hopes to learn more about scientific and technical developments that might influence its business, even decades from now. The company says it benefits from having its own employees rub shoulders with professors, while gaining the chance to observe younger talent in Ph.D. programs.

“You can view this as a pure pipeline,” says Mr. Chien, himself a former professor.

Jean Stéphenne, president of the vaccine division of GlaxoSmithKline, the pharmaceutical company, says university partnerships with corporations will grow “because technology is changing so rapidly.” Even if companies have the resources to finance their own research and identify the right academic problems to tackle, they usually don’t have the time to assemble a staff to pursue these problems. Without help from university professors, Mr. Stéphenne asks, “How can we cope?”

Some people doubt that formal partnerships between corporations and universities can deliver real benefits.

“Universities don’t innovate,” says Curtis R. Carlson, chief executive of SRI International, a nonprofit research institute in Menlo Park, Calif., that bought what remained of RCA’s lab. “Innovation means you get it out so people can use it. The university is not going to take it to the world.”

But corporations hope that universities can help them take innovations to the world faster and more efficiently. Last month, BP pledged to spend $500 million over 10 years on alternative-energy research to be carried out by a new Energy Biosciences Institute at Berkeley, which will manage work done at a nearby Department of Energy lab and at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

“This is a new model we’re working through in real time,” says Robert J. Birgeneau, the chancellor of Berkeley.

CRITICS of corporate-university partnerships fear limits on academic freedom or, worse, that companies might censor results that go against their interests. The risk of such interference seems small, however. Despite the large amount being offered by BP, the money will be divided three ways; of Berkeley’s annual research budget of $500 million (nearly all from the federal government), BP will be contributing less than 3 percent.

Under the terms of the partnership, meanwhile, Berkeley professors are free to publish results of BP-funded research. The university also will own the rights to any resulting intellectual property. BP would even have to license that intellectual property, though payments are capped and the company would get the first look at promising results.

The alternative to corporate funds is for universities to rely even more on government funds. And that raises parallel issues in the minds of some academics. The idea that government funding plays no role in prioritizing research “is completely at odds with reality,” says Michael Crowe, the president of Arizona State University.

The marriage of corporations and university researchers is still in its early days. “In the decades ahead, we will see more differentiation among universities in how they go about doing this,” Mr. Crowe says.

For universities, no matter what models emerge, the key is to deliver benefits to society and business.

“Will these partnerships produce products you won’t get from two people in a garage?” Mr. Birgeneau asks. “We don’t know that yet. It is an important question.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/16/business/16ping.html





Users Left in Lurch by Network Shutdown
Peter Svensson

When Adele Rothman bought her 16-year-old son a car in 2003, she made sure to pick one that had OnStar, the onboard communications and safety system.

What the Scarsdale, N.Y., resident didn't know was that the OnStar system in the car was already doomed to die. The federal government decided in 2002 to let cellular carriers shut down analog cell phone networks, used by Rothman's Saab and about 500,000 other OnStar-equipped cars, after Feb. 18, 2008.

It's the end of the nationwide network that launched the U.S. wireless industry 24 years ago, and it leaves a surprising number of users like Adele Rothman in the lurch.

OnStar told Rothman in March its service would stop at the end of this year, in anticipation of the network shutdown in February. "I was really upset," she said, "because that was my tieline" to her son.

Perhaps a million cell phones will lose service, but those are cheap and easy to replace. The effects will be felt the most by people who have things that aren't phones but have built-in wireless capabilities, like OnStar cars and home alarm systems.

The shutdown date has been known years in advance, but some industries appear to have a had a problem updating their technologies and informing their customers in advance, which raises the question of whether the effects will be even more widespread the next time a network is turned off, given the proliferation of wireless technology.

General Motors Corp., which owns OnStar, started modifying its cars after the 2002 decision by the Federal Communications Commission to let the network die, but some cars made as late as 2005 can't use digital networks for OnStar, nor can they be upgraded. For some cars made in the intervening years, GM provides digital upgrades for $15.

In 2006, OnStar said it had let customers know of the shutdown with a posting on its Web site. This year, it said it had notified all affected customers. Spokeswoman Cristi Chojnacki said she was unable to comment beyond those statements. General Motors and other car manufacturers with similar systems, including Daimler AG's Mercedes-Benz, are facing a potential class-action lawsuit over the analog shutdown.

When Rothman complained, GM sent a $500 coupon toward the purchase of a new car. To compensate for the lack of OnStar, she outfitted her son's car with a handsfree system and a Global Positioning System.

A week before the end-of-year shutdown, the analog coverage map is still the first one presented on OnStar's Web site. The digital coverage map, showing large areas of "limited" service in out-of-the-way places, is available on another page.

On the home alarm side, about 400,000 systems still use analog service, according to Lou Fiore, chairman of the Alarm Industry Communications Committee. In most of those systems, the wireless link to the alarm center is a backup to the landline. But some homes lack a landline, so the wireless link is the only connection to the outside world.

Fiore doesn't know the current number of systems that only use analog wireless connections and no landline, but a survey by the AICC a few years ago put the number at 138,000.

"The larger (alarm) companies are in pretty good shape," Fiore said. "There are so many smaller companies out there that are probably, I'd say, in denial. They just don't know about it."

To complicate things, some alarm systems advertised as "digital" actually use a digital subchannel of the analog network. True digital alarm system modems did not become available until 2006, according to the AICC.

According to the FCC, many analog alarms that have not been replaced by the time the network is shut down will start beeping to warn that they've lost the connection to the alarm center.

The Central Station Alarm Association, an alarm industry group and the parent of the AICC, tried to get the FCC to delay the analog sunset.

The FCC turned away that request this year, saying digital networks are a much better use of the airwaves. The same spectrum can carry about 16 times more traffic using digital technology compared to analog.

Verizon Wireless, AT&T Inc. and Alltel Corp. are the largest carriers that still have analog networks. Alltel will take more time than Verizon and AT&T to close its network, shutting down in three stages ending in September. Each carrier will keep its portion of the newly available spectrum, and will use it to boost their digital services.

A few rural cellular providers may keep their networks up. Plateau Wireless, which provides service in eastern New Mexico and western Texas, will maintain its analog network alongside a digital one "for the foreseeable future," according to Chief Executive Tom Phelps.

Many of the company's 75,000 customers are farmers and ranchers, and the network's superior range helps them because it fills gaps in the digital network. The larger carriers say their digital buildout will cover any gaps left by the demise of analog service.

Commercial service on the analog network, also known as the Advanced Mobile Phone Service, or AMPS, began in 1983; it was the first time coverage areas were divided into smaller areas known as cells, a move that boosted call capacity tremendously.

Rapid development in the wireless field now means a faster, better technology always lurks just around the corner, tempting carriers to upgrade. Digital networks will almost certainly have shorter life spans than the 24-year run for AMPS, causing problems for manufacturers who want to include wireless technology in things that have long life spans.

"If you've got a product that's going into the market for five years, for 10 years, for 15 years, how do you pick a technology that's going to be around that long?" asked Chris Purpura, senior vice president of marketing at Aeris Communications.

Aeris, in San Jose, runs a control center that manages automated wireless communications for alarm companies, trucking fleets, manufacturers and utilities. As late as last year, more than a million of its clients' devices, like remote-readable electricity meters and refrigerated shipping containers, used the analog network.

Purpura said the next generation of wireless devices could be 10 times as big, making the challenge of the next transition even greater. He said GPRS, or General Packet Radio Service, could be the next network to go, since this relatively slow second-generation digital technology isn't compatible with newer cellular broadband networks.

"I don't think anyone wants to go through this again in five years," Purpura said.
http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5i...OHmQAD8TM1PKG0





Google Gets Ready to Rumble With Microsoft
Steve Lohr and Miguel Helft

A CEREBRAL computer-scientist-turned-executive, Eric E. Schmidt has spent much of his career competing uphill against Microsoft, quietly watching it outflank, outmaneuver or simply outgun most of its rivals.

At Sun Microsystems, where he was chief technology officer, Mr. Schmidt looked on as Scott G. McNealy, the company’s chairman, railed against Microsoft and its leaders, Steven A. Ballmer and Bill Gates, as “Ballmer and Butthead.” During a four-year stint as chief executive of Novell, Mr. Schmidt routinely opined that it was folly for any Microsoft rival to “moon the giant,” as he put it; all that would do, he argued, was incite Microsoft’s wrath.

Then, six years ago, Mr. Schmidt snared the C.E.O. spot at Google and today finds himself at the helm of one of computing’s most inventive and formidable players, the runaway leader in Internet search and online advertising. With its ample resources and eye for new markets, Google has begun offering online products that strike at the core of Microsoft’s financial might: popular computing tools like word processing applications and spreadsheets.

The growing confrontation between Google and Microsoft promises to be an epic business battle. It is likely to shape the prosperity and progress of both companies, and also inform how consumers and corporations work, shop, communicate and go about their digital lives. Google sees all of this happening on remote servers in faraway data centers, accessible over the Web by an array of wired and wireless devices — a setup known as cloud computing. Microsoft sees a Web future as well, but one whose center of gravity remains firmly tethered to its desktop PC software. Therein lies the conflict.

But in a lengthy interview at Google’s campus here, Mr. Schmidt, 52, follows past practices. He soft-pedals. As he coyly describes a move that most of the industry views as Google’s assault on Microsoft, he does his best to say that it is something entirely other than that.

No, he says, there was no thought of a Microsoft takedown when, earlier this year, Google introduced a package of online software offerings, called Google Apps, that includes e-mail, instant messaging, calendars, word processing and spreadsheets. They are simpler versions of the pricey programs that make up Microsoft’s lucrative Office business, and Google is offering them free to consumers.

Still, Google Apps aren’t anything other than a natural step in Google’s march to deliver more computing capability to users over the Internet, Mr. Schmidt says.

“For most people,” he says, “computers are complex and unreliable,” given to crashing and afflicted with viruses. If Google can deliver computing services over the Web, then “it will be a real improvement in people’s lives,” he says.

To explain, Mr. Schmidt steps up to a white board. He draws a rectangle and rattles off a list of things that can be done in the Web-based cloud, and he notes that this list is expanding as Internet connection speeds become faster and Internet software improves. In a sliver of the rectangle, about 10 percent, he marks off what can’t be done in the cloud, like high-end graphics processing. So, in Google’s thinking, will 90 percent of computing eventually reside in the cloud?

“In our view, yes,” Mr. Schmidt says. “It’s a 90-10 thing.” Inside the cloud resides “almost everything you do in a company, almost everything a knowledge worker does.”

Mr. Schmidt clearly believes that the arcs of technology and history are in Google’s corner, no matter how hard he tries to avoid mooning the giant. Microsoft, of course, isn’t planning to merely stand still. It has spent billions trying to catch Google in search and Web advertising, so far without success. And the companies are also fighting it out in promising new fields as varied as Web maps, online video and cellphone software.

“The fundamental Google model is to try to change all the rules of the software world,” says David B. Yoffie, a professor at the Harvard Business School. If Google succeeds, Mr. Yoffie says, “a lot of the value that Microsoft provides today is potentially obsolete.”

At Microsoft, Mr. Schmidt’s remarks are fighting words. Traditional software installed on personal computers is where Microsoft makes its living, and its executives see the prospect of 90 percent of computing tasks migrating to the Web-based cloud as a fantasy.

“It’s, of course, totally inaccurate compared with where the market is today and where the market is headed,” says Jeff Raikes, president of Microsoft’s business division, which includes the Office products.

TO Mr. Raikes, the company’s third-longest-serving executive, after Mr. Gates and Mr. Ballmer, the Google challenge is an attack on Microsoft that is both misguided and arrogant. “The focus is on competitive self-interest; it’s on trying to undermine Microsoft, rather than what customers want to do,” he says.

Microsoft, Mr. Raikes notes, has spent years and billions of dollars in product development and customer research, studying in minute detail how individual workers and companies use software. What they want, he says, is the desktop programs and features of Microsoft Office, and the proof is in the marketplace. “I mean, we have more than 500 million people who are using Microsoft Office tools,” he says.

Indeed, Microsoft is the wealthy incumbent with a huge lead in the market for personal productivity software, with a share of more than 90 percent. But the Google challenge, industry analysts say, is not so much a head-to-head confrontation with Microsoft in its desktop stronghold as it is a long-term shift toward Web software, which operates with different principles and economics.

Analysts note that Google is a different competitor from others Microsoft has dispatched in recent years: it is bigger, faster-growing, loaded with cash and a magnet for talent. And the technology of the Google cloud opens doors. Its vast data centers are designed by Google engineers for efficiency, speed and low cost, giving the company an edge in computing firepower and allowing it to add offerings inexpensively.

“Once you have those data centers, you want to go out and develop complementary products and services,” says Hal R. Varian, a former professor at the University of California, Berkeley, who is Google’s chief economist. They can be offered free or at minimal cost to users, he says, because they bring more traffic to Google, generating more search and ad revenue.

Google, it seems, has a promising opening against Microsoft. But tilting at a giant and taking down a giant are very different things.

Microsoft, of course, isn’t standing still. Just as it squelched the first Internet challenge in the 1990s by linking Web browsing software to its mainstay products, it is now adopting a similar strategy for cloud computing by adding Internet features to its offerings. It is moving cautiously on this front, however, to avoid eroding the profitability of its desktop franchise.

More than any other Google foray, providing Web-based software to workers for communication, collaboration and documents promises to be the acid test of how far Google can go beyond Internet search. Will two of its formulas — its distinctive, hurry-up model of building products and services, and its rapid-fire approach to recruiting and innovation — succeed in new arenas?

Google’s quicksilver corporate culture can be jarring for some employees, even for Mr. Schmidt. He recalls that shortly after joining the company and its young founders, Sergey Brin and Larry Page, he was frustrated that people were answering e-mail on their laptops at meetings while he was speaking.

“I’ve given up” trying to change such behavior, he says. “They have to answer their e-mail. Velocity matters.”

VELOCITY does, indeed, matter, and Google deploys it to great effect. Conventional software is typically built, tested and shipped in two- or three-year product cycles. Inside Google, Mr. Schmidt says, there are no two-year plans. Its product road maps look ahead only four or five months at most. And, Mr. Schmidt says, the only plans “anybody believes in go through the end of this quarter.”

Google maintains that pace courtesy of the cloud. With a vast majority of its products Web-based, it doesn’t wait to ship discs or load programs onto personal computers. Inside the company, late stages of product development are sometimes punctuated by 24-to-48-hour marathon programming sessions known as “hack-a-thons.” The company sometimes invites outside engineers to these sessions to encourage independent software developers to use Google technologies as platforms for their own products.

New features and improvements are made and tested on Google’s computers and constantly sprinkled into the services users tap into online. In the last two months alone, eight new features or improvements have been added to Google’s e-mail system, Gmail, including a tweak to improve the processing speed and code to simplify the handling of e-mail on mobile phones. A similar number of enhancements have been made in the last two months to Google’s online spreadsheet, word processing and presentation software.
Early this month, Google released new cellphone software, with the code-name Grand Prix. A project that took just six weeks to complete, Grand Prix allows for fast and easy access to Google services like search, Gmail and calendars through a stripped-down mobile phone browser. (For now, it is tailored for iPhone browsers, but the plan is to make it work on other mobile browsers as well.)

Grand Prix was born when a Google engineer, tinkering on his own one weekend, came up with prototype code and e-mailed it to Vic Gundotra, a Google executive who oversees mobile products. Mr. Gundotra then showed the prototype to Mr. Schmidt, who in turn mentioned it to Mr. Brin. In about an hour, Mr. Brin came to look at the prototype.

“Sergey was really supportive,” recalls Mr. Gundotra, saying that Mr. Brin was most intrigued by the “engineering tricks” employed. After that, Mr. Gundotra posted a message on Google’s internal network, asking employees who owned iPhones to test the prototype. Such peer review is common at Google, which has an engineering culture in which a favorite mantra is “nothing speaks louder than code.”

As co-workers dug in, testing Grand Prix’s performance speed, memory use and other features, “the feedback started pouring in,” Mr. Gundotra recalls. The comments amounted to a thumbs-up, and after a few weeks of fine-tuning and fixing bugs, Grand Prix was released. In the brief development, there were no formal product reviews or formal approval processes.

Mr. Gundotra joined Google in July, after 15 years at Microsoft. He says that he always considered Microsoft to be the epicenter of technological development, but that the rise of cloud computing forced him to reconsider.

“It became obvious that Google was the place where I could have the biggest impact,” he says. “For guys like me, who have a love affair with software, being able to ship a product in weeks — that’s an irresistible draw.”

Another draw is Google’s embrace of experimentation and open-ended job assignments. Recent college graduates are routinely offered jobs at Google without being told what they will be doing. The company does this partly to keep corporate secrets locked up, but often it also doesn’t know what new hires will be doing.

Christophe Bisciglia, a 27-year-old engineer, qualifies as a seasoned veteran at Google, having worked there for four years. Mr. Bisciglia has done a lot of college recruiting in the last two years and has interviewed more than 100 candidates.

“We look for smart generalists, who we can be confident can fulfill any need we have,” he explains. “We hire someone, and who knows what need we’ll have when that person shows up six months later? We move so fast.”

MR. SCHMIDT readily concedes that cloud computing won’t happen overnight. Big companies change habits slowly, as do older consumers. Clever software is needed — and under development, he says — to overcome other shortcomings like the “airplane issue,” or how users can keep working when they find themselves unable to get online.

Yet small and midsize companies, as well as universities and individuals — in other words, a majority of computer users — could shift toward Web-based cloud computing fairly quickly, Mr. Schmidt contends. Small businesses, he says, could greatly reduce their costs and technology headaches by adopting the Web offerings now available from Google and others.

“It makes no sense to run your own computers if you are a small business starting up,” he says. “You’d be crazy to buy packaged software.”

Still, in order to succeed, Google needs to win a broad array of converts, including corporations. That effort is led by Dave Girouard, the general manager of Google’s enterprise business, who joined the company in 2004, shortly after it decided to move beyond its search business and consumer focus.

Gmail, introduced just after Mr. Girouard arrived, illustrates Google’s strategic evolution as well as its increased willingness to take on Microsoft.

Paul Buchheit, a Google engineer, started on what became Gmail as far back as 2001. At the time, there was resistance inside the company to the project. Back then, Google was providing search service for Yahoo, a useful source of revenue for the young start-up, and Yahoo had its own Web e-mail system. Another concern was straying into Microsoft’s territory.

“Definitely one of the reasons people thought it was a bad idea is that it could incite Microsoft to destroy Google,” recalled Mr. Buchheit, who left Google last year and now works for a start-up.

Gmail, a full-fledged Web offering built by Google, took time to develop. Features had to be added and tested, and hundreds of Google engineers had to use it and approve. The company’s arsenal of data centers — highly efficient and designed by Google engineers — had to be equipped to offer ample free storage for users.

And as Google grew in size, profitability and stature during those years, riling a giant was less of a worry. By the time Gmail was ready, Mr. Buchheit says, “Google was much more established, and they were more comfortable competing with Microsoft.”

In the corporate market, Google sees itself as a powerful agent of change, breaking down old barriers. “For the last 30 or 40 years, there has been this huge Chinese wall between business and consumer technology,” Mr. Girouard says. “That was historical and no longer valid.”

Google’s push into the business market began in earnest only this year, but Mr. Girouard is already encouraged by the results. About 2,000 companies are signing up for Google Apps every working day, he said. Most are trying the free version. That’s fine, he says, because those users also generate more search-related advertising revenue for Google. After a 60-day free trial, companies with more than 50 users are beginning to sign up for the Google Apps Premier Edition at a charge of $50 a year per user, which includes customer support.

These applications are minimal, task-oriented tools that lack many of the features in Microsoft Office, but, Google managers say, most people use only a fraction of those fancier features anyway.

“If you’re creating a complex document like an annual report, you want Word, and if you’re making a sophisticated financial model, you want Excel,” Mr. Girouard notes. “That’s what the Microsoft products are great at. But less and less work is like that.”
Google’s entry, he says, has ignited interest in bringing cloud computing into corporations. Senior technology managers of large corporations, he says, are “talking to us every day of the week about where Google is going and what we can do.” A few large companies, notably General Electric and Procter & Gamble, have said publicly that they are at least trying out Google Apps.

Next year, Mr. Girouard predicts, “a lot of big companies” will be adopting Google Apps for tens of thousands of workers each.

Microsoft dismisses Google’s optimism as wishful thinking. Microsoft’s competitive tracking of the corporate market, says Mr. Raikes, the leader of the Office business, finds nothing like the momentum for Google that Mr. Girouard portrays. “It is not in any way, shape or form close to what he is suggesting,” Mr. Raikes says.

COUNTLESS decisions by corporate technology managers, office workers, university students and rank-and-file computer users of all kinds will ultimately determine Google’s success. How easy and inexpensive will it be to do e-mail, word processing, spreadsheets and team projects on Web software? Will high-speed network connections soon become as ubiquitous and reliable as Google seems to assume? Will companies, universities and individuals trust Google to hold corporate and personal information safely?

At the corporate level, inexpensive, low-stress e-mail is the initial lure of Google Apps. About 160 employees of BankFirst Financial Services, a small bank in Macon, Miss., have been using Gmail for about two months, happily substituting it for an older system that had been overwhelmed by heavy traffic and spam. Bank workers are also using Google Apps’ instant messaging and calendar features to get immediate answers to customer questions and to set up meetings online.

But BankFirst isn’t using Google’s online word processing, presentation and spreadsheets, a package known as Google Docs. Like so many other companies, it still relies on the Microsoft Word and Excel programs for those tasks. “I really don’t see us migrating from that,” says Josh Hailey, the bank’s computer network manager.

According to Compete.com, a research firm, Google Docs is gaining popularity. It had 1.6 million users in November, seven times as many as a year earlier. That’s a nice lift, but the Microsoft Office suite, containing programs like Word and Excel, is nearly two decades old and runs on some 500 million PCs. The reality is that even if Mr. Schmidt and Google are right about the potential of cloud computing in the workplace, Microsoft is still seen inside most companies as the safe choice.

Another crucial battleground for both companies is the university market, where the stakes are less about making money and more about winning the loyalty of students who might become valuable customers later in life. Google and Microsoft each offer free Web-based e-mail to universities, for example.

When Arizona State University, one of the nation’s largest with 65,000 students, decided last year to choose a new e-mail system, it had concerns about the security and privacy of student information and messages stored on Google servers. “It’s like the virtue of banks over mattresses,” explains Adrian Sannier, the university’s chief technology officer. “You feel like keeping the money in your mattress and defending it with your own gun is the right thing to do.” But Arizona State decided that Google, with all its expertise, could do a better job than the university’s own technology department.

Microsoft, Mr. Sannier notes, also offered free Web e-mail to Arizona State, but for an online service the university decided Google was the smarter choice because the company is totally committed to Web software. “We saw Microsoft as a company that is divided on the issue of cloud computing,” Mr. Sannier says.

The university’s switch to Google-hosted e-mail has gone smoothly, and Mr. Sannier estimates that the school is saving $500,000 a year by not handling e-mail itself. Students, he added, also get more than e-mail. They have access to Google Apps, and thousands of them, he says, now use Google’s Web software for calendars, word processing and spreadsheets.

To be sure, Microsoft is not ceding cloud computing to Google. It is investing heavily in huge data centers and Web software. Inside Microsoft, there are engineers and product managers who sound a lot like Googlers.

Ellie Powers-Boyle, 25, a graduate of M.I.T., works on Microsoft’s Web e-mail products. In the last three years, she says, there have been a dozen significant upgrades of the Web e-mail product, and she has worked on three or four new features each time. “We iterate quickly,” she says. “For someone of my generation, the whole idea of waiting years to see if you made the right product makes no sense.”

The challenge for Microsoft is not the ability to do much of what Google does. Instead, the company faces a business quandary. The Microsoft approach is largely to try to link the Web to its desktop business — “software plus Internet services,” in its formulation. It will embrace the Web, while striving to maintain the revenue and profits from its desktop software businesses, the corporate gold mine. That is a smart strategy for Microsoft and its shareholders for now, but it may not be sustainable.

Assuming that competition heats up, Office may continue to be an outstanding product, but Microsoft may not be able to charge as much for it — just as low-cost personal computers eventually undercut the mainframe business, and traditional publishing and media companies have grappled with Internet distribution. The traditional products remain popular, but they become much less profitable.

FOR its part, Google faces its own set of challenges: competition from Microsoft and from Web-based productivity software being offered by start-ups like Zoho and Transmedia as well as more established players like Yahoo. A recent report by the Burton Group, a technology research firm, concluded that it was “unclear at this point whether Google will be able to capitalize on the trends that it’s accelerating.”

Is Google “really committed to the productivity of information workers?” asks Chris Capossela, a vice president in Microsoft’s Office group. “Boy, there’s no question that we are. No customer on the planet thinks about Microsoft without thinking about Office. It’s part of the DNA of Microsoft.

“Needless to say, we are going to do everything we can to remain the leader in this space,” he adds. “And whoever comes our way, we’ll certainly be waiting for them.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/16/te...gy/16goog.html





Deleting history

FTC Chairman Denies Conflict in Google Case

Majoras Refuses to Recuse Herself
Catherine Rampell

Federal Trade Commission Chairman Deborah Platt Majoras said yesterday that she will not recuse herself from reviewing the proposed merger of Google and DoubleClick. Two privacy groups had asked her to step aside upon learning that her husband works for a law firm that represents DoubleClick.

Majoras also worked for the firm, Jones Day.

Commissioner William E. Kovacic, whose wife, Kathryn M. Fenton, works for Jones Day, also said he would not recuse himself from reviewing the merger. The privacy groups had not asked him to do so.

Google dominates the market for selling text-based online advertising. DoubleClick is the leader in online display ads.

In a written statement, Majoras said there was no ethical or legal conflict because her husband, John M. Majoras, is not an equity partner and therefore his compensation "will not be increased or affected by changes in the firm's income." Also, she said, the firm represents DoubleClick only in Europe.

Fenton also is a non-equity partner.

Jeffrey A. Chester, executive director of the Center for Digital Democracy, said Jones Day's Web site indicated otherwise. On Monday he noticed that the firm's site said it was "advising DoubleClick Inc . . . on the international and U.S. antitrust and competition law aspects of its planned $3.1 billion acquisition by Google Inc. . . . The transaction is currently under review by the U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and European Commission."

The page has since been removed from Jones Day's site.

The Electronic Privacy Information Center, which also petitioned for Majoras to recuse herself, yesterday filed a Freedom of Information Act request to determine whether Jones Day lobbied the FTC on the Google-DoubleClick merger.

The privacy groups oppose the merger because, they said, it would give one company too much private information about consumers.

Commissioners Pamela Jones Harbour, Jon Leibowitz and J. Thomas Rosch issued a statement in support of Majoras's and Kovacic's decisions.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...401735_pf.html





U.S. Approves Google's Purchase of Rival DoubleClick

The Federal Trade Commission said on Thursday it approved Google's proposed $3.1 billion purchase of advertising rival DoubleClick.

The deal, which combines Google's dominance in pay-per-click Internet advertising with DoubleClick's market-leading position in flashier display ads, is also being scrutinized by European antitrust officials.

In a 4-1 vote, the FTC decided to end its eight-month investigation of the transaction, concluding that the deal would not substantially lesson competition. Critics of the combination, first announced in April, had said it could give Google too much control over online advertising.

(Reporting by Diane Bartz, editing by Dave Zimmerman)
http://www.reuters.com/article/rbssT...00810620071220





Yes, There Can Be Life After Word
Damon Darlin

AS the clerk at Circuit City rang up my purchase of a new notebook computer last month, she started her up-selling.

Padded bag? No. Security lock? No. Windows Office?

For someone who processes words for a living, Microsoft’s software would seem to be an indispensable tool. But when one of the least expensive versions of Office costs $150, or 25 percent of the price of my new notebook, I needed an alternative.

Google let me slip Microsoft’s monopoly. Its Google Docs is a free suite of office applications. You can find it at docs.google.com. It works just like Office, but you use it online. The software that makes it work isn’t on your computer, but on one of Google’s.

You use the word processor just like Word, or I should say, the version you might remember from the early 1990s, before Microsoft added all the bells and whistles that you never need.

I had tried to use the stripped-down word processor from Microsoft that came installed on the notebook, Microsoft Works. But it didn’t allow me to paste 500 words into a document, or even a fraction of that, so it seemed too hobbled to use.

Google Docs also has a spreadsheet program that apes Microsoft’s Excel and a presentation application that can substitute for PowerPoint. There is also Calendar, replacing one function of Microsoft Outlook.

The advantage to Google Docs is that you can work on a document at home on one computer, store it and then grab the same document on another computer, even at the office. You could work on the document with any computer that has an Internet connection. (There’s the hitch: you can’t work on it while on a plane.)

Actually, there is another hitch. You store the documents on Google servers. That might make someone dealing with important documents nervous, if you think Google might be looking at them or that someone might hack in.

Those fears are exaggerated. But if you store documents there that prosecutors might want to look at, the documents are just as vulnerable to a search warrant or subpoena as they would be on your computer’s hard drive.

After you work on a document, you can save a copy to your drive. You can send it to others, and they can edit it in Word.

The other advantage to Google Docs is that if you give permission, other people can edit it online, even while you’re working on it. You don’t have to send the file anywhere.

The online collaboration function is particularly useful with Calendar. A family or a small office can coordinate activities.

Google isn’t the only company doing what is called computing in the cloud. Zoho (zoho.com) and ThinkFree (thinkfree.com) offer online word processing. In fact, some people think Zoho is actually the best online word processor available. (You can also get good free office applications that reside on your PC the old-fashioned way from Abiword.com or OpenOffice.org.)

I’ve lived for a month without Word. And it has set me free.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/16/te...gy/16docs.html





Serious Flash Vulns Menace Tens of Thousands Websites
Dan Goodin

Researchers from Google have documented serious vulnerabilities in Adobe Flash content which leave tens of thousands of websites susceptible to attacks that steal the personal details of visitors.

The security bugs reside in Flash applets, the ubiquitous building blocks for movies and graphics that animate sites across the web. Also known as SWF files, they are vulnerable to attacks in which malicious strings are injected into the legitimate code through a technique known as cross-site scripting, or XSS. Currently there are no patches for the vulnerabilities, which are found in sites operated by financial institutions, government agencies and other organizations.

The vulnerabilities are laid out in the book Hacking Exposed Web 2.0: Web 2.0 Security Secrets and Solutions. It is due to hit store shelves soon, but is already in the hands of many security professionals. The book's authors, who work for penetration testing firm iSEC Partners as well as for Google, say a web search reveals more than 500,000 vulnerable applets on major corporate, government and media sites.

"Lots of people are vulnerable, and right now there are no protections available other than to remove those SWFs and wait for the authoring tools and/or Flash player to be updated," says Alex Stamos, one of the book's authors. "In the mean time, people will have to think: 'What kind of flash am I using on my site,' and manually test for vulnerabilities."

Flash flood

That could be a mammoth task, because a half-dozen of the most popular Flash authoring programs automatically generate the buggy content. What's more, the people who crank out graphics frequently work separately from a site's security team. Removing the vulnerable content will require combing through website directories for SWF files and then testing them one by one. Updates in the Adobe software that renders SWF files in browsers are also likely, but they probably wouldn't quell the threat completely, according to Stamos.

The authors have been working since the summer with Adobe, the developer of Flash, and the United States Computer Emergency Readiness Team (http://www.us-cert.gov/) to coordinate a remedy. But so far there is no estimate when patches may be released. A security update Adobe released this week (http://www.adobe.com/support/securit...apsb07-20.html) for its Flash player doesn't fix the vulnerabilities, Stamos said. Adobe representatives didn't reply to emails seeking comment.

Attack scenarios work something like this: A bank website hosts marketing graphics in the form of a vulnerable Flash applet. Attackers who trick a customer into clicking on a malicious link are able to execute the SWF file but inject malicious code variables that cause the customer's authentication cookies or login credentials to be sent to the attacker.

"There are definitely lots of people who are vulnerable," Stamos said. "Tens of thousands is very conservative. Realistically, it's probably in the hundreds (of thousands)."

Shockwave to the system

One reason for the sheer volume of vulnerable applets: SWF files generated by six of the more popular content development tools automatically contain the bugs, according to the book. Those programs include DreamWeaver, Connect, Breeze - which are sold by Adobe - and TechSmith Camtasia, InfoSoft FusionCharts and software from Autodemo.

Stamos said Adobe is likely to update its Flash Player so it does a better job of vetting code variables before executing SWF files. But he said interaction with third-party code is such a core part of the way Flash works that updates to the player would likely provide only a partial fix.

Eradicating the problem will require updates for all of the graphics authoring tools so they no longer generate buggy Flash content. Even then, security pros will have to analyze all of a website's SWF files and recompile any found to be vulnerable.

The book was authored by Rich Cannings, a senior information security engineer at Google, and Himanshu Dwivedi, Zane Lackey, Chris Clark and Stamos of iSEC. It is published by The McGraw-Hill Companies.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/12...bility_menace/





On Facebook, Scholars Link Up With Data
Stephanie Rosenbloom

Each day about 1,700 juniors at an East Coast college log on to Facebook.com to accumulate “friends,” compare movie preferences, share videos and exchange cybercocktails and kisses. Unwittingly, these students have become the subjects of academic research.

To study how personal tastes, habits and values affect the formation of social relationships (and how social relationships affect tastes, habits and values), a team of researchers from Harvard and the University of California, Los Angeles, are monitoring the Facebook profiles of an entire class of students at one college, which they declined to name because it could compromise the integrity of their research.

“One of the holy grails of social science is the degree to which taste determines friendship, or to which friendship determines taste,” said Jason Kaufman, an associate professor of sociology at Harvard and a member of the research team. “Do birds of a feather flock together, or do you become more like your friends?”

In other words, Facebook — where users rate one another as “hot or not,” play games like “Pirates vs. Ninjas” and throw virtual sheep at one another — is helping scholars explore fundamental social science questions.

“We’re on the cusp of a new way of doing social science,” said Nicholas Christakis, a Harvard sociology professor who is also part of the research. “Our predecessors could only dream of the kind of data we now have.”

Facebook’s network of 58 million active users and its status as the sixth-most-trafficked Web site in the United States have made it an irresistible subject for many types of academic research.

Scholars at Carnegie Mellon used the site to look at privacy issues. Researchers at the University of Colorado analyzed how Facebook instantly disseminated details about the Virginia Tech shootings in April.

But it is Facebook’s role as a petri dish for the social sciences — sociology, psychology and political science — that particularly excites some scholars, because the site lets them examine how people, especially young people, are connected to one another, something few data sets offer, the scholars say.

Social scientists at Indiana, Northwestern, Pennsylvania State, Tufts, the University of Texas and other institutions are mining Facebook to test traditional theories in their fields about relationships, identity, self-esteem, popularity, collective action, race and political engagement.

Much of the research is continuing and has not been published, so findings are preliminary. In a few studies, the Facebook users do not know they are being examined. A spokeswoman for Facebook says the site has no policy prohibiting scholars from studying profiles of users who have not activated certain privacy settings.

“For studying young adults,” said Vincent Roscigno, an editor of The American Sociological Review, “Facebook is the key site of the moment.”

Eliot R. Smith, a professor of psychological and brain sciences at Indiana University, and a colleague received a grant from the National Science Foundation to study how people meet and learn more about potential romantic partners. “Facebook was attractive to us because it has both those kinds of information,” Professor Smith said.

S. Shyam Sundar, a professor and founder of the Media Effects Research Laboratory at Penn State, has led students in several Facebook studies exploring identity. One involved the creation of mock Facebook profiles. Researchers learned that while people perceive someone who has a high number of friends as popular, attractive and self-confident, people who accumulate “too many” friends (about 800 or more) are seen as insecure.

In “The Benefits of Facebook ‘Friends,’” a paper this year in The Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, Nicole Ellison, an assistant professor at Michigan State University, and colleagues found that Facebook use could have a positive impact on students’ well-being. (Note to parents: in an earlier paper the researchers found no correlation between grade-point average and intensity of Facebook use.)

An important finding, Ms. Ellison said, was that students who reported low satisfaction with life and low self-esteem, and who used Facebook intensively, accumulated a form of social capital linked to what sociologists call “weak ties.” A weak tie is a fellow classmate or someone you meet at a party, not a friend or family member. Weak ties are significant, scholars say, because they are likely to provide people with new perspectives and opportunities that they might not get from close friends and family. “With close friends and family we’ve already shared information,” Ms. Ellison said.

Ms. Ellison and her colleagues suggest the information gleaned from Facebook may be more accurate than personal information offered elsewhere online, such as chat room profiles, because Facebook is largely based in real-world relationships that originate in confined communities like campuses.

Mr. Sundar of Penn State agreed. “You cannot keep it fake for that long,” he said. “It’s not a Match.com. You don’t make an impression and then hook somebody.”

But some scholars point out that Facebook is not representative of the ethnicity, educational background or income of the population at large, and its membership is self-selecting, so there are limits to research using the site. Eszter Hargittai, a professor at Northwestern, found in a study that Hispanic students were significantly less likely to use Facebook, and much more likely to use MySpace. White, Asian and Asian-American students, the study found, were much more likely to use Facebook and significantly less likely to use MySpace.

Facebook began in 2004 at Harvard and was restricted to students until 2006. As Ms. Hargittai points out in her paper, “Requiring such an affiliation clearly limited the number and types of people who could sign up for the service in the beginning.”

Most researchers acknowledge these limits, yet they are still eager to plumb the site’s vast amount of data. The site’s users have mixed feelings about being put under the microscope. Katherine Kimmel, 22, a graduate student at the University of Cincinnati, said she found it “fascinating that professors are using something that started solely as a fun social networking tool for entertainment,” and she suggested yet another study: how people fill out Facebook’s “relationship status” box. “You’re not really dating until you put it on Facebook,” she said.

But Derrick B. Clifton, 19, a student at Pomona College in California, said, “I don’t feel like academic research has a place on a Web site like Facebook.” He added that if it was going to happen, professors should ask students’ permission.

Although federal rules govern academic study of human subjects, universities, which approve professors’ research methods, have different interpretations of the guidelines. “The rules were made for a different world, a pre-Facebook world,” said Samuel D. Gosling, an associate professor of psychology at the University of Texas, Austin, who uses Facebook to explore perception and identity. “There is a rule that you are allowed to observe public behavior, but it’s not clear if online behavior is public or not.”

Indiana University appears to have one of the stricter policies. Its Web site states that the university will not approve academic research without permission from social networking sites or specific individuals.

Professor Hargittai of Northwestern conducted her Facebook study through a writing course that is required of all students at the University of Illinois, Chicago. Some 1,060 participants answered survey questions on paper. Professor Ellison of Michigan State used a random sample of 800 undergraduates who were invited to participate via an e-mail message that included a link to an online survey.

Dr. Christakis of Harvard said he and his colleagues were studying the profiles of the East Coast college class with the approval of Harvard’s Institutional Review Board, and with the knowledge of the unnamed college’s administration — but unknown to the students being studied.

“Employers are looking at people’s online postings and Googling information about them, and I think researchers are right behind them,” said Dr. Christakis, a sociologist and internist who was an author of a study that received wide attention this year for its suggestion that obesity is “socially contagious.” (The researchers did not use Facebook.)

Among other topics, the Harvard-U.C.L.A. researchers are investigating a concept, first put forth by the pioneering German sociologist Georg Simmel, known as triadic closure: whether one’s friends are also friends of one another. If this seems trivial, consider that a study in 2004 in The American Journal of Public Health suggested that adolescent girls who are socially isolated and whose friends are not friends with one another experienced more suicidal thoughts.

“Triadic closure was first described by Simmel 100 years ago,” Dr. Christakis said. “He just theorizes about it 100 years ago, but he didn’t have the data. Now we can engage that data.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/17/st...cebook.html?hp





Free Trade Zones Ease Passage of Counterfeit Drugs
Walt Bogdanich

Along a seemingly endless row of identical gray warehouses, a lone guard stands watch over a shuttered storage area with a peeling green and yellow sign: Euro Gulf Trading.

Three months ago, when the authorities announced that they had seized a large cache of counterfeit drugs from Euro Gulf’s warehouse deep inside a sprawling free trade zone here, they gave no hint of the raid’s global significance.

But an examination of the case reveals its link to a complex supply chain of fake drugs that ran from China through Hong Kong, the United Arab Emirates, Britain and the Bahamas, ultimately leading to an Internet pharmacy whose American customers believed they were buying medicine from Canada, according to interviews with regulators and drug company investigators in six countries.

The seizure highlights how counterfeit drugs move in a global economy, and why they are so difficult to trace. And it underscores the role played by free trade zones — areas specially designated by a growing number of countries to encourage trade, where tariffs are waived and there is minimal regulatory oversight.

The problem is that counterfeiters use free trade zones to hide — or sanitize — a drug’s provenance, or to make, market or relabel adulterated products, according to anticounterfeiting experts.

“Free trade zones allow counterfeiters to evade the laws of the country because often times the regulations are lax in these zones,” said Ilisa Bernstein, director of pharmacy affairs at the United States Food and Drug Administration. “This is where some of the Internet sellers work,” she added.

Dubai is particularly attractive to counterfeiters because of its strategic location on the Persian Gulf between Asia, Europe and Africa. Records show that nearly a third of all counterfeit drugs confiscated in Europe last year came from the United Arab Emirates. “Three or four years ago, Dubai did not even appear on the radar screen,” said an investigator for a major American drug company who is based in China and requested anonymity because he did not have authority to speak for his employer.

Dubai is vulnerable because of the huge volume of goods that move through its free trade areas, and because of what is perceived by some in the pharmaceutical industry to be a murky line of authority for rooting out counterfeits there. “It is not clear that the normal Dubai customs authorities have jurisdiction,” said Rubie Mages, a director of global security for Pfizer.

The authorities in Dubai do show a willingness to act when drug company investigators tip them to possible counterfeits, as they did in the raid announced earlier this year. “Dubai has taken a big step in fighting the counterfeiters,” said Ahmed Butti Ahmed, director general of Dubai customs.

But significant quantities of fake drugs are still getting through, international health officials say. And as countries create more free zones, counterfeiters have more options. “What happens is they move around,” said Ms. Bernstein of the F.D.A. Sometimes, in an attempt to avoid detection, they move products between free zones.

“It’s not just the U.A.E. trade zones that are a problem, but free zones around the world,” said Steve Allen, a senior investigator for Pfizer, who was in Dubai early this month to talk to customs officials.

One problem area, counterfeiting experts say, is the Colón Free Trade Zone, situated next to the Panama Canal.

In June, the Panamanian authorities raided a warehouse there that was used by an Australian, George Adams, to run his Internet pharmacy business. No charges were filed in connection with that raid, but about $50,000 in drugs were seized, Mr. Adams said. Several months earlier, Mr. Adams had been arrested for trying to sell counterfeit Viagra. He said he was “set up” and denies any wrongdoing.

Mr. Allen, of Pfizer, said his latest concern involves counterfeit shipments passing through Jordan and Mauritius, an island east of Africa.

In July, the authorities in Dubai said fake drugs from Mauritius had been seized at a free zone next to the Dubai airport. There were more than half a million pills of counterfeit Plavix, a blood-thinning drug made by the French company Sanofi-Aventis.

The Dubai health authorities say they do not know who made it.

Some pills, a government official said at the time, contained cement powder.

A Suspicious Shipment

On May 22, 2006, British customs officials made a troubling discovery at Heathrow Airport in London. They intercepted 846 pounds of pharmaceuticals, mostly counterfeits of products made by such well-known companies as Merck, Novartis, AstraZeneca, Pfizer and Procter & Gamble. Some medication contained traces of metal.

These were not just lifestyle drugs; this medicine was supposed to treat high blood pressure, high cholesterol, osteoporosis and acid reflux, among other ailments.

Where the drugs came from and where they were going struck inspectors as odd.

The shipment had arrived from the United Arab Emirates en route to its next destination: the Bahamas. This was not a route the drug companies used, said Nimo Ahmed, head of intelligence for the British drug regulatory agency. “What triggered this particular interception was that the pharmaceutical companies had conducted some awareness training with customs in Heathrow to explain suspicious routes,” Mr. Ahmed said.

Pfizer took a particular interest in the case. Thousands of pills of its cholesterol-fighting drug Lipitor had been among those counterfeited, the company said.

Pfizer, which runs one of the industry’s most sophisticated anticounterfeiting operations, contacted Bahamian law enforcement officials in the hope they would investigate the intended recipient of the Heathrow cache. In early June, the Bahamian authorities followed up and raided the Personal Touch Pharmacy in Freeport, seizing nearly $4 million in drugs, some of which turned out to be counterfeit, investigators said.

Eventually it was determined that the pharmacy did $8 million in annual business. The question was, with whom?

Meanwhile, back in London, there was the matter of tracing the drugs back to their source. That led to one of the many free trade zones in the United Arab Emirates. Those zones are major revenue producers for the emirates and, according to a 2006 State Department report, 17 of them were in operation, with 11 more in development.

“The government in Dubai, believing in the liberal market, adopted this concept,” said Mohammed Y. Rai Al Boom, a spokesman for the Dubai Airport Free Zone Authority. “It is very convenient to get products in and out of Dubai.”

Mr. Ahmed, the British health official, said the zones were set up to encourage legitimate trade. “They will process packages quicker, receive fees for them, and if everything is done legitimately it’s a win-win for everybody,” he said. But, he added, “counterfeiters are using it as a way to hide where their products are originally sourced.”

Free zones act as way stations for goods moving around the globe. Since most of the shipments do not officially enter the country, there are fewer bureaucratic entanglements. In the emirates’ zones, the usual requirement for local ownership of companies is waived, and there are no import and export fees or income tax.

Shipping records showed that the Heathrow container came from a company located in a free zone in Sharjah, one of the emirates.

Drug company investigators say that shortly after the raid in the Bahamas, an effort was made to hide additional drug stock by moving it from Sharjah to the Jebel Ali Free Zone.

Afaque Ahmed Khan, a business executive in Dubai, has seen Jebel Ali grow from nothing. “It’s literally like someone walking in the sand and placing his figure on a spot and saying, ‘This here is going to be the transit point for trade, globally,’” Mr. Khan said. “And that’s what happened, literally.”

By far the biggest and oldest free zone in Dubai, Jebel Ali is home to some 6,000 companies. A major new airport is being built to complement the seaport, where millions of containers from boats around the world are unloaded each year.

The counterfeit drugs were put in warehouse VC-08, which belonged to Euro Gulf, a trading house that sells laundry, household cleaning and personal care products, according to its Web site. “Our proactive international strategy has resulted in an increase in exports to more than 40 countries worldwide,” the Web site said.

But customs officials in Dubai had been alerted to what was inside. They swept in, found counterfeit drugs and charged seven people with various crimes.

A Canadian Pharmacy

In the Bahamas, investigators had also made an important discovery. The computers at Personal Touch Pharmacy were connected to a server hosting a Canadian Internet pharmacy Web site.

The site belonged to RxNorth, described by one trade association as the world’s first major online pharmacy.

A founder, Andrew Strempler, had been the subject of numerous profiles, including one in The New York Times in 2005 that described how at the age of 30 he had two Dodge Vipers, a Jaguar and a yellow Lamborghini with a license plate that reads “RX Boss.”

The article reported that Mr. Strempler’s innovation “created a whole new Canadian industry that has plugged a niche in America’s troubled health care system almost overnight, providing about $800 million worth of low-cost drugs a year to two million uninsured and underinsured Americans, many elderly.” Drugs have traditionally been cheaper in Canada because of its health care system.

The big pharmaceutical companies were not pleased. Pfizer and Merck cut off his supplies, forcing Mr. Strempler to buy from other wholesalers.

That was not Mr. Strempler’s only setback. According to the Manitoba Pharmaceutical Association newsletter, the group’s discipline committee concluded that in 2001 Mr. Strempler had improperly filled “in excess of 10,000 orders for medications for patients residing in the United States of America without receiving prescriptions from a medical practitioner or dentist licensed to practice in Canada.”

Mr. Strempler’s online business began to unravel last year when Edward Hector, a former customer service employee, complained to a Canadian television station about the company’s business practices. In a recent interview, Mr. Hector said he was told, “Under no circumstances are you to tell any customer that their medication comes from the Bahamas.” Mr. Hector said he left RxNorth in May 2006 after working there for a little more than a year.

Mr. Strempler did not return telephone messages seeking comment, but he has publicly defended his products. The television station also quoted him as saying customers were not told about the Bahamas because medicine coming through there might actually originate in Europe or Australia. It was not clear if he knew the true source of drugs being dispensed by the company in the Bahamas.

In fact, drug company investigators say, some of them were coming from China, a country known for producing counterfeit medicine.

“We traced the source of the medicines and determined that they had been manufactured in China,” said Ms. Mages of Pfizer. From the mainland it went to Hong Kong, then to the United Arab Emirates and the Bahamas, where individual prescriptions were filled and put into packets and addressed.

“Instead of sending it directly to the patient, it then went back to the U.K., where U.K. postage would be affixed, and then it would be mailed to the U.S.,” Ms. Mages said. “This was done to lend credibility to the medicine.”

Drug company investigators say they believe that at least some of the counterfeit drugs seized at the Jebel Ali zone were following that same route.

Mr. Ahmed, the British health official, said circuitous routes were used to avoid customs checks. “The chance of getting intercepted lessens if they use this route,” he said. And Ms. Mages cited another reason: “The whole purpose of going through multiple points of entry is to disguise the source.”

In August and September of last year, the F.D.A. intercepted 5,000 packages from the online pharmacy. At the same time, the agency also warned Americans not to buy 10 drugs from RxNorth or related Web sites because preliminary testing had found counterfeits.

The drugs named were: Lipitor, Crestor and Zetia, for cholesterol; Diovan and Hyzaar, for high blood pressure; Actonel for osteoporosis; Nexium for reflux disease; Celebrex for arthritis pain; Arimidex for breast cancer; and Propecia for baldness.

Trail’s End

Mr. Strempler has not been charged with any crime relating to RxNorth, and published reports say about a year ago he transferred dispensing operations to another Canadian online pharmacy.

The F.D.A. declined to comment on RxNorth. Health Canada, the national health agency, said it “cannot comment on ongoing investigations, specific companies or alleged violations with respect to possible counterfeit activity.”

In the Bahamas, a pharmacist and office manager for Personal Touch Pharmacy face trial next year on conspiracy and fraud charges, said Garvin Gaskin, chief counsel for the office of attorney general in the Bahamas.

In Dubai, seven officials associated with Euro Gulf were convicted recently and sent to prison, customs officials said. “We have been successful in getting customs authorities to work with us to inspect and to seize questionable goods, but we still have a long way to go,” Ms. Mages said.

And Mr. Ahmed, the British health official, said he expected individuals to be tried next year on charges relating to RxNorth’s links to Britain. He declined to elaborate.

But a critical piece of the puzzle remains missing — who made the counterfeit drugs? Investigators had obtained the license number of a truck that brought the suspect medicine into Hong Kong from mainland China. But that turned out to be a dead end.

And even if investigators do find the factory, there is no shortage of Chinese companies making fake, subpotent or adulterated drug products.

“Some of them in the morning, they manufacture good drugs and in the afternoon and evening they manufacture counterfeit medicine,” said Dr. Mohammed Abu Elkhair, a health official in Abu Dhabi who helped organize a conference last month in the capital city to educate United Arab Emirates officials on how to combat counterfeit medicine.

In October, The New York Times reported that scores of Chinese chemical companies were exporting drug ingredients even though they were not licensed to do so.

Calling counterfeit medicine a growing global threat, Dr. Abu Elkhair said one only had to look at a mass poisoning in Panama last year to understand the seriousness of the problem. More than a hundred people died there because the government had unwittingly mixed a counterfeit ingredient made by a chemical company in China into cold medicine.

“The people there lost faith in the whole health care system, not just in the drug regulations authority,” he said.

Andrew W. Lehren contributed reporting from New York, and R. M. Koster from Panama.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/17/wo...eezone.html?hp





Bob Marley and Sons Take Top 3 Spots on Reggae Chart

More than 26 years after his death, Bob Marley continues to sell records, topping Billboard's year-end Top Reggae Albums chart.

The list-capping title, "Forever Bob Marley" (Madacy Special Products/Madacy), is a set of songs from the reggae great's pre-Island Records days.

Bob Marley & the Wailers also come in at No. 9 with "Africa Unite: The Singles Collection" (Island/Tuff Gong/UMe/IDJMG) and No. 10 with "Gold" (Tuff Gong/Island/Chronicles/UMe), both selections of such fan favorites as "Stir It Up" and "Get Up, Stand Up."
Carrying on the family tradition, Marley's sons Stephen and Damian claim the No. 2 and 3 rungs on the year-end reggae albums chart with "Mind Control" (Ghetto Youths/Tuff Gong/Universal Republic/UMRG) and "Welcome to Jam Rock" (Ghetto Youths/Tuff Gong/Universal Republic/UMRG), respectively. The brothers also rank at Nos. 3 and 4 on the Top Reggae Artists year-end chart.

For the second year in a row, New Yorker Matisyahu tops the Reggae Artists chart, continuing to garner new fans with his mix of hip-hop and reggae, as well as his lyrics about his Hasidic Jewish background. His three albums, "Youth" (Or/Epic/Sony Music), "No Place to Be" (One Haven/Or/Epic/Sony Music) and "Live at Stubb's" (Or/Epic/Sony Music), are Nos. 5, 6 and 11, respectively, on the Top Reggae Albums chart.

Longtime star Sean Paul's "The Trinity" (VP/Atlantic/AG) reaches No. 4 on the Top Reggae Albums chart for 2007, dropping from the No. 1 spot in 2006. Paul also comes in at No. 5 on the Top Reggae Artists recap.

Elsewhere, VP's "Reggae Gold" compilations continued to do well, with the 2006 edition rounding out the album chart at No. 15 and the 2007 edition coming in at No. 8.

Controversial artist Beenie Man, who has been accused of inciting violence against homosexuals in the past and was cited by a Jamaican court for tax evasion earlier this year, ranks at No. 14 on the Top Reggae Albums chart for "Undisputed" (Shocking Vibes/Virgin) and No. 10 on the Top Reggae Artists chart.
http://www.reuters.com/article/music...33500220071217





Digital Business Heats Up For Latin Music

After years of modest results, the digital marketplace in 2007 finally began to yield considerable revenue streams for Latin labels and acts.

Sales of Latin digital albums numbered 477,000 units by December 10, according to Nielsen SoundScan -- 1.6 percent of all Latin albums sold. That figure is still significantly less than the 10.4 percent portion of album sales overall that were digital, but far exceeds the 293,000 digital album sales tallied for Latin music in 2006.

Growth has been bolstered by iTunes Latino's solidified status as a destination for a vast, well-catalogued library of music and by the proliferation of videos by Latin acts now found on YouTube. Ringtones and master ringtones are also growing sources of revenue for Latin labels.

Following are five digital stories that altered the Latin music business in 2007 and will likely have an impact in 2008.

1. Juanes: Worldwide, according to label Universal Music Latino, Juanes sold 6 million digital tracks the week prior to release of "La Vida Es ... Un Ratico." That number includes singles, master ringtones and digital albums broken down by tracks. It also includes digital albums preloaded onto mobile phones -- including 500,000 in Latin America, according to Universal. In the United States, bolstered by a major sponsorship with Sprint and heavy promotion on sites like iTunes, iTunes Latino and Univision.com, the album sold 8,000 digital copies during its first week, according to Nielsen SoundScan -- a record for a Latin album.

2. Zune: In a sign that Microsoft is taking Latin music seriously, Zune launched its first custom device with reggaeton duo Wisin & Yandel. The W&Y Zune was sold as a limited edition exclusively via Wal-Mart and promoted in a massive multimedia campaign. Wisin & Yandel's "Los Extraterrestres" notched the second-highest debut for a Latin album this year. Zune promises more extensive alliances with Latin acts in coming months, including cross-promotion with properties like MSN and aggressive promotion of digital sales in its Zune marketplace.

3. Univision: The dominant label group in regional Mexican, finally made its catalog available as mastertones this year, giving the top-selling Latin subgenre a chance to translate its popularity to mobile. Results so far have been promising: Alacranes Musical's "Por Tu Amor" has shifted 39,000 master ringtones since it was made available in May, according to Nielsen RingScan, compared with 6,000 tones of the group's top-selling polyphonic, "No Voy a Llorar." Other Univision artists, like Ivy Queen, are also regulars on Nielsen RingScan's charts.

4. Preloaded music: Labels increasingly crafted deals with carriers and handset manufacturers to preload music and other music-related content onto cell phones. In Latin America, the practice is the norm for established acts, including Ricky Martin, Juanes, Mana and RBD. Newer acts will begin taking advantage of the trend when Sony Ericsson debuts its new Walkman phones by year's end in Latin America, featuring music from Sony/ATV Music Publishing's roster of proven and developing artists.

5. MySpace: 2007 saw the launch of MySpace Mexico, MySpace Latin America and MySpace Latino, a Spanish-language site directed at the U.S. market. Since the launches, MySpace says unique monthly visitors in Latin America have nearly doubled to about 4.3 million and in Mexico have more than doubled to 1.5 million. MySpace Latino sponsored its first tour this year, with the bilingual, U.S.-based band B-Side Players.
http://www.reuters.com/article/techn...33511720071217





Celine Dion, She Went On and On
Melena Ryzik

For the final performance of “A New Day,” Celine Dion’s show at Caesars Palace here last weekend, M J Wylie, 49, a health-care consultant from Denver, decided to go formal. She wore a floor-length black gown and a sparkly white shawl; around her neck was a silver pendant in the shape of the show’s first logo, an elongated figure of a woman. Inside her $3,400 Judith Leiber clutch, bought at the gift shop adjacent to the theater and also bedazzled with the logo, were several autographed photos of Ms. Dion with Ms. Wylie. It was an undeniably elegant ensemble; the only problem, Ms. Wylie said, was that her dress hid her commemorative “New Day” tattoo.

It was her 62nd time at the show.

On Saturday night about 4,000 fans bid farewell to “A New Day,” which has been running in the custom-built Colosseum theater at Caesars since March 25, 2003. Over 717 performances, nearly three million people have seen the show, an elaborate hybrid of a concert and a Cirque du Soleil-style spectacle with a cast of 50 dancers and musicians.

“I’m trying to elongate the evening,” Ms. Dion said in the two-hour final show, during which she went through seven costume changes and several speeches about her career and family. Despite early negative reviews and her desire to stay home with her young son, Ms. Dion said she was glad she stuck it out. “It’s quite hard to believe that we’ve come to an end,” she said to the crowd. “I think you understand our emotions tonight.” Almost every number was punctuated by ovations; Ms. Dion said she was “extremely in shock that, night after night, week after week, year after year, you came, you were here.”

Ms. Wylie said, “It’s been my escape for the last five years.” She likened her fervor to a drug addiction — except, she said, “it’s legal, it’s wholesome.” But it’s also pricey: She estimated she had easily spent $15,000 to $20,000 on her Dion habit. Over the years fans like her, flocking to Las Vegas from all corners of the globe, have helped pull in $400 million in sales, the show’s producers said.

And between the hundreds of dancers, musicians, makeup artists, costumers, prop masters, and other technicians and staff members the production employs, and the gift shop hawking everything from branded golf balls to “Always Belong” perfume, a kind of Celine Dion cottage industry has sprung up around Caesars. On Saturday night the store did a brisk business in baseball hats, T-shirts, shot glasses and books — though, since it was the last night of the show, much was 50 percent off.

Gary Selesner, the president of Caesars Palace, credited Ms. Dion with revitalizing the fortunes of the hotel itself.

When Ms. Dion first came up with the idea of a residency in Las Vegas around 2000, that kind of success was far from assured, as she recounted in a behind-the-scenes documentary on the show’s DVD (released on Tuesday and already selling out). For starters there was nowhere to house her; Caesars built a 4,100-seat theater for her at a cost of $95 million. Inspired by a performance of Cirque du Soleil’s “O,” Ms. Dion hired its director, Franco Dragone. He brought in many signature high-tech and surrealist elements, like an enormous LED screen backdrop (cue the flying doves and celestial imagery), floating lampposts and trapezes. The choreography, by the pop mainstay Mia Michaels (“So You Think You Can Dance?”), was acrobatic. A white-clad dancer-mime was on the edge of nearly every scene.

But at the center of the production was Ms. Dion, the French-Canadian Grammy-winning, platinum-selling artist whose ballads, like “My Heart Will Go On” will be familiar to anyone who has ever been in a karaoke bar. Her nearly $100 million Las Vegas contract was considered one of the most lucrative — and risky — in the touring industry, but despite three-figure tickets, the show routinely sold out. The success helped spur a revival in artist residencies, a trend that last flourished during the Rat Pack era. Elton John is already performing at Caesars. In February Bette Midler will move into Ms. Dion’s theater, and Ms. Dion will begin a worldwide tour for her new album, “Taking Chances.”

In an interview outside the gift shop, Luc Plamondon, a Paris-based songwriter who has worked with Ms. Dion, said that many in the music industry initially questioned her decision to do a residency. “Nobody understood,” he said. “It was like she was sacrificing her career to do a revue in Vegas. But it was a great choice because instead of always fighting to be a pop singer” — in other words, fighting to have the latest big hit — “she put aside her pop career and she made a transition to a kind of diva career.”

Moments later, Mr. Plamondon was swarmed by people seeking autographs and photos.

The ferocity of Ms. Dion’s fan base (at least one person came to see the show more than 100 times, and a mother and son from Quebec admitted to having a Dion shrine in their home) may be surprising in this fractured, musical age.

“She sings about what every woman wants — love,” said Dana DiMatteo, from Orlando, Fla., who was taken to the show as an anniversary present. Mr. husband, Tony, said, “She’d be great if she weren’t so schmaltzy and cheesy.” (His musical taste runs more toward System of a Down.)

But Ms. Dion’s audience, which congregates online at celinedionforum.com, was not only after romance. Estevam Peric, 28, a financial analyst from Săo Paolo, Brazil, has amassed a collection of 450 Celine recordings of various kinds and had seen “A New Day” 25 times. Why? “For me, Celine is like an angel,” he said. “The energy and the strength that she brings is unbelievable.”

At the show fans posed for photos with a wax figurine of Ms. Dion. Their devotion was matched only by the performers’. By consensus Las Vegas’s tightly knit show-business community considered Ms. Dion’s show a good one to work on; many dancers and staff members stayed on for the full five-year run, a rarity in the industry, especially considering the grueling set-up. (The stage is raked at a punishing 5.7-degree angle, and injuries are common. Ms. Dion’s advice to Ms. Midler: “Tell them to fix the stage.”)

The longevity made the final performance bittersweet. “I didn’t sleep at all last night — I don’t think many of us did,” Trevelynn Henuset, the staff chiropractor for the duration of the run, said on Saturday. A few hours before curtain, the cast held an open mic to share their feelings, and their tears. “This is probably one of the greatest shows ever assembled in the world, as far as I’m concerned,” added Dr. Henuset, a well-known figure among Vegas dancers.

For Ms. Dion, a dedicated entertainer who performed — through tears — on the day her father died, the final show was a testament to her resolve over a process that sometimes felt, she said, “like the Titanic was going to sink again.”

In a post-show news conference in the theater, she said: “Tonight I was emotionally invaded. It was very important for me to pace myself, and try not to cry.” Showered by red rose petals from the ceiling, and joined by her husband and manager, René Angélil, and her 7-year-old son, René-Charles — whose appearance drew constant awws — she remained composed at the final curtain call. A standing ovation lasted nearly 10 minutes.

For fans who could not make it to Vegas to see the final spectacle, there is some solace: 200 movie theaters across the country will screen the show today (fathomevents.com has details). Of course, for mega-fans like Ms. Wylie and Mr. Peric, the show will go on; between them they already have tickets to Ms. Dion’s tour from Amsterdam to Denver.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/17/ar...17celi.html?hp





Singer/Songwriter Dan Fogelberg Dies At 56

Dan Fogelberg, the singer and songwriter whose hits "Longer," "Leader of the Band" and "Same Old Lang Syne" helped define the soft rock era, died today (Dec. 16) at his home in Maine after battling prostate cancer. He was 56.

"Dan left us this morning at 6:00 a.m. He fought a brave battle with cancer and died peacefully at home in Maine with his wife Jean at his side," reads a statement posted on Fogelberg's Web site. "His strength, dignity and grace in the face of the daunting challenges of this disease were an inspiration to all who knew him."

Fogelberg discovered he had advanced prostate cancer in 2004. In a statement then, he thanked fans for their support: "It is truly overwhelming and humbling to realize how many lives my music has touched so deeply all these years ... I thank you from the very depths of my heart."

Fogelberg's music was powerful in its simplicity. He didn't rely on the volume of his voice to convey his emotions; instead, they came through in the soft, tender delivery and his poignant lyrics. Songs like "Same Old Lang Syne," in which a man reminisces after meeting an old girlfriend by chance during the holidays, became classics not only because of his performance, but for the engaging storyline as well.

Fogelberg's heyday was in the 1970s and early '80s, when he scored several platinum and multi-platinum records fueled by such hits as "The Power of Gold" and "Leader of the Band," a touching tribute he wrote to his father, a bandleader.

Later in his career, he would write material that focused on the state of the environment, an issue close to his heart. Fogelberg's last album was 2003's "Full Circle," his first of original material in a decade. A year later, he would receive his cancer diagnosis, forcing him to forgo a planned fall tour.
http://www.billboard.com/bbcom/news/..._id=1003686059





Ike Turner Dead At 76
FMQB

Rock & Roll pioneer Ike Turner passed away at the age of 76 on Wednesday. He died at his home in San Marcos, CA, right outside of San Diego, though the cause of death has not been released. While Turner is often remembered for his gruff image as the abusive and drug-addicted husband of Tina Turner, his impact on music cannot be denied. Turner's 1951 hit with his band the Kings of Rhythm, "Rocket 88," is widely credited as one of the first Rock & Roll songs, and Turner is a member of the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame.

His rise to fame began when he discovered his future wife, then named Anna Mae Bullock, in the mid-1950s. She began singing with his revue and married him in 1958, assuming the stage name Tina Turner. In 1960, the couple launched their Ike and Tina Turner Review and became known for their many hits, including "River Deep, Mountain High" and "Proud Mary." But after a tumultuous relationship, Tina left Ike in 1976.

Though his image was tarnished and he spent time in jail in the early '90s on drug charges, Ike managed to get his career back on track later in life when he toured with the Kings of Rhythm again. He won a Grammy in 2007 for Best Traditional Blues Album for Risin' With the Blues.

The Recording Academy issued a statement saying, "There is no doubt that Ike Turner was one of Rock & Roll's great architects with his genre-defying sound as an instrumentalist and bandleader. As a two-time Grammy Award winner and recipient of The Recording Academy's 2004 Heroes Award, Ike's legacy as a groundbreaking pioneer in the music industry will never be forgotten."

Meanwhile, Tina Turner's rep issued a statement to celebrity blog TMZ.com saying, "Tina is aware that Ike passed away earlier today. She has not had any contact with him in 35 years. No further comment will be made."
http://fmqb.com/Article.asp?id=531391





Ike Turner's Memorial: Moving, Musical
Sandy Cohen

Ike Turner's funeral was part memorial service, part rock concert. The nearly three-hour remembrance Friday at Greater Bethany Community Church City of Refuge in Gardena featured Turner's eight-piece band, the Kings of Rhythm, which performed rollicking renditions of some of the musician's greatest hits, including ''Nutbush City Limits'' and ''Proud Mary.'' The songs brought the crowd of hundreds to its feet.

''Daddy wouldn't want any of us crying,'' said Turner's daughter, Mia Turner. ''He would want us to throw a party.''

Among those eulogizing Turner, who died Dec. 13 at age 76, were music producer Phil Spector and rock 'n' roll pioneer Little Richard, who described his friend as ''one of the greatest musicians I have ever met in my life.''

Richard said that Turner's breakthrough rock 'n' roll hit, ''Rocket 88,'' ''shook my soul.''

''I took that same introduction and made `Good Golly, Miss Molly,''' he said. ''I took that same thing and made a huge hit.''

Spector, who produced Turner's song ''River Deep, Mountain High,'' said, ''There was only one Ike, and I learned more from Ike than any professors I know.''

He went on to say that Turner was ''demonized and vilified'' by his ex-wife, Tina Turner. He called the 1993 film ''What's Love Got To Do With It,'' based on her autobiography, a ''piece of trash movie,'' inspiring applause from some mourners.

''Ike made Tina the jewel she was,'' Spector said.

Spector also accused Oprah Winfrey and Whoopi Goldberg of ''demonizing'' Turner on their talk shows.

Of Turner's time in California state prison for a drug conviction in the mid-1980s, Spector said, ''He was sent to prison for no other reason than he was a black man in America.''

Other speakers included Ike Turner, Jr., who brought his father's two Grammy Awards on stage.

''He made billions and billions and billions of people happy,'' he said. ''He had the best life.''

The service began with a photo montage from throughout Turner's life set to his song ''Jesus Loves Me,'' which features the refrain ''I'm a bad boy, but Jesus loves me anyway.''
http://www.wtopnews.com/?nid=114&sid=1315229





Singing of Love and Murder, and Then Dying
James C. McKinley Jr.

Mexico’s country music stars are being killed at an alarming rate — 13 in the past year and a half, three already in December — in a trend that has gone hand in hand with the surge in violence between drug gangs here.

None of the cases have been solved. All have borne the signs of Mexican underworld executions, sending a chill through the ranks of other grupero musicians, who sing to a country beat about love, violence and drugs in modern Mexico.

One of the most shocking attacks came when Sergio Gómez, the founder and lead singer of K-Paz de la Sierra, was kidnapped while leaving a concert in his home state of Michoacán early on the morning of Dec. 2.

His body was found the next day dumped on a roadside outside this city, the state capital. He had been beaten, tortured with a cigarette lighter, then strangled with a plastic cord, officials said. He was 34 and had just been nominated for a Grammy Award.
“We don’t understand why this happened,” his uncle, Froylán Gómez, said in an interview. “He never did anyone any harm.”

The motives for the killings remain a matter of speculation, and no evidence has been found to link them to a single killer. In some cases, the musicians appeared to have ties to organized crime figures, making them potential targets in reprisal attacks from rival gangs.

Others had composed ballads known as narcocorridos, glorifying the shadow world of drug dealers and hit men, which can offend other drug dealers and hit men. In still other cases, as the musicians’ fame grew, they may have become embroiled with criminals unwittingly.

“Sometimes there is a direct relationship between the musician and the narcotics trafficker,” said Miguel Olmos, a musicologist at the College of the Northern Border in Tijuana. “But also there are a lot of passionate crimes. That is to say, the musician establishes some sort of sentimental relationship with people who are linked to this culture of violence and of narcotics trafficking, and somehow it gets out of hand. They always touch some nerve of the trafficker.”

In the case of Mr. Gómez, who was best known for his stirring love songs, prosecutors are investigating whether he had ties to organized crime. So far, however, the investigation into his abduction has been a morass of conflicting accounts, missing witnesses and loose ends unlikely to be tied up soon.

Investigators have yet to interview the two impresarios with Mr. Gómez when he was kidnapped, nor have they interviewed the other members of his group. “We hope we can locate all these people,” said María Elena Cornejo Chávez, the assistant attorney general of Michoacán State. “It’s very complicated for us because they all left the state.”

The killings have been particularly brutal. On Thursday, José Luis Aquino, 33, a trumpet player with Los Conde, was found beaten to death in Oaxaca State, with a plastic bag over his head and his hands and feet tied.

On Dec. 1, Zayda Peńa, the raven-haired lead singer of Zayda y los Culpables, was shot in a motel room in Matamoros in Tamaulipas State. She survived the attack, but the killers followed her to the hospital and finished her off with two more bullets as she lay in bed. She was 28.

“We are in shock, because it’s a weird thing that in one week three members of the grupero wave would be killed,” José Ángel Medina, the leader of the group Patrulla 81, told reporters after the recent killings. “We are afraid because we are superexposed, and this could keep going. We don’t know who’s next.”

Entire groups have been targeted as well. Four members of Los Padrinos de la Sierra were shot and killed in Durango State on June 9. On Feb. 19, assassins with machine guns attacked the members of Tecno Banda Fugaz in the town of Puruarán, Michoacán, killing four and wounding one.

The toll in 2006 was equally grim. On Aug. 9, three members of Explosión Norteńa, a group who dedicated themselves to songs about drug traffickers, were shot and seriously wounded in their offices in Tijuana, across the border from San Diego.

Nov. 25 of that year brought the assassination of the singer Valentín Elizalde, 25, along with his manager and driver, shortly after a show in the border town of Reynosa, Tamaulipas, across from McAllen, Tex. More than 66 rounds from an AK-47 were fired into their car.

A month later, Javier Moralez Gómez, a member of Los Implacables del Norte, was shot to death in Huetamo, Michoacán.

All the victims played various genres of Mexican country music, distinguished by its oompah beat and maudlin lyrics about everything from unrequited love to famous bandits.

Some were known particularly for their narcocorridos. One of Ms. Peńa’s hits, for instance, was “Tiro de Gracia,” a reference to gangland executions. Mr. Elizalde was also well known for his ballads about bandits and drug kingpins.

Mr. Gómez, of K-Paz de la Sierra, however, was different. His biggest hits were love songs like “Mi Credo” (My Creed) and “Volveré” (I Will Return.) His band played in the Durango dance style, characterized by the prominence of brass instruments and a superfast, march beat. Like many other grupero combos, the band members wore identical western suits and cowboy hats.

News of his death prompted some musicians to cancel concerts in Michoacán. Others said the killings made them nervous about appearing in public.

“These assassinations have been done with a lot of cruelty and this makes us tense,“ said Jorge Medina, a singer with La Arrolladora Banda, in a televised interview.

Michoacán investigators say Mr. Gómez left a stadium in Morelia after his concert at about 3:30 a.m. on Dec. 2, a Sunday. He was in the company of a driver and two music industry executives, Javier Rivera and Víctor Hugo Sánchez. They drove off in a sedan, the police said. The other seven musicians in the band and two of Mr. Gómez’s brothers followed in other cars.

A short while later, a member of the group called the federal police and reported that Mr. Gómez and the two businessmen had been abducted by armed men about three miles outside Morelia on the highway to Salamanca. The federal police informed the state police, the authorities said.

What happened next remains unclear. The state police maintain that when they arrived at the scene, federal agents told them they had interviewed the two businessmen and determined the kidnapping had been a false alarm, said Ms. Cornejo, the deputy state attorney general. A spokesman for the federal attorney’s office in Morelia, Miguel Ángel Hernández, confirmed this account.

Yet Mr. Gómez was tortured to death between 4:30 a.m. and 11 a.m. on Dec. 2 in an unknown place, an autopsy found. He had been beaten badly, around the head and chest. His thighs and genitals had been burned with a flame. He died of strangulation.

In Ciudad Hidalgo, a small farming town nestled in a valley about 60 miles east of Morelia, people remembered Mr. Gómez with warmth. He had grown up there, the son of a local singer who never made the big time, in a modest house in a poor neighborhood. While still a teenager, he married a girl from a nearby ranch, lived in his parent’s home, fathered his first child and went to work as a cabinet maker.

The entire family moved to Chicago during the financial crisis in the mid-1990’s, where Mr. Gómez worked menial jobs, fathered two more children and ran into trouble with immigration authorities. Eventually he found work as a sound technician for a band, Montéz de Durango.

In 2003, he and three musicians from that group formed K-Paz de la Sierra. His career took off. The band recorded four highly successful albums and regularly toured arenas and large concert halls venues in Mexico.

He also visited Ciudad Hidalgo every year and gave thousands of dollars to expand the grade school where he studied as a child. He never put on airs with his old friends, neighbors said. “He always behaved very well,” said one acquaintance, who asked not to be identified for fear of drug dealers. “He was not one to be very snobbish.”

His wife, Felicita, told reporters he seemed relaxed in the days just before his death and never mentioned any threats. “I never saw him nervous or expecting something bad,” she said.

Froylán Gómez noted that his nephew never sang about drug dealers or used drugs himself. “This man didn’t even smoke or drink,” he said. “We cannot understand why it happened. The whole family is demanding justice. We want to know who is the author of this crime.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/18/wo...mexico.html?hp





County Records Release Ordered

Judge rules Democratic Party has right to inspect '06 election files
Andrea Kelly

Pima County will have to turn over electronic database records from past elections to the Pima County Democratic Party, a judge ruled Tuesday.

The county must release records requested a year ago, including copies of the Diebold GEMS databases for the 2006 primary and general elections, because they fall under state public-records law, Pima County Superior Judge Michael Miller said. That means the Democratic Party will have a chance to inspect the records for transparency and security.

Without the records, the party cannot fully monitor elections, a job political parties are required by statute to do, Miller wrote in his ruling. That outweighs the risks associated with making the records public, he wrote.

The party requested the records to fulfill its duty of election monitoring, said the party's attorney Bill Risner.

The Pima County Democratic Party sued the county this year for the electronic databases from past elections. The party requested the databases and passwords be released according to Arizona public-records law. Pima County denied that part of the request, while turning over other records the party asked for.

In closing arguments of the four-day trial that began Dec. 4, Pima County argued the databases meet the definition of a computer program, which is protected by state law, said Deputy County Attorney Thomas Denker.

Releasing the databases could pose the risk of security flaws in future elections, Denker said. People could hack into the system and change the vote numbers or create fake ballots and submit them on election day, he said. There are also unknown risks associated with releasing the databases and associated passwords, he said.

"There is a significant risk these systems could be hacked or discredited," Denker said.

The county was also concerned releasing the passwords for the databases would more easily allow someone to manipulate the results and claim different results than the county had on record, he said. There's also no evidence the records requested would allow someone to discover fraud in an election, Denker said.

The county supervisors will likely meet in a closed-door session at the next scheduled meeting on Jan. 8 to decide whether to release the records or appeal the ruling, said Chris Straub, chief civil deputy Pima County attorney.

He emphasized there was no wrongdoing found on behalf of county elections employees.

During the trial Risner said the case was about the freedoms Americans have, including the ability to change the course of the system by voting.

"You get a cold sweat and think what if our vote was taken from us and then you think what if our vote has been taken from us?" Risner said.

He said the records should be released so the party can carry out its duty of monitoring elections to ensure they are transparent and secure.

While the county cited security issues as a reason the records should not be released, Risner said that's the exact reason they should be released.

"Our political party wants to carry out its role of ensuring our votes' accuracy," he said.

Allowing political parties access to these databases would allow confirmation of vote counts and could lead to a better, more secure system in the the future, he said during the trial.

He said the ruling, which releases the databases for the primary and general elections in 2006, will allow the party to fully monitor elections.

"No one is looking to see what goes on, and it's our role. We want to, and we're going to do it," Risner said.
http://www.azstarnet.com/metro/216878





Voting Machines For Major Counties Decertified

Machines have problems with security, accuracy, Secretary Of State says

Colorado's top election official decertified electronic voting machines used in some of the state's largest counties on Monday, including Denver, Arapahoe and Jefferson.

The devices are also used in Pueblo, Mesa and Elbert counties.

Secretary of State Mike Coffman cited security or accuracy problems in the decertified machines.

A number of electronic scanners used to count ballots were also decertified, including a type used by Boulder County.

Coffman said the system had a 1 percent error rate when counting ballots. "So for every 100 ballots we tested, we found there was an error with one of those ballots," Coffman said.

The manufacturers have 30 days to appeal his ruling.

Coffman announced in March that he had adopted new rules for testing electronic voting machines after problems in the November election.

He said at the time that the four electronic voting systems used in all 64 Colorado counties would have to apply for recertification. The four systems are manufactured by Hart InterCivic, Premier Election Solutions -- formerly known as Diebold Election Systems -- Sequoia Voting Systems and Election Systems and Software.

Coffman had also put Denver, Pueblo, Douglas, Montrose and Routt counties on an election watch list for problems in the November 2006 election. Pueblo has since been removed from the list.

Critics of electronic voting say there are no fixes that will work. Al Kolwicz told 7NEWS that with electronic voting, there is no way to know for certain that a vote has been properly counted.

More lawsuits are possible from both the election machine companies and public interest groups opposed to computerized voting.

On Tuesday, Colorado county clerks and members of the General Assembly will convene at 9 a.m. to hear an explanation from Hoffman about the results of the certification process.

Reaction From County Clerks

"This report is really just part of the larger equation for us. Once we feel we have the full picture of what the Secretary of State's report means, we can move forward with choosing our systems and preparing for the 2008 election season," said Denver Clerk and Recorder Stephanie O'Malley.

"Our number one priority is to ensure that anyone who is registered to vote in next year's election gets a ballot and their vote is counted accurately," said Boulder County Clerk & Recorder Hillary Hall.

She and the Boulder County Elections Division staff have already begun reviewing the Secretary's 188-page document detailing the certification process and its findings.

"We need time to review today's findings and to evaluate the impact on Boulder County's voting system," said Hall. "The document released today is an overview of the testing results and we expect to obtain additional information at tomorrow's hearing. Any statement at this point would be premature. We will keep the public informed as we proceed."
http://www.thedenverchannel.com/poli...34/detail.html





Ohio County to Switch Voting Machines
Julie Carr Smyth

Ohio's chief elections officer decided Friday to have the state's most populous county switch to a new voting system in time for the March 4 presidential primary.

Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner broke a 2-2 tie for the Cuyahoga County Board of Elections, which deadlocked a day earlier on the issue.

She had been pressuring the board to scrap its $21 million electronic touch-screen machines for an optical-scan system, in which a computer scans ballots that voters fill out by hand. She issued a report last week citing security flaws with the current system.

''I find that the move to a high-speed central count optical-scan system for paper ballots for the March 2008 primary election is the best way to ensure a safe, reliable and trustworthy primary election,'' Brunner said in a letter to the director of the Cuyahoga board.

The county will lease equipment from Omaha, Neb.-based Election Systems & Software for about $1 million. That includes high-speed scanners to tally primary votes downtown at the board of elections.

''The question is no longer can we do this,'' said Jane Platten, the board's director. ''The situation is we must do this and we must do it right.''

One of the major jobs will be retraining poll workers.

Platten believes it won't be a difficult transition because this system will be more simple to use.

''They don't have the electronic devices to set up, it's more of a paper management system now,'' she said. ''They're already used to using the optical scan ballots at the precinct. They use them for provisional voting and curbside voting if someone can't get out of their car.''

Governments across the country have bought touch-screen machines to comply with the federal Help America Vote Act.

Many voting problems were reported in Ohio in the 2004 race between President Bush, a Republican, and Democrat John Kerry, including the accuracy of vote totals in precincts using electronic machines. Kerry conceded the election after narrowly losing Ohio's 20 electoral votes.

------

Associated Press writer Joe Milicia in Cleveland contributed to this report.
http://www.al.com/newsflash/national...ylist=national





Texas: Voting System Allows "Corrections"
Warren Stewart

A Houston Chronicle article last week described how, following the November 6 election, Harris County election administrator Johnnie German “used high-security codes to tap into the Harris County elections computer system last week and change some of the results manually.” It seems that the Hart Intercivic voting system used in Harris County allows anyone with access and a passcode to modify vote totals from an election without leaving any record of the modification.

But it gets worse. According to Dan Wallach of Rice University's Computer Security Lab, who served on the task force that recently studied the Hart system as part of the California Secretary of State’s electronic voting system review , the "encryption key" code can be extracted from voting equipment at any precinct.

The necessity for modifying the vote totals in Harris County was the result of confusion during early voting caused by split precincts resulted in 293 voters in Emergency Services District No. 9 being given the wrong ballot and therefore being unable to express an opinion on a sales tax referendum for a fire/ambulance district in the Cypress-Fairbanks area of the county since it didn't appear on their screens.

Computer expert John R. Behrman, who observed the vote adjustments, said he was “shocked” when he saw German use a series of passwords and an "encryption key" -- a series of numbers on a nail file-size computer memory storage device -- to reach a computer program that said "Adjustment." Shocking indeed.

Quote:
"A hundred percent of precincts reporting, and everything had been distributed to the press," he said. "Then and only then did I see how they were going to do this, and frankly I never thought it was possible.

"Basically it turns out, without regard to any ballots that have been cast, you can enter arbitrary numbers in there and report them out in such a way that, unless you go back to these giant (computer) logs and interpret the logs, you wouldn't know it has been done."
It is reasonable that an electronic voting system should provide administrators with procedures with which to make such corrections - if such procedures are secure and accountable. However it seems that the Hart “Adjust” feature fails to provide adequate security or even follow fundamental accounting principles.

With reference to the section of the California team’s report on their review of Hart’s source code that describes the "vote adjustment" feature, Professor Wallach explained in an email posted on Charles Kuffner’s Blog:

Quote:
Hart's tabulation system, "Tally" supports a feature that allows an election administrator (i.e., somebody who knows the special administrator password, has the appropriate USB key token, and has access to the Tally machine) to make pretty much arbitrary changes to the election totals. This functionality operates by directly editing the totals, which goes entirely against standard bookkeeping practices (where you never, ever overwrite a number in the books; you instead add a line to the books that states what the correction is and where the error occurred). Hart's basic design allows for innocent mistakes to go uncorrected, since there is no easy way to audit any corrections that may have been made. Corrections do not show up on official election reports.

As a secondary matter, the security features, intended to prevent unauthorized users from accessing this feature, are similarly inadequate. The password necessary to interact with the database is stored on the disk where any user of the machine can easily access it (see our report, pages 48-49, "Issue 15: Database passwords are stored insecurely"). Similarly, the USB tokens, used to manage cryptographic keys, turn out to all contain precisely the same key, which is used throughout the county. The very same key is stored inside machines in every precinct and can be easily extracted (see our report, pages 55-57, Section 6.7, "Cryptographic Key Management").

So, indeed, Hart has multiple lines of defense. Unfortunately, every one of them is incorrectly engineered, rendering the system entirely vulnerable to compromise. Of course, I am not stating that any such compromise has ever happened in Harris County. What I am saying is that the design of the Hart system is entirely insufficient to prevent such attacks, should a competent attacker wish to make them.
Wallach also notes that as a result of the review of Hart’s system, the California Secretary of State imposed a variety of conditions on the use of Hart systems, but that in Texas, such procedures are far behind the California standards – and in his opinion are unacceptably error-prone and insecure.

Quote:
If Texas were to adopt all of the conditions of how voting systems are used in California (including parallel testing, mandatory paper trails, mandatory audits of the paper trails, limits on the number of DREs per precinct with most voters casting optical scan paper ballots, and so forth) that would be a great start.
Hart Intercivic equipment is used in 16 states nationwide. Some of those states have some of the security procedures that Wallach mentions in place, but many do not. Safeguards to help mitigate these security concerns like those required in California can and should be implemented in all jurisdictions using electronic voting systems.

Above all, it is important to note that the election official in Harris County rightly required bi-partisan observers to be present when he made the correction. Under no circumstances should this type of process occur without appropriate observers, so that everyone understands the purpose for the correction and can verify how it was accomplished. Ideally citizens should be invited to observe as well, not just representatives of political parties.
http://www.verifiedvotingfoundation....le.php?id=6529





Ribbit Unveils Web Telephone Development Platform

Valley start-up Ribbit Corp on Monday unveiled a technology platform that will let developers put Web telephony in everything from business software to popular social network sites such as Facebook.

As well as planning to sell its own services directly to consumers in the first quarter, Ribbit said it is working with more than 600 outside developers who are using its technology to create their own voice applications.

Ribbit software serves as an interface between anything from Web sites, e-mail and instant messaging to mobile or regular phones. Developers do not need to be telephony experts to build services with Adobe's <ADBE.O> Flash software, which works on most computers.

"A developer can take telephony out of our sandbox and bring it to where you live," said Crick Waters, Ribbit's vice president for strategy and business development.

For example, he said that about four developers are using Ribbit to build services that consumers could incorporate into their personal pages on Facebook, a popular online hangout. These services could let members make and log calls and check their voicemail in transcript form without leaving Facebook.

Ribbit has already built an application that businesses will be able use within Salesforce.com Inc's <CRM.N> customer relationship management software. This lets workers dial clients via the Internet from within the application and automatically stores a log of client calls and voicemail transcripts alongside the rest of that client's information.

About 30 corporations are testing the service, which will cost $25 a month per person and be available to Salesforce.com users in the first quarter. Ribbit did not disclose financial terms of its agreement with Salesforce.com.

For other applications that Ribbit is not directly involved in the third-party developer would also pay Ribbit a subscription based on the number of users of their service.

Android For Web Telephony

Services such as Vonage and Skype, owned by eBay, already offer Web calling. But Ovum analyst Brett Azuma said Ribbit's openness to outside developers and its plan to offer new types of services could help it stand out.

"We're talking about a new type of phone company," Azuma said. "The other Web telephone companies such as Vonage are offering the same old stuff with a different technology."

However Azuma said it was less clear that consumers would pay extra to make calls from locations such as Facebook.

"I think the business applications will be the ones that are most attractive" because this will save time for users, Azuma said. "The consumer applications are a little less clear. I don't know what consumers are willing to pay for yet."

Ribbit's announcement comes as the idea of opening up phone networks -- which have long been tightly controlled by network operators such as AT&T Inc and Verizon Communications -- for the wider developer community gains momentum.

Verizon Wireless, the mobile unit of Verizon and Vodafone Group Plc, promised to open its network next year to any device and software that works on its network. Web Search leader Google Inc is creating an open source mobile phone platform "Android" with support from multiple companies.

Ted Griggs, Ribbit Chief Executive and co-founder, described his company as the "Android of Web telephony." He expects Ribbit to be cash-flow positive in the second quarter of 2009.

Ribbit raised $13 million funding from investors including Alsop-Louie Partners, Allegis Capital and KPG Ventures.

Ribbit did not give full details of its own retail service beyond saying it may include voice recording and "goofy" offers like call logs in the form of a picture of the world with red lines crossing between call origin and destination locations.

Ribbit expects in-house services to initially generate the bulk of revenue but marketing executive Don Thorson said the company is expecting enough outside developers will use the service that they will surpass Ribbit brand business.

"Over time we think the business model will change and the developers will overtake us," he said.
http://uk.reuters.com/article/techno...33365320071217





Faster Chips Are Leaving Programmers in Their Dust
John Markoff

When he was chief executive of Intel in the 1990s, Andrew S. Grove would often talk about the “software spiral” — the interplay between ever-faster microprocessor chips and software that required ever more computing power.

The potential speed of chips is still climbing, but now the software they run is having trouble keeping up. Newer chips with multiple processors require dauntingly complex software that breaks up computing chores into chunks that can be processed at the same time.

The challenges have not dented the enthusiasm for the potential of the new parallel chips at Microsoft, where executives are betting that the arrival of manycore chips — processors with more than eight cores, possible as soon as 2010 — will transform the world of personal computing.

The company is mounting a major effort to improve the parallel computing capabilities in its software.

“Microsoft is doing the right thing in trying to develop parallel software,” said Andrew Singer, a veteran software designer who is the co-founder of Rapport Inc., a parallel computing company based in Redwood City, Calif. “They could be roadkill if somebody else figures out how to do this first.”

Mr. Grove’s software spiral started to break down two years ago. Intel’s microprocessors were generating so much heat that they were melting, forcing Intel to change direction and try to add computing power by placing multiple smaller processors on a single chip.

Much like adding lanes on a freeway, the new strategy, now being widely adopted by the entire semiconductor industry, works only to the degree that more cars (or computing instructions) can be packed into each lane (or processor).

The stakes are high. The growth of the computer and consumer electronics industries is driven by a steady stream of advances in both hardware and software, creating new ways to handle audio, video, advanced graphics and the processing of huge amounts of data.

Engineers and computer scientists acknowledge that despite advances in recent decades, the computer industry is still lagging in its ability to write parallel programs.

Indeed, a leading computer scientist has warned that an easy solution to programming chips with dozens of processors has not yet been discovered.

“Industry has basically thrown a Hail Mary,” said David Patterson, a pioneering computer scientist at the University of California, Berkeley, referring to the hardware shift during a recent lecture. “The whole industry is betting on parallel computing. They’ve thrown it, but the big problem is catching it.”

The chip industry has known about the hurdles involved in moving to parallel computing for four decades. One problem is that not all computing tasks can be split among processors.

To accelerate its parallel computing efforts, Microsoft has hired some of the best minds in the field and has set up teams to explore approaches to rewriting the company’s software.

If it succeeds, the effort could begin to change consumer computing in roughly three years. The most aggressive of the Microsoft planners believe that the new software, designed to take advantage of microprocessors now being refined by companies like Intel and Advanced Micro Devices, could bring as much as a hundredfold computing speed-up in solving some problems.

Microsoft executives argue that such an advance would herald the advent of a class of consumer and office-oriented programs that could end the keyboard-and-mouse computing era by allowing even hand-held devices to see, listen, speak and make complex real-world decisions — in the process, transforming computers from tools into companions.

The chip industry will continue to be able to add more transistors to a silicon chip for the foreseeable future, but the problem lies in the amount of power they consume and thus the amount of heat generated. That will limit the rate at which processing speeds increase.

The need to get around what the industry is calling the “power wall” has touched off a frantic hunt for new computing languages, as well as new ways to automatically break up problems so they can be solved more quickly in parallel.

Although the Microsoft effort was started about five years ago by Craig Mundie, one of the company’s three chief technical officers, it picked up speed recently with the hiring of a number of experts from the supercomputing industry and academia.

Mr. Mundie himself is a veteran of previous efforts in the supercomputer industry during the 1980s and 1990s to make breakthroughs in parallel computing. “I’m happy that by hiring a bunch of old hands, who have been through these wars for 10 or 20 years, we at least have a nucleus of people who kind of know what’s possible and what isn’t,” he said.

The more recent arrivals at Microsoft include luminaries like Burton Smith, a supercomputer designer whose ideas on parallel computing have been widely adopted, and Dan Reed, an expert on parallel computing.

Dual-core microprocessors are already plentiful in consumer devices. For example, both Intel and A.M.D.’s standard desktop and portable chips now have two cores, and even the iPhone is reported to have three microprocessors.

Microsoft sees this as the company’s principal opportunity, and industry executives have said that the arrival of manycore microprocessors is likely to be timed to the arrival of “Windows 7.” That is the name the company has given to the follow-on operating system to Windows Vista.

The opportunity for the company is striking, Mr. Mundie said, because manycore chips will offer the kind of leap in processing power that makes it possible to take computing in fundamentally new directions.

He envisions modern chips that will increasingly resemble musical orchestras. Rather than having tiled arrays of identical processors, the microprocessor of the future will include many different computing cores, each built to solve a specific type of problem. A.M.D. has already announced its intent to blend both graphics and traditional processing units onto a single piece of silicon.

In the future, Mr. Mundie said, parallel software will take on tasks that make the computer increasingly act as an intelligent personal assistant.

“My machine overnight could process my in-box, analyze which ones were probably the most important, but it could go a step further,” he said. “It could interpret some of them, it could look at whether I’ve ever corresponded with these people, it could determine the semantic context, it could draft three possible replies. And when I came in in the morning, it would say, hey, I looked at these messages, these are the ones you probably care about, you probably want to do this for these guys, and just click yes and I’ll finish the appointment.”

There are those who argue that there will be no easy advances in the field — including some inside Microsoft.

“I’m skeptical until I see something that gives me some hope,” said Gordon Bell, one of the nation’s pioneering computer designers, who is now a fellow at Microsoft Research.

Mr. Bell said that during the 1980s, he tried to persuade the computer industry to take on the problem of parallel computing while he was a program director at the National Science Foundation, but found little interest.

“They told me, ‘You can’t tell us what to do,’” he said. “Now the machines are here and we haven’t got it right.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/17/te...gy/17chip.html





Start-Up Sells Solar Panels at Lower-Than-Usual Cost
John Markoff

Nanosolar, a heavily financed Silicon Valley start-up whose backers include Google’s co-founders, plans to announce Tuesday that it has begun selling its innovative solar panels, which are made using a technique that is being held out as the future of solar power manufacturing.

The company, which has raised $150 million and built a 200,000-square-foot factory here, is developing a new manufacturing process that “prints” photovoltaic material on aluminum backing, a process the company says will reduce the manufacturing cost of the basic photovoltaic module by more than 80 percent.

Nanosolar, which recently hired a top manufacturing executive from I.B.M., said that it had orders for its first 18 months of manufacturing capacity. The photovoltaic panels will be made in Silicon Valley and in a second plant in Germany.

While many photovoltaic start-up companies are concentrating on increasing the efficiency with which their systems convert sunlight, Nanosolar has focused on lowering the manufacturing cost. Its process is akin to a large printing press, rather than the usual semiconductor manufacturing techniques that deposit thin films on silicon wafers.

Nanosolar’s founder and chief executive, Martin Roscheisen, claims to be the first solar panel manufacturer to be able to profitably sell solar panels for less than $1 a watt. That is the price at which solar energy becomes less expensive than coal.

“With a $1-per-watt panel,” he said, “it is possible to build $2-per-watt systems.”

According to the Energy Department, building a new coal plant costs about $2.1 a watt, plus the cost of fuel and emissions, he said.

The first Nanosolar panels are destined for a one-megawatt solar plant to be installed in Germany on a former landfill owned by a waste management company. The plant, being developed by Beck Energy, is expected to initially supply electrical power for about 400 homes.

The company chose to build its plant in southern San Jose, news that was cheered by local development officials. Much of the microelectronics industry created here has moved to Asia and new factories are a rare commodity in Silicon Valley.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/18/te...y/18solar.html





Pistol packing pundit

Boycotted Radio Host Remains Unbowed
Jacques Steinberg

The humbling of Don Imus last spring over his remarks about the Rutgers women’s basketball team has done nothing to quiet Michael Savage, a radio host with a far bigger following and far more checkered track record.

Mr. Savage, whose program reaches an estimated eight million listeners a week on nearly 400 stations, suggested over the summer that a group of college students on a hunger strike in support of easing immigration restrictions should “fast until they starve to death.” In October the Board of Supervisors of San Francisco, the city from which Mr. Savage often broadcasts, took the unusual step of passing a resolution condemning him for the remarks.

Then, a few weeks ago, Mr. Savage uncorked a cascade of invective about Islam. Among his on-air comments: the Koran is “a book of hate”; some Muslims, at least, “need deportation”; and adherents of Islam would do well to “take your religion and shove it up your behind” because “I’m sick of you.”

In response the Council on American-Islamic Relations, whose stated mission includes correcting mischaracterizations of Islam, tore a page from the playbook of Mr. Imus’s critics. It made Mr. Savage’s comments widely available on the Internet and called on advertisers to boycott his program, which is behind only Rush Limbaugh’s and Sean Hannity’s in number of listeners, according to Talkers magazine, an industry publication.

At least two of his major sponsors — Citrix, which sells remote access to computers, and Trusted ID, which provides protection against identity theft — have pulled their spots. Thus far, Mr. Savage said in an interview last week, the boycott had cost his program more than a million dollars in advertising revenue committed for next year.

On Dec. 3 Mr. Savage fired back at his critics in a way Mr. Imus never did: He filed a lawsuit in United States District Court against the council, not only for taking his comments out of context — he says they were made within a broader discussion of the president of Iran — but for then making audio of them available on its Web site, cair.com.

With his suit, Mr. Savage has put himself in an odd position for someone who makes his living talking and is a fierce advocate for free speech: He is complaining about others quoting him.

But in the interview Mr. Savage contended that the council had violated the copyright protections on his broadcast by using his words, in effect, to raise money. He cited the bright orange button labeled “Donate” that appears on the council Web site just to the right of the “Action Alert” it put out against him.

“If they are trying to hang me by my own petard, they have no right to use my petard,” Mr. Savage said after Monday’s show. “It’s my petard, not theirs.”

A spokesman for the council, Ahmed Rehab, said, “We think the suit is a P.R. ploy.” (A spokeswoman for Citrix would not discuss the reasons for the company’s decision; the chief executive of Trusted ID, Scott Mitic, said it had abandoned Savage’s program because his audience wasn’t buying the company’s product.)

Mr. Savage likened his remarks about the San Francisco protesters to those of a father frustrated with a child who won’t eat his peas: in other words, “Suit yourself, you can starve to death for all I care.”

“Remember, I’m a New Yorker,” he said. “I grew up on sarcasm and satire. People are too literal, No. 1, and they don’t have a true sense of humor, No. 2.”

Mr. Savage proudly calls himself conservative, even right wing, and his audience has proved to be both enormous and loyal, sticking with him after MSNBC pulled the plug on a simulcast of his radio show in 2003. The action came after he said he hoped a caller to his radio show, who had identified himself as gay, would die of AIDS.

Mr. Savage has always been regarded as a bit of a maverick, if not a loose cannon, in both Republican and talk-radio circles. In the interview he singled out two Republican presidential contenders, Rudolph W. Giuliani and Mitt Romney, for refusing to be on his show.

He also lamented that other conservative titans with microphones — Mr. Limbaugh, Mr. Hannity and Bill O’Reilly — “won’t lift a finger to help me” fend off the council boycott.

That is not much of a surprise to Michael Harrison, the founder and publisher of Talkers.

“Michael Savage is one of the few high-profile conservative hosts who is politically independent and does not hesitate to criticize the superstars of the Republican movement,” he said. “As a result he is not the most popular host among his conservative peers.”

Mr. Savage agreed last week to allow a reporter to sit in on his program, but only on the condition that the reporter not reveal the location of the waterside house where he was broadcasting that day, or of two other homes where he has studios and which he treats as virtual safe houses. Mr. Savage, who is licensed to carry a pistol and does so, said the secrecy was warranted by his fears for his life, based on the sheaf of death threats he says he has received over the years.

Mr. Savage can be surprisingly unintimidating in person, standing 5-foot-7 and looking, on this day, like he had sprung from an L. L. Bean catalog in a bright orange corduroy shirt, black fleece vest and tan chinos, with a miniature poodle at his feet. He can also project charm, insisting that a visitor just off a cross-country flight pause to have a turkey sandwich with potato salad.

“Drew, did you get pastry?” he later asked his assistant, Drew Bader, sounding more like a grandmother than a firebrand.

“Yes,” Mr. Bader assured him wearily, “I got a hamantaschen and a piece of kugel.”

At one point Mr. Savage — who was born Michael Weiner, and who still is, legally, Michael Weiner — led a visitor to a glass case that included a photo of him as a boy wearing a tallit, or Jewish prayer shawl. Asked if it was his bar mitzvah photo, he said it was, adding, “Tell that to my Muslim friends.” (Mr. Savage said later that when he became a talk show host 14 years ago, he took a “nom de voix,” as he referred to his pseudonym, to blunt any potshots at him as “a Jew from the Bronx,” which he happens to be.)

But whether on the air or off, Mr. Savage delights in being provocative.

He told his listeners last Monday that he had attended a boxing match in Las Vegas the previous weekend, which he characterized as between Floyd Mayweather, “the black guy,” and Ricky Hatton, “the white guy.”

“I rooted for the underdog, who was the little guy, Hatton,” Mr. Savage said. “I didn’t root for him because he was white.”

Mr. Savage insists that such comments aren’t just shtick. “I couldn’t do this for 14 years as an entertainer,” he said. “I’m not really a stealth liberal off the air.”

He readily acknowledged, though, that during his 20s and 30s he was “super left-wing,” including the times he worked as a welfare worker on the Upper West Side of Manhattan and later as a graduate student at the University of California, Berkeley, where he earned a Ph.D. in nutritional ethnomedicine.

But he turned sharply to the right after, among other things, finding that his welfare clients were often living better than he, and that despite a Ph.D. he couldn’t get a college teaching job after five years of trying. “I was the wrong race,” he said. “I was the wrong sex.”

Eventually he made a demo tape and was hired by KGO, a San Francisco station.

These days Mr. Savage can be heard in San Francisco on a competitor, KNEW, as well as on WOR in New York City. Though none of his affiliates — a number of them owned by Clear Channel — has publicly expressed any intention of dumping him, ŕ la Mr. Imus, he said he has lately been contemplating retiring. (Though he wouldn’t comment on his current deal, it pays him several million dollars annually and ends sometime in 2008, according to an industry executive who spoke anonymously because he was not authorized to discuss the deal publicly.)

But in the same breath Mr. Savage acknowledged that he wasn’t sure he’d know what to do with himself without a microphone. And then there’s the prospect that Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama, two favorite Savage foils, could win the 2008 presidential election.

“It’s going to be the golden age of radio, at least until they pass the fairness doctrine,” he said, savoring the thought of a Clinton presidency in particular. “What fun we’re going to have, till they get around to that.”

“Then it’ll be Venezuela,” he predicted. “They’ll close down the opposition stations through legislation.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/17/arts/17sava.html





Munch munch munch

NCAA Puts Limits On Live Blogging Sports Events

For years, we've been pointing out how ridiculous it is for professional sports leagues to try to claim ownership of game data. Facts cannot be covered by copyright -- and neither can your own description of the events on the field. However, many of the leagues still wanted to claim that you couldn't report the facts of the game without paying a license. Trying to show how ridiculous this claim was, I asked where it ended, saying: "If I'm at the game, and I use my mobile phone to report what I see, is that considered 'rebroadcasting' the game? What if I'm posting the information to a web site?" The point had been that no one would rationally think that was against the rules. How naive I was apparently...

Acting even worse than a professional sports league, the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA), got things rolling last summer by ejecting a live blogger from a college baseball game. Apparently, the NCAA had decided that this was too close to "rebroadcasting" and ridiculously believing that fans might just watch a liveblog report rather than the actual event on TV. This kicked up some attention -- and you would think that the NCAA would have realized what a dumb policy this was and backed down. Not so.

Instead, the NCAA has now instituted special "live-blogging rules" for anyone credentialed to cover NCAA events. The rules change per sport, but they limit how many times you can blog during the course of a game. For baseball: once per inning (not even once per half-inning!). For basketball, it's five times per half, once during half-time, and twice in overtime. Football is three times per quarter and once at half-time. It even covers the more obscure sports: you can only blog 10 times per day at a swimming match, for example. You can see all the details here (pdf).

Now, before anyone goes screaming censorship or free speech or anything along those lines -- these are the rules that the NCAA is setting for credentialed reporters. And, as a private organization, the NCAA can set whatever rules it wants for handing out credentials, no matter how mind-numbingly stupid they may be. If I were a publication covering NCAA sports, I would simply buy my reporters tickets to the games, rather than getting them in on a press pass under such rules. What's really idiotic, though, is that this makes no sense. Limiting live blogging only hurts the sport. The people who follow live blogs are the really passionate fans -- the ones who love the game the most. They follow the live blogs not as a substitute for watching the game on TV or attending in person -- but because they cannot view the games that way and/or they want to feel the camaraderie of discussing the event with other passionate fans. Cutting off the ability of a reporter to feed info to these fans simply makes no sense. It's hurting your most passionate fans for no good reason whatsoever.
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20071220/010939.shtml





Why Photographers Hate Creative Commons
Scott

Last week, Creative Commons turned five years old -- five years of phenomenal growth, thanks in no small part to advocates like the photo-sharing site Flickr.

Now, I don't want to piss on CC's birthday cake just for the fun of it. But it does seem clear that an increasing number of photographers -- not just professionals but high-end hobbyists also -- have become disenchanted with the Creative Commons system.

Why? Depending on who you ask, it's because:

1. It's taking money out of the pockets of working photographers;
2. It's putting money into the coffers of large corporations, whose executives like CC-enabled crowdsourcing even better than Third World child labor;
3. It's supposed to make sharing your work easier, but it often just makes it more confusing -- creating the kind of misunderstandings that lead to lawsuits.

Since the first two complaints are related, let's address them together. Creative Commons is a system that enables you to renounce some or all of your copyright protections -- in the name of sharing. This raises a question that doesn't get enough serious consideration: Who actually benefits from this?

Theoretically, we all do, since I can stick your Flickr photo on my blog and link back to you, and maybe this will cause more people to visit your Web site, and -- who knows -- maybe if you're a professional photographer, you'll get a paying gig or two out of it.

The fact is, though, that a Creative Commons license isn't necessary for this kind of sharing to happen. People are going to grab your photos anyway for their noncommercial use, because that's the common law of the Web today -- where "fair use" is interpreted very broadly. And if you really, really want to encourage people, you can put a note on your Web site explicitly giving people permission to use your photos, under whatever conditions you set forth. How hard is that? Why do you need a CC badge to say it?

The real issue is commercial use -- and this is where we get to who really benefits, at least over the long term. Before Creative Commons, a corporation or ad agency that wanted to use your photo would have to contact you or your photo agency for permission to use it. You could negotiate a price based on the particular use, making sure you got a fair deal.

Through CC, hundreds of thousands -- if not millions -- of photographers have thrown this right away forever. (Remember, CC says that once you choose a license for your work, it's irrevocable.) Photographers are generally doing this with good intentions or for idealistic reasons. But the end result is that you are building a system enabling commercial buyers to use your images without paying for them.

I know what you're thinking: "But you can choose a noncommercial use license to protect yourself from this." Sure you can, if:

1. You are informed enough to make the correct license choice;
2. The publisher of your photo is informed enough to know the differences among the various licenses; and
3. You, the publisher and the rest of the world can all agree on what "noncommercial use" actually means.
Gordon Haff offers just a few of the scenarios that can be interpreted either as commercial or noncommercial:

• What if I have some AdSense advertising on my Web page or blog?
• What if I put together an entire ad-supported Web site using noncommercial photos?
• What if I'm using those photos as "incidental" illustrative content in a presentation I'm being paid to give? (This was my case.)
• What if I print a book of these photos but only charge my cost? What if I cover my time at some nominal rate as well?

And if you and the entity that publishes your photo don't see eye to eye -- or you choose, as many CC users do, a simple attribution license? As Daryl Lang of Photo District News puts it:
If you're not careful, you might inadvertently grant permission for your photo to appear on a giant billboard for herpes medication, or in the newsletter of some political organization you despise. Images have commercial value that's very different from, for example, a piece of writing. Their rights need to be treated with care and respect.

Because it's so confusing (or, to be more generous, "open to interpretation"), Creative Commons licensing spawns false confidence and innocent mistakes -- giving sue-happy lawyers much to salivate over. Did you know that Creative Commons and Flickr can't even seem to agree on whether CC licenses are permanent? That would seem to be a rather basic point.

Earlier this month, blogger Jeremy Johnstone expressed his frustrations:
I license almost all of my photos under a CC license (attribution-noncommercial-no derivative works 2.0 specifically) and I have been finding that virtually _no one_ follows what I believe to be the intent of that license ...

I've come to accept my colleagues' and peers' opinions that non-commercial simply means they can't sell my work. Personally, I think this should also mean you can't put my photo on a page you are making money off of (aka advertising) either without my permission (which in most, but not all cases I would give automatically upon being asked), but apparently I am fairly alone in that belief...

Some say that I should be happy that people want to use my photos and I am getting free publicity (when they actually link back to me that is), but it becomes a whole different situation when you are getting flak about photos you took being used in manners not intended (like one I took of a leader of a foreign country a while back).

Jeremy's objections aren't the half of it. Creative Commons can -- and inevitably will -- lead to more Virgin Mobile-style lawsuits. It's nice to get your photo in the New York Times, until you realize you're not getting a dime for it. Let's face it: CC is confusing to the point of being a running joke.

So photographers, feel free to congratulate Creative Commons on its fifth birthday. Just don't celebrate by giving commercial users the gift that keeps on giving – a license to use your work for free, forever.
http://rising.blackstar.com/why-phot...e-commons.html





Once Broke, GameStop Moves Up to S.&P. 500
Dan Fost

Just over a decade ago, the company now known as GameStop was bankrupt, and analysts in the video game industry predicted that people would buy games online rather than in its mall stores.

But instead the franchise grew, pulled from its financial woes by a group of investors led by Leonard Riggio, the founder and chairman of Barnes & Noble. Spun off from Barnes & Noble in 2004, GameStop calls itself the world’s largest video game retailer.
Now the company can add a new distinction: member of the Standard & Poor’s 500-stock index. On Thursday, after Dow Jones & Company was acquired by the News Corporation and lost its berth in that index, GameStop took its place, moving up from a midsize index.

For GameStop, the ascension puts a cap on a remarkable journey. The company has gone through a number of names and ownership configurations, but it is still essentially a chain that hires serious game enthusiasts to sell new and used software from relatively bare-bones stores.

GameStop executives declined to talk for this article, but did answer questions by e-mail. “The broadening landscape of consumers eager to visit our stores and interact with our knowledgeable sales associates has been very advantageous for GameStop,” wrote David W. Carlson, the company’s chief financial officer. “While our Internet operations are strong, our stores remain the cornerstone of our business.”

A move into the S.& P. 500 usually brings a stamp of legitimacy to a company as well as a boost in its stock price, according to Ben Schachter of UBS Securities, an Internet and video game analyst. Large mutual funds based on the index now need to buy shares of Game- Stop’s stock, he said.

GameStop’s stock price rose 66 cents on Friday, closing at $58.21 a share. The company’s market capitalization was $9.37 billion.

“If you look back five years, the stock was about a tenth of where it is now,” Mr. Schachter said. “It was a relatively small video-game retailer. Back then, everyone argued that games would be distributed online, and the business would go away. But these guys stuck to their game plan and exceeded everyone’s expectations.”

The company has its roots in NeoStar Retail, which was formed in the 1990s in the merger of Babbage’s and Software Etc. After NeoStar went into bankruptcy in 1996, Mr. Riggio, who remains one of GameStop’s largest investors, took it over.

He brought in a new management team, and some of those executives remain with the company today. Barnes & Noble sold shares of GameStop to the public in 2002 and spun off the company entirely in 2004.

The next year, GameStop bought a major competitor, Electronics Boutique, for $1.4 billion, in a deal that put the combined company ahead of Wal-Mart Stores in terms of video game sales.

“Almost every employee at every GameStop is pretty much a hard-core gamer,” Mr. Schachter said. The know- ledge of the sales staff, the broad selection of game titles, and GameStop’s role as a clearinghouse for used games helps give the company a leg up over big-box competitors like Wal-Mart, he said.

Standard & Poor’s picks companies for the index with market capitalizations of at least $5 billion and focuses on “leading companies in leading industries,” according to David Guarino, a spokesman. He would not say why Standard & Poor’s picked GameStop over other contenders.

Mr. Carlson of GameStop offered this comment: “The move to the S.& P. 500 is a reflection of GameStop’s real momentum in the video game business and a validation of our success as a specialty retailer.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/17/te...7gamestop.html





Exclusive: Retail Chain Scalping Wii Allotment on eBay
Ben Kuchera

There is no doubt that this holiday season, one of the hottest gifts is the Nintendo Wii. Nintendo of America's president, Reggie Fils-Aime, warned gamers months ago that supplies would be short and tried to alleviate the problem with a voucher program through GameStop. It's clear this won't be enough to meet demand, causing Nintendo to strongly urge retailers not to force consumers to buy bundles of software and accessories in order to take advantage of the shortage. At Opposable Thumbs, we ran a post about how to deal with these bundles and asked readers to contact us with their horror stories. One worker followed up quickly with his own twist on holiday price gouging: instead of selling the systems with bundles, a chain of Illinois/Missouri gaming stores called Slackers is simply dumping its stock onto eBay for the Buy It Now price of $399.99, an almost $150 markup.

"In the past year, none of the 12 [Slackers locations] have sold any Wiis except for a one-time promotional deal, where we did force customers to buy a game with it," the employee told Ars Technica. "The real crime is that we get Wii shipments regularly. In fact, right now we have about 20, but none of them make it to the store front. They all get put on the store's eBay site at a minimum $499.99 buying price."

Our source then told us that the price has since been lowered to $399.99, (they weren't moving at $499) and sure enough, there are three Wiis available through Slackers' eBay storefront at $399.99. Looking back in the store's history, one can find other Wii sales in its feedback, with the auction advertising "NEW WITH GAME." The game of course being the bundled Wii Sports.

Ars Technica contacted the St. Louis Slackers location for confirmation of the practice. When asked if the allegations were true, there was a long silence. "That is something you'll have to speak with the owner about," we were told. We have since attempted to contact Slackers' owner multiple times, but have been unsuccessful. Nintendo has also not responded to our requests for comment on this story.

There are a couple of reasons Nintendo—and every other console manufacturer—is so strict on keeping one price point. Raising the price in this way hurts Nintendo's ability to position the Wii as the low-cost system, and it also cuts Nintendo out of a share in the higher profits. At the same time, Nintendo keeps retailers from offering the systems as low-priced loss leaders, dropping the console below the suggested retail price to get customers into the store. Nintendo wants to be sure it controls the pricing, and Fils-Aime has talked in the past about the power of the Wii's low price.

While dropping systems on eBay might seem like a quick and easy way for retailers like Slackers to make money, raising the price on Nintendo's system for one's own profit is a surefire way to get cut off from future shipments of games, systems, and accessories. "We don't have to remind retailers of the strength we have right now," Fils-Aime said in a recent interview with Reuters. "We are simply making an observation and that reinforces our point quite nicely with retailers."

Nintendo does indeed have the strength right now, and our source also told us he has reported his employer's practices to Nintendo. Unfortunately, it's unlikely that Slackers' customers hungry for the system are aware that Wiis are apparently being stockpiled in the store room for eBayers willing to pay $400 instead of on store shelves at Nintendo's MSRP of $249.
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post...t-on-ebay.html





Looking Beyond Megapixels
David Pogue

You may have your holiday traditions: caroling, stockings, candles, whatever. But here at The New York Times Institute of Gadgetology, we have a tradition of our own. Every December since 2001, we’ve asked: “How much digital camera can you get for $300?”

For years, that low price pretty much guaranteed low picture quality. Camera makers spent all their effort groveling at the altar of megapixels, in hopes that the public would come to associate megapixels with picture quality.

But the manufacturers are finally turning their attention to features that really do help your photos, like image stabilization (reduces blur in low light) and face recognition (ensures proper focus and exposure on human subjects). They haven’t eliminated shutter lag (the delay before the picture is snapped) — you’ll have to buy one of those big digital single-lens reflex cameras for that luxury — but there’s some improvement this year.

Here they are, then, presented roughly in order of photo quality: the cameras that the nine major manufacturers consider their finest sub-$300 work. Except as noted, they’re credit-card-size, eight-megapixel models with 3X optical zoom, SD memory cards and no eyepiece viewfinder. (Don’t miss the complete table of features, and the slide show of samples, at nytimes.com/tech.)

Casio Exilim EX-V8 ($240). With high-end features like a 7X zoom lens, image stabilizer and the ability to zoom while shooting movies, you’d think that this camera would get the highest marks. But no such luck; its photos consistently trailed the pack. In low light, some were truly awful: murky, sepia-toned, blurry. You can do light-years better.

Pentax Optio Z10 ($219). This sleek camera offers some unusual features. For example, it can help recover photos you’ve deleted accidentally. And its 7X zoom lens is astonishing, considering that it’s completely contained inside the camera; nothing telescopes outward when you turn the camera on.

Unfortunately, that zooming apparatus eats up a lot of space, leaving only enough room for a cylindrical battery the size of your pinky. You’ll get 180 shots per charge if you’re lucky (compared with 330 on, say, the Sony).

There are other problems, too: no image stabilizer, no autofocus-assist lamp for low light and severe graininess indoors or at night.

Samsung i85 ($266). One thing is for sure: this is the only camera here that comes with earbuds. That’s because it doubles as a basic MP3 music player and even acts as an e-book reader; it can page through text files copied onto it from a Mac or PC.

The Samsung is a looker, too: shiny stainless steel wrapped around an enormous three-inch screen. Its photos usually look good, and the flash is powerful. But because there’s no image stabilizer, flashless indoor or nighttime photos are blurry and doomed.

Nikon Coolpix S700 ($280). For years, Nikon had a split personality: it made phenomenal digital S.L.R. cameras, but mediocre pocket models. With this camera, Nikon might be starting to turn things around. The S700’s stabilizer virtually banishes blur, and graininess is a problem only in nighttime shots. The camera itself looks great, too.

Unfortunately, in sunlight, the 2.7-inch screen turns into a slab of onyx; without an eyepiece viewfinder, you can’t see well enough to take any pictures at all. (The Pentax has the same problem. The screens on the other cameras here are bright enough even in direct light.) And this camera’s 150-shot battery life is the worst of the batch.

Kodak Z812IS ($245). This camera won’t fit in a pants pocket; it’s shaped like a miniature S.L.R., complete with a sculptured hand grip (and, alas, a detached lens cap). The payoff, though, is the amazing 12X zoom, which is enormously useful in shooting sports, school plays and anything surreptitiously.

Of course, zooming magnifies your hand jitters; fortunately, the IS in this camera’s name stands for image stabilizer.

The camera takes great movies, even in high definition (at a full 30 frames a second). In fact, the Z812 can both zoom and refocus while you’re filming, which is a rarity in still cameras. Nice.

Most of the photos came out great; a nighttime shot of a Miami Beach restaurant festooned by neon signs was practically magazine-worthy. The Kodak muffed only a few shots, generally night scenes.

There is an eyepiece viewfinder on this camera, but it’s not a true optical one; it’s electronic, meaning that you’re peering into another screen, and a somewhat coarse one at that.

Sony Cyber-shot DSC-H3 ($270). This camera, like the Kodak, is also shaped like a mini-S.L.R. and has a stabilized superzoom lens (10X). It feels wonderful in your hand.

Other goodies: With a $40 component cable, you can display your photos in spectacular high definition on an HDTV. And the H3 has the clearest, easiest, smartest button and menu design of the year. The only question: On a bigger camera like this one, why not include an optical viewfinder?

Like many Sony cameras, this one sometimes produces a slight bluish cast. But otherwise, it does a terrific job, even indoors, even without the flash. It blurred only a single torture-test photo: palm trees at night, illuminated only by reflected swimming-pool light.

Panasonic Lumix FX55 ($300). The menus on this camera’s huge three-inch screen are something out of the Stone Age: huge, pixellated words in all caps, as though the camera is shouting at you.

On the other hand, the Lumix has an enormous wide-angle view; compared with the narrow fields of view on the Nikon and Sony, these photos are practically panoramas. The advertisements always promote the telephoto (zoom) powers of cameras, but wide-angle ability is arguably even more important, at least on vacations to scenic places.

And the Lumix’s photos are nearly impeccable. They’re grain-free, smoothly toned and perfectly exposed. Only one shot tripped up the Lumix: the same pool-and-palms shot that stymied the Sony.

Canon PowerShot SD850 IS ($256). This camera’s awesome predecessor cost $360 last year. Now you can get the same vivid photos and movies for $256.

But that’s not all! Yes, folks, you also get image stabilization, face recognition, 4X optical zoom and a genuine optical eyepiece viewfinder. It’s the only optical viewfinder of these $300 cameras, in fact. Canon, mercifully, is bucking the trend on this great little machine.

Fujifilm FinePix F50fd ($234). For the last several years, Fuji has been spending big R.& D. dollars on nailing the low-light problem. “If we can put a man on the moon,” they evidently muttered, “surely we can design a pocket camera that takes nighttime and indoor photos without grain, blur or flash.”

This camera is it. The 12-megapixel photos are delightful; indoors, outdoors, with the flash or without. Even those poolside palm trees came out sharp and clear.

One probable reason is that the F50fd’s sensor is more than 50 percent bigger than those on most of the other cameras: 0.625 inch diagonal, versus 0.4. Now that’s a statistic — not megapixels — that matters in a camera.

More good news: the F50fd accepts standard SD cards in addition to the proprietary, expensive XD memory cards that Fuji has been pushing for years. How can this be the second-least-expensive camera of the batch?

The bottom line: some of this year’s cameras truly rock. If you want a pocket model, consider the Lumix for its wide angle, the Canon for its 4X zoom and optical viewfinder or the Fujifilm for its amazing natural-light performance. If you’re willing to pack something bigger, you can get a lot more zoom for your buck with the Kodak or the Sony. Congratulations to these companies for getting back to photo-quality basics this year — and to you, dear customer, for doing your homework.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/06/te...h/06pogue.html





At Web Site for Journalists, Criticism of a Campaign Article Becomes a Melee
Maria Aspan

A usual round of media self-criticism turned into a schoolyard brawl last week, as editors, reporters and bloggers traded insults over a front-page article in The Washington Post, all at the very online water cooler where they usually get their news about the industry.

The Post article, which ran on Nov. 29, was about rumors of Barack Obama’s ties to the Muslim world. The piece drew widespread criticism: the Columbia Journalism Review said the article “may be the single worst campaign ’08 piece to appear in any American newspaper so far this election cycle.”

The Post’s ombudsman, Deborah Howell, devoted a column on Dec. 9 to the backlash against it, concluding that “the rumors were old” and that “convincing evidence of their falsity wasn’t included in the story.”

Then things got really ugly — and personal. On Dec. 10, Chris Daly, a Boston University journalism professor, posted an entry on his blog that turned the debate over the merits of the article’s reporting into a debate over the merits of its author, Perry Bacon Jr., a Post staff reporter.

“Since when does The Post assign 27-year-olds to write Page 1 presidential campaign pieces?," wrote Mr. Daly, who is 53 and had written for The Post as a freelance regional correspondent for eight years starting in 1989. “This is fast-tracking with a vengeance.”

After Jim Romenesko, who runs a popular media blog for the Poynter Institute, a Florida-based nonprofit school for journalists, posted a link to Mr. Daly’s blog post, Mr. Bacon’s friends and colleagues rushed to defend him.

Soon the Romenesko Web site was full of letters of support from Mr. Bacon’s past and present colleagues and other reporters, including Michael Barbaro and Adam Nagourney of The New York Times, Karen Tumulty of Time Magazine, and Peter Baker of The Washington Post. Media critics on outside sites like The Huffington Post and Slate also weighed in, with posts that the site also linked to.

The most through-the-looking-glass moment of the week, however, came when The Post’s executive editor, Leonard Downie Jr., criticized the Romenesko blog — in a publicly posted letter to Mr. Romenesko — for linking to Mr. Daly’s original complaint in the first place. Mr. Daly’s post was “an outrageous personal attack on a fine young journalist, and I’m disappointed that it has been given circulation on Romenesko,” Mr. Downie wrote.

Then he, too, got personal, taking a swipe at Mr. Daly. “Daly, however, during his time as a contract stringer for this newspaper, failed to earn a similar role for himself” by getting hired as a staff reporter, Mr. Downie wrote.

Mr. Downie said on Friday that he stood by his comments. His remark about Mr. Daly was accurate “and goes to motivation,” he said, adding that motivation was relevant because Mr. Daly’s “posting was so outside the bounds.”

He also stood by his criticism of the Romenesko site. “My response to Daly was not to say that Romenesko should not publish criticism of Washington Post journalism,” he said. “But that’s not what this was, this was an unjustified personal attack.”

As for Mr. Daly, he said by telephone on Friday that he had been “a little surprised at the sheer volume and intensity of the reaction” to his original post. In a follow-up entry on Dec. 11, he wrote that he had “meant no disrespect to Mr. Bacon personally. In my view, this is not about him.”

Instead, Mr. Daly said by telephone, he had meant to focus on “standards of journalistic practice,” like the guidance and editing of reporters at influential media organizations. He added that he regretted the way he had phrased his comments about Mr. Bacon.

“It didn’t come out right,” he said. “Blogging is very much an off-the-cuff enterprise, it’s not like the careful research that I do.”

Mr. Bacon declined to comment and referred a reporter to his editor, Bill Hamilton, the assistant managing editor for politics. “It’s just unfortunate that it went to that level,” Mr. Hamilton said of Mr. Daly’s comments. “I just think he got into an area that just wasn’t relevant. He should have just stuck to the merits of debating the story.”

And what did the man behind the curtain, who provided the forum for the intramedia hair-pulling, think of the fallout? “Mr. Downie’s letter didn’t surprise me,” Mr. Romenesko said in an e-mail message on Friday. “I’m sure most editors would prefer that I not link to stories that criticize their staffers. There’s no reason I should have passed on Chris Daly’s blog post.”

He added, “When I posted Daly’s item about Perry, I was most interested in getting readers’ reactions to the professor’s complaint about young journalists getting big assignments; I certainly got them.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/17/bu...ia/17romo.html





Gone Wild and Gone All Wrong
Mireya Navarro

THE multimillionaire creator of “Girls Gone Wild” sits in a jail visiting room here, wearing a uniform of orange shirt and gray pants and looking pale but rested from eight months of incarceration. He talks to a visitor through glass, often yelling, sometimes tapping on the glass with his index finger for emphasis, railing into a handset against “evil” and “vengeful” government officials and vowing to sue them all.

“Enough is enough,” he spits out. “I am not a criminal.”

Joe Francis, 34, has long been a polarizing figure, having made his riches enticing young women at Spring Break locations (many of them drunk) to bare their breasts for the cameras for his popular videos. He has not been scoring brownie points by calling local officials in Florida — where Spring Break 2003 in Panama City Beach went terribly wrong for him — “Nazis” and “cockroaches.”

But, stuck in jail in Reno, Mr. Francis is now desperately trying to drum up public sympathy, if not win release, to expose how unfairly he believes authorities have treated him. For the last two and a half months, he has taken out ads, sent out news releases, appeared on dozens of radio and TV talk shows and used a Web site, www.meetjoefrancis.com, to relate his convoluted story while his lawyers file motions charging prosecutorial misconduct and ask for investigations.

And as he goes about trying to transform his image from soft-porn entrepreneur to victim of vindictive officials, support has come from unusual quarters. His most vocal allies are not the Hollywood A-listers who have vacationed at his Mexico estate, but conservative radio hosts and their listeners, who suspect government shenanigans.

“EVEN though I don’t approve of what Joe Francis does for a living, he’s caught up in a nightmare,” said Mike Gallagher, one of the syndicated radio hosts who have given Mr. Francis a platform in recent weeks via jail telephone. “There’s a real issue here of somebody not getting bail.”

But Florida officials have been doing some p.r. of their own. The prosecutor, State Attorney Steve Meadows, has sat down for interviews on “Nightline” and VH-1 and issued news releases vowing to “pursue the prosecution against Joe Francis at every stage and in every court.”

And the former mayor of Panama City Beach, Lee Sullivan, one of the first Florida officials to lock horns with Mr. Francis, maintains he has only his “arrogance and bad judgment” to blame for his travails. Last year, when Mr. Sullivan unsuccessfully ran for state representative, his campaign listed as his proudest mayoral achievement “taking ‘Girls Gone Wild,’ their slick California lawyers and their exploitation of young women to court and making certain their pornography would never be made on the Emerald Coast again.”

Mr. Francis’s troubles started nearly five years ago when he included Panama City Beach, a Panhandle city of white-sand beaches on the Gulf of Mexico, in a highly publicized pay-per-view event from three Spring Break locations. “Girls Gone Wild” camera crews, who usually film college women at bars, parking lots, hotel rooms and other party hangouts, had been to Panama Beach City before, but in 2003 they arrived with unusual hoopla.

Mayor Sullivan took exception and law enforcement officials cracked down on acts of lewd behavior, which interfered with the filming. Mr. Francis sued the officials, claiming violation of his First Amendment rights, and got them to settle and back down. But Mr. Francis and some of his crew were arrested when the father of one of two women filmed in a shower scene at the hotel room the filmmakers had rented contacted the county sheriff’s office, saying the girls were minors.

The officials came down hard: They confiscated Mr. Francis’s Ferrari and private jet, announcing cocaine had been found on the plane. Mr. Francis was charged with more than 70 counts, including racketeering, drug trafficking, prostitution and promoting the sexual performance of children.

A judge ended up throwing out all but six of the criminal counts, which revolve around the use of minors in a sexual performance, because of a flawed search warrant. And as it turned out, no cocaine was found on the plane.

But Mr. Francis was also saddled with a civil suit for emotional distress from the two girls, each 17, in the shower scene, along with five women. While he was out on bail in the criminal case, which is pending, the judge overseeing the suit ordered Mr. Francis to return to Florida to mediate the suit. That civil case landed Mr. Francis in jail in April when the women’s lawyers complained he was verbally abusive in negotiations. Judge John Richard Smoak Jr. of the Northern District of Florida held Mr. Francis in civil contempt for not properly participating in mediation and ordered him into custody. Mr. Francis, by then back home in Los Angeles, showed up to do his time four days late, which earned him another contempt order, this time for criminal contempt.

Mr. Francis settled the lawsuit while in jail in Bay County, Fla., but his troubles were not over. Before he could get out, guards found sleeping pills, prescription medication for anxiety and high cholesterol and $700 in cash in his cell, and he soon faced criminal charges for introducing contraband into a detention facility.

Because of the new charges, his bail on the 2003 criminal case was revoked, and bail in the contraband case was denied by Judge Dedee S. Costello of Bay County Circuit Court, who said Mr. Francis had “impugned the integrity of the judicial process.”

Mr. Francis would still be jailed in Florida if not for another twist: Federal officials in Nevada charged him with two counts of tax evasion, so in June he was transferred to Washoe County jail here to answer the new charges. He faces trial on the tax evasion case but denies any wrongdoing.

In fact, he says, he sees the tax evasion case as a godsend. That case keeps him from going back to Bay County, where he claims in court papers he suffered abusive treatment. He remains in Nevada while his lawyers, including the well-known Miami lawyer Roy Black, try to get the Florida charges dismissed. The chance of that happening is slim, his lawyers said, and Mr. Francis is looking at more jail time.

Here, Mr. Francis spends his days on the pay phone talking to his lawyers, arranging interviews and keeping tabs on “Girls Gone Wild” and Mantra Entertainment, his Los Angeles-based company. The business, with 350 employees, now brings in nearly $100 million a year in revenue, he said, and has branched out from DVDs to the Internet, mobile phones and apparel lines.

Mr. Francis admits having made mistakes. He said he regretted reporting to jail in Florida late while trying to get the judge’s order stayed.

But he is hardly contrite. He has a defense for every bad turn along the way: The two minors filmed in Panama City Beach lied about their age to the cameraman and would have been vetted before the video was released; the mediation of their suit turned sour on both sides and it didn’t help him that one of the girls’ lawyers was Judge Smoak’s former law partner; Mr. Francis says he walked into jail with pills and cash because he was not searched and didn’t know better.

Mr. Francis, who sees himself as a Larry Flynt figure, argues this is all payback for defying the power structure in Bay County with his First Amendment lawsuit. Mr. Sullivan, the former mayor, denied this, but said Mr. Francis’s “cavalier attitude” and “obvious disdain” for authority have not helped him.

“If he’s looking for his worst enemy, he’ll find it in the mirror,” he said.

JOE GRAMMER, a spokesman for the Florida attorney’s office, said Mr. Meadows, the prosecutor in the original underage-girls case, is no longer commenting because of a judge’s admonition to lawyers to limit public statements. In his latest salvo, Mr. Francis filed a motion last October to have charges dismissed, accusing Mr. Meadows of tainting the jury pool by making disparaging statements against him on national TV and showing a portion of the shower video to “Nightline.”

Greta Van Susteren, who has aired the feud between Mr. Francis and the Florida officials on her news show on the Fox News Channel since the beginning, said the case seemed out of control.

“This is a grudge match,” said Ms. Van Susteren, a lawyer. “They’re messing with him, without a doubt, and that’s because Joe has poked a stick in the eyes of the prosecutors who have the power to hold him.”

Mr. Francis and his company have faced numerous suits from women over his videos and have paid hefty fines for violating record-keeping laws by failing to document the ages of young women in his videos and for the unauthorized shipping and billing of his DVDs. A few years ago a man broke into Mr. Francis’s home in Bel Air, bound and gagged him at gunpoint and forced him to pose partly naked for a video as part of an extortion attempt. The man was sentenced to over 10 years in prison.

Mr. Francis was in the news again when a bachelor party in Mexico he gave for Richard Johnson, a gossip editor for The New York Post, figured in a scandal about Post gossip staff accepting favors from sources.

Mr. Francis’s Hollywood friends, some of whom have written testimonials for his Web site, say they don’t know what to make of his current situation.

“It’s been so long and no bail,” said Quincy Jones, a neighbor in Bel Air who accompanied Mr. Francis’s parents to Florida when Mr. Francis was first jailed. “I don’t know what that’s about.” Mr. Jones, 74, said he knew Mr. Francis as a “giving” person with a good heart.

E-mail messages to Mr. Francis at Mantra Entertainment get an automatic “I am out of the office” reply, as if he’s just momentarily gone on business. But Mr. Francis said he lost a $300 million offer for his business as a result of his legal problems. At least he has found a much friendlier jail atmosphere in Washoe County than in Florida. He’s in a special housing unit because of his high profile and sheriff’s deputies have accommodated his numerous press interviews. He has his own cell but works handing out meals and doing other chores and has posed no problems, a spokeswoman for the jail said.

Mr. Francis says his fellow inmates — bank robbers, drug dealers and the occasional hair stylist on D.U.I. who has cut his hair — have been sympathetic. Many are “Girls Gone Wild” fans, he said, and he has even signed autographs.

But while his money is good for phone calls all day long, ordering out for food and the best lawyers, it can’t buy his freedom.

“They joke with me every day here,” he said of his guards. “‘Another murderer got out, Francis! Call your lawyer!’ At least they know that I shouldn’t be here.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/16/fa...16francis.html





When the Bullies Turned Faceless
Christopher Maag

LIKE most mobs, the one that pursued Megan Meier was cruel and unrelenting. Its members gathered on the social networking site MySpace and called Megan a liar, a fat whore and worse.

Megan, 13, fought back, insulting her tormenters with every profanity she knew. But the mob shouted her down, overwhelming her computer and her shaky self-confidence with a barrage of hateful instant messages.

“Mom, they’re being horrible!” Megan said, sobbing into the phone when her mother called. After an hour, Megan ran into her bedroom and hanged herself with a belt.

“She felt there was no way out,” Ms. Meier said.

Megan Meier’s suicide made headlines because she was the victim of a hoax. Lori Drew, another mother in the neighborhood, said in a police report that she had created a MySpace profile of a boy, an invention named “Josh Evans,” and that she and her daughter had manipulated Megan into thinking that this fabricated person liked her.

Then, after a few weeks, Ms. Meier said, girls posing as Josh wrote MySpace messages telling Megan that he hated her. He insulted her, and other girls — most unaware that Josh did not exist — viciously piled on. (Later, through her lawyer, Ms. Drew, 48, denied knowing about the hoax.)

In some ways, the hoax was a tragic oddity. Most mothers don’t pull vicious pranks, and few harassed adolescents become depressed and commit suicide. But Megan’s story is also a case study about cyberbullying.

Cellphone cameras and text messages, as well as social networking Web sites, e-mail and instant messaging, all give teenagers a wider range of ways to play tricks on one another, to tease and to intimidate their peers.

And unlike traditional bullying, which usually is an intimate, if highly unpleasant, experience, high-tech bullying can happen anywhere, anytime, among lots of different children who may never actually meet in person. It is inescapable and often anonymous, said sociologists and educators who have studied cyberbullying.

Even in this town, where Megan’s name is a constant reminder of the danger of the Web, adolescents say they love using the technology — and some do a little bullying of their own.

“I’m sure that every girl at this table has used cellphones or instant messaging to say something mean about somebody,” said Victoria Fogarty, as she discussed bullying with six other adolescents. Victoria, 14, is the daughter of Pam Fogarty, the mayor of Dardenne Prairie, and an eighth grader at West Middle School, which Megan attended.

Other children are afraid of becoming the next victim.

“Once you’re on MySpace, you’re trapped,” said Jake Dobson, 12, a seventh grader at West Middle School. “You spend all your time online just trying to keep the negative stuff about you from spreading.”

Megan Meier spent months begging for a MySpace page before her mother finally gave in. Ms. Meier thought that making friends online could be good for her daughter, a sensitive girl who craved an emotional connection.

But that neediness made Megan vulnerable. By the third grade Megan hated herself and talked of suicide, Ms. Meier said. The diagnosis was depression and attention deficit disorder, which meant Megan would receive weekly counseling and an evolving list of medications as treatment.

By the time she reached seventh grade at West Middle School, Megan was overweight but active, Ms. Meier said. She hung out with other volleyball players, who were in the second tier of popular girls, just beneath the soccer players, said Laura Rodgers, 14, Megan’s friend.

She aped the styles of those above her, Ms. Meier said. She favored clothes like Hollister and Abercrombie & Fitch. Sometimes she applied so much mascara that she resembled a raccoon. Occasionally she would gleefully accept a soccer girl’s invitation to sit at the popular table during lunch, Laura said.

These moments of success faded during gym class, when Megan had to trade her plus-size designer clothes for athletic shorts and T-shirts. “People in P.E. class called her fat every day,” Laura said. “I’d see her in the locker room crying.”

After a difficult year, Megan’s parents transferred their daughter to Immaculate Conception Catholic School in Dardenne Prairie. The school had strict policies aimed at avoiding cliques. Students wear uniforms, and they are assigned lunch tables so they can socialize with everybody.

“There aren’t really cliques there at all,” said Rachel Garzon, 14, who befriended Megan. “You might be closer friends with some people, but you can walk up and talk to anybody and they’ll be nice to you.”

Megan, who had escaped the old cliques, retained her old MySpace page. “She technically wasn’t old enough, because you have to be 14,” Ms. Meier said. “But I was the only one who knew the password. I read every message she received or sent. I thought I could keep it safe, and Megan could meet some friends.”

MySpace uses algorithms and people to strike harassing or bullying images and content, the company said in a written statement, and the site offers users opportunities to report cyberbullies.

But controlling the Web can be almost impossible, experts on children say, and most adolescents are simply not mature enough to handle the virtual world and its anonymous attacks. For instance, “Adolescents take what is said online as the literal truth,” said Justin Patchin, assistant professor of criminal justice at the University of Wisconsin, Eau Claire, who studies cyberbullying.

And, as in the Megan Meier case, the victim of cyberbullying is often isolated, yet never free from attack. “The target sees this entire cyberuniverse where everybody is against them, and no one will come to their defense,” said Dr. Walter Roberts, professor of counselor education at Minnesota State University, Mankato. “The harassment is not limited to the portion of the day when the kids are in school. The targeted kids have no escape.”

Three years ago, before Megan’s suicide, the school system identified cyberbullying as a serious problem, said Kim Carter, assistant superintendent for student services in the Fort Zumwalt School District.

In 2005, the school surveyed students and teachers. And before and after Megan’s death, the district held a variety of assemblies, meetings and workshops to train students, parents, faculty and administrators how to recognize and react to cyberbullying.

While all the vigilance has helped, students say, cyberbullying remains common. Last month, a girl won $500 in a class raffle. Before her teacher even opened the door to excuse everyone, the rest of the school was abuzz with rumors that she had cheated, said Sarah Fogarty, another of the mayor’s children.

How was that possible? Cellphones are supposed to be turned off in school. Girls practice text messaging with their eyes closed, Sarah said. They’ve become adept at pressing buttons under their desks while keeping their focus on the teacher.

“I’m not good at it yet,” Sarah said.

This fall an unpopular boy started break dancing at a football game. People took cellphone photos and videos, which they immediately forwarded to hundreds of people. “They were egging him on because they wanted to keep making fun of him, and the photos made him look ridiculous,” said Jake Dobson, the seventh grader.

Even popular kids feel vulnerable.

Ryan Franklin, 12, was a star player on his Little League baseball team until he needed stomach surgery last summer, said his mother, Sonya Franklin. As he recovered, a friend sent e-mail messages to dozens of students falsely stating that Ryan had made sexual comments about a girl in class, Ms. Franklin said.

“The truth was that he’d stopped playing baseball and so he’d lost some of his status,” Ms. Franklin said. “Some people started picking on him because he was an easier target.” The e-mail messages stopped only when she threatened to call the boy’s mother.

Jake Dobson admits he’s not above an instant message making fun of someone, even if he knows that the same thing could happen to him.

“It’s like I can’t even do anything because everybody is sitting there with a cellphone just waiting for me to mess up,” he said.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/16/fa...ml?ref=fashion





The Magnificence of the Disaster: Reconstructing the Sony BMG Rootkit Incident

DEIRDRE MULLIGAN
Affiliation Unknown
AARON K. PERZANOWSKI
Berkeley Center for Law & Technology

Berkeley Technology Law Journal, Vol. 22, p. 1157, 2007


Abstract:
Late in 2005, Sony BMG released millions of Compact Discs containing digital rights management technologies that threatened the security of its customers' computers and the integrity of the information infrastructure more broadly. This Article aims to identify the market, technological, and legal factors that appear to have led a presumably rational actor toward a strategy that in retrospect appears obviously and fundamentally misguided.

The Article first addresses the market-based rationales that likely influenced Sony BMG's deployment of these DRM systems and reveals that even the most charitable interpretation of Sony BMG's internal strategizing demonstrates a failure to adequately value security and privacy. After taking stock of the then-existing technological environment that both encouraged and enabled the distribution of these protection measures, the Article examines law, the third vector of influence on Sony BMG's decision to release flawed protection measures into the wild, and argues that existing doctrine in the fields of contract, intellectual property, and consumer protection law fails to adequately counter the technological and market forces that allowed a self-interested actor to inflict these harms on the public.

The Article concludes with two recommendations aimed at reducing the likelihood of companies deploying protection measures with known security vulnerabilities in the consumer marketplace. First, Congress should alter the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) by creating permanent exemptions from its anti-circumvention and antitrafficking provisions that enable security research and the dissemination of tools to remove harmful protection measures. Second, the Federal Trade Commission should leverage insights from the field of human computer interaction security (HCI-Sec) to develop a stronger framework for user control over the security and privacy aspects of computers.
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.c...act_id=1072229

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Police Blotter: Can Circuit City Techs Legally Peruse Files?
Declan McCullagh

What happened, according to court documents:
On October 15, 2004, Kenneth Sodomsky brought his computer to a Circuit City store in Wyomissing, Pa., and asked store technicians to install a DVD burner.

Circuit City told Sodomsky that the upgrade would be finished in about an hour. After installing the DVD burner, the technicians tested the drive's new software by searching the computer's hard drive for video files to play back. (Amusingly, the court refers to "codecs"--video compression and decompression software--as "code X.")

When searching the Windows XP computer for some sample video files, a technician named Stephen Richert allegedly spotted files that "appeared to be pornographic in nature" based on their names. Richert clicked on one that had listed a male name and an age of 13 or 14 and found a video he believed to contain child pornography.

Then the usual series of events happened: Richert called Wyomissing police, who promptly showed up, seized the computer, and, after Sodomsky returned to pick it up, seized its owner as well.

What makes this case relevant to Police Blotter is the question of what privacy rights govern Sodomsky's computer when he drops it off for an upgrade. If he had an expectation of privacy, then the allegedly incriminating files could be suppressed. If not, they could be used as evidence against him.

The trial court granted Sodomsky's request to suppress the information, but prosecutors appealed.

Making this case tricky for the appeals court is that there's not exactly a clear precedent, leaving the judges to reason through analogy. Is this a no-reasonable-expectation-of-privacy situation such as when a defendant hands illegal drugs to a third party? Or is it closer to tenants or bank customers, who retain some privacy rights under state or federal constitutions?

In the case of Sodomsky, the appeals court noted that he gave Circuit City technicians access to the hard drive and consented to the installation of a DVD drive. The court also noted that the technicians weren't randomly perusing the drive for contraband, but instead were testing its functioning in a "commercially accepted manner."

The appeals court reversed the previous order, allowed the evidence to be introduced, and sent the case back to the trial judge for additional proceedings.

Excerpts from appeals court's opinion:
Appellee implies that the DVD drive should have been tested by inserting and playing a DVD. Nevertheless, as noted, Appellee did not ask how the burner would be tested nor did he place any restrictions regarding the manner of that procedure. As Mr. Richert's testimony indicated, the playing of videos already in the computer was a manner of ensuring that the burner was functioning properly. Once the search for videos was initiated, the list of appellee's videos appeared automatically on the computer screen. The employee testing the burner was free to select any video for testing purposes, as appellee had not restricted access to any files. Therefore, Mr. Richert did not engage in a fishing expedition in this case...

The final factor we utilize is the volitional nature of appellee's actions. In this case, Appellee removed the computer from his home, took the computer to Circuit City, and left it there without either removing the videos containing child pornography or changing the titles of the videos so that they did not appear to have illegal content...Appellee was aware of the child pornography and could have elected to leave the store with the computer rather than risk discovery of the pornographic files.

This scenario also stands in contrast with the landlord case relied upon by the trial court. Although landlords routinely retain the right to inspect their premises upon notice, people still retain a privacy expectation in their home despite its status as rental property. Here, however, we find that under the facts and circumstances presented, appellee knowingly exposed to the public, the Circuit City employees, the contents of his video files. It is clear that Circuit City employees were members of the public; hence, if appellee knowingly exposed the contents of his video files to them, as members of the public, he no longer retained an expectation of privacy in those videos nor could he expect that they would not be distributed to other people, including police.

Our result in this case is consistent with the weight of authority in this area. If a person is aware of, or freely grants to a third party, potential access to his computer contents, he has knowingly exposed the contents of his computer to the public and has lost any reasonable expectation of privacy in those contents...

We also conclude that the incriminating nature of the video files was immediately apparent. Appellee suggests that it was unclear whether the videos depicted child pornography because police could not ascertain the age of the naked male, whose face was not revealed, from the portion of the video that they viewed. We disagree....Finally, police had the lawful right to access the videos because, as analyzed extensively above, appellant had abandoned any reasonable expectation of privacy in them.
http://news.zdnet.com/2100-1009_22-6222794.html





Watching the Watchers: Why Surveillance Is a Two-Way Street

If governments and businesses can keep an eye on us in public spaces, we ought to be able to look back.
Glenn Harlan Reynolds

Suddenly, cameras are everywhere. As this month's cover story notes, the recent boom in video monitoring—by both the state and businesses—means we're all being watched. It's like something out of George Orwell's 1984. Except that, unlike Orwell's protagonist Winston Smith, we can watch back—and plenty of people are doing just that. Which makes a difference.

The widespread installation of recording devices is not all bad: ATM cameras helped prove that Duke students accused of rape couldn't have committed the crime. And we all sympathize with the goals of preventing terrorism and crime, though it is not proven that security cameras accomplish this.

Nonetheless, the trend toward constant surveillance is troubling. And even if the public became concerned enough to pass laws limiting the practice, it's not clear how well those laws would work. Government officials and private companies too often ignore privacy laws. (In a notorious recent case, Hewlett-Packard executives were caught spying on the phone records of reporters covering the company.) Besides, the technology of surveillance is becoming so advanced—biologists are now attaching tiny cameras to crows' tail feathers to observe the birds' tool use in the wild—that in reality there's not much we can do to ensure privacy anyway.

Maybe that doesn't matter. Privacy is a recent phenomenon. For most of human history, people lived in small tribes or villages where everyone knew everyone else's business. Ubiquitous surveillance may be just a case of the past as prologue.

There's a difference, though. In the old days, ordinary people didn't have much privacy, but neither did big shots. By contrast, today's government officials and big corporations often want to watch us, but they don't want to be watched in return. Shopping malls are full of security cameras, but many have signs at the entrance telling customers that no photography or video recording is allowed. Police cars have dashboard cameras, cities and counties are posting red-light and speed-limit cameras, and it seems that the dream of many government officials is to put every public space under 24-hour video watch. But try shooting photos or video of police or other public officials as they go about their business and you might find yourself in wrist restraints.

In recent months such cases have been piling up. Brian Kelly of Carlisle, Pa., was a passenger in his friend's car when the police pulled the vehicle over for speeding. When Kelly began videotaping, he was arrested and charged with violating a state wiretap statute and thrown in jail overnight. Charges were dropped when the district attorney recognized that recording police in public isn't much like wiretapping. In addition, the DA said that the police had no expectation of privacy when they themselves were recording the incident. Michael Gannon, of Nashua, N.H., faced similar charges when he used a front-door security camera to record what he considered to be overly aggressive behavior by a detective. The charges against Gannon were dropped. That's the eventual outcome in most such cases, though sometimes photographs and video are lost in the process.

Of course, it's understandable that police might be skittish. Ever since the Rodney King case, police have known that video images—whether recorded by citizens or by the authorities themselves—can provoke controversy. With video technology spreading so rapidly, such images are coming to light more often. In October 2007, an elite unit of the Chicago Police Department was disbanded after video emerged of its members shaking down barroom customers. A policeman in Puerto Rico is under FBI investigation because video—uploaded to YouTube—apparently shows him executing an unarmed man. And a Baltimore woman recently won a $180,000 false arrest and imprisonment lawsuit based on police videotape evidence that confirmed a different but similarly dressed woman was the one buying drugs.

Supporters of widespread surveillance often argue, "If you're obeying the law, you have nothing to fear." Why shouldn't the same go for police officers? The cases above all involve accusations of extreme misconduct or errors on the part of police. Let's hope those are rare. Far more common, I suspect, are cases where the existence of a video record helps protect honest cops from false charges. The "don't Tase me, bro" case became a YouTube sensation after footage emerged of University of Florida police using a Taser on an obstreperous student. But ultimately that same footage was instrumental in clearing the officers of charges of wrongdoing.

Under the law, citizens have no right not to be photographed in public places. So why should people who make their living on the taxpayers' dime enjoy greater freedom from public scrutiny than the taxpayers themselves? Civil liberties groups have begun supporting the trend toward a video-enabled populace. The Eastern Missouri chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union sends out volunteers with cameras, though they have faced police hostility at times.

Over the long haul, such efforts may be superfluous. The widespread availability of digital cameras and video-capable cellphones means that ubiquitous surveillance on the part of the little guys is moving, if anything, even faster than ubiquitous surveillance on the part of the big boys. And distribution tools like YouTube make it easier to get the footage to a large audience.

I think that's a good thing. Today's pervasive surveillance may seem like something out of 1984, but access to technology has become a lot more democratic since Orwell's time. Big Brother had a network of security cameras, but could that oppressive regime have survived a network of cellphones?
http://www.popularmechanics.com/tech...w/4237005.html





The NSA has the ability to eavesdrop on your communications—landlines, cell phones, e-mails, BlackBerry messages, Internet searches, and more—with ease. What happens when the technology of espionage outstrips the law’s ability to protect ordinary citizens from it?
James Bamford

Big Brother Is Listening

On the first Saturday in April of 2002, the temperature in Washington, D.C., had taken a dive. Tourists were bundled up against the cold, and the cherry trees along the Tidal Basin were fast losing their blossoms to the biting winds. But a few miles to the south, in the Dowden Terrace neighborhood of Alexandria, Virginia, the chilly weather was not deterring Royce C. Lamberth, a bald and burly Texan, from mowing his lawn. He stopped only when four cars filled with FBI agents suddenly pulled up in front of his house. The agents were there not to arrest him but to request an emergency court hearing to obtain seven top-secret warrants to eavesdrop on Americans.

As the presiding justice of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, known as the FISA court, Lamberth had become accustomed to holding the secret hearings in his living room. “My wife, Janis … has to go upstairs because she doesn’t have a top-secret clearance,” he noted in a speech to a group of Texas lawyers. “My beloved cocker spaniel, Taffy, however, remains at my side on the assumption that the surveillance targets cannot make her talk. The FBI knows Taffy well. They frequently play with her while I read some of those voluminous tomes at home.” FBI agents will even knock on the judge’s door in the middle of the night. “On the night of the bombings of the U.S. embassies in Africa, I started the first emergency hearings in my living room at 3:00 a.m.,” recalled Lamberth. “From the outset, the FBI suspected bin Laden, and the surveillances I approved that night and in the ensuing days and weeks all ended up being critical evidence at the trial in New York.

“The FISA court is probably the least-known court in Washington,” added Lamberth, who stepped down from it in 2002, at the end of his seven-year term, “but it has become one of the most important.” Conceived in the aftermath of Watergate, the FISA court traces its origins to the mid-1970s, when the Senate’s Church Committee investigated the intelligence community and the Nixon White House. The panel, chaired by Idaho Democrat Frank Church, exposed a long pattern of abuse, and its work led to bipartisan legislation aimed at preventing a president from unilaterally directing the National Security Agency or the FBI to spy on American citizens. This legislation, the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, established the FISA court—made up of eleven judges handpicked by the chief justice of the United States—as a secret part of the federal judiciary. The court’s job is to decide whether to grant warrants requested by the NSA or the FBI to monitor communications of American citizens and legal residents. The law allows the government up to three days after it starts eavesdropping to ask for a warrant; every violation of FISA carries a penalty of up to five years in prison. Between May 18, 1979, when the court opened for business, until the end of 2004, it granted 18,742 NSA and FBI applications; it turned down only four outright.

Such facts worry Jonathan Turley, a George Washington University law professor who worked for the NSA as an intern while in law school in the 1980s. The FISA “courtroom,” hidden away on the top floor of the Justice Department building (because even its location is supposed to be secret), is actually a heavily protected, windowless, bug-proof installation known as a Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility, or SCIF. “When I first went into the FISA court as a lowly intern at the NSA, frankly, it started a lifetime of opposition for me to that court,” Turley recently told a group of House Democrats looking into the NSA’s domestic spying. “I was shocked with what I saw. I was convinced that the judge in that SCIF would have signed anything that we put in front of him. And I wasn’t entirely sure that he had actually read what we put in front of him. But I remember going back to my supervisor at NSA and saying, ‘That place scares the daylights out of me.’”

Lamberth bristles at any suggestion that his court routinely did the administration’s bidding. “Those who know me know the chief justice did not put me on this court because I would be a rubber stamp for whatever the executive branch was wanting to do,” he said in his speech. “I ask questions. I get into the nitty-gritty. I know exactly what is going to be done and why. And my questions are answered, in every case, before I approve an application.”

It is true that the court has been getting tougher. From 1979 through 2000, it modified only two out of 13,087 warrant requests. But from the start of the Bush administration, in 2001, the number of modifications increased to 179 out of 5,645 requests. Most of those—173—involved what the court terms “substantive modifications.”

This friction—and especially the requirement that the government show “probable cause” that the American whose communications they are seeking to target is connected in some way to a terrorist group—induced the administration to begin circumventing the court. Concerned about preventing future 9/11-style attacks, President Bush secretly decided in the fall of 2001 that the NSA would no longer be bound by FISA. Although Judge Lamberth was informed of the president’s decision, he was ordered to tell no one about it—not even his clerks or his fellow FISA-court judges.

Why the NSA Might be Listening to YOU

Contrary to popular perception, the NSA does not engage in “wiretapping”; it collects signals intelligence, or “sigint.” In contrast to the image we have from movies and television of an FBI agent placing a listening device on a target’s phone line, the NSA intercepts entire streams of electronic communications containing millions of telephone calls and e-mails. It runs the intercepts through very powerful computers that screen them for particular names, telephone numbers, Internet addresses, and trigger words or phrases. Any communications containing flagged information are forwarded by the computer for further analysis.

The NSA’s task is to listen in on the world outside American shores. During the Cold War, the principal targets were the communications lines used by the Soviet government and military—navy captains calling their ports, fighter pilots getting landing instructions, army commanders out on maneuvers, and diplomats relaying messages to the Kremlin. But now the enemy is one that communicates very little and, when it does, uses the same telecommunications network as everyone else: a complex system of wires, radio signals, and light pulses encircling and crisscrossing the globe like yarn. Picking up just the right thread, and tracing it through the maze of strands, is difficult. Sometimes a thread leads back inside the United States. An internal agency report predicted a few years ago that the NSA’s worldwide sigint operation would demand a “powerful and permanent presence” on the global telecommunications networks that carry “protected American communications.” The prediction has come true, and the NSA now monitors not only purely “foreign” communications but also “international” ones, where one end of the conversation might be in the United States. As a result, the issue at hand since the revelation last December of the NSA’s warrantless spying on American citizens is not the agency’s access to the country’s communications network—it already has access—but whether the NSA must take legal steps in preparing to target the communications of an American citizen.

It used to be that before the NSA could place the name of an American on its watch list, it had to go before a FISA-court judge and show that it had probable cause—that the facts and circumstances were such that a prudent person would think the individual was somehow connected to terrorism—in order to get a warrant. But under the new procedures put into effect by Bush’s 2001 order, warrants do not always have to be obtained, and the critical decision about whether to put an American on a watch list is left to the vague and subjective “reasonable belief” of an NSA shift supervisor. In charge of hundreds of people, the supervisor manages a wide range of sigint specialists, including signals-conversion analysts separating HBO television programs from cell-phone calls, traffic analysts sifting through massive telephone data streams looking for suspicious patterns, cryptanalysts attempting to read e-mail obscured by complex encryption algorithms, voice-language analysts translating the gist of a phone call from Dari into English, and cryptolinguists trying to unscramble a call on a secure telephone. Bypassing the FISA court has meant that the number of Americans targeted by the NSA has increased since 2001 from perhaps a dozen per year to as many as 5,000 over the last four years, knowledgeable sources told The Washington Post in February. If telephone records indicate that one of the NSA’s targets regularly dials a given telephone number, that number and any names associated with it are added to the watch lists and the communications on that line are screened by computer. Names and information on the watch lists are shared with the FBI, the CIA, the Department of Homeland Security, and foreign intelligence services. Once a person’s name is in the files, even if nothing incriminating ever turns up, it will likely remain there forever. There is no way to request removal, because there is no way to confirm that a name is on the list.

In December of 1997, in a small factory outside the southern French city of Toulouse, a salesman got caught in the NSA’s electronic web. Agents working for the NSA’s British partner, the Government Communications Headquarters, learned of a letter of credit, valued at more than $1.1 million, issued by Iran’s defense ministry to the French company Microturbo. According to NSA documents, both the NSA and the GCHQ concluded that Iran was attempting to secretly buy from Microturbo an engine for the embargoed C-802 anti-ship missile. Faxes zapping back and forth between Toulouse and Tehran were intercepted by the GCHQ, which sent them on not just to the NSA but also to the Canadian and Australian sigint agencies, as well as to Britain’s MI6. The NSA then sent the reports on the salesman making the Iranian deal to a number of CIA stations around the world, including those in Paris and Bonn, and to the U.S. Commerce Department and the Customs Service. Probably several hundred people in at least four countries were reading the company’s communications. The question, however, remained: Was Microturbo shipping a missile engine to Iran? In the end, at the insistence of the U.S. government, the French conducted a surprise inspection just before the ship carrying the mysterious crate was set to sail for Iran. Inside were legal generators, not illegal missile engines.

Such events are central to the current debate involving the potential harm caused by the NSA’s warrantless domestic eavesdropping operation. Even though the salesman did nothing wrong, his name made its way into the computers and onto the watch lists of intelligence, customs, and other secret and law-enforcement organizations around the world. Maybe nothing will come of it. Maybe the next time he tries to enter the United States or Britain he will be denied, without explanation. Maybe he will be arrested. As the domestic eavesdropping program continues to grow, such uncertainties may plague innocent Americans whose names are being run through the supercomputers even though the NSA has not met the established legal standard for a search warrant. It is only when such citizens are turned down while applying for a job with the federal government—or refused when seeking a Small Business Administration loan, or turned back by British customs agents when flying to London on vacation, or even placed on a “no-fly” list—that they will realize that something is very wrong. But they will never learn why.

More than seventy-five years ago, Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis envisioned a day when technology would overtake the law. He wrote:

Subtler and more far-reaching means of invading privacy have become available to the government … The progress of science in furnishing the government with means of espionage is not likely to stop with wiretapping. Ways may some day be developed by which the Government, without removing papers from secret drawers, can reproduce them in court, and by which it will be enabled to expose to a jury the most intimate occurrences of the home … Can it be that the Constitution affords no protection against such invasions of individual security?

Brandeis went on to answer his own question, quoting from an earlier Supreme Court decision, Boyd v. U.S. (1886): “It is not the breaking of his doors, and the rummaging of his drawers that constitutes the essence of the offence; but it is the invasion of his indefeasible right of personal security, personal liberty, and private property.”

Eavesdropping in the Digital Age

Today, the NSA’s capability to eavesdrop is far beyond anything ever dreamed of by Justice Brandeis. With the digital revolution came an explosion in eavesdropping technology; the NSA today has the ability to scan tens of millions of electronic communications—e-mails, faxes, instant messages, Web searches, and phone calls—every hour. General Michael Hayden, director of the NSA from 1999 to 2005 and now principal deputy director of national intelligence, noted in 2002 that during the 1990s, e-communications “surpassed traditional communications. That is the same decade when mobile cell phones increased from 16 million to 741 million—an increase of nearly 50 times. That is the same decade when Internet users went from about 4 million to 361 million—an increase of over 90 times. Half as many land lines were laid in the last six years of the 1990s as in the whole previous history of the world. In that same decade of the 1990s, international telephone traffic went from 38 billion minutes to over 100 billion. This year, the world’s population will spend over 180 billion minutes on the phone in international calls alone.”

Intercepting communications carried by satellite is fairly simple for the NSA. The key conduits are the thirty Intelsat satellites that ring the Earth, 22,300 miles above the equator. Many communications from Europe, Africa, and the Middle East to the eastern half of the United States, for example, are first uplinked to an Intelsat satellite and then downlinked to AT&T’s ground station in Etam, West Virginia. From there, phone calls, e-mails, and other communications travel on to various parts of the country. To listen in on that rich stream of information, the NSA built a listening post fifty miles away, near Sugar Grove, West Virginia. Consisting of a group of very large parabolic dishes, hidden in a heavily forested valley and surrounded by tall hills, the post can easily intercept the millions of calls and messages flowing every hour into the Etam station. On the West Coast, high on the edge of a bluff overlooking the Okanogan River, near Brewster, Washington, is the major commercial downlink for communications to and from Asia and the Pacific. Consisting of forty parabolic dishes, it is reportedly the largest satellite antenna farm in the Western Hemisphere. A hundred miles to the south, collecting every whisper, is the NSA’s western listening post, hidden away on a 324,000-acre Army base in Yakima, Washington. The NSA posts collect the international traffic beamed down from the Intelsat satellites over the Atlantic and Pacific. But each also has a number of dishes that appear to be directed at domestic telecommunications satellites.

Until recently, most international telecommunications flowing into and out of the United States traveled by satellite. But faster, more reliable undersea fiber-optic cables have taken the lead, and the NSA has adapted. The agency taps into the cables that don’t reach our shores by using specially designed submarines, such as the USS Jimmy Carter, to attach a complex “bug” to the cable itself. This is difficult, however, and undersea taps are short-lived because the batteries last only a limited time. The fiber-optic transmission cables that enter the United States from Europe and Asia can be tapped more easily at the landing stations where they come ashore. With the acquiescence of the telecommunications companies, it is possible for the NSA to attach monitoring equipment inside the landing station and then run a buried encrypted fiber-optic “backhaul” line to NSA headquarters at Fort Meade, Maryland, where the river of data can be analyzed by supercomputers in near real time.

Tapping into the fiber-optic network that carries the nation’s Internet communications is even easier, as much of the information transits through just a few “switches” (similar to the satellite downlinks). Among the busiest are MAE East (Metropolitan Area Ethernet), in Vienna, Virginia, and MAE West, in San Jose, California, both owned by Verizon. By accessing the switch, the NSA can see who’s e-mailing with whom over the Internet cables and can copy entire messages. Last September, the Federal Communications Commission further opened the door for the agency. The 1994 Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act required telephone companies to rewire their networks to provide the government with secret access. The FCC has now extended the act to cover “any type of broadband Internet access service” and the new Internet phone services—and ordered company officials never to discuss any aspect of the program.

The NSA won’t divulge how many people it employs, but it is likely that more than 38,000 worldwide now work for the agency. Most of them are at Fort Meade. Nicknamed Crypto City, hidden from public view, and located halfway between Washington and Baltimore, the NSA’s own company town comprises more than fifty buildings—offices, warehouses, factories, laboratories, and a few barracks. Tens of thousands of people work there in absolute secrecy, and most never tell their spouses exactly what they do. Crypto City also houses the nation’s largest collection of powerful computers, advanced mathematicians, and skilled language experts.

The NSA maintains a very close and very confidential relationship with key executives in the telecommunications industry through their membership on the NSA’s advisory board. Created shortly after the agency’s formation, the board was intended to pull together a panel of science wizards from universities, corporate research labs, and think tanks to advise the agency. They keep the agency abreast of the industry’s plans and give NSA engineers a critical head start in finding ways to penetrate technologies still in the development phase.

One of the NSA’s strategies is to hire people away from the companies that make the critical components for telecommunications systems. Although it’s sometimes difficult for the agency to keep up with the tech sector’s pay scale, for many people the chance to deal with the ultimate in cutting-edge technology and aid national security makes working for the NSA irresistible. With the help of such workers, the agency reverse-engineers communication system components. For example, among the most crucial pieces of the Internet infrastructure are routers made by Cisco. “Virtually all Internet traffic,” says one of the company’s television ads, “travels across the systems of one company: Cisco Systems.” For the NSA, this is an opportunity. In 1999, Terry Thompson, then the NSA deputy director for services, said, “[Y]ou can see down the road two or three or five years and say, ‘Well, I only need this person to do reverse-engineering on Cisco routers (that’s a good example) for about three or five years, because I see Cisco going away as a key manufacturer for routers and so I don’t need that expertise. But I really need somebody today and for the next couple of years who knows Cisco routers inside and out and can help me understand how they’re being used in target networks.’”

The Temptations of Secrecy

The National Security Agency was born in absolute secrecy. Unlike the CIA, which was created publicly by a congressional act, the NSA was brought to life by a top-secret memorandum signed by President Truman in 1952, consolidating the country’s various military sigint operations into a single agency. Even its name was secret, and only a few members of Congress were informed of its existence—and they received no information about some of its most important activities. Such secrecy has lent itself to abuse.

During the Vietnam War, for instance, the agency was heavily involved in spying on the domestic opposition to the government. Many of the Americans on the watch lists of that era were there solely for having protested against the war. Among the names in the NSA’s supercomputers were those of the folk singer Joan Baez, the pediatrician Benjamin Spock, the actress Jane Fonda, the civil-rights leader Martin Luther King Jr., and the newspaper editor David Kahn, whose standard history of cryptology, The Codebreakers, contained information the NSA viewed as classified. Even so much as writing about the NSA could land a person a place on a watch list. The NSA, on behalf of the FBI, was also targeting religious groups. “When J. Edgar Hoover gives you a requirement for complete surveillance of all Quakers in the United States,” recalled Frank Raven, a former senior NSA official, “and when Richard M. Nixon is a Quaker and he’s the president of the United States, it gets pretty funny.”

Of course, such abuses are hardly the exclusive province of the NSA; history has repeatedly shown that simply having the ability to eavesdrop brings with it the temptation to use that ability—whatever the legal barriers against that use may be. For instance, during World War I, the government read and censored thousands of telegrams—the e-mail of the day—sent hourly by telegraph companies. Though the end of the war brought with it a reversion to the Radio Act of 1912, which guaranteed the secrecy of communications, the State and War Departments nevertheless joined together in May of 1919 to create America’s first civilian eavesdropping and code-breaking agency, nicknamed the Black Chamber. By arrangement, messengers visited the telegraph companies each morning and took bundles of hard-copy telegrams to the agency’s offices across town. These copies were returned before the close of business that day.

A similar tale followed the end of World War II. In August of 1945, President Truman ordered an end to censorship. That left the Signal Security Agency (the military successor to the Black Chamber, which was shut down in 1929) without its raw intelligence—the telegrams provided by the telegraph companies. The director of the SSA sought access to cable traffic through a secret arrangement with the heads of the three major telegraph companies. The companies agreed to turn all telegrams over to the SSA, under a plan code-named Operation Shamrock. It ran until the government’s domestic spying programs were publicly revealed, in the mid-1970s. The discovery of such abuses in the wake of the Watergate scandal led Congress to create select committees to conduct extensive investigations into the government’s domestic spying programs: their origin, extent, and effect on the public. The shocking findings turned up by the Church Committee finally led to the formation of permanent Senate and House intelligence committees, whose primary responsibility was to protect the public from future privacy abuses. They were to be the FISA court’s partner in providing checks and balances to the ever-expanding U.S. intelligence agencies. But it remains very much an open question whether these checks are up to the task at hand.

Who Watches the Watchmen?

Today, the NSA has access to more information than ever before. People express their most intimate thoughts in e-mails, send their tax returns over the Internet, satisfy their curiosity and desires with Google searches, let their hair down in chat rooms, discuss every event over cell phones, make appointments with their BlackBerrys, and do business by computer in WiFi hot spots.

NSA personnel, the customs inspectors of the information superhighway, have the ultimate goal of intercepting and reviewing every syllable and murmur zapping into, out of, or through the United States. They are close to achieving it. More than a dozen years ago, an NSA director gave an indication of the agency’s capability. “Just one intelligence-collection system,” said Admiral William O. Studeman, referring to a listening post such as Sugar Grove, “can generate a million inputs per half hour.” Today, with the secret cooperation of much of the telecommunications industry, massive dishes vacuuming the airwaves, and electronic “packet sniffers,” software that monitors network traffic, diverting e-mail and other data from fiber-optic cables, the NSA’s hourly take is in the tens of millions of communications. One transatlantic fiber-optic cable alone has the capacity to handle close to 10 million simultaneous calls. While most communications flow through the NSA’s electronic net unheard and unread, those messages associated with persons on the agency’s watch lists—whether guilty or innocent—get kicked out for review.

As history has shown, the availability of such vast amounts of information is a temptation for an intelligence agency. The criteria for compiling watch lists and collecting information may be very strict at the beginning of such a program, but the reality—in a sort of bureaucratic law of expansion—is that it will draw in more and more people whose only offense was knowing the wrong person or protesting the wrong war.

Moreover, as Internet and wireless communications have grown exponentially, users have seen a corresponding decrease in the protections provided by the two institutions set up to shield the public from eavesdroppers. The first, the FISA court, has simply been shunted aside by the executive branch. The second, the congressional intelligence committees, have quite surprisingly abdicated any role. Created to be the watchdogs over the intelligence community, the committees have instead become its most enthusiastic cheerleaders. Rather than fighting for the public’s privacy rights, they are constantly battling for more money and more freedom for the spy agencies.

Last November, just a month before The New York Times broke the story of the NSA’s domestic spying, the American Bar Association publicly expressed concern over Congress’s oversight of FISA searches. “The ABA is concerned that there is inadequate congressional oversight of government investigations undertaken pursuant to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act,” the group stated, “to assure that such investigations do not violate the First, Fourth, and Fifth Amendments to the Constitution.” And while the administration did brief members of Congress on the decision to bypass FISA, the briefings were limited to a “Gang of Eight”—the majority and minority leaders of the House and Senate and the chairmen and ranking members of the two intelligence committees. None of the lawmakers insisted that the decision be debated by the joint committees, even though such hearings are closed.

Frank Church, the Idaho Democrat who led the first probe into the National Security Agency, warned in 1975 that the agency’s capabilities could be turned around on the American people, and no American would have any privacy left, such [is] the capability to monitor everything: telephone conversations, telegrams, it doesn’t matter. There would be no place to hide. If this government ever became a tyranny, if a dictator ever took charge in this country, the technological capacity that the intelligence community has given the government could enable it to impose total tyranny, and there would be no way to fight back, because the most careful effort to combine together in resistance to the government, no matter how privately it is done, is within the reach of the government to know. Such is the capacity of this technology.

It was those fears that caused Congress to enact the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act three years later. “I don’t want to see this country ever go across the bridge,” Senator Church said. “I know the capacity that is there to make tyranny total in America, and we must see to it that [the National Security Agency] and all agencies that possess this technology operate within the law and under proper supervision, so that we never cross over that abyss. That is the abyss from which there is no return.”
http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200604/nsa-surveillance.





Surveillance Society: New High-Tech Cameras Are Watching You

In the era of computer-controlled surveillance, your every move could be captured by cameras, whether you're shopping in the grocery store or driving on the freeway. Proponents say it will keep us safe, but at what cost?
James Vlahos

The ferry arrived, the gangway went down and 7-year-old Emma Powell rushed toward the Statue of Liberty. She climbed onto the grass around the star-shaped foundation. She put on a green foam crown with seven protruding rays. Turning so that her body was oriented just like Lady Liberty's, Emma extended her right arm skyward with an imaginary torch. I snapped a picture. Then I took my niece's hand, and we went off to buy some pretzels.

Other people were taking pictures, too, and not just the other tourists—Liberty Island, name notwithstanding, is one of the most heavily surveilled places in America. Dozens of cameras record hundreds of hours of video daily, a volume that strains the monitoring capability of guards. The National Park Service has enlisted extra help, and as Emma and I strolled around, we weren't just being watched by people. We were being watched by machines.

Liberty Island's video cameras all feed into a computer system. The park doesn't disclose details, but fully equipped, the system is capable of running software that analyzes the imagery and automatically alerts human overseers to any suspicious events. The software can spot when somebody abandons a bag or backpack. It has the ability to discern between ferryboats, which are allowed to approach the island, and private vessels, which are not. And it can count bodies, detecting if somebody is trying to stay on the island after closing, or assessing when people are grouped too tightly together, which might indicate a fight or gang activity. "A camera with artificial intelligence can be there 24/7, doesn't need a bathroom break, doesn't need a lunch break and doesn't go on vacation," says Ian Ehrenberg, former vice president of Nice Systems, the program's developer.

Most Americans would probably welcome such technology at what clearly is a marquee terrorist target. An ABC News/Washington Post poll in July 2007 found that 71 percent of Americans favor increased video surveillance. What people may not realize, however, is that advanced monitoring systems such as the one at the Statue of Liberty are proliferating around the country. High-profile national security efforts make the news—wiretapping phone conversations, Internet monitoring—but state-of-the-art surveillance is increasingly being used in more every-day settings. By local police and businesses. In banks, schools and stores. There are an estimated 30 million surveillance cameras now deployed in the United States shooting 4 billion hours of footage a week. Americans are being watched, all of us, almost everywhere.

We have arrived at a unique moment in the history of surveillance. The price of both megapixels and gigabytes has plummeted, making it possible to collect a previously unimaginable quantity and quality of data. Advances in processing power and software, meanwhile, are beginning to allow computers to surmount the greatest limitation of traditional surveillance—the ability of eyeballs to effectively observe the activity on dozens of video screens simultaneously. Computers can't do all the work by themselves, but they can expand the capabilities of humans exponentially.

Security expert Bruce Schneier says that it is naive to think that we can stop these technological advances, especially as they become more affordable and are hard-wired into everyday businesses. (I know of a local pizzeria that warns customers with a posted sign: "Stop stealing the spice shakers! We know who you are, we have 24-hour surveillance!") But it is also reckless to let the advances proceed without a discussion of safeguards against privacy abuses. "Society is fundamentally changing and we aren't having a conversation about it," Schneier says. "We are entering the era of wholesale surveillance."

Earlier this year, on a hot summer afternoon, I left my Brooklyn apartment to do some shoplifting.

I cruised the aisles of the neighborhood grocery store, a Pathmark, tossing items into my cart like a normal shopper would—Frosted Mini-Wheats, Pledge Wipes, a bag of carrots. Then I put them on the belt at checkout. My secret was on the lower level of the cart: a 12-pack of beer, concealed and undetectable. Or so I thought. Midway through checkout the cashier addressed me, no malice in her voice, but no doubt either. "Do you want to ring up that beer?"

My heist had been condoned by Pedro Ramos, Pathmark's vice president of loss prevention, though he didn't know precisely when or where I was going to attempt it. The beer was identified by an object-recognition scanner at ankle level—a LaneHawk, manufactured by Evolution Robotics—which prompted the cashier's question. Overhead, a camera recorded the incident and an alert was triggered in Ramos's office miles away on Staten Island. He immediately pulled up digital video and later relayed what he saw. "You concealed a 12-pack of Coronas on the bottom of the cart by strategically placing newspaper circulars so as to obstruct the view of the cashier."

Busted.

Pathmark uses StoreVision, a powerful video analytic and data-mining system. There are as many as 120 cameras in some stores, and employees with high-level security clearances can log on via the Web and see what any one of them is recording in real time. An executive on vacation in Brussels could spy on the frozen-food aisle in Brooklyn.

In 2006 theft and fraud cost American stores $41.6 billion, an all-time high. Employee theft accounted for nearly half of the total (shoplifting was only a third), so much of the surveillance aims to catch in-house crooks. If the cashier had given me the beer for free—employees often work with an outside accomplice—the system would know by automatically comparing what the video recorded with what the register logged. The technologies employed by Pathmark don't stop crime but they make a dent; weekly losses are reduced by an average of 15 percent.

Pathmark archives every transaction of every customer, and the grocery chain is hardly alone. Amazon knows what you read; Netflix, your taste in movies. Search engines such as Google and Yahoo retain your queries for months, and can identify searches by IP address—sometimes by individual computer. Many corporations log your every transaction with a stated goal of reducing fraud and improving marketing efforts. Until fairly recently it was impractical to retain all this data. But now the low cost of digital storage—you can get a terabyte hard drive for less than $350—makes nearly limitless archiving possible.

So what's the problem? "The concern is that information collected for one purpose is used for something entirely different down the road," says Ari Schwartz, deputy director of the Center for Democracy and Technology, a Washington, D.C., think tank.

This may sound like a privacy wonk's paranoia. But examples abound. Take E-ZPass. Drivers signed up for the system to speed up toll collection. But 11 states now supply E-ZPass records—when and where a toll was paid, and by whom—in response to court orders in criminal cases. Seven of those states provide information in civil cases such as divorce, proving, for instance, that a husband who claimed he was at a meeting in Pennsylvania was actually heading to his lover's house in New Jersey. (New York divorce lawyer Jacalyn Barnett has called E-ZPass the "easy way to show you took the offramp to adultery.")

On a case-by-case basis, the collection of surveillance footage and customer data is usually justifiable and benign. But the totality of information being amassed combined with the relatively fluid flow of that data can be troubling. Corporations often share what they know about customers with government agencies and vice versa. AT&T, for example, is being sued by the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a San Francisco-based civil liberties group, for allowing the National Security Agency almost unlimited access to monitor customers' e-mails, phone calls and Internet browsing activity.

"We are heading toward a total surveillance society in which your every move, your every transaction, is duly registered and recorded by some computer," says Jay Stanley, a privacy expert with the American Civil Liberties Union.

In the late 18th century, English philosopher Jeremy Bentham dreamed up a new type of prison: the panopticon. It would be built so that guards could see all of the prisoners at all times without their knowing they were being watched, creating "the sentiment of an invisible omniscience," Bentham wrote. America is starting to resemble a giant panopticon, according to surveillance critics like Bob Barr, a former Republican congressman from Georgia. "Were Bentham alive today, he probably would be the most sought-after consultant on the planet," he recently wrote in a Washington Times op-ed.

One of the most popular new technologies in law enforcement is the license-plate reader, or LPR. The leading manufacturer is Remington-Elsag, based in Madison, N.C. Its Mobile Plate Hunter 900 consists of cameras mounted on the outside of a squad car and connected to a computer database in the vehicle. The plate hunter employs optical-character-recognition technology originally developed for high-speed mail sorting. LPRs automate the process of "running a plate" to check if a vehicle is stolen or if the driver has any outstanding warrants. The sensors work whether the police car is parked or doing 75 mph. An officer working the old-fashioned way might check a couple dozen plates a shift. The LPR can check 10,000.

New York's Long Beach Police Department is one of more than 200 agencies around the country that use LPRs, and I rode in a squad car with Sgt. Bill Dodge to see the technology at work. A computer screen mounted in front of the glovebox flashed black-and-white images of every photographed plate; low alarms, like the sounds of your character dying in an '80s video game, droned for the problem cars. Over the course of a couple of hours we didn't net any car thieves or kidnappers, but Dodge's LPR identified dozens of cars with suspended or revoked registrations. He said that the system doesn't violate anyone's privacy—"there's no magic technology that lets it see inside a garage"—and praised its fairness. "It doesn't matter if you're black, white, old, young, a man or a woman, the system cannot discriminate. It looks at everyone and everything."

In July, New York City officials unveiled the Lower Manhattan Security Initiative, modeled after London's "Ring of Steel," which will include license-plate readers, automated roadblocks and 3000 new surveillance cameras—adding to the 250 already in place. Chicago, meanwhile, which has 560 anti-crime cameras deployed on city streets, revealed plans in September to add a sophisticated IBM video analytic system that would automatically detect abandoned bags, suspicious behaviors (such as a vehicle repeatedly circling the Sears Tower) and vehicles sought by the police. Expanded surveillance is perhaps to be expected for these high-profile cities, but they're hardly alone. Richmond, Calif.; Spokane, Wash.; and Greenville, N.C., are among the cities that have recently announced plans to add electronic spying eyes. According to iSuppli, a market research firm, the global surveillance-camera business is expected to grow from $4.9 billion in 2006 to $9 billion in 2011.

The ability of cameras to deter criminals is unproven, but their value in helping to solve crimes is not. Recall how videos led to several arrests in the July 7, 2005, London subway bombings. The problem with surveillance video is that there's simply too much of it. "It's impossible for mere mortals with eyeballs and brains to process all the information we're gathering," says Stephen Russell, the chief executive of 3VR, a company that makes video analytic software.

An investigator looking for a particular piece of video is like a researcher working in a library with a jumbled card catalog—or in books with no tables of contents. The solution of 3VR and other similar companies is software that automatically analyzes and tags video contents, from the colors and locations of cars to the characteristics of individual faces that pass before the lens. The goal is to allow rapid digital search; instead of functioning like a shoddy library, 3VR hopes to be "the Google of surveillance video," Russell says. "It took 1000 [British agents] six weeks to review all the video after July 7. Had 3VRs been in place, it might have taken a dozen or so agents a weekend," he claims.

I recently spent a night at Chicago's Talbott Hotel, a luxurious small retreat where the staff addresses you by name and you have to clear a dozen pillows from the cushy king-size bed before lying down. The Talbott is surveilled by 70 cameras, which cover every public area of the hotel and feed into a 3VR system.

Troy Strand, general manager of the hotel, showed me a computer screen divided into 16 panes with different camera views. He looked up my check-in time and seconds later retrieved video of my arrival the previous day. There I was, towing my carry-on toward room 1504.

Strand found a few other shots showing me, then instructed the software to begin facial analysis. The system assessed the balance of light and dark areas of skin tone and hair and gauged the distance between my eyes, nose and mouth. Strand instructed the system to search for all recorded videos showing my face, and the computer retrieved several dozen faces, none of which was mine. There was a woman and a black man. But Strand went through a few pages of results, and I started to show up. When he clicked on any image, an associated video of me played—crossing the lobby to go to breakfast, chatting with the front-desk clerk.

So-called "facial profiling" has been surveillance's next big thing for nearly a decade, and it is only now showing tentative signs of feasibility. It's easy to see why people are seduced by the promise of this technology. Twelve bank companies employ 3VR systems at numerous locations, which build a facial template for every single person that enters any branch. If somebody cashes a check that is later determined to be stolen, the person's face can be flagged in the system, and the next time the con artist comes in, the system is supposed to alert the tellers.

For Strand, the security system's fancier features are just a bonus. The cameras are in plain sight, so he believes that would-be criminals and misbehaving employees are deterred. "You can't have security people on every floor monitoring every angle of the building," he says.

There's a man in Salt Lake City who knows what I did last summer. Specifically, he knows what I did on Aug. 24, 2007. He knows that I checked my EarthLink e-mail at 1:25 pm, and then blew a half an hour on ESPN's Web site. He also knows that my wife, Anne, wanted new shoes, from Hush Puppies or DSW, and that she synced her electronic planner—"she has quite a busy schedule," the man noted—and downloaded some podcasts. We both printed out passes for free weeklong trials at 24 Hour Fitness, but instead of working out, apparently spent the evening watching a pay-per-view movie. It was Bridge to Terabithia or Zodiac, he thinks.

The man's name is Joe Wilkinson, and he works for Raytheon Oakley Systems. The company specializes in "insider risk management," which means dealing with the problem of employees who, whether through innocent accident or nefarious plot, do things they really shouldn't be doing at work. Oakley's software, developed for the U.S. government and now used by ten Fortune 100 companies, monitors computer use remotely and invisibly. Wilkinson had agreed to run a surveillance trial with me as the subject, and after accessing my computer via the Web, he installed an "agent" that regularly reported my activities back to him.

The modern desktop machine is a multimedia distraction monster: friend, lover, shopping mall, stereo, television, movie theater and adult video store are mere mouse clicks away. Raytheon Oakley's software caught me wasting valuable work time checking personal e-mails and reading digital camera reviews online. Companies are also concerned about hostile work environments caused by employees openly surfing porn in the office—conse-quently, my 10:14 am visit to a risqué site was duly noted. Employees also leak trade secrets. (Consider the case of DuPont chemist Gary Min, who, after accepting a job with a competitor in 2005, raided DuPont's electronic library for $400 million worth of technical documents. He was caught by the FBI last year.) If I had downloaded any large engineering drawings onto a removable hard drive, Oakley's software would have alerted Wilkinson. And employees bad-mouth the boss. I wrote an e-mail to Anne that mentioned my editor at Popular Mechanics, Glenn Derene. Wilkinson rigged the software to flag anything with Derene's name, and alarm bells rang. Sorry, Glenn.

Surveillance of this sort is common. A 2005 survey by the American Management Association and the ePolicy Institute found that 36 percent of companies monitor workers on a keystroke-by-keystroke basis; 55 percent review e-mail messages, and 76 percent monitor Web sites visited. "Total Behavioral Visibility" is Raytheon Oakley's motto. The vice president of marketing, Tom Bennett, knows that some people fear workplace monitoring. But the technology has many positive aspects. "We are not Big Brother," he insists.

Employees are sometimes lazy or dishonest, but often they're simply careless. A parent who has to leave the office at midday to care for a sick child might copy sensitive company information onto a USB drive so that he can work at home. An account manager might carelessly send customer credit card numbers over an unsecured wireless network where they can be stolen. Bennett says that his company's software helps companies understand and improve how workers use their computers. The Oakley monitoring application works like a TiVo, allowing an instant video replay: where you pointed the mouse, when you clicked, what you wrote. This can catch the guilty but also exonerate the innocent, because the replay puts your actions in context.

The debate over surveillance pits the tangible benefits of saving lives and dollars against the abstract ones of preserving privacy and freedom. To many people, the promise of increased security is worth the exchange. History shows that new technologies, once developed, are seldom abandoned, and the computer vision systems being adopted today are transforming America from a society that spies upon a small number of suspicious individuals to one that monitors everybody. The question arises: Do people exercise their perfectly legal freedoms as freely when they know they're being watched? As the ACLU's Stanley argues, "You need space in your life to live beyond the gaze of society."

Surveillance has become pervasive. It is also more enduring. As companies develop powerful archiving and search tools, your life will be accessible for years to come in rich multimedia records. The information about you may be collected for reasonable purposes—but as its life span increases, so too does the chance that it may fall into unscrupulous hands.

Several months after I stayed at the Talbott Hotel, Derene, my editor, called Troy Strand to ask if he still had the security camera images of me at the hotel. He did. My niece Emma's Statue of Liberty shots are probably stored on a computer, as are the records of all my Pathmark purchases. Ramos could query my shopping trip of, say, Jan. 13, 2005, and replay video keyed precisely to any part of the register tape—from the fifth item scanned, pork chops, to the tenth, broccoli. That's innocuous and even humorous on the surface, but the more I thought about the store's power, the more it disturbed me.

"I would never do that," Ramos assured me. "But I could."
http://www.popularmechanics.com/tech...w/4236865.html





Spy Planes to Recharge by Clinging to Power Lines
Paul Marks

The next time you see something flapping in the breeze on an overhead power line, squint a little harder. It may not be a plastic bag or the remnants of a party balloon, but a tiny spy plane stealing power from the line to recharge its batteries.

The idea comes from the US Air Force Research Lab (AFRL) in Dayton, Ohio, US, which wants to operate extended surveillance missions using remote-controlled planes with a wingspan of about a metre, but has been struggling to find a way to refuel to extend the plane's limited flight duration.

So the AFRL is developing an electric motor-powered micro air vehicle (MAV) that can "harvest" energy when needed by attaching itself to a power line. It could even temporarily change its shape to look more like innocuous piece of trash hanging from the cable.
Hanging about

AFRL's initial aim is to work out how to make a MAV flying at 74 kilometres per hour latch onto a power line without destroying itself or the line.

In addition, so as not to arouse suspicion, AFRL says the spy plane will need to collapse its wings and hang limply on the cable like a piece of wind-blown detritus. Much of the "morphing" technology to perform this has already been developed by DARPA, the Pentagon's research division. Technologies developed in that program include carbon composite "sliding skins", which allow fuselages to change shape, and telescopic wings that allow lift to be boosted in seconds by boosting a wing's surface area.

Challenges abound, though. Zac Richardson, a power-line engineer with National Grid in the UK, warns that if the MAV contacts an 11-kilovolt local power line, it could short circuit two conductors, causing an automatic disconnection of the very power the plane seeks.

And, on a 400 kilovolt inter-city power line, it risks discharging sparks. "It will hang there fizzing and banging and giving its position away anyway," says Richardson.

"Even kites falling across power lines cause breakdowns," adds Ian Fells, an expert in electricity transmission based in Newcastle, UK. "It's an utterly bizarre idea to try to land a plane on one."

Regardless of the challenges faced, AFRL plans test flights in 2008.
http://technology.newscientist.com/a...wer-lines.html





The Terror Train Bears Down
David Neiwert

Last week I tried to explain why Jane Harman's "Violent Radicalization and Homegrown Terrorism Prevention Act of 2007" is a profoundly bad idea, one likely to skew and misdirect the fight against genuine terrorism into an ideological witchhunt that poisons our constitutional rights.

What I neglected to mention, unfortunately, is that this Orwellian bill is very much on the verge of becoming reality. It has already passed the House by a 400-6 vote, and now sits before the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs -- chaired by that "Independent Democrat" Joe Lieberman.

I think we can all see where this is heading. Joe loves him those Muslim-bashers, and this bill is tailor-made for them.

Amy Goodman raised the red flag about this bill the other day, and a point raised on her program by Kamau Franklin of the Center for Constitutional Rights really got to the heart of the problem with this bill:

KAMAU FRANKLIN: I just wanted to add to the Rand comment, particularly with Brian Michael Jenkins, supposed terrorist expert who’s mainly known according to Rand as someone who helped the United States in counter-insurgency measures in Vietnam, which is one of his claims to fame. In addition to that, he wrote a book and in his own book, I just want to quote that says “in their international campaign, the Jihadist will seek common ground with leftist, anti-American and anti-globalization forces who will in turn seek radical Islam comrades against a mutual foe.” So I think what Jessica’s talking about, is that, the breadth of it is not focused in on supposed terrorists who are threatening the United States, but folks who have real concerns about where this country is heading, folks who express dissent in various different ways including demonstrations and marches. These are the folks who this bill potentially good target.

This is also a powerful indicator of just how open to abuse this legislation will be. The reality of the radical Islam, both in ideology and practice, is such that it's clear that any alliances it forms in this are almost certainly going to be on the side of the extreme American right and not its left.

It's more than just the common ground of radical fundamentalism they share. It's also manifested in what has actually occurred: David Duke and other far-right figures appearing at Holocaust-denial conferences sponsored by radical Islamic fundamentalists; outreach efforts among the far right, such as the Aryan Nations' Ministry of Islamic Liaison; the ongoing theoretical work of David Myatt, the British ex-neo-Nazi who converted to Islam and frequently expounds on building bridges between the two factions; the ongoing shared rhetoric of hate.

George Michael's book The Enemy of My Enemy: The Alarming Convergence of Militant Islam and the Extremist Right does a thorough job of examining and documenting this reality. Meanwhile, the evidence of any similar convergence of militant Islam and the antiglobalist left is very thin if not nonexistent.

But under the antiterrorism regime created by Harman's bill, all you need is for an "expert" (even if he has an ax to grind) to assert on the thinnest evidence that a convergence of radical Islam and antiglobalist, or just as likely, antiwar organizations exists, and the witchhunt will descend.

We should be at least alarmed if not outraged over the bill's passage, and yet it has hardly raised a blip on our political radars. As Goodman observes:

AMY GOODMAN: Jessica Lee, the Violent Radicalization and Homegrown Terrorism Prevention Act was passed in the house 400-6. That is a very big margin.

JESSICA LEE: Correct. It was actually passed under what is called the “Suspension of the Rules”, which is a provision the House uses to pass bills very quickly and these are usually bills deemed uncontroversial and do not need more debate. So we saw a quick vote. Six people voted against. One was presidential candidate Dennis Kucinich. He was unavailable for comment unfortunately. So what we’re seeing not only the Republican congress giving the Bush administration swath of powers to confront the war on terrorism, but we are also seeing the democratically-led congress also extending these powers.

At this point, the bill certainly looks to be a fait accompli. Perhaps, somewhere in the Senate, someone will find the courage to stand up and question what this bill does and where it is taking us.

It would take an act of unusual courage this year, because you can be certain anyone doing so would be accused of being "soft on terrorism" -- and nothing sends politicians on both sides of the aisle scurrying faster than those dread words. And the Democrats voters put in power in 2006 have not exactly been profiles in courage so far, Chris Dodd notwithstanding.

Here are the Democratic members of the Senate Homeland Security committee:

Carl Levin, MI

Daniel Akaka, HI

Thomas Carper, DE

Mark Pryor, AR

Mary Landrieu, LA

Barack Obama, IL

Claire McCaskill, MO

Jon Tester, MT

Not exactly a promising list, I know. But it is what it is.

This bill is a runaway train loaded with nitroglycerin, and the wreckage it creates may be far worse than anyone anticipates. At this point, we may just want to prepare ourselves for the shock.
http://firedoglake.com/2007/12/20/th...in-bears-down/





FBI Prepares Vast Database Of Biometrics

$1 Billion Project to Include Images of Irises and Faces
Ellen Nakashima

The FBI is embarking on a $1 billion effort to build the world's largest computer database of peoples' physical characteristics, a project that would give the government unprecedented abilities to identify individuals in the United States and abroad.

Digital images of faces, fingerprints and palm patterns are already flowing into FBI systems in a climate-controlled, secure basement here. Next month, the FBI intends to award a 10-year contract that would significantly expand the amount and kinds of biometric information it receives. And in the coming years, law enforcement authorities around the world will be able to rely on iris patterns, face-shape data, scars and perhaps even the unique ways people walk and talk, to solve crimes and identify criminals and terrorists. The FBI will also retain, upon request by employers, the fingerprints of employees who have undergone criminal background checks so the employers can be notified if employees have brushes with the law.

"Bigger. Faster. Better. That's the bottom line," said Thomas E. Bush III, assistant director of the FBI's Criminal Justice Information Services Division, which operates the database from its headquarters in the Appalachian foothills.

The increasing use of biometrics for identification is raising questions about the ability of Americans to avoid unwanted scrutiny. It is drawing criticism from those who worry that people's bodies will become de facto national identification cards. Critics say that such government initiatives should not proceed without proof that the technology really can pick a criminal out of a crowd.

The use of biometric data is increasing throughout the government. For the past two years, the Defense Department has been storing in a database images of fingerprints, irises and faces of more than 1.5 million Iraqi and Afghan detainees, Iraqi citizens and foreigners who need access to U.S. military bases. The Pentagon also collects DNA samples from some Iraqi detainees, which are stored separately.

The Department of Homeland Security has been using iris scans at some airports to verify the identity of travelers who have passed background checks and who want to move through lines quickly. The department is also looking to apply iris- and face-recognition techniques to other programs. The DHS already has a database of millions of sets of fingerprints, which includes records collected from U.S. and foreign travelers stopped at borders for criminal violations, from U.S. citizens adopting children overseas, and from visa applicants abroad. There could be multiple records of one person's prints.

"It's going to be an essential component of tracking," said Barry Steinhardt, director of the Technology and Liberty Project of the American Civil Liberties Union. "It's enabling the Always On Surveillance Society."

If successful, the system planned by the FBI, called Next Generation Identification, will collect a wide variety of biometric information in one place for identification and forensic purposes.

In an underground facility the size of two football fields, a request reaches an FBI server every second from somewhere in the United States or Canada, comparing a set of digital fingerprints against the FBI's database of 55 million sets of electronic fingerprints. A possible match is made -- or ruled out--as many as 100,000 times a day.

Soon, the server at CJIS headquarters will also compare palm prints and, eventually, iris images and face-shape data such as the shape of an earlobe. If all goes as planned, a police officer making a traffic stop or a border agent at an airport could run a 10-fingerprint check on a suspect and within seconds know if the person is on a database of the most wanted criminals and terrorists. An analyst could take palm prints lifted from a crime scene and run them against the expanded database. Intelligence agents could exchange biometric information worldwide.

More than 55 percent of the search requests now are made for background checks on civilians in sensitive positions in the federal government, and jobs that involve children and the elderly, Bush said. Currently those prints are destroyed or returned when the checks are completed. But the FBI is planning a "rap-back" service, under which employers could ask the FBI to keep employees' fingerprints in the database, subject to state privacy laws, so that if that employees are ever arrested or charged with a crime, the employers would be notified.

Advocates say bringing together information from a wide variety of sources and making it available to multiple agencies increases the chances to catch criminals. The Pentagon has already matched several Iraqi suspects against the FBI's criminal fingerprint database. The FBI intends to make both criminal and civilian data available to authorized users, officials said. There are 900,000 federal, state and local law enforcement officers who can query the fingerprint database today, they said.

The FBI's biometric database, which includes criminal history records, communicates with the Terrorist Screening Center's database of suspects and the National Crime Information Center database, which is the FBI's master criminal database of felons, fugitives and terrorism suspects.

The FBI is building its system according to standards shared by Britain, Canada, Australia and New Zealand.

At the West Virginia University Center for Identification Technology Research (CITeR), 45 minutes north of the FBI's biometric facility in Clarksburg, researchers are working on capturing images of people's irises at distances of up to 15 feet, and of faces from as far away as 200 yards. Soon, those researchers will do biometric research for the FBI.

Covert iris- and face-image capture is several years away, but it is of great interest to government agencies.

Think of a Navy ship approaching a foreign vessel, said Bojan Cukic, CITeR's co-director. "It would help to know before you go on board whether the people on that ship that you can image from a distance, whether they are foreign warfighters, and run them against a database of known or suspected terrorists," he said.

Skeptics say that such projects are proceeding before there is evidence that they reliably match suspects against a huge database.

In the world's first large-scale, scientific study on how well face recognition works in a crowd, the German government this year found that the technology, while promising, was not yet effective enough to allow its use by police. The study was conducted from October 2006 through January at a train station in Mainz, Germany, which draws 23,000 passengers daily. The study found that the technology was able to match travelers' faces against a database of volunteers more than 60 percent of the time during the day, when the lighting was best. But the rate fell to 10 to 20 percent at night.

To achieve those rates, the German police agency said it would tolerate a false positive rate of 0.1 percent, or the erroneous identification of 23 people a day. In real life, those 23 people would be subjected to further screening measures, the report said.

Accuracy improves as techniques are combined, said Kimberly Del Greco, the FBI's biometric services section chief. The Next Generation database is intended to "fuse" fingerprint, face, iris and palm matching capabilities by 2013, she said.

To safeguard privacy, audit trails are kept on everyone who has access to a record in the fingerprint database, Del Greco said. People may request copies of their records, and the FBI audits all agencies that have access to the database every three years, she said.

"We have very stringent laws that control who can go in there and to secure the data," Bush said.

Marc Rotenberg, executive director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center, said the ability to share data across systems is problematic. "You're giving the federal government access to an extraordinary amount of information linked to biometric identifiers that is becoming increasingly inaccurate," he said.

In 2004, the Electronic Privacy Information Center objected to the FBI's exemption of the National Crime Information Center database from the Privacy Act requirement that records be accurate. The group noted that the Bureau of Justice Statistics in 2001 found that information in the system was "not fully reliable" and that files "may be incomplete or inaccurate." FBI officials justified that exemption by claiming that in law enforcement data collection, "it is impossible to determine in advance what information is accurate, relevant, timely and complete."

Privacy advocates worry about the ability of people to correct false information. "Unlike say, a credit card number, biometric data is forever," said Paul Saffo, a Silicon Valley technology forecaster. He said he feared that the FBI, whose computer technology record has been marred by expensive failures, could not guarantee the data's security. "If someone steals and spoofs your iris image, you can't just get a new eyeball," Saffo said.

In the future, said CITeR director Lawrence A. Hornak, devices will be able to "recognize us and adapt to us."

"The long-term goal," Hornak said, is "ubiquitous use" of biometrics. A traveler may walk down an airport corridor and allow his face and iris images to be captured without ever stepping up to a kiosk and looking into a camera, he said.

"That's the key," he said. "You've chosen it. You have chosen to say, 'Yeah, I want this place to recognize me.' "

Staff researcher Richard Drezen contributed to this report.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...122102544.html





If it’s good enough for Edgar…

Hoover Planned Mass Jailing in 1950
Tim Weiner

A newly declassified document shows that J. Edgar Hoover, the longtime director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, had a plan to suspend habeas corpus and imprison some 12,000 Americans he suspected of disloyalty.

Hoover sent his plan to the White House on July 7, 1950, 12 days after the Korean War began. It envisioned putting suspect Americans in military prisons.

Hoover wanted President Harry S. Truman to proclaim the mass arrests necessary to “protect the country against treason, espionage and sabotage.” The F.B.I would “apprehend all individuals potentially dangerous” to national security, Hoover’s proposal said. The arrests would be carried out under “a master warrant attached to a list of names” provided by the bureau.

The names were part of an index that Hoover had been compiling for years. “The index now contains approximately twelve thousand individuals, of which approximately ninety-seven per cent are citizens of the United States,” he wrote.

“In order to make effective these apprehensions, the proclamation suspends the Writ of Habeas Corpus,” it said.

Habeas corpus, the right to seek relief from illegal detention, has been a fundamental principle of law for seven centuries. The Bush administration’s decision to hold suspects for years at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, has made habeas corpus a contentious issue for Congress and the Supreme Court today.

The Constitution says habeas corpus shall not be suspended “unless when in cases of rebellion or invasion, the public safety may require it.” The plan proposed by Hoover, the head of the F.B.I. from 1924 to 1972, stretched that clause to include “threatened invasion” or “attack upon United States troops in legally occupied territory.”

After the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, President Bush issued an order that effectively allowed the United States to hold suspects indefinitely without a hearing, a lawyer, or formal charges. In September 2006, Congress passed a law suspending habeas corpus for anyone deemed an “unlawful enemy combatant.”

But the Supreme Court has reaffirmed the right of American citizens to seek a writ of habeas corpus. This month the court heard arguments on whether about 300 foreigners held at Guantánamo Bay had the same rights. It is expected to rule by next summer.

Hoover’s plan was declassified Friday as part of a collection of cold-war documents concerning intelligence issues from 1950 to 1955. The collection makes up a new volume of “The Foreign Relations of the United States,” a series that by law has been published continuously by the State Department since the Civil War.

Hoover’s plan called for “the permanent detention” of the roughly 12,000 suspects at military bases as well as in federal prisons. The F.B.I., he said, had found that the arrests it proposed in New York and California would cause the prisons there to overflow.

So the bureau had arranged for “detention in military facilities of the individuals apprehended” in those states, he wrote.

The prisoners eventually would have had a right to a hearing under the Hoover plan. The hearing board would have been a panel made up of one judge and two citizens. But the hearings “will not be bound by the rules of evidence,” his letter noted.

The only modern precedent for Hoover’s plan was the Palmer Raids of 1920, named after the attorney general at the time. The raids, executed in large part by Hoover’s intelligence division, swept up thousands of people suspected of being communists and radicals.

Previously declassified documents show that the F.B.I.’s “security index” of suspect Americans predated the cold war. In March 1946, Hoover sought the authority to detain Americans “who might be dangerous” if the United States went to war. In August 1948, Attorney General Tom Clark gave the F.B.I. the power to make a master list of such people.

Hoover’s July 1950 letter was addressed to Sidney W. Souers, who had served as the first director of central intelligence and was then a special national-security assistant to Truman. The plan also was sent to the executive secretary of the National Security Council, whose members were the president, the secretary of defense, the secretary of state and the military chiefs.

In September 1950, Congress passed and the president signed a law authorizing the detention of “dangerous radicals” if the president declared a national emergency. Truman did declare such an emergency in December 1950, after China entered the Korean War. But no known evidence suggests he or any other president approved any part of Hoover’s proposal.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/23/wa.../23habeas.html





6 States Defy Law Requiring ID Cards
Bob Child

Six state legislatures are defying a federal law requiring new driver's licenses that aim to prevent identity theft, fraud and terrorism.

The states have passed laws in the past two months, saying the federal law has a steep cost and invades privacy by requiring 240 million Americans to get highly secure licenses by 2013. The 9/11 Commission urged the first standards for licenses to stop fraud and terrorists such as the Sept. 11 hijackers, who lied on residency statements to get licenses and state IDs.

Lawmakers in Maine, Montana, New Hampshire, Oklahoma, South Carolina and Washington say new standards would be expensive to implement and result in a national ID card that compromises privacy. The National Conference of State Legislatures estimates that it will cost states more than $11 billion.

State resistance has drawn criticism from the Homeland Security Department. "I cannot imagine a state official anywhere that would want to have to testify before Congress about … how their non-compliant licenses contributed to a terrorist attack," department spokesman Russ Knocke said.

Knocke said the federal government can't force states to comply. But he said each state's residents are likely to bring pressure on their local governments when they learn they'll be barred from boarding airplanes because their state's licenses don't meet federal standards.

Airline passengers can use other government photo identification, such as passports and military IDs.

Some lawmakers say any inconvenience is outweighed by the cost and potential privacy invasion for each state to create a photo database of license holders.

"The people of New Hampshire are adamantly opposed to any kind of 'papers-please' society reminiscent of Nazi Germany and Stalinist Russia," said Neal Kurk, a Republican state representative from New Hampshire. "This is another effort of the federal government to keep track of all its citizens."

The federal law requires everyone to renew licenses by 2013 with documents showing their Social Security number and home address, and that they are in the USA legally. State Sen. Larry Martin, a Republican from South Carolina, said the law will overwhelm states by requiring agencies to verify documents such as birth certificates.

The defiance by six states could force Congress to reconsider the law, said Barry Steinhardt of the American Civil Liberties Union. "You can't have a national ID card if the residents of six states won't have one," Steinhardt said.
http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/...id-cards_N.htm
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Telecom Industry Wins a Round on Eavesdropping
David Stout

Telecommunications companies won a skirmish in the Senate on Monday as a bill to protect them from lawsuits for cooperating with the Bush administration’s eavesdropping programs easily overcame a procedural hurdle.

By 76 to 10, with Democrats divided, the Senate voted to advance the bill for consideration. A measure to block it, which was led by Senator Christopher J. Dodd, Democrat of Connecticut fell short, as those who wanted the bill to reach the floor got 16 votes more than the 60 needed to achieve that goal.

What happens next is not immediately clear. A different bill, which would not grant immunity to the companies, was also expected to be introduced by Senator Patrick J. Leahy, the Vermont Democrat who heads the Judiciary Committee. And whatever bill emerges from the Senate may have to be reconciled with a House version that does not include immunity.

The measures are meant to renew the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, legislation that has deeply divided the White House and Capitol Hill and members of the House and Senate. Some action is necessary fairly soon, because the current FISA law expires in February.

In his unsuccessful bid to block the legislation, Senator Dodd urged his colleagues not to immunize the telecommunications industry for cooperating with the National Security Agency’s secret program of eavesdropping without warrants. The program was disclosed late in 2005 by The New York Times.

“For the last six years, our largest telecommunications companies have been spying on their own American customers,” Mr. Dodd said. “Secretly and without a warrant, they delivered to the federal government the private, domestic communications records of millions of Americans — records this administration has compiled into a data base of enormous scale and scope.”

“I have seen six presidents — six in the White House — and I have never seen a contempt for the rule of law equal to this,” Mr. Dodd asserted.

Another opponent of the immunization measure, Senator Russell D. Feingold, called it “deeply flawed.”

“This time around, the Senate should stand up to an administration that time and again has employed fear-mongering and misleading statements to intimidate Congress,” said Mr. Feingold, Democrat of Wisconsin.

But supporters of the administration’s program of surveillance without warrants have described it as necessary to protect Americans from terrorists, and they insist the program strikes a sensible balance between national security and personal liberty.

But not all of the 76 senators who voted to advance the bill necessarily agree entirely with the administration. Some do, but others voted to advance the bill so they can criticize it or offer amendments.

For instance, Senator Edward M. Kennedy, Democrat of Massachusetts, voted to advance the bill because, he said, the issue is “too important to hold up any longer.” Mr. Kennedy said he strongly favored the version backed by Senator Leahy, who himself voted on Monday to advance the competing bill, rather than the version that just advanced, saying that version would grant “vast new authorities to spy on Americans.”Senator Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania, the ranking Republican on the Judiciary Committee, said he would offer an amendment that would substitute the federal government as defendant in lawsuits, in place of the companies.

“The telephone companies have, I believe, acted as good citizens,” Mr. Specter said.

President Bush has threatened to veto any measure that does not grant immunity to the companies. The House version of the legislation, enacted a month ago, was approved by 227 to 189, or dozens of “yes” votes short of the two-thirds needed to overcome a presidential veto.

Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, the Democratic majority leader, said he agreed to have both Senate measures considered at the same time because “this process will give senators the opportunity to fully debate the various issues.”

In addition to Mr. Dodd and Mr. Feingold, the senators who voted against advancing the immunization measure were Barbara Boxer of California, Sherrod Brown of Ohio, Maria Cantwell of Washington, Benjamin L. Cardin of Maryland, Tom Harkin of Iowa, John Kerry of Massachusetts, Robert Menendez of New Jersey, and Ron Wyden of Oregon, all Democrats.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/17/wa...17cnd-nsa.html





Dodd: “We Say To President Bush, We Would Never Take ‘Trust Me’ For An Answer”

The Senate today began debate on a FISA bill that would overhaul the rules for electronic surveillance and provide retroactive immunity for telecom companies that participated in the Bush administration’s illegal spying efforts.

Sen. Chris Dodd (D-CT) took to the Senate floor and protested the bill today, arguing that that Congress should not reward the President’s “favored corporations” for betraying “millions of customers’ trust.”

In response to the White House’s insistence that the telecomm’s actions were legal, Dodd explained, “[W]e say to President Bush that a nation of truly free men and women would never take ‘trust me’ for an answer, not even from a perfect president — and certainly not from him”:

Quote:
So here we are–facing a final decision on whether the telecommunications companies will get off the hook for good. The president’s allies are as intent as they ever were on making that happen. They want immunity back in this bill at all costs.

But what they’re truly offering is secrecy in place of openness. Fiat in place of law.

And in place of the forthright argument and judicial deliberation that ought to be this country’s pride, two simple words from our president’s mouth: “Trust me.”

I cannot speak for my colleagues–but I would never take that offer, not even in the best of times, not even from a perfect president. I would never take that offer because our Constitution tells us that the president’s word is subject to the oversight of the Congress and the deliberation of the courts; and because I took an oath to defend the Constitution; and because I stand by my oath.

“Trust me.” It is the offer to hide ourselves in the waiting arms of the rule of men. And in these threatened times, that offer has never seemed more seductive. The rule of law has rarely been so fragile.

“It is a universal truth that the loss of liberty at home is to be charged to the provisions against danger…from abroad.” James Madison, the father of our Constitution, made that prediction more than two centuries ago. With the passage of this bill, his words would be one step closer to coming true. So it has never been more essential that we lend our voices to the law, and speak on its behalf.

On its behalf, we say to President Bush that a nation of truly free men and women would never take “trust me” for an answer, not even from a perfect president — and certainly not from him. […]

If this disastrous war has taught us anything, it is that the Senate must never again stack such a momentous decision on such a weak foundation of fact. The decision we’re asked to make today is not, of course, as immense. But between fact and decision, the disproportion is just as huge.

So I rise in determined opposition to this unprecedented immunity and all that it represents. I have served in this body for more than a quarter-century. I have spoken from this desk hundreds and hundreds of times. I have rarely come to the floor with such anger.

But since I came to Washington, I have seen six presidents sit in the White House–and I have never seen a contempt for the rule of law equal to this. Today I have reached a breaking point. Today my disgust has found its limit.

I don’t expect every one of my colleagues to share that disgust, or that limit. I wish they did–but had that been the case, we would never have come to this point.
http://thinkprogress.org/2007/12/17/dodd-fisa/





Obama’s Statement on Dodd and Filibuster
Jane Hamsher

I contacted the Clinton, Edwards and Obama campaigns last night to ask them if they had statements on Dodd's filibuster against retroactive immunity today. So far the only one to get back to me with one is Obama:

Quote:
Senator Obama unequivocally opposes giving retroactive immunity to telecommunications companies and has cosponsored Senator Dodd's efforts to remove that provision from the FISA bill. Granting such immunity undermines the constitutional protections Americans trust the Congress to protect. Senator Obama supports a filibuster of this bill, and strongly urges others to do the same. It's not clear whether he can return for the vote, but under the Senate rules, the side trying to end a filibuster must produce 60 votes to cut off debate. Whether he is present for the vote for not, Senator Obama will not be among those voting to end the filibuster.
Both the Edwards and Clinton campaigns said they are working on statements.

It would be wonderful if Obama came off the campaign trail to support Dodd.
http://firedoglake.com/2007/12/17/ob...nd-filibuster/





Surveillance Bill Delayed
Pamela Hess

The Senate late Monday delayed its consideration of a vote on a new government eavesdropping bill until January.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid delayed the bill because there were more than a dozen amendments planned, and not enough time left on the legislative calendar to manage them.

"Everyone feels it would be to the best interests of the Senate that we take a look at this when we come back after the first of the year," said Reid, D-Nev.

The new surveillance bill is meant to replace a temporary eavesdropping law Congress hastily passed in August. That law, which expanded the government's authority to listen in on American communications without court permission, expires Feb. 1.

Senators clashed Monday in hours of debate over whether the government's need to eavesdrop on potential terrorists outweighs Americans' expectations that their private communications are protected.

The Senate was grappling with how to update the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, the law that dictates when federal agents must obtain court permission before tapping phone and computer lines inside the United States to gather intelligence on foreign threats. Agents may tap lines without court permission outside the country.

The most contentious question is whether telecommunications companies that helped the government tap American communications after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks should be granted immunity from lawsuits stemming from their actions. The surveillance was done without permission from the secret court created 30 years ago to protect Americans from unwarranted government intrusions on their privacy.

Senate leaders hoped to decide this week whether to shield the telecommunications companies from the roughly 40 pending civil lawsuits alleging violations of communications and wiretapping laws. The White House says if the cases go forward they could reveal information that would compromise national security. If they succeed, the companies could be bankrupted.

The companies were helping the Bush administration carry out the so-called Terrorist Surveillance Program, a still classified effort that intercepted communications on U.S. soil without oversight from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court from Sept. 11 to January 17, 2007.

"For the last six years, our largest telecom companies have been spying on their own American customers," said Sen. Christopher Dodd, D-Conn.

"This program is one of the worst abuses of executive power in our nation's history," said Sen. Russell Feingold, D-Wis. "It's time for congress to state, when we pass a law we mean what we said," Feingold said.

Sen. John Warner, R-Va., said he believes the TSP was legal and "essential to prevent further terrorist attacks against our homeland." The companies helped out of concern for the country's security after the terrorist attacks, he said.

The White House threatened Monday to veto any bill that does not contain a retroactive immunity provision. The Senate Intelligence Committee's version of the bill provides it; a competing version from the Judiciary Committee does not.

The House recently approved a surveillance bill that does not provide retroactive immunity.

Multiple efforts were under way Monday to craft alternative immunity provisions. Among the potential amendments is one by Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Pa., who wants the U.S. government to stand in for telecommunications companies as the defendant in the cases. The Senate Judiciary Committee rejected putting such a provision in its version of the bill.

Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., also introduced an immunity amendment that would leave it to the 15 judges on the FISA court to decide whether the companies merit protection from lawsuits. The court, which was not consulted on the electronic surveillance at the center of the debate, would determine whether the government's written requests to the telecommunications companies were legal. If not, it would determine whether the telecommunications companies believed they were complying with a good-faith request from the government.

The White House wants a permanent rewrite of FISA, contending that changes in telecommunications technology have made the law an obstacle to intelligence gathering. FISA requires the government to obtain court approval before conducting electronic surveillance on U.S. soil, even if the target is a foreign citizen in a foreign country.

However, many purely international communications are now routed through fiber-optic cables and computers in the United States.
http://www.lasvegassun.com/sunbin/st...121702614.html





Bush Lawyers Discussed Fate of C.I.A. Tapes
Mark Mazzetti and Scott Shane

At least four top White House lawyers took part in discussions with the Central Intelligence Agency between 2003 and 2005 about whether to destroy videotapes showing the secret interrogations of two operatives from Al Qaeda, according to current and former administration and intelligence officials.

The accounts indicate that the involvement of White House officials in the discussions before the destruction of the tapes in November 2005 was more extensive than Bush administration officials have acknowledged.

Those who took part, the officials said, included Alberto R. Gonzales, who served as White House counsel until early 2005; David S. Addington, who was the counsel to Vice President Dick Cheney and is now his chief of staff; John B. Bellinger III, who until January 2005 was the senior lawyer at the National Security Council; and Harriet E. Miers, who succeeded Mr. Gonzales as White House counsel.

It was previously reported that some administration officials had advised against destroying the tapes, but the emerging picture of White House involvement is more complex. In interviews, several administration and intelligence officials provided conflicting accounts as to whether anyone at the White House expressed support for the idea that the tapes should be destroyed.

One former senior intelligence official with direct knowledge of the matter said there had been “vigorous sentiment” among some top White House officials to destroy the tapes. The former official did not specify which White House officials took this position, but he said that some believed in 2005 that any disclosure of the tapes could have been particularly damaging after revelations a year earlier of abuses at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq.

Some other officials assert that no one at the White House advocated destroying the tapes. Those officials acknowledged, however, that no White House lawyer gave a direct order to preserve the tapes or advised that destroying them would be illegal. The destruction of the tapes is being investigated by the Justice Department, and the officials would not agree to be quoted by name while that inquiry is under way.

Spokesmen for the White House, the vice president’s office and the C.I.A. declined on Tuesday to comment for this article, also citing the inquiry.

On Wednesday, the White House press secretary, Dana Perino, issued a statement saying “The New York Times’ inference that there is an effort to mislead in this matter is pernicious and troubling.”

Ms. Perino’s statement said that other than President Bush’s comment that he had not known about the tapes, White House officials have declined to discuss the matter because of pending investigations by the Department of Justice and the C.I.A. inspector general.

The new information came to light as a federal judge on Tuesday ordered a hearing into whether the tapes’ destruction violated an order to preserve evidence in a lawsuit brought on behalf of 16 prisoners at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. The tapes documented harsh interrogation methods used in 2002 on Abu Zubaydah and Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, two Qaeda suspects in C.I.A. custody.

The current and former officials also provided new details about the role played in November 2005 by Jose A. Rodriguez Jr., then the chief of the agency’s clandestine branch, who ultimately ordered the destruction of the tapes.

The officials said that before he issued a secret cable directing that the tapes be destroyed, Mr. Rodriguez received legal guidance from two C.I.A. lawyers, Steven Hermes and Robert Eatinger. The officials said that those lawyers gave written guidance to Mr. Rodriguez that he had the authority to destroy the tapes and that the destruction would violate no laws.

The agency did not make either Mr. Hermes or Mr. Eatinger available for comment.

Current and former officials said the two lawyers informed the C.I.A.’s top lawyer, John A. Rizzo, about the legal advice they had provided. But officials said Mr. Rodriguez did not inform either Mr. Rizzo or Porter J. Goss, the C.I.A. director, before he sent the cable to destroy the tapes.

“There was an expectation on the part of those providing legal guidance that additional bases would be touched,” said one government official with knowledge of the matter. “That didn’t happen.”

Robert S. Bennett, a lawyer for Mr. Rodriguez, insisted that his client had done nothing wrong and suggested that Mr. Rodriguez had been authorized to order the destruction of the tapes. “He had a green light to destroy them,” Mr. Bennett said.

Until their destruction, the tapes were stored in a safe in the C.I.A. station in the country where the interrogations took place, current and former officials said. According to one former senior intelligence official, the tapes were never sent back to C.I.A. headquarters, despite what the official described as concern about keeping such highly classified material overseas.

Top officials of the C.I.A’s clandestine service had pressed repeatedly beginning in 2003 for the tapes’ destruction, out of concern that they could leak and put operatives in both legal and physical jeopardy.

The only White House official previously reported to have taken part in the discussions was Ms. Miers, who served as a deputy chief of staff to President Bush until early 2005, when she took over as White House counsel. While one official had said previously that Ms. Miers’s involvement began in 2003, other current and former officials said they did not believe she joined the discussions until 2005.

Besides the Justice Department inquiry, the Congressional intelligence committees have begun investigations into the destruction of the tapes, and are looking into the role that officials at the White House and Justice Department might have played in discussions about them. The C.I.A. never provided the tapes to federal prosecutors or to the Sept. 11 commission, and some lawmakers have suggested that their destruction may have amounted to obstruction of justice.

Newsweek reported this week that John D. Negroponte, who was director of national intelligence at the time the tapes were destroyed, sent a memorandum in the summer of 2005 to Mr. Goss, the C.I.A. director, advising him against destroying the tapes. Mr. Negroponte left the job this year to become deputy secretary of state, and a spokesman for the director of national intelligence declined to comment on the Newsweek article.

The court hearing in the Guantánamo case, set for Friday in Washington by District Judge Henry H. Kennedy Jr. over the government’s objections, will be the first public forum in which officials submit to questioning about the tapes’ destruction.

There is no publicly known connection between the 16 plaintiffs — 14 Yemenis, an Algerian and a Pakistani — and the C.I.A. videotapes. But lawyers in several Guantánamo cases contend that the government may have used information from the C.I.A. interrogations to identify their clients as “unlawful combatants” and hold them at Guantánamo for as long as six years.

“We hope to establish a procedure to review the government’s handling of evidence in our case,” said David H. Remes, a lawyer representing the 16 detainees.

Jonathan Hafetz, who represents a Qatari prisoner at Guantánamo and filed a motion on Tuesday seeking a separate hearing, said the videotapes could well be relevant.

“If the government is relying on the statement of a witness under harsh interrogation, a videotape of the interrogation would be very relevant,” said Mr. Hafetz, of the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University law school.

In addition to the Guantánamo court filings, the American Civil Liberties Union has asked a federal judge to hold the C.I.A. in contempt of court for destroying the tapes. The A.C.L.U. says the destruction violated orders in a Freedom of Information Act case brought by several advocacy groups seeking materials related to detention and interrogation.

David Johnston contributed reporting.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/19/wa...19cnd-cia.html





Hearing On CIA Interrogation Tapes

The Bush administration must answer questions about the destruction of CIA interrogation videos of two al Qaeda suspects, a federal judge said Tuesday, rejecting the government's efforts to keep the courts out of the investigation.

U.S. District Judge Henry H. Kennedy ordered Justice Department lawyers to appear before him Friday at 11 a.m. to discuss whether destroying the tapes, which showed two al Qaeda suspects being questioned, violated a court order.

The Justice Department has urged Congress and the courts to back off, saying its investigators need time to complete their inquiry. Government attorneys say the courts don't have the authority to get involved in the matter and could jeopardize the case.

For now, at least, Kennedy disagreed. Attorneys in unrelated cases, meanwhile, began pressing other judges to demand information about the tapes.

"Just because the judge wants to have a hearing doesn't mean he is going to rule against the government," CBS News chief legal analyst Andrew Cohen said. "But I suspect that federal lawyers are going to have some tap dancing to do in court as they explain how those CIA videotapes could have been destroyed in 2005 when there were questions about whether they fell under the judge's do-not-destroy order."

In June 2005, Kennedy ordered the Bush administration to safeguard "all evidence and information regarding the torture, mistreatment, and abuse of detainees now at the United States Naval Base at Guantanamo Bay."

Five months later, the CIA destroyed the interrogation videos. The recordings involved suspected terrorists Abu Zubaydah and Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri. The Justice Department argued that the videos weren't covered by the order because the two men were being held in secret CIA prisons overseas, not at the Guantanamo Bay prison.

David Remes, a lawyer who represents Yemeni detainees at Guantanamo Bay, said the government was obligated to keep the tapes and he wants to be sure other evidence is not being destroyed.

"We want more than just the government's assurances. The government has given these assurances in the past and they've proven unreliable," Remes said. "The recent revelation of the CIA tape destruction indicates that the government cannot be trusted to preserve evidence."

Kennedy did not say why he was ordering the hearing or what he planned to ask. Even if the judge accepts the argument that the government did not violate his order, he still could raise questions about obstruction or spoliation, a legal term for the destruction of evidence in "pending or reasonably foreseeable litigation."

Also Tuesday, lawyers for a man convicted of terrorism charges alongside Jose Padilla asked a federal judge in Miami to force the government to turn over any remaining evidence regarding Zubaydah's interrogation. Prosecutors have acknowledged that Zubaydah provided information identifying Padilla as an al Qaeda operative working on a purported "dirty bomb" plot, leading to his May 2002 arrest at Chicago's O'Hare International Airport.

Lawyer Ken Swartz said information about his client, convicted terrorism supporter Adham Amin Hassoun, might be found in those interrogations.

In a third case, this one involving another Guantanamo Bay detainee, attorney Jonathan Hafetz of the Brennan Center for Justice asked U.S. District Judge Gladys Kessler in Washington to schedule a hearing. Kessler's order, filed in July 2005, is almost identical to Kennedy's, and Hafetz says he worries key evidence was destroyed.

The Justice Department had no comment on Kennedy's decision to hold a hearing. Its lawyers are working with the CIA to investigate the destruction of the tapes and urged Kennedy to give them space and time to let them investigate.

Remes had urged Kennedy not to comply.

"Plainly the government wants only foxes guarding this henhouse," Remes wrote in court documents this week.

The Bush administration has taken a similar strategy in its dealings with Congress on the issue. Last week, the Justice Department urged lawmakers to hold off on questioning witnesses and demanding documents because that evidence is part of a joint CIA-Justice Department investigation.

Attorney General Michael Mukasey also refused to give Congress details of the government's investigation into the matter Friday, saying doing so could raise questions about whether the inquiry was vulnerable to political pressure.

Kennedy served as a federal prosecutor during the Nixon and Ford administrations until he was named a federal magistrate judge in 1976. President Carter appointed him to be a local Washington judge and President Clinton appointed him to the federal bench.
http://wcco.com/politics/CIA.tapes.h....2.613415.html





9/11 Panel Study Finds That C.I.A. Withheld Tapes
Mark Mazzetti

A review of classified documents by former members of the Sept. 11 commission shows that the panel made repeated and detailed requests to the Central Intelligence Agency in 2003 and 2004 for documents and other information about the interrogation of operatives of Al Qaeda, and were told by a top C.I.A. official that the agency had “produced or made available for review” everything that had been requested.

The review was conducted earlier this month after the disclosure that in November 2005, the C.I.A. destroyed videotapes documenting the interrogations of two Qaeda operatives.

A seven-page memorandum prepared by Philip D. Zelikow, the panel’s former executive director, concluded that “further investigation is needed” to determine whether the C.I.A.’s withholding of the tapes from the commission violated federal law.

In interviews this week, the two chairmen of the commission, Lee H. Hamilton and Thomas H. Kean, said their reading of the report had convinced them that the agency had made a conscious decision to impede the Sept. 11 commission’s inquiry.

Mr. Kean said the panel would provide the memorandum to the federal prosecutors and congressional investigators who are trying to determine whether the destruction of the tapes or withholding them from the courts and the commission was improper.

A C.I.A. spokesman said that the agency had been prepared to give the Sept. 11 commission the interrogation videotapes, but that commission staff members never specifically asked for interrogation videos.

The review by Mr. Zelikow does not assert that the commission specifically asked for videotapes, but it quotes from formal requests by the commission to the C.I.A. that sought “documents,” “reports” and “information” related to the interrogations.

Mr. Kean, a Republican and a former governor of New Jersey, said of the agency’s decision not to disclose the existence of the videotapes, “I don’t know whether that’s illegal or not, but it’s certainly wrong.” Mr. Hamilton, a former Democratic congressman from Indiana, said that the C.I.A. “clearly obstructed” the commission’s investigation.

A copy of the memorandum, dated Dec. 13, was obtained by The New York Times.

Among the statements that the memorandum suggests were misleading was an assertion made on June 29, 2004, by John E. McLaughlin, the deputy director of central intelligence, that the C.I.A. “has taken and completed all reasonable steps necessary to find the documents in its possession, custody or control responsive” to formal requests by the commission and “has produced or made available for review” all such documents.

Both Mr. Kean and Mr. Hamilton expressed anger after it was revealed this month that the tapes had been destroyed. However, the report by Mr. Zelikow gives them new evidence to buttress their views about the C.I.A.’s actions and is likely to put new pressure on the Bush administration over its handling of the matter. Mr. Zelikow served as counselor to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice from 2005 to the end of 2006.

In an interview on Friday, Mr. McLaughlin said that agency officials had always been candid with the commission, and that information from the C.I.A. proved central to their work.

“We weren’t playing games with them, and we weren’t holding anything back,” he said. The memorandum recounts a December 2003 meeting between Mr. Kean, Mr. Hamilton and George J. Tenet, then the director of central intelligence. At the meeting, it says, Mr. Hamilton told Mr. Tenet that the C.I.A. should provide all relevant documents “even if the commission had not specifically asked for them.”

According to the memorandum, Mr. Tenet responded by alluding to several documents that he thought would be helpful to the commission, but made no mention of existing videotapes of interrogations.

The memorandum does not draw any conclusions about whether the withholding of the videotapes was unlawful, but it notes that federal law penalizes anyone who “knowingly and willfully” withholds or “covers up” a “material fact” from a federal inquiry or makes “any materially false statement” to investigators.

Mark Mansfield, the C.I.A. spokesman, said that the agency had gone to “great lengths” to meet the commission’s requests, and that commission members had been provided with detailed information obtained from interrogations of agency detainees.

“Because it was thought the commission could ask about the tapes at some point, they were not destroyed while the commission was active,” Mr. Mansfield said.

Intelligence officials have said the tapes that were destroyed documented hundreds of hours of interrogations during 2002 of Abu Zubaydah and Abd al Rahim al-Nashiri, two Qaeda suspects who were taken into C.I.A. custody that year.

According to the memorandum from Mr. Zelikow, the commission’s interest in obtaining accounts from Qaeda detainees in C.I.A. custody grew out of its attempt to reconstruct the events leading up to the Sept. 11 attacks in the United States.

Its requests for documents from the C.I.A. began in June 2003, when it first sought intelligence reports describing information obtained from prisoner interrogations, the memorandum said. It later made specific requests for documents, reports and information related to the interrogations of specific prisoners, including Abu Zubaydah and Mr. Nashiri.

In December 2003, the commission staff sought permission to interview the prisoners themselves, but was permitted instead to give questions to C.I.A. interrogators, who then posed the questions to the detainees. The commission concluded its work in June 2004, and in its final report, it praised several agencies, including the C.I.A., for their assistance.

Abbe D. Lowell, a veteran Washington lawyer who has defended clients accused of making false statements and of contempt of Congress, said the question of whether the agency had broken the law by omitting mention of the videotapes was “pretty complex,” but said he “wouldn’t rule it out.”

Because the requests were not subpoenas issued by a court or Congress, C.I.A. officials could not be held in contempt for failing to respond fully, Mr. Lowell said. Apart from that, however, it is a crime to make a false statement "in any matter within the jurisdiction of the executive, legislative or judicial branch."

The Sept. 11 commission received its authority from both the White House and Congress.

On Friday, the leaders of the Senate Judiciary Committee sent a letter to Attorney General Michael B. Mukasey and to Mike McConnell, the director of national intelligence, asking them to preserve and produce to the committee all remaining video and audio recordings of “enhanced interrogations” of detainees in American custody.

Signed by Senator Patrick Leahy, Democrat of Vermont, and Senator Arlen Specter, Republican of Pennsylvania, the letter asked for an extensive search of the White House, C.I.A. and other intelligence agencies to determine whether any other recordings existed of interrogation techniques “including but not limited to waterboarding.”

Government officials have said that the videos destroyed in 2005 were the only recordings of interrogations made by C.I.A. operatives, although in September government lawyers notified a federal judge in Virginia that the agency had recently found three audio and video recordings of detainees.

Intelligence officials have said that those tapes were not made by the C.I.A., but by foreign intelligence services.

Scott Shane contributed reporting.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/22/wa...n/22intel.html





UPDATE 1-XM says Resolves Lawsuit with Universal Music

XM Satellite Radio Holdings Inc said on Monday it has settled a patent infringement lawsuit filed by Universal Music Group and hopes to reach deals with the other music companies.

The dispute centers around XM's portable "Inno" device, which can store and record music from satellite radio.

Major music labels including Vivendi's Universal, Warner Music Group Corp, EMI Group Plc and Sony BMG sued XM in May 2006, saying the Inno infringes copyrights and transforms a passive radio experience into the equivalent of a digital download service like Apple Inc's iTunes.

XM said on Monday it has reached a multiyear deal with Universal, which will withdraw from the complaint. It said the pact covers all XM radios with advanced recording functions, including future products. XM did not give financial terms.

"We look forward to continuing our discussions with the other music companies in hopes of arriving at a resolution that benefits everyone, especially consumers," XM said in a statement.

Warner Music and EMI declined comment. Sony BMG, which is a joint venture between Sony Corp and Bertelsmann AG, did not have immediate comment.

Warner Music is in talks with XM to try to settle the dispute and expects a resolution soon, said a source familiar with the matter who spoke on condition of anonymity.

The original lawsuit, filed in New York federal court, had accused XM Satellite of "massive wholesale infringement" and sought $150,000 in damages for every song copied by XM customers using the Inno, which went on sale last year.

XM had argued that the Inno, which is manufactured by Pioneer Corp, is a legal device that lets consumers listen to and record radio as the law has allowed for decades.

"We are pleased to have resolved this situation in an amicable manner," Universal Music Chairman and Chief Executive Doug Morris said in a statement." XM is "recognizing the intrinsic value of music to their business and the need to respect the rights of content owners."

XM, with more than 8.5 million subscribers, is waiting for regulatory approval to merge with No. 2 satellite radio company Sirius Satellite Radio Inc. Sirius already has a deal with the recording industry.

XM shares were down 42 cents or 3.1 percent at $13.13 in late trading on the Nasdaq. Sirius shares were down 10 cents or 3 percent at $3.21. (Reporting by Sinead Carew, Franklin Paul and Tiffany Wu; Editing by Jeffrey Benkoe and Gerald E. McCormick)
http://www.reuters.com/article/compa...42071320071217





Justice Dept to Rule on XM/Sirius Deal Soon: Analyst

The U.S. Department of Justice may rule on the proposed acquisition of XM Satellite Radio by rival Sirius Satellite Radio as early as Friday, a Bear Stearns analyst said.

The Justice Department could not immediately be reached for comment.

"Conversations with contacts in (Washington) D.C. suggest that DOJ decision is imminent," Bear Stearns analyst Robert Peck wrote in a research note. He added the decision could come today or Monday.

Peck believes that higher ranking officials at the agency will allow the merger to go through, overruling junior staffers who recommended blocking the merger.

Sirius plans to buy XM in an all-stock deal worth about $5 billion, but the merger, announced in February, has been criticized as anti-competitive by some U.S. lawmakers, consumer groups and the traditional radio industry.

Sirius and XM must win approval from the Justice Department's antitrust division, as well as from the Federal Communications Commission, for their deal to be completed.

XM shares climbed 9 percent to $14.93 in early trade on Friday, while Sirius shares rose 4 percent to $3.66.

(Reporting by Franklin Paul and Diane Bartz in Washington; Editing by Derek Caney)
http://www.reuters.com/article/techn...29039220071130





Three U.S. Lawmakers Back XM/Sirius Merger
Diane Bartz

Three U.S. House of Representatives lawmakers have come out in favor of Sirius Satellite Radio Inc's proposed purchase of its rival XM Satellite Radio Holdings Inc, the companies said on Thursday.

Republican Connie Mack of Florida backed the merger, as did Democrats Joe Baca and Bob Filner of California, the two companies said in a statement.

The Justice Department is evaluating whether the merger of the only two U.S. satellite radio companies would hurt competition. Congress has held hearings on the proposed deal but has no say in the Justice Department's antitrust evaluation.

On Thursday, shares of the two companies rebounded after falling sharply late Wednesday on concerns about whether the merger would win approval from antitrust regulators.

Democrat John Conyers of Michigan, who chairs a House antitrust task force, and Republican Steven Chabot of Ohio sent a letter to Attorney General Michael Mukasey earlier in the week expressing concern that senior department officials might intend to approve the merger over the objections of staff lawyers.

In afternoon trading, Sirius was up 16 cents or 4.86 percent at $3.45 a share while XM rose 85 cents or 6.43 percent to $14.06.

Sirius and XM also said that General Motors Corp supported the merger and had urged the Federal Communications Commission to avoid putting conditions on the deal. GM installs XM Satellite Radio in some of its vehicles. The FCC is reviewing the deal to determine its impact on the public.

(Reporting by Diane Bartz, editing by Gerald E. McCormick)
http://www.reuters.com/article/indus...21997920071214





RIAA Versus Grandma, Part II: the Showdown that Wasn't
Eric Bangeman

The RIAA has settled a case against a grandmother in Texas who was accused of sharing music over the KaZaA network. Both the RIAA and Rhonda Crain, the defendant, agreed to a stipulation of judgment against Crain, but the record labels involved in the suit will not get any damages for any infringement that occurred.

Crain, a grandmother who was displaced by 2005's Hurricane Rita, was sued for copyright infringement in September 2006 after the RIAA's investigators flagged user "kcrain@KaZaA" for sharing 572 tracks on the P2P network, including tracks by 50 Cent and Usher. After Crain denied engaging in file-sharing and rejected the RIAA's $4,500 prelitigation settlement offer, the RIAA filed suit.

Represented by Lone Star Legal Aid, Crain denied engaging in file-sharing and, in a counterclaim, said that the labels had no evidence that she had infringed on their copyrights other than her ISP's linking of the IP address flagged by SafeNet on KaZaA to her account. She also accused the labels of extortion, and in a filing this past July, accused the RIAA of using investigators not licensed by the state of Texas in violation of state law.

Crain's counterclaims were dismissed in September, but late last month, the parties agreed to settle the case. Under the terms of the settlement, a final judgment has been entered in favor of the RIAA, although Crain does not admit to infringement herself. She is permanently barred from copyright infringement and is required to delete all of the recordings that "Defendant and/or any third party that has used the Internet connection and/or computer equipment owned or controlled by Defendant."

That last stipulation may be the reason behind the RIAA's decision to settle the case without any damage award. The KaZaA user seen by the RIAA's investigators was signed on using the screen name kcrain@KaZaA, which may indicate that one of Rhonda Crain's children or grandchildren was logged into KaZaA at the time and that the defendant's only "crime" was paying for the Internet account used for file-sharing.

That was what happened in two cases that the record labels came out on the wrong end of. Debbie Foster and Patricia Santangelo triumphed over the RIAA after the judges in both cases dismissed the lawsuits with prejudice, meaning that they were both the prevailing parties.

In each case, there was evidence that someone in Foster's and Santangelo's homes may have been logged into KaZaA, but the RIAA was unable to show that the defendants themselves engaged in file-sharing. The labels had argued that, even if Foster and Santangelo had not been on KaZaA themselves, they were both liable for "secondary infringement."

Had the Crain case moved towards a trial, the RIAA would likely have found itself forced to make the same secondary infringement argument. Judge Lee R. West, who ruled in favor of Debbie Foster, found that the Copyright Act failed to support the RIAA's secondary infringement allegations. "The Copyright Act does not expressly render anyone liable for infringement committed by another," wrote Judge Lee. "Under... common law principles, one infringes a copyright contributorily by intentionally inducing or encouraging a direct infringement." Paying for an Internet account used by someone else didn't rise to that standard.

By settling with the RIAA, Crain moves out from under the legal cloud without admitting infringement and, more importantly, without having to pay any damages to the RIAA. For its part, the labels avoid the risk of having the case against Crain dismissed and being forced to pay attorneys' fees, as they had to do in the Foster case (Santangelo was given the right to seek attorneys' fees by the judge in that case, but I could find no record of an award one way or another).
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post...hat-wasnt.html





Why Nobody Likes a Smart Machine
John Tierney

At a Best Buy store in Midtown Manhattan, Donald Norman was previewing a scene about to be re-enacted in living rooms around the world.

He was playing with one of this year’s hot Christmas gifts, a digital photo frame from Kodak. It had a wondrous list of features — it could display your pictures, send them to a printer, put on a slide show, play your music — and there was probably no consumer on earth better prepared to put it through its paces.

Dr. Norman, a cognitive scientist who is a professor at Northwestern, has been the maestro of gizmos since publishing “The Design of Everyday Things,” his 1988 critique of VCRs no one could program, doors that couldn’t be opened without instructions and other technologies that seemed designed to drive humans crazy.

Besides writing scholarly analyses of gadgets, Dr. Norman has also been testing and building them for companies like Apple and Hewlett-Packard. One of his consulting gigs involved an early version of this very technology on the shelf at Best Buy: a digital photo frame developed for a startup company that was later acquired by Kodak.

“This is not the frame I designed,” Dr. Norman muttered as he tried to navigate the menu on the screen. “It’s bizarre. You have to look at the front while pushing buttons on the back that you can’t see, but there’s a long row of buttons that all feel the same. Are you expected to memorize them?”

He finally managed to switch the photo in the frame to vertical from horizontal. Then he spent five minutes trying to switch it back.

“I give up,” he said with a shrug. “In any design, once you learn how to do something once, you should be able to do it again. This is really horrible.”

So the bad news is that despite two decades of lectures from Dr. Norman on the virtue of “user-centered” design and the danger of a disease called “featuritis,” people will still be cursing at their gifts this Christmas.

And the worse news is that the gadgets of Christmas future will be even harder to command, because we and our machines are about to go through a rocky transition as the machines get smarter and take over more tasks. As Dr. Norman says in his new book, “The Design of Future Things,” what we’ll have here is a failure to communicate.

“It would be fine,” he told me, “if we had intelligent devices that would work well without any human intervention. My clothes dryer is a good example: it figures out when the clothes are dry and stops. But we are moving toward intelligent machines that still require human supervision and correction, and that is where the danger lies — machines that fight with us over how to do things.”

Can this relationship be saved? Until recently, Dr. Norman believed in the favorite tool of couples therapists: better dialogue. But he has concluded that dialogue isn’t the answer, because we’re too different from the machines.

You can’t explain to your car’s navigation system why you dislike its short, efficient route because the scenery is ugly. Your refrigerator may soon know exactly what food it contains, what you’ve already eaten today and what your calorie limit is, but it won’t be capable of an intelligent dialogue about your need for that piece of cheesecake.

To get along with machines, Dr. Norman suggests we build them using a lesson from Delft, a town in the Netherlands where cyclists whiz through crowds of pedestrians in the town square. If the pedestrians try to avoid an oncoming cyclist, they’re liable to surprise him and collide, but the cyclist can steer around them just fine if they ignore him and keep walking along at the same pace. “Behaving predictably, that’s the key,” Dr. Norman said. “If our smart devices were understandable and predictable, we wouldn’t dislike them so much.” Instead of trying to anticipate our actions, or debating the best plan, machines should let us know clearly what they’re doing.

Instead of beeping and buzzing mysteriously, or flashing arrays of red and white lights, machines should be more like Dr. Norman’s ideal of clear communication: a tea kettle that burbles as the water heats and lets out a steam whistle when it’s finished. He suggests using natural sounds and vibrations that don’t require explanatory labels or a manual no one will ever read.

But no matter how clearly the machines send their signals, Dr. Norman expects that we’ll have a hard time adjusting to them. He wasn’t surprised when I took him on a tour of the new headquarters of The New York Times and he kept hearing complaints from people about the smart elevators and window shades, or the automatic water faucets that refuse to dispense water. (For Dr. Norman’s analysis of our office building of the future, go to nytimes.com/tierneylab.)

As he watched our window shades mysteriously lowering themselves, having detected some change in cloud cover that eluded us, Dr. Norman recalled the fight that he and his colleagues at Northwestern waged against the computerized shades that kept letting sunlight glare on their computer screens.

“It took us a year and a half to get the administration to let us control the shades in our own offices,” he said. “Badly designed so-called intelligent technology makes us feel out of control, helpless. No wonder we hate it.” (For all our complaining, at The Times we have nicer shades that let us override the computer.)

Even when the bugs have been worked out of a new technology, designers will still turn out junk if they don’t get feedback from users — a common problem when their customer is a large bureaucracy. Engineers have known how to build a simple alarm clock for more than a century, so why can’t you figure out how to set the one in your hotel room? Because, Dr. Norman said, the clock was bought by someone in the hotel’s purchasing department who has never tried to navigate all those buttons at 1 in the morning.

“Our frustrations with machines are not going to be solved with better machines,” Dr. Norman said. “Most of our technological difficulties come from the way we interact with our machines and with other people. The technology part of the problem is usually pretty simple. The people part is complicated.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/18/science/18tier.html





Pellicano Lawyers, Feds Spar Over Evidence

The judge will rule within days on whether a further hearing is necessary on the conduct of the government in wiretap case.
Greg Krikorian

In their most contentious court hearing to date, federal prosecutors and defense attorneys in the Anthony Pellicano wiretapping case sparred Monday over whether the government's conduct in the long-running investigation should invalidate crucial evidence, including a search warrant for the onetime private eye's offices.

With only two months before the scheduled start of trial, U.S. District Judge Dale S. Fischer said she would hold one in-chambers hearing over the handling of audio recordings seized from Pellicano's Sunset Strip offices. Fischer also said she would rule within days on whether a separate courtroom session was warranted into the government's conduct in the case and particularly the actions of veteran FBI Agent Stanley Ornellas.

For months, attorneys for Pellicano and his five co-defendants have accused the government of misconduct, focusing particularly on Ornellas' sworn account of evidence used to obtain a search warrant. Pellicano lawyer Michael Artan was among several defense lawyers Monday to accuse the 35-year FBI veteran of knowingly including false information in the warrant.

"Agent Ornellas does not have clean hands," Artan said near the outset of a two-hour hearing. "He lied." Artan said Ornellas used an unreliable informant and embellished details of a threat against a former Los Angeles Times reporter to secure a search warrant at Pellicano's office. The phony details, he said, included allegations that the front windshield of the reporter's vehicle had been shattered by a gunshot when no bullet was ever found by the LAPD.

"This is the Los Angeles Police Department, not the Mayberry Sheriff's Department," Artan said. "If there had been anything to suggest a bullet, there would be forensic testing."

But prosecutors Daniel Saunders and Kevin Lally challenged the accusations, saying defense attorneys had fallen far short of proving that Ornellas misled the courts or engaged in the sort of "deliberate or reckless" behavior needed to prove misconduct.
http://www.latimes.com/news/printedi...-pe-california





Cellular Spending Exceeded Wireline Spending in the US in 2007

Cellular phone expenditures increased rapidly from 2001 through 2006. Coupled with a decrease in spending on residential landline phone services (residential phone services) over the same period, spending on the two types of services were practically equal in 2006. Expenditures for cellular phone services per consumer unit rose from $210 in 2001 to $524 in 2006, an increase of 149%. Expenditures for residential phone services per consumer unit fell from $686 in 2001 to $542 in 2006, a decline of 21%. In 2001, the ratio of spending on residential phone services to spending on cellular phone services was greater than 3 to 1. In 2006, the shares of these two components were almost equal, with residential phone expenditures accounting for 49.9% of total telephone expenditures and cellular phone expenditures constituting 48.2%.
http://www.itfacts.biz/index.php?id=P9287





The Coming Exaflood, and Why it Won't Drown the Internet
Nate Anderson

Eating his words

In December, 1995, Bob Metcalfe wrote a famous column for InfoWorld in which he predicted that the Internet would suffer "gigalapses" at some point in 1996. According to his scenario, the massive traffic of the time was building like a wave about to break on the unsuspecting villagers who had just begun to rely on this "Internet" thing for e-mail and some primitive web browsing. Fantastic failures would be the norm as overloaded networks struggled to push the bits along.

Metcalfe knew his networking; this is the man who worked on Ethernet and founded 3Com, after all. His column's call to arms certainly achieved one effect: it riled up a lot of network engineers who claimed that 1996 was in no way going to be the Year the 'Net Crashed.

And of course, it didn't. There were no gigalapses in 1996, and things have been chugging along more or less smoothly for another decade since.

In early 1997, after it had become clear that his predictions had proven considerably more apocalyptic than reality warranted, Metcalfe made his mea culpa. He took to the stage at the Sixth Annual World Wide Web Conference in Santa Clara to eat his words. Literally.

Up on stage, Metcalfe brought out a cake designed to resemble his column. The crowd booed. "You mean eating just a piece of cake is not enough to satisfy you? I kind of suspected it would turn ugly," said Metcalfe, according to a Reuters writeup of the event.

He then took a copy of his original article and, predating the current "Will it blend?" craze, pulped the column in a blender along with some liquid and drank the entire slurry in front of a cheering crowd. Whatever else it was, the event represented excellent value for money.

In a note to the North American Network Operators Group, Metcalfe then admitted that "I was wrong. I ate the column. I am sorry. I am not worthy."

Everything old is new again

Despite Metcalfe's column-drinking, doomsday predictions about the collapse of the Internet have never been hard to come by. Most recently, concern has focused on the rise of Internet video, one of the key drivers of traffic growth over the last couple of years. Should Internet traffic surge more quickly than networks can keep up, the entire system could clog up like a bad plumbing job.

A scholar at the Discovery Institute (yes, that Discovery Institute), Brett Swanson, kicked off the current round of debate about Internet capacity with a piece in the Wall Street Journal. Swanson warned that the rise in online voice and video were threatening the Internet, especially at its "edges," those last-mile connections to consumers and businesses where bandwidth is least available. "Without many tens of billions of dollars worth of new fiber optic networks," he wrote, "thousands of new business plans in communications, medicine, education, security, remote sensing, computing, the military and every mundane task that could soon move to the Internet will be frustrated. All the innovations on the edge will die."

What we are facing is nothing less than a "coming Exaflood."

Swanson's word refers to the exabytes of data expected to cross the Internet within the next few years (an exabyte is one thousand petabytes; each petabyte is one thousand terabytes), along with the sinister suggestion that this information will wash across the ‘Net's routers in a biblical wave of destruction. Swanson believes that the challenge of the Exaflood can be met, but only if a certain political agenda is adopted—more on this in a bit.

Swanson is not alone in forecasting massive growth. The US Internet Industry Association released a report in May on "The Exabyte Internet" in which the group talked about the "ramifications on Internet public policy as we grow from a Megabyte Internet to an Exabyte Internet." Cisco released a report on the "Exabyte Era." Clearly, these exabytes pose a risk to our precious tubes; will they clog them up?

Here comes the fear

Here's the problem: data on the Internet is exploding. IDC estimates that 161 exabytes of digital content was created and copied in 2006; in 2010, that number could grow as high as 988 exabytes. Not all digital content passes across the Internet, of course, but much of it does (and more of it will as online backup systems become pervasive).

Cisco's estimates for IP traffic are in line with this growth rate in digital content. The network equipment maker estimates that IP traffic will quintuple between 2006 and 2011, and it says that P2P traffic alone will account for three exabytes of data each month by that time. Cisco notes that three exabytes is equivalent to 750 million DVDs.

If network providers can't or won't upgrade their networks fast enough, delays and outages could be the result. And it's not just the core of the Internet that is the focus of these concerns; in fact, the major companies that run the largest networks in the world are the ones most likely to substantially upgrade their networks to keep pace. Instead, the problem could come at the edges of the network, the last-mile connection to homes and businesses.

Part of the problem is that the size of media files is growing quickly. Music files, once commonly offered at 128kbps, are now routinely offered at 265kbps or 320kbps. Video files sizes are also exploding with the rise of HD formats. Simply downloading these files from a company's servers could make for real congestion in the last mile, and this was as a special problem for cable operators, which often share bandwidth among all users of a single node. HD won't even be the worst of it, as new 4K video (4,000 pixels across) threatens to balloon file sizes even further over the next decade.

But the growth in file sizes is made worse by a concurrent increase in the use of P2P as a delivery mechanism. Distribution gets pushed form the center of the network to the edges as users increasingly become both the consumers and providers of content, so the tubes could be clogged in both directions. Much of this traffic may not even reach the public Internet when large ISPs like AT&T and Comcast have both the uploader and downloader as subscribers. The USIIA describes this transition as a traffic shift "from the Internet backbone to a peered system in which content is streamed directly to consumers," and the group notes that it will require ISPs to upgrade the most expensive part of their networks to keep pace: the last mile.

New services like video rental are also making the move online and should hit the mainstream within several years. Even now, when online video distribution is just beginning to take off, Microsoft alone uses an estimated 5,500TB each month in bandwidth just to send movies and television shows to Xbox 360 consoles. Social networking, not usually thought of as a high-bandwidth proposition, can certainly slurp up the bits. According to Cisco estimates, MySpace alone moves 4,148TB each month. Even gaming requires big bandwidth. World of WarCraft, by itself, moves over 2,500TB of data a month, more than Yahoo's US operations.

Keep in mind that the entire US Internet backbone transferred only 6,000TB a month back in 1998. Now, a decade later, individual US sites like YouTube require nearly twice that amount.

Throw more bandwidth at the problem

The USIIA cites a research study from Teleography that found Internet traffic increased by 75 percent in 2006, while capacity grew by only 47 percent. Should such trends continue, we could be in for some trouble. One approach to the problem is simply adding more bandwidth. It's the most obvious solution, of course, and it's one suggested by people like industry analyst David Isenberg. Isenberg argues that it's simply cheaper to "overprovision" the Internet, even by a factor of two, than it is to resort to traffic shaping and packet management tools on a large scale.

Not everyone agrees that this approach is feasible. The USIIA, for instance, says, "Though additional capacity is an important part of the overall strategy, it will not in itself resolve all of these issues." That's because Internet traffic is growing faster than capacity, but also because of the difficulty in upgrading the edges of the network, not just the center (where such upgrades are relatively simple).

Nemertes Research, in its recent report on the subject, concluded that "demand for Internet and IP services is increasing exponentially, while access investment is proceeding linearly. An exponential curve will always intersect a linear one given enough time." Nemertes believes that this will happen sometime around 2010. When it does, the Internet won't collapse, but individual users will "increasingly find themselves encountering Internet brownouts or snow days, during which performance will (seemingly inexplicably) degrade."

To their credit, most people involved in writing about the "coming Exaflood" have kept the alarmism dialed back. Nemertes is clear that the effects on the Internet could be substantial, but that no amount of data is likely to bring the entire set of networks to a grinding halt. The USIIA, likewise, sounds the alarm bell but notes that "the numbers do not yet mean an Internet in imminent danger of collapse." Cisco says in the very first line of its executive summary, "The Internet is not collapsing under the weight of streaming video."

And despite warning that "all the innovations on the edge will die," Brett Swanson closed his Wall Street Journal piece by claiming that the crisis could be averted with "tens of billions of dollars worth of new fiber optic networks."

So that's alright, then. The Exaflood may be rolling in upon us, and it may threaten the Internet with a data tsunami, but the crisis can be averted if enough cash is tossed in the direction of the problem. And ISPs—whose business data transmission is, after all—will no doubt do whatever it takes to keep the Internet "snow days" away. Assuming they don't have to abide by 'Net neutrality, of course.

You didn't really think this issue was non-political?

The politics of flooding

There's a reason that "exaflood" sounds scary. It's supposed to. Though Swanson's Wall Street Journal piece tried to avoid alarmism, it did have an explicitly political point in mind: net neutrality is bad, and it could turn the coming exaflood into a real disaster (check out the Fiber to the Home Council's YouTube video explaining the exaflood for an excellent example of this type of thinking).

"Wall Street will finance new telco and cable fiber optic projects, but only with some reasonable hope of a profit," Swanson wrote. "And that is what net neutrality could squelch." His examples of the kind of deals ‘Net neutrality might threaten include:
1. Google's guarantee of $900 million in advertising revenue to MySpace
2. Google's payment of $1 billion to Dell to install Google search boxes on its computers
3. YouTube partnered with Verizon Wireless
4. MySpace signed its own content deal with Cingular

The first two examples have nothing to do with any sort of commonly-understood concept of 'Net neutrality (neither Google, MySpace, nor Dell are network operators), but one sees what Swanson means. Certain kinds of deals could be off the table; that's the whole point of network neutrality.

The USIIA report, though it stays away from discussing "network neutrality" in those terms, does argue that the cost of network upgrades over the next few years could run as high as a trillion dollars. The first priority of the government, therefore, should be on "enabling network operating companies to secure and utilize the investment capital needed to meet these estimates and provide consumers with affordable broadband services." What the US needs is a better "pro-growth environment."

Writing in the Washington Post, the heads of the Internet Innovation Alliance said much the same thing. "The formula for encouraging such extraordinary investments is clear: minimize tax and regulatory constraints and maximize competition."

Would a lack of deals like those above really hamper investment in the ‘Net? It's possible. Because network neutrality means so many things, it's difficult even to speculate unless we're all talking about a single proposed bill or an FCC regulation. It's worth noting that the ‘Net managed to get itself built so far and has been generally neutral. Even the FCC has adopted a set of four neutrality principles that companies are expected to adhere to. Despite that, I just looked out the window; the sky is still there.

Still, writing network neutrality into law is complicated business with huge potential for unintended (and negative) effects. Should a law be passed, and should it derail investment, the Internet wouldn't stop working; it would just be stuck in a time warp.

Nemertes Research claims in its report that the main result of failing to expand capacity would be to slow down the pace of innovation (although some existing services could also be affected). "The next Amazon, Google, or YouTube might not arise," says the report, "not from lack of user demand, but because of insufficient infrastructure preventing applications and companies from emerging."

Who stands to gain

But assuming that ‘Net neutrality troll stays away and the investment money can be raised, several of the recent reports express doubt that the ISPs will truly keep up with end-user demand. Such reports are music to the ears of deep packet inspection hardware manufacturers, who stand ready to offer ISPs a way out: throttling, filtering, and packet shaping.

If the simple overprovisioning of dumb (i.e., generally neutral) networks turns out to take care of the exaflood, and is affordable, DPI vendors have one less reason to sell their gear. If network neutrality becomes law, DPI vendors would have one more legal obstacle to selling their gear (it could still be used for plenty of lawful things, such as CALEA compliance).

So vendors of both routing equipment and DPI gear are thrilled with the prospect of a huge spike in bandwidth.

I spoke with Cam Cullen, the director of Americas' product management for DPI vendor Allot. He said that Allot gear was sold mainly to ISPs and enterprises and is used for subscriber management (bandwidth caps, throttling, etc.), for keeping peering links from saturation, and for monitoring the network core.

Smaller US ISPs tend to use DPI at their peering points with larger ISPs in order to make sure such links aren't saturated by P2P apps or anything else. Should an ISP's peering links reach saturation, no more bandwidth is available to that ISP's customers; additional connectivity can't generally be dialed up on the fly.

At larger ISPs, this isn't a problem, so they tend to use DPI for subscriber management. Cullen notes that Asia and Europe have far more experience at using DPI to create custom packages (buy faster access to P2P might cost extra, for instance, as might buying a plan that better supports gaming). The US has generally adopted a different, all you can eat approach that doesn't (explicitly) impose bandwidth caps or speed throttles on applications. Part of that was due to concerns over ‘Net neutrality legislation, but Cullen says that most of those concerns have evaporated.

Networking equipment makers like Cisco are also poised to cash in, and in fact have already started. An August article in the Wall Street Journal pointed out that Cisco's profits surged this year on the back of increased hardware sales. Social networking and video are already forcing a major buildout of ‘Net capacity. "We believe there's an opportunity to be an instant replay to what occurred for Cisco in the very early 1990s," CEO John Chambers told the paper.

Bring on the zettaflood

Regardless of what side in the ‘Net neutrality debate one comes down in, backers are convinced that the "coming Exaflood" can be handled. Even if it can't, the Internet will survive, but innovation will suffer. Either way, life will go on.

Fear of future traffic is an old story on the Internet. It didn't start with "gigalapses" and it won't stop with the "exaflood." In fact, the next chapter is already being written.

I had hoped to wrap up with a tongue-in-cheek reference to the "coming zettaflood" but found that I had already been beaten to it, and by a familiar name: Brett Swanson. Apparently, the "exaflood" feature was well-enough received to spawn a sequel. Like most sequels, the plot is a bit derivative, but the fans seem to enjoy it.

In October, Swanson gave a keynote at the Fiber to the Home Conference in Orlando, a group that would love nothing better than to be told that massive new amounts of bandwidth will soon be called for. He closed by predicting that US IP traffic could hit 1 zettabyte by 2015. Soon after the exaflood washes over us, it appears, the zettaflood will rise to menace us once more.

And so it goes.

http://arstechnica.com/articles/cult...g-exaflood.ars





Blockbuster Slaps Its Biggest Fans
Saul Hansell

Why would Blockbuster want to penalize its best customers and biggest fans? That appears to be exactly the effect of the price increase it announced today for its Total Access video rental service.

That service was a rather attractive proposition that really offered an advantage over the popular DVD-by-mail service from Netflix. Under the Total Access plan, you could have a set number of DVDs at once, and exchange them either by mail or in a Blockbuster store. For example, for $24.99 a month you could have possession of three DVDs at once, and make an unlimited number of exchanges by mail or in Blockbuster stores. It charged $17.99 for a three-DVD plan, with unlimited mail exchanges and no more than five in-store exchanges. (The Netflix three-DVD-at-a-time plan costs $16.99.)

The problem was that Blockbuster was losing a lot of money at those prices.

In a conference call with investors last week, James W. Keyes, Blockbuster’s chief executive, said Total Access was a hit with consumers, but the wrong sort:

We did achieve a significant boost in subscriber count but we attracted some of the most price-sensitive and the heaviest-consumption customers with our offer of free in-store exchanges.

Attracting “heaviest consumption” customers who are “price sensitive” means Blockbuster found a lot of people who liked movies a lot and rented more of them when it offered the all-you-can eat plan. The economics of subscription businesses — like health clubs — is that you make your money on people who sign up and never actually use your service. Blockbuster’s service was really popular and a great value, so it had to pull back.

Now new customers for the unlimited-store-exchange, three-DVD-at-a-time plan will pay $34.99, a $10 increase. The plan with five in-store exchanges will rise $2 to $19.99. Frankly, that one doesn’t seem too bad to me actually: to be able to get a new movie the same night you want one five times for $3 over the Netflix rate.

What is more dicey is how Blockbuster is treating its existing subscribers. It is raising prices for some of them, depending on how much they use the service. A Blockbuster spokeswoman told hackingnetflix.com that current customers will pay anywhere between $19.99 and $34.99 for the three-DVD plan with unlimited in-store exchanges, but she wouldn’t explain the formula.

If businesses allow users to have “unlimited” use of something, betting they won’t use that much of it, is it right for them to change the rules for consumers that take them up on their offer? That has come up recently with cellphone companies and cable companies that put limits on their unlimited use data plans.

Blockbuster is probably within its rights to do this. Unlike cellphones, where there is typically a contract, Blockbuster’s service runs month to month, so consumers can cancel and it can raise prices at will. And you could argue that keeping some customers — those who don’t rent that much at stores — on the lower price plan is better than raising prices for everyone.

Still, I wonder how well a business can grow when it singles out those customers who are most loyal — and who love its products the most — for the biggest price increases.
http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/1...ans/index.html





Peter Jackson to Produce `The Hobbit'
Jake Coyle

Peter Jackson and New Line Cinema have reached agreement to make J.R.R. Tolkien's "The Hobbit," a planned prequel to the blockbuster trilogy "The Lord of the Rings."

Jackson, who directed the "Rings" trilogy, will serve as executive producer for "The Hobbit." A director for the prequel films has yet to be named.

Relations between Jackson and New Line had soured after "Rings," despite a collective worldwide box office gross of nearly $3 billion - an enormous success. The two sides nevertheless were able to reconcile, with Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios (MGM) splitting "The Hobbit" 50/50, spokesmen for both studios said Tuesday.

"I'm very pleased that we've been able to put our differences behind us, so that we may begin a new chapter with our old friends at New Line," Jackson said in a statement. "We are delighted to continue our journey through Middle Earth."

Two "Hobbit" films are scheduled to be shot simultaneously, similar to how the three "Lord of the Rings" films were made. Production is set to begin in 2009 with a released planned for 2010, with the sequel scheduled for a 2011 release.

New Line Cinema is owned by Time Warner. Sony and Comcast are among the owners of MGM.
http://www.examiner.com/a-1111326~Pe...?cid=sec-promo





Iron Maiden Strikes New Deal With EMI
FMQB

Iron Maiden has extended it's 28-year relationship with EMI with a new deal that includes albums, touring, merchandise and sponsorships. The deal covers the world excluding the United States. As the group prepares to embark on the Somewhere Back In Time world tour, its management team says the timing was perfect to renew its pact with EMI.

"We've had three tremendous decades working with EMI and have many friends there. Through many regimes, EMI have always given us their full support and our relationship with their companies worldwide has always been excellent," said Maiden manager Rod Smallwood. "We've got some great plans for 2008 and beyond, and I can't wait to get back on the road next year on a tour which appropriately celebrates the band's formative years."

EMI Music U.K. Chairman & CEO Tony Wadsworth added, "Since the early eighties Maiden has been a flagship band for EMI and we have enjoyed a fantastic long term relationship. Now that we can work with and support them in their broader music activities, our goal is to help build on the foundations already in place for an even more successful future."

Meanwhile, the Somewhere Back In Time tour, which will focus on the Maiden catalog from the '80s, kicks off February 1 in India. The only two U.S. dates announced thus far are February 19 in Los Angeles and March 14 in East Rutherford, NJ. More dates will be added.
http://fmqb.com/Article.asp?id=530703





Singing Her Way From Obscurity to Fame on the Internet
Devan Sipher

Cinderella is alive and well and living on Staten Island.

Ingrid Michaelson, a 28-year-old singer-songwriter whose self-produced album “Girls and Boys” reached No. 2 on the iTunes pop chart, is enjoying an enchanted transformation as a recording artist.

Ms. Michaelson’s climb out of obscurity started, as is so often the case these days, on the Internet. Now she is known to many “Grey’s Anatomy” fans for her quirky, heartfelt songs that were featured over the past year on the ABC television series. After a cross-country music tour, she is performing on Wednesday at the Bowery Ballroom in Manhattan, and she pointed out that the concert sold out a month ago without any advertising. (She has added a concert on Feb. 15 at Webster Hall.)

Not bad for someone who, until May, was teaching in an after-school theater program in the Stapleton neighborhood of Staten Island, where she still lives with her parents, a dog and a pet rabbit in the house she has inhabited since she was born.

“It’s so uncool, it’s cool,” said her mother, Elizabeth Egbert, the executive director of the Staten Island Museum.

Ms. Michaelson has inherited her mother’s dry wit, which she combines with youthful enthusiasm and a penchant for funky eyeglasses. “Apparently my glasses make me sound just like Lisa Loeb,” she deadpanned, alluding to articles that compared her to Ms. Loeb, a well-known singer.

Ms. Michaelson began her music career in 2002 as a barista at the Muddy Cup, a coffee bar and performance space in Stapleton, where she performed weekly. By 2003, she had produced her first album, “Slow the Rain,” and was playing at the Bitter End in Manhattan.

She called those shows a sobering experience. “I learned pretty quickly that just because you’re playing at a good venue doesn’t mean people are going to come see you,” she said.

So she decided to throw caution to the wind, or, more specifically, to the Internet. She completed “Girls and Boys” in 2006 and loaded the music onto a MySpace page, where it caught the attention of Lynn Grossman, the owner of Secret Road, a music licensing and artist management company in Los Angeles.

“I listened to her song ‘Breakable’ about 40 times in a row, and I completely fell in love with the song,” Ms. Grossman said, referring to a surprisingly buoyant song about human fragility.

Ms. Grossman’s visceral reaction to the material astonished her. After years in the music industry, she said, she had considered herself desensitized. “It’s really rare when something pierces through,” she said.

So she immediately contacted Ms. Michaelson, pledging to get a song on “Grey’s Anatomy,” which was Ms. Michaelson’s dream.

Yet Ms. Michaelson remained skeptical. “You get so many false promises from people that you don’t expect anything to happen,” she said.

But things did happen. And fast. Old Navy chose her song, “The Way I Am,” for a sweater commercial. VH1 selected her for its artist discovery program, making her the first unsigned artist to appear on the channel. And radio stations, including WPLJ-FM (95.5) in Manhattan, added her songs to their playlists.

“I had a three-year plan, and we achieved all those goals in 10 months,” Ms. Grossman said. As for “Grey’s Anatomy,” the series used not one but three of the songs from Ms. Michaelson’s album. Then the producers took the unusual step of asking her to try writing something specifically for the show.

She grabbed the opportunity and created “Keep Breathing,” a song that juxtaposes a plaintive melody with deceptively simple lyrics. “I like to say a lot in a very small amount of words,” Ms. Michaelson said.

The song played through the closing minutes of the season finale in May, with the last line, “All we can do is keep breathing,” repeating incessantly over layers of reverberating percussion and instrumentation.

“I love songs that have tension, tension, tension, and then release,” Ms. Michaelson said. “We feel it in our bodies. We hold in the tension, and then we release and exhale.”

After a whirlwind year, this might be a good time for Ms. Michaelson to exhale. But that’s easier said than done. The music business is notoriously unpredictable, and she is all too aware that her fairy tale success story did not happen by the book.

“I worry this is all going to disappear in a few months, and I’ll have to wait tables again,” she said. “I get anxiety-ridden, and I can’t relax.”

She took a breath and added, “I should sing my own songs to myself.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/18/ny.../18singer.html





Madonna Ditches Label, Radiohead Go Renegade: The Year The Music Industry Broke

In the first installment of our three-part series on the future of music, we take a look back at what went wrong and when.
James Montgomery, with additional reporting by Gil Kaufman

In April, Trent Reznor released Year Zero, a concept album about a future society teetering on the brink of apocalypse. It was supposed to be a grand work of fiction, but it could just as easily have been about the music industry in 2007 — a bleak, burned-out world where the sky fell on a daily basis and the rivers ran red with the blood of record execs. (That the album didn't sell well only furthers the analogy ...)

Make no mistake about it, 2007 was a b-a-a-a-d year for the industry. According to Nielsen SoundScan, album sales were down 15 percent from 2006 (a trend that's continued for eight straight years now); big-name artists jumped ship in increasingly complicated — and messy — ways; and the powers-that-be seemed to get even more heartless and disconnected, thanks to a series of lawsuits, feuds and terrible decisions.

In fact, you could probably say that 2007 was Year Zero. Things started to change because they couldn't possibly get any worse.

In the first installment of our three-part series on the future of the music industry that is rolling out this week, here's a blow-by-blow recap of just how bad the year was ...

January 14: The "Dreamgirls" soundtrack tops the Billboard albums chart with sales of just over 60,000 copies. It's the lowest sales total for a #1 album in SoundScan's 16-year run, beating the record set the previous week, when the soundtrack landed at #1 with sales of 66,000 copies.

January 30: Sony BMG announces that it has reached a proposed settlement with the Federal Trade Commission that would allow consumers to trade in CDs with the controversial self-installing "rootkit" antipiracy software — which the company had included without consumers' knowledge — "through June 31," according to a press release (of course, in keeping with the less-than-forthright spirit of the whole rootkit issue, there are only 30 days in June). The company also agrees to pay up to $150 to repair any damage to computers caused by users trying to remove the digital-rights-management software, which was revealed to cause serious security risks. The settlement also calls for Sony BMG to disclose any limitations on consumers' use of the music CDs, and prohibits the company from collecting user information for marketing purposes and from installing software without users' consent. Sony is also required to provide a way for users to easily uninstall the rootkit software.

March 5: In a blow to small Internet radio, the Copyright Royalty Board — made up of three copyright-royalty judges appointed by the librarian of Congress — significantly increases the royalties paid to musicians and record labels for streaming digital songs online, ending a discounted fee for small Internet broadcasters. Under the ruling, the current rate of $0.08 each time a song is played will more than double by 2010. In April, a coalition of webcasters, including National Public Radio, attempts to request a new hearing, but the Royalty Board rejects the appeal, and on July 15, the royalty hike goes into effect. In November, both AOL and Yahoo contemplate shuttering their Web radio services due to the increased royalties.

March 21: Paul McCartney leaves longtime label EMI to sign with Starbucks' new record label, Hear Music. His album, Memory Almost Full, is released in June through both traditional retailers and more than 6,000 Starbucks locations in the U.S., and sells more than 160,000 copies in its first week. "For me, the great thing is the commitment and the passion and the love of music," McCartney tells an audience of Starbucks shareholders. "It's a new world now and people are thinking of new ways to reach the people, and for me that's always been my aim."

June 11: In a move that would have seemed unimaginable in the label-driven industry of old, Kelly Clarkson feuds openly with the head of her label — Sony BMG head Clive Davis, for decades one of the most powerful industry executives — and parts ways with her management company, the Firm, amid controversy about her upcoming album My December. Three days later, concert promoter Live Nation announces that Clarkson's summer tour in support of the album has been canceled due to underwhelming ticket sales. My December hits stores later in the month, and sells more than 290,000 copies in its first week, giving Clarkson the #2 album in the country — behind the "Hannah Montana" soundtrack — but shows little staying power. Clarkson later apologizes for her remarks.

July 10: Canadian indie outfit Stars make their new album, In Our Bedroom After the War, available for download just 10 days after completing it — and some three months before its scheduled release date. The move is done with the blessing of their label, Arts& Crafts, and the album becomes a mainstay on the iTunes Music Store's most-downloaded list.

July 15: Prince ticks off his U.K. record label and Britain's Entertainment Retailers Association when he decides to release his new album, Planet Earth, for free with the Sunday edition of the British newspaper The Mail. It's estimated that 2.27 million people receive the album, which helps boost sales of tickets for his 21-night stand at London's O2 arena. "It's direct marketing, and I don't have to be in the speculation business of the record industry, which is going through a lot of tumultuous times right now," Prince says.

September 19: Kanye West's Graduation sells nearly 957,000 copies to claim the top spot on the Billboard albums chart. 50 Cent's Curtis bows at #2 with sales of more than 691,000. Both are the best first-week numbers of 2007 (besting Linkin Park's Minutes to Midnight, which scanned 623,000 copies in May), and Graduation notches the biggest first week in nearly two years — beating, interestingly, West's Late Registration, which sold more than 860,000 copies when it was released in September 2005.

October 1: Radiohead shock fans by announcing on their blog that not only have they completed their much-anticipated new album, In Rainbows, but that "it's coming out in 10 days," via download — leading to reams of "this is a taste of the future of albums"-type commentary. The bandmembers, who have been free agents since the release of 2003's Hail to the Thief, decide to release the album by themselves in two formats: download-only, which allows fans to name their price for the album, and as a deluxe "discbox" version (priced at approximately $80).

October 4: The Recording Industry Association of America wins its first case against file-sharing, when a jury finds 30-year-old Brainerd, Minnesota, resident Jammie Thomas guilty of copyright infringement. In question were 24 music files she allegedly posted on the peer-to-peer site Kazaa. Thomas is ordered to pay $220,000 in fines — or $9,250 per song file. Her lawyers appeal the ruling, on the grounds that it is "unconstitutionally severe," but in December, the U.S. Department of Justice intervenes, urging the courts not to rule on the constitutionality of the damages, as "Copyrights are of great value, not just to their owners, but to the American public as well."

October 8: Trent Reznor announces the end of his 13-year relationship with Interscope Records, writing on his site, "As of right now, Nine Inch Nails is a totally free agent, free of any recording contact with any label. ... It gives me great pleasure to be able to finally have a direct relationship with the audience as I see fit." He then goes on to write that there are "exciting times" ahead. The Week in Review is edited and published by Jack Spratts. And he's not kidding: Within a week, he promises (threatens?) to scuttle Interscope's release of a Year Zero remix album by leaking tracks from it to the Internet, then announces that he's partnering with Saul Williams to release The Inevitable Rise and Liberation of Niggy Tardust! via download, and gets into a public argument with the Universal Music Group over the legality of a proposed fan-only remix site, before deciding to launch the site himself.

October 9: One day before downloads of In Rainbows are scheduled to begin, Radiohead send an e-mail to those who've ordered it, stating that the album will be encoded at 160 kilobits per second, a rate far inferior to their other LPs, which are all available for download at 320 kbps (or most MP3s floating around file-sharing sites like OiNK, for that matter). This angers many fans, who feel that the band duped them by not announcing the encoding rate upfront, and the bad feelings are only furthered when Radiohead's managers give an interview to a British trade mag, in which they suggest the download version of In Rainbows is a promotional tool for the actual CD.

October 10: In Rainbows is made available for download. Over the next two months, much speculation ensues as to just how many people downloaded it and exactly how much they paid to do so: Early reports have more than 1.2 million fans downloading it at an average price of $8, though later findings by comScore, a company that measures consumer activity online, adds that more than 60 percent of downloaders paid nothing for the album. Neither Radiohead nor their publicists discuss the financial aspects of the download experiment, though the band does issue a statement dismissing comScore's findings as "wholly inaccurate."

October 16: Madonna finalizes a massive 10-year deal with Live Nation, believed to be worth $120 million. It's the largest so-called "360 deal" in history, involving not only Madge's future studio albums but her tours, merchandising, film and TV projects, DVD releases and music-licensing agreements. "For the first time in my career, the way that my music can reach my fans is unlimited," Madonna says in a statement. "The possibilities are endless. Who knows how my albums will be distributed in the future?" The deal brings to an end the singer's 25-year relationship with Warner Music Group, which has released all of her albums to date.

October 23: OiNK, "the world's biggest source for pirated, pre-release albums," is shut down after a two-year criminal investigation led by Interpol (the international police organization headquartered in Lyon, France ... not the band). Officers raid the apartment of OiNK's creator, a 24-year-old Brit named Alan Ellis, and seize the site's servers in Amsterdam. Ellis is arrested on suspicion of conspiracy to defraud and copyright infringement, and the e-mail addresses of the site's more than 180,000 users are made available to police — though it is not known whether they could face criminal prosecution as well. Ellis' trial is scheduled to begin in February.

November 7: Thanks to a last-minute rule change by the folks at SoundScan, the Eagles' Wal-Mart-only LP, Long Road Out of Eden, debuts at #1 on the Billboard albums chart with sales of more than 711,000 copies. The total nearly triples that of the country's #2 album, Britney Spears' Blackout, and gives the group — which hadn't released an album of new studio material in 28 years — the second-highest debut of 2007.

November 27: Universal Music Group CEO Doug Morris gives a disastrous interview to Wired magazine, in which he compares the music industry to a character from the comic strip "Lil' Abner," calls college students who download music "criminals" and explains the industry's inability to keep up with the Internet by saying, "There's no one in the record company that's a technologist. ... It's like if you were suddenly asked to operate on your dog to remove his kidney. What would you do?"

November 28: Reigning "American Idol" champ Jordin Sparks' self-titled debut lands at #10 on the Billboard chart with sales of 119,000 copies. It's the lowest first-week sales total for any "Idol" winner — by more than 180,000 copies.

December 3: Island Def Jam lays off nearly 6 percent of its staff. Rumors of axings at major labels like Sony BMG and the Universal Music Group begin to swirl — and at press time, it looked like they may have begun. The Warner Music Group announces that it has cut bonuses for employees, and Terra Firma, the private equity group that owns EMI (home to Capitol Records), reportedly makes "cutbacks a core part of its strategy." There are also reports of massive reshuffling at labels like Epic, RCA and Arista.
December 31: In Rainbows is set to be released to retailers in the U.K. through XL Recordings. The U.S. release will come one day later, through TBD Records, an offshoot of the Dave Matthews-founded ATO Records.
http://www.mtv.com/news/articles/157....jhtml?src=rss





McCartney Happily Evolving With New Label
FMQB

Back in March, when Paul McCartney became the first artist to sign with Hear Music, the label formed by Starbucks and the Concord Music Group, he said at the time, "For me the great thing is the commitment and the passion and the love of music, which as an artist is good to see. It’s a new world now and people are thinking of new ways to reach the people, and for me that’s always been my aim." It was a huge change for McCartney, who had spent 45 years with EMI. Now, in a new interview with U.K. newspaper The Times, he talks openly about how his former label had gotten stale and the importance of finding new and innovative ways of releasing music.

"Everybody at EMI had become a part of the furniture. I’d be a couch; Coldplay are an armchair. And Robbie Williams, I dread to think what he was," McCartney told the Times. "But the most important thing was, I’d felt [the people at EMI] had become really very boring. And I dreaded going to see them... because I could guess what they were going to say: ‘Love your record, Paul.' And I’d say: ‘Well, what should we do with it?’ Then they’d go: ‘Well, we think you ought to go to Cologne,' which is what they always say. This idea became symbolic of the treadmill, you know? You go somewhere, speak to a million journalists for one day, and you get all the same questions. It’s mind-numbing. So I started saying: 'God, we’ve got to do something else.'"

He found that "something else" with Starbucks' new music venture, and Macca added that he also admires the Radiohead tactic of releasing music online as soon as its complete, noting that it's actually reminiscent of the old guard. "This was how we used to operate. I remember John [Lennon], for instance, writing 'Instant Karma' and demanding it was released the following week," he said.

Meanwhile, at age 65, McCartney is not doing much slowing down. In February he picks up an award for Outstanding Contribution to Music at the Brit Awards. He will then go into the studio to assist on an album by his son, James. Also nearing completion are a guitar concerto and a new album under his alter ego, The Fireman. And his latest album, Memory Almost Full, will be up for three Grammy Awards at the February ceremony.

"I'm very pleased with these Grammy nominations for my latest album, Memory Almost Full," he said in a statement. "I had a lot of fun making it with [producer] David Kahne and my band and am very pleased with how successful it has been, particularly because of the way we got it out to people in a new and interesting way."
http://fmqb.com/Article.asp?id=532275





Trent Reznor on Year Zero, Planting Clues, and What's Ludicrous About Being a Musician Today

Wired contributing editor Frank Rose interviewed Nine Inch Nails' Trent Reznor at his house in Beverly Hills on October 18, 2007.

Rose: So, as you know, I'm doing a piece on ARGs and focusing on 42 [Entertainment] and Year Zero. And I've spent most of the last day and a half with the Year Zero people going over that, and sort of —

Reznor: The 42 guys?

Rose: Yeah, I'm sorry, with the 42 guys, right, right. In fact —

Reznor: (You met) Susan and Alex?

Rose: Yeah, exactly. In fact, this morning Susan took me to the place where you did the sort of secret concert. [laughs] That was a pretty great location. And so anyway, I just wanted to, you know, first off get a sense of how you got started. What was the impetus for you in terms of doing this? I gather you contacted them.

Reznor: Yeah, on my end what had happened was I was on tour from 2005ish-toured for about a year and a half, almost two years for the With Teeth album. And while on tour I realized OK, I'm bored. You know, it's fun to play that two hours a day, but the rest of the time is (kind of wasted). And I started messing about on-I'd never had any luck writing music on tour because I never had the kind of attention span. And this time I opened up laptops and, you know, everything had advanced so much that you actually get a very nice recording experience now contained —

Rose: Right, right.

Reznor: So, I started working (about) some music and ideas, and that led to quite a bit of ideas. It ended up being-when the tour was finished last a year ago just now I had more than an album's worth of musical ideas that seemed fertile and interesting. And lyrically I'd been toying around with the idea of taking Nine Inch Nails out of being just a narrative about my own head and addressing something that had gotten higher up on the list of importance to me over the years, which has just been kind of what's happening in America and the direction we've taken as a country. And it felt kind of dangerous to expand Nine Inch Nails into that, and risky, and that seemed like at this point in my life a good thing. And so I worked from the idea that I was going to set this record 15 or so years into the future. And I was going to write it from various points of view of people in that world and have no real narrative that went from point A to B, but just glimpses, snapshots, Polaroids going by. And it started as an experiment of just seeing how that would work, and within the month the album was pretty much written, which is extremely fast for me. And I knew, OK, I'm four-fifths of the way there, I'm committed to this idea. And it still feels good and it still feels — like when I first started I didn't know if it would just be terrible or if it might be all right, you know. And as it started going it "feeled" itself and it turned into something that really felt strong to me. But I wound up with a problem at the end. And the problem was: I now had a collection of songs that made sense to me because I knew what the backstory was. And I should interject then that right at the beginning of this phase of getting off tour, about a year ago I came back to LA, had the music, a lot of the music, had ideas. And before I started writing the songs, I spent maybe a week really writing out kind of what the sociopolitical vibe would be like in this climate, what would it be like from a spiritual tone, events that may have happened leading up to this, you know, if I was going to forward-write history leading up to this day 15 years from now. I had a good working kind of knowledge of what things were going to be like and events that would have triggered that led us to this place. And then chose people that would be in these various different places to write these songs. That was the idea. Wrote this music. And had kind of been toying around with the question of how I was going to tell the backstory and make the record make sense to other people. And, at first, it went through a few iterations of the best media and ways to do that. It could have been liner notes, if there were such a thing these days, you know. A cryptic tale that kind of set the story that if you bought a Who album would be written on the inside or the inside sleeve. Showing my age, because that's still how I look at records. I still think A and B sides and still kind of work in that format. So, that kind of lost its steam, and I couldn't find the right way to do that. And then I thought maybe it could be a Web site that kind of explains it. But what I realized was, the — for example the idea that, let's say, one of the ideas in Year Zero is that a faction of American citizens who have lost their right to vote and their freedom of speech and their voice isn't heard and their government isn't allowing them any way to express themselves and their art is suppressed, a more radical faction of Americans feel that, well, they've learned what does work is forms of terrorism. It does get attention. So, maybe they, in a homegrown way, lash out and try to blow up a senator's family to get their voice heard. So, domestic terrorism — that was an idea that came up as a valid means of questionable morality of what someone might resort to to get the message across when their own government's holding them down. And me telling you what I just told you in a form of an essay or Web site or paragraph is one thing. But actually finding a Web site that probably isn't real, but, God, what if — that hoaxish feeling, like War of the Worlds, H.G. Wells kind of thing, seemed like a much more effective way for the audience to experience it rather than be told a little fictional thing. "Oh, that explains why this song's kind of ..." So that led my creative partner Rob Sheridan — who's our art director as well, has been for a few years, we kind of share the same brain. He's coming at it from a 15 years younger than me perspective, but we have similar taste, and we flush out the generation gap — it's covered up pretty well. And we started talking about, how the hell can we do this in a way that — how can we tell this story? How do we find — we want to make the world's most elaborate album cover, you know, using the media of today instead of making people buy a vinyl record, which they're not going to do, or a CD or an MP3, which has no artwork, no — so that led to us remembering really the whole thing that happened with — why am I drawing a complete blank right now? Spielberg and —

Rose: Oh, and A.I.? Right, uh-huh.

Reznor: We remembered, oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Remember when — and neither of us had played that game, but we both, we both were aware of it. And I remember hearing about it after it kind of got off the ground, something about the (credit and the postman), if you Googled that it came up with this and that led to this crazy person. What appealed to me was the incredible detail and thought that went into it. I thought, what an interesting way to kind of make it — I mean ultimately, in that case, you're marketing a movie. You're trying to garner interest among a pretty specialized group of people, you know, demographic, that would be interested enough to find that and research it. But I really loved the way that it utilized these new forms of communication and medium that were emerging. Internet and bulletin boards, et cetera. And so we did a little research and found that. That was really the main thing I was even aware of in the ARG world. I was aware of — like I'm a big fan of Lost, you know, and that type of — I've seen those little magazine ads that that's from the airline that's in — or something like. And it intrigues me, for whatever reason that is, an interest in puzzle solving, a mystery, taboo, you know, finding something new you weren't supposed to. The joy of researching something that's not too hard to do but yields a result. It feels like you uncovered something. So, anyway, we set up a meeting with these guys. And right off the bat [i] was really impressed with them in terms of intellect and tastefulness.

Rose: Can I interrupt for a second? How did you get in touch with them? Did you just like send them an email or ...?

Reznor: We found 42 Entertainment. I said, "Can you track these guys down? It's something I have an interest in." Because I didn't know, frankly, if they would want to do something like this, which seemed different to me than — and I'll get into specifically what it is, and what I've known that they've done. And secondly, can we afford it? Because I know I couldn't go to the record label and say — well, I could ask. But that has its own set of problems that I'll get into in a second. So, regardless, a meeting was set up. And initially it was a couple phone calls and me kind of explaining what I wanted to do. And where I think it differed from what they've done in the past — and this is what we kind of got — we didn't get into an argument with, just this is what I needed to make clear, was that I don't — first thing I did was tell them what we had. And it kind of came back [with the approach to] 42 Entertainment-fy it, which was create a narrative that kind of ran alongside of this that added a kind of starting point and endpoint in terms of a narrative that could be understood and put together over time. And I sat with that for a while and then I came back, and I said, "No, that shouldn't be it. And here's why." Because the Lost Experience, and I don't know who even did that one, but as a fan of Lost, when I found out about it, and followed a few breadcrumbs it felt like the equivalent of the Star Wars books that are in the grocery store. It's set in the same world, and it has some of the elements I like. But I know Darth Vader's not going to be in it. It doesn't feel like the A team is working on this. It's just something — and then my mind puts it in the category of oh, it's marketing. You know. I'm not going to find any real gems here, it's just a marketing thing. So, I said I want to make sure the focus on this project stays on the music, and I want this to all be the same. You're not marketing my record, the record is as much marketing this project. I want it to be a kind of just experiment. This is where the flaky artist guy comes out, you know. But I think what needed to be pure about it was it wasn't ever considered marketing. And we never tried to monetize anything, unless there's some way that it doesn't in any way make you feel like you're being hustled by something. Which is why I didn't tell the record company about it. Because the very first thing any record company would do would be: alright, how are we going to tie this in with K-Rock, giveaways. And how do we get them to buy ringtones and Verizon will give them — you know. If it goes that way — if it happens to spring up where there's some interesting way that somehow that can be monetized and it doesn't impinge on, great. But we're not letting that drive how we do this thing is that you have sell ring tones so we're going to — this has to be a giveaway to give concert tickets to — fuck all that. It's not what this is. So, anyway, the plan got a bit modified with 42 where I said I don't want to introduce a narrative of characters that have nothing to do with the music to kind of give your story legs and a game plan. Let's make it all puzzle pieces that by the end of — I gave them my Wiki that I'd written, Rob and I had written — that had all the whole background of Year Zero. And it was —

Rose: You had already sort of put that online or —

Reznor: Not — just internally. Rob and I use that as a kind of working template to put our ideas together, because it was easy to branch off into the different — and it was also easy to see, hey, we need to — for example, let's get more into the India-Pakistan dispute and what caused that and the repercussions. You could go into elaborate detail or not — kind of was tangible and made more sense to us. So, we gave them that. And I just kind of said why don't we just pick bits of this that we can flesh out into things that become breadcrumbs or Web sites or whatever they might be. But let's not add into it Character X who we find out goes from this to that. Let's make this just a snapshot of something. And they came up with the mechanism, the fiction of a 20th of a second of the Internet got sent back in time and landed on our Internet. And what was nice about that was it eliminated progression of story. It eliminated the narrative. Now it was what —

Rose: Slices, yeah.

Reznor: You'd put together a piece of a newspaper that you found and got bits of this. And I've got to say, like, it was the most collaborative rewarding experience I've had, counting music, that I've ever had.

Rose: Really, uh-huh.

Reznor: Just working with a team of people that I innately trusted and respected and was regularly amazed by the ideas they'd come up with. And also I sensed mutual respect to where I didn't feel like they thought I was just being stubborn about things. We all had a good kind of taste barometer, you know. We'd run it by and someone would say, "Oh, this could be" "You know what, you're right." It was never an antagonistic thing, and I think the result we ended up with was something I'm very proud of.

Rose: Yeah, it's pretty amazing, yeah, right.

Reznor: It was a fun process. I'm not sure ... you know it did more than I ever thought it would do. And, you know, it was just an interesting way to get that story out, and I think it really made the record sound better to me, in a way.

Rose: Right. [laughs]

Reznor: You know, but it did require me, in a number of places, kind of explaining to the public [that] it's not fucking marketing. You know, because immediate — that was the one that hurt me the most. The second that the whiff came out that this was coming out, and they had no idea how deep it went. And I think a lot of my music fans have never experienced what happens in an ARG or what — it was fun watching it unravel. But right off the bat someone goes, "Oh, it's 42 Entertainment. They've been hired to market this record." It's not fucking marketing, you know. I'm not trying to sell you anything. Anyway.

Rose: Huh. So, who — how did you come up with the idea of, you know, leaving USB drives in bathrooms with songs on them?

Reznor: Well, I think that came from their side of things. What we were trying to do was — what were we trying to do? I think what was unique to them was because this was a music project, it gave them some new opportunities that they didn't normally have. Like lots of clues in audio that we collaborated on — how to hide stuff in the actual sound of the record in places. And we also had this thing that was, I think, unique to them, which was a live tour starting up. Which is, events that people will be interested in going to. How can we make it something that feels like not everything is something found on the Internet so everybody — I'll back up one step too and say — they probably got into this, but I remember right at the kind of phase of debating whether we were going to work together, the initial kind of courtship, there was this kind of sense of it would be cool if we could make a difference in the world feeling, you know with the subject of what we're dealing with. And that was a new thing for me with Nine Inch Nails as well. The thought of — I've been asked this, "Well, why'd you do it anyway?" So one reason was what was good about the format of an ARG which forces people to form communities and discuss things, and then watching the debate, or I'd see them find a clue about something. And I could see that they're hitting around what we mean. And then someone would hit it right on the head and they'll get dismissed, and then they'll go back way off track. And then it winds up, usually, nine times out of 10, right back [at] what you wanted them talking about. And then you see people discussing what that means, you know, and where this isn't just — although it's fictional it's all based on things that are happening right now, which most everything that was dealt with in the world of Year Zero is based on policies or things in motion at the present. And the whole point of it was to get people to pay a little bit more attention. And when asked, "Well how do you prevent — do you think that's how the world's going to really be?" I hope not. But I think the key to it not being turning into that is more people paying more attention to what is happening right now. And seeing some people online, even if it's a handful of people that's questioned the next little thing that happens to slide by in the guise of the Patriot Act or we're protecting your freedom and think to question it, I think that's certainly a step in the right direction of youth today or anybody for that matter.

Rose: So, you followed the progress online, I mean the players' progress?

Reznor: Oh yeah, it was a lot of fun for us. We were in Europe when this thing started. What we did then was we worked backwards from if it's around the record, now we have a solid kind of the release date of the record was I think May or April. The record will leak by the fact that they all do a couple weeks before then when it goes to manufacturing somebody leaks it. So, we have that window of time when that's going to happen, between a month and two weeks it will for sure leak.

Rose: So, you mean somebody will post it on one of the —

Reznor: Yeah.

Rose: (one of the nets) yeah.

Reznor: Yeah, what's ludicrous about being a musician today, and this is a whole other hundred hour conversation I can have, is because any record label still meat and potatoes come from retail brick and mortar sales, they can't offer anything for sale until it can show up in the store. They're going to piss off Wal-Mart or Best Buy or whoever it may be. Meanwhile, avid fans who you want are monitoring the Torrent sites and the PtP sites for that first — you know, as I do as a fan of bands. Do I want to hear it now or do I want to wait a month, go to the store and then put it back on my computer, or just get it on the computer? So, you have to work around that leak date, which always at the latest happens when it goes to manufacturing. There's people there that just upload it. And as you know one copy means every copy. So, working around those dates, and then utilizing what we had happening at the time, which was (we're) starting before that, I think it was their idea, let's come up with ways to maybe have actual music as clues. What if someone found — yeah! Now I didn't get permission to do that from the record label, because they wouldn't have. So, I don't know who did it but it seemed to wind up in the — that was one thing, that was one of a bunch of things that we did do that seemed to resonate and got picked up on. They also had things — did they tell you about this — where we had speakers, directionalized speakers where we could pump sound into people's heads from quite a ways away.

Rose: Oh no, no, I (don't know) about that.

Reznor: It sounded better on paper than it actually did in the execution. But we had — I forget what they actually call them, but it's basically a focused cone of sound from these amusement parks and things so you could hear something in one corner but you don't — and if you get out of that very fine — if you were 30 feet away from here I could aim it at you and you'd hear it. If I aim it that way it disappears. So, we were trying to pump messages into people's heads at the show between acts. You'd be sitting back with this thing, aiming it, with an iPod with some scary message that we'd computer voiced —

Rose: So like you aim it at specific people or it's just like a small group of people?

Reznor: We'd look at people that we thought would be the kind of people we expected were probably online, you know, and try to target them. But we could never tell if they were really hearing it or not. Then I went out and hotrodded one up and put a bigger power amp on it. I was walking the line between — I was ready for smoke to come out of somebody's head. So, that was an idea that really didn't work as well as we thought. But we put a lot of effort into little things like that, to try to really make an experience that broke down the idea that you come and see concerts, two bands play, you drink a beer, you go to the bathroom, you go home. And ideally in the future the plan is to work with them again. It's something that's probably less classic ARGish and more about breaking that audience performer barrier down into something that — we haven't figured it out yet. But something that you know will never be a mainstream thing, but to the people that are into it. I think why this idea worked for Nine Inch Nails is I know that there's a faction of my fans that would be into this sort of thing. It was a real treat to be able to watch them uncover it. We couldn't wait after the show to get online and try to get Internet in Barcelona, watching seeing if — "Did they find it, did they find it? One guy found it on IRC." We'd be monitoring all these things.

Rose: Monitoring the chatrooms?

Reznor: The chatrooms and IRC chats and the fastest information would be there. Then you could kind of watch — there was one exciting one where there was a mural, that was actually the one in Brixton.

Rose: Right, uh-huh, yeah.

Reznor: And somebody got — I forget how we put that clue, I think on a flyer, an actual flyer gave an address that they had to figure out was an address. And somebody was driving to go there, and everyone online's like, "They've got to be there by now. I mean it's not that far to get there." And then the guy that's there presents a whole onslaught of pictures and all this (you know) try to solve part of it before he put the pictures up, because he knew people would see the mural, and there's a bunch of clues in there. It was exciting. I sound very nerdy I guess right now. But it was very rewarding —

Rose: You're talking to the right magazine, it's OK.

Reznor: — experience.

Rose: [laughs] Right.

Reznor: The other guys in the band are out, you know, having drinks and having fun. And Rob and I, you know, we're iChatting each other trying to monitor how people are picking up on this stuff. It was interesting.

Rose: So, is this back in your hotel room? Backstage? Sort of right —

Reznor: Hotel room. Because we had to leave the venue, which always had terrible Internet. And then get to the hotel which just had very bad Internet.

Rose: Right, right. So, and you also posted songs online that you could download from BitTorrent. I mean they're still there, in fact, some of them.

Reznor: Yeah, the way we did that was that was another thing that we started doing, we experimented with on With Teeth, which was it dawned on me another bored day in the hotel doing press for the album. And I didn't have anything with me except my Mac. And I booted up Garage Band, and I'd never really paid any attention to it because you know it's not a real application (an artist) snobby music programmer. And I was amazed how powerful it actually is as a multitrack editor and time stretching device. And how fun it is with all their built in loops to just very simply create something that was interesting. It was intelligent enough to know what key things were in, and it was drag and drop simplicity that you don't get in the Pro Tools world. So, as an experiment, I happened to have multitracks of a couple of the songs with me for some reason. And I wondered if I could streamline them enough to fit into that program, and load with a rewarding experience. And it did. And then I sent it out to the crew and I said just mess around with this and see what — you know, and it was a really positive experience of, you know, I've got a country-western version of "The Hand That Feeds." And I thought, you know, this would be cool to just get out to people. Based on the premise that you know the software's pretty powerful now. And I know I would download a song by a band I didn't even like if I could mess around with it and have fun and feel like I'm, whatever. So, then it was a matter of talking the record label into giving away master multitrack tapes. And I think their lack of knowledge about what that was aided my cause on that. And there seems to be this preciousness about your master tapes. Why the hell can't we let them out? You know, I'm done with them. The record's out. People can have fun, mess around. So, we did that, ended up doing that with two songs off of that album, and it spurred a whole community of people doing remixes because now they have the key to get into the track, and dissect it. And so, one of the ones we put up — or we offered them for download in Mac format, Garage Band. But in a frustrating way the second (that the disc) come out everybody's hacking into them to try to get them to be something on PC. And, "I listened to it in iTunes and it's just the vocal." Just, arr. So, we sprayed them all out as just wav files, you could load into any program. But rather than eating the cost of the bandwidth, they just posted them on (pirate bay), let the ISPs eat the cost.

Rose: I'm sorry, you posted them on?

Reznor: We put them up on Pirate Bay I think is where we posted the Torrents, because anyone who was doing all that stuff knows how to use a Torrent anyway. And rather than pay whatever it is to give stuff away, just get them there. I didn't really think that would cause any controversy, to be honest with you, but I did notice that we're in bed with the pirates. I'm just looking for free bandwidth, you know. That's all it was. And it was easier than (send space), you know.

Rose: So did you — you got flack from the RIAA I heard.

Reznor: Well, I did read a little bit of — a little grumbling from them. But I'm not on their side. And they're not on my side. And that's what I wish the public knew more about where the RIAA really stands. And they're just a lobbyist group for the record labels. They do not have the artists' best interests in mind. And as proof of that in the last few years, a couple examples that are ridiculous in terms of things that there's no way they can misconstrue that as being for the artists' rights, you know. And I think what they're doing now as far as going after the housewife, you know, is ludicrous. This is your fans and your audience that you're attacking —

Rose: The housewife in Minnesota?

Reznor: Yeah. I mean ... I'm strongly against that. Which brings me to this point, which is you know I had a real awakening when I was living in New Orleans, which is where I lived from '91 until just a couple years ago. I started getting out of touch with what's happening. You know, I was in the studio locked in there and getting older and not paying attention to what's going on (and really). And I remember going to somehow I wound up at some college kid's dorm. And this would have been I'd say '96, '97. Ten years ago. And it was like, oh, everybody listens to their music on computers now.

Rose: [laughs] Right, right, yeah.

Reznor: You know, I didn't really think anyone really did that. But that is everybody's stereo, back then. And everyone had stolen everything. I was never a Lime Wire guy because it's too much hassle to find the song. It just seemed (seemed shitty to me). But you know it dawned on me, when iPods first came out I was very skeptical. And it's not the music experience I want. You know, I'm still back in the world of — I don't know what it was. Head in my ass basically. I didn't see how radically that was going to transform not only the business. But now that I have a thousand albums in my car all the time, I listen to more music. I was too lazy, I always had the same five discs in there. I'd never think to change it.

Rose: Yeah, right, sure.

Reznor: But then went through a phase of feeling very bad and violated by the fact that people felt it was their right to steal your art. It's like I'd like to be compensated for the hard, hard work I put into this. And just because you're able to steal it doesn't mean it's OK to steal it. I used to stand behind this kind of bullshit line of do you think it's OK to steal Photoshop? I did it, but that feels like I shouldn't have done that.

Rose: To steal the program you mean? Photoshop?

Reznor: Yeah, I mean somehow that seemed different than a song, you know. But what I've come to realize, you know, since it can't be stopped — and I blame that on an outdated concept of what copyright law is in the way of ownership. Primarily the greed of the record industries have not — their own greed has prevented them from adopting any solution that would give people what they want. People want to listen to a lot of music and do whatever they want with it. They don't want DRM, they don't want subscriptions. They don't want a player that only can do this but can't do that and you only have one copy. They don't want that. You know? I don't want that. And they're so rooted in this outdated business model that they're not willing to give up their CEO salaries or their Lear jets or their ridiculous overdone staff or their lion's share of the cut of records that get sold. And so, a couple years ago I kind of realized that music essentially is free now. I'd prefer if it wasn't. But it is. And being on the other side of that argument is a losing battle. And once you kind of get your head around — it's not a flawless thing, because I think the songwriter he's more fucked in this scenario. But applying it to my own life, hey I've had a pretty good run. I can still make a living with touring. And maybe you buy a t-shirt. And I would rather 10 million people get my record and listen to it for free than 500,000 that I coerced to pay $15 for it, you know? And I think given the state of the way the industry is right now, the only way to look at it is I think what Prince is doing. I think Radiohead if they would have executed it better could have — you know the idea is right. Eliminate this dinosaur in the corner that's primarily taking all your money, based on a thieving business model, and are making enemies out of the people that they're customers. You know, that's ridiculous. I mean if you're going to go after someone go after ISPs. Don't go after somebody that — what good is that going to do?

Rose: Yeah, right. So, what would you have done differently from what Radiohead (did)?

Reznor: Well, I'm a big Radiohead fan, and I applaud their what seemed like courage. But I felt a little funny after X amount of people have signed up to pay for a download to then find out the day before or the day you're going to get it, oh it's a 160K MP3, which is MySpace streaming quality, which is not good. And what if you just paid $20 for that because you want to support your favorite band, and find out oh I just paid for something that sucks? And then hearing some inane idiotic comments from their managers saying, "Well, the real way to hear Radiohead is on a CD." Oh, so this is all just a bait and switch to get us to buy something that we thought was the real product that wasn't after we paid for it. And then to get us to rebuy it as a CD because it has extra tracks because you want to make sure you have your brick and mortar traditional record deal in place feels — that feels like I've been had, as a fan.

Rose: That's interesting, I didn't realize that that's how it worked in fact.

Reznor: Yeah. And then the band even, one of the guys in the band, well it's higher rate than iTunes, which is 128. No, it's not. Because iTunes is in AAC files, not mp3. Not to split hairs.

Rose: Yeah, well no, AAC is much better.

Reznor: I think as a musician right now, and one that cares about perception of integrity above making every last cent and every opportunity to monetize everything, it's a very slippery slope now. Because basically people if you're moderately technologically aware music is free to you. And I had said before Radiohead did their thing that if I had an album ready to go right now I would offer it, PayPal button, download it for free if you want, if you want to support the artist here's four or five bucks. Click here and it goes to the artist. If that option was available across the board I'd pay for every record I come across. And I would believe that putting it back in the hands of the fans in terms of honor and respect, that yields results. Not everybody, certainly not everybody's going to do that. But I think giving people (an opportunity) to feel good about, I think people do want to support the music that they like, I think that — and Radiohead did do that. I think that's good. However, it felt like there's a catch on that. Because I was the guy that paid for the $80 physical thing that's coming out, because I'm a fan and I wanted to see what it was like. But I do know a lot of people that felt like, "I don't want that, but I'm going to pay for this record." And then got a cassette copy of it, you know.

Rose: [laughs] Right.

Reznor: That felt like a — it felt weird to me.

Rose: How did you deal with — you were talking a few moments ago about you know like two weeks or so before the album comes out, you know, it gets uploaded. How did you deal with that in terms of the game or in terms of, you know, I mean everything?

Reznor: Right. For a band like Nine Inch Nails, and I would also add the Radioheads of the world in that camp, as opposed to the Gwen Stefanis and the Fergies, we genuinely have one spike of interest now. Two spikes of interest. And that would be when the record leaks, and when the retail release comes out. And the first one in my case is a ten out of ten. And the second one is a seven and a half out of ten, because the fans already have it. And then it's just their moral remembrance to go and actually and pay for one now. After that, it's consumed and passed along, discussed furiously and then it's forgotten. And then the next level of spike comes if we tour. It used to be you had the advance single that would get some kind of bit of interest, the release date would be a ten out of ten, and then the single that comes out, the second single with a video with it. Now it doesn't make any sense monetarily to really make videos unless you can do them cheaply, because there are no outlets for them any more, because MTV's too concerned about lifestyle reality programming. There is a reason to do it on YouTube. And I found out throughout Europe they still play videos a fair amount. But where that differs from say the Fergie Gwen Stefani model, they still have those videos and they have an audience that might be technically less on top of it, maybe. But they still get dictated what to listen to, and radio still plays those things and they do what they're told in that camp. In our camp it comes out, it goes through channels, and that's where it stays. So, my theory was, after the record leaks I don't have any surprises left in terms of the music for the record. But before it leaks I've got 15 surprises. How can I seed them out in the way that I would like people to hear it? Like as an artist in a perfect world everyone would get the record at the same time, and everyone would stop what they're doing and go into a place that sounds nice, take the phone off, listen to it from start to finish, think about it, listen to it again from start to finish, go to bed that night. In the real world now its' terrible quality bootlegs file shared, I've got the third song, you've got the second song and it's jumbled around and it's — because music is primarily free I think people just want to get more and more and more. Compared to when I was growing up, I had $10 to spend on a record, I listened to that record, and I got my $10 worth, even if I may not have liked it. I fucking bought it, let me — now you just have all the stuff. I've got a lot of shit on my iPod I haven't listened to yet, you know. And it does have less value because it's free. So, what we did was strategically linked out songs ahead of time via methods we could use in the game and the story that would direct people and (taint) them what I wanted them to think about the record before the bulk of it came out. And generally it would be this is not what the rest of it sounds like, get them scratching their beards for a minute. A couple weeks later, here's something else that doesn't even sound like it's even the same band. Oh, throw them for a loop. And then punch them when the whole thing leaks out.

Rose: So, that's what the USBs were about.

Reznor: That was the method we used to get those out. There's another one that you could hear snippets of a song if you found a clue that was a phone number that had a bit of it in the background. But the other factor we had to consider was several of kind of the bigger clues were in the actual audio of the album. And we had to factor in, in this very carefully orchestrated reveal of all the parts, this might happen two weeks before the record's out or it might happen a month before if somebody's careless. This window's shifting. We made it pretty far further than we thought, closer to the release date before it leaked. And the last set of clues would be on the actual physical jacket sleeve, that no one would really get until much closer to the deadline, because for some reason that seems to be — you'd see scans of some stuff, but that generally is right up to the release date before people get that and can scan it. Then everyone's trying to look for clues. You know, I found during the course of this ARG that as much as I loved watching people do it, I would get super frustrated when they're ruining the game, sometimes, by their over eagerness, you know what I mean? You put these — and I'm sure these guys told you the same thing. You'd put in clues that you thought nobody's going to figure this out. I mean I would never ever come up with how you do that. And in ten minutes they've got it. And other things that feel like it's almost too easy, never solved. You know. So, it's interesting watching everybody else. But I do admit getting frustrated at times where there'd be this kind of race to spoil, just not even enjoying the process, just racing to the end of it, you know. But it was a fun experience.

Rose: Yeah. Huh. So, you've said that you're not going to release on major labels anymore, except I think you have what one more due on (Interscope)?

Reznor: I'm done with Interscope. There is the remix record coming out that's still going to come out. And they have the right to release a greatest hits record at some point, which there's no animosity between myself and the main guys at the label. And I think they understand that a lot of what I'm saying that's been against labels is just from a hey, the ship's going down and I disagree with most of what you guys are doing. And I'm not going down with you just because you guys are greedy. And I'm going to call you on it. But, will I ever be on a major label? I mean right now I can tell you what we're not doing is meeting with all the labels to find out what kind of deal we can get, because quite frankly there's nothing really that we need them for today. I think I really feel that the next few years the business is in a between phase. And the right model hasn't revealed itself yet. And I don't think it's the Radiohead model, which what we would do is similar to that. I don't think that's the end — all thing, and it certainly doesn't work for new bands. You know if nobody knows who you are nobody's going to buy your record. I know I've been meeting with a lot of technological companies that are trying to fill that void of being your store for you. But there's always an agenda there. And most of these companies won't be here certainly within the year, maybe six months. You know Snowcap is a good example of something that I just — just feels wrong to me, doesn't feel like the right thing. Add into it some of the things they can't do, sell outside the States, (so 30%). Give you fucking 30% to do what?

Rose: [laughs] That's right. Might as well be at a label, right.

Reznor: I finally got 100% back. I'm not really — you know up from 20% that I had. But it certainly would be nice if there was a toolkit that was out there. You know if I was what's his name from Microsoft, Allen that's got more money than he knows what to do with — he's got five huge yachts with recording studios and all that bullshit in there that makes me sick when I think about it — how about if you're into music how about creating or funding someone creating a toolkit that's free, that would give musicians the power to house their own music and sell it from storefronts that don't take the lion's share of that? Give them some tools that musicians can make their own music and not be now beholden to some other hustling company that's trying to —

Rose: Right, right.

Reznor: And put some respect back into the process. We have a little — Rob and I, the aforementioned art director — we'll e-mail back and forth any time we see things that are like — we're hoping somebody makes a kind of archival Web site of in the major label music business's last days, some of the desperate things they're doing to try to sell music. There's just some sickening things.

Rose: What do you have in mind?

Reznor: Well one of them was some rapper, write lyrics to my new song and win, you know, something to do with Doritos. Something just ridiculous. And then we were talking about the company that has something to do with Blackeyed Peas, this, that and the other thing. You go to their site and there's Google ads all over their official sites and sign up here to get — put this on your site and if anyone buys it you'll get a percentage of the sale of my record.

Rose: [laughs] Sounds like a pyramid scheme.

Reznor: Yeah. I mean for some artists that may not be something that seems in appropriate, you know, and I'm not here to judge them. I am here to judge them, actually. But you know, can't it be about the music? Can't it be about have some dignity and just be about the experience? You know I'm the guy that fights to have better quality sleeve and printing job on the CD, because I think it matters. To me it matters, you know. When I'm sitting next to the marketing guy at the record label trying to explain why that matters. "No it does matter if it's a matte finish versus (only) because it feels better." "Yes, but it's seven cents more. That means you're going to lose..." "But it feels better." It makes it a better experience to me. It's not just about — it's about the whole thing. And that usually falls on deaf ears these days. Because everything's about — when musicians started bragging about what great businessmen and how much money they have, so when did that start happening? Mid-90s?

Rose: [laughs] Yeah, right, probably, yeah.

Reznor: I mean I'm sure it had something to do with hip hop's emergence as a superforce. But I remember you know early '90s if your music was on a commercial, you were kicked out. That was —

Rose: Yeah totally. But now it's the opposite.

Reznor: Suddenly it's like that's a great way to break a band. Get on an iPod commercial. You know it's like, oh, we've come to that now. You know, I guess it's better than American Express. Or is it? You know? It's sad that it has to rely on those achieving things to survive these days. But I don't think you do.

Rose: So, you said you were going to work with 42 again. Is this going to be on the remix album do you think or like the next project you do?

Reznor: No, the remix record is just what it is. It's a remix record and the kind of thing we've added to that. I think it's the best remix record I've done, which is that's — what does that mean? But it also comes with a data DVD, if you buy the physical that has every track on this new album, Year Zero, as multitracks in its generic WAV file format to work with anything, or as Garage Band or as (abelton live) which is Mac (and PC). And that will coincide with the release of a new version, the first component of the new Nine Inch Nails website. Which will be built around remix type site where you can upload your mixes, rate others, listen to theirs, download them, whatever you want to go. Just kind of a hopefully elegant place to put stuff based on discussion. No fee, you know just a place to see what's up.

Rose: That's an interesting idea.

Reznor: Interesting graphs to see data in new ways. And just see how it goes, you know. No real agenda there other than I thought it would be something cool to do. Interscope went along with it. So. And I don't know of anyone that's done that. I'm sure someone may have done it, but. That's the remix record. And then I'm just working on some new music now that I don't — I'm finding that it's starting off with a different vibe, I've just started working on, because — and this may be famous last words — but because I know this project won't end up on probably any label, I don't feel any need to cater it to any format. And it feels kind of freeing right now. It may be unlistenable at the end of the day, I don't know. But I'm not worried about that time I bring the record in and say, "Here's my new album. Sorry guys. No hit singles again." You know? That's gone. So, it's really do whatever I want to do. Not that I couldn't in the past. But somehow you're aware that there's — the thing I felt on the label that I've been on is they're really good at getting the record out there. And there's certain types of records that are unmatched at marketing. But when it's not one of those records then they're like a big machine knows how to do this thing. But if you give them this thing, they're not sure what to do with that thing. And they look at it as a failure if it doesn't perform like that thing. And that's a frustrating entity to deal with sometimes. Where and you always — at least I do — feel like well I failed them in some capacity. These are my business partners, I've given them something that didn't — wasn't a sleek model that did what that one did. You catch yourself but that's ... I don't want to be that model. I never was that model, I'm not trying to be that model. You're trying to make me that model, just let it do its thing. So, it's an interesting time in the music business. You know it's scary, it's also — it's change that's needed to take place. I remember when I first got a record deal in '89, and I actually saw the numbers on a record deal. And you realize how little — you do all the work, they lend you some money to record an album, you pay them back every penny. Then they own it, and they give you this much, 15 percent or, on the upside, 20 percent of wholesale, after they've overcharged you for manufacturing, which they own so who knows how much that really costs. And then they don't pay you until you audit them. And that's OK somehow. And there's no penalty for that. You know this kind of sucks, you know? How did this get started? Who allowed this kind of format to be the norm? And if what's happening now puts an end to all that, it's 30 years too late, you know. Not saying there won't be something else equally as thieving that can prey upon musicians and artists. But hopefully they'll be more educated, the young kid coming into it doesn't make the mistakes that I made (in my footsteps).

Rose: So, how do you think you will release your new album? Or will it be an album even?

Reznor: I mean what we're thinking of right now is less of a long album like thing and more frequent EP type things that come out rather than every couple of years, maybe every few months. Because there's something about the idea that I can go downstairs and work on something and then that night it can be out in the world, ooh. And, you know, there are things that — there are issues we need to think about that I find myself embroiled in right now, because I spent the last few months — I should say I spent the last few years, couple years, same time I worked on Year Zero I was working on (Solium's) new album, writing and producing that. And we just finished that a couple months ago. And found that, wow, major labels are afraid of signing new artists that don't sound like the Black Eyed Peas. And this is something that's pretty volatile and interesting, and has something to say and doesn't sound like everything else. And I'd just gotten into it with (soulabap) which, "I can't in good conscience let you go sign with a major label, you know. I wouldn't do it. We're not on the same footing right now, but let's see how we can apply what's happening today in the world to your record and see how we can make it interesting." And unlike, say, what Radiohead, which is very pull. You just go there if you know who they are and you're interested in them or you seek it out, it's the only place you can get it and find it. That works I think fine for them. What I would be thinking about for Nine Inch Nails or certainly for (Saul) is a way to get out to more people that doesn't feel too pushy, doesn't feel to spammy or —

Rose: Right, right.

Reznor: Or in any way feels compromising in terms of its association with who your guy funding it might be. In other words, any corporate affiliations that might help get the word out. It's interesting what Prince did with his record in England about giving it away with the newspaper. You know, and it angered retail, brick-and-mortar retail, people because they're selling the same record that's for free in the newspaper. And I understand that, and I have sympathy for them. That they're another casualty of the record business just like the artist is. But from Prince's point of view, you can sell a handful or you can give away a truckload. And then he plays 20 some shows at the big arena over there and who's laughing at the end of the day? Now, I don't know that that's the right model, I don't necessarily think it is. But the idea of making music something that you're not under the illusion that you're going to coerce people into not stealing and paying for, but getting it out to a shitload more people, that's exciting. And maybe you can monetize it another way through what I mentioned, (merchant it off) or maybe not. But at the moment I don't see any real alternatives. And I'd much rather have a lot of people hear what (I love to do) or discover (Saul), you know. We're working on a plan where you can get his record for free, or you can support and pay what I consider a reasonable amount, and I think anyone would consider. Valet parking or an hour's worth of entertainment that we've worked our asses off, you know?

Rose: [laughs] Right, right.

Reznor: Big Mac, not even supersized, just regular sized meal or you know. And it's a challenge right now just trying to find the thing that feels, feels the best, that doesn't feel like it's some kind of hustle.

Rose: The sort of store mechanism to how exactly you would release it or make it available?

Reznor: Yeah, I mean if — I think the purest way is to build your own store, then your bandwidth costs are on your back on the downside. But when you take an artist like (Saul) that doesn't have a big pot of money to start digging into develop that, test it and then house it and then have support for it, it starts looking a lot more appealing to look at other options and people who have already built that. But then it's what do they want from it? Payment is one thing. But affiliation I think is another important one. Because you know like something I just was thinking about is when you visit some of these sites that you can buy people's music, it feels like — this will sound snobby but it's just being truthful — it seems like the people that are on those sites are not there because they want to be there. They're there because that's the only place they can be. You know? And it feels sometimes like a lot of it's made for the bedroom techno artist, nothing against that guy. But it has a kind of perception of value is a bit lower. It's K-Mart versus (Amoeba), you know. It feels cooler getting it there. Versus is this defective? You know what I mean? I don't know why that is, and maybe it's just me and Rob that feel that way. But just some of the miscellaneous bullshit, just thinking about it in terms of how do I get my music out to people the most bulletproof way that satisfies all our needs. They get it for free or whatever they want to pay for it, X amount, and I do it in a way that I'm not losing money hand over fist to give you my album away for free to pay for bandwidth to get it into your iPod, you know what I mean? That doesn't make any sense to me.

Rose: Yeah, right.

Reznor: And it's an interesting time, just trying to weigh everything out. So, I don't know if that answered your question or not but —

Rose: Yeah.

Reznor: I can't tell you definitely I would do it this way. But you know if I was putting an album out tomorrow I would do it where you have a choice of paying nothing or I would say a fixed amount, this much, your choice. And if you get it as a fixed amount, here's the bonus. We'll give it to you as a FLAC file if you want or the mp3 high, or medium (or low). If it's free, it's a good quality MP3. But I can't justify enormous bandwidth costs to give you something completely for free. If you can get it for free, great. Or just steal it somewhere, if you're going to do that anyway. But I think the important part of that is giving people a legitimate option to support art and music they love. I think inherently people that are into it don't feel bad about that. At the moment what you're fighting is a perception that, oh, it's the record label, and they're greedy fuckers, and they're overcharging anyway. That's how I feel, you know.

Rose: [laughs] Right.

Reznor: And I know that, you know.

Rose: Huh. So, to get back to the ARG question, do you know — do you have any idea what you want to do with them next? Or is that sort of like —

Reznor: Well, I left that experience of working with them feeling like I wished I worked for them, you know what I mean? I have more fun doing that than a lot of what I end up doing in my own career. And I sensed a real respect and admiration mutually from them as well, and it was fun because I think — this is my own possibly warped perception, but we both had a good time doing it, and it felt kind of not as rigid as maybe some things they worked on. And for me it was interesting because I wasn't working with the marketing company, I was working with artists who happened to work in that world. And that's what I think resonated between both camps. Alex and I still stay in touch, as do Susan and I. And we've talked about — we've just planted the seeds of let's say like initially the next thing I was going to do is the final portion of Year Zero record, and a tour that supported both things. And the idea then was that we wouldn't repeat another ARG like we just did. But something that broke into that boundary with the concert experiences and maybe each concert is unique and ties in with your presence there. A lot of long discussions over a lot of coffee and idea back and forth with them, now that I know that they're a resource in terms of what is possible, you know. So, there is no concrete idea, and what's shifted in my world is now not being on Interscope. And also the kind of unpredictable how do I feel creatively. I don't particularly feel like right now I want to sit down and go back in Year Zero and open up that world. I want to work in terms of some shorter bursts of music that are just coming out of subconscious. And we are planning on doing some live shows in the near future with a new band and new way of presenting Nine Inch Nails. And that may or may not involve some element of 42 for that. You know, when the record label when we did the ARG, they were amazed at — did they tell you about our meetings we had with them?

Rose: No. With the label?

Reznor: With the record label. Yeah, I funded it myself so I could call the shots basically. But it came a point when it was about to come to life, work was being done, they had been hired, and I wanted to involve the label, explain to them what was going to happen, so that they basically didn't mess it up. Just let it do its thing, but warning them what might start happening. And there was some of the most absurd conversations I would have, where I'm trying to explain something that's — if you try to explain what an ARG is to somebody, it's a tough —

Rose: Yeah, yeah it is, it is, right, right.

Reznor: I can tell you another tough conversations. Calling my manager and saying, "Listen, here's what I want to do. I'm going to hire these guys — " "How much?" "Yeah, but here's what's going to happen. People are just going to start sensing this thing's going on. And it's going to be this rabid kind of excitement about this story that ties into the record." "Well, how are they going to find out about it?" "Well, first on a T-shirt, you notice a letter's a little bit different. And someone's going to put that together, and someone's going to think what if I type that in a browser? And it's going to take them to a site. And that's going to talk — and they're going to put that online." I could hear myself saying it, and I thought goddamn I sound like a crazy person, you know. And I'm saying, "Look how much money I'm going to spend to do this." It sounds crazy, you know. But to their credit they trusted me. And they understood what — they kind of picked up on what would be cool about it.

Rose: The label you mean?

Reznor: No my management.

Rose: Your management, right, (Jim).

Reznor: "I'm going to do it anyway, you know what I mean. But I wanted to let you know I want them on board." So then we're all on board and it's in motion, and the money's being spent, and now I'm talking to the label and I'm saying, "Here's what I'm doing." And I could see that same what's going to happen now? "There's a few things that for sure are going to happen, but I can't tell you what they are. No offense, but if I tell you what they are and someone finds out before it happens, it ruins what it is. So, it's for your own protection." Really, it's because I don't want you to know because you'd fuck it up somehow. In this form, "Hey K-Rock, check out this billboard down the street next week. You're going to see this thing blow up." And a minute later, "Hey, check out the billboard down on" you know. Story blown.

Rose: Yeah, got it, absolutely.

Reznor: So, then we had a meeting where I brought them in, because I figured they're smart. And they have impressive credentials. Let's put them in front of the record, it will sell. We had a little music listening party at a recording studio, and I brought Susan and Alex in. And I said, "Now it's the guys from 42 Entertainment, and they're going to explain what they did for Vista and for some other bullshit." And then I left [laughs]. They were nervous, talking to these people. And I couldn't stand to bet here and watch them (in fire). It all worked out well.

Rose: Yeah, yeah, right. How did you — I know they came to you with the idea of the sort of secret concert. How did you —

Reznor: Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. That was something that never could have happened without those guys on board. Because we were on tour, I remember we were in London and they came over for something, a mural went up.

Rose: Yeah, the Brixton thing, yeah.

Reznor: And then we started talking about it was getting to the phase where — not everything was planned out from the very beginning. Certainly the skeletal ideas. But then some things were left to mutate depending on how it went. And at that meeting it was like, "OK, we should think about the end and we should think about how to wrap it up and make it feel like this phase of it has a conclusion to give people a sense of accomplishment, and to keep them from being frustrated looking for something that isn't there anymore." And then there was the idea of "What about this idea? Susan, you're going to kill me." It was (Alonna) saying this. "And what about this, we're in Cleveland. You guys play a secret show. As soon as everyone leaves the building they're across the street from the building, boom, detonates, implodes."

Rose: [laughs]

Reznor: You know, and I'm like these are my kind of people. How the fuck can we do that? Yes, you know. Anyway, that mutated into — I came up with the idea of — it was their idea to have a show. The problem I had with that was it can't be a full show, it needs to maintain a level of excitement where people feel like they're getting a treat, that something happens. It can't just be a show, because then it becomes a show. So, I kind of wrote up a synopsis of what I thought would be a cool thing to happen, including primarily what happened, you know. And I thought for sure there'd be some liability (of us) being able to do that. And what if someone gets hurt, and you know. But then I kind of rationalized it, like OK, when you to a haunted house somebody's coming at you with a chainsaw and a strobe light in the dark, you know. Those somehow nobody goes to jail for that usually. And so they really just started working on the idea. And I knew that the people they would get to execute it would be — I'm not just kissing ass when I'm talking to you. But by that time they'd really proven themselves as they don't disappoint. It's an A list — its what I would do if I was in that job. I'm a guy that overthinks things and you know gets — but it was the same, I knew they could pull it off. And we talked about it, and we decided to use that place you saw. It's where we filmed the ("Survivalism") video a while earlier. And much to my amazement, that went off without a hitch, you know. Without a hitch,. and there were so many things that could have just made us look stupid, you know. And to my surprise, you know, watching — all I could see, because we were in the building. I could see the bus pulling up and we were all looking out the window and seeing people walk out and guys on the roof. It looked great, you know. And I couldn't tell what was happening in the actual meeting until I saw we edited it right after the film, watched the video tape. And it was — I was surprised that it was what I hoped would happen. It was that suspension of disbelief, worked it out so where it would feel like, hey everybody thought this was (entertaining news) but now we tie Nine Inch Nails and fiction into this and now you realize, oh I'm at the first resistance meeting. And this is the guy — oh, I'm in the movie. You know. And the whole idea of it being broadcast, Webcast, and then it cuts off right when you don't know what happened. And those people that we carefully selected would be the ones that tell the story. I thought it was genius. All those flourishes were there (and doing). And what was great about it was the next day, people had — so the story ended with the SWAT team coming in, tear gas and sirens, people getting rushed out to the bus, were bound up against the wall, and you know, people running out, freaked out. And then people filled in the story with they went to jail. Which I don't think they did, you know what I mean. I couldn't tell what was real myself. My manager Jim called me up and he's like, "What the hell happened last night?" I'm like, "It went off without a hitch." "No one was in jail?" "Not that I know of. I don't know why they would, it wasn't really cops there, were there?" You know what I mean, like it really got into like I can't imagine what it would have been like if you had fallen along the line and got cut off and then the stories popping up. I didn't really hear anybody kind of pulling the sheet away, showing the guy behind the curtain, you know. It all felt like it really — I don't know how many people in the end really were aware of what was happening at that time. You know, but in terms of keeping it pure, and really making that thing feel like it had a cool climax. That was — I can't tell you how much fun it was for me. That's the kind of stuff I love to do, and be able to pull it off and have the team together to come up with an idea and say, "Oh yeah, if anyone in the world can do it, these guys can, you know." And they take pride in making it happen, and it was good. Down to their — well, I better not say. Down to the guy providing the weapons, the real weapons, the SWAT team trainer, you know, who was terrifying in his own way.

Rose: [laughs]

Reznor: Really into, you know, making sure it looked right.

Rose: Right, right.

Reznor: Did they tell you about the girls that were plants too?

Rose: No, no.

Reznor: That's a good detail. Normally when I'm explaining to somebody what happened, you know, I explain the story of how they get their little kit and phone rings and they're all excited and they know to meet at this place and they get put in the van or the bus and don't know where they're going. They get there and they realize they're a meeting, and then what they probably suspect comes to life. And the band's going to play, and wow — and then bang. Even on the set list, we had a full 20 song set list including a couple songs we'd never played live. And I knew someone would see that. And the very first thing I see, "You know what pissed me off the most is they were going to play Perfect Drug." You know, but I knew the fifth song it's over. So the sixth song was, you know. But for that added bit of realism, I said, now imagine you're one of those guys that you're probably on the nerdy tip if you're the guy that's at the thing, got the kit, (what's on) the phone call. And at the place you're going to meet there's kind of a hot chick who's also kind of nerdy but by herself. And she's sitting next to you on the bus ride there. And she's you know (roll over) during the meeting that you sit through. And then she stand next to you when the band's playing. And then when the SWAT team breaks in, she's the one that gets grabbed by the hair and thrown to the ground and punched and pulled back. It was a plant the whole time. So, we had a couple of them in there just to add to the what the fuck factor. And that was the weapons provider's girlfriend. So, it was fun.

Rose: [laughs]

Reznor: It has to be that cross the line a little. It can't be too safe. But so far no lawsuits, so I think everyone survived.

Rose: So, did the — actually one thing I wanted to ask you about, I read about that you tried to buy 42 at one point?

Reznor: That who did?

Rose: That you did. That you offered to buy them.

Reznor: No, no, it was Jimmy from Interscope.

Rose: Uh-huh, oh Jimmy did.

Reznor: Yeah, what happened was I was never — I heard about it third party. When this started happening on the Internet there was a big buzz. And the label was looking at, well, everything we don't really know about these guys seem to — Jimmy told me, (hey it's Star Wars on the Internet you did). Now that didn't relate to Star Wars sales figures for the album, which is what they were hoping it would be — a 2 million sales. "We found the future of the music business. Do an ARG for every record." So then, unbeknownst to me, then I heard that Jimmy was talking to what's his name, the name guy.

Rose: (Leo Klein) or —

Reznor: No, no, at 42.

Rose: Oh, at 42. Jordan (Likum).

Reznor: Jordan, yeah. And set up a meeting with them, first with my manager there and then not with my manager there to kind of get involved in seeing, "OK, you guys know about this mysterious Internet thing and in touch with the people that use this thing that are stealing our music. Maybe it makes sense for us, because we have deep pockets, just to buy you and we have you as an asset." And I even wrote to those guys and said, "Look, this is not my doing. You know, I didn't even know about this. So, don't blame me or don't thank me. It's whatever it is." And to be honest with you, what I thought was if I was — just to talk too much here for a minute — if I was running the record label I would buy them. And I would say, "You guys are in charge of new media now, their blanket term for everything that's not a CD basically. And educate us how to make the label not the enemy. And what do people want? You know, because we don't know. How can we get back on people's good side? How can we give them some service — they don't want to buy plastic circles anymore. What do they want? How does it make sense for us? What do we need to do?" But I don't think that it was that kind of discussion. "I think it was more what exactly do you guys do? And how can we apply it to the roster that we have?" And I think when that became clear that that probably wasn't the best solution I think the talks just dissipated.

Rose: Yeah. This is Jimmy (Arvin) you're talking about.

Reznor: Yeah, Jimmy's a smart guy. You know, Jimmy if you look back at how he's navigated Interscope through the waters of the '90s from where it was to what it is now, that's him. That's his — he's the guy that call him any time of the night and will go to any length to get the artist he wants. He's a smart guy and will outmaneuver you in a number of ways. I consider him a friend and also have been outmaneuvered by him, regularly. But I could see where he sees — he smells something that is of quality, of interest. And in this case it was 42. And the sharks circled the ship there. I'm not saying it would have been a bad thing for either party. But I was just sitting on the sideline. I think where you heard me, my name came up, was I heard if he buys them (I'll make) a chunk of the company. But that was never a discussion with Jim and I or me and them. And I would have said, "Look, don't. I'm not trying to make this happen, you know what I mean? I respect you guys and I respect our relationship. There's no weird."

Rose: I probably read about it on MTV news or something like that, but I was curious to — I thought the coverage of even like Rolling Stone, you know, MTV, it was always like — I mean the coverage of the ARG that you guys were doing was like what are these wacky rock stars going to think of next? You know, it was kind of odd.

Reznor: It was more mainstream than I ever thought it was going to be. You know, to which I'm grateful of that. I mean I did it, so I'd hope people would notice it was happening.

Rose: Yeah, the ARG was more mainstream you're —

Reznor: Yeah. I mean it got picked up in more mainstream journals than I expected. I think it was — again the reason for doing it was to — the subject matter of the album made sense to do it. If I'm singing about [78:44] but that lent itself to that medium. And I felt that it was the strongest way to convey that story. And there was a story to convey that made the music make more sense, I think. And probably as much work went into each side that I really looked at it as that isn't the art and that isn't the marketing. They're both the same thing. (If there) was some way to immortalize that as a boxed set explanation of some sort, or DVD with all the media. We've talked about that even, some way to kind of get behind the scenes all the details, the original Wiki, just have access. Because it's interesting.

Rose: Yeah, it is, it is. (I be) explain it myself.

Reznor: To show how many layers of thought and how bulletproof the fiction was and how many times we went back and forth on, well, once you get time travel involved then a whole 'nother world of — I remember a few times where we all locked up after four hours of talking about something. Yeah, but if the future you is that, then how did ... would I have known about — getting into that. Which appeals to me as a fan of science fiction. What's nice about all this is it whetted my appetite to do some things other than make an album, go on tour, make an album, go on tour. Talk about where the name came from, you know, over and over and over and over again. And I felt like, you know, there's no rules as to what entertainment is. And I think rock concerts are lazy. Shitty band you don't like plays. Intermission. Band you like plays, it sounds back. Go home. You know what I mean? Eat a hot dog maybe. Buy shitty t-shirt for too much money. Just break it all down and say, utilize the medium we have today and cross kind of collaborations between those things. It just felt like a fun thing to do, really, was the idea.

Rose: Yeah, right, right.

Reznor: And it wasn't to be weird and it wasn't to confuse people and it wasn't to get you to sign up for our fan club or any shit like that. It was ... but at the end of the day I'm also coming at it with the luxury of you know I had a sizable recording budget from Interscope that I spent most all of it on this.

Rose: Oh really?

Reznor: Yeah, because I don't have tons of money, cash on hand, to frivolously pursue these things. Just reality comes into play, basic economics come into play. And with this it was some soul searching when it was like take the whole burden on and maybe do the coolest thing ever? OK, it's no discussion. I mean yeah I'm going to do that, you know. If I have the opportunity to, sure.

Rose: So, does that mean you didn't spend as much recording as you might have or?

Reznor: Well, the deal that I just got out of was one that was, you know, I signed a recording contract in '89, it got sold from one record label to Interscope. It got re-upped in '94 or something and the end of it was now. But each record goes up in money, and it's their option to keep you or not (on all of it). So, you know, as those numbers went up, cost of recording really has gone down, because most of it happens in your house. And more money I've spent on the last couple of records I've put into gear that I can just do it myself. Not necessarily to save money but just convenience. And people buy less records. So, it's working all against the record label. But with that said I have the luxury of a large advance that would cover something like the 42 thing. And it just seemed like justified. As long as I didn't think of it in terms of real world money.

Rose: [laughs]

Reznor: (guitar) or I could do this thing [82:57] my mom a new house, but yeah I could, you know. If you start that discussion then it usually leads to a bad place. If you just don't think about it, say I want to make the coolest thing ever. And I'm glad I did it, I am.

Rose: Great. Well, thank you, thank you, terrific.

Reznor: OK, I love — it's nice to talk about — one I'm not doing any interviews now because I'm in a whole working on new stuff. But to be able to talk about this kind of stuff is so much more interesting to men than the rock music side of —

Rose: Yeah.

Reznor: Tedious stuff, you know. But ...

Rose: Right. Was there ever a time in the middle of it that you thought, like, it wasn't working or might go awry or something? I mean, when you were, like, tracking people, you know, sort of, like, watching what they were doing online?

Reznor: Not really. I mean, the biggest debates we had in terms of — once we ironed out the big things, like let's remove the narrative that you're going to interject into it, and let's just make it about snapshots. Once that, that was probably the biggest headbutting between Jordan and myself in terms of — and I have to respect they've done this and I haven't. And so I basically said, "Let's try to do it this way. But if you know it's not going to work, don't let me — you know I don't know it's not going to work." I don't like the idea of let's come up with sort of comic book characters to feel like it's not this, it's something parallel to it. And I think they realized as we got going that that was a better way. It felt good to me. It wasn't — when we started executing it after we kind of worked out the major issues it felt solid to me. It wasn't any part of it I was edgy about. Other than placing myself in fiction in it. And that was the thing that you don't want to — I didn't want to have to lie about anything. I think the way we did it was smart. It was a minor thing that you read into that. Just to elaborate for a minute, the idea that — the first question was if you were trying to rationalize everything out, if this really has happened and the idea was that I got seeded with some snapshots of the album cover for example, and some information that some third party sent to me. And one of the things was a recording of a song that I just started writing, that were the same words, but I hadn't finished the song yet. But I could hear a kind of shitty copy, some distorted copy. It sounds like me, and it's exactly what I'm writing. How? So, I investigate and this person kind of tells me this farfetched story that he's intercepted some of these things off the Web that are from the future. And it's kind of your duty to kind of write a record about this or be inspired by this. I don't know if it's bullshit or not. So, it fits with the music I'm writing now. Let me — inspired by, OK. And I end up making this record that ends up becoming the record that gets sent back to myself. And that's how these murals have appeared now. Who this third party that you don't know is we never got into. 'Cause it had its own — if there wasn't a real third party it had its own set of problems that they run into and they have a real person in there [86:42] We kept that very nebulous, but that person also fed some graphic artists things that became these murals that popped up. And so there's somebody that's intercepted some of these things and feels it's their moral duty — they believe it, kind of a conspiracy theorist person. They start feeding it out to people they like, artists they like to try to get the seed in popular culture that this could happen, maybe defuse it from happening. A lot of debate on how to work that in where it didn't feel — oh there's a lost chapter from this. I probably — well, I'll say it. There's a couple guys who were about to — talking about writing a biography about me. And there's nothing that I'd be less interested in than that. You know that's so not what — even thinking about it makes me feel uneasy. But then I started thinking, what if it was the first two-thirds of the book were reality, up until the present, then it goes into the last third of what happens to me? The book has been sent back or found (as an archive). And then it became interesting, you know. Not sure when the cross over takes place, it has my death in the book and where it ends up, (ties in to) what happens in Year Zero. So, that's something that is kind of on the burner right now, may or may not be executed depending on when I do the second part of this thing, if there is a second part of this thing.

Rose: A second part of Year Zero? You mean more songs or?

Reznor: Yeah, the idea was that it would be a two part record. And the second record is yet to be done. Kind of continues the story into answering the questions that were not addressed on this. What is (the presence), for example. We know what that is. We made sure we didn't — we left it where it could be a few things. I know what it is.

Rose: You do. Uh-huh, uh-huh.

Reznor: I knew when I first started it what it is. And it branches off into the incredibly pretentious world of my own philosophy. But that's why I'm just kind of letting it sit there for a while. I'm the author I can do these things. But I knew what it was and we made something that wouldn't break, what it is, but didn't rely on until I find an elegant way to execute the next part that does what I want it to do but doesn't end my career instantly. [laughs] Or maybe it does, maybe.

Rose: [laughs] So, is this the material you're working on now?

Reznor: Well, it's not — right this second I find myself energized, been in a different mindset. So what I'm doing is just setting them aside for the time being. I think we'll do some shows coming up in a new way, and some music will come out before then that won't be necessarily tied into that. And then I think when I get that out of my system dig in and really — if I feel inspired at that point. It may be one of those things that the moment in time passes. We'll see.

Rose: If you feel inspired to do the next part of Year Zero —

Reznor: Yeah, today I don't feel — I feel — Year Zero felt — although it was very complex, it was effortless to do. The music fell out of my head. I'm not saying it wasn't hard work at the time, but it wasn't agonizing over ideas and how am I — just get down and do it and it came out. I must have been thinking about it subconsciously. The ARG, the background of the story was literally a week of me by myself and a week of me and Rob helping me bouncing ideas off stuff. It was the meat and potatoes of 90% of it. Then we gave it to 42 and then they executed its chapters of it essentially. But it wasn't — it was never a time when it felt bogged down and stuck in the mud. And I feel like the second part's going to get a little — my hands are going to get dirtier because it's less off the cuff, and now it has to — it feels like it's going to be that. And rather than put the breaks on right now I'm just say for the next year I'm just going to sit and think this out and write an album that really, you know, I kind of feel like I want to get back out and get some music out quickly. And I have some other ideas that aren't related to that. Those feel more exciting at the moment. And I'll either get to it, which I plan to, or it might be one of those things that's there's always something that's — I don't know yet.

Rose: So, you know there was some pretty ballsy stuff in that album and in the ARG in terms of you know like political commentary so to speak. Did you get any flack from that or did you expect to?

Reznor: I heard some things from — I have a friend that works in the government and it was like, "Watch list, you're definitely on it. You fucked up." That kind of shit.

Rose: Really?

Reznor: And I don't know if our relationship is such that I don't know if that was because she knows how I'd react to hearing that. Or if it's truth, you know, I don't know. And I was too proud to ask, or even inquire about it because I know that was just a fishhook waiting to — you know. But I've gotten in and out of the country 50 times and there's no sign of that happening. You know, I think if it — it would be sad if what I said got me in some situation where — I'm just, the things that you claim I have, those rights, I'm exercising them. I don't agree with what you're doing at all. I'm utilizing my voice to say that and express it in any way I feel is appropriate. But you know I can't — I'm saying that from a guy that hasn't been cavity searched or can't leave — you know what I mean, I haven't felt the wrath of that. So, I'm sure there's a whole downside to that. But at the moment I'm functioning on the arrogance of you know fuck you.

Rose: [laughs] Did you see the letter that came in from the kid in Iran?

Reznor: Yeah.

Rose: Yeah, wasn't that amazing?

Reznor: Amazing, really amazing. I mean and it's stuff like that that kind of was like, that's why we're doing it. You know what I mean? It reminds you that it's — the meeting of music and all entertainment for that matter or art for that matter, you send seeds out and people make it what — make it their own. That just never fails to amaze me how that — whether it be like the Johnny Cash covering my song. That's the weirdest because that was literally just a dark moment in my bedroom trying to make myself feel better, just write this thing down, turn it into a song and it felt like a very private moment in my own life, and felt proud of. Ten years later, the last person on the earth I would expect to hear from, Johnny Cash, wants to record that song. And then it's kind of is an epitaph for him. Wow, weird. You know I'm like I never would have imagined that. Finally got respect in my hometown. "You wrote that Johnny Cash song, right?" "Yeah, I did. I did write that Johnny — ", you know.

Rose: [laughs] Right, right, yeah, exactly.

Reznor: Whatever it takes.

Rose: Uh-huh. Huh. Great, well, thank you, thank you. This is super.

Reznor: Oh, been a pleasure.

Rose: Is Rob here by the way?

Reznor: He is not. He is — and he lives on the other side of town.

Rose: I'm sorry? He's —

Reznor: He's not here, but he is in town. I'm sure he would be.
http://www.wired.com/entertainment/m.../ff_arg_reznor





David Byrne and Thom Yorke on the Real Value of Music

It seemed like a crazy idea. When Radiohead said it would release its new album, In Rainbows, as a pay-what-you-will digital download, you'd have thought the band had gone communist. After all, Thom Yorke and company are one of the world's most successful groups — a critical darling as well as a fan favorite for nearly 15 years. They hadn't put out a new album in more than four years, and the market was hungry for their next disc. So why would Radiohead conduct such a radical experiment?

It turns out the gambit was a savvy business move. In the first month, about a million fans downloaded In Rainbows. Roughly 40 percent of them paid for it, according to comScore, at an average of $6 each, netting the band nearly $3 million. Plus, since it owns the master recording (a first for the band), Radiohead was also able to license the album for a record label to distribute the old-fashioned way — on CD. In the US, it goes on sale January 1 through TBD Records/ATO Records Group.

While pay-what-you-will worked for Radiohead, though, it's hard to imagine the model paying off for Miley Cyrus — aka chart-topping teenybopper Hannah Montana. Cyrus' label, Walt Disney Records, will stick to selling CDs in Wal-Mart, thank you very much. But the truth is that Radiohead didn't intend In Rainbows to start a revolution. The experiment simply proves there is plenty of room for innovation in the music business — this is just one of many new paths. Wired asked David Byrne — a legendary innovator himself and the man who wrote the Talking Heads song "Radio Head" from which the group takes its name — to talk with Yorke about the In Rainbows distribution strategy and what others can learn from the experience.

Byrne: OK.

Yorke: [To assistant.] Shut the bloody door.

Byrne: Well, nice record, very nice record.

Yorke: Thank you. Wicked.

Byrne: [Laughs.]

Yorke: That's it, isn't it?

Byrne: That's it, we're done. [Laughs.] OK. I'll start by asking some of the business stuff. What you did with this record wasn't traditional, not even in the sense of sending advance copies out to the press and such.

Yorke: The way we termed it was "our leak date." Every record for the last four — including my solo record — has been leaked. So the idea was like, we'll leak it, then.

Byrne: Previously there'd be a release date, and advance copies would get sent to reviewers months ahead of that.

Yorke: Yeah, and then you'd ring up and say, "Did you like it? What did you think?" And it's three months in advance. And then it'd be, "Would you go do this for this magazine," and maybe this journalist has heard it. All these silly games.

Byrne: That's mainly about the charts, right? About gearing marketing and prerelease to the moment a record comes out so that — boom! — it goes into the charts.

Yorke: That's what major labels do, yeah. But it does us no good, because we don't cross over [to other fan bases]. The main thing was, there's all this bollocks [with the media]. We were trying to avoid that whole game of who gets in first with the reviews. These days there's so much paper to fill, or digital paper to fill, that whoever writes the first few things gets cut and pasted. Whoever gets their opinion in first has all that power. Especially for a band like ours, it's totally the luck of the draw whether that person is into us or not. It just seems wildly unfair, I think.

Byrne: So this bypasses all those reviewers and goes straight to the fans.

Yorke: In a way, yeah. And it was a thrill. We mastered it, and two days later it was on the site being, you know, preordered. That was just a really exciting few weeks to have that direct connection.

Byrne: And letting people choose their own price?

Radiohead performs "Jigsaw."

Yorke: That was [manager Chris Hufford's] idea. We all thought he was barmy. As we were putting up the site, we were still saying, "Are you sure about this?" But it was really good. It released us from something. It wasn't nihilistic, implying that the music's not worth anything at all. It was the total opposite. And people took it as it was meant. Maybe that's just people having a little faith in what we're doing.

Byrne: And that works for you guys. You have an audience ready. Like me — if I hear there's something new of yours out there, I'll just go and buy it without poking around about what the reviews say.

Yorke: Well, yeah. The only reason we could even get away with this, the only reason anyone even gives a shit, is the fact that we've gone through the whole mill of the business in the first place. It's not supposed to be a model for anything else. It was simply a response to a situation. We're out of contract. We have our own studio. We have this new server. What the hell else would we do? This was the obvious thing. But it only works for us because of where we are.

Byrne: What about bands that are just getting started?

Yorke: Well, first and foremost, you don't sign a huge record contract that strips you of all your digital rights, so that when you do sell something on iTunes you get absolutely zero. That would be the first priority. If you're an emerging artist, it must be frightening at the moment. Then again, I don't see a downside at all to big record companies not having access to new artists, because they have no idea what to do with them now anyway.

Byrne: It should be a load off their minds.

Yorke: Exactly.

Byrne: I've been asking myself: Why put together these things — CDs, albums? The answer I came up with is, well, sometimes it's artistically viable. It's not just a random collection of songs. Sometimes the songs have a common thread, even if it's not obvious or even conscious on the artists' part. Maybe it's just because everybody's thinking musically in the same way for those couple of months.

Yorke: Or years.

Byrne: However long it takes. And other times, there's an obvious...

Yorke: ... Purpose.

Byrne: Right. Probably the reason it's a little hard to break away from the album format completely is, if you're getting a band together in the studio, it makes financial sense to do more than one song at a time. And it makes more sense, if you're going to all the effort of performing and doing whatever else, if there's a kind of bundle.

Yorke: Yeah, but the other thing is what that bundle can make. The songs can amplify each other if you put them in the right order.

"Do you know where your income comes from?"

Byrne: Do you know, more or less, where your income comes from? For me, it's probably very little from actual music or record sales. I make a little bit on touring and probably the most from licensing stuff. Not for commercials — I license to films and television shows and that sort of thing.

Yorke: Right. We make some doing that.

Byrne: And for some people, the overhead for touring is really low, so they make a lot on that and don't worry about anything else.

Yorke: We always go into a tour saying, "This time, we're not going to spend the money. This time we're going to do it stripped down." And then it's, "Oh, but we do need this keyboard. And these lights." But at the moment we make money principally from touring. Which is hard for me to reconcile because I don't like all the energy consumption, the travel. It's an ecological disaster, traveling, touring.

Byrne: Well, there are the biodiesel buses and all that.

Yorke: Yeah, it depends where you get your biodiesel from. There are ways to minimize it. We did one of those carbon footprint things recently where they assessed the last period of touring we did and tried to work out where the biggest problems were. And it was obviously everybody traveling to the shows.

Byrne: Oh, you mean the audience.

Yorke: Yeah. Especially in the US. Everybody drives. So how the hell are we going to address that? The idea is that we play in municipal places with some transport system alternative to cars. And minimize flying equipment, shipping everything. We can't be shipped, though.

Byrne: [Laughs.]

Yorke: If you go on the Queen Mary or something, that's actually worse than flying. So flying is your only option.

Byrne: Are you making money on the download of In Rainbows?

Yorke: In terms of digital income, we've made more money out of this record than out of all the other Radiohead albums put together, forever — in terms of anything on the Net. And that's nuts. It's partly due to the fact that EMI wasn't giving us any money for digital sales. All the contracts signed in a certain era have none of that stuff.

Byrne: So when the album comes out as a physical CD in January, will you hire your own marketing firm?

Yorke: No. It starts to get a bit more traditional. When we first came up with the idea, we weren't going to do a normal physical CD at all. But after a while it was like, well, that's just snobbery. [Laughter.] A, that's asking for trouble, and B, it's snobbery. So now they're talking about putting it on the radio and that sort of thing. I guess that's normal.

Byrne: I've been thinking about how distribution and CDs and record shops and all that stuff are changing. But we're talking about music. What is music, what does music do for people? What do people get from it? What's it for? That's the thing that's being exchanged. Not all the other stuff. The other stuff is the shopping cart that holds some of it.

Yorke: It's a delivery service.

Byrne: But people will still pay to have that experience. You create a community with music, not just at concerts but by talking about it with your friends. By making a copy and handing it to your friends, you've established a relationship. The implication is that they're now obligated to give you something back.

Yorke: Yeah, yeah, yeah. I was just thinking while you were saying that: How does a record company get their hands on that? It makes me think of the No Logo book where Naomi Klein describes how the Nike people would pay guys to get down with the kids on the street. I know for a fact that major record labels do the same thing. But no one has ever explained to me exactly how. I mean, do they lurk around in the discussion boards and post "Have you heard the..."? Maybe they do. And then I was thinking about that Johnny Cash film, when Cash walks in and says, "I want to do a live record in a prison," and his label thinks he's bonkers. Yet at the same time, it was able to somehow understand what kids wanted and give it to him. Whereas now, I think there's a lack of understanding. It's not about who's ripping off whom, and it's not about legal injunctions, and it's not about DRM and all that sort of stuff. It's about whether the music affects you or not. And why would you worry about an artist or a company going after people copying their music if the music itself is not valued?

Byrne: You're valuing the delivery system as opposed to the relationship and the emotional thing...

Yorke: You're valuing the company or the interest of the artists rather than the music itself. I don't know. We've always been quite naive. We don't have any alternative to doing this. It's the only obvious thing to do.
http://www.wired.com/entertainment/m...urrentPage=all





Next for Apple: Lossless iTunes Store
Nate Lanxon

They say once you've had FLAC, you don't go back. It was certainly true for me. And now I have an inkling Apple will add lossless music downloads to the iTunes Store within the next 12 months.

Apple adopted AAC as its standard music download format, not only because the creator of MP3 has named it the superior successor to its creation, but because it also allows for the embedding of DRM -- the ubiquitously despised method for preventing unauthorised copying. But there's another reason.

Before iPod, few players supported AAC. By choosing the format, Apple maintained the ecosystem it needed in order for the iTunes/iPod pairing to succeed -- a double act that fuels the sale of iPods, Apple's primary goal. As it did with Apple Lossless, Apple could have surely developed its own alternative to MP3, but it would have been pointless as the perfect, standardised, DRM-able option was available, and it didn't come from Microsoft.

But why lossless downloads?
Lossless audio is the audiophile's best friend, but the storage device's worst enemy -- it's sonically identical to CD audio, but at the cost of massive file sizes. Until recently, lossless audio wasn't an option for portable players. But now iPods come with up to 160GB of storage, lossless is a viable option for portable media, and pocketable audiophile earphones are within the reach of certain budgets (though of course iPods would surely be plugged into hi-fi equipment, too).

Apple has used its own lossless audio format since 2004 -- Apple Lossless Audio Codec, or ALAC. But why bother developing its own, when patent- and royalty-free options were already available? Firstly, some options weren't Mac-compatible. Others didn't support DRM. FLAC, arguably the most popular lossless codec, actively discourages the use of DRM, and Apple knows better than to anger a mob of hardcore geeks by shoving copy-protection into their open-source format.

But by not using FLAC -- a format rarely supported by players, bar Cowon, for example -- Apple ensures only its devices will work with Apple Lossless, thus a) maintaining the crucial ecosystem, and b) ensuring future sales of iPods, namely the expensive 160GB models.

With the current state of the music industry, innovation surrounding music consumption is vital. iTunes is not only the solitary music store capable of successfully monetising lossless downloads (due to its integration with iTunes/iPod), but it's also arguably the only one with a company behind it that will push for innovation until it's blue in the face.

Steve Jobs was recently named the most powerful businessman in the world by Fortune magazine. He was also the first to get a major record label to ditch DRM from its entire catalogue. iTunes and the iPod is not only perfectly geared up for lossless downloads, but it has the most powerful industry shaker-upper behind it, and a heap of potential new customers gagging to hand over their cash.

Give it 12 months.

http://reviews.cnet.co.uk/natelanxon...9294808,00.htm





Mac Versus Windows Vulnerability Stats for 2007
George Ou

The year 2007 has been an interesting year that brought us improved security with Windows Vista and Mac OS X Leopard (10.5). But to get some perspective of how many publicly known holes found in these two operating systems, I’ve compiled all the security flaws in Mac OS X and Windows XP and Vista and placed them side by side. This is significant because it shows a trend that can give us a good estimate for how many flaws we can expect to find in the coming months. The more monthly flaws there are in the historical trend, the more likely it is that someone will find a hole to exploit in the future. For example back in April of this year, hackers took over a fully patched Macbook and won $10,000 plus the Macbook they hacked.

I used vulnerability statistics from an impartial third party vendor Secunia and I broke them down by Windows XP flaws, Vista flaws, and Mac OS X flaws. Since Secunia doesn’t offer individual numbers for Mac OS X 10.5 and 10.4, I merged the XP and Vista vulnerabilities so that we can compare Vista + XP flaws to Mac OS X. In case you’re wondering how 19 plus 12 could equal 23, this is because there are many overlapping flaws that is shared between XP and Vista so those don’t get counted twice just as I don’t count something that affects Mac OS X 10.4 and 10.5 twice.Windows XP, Vista, and Mac OS X vulnerability stats for 2007

So this shows that Apple had more than 5 times the number of flaws per month than Windows XP and Vista in 2007, and most of these flaws are serious. Clearly this goes against conventional wisdom because the numbers show just the opposite and it isn’t even close.

Also noteworthy is that while Windows Vista shows fewer flaws than Windows XP and has more mitigating factors against exploitation, the addition of Windows Defender and Sidebar added 4 highly critical flaws to Vista that weren’t present in Windows XP. Sidebar accounted for three of those additional vulnerabilities and it’s something I am glad I don’t use. The lone Defender critical vulnerability that was supposed to defend Windows Vista was ironically the first critical vulnerability for Windows Vista.
http://blogs.zdnet.com/security/?p=758





Apples For The Army
Andy Greenberg

Given Apple's marketing toward the young and the trendy, you wouldn't expect the U.S. Army to be much of a customer. Lieutenant Colonel C.J. Wallington is hoping hackers won't expect it either.

Wallington, a division chief in the Army's office of enterprise information systems, says the military is quietly working to integrate Macintosh computers into its systems to make them harder to hack. That's because fewer attacks have been designed to infiltrate Mac computers, and adding more Macs to the military's computer mix makes it tougher to destabilize a group of military computers with a single attack, Wallington says.

This past year was a particularly tough one for military cybersecurity. Cyberspies infiltrated a Pentagon computer system in June and stole unknown quantities of e-mail data, according to a September report by the Financial Times. Later in September, industry sources told Forbes.com that major military contractors, including Boeing (nyse: BA - news - people ), Lockheed Martin (nyse: LMT - news - people ), Northrop Grumman (nyse: NOC - news - people ) and Raytheon (nyse: RTN - news - people ) had also been hacked.

The Army's push to use Macs to help protect its computing corps got its start in August 2005, when General Steve Boutelle, the Army's chief information officer, gave a speech calling for more diversity in the Army's computer vendors. He argued the approach would both increase competition among military contractors and strengthen its IT defenses.

Apple (nasdaq: AAPL - news - people ) computers still satisfy only a tiny portion of the military's voracious demand for computers. By Wallington's estimate, around 20,000 of the Army's 700,000 or so desktops and servers are Apple-made. He estimates that about a thousand Macs enter the Army's ranks during each of its bi-annual hardware buying periods.

Military procurement has long been driven by cost and availability of additional software--two measures where Macintosh computers have typically come up short against Windows-based PCs. Then there have been subtle but important barriers: For instance, Macintosh computers have long been incompatible with a security keycard-reading system known as Common Access Cards system, or CAC, which is heavily used by the military.

The Army's Apple program, created after Boutelle's 2005 address, is working to change that. As early as February 2008, the Army is planning to introduce software, developed by Arlington, Texas-based Thursby Software, that will also enable Mac desktops and laptops to use CAC systems--a change that should make it easier to get Macs into the service.

Though Apple machines are still pricier than their Windows counterparts, the added security they offer might be worth the cost, says Wallington. He points out that Apple's X Serve servers, which are gradually becoming more commonplace in Army data centers, are proving their mettle. "Those are some of the most attacked computers there are. But the attacks used against them are designed for Windows-based machines, so they shrug them off," he says.

Apple, which declined to comment, has long argued its hardware is less hackable than comparable PCs. Jonathan Broskey, a former Apple employee who now heads the Army's Apple program, argues that the Unix core at the center of the Mac OS operating system makes it easier to lock down a Mac than a Windows platform.

And Apple's smaller market share has long meant that it didn't attract cybercriminals hoping to wreck the most havoc possible. "If you look at the numbers, you see that malicious software for Macs is very limited," he says. "We used to sell Apples by saying they don't get viruses."

Of course, cyberspooks may be honing their Mac-attacking skills, too. An end-of-year report by Finnish software security company F-Secure highlights the growing number of hackers targeting Apple systems with malicious software, some of which could allow cybercriminals to steal security passwords. In the past two years, until this October, F-Secure found only a small handful of malicious programs targeting Macs. In the past two months, the company has found more than a hundred specimens of Mac-targeted malicious code.

Charlie Miller, a software researcher with Independent Security Evaluators, worries that the Army's diversification plan isn't enough to thwart the bad guys. He sees a two-platform system as a "weakest link" scenario, in which a determined cyber-intruder will seek out the more vulnerable of the two targets. "In the story of the three little pigs, did diversifying their defenses help? Not for the pig in the straw house," he says.

The marketing pitch that Apples are inherently more secure than PCs is also largely a myth, contends Miller, who gained notoriety for remotely hacking the iPhone last August. He points to data gathered by software security firm Secunia, which showed that Apple had to patch nearly five times as many security flaws in its software over the past year as Microsoft (nasdaq: MSFT - news - people ) had to patch in Windows. Apple's Quicktime player alone, he says, was patched 34 times. "I love my Macs, but in terms of security, they're behind the curve, compared to Windows," Miller warns.

But the Army's Jonathan Broskey stands by his claims of Apple's security: He says the high number of patches to Apple software is a good sign--evidence of the large community of developers actively working to tighten Unix programs and eliminate bugs. Nonetheless, like any responsible IT department, he says the Army's Apple program will closely monitor security updates to Mac-specific programs. "The Army's no different from any corporation," he says.

Still, relative to corporate cybersecurity, Lieutenant Colonel Wallington points out, the stakes are much higher. A leaked deployment order, for instance, might reveal the path of a supply truck and the points where it could be sabotaged, he says.

"This is information that affects the lives of soldiers and the civilians we're trying protect," Broskey adds. "It has to be safeguarded."
http://www.forbes.com/home/technolog..._1221army.html





Microsoft Patent Could Force Downloaders to View Commercials
David Chartier

A new patent application filed by Microsoft describes methods for "enforcing" advertisements in downloaded media. Traditionally, ads accompany streaming content and, by extension, restrict that content to a browser. But technology that could bring ads to downloaded content would open up new opportunities for digital distribution services, advertisers, and consumers, and could give DRM a whole new leg to stand on.

Microsoft's patent application, titled Enforcing Advertising Playback For Downloaded Media Content, describes systems that are based both on tokens and DRM which would prohibit playing a media file unless its accompanying advertising is viewed. The technology is designed to prohibit fast-forwarding, editing, or otherwise circumventing the advertisements, though it is unclear exactly where the ads would be placed. Internet users have repeatedly announced their distaste for pre-roll ads in streaming content and video games, but users of NBC's Hulu service reportedly don't mind its TV-like interstitial ads.

On the other hand, users have made it abundantly clear that paid content, such as the $1.99 TV shows from Apple's iTunes Store, should be devoid of any advertising whatsoever. This is where Microsoft's ad-enforced download technology could actually offer a new choice for distributors and consumers. Downloads offered for less than $1.99—or, ideally, for free—that contain an agreeable amount of advertising could gain real traction with consumers who want to download, collect, and organize their own media library. This would be especially advantageous for users who want to experience media on portable devices, or while otherwise offline.

The studios could take a swing at digital distribution by offering free (or cheap) files that contain a little advertising and DRM, in exchange for offline and portable viewing. If Microsoft or another service could offer a selection of TV shows and movies at least competitive with the dominant iTunes Store, the allure of free, portable media might help customers overcome some of their DRM loathing.
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post...--and-drm.html





Security Researcher Promotes Concept of 'Safe' and 'Promiscuous' Web Browsers

A quick tip for keeping yourself safe online--if you don’t mind extreme web browsing
Rick Cook

For the most part, the defense against Cross Site Request Forgery (CSRF)--considered one of the most insidious but least appreciated threats in application security--must come from websites themselves, not ordinary web users. To ensure that criminals can’t trick an unknowing user’s web browser into sending unauthorized requests to the websites where they do online banking or other sensitive activities, web developers must increase the number of times they authenticate customers and make other changes in how sites are programmed.

But Jeremiah Grossman, CTO at Whitehat Security and one of the country’s most prominent application security researchers, has a workaround he uses to protect himself online. It involves having two browsers: One, which he calls the “promiscuous” browser, is the one he uses for ordinary browsing. A second browser is used only for security-critical tasks such as online banking. When Grossman wants to do online banking, he closes his promiscous browser, opens the more prudish one, and does only what he has to do before closing it and going back to his insecure browser.

The approach works because then, even if Grossman encounters the CSRF attack while online, the website where he does sensitive activities won’t execute any orders it receives from his browser. "The bad guys are just looking in the off chance someone is logged into that particular website," Grossman says.
http://www2.csoonline.com/exclusives...html?CID=33396





Net neutrality

Major Aussie ISP Telstra BigPond Shafts Open Source OpenOffice
John Pospisil

Australia’s largest Internet service provider Telstra BigPond has removed the free open source office suite OpenOffice from its unmetered file download area following the launch of its own, free, hosted, office application, BigPond Office.

The removal of OpenOffice was brought to our attention by a TECH.BLORGE.com reader, who complained to Telstra’s support department about no longer being able to download OpenOffice updates. His first complaint was met with the following response:

BigPond is in the process of refreshing our File
Downloads service and this has resulted in the removal of various
files which have previously been listed. Due to a recent business
decision these files won’t be reinstated. Please visit BigPond
Files for further updates.


Our reader, an IT veteran with more than 25 years experience in the IT industry, than asked support why OpenOffice was removed, pointing out that the file download request page makes no mention of an invalid file criteria due to ‘business reasons’. He received this surprisingly honest email:

With the launch of BigPond Office, the OpenOffice downloads were removed
to ensure we were not offering competing products. If there are specific
OpenOffice files you require, which are not available as part of the
BigPond Office suite - please resubmit your request.


Our reader was outraged by Telstra’s move, which he sees as an attack on the open source software movement.

“The principle of the matter upsets me,” he said. “The fact that BigPond has removed previously allowed open source software is un-ethical. They are discriminating against me, even though I pay the same as other customers. They are attacking the Free Software movement.”

“You can’t offer a service and then suddenly change the rules because you know no-one can do anything about it. If you look at BigPond’s rules for a ‘valid file’, it has omitted to mention that files that ‘compete’ with its products are ‘invalid’ … BigPond needs to update the rules on its file request web page.“

“Although, one could argue, that customers could easily download the software directly, but then what exactly is BigPond’s point? To punish its customers? ”

While I’m very sympathetic to our reader’s outrage, I’m not sure that what Telstra has done is necessarily unethical. It’s a commercial enterprise and it can use its discretion, to some degree, about what services it chooses to provide — even though, as our reader points out, it doesn’t spell out that it won’t host software that competes with services it offers.

However, Telstra BigPond’s action is unquestionably petty, and will no doubt generate ill feelings amongst the open source community.

The action also seems to be driven by a lack understanding of what BigPond Office is actually about. As a hosted online application, BigPond Office is useful for people who want to access their documents from different machines; it’s not really a viable alternative to Microsoft Office or OpenOffice. BigPond Office is competing with the likes of Google Docs, and is really only of interest to BigPond users who can access BigPond Office without using up their monthly bandwidth quota. It’s highly unlikely that someone would download OpenOffice, instead of signing up for BigPond Office.

So, come on Telstra BigPond, show some good will, and reinstate OpenOffice in the BigPond File Download area; banning it only demonstrates pettiness and ignorance.
http://tech.blorge.com/Structure:%20...ce-openoffice/





$8,000-Per-Gallon Printer Ink Leads to Antitrust Lawsuit
Ryan Paul

A Boston man has filed a class-action lawsuit accusing hardware maker HP and office supply retailer Staples of colluding to inflate the price of printer ink cartridges in violation of federal antitrust law. According to the suit, HP allegedly paid Staples $100 million to refrain from selling inexpensive third-party ink cartridges, although the suit doesn't make it clear how plaintiff Ranjit Bedi arrived at that figure.

For most printer companies, ink is the bread and butter of their business. The price of ink for HP ink-jet printers can be as much as $8,000 per gallon, a figure that makes gas-pump price gouging look tame. HP is currently the dominant company in the printing market, and a considerable portion of the company's profits come from ink.

The printer makers have been waging an all-out war against third-party vendors that sell replacement cartridges at a fraction of the price. The tactics employed by the printer makers to maintain monopoly control over ink distribution for their printing products have become increasingly aggressive. In the past, we have seen HP, Epson, Lenovo and other companies attempt to use patents and even the Digital Millennium Copyright Act in their efforts to crush third-party ink distributors.

The companies have also turned to using the ink equivalent of DRM, the use of microchips embedded in ink cartridges that work with a corresponding technical mechanism in the printer that blocks the use of unauthorized third-party ink. Adding insult to injury, most printers are lying, filthy ink thieves, according to a recent study, misreporting that they are low on ink when they are not.

Bedi's suit asks for unspecified damages and an injunction barring the two companies from engaging in anticompetitive business practices.
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post...nk-prices.html





Businesses Generally Ignoring E-Discovery Rules
Chris Preimesberger

A full year after the institution of federal e-discovery court rules, it appears few potential storage customers are paying attention.

A year and 16 days after the institution of the revised Federal Rules of Civil Procedure on Dec. 1, 2006, about two-thirds of U.S. businesses remain unprepared to meet strict court requirements for the discovery and handling of electronic evidence, according to a data storage researcher.

The new regulations, ordered by the U.S. Supreme Court in April 2006, mandate that businesses must be able to quickly produce such data—including e-mail, digital word documents, images and digital audio and video—when required by litigation in a federal court.

To this end, a relatively new IT sector built around efficient storage and access to legacy business data has been developing, but apparently the genre still has plenty of space to grow. At the one-year milestone, it doesn't appear as if many potential customers are paying attention—or, if they are aware of the rules, are simply ignoring them.

"The survey reveals serious legal issues for organizations that are either ignoring the new federal mandates for compliance and e-discovery or are clearly not well educated on how to meet the technical requirements," said IT researcher Michael Osterman of Osterman Research, in Black Diamond, Wash.

Many recent court cases have shown that companies are expected to show a clear retention policy, Osterman said.

"I don't think it's difficult to understand the [FRCP] rules," Osterman told eWEEK. "Or that business owners don't know about them. I just think that it sometimes takes 'headline shock' to make people move on some things—especially when we're talking about 'potential' liabilities.

"In other words, if it hasn't happened to them yet, it hasn't happened."

Osterman, a veteran, well-respected storage and data center researcher, said that it often takes bad news to happen to another company before a business owner gets serious about the potential problems he or she could face in litigation.

"Let's face it: Unless some company gets hit by a $15 million judgment, it is difficult for an IT manager or a CIO to go to his board and say, 'We might be liable under the new laws for not keeping all our e-mails and word docs. The 'potential' problems often don't get addressed," Osterman said.

Osterman told of a company he knows in the United Kingdom—one of the larger employers in that nation—that had a sudden change of mind on this issue.

"The CIO had gone to his board in April 2005 with a 265-thousand-pound purchase order request for e-discovery and archiving software and services. He was turned down. In September of that same year, one of the company's competitors was hit by a large court judgment.

"Three days later, the first company's board approved the CIO's original request," Osterman said.

Many companies are still unclear on the concept of e-discovery in general, Osterman said.

"There really is no consensus yet on whether a company should keep all its e-mail and other docs, or whether a company should keep a finite number of years' worth of data, or whether it should keep more than 30 days' worth of data," Osterman said. "As long as a company can prove it has predictable methods of storing or not storing data, it can show the court that it has some sort of policy in place."

The uncertainty is about the nature of the policies, which can be different according to each company. Only 47 percent of companies have some kind of e-mail retention policy in place, Osterman said.

Some of the other findings from Osterman include:

53 percent of companies lack a policy to govern e-mail retention and deletion.

67 percent of companies allow individual end users to determine how long messages are kept by the company.

66 percent of companies do not have the e-mail archiving technology required to manage e-mail retention, litigation holds and e-discovery.

If they are taken to court, these companies would likely be required to search backup tapes, desktop files and legacy systems to find information that was deleted in the absence of a good-faith retention policy, Osterman said. Manual e-discovery searches can be costly.

In addition, companies without an e-discovery policy risk being sanctioned for the illegal destruction of evidence, including courtroom penalties that can cost a company an important legal case on process grounds, Osterman said.

The survey was conducted among 111 companies in fall of 2007 by Osterman Research for MessageOne, based in Austin, Texas.
http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1895,2236400,00.asp





Plexiglas-Like DVD to Hold 1TB of Data

A TeraDisc could hold up to 250,000 high-resolution pictures or 40 HD movies
Lucas Mearian

At the upcoming CES conference in Las Vegas, one company plans to demonstrate the ability to store half a terabyte of data on a DVD disc that is made of a polymer similar to Plexiglas.

Israel-based Mempile Inc. said its TeraDisc DVDs will offer 1TB of storage for consumers in the next few years -- and corporations will be able to use the technology to permanently store data at a fraction of the price of spinning disk and tape, according to Dr. Beth Erez, Mempile's chief marketing officer. Today's high-definition DVDs hold a maximum of 50GB in formats such as HD DVD and Blu-ray Disc.

With 1TB capacity, a TeraDisc could hold up to 250,000 high-resolution photos or MP3s, or about 40 HD movies or 115 DVD movies. While that may seem like an unnecessary amount of capacity for anything but the largest professional needs, Tom Coughlin, a storage analyst at Coughlin Associates in Atascadero, Calif., said HD formats for movie distribution are already four times the current 1080-pixel resolution currently used for consumer HD retail movie distribution. Over the next 10 years, both studio and consumer HD products will multiply by 10 times the current resolution.

"If HD now is 25GB, you can easily have something that's 300GB or larger in the future. So I think we've not reached the limits of resolution that people want in their entertainment devices," Coughlin said.

The TeraDisc platter and drive prototype

Another company offering DVD storage is Cambridge, England-based Plasmon PLC, which relies on the same blue-laser technology used by Blu-ray and HD DVD. Plasmon's technology, called Ultra-Density Optical (UDO technology) can write up to 60GB on a proprietary DVD format platter for corporate data archive use. Plasmon sells automated libraries, which can store terabytes of data. Pricing varies, but Computerworld found a 60GB UDO platter for $60 on Pricegrabber.com. Plasmon's road map envisions 240GB discs, and it offers drives for use in automated libraries and stand-alone drives for desktops. The DVDs are available in both first-generation 30GB and second-generation 60GB models.

Similarly, TDK is working on next-generation Blu-ray Disc technology that will offer up to 200GB on a DVD platter.

Mempile's DVD drives will initially retail for between $3,000 and $4,000, and a 700GB platter -- the first model expected out around 2011 -- will sell for $30, according to a Mempile spokeswoman. Until now, Mempile had demonstrated writing and reading data on 100 layers within a .6mm thick substrate material that in total can hold 500GB. The company plans to begin retailing its product next year. Over the next three years, the company expects to increase the disc's thickness to the industry DVD standard of 1.2mm, which will allow it to record 5GB on each of 200 layers, spaced 5 microns apart, for a total of 1TB of capacity. According to a company white paper, the technology road map calls for a 5TB DVD "a few years down the road."

Unlike HD DVDs, which use blue lasers to record and read data off a reflective surface on top of a polymer substrate, Mempile's TeraDisc drives use more powerful red-laser technology to write and read. The Mempile drive has two lasers, one that tracks and one that reads and writes. The drive uses a CD-like system for tracking data in the substrate. Erez said his company's technology writes bits at the molecular level, changing the color of florescent molecules in the Plexiglas-like material to record the data.

Erez said traditional HD DVD technology, which reflects light back to an optical reader, causes signal deterioration and background noise, where writing and reading through a clear substrate offers a cleaner signal that is more efficient for data transfer. "We have no noise in looking at the 200th layer or the second layer or the 10th," Erez said.

Erez said the TeraDisc technology can also be used for network-based backup for archive purposes. Mempile is manufacturing the TeraDisc technology using polymers produced by chemical developer Arkema Inc., which also produces hoses and gaskets for cars and polyethylene packaging for foods, among other things.
http://www.computerworld.com/action/...icleId=9053822





Penny-Sized Flash Drive Holds 16GB

Intel has announced a flash memory companion module for its forthcoming "Menlow" chipset for Linux-based mobile Internet devices (MIDs). The Z-P140 SSD (solid-state drive) measures 0.7 x 0.5 x 0.07 inches (18 x 12 x 1.8mm), and will be available in capacities up to 16GB.

Intel describes its new SSD as "smaller than a penny, and weighing less than a drop of water." The part is "400 times smaller in volume than a 1.8-inch hard drive," Intel boasts, "and at 0.6 grams, 75 times lighter."

The Z-P140 comprises a small 12mm x 12mm dual-channel PATA (IDE) controller module powered by a 32-bit RISC processor, and connected to the host board via a standard 40-pin interface. The physical connector is a 168 BGA (ball grid array).

Atop the PATA module, between one and four NAND flash modules can be stacked via a 122 BGA package-on-package (PoP) interface. Each PATA channel supports up to two modules. Currently supported NAND modules include Intel's SD54B 2 GB and SD58B 4 GB NAND modules.

The Z-P140 parts have a standard PATA interface, and thus could serve as a drop-in replacement for IDE hard drives in most any computer system. However, the parts will be marketed initially at least for use with Intel's "Menlow" chipset for MIDs (mobile Internet devices).

Additional claimed characteristics for the Z-P140 SSD include:

• Read speeds of 40 Megabytes-per-second (MB/s)
• Write speeds of 30 MB/s
• Active power use 300mW (milliwatts)
• Sleep mode power use 1.1mW
• 2.5 million hours MTBF (mean-time between failures)

Intel calls the SSD an "optional part" of the Menlow platform. The chip giant announced Menlow in Beijing in April, a day after revealing its vision for Linux-powered Linux-based Mobile Internet Devices (MIDs). Menlow includes Intel's "Silverthorne" mobile device processor, based on a 45nm silicon process and "High-K" metal gate transistor technologies, along with the "Poulsbo" companion chip (integrated northbridge/southbridge).

Pete Hazen, director of marketing for Intel's NAND products group, stated, "Our customers are finding the Intel Z-P140 PATA SSD to be the right size, fit, and performance for their pocketable designs."

Availability

The Z-P140 is currently sampling, with mass production slated for Q1, 2008. The 2GB version will ship first, followed by the 4GB version.

Intel's currently shipping Z-U130 SSD connects via a USB interface. An SSD with a SATA interface will be announced as a product line in 2008, Intel said.
http://linuxdevices.com/news/NS5845259932.html





Scholastic Plans to Put Its Branding Iron on a Successor to Harry Potter
Motoko Rich

With the Harry Potter series now completed, Scholastic, the United States publisher of those wildly successful books by J. K. Rowling, is moving forward with what it hopes will be its follow-up blockbuster series.

Called “The 39 Clues,” this series will feature 10 books — the first of which is to go on sale next September — as well as related Web-based games, collectors’ cards and cash prizes. The project demonstrates Scholastic’s acknowledgment that as much as the publisher heralded the renewed interest in reading represented by the Harry Potter books, many children are now as transfixed by Internet and video games as they are by reading.

“We want to go where the kids are and really be part of their complete world, rather than going to one aspect of their world,” said David Levithan, an executive editorial director at Scholastic. He added, “We talk of it as being subversively educational.”
The series, to be officially announced by Scholastic on Tuesday morning, will be aimed at readers 8 to 12 and offer mystery novels telling the story of a centuries-old family, the Cahills, who are supposed to be the world’s most powerful clan. According to the books, famous historical figures ranging from Benjamin Franklin to Mozart were members of the family. The plots will revolve around the race by two young Cahills, Amy, 14, and Dan, 11, against other branches of the family to be the first to find the 39 clues that will lead to ultimate power.

Rick Riordan, the best-selling author of the Percy Jackson series, which includes “The Lightning Thief” and “The Sea of Monsters,” mythologically themed books aimed at preteens, has written the first title in this new series, “The Maze of Bones.” He has also outlined the story arc for the next nine installments.

The books will come out once every two or three months, and the publisher has already signed Gordon Korman, the author of “Swindle” and “Schooled,” aimed at middle school children, to write Volume 2. Peter Lerangis, who has written books in the Spy-X and Watcher series, as well as ghostwritten for The Baby-Sitters Club and Three Investigators series, will write the third title, and Jude Watson, who has written several “Star Wars” prequels, will write the fourth.

The series is also Scholastic’s attempt to create a branded franchise for which it owns all the rights. Ms. Rowling retained the rights to the Harry Potter series, which meant that she could pursue separate deals for film and other licensed products, effectively cutting out Scholastic.

An online game will allow readers to search for the 39 clues themselves, while solving puzzles and playing mini-games that will be refreshed daily. Mr. Levithan said the site would include blogs written from the points of view of characters, and maps, treasure hunts and videos, many with historical and geographical content.

Each book will come with six collectors’ cards that can be used to find further clues in the online game. Players can also win cash and other prizes.

The publisher hopes that reluctant readers will be drawn to the books by the game. “Reading the books will make you better at the games, so that is the incentive,” said Suzanne Murphy, publisher of Scholastic’s trade division.

Jesse Soleil, director of the Lab for Informal Learning, a research group within Scholastic that has been developing new projects, said many gamers were already avid readers. But for those who aren’t, he said, the series is “about living where these kids are, and even if they are reading the books for information for the game, hopefully they will get some entertainment, and it will get them into reading.”

Mr. Riordan was drawn to the series partly because of the gaming component. “I’m a gaming geek from way back,” he said, recalling his passion for Dungeons and Dragons as a teenager. Now he plays online games like World of Warcraft with his two sons.

But he said he didn’t try to write the first book with specific gaming outcomes in mind. “My main concern was crafting an adventure novel that would stand on its own, even if kids never access the Internet at all,” Mr. Riordan said.

During the brainstorming phase and after he wrote a manuscript, Mr. Riordan worked with editors at Scholastic, who suggested details that could be worked into the novel so that they could also be used in the game.

“There’s a lot of commonality between what makes a good game and a good book,” Mr. Riordan said. “Whether you’re a gamer or a reader, you want to feel immersed in the story and invested in the action and the characters, and you want to care about the outcome and you want to participate in solving the mystery.”

As for whether attaching the books to an Internet game could help recruit new readers, he said: “Some kids are always going to prefer games over books. But if you can even reach a few of those kids and give them an experience with a novel that makes them think, ‘Hey, reading can be another way to have an adventure,’ then that’s great. Then I’ve done my job.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/18/books/18scho.html





Campaign Song 2008? Strike Up the Broadband
Michiko Kakutani

Already, the influence of the Internet and new media has been felt on the national political scene — from the success of Barack Obama in raising large amounts of money from small donors over the Web, to the George Allen “Macaca” clip posted on YouTube, which played a key role in his losing his Senate seat in 2006, thereby helping turn over control of the Senate to the Democrats. In his lively new book, “The First Campaign: Globalization, the Web and the Race for the White House,” Garrett M. Graff — the founding editor of the blog FishbowlDC.com and editor at large of Washingtonian magazine — asks how the technology that is transforming the global economy is going to affect the “first campaign of the new age.”

Because that campaign is still in medias res, his book circles around this question without coming to any real conclusions. But along the way Mr. Graff raises a lot of provocative questions about how candidates are grappling with “the new campaign paradigm” (which, he says, emphasizes a dialogue between candidates and voters, instead of a one-way conversation); how they are planning to chart America’s course in a new, globalized world that is increasingly reliant on broadband communication and technological innovation; and how his own generation (born in the 1980s and “more technologically savvy and more civic-minded than the one before it”) regards the current state of politics.

Although many of the more compelling ideas in this book are heavily indebted to the works of other writers — most notably, the New York Times columnist Thomas L. Friedman’s writings on globalization — the astonishingly young Mr. Graff (who was born in 1981) proves in these pages that he is a cogent writer, willing to tackle large-scale issues and problems.

Unlike some bloggers, who, as Matt Bai noted in his recent book, “The Argument,” willfully eschew a historical perspective, Mr. Graff grounds his narrative in lots of historical analogies and a broad spectrum of reading. The one big flaw of his book is that while he can be eloquent on the positive effects that the Internet has had on American politics — including making vast amounts of information easily accessible, increasing voter involvement and empowering grass-roots movements — he does not come to terms with its downsides: its tendency to fuel partisanship (which in turn makes compromise and legislation on the big issues facing the country more difficult); its blurring of the lines between subjective analyses and rigorously fact-checked reports; its tendency to promote commiseration among like-minded people instead of reasoned debate between individuals with different points of view.

Mr. Graff got his start as Howard Dean’s first Webmaster and he makes it clear in these pages that he believes that “the reins of power online are firmly in the hands of the Democrats” — even though the veteran political reporters Mark Halperin and John F. Harris suggested in their 2006 book, “The Way to Win,” that the new media overwhelmingly favors conservatives, not only because of the ascendance of Fox News, the Drudge Report and talk show hosts like Rush Limbaugh, but also because the right showed with its Swift Boat attacks on John Kerry in 2004 that it knew how to manipulate the new-media landscape.

In contrast, Mr. Graff argues that Republicans have been slower to capitalize on Internet fund-raising than Democrats like Barack Obama, that the G.O.P. signaled its wariness of the Internet this year by trying to scuttle a YouTube debate, and that “a new power structure of ordinary bloggers” like Daily Kos has emerged on the left that poses a potent threat to conservatives.

“The left’s blogosphere,” Mr. Graff writes, “has grown up in an era when Republicans controlled government, giving them a target and an ongoing battle to wage. The right’s blogosphere has grown only in fits and starts within a party that’s both in power and by its core nature more hierarchical.”

When it comes to Washington’s understanding of the need to build a technological infrastructure for the 21st century — expanding broadband access, encouraging research and development, and educating and recruiting new-economy workers — Mr. Graff is gloomier about both sides of the political aisle. Whereas the cold war helped set off a boom in science- and government-sponsored research, he says, the United States now “risks being overtaken in the world that it created.”

Mr. Graff writes that America “is no longer a net exporter of high tech, going from a $54 billion surplus in 1990 to a $50 billion deficit in 2001”; that in 2005 only one out of the 25 largest I.P.O.’s worldwide was held in the United States; that only 3 of the Top 10 recipients of American patents in 2003 were United States-based companies; that as a percentage of gross domestic product, federal research and development dollars fell to less than 1 percent in the early 2000s from nearly 2 percent in 1965; and that the United States now ranks 12th among major industrialized nations for broadband penetration.

Today, Mr. Graff observes, “the nation’s best minds quickly end up in places like Silicon Valley or Wall Street,” not the government, leaving Washington increasingly “out of touch” with the new economy. “This disconnect points to one of the biggest problems that the country faces today,” he goes on. “The new economy lacks a political infrastructure. The older industries are the best organized and most entrenched and therefore the most powerful. They’re able to land the meetings with officials that lead to government loans; it’s their armies of lobbyists who can operate in back rooms, slipping in tax breaks and making competition for newcomers more difficult.”

Echoing arguments that Bill Bradley made in his 2007 book, “The New American Story,” and Charles E. Schumer made in his 2007 book, “Positively American,” Mr. Graff suggests that the erosion of quality in American education poses a serious threat to American competitiveness in a global environment in which countries like China and India are capturing more and more of the high-tech jobs that once went to the United States.

Given globalization, Mr. Graff argues, education and job security, like energy policy, are no longer simply domestic issues, adding that the question of whether the United States “will make the investments and decisions necessary to compete in the coming decades must be front and center” in the presidential campaign of 2008.

So far, this does not seem to be happening. While some candidates are learning to embrace the digital age as a means of getting their message out, none have yet made the issue of technological innovation and the challenge of globalization centerpieces of their campaign.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/18/books/18kaku.html





Keeper of an Unlikely Trove, Gutenberg to Warhol
Andrew Jacobs

It is difficult to say which is more surprising: that the Newark Public Library owns prints by Picasso and Rauschenberg, a page of the Gutenberg Bible and a 1493 handwritten tome known as the Nuremberg Chronicles, or that William J. Dane, a dapper, refreshingly irreverent art scholar from New Hampshire, has been tending to this astounding collection for six decades.

Mr. Dane does not like to talk about his age, but it is worth noting that he was old enough to join the Army during World War II and fight through France, Belgium and Germany.

“I don’t want this to be a story about some old dumbbell who stayed at the same job for 60 years,” he said last Friday, adjusting his tie, which was adorned with burgundy-and-green bunches of grapes.

In a well-timed distraction, Mr. Dane pulled up his sleeve to reveal a rhinestone-slathered watch that would have put Liberace to shame. “You like my bling,” he said deadpan. “It’s an hour fast because I haven’t figured out how to change the hands.”

Mr. Dane, who carries the regal title “keeper of the prints,” has been cradling and nourishing one of the country’s most impressive collections of prints, posters and rare books since he left the scorched battlefields of Europe and ambled into the library’s main branch on Washington Street, whereupon he was immediately hired as a clerk.

“I guess you could say I was at the right place at the right time,” said Mr. Dane, a state legislator’s son who has lived in the same Newark building — a faded steel-and-glass tower designed by Mies van der Rohe — for 30 years.

In the 1940s, before the city became tarnished by words like “blight” and “urban decay,” Newark was an industrial powerhouse whose leading citizens thought its public art should reflect its ambitions and rival the collections of New York, Philadelphia and Chicago.

During the late 19th century, local patrons had begun plying the library with etchings by Piranesi, 4,000-year-old Sumerian writing tablets and a one-of-a-kind ambrotype — a photographic image on glass — of a youthful Abraham Lincoln, years before the weight of civil war scored his face with sadness.

At the time he was hired to work in the Department of Art and Music, Mr. Dane did not know much about fine art, but he quickly learned that the man who had started Newark’s collecting spree in the early 20th century, John Cotton Dana — a giant to librarians and museum directors worldwide — would have wanted him to keep it growing, and to make sure it was accessible to what elitists of the era might have described as the rabble.

“He thought it was important for the people of Newark to know how an etching was different from a print,” Mr. Dane said, briskly spinning past the display cases on the library’s second and third floors that hold signed works by Miró, Goya and Rosenquist.
“Ahh, Andy,” he said, pausing at a Warhol serigraph of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis.

A few paces later, he glanced up at a Red Grooms portrait of Gertrude Stein and recounted the time he had run into Ms. Stein while he was studying art in France. The writer promptly asked him to mind her dog for a few minutes.

During the rough years — decades really — Mr. Dane made sure that the library kept stocking up on works of the Abstract Expressionists, Pop artists and Japanese print makers. He sought out pieces by unheralded local artists and spent $40 on a signed Lichtenstein lithograph whose price tag would now include at least three additional zeros.

“When we were acquiring Jackson Pollock posters,” Mr. Dane said, “people thought we were crazy to buy work by a guy who made art by dripping paint.”

Through the years, as the library drew the unwanted attention of elected officials eager to fill ugly budget gaps, Mr. Dane folded his arms and dug in his heels.

“Bill has been able to protect the collection at times when some people might have sold it off to pay for city services,” said Clement A. Price, a history professor at Rutgers University who serves on the library’s board of trustees.

Even as Newark suffers through yet another budget crunch, Mr. Dane has leveraged a wispy budget to beef up the library’s collection, which includes 23,000 prints, 5,000 posters and 1,000 autographs — think Mozart, Thomas Paine, Winston Churchill and Eleanor Roosevelt.

Wilma J. Grey, the library’s director, declined to reveal Mr. Dane’s acquisition budget, saying she did not want to provoke dissension among cash-strapped departments and the city’s 10 library branches.

“We don’t like to talk about it, but it’s minimal,” she said. “The great thing about William is he’s been able to spot artists that were up-and-coming.”

When it comes to the collection, Mr. Dane is not one to play favorites. But he has an admitted weakness for handmade artists’ books and mass-produced pop-up books, the more outrageous the better.

“Watch out, watch out, here it comes,” he said, cracking open a battery-powered Star Wars book that featured Han Solo and Darth Vader duking it out with sabers fashioned from glow sticks. “Boy, that was scary!”

Mr. Dane cannot say when he might retire, but he hopes to stay long enough to see the completion of a proposed $100 million expansion, which would double the library’s shelf space and provide more opportunities for exhibitions. After all, what good is owning a Dürer etching or an Escher woodcut if it is seen only by a few librarians and academics?

“A library should be a palace for the people,” he said, as the building’s 5 o’clock closing bell rang out with earsplitting finality.

As he rode the elevator down, he noticed that an enterprising library patron had written “Lil T Wuz Here” in a red marker on the wall of the elevator. It appeared that Mr. Dane might try to wipe away the still-glistening ink — but he stopped himself.

“How nice,” he said approvingly. “An artist at work.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/18/ny...18library.html





2007: By The Numbers, In Bigger Than The Sound

We break down the music industry's past 12 months, including 50 Cent's retirement promise, Nicole Scherzinger's perpetually delayed LP and more.
James Montgomery

On The Record: The Numbers Of The Year

If you go by the numbers (or, really, any other indicator), 2007 was the worst 12-month period the music industry has ever seen. Sales of albums were down some 15 percent from '06, continuing an eight-year trend of redefining the term "scraping the bottom of the barrel." The "Dreamgirls" soundtrack set the record for the lowest chart-topping sales total (66,000 copies) then shattered it the following week (60,000). Will.I.Am's solo effort, Songs About Girls, was outsold by an Iron and Wine record, The Shepherd's Dog. By 10,000 copies. People quibbled over the difference between 320 and 160 kilobits, debated whether the Billboard 200 even mattered anymore and tried very hard to tell the difference between Finger Eleven and OneRepublic (hint: one of them is from Canada).

Yes, it was bad times all around ... so bad, in fact, that no mere essay could encapsulate it all. But the numbers don't lie. So, in order to rub salt in the wounds/ kick a man when he's down/ flog a dead horse/ get out of writing an actual column this week since it's almost the end of the year and I've mentally checked out, I'm presenting 2007: By the Numbers, a list of figures, digits and stats that accurately sums up the year that was, and is almost entirely based in fact (surely a first for Bigger Than the Sound).

I'm also including a couple of reader top 10s that were submitted after my massive 20 Best Albums of 2007 column from last week. Boy, you guys sure hate Against Me!

(Oh, and this will be my final BTTS of the year. I'll be back in 2008, provided the contents of this column don't get me fired. Happy holidays, everyone.)

And now ... let's get numeric:

» Total sales of Nickelback's All the Right Reasons, Daughtry's Daughtry, Carrie Underwood's Carnival and Some Hearts, Fergie's The Dutchess and Miley Cyrus' Hannah Montana 2: Meet Miley Cyrus as of December 9: 19,847,303 copies

» Total number of "High School Musical" soundtracks sold as of December 9: 7,004,406 copies

» Total sales of the Arcade Fire's Funeral, Clap Your Hands Say Yeah's Some Loud Thunder and LCD Soundsystem's Sound of Silver as of December 9: 455,347 copies

» Approximate number of year-end lists topped by any of those three albums: 4,589,668 (and counting)

» Approximate size of the chasm between consumers and critics, in miles: 5,879 (and counting)

» Projected first-week sales of Will.I.Am's Songs About Girls: 100,000 to 120,000 copies

» Actual first-week sales of Will.I.Am's Songs About Girls: 20,876 copies

» Rumored age of "teen" sensation Lil Mama: 29

» Approximate number of times I made the exact same joke in this column: 4

» Amount of time, in days, between the release of Good Charlotte's Good Morning Revival and them falling completely off the cultural radar: 5

» Number of people who just read that and went, "Holy crap, Good Charlotte released an album this year?!?": 4,477

» Total worth of 50 Cent's "I'll retire if Kanye West beats me" promise, if you held it in one hand and a quarter in the other: 25 cents

» Despite realizing that, the percent of my entire being with which I hoped it would be true: 100

» Number of promised (threatened?) release dates for Nicole Scherzinger's solo debut, Her Name Is Nicole, multiplied by number of singles released from the album that failed to impact in any way whatsoever: 12 (4 dates x 3 singles)

» Percent sure I am that Her Name Is Nicole will see the light of day in 2008: 23

» Amount of feet my jaw dropped when I was informed what Soulja Boy's "Crank That" was really about: 5

» Number of countries that is probably illegal in: 27

» Number of times I was actually afraid of bodily harm because of something I wrote: 4

» Number of times that fear was brought on by the phrase "50 Cent is filming a live concert a couple of floors below us, and he's not happy": 1

» Number of times I had to follow something negative I said about much-buzzed-about act the Black Kids with the phrase " ... the band" so as not to offend those around me: 548-plus

» Pounds of crow I was forced to eat when I ended up putting the Black Kids' "Not Gonna Teach Your Boyfriend How to Dance With You" on my Best Singles of 2007: 16

» Total number of people who downloaded Radiohead's In Rainbows on October 10: somewhere between 0 and 10,000,000

» Total amount of money Radiohead made in the In Rainbows windfall: somewhere between $0 and $10,000,000

» Total difference, in kilobits per second, of the encoding on the download-only version of In Rainbows and a "high-quality" MP3: 160

» Number of Radiohead fans enraged by said kilobit-per-second difference, who are apparently also bats gifted with supersonic hearing: somewhere between 0 and 10,000,000

» Actual audible difference between download-only version of In Rainbows and a "high-quality" MP3: 0

» First-week sales for Britney Spears' Blackout: 289,712

» Total number of times I was convinced Britney Spears would be dead within the next two days, and therefore refrained from writing mean things about her in my column: 289,712

» Number of conversations I had with fellow employees about Rihanna, Hannah Montana and/or Jordin Sparks that were borderline disturbing/illegal, given the age of the subjects: 98

» Number of pornographically harrowing/amazing blog posts written by Deerhunter frontman Bradford Cox: 65

» Number of said posts that were actually pornographic: 1

» Number of Bigger Than the Sound columns published in 2007: 35

» Number that didn't contain petty, somewhat baseless insults hurled at Panic! at the Disco, Gym Class Heroes, New York Jets running back Thomas Jones and/or Rivers Cuomo: 6

» Number that disappeared from the Internet soon after complaints from publicists at large and a multinational corporation that rhymes with "Tunaversal Fusic Troop": 1

» Number of angry e-mails I received from radio DJs with names like Spike, Lazlo or Dash after the Why Are Radio DJs So Dumb column of June 6: 55

» Number of angry e-mails I got from a Thrice fan/employee at the Guitar Hangar in Brookfield, Connecticut, that encouraged me to "go [eat] sh-- from a dying whale's ass" and were signed "Someone with far better musical taste than you": 1

» Number of apologetic e-mails I received from the owner of Guitar Hangar after he read his employee's e-mail and "spoke to him about sending out this kind of e-mail from our company's e-mail system": 1

Cleaning Out My Inbox (Or "Interactivity, While A Touchstone Of So-Called 'New Media,' Is Actually Overrated And Kind Of A Waste Of Time")

Like I said, last week I dropped my 20 Best Albums of 2007 list. And I asked for your feedback. What I got was a couple of angry e-mails (one from a really indignant dude with an AOL account named after a Thursday record who chided me about "only focus[ing] on supposedly 'indie' records that are packed with just enough hooks and retro influence to gain attention from the undeservedly pretentious 'blogosphere,' " then included a list containing several of said "indie" records) and a bunch of really good lists. I've compiled some of them below.

1. The National, Boxer
2. Spoon, Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga
3. LCD Soundsystem, Sound of Silver
4. Apples in Stereo, New Magnetic Wonder
5. Jens Lekman, Night Falls Over Kortedala
6. The Rosebuds, Night of the Furies
7. The Good, the Bad & the Queen, The Good, the Bad & the Queen
8. Menomena, Friend and Foe
9. Georgie James, Places
10. Radiohead, In Rainbows
-Rusty, Stranded in Stereo

1. M.I.A., Kala
2. Wu-Tang Clan, 8 Diagrams
3. Boys Noize, Oi Oi Oi
4. Jesu, Conqueror
5. Underworld, Oblivion With Bells
6. The End, Elementary
7. Atreyu, Lead Sails Paper Anchor
8. White Stripes, Icky Thump
9. Black Rebel Motorcycle Club, Baby 81
10. Hail Social, Modern Love & Death
11. Ulrich Schnauss, Goodbye
12. Patrick Wolf, The Magic Position
13. El-P, I'll Sleep When You're Dead
-Corey, New York City

1. Silverchair, Young Modern
2. Kenna, Make Sure They See My Face
3. Ween, La Cucaracha
4. Radiohead, In Rainbows
5. Lily Allen, Alright, Still
6. Lyle Lovett and His Large Band, It's Not Big, It's Large
7. The Projection People, Monotony Forgotony
8. Malajube, Trompe-L'Oeil
9. The Sleepy Jackson, Personality
10. Björk - Volta
-Tyler, Madison, Wisconsin

1. Radiohead, In Rainbows
2. Thrice, The Alchemy Index, Vol. I and II
3. Caspian, The Four Trees
4. The National, Boxer
5. Moving Mountains, Pnuema
6. Crime in Stereo, Is Dead
7. Look Mexico, This Is Animal Music
8. Battles, Mirrored
9. A Wilhelm Scream, Career Suicide
10. Daggermouth, Turf Wars
11. Jesu, Conqueror
12. Cassino, Sounds of Salvation
13. Maritime, Heresy and the Hotel Choir
14. Modern Life Is War, Midnight in America
15. Say Anything, In Defense of the Genre
16. Crippled Black Phoenix, A Love of Shared Disasters
17. The American Dollar, The Technicolour Sleep
18. The Kidcrash, Jokes
19. The Allstar Project, Your Reward ... A Bullet
20. Sunset Rubdown, Random Spirit Lover
-Angry dude with Thursday-inspired AOL address, somewhere in the wilds of the Internet (but probably Sayreville, New Jersey)
http://www.mtv.com/news/articles/157...50_cent.jhtml#





Ten Worst Telco Moments of 2007
Timothy Karr

A few years ago, President Bush pledged that every corner of America would have high-speed Internet by 2007. Well, the year is drawing to a close, and millions of Americans still do not have access. The United States has dropped from fourth to 15th in the world in broadband penetration in the past five years -- a result of a telco stranglehold on both broadband markets and broadband policy that puts their profits before innovation and the public good.

But that's not all. Even when Americans can get online, an open and neutral Internet is not guaranteed. In the past year, phone and cable companies have been throttling the free flow of information on the Internet and cell phones -- giving us a harrowing glimpse of a world without Net Neutrality.

A review of the 10 Worst Telco Moments of 2007 (in no particular order):

1. White House Declares 'Mission Accomplished' for the Internet

"We have the most effective multiplatform broadband in the world," the Bush administration's top technologist, John Kneuer, told skeptical Web experts and the media in June, despite several international surveys that place the United States far behind countries in Asia and Europe.

Kneuer says the real problem is not bad policy, but faulty data in the surveys. While the Bush White House seemed over eager to declare broadband success, America's failing report card told a story of a larger systems breakdown. "Previous generations put a toaster in every home and a car in every driveway as signs of economic progress," Sen. John Kerry wrote in September. "To stay competitive, we should strive to do the same with nationwide broadband."

Let's hope our next president understands that ubiquitous broadband access needs to be more than a mirage.

2. Telcos Spy on Millions of Americans

For several years now, the nation's largest telecommunications companies have been spying on their own customers without a warrant. In the process, they delivered to the federal government the private records of millions of Americans. Their excuse -- national security in the face of a known terrorist threat -- holds little weight when one considers that they've been spying on us with the NSA well in advance of the September 11 attacks.

Now, they are pushing a bill -- "Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act" -- that would grant complicit phone companies retroactive amnesty from prosecution for violations of our civil liberties. While a few, brave senators have stood in the way of the bill and refused to let the telcos off the hook, the legislation still stands a good chance of getting through.

3. Comcast is Busted for Blocking BitTorrent

In October, an Associated Press investigation revealed that Comcast - technically a cableco - was secretly blocking peer-to-peer file sharing programs like BitTorrent and Gnutella. Comcast's blocking is a glaring violation of Net Neutrality.

BitTorrent is rapidly emerging as one of the most successful online platforms for the sharing of large files. Comcast has a natural incentive to keep customers watching movies and television shows through their system, not the Internet.. Despite the evidence, Comcast's David Cohen told Ars Technica that Comcast does not block access to file sharing applications and that their practice is just "content shaping." In response, SavetheInternet.com members filed a petition urging the FCC to stop Comcast from blocking Internet traffic and fine them for their violations.

And what can you do if you find out that you've been blocked by Comcast? Switch to AT&T or Verizon and suffer with slow DSL speeds and their own draconian terms of service. Free Press has sifted through the agreements of several Internet and cell phone providers and found similar language that reserves their right to cut off users on a whim.

4. AT&T and Verizon Censor Free Speech

In September, Verizon Wireless blocked NARAL Pro-Choice America's efforts to send mobile text messages to its members. After a New York Times expose, the phone company reversed its policy, claiming it was a glitch.

A month earlier, during the live Lollapalooza webcast of a Pearl Jam concert, AT&T muted lead singer Eddie Vedder just as he launched into a lyric criticizing President Bush. AT&T launched its own bungled PR response after a flurry of criticism. But both companies refused to change internal policies which allowed them to censor in the future.

Their apologies aren't cutting it anymore. Censorship by AT&T and Verizon is further proof that these corporate giants simply cannot be left at the controls of Internet content. These same providers handed customer phone records over to the NSA without a subpoena and are now strong-arming Congress for retroactive immunity (see No. 2). And they want us to trust them with the Internet?

5. Caught Red-Handed, Telcos Change Their Tune

For some time, phone and cable companies and their shills and lobbyists had been spinning Net Neutrality as a "solution in search of a problem." But 2007 brought us a series of violations of Internet freedom which brought the "problem" into vivid relief for millions.

Undaunted, the shills quickly changed their tune, admitting that indeed some mistakes were made, but the telcos were merely implementing "reasonable network management" (aka content discrimination) to bring us the Internet that we all love and cherish. The moral of this story: Follow what the telcos do, not just what they say.

6. Media Insiders Suffer Telco-Vision

Don't always believe the purveyors of conventional wisdom in Washington media. Some of these pundits are so steeped in their own "knowledge" that they get stuck spinning in place when faced with evidence to the contrary. This was the case for a chosen few who in 2007 hunkered down behind their laptops to write commentaries to convince the world that Net Neutrality was dead and gone. The issue is a "fading memory," one crowed. It "barely raises a yawn" said another.

Their view of the world, however, rarely extends beyond the Potomac, where the Net Neutrality issue was leading the news and being vigorously debated along the campaign trail. Indeed, Net Neutrality emerged as the No. 1 issue that thousands of visitors to TechPresident selected to be answered by all the presidential candidates. So the next time an insider tells you that Net Neutrality is dead, I advise you to check his pulse instead. Then point out the more than 1.5 million Americans who are taking action to protect the free and open Internet.

7. The iPhone Gets Shackled

The introduction of the iPhone over the summer highlighted both the promise and the problems of America's wireless marketplace. On the one hand, it demonstrated the promises of a truly mobile Internet. On the other hand, the iPhone raised serious questions about the fact that most every mobile phone consumer is locked into a long-term contracts, using a phone that has been "crippled" by carriers, with significant penalties for switching to a new provider.

The iPhone was shackled to AT&T. The reason? We have allowed carriers to exert almost complete gatekeeper control over all devices, services and content in the wireless sector -- a move that has left U.S. innovation generations behind other nations. Reviewing the state of the wireless market in America, New York Times blogger David Pogue called American carriers "calcified, conservative and way behind their European and Asian counterparts." Despite recent efforts to open devices, the lockdown of cell phones remains the dominant characteristic of most every user agreement in the country.

8. Bush's Justice Dept. Files Against Net Neutrality

In September, departing Attorney General Alberto Gonzales filed a brief with the Federal Communications Commission, urging the agency to oppose Net Neutrality. The DOJ stated that broadband companies like AT&T should be able to erect toll booths and filter traffic -- upending the even playing field that has made the Web an unrivaled engine of democratic discourse and new ideas.

The DOJ move once again proved the point: Powerful corporate and government gatekeepers are working together to dismantle Internet freedoms and impose their will upon the Web. By moving against Net Neutrality, Gonzales was merely pulling last-minute favors for friends in high places. Soon thereafter, Free Press submitted a FOIA request to shed light on the DOJ's recent hit job against Net Neutrality and uncover whether industry lobbyists or White House politics had a hand in this unusual action. We're still waiting for a response.

9. FCC's Rosy Broadband Report Wilts Under Scrutiny

In February, the FCC released its biannual report on the U.S. broadband market. On the surface, the numbers sounded good. High-speed Internet lines increased by 26 percent during the first half of 2006, and broadband was reportedly available in 99 percent of all U.S. ZIP codes. But the broadband reality is much darker. According to Free Press Research Director Derek Turner, the FCC used an "absurd standard" to measure broadband -- 200 kilobits per second. "That was barely fast enough to surf in 1999, but is far below what's needed to enjoy streaming video, VoIP, flash animation or other common Internet applications."

Indeed, speeds are much slower than what's available in the rest of the world. Half of all U.S. broadband connections are slower than 2.5 megabits per second -- yet in countries like Japan and South Korea, they're rolling out 100 megabit services. And there's no real competition. 98 percent of high-speed residential lines in America are provided by incumbent cable or telecom companies. Using ZIP codes alone vastly overstates the availability and competition for broadband services. While the FCC's data has been widely debunked, the telco lobby crowed that the FCC had proven beyond a doubt that the American broadband marketplace was a haven of free-market competition -- which leads us to our final "worst moment."

10. More Astroturf Sprouts Up, Speads Lies

Washington policymaking has spawned a cottage industry of phony front groups put in place by phone and cable companies eager to spread misinformation about anything that threatens their control over the network. Nowhere is this more evident than in their campaign to defeat open Internet initiatives.

Throughout the year, companies like AT&T, Verizon and Comcast have funneled millions of dollars toward "Astroturf" front groups such as the disingenuously named NetCompetition.org, Hands Off the Internet and The Future Faster. For example, Hands Off the Internet -- which sounds like a citizens group to protect the Internet from gatekeepers -- is actually a telco-backed lobbying group that spends hundreds of thousands of dollars on video PSAs and "grassrootsy" Web campaigns aimed at eliminating efforts to restore Net Neutrality protections and spread open access.

True to form, these front groups spent much of 2007 cranking out phony PR, mouthing telco taking points and casting doubt against any effort to ensure that the Internet is open, neutral and free of interference by gatekeepers. And these groups aren't going away soon. Expect to see them on our worst moments list at the end of 2008.

-- Co-authored by Lynn Erskine
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/timoth...o_b_77748.html





Year's Top Quotes: 'Don't Tase Me, Bro'
Susan Haigh

It was the plea heard round the world. ''Don't tase me, bro'' -- shouted by a Florida college student as officers removed him from a speech by Sen. John Kerry -- tops this year's list of most memorable quotes, compiled by the editor of the Yale Book of Quotations.

Second on the list is a quote from Lauren Upton, the Miss Teen USA contestant who gave a confused and mangled response to a question about why one-fifth of Americans can't locate the U.S. on a map.

''I personally believe that U.S. Americans are unable to do so because some people out there in our nation don't have maps and I believe that our education like such as in South Africa and Iraq and everywhere like such as and I believe that they should our education over here in the U.S. should help the U.S. or should help South Africa and should help Iraq and the Asian countries so we will be able to build up our future for us,'' Upton said.

The words of both young people were immortalized in videos posted on YouTube, the video-sharing Web site.

''These new media are spreading these things,'' said editor Fred R. Shapiro, 53, associate librarian and lecturer in legal research at the Yale Law School. ''I'm not listing the most admirable quotes, the most eloquent quotes. It's the most memorable quotes.''

President Bush dominated last year's list with quotes about the Iraq war, but this year he didn't break into the top 10.

That doesn't mean politicians didn't say anything memorable this year.

Third on the list is Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's comment at Columbia University in New York: ''In Iran we don't have homosexuals like in your country.''

Sen. Larry Craig, R-Idaho, took eighth place with ''(I have) a wide stance when going to the bathroom,'' his explanation for his foot touching the foot of an undercover police officer in an airport men's room.

Shapiro released his Yale Book of Quotations last year after six years of research. It contains about 13,000 quotes, each extensively researched to verify its origin.

He expects to add roughly 1,000 more quotes -- mostly modern -- for the next edition in about five years, and in the meantime he plans to keep issuing annual top 10 lists.

He relies on suggestions from quote-watchers throughout the world, plus his own choices from songs, the news and movies, and then searches dababases and the Internet to determine the popularity of the quotes.

In the case of ''Don't tase me, bro'' -- uttered shortly before the student was shocked with a Taser -- he discovered the phrase was even printed on T-shirts and used as a cell phone ring tone.

''It's not Shakespeare, but there is a kind of folk eloquence in that. It wouldn't be a quote if he didn't say 'bro,''' Shapiro said. ''That had just the right rhythm to make it memorable.''

Shapiro said he struggled before deciding to include radio personality Don Imus' ''nappy-headed hos'' comment about the Rutgers University women's basketball team. The quote ended up fourth on his list.

''My book does mix the most eloquent and magnificent quotes with the sordid and sleazy materials from recent times. There are some real jarring juxtapositions there,'' he said. ''I wanted to include the whole culture -- the high and the low, the old and the new.'' http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/...e/5392564.html

5. "I don't recall." -- Former U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales' repeated response to questioning at a congressional hearing about the firing of U.S. attorneys.

6. "There's only three things he (Republican presidential candidate and former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani) mentions in a sentence: a noun and a verb and 9/11." -- Sen. Joseph Biden, speaking at a Democratic presidential debate.

7. "I'm not going to get into a name-calling match with somebody (Vice President Dick Cheney) who has a 9 percent approval rating." -- Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, a Democrat.

8. "(I have) a wide stance when going to the bathroom." -- Idaho Republican Sen. Larry Craig's explanation of why his foot touched that of an undercover policeman in a men's room.

9. "I mean, you got the first mainstream African-American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy. I mean, that's a storybook, man." -- Biden describing rival Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama.

10. "I think as far as the adverse impact on the nation around the world, this administration has been the worst in history." -- Former President Jimmy Carter in an interview in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette newspaper. http://www.reuters.com/article/lifes...54456920071220





O.K. to Fire on Godzilla, Japanese Official Says
Martin Fackler

The minister of defense caused a media squall after joking about invasions by space aliens and movie monsters. Responding to a question at a news conference, the minister, Shigeru Ishiba, told reporters that he was studying whether the nation’s pacifist Constitution would limit a military response to an attack by space aliens. “There are no grounds to deny that there are unidentified flying objects and some life forms that control them,” Mr. Ishiba said, smiling at first, but then delivering a straight-faced explanation. “If Godzilla attacked, that would probably be a natural disaster relief operation,” making military action legally permissible, he said. The comments came days after Japan’s chief cabinet secretary, Nobutaka Machimura, who is the government’s top spokesman, professed belief in U.F.O.’s.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/22/wo...-godzilla.html





‘I Am Legend’ DVD Screener Leaks! Will Smith's Oscar Chances Sunk?

For your consideration: Dog for Best Supporting Actor.

A DVD screener for Will Smith's new I Am Legend leaked onto BitTorrent sites last night, causing some to wonder (us, at least) why the heck one ever existed in the first place. Generally, at this time of year, the only promotional screeners mailed out are for movies that studios think might actually win Academy Awards (promo copies of The Kite Runner, I'm Not There, Before the Devil Knows You're Dead, and Eastern Promises have been sent to critics, and all are currently making the rounds on file-sharing sites).

Could Warner Bros. actually have been serious about pushing Will Smith for a Best Actor Oscar? We hope they've learned their lesson!
http://nymag.com/daily/entertainment...ner_leaks.html





MPAA Censors Torture Documentary, Gleefully Approves of Fake Torture
Robbo

ThinkFilm is releasing Alex Gibney's documentary "Taxi To The Dark Side" and submitted a poster for MPAA approval which featured a photo of two soldiers leading away a handcuffed and hooded man. The MPAA rejected it as being "not suitable for audiences of all ages".

The hypocrisy of this, in the face of posters for horror/slasher flicks like "Saw" and "Hostel", is astounding. Censorship pure and simple.

The photo used in the proposed poster is derived from an actual photograph which the army also tried to censor. The MPAA has also rejected a one-sheet for Roadside Attractions "The Road To Guantanamo" which featured a hooded man hanging by his wrists from handcuffs.

MPAA message? Torture for entertainment is suitable for all ages. Torture examined in a documentary is not.

ThinkFilm is appealing.
http://www.boingboing.net/2007/12/20...s-torture.html





Student Punished for Wearing Pro-Gay T-Shirt Gets Apology
Michael Beder

The Spencer-Van Etten Central School District in New York agreed to make a public statement supporting students' right to wear T-shirts with controversial messages, satisfying demands made by civil liberties advocates after a student was punished for wearing a shirt supporting gay rights.

Heathyre Farnham, a 16-year-old student at Spencer-Van Etten High School, was sent home Sept. 21 because Principal Ann Sincock believed Farnham's T-shirt — which read "gay? fine by me" — would spark a disruption by prompting anti-gay responses.

District officials, including school district attorney Jim Young, later acknowledged that Sincock's action was a mistake and that Farnham's T-shirt was a form of protected expression. Barrie Gewanter, director of the Central New York chapter of the New York Civil Liberties Union, pressed the school board at an Oct. 23 board meeting to issue an apology to Farnham and a public statement to students that district schools would respect students' free-expression rights.

The school board did not grant either request at the meeting. But after further negotiations with the NYCLU, the district agreed to both. According to a Dec. 6 NYCLU press release, a Nov. 2 message read over the high school's public address system said the school dress code "does not prohibit students from displaying controversial or political messages," and that among the "wide range" of acceptable messages are those "supportive of lesbian, gay bisexual and transgender people." The announcement did note that the dress code bans obscene or profane words and images, as well as messages promoting the use of drugs, alcohol or tobacco.

Sincock also apologized to Farnham privately, Farnham told the Student Press Law Center.

Superintendent Steven Schoonmaker declined to comment on the details of the agreement, saying only that the issue had been resolved.

"Everyone seems to be happy and we're going to go back to educating children," he said.

Farnham said she is satisfied with the resolution of the controversy.

"It wasn't storybook, but it turned out OK," she said, adding that "everything's pretty much back to normal."

Gewanter said the public statement directly to students was important to dispel the chilling effect of Farnham's initial punishment.

"You can't cure the chill of censorship with silence," Gewanter said. Farnham's punishment was troubling not only because it infringed on students' free-speech rights, but also because censoring a message supportive of gay and lesbian students called the school's support for those students into question, Gewanter said.

"We are very happy that the school district decided to cure the message of censorship with a message of tolerance," she said.
http://www.splc.org/newsflash.asp?id=1659&year=





Student Told to Cover Up Lesbian T-Shirt
Dionne Walker

A lesbian high school student says she was asked by a teacher to cover up a lesbian-themed T-shirt or face suspension, and now a civil liberties group has taken up her cause.

Bethany Laccone, 17, said she was asked to cloak a logo of two interlocked female symbols while attending a hotel management class this month at I.C. Norcom High School in Portsmouth. She's a senior at nearby Woodrow Wilson High School, where she has not faced a similar ultimatum.

In a letter sent Thursday, the American Civil Liberties Union of Virginia asked Norcom administrators to remove any mention of the incident from Laccone's records and agree not to similarly censor other students.

ACLU leaders want administrators to clarify that students can express political views. The school's dress code prohibits "bawdy, salacious or sexually suggestive messages."

The ACLU gave the school until Jan. 11 to respond or possibly face further action.

"What's happening to Bethany Laccone is a clear-cut case of unconstitutional censorship," said Kent Willis, executive director of the Virginia chapter.

School officials did not respond to repeated messages left by The Associated Press. However, Joseph L. Wiggins, the district superintendent's executive assistant, told The Virginian-Pilot of Norfolk that while he didn't know what Laccone had been told, "The concern could be that we are training students to go out into the business world."

After Laccone's teacher asked her to cover the shirt, she said she zipped up her jacket. One week later, she again wore the bright red shirt, which she said is her favorite.

Laccone said her teacher again asked her to cover her shirt or go to the assistant principal's office. Once there, Laccone said she was given a choice.

"I could either zip up my jacket, turn my shirt inside out, or get suspended," said Laccone, who covered the shirt, but told her parents what had happened.

According to the ACLU, administrators later told Laccone's father the shirt had upset a conservative instructor and interfered with her ability to teach.

In Thursday's letter, they argue the T-shirt "intended to convey a particularized, political message that lesbian identity should be celebrated and is a source of pride."

Laccone said she just wants to wear her shirt.

"I don't feel like I should have to hide my sexuality," she said.
http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5g...hLP0QD8TM5UDO1





At 71, Physics Professor Is a Web Star
Sara Rimer

Walter H. G. Lewin, 71, a physics professor, has long had a cult following at M.I.T. And he has now emerged as an international Internet guru, thanks to the global classroom the institute created to spread knowledge through cyberspace.
Professor Lewin’s videotaped physics lectures, free online on the OpenCourseWare of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, have won him devotees across the country and beyond who stuff his e-mail in-box with praise.

“Through your inspiring video lectures i have managed to see just how BEAUTIFUL Physics is, both astounding and simple,” a 17-year-old from India e-mailed recently.

Steve Boigon, 62, a florist from San Diego, wrote, “I walk with a new spring in my step and I look at life through physics-colored eyes.”

Professor Lewin delivers his lectures with the panache of Julia Child bringing French cooking to amateurs and the zany theatricality of YouTube’s greatest hits. He is part of a new generation of academic stars who hold forth in cyberspace on their college Web sites and even, without charge, on iTunes U, which went up in May on Apple’s iTunes Store.

In his lectures at ocw.mit.edu, Professor Lewin beats a student with cat fur to demonstrate electrostatics. Wearing shorts, sandals with socks and a pith helmet — nerd safari garb — he fires a cannon loaded with a golf ball at a stuffed monkey wearing a bulletproof vest to demonstrate the trajectories of objects in free fall.

He rides a fire-extinguisher-propelled tricycle across his classroom to show how a rocket lifts off.

He was No. 1 on the most downloaded list at iTunes U for a while, but that lineup constantly evolves. The stars this week included Hubert Dreyfus, a philosophy professor at the University of California, Berkeley, and Leonard Susskind, a professor of quantum mechanics at Stanford.

Last week, Yale put some of its most popular undergraduate courses and professors online free. The list includes Controversies in Astrophysics with Charles Bailyn, Modern Poetry with Langdon Hammer and Introduction to the Old Testament with Christine Hayes.

M.I.T. recently expanded on the success of its online classes by opening a site aimed at high school students and teachers.

Judging from his fan e-mail, Professor Lewin, who is among those featured on the new site, appeals to students of all ages. Some of his correspondents compare him to Richard Feynman, the free-spirited, bongo-playing Nobel laureate who popularized physics through his books, lectures and television appearances.

With his halo of wiry grayish-brown hair, his tortoiseshell glasses and his intensity, Professor Lewin is the iconic brilliant scientist. But like Julia Child, he is at once larger than life and totally accessible.

“We have here the mother of all pendulums!” he declares, hoisting his 6-foot-2, 170-pound self on a 30-pound steel ball attached to a pendulum hanging from the ceiling. He swings across the stage, holding himself nearly horizontal as his hair blows in the breeze he has created.

The point: that a period of a pendulum is independent of the mass — the steel ball, plus one professor — hanging from it.

“Physics works!” Professor Lewin shouts, as the classroom explodes in cheers.

“Hi, Prof. Lewin!!” a fan who identified himself as a 17-year-old from China wrote. “I love your inspiring lectures and I love MIT!!!”

A fan who said he was a physics teacher from Iraq gushed: “You are now my Scientific Father. In spite of the bad occupation and war against my lovely IRAQ, you made me love USA because you are there and MIT is there.”

Professor Lewin revels in his fan mail and in the idea that he is spreading the love of physics. “Teaching is my life,” he said.

The professor, who is from the Netherlands, said that teaching a required course in introductory physics to M.I.T. students made him realize “that what really counts is to make them love physics, to make them love science.”

He said he spent 25 hours preparing each new lecture, choreographing every detail and stripping out every extra sentence.

“Clarity is the word,” he said.

Fun also matters. In another lecture on pendulums, he stands back against the wall, holding a steel ball at the end of a pendulum just beneath his chin. He has just demonstrated how potential energy turns into kinetic energy by sending the ball flying across the stage, shattering a pane of glass he had bolted to the wall.

Now he will demonstrate the conservation of energy.

“I am such a strong believer in the conservation of energy that I am willing to risk my life for it,” he says. “If I am wrong, then this will be my last lecture.”

He closes his eyes, and releases the ball. It flies back and forth, stopping just short of his chin.

“Physics works!” Professor Lewin shouts. “And I’m still alive!”

Chasing rainbows hooked Mr. Boigon, the San Diego florist. He was vacationing in Hawaii when he noticed the rainbow outside his hotel every afternoon. Why were the colors always in the same order?

When he returned home, Mr. Boigon said in a telephone interview, he Googled rainbows. Within moments, he was whisked to M.I.T. Lecture Hall No. 26-100. Professor Lewin was in front of a few hundred students.

“All of you have looked at rainbows,” he begins. “But very few of you have ever seen one. Seeing is different than looking. Today we are going to see a rainbow.”

For 50 minutes, he bounds across the stage, writing equations on the blackboard and rhapsodizing about the “amazing” and “beautiful” physics of rainbows. He explains how the colors always appear in the same order because of how light refracts and reflects in the water droplets.

For the finale, he creates a rainbow by shining a bright light into a glass sphere containing a single drop of water.

“There it is!” Professor Lewin cries.

“Your life will never be the same,” he tells his students. “Because of your knowledge, you will be able to see way more than just the beauty of the bows that everyone else can see.”

“Professor Lewin was correct,” Mr. Boigon wrote in an e-mail message to a reporter. “He made me SEE ... and it has changed my life for the better!!”

“I had never taken a course in physics, or calculus, or differential equations,” he wrote to Professor Lewin. “Now I have done all that in order to be able to follow your lectures. I knew the name Isaac Newton, but nothing about Newtonian Mechanics. I had heard of the likes of Einstein, Galileo.” But, he added that he “didn’t have a clue on earth as to what they were all about.”

“I walk down the street analyzing the force of a boy on skateboard or the recoil of a carpenter using a nail gun,” he wrote. “Thank you with all my heart.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/19/ed...hysics.html?hp







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Old 19-12-07, 04:19 PM   #3
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oh well thanks anyway for the quotes, Jack
Lion has one in mind for this weeks quote
looking forward to seeing what it is...
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Old 19-12-07, 11:22 PM   #4
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Quote:
Originally Posted by multi View Post
oh well thanks anyway for the quotes, Jack
Lion has one in mind for this weeks quote
looking forward to seeing what it is...
wait, lion hijacked the listening thread and now he's hijacking your quote thread?

not fair!

- js.
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Old 20-12-07, 12:19 AM   #5
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hmm.. hadn't thought about that.
maybe he changed his name so we would'nt notice
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