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Old 15-10-08, 06:43 AM   #1
JackSpratts
 
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Default Peer-To-Peer News - The Week In Review - October 18th, '08

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October 18th, 2008





Music Fans Back Legal Downloads
BBC

More people are turning to legal downloads suggests research

Music pirates can be deterred by warnings from their internet service provider (ISP), suggests a survey.

Almost 75% of music pirates would stop if told to by their ISP, the survey of 1500 UK consumers found.

The research looked at the digital habits of consumers and found that the abundance of online music services was convincing many to go straight.

Just over half of those questioned said they got music from legal subscription sites, or those supported by ads.

Older fans

Conducted by Entertainment Media Research (EMR) the survey aimed to find out what kinds of digital media consumers like and also how media sellers can make it more palatable.

The research revealed the effect of the campaign against persistent pirates conducted by the music industry.

Acting on information supplied by music industry groups many ISPs have contacted customers to tell them they are suspected of illegally downloading music.

"It is quite evident that an ISP-led strategy has bite, because illegal downloaders are fairly convinced that ISPs are currently monitoring their activities and are more likely to act against them than the courts," said Russell Hart, chief executive of Entertainment Media Research in a statement.

The research found that younger net users tended to be the most persistent pirates. In the 13-17 age bracket, 58% said they had downloaded illegally. It also found that 61% of those questioned who admitted to being illegal downloaders were convinced that their activities were being monitored by net firms.

Fierce competition among online music stores meant that few needed to illegally download in order to listen to the music they wanted.

For the first time in the five years the EMR survey has been produced, a majority of respondents - 51% - received their music via legal downloads.

In the last month firms such as Nokia, MySpace and Play have unveiled digital music stores.

But, noted the survey, much of that growth was coming from older music lovers with more than 40% of over-35s buying downloads at least once per month.

"The survey shows that despite the ubiquity of free music, there's a real willingness by consumers to pay for music products if the package is right," said Alexander Ross, music partner at media law firm Wiggin which collaborated on the research.

The survey also highlighted the importance of social media and networking sites to music fans. Many now use YouTube, MySpace and Facebook to find new bands or talk to other fans of established acts.

Video was becoming an increasingly important part of music consumption, it found, with 41% saying YouTube was their preferred social networking site. By contrast only 25% said MySpace was their favourite site for music.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/7664088.stm





Tina Turner Mixes Soul, Spectacle in Comeback Show
Darryl Morden

Returning to the stage after eight years of retirement, Tina Turner delivered a mix of gritty soul and Vegas spectacle during a two-hour show at the Staples Center in Los Angeles on Monday.

Coming up on her 69th birthday, the Queen of Rock can't move like days of old, but her voice and her spirit were willing, as were those legendary legs.

The first half kicked into high gear a few songs in with the rising rumbling of the Phil Spector classic "River Deep -- Mountain High," its Wall of Sound intact, followed by the British Invasion-styled "What You Get Is What You See" and a crunchy, commanding "Better Be Good to Me."

Sneaking off for the first of several outfit changes, some silly stage business by her male acrobats as fake security guards and stage crashers gave way to a synth-and-power-chord tease of the Who's "Won't Get Fooled Again" as she re-emerged in a diaphanous red dress for "The Acid Queen."

Surprisingly, hits from her mid-'80s comeback period came off as the least essential numbers of the night, such as a shaky "What's Love Got to Do With It." A cage match, Cirque du Soleil-goes-apocalyptic "We Don't Need Another Hero," with clips from "Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome," was absurd, but she pulled it off.

After an intermission of ads from tour sponsor Amway, Part 2 brought the night's musical highlight: a scaled-down run of songs that included a ballad version of the Beatles "Help," the slinky "Undercover Agent for the Blues," the soul groove of Al Green's "Let's Stay Together" and earthy funk of Ann Peebles' "I Can't Stand the Rain," all Tina-fied.

A fireball medley of "Jumpin' Jack Flash" and "It's Only Rock 'n Roll (but I Like It)" brought the crowd to its feet, while the James Bond theme "GoldenEye" was an obvious choice for more flashy production. But it was "Proud Mary," the Creedence song she put her stamp on 37 years ago, that still can't be beat, from slow and swampy nice to explosive and frantic rough.

For the encore, the former Anna Mae Bullock let loose with the biographical hometown rave-up "Nutbush City Limits" as she climbed into a cherry-picker crane that rose up from the stage floor and took her above the arena audience. The hoopla was contrasted by the gentle closing ballad "Be Tender With Me, Baby."

Turner began the evening telling the mostly middle-aged crowd that she was offering "a show of my past." But she delivered a confirmation that in the present, she's every bit deserving of the marquee celebration at night's end that flashed T-I-N-A, an icon-- no, make that a queen -- of American music.
http://www.reuters.com/article/enter...49E06T20081015





Ageless and Defiant, AC/DC Stays on Top Without Going Digital
Robert Levine

IN a tastefully luxurious suite at the Peninsula Hotel in New York, Brian Johnson, the lead singer of AC/DC, is crooning the opening lines of “It’s a Wonderful World” while he waits to have his picture taken. Although he’s known for belting out AC/DC’s hard rock songs, he can also sing delicately about trees of green and red roses.

Suddenly he clears his nasal passages with a giant snort and cracks up laughing. “What’s green and goes backward at 100 miles an hour?” he asks in a northeastern English accent. Across the room the brothers Angus and Malcolm Young, the band’s guitarists, start laughing along with him. Even at their age — Angus is 53, Malcolm is 55 and Mr. Johnson is 61 — the members of AC/DC can’t resist a gross-out joke.

The band’s music hasn’t matured much either, to the delight of its fans. AC/DC has always delivered an aggressive take on rock’s raw essentials: slicing guitars, driving rhythms and lyrics about sex, drink and rock ’n’ roll. Its new album, “Black Ice” (Columbia), which will be sold in the United States only at Wal-Mart starting Oct. 20, is its most focused release in almost two decades, full of the fist-pumping riffs and shout-along choruses the band is known for. And it is expected to be one of fall’s biggest rock releases.

Gradually, and without getting much media attention, AC/DC has become the most popular currently active rock band in the country, to judge by albums sold. Since 1991, when Nielsen SoundScan started tracking music sales, this Australian band has sold 26.4 million albums, second only to the Beatles, and more than the Rolling Stones or Led Zeppelin. Over the past five years, as CD sales have cratered, AC/DC albums have sold just as well as or better than ever; the band sold more than 1.3 million CDs in the United States last year, even though it hasn’t put out any new music since 2000. And with “Black Ice,” increased visibility for the band’s catalog at Wal-Mart and a tour that starts Oct. 28, it’s possible that AC/DC could sell more CDs overall this year than any other act in pop music.

AC/DC’s commercial success flies in the face of conventional music industry wisdom. The band does not sell its music online and has never put out a greatest hits collection or allowed other musicians to sample its songs. At a time when most pop acts give fans the opportunity to have it their way by offering downloadable tracks and remixes, AC/DC gives listeners a different choice: its way or the highway.

“You get very close to the albums,” said Angus, relaxing on a couch while sipping a cup of tea. Without the schoolboy uniform he’s famous for wearing onstage, he comes off calm and soft-spoken in a black T-shirt, blue jeans and Converse Chuck Taylors. Like his brother he’s short and slight, about 5 foot 3 and 110 pounds.

“It’s like an artist who does a painting,” he added. “If he thinks it’s a great piece of work, he protects it. It’s the same thing: this is our work.” The band has said it does not want to break up its albums to sell individual songs as iTunes usually requires.

AC/DC’s decision to focus on selling CDs has put it at the center of an industry debate about whether even superstar acts can continue to dictate the way their music is sold. Although Kid Rock and Buckcherry had recent hits without iTunes, that online store is now the largest music retailer.

The band’s reluctance to break up its albums may stem from a stubborn belief in their power. But AC/DC also has a reputation of being business savvy and a tendency of skipping an easy paycheck to preserve its long-term interests. The band has also been reluctant to license its music for advertising.

“They have a purist approach,” said Steve Barnett, the chairman of Columbia Records, a division of Sony Music Entertainment. (He also managed the band from 1982 to 1994.) “Their instinct was always to do the right thing for fans, think long term and not be influenced by financial rewards.”

AC/DC’s insistence on selling albums has almost certainly helped keep its sales from declining. And although many music executives believe that not selling tracks online leads fans to download music illegally, AC/DC’s music is downloaded from file-sharing sites less than that of Led Zeppelin, which does sell music digitally, according to BigChampagne, a company that monitors peer-to-peer services.

AC/DC gets less attention than many bands it outsells. Its songs receive less airplay than those of Aerosmith, according to Nielsen Broadcast Data Systems. Its members get less attention in gossip columns than the children of the Beatles. And it has never been a critical favorite. The band makes no pretense to art, and its lyrics often contain what might be called single entendres.

For this, and much else, Angus is unapologetic. “People say it’s juvenile music, but pardon me” — he speaks these last two words with exaggerated politeness — “I thought rock ’n’ roll was supposed to be juvenile. You sing what you know. What am I going to write about — Rembrandt?”

Much of AC/DC’s appeal lies in the group’s consistency, its unwavering focus on cranking up the rhythms of early rock into stadium-sized anthems. Although AC/DC has fans of all ages, it is almost unique among ’70s bands in that it never tried to grow up with its audience. The band never experimented with different genres, made an “unplugged” album or even recorded a ballad, and none of its songs sound rooted in a particular time.

The group’s raw aggression is as relevant to teenagers who listen to its albums on iPods as they were to those who heard them on record players. “Back in Black,” which has sold 49 million copies worldwide since 1980, according to Columbia, could serve as a catchy soundtrack to teenage frustration for as long as it exists.

Like a blues song come to life, Angus Young is a seventh son. His parents emigrated from Glasgow, Scotland, to Sydney, Australia, where his older brother George joined the Easybeats, the pioneering rock band known for “Friday on My Mind.” Obsessed with rockers like Little Richard and Chuck Berry, Angus and Malcolm formed AC/DC in 1973 when they were teenagers, and won a reputation for giving raucous concerts after their sister suggested that Angus perform in his school uniform.

“Most of the time I’m quiet, but when I put on that suit it gives me that kind of confidence,” Angus said. “I suppose the music sounds aggressive but I was never that guy, really.”

AC/DC had its first big hit in the United States when the producer Robert John (Mutt) Lange gave its guitar riffs a pop shine on the 1979 album “Highway to Hell.” The next year, after the singer Bon Scott died in a misadventure with alcohol, the band recruited Mr. Johnson. The group’s next album, “Back in Black,” has sold about 22 million copies in the United States, making it the fourth best-selling album in American history.

Since then AC/DC has lost its way (“Fly on the Wall,” 1985) and recaptured its old energy (“Razors Edge,” 1990). But its catalog kept selling. “High school kids were discovering this band while they weren’t even doing anything,” Mr. Barnett said.

In 2003, after the rights to AC/DC’s previous albums reverted to the band, Mr. Barnett acquired those rights for Sony. In 2006 he renewed that deal and acquired the rights to the album left on the group’s recording contract with Warner Music. Under his direction Sony reissued the old albums in nicer packaging, negotiated to put the band’s music in movies like “School of Rock” and “Iron Man” and released several DVDs and DVD box sets. The most popular of these, “AC/DC Live at Donnington,” has sold more than 800,000 copies, making it the label’s best-selling DVD; it will provide the basis for an AC/DC edition of the video game “Rock Band.”

These days the band’s members don’t spend much time together between albums. The Young brothers split their time between London and Australia; the drummer Phil Rudd lives in New Zealand; and the bassist Cliff Williams and Mr. Johnson live about a half-hour apart in southwestern Florida. Mr. Johnson enjoys driving sports cars and recently came in third in an event at the Sebring International Raceway in central Florida.

Over the last several years Angus and Malcolm would come up with riffs and ideas on their own, then meet to work them into songs. When they had enough material for an album, they called Mr. Barnett, who recommended that they work with the producer Brendan O’Brien, who has also made albums with Pearl Jam and Rage Against the Machine.

“The AC/DC music that I remember most is ‘Highway to Hell’ and ‘Back in Black,’ which I view as pop songs done in a very heavy ferocious way,” Mr. O’Brien said. “Angus and Malcolm were writing songs that had a lot of hooks and my only job was to make a record that made people say, ‘I’ve missed AC/DC, and I’m glad they’re back.’ ”

Columbia has high hopes for “Black Ice,” particularly since Wal-Mart aggressively promotes exclusive releases. The album’s first single, “Rock N’ Roll Train,” is the most-played song on classic-rock radio stations, and many of the band’s concerts sold out the day tickets went on sale (AC/DC plays Madison Square Garden on Nov. 12 and 13, and the Izod Center in East Rutherford, N.J., on Nov. 19.) AC/DC’s last album, “Stiff Upper Lip,” sold about 940,000 copies, according to Nielsen SoundScan, but it has been reported that Wal-Mart guaranteed it would sell 2.5 million copies of “Black Ice.” (Neither the label nor the retailer would comment.)

Although AC/DC was criticized by religious groups in the ’80s for songs like “Highway to Hell” (which is actually about the difficulty of life on the road), the band is so popular at Wal-Mart that the chain was responsible for half the band’s sales last year, according to Columbia. The retailer is setting up special areas devoted to AC/DC in each of its stores, where it will sell the band’s albums, DVDs and “Rock Band” game, as well as a selection of T-shirts and other clothing. At a time when music stores are closing, the band says the Wal-Mart deal makes sense.

At least for the near future stores will be the only place to find AC/DC albums.

“Going back a few years, everyone was going digital but people were still buying our albums,” Angus said. “They said everything was going that way, then they came back to us and said, ‘You’re hanging in there.’ So what’s the rush?”
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/12/ar...ic/12levi.html





AC/DC's iTunes Boycott is on Highway to Hell
Greg Sandoval

AC/DC, the iconic Australian rock band, has been talking to reporters as part of the promotion of its upcoming album. The group has also used the opportunity to take swipes at Apple.

The band refuses to offer music at iTunes because it isn't interested in selling individual songs. The only places to acquire the album, Black Ice, is at Wal-Mart Stores or on the band's Web site. In an interview with Reuters, lead singer Brian Johnson said the band is trying to protect the album format.

"Maybe I'm just being old-fashioned, but this iTunes, God bless 'em, it's going to kill music if they're not careful," Johnson, 61, told Reuters. "It's a...monster, this thing. It just worries me. And I'm sure they're just doing it all in the interest of making as much...cash as possible. Let's put it this way, it's certainly not for the...love, let's get that out of the way, right away."

Angus Young, who co-founded the band with brother Malcolm, told The New York Times last week: "It's like an artist who does a painting. If he thinks it's a great piece of work, he protects it. It's the same thing: this is our work."

I want to give AC/DC, one of the best-selling rock & roll bands of all time, the benefit of the doubt. I want to believe they really do consider their work art and that the forthcoming album, which debuts October 20, will reflect a legitimate attempt to deliver a hit with every track.

This kind of good-faith effort from the music industry wasn't always guaranteed, remember? I'll get back to that.

First, I could care less if the band doesn't like iTunes. Plenty of people don't. Other artists, such as Kid Rock, choose not to distribute via the country's largest music retailer. It's their music--they can do what they want with it. What offends me about AC/DC's comments is that in the band members' attack on iTunes, they completely ignore history.

Johnson implied that iTunes is all about money and thus this commercialization is hurting music. Let me state the obvious: plenty of people profited off of music long before iTunes was formed, including AC/DC. What, is Wal-Mart donating the Black Ice profits to charity?

If iTunes is such a threat to the music industry, you couldn't tell by listening to Doug Morris, CEO of Universal Music Group, the largest of the four top recording companies. Billboard asked him recently who he thought was the smartest person in music. He named Apple CEO Steve Jobs.

"When you look at the whole picture, we make a lot of money through iTunes," Morris said. "We consider (Jobs) a friend...I talk to him about once a month. I like him very much. I have dinner with him occasionally, and he's the kind of guy we'll be talking about 100 years from now. He's a brilliant guy."

As for albums, there's nothing sacred about this format--at least not to consumers. Angus should look around. Hardly anyone in the music business advocates for albums anymore. That's because digital technology has rendered the album obsolete. Consumers are free to buy tracks they like and aren't forced to shell out money for those they don't. Years ago, after the rise of CDs, if a fan liked a song, he or she had little choice but to buy the entire album.

The truth is the album was anti-consumer.

I stopped buying music in the early 1990s after reading a Rolling Stone interview where Kurt Cobain suggested that this trend wasn't an accident. Nirvana's legendary frontman implied that music labels would take a band's best tracks and scatter them over multiple albums to squeeze more money out of consumers. In the two years I've covered digital music, I've had the opportunity to ask a number of music executives about this.

Not one has ever denied it.

This was obviously a poor way to treat customers, and it's not a stretch to suggest this is why many people felt justified in downloading songs off Napster in the late 1990s, and why so many continue to pirate music to this day.

By requiring Black Ice be sold as an album, AC/DC is trying to cram it down the throats of fans. Why not offer the music on iTunes and be confident that the individual songs will sell themselves?
http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-10066360-93.html





AC/DC Electrify BitTorrent Album Downloads
enigmax

AC/DC will release its new album ‘Black Ice’ worldwide on October 20th, in physical format only since the band doesn’t sell its music online. However, the upcoming album has already been digitized by pirates, as it leaked to BitTorrent five days ago. In that time it has taken the trackers by storm, racking up a staggering 400,000 downloads.

A big name band releasing their first album in 8 years is important, so when AC/DC’s forthcoming album ‘Black Ice‘ leaked onto the Internet last week, it felt like it should’ve been a newsworthy event. But there seemed little to get worked up about because let’s face it, everything leaks these days and this particular leak initially seemed to offer little new.

Then, just one day after the October 7th leak, Undercover ran a story, claiming that Sony was flooding BitTorrent sites with fakes in an attempt to frustrate potential downloaders of ‘Black Ice’. TorrentFreak investigated these claims and couldn’t find any fakes on the most commonly used BitTorrent trackers and it’s pretty certain that fakes wouldn’t exist on any private trackers either. Calls for Undercover to clarify the basis for the claim have gone unanswered.

However, there is something exciting to report in respect of this leak. During the last 5 years when most recording artists have experienced a drop in CD sales, AC/DC have been flourishing, last year selling 1.3 million CDs in the US alone. For a band that hasn’t released any new music for 8 years, never releases a ‘greatest hits’ album and does not sell any of its music online in digital format, this is pretty impressive.

Of course, AC/DC might not want to distribute their music online, but there are plenty of other people who are happy to do so. Since the album leaked to BitTorrent on October 7th, a full 13 days in advance of its worldwide release date, ‘Black Ice’ has been downloaded an incredible 400,000 times, which is a pretty clear indicator that AC/DC fans would like the band’s music in digital format rather than just CD. On Mininova, one of the world’s most popular BitTorrent download locations, four of the top five most downloaded music torrents in the last week are AC/DC.

Other ‘winners’ in the BitTorrent music download charts this week were Keane, coming in at #3 with 80,000 downloads of their album ‘Perfect Symmetry‘ (due to be released officially tomorrow) and Oasis in second position with 100,000 downloads of ‘Dig Out Your Soul‘.

Just this week, Oasis guitarist Noel Gallagher said he believes that the music industry loses around 25% of its profits to piracy. “That’s what was spent on champagne and limos,” he said, adding, “It’s good when record companies panic. They need to streamline. Just like these big banks going under, and those Wall Street idiots driving Ferraris. What about people who had a hurricane rip apart their community? That’s real pressure, my friend.”

Whether artists actually lose money from ‘illegal’ downloads is something that can be debated. However, it is clear that refusing to make music available online will boost pirated downloads significantly. In just a few days the downloads of ‘Black Ice’ on BitTorrent equal a third of all AC/DC’s physical album sales last year. Quite a shocker.
http://torrentfreak.com/acdc-electri...ck-ice-081012/





The Pirate Bay Removes Fake Trackers from Torrents
Ernesto

In an attempt to make BitTorrent more secure, and to reduce some of the load on their own tracker, The Pirate Bay has started to remove all duplicate, dead and anti-pirate trackers from the torrents they host. These changes will improve the trackers’ performance, and increase ’security’ for its users.

Running the largest BitTorrent tracker on the Internet requires a lot of expensive hardware. To keep this hardware running smoothly, The Pirate Bay is constantly optimizing their setup.

One of the latest changes is that they have started to automatically remove duplicate trackers from torrent files, to keep unnecessary connections between BitTorrent clients and their tracker to a minimum.

Pirate Bay co-founder TiAMO explained to TorrentFreak: “It’s totally unnecessary to have more than one of our tracker URLs when they all have the same peers, they just ask the tracker for the same data lots of times.”

“Also, now we can strip out all bad trackers from anti-p2p companies, as well as old ones that stopped working years ago,” he added. So, while they were at it, they have also decided to remove dead trackers, and BitTorrent trackers that are run by anti-piracy organizations. This makes it less likely that the MPAA and RIAA , often though companies like Mediasentry, can keep tabs on the download habits of Pirate Bay users.

Another advantage, of course, is that the number of fake files and spam from companies such as MediaDefender are kept to a minimum. Fake torrents are often used to trick people into downloading useless data instead of Hollywood’s latest blockbuster. The Pirate Bay already had quite a good track record when it comes to removing fakes, and this will only improve with these latest changes.

The Pirate Bay currently has 13 servers dedicated to the tracker, and another 14 servers for the website itself. Yesterday, the tracker broke a new record, with close to 18 million active users on “TV-torrent Tuesday“, and at the current rate, they will be tracking 20 million peers a few weeks from now.
http://torrentfreak.com/the-pirate-b...rrents-081016/





EMI Planning Its Own Digital Music Service
FMQB

According to multiple reports, EMI Music is planning to launch its own, in-house digital music store sometime before the end of the year. The major label would sell its own music directly from EMI.com, though sources say the project is not intended to compete directly with Apple's iTunes Music Store or with Amazon.com. Instead, EMI will use the site as a "learning lab," according to the Financial Times. The site's main goal would actually be to gather data about consumer behavior, instead of as another revenue stream for the label. The site will have video content too, with other unique elements as well.

One anonymous executive told the FT that he doubted the new EMI plan. "Research has shown that when consumers are looking for music they want it all in one place. They want to buy Beyoncé when they are buying Rihanna. I am not quite sure what EMI will get for the money they have spent on it."

Reportedly the project is being led by former Google executive Douglas Merrill, who is now EMI's head of digital.

Previous attempts from the labels to launch their own stores, such as Pressplay and MusicNet, fell by the wayside as iTunes surpassed them.
http://fmqb.com/Article.asp?id=926902





Facebook Eyes Digital-Music Business: Report

Social networking site Facebook's founder and Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg plans to enter the digital-music business in the wake of the launch of News Corp's MySpace Music last month, the New York Post said.

Zuckerberg is talking to a number of song-streaming services and music community sites, including Rhapsody.com, iMeem.com, iLike.com and Lala.com about an outsourcing deal, the Post reported, citing sources familiar with the situation.

Facebook executives have been busy meeting major record companies about the strategy, the paper said on its website.

The Post quoted sources saying that unlike MySpace, which traded equity in its music venture in exchange for licenses to stream ad-supported songs, Facebook doesn't want to secure licenses to distribute music, or build a proprietary service from scratch.

Sources further cautioned that nothing was imminent, and Facebook may ultimately walk away from the plan altogether, the paper reported.

Facebook did not immediately return calls seeking comment.

(Reporting by Shradhha Sharma in Bangalore, editing by Will Waterman)
http://www.reuters.com/article/techn...49G2EJ20081017





Country Star Tim McGraw Rips Label Over Hits CD

Embarrassed country star Tim McGraw on Tuesday accused his label of releasing an unauthorized hits collection in order to delay his plans to jump to a new home.

"Greatest Hits 3" went on sale last Tuesday, a little over two years after Curb Records released "Greatest Hits 2." Earlier this year, Curb released a "limited edition" package of his first two hits albums.

McGraw said in a statement that he had wanted to release a studio album that he has been working on for over a year, but the Nashville-based label opted to release "Greatest Hits 3" in order to keep him at the label a little longer.

"I had no involvement in the creation or presentation of this record," he said. "Sure I love the songs and I don't want to take anything away from all the creative people who were a part of making those records. But the whole concept is an embarrassment to me as an artist. In the spirit of an election year, I would simply say to my fans 'I'm Tim McGraw and I don't approve their message.'"

A spokeswoman for McGraw said he has "probably one or two" studio albums left on his contract, and that "one could assume" he would then jump to a new label. He hoped to release a studio album early next year, although nothing was fixed, she said.

She added that McGraw has "a history of discontent" at Curb, saying that the previous hits albums were also released at times McGraw would have preferred to release new material.

"Greatest Hits 2," released in March 2006, went on to sell 2.2 million copies in the United States, according to Nielsen SoundScan. Since then, McGraw has issued just one studio album, "Let It Go," which debuted at No. 1 on the U.S. pop chart in April 2007 and has sold 1.4 million copies to date. Curb released his first hits set in 2000; that has sold 5.9 million copies.

A Curb statement did not address McGraw's allegations, and instead indicated that his concerns were more commercial than artistic, saying "We share Tim McGraw's disappointment with the first week's sales levels" in a tough economic climate. Sales data will be published on Wednesday. The label is run by veteran music impresario Mike Curb, a one-time state politician in California.

Curb Records was engaged in a bitter legal dispute with another act, LeAnn Rimes, earlier this decade. After she sought to nullify her contract in 2000, Curb released a studio album the following year without her approval. As with McGraw, she issued an apologetic statement distancing herself from the album. The underlying lawsuit, part of a messy family dispute, was resolved in Curb's favor.

Another Curb artist, Lyle Lovett, said earlier this year that he had "never made a dime" from album sales during his two-decade career, although it was not clear if he had sold enough albums to pay back his advance from Curb.

(Editing by Jill Serjeant)
http://www.reuters.com/article/enter...49D93420081014





Korean Star’s Suicide Reignites Debate on Web Regulation
Choe Sang-Hun

Choi Jin-sil, a movie star, was the closest thing South Korea had to a national sweetheart.

So when Ms. Choi, 39, was found dead in her apartment on Oct. 2 in what the police concluded was a suicide, her grief-stricken homeland sought an answer to why the actress had chosen to end her life.

The police, the media and members of Parliament immediately pointed fingers at the Internet. Malicious online rumors led to Ms. Choi’s suicide, the police said, after studying memos found at her home and interviewing friends and relatives.

Those online accusations claimed that Ms. Choi, who once won a government medal for her savings habits, was a loan shark. They asserted that a fellow actor, Ahn Jae-hwan, was driven to suicide because Ms. Choi had relentlessly pressed him to repay a $2 million debt.

Public outrage over Ms. Choi’s suicide gave ammunition to the government of President Lee Myung-bak, which has long sought to regulate cyberspace, a major avenue for antigovernment protests in South Korea.

Earlier this year, the Lee government was reeling after weeks of protests against beef imports from the United States. Vicious antigovernment postings and online rumors on the dangers of lifting the ban on American beef fueled the political upheaval, which forced the entire cabinet to resign.

In a monthlong crackdown on online defamation, 900 agents from the government’s Cyber Terror Response Center are scouring blogs and online discussion boards to identify and arrest those who “habitually post slander and instigate cyber bullying.”

Hong Joon-pyo, floor leader of the governing Grand National Party, commented, “Internet space in our country has become the wall of a public toilet.”

In the National Assembly, Ms. Choi’s suicide set the country’s rival parties on a collision course over how to regulate the Web. The governing party is promoting a law to punish online insults; the opposition parties accuse the government of trying to “rule cyberspace with martial law.”

The opposition says that cyberspace violence is already dealt with under existing laws against slander and public insults. But the government says that a tougher, separate law is necessary to punish online abuse, which inflicts quicker and wider damage on victims.

To battle online harassment, the government’s Communications Commission last year ordered Web portals with more than 300,000 visitors a day to require its users to submit their names and matching Social Security numbers before posting comments.

The police reported 10,028 cases of online libel last year, up from 3,667 reported in 2004.

Harassment in cyberspace has been blamed for a string of highly publicized suicides. Ms. Choi made headlines when she married a baseball player, Cho Sung Min, in 2000. But tabloids and Web bloggers were relentless in criticizing her when the marriage soured and she fought for custody of her two children.

TV producers and commercial sponsors dropped her. The general sentiment was that her career was over.

But in 2005, she made a comeback with a hugely popular soap opera called “My Rosy Life.” In it, she dropped her cute-girl image and played a jilted wife who throws a kick at her errant husband, but reconciles with him when she learns she has terminal cancer.

This year, she broke another taboo by successfully petitioning a court to change the surname of her two children to her own.

But in an interview with MBC-TV in July, which was broadcast after her death, she said she “dreaded” the Internet, where posters had insulted her for being a single, divorced mother. The police said she had been taking antidepressants since her divorce.

In South Korea, volunteer counselors troll the Internet to discourage people from using the Web to trade tips on how to commit suicide and, in some cases, how to form suicide pacts.

“We have seen a sudden rise in copycat suicides following a celebrity death,” said Jeon Jun-hee, an official at the Seoul Metropolitan Mental Health Center, which runs a suicide prevention hot line. Mr. Jeon said the hot line had received 60 calls a day, or twice the usual number, since Ms. Choi’s suicide.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/13/te...13suicide.html





Neal Hefti, 85, Jazz and Hollywood Composer, Dies
Bruce Weber

Neal Hefti, whose renown as a forward-looking composer and arranger for Woody Herman and Count Basie was probably overwhelmed forever after he went to Hollywood and wrote the theme for the 1960’s television show “Batman,” and for the movie and television versions of “The Odd Couple,” died Saturday at home in Toluca Lake, Calif. He was 85.

He died suddenly from an undetermined cause, his son, Paul, said. Mr. Hefti’s death was first reported in a blog posting by a friend, the singer Nancy Sinatra, on the website www.sinatrafamily.com.

Over the years, Mr. Hefti, first known as a jazz trumpeter in the 1940s and 1950s, was much admired and much in demand as an arranger, conductor and occasional record producer; he worked with Frank Sinatra, Doris Day, Mel Tormé and Tony Bennett, among others. He also led his own bands, and he was active as a player until 1960.

But his greatest sphere of influence was as an arranger and composer for other jazz artists. His early travels with jazz bands took him to New York, where he was mesmerized by the bebop playing of Dizzy Gillespie, and joined the Herman band — known as First Herd — in 1944. He was influential in moving that band from its swing roots in the direction of bebop.

He spent only two years with the Herd; when he left in 1946, he took the singer Frances Wayne, his new wife, with him. But by then he had created new arrangements for Herman’s compositions like “Woodchopper’s Ball” and “Blowin’ Up a Storm,” and composed tunes like “Apple Honey,” “Wild Root” and “The Good Earth.”

He toured with Harry James and he arranged tunes for Buddy Rich. Though he also toured and recorded with his own bands, sometimes with his wife, he never achieved real success as a bandleader. For him, the decade of the 1950’s was characterized by his association with the Basie band, for which he wrote perhaps his best known jazz tunes, including “Splanky,” “Little Pony,” “Li’l Darlin’,.” whose tempo Basie famously slowed down to a luscious and sensual crawl, and the perky “Cute.”

“If it wasn’t for Neal Hefti, the Basie band wouldn’t sound as good as it does,” Miles Davis said in 1955. “But Neal’s band can’t play those same arrangements nearly as well.”

Starting in the 1960s, Mr. Hefti found great success writing television and film scores. In addition to writing the theme for “The Odd Couple” (1968), which would be burned into the memories of baby boomers with the creation of the television series in 1970, he composed the scores for two other Neil Simon films, “Barefoot in the Park” (1967) and “Last of the Red Hot Lovers” (1972). His other film work included “Duel at Diablo” (1966), a brutal Western; Elaine May’s farce “A New Leaf” (1971), and the gleeful sex comedies “Sex and the Single Girl” (1964), “Boeing Boeing” (1965) and “How to Murder Your Wife” (1965).

There was a politically incorrect strain to Mr. Hefti’s work, possibly tongue-in-cheek; for the 1965 biographical film “Harlow,” he and Bobby Troup wrote the bluesy, winkingly sexist tune, Girl Talk.” (For the same movie, Mr. Hefti wrote “Lonely Girl,” the Bobby Vinton hit.)

“He felt his true work was done for the movies and television,” Paul Hefti said in a telephone interview on Wednesday. What his father especially liked about writing for the screen, he said, was that he was not restricted by a band’s instrumentation, that he could write for whatever combo, for whatever musicians he wanted.

Oddly enough, his most famous tune is among his least musically interesting, even if it was somehow brilliantly apt: the jauntily arch and repetitive theme for the television series “Batman.” Mr. Hefti said that the show was so campy it took him weeks to come up with a suitable melody. It won him his only Grammy.

Neal Paul Hefti was born in Hastings, Neb., on Oct. 29, 1922. He received a trumpet as a Christmas present when he was 10 years old; according to family lore, his mother encouraged him to play so that, if he were drafted, he would be in the band and not the infantry. By the time he was out of high school, he was arranging and playing for local bands in order to contribute to the household. He saw Count Basie and Dizzy Gillespie play when they passed through nearby Omaha before he ever saw them in New York.
His wife died in 1978; a daughter died in 1997. In addition to his son, also of Toluca Lake, Mr. Hefti is survived by a brother, Joe, of Pensacola, Fla.; a sister, Pat Wacha, of Clarkson, Neb.; and three grandchildren.

“He told me he tore up more paper on ‘Batman’ than on any other work he ever did,” Paul Hefti said. “He had to find something that worked with the lowest common denominator, so it would appeal to kids, yet wouldn’t sound stupid. What he came up with was a 12-bar blues with a guitar hook and one word.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/16/ar...c/16hefti.html





Study Warns of Hearing Loss From Music Players
Stephen Castle

Noise from personal music players is a routine annoyance for travelers on buses, trains and planes.

But it also threatens permanent hearing loss for as many as 10 million Europeans who use them, according to a scientific study for the European Union that will be published Monday.

The report said that those who listened for five hours a week at high-volume settings exposed themselves to more noise than permitted in the noisiest factory or work place. Maximum volume on some devices can generate as much noise as an airplane taking off nearby.

The study — from a team of nine specialists on the Scientific Committee on Emerging and Newly Identified Health Risks — also warns that young people do not realize the damage until years later.

“Regularly listening to personal music players at high-volume settings when young,” the report said, “often has no immediate effect on hearing but is likely to result in hearing loss later in life.”

The report is the latest of several to warn that the “MP3” generation of youths may be heading for hearing impairment in later life.

But older people may also be vulnerable. In the 27 countries in the European Union, an estimated 50 million to 100 million people out of about 500 million may be listening to portable music players daily, the report said.

Users listening at high volumes for more than an hour a day each week risk permanent hearing loss after five years. This is equivalent to 5 percent to 10 percent of the listeners, which may be 2.5 million to 10 million people in the European Union, the study concluded.

Such fears have already prompted litigation. In 2006 a man in Louisiana filed a lawsuit against Apple, claiming the company had failed to take adequate steps to prevent hearing loss among iPod users.

The suit, filed in Federal District Court in San Jose, Calif., claims that the iPod can produce sounds as loud as 115 decibels, when 89 decibels is considered that maximum for safe listening. Apple warns its customers about the danger of hearing loss in its iPod manual.

Personal stereos and portable phones with a music-playing facility are considered a particular threat because ear-bud type earphones lead to a greater sound exposure than other types of listening devices.

“Some authors stress that if young people continue to listen to music for long periods of time and at high volume levels during several years, they run the risk of developing hearing loss by the time they reach their mid-twenties,” the report said. “Among young people, there are many reports of temporary or persistent tinnitus induced by loud music, but very few studies have focused on the relationship between the use of personal music players and tinnitus.”

Meglena Kuneva, the European consumer affairs commissioner, planned to announce a proposal on Monday for a conference in Brussels in 2009 to evaluate the findings with national governments as well as representatives of industry and consumers.

The conference will discuss precautions that users can take, as well as technical solutions to minimize hearing damage. It will also consider whether there is a need for further regulations or revisions of existing safety standards.

The report refers to a 2004 study that recommends limiting listening time to one hour per day and setting the volume to no more than 60 percent of maximum sound output when using headphones that are placed over the ears — and even less when using ear buds.

It said another study suggested restricting the maximum output level of personal music players to 90 decibels.

The Scientific Committee opinion argues that if users of personal music players listen for only five hours a week at volumes exceeding 89 decibels, that level would exceed the current limits in place for noise allowed in the work place.

Last year in Britain, the Royal National Institute for Deaf People warned that more than two-thirds of young people who regularly use MP3 players faced premature hearing damage.

The market for personal music devices continues to boom. In the last four years, estimated sales ranged from 184 to 246 million for all portable audio devices and from 124 to 165 million for MP3 players.

The European Union specialists add that although such listening devices are beneficial to many listeners, there are other dangers apart from hearing loss.

“Listening to music through personal music players can be beneficial when performing boring and repetitive tasks,” the report said.

“However, it may be a hindrance for complicated tasks that require thinking. Music can distract the listeners and isolate them from their environment which can be very dangerous when driving or walking on busy roads.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/13/te...y/13noise.html





EU Tells Music Lovers to Turn Down MP3 Players

The European Union told music lovers Monday to turn down the volume of MP3 players, saying they risk permanent hearing loss from listening too long at maximum levels.

EU scientists reported that between 2.5 million and 10 million Europeans could suffer hearing loss from listening to MP3 players at unsafe volumes — over 89 decibels — for more an hour daily for at least five years.

EU spokeswoman Helen Kearns said the EU executive was asking people, especially children and young people, "to turn it down" now because they may be damaging their hearing without noticing it.

"It's damage that may come back and haunt you later in life," she said at a news conference.

She said regulators would look next year at lowering the EU legal limit of 100 decibels for MP3 players.

Apple was forced to pull its iPod player from store shelves in France and upgrade software on the device to limit sound to 100 decibels.

The Cupertino, California-based company ships a warning with each iPod that cautions "permanent hearing loss may occur if earphones or headphones are used at high volume."

EU noise rules are meant to limit noise levels in the workplace, construction sites, factories and even orchestras.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20081013/...c_hearing_loss





A.M.D.’s Results Show Improvement
Laurie J. Flynn

Advanced Micro Devices, the troubled chip maker, said on Thursday that its earnings were showing significant improvement despite the turmoil in the economy.

The company, which is preparing to spin off its manufacturing operations and focus on chip design, reported its eighth consecutive loss but beat Wall Street’s forecasts for both revenue and earnings.

The improvement was attributed in part to strong demand for A.M.D.’s new line of graphics processors, which were released during the quarter.

A.M.D. reported a net loss of $67 million, or 11 cents a share, in the third quarter, compared with a loss of $396 million, or 71 cents a share, in the year-ago quarter. Revenue rose 14 percent to $1.78 billion, helped by $191 million in revenue from technology licenses.

Excluding one-time charges, A.M.D. said it turned a profit of $80 million, or about 13 cents a share.

Analysts had expected a loss of 40 cents a share excluding charges, on revenue of $1.48 billion, according to a survey by Thomson Financial.

“These are very strong numbers,” said Cody G. Acree, an analyst at Stifel Nicolaus. “It means they are doing something right with new products.”

Dirk Meyer, A.M.D.’s president and chief executive, called the performance “directionally correct,” but not entirely satisfactory.

“We’re on a path to be the company we aspire to be,” he said.

On the critical measure of gross margin, A.M.D. also beat Wall Street’s estimates. Gross margin for the quarter was 45 percent excluding licensing fees, compared with analysts’ average forecast of 41 percent.

The report was released after the close of trading Thursday. Shares of A.M.D. rose as much as 19 percent in after-hours trading; they closed up 21 cents at $4.12 in regular trading.

Looking ahead, A.M.D. expects revenue in the fourth quarter to be roughly the same as in the last quarter.

A.M.D.’s report follows a largely downbeat forecast from its rival Intel. On Tuesday, Paul S. Otellini, Intel’s chief executive, warned investors that the global economic crisis could hurt Intel’s business in the coming months, but he said it was too soon to determine the actual impact. He said that while Intel experienced some “softness” in September, the company’s profit rose 12 percent during the third quarter, but sales rose only 1 percent.

Last week, A.M.D. announced plans to split into two entities. One will continue to design microprocessors, while a new company, owned jointly by A.M.D. and a fund controlled by the Abu Dhabi government, will manufacture them.

The announcement of the split-up of A.M.D., based in Sunnyvale, Calif., came just as investors were starting to lose confidence in the company. In the last few years, A.M.D. lost considerable ground as it endured a bruising price war and encountered technical problems that hampered the introduction of its critical new chip, Barcelona. A.M.D. had long been struggling to pay for capital-intensive plants in order to stay competitive.

The Advanced Technology Investment Company, created by the Abu Dhabi government, said it would invest up to $8 billion in A.M.D.’s factory spinoff in exchange for a 55.6 percent stake in the new company.

After A.M.D.’s seventh consecutive quarterly loss, reported in July, the company’s board ousted Hector Ruiz from the chief executive job and replaced him with Mr. Meyer, an engineer who had been president and chief operating officer since 2006.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/17/te...es/17chip.html





99.8% of Gamers Don’t Care About DRM, Says EA
Ben Hardwidge

John Riccitiello claims that DRM is only a concern for 0.2% of gamers

If you thought that EA might have been humbled by the massive Internet backlash against its use of SecuROM in its recent games, then you’d be wrong. Speaking at the Dow Jones/Nielsen Media and Money Conference, EA’s CEO John Riccitiello claimed that the whole issue had been blown out of all proportion.

‘We implemented a form of DRM and it's something that 99.8 per cent of users wouldn't notice,’ claimed Riccitiello, ‘but for the other 0.2 percent, it became an issue and a number of them launched a cabal online to protest against it.’ The use of SecuROM in EA’s recent PC games, including Spore, Mass Effect and Crysis Warhead, has caused a lot of controversy on the Internet, resulting in hundreds of one-star reviews on Amazon.

Originally, Spore only allowed you to activate the game three times before you had to call EA, but this was later relaxed to five activations. However, the limit on the number of installations is just a part of the controversy. The latest version of SecuROM installs a service in Windows that allows it to shutdown emulation software, preventing you from using some disc-copying software such as Alcohol 120% and Nero.

This low-level access to the operating system has led to an accusation that SecuROM has access to Ring 0, providing direct access to the kernel. EA is currently being taken to court over the use of this DRM system in Spore. However, officially SecuROM only has access to Ring 3 of Windows, which contains normal applications.

Riccitiello admitted that he personally doesn’t like DRM, as it ‘interrupts the user experience.’ He also added that ‘We would like to get around that. But there is this problem called piracy out there.’
http://www.custompc.co.uk/news/60503...m-says-ea.html





Fallout 3 Already Pirated On Xbox 360

The Xbox 360 version of Bethesda’s Fallout 3 is already available for illegal download on torrent sites, three weeks before the game’s scheduled release.

The eagerly-awaited title recently went gold, which may mean a leak of the game’s code took place at a manufacturing plant.

Although a modified Xbox 360 console is needed in order to play the game, many leading piracy sites indicate that the title has already been downloaded by thousands of users.

Although the level of piracy on the PC has been heavily criticized in recent months, by a number of different publishers, the PC version of Fallout 3 does not yet appear to be available on the same piracy websites.

Nevertheless, Ubisoft commented earlier in the week that PC piracy "cannibalizes" sales of the console version of a game and that releasing a PC version of a title was tantamount to “letting people have a free version that they rip off instead of a purchased version”.
http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/new...hp?story=20598





Yahoo Inks Search Ad Pact with Google
Stephen Shankland

Yahoo announced a nonexclusive partnership Thursday under which rival Google will supply it with some search ads, a move that could increase Yahoo search revenue but that also gives Google even more power in the market.

Yahoo expects the deal, which was expected, to raise revenue by $800 million in its first year and to provide an extra $250 million to $450 million in incremental operating cash flow. That's a major potential boost, given that Yahoo reported revenue of $1.53 billion in its most recent quarter, after ad commissions are subtracted.

"We see this as a good, open, flexible deal and (one that) helps Yahoo be strengthened as a good longer-term competitor," Chief Executive Jerry Yang said in a conference call Thursday.

Some saw more urgent motives at work, though.

"They're using this as a tool to boost short-term cash flow," said Canaccord Adams analyst Colin Gillis. "They're trying to keep the wolves at bay."

Yahoo expects the revenue to help the company invest in its dual-pronged advertising strategy that's designed to offer advertisers an easy ability to buy text ads on search results and to buy graphical "display" ads elsewhere on Yahoo's considerable Internet properties.

"This agreement provides a source of funds to both deliver financial value to stockholders from search monetization and to invest in our broader strategy to transform display advertising and advance our starting-point objectives with users," Yahoo President Sue Decker said in a statement. "It enhances competition by promoting our ability to compete in the marketplace where we are especially well-positioned: in the convergence of search and display."

Shareholders looking for a quick payback should be prepared for a wait, though. The companies are voluntarily delaying implementation of the partnership for up to three and a half months to let the Justice Department review the deal, Yahoo said, a nod to antitrust concerns raised about the deal.

"We believe, given that it's a commercial agreement, there's not formal regulatory approval" required, Yang said. "We agreed with the Department of Justice on a voluntary basis to have them review this deal."

Antitrust scrutiny
One U.S. senator, meanwhile, urged scrutiny.

"We will closely examine the joint venture between Google and Yahoo announced today," Sen. Herb Kohl, Democratic chairman of the Senate Antitrust Subcommittee, said in a statement. "This collaboration between two technology giants and direct competitors for Internet advertising and search services raises important competition concerns. The consequences for advertisers and consumers could be far-reaching and warrant careful review, and we plan to investigate the competitive and privacy implications of this deal further in the Antitrust Subcommittee."

While Yahoo evidently expects a stronger future out of the deal, a tight partnership is a double-edged sword. In the long run, Yahoo likely will find its Google partnership hard to dial back even if it wants to: "The reality is it's going to be hard to unhook from the Google cash flow," Gillis said.

Under the deal, Yahoo will select the search terms for which Google will supply ads, the companies said. The ads will be displayed in the United States and Canada, and Decker took pains to say how Yahoo controls which Google results are displayed and when.

Yahoo's search ad engine, Panama, is competitive with Google's for many popular queries, but Yahoo plans to use Google with less common searches, Decker said. "Yahoo monetizes very competitively with Google for query ads but is not as competitive in the tail," she said, referring to the long statistical tail consisting of a large number of infrequent searches.

IM partnership
The partnership also extends beyond advertising. The two companies will make their instant-messaging services interoperable, lowering a barrier that separated two communities of users at the sites.

The agreement allows either party to cancel under circumstances such as an acquisition or other "change in control." However, Yahoo must pay $250 million, minus the revenue Google earned, if it's terminated within 24 months.

The partnership is a 10-year deal, a four-year initial period and two options for Yahoo to renew for three years, Decker said.

Google and Yahoo declared a limited two-week search ad deal in April a success, but even the limited partnership raised antitrust hackles at Microsoft.

Google is the leading search engine by a wide margin. Google increased its share of the U.S. search market to 68.29 percent in May at the expense of Yahoo and Microsoft, according to Hitwise.

Having more searches means more virtual real estate for ads and therefore a more desirable place for advertisers to bid for placement. Google also has worked aggressively to try to deliver only ads that are relevant to particular search queries, a move geared to increase the revenue generated per click.

Microsoft, adieu
The partnership idea came to light during Microsoft's attempt to acquire Yahoo, which put more pressure on the Internet company to improve its financial results. Both a full-on acquisition and a narrower partnership appear to be no longer an option, though.

Yahoo announced Thursday that it and Microsoft couldn't close a deal and that Microsoft wasn't interested in buying Yahoo outright even at the earlier price of $33 per share. Yahoo's shares dropped more than 10 percent, or $2.63, to $23.52.

Microsoft quickly raised antitrust concerns when the search ad test began, saying the move would reinforce Google's dominance in the search ad business. Google has countered that search ads are only a narrow part of the online ad market, and that Yahoo is the strongest company when it comes to the graphical "display" ads.

Google spoke highly of the deal on Thursday, too, though it didn't offer any projections of its financial effects.

"This commercial agreement provides Yahoo with the opportunity to deliver more relevant ads to users and provide advertisers and publishers with better advertising technology to help them succeed in their own businesses," said Google CEO Eric Schmidt in a statement. "This agreement will preserve the competitive and dynamic online advertising space."

News.com staff writer Ina Fried contributed to this report.
http://news.cnet.com/8301-10784_3-9967369-7.html





Google to Appeal German Copyright Decisions
Greg Sandoval

Google lost two copyright cases in Germany on Monday but the search company reportedly plans to appeal.

A German court ruled that Google violated the copyright of Michael Bernhard by displaying one of his photographs as a preview thumbnail, according to the Bloomberg news service.

Separately, a German court ruled in favor of Thomas Horn, who owns the copyright to some German comics that appeared in Google's search results.

In Bernhard's case, the court ruled "that it doesn't matter that thumbnails are much smaller than the original pictures and are displayed in a lower resolution," Bloomberg reported.

Google told the blog paidContent.org: "We believe that services like Google Image Search are entirely legal. Today's decision is very bad for Internet users in Germany."
http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-10064740-93.html





Trying to get Real

MPAA's Suit Against Real About Control And Innovation -- Not Piracy
from the clarifying dept

As we've been writing about the MPAA's odd lawsuit against RealNetworks for its RealDVD DVD ripping product, we've pointed out (multiple times) how it doesn't make much sense. The problem was that there are tons of much more effective DVD ripping products out there. Unlike RealDVD, they don't hobble the ripped copies. So, shutting down RealDVD doesn't do anything to stop piracy -- and if anything only increases it, as those who want to rip DVDs are more likely to just download one of those free products that don't encumber the resulting rip with more DRM. Thus, people will still be copying DVDs, and will do so in a way that is a lot more "piratable" than if the MPAA let RealDVD live.

So why is the MPAA doing what it's doing?

The EFF has stepped up with theory that makes a lot of sense: this has nothing to do with stopping piracy, and everything to do with controlling how innovation happens in the movie market. The movie studios that make up the MPAA believe that they own the movie business, and thus any innovation in the industry needs to come through them and get their approval. What Real is doing with RealDVD is ignoring the MPAA's "approval" process, and effectively taking the path of innovation out of the studios' hands.

If this sounds familiar, it's because this has what's been going on with almost all of the "anti-piracy" battles over the last decade. Napster wasn't so much about stopping piracy (which of course, didn't work in the slightest), but about the RIAA record labels freaking out that someone else (a college kid, no less) had established a much better and more efficient distribution mechanism without getting their approval and running it through their filter first.

Effectively, the Big Content players believe that they own their industries, and innovation should come from the top down through the paths that they choose. Thus, these sorts of lawsuits will continue until the management of these firms recognize that innovation is a bottom-up phenomenon. Or, the big firms go out of business. Whichever comes first.
http://techdirt.com/articles/20081013/0105432524.shtml





RIAA Appeals Mistrial in File-Sharing Case
Stephanie Condon

The Recording Industry Association of America is appealing a judge's decision last month to declare a mistrial in the case of Jammie Thomas, who was ordered to pay the recording industry $222,000 for allegedly sharing music online.

Thomas was charged in October with violating copyright law by making 24 songs available for others to download on the Kazaa network. In late September, though, U.S. District Judge Michael Davis threw out the verdict on the grounds that he originally misguided the jury by indicating that simply the act of making a copyrighted song available for sharing amounts to infringement.

The RIAA is requesting that Davis let its appeal go through before scheduling a retrial for Thomas.

"Although this court is not the only court to have questioned the making-available right, numerous others have concluded that making a copyrighted work available does constitute a distribution," the RIAA wrote in its request to stay the retrial.

Thomas is the only individual charged with copyright infringement by the RIAA who has taken her case to trial.
http://news.cnet.com/8301-13578_3-10068547-38.html





Copyright Cops Target Kids’ Schools and Community Centers
enigmax

The Performing Rights Society, the UK outfit collecting royalties for the music industry, seems it will stop at nothing as it demands money from small businesses, charities, playschools, and now, kids’ community centers, all so that they can listen to music without fear of prosecution.

The UK’s Performing Rights Society (PRS) is a non-profit organization, setup to ensure that the music industry continues to make plenty more profits on an on-going regular basis. For years now, they have collected license fees from companies that use music as part of their businesses, such as pubs, clubs and restaurants. Some might argue that these type of companies benefit commercially from playing music to the public, so a license fee, although not particular popular, can be absorbed as a legitimate business expense.

However, recently the PRS has been getting more and more aggressive in its quest to funnel cash to its paymasters. It now sees every UK organization - commercial or otherwise - as a legitimate target to intimidate with threats of legal action, should they dare to play a radio, TV or DVD within earshot of the public without a license. Small businesses playing the radio for personal entertainment to pass the working day, charities, tea rooms, corner shops and even community centers are being targeted by this outfit. Bizarrely, they are currently going after the British police, who have been refusing to pay. It’s clear, they care about just one thing - money.

To get this money the PRS go after people like the 61 year-old mechanic Paul Wilson, who has worked alone at his garage for 23 years since he was 15. He can’t afford the PRS license, so now he has to work in silence. “When I was first contacted by the PRS I thought somebody was having a laugh with me,” he said. But really, this is no laughing matter. After the demands for money, Mr Wilson told the PRS to take his radio to prove he wasn’t listening to it, but the PRS warned that the police could come round to do spot checks. Meanwhile, the garage next door to Mr Wilson also received a PRS letter, so they are maintaining radio silence too. Just regular people trying to earn a living, being chased down for money to listen to a radio at work. It’s astonishing.

When the small guy gets hit by these type of issues it really annoys people in the copyright debating community. However, if you really want to widen the debate and spread some really bad PR, it’s going to take tactics which show how low you are prepared to go. For instance, you could go after a charity trying to raise funds via a tea-room, discover their staff radio can be overheard, and demand money from them.

But it is possible to further outrage people. And this is what these type of collection outfits are doing, by widening their campaigns to start going after the softest most impressionable target in the country - kids. Last week we reported how the MPLC, a Hollywood royalty collection outfit, (illegally) demanded money from kindergartens in Ireland, so that the kids could watch DVDs there.

But going after children isn’t exclusively an MPLC tactic, the PRS are doing it too. Part of the claim against the tea-rooms mentioned above was that the kids there needed to be licensed to sing carols in front of the public and now, to add insult to injury, the PRS ‘non-profit’ copyright cop is going after a kid’s non-profit community center in Glasgow, Scotland. The Yoker Resource Center is faced with a Ł3,000 bill, it if wants to carry on using its TV, radio or CD player, that is.

Elizabeth Busby, the after-school supervisor at the center said: “We can’t afford to pay this money. Although we have a TV license for the center, under these rules we cannot let all the kids watch it.”

Wondering (like the rest of us in the sane world) why people have to pay twice or more for using the same product, Ms Busby added: “If the children are watching a DVD then I have gone out and paid for it, so whether it is one person or twenty-five I still paid for it. It’s not as if I’m buying pirate copies or downloading them illegally. Soon it will be the Halloween party and what do we do for music?”

Asked to comment, the PRS declined. I’d like to think that the silence is down to shame, but I doubt it. I’ll leave you with some comments from Steve Pendlebury, writing in The Bolton News:

“Radio stations pay large amounts of money to licensing organizations PRS and PPL for the music they play, and music has been on the radio for many years. During the war, there were programmes like Workers Playtime and Music While You Work. Now, many radio stations have features about workplaces. If the PRS force people to switch their radios off then how are these stations going to survive?

Music has to be heard before people go out and buy it.”

http://torrentfreak.com/uk-copyright...enters-081015/





New Zealand First to Adopt 3-Strikes Law for Pirates
Ben Jones

New Zealand is known for sheep, rugby, and dramatic filming locations. However, it will also be known for being the first place in the world with a 3-strikes law for copyright infringement. The Copyright Amendment Act 2008 gained royal assent earlier this year, and goes into effect at the end of February 2009. Opposition to this bill, despite being signed into law, is still growing though.

Previously we’ve discussed how certain countries have been pushing for laws requiring ISPs to disconnect filesharers, if they receive multiple notices alleging copyright infringement. This proposal has been struck down by the EU, and no-one but lobby groups seems to want it.

However, over in New Zealand a law requiring ISPs to disconnect repeat copyright infringers has been proposed, passed and signed into law. The law, Copyright (New Technologies) Amendment Act 2008 adds a new section to deal with Internet Service Providers and copyright infringement. Yet, opposition from ISPs, and Internet user groups may see it being struck down or modified before it goes into force.

The section in question, 92A reads

Quote:
Internet service provider must have policy for terminating accounts of repeat infringers
(1) An Internet service provider must adopt and reasonably implement a policy that provides for termination, in appropriate circumstances, of the account with that Internet service provider of a repeat infringer.
(2) In subsection (1), repeat infringer means a person who repeatedly infringes the copyright in a work by using 1 or more of the Internet services of the Internet service provider to do a restricted act without the consent of the copyright owner.
Opposition to this section of law has been steady, with six industry bodies that have opposed the law meeting with government ministers. Indications from Communications Minister David Cunliffe and Associate Commerce Minister Judith Tizard, are that if the opposing groups and rights holders can come to an agreement by developing a workable code of practice, the law can be reworded. Tizard also reiterated strongly that the law was going ahead, and it would do so because of ‘Internet piracy’, according to one of the meeting’s participants

The issue at the heart of the debate is that of proof. InternetNZ head Keith Davidson told New Zealand’s Stuff, that he wanted to see an element of proof being required before people are cut off. A position understandable with the recent bad press given to copyright infringement allegations in the US, both in studies, and the courtroom. Countering him was the CEO of the NZ Recording Industry Association, telling Stuff that proving the guilt of infringers in a court of law, before any penalty is dealt out would be “impractical and ridiculous”, a sentiment also shared by his American counterparts.

A provision to penalize false or inaccurate accusations was in the bill at one point, after dealings by the group of six with a select committee. However, Tizard stated that it was inappropriate, as the Cabinet had already decided the law was to go ahead as was, and that people shouldn’t be surprised.

New Zealand is also in the middle of an election (voting day is November 8th) so there may be a change of ministers soon. These may be more amenable to changing the wording of the law, to be based on proof, not simple accusations. As always though, nothing is certain for the 3.3 million kiwi’s (around 80% of the population) on the net, except they are considered less important than the greed of lobby groups.
http://torrentfreak.com/kiwi-3-strikes-law-081017/





“Damn The Man!” The Ability To Sell Second-Hand CDs
Matt Schroettnig

Music is like, crazy, man.

It seems every time you check the news, the music industry is once again going broke as a result of some epic catastrophe. In the 1980s that catastrophe was the blank cassette tape; in the ’90s it was used-CD sales; the turn of the century brought us the MP3 format and Napster. And now, another problem has surfaced: “promotional” music CDs. So much so, in fact, that Universal Music Group (UMG) filed suit against a man named Troy Augusto in California Federal Court in May 2007. Mr. Augusto runs an eBay business named “Roast Beast Music Collectables” based around finding rare promotional albums in second-hand shops and selling them online for a profit. These CDs are distributed by music labels to radio stations, music industry executives, and other influential people as a marketing tool. UMG argued that marking the CDs with the label “For Promotional Use Only” means that UMG will own the CDs forever, and that selling them, or even throwing them away, is illegal.

Luckily for Mr. Augusto, UMG seems to have forgotten about the century-old “First Sale Doctrine.” In 1908, the Supreme Court handled a similar issue in Bobbs-Merril Co. v. Straus. Therein, Bobbs-Merril, a publisher, attempted to control the second-hand price of one of its books by inserting a detailed declaration:

The price of this book at retail is $1 net. No dealer is licensed to sell it at a less price, and a sale at a less price will be treated as an infringement of the copyright.

Macy’s Department Store sold copies of the book for less than $1, and Bobbs-Merril brought suit to prevent them from continuing to do so. The Supreme Court replied, in short, “That’s not how this works…” The Court stated that once a person purchases or is given a book (that is, after its “first sale”), it belongs to that person exclusively. Of course, a seller is still free to negotiate a contract or licensing agreement with the buyer regarding subsequent use of that book. But barring that, the individual is free to sell, lend, or give away the book as he or she sees fit. The First Sale rule has since been extended to cover other published materials, including movies and music. The copyright holder still retains the right to make and distribute additional copies of the original work, but that copy Joe Plumber bought with his own money? It’s his and his alone. He doesn’t have to sell it at the price the publisher sets, pay the publisher a share of the resale value, or listen to what the publisher has to say at all.

Why They’re Wrong

Codified in 1976 in §109 of the Copyright Act (17 U.S.C. § 109(a)), the principle of first sale allows the purchaser of a legally produced “phonorecord,” “without the authority of the copyright owner, to sell or otherwise dispose of the possession of that copy or phonorecord.” A “phonorecord” is any material object that embodies “fixations of sounds,” including cassette tapes, CDs, and LPs. (17 U.S.C. § 101) Actual sale isn’t truly requisite. Instead, the principle applies after the first “authorized disposition by which title passes.” Significantly, this allows for the time-honored tradition of re-gifting around the holidays. Failing that, it allows us to sell our purchases to someone else when we grow tired of them.

Aside from our grandparents, another obvious beneficiary of this principle is the public library system. Libraries can purchase books and lend them out without having to first seek the permission of the publisher. UMG, however, saw Mr. Augusto’s business as an unjustifiable infringement on its ability to control its copyrighted works. Given the option to purchase a new CD for $10 from a store, or a used copy for $5 from a friend, which would the average person choose? A choice of the latter, under UMG’s theory, would prevent the copyright holder from determining the terms of the article’s sale, thus depriving the copyright holder of revenue and control it fairly deserves.

So… Where’s the Rub?

It was unclear to Mr. Augusto why anyone would have an issue with his re-selling the CDs purchased at second-hand shops. Since the advent of the vinyl record there has been a vibrant second-hand market for music, including those labeled “for promotional use only.” Regarding promotional CDs, which UMG considered to be a copyrighted work, UMG’s opinion differed markedly. Their legal claim is detailed within the end-user license agreement (EULA) included with the promo CDs in question:

Quote:
This CD is the property of the record company and is licensed to the intended recipient for personal use only. Acceptance of this CD shall constitute an agreement to comply with the terms of the license. Resale or transfer of possession is not allowed and may be punishable under federal and state laws.
Used by software companies to circumvent the principle of first sale, EULAs similar to the one seen above are often found attached to software programs. Many computer users are familiar with being required to click “I agree” prior to installing a newly purchased piece of software. Similarly, UMG attempted to retain ownership of the disks, by claiming that it merely “licensed” the buyer to use the disk for promotional purposes, until such time as UMG demanded it back. Given the nature of promotional CDs, though, that argument wasn’t going to work in a court of law.

Every year, producers and promoters mail thousands of free promotional CDs to influential people in the music business in order to “promote” the featured artists. This transaction constitutes a gift in which title transfers from one entity or individual (the publisher) to another (the recipient). EULA or no, the gifted CDs fall under the first sale principle, and can thus be resold at will.

The Legality of it All

Once again, the music industry overestimated the level of control they should be allowed to maintain over their copyrighted works. Just as when Sony invaded its consumers’ privacy by embedding software in CDs and when the five largest music distribution companies illegally corroborated to fix the price of CDs, the music industry has again violated the law. The United States District Court for the Central District of California concluded, via summary judgment, that the purported EULA included by UMG did not create a “license,” nor does it allow UMG to retain any control over the promotional CD. UMG gave away these CDs, and those who receive them are free to dispose of them as they see fit. Therefore, the court found, as the legal owner of the CDs in question, Mr. Augusto and Roast Beast Music broke no laws in selling these recordings, and may continue to do so.

At least we can still sell our old CDs… Right?

It depends. While Mr. Augusto enjoys the right to sell his legally owned CDs, questions arise in a number of states as to who can purchase them. The music industry, it seems, is foregoing lawsuits in favor of promoting preventative legislation. Recent legislation in Florida, Utah, Wisconsin, and Rhode Island has made it more difficult to sell used CDs in those states than it is to get a driver’s license. In Florida, for example, anyone attempting to sell used CDs to a retailer must present identification and be fingerprinted, and any retailer looking to sell those same CDs must apply for a permit and submit a $10,000 bond with the Department of Agriculture and Human Services. Thankfully, those restrictions do not apply to online or person-to-person sales.

The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) has made it extremely clear that any perceived loss of control over copyrighted materials is taken very seriously. Thanks to the first sale doctrine, Mr. Augusto and the rest of us currently have the right to buy and sell our legally purchased “phonorecords” at will. The question remains as to whether the above-mentioned restrictions states would stand up in court when faced with a first sale claim.

Until that time, however, we should probably stick to eBay.

Researched by: Adam Gottlieb
Edited by: Eric Blaine and Tom Borton
Managing Editor: Brady Iandiorio

http://www.thelegality.com/archives/93





Bush Signs Controversial Anti-Piracy Law

President George W. Bush signed into law on Monday a controversial bill that would stiffen penalties for movie and music piracy at the federal level.

The law creates an intellectual property czar who will report directly to the president on how to better protect copyrights both domestically and internationally. The Justice Department had argued that the creation of this position would undermine its authority.

The law also toughens criminal laws against piracy and counterfeiting, although critics have argued that the measure goes too far and risks punishing people who have not infringed.

The Recording Industry Association of America and Motion Picture Association of America backed the bill, as did the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.

"By becoming law, the PRO-IP Act sends the message to IP criminals everywhere that the U.S. will go the extra mile to protect American innovation," said Tom Donohue, president and CEO of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.

Counterfeiting and piracy costs the United States nearly $250 billion annually, according to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.

Rick Cotton, general counsel for NBC Universal, said the bill would give movie and music makers more tools to fight what he called a "tidal wave" of counterfeiting and piracy of everything from medical devices to automobile parts to media by organized crime.

"That is at the core of what this discussion is about," he said. "It is not about teenagers."

Cotton said he did not expect an IP czar to be named before Bush's term ended in January.

Richard Esguerra, spokesman for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, said he was relieved to see lawmakers had stripped out a measure to have the Justice Department file civil lawsuits against pirates, which would have made the attorneys "pro bono personal lawyers for the content industry."

But the advocacy group Public Knowledge had argued that the law went too far, especially given that fair use of copyrighted material was already shrinking.

Public Knowledge particularly opposed a measure that allowed for the forfeiture of devices used in piracy.

"Let's suppose that there's one computer in the house, and one person uses it for downloads and one for homework. The whole computer goes," said Public Knowledge spokesman Art Brodsky.

Brodsky argued that, at best, the bill was unnecessary because the recording and movie industry had the right to take accused infringers to court.

"There's already lots and lots of penalties for copyright violations," he said. "They've got all the tools they need."

(Reporting by Diane Bartz; Editing by Bernard Orr, Gary Hill)
http://www.reuters.com/article/techn...49C7EI20081013





McCain Campaign Protests YouTube's DMCA Policy
Declan McCullagh

John McCain's presidential campaign is protesting YouTube's video-removal policy, which has resulted in the deletion of some political advertisements the campaign believes are perfectly legal and protected by fair use.

In a letter (PDF) sent to YouTube CEO Chad Hurley and company attorneys on Monday, the campaign charges that "our advertisements or Web videos have been the subject of DMCA takedown notices regarding uses that are clearly privileged under the fair use doctrine." The DMCA is, of course, the 1998 Digital Millennium Copyright Act that allows copyright holders to submit takedown notices.

The letter cited "numerous" examples, without listing them. One would likely be CBS News' successful DMCA takedown request to YouTube over the McCain campaign's lipstick-on-a-pig ad. It used a brief video clip featuring CBS News anchor Katie Couric to make a point about sexism. (Disclaimer: CNET is published by CBS Networks, home of CBS News.)

Then there was the related flap last fall about Fox News complaining about McCain using a video clip from a Fox News-sponsored debate.

Legally speaking, McCain can't force the Google-owned video site to host his videos; among other things, the terms of service says "YouTube reserves the right to discontinue any aspect of the YouTube Web site at any time."

But more broadly, the campaign has a point; YouTube seems a bit too eager to remove political videos. The McCain camp's solution is to ask for a "full legal review" of videos posted by political candidates and campaigns before they're automatically removed. Another solution? If you don't like the neighborhood, move. Nobody's forcing them to stick with YouTube.
http://news.cnet.com/8301-13578_3-10066510-38.html





McCain's Sex Offender E-Mail Registry Signed Into Law
Kevin Poulsen

Registered sex offenders will have to start providing their e-mail addresses to a national database available to social networking sites, under the misleadingly titled "Keeping the Internet Devoid of Sexual Predators Act of 2008" — a bill authored by Senator John McCain and signed by President Bush on Monday.

The idea behind the law (.pdf) is that a social networking site can query the database to keep registered sex offenders from signing up, and thus prevent them from preying on underage users. Needless to say, the law does nothing to stop first-time predators. But it's doubtful that even recidivists will be affected. Pedophiles looking to victimize children — a felony worth years, even decades, in prison — won't be afraid to violate this new law by using an unregistered Gmail address. And now law enforcement will have to struggle to discern whether an offender is using a disposable webmail account to commit new crimes, or just to shunt the blacklist and network with their adult friends and family.

The idea for this law originated with Fox a few years back, after a series of child predation cases were linked to the company's MySpace service, prompting several state attorneys general to start investigating the site. Fox's feel-good fix was then adopted by McCain, who turned it into legislation.

Here, Fox's interests and McCain's converge perfectly. For any social networking site, it's much easier to check an e-mail address than to effectively police message boards and friends lists for signs of predation. And this plan allows McCain to appear tough on child predators, while opposing more serious efforts against pedophiles that offend the far right.

In television ads he ran last month, McCain slammed a 2003 Illinois measure once supported by presidential rival Barack Obama that would have taught children how to recognize, and avoid, sexual predators. McCain called the plan "comprehensive sex education" for kindergartners.

In other words, to McCain, teaching children to avoid predators is as bad as teaching sexually active teenagers about contraception. But setting up an e-mail database that relies on pedophiles being honest and respectful of the law — well, we can all live with that.
http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/200...s-sex-off.html





Rivals’ Visions Differ on Unleashing Innovation
William J. Broad and Cornelia Dean

For decades, the United States dominated the technological revolution sweeping the globe. The nation’s science and engineering skills produced vast gains in productivity and wealth, powered its military and made it the de facto world leader.

Today, the dominance is eroding. In 2002, the nation’s high-technology balance of trade went south, and it never came back. By 2007, the annual gap between high-tech exports and imports had grown to $53 billion. The gap this year is expected to be the largest ever — approaching $60 billion.

Both presidential candidates, in their careers and in their campaigns, have made detailed arguments for how the nation should deal with technology rivals, sharpen its competitive edge and improve what experts call its “ecology of innovation.”

Yet their visions are strikingly different. They diverge mainly on the appropriate role for the federal government in education, in spending on research, and in building, maintaining and regulating the complex infrastructure on which innovation depends. The visions both face tough questions on their viability amid the nation’s deepening financial crisis.

Senator John McCain, the Republican nominee for president, seeks to encourage innovation by cutting corporate taxes and ending what he calls “burdensome regulations” that he says inhibit corporate investment. But Mr. McCain has also repeatedly gone up against business if he sees a conflict with national security, for instance, in seeking to limit sensitive exports.

In Senator Barack Obama’s view, the United States must compete far more effectively against an array of international rivals who are growing more technically adept. Mr. Obama, the Democratic nominee, looks to the federal government to finance science, math and engineering education and the kind of basic research that can produce valuable industrial spinoffs.

The personal styles of the candidates also contrast. Mr. McCain says his leadership of the Senate commerce committee has versed him in technology issues, but he also jokes about his ignorance of personal computers and e-mail. Mr. Obama, an avid BlackBerry user, commenced an aggressive drive for campaign donations over the Internet.

Mr. Obama embraces the theory of evolution and argues that the teaching of intelligent design and other creationist ideas “cloud” a student’s understanding of science. While Mr. McCain says he personally believes in evolution, he has also said children should be taught “all points of view.”

Mr. McCain has written five books, starting in 1999, but none discuss in any detail how the nation might respond to technical rivals — a central theme of Mr. Obama’s second book, published in 2006. Mr. Obama posted a detailed set of technology proposals on his Web site late last year; Mr. McCain did so in recent months.

It remains to be seen how the candidates would pay for their proposals.

At the request of The New York Times, the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation, a nonpartisan research group in Washington, estimated the annual costs of the plans and put Mr. Obama’s at $85.6 billion and Mr. McCain’s at $78.8 billion, excluding his proposed reductions in corporate taxes.

“The pressures of an unfolding fiscal crisis make these priorities recede on the list of what politicians want to do,” said Robert Reischauer, director of the Congressional Budget Office from 1989 to 1995.

Nevertheless, there is wide agreement among economists and other experts that the capacity to innovate is central to growth, quality of life and success in the global marketplace — a point on which the candidates agree.

“If we don’t have an innovation agenda, if we don’t invest in science research, if we don’t provide encouragement for our kids to pursue careers in math and science, I don’t see where our country can go economically in the future,” said John Edward Porter, a Republican former congressman who is the board chairman of Research!America, an advocacy group.

Several experts faulted both campaigns for failing to give the innovation issue higher visibility, despite their many plans and proposals.

“I understand the immediate pressures and vicissitudes of elections,” said Charles M. Vest, president of the National Academy of Engineering and former president of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. “But I’d like to see them raising the discussion on this, which is absolutely fundamental to the future of jobs and the economy.”

Restoring the nation’s competitive edge is urgent, said Norman R. Augustine, a former chief executive of the aerospace giant Lockheed Martin who led an influential innovation study by the National Academies.

“If we don’t wake up,” Mr. Augustine said in an interview, “there’s a high chance that the generation of children we’re leaving behind will have a much lower quality of life.”

McCain as Committee Leader

The golden age of American invention began after World War II, when the government and industry poured big money into research and produced advanced goods like the transistor, the laser, new drugs, fiber optics, new kinds of jets and spacecraft, modems and the desktop computer. All were exported in vast quantities.

Signs of trouble appeared in September and October of 1995, when the nation registered its first negative balances of trade in advanced technology goods, according to the Foreign Trade Division at the Census Bureau.

In 1997, Senator McCain, of Arizona, became chairman of the Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation, beginning a tenure that, with an interruption in 2001 and 2002, went until early 2005.

Though often approving of business and deregulation, he could reverse course if the issue impinged on what he saw as national security. An early initiative of his sought to restrict American exports of certain high-tech goods, even as the Clinton administration pushed for trade liberalization.

“It’s critical that safeguards are in place,” he said in opening a 1998 hearing on missile and satellite exports to China. Later, Republicans charged the Clinton administration with dangerous irresponsibility in allowing the Chinese to import high-performance computers. Getting the export issue right, Mr. McCain said at a hearing in 2000, is “one of the greatest challenges of our time.”

The drive helped tighten export regulations. But technology analysts faulted the attack as political and the tightening as unnecessary.

James A. Lewis, an export specialist at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, wrote in 2001 that the new system “expends enormous resources on trivial and unimportant security risks” and threatens to damage important sectors of the economy, like the defense industry. The Republicans “closed off space exports,” he added in an interview this month. “So, many countries started their own space programs to get around the export controls.”

Domestically over the years, Mr. McCain’s committee sought to spur things like Internet development, the private space industry and the commercial licensing of federally owned inventions.

But in 2002, for the first time, the nation registered negative balances of trade in advanced technology goods for a whole year. “Time to wake up,” Representative Donald Manzullo, an Illinois Republican, said as he led a hearing in July 2003 on preserving the defense industrial base.

Mr. McCain, who held no hearings on the issues, did push for new innovations. For instance, he introduced a bill in 2005 to limit heat-trapping gases that sought to spur the development of green technologies.

A few months later, the National Academies issued its influential report “Rising Above the Gathering Storm.” The academies, the nation’s most eminent scientific and engineering organization, called for an urgent effort to strengthen American competitiveness.

The report said industries like chemical, semiconductor and automotive were growing in other countries while comparable American efforts atrophied. The patent office issued most of its information technology patents to foreigners. The United States ranked 17th among industrialized nations in high-school graduation rates, and the country had become “a net importer of high-technology products,” many from China.

The report added that corporations were cutting back on basic research and eliminating in-house laboratories.

Among other things, it proposed that the government finance 10,000 scholarships for math and science teaching careers and 30,000 scholarships for college-level study of science, math and engineering; increase the basic research budget by 10 percent a year for seven years; and establish programs to make broadband available nationwide at low cost.

Representative Sherwood L. Boehlert, a New York Republican who was chairman of the House science committee, praised the report at a hearing and said, “Complacency will kill us.”

Outlook in Obama Book

In October 2006, Mr. Obama, who had been elected to the Senate from Illinois two years earlier, published his second book, “The Audacity of Hope: Thoughts on Reclaiming the American Dream.” He wrote of visiting Google headquarters in Mountain View, Calif., where, among other things, he saw a map of the world with lights showing where Google searches were going on. Swaths of Africa and South Asia were dark. But so were portions of the United States, he wrote, where “thick cords of light dissolved into a few discrete strands.”

Many of the engineers Mr. Obama met at Google were from Asia or Eastern Europe. “As far as I could tell, not one was black or Latino,” he wrote. His guide told him that finding American-born engineers of any race was getting so hard that American companies were setting up shop abroad, in part for access to talent.

America, Mr. Obama wrote, cannot compete with countries like China and India simply by cutting costs and shrinking government. “If we want an innovation economy,” he added, “one that generates more Googles each year, then we have to invest in our future innovators — by doubling federal funding of basic research over the next five years, training 100,000 more engineers and scientists over the next four years, or providing new research grants to the most outstanding early-career researchers in the country.”
He acknowledged that his plan would cost about $42 billion over five years — “real money, to be sure, but just 15 percent of the most recent federal highway bill.”

The next year, Mr. Obama joined other senators to introduce a bill that built on the recommendations of “The Gathering Storm.” It eventually drew 69 co-sponsors from both sides of the Senate aisle; Mr. McCain was not among them.

Mr. Obama then offered amendments to the bill intended to increase federal support of science education, particularly among women and underrepresented minorities. “If we do not tap the diversity of our nation,” he said on the Senate floor, “we will diminish our capacity to innovate.”

The Senate passed the bill 88 to 8. Mr. McCain abstained. President Bush signed the bill, the America Competes Act, into law. But Congress has yet to finance its programs, estimated to cost about $43 billion for the first three years.

Candidates’ Platforms

Mr. McCain and Mr. Obama acknowledge the importance of scientific research. The two men, for instance, advocate making research and development tax credits permanent. They would move the presidential science adviser back into the close orbit of the White House, a position it occupied until 2001, and they support the human exploration of space.

Though their approaches differ, both call for changes in the operation of the patent office, agree that access to broadband must be expanded and advocate steps to encourage technically trained foreigners to enter and stay in the United States.

But Mr. Obama looks to encourage basic research with infusions of federal cash. Mr. McCain says easing regulatory and tax burdens will encourage private spending on research. (Experts say industry now tends to focus on near-term applications, while government finances more basic research that has greater breakthrough potential.)

Mr. Obama has proposed doubling federal financing for basic research in physics, life sciences, mathematics and engineering over 10 years. He has promised to review export rules he calls outdated and sees as having “unduly hampered the competitiveness of the domestic aerospace industry.”

By contrast, even before the current economic crisis, Mr. McCain proposed freezing, at least initially, almost all discretionary federal spending — a budget category that includes federal research efforts.

And he makes hay on the stump by citing, as an example of wasted money, a study of the DNA of grizzly bears in Montana, wondering aloud why anyone would think bears were involved in paternity suits or criminal activity. (In fact, the project, undertaken by the United States Geological Survey, intended to find ways of estimating the region’s population of grizzlies, endangered in the lower 48 states.)

The McCain campaign has said he will encourage corporate research by reducing the capital gains and corporate taxes and promoting “conditions favorable to investment.” In response to a survey by Science Debate 2008, a private group that tried to arrange a debate on science issues, he cited “burdensome regulations” as inhibiting innovation in the United States and said he would work to remove them.

“I am uniquely qualified to lead our nation during this technological revolution,” he said in the survey response, pointing to his Navy experience with advanced technologies as well as his leadership on the Senate commerce committee. “Under my guiding hand,” he added, Congress developed a wireless spectrum policy that prompted the rapid rise of mobile phones and Wi-Fi technology.

Seeking to reduce the government’s role in choosing technologies and to increase that of entrepreneurs, Mr. McCain has now proposed federal sponsorship of a $300 million prize to encourage the development of a revolutionary new battery for electric cars.

Mr. Obama supports expanding research on human embryonic stem cells. The research is regarded as a promising avenue toward novel treatments for serious diseases. But because such research involves destruction of early stage human embryos, opponents of abortion rights oppose it. Mr. Bush severely restricted the work in 2001.

Mr. McCain has voiced support for this research, but he now adds that he hopes it will soon be unnecessary to use these cells. In his response to the Science Debate 2008 questionnaire, at sciencedebate2008.com, Mr. McCain said the nation should refuse “to sacrifice moral values and ethical principles for scientific progress.”

Mr. McCain’s campaign did not respond to repeated requests for information. According to the journal Science, he has “no formal structure” for seeking science advice. It reports that Douglas Holtz-Eakin, a former economic adviser and head of the Congressional Budget Office under Mr. Bush, serves as Mr. McCain’s “point man” on science, having been in touch with experts on climate, space and “science in general.”

On the other hand, Mr. Obama established a science advisory committee led by Dr. Harold Varmus, a Nobel laureate who is president of the Memorial-Sloan Kettering Cancer Center. Dr. Varmus said the group’s leaders communicated almost daily with the campaign’s policy leaders. And this month, the campaign announced that 61 American Nobel laureates in science had endorsed Mr. Obama. (When Martin Chalfie, a Columbia biologist, learned last week that he had won the Nobel Prize in chemistry, he said one of the first things he did was to call one of the 61 to ask how to add his name to the list.)

Dr. Varmus acknowledged that finding the money to pay for the Obama innovation agenda “is not an easy question.” But he said Mr. Obama would focus on federal spending on high priority areas “and among the things he mentioned as being central to economic recovery are science and technology.”

Experts agree that the immediacy of the financial crisis is overshadowing the innovation debate and predict little headway until a new president has settled into office and confronts budgetary realities.

“The problem,” said Mr. Boehlert, the former chairman of the House science committee, who left Congress last year, “is that it takes an immediate investment that won’t pay immediate dividends, and people are looking for an instant fix.”

Kenneth Chang contributed reporting.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/17/us...7innovate.html





The Man Behind the Whispers About Obama
Jim Rutenberg

The most persistent falsehood about Senator Barack Obama’s background first hit in 2004 just two weeks after the Democratic convention speech that helped set him on the path to his presidential candidacy: “Obama is a Muslim who has concealed his religion.”

That statement, contained in a press release, spun a complex tale about the ancestry of Mr. Obama, who is Christian.

The press release was picked up by a conservative Web site, FreeRepublic.com, and spread steadily as others elaborated on its claims over the years in e-mail messages, Web sites and books. It continues to drive other false rumors about Mr. Obama’s background.

Just last Friday, a woman told Senator John McCain at a town-hall-style meeting, “I have read about him,” and “he’s an Arab.” Mr. McCain corrected her.

Until this month, the man who is widely credited with starting the cyberwhisper campaign that still dogs Mr. Obama was a secondary character in news reports, with deep explorations of his background largely confined to liberal blogs.

But an appearance in a documentary-style program on the Fox News Channel watched by three million people last week thrust the man, Andy Martin, and his past into the foreground. The program allowed Mr. Martin to assert falsely and without challenge that Mr. Obama had once trained to overthrow the government.

An examination of legal documents and election filings, along with interviews with his acquaintances, revealed Mr. Martin, 62, to be a man with a history of scintillating if not always factual claims. He has left a trail of animosity — some of it provoked by anti-Jewish comments — among political leaders, lawyers and judges in three states over more than 30 years.

He is a law school graduate, but his admission to the Illinois bar was blocked in the 1970s after a psychiatric finding of “moderately severe character defect manifested by well-documented ideation with a paranoid flavor and a grandiose character.”

Though he is not a lawyer, Mr. Martin went on to become a prodigious filer of lawsuits, and he made unsuccessful attempts to win public office for both parties in three states, as well as for president at least twice, in 1988 and 2000. Based in Chicago, he now identifies himself as a writer who focuses on his anti-Obama Web site and press releases.

Mr. Martin, in a series of interviews, did not dispute his influence in Obama rumors.

“Everybody uses my research as a takeoff point,” Mr. Martin said, adding, however, that some take his writings “and exaggerate them to suit their own fantasies.”

As for his background, he said: “I’m a colorful person. There’s always somebody who has a legitimate cause in their mind to be angry with me.”

When questions were raised last week about Mr. Martin’s appearance and claims on “Hannity’s America” on Fox News, the program’s producer said Mr. Martin was clearly expressing his opinion and not necessarily fact.

It was not Mr. Martin's first turn on national television. The CBS News program "48 Hours" in 1993 devoted an hourlong program, "See You in Court; Civil War, Anthony Martin Clogs Legal System with Frivolous Lawsuits," to what it called his prolific filings. (Mr. Martin has also be known as Anthony Martin-Trigona.) He has filed so many lawsuits that a judge barred him from doing so in any federal court without preliminary approval.

He prepared to run as a Democrat for Congress in Connecticut, where paperwork for one of his campaign committees listed as one purpose “to exterminate Jew power.” He ran as a Republican for the Florida State Senate and the United States Senate in Illinois. When running for president in 1999, he aired a television advertisement in New Hampshire that accused George W. Bush of using cocaine.

In the 1990s, Mr. Martin was jailed in a case in Florida involving a physical altercation.

His newfound prominence, and the persistence of his line of political attack — updated regularly on his Web site and through press releases — amazes those from his past.

“Well, that’s just a bookend for me,” said Tom Slade, a former chairman of the Florida Republican Party, whom Mr. Martin sued for refusing to support him. Mr. Slade said Mr. Martin was driven like “a run-over dog, but he’s fearless.”

Given Mr. Obama’s unusual background, which was the focus of his first book, it was perhaps bound to become fodder for some opposed to his candidacy.

Mr. Obama was raised mostly by his white mother, an atheist, and his grandparents, who were Protestant, in Hawaii. He hardly knew his father, a Kenyan from a Muslim family who variously considered himself atheist or agnostic, Mr. Obama wrote. For a few childhood years, Mr. Obama lived in Indonesia with a stepfather he described as loosely following a liberal Islam.

Theories about Mr. Obama’s background have taken on a life of their own. But independent analysts seeking the origins of the cyberspace attacks wind up at Mr. Martin’s first press release, posted on the Free Republic Web site in August 2004.

Its general outlines have turned up in a host of works that have expounded falsely on Mr. Obama’s heritage or supposed attempts to conceal it, including “Obama Nation,” the widely discredited best seller about Mr. Obama by Jerome R. Corsi. Mr. Corsi opens the book with a quote from Mr. Martin.

“What he’s generating gets picked up in other places,” said Danielle Allen, a professor at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, N.J., who has investigated the e-mail campaign’s circulation and origins, “and it’s an example of how the Internet has given power to sources we would have never taken seriously at another point in time.”

Ms. Allen said Mr. Martin’s original work found amplification in 2006, when a man named Ted Sampley wrote an article painting Mr. Obama as a secret practitioner of Islam. Quoting liberally from Mr. Martin, the article circulated on the Internet, and its contents eventually found their way into various e-mail messages, particularly an added claim that Mr. Obama had attended “Jakarta’s Muslim Wahhabi schools. Wahhabism is the radical teaching that created the Muslim terrorists who are now waging jihad on the rest of the world.”

Mr. Obama for two years attended a Catholic school in Indonesia, where he was taught about the Bible, he wrote in “Dreams From My Father,” and for two years went to an Indonesian public school open to all religions, where he was taught about the Koran.

Mr. Sampley, coincidentally, is a Vietnam veteran and longtime opponent of Mr. McCain and Senator John Kerry, both of whom he accused of ignoring his claims that American prisoners were left behind in Vietnam. He previously portrayed Mr. McCain as a “Manchurian candidate.” Speaking of Mr. Martin’s influence on his Obama writings, Mr. Sampley said, “I keyed off of his work.”

Mr. Martin’s depictions of Mr. Obama as a secret Muslim have found resonance among some Jewish voters who have received e-mail messages containing various versions of his initial theory, often by new authors and with new twists.

In his original press release, Mr. Martin wrote that he was personally “a strong supporter of the Muslim community.” But, he wrote of Mr. Obama, “it may well be that his concealment is meant to endanger Israel.” He added, “His Muslim religion would obviously raise serious questions in many Jewish circles.”

Yet in various court papers, Mr. Martin had impugned Jews.

A motion he filed in a 1983 bankruptcy case called the judge “a crooked, slimy Jew who has a history of lying and thieving common to members of his race.”

In another motion, filed in 1983, Mr. Martin wrote, “I am able to understand how the Holocaust took place, and with every passing day feel less and less sorry that it did.”

In an interview, Mr. Martin denied some statements against Jews attributed to him in court papers, blaming malicious judges for inserting them.

But in his “48 Hours” interview in 1993, he affirmed a different anti-Semitic part of the affidavit that included the line about the Holocaust, saying, “The record speaks for itself.”

When asked Friday about an assertion in his court papers that “Jews, historically and in daily living, act through clans and in wolf pack syndrome,” he said, “That one sort of rings a bell.”

He said he was not anti-Semitic. “I was trying to show that everybody in the bankruptcy court was Jewish and I was not Jewish,” he said, “and I was being victimized by religious bias.”

In discussing the denial of his admission to the Illinois bar, Mr. Martin said the psychiatric exam listing him as having a “moderately severe personality defect” was spitefully written by an evaluator he had clashed with.

Mr. Martin, who says he is from a well-off banking and farming family, is clearly pleased with his newfound attention. But, he said, others have added to his work in “scary” ways.

“They Google ‘Islam’ and ‘Obama’ and my stuff comes up and they take that and kind of use that — like a Christmas tree, and they decorate it,” he said. For instance, he said, he did not necessarily ascribe to a widely circulated e-mail message from the Israeli right-wing activist Ruth Matar, which includes the false assertion, “If Obama were elected, he would be the first Arab-American president.”

He said he had at least come to “accept” Mr. Obama’s word that he had found Jesus Christ. His intent, he said, was only to educate.

Kitty Bennett contributed reporting.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/13/us...martin.html?em





Spinning a Web of Lies at Digital Speed
Noam Cohen

“A lie can travel halfway around the world while the truth is still putting on its shoes.” — attributed to Mark Twain.

IN 1864, back when rumor still traveled by foot, a young messenger walked into the newsrooms of New York City’s press row with an Associated Press bulletin that President Lincoln had ordered the conscription of 400,000 additional troops for the Union.

The news arrived at a precarious time for the newspapers — around 2 a.m. Even the night editors had left, forcing a skeleton crew to decide whether to rush something into the paper, or risk being scooped. Two papers took the bait on what soon was exposed as a hoax.

But the news also came at a precarious time for the country: a conscription would have meant the Union army was in trouble, and the price of gold soon shot up. Two journalists from Brooklyn hatched the plan, knowing how best to sneak bogus news into print, and remembering to buy gold beforehand. (They were soon caught.)

Markets exist to convert good information into profitable investments. And, in their deep agnosticism, they also exist to allow false information to create quick profits. During that brief window, false information may in fact be easier to exploit — it shows up just in time, and purports to answer the questions on everyone’s mind.

And while the Civil War-era hoax had to use crude tools (war is going badly, gold rises in the face of bad news), Internet-fueled falsehoods and day-trading sites allow for highly tailored rumors to be quickly amplified and exploited.

In recent days there has been a range of false reports that managed to gain great purchase across the globe while the truth is still logging on.

Early in the month, Apple stock fell as much as 5 percent after a CNN-sponsored citizen-journalism site, ireport.com, published a false item from a user reporting that Steve Jobs, the company’s chief executive whose health has been a public preoccupation, had been rushed to the emergency room. The poster is still a mystery, though the Securities and Exchange Committee is investigating and CNN is cooperating.

In September, United Airlines lost more than $1 billion in market capitalization when traders treated a six-year-old announcement of a bankruptcy as a new development.

And in politics, it is common for rumors to be floated on sites like Drudge Report, forcing hurried denials and gaining life in the court of public opinion.

While not involving the stock market, an example from the Drudge Report is instructive about how false news — in effect, reputational short-selling — spreads. On Friday, Sept. 5, Drudge Report hailed an exclusive about the newly nominated Republican vice-presidential candidate: “Oprah Balks at Hosting Sarah Palin; Staff Divided.”

Oprah Winfrey later that day released a statement denying the report. But it was in the news enough for Tom Brokaw, of NBC’s “Meet the Press,” to introduce the subject to the Democratic vice-presidential nominee, Joe Biden: “Do you think that some people will see that as an elitist position, that in some ways Democrats may be afraid of her, Sarah Palin?”

With its oodles of information, the Internet is laden with falsehoods, but, in fact, these recent cases show how critical are amplifying sites like Drudge or Google News or Digg to getting reports from the backwoods before the public.



Wander over to ireport.com, which CNN created in February 2008, and it can appear overwhelming. It was meant to be a clearing house for user submissions — as many 10,000 a month — that in the past were only culled by CNN staff, and it looks like one. It’s not the first place to go for stock tips. But the Steve Jobs item benefited from promotion on collaborative news-rating sites like Digg.

While disavowing responsibility for the spread of the Steve Jobs item, saying that it never reached the coveted spot of being on Digg’s home page, the site’s chief executive, Jay Adelson, readily conceded that Digg had promoted other items that turned out to be false.

“There is almost a short-seller mentality in the blogosphere,” he said. “We allow anyone to submit on a level playing field. We allow the digital democracy to be the fact checkers. There is definitely some risk to that.”

While only 150 or so items make the Digg home page, Mr. Adelson said its tools for “syndicating” an interesting item to friends could help create a cascade, since the way young people “consume is through the push.”

But he argued that transparency would be one way to counteract rumor-mongering on the Internet. The person who submitted the ireport item to Digg had the impersonal login “joshua’s iphone.” And Mr. Adelson mentioned the various red flags: the user first posted in July; none of his or her earlier stories made it to the home page; and the first story to gain any traction was the one about Mr. Jobs’s health. “These things matter to the digital citizen,” he said.



Relying on the community and transparency is one method. Mr. Adelson says Google News tries to ensure reliability by vetting what news sources it draws from. And experimental sites like newstrust.net hope to create ratings systems from authorities who evaluate news articles on a range of criteria, and are themselves rated by the raters. (One of my articles was vetted by four reviewers and received a 4 out of 5 in terms of accuracy from its four reviewers.)

Fabrice Florin, the founder of News Trust, said sites like his would be crucial to flagging inaccuracy, though he said, “we probably wouldn’t be as effective in less than an hour,” a time span when most of the damage is done in these false reports. He said three reviewers would be enough to warn readers, “if the reviewers are trustworthy.”

The only long-term hope, he said, was news literacy training for the public, one of New Trust’s missions. “Our little brains were never in a position to handle that much information,” he said.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/13/bu...ia/13link.html





Overfeeding on Information
Alex Williams

YANA COLLINS LEHMAN, a film production accountant who lives in Brooklyn, knew something was amiss when her 5-year-old son, Beckett, started to announce to no one in particular, “I’m John McCain, and I approved this statement.”

Ms. Collins Lehman, 36, thought: “Oh my God, I’m watching too much news.”

But it is hard not to, she said, with the financial markets in meltdown, and that crisis increasingly intertwined with a frenzied presidential campaign entering the homestretch. This is why her own news diet has spiked to where it feels as if it’s taking over her life. And maybe her son’s, too.

“It’s such a drain on productivity,” Ms. Collins Lehman said. “It’s a compulsion.”

For many, the hunger for information is reminiscent of those harried, harrowing months after Sept. 11, 2001. But seven years ago, there was no iPhone, no Twitter, no YouTube. There was no Google Reader to endlessly feed people updates on their favorite Web sites. Social networking sites, blogs and TiVo were in their infancy.

This explosion of information technology, when combined with an unusual confluence of dramatic — and ongoing — news events, has led many people to conclude that they have given their lives over to a news obsession. They find themselves taking breaks at work every 15 minutes to check the latest updates, and at the end of the day, taking laptops to bed. Then they pad through darkened homes in the predawn to check on the Asian markets.

Despite having a job that obliges her to keep up with the latest movies, Ms. Collins Lehman recently downgraded her Netflix subscription to two movies a month, she said, because she was spending so much time following the news.

Raymond L. Roker, 40, who runs a music magazine called Urb and lives in Los Angeles, said that his media diet has swollen to nearly unmanageable proportions because of the turbulent current events. He sets his DVR to record more than 10 daily political shows, which can take four to five hours to sit through every night, and posts about politics continuously on his personal blog (he also blogs occasionally for The Huffington Post).

In addition, Mr. Roker said, he spends much of his remaining free time swapping political views with friends on Facebook. “And meanwhile, I should be running my mini media empire,” he said in an e-mail message. “If that’s not addiction, I don’t know what is.”

Mary Beth Caschetta, 42, an advertising copywriter who lives in Provincetown, Mass., said she has been so concerned about the direction of the country that she has been taking her Kindle to bed so she can track the headlines. In recent weeks, Ms. Caschetta said, the news has even invaded her dreams. A recent one had her grilling the House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, about the economy over cocktails, she said.

“It’s just the last thing I think of every night before I go to sleep,” Ms. Caschetta said, referring to the news.

This spike in news interest is reflected in Web traffic figures from Yahoo’s political and financial news sites, according to the company. “Both sites are experiencing record traffic over the last few weeks,” said Brian Nelson, a Yahoo spokesman. “Finance has been operating at near capacity.”

Traffic on the financial channel jumped by 27 percent during the week of Sept. 15, when Lehman Brothers and Merrill Lynch imploded as the simmering crisis boiled over, company figures showed.

ERIC KLINENBERG, a sociology professor at New York University, said people are unusually transfixed by news of the day because the economic crisis in particular seems to reach into every corner of their lives. Usually, he added, people can compartmentalize their lives into different spheres of activity, such as work, family and leisure. But now, “those spheres are collapsing into each other.”

And the news is not just consequential, but whipsaw-volatile. Financial markets swing hundreds of points within an hour; poll numbers shift. This means that news these days has an unbelievably short shelf life, news addicts said. If you haven’t checked the headlines in the last half-hour, the world may already have changed.

Jeff Slate, a songwriter who lives in Manhattan, said that he has found himself logging on to the Internet in the middle of the night to check the Asian financial markets, something he had not done for years. And a quick scan of the headlines usually leads him down an information rabbit hole, since almost every blog or news article links to a half-dozen others, which link to others. Even music blogs these days are filled with links to political news and commentary.

“There’s just been a glut of information that even four years ago that wasn’t the case,” said Mr. Slate, 41. In times when people think their fate is tied to enormous events that are out of their hands, stockpiling information can give some people a sense of control, social scientists said.

For others, information serves as social currency. Crises, like soap operas or sports teams, can provide a serial drama for people to talk about and bond over, said Kenneth J. Gergen, a senior research psychologist at Swarthmore College who studies technology and culture. “It gives us the stuff that keeps the community together,” he said. And for those whose social circles think of knowledge as power, having the latest information can also enhance status, Dr. Gergen said. “If you can just say what somebody said yesterday, that doesn’t do the trick,” he said.

Indeed, Michael Palka, who lives in Manhattan and is the president of SheFinds.com, an Internet fashion publishing company founded by his wife, Michelle Madhok, said that he feels a sense of “one-upmanship” among those in his social circle to know the latest details about, say, credit default swaps and how they may affect the election. An Obama supporter, he said, he uses any means at his disposal to stay ahead of the curve. He downloaded an application onto his iPhone to feed him up-to-the-minute polling data; during presidential debates, he and his wife sit around at home, using Twitter to exchange political updates with friends.

“The more you know about what’s going on,” Mr. Palka said, “the better case you can make for your candidate.”

To combat the sense of information overload, some find it tempting to pull back. Michael Davidson, the founder of Citypl.com, an expedited delivery service, who lives in Potomac, Md., said he and his wife attended a recent dinner party with three other couples where “each individual sat wringing their hands and telling in their own way how they can’t keep up anymore with all of the news and current events,” he said in an e-mail message. Mr. Davidson, 57, argued that the Rip Van Winkle approach was still the best.

That Washington Irving tale, he said he explained to them, concerns a man who went to sleep under a tree for 20 years, only to wake up and find that on the surface everything had changed, but on another level, nothing had.

Unfortunately, that story is fiction.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/12/fa...es/12news.html





Workout for Brain Just a Few Clicks Away
Julie Steenhuysen

Searching the Internet may help middle-aged and older adults keep their memories sharp, U.S. researchers said on Tuesday.

Researchers at the University of California Los Angeles studied people doing Web searches while their brain activity was recorded with functional magnetic resonance imaging scans.

"What we saw was people who had Internet experience used more of their brain during the search," Dr. Gary Small, a UCLA expert on aging, said in a telephone interview.

"This suggests that just searching on the Internet may train the brain -- that it may keep it active and healthy," said Small, whose research appears in the American Journal of Geriatric Psychiatry.

Many studies have found that challenging mental activities such as puzzles can help preserve brain function, but few have looked at what role the Internet might play.

"This is the first time anyone has simulated an Internet search task while scanning the brain," Small said.

His team studied 24 normal volunteers between the ages of 55 and 76. Half were experienced at searching the Internet and the other half had no Web experience. Otherwise, the groups were similar in age, gender and education.

Both groups were asked to do Internet searches and book reading tasks while their brain activity was monitored.

"We found that in reading the book task, the visual cortex -- the part of the brain that controls reading and language -- was activated," Small said.

"In doing the Internet search task, there was much greater activity, but only in the Internet-savvy group."

He said it appears that people who are familiar with the Internet can engage in a much deeper level of brain activity.

"There is something about Internet searching where we can gauge it to a level that we find challenging," Small said.

In the aging brain, atrophy and reduced cell activity can take a toll on cognitive function. Activities that keep the brain engaged can preserve brain health and thinking ability.

Small thinks learning to do Internet searches may be one of those activities.

"It tells us we probably can teach an old brain new Internet tricks," he said.

(Editing by Will Dunham and John O'Callaghan)
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...500803_pf.html





Newspapers’ Web Revenue Is Stalling
Stephanie Clifford

Newspapers, already facing a grim economic forecast, are digesting another piece of bad news: the growth in online advertising they saw as their salvation has slowed to a crawl.

In the last few years, newspaper companies have been rapidly expanding their Web presence — adding blogs, photo slide shows and podcasts — in the belief that more features would bring more advertisers. But now, after 17 quarters of ballooning growth, online revenue at newspaper sites is falling. In the second quarter, it was down 2.4 percent compared with last year, to $777 million, according to the Newspaper Association of America. It was the only year-over-year drop since the group began measuring online revenue in 2003.

Overall online advertising, however, is strong. Display advertising, the graphics-rich ads that newspaper sites carry, grew 7.6 percent in the second quarter, TNS Media Intelligence reported.

Newspaper executives say the new features have drawn bigger, more engaged audiences, which they hope will translate to more advertisers. Unique readers in August were 17 percent higher than a year earlier, at 69.3 million, according to a Nielsen Online analysis of newspaper sites for the newspaper association. They also point to other factors for the decline, including the economic downturn and the continued flight of classified advertisers away from papers and their sites.

But the advertising glut, particularly in display advertising, on which companies had based their optimistic projections, has shrunk. As newspapers keep adding pages, they are forced to sell ads at cut-rate prices.

Large papers like The Washington Post or The New York Times can sell premium ad space on, for example, a newspaper’s home page, for $15 to $50 for every thousand impressions. But these and other papers of all sizes have increasingly relied on middlemen — known as ad networks — to sell less desirable space, typically for around $1 for every thousand impressions. The networks usually charge advertisers double that or higher, industry insiders said.

While some publishers rely on ad networks, others are devising strategies to avoid them. With networks, “unwittingly, I think, the publishers commoditize their own inventory,” said Paul Iaffaldano, the general manager of the TWC Media Solutions Group, which sells ads for the Weather Channel and Weather.com.

A recent study from Bain & Company and the Interactive Advertising Bureau examining seven high-end publishers (their names were not disclosed) found that about 53 percent of the ad space on newspaper sites went unsold without networks last year, up from 50 percent in 2006.

Given the choice of showing an ad-free page and making no money, or using an ad network and making a few cents, many publishers choose networks. In 2007, 30 percent of the ad spaces sold on their sites came from networks, up from 5 percent in 2006, according to the Bain study.

“If we sold every scrap of inventory, we wouldn’t use ad networks, but right now it makes some sense for us,” said Jeff Webber, the publisher of USAToday.com. At Gannett, which owns USAToday.com, online revenue in the United States rose a modest 3 percent in the second quarter. Results from other chains have been grimmer. In the second quarter, online revenue dropped about 12 percent at A. H. Belo, 8 percent at E. W. Scripps newspapers, 4 percent at the Tribune Company, and 9 percent at Lee Enterprises, all compared with the same period last year.

Denise Warren, the chief advertising officer of The New York Times Media Group, said NYTimes.com used ad networks despite some concerns. She said they were useful when traffic spiked; this September, for example, the financial crisis spurred lots of page views.

“We couldn’t sell that inventory because we didn’t know it was going to exist, so if we have an ad network we’re able to have all those extra C.P.M.’s,” she said, using the industry term for cost per thousand impressions.

At The New York Times Company, online revenue grew a healthy 13 percent in the second quarter. More recent figures indicate sluggishness at the company’s newspaper sites, however. At The Times’s News Media Group, which includes newspaper sites like The Boston Globe, The New York Times and regional newspapers, online revenue grew only 0.9 percent in July and 7.9 percent in August, well below the usual double-digit growth.

Ms. Warren said that the two months were anomalies, adding that growth in display advertising at NYTimes.com alone had been much higher, though she declined to specify a figure.

As for the new blogs and video, “those investments will definitely add to advertising revenue,” she said, but “those things are just getting started right now.”

Steve Stup, the vice president for sales at Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive, said he began using networks this year only because the site had unpredictable traffic because of the elections. He said some advertisers might start to see networks as an inexpensive substitute for dealing with papers directly.

“It’s still a situation where if advertisers even perceive they can reach your audience, they might be inclined to go with a network, and that’s a concern I have with networks,” he said.

This has meant a spurt in networks, which are popular with marketers looking for direct response, like eBay and E*Trade. There are now more than 300 networks, most offering custom ads, and they are popular venture-capital investments and acquisition targets. Last year, Microsoft bought the network DRIVEpm, Yahoo bought Blue Lithium, and AOL bought Tacoda.

“The ad networks have actually been using the presence of publisher inventories as part of their selling story to ad buyers,” said John Frelinghuysen, a partner in Bain’s media practice. Many publishers join only the networks that do not disclose what sites they include, but even so, savvy advertisers can guess.

In response to the downturn, some publishers are exploring a larger, counterintuitive strategy: instead of creating more ad space, they are limiting it.

“We’re going to reduce the number of ad sizes we use and the number of units,” said Christian Hendricks, the vice president for interactive media at McClatchy. “It is a case where yeah, you could probably sell another advertiser by creating another ad space,” but that could hurt the revenue over all, he said. Online revenue at McClatchy rose 12.5 percent in the second quarter; a year earlier, revenue dropped 2.2 percent.

McClatchy also tries to avoid ad networks. “We don’t want to get in the habit of filling every little space we have with remnant,” Mr. Hendricks said.

Mr. Frelinghuysen said limiting the ads on a page can be smart. “That high level of unsold inventory often creates a real challenge in terms of sustaining pricing or growing pricing,” he said. “In most media, especially in television, the traditional model has been that you drive sellout, and that gives you the ability to drive pricing over time.”

Some sites unaffiliated with newspapers have also limited inventory and banned ad networks, and many report good results.

Weather.com limits its ad spaces so it can sell out each day, and it does not use ad networks, Mr. Iaffaldano said. Prices there have increased 10 to 15 percent over last year, he said.

Forbes.com stopped using ad networks this year, as did ESPN.com and CNN and other Turner sites. (Turner and Forbes then created their own networks, which they say are different from the remnant networks because they focus on narrow subjects.)

“As more and more sites like ourselves forsake networks and are public about it, the ability for the agency to think for themselves, or even suggest to a client, that they’re going to get quality impressions, will get harder and harder,” said Jim Spanfeller, the chief executive of Forbes.com.

At CNN.com, where display advertising rose 17 percent in the second quarter, the site does not use networks and limits space.

“We want to get as much value for our product as possible, and that means not having an endless supply of inventory,” said Greg D’Alba, the executive vice president and chief operating officer of CNN Advertising Sales.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/13/bu...ia/13adco.html





Probe Sees Unused Internet

A survey shows that addresses are not running out as quickly as we'd thought.
Robert Lemos

In a little more than two years, the last Internet addresses will be assigned by the international group tasked with managing the 4.3 billion numbers. And yet, while most Internet engineers are looking to Internet Protocol version 6 (IPv6), the next-generation Internet addressing scheme, a research team has probed the entire Internet and found that the problem may not be as bad as many fear. The probe reveals millions of Internet addresses that have been allocated but remain unused.

In a paper to be presented later this month at the Proceedings of the ACM Internet Measurement Conference, a team of six researchers have documented what they claim is the first complete census of the Internet in more than two decades. They discovered a surprising number of unused addresses and conclude that plenty will still be lying idle when the last numbers are handed out in a few years' time. The problem, they say, is that some companies and institutions are using just a small fraction of the many million addresses they have been allocated.

"People are very concerned that the IPv4 address space is very close to being exhausted," says John Heidemann, a research associate professor in the department of computer science at the University of Southern California (USC) and the paper's lead author. "Our data suggests that maybe there are better things we should be doing in managing the IPv4 address space."

The census, carried out every quarter since 2003 but only recently published, is the first comprehensive map of the Internet since David Smallberg, then a computer-science student at the University of California, Los Angeles, canvassed the Internet's first servers--all 300-plus of them--following the switchover from the ARPANET in early 1983.

Internet Protocol version 4 (IPv4) addresses are typically managed as network blocks consisting of 256 addresses (known as a C block), 65,536 addresses (known as a B block), or approximately 16.8 million addresses (known as an A block). About a quarter of the A block addresses--the largest segments of the Internet--were given out in the first days of the Internet to early participants and to companies and organizations including Apple, IBM, and Xerox.

Today, A blocks are issued by an organization called the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) to large Internet service providers or to regional registrars to which the A blocks are resold. But because accelerating use of the Internet is quickly eating up the remaining free blocks of network addresses, the last blocks will likely be given out between the end of 2010 and 2011.

The next-generation Internet address scheme, IPv6, solves the shortage by vastly increasing the number of addresses available. While IPv4 offers about 4.3 billion addresses for the earth's 6.7 billion people, IPv6 will offer 51 thousand trillion trillion per person. However, the move to IPv6 has progressed slowly because of cost and complexity, even with recent mandates for use of IPv6 within the U.S. government.

The new map of the Internet suggests that there is room for more hosts even if addresses are running out. The map reveals that, while roughly a quarter of all blocks of network addresses are heavily populated and therefore efficiently used, about half of the Internet is either used lightly or is located behind firewalls blocking responses to the survey. The last quarter of network blocks consists of addresses that can still be assigned in the future.

The USC research group used the most innocuous type of network packet to probe the farthest reaches of the Internet. Known as the Internet Control Message Protocol, or ICMP, this packet is typically used to send error messages between servers and other network hardware. Sending an ICMP packet to another host (an action known as pinging) is generally not seen as hostile, Heidemann says. "There are certainly people who misunderstand what we are doing," and interpret it as the prelude to an attack, he says. "By request, we remove them from the survey, but its fewer people than you might think. Pings are pretty innocuous."

The researchers found that ICMP pings stack up well against another method of host detection, the Internet's main means of transmitting data: the Transmission Control Protocol, or TCP. TCP-probing is a common technique used by network scanners, but it tends to take longer and is considered more aggressive than ICMP pings, so it may be blocked. To compare the effectiveness of each technique, the team probed a million random Internet addresses using both ICMP and TCP, finding a total of 54,297 active hosts. ICMP pings elicited a response from approximately three-quarters of visible hosts, while TCP probes garnered a response slightly less than two-thirds of the time.

In total, the researchers estimate that there are 112 million responsive addresses, with between 52 million and 60 million addresses assigned to hosts that are contactable 95 percent of the time.

The survey may miss computers behind firewalls or computers that do not respond to pings, but the overall conclusion--that the Internet has room to grow--is spot on, says Gordon Lyon, a security researcher who created the popular network scanning tool NMAP.

"There are huge chunks of IP space which are not allocated yet, and also giant swaths which are inefficiently allocated," Lyon says. "For example, Xerox, GE, IBM, HP, Apple, and Ford each have more than 16 million IP addresses to themselves because they were allocated when the Internet was just starting."
http://www.technologyreview.com/web/21528/?a=f





More on Comcast's New 22Mbps Speed Tier

New tier will cost $62.95 in DOCSIS 3.0 upgraded markets...
Karl Bode

Last week an insider told me that in addition to the $150, 50Mbps/5Mbps tier Comcast is deploying in DOCSIS 3.0 upgraded regions, the cable company is planning on unveiling a slower, 22Mbps/5Mbps tier as well. While Comcast will never officially comment on unreleased products, posts to our Comcast forums seem to confirm the upcoming tier, and suggest it will be priced at $62.95 a month. The tier is obviously aimed at competing with Verizon Fios's 20Mbps/5Mpbs tier, which costs $52.99/month when bundled with phone service and $57.99/month solo. Rumors also indicate that Comcast's standard $42.95 per month tier will be upgraded to 12Mbps/2Mbps in all DOCSIS 3.0 markets. Expect a flurry of DOCSIS 3.0 announcements shortly, with Northern New England expected to go live as soon as next week. Comcast has promised 20% of their markets will be upgraded by year's end, with all markets upgraded by the end of 2010.
http://www.dslreports.com/shownews/M...eed-Tier-98418





FCC, Wireless Providers at Odds Over Plan for Unused Airwaves
Kim Hart

A report released yesterday by the Federal Communications Commission concluded that using empty airwaves to provide free wireless Internet would not cause major interference with other services, paving the way for FCC Chairman Kevin J. Martin's proposal to sell the airwaves at a federal auction.

"We need to reserve some spectrum for free broadband services," Martin said. "This would be lifeline broadband service . . . that would be designed for lower-income people who may not otherwise have access to the Internet."

But several large wireless carriers, including T-Mobile, Verizon Wireless and AT&T, argue that using the spectrum will in fact interfere with their own broadband services operating in adjacent airwaves.

T-Mobile has been a vocal opponent of the plan, saying it will cause major disruption for its customers, especially as it rolls out its new G1 phone in partnership with Google.

FCC engineers conducted field tests last month in Seattle to determine the level of static between the services. The FCC concluded that sufficient technical protections would prevent major problems.

Martin's proposal is to auction off the spectrum, with some rules attached. Some of the spectrum would be used for free Internet service, which would have content filters to block material considered inappropriate for children. Adults would be able to get around the filters.

The network would have to reach half of the U.S. population after four years, and 95 percent after 10 years.

"The standards of protection are at least as strong as the standards we use to auction off any other spectrum," Martin said. "The standards are actually going to be tougher" to prevent interference.

The test results are good news for M2Z Networks, a Silicon Valley company with operations in Arlington that wants to use the airwaves to build a "family-friendly," nationwide high-speed network.

In May, Martin indicated he was interested in finding a way to use the spectrum to provide free broadband.

M2Z chief executive John Muleta said the plan's anti-interference rules are more stringent than necessary, given the test results.

Christopher Guttman-McCabe, vice president of CTIA, the wireless industry's main lobby group in Washington, said the companies that paid billions to buy the adjacent spectrum in 2006 deserve more assurances that their customers will not be affected.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...003074_pf.html





Free Wireless Band Passes FCC Tests
Stephen Lawson

Mobile devices using a new U.S. radio band with free wireless service would not cause significant interference with cell phones using a nearby band, the Federal Communications Commission has concluded from tests conducted last month.

The FCC is considering auctioning off frequencies in a band between 2155 and 2175 MHz to operators that would be required to offer free wireless data services in that band. The agency tested use of this proposed AWS-3 (Advanced Wireless Services 3) band because holders of nearby AWS-1 spectrum argued that it would interfere with their customers' devices.

In a report released Friday, the agency concluded, "the analysis shows that an AWS-1 and AWS-3 device operating in close proximity does not necessarily result in interference."

In addition, the FCC said its analysis was based on very bad conditions, so in more likely situations, the potential for interference would be less. For example, the analysis assumed an AWS-3 handset would always transmit at its maximum power, and that it would be operating close by to an AWS-1 handset and on a directly adjacent channel.

The 2155-2175 MHz band was once used for microwave links between carrier facilities but was set aside for AWS in 2000. In 2006, citing the lack of any FCC plan at the time for assigning the spectrum, M2Z Networks proposed using it for a combination of free and paid wireless services that would reach 95 percent of U.S. residents. The startup proposed paying the government 5 percent of its gross revenue rather than going through a traditional license auction.

Last year, the government rejected M2Z's plan, but FCC Chairman Kevin Martin is now circulating a proposal among the commissioners that would set rules for an auction of the spectrum. The agency had hoped to vote on the plan June 12 but delayed the vote due to objections from wireless operators. T-Mobile, for one, had said its own tests showed mobile use of the band would degrade its customers' experience.

The tests cited by the FCC's report were conducted Sept. 3-5 in Seattle in the presence of engineers from T-Mobile, M2Z, AT&T, Nokia and other entities. The results will be used as one part of the public record on the proposal, FCC spokesman Robert Kenny said in an e-mail interview.

If the commissioners support an auction, they will then have to set rules, possibly allowing additional time for public comment, Kenny said. An auction could take place in June or July of 2009 at the earliest, he said.

However, the September tests do not appear to have resolved the dispute.

T-Mobile took issue with Friday's FCC report, saying the agency based its conclusions on new assumptions that weren't used when the tests took place. The carrier wants to give comments before a formal auction plan goes before the commissioners.

"We don't think it's unreasonable, given that they took five weeks to make their conclusions public, to ask for 30 days to respond to those conclusions," said Kathleen Ham, T-Mobile USA's vice president of federal regulatory affairs.

M2Z, not surprisingly, praised the report and called for quick action to make the band available.

"There is no longer any need for American consumers, the public interest and the FCC’s regulatory process to be held hostage as it has been for the last five months by incumbent carriers ... who have used unfounded claims of interference to disguise their intent to prevent the introduction of new broadband competition in the AWS-3 band," M2Z said in a statement.
http://www.itworld.com/mobile-amp-wi...sses-fcc-tests





Free Broadband for the Masses

Backed by VC cash, a former FCC official's startup is out to provide no-fee, ad-supported wireless service
Steve Rosenbush

There's little debate whether the U.S. is a laggard in high-speed Internet access. About 40% of U.S. households surf the Net over so-called broadband connections. That's about half the rate in Korea and Japan. And it's significantly behind many countries in Europe.

Harder to settle is what needs to be done. Enter John Muleta, a senior U.S. communications official under both Presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush. Muleta, former head of the wireless bureau at the Federal Communications Commission, wants to offer free wireless broadband to consumers across the U.S. So he has launched a new company called M2Z Networks, which has raised an undisclosed amount of money from three major venture-capital firms, including Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, Charles River Ventures, and Redpoint Ventures.

M2Z aims provide a basic advertiser-supported service at no cost to consumers. It would charge fees for premium services, such as faster connection speeds. "The model here is broadcast TV," said Muleta, referring to free over-the-air TV, which is supported by ad revenue. He founded the company with Milo Medin, founder of the @Home Networks broadband service.

Auction Bypass?

But what may sound like a straightforward plan won't be easy to put into practice. M2Z's biggest obstacle is gaining access to the radio airwaves over which wireless signals travel. The FCC typically sells the airwaves, or spectrum, at auctions where rival bidders spend large sums with no guarantee that they can secure the specific chunks of spectrum they want. The biggest-ever FCC auction of spectrum, worth an estimated $8 billion to $15 billion, is set to begin next month.

Muleta wants to bypass the auction process altogether. He's hoping to strike a deal that would give him a preset block of underutilized spectrum in the range of 2155 megahertz to 2175 megahertz. The government has designated the spectrum for high-speed wireless services. Rather than fork over the up-front payments associated with auctions, M2Z wants to give the government 5% of annual sales.

Not if the wireless industry has anything to say about it. Wireless executives who declined to be identified said Muleta is trying to trade on his government background, using President Bush's aim to provide universal broadband by the end of next year as a way to make a buck. "It's crass," says one wireless executive. Wireless industry trade group CTIA-The Wireless Assn. opposes the proposal, too. "We don't see a need for the FCC to revisit their decision to allocate and auction this valuable spectrum for advanced wireless services," says Joe Farren, a spokesman for the group.

Broadband Bandwagon.

M2Z, which stands for "move the cost of data transport to zero," says the plan is perfectly legitimate. It points to several precedents, including the distribution of spectrum to broadcast TV companies and a swap that gave valuable airwaves to Sprint Nextel (S). That transaction, negotiated when Muleta worked at the FCC, was aimed at reducing interference over airwaves used by public safety officials.

What's more, M2Z says, the plan would serve the public interest. While the vast majority of households have access to broadband sold by cable TV and phone companies, only 40% choose to purchase it. While the price of broadband has dropped to $15 or $20 a month under many plans, it's still too expensive for many low-income households. Other families simply may not see the value.

Falling Behind.

But the limited scope of broadband usage has big economic implications, and Muleta is far from alone in drawing attention to it. New York Attorney General and gubernatorial candidate Eliot Spitzer this month outlined a plan to provide affordable broadband to all citizens of the Empire State.

Households that use slow dial-up connections can't gain access to many of the advanced information, entertainment, education, and other types of services now available over the Web. And companies and investors will be reluctant to step up investment in such sites unless they believe they can reach a big enough audience. That means the U.S. could fall behind when it comes to the formation of broadband-driven companies, jobs, and services. And it means the next generation of tech leaders could be based in countries that have more advanced broadband infrastructures than the U.S. "The fact is the U.S. lags in broadband, and sooner or later that lag is going to create other lags, in everything from economic growth to education," says Bruce Sachs, a partner at Charles River Ventures.

Even if M2Z succeeds in bypassing the auction process, plenty of other challenges remain. It's far from clear that the company can make money using a combination of advertiser-supported service and paid premium service. The price of basic broadband has dropped from the $50 level over the past few years. By the time M2Z gets to market, basic broadband may be so cheap that even lower-income households can afford it.

Tough Competition. And the company will face plenty of competition from telecom companies that offer endless arrays of premium service. Companies like Verizon (V) and AT&T (T) are building superfast fiber networks. Internet companies such as Google (GOOG) may offer wireless broadband, possibly for free.

Muleta is optimistic, though. M2Z plans to use a new kind of wireless technology called OFDM, which some say is faster and cheaper than current wireless options. Sachs says OFDM costs about one-tenth the price of wireless technologies on the market just a few years ago.

Combine OFDM with advances in antenna technology, and the company thinks it can build a basic network for as little as $1 billion, expanding as customers demand more capacity. "We think there's a demand for consumers for a very basic level of broadband, and that we can provide a lot of value to that market," Muleta says.

The most astonishing aspect of the proposal may be that $1 billion price tag. Regardless of whether M2Z succeeds, the fact that it can contemplate offering universal broadband with a relatively small investment reflects how the wireless revolution is opening up possibilities that regulators could only dream about a few years ago.
http://www.businessweek.com/technolo...522_430352.htm





2008: The Year Broadband Over Powerline Died

BPL-poster-child project taken over by city of Manassas, may be shut down...
Karl Bode

Manassas, Virginia was the first US city to see a real, non-trial launch of broadband over powerline (BPL) technology. However, BPL has floundered the last few years because of its inherent potential for interference with amateur and emergency radio, its irrelevance in the face of next-generation speeds, and the unavoidable fact that many utilities simply didn't want to be broadband providers. Manassas was a particular hotbed of interference debate, with enthusiasts complaining the FCC (who for years cheerleaded the technology a little too enthusiastically) didn't properly test the network and used bogus data to make the case for BPL.

The FCC's dream technology, embraced in the hopes it would help them obfuscate the fact their policies have created an uncompetitive duopoly, hasn't been faring well. Last May, a flagship BPL trial in Dallas operated by DirecTV and Current Communications was sold to the local utility. The network DirecTV and Current Communications had hoped would offer BPL service to 2 million residents -- is now being used for smart-electrical grid monitoring. After five-plus years of the BPL industry insisting each year would be "the year of BPL," it looks like 2008 may be known as the year that BPL died. It's estimated the technology never saw more than roughly 5,000 subscribers, most of them trial participants.

Comtek, the company who originally built the Manassas network, has read the tea leaves and begun focusing on smart electric grid technology like Current Communications. Comtek was somewhat obnoxious when it came to complaints from ham enthusiasts in Manassas, claiming that interference didn't exist, and that ham groups like the ARRL were engaged in a "campaign to turn back the clock on broadband in the United States." These days Comtek wants no part in the network it hyped for years, and the city has taken control of the network:

Quote:
ComTek was supposed to sell the technology — used to provide basic Internet capabilities to residents and businesses — to Smart Grid LLC. However, the deal fell through this year. Instead of axing the program right away, the council decided to keep the service for the roughly 675 customers until April, when it will be on the budget cutting room floor for fiscal 2010.
In other words, another network that was supposed to be a shining example of broadband over powerline's promise is likely going to be shelved. The city may potentially keep the network operational to monitor the city's electric grid, but says the technology simply isn't viable as a major broadband option. That's something we've been saying for going on half a decade, though many didn't want to hear it.
http://www.dslreports.com/shownews/2...ine-Died-98477





Revived Fervor for Smart Monitors Linked to a Server
Ashlee Vance

Instead of having a big, loud and complex computer on your desk, what if you could have a quiet, thin machine that rarely needed an upgrade or a fix?

That has been the goal of many technology companies over the last 15 or so years. They have tried to disrupt Microsoft’s dominance of the PC desktop by creating what amount to intelligent monitors.

Rather than relying on their innards for handling work, these so-called thin clients send it out over the network to much larger servers that hold all of the necessary software and handle data-processing jobs.

For a variety of reasons, including slow data connections and clunky software, this model failed to live up to its promise and turned into an industrywide joke. But now the technology is making a comeback, and large companies like Hewlett-Packard, Sun Microsystems and Samsung are increasing their investments in thin client systems. Plenty of start-ups are looking at the market as well.

Thin-client backers have by now mostly given up on challenging Microsoft — in fact, in most cases they make it easy to use Windows over the network. But they continue to bill thin clients as a way to save companies money and make their systems more secure.

“The hype cycle that has followed thin clients started at this enormous level, disappeared into negativity and now is bubbling back up,” said Bob O’Donnell, an analyst at the consulting firm IDC.

The benefits of the technology seem obvious. Software glitches, updates and security are much less of a problem. The thin-client model places the burden of managing computers on professionals monitoring servers in a large warehouse.

Perhaps best of all, the users’ data is stored on the network. If the machine on your desk breaks, you just get another one and connect to the data warehouse, and off you go.

The biggest changes driving the interest in thin clients stem from networking and software improvements. The spread of high-speed Internet connections means that people working in a cubicle and at home can rely on an effective link back to the data warehouses.

H.P., Citrix Systems, Microsoft and others are also fine-tuning the software that controls communication between thin clients and the servers. This has led to smoother-running machines that can handle even video and audio applications.

Most significantly, the pool of programs thin clients can use has grown thanks to so-called virtualization software, which lets companies package up an entire operating system and all of its applications. Instead of picking and choosing certain software to send over the wire, companies can ship entire “virtual desktops.”

The reinvigorated buzz around thin-client technology has caused a scramble to address the market in innovative ways.

For example, Teradici, a start-up near Vancouver, produces a microprocessor that can speed the flow of software from data warehouses to thin clients. Dell and I.B.M. offer systems based on this chip and say that they can deal with even the most demanding software, like design programs.

Next month, Samsung will ship the 19-inch SyncMaster 930ND monitor, which relies on Teradici’s chip. Business customers can plug an Ethernet cable into the monitor and turn it into a full-fledged computer by connecting back to their data centers.

Customers of the Silicon Valley start-up Pano Logic plug their monitors, keyboards and mice into a small device that manages connections with servers holding full virtual desktops. The Hot-E from the Australian company ThinLinX is similar. One longtime player in the thin-client business, Wyse, manufactures an array of slim hardware, including laptops, that handle much the same work.

Noting rising interest in thin clients and virtual desktops, H.P. created a new group six months ago to address the technology, after buying the thin-client company Neoware for $214 million in late 2007.

“What you are seeing is that a lot of the right technology elements are starting to be there,” said Roberto Moctezuma, the vice president in charge of H.P.’s “desktop solutions” organization. “I think five years from now you will see a lot of thin computing in businesses.”

JetBlue has bought into thin clients for 20 percent of its computers using a combination of H.P.’s hardware and Citrix’s software. The technology will take center stage at the airline’s new terminal at Kennedy Airport.

“Thin clients represent a strategic direction for us,” said Pat Thompson, director of technology operations at JetBlue. “They are pretty much behind every customer-facing piece of technology that you see out there.”

By next January, the Regional Transportation District of Denver, which handles public transit in the Denver area, plans to replace about one-quarter of its systems with thin clients from Wyse running virtualization software from VMware.

“We’re looking at saving about $30,000 per year just in energy costs,” said Trent Ratcliff, the technology infrastructure manager. “And we’ll probably replace these every seven to nine years instead of every three years with PCs.”

Despite the budding interest, thin clients remain a tough sell for cultural reasons. People are used to keeping confidential and personal information on their own machines, and many companies see moving away from traditional desktops as a risk. In 2008, only 3.7 million thin clients were shipped, compared with 300 million PCs, according to IDC.

That should start to change in 2009 as companies begin a number of test projects and in 2010 when large-scale commitments to the technology begin, Mr. O’Donnell said.

Wall Street firms looking to make things easier for employees and save money, especially in these tight times, are driving some of the early tests.

“Financial services companies in the U.S. are very interested in using thin clients,” said Scott Woodgate, director for the Windows business group at Microsoft.

Microsoft has developed its virtualization software and acquired a pair of software makers — Calista Technologies and Kidaro — whose products could complement thin client technology.

Looking ahead, the thin client model could creep into the home, with PC-like functions arriving via TV set-top boxes or through devices that plug into the back of televisions. Internet service providers have started to explore the idea of selling these products to consumers and then offering monthly subscriptions to computing services.

Consumers would benefit by buying a device that’s cheaper than a PC but can still tap into a full virtual computer back in a managed data warehouse.

“There are companies that are talking about peeling off an infinite number of virtual systems and renting them to consumers,” said Roger L. Kay, president of the analysis firm Endpoint Technologies. “This is an idea whose time has come, and the argument is growing every day in favor of thin computing of some sort.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/13/te...ng/13thin.html





‘Chihuahua’ Is Top Draw at Box Office
Brooks Barnes

This is how far movie stars have fallen in their ability to pull audiences into theaters, at least when the story revolves around Iraq and the messiness of the Middle East: A picture about talking dogs, “Beverly Hills Chihuahua,” trampled Leonardo DiCaprio and Russell Crowe at the weekend box office.

“Body of Lies,” a terrorism thriller starring Mr. DiCaprio and Mr. Crowe, sold an anemic $13.1 million in tickets at North American theaters, according to the theater tracking company Box Office Mojo. The movie’s stars are considered two of the biggest draws in the business. And the film was directed by Ridley Scott (“Blade Runner,” “American Gangster”), one of the few filmmakers who are household names.

Warner Brothers, the studio behind this serious, expensive movie, blamed the bad timing of an economic crisis. “The result is directly related to the dire mood of Americans,” Dan Fellman, president for domestic theatrical distribution at Warner Brothers, who flatly rejected the industry belief that the film’s megawatt stars should have garnered higher sales regardless.

Still, Warner Brothers had turned “Body of Lies” into a referendum on star power by choosing to market the film squarely on the backs of Mr. DiCaprio and Mr. Crowe, delivering scant information about the plotline in the process. And the marketing was considerable, beginning in force during the Beijing Olympics and continuing with a major billboard and television campaign. (“Body of Lies” cost an estimated $70 million to produce; the average studio film costs an average of nearly $36 million to market.)

The studio worried that selling “Body of Lies” based on its plot would be difficult. Adapted from the best-selling novel by David Ignatius, the movie centers on a C.I.A. operative who is tracking a terrorist leader, and bounces from Iraq to Turkey to the United States to Jordan. In the past few years movies focusing on the Iraq war and the fallout from 9/11 (“Rendition” and “Lions for Lambs,” for example) have generally performed terribly, even with big-name stars like Tom Cruise and Reese Witherspoon.

Escapism definitely ruled the weekend — something that should ring alarm bells for almost all the Hollywood studios as they prepare to flood the market with somber awards-driven pictures. Films like “Changeling,” starring Angelina Jolie as a mother in search of her kidnapped son, and “The Soloist,” featuring Jamie Foxx as a homeless musician, may have an extra hurdle to cross.

“Beverly Hills Chihuahua,” a Walt Disney Pictures release, sold an estimated $17.5 million in tickets over the weekend, according to Box Office Mojo. That was enough for the No. 1 slot for the second week in a row, bringing its cumulative gross to $52.5 million. Second place went to another escapist entry, this time in the horror genre: “Quarantine,” released by Sony/Screen Gems, sold about $14.2 million in tickets, drawing heavily on younger moviegoers.

“Body of Lies” was third. Fourth place went to “Eagle Eye” with $11 million (for a new total of $70.6 million). And “Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist” was fifth with $6.5 million ($20.8 million).
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/13/movies/13box.html





Ridley Scott Takes On 'War'

Film based on Haldeman novel 'Forever'
Michael Fleming

Fox 2000 has acquired rights to Joe Haldeman’s 1974 novel "The Forever War," and Ridley Scott is planning to make it into his first science fiction film since he delivered back-to-back classics with "Blade Runner" and "Alien."

Scott intended to follow those films with "The Forever War," but rights complications delayed his plans for more than two decades.

The film will be produced by Scott Free. Vince Gerardis and Ralph Vicinanza will exec produce. Their company, Created By, reps Haldeman and spent the last decade trying to get back the rights.

"I first pursued ‘Forever War’ 25 years ago, and the book has only grown more timely and relevant since," Scott told Daily Variety. "It’s a science-fiction epic, a bit of ‘The Odyssey’ by way of ‘Blade Runner,’ built upon a brilliant, disorienting premise."

Book revolves around a soldier who battles an enemy in deep space for only a few months, only to return home to a planet he doesn’t recognize some 20 years later, Scott said.

"The Forever War" rights were acquired right after publication by f/x titan Richard Edlund, who spent $400,000 of his own money and intended to make the book his directorial debut. The book became an iconic sci-fi title but Edlund, who won two Oscars — including one for visual effects on "Raiders of the Lost Ark" — never got "The Forever War" off the ground. After a Sci Fi Channel miniseries stalled, Scott became interested again and Edlund was ready to make a deal. It took six months to secure all the rights.

Scott Free and Fox 2000’s Elizabeth Gabler and Rodney Ferrell will hire a writer immediately. Scott, whose "Body of Lies" was released Friday, next plans to direct "Nottingham," starring Russell Crowe. He has several other projects percolating that include the thriller "Child 44," for which Richard Price just penned a script, and "Gucci," about the internecine squabbles within the fashion family that led to the murder of Maurizio Gucci. That Fox 2000 pic has a new draft by Charles Randolph.
http://www.variety.com/article/VR111...goryid=13&cs=1





Google Taps Full-Length Shows to Bolster YouTube
John Letzing

Google on Friday mounted another effort to transform its popular YouTube video sharing service into a profit engine by presenting full-length TV shows from CBS replete with prominently displayed advertising.

The programs will include new editions of CBS shows including "The Young and the Restless," "Dexter" and "Californication," according to YouTube director of content partnerships Jordan Hoffner.

On Thursday, Google is expected to report its fiscal third-quarter results amid growing concern among investors over the health of the Internet advertising market.

Google shares have fallen recently alongside the broader market. The shares rose Friday to close at $332, up 3 percent.

The episodes will be presented with so-call "pre-roll," "mid-roll" and "post-roll" advertisements that briefly disrupt a video with an advertiser's own content.

The move highlights Google's ongoing effort to turn YouTube, which it acquired for $1.65 billion in 2006, into a money-maker commensurate with the service's popularity. Google has been criticized for that purchase, as investors and analysts struggled to understand how a video service best known for quirky content uploaded by users could provide a reliable platform for corporate advertisers.

In a conference call with analysts in July, Google Chief Executive Eric Schmidt acknowledged the matter and said, "The perfect ad product for YouTube has not been invented yet."

Google has experimented with a variety of advertising formats for YouTube, most often using less-disruptive ads overlaid onto videos as they play. There has been some debate over Internet users' willingness to sit through formats such as pre-roll ads, which are presented as brief, separate videos prior to a main feature.

But Hoffner said the company has never had a bias for one ad format over another, and has instead been open to matching different ad formats with different content varieties. In addition, he noted a "growing acceptance by users of full-length advertising."
http://www.siliconvalley.com/news/ci...nclick_check=1





TorrentFreak TV Launches
Ernesto

TorrentFreak is proud to present the first episode of ‘TorrentFreak TV’, a recap of some of the best, most interesting or remarkable stories from the wonderful world of BitTorrent. The show is directed by none other than Andrej Preston, who some people might remember as the founder of the legendary Suprnova.org.

The plan is to release a new episode every other week. The episodes will be posted here on TorrentFreak, and in the near future on TorrentFreak.tv, with an iTunes compatible RSS feed.

We’re all very excited about this new project, and we hope to see many more episodes in the future. Below, Andrej himself (aka Sloncek) will introduce people who contributed to TorrentFreak TV.

Quote:
The idea for the show came when Ernesto asked me if I was willing to produce some webisodes for him. Of course I wanted to do it, since I am trying to get an UnderGrad major in Producing. :)

The first step was to get a team together, and I knew straight ahead who I would want to be the host of it. So, I asked my friend and classmate Ashley Hardy, which did not really need to think twice about this.

Then, I needed somebody to do the introduction and graphics for the show and my good friend Micky Smeds, who is an Animation student, stepped in. He also pointed me towards the people who could create the music and soundFX needed for the show - LJUDAFABRIKEN. Just when I thought I had most of the ‘crucial’ people, I remembered I need somebody to write the script. Luckily, my friend Krista Steinberger jumped in the last second.

With the episodes I want to bring most of the TorrentFreak’s news to people who might not read it for whatever reason, or who just prefer the ‘watching’ format. The whole show is meant not to be too ’serious’, since the things it talks about can get really dull pretty fast if said the wrong way.

Like every pilot, this one has many mistakes. We learned a lot from it, but still it would be great if the viewers could send us an email and tell us what exactly is interesting to them and so on, so that we can be better with every episode.
The episode can be downloaded from Mininova as well. For tips, comments or suggestions, feel free to contact the crew at tv@torrentfreak.com.
http://torrentfreak.com/torrentfreak-tv-081012/





Digital TV Switch Will Be Messy: FCC Official
Kim Dixon

A pending mandatory switch of all U.S. televisions to digital will be messy, a federal communications official said on Tuesday, urging broadcasters to step up local efforts to educate the public.

Broadcasters have the most to lose if viewers' screens fade to black when analog signals are turned off, said Robert McDowell, a Republican on the five-member Federal Communications Commission (FCC), urging broadcasters to tailor informational campaigns to local markets.

Congress ordered the switch to digital, effective February 17, to free up public airwaves for other uses, such as for police and fire departments.

Despite a wide-ranging education campaign by the government and broadcasters, consumers are likely to face glitches, McDowell said.

"The transition will be messy ... but we will get through it," he said.

About 15 percent of U.S. households use only analog TV sets and could risk their screens going black as analog signals are turned off, according to the Government Accountability Office, a congressional watchdog group. Owners of analog televisions must buy a TV converter box to receive a digital signal.

The digital transition will not impact TV sets that are connected to cable service, according to the FCC.

Broadcasters should target their advertising based on the technical needs of local markets, McDowell said. In some markets, for example, consumers are more likely to require new antennas for their converter boxes to work, he said.

Regulators are offering consumers $40 coupons to help pay for converter boxes, but have no plan to manage an anticipated last-minute frenzy of consumer demand for the coupons, the GAO said last month.

Big networks, such as Walt Disney Co's (DIS.N: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz) ABC, General Electric's (GE.N: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz) NBC, and CBS Corp (CBS.N: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz) own some local stations, usually in big markets.

A host of other companies like Hearst-Argyle Television, Inc (HTV.N: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz), McClatchy Co (MNI.N: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz) and the Washington Post (WPO.N: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz) also own local affiliates.

FCC commissioners are traveling the country to educate local officials and broadcasters about the switch. McDowell just returned from Montana, Oklahoma and Alaska.

The GAO report said regulators are unprepared for an expected surge in demand for government help from consumers needing to switch.

(Reporting by Kim Dixon; editing by Susan Kelly)
http://www.reuters.com/article/techn...49D8M220081014





Apple's Steve Jobs Calls Blu-Ray "a Bag of Hurt"
Darren Murph

Straight from El Jobso's mouth at today's notebook keynote: "Blu-ray is just a bag of hurt. It's great to watch the movies, but the licensing of the tech is so complex, we're waiting till things settle down and Blu-ray takes off in the marketplace." Phil chimed in with "We have the best HD movie and TV options in iTunes." Damn. As if that weren't enough to make Mac-lovin' home theater junkies cringe, Steve also commented (when asked about the dearth of HDMI in his introductions) that HDMI was "limited in resolution," and Philip Schiller elaborated by saying that "for typical computer use, DisplayPort is the connector of the future." So, does that mean we can't count on Blu-ray support in OS X 10.5.6?
http://www.engadgethd.com/2008/10/14...a-bag-of-hurt/





Is Laser-Powered HDTV the Highest Def Yet?
Josh Quittner

I covet my neighbor's Man Cave.

Dorfman has a small paneled room, lined with his books and sports trophies, close enough to the front door so that if Mrs. Dorfman is out, cigars can be enjoyed. There's just enough room for a leather easy chair and ottoman, where Dorfman himself presides, and a big love seat, where two men can sit without accidentally touching. The focal point of the Man Cave, of course, is the high-definition TV, a once state-of-the-art-and now relatively puny-36-in. (91 cm) liquid-crystal-display (lcd) screen. "Want to watch the Michigan game?" I asked him on a recent Saturday morning. "The Man Cave?" he offered, as usual.

"Come to my house instead," I countered. "I'm testing a new TV. It's supposed to be pretty sweet." Dorfman acquiesced, not realizing that an extremely large and powerful TV was about to rock his tiny-TV world.

Upon arrival, he was awestruck by the monolith that rose from my living-room floor like the obelisk in 2001: A Space Odyssey. "What's that?" he asked. This new HDTV was so big, I had to put it in front of the entertainment center that held my stereo and old HDTV. It was so big, it blotted out the windows and the sunshine that ordinarily would have threatened to ruin a perfect day for watching TV.

"This, my friend, is the Mitsubishi LaserVue-65 in. of blazing, high-definition fury," I said. "Is it a cheap LCD, like the one in your Man Cave? No, it is not. Is it a somewhat better plasma TV, like our neighbor has? Wrong again. The LaserVue is the first HDTV to be powered by lasers!" I paused to let Dorfman think about that, about what the world would be like with such a thing so close to the Man Cave. Then I added quietly, "It's the best home-entertainment display in America."

"How much?" he asked.

"Er, $6,999. But it uses two-thirds less power than an lcd or plasma TV."

Dorfman whistled. "We'll all be on soup lines soon, but at least we'll have great televisions."

I put on the Michigan game, which wasn't easy. Since the TV blocked the shelves that held my cable box, I had to wedge my arm between the LaserVue and the entertainment center to get the remote to work. But once we had the game on, it was worth the slight bruising: the colors were sensational and bright; the players, larger than life. I had lugged a pair of speakers up from the basement and connected them to my sound system for the full surround-sound effect, so when the band struck up the Michigan fight song ("Hail! to the victors valiant/ Hail! to the conqu'ring heroes"), Dorfman, an alumnus, brushed away a tear. Emboldened, I marveled at the superior picture quality. "Supposedly, the reds are redder," I said, pointing at the ruby ESPN logo at the top of the screen.

"Are you sure that's red?" he asked. "It looks a little off."

He was messing with my head, of course, but it shook me. I decided to call blogger Gary Merson, whose HDGuru.com is the bible of the HDTV industry, and ask him the Passover question: How is the laser HD different from all other HDTVs?

"It displays pitch-black blacks, consumes less power than a similarly sized TV and has the widest color gamut of any display ever made," he said. The reds, he noted, were a case in point. Put the LaserVue alongside Dorfman's lcd, and his reds would look orange. Indeed, the LaserVue comes closer than any TV before it to reproducing the colors one sees in a film in a movie theater. Mitsubishi, which has a lock on the technology so far, is working on a 73-in. (185 cm) LaserVue. Merson said prices (and screen sizes) would doubtless diminish over time.

Later, Dorfman took in this info and conceded that the TV was indeed awesome. "You know what would make it even better?" he asked. "If it was in the Man Cave." Yeah, right, as if it would fit.
http://www.time.com/time/business/ar...rss-topstories





Anti-Pirates Wipe Out Movie and TV ‘Fansub’ Sites
enigmax

This week many sites offering homemade Greek subtitles received legal threats from an organization representing the TV and movie industries. Very quickly, fansub sites closed down or removed access to subtitles, leaving thousands of Greek file-sharers quite literally in a position of not understanding what is going on.

EPOE, Company for the Protection of Audio-Visual Works (known as Eteria Prostasias Optikoakoustikon Ergon), is a non-profit organization working to protect the copyrights of its for-profit members. Operating at the behest of its members, EPOE is given authority by Greek law enforcement and works under license of the Greek Copyright Organization, which itself is linked to the Ministry of Culture. Its members include many Greek companies but its international members are most easily recognized as they include MPA, Columbia, Fox, Universal, Buena Vista, MGM, Warner and Paramount.

On Tuesday, virtually every site offering user-generated Greek subtitles (fansubs) for English language movies and TV shows received legal threats from EPOE. Within a very short time, all sites including greektvsubs.gr, subtitles.gr, greeksubs, subs4u.gr and apsubs.com had either closed down or removed all subtitles. A sample of the translated complaint issued to greektvsubs is shown below:

Quote:
According to our information and evidence, in your capacity as owner and manager of the website under the name www.greektvsubs.gr, without right and in violation of the provisions of Law 2121/93, without the required prior written permission of the legitimate beneficiaries of copyright and related rights of our member-companies, are engaged in a totally illegal activity, which consists of right without translation in the English language texts / dialogues and subtitles creation of films or television series, the royalties of which belong to our member companies, which you have then illegally and without right, distributed via the Internet.
So why are the Greeks file-sharers so upset? Yiannis, a user close to the subtitling sites explained to TorrentFreak: “Greek TV networks are most of the times very slow in airing the popular shows (one or two years is common), not showing them at all or the worst, or show a season or two and then forget about them, leaving the fans looking desperately for solutions. DVD distribution companies are no better. Some popular shows do not even exist in a translated form.”

“A couple of years ago dedicated fans started working to translate and create subtitles of their favorite shows and they teamed up to create a few web sites to share them with the rest of the fans,” Yiannis said “One of the biggest was greektvsubs.gr. These people managed to do with hard work, love and dedication what the TV industry failed: translate TV show episodes hours after they were aired and offer the subtitles for Greek speaking people to be able to watch their favorite show.”

There is currently a fierce debate surrounding the legality of such fan-subtitling sites. The Greek subtitles (in common with user-generated subtitles in other locales) are the result of hours of really hard work, listening to the TV show or movie in its native English and then translating by hand into Greek. The ’subbers’ don’t have access to the original scripts, everything is created from scratch since the movie or TV show isn’t even available in Greek, so on this basis some believe the sites operate legally. However, some are suggesting that under Greek copyright law, a translation could be considered as a ‘derivative work’ and as such requires permission from the original copyright holder.

Whatever the truth - and this is echoed in the emails we’ve received here at TorrentFreak from the fans - there is obviously a really healthy demand for these products in Greek language (not to mention from deaf people who absolutely rely on subtitles), yet the media companies spend their money on litigation, instead of addressing the core issue of giving the fans what they want.

In the meantime, while EPOE throws its considerable weight around, the show goes on for Greek subtitling fans as they head to their new home at gr.tvsubtitles.net.

Thanks to Yiannis and fakeb0us
http://torrentfreak.com/anti-pirates...-sites-081017/





Online Streaming Adds Millions of Viewers For ‘Heroes,’ ‘The Office’
Brian Stelter

How many consumers stream TV episodes on the Internet? How many download the episodes on iTunes? How many watch the episodes using video on demand? How many view the episodes on mobile phones?

NBC is trying to tell by adding together all the exposure of its episodes on five platforms in a rubric they call the TAMi, short for “Total Audience Measure index.” The TAMi was first used for the Olympics and is now being released on a weekly basis for NBC’s prime time shows.

While the piece-meal approach to measuring multi-platform views leaves much to be desired, the data persuasively shows that free Internet streaming is the most popular alternative to traditional television viewing. Next to streaming, paid downloads, video on demand and mobile viewing all account for only a tiny share of the total viewing.

Take “Heroes,” NBC’s signature drama. The season’s second episode of “Heroes,” on Sept. 29, was viewed about 17 million times, NBC estimates. Television viewing accounted for 12.8 million of those views. Online streams added 4 million views to the total. Paid downloads on iTunes, Microsoft’s Zune and Xbox stores, and Amazon.com accounted for 19,780 views. Video on demand added 19,438 views and mobile added 16,984 views.

The data includes a big asterisk: all online streams are not counted equal. On NBC.com, each segment of an episode is counted as a stream, so a full episode could count as six streams. On Hulu.com, one episode equals one stream, avoiding the duplication problem. Presuming that half the views were on NBC.com — and thus two million of the streams should actually count as 340,000 views — then the total streaming figure of 2.3 million still represents 20 percent of the total viewing of the episode.

The first episode of “Heroes” saw 8.1 million streams, but like other shows, the number of streams dissipated as the season continued. The show’s third episode, on Oct. 6, saw 11.2 million TV viewers, 3.1 million streams, 15,306 downloads, 5,627 video on demand views, and 18,306 mobile views.

First-year shows like “Knight Rider” that were released online one week before they premiered on TV enjoyed a nice boost from the Web, but it’s unclear whether the early releases had a long-term benefit. The first episode of “Knight Rider” was streamed 1.3 million times and downloaded 90,843 times. The second episode was streamed 692,000 times and downloaded 4,383 times, and the third episode was streamed 393,230 times and downloaded 2,095 times. (NBC notes that episodes that air earlier can “accumulate more exposures” because they are available for a longer period of time.)

“The Office,” now in its fifth season, is an especially popular program among online viewers. Its first episode was viewed by 15.4 million on TV and another 6.9 million times on streaming sites. Again, streams are not counted equally, but even if half the streams came from NBC.com, the full episode was still viewed 4 million times online, an impressive amount.
http://tvdecoder.blogs.nytimes.com/2...the-office/?hp





Apple Sells 200 Million TV Shows, But is That a Big Deal?
Greg Sandoval

Apple said Thursday that it has sold 200 million TV episodes on iTunes. This might sound like a lot, but the money that TV networks see from the deal may still be relatively small.

The company also announced that the download store would offer high-definition TV shows from all four of the major broadcast networks--CBS, Fox, ABC, and NBC--and that it had sold 1 million HDTV episodes since last month.

To put the 200 million number into context, Peter Kafka at Silicon Alley Insider figured it this way: Apple sold the 200 million episodes over three years. If each show sold for the standard $1.99 iTunes price and the networks took a 70 percent slice then they would have seen about $280 million. That means the group is getting just over $93 million a year.

NBC has said that it accounts for 40 percent of the videos sold on iTunes, which would mean it takes in $36 million. Here's where things get hinky. That figure is more than twice the $15 million that NBC Universal CEO Jeff Zucker said the company nets from iTunes. Of course, he said that a year ago, just after pulling NBC content from iTunes following a spat over pricing.

This could mean that the sales rate at iTunes jumped in the past year while NBC's content was gone. Sales may have skyrocketed with the debut of the iPhone. We don't know. Regardless, the truth is that even in a best-case scenario the numbers are a drop in the bucket. The Television Bureau of Advertising reported in August that total broadcast ad revenue was just over $11 billion for the second quarter.

That's worth repeating: $11 billion for the second quarter.

But does this mean iTunes won't be a significant video distributor in coming years? No way. The numbers show that a significant amount of people are willing to pay cash for mobile content, the same content they can watch for free via broadcast or at Web sites like Hulu.

"Consumption of (mobile video) is not replacing broadcast but it is supplementing it," said Josh Martin, an analyst with the Yankee Group. "This is an indication consumers are willing to consume media in multiple forms. Providing freedom of choice is important for content owners. Linear broadcast is still the golden goose but there are other opportunities for the networks to make money and please consumers."
http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-10068141-93.html





Shari Redstone Comments on Sale of Viacom, CBS Stake: Report

Media mogul Sumner Redstone's daughter Shari said on Tuesday that the movie theater business she runs wasn't to blame for the forced sale of a chunk of the family's holdings in Viacom Inc and CBS Corp, the Wall Street Journal reported.

National Amusements Inc, a privately held company controlled by Sumner Redstone, sold more than 20 percent of its stake in Viacom Inc and CBS Corp to pay down debt to comply with its credit agreement covenants.

People familiar with the situation said the loan was used, at least in part, to expand movie theatres and was linked to the operating performance of that business, as well as Viacom and CBS stock, the Journal reported.

"The implication that this stock sale was required by the operation and expansion of the company's theater circuit is not accurate," Shari Redstone's movie theater unit told the paper in an e-mailed statement on Tuesday.

The sale "was the direct result of last week's historic financial crisis, which included the precipitous...drop in value of CBS and Viacom stock," the statement said, without elaborating.

People familiar with the situation say Shari Redstone is sensitive to criticism about her management of the movie-theater chain from her father, who chairs the family holding company and has differed with his daughter over the future of the movie-theater business, the Journal said.

Shares of Viacom and CBS had plunged roughly 20 percent last week in their worst single-day fall since they were split into separate companies in late 2005. Both are still controlled by Sumner Redstone.

Calls to CBS Corp and Viacom Inc seeking Sumner Redstone's reaction were not immediately returned.

(Reporting by Shradhha Sharma in Bangalore; Editing by Kim Coghill)
http://www.reuters.com/article/innov...49E14E20081015





A Complex Engine Seizes Up
Matt Richtel and Stephanie Rosenbloom

With his retirement account devastated by the plunging stock market, Henry Vicenteno is feeling poor — poor enough to play the Grinch this holiday season.

Mr. Vicenteno, 31, an aircraft mechanic in Cleveland, said his 9-year-old son had asked for a copy of Skate, a skateboarding video game by Electronic Arts. “I told him I’d buy it for him, but really I’m just going to Blockbuster to rent it,” Mr. Vicenteno said. “Before, I would have bought it, no problem. But it’s like $50, and we can’t be spending that kind of money.”

With consumers increasingly worried about a severe economic recession, Mr. Vicenteno is hardly the only person keeping his wallet shut.

A growing body of statistical and anecdotal evidence suggests that demand for televisions, computers, cameras and other electronics is falling sharply — portending extra discounts for customers in coming months but a very unhappy holiday season for retailers, electronics makers and component suppliers.

MasterCard reported last week that spending on consumer electronics and home appliances dropped 13.8 percent in September compared with a year ago. That number is by far the largest recorded since MasterCard began tracking the category in 2003, and twice the largest previous monthly drop in such spending.

“September was a dramatic pullback in terms of spending on consumer electronics,” said Kamalesh Roa, director of economic research for MasterCard SpendingPulse. In particular, “people are pulling back from buying big-ticket items.”

Wal-Mart Stores, the nation’s largest retailer, was one of the few companies to report positive September sales figures last week, but the company’s sales of discretionary items were soft. At the company’s Sam’s Club division, electronics and videogames were among the weakest categories.

BJ’s Wholesale Club, which had strong September sales over all, said sales of electronics, TVs and prerecorded videos declined from the previous year, although computer sales were up.

The sudden and steep drop in the economy and consumer confidence has caught retail chains by surprise and left them scrambling to adapt their sales strategies. The holidays are a critical time for sales of electronics and in-home entertainment products. The video game industry traditionally does 50 percent of its business in the holiday quarter.

If the early sales trends continue or get worse, they are likely to push some troubled retailers into bankruptcy. Industry analysts view Circuit City Stores, whose stock closed Tuesday at 40 cents a share, as the electronics retailer that is most vulnerable.

Circuit City fired its chief executive last month and said that sales at stores open at least a year, a measure of retail health, fell 13.3 percent for three months ending in August. The company said sales dropped in virtually every category of electronics, from personal computers to GPS navigation units. The only exception was flat-panel TVs.

Under the terms it has reached with creditors, Circuit City can borrow up to $1.3 billion against existing inventory to buy more inventory, according to Anthony Chukumba, an industry analyst with FTN Midwest Securities. But he said that manufacturers have grown cautious about how much merchandise to ship to Circuit City, fearing the company is financially unstable. As inventory goes down, credit available to Circuit City to buy additional inventory falls, he said.

“It becomes a death spiral,” Mr. Chukumba said. “I call this Christmas ‘Circuit City’s last stand.’ ”

Circuit City did not respond to a request for comment. Its chief rival, Best Buy, declined to comment.

But they have to be worried about customers like Wayne Giacomo, 66, a retired telecommunications supervisor who was shopping Friday at a Best Buy in Arlington Heights, Ill., near Chicago.

Mr. Giacomo recently bought a 52-inch flat-screen TV, and he had been hoping to add a $2,000 surround-sound unit to complete his home theater. But after watching his stocks nose-dive last week, he is curbing unnecessary spending. “The surround sound is going to have to wait, at least until next spring,” he said.

His consolation purchase instead: a $39 DVD boxed set of the 1970s television show “Mission Impossible.”

The slowdown at retailers is already beginning to be felt among their suppliers. Micron Technology, a supplier of flash memory for electronics like music players and digital cameras, said Thursday that it was stopping flash production at one factory and laying off nearly 3,000 workers because of weakening demand.

Analysts said that companies in Taiwan and Korea that manufacture electronics and the parts used to build them are being told to prepare for slowing demand.

Doug Bell, an analyst with the research firm IDC, said his company plans to cut its projections of a 10.2 percent rise in personal computer sales in the fourth quarter after conversations with both manufacturers and consumers. “We’re seeing the lowest consumer confidence levels in a long time, and major vendors are cutting shipments,” he said.

Sales of high-end cellphones could also take a hit. This Christmas was supposed to be the season of the smartphone, when all of the major mobile phone makers came out with new devices to challenge Apple’s iPhone. In the past few weeks, new touch-screen competitors have been introduced, including the G1 powered by Google’s Android platform, Nokia’s 5800 Xpress Music and the BlackBerry Storm from Research in Motion.

But with consumers worried more about the financial crisis and its impact on their pocketbooks, the new must-have phone could become a not-have. Smartphones are among the most expensive mobile devices, some costing hundreds of dollars.

“It’s the impulse purchase and the self-purchase that’s going to suffer this holiday,” said Marshal Cohen, chief industry analyst at NPD Group.

And retailers, worried about grabbing the few dollars consumers are willing to part with, will be offering the kind of discounts usually only seen in the days leading up to Christmas. “I think electronics are going to go through an early promotional period,” Mr. Cohen said. “We’ll be lucky to get through October without aggressive promotions.”

Still, for all the gloom, the outlook for electronics is better than for retail sales as a whole, according to analysts.

Jason Oxman, vice president for industry affairs for the Consumer Electronics Association, said the trade group was projecting that sales of televisions and audio equipment would be 4.7 percent higher this holiday than a year ago, while video game hardware sales will be up 3.5 percent.

Meanwhile, many analysts are predicting that overall retail sales will be flat or decline over the holidays, dragged down by categories like apparel and luxury goods. “With consumers already saying they plan to spend less, stores with lean inventories, those inventories on sale as soon as they hit the floor, and tightening credit both for businesses and consumers, where can growth come from?” Mr. Cohen wrote in a report on Tuesday.

Mr. Chukumba said some consumers would respond to the economic downturn by buying electronics instead of going out to dinner or a sporting event. “There’s a nesting phenomenon going on,” he said. But the concern for retailers is that customers will nest with the products they already have.

Damion Isaac, 31, a warehouse manager from South Euclid, Ohio, near Cleveland, said he has a six-year-old 31-inch TV that he is itching to replace. But he cannot afford to buy a new one, so he will not even go window-shopping at Best Buy. “I don’t even torture myself like that,” he said.

Laura M. Holson, Chris Maag and Karen Ann Cullotta contributed reporting.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/15/bu.../15retail.html





In Credit Crisis, Some Turn to Online Peers for Cash
Alan B. Krueger

While conventional credit markets have frozen, imperiling the entire economy, one nontraditional lending source has become hotter: peer-to-peer lending.

P2p lending is a way to link lenders to borrowers without intermediation by a bank, much the way that eBay matches buyers and sellers of goods without a store in between. For example, at the nation’s largest p2p lending site, Prosper.com, those seeking to borrow funds list how much they desire, the maximum interest rate they will pay and some optional personal information about themselves, such as a photograph. They also must submit to a credit check. Lenders specify the minimum interest rate they will be willing to accept. The Web site matches lenders to borrowers to clear the market, when there are enough willing lenders to fulfill a loan request. The Web site also charges a fee of 2 to 3 percent of the value of the loan from the borrower, and 1 percent of the outstanding value of the loan from the lender each year.

Other popular p2p lending sites, which may work somewhat differently, include Lending Club, Loanio, VirginMoney and Zopa.

Historically, many would-be p2p borrowers have not been able to get a loan. The loans in p2p lending typically are not collateralized. Default rates are high. As a result, interest rates are also high.

Growth in p2p lending has been hampered by a problem known as adverse selection. The sites tend to attract high-risk borrowers who are unable to obtain credit at lower rates from traditional sources like a bank. Fear of lending to lemons, in turn, discourages potential lenders from agreeing to finance a loan.

That may be changing.

Devin Pope, an economist at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania who studies p2p lending, told me that at Prosper the “fraction of funded loans going to individuals with higher credit scores has increased over the last year.” Interestingly, the total number of loan applications did not change. But better risks seem to be seeking credit though this nonconventional source. As a result, the volume of loans financed at Prosper increased by 41 percent from April 2008 to September 2008 compared with the preceding six months.

In other words, the number of loans agreed to on the p2p lending site began to expand around the start of the current credit crisis. This suggests that the crisis led some of traditional banks’ customers to seek nontraditional lending sources.

While the online p2p lending industry is still young, a few economists have already done some fascinating research into its workings.

Professor Pope and Justin Sydnor of Case Western Reserve University, for example, have studied the efficiency of p2p lending. In particular, they analyzed the likelihood that blacks, older people and women would have their loan requests fulfilled on the Prosper.com site. They find a significant racial disparity: blacks are 25 to 35 percent less likely to receive financing than whites. Those over age 60 are also less likely to have their loan requests financed, and women are more likely than men to have their requests financed.

They further find that blacks who do receive loans pay an interest rate that is 60 to 80 basis points higher than that paid by whites with comparable credit ratings. Whether these results are an indication that lenders discriminate against blacks is complicated, however, because the rate of return lenders earn on loans to black borrowers is lower, on average, than the return they earn on loans to white borrowers because of racial differences in default rates on loans obtained through Prosper.com, even among those with similar credit ratings.

For those older than 60, the interest rate charged to borrowers is higher and the rate of return earned by lenders on those loans is also higher than for younger borrowers, consistent with discrimination against older borrowers.

The market seems to discriminate in favor of women, as their requests are more likely to be financed — and at lower interest rates and lower returns for lenders — than men’s.

P2p lending is unlikely to replace brick and mortar banks any time soon. The volume of traffic is still modest and interest rates are high, averaging around 10 percent for “prime” funded loans on Prosper.com this summer, and reaching 18 percent for “near prime” loans. Still, the shake-out in the financial crisis is likely to increase the popularity of p2p lending and provide at least some floor if credit markets should continue to freeze up.
http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/20...eers-for-cash/





Hackers Got Into 18 Computer Servers at World Bank
Byron Acohido

Cyberintruders used the Internet to crack into at least 18 computer servers at the World Bank Group last July.

The intrusion, revealed Friday in a FoxNews.com story by veteran investigative reporter Richard Behar, underscores how relentlessly criminals probe corporate IT systems, especially banks, say tech-security experts.

"The sophistication, resolve and organization of cybercriminals are growing exponentially," says Tom Kellerman, vice president of security awareness at Core Security Technologies.

Kellerman served as a senior risk-management specialist at the World Bank from 2000 to 2006; he helped set up the bank's cyberdefenses. "Every financial organization is under siege," he says.

World Bank spokesman Carl Hanlon confirmed the authenticity of bank memos obtained by Behar describing how bank officials discovered — and reacted to — the cyberbreak-in. "The bottom line is that at no point was any sensitive information accessed," Hanlon said in a phone interview.

That assertion drew skepticism in tech-security circles. Several security experts noted that cyberthieves are experts at stealing data without leaving a trace. "It's not like when you steal the Mona Lisa and there's a blank space left on the wall," says Sophos researcher Graham Cluley.

One bank memo lists the breached servers and makes this assessment: "As of 9/9/08 we have determined that 5 of the compromised servers contain sensitive data, and care must be taken to determine the amount of information that may have been transmitted outside of the World Bank Group."

Michael Maloof, CTO of TriGeo Network Security, notes that cyberintruders routinely install programs to systematically harvest data, while also continually "sniffing" for access to other computers in the network, including those of partners and customers.
Hanlon acknowledged that "like other public and private institutions, the World Bank has repeatedly experienced hacking attacks on its computer systems and is constantly updating its security to defeat these."

Banks, indeed, are not the only targets. Corporate intrusions in general are on the rise, says Phil Neray, vice president at database security firm Guardium. Cybercrooks seek out PCs used by privileged insiders so they can access sensitive databases and other PCs. "Many organizations don't have any real-time monitoring or alerting mechanisms in place to identify unauthorized activities," Neray says.
http://www.usatoday.com/money/indust...-hackers_N.htm





FBI Warns of Sweeping Global Threat to U.S. Cybersecurity
Andrew Noyes

The FBI's newly appointed chief of cybersecurity warned today that "a couple dozen" countries are eager to hack U.S. government, corporate and military networks. While he refused to provide country-specific details, FBI Cyber Division Chief Shawn Henry told reporters at a roundtable cooperation with foreign law enforcement is one of the bureau's highest priorities and added the United States has had incredible success fostering overseas partnerships.

He compared the situation to 1999, when he headed the FBI's National Infrastructure Intrusion Center's computer intrusion unit and "there wasn't all that much we could do" in the face of a cyberattack.

Henry said certain countries have mounted aggressive campaigns to attack U.S. Internet assets like the .gov, .mil and .com Web domains. Some are interested in sensitive research and development data, while others, like terrorist organizations, see the value in stealing and selling sensitive data to fund physical attacks.

"The threat that we face from organized groups that have infiltrated home computers, corporate computers, government computers [is] substantial and its impact on economy is a national security concern," Henry said. He then hinted that an announcement, expected Thursday, will be "an example of really good cooperation" between the FBI and foreign counterparts.

The department's caseload of active cybercrime investigations is well into the thousands and the number has increased steadily in the past year, Henry said. That is due to a "greater sense of awareness about the amount of money that is to be made illegally" on the Web, he said. Malicious activity by armies of corrupted computers known as "botnets" and by criminal gangs is on the rise and a chief concern of the agency. Public awareness of the threat is also growing, he said. The FBI's Internet Crime Complaint Center has fielded more than a million complaints since May 2000 and the center hears from 18,000-20,000 victims per month.

At the briefing, Henry would not comment in detail on President Bush's largely classified government-wide initiative designed to better protect federal computer networks, which is being spearheaded by the Homeland Security Department. He shied away from commenting on a forthcoming report by the Center for Strategic and International Studies' Commission on Cybersecurity for the 44th Presidency, which will recommend that government cybersecurity leadership in the next administration should reside at the White House. Both have been topics of hearings in the 110th Congress.

Henry's comments came a day after Homeland Security Secretary Chertoff spoke about the Bush administration's cybersecurity agenda, noting the topic would be a "major priority" for the next president. Unlike other areas of national security, the cyber realm "is not exclusively or even largely a federal responsibility," Chertoff said in a U.S. Chamber of Commerce speech that stressed the important role of the private sector.
http://www.nextgov.com/nextgov/ng_20081015_7578.php





Cybercrime Supersite 'DarkMarket' Was FBI Sting, Documents Confirm
Kevin Poulsen

DarkMarket.ws, an online watering hole for thousands of identify thieves, hackers and credit card swindlers, has been secretly run by an FBI cybercrime agent for the last two years, until its voluntary shutdown earlier this month, according to documents unearthed by a German radio network.

Reports from the German national police obtained by the Südwestrundfunk, Southwest Germany public radio, blow the lid off the long running sting by revealing its role in nabbing a German credit card forger active on DarkMarket. The FBI agent is identified in the documents as J. Keith Mularski, a senior cybercrime agent based at the National Cyber Forensics Training Alliance in Pittsburgh, who ran the site under the hacker handle Master Splynter.

The NCFTA is a non-profit information sharing alliance funded by financial firms, internet companies and the federal government. It's also home to a seven-agent FBI headquarters unit called the Cyber Initiative and Resource Fusion Unit, which evidently ran the DarkMarket sting.

The FBI didn't return a phone call Monday.

Like earlier crime sites, DarkMarket allowed buyers and sellers of stolen identities and credit card data to meet and do business in an entrepreneurial, peer-reviewed environment. Products for sale ran the gamut from specialized hardware, to electronic banking logins collected from phishing attacks, stolen personal data needed to assume a consumer's identity ("full infos") and credit card magstripe swipes ("dumps), which are used to produce counterfeit cards. Vendors were encouraged to submit their goods for review before offering them for sale.

The unearthed documents, seen by Threat Level, show the FBI sting had begun by November, 2006. An FBI memo sent to the German national police regarding a forum member in that country boasts, "Currently, the FBI has been successful in penetrating the inner 'family' of the carding forum, DarkMarket." A March 2007 e-mail from Mularski's FBI address to his German counterpart puts it bluntly. "Master Splynter is me."

The documents indicate the FBI used DarkMarket to build "intelligence briefs" on its members, complete with their internet IP addresses and details of their activities on the site. In at least some cases, the bureau matched the information with transaction records provided by the electronic currency service E-Gold.

Last month, Master Splyntr -- now identified as Mularski -- announced he was shuttering the site as of October 4th, citing unwanted attention garnered by a fellow administrator, known as Cha0. From his home in Turkey, Cha0 had aggressively marketed a high-quality ATM skimmer and PIN pad that fraudsters could covertly affix to certain models of cash machines, capturing consumers account numbers and secret codes. But he began drawing heat this year after reportedly kidnapping and torturing a police informant. He was arrested in Turkey last month, where police identified him as one Cagatay Evyapan.

That's why it was time to close DarkMarket, Master Splynter explained, in a message that now rings with irony.

"It is apparent that this forum … is attracting too much attention from a lot of the world services (agents of FBI, SS, and Interpol). I guess it was only time before this would happen. It is very unfortunate that we have come to this situation, because ... we have established DM as the premier English speaking forum for conducting business. Such is life. When you are on top, people try to bring you down."

The German report confirm rumors that have swirled around DarkMarket since late 2006, when uber-hacker Max Ray Butler cracked the site's server and announced to the underground that he'd caught Master Splynter logging in from the NCFTA's office on the banks of the Monongahela River. Butler ran a site of his own, and the warning was generally dismissed as inter-forum rivalry, even when Butler was arrested in San Francisco last year on credit card fraud charges, and shipped to Pittsburgh for prosecution.

Until this afternoon, SpamHaus listed Master Splynter as an Eastern European spammer named Pavel Kaminski, who was active as recently as 2005. It's possible the FBI took over the handle sometime thereafter. In 2004, the Secret Service ran a similar scheme on the crime board ShadowCrew, but that agency used an informant, who went on to commit more crimes -- a risk not likely present with agent Mularski.

Lord Cyric, another former DarkMarket administrator, says Master Splynter was invited onto DarkMarket as an admin about two years ago, and was still known as a spammer. Based in Canada, Lord Cyric has sold fake IDs and checks in the underground, but he's convinced he's out of reach of any sting operation.

"Worry? Me? Nah," he wrote in an IM interview. "It's a long, slow hard process for them to interest Canadian [law enforcement] to go after someone who doesn't touch drugs nor deals with skimmers. ... It's all about U.S. busts, unless there's a big drug deal and DEA gets involved."

Threat Level admires Lord Cyric's bluster, but thinks his days in the underground are numbered. The FBI almost certainly closed DarkMarket in preparation for a global wave of arrests that will unfold in the next month or so. The site was likely shuttered to avoid an Agatha Christie scenario in which a diminishing pool of cybercrooks are free to speculate about why they're disappearing one-by-one like the hapless dinner guests in Ten Little Indians.

Kudos to Südwestrundfunk reporter Kai Laufen, who discovered the operation. I'm sending him the "I Spotted the Fed" tee-shirt I took home from DefCon 7.
http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/200...rket-post.html





UK Appeals Court Rejects Encryption Key Disclosure Defense

Defendants can't deny police an encryption key because of fears the data it unlocks will incriminate them, a British appeals court has ruled.
Jeremy Kirk

Defendants can't deny police an encryption key because of fears the data it unlocks will incriminate them, a British appeals court has ruled.

The case marked an interesting challenge to the UK's Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act (RIPA), which in part compels someone served under the act to divulge an encryption key used to scramble data on a PC's hard drive.

Failure to do so could mean a two-year prison sentence or up to five years if the case involves national security.

The appeals court heard a case in which two suspects refused to give up encryption keys, arguing that disclosure was incompatible with the privilege against self incrimination.

One of the suspects had been ordered not to move house without permission under a terrorism-prevention act. The man defied the order, and he and another man were arrested, according to the ruling from the England and Wales Court of Appeal Criminal Division.

Police also seized encrypted material on a disc belonging to the first man. When the second man was arrested, police saw he had partially entered an encryption key into a computer.

In its ruling, the appeals court said an encryption key is no different than a physical key and exists separately from a person's will.

"The key to the computer equipment is no different to the key to a locked drawer," the court found. "The contents of the drawer exist independently of the suspect; so does the key to it. The contents may or may not be incriminating: the key is neutral."

The right against self incrimination is not without bounds, as suspects also can't refuse to give a DNA sample if properly compelled.

RIPA, passed in 2000 by the U.K. Parliament, is intended to give police new powers to conduct covert surveillance and wiretap operations in respect to new communication technologies.

The third part of RIPA concerning the disclosure of encryption keys came into force in October 2007. It was delayed since when RIPA was approved, law enforcement wasn't seeing wide use of encryption. It was also one of the more controversial parts of RIPA, as critics said companies could be at risk if law enforcement mishandled their data.

To obtain a key, a so-called "Section 49" request must first be approved by a judicial authority, chief of police, the customs and excise commissioner or a person ranking higher than a brigadier or equivalent. Authorities can also mandate that recipients of a Section 49 request not tell anyone except their lawyer that they have received it.
http://www.linuxworld.com.au/index.php/id;897277082





ISPs Pressed to Become Child Porn Cops

New law, new monitoring technology raise concerns about privacy
Bill Dedman and Bob Sullivan

New technologies and changes in U.S. law are adding to pressures to turn Internet service providers into cops examining all Internet traffic for child pornography.

One new tool, being marketed in the U.S. by an Australian company, offers to check every file passing through an Internet provider's network — every image, every movie, every document attached to an e-mail or found in a Web search — to see if it matches a list of illegal images.

The company caught the attention of New York's attorney general, who has been pressing Internet companies to block child porn. He forwarded the proposal to one of those companies, AOL, for discussion by an industry task force that is looking for ways to fight child porn. A copy of the company's proposal was also obtained by msnbc.com.

Privacy advocates are raising objections to such tools, saying that monitoring all traffic would be an unconstitutional invasion. They say companies can't start watching every customer's activity, and blocking files thought to be illegal, even when the goal is as noble as protecting children.

But such monitoring just became easier with a law approved unanimously by the Congress and signed on Monday by President Bush. A section of that law written by Republican presidential candidate Sen. John McCain gives Internet service providers access to lists of child porn files, which previously had been closely held by law enforcement agencies and the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. Although the law says it doesn't require any monitoring, it doesn't forbid it either. And the law ratchets up the pressure, making it a felony for ISPs to fail to report any "actual knowledge" of child pornography.

That actual knowledge could be handed to the Internet companies by technologies like the one proposed by the Australian company, Brilliant Digital Entertainment Ltd. Known as CopyRouter, the software would let ISPs compare computer files — movies, photographs and documents — against those lists. Banned files would be blocked, and the requestor would receive a substitute file provided by law enforcement, such as a warning message: "The material you have attempted to access has been identified as child pornography." The attempt to send or receive the file could then be reported to law enforcement, along with the Internet Protocol address of the requestor.

The CopyRouter relies on a controversial new technology called "deep packet inspection," which allows Internet companies to analyze in real time the river of data flowing through their networks. The pipeline would know what was passing through it. You can read more about this technology in Bob Sullivan's Red Tape Chronicles.

Child porn foes give proposal to AOL
A PowerPoint slide show from Brilliant Digital Entertainment describing the technology was passed on to AOL last month by two powerful forces in the fight against child porn: the office of New York Attorney General Andrew M. Cuomo, who has been calling out ISPs that won't agree to block sites with illegal images, and Ernest E. Allen, the president and CEO of the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, a nonprofit given by Congress a central role in the fight.

When msnbc.com inquired about the proposal, both Cuomo's office and Allen said they were not promoting the technology, merely passing it along to a committee of Internet service providers and software companies as part of "brainstorming" on new technologies to detect illegal images.

One of the leading experts on electronic privacy in the U.S. says the proposal would clearly run afoul of the U.S. Constitution, essentially setting up a wiretap without obtaining permission from a judge.

"This would be plainly illegal in the United States, whether or not a governmental official imposed this on an ISP or the ISP did this voluntarily," John Morris of the Center for Democracy and Technology said after viewing Brilliant Digital's slide show. "If I were the general counsel of an ISP, I wouldn't touch this with a 10-foot pole."

A spokesman for Brilliant Digital Entertainment disputed that, saying the technology would be "non-invasive," would not compromise privacy, would be legal in the U.S. and elsewhere, and most important, would curtail the global proliferation of child pornography.

"I don't think it takes many voices before the Internet industry separates out those who are prepared to build a business on the trafficking of child sexual exploitation," said Michael Speck, Brilliant Digital's commercial manager in charge of law enforcement products. "If boxes started turning up with Pablo Escobar's special-delivery cocaine inside, they'd stop it, they'd do something about it."

Here's how CopyRouter would work, according to the company's slide show:

• A law enforcement agency would make available a list of files known to contain child pornography. Such files are commonly discovered in law enforcement raids, in undercover operations and in Internet searches that start with certain keywords (such as "pre-teens hard core"). Police officers have looked at those files, making a judgment that the children are clearly under age and that the files are illegal in their jurisdiction, before adding them to the list. Each digital file has a unique digital signature, called a hash value, that can be recognized no matter what the file is named, and without having to open the file again. The company calls this list of hash values its Global File Registry.

• Whenever an Internet user searched the Web, attached a file to an e-mail or examined a menu of files using file-sharing software on a peer-to-peer network, the software would compare the hash values of those files against the file registry. It wouldn't be "reading" the content of the files — it couldn't tell a love note from a recipe — but it would determine whether a file is digitally identical to one on the child-porn list.

• If there were no match, the file would be provided to the user who requested it. But if there were a match, transmission of the file would be blocked. The users would instead receive another image or movie or document, containing only a warning screen. The makers of CopyRouter claim that it can even be used to defeat encryption and compression of files in the Internet's Wild West: the peer-to-peer file-sharing tools such as Gnutella and BitTorrent. Many people use those file-sharing systems for legal traffic, such as independent artists distributing their music, or software developers sharing open-source code. But others use them for illegal traffic in copyrighted music and movies. They also are popular for distributing adult pornography, which is legal, and child pornography, which is not.

Can software fool encryption schemes?
Encrypted files on the peer-to-peer network could not be decrypted by CopyRouter, but the company claims it can fool the sender's computer into believing that the recipient was requesting an unencrypted and uncompressed file. The slide show calls this "special handling." This is done by changing the underlying protocol settings that establish how the sender and recipient exchange the file. This trickery, unknown to either the sender or recipient, would make it possible for CopyRouter to see the underlying files, calculate a hash value and compare the files to the list of illegal files, Brilliant Digital says.

A photo of the company's first test machine can be found online, in the online photos of the company's systems architect, Norberto "Beto" Meijome, author of the PowerPoint presentation. Meijome's portfolio of online photos on Flickr includes photos of his Cisco SCE router on the day he unpacked and installed it, Sept. 11, 2007. He labels the SCE router "the new toy."

Brilliant Digital Entertainment has a complicated past. Its subsidiary, Altnet, made news in 2002, when its software shipped with the Kazaa file swapping software, then heir to Napster’s throne as the favored way for file swappers to illicitly trade music. Altnet's program was designed to use unused bandwidth and processing power of Kazaa users for such uses as paid advertising and promotions for commercial products. The company claimed that this activity only occurred if the customer allowed it, but some antivirus firms labeled the software as spyware. Later, Altnet was sued by the recording industry for its role in helping spread the popularity of Kazaa.

After settling a lawsuit with the music industry, Brilliant Digital decided to approach file sharing from a new direction, selling products designed to help copyright holders protect their intellectual property. It now describes itself as a "significant online provider of licensed film and music content."

Seeking allies to move the new product to market
Now the company wants to expand into a new product line: fighting child porn.

"We have been working on it for some time," Speck said in a telephone interview from Australia.

"We've been in negotiations with ISPs and law enforcement agencies and content owners." Speck said he previously led the anti-piracy organization of the Australian sound recording industry.

Now he's lining up meetings in the U.S. next month with Internet providers and the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children.

In advance of his trip to the U.S., Speck spoke with the staff of Andrew Cuomo, whose New York attorney general's office has been pressuring Internet service providers to fight child porn. In June, Cuomo announced he was investigating ISPs, using a modern version of the public stocks to encourage cooperation. He set up a Web site listing Internet providers around the nation that made the changes he demanded, as well as "ISPs that have failed to make the same commitment to stop child porn." Cuomo, who was recently cited by McCain as one Democrat he would like to appoint to federal office, has urged Internet service providers to block access to child porn news groups and "purge their servers of child porn Web sites."

Speck had a conference call in September with Cuomo's staff, which he said gave him a blunt description of the legal and privacy landscape in the U.S.

"We'd be grateful for any assistance in getting this to the relevant ISPs and law enforcement agencies, and making any adjustments necessary," Speck said, recounting the conversation with Cuomo's staff. "It was made very clear that, for this to be a viable law enforcement tool, this would have to operate within the legislative framework within the country."

After talking with Speck, Cuomo's office passed the proposal on to John D. Ryan, AOL's senior vice president, deputy general counsel and head of its public safety and criminal investigations unit. Ryan received the slide show on Sept. 18, the day before attorneys from Cuomo's office arrived at AOL's headquarters in Virginia to discuss new technologies to fight child porn. Both Cuomo's office and AOL said that the CopyRouter was not discussed explicitly during what was described as a brainstorming session.

‘We have nothing to do with this technology’
"We have not pressured anyone to use this technology," said a Cuomo spokesman, Matthew Glazer. "We have nothing to do with this technology."

At the same time, AOL's Ryan received a copy of the slide show from the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. Known as NCMEC, this private nonprofit organization has an increasing role in the law enforcement effort against child porn, and receives more than $35 million in taxpayer funds each year. NCMEC and Cuomo's office have worked together this year on the child-porn fight, holding a joint press conference to announce Cuomo's Web site.

Ryan also has close ties to NCMEC, serving as a member of the board of directors and as leader of its industry Technology Coalition on child porn. Members of that group also include Yahoo, Microsoft, Google and others. (Msnbc.com is a joint venture of Microsoft and NBC Universal.)

AOL officials said they did not feel pressured by Cuomo or NCMEC to adopt any particular technology, adding that the company has a long history of fighting child porn on its own initiative. "The relationship with the attorney general is positive and partnering," Ryan said.

AOL's has a system of its own
AOL officials told msnbc.com that they already examine some files for child porn, block access to those files, and provide evidence to law enforcement. That system (called image detection filtering protocol) apparently is based on the same general principle as CopyRouter, comparing the hash values of files to a known list. But there are significant differences between the two approaches.

AOL checks files uploaded as attachments to e-mail against a list of files that AOL has identified as child porn. If the file matches one on its list, the sender is led to believe that the file has been sent, but it has not. AOL's methods have been shared with other Internet service providers.

But AOL officials said a device like the CopyRouter would be more extensive and more efficient for two reasons: AOL checks only e-mail attachments, not Web searches or other Internet traffic, and its home-grown list of banned files is much shorter than the lists compiled by law enforcement and NCMEC.

"The library of hash values that AOL has, has been derived over time, completely in house from reports from users and files we've stumbled upon," said Christopher G. Bubb, an AOL assistant general counsel in the public safety and criminal investigations unit. "So it's not a government list. Courts have likened it to citizen provided information."

Government role would be problematic
That distinction is important. Internet service providers could be considered agents of law enforcement if they began comparing files to a list provided by the police and intercepting traffic by substituting a legal file for an illegal one. The Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution forbids unreasonable search and seizure by the government. Courts have held that Internet service providers are within their rights to examine the traffic that flows through their pipeline — as they must do, for example, to combat spam — because the scrutiny is being done by a company, not the government.

Although they said they could not pass judgment on software proposed by any vendor, the AOL officials suggested that Brilliant Digital's proposal might not work in the U.S., at least not without Congress providing ISPs more legal cover.

""Keep in mind that this is developed in a totally different cultural and legal regime. The Australian legal system is quite different from an American legal system," said Ryan, the AOL executive. "It would raise concerns. ... Would we be deemed an agent of the government?"

‘Not an intelligence-gathering tool’
Speck, the Brilliant Digital official, argued that CopyRouter would not put ISPs in a law enforcement role because the list of banned files would be managed by the law enforcement agency, not handed over to the private companies. CopyRouter would consult that list, but at arm's length from the companies.

"The responsibility is shifted to law enforcement," Speck said. "We've delivered to Internet service providers something they've called for. ... This is not an intelligence-gathering tool. This is not for developing a list of users. This is an extension of what routers already do."

But wouldn't the Internet service provider know which traffic CopyRouter had blocked, and which user had sent or attempted to download it? No, Speck said, because his company's product would be a neutral middleman, not sharing information with the ISP or law enforcement.

"All hashes are provided to Global File Registry, which manages a secure data base and communications channel between law enforcement agencies and the ISP such that the illicit file hashes targeted by law enforcement remain private and secure to the relevant law enforcement agency," he said in an e-mail after the interview. "There is no personal (sender/receiver) information identified, and privacy is maintained."

The company's slide show, however, does describe information on users being passed directly to law enforcement. Any files that matched the child porn list would be reported to a "law enforcement data collector," along with IP addresses identifying the user's computer. The slide show says, "Any hits here will generate a 'red' report, which will be routed to the police collector server ONLY. These reports contain full IP information."

Although Brilliant Digital says no law enforcement agency has signed on to the CopyRouter plan, that hasn't kept the company from including a familiar blue seal in its slide show. At each point when a law enforcement computer is depicted, it bears a mark that closely resembles the FBI logo. Only when the logo is magnified can one see that it says "Friendly Bus Investigator" rather than "Federal Bureau of Investigation." The FBI hasn't signed on to the plan, Speck said, and the logo was not meant to imply any endorsement.

The FBI met a hailstorm of criticism in 2000 when the existence of its Carnivore project was revealed. The packet-sniffing technology was used to monitor and log traffic when installed at an Internet service provider. The FBI by 2005 had stopped using the technology, in favor of commercial tools.

New law may take law enforcement out of the loop
Under the new U.S. law, a system like CopyRouter might not require involvement of law enforcement. The McCain portion of the new child-porn law allows such a system to be set up by the Internet service providers, because it gives them access to those lists of illegal files.

The key player in that transfer is the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. Although it's a nonprofit organization, NCMEC has increasingly taken on law enforcement roles, with Congress requiring that complaints of child pornography be sent to its CyberTipline. Since 1998, NCMEC says, it has received more than 300,000 reports from ISPs. And it gives them a daily list of Internet addresses that appear to host child porn, so the companies can choose to block those Web pages.

The new law authorizes NCMEC to go further, handing to Internet service providers the list of files judged to be child porn. Law enforcement agencies give those hash values to NCMEC, which will be allowed (but not required) to give them to the ISPs. That cooperation would allow the ISPs to use CopyRouter or their own home-grown solutions, without including cops in the loop directly.

That provision was part of the SAFE Act, a bill introduced by Sen. McCain and Democratic Sen. Chuck Schumer of New York. A McCain aide called the bill a "NCMEC wish list." The SAFE Act also made it a felony for ISPs to fail to report child porn, if they discover it, with penalties up to $300,000 for each instance.

McCain's bill got caught in a tug-of-war with a broader bill written by another player in the presidential election, Sen. Joe Biden, the Democratic vice presidential candidate. Biden's solution leaned more toward law enforcement, giving more money to the Justice Department and state Internet Crimes Against Children task forces, which investigate child pornography.

With NCMEC lined up behind McCain's bill, and other child protection activists (and Oprah Winfrey) pushing for Biden's bill, Congress finally passed them both: McCain bill was folded into the Biden bill, which passed the House and Senate without objection. Republicans were able to cut the spending in the Biden bill, down to $300 million.

With the new law in place, NCMEC has a plan for ISPs to use their new access to the hash values.

"We believe that there needs to be more proactive, voluntary methods to identify illegal child pornography content that bring it to their attention," said Allen, the NCMEC president. "We are working with leading ISPs to do that."

He said NCMEC's Hash Sharing System would share with Internet service providers information on only the " worst of the worst" images of child pornography. An image must depict a pre-pubescent child who has been identified by law enforcement. And it must depict one of the following: "oral, vaginal or anal penetration and/or sexual contact involving a child whether it be genital, digital, or a foreign object; an animal involved in some form of sexual behavior with a child; or lewd or lascivious exhibition of the genitalia or anus. "

"Through this project, NCMEC is also working with the members of the Technology Coalition to test existing software and develop new technologies that will enable ISPs to identify apparent child pornography images by hash value and block them," Allen wrote in an e-mail.

Some ISPs willing to police copyright law
The idea of turning Internet service providers into cops has been opposed and embraced by different ISPs in a different realm — copyright protection. The recording and movie industries have pressed ISPs to monitor their customers to detect traffic copyright violations. AT&T has said it hopes to monitor for pirated content, and has been in discussions with content companies, including NBC Universal (co-owner of msnbc.com), which has pushed for such filtering. Microsoft (the other co-owner of msnbc.com) has said it opposes filtering by ISPs.

ISPs also have run into public and government opposition just for slowing down, not blocking, some Internet traffic. The Federal Communications Commission ruled in August, on a 3-2 vote, that Comcast's limiting of BitTorrent traffic was illegal. Comcast said it was merely trying to keep the flood of peer-to-peer file sharing from slowing down the Internet for everyone else. As for CopyRouter, the company's manager said it would not slow down Internet traffic noticeably, because it's not inspecting the contents of files, merely comparing their hash values to a list, which can be done quickly.

Privacy advocates have already raised objections to deep-packet inspection. Earlier this year, a California company named NebuAd proposed a service that would observe Web surfers’ Internet habits through machines installed at ISPs, then inject context-sensitive advertising into the Web sites the consumers visited. It called the system "Behavioral Targeting." Public outcry and rumblings of an investigation from Congress led firms considering the technology to pull out.

Morris, of the Center for Democracy and Technology, said Brilliant Digital's plan constitutes an illegal wiretap, and would run afoul of the Electronic Communications Privacy Act. No firm can listen in on private communications unless it is instructed to do so by a law enforcement official with a proper court order, he said.

‘Enormous First Amendment problems’
Even then, no government agency — even a law enforcement agency or state attorney general's office — could impose a requirement to stop all files on a blacklist, or otherwise create a list of forbidden content, Morris said. Such a list would not pass constitutional muster.

"You can't declare speech, or images, illegal without judicial proceedings," Morris said. "... That creates enormous First Amendment problems. You can't have an agency or outside firm acting as judge and jury on these images."

Also, blocking images before they were delivered would constitute a prior restraint of communication, Morris said, violating the First Amendment right of free speech.

Other methods used to combat child porn — logging IP addresses of frequent senders and investigating them, by using a subpoena to force ISPs to reveal the name, and then knocking on the user's door — raise no such constitutional issues, Morris said. He compared that to a law enforcement official overhearing illegal speech in a public place and prosecuting a speaker. Brilliant Digital's scheme, he said, is more like picking up a telephone and listening in on private conversations.

"As horrible as child pornography is, and it is horrible, you still have to follow the Constitution," Morris said.

At NCMEC, Allen said the privacy interests are being heard. "We have been very sensitive to legitimate free speech and privacy-related concerns. That is one of the reasons we are focusing exclusively on pre-pubescent children and the most egregious images. That does not suggest that child pornography images involving 13-year-old children are acceptable or less serious, however, traditional law enforcement investigation and prosecution efforts are being used for those situations."

A different approach
Another child protection group has a different approach. The National Association to Protect Children, which advised Sen. Biden on his bill, said that blocking of files by Internet service providers could easily be seen by the public as "overreaching," making it harder to get public support for efforts of law enforcement. What's needed, said the group's executive director, Grier Weeks, is for cops to investigate the leads they already have.

"The Department of Justice and all 50 attorneys general are sitting on a mountain of evidence leading straight to the doors of child pornography traffickers," Weeks said. "We could rescue hundreds of thousands of child sexual assault victims tomorrow in America, without raising any constitutional issues whatsoever. But government simply won't spend the money to protect these children. Instead of arrests by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the child exploitation industry now faces Internet pop-ups from the Friendly Bus Investigators. That was always the fundamental difference between the Biden bill and the McCain bill. Biden wanted to fund cops to rescue children. McCain wanted to outsource the job."

Sen. McCain's general counsel, Lee C. Dunn, said that he's happy that both the law enforcement and technology approaches became law, that his focus was on protecting children. She said the new law does not require any Internet provider to monitor traffic.

"They have the responsibility and their right to manage the network as they wish," Dunn said. "If AOL wants to monitor their network for child porn, some customers may go to them, because they'll keep them from getting this stuff showing up in their e-mail. Other companies may choose not to, and other people may prefer that. We're not dictating to them that they monitor their network."

Brilliant Digital Entertainment is betting that most internet companies will choose to monitor their customers. Michael Speck said his company's product pitches have been well received by law enforcement agencies, government officials and Internet service providers.

"I don't think there's anyone in the Internet space," Speck said, "who doesn't think fighting child sexual exploitation is good business."
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/27198621





China Photographs All Internet Cafe Customers
Jane Macartney

ALL visitors to internet cafés in Beijing will be required to have their photographs taken in a stringent new control on the public use of cyberspace.
Hopes that the Olympic Games would usher in a relaxed approach to the internet had already been hit hard when the “Great Firewall of China” — the blocking of websites deemed subversive — was reimposed not long after foreign reporters left the country.

The temporary lifting of the firewall applied to only a few sites and Chinese citizens experienced few changes.

According to the latest rules, by mid-December all internet cafés in the main 14 city districts must install cameras to record the identities of their web surfers, who must by law be 18 or over. There are more than 250 million internet users in China, approximately 10 times more than there were in 2000.

It has been several years since internet cafés were required to register users to ensure that customers were not under age.

All photographs and scanned identity cards will be entered into a city-wide database run by the Cultural Law Enforcement Taskforce. The details will be available in any internet café.

At the Mingluo internet café in the Dongcheng district about 60 people were ensconced in front of terminals. Most were chatting online or watching films. The manager affected a lack of concern about the regulation, saying that he had introduced the policy a month ago. “I think most people don't mind. We explain to them that this will not have any impact on them,” he said.

The Times searched for online comments on the rules but was unable to find any — often a sign that most commentary has been critical and has therefore been erased. However, a survey by the internet version of the People's Daily showed that 72 per cent of respondents were opposed to the measure, calling it an infringement of their rights. Just over 26 per cent supported the photographing because it would benefit children.

Today is the expiry date on one of the concessions to the greater freedom that came with the Olympics: permission for foreign reporters to travel the country unhindered. China had promised complete media freedom when it applied to host the Games.

While its propaganda mandarins issued a 21-point directive limiting the domestic media, officials lifted restrictions on travelling and reporting by foreign journalists.

The authorities indicated that some freedoms could be maintained. Qin Gang, spokesman for the Foreign Ministry, said: “The Chinese Government will continue to follow the opening-up policy and to facilitate the work of foreign media and journalists in China.”

Sophie Richardson, of Human Rights Watch Asia, said that keeping the regulations and extending them to Chinese journalists “would be one of the most important legacies of the Games”.

Watching the media

— The Foreign Correspondents' Club says authorities interfered with reporters more than 335 times since January 1 last year

— Police beat the ITN reporter John Ray at a Tibet protest near Beijing's main Olympic zone this August

— Zhang Jianhong, former editor-in-chief of the banned literary website Aegean Sea, was jailed for six years in March 2007 for “inciting subversion”

— Police arrested the web dissident Du Daobin in July for violating probation, after his 2004 jailing

— More than 18,000 blogs and websites were shut from April to September 2007

— In late May 2008 media ordered to reduce coverage of collapsed schools in the earthquake zone that killed thousands of pupils

http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au...1-2703,00.html





Telecom Spying Amnesty Unconstitutional, EFF Tells Court
Ryan Singel

The government's attempt to give retroactive immunity to the companies that helped the Bush administration's warrantless spying program violates the Constitution by ripping from the courts the power to hear citizens' grievances against the government, a rights group told a federal court Thursday.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation is also challenging the government's assertion to the court that the program wasn't a "dragnet" that pulled in the contents of millions of Americans, arguing that the government is playing word games.

The filing late Thursday night comes three months after the Democratically-controlled Congress gave in to political pressure and gave the Attorney General the power to tell a court to dismiss lawsuits against the nation's phone and internet companies.

To win dismissal, the attorney general must provide some evidence to the judge that the companies were given assurances the program was legal or that they did not help. After seeing these in secret, the judge has little choice but to dismiss the suits without being able to look at what the company did.

In September, the government invoked that power in the EFF's case against AT&T, which is being argued along with three dozen other suits against the nation's telecoms in a San Francisco federal court. The EFF's lawsuit includes documents from a former AT&T technician that the EFF claims describe a secret room in an AT&T building in San Francisco that is wired up to share raw internet traffic with the NSA.

The EFF's response brief argues that Congress had no right to pass such legislation, since the courts have a fundamental duty and right to hear citizens' complaints that the government violated their Constitutional rights.

"For if Congress can give the Executive the power to exclude the Judiciary from considering the constitutional claims of millions of Americans, can abdicate to the Executive the authority to change the law applicable in specific litigation, and can prevent the Judiciary from making an independent determination of the facts and law in specific litigation, then the Judiciary will no longer be functioning as a co-equal branch of government," the EFF's brief reads.

The government surprised many court watchers with the assertion in its September filing that its secret surveillance program was not a content dragnet and that all the companies being sued on such grounds should have the suits tossed.

The EFF calls that semantic wordplay. To document what exactly is known about the surveillance program, its secret rooms and its wholesale surveillance of Americans' internet communications, the group collected all that has been revealed about the warrantless spying — from news accounts to Congressional testimony to White House press statements and filed them in eight large binders with the court.

The group then summarized for the court what is known about how the program worked, how much of Americans' communications were sucked into government databases and how the nation's top officials have continuously spoken in carefully chosen phrases in order to conceal the breadth of the operation.

The EFF's filing and documents were provided to U.S. District Court Judge Vaughn Walker.

According to the immunity bill, Congress authorized Mukasey to inform Judge Walker via classified and non-public documents about why the government is seeking immunity on behalf of the communication companies. According to the legislation, Walker has little power to deny Mukasey's request.

However, Walker, a libertarian-leaning Republican appointee, has so far not been sympathetic to the government, ruling early on that the suits could continue despite the government's claim that the suits would put the nation at risk.

Walker will hear oral arguments in early December.
http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/200...om-spying.html





PBS Slow to Embrace a Program on Torture
Elizabeth Jensen

“Torturing Democracy,” a documentary examining the Bush administration’s detention and interrogation policies, will be shown on WNET in New York on Thursday and on a grab bag of other public television stations nationwide in coming weeks. But some of the country’s viewers will have to watch online if they want to see the program anytime soon because PBS decided that no national airdate was available until Jan. 21, a day after a new presidential administration takes office.

The film’s producer and writer, Sherry Jones, rejected that offer and, with the help of Bill Moyers, a PBS mainstay, has been appealing to stations individually to find time on their schedules before 2009. Stations serving about 85 percent of the nation’s viewers have agreed to carry the program on some date. But a major gap is Washington. Mary Stewart, a spokeswoman for that city’s largest public station, WETA, said, “It’s a show we are looking at, but we haven’t scheduled it yet.”

Ms. Jones said, “Since it is a story about policy, driven from Washington, that is something I wish were different.”

She has done award-winning work for the PBS program “Frontline” and Mr. Moyers’s production company, among other projects. Her 90-minute “Torturing Democracy” can be seen at torturingdemocracy.org. It explores the evolution of United States policy and internal administration battles over the use of coercive interrogation techniques on military detainees, including suspected terrorists. Interview subjects include former government and military officials and former detainees; several current administration officials declined to participate. In one interview Richard L. Armitage, the former deputy secretary of state, describes for the first time on camera his experience being waterboarded during Vietnam-era military training.

On WNET and on some other stations the program will be followed by a taped half-hour panel discussion among the Harvard law professor Alan M. Dershowitz; Carol Rosenberg, a reporter for The Miami Herald; and Philippe Sands, director of the Center for International Courts and Tribunals at University College, London.

Stephen Segaller, vice president for content at WNET called the documentary “flawlessly journalistic in its adduction of evidence,” and said the panel discussion would examine “issues that arise from those facts.”

Ms. Jones began talking to PBS about the film early this year, and PBS executives received a version on May 5. On Aug. 28 PBS, which relies partly on federal funds, offered the January airdate, citing “scheduling difficulties,” Ms. Jones said, adding, “I take them at their word, but PBS is in the business of producing programs in the public interest and my hope had been that scheduling would not have prevented this from airing in a timely manner.”

Several factors prevented a summer airdate, including scheduling of the animated sitcom “Click & Clack’s As the Wrench Turns” and the political conventions, and a desire not to compete against the Olympics, Lea Sloan, a PBS spokeswoman, said.

PBS executives also asked Ms. Jones to make changes to the film, including adding the panel discussion. By the time that happened, the fall schedule was set, said John Wilson, the PBS senior vice president for programming. He called the film “ultimately an impressive work of journalism,” and said, “our goal was to have it in a good slot.” That the first date offered happened to be the day after the Bush administration is to leave power “absolutely is coincidental,” he said. “It was the date that offered itself up.”

Ms. Jones said that she “agreed to every change that was requested of me, except one,” that of changing the documentary’s name, which would have been expensive. Had she known that “despite all of that, the airdate was still not going to be until after the first of the year,” she said she would have decided much earlier to circulate the film independently of PBS.

She noted that Congress had been holding hearings on the issue since June, and Jane Mayer’s book “The Dark Side: The Inside Story of How the War on Terror Turned Into a War on American Ideals,” was published in July. Ms. Mayer, a consultant for the program, cites some of its interviews in her book.

“It’s been very frustrating,” Ms. Jones said. “There’s something of a public discussion going on and there’s reporting that ought to be out there.”

PBS, Mr. Wilson said, has shown programs examining Bush administration controversies, including “Bush’s War” on “Frontline.” “I don’t think there’s a track record here that you can say we’re unwilling to speak truth to power,” he said.

Mr. Segaller of WNET, who had some input in the documentary’s revision, said PBS was in a no-win situation and would also have been criticized had it decided to show the program before the Nov. 4 election. He added, “I suspect that when we air it and other people air it there will be some criticism, attacking its motive rather than its content.”

Nonetheless he called it “a fundamentally important issue and a film that is fundamentally journalistic.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/16/ar...ion/16pbs.html





Army Orders Pain Ray Trucks; New Report Shows 'Potential for Death'

For $25 million, army buys system that drives off rioters with microwave-like beam
David Hambling

After years of testing, the Active Denial System -- the pain ray which drives off rioters with a microwave-like beam -- could finally have its day. The Army is buying five of the truck-mounted systems for $25 million. But the energy weapon may face new hurdles, before it's shipped off to the battlefield; a new report details how the supposedly non-lethal blaster could be turned into a flesh-frying killer.

The contract for the pain ray trucks is "expected to be awarded by year's end," Aviation Week notes. "A year after the contract is signed, the combination vehicle/weapons will start be fielded at the rate of one per month."

It's been a very long time coming. As we've previously reported, there have been calls to deploy the Active Denial System in Iraq going back to 2004. But it's always been delayed for legal, political, and public relations reasons. Anything that might be condemned as torture is political dynamite. Interestingly, the version being bought is not the full-size "Version 2," but a containerized system known as Silent Guardian, which Raytheon have been trying to sell for some time. They describe Silent Guardian as "roughly 1/3 the size and power of the other Active Denial Systems," and quote it's range as "greater than 250 meters." The larger system has a range somewhere in excess of 700 meters.

Silent Guardian weighs a shade over 10,000 pounds all up, and will be mounted on an "armored ruggedized HEMTT [Heavy Expanded Mobility Tactical Truck]."

The announcement arrives on the same day as a new report from less-lethal weapons expert Dr. Jürgen Altmann that analyzes the physics of several directed energy weapons, including Active Denial, the Advanced Tactical Laser (used as a non-lethal weapon), the Pulsed Energy Projectile (a.k.a. "Maximum Pain" laser) and the Long Range Acoustic Device (a.k.a. "Acoustic Blaster").

Dr. Altmann describes the Active Denial beam in some detail, noting that it will not be completely uniform; anyone unlucky enough to be caught in the center will experience more heating than someone at the edge. And perhaps more significant is his thorough analysis of the heating it produces -- and the cumulative effect if the target does not have the chance to cool down between exposures. In U.S. military tests, a fifteen-second delay between exposures was strictly observed; this may not happen when the ADS is used for real.

"As a consequence, the ADS provides the technical possibility to produce burns of second and third degree. Because the beam of diameter 2 m and above is wider than human size, such burns would occur over considerable parts of the body, up to 50% of its surface. Second- and third-degree burns covering more than 20% of the body surface are potentially life-threatening due to toxic tissue-decay products and increased sensitivity to infection and require intensive care in a specialized unit. Without a technical device that reliably prevents re-triggering on the same target subject, the ADS has a potential to produce permanent injury or death. "

This potential hazard need not be a show-stopper -- existing less-lethals, such as plastic bullets and tear gas, can also be fatal under some circumstances (and I'm not even going to get into the argument about Tasers).

Dr. Altmann notes that "the present analysis has not found convincing arguments that the ADS would be immoral or illegal in each foreseeable circumstance," and that acceptance will depend very much on how it is used. If the ADS prevents small boats from approaching a U.S. vessel without harming anyone, then it will be seen as a humane option. If it is used to clear protesters out of the way it may be seen differently.

Meanwhile, the National Institute of Justice is still has a reported interest in a "hand-held, probably rifle-sized, short range weapon that could be effective at tens of feet for law enforcement officials." That's just one of the likely domestic applications of Active Denial technology which are likely to follow if the Army's experiment with ADS is successful. A lot of people will be watching this one very closely.
http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/sto...6007823&page=1





TSA Airport Screener Steals Over $200,000 in Gadgets, Almost Gets Away With It

Transportation Security Administration baggage screener Pythias Brown is the reason you hate flying with expensive gear in your bag, especially if you ever flew out of Newark airport. Over the last few years, he stole at least $200,000 worth of electronics. Not just a camcorder here, a laptop there, or an Xbox 360 or two, either. No, this guy had balls. Among his biggest hauls—literally—was an HBO employee's $47,900 camera. And the TSA was totally clueless about it. He was finally caught after CNN found a camera he had stolen from them up for sale on eBay.

When the USPS and local police tracked him down and raided his place, they found they found 66 cameras, 31 laptops, jewelry, camera lenses, GPS devices and more. So yeah, how does a TSA screener systematically walk out of the airport with more gadgets than Best Buy—hell, with some gear you can't even buy there—without a single agent ever noticing? I guess if you ever check anything actually valuable, you might want avoid Newark (not that there aren't a million more reasons to avoid Newark).
http://gizmodo.com/5062913/tsa-airpo...s-away-with-it





Flash Cookies: The Silent Privacy Killer

There are hundreds of applications out there from spyware cleaners to built-in browser features that eliminate cookies on the spot, and even let you set cookie policies on your computer regarding what can be stored in your machine, and for how long.

I’m assuming that if you’re here reading this post, you already know all of the dangers of cookies on your computer. In all honesty, I don’t seriously believe that they’re the most dangerous form of movement or web tracking, but they can definitely be used to monitor more movements than a person should feel comfortable with.

What if there was a type of cookie that could:

Stay on your computer for an unlimited amount of time
Store 100 kb of data by default, with an unlimited max
Couldn’t be deleted by your browser
Send previous visit information and history, by default, without your permission

Okay… That’s a pretty scary cookie. As it is right now, the cookies we’re so deadly afraid of can store a maximum of 4 kb of information, are manage by your browser, and by default have reasonable defaults and restrictions.

This type of cookie exists on 98% of global computers, across all operating systems. it’s the Adobe Flash Player.

The Adobe Flash Player maintains proprietary cookies called Local Shared Objects or LSO’s. LSO’s are capable of storing 100 kb’s of information for an indefinite amount of time by default. When you clear your browser history in Internet Explorer, Firefox or Opera on Windows, Linux, or OS X LSO’s are not cleared from Adobe’s local repository.

In fact, all the information in those cookies will remain indefinitely until they’re removed by the issuing website, or by you via a cumbersome and ridiculous process.

Unfortunately, I haven’t even explained the worst of it.

There’s no easy way to tell what sites are using flash cookies to track your movements. There’s no list, and there doesn’t have to be a flash GUI or visible application for flash cookies to be present. In fact, most websites using flash for user tracking don’t create GUI’s, toolbars, or applications that you can actually see in your browser while browsing the site.

Many times a tiny flash module, 2 kb in size or less is loaded into your browser on every page visit in the same way a gif, jpg or other image is. The whole purpose of this tiny, invisible flash module might be to simply record the page request, and your username or other session variables.

Alright, so now you’re sufficiently convinced that this is creepy stuff. Let’s talk about how to get rid of it?

Lame as it might be, the Flash Player has no ability to delete cookies. And as I’ve already said, your browser can’t help you out. It doesn’t even know these cookies exist! Most of the privacy settings for Adobe Flash have be accessed via a flash application on Adobe’s website called the Adobe Flash Player Settings Manager.

If you want to access the Settings Manager, you can do so here. In fact, open it up now and let’s take a look.

If you’ve clicked the link above, then you’re looking at the Flash Player Settings Manager, and a list of all the sites currently storing information on the cookies stored on your computer.

Looking at my list, I see over 100 websites that have been accessing the same cookie for the last year (the last time I formatted my computer). Some of them are storing only 1kb of information, some are storing the full 100 kb’s. On my own computer, I see that my bank is storing flash information despite the fact that there isn’t a single flash application visible when I log in to check my balance. I see Youtube, CNN, Microsoft, Rotten Tomatoes and a ton more!

To delete all the Flash Cookies currently being stored on your machine:

Go to the Settings Manager (Website Storage Settings)
Go to the far-right tab
Click “Delete all sites”

To prevent websites from storing any more information on your computer:

Go to Settings Manager
Click the Second Tab from the left (Global Storage Settings)
Set the Storage Settings slider to None
Uncheck “Allow Third Party Flash Content to store data on your computer

There are several other “privacy” settings on the other tabs, but don’t be persuaded. Most of those privacy settings have to do with whether or not websites can access your microphone and webcam. There isn’t a single cookie option on any of the privacy tabs on the Settings Manager.

Adobe, as a global leader in browser technology (a 98% computer market share), has a responsibility to make Privacy Options easily accessible from within the Player application itself. They also have a responsibility to set reasonble default limitations. It’s ridiculous that they would enable websites to store cookies indefinitely, and in such large sizes.

Is Adobe intentionally allowing websites to abuse privacy? You tell me. Comments Welcome.
http://www.imasuper.com/66/technolog...rivacy-killer/





Adobe Redirects Web Surfers to Nefarious Links

Six days of Serious Magic Malware
Dan Goodin

Adobe has been caught hosting a web page that redirects unsuspecting visitors to websites that attempt to install malware on vulnerable machines. The company was informed of the problem on Friday, but six days later, it still hasn't been fixed.

The infection, which resides at hxxp://www.seriousmagic.com/help/tuts/tutorials.cfm?p=1, instructs users browsers to silently install a malicious file from a series of domains known to host attack sites. Adobe announced its acquisition of Serious Magic two years ago and whois records indicate the company is the owner of the seriousmagic.com domain.

According to this post from anti-virus provider Sophos, Adobe was notified of the infected page on Friday. The Register visited the link (using a virtual machine, of course) on Thursday and found it was still trying to redirect users to a series of nefarious sites including hxxp://abc.verynx.cn/w.js and hxxp://1.verynx.cn/w.js. While those links no longer appeared to be active, two other sites used in the attack, hxxp://jjmaobuduo.3322.org/csrss/w.js and hxxp://www2.s800qn.cn/csrss/new.htm, were still active at time of writing.

The sites are associated with the malware Sophos dubs Mal/Badsrc-C. It spreads by infecting legitimate sites using so-called SQL injections. Such attacks take advantage of web developers who write SQL database applications that accept user-supplied data without inspecting it for malicious characters. They work across a broad array of web applications.

An Adobe spokesman said the company was looking in to the matter.

With Fortune 1000 companies such as Adobe punting malicious links, it's no wonder security experts estimate that more than half of the websites hosting malware were legitimate destinations that had been hacked. Sensitive government websites on both sides of the Atlantic have also been commandeered over the past year.

So next time you discount a vulnerability in your favorite browser or music player because it requires the user to be lured to a website under the control of an attacker, remember the scenario isn't as far-fetched as it seems. With a little help from sites like Adobe, the bad guys just may have their way with you.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/10...ed_abobe_page/





Congress Opts for Educating Students over Blocking Web Sites and Social Networks
Paul McNamara

Score one for common sense and local control.

Rather than ordering educators to censor student Internet access, which had been proposed, a little-noticed provision of recently passed broadband legislation simply requires school districts receiving e-Rate discounts to do what they're trained to do: teach -- in this case teach students about online safety and cyber-bullying.

A bill filed in 2006 called the Deleting Online Predators Act would have mandated that schools and libraries prohibit access to the likes of MySpace and Facebook.

From a story in eSchool News:

Quote:
As time ticked down on the 110th Congress, many people believed (a) web-safety bill, the Protecting Children in the 21st Century Act, sponsored by Republican Sen. Ted Stevens of Alaska, would fail to see any final action. Stevens is on trial for allegedly failing to report gifts.

(His bill) included language, supported by several educational technology advocacy groups, requiring schools receiving e-Rate funds to teach students about appropriate behavior on social networking and chat room web sites, as well as the dangers of cyber bullying.

The Senate Commerce Committee merged the language in Stevens' bill into the Broadband Data Improvement Act, which focuses on establishing new studies to track the penetration of U.S. broadband internet access.
The bill still needs to be signed by President Bush.

As for reaction:

Quote:
"We recognize that students need to learn how to avoid inappropriate content and unwanted contacts from strangers while online," said representatives from the Consortium for School Networking and the International Society for Technology in Education in a joint statement. ... "Educating students on how to keep themselves safe while online is the best line of defense, because no technological silver bullet has yet been devised that will guarantee that students are effectively protected. Therefore, we embrace wholeheartedly the thoughtful approach that (this legislation) takes, particularly the flexibility that it affords districts on determining how best to educate students about staying safe online."
Of course, many school districts already provide that type of education. And many school districts already limit access to certain sites and certain types of sites -- which will continue. The difference being, however, that in these cases you have local educators making their best judgments and being held accountable by local school boards and local voters ... instead of Congress.

And it should go without saying that all the education in the world won't be a panacea for the myriad troubles that young people may encounter online (no more so than for those they encounter in the real world). It's merely the better of the two alternatives.
http://www.networkworld.com/community/node/33926





No Opt-Out of Filtered Internet

Australians will be unable to opt-out of the government's pending Internet content filtering scheme, and will instead be placed on a watered-down blacklist, experts say.
Darren Pauli

Australians will be unable to opt-out of the government's pending Internet content filtering scheme, and will instead be placed on a watered-down blacklist, experts say.

Under the government's $125.8 million Plan for Cyber-Safety, users can switch between two blacklists which block content inappropriate for children, and a separate list which blocks illegal material.

Pundits say consumers have been lulled into believing the opt-out proviso would remove content filtering altogether.

The government will iron-out policy and implementation of the Internet content filtering software following an upcoming trial of the technology, according to the Department of Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy.

Department spokesman Tim Marshall said the filters will be mandatory for all Australians.

"Labor's plan for cyber-safety will require ISPs to offer a clean feed Internet service to all homes, schools and public Internet points accessible by children," Marshall said.

"The upcoming field pilot of ISP filtering technology will look at various aspects of filtering, including effectiveness, ease of circumvention, the impact on internet access speeds and cost."

Internet Service Providers (ISPs) contacted by Computerworld say blanket content filtering will cripple Internet speeds because the technology is not up to scratch.

Online libertarians claim the blacklists could be expanded to censor material such as euthanasia, drugs and protest.

Internode network engineer Mark Newton said many users falsely believe the opt-out proviso will remove content filtering.

"Users can opt-out of the 'additional material' blacklist (referred to in a department press release, which is a list of things unsuitable for children, but there is no opt-out for 'illegal content'", Newton said.

"That is the way the testing was formulated, the way the upcoming live trials will run, and the way the policy is framed; to believe otherwise is to believe that a government department would go to the lengths of declaring that some kind of Internet content is illegal, then allow an opt-out.

"Illegal is illegal and if there is infrastructure in place to block it, then it will be required to be blocked -- end of story."

Newton said advisers to Communications Minister Stephen Conroy have told ISPs that Internet content filtering will be mandatory for all users.

The government reported it does not expected to prescribe which filtering technologies ISPs can use, and will only set blacklists of filtered content, supplied by the Australia Communications and Media Authority (ACMA).

EFA chair Dale Clapperton said in a previous article that Internet content filtering could lead to censorship of drugs, political dissident and other legal freedoms.

"Once the public has allowed the system to be established, it is much easier to block other material," Clapperton said.

According to preliminary trials, the best Internet content filters would incorrectly block about 10,0000 Web pages from one million.
http://www.infoworld.com/news/feeds/...html?source=gs





U.S. Allegedly Listened In on Calls of Americans Abroad
Joby Warrick

The chairman of the Senate intelligence committee is looking into allegations that a U.S. spy agency improperly eavesdropped on the phone calls of hundreds of Americans overseas, including aid workers and U.S. military personnel talking to their spouses at home.

The allegations, by two former military intercept officers assigned to the National Security Agency, include claims that U.S. spies routinely listened in on intimate conversations and sometimes shared the recordings with each other. At least some of the snooping was done under relaxed eavesdropping rules approved by the Bush administration to facilitate spying on terrorists.

The chairman of the Senate intelligence committee, Sen. John D. Rockefeller IV (D-W.Va.), yesterday termed the accusations "extremely disturbing" and said his staff had begun gathering information and may consider holding hearings. "Any time there is an allegation regarding abuse of the privacy and civil liberties of Americans, it is a very serious matter," he said.

The alleged intercepts were described by two linguists who said they witnessed the activity while assigned to the NSA's giant eavesdropping station known as Back Hall at Fort Gordon, Ga. Adrienne Kinne, 31, a former Army reservist, was an intercept operator at the site from 2001 to 2003, while Navy linguist David Murphee Faulk, 39, held a similar position from 2003 to 2007. Both provided accounts to investigative journalist James Bamford for his book "The Shadow Factory," due for release next week, and also in interviews with ABC News.

Both said the NSA's intercept program was intended to pick up intelligence about terrorists and their plans -- which sometimes happened. But the operators also would frequently tap into phone calls by Americans living abroad -- usually satellite phone calls made from the Middle East, or routine calls made by U.S. military personnel from phones in Baghdad's Green Zone, they said in interviews broadcast yesterday.

Faulk said some of his fellow operators, after stumbling upon a titillating conversation, couldn't wait to let their friends in on it.

"There's good phone sex or there's some pillow talk -- pull it up, it's really funny," Faulk told ABC, recalling conversations between operators.

While declining to give specifics, an NSA spokesman said some of the allegations were currently under investigation, while others had been "found to be unsubstantiated."

"We operate in strict accordance with U.S. laws and regulations and with the highest standards of integrity and lawful action," said chief spokesman Patrick Bumgardner. He added that any evidence of misconduct would bring a "swift and certain" response.

A U.S. intelligence official familiar with the reports noted that two internal investigations, by the inspectors general of the NSA and the Army, were unable to substantiate the allegations by Kinne. The official spoke on the condition that he not be identified, citing the secret nature of the intercept program.

The official noted that the NSA is legally allowed to monitor communications of government employees in war zones, and he acknowledged that agency spies assigned to intercept foreign communication will sometimes "encounter information to, from or about" U.S. citizens. But the agency's policies bar it from retaining or sharing any intercepted conversations between Americans that do "not constitute foreign intelligence," he said.

Staff researcher Julie Tate contributed to this report.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...100902953.html





Report Says Acclaimed Czech Writer Informed on a Supposed Spy
Rachel Donadio

In a revelation that could tarnish the legacy of one of the best-known Eastern European writers, a Czech research institute published a report on Monday indicating that the young Milan Kundera told the police about a supposed spy.

According to the state-backed Institute for the Study of Totalitarian Regimes, in 1950, long before he became famous for darkly comic novels like “The Unbearable Lightness of Being” and “The Joke,” Mr. Kundera, who was then 21, told the local police about a guest in a student dormitory where he lived.

The police quickly arrested the man, Miroslav Dvoracek, who had defected to Germany in 1948 and was said to have been recruited by United States-backed anti-Communists as a spy against the Czech government. He was sentenced to 22 years in prison. Mr. Dvoracek narrowly escaped the death penalty, a common punishment for espionage, and eventually served a 14-year sentence, including hard labor in a uranium mine.

The allegations could diminish Mr. Kundera’s moral stature as a spokesman, however enigmatic, against totalitarianism’s corrosion of daily life.

The reclusive Mr. Kundera vehemently denied the account.

“I object in the strongest manner to these accusations, which are pure lies,” he said in a statement released by his French publisher, Gallimard.

In a rare interview on Monday with the Czech CTK news agency, Mr. Kundera also accused the news media of committing “the assassination of an author.”

The story is the most dramatic recent episode in Eastern Europe’s fitful reckoning with its Communist past, an era that Czechs, with their soft Velvet Revolution against the Soviet system, have been loath to explore deeply.

The report about Mr. Kundera also recalls the case of the German writer Günter Grass, a Nobel laureate, who disclosed in 2006 that he had been a volunteer in the Waffen-SS as a teenager during World War II.

The report also speaks to Mr. Kundera’s vexed relationship with his former homeland. He was a staunch member of the Communist Party until the Soviet invasion in 1968, when he was fired from his teaching post and his work was banned. Expelled from the party in 1970, he emigrated to France in 1975 and has lived there ever since, taking French citizenship. He is respected but not loved in the Czech Republic, where many of his recent books, written in French, have not been translated.

In the interview with the Czech news agency, Mr. Kundera said: “My memory has not tricked me. I did not work for the secret police.”

Yet the institute’s claims do not link him to the secret police. Instead, with its combination of specificity and mystery, a local police report from the time reads like something out of Mr. Kundera’s writing.

Dated March 14, 1950, during the Stalinist terror, it states that “Milan Kundera, student, born on 1 April 1929 in Brno, resident at the Prague VII student hall of residence,” went to the local police at 4 p.m. and made a statement about Iva Militka, another student from the residence.

According to the report, Mr. Kundera learned that Ms. Militka had told a fellow student that she met Mr. Dvoracek, who said he had deserted Czech military service and fled to Germany. He asked her to hold a briefcase “for safekeeping.” Informed by Mr. Kundera about the briefcase, police officers waited for Mr. Dvoracek to return, found that he had a false identity document and arrested him.

The suitcase contained “two hats, two pairs of gloves, two pairs of sunglasses and a tube of cream.”

The claims emerged only now, more than 50 years after the arrest, when a researcher for the Institute for the Study of Totalitarian Regimes stumbled onto the police report “by accident” earlier this year, said Vojtech Ripka, the director of the institute’s documentation unit. The institute, which opened in February, was created by the government to research the country’s Communist and Nazi past.

The researcher, Adam Hradilek, was investigating cases like that of Mr. Dvoracek’s: Czechs who fled to Germany after the Communist invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1948 and returned to spy on the Prague government.

Mr. Hradilek and a co-author, Peter Tresnak, published their findings on Monday in Respekt, a Czech political weekly magazine. Martin Simecka, the editor in chief of Respekt, said he had no reason to doubt the authenticity of the police report.

Mr. Simecka said that if the Czech authorities had known about the document in the 1970s, they might have used it against Mr. Kundera.

For his part, Mr. Dvoracek suffered a stroke in June and can no longer speak, his wife, Marketa Dvoracek Novak, said in a telephone interview from the couple’s home in Sweden, where they have lived since Mr. Dvoracek’s release from prison in 1964.

She said Mr. Hradilek in June showed her a copy of the police report naming Mr. Kundera, and she had shown it to her husband. “Yes, he understood it, but it didn’t make much difference,” she said. “He just waved his hand. After a whole life, it doesn’t matter. It’s too late.”

She said her husband did not care who had turned him in. “It doesn’t really matter to him whether it was some very famous bad guy who was the informant, or someone who was not famous at all,” she said.

Nor did she expect an apology or explanation from Mr. Kundera. “No, no, no — that is irrelevant,” she said. “To apologize after 58 years? No.”

Mr. Ripka, of the institute, said he was disappointed Mr. Kundera had not responded more fully.

“We regret that he doesn’t speak more specifically about the case, because he definitely knows more information,” Mr. Ripka said. He denied Mr. Kundera’s claim that the institute had unjustly singled out the author. “We really don’t search archives for attractive information for the media,” he said.

Roberto Calasso, a close friend of Mr. Kundera’s who is the director of Mr. Kundera’s Italian publisher, Adelphi, said the claims stemmed from “a strong acrimony that his country has for him.”

Some others saw the report in a different light.

“I would say this would not be out of character for Kundera or anyone who was so young and so dedicated to the Communist cause,” said Michael Kraus, a Prague native and professor at Middlebury College in Vermont, who served on the advisory board that helped establish the research institute.

Although Mr. Kundera’s views later evolved, Mr. Kraus said, back then he was “a true believer.”

“If in fact this is what he did,” Mr. Kraus added, “he was just simply doing his patriotic duty, as he saw it.”

In an interview published in The New York Times in 1985, Mr. Kundera discussed his belief in privacy.

“We live in an age when private life is being destroyed,” he said. “The police destroy it in Communist countries, journalists threaten it in democratic countries, and little by little the people themselves lose their taste for private life and their sense of it,” he said then.

“Without secrecy,” he added, “nothing is possible — not love, not friendship.”

Walter Gibbs contributed reporting.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/14/wo...e/14czech.html





Mafia Wants Author Dead by Christmas
Stephen Brown

Police in Italy are looking into reports that the Naples mafia plans to carry out its threat to kill the author of the best-selling book "Gomorra," which has been made into a hit movie about mafia brutality, by Christmas.

Roberto Saviano, 29, has lived in hiding with 24-hour police protection for the past two years since the "Camorra," as the mob in his hometown is known, decided to punish him for the huge success of his book, which is based on his own investigations.

It has sold 1.2 million copies in Italy and been translated into 42 languages. Now that it has hit the big screen and is a candidate for the Oscars, the mafia is even angrier and wants Saviano and his bodyguards killed as soon as possible.

"We've launched in inquiry to verify the truth behind this news," Franco Roberto, a coordinator of the local anti-mafia squad for Naples, told Reuters.

Italian papers said the Naples mob's notorious Casalesi clan -- in the news recently over the murder of six Africans, which sparked riots by other immigrants -- had moved the threat into the "operative" phase and wanted Saviano dead by Christmas.

The source of the tip-off was a "supergrass" related to the jailed Camorra godfather Francesco Schiavone, aka "Sandokan."

The Camorra has its finger in every pie in Naples and the surrounding areas, from the protection racket to drugs and even waste disposal, as Saviano's book documents in great detail.

With his shaved head, dark close-cropped beard, piercing eyes and black T-shirt, Saviano has become a symbol of the fight against organized crime for a new generation of Italians.

He marked two years living under escort on Monday, telling a radio show of his relationship with the policemen who have been his only company since he was forced to leave his home.

"Many days are terrible," said Saviano, who spends some of his time boxing with escorts "who sometimes call me 'captain.'"

The writer said it was the millions of people who had bought the book who really worried the mafia.

"It's the readers who have frightened the crime bosses, not me," said Saviano.

Some politicians urged the Italian public to show their solidarity with the writer.

"Nobody must touch Saviano!" said the former cabinet minister Giovanna Melandri, denouncing the Camorra as "one of the main cancers blighting our country."

(Writing by Stephen Brown; Additional reporting by Roberto Bonzio in Mila, editing by Paul Casciato)
http://www.reuters.com/article/oddly...49D6D220081014





Russian Rights Lawyer 'Poisoned'
BBC

French police have opened an inquiry into allegations that a prominent Russian human rights lawyer may have been poisoned in Strasbourg on Monday.

Karina Moskalenko, who represents some of the Kremlin's best known critics, fell ill after finding a substance similar to mercury inside her car.

She and members of her family were later treated for nausea and headaches.

Prosecutors said there had not been enough of the substance to endanger life, but that more tests were needed.

Ms Moskalenko's clients include the jailed former Russian oil tycoon, Mikhail Khodorkovsky, and the family of the murdered journalist, Anna Politkovskaya.

The lawyer said on Tuesday that her illness had meant she was unable to travel to Moscow on Wednesday for a preliminary hearing at the trial of three men charged with Ms Politkovskaya's murder.

"People do not put mercury in your car to improve your health," she told Russia's Ekho Moskvy radio station. "I am very concerned because there were children in that car."

"The question that preoccupies me now is: was it a demonstration, which I only noticed too late, or on the contrary, did I notice it too soon, and the plan was that it should travel with us for longer?"

One of Ms Moskalenko's colleagues, Anna Stavitskaya, also said the incident appeared to be "an attempt at intimidation" linked to the trial, and that she would ask for the hearing to be postponed.

Symptoms of mercury poisoning can include memory loss, mood instability, headaches and visual and hearing problems. It can also damage the immune system and kidneys.

An assistant prosecutor in Strasbourg said an investigation had been opened into the incident. He also said Ms Moskalenko and her family had been invited to undergo a medical examination to check if they had been contaminated.

"The circumstances as well as her background are such that she is concerned," Claude Palpacuer told the Reuters news agency.

A former Russian agent, Alexander Litvinenko, who was a fierce critic of Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, died from polonium poisoning in London in 2006. UK investigators suspect former KGB agent Andrei Lugovoi of the murder, but he has always denied any involvement.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/h...pe/7670518.stm





Kazakh Bloggers Say Can't Access Popular Website

Internet users in Kazakhstan complained of censorship Friday after being unable to access the popular blogging service Livejournal, but the state-owned telecoms company denied it was blocking it.

Associates of Rakhat Aliyev, the former son-in-law of President Nursultan Nazarbayev who fell out with the veteran leader last year, started their own blog on Livejournal in June which often contains critical comments about the government.

"This is outrageous. They used to shut down papers and television channels, now they are shutting down the Internet," a Livejournal blogger wrote in a posting.

A spokesman for Russian company SUP, which owns the website, said Livejournal itself was not blocking Kazakh users.

"The facts show there are no technical problems on our side," he said. "There has been no reaction yet from Kazakhtelecom or the Kazakh government."

Most of those who continue posting to Livejournal from Kazakhstan do so through smaller Internet providers that still give them access to the blogging service or use websites that mask their location.

Kazakhtelecom said it had nothing to do with the issue.

"We will look into it, but we are not doing anything like that on purpose," Kazakhtelecom's IT Director Marat Abdildabekov told reporters.

Aliyev, sentenced by Kazakh courts in absentia to 40 years in prison for crimes including attempting a coup and kidnapping, lives in Austria where a local court ruled against handing him over to Kazakhstan. He says he is innocent.

Kazakh Internet users have complained in the past about lack of access to websites the authorities do not like.

In 2006, a government-appointed Internet regulator canceled the registration of website http://www.borat.kz used by British comedian Sacha Baron Cohen for his character Borat, a fictional Kazakh journalist deemed offensive by some local officials.

(Reporting by Masha Gordeyeva; additional reporting by Alexander Gelogayev in Moscow; writing by Olzhas Auyezov; editing by Tim Pearce)
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...101300542.html





Creationist Blocks Website
Robert Tait

The website of Turkey's third largest-selling newspaper has been blocked after a complaint by an Islamic creationist.

Turkish internet users are now denied access to the Vatan newspaper's website, gazetevatan.com, after a court decided it had insulted Adnan Oktar, a prolific Turkish writer who disputes the theory of evolution. It is believed to be the first major newspaper site to be blocked. About 850 sites are already filtered.

Oktar, who last month successfully had the website of the British evolutionist Richard Dawkins blocked in Turkey, complained that he had been defamed in readers' comments to stories on the online edition of Vatan, a liberal publication.

His spokeswoman, Seda Aral, claimed the comments included obscenities and said the newspaper had ignored requests to remove them. "We are trying to protect ourselves," she said. "Vatan is always propagating against Mr Oktar and constantly publishes allegations about him. When people read these they are provoked into using these insults against him."

Oktar, who writes under a pseudonym, Harun Yahya, last year succeeded in blocking access to worldpress.com, and in April sued Google Groups for libel.

Critics say Turkey's penal code makes it too easy to obtain blocking orders, although in practice prohibitions are often easily overcome through proxy servers.

Freedom of expression issues were further sharpened by a call from the army chief of staff to journalists to "be careful and stand in the right position". It came after the newspaper Taraf published leaked images it said showed the army failed to act on prior intelligence of a raid by Kurdish militants that killed 17 troops near the Iraq border two weeks ago.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008...urkey-religion





Opera Develops Search Engine for Web Developers

According to the MAMA system, the average web page has 47 markup errors and some 80 per cent of sites use CSS.
Nicole Kobie

Opera Software is creating a search engine to track the structure of the web, in the hopes of helping browser developers and standards bodies make it a better place.

The Metadata Analysis and Mining Application (MAMA) doesn’t index content like a standard search engine, but looks at markup, style, scripting and the technology behind pages.

This will let developers ask questions such as “can I get a sampling of web pages that have more than 100 hyperlinks?” and get an answer based on 3.5 million pages, Opera said.

Based on those existing MAMA-ed pages, 80.4 per cent of sites use cascading style sheets (CSS), while the average web page has 47 markup errors and 16,400 characters. Should you want to know which country is using the AJAX component XMLHttpRequest the most, MAMA can tell you that it’s Norway, with 10.2 per cent of the data set.

Opera hopes such information will help web developers to influence standards bodies by showing the reality of what is happening online, thereby improving the interoperability of browsers. “The web is fragmented, complex and always evolving. MAMA’s vast database provides us with detailed information about how Web technologies are used,” said Snorre M. Grimsby, vice president of quality assurance at Opera.

MAMA will be made public in the next few months, Opera said. "This is key in our efforts to test and ensure high-quality compatibility, stability and performance of our products, and we want to share it with our peers, so they can benefit from it too," Grimsby said.
http://www.itpro.co.uk/607158/opera-...web-developers





Opera Study: Only 4.13% of the Web is Standards-Compliant
Ryan Paul

Browser maker Opera has published the early results of an ongoing study that aims to provide insight into the structure of Internet content. To conduct this research project, Opera created the Metadata Analysis and Mining Application (MAMA), a tool that crawls the web and indexes the markup and scripting data from approximately 3.5 million pages.

Statistical analysis of the data collected by MAMA has provided Opera's engineers with a unique understanding of emerging trends in web development and the way that standards-based web technologies are used on the Internet. Opera plans to take the project to the next level by building a search engine on top of the indexed data so that web designers, browser implementers, and standards experts can easily obtain information about real-world usage of web technologies.

The preliminary data published today by Opera provides some intriguing statistics about the use of specific HTML elements. Among the pages analyzed by MAMA, the most popular HTML tags were HEAD, TITLE, HTML, BODY, A, META, IMG, AND TABLE. The list of least popular tags includes VAR, DEL, AND BDO.

Opera also studied the prevalence of rich web content technologies and scripting mechanisms that are typically associated with Ajax. The study found that Adobe Flash is used on roughly 35 percent of all web sites. Flash is most popular in China, where it was found on 67 percent of the web sites analyzed by MAMA, and it was least popular in Denmark, where it is used on 25 percent of web sites. The XMLHttpRequest scripting mechanism, one of the cornerstones of Ajax, is used on roughly 3.2 percent of the indexed web sites. It is most popular in Norway, where it was found on 10 percent of pages.

The study found that cascading stylesheets (CSS) are very widely used, and appear inline or referenced on 80 percent of the sites indexed by MAMA. The most popular CSS properties relate to color and fonts. JavaScript is also extremely common and is found on 75 percent of indexed web sites.
Standards compliant?

Opera also ran the pages indexed by MAMA through the W3C's validation tools to see how many conform with standards. The results show that only 4.13 percent are valid. A more startling conclusion that Opera derived from its MAMA data is that only 50 percent of sites that display a badge touting validation are actually valid. This could indicate that many sites which are initially designed with valid HTML later cease to be valid as changes are made and new content is added.

Opera analyzed page meta tags to see if there were any correlations between editing tools and validation rates. Surprisingly, Apple's iWeb delivered the highest volume of valid pages—the study shows that 81 percent of pages created with iWeb were valid. By comparison, only 3.4 percent of pages created with Adobe Dreamweaver were valid.

The initial results of Opera's study are fascinating, but its true value hasn't yet been fully unlocked. Opera's efforts to build a search engine on top of MAMA will open the door for some really exciting analysis and will enable third parties to use and repurpose the data for their own studies and projects.

"The Web is fragmented, complex and always evolving. MAMA's vast database provides us with detailed information about how Web technologies are used," said Opera vice president of quality assurance, Snorre M. Grimsby, in a statement. "This is key in our efforts to test and ensure high-quality compatibility, stability, and performance of our products, and we want to share it with our peers, so they can benefit from it, too."

Indeed, this project is a laudable gift to the web development community and web standards bodies. Its usefulness will continue to grow as Opera extends its scope and adds more functionality to accommodate broader research.
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post...compliant.html





Local news

Matter of Minutes : New Media Experts Frustrated at Officials' Lack of Support for New Web Law
Eugene Driscoll

Darryl Ohrt had a hard time containing his frustration after learning some towns in the state were pulling the plug on their government Web sites because of a new state law requiring towns and cities to post agendas and meeting minutes online in a timely fashion.

"It is infuriating to read. That is just ridiculous," said Ohrt, who runs Plaid, a new media marketing firm in Danbury.

A law that went into effect Oct. 1 in Connecticut requires municipalities to post minutes of their government meetings on the town's Web site within seven days of the meeting.

The new law also commands towns and cities to post notice of the meeting no less than 24 hours before the meeting.

Every town in greater Danbury is affected, because every town in greater Danbury has a Web site.

While municipal leaders complain the new law is just another unfunded state mandate, local media experts said the issue underscores that in the age of the Internet, many local governments still want to rely on posting notices on City Hall bulletin boards.
The opposition

Town officials across the state are saying the law is an unfunded state mandate they do not have to resources to handle.

Some small towns, such as Harwinton and Salem, pulled their Web sites, fearing they could not comply with the new law.

Harwinton's First Selectman Frank J. Chiaramonte told the Associated Press that towns have too many questions about the law and are worried it will lead to lawsuits.

Officials from larger cities -- such as Danbury -- also complained about the new law, saying it will tie up municipal employees. Officials worried they will be forced to appear in front of the state's Freedom of Information Commission to explain why the minutes to a subcommittee of the local wetland commission weren't immediately posted.

"It's not going to be easy, because we have so many boards and commissions, but we'll make every effort to comply," Danbury Mayor Mark Boughton said.

In a story from the Associated Press, state Sen. Andrew Roraback, a Republican from Goshen, said the new law received little discussion during this year's General Assembly session -- and that state officials will revisit the law in January.

Goshen represents parts of Brookfield and New Milford, along with the smaller towns of Sharon and Washington.

The law was inserted into a larger ethics reform bill in June at the request of Gov. M. Jodi Rell. State government does not have to comply with the law it created, which further angers local leaders.

Online experts scratch their heads

New-media professionals such as Ohrt don't understand what all the hair-pulling is about.

Ohrt said it is not difficult or expensive to post information on existing Web sites. Nor are additional manpower or a degree in computer programming required, as there are a plethora of programs that can help towns upload the information.

"It gets easier every day," Ohrt said. "I think it is just fear of the Internet. It's just something they're not using, which is probably their first mistake."

Ohrt suggested town officials who are uneasy about the law should look into incorporating free social media sites such as Blogger.com into their existing site. In small towns, the worker or volunteer who operates the Web site probably already has more technical expertise than needed to create a blog.

"I can literally create a blog in 60 seconds or less," Ohrt said. "If you have an e-mail address and can pick a word out of the English language for your password, you can create a blog."

Al Robinson, a Danbury resident who writes a local Democratic-leaning Web site called Hat City Blog, points out state law has long required town officials to make meeting minutes available within seven days after the meeting. The new law is simply saying "then hit 'copy and paste.'"

"We live in a age where everything is done by computer," Robinson said. "Therefore what the state is asking is really no big deal."

Robinson said if town officials are already using a computer to type minutes, posting the documents is not difficult.

"You can make a text or PDF file via the 'save as' command just as fast as printing a document, so I don't know what the big deal is," Robinson said. "Again, they're already required to have hard copy of the minutes available to the public seven days after a meeting."

Both Robinson and Ohrt said the days of simply stapling pieces of paper to a bulletin board in City Hall are long gone, and that local government has a responsibility to make sure it is transparent to residents.

They suggested the clerk who prepares the minutes be the person responsible for posting it online.

Christine Stuart, a former print reporter who operates the news site CTNewsJunkie.com, was not surprised by the "sky is falling" attitude taken by many towns and city officials.

"It's Connecticut," Stuart said. "People are reluctant to change. Old habits die hard in Connecticut."

Stuart researches, writes, edits and uploads her stories to her Web site.

How difficult is the upload process?

"It's 'copy,' 'paste,' 'save' and 'publish,'" she said.

Back to the drawing board

State Sen. Gayle Slossberg, a Democrat from Milford who chairs the Senate's Government Administration and Elections Committee, said the law's intent is good, but she acknowledged it needs to go back to the legislature for review.

"The intent here, obviously, is to increase transparency in our government. We often get, through the Freedom of Information Commission, many complaints from people in towns saying they can't get information or they can't get it in a timely manner," she said.

Slossberg, known for advocating open government, said state officials are listening to the complaints and are concerned the new law will force small towns to hire people to upload documents.

Slossberg said revising the law will likely be one of the first issues tackled when the state legislature returns to session in January.

Adam Liegeot, a spokesman for Gov. M. Jodi Rell, said the governor does not want the new law to burden towns.

"The governor's staff has also met with Freedom of Information Commission officials to work toward a resolution that addresses the concerns of municipal leaders," Liegeot said.

"The governor's goal is to protect small towns that do not have the capability of complying with this law. The last thing we want to do is penalize these towns."

Suggestions

While state lawmakers said they'll most likely tweak the Web requirement in January, here are some suggestions offered by local online gurus for towns struggling with the requirement.

• Have the person responsible for preparing the meeting minutes also be responsible for posting the minutes online instead of passing the task to another person.
• Have an IT person, or the person responsible for the town's Web site, look into incorporating user-friendly Web services such as Blogger.com into the Web site. Or, keep a separate Web site at Blogger.com and link to it from the town's Web site.
• Research Web-based services that allow you to easily post documents. An example is www.docstoc.com.

The grades

Last week The News-Times took a quick look at town Web sites in greater Danbury and whether visitors can find agendas and meeting minutes. While no town would be in total compliance with the new state law, most towns post agendas and meeting minutes for the major government entities, such as boards of selectmen or planning and zoning commissions. Here is what we found.

• BETHEL Most meeting notices and meeting minutes are available, ranging from the Board of Selectmen to the volunteer fire department. Bare bones, somewhat difficult to tell the difference between a notice and meeting minutes, but solid overall. GRADE: A
• BRIDGEWATER Has a static list of meeting schedules, but no agendas or minutes. GRADE: F
• BROOKFIELD Board of Selectmen up to date with agendas and minutes, Board of Finance not updated since August, inland wetland commission up to date, and planning commission current. Easy to navigate. GRADE: A
• DANBURY No charter revision minutes, no planning commission minutes posted since Feb. 20, but zoning commission agendas up to date. Common Council agendas up to date, as are Common Council minutes, but there seems to be no rhyme or reason to what is posted and what is not. Calendar of events sometimes lists meetings not listed under "today's meetings." GRADE: B+
• NEWTOWN Minutes of Board of Selectmen's Sept. 24 meeting were posted Sept. 26. Board of Finance Sept. 25 meeting posted Sept. 26. Same with Legislative Council. Planning and zoning minutes. GRADE: A
• NEW FAIRFIELD The public meeting calendar is on the home page. Board of Selectman link includes links to agendas and meeting minutes. Minutes and agendas are up to date. GRADE: A
• NEW MILFORD Agendas and minutes for most entities easily available and mostly up to date. GRADE: A
• REDDING Agendas available for the board of selectmen and the planning commission, but that is about it. GRADE: F
• RIDGEFIELD Found planning and zoning commission meeting schedule, but no minutes. Board of Selectmen meeting minutes go back to 2001, but as of Oct. 3, minutes had not been posted since July. Latest Board of Finance minutes were from June. Town marked them as "draft." GRADE: B+
• ROXBURY Agendas and minutes available for most Board of Selectmen meetings. Last minutes for inland wetlands dated June 24. No planning commission meeting minutes since April 24 (no indication whether those meetings took place). GRADE: C
• SHERMAN Board of Selectmen, Planning and Zoning minutes and agendas easily available. Other meeting minutes either not there or not easy to find. GRADE: C
• WASHINGTON Board of Selectmen, along with finance and planning, all up to date. GRADE: A

http://www.newstimes.com/ci_10713188





New Data Privacy Laws Set For Firms
Ben Worthen

Alicia Granstedt, a Las Vegas-based hair stylist who works for private clients and on movie sets, never worried about conducting most of her business through email.

Ms. Granstedt regularly receives emails from customers containing payment details, such as credit-card numbers and bank-account transfers. Since she travels frequently, she often stores the emails on her iPhone.

But a Nevada law that took effect this month requires all businesses there to encrypt personally-identifiable customer data, including names and credit-card numbers, that are transmitted electronically.

After hearing about the new law, Ms. Granstedt started using email-encryption software, which requires her clients to enter a password to read her messages and send responses. It is a hassle, "but I can't afford to be responsible for someone having their identity stolen," she said.

Nevada is the first of several states adopting new laws that will force businesses -- from hair stylists to hospitals -- to revamp the way they protect customer data. Starting in January, Massachusetts will require businesses that collect information about that state's residents to encrypt sensitive data stored on laptop computers and other portable devices. Michigan and Washington state are considering similar regulations.

While just a few states have adopted such measures so far, the new patchwork of regulations is something many businesses will have to navigate, since the laws apply to out-of-state companies with operations or customers in those states.

That's one reason the Massachusetts law has the attention of Andrew Speirs, information security officer for National Life Group, an insurance company based in Montpelier, Vt. "We do business in all 50 states so we're definitely reviewing it," he said. Mr. Speirs said that National Life has a program in place to protect data, but that the Massachusetts law "is a little more particular" than other state laws. He is checking his company's program for any holes.

While it isn't clear if state authorities intend to crack down on mom-and-pop businesses -- the attorney general in Massachusetts is still developing an enforcement policy, a spokeswoman said -- the laws establish a liability that could be used in civil suits against businesses following a data breach, privacy lawyers said.

In Nevada, companies that suffer a security breach but comply with the new law would cap their damages at $1,000 per customer for each occurrence. Those that don't comply would be subject to unlimited civil penalties under the proposed enforcement plan, said James Earl, executive director of the state's task force for technological crimes.

Some businesses have already started buying security technology in anticipation of the new laws. Papa Gino's Inc., a Dedham, Mass.-based pizza and sandwich chain, began purchasing laptops with encrypted hard drives from Dell Inc. for its workers last year. Dell sells these computers for about $100 more than those with unencrypted drives. So far, the company has bought about 80 of the computers.

Papa Gino's is also purchasing encryption software -- which costs about $50 per computer -- to protect files containing sensitive information on the 170 or so laptops that don't have encrypted drives, said Chris Cahalin, manager of network operations for the company, which has 370 locations.

The new regulations mean "anybody in IT has to become a security guy," he said.

Getting compliant with the new laws will require most businesses to open their wallets. According to Forrester Research, about 31% of large corporations and 22% of small- and medium-size firms currently have at least some laptops with encrypted hard drives, a way of protecting information on a computer if it is lost or stolen.

The Massachusetts government estimates that a business with 10 employees will need to spend $3,000 up front, plus an additional $500 a month in order to comply. Security executives at larger firms said they expect to spend a similar amount per employee.

Partners HealthCare System Inc., a Boston-based hospital operator, will have to spend more than $100,000 to comply with the new regulations, said Karen Grant, the company's chief privacy officer. Partners is looking into encryption for laptops and technology that can trace lost or stolen devices.

The company may need to reprioritize its current projects in order to get the new technology in place by January, said Ms. Grant. "It's a burden," she added, "but it's something you have to do."

The new state data-security laws are stricter than past regulations, which only required businesses to notify people whose personal information they lost. The new laws establish a standard that can be used by plaintiffs in civil suits to argue that a business that lost data was negligent, said Miriam Wugmeister, an attorney with Morrison & Foerster LLP.

The so-called breach-notification laws, which were enacted in more than 40 states, ended up doing little to tamp down security breaches.

So far this year, more than 500 organizations have publicly disclosed a breach, up from the 446 disclosed in all of 2007, according to the Identity Theft Resource Center, a San Diego nonprofit group. In a September study, researchers at Carnegie Mellon University found that notification laws only reduce identity theft by around 2%.

"Breach-notification laws deal with what happens after the horse leaves the barn," said Daniel Crane, undersecretary of the Massachusetts Office of Consumer Affairs and Business Regulation. The new regulation in his state "is intended to prevent the horse from getting out of the barn in the first place."
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122411532152538495.html





Authorities Shut Down Spam Ring
Brad Stone

The Federal Trade Commission won a preliminary legal victory against what it called one of the largest spam gangs on the Internet, getting an Illinois district court on Tuesday to freeze the group’s assets and order the spam network to shut down.

The group, which used several names but was known among spam-fighting organizations as HerbalKings, sent billions of unsolicited messages to Internet users over the last 20 months, touting replica watches and a variety of pharmaceuticals, including weight-loss drugs and herbal pills that supposedly enhanced the male anatomy, according to the F.T.C.

“This is pretty major. At one point these guys delivered up to one-third of all spam,” said Richard Cox, chief information officer at the non-profit anti-spam research group SpamHaus.

The investigation provides a clear window into the business of modern spam, which by some estimates accounts for 90 percent of all e-mail sent over the Internet.

To pepper Internet users with its solicitations, the HerbalKings group used a botnet, a global network of computers that have been infected with malicious software, often without the knowledge of their owners. The New Zealand security firm Marshal Software, which assisted the F.T.C. with the investigation, estimated in court documents that the group’s Mega-D botnet — named after one of its pill products — was comprised of 35,000 computers and was capable of sending 10 billion e-mail messages a day. In January, the botnet was the leading source of spam on the Internet, the firm estimated.

F.T.C. investigators also said they monitored the group’s finances closely and that it cleared $400,000 in Visa charges in one month alone.

The F.T.C. has brought more than a hundred cases against spammers and spyware vendors over the past decade. But officials and anti-spam investigators said this was perhaps the most extensive spam operation it had ever encountered, with ties to Australia, New Zealand, India, China and the United States.

“They were sending extraordinary amounts of spam,” said Jon Leibowitz, an F.T.C. commissioner. “We are hoping at some level that this will help make a small dent in the amount of spam coming into consumers’ in-boxes.”

The F.T.C. asked the Illinois court to freeze the gang’s finances, arguing that its members were using unfair and deceptive advertising practices and violating the CAN-SPAM Act of 2003. That federal law provides civil and criminal penalties for spammers who falsify information in e-mail messages and fail to offer ways for consumers to refuse further messages.

The government is also pursuing criminal charges against the group. F.B.I. investigators in Chicago and St. Louis have executed search warrants against members of the spam gang, the F.T.C. said.

Jody Michael Smith, 29, of McKinney, Tex., was involved in the group’s finances, according to the F.T.C. Reached at his home, Mr. Smith said: “I don’t even know who these people are who I have been tied to,” and referred all inquiries to his Dallas lawyer, John R. Teakell. Mr. Teakell did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

United States officials are also working with New Zealand authorities in the case against Lance Thomas Atkinson, 26, a native of New Zealand who now resides in Australia. Mr. Atkinson has a history in the spam business. In 2005, the F.T.C. obtained a $2.2 million judgment against him and a business partner for running a similar operation selling herbal pills online.

In conjuction with the investigation in the United States, the department of internal affairs in New Zealand on Tuesday asked a court to lodge a $200,000 fine against Mr. Atkinson, his brother Shane Atkinson and a business partner for violating the country’s own anti-spam laws.

As with other criminal groups online, the activities of the HerbalKings group were remarkably international in scope. The group was shipping drugs like Propecia, Lipitor, Celebrex and Zoloft out of India. The F.T.C. also said the group based its Web sites in China, fulfilled credit cards from the Republic of Georgia and the Mediterranean island of Cyprus, and transferred funds between members using ePassporte, an electronic money network.

As part of its investigation, the F.T.C. purchased the “herbal” pills from the group and asked the Food and Drug Administration to test them. The agency found that they contained sildenafil, the active ingredient in Viagra, which can be risky for some people with heart conditions. The drug offers no long-term benefits.

Anti-spam researchers lauded the crackdown and said it would send a strong message to other spammers. But they were not confident that spam volumes would decrease.

“This will send some real shockwaves through the spamming industry, but even if these guys were running a substantial botnet of compromised computers, there are always spammers looking to take their place,” said Graham Cluely, a senior technology consultant at the anti-spam security firm Sophos. “It wouldn’t be a surprise if people don’t notice any difference in their in-box tomorrow morning.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/15/te...15spam.html?hp





How Spam is Improving AI

Anti-spam puzzles are helping researchers develop smarter algorithms.
Kurt Kleiner

Those pesky visual puzzles that have to be completed each time you sign up for a Web mail account or post a comment to a blog are under attack. It's not just from spam-spewing computers or hackers, though; it's also from researchers who are using anti-spam puzzles to develop smarter, more humanlike algorithms.

The most common type of puzzle (a series of distorted letters and numbers) is increasingly being cracked by smarter AI software. And a computer scientist has now developed an algorithm that can defeat even the latest photograph-based tests.

Known as CAPTCHAs (Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart), these puzzles were developed in the late '90s as a way to separate real users from machines that create e-mail accounts to send out spam or log in to message boards to post ad links. The Turing Test, named after mathematician Alan Turing, involves measuring intelligence by having a computer try to impersonate a real person.

Textual CAPTCHAs are a good way to tell humans and spam-bots apart, because distorted letters and numbers can easily be read by real people (most of the time) but are fiendishly difficult for computers to decipher. However, computer scientists have long seen CAPTCHAs as an interesting AI challenge. Designers of textual CAPTCHAs have gradually introduced more distortion to prevent machines from solving them. But they have to balance security against usability: as distortion increases, even real human beings begin to find CAPTCHAs difficult to decipher.

Earlier this year, Jeff Yan, a researcher at the University of Newcastle, U.K., revealed a program capable of completing the textual CAPTCHAs used to protect Microsoft's Hotmail, MSN, and Windows Live services with a success rate of 60 percent. This might not sound like much, but it's significant, since a computer can try its attack thousands of times each minute. Yan withheld the paper until Microsoft had a chance to tweak its CAPTCHAs so that they were more difficult to crack. But at the ACM Computer and Communication Security Conference in Alexandria, VA, later this month, Yan will present details of another program that he says can crack even more widely used textual CAPTCHAs.

So an alternative is to ask users to solve different kinds of puzzles. But another paper to be presented at the same conference describes an algorithm that could spell trouble for even newer CAPTCHAs.

Philippe Golle of the Palo Alto Research Center has developed a program that can correctly pass an image-based CAPTCHA called Asirra, developed by Microsoft. Asirra asks users to correctly classify images of either cats or dogs using a database of three million images provided by animal-rescue organizations. This task should be even harder for computers than recognizing squiggly letters, but Golle's program can correctly identify the cats or dogs shown by Asirra 83 percent of the time.

Golle trained his program using 8,000 images collected from the same website. Through trial and error, his software gradually learned to tell cats and dogs apart, based on a statistical analysis of color and texture in each photo. The pink of the dogs' tongues and the green of the cats' eyes provided strong clues, Golle says, but it is only by studying color and texture information from so many images that his program could attack the problem. "Machine learning is very good at aggregating information," Golle says.

However, although each individual picture was recognized 83 percent of the time, the full CAPTCHA test requires 12 pictures to be identified simultaneously, so the attack actually works only 10.3 percent of the time.

Golle says that an easy countermeasure would be for Asirra to present more pictures, which would further drive down the success rate of the attack. Microsoft did not respond to our requests for comment.

Despite all this progress, it's unclear whether or not real spammers are currently using AI attacks against real CAPTCHAs. Websense Security Labs, in San Diego, has released reports about spammers cracking CAPTCHAs, but often this involves simply having low-paid workers solve CAPTCHAs manually.

Luis von Ahn, a computer scientist at Carnegie Mellon University, who helped coin the term CAPTCHA, says that it's not clear that any common CAPTCHAs have been broken by machine attack in the real world. "I don't know of anybody who's thinking of getting rid of the CAPTCHA because it doesn't work," he says.

However, von Ahn notes that using humans comes at a cost. Even if workers are paid just $3 per 1,000 CAPTCHAs, that is expensive, he says, especially since most of the hacked Web mail accounts will be shut down soon after they begin to send out spam. So a truly automated attack would reduce the cost to spammers and greatly increase the number of successful attacks they could afford, he says.

But until computers start to get much smarter, CAPTCHA creators will always be able to implement a few simple tweaks to make a CAPTCHA much harder. "I do think there will be a day when, essentially, CAPTCHAs are going to be useless," von Ahn says. "But I don't think it's this year, or next."
http://www.technologyreview.com/web/21519/page1/





Company Puts NVIDA GPUs to Work Cracking Wireless Security
Joel Hruska

There's a new application from Elcomsoft that explicitly uses NVIDIA development tools to work its magic, but the GPU manufacturer may be less than thrilled about it. NVIDIA's Compute Unified Device Architecture, or CUDA, is a set of development tools (including compiler) designed to simplify the task of coding for the company's GPU products. The toolset has been available since February, 2007, but NVIDIA has heavily emphasized CUDA throughout 2008, touting it as a development platform for the company's upcoming Tegra line of products, and as an important component of GPU software development. NVIDIA fully intends to continue developing top-end GPUs, but the company has broadened its market focus; CUDA, and the development of CUDA-enabled software are both major initiatives.

Elcomsoft's use for the language probably departs from the sorts of software development projects NVIDIA had in mind. A year ago, we covered Elcomsoft's work in GPU-assisted password cracking; now the company is ready to debut a shipping product along the same lines. Elcomsoft boasts that its new "Elcomsoft Distributed Password Recovery" software is quite a piece of work, and describes it thusly. "ElcomSoft patent-pending GPU acceleration technology implemented in Elcomsoft Distributed Password Recovery allows using laptop, desktop or server computers equipped with supported NVIDIA video cards to break WiFi encryption up to 100 times faster than by using CPU only."

The list of goodies continues. Elcomsoft supports (meaning, can crack) both WPA and WPA2 10 to 15 times faster when using a modest 8800M or 9800M GPU, and up to 100 times faster if you happen to have a GeForce GTX 280 handy. Elcomsoft, of course, envisions only legitimate uses for its software, stressing its applicability to government, forensic and corporate use. Hackers, of course, are not mentioned as a beneficiary, though it's possible that they just might glean some unspecified gain from such software.

Ironically, Elcomsoft then gives a brief security lecture on WEP, WPA, and WPA2. Tongue planted firmly in cheek, the company touts the benefits of WPA/WPA2 over WEP, before noting that CPU-driven brute-force attacks against the consumer-grade versions of these standards could take years. With GPU assistance, however, those years vanish into months, weeks, days, or even minutes depending on how many GPUs you have access to. Elcomsoft claims its Distributed Password Recovery software can retrieve passwords from a variety of sources, including:

• NT LAN Manager (Microsoft authentication protocol)
• Boot password recovery for all NT-based OSes
• Windows Syskey startup passwords
• Windows Domain Cached Credentials (DCC) passwords.
• Unix user passwords
• Oracle user passwords
• Microsoft Office documents, including Word, PowerPoint, Project 2007, Excel, Money, and OneNote. All applicable versions of these applications from 1997-2007 can be cracked.
• Various OpenDocument (ODF) filetypes, including documents, spreadsheets, and presentations
• PGP zip archives, PGP with conventional encryption (.PGD), self-decrypting archives (.EXE), whole-disk encryption, and secret key rings

The above is simply a sampling; the full list of crackables is more exhaustive. Elcomsoft doesn't delve into the long-term implications of its own software package—the company is more interested in selling you a copy—but if its claims are true, the ability to suddenly crack existing encryption systems several orders of magnitude more quickly than was previously possible is a problem that must be addressed with a certain degree of urgency. There may be nothing new about the fact that increasing computational power eventually deprecates encryption methods that were once considered practically unbreakable, but such advances typically don't occur overnight. I haven't mathematically figured up the exact degree of difference, but imagine if Intel had introduced the 486 DX2-66 one week, and the Core 2 Duo at 3GHz the week after.

There's a certain short-term window of opportunity here for the quick-minded and well-padded hacker, but long term, software like Elcomsoft's could actually lead to the creation of better encryption standards. Cryptologists working on future standards (AES2, or what have you) will also be able to test those standards more quickly, and for far less money. It's safe to assume that NVIDIA will have introduced faster GPUs by this time, giving future developers an even greater advantage compared to what researchers have previously worked with. For the moment, Elcomsoft's software scales to "just" 64 CPU cores with four GPUs per node for a total of 256 GPUs, but this number will undoubtedly ramp as well. Short-term, this is less-than-great news for the security industry. Long-term, it might improve cryptology standards across the board.
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post...-security.html





UK Government Considering Huge Telecoms Database
Jill Lawless

Britain is considering setting up a database of all phone and e-mail traffic in the country as part of a high-tech strategy to fight terrorism and crime, its top law-and-order official said Wednesday.

Opposition politicians and civil liberties groups immediately condemned the idea, and the country's terror-law ombudsman said the government must not be allowed to set up a vast "data warehouse."

Home Secretary Jacqui Smith said Britain's police and security services need new ways to collect and store records of phone calls, e-mails and Internet traffic.

Technological changes have created a "complex and fragmented" online world that meant information such as telephone billing data was not always retained, she said, adding that new measures would try to find "some way or other to collect that data and store it."

Her department, the Home Office, said one option being considered was a database that would store the phone numbers dialed, the Web sites visited and the e-mail addresses contacted by every one in Britain.

Officials stressed such a database would not store the content of phone calls or e-mails.

"There are no plans for an enormous database which will contain the content of your e-mails, the texts that you send or the chats you have on the phone or online," Smith said.

Chris Huhne, domestic affairs spokesman for the opposition Liberal Democrats, accused the government of hatching "Orwellian plans for a vast database of our private communications."

Dominic Grieve, his counterpart for the main opposition Conservatives, called for "a full and proper debate" on the issue.

The civil liberties group, Liberty, said there were "huge dangers" in collecting so much data about everyone in the country.

"The bigger the data haul, the greater the temptation to treat innocent habits as suspicious behavior," said the group's policy director, Gareth Crossman.

Lord Carlile, the government's independent reviewer of terror laws, said any new law must include strict limitations and protections against abuse. A 2006 European Union directive on storing communications data, signed by Britain, lays out safeguards including limits on who may access data and a requirement that the data be erased after two years if not needed for an investigation.

"This is not a simple subject and we need as much detail as possible as soon as possible," said Carlile. "The raw idea of government having a data warehouse is awful. That's why we need to have protections."

The government said the database was just one of several ideas being considered and said nothing would be drafted until after a public consultation next year.

Since the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks _ and especially since the July 7, 2005 suicide bombings that killed 52 commuters on London's transit system _ the government has sought tougher powers for police and the security services, citing the threat from terrorist plots.

The current threat level in Britain is assessed as severe _ the second highest of five possible ratings.

But government plans for tougher powers have met stiff opposition from human rights groups, lawyers and even a growing number of members of the governing Labour Party. This week Parliament's upper chamber, the House of Lords, defeated government plans to increase from 28 to 42 days the length of time terrorist suspects may be held without charge. Opponents of the move included a former head of the domestic intelligence service and two former Labour attorneys general.

Human rights groups claim Britain's 28-day pre-charge detention is already the longest in the Western world, and say Britons are among the world's most watched people, surveyed by a network of millions of closed circuit security cameras.

Trust in the government has also been hit by a series of lost data incidents. This week the Ministry of Defense acknowledged it had lost a computer hard drive that could contain personal information on 1.7 million recruits and people who had applied to join the armed forces. In November, a government department lost a disk that contained the names, addresses and bank details of 25 million people.

Smith expected people to have doubts about the proposal.

"Even if there had not been events," she said, referring to the data losses, "the British public would have every right to be skeptical about a state activity which involves the collection of data."
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...101501757.html





Software Can Hold Drivers' Cell-Phone Calls
AP

When David Teater's 12-year-old son, Joe, was killed in 2004 by a driver who was talking on a cell phone, he tried to cut back on his own habit of driving and talking. It turned out to be very difficult.

New software can detect whether a cell phone is moving at car speeds and hold calls until the drive is over.

"You have to remember to turn the phone off ... which you never remember to do. Or you have to ignore a ringing phone, which is incredibly hard," Teater said. "We've been conditioned our entire lives to answer ringing phones."

Teater became an advocate for curbing what he calls "driving while distracted," and now, he's part of a company with a technology that can help.

Aegis Mobility, a Canadian software company, announced Monday that it has developed software called DriveAssistT that will detect whether a cell phone is moving at car speeds. When that happens, the software will alert the cellular network, telling it to hold calls and text messages until the drive is over.

The software doesn't completely block incoming calls. Callers will hear a message saying the person they're calling appears to be driving. They can hit a button to leave an emergency voice mail, which is put through immediately.

Several states, including New York and California, have introduced laws against talking on a cell phone while driving, but they still allow the use of hands-free devices like Bluetooth headsets. However, studies have shown that hands-free devices may not help. It appears that it is the distraction of dialing or talking that is dangerous, rather than the act of taking a hand off the wheel.

A study by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration in 2006 found that dialing or talking on the phone was the cause in 7 percent of crashes and near-crashes. For the study, drivers had onboard "black boxes" that recorded their actions.

Last year, 41,059 people died in traffic accidents.

Aegis' software will work on phones with Windows Mobile software, popular for "smart" phones, or Symbian software, used in phones from Nokia and Sony Ericsson. It uses the phone's Global Positioning System chip to detect motion, aided by the cell-tower signal. If the phone has a Wi-Fi antenna, that can be used as well, said Dave Hattey, Aegis' CEO.

To work, the software has to be supported by the cellular carrier. Aegis has no deals in place yet, but is in discussions with the big U.S. networks, said Teater, who is a vice president at Aegis. The company hopes to be able to announce early next year that the software is available through a carrier, probably for $10 to $20 per month for a family.

The software can be managed remotely through a Web site. For instance, parents will get alerts if their kids override the motion-sensing feature to indicate that they're riding in car rather than driving. A corporation that buys the software for their employees can do the same.
Unusually for the world of cell phone software, Aegis is bringing out DriveAssistT in partnership with an insurance company. Nationwide Mutual Insurance Co. said it plans to offer a discount of 3 percent to 10 percent on family policies for people who use DriveAssistT.
http://www.cnn.com/2008/TECH/ptech/1....ap/index.html





A Look at Google’s First Phone
David Pogue

The Google phone is real, and it’s finally here. Stand clear of popping corks.

Actually, to be completely accurate, there isn’t anything called “the Google phone.” You can’t buy “the Google phone,” any more than you can buy “the Windows PC.” Google makes the software (called Android), and it’s up to the phone manufacturers to build cellphones around it.

What has its debut on Oct. 22, therefore, is a Google phone, the very first one: the T-Mobile G1 ($180 with two-year contract). Others will follow in the coming months.

The G1 is quite obviously intended to be an iPhone killer. Assessing its success, however, is tricky, because it’s the sum of three parts. Google wrote the software, HTC made the phone and T-Mobile provides the network. What you really need is separate reviews of each.

The software. The Android software looks, feels and works a lot like the iPhone’s. Not as consistent or as attractive, but smartly designed and, for version 1.0, surprisingly complete. In any case, it’s polished enough to give Windows Mobile an inferiority complex the size of Australia; let’s hope Microsoft has a good therapist.

The Home button opens a miniature computer desktop, with a background photo of your choice. A sliding on-screen “drawer” contains the icons of all of your programs; you can drag your favorites onto the desktop for easier access, or even into little folders. You can park playlists, single-purpose “widgets,” Web pages or address-book “cards” there, too, just as on a real computer (which this is).

The Home screen scrolls sideways to reveal more desktop area. You’ll need it once you start downloading programs from the online Android Market.

Like the iPhone store, this market is a gigantic development, rich with possibilities; as programmers everywhere create new programs, mostly free, this “phone” will turn into something vastly more flexible — and patch many of its feature holes.

Better yet, Google insists that its store will be completely open. Unlike Apple, it will not reject software submissions if they don’t serve the mother ship’s commercial interests. For example, Apple rejects programs that would let you make phone calls over the Internet, thereby avoiding using up cellular airtime. Google and T-Mobile swear they would permit such a thing.

One crucial improvement over the iPhone: a Menu button. It summons a panel of big buttons for functions related to what you’re doing. It’s the equivalent of right-clicking a computer mouse.

This panel offers commands like Hold, Mute and Speaker when you’re on a call; Archive and Delete when you’re working with e-mail; or Rotate and Share when you’ve taken a photo. If you can just remember to tap that Menu button, you’ll rarely flounder trying to find your way around.

Android comes with built-in programs like Contacts, Calendar, Calculator, Music, Google Maps, a YouTube module and chat and text-messaging programs. The Web browser uses the entire, glorious, 3.2-inch screen (480 by 320 pixels); unfortunately, it offers no Flash video. Worse, you have to do a lot of zooming in and out, and the onscreen + and - buttons are much fussier to use than pinching on the iPhone’s multitouch screen.

There are a bunch of minor glitches. For example, you have to deal with two different e-mail programs: one for Gmail accounts, one for other accounts. The Gmail program can view Microsoft Office attachments; the other one can’t. And when you’re using the non-Gmail mail program, hitting Reply puts the cursor in the To box (which is already filled in), rather than the body of the message.

You can’t get from one message to the next without returning to the Inbox list in between. There’s no Visual Voicemail (voice mail messages appear in a written list) or Microsoft Exchange compatibility, either.

Where Android really falls down is in the iPod department. There’s no companion program like iTunes to sync your photos, music and videos to the phone; you’re expected to drag these items to the phone manually after connecting via USB cable to your Mac or PC. More time-consuming fussiness.

Nor is there an online store for music, TV and movies. T-Mobile has worked out a deal with Amazon’s music store, which is a start, although you can download songs only when you’re in a Wi-Fi hot spot. Out of the box, Android can’t play videos at all, although a video-playing program is available from the Android Market.

Some of the goodies in Android will reward the iPhone holdouts: voice dialing, picture messaging, built-in audio recording and the ability to turn any song into a ring tone are all included — no charge.

Those who are Google haters won’t want an Android phone. A Gmail account is required and your calendar and address book don’t sync with anything but Google’s online calendar and address book services.

The phone. The G1 has Wi-Fi, GPS (but no turn-by-turn directions) and a mediocre camera (for stills — no video recording). The dedicated Send, End and Back buttons, and the tiny trackball for scrolling, make the G1 more flexible than the iPhone, but also more complicated.

The big news is the physical keyboard. As on a Sidekick phone, the screen pops open with a spring-loaded click to reveal a tiny thumb keyboard underneath, much to the relief of people who can’t abide on-screen keyboards.

It’s not pure joy, though. The keys don’t click down much. Worse, you have to keep turning the phone 90 degrees from its customary vertical orientation every time you need to enter text. That gets old fast.

There’s also a removable battery. Good thing, too — when all the G1’s guns are blazing (Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, GPS and so on), the juice is gone in about 3.5 hours of continuous use.

Unfortunately, the keyboard and the removable battery make the phone a lot thicker, heavier and homelier than the iPhone. Nobody looks at G1 and says, “Ooooh, I gotta have that.”

And it’s bizarre that, even though the phone contains a tilt sensor like the iPhone’s, it’s not hooked up to the screen. Turning the phone 90 degrees to get a wider look at a photo or Web page doesn’t rotate the image. You have to do that manually, using a menu or by popping open the keyboard, which makes no sense.

Finally, there’s no headphone jack. (Hello?!) If you want to use headphones, you have to buy and carry a special adapter that connects to the USB jack.

The G1 has very little built-in storage for photos, music and programs. Instead, it requires a MicroSD card (it comes with a 1-gigabyte card). To match the storage of the base-model $200 iPhone, you need an 8-gig card (about $30); to equal the storage of the 16-gig iPhone, well, you’re out of luck.

The network. G1 plans start as low as $55 a month for unlimited Internet use and 300 minutes of calling.

But T-Mobile also has one of the weakest networks. You iPhoners complain about AT&T’s high-speed 3G Internet network? T-Mobile’s fledgling 3G network covers only 19 metropolitan areas so far, compared with AT&T’s 280. And outside of those areas, Web surfing on the G1 is excruciatingly slow — we’re talking minutes a page.

(Then again, the Android mantra — “open”— may yet be the G1’s savior. After 90 days, you can request a T-Mobile unlock code that lets you use it on any GSM network, like AT&T’s or the ones in Europe.)

So there’s your G1 report card: software, A-. Phone, B-. Network, C.

But get psyched. Although the ungainly T-Mobile G1 is the first Android phone, it won’t be the last; Android phones will soon come in all shapes and sizes, and on all kinds of networks.

With so many cooks, it’s unlikely that any of them will achieve the beauty, simplicity and design purity of the iPhone. And it’s certain that none of them will inspire the universe of accessories — car adapters, cases, speaker systems and so on — that makes the iPhone fun to own.

Even so, Android itself is very successful. Clearly, there’s a sizable audience for phones that have the touchy, easy-to-navigate fun of an iPhone, without such an extreme philosophy of feature minimalism. If that’s you, then you should welcome the Android era with open eyes and ears.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/16/te...h/16pogue.html





Doctors Warn of Rash from Mobile Phone Use

Doctors baffled by an unexplained rash on people's ears or cheeks should be on alert for a skin allergy caused by too much mobile phone use, the British Association of Dermatologists said on Thursday.

Citing published studies, the group said a red or itchy rash, known as "mobile phone dermatitis," affects people who develop an allergic reaction to the nickel surface on mobile phones after spending long periods of time on the devices.

"It is worth doctors bearing this condition in mind if they see a patient with a rash on the cheek or ear that cannot otherwise be explained," it said.

The British group said many doctors were unaware mobile phones could cause the condition.

Safety concerns over mobile phones has grown as more people rely on them for everyday communication, although the evidence to date has given the technology a clean bill of health when it comes to serious conditions like brain cancer.

"In mobile phone dermatitis, the rash would typically occur on the cheek or ear, depending on where the metal part of the phone comes into contact with the skin," the group said in a statement.

"In theory it could even occur on the fingers if you spend a lot of time texting on metal menu buttons."

Nickel is a metal found in products, ranging from mobile phones to jewelry to belt buckles and is one of the most common causes of allergic contact dermatitis, according to the Mayo Clinic in the United States.

Earlier this year Lionel Bercovitch of Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island and colleagues tested 22 popular handsets from eight different manufacturers and found nickel in 10 of the devices.

(Reporting by Michael Kahn; Editing by Opheera McDoom)
http://www.reuters.com/article/oddly...49F3YI20081016





Nokia Enters Digital Music Battle with Apple
Kate Holton

Britons who have only ever used Apple's iTunes to buy digital music suddenly have a new and attractive toy: a Nokia mobile music service which offers thousands of tracks for free.

Nokia's new "Comes With Music" phones are not just a boon for the Apple-averse: parents, worried about piracy may also take to the subscription service.

"Comes With Music" phones make their global launch in Britain on October 16, offering unlimited music from the four major music labels and many independents which can be kept after the yearly contract has expired.

The individual tracks can be downloaded to a single computer, and are free -- although the cost of that music is reflected in the price of the phone itself.

But with millions of consumers already tuned into their iPods or the more recent iPhone from Apple, Nokia will have some catching up to do. Due to anti-piracy software, the tracks will not play on an iPod.

"While the Comes with Music offering is a proposition that Apple lacks, the new device and the scope of the service are still significantly behind," Nomura analyst Richard Windsor said, explaining that it would only be available on a few Nokia devices compared to Apple's wider range.

"(But) the price of the device and the service are relatively attractively priced and we think that there will be good demand."

The sleek 5310 XpressMusic phone is the first handset to be launched with the offering. The music, which spans genres from hip-hop to classical, is available through the phone for the 12 months of the contract, and thereafter users can either buy individual songs on an a la carte basis or buy another "comes with music" phone if they want continued unlimited music.

Anyone buying a new phone would have to transfer their existing tracks from the computer to the new phone.

Piracy Fighter

But the 5310 will only initially be available on a pay-as-you-go contract for 130 pounds ($228.70) through the independent British retailer Carphone Warehouse, or without a SIM card on the Nokia website, which may put off those who are used to monthly deals.

A SIM card is a removable data chip that identifies the user on a mobile network.

The sophisticated N95 smartphone with 8 gigabytes of memory - a capacity of about 2,000 songs - will also carry the service, but its price or type of contract has not yet been revealed.

An industry source told Reuters that the phone would be available on a monthly contract on the operator 3 UK in time for Christmas.

The launch follows a push by the music industry to reinvent itself for the digital age after years of falling CD sales and rampant piracy.

The global music industry has been experimenting with several versions of free all-you-can-eat music in the last 12 to 18 months in a bid to compete with piracy including free streaming music on social networks like MySpace Music, Imeem and Last.fm.

The presence of an "all you can eat" service also comes at an interesting time for digital music in Britain, with the government increasingly looking to tackle online piracy.

With the threat of punishment ringing in their ears, parents could be encouraged to opt for a service like Nokia to avoid their children using illegal alternatives.

Nokia is not the first company to offer music through a mobile, but analysts believe the "all you can eat" package will be very tempting, especially from such a big player.

"The intended range of phones indicates Nokia's commitment to becoming the leading distributor of mobile music by displacing its rival, Apple," said CCS Insight analyst Paolo Pescatore, "This is a huge task, but Nokia is in better shape than other pretenders to Apple's crown, given its dominance of the global phone market."

(Editing by Derek Caney)
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...101501546.html





Steve Jobs to Quit Apple

Thin white Duke prepares for Golgotha
Nick Farrell

STEVE JOBS is apparently planning to do what no other Messiah has done before him - he is planning to quit.

Normally the way for those to leave a religious cult they have created is to be nailed up, shot, get arrested, or die in office, but the dark satanic rumour mill is suggesting that Steve is planning to just walk away from the Apple cult he created.

The people at Gizmodo have been going over the transcripts of the last time Steve took to the stage to present the new same-as-the-old-one-but-this-is-aluminium MacBook to the cheers of the faithful.

They say there are signs that Steve is getting ready to ascend, if not to heaven, at least to a nice retirement home.

The first sign is economic ruin, the next is a comet, the third is the establishment of a One World government based in Rome and the rebuilding of the Jewish temple in Jerusalem.

No, not really. The signs apparently included Steve telling the zealots at the conference that Apple is more than himself and introducing his disciples, sorry his staff.

According to Gismodo it was a bit like Christ allocating new jobs after his crucifiction with Peter getting the top job in Rome which ultimately ended up with a big church next to the INQ's Roman office being staffed by a former member of the Hitler Youth.

Unlike Christ's disciples, who got called Christians, Steve's are going to be known as "the guys, the Goodfellas, the A-Team".

He said that the Guys share the same vision he has and are going to push the company forward when "I change my office chair for a hammock and caipirinhas on my private beach in Hawaii".

Tim Cook took the stage wearing Steve's sacred colour scheme of blue jeans and black top. To watchers of other religions this is the same as collecting the Pope's mitre or kissing Steve Jobs' ring.

According to Gizmodo this symbolically puts Cook on the same level as the thin white duke and eases the future potential power transition in the minds of the faithful.

While it is possible that Jobs' is not dying, he has had the realisation that there is more to life than flogging expensive toys to spotty smug gits and it is time to spend some of the money he has earned enjoying himself, before it is too late.
http://www.theinquirer.net/gb/inquir...obs-quit-apple





Cartoon-Off: XKCD
Farley Katz

Last night I was out shopping for groceries at my local grocery store when I ran into none other than Randall Munroe, creator of the webcomic XKCD (and, it might be noted, the guy in the grocery store who pushes his cart extra slow and then stops right in the middle of the aisle, so you can’t get over to the candy section!). Before I could muster the courage to challenge him to a cartoon-off, as I knew I must, he had already removed his glove—a long silky stocking of a thing—and lofted it against my cheek, mouthing the words “cartoon off”. The game was on.

The Rules—each contender is to draw:

• The Internet, as envisioned by the elderly.
• String Theory.
• 1999.
• Your favorite animal eating your favorite food.




After all that drawing, I had a few questions for this Munroe guy.

Cartoon Lounge: Tell us a little bit about yourself and XKCD.

Randall Munroe: Well, I draw XKCD, a webcomic about stick figures who do math, play with staple guns, mess around on the Internet, and have lots of sex. It’s about three-fourths autobiographical.

I used to work at NASA in Virginia. It was nothing glamorous; I was just tasked with making code compile for obscure projects, and I wasn’t very good at it. Now I spend most of my time drawing pictures and looking at funny things on the Internet, which in retrospect is largely what I did at my old job, too. Maybe that’s why they kicked me out. I also program, read, and try to get outside once in a while (any longer in front of this screen and my skin tone might actually hit #FFFFFF).

C.L.: You say that XKCD isn’t an acronym for anything, but shouldn’t it stand for eXcellent Kids Can Dance? That would be a good comic (and inspirational for kids).

R.M.: Well, in the absence of peer-reviewed scientific studies of the subject, I can’t in good conscience assert that excellent kids CAN dance.

C.L.: What’s next for XKCD? A book? Television? A second Internet where XKCD is Google?

R.M.: Well, Google owns YouTube, and recently, I drew a comic about an idea for a YouTube feature—which they actually took seriously and implemented. So I’m thinking that maybe we’ll have a future where Google is XKCD. That’s a troubling prospect—every image search would just turn up erotic photos of electric guitars being played in the shower.

I know I should be used to it, but I keep being surprised seeing the ideas in the comic leak out into real life. It’s tempting to just write a comic called “EVERYONE MAIL RANDALL MUNROE TWENTY BUCKS”—maybe it would work, and I could just close down the XKCD store and sit on a beach and draw pictures and make snarky Reddit posts for the rest of my life. If that doesn’t work, I’ll go to plan B: insisting that XKCD is too big to fail, and I need a massive government bailout. If Congress questions me, I’ll just draw some graphs and their eyes will glaze over. The only person who would oppose me is Ron Paul, and I can leverage my contacts in the blogosphere to neutralize him by having his blimp grounded.
http://www.newyorker.com/online/blog...noff-xkcd.html





Sorry, Dad, I'm Voting for Obama
Christopher Buckley

Christopher Buckley, in an exclusive for The Daily Beast, explains why he left The National Review, the magazine his father founded.

I seem to have picked an apt title for my Daily Beast column, or blog, or whatever it’s called: “What Fresh Hell.” My last posting (if that’s what it’s called) in which I endorsed Obama, has brought about a very heaping helping of fresh hell. In fact, I think it could accurately be called a tsunami.

The mail (as we used to call it in pre-cyber times) at the Beast has been running I’d say at about 7-to-1 in favor. This would seem to indicate that you (the Beast reader) are largely pro-Obama.

As for the mail flooding into National Review Online—that’s been running about, oh, 700-to-1 against. In fact, the only thing the Right can’t quite decide is whether I should be boiled in oil or just put up against the wall and shot. Lethal injection would be too painless.

I had gone out of my way in my Beast endorsement to say that I was not doing it in the pages of National Review, where I write the back-page column, because of the experience of my colleague, the lovely Kathleen Parker. Kathleen had written in NRO that she felt Sarah Palin was an embarrassment. (Hardly an alarmist view.) This brought 12,000 livid emails, among them a real charmer suggesting that Kathleen’s mother ought to have aborted her and tossed the fetus into a dumpster. I didn’t want to put NR in an awkward position.

Since my Obama endorsement, Kathleen and I have become BFFs and now trade incoming hate-mails. No one has yet suggested my dear old Mum should have aborted me, but it’s pretty darned angry out there in Right Wing Land. One editor at National Review—a friend of 30 years—emailed me that he thought my opinions “cretinous.” One thoughtful correspondent, who feels that I have “betrayed”—the b-word has been much used in all this—my father and the conservative movement generally, said he plans to devote the rest of his life to getting people to cancel their subscriptions to National Review. But there was one bright spot: To those who wrote me to demand, “Cancel my subscription,” I was able to quote the title of my father’s last book, a delicious compendium of his NR “Notes and Asides”: Cancel Your Own Goddam Subscription.

Within hours of my endorsement appearing in The Daily Beast it became clear that National Review had a serious problem on its hands. So the next morning, I thought the only decent thing to do would be to offer to resign my column there. This offer was accepted—rather briskly!—by Rich Lowry, NR’s editor, and its publisher, the superb and able and fine Jack Fowler. I retain the fondest feelings for the magazine that my father founded, but I will admit to a certain sadness that an act of publishing a reasoned argument for the opposition should result in acrimony and disavowal.

My father in his day endorsed a number of liberal Democrats for high office, including Allard K. Lowenstein and Joe Lieberman. One of his closest friends on earth was John Kenneth Galbraith. In 1969, Pup wrote a widely-remarked upon column saying that it was time America had a black president. (I hasten to aver here that I did not endorse Senator Obama because he is black. Surely voting for someone on that basis is as racist as not voting for him for the same reason.)

My point, simply, is that William F. Buckley held to rigorous standards, and if those were met by members of the other side rather than by his own camp, he said as much. My father was also unpredictable, which tends to keep things fresh and lively and on-their-feet. He came out for legalization of drugs once he decided that the war on drugs was largely counterproductive. Hardly a conservative position. Finally, and hardly least, he was fun. God, he was fun. He liked to mix it up.

So, I have been effectively fatwahed (is that how you spell it?) by the conservative movement, and the magazine that my father founded must now distance itself from me. But then, conservatives have always had a bit of trouble with the concept of diversity. The GOP likes to say it’s a big-tent. Looks more like a yurt to me.

While I regret this development, I am not in mourning, for I no longer have any clear idea what, exactly, the modern conservative movement stands for. Eight years of “conservative” government has brought us a doubled national debt, ruinous expansion of entitlement programs, bridges to nowhere, poster boy Jack Abramoff and an ill-premised, ill-waged war conducted by politicians of breathtaking arrogance. As a sideshow, it brought us a truly obscene attempt at federal intervention in the Terry Schiavo case.
So, to paraphrase a real conservative, Ronald Reagan: I haven’t left the Republican Party. It left me.

Thanks, anyway, for the memories, and here’s to happier days and with any luck, a bit less fresh hell.
http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-a...ase-for-obama/





Facebook is 'Social Glue' for University Freshers

The first few weeks at university can be a difficult time for freshers as they attempt to settle in to their new academic and social life. Researchers at the University of Leicester have found that a high proportion of freshers use the internet to smooth the settling-in process.

The University is now exploring ways of using internet platforms that most students are familiar with -- social networking sites and podcasting -- to help new arrivals get their bearings.

And it is looking into how these technological mediums might also be used to improve the student experience beyond the first few weeks at university.

The work is focussing on two areas:

-- Building on the findings of a study that has concluded that "Facebook is part of the social glue that helps students settle into university life".

-- Launching a new website that provides podcasts of students talking about their experiences of settling in to university life, covering everything from finding accommodation to coping with debt. This is available at www.StartingUni.info

The University of Leicester's own Facebook network lists 10,000 members, including current and past students and staff. A research project, funded by the Registrar and Secretary of the University and its Teaching Enhancement Fund, was launched to find out more about how students were using Facebook at university, and how it helps them integrate into university life.

The study was conducted by Dr. Jane Wellens from the University's Staff Development Centre, Dr Clare Madge from the Department of Geography, Dr Tristram Hooley from CRAC: The Career Development Organisation and Dr Julia Meek from Lifecycle Evaluation.

The researchers state: "We know little about how this phenomenon impacts on the student experience and, in particular, if and how it facilitates new students' social integration into University life. Our project focused on how pre-registration engagement with the University of Leicester Facebook network influences students' post-registration social networks and their understanding of the University. It also explored whether there is any role for social networking tools to be used by University support services and academic departments to enhance the social and academic integration of students."

A survey of 221 first year students conducted between April and June this year found that more than half (55 per cent) had joined Facebook to make new friends prior to entering university, while a further 43 per cent joined immediately after starting university. Nearly three quarters said Facebook had played an important part in helping them to settle in at university.

Over a third of respondents also said they used Facebook to discuss academic work with other students on a weekly basis, and more than half responded positively to the idea of using Facebook for more formal teaching and learning – although only 7 per cent had actually done so. Many suggested ways in which Facebook could be used, such as providing social support for students in departments and informing students about changing lecture times.

But the survey also found that 41 per cent of students were against being contacted directly by tutors via Facebook. A report on the preliminary findings warns that the university will need to tread carefully if it wants to use Facebook to communicate with students for administrative or teaching and learning purposes.

The researchers say: "The survey data illustrate that Facebook is part of the 'social glue' that helps students settle into university life, that keeps the student body together as a community and which aids in communication (especially about social events) between the student body. However, care must be taken not to over privilege Facebook: it is clearly only one aspect of student's social networking practices and clearly face-to-face relationships and interactions remain significant.

"A clear picture is emerging whereby the students thought the use of Facebook was most importantly for social reasons, not for formal teaching purposes. Although it was sometimes used informally for learning purposes by students, they were not overly keen on the idea of being contacted by their tutors via Facebook. The Week in Review is edited and published by Jack Spratts. Just under half of the respondents considered it to be acceptable for the University to be contacting them for teaching, marketing or pastoral matters but less than one third were happy to be contacted for administrative matters."

The team that conducted the research is now beginning a second phase of the study involving in-depth interviews to explore ways in which the university might subtly use Facebook and other web-based platforms to enhance the student experience, without making students feel like their virtual social space is being invaded.

The link to the project site is http://www.le.ac.uk/geography/resear...dge_FULSE.html

http://www.physorg.com/news143200776.html





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