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Old 31-03-10, 07:40 AM   #1
JackSpratts
 
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Default Peer-To-Peer News - The Week In Review - April 3rd, '10

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"We're creating a revenue stream and monetizing the equivalent of an alternative distribution channel." – Jeffrey Weaver


"The Internet was the Gods’ first gift to China. Twitter is the second." – Zhao Jing



































April 3rd, 2010




New Litigation Campaign Quietly Targets Tens of Thousands of Movie Downloaders
Eriq Gardner

In what may be a sign of things to come, more than 20,000 individual movie torrent downloaders have been sued in the past few weeks in Washington D.C. federal court for copyright infringement. A handful of cases have already settled, and those that haven't are creating some havoc for major ISPs.

The lawsuits were filed by an enterprising D.C.-based venture, the US Copyright Group, on behalf of an ad hoc coalition of independent film producers and with the encouragement of the Independent Film & Television Alliance. So far, five lawsuits have been filed against tens of thousands of alleged infringers of the films "Steam Experiment," "Far Cry," "Uncross the Stars," "Gray Man" and "Call of the Wild 3D." Here's an example of one of the lawsuits -- over Uwe Boll's "Far Cry."

Another lawsuit targeting 30,000 more torrent downloaders on five more films is forthcoming, we're told, and all this could be a test run that opens up the floodgates to massive litigation against the millions of individuals who use BitTorrent to download movies.

The genesis of this legal campaign occurred in Germany when lawyers from the US Copyright Group were introduced to a new proprietary technology by German-based Guardaley IT that allows for real-time monitoring of movie downloads on torrents. According to Thomas Dunlap, a lawyer at the firm, the program captures IP addresses based on the time stamp that a download has occurred and then checks against a spreadsheet to make sure the downloading content is the copyright protected film and not a misnamed film or trailer.

For the past couple of years, using the technology, content producers have been taking to German and UK courts to identify and sue pirates using torrents. Jeffrey Weaver, another lawyer at the firm, claims those efforts have been successful. One example cited is a limited-release German film whose producers recovered $800,000 through litigation. Gurdalay and its German lawyers agreed to let the US Copyright Group try out the system in the United States, where BitTorrent users have gotten a pass up until now.

Before doing so, however, Dunlap talked with the IFTA, which wouldn't explicitly endorse the litigation, but which agreed to be generally supportive. Dunlap also talked with the MPAA and other big studios, which expressed interest but wanted to see proof that ISPs would be cooperative. And so, in the past few weeks on behalf of some low-key indie films, the first lawsuits were filed.

"We're creating a revenue stream and monetizing the equivalent of an alternative distribution channel," says Weaver.

Right now, there may be three big reasons why the movie industry hasn't been more aggressive against individual pirates.

Bittorrent-6 First, there may still be lingering debates about the general wisdom of a strategy that targets individuals rather than the technology companies that make infringement possible. In December, 2008, after suing some 35,000 individuals, the RIAA announced it was abandoning mass litigation against individual song pirates. Many believed the campaign to be a PR disaster.

Second, there are tricky issues involving technology and liability. BitTorrent users only receive and host small packets of data at a single time. In addition, there are questions about IP addresses being an identifier of a pirate since users can steal or borrow another's IP address to commit file infringement.

Third, and perhaps most importantly, ISPs present a roadblock as they are less than enthusiastic about turning off customers by handing over sensitive information to copyright holders.

To get past ISPs, a copyright holder needs to file a "John Doe" case and get a court to issue a subpoena that orders the ISP to hand over information. This can be costly. According to Dunlap, ISPs are charging $32 to $60 for each IP address account requested. ISPs cite the cost of notifying the account holder and giving them opportunity to file a motion to quash the subpoena.

When the U.S. Copyright Group filed its recent lawsuits and approached AT&T and other ISPs for account information, the lawyers say they were stunned at the reaction. "Their subpoena compliance group said, 'We thought we had shut this (approach) down with the MPAA before,'" says Dunlap.

The difference between the MPAA's past approach and the new one being offered by the US Copyright Group could come down to numbers. Weaver says the MPAA took a less targeted approach going after a smaller sampling of infringers in a single suit for multiple films, to send a message that would hopefully resonate to a much larger crowd. In contrast, Dunlap and his partners are using the new monitoring technology to go after tens of thousands of infringers at a time on a contingency basis in hopes of coming up with the right cost-benefit incentive to pursue individual pirates. The firm is following in the footsteps of lawyers in the UK who have crafted a business out of being IP cops.

So far, the US Copyright Group says that one ISP has cooperated, handing over 71 names and addresses. These individuals will be sent settlement offers. Eight of those cases have already settled. The other less cooperative ISPs are in the midst of fighting in court or reaching out to their respective customers.

The US Copyright Group plans to issue a press release soon touting the success of this program. The lawyers are also traveling to the Festival de Cannes in May with hopes of convincing other producers -- and perhaps major studios -- to try their luck suing hundreds of thousands of pirates.
http://thresq.hollywoodreporter.com/...ent-users.html





High Court Finds Newzbin Liable For Copyright Infringement
enigmax

Newzbin, the Internet’s premier Usenet indexer, has lost its High Court case against several Hollywood movie studios. Justice Kitchin found the company, which turned over more than £1 million in 2009, liable for copyright infringement and will issue an injunction restricting its activities later this week.

The London High Court showdown between Twentieth Century Fox, Universal, Warner Bros., Paramount, Disney, Columbia Pictures and Newzbin Ltd ended earlier this month.

Mr Adrian Speck represented the claimants, with David Harris and later Ms Jane Lambert representing Newzbin. The case was heard before Mr Justice Kitchin, who this morning delivered his lengthy decision which is summarized below.

The claimants said that Newzbin is a site focused on piracy. It does this by locating and categorizing illicit copies of movies and displays the titles in its indexes, providing users who search for such items a facility to download the items with one click.

Newzbin conversely said that its site is a “content agnostic” search engine very much like Google, and is designed to index all of Usenet. It offers only hyperlinks, meaning that users can access material directly from their Usenet provider, an activity Newzbin plays no part in.

Mr Speck represented the claimants throughout the case but Mr Harris dropped out of defending Newzbin on February 10th when it became apparent he had acquired shares in Newzbin. Ms Lambert took over from him when the trial resumed on 2 March 2010.

The claimants used Andrew Clark, Head of Forensics at Detica Limited, as their expert witness. His description of Usenet was not challenged in court.

Newzbin is run by Chris Elsworth (aka “Caesium”), Thomas Hurst (aka “Freaky”) and Lee Skillen (aka “Kalante”). All three were, until recently, directors and shareholders in Newzbin.

Court documents give a perhaps surprising insight into the size of the Newzbin business. Its accounts for 2009 reveal that it turned over in excess of £1 million, yielded a profit of more than £360,000 and paid dividends on ordinary shares of £415,000. It has around 700,000 members.

Newzbin’s help guides were referred to in the decision. They state that the site can help people find what they’re looking for, “whether that be obscure music, tv shows, games or movies. Think of us as a TV guide, but we’re a guide that applies to Usenet.”

In addition to various features offered by the site, focus was placed on the function and offering of .NZB files – Usenet’s nearest equivalent to .torrent files. Expert witness Mr Clark demonstrated how they could be used to retrieve a copy of a Harry Potter movie via Newzbin with the Usenet client, GrabIt.

The titles of categories used by Newzbin to index content were highlighted, such as Anime, Apps, Books, Consoles, Emulation, Games, Movies, Music, PDA and TV.

Sub-sections of the Movies category were highlighted including CAM, Screener, Telesync, R5 Retail, Blu-Ray, DVD, HD-DVD DivX, XviD. A witness for FACT, the Federation Against Copyright Theft, explained in detail why some of these categories are a “strong indication” of piracy.

Newzbin has members called ‘editors’ who help to compile reports on material to be found on Usenet. Newzbin’s own documentation was used to show that the site encouraged editors to post links to movies. The verdict notes that to assist editors useful links to IMDb and VCDQuality are provided, the latter being useful to provide information about “screeners”.

Referencing rules that Newzbin publishes for the attention of editors, ostensibly to protect the site (i.e not posting NZB’s which link to warez, movies or music), Justice Kitchin states that these warnings are “entirely cosmetic”, are not intended, nor are they adhered to. Newzbin knew that infringing copies were being made available to users and yet no action was taken against editors, he wrote.

Referring to groups indexed by Newzbin such as alt.binaries.warez, Justice Kitchin said he is satisfied that the term ‘warez’ refers to content protected by copyright from illicit sources. Newzbin, he said, is therefore designed to search newsgroups which contain infringing material, an assertion that Newzbin’s Chris Elsworth had no “satisfactory explanation” for.

Justice Kitchin said Newzbin “encouraged its editors to report and has assisted its users to gain access” to infringing copies of movies.

Newzbin was also criticized for its “delisting” or notice and takedown procedures, which were referred to as a “cosmetic” and “cumbersome” mechanism designed to “render it impractical” for rights holders to have material removed.

Justice Kitchin went on to reject Newzbin’s assertion that an insignificant amount of links in their database relate to infringing content. Around 50,000 reports (.NZBs) were checked and around 97% had a valid link to IMDb (TF: Kitchin apparently assumes that everything on IMDB is not free to share), 0.7% to Amazon and a further 1.5% were otherwise shown to be commercially available. Only 0.3% were not shown to be commercially available, evidence which the court found “extremely powerful”.

The verdict addresses in some detail whether Newzbin had knowledge of infringing material being made available via the site. Newzbin said they did not but would’ve taken action to remove items and take action against any editor posting such material. Justice Kitchen said “a very different picture” emerged when Elsworth was cross-examined.

A transcript of the questioning reveals Elsworth being aggressively cross-examined over the nature of the Blu-Ray category on the site and whether it would contain copyright infringing material.

“I am satisfied that Mr Elsworth well knew that these categories were primarily intended for new commercial films,” wrote Justice Kitchin, while referencing a comment made by Elsworth in January 2007 where he notes that Blu-Ray had “been cracked officially”.

The verdict also states that Newzbin was told that the site is being used to infringe the claimants’ copyrights, yet no action has been taken against those reports (NZBs), the editors that reported them, or users that downloaded them.

Justice Kitchin said that considering the structure of Newzbin, the way they categorize content and the way they have encouraged editors to report movies, he has no doubt that Newzbin knew that “the vast majority of films in the Movies category of Newzbin are commercial and so very likely to be protected by copyright, and that members of Newzbin who use its NZB facility to download those materials, including the claimants’ films, are infringing that copyright.”

For the claimants, Mr Clark gave evidence that it would be straightforward for Newzbin to restrict access to the Movie and TV categories on the site and/or employ a filter based on a list of titles provided by the movie companies. Justice Kitchin said that the Newzbin programmers are skilled enough to implement “an effective content filtering system.”

Justice Kitchin found that:

i) Newzbin operates a site “designed and intended to make infringing copies of films readily available to its premium members”.
ii) The site is structured to promote infringement by guiding members to infringing copies via NZBs.
iii) Use of the NZB feature “inevitably” results in the creation of an infringing copy.
iv) Newzbin encouraged and induced its editors to make reports of movies protected by copyright and assisted users to infringe by providing advice.
v) Newzbin profited from infringement.

Newzbin was found liable to the claimants for infringement of their copyrights because it authorized the copying of their movies, “procured and engaged with its premium members in a common design to copy the claimants’ films” and communicated the claimants’ movies to the public.

The claimants appear to be seeking a broad injunction against Newzbin which would prevent it from including any item which infringes copyright in their index. This would extend to all works, not just those to which the claimants own the copyright.

Justice Kitchin wrote that he will not grant such a broad injunction and would instead impose limits on its scope to restrain Newzbin from infringing the copyrights of those movies to which the plaintiffs own the copyright.

“We welcome the Court’s decision today,” said Ted Shapiro, the Motion Picture Association’s general counsel for Europe.

“Newzbin is a source of immense damage to the creative sector in the UK and worldwide. This is an important decision and it sends a clear message that websites focusing on providing viewers with pirated film and TV programmes infringe copyright and are liable for their actions even where those websites don’t themselves host the content.

“This decision will help to support the continued investment in new legal online services and the creation of new films and television shows for enjoyment by audiences both in the UK and around the world.”

Newzbin was given the opportunity to contribute to this and earlier articles, but did not respond to our requests.

The exact terms of the injunction will be announced later this week.
http://torrentfreak.com/high-court-f...gement-100329/





IsoHunt Told to Pull .torrent Files Offline, Likely to Close
Jacqui Cheng

The founder of popular Bit Torrent site IsoHunt, Gary Fung, has been ordered to remove the .torrent files for all infringing content—an order that could result in the site shutting down. US District Judge Stephen Wilson issued the order last week after years of back-and-forths over the legality of IsoHunt and Fung's two other sites (Torrentbox and Podtropolis). Fung claims he's still hoping for a more agreeable resolution that won't result in IsoHunt closing its doors, but for now, things aren't looking good for the torrent site.

Judge Wilson's order follows a summary judgement against Fung in December 2009. At that time, Wilson said that Fung had completely failed to rebut the claims brought against him by the MPAA. The movie studios had brought in expert witnesses stating that a statistical sampling of the content and server logs showed that nearly all of the content infringed copyrights, and about half of the downloads were made within the US. Fung dismissed this as "junk science" but did not present any sort of evidence showing that this wasn't a valid approach.

Fung previously tried to argue that his sites were just another search engine that just happened to pick up copyrighted content, but the studios countered with evidence that his search code was specifically tuned to find copyrighted material.

Now, Fung is stuck between a rock and a hard place as he tries to find a way to comply with his injunction without shutting down. Judge Wilson has barred Fung from creating, maintaining or providing access to categories with .torrent files, search results with .torrent files, or any "similar files using or based on Infringement-Related Terms."

This means that the basic search functionality of IsoHunt, Torrentbox, or Podtropolis would no longer be permissible under the injunction, not to mention that it would be nearly impossible for Fung to actively investigate every single file to see whether it's legal or not. Fung believes this goes outside of the DMCA and that the MPAA should provide a list of links to files that it wants taken down instead. "We’re discussing the mechanics, the process that is reasonable for an injunction. We’re still trying to hope that the judge will do the right thing," Fung told Wired.

The MPAA did not respond to our request for comment by publication time, so it's unclear how willing it will be when it comes to working with Fung. Given how well things have gone for Fung so far, though, it doesn't look very promising.

Update: A MPAA spokesperson got back to us and said that the court has rejected Fung's proposal. Looks like he'll either be picking out all the illegal content or shutting down after all.
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/n...y-to-close.ars





Burrows Bussin Controversial File Sharing Case Dropped

A Manchester law firm claims to have succeeded in getting the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) to drop what it says was a heavy-handed attempt to make a 17-year-old boy a scapegoat for illegal downloading.

Burrows Bussin, a fraud defence practice based in Deansgate, had been preparing to defend Matthew Wyatt in a case brought by Cleveland Police concerning the North East-based OiNK filesharing site.

The case was due to be heard in June, but this week the CPS dropped it, ending all continuing actions against OiNK. Earlier this year Allan Ellis, OiNK’s
administrator, was acquitted of conspiracy to defraud.

David Cook, a solicitor at the two-partner practice who was representing Mr Wyatt, said the fact that the CPS had been trying to get the case heard before a criminal judge, rather than a civil judge as suggested by case law, showed that the service had been trying to make an “example” of Wyatt.

“We had asked the CPS to comment on this issue,” he said, “but it dropped the case prior to the court hearing.”

Mr Wyatt was arrested three years ago when he was 17 following a raid on his house in Stamford, Lincolnshire, by police, trading standards officers and members of the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI) and the British Phonographic Industry (BPI).

He was subsequently charged with distributing copyrighted material – an offence which Cook said can carry a maximum sentence of 10 years.

But Mr Cook said no one suggested Wyatt had been the original uploader of the music – a crucial point – nor had it been proven that the material in question was in fact copyrighted.

“The computer experts that the CPS had instructed explained that the uploaded materials contained a digital watermark allowing such leaks to be traced back to the source,” he said. “But an examination of the watermark and a trace were never carried out.

“In fact, the likely source of the material would be a band insider, record company employee or a music critic. But rather than alienate themselves from these useful allies, the IFPI, which represents the interests of the four major record companies, chose instead to make a scapegoat of a 17-year-old boy.”
http://www.manchestereveningnews.co....case_dropp ed





Italian Pirate Bay Proxy Site Closed Down
Mark Worden

The Italian music industry's battle with the controversial Swedish BitTorrent tracker the Pirate Bay continues.

Officers from the Guardia di Finanza, Italy's fiscal police force, operating in the northern Italian town of Bergamo, have seized and closed down labaia.it ("the bay"), a proxy site which enabled Italian users to access Pirate Bay.

Italian users have been unable to access the Pirate Bay directly for some time, following a series of court rulings. Italian access to the Pirate Bay was first blocked by a court in Bergamo in August 2008.

Swedish supporters of the Pirate Bay proceeded to denounce Italy as a "fascist state" and the ruling was overturned on appeal the following month. That appeal ruling was itself overturned by Italy's Court of Cassation in September 2009.

When a local court in Bergamo re-considered the case earlier this week, in light of the Court of Cassation ruling, it decided that all access to Pirate Bay in Italy should be blocked, prompting the fiscal police officers to apply that order to the proxy site.

In a statement Italy's major label representative body, the IFPI-affiliated FIMI, says it is "satisfied" with this latest development.
http://www.billboard.biz/bbbiz/conte...6cf4b676a5ecec





Anti-piracy Law has Little Effect on Internet Use
Peter Vinthagen Simpson

A year after the adoption of Sweden's IPRED anti-piracy legislation, new figures show that file sharing is growing in popularity, internet traffic has rebounded strongly, and only a small handful of cases have been brought before the courts.

The introduction of the law, aimed at tackling file sharing by allowing access to subscriber information, coincided with the high profile convictions of the four backers of the Pirate Bay in April 2009.

The day after the law's adoption on April 1st internet traffic declined by 30 percent, according to figures from Netnod, a company responsible for the operation of internet exchanges in five Swedish cities.

"The majority of all internet traffic is file sharing, which is why nothing other than the new IPRED law can explain this major drop in traffic," Anti-Piracy Agency lawyer Henrik Pontén said at the time.

But new figures from Netnod indicate that the drop was only short lived and taken over a two year period the April dip is part of a longer term steady upward trend.

But the agency claims that the law continues to have a "dampening effect" on illegal file sharing.

"The degree to which this effect will be sustained may be impacted by, among other things, the decisions in the IPRED cases currently under the court's review," the agency wrote in a statement marking the first anniversary of the law on Thursday.

According to a Sifo survey published by broadcaster Viasat on Wednesday the number of illegal file sharers is increasing. In March 2009 26 percent of Swedes confirmed that they file shared, by September 2009 this has dropped to 11 percent, but in Wednesday's poll the figure had climbed back up to 16 percent.

Illegal streaming has also become more popular with a recent report from internet company Cisco confirming the rise of the technology as it eliminates the need for users to download copyrighted files and run the risk of prosecution.

In framing the legislative proposal the justice department stated an expectation that 400-800 IPRED cases would reach the courts each year, but over the past year a mere five reports have been made to Sweden's courts, only three of which remain outstanding.

One of the more high profile cases concerns five audio book publishers which was filed on April 1st 2009. On October 13th the appeals court denied the publisher's request for subscriber information.

A further case in Södertörn district court in August resulted in TeliaSonera being instructed to divulge subscriber information; the firm has now appealed the ruling.

A fund that was set up to support those sued under the IPRED law has now been put on hold, as has a similar service by the Bureau of Piracy (Piratbyrån), a group set up in 2003 to discuss file sharing issues.

"The IPRED law has not got the breakthrough that people thought, regardless of which side of the debate you sit. As not much has happened then it is difficult to assess whether the law has been effective, or whether it has been a threat to personal integrity," said Marcin de Kaminski, a founder of the Bureau of Piracy and researcher at Lund University, to the Svenska Dagbladet daily.

The Local spoke to Lars Gustafsson, chief executive of IFPI Sweden, in February after a police raid led to the seizure of so-called DC hubs and their operators at locations across Sweden.

"The police have had a shortage of resources for this type of crime but now it seems to be creeping up the list of priorities somewhat," he said.

The new file sharing law is based on the European Union's Intellectual Property Rights Enforcement Directive (IPRED) and allows courts to order internet operators to hand over details that identify suspected illegal file sharers.
http://www.thelocal.se/25868/20100401/





EU Demands Canada Completely Overhaul Its Intellectual Property Laws

Late last year, a draft of the European Union proposal for the intellectual property chapter of the Canada - EU Comprehensive Economic Trade Agreement leaked online. The leak revealed that the EU was seeking some significant changes to Canadian IP laws. Negotiations have continued and I have now received an updated copy of the draft chapter, complete with proposals from both the EU and Canada. The breadth of the demands are stunning - the EU is demanding nothing less than a complete overhaul of Canadian IP laws including copyright, trademark, databases, patent, geographic indications, and even plant variety rights.

While there are some Canadian requests - for example, Canada plays Hollywood North by asking the EU to introduce an anti-camcording provision - virtually all the changes would require Canadian reforms. In fact, while the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement garners the bulk of the attention, CETA would actually involve far more domestic change. In some sections, the EU simply takes its own directives and incorporates them into the treaty. For example, provisions on the liability of ISPs is taken directly from EU law, including the use of terms such as "information society service" - something that is defined under EU law but is meaningless in Canada.

Notably, the draft includes many new rights for broadcasters. These rights form part of a proposed Broadcast Treaty at WIPO that has failed to achieve consensus. The EU is seeking to build support for the treaty by requiring Canada to implement many new provisions that would give broadcasters a host of new rights and force public places to pay additional fees for carry broadcasts.

Given the magnitude of the proposed changes, the price of a trade agreement is clear. The EU is effectively demanding that Canada surrender its sovereignty over intellectual property law and policy. Some of the proposed changes in the Intellectual Property chapter (Chapter 20) of CETA include:

Copyright

The EU demands include:

* compliance with WIPO Internet treaties
* extension of the term of copyright to life of the author plus 70 years (Canadian law currently at life plus 50 years)
* additional copyright term extensions for audiovisual works, anonymous works, and unpublished works
* term of copyright for broadcasts for at least 50 years (Canada wants to limit to wireless broadcasts, while EU wants it to cover everything)
* greater transparency for copyright collectives
* new resale right for works of art
* new exclusive right of fixation for broadcasts (Canada wants to limit to wireless broadcasts, while EU wants it to cover everything)
* new exclusive right for broadcasters for retransmission in public places (ie. new fees for bars and other public places)
* new distribution right
* extension of the reproduction right to performers and broadcasters
* extension of the communications right for performers, phonogram producers, film producers, and broadcasters.
* anti-circumvention rules including provisions against devices that can be used to circumvent digital locks
* protection for rights management information

These are all EU demands. The only Canadian request is a yet to be specified provision on camcording.

Enforcement of IP Rights

The enforcement IP rights section contains literally pages of European law that the EU wants incorporated into Canada. It addresses everything from ISP liability to injunctions to border measures to damages provisions. The EU even wants new criminal sanctions added, but has yet to specify what those should be. There are no Canadian requests here. Rather, the EU wants Canada to discard its approach to the enforcement of intellectual property almost completely and simply adopt the EU model.

Trademarks

The EU demands include:

* Canada to comply with the Trademark Law Treaty (Canada wants only to comply with the Singapore Treaty on the Law of Trademarks and to make reasonable efforts to accede to Madrid Agreement on international registration)
* Canada to change its procedure for registration of trademarks
* Canada to provide protections for well-known trademarks

Geographic Indications

Canada and the EU propose competing approaches for extending protections for geographic indications. This applies to a wide range of products including agricultural products, wine, spirit drinks, and foodstuffs. The EU's plan is far more extensive with provisions on protection, enforcement, rights of use, and scope of protection. In fact, the EU even wants to create a Joint Committee on geographic indications charged with monitoring the rules between Canada and the EU.

Designs

The EU demands include:

* Canada to accede to the Hague Agreement Concerning the International Registration of Industrial Designs
* new protection for designs
* new rights for registration of designs
* term of protection for designs of at least five years

Patents

The EU demands include:

* Canada to comply with Articles 1 - 16 of the Patent Law Treaty (Canada wants to "endeavour to accede" to the treaty)
* further protection for medicinal or plant protection
* additional protection blocking disclosure of pharmaceutical data that is submitted to regulatory authorities to third parties
* new data protection for plant protection

Trade Secrets

Canada demands that the EU adopt the Canadian protection for trade secrets
http://www.michaelgeist.ca/content/view/4914/125/





Pirate Party Pillages Private Papers

Recently, a document that is allegedly a consolidated discussion paper of the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement was leaked in full to the internet. Today, due to the complete lack of a transparent public consultation process with ACTA, Pirate Party Australia will also be mirroring this controversial document, in order to fuel public awareness and debate surrounding government transparency. You can view the PDF with software such as Adobe Acrobat Reader or Foxit Reader by visiting the following link.

Download PDF Version of Secret ACTA Documents

Download PDF Version of Press Release

The Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement, or ACTA, is a secret agreement in negotiation between the EU, Canada, the USA, Japan, NZ, Australia and other nations. While it does propose some legitimate anti-counterfeiting measures, the copyright-related chapters are the result of commercial interests seeking to limit society's rights to material designed to enhance our culture.

These vested interests are the reason that the negotiating parties do not wish for the closeted discussions of ACTA to be public. Proposals such as a graduated response scheme, or 'three strikes' as it is commonly known, have been considered in multiple leaked ACTA documents over the past two years. 'Three strikes' would force ISPs to disconnect households from the Internet upon three accusations of copyright infringement.
"The most alarming part of these proposals is the complete lack of judicial oversight, allowing the copyright owners to play both judge and jury, while forcing ISPs to take on the role of executioner," said David Crafti, Pirate Party President.

Pirate Party Australia has twice attempted to gain ACTA documents under a Freedom of Information request, but both were rejected. Most recent attempt documented here.

Notable sections include Section 4 (p25)which includes sanctions that would require ISPs to enforce copyright, effectively deeming them copyright police and overriding the AFACT vs iiNet trial verdict entirely. It is disgraceful that this agreement continues to be negotiated without public oversight and transparency.

The EU recently voted to oppose ACTA, with 663 votes for and 13 against. Many EU members claimed the negotiations were a violation of the Lisbon Treaty. "We have shown that we do not accept secrecy. We have shown that we are prepared to stand up for a free internet open to everybody.
Christian Engström, Pirate Party MEP

Pirate Party Australia applauds the EU's opposition to the Treaty and in the interests of its citizens, calls for the Australian government to withdraw from negotiations. We also encourage everyone to get informed about what the ACTA treaty will mean for individuals and all of us as a nation. We need to make it clear that our personal liberties are more important than a record label's hip pocket.
http://pirateparty.org.au/Pirate-Par...Private-Papers





Economists Urge Government to Stop War on Piracy
Ernesto

In an advisory report two economy professors are urging a government to rethink new anti-piracy legislation currently being drafted. The professors argue that harsher anti-piracy measures will only benefit the large media companies and prominent artists, at the expense of users and upcoming artists.

The Spanish Government has recently proposed new legislation under which BitTorrent sites could be taken offline without a judicial order. The new Sustainable Economy Law, sponsored by Prime Minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, further includes a wide range of measures that are aimed at protecting copyright holders from online piracy.

It comes as no surprise that the new legislation has been met with firm opposition from the public. They are now joined by Professor Pablo Fernández and Professor Michele Boldrin, who have published a report arguing that the new law might do more harm than good.

The report, published by the economy research center FEDEA, harshly criticizes the Government’s plans to clamp down on the file-sharing public. They say that the current proposals are a “useless and an ineffective way to defend the artists because it is already an ancient form of fighting piracy.”

According to professors Fernandez and Boldrin, the proposed legislation only benefits the major labels and artists “at the expense of users and lesser-known artists.” They further say that it would be more effective for the entertainment industry to explore new business models instead of clinging to an old model that has proven to be ineffective.

“The Internet has changed the playing field and there are new rules that would allow a substantial reduction in property rights,” Professor Pablo Vazquez said commenting on the report. The researchers therefore advise the Government to stop its war on piracy and come up with legislation that would allow for reduced copyright terms .

In their report the professors rightfully argue that the Internet has drastically changed the way users interact with media. If tougher anti-piracy legislation is implemented, digital innovation may be hampered due to unnecessary restrictions on Internet use.

Under the current laws Spanish citizens are allowed to share copyrighted files for non-commercial use. Websites that offer links to copyrighted files are also acting within the boundaries of the law as long as they do not profit directly from infringements.
http://torrentfreak.com/economists-u...piracy-100327/





Sen. Klobuchar Introducing Legislation to Protect File Sharers
Mark Zdechlik

Sen. Amy Klobuchar says Congress needs to bolster consumer protections when it comes to computer file sharing networks.

Peer-to-peer networks allow computer users to do everything from play games with each other to share music and video files. But Klobuchar says the technology can compromise personal information.

"Because file sharing programs encourage users to share the files on their computers, many users end up unintentionally sharing personal documents such as tax returns governments, medical forms, confidential business files and classified government documents," Klobuchar said.

Klobuchar says that's causing major problems for individuals, businesses and government agencies.

"Inadvertent file sharing over P2P networks has led to widespread identify theft, medical fraud, child predators, copyright violations and national security threats," she said.

The legislation Klobuchar is proposing would ensure file sharing programs can not be installed without the clear consent of an authorized computer user.

It would also prevent such software from blocking efforts to remove them and it would give the Federal Trade Commission enforcement authority.
http://minnesota.publicradio.org/dis...-file-sharing/





UK Music Calls for Stronger Copyright Protection
Shane Richmond

UK Music, the umbrella organisation that represents various parts of the British music industry, has released its recommendations for the future of the industry, among them a call for stronger copyright protections.

The recommendations are contained in the strategy document that I wrote about a couple of weeks ago, called Liberating Creativity. On copyright, UK Music says:

“As a priority, Government should swiftly implement the proposals laid out in the Digital Economy Bill which address digital copyright infringement and work with competition authorities to help ease the tension between the desire by copyright users for easier licensing and the restrictions imposed on the rights holders who are trying to achieve this, especially at a European level. Government should continue to press our case in Europe on copyright term extension for sound recordings; and complete implementation of the recommendations from its review of the Copyright Tribunal.”

Long-time readers will no that I’m no fan of copyright law as it stands at the moment and I’m certainly not in favour of copyright extensions, though there is a certain depressing inevitability about them given the Government’s desire to accede to the entertainment industry’s desire to prop up existing business models.

I’m not wild about the Digital Economy Bill either but it looks set to be rushed through Parliament ahead of the election in the ‘wash up’. It will require ISPs to “disconnect” those who are accused of persistent filesharing and allow for websites that are sharing copyrighted material to be closed down. I doubt it will make more than a dent on internet piracy since the pirate will find ways to escape detection.

Anyway, what do we get in return for these measures? UK Music writes:

“The music industry will open up ever more ways for music to be enjoyed through new business models for commercial use and innovative licensing arrangements for non-commercial use.”

This, I think, gets to the core of my disagreement with UK Music’s approach. I would argue that the music industry should be doing those things anyway and that they are the best way to tackle piracy. The music industry – or at least some of it – wants to ensure sufficient protections are in place before they can innovate.

In addition to copyright, Liberating Creativity, makes recommendations about Government investment in the British music industry, calls for a Creative Industries cabinet committee and sets out plans for music education, skills and training. You can read the full report here [PDF link].
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/technol...ht-protection/





Digital Economy Bill Could Block Websites

The Government has reintroduced measures into the Digital Economy Bill that would allow politicians to block pirate websites without primary legislation
Matt Warman

The controversial Digital Economy Bill has been further amended so that ministers could block websites that offer pirated copyright content. The new move, which is supported by both Conservatives and Labour, means it is now even more likely that the Bill will be passed into law in the wash-up process, which takes place between an election being called and parliament being dissolved.

Original plans in the bill to allow Government to change the law without primary legislation had been criticised widely and were blocked by the opposition parties. Now, however, the bill has been changed so that Government would consult the public on each proposed blocking and then pass a statutory instrument compelling ISPs to do so. This secondary legislation could, theoretically, be blocked by parliament.

The conditions required for a website to be blocked have also been made more onerous: “serious adverse effect on businesses or consumers” would need to be shown, along with evidence that “a substantial amount of material has been, is being or is likely to be made available in infringement of copyright”.

Opposition parties had proposed that service providers should be responsible for blocking sites, but the Government agreed with industry demands that cost and freedom of speech be taken into account. Lord Mandelson has now written to his Conservative and Liberal Democrat counterparts, Jeremy Hunt and Don Foster, to explain the new proposals.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technolog...-websites.html





Liberal Democrats Say Digital Economy Bill Should Wait for Next Government

Controversial bill should not be pushed through at tail-end of Parliament, says chief whip as government pushes new clause
Charles Arthur

The Liberal Democrats have called for the Digital Economy bill to be scrapped and re-introduced afresh in the next Parliament, and say they will oppose its rushed passage if, as expected, it is speeded through to become law in the "wash-up" ahead of a general election.

Paul Burstow, the Liberal Democrat chief whip, told the Guardian that although the party's opposition might not be enough on its own to prevent the bill from passing, he hoped that the arguments being put forward - that the issues needed more debate than has been possible - might sway one of the other parties into delaying its passage.

"During the negotiation and discussion in the wash-up we will make it clear that we think that it isn't a suitable way to deal with the issues remaining such as site blocking," Burstow said. "We will put amendments down and make the case and hope that the government and the Conservatives will agree that it shouldn't proceed at this stage," Burstow said.

The bill has proved controversial principally because it would require internet service providers (ISPs) to monitor internet connections provide details in cases of alleged copyright infringement, and the powers that it gives to "copyright holders" - expected mainly to be record labels and film companies - to lay accusations against people who might then see their internet connection suspended without proof of wrongdoing. It also contains provisions that could lead to sites which are "mostly infringing" of copyright being blocked by ISPs. That could mean that a site such as Wikileaks, which acts as a conduit for documents leaked anonymously by whistleblowers, would vanish from the internet as seen in Britain.

On Tuesday night the government published a new clause 18 for the bill to replace one which has raised the ire of lobbying groups. The key difference from the previous clause appears to be that the secretary of state for business would have the final say on whether an internet site could be blocked.

The Department for Business, Innovation and Skills says of the addition: "the new clause sets out to achieve the main aims of the original clause 18, but with some new safeguards:

"The new clause is a legally enforceable version of the clause inserted by the Opposition, with additional safeguards:
"It provides for a limited power to propose regulations in the future. The regulations would allow copyright owners to apply for court injunctions. These injunctions would require ISPs (or other service providers) to block access to specified internet locations providing access to copyright infringing material;
"The safeguards are extensive, including provisions on consultation, threshold and proportionality, Parliamentary accountability, legitimate use of websites, freedom of speech, and ensuring due court process."

Hundreds of people protested outside Parliament last week over those provisions of the bill. The Open Rights Group has also been critical of the amount of time that has been devoted to debating it: while it has had three readings in the House of Lords, including a committee stage, it has had only one reading in the Commons, and if it proceeds to the "wash-up" it will not receive a detailed line-by-line examination in committee. Instead, it would be pushed through with the minimum of debate.

The bill's second reading in the Commons is scheduled for Tuesday 6 April, when Gordon Brown is also expected to ask the Queen to dissolve Parliament ahead of a general election on 6 May. That would trigger the fast-track "wash-up" where legislation that has passed through one house of Parliament will be considered by all the main party whips for royal assent. Typically, bills required to keep the process of government going - such as the Budget or finance bills - are nodded through in a truncated third reading.

Doing that with the Digital Economy bill could prove more controversial if the government puts it into the wash-up, says Burstow. "We will vote against it at the third reading," he said.

Burstow said that discussions about the parties' positions occur all the time as part of Parliamentary business. "The question will be whether these concerns are shared by one of the other parties." Such opposition would constitute an obstacle to the bill, rather than a roadblock, he acknowledged. "We're putting down some markers."

"It might be that this is legislation where there's recognition that it need more time to be properly scrutinised, which isn't possible this close to a general election," Burstow said.

The question of whether the bill has had sufficient debate has also caused a row between the BPI, which represents record labels and backs the bill, and the Open Rights Group, which opposes its strictures on internet users and says it would choke off services such as public Wi-Fi. The ORG says that the bill has had insufficient debating time in the Commons, and has challenged the BPI to say whether it thinks the time allotted - expected to amount to about 90 minutes - is sufficient for a bill of this importance. The BPI says that the time allotted is a matter for the party managers - but has declined so far to answer queries raised by Guardian columnist Cory Doctorow on whether it thinks the time allotted under the present timetable is sufficient.

Thousands of letters have been sent to MPs by constituents via the 38 Degrees site complaining at the lack of debate of the bill.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology...igital-britain





NZ's Labour Party Rejects Cutting off Pirates
Juha Saarinen

New Zealand's Labour party, currently in opposition, has stated that it would no longer support provisions for cutting off file sharer's internet accounts.

The policy is a back-flip on the party's position on graduated response legislation in the past, which supported termination of internet access.

The party announced that it support for the current New Zealand Government's Copyright Infringement File Sharing Amendment Bill, but said it strongly opposes provisions in it for cutting off file sharers' Internet accounts.

Labour ICT spokeswoman Clare Curran says cutting off infringers' Internet access "is not workable" and "ineffective as a remedy according to all advice received" by her party. Curran also says it was also a matter of principle to ensure that people have freedom of access to information.

In 2008, New Zealand's Labour Party enacted a controversial Section (92A) of the country's Amended Copyright Act which required ISPs to implement a "reasonable policy" to terminate repeat infringers' Internet accounts, with the support of the then opposition National Party.

Following a public outcry against S92A the year after, the new National government suspended the law pending consultation with stakeholders. The present S92 proposes a regime with a longer process and Internet termination only after a tribunal order.

Curran says the intense and widespread public reaction to S92A is directly behind Labour changing its mind on Internet termination as a penalty. She says Labour has consulted extensively on the issue with interested parties, including rights holders. These, Curran says, are "broadly supportive of the new S92A."

Lobby group InternetNZ's policy director Jordan Carter says his organisation is pleased to see Labour reversing its previous position on Internet termination and "coming to its senses" on the issue.

Next month, New Zealand hosts the latest round of the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) discussions, under which the host country is pushing for greater clarity and transparency under the international agreement.
http://www.itnews.com.au/News/170963...ikes-rule.aspx





Zoot Alors

French Anti-Piracy Law Actually Increasing Piracy
David Murphy

Don't pirate content in France: That's the mantra of the country's High Authority for Copyright Protection and Dissemination of Works on the Internet law (HADOPI 2), but it's not clear that its intended audience has received the message loud and clear.

The three-strikes-and-you're-banned law is designed to sever copyright infringers from the ability to purchase service from any French ISP if they're found guilty of pirating online material. That's after a series of two warning letters and some face-time in front of a French judge, who has the capacity to assign fines of up to €300,000, as well as jail time.

However, new research is indicating that HADOPI's effect on filesharing might not be as pronounced as lawmakers might have hoped, even given the law's tough stance toward online piracy. Ars Technica reports that French researchers at the University of Rennes have found a three-percent increase for online copyright infringement since HADOPI's inception.

For what it's worth, HADOPI's punishments aren't currently being enforced. But even though online pirates have yet to receive warning letters or service termination, the threat of HADOPI has been enough to deter their activities somewhat. The aforementioned researchers noted that online file infringement has lessened on P2P services after the law's passage—of 2,000 surveyed participants, 15 percent indicated that they had ceased their P2P-downloading ways.

Removing the platform hasn't removed the desire, however. Two-thirds of this very same group went on to indicate that they now found their copyright material on other sources that don't fall under HADOPI's watch, including streaming services and HTTP-based download hosts (think RapidShare).

From Ars Technica:

"While this might sound depressing to HADOPI's backers, the study also has some surprising news about pirates: many of them buy. Half of the people who said they purchase digital music or video online also said they pirated some material. Twenty-seven percent of all digital media buyers are "Hadopi pirates" (ie, P2P users), while the other 23 percent rely on streaming and downloads. As the researchers note, this means that banning P2P pirates from the 'Net could "eliminate 27 percent of all Internet buyers of music and video."

The survey also finds that 70 percent of all Internet users surveyed don't engage in any type of online infringement. Far more users hit legal video sites like YouTube and DailyMotion (48 percent), or go to legal streaming music sites like Deezer (43 percent), or legal download sites like iTunes (22 percent) than engage in any infringing activities.

The most popular single infringing activity is illicit Web streaming sites (20 percent), followed by P2P use (14 percent)."

Passing HADOPI has been quite the legislative process for France. The original version of the law, which offered no judicial recourse for alleged filesharers, was struck down by France's Constitutional Council in June of 2009.

However, the spirit of the law hasn't remained an exclusively French experience. The United Kingdom is considering a similar "three-strikes" provision in its upcoming Digital Economy Bill. As well, similar criticisms against the legislation's key details—only three accusations of Internet piracy would be required to suspend a user's internet connection—are sprouting up in opposition to the legislation.

Both France's current law and the UK's proposed law make no safeguards for shared networks, which has the potential to effect anyone from the errant open-Wi-Fi enthusiast to coffee shops and businesses. As written, the owner of the network is the responsible party for internal network activity. Leave your WiFi unlocked for pirates to leech off of, and you'll be liable for the results of their Web surfing.

"Responding to such claims, Lord Young, who is sponsoring the bill alongside Lord Mandelson, said that nobody could be excluded from the law - and that business and organisations should take 'proportionate and reasonable measures' to prevent illegal activity," the U.K.'s The Guardian reported.

'No one wants to see libraries or universities the subject of court action or technical measures if—I stress this—they are ever introduced,' he said, according to the paper.

'No one wants to see legitimate businesses suffer as a consequence of the actions of their customers but, equally, it cannot be right that they are totally excluded from the provisions of the bill.'

Lord Young suggested that all those potentially affected by the law should issue terms of service which placed the liability for file sharing on the user, rather than the wireless hotspot owner. He added that technical solutions could be used to block high bandwidth activity - such as downloading movies - or to screen out file sharing applications."
http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2010/...easing-piracy/





Sony Disables PlayStation Feature
BBC

Sony has said it will disable a feature on its PlayStation 3 (PS3) console in a move some consider to be a pre-emptive strike to guard against games piracy.

The firm said that an update to be released on 1 April will prevent people using a function that allows them to install alternative operating systems.

Sony said it had made the decision to address "security concerns".

The move comes after a US hacker released the first code that he claimed bypassed the PS3's security systems.

The exploit, released by hacker Geohot, used a machine running a variant of the Linux operating system.

One gamer, commenting on Sony's blog post, said: "The funny thing about this is that users that legally enjoy this feature will suffer its loss and the hackers will find some way to have the update plus the feature."

Another said: "This is so stupid. I spent $500 on this system to be able to use whatever features it came with. Preventing hackers is one thing, but taking away a feature that I paid for is another."

Geohot, also known as George Hotz, gained notoriety for unlocking Apple's iPhone as a teenager.

He has said that he will work on a method to bypass the new update and allow gamers to retain the ability to install other operating systems.

"This is about more than this feature right now," he wrote in his blog. "It's about whether these companies have the right to take away advertised features from a product you purchased.

"Imagine if an exploit were found in Safari on the iPhone, but instead of fixing it, Apple decides to pull web browsing altogether."

Playback problem

The "Other OS" feature on the PS3 allows gamers to install a version of Linux on their machines. The feature has been used by researchers who want to tap into the PS3's processing power.

The latest update will be rolled out on 1 April, making many gamers think it was an April Fool's joke.

Sony has said the update is optional, but those people that do not install it will no longer have access to features, such as its online games network and the ability to playback certain games or Blu-ray DVDs that require the most up-to-date firmware.

A Sony spokesperson said that gamers would have to "accept" the update before it begins to install.

The update only affects older machines. The newer "slim" models of the PS3 do not have the "other OS" feature.

Sony will not say how many people it believes will be affected by the update, although the figure is thought to be relatively small.

The firm advised people using a machine running another operating system who want to install the update to back up any data on their machine.

The firm has sold more than 33 million consoles worldwide.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/h...gy/8594720.stm





Court Ruling Seen to Guard Online Content
Tim Bradshaw and Esther Bintliff

Broadband providers will have to do more to help music labels and movie studios protect their content online, legal experts said on Monday following a High Court ruling.

In a case brought by a group of film studios including Disney, Twentieth Century Fox, Universal and Warner Bros, Mr Justice Kitchin found that Newzbin, a private online forum, was liable for its members’ copyright infringement when they used the site to download movies and TV shows.

Newzbin argued that it was no more responsible for copyright infringement than Google is, but the judge said its knowledge of the downloading meant it shared responsibility.

The case has been compared with record labels’ victory over Pirate Bay in Sweden last year. Simon Baggs, partner at Wiggin, the law firm that represented the studios, said that the ruling set a new precedent.

“It doesn’t mean that the judgment only has application to sites of this particularly egregious type,” Mr Baggs told the FT.

Many websites seek to avoid liability by relying on precedents that pre-date the web. But now, any site which is actively promoting links to infringing content – which could include video streaming sites – could be held liable for the copyright infringement of their users, Mr Baggs said.

After the case, internet service providers such as BT, TalkTalk and Virgin Media will have to be more responsive to rights holders’ requests to block sites that they see as enabling piracy, Mr Baggs said.

“I don’t think ISPs need to be proactive [in policing content on their networks] but the judgment supports the view that ISPs can be required to block websites,” Mr Baggs said. “It opens the door to rights owners to seek to require ISPs to take action where infringement is taking place.”

The digital economy bill, currently making its way through parliament, could clarify the law further by requiring ISPs to block sites, he added.

Kim Walker, a partner at Pinsent Masons, said that ISPs could no longer “turn a blind eye” to piracy, while Mark Shillito, partner at Herbert Smith, agreed that ISPs should be “on their guard”.

Newzbin could not be reached for comment.
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/1e7687b0-3...44feabdc0.html





Help wanted

Warner Bros: £17.5K to Hunt Internet Pirates
Hani Megerisi

Warner Bros is recruiting an anti-piracy intern to hunt down internet pirates.

Duties include monitoring local internet forums for pirated Warner Bros and NBC Universal content, scanning the net for infringing files and maintaining and developing bots for internet link scanning.

The successful candidate’s duties also include “performing trap purchases of pirated product[s]”, keeping information on pirate websites, groups and users on file-sharing websites, and logging “data and other intelligence in forensic databases”.

Warner Bros refused to comment on the vacancy, except to confirm that it was a legitimate position

The year-long work placement is open to students who have experience with peer protocols and with programming.

“It is legal and it is a very common practice,” a spokesman for law firm Pinsent Mason told PC Pro. “There are a couple of potential legal issues but it looks like they’ve covered their bases. They have to log the problems in case it comes up in court… [and] they can only monitor their own content.

“It’s very common across numerous sectors – music, film, visuals – they use it to monitor infringements.”

Warner Bros refused to comment on the vacancy, except to confirm that it was a legitimate position.

This comes as the UK is currently embroiled in disputes over file-sharing and online copyright infringement, with the problem being a central part of the Digital Economy Bill. In the dispute, the BPI has come under fire for allegedly influencing potential policy on file-sharing, pushing for harder penalties on infringers.

If the internship sounds attractive, there's bad news. Prospective candidates have just two days left to hand in their applications, with a closing date of 31 March 2010.
http://www.pcpro.co.uk/news/356848/w...ternet-pirates





Software Piracy – It’s Not Right, but How Do We Fix It?
Yousif A.

It’s been in the media quite predominately recently. Piracy seems to be the hot topic of the month. Ubisoft implemented their DRM system that will require PC owners to constantly be in contact with their servers to play their games. Everyone seems to be up in arms about a fight that developers and publishers have been engaged in since the birth of the video game, well really since the birth of recording equipment. Are these people justified in their arguments? Well yes!

Piracy – The Unauthorized use or reproduction of copyrighted or patented material. Essentially this means, the theft of software, and theft is the issue. Piracy is wrong however you look at it, yet everyone has done it in one way or another. You can count the number of PC owners who have never cracked or copied a game on one hand. For years programs and systems for stopping this act have been trialed and generally failed. CD keys were the first step, and a good one, but it didn’t take long for the emergence of cracks to appear (bypassing a CD key). Other systems like Windows live and Steam have been slightly more successful. Steam-linked products cannot then be passed on after activation (at least not to my knowledge) and windows live does not allow you to save your progress or use online functionality unless you are signed in.

Pirates claim they make illegal copies of these games for a number of reasons. “The product is too expensive,” “the restrictions placed by publishers are unfair,” or maybe, ”because I can.” No argument is valid, no verification they can give for their actions works when applied to any other item in the world. The argument people have already put out against the DRM system is that they have blown it out of proportion and that they are going to hack it simply because the system is there. That’s like saying “I used to go into my housemate’s room to borrow DVD’s, but he put a lock on the door so I’m going to break in.”

Some pirates copy games simply because they don’t want to pay for it, these are obvious criminals. The problem is they then open up the way for people who are disenfranchised with something the publisher has done. These people get on the bandwagon simply because they know it’s rolling through town. Without the former a large number of people who get copied games would not exist. It’s petty and untoward; these people get a large amount of their entertainment from the industry and don’t see the damage they are doing. “I’m just one person” has never been a good argument, as thousands will give the same justification. Take a look at the cinema industry and the damage to profits that pirated films have caused. Cinemas are taking another knock as DVD publishers are fighting towards earlier release times from silver screen to sale due to the losses sustained. Films may make huge money, but after all the money put in and investments, poor sales due to illegal copies can cripple a company. The same will start to happen to the video game industry unless measures like DRM are taken.

I’m not happy about having to be online for my game to work, but I understand the angle Ubisoft are coming from. We only have ourselves to blame for our problems, and I wouldn’t be surprised if consoles take the same approach by the next generation after the substantial amount of modifications to Xbox and Wii consoles. The Playstation 3 is only getting away with minimal abuse due to the format of their games, but that won’t last forever now that Blu-ray is starting to make some serious headway against DVD sales. After running an independent games store for 2 years, seeing the amount of people with modified consoles is astounding. The scariest thing is that these people usually don’t realize that it’s illegal when they come to sell the console, let alone the amount of people that tried to return games hours after purchase claiming problems when they had actually copied the game to a hard drive. The main retailer for games in the UK, Game, stopped their 10 day return policy for this exact reason. Now if you buy a terrible game and the packaging is opened you cannot return the product for full price or a different title, which was a life saver in my naive youth.

The only example of helpful cracking that I have encountered has been with the PC special edition of Dreamfall, which simply won’t work on Vista or Windows 7. The game did not require a CD key, but needed verification online under a security system that simply doesn’t work. The only way to get it to work is to trick it into needing a CD key and then cracking it. I bought the game so I cannot see a problem with this method of solving the issue. I have the receipt for my product if anyone wants to complain. In essence this hack is a roundabout fix using something that is made for an illegal version. The fact something good came from something very bad is not a justification for its existence.

So we come to the crux of the problem. Developers are always going to try and protect their products and there will always be people breaking through these defenses. So how do you stop the vicious circle? Well, it’s not pretty and it opens the way for some new problems to replace the old, but stricter punishment. If you right now have a modified 360 online and it gets detected, it will be permanently disabled, in theory. So in this theoretical situation, your 360 which contained hundreds of dollars worth of copied games, is now useless. Convenient that you saved those hundreds of dollars on games for a year. You can spend some of your cash on a replacement and start again. Rather than punishment, the current reprimand is more of an inconvenience.

Can you imagine a world where stolen copies of games were punishable (constantly) by a $500 fine for each item? How many people would still be doing it if that were the case? I’m willing to bet at least 75% of current piracy would stop dead. The problem with this is twofold. Currently according to the law (UK) you are allowed copies of games as a backup for up to 2 days. You don’t even have to prove ownership, destroy these copies after 2 days and it’s all good. Also items like the notorious Nintendo DS R4 card are completely legal. The R4 card in itself is just a piece of technology that can be used to transfer media products onto your DS, or back up your own games. How people use the technology may not correlate with this, but the makers of the card cannot be punished. As with all technology, the use hardly ever corresponds to the original purpose.

If these laws were to change, then even getting your hands upon items capable of creating pirate copies would become difficult. With that we get more problems. How much valid technology would be banned due to its possible use? It’s a bit like banning kitchen knives because someone could use it as a weapon. Again when you consider the ramifications of changing the law on owning copies, it looks rather bleak. I currently have a copy of STALKER on a copied disc from a friend’s version. My disc for STALKER got crushed when I moved. I own the game, just my original version is in pieces. How would I prove my innocence with just a box? The broken disc went in the bin a long time ago, and I’m not one for keeping receipts.

So while punishment seems like a better option than constantly battling protection software, it has some flaws too. I do believe that stricter punishment should be placed upon those who have committed obvious offences. Modified consoles are far from innocent and couldn’t even begin to justify themselves in a court of law. Due to the Data Protection Act (we salute you), companies like Microsoft cannot actually trace your IP to discover who you are, nor can they be sure your ‘Xbox Live’ details are what you claim them to be. A small change in the law here would be a step in the right direction. God forbid, we ever touch the Data Protection Act. If one person does, it opens the way for something far nastier than media piracy issues. Just a small change somewhere in the law that allows IP addresses to be followed on proof of guilt, which will be supplied by the servers that detect these modifications.

However you look at it, piracy will not be going away. Theft has been a crime since the beginning of our species. We have constantly upgraded CCTV and detection methods to stop petty crime in the streets, and yet still it continues to this day. To assume that in another form of theft, that we could stop these crimes from occurring is an unreachable goal. However at least theft of a physical item is punished by prosecution, perhaps there is something to be learnt from that. What gets to me in the end, is not the people that have done this their whole lives, and that the chances of getting caught are minimal. No, it’s the people that pirate just because they can.

It’s sad to see a large proportion of the gaming community feel like the industry owes them something, and should it not appear, they can take it with egomaniacal denial and justification. As gaming becomes larger in the eyes of society as a whole, the criminal element becomes larger and the once proud entertainment format becomes tied up in rules, regulations, and restrictions (there are your 3 R’s). The word “entertainment”starts to become less relevant the further you go into the community. They forget the reason they came here in the first place. So many angry people online, so many court cases and laws being written, so many uneducated comments and slights brought down upon an industry they know nothing about, and yet they speak with complete conviction. What happened to video game entertainment?
http://kokugamer.com/2010/03/27/soft...-do-we-fix-it/





Five Best Online File Sharing Services

When you want to share a file with a friend but don't want to hassle with email attachment limits or running a home server, very little beats a fast online file sharing service. Here's a look at five of your best options.

Running a home server is a nifty way to share files, but it's not for everyone; it puts the burden of maintenance, uptime, and speed on your shoulders. In fact, How-To Geek recently walked through how to easily share large files and media with friends by running a dead simple home server using Opera Unite, and while it's a great solution, online file sharing services are perfect when you want to let someone else handle the logistics.
Drop.io (Web-based, Basic: Free/Premium: From $19/Month)

The drop.io service is available in two primary flavors. The free service supports "file drops" which can consume up to 100MB of storage. Premium services start at $19 a month and expand the available storage from 100MB to 10GB and up, depending on how much storage and how many drops you'd like. Drop.io's "file drops" are where it really stands out compared to other file-sharing services. File drops are active pools of files to which you can add batches of files, share with others, allow other people to add files and collaborate, and view the media directly from the drop.io's media viewer.

MediaFire (Web-Based, Basic: Free, Premium: From $7/Month)

MediaFire offers multiple tiers of file sharing. At the most basic you can upload as many files as you want, limited by a 200MB cap per file. Free accounts will hold files for 30 day from the last time they were downloaded. Premium accounts start at $7 a month and boost the file cap to 2GB per file, enable site-to-site transfer to your MediaFire account, enable embeddable Dropbox folders, and offer direct file linking—no MediaFire splashpage when you share a link to a file. The folder-based organization of MediaFire makes it simple to share entire batches of files with others, like vacation photos or project files.

Dropbox (Web-Based/Windows/Mac/Linux, Basic: Free, Premium: From $10/Month)

Dropbox has won over many users by combining online file sharing with local storage and syncing. You can use Dropbox exclusively as a web-based file sharing tool to upload and organize files in folders, easily sharing them with yourself or friends. Grabbing the Dropbox client, however, allows you to share any file from a folder on your computer. Files stored in a local Dropbox folder are automatically synced to Dropbox on the web—useful for all sorts of tricks like syncing your OnteNote notebooks among computers or keeping your password keyrings up to date.

RapidShare (Web-Based, Basic: Free, Premium: From $9/Month)

The RapidShare service has multiple layers of user accounts which, at first glance, can be quite confusing to a new user. Without signing up you can upload a single file of 200MB, and your file can then be downloaded up to 10 times—perfect for just sharing a file with a few friends. When you upload files, you're offered the chance to set up a free "collector's" account which gives you further options to store and organize your files. Collector's accounts accumulate points, which you can convert into a premium account—but no clear explanation of the process is anywhere to be found on the RapidShare site. Purchasing a premium account boosts your storage to 20GB and raises your per-file-cap to 2GB.

Megaupload (Web-Based, Basic: Free, Premium: From $10/Month)

Megaupload, like other popular fire-and-forget file sharing tools, has three tiers of service. You can share files with no sign up at all—they'll be limited to 500MB in size, have a 45 second splash page when downloaded, and be given lower priority in the server queue. Signing up for a free account boosts your priority in the queue, raises your maximum file size limit to 2GB, and gives you 200GB of online storage—not bad for a free account. Premium accounts give you unlimited storage, unlimited file size, remove the wait time for downloading, and enable a host of features like batch downloading, password protection for files, and support for FTP and direct HTTP linking.
http://lifehacker.com/5503770/five-b...aring-services





FCC Relying on Faulty ISP Performance Data from comScore

ComScore testing underreports actual ISP performance
Sevcik and Wetzel

The FCC recently used speed test results from comScore as an absolute indicator of specific ISPs' performance. NetForecast analyzed comScore's testing methodology and data to assess whether it accurately reflects broadband ISP performance, and to assess the appropriateness of using the data to reach general conclusions about the actual performance ISPs deliver to their subscribers. We uncovered problems on both counts.

We found that the effective service speeds comScore reports are low by a large margin because its data calculations underreport performance and place many subscribers in a higher performance tier than they purchased. Details of our analysis are available in a NetForecast report, but here is an overview of our findings.

NetForecast's investigation of comScore's ISP speed test methodology uncovered the following data gathering errors:

* Only one TCP connection is used
* Client-server delay is variable
* Participants' computers may be resource constrained
* Test traffic may conflict with home traffic
* Decimal math is incorrect
* Protocol overhead is unaccounted for
* Purchased speed tiers are incorrectly identified

All of these data gathering errors cause the actual speed delivered by an ISP on its network to be underreported, and the individual errors create a compounding effect when aggregated in an individual subscriber's speed measurement. As a result, the actual speed delivered by each ISP tested is higher than the comScore-reported speed for each result of every test.

The data interpretation errors stem from incorrect speed tier identification. These errors are important because they cause the test results to overstate the disparity between the median actual and maximum advertised speeds. The problem stems from a flaw in comScore's method for determining the advertised speed, which often incorrectly bumps subscribers into a higher speed tier than they actually purchased--essentially penalizing an ISP for surpassing its advertised speed.

ComScore calculates the "average actual speed relative to the advertised speed" by dividing the consistently-underreported speed delivered by a frequently-inflated purchased speed. The combination of an inaccurately low numerator and inaccurately high denominator leads to a ratio that incorrectly shows ISPs delivering dramatically low performance relative to what they sold to their subscribers. The actual/advertised effective performance ratio based on this methodology is incorrect to such an extent that it is of extremely limited utility.

ComScore's speed test was designed for ISPs to compare performance to one another in specific markets. Although appropriate for its original use, the test is inappropriate for the FCC to use as an absolute indicator of specific ISPs' performance.

For NetForecast's comprehensive assessment of comScore's technical and statistical methodology, read our "ComScore ISP Speed Test Accuracy" report.





Ofcom Gets Tough on Internet Suppliers Over Broadband Speed Claims
Richard Wray

Ofcom threatens to take action to force ISPs to give more accurate broadband speed information. Photograph: Gamma Ray Studio Inc/Getty Images

Internet users are still not getting the broadband speeds promised by internet service providers, more than a year after the industry signed up to a voluntary code of practice, forcing Ofcom to threaten mandatory regulation.

ISPs are supposed to give consumers an accurate estimate of the maximum speed their lines can support but they should also explain the actual speed may be slower.

But a mystery shopper exercise carried out by Ofcom late last year showed that while 85% of callers were provided with a maximum speed estimate for their line before they signed up, three-quarters of them were not warned that their actual speed was likely to be slower.

Many ISPs were also reticent about giving out speed details unless asked, with 42% of callers having to prompt providers to give them the information.

Consumers are becoming increasingly annoyed about the speed of their broadband connections. The rise of on-demand video services such as the BBC iPlayer and 4oD, which require fast, reliable connections, has shown many internet users that their connections are slower than they had been led to believe. Ofcom's research last year showed consumers were getting less than half the speeds being advertised.

The code of practice was brought in after Ofcom received a flurry of complaints about speed from consumers, and its consumer panel wrote to the six largest ISPs, including BT and TalkTalk, to demand action. But the industry has dragged its feet throughout the process.

Ofcom plans to tighten the code of practice that came into force in December 2008, so that ISPs have to make plain to potential customers the speed that they can expect from their line before they hand over their bank details or the MAC code needed to switch supplier.

Ofcom is also considering adding a clause to the code which would enable customers to cancel their contract without incurring a penalty if their line speed is significantly below the estimate given at the time of signing up.

Ofcom also wants the ISPs to agree to a single, uniform way of measuring line speed. At present, different ISPs use different metrics, meaning that different ISPs often provide widely different estimates about the speeds they can achieve. Some ISPs are also still providing customers with a speed range but the code states that they must be given an actual figure.

Ofcom used independent broadband specialist Sam Knows in a benchmarking exercise last year which examined services offering speeds of "up to" eight megabits a second. At the time, that was the most popular service in the UK, used by 57% of homes. The report showed that, on average, users were getting speeds of 3.9Mbps.

Ofcom recently commissioned a second round of speeds research which it will publish in July 2010. It intends to carry out research into broadband speeds every six months and its first report has quickly become the most downloaded file from Ofcom's website.

Ofcom said no ISP came out best or worst in its mystery shopper exercise, which involved over 1,200 telephone and website shops across a range of ISPs between 30 October and 30 November 2009 in England, Scotland and Wales, and it refused to give details of which providers were investigated.

The regulator, which already publishes advice for consumers about speed, will introduce its changes to the code in the summer and then carry out a further mystery shopper exercise towards the end of the year. If the situation has not improved, Ofcom warned, it will introduce mandatory regulation of the industry next year.

"Consumers are now receiving more accurate information at the point of sale about their broadband service," said Ofcom chief executive, Ed Richards. "But our mystery shopping research reveals there is still significant further progress to be made, particularly in relation to the checkers used to calculate line speeds."

Sebastien Lahtinen, co-founder of thinkbroadband.com, was rather more scathing, saying the research "shows that broadband service providers are still failing to address fully the needs of today's consumers, who are not necessarily as technically literate as those buying broadband connections a few years ago".

"We were disappointed that Ofcom did not publish the results for each broadband provider, as we believe that consumers have a right to know how each broadband provider performed, as this may well indicate how open and transparent they are likely to be with regard to other problems."
http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2...m-isp-internet





We build to suit







Telecom Industry Ripe for Consolidation
Kevin J. O'Brien

Naguib Sawiris, the chief executive of Orascom, the Egyptian group that runs wireless phone networks around the world, believes the global industry of mobile operators is about to enter a turbulent period of Darwinian struggle.

“The next few years will witness major consolidation,” Mr. Sawiris said last month at an industry convention. “All small and medium-sized operators are looking for appropriate M.&A. deals to be able to secure themselves a place on the new world map.”

With global markets on the upswing and governments around the world looking to blanket populations with mobile broadband service, experts say the wireless industry is poised for a wave of mergers and deals that could reshape the industry.

While the growth in demand for mobile data helped operators weather the economic downturn, the global financial crisis slowed the pace of M.&A.’s, or mergers and acquisitions.

The value of global transactions in the telecommunications sector fell to $80.4 billion last year from a peak of $284.7 billion in 2005, according to Mergermarket, an analysis firm. But already this year, deal making has picked up and the market is on track to grow by 50 percent.

Of the $31.2 billion in transactions through March 18, 83 percent is tied to the Mexican billionaire Carlos Slim Helú’s consolidation of his holdings in three Latin American carriers, América Móvil, Carso Global and Telmex Internacional, in deals worth $23.8 billion.

But other large transactions, like the $10.7 billion bid from Bharti Airtel, of India, for African businesses owned by Zain, a Kuwaiti operator with networks in the Middle East, are also on tap. Bharti said last week that it had completed its due diligence and expected to sign a final purchase agreement soon.

Expectations of a wave of consolidation in Europe have been raised by two deals involving France Télécom, which since November has merged its Orange mobile operations in Britain and Switzerland with T-Mobile of Germany and TDC of Denmark, respectively.

Most European mobile markets are mature and static, with a handful of operators typically competing for each other’s customers. With cellphone penetration rates exceeding 100 percent, there is little room to grow and slim prospects of overtaking entrenched leaders.

“We came to the conclusion in Britain and Switzerland that there were limits to growth and it was better to consolidate and proceed with partners,” Gervais Pellissier, France Télécom’s chief financial officer, said during an interview. “Also, growth in the future will come from mobile broadband, not voice, and for that you need the biggest possible network.”

France Télécom adopted its more sanguine view on cross-border acquisitions after investors reacted negatively to the company’s $40.8 billion bid in 2008 for the Swedish-Finnish operator TeliaSonera. France Télécom subsequently withdrew the offer.

Still, expectations of greater merger activity this year are rising in tandem with global stock markets, which may give telecommunications executives more confidence that investors will not penalize their companies for pursuing large and ambitious transactions.

“Right now, barring a reversal of the market repair through, for example, governmental intervention, I would expect mergers and acquisitions activity to increase,” said Paulo C. Pereira, a partner in London at Perella Weinberg Partners, an independent financial services firm that advises telecommunications operators. While industry executives are in a “predominantly cautious stance,” Mr. Pereira said, “the critical factor is that the market recovery holds. If the capital markets continue to be relatively benign, then this will build further the confidence of C.E.O.’s.”

Many chief executives are sticking to pledges to forsake major transactions. On March 17, René Obermann, the Deutsche Telekom chief executive, told investors that no “major” mergers and acquisitions were planned. The company is working to integrate the Greek operator OTE, which it acquired in 2008, and to increase profit in Austria, the Netherlands and the United States.

Vodafone, the European operator with the most subscribers, has refrained from large acquisitions of late amid investor concerns about flagging profitability. Last year, Vodafone merged its Australia carrier with Hutchison Whampoa’s 3.

Clare McCarthy, an analyst at Ovum in London, said Vodafone’s reticence typified the new realism of many operators, some of whom overspent on acquisitions a decade ago believing that size alone would give them an advantage.

“When you look at the way telcos are approaching investments, they are looking for the business case to be nailed down, quantifiable,” she said.

With Western operators cutting costs in mature markets, the bigger deals are seen coming in Africa and the Middle East, where mobile phone penetration remains low. The regional operators Bharti Airtel and Reliance Communications of India, Etisalat of Abu Dhabi, Qtel of Qatar, Zain and Orascom have all built their groups through acquisitions.

But here, too, big cross-border deals remain difficult amid disagreements on price. Bharti and Reliance both bid unsuccessfully for MTN, the largest African operator. Vivendi of France tried and failed to buy Zain Africa. Orascom is fighting in court with France Télécom over their joint Egyptian business.

Few Middle Eastern operators have melded their acquisitions into profitable groups, said Karim Sabbagh, an analyst in Dubai at Booz & Co. “Those operators that can successfully transition from mere collections of independent multimarket companies to truly integrated international companies will sustain competitive advantage,” Mr. Sabbagh said.

Indian operators may also be distracted this year by that country’s coming series of auctions for third-generation licenses, said Bundeep Singh Rangar, the chairman of IndusView, a London consulting firm on Indian business.

“I think it is going to be difficult for Indian operators this year,” he said.

Some analysts say they see lagging or midsize competitors like Sprint Nextel in the United States, Telecom Italia, KPN of the Netherlands and TDC of Denmark as potential takeover candidates.

Peter Alexiadis, a lawyer in Brussels who advises operators on mergers for Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher, said operators were being required to consider larger deals as their businesses shifted from voice to wireless data. “M.&A. is already picking up, based on what is coming across my desk,” he said.

But in this environment, caution is still the rule.

“I see no one ready for big moves,” said Mr. Pellissier, of France Télécom. “I think today everyone is having to take care of their own markets.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/29/te...iht-telco.html





Town Angry Over Net Slurs at Suicide Victim
Frank Eltman



A community reeling from the suicide of a popular high school senior turned its sorrow to outrage Friday over a practice known as "trolling," in which derogatory, hurtful comments are posted online against a person.

In this instance, a tribute site created for Alexis Pilkington, 17, of West Islip High School was the target of insulting messages after her death.

"I think it's horrible. It's vicious. It's cruel. It upsets me as a parent," Lorraine Kolar said as she left a memorial service Thursday for Pilkington.

Classmates, relatives and friends were incensed over what they called creepy, insensitive messages about Pilkington, many posted anonymously and also appearing on other Internet sites since her death.

"It's a disgrace," said Cathi Musemeci, a close friend of the family. "I think it's horrible. Let the girl die in peace."

"Trolling is part of the dark side of cyberspace," said Anne Collier, co-director of the Salt Lake City-based Connectsafely.org, a forum about safety issues on the Internet and social Web sites.

"It's not necessarily tied to any school activity," she said. "It's quite anonymous and random and is usually seen as aggressive, egregious cruelty on the Internet. The people who sit behind computers and do this are known as trolls."

Pilkington received harassing Internet messages even before she killed herself last Sunday. Her parents and other relatives insist she had been troubled for some time. They don't believe the messages were a major factor in her death.

"It had nothing to do with that," said Musemeci. "Lexi was in a lot of pain. She was hurting."

Still formspring.me, a social networking site that was flooded with mean-spirited messages and graphic images, has been the target of much of the town's anger.

About two dozen West Islip High School students sported white T-shirts Friday painted with neon green and orange lettering declaring "Boycott Formspring" and gathered petitions outside the school.

"We just want it off the Internet," said organizer Billy Crawford, a West Islip senior. "If you have anything to say to somebody, there's no reason you shouldn't say it to their face."

A Formspring spokeswoman said the company changed its service in response. Users can now decide whether to decline anonymous questions or allow them. They can also opt to allow them only from a user who is logged into the system, said spokeswoman Margit Wennmachers.

Some Facebook postings, which are not anonymous, also came under scrutiny for negative comments posted about the girl after her death. Facebook spokesman Andrew Noyes said the company does not condone cyberbullying, and said it would disable accounts that are found to be intimidating others.

Frank Stallone, deputy chief of detectives for the Suffolk police, said the department's computer crimes unit was investigating. He said it is often difficult to prosecute such cases, though.

"Sometimes being offensive or crude doesn't always amount to doing something illegal," he said.

Also, he added, "trolling" is difficult to prosecute because offenders "could come from any place in the world.

Stallone said that unless a Pilkington family member files a complaint, the police cannot do much.

More than 15 states have laws making cyberbullying a crime or making it easier to investigate or prosecute, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. New York does not have such a law, although a bill has been proposed to stiffen penalties for hazing if it occurs online.

Federal legislation has been proposed that would give prosecutors the ability to punish people who use electronic means to engage in severe cyberbullying — defined as repeated, hostile and severe communication made with an intent to harm.
http://www.newstimes.com/news/articl...tim-424231.php





Phoebe Prince, South Hadley High School's 'New Girl,' Driven to Suicide by Teenage Cyber Bullies
Helen Kennedy

Nine Massachusetts teenagers were indicted Monday for driving a pretty 15-year-old "new girl" from Ireland to suicide in a case that has become a symbol of high school and online bullying.

The sweeping charges - which come after months of complaints that the bullies weren't being punished - include statutory rape, violation of civil rights with bodily injury, criminal harassment and stalking.

Phoebe Prince, a new arrival at South Hadley High School from a tiny seaside hamlet in County Clare, was mercilessly tormented by a cadre of classmates later dubbed the "Mean Girls" by Massachusetts newspapers.

"The investigation revealed relentless activity directed towards Phoebe designed to humiliate her and to make it impossible for her to remain at school," said District Attorney Elizabeth Scheibel.

"The bullying for her became intolerable."

According to students, Phoebe was called "Irish slut" and "whore" on Twitter, Craigslist, Facebook and Formspring.

Her books were routinely knocked out of her hands, items were flung at her, her face was scribbled out of photographs on the school walls, and threatening text messages were sent to her cell phone.

Scheibel said she had drawn the ire of the "Mean Girls" by briefly dating a popular senior football player in her first weeks at the school.

On Jan. 14, Phoebe was harassed and threatened in the school library and in a hallway at school, Scheibel said. As she walked home, one of the "Mean Girls" drove by and threw a can of Red Bull at her.

Phoebe walked into her house and hung herself in a stairwell.

But the nastiness didn't even end there. Her tormentors actually posted snide comments on the dead girl's Facebook memorial page.

For months, community anger simmered that no punishment had befallen Phoebe's bullies. Petitions were signed and town hall meetings held.

Scheibel said her investigators were taking the time to investigate thoroughly, and slammed "the inexplicable lack of cooperation from Internet service providers, in particular Facebook and Craigslist."

Seven of the nine charged Monday are girls charged with a range of crimes, from criminal harassment to stalking to civil rights violations. A juvenile was charged with assault by means of a dangerous weapon - namely, the Red Bull can.

The two males, 17 and 18, are charged with statutory rape.

Unveiling the indictments Monday, Scheibel said numerous faculty members, staff members and administrators at South Hadley High School were aware of the bullying - some even witnessed physical abuse - and did nothing.

She said the investigation looked at whether the adults' failure to help Phoebe amounted to criminal behavior.

"In our opinion, it did not," she said. "Nevertheless, the actions or inactions of some adults at the school are troublesome."
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/nati...eenage_cy.html





Peaches Geldof Dropped by Ultimo

Peaches Geldof has been axed as the "face and body" of underwear brand Ultimo following claims about her private life.

The company said it would be removing visuals of the 21-year-old, who was appointed in May last year, from all shops and window displays.

In a statement, a spokeswoman for Miss Ultimo lingerie said on Monday: "We have been in meetings all morning with regards to the stories that have surfaced over the weekend about Peaches and unfortunately we have no option but to terminate her contract."

She went on: "Miss Ultimo is a brand geared towards a young female audience and as a company we have a social responsibility to ensure we are promoting only positive role models that young women can aspire to.

"We are thus in the process of removing Peaches from the website and we are working with Debenhams to remove her visuals from all Miss Ultimo shops and window displays throughout the UK."

Michelle Mone, the founder of the brand, said: "We've given this a lot of thought, but there's a point where a business must stick to its principles and as a brand that targets young women, we feel it is impossible for Peaches to continue to work with us as the face of Miss Ultimo lingerie."

The Miss Ultimo range is geared towards women aged 18 to 25 and has been stocked in Debenhams stores and online.

Peaches is thought to be currently in Los Angeles.

Her spokeswoman was not immediately available for comment.
http://www.mirror.co.uk/celebs/lates...5875-22147339/





Keeping a Closer Eye on Employees’ Social Networking
Joshua Brustein

A service released earlier this week by Teneros, an online communication services company, makes it much easier for companies to keep tabs on their employees’ social networking activities.

The software, called Social Sentry, will automatically monitor Facebook and Twitter accounts for $2 to $8 for each employee, depending on the size of the company and the level of activity being monitored.

It has always been possible, of course, for employers to look at what their workers are posting on social media. It is an increasingly common activity for human resources departments vetting prospective employees. But there was a measure of privacy afforded by the sheer amount of information online. Automating the process makes it more likely that monitoring will become commonplace, say both those who approve and those who disapprove.

Social Sentry draws only on publicly posted information on Facebook and Twitter; the company plans to add YouTube, MySpace and LinkedIn by this summer. The company is marketing the product as a way to watch for the release of confidential or embarrassing information and to measure how much time employees are spending on social media during work hours.

But what employers decide they want to look for is up to them, said Matt Weil, the company’s chief executive. “We only provide the application and software,” he said. “It is the companies that decide what to do with it.”

As cases involving mischievous workers for Domino’s Pizza and an indiscreet Israeli soldier have shown recently, people’s social media activity can come back to haunt their employers.

Employers are looking for better control. The American Management Association and the ePolicy Institute do an annual survey of companies on their approach to digital media, and more than 60 percent of the companies that responded in the most recent survey said they had some social media policy in place. Like e-mail, employees’ social media creates a trail that could be used in litigation, said Nancy Flynn, the executive director of the ePolicy Institute.

“You definitely want to take advantage of your legal right to monitor,” Ms. Flynn said.

Unlike corporate e-mail accounts, however, social networking isn’t clearly of the working world. While it is publicly accessible, many users see it as an informal and intimate form of communication. And well-documented confusion over privacy settings means that some information is being made public without users’ knowledge.

Lewis Maltby, president of the National Workrights Institute, a research and advocacy group, called the automatic monitoring of social networking a “disaster,” and predicted that it would lead to people being fired for online griping, the airing of political views and other innocuous conversation. There is a tendency to react to an off-color joke or complaint that appears online more harshly than to the same comment made in a cafeteria or company picnic.

But he also said that there is little recourse for those whose social networking activity gets them in trouble.

“I’m a privacy advocate, and I wouldn’t stand up before Congress and say your boss shouldn’t be allowed to read your social networking sites,” he said. “You’re putting it out there for the world.”
http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/0...al-networking/





Facebook Changes Continue to Chip Away at Privacy
Robert L. Mitchell

If proposed changes to the Facebook Privacy Policy go through next month, the social network will store financial account information you use to make purchases on its site unless you tell it not to.

That's just one of the concerns I have about the proposed changes, due to go into force in April, that Facebook attempted to slip by users over the weekend.

Here's what's on my mind:

1. I object to the idea that Facebook will now store my payment account numbers from now on unless I explicitly bar it from doing so.

If you make purchases through Facebook, the service will store a copy your payment account number information in its database unless you opt out. Currently Facebook can only store those numbers with your explicit consent. Given the poor job the financial services industry has done protecting credit card and other consumer payment account data this would seem to be a very bad idea.

To change this users will need to go to their My Accounts page, click on the Payments tab, go to Payment Methods and click the "manage" hotlinked text.

2. Facebook will be more generous in sharing information about me with third-party web sites and applications.

Language removed: "You can choose to opt out of Facebook Platform and Facebook Connect altogether through your privacy settings."

Added: "When you connect with an application or website it will have access to General Information about you. The term General Information includes your and your friends’ names, profile pictures, gender, user IDs, connections, and any content shared using the Everyone privacy setting. We may also make information about the location of your computer or access device and your age available to applications and websites..."

3. The proposed Facebook privacy policy changes were deliberately announced, quietly, over a weekend, when few would notice.

The notice, which I received this morning, was dated March 27th. In addition, once I clicked through and read the proposed changes the notice - and any links to the proposed changes, - simply disappeared from my Facebook page. I was unable to find it on the privacy policy page nor by searching the site. Fortunately I had downloaded a PDF copy of Facebook's proposed privacy policy changes before closing the page.

Facebook still has very much a "doors wide open" approach to privacy - and that door is getting wider. It gives new users less restrictive privacy settings by default. Facebook itself describes quite nicely why you should set your privacy settings very conservatively - and think twice about anything you post or do on Facebook:

"Even after you remove information from your profile or delete your account, copies of that information may remain viewable elsewhere to the extent it has been shared with others, it was otherwise distributed pursuant to your privacy settings, or it was copied or stored by other users."

Translation: Nothing you post on Facebook is ever, truly private.
http://blogs.computerworld.com/15835...way_at_privacy





Tech Coalition Pushes Rewrite of Online Privacy Law
Declan McCullagh

A broad coalition of companies including Google, Microsoft, and AT&T, joined by liberal and conservative advocacy groups, will announce a major push Tuesday to update federal privacy laws to protect mobile and cloud computing users, CNET has learned.

They hope to convince the U.S. Congress to update a 1986 law--written in the pre-Internet era of telephone modems and the black-and-white Macintosh Plus--to sweep in location privacy and documents stored on the Web through services like Google Docs, Flickr, and Picasa.

That law, the Electronic Communications Privacy Act, or ECPA, is notoriously convoluted and difficult even for judges to follow. The coalition hopes to simplify the wording while requiring police to obtain a search warrant to access private communications and the locations of mobile devices--which is not always the case today.

Under current law, Internet users enjoy more privacy rights if they store data locally, a legal hiccup that some companies fear could slow the shift to cloud-based services unless it's changed. "The main thing that's broken about ECPA is that it penalizes you for using cloud computing," says Marc Zwillinger, a partner at Zwillinger Genetski in Washington, D.C. who specializes in data privacy law and has provided the coalition with legal advice.

What's unusual about the coalition to be announced Tuesday is that it includes occasional rivals including AOL, Loopt, and Salesforce.com, sources told CNET. The nonprofit participants, too, have sharply different political views: the American Civil Liberties Union, Americans for Tax Reform, the Center for Democracy and Technology, the Progress and Freedom Foundation, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, and Citizens Against Government Waste have signed on.

This push for cell phone privacy is likely to put the coalition at odds with the Obama Justice Department. A few weeks ago, Justice Department prosecutors told a federal appeals court that Americans enjoy no reasonable expectation of privacy in their mobile device's location and that no search warrant should be required to access location logs.

Sen. Patrick Leahy, the Democratic chair of the Judiciary committee, said at the time that it was necessary to "update and clarify the law to reflect the realities of our times." One coalition participant said the group has had meetings with the FBI, the White House counsel, and several congressional staffers.

There have been dozens of cases in the last year or so where the police have asked wireless companies for logs of which cell phones contacted a tower at a specific time, says Al Gidari, an attorney who advises wireless carriers. The proposed ECPA changes would require a search warrant for that information as well.

Facebook is not participating formally in the coalition at this point, a spokesman said on Monday, but the company is "interested in monitoring the discussion and plan to evaluate joining in the future."

"It's rare for there to be such a broad consensus that reform is needed," says Ryan Radia, a technology policy analyst at the free-market Competitive Enterprise Institute, one of the coalition members. "Federal privacy law today doesn't really reflect the realities of the cloud computing age."

Possible fixes to ECPA have been talked about before, of course, at law school conferences and occasionally on Capitol Hill as well. Zwillinger, the data protection lawyer, co-authored a 2007 law review article (PDF) proposing more privacy protections. But until now, there has been no broad coalition pushing to enact them.

Julian Sanchez of the Cato Institute, which is sympathetic to the coalition's efforts but has not joined, notes that judges have reached different conclusions about how ECPA applies to criminal investigations. "It's absurd that in 2010, we're publicly unclear about what level of protection our e-mails are entitled to," Sanchez says.

Four privacy principles

The groups plan to announce four principles, buttressed by legal analyses including one by Jamie Gorelick, a former deputy attorney general now in private practice at a Washington, D.C. law firm, according to one source. The principles apply only to government access to data stored by Internet and telecommunications companies and do not regulate the private sector or private litigants.

First, police may obtain "communications that are not readily accessible to the public only with a search warrant." Second, police may access "location information regarding a mobile communications device only with a warrant." Third, additional privacy protections would be extended to legal requests for outgoing and incoming call records, which are known as pen registers and trap and trace devices.

Fourth, police may use "subpoenas only for information related to a specified account or individual"--which would bar a subpoena to AT&T asking for information about anyone connecting to one cell site at a certain time, or prevent a subpoena to Google asking for anyone searching for "weaponized anthrax" on a specified date. (That information might still be available, however, to law enforcement officials armed with valid search warrants.)

The last point is important because not all companies that store such data push back as much as they should, says Gidari, the partner at Perkins Coie in Seattle who contributed to the coalition's principles. "You've got to have a set of standards that make users comfortable that the government is not willy-nilly accessing things without judicial oversight," he says.

Gidari likens the current state of the law to what existed after the U.S. Supreme Court's 1928 Olmstead v. United States case, which said that federal agents' warrantless wiretapping of phone conversations did not violate the Fourth Amendment and the conversations could be used as evidence in a criminal prosecution. The decision was not overturned until the 1967 Katz v. United States case, in which the majority said: "Wherever a man may be, he is entitled to know that he will remain free from unreasonable searches and seizures."

Just as the Katz decision said that the right to privacy accompanies a person no matter where he or she travels, today's coalition proposes that the right to privacy should accompany data no matter where it is stored. At the moment, "when you put your digital bits out where a third party can touch them, you're waiving your Fourth Amendment rights," Gidari says. "It almost seems like a throwback."

Update on March 29 at 8 p.m.: I've heard back from Brian Knapp, the chief operating officer of social location-mapping firm Loopt in Mountain View, Calif. He sent me e-mail saying: "We've already enacted the highest legal standard when it comes to government requests -- a warrant based on probable cause is required under our Information Requests Policy and has been for some time now. Enacting principle #2 under this initiative clearly makes the law what Loopt already believes to be the applicable standard in its case."
http://news.cnet.com/8301-13578_3-20001393-38.html





Microsoft: Google Chrome Doesn't Respect Your Privacy
Emil Protalinski

Microsoft is going on the offensive against Google, accusing the search giant of creating a browser that does not respect user privacy. The company posted a video on TechNet Edge with the following description: "Watch a demo on how Google Chrome collects every keystroke you make and how Internet Explorer 8 keeps your information private through two address bars and In Private browsing."

Microsoft's first criticism is Chrome's combining the address bar and the search box into a single entry box; IE8 keeps those fields separate. "By keeping these boxes separate, your privacy is better protected and the addresses of the sites you're visiting aren't automatically shared with Microsoft, or anyone else," says IE product manager Pete LePage.

"As I start to type an address into the address bar, Fiddler [a Web debugging proxy] shows that for nearly every character I type, Chrome sends a request back to Google," LePage says. "I haven't even hit enter yet to load the website and Google is already getting information about the domain and sites I'm visiting." Right after that, he shows how typing something in the address bar in IE8 is very different—nothing is shared with the search provider, according to LePage.

In the second part of the video, LePage demonstrates how Internet Explorer 8 has a privacy feature called InPrivate, a privacy mode to allow browsing without leaving a trace. Unfortunately, he fails to acknowledge the existence of Google Chrome's Incognito, which disables history tracking, which undercuts his argument.

It's worth taking a closer look at LePage's first accusation. Even though he didn't really elaborate, the reason for the striking difference for IE8's and Chrome's behaviors is really that simple: IE8 has two boxes and Chrome has one. LePage makes an important mistake in his accusation against Google: his statement should not be "Chrome sends a request back to Google" but it should be "Chrome sends a request back to the search provider." He makes this distinction with IE8 but does not with Chrome. The information is being sent so that the search provider can help the user choose a query right in their browser.

We downloaded Fiddler to make some comparisons of our own. As we suspected, Chrome can be set to send information on every keystroke to Bing (or any other search engine that supports Search Suggestions) instead of Google. The same behavior occurs in IE8, but only in the search bar. LePage is only correct in his assertion that IE8 does not send information to anyone when the user types into the address bar.

See for yourself: download Fiddler and type something into the address bar on Chrome and watch how Fiddler reacts when you have Search Suggestions on and off. Then do the same in both IE8 fields.
http://arstechnica.com/microsoft/new...ur-privacy.ars





The War on WikiLeaks and Why it Matters
Glenn Greenwald

A newly leaked CIA report prepared earlier this month (.pdf) analyzes how the U.S. Government can best manipulate public opinion in Germany and France -- in order to ensure that those countries continue to fight in Afghanistan. The Report celebrates the fact that the governments of those two nations continue to fight the war in defiance of overwhelming public opinion which opposes it -- so much for all the recent veneration of "consent of the governed" -- and it notes that this is possible due to lack of interest among their citizenry: "Public Apathy Enables Leaders to Ignore Voters," proclaims the title of one section.

But the Report also cites the "fall of the Dutch Government over its troop commitment to Afghanistan" and worries that -- particularly if the "bloody summer in Afghanistan" that many predict takes place -- what happened to the Dutch will spread as a result of the "fragility of European support" for the war. As the truly creepy Report title puts it, the CIA's concern is: "Why Counting on Apathy May Not Be Enough":

The Report seeks to provide a back-up plan for "counting on apathy," and provides ways that the U.S. Government can manipulate public opinion in these foreign countries. It explains that French sympathy for Afghan refugees means that exploiting Afghan women as pro-war messengers would be effective, while Germans would be more vulnerable to a fear-mongering campaign (failure in Afghanistan means the Terrorists will get you). The Report highlights the unique ability of Barack Obama to sell war to European populations.

It's both interesting and revealing that the CIA sees Obama as a valuable asset in putting a pretty face on our wars in the eyes of foreign populations. It is odious -- though, of course, completely unsurprising -- that the CIA plots ways to manipulate public opinion in foreign countries in order to sustain support for our wars. Now that this is a Democratic administration doing this and a Democratic war at issue, I doubt many people will object to any of this. But what is worth noting is how and why this classified Report was made publicly available: because it was leaked to and then posted by WikiLeaks.org, the site run by the non-profit group Sunshine Press, that is devoted to exposing suppressed government and corporate corruption by publicizing many of their most closely guarded secrets.

* * * * *

I spoke this morning at length with Julian Assange, the Australian citizen who is WikiLeaks' Editor, regarding the increasingly aggressive war being waged against WikiLeaks by numerous government agencies, including the Pentagon. Over the past several years, WikiLeaks -- which aptly calls itself "the intelligence agency of the people" -- has obtained and then published a wide array of secret, incriminating documents (similar to this CIA Report) that expose the activities of numerous governments and corporations. Among many others, they posted the Standard Operating Manual for Guantanamo, documents showing how corrupt offshore loans precipitated the economic collapse in Iceland, the notorious emails between climate scientists, documents showing toxic dumping off the coast of Africa, and many others. They have recently come into possession of classified videos relating to civilian causalities under the command of Gen. David Petraeus, as well as documentation relating to civilian-slaughtering airstrikes in Afghanistan which the U.S. military had agreed to release, only to change their mind.

All of this has made WikiLeaks an increasingly hated target of numerous government and economic elites around the world, including the U.S. Government. As The New York Times put it last week: "To the list of the enemies threatening the security of the United States, the Pentagon has added WikiLeaks.org, a tiny online source of information and documents that governments and corporations around the world would prefer to keep secret." In 2008, the U.S. Army Counterintelligence Center prepared a secret report -- obtained and posted by WikiLeaks -- devoted to this website and detailing, in a section entitled "Is it Free Speech or Illegal Speech?", ways it would seek to destroy the organization. It discusses the possibility that, for some governments, not merely contributing to WikiLeaks, but "even accessing the website itself is a crime," and outlines its proposal for WikiLeaks' destruction as follows (click on images to enlarge):

As the Pentagon report put it: "the governments of China, Israel, North Korea, Russia, Vietnam and Zimbabwe" have all sought to block access to or otherwise impede the operations of WikiLeaks, and the U.S. Government now joins that illustrious list of transparency-loving countries in targeting them.

The Pentagon report also claims that WikiLeaks has disclosed documents that could expose U.S. military plans in Afghanistan and Iraq and endanger the military mission, though its discussion is purely hypothetical and no specifics are provided. Instead, the bulk of the Pentagon report focuses on documents which embarrass the U.S. Government: information which, as they put it, "could be manipulated to provide biased news reports or be used for conducting propaganda, disinformation, misinformation, perception management, or influence operations against the U.S. Army by a variety of domestic and foreign actors." In other words, the Pentagon is furious that this exposing of its secrets might enable others to engage in exactly the type of "perception management" which the aforementioned CIA Report proposes the U.S. do with regard to the citizenry of our allied countries.

All of this is based in the same rationale invoked by President Obama and the Democratic Congress when they re-wrote the Freedom of Information Act last year in order to suppress America's torture photos. It's the same rationale used by all governments to conceal evidence of their wrongdoing: we need to suppress our activities for your own good. WikiLeaks is devoted to subverting that mentality and, relatively speaking, has been quite successful in doing so.

For that reason, numerous governments and private groups would like to see them destroyed. Corporations have sued to have the site shut down. And in addition to this 2008 Pentagon report, WikiLeaks has acquired, though not yet posted, other U.S. Government classified reports on its activities, including a U.S. Marine Intelligence Report and an analysis prepared by the U.S. military base in Germany, both of which speak of WikiLeaks as a threat. Moreover, the FBI has refused to provide any information about its investigations and other activities aimed at WikiLeaks, citing, in response to FOIA requests, national security and other excuses for concealing it.

* * * * *

In my interview this morning with Assange, he described multiple incidents that clearly signal a recent escalation of surveillance and other forms of harassment directed at WikiLeaks. Many of those events are detailed in an Editorial they just published, which, he explained, was part of an effort to publicize what is being done to them in order to provide some safety and buffer. A good summary of those events is provided by Gawker. As but one disturbing incident: a volunteer, a minor, who works with WikiLeaks was detained in Iceland last week and questioned extensively about an incriminating video WikiLeaks possesses relating to the actions of the U.S. military. During the course of the interrogation, the WikiLeaks volunteer was not only asked questions about the video based on non-public knowledge about its contents (i.e., information which only the U.S. military would have), but was also shown surveillance photos of Assange exiting a recent WikiLeaks meeting regarding the imminent posting of documents concerning the Pentagon.

That WikiLeaks is being targeted by the U.S. Government for surveillance and disruption is beyond doubt. And it underscores how vital their work is and why it's such a threat.

WikiLeaks editors, including Assagne, have spent substantial time of late in Iceland because there is a pending bill in that country's Parliament that would provide meaningful whistle blower protection for what they do, far greater than exists anywhere else. Why is Iceland a leading candidate to do that? Because, last year, that nation suffered full-scale economic collapse. It was then revealed that numerous nefarious causes (corrupt loans, off-shore transactions, concealed warning signs) were hidden completely from the public and even from policy-makers, preventing detection and avoidance. Worse, most of Iceland's institutions -- from its media to its legislative and regulatory bodies -- completely failed to penetrate this wall of secrecy, allowing this corruption to fester until it brought about full-scale financial ruin. As a result, Iceland has become very receptive to the fact that the type of investigative exposure provided by WikiLeaks is a vital national good, and there is real political will to provide it with substantial protections.

If that doesn't sound familiar to Americans, it should. At exactly the time when U.S. government secrecy is at an all-time high, the institutions ostensibly responsible for investigation, oversight and exposure have failed. The American media are largely co-opted, and their few remaining vestiges of real investigative journalism are crippled by financial constraints. The U.S. Congress is almost entirely impotent at providing meaningful oversight and is, in any event, controlled by the factions that maintain virtually complete secrecy. As I've documented before, some alternative means of investigative journalism have arisen -- such as the ACLU's tenacious FOIA litigations to pry documents showing "War on Terror" abuses and the reams of bloggers who sort through, analyze and publicize them -- but that's no match for the vast secrecy powers of the government and private corporations.

The need for independent leaks and whistle-blowing exposures is particularly acute now because, at exactly the same time that investigative journalism has collapsed, public and private efforts to manipulate public opinion have proliferated. This is exemplified by the type of public opinion management campaign detailed by the above-referenced CIA Report, the Pentagon's TV propaganda program exposed in 2008, and the ways in which private interests covertly pay and control supposedly "independent political commentators" to participate in our public debates and shape public opinion.

Last month, I was on a panel at the New School's Conference on how information is controlled in a democracy, and also on the panel were Daniel Ellsberg, who risked his liberty to leak the Pentagon Papers, and The New York Times' David Barstow, who won the Pulitzer Prize for exposing the Pentagon's propaganda program. Ellsberg described how massive is the apparatus of secrecy in the National Security State, and Barstow made the vital point -- which I summarized in the clip below when speaking later that day at NYU Law School -- that the public and private means for manipulating public opinion are rapidly increasing at exactly the same time that checks on secrecy (such as investigative journalism) are vanishing:

Aside from the handful of organizations (the ACLU, the NYT) with the resources and will to engage in protracted FOIA litigations against the government, one of the last avenues to uncover government and other elite secrets are whistle blowers and organizations that enable them. WikiLeaks is one of the world's most effective such groups, and it's thus no surprise that they're under such sustained attacks.

This is how Assange put it to me this morning in explaining why he believes his organization's activities are so vital and why he's willing to make himself a target in order to do it:

This information has reform potential. And the information which is concealed or suppressed is concealed or suppressed because the people who know it best understand that it has the ability to reform. So they engage in work to prevent that reform . . . .

There are reasons I do it that have to do with wanting to reform civilization, and selectively targeting information will do that -- understanding that quality information is what every decision is based on, and all the decisions taken together is what "civilization" is, so if you want to improve civilization, you have to remove some of the basic constraints, which is the quality of information that civilization has at its disposal to make decisions. Of course, there's a personal psychology to it, that I enjoy crushing bastards, I like a good challenge, so do a lot of the other people involved in WikiLeaks. We like the challenge.

The public and private organizations most eager to maintain complete secrecy around what they do -- including numerous U.S. military and intelligence agencies -- are obviously threatened by WikiLeaks' activities, which is why they seek to harass and cripple them. There are numerous ways one can support WikiLeaks -- donations, volunteer work, research, legal and technical assistance -- and that can be done through their site. There aren't many groups more besieged, or doing more important work, than they. http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/gl...aks/index.html





Israel’s Supreme Court Rules that no Legal Procedure is Available to Reveal Anonymous Commenters

Written By: under Categories: Internet, israel, law and Tags: Tags: Anonimity, Drora Pilpel, Eliezer Rivlin, israel, Jacob Sabo, john doe process, Michal Agmon Gonen, Premier League, privacy, Rami Mor, Supreme Court, Yitzhak Amit

0.
No matter what, at this moment all the Israeli legal community knows that someone, somewhere in the internet, called Rami Mor a quack.

1.
The supreme court’s decision in RCA 4447/07 Rami Mor v. Barak was quite a surprise. Rami Mor an alternative medicine practitioner, was enraged that someone, somewhere in the internet, slandered him. Mor filed two different motions, the first against 013-Barak, (OCR 1238/07 Rami Mor v. Barak) and another one against Bezeq International (OCR 1752/06 Rami Mor v. Bezeq Int) to reveal the identity of anonymous posters. After the motions were dismissed, Mor petitioned to the Haifa District Court, where judge Yitzhak Amit ruled (RPA 850/06 Rami Mor v. Yedioth Internet) that the veil of anonymity shall only be removed where a cause of action against the anonymous commenter exists and where the anonymity was used in order to avoid liability; moreover, the court explained that “an additional mean is required” in order to accept the petition. Mor, who did not accept the ruling, appealed again to the supreme court. This week, in a precedent decision, the Israeli supreme court ruled that the veil of anonymity is, sometimes, a constitutional right, and that currently Israel has no procedure to unmask commenters who post anonymously as there is no legislation.

2.
Hon. Justice Eliezer Rivlin dismissed Mor’s petition and analysed the procedure to reveal anonymous posters. According to his ruling “it is an attempt to harness, prior to a legal proceeding, the justice system and a third party in order to conduct an inquiry which will lead to the revealing of a person committing a tort so that a civil suit could be filed against him. It is, de facto, an investigative-like procedure that the court is drafted to in a preliminary procedure in this way or another. This procedure is not trivial, it involves policy consideration and requires legislative regulation“. His decision rules, actually, that until a procedure will be legislated, petitions to reveal anonymous users may not be granted (and according to estimations, there is at least one daily request per ISP).

3.
Justice Rivlin alson rules out the availability of an Israeli John Doe process as it contradicts due process. “It is, in fact, a judicial change of the civil procedure rules by adding a new chapter titled ‘John Doe Lawsuits’, if such update is needed, it should be done by legislation“. This is a substantial ruling as it has implications on standing cases where John Does are presenting their case to avoid being revealed (see, for example, OCR 567/08 א 4854/07 Barlomenfeld v. Google Inc). But it mostly have meaning in another pending case, the appeal on OCR 11646/08 Premier League v. Doe (which the supreme court is hearing under CA 9183/09 Premier League v. Doe) (English summary of the case). The Premier League’s request was to reveal an anonymous website operator who posted links to video streams of sport events. But does the Rami Mor decision say anything else?

4.The supreme court ruled that:

Shattering the ‘illusion of anonymity’, in a reality where a user’s privacy feeling is a myth, may raise associations of a “big brother”. Such violation of privacy should be minimized. In adequate boundaries the anonymity shelters should be preserved as a part of the Internet Culture. You may say that anonymity makes the internet what it is, and without it the virtual freedom may be reduced.

Actually, at this moment there are dozens of requests to unmask anonymous users that following the Mor decision may be dismissed; apart from that, several lawsuits are based on evidence that was obtained in such manner (or not in such manner, decent disclosure etc) and may be dismissed as the evidence was obtained by violation of privacy (see HCJ 6650/04 Doe v. The Rabbinical Court of Netanya). In fact, the supreme court took five years of case law, and ruled that it is based on a legal mistake. No more cases which need to choose between Judge Amit’s approach to the method construed by Judge Michal Agmon-Gonen in PP 541/07 Jacob Sabo v. Yedioth Internet and the interpretation of Judge Drora Pilpel in PP (Tel-Aviv) 250/08 Brokertov v. Google, but a ruled precedent by the supreme court.

5.
The real meaning is that now a hasty legislator needs to start drafting an adequate procedure, where the Knesset may ask if there is room for a John Doe process in Israel or not.

[Originally in Hebrew]
http://2jk.org/english/?p=197





Evony Drops Libel Case Against British Blogger Bruce Everiss

Lawsuit brought against outspoken games veteran is dropped as Evony witness evidence is queried
Charles Arthur

Evony, the American-registered games company that was suing the British games blogger Bruce Everiss for libel in an Australian court over a series of highly critical blog posts, has dramatically dropped its case after just two days of hearings.

The company abruptly abandoned its case against Everiss, which was being heard in the supreme court in Sydney, halfway through the second day of the case – and is now facing a legal bill of A$114,000 (£68,800) for the defence's costs.

In a statement put out by Benjamin Gifford, the "vice development director" of Evony's legal and intellectual property strategic division, the company said that it would not pursue the case in Australia or elsewhere. He told the Guardian that the decision had been driven by criticism from players of the game. "A lot of our players expressed opinions about the lawsuit," he said, "and we reacted to that."

Everiss, who lives in Coventry, declared himself "relieved" but noted that a quirk of the Australian legal process means that the case is not concluded until Evony pays a second tranche of A$80,000 of costs by 12 April. If it does not, the case reconvenes.

Sources from the case suggested that Evony did not want the publicity to overshadow its launch of the next version of its game, Evony: Age II, which is due for release imminently.

Everiss, a 30-year veteran of the UK games industry, has posted a series of blogposts on his bruceongames.com site since last summer in which he has said that Evony had previously been owned by a Chinese company, UMGE, and that it was linked to a Chinese "gold farming" business – which gets low-paid workers to earn virtual money in online games such as World of Warcraft, and then sells it, against the game's rules, to other players. He has also detailed connections between Evony's owners and a company being sued by Microsoft for alleged click fraud on search engine adverts.

Evony denied the claims at the time and launched a furious legal attack on Everiss – and then to the surprise of many chose to pursue its lawsuit in Australia, where neither Everiss lives nor the company was headquartered. It claimed that Everiss's blog had readers there, but was accused of "libel tourism" in return.

Evony's case began to break down during the second day when Gifford was cross-examined. He admitted that his claim to have BA and MBA degrees were not true. Everiss's lawyers, led by Damian Sturzacker of Marque Lawyers, also established links between Evony and two companies, Regan Mercantile of Hong Kong – owned by a mysterious woman named Lu Lu – and Regan Mercantile of New York.

Under Australian libel law, only companies with fewer than 10 employees can sue for libel. Sturzacker sought to demonstrate that Evony in effect employed more than 10. The court also heard that the company had 14 vacancies. Separately, Everiss has posted a series of photographs apparently from the company's Chinese development arm showing a huge development team at work in Guangzhou, China – though this was not presented as evidence in the case.

If Evony does not pay an A$80,000 tranche of costs by 12 April, then the case could resume – although Everiss's team expects that it could win a summary judgement. The costs of Evony's legal team, including Ric Lucas, the chair of the Australian Law Society's libel committee, could be double the A$114,000 that it has to pay Everiss's side.

However, Evony is believed to be highly profitable, although its exact financial position is unclear, as its revenues are remitted to Regan Mercantile.

Everiss's legal team had questioned its decision to bring the case in Australia rather than the UK, where Everiss lives, or the US, where Evony has been registered as a business in the US since 22 July 2009, according to documents filed with the court on Tuesday – though Everiss's first post about the company was on 10 July that year.

A previous hearing in December was due to help settle the matter, but Evony changed its legal team – moving from suburban Sydney firm Warren McKeown Dickson to Canberra-based Colquhoun Murphy – and the hearing was delayed.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology...-bruce-everiss





Science Writer Simon Singh Wins Libel Appeal after 'Orwellian Nightmare'
Karen McVeigh

Science writer Simon Singh outside the high court, London, after he won his appeal for the right to rely on the defence of fair comment in a libel action Photograph: Fiona Hanson/PA

When the science writer Simon Singh sat down to write an opinion piece on chiropractors two years ago, he could have had little inkling of the nightmare that lay ahead.

Yesterday, after a court of appeal ruling hailed as a "resounding victory" for Singh, he has been spared having to stand up in court and prove that the comments that sparked a libel suit from the British Chiropractic Association (BCA) were factually correct – an experience that the three appeal judges compared to "an Orwellian ministry of truth".

The landmark ruling will allow the writer, whose battle has become a catalyst for demands for libel law reform, to rely on a "fair comment" defence of his statements about chiropractors. It will also strengthen the position of others – from science writers and medical professionals to bloggers – who face libel suits, as the judges made clear the court was not the place to settle scientific controversies.

Singh was accused of libel by the BCA over an opinion piece he wrote in the Guardian in April 2008. In the article, he had criticised the BCA for claiming its members could use spinal manipulation to treat children with colic, ear infections, asthma, sleeping and feeding conditions and prolonged crying. He described the treatments as "bogus" and based on insufficient evidence and criticised the BCA for "happily promoting" them. The BCA denies these criticisms.

Following the ruling, the court recognises Singh's comments as a matter of opinion, and that they did not imply that the BCA was being consciously dishonest. On the steps of the court, Singh, who has lost two years of his career and still faces court action which he fears could last two more years, described the ruling as "brilliant" but added: "It is extraordinary that this action has cost £200,000 to establish the meaning of a few words."

He said that there were hundreds more cases where writers accused of libel had been forced to back down or to censor themselves because they could not afford to go to court. Writing in today's Guardian, Singh says: "Unfortunately, the English libel system is still notoriously hostile to journalists and the case for libel reform remains as strong as ever."

Singh's lawyers, Robert Dougans, said: "Scientists have been rightly concerned about the consequences they might face if opponents seek to counter their arguments with a libel claim rather than engage in debate and research. The court of appeal's brave decision today gives hope that important research on scientific matters will be protected against libel threats and will hopefully make people think again before embarking on legal action hoping to shut down debate. It is clear from the judgment that the court of appeal is not satisfied with the current state of English libel laws and recognises the absurdities and injustices that can result from them as they currently stand."

Allen Green, writer of the 2010 Orwell prize-longlisted blog Jack of Kent, said: "His victory is cheering, but for him to have got here has been a complex, depressing and obscenely expensive journey. This is not an example of the English libel laws working. Instead it is a horrifying example of how bad they really are."

The ruling, by England's two senior judges, Lord Judge and Lord Neuberger, together with Lord Justice Smedley, was scathing of the way the BCA began libel proceedings rather than taking up the Guardian's offer of a right to reply. It acknowledged that the action had a "chilling effect on public debate". The BCA's actions had created the "unhappy impression" that it was "an endeavour by the BCA to silence one of its critics".

The BCA posted a statement on its website saying that it was never its intention to suppress free speech and it simply wanted to clear its name. It was considering whether to seek permission to appeal to the supreme court.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2010/ap...s-libel-appeal





Navigating China's Web of Censors

Google bows out, leaving a large, complex surveillance system in its wake
Kari Huus

Google’s face-off with Beijing over censorship may have struck a philosophical blow for free speech and encouraged some Chinese Netizens by its sheer chutzpah, but it doesn’t do a thing for Internet users in China. It merely hands the job of blocking objectionable content back to Beijing.

Its more lasting impact may lie in the global exposure it has given to the Chinese government’s complex system of censorship – an ever-shifting hodgepodge of restrictions on what information users can access, which Web tools they can use and what ideas they can post.

“You can only guess what the rules are,” said Zhao Jing, a Chinese free-speech activist whose popular blog was deleted by censors from its host server in 2005. “It means you should self-censor, limit your mind and be cautious, because you have no idea where the line is.”

Censorship in China is unpredictable in part because it employs an array of tools — combining cutting-edge filtering algorithms and software that detects taboo keywords with the blunt instruments of the government’s old propaganda machine. It takes place at different levels, involving government agencies and the private sector.

“The point of confusion is who is doing what,” says Nart Villeneuve, a cyber security professional and research fellow at the University of Toronto who has done detailed analysis of Chinese Internet censorship. Frequently, what observers assume is blocked by Beijing, is actually taken out of the public arena by Internet companies trying to read the government’s will, he said.

One tool in the toolbox

The so-called “Great Firewall,” as China's censorship system is known, filters out politically sensitive material, as well as gambling sites and pornography originating outside China. It reportedly blocks thousands of sites, including those of human rights groups, organizations that promote Tibet or Taiwan independence and Chinese dissident groups.

The firewall also censors by keywords, causing infuriating interruptions in service.

For example, if an Internet surfer in China searches for the term “Falun Gong” —a banned and harshly suppressed religious group — the firewall responds by sending a reset packet to his or her computer that results in the display of a default error page. It also causes a gap in service preventing subsequent searches -- even on innocuous topics.

“If you try to look for a URL path with a banned word or phrase, it will halt your connection, even if the site is not blocked,” said Villaneuve, who runs tests to determine at what point censorship occurs in China. “Then you can’t do a normal query for a little while.”

Making surfing even more complicated, the taboos are always changing, depending on the political winds.

After bloody ethnic clashes erupted last summer in China’s predominantly Muslim territory of Xinjiang, the news spread quickly the Internet. Beijing blamed the rioting on ethnic Uyghur separatists organizing through the Web, and shut down Internet access throughout the region, along with text messaging and international calling in some areas.

At that point, Beijing also blocked Twitter for all of China, and other popular social networking and sharing sites, including Facebook, YouTube and Flickr. Those roadblocks remain in place eight months later.

For the vast majority of people in Xinjiang, access to the Internet is still severely restricted. The general public can view only a few sites hand-picked by authorities, including the state-run Xinhua News Agency and People’s Daily — and two Chinese portals, according to the China Daily. Elsewhere in China, despite censorship, Internet users have access to tens of thousands of foreign and domestic sites.

Occasionally, China also unexpectedly unblocks Web sites. When the capital was flooded with athletes and tourists for the Beijing Olympics in August, for instance, the BBC and Voice of America, which usually are blocked, were suddenly available.

Within the wall, “self-discipline”

Arguably, the most stringent censorship in China is conducted by the private sector. The government puts the responsibility for monitoring and censoring material originating inside China on companies that provide Internet service — search engines, portals, social networking sites, chat rooms or photo and video-sharing sites.

Every search engine or blogging site in China reportedly has a department dedicated to filtering, reviewing and deleting material that the censors know — or guess — the government does not want the public to see. If they get it wrong, these companies risk losing their operating licenses.

A number of video-sharing sites have suffered this fate, as well as the Chinese blog site, Bullog.cn, known for edgy political commentary and counter-culture fare. When the government shut the site in January 2009, amid an anti-porn it crackdown, it accused the site of hosting “low and vulgar” content.

Two popular micro-blogging services similar to Twitter were suspended last July, about the same time that the foreign social networking sites were blocked, for refusing to edit or delete content. The larger of the two, Fanfou, boasted more than a million users before it ran afoul of authorities.

“Either the Web site censors sensitive feeds or the Web site will be censored,” Fanfou founder Wang Xing wrote in one of his last posts on the site, according to a report in Hong Kong’s South China Morning Post. “This uncomfortable, but necessary decision has to be made.”

Self-discipline is portrayed as a patriotic duty by the government, which confers annual “Internet Self-Discipline Awards” to industry executives for effectively censoring themselves.

But the way “self-discipline” is carried out varies widely among the companies because the government provides only broad guidance, not detailed instructions. While there are topics that are universally understood to be taboo — anything supportive of Falun Gong, for instance — interpretation of the rules varies widely.

For that reason, it is easy to mistake unexpected content for an intentional policy shift, when it may indicate only that censorship is very patchy in China. On March 16, for example, we reported on this site that Google appeared to have stopped censoring its Chinese site, because searches on the site produced surprisingly sensitive content, including the famous “Tank Man” image from the 1989 Tiananmen Square crackdown. That conclusion was incorrect, censorship researcher Villeneuve concluded after running some tests, which showed the same content showing up on other search engines in China.

Google’s China initiative

In general, however, Google’s experience in China is a good example of how differently censorship is handled from one company to the next.

“When Google first arrived in China in 2006, it consistently blocked less material than Baidu (a Chinese search engine that dominates the domestic market),” said Rebecca MacKinnon, visiting fellow at Princeton University’s Center for Information Technology and a former China journalist.

Its search engine, Google.cn, also tried to remain transparent to users. When material was removed from its search results, the company posted a message at the bottom of its results pages: “Pursuant to local laws, regulations and policies, a portion of the search results are not displayed,” in effect alerting users to the censorship.

“This is how Google executives justified the ethics of their presence in China,” said MacKinnon. “Chinese users, they argued, were still better off with Google.cn than without it.”

But over the last 12 to 14 months, MacKinnon and other experts say, as Beijing started blocking more sites, pressure also grew on Internet providers, including Google, to censor more stringently.

Google responded by announcing it would stop censoring information and would instead reroute users in China to Google.hk, its Hong Kong search engine. But that does not mean that its customers in mainland China will gain full access to the Internet, as users in Hong Kong have.

Although Hong Kong reverted to Chinese rule in 1997 after 100 years of British control, it still operates under a different set of rules from the mainland, with nearly complete press freedom, unfettered access to the Internet and multi-party elections. But Internet companies in Hong Kong are treated like foreign companies, and are subject to filtering and blocking by the Great Firewall as material enters China’s domestic Web network.

Business as usual

To be sure, most of China’s 384 million Internet users log on for mundane reasons that don’t challenge the limits of free speech. A lot of Chinese citizens also accept the notion that stability and continued economic growth depend on government controls, including censorship.

And Beijing has been largely successful at keeping a lid on sensitive information while using the Internet to fuel economic development.

“Lack of free information will catch up with China in the end, hobbling the spirit of free inquiry at the heart of science and of innovation,” said Kaiser Kuo, an American writer and independent tech consultant in Beijing. “The indirect effects, and the long-term impact, are profound, but I think it's only fair to point out that the direct effect is relatively small.”

Blog madness

Even with censorship, the free-wheeling Internet— especially user-generated content — is a dramatic departure from tradition inside China, where the state controlled news and information with an iron grip for decades. Under that system, the central government disseminated the party line to state-owned newspapers, radio and television, which reported accordingly. Circulation of foreign papers in China was restricted.

As the Internet became available to the public in the early 2000s, at first through cybercafé’s that proliferated in cities, and then through widely available in-home and office connections, the government’s ability to control the flow of information began to unravel. When Web 2.0 arrived, allowing ordinary citizens to publish independently, Chinese people jumped at the opportunity.

The first blogs in the country appeared in 2004, and there were 47 million Chinese bloggers just three years later, according to official statistics.

The way blogs are handled suggests that the blog-hosting sites have broad discretion over censorship, apparently by using various combinations of keyword flagging and human monitoring, according to MacKinnon, the Princeton fellow and former journalist.

On some blogs, politically sensitive posts are blocked at the publication stage, she said, while others are delayed for “moderation” and then posted -- or not. Some are posted only in private view, so only the author can view them.

In 2005, in one display of “self-discipline,” the staff of Microsoft Live Spaces in China deleted the entire blog written by Zhao Jing, under the pseudonym Michael Anti, sparking an international outcry over the move.

More commonly, single blog entries disappear 24 hours or so after they are posted. That has created a tendency among knowledgeable Chinese Web surfers to quickly squirrel away potentially sensitive information that they encounter.

“People who have been around Internet in China will quickly save an item offline, because the link might disappear,” said MacKinnon. “The same goes for photos and so on.”

In some cases, Beijing turns from the high-tech to the blunt old-fashioned instruments of censorship — arrest and intimidation, as it did in the case of writer Liu Xiaobo.

In 2008, Liu co-authored a manifesto calling for democracy in China, which was signed by 303 prominent Chinese intellectuals. Police arrested Liu at his Beijing home just as the document was released on the Internet. Censors quickly went to work expunging material about Liu and the document from the Internet, but not before the manifesto circulated widely and garnered some 10,000 signatures of support.

In December, after Liu had spent a year in prison, a Chinese court convicted him of subversion and sentenced him to 11 years in prison.

The digerati fight back

Free speech advocates, human rights activists and liberal intellectuals in China have developed a bevy of ways of getting around Internet controls.

In posting comments and blogs, they alter spellings, substitute acronyms for sensitive words, or substitute Chinese characters that sound the same but are written differently than the sensitive term they are trying to use. As the censors catch on, they move on to new strategies.

Using VPNs (virtual private networks) and proxy servers, tech-savvy Chinese users also can access materials that are otherwise blocked by the Great Firewall.

Despite being barred in China, Twitter is growing fast among people who can circumvent the firewall. According to Zhao Jing, the journalist and former blogger, he had 3,000 followers on Twitter before Twitter was officially blocked in July. Now, he said, he has 17,000. Throughout China, he said, there are 50,000 Twitter users, including many activists, liberal lawyers, professors and journalists.

Meanwhile, he said, even the domestic micro-blog services, though subject to controls, are delivering unvarnished news so quickly that it is difficult to censor. What’s more, news from remote parts of the country that once could have been easily suppressed now finds its way into the state-run press, he said.

“In 2009, we saw that many local events, protests, complaints were conveyed by cell phones and text messages and email from ordinary people, from non-profit organizations … to friends, and then Tweeted and reTweeted,” and sometimes picked up by reporters in the state press, said Zhou. “A local protest can easily become a national issue.”

Web 2.0, even in the hands of a relatively few Chinese, will eventually pave the way for a birth of a free press and democratization in China, Zhou believes.

“The Internet was the Gods’ first gift to China,” he said. “Twitter is the second.”
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/36041417...ence-security/





Google: Mobile Services Partially Blocked in China

Google Inc said its mobile services have been partially blocked in China for two days, about a week after the company shut its mainland Chinese portal and rerouted Web searches to a Hong Kong site.

On a website showing the accessibility of Google's services in China, the company listed mobile as "partially blocked" on Sunday and Monday. Prior to Sunday, there were no issues with mobile services in China, according to the site -- www.google.com/prc/report.html#hl=en.

Google stopped censoring search results in China earlier this month by effectively shutting Google.cn and rerouting traffic to an uncensored site in Hong Kong.

The leading Internet search provider said it intends to retain some business operations on mainland China, including research and development staff and a sales team, but analysts have said that the Chinese government could make life difficult for Google.

(Reporting by Tiffany Wu, editing by Maureen Bavdek)
http://www.reuters.com/article/idUST...technologyNews





Some Yahoo Email Accounts Hacked in China, Taiwan
Lucy Hornby and Alexei Oreskovic

Yahoo email accounts of some journalists and activists whose work relates to China were compromised in an attack discovered this week, days after Google announced it would move its Chinese-language search services out of China due to censorship concerns.

Several journalists in China and Taiwan found they were unable to access their accounts beginning March 25, among them Kathleen McLaughlin, a freelance journalist in Beijing. Her access was restored Wednesday, she told Reuters.

The compromised accounts include those of the World Uyghur Congress, an exile group that China accuses of inciting separatism by ethnic Uighurs in the frontier region of Xinjiang.

"I suspect a lot of information in my Yahoo account was downloaded," the group's spokesman, Dilxat Raxit, told Reuters Wednesday. He said the email account, which was set up in Sweden, has been inaccessible for a month.

"A lot of people I used to contact in Lanzhou, Xi'an and elsewhere have not been reachable by phone for the past few weeks," he said, adding he had used the Yahoo email account to contact them in the past.

Andrew Jacobs of the New York Times in Beijing said on Wednesday his Yahoo Plus account had been set, without his knowledge, to forward to another, unknown, account.

In late 2009 and early this year, several human rights activists and journalists whose work related to China had similarly discovered their Gmail accounts had been set to forward to unfamiliar addresses, without their knowledge.

Google cited the Gmail attacks in January, when it announced a hacking attack on it and more than 20 other firms. It cited those attacks and censorship concerns in its decision to move its Chinese-language search services last week to Hong Kong.

Yahoo did not comment on the nature of the attacks on its accounts, or whether they were co-ordinated or isolated incidents.

"Yahoo! condemns all cyber attacks regardless of origin or purpose," spokeswoman Dana Lengkeek said in an email response to a Reuters query.

"We are committed to protecting user security and privacy and we take appropriate action in the event of any kind of breach."

Google's announcement of the hacking attacks drew unprecedented outside attention to cyber-security and China's Internet controls, used to limit discussion of topics deemed sensitive or threatening to "social stability."

Google said Wednesday said it had identified cyber attacks aimed at silencing opposition to a Vietnamese government-led bauxite mining project involving a major Chinese firm. The attacks were separate from, and less sophisticated than, those at the heart of the company's friction with Beijing.

Sporadic Disruption

China's control of the Internet and media has intensified under the current leadership and reflects a lack of understanding of the Chinese public, said Hao Xiaoming, a China media expert at Wee Kim Wee School of Communication and Information in Singapore.
"China is going back rather than going forward in terms of information and control. That reflects the lack of confidence in the (current) Chinese leaders," Hao said.

"China's Internet has become a controlled Internet, an internal Internet rather than linked internationally. It defeats the whole purpose."

Tuesday, Internet users in mainland China were sporadically unable to conduct searches through Google's portal in Hong Kong, a disruption that Google attributed to changes in China's Internet filtering configuration.

It said it did not know whether the stoppage was a technical glitch or a deliberate move in confrontations over Internet censorship.

China's Ministry of Industry and Information Technology gave no immediate reply to a request for comment on the disruption.

Google said it was monitoring the situation but it appeared the access problem had been resolved. Access has been patchy since Google shifted to Hong Kong, underscoring the vulnerability of Google's business in the world's most populous country.

Very few of the other firms mentioned by Google in January as having been affected by the attack have identified themselves.

A source at the time told Reuters that Yahoo knew it had been a target of attacks and discussed them with Google before Google went public.

Yahoo said at the time that it was "aligned" with Google's position, a statement that its Chinese partner, e-commerce giant Alibaba Group, called "reckless."

Unlike Google, Yahoo keeps some of its email servers in China. It was criticized by the U.S. Congress when it released to Chinese authorities information relating to the account of Shi Tao, a Chinese journalist who was then sentenced to 10 years in jail for revealing state secrets.

(Additional reporting by Melanie Lee in SHANGHAI; Editing by Ron Popeski and Sugita Katyal)
http://www.reuters.com/article/idUST...technologyNews





China Journalist Club Shuts Website After Attack

The Foreign Correspondents Club of China said on Friday it had shut its website after a burst of hacker attacks, days after attacks on the Yahoo email accounts of some foreign journalists covering China were discovered.

"We do not know who is behind the attacks or what their motivation is," the club's board said in an emailed statement explaining it had decided to shut down temporarily the site after two days of "persistent" attacks.

The club has traced the online assault to IP addresses in both China and the U.S., but added that these machines could have been taken over by hackers in other locations.

The hacking was the latest of several recent incidents that have brought to light the Internet vulnerabilities of people or groups whose work may raise hackles in China.

Yahoo email accounts of some journalists and activists whose work relates to China were also compromised in an attack discovered this week, with some users still shut out from their accounts, rights groups and foreign correspondents said.

Google's recent decision to move its Chinese-language search services out of China came after the company discovered it had been the victim of "a sophisticated cyber attack originating from China," and found that the Gmail accounts of dozens of activists connected with China were being compromised.

China's government has said it condemns Internet hacking and was not behind the attacks on Google. Some analysts, however, say such attacks have the hallmarks of a sophisticated organization.
http://www.reuters.com/article/idUST...technologyNews





U.S. Concerned by Australian Internet Filter Plan
Rod McGuirk

The United States has raised concerns with Australia about the impact of a proposed Internet filter that would place restrictions on Web content, an official said Monday.

The concerns of Australia's most important security ally further undermine plans that would make Australia one of the strictest Internet regulators among the world's democracies.

"Our main message of course is that we remain committed to advancing the free flow of information which we view as vital to economic prosperity and preserving open societies globally," a U.S. State Department spokesman Michael Tran told The Associated Press by telephone from Washington.

Tran declined to say when or at what level the U.S. State Department raised its concerns with Australia and declined to detail those concerns.

"We don't discuss the details of specific diplomatic exchanges, but I can say that in the context of that ongoing relationship, we have raised our concerns on this matter with Australian officials," he added.

Internet giants Google and Yahoo have condemned the proposal as a heavy-handed measure that could restrict access to legal information.

The plan needs the support of Parliament to become law later this year.

Australian Communications Minister Stephen Conroy says the filter would block access to sites that include child pornography, sexual violence and detailed instructions in crime or drug use.

The list of banned sites could be constantly updated based on public complaints. If adopted into law, the screening system would make Australia one of the strictest Internet regulators among the world's democracies.

Conroy declined to comment on the U.S. concerns.

Some critics of Australia's filter have said it puts the nation in the same censorship league as China.
http://www.siliconvalley.com/latest-...es/ci_14778546





Commission Seeks to Block Child Porn Websites

Proposal also calls for mandatory sentences for human traffickers.
Toby Vogel

The European Commission has proposed that websites containing child pornography should be blocked across the European Union and that maximum sentences of five to ten years should be imposed on human traffickers.

The measures are part of a legislative package to combat human trafficking and the sexual exploitation of children announced by Cecilia Malmström, the European commissioner for home affairs, in Brussels today (29 March).

Malmström also announced that the Commission will appoint an anti-trafficking co-ordinator “very soon”.

Blocking websites is controversial among the member states, whose endorsement, together with that of the European Parliament, is needed for the two directives to take effect. Officials expect fierce disagreements among member states and MEPs as they debate the draft directives, which are likely to be watered down in the process. However, under the Lisbon treaty individual member states can no longer block legislation in the field of justice and home affairs.

Malmström said that she would now work with MEPs and member states to impress on them that acting on these “heinous crimes” was imperative. She said that both Spain and Belgium – the current and next holder of the EU's rotating presidency – were “eager” to move on the matter. She said that the power to block access to websites would be limited to child pornography and would not be used to block other content.

“Child pornography is not about freedom of expression,” she said.

Jan Philipp Albrecht, a German Green MEP, has called on the Commission and the Council of Ministers to “abandon their plans for an EU internet censorship directive”.

“Filtering certain content on the web is counter-productive for the real take-down of illegal websites and constitutes a threat to liberal democracy,” he said. “There is a slippery slope from filtering child abuse and other illegal websites to filtering unwanted or politically unfavourable content.”

Malmström said that blocking websites was not a “substitute for removing content” but a pragmatic measure to prevent people from seeing it. She pointed out that the Scandinavian countries, the UK and Italy already had similar measures in place. “It works in practice,” she said.

The proposals would leave it up to member states to determine the exact methods with which to block access but would set up legal safeguards to ensure that they were effectively blocked. The draft trafficking directive also foresees improved support for victims, including the provision of shelter and medical and psychological assistance.

EU sex tourists would face prosecution in their home country if they abused children outside the EU, and prohibitions on contact with children imposed by one member state would be effective across the EU.
http://www.europeanvoice.com/article...tes/67550.aspx





Germany Resists EU Plans to Block Child Porn Sites

The European Union wants to block child pornography Web sites. Germany would like to take them down altogether.

Germany's justice minister is fighting EU plans to block access to child pornography sites because she doesn't think the measures would work. She wants such sites shut down instead. The opposition Greens and SPD party agree with her.

German Justice Minister Sabine Leutheusser-Schnarrenberger wants to stop a European Union plan to block Web sites containing child pornography because she doesn't think such a measure would be effective enough. Instead, she is lobbying for the EU to remove such sites from the Internet altogether.

"I expect a broad debate in the upcoming discussions in which I shall be representing the principle 'removing instead of blocking' and lobbying for as broad support as possible in the Council and in the European Parliament," the minister told the Hamburger Abendblatt newspaper in an interview published on Tuesday.

The European Commission wants member states to agree to block access to child pornography sites as part of a proposed package of measures presented by EU Home Affairs Commissioner Cecilia Malmstrom on Monday. Malmstrom also proposed tougher punishments for child abusers and human trafficking gangs. "Child pornography is not about freedom of expression. It is a horrendous crime. It is not about circulating an opinion," Malmstrom said.

"Child pornography means images of children suffering sex abuse. Downloading or viewing child pornography on the Internet leads to more children being raped to produce those images," she told a news conference.

Chancellor Angela Merkel's center-right government has decided not to apply a law passed under her previous government of conservatives and center-left Social Democrats which allows sites to be blocked. It now wants to draft a new law to take child pornography sites offline.

"Circumventing Internet Blocks is Easy"

Leutheusser-Schnarrenberger criticized the Commission's plan. "The German government opposes blocking sites. It doesn't represent an effective measure in the fight against child pornography and at the same time does great damage to confidence among Internet users," she said. The minister is a member of the pro-business Free Democrat Party (FDP), which traditionally campaigns against government restrictions.

Germany's opposition Greens and Social Democrats (SPD) are also opposed to the EU plans. Konstantin von Notz, the Internet affairs spokesman for the Greens, told Hamburger Abendblatt: "I don't see how we'd make any progress by hanging up stop signs in the Internet. Circumventing the stop signs is easy. We don't need a new law because it's long been legally possible to remove criminal sites from the Internet."

Olaf Scholz, deputy leader of the SPD, said experience in Germany had already shown that Internet blocks didn't work.

Members of the Merkel's conservative Christian Democrats (CDU) and of child protection groups support Malmstrom's plans, however. Wolfgang Bosbach of the CDU, the chairman of the German parliament's domestic affairs committee, said the EU measures would create common standards for tackling an international problem. Internet blocks could warn users that they faced prosecution if they make one more click. He said he didn't think such a measure represented censorship. "Things that are forbidden offline should also be prevented online," Bosbach told the Frankfurter Rundschau newspaper.

The Commission said the number of Web sites devoted to child pornography is growing and that 200 new images containing child pornography are posted on the Web every day. Malmstrom said the proposals would also combat 'grooming' children -- luring them into intimate relationships -- through the Internet and viewing child pornography without downloading files.
http://www.spiegel.de/international/...686405,00.html





Court Says Computer Ban Was Too Long
AP

A convicted sex offender should not have been forbidden to use or possess a computer for 30 years after he was released from prison, a federal appeals court ruled Friday.

A three-judge panel agreed with prosecutors and the man's lawyer that the restriction was too harsh because it could never be modified over three decades.

Mark Wayne Russell of Columbia, Md., had been caught in a 2006 sex sting trying to meet someone he found through the Internet and believed was a 13-year-old girl.

The judges noted it is often necessary to use a computer to apply for a job, including at McDonald's and PETCO. Russell had served several years in prison and challenged the conditions of his release. The panel ordered a lower court to modify the conditions.

As part of his sentence, Russell was ordered not to own or use a computer "for any reason."

The 15-page appeals court ruling said that isn't fair, particularly to a 50-year-old man who worked for 10 years as an applied systems engineer.

"Even a lot of blue collar work requires some computer use," the judges wrote. "It is totally unsurprising in the realities of the modern world that in his post-release search for employment Russell has evidently found that computer use is required for filling out most job applications."

Such a 30-year ban on computer use hinders Russell's rehabilitation, the judges found.
http://skunkpost.com/news.sp?newsId=2033





Stalker Jailed for Planting Child Porn on a Computer

An elaborate scheme to get the husband of a co-worker he was obsessed with locked up in jail, backfired on Ilkka Karttunen, a 48-year from Essex.

His plan was to get the husband arrested so that he could have a go at a relationship with the woman, and to do this he broke into the couple's home while they were sleeping, used their family computer to download child pornography and then removed the hard drive and mailed it anonymously to the police, along with a note that identified the owner.

The whole family received a shock when the police came and arrested the husband on suspicion of possession of indecent images of children. He was banned from seeing his own children and from returning to his home while he was under investigation.

Luckily for him, a search of Karttunen's home revealed evidence about the real perpetrator of the crime. Before sending the hard disk to the police, he downloaded its contents onto his computer, which he held in the garden shed. A lot of personal information like pictures and credit and debt card information belonging to the family was discovered on it after the computer was analyzed.

Times Online reports that they also found evidence of him having repeatedly broken into the family's home and taking pictures of a child's bedroom and a calendar on which the working schedule of the husband was marked.

“The lengths this man went to in order to pursue a fantasy were incredible," remarked the case prosecutor. Aside from the prison sentence, he was also slapped with a restraining order and is now signed into the sex offenders register.
http://www.net-security.org/secworld.php?id=9090





Victorinox Launches Super-Secure USB Stick
Ian Paul

Victorinox, maker of the legendary Swiss Army Knife, has launched a new super-secure memory stick that sounds like something right out of Mission: Impossible. Called the Victorinox Secure, the new USB drive comes in 8GB, 16GB, and 32GB sizes, sells for $75 to $270, and provides a variety of security measures including fingerprint identification, a thermal sensor, and even a self-destruct mechanism.

Victorinox says that during the Secure's launch event in London, the company offered a team of professional hackers close to $150,000 if they could get past the Secure's security measures. The prize money went unclaimed, Victorinox says, and the company did not identify the hackers.

It's not the first secure USB; both the SanDisk Cruzer and Kingston Technology DataTraveler Vault Privacy USB stick have been on the market for some time. Neither has the extras that the Victorinox Secure boasts.

A USB Stick Ethan Hunt Could Love

Victorinox says the Secure is "the most secure [device] of its kind available to the public." The Secure features a fingerprint scanner and a thermal sensor "so that the finger alone, detached from the body, will still not give access to the memory stick's contents."

There's also a self-destruct mechanism. Victorinox offers no explanation how this works, only saying that if someone tries to forcibly open the memory stick it triggers a self-destruct mechanism that "irrevocably burns [the Secure's] CPU and memory chip."
Victorinox says the device uses the Advanced Encryption Standard 256 to protect your data as well as its own proprietary security chip.

Being a Swiss Army Knife, the Secure also comes with a variety of other features including an LED mini light, retractable ballpoint pen, blade, scissors, nail file, screwdriver, and key ring.

The device was launched last Thursday at Victorinox's Bond Street location, according to a Victorinox sales representative.
http://www.pcworld.com/article/19273...usb_stick.html





Gov't, Certificate Authorities Conspire to Spy on SSL Users?
Peter Bright

SSL is the cornerstone of secure Web browsing, enabling credit card and bank details to be used on the 'Net with impunity. We're all told to check for the little padlock in our address bars before handing over any sensitive information. SSL is also increasingly a feature of webmail providers, instant messaging, and other forms of online communication.

Recent discoveries by Wired and a paper by security researchers Christopher Soghoian and Sid Stamm suggests that SSL might not be as secure as once thought. Not because SSL itself has been compromised, but because governments are conspiring with Certificate Authorities, key parts of the SSL infrastructure, to subvert the entire system to allow them to spy on anyone they wish to keep tabs on.

With SSL, any two parties on the Internet can make a secure connection between them, through which information can be passed without eavesdroppers being able to listen in. However, the core technology used in initiating SSL connections has some problems. The first problem is that although it allows you to create a secure connection between two parties, it doesn't allow either party to prove that the person they're talking to is the one they think they're talking to. The second is that if an eavesdropper can intercept the initial negotiation they can sit between the two other parties and decrypt and then re-encrypt the data sent between them, allowing them to see what's being sent, without either party knowing.

Such attacks, where someone sits between the two parties and listens in on their conversation, are known as "man-in-the-middle" attacks. They're a big threat when trying to perform private communication over an insecure medium. Fortunately, there's a solution.

Until now, it had been broadly assumed that the CAs were honest and wouldn't give certificates to people they shouldn't, thereby keeping the entire system trustworthy.

The solution to both of these problems is cryptographic certificates. A certificate provides an unforgeable proof of identity, allowing one person to verify that they are indeed talking to their bank (rather than a hacker), and by incorporating certificate data into the set-up of the secure connection, the man in the middle can no longer decrypt and encrypt the traffic without being detected.

The problem with certificates is that on its own, a certificate announcing "I am Amazon.com" doesn't mean much—anyone could make one. To deal with that, certain organizations are trusted by SSL software. If a certificate is issued by one of these companies, it will be trusted by SSL software. The reason these companies are trusted is that they make some promise to verify who people are before issuing them with certificates. In other words, before they'll give me a certificate that lets me claim to be a bank or a well-known online retailer, they'll check that I really am the bank or retailer, and only if I am who I say I am will they give me the certificate.

These organizations are called known as Certificate Authorities (CAs), and their role in the system is essential. Most Web browsers and operating systems have a set of certificates from a few dozen CAs, and will verify that the certificates used in any SSL connection can be traced back to one of those CAs. If the certificate can't be traced back, the software will typically display a warning about an untrusted connection, and might even refuse to connect entirely.

The weak link here is that if a CA could be persuaded to issue a certificate to, say, Amazon to someone who wasn't actually from Amazon, then all the protections fall apart. Anyone connecting to the person with that certificate would think that they were connecting to the real Amazon. Moreover, if the person could intercept traffic between would-be customers and the real Amazon, they could do the decryption/re-encryption trick to listen in on any traffic sent to and from the company.
Untrustworthy certificate authorities

Until now, it had been broadly assumed that the CAs were honest and wouldn't give certificates to people they shouldn't, thereby keeping the entire system trustworthy. Though there have been attacks on certain aspects of the cryptography and handling of certificates by software, the basic design of SSL has been solid, and these specific problems have been solved by tightening policies and fixing software. Unfortunately, these untrustworthy CAs render all the encryption technology irrelevant, as it can now be bypassed.

The security researchers found out that an Arizona-based network security company, Packet Forensics, was covertly selling a piece of hardware designed to perform these man-in-the-middle attacks—just as long as it could be provided with a suitable certificate. The existence of such a product makes no sense without the ability to retrieve such certificates—which meant that CAs must be handing over certificates so that they could be used with the device.

Software for security researchers and/or hackers that could perform this kind of man-in-the-middle attack has been around for some years, but its utility has always been limited due to the difficulties in getting appropriate certificates; the tools are useful in demonstrating the kind of attacks mentioned above, but have little practical value. The existence of hardware changes things substantially—nobody goes to the expense of designing and creating hardware devices unless they can use them.

Packet Forensics initially denied that it even sold the devices, but eventually admitted that it was real. The company sells hardware to law-enforcement agencies and similar groups, so these certificates might well be issued on demand of a court order. But equally, they could be coerced by blackmail, or even outright theft.

This strikes a blow at the entire trust system integral to SSL. If CAs can't be trusted, the SSL can't be used safely.

And it gets worse.

It gets worse

The set of CAs trusted by default by different browsers and OSes vary, but there are some commonalities between them all. A few big CAs like VeriSign are supported as standard across the board. These CAs might in turn be victims of court orders, blackmail, and so on. But many platforms go further, and include government CAs. That is, certificate authorities operated not by private, independent corporations, but by government departments (typically government telecommunications monopolies). The reason for this is to allow governments to avoid a dependence on external third parties for their cryptographic needs, but the result is this: any one of those governments could produce a certificate purporting to be from any site in the world, feed it into one of Packet Forensics' machines, and use it to eavesdrop on encrypted traffic. Because the browser will automatically trust a certificate issued by one of these government authorities, it won't provide any alert to the user that something is wrong with the certificate. Everything will appear to work as normal. It just won't be secure.

Now, a careful observer might be able to detect this. Amazon's certificate, for example, should be issued by VeriSign. If it suddenly changed to be signed by Etisalat (the UAE's national phone company), this could be noticed by someone clicking the padlock to view the detailed certificate information. But few people do this in practice, and even fewer people know who should be issuing the certificates for a given organization.

Even this is limited; if VeriSign issued the original certificate as well as the compelled certificate, no one would be any the wiser. The researchers have devised a Firefox plug-in that should be released shortly that will attempt to detect particularly unusual situations (such as a US-based company with a China-issued certificate), but this is far from sufficient.

This gives governments considerable ability to intercept and eavesdrop on supposedly secure communications. It's true that the case is, at present, only circumstantial. Just because a company is selling man-in-the-middle hardware that requires the use of court-ordered certificates, and just because companies like VeriSign make a lot of money from security and surveillance does not necessarily mean that anyone has actually bought or used the technology. But it seems unlikely that a company would develop or promote a man-in-the-middle system if it could not be used. Though the weakness of the CA system is well-known, the prospects of real attacks on CA trust seemed slim. Not so any more. VeriSign, for its part, refuses to comment on the matter; other CAs, such as GoDaddy, insist that no such request has ever been made, nor would such a request be granted.

The value to governments—enabling largely undetectable spying on, say, Gmail accounts—could be substantial, as such tools are widely used among both terrorists and freedom fighters alike. It'd be useful in the growing international industrial espionage business, too. And governments are certainly known to be interested; Etisalat last year rolled out a BlackBerry patch that embedded spyware into RIM devices enabling monitoring of e-mail, so it can hardly be considered trustworthy (in spite of its widespread appearance in trusted CA lists).

A robust solution is hard to devise. The Electronic Frontier Foundation has made suggestions; certificates could be independently certified by notaries (though this only extends the level of coercion required), and the TOR anonymous routing system could be used to ensure that the same certificate was used regardless of location. This would detect compromises made in, say, a hotel, Internet café or ISP, but would be ineffective if the monitoring equipment were placed close to the target server. It might also be desirable to get browsers and OSes to trim their list of trusted CAs. In particular, those that are prone to control by oppressive regimes such as the Chinese CNNIC would be good candidates for removal, to ensure that browsers at least present a warning when connecting to sites with their certificates.

In spite of the concerns, however, SSL is still the best system we have, in general, and for connecting to public sites like Gmail or banking, it's the only option we have. Checking for those padlocks is still worth doing—even if it doesn't mean quite as much as we once thought it did.
http://arstechnica.com/security/news...-ssl-users.ars





SpyEye vs. ZeuS Rivalry
Brian Krebs

It’s common for malware writers to taunt one another with petty insults nested within their respective creations. Competing crime groups also often seek to wrest infected machines from one another. A very public turf war between those responsible for maintaining the Netsky and Bagle worms back in 2005, for example, caused a substantial increase in the volume of threats generated by both gangs.

The latest rivalry appears to be budding between the authors of the Zeus Trojan — a crime kit used by a large number of cyber thieves — and “SpyEye,” a relatively new kit on the block that is taking every opportunity to jeer at, undercut and otherwise siphon market share from the mighty Zeus.

Symantec alluded to this in a February blog post that highlighted a key selling point of the SpyEye crimeware kit: If the malware created with SpyEye lands on a computer that is already infected with Zeus, it will hijack and/or remove the Zeus infection.
Now, just a few months later, the SpyEye author is releasing a new update (v. 1.1) that he claims includes the ability to inject content into Firefox and Internet Explorer browsers, just as Zeus does (this screen shot shows the result of a demo configuration file on the left, which instructs the malware to inject SpyEye and “Zeuskiller” banner ads into a live Bank of America Web site). It is precisely this injection ability that allows thieves using Zeus to defeat the security tokens that many banks require commercial customers to use for online banking.

The new version comes as the Zeus author is pushing out his own updates (v. 1.4), along with a hefty price tag hike. The old Zeus kit started at around $4,000, while the base price of the newer version is double that. According to research from Atlanta-based security firm SecureWorks, Zeus plug-ins that offer additional functionality raise the price even more. For example:

-Windows7/Vista compatibility module – $2,000
-Backconnect module (lets criminals connect back to victim and make bank transactions through that PC) – $1,500
-Firefox form grabbing (copies out any data entered into a form field, such as a user name and password) – $2,000
-Jabber notification (a form of instant message) – $500
-FTP clients saved credentials grabbing module – $2,000
-VNC module — $10,000 (like GoToMyPC for the bad guys, reportedly no longer being sold/supported)

The SpyEye author declined to be interviewed for this story. But it’s clear from his Flash banner ads reproduced here that he plans to keep up the public relations campaign against Zeus, with a focus on the relatively low price: SpyEye costs just $500 (although the new Firefox injection tool runs an extra $1,000).

SecureWorks has noted that the latest versions of Zeus include anti-piracy technology that uses a hardware-based licensing system that can only be run on one computer. “Once you run it, you get a code from the specific computer, and then the author gives you a key just for that computer,” SecureWorks wrote. “This is the first time we have seen this level of control for malware.”

Not to be outdone, the SpyEye author now claims his malware builder also includes a hardware lock, using VMProtect, a Russian commercial software protection package.
http://www.krebsonsecurity.com/2010/...-zeus-rivalry/





Court Says Bush Illegally Wiretapped Two Americans
David Kravets

A federal judge on Wednesday said the George W. Bush administration illegally eavesdropped on the telephone conversations of two American lawyers who represented a now-defunct Saudi charity.

The lawyers alleged some of their 2004 telephone conversations to Saudi Arabia were siphoned to the National Security Agency without warrants. The allegations were initially based on a classified document the government accidentally mailed to the former Al-Haramain Islamic Foundation lawyers. The document was later declared a state secret and removed from the long-running lawsuit weighing whether a sitting U.S. president may create a spying program to eavesdrop on Americans’ electronic communications without warrants

“Plaintiffs must, and have, put forward enough evidence to establish a prima facie case that they were subjected to warrantless electronic surveillance,” U.S. District Judge Vaughn Walker ruled, in a landmark decision. Even without the classified document, the judge said he believed the lawyers “were subjected to unlawful electronic surveillance” in violation of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which requires warrants in terror investigations.

It’s the first ruling addressing how Bush’s once-secret spy program was carried out against American citizens. Other cases considered the program’s overall constitutionality, absent any evidence of specific eavesdropping.

The Obama administration’s Justice Department staunchly defended against the lawsuit, which challenged the so-called Terror Surveillance Program that Bush adopted in the aftermath of the 2001 terror attacks. The classified document was removed from the case at the behest of both the Bush and Obama administrations, which declared it a state secret.

The Justice Department said it was reviewing the decision.

Judge Walker likened the department’s legal tactics as “argumentative acrobatics.” He said counsel for attorneys Wendell Belew and Asim Gafoor are free to request monetary damages.

Their lawyer, Jon Eisenberg, said in a telephone interview that “the case is not about recovering money.”

“What this tells the president, or the next president, is, you don’t have the power to disregard an act of Congress in the name of national security,” Eisenberg said.

Because of the evocation of the state secrets privilege, Walker had ruled the lawyers must make their case without the classified document. So Eisenberg amended the case and cited a bevy of circumstantial evidence. Walker ruled that evidence shows that the government illegally wiretapped the two lawyers as they spoke on U.S. soil to Saudi Arabia. Walker said the amended lawsuit pieces together snippets of public statements from government investigations into Al-Haramain, the Islamic charity for which the lawyers were working, including a speech about their case by an FBI official.

Under Bush’s so-called Terrorist Surveillance Program, which The New York Times disclosed in December 2005, the NSA was eavesdropping on Americans’ telephone calls without warrants if the government believed the person on the other line was overseas and associated with terrorism. Congress, with the vote of Obama — who was an Illinois senator at the time — subsequently authorized such warrantless spying in the summer of 2008.

The legislation also provided the nation’s telecommunication companies immunity from lawsuits accusing them of being complicit with the Bush administration in illegal wiretapping.

It’s uncertain whether Wednesday’s decision will withstand appeal.

In 2006, for example a Detroit federal judge declared Bush’s spy program unconstitutional. But a federal appeals court quickly reversed, ruling that the plaintiffs did not have legal standing to bring a case, because they had no evidence to show that their telephone calls specifically were intercepted. The Supreme Court declined to review that ruling.
http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2010/03/bush-spied/





Twitter's Heady Rise has Venezuela's Hugo Chavez in Spin
Enrique Andres Pretel

A jailed judge "tweets" to her followers from prison. The director of an opposition TV station uses Twitter to denounce a conspiracy to oust him.

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez's opponents have jumped on the use of Twitter and other social networking sites, opening up a new flank in a decade-long campaign against the self-proclaimed socialist revolutionary who they accuse of silencing critical media and attacking free speech.

The closing down of a popular private television network triggered street protests rallied by #freevenezuela messages that became the fourth most commented "trending topic" on Twitter worldwide for February.

The microblogging site has seen an explosive rise in usage in Venezuela to more than 200,000 active accounts. With growth of over 1,000 percent in 2009, Venezuela now has one of the highest rates per capita of Twitter users in Latin America.

Twitter's dizzy expansion has upset Chavez and he is hitting back.

"The Internet is a battle trench because it is bringing a current of conspiracy," Chavez said earlier this month.

"The Internet cannot be free," he said, though days later he denied claims that his government planned to censor the Internet, pointing out that Web use by Venezuelans has expanded dramatically during his 11 years in power.

Still, his detractors say a plan to channel all Internet traffic through the state telecom company is a strong signal of Chavez's intentions to silence online dissent.

Opposition 2.0

Frustrated by his ubiquitous presence in traditional media, where he often applies a law that forces TV and radio stations to broadcast his lengthy speeches, opponents see networking sites as a means of outwitting the populist president.

"Twitter is altering the way in which users communicate and organize themselves, giving them new powers and abilities to spread information," said information technology expert Luis Carlos Diaz of the Center for Investigation and Social Action.

When Chavez came to power in 1999, Internet access was a privilege of the rich and only 5.8 percent of Venezuelans used it. But thanks in part to the government's own efforts -- it launched thousands of free Internet centers in the country's poorest and most remote shantytowns -- access has shot up.

About 8.8 million people, or 31 percent of the oil-exporting nation's population, now use the Internet and more than two-thirds of them are from the poorest sections of society.

"The Internet now has a political impact because it represents many people, many of them among the poor who are the government's main constituency. And the figure keeps growing," said Carlos Jimenez of the online polling firm Digital Tendencies.

Twitter is still primarily used by the more affluent, but increasingly poorer Venezuelans are discovering and using the service too, Jimenez said.

Seven of the top 10 most followed Twitter accounts in the country are strongly critical of Chavez, while his defenders do not appear until number 66 in the list.

Globovision (@Globovision), the most prominent of the remaining opposition television networks, consistently rates among the top 20 most influential Twitterers in the world, according to consulting firm Edelman (www.TweetLevel.com), beating out prestigious international media companies, pop stars and technology gurus.

@hugochavez

Belatedly, Chavez appears to have become aware of the Internet's power as a communication tool. He recently called on his followers to turn themselves into "soldiers" on the Internet and engage with the enemy online.

The former paratrooper turned president even suggested he might start his own blog, saying he would "bombard" his critics from his "own trench on the Internet," but he hasn't yet done it.

Chavez has steadily moved against opposition voices in the traditional media. Earlier this year, Caracas-based RCTV International was closed down after refusing to comply with a law that obliged the TV station to air Chavez's speeches.

Students responded by using Twitter and Facebook to coordinate a series of protest marches and analysts say Chavez is finding the fragmented nature of the Internet, with its millions of individual users, harder to control.

"For the government it is relatively easy to neutralize a television or radio station," said Billy Vaisberg, creator of the directory Twitter Venezuela (twitter-venezuela.com). "But Twitter has hundreds of thousands of people using a service that is not located in Venezuela."

(Reporting by Enrique Andres Pretel; Writing by Charlie Devereux; Editing by Kieran Murray)
http://www.reuters.com/article/idUST...technologyNews





North Koreans Use Cellphones to Bare Secrets
Choe Sang-Hun

North Korea, one of the world’s most impenetrable nations, is facing a new threat: networks of its own citizens feeding information about life there to South Korea and its Western allies.

The networks are the creation of a handful of North Korean defectors and South Korean human rights activists using cellphones to pierce North Korea’s near-total news blackout. To build the networks, recruiters slip into China to woo the few North Koreans allowed to travel there, provide cellphones to smuggle across the border, then post informers’ phoned and texted reports on Web sites.

The work is risky. Recruiters spend months identifying and coaxing potential informants, all the while evading agents from the North and the Chinese police bent on stopping their work. The North Koreans face even greater danger; exposure could lead to imprisonment — or death.

The result has been a news free-for-all, a jumble of sometimes confirmed but often contradictory reports. Some have been important; the Web sites were the first to report the outrage among North Koreans over a drastic currency revaluation late last year. Other articles have been more prosaic, covering topics like whether North Koreans keep pets and their complaints about the price of rice.

But the fact that such news is leaking out at all is something of a revolution for a brutally efficient gulag state that has forcibly cloistered its people for decades even as other closed societies have reluctantly accepted at least some of the intrusions of a more wired world. “In an information vacuum like North Korea, any additional tidbits — even in the swamp of rumors — is helpful,” said Nicholas Eberstadt, a scholar at the American Enterprise Institute who has chronicled the country’s economic and population woes for decades.

“You didn’t used to be able to get that kind of information,” he said of the reports on the currency crisis. “It was fascinating to see the pushback from the lower levels” of North Korean society.

Taken together, the now-steady leak of “heard-in-Korea” news is factoring into ever swirling intelligence debates about whether there is a possibility of government collapse, something every American president since Harry S. Truman has wished for, and none have witnessed.

The news the informants are spiriting out is not likely to answer the questions about the North’s nuclear program or leadership succession that the United States cares about most. There is no evidence so far that these new sources have any access, or particular insight, into the North Korean leadership or military elite.

The informers themselves remain of limited use to American and South Korean spymasters, in part because the North has no broad cellphone network, making it easier for the authorities to eavesdrop on calls and harder for handlers to direct operatives in real time.

As one senior American intelligence official put it, “You’re not going to find the North Korean uranium project from these guys.” So the traditional methods of intelligence collection — using satellite imagery, phone and computer intercepts, and informants and agents of South Korea’s intelligence service — remain the main sources of information.

Still, the Web sites appear to have inflicted damage. North Korea’s spy agencies, which almost never admit to weaknesses, recently warned that South Korea’s “plot to overthrow our system, employing all manners and means of spying, is spreading from the periphery of our territory and deeply inland.” They vowed retaliation, especially against “human trash,” an apparent reference to the North Koreans who have betrayed their leaders’ code of silence out of principle or for pay to supplement their usually meager wages.

The informers’ networks are part of broader changes in intelligence gathering rooted in the North’s weaknesses. The first breakthrough came in the 1990s, when famine stoked by a breakdown in the socialist rationing system drove defectors out of the country and into the arms of South Korean and American intelligence agencies. The famine also led North Korea to allow traders to cross the border into China to bring home food, leaving them vulnerable to foreign agents, the news media and, most recently, the defectors and activists intent on forcing change in the North.

The first of their Web sites opened five years ago; there are now five. At least three of the sites receive some financing from the United States Congress through the National Endowment for Democracy.

The Web reports have been especially eye-opening for South Koreans, providing a rare glimpse of the aptly named Hermit Kingdom untainted by their own government’s biases, whether the anti-Communists who present the North in the worst light or liberals who gloss over bad news for fear of jeopardizing chances at détente.

“I take pride in my work,” said Mun Seong-hwi, a defector turned Web journalist with the site Daily NK, who works with the informers and uses an alias to protect relatives he left behind. “I help the outside world see North Korea as it is.”

Even in the days of the Iron Curtain, North Korea was one of the world’s most closed societies. There were few Western embassies where spies could pose as diplomats. And with citizens deputized to watch one another for suspicious activities, strangers could not escape notice for long.

Of the 8,400 agents South Korea sent over the border between the end of the Korean War in 1953 and 1994, just 2,200, or about 1 in 4, made it home. Some defected, according to former agents, but many were killed.

As recently as 2008, when the North’s leader, Kim Jong-il, reportedly had a stroke, it was long-distance sleuthing rather than on-the-ground spying that broke the news. South Korean agents intercepted a government e-mail message containing his brain scans, according to the Monthly Chosun magazine.

The Web sites have not uncovered news that delicate, although the implications of their reports on the currency crisis, later confirmed by South Korean government officials, were far-reaching. They said that the North was requiring people to exchange old banknotes for new ones at a rate of 100 to 1, as well as limiting the amount of old money that could be swapped. That suggested that officials in the North were cracking down on the few glimmers of private enterprise that they had tolerated, dashing hopes that the country might follow China’s lead of at least opening its economy anytime soon.

Still, the Web sites are plagued with challenges. The cellphones work on China’s cellular networks, so they operate only within several miles of the Chinese border. Because North Koreans cannot travel freely in their country, the Web sites are forced to depend mostly on people who live near China.

Beyond that, Ha Tae-keung, who runs one of the Web sites, says that some sources are prone to exaggerate, possibly in the hopes of earning the bonuses he offers for scoops. He and other Web site operators, meanwhile, are vulnerable to “information brokers” in the North who sell fake news.

But Mr. Ha said that the quality of the information was improving as Web sites hired more defectors who left government jobs and remained in touch with former colleagues, often by cellphone. “These officials provide news because they feel uncertain about the future of their regime and want to have a link with the outside world,” he said, “or because of their friendship with the defectors working for us, or because of money.”

While such contacts would have been unimaginable 20 years ago, one thing has not changed: the danger.

Mr. Mun of Daily NK says his informers engage in a constant game of cat and mouse with the authorities. The North Korean government can monitor cellphone calls, but tracing them is harder, so the police rove the countryside in jeeps equipped with tracking devices.

The informants call him once a week; they never give their names, and they hide the phones far from their homes.

Despite those precautions, they are sometimes caught. This month, Mr. Ha’s Web site reported that an arms factory worker was found with a cellphone and confessed to feeding information to South Korea. A source said the informant was publicly executed by firing squad.

David E. Sanger contributed reporting from Washington.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/29/wo...ia/29news.html





Senate Panel Passes Cybersecurity Act with Revised "Kill Switch" Language
Donny Shaw

Last April, Sen. Jay Rockefeller [D, WV], the Chairman of the Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee, introduced the Cybersecurity Act of 2009 to his committee. The goal of the bill was to develop a public-private plan for strengthening national security in the case of internet-based attacks. But it stalled almost immediately because of a controversial provision that would have give the President unilateral authority to declare a cybersecurity emergency and then shut down or limit access to parts of the internet without any oversight or explanation.

A couple weeks ago, Sen. Rockefeller partnered with Sen. Olympia Snowe [R, ME] to introduce a major revision to the bill that, among other things, made changes [to] the emergency “kill switch” provision. The revision was adopted by the committee last Thursday and the bill was approved. It’s now ready for consideration by the full Senate.

The revised bill would require the President to develop an “emergency response an[d] restoration” plan with the help of private industry and other government agencies, but it is vague enough that it does not actually limit what the plan can include. The President would still have authority to declare an emergency and implement the plan without first seeking congressional approval, though he would have to report to Congress within 48 hours after declaring an emergency. The revised bill also doesn’t require the plan to be made public, so it could potentially give the President the same authority to restrict internet access as the original bill did, just without being explicitly and publicly stated in the legislation itself.

Below is the revised text of the section as passed by the committee — it only exists in .PDF right now, hence the screenshots:
http://www.opencongress.org/articles...witch-language





Sweat Equity, the Movie
Larry Rohter

THERE are low-budget films, there are micro-budget films, and then there is “Breaking Upwards.” It may be hard to imagine how someone could make a feature-length romantic comedy in New York City for just under $15,000, but Daryl Wein and Zoe Lister-Jones managed to do it.

The making of “Breaking Upwards,” which opens Friday both at the IFC Center and on cable through video on demand, is almost a tutorial in how a do-it-yourself ethos can overcome the tough economics of the movie business. And that is not simply because the couple collaborated on the script, played the lead roles and produced the film together, with him also directing and her in charge of tasks ranging from writing the lyrics for the songs to cooking meals for cast and crew.

Most members of that small, young crew was recruited from Craigslist and worked free. PVC tubes were adapted to make a track for their camera dolly, and when Ms. Lister-Jones was given a red carpet as a joke birthday gift, that was also used to help steady the camera. Their director of photography, Alex Bergman, used an inheritance from his grandmother, meant to enable him to go to film school, to buy top-of-the-line equipment instead.

Insurance was obtained by piggybacking on the policy of another production, thereby saving thousands of dollars, and because the movie was shot digitally, Mr. Wein was able to edit it in his living room, using a flat-screen television. The couple was also able to get the veteran Broadway actors Julie White, Peter Friedman and Andrea Martin to join the cast, along with their friend Olivia Thirlby from HBO’s “Bored to Death.”

“You can’t put a value on sweat equity,” said Jonathan Sehring, the president of IFC Entertainment, which is distributing the film. “If this were just friends and family, that would be one thing. But they’ve got some very distinguished actors, and it looks great. So it’s incredible that they spent so little out of pocket.”

Mr. Wein said the couple began shopping their script, meant to be “funny and intelligent in a way going back to the early Woody Allen films,” in 2007, naïvely hoping to make the film “through a production company for anywhere between $1 and $2 million.” But the process was slower than they anticipated and coincided with a retrenchment at studios and production companies, which were closing or downsizing specialty divisions that had been financing quirky low-budget films.

That shakeout has “complicated the process for indie filmmakers in the sense that there are fewer distributors, which means there are fewer potential buyers for films, and so the deals are not as attractive because there is less leverage and less money involved,” said Richard Abramowitz, founder of Abramorama, a consulting company that specializes in production, marketing and distribution services for independent films. “On the other hand, it’s created a bit of a new industry that allows D.I.Y. filmmakers to control the process and the rights themselves.”

“Breaking Upwards” is about a pair of Jewish Manhattan 20-somethings who find their relationship foundering; but rather than split up, they choose to alternate days alone and together. Emotions get complicated and feelings get hurt, of course, as they meet potential romantic partners and have to explain their arrangement to their uncomprehending parents, played by Ms. White, Mr. Friedman and Ms. Martin.

The story in large part echoes the experience of Mr. Wein, 26, and Ms. Lister-Jones, 27. A couple for six years, they “started having issues,” as they put it, about two years after they met and decided to try what their parents’ generation might term an open relationship but which they (and anthropologists) call polyamory.

“I remember that we were sitting in a coffee shop much like a scene in the film, writing on a paper tablecloth, both of us being so hyper-articulate about the goals and bounds of this experiment we were going to do,” Ms. Lister-Jones recalled. “It was definitely a sad moment, but we were also laughing at ourselves. I remember that at that moment Daryl said, ‘This would make a really funny movie.’ ”

While the couple was apart, Mr. Wein wrote a script with a friend, Peter Duchan. When he and Ms. Lister-Jones got back together, she was invited to add her perspective to a screenplay that, in her estimation, “needed the feminine touch” to tone down a tendency to “heroize the male protagonist and villainize the female.”

Many micro-budget films are made by young filmmakers, who often rely on friends and give short shrift to the older generation. But Ms. Lister-Jones has worked in New York theater, including in “The Little Dog Laughed” with Ms. White, which helped to recruit actors who have won or been nominated for Tony Awards to play the fleshed-out roles of the couple’s parents — paid at the Screen Actors Guild ultra-minimum of just over $100 a day.

“The money was never an issue,” Ms. Martin wrote in an e-mail message. “When you sign on to do indie films, minimal salary to no salary is a given. You say yes for many other reasons.” She added: “There was something very appealing about the collaboration that reminded me of my early days of Second City. Everyone on the same page, no hierarchy.”

Ms. Thirlby, who has been a friend of Mr. Wein’s since she was in high school and received critical praise for her performances in “Juno” and “The Wackness,” played his alternate romantic interest. She also remarked on “the very casual, very low-key” approach on the set.

“They called me up one day, a Sunday morning, and asked if I could come over because they needed to shoot an additional scene,” she recalled. “So I went over in my own clothes and brought a selection of my shirts and earrings for Daryl to pick from.” And of course, like mostly everybody else, she did her own makeup and hair.

But once the shoot was finished, in 2008, just as the economy was nosediving, Mr. Wein and Ms. Lister-Jones realized that they had, in their words, “an even bigger mountain to climb.” Not only were they first-time feature filmmakers, but they were working in a genre that is an especially hard sell to distributors.

“A romantic comedy that doesn’t have one of very few leading women or men is complicated,” said Mr. Abramowitz, who also teaches at New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts. “With a horror film the genre is its own star. But with a romantic comedy there are certain conventions that are expected and a level of anticipation in seeing a familiar actor or actress going through those paces. Daryl and Zoe are talented actors and filmmakers with a fine script, but they are starting off with a disadvantage because they are not recognizable.”

Hoping to overcome that handicap, the couple have been promoting “Breaking Upwards” over the last year with every tool available, from the latest in Internet social networking to the most basic: writing the title of their movie in chalk on sidewalks and walls around Manhattan. In advance of taking “Breaking Upwards” on the festival circuit — from South by Southwest, where it was seen by IFC, to places like Little Rock, Ark., and, this month, the Pittsburgh Jewish Israeli Film Festival — they managed to generate buzz with a series of videos for funnyordie.com that included plot summaries sung as rap and reggae and a sketch in which Ms. Martin plays a vindictive Judge Judy type.

With a $40,000 advance from IFC in hand, Mr. Wein and Ms. Lister-Jones decided that having their movie shown in a theater was also a necessary part of establishing its identity. They plowed that money into promotion and marketing, and “Breaking Upwards” is scheduled to open in theaters in Los Angeles and San Francisco later next month, even though it will already be available through video on demand. But some colleagues in the micro-budget world disagree and no longer bother to seek a traditional theatrical release.

“My feeling is that every movie has a moment when awareness is at a peak, when it is new and exciting and people want to see it, and usually that moment is a festival premiere,” said the prolific director Joe Swanberg, whose films include “Alexander the Last” and “Hannah Takes the Stairs.” “If you have that and then a distributor buys your movie, it becomes all about trying to re-create that moment six or nine months later, spending money to get what you already got for free.

“To me, it’s better to capitalize on that attention and make it possible for you to watch it right away if it sounds interesting to you,” he continued. “There is a kind of national film community that lives outside major cities, is reading blogs and reviews and is part of the cinephile discussion, but doesn’t have access to a film until it’s on DVD. Video on demand opens up that discussion to everybody right away.”

But, perhaps spurred by the runaway success of “Paranormal Activity,” which was made for about the same cost as “Breaking Upwards” and has grossed more than $100 million, major studios seem interested in edging into the D.I.Y. game. Paramount, for example, has created a new micro-budget division to be called Insurge Pictures, though the studio would neither confirm nor deny reports that the new unit’s initial slate will consist of 10 films to be made for $100,000 each.

For their part Mr. Wein and Ms. Lister-Jones have three other scripts they’d like to film and, thinking big, suggested a $3 million budget to a studio executive interested in one of the screenplays. “Unfortunately we don’t know how to market a film that is made for just $3 million,” they recalled being told, which raises the odd prospect that their proven ability to work on a shoestring may keep them confined to the micro-budget niche.

“In this market I think the battle continues,” Ms. Lister-Jones said. “It feels like a huge success that we’ve made this movie and sold it and that it will have a theatrical release and will be on V.O.D. and all these things. But I think we’ve encountered how hard it is still, even with a calling card like this, to get any money, to see any money. We’re still a risk, sadly.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/28/mo...8breaking.html





`Smart' Meters Have Security Holes
Jordan Robertson

Computer-security researchers say new "smart" meters that are designed to help deliver electricity more efficiently also have flaws that could let hackers tamper with the power grid in previously impossible ways.

At the very least, the vulnerabilities open the door for attackers to jack up strangers' power bills. These flaws also could get hackers a key step closer to exploiting one of the most dangerous capabilities of the new technology, which is the ability to remotely turn someone else's power on and off.

The attacks could be pulled off by stealing meters — which can be situated outside of a home — and reprogramming them. Or an attacker could sit near a home or business and wirelessly hack the meter from a laptop, according to Joshua Wright, a senior security analyst with InGuardians Inc. The firm was hired by three utilities to study their smart meters' resistance to attack.

These utilities, which he would not name, have already done small deployments of smart meters and plan to roll the technology out to hundreds of thousands of power customers, Wright told The Associated Press.

There is no evidence the security flaws have been exploited, although Wright said a utility could have been hacked without knowing it. InGuardians said it is working with the utilities to fix the problems.

Power companies are aggressively rolling out the new meters. In the U.S. alone, more than 8 million smart meters have been deployed by electric utilities and nearly 60 million should be in place by 2020, according to a list of publicly announced projects kept by The Edison Foundation, an organization focused on the electric industry.

Unlike traditional electric meters that merely record power use — and then must be read in person once a month by a meter reader — smart meters measure consumption in real time. By being networked to computers in electric utilities, the new meters can signal people or their appliances to take certain actions, such as reducing power usage when electricity prices spike.

But the very interactivity that makes smart meters so attractive also makes them vulnerable to hackers, because each meter essentially is a computer connected to a vast network.

There are few public studies on the meters' resistance to attack, in part because the technology is new. However, last summer, Mike Davis, a researcher from IOActive Inc., showed how a computer worm could hop between meters in a power grid with smart meters, giving criminals control over those meters.

Alan Paller, director of research for the SANS Institute, a security research and training organization that was not involved in Wright's work with InGuardians, said it proved that hacking smart meters is a serious concern.

"We weren't sure it was possible," Paller said. "He actually verified it's possible. ... If the Department of Energy is going to make sure the meters are safe, then Josh's work is really important."

SANS has invited Wright to present his research Tuesday at a conference it is sponsoring on the security of utilities and other "critical infrastructure."

Industry representatives say utilities are doing rigorous security testing that will make new power grids more secure than the patchwork system we have now, which is already under hacking attacks from adversaries believed to be working overseas.

"We know that automation will bring new vulnerabilities, and our task — which we tackle on a daily basis — is making sure the system is secure," said Ed Legge, spokesman for Edison Electric Institute, a trade organization for shareholder-owned electric companies.

But many security researchers say the technology is being deployed without enough security probing.

Wright said his firm found "egregious" errors, such as flaws in the meters and the technologies that utilities use to manage data from meters. "Even though these protocols were designed recently, they exhibit security failures we've known about for the past 10 years," Wright said.

He said InGuardians found vulnerabilities in products from all five of the meter makers the firm studied. He would not disclose those manufacturers.

One of the most alarming findings involved a weakness in a communications standard used by the new meters to talk to utilities' computers.

Wright found that hackers could exploit the weakness to break into meters remotely, which would be a key step for shutting down someone's power. Or someone could impersonate meters to the power company, to inflate victims' bills or lower his own. A criminal could even sneak into the utilities' computer networks to steal data or stage bigger attacks on the grid.

Wright said similar vulnerabilities used to be common in wireless Internet networking equipment, but have vanished with an emphasis on better security.

For instance, the meters encrypt their data — scrambling the information to hide it from outsiders. But the digital "keys" needed to unlock the encryption were stored on data-routing equipment known as access points that many meters relay data to. Stealing the keys lets an attacker eavesdrop on all communication between meters and that access point, so the keys instead should be kept on computers deep inside the utilities' networks, where they would be safer.

"That lesson seems to be lost on these meter vendors," he said. That speaks to the "relative immaturity" of the meter technology, Wright added.
http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/...bN6eAD9EMFLGG0





Apple Delivers Record Monster Security Update

Apple today patched 92 vulnerabilities, a third of them critical, in a record update to its Leopard and Snow Leopard operating systems.

Security Update 2010-002 plugged 92 holes in the client and server editions of Mac OS X 10.5 and Mac OS X 10.6, breaking a record that has stood since March 2008 . The update dwarfed any released last year, when Apple 's largest patched 67 vulnerabilities .

"The sheer number, it's almost so daunting that you don't even want to look," said Andrew Storms, director of security operations at nCircle Network Security.

Today's security roll-up fixed flaws in 42 different applications or operating system components in Mac OS X, from AppKit and Application Firewall to unzip and X11, the Mac's version of the X Window System.

Eighteen of the vulnerabilities were specific to the older Leopard operating system, while 29 were specific to Snow Leopard . The remaining 45 affected both, which are the only editions that Apple currently supports. Users running Leopard will patch 63 vulnerabilities, while Snow Leopard users face a total of 74 flaws.

The update brings Snow Leopard to version 10.6.3, making this the third major update to the OS that Apple launched in August 2009. Apple also addressed a list of nearly 30 non-security issues in the 10.6.3 update. Leopard users, meanwhile, received only the security patches.

More than 40% of the vulnerabilities patched today, 37 out of the 92, were accompanied by the phrase "may lead to arbitrary code execution," which is Apple's way of saying that a flaw is critical and could be used by attackers to hijack a Mac. Apple does not assign ratings or severity scores to the bugs it patches, unlike other major software makers, such as Microsoft and Oracle .

Among the most noticeable patches were nine affecting QuickTime, Apple's media player, in Snow Leopard. All nine were rated critical; six had been reported to Apple by 3Com TippingPoint, which runs a bug bounty program called Zero Day Initiative.

TippingPoint was in the news much of last week as it again sponsored the Pwn2Own hacking contest at the CanSecWest security conference in Vancouver, British Columbia. The company handed out $45,000 in prizes to five researchers for hacking the iPhone, as well as Apple's Safari, Microsoft's Internet Explorer and Mozilla's Firefox browsers.

Charlie Miller, the researcher who cracked Snow Leopard's security defenses to take down Safari, said today that Apple had not patched the vulnerability he used last Wednesday. "New patch doesn't fix pwn2own bug," Miller said via Twitter . "Sorry suckers, gonna have to wait for the next patch."

The timing of today's monster update didn't come as a surprise to nCircle's Storms. "It's not suprising that they patched QuickTime, what with the pending iPad release," he said today, referring to the April 3 on-sale date for Apple's new media tablet. Apple typically updates its iTunes music software, and the accompanying QuickTime player, before it releases new products that call on the former. The iPad will use the iTunes store to serve up applications and media content to customers.

"For the same reason, I'm going to guess that Apple will also update the iPhone OS this week," Storms added.

The security update can be downloaded from the Apple site or installed using Mac OS X's integrated update service.
http://www.reuters.com/article/idUS88322340020100330





Hacker Finds a Way to Exploit PDF Files, Without Vulnerability
Ryan Naraine

A security researcher has managed to create a proof-of-concept PDF file that executes an embedded executable without exploiting any security vulnerabilities.

The PDF hack, when combined with clever social engineering techniques, could potentially allow code execution attacks if a user simply opens a rigged PDF file.

Here’s the skinny from researcher Didier Stevens.

I use a launch action triggered by the opening of my PoC PDF. With Adobe Reader, the user gets a warning asking for approval to launch the action, but I can (partially) control the message displayed by the dialog. Foxit Reader displays no warning at all, the action gets executed without user interaction.

Although PDF viewers like Adobe Reader and Foxit Reader doesn't allow embedded executables (like binaries and scripts) to be extracted and executed, Stevens discovered another way to launch a command (/Launch /Action), and ultimately run an executable he embedded using a special technique.

Stevens said Adobe’s PDF Reader will block the file from automatically opening but he warned that an attacker could use social engineering tricks to get users to allow the file to be opened.

With Foxit Reader, there is no warning whatsoever.

Stevens has not released the proof-of-concept file. The issue has been reported to Adobe’s security response team.

With Adobe Reader, the only thing preventing execution is a warning. Disabling JavaScript will not prevent this (I don’t use JavaScript in my PoC PDF), and patching Adobe Reader isn’t possible (I’m not exploiting a vulnerability, just being creative with the PDF language specs).

Stevens tested his research on Adobe Reader 9.3.1 (Windows XP SP3 and Windows 7).
http://threatpost.com/en_us/blogs/ha...ability-033010





BBC Bows to Newspaper Concerns, Delays Mobile Apps

British state broadcaster BBC has delayed launching mobile applications delivering its news and sport free to devices like Apple's iPhone after newspapers expressed concern about direct competition.

The Newspaper Publishers Association had asked the BBC's governing body, the BBC Trust, to examine proposals it feared could harm efforts by commercial rivals to succeed with their own mobile offerings.

"It is vital that these proposals are scrutinized properly to avoid any adverse impact on commercial media organizations," the NPA's director, David Newell, said on Monday. "We are pleased that the BBC Trust has listened to the industry's concerns and acted to delay the planned April launch."

The BBC Trust will now examine the proposals. It did not give any timetable, but the earliest it was likely to discuss the matter is at a meeting late next month.

The BBC, which receives a guaranteed 3.6 billion pounds each year ($5.4 billion) in license fees paid by householders, has come under fierce attack from broadcaster BSkyB and other commercial rivals exposed to a severe advertising slump.

James Murdoch, seen as the heir to his father Rupert Murdoch's News Corp media empire, has described the broadcaster's scale and ambitions as "chilling."

The amount of free content the BBC already makes available online has discouraged many newspapers from attempting to charge readers for content on the Web.

Earlier this month, the BBC signaled a retreat from some commercial operations to focus on core services, bowing to pressure from rivals and ahead of a general election almost certain to result in public spending cuts.

(Reporting by Georgina Prodhan; Editing by Dan Lalor)
http://www.reuters.com/article/idUST...technologyNews





Microsoft Ignored the Long Tail in Search, Bing Boss Says
Clint Boulton

Microsoft fell so far behind Google in the search engine market because it failed to retrieve relevant results for a long line of less popular queries, a senior Microsoft executive told the crowd at the Search Engine Strategies show here March 25.

Such was the key reason Yusuf Mehdi, senior vice president of the Online Audience Group for Microsoft Bing, offered for why Google is light-years ahead of Microsoft in the search market. Google commands 65 percent of the U.S. share search market, compared with 11.5 percent for Microsoft Bing.

Mehdi, responding to a keynote host's observation that Microsoft was late to the Internet and search, said, "We missed the boat early on that the focus was about the long tail. We actually focused a lot on the head of the queries. ... It turned out the long tail was much more important."

For Microsoft, focusing on the head instead of the "long tail" meant that it returned popular queries but failed to satisfy less common queries. The long tail of queries ended up yielding more sizable traffic and therefore more money for Google over the last 11-plus years.

The result was a decade of search futility; just 10 short months ago, Microsoft's share of the search market had fallen to 8 percent. Bing has gained 3.5 percentage points of search since June 2009. Google has remained at its position, even growing a tad, while Yahoo has slid, with Bing gobbling the company's lost share.

Mehdi said that a year ago, four new URLs were created every second of every day.

"Think about the explosion in the long tail. You have to crawl, index and make sense of that. On any given a month, one-third of queries that show up on Bing, it's the first time we've ever seen that query. A huge chunk of those, we'll never see again. They're like gone with the wind. The challenge of being able to be up to speed to understand that new flow of data and to be able to index the right thing so you can respond in subsecond time is a very, very hard problem."

This scale challenge Mehdi described is a big reason why Google has extended and maintained its massive search share. That and the massive digital advertising market Google has fostered to make $23 billion a year.

"The problem gets harder when it comes to new forms of unstructured data," Mehdi continued. "How do I get to things that are closed off, such as Twitter feeds or YouTube videos, or things that you can't crawl easily? What happens when you can't understand the URL?"

Mehdi said the tide is turning back around to the head of popular queries. This is why Microsoft has partnered with Twitter, Wolfram Alpha and, as of today, popular location-sharing service Foursquare.

Search was originally meant for navigation, with Google's PageRank ranking algorithm fortifying results with relevance. Search is becoming an engine to fuel transactions and advanced research, including queries of multiple sentences instead of just keywords.

If the old search query was about finding the right Website, the new line of queries is more like, "Where does President Obama stand on healthcare?" and "What are the causes of a certain type of pancreatic cancer?" Mehdi explained.

Current search isn't designed to keep up with humans' thinking patterns on search and suffers from ambiguity. Bing, he said, is looking to solve the challenge of deciphering user intent. This means finding what users are searching for even though the consumers' query words don't match their idea of what they want to find.

"It's more of a dialogue with the consumer," Mehdi said. "We are about understanding user intent, and in mapping the intent into tasks and into actions."

Microsoft executives are certainly on the same page in this regard.
http://www.eweek.com/c/a/Search-Engi...s-Says-396023/





Special Report: iPad Striptease: It's What's Inside that Counts
Gabriel Madway

The iPad will not hit stores until Saturday, but the race to unlock its mysteries started several weeks ago in San Luis Obispo, a picturesque college town roughly 200 miles south of Apple's Silicon Valley headquarters.

On March 12, Kyle Wiens and Luke Soules woke up before dawn. Their plan demanded that they be among the first to get their hands on the device.

So at 5:30 a.m., the minute Apple began taking iPad orders on its website, Wiens and Soules -- do-it-yourself repair evangelists and co-founders of a company called iFixit -- placed theirs. As delivery addresses, they entered several U.S. locations where their research determined the iPad is likely to arrive soonest. They could tell you which ones, but they would have to kill you.

Armed with heat guns, suction cups and other tools of the trade, the duo will set out on Saturday to reveal some of the tablet's most closely guarded secrets: the design and components that make it tick. If all goes according to plan, by the time the lines outside Apple Stores start to thin, iFixit will have provided a blow-by-blow account of its "teardown" to the world, complete with a photo montage.

Such details are manna for the Apple faithful, and iFixit has made a name for itself in technology circles by providing them fast. To do so, Wiens and Soules must above all make sure they are among the very first people to be in actual possession of these hotly anticipated gadgets. And this being Apple, one of the world's most secretive companies, each launch presents a different set of challenges.

Apple's mostly unsung suppliers, which are barred from talking about their most famous customer, will admit in private that they love these teardowns by iFixit and others. The spectacles trumpet to the world that a manufacturer is good enough to make it into an Apple product. In late 2006, the mere rumor that a component by Skyworks Solutions would be in the original iPhone was enough to boost its share price.

Perhaps not surprisingly, Apple, which declined to comment for this story, does not like anybody monkeying around with its devices. This after all is a company that won't even let users change their iPod and iPhone batteries. It has fired executives over leaks and sued bloggers to halt their revelations.

But there is nothing Apple can do about teardowns. "What we do is completely legal, but if they could stop us they would," Wiens, 26, said with a touch of pride. He said that iFixit has had no formal contact with Apple.

What Apple can and does do is make its devices tougher for him and others to decrypt. Teardown firms say the electronics giant forces some suppliers to stamp their microprocessors with the Apple logo, making it harder to determine their provenance.

"Apple is usually trying to cloak who its suppliers are," said David Carey of UBM TechInsights, a prominent teardown firm. "But it can only keep the door closed for so long."

One reason Apple frowns upon teardowns, say experts, is that it is reluctant to broadcast that it doesn't manufacture the widgets itself. "Apple really wants end users to think that Apple makes this thing, that Apple makes the iPad, not Foxconn, Samsung, Toshiba," Soules said.

Rebels With A Cause

For iFixit, these techno-stripteases are more than just publicity stunts designed to promote its business (though they are that for sure.) They are also, to hear Wiens and Soules tell it, a cause.

The two businessmen say one of their goals is to cut down on electronic waste that ends up in landfills by demonstrating the old-fashioned virtue of repair, extending the lifespan of devices.

Wiens said it was his mission to make repair "sexy." He refers to Apple as a "closed company," because it doesn't want its users repairing its products. "We used to fix things in this country, back in the 1950s it was cool to tinker with your car, but that changed as it became more of a consumer culture," he said.

Wiens and Soules launched iFixit, which sells Apple parts and provides free online repair manuals, as teenagers in 2003 out of their college dorm at California Polytechnic State University at San Luis Obispo. It is now a thriving small business that employs around two dozen people and generates more than $2 million in annual sales.

With so much riding on getting hold of the iPad first or close to it, iFixit is playing the odds, flying representatives to multiple cities that Wiens and Soules are keeping to themselves for the moment.

If past is prologue, there is little they won't do to be among the first. In 2008, the year Apple debuted the second-generation iPhone in a global launch, Soules chased it 6,000 miles to the first time zone where he could find the device. He flew to Auckland, New Zealand, and headed to a Vodafone store. There, he waited on line for more than a full day. By his count, he was the fourth person in the world to get the iPhone.

There was just one problem. Soules, a soft-spoken, baby-faced 25-year-old who could easily pass for 16, didn't know a soul in Auckland. So iFixit combed its client list and found one helpful fellow who offered up his print shop to host the teardown. It began shortly after midnight and lasted all night, with Soules streaming nearly live photos onto the Internet to waiting Apple fans half a world away.

Last year was even tougher. Wiens traveled to Britain to get ahead of the third-generation iPhone launch. But his scheme was foiled, he said, when a carrier store in France began selling the device at midnight. He was not among the first to get it -- a failure that still rankles. "There's no magic formula to this, we make up a new plan with each launch, and sometimes it doesn't work out."

Deconstruction Derby

The iPad is Apple's most high-profile product launch since the iPhone three years ago. Starting at $499, the 9.7-inch iPad represents a new category of device, an always-on, all-purpose tool for media consumption.

Stores are sure to be packed on launch day, but Wall Street is still debating its long-term impact on Apple's bottom line. Many analysts expect the company to sell 4 million to 5 million iPads this year.

Whether the iPad flops or becomes the next big thing, the competition to accurately divulge who made which microprocessor and sundry other parts will be fierce.

"There are a lot of people doing this now," said Carey of UBM TechInsights. But he said all teardowns are not created equal. "There are different levels of audience and sophistication, and we have tools and lab capabilities that let us drill down to the transistor level."

Indeed, TechInsights' report on the iPhone 3G provides a level of detail only engineers could love, describing the pin counts on diode arrays that measure a millimeter in length and cost 3 cents.

In contrast to iFixit, which makes public its teardown information, TechInsights provides its data to paying clients. Its reports can run 200 pages. While speed is important, Carey said, it is not the main concern.

Teardown firms like his are hired by an array of clients throughout the technology foodchain. The data is used for competitive intelligence, in patent disputes, or by those simply looking to stay current on industry benchmarks.

Stripping down a device can last a week or more, requiring a variety of tools. Just opening an Apple gizmo can be tricky; the first generation iPhone, in particular, was sealed up tight enough to frustrate Harry Houdini.

"Apple thinks of the iPhone as a magical black box," said Wiens. "They hate screws."

Besides heat guns for melting seals, suction cups for maneuvering screens, and a small hooked stick called a spudger, some less conventional instruments sometimes come into play. "It turned out the best tool to take apart the original iPhone was a dental pick," Wiens said.

Identifying certain computer chips takes some digital sleuthing. The Web is awash in lists of component serial numbers, so parts often can be tied to the manufacturer simply by plugging them into a search engine such as Google.

But divining the origin of other parts requires more expensive hardware such as X-ray machines or a scanning electron microscope, a desk-sized device that provides pictures at the nanometer level.

Chips are carefully sliced open, and then examined from the inside, a process that can take days.

Francis Sideco, an analyst with research group iSuppli, calls the process of identifying parts "doing triangulation." He said iSuppli expects to put out an iPad teardown analysis a few days after the launch.

"We like to get it right, we don't want to wait two weeks, but we do want to get it right," Sideco said.

There is only one iPad component that is known for certain: Apple has already announced that its very own A4 processor is the primary brains of the device. The chip is reportedly manufactured for Apple by Samsung.

ISuppli predicts that other chip suppliers will include Broadcom Corp and Texas Instruments Inc. Flash memory could come from Samsung and Toshiba Corp.

The iPad display and touchscreen are the most expensive part of the device, likely to be around $80. They are also the biggest engineering mystery, Sideco said. The iPad's screen measures 9.7-inches.

"Capacitive touchscreens are typically 3-to-4 inches, and increasing sizes is one of the biggest challenges. The display is key, and what it costs," he said.

Cracking Apple

In the past, iFixit's teardowns have turned up parts from companies like Wolfson Microelectronics Plc, Skyworks Solutions Inc, TriQuint Semiconductor Inc and Marvell Technology Group Ltd.

The team also discovered a small space in the iPod touch meant for a camera, although the device doesn't yet include one. They don't know what they'll find when they crack open the iPad, but they certainly plan to be among the first.

Wiens and Soules own homes next door to each other in Atascadero, a 15-minute drive north from San Luis Obispo. Soules' house doubles as an office for around 10 employees, as well as an Apple parts depot.

The house is an Apple geek wonderland, with a cat named Midnight prowling the halls. The decor is dominated by a life-sized suit of armor, and racks filled with parts for iPods, iPhones and Mac computers. A jaccuzzi-style tub in the bathroom doesn't appear to have been used in some time, as it is piled high with boxes.

Soules just shrugs when asked about the clutter, but he seems right at home. He got his first Mac when he was in first grade, and worked as a computer tech through high school. His grandfather fixed typewriters, so repair is in his blood.

Wiens' father ran a Harley-Davidson dealership, and he said Apple's cult appeal has a lot in common with that of the motorcycle maker.

"Mystery attracts attention, and Apple is a master at getting attention," he said. (Reporting by Gabriel Madway; editing by Jim Impoco, Tiffany Wu and Claudia Parsons)
http://www.reuters.com/article/idUST...technologyNews





Publishers Bet Future on iPad They Haven't Yet Seen
Yinka Adegoke and Georgina Prodhan

Publishers are placing big bets that Apple Inc's iPad will kick-start a commercially viable transition to digital magazines and newspapers -- even though few executives have laid hands on the tablet ahead of launch.

In fact, many publishers likely will not announce their iPad applications until after the tablet hits U.S. stores on Saturday, due to the many constraints that Apple has placed on allowing its partners access to the device.

While media content is critical to the success of the iPad -- a 9.7-inch tablet that looks like a large iPhone and aims to bridge the gap between a smartphone and a laptop -- Apple has been typically secretive about its plans.

Media executives say they have had to test out the iPad in situ at Apple's Cupertino, California office, or agree to extremely restrictive security measures to get one off-site.

"We were offered the opportunity to have an iPad in the building but the security implications were so high, it wasn't worth it," said one publisher who did not want to be identified ahead of the iPad launch.

Only a lucky few received a personal visit from Apple Chief Executive Steve Jobs, who was in New York earlier this year to show off the iPad to a few publishers including the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times.

Despite the restrictions, the iPad's full color touchscreen is seen as a game changer for media companies that have long struggled to make money off digital content, which most consumers expect to get for free or at a very low cost.

Book publishers see a new chance to get their electronic offering right -- and win more bargaining power if the iPad emerges as a viable rival to Amazon.com Inc's Kindle.

"We have all struggled in this industry to find an online model that works successfully in terms of content and the consumer's propensity to pay," Penguin Books Chief Executive John Makinson told a recent media conference in London.

"I think myself that the iPad represents the first real opportunity to create a paid model that will be attractive to consumers. and I think the psychology around payment on tablet is different from the psychology around payment on PCs."

Penguin will share 30 percent of its revenue from e-book sales for iPads with Apple, which Makinson said is better than the 50 percent that publishers typically pay to book retailers including Amazon.

"On balance, that's not bad. Plus we get some consumer data, we get some growth, we don't have marketing investment," he said.

Media Apps

Time Warner Inc plans to unveil a full edition of Time magazine for the iPad launch. It will cost the same as the print copy at $4.95 and feature advertisers including Unilever, Toyota Motor Corp and Fidelity Investments among others.

Time Inc Senior Vice President Monica Ray said the magazine will eventually sell digital subscriptions, and is working on iPad versions of People, Sports Illustrated and other titles.

The Financial Times is working on an iPad application that it expects to be ready around the end of April, when the tablet will be sold overseas, including some European markets, and when a version with 3G wireless connectivity will be launched.

The FT's iPad app will be free to download and for the first two months, readers will be able to get a free trial of ft.com, thanks to sponsor Hublot, the maker of Big Bang watches owned by luxury group LVMH.

After the first two months, the regular ft.com access model will kick in: users must register to read up to 10 articles a month for free, or pay between 170 and 260 pounds ($256 to $391) per year for a subscription.

That compares with $17.99 per month or $126 a year for the iPad version of News Corp's Wall Street Journal, according to a source quoted in the Journal.

Like many publishers, the FT prefers iPad's direct-app sales model to that offered by Amazon: Kindle readers have to buy publications through the Kindle store and share revenue with Amazon.

"Importantly, the app model gives us the ability to retain a direct relationship with our customer and the ability to determine pricing," FT CEO John Ridding said in an email.

The FT, which is part of British media group Pearson, has already had 250,000 downloads of its iPhone app.

Thomson Reuters Corp will also have an advertising-funded iPad app at the launch, sponsored by FedEx. The company plans other subscription-based apps aimed at customers in the financial, legal and medical spheres.

Brian Murray, chief executive of News Corp's book publisher Harper Collins, said even though he has only seen the iPad twice, and for a short while, he felt that book publishing would benefit immensely from Apple's expertise.

"Apple has demonstrated over the years that they can really expand the market," said Murray. "The iPad represents a dramatic step forward in terms of handheld devices."

(Reporting by Yinka Adegoke in New York and Georgina Prodhan in London; Editing by Richard Chang)
http://www.reuters.com/article/idUST...technologyNews





Sony Pursues a Bold Success to Match Its Scale
Hiroko Tabuchi

The airy new Sony store in this central Japanese city has floor-to-ceiling windows, sleek white counters and friendly employees, called stylists, who offer advice and tailored counseling on Sony gadgets.

“It’s just like the Apple store,” laughed Yuka Hara, 23, a publishing company employee who was one of thousands of visitors on the store’s first day of business this month.

The store’s copycat design, although more hip and up-to-date than the company’s traditional Sony Style retail outlets, is emblematic of Sony’s struggle to regain its footing in recent years after a host of missteps: the company always seems to be playing catch-up instead of leaping ahead.

“Sony once hit home runs, but now it’s lost its touch,” said Akihiko Jojima, an analyst and author of the book “Sony’s Sickness.” “Sony still makes competent products but they’re all just boring ground balls.”

It’s been a humbling fall for the company, which once shook up entire categories of electronics with its Walkman music player and PlayStation game console, and commanded premium prices for top-quality products.

In the last few years, its position as a consumer electronics titan has been usurped by more nimble competitors. The iPod from Apple dominates digital music players. In gaming, both the PlayStation 3 and its PlayStation Portable consoles from Sony trail the competing Wii and DS machines from Nintendo — and the DS is about to get a 3-D upgrade. Samsung Electronics leads in the global flat-panel TV market, a traditional stronghold of Sony, based in Tokyo.

Sony’s pioneering e-book reader lost its early lead to the Kindle from Amazon.com. And in the fast-growing smartphone market, an important area for future growth, Sony’s hands have been tied. Under a 2001 deal that spun off its mobile phone operations into a joint venture with Ericsson, Sony has been prevented from offering cellphones that draw heavily on its own other technologies.

All the while, Sony has failed to leverage the wealth of content at its music and cinema arms to the advantage of the wider company.

Sony, while acknowledging its past stumbles, says that its comeback has begun.

“We will go on the offensive in 2010,” said Yoshihisa Ishida, a Sony senior vice president, at the unveiling of a new 3-D television in Tokyo this month. Sony will begin selling 3-D TVs in June, joining an industrywide push to bring the technology behind the hit movie “Avatar” from cinemas to living rooms.

In the next few weeks, Sony will introduce a new online service that will eventually let users download music, television shows, movies and games from the company’s extensive library onto gadgets like computers, Blu-ray players, televisions, game consoles and digital cameras. The network, tentatively called the Sony Online Service, will be based on the company’s existing PlayStation Network, a game download site with more than 40 million accounts.

Sony is working with Google and Intel on Google TV, a platform for a new generation of televisions and set-top boxes that will make it easier to browse the Web on TV screens. The first devices featuring the technology are expected to be on sale this summer.

The company is also working on tablet computers similar to the coming iPad from Apple. “You’ll see many different products that you can probably compare with the iPad,” said a Sony engineer who asked for anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the news media.

Whatever the mode of attack, the next steps by Sony’s chief executive, Howard Stringer — who promised to make Sony “cool again” when he took the helm at the manufacturer in 2005 — will be critical.

Sony’s finances, battered in the global financial crisis, are finally improving after an aggressive cost-cutting drive and a revival in sales. In the final quarter of 2009, Sony surpassed analysts’ expectations with a sevenfold increase in profit, to 79 billion yen, or $853 million.

And with Mr. Stringer’s favorite lieutenants finally in place after a management reshuffle last year, investors hope that he can finally focus on his oft-stated vision to link Sony’s hardware with its software. Sony’s stock price has doubled in the last year, outperforming the broader Japanese stock market.

“If you add up all of Sony’s cellphones, digital cameras, music players, computers, you get a network that would dwarf Apple’s,” said Eiichi Katayama, a technology analyst at Nomura Securities in Tokyo. “And Sony also has content. They could become a force to contend with.”

Sony’s new retail concept in Nagoya, which the company plans to introduce worldwide if it is successful, is an effort to showcase its entire network of products. Displays at the store show how various gadgets can work together: a camcorder, Blu-ray player and TV, for example, or a camera, Vaio laptop and digital photo frame.

The store got off to a flying start. More than 300 people lined up for the March 17 opening of the sleek space, designed by the architect Tadao Ando. A line quickly formed in front of Sony’s new 3-D televisions.

“Sony quality has always been the best,” said Yusuke Takagi, 20, a design student in Nagoya, who said he owned a PlayStation 3, a PlayStation Portable and a CyberShot camera. But he said he was also intrigued by the iPad tablet, which goes on sale at the end of April in Japan.

Sony tried to marry its hardware with content long before Mr. Stringer’s arrival. In 1987, Sony bought CBS Records for $2 billion and followed through two years later with a $3.4 billion purchase of Columbia Pictures. By the late 1990s, Sony was pushing what it called a “ubiquitous value network,” in which gadgets would seamlessly communicate with one another, beaming back and forth music, movies, messages and phone conversations.

But a series of blunders continue to keep that network elusive. Norihiko Fujita, a former Sony executive who is now a lawmaker in Japan’s governing party, says Sony’s biggest mistake was to misread the importance of mobile phones.

In 2001, when Sony spun off its cellphone business into the joint venture, “There was the sense that mobile phones were weighing down the company,” said Mr. Fujita, who helped negotiate the deal. “My heart still hurts to think about it.”

With Sony’s mobile engineers dispatched to the venture — and an agreement that forbids Sony from competing in the business — the company found it difficult to work on multipurpose handsets that drew heavily on its other technologies. For example, Sony’s video games arm was prevented from developing a PlayStation phone, according to a person with knowledge of the situation.

Sony officials declined to comment on the cellphone issue.

But in February, at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Spain, Mr. Stringer said that cellphones are now “the world’s most ubiquitous computer” and indicated that Sony would somehow get back in the game.

“We are building a new network service that will connect many more network-enabled products,” he said. “We are committed to extending that service to Sony Ericsson mobile phones.”

Sony needs to focus on building one blockbuster multifunction device, said Mr. Katayama, the Nomura analyst. “It needs to build a network, but it also needs to make sure consumers have a ticket to play.”

At the Nagoya store, at least, expectations were running high.

“I think Sony can make a global comeback,” said Yoshio Kamiya, a university lecturer in computing. “I’m hoping that soon Sony and Apple can finally play sumo.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/29/te...gy/29sony.html





I Penned the Suckiest Movie Ever - Sorry!
J.D. Shapiro

This month, "Battlefield Earth," the blockbuster bomb based on the novel by Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard, won the Razzie for "Worst Movie of the Decade." J.D. Shapiro, the film's first screenwriter, accepted the award in person. Shapiro, who also wrote the screenplay for "Robin Hood: Men in Tights," "We Married Margo," and is developing a King Arthur spoof called "524 AD" (524AD.com), explains what it's like to be attached to one of Hollywood's most notorious flops.

Let me start by apologizing to anyone who went to see "Battlefield Earth."

It wasn't as I intended -- promise. No one sets out to make a train wreck. Actually, comparing it to a train wreck isn't really fair to train wrecks, because people actually want to watch those.

It started, as so many of my choices do, with my Willy Wonker.

It was 1994, and I had read an article in Premiere magazine saying that the Celebrity Center, the Scientology epicenter in Los Angeles, was a great place to meet women.

Willy convinced me to go check it out. Touring the building, I didn't find any eligible women at first, but I did meet Karen Hollander, president of the center, who said she was a fan of "Robin Hood: Men in Tights." We ended up talking for over two hours. She told me why Scientology is so great. I told her that, when it comes to organized religion, anything a person does to reward, threaten and try to control people by using an unknown like the afterlife is dangerous.

Nonetheless, Karen called me a few days later asking if I'd be interested in turning any of L. Ron Hubbard's books into movies. Eventually, I had dinner with John Travolta, his wife Kelly Preston, Karen -- about 10 Scientologists in all. John asked me, "So, J.D., what brought you to Scientology?"

I told him. John smiled and replied, "We have tech that can help you handle that." I don't know if he meant they had technology that would help me get laid or technology that would stop Willy from doing the majority of my thinking.

I researched Scientology before signing on to the movie, to make sure I wasn't making anything that would indoctrinate people. I took a few courses, including the Purification Rundown, or Purif. You go to CC every day, take vitamins and go in and out of a sauna so toxins are released from your body. You're supposed to reach an "End Point." I never did, but I was bored so I told them I had a vision of L. Ron. They said, "What did he say?" "Pull my finger," was my response. They said I was done.

During my Scientology research, I met an employee who I instantly had a crush on. She was kind of a priestess, and had dedicated her life to working for the church by becoming a Sea Org member. She said that she signed a billion-year contract. I said, "What! Really?" She said she got paid a small stipend of $50 a week, to which I said, "Can you get an advance on the billion years, like say, a mere $500,000?" And then she said as a Sea Org member, you can't have sex unless you're married. I asked her if she was married. She said yes. So I said, "Great! That means we can have sex!"

As far as I know, I am the only non-Scientologist to ever be on their cruise ship, the Freewind. I was a bit of an oddity, walking around in a robe, sandals, smoking Cuban cigars and drinking fine scotch (Scientologists are not allowed to drink while taking courses). I also got one of the best massages ever. My friends asked if I got a "happy ending." I said, "Yes, I got off the ship."

But if you're reading this to get the dirt on Scientology, sorry, no one ever tried to force me to do anything.

Even after all the "trouble" I'd gotten into, people at the church liked me, so I read "Battlefield Earth" and agreed to come up with a pitch to take to studios.

I met with Mike Marcus, the president of MGM, and pitched him my take. He loved it, and the next day negotiations went under way. A few days after I finished the script, a very excited Travolta called, told me he "loved it," and wanted to have dinner. At dinner, John said again how much he loved the script and called it "The 'Schindler's List' of sci-fi."

My script was very, VERY different than what ended up on the screen. My screenplay was darker, grittier and had a very compelling story with rich characters. What my screenplay didn't have was slow motion at every turn, Dutch tilts, campy dialogue, aliens in KISS boots, and everyone wearing Bob Marley wigs.

Shortly after that, John officially attached himself to the project. Then several A-list directors expressed interest in making the movie, MGM had a budget of $100 million, and life was grrrrreat! I got studio notes that were typical studio notes. Nothing too crazy. I incorporated the notes I felt worked, blew off the bad ones and did a polish. I sent it to the studio, thinking the next I'd hear is what director is attached.

Then I got another batch of notes. I thought it was a joke. They changed the entire tone. I knew these notes would kill the movie. The notes wanted me to lose key scenes, add ridiculous scenes, take out some of the key characters. I asked Mike where they came from. He said, "From us." But when I pressed him, he said, "From John's camp, but we agree with them."

I refused to incorporate the notes into the script and was fired.

I HAVE no idea why they wanted to go in this new direction, but here's what I heard from someone in John's camp: Out of all the books L. Ron wrote, this was the one the church founder wanted most to become a movie. He wrote extensive notes on how the movie should be made.

Many people called it a Scientology movie. It wasn't when I wrote it, and I don't feel it was in the final product. Yes, writers put their beliefs into a story. Sometimes it's subtle (I guess L. Ron had something against the color purple, I have no idea why), sometimes not so subtle (L. Ron hated psychiatry and psychologists, thus the reason, and I'm just guessing here, that the bad aliens were called "Psychlos").

The only time I saw the movie was at the premiere, which was one too many times.

Once it was decided that I would share a writing credit, I wanted to use my pseudonym, Sir Nick Knack. I was told I couldn't do that, because if a writer gets paid over a certain amount of money, they can't. I could have taken my name completely off the movie, but my agent and attorney talked me out of it. There was a lot of money at stake.

Now, looking back at the movie with fresh eyes, I can't help but be strangely proud of it. Because out of all the sucky movies, mine is the suckiest.

In the end, did Scientology get me laid? What do you think? No way do you get any action by boldly going up to a woman and proclaiming, "I wrote Battlefield Earth!" If anything, I'm trying to figure out a way to bottle it and use it as birth control. I'll make a mint!
http://www.nypost.com/p/entertainmen...Jmfpw80Xc7aO/0





'80s Stars Hall & Oates Back in Spotlight
Ann Donahue

When Greg Kurstin, half of esoteric Los Angeles pop duo the Bird and the Bee, speaks of Hall & Oates, it's in a reverent tone usually reserved for devout believers meeting a major religious figure.

"'One on One' is the perfect song with the perfect production," he says with unblinking earnestness. "I strive for that level of greatness every day."

On March 23, Kurstin and bandmate Inara George released their homage to the pair, "Interpreting the Masters Volume I: A Tribute to Daryl Hall and John Oates," on Blue Note. It's the latest example of the unlikely pop-culture resurgence for the fourth-best-selling duo of all time (13 million albums shipped, according to the Recording Industry Association of America).

In the past two years, Hall & Oates' music, which peaked chart-wise during the first term of the Reagan White House, has been featured in everything from tastemaking films like "(500) Days of Summer" to taste-questionable outlets like QVC. The driving force behind the resurgence is twofold: the giddiness of 30-something nostalgics like George and Kurstin, and the willingness of Daryl Hall, 63, and John Oates, 61, to connect with these fans in the free-flowing back-and-forth of today's media world.

Jonathan Wolfson has been the band's publicist for five years; he took over as their manager in 2009. He remembers being a teenager in New York, sitting in the nosebleed seats and thrilling to Hall & Oates performing "Maneater" live. Now, Hall & Oates are his sole clients, and he navigates opportunities for exposure for the act from a two-story, peach-colored strip mall in the west San Fernando Valley.

"Daryl and John allowed me to push on their behalf," he says. "A lot of the bands get in the way of themselves. I feel like I work with them -- obviously, I work for them -- but I feel like I work with them."

Not Press Darlings

Oates, for one, is appreciative of how the duo's music is branching out into everything from film to online animation; it stands as a comeuppance to those who once questioned the relevance of their music. "We were not in the cool club with the rock press," he says. "But in the end, it's the songs that stand the test of time -- they've been covered, sampled, and there's a generation of creative people who grew up with our music."

This younger generation of fan appreciates the commercial artistry of their techno-savvy blue-eyed soul and takes kitschy pleasure in the decadent, shoulder-padded extravagance of the surrounding era. This gives Wolfson a large playing field to hype the band: It can perform on the hipper-than-thou "Daily Show" even as middlebrow TV chef Rachael Ray pushes for their entry into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

"When I started doing press for them, it was the same cliched rock critics saying, 'Well, you didn't play CBGB's in '78 ...' It was kind of bulls--t actually," Wolfson says. "I hate to be an ageist, but when I started going to people who were contemporaries, it was a way different conversation than it was with the Robert Hilburns of the world, who basically called them the Thompson Twins and said, 'I'll never write about these guys.' It's one of those things -- if they don't let you in the party, you create your own. And the party got bigger and bigger and bigger."

Ever since the single "Sara Smile" was certified gold by the RIAA in 1976, Hall & Oates have always been just on the wrong side of cool with the rock establishment. Despite seven platinum albums -- three of which went double-platinum: 1982's "H2O," 1983's "Rock 'n Soul, Part 1" and 1984's "Big Bam Boom" -- the Philadelphia duo has never won a Grammy Award. ("Always the bridesmaid, never the bride," Hall muses; the pair was nominated this year for best performance by a duo or group with vocals for a version of "Sara Smile" on "Live at the Troubadour.")

Pop fans have long embraced Hall & Oates -- leading to six No. 1 songs on the Billboard Hot 100 -- but critics derided their music as "yacht rock," slick '80s smarm designed to lure radio programmers across a variety of genres.

Boosts From Web, Stern

With the resurgence of Hall & Oates among hipsters, that attitude has changed, and in a very public manner. "They were hated, they really were," Wolfson says. "But the Internet has really been their friend. The fact that the Internet has no gatekeepers and bloggers can write whatever they want -- if something's good, people respond."

Sales have been on the increase: In 2009, they sold 177,000 albums, up from 161,000 in 2008. In that same time period, digital song downloads were up 19 percent to 547,000.

The recent Hall & Oates revival seemingly started with the harmonic convergence of Howard Stern and a series of Google Alerts.

In November 2007, Hall appeared on Stern's show on Sirius Satellite Radio to promote his Web-only series, "Live From Daryl's House." It's a monthly performance program where Hall and a visiting musician jam in his farmhouse in New York state, playing Hall & Oates standards and songs by the accompanying artist.

But as usual on Stern, things got weird. The recap on HowardStern.com summed it up as such: "Daryl then opened up about his Lyme disease and the debilitating effect it has had on his life, adding that we should 'kill all the f'ing deer. They're like giant rats' ... Howard told Daryl that he might have him cut some public service announcements about the 'f'ing deer,' but Daryl insisted that he'd rather just be given a machine gun. Daryl then treated the crew to a live performance of 'Sara Smile.'"

With a later mention that he and Oates have had sex in the same room -- not with each other but apparently close enough to notice that Oates was a "German shepherd in a chihuahua's pants" -- Hall & Oates earned something that largely eluded them during their heyday: street cred.

"I've booked everyone from Yanni to Suge Knight onto Howard Stern, and this was the craziest interview," Wolfson says. "That really generated a lot of hits (for "Live From Daryl's House"). It was a good way to break it out."

Around that same time, Wolfson noticed something every time he opened his e-mail: Google Alerts detailing how various bands were paying tribute to Hall & Oates. In 2007, Gym Class Heroes named its summer trek the Daryl Hall for President Tour 2007. Brandon Flowers of the Killers said "Rich Girl" was a perfect pop song. Ben Gibbard of Death Cab for Cutie wrote an exegesis of his 10 favorite Hall & Oates songs on Pitchfork.

'House' Calls

Soon, an idea was born -- to approach the musicians who were vocal in their love for Hall & Oates to appear on "Live From Daryl's House." "We went through a few stages with the whole renaissance of Hall & Oates," Wolfson says. "At first it was like, 'Oh, it's OK to like these guys.' And then, all of a sudden, once all the bands started giving testimonials, it just started snowballing. (Fall Out Boy's) Patrick Stump isn't just praising Hall & Oates, he's on the show. He's playing 'Out of Touch.'"

A new episode of "Live From Daryl's House" debuts on the 15th of each month; each episode has a budget of $35,000, Wolfson says, and uses five cameras to shoot in HD. Recent guests have included Smokey Robinson and Diane Birch; each episode receives about 30,000 views upon its debut, and it builds to about 100,000 per show as they're archived, Wolfson says.

Some artist appearances sparked new opportunities: The connection Hall made with electro-funk duo Chromeo on the show has lead to the group prepping a version of "Live From Daryl's House" for this year's Bonnaroo festival. "Bonnaroo is significant because it's taking 'Live From Daryl's House' into an additional place," Hall says. "It shows how the show is evolving into a live entity."

Other H&O appearances came about the old-fashioned way: connections and invites from influential fans. They've included performances on "Dancing With the Stars" and "The Daily Show," whose producers invited Hall & Oates to do a farewell song to Alan Colmes after Fox News' token liberal host left "Hannity & Colmes."

For the 2009 film "(500) Days of Summer," director Marc Webb turned the placement of the duo's "You Make My Dreams" into a song-and-dance extravaganza featuring a literal bluebird of happiness. "The filmmaker thought the song epitomized euphoria," says Oates, who saw the film at the Grove movie theater in Los Angeles with his family. "I have never been in a theater before where people started clapping for the music in a movie."

It was a licensing deal with impact. In terms of digital track sales, "You Make My Dreams" sold 103,000 downloads in 2009, compared with 51,000 in 2008, according to Nielsen SoundScan.

Some recent Hall & Oates promotions are a blend of traditional music revenue streams and digital initiatives. "J-Stache" is an online cartoon financed by publisher Primary Wave that features Oates' famous mustache as his zeppelin-exploding superhero alter ego. "We wanted to accomplish two things: incorporate additional Hall & Oates music and give us the opportunity to let the public hear some of the undiscovered gems," Primary Wave chief marketing officer Adam Lowenberg says.

The cartoon premiered on FunnyOrDie.com, where it has received 37,000 viewers. "It created a cool buzz with a younger generation of fans," Oates says. "And it appealed to my insane side."

Next Generation

For Hall & Oates, all these appearances keep them part of the public domain, and the knowing spirit of the enterprises makes them enduring and endearing. It's a strategy that involves a willingness to laugh at one's self, and adapt.

"I'm a firm believer in the intergenerational interplay," Hall says. "In order for an artist to really achieve significance you have to go out of your own generation, and luckily I think I've pulled that off."

In an appearance that veered into the it's-so-uncool-it's-cool territory, late last year Hall & Oates went on QVC to sell their boxed set, "Do What You Want, Be What You Are: The Music of Daryl Hall and John Oates" (RCA/Legacy).

QVC may conjure visions of late-night, drug-fueled purchases of vacuum cleaners, but Wolfson cautions people not to mock. "The boxed set sold 5,000 copies the first hour," he says. In total, the $50 set has sold 15,000 copies, according to Nielsen SoundScan, peaking at No. 89 on the Billboard 200.

The release was a significant undertaking for Hall & Oates, who curated the selections on the four-disc set and contributed extensively to the 60-page booklet that accompanies the discs. "There's a lot of overlooked songs that were very significant in our growth," Hall says. "And I wanted to make sure those songs were very much in evidence so people could listen and see how it all happened for these two guys from Philadelphia with backgrounds in soul."

While Hall & Oates march on -- the duo is planning to tour this summer on a few select dates, after a 15-show trek last year that grossed $1.5 million, according to Billboard Boxscore -- both artists are also pursuing new endeavors individually. "We're going in sort of new directions, but not losing the old direction," Hall says. "I'm basically running two careers here, and that's rough. But it's a labor of love."

Hall returned to the studio recently to begin work on a solo album for Verve, and Oates is putting together a songwriter's festival in Aspen, Colorado, where he now lives.

"I'm at the point in my life and my career where I can do exactly what I want," Oates says. "And that's all any creative person wants to do."
http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE62R23D20100328





Musician Remixes Anti-War Hit "19" for Afghanistan
Mirja Spernal

British musician Paul Hardcastle is releasing an updated version of his international anti-war hit "19" 25 years on, but this time his focus is on the Afghan conflict rather than Vietnam.

The 1985 hit topped charts in 13 countries when it was released, appealing to audiences with its dance beat, catchy tune, anti-war message and accompanying video featuring harrowing footage of U.S. troops fighting in Vietnam.

It was inspired by a documentary Hardcastle saw which stated that the average age of a combat soldier in Vietnam was 19, compared with 26 in World War Two -- figures which are disputed by some.

On April 19, the musician is releasing a re-mixed version and new video which cuts film of British troops serving in Afghanistan with the older footage in the original.

"I was always going to do a 25th anniversary edition," Hardcastle said in an interview to promote the single.

"Seeing what is happening now, and my son's friend is actually one of the people that died in Afghanistan ... I thought maybe I should feature what's happening now as well, so that was the main reason of doing it I guess," he added.

Georgie Sparks, his son's friend, was 19 years old when he was killed in 2008.

While Hardcastle supports troops in the field, he criticized the government for failing to equip them as well as they would like, said they were paid too little and took issue with sending men and women into battle at such an early age.

"I think being out there and not even knowing who you're fighting -- is that a family over there or is it someone who is about to blow themselves up? -- I don't think that's fair on a 19-year-old kid. I think it's too young.

"At 21, you can't even have a (alcoholic) drink in America, yet you can go into some battlezone when you're 19 or 18. How does that work?"

Job Squeeze

Hardcastle acknowledged that the British army was voluntary, but believed many young people were forced into joining the armed forces due to economic pressures.

"I know a few people that want to go into the army, and why do they want to go into the army? Because they can't get jobs."

The musician, who spends most of his time working on smooth jazz, or instrumental "chill out music," saw parallels between the Vietnam and Afghan conflicts.

"There are parallels and that's what it shows you on the video -- you see two shots, one from 35 years ago and one from now and it almost looks like the same piece of footage.

"It was all history repeating itself, as I say on the record. After seeing how long this Afghan thing is going to drag on, and it's going to drag on for a long tine, it could become another Vietnam, and that will be a big problem."

Hardcastle said his aim was to raise awareness and ensure that the British people did not forget that soldiers were fighting and dying in Afghanistan.

"The fact that the families of the people that have died out there are saying to me 'Thanks for keeping our sons' names alive', that's one of the things that spurs me on."

(Writing by Mike Collett-White, editing by Paul Casciato)
http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE6301XC20100401





Fox Sports Exec: Next Super Bowl Halftime Performer "Won't Need Oxygen"
FMQB

For those wondering about who will be performing at the next Super Bowl halftime show, the run of safe, ubiquitous Classic Rock artists (save for Prince) that have dominated since Justin and Janet took the stage may be coming to an end.

Fox has the next Super Bowl, and in an interview with the Los Angeles Times, Fox Sports Chief Executive David Hill was less than enthusiastic about the prospects of putting another aging rocker on stage.

"Oh, please, God, yes," responded Hill, when asked if the halftime act would be under the age of 60. "If I saw [Who guitarist] Pete Townshend's belly again I was going to throw up. In his younger days it might have been rippling muscle, but now it's like mine -- rippling fat. From the conversations I've had with the NFL, we won't need oxygen."

Shortly after the Super Bowl, FMQB began polling music and radio industry execs regarding who they think will get the slot next year. Many people feel that another Classic Rock artist or current Rock band will be the choice, so that's what makes Hill's comment interesting, because it goes against the industry's expectations. The time might be at hand where the NFL feels it would not be too risqué to put current pop culture-bred musicians back on the stage.

A couple things come in to play here when considering the odds below. The 2011 broadcast is on Fox, home of American Idol, and the game is in Dallas. So, the leading vote getter in this unofficial poll - Bon Jovi - isn't our candidate for best odds to get the gig. Our guess is Bon Jovi gets saved for 2012, due his NBC partnership (they have the 2012 game), plus he’s a Giants fan so we don’t see Jerry Jones letting him up on stage, which is also the reason we rule out The Eagles as a candidate. We also see Bon Jovi turning down any Super Bowl appearance until New Giants Stadium gets its game, expected to be in 2014. (Of course, that's if Jets owner Woody Johnson didn't screw that up already).

The unofficial, official FMQB music industry 2011 Super Bowl halftime show poll odds...

American Idol "friends" 3-1
Jay Z w/ Beyonce 5-1
ZZ Top 8-1
Metallica 10-1
Justin Bieber 10-1
AC/DC 15-1
Carrie Underwood 15-1
Foo Fighters 15-1
Linkin Park 20-1
Taylor Swift 25-1
Bon Jovi 25-1
Green Day 50-1
Pink Floyd 50-1
Dave Matthews Band 50-1
Ozzy 75-1
Guns N Roses 75-1
Pearl Jam 100-1
The Eagles 10,000,000-1

We'll be updating the odds from time-to-time, so if you have your thoughts on the next Super Bowl halftime show, email us with a subject header of SUPER BOWL at fmqb@fmqb.com.
http://www.fmqb.com/article.asp?id=1746187





For Photographers, the Image of a Shrinking Path
Stephanie Clifford

By the time Matt Eich entered photojournalism school in 2004, the magazine and newspaper business was already declining.

But Mr. Eich had been shooting photographs since he was a child, and when he married and had a baby during college, he stuck with photography as a career.

“I had to hit the ground running and try to make enough money to keep a roof over our heads,” he said.

Since graduation in 2008, Mr. Eich, 23, has gotten magazine assignments here and there, but “industrywide, the sentiment now, at least among my peers, is that this is not a sustainable thing,” he said. He has been supplementing magazine work with advertising and art projects, in a pastiche of ways to earn a living. “There was a path, and there isn’t anymore.”

Then there is D. Sharon Pruitt, a 40-year-old mother of six who lives on Hill Air Force Base in Utah. Ms. Pruitt’s husband is in the military, and their frequent moves meant a full-time job was not practical. But after a vacation to Hawaii in 2006, Ms. Pruitt uploaded some photos — taken with a $99 Kodak digital camera — to the site Flickr.

Since then, through her Flickr photos, she has received a contract with the stock-photography company Getty Images that gives her a monthly income when publishers or advertisers license the images. The checks are sometimes enough to take the family out to dinner, sometimes almost enough for a mortgage payment. “At the moment, it’s just great to have extra money,” she said.

Mr. Eich and Ms. Pruitt illustrate the huge shake-up in photography during the last decade. Amateurs, happy to accept small checks for snapshots of children and sunsets, have increasing opportunities to make money on photos but are underpricing professional photographers and leaving them with limited career options. Professionals are also being hurt because magazines and newspapers are cutting pages or shutting altogether.

“There are very few professional photographers who, right now, are not hurting,” said Holly Stuart Hughes, editor of the magazine Photo District News.

That has left professional photographers with a bit of an identity crisis. Nine years ago, when Livia Corona was fresh out of art school, she got assignments from magazines like Travel and Leisure and Time. Then, she said, “three forces coincided.”

They were the advertising downturn, the popularity and accessibility of digital photography, and changes in the stock-photo market.

Magazines’ editorial pages tend to rise or fall depending on how many ad pages they have. In 2000, the magazines measured by Publishers Information Bureau, a trade group, had 286,932 ad pages. In 2009, there were 169,218 — a decline of 41 percent. That means less physical space in which to print photographs.

“Pages are at a premium, and there’s more competition to get anything into a magazine now, and the bar is just higher for excellent work,” said Bill Shapiro, the editor of Life.com, who ran the print revival of Life before Time Inc. shut it in 2007. And that is for the publications that survived — 428 magazines closed in 2009 alone, according to the publication database MediaFinder.com, including ones that regularly assigned original photography, like Gourmet, Portfolio and National Geographic Adventure.

And while magazines once sniffed at stock photographs, which are existing images, not original assignments, shrinking editorial budgets made them reconsider.

“When we began, stock photography or licensed images, preshot images being licensed, was perceived as the armpit of the photo industry,” said Jonathan Klein, the chief executive of Getty Images who helped found the agency in 1995. “No self-respecting art director or creative director would use a preshot image, because it wasn’t original, it hadn’t been commissioned by them, it wasn’t their creativity.”

At the same time, the Internet has made it easier for editors to find and license stock photos — they can do it in seconds with a search term and a few clicks, rather than spending seven weeks mailing film transparencies back and forth.

Concurrently, digital photography took off. “It used to be you really needed to know how to use a camera,” said Keith Marlowe, a photographer who has worked for Spin and Rolling Stone. “If you messed up a roll, you couldn’t redo the concert.” Now, though, any photographer can instantly see if a shot is good, or whether the light balances or other technical aspects need to be adjusted.

That meant a flood of pretty decent photographs, and that changed the stock-photography industry. In the last few years, stock agencies have created or acquired so-called microstock divisions. They charge $1 to $100, in most cases, for publishers or others to rerun a photo, often supplied by an amateur. And Getty made a deal with Flickr in 2008, permitting Getty’s photo editors to comb through customers’ images and strike license agreements with the amateur photographers.

“The quality of licensed imagery is virtually indistinguishable now from the quality of images they might commission,” Mr. Klein said. Yet “the price point that the client, or customer, is charged is a fraction of the price point which they would pay for a professional image.”

In 2005, Getty Images licensed 1.4 million preshot commercial photos. Last year, it licensed 22 million — and “all of the growth was through our user-generated business,” Mr. Klein said.

That is because amateurs are largely happy to be paid anything for their photos. “People that don’t have to make a living from photography and do it as a hobby don’t feel the need to charge a reasonable rate,” Mr. Eich said.

With stock-photography payments declining and magazines pulling back on original assignments, some Web sites like Life.com and BurnMagazine.org have popped up as homes for original photography. Life commissions about two projects a month — it sent Mr. Marlowe to Haiti after the earthquake, for instance, and the entertainment photographer Jeff Vespa to cover the European news media tour by the “Avatar” cast.

There seems to be an audience for professional photography on these sites. The average number of photos each visitor viewed for “Michael Jackson: The Memorial” was 41, for example, and for {ldquo}Oscars 2010: The Best Dresses{rdquo} Life.com's Oscars story.” it was 38 images.

Still, the pay, compared with print, is “less, for sure,” Mr. Shapiro of Life.com said, since professional photographers “are really more excited for the exposure than they are to drive a hard bargain.”

But it is hard to live on exposure alone. And some professionals worry that with ways to make a salary in photography disappearing, the impact will be severe.

“The important thing that a photojournalist does is they know how to tell the story — they know they’re not there to skew, interpret or bias,” said Katrin Eismann, chairwoman of the Masters in Digital Photography program at the School of Visual Arts in New York. “A photographer can go to a rally or demonstration, and they can make it look as though 10 people showed up, or 1,000 people showed up, and that’s a big difference. I’m not sure I’m going to trust an amateur to understand how important that visual communication is.”

“Can an amateur take a picture as good as a professional? Sure,” Ms. Eismann said. “Can they do it on demand? Can they do it again? Can they do it over and over? Can they do it when a scene isn’t that interesting?”

But amateurs like Ms. Pruitt do not particularly care.

“I never followed any traditional photography rules only because I didn’t know of any — I never went to photography school, never took any classes,” she said. “People don’t know the rules, so they just shoot what they like — and other people like it, too.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/30/bu...30photogs.html





A Start-Up Has Survived to Beam Up Your Gestures
Ashlee Vance

Making computers see humans has not been easy for Canesta.

The founding team of the small Silicon Valley chip company set out 11 years ago to give any electronic device with a tiny digital camera the ability to view the world around it in three dimensions. Such technology that mimics the human eye holds the promise of altering the ways in which humans interact with the computers that fill their lives. But later this year, when consumers begin to find computers, TVs and gaming systems in stores that they can control through hand and body gestures, the company may finally escape its many near-death experiences.

“The 3-D cameras used to cost $5,000,” said Michel Tombroff, the chief executive of Softkinetic, which makes software for the 3-D gesture recognition systems. “That price has come down to $50 or less for the bill of materials.”

Advocates of this technology hail it as one of the most significant changes to the way people interact with their devices. Some even expect to it to vastly overshadow the touch-screen technology that has recently captured attention.

But the technology has proved so difficult to create that Canesta, based here, has spent its entire existence selling far more promises than actual products. In 2002, James Spare, then the head of marketing at Canesta, began showing off a virtual keyboard to the public. Using Canesta’s technology, hand-held devices like the Palm Pilot and cellphones could project a keyboard, in flickering red light, onto a desk or table. No one would have to lug a keyboard.

Canesta’s virtual keyboard garnered plenty of attention, but it did not work all that well. People were used to putting pressure on keys, while Canesta’s system required them to think more about the position of their fingers in space. Human anatomy proved troubling as well.

“Fingernails were a problem,” said Cyrus Bamji, the chief technology officer at Canesta. “We could not see fingernails because they would disperse the light sent out by our laser. We joked about selling a line of special fingernail polish.”

Canesta’s technology had some early industrial uses in the automotive and robotics fields. Car companies could create sensors that would help vehicles see obstacles around them, and industrial robots could be equipped with sensors for checking product quality.

Still, Canesta’s executives thought that a bigger payoff would come by burrowing into the consumer electronics market. But to get into everyday gadgets, Canesta would have to create a chip cheap enough and tiny enough to be paired with minuscule digital cameras. The chip module would send out infrared light and then calculate how long that light took to return to the module.

The company’s engineers knew that building such a chip would require herculean feats of creativity and years of toil. For one, they had to figure out a way to coax the chip into seeing only Canesta’s brand of infrared light while ignoring the immense amount of infrared energy from the sun.

“I remember a meeting in Japan where an executive opened the window ahead of our demonstration,” Mr. Bamji said. “There was a lake outside, and we got all this reflection back from the sun. That was a big, embarrassing problem.”

After such setbacks, Canesta needed more money. That meant persuading investors to take a big risk on the unknown.

“We had 140 meetings with venture capitalists,” said Mr. Spare, now the chief executive. “It has been a challenge to find investors that are focused on the big opportunity.”

Investors in Silicon Valley have largely given Canesta the cold shoulder. Long-term investments in chip companies have become increasingly rare here.

Over the years, Canesta has secured about $60 million. Investors like the Carlyle Group and Venrock have stuck with it, while other investors from Taiwan and Korea have joined in.

Notably, Quanta, a Taiwanese company that manufactures laptops for the top PC brands, has put money into Canesta. It expects to sell laptops this year or next with the 3-D camera modules. Honda has invested as well, and there is talk of using Canesta’s chips for sensors on the outside of cars and internal sensors that can see whether an adult or a child is in a seat and adjust the way an air bag behaves accordingly.

Over the next year, PCs and TVs will arrive with the company’s chip inside. People will soon be able to turn on their TVs simply by raising their hand in the air or flip through photos on their computers with a wag of a finger.

Canesta’s gaming smarts were on display at the South by Southwest conference in Austin, Tex. A company called Frog Design held a party where people could play classic arcade games like Breakout and Galaga with their bodies on a 12-foot-by-9-foot screen, using Canesta’s technology.

In the coming years, the expectation is that just about every digital camera in consumer devices like PCs and cellphones will be replaced by a 3-D camera capable of recognizing gestures. Microsoft has sparked tremendous interest in this gesture recognition technology through a gaming system code-named Project Natal. This is a device that Microsoft will sell later this year for its Xbox 360 consoles, allowing people to do away with controllers altogether and use their bodies to play games.

Canesta hopes to piggyback on the exploding interest in the technology and pop low-cost chips into every device it can.

“We will make a little profit on every one of those chips,” Mr. Spare said. “Years ago, there may have been a light at the end of the tunnel, but it was hard to see and blinking at best. Now that light is bright.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/29/te...29canesta.html





How TV Makers Are Selling the Idea of 3-D at Home
Elizabeth Olson

THE consumer electronics world thrives on the latest new thing. And this year that would be 3-D. It was once considered a quirky technology gone nowhere, but, because of the popularity of “Avatar,” television makers now are racing to bring multidimensional viewing to the living room.

Samsung Electronics is introducing 15 3-D television models with a live-action three-dimensional commercial created by the same technical production company that made “Avatar,” James Cameron’s popular film.

And just like the 1950s when the technology was popular in the country’s theaters, special spectacles — which look nothing like the paper versions but come at an additional price — are required for the full visual experience.

But for all the razzle-dazzle, Samsung knows that, with hefty price tags, consumers need to feel they are not buying into a one-off phenomenon. So the company has worked with DreamWorks Animation and the pop band Black Eyed Peas, and is talking to Hollywood studios and other companies about creating and providing 3-D content for home viewing.

TV manufacturers are betting on 3-D. There are forecasts that consumers will buy 3.5 million to 4 million such sets, or about 10 percent of all United States television sales, this year. But that may be optimistic. Different and incompatible technologies mean that one maker’s glasses, for example, cannot be used on another’s television model.

“The glasses go for a premium — around $150 — which means it’s costly, for example, to have a few people over for a Super Bowl party, unless it’s ‘bring your own compatible spectacles,’ ” said Ross Rubin, an analyst for NPD Group, a market research firm.

Tim Baxter, president of Samsung Electronics America, said that electronics companies were working to come up with a single standard, but he conceded that it would not happen immediately. Even so, he said that Samsung executives believed that 3-D technology was ushering in an era where “there will be less passive sitting back and watching television, and a more immersive, interactive experience.”



He said that the high-definition TVs, which can be switched from 2-D to 3-D with the push of a button, built on Samsung’s previous experience with such technology. Its research found that more than 90 percent of United States consumers were aware of the technology, but fewer than a third had experienced it.

“We’ve already sold a couple of thousand units in less than two weeks,” Mr. Baxter said. The first two models — the 46-inch and 55-inch — are now in stores, and the remaining sets will be available in the next 60 days, he said. The best seller is the wider model, he said, because “early adopters gravitate toward the bigger screen.”

Panasonic also has introduced its 3-D products and sent a fleet of tractor trailers on a tour to acquaint consumers with the technology. This month, LG Electronics began promoting its new Infinia series of televisions, which feature 3-D. The 30-second spots, created by Young & Rubicam, part of WPP, are appearing during the N.C.A.A. basketball tournament on CBS.

LG’s 3-D televisions will be in stores in May or June, the company said. Sony’s 3-D products will be available in June.

Samsung is spending about $100 million this year on marketing and advertising its 3-D products. That included promoting its 3-D line with a Black Eyed Peas concert in Times Square on March 10.

For its signature advertising spot, Samsung hired the Oscar-winning cinematographer Mauro Fiore, who used the fusion 3-D camera technology that was employed to make “Avatar.” The 30-second commercial, called “Dedicated to Wonder,” was created by Chicago’s Leo Burnett agency, part of the Publicis Groupe.

The commercial shows a family at the wall of a huge aquarium. The father reaches over and, using his finger, carves out a block of the water — manta rays, fish and all — then transports it home and places it inside the Samsung 3-D television. As the family settles in on the sofa, a manta ray swims out of the television.

“It’s so real that the family’s little boy reaches out to touch it,” said Bob Price, Leo Burnett’s creative director. A 15-second snippet of the commercial was shown during this year’s Academy Awards telecast. The full campaign began on March 21, with ads scheduled to run in a number of prime-time programs. The ads will also appear on cable, and a print version will run in Architectural Digest, Entertainment Weekly and ESPN magazines, among other titles.

Peggy Ang, Samsung’s marketing director, said the company would advertise online at entertainment and sports sites and was looking at gaming sites. Samsung is on Facebook also and had 130,000 page views immediately after its Academy Awards spot, she said. Samsung also plans to advertise in Imax theaters and in conventional theaters before 3-D movies.

Samsung is pursuing partnerships with film studios, cable networks and others to supply content, Ms. Ang said, but she predicted that “3-D content will proliferate because industry sees the potential for it.”

Anthony Chukumba, an analyst for BB&T Capital Markets, said the increased offerings, like ESPN’s 3-D broadcast of World Cup soccer in June, DirectTV and Discovery’s planned channels, as well as more 3-D movies and video games, would increase consumer awareness.

“The fact that these are also 2-D televisions also means that if you are looking to buy a television, you may want to future-proof by purchasing 3-D and wait for the content to catch up,” he said.



On Sunday, Samsung introduced a second commercial that showcases the DreamWorks animated film “Monsters vs. Aliens.” Under the arrangement, Samsung can include a 3-D copy of the space-invaders-meet-weird-earthlings movie along with a Blu-ray player and set of 3-D glasses that are bundled in a separate “starter-kit” package.

The studio also will convert its “Shrek” movies to 3-D, including the fourth installment that is scheduled to be released in May. DreamWorks has agreed to let Samsung include 3-D “Shrek” versions as part of its promotional bundle.

The offers will be part of a national in-store marketing program, with 5,000 kiosks available for prospective buyers to sample 3-D. The 3-D line includes LED, plasma and LCD models, with the 46-inch model selling for $2,600, and 55-inch model for $3,300. The bundle, which includes two pairs of active-shutter glasses and a 3-D DVD, costs an additional $350.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/30/bu...ia/30adco.html





Judge Invalidates Human Gene Patent
John Schwartz and Andrew Pollack

A federal judge on Monday struck down patents on two genes linked to breast and ovarian cancer. The decision, if upheld, could throw into doubt the patents covering thousands of human genes and reshape the law of intellectual property

United States District Court Judge Robert W. Sweet issued the 152-page decision, which invalidated seven patents related to genes whose mutations have been associated to breast cancer, BRCA1 and BRCA2.

The American Civil Liberties Union and the Public Patent Foundation at the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law in New York joined with individual patients and medical organizations to challenge the patents last May: they argued that genes, products of nature, fall outside of the realm of things that can be patented. The patents, they argued, stifle research and innovation and limit testing options.

Myriad Genetics, the company that holds the patents with the University of Utah Research Foundation, asked the court to dismiss the case, claiming that the work of isolating the DNA from the body transforms it and makes it patentable. Such patents, it said, have been granted for decades; the Supreme Court upheld patents on living organisms in 1980. In fact, many in the patent field had predicted the courts would throw out the suit.

Judge Sweet, however, ruled that the patents were “improperly granted” because they involved a “law of nature.” He said that many critics of gene patents considered the idea that isolating a gene made it patentable “a ‘lawyer’s trick’ that circumvents the prohibition on the direct patenting of the DNA in our bodies but which, in practice, reaches the same result.”

The case could have far-reaching implications. About 20 percent of human genes have been patented, and multibillion-dollar industries have been built atop the intellectual property rights that the patents grant.

“If a decision like this were upheld, it would have a pretty significant impact on the future of medicine,” said Kenneth Chahine, a visiting law professor at the University of Utah who filed an amicus brief on the side of Myriad. He said that medicine was becoming more personalized, with genetic tests used not only to diagnose diseases but to determine which medicine is best for which patient.

Mr. Chahine, who once ran a biotechnology firm, said the decision could also make it harder for young companies to raise money from investors. “The industry is going to have to get more creative about how to retain exclusivity and attract capital in the face of potentially weaker patent protection,” he said.

Edward Reines, a patent lawyer who represents biotechnology firms but was not involved in the case, said loss of patent protection could diminish the incentives for genetic research.

“The genetic tools to solve the major health problems of our time have not been found yet,” said Mr. Reines, who is with the Silicon Valley office of the firm Weil, Gotshal & Manges. “These are the discoveries we want to motivate by providing incentives to all the researchers out there.”

The lawsuit also challenged the patents on First Amendment grounds, but Judge Sweet ruled that because the issues in the case could be decided within patent law, the constitutional question need not be decided.

The decision is likely to be appealed. Representatives of Myriad did not return calls seeking comment. But this month, the company’s chief executive, Peter Meldrum, told investors that “regardless of the outcome of this particular lawsuit, it will not have a material adverse effect on the company,” or its future revenues, according to the Pharmacogenomics Reporter, “or on the future revenues of our products.”

Janice Oh, a spokeswoman for the United States attorney’s office in Manhattan, which represented the Patent and Trademark Office in the case, had no comment.

One of the individual plaintiffs in the suit, Genae Girard, who has breast cancer and has been tested for ovarian cancer, applauded the decision as “a big turning point for all women in the country that may have breast cancer that runs in their family.” Chris Hansen, an A.C.L.U. staff lawyer, said: “The human genome, like the structure of blood, air or water, was discovered not created. There is an endless amount of information on genes that begs for further discovery, and gene patents put up unacceptable barriers to the free exchange of ideas.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/30/business/30gene.html





Thumbs Down for Software Patents in NZ

Commerce Select Committee tips its hat to open source submissions
Stephen Bell

Open source software champions have been influential in excluding software from the scope of patents in the new Patents Bill.

Clause 15 of the draft Bill, as reported back from the Commerce Select Committee, lists a number of classes of invention which should not be patentable and includes the sub-clause “a computer program is not a patentable invention.”

“We received many submissions concerning the patentability of computer programs,” says the committee in the preamble to the Bill. “Under the Patents Act 1953, computer programs can be patented n New Zealand, provided they produce a commercially useful effect.

“Open source, or free, software has grown in popularity since the 1980s. Protecting software by patenting it is inconsistent with the open source model and its proponents oppose it. A number of submitters argue that there is no ‘inventive step’ in software development, as ‘new’ software inevitably builds on existing software.”

Software can still be protected by copyright and by the terms of its licence.

A requirement for a genuine “inventive step” — a development that would not be obvious to a person skilled in the appropriate field — is a feature of the Patents Bill, which in general imposes tighter requirements than the existing Act before a patent can be obtained.

“[Some submitters] felt that computer software should be excluded from patent protection as software patents can stifle innovation and competition, and can be granted for trivial or existing techniques. In general we accept this position,” the committee says.

It admits that there was some doubt over embedded software, which forms an integral part of a machine. It sought ways of making a distinction between embedded and other software and decided drawing a “clear and definitive” line would be too difficult.

In addition, “we received advice that our recommendation…would be unlikely to prevent the granting of patents for inventions involving embedded software,” the committee says.

NZ Open Source Society president Don Christie applauds the move in his blog Pass the Source.

“New Zealand MPs of all parties are to be congratulated on recognising what to many, for many years, has been patently obvious,” he writes. “There are some members of that committee that paid particular attention to the detail of the debate; there were also lots of submissions made by patent lawyers in favour of patents.

“These MPs weighed up the arguments and came down against software patents. This is ground-breaking and visionary. I congratulate our law makers today.

“To all who took the time and effort to write submissions and who took the unique step of coming to Wellington and backing up those submissions orally…congratulations.”

Reaction to the change among a broader range of developers at a Computer Society meeting in Wellington last night was also positive.

Christie and other supporters acknowledge the battle is not won yet. The Bill now goes back to the full Parliament for its second reading.

It has also been divided into two parts; the sections concerning registration of patent attorneys have been extracted into a separate Bill, which will be delayed, because of the need to co-ordinate these provisions with Australian law.
http://computerworld.co.nz/news.nsf/...-patents-in-nz





Utah Jury Decides Unix Battle in Favor of Novell
Paul Foy

Novell never sold ownership rights to Unix computer software code when it allowed another company to take over the servicing of the venerable server operating system used by large corporations, a jury in Utah decided Tuesday.

The verdict was a setback for The SCO Group of Lindon, Utah, which hoped a victory would lift it out of bankruptcy and strengthen a separate case alleging IBM misappropriated Unix code for improvements that made the open-source Linux operating system run better.

Former Novell executives testified that they intended to sell the copyrights along with the Unix operating system, and SCO Group offered an amendment written a year after the 1995 sale that transferred the rights.

"Obviously, we're disappointed in the jury's decision," said SCO trial lawyer Stuart H. Singer. "We were confident in the case, but there's some important claims remaining to be decided by a judge."

SCO will ask U.S. District Judge Ted Stewart to award the copyrights to SCO "even if we didn't have them before," he said. "It's a setback, but it's not over."

SCO filed a slander-of-title lawsuit in 2004 asserting Waltham, Mass.-based Novell hurt its business and reputation by claiming it sold serving rights, but not copyrights.

"Novell is very pleased with the jury's decision confirming Novell's ownership of the Unix copyrights, which SCO had asserted to own in its attack on Linux," the company said in a statement. "Novell remains committed to promoting Linux, including by defending Linux on the intellectual property front."

An IBM spokeswoman didn't immediately return a call from The Associated Press.
http://www.siliconvalley.com/latest-...es/ci_14787463





The State of the Internet Operating System
Tim O'Reilly

I've been talking for years about "the internet operating system", but I realized I've never written an extended post to define what I think it is, where it is going, and the choices we face. This is that missing post. Here you will see the underlying beliefs about the future that are guiding my publishing program as well as the rationale behind conferences I organize like the Web 2.0 Summit and Web 2.0 Expo, the Where 2.0 Conference, and even the Gov 2.0 Summit and Gov 2.0 Expo.

Ask yourself for a moment, what is the operating system of a Google or Bing search? What is the operating system of a mobile phone call? What is the operating system of maps and directions on your phone? What is the operating system of a tweet?

On a standalone computer, operating systems like Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux manage the machine's resources, making it possible for applications to focus on the job they do for the user. But many of the activities that are most important to us today take place in a mysterious space between individual machines. Most people take for granted that these things just work, and complain when the daily miracle of instantaneous communications and access to information breaks down for even a moment.

But peel back the covers and remember that there is an enormous, worldwide technical infrastructure that is enabling the always-on future that we rush thoughtlessly towards.

When you type a search query into Google, the resources on your local computer - the keyboard where you type your query, the screen that displays the results, the networking hardware and software that connects your computer to the network, the browser that formats and forwards your request to Google's servers - play only a small role. What's more, they don't really matter much to the operation of the search - you can type your search terms into a browser on a Windows, Mac, or Linux machine, or into a smartphone running Symbian, or PalmOS, the Mac OS, Android, Windows Mobile, or some other phone operating system.

The resources that are critical to this operation are mostly somewhere else: in Google's massive server farms, where proprietary Google software farms out your request (one of millions of simultaneous requests) to some subset of Google's servers, where proprietary Google software processes a massive index to return your results in milliseconds.

Then there's the IP routing software on each system between you and Google's data center (you didn't think you were directly connected to Google did you?), the majority of it running on Cisco equipment; the mostly open source Domain Name System, a network of lookup servers that not only allowed your computer to connect to google.com in the first place (rather than typing an IP address like 74.125.19.106), but also steps in to help your computer access whatever system out there across the net holds the web pages you are ultimately looking for; the protocols of the web itself, which allow browsers on client computers running any local operating system (perhaps we'd better call it a bag of device drivers) to connect to servers running any other operating system.

You might argue that Google search is just an application that happens to run on a massive computing cluster, and that at bottom, Linux is still the operating system of that cluster. And that the internet and web stacks are simply a software layer implemented by both your local computer and remote applications like Google.

But wait. It gets more interesting. Now consider doing that Google search on your phone, using Google's voice search capability. You speak into your phone, and Google's speech recognition service translates the sound of your voice into text, and passes that text on to the search engine - or, on an Android phone, to any other application that chooses to listen. Someone familiar with speech recognition on the PC might think that the translation is happening on the phone, but no, once again, it's happening on Google's servers. But wait. There's more. Google improves the accuracy of its speech recognition by comparing what the speech algorithms think you said with what its search system (think "Google suggest") expects you were most likely to say. Then, because your phone knows where you are, Google filters the results to find those most relevant to your location.

Your phone knows where you are. How does it do that? "It's got a GPS receiver," is the facile answer. But if it has a GPS receiver, that means your phone is getting its position information by reaching out to a network of satellites originally put up by the US military. It may also be getting additional information from your mobile carrier that speeds up the GPS location detection. It may instead be using "cell tower triangulation" to measure your distance from the nearest cellular network towers, or even doing a lookup from a database that maps wifi hotspots to GPS coordinates. (These databases have been created by driving every street and noting the location and strength of every Wi-Fi signal.) The iPhone relies on the Skyhook Wireless service to perform these lookups; Google has its own equivalent, doubtless created at the same time as it created the imagery for Google Streetview.

But whichever technique is being used, the application is relying on network-available facilities, not just features of your phone itself. And increasingly, it's hard to claim that all of these intertwined features are simply an application, even when they are provided by a single company, like Google.

Keep following the plot. What mobile app (other than casual games) exists solely on the phone? Virtually every application is a network application, relying on remote services to perform its function.

Where is the "operating system" in all this? Clearly, it is still evolving. Applications use a hodgepodge of services from multiple different providers to get the information they need.

But how different is this from PC application development in the early 1980s, when every application provider wrote their own device drivers to support the hodgepodge of disks, ports, keyboards, and screens that comprised the still emerging personal computer ecosystem? Along came Microsoft with an offer that was difficult to refuse: We'll manage the drivers; all application developers have to do is write software that uses the Win32 APIs, and all of the complexity will be abstracted away.

It was. Few developers write device drivers any more. That is left to device manufacturers, with all the messiness hidden by "operating system vendors" who manage the updates and often provide generic APIs for entire classes of device. Those vendors who took on the pain of managing complexity ended up with a powerful lock-in. They created the context in which applications have worked ever since.

This is the crux of my argument about the internet operating system. We are once again approaching the point at which the Faustian bargain will be made: simply use our facilities, and the complexity will go away. And much as happened during the 1980s, there is more than one company making that promise. We're entering a modern version of "the Great Game", the rivalry to control the narrow passes to the promised future of computing. (John Battelle calls them "points of control".) This rivalry is seen most acutely in mobile applications that rely on internet services as back-ends. As Nick Bilton of the New York Times described it in a recent article comparing the Google Nexus One and the iPhone:

Chad Dickerson, chief technology officer of Etsy, received a pre-launch Nexus One from Google three weeks ago. He says Google's phone feels connected to certain services on the Web in a way the iPhone doesn't. "Compared to the iPhone, the Google phone feels like it's part of the Internet to me," he said. "If you live in a Google world, you have that world in your pocket in a way that's cleaner and more connected than the iPhone."

The same thing applies to the iPhone. If you're a MobileMe, iPhoto, iTunes or Safari user, the iPhone connects effortlessly to your pictures, contacts, bookmarks and music. But if you use other services, you sometimes need to find software workarounds to get access to your content.

In comparison, with the Nexus One, if you use GMail, Google Calendar or Picasa, Google's online photo storage software, the phone connects effortlessly to these services and automatically syncs with a single log-in on the phone.

The phones work perfectly with their respective software, but both of them don't make an effort to play nice with other services.

Never mind the technical details of whether the Internet really has an operating system or not. It's clear that in mobile, we're being presented with a choice of platforms that goes far beyond the operating system on the handheld device itself.

With that preamble, let's take a look at the state of the Internet Operating System - or rather, competing Internet Operating Systems - as they exist today.

The Internet Operating System is an Information Operating System
Among many other functions, a traditional operating system coordinates access by applications to the underlying resources of the machine - things like the CPU, memory, disk storage, keyboard and screen. The operating system kernel schedules processes, allocates memory, manages interrupts from devices, handles exceptions, and generally makes it possible for multiple applications to share the same hardware.

Web 2.0 Expo San FranciscoAs a result, it's easy to jump to the conclusion that "cloud computing" platforms like Amazon Web Services, Google App Engine, or Microsoft Azure, which provide developers with access to storage and computation, are the heart of the emerging Internet Operating System.

Cloud infrastructure services are indeed important, but to focus on them is to make the same mistake as Lotus did when it bet on DOS remaining the operating system standard rather than the new GUI-based interfaces. After all, Graphical User Interfaces weren't part of the "real" operating system, but just another application-level construct. But even though for years, Windows was just a thin shell over DOS, Microsoft understood that moving developers to higher levels of abstraction was the key to making applications easier to use.

But what are these higher levels of abstraction? Are they just features that hide the details of virtual machines in the cloud, insulating the developer from managing scaling or hiding details of 1990s-era operating system instances in cloud virtual machines?

The underlying services accessed by applications today are not just device components and operating system features, but data subsystems: locations, social networks, indexes of web sites, speech recognition, image recognition, automated translation. It's easy to think that it's the sensors in your device - the touch screen, the microphone, the GPS, the magnetometer, the accelerometer - that are enabling their cool new functionality. But really, these sensors are just inputs to massive data subsystems living in the cloud.

When, for example, as an iPhone developer, you use the iPhone's Core Location Framework to establish the phone's location, you aren't just querying the sensor, you're doing a cloud data lookup against the results, transforming GPS coordinates into street addresses, or perhaps transforming WiFi signal strength into GPS coordinates, and then into street addresses. When the Amazon app or Google Goggles scans a barcode, or the cover of a book, it isn't just using the camera with onboard image processing, it's passing the image to much more powerful image processing in the cloud, and then doing a database lookup on the results.

Increasingly, application developers don't do low-level image recognition, speech recognition, location lookup, social network management and friend connect. They place high level function calls to data-rich platforms that provide these services.

With that in mind, let's consider what new subsystems a "modern" Internet Operating System might contain:

Search
Because the volume of data to be managed is so large, because it is constantly changing, and because it is distributed across millions of networked systems, search proved to be the first great challenge of the Internet OS era. Cracking the search problem requires massive, ongoing crawling of the network, the construction of massive indexes, and complex algorithmic retrieval schemes to find the most appropriate results for a user query. Because of the complexity, only a few vendors have succeeded with web search, most notably Google and Microsoft. Yahoo! and Amazon too built substantial web search capabilities, but have largely left the field to the two market leaders.

However, not all search is as complex as web search. For example, an e-commerce site like Amazon doesn't need to constantly crawl other sites to discover their products; it has a more constrained retrieval problem of finding only web pages that it manages itself. Nonetheless, search is fractal, and search infrastructure is replicated again and again at many levels across the internet. This suggests that there are future opportunities in harnessing distributed, specialized search engines to do more complete crawls than can be done by any single centralized player. For example, Amazon harnesses data visible only to them, such as the rate of sales, as well as data they publish, such as the number and value of customer reviews, in ranking the most popular products.

In addition to web search, there are many specialized types of media search. For example, any time you put a music CD into an internet-connected drive, it immediately looks up the track names in CDDB using a kind of fingerprint produced by the length and sequence of each of the tracks on the CD. Other types of music search, like the one used by cell phone applications like Shazam, look up songs by matching their actual acoustic fingerprint. Meanwhile, Pandora's "music genome project" finds similar songs via a complex of hundreds of different factors as analyzed by professional musicians.

Many of the search techniques developed for web pages rely on the rich implied semantics of linking, in which every link is a vote, and votes from authoritative sources are ranked more highly than others. This is a kind of implicit user-contributed metadata that is not present when searching other types of content, such as digitized books. There, search remains in the same brute-force dark ages as web search before Google. We can expect significant breakthroughs in search techniques for books, video, images, and sound to be a feature of the future evolution of the Internet OS.

The techniques of algorithmic search are an essential part of the developer's toolkit today. The O'Reilly book Programming Collective Intelligence reviews many of the algorithms and techniques. But there's no question that this kind of low-level programming is ripe for a higher-level solution, in which developers just place a call to a search service, and return the results. Thus, search moves from application to system call.

Media Access
Just as a PC-era operating system has the capability to manage user-level constructs like files and directories as well as lower-level constructs like physical disk volumes and blocks, an Internet-era operating system must provide access to various types of media, such as web pages, music, videos, photos, e-books, office documents, presentations, downloadable applications, and more. Each of these media types requires some common technology infrastructure beyond specialized search:

* Access Control. Since not all information is freely available, managing access control - providing snippets rather than full sources, providing streaming but not downloads, recognizing authorized users and giving them a different result from unauthorized users - is a crucial feature of the Internet OS. (Like it or not.)

The recent moves by News Corp to place their newspapers behind a paywall, as well as the paid application and content marketplace of the iPhone and iPad suggests that the ability to manage access to content is going to be more important, rather than less, in the years ahead. We're largely past the knee-jerk "keep it off the net" reactions of old school DRM; companies are going to be exploring more nuanced ways to control access to content, and the platform provider that has the most robust systems (and consumer expectations) for paid content is going to be in a very strong position.

In the world of the App Store, paid applications and paid content are re-legitimizing access control (and payment.) Don't assume that advertising will continue to be the only significant way to monetize internet content in the years ahead.

* Caching. Large media files benefit from being closer to their destination. A whole class of companies exist to provide Content Delivery Networks; these may survive as independent companies, or these services may ultimately be rolled up into the leading Internet OS companies in much the way that Microsoft acquired or "embraced and extended" various technologies on the way to making Windows the dominant OS of the PC era.

* Instrumentation and analyticsBecause of the amount of money at stake, an entire industry has grown up around web analytics and search engine optimization. We can expect a similar wave of companies instrumenting social media and mobile applications, as well as particular media types. After all, a video, a game, or an ebook can know how long you watch, when you abandon the product and where you go next.

Expect these features to be pushed first by independent companies, like TweetStats or Peoplebrowsr Analytics for Twitter, or Flurry for mobile apps. GoodData, a cloud-based business intelligence platform is being used for analytics on everything from Salesforce applications to online games. (Disclosure: I am an investor and on the board of GoodData.) But eventually, via acquisition or imitation, they will become part of the major platforms.

Communications
The internet is a communications network, and it's easy to forget that communications technologies like email and chat, have long been central to the Internet's appeal. Now, with the widespread availability of VoIP, and with the mobile phone joining the "network of networks," voice and video communications are an increasingly important part of the communications subsystem.

Communications providers from the Internet world are now on a collision course with communications providers from the telephony world. For now, there are uneasy alliances right and left. But it isn't going to be pretty once the battle for control comes out into the open.

I expect the communications directory service to be one of the key battlefronts. Who will manage the lookup service that allows individuals and businesses to find and connect to each other? The phone and email address books will eventually merge with the data from social networks to provide a rich set of identity infrastructure services.

Identity and the Social Graph
When you use Facebook Connect to log into another application, and suddenly your friends' faces are listed in the new application, that application is using Facebook as a "subsystem" of the new Internet OS. On Android phones, simply add the Facebook application, and your phone address book shows the photos of your Facebook friends. Facebook is expanding the range of data revealed by Facebook Connect; they clearly understand the potential of Facebook as a platform for more than hosted applications.

But as hinted at above, there are other rich sources of social data - and I'm not just talking about applications like Twitter that include explicit social graphs. Every communications provider owns a treasure trove of social data. Microsoft has piles of social data locked up in Exchange, Outlook, Hotmail, Active Directory, and Sharepoint. Google has social data not just from Orkut (an also-ran in the US) but from Gmail and Google Docs, whose "sharing" is another name for "meaningful source of workgroup-level social graph data." And of course, now, there's the social graph data produced by the address book on every Android phone...

The breakthroughs that we need to look forward to may not come from explicitly social applications. In fact, I see "me too" social networking applications from those who have other sources of identity data as a sign that they don't really understand the platform opportunity. Building a social network to rival Facebook or Twitter is far less important to the future of the Internet platform than creating facilities that will allow third-party developers to leverage the social data that companies like Google, Microsoft, Yahoo!, AOL - and phone companies like ATT, Verizon and T-Mobile - have produced through years or even decades of managing user's social data for communications.

Of course, use of this data will require breakthroughs in privacy mechanism and policy. As Nat Torkington wrote in email after reviewing an earlier draft of this post:

We still face the problem of "friend": my Docs social graph is different from my email social graph is different from my Facebook social graph is different from my address book. I want to be able to complain about work to my friends without my coworkers seeing it, and the usability-vs-privacy problem remains unsolved.

Whoever cracks this code, providing frameworks that make it possible for applications to be functionally social without being socially promiscuous, will win. Platform providers are in a good position to solve this problem once, so that users don't have to give credentials to a larger and larger pool of application providers, with little assurance that the data they provide won't be misused.

Payment
Payment is another key subsystem of the Internet Operating System. Companies like Apple that have 150 million credit cards on file and a huge population of users accustomed to using their phones to buy songs, videos, applications, and now ebooks, are going to be in a prime position to turn today's phone into tomorrow's wallet. (And as anyone who reaches into a wallet not for payment but for ID knows, payment systems are also powerful, authenticated identity stores - a fact that won't always be lost on payment providers looking for their lock on a piece of the Internet future.)

PayPal obviously plays an important role as an internet payment subsystem that's already in wide use by developers. It operates in 190 countries, in 19 different currencies (not counting in-game micro-currencies) and it has over 185 million accounts. What's fascinating is the rich developer ecosystem they've built around payment - their recent developer conference had over 2000 attendees. Their challenge is to make the transition from the web to mobile.

Google Checkout has been a distant also-ran in web payments, but the Android Market has given it new prominence in mobile, and will eventually make it a first class internet payment subsystem.

Amazon too has a credible payment offering, though until recently they haven't deployed it to full effect, reserving the best features for their own e-commerce site and not making them available to developers. (More on that in next week's post, in which I will handicap the leading platform offerings from major internet vendors.)

Advertising
Advertising has been the most successful business model on the web. While there are signs that e-commerce - buying everything from virtual goods to a lunchtime burrito - may be the bigger opportunity in mobile (and perhaps even in social media), there's no question that advertising will play a significant role.

Google's dominance of search advertising has involved better algorithmic placement, as well as the ability to predict, in real time, how often an ad will be clicked on, allowing them to optimize the advertising yield. The Google Ad Auction system is the heart of their economic value proposition, and demonstrates just how much difference a technical edge can make.

And advertising has always been a platform play. Signs that it will be a key battleground of the Internet OS can be seen in the competing acquisition of AdMob by Google and Quattro Wireless by Apple.

The question is the extent to which platform companies will use their advertising capabilities as a system service. Will they treat these assets as the source of competitive advantage for their own products, or will they find ways to deploy advertising as a business model for developers on their platform?

Location
Location is the sine-qua-non of mobile apps. When your phone knows where you are, it can find your friends, find services nearby, and even better authenticate a transaction.

Maps and directions on the phone are intrinsically cloud services - unlike with dedicated GPS devices, there's not enough local storage to keep all the relevant maps on hand. But when turned into a cloud application, maps and directions can include other data, such as real-time traffic (indeed, traffic data collected from the very applications that are requesting traffic updates - a classic example of "collective intelligence" at work.)

Location is also the search key for countless database lookup services, from Google's "search along route" to a Yelp search for nearby cafes to the Chipotle app routing your lunch request to the restaurant near you.

O'Reilly Where 2010 ConferenceIn many ways, Location is the Internet data subsystem that is furthest along in its development as a system service accessible to all applications, with developers showing enormous creativity in using it in areas from augmented reality to advertising. (Understanding that this would be the case, I launched the Where 2.0 Conference in 2005. There are lessons to be learned in the location market for all Internet entrepreneurs, not just "geo" geeks, as techniques developed here will soon be applied in many other areas.)

Activity Streams
Location is also becoming a proxy for something else: attention. The originally designed for finding spots where people are congregating, quickly became a focus for advertising, as merchants were able to discover and reward their most frequent customers. Now the idea of the check-in being "embraced and extended" to show attention to virtual locations. As John Battelle put it the other day, "My location is a box of cereal." (Disclosure: O'Reilly AlphaTech Ventures is an investor in Foursquare.)

We thus see convergence between Location and social media concepts like Activity Streams. Platform providers that understand and exploit this intersection will be in a stronger position than those who see location only in traditional terms.

Time
Time is an important dimension of data driven services - at least as important as location, though as yet less fully exploited. Calendars are one obvious application, but activity streams are also organized as timelines; stock charts link up news stories with spikes or drops in price. Time stamps can also be used as a filter for other data types (as Google measures frequency of update in calculating search results, or as an RSS feed or social activity stream organizes posts by recency.)

"Real time" - as in the real-time search provided by Twitter, the "where am I now" pointer on a map, the automated replenishment of inventory at WalMart, or instant political polling - emphasizes just how much the future will belong to those who measure response time in milliseconds, or even microseconds, rather than seconds, hours, or days. This need for speed is going to be a major driver of platform services; individual applications will have difficulty keeping up.

Image and Speech Recognition
As I've written previously, one of the big differences since I first wrote What is Web 2.0?, my analysis of how the Web as Platform was going to be dominated by data services built by network effects in user-contributed data, is that increasingly, the data is contributed by sensors. (John Battelle and I called this trend Web Squared).

With the advent of smartphone apps like Google Goggles and the Amazon e-commerce app, which deploy advanced image recognition to scan bar codes, book covers, album covers and more - not to mention gaming platforms like Microsoft's still unreleased Project Natal and innovative startups like Affective Interfaces, it's clear that computer vision is going to be an important part of the UI toolkit for future developers. While there are good computer vision packages like OpenCV that can be deployed locally for robotics applications, as well as research projects like those competing in the DARPA Grand Challenge for automated vehicles, for smartphone applications, image recognition, like speech recognition, happens in the cloud. Not only is there a wealth of compute cycles, there are also vast databases of images for matching purposes. Picasa and Flickr are no longer just consumer image sharing sites: they are vast repositories of tagged image data that can be used to train algorithms and filter results.

Government Data
Gov 2.0 Expo 2010 Long before recent initiatives like data.gov, governments have been a key supplier of data for internet applications. Everything from weather, maps, satellite imagery, GPS positioning, and SEC filings to crime reports have played an important role in successful internet applications. Now, government is also a recipient of crowdsourced data from citizens. For example, FixMyStreet and SeeClickFix submit 311 reports to local governments - potholes that need filling, graffiti that needs repainting, streetlights that are out. These applications have typically overloaded existing communications channels like email and SMS, but there are now attempts to standardize an Open311 web services protocol.

Now, a new flood of government data is being released, and the government is starting to see itself as a platform provider, providing facilities for private sector third parties to build applications. This idea of Government as a Platform is a key focus of my advocacy about Government 2.0.

There is huge opportunity to apply the lessons of Web 2.0 and apply them to government data. Take health care as an example. How might we improve our healthcare system if Medicare provided a feedback loop about costs and outcomes analogous to the one that Google built for search keyword advertising.

Anyone building internet data applications would be foolish to underestimate the role that government is going to play in this unfolding story, both as provider and consumer of data web services, and also as regulator in key areas like privacy, access, and interstate commerce.

What About the Browser?
While I think that claims that the browser itself is the new operating system are as misguided as the idea that it can be found solely in cloud infrastructure services, it is important to recognize that control over front end interfaces is at least as important as back-end services. Companies like Apple and Google that have substantial cloud services and a credible mobile platform play are in the catbird seat in the platform wars of the next decade. But the browser, and with it control of the PC user experience, is also critical.

This is why Apple's iPad, Google's ChromeOS, and HTML 5 (plus initiatives like Google's Native Client) are so important. Microsoft isn't far wrong in its cloud computing vision of "Software Plus Services." The full operating system stack includes back end infrastructure, the data subsystems highlighted in this article, and rich front-ends.

Apple and Microsoft largely have visions of vertically integrated systems; Google's vision seems to be for open source driving front end interfaces, while back end services are owned by Google. But in each case, there's a major drive to own a front-end experience that favors each company's back-end systems.

What's Still Missing
Even the most advanced Internet Operating System platforms are still missing many concepts that are familiar to those who work with traditional single-computer operating systems. Where is the executive? Where is the memory management?

I believe that these functions are evolving at each of the cloud platforms. Tools like memcache or mapreduce are the rough cloud equivalents of virtual memory or multiprocessing features in a traditional operating system. But they are only the beginning. Werner Vogels' post Eventually Consistent highlights some of the hard technical issues that will need to be solved for an internet-scale operating system. There are many more.

But it's also clear that there are many opportunities to build higher level functionality that will be required for a true Internet Operating System.

Might an operating system of the future manage when and how data is collected about individuals, what applications can access it, and how they might use it? Might it not automatically synchronize data between devices and applications? Might it do automatic translation, and automatic format conversion between different media types? Might such an operating system do predictive analytics to collect or locally cache data that it expects an individual user or device to need? Might such an operating system do "garbage collection" not of memory pointers but of outdated data or spam? Might it not perform credit checks before issuing payments and suspend activity for those who violate terms of service?

There is a great opportunity for developers with vision to build forward-looking platforms that aim squarely at our connected future, that provide applications running on any device with access to rich new sources of intelligence and capability. The possibilities are endless. There will be many failed experiments, many successes that will be widely copied, a lot of mergers and acquisitions, and fierce competition between companies with different strengths and weaknesses.

Next week, I'll handicap the leading players and tell you what I think of their respective strategies.
http://radar.oreilly.com/2010/03/sta...ng-system.html





The Smog

Coal Fuels Much of Internet "Cloud," Greenpeace Says
Peter Henderson

The 'cloud' of data that is becoming the heart of the Internet is creating an all-too-real cloud of pollution as Facebook, Apple and others build data centers powered by coal, Greenpeace said in a new report to be released on Tuesday.

A Facebook facility being built in Oregon will rely on a utility whose main fuel is coal, while Apple Inc is building a data warehouse in a North Carolina region that relies mostly on coal, the environmental organization said in the study.

"The last thing we need is for more cloud infrastructure to be built in places where it increases demand for dirty coal-fired power," said Greenpeace, which argues that Web companies should be more careful about where they build and should lobby more in Washington for clean energy.

The growing mass of business data, home movies and pictures has ballooned beyond the capabilities of many corporate data centers and personal computers, spurring the creation of massive server farms that make up a "cloud," an emerging phenomenon known as cloud computing.

The Greenpeace report comes during a global debate whether to create caps or other measures to cut use of carbon-heavy fuels like coal and curb climate change.

Cheap and plentiful, coal is the top fuel for U.S. power plants, and its low cost versus alternative fuels makes it attractive, even in highly energy-efficient data centers.

Apple, Facebook, Microsoft Corp, Yahoo Inc and Google Inc have at least some centers that rely heavily on coal power, said Greenpeace.

Pursuing Energy Efficiency

Most of the companies declined to give details of their data centers to Reuters. All said, however, they considered the environment in business decisions, and most said they were aggressively pursuing energy efficiency.

High technology companies say they support the environment. Apple has released its carbon footprint, or how much greenhouse gases it produces, and Facebook said it chose the location for its center to use natural means to cool its machines.

Microsoft said it aimed to maximize efficiency, and Google said it purchased carbon offsets -- funding for projects which suck up carbon -- for emissions, including at data centers.

Yahoo, which is building a center near Buffalo, New York, that Greenpeace saw as a model, will get energy from hydroelectric facilities. The company said energy-efficiency was the top goal, with a building design that promotes air circulation.

Data center energy use already is huge, Greenpeace said.

If considered as a country, global telecommunications and data centers behind cloud computing would have ranked fifth in the world for energy use in 2007, behind the United States, China, Russia and Japan, it concluded.

The cloud may be the fastest-growing facet of technology infrastructure between now and 2020, said Greenpeace.

The group based its findings on a mix of data, including a federal review of fuels in U.S. zip codes in 2005 and a 2008 study by the Climate Group and the Global e-Sustainability Initiative, which Greenpeace updated in part with U.S. Environmental Protection Agency data.

(Editing by Philip Barbara)
http://www.reuters.com/article/idUST...technologyNews





Why I Won't Buy an iPad (and Think You Shouldn't, Either)
Cory Doctorow

I've spent ten years now on Boing Boing, finding cool things that people have done and made and writing about them. Most of the really exciting stuff hasn't come from big corporations with enormous budgets, it's come from experimentalist amateurs. These people were able to make stuff and put it in the public's eye and even sell it without having to submit to the whims of a single company that had declared itself gatekeeper for your phone and other personal technology.

Danny O'Brien does a very good job of explaining why I'm completely uninterested in buying an iPad -- it really feels like the second coming of the CD-ROM "revolution" in which "content" people proclaimed that they were going to remake media by producing expensive (to make and to buy) products. I was a CD-ROM programmer at the start of my tech career, and I felt that excitement, too, and lived through it to see how wrong I was, how open platforms and experimental amateurs would eventually beat out the spendy, slick pros.

I remember the early days of the web -- and the last days of CD ROM -- when there was this mainstream consensus that the web and PCs were too durned geeky and difficult and unpredictable for "my mom" (it's amazing how many tech people have an incredibly low opinion of their mothers). If I had a share of AOL for every time someone told me that the web would die because AOL was so easy and the web was full of garbage, I'd have a lot of AOL shares.

And they wouldn't be worth much.

Incumbents made bad revolutionaries
Relying on incumbents to produce your revolutions is not a good strategy. They're apt to take all the stuff that makes their products great and try to use technology to charge you extra for it, or prohibit it altogether.

I mean, look at that Marvel app (just look at it). I was a comic-book kid, and I'm a comic-book grownup, and the thing that made comics for me was sharing them. If there was ever a medium that relied on kids swapping their purchases around to build an audience, it was comics. And the used market for comics! It was -- and is -- huge, and vital. I can't even count how many times I've gone spelunking in the used comic-bins at a great and musty store to find back issues that I'd missed, or sample new titles on the cheap. (It's part of a multigenerational tradition in my family -- my mom's father used to take her and her sibs down to Dragon Lady Comics on Queen Street in Toronto every weekend to swap their old comics for credit and get new ones).

So what does Marvel do to "enhance" its comics? They take away the right to give, sell or loan your comics. What an improvement. Way to take the joyous, marvellous sharing and bonding experience of comic reading and turn it into a passive, lonely undertaking that isolates, rather than unites. Nice one, Misney.

Infantalizing hardware
Then there's the device itself: clearly there's a lot of thoughtfulness and smarts that went into the design. But there's also a palpable contempt for the owner. I believe -- really believe -- in the stirring words of the Maker Manifesto: if you can't open it, you don't own it. Screws not glue. The original Apple ][+ came with schematics for the circuit boards, and birthed a generation of hardware and software hackers who upended the world for the better. If you wanted your kid to grow up to be a confident, entrepreneurial, and firmly in the camp that believes that you should forever be rearranging the world to make it better, you bought her an Apple ][+.

But with the iPad, it seems like Apple's model customer is that same stupid stereotype of a technophobic, timid, scatterbrained mother as appears in a billion renditions of "that's too complicated for my mom" (listen to the pundits extol the virtues of the iPad and time how long it takes for them to explain that here, finally, is something that isn't too complicated for their poor old mothers).

The model of interaction with the iPad is to be a "consumer," what William Gibson memorably described as "something the size of a baby hippo, the color of a week-old boiled potato, that lives by itself, in the dark, in a double-wide on the outskirts of Topeka. It's covered with eyes and it sweats constantly. The sweat runs into those eyes and makes them sting. It has no mouth... no genitals, and can only express its mute extremes of murderous rage and infantile desire by changing the channels on a universal remote."

The way you improve your iPad isn't to figure out how it works and making it better. The way you improve the iPad is to buy iApps. Buying an iPad for your kids isn't a means of jump-starting the realization that the world is yours to take apart and reassemble; it's a way of telling your offspring that even changing the batteries is something you have to leave to the professionals.

Dale Dougherty's piece on Hypercard and its influence on a generation of young hackers is a must-read on this. I got my start as a Hypercard programmer, and it was Hypercard's gentle and intuitive introduction to the idea of remaking the world that made me consider a career in computers.

Wal-Martization of the software channel
And let's look at the iStore. For a company whose CEO professes a hatred of DRM, Apple sure has made DRM its alpha and omega. Having gotten into business with the two industries that most believe that you shouldn't be able to modify your hardware, load your own software on it, write software for it, override instructions given to it by the mothership (the entertainment industry and the phone companies), Apple has defined its business around these principles. It uses DRM to control what can run on your devices, which means that Apple's customers can't take their "iContent" with them to competing devices, and Apple developers can't sell on their own terms.

The iStore lock-in doesn't make life better for Apple's customers or Apple's developers. As an adult, I want to be able to choose whose stuff I buy and whom I trust to evaluate that stuff. I don't want my universe of apps constrained to the stuff that the Cupertino Politburo decides to allow for its platform. And as a copyright holder and creator, I don't want a single, Wal-Mart-like channel that controls access to my audience and dictates what is and is not acceptable material for me to create. The last time I posted about this, we got a string of apologies for Apple's abusive contractual terms for developers, but the best one was, "Did you think that access to a platform where you can make a fortune would come without strings attached?" I read it in Don Corleone's voice and it sounded just right. Of course I believe in a market where competition can take place without bending my knee to a company that has erected a drawbridge between me and my customers!

Journalism is looking for a daddy figure
I think that the press has been all over the iPad because Apple puts on a good show, and because everyone in journalism-land is looking for a daddy figure who'll promise them that their audience will go back to paying for their stuff. The reason people have stopped paying for a lot of "content" isn't just that they can get it for free, though: it's that they can get lots of competing stuff for free, too. The open platform has allowed for an explosion of new material, some of it rough-hewn, some of it slick as the pros, most of it targetted more narrowly than the old media ever managed. Rupert Murdoch can rattle his saber all he likes about taking his content out of Google, but I say do it, Rupert. We'll miss your fraction of a fraction of a fraction of a percent of the Web so little that we'll hardly notice it, and we'll have no trouble finding material to fill the void.

Just like the gadget press is full of devices that gadget bloggers need (and that no one else cares about), the mainstream press is full of stories that affirm the internal media consensus. Yesterday's empires do something sacred and vital and most of all grown up, and that other adults will eventually come along to move us all away from the kids' playground that is the wild web, with its amateur content and lack of proprietary channels where exclusive deals can be made. We'll move back into the walled gardens that best return shareholder value to the investors who haven't updated their portfolios since before eTrade came online.

But the real economics of iPad publishing tell a different story: even a stellar iPad sales performance isn't going to do much to staunch the bleeding from traditional publishing. Wishful thinking and a nostalgia for the good old days of lockdown won't bring customers back through the door.

Gadgets come and gadgets go
Gadgets come and gadgets go. The iPad you buy today will be e-waste in a year or two (less, if you decide not to pay to have the battery changed for you). The real issue isn't the capabilities of the piece of plastic you unwrap today, but the technical and social infrastructure that accompanies it.

If you want to live in the creative universe where anyone with a cool idea can make it and give it to you to run on your hardware, the iPad isn't for you.

If you want to live in the fair world where you get to keep (or give away) the stuff you buy, the iPad isn't for you.

If you want to write code for a platform where the only thing that determines whether you're going to succeed with it is whether your audience loves it, the iPad isn't for you.
http://www.boingboing.net/2010/04/02...nt-either.html

















Until next week,

- js.



















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