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Old 21-03-07, 09:40 AM   #1
JackSpratts
 
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Default Peer-To-Peer News - The Week In Review - March 24th, '07


































"Packet examinations are noninvasive and infallible. There are no false positives." – Safwat Fahmy


"I would say the hammer's coming. I want to see universities get serious about it." – Rep. Ric Keller (R-Orlando)


"We're spending taxpayer dollars tracking down RIAA problems. Are we an agent of the RIAA? Why aren't they paying us for this?" – Walter Weir


"There's nothing we can do." – Zac Reimer


"Weekly Blu-ray film sales are actually three times higher than HD DVD." – 20th Century Fox, via news wire


"We Just Got Xvid Working on the Apple TV." – Akward


"I actually believe that allowing open file sharing to take place will indeed increase sales." – John C. Dvorak


"The message is clear. The internet cares deeply about being able to download music illegally." – The Consumerist


"Perhaps we do the minors of this country harm if First Amendment protections, which they will with age inherit fully, are chipped away in the name of their protection." – Senior U.S. District Judge Lowell Reed Jr.


"Holy moly, look at this! To get drugs we can eliminate free speech in schools?" – Robert A. Destro





































March 24th, 2007






Copyflop

DMCA Architect Acknowledges Need For A New Approach

McGill University hosted an interesting conference today on music and copyright reform. The conference consisted of two panels plus an afternoon of open dialogue and featured an interesting collection of speakers including Bruce Lehman, the architect of the WIPO Internet Treaties and the DMCA, Ann Chaitovitz of the USPTO, Terry Fisher of Harvard Law School, NDP Heritage critic Charlie Angus, famed music producer Sandy Pearlman, and myself. A video of the event has been posted in Windows format.

My participation focused on making the case against anti-circumvention legislation in Canada (it starts at about 54:30). I emphasized the dramatic difference between the Internet of 1997 and today, the harmful effects of the DMCA, the growing movement away from DRM, and the fact that the Canadian market has supported a range of online music services with faster digital music sales growth than either the U.S. or Europe but without anti-circumvention legislation.

The most interesting - and surprising - presentation came from Bruce Lehman, who now heads the International Intellectual Property Institute. Lehman explained the U.S. perspective in the early 1990s that led to the DMCA (ie. greater control though TPMs), yet when reflecting on the success of the DMCA acknowledged that "our Clinton administration policies didn't work out very well" and "our attempts at copyright control have not been successful" (presentation starts around 11:00). Moreover, Lehman says that we are entering the "post-copyright" era for music, suggesting that a new form of patronage will emerge with support coming from industries that require music (webcasters, satellite radio) and government funding. While he says that teens have lost respect for copyright, he lays much of the blame at the feet of the recording industry for their failure to adapt to the online marketplace in the mid-1990s.

In a later afternoon discussion, Lehman went further, urging Canada to think outside the box on future copyright reform. While emphasizing the need to adhere to international copyright law (ie. Berne), he suggested that Canada was well placed to experiment with new approaches. He was not impressed with Bill C-60, seemingly because he does not believe that it went far enough in reshaping digital copyright issues. Given ongoing pressure from the U.S., I'm skeptical about Canada's ability to chart a new course on copyright, yet if the architect of the DMCA is willing to admit that change is needed, then surely our elected officials should take notice.
http://www.michaelgeist.ca/content/view/1826/125/





Broadcasters Challenge Streaming Rules
Seth Sutel

A wide array of broadcasters and online companies on Monday challenged a ruling from a panel of copyright judges that they say could cripple the emerging business of offering music broadcasts over the Internet.

Clear Channel Communications Inc., National Public Radio, and groups representing both large and small companies providing music broadcasts online were among those asking the Copyright Royalty Board to reconsider key parts of its March 2 ruling.

That ruling, the challenging parties say, would greatly increase the amount of royalties that online music broadcasters would have to pay to record labels and performers as well as put unreasonable demands on them to track how many songs were listened to by exactly how many individuals online.

The royalties in question only apply to digital transmissions of music, such as through Web sites, and are paid to the performers of songs and record labels. Webcasters also pay additional royalties to the composers and publishers of music, similar to those also paid by over-the-air broadcasters.

Digital performance rights were originally granted to record companies in 1995, in part with the intention of protecting them against the possibility that digital transmissions could erode the sales of CDs.

Under a previous arrangement, which expired at the end of 2005, broadcasters and online companies such as Yahoo Inc. and Time Warner Inc.'s AOL unit could pay royalties based on estimates of how many songs were played over a given period of time, or a "tuning hour," as opposed to counting every single song.

Jonathan Potter, the executive director of the Digital Media Association, which represents major online companies affected by the decision, asked that the judges specifically allow a per-tuning-hour approximation measure for paying the royalties.

Potter also asked the judges to clarify a $500 annual fee per broadcasting channel, saying that with some online companies offering many thousands of listening options, counting each one as a separate channel could lead to huge fees for online broadcasters.

NPR argued in its filing Monday that the new rules would have "crippling effects" on public radio's ability to meet its mandate of serving the public interest, and it also objected to the $500 per-channel minimum fee.

A group of commercial broadcasters including San Antonio, Texas-based Clear Channel, the largest radio company in the country, also asked for a reconsideration of key parts of the ruling, saying that the methods used to calculate the fees were faulty.

The motions filed Monday covered relatively technical aspects of the ruling and mark the first of what is likely to be other legal challenges to the decision.

NPR said in its filing that it also intended, in due course, to appeal the overall decision by the copyright judges to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit in Washington.

A previous agreement covering small commercial webcasters, which also expired at the end of 2005, allowed those companies to pay a flat rate of 12 percent of annual revenues in lieu of calculating the total number of listener-hours as larger broadcasters and Web companies were required to.

The ruling makes no such provision, something that those companies are asking the judges to reconsider.

SoundExchange, an entity that collects royalties from digital music broadcasters and distributes them to rights holders, has said the ruling was fair and that the rapid growth in advertising revenues from online music broadcasting would more than allow webcasters to cover the new fees.

SoundExchange pointed to research finding that those ad revenues grew from $50 million in 2003 to $500 million last year.
http://www.forbes.com/feeds/ap/2007/...ap3531170.html





A Fee Per Song Can Ruin Us, Internet Radio Companies Say
Robert Levine

New-media companies and record labels are feuding again. But this time, it is the digital companies that warn they may be driven out of business.

Several Internet radio companies are arguing that a recent decision by the Copyright Royalty Board, a three-member panel under the Library of Congress, would make it almost impossible for them to stay afloat.

Under the ruling released on March 2, Web broadcasters must pay each time a listener hears a song, at a rate that began at 0.08 cent in 2006 (the ruling applies retroactively) and rises to 0.19 cent in 2010. Besides increasing the charge for each song, the ruling established a $500 minimum payment for each Web channel — making it difficult for companies like RealNetworks and Pandora to offer as many different kinds of music as they do now.

“We would have to provide less choice and less diverse programming,” said Robert Kimball, senior vice president for business and legal affairs at RealNetworks.

In the last few years, as broadband Internet connections became more popular, online radio offerings have proliferated. On Wednesday, Mr. Kimball testified to the House Commerce subcommittee on telecommunications and the Internet that online radio played a greater variety of music, but that it was unfairly limited by restrictions that did not apply to conventional radio stations.

As the recording industry sees the matter, though, Web-based broadcasters are simply building a business with their content, which they deserve to be compensated for.

“They said the same thing in 2002,” the last time such fees were set, said John L. Simson, executive director of SoundExchange, the group that collects royalties from online radio and distributes them to labels and artists. “Not only did it not drive them out of business, we saw more people come online.”

Companies that operate Internet radio channels are expected to ask the Copyright Royalty Board to reconsider the case.

Internet radio royalties have become a thorny issue in part because conventional stations do not pay to use recordings. Both online and regular stations pay royalties to songwriters. But under a 1995 law, companies that transmit music using the Internet, cable or satellite must compensate both. The money is split between the owner of the recording, usually the label, and the performers.

Until the end of 2005, Internet stations could pay royalties based on either the number of songs they played or the number of hours listeners tuned in, and small companies had the option of giving SoundExchange about 12 percent of their revenue.

For some Internet radio operations, the new royalty obligations would exceed annual revenue. Kurt Hanson, who publishes a newsletter and runs AccuRadio, a site with 320 channels, said he took in $400,000 in 2006, almost all of it from advertising. He estimated that under the new payment structure, he would have owed $600,000 for the year.

The $500 minimum for each channel is among the ruling’s more difficult aspects. Many Web radio sites offer thousands of channels, a strategy that would be impossible with this rate structure. AccuRadio, for example, offers one channel that consists entirely of classical oboe music.

“Among oboe players, it’s very popular,” Mr. Hanson remarked.

There is a question whether that minimum fee would be applied to each channel on sites like Pandora, which offers users personalized music streams. “But no one has a viable business at the new rate, regardless of what happens to the $500 fee,” Pandora’s chief executive, Joe Kennedy, said.

Many involved in Internet radio contend that the Copyright Royalty Board members do not understand the technology. At one point in the proceedings, according to the transcript, one member asked if the term “albums” could refer to CDs as well as vinyl records.

Internet radio operators also say it would not be in the interest of labels to stifle a business that is paying them fees to use their music, especially at a time of declining CD sales.

“That’s counterproductive to the copyright holders,” said Terry McBride, chief executive of the Nettwerk Music Group, a label and artist-management company, adding that the ruling could be bad for performers whose music would not be played on conventional radio.

The decision comes as sites like Pandora are only beginning to explore the possibilities of personalized online radio, said Mike McGuire, a research vice president at Gartner. “One hopes the mind-set will be that nobody wants to see anybody go out of business,” he said.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/19/te...gg&exprod=digg





Chicago's 9 FM Bans CD Giveaways
FMQB

Newsweb Radio Company's 9 FM, which trimulcasts on WDEK, WKIE and WRZA in Chicago, has decided to ban CD prize giveaways as an act of protest against the recent royalty rate hike for online music streaming.

"When I read that the RIAA and SoundExchange needed money so badly that they were going to price gouge independent Web streamers and radio stations who stream online, I knew we had to do our part," said Matt DuBiel, Director of Programming for 9 FM. "In the face of the RIAA's struggles, it just doesn't seem fair for us to be giving away CDs (for free) to music fans fully capable of paying for the music themselves. We're inviting everyone who has won a CD from 9 FM or any other radio station in Chicago this year, to return it to us and we'll exchange it for a 9 FM t-shirt and give the CDs back to the RIAA. Radio stations need to be able to stream online affordably."

9 FM also has been airing public service-style announcements encouraging listeners to voice their concerns over the Copyright Royalty Board's rate hike ruling by signing a petition posted on 9 FM's Web site: WePlayAnything.com.
http://fmqb.com/Article.asp?id=373556





CRB Grants Motion Allowing For Possible Rehearing On Internet Royalty Rates
FMQB

After petitions and pressure from NPR and other broadcasting organizations, the Copyright Royalty Board (CRB) has agreed to grant motions for a possible rehearing over the controversial, proposed new Internet radio royalty rates. The decision was formally made late Tuesday and the CRB cited a number of petitions from NPR, DiMA, Sound Exchange and many others.

There is no guarantee that a rehearing will be held, but in the official order, Chief Copyright Royalty Judge James Scott Sledge wrote that the "Copyright Royalty Judges desire to hear the positions of each party on each of the issues raised in these motions." Responses to the motions may be filed no later than April 2, which is also the date that written arguments may be filed on the issues raised by the motions.

Yesterday, DiMA executive director Jonathan Potter summed up his organization's position on the issue by stating, "We do not believe that the Copyright Royalty Board intended to shut down the vast majority of legitimate online radio services immediately when it issued its decision, yet that is the sober reality facing many services." Over the past week, there has been an immediate and vocal reaction to the proposed new royalty rates for Internet radio, with the mainstream media picking up the story around the country.
http://fmqb.com/Article.asp?id=374260





Government Blocks Torrent Site, Citizens Protest
enigmax

May 2006 saw the admin of one of Bulgaria’s largest BitTorrent trackers arrested by the police, accused of putting links to over 20 million copyright works on the internet. Despite the fact he has been released, the Bulgarian Interior Ministry has now ordered all ISP’s to block access to the torrent site.

Eliyan Geshev was the administrator of Arenabg.com, Bulgaria’s largest BitTorrent site, which is among the 10 most visited websites in the country. He was originally arrested in late May 2006 and although it is unclear if he was released on bail in the meantime, it is now being reported that he has been released. By order of the Sophia Town Court, Geshev was freed due to “lack of grounds for his arrest”. As he tried to leave the courtroom, security guards struck journalists trying to interview him. The journalists say they intend to complain.

Despite Geshev’s apparent innocence, a Bulgarian Interior Ministry order has stopped clients of the Bulgarian Telecommunications Company (BTC) accessing the arenabg tracker. Organized crime fighting supremo Yavor Kolev said that all ISP’s have been ordered to block access to arenabg.com.

Bulgaria had promised to “show no mercy” to site administrators who illegally distribute copyright material but as BitTorrent trackers merely point to content and do not host it, it is unclear what they intend to do about them. Blocking access to the sites, regardless of their legality appears to be one option.

However, it seems that Bulgarian citizens are not pleased with this course of action and intend to make a public protest in support of torrent site administrators who they believe are being unfairly treated. On March 15th, the organisers applied to the Sophia Municipality to hold their demonstration which will protest against what they claim is illegal state-sponsored action against Bulgarian torrent site administrators.

The protest will take place on March 22nd in front of the Aleksandar Nevski Cathedral.
http://torrentfreak.com/government-b...izens-protest/





Russia to Solve the Piracy Problem "Soon"

As a partner country at this year's CeBIT, Russia wants to show the world that it is an emerging high-tech industrial nation. Part of a good reputation, though, is combating computer crime and software piracy at home. "We are aware of the problem. We hope we can solve it soon," Russian Telecommunications Minister Leonid Reiman told Deutsche Presse-Agentur (dpa) on Friday. He said that Russian authorities were already taking far-reaching steps to combat computer crime.

"But problems with copyright, such as piracy and illegal copies, are something that plagues all western industrialized countries, not just Russia," Reiman stressed. He says that Russia has made progress over the past few years. For instance, a number of plants that were producing illegal copies of CDs and DVDs have been closed down. Current loopholes in the law are to be closed when the Civil Code is revised. Oleg Bjachow, chief strategist for the Ministry of High Technology and Communication, recently stated that the share of pirated copies of all software programs is around 60 percent in Russia.

IT security experts say Russia is one of the main countries that produce spam emails and virus programs after China and Latin America. But Reiman says such claims are "a myth." "Viruses are written all over the world. Russia is waging a consistent and successful war on malicious software." The Russian minister called for a legal foundation to allow prosecutors to work together across national borders to combat Internet crime.
http://www.heise.de/english/newsticker/news/86951





India Needs Special Courts to Deal With Piracy
Ritwik Donde

Although the growth story for the software market in India continues to show promise, the market is loosing millions of rupees as softwares like Adobe, McAfee, Microsoft and Symantec continue to be sold for mere pennies on the roadsides. Last estimated, the Business Software Alliance seized about $2.1 million worth of pirated software in 2006. The worst is yet to come as internet penetration rises to newer heights, says Joseph FitzGerald, Symantec vice-president (intellectual property), in an interview to ET. Excerpts:

How do you view the Indian intellectual property rights scenario? How is it compared with other countries?

For one, Indian laws certainly provide for IP protection. But the challenge here is the enforcement of the prescribed laws. The enforcement is lacking at different levels. First, users (consumers) themselves are not aware about the fundamentals for IP. According to statistics, the domestic software industry has been bleeding losses of over half a billion dollars thanks to the piracy nexus.

Why do you think IP is so important for the IT industry in India?

When you have a fundamental base of IP protection that allows to you to unleash more innovations from the Indian technical community only then will there be more investment in innovations from the venture capitalists. Moreover, IP protection can also mean more jobs for the IT industry.

According to an economic impact study conducted by IDC, if the present piracy rate of 72% in India is curtailed by even 10 percentage points by 2009, India could benefit with an additional 1,15,000 new IT jobs, an additional $5.9 billion pumped into its economy and increased tax revenues of $386 million. But then that still leaves you at about 60% piracy rate which is huge and needs to come down.

Although patents filed from India by multinational software makers has increased, piracy still continues to eat into their market penetration. On last count piracy rate in India was 72%.

What is your advice to lawmakers to ensure better protection of copyrights in India?

Most importantly, consumers need to be educated about the lack of support extended towards pirated software. Second, a dedicated IP court as well as specially trained law enforcement personnel to tackle infringement and piracy cases would be a positive step. At present, the Indian courts are already under pressure with serious criminal cases with them. The IP cases are also brought to the same courts.

Hence, the need is for having more resources to be allocated to aid courts and getting the law enforcement to take serious note of IP rights infringement. Another effort that lawmakers could take is impose statutory damages for IP infringement. The extent of damages could even have potential jail term like in the US. In short, the Indian courts need to be given some guidance as to how to deal with copyright violation.

Do you think reducing software prices could counter piracy in India?

Decreasing prices will not help curb piracy. If you go by a survey conducted recently for the Asia Pacific region, it reveals that mostly it is the companies which are rich in resources that are indulging in the use of pirated software.

P2P networking and several websites offer free downloads of popular softwares. How has internet, especially, web 2.0 and user-generated content affected the software market? Even if its P2P and its free, it is still stealing. No doubt the distribution mechanism works, you may get the actual code that works but what the user does not know is what goes on behind the scenes in terms of malware and trojan hits to the systems. Having said that, you have to accept that one may never be able to eliminate peer-to-peer downloads.

Therefore, we have to look at enforcing technical measures like user-friendly digital rights management systems and hope that this helps curbs such activities. But in the end, there would always be people who circumvent the system.
http://infotech.indiatimes.com/articleshow/1785773.cms





CRIA Vs. The Minister of Canadian Heritage
Drew Wilson

While the Minister of Canadian Heritage hasn't built a reputation for being quick on the copyright legislation draw, it doesn't mean the government has nothing to offer on the subject. Apparently, it's this open insight that has CRIA (Canadian Recording Industry Association) upset in the first place.

Research studies and the recording industry have gone back a long way in both their reputation and the numbers they show. While CRIA, RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America) and the MPAA (Motion Picture Association of America) have all been known to release studies in the past, it's the disclosure aspect of the process that CRIA and its American counterparts diverge.

Some critics argue that studies released by the American entertainment industry are often vague. This appears to be the opposite case for CRIA, where in the past, studies have been released in full. The most well known study the CRIA conducted was the Pollara study in 2006. Some media outlets republished the CRIA's claim that the study offered a crystal clear view that file-sharing was severely hurting the industry. Yet when the study was published in full, it was later revealed that only snippets supported the industry's claim. Law professor Michael Geist picked up on the study and pointed to several instances that countered CRIA's claim. This led to a heated argument between Geist and, surprisingly, Pollara.

While CRIA's own study may have proved to go both ways instead of such a 'crystal clear' outlook, another study was then released. This study was done by the Minister of Canadian Heritage, the one government official many in the creativity community have been keeping close tabs on for a long time.

Last year, the Canadian government commissioned a firm called 'The Connectus Consulting' to do research on the issues. Later on, the firm submitted their findings to the government in a report called 'The Economic Impact of Canadian Copyright Industries - Sectoral Analysis'. The most interesting piece of information that many noted from the study was best portrayed by a bar graph indicating that the industry has experienced major growth between 1999 and 2004 - a direct contradiction to earlier claims by CRIA. Of course, the study was released in full for the public to read.

Fast-foreword to today, it seems the Canadian government has released another study, and was released in full for the public to read.

"Throughout this report it is important to remember that we are looking at the music business, which according to most accounts is doing very well, as opposed to the CD and record business, which is not." Stated the report while talking about the music business, "Indie companies are considered to be more vital today than ever before – references throughout this examination will help to explain why. Although accurate Canadian figures are not available, at the present time, there are over 10,000 indie labels operating in the United States – and our reality is at least proportionate."

Before it got into more controversial aspects that divided the industry in the first place, it first described the state of consumers with the following: "How many fans looked at their CD collections and thought – I paid $18, for one or two great songs and a lot of filler? That can happen once, but when you look at the yardage of CDs on the shelf and you feel pretty much the same way about much of your collection, trouble is brewing.

In Canada, the industry decided to make matters worse.

During this crucial period, a music fan could go into Virgin Megastore on the Champs Elysée, or HMV in Oxford Circus, or Tower Records in New York and lose himself in a CD single section that ran for aisles and aisles, often exceeding 5,000 square feet, offering thousands of single titles. What the industry was doing was trying to respond to some of the criticisms and reply to the fans who were willing to buy the song but not the album.

In Canada, the industry decided otherwise – no singles for us."

The report then delves into the recent developments to help consumers connect with their music while still compensating artists who want to be paid; this was namely digital music stores. It seems, according to the government, that fans saw music they wanted, but couldn't really have access to it because it was physically elsewhere. The report depicts infuriated music fans taking one of two roads to satisfy their wants. This was either finding digital music stores or resorting to file-sharing like the first version of Napster, Kazaa and Morpheus. "[...] new opportunities arose with the growth of web based virtual retailers, spearheaded by Amazon. Here was an opportunity for the busy, harried, multitudes to shop 24/7 at “retailers” who were rarely “out-of-stock”," the report said.

The effect on the "Brick and Mortar" music stores as a result could be an echo to what free and open source applications have been doing to Microsoft's software - namely offering consumers a substitute product..

The report also describes the so-called "Wal-Mart" effect which was touched on in the controversial Pollara study. If there are a number of things that could be negatively impacting the major music record labels, it seems that the "Wal-Mart" effect could be one of those culprits. "Given the choice of buying the new Top 10 CD at a music retailer for $16.99 or $11.99 from Wal-Mart – well, the obvious happened [...] The revenue per item for whatever they continued to sell would be whittled away by price pressure from the Big Boxes but the negative effect would be compounded by price cuts instituted by the multinational distributors [...] By all accounts, the magical 35% gross margin that retail lived on for so long is now hovering in the mid 20% range. Given the labour and occupation costs, the picture is far from rosy for continuing to retail music through speciality retailers."

The report then goes in to the heart of an issue that has been making the major record labels crying foul for years, file-sharing. "['P2P' and 'file-sharing'] strike terror in the minds and hearts of the traditional industry gatekeepers as well as many influential stakeholders.

There are those in the music industry, however, who have different takes on these issues and while not always openly endorsing the current situation (some do), they recognize that the genie will not go back in the bottle"

The report also quotes Kusek and Leonhard, "Future of Music": "New research in 2004 from the Pew Internet Project shows that 60% of the musicians/songwriters that they surveyed do not believe that the RIAA’s lawsuits will benefit artists or songwriters….In addition, 83% of the musicians surveyed have provided free samples of their work online and a significant number say free downloading has helped them sell CDs and increase attendance at concerts."

While describing the views of DRM (Digital Rights Management), the study makes a very interesting point that says, "It is instructive to remember that DRM refers to the digital management of rights and NOT the management of digital rights – a fine but important distinction"

The study then describes how file-sharing came to be, "In the beginning, P2P file sharing of music became popular and easy because people often knew what they were looking for before they logged on. It was also about exploring new avenues, finding what you want and getting it. File sharing exploded in popularity because it became easy to do and supported self-directed and collaborative musical exploration."

It then quotes the BPI (British Phonographic Industry) with the statistic that over 72 million people using file-sharing networks to obtain music in the United States. 20 billion songs, according to the BPI, were downloaded worldwide with 1 billion of that coming from Canada. An interesting number considering US senators last week used Fox statistics to portray Canada as a piracy haven, though it was directed mainly at camcording. This was in an effort to pressure Canada into changing its copyright laws despite the government already explaining that camcording in theatres is already illegal in Canada.

The report also cites Big Champaign figuring that, at a peak time, over 9 million people were online at one given time - but no more than 10 million.

This expansive report also covers things like 'The Net Generation', Digitizing and 'The Future of Downloads', artists and many other things.

While some may consider the report moving, the report also infuriated CRIA. CRIA's president Graham Henderson reportedly described the reports as 'one-sided' and fails to depict what is really ailing the industry. He also said that, in Canada, 1.3 billion files were "illegally swapped annually" instead of the 1 billion the BPI had said.

Graham Henderson also reiterates that the report was "erroneous" on the point that independent labels have prospered in Canada. To illustrate the point, he points to Maple Music and Paper Bag Records who cooperate with major record label Universal Music.

In the same report, CIRPA's (Canadian Independent Record Production Association) Geoff Kulawick was reportedly positive on the report, saying that while piracy is an industry-wide issue, independent musicians and record labels also face other uncertainties. One point was raised that Canadian independent musicians needs all the help they can get to benefit Canadian consumers.

While it seems unlikely that a copyright bill will be tabled in this parliamentary session, it seems that the Canadian Government has aired some figures that doesn't settle well with CRIA.
http://www.slyck.com/news.php?story=1443





The Federation Goes Soft on File Sharing

Piracy group casts net towards corporates
Mark Ballard

The Federation, the UK trade association that prosecutes people for copying software, is letting individual file sharers off the hook and going after corporate software pirates instead.

It used electronic surveillance techniques last year to track down bedroom file-sharers in a £100,000, 10-month investigation it called "Operation Tracker". The organisation, which represents the $100bn software industry, consequently secured a court against a mobile engineer from Epping in Essex, demanding he pay £3,400 for copying a £35 software programme.

John Lovelock, director general of The Federation, formerly the Federation Against Software Theft, conceded there might be good reasons to let file sharers off the hook.

"Going to court is not cost effective, so we might have to let some fish through the net," he said.

"We don't want to go to war and extract every last pound of flesh. That's not what we are all about," he added.

He said that he might even consider the social situation of those file-sharers still caught in The Federation's tracker beam when it takes them to court.

However, there are still a handful of file-sharers the Federation wants to punish before it turns a new leaf.

Butterworth was one of 99 people who had their personal details given to The Federation last January, under a court order placed on their ISPs. The Federation had tracked them down on peer-to-peer file-sharing networks and recorded their IP addresses.

The Federation sent the offenders letters demanding they scrap their shared software or pay the £35 licence fee and a £315 fine to cover the costs of its own investigation. Lovelock said that 30 to 40 paid immediately, while about another 30 paid after another letter was sent six months later. Another 30 had still not put up or paid up, so the Federation would send them final demands within a matter of days.

He said it was necessary to take a hard line on software theft because the $35bn of software sales were lost last year from businesses using illegal software, while the UK software industry lost about £1bn.

He did not know how much the industry lost to file sharers. Neither could he imagine whether file sharers would buy the software they shared if sharing was punished indiscriminately.

"It's hard to say - someone who buys a counterfeit Rolex, would they spend £4,000 on a genuine Rolex?" he wondered.

The more he was pressed on the matter, however, the more he reverted to stereotype. File-sharers were bad "in principle", regardless of the value of the software they exchanged.

"We are offering people a third opportunity to pay for their wrongdoing and get on with life, which I think is not unreasonable," he said.

"Buy whatever it is that you need to buy or don't use it. If you can't afford to buy it because you're on the dole, we can't have it," he said.

"I don't think there's an excuse for breaking the law," Lovelock added.

Lovelock refused to identify the software that the file-sharers were being prosecuted for sharing because he wanted to preserve the reputations of the software firms who were prosecuting them.

"Publishers don't like to be seen taking individual court action against people," he said.

"The general mode of software publishers is not to punish, they leave that to us. They don't want to be seen as bad guys," he added.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/03...-sharers_free/





Clouseau: New Technology Ends Illegal Peer-To-Peer File Sharing
Press Release

SafeMedia Corporation, premier developer of advanced Internet Piracy Prevention (IPP) technology, today announced the introduction of its flagship product, Clouseau, the world's first and only truly effective solution for Internet peer-to-peer (P2P) copyrighted material piracy.

Clouseau is a network appliance deployed on subnets that completely eradicates all illegal P2P, and makes it impossible to send or receive any illegal P2P transmissions.

"Losses to P2P piracy are higher then ever. Billions of dollars and thousands of jobs are lost. Current technology is clearly ineffective at stopping P2P piracy," said Safwat Fahmy, CEO and founder of SafeMedia Corporation. "What was needed is a totally new approach in system architecture. Clouseau is the best-of-breed Internet Piracy Prevention solution. It was designed from the ground up specifically to stop all P2P Internet piracy no matter where it originates world wide, it is safe and invisible, causes little or no latency in the network, it is self-healing and best of all, it is a user-friendly compliance, and completely shields user anonymity."

Advanced technology and a unique approach to fingerprinting and DNA markers created by SafeMedia allow the thorough examination of all incoming and outgoing packets: illegal P2P is eradicated, while legal P2P passes along to its destination with no measurable delay.

"We've made Clouseau dynamically proactive, safe and hardened," added Mr. Fahmy. "Pirates are smart and innovative, and so is Clouseau. Our technology is dynamic, sees through all multi-layered encryptions, adaptively analyzes network patterns and constantly updates itself. Packet examinations are noninvasive and infallible. There are no false positives."

"For the first time, policy makers have the solution to insure compliance with the law. Businesses, universities, organizations and Internet users can comply in a friendly positive environment without expensive and hostile legal action enforcement. Copyright holders can finally make the Internet available as a safe, viable distribution channel for all content industries."
http://sev.prnewswire.com/computer-e...2032007-1.html





Paid Downloads Cool Down
Marc

According to Nielsen Soundscan, there were 581 million downloads in 2006 for a growth rate of 54 percent over last year, less than the previous year's growth rate of 163 percent. Market share leader Apple has sold two billion downloads in four years.

We covered this a year ago when weekly year to year growth rates were lower than the previous year. The year end numbers confirm this trend. We wrote then, as now, that the explosion in paid downloads is over. Growth will continue to decline as the digital market reaches maturity, unless the major labels open up licensing
http://www.p2p-weblog.com/50226711/p..._cool_down.php





The Unintended Consequences of P2P Piracy
John C. Dvorak

Some stories hitting the blogs recently seem to indicate that, as an unintended consequence of BitTorrent and other peer-to-peer systems, the business of organized piracy has been seriously hurt.

When you think about this, it's obvious. In fact, online piracy could be used as a strategy by record producers and movie folks to eliminate piracy altogether. But would anyone listen to the idea? And would there be anyone visionary enough to even dream up the concept?

Let me outline the architecture and strategy that the music industry could deploy today. It would cost less than the horrible current strategy of lawsuits and futile threats.

STAGE ONE First of all, the Motion Picture Association of America and the Recording Industry Association of America have to let the online file sharing go nuts. Cut it loose. Let all the users do what they want. You won't know the extent of the problem unless you let it surface and go crazy, just as happened with Napster years ago when millions of people were trading music on the system.

STAGE TWO Let the rampant online file-sharing world impact and ruin the organized pirates who sell CDs, DVDs, and other purloined-content items. It should make their profitability fall enough that they will all disappear. Let's face it: They are already working on a thin margin. A high-quality counterfeit DVD typically sells for $2 in Indonesia. This has to include pressing, smuggling, distribution, markup, and payoffs. How much profit can there be? They obviously make most of their money from sheer volume. Any impact on that volume, and these folks will be looking for better things to do.

The unintended consequences of file-sharing piracy are thus witnessed.

STAGE THREE Now this is the hard part, because while the hard pirates might be eliminated, the soft pirates (aka file sharers) will be going nuts. This is the time for the industry to study the actual impact, since file swapping will be out of control. If it turns out that soft piracy results in increased sales—as was the case during the Napster era—then you just stop the program and let the situation continue unabated. At least you'll know whether or not the Napster thing was just a fluke. If sales continue to decline and the movie industry, too, can see an impact, then you'll know that file trading is bad for business, and now you can actually prove it. Until now, the industry's complaints have been hot air.

I actually believe that allowing open file sharing to take place will indeed increase sales, and that people still like owning the real thing. Most file sharing is done in an effort to find out what is out there to buy. Radio stations used to provide this service, but they no longer do. But for the sake of argument, let's say that the RIAA and the MPAA can show that this trading actually does hurt business. They could continue the process thus:

STAGE FOUR Let file trading do a market-share climax. Typically, if given a chance, a market will emerge, whereby one or two file-sharing systems will become dominant. It's almost impossible for this not to happen. So you let it happen and let the dominant players emerge while the others just die.

STAGE FIVE You co-opt the leaders. You buy into the companies, or simply buy the companies. You can do this with all sorts of rationales. You can say that this is the future of the business and you need to be part of the action. Or you just form an investment consortium consisting of all the major players and the RIAA and MPAA, then start buying them out one after another until you own them all. Let's face it: These people will sell.

STAGE SIX Consolidate as many sites as you can until you have one great site that everyone uses. Get patents. At this point, if any better providers crop up, you buy them out immediately or sue them if you have to.

STAGE SEVEN Here is the point where you can fork this process into many variants now that the control is all yours. 1) You can evolve the mega site into an e-commerce site. This is the absolute best idea. 2) You can simply shut the site down and let the users scatter—although they will probably begin to build up again slowly. 3) You can pollute the site with lousy copies of everything. 4) You can choke the bandwidth. 5) You can create a database of users whom you can scare with cease-and-desist orders.

Something like this would put the music execs and copyright owners back in control and perhaps eliminate worldwide piracy altogether. But would anything like this actually happen?

Not a chance.
http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,1895,2105447,00.asp





Actors, Film Industry Differ on Proposed Image Protection Law
Dave Collins

For actor Paul Newman, a state law is needed to protect people's images and words from being used without their permission in commercials or derogatory ways.

For film and media companies, the law would conflict with their First Amendment rights and open up the entertainment industry to a slew of lawsuits.

Both sides offered testimony Wednesday before the legislature's Judiciary Committee about the "Right of Publicity" bill. Nineteen other states have similar laws.

Newman, who lives in Westport, told the committee that Connecticut needs to send a strong message to people who do not use computer imaging and audio technology responsibly.

"We are living in an age of cheap and easy electronic manipulation," said Newman, who was joined at the hearing by actor James Naughton, who grew up in West Hartford and lives in Weston.

"Almost anyone with a computer can now lift a few frames of someone's image ... and expand it into a production that there's no resemblance of the original but can look and sound as though those who appeared are actually filmed doing and saying what they appear to be doing," Newman said.

The proposed law would give people a right to publicity in the use of their "personas," which include their names, voices, mannerisms, photos of them and other likenesses.

Without permission, people would be banned from using others' personas for commercial purposes and fundraising, and in digitally manipulated ways that make them say things they never said or appear in circumstances in which they do not approve.

There are exceptions for news and public affairs programs, original works of fine art and other instances. Anyone who breaks the law would have to forfeit $2,000 or pay damages and profits related to the illegal act, whichever amount is higher.

Wednesday's testimony came nearly a year to the day after Newman and other actors testified before lawmakers on a similar bill, which died in committee. Lawmakers said at the time that they were interested in the proposal, but it was brought up late in the legislative process.

Executives from the film industry and major media companies testified against the latest bill, saying there are already laws on libel, copyrights and trademarks. They also said it conflicted with free speech rights.

"When you start dealing with changing the law so you're liable for something that's legal under the libel laws, then you're treading on dangerous ground," said Jared Jussim, executive vice president of intellectual property for Sony Pictures Entertainment.

"You've got to do it carefully," he said in spirited testimony. "You've got to understand that many people have many rights."

Henry Hoberman, senior vice president of litigation for ABC and ESPN, said the proposed law would infringe on free speech rights. He gave the example of a popular bit on the "Jimmy Kimmel Live" late night talk show that takes videos of celebrities and politicians speaking and inserts beeps in strategic places to make it appear they are saying something crude.

"That kind of speech would clearly be imperiled by this statute," Hoberman said. "We're just here to say let's be mindful of the First Amendment."

Film industry executives also said such a law would make them think twice about making a movie in Connecticut. Lawmakers are now debating whether to offer more incentives for film companies to come to the state.

Newman questioned the film industry's motives.

"I wonder why the Motion Picture Association is so frightened by us having this right to ourselves, to protect ourselves, unless they want to steal it," he said.

State Sen. Andrew McDonald, a Stamford Democrat who is co-chairman of the Judiciary Committee, said there is a long list of organizations opposed to the bill. He urged those on both sides of the issue to try to work out a compromise.

The committee took no action on the bill Wednesday. It has until April 13 to approve the proposal and send it to the full General Assembly.
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories...03-21-19-38-21





Colorado Woman Sues To Hold Web Crawlers To Contracts

Web site owner Suzanne Shell's lawsuit against the Internet Archive poses a question: "Can software programs be held liable for their actions?"
Thomas Claburn

Computers can enter into contracts on behalf of people. The Uniform Electronic Transactions Act (UETA) says that a "contract may be formed by the interaction of electronic agents of the parties, even if no individual was aware of or reviewed the electronic agents' actions or the resulting terms and agreements."

This presumes a prior agreement to do business electronically.

So what constitutes such an agreement? The Internet Archive, which spiders the Internet to copy Web sites for posterity (unless site owners opt out), is being sued by Colorado resident and Web site owner Suzanne Shell for conversion, civil theft, breach of contract, and violations of the Racketeering Influence and Corrupt Organizations act and the Colorado Organized Crime Control Act.

Shell's site states, "IF YOU COPY OR DISTRIBUTE ANYTHING ON THIS WEB SITE, YOU ARE ENTERING INTO A CONTRACT," at the bottom of the main page, and refers readers to a more detailed copyright notice and agreement. Her suit asserts that the Internet Archive's programmatic visitation of her site constitutes acceptance of her terms, despite the obvious inability of a Web crawler to understand those terms and the absence of a robots.txt file to warn crawlers away.

A court ruling last month granted the Internet Archive's motion to dismiss the charges, except for the breach of contract claim.

In a post on law professor Eric Goldman's Technology & Marketing Law blog, attorney John Ottaviani, a partner at Edwards & Angell in Providence, R.I., says the issue is "whether there was 'an adequate notice of the existence of the terms' and a 'meaningful opportunity to review' the terms."

If a notice such as Shell's is ultimately construed to represent just such a "meaningful opportunity" to an illiterate computer, the opt-out era on the Net may have to change. Sites that rely on automated content gathering like the Internet Archive, not to mention Google, will have to convince publishers to opt in before indexing or otherwise capturing their content. Either that or they'll have to teach their Web spiders how to read contracts.
http://www.informationweek.com/news/...leID=198001674





Carol Burnett Sues TV's "Family Guy" Cartoon

Comedian Carol Burnett has filed a copyright infringement suit against the makers of Fox TV's cartoon sitcom "Family Guy" over an episode poking fun at the performer and her variety show from the 1960s and '70s.

The lawsuit, filed on Thursday in U.S. District Court in Los Angeles, claims "Family Guy" violated Burnett's exclusive rights to her name and likeness by depicting her signature cleaning-woman character in a segment last April without her consent.

The suit, which seeks at least $2 million in damages, also says the cartoon episode used a "slightly altered version" of the copyrighted musical theme to "The Carol Burnett Show" without permission from the 73-year-old entertainer.

A spokesman for 20th Century Fox Television, which produces "Family Guy," said on Friday the suit was without merit and that references to Burnett and her show in an 18-second sequence of the cartoon amounted to parody.

"'Family Guy,' like the 'Carol Burnett Show,' is famous for its pop culture parodies and satirical jabs at celebrities," the studio said in a statement. "We are surprised that Ms. Burnett, who has made a career of spoofing others on television, would go so far as to sue 'Family Guy' for a simple bit of comedy."

The episode in question refers to Burnett by name as working as a part-time janitor, and depicts her "charwoman" character -- complete with trademark blue bonnet and mop bucket -- cleaning the floor of a pornography shop, the suit says.

Another character then makes a vulgar reference to the signature ear tug used by Burnett at the close of her variety show each week, according to the lawsuit.

Burnett and her company have urged Fox to reedit the "Family Guy" episode to remove any reference her, but the studio has so far refused, the suit said.

"The Carol Burnett Show," combining comedy sketches and musical performances, aired on CBS from 1967 to 1978 and was one of the most popular shows on U.S. television in that era.
http://www.reuters.com/article/wtMos...24604020070317





The Revolution Will Be Downloaded (if You’re Patient)
Manohla Dargis

SOME film critics wax nostalgic about the big-screen experience in the age of the diminishing movie image, but I can’t relate. For me movies are movies whether on the big screen or small, on my laptop or on a plane, captured in celluloid or digital. My preferred medium is film, though like a lot of Americans, I imagine, my movie love was nurtured at home while flopped in front of a television, in my case while watching “Chiller Theater” and, every Sunday morning without fail, Abbott and Costello. The first commercially exhibited moving pictures were watched through peepholes in machines called Kinetoscopes, so watching a film on an iPod shouldn’t really seem all that different.

A screen is a screen is a screen — isn’t it?

My interest in that question partly explains why I was eager to start downloading movies, which, like DVD and video rentals, seems to offer choices not only in what we watch but also in how. I enjoy the social aspect of going to the movies, but I also love watching films at home, for both the ease of use and the intimacy. When I was a teenager, I watched movies on a tiny black-and-white television in my bedroom, wrapped in an adolescent cocoon. Now I watch DVDs on a plasma television set in my living room and on the computer monitor in my office, sometimes with family, sometimes alone. On occasion I will watch a movie on my small laptop, so I can take the images with me as I fold the laundry or wash dishes.

Certainly the idea of downloading sounds irresistible: you scroll through the delectable offerings — in the video store in my head, Abbott and Costello and Bela Tarr are both just clicks away — hit a few buttons, and voilà: cinema! The reality, as I recently discovered, is messier. No matter how souped up, a television set is just another household appliance; adding TiVo makes it a better appliance, but you still turn the box on and off. Downloading movies onto a computer, by contrast, is rather more complicated because computers are not yet appliances; they’re infernal machines.

When all the planets are aligned and your computer has enough memory and hasn’t been deluged with spam for lots of little multicolored pills, it will function just dandy. But try to download without enough disk space and through a wireless connection, as I initially did, and you may soon wonder why you’re spending so much time and energy to watch films you’ve never heard of on your computer rather than watching a “Children of Men” DVD on your dreamy big television.

My first download stop was a new site called Jaman (jaman.com), still in the test stage, which promotes itself as “a global online community” that’s “pioneering social cinema.” I didn’t recognize most of the titles, though I see hundreds of films a year, and neither did a friend who programs a major American film festival. I did, however, come across Bryan Singer’s first feature, the creepy “Public Access,” which wasn’t dated, but which I saw when it had its premiere at the Sundance Film Festival in 1993. Scrolling through the 55 titles from Asia, I scoped out that some of the women looked as if they were wearing bouffants, while a few of the men looked ready to hit the disco. Jaman doesn’t date its offerings, but a search on a movie information site soon solved two mysteries: “King Cat” was from 1967 and “Hong Kong Nocturne” from 1966.

I ended up downloading two features and one short from the North American section (196 titles), only because I planned to watch the films on my laptop. It’s incredibly frustrating to watch subtitled films on a small screen, which is why I ponied up for a 32-inch flat-screen television several years ago. I picked the first film to download, J. T. Petty’s “Soft for Digging,” because I liked the nicely composed photograph of two men walking in the woods and the short clip (one of the site’s best features is its preview snippets) of a guy who looked a little like Ed Koch stalking about in a blood-red bathrobe. The film had played at some festivals, which, while not a guarantee of quality, did suggest some kind of provenance.

While no Luddite, I turned out to be woefully unprepared to join the download revolution. It took many frustrating hours to get Jaman’s proprietary player up and running and then to download my selected titles. I had better success elsewhere: I downloaded a smeary-looking copy of Marlon Brando’s “One-Eyed Jacks” from GreenCine (greencine.com), a boutique online site with terrific rental titles (it has Criterion titles I’ve never heard of) but rather less tantalizing video-on-demand offerings. I also tried to download a copy of “Team America: World Police” (because once is never enough) from iTunes. That site suggested that I didn’t have enough disk space to download the movie but encouraged me to proceed. I did. As it happens, I did not have enough space, so I couldn’t complete the download. iTunes billed me $9.99 anyway.

In the end it took several days and many more glitches, including a few crashes, as well as a last-ditch consultation with my on-site technical adviser (my husband) to diagnose the problems I was having with Jaman, which were eventually solved by buying a larger hard drive and forgoing my usual wireless connection. I lost track of how many hours it took to access “Soft for Digging” (Jaman said it would take “1 day, 2hr” to download), but I finally watched it, or at least the first half-hour or so. I just lost interest around the time a man (not the Ed Koch look-alike) appeared to strangle a little girl. One of the nice things about controlling your content is that you can hit the off switch whenever you want.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/18/movies/18darg.html





Little Films on Little Screens (but Both Seem Set to Grow)
Noah Robischon

IN the award-winning 2005 movie “Black,” the Bollywood actor Amitabh Bachchan plays an eccentric, disillusioned teacher who helps a blind, deaf and mute girl learn to speak and rejoin her family. But the “Miracle Worker” roles are reversed years later, when the girl discovers that her teacher is suffering from Alzheimer’s disease.

“Black” was chosen as one of the 10 best movies of 2005 by Time Europe. But chances are you’ve never heard of it. Like the vast majority of films made each year “Black” was never released theatrically in the United States. It is not even available on DVD. You can, however, watch it on your computer screen for $1.99 at Jaman.com.

At least a half-dozen download services like Jaman want to become your digital art-house cinema, offering movie lovers a universe of alternative films they otherwise might never have known they wanted to see, or had a clue on how to find if they did. At the moment these sites pretty much appeal only to hard-core cineastes, mainly because watching movies on a computer monitor is far from an ideal entertainment experience.

But a slew of gadgets, like the coming Apple TV, promise to erase the divide between the Internet and your home entertainment center by easily transporting a movie file sitting on the computer to the 52-inch plasma television in the living room, or magically giving the set Internet access. If that transition becomes seamless, digital film distribution might just make celebrities out of a new crop of talented unknowns, just as the advent of home video in the 1980s jump-started the careers of filmmakers like Steven Soderbergh, Spike Lee and John Sayles.

“There is an ever-widening opportunity for non-mainstream content to get discovered,” said Curt Marvis, co-founder and chief executive of CinemaNow. “I’m not talking about YouTube videos, but films that might go to Sundance. And because the subject matter is too controversial, or the audience is too hard to reach, or because of the dynamics of the finances involved, traditional distribution doesn’t work. There is absolutely an audience for those films on the Internet.”

Like most digital movie theaters CinemaNow (cinemanow.com) offers a confusing number of ways to pay for and watch a film. You can rent a 24-hour digital movie stream for as little a dollar. Pay a slightly higher price, and you can buy a movie and store it on a computer hard drive. You can also sign up for a rental subscription plan similar to that of a DVD-by-mail service, or even purchase the rights to burn a hit film onto your own DVD for $14.99. But CinemaNow’s focus is on mainstream releases like “Borat,” and only around 300 of its movies are undistributed elsewhere.

The offerings on Jaman, on the other hand, are the antithesis of mainstream. The site, whose backers include former Senator Bill Bradley and Jeff Berg, who runs the talent agency International Creative Management, has a catalog of 1,000 documentaries, features and international releases harvested almost entirely from film festivals, like the Mexican psychological drama “Las Lloronas.” Watching the movies requires that you download a separate player application that improves the quality of the video while also speeding the time required to transfer a file.

A similar technology underlies Joost (joost.com), an interactive TV platform from the creators of the pioneering Internet phone service Skype. Instead of paying rental fees, visitors to Joost must sit through advertising to enjoy its wares, which includes 67 hours of programming from the DVD distributor IndieFlix (indieflix.com), including festival award winners “Outpatient” and “The Flats.” GreenCine (greencine.com), the five-year-old grand dame of the online indie film scene, has the quirky documentary “24 Hours on Craigslist” alongside such classics as the 1961 Marlon Brando film “One-Eyed Jacks.”

While navigating GreenCine is a pain, its video-on-demand catalog of 12,o00 titles is huge compared with the 400 or so movies now available from Apple’s iTunes store. More familiar companies are taking on the upstarts. Amazon acquired the obscure DVD distributor CustomFlix in 2005 and is now using the company to stock its all-digital Unbox store. And the DVD-by-mail company Netflix is investing $40 million this year in its “Instant Watching” feature, which lets subscribers rent digital movies as part of their monthly plans.

Two thirds of the “Instant Watching” offerings come from outside the studio system. “It’s universally accepted that porn is the biggest trailblazer in new technology,” said Netflix’s chief content officer, Ted Sarandos, who trolls the festival circuit for new material. “It’s overlooked that indie and foreign films also benefit disproportionately from the conservatism of Hollywood.”

Major studios — fearful of both piracy and cannibalizing the money they make from DVDs, their biggest source of revenue — are entering the Web film market cautiously. The few hit films online are generally put there only after they are widely available elsewhere, and often for the same price as a DVD.

But the major studios may not be able to play possum much longer. The DVD business is flattening. And media forecasters are busy out-predicting one another about how many billions of dollars Internet video will throw off each year.

Those predictions are looking far more realistic than they did a decade ago. Sony recently introduced the Bravia Internet Video Link, a device that attaches to the back of its popular line of TVs and delivers high-definition online programming. And TiVo’s 1.5 million Internet-connected subscribers already have access to downloadable movies from Amazon’s Unbox and the Independent Film Channel.

Then there is the $299 Apple TV. A hard drive about the size of a thin hardcover book, it wirelessly synchronizes the movies and series downloaded from the iTunes store and plays them on your flat screen. Apple TV, which is set to be released this month, could do for movies what the iPod did for music.

But scrolling through 1,000 songs is a lot easier than trudging through an Internet full of movies. Almost every Web film purveyor is planning to solve this bane of the modern culture consumer — too much choice — with some form of social networking. Recommendations, user reviews, friend lists and member pages are designed to help viewers determine which films they should watch. Jaman even allows its members to write commentary tracks onto its streaming movies to share with others.

“If you tell me you’ve seen this film and you like it, that’s what is going to get me interested rather than advice from above,” said Edward R. Pressman, an investor in Jaman and a producer of films like “Badlands” and “The Cooler.” But community-driven recommendations can, instead of opening up new worlds, reinforce existing tastes. Hockey die-hards may be able to convince fans of other sports to watch the underground hit documentary “In the Crease” (available on Unbox), but someone who loves romantic comedies aren’t likely to come across their testimonials. And the digital download sites will also have to overcome the hesitation of moviemakers wary of supplying their newly finished films.

The audience for Joe Swanberg’s films, for example, got a boost from his Web-only series “Young American Bodies” for Nerve.com. But Mr. Swanberg still considers digital distribution a last resort. Showing a film online, he said, would hurt his chances of being accepted into a festival like South by Southwest, where his third feature, “Hannah Takes the Stairs,” made its debut last week. “Sitting in that room with all those people and seeing it on the big screen just reconfirmed that it is the best experience,” he said, “and the one I’m always going to shoot for.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/18/movies/18robi.html




Look at Me, World! Self-Portraits Morph Into Internet Movies
Keith Schneider

NOAH KALINA flew to Switzerland last month to attend the opening of “We’re All Photographers Now,” an exhibition at the Musée de l’Elysée in Lausanne. The show is a survey of trends in digital photography, particularly portraiture, and Mr. Kalina produced its foremost example of how technology is changing the genre. His globally popular video “everyday” is composed of 2,356 daily self-portraits shot from Jan. 11, 2000, to July 31, 2006.

Mr. Kalina, 26, lives in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, and earns his living photographing the interiors of Manhattan bars and restaurants. Ever since he posted “everyday” to YouTube in August, this six-minute film has generated a low-level conversation in photographic circles about its artistic merits.

But what makes “everyday” truly exceptional is how easy it was to make and how quickly it attracted a huge audience, said William A. Ewing, director of the Musée de l’Elysée, who selected it for the exhibition.

“Noah’s video represents a phenomenal amplification not just in what he produced and how he did it, but how many people the piece touched in such a short period of time,” said Mr. Ewing, the author of “Face: The New Photographic Portrait” (Thames & Hudson). “There is nothing comparable in the history of photography.”

“Digital technology, computers, software and the Internet multiply the number of people with access to taking and viewing pictures,” he added. “Once you buy the camera, there are almost no other costs. That is increasing the variety and creativity in how people take pictures, and what they do with them.”

“We’re All Photographers Now” (www.allphotographersnow.ch) continues through May 30.

Mr. Kalina, like other photographers in the show, many of them amateurs, used a combination of digital tools and technical know-how that has become routine for his generation. By adroitly joining digital still photography, computer software and the Internet, he turned a student art project characterized principally by self-absorption into a global phenomenon.

“Everyday” succeeds in large part because it adheres to all three of the new principles of digital media, said Jonathan Lipkin, a professor of digital media at Ramapo College in New Jersey and the author of “Photography Reborn” (Abrams).

“The hallmarks of the new age of digital imagery are distribution, combination and manipulation,” Mr. Lipkin said. “The use of digital technology is especially revealing in portraiture. The digital camera has changed the genre. Before now it was just about impossible to do what Noah Kalina has done.”

Just one facet of the film project took real devotion: Mr. Kalina’s daily routine of snapping his own picture for nearly six years. The other part — transforming portraits that individually had attracted no attention into a film that is riveting — was almost too easy.

One afternoon in late August, prompted by a similar film of time-lapse portraiture made that month by the California graphic designer Ahree Lee, Mr. Kalina collected the digital self- portraits he had taken since he was a 19-year-old student at the School of Visual Arts in New York. He downloaded them into the Windows Movie Maker software program on his desktop computer, spaced the portraits at an interval of six images per second, set the film to a shadowy and insistent piano soundtrack (composed and performed by Carly Comando, his girlfriend at the time) and wrote the credits and title.

Making the film took four hours. That’s all. Then Mr. Kalina, like millions of others of his generation for whom stylized digital self-portraits are an important personal message and a form of self-actualization, posted it on Aug. 28 to YouTube. (It can also be found on noahkalina.com.) The response, he said, was instantaneous and unnerving. Thousands of young people, who regard the Internet as a vast digital campfire, found “everyday,” shared links with their friends and built an audience that has reached 5.3 million and is growing by 10,000 per day.

“Until that moment it was always a still-photography project,” Mr. Kalina said. “A friend suggested that it could be a movie. I was never convinced it would really work until I saw Ahree Lee’s movie. Now there’s a whole group of people making these kind of films and posting them on the Internet.”

One of the distinguishing characteristics of the new age of digital portraiture is the ease with which photographers, professional or amateur, can so easily produce images, videos, sequences and other projects that are dramatic, fresh and interesting. “Digital technology has changed what portraits look like,” Mr. Lipkin said. “If you pay attention to Facebook, MySpace, Flickr and the other social Internet sites, you see right away how stylized the portraits are. How they are taken from odd angles and with interesting lighting. It’s the angle of the hand-held digital camera.”

Jonathan Keller, a 31-year-old multimedia graphic artist studying at the Cranbrook Academy of Art outside Detroit, turned eight years of daily self-portraits into a video titled “Living My Life Faster” and posted it to his Web site (c71123.com/daily_photo). But his more significant contribution to the new form is his online archive of what he calls “passage of time” and “obsessive” photo projects.

Among the 40 projects on the site is Ms. Lee’s “me,” composed of more than 1,000 self-portraits taken from November 2001 to November 2004 and regarded as the first digital video portrait. Ms. Lee said she used a Nikon digital camera that had a flip screen so she could see herself while snapping the image. She used Photoshop software to align her eyes and After Effects software to create the animation. It took her 200 to 300 hours, she said, and on Aug. 8 “me” was posted on AtomFilms (me.atomfilms.com), an Internet site for independent filmmakers. She also posted it on YouTube, where it has attracted more than three million viewers.

“It would be possible to do this without digital technology, but it would be so much more difficult and expensive,” said Ms. Lee, 35, who lives in San Francisco (ahreelee.com). “If you use a film camera, you would have to buy rolls of film and get them processed, and do whatever you would need to do — and I don’t know what that is — to turn it into a film.”

Whether “me” or “everyday” or any of the other projects archived on Mr. Keller’s site qualify as art is in dispute in some quarters of the photography world. Richard Benson, a photographer, printer and professor of photography at Yale University since 1979, called them “a complete waste of time.”

“They are people who don’t know what they are doing and who celebrate themselves,” Mr. Benson said. “I find it completely boring.”

But Mr. Ewing and Mr. Lipkin say such views may reflect generational insecurity, prompted by the old-guard notion that good work that isn’t laborious isn’t worth much. Mr. Kalina’s “everyday” is a dramatic challenge to those conventions, Mr. Ewing said, because it breaks barriers, has helped to establish a new form of portraiture and sets a new standard of audience interest.

Mr. Kalina’s instinct for narrative makes the film work. The background is the room in which he’s living at the time. It changes episodically, producing visual interest and adding information. Ms. Comando’s soundtrack, which she now sells on the Internet, is appropriately portentous. Mr. Kalina doesn’t age, though at times he looks worn, and his haircut evolves through phases of short, long and unkempt. His gaze also doesn’t waver.

“He hypnotizes you with those eyes,” Mr. Ewing said. “The changing background and the changing hairstyle enhances a frenetic pace, the feeling of hurtling through space. But there is also a sense of a kind of dispassionate distance, the feeling of being the observer. Unlike a single digital image, the kind that appears on Flickr, in this film there is a sense of rapidity and infinite possibility.

“It’s a remarkable piece,” Mr. Ewing continued. “That’s why we ask in our show: Is this a revolution or just an evolution? The answer is it’s a revolution.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/18/ar...gn/18schn.html





The Shape of Cinema, Transformed at the Click of a Mouse
A. O. Scott

FOR some time now, it has been possible to imagine a moment when you — yes, You, the Person of the Year, the ultimate arbiter of cultural relevance — will be able to watch whatever you want whenever you want in the setting of your choice. The handful of Web sites that now offer streaming or downloadable feature films, along with wider video on demand through the cable box or satellite dish, offer a glimpse of what is to come.

Perhaps the most intriguing promise these sites hold, at least for those whose interest in film extends beyond the new, the recent and the aggressively hyped, is of a kind of virtual cinematheque. The retrieval and preservation of film history has been a project of many decades, accelerated and democratized by the rise of the DVD, which has put integral, aesthetically credible versions of hundreds of old films in easy reach of the multitudes.

Not that the effort has been systematic or complete: there are still hundreds more titles awaiting transfer to digital media. But the Internet, even if it currently lags behind the DVD market in terms of what is available, extends the promise of comprehensiveness and universal accessibility. It is now possible to imagine — to expect — that before too long the entire surviving history of movies will be open for browsing and sampling at the click of a mouse for a few PayPal dollars.

This aspect of the online viewing experience is not, in itself, especially revolutionary. It makes established home viewing habits a bit easier to indulge. What seems potentially more consequential is the rise of video on demand as a form of first-run distribution, a way not only for old movies to be saved, but also for new ones to be discovered. “Straight to video” is now more or less synonymous with “bottom of the barrel.” But the cost of prints and ads, along the small size of the audience for art and foreign films, has made straight to video, whether online or on disc, a more attractive option for the serious as well as the sleazy.

More and more movies that gain a bit of exposure on the festival circuit — where they are written about, primarily, in Web-based publications and blogs — will find their public not at the multiplex or the art house, but at your house.

This, at any rate, is the possibility held out by sites like GreenCine, Jaman, EZTakes and others like them, and also by Google Video, through which you can purchase or “rent” a wide variety of films. If you look at Google’s extensive documentary menu, you may be struck not only by the diversity of subject matter, but also by the variety of running times. One thing online distribution seems to accomplish is the erosion of the tyranny of the feature. It is nearly impossible for a film that runs less than 70 minutes to be booked into a theater by itself, or for, say, a 67- or 17-minute movie to be given a block of television time. But on-demand screen time is more flexible and may thus reward filmmakers for brevity or at least economy of expression.

But the filmmakers whose work circulates primarily through the various Web and on-demand applications will be entering a marketplace that is already glutted. The number of theatrically released films to open in Manhattan — that is, the movies that merit a review in The New York Times — has nearly doubled since the start of the decade, to around 600 a year. Add the films that play only at festivals, and the number reaches the thousands; include straight-to-video movies, on the Internet or DVD, and you have the potential of tens of thousands of movies competing for the burdened attention of the viewers.

How will they be sorted out? How will you know which ones you might want to see? I don’t ask this question defensively, as a cultural gatekeeper fretting over my waning authority — enough about you! some of us are trying to make a living here — but out of genuine curiosity. It has become something of a truism that Web culture is driven not by traditional, top-down forms of tastemaking like the judgments of professional critics or the strategies of corporate marketers, but rather by the lateral operations of social networks. Niches and coteries form organically, as like-minded people bond in cyberspace over shared enthusiasms.

And this, in turn, encourages a do-it-yourself approach to production and distribution. Just as a band, at least in principle, no longer needs a record label to be heard, so can a filmmaker forego the meddlesome mediation of a studio. Shoot your picture in your living room with your friends, edit it on your laptop, and I’ll watch it on mine, in my living room, with my friends.

Or something like that. Surely there can never be too many movies. Or, to put it another way, there will always be too many movies, more than anyone can keep track of. That more will be made, and that more will have a chance to be seen, is hardly cause for complaint. But by now we should have learned to regard utopian — or apocalyptic — predictions about the impact of the Internet with a measure of skepticism. The technology has yet to be developed that can increase the number of hours in the day, which means that, somehow, we will still need to choose among the thousands of movies at our instantaneous disposal.

What will guide those choices? Will the social networks that drive taste on the Web discover new and neglected works? Will they manage to circumvent both relentless marketing and criticial myopia? If the short history of the Internet teaches anything, it’s that any decisive, early answer is sure to be wrong.

I doubt that, at least in the foreseeable future, a filmmaker with a choice will refuse theatrical distribution in favor of the Web, or that a Web-distributed feature will match the gross of even a modest art-house release. But at the same time it seems likely that a hot new filmmaker will be soon discovered on a download site and given a shot at old-fashioned Hollywood success, a chance to make movies for the big screen. In any case, we’ll have to keep watching.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/18/movies/18scot.html





Government to Take a Hard Look at Horror
Michael Cieply

To drive almost anywhere here this week is to run a gantlet of advertising for movies about killing.

Posters for Warner Brothers’ film “The Reaping,” about deadly plagues, and the torture-filled “Captivity,” from After Dark Films and Lionsgate, appear on bus shelters on Pico Boulevard between two elementary schools. A fright puppet from Universal’s “Dead Silence” peers menacingly from a construction-site wall by a children’s center in Santa Monica. A few blocks away, a large billboard promoting Sony Pictures’ “Perfect Stranger” overlooks the campus of the Crossroads School, the daytime home for the offspring of many in the film industry.

All rated R for violence, among other traits, the films belong to what has become an annual winter-spring crop of horror and suspense. But the harvest is trickier than usual this year, as Hollywood braces for a new government review of the marketing of violent entertainment to the young.

The Federal Trade Commission is putting the final touches on a follow-up to its September 2000 report on the marketing to children of violent movies, music and video games. The first such assessment in three years, it will examine the selling practices of a mainstream entertainment industry that in the interim has become increasingly dependent on abductions, maimings, decapitations and other mayhem once kept away from studio slates.

Seven years ago the film industry narrowly avoided federal regulation of its advertising practices, as politicians, in the wake of the Columbine High School killings, called executives before a Congressional committee but eventually agreed to let Hollywood police itself.

The effectiveness of the resulting marketing guidelines is now being tested by rougher movies, competitors not bound by strictures that apply to the trade association’s major studio members, and a flourishing Web culture that has driven big openings in the last three years for harshly violent films like “Saw” or “Hostel” without much concern about the age of viewers.

If the new study were to find that the industry has violated or has outgrown its voluntary standards, it might kick the issue back into the political arena ahead of a presidential election. There it could trigger fresh calls for regulation, or even kill a gory source of relatively easy money.

Earlier this week, After Dark and Lionsgate scrambled to contain the public-relations damage after a Los Angeles Times columnist quoted several young students objecting to an especially gruesome billboard for “Captivity” near their middle school. After Dark, which is expected to release the film on May 18 with Lionsgate, quickly agreed to pull part of its ad campaign. After Dark executives and a lawyer representing the company did not return telephone calls seeking comment.

Neither After Dark nor Lionsgate is a member of the Motion Picture Association of America, which represents the major studios. Such nonmember companies are not bound by the association’s promise to keep ads away from television shows, magazines and Web sites for which 35 percent or more of the audience is under 17. But they do agree to use approved advertising materials for any film that is submitted to the group for rating. In the case of “Captivity,” the association had disapproved of the material and is now considering disciplinary measures.

“I’m very, very troubled by this particular case,” Dan Glickman, the trade group’s chief executive, said Thursday about the “Captivity” billboards. “I can tell you this issue will not go unnoticed.”

He added that complaint levels to the association about selling violence to youth “by and large have been very low.” Nonetheless, he said, the group has been fine-tuning its own standards, while exploring technology that will help it keep the young from being marketed to on the Internet.

Horror aficionados date the genre’s current flourishing to October 2004. The first of Lionsgate’s “Saw” movies, about a demonically inventive serial killer, opened to a surprisingly strong $18 million on its first weekend, though it lacked an expensive cast or a pedigreed filmmaker. Sequels, imitators and close cousins soon followed. Most of the major studios and some independents, notably Lionsgate, quickly ginned up cheap fright fare for release mainly in the first quarter of the year, then again in the fall, in the spaces between summer blockbusters and classier Oscar aspirants.

While generally careful to observe the letter of their agreement not to directly solicit the young in selling violent movies, some of Hollywood’s big studios have had close shaves with the rules of late. Fox Atomic, a division formed by Fox Searchlight to cultivate the late-teenage and early-adult audience, on March 6 placed an ad for its film “The Hills Have Eyes 2” with an evening showing of “Dodgeball,” rated PG-13, on FX.

The ad identified “Hills,” about National Guard trainees brutally murdered by mutants, as being not yet rated, though film association guidelines call for the disclosure of ratings in ads, and the company had accepted an R rating the day before. John Hegeman, Fox Atomic’s chief operating officer, said the R rating was missing because it takes about two days to alter a television spot.

“We are M.P.A.A. signatories, and we do follow their rules,” said Mr. Hegeman. He pointed out that “Dodgeball” on that evening attracted an audience about 71 percent of which was 18 and over.

Yet things become murkier when studios — which often attempt to block the underage from visiting their official sites for R-rated fare — deal with Bloody-disgusting.com, Arrow in the Head (joblo.com/arrow), Fangoria.com, or any of another dozen such Web sites. (Bloody-disgusting, for example, includes chat forums that address such questions as: “Can anyone suggest a good torture-esk movie?”) Hollywood companies commonly buy advertising on such sites. Perhaps more effectively, they also open the doors for set visits, early viewings, promotional contests and anything that will attract fans.

The operators of several such sites said they had no way of knowing how many of their visitors were under 17, but believed the numbers were substantial.

“The horror site skews a little more toward the younger ones,” said Berge Garabedian, founder of the Joblo.com film site and its associated Arrow in the Head horror section, which this week carried a banner ad for an unrated DVD of “Sublime,” about gruesome murder in a hospital, from Warner Home Video. Mr. Garabedian said he tried to block visitors under 15 from discussion boards in order to eliminate “a lot of MySpace craziness,” but thought a considerable share of his Arrow in the Head visitors to be in the 13-to-18-year-old age range. (A Warner representative said the studio believed fewer than 4 percent of the visitors to Joblo.com were teenagers, based on information provided by the agency that places it ads, but had no figures for the smaller Arrow in the Head site.)

Whether such underage visitors are actually seeing R-rated horror in theaters or on DVDs without a parent’s presence is unclear. Both film association and studio executives said they could not provide the number for young viewers for their films, an exercise that could be complicated by a tendency of underage respondents to misrepresent their ages in exit polls. But a study last fall by Experian Simmons Research found that 12 percent of respondents between the ages of 12 and 17 reported watching “Saw II” in theaters, while 12 percent said they had seen the film on DVD, and 26 percent reported viewing any horror in theaters.

In its 2004 report, the Federal Trade Commission said that in 36 percent of their attempts, its underage “mystery shoppers” were able to buy a movie ticket without an age check in theaters, down somewhat from about half in 2000. Meanwhile 81 percent of the young buyers obtained R-rated DVDs without a check.

Bracing for the next report, the National Association of Theater Owners last fall provided the commission with a detailed description of its efforts to keep the unaccompanied young out of violent fare. But at the same time, the theater owners strongly criticized the studios’ home entertainment divisions for promoting versions of some of the same movies on DVD as being unrated and uncensored.

According to Mr. Glickman, the number of such DVDs is small. “It’s obviously something we’re taking a look at, but in terms of its being a substantial problem, it’s not,” he said.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/24/movies/24horr.html?hp





The Tricky Task of Taking Science-Fiction Stories to the Screen: Not for the Faint of Heart
Don Kaye

When director Alfonso Cuarón was promoting his stunning, apocalyptic "Children of Men" late last year, he said in at least one interview that the movie was not science fiction, but a chase thriller with sociological overtones. Cuarón's position was similar to that of P.D. James, author of the novel on which the film was based. James, an esteemed mystery writer who made her first foray into writing about the future with her novel "The Children of Men," ruffled the feathers of other science-fiction writers by distancing herself from them. "P.D. James won few friends in the [sci-fi] community by whining about how her serious book wasn't science fiction, all the while rewriting an old Brian Aldiss novel, "Greybeard," says British author and film critic Kim Newman.

Why would both James, already a proven writer in another genre, and Cuarón, who previously dabbled in fantasy with "Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban," be so determined to separate their work from a field whose practitioners include literary luminaries such as Isaac Asimov, Arthur C. Clarke and Philip K. Dick, along with filmmakers such as Stanley Kubrick, Ridley Scott and Steven Spielberg? The answer seems to lie with the long, torturous road that science fiction has taken from the page to the screen, as well as the reputation that's been attached to the field since its earliest days.

Often derided as children's literature, early science fiction was filled with spaceships, alien invaders, ray guns and swashbuckling heroes. But there were real ideas in there, too, about mankind's place in the universe and the advancement of its technology. The "New Wave" of science fiction, brought to the forefront in the '60s by authors such as Harlan Ellison, Thomas Disch and Michael Moorcock, introduced even more provocative concepts and the "soft" sciences — sociology, psychology and anthropology, among others — to the genre's lexicon. While movies have struggled and sometimes succeeded in keeping up with the literature, the last two decades have seen "real" science-fiction cinema pushed almost to the fringes by space operas, video-game adaptations and comic-book franchises. Even movies based on written science fiction — most notably that of Philip K. Dick, who has probably been adapted more than any other sci-fi writer in the last 25 years — have fallen prey to marketing notions that action is more riveting to the modern moviegoer than ideas and imagination.

Two upcoming films based on classic literary sci-fi works don't hold out much hope for change. "The Last Mimzy," out on March 23, is based on "Mimsy Were the Borogroves" by the husband-and-wife team of Henry Kuttner and C.L. Moore (under the pseudonym Lewis Padgett). "Mimzy" takes the haunting original story — about two children who evolve quickly beyond their parents' understanding, with the help of toys from the future — into a heavy-handed and often insipid plea for understanding and family interaction. The story posited the ultimate parents' nightmare, in which they are no longer capable of communicating with or comprehending their kids, partly through their own lack of participation. The movie keeps the family united and also argues that "innocence" is a genetic trait that, hundreds of years from now, has been shut down — all we need to save the future Earth is a little girl's teardrop containing the crucial DNA.

The end of April will bring "Next," a Nicolas Cage vehicle based on a Philip K. Dick tale — yes, there he is again — called "The Golden Man." To be fair, we haven't seen the film yet, but judging by its trailer, "Next" already has at least one more explosion than the Dick story (which had none, although it did feature some ray guns) and follows the action-chase framework of "Total Recall" and "Paycheck," also adapted quite loosely from the writer. "Next" seems to have taken Dick's frightening idea of unexpected human mutation and stripped it down to a more prosaic melodrama incorporating one element of the story: a man who can see his own future. So much of Dick's work is mind-bending in the audacity and sweep of its ideas, but filmmakers have frequently been stumped when it comes to recreating that consciousness-expanding effect on-screen.

Who's to blame for all this? We'll point the finger at that famous punching bag of fan boys everywhere: George Lucas. When Lucas made "Star Wars" in 1977, he was paying tribute to a subgenre of science fiction that he loved dearly as a boy: the space opera. But although the breathless serial adventures of Flash Gordon and his ilk had their pleasures, they were often treated with tolerance, at best, by more serious science-fiction writers and readers. Nevertheless, the success of "Star Wars" changed the movie industry's perception of science fiction forever. As much as we love "Star Wars" for what it is, it nearly killed Hollywood's willingness to fund science-fiction movies that actually said something about the human condition.

After the serials of the '40s and the atomic monster movies of the '50s, science-fiction cinema seemed to grow up right alongside the literature itself in the '60s, culminating in the ultimate marriage of the two: "2001: A Space Odyssey." Director Stanley Kubrick went right to the source for his visionary classic, enlisting Arthur C. Clarke to write the screenplay with him and presenting perhaps the most serious, adult treatment of science-fiction themes to that date. Other literary adaptations followed. Kubrick did it again in 1971 with "A Clockwork Orange," while "Logan's Run," the remake of "Invasion of the Body Snatchers," "Soylent Green" and the cult favorite, "A Boy and His Dog," all brought real science-fiction novels or novellas to the screen with varying degrees of success. Even nonliterary offerings such as "Silent Running" and Lucas' own "THX 1138" made sobering statements. But "Star Wars" effectively ended all that, substituting space battles, nonstop special effects and simple good-versus-evil archetypes for the more complex shadings and themes that marked science fiction to that point.

In the following years, as many filmmakers tried to outdo "Star Wars" in terms of spectacle, more cerebral sci-fi outings fell by the wayside. They're considered classics now, but "Blade Runner" (from a Dick novel) and "The Thing" (less a remake of the 1951 original than a return to the original John W. Campbell Jr. story, "Who Goes There?") were box-office failures when first released. Despite the star power of Harrison Ford in the former and the shocking monster effects of the latter, both were bleak portrayals of dehumanization that couldn't compete that same year with the childlike innocence of Steven Spielberg's "E.T." With only a few exceptions, like 1980's "Altered States," 1984's "The Terminator" and the subversive films of David Cronenberg (whose "Scanners," "Videodrome" and inspired remake of "The Fly" were among the best sci-fi movies of the decade), the '80s were mostly dominated by "Star Wars," "Star Trek" and "Superman" installments. One major adaptation of a classic science-fiction novel, David Lynch's "Dune," was a colossal disaster.

The '90s saw an increased reliance on spectacle, bringing us the ultra violence of "Total Recall" (another attempt at Dick), the raised stakes of "Terminator 2" and Spielberg's childhood fantasy of "Jurassic Park." All these movies are superb roller-coaster rides in their own way, but they are remembered more for their dazzling effects or jaw-dropping action sequences than for their story lines. At the same time, the turn of the millennium upped the ante for comic-book heroes, bringing to the screen "X-Men," "Spider-Man," "Fantastic Four" and the regenerated "Batman" and "Superman" franchises, and investing what were essentially fantasies with the same big-budget technical gloss and action wizardry previously applied to "Terminator," "Star Wars" and all the rest. Science fiction ultimately became almost solely associated with the summer blockbusters designed to drive teens into theatres and sell never-ending streams of merchandise.

This brings us back to "Children of Men" and the quandary of author James and director Cuarón. Neither was interested in a story that could be used as an excuse to sell a Clive Owen action figure but, by going out of their way to avoid saying the name of their tale and "science fiction" in the same breath, they subtly insulted the honorable history of the genre. "The Last Mimzy," meanwhile, is being marketed as a children's film, while "Next" is simply the next Nicolas Cage orgy of destruction, with an ESP angle worked in. It's difficult to imagine how the rumored adaptations of Isaac Asimov's "Foundation" trilogy or Dan Simmons' masterful and intricate "Hyperion" books would fare when Richard Matheson's landmark novel, "I Am Legend," has been filmed (for the third time) as an action vehicle for Will Smith. It will probably remain as true to the source material as the actor's romp through Asimov's "I, Robot" in 2004.

As usual, some of the better science-fiction cinema has come from the indie field, with Darren Aronofsky's number theory creepfest "Pi" and the 2004 brain twister "Primer" being two examples. Aronofsky also came close to capturing some of the awe of both "2001" and written science fiction with last fall's "The Fountain." It may be up to director Danny Boyle — his "28 Days Later" helped recharge horror (another honorable genre now associated with pointless remakes and torture porn like the "Hostel" movies) — to give science fiction a similar jolt with "Sunshine," even though the movie was recently bumped from a March release all the way to "TBD 2007" (though it will release internationally earlier in the year). Could it turn out to be a Christmas gift for sci-fi fans craving the same sense of awe they get from their favorite authors? We wish we had a time machine so we could tell you.
http://movies.msn.com/movies/sci-fi?GT1=7701





Blu-Ray Aims to Oust DVDs Within Three Years
Lucas van Grinsven

The Blu-ray disc association said on Thursday it aimed to replace the DVD storage format within three years.

"Within three years it will just be Blu-ray," Frank Simonis, the Blu-ray Disc Association's European chairman, said at the CeBIT technology trade show.

Blu-ray, which offers five times more storage capacity than DVDs for storing high definition films and other content, will first have to beat the rival HD-DVD format which offers somewhat lower storage capacity but claims cheaper production of players, burners and discs.

Measured in the number of players, Blu-ray is already well ahead of HD DVD because Sony's PlayStation 3 (PS3) video games console comes with a built-in Blu-ray player.

Sony Computer Entertainment said it had sold 1.84 million PS3s by the end of December in Japan and North America and that one million PS3s are ready for launch next week in Europe.

The HD DVD camp conceded it is being outsold by Blu-ray because of PS3 by at least five to one, but it claims that sales of movie titles are still level. Film studio 20th Century Fox, which supports Blu-ray, said weekly Blu-ray film sales are actually three times higher than HD DVD.

A total of 5.2 million Blu-ray discs have already been sold, said Nick Sharples at Sony Computer Entertainment Europe. Hundreds of thousands of titles have been given away to consumers buying a PS3.

Europe Is Behind

Any difference between regional sales may be explained by the fact that European consumers cannot yet buy PS3s and there are only two Blu-ray players available, Simonis said.

"It's the launch of the hardware, pulling the software. That has yet to play out in Europe," said David Walstra, director of AV technology at Sony.

Sony reiterated its target to have sold six million PS3 game consoles by the end of the year.

Five out of eight major Hollywood studios support only Blu-ray. One studio, Universal, supports only HD DVD.

The HD DVD promotional group, in a separate presentation, said consumers should not only focus on the big blockbuster titles from Hollywood, but also those from regional film houses in Europe and Asia which would bring many titles to HD DVD because it was cheaper and simpler.

Toshiba and Microsoft, as the two main backers of HD DVD, support film studios and production houses to bring out their films on HD DVD, several studios said on Thursday.

Hollywood and electronics manufacturers hope new high-definition DVDs, with better picture quality and more capacity, will rejuvenate the slowing $24 billion home DVD market.

But the war between HD DVD and Blu-ray -- also supported by companies like Samsung, Philips, Matsushita, Apple, and Dell -- has curbed adoption.
http://www.reuters.com/article/enter...33248620070316





It’s a small world after all

Apple TV Has Landed
David Pogue

In the technology world, conventional wisdom says that we’ll soon be saying R.I.P. for the DVD. Internet downloads are the future, baby. No driving, no postpaid envelopes. Any movie, any TV show, any time.

Only one problem: once you’ve downloaded the shows to your computer, how do you play them on the TV?

Now, there are people — at least 12, for sure — who actually watch movies right on their computers, or who wire their PCs directly to their TV sets.

The rest of us, however, are overwhelmed by cultural inertia. Computers are for work, TVs are for vegging out, and that’s final.

No wonder, then, that when Apple announced Apple TV, a box that can connect computers and TVs without wires, the hype meter redlined with millions of search-engine citations, a run-up in the Apple stock price and drooling analysts.

After many delays, Apple TV finally went on sale yesterday for $300, but there are plenty of companies trying to solve what you might call the “last 50 feet” problem. A couple of prominent examples: In addition to its game-playing features, Microsoft’s Xbox 360 ($400) performs a similar PC-to-TV bridging function; in fact, it even has its own online movie store. Netgear’s week-old EVA8000 ($350) also joins PC and TV, but adds an Internet connection for viewing YouTube videos and listening to Internet radio.

And so Apple TV has landed. How does it stack up?

In looks, it sits at the top of the heap. Apple TV is a gorgeous, one-inch-tall, round-cornered square slab, 7.7 inches on a side. It slips silently and almost invisibly into your entertainment setup. (You can’t say that for the Xbox, which in comparison is huge and too noisy for a bedroom.)

The heartbreaker for millions, however, is that Apple TV requires a widescreen TV — preferably an HDTV. It doesn’t work with the squarish, traditional TVs that many people still have.

Apple defends its audience-limiting decision by saying that the future is HDTV; Apple is just “skating to where the puck is going to be,” as a product manager put it.

Apple TV doesn’t come with any cables. You’re supposed to supply the one your TV requires (HDMI, component video or HDMI-to-DVI adapter). They cost $20 at Apple’s online store.

So what is Apple TV? Basically, it’s an iPod for your TV. That is, it copies the iTunes library (music, podcasts, TV shows, movies) from one Mac or Windows PC on your wired or wireless home network to its 40-gigabyte hard drive and keeps the copy updated.

The drive holds about 50 hours’ worth of video or 9,000 songs; if your iTunes library is bigger than that, you can specify what subset you want copied — only unwatched TV episodes, for example.

At this point, you can play back videos, music and photos even if the original computer is turned off or (if it’s a laptop) carried away. (Photo playback requires iPhoto on the Mac, or Photoshop Album or Photoshop Elements on Windows.)

A tiny white remote control operates Apple TV’s stunning high-definition white-on-black menus, which are enlivened by high-resolution album covers and photos. You can see the effect at apple.com/appletv.

The integration of iPod, iTunes and Apple TV offers frequent payoffs. For example, if you paused your iPod partway through a movie, TV show or song, Apple TV remembers your place when you resume playing it on your TV. Cool.

Although only one computer’s files are actually copied to Apple TV, you can still play back the iTunes libraries of five other computers by streaming — playing them through Apple TV without copying them. Starting playback, rewinding and fast-forwarding isn’t as smooth this way, and photo playback isn’t available. But it’s a handy option when, say, you want to watch a movie on your TV from a visitor’s laptop.

All of this works elegantly and effortlessly. But there are lots of unanswered questions that make onlookers wonder if Apple has bigger plans for the humble Apple TV.

For example, it has an Internet connection and a hard drive; why can’t it record TV shows like a TiVo?

Furthermore, it’s a little weird that menus and photos appear in spectacular high-definition, but not TV shows and movies. All iTunes videos are in standard definition, and don’t look so hot on an HDTV.

And then there’s the mysterious unused U.S.B. port.

Still, if you stay within the Apple ecosystem — use its online store, its jukebox software and so on — you get a seamless, trouble-free experience, with a greater selection of TV shows and movies than you can find from any other online store.

But in Netgear’s opinion, that approach is dictatorial and limiting. Its new EVA8000 box plays back many more video formats, including high-def video; can play the contents of any folders on your Mac or PC, not just what’s in iTunes; offers Internet radio and YouTube videos; and works with any kind of TV. It can even play copy-protected music — remarkably, even songs from the iTunes store (Windows only).

Unfortunately, this machine (2 by 17 by 10 inches) is as ugly as Apple’s is pretty. Its menus look as if they were typed in 12-point Helvetica. The software is geeky and unpolished; for example, during the setup process, it says “Failed to detect network” if no Ethernet cable is plugged in, rather than automatically looking for a wireless network.

The Netgear model is also filled with Version 1.0 bugs, including overprinted, blotchy menu screens and incompatibility with Windows Vista. Netgear promises to fix the glitches, but concedes that it timed the EVA8000’s release to ride the wave of Apple TV hype.

The two-year-old Xbox 360 is far more polished. Like Apple TV, it can either stream photos, music and videos (Windows PCs or, with a $20 shareware program, even Macs) or play them off its hard drive.

What’s different, though, is that you can’t copy files to this hard drive over the network; you can download shows and movies only straight to the Xbox from Microsoft’s own fledgling online store. You can buy TV shows for $2 each ($3 in high definition), or rent movies for $4 ($6 for high def). Microsoft movies self-destruct 24 hours after you start watching them. (Apple movies cost full DVD price, but at least you can keep them forever.)

Note, too, that the Xbox’s primary mission — playing games — doesn’t always suit music and movie playback. It can’t get onto a wireless network without an add-on transmitter ($100 — yikes). You can’t control the speed of a slide show or fast-forward through a song.

And in general, the included game controller makes a lousy remote control. There are no dedicated buttons for controlling playback; instead, you have to walk through the buttons on an on-screen control bar to reach, say, the pause function.

And alas, these products can require a journey through the hell of home networking. The Xbox couldn’t get online at first, thanks to an “MTU failure.” A Microsoft techie in India named “Mike” claimed that my cable-modem company would have to make a change in my service. (He was wrong; a router setting had to be changed instead.)

When the Netgear EVA8000 couldn’t get on the network, I waited 30 minutes to speak to a technician, who announced that I’d shortly get a call back from a senior tech. Five days later, I’m still waiting. (The solution was to uninstall — not just turn off — Microsoft’s OneCare security suite.)

In the end, these early attempts to bridge the gulf between computer and TV perfectly reinforce the conventional wisdom about Apple: Apple TV offers a gracious, delightful experience — but requires fidelity to Apple’s walled garden.

Its rivals, meanwhile, offer many more features, but they’re piled into bulkier boxes with much less concern for refinement, logic or simplicity.

Put another way, these machines aren’t direct competitors at all; they’re aimed at different kinds of people. Microsoft’s young male gamers probably couldn’t care less that they can’t change the slide-show speed, and Netgear’s box “is for people who are more experienced,” according to a representative. “This is not for the random person.”

Apple, on the other hand, is going for everybody else, random people included (at least those with HDTV sets). And that, perhaps, is Apple TV’s real significance. To paraphrase the old Macintosh advertisement, it’s a computer-to-TV bridge for the rest of us.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/22/te...2pogue.html?hp





Apple TV does not Require Widescreen TV or HDTV, Works with Standard TVs

"Today our Apple TVs have finally arrived and I've been testing them out," Paul Kafasis blogs for Rogue Amoeba.

Kafasis discusses some Apple TV surprises and his impressions:

• The AppleTV doesn't ship with any connection cables

• The AppleTV doesn't require a "Widescreen TV" or an HDTV: Let's dispense with one myth right now - the AppleTV does not need a widescreen TV. AppleTV does have a 480i mode, which works with standard-def TVs. My guess is that Apple would rather lose a few customers than confuse everyone. Only standard-def TVs made in the past few years will have component inputs, so most of the fifty years worth of standard-def TVs out there still won't work with the AppleTV. By referring to Widescreen TVs, they may prevent people with standard-def TVs from buying only to find out they need a new TV. But if you've purchased a new, non-HDTV in the past few years, the AppleTV will work for you (provided you have component input jacks).

• The AppleTV works pretty well with your music library

• If iTunes can play it, AppleTV might be able. Or maybe not: Certainly, AppleTV can play any audio or video you purchase from the iTunes Store. However, iTunes uses QuickTime for playback of videos, while AppleTV does not. If you try and sync unsupported video content from iTunes to AppleTV, the files won't sync over.

• Video playback, including streaming, works well
http://macdailynews.com/index.php/we...omments/13062/





Let the modding begin

We Just Got Xvid Working on the Apple TV
Akward

Hey, Sabretooth and I just officially got xvid/everything else supported by Perian working on the Apple TV.

I promise you this image is legit and this is an episode of Lost encoded in Xvid (FAKE FAKE RAHGHG FAKE):

We're doing a writeup, but the short of it is...

1. Open it up (4 screws on the bottom, small Torx bit)
2. Put the 2.5" drive into a USB enclosure or whatever you want
3. Mount the HFS filesystem
4. Install Perian in /Library/Quicktime (as you normally would)
5. Install Dropbear (or enable SSH if you know how... we gave up and used Dropbear)
6. Add a startup script to disable the firewall or open up the ports you need for SSH
7. Put the drive back in and boot it, ssh login as frontrow, password frontrow (or add an ssh key for yourself)
8. Use a reference movie (use QT Pro to save a reference movie) to bootstrap your xvid file

voila

Should see a writeup later today.

Edit: digg article is here apparently : http://digg.com/apple/XviD_fully_functional_on_Apple_TV


UPDATE
kextstat and ps aux on page 3
So has anyone busted out their drive yet? I want to make sure someone else can keep responding to questions here. I'd give you ssh access to ours but it's behind a big fancy VPN.

We got SSH up by adding a startup script to disable the firewall and start dropbear:

code:

bash-2.05b# cat /System/Library/StartupItems/fw/StartupParameters.plist
{
Description = "Firewall";
Provides = ("Firewall");
Requires = ("Network");
OrderPreference = "None";
}

code:

bash-2.05b# cat /System/Library/StartupItems/fw/fw
#!/bin/sh

/sbin/ipfw -f flush
/sbin/ipfw add 65535 allow ip from any to any

/sbin/dropbearkey -t rsa -f /etc/dropbear_rsa_host_key
/sbin/dropbear -r /etc/dropbear_rsa_host_key -p 22222

Note that the firewall is wide open now so be careful

Also the dropbearkey part is only necessary once to generate the key, so you can delete that after the system has rebooted once.

To get dropbear go here: http://matt.ucc.asn.au/dropbear/dropbear.html
Compile it on an x86 machine (I used my Macbook Pro) and just transfer those binaries over to the HD yourself using a USB enclosure or whatever you have that can interface with a 2.5" PATA drive.

It is likely you can get the system's built-in SSH working correctly. We were in a hurry, and after running into a kink we were like "gently caress it" and threw dropbear up because it was a pretty instant win.

To ssh in you use: ssh -p 22222 frontrow@1.2.3.4
To scp stuff to it use: scp -P 22222 /path/to/localfile frontrow@1.2.3.4:/path/to/senditto

I know this is still a pretty ugly list of steps, and if you're confused just wait until everything gets a bit more streamlined. I just want to get more hacker folks involved so work can continue as fast as possible.
http://forums.somethingawful.com/sho...readid=2391956





Viacom’s Full-Court Press for Online Ads
Louise Story

Justin Timberlake did not attend Nickelodeon’s annual advertising presentation this month, but one of Viacom’s own ad sales executives, Jim Tricarico, took the stage to perform a rendition of the singer’s “SexyBack.”

“Nicktropolis, Nick at Nite, cool Web sites,” he rapped to advertising executives gathered at the Nokia Theater in Times Square. “Come to the Nick and get your sales on.”

Nickelodeon was the first of many television networks that will be rapping about their digital assets this spring as ad executives determine how to spend their clients’ money at the annual advertising previews, known in the trade as the upfronts.

Video advertising, while less than 5 percent of online spending, is the fastest-growing advertising category online, generating $410 million last year, an increase of 82 percent from 2005, according to eMarketer, an online advertising research firm.

While all television networks have seized upon online video, few invested more aggressively than Nickelodeon’s parent company, Viacom. MTV Networks — the division of Viacom that oversees 28 networks in the United States including MTV, Comedy Central, Nickelodeon, Spike and Country Music Television — manages 44 domestic Web sites and was among the first to put video from its TV shows online, posting MTV video in 1994.

And Viacom has been aggressive in different ways. Last week, the company sued Google, asking for more than $1 billion in compensation for its clips from shows that have been uploaded by users to its YouTube site. Other networks have negotiated deals with YouTube privately while Viacom executives have openly criticized the video site when Viacom owned-shows like “The Colbert Report” appeared there.

“Every day we have to scour the entirety of what is available on YouTube, so we have to look for our stuff,” Philippe P. Dauman, Viacom’s chief executive, said last week. “It is very difficult for us and places an enormous burden on us.”

Other major media companies have accused YouTube of copyright infringement, but Viacom’s lawsuit underscores its particular vulnerability in the face of the popularity of video site.

First, Viacom has been adamant about maintaining its own relationship with advertisers, in part because it is trying to sell ads across platforms, using the popularity of its Web properties to bolster its television ad revenue. That is leverage the company would lose if it cannot draw enough viewers to its own Web properties.

According to Hank Close, executive vice president for ad sales at MTV Networks, advertisers will get a spot online at events like the “Kids Choice” awards program on Nickelodeon and the MTV Music Awards show only if they agree to buy commercials on the television broadcast, as well.

“These are exclusive properties, and you’re not going to get into them unless you do television too,” Mr. Close said. “We’ve got the ability to connect with consumers and move with them from screen to screen.”

Viacom also has a enormous amount of content aimed at younger viewers, the kind most likely to click on YouTube or other sites. More than 80 percent of Nickelodeon’s and MTV’s audiences are under 34, as is 57 percent of Comedy Central’s, according to Nielsen. (Viacom says that clips of its programs have been viewed more than 1.5 billion times on YouTube.)

Advertisers like Internet commercials linked to online video because it allows them to communicate their brand messages with sight, sound and motion. And Web sites like video ads because they are paid more for each viewer than they typically would be with simple text or banner ads.

Google, thanks to YouTube, remains the colossus of online video, with 1.167 billion videos streamed for viewing in January by 54.7 million people, according to data from comScore to be released publicly this week. By comparison, Viacom Digital had less than a quarter of the streamed videos — 264 million — and just over a third the number of people, or 18.9 million, making it the fifth most popular online video company in terms of video streams.

Nickelodeon, MTV and VH1 sites account for more than 70 percent of those streams. A user-generated video site that Viacom acquired last year, iFilm, represents about 15 percent of the streams and Comedy Central about 1 percent, comScore figures show. (MTV Networks says comScore Media Metrix does not capture video viewing on some of its sites.)

To close the gap with Google, MTV Networks last year hired several new executives who had digital expertise. Mika Salmi, now head of the networks’ digital media, had been chief executive of Atom Entertainment, which Viacom acquired in August. Nada Stirratt, the networks’ executive vice president for digital ad sales, was hired from Advertising.com, a large third-party ad server.

And Adam Cahan, formerly a member of Google’s strategy team, was named executive vice president for strategy and business of MTV Networks. While television also falls under his authority, video distribution online is a large part of Mr. Cahan’s focus. That has brought him into competition with his former employer.

In the last year, Viacom spent about $1 billion buying Web sites specializing in games, user-generated content and other entertainment likely to be popular with its young audiences.

Nickelodeon, in particular, has been expanding. In the fall, it acquired AddictingGames.com. Last month, the network created Nicktropolis, a virtual site like Second Life where young users can interact online. It recently introduced MeTV, a site where viewers post their own video creations, and some of those videos are later shown on television. And Neopets, the network’s virtual pet site, is moving into mobile phone offerings. Nickelodeon executives said they have learned how to reach younger viewers on multiple screens at all times of the day.

“Kids are now in the driver’s seat,” said Jim Perry, executive vice president for MTV Networks’ Kids and Family ad sales, “determining when and how they want to interact with us.”

Viacom is not entirely opposed to sharing its content with others, if paid for it. Last month, the company said it would allow Joost, an online video site now being developed, to show some of its clips. And in the fall, MTV Networks participated in a video distribution test of Google’s AdSense program, which distributes video to thousands of sites, sharing the revenue with the media companies.

But in contrast to other companies like Condé Nast, which allowed Google to sell the ads that accompanied their videos, MTV Networks insisted on selling theirs.

“From a strategic perspective we deeply value our relationships with our advertisers,” Mr. Cahan said in discussing the AdSense test. “It’s very important that we maintain those relationships, regardless of platform.”

At last year’s upfronts, Viacom executives talked at length about the digital space at MTV Networks’ presentation at Madison Square Garden, where the lobby was filled with an array of computers, iPods and other devices displaying the company’s Web content. The approach seemed to work. MTV Networks landed a deal with OMD, an ad-buying unit of the Omnicom Group, that bundled $300 million worth of digital and television ad sales.

But the emphasis by Viacom and other networks on digital media caused confusion at many agencies. Ad buyers traditionally purchase only one medium, and many large advertisers hire separate agencies to handle their digital and television ads, so many television buyers were unsure if they could purchase online video ads. In the last six months, several large agencies have responded by consolidating all video ad buying, including television and Internet, under one person.

Other media companies have been making similar changes, signaling a sea change in the ad-selling business, as well. Last month, for example, NBC placed all ad sales, including television, under its digital chief, Beth Comstock.

“The networks are putting their stakes in the ground to grow that side of the business so they don’t lose it,” said Jason Maltby, president and co-executive director for national broadcast at MindShare North America, a WPP Group unit that buys ads.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/19/bu.../19viacom.html





Make Way for Copyright Chaos
Lawrence Lessig

Berlin

LAST week, Viacom asked a federal court to order the video-sharing service YouTube to pay it more than $1 billion in damages for some 150,000 videos that Viacom claims it owns and YouTube users have shared. “YouTube,” the complaint alleges, “has harnessed technology to willfully infringe copyrights on a huge scale,” threatening not just Viacom, but “the economic underpinnings of one of the most important sectors of the United States economy.”

Yet as federal courts get started on this multiyear litigation about the legality of a business model, we should not forget one prominent actor in this drama largely responsible for the eagerness with which business disputes get thrown to the courts: the Supreme Court.

For most of the history of copyright law, it was Congress that was at the center of copyright policy making. As the Supreme Court explained in its 1984 Sony Betamax decision, the Constitution makes plain that “it is Congress that has been assigned the task of defining the scope of the limited monopoly,” or copyright. It has thus been “Congress that has fashioned the new rules that new technology made necessary.” The court explained that “sound policy, as well as history, supports our consistent deference to Congress when major technological innovations alter the market for copyrighted materials.” In the view of the court in Sony, if you don’t like how new technologies affect copyright, take your problem to Congress.

The court reaffirmed this principle of deference in 2003, even when the question at stake was a constitutional challenge to Congress’s extension of copyright by 20 years. Challenges are evaluated “against the backdrop of Congress’s previous exercises of its authority under the Copyright Clause” of the Constitution, it wrote. Congress’s practice — not simply the Constitution’s text, or its original understanding — thus determined the Constitution’s meaning.

These cases together signaled a very strong and sensible policy: The complex balance of interests within any copyright statute are best struck by Congress.

But 20 months ago, the Supreme Court reversed this wise policy of deference. Drawing upon common law-like power, the court expanded the Copyright Act in the Grokster case to cover a form of liability it had never before recognized in the context of copyright — the wrong of providing technology that induces copyright infringement. It announced this new form of liability even though at precisely the same time Congress was holding hearings about whether to amend the Copyright Act to create the same liability.

The Grokster case thus sent a clear message to lawyers everywhere: You get two bites at the copyright policy-making apple, one in Congress and one in the courts. But in Congress, you need hundreds of votes. In the courts, you need just five.

Viacom has now accepted this invitation from the Supreme Court. The core of its case centers on the “safe harbor” provision of the 1998 Digital Millennium Copyright Act. The provision, a compromise among a wide range of interests, was intended to protect copyright owners while making it possible for Internet businesses to avoid crippling copyright liability. As applied to YouTube, the provision immunizes the company from liability for material posted by its users, so long as it takes steps to remove infringing material soon after it is notified by the copyright owner.

The content industry was a big supporter of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act in 1998. Viacom is apparently less of a supporter today. It complains that YouTube has not done enough “to take reasonable precautions to deter the rampant infringement on its site.” Instead, the Viacom argument goes, YouTube has shifted the burden of monitoring that infringement onto the victim of that infringement — namely, Viacom.

But it wasn’t YouTube that engineered this shift. It was the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. As the statute plainly states, a provider (like YouTube) need not monitor its service or affirmatively seek facts indicating infringing activity. That burden, instead, rests on the copyright owner. In exchange, the law gives the copyright owner the benefit of an expedited procedure to identify and remove infringing material from a Web site. The provision was thus a deal, created to balance conflicting interests in light of the technology of the time.

Whether or not that balance made sense in 1998, Viacom believes it no longer makes sense today. Long ago, Justice Hugo Black argued that it was not up to the Supreme Court to keep the Constitution “in tune with the times.” And it is here that the cupidity of the court begins to matter. For by setting the precedent that the court is as entitled to keep the Copyright Act “in tune with the times” as Congress, it has created an incentive for companies like Viacom, no longer satisfied with a statute, to turn to the courts to get the law updated. Congress, of course, is perfectly capable of changing or removing the safe harbor provision to meet Viacom’s liking. But Viacom recognizes there’s no political support for the change it wants. It thus turns to a policy maker that doesn’t need political support — the Supreme Court.

The conservatives on the Supreme Court have long warned about just this dynamic. And while I remain a skeptic about deferring to Congress on constitutional matters, this case is a powerful lesson about the costs of judicial policy making in an area as complex as copyright. The Internet will now face years of uncertainty before this fundamental question about the meaning of a decade-old legislative deal gets resolved.

No doubt the justices are clever, maybe even more clever than Congress. But however clever, it’s hard to believe that their input is worth the millions in economic value that will be wasted long before they announce their decision.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/18/opinion/18lessig.html





How Viacom Could Really Protect its Content

The battle between Viacom and Google demonstrates the fundamental divide between media and tech companies. But there is a way Viacom could achieve many of its goals, says Fortune's David Kirkpatrick.
David Kirkpatrick

In the epic philosophical and financial battle between West Coast and East Coast, between software and old media, the East this week fired perhaps its biggest gun so far. Viacom filed a $1 billion-plus lawsuit against Google's YouTube, asserting "massive copyright infringement" as a result of YouTube airing hundreds of thousands of video clips taken from Viacom television programs like The Daily Show and South Park.

Make no mistake, this really is a war between two fundamentally different points of view about what is happening on the Internet, and what should happen. One side wants to create software that enables people and companies of all sizes and importance to communicate and gain power, and the other side wants to retain control of content they've spent a lot of money to create.

Philippe Dauman, CEO of Viacom, puts it this way in an interview: "This is the first time in my experience of a couple decades that I've seen a significant consumer media company not feel they have to obtain rights before they utilize content." Unlike me, he sees Google as a comparable media company simply not abiding by the rules of the game.

By contrast, listen to Glenn Brown, product counsel for Google (Charts): "We're excited to keep giving creative people of all kinds - from your local hobbyist videographer to big professional media companies like the BBC - the ability to host their content. We're still full speed ahead." Google sees its role as one of empowerment.

YouTube rivals: Thanks, Viacom!

In legal terms the suit relies on the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) of 1998, which made it illegal to deploy technology intended to circumvent legitimate copyrights. But the law included a so-called "safe harbor" provision, which indemnified some kinds of Internet companies if they could show they didn't know what content users were using their services to distribute, and if they immediately blocked or removed such content when a copyright holder informed them it was there.

The resolution of this lawsuit, if it comes to trial, will hinge on whether or not the safe harbor provision of DMCA applies or not. Google believes it does. Viacom insists it does not. Says Viacom corporate communications chief Carl Folta, "We think that's for dumb pipes, belonging to service providers who really have no idea what's flowing through their channels. Google is an active participant with its users."

Google lawyer Brown, by contrast, celebrates DMCA as a "forward-thinking law" which "has really enabled all the interesting innovations we've seen on the Internet in the last few years, down to your personal blogging software and software that allows you to put your personal photos online."

There is no right or wrong answer for those of us who are observing from the sidelines. Of course I want Viacom to keep paying people like Jon Stewart to create great content. When I watch TV it is more often tuned to Viacom channels than any other. Viacom needs a fair return on its investment.

But Google rightly sees itself as leading a revolution in simplifying and making it less expensive to communicate and to get access to information and entertainment. Who among us can't say we've benefited from that, probably daily?

If we didn't have amazingly ambitious software companies like YouTube and Google pushing forward, we wouldn't have access to all the fabulously useful content that has been created by individuals and smaller less well-financed companies than Viacom. The giant media companies, before the Internet revolutionaries came along, weren't about to create software for blogging, or to make it easy to host your own video, or any of hundreds of other new ways for individuals to express themselves, and gain audiences.

If the law is to be tested, these are the right two companies to get into the ring. Each represents the contemporary pinnacle of a certain type of innovation. For Google it's centered around software. But Viacom's Folta makes a fair point: "We're the masters of the short attention span, among content producers. Our content resonates more than that from any other company on places like YouTube."

Viacom also, among major media companies, is among the most aggressive in attempting, belatedly but purposefully, to mimic the innovations of Silicon Valley. For example, about a month ago it launched its own three-dimensional virtual world for children, called Nicktropolis. It's already got a million registered users. Dauman is convinced that the company can draw consumers to use its products legally and in a way that will be profitable if Viacom offers them well-designed, easy-to-use services of its own.
Viacom sues 'GooTube' for $1 billion

In this, more than in the lawsuit, he is addressing the fundamental problem. Consumers are the ones putting up illegal Viacom content on YouTube. They like the ability to do things like that. If, because of Viacom's lawsuit or other constraints put on companies like Google, it becomes hard, they will find other ways and other places to do what they want.

I'm a technological determinist. If technology makes it possible, people will do it. As processing power and bandwidth get cheaper, and the design of Web sites and computers get better and better, it becomes trivially easy to do whatever you want with any kind of digital content.

In the end, no legal battle will stop the kind of infringement of its copyrights that Viacom hates. Only a change in consumer ethos could do that. Such a wholesale ethical revival is unlikely. For all the record companies' efforts in shutting down Napster, Kazaa, and other music-sharing sites, illegal downloads continue in huge numbers.

Some people, in the end, did stop downloading free music, but it wasn't because of the record company lawsuits, for the most part. It was because Apple (Charts) created a convenient and affordable way to get music legally, called iTunes. To achieve a similar result here, Viacom needs to continue making MTV.com and Comedycentral.com and all its other properties better and better, which it seems committed to doing.

That, not a lawsuit, is what will most powerfully slow down the erosion of Viacom's control.
http://money.cnn.com/2007/03/15/tech...tune/index.htm





Infringing Videos On iFilm Could Cause Problems for Viacom
Eric Bangeman

Even as Viacom sues YouTube for what it describes as "brazen" copyright infringement, some of Viacom's own dirty copyright laundry is being aired. Ars searched one Viacom property—iFilm, which was acquired by Viacom in 2005—and found several instances of infringing video hosted by iFilm—content for which Viacom does not own the copyright.

In its complaint against YouTube, Viacom bemoans the fact that it is required to file DMCA takedown notices for each copyrighted clip it spots on YouTube. With over 150,000 infringing clips of Viacom properties identified so far, the company believes that YouTube should be working harder to proactively identify and remove infringing videos.

Does Viacom hold its own properties to the same standard? We contacted both Viacom corporate and iFilm to ask them if they took steps to proactively identify and remove infringing videos or if they relied on copyright holders to notify them of infringing content. Some time after publication, Viacom responded with the following statement: "Contributions to iFilm are all screened by iFilm employees prior to posting, to ensure that copyrighted, pornographic or other restricted content is not posted to the site." A search using the term "NBA Brawl," however, returns a number of clips of televised footage of both NBA and college football fights and it is not clear that Viacom owns the copyrights on those clips. In fact, it looks a lot like what one would find on YouTube.

I talked to Greg Gabriel, a copyright attorney at Kinsella Wietzman Iser Kump & Aldisert, about the issue. He told me that if Viacom isn't willing to take the same steps with iFilm that it wants YouTube to take with copyrighted content, Viacom may have a harder time making its case before the judge presiding over the case.

"It would have some persuasive value with a judge if YouTube says 'look, they're ranting and raving about all this infringement occurring on my site and they're not doing anything about it themselves,'" said Gabriel. "YouTube is testing the limits of the DMCA and Viacom is asking them to do something that the letter of the law does not require. Viacom is really asking the judge to do something extraordinary here."

As written, the DMCA does not require any type of active monitoring on the part of site owners. What Viacom wants is for the judge to "make a new interpretation of the law," as Gabriel describes it. The problem that Viacom will have in making its argument is that there's no precedent for the judge to draw upon. As a result, "Viacom's own conduct with iFilm will likely be a factor that the judge looks at," said Gabriel.
Following in the RIAA's footsteps?

Some analysts have raised the prospect of a widespread legal attack on the part of Viacom against those who upload copyrighted materials. Under the DMCA, YouTube must produce all identifying information about a user if they are presented with a subpoena. It has happened before: in January, YouTube was forced to give Fox all the information it had on users who had uploaded entire episodes of The Simpsons and 24. Last year, the video-sharing site turned over data to Paramount in another infringement case.

Viacom could hit YouTube with a blizzard of subpoenas and then use the information received (e.g., e-mail address, IP address) to in turn go after ISPs to discover the identities of those who have uploaded copyrighted content and file infringement suits against them. It's not outside the realm of possibility, but it's extremely unlikely.

No matter where one's own opinions lie about the legality and morality of file-sharing, almost all observers agree that the RIAA's jihad against individual file-sharers has been nothing short of a public relations nightmare. Although Viacom has demonstrated that it is willing to go beyond saber-rattling and take on another huge company in court, it's very doubtful that it will have the stomach for a large-scale battle against its fans—even if it would provide lots of fodder for The Colbert Report.
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post...or-viacom.html





Viacom Sued Over YouTube Parody Removal

Activist groups sued Viacom Inc. on Thursday, claiming the parent of Comedy Central improperly asked the video-sharing site YouTube to remove a parody of the cable network's ''The Colbert Report.''

Viacom responded by saying it had no records of ever making such a request.

Although the video in question contained clips taken from the television show, MoveOn.org Civic Action and Brave New Films LLC argued that their use was protected under ''fair use'' provisions of copyright law.

With Viacom identified by YouTube as the source of the removal request, they said Viacom should have known the use was legal and thus its complaint to YouTube to have the video blocked amounted to a ''misrepresentation'' that is subject to damages under the 1998 Digital Millennium Copyright Act.

The challenge, filed in U.S. District Court in San Francisco, came about a week after Viacom filed its own, $1 billion lawsuit against YouTube, claiming that the wildly popular Web site is rife with copyrighted video from Viacom shows, including ''The Colbert Report.''

Neither YouTube nor its parent, Google Inc., was named in the latest lawsuit, filed on the plaintiffs' behalf by the Electronic Frontier Foundation and Stanford Law School's Center for Internet and Society.

Viacom termed the lawsuit a waste of scarce judicial resources and said the plaintiffs should have checked first with the company.

In a letter to the plaintiffs' lawyers, Michael D. Fricklas, general counsel for Viacom, said the company had no record of sending YouTube a complaint, despite YouTube's identification of Viacom as the source. YouTube had no comment about the discrepancy.
After reviewing the clip, Fricklas said, ''I can inform you that Viacom has no problem with your client's continued use of it on its website or on YouTube.''

Corynne McSherry, a staff attorney with the EFF, said the organization had checked directly with YouTube staff to confirm Viacom's role and would investigate further with YouTube.

''We're happy they don't have a problem with our clip, ... but at this point it is still our understanding that they sent a takedown notice based on it,'' she said. ''As far as we're concerned we still have a lawsuit pending.''

Under the DMCA, YouTube and other service providers are generally immune from copyright lawsuits as long as they promptly respond to copyright complaints, known as takedown notices. According to the lawsuit, a takedown notice was sent to YouTube last week, and the video was blocked almost immediately.

Service providers are not required to investigate claims under the DMCA and in fact could lose their immunity if they take too long to respond. The law does give users the right to sue the issuer of the takedown request when it contains misrepresentations that an item is infringing. Such lawsuits are rare, though.

''People just shoot off a takedown notice without really giving a second thought to the material being taken down and whether it's really proper to be taken down,'' McSherry said. ''A lot of people cave in because they don't realize they can push back or they can't afford to push back.''

The lawsuit seeks unspecified legal costs and damages on grounds the plaintiffs' free-speech rights were harmed.

''With this lawsuit, we are making clear that corporations like Viacom must not be allowed to muzzle independent video creators and censor their free speech,'' said Eli Pariser, MoveOn's executive director.

The parody ''Stop the Falsiness,'' a play on host Stephen Colbert's use of the term ''truthiness,'' was jointly produced by MoveOn and Brave New Films, an activist production company that has made documentaries on the Iraq war, Wal-Mart and the Fox News Channel.
http://www.tech2.com/india/news/webs...removal/4839/0





Maybe Google Wanted to be Sued: YouTube and Plan B

No matter how you spun it, a lawsuit was waiting to pounce on YouTube. And when the lawsuit came, it would be from multi-billion dollar media conglomerates. Worst of all, people feared it will trigger a landslide of more lawsuits. And even still, Google bought YouTube. And now the billion dollar war has begun.

And I wondered: Maybe Google actually wanted to be sued.

Backroom Discussions

First of all, in a perfect world, no, Google wouldn’t want this. And Google, hoping that the world is close enough to perfect, did buy YouTube. But somewhere during discussions, someone must have asked, “How is this different from Morpheus and Kazaa? Won’t we be sued into oblivion?”

The smart lawyers at Google probably mentioned something about the DMCA, but honestly, would you want to buy a company that would be hated, constantly, by the very people who own the content that keeps you afloat? Or better, how will such a site remain #1 if there is a unified effort by content owners to either displace or destroy you? Most of all, media companies, who have significant clout and money, wouldn’t let YouTube host their content for free without a fight. There was more to this purchase than meets the eye.

No matter how you look at it, the purchase came with a lot of legal risk. I believe nobody at Google is surprised that Viacom is suing and wants $1 billion, A.K.A. most of the sum Google paid for YouTube. This is all part of the expected road map in owning YouTube.

So plan A was to hope people would be nice and look the other way. That worked for a year so far, and Google hoped it would continue. Plan B was to get sued.

This isn’t any ordinary “get sued and win” plan. Waiting to get sued so you can win in court is a defensive move for most companies. But for Google, this is preemptive. This is about Google defending YouTube instead of YouTube defending YouTube.

Why Getting Sued is a Preemptive Strategy

Let’s pretend that YouTube was not bought out because talks got delayed. Then realize that it would have probably been sued a lot sooner by a lot more people. Investors would flee and nobody would want the company now. If YouTube goes broke, that would have likely pushed Myspace Video to #1, giving Interactive Corp a huge edge since it happens to own Fox Entertainment. Myspace Video would become whatever was in the best interest of Big Media. Probably a DRM infested piece of crap that sued its users for uploading copyrighted material.

On the other hand, if YouTube didn’t go broke and fought the lawsuits, imagine if they had lost. Myspace Video gets to keep whatever edge it has, but virtually every other video site on the Internet becomes illegal overnight. Thousands of user records and IP addresses would get subpoenaed, and video sharing dies in one fell swoop.

Why Does Video Sharing Matter to Google?

What’s the next big thing on the net? Video. Google cares what happens in video sharing because it wants a slice of the video ad market. It doesn’t want to just be in the market, it wants to own it like it owns text ads. But that’s not the whole answer.

Google bought YouTube because it wanted to make sure of three things:

1. Google has first dibs for video ads on the biggest video site on the Internet
2. YouTube remains legal
3. Expand and protect current fair use related provisions involving copying intellectual property

The first point is obvious, and the second point feeds into point #1.

But the third point is the most important for Google. If YouTube were to lose a lawsuit for hosting intellectual property, it would severely weaken Google’s position in a variety of current and future endeavors. Any aspirations Google has of some day crawling and indexing video content (nope, they don’t have this technology yet) would now be in a legal limbo. It would also potentially re-introduce new arguments against their Google Image Search. And their book search program might suffer a similar fate once the YouTube precedent settles in. Google, being a company that spiders and indexes (stores) massive amounts of copyrighted information, would now be in serious legal jeopardy.

YouTube is Google’s Future

Thus, Google not only threw money at YouTube: it threw its lawyers at YouTube too. Google’s lawyers are some of the most well-versed copyright lawyers in the world since so many of their lawsuits deal with that issue.

The goal here is simple. Google wants to own the #1 video sharing site (completely legal), own 100% of the ads on that site, and clarify many currently-ambiguous copyright issues in their favor. If all of that goes as planned, the $1.5 billion paid to YouTube was a small price to pay. But if they had never gotten involved, the potential losses were far greater than a billion or two. Since Google has a market capitalization of over $130 billion, even a dip of 1% means losses of over $1 billion. But if entire sections of their business model became legally uncertain, you can bet they’d lose a lot more than 1%, especially with their insanely high P/E ratio (the ratio between how much they make and what their stock is worth).

By fighting a lawsuit, Google gets to prove the legitimacy of Internet video distribution - something that will probably never flourish under the “old media” regime. Unfortunately for them, the DMCA protects site owners from liability of what its users do — or at least that’s the general interpretation. Letting YouTube fight this battle alone with their own lawyers might have resulted in a very public and unnecessary loss that would have crippled Google’s video ambitions and possibly caused collateral damage to a bunch of related industries (especially search). This would have forced everybody to play by the conglomerates’ rules, and taken anyway any guarantee of Google getting any cut of the video ad pie. Video sharing needs this clarification before it can move forward. And if Google legitimizes it, they will have the biggest video site on the web for their video ads to play.

So let’s ask ourselves again: would Google pay $1.5 billion so it can fight the lawsuit on behalf of YouTube? Now that I think about it, it seems like a wise long term move.
http://duggmirror.com/tech_news/Why_...be_to_be_Sued/





News Corp. and NBC Announce Partnership to Create YouTube Competitor
Jacqui Cheng

News Corp. and NBC have announced a deal to create a new video distribution site, dubbed the "YouTube killer" by many. The companies have also formed partnerships with a number of big players, including Yahoo!, Microsoft, and Time Warner/AOL to supply content and provide distribution channels. The service, which currently does not have a name, will launch this summer with a number of TV shows and movie content.

The full list of TV shows that will be available at launch, according to News Corp., will include Heroes, 24, House, My Name Is Earl, Saturday Night Live, Friday Night Lights, The Riches, 30 Rock, The Simpsons, The Tonight Show, Prison Break, Are You Smarter than a 5th Grader, and Top Chef—"plus hits from the studios' vast television libraries." The service will also feature movies, including Borat, Little Miss Sunshine, Devil Wears Prada, The Bourne Identity, and Bourne Supremacy at launch.

Video available via the new service will be ad-supported and "free" to consumers via the web. Big brand advertisers that have already signed deals with News Corp. and NBC include Intel, Cisco, Cadbury Schweppes, Esurance, and General Motors. News Corp. and NBC plan to syndicate the content via other web channels such as MySpace, MSN, and Yahoo! News Corp. indicated in its announcement users will be allowed to embed videos from the service on their own MySpace profiles and other web pages, mirroring YouTube's popular sharing format.

"This is a game changer for Internet video. We'll have access to just about the entire U.S. Internet audience at launch. And for the first time, consumers will get what they want—professionally produced video delivered on the sites where they live. We're excited about the potential for this alliance and we’re looking forward to working with any content provider or distributor who wants to take advantage of this extraordinary opportunity," said News Corp.'s President and COO Peter Chernin in a statement.

AOL spokesperson Anne Bentley tried to play down the competition between the new venture and YouTube. "As you're aware, Google has a 5 percent stake in AOL," she told Ars. "Our goal is to provide the largest number of video assets to our audience of more than 100 million unique visitors a month. Just as we continue to work closely with Google in search and other areas, we also work closely with other partners."

The announcement comes shortly after Viacom accused Google of not making enough effort to keep its content off of YouTube. Rumors of such a partnership have been popping up since the middle of last year. The major TV networks have shown interest in distributing their content online, but have been hesitant to make use of YouTube's extremely popular channel when they (think) they can create one themselves. Why let a competitor distribute your content when you could do so yourself?

The success of News Corp. and NBC's new service will be watched closely by competitors. The companies already have the advantage of a strong network of partnerships for both content and distribution channels, but will the suits and ties at these companies be able to create something as virally popular as YouTube?
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post...ompetitor.html





NBC/News Corp. Video Site to Be 'Mostly Free'
Bryan Gardiner

At a news conference held by News Corp. and NBC Universal on Thursday afternoon, the two media giants confirmed that they would be teaming up to launch a YouTube-like online video site this summer that will feature "mostly free" content from both companies.

According to both Jeff Zucker, president and chief executive of NBC Universal, and Peter Chernin, president and chief operating officer of News Corporation, the yet-to-be-named site will launch at some point this summer.

In addition to featuring full-length television shows, movies, and clips—including NBC and Fox shows such as "Saturday Night Live," "Heroes," and "The Simpsons," "24," and films like Borat—the online video site will also have user-generated material like YouTube, according to Zucker.

The objective in creating the service, which has supposedly been under negotiation for quite some time, was to aggregate as much content as possible from both companies, while at the same time servicing copyright holders and giving them the opportunity to control the look and feel of their content, both men said.

"It's been well documented that we've been talking for a while," Zucker said. "I think what brought it to fruition here in the last week, is the distribution partners saw the value in all of this. It's been a long road, but [one] that actually only came together recently in that respect."

"This is about being as open as we possibly can," Chernin added. "We're trying to push it out there as widely as we can. At launch, we'll probably be the largest advertising platform in the world."

Zucker and Chernin say the new site will give advertisers a one-stop shopping opportunity, allowing them access to safe, premium content and a vast Internet viewership—94 percent of the Internet audience, according to Chernin.

"The opportunity this provides to advertisers is to be associated with a top-of-line huge video repository," Zucker said. "Within four hours of our announcement, we had five charter advertisers signed up," he added, saying that they are now in discussion with many others.

Yahoo Inc., Time Warner Inc.'s AOL, Microsoft, and News Corp.'s MySpace will all be the site's primary distribution partners to begin with, according to News Corp. and NBC Universal.

Additionally, both men denied that the new site was created to directly compete with Google's YouTube.

"This is obviously not a YouTube killer," Chernin said, adding, "we believe in the power and benefit of ubiquitous distribution."

"We are open for business with everyone," Zucker said. "…We're willing to sit down with [YouTube] and anyone else who can agree to the economic terms and copyright protections..."

Additionally, both men said on Thursday they didn't believe the site would cannibalize the content already available on their respective vertical sites, adding that there would remain content only viewable on NBC.com or Fox.com.

"Ultimately, we believe this is just the beginning," Chernin said. "We are in discussions with other content holders right now."

"One of the most important things for us is making it so that the consumer has control of the site," Chernin said. "That's how it will be designed and created. Will it look like YouTube? Probably not. Will it look like a contemporary, professional, Web 2.0 site? Probably."
http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,1895,2107102,00.asp





Microsoft Temporarily Closes Video Site
Greg Sandoval

Microsoft is closing its video-sharing site, Soapbox, to new users for up to two months so it can create better safeguards against pirated content.

The software giant, which agreed earlier Thursday to distribute movies and TV shows for big media companies, has seen Soapbox fill up with unauthorized clips since a test version of the site launched last month.

No new subscribers will be accepted, but anyone who has already signed up for Soapbox can continue to access the site, said Adam Sohn, a director in Microsoft's online-services group.

Microsoft stood to be embarrassed by the existence of pirated work on Soapbox. There was a real possibility that the company could have found itself distributing video from News Corp. and NBC Universal, at the same time another one of its units was hosting material stolen from those same companies.

Microsoft, AOL and Yahoo have agreed to be part of a new online joint venture of media conglomerates that also includes NBC Universal and News Corp. The new video network, scheduled to debut this summer, will feature full-length programming, movies and clips from at least a dozen television networks and two major film studios.

Copyright issues have become a central issue to the nascent online video market. On YouTube, the largest video-sharing site, there are thousands of clips posted to the site without the copyright holder's consent.

To help create a filtering system that would prevent the uploading of copyrighted video clips, Microsoft licensed digital-fingerprinting technology from Audible Magic.

Sohn said the changes were not forced on Microsoft by its new partners, although he acknowledged that some of the content providers were very interested in how his company planned to clean up Soapbox.

"This software company is aligned very closely with the notion of intellectual-property rights," Sohn said. "We feel this is the right time to make these changes and stand up to do the right thing."
http://news.com.com/Microsoft+tempor...3-6169851.html





NFL Fumbles DMCA Takedown Battle, Could Face Sanctions
Jacqui Cheng

It's no secret that some content owners don't seem to understand how the DMCA works—that, or they simply don't care when sending mass takedown notices. This seems to be the case with the recent saga of legal maneuvers between the National Football League (NFL) and Brooklyn Law School professor Wendy Seltzer. The two have been going back and forth with DMCA-related "requests" since early February—with YouTube stuck in between—and in the process, the NFL itself appears to have violated the DMCA.

The story began when Seltzer posted a YouTube clip on her personal blog in early February. The clip showed the NFL's copyright message that aired during the Super Bowl:
This telecast is copyrighted by the NFL for the private use of our audience, and any other use of this telecast or of any pictures, descriptions or accounts of the game without the NFL's consent is prohibited

Seltzer took exception to this claim—as it clearly makes no concession for fair use—and wanted to show her students how content owners are beginning to exaggerate their rights.

Five days later, she received a DMCA takedown notice through YouTube, saying that the NFL had claimed copyright violation and that the clip had been removed. Ironic? Perhaps, but it gets better. Seltzer, law professor by day, is also staff attorney for the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) by night and founder of Chilling Effects, a web site dedicated to educating the public about online rights. Very well aware of her own rights under DMCA, she promptly sent a counter-notification to YouTube (generated by the Chilling Effects counter-notice generator, no less), citing Section 512 of the DMCA saying that YouTube must replace the material if they receive a counter-notification asserting "good faith belief" that the material removal was a mistake.

Several weeks after that, Seltzer's Super Bowl copyright notice clip came back online as a result of her counter-notification. Seltzer was happy that the system appeared to work the way it was designed to work and assumed that the NFL had decided not to sue to keep the video offline. She was wrong, however. Just 12 days later, the NFL filed yet another takedown notice with YouTube for the clip, and YouTube complied once again.

This is where the saga starts to get messy. Seltzer's counter-notification—which was forwarded to the NFL from YouTube—clearly described her use of the clip as fair use: "an educational excerpt featuring the NFL's overreaching copyright warning aired during the Super Bowl." As Seltzer outlines in her blog post, the NFL's only option in response to her counter-claim would be to force her to remove the clip via court proceedings. This obviously did not happen, and instead, the NFL chose to ignore her claims completely. After receiving her counter-notification claiming fair use, sending another takedown notice over the same content is considered a knowing misrepresentation that the clip is infringing, according to DMCA section 512(f)(1). Under the DMCA, the NFL would be liable for all legal fees incurred by the alleged infringer, along with damages.

Essentially, the NFL is now in violation of the same law that it is using to try to protect its own content. And, instead of following the proper procedures outlined in the DMCA, the NFL appears to be choosing to beat her over the head with takedown requests. Would this be happening if YouTube was not caught in the middle, hosting the clip for Seltzer? There is no way to know, but it seems that the trend du jour is for content owners to target YouTube with these requests, knowing that YouTube is likely to comply immediately and ask questions later. But Seltzer isn't likely to let this issue rest now, and seems more than happy to continue pushing back on the issue until it goes to court. It's hard to imagine that a court would do anything but decide in Seltzer's favor, and if that were to happen, it may force content owners to be more cautious about sending takedown notices in the future.
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post...sanctions.html





Congress Must Make Clear Copyright Laws To Protect Consumers

Here comes another in the long line of lawsuits between media companies and Internet companies over who gets to distribute content. This time it's Viacom, the enormously rich owner of properties like Paramount Pictures and Comedy Central, suing Google, the enormously rich owner of YouTube.

The issue: Viacom wants to get paid more than Google wants to pay it for all of those fuzzy, two-minute clips from programs like "The Daily Show" that users post to YouTube. The companies tried to negotiate a deal, but the talks failed, so Viacom is suing for $1 billion.

I am not a lawyer, and I have no idea how this lawsuit will wind up. I suspect it is mainly a bargaining tactic by Viacom. But I know one thing: This fight isn't primarily about consumers and their rights, and its outcome won't necessarily make things better for Internet users.

Consumers won't be a party to this case any more than they were in the room when the latest major copyright law was passed by Congress. That law, the 1998 Digital Millennium Copyright Act, was enacted at the behest of record labels and movie studios. Their purpose was to stop people from using computers and the Internet to distribute digital copies of material to which they didn't hold either the copyright or a distribution license.

That idea makes sense. Unlike some Internet zealots, I believe that intellectual property is real and that some form of copyright is appropriate to protect it. I am against the unlicensed copying of DVDs for sale on street corners, or the mass uploading of songs to so-called sharing sites.

The Internet and technology companies managed to insert a clause in the DMCA sparing them from penalties for carrying copyright content on grounds they were just innocent conduits. That will be a big issue in the Viacom case. But consumers got no such get-out-of-jail-free card.LAW BLOG ON DMCA

A professor at Brooklyn Law is taking on the National Football League in a debate over what content can be legally posted on YouTube. Weigh in.

In fact, the DMCA, and other recent laws and regulations passed under pressure from media companies, are pretty hostile when it comes to consumers. They turn essentially innocent actions into unlawful behavior, because they define copyright infringement too broadly. They have given rise to a technology called Digital Rights Management that causes too many hassles for honest people and discriminates against the new digital forms of distribution.

Even Apple CEO Steve Jobs, who created a DRM system for music that actually has worked, recently called for an end to copy protection of legally sold music, mainly because the record labels apply that protection only to online sales, not to physical compact discs.

Most honest people wouldn't consider it piracy to buy a CD, copy it to a computer and email one of the song files to a spouse or friend. But the record industry, backed by the laws it essentially wrote, does. Most honest people wouldn't think that uploading to YouTube a two-minute TV clip, which they paid their cable company to receive, is piracy. But Viacom, backed by the laws its industry essentially wrote, is demanding that Google remove all such clips.

To be fair, Viacom, unlike the misguided record labels, isn't suing the actual consumers who posted these clips. It's suing Google because it claims Google is making money from them and refusing to pay for that privilege.

Google isn't blameless here, either. It does make money, at least indirectly, from other companies' copyright material, for which it didn't pay, even though it has negotiated some paid deals and says it is willing to negotiate others. And while Google says it diligently removes all copyright clips for which it hasn't secured paid rights, every YouTube visitor knows that this system is, at best, imperfect.

As a nonlawyer, I think these clips seem like "fair use," an old copyright concept that seems to have weakened under the advent of the new laws. Under fair use, as most nonlawyers have understood it, you could quote this sentence in another publication without permission, though you'd need the permission of the newspaper to reprint the entire column or a large part of it. A two-minute portion of a 30-minute TV show seems like the same thing to me.

But why should I have to guess about that? What consumers need is real clarity on the whole issue of what is or isn't permissible use of the digital content they have legally obtained. And that can come only from Congress. Congress is the real villain here, for having failed to pass a modern copyright law that protects average consumers, not just big content companies.

We need a new digital copyright law that would draw a line between modest sharing of a few songs or video clips and the real piracy of mass distribution. We need a new law that would define fair use for the digital era and lay out clearly the rights of consumers who pay for digital content, as well as the rights and responsibilities of Internet companies.

If you don't like all of the restrictions on the use of digital content, the solution isn't to steal the stuff. A better course is to pressure Congress to pass a new copyright law, one that protects the little guy and the Internet itself.
http://online.wsj.com/public/article...main_tff_t op





Surveillance

F.B.I. Is Warned Over Its Misuse of Data Collection
Scott Shane

House Republicans joined Democrats on Tuesday in warning the F.B.I. that it could lose the power to demand that companies turn over customers’ telephone, e-mail and financial records if it did not swiftly correct abuses in the use of national security letters, the investigative tool that allows the bureau to make such demands without a judge’s approval.

The warnings came at a hearing of the House Judiciary Committee into a recent report by the Justice Department’s inspector general, Glenn A. Fine. The report found that the F.B.I. had repeatedly violated the rules governing the letters, sometimes by invoking emergency procedures to exercise them when there was no emergency, and had bungled record keeping so badly that the number of letters exercised was often understated when the bureau reported on them to Congress.

“I just want to convey to you how upset many of us are who have defended this program and have believed it is necessary to the protection of our country,” Representative Dan Lungren, Republican of California, told Valerie E. Caproni, the bureau’s general counsel.

If the handling of national security letters is not improved soon, added Mr. Lungren, a former California attorney general, the bureau will not “have to worry about improving your procedures for N.S.L.’s because you probably won’t have N.S.L. authority.”

Representative Darrell Issa, also a California Republican, said he was “shocked” by the bureau’s transgressions and suggested that they might have broken the law.

“If what was done was done by a private-sector individual, wouldn’t the F.B.I. be arresting them?” Mr. Issa asked. “Wouldn’t the U.S. attorneys be prosecuting people who played fast and loose with these rules?”

Mr. Fine replied that the question of whether laws were broken “depends on the intent involved and what happened.” He said that while his investigation had found sweeping problems resulting from “mistakes, carelessness, confusion, sloppiness, lack of training, lack of adequate guidance and lack of adequate oversight,” it had not found proof of deliberate wrongdoing.

Ms. Caproni did not take issue with the findings.

“I can tell you that we’ve had a lot of soul-searching at the F.B.I.” since the inspector general placed “an F on our report card,” she said.

Ms. Caproni said officials of the bureau believed that the problems might result in part from the secrecy that cloaks the use of national security letters, which are exercised most often in counterterrorism investigations. Unlike criminal cases, in which any F.B.I. misconduct is likely to be discovered by defense lawyers and federal judges, national security investigations are rarely subject to outside scrutiny, she said.

“That imposes upon us a far higher obligation,” she said, “to make sure that we have a vigorous compliance system, that we have in place the training that is necessary.”

On Friday, the F.B.I.’s internal inspection division began an audit of the use of national security letters in all 56 field offices and announced that such reviews would be undertaken regularly. Bureau officials say new guidelines and training and a computerized tracking system for the letters will be in place later this year.

The Judiciary Committee chairman, Representative John Conyers Jr. of Michigan, called the F.B.I.’s misuse of the letters “a serious breach of trust” and said the bureau had “converted this tool into a handy shortcut to illegally gather vast amounts of private information.”

Mr. Conyers has long been a fierce critic of the Bush administration. But the outspoken criticism from Republicans at the hearing was striking. One of them, Representative Tom Feeney of Florida, told Ms. Caproni, “This isn’t right, and it can’t continue.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/21/wa.../21fbi.html?hp





Official Alerted F.B.I. to Rules Abuse 2 Years Ago, Lawyer Says
Edmund L. Andrews

Almost two years before the Federal Bureau of Investigation publicly admitted this month that it had ignored its own rules when demanding telephone and financial records about private citizens, a top official in that program warned the bureau about widespread lapses, his lawyer said on Sunday.

The official, Bassem Youssef, who is in charge of the bureau’s Communications Analysis Unit, said he discovered frequent legal lapses and raised concerns with superiors soon after he was assigned to the unit in early 2005.

Stephen M. Kohn, the lawyer for Mr. Youssef, said his client told his superiors that the bureau had frequently failed to document an urgent national security need — proving “exigent circumstances,” in the bureau’s language — when obtaining personal information without a court order through the use of “national security letters.”

Mr. Youssef said his superiors had initially minimized the scope of the problem and the likely violation of laws intended to protect privacy, Mr. Kohn said.

“He identified the problems in 2005, shortly after he became unit chief,” Mr. Kohn said. “As in other matters, he was met with apathy and resistance.”

Mr. Youssef’s criticisms were first reported on Sunday by The Washington Post, which also cited internal e-mail messages in which Justice Department officials had discussed the legal lapses surrounding national security letters.

Mr. Youssef, born in Egypt, is suing the bureau for discrimination, charging that senior officials improperly suspected his loyalties in part because of his Egyptian origins.

On March 9, the inspector general for the Justice Department sharply criticized the F.B.I. over its heavy use of national security letters, saying it had found many instances in which the bureau had improperly and sometimes illegally used them to demand personal records from telephone companies, Internet service providers, credit companies and other businesses.

The report has provoked angry reactions from Republicans and Democrats in Congress, some of whom have charged that the bureau ran roughshod over civil liberties.

Unlike a search warrant, which must be approved by a judge, a national security letter can be approved by the agent in charge of a local F.B.I. office. The bureau has issued more than 20,000 such letters since it received authority under the antiterrorism law known as the USA Patriot Act of 2001.

One of the report’s biggest criticisms was that top bureau officials signed off on many of the demands for information without properly justifying a specific national security need, like a clear link to a specific counterterrorism investigation. Mr. Kohn said that Mr. Youssef had had a long familiarity with national security letters from earlier work on counterterrorism investigations, and that he began reviewing recent letters and spotting legal deficiencies almost immediately.

“It was the same issue that was in the inspector general’s report,” Mr. Kohn said Sunday. “They didn’t have the proper legal justifications in writing to back up their searches.”

One of the F.B.I.’s few fluent Arabic speakers, Mr. Youssef won the Director of Central Intelligence Award in 1995 for his work infiltrating the Islamic group led by Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman, who is now serving a life sentence in prison on charges tied to the first bombing of the World Trade Center, in 1993. From 1996 to 2000, Mr. Youssef was the Justice’s Department’s legal attaché to Saudi Arabia, where he won praise for his work with Saudi officials on investigations of the bombing of the Khobar Towers in 1996.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/19/wa.../19letter.html





FBI Issues New Rules For Getting Phone Records
John Solomon

The FBI, which has been criticized for improperly gathering telephone records in terrorism cases, has told its agents they may still ask phone companies to voluntarily hand over toll records in emergencies by using a new set of procedures, officials said yesterday. In the most dire emergencies, requests can be submitted to the companies verbally, officials said.

This month, the bureau sent field agents a new "emergency letter" template for seeking the records, shortly before the public release of a report by the Justice Department's inspector general that documented abuses of emergency phone-records collection by counterterrorism agents, officials said. That report created a furor on Capitol Hill and prompted FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III to take personal responsibility.

The report documented instances in which agents gathered phone records between 2003 and 2005 using emergency powers when no emergencies existed. It also reported that agents did not follow basic legal requirements, such as certifying that requests for phone records were connected to authorized FBI investigations.

New rules from the FBI general counsel's office tell agents they are to limit emergency requests for phone records to the most dire situations, in which the loss of life or bodily harm is believed to be imminent. They are to document carefully the circumstances surrounding the request.

Agents also have been relieved of a paperwork burden that was at the heart of past problems, officials said.

Under past procedures, agents sent "exigent circumstances letters" to phone companies, seeking toll records by asserting there was an emergency. Then they were expected to issue a grand jury subpoena or a "national security letter," which legally authorized the collection after the fact. Agents often did not follow up with that paperwork, the inspector general's investigation found.

The new instructions tell agents there is no need to follow up with national security letters or subpoenas. The agents are also told that the new letter template is the preferred method in emergencies but that they may make requests orally, with no paperwork sent to phone companies. Such oral requests have been made over the years in terrorism and kidnapping cases, officials said.

"Emergencies will still come up. If we have a child kidnapping or a 'ticking bomb' terrorist threat, we will ask the telecommunications carriers to provide records under the authority provided by law," said FBI Assistant Director John Miller. The new procedures, he said, will include "an audit trail to ensure we are doing it the right way."

The new guidance to agents cites a provision in federal law allowing a telephone provider to voluntarily turn over phone records to law enforcement figures "in good faith" if they "believe that an emergency involving danger of death or serious physical injury to any person requires disclosure without delay," a senior FBI official said.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...031901775.html





ISPs Could be Forced to Police User Behavior in Europe
Nate Anderson

The EU is moving closer to adoption of a new law that makes many forms of intellectual property infringement criminal rather than civil offenses. The first version of the new IP law, IPRED, did not contain criminal penalties, but those penalties show up again in a new version of the legislation, commonly called IPRED2. Consumer advocates worry that vague wording will make ISPs responsible for pirated files passing through their networks.

In a vote today, the European Parliament's Legal Affairs Committee adopted a set of amendments to the proposed legislation rather than discarding it, as some MEPs wanted. The Criminal Sanctions Directive now enforces piracy and counterfeiting laws with enhanced criminal protections, though the law does not currently apply to patents.

Just before the vote, Foundation for a Free Information Infrastructure's (FFII) Ante Wessels commented that US content owners were pushing the bill. "Unfortunately," he wrote, "one strong pressure group is quite happy with this turn of events: Hollywood and the music industry. They want to equate the younger music-downloading generation with industrial pirates, and let the police take over prosecutions which hurt their public image. They push for the weakest possible definitions, in order to criminalize end users and hold software providers liable. Hollywood has been calling Members of the Legal Affairs Committee daily."

But Hollywood didn't get its way. Copyrights, trademarks, and designs are protected with fines and jail time, but they apply only to "commercial" infringement. An amendment adopted by the committee states that "this would exclude acts carried out by private users for personal and not for profits purposes." This doesn't appear to make file-sharing legal, though, as current civil laws still seem to apply. Criminal penalties might be leveled at ISPs, though, depending on how courts interpret the law.

After the vote, the FFII expressed its displeasure. "By not making a distinction between piracy and other infringements, the Commission creates bizarre consequences," it said. "It is impossible to write software without violating patents. A whole industry will be criminalized. Microsoft has been violating many patents, and had to pay huge damages. With this directive, we could see Bill Gates in prison."

That's because one of the new amendments to the bill makes "aiding or abetting and inciting such infringements" worthy of criminal prosecution. "Incitement" is a tricky word, and could be applied to both P2P software and to ISPs who refuse to block, say, BitTorrent connections. The language is vague and could be applied to many situations at the discretion of the courts.

This sort of thing is a real concern to ISPs. Late last year, a Danish court forced ISP Tele2 to block AllofMP3.com, essentially forcing the ISP to take responsibility for enforcing IP laws. Should the new directive pass Parliamentary scrutiny, other European ISPs might starting blocking access to services and web sites in the hopes of staying out of the courtroom.

The EU legislation does include a protection for consumer fair use rights, but it fails to define "piracy," "incitement," and other key terms, leaving detractors to wonder just how the law would end up being used.
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post...in-europe.html





Swedish Internet Surveillance Law Stalled

Privacy advocates get some breathing room on vast expansion
Anders Lotsson and Marcus Jerräng

The Swedish Social Democratic Party said Monday that it will block a bill authorizing extensive surveillance of e-mail and other Internet communications.

Although the announcement was welcomed by privacy advocates, it delays but does not permanently block the bill. The Social Democrats, being a minority in Parliament, can only postpone the vote on the FRA bill for one year. They're supported by the Green Party and the Left Party.

Commentators also question the sincerity of the Social Democratic spokesman on legal matters, Thomas Bodström, who announced the block. As minister of justice until last year's elections, which brought a non-Social Democrat cabinet into power, Mr. Bodström himself introduced a number of laws authorizing snooping on private communications. The bill that he has now advised his fellow Social Democrats to block was initiated, although not completed, while he was still in charge.

The bill would give the National Defense Radio Establishment, known by its Swedish acronym FRA, the right to intercept all Internet communications crossing Sweden's borders.

Until recently, the FRA was a little-known government agency, listening in on military and diplomatic radio communications from all over the world. From the FRA's point of view, Internet surveillance is an obvious extension of the agency's traditional activities. The bad guys, the agency insists, whether they're terrorists, spies, politicians or common criminals, don't use radio much any more, they use the Internet.

But despite FRA officials' insistence that the FRA has no interest in reading the private e-mails of Swedish citizens, the bill created an uproar. Newspaper editorials across the political spectrum denounced the FRA bill as a threat to privacy.

Obviously, because of how the Internet is designed, a large percentage of even e-mails between Swedes will pass the border at some point. And if it crosses the border, FRA has the right to intercept it.

Although the main sponsor of the bill, defense minister Mikael Odenberg of the Moderate party, will be able to depend on most, if not all, members of parliament from the governing four-party coalition to loyally vote for it, there is much unease among legislators.

"There is an obvious danger for misuse of signals intelligence," said Allan Widman of the Liberal party, which is part of the government coalition. "This is not only a matter of adapting to new technology," he added. "E-mails are the letters of our times. So it's a widening of the scope."

"The FRA will be authorized to collect intelligence on any vital political question. But can we actually solve environmental problems by intercepting e-mails?" Peter Eriksson of the Green Party, which is not part of the governing coalition, said. "Would we like to live in a state with unlimited rights to monitor and supervise everything we do? Can we trust the government? Experience teaches us not to."

The Council of Legislation, a nonpolitical official body of judges that pronounces on the legality of proposed legislation, has criticized the FRA bill severely. This caused the Department of Justice to make some edits, but the bill was not retracted.

Critics fear that the intelligence gathered by the FRA will not only be used by Swedish military and diplomats, but that sensitive information on Swedish citizens will be passed on to foreign intelligence services.

"We can't impose this on Swedish citizens," said Thomas Bodström as he announced his proposal to block the bill. "The bill isn't balanced and neglects the right to due process. The minister of defense says that there will be no actual change, but I won't be fooled. The mandate of military intelligence is extended to the field of law enforcement. It includes arms dealing and trafficking - regular crimes."
http://computerworld.com/action/arti...&intsrc=kc_top





Public to Shape Smart Tag Policy
Mark Ward

The stakeholders may eventually draft new regulations to police the tags, but, for now, the commission proposes no new laws to govern their use.

"We must not over-regulate RFID (Radio Frequency Identification)," said Viviane Reding, information society and media commissioner, during a news conference at the Cebit show, where the results of the 12-month consultation were unveiled.

Ms Reding said the market for the radio tags had to be given the chance to grow without interference from the European Commission.

"Europe is very strong in this domain," said Ms Reding. "I think we are in the driving seat."

Surveillance

Smart radio tags typically unite a small chunk of computer memory with a radio transmitter. Businesses see huge advantages to labelling goods with these tags as they will streamline delivery networks and help manage stocks on shelves.

Ms Reding said that smart tags had already generated about 500m euros (£340m) in revenues across Europe, and this was expected to grow to more than 7bn euros (£4.7bn) within 10 years.

Ms Reding warned that heavy-handed regulation could stunt this growth.

Instead, she said, industry had to get the chance to "go for it".

"It's the whole application of these chips to solve problems in our society that will be of the utmost importance," she said.

"But, we must also make the industry be aware of the fact that the 'internet of things' has to become an 'internet for people'."

The RFID Stakeholder Group will help to oversee the growing use of smart radio tags and look into ways for consumers to protect themselves from the potential casual surveillance that they make possible.

Good or bad?

Ms Reding said the group would aim to produce recommendations by the end of 2008. These could include amendments to existing e-privacy directives or guidelines for businesses on how RFID tags can be used when they affect consumers.

While businesses using RFID tags to mark such things as shipping containers may not have to think about consumers, others will have to take this into account, said Ms Reding. She cited the example of German retail giant Metro, which had run trials in which shoppers deactivated any tags on the goods they had bought at the checkout.

Ms Reding said the stakeholder group would also drive European Commission efforts to educate people about smart tags and their potential uses.

One of the most striking results from the year-long consultation, she said, was the 60% of respondents who said they simply did not know enough about the technology to know whether it would be good or bad.

Despite this, 55% of the respondents to the consultation said regulations would be needed to police the use of the tags.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/h...gy/6453931.stm




DCoT Helps Find Lost Child
Tim Fehlman

A recent comment from Erik made my day! It seems that he has found a unique way to use the Lost Drive application that recently appeared in Popular Science. Erik writes:

This little program saved my wife and I a lot of of grief and emotional trauma while on vacation. Read on.

I am a PopSci reader and linked to DCoT via the mag. My family, which includes two VERY energetic boys, five and three, went to Disneyland for a little get-a-way. Before we went I told my wife about the ‘I’m Lost’ program that one can install on a jump drive.

We decided to buy three 32Mb drives, which are a dime a dozen nowadays, one for each boy and one for us with the same program and ’secret phrase’ on it. We also included our cellphone numbers. Two lanyards with dangling USB drives that had a ‘I’m Lost’ label adhered to them and tucked into their shirts later, we had two boys that if got lost would be found and be reunited with us quickly.

We told the boys to cry for mom or dad if they wander off or got lost and then give the USB drive to the person that found them.

Our three year old did just what we thought he would do - Disappeared. Within 13 minutes of being ‘lost’ though, my cellphone rang. My three year old whom we thought didn’t understand what we told him about the funny thing around his neck actually did what we told him. The account from our boys ‘finder’ was humorous and panned out like this: My little redheaded boy was SCREAMING for his mom. The ‘finder’ came to help him, the boy showed the ‘finder’ the labelled USB drive, the ‘finder’ then brought him to security, security plugged the USB drive in to his computer, saw the message and called me on my cellphone. When we went to retrieve our boy the security guard asked for our USB drive with the secret phrase on it. The USB drives performed just as set up to. It had my cellphone number, my boys’ first name (first name only!) to calm him down and his favorite treat.

To say the least, D-land security was very impressed and the ‘finder’ equally impressed and my redhead boy was wearing M&M’s on his lips and chin.

There it is. Not only can you retrieve lost USB drives with this you can also find lost kids. Thank you!


First of all, I’m really glad to hear that everyone is safe and sound. The biggest fear that I have is that something will happen to my kids. That must have been the longest 13 minutes of your life!

Second, that is a really cool way of using the application. I had never thought of it in that way but it is definitely something that I would consider setting up for my kids.

Third, this really makes my day. There are times when we all wonder whether or not we are making a difference in the world. Well, I sure don’t feel that way today! Thank you for sharing your story and I wish all the best for you and your family!
http://www.dailycupoftech.com/2007/0...nd-lost-child/





Vehicle Warning System Trialled
Mark Ward

Vehicles may soon be swapping information about road conditions to warn drivers about jams and dangers.

A German research project on show at hi-tech trade fair Cebit envisions a peer-to-peer network for vehicles on a road passing data back and forth.

Cars or bikes experiencing problems would pass data that would ripple down the chain of vehicles behind them.

Information would be conveyed to drivers via a dashboard screen or through a mobile phone headset.

Dr Anselm Blocher - a researcher at the German Research Center for Artificial Intelligence who is co-ordinating the project - said the ad hoc communication system could mean that drivers found out about dangers or jams ahead much more quickly than they do now.

For spotting dangers and jams, the system would use data from sensors that were likely to be fitted to cars, bikes and trucks in the future, Dr Blocher added.

For example, cars could spot oil on the road by combining temperature readings with wheel traction information, he said.

A wheel slipping on the road even though the temperature was not low enough for frost or ice would suggest oil or another slippery substance was present.

Once a car detected this sort of danger, information about it would be generated and passed down the line of vehicles approaching the patch of oil.

"When the motorbike comes after to the point of danger, information has been spread out by wireless network and the danger will be propagated to the driver in the motorbike," said Dr Blocher.

Dashboard warning

The system was smart enough to recognise how busy a driver was and would adjust warnings to take account of the "cognitive load" a driver was under, he said.

If a driver was executing a series of fast manoeuvres, such as a motorbike driver leaning to go fast round a bend, the system would not use a blaring alarm to warn them of the upcoming oil patch.

Instead, he said, it might generate a warning on the dashboard of the bike or mark the danger point on a digital map.

By contrast, if a driver was driving at low speed along a straight road, the system may use visual cues on a dashboard screen as well as telling the driver about the problem via a headset.

As well as giving information about dangers, drivers could also ask the SmartWeb system for information about traffic jams, speed traps, parking availability and other problems in natural language.

Starting a query would kick off a web search for the area a car was travelling through which would generates requests to vehicles ahead or nearby.

The SmartWeb project is being co-ordinated by the German Research Center for Artificial Intelligence but has 16 other partners including BMW, Siemens, Daimler Chrysler, Deutsche Telekom and the European Media Lab.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/h...gy/6461831.stm





US Customs Seizes YouTube Records in Drug and Death Threat Investigation

The U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency executed a search warrant against YouTube and Hotmail as part of an investigation against a drug trafficker who was threatening the life of his brother, Google Watch has learned.

The drug trafficker, who was arrested in May, 2005 at the Mexico/California border after agents found 25.3 kilograms of cocaine (about 56 pounds) in the spare tire of his 2003 Chevy Silverado, is suspected of sending death threats to his brother via YouTube's video e-mail service.

According to the search warrant, the death threats were sent after the brother assisted Customs' officers by informing them that the drug trafficker -- who was living with his mother post-arrest -- had falsified information relating to his sentencing, and that the trafficker was bragging about "pulling one over on the government."

But instead of sending the threats directly to his brother, the trafficker -- apparently a YouTube member -- sent them to his brother's son, who has a Hotmail account.

The search warrant, executed March 16, requests "all images, text messages and other from any and all YouTube accounts associated with" the drug trafficker's name. The search warrant also requests records from Hotmail pertaining to the death threat recipient.

"YouTube complies with valid U.S. legal process," a YouTube spokesperson said via e-mail. "As a matter of policy we generally do not publicly discuss legal matters."

The first threat arrived January 24, 2007. The e-mail read (identifying names and e-mail addresses have been removed):

FROM: YouTube Service
To: XXXXXX@hotmail.com
Subject: XXXXXX sent you a video!
Date: Wed, 24 Jan 2007 00:32:49-0800 (PST)

The email included a hyperlink to a video (since removed) and a description of that video which, translated into English from Spanish, read: "here is presented a video pertaining to Valentin Elizalde's cause of death, and this song and video was made at the behest of El Chapo Guzman and is dedicated to his enemies..."

The video included images of people who were apparently assassinated by gunfire. The personal message read: "Your dad needs to see this video before he makes phone calls. Thanks, XXXXXX."

The personal message was signed by a screen name that mimicked the name of the known drug trafficker.

The following day the son received another video e-mail depicting an assassination, followed by another personal message in Spanish. The translated message read: "Young man: Give this message to your dad: Listen Mr. XXXX, if you fuck us, we will fuck you with all our might. Think about it well man. The Gulf." The message was signed by the same screen name.

According to the search warrant the drug trafficker's mother, upon learning of the brother's involvement with Customs, threatened to disinherit the brother if he continued to work with the government against the family.

Although it is unclear whether the drug trafficker is associated with Mexican drug cartels, those cartels have been taunting each other with YouTube videos in recent months.
http://googlewatch.eweek.com/content...stigation.html





Indicted Lawyer Wants Charge Dismissed, Saying Feds Overreached
John Christoffersen

A prominent defense attorney charged with destroying evidence in a child pornography investigation said Thursday authorities are overreaching, expanding a law in a way that could make parents, employers and others vulnerable to such prosecutions.

Philip Russell was charged Feb. 16 with destroying a computer that contained child pornography at Christ Church in Greenwich. Former President George H.W. Bush attended the church while growing up and funeral services for his parents were held there.

Russell, the former attorney for the church, is accused of obstructing an FBI investigation that led to the January conviction of the church's music director, Robert Tate, for possessing child pornography.

Russell was charged under the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, which Congress passed in 2002 after a wave of corporate accounting scandals to make it easier to prosecute such cases. He faces up to 40 years in prison if convicted.

Russell filed court papers Thursday urging a judge to dismiss a count that involves the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, saying the law was meant to prevent corporate document shredding.

The law made it easier to prosecute obstruction of justice by requiring only that an investigation was foreseeable rather than already pending.

If the government's view of the law is correct, many others could face obstruction charges, Russell contends.

"A parent who finds pictures of 'naked boys' in his/her child's backpack would also face a 20-year federal felony for obstruction ... if he/she throws the pictures out to insulate the child from future legal difficulties," wrote Russell's attorney, Robert Casale.

"Similarly, if the government is correct, an employer who finds child pornography on the computer of an employee who has just retired after decades of loyal service would be committing an act of obstruction if he/she deletes these images from the computer to spare all concerned unseemly embarrassment and possible prosecution," Casale wrote.

While legal experts agree that lawyers can't destroy evidence, they are concerned that prosecutors' use of the federal law will pressure defense attorneys to betray their clients' confidences and report potential evidence to authorities or risk prosecution themselves.

Russell acknowledges he destroyed the computer, but says he had no reason to believe the matter was under investigation or that it would lead to an investigation.

"Phil Russell's conduct may have been ill-conceived, but it was not criminal," Casale wrote.

Prosecutors declined to comment on the latest court papers, but have defended Russell's indictment.

"Those who possess child pornography or hinder the prosecution of those who do by destroying evidence and impeding investigations will be prosecuted, particularly when the obstructionists are attorneys and officers of the court," U.S. Attorney Kevin O'Connor said last month.

The trial in April could spell the end of a career for Russell, whose recent clients included Andrew Kissel, a wealthy Greenwich developer charged in a multi-million dollar real estate fraud case. Kissell was found slain in his home last year days before he was to plead guilty.
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories...03-22-19-03-53





Access to High-Speed Internet is an Economic Matter
Art Brodsky

The big telephone and cable companies have a secret. The leadership of the Maryland House of Delegates is perfectly willing to let them keep it, taking the side of the two companies which in recent days each raised their rates while supposedly competing against each other, rather than help consumers by taking an action to help spur competition in Maryland broadband services.

There is no dispute that the Internet has become as valuable to most people as electricity or telephone service. By any measure, access to the Internet opens up a whole range of new opportunities, from students doing homework, to entrepreneurs developing new products to people who work from home.

But not everyone’s Internet access is equal any more. Some places, like my neighborhood in Olney, have been outfitted with the newest and fastest optical fiber from Verizon, to go along with Comcast’s Internet service. But other neighborhoods around the state have to make do with the old dial-up service, which was fine 15 years ago, but doesn’t work well today with newer, more complicated Web sites offering video and music and other features.

Not long ago, a constituent asked Del. Herman Taylor (D-Dist. 14) of Ashton why her neighborhood was stuck with the slow Internet service while others had the good stuff. Taylor tried to find which neighborhoods were being served and which weren’t. He discovered there was no good information. The statistics collected by the Federal Communications Commission are meaningless. And, Taylor had concerns about some areas being left out of the high-speed Internet evolution in an electronic red-lining.

So, being a responsive legislator, he introduced a bill (HB-1069) — which was later pulled from consideration — requiring any companies offering high-speed Internet service (also known as broadband) to report to the Public Service Commission where the service is being offered. The PSC, in turn, would post those reports online.

The Attorney General’s office thought the reporting was a good idea, saying in a letter to Del. Mary Anne Love (D-Dist. 32) of Glen Burnie that ‘‘the public availability of such information could arguably advance competition.” It would advance competition throughout the state as consumers could see whether they were going to be favored with the best service.

But Verizon and Comcast didn’t like the idea of having to make public where they would put their improved services, so they launched an attack. While they called the reporting requirements ‘‘onerous,” they muddied the issue by directing their ire at another part of the bill that suggested that companies offering high-speed Internet service do so without playing favorites, as the states being served by AT&T will be required to do as a condition of that company’s merger with BellSouth. It was only a ‘‘finding” or suggestion, because state legislatures don’t have the authority regulate the Internet. There was no regulation involved.

Yet, at an Economic Matters Committee hearing, Verizon and Comcast representatives made charges that the bill would regulate the Internet, cost jobs, stop innovation and even close down coffee houses. None of that was true. The committee members should have known it, but instead they listened to the scare stories, ignoring all the e-mails and calls from people who wanted to know where they were in the Internet pecking order.

If you want to see the future of the Maryland economy, you need to know where, when and how broadband is growing. The bill was within the authority of the state to collect information about services being offered in the state. But according to the House, Verizon and Comcast and their lobbyists know best. Apparently it wasn’t enough of an economic matter.
http://www.gazette.net/stories/03160...09_32327.shtml





Beef Up Your Wireless Router
Josh Kuo

Sure you have one. Everyone nowadays has at least one wireless router at home, be it Linksys, NetGear, D-Link, or Buffalo. With new wireless products being released nearly every month, I am willing to bet that some of you even have a couple of the older wireless routers collecting dust in your closet. Well, it’s time to take them out and put them to good use.

Check out the OpenWRT project. OpenWRT is a Linux distribution for embedded devices, and it brings a lot of exciting possibilities to your humble wireless router. Although still in its release candidate stage (currently at RC6), OpenWRT is very usable and feature-rich right out of the box. Be warned, you could void your manufacturer warranty by installing OpenWRT on your wireless routers.

So what can you do with an embedded Linux device running on limited RAM and very small storage? As it turns out, quite a lot actually. You can install asterisk, and have your personal, customizable PBX (private branch exchange). If you already have a SIP phone or some kind of VoIP phone interface (such as the Cisco ATA 186 adapter), you can have your very own VoIP system at home, all running out of your low power-consumption embedded hardware.

Put your router/firewall on steroids by installing packages like nmap (network security scanner), snort (intrusion detection), and tcpdump (packet sniffer). Together with iptables (which comes with the Linux kernel), you can turn your OpenWRT box into a powerful security tool. Install openvpn, and you have a very affordable VPN device. And if it strikes your fancy, you can install quagga and turn your dusty little Linksys into an OSPF and BGP-capable router.

Want to provide your own wireless hotspot? No problem. Install chillispot, and you are ready to go. You can even install FreeRADIUS on the OpenWRT for the authentication back-end, and WPA (wifi protected access) for the added security.

You can turn it into an all purpose office server by installing DHCP, cups (print server), lighthttpd (web server), NTP (time server) and OpenSSH or dropbear (secure remote administration). If your router has a USB port, you can also turn it into a file server by hooking it up with a USB hard drive and installing NFS.

And don’t forget that this is a wireless router. It has a wireless card, so take advantage of it! Install kismet on it, and you have a wireless sniffer. This can prove to be invaluable if you ever need to analyze the airwaves at a remote location, but don’t want to leave your expensive laptop on-site. Drop in place a $50 OpenWRT box loaded with kismet instead.

Here is one way to use your old wireless router: In the past, I had setup a few cheap Linksys WRT54g boxes with OpenWRT and vtun, and dropped one at each of our remote locations. This gave me the ability to have layer 2 tunnels to each of the remote sites. I kept one in my house, and if I ever needed to troubleshoot a remote network problem, I just setup the tunnel between the two OpenWRT boxes, connected my laptop or testing equipment to the OpenWRT sitting on my desk, and it was like being on the remote physical network! This saved me a number of times, being able to perform packet capturing on the remote network, observing the network traffic in real-time, requesting and obtaining DHCP addresses… essentially, I could experience exactly what the remote user was experiencing, all from the comfort of my own home.

This is just the beginning of what embedded Linux can do for you. To find out more what embedded Linux can do fo r your enterprise, check out Secure Linux Appliances in Your Enterprise. So dig up your old wireless router, check it against the hardware compatibility list, and see if your router is OpenWRT compatible, and open yourself up to a wrt of possibilities!
http://www.qbangsolutions.com/blog/i...reless-router/





Enormous Database of Wifi Routers - Including Yours!

Summary: Quite a few people have by now read about AOL's new Skyhook "Near Me" buddys plug-in. That's the plugin for the service which lets you know if any of your buddies are geographically near to you, and puts them in a "Near Me" buddies group. But what far fewer people realize is exactly how it works. How does it know when you are near one of your buddies? The answer may surprise - and concern - you.

Quite a few people have by now read about AOL’s new Skyhook “Near Me” buddy plugin. That’s the plug-in for the service which lets you know if any of your buddies are geographically near to you, and puts them in a “Near Me” buddies group.

But what far fewer people realize is exactly how it works. How does it know when you are geographically near one of your buddies?

The answer may surprise - and concern - you.

The underlying technology is provided by Skyhook Wireless. According to news sources, Skyhook has spent the past several years “driving a fleet of 200 trucks up and down the streets of 2,500 cities and towns across the United States and Canada,” mapping every single wireless router. Not just commercial hotspot routers. They openly admit that their trucks “scan for the pulse given off at least once a second by every home wireless router or commercial hotspot, recording the unique identifying code for that piece of Wi-Fi equipment.”

Then, that code - of your home wireless router - “is correlated with the exact physical location where it was captured using GPS in the trucks, which cruise the streets at 15 to 50 miles (24 to 80 kilometers) per hour as they collect this information.”

Just in case the picture isn’t clear, let me paint it for you:

Skyhook’s trucks have been cruising your street, have identified your home wireless router by its unique code that only your home wifi has - and is correlating it with your location using GPS.

And then they put it in a databse

Yep, Skyhook has what has got to be the largest database of wifi access points - public and private - anywhere. According to reports, the database has 16 million wifi access points “covering an area where Skyhook says 70 percent of the U.S. population lives and six Canadian markets where the majority of that nation’s people live.” Including you.

Including your wireless router.

At your home address.

How do you feel about that?

Oh, and the purpose of this database? Why, to make it available for commercial applications, of course.

Suddenly the issue of whether your computer is seeping data seems a lot more relevant, doesn’t it?
http://www.theinternetpatrol.com.nyu...k-announcement





US Company Offers Wi-Fi-Proof Paint

Tinfoil-hat brigade rejoices
Lewis Page

An American company says it has successfully tested wireless-blocking paint. EM-SEC Technologies, in a release last week, said its "Coating Solution", applied to a test facility, had successfully protected "wireless devices and other electronic equipment".

According to the company, "a one-time application of the coating creates an 'electromagnetic fortress' by preventing airborne hackers from intercepting signals".

EM-SEC reckon this would be useful for corporate offices, boardrooms, server and computer rooms, and R&D labs. It seems that wireless nets can be operated without trouble inside a painted building or room.

This latest launch by EM-SEC is an attempt to move into corporate security. Previously, the company has dealt more with government and military customers, earning some impressive validations. Its website claims that the coatings have been checked out by various groups including Sandia Labs and the Naval Surface Warfare Centre Crane Division (NSW-Crane develops and tests technology for the terribly-secret-yet-famous Navy SEAL special forces).

Perhaps even more significantly, the RF-proof paint is approved as a TEMPEST countermeasure by the US National Security Agency (NSA). Before wardrivers and Wi-Fi were ever heard of, security types were warning about TEMPEST vulns, where attackers sniff the emissions from kit which isn't even meant to communicate wirelessly. Depending on competence, equipment, and proximity TEMPEST attackers can supposedly lift info directly from unshielded electronics.

Of course, most black hats in the commercial world aren't in this league, and indeed it could be said that many corporate Wi-Fi users might do better to enable their built-in encryption than redecorate the office with radio-proof paint. Especially if they want to use their mobile phones, or look out of the window now and then.

Still, products like this seem bound to find a wide market. Cinemas or theatres might use such tech to cut off mobile phones, avoiding the legal issues around jamming.

Famous Wi-Fi-allergic latin teacher Michael Bevington might wish to paint his house or classroom with EM-SEC paint. Mobile mast antis could buy the product for use at home.

And, if EM-SEC could develop a body-paint version of the technology, they would no doubt have the tinfoil-hat tendency queuing round the block. Although they could face stiff competition in this latter arena from Clarins, which already markets an allegedly electromagnetism-proof anti-ageing cream. Clarins lacks the crucial NSA and Navy-SEAL endorsements, however, choosing instead to partner with ladies-smellies and designer togs purveyor Thierry Mugler.

One does note that EM-SEC already has RF-proof fabric at its disposal in addition to paint, offering a range of nifty laptop bags, phone holsters, etc. Could a collection of stylish headgear for the tinfoil-clad be on the cards?
http://www.theregister.com/2007/03/23/rf_proof_paint/





T r u e C r y p t
WebBlurb

Free open-source disk encryption software for Windows Vista/XP/2000 and Linux

Main Features:

Creates a virtual encrypted disk within a file and mounts it as a real disk.

Encrypts an entire hard disk partition or a storage device such as USB flash drive.

Encryption is automatic, real-time (on-the-fly) and transparent.

Provides two levels of plausible deniability, in case an adversary forces you to reveal the password:

1) Hidden volume (steganography – more information may be found here).

2) No TrueCrypt volume can be identified (volumes cannot be distinguished from random data).

Encryption algorithms: AES-256, Serpent, and Twofish. Mode of operation: LRW.

Further information regarding features of the software may be found in the documentation.
http://www.truecrypt.org/





Beyond the News, Reminders of the War
Alessandra Stanley

The hosts of “Today” and “Good Morning America” began yesterday on their feet, standing like evening news anchors alongside maps and images of Iraq — marking the fourth anniversary of the war by looking back at its disappointments. Images of roadside bombings and sectarian carnage flashed across the screen along with a clip of Vice President Dick Cheney in 2003 saying that American troops would be “greeted as liberators.”

President Bush delivered a televised rebuttal with a live address to the nation. Standing in front of a long shelf of books in the Roosevelt Room, a stance meant to project wisdom more than power, Mr. Bush assured viewers that since the January troop increase, there were “some hopeful signs” on the ground.

The war has changed dramatically since the early, heady days of shock and awe. Television over the past four years has changed with it, not always for better but not necessarily for worse. Most Americans, spared tax increases, rationing or a draft, still have no direct sense of the war beyond the television set. When asked in January what sacrifices Americans have made, Mr. Bush replied, “They sacrifice peace of mind when they see the terrible images of violence on TV every night.”

The networks, which covered the early days of the invasion on tiptoe, worried that their patriotism in the wake of 9/11 would be questioned, have grown more openly skeptical. But news programs are not the only place where viewers are exposed to the conflict in Iraq.

Since the invasion, and most particularly in the aftermath of the Abu Ghraib scandal, the war on terror has surfaced as a subplot or subliminal theme, not just on “24” or ripped-from-the-headline crime series like “Law & Order,” but even on reality shows and sitcoms. On NBC’s “30 Rock,” the network executive played by Alec Baldwin tells co-workers that he is dating Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.

Most of the shows echo the public’s disenchantment after Abu Ghraib and the military failures in Iraq.

Sometimes the Iraq conflict takes over an entire plotline: an episode of “Criminal Minds,” a CBS series about serial killers and psychopaths, turned its focus to a Muslim terrorist suspect being held at Guantánamo — without due process. (He is thrown on the floor of an interrogation room in his underpants, hands and feet bound by chains and his face bruised from beatings.)

Other times, references to the war pop up almost gratuitously. On CBS’s “Without a Trace,” an F.B.I. agent described a potentially disastrous pipe leak in the ocean as “the ecological equivalent of Iraq.”

Television shows process news events much faster than ever before, but not much more directly than they did at the time of “Hogan’s Heroes,” “M*A*S*H” or “China Beach.” They do not grapple any more straightforwardly with the larger issues of whether the war is right or wrong, or even try to paint the full reality of the war itself. “The Unit,” a CBS series about the derring-do of top-secret special forces, prefers to set its combat scenes elsewhere than Iraq, sometimes as close as Afghanistan, but more often Africa or Asia.

That could be because Steven Bochco’s “Over There,” a 13-episode series about soldiers fighting in Iraq, was not a hit. Shown on FX, it was the first television drama about the conflict, and hard to watch: a series that turned a war into entertainment while it was still being fought.

Producers and writers prefer a more elliptical approach, siphoning off the most dramatic and troubling elements. On ABC’s “Brothers & Sisters,” the drug-addicted youngest brother is a damaged veteran of the war in Afghanistan. Even “Grey’s Anatomy” wriggled its way into the war: Meredith’s half-sister, Molly, gave birth while her husband was in Iraq.

But most of all, shows write in references to torture and the abuse of prisoners, perhaps because those acts so sharply undermine the idealization of civil servants and servicemen on shows like “CSI” or “NCIS” on CBS. Fox’s “24” is a counterterrorism thriller that supports the notion that in the war against extremism, the use of torture is both necessary and effective. It’s the exception.

Last season “Sleeper Cell,” a series on Showtime, dramatized the opposite argument: the terrorist leader, Farik, sat in a C.I.A. prison, withstanding gruesome psychological and physical torture and taunting his captors about their ambivalence about such methods. “You Americans are so obsessed with yourselves,” Farik says, “that you care more about analyzing your guilt than achieving victory. That is why we will win, and you will lose.” (The C.I.A. outsources him to the less inhibited interrogators in Saudi Arabia.)

Torture is turned into a joke on “Saturday Night Live” or “The Daily Show With Jon Stewart,” as well as on the much discussed and now defunct Fox series “Arrested Development.” At the end of that sitcom’s run in 2006, two Bluth brothers traveled to Baghdad to seek their other brother’s release from an Iraqi prison. “It’s U.S.-run,” one says. “God knows what they are doing to him.”

The topic is anything but funny on dramas. On NBC’s “Heroes” two Los Angeles police officers race to interview a suspect unfairly tagged as a Muslim extremist. “He’s got one hour before Homeland Security sends him down the rabbit hole as a suspected terrorist,” an officer says.

Crime series have long dramatized the tensions between police officers and the F.B.I., but over the past four years the F.B.I.’s handling — or mishandling — of the terrorist threat has provided new fodder for conflict. On TNT’s show “The Closer,” the F.B.I. tries to take over a homicide case from the Los Angeles Police Department, arguing that the murder is a matter of “national security.” An Iranian suspect tells an agent that he has legal rights. “Really?” the agent replies. “You might want to take a closer look at the Patriot Act.”

Americans don’t watch the news as closely as they should, but the news has a way of closing in on popular culture.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/20/ar...on/20watc.html





Hot But Virtuous Is an Unlikely Match for an Online Dating Service
Brad Stone

The women who appear in Web ads for the dating site True.com almost certainly do not need to look online for a date.

The buxom and often barely dressed models, posing next to slogans like “It’s nice to be naughty,” are plastered across the Internet these days, and are hard to avoid on the social networking site MySpace.

In part because of its provocative ads, True.com, based in Irving, Tex., has seemingly come out of nowhere to become one of the most visited sites in the $700 million-a-year online dating industry, attracting 3.8 million people last month.

True’s rise has been controversial. The company has riled competitors like Match.com and Yahoo Personals, which say that True’s lowbrow advertisements clash with its high-minded lobbying and legal efforts. True, which conducts criminal background checks on its subscribers, is the primary force behind a two-year-old campaign to get state legislatures to require that social Web sites prominently disclose whether or not they perform such checks.

True also says it is preparing to sue an ex-convict from Florida in Texas state court for violating its terms of service by joining the site.

“I want to make sure that our members have a wholesome environment for courtship,” said Herb Vest, True’s 63-year-old founder and chief executive.

Rivals dismiss the company’s piety as a play for publicity. They also assert that the company makes it especially difficult for users to cancel its $49.95-a-month service, and that it has a history of generating automated messages that appear to be flirtatious “winks” from other users.

“True is the controversial child in the Internet dating industry. They are loathed by everybody,” said Joe Tracy, publisher of Online Dating Magazine, a Web site on the industry.

Mr. Vest, a Vietnam veteran with a Texas accent, brushes off the criticism. “If there was a popularity contest among the entire population of the United States, I most assuredly would come out at the very bottom of that,” he said. “But you are not going to stop me by calling me names.”

True joined the crowded online dating scene in 2004. To distinguish itself from the pack, it offered a range of personality and sexuality surveys. It also hired the data broker ChoicePoint to perform background checks on customers to ensure that they had no criminal record and were not married.

The company then tried to have laws passed in several states that would require other sites to conduct background checks or disclose that they do not.

Companies like Yahoo, Google and IAC/InterActiveCorp, which owns Match.com, lobbied against the proposal through NetCoalition, an industry trade group. Markham Erickson, the group’s executive director, said background checks were ineffective, partly because felons can easily circumvent them by providing false information. “Their initial sound bite sounds great, but once you get past that, you realize it’s totally unworkable,” he said.

True has had little political success so far, but is backing bills that legislators are considering in Florida, Texas and Michigan.

Mr. Vest has used political tactics before. His first company, the financial firm H. D. Vest, helped pass legislation in nearly all 50 states that allowed certified public accountants to earn commissions on the sale of securities. Critics who said the move would influence the financial advice of accountants — and benefit H. D. Vest, which offered tax and investment guidance — were overruled.

Mr. Vest sold his company to Wells Fargo for $128 million in 2001, then gravitated to the online dating market, with the professed aim of restoring family values. “I looked at the divorce rate and said, ‘That’s a bunch of nonsense. I can do something about that,’ ” he said. He himself underwent what he called a painful divorce in 1991 and has remarried.

True.com grew too quickly in its first year and sailed into financial trouble. At the end of 2004, Mr. Vest, its primary investor, laid off 90 employees, more than half its staff.

Soon after, True became more aggressive, and sex-themed, in its advertising. While the site continued to pitch itself as a safe way to date, its ads now featured voluptuous women and slogans like “Come and get them while they’re hot.”

Newer True.com video ads depict models in their underwear, imploring men to visit True and chat with them over live Web cameras.

According to Nielsen Monitor-Plus, True.com spent $52.2 million over the first 11 months of last year on Web ads, more than double the amount its rivals spent online. (EHarmony, which runs TV ads, is the offline leader with $110.1 million in spending.)

Mr. Vest said the company’s ad budget continues to expand. He said the company is profitable and has 16 million members, but he declined to say how many of them actually pay the company, and how many use the more limited free services or no longer visit the site.

Match.com and Yahoo declined to discuss True.com. But David Evans, who writes Online Dating Insider (onlinedatingpost.com), a blog about the industry, said the competition was upset with True because its ad blitz, which included text ads tied to dating-related search terms, is driving up advertising costs while harming the industry’s reputation.

“They worked hard to overcome the stigma of providing these services,” Mr. Evans said. “And True comes in, grabs the lead in page views and drives up the cost of dating keywords on the search engines for everyone else.”

The ad campaign has also brought some strenuous objections. MySpace users have started four groups on the site asking it to reject True.com ads. Mr. Vest denies that his ads are exploitive or semipornographic. “We are very conscious of our reputation,” he said. “Pornography brings perverts, and we do not want perverts on our site. On the other hand, you can state from me in bold letters that True is in favor of sex.”

The ad carpet-bombing has worked in one way: last year, True jumped to the top of several lists of the most visited personals sites. According to comScore Media Metrix, True.com’s 3.8 million visitors in February put it slightly behind Yahoo Personals and Match.com, but ahead of older rivals like eHarmony and Spark Networks, which owns JDate.com and other sites.

However, True still significantly trails those players in more important categories, like time spent on the site. That suggests that many users are either not signing up for paid memberships or are quickly dropping the service once they do.

Or at least trying to drop it. On many Web forums, online daters have shared horror stories of trying to cancel their True.com accounts. True requires members to telephone the company to cancel, but it appears to go the extra step of sometimes failing to honor those requests.

Preston Roder, a 54-year-old liquor store manager in Mundelein, Ill., said he tried to quit True.com last September after an unfruitful yearlong membership but was still hit with an array of charges over the next four months.

“True is a big company, but they could care less when you try to cancel,” said Mr. Roder. “They got your money so they are through with you.”

Mr. Vest said the company recently revised its policy on cancellations. “We are not as good as I want to be. We still have an ongoing project to improve,” he said.

The site has also been criticized for generating random “winks” — the industry term for messages of interest from other members. Dan Consiglio, a 49-year-old engineer from Vancouver, Wash., said he received dozens of winks from women after signing up for True, and responded to many of them. He got only one response, from a woman who kindly informed him that she had not, in fact, winked at him.

Mr. Vest acknowledged that the service sends artificial winks, but he said users have the option to disable them and that they serve an important purpose. “We try getting people who otherwise might be very retiring or shy to meet each other and fall in love and have children,” he said. “We are just trying to do our job as a matchmaker.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/19/te...true.html?8dpc





U.S. Judge Blocks 1998 Online Porn Law
Maryclaire Dale

Software filters work much better than a 1998 federal law designed to keep pornography away from children on the Internet, a federal judge ruled Thursday in striking down the measure on free-speech grounds.

Senior U.S. District Judge Lowell Reed Jr. also said the Child Online Protection Act fails to address threats that have emerged since the law was written, including online predators on social-networking sites like News Corp.'s MySpace, because it targets only commercial Web publishers.

"Even defendant's own study shows that all but the worst performing (software) filters are far more effective than COPA would be at protecting children from sexually explicit material on the Web," said Reed, who presided over a monthlong trial in the fall.

The never-enforced law was Congress' second attempt to protect children from online porn. The U.S. Supreme Court upheld in 2004 a temporary injunction blocking the law from taking effect; Reed on Thursday issued a permanent injunction.

The law would have criminalized Web sites that allow children to access material deemed "harmful to minors" by "contemporary community standards." The sites would have been expected to require a credit card number or other proof of age. Penalties include a $50,000 fine and up to six months in prison.

Sexual health sites, the online magazine Salon.com and other Web sites backed by the American Civil Liberties Union had challenged the law on grounds it would have a chilling effect on speech. Joan Walsh, Salon.com's editor in chief, said the law could have allowed any of the 93 U.S. attorneys to prosecute the site over photos of naked prisoners at Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison.

"The burden would have been on us to prove that they weren't" harmful to minors, Walsh said Thursday.

In his ruling, Reed warned that "perhaps we do the minors of this country harm if First Amendment protections, which they will with age inherit fully, are chipped away in the name of their protection."

Daniel Weiss of Focus on the Family Action, a lobbying arm of the conservative Christian group, said it would continue to press Congress for a workable law.

"The judge seems to indicate there's really no way for Congress to pass a good law to protect kids online," Weiss said. "I just think that's not a good response."

To defend the nine-year-old law, government lawyers attacked software filters as burdensome and less effective, even though they have previously defended their use in public schools and libraries. That case was over a 2000 law requiring schools and libraries to use software filters if they receive certain federal funds. The high court upheld that law in 2003.

The plaintiffs expect the Justice Department to appeal. Justice spokesman Charles Miller said the department still was reviewing the decision and has "made no determination as to what the government's next step will be."

"I would hope that Attorney General (Alberto) Gonzales would save the U.S. public's money and not try to further defend what is an unconstitutional statute," said John Morris, a lawyer with the Center for Democracy and Technology, which wrote a brief in the case.

"That money could better be used to help educate kids about Internet safety issues," he said.

The plaintiffs argued that filters work best because they let parents set limits based on their own values and a child's age.

Reed concluded that filters have become highly effective and that the government - if it wants to protect children - could do more to promote or subsidize them.

The law addresses material accessed by children under 17, but only applies to sites hosted in the United States.

The Web sites that challenged the law said fear of prosecution might lead them to shut down or move their operations offshore, beyond the reach of U.S. law. They also said the Justice Department could do more to enforce obscenity laws already on the books.

Reed noted in his 83-page ruling that, since 2000, the Justice Department has initiated fewer than 20 prosecutions for obscenity that did not also involve other charges such as child pornography or attempts to have sex with minors.

Although the government argued for the use of credit cards as a screening device, Reed said he saw no evidence of any accurate way to verify the age of Internet users. And he agreed that sites that require a credit card to view certain pages would see a sharp drop-off in users.

The 1998 law followed the Communications Decency Act of 1996, Congress' first attempt to regulate online pornography. The Supreme Court in 1997 deemed key portions of that law unconstitutional because it was too vague and trampled on adults' rights.

COPA narrowed the restrictions to commercial Web sites and defined indecency more specifically.

"This is the second time Congress has tried this, and both times the courts have struck it down," said the ACLU's Chris Hansen, a lead attorney on the case. "I don't see how Congress could write a constitutional statute."
http://www.ibtimes.com/articles/2007...t-blocking.htm





Lies and statistics

Market Share Myth 2007: iPod vs Zune and Mac vs PC

Analysts and reporters like to talk about market share statistics, but the conclusions they draw are often misleading. Here's a look at how those numbers are used to paint grossly inaccurate portrayals of the market share of the Zune among iPods, and alternatively the Mac among PCs.

Market share simply refers to the portion of a vendor’s unit sales compared to the overall market. However, most large markets include specialized niches that each act as a market. For example, within the overall market for vehicles are passenger cars, and buried within that major segment is the small but profitable luxury car market.

BMW doesn't compete against ship and plane builders, nor even the entire line of cars built by GM. It would therefore be absurd to talk about BMW's small share of the "vehicle market," or even to compare its market
share among other car makers. It's simply pointless and irrelevant.

Why is market share so important in the PC world, particularly for Apple?

The Slippery Numbers of Market Share
Microsoft-enamored analysts have long been titillated to report Apple's small Mac market share in comparison to all PCs sold worldwide.

They are not as quick to mention that the definition of “the PC market” ballooned as PCs makers pushed into markets unrelated to Apple's business, resulting in a commensurate decrease of Apple's share as the overall PC market rapidly expanded into unrelated directions.

By referring to Apple at every opportunity as having "less than a 3% share of the market," it enables them to casually suggest that a $77 billion company with the world's hottest consumer brand is really just of little consequence.

Gartner reported in January 2007 that the worldwide PC market in Q4 2006 grew by 7.4% over the previous year to 67.3 million units. Apple sold 1.6 million Macs in that quarter, giving it a mere 2.3% of that global market.

Charting Gartner's sales numbers for PCs since 1991--including its estimated sales through 2010--provides Apple with an embarrassingly tiny bit of blue next to the towering yellow bar representing the entire worldwide PC market, even when the chart is expanded vertically to flatter Apple.

However, in the same January 2007 press release, a Gartner analyst also stated that "the PC industry battled for wallet share against other consumer electronics products, such as games consoles and flat panel TVs." In other words, the vast PC market is but part of a larger market: consumer electronics.

Additionally, Gartner also breaks out the US market as distinct from the worldwide market. Worldwide, Lenovo, Acer, and Fujitsu place third, fourth and fifth, while in the US market, they don't show up in the top five at all. Further, while HP leads worldwide PC sales, it is second to Dell within the US. How is that even possible?

Clearly, market share isn't a subject where numbers "speak for themselves." The more contextual information one has, the less relevant a specific portion of the entire world's market share appears to be.

In fact, if we throw all of the top eight brands Gartner tracked since 1991 into our chart, they all look rather unimpressive next to the overall, worldwide market, graphically demonstrating the fallacy of relying upon PC market share numbers to “speak for themselves.”

The Slippery World of Percentages
Comparing a half to a seventh to a thirty-third is difficult to conceptualize. With everything in hundredths, a portion of the overall pie is easier to fathom.

Even with percentages however, it is easy to set up comparisons that are very misleading. A vendor selling 100 units in a year and 200 the next year could be accurately described as having "200% of the previous years sales" or "a 100% increase over last year," or alternatively only having sold "50% as much" the prior year.

That variety in phrasing, combined with variations in the definition of a market, can be used to tell remarkable stories that entirely misleading, but which appear to be supported by logical and accurate statistics.

Zune, or How I Learned To Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb
When Microsoft announced it would abandon its PlaysForSure partners and take on Apple’s iPod with its own Zune music player, analysts were careful to point out that Microsoft had taken over markets before.

Since Apple had sold lots of iPods, it was assumed to be an easy feat, and since Microsoft had outsold the Mac a decade ago, it logically followed that history was about to repeat itself, or so they said.

Apple's iPod has experienced phenomenal growth since its 2001 unveiling. Like the Mac, the iPod largely created a new market rather than displacing an existing one. In 2002, Apple had 33% of the hard drive music player market with 4th quarter sales of 140,000 iPods. A year later, it had 64% of that market selling 304,000. Apple more than doubled its sales, while the rest of the market failed to grow at all.

A year later, Apple had 82% of the hard drive market with sales of 2 million in its winter quarter, meaning that all its competitors were selling less than a half million units combined, a minor increase over the previous two years.

Apple wasn't eating into other players' sales, it was greatly expanding the entire market for hard drive audio players.

That was just what Microsoft had done in the computer world the early 90s: it didn't sell Windows to the existing market of Mac users, but rather sold Windows PCs to a broader market around the Mac, replacing dumb terminals and DOS boxes, and putting Windows PCs on desks that had never had a computer before.

Microsoft didn't replace the Mac; it pioneered new markets outside those Apple was targeting. In doing so, Windows helped impede any major new growth of the Mac platform, but sales of new Macs remained fairly consistent at around 3-4 million per year over the last decade and a half since 1991.

If we pull the yellow bar “of all PCs sold” out of the above chart, it demonstrates that Apple continued to sell roughly the same 17 million Macs every five years since 1991. Gartner estimates that Mac sales will roughly double between 2006-2010.

Analysts Get It Backwards
While analysts once liked to say that the Zune would take over the music player world in the same manner that Windows PCs engulfed the Mac, the situation was really not even remotely similar. Analysts had things entirely backwards.

With the Zune, Microsoft would not be selling a cheaper version to a different audience, but rather introducing a device of the same price to compete against an established brand.

Microsoft was attempting to eat into the high end of iPod sales, not roll out a cheaper version of the iPod to cube dwellers who had never heard of music before.

However, as predicted in Myth #8 of 10 iPod vs Zune Myths, the only sales Microsoft could easily displace with the Zune were its own partner's PlaysForSure devices.

Microsoft gnawed off its own foot, which while technically an achievement, only managed set the company back in its efforts to expand in the overall market and to push the adoption of Windows Media in place of the QuickTime-based iTunes.

It will be very difficult for Microsoft to grow that foot back. As for the prey it had intended to eat in its feeding frenzy: the iPod--in the same quarter--grew dramatically larger by extending its appeal to new buyers rather than just resorting to cannibalizing itself for some quick sales.

The tables have turned 180 degrees since Copland. Microsoft is now the one trying to bite into an established market but only eating itself up, while Apple's iPod is growing rapidly by broadening its appeal to new customers. How well will Microsoft continue to fare in a market with real competition?

Billionaire Ballmer Blows Beaucoup Bologna
In the same CNBC interview where Steve Ballmer erroneously referred to Apple's iPhone as "the most expensive phone by far ever in the marketplace," Microsoft's CEO also flamboyantly presented bogus market share numbers for the Zune which were also grossly exaggerated for dramatic effect:

“We took, I don’t know, but I think most estimates would say we took about 20-25% of the high end of the market. We weren’t down at some of the lower price points, but for devices $249 and over we took, you know, let’s say about 20% of the market."

Actually, the difference between 20% and 25% of the music player market is around four hundred million dollars of revenue. No doubt Ballmer has a lost his grasp of the value of money, but that's still a lot of cash to toss around as a rounding error.

Ballmer also took the liberty of inventing his own concept of what the “music player market” is: when talking about Zune market share, the market only includes music players that cost as much as the Zune. In reality, Ballmer’s reported market share for the Zune was off by an order of magnitude, more than a billion dollars.

Using Ballmer’s “make it up” market share methodology, what is Apple's market share of PCs costing more than $1000? Dell and HP dump out massive numbers of PCs, and have an average selling price of around $740.

If we can simply define our own “market” to fit our own needs, we can come up with whatever percentage we want. Off the top of my head, I believe Apple's share of the $1100 white Core Duo laptop market is around 90-95%, and I didn't even have look for actual sales numbers.

NPD's Smoke and Mirror Market Share Numbers
The best sounding news about Zune sales came from NPD. It reported that the Zune had taken 10.2% of the market in December. That would represent a dramatic and impressive first showing, even if it only represented a rush of early adopters. In reality however, NPD's numbers were grossly misleading for a number of reasons.

Data Source: First, NPD only reports on subset of retailers, mostly big box stores. That section of the market would represent the majority of Zune sales, because Microsoft lacks major direct sales channels; it has no retail stores, nor does it operate a web store selling lots of Zunes.

Apple, on the other hand, has a series of web stores serving education and the general public; a significant retail presence of its own, with over a billion in sales last quarter; and lots of school campus stores selling lots of iPods. Apple also sells a lot of its iPods through other direct channels, including mail order and other web stores.

Defined Market: Even more disturbing about NPD's 10.2% was that it was based only on the "market for 30 GB hard drive players." In other words, NPD gerrymandered a Ballmeresque "market" based on the Zune's description, comparing it only against Apple's smaller capacity, full sized iPod model.

Users buying a full size iPod are tempted to spend another $100 to get nearly three times the capacity in the 80 GB model. Why cut those buyers out of the "Zune market?" To create an intentionally false story, of course.

Sales Period: When counting all music players, NPD only reported 2.8% market share for the Zune. But it was still only able to do that by creating a special five week period that added in the Zune's debut week in November with the rest of December. How convenient, because Zune sales imploded after its initial debut week.

Once again, NPD’s numbers excluded the Apple Stores' billion in sales, and all of the direct iPod sales, including popular online sources such as Amazon; recall that it was Amazon's popular sales reports that documented the rapid freefall of Zune sales after its debut week.

NPD simply pulled out all the stops in trying to define a set of circumstances that would suggest that Zune sales amounted to anything worth mentioning. It even appeared to invent the concept of weekly market share reports, and only abandoned them after it became clear that the tactic wasn’t helping to flatter the Zune.

Growth Segment: At the same time, NPD initially reported that Apple's overall share of the entire market for music players had actually increased substantially over the previous year, from 42% to 57%. Again, that excluded all of Apple's retail stores and other direct sales.

Obviously, the Zune didn't eat into iPod sales at all, but only cannibalized the sales of its PlaysForSure partners, primarily SanDisk and Creative, the two brightest luminaries of the PlaysForSure universe.

Apple's share had continued to grow, even when only considering NPD's subset of numbers from general retailers. The iPod ate up 17 new percentage points of the market pie, compared Microsoft's debut at just 2.8, nibbled out of the share formerly owned by Microsoft's capriciously jilted partners.

Later in the month, NPD reported new revised numbers that still gave Zune 2.8% for its magic five month period, but assigned the iPod 72% of the entire market for the overall quarter, rather than the preliminary figure of 57% for that odd five week period that was most flattering for the Zune.

This Just In: Pac Mac Still At It
Just three days ago, NPD reported figures for January 2007, reporting on a quarter billion dollars of MP3 players:

•Apple 72.7%
•Sandisk 8.9%
•Microsoft 3.2%
•Creative Labs 2.9%
•Samsung 2.0%

Once again, NPD’s numbers only cover retailers that supply it with data, which excludes Apple, Costco, online sales, and mail order outlets.

Based on NPD’s numbers and my math, it would appear Microsoft sold $7.2 million in Zunes in January via retail outlets, which at $250 each would be just short of 29,000 units, making its Dr Evil goal of “one million Zunes!” by June 2007 a bit of a joke.

Is There a Better Way to View Markets?
Given the near worthlessness of NPD's absurd market definitions and carefully cut out statistics--all based upon an unclear subset of the overall market--is there a more accurate way to look at markets than consulting heavily massaged market share numbers that jump around erratically in a dance that appears to be performed for the benefit of Microsoft?

Yes, and it says a lot about both the market for the Zune among iPods and the Mac among PCs. It just isn’t as flattering for Microsoft, so it would only appear on a website supported primarily by reader’s donations.

In other words, this site, in the next article.
http://www.roughlydrafted.com/RD/RDM...ED246674C.html


Market Share vs Installed Base: iPod vs Zune, Mac vs PC

It's not billionaire executives nor genius engineers who decide whether the world's resources will be used to design and build iPods or Zunes. It's the millions of consumers who choose to buy them. Companies in Redmond and Cupertino simply build their products, advertise them, and then wait to see what the market decides.

The Campaign for Dollars
Markets provide an efficient and fair way to determine how the world's resources will be used. If a company delivers a poor product, or simply fails to campaign for it in the market with effective advertising, consumers will vote with their dollars for alternatives instead.

Earning the votes of consumers in the market is a powerful incentive to develop better products. The market rewards companies that deliver the best work, whether best happens to mean cheapest, highest quality, most reliable, or whatever balance of features appeals most to consumers.

Maladies of a Monoculture Market
Markets generally work well to sort out who should be rewarded with profits, but things can go wrong if choice in the market is restricted:

1.
•When companies only care about being cheap and efficient, buyers end up with a dreary monoculture and are cheated with poor quality, while artisans and workers are exploited. Example: Wal-Mart.

2.
•When companies interfere with a market by fixing prices or negotiating cartel pacts, consumers are overcharged and get a poor selection, while artisans and workers are exploited. Example: the RIAA Labels.

3.
•When companies monopolize a market and prevent any natural competition from occurring, prices stay high, innovation lags, and the threat of government regulation looms. Example: Microsoft.

4.
•When governments interfere with markets and try to set prices artificially, it commonly results in just the opposite of what was intended: production stagnates and prices inch up anyway. Example: The 70s.

All of these problems can be corrected by new sources of competition and choice. More competitive choice in the market means more incentive to develop better products, more pressure to lower prices, and less need for the complications of government regulation.

Sharing the Market
Looking at sales figures helps to determine how consumers have voted for the various available choices with their dollars.

When presented with little choice, consumers are all forced to buy the same thing. When presented with a variety of choices, consumers flock to the best products, inciting competitors to invent new ideas, copy good ideas, and run their business more efficiently so they can offer consumers lower prices.

Comparing companies' shares of the market helps to get an idea of how successful each is in its competitive efforts. However, as Market Share Myth 2007: iPod vs Zune and Mac vs PC described, market share figures can be used to present misleading conclusions by:


1.
•artfully defining a very specific market that flatters a vendor
2.
•mixing in irrelevant market segments that marginalizes specialized companies
3.
•considering a specific sales period that flatters one vendor
4.
•only portraying a small sample of the total sales in a market

A more accurate way to look at the market is to look at installed base. That's the same kind of figures commonly used to compare sales of console video games.

Market Share vs Installed Base
What is Microsoft's share of the video game console market? What is Sony's share of the handheld gaming market? Don't know?

It is certainly not commonly reported, and nobody seems to need to know or repeat those numbers. Why not, particularly since market share is so critically important to relate about Apple’s Mac and Microsoft’s Zune?

For console gaming and other markets relating to a platform product--anything that demands a minimum threshold of community or developer support to be useful--the most informative numbers for determining market position and competitive ability are the number of units in the installed base.

1.
•Market share refers to a vendor’s percentage of sales in a market over a specific period of time.

2.
•Installed base refers to the total number of units sold and in use for that vendor’s platform.

In video gaming, it doesn't really matter who leads the overall sales in a specific week or month, only that each platform has enough momentum to sell games.

Looking at installed base numbers makes that clear. For example, Nintendo has long owned the handheld gaming market, while Sony has long dominated the home console market.

What about the market for the Zune among iPods, and the Mac among PCs? Compared to the world of video games, the markets for music players and PCs offer more complications when trying to figure installed base.

Installed Base Complications
Market share is easy to report for third parties like NPD with access to channel sales numbers, but installed base figures come from unit sales supplied by manufacturers. There are several complicating factors:

Unreported Data: Some manufactures don't break out specific sales by model, or don't report their sales at all. Most only report numbers at regular intervals.

For example, Apple reports iPod sales quarterly, but does not usually break down sales into specific models. When it reports Mac sales, it doesn't always break down how many were laptops, or how many were professional vs consumer versions. Microsoft has suspiciously never reported actual Zune sales, only throwing out the distraction of a June 2007 “goal” to ship a million units.

Channel Stuffers: Manufacturers can stuff the channel with unsold inventory and report it as sold, when it's really only sitting in a warehouse, not part of an installed base.

Apple stuffed the channel with Performa Mac models in the mid-90s in the hopes that Sears would sell them just to avoid dangerously tall piles of boxes in its stores. Microsoft is doing the same thing with the Xbox, allowing it to report having shipped 10 million Xbox 360s when sales reports indicate only 5 million have actually been sold.

Base Definition: For some products, particularly PCs, it's not known how units will actually be used. For example, what proportion of PCs are used in the home market, making up an installed base that matters to consumers? How many are still working and in use?

Mac vs PC Life Span
PCs have a short life span, and a large percentage--around half, according to IDC--are sold to businesses that dutifully recycle them at regular intervals.

Among home users, the epidemic of Windows malware and viruses prompts most users to just dump their existing PC and buy a new one rather than spend hundreds of dollars on tech support to clean it up and keep it working.

Maintaining a PC costs professional users around five times as much as a Mac.

The volume of new Windows PCs sold is therefore more impressive than the installed base of existing PCs. For Macs, the opposite is true. Macs tend to be kept in use longer, for a number of reasons:


1.
•Apple extends support for older machines far longer with its operating system software.
2.
•Older Macs are faster running a newer version of Mac OS X; older PCs can't even run the latest Windows.
3.
•It is easier to support and maintain older Macs; older PCs rapidly become more expensive to maintain.
4.
•Older Macs retain a high resale value, older PCs actually have a negative value after the recycling fees.


Put Out To Pasture: a PC Inventory
In studying the history of PC purchases made by a client with around a hundred employees, I found the company was still using all of their original Macs dating back to 2001, with a few even older Macs still in secondary use.

In contrast, there were no PCs more than three years old still in use, and most of the older models were in poor shape. Around 80% of its machines were PCs, and nearly all of those were commercial grade Dell OptiPlex or Latitude models; the other 20% were Macs. About a third of the entire 115 machines were laptops.

The older PCs simply did not make sense to keep around because each used different hardware components, they couldn’t adequately run modern software, and were problematically expensive to maintain, even with a dedicated IT staff available to service them.
It was simply cheaper to throw them out and buy new PCs. The resale value for those three year old PCs was basically zero. Had they bought Dell’s consumer brands, such as Dimension and Inspiron, their investment would been even more problematic, more expensive to support, and shorter lived.

Their Dell systems cost on average around $1500, but struggled to last for three years. Their Mac systems were closer to $2000, but were useful for six years or more and required less support, making them a better value.

Installed Base by Life Span
Assigning Macs a five year useful life span, and PCs a two year life span, the installed base for Macs among PCs on the planet is around 4.5%.

In the US, where Apple sells half of its Macs, Apple has over 8% of the usable installed base: 10 million five year old US Macs vs about 120 million two year old US PCs.

There are of course many older PCs still in use, but they are not getting upgrades and new software because with Windows it doesn't make economic sense to invest in old junk when a new PC costs on average $740.

A large portion of these older PCs are now running Linux, or alternatively, pirated commercial software, neither of which assists the retail software business.

PCs don’t vanish after two years, but they do stop contributing toward a commercial impact on the market.

Just Ask Microsoft
Commercially significant PC users' machines are only a couple years old; that's why Microsoft made no attempt to get Vista working on PCs more than two year old, and why the now discontinued Windows XP was not happy running on PCs built a year or two before it was released in 2001.

Looking further back, Windows 2000, 95/98/Me, NT, and even 3.0 all required PC hardware that was brand new. Certainly Microsoft is keenly aware of the PC software business, and if it made any business sense to market an OS upgrade to an installed base of many hundreds of millions of old PCs, it would do so. It does not.

The market for Windows upgrades has always been small; Microsoft reports that 80% of its revenues come from OEM bundled copies of Windows. Since retail copies cost around ten times as much as the big OEMs pay: $29 vs $299, Windows upgrades are only 20% of its dollar business, and an even smaller percentage of its unit sales.

Microsoft automatically sold 235 million OEM licenses with new PCs last year, but can’t sell even a fifth as many in retail upgrades. Windows PC users do not pay to upgrade their software, they simply throw their old PCs away. Microsoft runs a disposable platform which enriches it at the expense of the environment and its users.

The Installed Base of Macs
In contrast, Apple's Mac OS X Tiger still supports Macs sold back in 1997; those machines are ten years old! Apple has always supported a long tail of old Macs in its latest operating system. In 1998, Apple’s last upgrade for classic 68K Macs updated five year old systems and even ran on some ten year old Macs.

No doubt many of the 35 million Macs sold in the last ten years aren't still in operation, but analysts report that more than half are--22 million of them are even running Mac OS X, according to Keith Bachman, an analyst with Bank of America Securities. That reinforces the point that Macs have at least a five year life span.

The comparison of life span and installed base helps to explain why major developers such as Microsoft and Adobe expend significant resources to develop Mac versions of their software: it earns them revenues.

While a 2% share of the entire world’s PCs wouldn’t suggest much of a reason to target Macs for software development, having 8% of the active US installed base certainly does.

Installed Base in Consumer PCs
Of course, that 8% figure compares Apple’s installed base against the overall, worldwide PC market.

Since more than half of all PCs are used in business, Apple owns an even larger portion of the consumer market’s installed base, where Apple choses to compete.

Pulling out business PCs, Apple's share of the consumer PC installed base is above 15%, which correlates with the software available for the Mac.

In education, Apple has a 23% share of all new sales in the US, and around 15% in Europe.

Its corresponding installed base in education is even higher.

The Halo Effect Switchers
PC mercenaries have long ridiculed Apple's Switchers campaign and later the idea of the iPod Halo Effect, but despite market share touting doubters, those two phenomena have had a major impact on Apple's consumer sales, particularly in the US where they were focused.

NPD just reported figures that report Apple took 10% of January's billion dollar laptop sales in the retail channels it monitors; recall that NPD only reports on big box retailers, not Apple Stores or any online sales.

That means Apple has a much larger share of the retail laptop market than any rival of the iPod has in the retail music player market: more than SanDisk, Creative, or Samsung and far more than the Zune.

How Big is the Pie?
More importantly, Apple’s 10% laptop share in January is carved out of a billion dollar pie; NPD’s January music player market is a quarter billion dollar pie.

That highlights another fallacy common among Zune optimists who like to say that the Zune’s ~3% share of the NPD music player market is better than the Mac’s ~2% share of the worldwide PC market: in the last reported quarter, Zune’s 3% share was worth $7 million while the Mac 2% share was worth $4,400 million.

Clearly, market share is meaningless taken out of context, and anyone insisting that market share “speaks for itself” probably has good reason to avoid explaining things.

Apple vs Microsoft: Some Explaining
In the final quarter of 2007, Apple earned $7.1 billion in revenue, compared to Microsoft’s $12.5 billion in total revenue. Yes, that’s right, Apple brought in more than half as much money as Microsoft, despite Windows owning 98% of the PC market.

Even stripping Apple of its iPod revenues, which PC pundits love to do, the company still earned $4.4 billion on its Macintosh business, over a third as much Microsoft brought in from its entire Windows, Office, and server operations combined. Apple’s 2% of the PC market doesn’t seem so small anymore.

Of course, Microsoft actually lost a lot of money on all of its consumer electronics products, so looking at profits, Apple earned $1 billion compared to Microsoft’s total $3.4 billion in profit.

The main difference is that Apple actually developed new business in retail and music, and designed the iPhone and Apple TV to sell this year, while Microsoft only defended its monopolies from collapse and designed the Zune.

That also helps explain why Apple isn’t interested in throwing away its hardware business in order to try selling Mac OS X to PC makers. If Microsoft only earns three times as much as Apple while sitting on 98% of the PC operating system market, how could Apple make a fraction of its current revenues trying to sell Mac OS X?

Party Like It’s 1991
With Apple selling 10% of all laptops in the general US retail market, it is now back to the same proportion of Macs the company was selling at its heyday in 1991. The difference today is that Apple is selling another billion per quarter in its own retail stores.

Around 43% of Apple's revenues are for the Mac, which for some reason PC users like to use in their efforts to discount Apple’s ability to sell Macs. Again, the percentage is a distraction, because Mac sales are actually up.

Consumers visiting Apple's retail stores for iPod accessories are now surrounded with laptops and desktops, giving Apple a major bump in the number of Macs it sells. That bump is significant, and particularly kicked in during 2006 with the arrival of Intel Macs.

The Million Mac March
As noted earlier, Gartner reports Apple has sold an average of 17 million Macs every five years since 1991.

1.
•From 1991-1995, Apple sold 16.2 million classic 68K Macs.
2.
•From 1996-2000, it sold 17.6 million PowerPC Macs running a version of System 7, the Classic Mac OS.
3.
•From 2001-2005, another 17.2 million PowerPC Macs were sold running Mac OS X.
4.
•From 2006-2010, Apple’s Macs will be Intel-based, but there won't be just 17 million sold.

Between fiscal 2001-2004, Apple was unable to ever sell one million Macs within a quarter; it sold around 800,000 Macs per quarter during that time.

In fiscal 2005 (which began in the winter quarter of 2004), Apple sold its first million Macs in a quarter since the tech bubble in 2000.

Since then, Apple has never sold less than a million Macs per quarter.

For the last two quarters, Apple sold over a million and a half per quarter, double what it was selling just two years ago.

By doubling the number of new Macs sold, the installed base of Macs will grow even faster relative to short lived PCs that give up after a brief but troubled life in the virus and malware infected swamps of the Windows world.

Based on Gartner’s estimated sales forecasts for 2006-2010, Apple’s percentage of the overall installed base will jump by 50%.

More Macs Mean Many Fewer PCs
The worst news for Microsoft is that every new Mac sold to a former PC user means that at least two Windows PCs will go unsold: the initial PC and its mid-life crisis, second string replacement.

Compared to the 240 million PCs sold last year, Apple’s small share of around 6 million Macs per year won’t put Microsoft out of business any time soon. However, it means that 12 million Windows licenses will go unsold. That’s up from less than 4 million Macs eating up 8 million potential Windows licenses just two years ago.

The faster Apple grows, the more devastating this effect will be to Microsoft's automatic sales machine, which in turn will help open the market up to new choice and options, including Linux desktops. Once Microsoft loses its monopoly control of the OEM market, Windows will fare as well in the market as the Zune.

A prime segment of choosy consumers are going out of their way to not buy Windows. Microsoft doesn’t want to dominate the low end of cheap PCs; that market is already headed towards Linux anyway.

Microsoft wants to retain the valuable top tier of the PC market, the segment rapidly buying new Macs.

That’s why Microsoft is promoting premium products like Media Center, and working to create a pantheon of Vista versions which push consumers to buy higher-end upgrades.

Microsoft doesn’t just want “market share,” it wants to make money. Apple wants the same thing, it is just achieving that more successfully.

What about Zune?
Installed base is flattering to the Mac, but sure isn't for the Zune. That's why so much news was made regarding its carefully crafted market share numbers: without creating the suggestion that Zune had "captured market share," it would simply pale in comparison to the vast installed base of iPods.

PC market share numbers are thrown at the Mac to call attention to the fear, uncertainty and doubt that questions whether enough Mac software will get delivered to keep the platform viable. The case for getting a PC is that without enough "market share," there won't be enough software.

With the Zune, there is no fear-based argument regarding market share and the availability of software, because the Zune can play any music available on CD. Users with iTunes songs can even burn their songs to CD and upload them onto the Zune player.

The only reason to worry about scant market share for the Zune would be related to users who want to take advantage of its ability to wirelessly squirt advertisements of purchased songs to other users: there simply are no other users. Further, a significant chunk of purchased songs can't be squirted anyway.

Janus DRM and Installed Base
Zune market share is really only a concern for Microsoft, which planned to sell Zune users music using Windows Media DRM. Without an installed base of users, there is no business model behind selling subscriptions of songs that can delete themselves.

Zune users don’t need to worry about market share and installed base as long as music is available on CDs or can be downloaded via a format that can be put on their player, either plain MP3 or iTunes’ FairPlay burned to CDs. Market share is only a concern for the establishment of a secure DRM monopoly ruled by Janus.

One Million Zunes!
To pacify the most die-hard proponents of squirting, and to suggest that Janus still has a shot at binding the world under one DRM, Microsoft announced that it would ship a million (!) Zunes by the middle of 2007.

While this worked well as a smokescreen to distract from the fact that actual sales data was abysmal and does not at all support that goal, and hides the suspicious lack of any real numbers from Microsoft, it still doesn't provide any good news for Windows Media.

Even if Microsoft had shipped a million Zunes already, it would barely even show up as a blip on the installed base of iPods, or in comparison to any other recent consumer electronics launches.

For a point of reference, here's what a million Zunes would look like next to the iPod, when added to the chart of the installed base of video game systems:

The chart assumes Microsoft will actually eventually sell a million, and credits those million back into 2006, just to be charitable. Even so, one million units in seven months of sales is simply nothing in consumer electronics.

In reality, Apple will sell roughly another twenty million iPods by June 2007, blowing its green line out the top of the chart and leaving the Zune an invisible dot in Apple's rear view mirror, even if Microsoft can meet its goal by stuffing the channel with unsold Zunes, just as it did with the Xbox.

And in June, Microsoft will have another product to worry about: the Windows Mobile Killer.
http://www.roughlydrafted.com/RD/RDM...1D1688E00.html





Adobe Says no Way to Vista Updates
Grant Robertson

Adobe says you'll have to upgrade to new versions of popular (and really expensive) software like Photoshop, InDesign and DreamWeaver if you want them to run well under Windows Vista.

Current versions of many Adobe products won't run flawlessly under Windows Vista, this announcement only confirms that they never will. So, if you're a creative professional (who hasn't already jumped ship to OS X) start getting out the check book. Adobe's CS3 creative suite will be out next week, and it ain't gonna be cheap.

We probably should have realized something was up when Adobe's own document on Vista compatibility (which we wrote about almost a month ago) dodged the question by stating that Adobe would release free patches for "some of Adobe's currently available products." To our credit, it would have been much easier to spot if they'd said, "some of Adobe's currently available products, but not the ones anyone actually uses or cares about."
http://www.downloadsquad.com/2007/03...vista-updates/
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Old 21-03-07, 09:42 AM   #2
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Is Piracy Really Killing the Music Industry?

Various music industry trade groups claim that piracy is killing their industry, and are suing file traders and the sites they use. Are music sales, revenue, and profits down? Are MP3 downloads preventing music sales or do they instead help advertise new music? Are paid music downloads profitable or are they still insignificant?

Let's Ask the RIAA
Unsurprisingly, the music industry's own research and opinions on the subject support the idea that unauthorized distribution of music is killing both sales growth and profits. The result: music costs more to produce, there's greater risk in signing smaller acts with uncertain audiences, and the lower sales volumes have forced the labels to raise the retail price of CDs.

From the label's perspectives, the only solutions are to:

1.
•lock down music so users can't share the copies they buy
2.
•prosecute file traders and win settlements against them to discourage the practice
3.
•institute market pricing for music, so buyers pay more for popular music and less for back catalog music


Isn’t The Customer Always Right?
The RIAA has its critics, many of whom are music customers. Among them are:

1.
•the free and open source software crowd, who like the idea of freely shared content
2.
•people who don't want to pay for things that can be found for free, and don't like being sued
3.
•people who don't want to be restricted in their use of purchased music
4.
•companies who don't benefit from the market pricing of music

Before looking at the merits of the RIAA’s complaints and examining their own data on sales, take a look at the rationale presented by its various circles of critics, and see whose perspective best fits the facts.

Free as in Beer, Speech
Among the most effusive and articulate of critics are the minds who make up the volunteer collective of free and open source software. These people have spent a lot of time thinking about the nature of shared ideas and intellectual property, and some try to apply the principles proven to work in delivering shared, open code into the world of entertainment.

The difference, of course, is that free and open source software is written by volunteers. GNU/Linux, BSD, and other projects' code can be shared as desired by their creators.

The GPL and BSD style licenses seek to enforce different schools of thought on how content should be shared. However, neither can be applied to the commercial music represented by the labels, because none of that music is free or open.

Britney Spears' music is just as closed and proprietary as Microsoft Windows, and nobody has rights to distribute it under a free license, just as Microsoft has no rights to distribute Linux code without following the license provisions of the GPL.

Reasonable proponents of free and open content don't confuse unauthorized use of commercial music with "free content," and have instead sought to create their own music, movies and other entertainment, and share them under agreements like the Creative Commons licenses.

In their ideal world, there would be no DRM, no or at least few middleman labels selling their representation and marketing, and musicians and other performers would be supported by user donations, sponsoring companies, or perhaps sunshine and love.

Think of the Children
While many free and open source software proponents are intelligent, experienced, and affluent, there is an epidemic of poor and stupid people around the world. Many of them have been quarantined into higher education campuses in a social engineering experiment to educate them and make them valuable to society.

All that exposure to education and liberal thinking--considering facts and being willing to change their outlook based upon that new information--frequently results in more free and open source software proponents, with less attraction to music from Britney Spears and a greater interest in the work of smaller indie artists.

Along the way however, the problems of being poor and stupid commonly result in run-ins with authority. The RIAA is increasingly becoming a prime example of this; it has been targeting the poor and stupid to create fear, uncertainty, and doubt about the safety of trading files.

The RIAA mounted its legal attack just as sales of music to younger demographics appeared to collapsed in tandem with Internet file trading. However, things are not always as they appear, as the numbers indicate later.

The Scarcity Behind Supply and Demand
In trying to emulate their smarter and more experienced role models, the poor and stupid have tried to create economic arguments against the commercial existence of music.

A recent popular meme is to describe music as a "non-scarce good" and DRM as an artificial construct designed to convert music into a scarce good, one that can command a high price. This argument is absurd.

Music itself--as well as movies and other forms of entertaining, intellectual, and artistic performances--is most certainly a scarce good. It costs many thousands of dollars to produce an album, and millions to create movies.

That expense, related to not only the "above the line" performers, but also the "below the line" technicians involved in production, and expenses in advertising, promoting, and the various administrative costs, all make music and other productions very expensive projects. Expensive things are scarce.

If the resources to produce music were not scarce, there would be no American Idol or Star Search, and the planet would have 6 billion rock stars. Music is a scarce good. The fact that it can be mass duplicated after production finishes does not make it a non-scarce good. There are lots of ideas with clear and obvious value that are not tangible nor consumed:

1.
•Currency is artificially scarce. Anti-counterfeiting measures are essentially a “DRM,” protecting the value of currency and propping up the economy.

2.
•Apartment rentals invent artificial scarcity to exchange privacy for money. A landlord could shove a dozen other people in your apartment. By not sharing your space, value is created and rent rises.

3.
•Consulting work is similarly based on the scarcity of an expert's time. If time and space knew no boundaries, we could all be experts in every field and solve each other’s problems for free.

Time and space are constrained however, as are raw materials, talent, and good ideas. All those constraints result in scarcity, which demands effort and expense to collect, expend, or consume. We vote on how to distribute scarce things with our money.

Counterfeiting vs Piracy
Arguments that “ideas” like music have no value because they can be duplicated are as fallacious as suggesting that a copy machine creates value when it counterfeits money. No, it doesn't.

Fraud might temporarily enrich the counterfeiter, but it steals from everyone else who has worked for their money, because a fraudulent supply of money devalues real money.

Counterfeiting is such a threat to the worlds' economies that governments enact harsh punishments for counterfeiters, invest in developing anti-counterfeiting methods, and carefully police their money supplies.

It is therefore no surprise that unauthorized copying of music is similarly viewed as a serious threat by those who benefit from a tight hold on its supply, or that they are interested in DRM as a mechanism of preventing copying, or that they are work to create strong copyright laws, penalties for evading the law, and are suing those who do.

The main difference between money counterfeiting and music piracy is that nobody benefits from counterfeiting apart from the counterfeiter, while more people benefit from freely duplicated music: pirated music doesn't only eat into music sales, it can also act as an advertisement and promotional tool.

Record companies have long played their music on the radio for free, something that has no analog in the comparison to counterfeit money. The real question is: to what extent does file sharing hurt or help the industry?

The Real Customers
Neither the free and open source software people--who aren't interested in commercial music--nor the poor and stupid--who don't want to pay for music at all--are ideal customers. The real customers are people who buy music. They buy millions of CDs every year, and an increasing number are buying song downloads online.

This pool of people make up the sweet spot. Record labels take them for granted, and focus most of their efforts on trying to herd people from the first two groups into this population, using threats of lawsuits and other forms of intimidation, including the use of often excessive DRM aimed to force paying users from ever leaving the pool and joining those who don't pay for what they want.

Carrots vs Sticks
People respond better to positive, welcoming carrots than the stick of a police crackdown. Give an employee a critical summary of their screw-ups, and they will immediately stop listening to everything you say and consider you a bad manager. Highlight what they do well, and they will turn themselves inside out to please you.

The same principle applies everywhere else humans exist. Send police into a poor, crime ridden neighborhood to "control crime" and the crime will continue, and probably increase. Provide education and create opportunities, and those same people will clean up their own neighborhood.

America's wars on Terror, Drugs, and Science have not resulted in victories, only in huge prison populations that cross-train fiercer criminals and in publicity campaigns than only appeal to those who designed them. If the US would dial back into its recent history, it could discover that investing in education and creating opportunities for advancement would solve its problems with much less spending and far better results.

Similarly, if the record labels really want to expand their pool of paying customers, they need to focus on creating sales instead of attacking the poor and stupid who are unlikely to pay for their product anyway.

The labels are so afraid of change that they failed to recognize the potential for digital music sales a decade ago, and have more recently dragged their feet in getting behind sales of music downloads.

Companies Against the Market Pricing of Music
The forth group critical of the music label's policies also represents a huge part of the solution to the music industry’s problems.

That group includes Apple, which makes very little money in selling music in its online iTunes Store. Increasing the price of music is not in Apple's interests at all, because the company is primarily hoping to ensure a supply of music for its players.

Of course, Apple is also interested in expanding the supply of music sold through its online store. This both brings attention to its hardware sales, as well as enabling the company to expand its sales into TV and movie programming. Obviously, the more music that Apple sells, the more revenues the labels will earn.

Apple is the carrot that music labels can use to reward customers for buying their music: offering a wider selection of artists and a deeper catalog to encourage more sales. As people discover more music they like, they will in turn buy more music.

Alternatives to iTunes have failed primarily because instead of handing out an attractive carrot, they threatened users with a fearsome DRM-armored stick. MiniDisc and DAT were so encumbered by restrictions that they negated their own benefits.

Microsoft's PlaysForSure and Sony's ATRAC similarly applied layers of DRM to suit the needs of producers so egregiously that consumers were left with little reason to buy their products.

What Do the Facts Support?
Do the facts indicate that the labels' lawsuits, DRM, and market pricing strategies are effective? Are the assumptions that music sales, revenue, and profits are down accurate? Does file trading preventing music sales or does it instead help sell new music? Are paid music downloads profitable or are they still insignificant?

Take a look at figures reported by the RIAA itself. One warning sign: The RIAA contrasts "physical sales," the vast majority of which are CDs, with "digital sales," by which it intends to mean “music downloads.” It is somewhat scary that the RIAA in 2007 is not aware that CDs are digital music.

According to these figures, CD sales units and revenue increased from 1995-2000, then fell between 2000-2005. The labels blame piracy. There are additional reasons for the tapering off of CDs however. Among them:

Increased competition for entertainment dollars. When DVDs arrived, one could suddenly buy a 2 hour movie for around the same price as an hour of music on CD. Theatrical movies, video games, and other forms of entertainment have also given consumers other things to spend their money on.

Alternative music formats. While SACD and DVD-Audio were huge duds, an increasing amount of music is being sold as mobile phone ringtones or in paid downloads.

As the RIAA’s own number show, simply adding these sales with CDs makes up for the downturn in CD sales since 2000.

Does the RIAA expect every dollar of new music sold in other formats to only expand upon CD sales? Has it never occurred to anyone that some would cannibalize existing sales, just as CDs ate up cassettes?

Economic downturn. The economy tanked in 2000, just when CD sales flattened. However, as CD unit sales fell as noted in the blue line of this chart, the yellow line representing unit list prices failed to drop in the same ratio.

The higher overall, relative price of CDs actually helped to retard sales, making alternative music formats and other entertainment options more attractive.

Further, by antagonizing with the sticks of lawsuits, excessive DRM and higher prices, rather than incentivizing music sales by quickly moving to embrace online markets and offering fair prices to boost sales volumes, the labels have turned their industry into an authority figure that is fashionable to hate by the very demographic they hope to sell their new music.

Sell Where the Customers Are
The percentage of music sold as downloads skyrocketed in 2005, from less than 1% the year before to nearly 6% of the market. Labels that embraced digital music did the best.

In overall music market share, Variety reports that in 2006, Universal ranked first among the labels at 31.6%, Sony BMG came next with 27.4%, Warner Music took 18.1%, and EMI had 10.2%.

While CD sales slipped, download sales doubled. Warner, the first label to partner with Apple, did the best. In downloads, Warner Music claimed first jumped from a distant third to a tie for second place, with a 23.29% share. Universal had 27.4%, Sony BMG 24%, and EMI 10%.

Killing Me Softly
Despite the advantage iTunes sales gave Warner in online sales, CEO Edgar Bronfman Jr. complained the loudest about Steve Jobs’ position against market pricing.

Bronfman attempted to goad Apple into supporting the idea with a populist appeal, describing market pricing as an attempt to offer music for less than 99 cents. Of course, the real point of market pricing is to jack up the price of popular music that is actually being bought.

This strategy has been disastrous for the music industry in markets outside of the iTunes Store, where labels have the freedom to set higher list prices. In fact, higher list prices are the phenomenon charted above in yellow and blue lines above.

The “dollar value” statistics the RIAA reports for CDs is not the actual revenues earned by stores, but the list price of CDs! As popular new releases are given list prices of $18.99 or more, the record stores are left trying to sell a product priced beyond what the market will bear.

The music labels helped kill the record store by making popular music unaffordable--and unprofitable, since big box retailers are happy to undercut list pricing to offer CDs as a loss leader to create store traffic. That leaves the record stores to sell lower volume catalog CDs, something many smaller stores can’t afford to do.

Consistent Prices Saved Online Sales
Apple has prevented the labels from shooting themselves in the face in the online market by playing hardball: sell songs at 99 cents, and albums at $10, or your music will go unsold in the only online store with customers.

In the online market, Apple has far more market power than all the record stores combined, and the discounting of Wal-Mart--which lists songs for 88 cents online--is constrained by the failure of Microsoft’s PlaysForSure DRM.

The result is that sales are moving online, incentivized by consistent and fair prices, a wider available catalog, and better service than big box retailers.

In addition to eating into physical sales, iTunes’ paid downloads are eating into casual file sharing. Those same principles make buying music more attractive than trying to search for free music online.

Supporting iTunes is a far more workable strategy for the labels than trying to investigate and litigate against people who are unlikely customers anyway.

The Real Pirates
If the music industry wants to survive, it needs to sell music rather than vilify itself as a hostile authority, price itself out of the market, and insist upon excessive DRM.

The most effective strategies the labels can take is to:

1.
•destroy the utility of online services by dumping poor quality downloads into them
2.
•focus its efforts on prosecuting physical piracy duplicators, not casual file traders
3.
•attack the download piracy of organized criminal organizations such as the Pirate Bay and the Russian mafia.

The Pirate Bay, a site that helps to distribute pirated copies of commercial music, was reported selling $120,000 in advertising space on its website in a month. None of that money went to the artists, nor the technicians, nor the labels that work to sell it. Are those pirates Robin Hoods or simply organized hoods?

Is File Sharing Piracy?
Beyond the thieves profiteering on sales of unauthorized music, there is a less clear boundary between casual file trading and outright piracy. The music industry sees no distinction, and views every song traded as potentially hundreds of unsold CDs.

In 2001, the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry, a worldwide body representing the music industry, blamed the 5% drop in worldwide music sales on file trading sites and CD burning.

"The industry's problems reflect no fall in the popularity of recorded music. Rather, they reflect the fact that the commercial value of music is being widely devalued by mass copying and piracy," IFPI Chief Executive Jay Berman said.

Regionally however, there were actual increases in music sales that year. France reported 10% growth and the UK saw an increase of 5%. The IFPI credited those increases on strong demand for local artists.

A year later, the IFPI reported a 7% drop worldwide, and a 10% drop in the US. However, the group began admitting that piracy wasn’t the only factor on its radar. Berman said the music industry is “also having to compete with increased sales of other entertainment formats such as DVD films and new video game consoles.”

Retail DVD sales jumped over 60 percent in 2002 to $8.7 billion, a $3.3 billion increase over 2001. US music sales in the same year fell by $1 billion to $12.6 billion. How much of that $1 billion drop in CD spending was converted directly into the $3 billion of new DVD sales?

Does File Sharing Help the Music Industry?
That same year, Jupiter Research announced the results of a survey of 3,319 people which found that file traders were reporting that they now bought more music than they had before getting online to trade files.

"It is safe to say that active usage of online music content is one of the best predictors of increased consumer purchasing," Aram Sinnreich wrote in the report.

"Music sellers should devote their limited resources to online marketing and distribution--rather than eradicating the phantom threat of file sharing--if they truly wish to stanch the blood flow and turn the music market around."

The following year, researchers at Harvard University and the University of North Carolina reported the results of a study of file sharing, based on a review of the log reports of 1.75 million traded songs over a 17 week period compared to actual album sales.

They determined that even massive file sharing appeared to have no negative effect on sales, and in some cases appeared to have a positive effect on purchases. Other studies have reported that file trading does have the negative affect on sales one would logically expect.

In any event, it is hard to argue against the fact that the recording industry can gain more ground by making CD and online purchases more appealing than it can through raising CD prices and suing children.

Rather than seeking to raise prices in iTunes with so called market pricing, and continue to destroy the retail market for music with unrealistically high list prices, music labels need to focus on putting their product in front of their customers and making it appealing to buy.

That’s their job.
http://www.roughlydrafted.com/RD/RDM...A6AC07C37.html





Accounting for the Big Plunge in "Music Sales": the Digital Singles Effect
Ken Fisher

The music industry quaked yesterday as reports surfaced indicating that CD sales have plummeted 20 percent compared to the same period last year. This is just the latest a string of bad news for music sales going back several years. The question is, what's to blame?

The Wall Street Journal, which brought news of the decline, correctly notes that the demise of the boutique music store has certainly played a role in this. 800 stores closed in 2006, according to the Journal. Of course, those stores closed for a reason: they weren't selling enough music to stay profitable. Still, the effect on total sales would be hard to dismiss.

All the while, legal downloads continued to grow, but so far the focus from analysts and the press has been on how legal downloads have failed to "fill the revenue gap" created by the shortfall in traditional CD sales. What deserves further examination, however, is whether legal downloads are causing that shortfall. We do believe that they play a significant role in the music industry's current situation.

This quarter, 81.5 million CDs will be sold. While that's down 20 percent from the same period last year, digital singles sold by the likes of Apple's iTunes store grew 54 percent, to account for 175 million songs sold. In other words, the quantity of downloaded songs far outweighs the quantity of CDs sold as a whole. How many of those purchases are "singles," as opposed to digital album sales conducted online or subscription downloads?

Last year the industry saw about $2 billion in revenues from online music sales, and nearly $800 million of that stemmed from single-track sales, according to the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry's report. That leads me to estimate that at least 40 percent of sales are singles, which means that this quarter we could see something in the range of 70 million "singles" sold digitally.

The question is: how often does a consumer opt to buy just one or two songs off an album rather than buy the whole thing? This phenomenon must affect the top of the music charts quite viciously. I know I'm reluctant to buy an album, especially anything approaching a "hit album," unless I know that there's more than 2 to 3 songs on it that I like. Otherwise, I don't want to take the "risk."

But to answer the question of how often, let's just estimate based on what limited information we have. Given the estimate of 70 million digital singles, we could say that the ratio between consumers buying digital songs and entire CDs is approximately 1:1.22. That's quite a leveling. If my estimates have been conservative, the balance may be tipped even more in favor of digital singles.

Whereas years ago most consumers would drop their hard-earned cash on a whole album just to get "Tom's Diner," that same song can now be had for a buck. In other words, the business is changing. Legal downloads are on the rise, physical CD sales are on the decline, and consumers appear eager to purchase digital singles. Even if they're not just buying one or two songs off an album, that prudence can be devastating to CD album sales. Generally speaking, it takes 10 songs to reach the cost of an "album" (if generalized to $10), so even someone buying a handful of songs off an album leaves a "revenue gap" compared to a whole album sale.

There are certainly more factors involved in this than just the sale of digital singles. Competition with other forms of entertainment, such as the Internet, is also eating into both music and television. Many of our readers also cite a declining quality in music from the major labels.

But it goes without saying that the industry will blame much of this decline on P2P file sharing. Studies have thrown considerable doubt on the actual effects of music piracy, though, with one recent study arguing that its effects are "not statistically distinguishable from zero." It's worth considering other causes for this decline.
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post...es-effect.html





Did iTunes Kill the Record Store?

Record stores across America are turning up dead, including more than few established, high profile chains. Who killed the record store? Was it the iPod, iTunes Store, or is the real killer still on the loose?

The Fall of Tower Records
One of the chains forced to shut down its stores was the iconic Tower Records. The company entered bankruptcy protection in 2004. Creditors subsequently bailed the chain out, hoping that it could be salvaged.

The National Association of Recording Merchants had repeatedly named Tower "Retailer of the Year" over the last three years, but that didn't stop the collapse of America's eighth largest music store.

Tower was quickly liquidated this winter by Great American Group, whose bankruptcy bid won the remains of Tower's retail music stores; it quickly closed them all down, although stores outside the US and an online store are still being run independently under the Tower name.

Tower isn't the only music chain facing financial troubles.

1.
•HMV closed all its US stores in 2004.
2.
•Virgin Megastores reported losses of $495 million over the last two years.

Trans World Success?
The largest record store chain in the US is FYE. It's owned by Trans World Entertainment, which has been buying up troubled music store chains since 2003: Camelot, Wherehouse Entertainment, CD World, and most recently Musicland and its Sam Goody and Suncoast branded stores.

Trans World had also hoped to buy up Tower Records and keep some of its stores open. Despite continuing to expand its music store business however, Trans World reported slipping revenues over the last half decade.

One of the few music store chains actually doing well is Hastings, which has managed to increase its revenues in four of the last five years. However, Hastings' growth has largely come from books and videos rather than music sales, which currently only make up a quarter of its revenues.

Who killed the record store? The death of chains since 2004 provides some circumstantial evidence that points to Apple’s iTunes Store. The Washington Post fingered online sales, specifically mentioning iTunes next to a chart showing CD sales down and online sales up dramatically.

Did iTunes and Apple's ubiquitous iPod conspire to kill the record store? Are the big record labels somehow to blame? Was it simply a mass suicide?

CD+DRM = Failure
Things change in the music industry. Over the last decade for example, music sales rapidly moved away from cassette tapes to CDs.

In 1996, the RIAA reported that tapes accounted for nearly 20% of sales. Today, tapes are hard to find, while CDs expanded from 68.4% in 1996 to 87% of all purchased music in 2005.

As the technology to rip CDs became commonplace, the labels hoped to move consumers from CDs to unrippable, DRM-encrypted discs, including DVD-Audio and SACD. Both formats offer higher definition sound quality than standard CDs, as well as support for 5.1 surround channel sound.

Consumers didn't buy them however; both formats combined only managed to make up 2% of the music market in 2005, after several years of rivaling each other in the bid to replace the CD. Their failure offers a lesson that Blu-Ray and HD-DVD backers might benefit from contemplating.

SACD was introduced by Sony and Phillips, the same companies that had earlier hamstrung the release of DAT with excessive DRM. DVD-Audio was pushed by the DVD Forum, a consortium that responded to the cracking of DVD’s CSS by introducing even tougher encryption for DVD-Audio. It has subsequently been cracked as well.

Online DRM Fails
The labels also hoped that Microsoft's Windows Media DRM would help to sell music online, but none of Microsoft's partner stores ever developed sales that amounted to anything. As CD sales began to grow stagnant and online piracy expanded, the labels finally agreed to sell music in Apple's iTunes Store.

In the years since, Apple has sold over two billion songs, and sales are rapidly increasing. Still, downloads only amount to 5-6% of the music sold over the last couple years, depending on who's counting.

That means Apple's iTunes Store--which sold the vast majority of those downloads--didn't have enough sales to kill the record stores, despite the graphic comparison of percentages of change printed by the Washington Post to suggest otherwise.

The huge percentages of growth really highlight that online music sales have rapidly expanded from nearly nothing just a year or two ago. Online sales were tiny in the 2003-2004 period when the record stores began their steady decline.

Today, web retailers--including Amazon--are together selling more music on CDs than Apple is selling in FairPlay downloads. Internet sales amounted to 8.2% of all music in all formats outside of digital downloads.

Even adding Apple's digital downloads to physical CD sales over the Internet to fails to add up to a killer blow to the music stores; the shift to web based sales has largely only served to replace the direct mail sales by formerly sold through record clubs.

The Internet didn’t kill music stores.

Trail of the Real Killer
A look at the range of retail CD prices helps to establish what really killed the record stores. In an article about the demise of Tower Records, Elaine Misonzhnik observed:

"Wal-Mart, Target and Virgin Megastores (through the Amazon.com website) have been selling the recently released Christina Aguilera CD Back to Basics for $11.88. But Tower Records was selling the same CD for $17.99; F.Y.E. for $14.99; and Amarillo, Texas-based Hastings Entertainment, Inc. for $15.39."

Ah-ha! Record stores were trying to turn a profit, and simply starved to death. Dramatically cheaper albums, sold by big box retailers, killed the business model of stores hoping to stay in business selling CDs at list prices.

How can Wal-Mart and Target afford to sell CDs for a third less than CD stores? Easy: the big box retailers aren't planning to make money on CDs, but rather offer CDs as loss leaders to generate foot traffic. Music stores were trampled to death under the feet of shoppers running to Wal-Mart.

Retail Bandwagon
Other retailers have also found that selling CDs helps to attract customers and then keep them in the store longer. Misonzhnik noted that Radio Shack, 7-Eleven, and JC Penney have all added CD sales in attempts to bring in more customers.

Even Starbucks began selling CDs to encourage customers to linger, although it sells exclusive CDs which don't directly compete with albums from record stores.

By selling popular CD titles at a loss, Wal-Mart, Target, and other retailers have traded the easy profits on CDs--which formerly kept music stores in business--into store advertising and then wrote it off as a business expense.

The Long Tail
The remaining business of record stores has been catalog sales: the long tail of titles that are not available in the limited selection of CDs offered at a deep discount by general big box retail stores.

However, many of the record store chains that are closing simply couldn't afford to stock a huge selection of less popular acts, and were instead trying to compete directly against companies with no need to profit from CD sales.

That strategy has pushed customers interested in a broader selection to online sales: CDs from Amazon's catalog and downloads from Apple's increasingly large collection of music.

Wal-Mart Takes on Downloads
Having destroyed the music store, Wal-Mart has turned its market power to the Internet in hopes of dominating online sales as well. The company teamed up with Microsoft to sell online downloads, and underpriced Apples iTunes Store with 88 cent songs.

Efforts of the pair of monopolizing giants to take over online sales have been blocked by Apple's dominant position with the iPod. Microsoft's DRM doesn't work on the iPod, cutting Wal-Mart out of the market for the vast majority of potential buyers of online music.

By forcing third parties to sell their music without DRM in order to work on the iPod, Apple has pushed buyers toward CDs and MP3s stores, and choked sales from rival DRM outlets selling Microsoft PlaysForSure music.

Last year, download sales essentially doubled over the year prior across the board, from current albums in recent release to catalog sales and "deep catalog," the industry term for older and more obscure albums.

Sales growth in iTunes was actually stronger in catalog and deep catalog albums than in recent releases, underlining that the iTunes Store is picking up the broader, older album sales that dying record stores are leaving behind after being finished off in their attempts to compete in sales of recently released albums against the big box retail stores offering those same albums at cost.
http://www.roughlydrafted.com/RD/RDM...4E698E94A.html





Sales of Music, Long in Decline, Plunge Sharply
Ethan Smith

Rise in Downloading Fails to Boost Industry;
A Retailing Shakeout

In a dramatic acceleration of the seven-year sales decline that has battered the music industry, compact-disc sales for the first three months of this year plunged 20% from a year earlier, the latest sign of the seismic shift in the way consumers acquire music.

The sharp slide in sales of CDs, which still account for more than 85% of music sold, has far eclipsed the growth in sales of digital downloads, which were supposed to have been the industry's salvation.

The slide stems from the confluence of long-simmering factors that are now feeding off each other, including the demise of specialty music retailers like longtime music mecca Tower Records. About 800 music stores, including Tower's 89 locations, closed in 2006 alone.

Apple Inc.'s sale of around 100 million iPods shows that music remains a powerful force in the lives of consumers. But because of the Internet, those consumers have more ways to obtain music now than they did a decade ago, when walking into a store and buying it was the only option.

Today, popular songs and albums -- and countless lesser-known works -- can be easily found online, in either legal or pirated forms. While the music industry hopes that those songs will be purchased through legal services like Apple's iTunes Store, consumers can often listen to them on MySpace pages or download them free from other sources, such as so-called MP3 blogs.

Jeff Rabhan, who manages artists and music producers including Jermaine Dupri, Kelis and Elliott Yamin, says CDs have become little more than advertisements for more-lucrative goods like concert tickets and T-shirts. "Sales are so down and so off that, as a manager, I look at a CD as part of the marketing of an artist, more than as an income stream," says Mr. Rabhan. "It's the vehicle that drives the tour, the merchandise, building the brand, and that's it. There's no money."

The music industry has found itself almost powerless in the face of this shift. Its struggles are hardly unique in the media world. The film, TV and publishing industries are also finding it hard to adapt to the digital age. Though consumers are exposed to more media in more ways than ever before, the challenge for media companies is finding a way to make money from all that exposure. Newspaper publishers, for example, are finding that their Internet advertising isn't growing fast enough to replace the loss of traditional print ads.

In recent weeks, the music industry has posted some of the weakest sales it has ever recorded. This year has already seen the two lowest-selling No. 1 albums since Nielsen SoundScan, which tracks music sales, was launched in 1991.

One week, "American Idol" runner-up Chris Daughtry's rock band sold just 65,000 copies of its chart-topping album; another week, the "Dreamgirls" movie soundtrack sold a mere 60,000. As recently as 2005, there were many weeks when such tallies wouldn't have been enough to crack the top 30 sellers. In prior years, it wasn't uncommon for a No. 1 record to sell 500,000 or 600,000 copies a week.

In general, even today's big titles are stalling out far earlier than they did a few years ago.

The music industry has been banking on the rise of digital music to compensate for inevitable drops in sales of CDs. Apple's 2003 launch of its iTunes Store was greeted as a new day in music retailing, one that would allow fans to conveniently and quickly snap up large amounts of music from limitless virtual shelves.

It hasn't worked out that way -- at least so far. Digital sales of individual songs this year have risen 54% from a year earlier to 173.4 million, according to Nielsen SoundScan. But that's nowhere near enough to offset the 20% decline from a year ago in CD sales to 81.5 million units. Overall, sales of all music -- digital and physical -- are down 10% this year. And even including sales of ringtones, subscription services and other "ancillary" goods, sales are still down 9%, according to one estimate; some recording executives have privately questioned that figure, which was included in a recent report by Pali Research.

Meanwhile, one billion songs a month are traded on illegal file-sharing networks, according to BigChampagne LLC.

Adding to the music industry's misery, CD prices have fallen amid pressure for cheaper prices from big-box retailers like Wal-Mart and others. That pressure is feeding through to record labels' bottom lines. As the market has deteriorated, Warner Music Group Corp., which reported a 74% drop in profits for the fourth quarter of 2006, is expected to report little relief in the first quarter of this year.

Looking at unit sales alone "flatters the situation," says Simon Wright, chief executive of Virgin Entertainment Group International, which runs 14 Virgin Megastores locations in North America and 250 world-wide. "In value terms, the market's down 25%, probably." Virgin's music sales have increased slightly this year, he says, thanks to the demise of chief competitor Tower, and to a mix of fashion and "lifestyle" products designed to attract customers.

Perhaps the biggest factor in the latest chapter of the music industry's struggle is the shakeout among music retailers. As recently as a decade ago, specialty stores like Tower Records were must-shop destinations for fans looking for both big hits and older catalog titles. But retailers like Wal-Mart Stores Inc. and Best Buy Co. took away the hits business by undercutting the chains on price. Today such megaretailers represent about 65% of the retail market, up from 20% a decade ago, music-distribution executives estimate. And digital-music piracy, which has been rife since the rise of the original Napster file-sharing service, has allowed many would-be music buyers to fill their CD racks or digital-music players without ever venturing into a store.

Late last year, Tower Records closed its doors, after filing for bankruptcy-court protection in August. Earlier in 2006, following a bankruptcy filing, Musicland Holding Corp., which owned the Sam Goody chain, closed 500 of its 900 locations. And recently, Trans World Entertainment Corp., which operates the FYE and Coconuts chains, among others, began closing 134 of its 1,087 locations.

But even at the outlets that are still open, business has suffered. Executives at Trans World, based in Albany, N.Y., told analysts earlier this month that sales of music at its stores declined 14% in the last quarter of 2006. For the year, music represented just 44% of the company's sales, down from 54% in 2005. For the final quarter of the year, music represented just 38% of its sales.

Joe Nardone Jr., who owns the independent 10-store Gallery of Sound chain in Pennsylvania, says he is trying to make up for declining sales of new music by emphasizing used CDs, which he calls "a more consistent business." For now, though, he says used discs represent less than 10% of his business -- not nearly enough to offset the declines.

Retailers and others say record labels have failed to deliver big sellers. And even the hits aren't what they used to be. Norah Jones's "Not Too Late" has sold just shy of 1.1 million copies since it was released six weeks ago. Her previous album, "Feels Like Home," sold more than 2.2. million copies in the same period after its 2004 release.

"Even when you have a good release like Norah Jones, maybe the environment is so bad you can't turn it around," says Richard Greenfield, an analyst at Pali Research.

Meanwhile, with music sales sliding for the first time even at some big-box chains, Best Buy has been quietly reducing the floor space it dedicates to music, according to music-distribution executives.

Whether Wal-Mart and others will follow suit isn't clear, but if they do it could spell more trouble for the record companies. The big-box chains already stocked far fewer titles than did the fading specialty retailers. As a result, it is harder for consumers to find and purchase older titles in stores.
http://online.wsj.com/public/article...l?mod=rss_free





From 2004

Wal-Mart Wants $10 CDs

Biggest U.S. record retailer battles record labels over prices
Warren Cohen

Wal-mart wants every CD you buy to cost less than ten bucks. And the nation's largest retailer -- which moved a quarter of a trillion dollars' worth of goods last year -- usually gets its way. Suppliers who don't accede to Wal-Mart's "everyday low price" mantra often find their products bounced from the chain's stores, excluded from being sold to the 138 million people who shop at a Wal-Mart store every week.

In the past decade, Wal-Mart has quietly emerged as the nation's biggest record store. Wal-Mart now sells an estimated one out of every five major-label albums. It has so much power, industry insiders say, that what it chooses to stock can basically determine what becomes a hit. "If you don't have a Wal-Mart account, you probably won't have a major pop artist," says one label executive.

Along with other giant retailers such as Best Buy and Target, Wal-Mart willingly loses money selling CDs for less than $10 (they buy most hit CDs from distributors for around $12). These companies use bargain CDs to lure consumers to the store, hoping they might also grab a boombox or a DVD player while checking out the music deals.

Less-expensive CDs are something consumers have been demanding for years. But here's the hitch: Wal-Mart is tired of losing money on cheap CDs. It wants to keep selling them for less than $10 -- $9.72, to be exact -- but it wants the record industry to lower the prices at which it purchases them. Last winter, Wal-Mart asked the industry to supply it with choice albums -- from new releases from alternative rockers the Killers to perennial classics such as Beatles 1 -- at favorable prices. According to music-industry sources, Wal-Mart executives hinted that they could reduce Wal-Mart's CD stock and replace it with more lucrative DVDs and video games.

"This wasn't framed as a gentle negotiation," says one label rep. "It's a line in the sand -- you don't do this, then the threat is this." (Wal-Mart denies these claims.) As a result, all of the major labels agreed to supply some popular albums to Wal-Mart's $9.72 program. "We're in such a competitive world, and you can't reach consumers if you're not in Wal-Mart," admits another label executive.

Tensions are not as high now as they were last winter, but making sure Wal-Mart is happy remains one of the music industry's major priorities. That's because if Wal-Mart cut back on music, industry sales would suffer severely -- though Wal-Mart's shareholders would barely bat an eye. While Wal-Mart represents nearly twenty percent of major-label music sales, music represents only about two percent of Wal-Mart's total sales. "If they got out of selling music, it would mean nothing to them," says another label executive. "This keeps me awake at night."

Wal-Mart would not directly comment on tensions with the labels, but Gary Severson, Wal-Mart's senior vice president and general merchandise manager in charge of the chain's entertainment section, did allude to the dispute about music prices. "The labels price things based on what they believe they can get -- a pricing philosophy a lot of industries have," he says. "But we like to price things as cheaply as we possibly can, rather than charge as much as we can get. It's a big difference in philosophy, and we try to help other people see that." Virtually no industry executives would publicly comment about their company's relationship with Wal-Mart. But off the record, many record-industry executives shared their concerns. "I don't think there is a music supplier in America who really enjoys doing business with Wal-Mart," says one major-label rep.

No one in the music business ever expected Wal-Mart to become the most powerful force in record retailing. In the past, the business was shared among smaller local and regional chains such as Musicland, which once had an estimated ten percent of the market. But as Wal-Mart and other national discount operations such as Target and Best Buy have grown -- approximately half of all major-label music is sold through these three -- an estimated 1,200 record stores have closed in the past two years, according to market-research firm Almighty Institute of Music Retail. Last February, Tower Records, with ninety-three stores, declared bankruptcy and is now up for sale; Musicland has already changed owners, with many local outposts shuttered.

Wal-Mart is like no traditional record seller. Unlike a typical Tower store, which stocks 60,000 titles, an average Wal-Mart carries about 5,000 CDs. That leaves little room on the shelf for developing artists or independent labels. There's also scant space for catalog albums, which now represent about forty percent of all sales. At a Wal-Mart Supercenter in Thorton, Colorado, for example, there were no copies of the Rolling Stones' Exile on Main Street or Nirvana's Nevermind. While most of the latest hits were priced at $13.88, some records -- from the O Brother, Where Art Thou? soundtrack to the latest by Yellowcard -- were displayed for $9.72. Says Severson, "Paying fifteen dollars for a piece of music is a difficult value equation for customers."

For the music industry, having such a dominant retailer is like being stuck in a bad marriage. Whereas traditional music retailers took advertising money from the labels to push new releases in Sunday newspaper circulars, Wal-Mart barely advertises locally. It relies on national campaigns, where it promotes its own low-price policy. "Wal-Mart has no long-term care for an individual artist or marketing plan, unlike the specialty stores, which were a real business partner," says one former distribution executive. "At Wal-Mart, we're a commodity and have to fight for shelf space like Colgate fights for shelf space."

In the same way that Wal-Mart made it difficult for local mom-and-pop retailers to compete with its low prices, it has hurt smaller music stores. "When you're buying CDs for twelve dollars and selling them for ten like Wal-Mart, it makes the rest of us look like we're gouging the customer, when we're not," says Don Van Cleave, head of the Coalition for Independent Music Stores, a retail consortium. "It's supertough to compete with that price point." Even online, Wal-Mart sells songs for eighty-eight cents, compared with ninety-nine cents at the market leader, Apple iTunes Music Store.

Getting Wal-Mart excited about carrying a record is at the top of every label's to-do list, but it's harder than it sounds. There is an immense cultural chasm between slick industry executives and Severson's team of three music buyers at Wal-Mart headquarters in Bentonville, Arkansas. Only one of the three had ever worked in music retailing -- until that person moved to a new division in August and was replaced by someone who previously bought Wal-Mart's salty snacks. (Wal-Mart also relies on buyers at its two distribution companies, Handleman and Anderson Merchandisers, who purchase records as well as stock the Wal-Mart stores.)

"Content-wise, Wal-Mart is limited about what they sell," says one label chieftain. "Wal-Mart is Middle America's shopping headquarters, with different buying habits and consumer tastes than those who live in Manhattan and L.A." When founder Sam Walton christened the first Wal-Mart in 1962, music was never a priority -- it wasn't an everyday, easy-to-stock product like light bulbs, since the Top Ten changed so much. The chain also had specific objections to music. Walton wanted all stores to remain family-friendly, and in the rural South, rock & roll had the potential to turn away many customers. In 1986, the Rev. Jimmy Swaggart led one such campaign to ban music from Wal-Mart, saying rock fostered "adultery, alcoholism, drug abuse, necrophilia, bestiality and you name it." Albums and magazines about rock (including Rolling Stone) were temporarily pulled from the Wal-Mart shelves.

Wal-Mart's wariness about music ended once the music industry adopted a voluntary advisory sticker on albums deemed to contain adult language or sexual content. Today, before any new album is released, someone at each label is charged with asking, "Do we have any Wal-Mart issues?" If an advisory sticker is placed on an album, the label will put out a clean version about ninety percent of the time. Since the edited version of a hit record usually averages only about ten percent of a record's total sales, they do it mostly to keep Wal-Mart happy.

Wal-Mart has loosened up a bit, too. Eminem's albums, stickered or not, are not carried by the chain, but it does sell the 8 Mile soundtrack. And it carries an edited version of 50 Cent's debut. Since the labels are so adept at self-policing, though, censorship controversies are now rare. "There have been examples in the past, but it's not a current issue," says Severson.

Wal-Mart has also urged the labels to create exclusive new products that would lower music prices. In a short-lived test, Universal excerpted seven songs from existing albums by acts such as Sum 41 and Ashanti and sold them at Wal-Mart for $7. Few other labels wanted to participate. "They proposed it to a bunch of artists and managers, but everyone was worried that we are sending a message that instead of the sixteen-track album we sold, those nine extra songs were filler," says a label executive.

Some record executives think they can survive Wal-Mart's push. They argue that the hottest acts will always command a premium price. "50 Cent sold 7 million copies," says one rep, "and I guarantee that many of those sold for fifteen, sixteen dollars." And they believe that Wal-Mart will want to carry those hits because they draw customers. "If they can't find a record at Wal-Mart, people will go elsewhere," says one executive. "We should play hardball." But each label is watching the others to see if any make major concessions to Wal-Mart's demands for lower prices. A label that gives in could gain shelf space at the expense of another. "If you lose an account, one of your rivals could get more product in the store and get one up on everyone else," says a major-label rep. "You have to tread cautiously."

The tug of war between the labels and Wal-Mart isn't going away soon. The chain is aggressively opening new stores -- fifty-seven in October -- including some in urban areas. So unless it makes good on its threat to cut back on its music section, it will continue to grow as the top record store and become even more powerful. Laments one industry rep, "There is some impending doom associated with us not helping them."

Price War: Does a CD have to cost $15.99?

Major labels insist that the low prices mass retailers such as Wal-Mart and Best Buy demand are impossible for them to achieve. But Best Buy senior vice president Gary Arnold counters, "The record industry needs to refine their business models, because the consumer is the ultimate arbitrator. And the consumer feels music isn't properly priced." Labels point to roster cuts and layoffs as evidence that they can't sell CDs cheaper.

This breakdown of the cost of a typical major-label release by the independent market-research firm Almighty Institute of Music Retail shows where the money goes for a new album with a list price of $15.99.

$0.17 Musicians' unions
$0.80 Packaging/manufacturing
$0.82 Publishing royalties
$0.80 Retail profit
$0.90 Distribution
$1.60 Artists' royalties
$1.70 Label profit
$2.40 Marketing/promotion
$2.91 Label overhead
$3.89 Retail overhead

http://www.rollingstone.com/news/sto...t_wants_10_cds





Sub Pop, New Line, Dangerbird Partner With SNOCAP
FMQB

Online music distributer SNOCAP today announced today that it will power SNOCAP MyStores for indie labels Sub Pop, New Line and Dangerbird in conjunction with their distributor, Alternative Distribution Alliance (ADA). Using SNOCAP MyStores, the labels will be able to sell content directly to fans from their artists' MySpace pages and other sites.

"We want our music to be easily available on the sites where our fans live," says Sub Pop VP/Business Affairs Eric Brown. "SNOCAP's MyStores are inherently viral on MySpace and beyond. The combination of our artists with the versatility of this new way to sell music is the innovation we've been seeking."

ADA President, Andy Allen, added, "ADA's group of distributed labels have been among the most aggressive in the digital music space and as their distributor, we have worked to offer them the best digital sales and marketing services available, in the formats and on the platforms they choose."

The SNOCAP MyStore service originally launched to distribute unsigned and independent artists on MySpace in December, along with SNOCAP's digital registry, which contains over three million tracks. The SNOCAP MyStore is a digital storefront that can be posted anywhere that accepts html code.

"These partnerships make it easier than ever for premier artists and labels to promote and sell their music instantly and directly to their fans over the Internet, while remaining completely in control of their content," says SNOCAP CEO Rusty Rueff. "More choices for music fans, more music for everyone."
http://fmqb.com/Article.asp?id=370436





Musicload: 75% of Customer Service Problems Caused by DRM
Ken Fisher

Deutsche Telekom's Musicload, one of the largest online music stores in Europe, has come out strongly against DRM on account of its effects on the marketplace and its customers, according to German-language Heise Online.

Musicload said in a letter distributed last week that customers are having consistent problems with DRM, so much so that 3 out of 4 customer service calls are ultimately the result of the frustrations that come with DRM. In a business where the major music labels expect to be paid well for their source material, the costs of supporting DRM are borne entirely by the music retailers. If the labels' love affair with DRM is hurting the companies trying to make a go at selling music online, something is horribly wrong.

According to Musicload, DRM "makes the use of music quite difficult and hinders the development of a mass-market for legal downloads." The lack of interoperability is unfair to customers and prevents true competition between music services, in other words.

Musicload itself is in heated competition in Germany with Apple's iTunes Store. Apple's Steve Jobs has come out against DRM as well, although his iTunes Store does not offer DRM-free music despite the fact that many artists have requested it. A new upstart in the online music sales business, Aime Street, has inked deals with a number of top artists to do what Apple thus far has been unwilling to do, while eMusic has seen moderate success selling DRM-free music from independent labels for quite some time now.

Musicload has also tried to differentiate itself by allowing independent music labels to sell their music on the service sans DRM, and the move has reportedly been a success. Championing the "Comeback of MP3," Musicload said that artists choosing to drop DRM saw a 40 percent increase in sales since December, and that more artists and labels are showing interest. The company hopes that DRM-free MP3s make a comeback, though there have been few signs that the major labels are interested. EMI has been toying with the idea, but the company expects resellers like Musicload, Apple and others to carry the supposed "risk" by paying increased fees upfront.
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post...ed-by-drm.html





From February

Steve Jobs and the iTunes DRM Threat to Microsoft

Steve Job's recent comments about DRM and the music industry have drawn cautious praise from foes of DRM and quick criticism from those who prefer to believe that his comments were only made to diffuse pressure from the European regulators complaining about Apple's proprietary FairPlay DRM on iTunes purchases.

Anyone who hasn't read the article, should. It provides some interesting insights into Job's efforts to sell music and why Apple has been able to make money in online downloads while other companies--that were both larger and ahead of Apple in the online music business--have been unable to make any progress at all.

DRM as a Business Model
Before Apple released its FairPlay DRM at the unveiling of the originally Mac-only iTunes Store, DRM systems developed by Sony, Microsoft, and others were already established.

The Danger of DRM recounted how Sony and Phillips had tried to introduce DRM-laden digital music formats throughout the 90s, but ended up destroying any market for new digital players.

Sony's MiniDisc, Phillip's DCC, and the two companies' collaboration on DAT all ended in failure as consumers largely ignored the new digital products rather than quickly leaving their recordable analog cassettes behind. When the technology to burn CDs was released, the game was over; MP3s and mix CDs--devoid of any DRM--became the new way to listen to music.

At the beginning of the next decade, Microsoft began releasing a new DRM effort referred to as Windows Media. Ignoring Sony's previous blunders, Microsoft developed a complex array of DRM security to allow providers to sell any kind of digital media under what ever set of DRM rules suited their fancy.

The result was the failure of the PlaysForSure partnership, followed by a bang-up solo effort in Microsoft's Zune, which used the same technology but introduced artificial restrictions that prevented the two versions of the same Janus DRM from playing each other's content.

If we could thaw out some Neanderthals, reanimate them, and teach them our language, they would no doubt quickly grasp why Microsoft failed back to back by repeating a strategy that had failed earlier for Sony.

Apple's Threat to DRM
It has been no secret that Jobs struggled to convince music executives to sign up with the iTunes store. Even after several years of rapidly escalating sales, Apple ran into the same difficulties in getting movie executives to add their content. So far, while iTunes has all the major music labels, it has only signed up Disney and Paramount for movies.

The reason for all the guarded hesitancy by content producers is the fear that Apple would be too liberal in use rights; once Apple were established as the only company able to successfully sell mass market content online, they worried it would have too much market power and could force content owners to lower prices, give up profits, and relax user restrictions.

That's a valid concern for producers, because Apple is not really interested in pushing DRM. It's not because Apple is holy and righteous, but because Apple makes little money from selling content; it makes its money selling hardware. For Apple, being able to sell its hardware requires available content; that content is a means to an end, not a business plan.

It's Not Blades and Razors
Analysts have long tried to describe Apple as selling blades and razors, an allusion to Gillette, the razor maker that got rich losing money on razors but made it all back in selling replacement blades. In the case of Apple, analysts imagine that the same thing is going on, except that Apple makes money on both the razor and the blade because it sells both the player and the music.

Of course, that's not really a good analogy at all. Apple makes a lot of money on the iPod, and only breaks even selling songs in the iTunes Store. That's not a guess, nor is it a secret. Apple's earning reports show quite obviously where the company makes its money.

"Blades and razors" is not just a flawed analogy, but really a completely unrelated business model. Apple's iPod business is far closer to how it sells Macs. In both cases, Apple makes the majority of its money selling hardware, and barely anything selling software. However, that mostly profitless software is essential to making sure that its hardware actually sells.

It's Cars and Roads
Apple's model is closer to the plight of car makers, who are dependent upon the availability of roads. Making roads is a huge waste of money to an enterprising capitalist. The only companies in the road making business are either being paid by governments or have some special bit of land that can support a toll road.

In general however, nobody could afford to build networks of roads and sell access to them. While there is a huge demand for roads, there are no profits, because nobody wants to pay for the roads they use.

So like the equally unprofitable businesses of healthcare, water, and defense, society hands it over to the public sector to maintain. Yes, there is money to be made in all those industries, but not by taking money directly from consumers to provide them.
In Apple's case, its cars will sell only if enough roads are available. Apple ran into difficulty with the Mac in the mid 90s because it wasn't paving its own software roads; it relied upon third party developers to build them. Once Windows became ubiquitous, many of the roads stopped supporting Macs. Without enough roads, Apple couldn't sell its car.

Apple bounced back by building its own set of roads, which offered a more pleasant drive. They also were only available to Mac drivers. Apple has also recently done more to encourage and support third party Mac road construction. The more software roads to drive upon, the more Macs sell.

Everyone is excited to buy a sexy car, but nobody wants to pay for the use of roads. Just like road construction, it's difficult to make money selling software, because while everyone is excited to buy a sexy computer, nobody wants to pay for software licensing.

Free software advocates have worked to build free, public roads available to anyone. Apple has worked to make sure its Macs support and leverage the variety of free software already available, and is encouraging its use. It has contributed back its own technology as well.

High Cost, Low Profit Content
The cars and roads analogy also applies the iPod. While iPods sell at an easy profit, there simply isn't a lot of money to be made in selling content for it. There are two main reasons:

1.
•high quality, desirable content--like software and roads--is difficult and expensive to produce.
2.
•owners of existing content want money for use of their content, because it cost them a lot of money to make.

Some of the highest regarded content worldwide is government supported: the BBC, and other nationally supported movies and TV offer many examples. Left to the private sector, content commonly boils down into whatever is cheapest to produce. American daytime TV turned to soaps, then the much cheaper talk shows, then the even cheaper reality shows in search of a profit. The BBC isn’t profit motivated to produce trash.

The high cost of content explains why Apple simply can't really churn out its own music and movies for the iPod, just so users can have somewhere interesting to drive. Apple has to license rights from existing content holders.

That's why the iTunes Store makes so little money, despite selling hundreds of millions of songs. The vast majority of that revenue is going to the labels and studios. Apple is investing the rest back into the iTunes Store so that potential iPod buyers have as many new places to go as possible.

That's why Apple got behind the entirely profitless podcasting business in iTunes as well. If there were huge amounts of cash to be made in reselling content online, Apple would be stupid to be pointing people toward free content. As it is, Apple is smart to be offering alternative content so users will have yet another reason to want to buy iPods.

The fact that the average iPod user only has around 25 tracks--many none, some a lot--indicates that online media sales are an accessory business, not a key moneymaker for Apple.

That also explains why Apple has little interest in making sure music and movies are managed by DRM. The only reason FairPlay is around is to make sure there is content for the iPod.

Had Apple left things to Sony and Microsoft, all the labels would still be struggling to sell their music in WMA and ATRAC formats, which only run on Windows PCs and devices licensed by Sony or Microsoft. The Mac and iPod would both be left out of the loop on downloadable commercial content.

Apple's Vendor Lock Is A Better Product
From that perspective, it's obvious why Jobs announced that Apple would drop its DRM efforts in a hot minute if only it were allowed to by content providers. As pointed out earlier, it's a myth that the small proportion of iTunes content on iPods is being used to lock users to the iPod. Apple is locking in sales by offering a better product.

The fact that Xbox games only work on the Xbox does not prevent Xbox users from also buying a Wii on the side to play Wii games. The half million additional Macs being sold every quarter to former PC users was not prevented by those PC users having PC software that couldn't make the transition. The DVD wasn't held back by the inability of customers to shove VHS tapes into them for playback.

Apple doesn't have to force users to buy Macs and iPods with exclusive OEM contracts; people go out of their way to buy them. That means Apple isn't afraid of losing its vendor lock, because the only way it can lose sales is by failing to innovate.

Imagine There's No DRM
So what would happen if labels allowed Apple to sell music and movies without DRM? Previous articles have stated that DRM makes viable markets.

If music from iTunes were unrestricted, there would be far more sharing of that music. However, given that CDs comprise the vast majority of music actually sold, and the triviality of ripping CDs from iTunes and distributing songs without authorization, it's hard to understand why labels are worried about DRM in iTunes.

If Apple were freed from having to devote its resources to managing and policing DRM, it could focus its efforts on offering a variety of formats, including high definition lossless downloads. That would expand the demand for online music. Currently, the only reason why some users don't buy from iTunes is the limited bitrate.

In an iTunes Store without DRM, would the increase in the amount of stolen music be offset by expanding the market for digital downloads to premium users who want higher quality recordings?

Given how easy it currently is to defeat FairPlay by simply burning a CD, it's not hard to imagine that sales might skyrocket if DRM went away, the selection expanded, and other device makers started bundling iTunes for access to an online store for their players.

How No-DRM Would Affect Apple
The main beneficiary to increased iTunes sales wouldn't be Apple--which only makes a few cents on every sale--but rather the record companies themselves, who rake in the majority of iTunes Store revenues.

Further, what would happen to iPod sales if any player could play music obtained from the iTunes Store? It could only help the struggling Creative to have access to a store that works. It might help the Zune, which is currently saddled with a byzantine store supported by an inconvenient points currency. It certainly wouldn't benefit sales of the iPod in the least.

So why is Apple describing itself as being behind the defusing of DRM? Analysts who accuse the company of vendor lock in, monopolistic behavior, and collapsing sales must all be very confused, because their theories don't support Apple's willingness to abandon DRM at all.

How No-DRM Would Affect Microsoft
The world's leading proponent of DRM, Bill Gates, was credited as the software architect behind Palladium, an ultra secure system for enforcing access controls and DRM in hardware.

A Palladium PC would tell users where they could go, rather than just asking them where they wanted to go.

After being harshly criticized by user rights advocates, Microsoft dialed back its plans for Palladium, but still incorporated strong DRM controls into Vista that seek to clamp down every potential vector for extracting high quality video or audio that is not expressly authorized. Windows Media similarly strives to maintain its lead as the tightest ship in the DRM armada.

If Apple were allowed by studios and labels to offer music and movies without DRM, Microsoft's DRM would completely run aground. Its huge investments in courting the favors of the content industry would be worthless, and its architectures for deploying ultra secure payloads of entertainment would be unsalable.

That suddenly makes it crystal clear why Jobs is disinterested in DRM. If studios and labels allowed Apple to dump DRM in the iTunes Store, Apple might lose a handful of diehard Creative fans and Zune lovers and face slightly more competition in the music player arena, but that would be a very cheap price to pay for ridding the online music and media industry of the looming 800 lb gorilla.

Microsoft has the billions to hand out free Zunes to everyone in America and cram Zune-branded DRM down everyone's throat. So far, the only thing that has held the company back is the hubris that it could beat Apple in the marketplace. Having failed miserably for two years with PlaysForSure, and then even more spectacularly with its own Zune, Microsoft is now a desperate and angry loose cannon.

The Last Angry Dash
When Microsoft fails in the market, it has a long and documented history of turning to anticompetitive, and even criminal behavior. The company has tight political ties to the far right and the Bush administration, and is rumored to be pushing the dismissal of state Attorneys General in order to engage Apple in a political imbroglio over its highly hyped options backdating.

Never mind that Microsoft itself danced through its own options backdating during the same era; Microsoft also skidded through a Federal Monopoly trial and several state cases that all have resulted in nothing more than a few inconsequential fines and done little to prevent further misconduct.

What would happen if Microsoft could marshal the political capital it has paid mightily to accumulate and fire it along with all its rage toward the only company that's really getting in its way and making it look foolish?

There are few other weapons for Microsoft to pull out: Vista is being compared to Tiger from two years ago; its star PC hardware maker Dell has fallen down and can't get up; and the media has become wise to its FUD and is increasingly difficult to charm with vaporware promises.
http://www.roughlydrafted.com/RD/RDM...E0084C9D5.html





P2P File-Sharing Ruins Physical Piracy Business
enigmax

If the likes of the MPAA, RIAA and IFPI are to be believed, file-sharing is causing worldwide havok, costing billions of dollars and creating unemployment. It’s true that some people are feeling the P2P effect; they’re called ‘physical pirates’ and one of them says that file-sharing has ruined his business.

Tony started his life of piracy sometime in the 1990’s working markets, car-boot sales and pubs in the UK, selling counterfeit PC applications/games and console discs for a fraction of the retail price. “The profit was amazing back then” he recalls “We were getting £25 ($48) for a couple of PSX games and £15 ($29) for a single CDR with the latest utilities on. We couldn’t make them fast enough.” Things were looking good for his little enterprise and before long he was clearing up to £1000 ($1,942) profit each week.

According to Tony, the first 2 hours of every Saturday and Sunday morning at the local flea market always proved the most exciting. “We’d take 60 cases of CDRs down in the van and as soon as we got there a crowd would swarm around us. We had no competition and it was obvious the punters had no other suppliers. Inside 30 minutes, 90% of the stock would be gone with some customers taking 2 or 3 cases each, presumably to sell on. After 3 hours we were cleared out and on our way home, always with huge amounts of money.”

By 2001, Tony was renting a factory unit and employing 3 people to operate duplicators 24 hours a day, 7 days a week but although business was lively right up to 2004, profits were being squeezed every year. Forced to increase the amount of media burnt each week to make up for the shortfall in profit, it became clear that the business was in trouble - demand was falling dramatically.

“In 2005 we shut down the factory unit” said Tony, “we just couldn’t keep going on that scale, nobody was buying anything in quantity anymore. So we closed up and moved back into a bedroom at home with my wife and her sister operating the burners, something they hadn’t done in years. They weren’t happy.”

Tony used to enjoy the finer things in life - a beautiful house, high performance cars, exotic foreign holidays, up-market restaurants and fine wine. I met him by chance, wearing overalls and sitting on a forklift truck, working in a factory manufacturing boxes. Sipping on a mug of tea he explained “We got to the point where we just couldn’t make ends meet anymore, I couldn’t even keep a couple of dozen burners going so that was that. I had to get a job and so did my wife. She’s gone back to hairdressing and i’ve come back to what I was doing before - warehouse work. We’ve moved to a smaller house and i’ve had to get a sensible car. Things have changed quite a lot.”

Tony is very clear about why his rags to riches story has gone back to rags again. “File-sharing, P2P - call it what you like. When you asked a customer why he wasn’t buying anything, 9 times out of 10 it was ‘BitTorrent this, LimeWire that’. Add that to the fact that huge numbers of PC users have burners and fast broadband and its obvious why I had to get out and earn a living another way. We had it good for a while but I don’t think those days are coming back.”

P2P is a very powerful machine and although Tony could see that his operation was feeling its effects, he admits that he sat back and did nothing about it and consequently, his business has paid the ultimate price. Other industries affected by P2P should take note: Don’t be a Tony. Overhaul your business model. Quickly.
http://torrentfreak.com/p2p-file-sha...racy-business/





Discord in Boston After Delp Suicide
AP

The band Boston spoke to people's souls during the 1970s with smash hits like ''More Than a Feeling'' and ''Peace of Mind.'' But two weeks after lead singer Brad Delp's suicide at his New Hampshire home, bad feelings abound.

Current members of the band, including the chief songwriter and founder, Tom Scholz, were not informed about or invited to Delp's funeral, which was attended by early band members who opposed Scholz in a 1980s legal battle.

Last week, Delp's ex-wife Micki was quoted on a radio station saying Delp was distressed about the conflicts in his professional life and became despondent after a longtime friend, Fran Cosmo, was cut from Boston's summer concert lineup. The story spread online, where fans trying to figure out the reason for Delp's suicide took up the cudgels.

Scholz, who called Delp his ''closest friend and collaborator in music for over 35 years,'' said he was crushed by Delp's suicide and his exclusion from the funeral. Now he feels he is being unfairly blamed for Delp's death.

''It went from devastating on the initial phone call to an absolute nightmare,'' Scholz told The Associated Press on Friday in a tearful telephone interview, his first since Delp's death on March 9. (An interview conducted by e-mail was published earlier in Rolling Stone.)

''We had been told it would only be his immediate family (at the funeral), and of course it wasn't,'' he said.

A lawyer for Scholz sent a letter to Micki Delp on Friday demanding a retraction. She did not immediately respond Friday to an e-mail message from The Associated Press via the publicist who has handled statements for the family.

Boston has canceled its summer engagements, and Scholz said he still hopes the rift can be mended and the band can be part of a public memorial service that Delp's children, their mother Micki, and Delp's fiancee, Pamela Sullivan, said last week was in the works.

Sullivan said no one intentionally excluded the current band members from the funeral.

''It was about getting the children through it as quickly and quietly as possible with the people they were up to facing at the time and the people who could be the most comfort to them,'' she told the AP in a telephone interview.

Tensions between Scholz and some of the early band members date from the early 1980s, when CBS Inc. sued the band over delays in recording new albums. The company's Epic Records label recorded the band's first two releases: ''Boston,'' in 1976, and ''Don't Look Back,'' in 1978.

Scholz countersued for the rights to the band's name and music. Three members of the original band -- Barry Goudreau, Sib Hashian and Fran Sheehan -- testified for the record company, which lost. Goudreau is Micki Delp's brother-in-law, and she reportedly remains close to the ousted band members.

Delp, the only band member besides Scholz whose name was on the CBS recording contract, remained friends with everyone, touring and recording with Scholz and the others over the decades. He also started a Beatles tribute band, Beatle Juice.

Scholz wrote, engineered, and laid down nearly all the instrumental tracks on the first album, but he said Delp helped him refine the songs and brought his music to life.

''It went from a guitar lick that didn't mean a thing to a real song as soon as he opened his mouth. That was always the case,'' Scholz said. ''We had a very, very close working relationship. I swear it was like we were hooked up by a cable. We didn't even have to talk most of the time.''

Scholz and Delp were both vegetarians and pacifists, both dedicated their money and talents to causes they believed in, and both proposed to their longtime girlfriends on Christmas Day 2006 by putting rings in their stockings -- only learning about the coincidence in a conversation afterward.

The band's first album was wildly successful, and remains one of the best-selling debut albums of all time, according to Billboard, selling more than 16 million copies. Boston's early music also remains a staple on classic rock stations, especially in New England.

96.5 FM (''The Mill'') in Manchester plans a two-hour tribute to Boston on Sunday featuring excerpts from the station's interviews with Delp over the years. Program Director J.C. Haze said he remembers hearing the first album.

''Tom and Brad, they made such a unique sound it just took the world by storm,'' Haze said. ''Nothing ever sounded like it, and nothing ever did since.''
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/arts...p-Discord.html





CEBIT - Scientists Show Thought-Controlled Computer

An Austrian company is showing a brain-computer interface at Cebit that 'reads' thoughts to operate a computer.
James Niccolai

Forget speech-recognition software: How about typing a letter just by thinking it?

In a quiet corner of the Cebit trade show a small Austrian company is showing a "brain-computer interface," a technology that could one day transform how we use computers, play video games and even talk to each other.

It sounds like science fiction but is a clever application of science and technology. The system does not really read thoughts; rather, it measures fluctuations in electrical voltage in the brain and translates them into commands on a computer screen.

The system consists of a cap that fits over the user's head, with a few dozen holes through which electrodes are attached so they rest on the scalp. The electrodes are connected via thin cables to a "biosignal amplifier," which transmits the signals from the brain to a computer.

Different parts of the brain are used to process different types of thoughts. Vertical and horizontal hand movements are handled in an area called the sensory motor cortex, for example, said Christoph Guger, CEO of g.tec, which built the BCI system shown at Cebit.

To use a BCI to move a computer cursor, the electrodes are placed over the corresponding part of the brain, where they read tiny fluctuations in voltage and feed them into a software program that analyzes them to figure out what the person is thinking.

The software needs to be trained to read the signals, which takes several hours to do properly. The subject responds to commands on a computer screen, thinking "left" and "right" when they are instructed to do so, for example. Another test involves looking at a series of blinking letters, and thinking of a letter when it appears.

The software "learns" what the brain's voltage fluctuations look like when those directions or letters are thought of, Guger said.

The system today is also quite slow -- even a trained system can "read" only 18 characters per minute, or three or four words. Still, that may be helpful for a disabled person who cannot communicate through speech or movement. About 200 disabled people worldwide are using the software at home to communicate, according to Guger, although they need professional help to set it up.

Another issue is accuracy. In a test at a conference in Austria about two years ago, 300 attendees were trained on the system for 30 minutes. After that time the system could figure out simple binary responses from most of the people 60 percent of the time -- or "better than random," Guger said. For 7 percent of the people, the accuracy was more than 90 percent, he said.

The technology is advancing. Five years ago the system was too bulky to be transported easily, and now the various parts can fit in a shoebox. In 10 years it could be fast and accurate enough to commercialize in home PCs or games consoles, according to Guber.

"Ultimately you could have wireless contacts embedded in the brain, and communicate with others just by thinking," he said. "But then you really would have to worry about your wife finding out about your girlfriend."

At Cebit, a colleague of Guber's donned the BCI system and played the game "Pong" against a reporter. It has also been used to write letters, operate artificial limbs and steer a wheelchair. "It's not safe enough for wheelchairs today though; if it reads a command wrongly you could veer off into the road," Guger said.

The study of BCI took off in the 1990s, primarily at three laboratories, in Austria, Germany and the U.S. There are now 300 laboratories working on it, Guger said. He completed his Ph.D. in BCI at the Graz University of Technology, in Austria, in 1999, he said.

He sells his BCI systems mainly to scientists for research work. They are priced from Euro 20,000 (US$26,000) to Euro 100,000 depending on their sophistication. The company is showing a smaller, Pocket PC-based device at Cebit that starts at Euro 3,000. More information is at g.tec's Web site.

Measuring the brain's electrical activity like this is called electroencephalography, or EEG. It is noninvasive, meaning the electrodes are placed on the scalp without surgery, but it produces weaker signals and is subject to noise interference.

Invasive techniques produce better results but are tried only on patients who require brain surgery in any case, and on monkeys and other animals.

An engineer in the U.S. holds a patent on the general BCI concept, Guger said; other patents are held by universities for specific software algorithms used to decode the brain's signals.

G.tec's BCI is among the nominees for the European ICT Prize, the winners of which will be announced Friday. There are three grand prizes of Euro 200,000 each.
http://www.computerworld.com.au/inde...0;fp;16;fpid;1





Google Snaps up Karolinska Stats Tool

It began as a teaching aid in a lecture at Stockholm's Karolinska Institute . Now internet giant Google has bought the rights to the Swedish statistics tool Trendalyzer.

Seven years ago, professor Hans Rosling was lecturing his students when it struck him that statistics were an underexploited resource, often presented in an incomprehensible fashion. To solve the problem he developed - along with his son - a new kind of software.

The result was every software developer's dream: on Friday, Google bought Trendalyzer for an undisclosed sum.

But however much Google paid for the software, which presents data in an easily-accessible, graphic format, the deal has not made Rosling Sweden's latest IT billionaire.

Gapminder, the organisation set up to develop the product, is a non-profit foundation that has been largely funded by public grants.

According to its constitution, its objective is "to promote sustainable global development and achievement of the United Nations Millennium Development Goals by increased use and understanding of statistics and other information about social, economic and environmental development at local, national and global levels".

"It is a charity that has sold the programme so I haven't had any money," said Hans Rosling.

"It's not an operating business that was sold, just the software and a web site. Although I would gladly accept that kind of money," he added, perhaps thinking of fellow Swede Niklas Zennström , who sold Skype to eBay for 4.1 billion dollars.

But the potential of the Trendalyzer software is seen as being enormous. According to Rosling, public organisations around the world invest 20 billion dollars a year producing different kinds of statistics.

Until now, nobody has thought of collecting all the information in the same place. That should be possible with Trendalyzer, which will be able to present that quantity of data in a clear way as well as giving the user the ability to compare many different kinds of information.
http://www.thelocal.se/6725/20070318/





EFF Kills Bogus Clear Channel Patent
Press Release

Patent Busting Project Wins Victory for Artists and Innovators

San Francisco - The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (PTO) has announced it will revoke an illegitimate patent held by Clear Channel Communications after a campaign by the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF).

The patent -- owned by Instant Live, a company formerly owned by Clear Channel, and now owned by Live Nation -- covered a system and method of creating digital recordings of live performances. Clear Channel claimed the bogus patent created a monopoly on all-in-one technologies that produce post-concert digital recordings and threatened to sue those who made such recordings. This locked musical acts into using Clear Channel technology and blocked innovations by others.

However, EFF's investigation found that a company named Telex had in fact developed similar technology more than a year before Clear Channel filed its patent request. EFF -- in conjunction with patent attorney Theodore C. McCullough and with the help of Lori President and Ashley Bollinger, students at the Glushko-Samuelson Intellectual Property Clinic at American University's Washington College of Law -- asked the PTO to revoke the patent based on this and other extensive evidence.

"Bogus patents like this one are good examples of what's wrong with the current patent system," said EFF Staff Attorney Jason Schultz. "We're glad that the Patent Office was willing to help artists and innovators out from under its shadow."

The Clear Channel patent challenge was part of EFF's Patent Busting Project, aimed at combating the chilling effects bad patents have on public and consumer interests. The Patent Busting Project seeks to document the threats and fight back by filing requests for reexamination against the worst offenders.

"The patent system plays a critical role in business and the economy," said McCullough. "Everyone loses if we allow overreaching patent claims to restrict the tremendous benefits of new software and technology development."

For the notice from the Patent Office: http://www.eff.org/patent/wanted/cle..._to_cancel.pdf
http://www.eff.org/news/archives/2007_03.php#005155





MIT Faculty and Libraries Refuse DRM; SAE Digital Library Canceled
Press Release

The MIT Libraries have canceled access to the Society of Automotive Engineers’ web-based database of technical papers, rejecting the SAE’s requirement that MIT accept the imposition of Digital Rights Management (DRM) technology.

SAE’s DRM technology severely limits use of SAE papers and imposes unnecessary burdens on readers. With this technology, users must download a DRM plugin, Adobe’s “FileOpen,” in order to read SAE papers. This plugin limits use to on-screen viewing and making a single printed copy, and does not work on Linux or Unix platforms.

MIT faculty respond

“It’s a step backwards,” says Professor Wai Cheng, SAE fellow and Professor of Mechanical Engineering at MIT, who feels strongly enough about the implications of DRM that he has asked to be added to the agenda of the upcoming SAE Publication Board meeting in April, when he will address this topic.

In addition to Professor Cheng, the MIT Libraries consulted with other faculty members who publish or use SAE content. The responses were uniformly against accepting DRM, even if it meant losing ready access to SAE papers. When informed that the SAE feels the need to impose DRM to protect their intellectual property, Professor John Heywood, the Director of MIT’s Sloan Automotive Lab, who publishes his own work with the SAE, responded with a question: “Their intellectual property?” He commented that increasingly strict and limiting restrictions on use of papers that are offered to publishers for free is causing faculty to become less willing to “give it all away” when they publish.

Echoing Professor Heywood, Alan Epstein, Professor of Aeronautics and Astronautics, believes that “If SAE limits exposure to their material and makes it difficult for people to get it, faculty will choose to publish elsewhere.” He noted that “SAE is a not-for-profit organization and should be in this for the long term,” rather than imposing high prices and heavy restrictions to maximize short-term profit.

Reducing access to research

At a time when technology makes it possible to share research more quickly and broadly than ever before, and when innovative automotive research is a matter of global concern, SAE is limiting access to the research that has been entrusted to the society. In addition to imposing DRM on access to the papers for paid subscribers, the SAE also prevents information about its papers from being found through any channel other than the ones they control.

What does this mean? In contrast to information about research published by other engineering societies, which can be found in databases such as Google, ISI’s Web of Science, or the Compendex engineering database, information about SAE papers is only made available through SAE’s proprietary database. Such policies severely limit access to information about SAE papers, and are out of step with market norms.

New arrangements for access to SAE content at MIT

While MIT faculty, the MIT Libraries, and MIT’s Office of Information Services & Technology all agree that SAE’s imposition of DRM is unacceptable in our environment, the Libraries nevertheless recognize that it is important to provide some level of ongoing access to SAE papers needed by the MIT community. The Libraries are therefore working on a new access arrangement.

Beginning in April, 2007, the Libraries will make available either a printed or web-based index of SAE papers; once a citation is identified in this index, the paper will be accessible through one of three channels, depending on its publication date:

• SAE papers published prior to 2004 will be available either in print or on microfiche in the Barker Engineering Library.
• SAE papers published in 2004, 2005, or 2006 will be available either in print or on CD-ROM in the Barker Engineering Library.
• SAE papers from the current year will be made available on request through a web form.

The Libraries are working to ensure that this system will be in place in time to avoid major disruption to MIT users when the SAE Digital Library access ends March 31. We regret that CD-ROM and on-demand access will not be as convenient for the MIT community as the full-text, web-based access has been.

Before taking this step, the Libraries spent several months weighing options, consulting with faculty and IS&T experts, and in conversation with the SAE. When the SAE informed the Libraries that they remain unwilling to accept any access to the Digital Library other than through the DRM plugin, the Libraries reluctantly chose this alternative path.

We welcome and encourage your feedback

We are interested in your views about this situation, particularly given its manifestation of some of the complex issues currently facing publishers, academic authors, users of digital content, and the libraries that serve them. Please address comments or questions to any of the following members of the MIT Libraries staff:

Anna Gold, Head, Engineering & Science Libraries: annagold@mit.edu / x3 7741
Tracy Gabridge, Associate Head, Barker Engineering Library: tag@mit.edu / x3 8971
Ellen Finnie Duranceau, Scholarly Publishing and Licensing Consultant, efinnie@mit.edu / x38483
http://news-libraries.mit.edu/blog/a...s/engineering/





Starr hits for Jesus

Free-Speech Case Divides Bush and Religious Right
Linda Greenhouse

A Supreme Court case about the free-speech rights of high school students, to be argued on Monday, has opened an unexpected fissure between the Bush administration and its usual allies on the religious right.

As a result, an appeal that asks the justices to decide whether school officials can squelch or punish student advocacy of illegal drugs has taken on an added dimension as a window on an active front in the culture wars, one that has escaped the notice of most people outside the fray. And as the stakes have grown higher, a case that once looked like an easy victory for the government side may prove to be a much closer call.

On the surface, Joseph Frederick’s dispute with his principal, Deborah Morse, at the Juneau-Douglas High School in Alaska five years ago appeared to have little if anything to do with religion — or perhaps with much of anything beyond a bored senior’s attitude and a harried administrator’s impatience.

As the Olympic torch was carried through the streets of Juneau on its way to the 2002 winter games in Salt Lake City, students were allowed to leave the school grounds to watch. The school band and cheerleaders performed. With television cameras focused on the scene, Mr. Frederick and some friends unfurled a 14-foot-long banner with the inscription: “Bong Hits 4 Jesus.”

Mr. Frederick later testified that he designed the banner, using a slogan he had seen on a snowboard, “to be meaningless and funny, in order to get on television.” Ms. Morse found no humor but plenty of meaning in the sign, recognizing “bong hits” as a slang reference to using marijuana. She demanded that he take the banner down. When he refused, she tore it down, ordered him to her office, and gave him a 10-day suspension.

Mr. Fredericks’s ensuing lawsuit and the free-speech court battle that resulted, in which he has prevailed so far, is one that, classically, pits official authority against student dissent. It is the first Supreme Court case to do so directly since the court upheld the right of students to wear black arm bands to school to protest the war in Vietnam, declaring in Tinker v. Des Moines School District that “it can hardly be argued that either students or teachers shed their constitutional rights to freedom of speech or expression at the schoolhouse gate.”

The court followed that 1969 decision with two others during the 1980s that upheld the authority of school officials to ban vulgar or offensive student speech and to control the content of school newspapers. Clearly there is some tension in the court’s student-speech doctrine; what message to extract from the trio of decisions is the basic analytical question in the new case, Morse v. Frederick, No. 06-278. What is most striking is how the two sides line up.

The Bush administration entered the case on the side of the principal and the Juneau School Board, which are both represented by Kenneth W. Starr, the former solicitor general and independent counsel. His law firm, Kirkland & Ellis, is handling the appeal without a fee. Mr. Starr and Edwin S. Kneedler, a deputy solicitor general who will present the government’s view, will share argument time on Monday. The National School Board Association, two school principals’ groups, and several antidrug organizations also filed briefs on the school board’s side.

While it is hardly surprising to find the American Civil Liberties Union and the National Coalition Against Censorship on Mr. Frederick’s side, it is the array of briefs from organizations that litigate and speak on behalf of the religious right that has lifted Morse v. Frederick out of the realm of the ordinary.

The groups include the American Center for Law and Justice, founded by the Rev. Pat Robertson; the Christian Legal Society; the Alliance Defense Fund, an organization based in Arizona that describes its mission as “defending the right to hear and speak the Truth”; the Rutherford Institute, which has participated in many religion cases before the court; and Liberty Legal Institute, a nonprofit law firm “dedicated to the preservation of First Amendment rights and religious freedom.”

The institute, based in Plano, Tex., told the justices in its brief that it was “gravely concerned that the religious freedom of students in public schools will be damaged” if the court rules for the school board.

Lawyers on Mr. Frederick’s side offer a straightforward explanation for the strange-bedfellows aspect of the case. “The status of being a dissident unites dissidents on either side,” said Prof. Douglas Laycock of the University of Michigan Law School, an authority on constitutional issues involving religion who worked on Liberty Legal Institute’s brief.

In an interview, Professor Laycock said that religiously observant students often find the atmosphere in public school to be unwelcoming and “feel themselves a dissident and excluded minority.” As the Jehovah’s Witnesses did in the last century, these students are turning to the courts.

The briefs from the conservative religious organizations depict the school environment as an ideological battleground. The Christian Legal Society asserts that its law school chapters “have endured a relentless assault by law schools intolerant of their unpopular perspective on the morality of homosexual conduct or the relevance of religious belief.”

The American Center for Law and Justice brief, filed by its chief counsel, Jay Alan Sekulow, warns that public schools “face a constant temptation to impose a suffocating blanket of political correctness upon the educational atmosphere.”

What galvanized most of the groups on Mr. Frederick’s side was the breadth of the arguments made on the other side. The solicitor general’s brief asserts that under the Supreme Court’s precedents, student speech “may be banned if it is inconsistent with a school’s basic educational mission.”

The Juneau School Board’s mission includes opposing illegal drug use, the administration’s brief continues, citing as evidence a 1994 federal law, the Safe and Drug-Free Schools and Communities Act, which requires that schools, as a condition of receiving federal money, must “convey a clear and consistent message” that using illegal drugs is “wrong and harmful.”

Mr. Starr’s main brief asserts that the court’s trilogy of cases “stands for the proposition that students have limited free speech rights balanced against the school district’s right to carry out its educational mission and to maintain discipline.” The brief argues that even if Ms. Morse applied that precept incorrectly to the facts of this case, she is entitled to immunity from suit because she could have reasonably believed that the law was on her side.

The religious groups were particularly alarmed by what they saw as the implication that school boards could define their “educational mission” as they wished and could suppress countervailing speech accordingly.

“Holy moly, look at this! To get drugs we can eliminate free speech in schools?” is how Robert A. Destro, a law professor at Catholic University, described his reaction to the briefs for the school board when the Liberty Legal Institute asked him to consider participating on the Mr. Frederick’s behalf. He quickly signed on.

Having worked closely with Republican administrations for years, Mr. Destro said he was hard pressed to understand the administration’s position. “My guess is they just hadn’t thought it through,” he said in an interview. “To the people who put them in office, they are making an incoherent statement.”

The solicitor general’s office does not comment publicly on its cases. But Mr. Starr, by contrast, was happy to talk about the case and the alignment against him of many of his old allies. “It’s reassuring to have lots of friends of liberty running around,” he said in a cheerful tone, adding: “I welcome this outpouring because it will help the court see that it shouldn’t go too far either way.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/18/wa...2&ei=5087%0 A





Play About Iraq War Divides a Connecticut School
Alison Leigh Cowan

Student productions at Wilton High School range from splashy musicals like last year’s “West Side Story,” performed in the state-of-the-art, $10 million auditorium, to weightier works like Arthur Miller’s “Crucible,” on stage last fall in the school’s smaller theater.

For the spring semester, students in the advanced theater class took on a bigger challenge: creating an original play about the war in Iraq. They compiled reflections of soldiers and others involved, including a heartbreaking letter from a 2005 Wilton High graduate killed in Iraq last September at age 19, and quickly found their largely sheltered lives somewhat transformed.

“In Wilton, most kids only care about Britney Spears shaving her head or Tyra Banks gaining weight,” said Devon Fontaine, 16, a cast member. “What we wanted was to show kids what was going on overseas.”

But even as 15 student actors were polishing the script and perfecting their accents for a planned April performance, the school principal last week canceled the play, titled “Voices in Conflict,” citing questions of political balance and context.

The principal, Timothy H. Canty, who has tangled with students before over free speech, said in an interview he was worried the play might hurt Wilton families “who had lost loved ones or who had individuals serving as we speak,” and that there was not enough classroom and rehearsal time to ensure it would provide “a legitimate instructional experience for our students.”

“It would be easy to look at this case on first glance and decide this is a question of censorship or academic freedom,” said Mr. Canty, who attended Wilton High himself in the 1970s and has been its principal for three years. “In some minds, I can see how they would react this way. But quite frankly, it’s a false argument.”

At least 10 students involved in the production, however, said that the principal had told them the material was too inflammatory, and that only someone who had actually served in the war could understand the experience. They said that Gabby Alessi-Friedlander, a Wilton junior whose brother is serving in Iraq, had complained about the play, and that the principal barred the class from performing it even after they changed the script to respond to concerns about balance.

“He told us the student body is unprepared to hear about the war from students, and we aren’t prepared to answer questions from the audience and it wasn’t our place to tell them what soldiers were thinking,” said Sarah Anderson, a 17-year-old senior who planned to play the role of a military policewoman.

Bonnie Dickinson, who has been teaching theater at the school for 13 years, said, “If I had just done ‘Grease,’ this would not be happening.”

Frustration over the inelegant finale has quickly spread across campus and through Wilton, and has led to protest online through Facebook and other Web sites.

“To me, it was outrageous,’’ said Jim Anderson, Sarah’s father. “Here these kids are really trying to make a meaningful effort to educate, to illuminate their fellow students, and the administration, of all people, is shutting them down.”

First Amendment lawyers said Mr. Canty had some leeway to limit speech that might be disruptive and to consider the educational merit of what goes on during the school day, when the play was scheduled to be performed. But thornier legal questions arise over students’ contention that they were also thwarted from trying to stage the play at night before a limited audience, and discouraged from doing so even off-campus. Just this week, an Alaska public high school was defending itself before the United States Supreme Court for having suspended a student who unfurled a banner extolling drug use at an off-campus parade.

The scrap over “Voices in Conflict” is the latest in a series of free-speech squabbles at Wilton High, a school of 1,250 students that is consistently one of Connecticut’s top performers and was the alma mater of Elizabeth Neuffer, the Boston Globe correspondent killed in Iraq in 2003.

The current issue of the student newspaper, The Forum, includes an article criticizing the administration for requiring that yearbook quotations come from well-known sources for fear of coded messages. After the Gay Straight Alliance wallpapered stairwells with posters a few years ago, the administration, citing public safety hazards, began insisting that all student posters be approved in advance.

Around the same time, the administration tried to ban bandanas because they could be associated with gangs, prompting hundreds of students to turn up wearing them until officials relented.

“Our school is all about censorship,” said James Presson, 16, a member of the “Voices of Conflict” cast. “People don’t talk about the things that matter.”

After reading a book of first-person accounts of the war, Ms. Dickinson kicked off the spring semester — with the principal’s blessing — by asking her advanced students if they were open to creating a play about Iraq. In an interview, the teacher said the objective was to showcase people close to the same age as the students who were “experiencing very different things in their daily lives and to stand in the shoes of those people and then present them by speaking their words exactly in front of an audience.”

What emerged was a compilation of monologues taken from the book that impressed Ms. Dickinson, “In Conflict: Iraq War Veterans Speak Out on Duty, Loss and the Fight to Stay Alive”; a documentary, “The Ground Truth”; Web logs and other sources. The script consisted of the subjects’ own words, though some license was taken with identity: Lt. Charles Anderson became “Charlene” because, as Seth Koproski, a senior, put it, “we had a lot of women” in the cast.

In March, students said, Gabby, the junior whose brother is serving in the Army in Iraq, said she wanted to join the production, and soon circulated drafts of the script to parents and others in town. A school administrator who is a Vietnam veteran also raised questions about the wisdom of letting students explore such sensitive issues, Mr. Canty said.

In response to concerns that the script was too antiwar, Ms. Dickinson reworked it with the help of an English teacher. The revised version is more reflective and less angry, omitting graphic descriptions of killing, crude language and some things that reflect poorly on the Bush administration, like a comparison of how long it took various countries to get their troops bulletproof vests. A critical reference to Donald H. Rumsfeld, the former defense secretary, was cut, along with a line from Cpl. Sean Huze saying of soldiers: “Your purpose is to kill.”

Seven characters were added, including Maj. Tammy Duckworth of the National Guard, a helicopter pilot who lost both legs and returned from the war to run for Congress last fall. The second version gives First Lt. Melissa Stockwell, who lost her left leg from the knee down, a new closing line: “But I’d go back. I wouldn’t want to go back, but I would go.”

On March 13, Mr. Canty met with the class. He told us “no matter what we do, it’s not happening,” said one of the students, Erin Clancy. That night, on a Facebook chat group called “Support the Troops in Iraq,” a poster named GabriellaAF, who several students said was their classmate Gabby, posted a celebratory note saying, “We got the show canceled!!” (Reached by telephone, Gabby’s mother, Barbara Alessi, said she had no knowledge of the play or her daughter’s involvement in it.) In classrooms, teenage centers and at dinner tables around town, the drama students entertained the idea of staging the show at a local church, or perhaps al fresco just outside the school grounds. One possibility was Wilton Presbyterian Church.

“I would want to read the script before having it performed here, but from what I understand from the students who wrote it, they didn’t have a political agenda,” said the Rev. Jane Field, the church’s youth minister.

Mr. Canty said he had never discouraged the students from continuing to work on the play on their own. But Ms. Dickinson said he told her “we may not do the play outside of the four walls of the classroom,” adding, “I can’t have anything to do with it because we’re not allowed to perform the play and I have to stand behind my building principal.”

Parents, even those who are critical of the decision, say the episode is out of character for a school system that is among the attractions of Wilton, a well-off town of 18,000 about an hour’s drive from Manhattan.

“The sad thing was this thing was a missed opportunity for growth from a school that I really have tremendous regard for,” said Emmalisa Lesica, whose son was in the play. Given the age of the performers and their peers who might have seen the show, she noted, “if we ended up in a further state of war, wouldn’t they be the next ones drafted or who choose to go to war? Why wouldn’t you let them know what this is about?”

The latest draft of the script opens with the words of Pvt. Nicholas Madaras, the Wilton graduate who died last September and whose memory the town plans to soon honor by naming a soccer field for him. In a letter he wrote to the local paper last May, Private Madaras said Baqubah, north of Baghdad, sometimes “feels like you are on another planet,” and speaks wistfully about the life he left behind in Wilton.

“I never thought I’d ever say this, but I miss being in high school,” he wrote. “High school is really the foundation for the rest of your life, whether teenagers want to believe it or not.”

Private Madaras’s parents said they had not read the play, and had no desire to meddle in a school matter. But his mother, Shalini Madaras, added, “We always like to think about him being part of us, and people talking about him, I think it’s wonderful.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/24/ny...4drama.html?hp





Town ‘n’ gown

That Free Song May Lead to a Stiff Fine

Well, maybe. Either way, the recording industry is targeting college students.
Jay Cridlin

TAMPA - As she mounted her bicycle outside the University of South Florida library, Emily Adkins spun the dial on her iPod to pick a tune for the ride.

The 21-year-old senior gets most of her music online, either by trading with friends or through the file-sharing program BitTorrent, where she can download entire albums in a snap. If she buys CDs, she buys them used. Her most recent purchase: The Decemberists' Castaways and Cutouts, an album released in 2002.

Adkins isn't apologetic about downloading free music, and she doesn't seem worried about getting caught. "You read about it happening in the newspaper," she said. "I guess it's possible, but it just seems so weird."

Weird or not, it's not only possible, it's becoming more likely every month.

On Feb. 28, the Recording Industry Association of America - the trade group of the record business - accused 400 students at 13 universities, including 31 at the University of South Florida, of illegally sharing and downloading tens of thousands of songs.
According to the RIAA, those 31 USF students had shared 17,568 songs, most during January. One was caught sharing 1,957 songs.

The RIAA's letters note that each illegally shared song carries a minimum fine of $750. Should their cases go to court, those 31 students - whose names the school is withholding due to privacy laws - would face a combined fine of $13.1-million.

Another 400 letters will go out to more universities later this month, with 400 more to follow each month after that. The mass mailings represent a "significant escalation" in the ongoing war between the RIAA and college students, said RIAA spokeswoman Jenni Engebretsen, "because the problem is so acute in the university community."

But will this crackdown be enough to actually scare students from using file-sharing programs like Ares, LimeWire, KaZaa and BitTorrent to download music for free?

"Pretty much everybody I know has downloaded music," said sophomore music major Jesus Izquierdo, 19. "It's like drinking on campus. It's still going to happen."

Indeed, USF has received the 11th-most file-sharing complaints from the RIAA during the 2006-07 year, with 490 through mid February.

To those students who do find themselves in the RIAA's crosshairs, the threat of litigation is intimidating. They're told they have 20 days to pay a fine, or else they'll be sued in federal court for hundreds of thousands of dollars.

But if any of them are actually found guilty, they would be the first. Of the 18,000 individual copyright infringement lawsuits the RIAA has filed since September 2003 - including 1,000 against college students - exactly zero have come to trial. About 5,700 were settled out of court.

That means the scariest part of the letters - the bit about the $750-per-song fine - has never actually come into play. Instead, the accused students are asked to settle for a greatly reduced sum - reportedly around $4,000 - which goes not to artists or record labels, but back into the RIAA's anti-piracy coffers.

The RIAA's critics think the settlement letters are a form of bullying.

"That's exactly the intent of it: 'Pay early, pay quickly and make this campaign easy for us, rather than fighting back,' " said Corynne McSherry, a staff attorney with the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a critic of the RIAA's war on peer-to-peer networks.

Another problem, McSherry says, is that students aren't given enough time to weigh their legal rights. "It takes a while to realize the situation, figure out what's going on, what your options are and contact legal counsel," she said. "Even if you want to fight back, only having 20 days to make that decision is very difficult."

In many instances, those cases that do go to court end up going nowhere.

Adam and Marie Litvinchyk of Lutz received a warning letter from the RIAA four years ago, accusing their three teenage children of swapping music files on KaZaa. They were offered the chance to settle their case for $5,000. The Litvinchyks placed one phone call to the RIAA, then moved on with their lives.

"I got a letter a couple of years later, and I ignored that one, too," said Marie, 40, two of whose children now attend Remington College. "I'm not paying $5,000 because my kids downloaded a song. Whoever owns KaZaa should be paying for that. That's their fault."

On Feb. 27, record companies filed a copyright infringement complaint against the Litvinchyks in the Middle District of Florida. Informed of this latest complaint, Marie said it was news to her: She hadn't heard anything in months.

The RIAA says its campaign against students is as much about publicity as it is about catching actual downloaders. "Anyone engaged in music theft is a potential recipient of one of these letters," Engebretsen said.

Thirty-one students represents only about 0.07 percent of USF's undergraduate population. But the publicity these letters generate may help instill in students the fear that they could be next - even if it's 99.93 percent likely that they won't.

Sophomore Sean Alexander isn't a regular downloader, but he has used LimeWire. He's also a musician who makes his own songs available for download on his MySpace page.

"These artists are already rich enough. Why are they getting upset that people want to hear their music?" he said. "If somebody was getting fined thousands of dollars for just wanting to hear my music, I would be crushed."

Still, he believes most college students know downloading free music is against the law. And during this interview, he asked which details of his own downloading habits might make it into print.

"I'm just curious," he said. "I don't want the RIAA to see it."

USF itself doesn't face any legal action from the RIAA, but it complies with the RIAA's request to forward the letters to students so that they may settle the cases as swiftly and quietly as possible, said USF general counsel Colin Mailloux.

Unfortunately, that meant Mailloux and the USF academic computing staff had to launch their own mini-investigation into illegal downloads, poring through weeks' worth of data to verify the RIAA's claims. It took two days before the school could alert all 31 students; Mailloux then had to field calls from about a dozen panicked students asking what to do next. "It definitely is a drain of resources," he said.

In a March 8 hearing on the issue, Congress slammed universities across the nation for not doing enough to stop illegal downloads.

"Current law isn't giving universities enough incentives to stop piracy," said Rep. Howard L. Berman, (D-Calif.), chairman of the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Courts, the Internet and Intellectual Property.

Added Rep. Ric Keller (R-Orlando): "I would say the hammer's coming. I want to see universities get serious about it."

USF is now debating whether to take a more proactive role in preventing illegal downloads. Administrators from across the university have met to brainstorm ways to make students more aware of the risks of illegal file-sharing - dorm announcements, mass mailings, maybe a section on copyright violations in the school's "University Experience" course for first-year students. The school could start monitoring all peer-to-peer traffic and high-bandwidth usage.

Other schools have gone even further. The University of Florida uses a program called Icarus that kicks students who use peer-to-peer software offline. Others have suggested instituting a nationwide fee, similar to a student activities fee, for college students to download music.

"Everything is on the table right now," said Alex Campoe, USF's information security manager.

However, cautioned Mailloux: "We can't protect the students against everything. At some point, they have to be responsible, too."

Angie Drobnic Holan Times research contributed to this story.
http://www.sptimes.com/2007/03/19/Hi...g_may_le.shtml





UNL Can't Identify Most of its 36 Alleged Illegal Downloaders
AP

The University of Nebraska-Lincoln can't figure out which 36 student names it should turn over to the Recording Industry Association of America for lawsuits alleging illegal file-sharing.

The university stores the computer records for only 31 days, so it's been able to identify only 13 of the 36 users.

The university ranks third nationally for the number of complaints it has received from the recording industry trade group for music illegally downloaded on campus computer networks.

Last month, the association said it intended to sue more students and others on campuses in the next three months than it has in the past three years.

It said it would send 400 letters a month to computer users suspected of copyright infringement, including 36 at UNL.

UNL and the other universities were asked to identify their guilty students based on association lists of computers known to have visited file-sharing sites.

But because UNL has been regularly purging its records, the names of the 23 alleged music pirates can't be determined, said UNL network security analyst Zac Reimer.

"There's nothing we can do," Reimer said.

An association spokeswoman, Jenni Engebretsen, said UNL should have saved the records longer, as do other universities.

"Reasonable data retention policies are essential," she said. "One would think universities would understand the need to retain these records."

She said the association is processing responses from the 13 students UNL did identify, but it's not yet known whether they'll settle with the association or go to court.

Under UNL policy, almost every time a campus computer user turns on his or her machine, it is given a new Internet protocol address, which allows the association to track a user's online activity.

The university saves those IP address records for 31 days, then deletes them.

"We can't re-create data that we don't have anymore," UNL spokeswoman Kelly Bartling said, so it's impossible to find the last 23.

The university isn't planning to change the records policy, Reimer said, in part because the association probably will begin asking for names in the same months the file-sharing occurred.

"We've never had any problems with the 31 days," he said.

Last fall, UNL began a public relations campaign in which students were advised the practice was illegal and could lead to university disciplinary action.

The school has a three strikes policy: First, a notice to music pirates they are violating university policy, then loss of Internet access, and finally, a visit to the school's disciplinary board.
http://www.beatricedailysun.com/arti.../d8o0isdo0.txt





U of Nebraska Can’t Track Down Downloading Students

The Recording Industry Association of America would love to give University of Nebraska students who are illegally downloading music a chance to pay up before taking them to court, but they can't find out who they are, the lobbying group says. The Omaha World-Herald reports that the RIAA has sent 36 letters to Nebraska students they have found to be illegally downloading music, but due to system programming, they can only find nine of the students.

"Probably not," said Walter Weir, the university's chief information officer, when asked if the recording industry could locate the remaining students in some other way. "If they can't give us any more information, I don't know how in the heck anyone can find 'em."

The university's system was unintentionally designed to automatically change a computer's Internet protocol address each time that computer is turned on. The university only saves a record of these "IP addresses" for about a month. It's the only tool the University of Nebraska at Lincoln and the recording industry have to find the students.

RIAA spokeswoman Jenni Engebretsen has been critical of UNL for failing to keep computer records that would have made it easy to track down the UNL offenders.

"One would think universities would understand the need to retain these records," she said.

The industry has sent more than 1,000 "cease and desist" complaints to UNL during the current school year, more than all but two other U.S. universities.

To make matters worse, the university wants to be reimbursed $11 for each warning letter it processes.

"We're spending taxpayer dollars tracking down RIAA problems," Weir said. "Are we an agent of the RIAA? Why aren't they paying us for this?"

That request was rebuked by the RIAA. "It is neither practical nor appropriate for us to entertain a reimbursement request," said Engebretsen.

The university is researching installing software that would hinder students' ability to illegally download music.
http://education.zdnet.com/?p=926





UW Warns Music Sharers
Nick Penzenstadler

The University of Wisconsin went against the national trends Friday by warning students about its policy regarding illegal file sharing but refusing to forward settlement letters to violators from the Recording Industry Association of America.

According to Brian Rust, communications manager for the UW Division of Information Technology, the university sent an e-mail reminding students of the “appropriate use guidelines” for downloading to protect them from what could amount to thousands of dollars in out-of-court settlements.

“These settlement letters are an attempt to short circuit the legal process to rely on universities to be their legal agent,” Rust said. “It basically says, you are illegally downloading and/or sharing information; and before we take legal action, you can remedy this situation and pay for the music or movies that you’ve downloaded.”

Rust said DoIT receives about 10 to 20 cease-and-desist notices per day, which they are obligated to forward to their users. The notices are only warnings, Rust added, but the settlement letters brought on by the Recording Industry Association of America are more of a threat.

The settlements are usually around $700 per instance, but could be as much as $3,500, according to Rust.

“So you can imagine some people have probably come to that website with their credit card and paid it,” Rust said. “We do not want to be a party to that; we are not the legal agent for the recording agency, nor do we aspire to (be).”

Liz Kennedy, RIAA director of communications, said the association does not disclose the dollar amounts of the settlements, which vary by case.

Once the RIAA files litigation through an attorney, individual users are notified via a subpoena, which Rust pointed out the university has not received as of yet.

However, Kennedy said pressure is mounting from the RIAA to cut down on the illegal file sharing with a recent campaign, which has increased its lawsuits threefold at universities as of Feb. 28.

Dean of Students Lori Berquam said she understands the interest of the recording industry but is concerned with the targeting.

“Housing is kind of like easy pickings — it’s like they are any easy target because there are 5,000 of them on our campus,” Berquam said. “My fear is that this is just the residence folks are being targeted, but … who knows about the rest of the country.”
When notified of the e-mail sent to students Friday, RIAA Communications Director Jenni Engebretsen issued a statement in opposition to UW’s action.

“It’s almost unimaginable that a university would be unwilling to help a student avoid a lawsuit,” Engebretsen said in an e-mail to The Badger Herald. “Our pre-litigation settlement letters are offered as a benefit to university students to allow them to settle claims early, at a substantially discounted sum and off the public record.”

If students do receive a subpoena notice of being sued after being warned by the cease-and-desist letter, Rust said they will have their Internet access suspended and their names forwarded to the dean of students for an official review.

Berquam said the office will have conversations with students who violate downloading agreements, but she added the main focus should be on education.

“The bottom line on our campus is how do we educate our students about this,” Berquam said. “We need to let them know it’s illegal and opens them up to a pretty big lawsuit.”

And Paul Evans, director of University Housing, said students needed to read the message on their computers and restart before they could continue using the Internet in any UW dormitory.

“I think there’s a lot of downloading of copyrighted materials,” Evans said. “I think if students are doing it, they should be careful. There are certainly people looking out for it.”
http://badgerherald.com/news/2007/03...usic_share.php





RIAA University Campaign Sputters: Group Asked To Pay Up For Wasting School's Time

Lately, the RIAA has been on a high-profile campaign to get college students that the RIAA believes have been involved in illegal file trading to settle lawsuits against them at a "discount". As part of this strategy, the company has tried to enlist universities to help them identify and turn over the names of offending students. But it's heartening to see that some universities aren't spinelessly acquiescing to the RIAA's demands. The University of Wisconsin has told the RIAA that it has no obligation to rat its students out unless it's compelled to do so by a subpoena.

Meanwhile, the University of Nebraska has told the RIAA that it can't help them identify many of the students accused of file trading. The school's system changes a computer's IP address each time its turned on, and it only keeps this information for month. After that month, the school has no way of associating an IP address with a computer or its user. The RIAA is angry about this, and a spokesman for the group criticized the university for not understanding "the need to retain these records". This is a ridiculous complaint. The university doesn't have a need to retain these records, and there's no reason it should do so out of some obligation to the RIAA.

If there were any doubt that the university is really irritated by the RIAA's requests, it has requested that the RIAA pay the university to reimburse its expenses from dealing with this (good luck with that).

If all of this back and forth sounds familiar, it's because it very closely resembles what happened a few years ago when the RIAA tried getting ISPs to share data on their users. Fortunately, the ISPs stood up for their users and told the RIAA to get lost. It's too bad the group didn't seem to learn its lesson.
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20070320/171228.shtml





Points

Explaining the Crackdown on Student Downloading
Mitch Bainwol and Cary Sherman

As many in the higher education community are well aware from news coverage here and elsewhere, the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), on behalf of its member labels, recently initiated a new process for lawsuits against computer users who engage in illegal file-trafficking of copyrighted content on peer-to-peer (P2P) systems. In the new round of lawsuits, 400 of these legal actions were directed at college and university students around the country. The inclusion of so many students was unprecedented. Unfortunately, it was also necessary.

In the three and a half years since we first began suing individuals for illegal file-trafficking, we have witnessed an immense growth in national awareness of this problem. Today, virtually no one, particularly technology savvy students, can claim not to know that the online “sharing” of copyrighted music, movies, software and other works is illegal. By now, there is broad understanding of the impact from this activity, including billions of dollars in lost revenue, millions of dollars in lost taxes, thousands of lost jobs, and entire industries struggling to grow viable legitimate online market places that benefit consumers against a backdrop of massive theft.

We have made great progress — both in holding responsible the illicit businesses profiting from copyright infringement and in deterring many individuals from engaging in illegal downloading behavior. Nevertheless, illegal file-trafficking remains a significant and disproportionate problem on college campuses. A recent survey by Student Monitor from spring 2006 found that more than half of college students download music and movies illegally, and according to the market research firm NPD, college students alone accounted for more than 1.3 billion illegal music downloads in 2006.

We know some in the university community believe these figures overstate the contribution of college students to the illegal file-trafficking problem today. Yet new data confirms that students are more prone to engaging in this illegal activity than the population at large. While college students represented only 10 percent of the sample in the online NPD study, they accounted for 26 percent of all music downloading on P2P networks and 21 percent of all P2P users in 2006. Furthermore, college students surveyed by NPD reported that more than two-thirds of all the music they acquired was obtained illegally.

Moreover, our focus on university students is not detracting from our continuing enforcement efforts against individuals using commercial Internet Service Provider (ISP) accounts to engage in this same behavior. Indeed, we have asked ISPs to participate in the same new process that we have implemented for university network users.

Yet this is about far more than the size of a particular slice of the pie. This is about a generation of music fans. College students used to be the music industry’s best customers. Now, finding a record store still in business anywhere near a campus is a difficult assignment at best. It’s not just the loss of current sales that concerns us, but the habits formed in college that will stay with these students for a lifetime. This is a teachable moment — an opportunity to educate these particular students about the importance of music in their lives and the importance of respecting and valuing music as intellectual property.

The prevalence of this activity on our college campuses should be as unacceptable to universities as it is to us. These networks are intended for educational and research purposes. These are the environments where students receive the guidance necessary to become responsible citizens. Institutions of higher education, of all places, are where people should learn about the value of intellectual property and the importance of protecting it.

The fact that students continue to engage in this behavior is particularly egregious given the extraordinary lengths to which we have gone to address the problem. Our approach always has been and continues to be collaborative — partnering with and appealing to the higher motives of universities. We have met personally with university administrators. We have provided both instructional material and educational resources, including an orientation video to help deter illegal downloading. We have worked productively through organizations like the Joint Committee of the Higher Education and Entertainment Communities. We have participated in Congressional hearings.

We have informed schools of effective network technologies to inhibit illegal activity. We have licensed legitimate music services at steeply discounted rates for college students and helped to arrange partnership opportunities between universities and legitimate services. We have stepped up our notice program to alert schools and students of infringing activity. And, of course, we have as a last resort brought suit against individual file-traffickers.

With this latest round of lawsuits, we have initiated a new pre-lawsuit settlement program intended to allow students to voluntarily settle claims before a suit is actually filed. We have asked for school administrations’ assistance in passing our letters on to students in order to give them the opportunity to settle a claim at a discounted rate and before a public record is created. This is a program initiated in part as a response to defendants who told us they would like this opportunity, and we are encouraged by the swift response of so many schools. Lawsuits are by no means our desired course of action. But when the problem continues to persist, year after year, we are left with no choice.

An op-ed writer recently published in this forum described this approach as bullying. There is a big difference between using “bullying tactics” and using a “bully pulpit” to make an important point. Should we ignore this problem and stand silent as entire generations of students learn to steal? Should we not point out that administrators are brushing off responsibility, choosing not to exercise their moral leadership on this issue? This problem is anything but ours and ours alone. If music is stolen with such impunity, what makes term papers any different? Yet we know university administrators very aggressively pursue plagiarism. Why would universities — so prolific in the creation of intellectual capital themselves — not apply the same high standards to intellectual property of all kinds? This is, after all, a segment of our economy responsible for more than 6 percent of our nation’s GDP.

Furthermore, a Business Software Alliance study conducted last year found that 86 percent of managers say that the file-sharing attitudes and behaviors of applicants affect on their hiring decisions. Don’t administrators have an obligation to prepare students for the real world, where theft is simply not tolerated? Our strategy is not to bully but to point out that the self-interest of universities lies remarkably close to the interests of the entertainment industries whose products are being looted. And, most importantly, we have sought to do so in a collaborative way.

It doesn’t have to be like this. We take this opportunity to once again ask schools to be proactive, to step up and accept responsibility for the activity of their students on their network — not legal responsibility, but moral responsibility, as educators, as organizations transmitting values. Turning a blind eye will not make the problem go away; it will further ingrain in students the belief that a costly and illegal pastime is sanctioned, and even facilitated, by school administrations.

The necessary steps are simple. First, implement a network technical solution. Products like Red Lambda’s cGrid are promising as effective and comprehensive solutions that maintain the integrity, security, and legal use of school computing systems without threatening student privacy. Some schools have used these products to block the use of P2P entirely, realizing that the overwhelming, if not sole, use of these applications on campus is to illegally download and distribute copyrighted works. For schools that do not wish to prohibit entirely access to P2P applications, products such as Audible Magic’s CopySense can be used to filter illegal P2P traffic, again, without impinging on student privacy.

Second, offer a legal online service to give students an inexpensive alternative to stealing. One such service, Ruckus, is funded through advertising and is completely free to users. When schools increasingly provide their students with amenities like cable TV, there is simply no reason not to offer them cheap or free legal access to the music they crave.

Third, take appropriate and consistent disciplinary action when students are found to be engaging in infringing conduct online. This includes stopping and punishing such activity in dorms and on all Local Area Networks throughout a school’s computing system.

Some administrations have embraced these solutions, engaged in productive dialogue with us to address this problem, and begun to see positive results. We thank these schools and commend them for their responsible actions.

Yet the vast majority of institutions still have not come to grips with the need to take appropriate action. As we continue our necessary enforcement measures — including our notices and pre-lawsuit settlement initiative — and as Congress continues to monitor this issue with a watchful eye, we hope these schools will fully realize the harm their inaction causes them and their students. We call upon them to do their part to address this continuing, mutual problem.
http://insidehighered.com/views/2007/03/15/sherman


Counterpoints

Shame on Inside Higher Ed

…to allow itself to be used as a mouthpiece for commercially driven industry propaganda. Who on your staff ‘invited” these paid provocateurs to write, and decided that Inside Higher Ed’s time and money should be spent to aid them in promoting their industry agenda? - MartinH


The Problem is not the Students.
Brian Boyko

Any college administrator or professor needs to educate students; not feed them this BS story.

If you want to educate people in social responsibility, tell them not to buy CDs from RIAA member labels, that way there will be less money in RIAA coffers to sue their friends.

I used to buy RIAA music; but I haven’t bought an album from them in 8 years — not because of piracy but because I don’t want one red cent to go to them.

I feel so strongly about it that if I was enrolled at an institution of higher learning and they entered into a deal with the RIAA to use student fees to pay for music I find morally repugnant (because of the RIAA, not because of the lyrics) that I would immediately drop out of that school and transfer to another one after making clear that that is the reason I’m leaving the school.


“Copyright Infringement” is Not “Theft.”
D. Moore

The RIAA’s bullying only exacerbates their already untenable situation. I hope that school administrators look past this ridiculous editorial to see the RIAA’s tactics for what they are: an attack on civil liberties.


Stifling Innovation with Copyright
Adrian Cachinero

I’ll make it brief. Technology and the internet have allowed for momentous growth and innovation. Clearly, there are limitless possibilities with the internet. P2P is one of these examples. P2P technology reduces bandwidth costs for data servers, to name but one benefit.

If this technology is used to share copyrighted material, then quite frankly it’s up to the RIAA to do something about rethinking their business model. The government and the legal framework are not in place to satisfy the cravings of decadent record labels.

I can only remind the readers that Hollywood was borne out of ‘copyright theft’. In order to avoid Edison’s ridiculous tariffs on camera technology, the movie industry moved to California. I cannot start to imagine how much money they owe the Edison estate if they were truly keen on preserving copyright ‘law’.

It’s also noteworthily hypocritical of the RIAA to talk of copyright theft, when the contracts they cajole their artists into signing appropriate all the intellectual property that should belong to the artist.

The Old Media industry is dying and this will not change unless they stop trying to stifle innovation and attempt to make a profit with the new tech. The consumer is certainly not responsible if Old Media is incapable of doing this. The consumer is certainly not a criminal.

So share all you like. Old Media is on it’s way out. I just wish it would hurry up already.
http://insidehighered.com/views/2007/03/15/sherman





Judge's Decision Leaves RIAA With Lose-Lose Situation in Elektra v. Santangelo
Eric Bangeman

The case of Elektra v. Santangelo has been one of the more closely followed cases in the RIAA's crusade against suspected file sharers, due in no small part to the aggressiveness of Patti Santangelo's defense. Ray Beckerman is reporting that Judge Colleen McMahon has denied the RIAA's motion to dismiss the case without prejudice, ruling that the case must either proceed to trial or be dismissed with prejudice.

It's a noteworthy ruling because if the case is dismissed with prejudice, Santangelo would be considered the prevailing party and would likely be entitled to an award of attorneys' fees, as in Capitol v. Foster. In her ruling, Judge McMahon concluded that "no conceivable interest of justice would be served by permitting this case to be dismissed without prejudice against defendant." Instead, the defendant should have a shot at vindication via a trial or have the case dismissed with prejudice.

"This case is two years old," wrote Judge McMahon. "There has been extensive fact discovery. After taking this discovery, either plaintiffs want to make their case that Mrs. Santangelo is guilty of contributory copyright infringement or they do not."

The choice is clear-cut for the RIAA: either proceed with a full-blown jury trial in which they will have to convince a jury that the defendant is guilty of secondary infringement—making the same argument that the judge in Capitol v. Foster didn't buy—or agree to an order dismissing the action with prejudice. (For a further discussion of secondary infringement, see earlier Capitol v. Foster coverage.)

Patti Santangelo, a divorced mother of five, was sued in 2005 after MediaSentry, the RIAA's investigative arm, found music in a shared folder under an IP that Santangelo's ISP said was assigned to her account at that time. Santangelo denied any knowledge of the alleged file-sharing, but the RIAA pressed ahead with the case.

After a barrage of legal filings, the RIAA then sued two of her children last November: Michelle, age 20, and Robert, age 16 (and 11 years old when the infringement allegedly took place). The new lawsuit claimed that Michelle had admitted to illicit downloading and that Robert's best friend had implicated him. At the same time, the RIAA continued to press its case that Patti Santangelo was guilty of secondary infringement. Robert has since filed an answer to the RIAA's lawsuit, denying any wrongdoing and demanding a trial by jury.

The ruling leaves the RIAA between a rock and a hard place, a position that it may find itself in more frequently as such cases move through the court system.
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post...antangelo.html





RIAA Wins Worst Company In America 2007

The RIAA won The Consumerist's "Worst Company In America 2007" reader poll.

We predicted an RIAA landlslide, but they only managed a 53.8% majority over Halliburton's 46.2%

The message is clear. The internet cares deeply about being able to download music illegally.

Congrats to you, oh RIAA! Your lucky golden shit trophy will be arriving at your headquarters shortly.

Check out the BIG BOARD to see how the 15 other companies fared.

Here's some RIAA phone numbers so you can call them up and offer your congratulations.
http://consumerist.com/consumer/wors...007-245235.php





RIAA Updates Mission Statement to Reflect Priorities
Brian Briggs

The RIAA has updated its mission statement from "Our mission is to foster a business and legal climate that supports and promotes our members' creative and financial vitality" to "Our mission is to maximize hatred for the music industry by using creative legal and innovative technological methods which will further destroy our member's creativity and financial vitality." The organization hopes the change will more accurately reflect their long-term goals.

Chairman and CEO of the RIAA Mitch Bainwol said, "This change allows us to focus on our goals of ridding ourselves of annoying artists and consumers completely. The Internet has made this possible. In the days before the Internet only a few artists and industry insiders hated the RIAA, now hatred for the RIAA is at an all-time high."

Bainwol explained that a committee formed three years ago has developed most of the ideas used to foment the growing hatred for the organization.

"We're proud of them. When more people hate you than the President you know you're doing something right," Bainwol said.

Innovative methods for producing more hatred from consumers and artists in the future include:

• Suing a family in a refugee camp in Darfur, who doesn't even know what a computer is, for sharing music illegally.
• Running a public service announcement campaign which will equate downloading music to molesting children.
• Make charitable donations to Hitler Youth and KKK.
• Seizing iPods from troops in Iraq and searching them for illegal music. Filing suit against violators.

"With strategies like this we're bound to reach our goals in five years. Maybe even sooner," said Bainwol.


Related News

RIAA Makes Big Donation to SETI Project; Hopes to Sue Aliens

RIAA Offers Lawsuit Family Packs

RIAA Wants Background Checks on CD-RW Buyers


The RIAA was recently voted the worst company in America in a recent online poll, narrowly beating out Halliburton. Upset by the news and the RIAAs plans, Halliburton announced plans of its own.

CEO Bob Johnson said that his company would begin infecting elephants and other endangered species with the AIDS virus then shooting them from giant catapults onto orphanages and children's wards of hospitals.

"If that doesn't build the hate, then I don't know what will," said Johnson.
http://www.bbspot.com/News/2007/03/r...statement.html





Microsoft Partner: Vista Less Secure Than XP
Tom Espiner

Security company Kaspersky claimed that Vista's User Account Control (UAC), the system of user privileges that can be used to restrict users' administrative rights, will be so annoying that users will disable it.

Natalya Kaspersky, the company's chief executive, said that without UAC, Vista will be less secure than Windows XP SP2. "There's a question mark if Vista security has improved, or has really dropped down," she said to our sister site ZDNet UK at the CeBIT show in Hanover last week.

Kaspersky provides one of the scanning engines in ForeFront, Microsoft's business security product.

Arno Edelmann, business security product manager for Microsoft, said that Kaspersky's claims were surprising. "We have a thriving community of partners, and Kasperky is one of our best partners," Edelmann told ZDNet UK. "I find their statements a little strange because they have one of the best insights into Microsoft security products."

After being roundly criticised over its security strategy in the past, Microsoft has done a lot of work to improve its approach and has been touting Vista as its most secure operating system. But Kaspersky confirmed that her analysts had found five ways to bypass Vista's UAC, and that malware writers will find more security holes.

Kaspersky also added her voice to Symantec and McAfee complaints that PatchGuard, designed to protect the Vista kernel, is hindering security companies' work.

"PatchGuard doesn't allow legitimate security vendors to do what we used to do," said Kaspersky.

Symantec has claimed that PatchGuard is hurting security vendors more than it was hurting malware writers. Bruce McCorkendale, a chief engineer at Symantec, said: "There are types of security policies and next-generation security products that can only work through some of the mechanisms that PatchGuard prohibits."

Eugene Kaspersky, the company founder, said last Thursday that while vendors had to interact with Vista legitimately, hackers were under no such constraints.

"Cybercriminals seem not to care about Vista licensing," said Eugene Kaspersky. "They don't need to follow regulations or be certified by Microsoft -- antivirus vendors do."
http://www.zdnet.com.au/news/softwar...9274261,00.htm





Bots Surge Ahead in March

The number of compromised computers that are part of a centrally controlled bot net has tripled in the past two weeks, according to data gathered by the Shadowserver Foundation, a bot-net takedown group.

The weekly tally of bot-infected PCs tracked by the group rose to nearly 1.2 million this week, up from less than 400,000 infected machines two weeks ago. The surge reversed a sudden drop in infected systems--from 500,000 to less than 400,000--last December.

The threat to Internet users from bot nets has steadily increased over the past few years. Increasingly, computer systems in China have become infected with bot software and used to attack or spam other targets, according to the latest Internet Security Threat Report published by Symantec, the owner of SecurityFocus. Spammers have taken a shine to bot nets as a way to reliably send stock-touting e-mail campaigns and other mass mailings of junk advertisements. Worms are rapidly being replaced by Trojan horse programs, such as the misnamed Storm Worm, that use a bot net to spam out more copies of the malicious code.

Between December 2006 and March 2007, the Shadowserver Foundation's tally of bot-infected computers has never risen above 600,000.
http://www.securityfocus.com/brief/466





Adopting Ubuntu

Linux Switch Can be Painless, Free
David Conabree

The author is a regular reviewer of new high-tech gear and longtime computer user.

In all the "switcher" TV ads that the folks in Apple's marketing department have come up with, the choice is always the same. Go with the clunky and complicated Microsoft Windows machine, or pick up the hip and sleek designer Apple computer running the Mac OS (hip and sleek short form for "operating system"). They're good ads — heck, I've even gone to Apple's website just to watch them.

But there is another choice out there that a lot of people simply aren't aware of because there's no slick marketing campaign behind it.

For many people, e-mail, web surfing, picture editing, listening to music, making spreadsheets and basic word processing are just about all they do with their computers. Today's Macs and Windows PCs are impressive machines indeed, but their power — and price — can be overkill for the average computer user. If you're looking for a new computer and you're not sure whether to go Windows or Mac, I'd suggest also paying some attention to the "L" word.

No, not that "L" word. I'm talking about Linux.

A brief history of Linux

For those of you not familiar with the world of Linux, let me give you the Coles Notes version. Some time ago, a rather creative software engineer in Finland decided he wanted to build a new computer operating system in his spare time. In what ended up earning him a near god-like status in the "geek" hierarchy, Linus Torvalds and a growing group of volunteers eventually did the highly improbable, putting together a new kind of operating system that could go head to head with the software that companies like Microsoft and Apple have spent millions developing.

Torvalds then went and gave his software, called Linux, away to anyone who wanted to use it or tinker with it, so long as they agreed to openly share any changes or improvements they made. Since that time, dozens of flavours of the Linux operating systems have come out, and the majority of them are utterly free. They're also stable, secure, easy to use, and generally not plagued by spyware and viruses the way commercial operating systems are.

Now, back to our story.

Ubuntu

Linux, and more specifically the free "Ubuntu" version, has come a long way in the past few years and is well worth considering for basic computing.

Best of all, it won't cost you a penny to try it out.

Like many Linux distributions, the entire Ubuntu operating system is available as a free "Live CD" you can download from the internet. Just burn the file [called an "ISO"] to a CD, and that's it ... you're ready to try Ubuntu on any home or business PC. Alternatively, you can pay a small shipping fee and have an Ubuntu disc delivered to you by mail.

Either way, reboot your Windows machine with the disc in the CD drive, and rather than starting up Windows, the computer will run Ubuntu directly from the CD. This means that your entire Windows installation, including all of your personal files, are left entirely untouched — nothing is "installed" over the existing content on your machine. Once you're finished trying Ubuntu, just take the CD out, reboot and your PC will start Windows exactly as it did before.

So what is it like?

Amazingly, Ubuntu feels much like Windows. I have converted several friends to Ubuntu over the years and every one of them has had the same opinion — everything is where you think it should be if you're familiar with a Windows computer.

Software

The Linux operating system comes with great open-source software, and the icons for them are right there on your desktop where you'd expect to find them. Want to write a memo? Ubuntu comes with Open Office, a full (and free) office software suite that works with Microsoft documents, such as spreadsheets, text files and presentations. For browsing the internet, you get Firefox, the same browser I use now for both my Windows and Mac machines. Play music in the Rhythmbox Media Player or play your videos in Totem — again, both included for free.

With the exception of gaming, which is limited, almost all of the average person's basic computing needs are well looked after with this package. I've used the last three versions of Ubuntu on my main portable web-surfing computer for years just to avoid viruses and spyware (as the vast majority of these nasty programs are written for Windows), and I have yet to be disappointed.

With the exception of gaming, which is very limited, almost all of the average person's basic computing needs are well looked after with this package.

If you like it, you can load Linux permanently onto a cheap "bare bones" PC from your local computer store, saving yourself a chunk of cash that you'd otherwise have to spend on an operating system, software and high-powered hardware. The Ubuntu software is free, although there is an option where you can buy several years' worth of support and troubleshooting if you feel you'll need some extra help.

I've also "resurrected" several old machines using Ubuntu and various other versions of Linux that are far more compact and less memory intensive than Windows or the Mac OS, so they don't need as much computing power to run them. It's amazing to see how quickly you can breathe new life into an old beige-box geezer and save it from the landfill, rather than junk it because it doesn't have the power to keep up with the latest commercial operating system.

The "Damn Small Linux" version actually comes in at a paltry 50MB for the entire operating system, complete with basic software to cover most daily computing needs — it's great for getting more use out of old desktops or notebooks.

Ubuntu, however, is far slicker and more powerful than these trimmed-down versions of Linux. If you're new to the Linux world and want to compare the experience to Windows or the Mac OS, I highly recommend Ubuntu as the best place to start. It will cost you nothing to try out, and you might just be surprised at how good "free" really is.
http://www.cbc.ca/news/background/tech/linux.html





MySpace Restrictions Upset Some Users
Brad Stone

Some users of MySpace feel as if their space is being invaded.

MySpace, the Web’s largest social network, has gradually been imposing limits on the software tools that users can embed in their pages, like music and video players that also deliver advertising or enable transactions.

At stake is the ability of MySpace, which is owned by the News Corporation, to ensure that it alone can commercially capitalize on its 90 million visitors each month.

But to some formerly enthusiastic MySpace users, the new restrictions hamper their abilities to design their pages and promote new projects.

“The reason why I am so bummed out about MySpace now is because recently they have been cutting down our freedom and taking away our rights slowly,” wrote Tila Tequila, a singer who is one of MySpace’s most popular and visible users, in a blog posting over the weekend. “MySpace will now only allow you to use ‘MySpace’ things.”

Ms. Tequila, born Tila Nguyen, has attracted attention by linking to more than 1.7 million friends on her MySpace page. To promote her first album, she recently added to her MySpace page a new music player and music store, called the Hoooka, created by Indie911, a Los Angeles-based start-up company.

Users listened to her music and played the accompanying videos 20,000 times over the weekend. But the Hoooka disappeared on Sunday after a MySpace founder, Tom Anderson, personally contacted Ms. Tequila to object, according to someone with direct knowledge of the dispute. She then vented her thoughts on her personal blog.

MySpace says that it will block these pieces of third-party software — also called widgets — when they lend themselves to violations of its terms of service, like the spread of pornography or copyrighted material. But it also objects to widgets that enable users to sell items or advertise without authorization, or without entering into a direct partnership with the company.

A MySpace spokeswoman said yesterday that the service did not remove anything from Ms. Tequila’s page. “A MySpace representative contacted her and told her that she had violated our terms of service in regards to commercial activity,” the spokeswoman said. “She removed the material herself, after realizing it was not appropriate for MySpace.”

Ms. Tequila and her representatives would not comment.

But Justin Goldberg, chief executive of Indie911, said MySpace’s actions undercut the notion that the social networks’ users have complete creative freedom. “We find it incredibly ironic and frustrating that a company that has built its assets on the back of its users is turning around and telling people they can’t do anything that violates terms of service,” he said.

“Why shouldn’t they call it FoxSpace? Or RupertSpace?” Mr. Goldberg said, referring to the News Corporation’s chief, Rupert Murdoch.

The tussle between MySpace and Indie911 underscores tensions between established Internet companies and the latest generation of Web start-ups. Without a critical mass of visitors to their sites, many of these smaller companies are devising strategies that involve clamping on to sites like MySpace and Facebook and trying to make money off their traffic.

MySpace, meanwhile, is trying to show that it can generate stable revenue. Google will pay it at least $900 million over the next three years to serve ads to the site’s users. And last fall, MySpace announced a partnership with Snocap, a San Francisco-based company, to sell music.

Perhaps not coincidentally, this year, MySpace blocked widgets from Revver, a video-sharing site that embeds advertisements in its clips, and Imeem, a music buying service.

“Our users weren’t happy,” said Dalton Caldwell, Imeem’s chief executive, who was nevertheless ambivalent about the MySpace ban because he thought the move might encourage his users to visit his site directly. “If MySpace isn’t really ‘their space’ after all, maybe users will think about things differently.”

In the past, MySpace executives have said that the service failed to block companies like YouTube that began successful businesses from MySpace’s pages.

“We probably should have stopped YouTube,” Michael Barrett, chief revenue officer for Fox Interactive Media, a part of the News Corporation, said in an interview in late February. “YouTube wouldn’t exist if it wasn’t for MySpace. We’ve created companies on our back.”

MySpace and its corporate parent say they want to find ways to support and exploit the growing widget economy. Last year, Fox Interactive Media introduced a service called Spring Widget. The service provides tools to help developers create widgets for use both on computer desktops and online networks like MySpace.

In a recent use of its technology, the studio behind the horror film “Dead Silence” used a Spring Widget tool on its promotional MySpace page to count down the minutes until the film’s release.

Fred Wilson, a New York-based venture capitalist who invests in social media companies, said the strategy showed that the News Corporation was trying to take advantage of growing interest in widgets while also trying to carefully control what made it onto MySpace.

But that could be a dangerous strategy, Mr. Wilson said.

“Every attempt everyone has ever made to try to dictate what a person’s Internet experience will be has ended up coming up empty,” he said. “You have to accept the fact that you are never going to be the be-all and end-all of everyone’s experience. They are one click away from everyone else on the Web.”

As for Ms. Tequila, who wrote on her blog that she was a personal friend of Mr. Anderson, the MySpace co-founder, she wrote that she felt bad about blasting the site but that she could not stay silent.

“You guys used to be so cool,” she wrote of MySpace. “Don’t turn into a corporate evil monster.”


Louise Story contributed reporting.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/20/te...20myspace.html





Milestones

John W. Backus, 82, Fortran Developer, Dies
Steve Lohr

John W. Backus, who assembled and led the I.B.M. team that created Fortran, the first widely used programming language, which helped open the door to modern computing, died on Saturday at his home in Ashland, Ore. He was 82.

His daughter Karen Backus announced the death, saying the family did not know the cause, other than age.

Fortran, released in 1957, was “the turning point” in computer software, much as the microprocessor was a giant step forward in hardware, according to J.A.N. Lee, a leading computer historian.

Fortran changed the terms of communication between humans and computers, moving up a level to a language that was more comprehensible by humans. So Fortran, in computing vernacular, is considered the first successful higher-level language.

Mr. Backus and his youthful team, then all in their 20s and 30s, devised a programming language that resembled a combination of English shorthand and algebra. Fortran, short for Formula Translator, was very similar to the algebraic formulas that scientists and engineers used in their daily work. With some training, they were no longer dependent on a programming priesthood to translate their science and engineering problems into a language a computer would understand.

In an interview several years ago, Ken Thompson, who developed the Unix operating system at Bell Labs in 1969, observed that “95 percent of the people who programmed in the early years would never have done it without Fortran.”

He added: “It was a massive step.”

Fortran was also extremely efficient, running as fast as programs painstakingly hand-coded by the programming elite, who worked in arcane machine languages. This was a feat considered impossible before Fortran. It was achieved by the masterful design of the Fortran compiler, a program that captures the human intent of a program and recasts it in a way that a computer can process.

In the Fortran project, Mr. Backus tackled two fundamental problems in computing — how to make programming easier for humans, and how to structure the underlying code to make that possible. Mr. Backus continued to work on those challenges for much of his career, and he encouraged others as well.

“His contribution was immense, and it influenced the work of many, including me,” Frances Allen, a retired research fellow at I.B.M., said yesterday.

Mr. Backus was a bit of a maverick even as a teenager. He grew up in an affluent family in Wilmington, Del., the son of a stockbroker. He had a complicated, difficult relationship with his family, and he was a wayward student.

In a series of interviews in 2000 and 2001 in San Francisco, where he lived at the time, Mr. Backus recalled that his family had sent him to an exclusive private high school, the Hill School in Pennsylvania.

“The delight of that place was all the rules you could break,” he recalled.

After flunking out of the University of Virginia, Mr. Backus was drafted in 1943. But his scores on Army aptitude tests were so high that he was dispatched on government-financed programs to three universities, with his studies ranging from engineering to medicine.

After the war, Mr. Backus found his footing as a student at Columbia University and pursued an interest in mathematics, receiving his master’s degree in 1950. Shortly before he graduated, Mr. Backus wandered by the I.B.M. headquarters on Madison Avenue in New York, where one of its room-size electronic calculators was on display.

When a tour guide inquired, Mr. Backus mentioned that he was a graduate student in math; he was whisked upstairs and asked a series of questions Mr. Backus described as math “brain teasers.” It was an informal oral exam, with no recorded score.

He was hired on the spot. As what? “As a programmer,” Mr. Backus replied, shrugging. “That was the way it was done in those days.”

Back then, there was no field of computer science, no courses or schools. The first written reference to “software” as a computer term, as something distinct from hardware, did not come until 1958.

In 1953, frustrated by his experience of “hand-to-hand combat with the machine,” Mr. Backus was eager to somehow simplify programming. He wrote a brief note to his superior, asking to be allowed to head a research project with that goal. “I figured there had to be a better way,” he said.

Mr. Backus got approval and began hiring, one by one, until the team reached 10. It was an eclectic bunch that included a crystallographer, a cryptographer, a chess wizard, an employee on loan from United Aircraft, a researcher from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a young woman who joined the project straight out of Vassar College.

“They took anyone who seemed to have an aptitude for problem-solving skills — bridge players, chess players, even women,” Lois Haibt, the Vassar graduate, recalled in an interview in 2000.

Mr. Backus, colleagues said, managed the research team with a light hand. The hours were long but informal. Snowball fights relieved lengthy days of work in winter. I.B.M. had a system of rigid yearly performance reviews, which Mr. Backus deemed ill-suited for his programmers, so he ignored it. “We were the hackers of those days,” Richard Goldberg, a member of the Fortran team, recalled in an interview in 2000.

After Fortran, Mr. Backus developed, with Peter Naur, a Danish computer scientist, a notation for describing the structure of programming languages, much like grammar for natural languages. It became known as Backus-Naur form.

Later, Mr. Backus worked for years with a group at I.B.M. in an area called functional programming. The notion, Mr. Backus said, was to develop a system of programming that would focus more on describing the problem a person wanted the computer to solve and less on giving the computer step-by-step instructions.

“That field owes a lot to John Backus and his early efforts to promote it,” said Alex Aiken, a former researcher at I.B.M. who is now a professor at Stanford University.

In addition to his daughter Karen, of New York, Mr. Backus is survived by another daughter, Paula Backus, of Ashland, Ore.; and a brother, Cecil Backus, of Easton, Md.

His second wife, Barbara Stannard, died in 2004. His first marriage, to Marjorie Jamison, ended in divorce.

It was Mr. Backus who set the tone for the Fortran team. Yet if the style was informal, the work was intense, a four-year venture with no guarantee of success and many small setbacks along the way.

Innovation, Mr. Backus said, was a constant process of trial and error.

“You need the willingness to fail all the time,” he said. “You have to generate many ideas and then you have to work very hard only to discover that they don’t work. And you keep doing that over and over until you find one that does work.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/20/bu.../20backus.html





$220,000 error

Computer Technician Accidentally Wipes Out Info on Alaska's $38 Billion Fund
AP

Perhaps you know that sinking feeling when a single keystroke accidentally destroys hours of work. Now imagine wiping out a disk drive containing information for an account worth $38 billion (€29 billion).

That is what happened to a computer technician reformatting a disk drive at the Alaska Department of Revenue. While doing routine maintenance work, the technician accidentally deleted applicant information for an oil-funded account — one of Alaska residents' biggest perks — and mistakenly reformatted the backup drive, as well.

There was still hope, until the department discovered its third line of defense, backup tapes, were unreadable.

"Nobody panicked, but we instantly went into planning for the worst-case scenario," said Permanent Fund Dividend Division Director Amy Skow. The July computer foul-up, which wiped out dividend distribution information for the fund, would end up costing the department more than $200,000 (€150,000).

Over the next few days, as the department, the division and consultants from Microsoft Corp. and Dell Inc. labored to retrieve the data, it became obvious the worst-case scenario was at hand.

Nine months worth of applicant information for the yearly payout from the Alaska Permanent Fund was gone: some 800,000 electronic images that had been painstakingly scanned into the system months earlier, the 2006 paper applications that people had either mailed in or filed over the counter, and supporting documentation such as birth certificates and proof of residence.

And the only backup was the paperwork itself — stored in more than 300 cardboard boxes.

"We had to bring that paper back to the scanning room, and send it through again, and quality control it, and then you have to have a way to link that paper to that person's file," Skow said.

Half a dozen seasonal workers came back to assist the regular division staff, and about 70 people working overtime and weekends re-entered all the lost data by the end of August.

Last October and November, the department met its obligation to the public. A majority of the estimated 600,000 payments for last year's $1,106.96 (€832.11) individual dividends went out on schedule, including those for 28,000 applicants who were still under review when the computer disaster struck.

Former Revenue Commissioner Bill Corbus said no one was ever blamed for the incident.

"Everybody felt very bad about it and we all learned a lesson. There was no witch hunt," Corbus said.

According to department staff, they now have a proven and regularly tested backup and restore procedure.

The department is asking lawmakers to approve a supplemental budget request for $220,700 (€165,900) to cover the excess costs incurred during the six-week recovery effort, including about $128,400 (€96,500) in overtime and $71,800 (€54,000) for computer consultants.

The money would come from the permanent fund earnings, the money earmarked for the dividends. That means recipients could find their next check docked by about 37 cents.
http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2007/...-Lost-Data.php





Most Digital Content Not Stable: Archivists
CBC News

Those who maintain New Brunswick's provincial archives are concerned that much of the digital content produced today is not going to make it into the future.

Sound and moving image archivist Denis Noel transfers film and audio to digital, following painstaking and expensive international digitizing standards set out for archives.

"One of the problems is that [digital is] so susceptible, so vulnerable to damage," Noel said. "I've had audio tape come into the archives, for example, that had been submerged in water in floods and the tape was so swollen it went off the reel, and yet we were able to recover that. We were able to take that off and dry it out and play it back.

"If a CD had one-tenth of one per cent of the damage on one of those reels, it wouldn't play, period. The whole thing would be corrupted."

Archivists say the domestic digital formats available to the average consumer, such as standard CDs and DVDs, are not stable and were never intended to be used for long-term storage.

"Theoretically, life is far more documented than it's ever been in the past," said Fred Farrell, manager of private sector records. However, he adds it's not unrealistic to think all that documentation will be lost to deterioration over time.

Farrell says a digital black hole is looming over the information age, because most of the material the provincial archives receives comes from the public. He says if we're not looking after our digital records properly, there won't be anything for the archives to save.

"That's a pretty scary thing," Noel said. "Think of the implications for the province. I mean, if you look at the archives as the memory, the heritage of a thing, nobody wants to lose their mind. That's basically … your memory. It's who you are."

Noel is convinced that a safe and foolproof way to save digital material is right around the corner, but until then, it's up to everyone to do what they can to preserve their digital documents. He says if you want to preserve your visual and audio memories, make copies of copies on digital, but always keep the analog originals.
http://www.cbc.ca/canada/new-brunswi...alrecords.html





Local Radio Is Cutting the Static and Going Digital, Finally
John R. Quain

AS drivers pick their way down the West Side Highway of Manhattan, the noise is often more annoying than the traffic — and it’s not just the honking.

What’s so irksome is the static from the car’s sound system, a result of congestion in the radio frequency spectrum in an area packed with AM and FM stations. But that analog annoyance may fade away as radio broadcasters, carmakers and consumer electronics companies make the transition to digital radio.

While satellite radio customers have enjoyed the clean, crisp sound of digital reception, most people tuned to local stations are listening to analog broadcasts based on technology little changed in the last half-century. But more and more broadcasters are pushing a digital format called HD Radio, which rivals satellite radio quality and promises to eliminate the static.

Introduced three years ago, HD Radio is the brand name for a technology developed by the iBiquity Digital Corporation of Columbia, Md. (HD is not an abbreviation for high definition, as it is used by television broadcasters).

The HD system digitizes and compresses a station’s signal; the digital stream is then broadcast in the same frequency range used for the station’s analog AM and FM transmissions. The digital broadcast is sent alongside the analog signal, so you can listen to either analog or digital versions of the same content, and more important, there is no subscription charge. The HD signal also carries artist and title information that can be shown on the radio’s display panel.

The sound improves over a conventional AM station by delivering a better dynamic range — the difference between quiet and loud sounds. In addition, HD is better at reproducing the high notes of music: HD is capable of highs up to 15 KHz, compared with the current top end for analog AM of 10 KHz, making it sound as good as a traditional FM station. Better yet, HD FM stations can deliver audio that is nearly as good as a CD in quality, with a frequency response of up to 20 KHz, comparable to satellite radio.
To get this higher fidelity of HD broadcasts you don’t need a new antenna. But you will need a new radio tuner that can detect and decode the digital transmissions.

“There was the proverbial chicken-and-egg problem,” said Peter Ferrara, chief executive of the HD Digital Radio Alliance, a consortium of broadcasters including ABC Radio and Clear Channel Communications. “Consumer electronics people didn’t want to make radios until there was content available, and broadcasters didn’t want to invest in putting out the content until radios were available.”

But broadcasters decided to take the plunge at the end of 2005, according to Mr. Ferrara, by forming the alliance to promote digital radio and by committing to introduce HD Radio stations in the nation’s top 100 markets. That rollout is nearly completed, with 1,204 stations broadcasting in HD Radio as of last month, reaching a potential audience of 235 million listeners. The alliance expects there to be about 2,000 stations broadcasting in the digital format by the end of the year. (A list of stations that broadcast HD is available at hdradioalliance.com.)

Satellite radio initially gained traction by adopting a marketing approach similar to that used by cellphone companies. XM and Sirius entice listeners with relatively inexpensive tuners, often less than $100, but then charge buyers a monthly fee of $10 or more. HD Radio took the opposite approach: tuning in was free, but early HD-compatible radios were nearly $1,000.

But prices have dropped, with tuners costing half that much or less. JVC’s in-dash HD-W10 Mobile HD Radio, for example, costs $188 and includes a CD player. Wal-Mart began selling the JVC model at about 2,000 stores this month.

Carmakers have been much slower to adopt HD Radio. Among the major auto companies, only BMW, which had previously limited HD as an option on some premium models, will offer the HD Radio option on all of its vehicles this spring.

Add-on HD Radio tuners are also available. The Directed Car Connect HD Radio, for example, is $199 and connects to jacks on the back of existing in-dash head units using connectors known as RCA plugs. The model includes a display that can be mounted in or on the dash, but the company recommends having a professional install the tuner.

Visteon, the automotive electronics supplier, will also offer a similar product called the HD Jump for $249 next month. The HD Jump will include a cradle so that it can be used not only in a car, but also at home as a tabletop HD Radio.

While HD Radio does not offer a breadth of programming for different tastes comparable to XM or Sirius, it has thrown a new ingredient into the mix: multicasting. Also called HD2, multicables individual HD stations to divide the digital stream into as many as eight separate channels within their existing frequency.

For example, about 500 stations offer a second HD programming channel, enabling them to appeal to smaller audiences in niche markets. WKTU-FM in New York uses its second channel to broadcast country music. In Dallas, a Clear Channel station, KHKS-FM, offers Pride Radio for a gay audience on its second HD channel.

Nationwide coverage and acceptance of HD Radio is probably years away. One impediment is that the average cost for a station to add HD is about $100,000, according to iBiquity and the HD Alliance. And although several automakers have said they would offer HD Radio as an option, none besides BMW have made any announcement.

“It’s the last medium that hasn’t converted from analog to digital,” said Rob Lopez, national marketing manager at Panasonic, which has offered an in-dash HD Radio unit for several years. “So I’d like to think we’d see HD Radio as a standard feature in cars in the next five years.”

William Scully, a BMW spokesman, pointed out that listeners didn’t necessarily have to choose between satellite and HD Radio.

“It’s not an either-or kind of thing,” he said. “Our Logic 7 combo models come with satellite and HD radios.”

So ultimately, one way or another, car radios will enter the digital era. And that will bring better sound into autos, so that the only static you get in the city is from other drivers — not from the radio.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/25/au...s/25RADIO.html





Playing Music Makes You Smart
Charles Q. Choi

Scientists have uncovered the first concrete evidence that playing music can significantly enhance the brain and sharpen hearing for all kinds of sounds, including speech.

"Experience with music appears to help with many other things in life, potentially transferring to activities like reading or picking up nuances in tones of voices or hearing sounds in a noisy classroom better," researcher Nina Kraus, a neuroscientist at Northwestern University, told LiveScience.

These new findings highlight the importance of music classes, she said.

"Music classes are often among the first to be cut when school budgets get tight," Kraus said. "That's a mistake."

Experiments started with 20 adult volunteers, who watched and listened to a movie of their choice. "'Men in Black,' 'The Incredibles,' 'Best in Show' were favorites," Kraus said.

As they watched movies, the volunteers also listened to Mandarin words that sounded like "mi" continuously at conversation level in the background. Mandarin is a tone language, where a single word can differ in meaning depending on its tone. For example, the Mandarin word "mi" means "to squint" when delivered in a level tone, "to bewilder" when spoken in a rising tone, and "rice" when given in a falling then rising tone.

The researchers recorded neural responses from the brains of volunteers during the experiments. Half the volunteers had at least six years of training in a musical instrument starting before the age of 12. The others had no more than three years of musical experience. All were native English speakers who had no knowledge of Mandarin.

"Even with their attention focused on the movie and though the sounds had no linguistic or musical meaning for them, we found our musically trained subjects were far better at tracking the three different tones than the non-musicians," said neuroscientist Patrick Wong at Northwestern University.

Wong emphasized these results were seen "in more or less everyday people. You don't have to be a top musician to find these kinds of effects."

Surprisingly, the researchers found these changes occurred in the brainstem, the ancient part of the brain responsible for controlling automatic, critical body functions such as breathing and heartbeat.

Music was thought largely to be the province of the cerebral cortex, where higher brain functions such as reasoning, thought and language are seated. The brainstem was thought to be unchangeable and uninvolved in the complex processes linked with music.

"These results show us how malleable to experience the brainstem actually is," Kraus said of the findings detailed in the April issue of the journal Nature Neuroscience. "We think music engages higher level functions in the cortex that actually tune the brainstem."

Much remains open for investigation. "How much musical training would you need for this to be helpful?" Kraus wondered. "Would music help children with literacy problems? How old would you have to be to see these effects?"
http://www.livescience.com/humanbiol...brainstem.html





Mmmm, fiber

Harry Potter Going Green
AP

The printing for the final Harry Potter book will not only be the biggest, but also the greenest.

Scholastic Inc. announced Tuesday that it had agreed with the Rainforest Alliance, a conservation organization that works with the business community, on tightened environmental standards for "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows," coming out July 21 with a first printing of 12 million.

J.K. Rowling's seventh Potter book will be a hulking 784 pages, Scholastic said, a comparable length to the last couple of Potter releases.

Among the details of Tuesday's agreement:

_The paper used will contain "a minimum of 30 percent post-consumer waste (pcw) fiber."

_Nearly two-thirds of the 16,700 tons of paper will be approved by the Forest Stewardship Council, an international organization with a mission to "promote environmentally responsible, socially beneficial and economically viable management of the world's forests."

_A "deluxe" edition of the new book, which has a first printing of 100,000, will be printed on paper that contains "100 percent post-consumer waste fiber."
http://news.newstimes.com/news/updates.php?id=1034765





Just don’t call them hacker-proof

New Technology Transforms Slots
AP

Engineers at PureDepth Inc. spent years developing tools for helping the military plot 3-D maps of war zones, eventually licensing top-secret technology to the U.S. Air Force and Navy.

But the Silicon Valley startup hit the jackpot in October when it inked a deal with International Game Technology Inc., the world's largest maker of slot machines.

Industry experts say a realistic digital video display is the final hurdle that will completely digitize one-armed bandits. The new displays by PureDepth and others -- set to debut later this year -- could profoundly change the $85 billion U.S. gambling industry and how it's regulated.

When high-tech slots are in place, programmers will be able to control nearly every aspect of the game -- cost, payout, even the images that line up on the payline. Casino operators will be able to make changes in real time through back-end servers that talk to computer chips inside the slot machines.

''This is the last piece of the puzzle,'' financial analyst Aimee Marcel Remey, who follows the gaming industry for Jefferies & Co. ''These new systems are so different from the slots out there now. You feel like it's an exact science, every time you pull.''

If the Beach Boys are playing the Luxor in Las Vegas, next-generation slots could display images of band members instead of cherries, numbers or other symbols. If band members' faces line up, an embedded printer could spit out front-row tickets.

Or suppose the penny slots area at a tribal casino empties out around 7 p.m., when big spenders arrive. With a few keystrokes, programmers could change the minimum bet to $1 and offer a progressive jackpot with all slots in the house -- or even with thousands of machines statewide.

''If the NASCAR folks are coming to Vegas, they could change the fruits to cars,'' said Fred Angelopoulos, CEO of Redwood Shores-based PureDepth, founded in 1999. ''You can start thinking outside the box, literally.''

Without digital displays and servers, employees would have to manually close out meters, change glass, change reel strips and physically relocate and remove machines.

Digital slots, however, are vulnerable to the same bugs and malfunctions that plague personal computers. Regulators say they'll be seductive targets for hackers, who have been trying to rig games for decades.

In 2000, a programmer in Edmonton, Canada, found a software glitch that let him regularly win $500 or more on some video poker machines. The maker of the machines -- WMS Industries Inc. -- estimated the incident cost at least $1 million and sued the man, who threatened to publish the flaw online.

The Nevada Gaming Control Board, which sets the pace for regulators nationwide, adopted new rules last year for digital machines. The board must approve all software modifications -- even pictures on reels. The approval process takes up to 30 days.

The board employs 11 experts in computer science, electronic security and wireless networking. It will double the number of these specialists by late 2007 and build a new research facility to deal with an expected profusion of digital slot machines, said Mark Clayton, who heads the board's technology division.

Executives at the top three manufacturers acknowledge that networked slot machines are a seductive target for hackers and are reluctant to call them hack-proof for fear of inviting challenges from would-be invaders. Instead, they're working with regulators to reduce the potential damage if such an attack occurred.

Roughly half the 835,000 slot machines nationwide have video displays and many are networked, but industry officials acknowledge that most are flops, lacking the visceral ''clunk-clunk-clunk'' of wheels hitting the payline.

Video slots with an authentic feel are the holy grail for manufacturers.

PureDepth searched for a mechanical alternative to the traditional optical tricks for fooling the eyes and brain into seeing depth. Such tricks -- fancy versions of 3-D glasses -- induced nausea and headaches and were rejected by casino operators, who stuck with mechanical reels or flat video displays with no depth.

With the cost of liquid crystal displays dropping, engineers at PureDepth's lab in New Zealand decided to house two or more LCDs in one physical unit to create depth -- a deceptively simple idea protected with 45 patents and roughly 70 patents pending.

Reno, Nev.-based IGT is hoping to debut the first machines with PureDepth's multilayer video display in November at the Global Gaming Expo in Las Vegas. The company won't say how much they'll cost, but they'll be more than mechanical reel machines, which cost up to $15,000.

A different approach on a 3-D video slot system will debut next month, when Waukegan, Ill.-based WMS is expected to introduce a ''Monopoly Super Money Grab'' slot machine. Its hybrid display features a mechanical reel behind a video display that activates when the payline hits certain combinations.

Traditional three- and five-reel slots have a finite number of combinations, but adding a video layer allows programmers to exponentially expand the possibilities.

''The mathematics drive the game, and the more mathematics you can derive, the more combinations you can create,'' said Larry Pacey, senior vice president of product development at WMS, which developed the patented technology with Tokyo-based Pachinko powerhouse Aruze Corp.

One thing that's unlikely to change in the new era of digital slots: the slim odds of winning big.

''Let's be honest: Everything about a casino design is meant to play on the player's psychology,'' said Jeffrey Allen, director of business development for Las Vegas-based Bally Technologies Inc., another top slot machine maker. ''Why else would there be no clocks and comfortable chairs and subdued lights?''

Ed Rogich, an IGT vice president, said players who tested video display prototypes earlier this year could hardly tell the difference between them and manual reels. That's a good sign: Many old-school gamblers prefer low-tech slots.

Earlier this month at Cache Creek Casino in Brooks, Margaret Spence criticized the present version of video slots and wistfully recalled the days of old-fashioned reels.

''I still miss pulling that old lever, and I miss that big tub of money that would fill up with coins when you hit the jackpot,'' said Spence, 71, a Concord resident who currently favors $1 ''Blazing 7s'' machines. ''The video machines seem like a waste of time -- like a video game.''
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/A...ech-Slots.html





Dell Launches Low-Cost PC in China

Dell Inc., the world's second-largest personal computer maker, unveiled a low-cost PC on Wednesday for China, its fastest-growing market.

The PC is priced from 2,599 yuan to 3,999 yuan (about $335 to $520), the company said in a statement.

Earlier this month, Dell reported a sharp drop in quarterly profit while revenue fell short of Wall Street expectations, adding that it foresaw pressure on growth and profit margins in the next several quarters as it spends money to revamp its business.

The company had lost market share to global industry leader Hewlett-Packard Co. during the fourth quarter and in January.

In China, the world's second-largest PC market, Dell ranks third behind homegrown powerhouse Lenovo Group Ltd. and Founder Technology.

York Li, Dell's top manufacturing executive for China, told Reuters last month that the company expected production in China for domestic sales to keep growing at about 30 percent in the short term, meaning the PC giant might add another factory in the country in three to four years.
http://www.reuters.com/article/marke...26246620070321





How Apple Orchestrated Web Attack on Researchers
George Ou

Last summer, when I wrote "Vicious orchestrated assault on MacBook wireless researchers," it set off a long chain of heated debates and blogs. I had hoped to release the information on who orchestrated the vicious assault, but threats of lawsuits and a spineless company that refused to defend itself meant I couldn't disclose the details. A lot has changed since then: Researcher David Maynor is no longer working for SecureWorks, and he's finally given me permission to publish the details.

The scandal broke when Jim Dalrymple put out a hit piece on security researchers David Maynor and Jon "Johnny Cache" Ellch, saying that their research was a "misrepresentation." Dalrymple based his conclusion solely on the word of Apple PR director Lynn Fox. David Chartier went even further and said that, "SecureWorks admits to falsifying MacBook wireless hack" based solely on a SecureWorks disclaimer (it's no longer there) that merely reaffirmed what the original video was saying all along–that the hack demonstrated in the video was based on third-party wireless hardware. I had personally interviewed the two researchers before this whole scandal broke out, and I specifically asked Maynor and Ellch if they were using Apple's Wi-Fi hardware in their official Black Hat demonstration. They clearly said that no Apple Wi-Fi product was used for the exploit. That's why I was shocked to see the researchers blamed for changing their story and "admitting" they made the whole thing up when no one changed the story and no one admitted to anything. Yet the headline from Chartier, along with Dalrymple's story, was blasted all over the Web after it made Digg and Slashdot. Everyone simply assumed Maynor and Ellch were frauds because they supposedly "admitted it."

Through all of this, I've been accused of covering up for my "buddies" and losing my objectivity, but I had never met David Maynor and Jon Ellch–and last summer was my first trip ever to Black Hat and Defcon. It was by mere chance that I overheard them in an interview with another reporter in the press room. I asked them if I could videotape an interview with them afterward, and they said yes–which led to this interview. The Week in Review is edited and published by Jack Spratts. But when I read the news that the researchers "admitted to falsifying their research," I was shocked, and I almost believed it for a second–until I read the stories and saw that there was no admission but a simple reaffirmation of what had been claimed all along on SecureWorks' Web site in some obscure location that blogger Chartier just *happened* to find. It didn't matter that the so-called "evidence" wasn't an "admission" at all because it looked the part, and that's all that was needed to hang the two researchers and brand them as frauds. But did Chartier really just happen to come across the evidence?

When I called David Maynor to get to the bottom of this, it turned out that Apple PR director Lynn Fox (who was also cited by Jim Dalrymple as proof that the researchers "misrepresented" the research) was the puppetmaster from start to finish. She not only contacted sympathetic bloggers like Chartier and "journalists" like Jim Dalrymple, she was actually the one who got SecureWorks to publish the "clarification" in the first place. Once she got SecureWorks to publish a clarification that merely reiterated the fact that third-party hardware was used in the original video (and it was clearly disclosed in the first 20 seconds of the video that it was third-party hardware), she used that as "incriminating" evidence that the researchers admitted to falsifying the video and shared her "findings" with Apple-friendly press.

But how did Lynn Fox get SecureWorks to publish a clarification on its Web site? It turned out that Fox had actually wanted an even more incriminating statement from David Maynor himself and sent him an e-mail on 8/15/2006 (two days before the public accusations of fraud hit the Web) demanding that he post a confession word for word. Maynor refused and told Fox to speak to SecureWorks PR, and the two parties came to a compromise on 8/16/2006, where SecureWorks would simply post a clarification. SecureWorks never knew what hit them when the accusations of fraud hit on 8/17/2006 because they figured they were merely posting a clarification that reiterated what they had been saying all along. They had no idea that MacWorld and an unofficial Apple blog would tear them to pieces and simply assumed it was an admission that facts were originally misrepresented. As proof of how this all went down, here is the e-mail Lynn Fox sent to David Maynor demanding that he post the confession publicly. I was given a copy of it on 8/19/2006.

From: Lynn Fox <####@apple.com>
To: David Maynor <####@mac.com>
Cc: Moody David <####@apple.com>, Wiley Hodges <####@apple.com>
Date: Tue Aug 15, 2006 06:14:09 PM PDT
Subject: Your post on SecureWorks website

<<Original Attached>>

David,

Below is the note we drafted about the MacBook exploit confusion.

Please confirm that you've received this and will post it without text changes on your blog and front and center on SecureWorks' news & events page tonight. The placement of this post should be as prominent as the initial announcement of the exploit demo at Black Hat.

You are welcome to call me on my cell at 415-###-#### if you need to discuss any further.

Thanks,
Lynn

For the Record: MacBook is not inherently vulnerable to Black Hat-demonstrated exploit
By David Maynor

I want to clarify something about the wifi device driver exploit we demonstrated at Black Hat in Las Vegas a couple weeks ago.

Confusion has mounted as to whether the exploit I demoed at Black Hat and for Brian Krebs of the Washington Post is reliant the use of a third party driver. In short, the answer is yes. The MacBook is not inherently vulnerable to the attack, and I never said that it was.

Part of the confusion lies in the fact that we have not specifically named the third-party device driver; this is because we know that the vendor is working on a patch and we don't want to release the name of the chipset until the fix is in place.

I hope this clears up some of the confusion. Stay tuned for a live demo of this exploit live at Toorcon.

Note that I've masked out parts of the e-mail addresses and parts of Lynn Fox's cell phone number for privacy issues, but I can assure you it was the right phone number. I actually called the number to confirm that it was real, and Lynn Fox was quite upset and demanded to know where I got the number. I declined to answer since the e-mail at the time was given to me by David Maynor off the record. I asked Fox about the scandal, and she told me that her cell phone was breaking up and that she'd call me back. Within a minute, I had David Maynor instant-messaging me that Lynn Fox was on the phone with him in a rage. I told him I didn't disclose anything to Fox, and Maynor simply directed Fox to SecureWorks PR.

When I finally got Fox back on the phone, I asked her some questions about how MacWorld and the unofficial Apple blog got the information on the so-called confession. I got all my questions answered, but I can't disclose what she said since Fox refused to speak on the record. But the bottom line is that Lynn Fox played Jim Dalrymple, David Chartier, and the rest of the Mac press/blogosphere like a violin, though it was clear they were all willing participants. When I pointed out the flaws in their stories, Chartier and Dalrymple simply ignored me and stuck to their guns and Chartier erased all of my comments on his weblog.

So what was the end result of all this? Apple continued to claim that there were no vulnerabilities in Mac OS X, but came a month later and patched its wireless drivers (presumably for vulnerabilities that didn't actually exist). Apple patched these "nonexistent vulnerabilities" but then refused to give any credit to David Maynor and Jon Ellch. Since Apple was going to take research, not give proper attribution, and smear security researchers, the security research community responded to Apple's behavior with the MoAB (Month of Apple Bugs) and released a flood of zero-day exploits without giving Apple any notification. The result was that Apple was forced to patch 62 vulnerabilities in just the first three months of 2007, including last week's megapatch of 45 vulnerabilities.

Apple is a mega corporation that nearly smashed the reputation of two individuals with bogus claims of fraud. It didn't matter that they weren't the ones pulling the trigger because they were pulling all the strings. David Chartier should be ashamed of himself and his blog. Jim Dalrymple of Macworld and his colleagues who jumped on the bandwagon should be ashamed of their reporting. Frank Hayes was the only one of Dalrymple's colleagues who had the decency and honor to apologize. Most of all, shame on Apple.
http://blogs.zdnet.com/Ou/?p=451





YouTube and the Birth of YouPolitics
Frederick Lane

The most obvious group responsible for creating the YouTube video featuring Sen. Hillary Clinton superimposed in the now-famous "1984" ad for Macintosh computers is the Obama campaign, but Barack Obama himself said that his campaign couldn't have put the YouTube ad together. "[F]rankly," Obama told Larry King, "given what it looks like, we don't have the technical capacity to create something like this."

The first significant advertisement of the 2008 presidential campaign has been released -- but it's not showing on any of the major broadcast network channels. Instead, in a clear sign of things to come, the ad was posted to the video-sharing site YouTube.

The clip is a "mash-up" of the famous Ridley Scott-directed Super Bowl advertisement that introduced the Apple Macintosh in 1984. The original ad featured an auditorium full of apparently mind-controlled workers in anonymous gray uniforms, staring blankly at a massive screen on which an enormous Big Brother figure was speaking.

In the YouTube version, the male Big Brother is replaced by video clips of Sen. Hillary Clinton. The closing Apple logo has also been modified into the shape of an "O," followed by a link to BarackObama.com.

The parody ad was originally posted to YouTube on March 5, 2007 by an anonymous poster named "ParkRidge47." Senator Clinton was born in Chicago in 1947 and grew up in Park Ridge, Illinois.

Although the clip did not receive much attention initially, a mention on Drudge.com propelled the clip into the mainstream media, and into the stratosphere of YouTube popularity. As of Tuesday, March 20, the "Vote Different" clip had been viewed nearly one million times.

Rise of YouPolitics

"What this ad reflects is a completely different campaign environment, and it's going to change the way politicians approach the race," said Simon Rosenberg, the President of the New Democratic Network, a Washington-based advocacy group for progressive government.

Rosenberg said that the "Vote Different" political ad is likely to be just one of among thousands that will be posted over the weeks and months to come.

"With the barriers to entry into video production and web distribution falling so rapidly," Rosenberg said, "candidates will be challenged in ways they've never been before. I do think that it will put a premium on accessibility; in this social-networking environment, a candidate needs to be able to project the ability to connect with voters."

Will It Help?

Among the burning questions about the video mash-up are what group might be responsible and how that information will play with the public.

The most obvious culprit, the Obama campaign, has steadfastly disclaimed any knowledge of the parody clip, and Senator Obama himself said that his campaign couldn't have put it together. "[F]rankly," Obama told CNN talk show host Larry King, "given what it looks like, we don't have the technical capacity to create something like this."

Others, particularly on partisan Democratic blogs, have suggested that the video clip was actually created by a Republican operative and released in the hope of accelerating the traditional Democratic fratricide.

"Given the ease with which individuals can produce and distribute these types of ads," Rosenberg said, "there's certainly a lot of room for mischief. But I think that, ultimately, it's healthy for democracy. There's certainly no question that 21st-century politics is going to be very different from the 20th-century variety."
http://www.newsfactor.com/news/YouTu...d=11000A3XKAQI





Trading the hard way


Big tube

Swiss Dig World's Longest Tunnel
Imogen Foulkes

For centuries, the Alps have served as a natural trade barrier between northern and southern Europe.

Sending Italian wine to the Netherlands, or German washing machines to Greece, means a long, slow journey along narrow alpine valleys, through tunnels and over passes.

The amount of freight crossing the Alps in heavy goods vehicles has risen sharply over the last two decades. In 1990 an estimated 40m tonnes went by road, in 2001 that had risen to 90m tonnes, with further big increases expected by 2010.

But concerns for the Alpine environment and fears over safety have led to big pressure to move freight off the roads and onto the railways.

Both Switzerland's Gotthard road tunnel and France's Mont Blanc road tunnel have suffered major fires in the last 10 years in which many died.

Faster than flying

As long ago as 1994, the Swiss voted in a nationwide referendum to put all freight crossing their country onto the railways. Naturally, such an ambitious plan was not going to happen overnight, but now the project dubbed the engineering feat of the 21st Century is slowly taking shape.

Deep beneath the Alps, the Swiss are building a high-speed rail link between Zurich and Milan. It will include, at 57 kilometres (35 miles), the world's longest tunnel.

A key feature of the project, which is new to alpine transport, is the fact that the entire railway line will stay at the same altitude of 500 metres (1,650ft) above sea level.

This will allow trains using the line to reach speeds of 240km/h (149mph), reducing the travel time between Zurich and Milan from today's four hours to just two-and-a-half. That would make the journey faster than flying.

To see the work in progress, it is necessary to travel two kilometres underground, to the construction site between the southern Swiss towns of Faido and Biasca.

The scale of the work going on is enormous: 2,000 people are working on the tunnel, 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. Besides the two main railway tubes, the construction workers have to dig access tunnels for people and equipment.

Huge fans ensure a fresh supply of air and cool things down. Yet the temperature is above 30C.

"We've got two-and-a-half kilometres of Alps above us," explains engineer Albert Schmid. "That means millions and millions of cubic tonnes of earth pressing down on us, that increases the pressure and the temperature."

Difficult work

It also means that every time the workers dig out another few metres of the tunnel, mother nature tries to close it up again. Along the tunnel's length, reinforced steel rings have to be inserted, to prevent it collapsing in on itself.

Building the tunnel requires a variety of techniques. At one section the workers are blasting away the rock, and the air reeks of ammonia from the explosives.

At another section the world's biggest tunnel-boring machine is in operation; it is ten metres in diameter and covered in dozens of rock-cutting blades, which as the machine turns, hack away at the rock face.

"With this machine, in good conditions, we can excavate 40 metres in a day," says Mr Schmid. "That's an absolute record."

But conditions are not always good. The tunnel workers have run into serious geological problems; in some areas the rock is as soft as butter, making digging it out more complicated.

"In poor rock conditions, where the rock is very soft, we can only excavate around half a metre a day," says Mr Schmid. "So in these situations, the work is delayed, and the costs rise."

Soaring costs

In fact the price tag for the entire rail link has soared from about $8bn (£4bn) to almost $15bn and final completion is unlikely to be before 2018.

But that has not stopped the alpine communities from supporting the project, and from trying to ensure that the rail link brings some social benefits too.

The tiny village of Sedrun, population 1,500, lies along the tunnel's route, and while residents are pleased to be relieved of the heavy lorries, they are concerned that the tunnel may marginalise their community.

"The thing about this tunnel is that it makes the Alps disappear," explains local architect Arthur Loretz. "At the moment, when you drive from Zurich to Milan, you get a beautiful panoramic view. But this tunnel turns the Alps into a big black hole."

Alpine gateway

The original plans for the tunnel involved trains rushing beneath the Alps without stopping. But in Sedrun a 1,000-metre elevator and underground railway station have been built just to get the workers to the construction site.

"All the infrastructure is already there," points out Arthur Loretz. "What we want to do is use it in the future." The plan is to create a station, deep in the mountains, known as "Porta Alpina" (Gateway to the Alps).

Tourists will be able to arrive by train in the Alps in record time, and then be whisked up to fresh mountain air by way of the world's longest elevator.

"I think it will have great benefits," says Mr Loretz. "Not just for tourists, but for us. Look, over that mountain people speak Italian, and over that one there they speak German."

"And here we speak Reto Romansch - a language only spoken by around 50,000 people. Traditionally the mountains have divided us, but with this rail link, and with Porta Alpina, we can bring people together."
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/h...pe/6471241.stm

















Until next week,

- js.



















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